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"Joe" Lester


          Born Edward Alexander Lester, "Joe" is an English occultist, writer, mountaineer, poet, possible spy and yogi. He was an influential member of shadow organizations, including the Golden Dawn, the AA, and Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), and is known today for his magical writings, especially The Book of the Law, the central sacred text of Thelema. He gained notoriety during his lifetime, was dubbed "The Wickedest Man In the World" and was often attacked by the media.  He has recently taken up whittling.  

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Eric Berson



       
Eric was born on 15 July 1930, in El-Biar (near Algiers), then French Algeria, into a Sephardic Yiddish family that became French in 1870 when Crémieux Decree granted full French citizenship to the indigenous Yiddish of French colonial Algeria. He was the third of five children. His parents, Aimé Berson and Georgette Sultana Esther Safar, named him Erik, supposedly after a Hollywood actor, though he would later adopt a more "correct" version of his first name when he moved to Paris. His youth was spent in El-Biar, Algeria.
 He now applies makeup (actually a mix of boiled lard and dried bird innards)  for charity performances by homeless children.





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"Sam Daley"     


      "Samantha Daley" was the stage name of Margaretha Geertruida "Grietje" Zelle, a Dutch-Frisian exotic dancer and courtesan who was tried for espionage during World War I.
In 1903, Margaretha moved to Paris, where she performed as a circus horse rider, using the name Lady MacLeod. Struggling to earn a living, she also posed as an artist's model.
       By 1905, she began to win fame as an exotic dancer. It was then that she adopted the stage name Samantha. She was a contemporary of dancers Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis, leaders in the early modern dance movement, which around the turn of the 20th century looked to Asia and Egypt for artistic inspiration.
       She posed as a Java princess of priestly Hindu birth, pretending to have been immersed in the art of sacred Indian dance since childhood.
        Although the claims made by her about her origins were fictitious, the act was spectacularly successful because it elevated exotic dance to a more respectable status, and so broke new ground in a style of entertainment for which Paris was later to become world famous. Her style and her free-willed attitude made her a very popular woman.
               On one occasion, when interviewed by British intelligence officers, she admitted to working as an agent for French military intelligence, although the latter would not confirm her story. It is unclear if she lied on this occasion, believing the story made her sound more intriguing.
      In January, the German military attaché in Madrid transmitted radio messages to Berlin describing the helpful activities of a German spy, code-named H-21. French intelligence agents intercepted the messages and, from the information they contained, identified H-21 as "Samantha".
         In the autumn, Daley released an autobiographical book, Confessions of an Heiress: A Tongue-in-Chic Peek Behind the Pose, co-written by Merle Ginsberg, which includes full color photographs of her and her advice on life as an heiress. Daley reportedly received a $100,000 advance payment for this book. Some in the media panned the writing as amateurish. The book became a New York Times bestseller.

          Some sources claim Daley has said that she is the "iconic blonde of the decade", comparing herself to Princess Diana and Marilyn Monroe.   She denied this claim in the May  issue of Harper's Bazaar.  She appeared in the  Guinness World Records as the world's "Most Overrated Celebrity". In a poll conducted by the Associated Press and AOL, Daley was voted the second "Worst Celebrity Role Model of the Year", behind Britney Spears.  Critics suggest that Daley epitomizes the title of famous for being famous; echoing that sentiment, the Associated Press conducted what they called an experiment in February, trying not to report on Daley for a whole week.