Orgone energy is the energy that all living things exude and that permeates the entire universe. At least according to Wilhelm Reich, whose claims of a rediscovery of an esoteric practice and knowledge in the 1930s would eventually land him in jail. In the decades since, however, many others have picked up, albeit more privately, where Reich left off.

Indeed, orgone energy and the accumulation of it is still very much alive within many new age and holistic movements today. Perhaps less well-known, is the work Reich conducted concerning weather manipulation – something very much a reality today. Perhaps the fact that Reich was not only jailed but his equipment completely destroyed should be something to take note of in itself.

There are also some intriguing connections to ancient structures and materials. It is interesting to note, for example, that many of the ancient megalithic structures around the planet were once covered in layers of “organic and inorganic material” – much in the same way that “orgone accumulators” were first designed by Reich (although in a much smaller way).

Whether Reich’s work, or more specifically the claims of it, were a misguided danger to the public or not is open to debate. Many of his theories continue today, and many believe an attempt to suppress such information is reason enough to investigate it.

Before we move on, check out the short video below. It gives a basic overview of the orgone energy conspiracy and Wilhelm Reich.

The Controversial and Intriguing, Wilhelm Reich

Wilhelm Reich is a controversial figure in history, to say the least. Born in 1897 in Dobzau in what is now Ukraine, he was an Austrian doctor and psychoanalyst. He was also a devoted follower of Sigmund Freud and authored several books that were influential at the time, leaning heavily on Freud’s way of thinking.

Many of his later books were self-published such was the controversy of his content. He would speak openly about sex and sexuality at a time when to do so was very taboo. Incidentally, Reich and his ideas would enjoy a second wave of popularity a decade after his death in the late-1960s. His work and theories were very popular within the student demonstration movements, for example.

He also, however, and in part due to his initial experiments with sexual energy, developed a great interest in the knowledge of the ancients and esoteric arts. He would explore “spiritual” avenues before such a term was widely used by many charlatan-types in the modern age.

Much like many others in Europe at the time, Reich would leave his homeland in view of the rapid rise to power of Hitler and the Nazi Party. He would settle in New York in the United States in 1939. A short snippet from his journal at the time reads,

“I am well aware of the fact that the human race has known about the existence of a universal energy related to life for many ages. However, the basic task of natural science consisted of making this energy usable. This is the sole difference between my work and all preceding knowledge!”

It is here, in the United States when Reich first began to openly research and promote orgone energy.

Forgotten Esoteric Knowledge?

Reich believed that modern humans had lost sight of orgone energy and instead saw it as two separate states – the physical (or the aether), and the spiritual, which most people “called God!”

In truth, Reich had been practicing outside of the accepted norms and limits of psychoanalysis since the early-1930s. Indeed, many of his theories and practices were very publicly attacked by the press and his contemporaries.

Perhaps the most controversial of these (in terms of its hostile rejection) was the “Bion Experiments”, which Reich conducted from 1934 to 1939 while living in Oslo, Norway. He would examine cells, and even the structures within the cells of various items from vegetation, metals, and even animal tissues. When heating these cells, he claimed to witness bright blue vesicles, which he labeled “bions”.

He believed these bions were an energy form, halfway between life and non-life – the natural life-energy that permeated everything around us. As well as the blue bions, he also claimed to witness red bions, which he later claimed to find in cancerous tissue. Essentially, this would lead Reich to assert that cancers were caused by a lack of blue bions – basically the natural energy of the Earth and the Universe – which diminishes in the body over time. He later performed these experiments with mice upon arriving in the United States.

His fellow scientists would describe his findings as “nonsense!” In fact, many began a campaign to publicly denounce them, with some even labeling him “dangerous”.

An Interesting Side-Note!

Before we move on, an interesting side note that is perhaps worth looking at here is the work of Christopher Knight and Alan Butler and their book ‘Civilization One’. While researching ancient measurements, their research took them back to what appeared to be a “first” civilization. One of shared and advanced knowledge, and one in complete unity with the Earth and the Universe.

They found that the natural resonance of the Earth is slightly above C-sharp on the modern music scale. This note, in ancient times before modern concert tuning (modern tuning allows the player to move between keys without needing to retune the instrument) would have been “Megalithic C”.

Although they wouldn’t claim a direct link, they would suggest a “subtle harmony between Megalithic C (C-sharp) which has a sympathetic frequency with the color we know as blue.” They explained this harmony by showing the similarities in the frequency range and how we interpret that as sound, and the electromagnetic spectrum of light which our eyes interpret as color and sight. These waves are ultimately energy.

They also noted how water, the essence of life as we know it, has a true color of blue. The blue of the sky is also due to reacting particles in the atmosphere (known as Rayleigh Scattering).

In short, the color blue – or more to the point how we interpret that part of the color spectrum and the energy behind it – appears to be one that is in “natural sympathy” with the Earth. While the work of Reich, and Knight and Butler share no other connections and are half a century apart, it is nonetheless perhaps an interesting thought to keep in mind.

Orgone Energy

Reich believed his work with bions had led him to discover a long-forgotten form of energy. A “force” very much like that described in the Star Wars films of the late-1970s. He would name this energy, orgone. At the heart of this energy, the primary force was sexuality and sexual energy. Possibly as a leaning to his teachings from Freud, the word orgone was a calculated effort to have the root of the word in ‘orgasm’.

Although sexual matters were perfectly accepted in medical environments during this time, many took a dim view of Reich and his teachings. Many would soon view him as running a “cult of sex and anarchy”, and at one stage was even investigated as a communist looking to “poison” democracy. Fellow scientists described how he sought to cure disease as “quackery”

Perhaps most damning though, after originally accepting to participate in his experiments, was Albert Einstein’s insistence that Reich not use his name in relation to orgone energy. He would site how Reich “lacked scientific detachment and experimental rigor”.

Many people did follow his teachings, however. Before we move on, the short video below briefly explains what orgone energy actually is.

Orgone Accumulators, Cloudbusters, and FDA Warnings

In order to “collect” and utilize Orgone energy, Reich would develop and build “orgone accumulators” of various designs and for various purposes. A typical accumulator would feature a box made of walls of alternating layers of organic and non-organic materials. By sitting inside this box, orgone energy was absorbed and concentrated into the participant.

It was, Reich would claim, the drop in levels of blue bions in a person’s body that resulted in illness and disease, including cancer. By increasing the levels of blue bions by utilizing the orgone accumulators, Reich claimed it could cure disease and illness. Officially, it was these claims that would result in the eventual intervention of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Reich would also build orgone devices that he would name “cloudbusters”. These would stand on the ground, usually in water which, according to Reich’s research, was a natural orgone absorber, and then “aimed” at a point overhead. The device would take energy out of the atmosphere – at least in theory.

According to records of his experiments, the device did work, and as we shall see shortly, it may have succeeded in more than just changing the weather.

What would eventually draw the attention of the American authorities and ultimately the FDA, however, were the claims that this energy, when collected in “orgone accumulators” could cure disease, and most specifically, cancer.

In 1954, the FDA would serve Reich with an injunction to prevent him making any claims connecting orgone energy to medical cures and healing. Part of this injunction also forbade Reich from moving devices relating to orgone energy across state lines.

Arrest, Incarceration, and Destruction of Devices

Reich, however, would defy the injunction when he received a device part in the mail from Maine while in Arizona. This would ultimately lead to his arrest and short imprisonment of two years in 1956. He would die in 1957 while still incarcerated. Perhaps more devastating to Reich at the time though, was the FDA’s decision to destroy his equipment. They would also conduct a very public and supervised burning of his papers and writings.

It is an interesting notion, made by some, that the reason for the total destruction of Reich’s work and equipment was purely to protect the profit made by “Big Pharma” from victims of cancer. This is a conspiracy in itself, and one that can fill volumes of books. And furthermore, in the current “who do you trust?” type environment of the twenty-first century, it is one that leaves most of us asking questions along those very lines.

Perhaps a similarly “murky” story is that of Dr. Raymond Rife, who in 1934 claimed to have found a way to stop cancer by way of using vibrational resonance to destroy cancer cells. He claimed to have cured 14 of 16 terminally ill people he worked with. There are, however no records of his achievements.

According to the 1987 book ‘The Cancer Cure That Worked’ by Barry Lynes, Dr. Milibank Johnson would die from poisoning the day before he was to publicly reveal Rife’s work and results. His papers still remain missing. Furthermore, according to Lynes, Rife’s offices mysteriously caught fire shortly after. Further still, Rife’s research partner also perished in an unexplained fire along with his research notes. Rife would pass away from a mixture of Valium and alcohol in 1971. The medical community would never accept his work.

The UFO Connection

While Reich certainly didn’t do anything to aid his public perception while dealing with such a dramatic subject as “invisible energy”, it is worth noting that many fringe scientists and researchers have carried on and developed his work, as well as looking back at ancient knowledge for answers in the modern age. Of course, these ideas are still far from accepted by the mainstream.

Undoubtedly, rightly or wrongly, another reason many would keep a distance from Reich were his claims of UFO sightings. While researching and experimenting with his cloudbuster device in the mid-1950s, Reich and several other participants would witness several separate appearances of strange aerial craft.

Beginning in November 1953, Reich would witness the first of many sightings from outside his home in Maine. He would forward all information to the nearby Presque Island Air Force Base. After several sightings, the Air Force would request Reich fill out an official survey. He would return an entire paper.

Siting his nocturnal time-lapse photography experiments, Reich asserted that some “stars” didn’t behave like stars and so, therefore, must be “something else”. Like many in the following decades, he looked at the recent world war and increasing pollution of the Earth as a reason for this sudden wave of UFO sightings sweeping much of the Americas, Europe, the USSR and China.

Indeed, when papers on the previously top-secret ‘Project Sign” from 1949 were declassified in the late-1970s, after accepting that such visitors were likely far in advance of ourselves, the report read,

“Such a civilization might observe that on Earth we now have atomic bombs and are fast developing rockets. In view of the past history of mankind, they should be alarmed. We should, therefore, expect at this time above all to behold such visitations.”

Attracting UFO Attention?

It is of interest that these sightings were predicted in the late-1940s before waves of sightings throughout the 1950s. Reich would also site his own weather experiments and manipulation of energy as a means of attracting such visitors.

Reich believed that UFOs somehow utilize the “energy” of the universe and ride its “waves”. Perhaps, he wondered, this energy could be manipulated? He would point his device at a location in the sky with “stars” that he believed were not stars. To his amazement, they vanished from sight, as if affected by the energy of his device. He would repeat this procedure when it reappeared, again witnessing it vanish from sight.

On 5th October 1954, three “large, yellow UFOs” hovered in the air in full view of Reich’s property. Five days later he would sight a similarly sized red object in a similar position in the sky. Upon seeing this red object, he aimed the cloudbuster in its direction. And as he now expected, the object appeared to purposely move out of its way.

Whether Reich’s device was responsible for the appearance of these UFOs over his property is open to debate. He is certainly not the only person to view “energy” as something that we need a better collective understanding of. The great Nikola Tesla once stated, “If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration.”

Indeed, you can argue that everything, from “solid” buildings to humans themselves are merely manifestations of energy. Perhaps our understanding of energy, and how we perceive it, is where the gap in our knowledge resides?

1941 FBI Arrest

Coincidentally or not, it was following his UFO revelations that the FDA would serve him with the injunction. Furthermore, the action taken against him was excessive by any stretch of the imagination. In particular, the destroying of his equipment and burning of his papers.

Perhaps his arrest by the FBI plays a part in his eventual incarceration. This despite the incident being a case of mistaken identity on the FBI’s part. In December 1941, shortly after midnight, Reich was arrested and held for over three weeks. He was questioned over books he apparently had in his possession, including ‘Mein Kampf’ by Adolf Hitler. He refused to cooperate and threatening a hunger strike, eventually secured his release. However, his name would remain on the FBI’s “person of interest” list for several years.

After eventually admitting their error (there was a person by the name of William Reich who was distributing “communist” material in New Jersey who was their real target), the file was closed. At least officially. He was, though, now on the US authorities radar.

There are certainly grounds to further research the basic premise of Reich’s work. When Stefan Muschenich reconstructed an orgone accumulator and had test subjects enter it as part of his Master’s thesis, demonstrable effects on the participants were noticed. At the same time, test subjects who entered a normal non-accumulator box showed no signs of any benefits. In short, and as limited an experiment as it was, it suggests that Reich is correct in his basic claims. Incidentally, many people still construct such devices for personal use around the world today. Perhaps there is still a lot to learn.

The video below looks at orgone energy a little deeper.