Reich, an Austrian-born psychiatrist, would not have considered himself a magician or occultist. Yet in his work with the life force, which he called orgone, he traversed the same territory and uncovered many of the same secrets that magicians had known about for centuries. What makes Reich's discoveries significant is that he approached the etheric realms and spiritual forces from a scientist's perspective, offering objective evidence for mystical experiences.

Best known for his contributions in the field of psychology, particularly his book Character Analysis, Reich was a colleague of Freud's in the 1920s. In 1933, Reich published an insightful analysis, titled The Mass Psychology of Fascism, describing the role psychosexual conditions played in fascism and Hitler's rise to power. This book drew heat from the press, the psychological community, and the Nazis. Reich's Jewish background and his criticism of the Nazis necessitated his exodus from Germany, first to Scandinavia and then, in 1939, to the United States.

Reich emphasized the significance of sexual energy as the life force responsible for mental and physical health. He proposed that repressed psychosexual energy could produce physical blocks, a condition he called “body armoring,” that led to physical illnesses including cancer and arthritis. He presented these ideas and the results of his scientific studies of human sexuality in his book The Function of the Orgasm. His concepts and experiences show that he had a keen understanding of sex magic, although he didn't use that term and it's unclear whether he knew about such practices within occult orders.

While living in Scandinavia, Reich began extensive studies of how orgone operated in the body and in the environment. He believed cancer was caused by the depletion of orgone energy. As a result of his experiments, he attempted to capture, heighten, and direct this “primordial cosmic energy” for healing purposes. In 1940, after relocating to Maine, he began building orgone accumulators, wood-and-metal boxes in which an ill person sat while orgone was channeled through her body.

To collect orgone from the atmosphere, Reich designed a “cloudbuster” that allowed him to produce rain. His experiments with orgone attracted UFOs, which led him to theorize that orgone fueled these crafts (discussed in his most controversial book, Contact with Space). These unconventional ideas caused many people to claim he'd gone mad. In 1947, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration outlawed the sale of orgone accumulators. When Reich disobeyed the injunction, he was sentenced to prison and the FDA burned several tons of his publications. He died in jail of heart failure in 1957.