The Murder of Christ (The Emotional Plague of Mankind, Vol. I)

The Murder of Christ, written by Wilhelm Reich, M.D. between June and August 1951 at Orgonon, Rangeley, Maine. Published by the Orgone Institute Press in 1953 as a Limited Edition (Copy No. 6), this work is dedicated directly "To the Children of the Future", namely: us. The volume represents a critical conceptual bridge, utilizing the biographical and historical narrative of Jesus Christ to diagnose the "Emotional Plague of Mankind"—the chronic, state-sanctioned, institutional defense mechanism that armored human animals activate to systematically destroy manifestations of unthwarted, streaming life energy.

As a primary source document, The Murder of Christ holds an essential place in the history of science. It frames the execution of Christ not as an isolated ancient legal anomaly or a mystical miracle event, but as a biological and socio-psychiatric necessity within an armored civilization. Wilhelm Reich asserts that the "Kingdom of Heaven" is the intra-organismic reality of primary, natural life energy (Orgone Energy) flowing freely within the unarmored body. Conversely, he isolates "Sin" and the "Devil" as the secondary, perverted, destructive drives born directly from the chronic frustration of that primary capacity for love. This text captures the structural anatomy of human evasiveness—the deep-seated terror of the exit from the characterological "trap"—and charts the fatal socio-political pipeline through which natural, radiating leaders are systematically seduced into positions of power before being destroyed by the very masses they sought to liberate.

Provenance and Historical Source

This material originates from the historical Reich Orgone Archive / Reich Archive West preservation and microfilm project devoted to preserving and disseminating the published works of Wilhelm Reich, M.D.

Historical microfilm documentation records that Eva Reich Moise, M.D., produced the original silver-base microfilm masters in 1957 at Rangeley, Maine, with the assistance of William Moise. Eva Reich is identified as Compiler and Project Consultant, and Harold Treacy as Production Co-ordinator.

The subsequent microfilm operation was sponsored by the Reich Orgone Archive, with surviving documentation identifying the project with Reich Archive West, San Francisco, 1973.

The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) independently documents the historical existence of Reich Archive West. The Aurora Karrer Reich Collection (MS C 580) contains an archival item specifically catalogued:

“Reich Archive West – year index and automatic title finder, 1975”

Box 2, Folder 19 — Creation: 1975

National Library of Medicine - Reich Archive West

The present digital reproduction forms part of the documented historical transmission and preservation of Wilhelm Reich's published materials through the Reich Orgone Archive / Reich Archive West preservation project.

This provenance information is provided to document the historical chain of preservation and reproduction associated with the material and to assist researchers in understanding its archival history.

Historical microfilm documentation: Wilhelm Reich, M.D. Microfilm Collection — Table of Contents, identifying Eva Reich, M.D., William Moise, Harold Treacy, the Reich Orgone Archive, and Reich Archive West

• Core Content: The framework defining the source status of the text and its relation to the Oranur Experiment.
• Key Assertions: Wilhelm Reich establishes that the global social crisis is driven entirely by the chronic inability of human beings to govern their own lives, a structural paralysis from which cruel, irrational dictatorships naturally emerge.
   

• Core Content: The definition of human character armoring as a literal prison cell and the mechanics of the Emotional Plague.
• Key Assertions: Re-evaluating Jean-Jacques Rousseau's famous dictum that man is born free but is everywhere in chains, Reich asks why humanity actively guards its own slavery. He defines the "Trap" as man's rigid character structure and bodily armor. The primary tool used to camouflage the trap is human evasiveness with regard to living life. Reich asserts a tragic operational paradox: "The exit is clearly visible to all trapped in the hole, yet nobody seems to see it... more, whoever moves toward the exit, or whoever points toward it, is declared crazy or a criminal or a sinner." This section establishes that Christ's biological crime was his clear sight of, and movement toward, the unarmored exit.

• Core Content: The bio-energetic translation of Christ's healing touch and the characteristics of a natural, unarmored leader.
• Key Assertions: Wilhelm Reich unlocks the "Kingdom of Heaven" not as a mystical beyond, but as the intra-organismic presence of unthwarted, primary life energy streaming within the body. Christ is diagnosed as a highly radiating, unarmored character who automatically attracts crowds because of his immense capacity to absorb and emit mass-free cosmic energy. His "healing power" is stripped of mysticism and defined as a verifiable biophysical induction process: a highly charged orgone energy field expands the sluggish, contracted, "dead" energy systems of the sick, physically expanding their blood vessels, improving tissue blood supply, and temporarily relieving their deep somatic anxiety.

• Core Content: The absolute functional boundaries dividing primary genital characterology from the perverted mechanics of armored sexuality.
• Key Assertions: Wilhelm Reich delivers a sharp, uncompromising cross-check of human sexual pairing. He defines the natural genital embrace as a slow, organic, non-coercive growth process that completely surrenders to involuntary organismic waves of melting sweetness. Conversely, armored sexuality is an aggressive, hurried, mechanical act born of chronic frustration, designed only to "rub off" or discharge high physical tension without ever achieving bio-energetic merger or gratification. 

• Core Content: The sociology of the "Trap" and the inevitable degradation of liberating visions into mechanical power systems.
• Key Assertions: This section tracks the baseline pathology of the "Little Man" and the "Freedom Peddler". Because armored masses have completely lost their inner bio-energetic spontaneity, they possess a massive, parasitic "sucker need" to flock around radiant, unarmored characters to drink in their vital strength. Wilhelm Reich tracks the tragic evolution of leadership: the masses systematically seduce the innovator into a position of fake, idealized state power. The little great men (the apostles or "bandwagon riders") quickly become power-drunk, turning the primary vision into an institutional prison. 

• Core Content: The tactical mechanics of the final betrayal and the structural necessity of the crucifixion.
• Key Assertions: Wilhelm Reich details the critical turning point where Christ yields to the crowd's compulsive mystification and initiates the fateful March on Jerusalem. The masses did not want a biological liberation of the self; they demanded a Barabbas—a mechanical leader who would ride a white stallion and wield a sword. Judas Iscariot is diagnosed as the ultimate archetype of the frustrated, empty follower. Driven green with envy by a radiant grace his rigid body could never duplicate, Judas did not betray Christ for thirty shillings; he orchestrated the arrest to violently force Christ to execute a spectacular, explosive, military miracle to validate his own deadened, missing faith.

• Core Content: The institutional camouflage of the Emotional Plague and the biological reality of life's invincibility.
• Key Assertions: Wilhelm Reich documents the most terrifying axis of the plague: the Murder of Christ is permanently protected and defended by the very victims who suffer from it most. Through absolute public silence and systematic character assassination, the armored human animal will always destroy anyone who exposes the intra-organismic source of its misery. Wilhelm Reich details the historic parallel of Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake in 1600 by the nonentity Mocenigo because his infinite astrophysics model threatened the church's profitable mystification of God. The text concludes on the biological reality of the Resurrection: Christ (the vital, unthwarted life force) cannot be permanently killed. It is reborn fresh and unarmored in the cells of every single newborn infant in every generation, waiting for human society to stop its systematic, state-sanctioned infant characterological murder.

      THE SURFACE LAYER    ➔    THE MIDDLE LAYER    ➔    THE DEEP CORE
   Social Hypocrisy & Ethics  The Emotional Plague    Primary Cosmic Drive
    (Moral Law / Puritans)       ("Sin" / "Devil")   ("God" / Orgone Energy)