On November 14th, 2025, Bloomberg News obtained 18,000 emails sent and received by Jeffrey Epstein.
Jeffrey Epstein (1953-2019) was the American financier who was implicated in the trafficking and sexual abuse of over a thousand victims.[1] Epstein was connected to prominent politicians, billionaires, celebrities, academics, and tech figures, who often flew on his plane, visited his residences (including his Little Saint James island), or met him for dinner. Epstein was reportedly blackmailing “powerful people” by keeping “information about their sexual proclivities and recreational drug use.”[2] Ghislain Maxwell, Epstein’s partner and the daughter of media giant and alleged Mossad agent Robert Maxwell, told a friend that Epstein’s private island in the Virgin Islands was completely wired for video.[3] Hidden cameras were planted throughout his residences.[4] [5] [6] Epstein also helped create the Israeli-Russian backchannel on Syria[7] and he helped Israel create a formal defense agreement with Cote d’Ivoire in 2014.[8]
Epstein’s numerous connections included U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, Duke of York Prince Andrew, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Bill Gates, Peter Thiel, Leslie Wexner, Noam Chomsky, Lawrence Krauss, Steven Pinker, Kevin Spacey, Woody Allen, Charlie Rose, Alan Dershowitz, and countless others. It is unclear who was or was not being blackmailed by Epstein, but it is astonishing that someone of such repute was connected to so many noteworthy people – some well after his initial conviction.
Epstein died in his jail cell awaiting trial in August 2019. His death was ruled a suicide by hanging by the then U.S attorney general William Barr, but anomalies in the circumstances around his death spurred widespread suspicion: Epstein was taken off suicide watch,[9] his cellmate was transferred out,[10] his jail cell was not being checked,[11] the guards in charge of him had fallen asleep and falsified records,[12] [13] two cameras in front of his cell malfunctioned that night,[14] the FBI removed nearly three minutes of surveillance footage from Epstein’s prison cell,[15] and Epstein’s lawyers and estate’s pathologist say evidence is “far more consistent” with murder than suicide.[16] [17]
Jeffrey Epstein’s suspicious death birthed a media tempest: was he running a pedophile ring that implicated people at the highest echelons of society? Was Epstein working on behalf of a foreign or domestic intelligence agency? Was his death really a suicide, or was he assassinated by the people he was blackmailing? And how will government institutions recover from the institutional distrust that sprouted from this scandal?
The emails recently obtained by Bloomberg contain receipts of books that Jeffrey Epstein bought throughout the years. We don’t know for sure if Epstein read these books, or if they were gifts for others, but they nonetheless give us a rare look into Epstein’s interests. Namely, Epstein repeatedly bought books with occult overtones. While many like to imagine the Western elite as custodians of philosophical materialism, science, and technology, who may be motivated by human rights or wealth, Epstein’s book purchases unveil a world of sex magick, tantra, Thelema, Kabbalah, and pop psychology.
The Annotated Lolita
In 2019, not long before his death, Epstein bought The Annotated Lolita, a novel written by Vladimir Nabokov and annotated by Alfred Appel Jr. Epstein’s plane was aptly named the “Lolita Express” after Lolita, which is about a man who kidnaps and violates his twelve-year-old stepdaughter.[18] Why someone like President Bill Clinton would board a plane with such a name numerous times is anyone’s dark guess.
The outset of the book describes the protagonist’s obsession with a specific type of girl:
“Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac); and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as “nymphets.””[19]
For the protagonist, not every girl in this age group is a nymphet. In order to detect a nymphet, one must be “an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy, with a bubble of hot poison in your loins and a super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in your subtle spine.”[20] The man who pursues the nymphet must be many years older: “never less than ten I should say, generally thirty or forty, and as many as ninety in a few known cases, between maiden and man to enable the latter to come under a nymphet’s spell.”[21] The nymphet is unaware of her sexual prowess: “The little deadly demon among the wholesome children; she stands unrecognized by them and unconscious herself of her fantastic power.”[22]
Lolita, the main nymphet in question, was forced to star in a “sexcapade” pornographic film.[23] In the novel, Lolita simultaneously represents the protagonist’s lost love “Annabel”, and Lolita’s widowed mother “Charlotte” – “a synthesis linking up two dead women.”[24]
Secrets of Western Tantra: The Sexuality of the Middle Path
In 2007, Jeffrey Epstein purchased Christopher S. Hyatt’s Secrets of Western Tantra: The Sexuality of the Middle Path. The book was dedicated to his “teacher and friend” Israel Regardie, a Kabbalist who was called Aleister Crowley’s “apprentice” and worked as his secretary in Paris.[25] Hyatt (born Alan Ronald Miller) himself was the co-founder of the “Thelemic Order of the Golden Dawn”.
Secrets of Western Tantra aims to unite polarities, such as male and female energies, life and death, lust and love, and Eastern and Western spiritual traditions.[26] Hyatt claims to have learned Reichian therapy from Regardie. Named after Dr. Wilhem Reich, the man who coined the phrase “the sexual revolution”, Reichian therapy was designed to help the neurotic “reach orgastic potency” – an ecstatic state that was supposedly the norm in pre-civilizational societies; which was then bred out by civilization.[27] Reich actually had a great contempt for mysticism and religion, and believed that “they only existed because man could not reach full orgasm.”[28] Hyatt then worked to create “a new Tantra, a new Goddess ‘religion’” for the Western world.[29]
Rather than Indian Tantra, which was tied up in discipline and taboos, Hyatt’s work seeks to merge Kundalini yoga with Thelemite ritual magic. Hyatt writes of a “New Aeon”, which James Wasserman’s preface refers to explicitly as the “Aeon of the Child” (the child being the result of the unity of male and female).[30] This is an explicit nod to Aleister Crowley’s Aeon of Horus, the child god. Hyatt himself was a practitioner of Crowleyan magic.[31] Hyatt also borrows from Kabbalah’s “Tree of Life”, writing that “it was from my work with the Tree of Life and Sexual Magick that this system evolved”.[32]
Modern Sex Magick: Secrets of Erotic Spirituality
In the same month, Jeffrey Epstein bought Modern Sex Magick: Secrets of Erotic Spirituality by Donald Michael Kraig. The book teaches the history and techniques of Western sex magick, and it promises to reveal the “sexual secrets of Kabbalah dating back to the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem” and analyze “the rarest of Crowley’s sex magick instructions”.[33] He claims a geneaology to sex magick: “the Templars learned sex magic from the Sufis of the Middle East, who had learned it from the Tantrics of India. The Medieval alchemists received this information from the Templars and coded it into some of their works. Eventually, Aleister Crowley, who learned about sex magick on his journeys to India and Africa, started experimenting with both traditional and his own newly created techniques.”[34] Kraig was a hypnotherapist who ran a tantric lodge and was initiated into Aridian Witchcraft and American Traditionalist Witchcraft.
For Kraig, Kabbalah “formed the basis of Western sex magick, in all its forms, as it exists today.”[35] He is not simply referring to the Kabbalah practiced in the Hasidic tradition, but an occult science that finds its roots in ancient Jewish folk paganism.[36] Kraig considers circumcision, bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs, cherubim, the Song of Songs, and shekhina theology to be traces of an ancient sex magick tradition.[37]
Kraig goes over the traditional evidence that, inside the Jerusalem’s Temple “Holy of Holies”, there may have been a figurine of a male and female cherubim clasped together.[38] Is this why Jeffrey Epstein had a temple-looking building on his island – one that resembles Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock, the building that sits where the Jerusalem Temple is believed to have stood? Was this building the epicenter of Epstein’s sex rituals? Was Epstein’s temple in his “favourite place to be”[39] a place where he could re-enact a sexualized Holy of Holies as an homage to the lost Jewish temple?
Otherwise, the book relies on the same Crowleyan influences. Kraig gives an interpretive summary of Crowley’s “IX° Emblems and Mode of Use”, decoding it as sex magick written in the jargon of alchemy.[40] In Kraig’s manual for “the Ritual of the Breath of Power”, the ritual space is first consecrated with banishings[41] – an explicitly Thelemite practice and ceremonial magical protocol. The men and women then form two circles,[42] symbolizing Hermetic sexual polarity. The outer circle then kneels and breathes “energy” at the inner circle.[43] There are references to altered states of consciousness (“Witches’ Cradle”),[44] BDSM,[45] and gay sex throughout the work.
Chakra & Kundalini Workbook: Psycho-Spiritual Techniques for Health, Rejuvenation, Psychic Powers & Spiritual Rejuvenation
Sometime between October and December of 2007, Jeffrey Epstein ordered Dr. John Mumford’s A Chakra & Kundalini Workbook: Psycho-Spiritual Techniques for Health, Rejuvenation, Psychic Powers & Spiritual Rejuvenation. Less Crowleyan than the aforementioned books, the Workbook is a how-to yoga manual – interest in Indic spirituality, New Age, and yoga was common among Epstein’s generation. It promises to “quickly build a solid foundation of inner relaxation and energy discipline that leads to better health, a longer life, and greater control over your personal destiny.”[46]
In yoga, Kundalini is a spiritual energy or life force, often symbolized as a coiled serpent, believed to be dormant at the base of the spine. Through practices like Kundalini yoga, which combines postures, breathing, and meditation, the aim is to awaken this energy and allow it to travel up through the body’s chakras (energy centers) to the crown chakra, leading to a state of expanded consciousness, bliss, and spiritual connection. Mumford notes that this serpent is a sexual symbol, and he seeks to reconcile the Tantric and Yogic schools on the issues of sexual energy and spiritual discipline.[47]
Merchants in the Temple: Inside Pope Francis’s Secret Battle Against Corruption in the Vatican
Epstein also bought Gianluigi Nuzzi’s Merchants in the Temple. While it is mainly about the Vatican’s financial scandals, it also references the child abuse scandals that have plagued the Church over the years. Since Epstein was a trafficker of young girls, is it possible that he was in some way connected to some of these cases? The purchase of this book may at least suggest an interest in the subject.
Conclusions and Religious Considerations
In Jeffrey Epstein’s taste in books, one can find clues to his interests, his inner psychology, his spiritual framework, and his sex crimes. Epstein was probably deeply immersed in modern esoterica and Kabbalah, especially where they pertain to sexuality. It is unclear how much of Epstein interests and beliefs reflect those of his peers, but where there is smoke, there is often fire. After all, there is a large body of evidence for the illicit sexual behaviours of many in Epstein’s circle (including sex crimes). There is also evidence of sex magick in Washington: John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign chair, was invited by his brother to a Marina Abramovic “Spirit Cooking” event – a performance art project that involves semen, breastmilk, and blood. After the invitation was leaked, Abramovic said, “It was actually just a normal menu, which I call spirit cooking. There was no blood, no anything else. We just call things funny names, that’s all.”[48]
For Christians and Muslims, the spiritual and sexual perversions of elites is not a surprise. Paul writes in Ephesians 6:12, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Chapter 11 of the Quran details that the prophets were constantly met with opposition from the elite (al-mala’, ٱلْمَلَأُ). The Quran further explains that some evil humans are even partners with evil jinn, saying, “That Day He will gather them together and say, ‘O assembly of jinn! You misled humans in great numbers.’ And their human associates will say, ‘Our Lord! We benefited from each other’s company, but now we have reached the term which You appointed for us.’ He will say, ‘The Fire is your home, yours to stay in forever, except whoever God wills to spare.’ Surely, your Lord is All-Wise, All-Knowing.” (6:128)
While Jeffrey Epstein is dead, and the names and faces of evil constantly change, Satan is the master (mawla) of the evildoers (Quran 2:257, 4:76, 7:27, 7:30, 22:4, 18:50), and he will remain so until his respite has expired.
[1] Quinn, Melissa; Rosen, Jacob, “Justice Department review finds Jeffrey Epstein had no ‘client list’ and died by suicide”, CBS News, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jeffrey-epstein-client-list-died-by-suicide-justice-department-review/#:~:text=The%20FBI%20and%20Justice%20Department,whom%20suffered%20%22unique%20trauma.%22
[2] Stewart, James B., “The Day Jeffrey Epstein Told Me He Had Dirt on Powerful People”, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-interview.html
[3] Grigoriadis, Vanessa, “They’re Nothing, These Girls”: Unraveling the Mystery of Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s Enabler”, Vanity Fair, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/08/the-mystery-of-ghislaine-maxwell-epstein-enabler
[4] Marra, Andrew, “The Man Who Had Everything: Jeffrey Epstein craved big homes, elite friends and underage girls”, The Palm Beach Post, https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/courts/2019/07/17/man-who-had-everything-jeffrey-epstein-craved-big-homes-elite-friends-and-underage-girls/4676283007/
[5] “Jeffrey Epstein accuser says his house had cameras ‘monitoring private moments’”, CBS News, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jeffrey-epstein-accuser-maria-farmer-says-his-house-under-constant-tv-surveillance/
[6] Christopher Mason, “Home Sweet Elsewhere”, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/11/garden/home-sweet-elsewhere.html
[7] Hussain, Murtaza; Grim, Ryan, “Jeffrey Epstein and the Mossad: How The Sex-Trafficker Helped Israel Build a Backchannel to Russia Amid Syrian Civil War”, Drop Site, https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/jeffrey-epstein-ehud-barak-putin-israel-russia-syria-war-depose-assad
[8] Ibid, “Jeffrey Epstein Helped Israel Sell a Surveillance State to Côte d’Ivoire”, Drop Site, https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/jeffrey-epstein-israel-surveillance-state-cote-d-ivoire-ehud-barak-leaked-emails
[9] Watkins, Ali; Ivory, Danielle; Goldbaum, Christina, “Inmate 76318-054: The Last Days of Jeffrey Epstein”, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/17/nyregion/epstein-suicide-death.html
[10] Zapotsky, Matt; Barrett, Devlin, “Correction officers, did not check on Epstein for several hours before his death, violating protocol, person familiar with the case says”. The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/it-was-inevitable-officers-watching-epstein-were-on-overtime-due-to-jail-staffing-shortage-union-president-says/2019/08/11/2b611404-bc5e-11e9-a5c6-1e74f7ec4a93_story.html
[11] Watkins, Ali “Why Wasn’t Jeffrey Epstein on Suicide Watch When He Died?”, The New York Times,
[12] Watkins, Ali; Ivory, Danielle; Goldbaum, Christina, “Inmate 76318-054: The Last Days of Jeffrey Epstein”, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/17/nyregion/epstein-suicide-death.html
[13] Benner, Katie; Ivory, Danielle, “Jeffrey Epstein Death: 2 Guards Slept Through Checks and Falsified Records” The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/13/nyregion/jeffrey-epstein-jail-officers.html
[14] Mark Hosenball, “FBI studies two broken cameras outside cell where Epstein died – source”, Reuters, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-people-jeffrey-epstein-cameras-idUSKCN1VI2LC/
[15] Mehrota, Dhruv, “The FBI’s Jeffery Epstein Prison Video Had Nearly 3 Minutes Cut Out”, Wired, https://www.wired.com/story/the-fbis-jeffrey-epstein-prison-video-had-nearly-3-minutes-cut-out/
[16] Stockler, Ashley, “Epstein Lawyers Say Evidence ‘Far More Consistent’ With Murder Than Suicide”, Newsweek, https://www.wired.com/story/the-fbis-jeffrey-epstein-prison-video-had-nearly-3-minutes-cut-out/
[17] Paybarah, Azi, “Epstein’s Autopsy ‘Points to Homicide,’ Pathologist Hired by Brother Claims”, The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/nyregion/jeffrey-epstein-homicide-autopsy-michael-baden.html
[18] Appel Jr., Alfred, The Annotated Lolita, pp. 239.
[19] Ibid, pp. 98.
[20] Ibid, pp. 98.
[21] Ibid, pp. 99.
[22] Ibid, pp. 99.
[23] Ibid, pp. 575.
[24] Ibid, pp. 586-587.
[25] Suster, Gerald, Crowley’s Apprentice: The Life and Ideas of Israel Regardie, pp. 30.
[26] Ibid, pp. 25.
[27] Ibid, pp. 49.
[28] Ibid, pp. 49.
[29] Ibid, pp. 50.
[30] Ibid, pp. 8.
[31] Ibid, pp. 167.
[32] Ibid, pp. 55.
[33] Kraig, Donald Michael, Modern Sex Magick: Secrets of Erotic Spirituality, inside flap.
[34] Ibid, pp. 4.
[35] Ibid, pp. 26.
[36] Ibid, pp. 7-15.
[37] Ibid, pp. 9-15.
[38] Ibid, pp. 11-12.
[39] Baez, Gabriella N., “On Epstein’s ‘Little St. Jeff’s’ island, a hideaway where money bought influence”, The Star, https://www.thestar.com/news/world/on-epstein-s-little-st-jeff-s-island-a-hideaway-where-money-bought-influence/article_07b81f24-846a-5109-bb6d-fbb9c44cc90c.html
[40] Kraig, Donald Michael, Modern Sex Magick: Secrets of Erotic Spirituality, 25-31, 319-329.
[41] Ibid, pp. 265.
[42] Ibid, pp. 265.
[43] Ibid, pp. 265.
[44] Ibid, pp. 281-284.
[45] Ibid, pp. 286-311.
[46] Mumford, John, A Chakra & Kundalini Workbook: Psycho-Spiritual Techniques for Health, Rejuvenation, Psychic Powers & Spiritual Rejuvenation, forward.
[47] Ibid, pp. 73-74.
[48] https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/marina-abramovic-on-right-wing-attacks-its-absolutely-outrageous-and-ridiculous-7255/
