Louis de Wohl: Former Astrologer and Catholic Convert

Will Duquette has a little review of Louis de Wohl’s Citadel of God. If you’ve raised Catholic kids, you’ve probably read one or more of de Wohl’s many fine saints biographies from Ignatius. He was a gifted writer and a very serious Catholic convert.What many people don’t know is that before his conversion, de Wohl, among other things, claimed to be an astrologer who could foretell the future and (what was even weirder) was hired by British intelligence to do exactly this during the early 40s. He was given the rank of captain and called himself Britain’s state seer.The Allies were willing to try anything, and since it was known that the Nazi consulted astrologers, the Brits decided to get an astrologer of their own to see if he could makes the same predictions as the Nazi astrologers and so get the jump on what the Nazis might be thinking about and planning.It lasted about six months and then British intel decided, “What were we thinking?” and let de Wohl go. Sometime after that, de Wohl, a German Jew by birth, entered the Catholic Church, abandoned his superstitions and became a devout Catholic writer of books about saints.I love this big crazy Church.