If you’ve ever dropped a tab of acid and stared at a Steve Ditko panel until the colors started screaming, you might have an inkling of what was brewing in the 1970s. But behind the neon mandalas and the “Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth” lies a rabbit hole that connects Silver Age ink to the darkest corners of occult history.

“Almost everyone is unaware of the true history of one of today’s most popular Marvel characters, Doctor Strange. What is the connection to Satanist Aleister Crowley, Satanism, the ancient heresy of Gnosticism and Doctor Strange? To truly understand the spiritual foundation of Marvel’s cosmology, one must first understand the influence of many comic book writers. These same influences were brought into the first iterations of Doctor Strange, beginning in 1961, when he was introduced as Dr. Droom, and then as Dr. Druid in 1976. Journey with us as we pull back the curtain further in Part 2 of Marvel & DC’s War on God to discover how the top movie franchises are continuing to indoctrinate and perpetuate Satanic lies to hundreds of millions of young people among their unsuspecting audience.”

A major point of this video is the story of Doctor Strange vs. Siseneg, which started in Marvel Premiere #13. Sise-Nig, Genesis backward, took both Dr. Strange and his enemy Baron Mordo on a journey through time, trying to add power to his already formidable grimoire of spells.  As they continued to move through time, they battled Shuma-Gorath, the chaos lord responsible for the death of Strange and Mordo’s teacher, the Ancient One.

The story ends with Sise-Nig heading to the literal dawn of time. Sise-Neg stands there in the nothingness, pulsing with the power of a thousand suns, and drops a truth bomb that would make Nietzsche weep. He realizes his plan to “improve” the cosmos is a fool’s errand. Why? Because after attaining total godhood, he figures out that humanity—with all its messy, flawed, beautiful chaos—is already the peak of perfection. A blinding flash of light, a roar that echoes through eternity, and a Big Bang that sends Strange and Mordo hurtling through the timestream like cosmic pinballs, sending them back to modern time. Mordo’s brain is short-circuited by seeing the fact of the creator, while Strange wonders if this was really the first Big Bang or a cosmic reset.

Stan Lee found out about this story and was pretty upset, but writer Steve Englehart and artist Frank Brunner scammed him. Take it from Brunner: “We had just completed Marvel Premiere #14-well, I had just completed the pencils, most of the art, but for some reason or another, nobody took notice of what we were doing. When the book came out, Stan finally got a hold of it, and I don’t know, somebody pointed it out, or he read it, and he wrote us a letter saying, “We can’t do God. You’re going to have to print in the letters column a retraction saying this is not the God, this is just a god.” Steve and I said, “Oh, come on! This is the whole point of the story! If we did that retraction of God, this is meaningless!” So, Steve happened to be on his way to Texas for something, this is when we were in California, and we cooked up this plot-we wrote a letter from a Reverend Billingsley in Texas, a fictional person, saying that one of the children in his parish brought him the comic book, and he was astounded and thrilled by it, and he said, “Wow, this is the best comic book I’ve ever read.” And we signed it “Reverend so-and-so, Austin, Texas”-and when Steve was in Texas, he mailed the letter so it had the proper postmark. Then we got a phone call from Roy: “Hey, about that retraction, I’m going to send you a letter, and instead of the retraction, I want you to print this letter.” And it was our letter! We printed our letter!”

Thanks to CBR, here’s the letter:

“Dear Mr. Lee,

The other evening at our Church’s Christmas social, a young member of my congregation showed me a comic book you presented, Marvel Premiere (#14, March). He told me it dealt with God.

I borrowed the comic from him, thinking that I would find another denigration of our Lord in the manner so fashionable these days. However, after reading this issue, I must commend you on the taste and perception you, your editor, and your writer showed in handling a very difficult subject. It is magazines such as yours that truly perform the Lord’s work and open new eyes to His majesty.

I have since recommended Marvel Premiere to many of my congregation and friends. Thank you, Mr. Lee, for your fine work.

Rev. David Billingsley

8794 East-West Highway

Denton, Texas”

As Englehart was a member of the OTO, a group founded by Aleister Crowley, you can only imagine how this movie views him.

This goes into the origins of Dr. Droom, who first appeared in Amazing Adventures #1 and was seen as a sort of trial run for Dr. Strange. Anthony Droom is referred to as a psychiatrist, lifelong learner and physician and is independently wealthy, as all comic book heroes should be. He meets a lama in Tibet who transforms him into an Asian man — the film claims he looks exactly like Crowley — and gives him the magic he needs to protect Earth.

Over a year later, artist Steve Ditko — who inked Jack Kirby’s five Droom stories — approached Stan Lee with a new magic character called Mr. Strange.

As for Druid, according to Wikipedia, he “is often ranked amongst the worst Avengers members, worst leaders of the team, and often considered a B-list hero. The original origin story for the character has also been cited as problematic due to the race-swapping aspect.”

Also: Dr. Druid is relatively unknown, despite what this film would have you believe.

As with all Good Fight Ministry docs, this goes all in on Gnosticism and then details how The Scarlet Witch is the Whore of Babylon. Strangely — pardon that pun — I don’t see Dr. Stephen Strange looking like Jack Parsons, but I did appreciate this getting him in, as well as Marjorie Cameron showing up in other films by these folks. 

Between the child sacrifice allegations leveled at Crowley (which many historians dispute) and his rumored Nazi ties (despite his work for British Intelligence), the history of Dr. Strange’s influences is just as murky as the Dark Dimension itself. I liked how they got across Ditko as a drug-addled lunatic staring into space and dreaming up comics; nothing is further from the truth.

Whether you see Strange as a harmless psychedelic hero or a gateway to the OTO, one thing is clear: the history of the Sorcerer Supreme is far weirder than any movie has dared to show.

You can watch this on Fawesome.