English Revolution

English Revolution
Thomas Allen

[Editor’s note: Footnotes in the original have been omitted.]

In England, Calvinism lead to Oliver Cromwell’s overthrow of the House of Stuart in 1648 and its replacement with the House of Orange-Nassau in 1688. (After Cromwell’s death, the House of Stuart was restored to the throne in 1660 only to be deposed again in 1688.)

After Cromwell executed King Charles I in 1649, he and his “Rump Parliament” assumed absolute power. Then in 1655, he opened England to the Jews. Thus, he repaid the Jews for financing his rebellion; Moses Carvajal was his primary financial backer. (The Jews had financed Cromwell primarily through the Bank of Amsterdam.) Carvajal was also an important source of intelligence for Cromwell. Cromwell, who may have been a Socinian, also allowed the Freemasonry to organize formally in England.

In spite of not being a Freemason, Cromwell is accredited with much of the development of Freemasonry in England. (Cromwell also organized a powerful Freemasonry movement in Italy, whose members were mostly Protestants or Jews.[1]) He gave the members the title of Freemasons. The allegory of the Temple of Solomon, which symbolizes the original condition of man in a state of equality with a Deistic religion, was his creation. Freemasons would rebuild it after the annihilation of Christ and his Church.[2] In this respect, the goals of Freemasonry and Jewry were, and still are, identical.

A political faction that aided Cromwell was the Levellers although he did not seem to share many of their political ideals. They had a political program and a religious program. John Lilburne was one of their political leaders. Politically, the Levellers were advocates of popular sovereignty and wanted the franchise extended. They wanted to change the structure of Parliament and to separate the legislative authority from the executive authority.

In the religious realm, Gerard Winstanley and Everard were the principal leaders. The Levellers believed that the dawn of the Messianic era had arrived. They were early Zionists and strong supporters of Jews—some, such as Everard, even claimed that they were Jews. They claimed to be Christians. However, their Christianity was like that of the Bavarian Illuminati and of the Christian Socialists: Jesus was the author of their egalitarian communistic philosophy.

Upon the death of Oliver Cromwell in 1688, his son, Richard Cromwell became Lord Protector. Two years later Charles II (a Freemason), son of Charles I, became king. James II (a Freemason) followed his father, Charles II, as king. With the aid of many English noblemen and Jewish financiers, William of Orange forced James to abdicate in 1688. William, who had married James’ daughter, Mary, then became king—William III.

The English Revolution occurred with the abdication of James and the crowning of William and the policies that he instituted. The English Revolution has been called the Glorious Revolution and the Bloodless Revolution. Among the important acts of William III as king were the enactment of the Declaration of Rights (1689)and the chartering the Bank of England (1694). The Declaration of Rights ended the king’s power to suspend Parliament or to dispense with its laws. Chartering the Bank of England granted the sole power to issue notes that circulated as money to a central institution. The charter also prohibited private goldsmiths from issuing receipts and required them to store their gold in the vaults of the Bank of England. Thus, the Bank of England became a monopoly to issue money. With its charter began the policy of a permanent national debt.

Loans that Jewish bankers made to the British government brought the Bank of England into being. Although most of the Bank of England’s initial shareholders were English noblemen, by 1721 Jewish financiers and bankers had acquired a significant number of shares and since 1751 shares seldom traded. (In 1946, the Bank of England was nationalized.)

Endnotes
1. Lady Queenborough, (Edith Starr Miller). Occult Theocracy (Two Volumes. Hawthorne, California: The Christian Book Club of America, 1933), pp. 158-159.

2. Denis Fahey, Grand Orient: Freemasonry Unmasked as the Secret Power behind Communism through Discovery of Lost Lectures Delivered by Monsignor George F. Dillon, D.D. at Edinburgh, in October 1884 (New and Revised Edition. Metairie, Louisiana: Sons of Liberty, 1950), p. 13.

ReferencesBirch, Una. Secret Societies and the French Revolution Together with Some Kindred Studies. New York, New York.: John Lane Co., 1911.

Cuddy, Dennis L. Now Is the Dawning of the New Age New World Order. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Hearthstone Publishing, 2000.

Fahey, Denis. Grand Orient: Freemasonry Unmasked as the Secret Power behind Communism through Discovery of Lost Lectures Delivered by Monsignor George F. Dillon, D.D. at Edinburgh, in October 1884. New and Revised Edition. Metairie, Louisiana: Sons of Liberty, 1950.

McGuire, Paul. Who Will Rule the Future: A Resistance to the New World Order. Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House Publishers, 1991.

Mohr, Gordon. The Hidden Power Behind Freemasonry. Second edition. Burnsville, Minnesota: Weisman Publication, 1993.

Mullins, Eustace. The Curse of Canaan: A Demonology of History. Staunton, Virginia: Revelation Book, 1987.

Mullins, Eustace. Secrets of the Federal Reserve. 1991.

Mullins, Eustace. The World Order: Our Secret Rulers. Second edition. Staunton, Virginia: Ezra Pound Institute of Civilization, 1992.

Queenborough, Lady (Edith Starr Miller). Occult Theocracy. Two Volumes. Hawthorne, California: The Christian Book Club of America, 1933.

Skousen, W. Cleon. The Naked Capitalist: A Review and Commentary on Dr. Carroll Quigley’s Book Tragedy and Hope. Salt Lake City, Utah, 1971.

Webster, Nesta H. Secret Societies and Subversive Movements. Palmdale, California: Omni Publication, 1924.

Copyright © 2009 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Religious Development in the Sixteenth Century

Religious Development in the Sixteenth Century
Thomas Allen

AlombradosThe Alombrados, the Illuminati of Spain, was an illuministic sect founded about 1520 in Salamanca, Spain. By a supernatural or “illuminated” union of minds, initiates concentrated on the will of the master. They taught a form of Gnosticism. Man’s spirit could attain direct knowledge of God—thus, rendering trappings of formal religion unnecessary for those who found the light. In 1623 the Grand Inquisition condemned and suppressed the Alombrados. Out of the Alombrados came Ignatius Loyola.

Jesuits
Loyola, a Spanish nobleman and soldier and a member of the Alombrados, founded the Order of the Jesuits (Society of Jesus) in 1541. It was ostensibly founded to defend the Catholic faith and the pope. The doctrines of the Society of Jesus are similar to those of the Jewish Mishnah.[1] Like the Assassins, Jesuits had unquestionable, unhesitating obedience to the Order’s cause and its leaders. It was divided into six grades. Its initiate rituals and ceremonies resembled those used by the Assassins and Freemasons.

According to Chaitkin, “The Venetian house of Contarini detained Ignatius Loyola, and obliged him to head up a new worldwide secret intelligence service to serve the Venetian interests, the Jesuits.”[2] The Jesuits became the pope’s intelligence agencies, the Vatican’s CIA. The Order’s primary goal was to destroy Protestantism. In carrying out its objective, it used indoctrination, blackmail, and coercion. The Jesuits are credited with, among other great historical events, the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, fomentation of the Thirty Years War, and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV in 1685.

Knights of Malta
When Rhodes failed to the Turks in 1522, the Hospitalers who were on the island fled to Malta. Here they reorganized as the Sovereign and Military Order of Malta or the Knights of Malta. Some recent members of the Knights of Malta are William F. Buckley (“conservative” writer), William Casey (CIA director), J. Peter Grace (chairman of W. R. Grace Co.), Alexander Haig (Reagan’s Secretary of State), Joseph P. Kennedy, Lee Iacocca (chairman of Chrysler), Clare Boothe Luce (American dramatist and diplomat), John McCone (CIA director), William Simon (Nixon’s Secretary of the Treasury), and William Wilson (ambassador to the Vatican). Today, the Knights of Malta serves as the principal channel of communication between the Central Intelligence Agency and the Vatican.[3]

Peasant’s War
In 1517 Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, and the Reformation was underway. The disturbance caused by the Reformation gave Illuminists many opportunities to work their mischief. They began by stirring up the peasants in Germany. They moved on to remove the Church condemnation of usury, a la Calvin, and to attack the divine nature of a resurrected Jesus, a la Socinus.

The year 1520 is often cited as the starting point of the leftist revolutionary movement:[4] unrestrained sensual pleasure; destruction of the family; collective ownership of property; subversion of science, literature, and arts; democratic despotic government; mass slaughter; and animosity toward God, i.e., the God of the Christians, and Christianity. The leader of this revolution was Thomas Munzer, a disciple of Nicholas Storck. Munzer claimed that inspiration came not from the Bible but from divine illumination or inner light. He devised a communistic doctrine of unrestricted equality. He advocated abolishing all temporal authority. His goal was to establish a theocratic communistic state. His preaching led to the Peasants’ War in 1524.

The Peasants’ War was an uprising of German peasants and of poor classes of the towns. Once the revolt broke out, Munzer took control when he came to the aid of Heinrich Pfeiffer. The revolt was crushed in 1525, and Munzer was beheaded.

A similar revolt occurred in Munster between 1533 and 1535. Like the Peasants’ War, this revolt sought equality and communion of goods. Lasciviousness was popular among the rebels.

Calvinism
According to Mullins, Calvinism was one of those movements organized by Illuminists that sweep across Europe periodically creating revolutions or turmoil.[5] Unlike previous Christian sects, Calvinism was compatible with the money interest. Instead of emphasizing austerity and vows of poverty, it approved of charging interest and acquiring wealth.

John Calvin of Noyons, France was the founder of Calvinism. His “religious movement was based on a literal Jewish interpretation of the Ten Commandments, Old Testament philosophy, and the prohibition of graven images.”[6] With the rise of Calvinism came the expansion of Jews into commercial activities besides banking, which they had historically dominated.

Calvinism revealed its kinship with Oriental despotism of Nimrod by its coercive nature. With his Ecclesiastical Ordinance, Calvin imposed absolute discipline on the inhabitants of Geneva. The penalty for objecting to Calvinism was death.

SocinusIn 1547, Laelius Socinus met with like-minded people in Vicenza. They laid plans to overturn orthodox Christianity and to replace it with their doctrines. They proposed executing their plans through a secret society. Upon learning of this conspiracy, the Republic of Venice captured and executed two members, Julian Trevisano and Francis de Rugo. The others fled and became involved in forming or capturing other secret societies across Europe. The secret society of Vicenza is among the ancestors of modern-day Freemasonry.[7]

Faustus Socinus, a Rosicrucian and nephew of Laelius Socinus, got his uncle’s papers after his uncle’s death. Using the doctrines in his uncle’s papers, he founded Socinianism from which came Unitarianism.

Socinianism rejected the teachings that Jesus had a divine nature. He was merely the human instrument of divine mercy. The Holy Spirit was nothing more than the activity of God. Although the Scriptures were considered authoritative, they were interpreted from the perspective of rationalism.

HuguenotsAnother reformation movement was the Huguenots. Huguenots were the Calvinist Protestants (Presbyterians) of France. They founded their church in 1559. The Huguenot massacres began in France soon after Catherine de Medici became Regent on the accession of her son, Charles IX. In 1568, she issued an edict that outlawed the Huguenots. As Huguenots had acquired great wealth, placing them outside the law invited their plunder. Hoping to prevent the impending slaughter of a tenth of his population, Charles began negotiating with the Huguenot leaders. While Charles negotiated, Catherine plotted their extermination. When Huguenot leaders assembled in negotiation, Catherine’s forces attacked and killed them. She had killed all the important Huguenot leaders. This massacre occurred on August 24, 1572, and became known as St. Bartholomew’s Massacre. This massacre lead to others until most Huguenots had been killed or driven from France. King Charles died soon after his mother betrayed his trust. His son Henry II died at the hands of an assassin because he seemed unwilling to slaughter the Huguenots.

The Huguenots received an uneasy peace between the issuance of the Edit of Nantes by Henry IV in 1598 and it revocation in 1685 by Louis XIV. Its revocation resulted in most of the remaining Huguenots fleeing France for the American colonies. (France’s unnecessary loss became America’s fortunate gain. France’s decline can be dated from the St. Bartholomew’s Massacre.)


Endnotes
1. Eustace Mullins, The Curse of Canaan: A Demonology of History (Staunton, Virginia: Revelation Book, 1987), p. 91.

2. Anton Chaitkin, Treason in America From Aaron Burr to Averell Harriman (New York, New York: New Benjamin Franklin House, 1984), p. 141.

3. Jim Marrs, Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids (New York, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2000), pp. 312-313.

4. Clarence Kelly, Conspiracy Against God and Man: A Study of the Beginnings and Early History of the Great Conspiracy (Belmont, Massachusetts: Western Islands, 1974), p. 29.

5. Mullins, pp. 81-83.

6. Ibid., p. 81.

7. Denis Fahey, Grand Orient: Freemasonry Unmasked as the Secret Power behind Communism through Discovery of Lost Lectures Delivered by Monsignor George F. Dillon, D.D. at Edinburgh, in October 1884 (New and Revised Edition. Metairie, Louisiana: Sons of Liberty, 1950), pp. 12-13.

ReferenceChaitkin, Anton. Treason in America From Aaron Burr to Averell Harriman. New York, New York: New Benjamin Franklin House, 1984.

Daraul, Arkon. A History of Secret Societies. New York, New York: The Citadel Press, 1961.

Fahey, Denis. Grand Orient: Freemasonry Unmasked as the Secret Power behind Communism through Discovery of Lost Lectures Delivered by Monsignor George F. Dillon, D.D. at Edinburgh, in October 1884. New and Revised Edition. Metairie, Louisiana: Sons of Liberty, 1950.

Kah, Gary H. The New World Religion. Noblesville, Indiana: Hope International Publishing, Inc., 1998.

Kelly, Clarence. Conspiracy Against God and Man: A Study of the Beginnings and Early History of the Great Conspiracy. Belmont, Massachusetts: Western Islands, 1974.

Marrs, Jim. Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids. New York, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2000.

Monteith, Stanley. Brotherhood of Darkness. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Hearthstone, 2000.

Mullins, Eustace. The Curse of Canaan: A Demonology of History. Staunton, Virginia: Revelation Book, 1987.

Preuss, Arthur. A Dictionary of Secret and Other Societies. St. Louis, Missouri: B. Herder Book Co., 1924.

Queenborough, Lady (Edith Starr Miller). Occult Theocracy. Two Volumes. Hawthorne, California: The Christian Book Club of America, 1933.

Copyright © 2009 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Templars

TemplarsThomas Allen

[Editor’s note: Footnotes in original are omitted.]

One little known, but immensely important, secret society was founded in the eleventh century. It was the Priory (Order) of Sion. Godfrey de Bouillon, Duke of Lower Lorraine and leader of the First Crusade, founded this Order in 1090. It was connected with the Rosicrucians. Between 1118 and 1188, the Grand Master of the Priory of Sion was also grandmaster of the Templars; in 1188 the two orders separated. Then the Priory of Sion became mostly concerned with the Merovingians, who had laid the foundations of the Priory of Sion. Its declared objective was to restore the Merovingian dynasty to the thrones of Europe; however, World War I seemed to have thwarted this scheme.

Grand masters of the Priority of Sion have included Leonardo da Vinci (1510-1519), Robert Fludd (1595-1637), Robert Boyle (1654-1691), Sir Isaac Newton (1691-1727), Charles Radcliffe, Victor Hugo, Claude Debussy, and Jean Cocteau.[1] Today its members are among the inner circles of Freemasonry, the Round Tables, and other secret illuministic societies.

Out of the Priority of Sion came the Templars. Hugues de Payens, a Burgundian knight, Godfrey of St. Omer, Andre de Montbard, and six other knights founded the Order of the Temple in 1118. Bernard of Clairvaux was the author of the Templars’ constitution, which he modeled after the Cistercian Order. The Templars were divided into degrees. The Order had a pyramidal chain of command where subordinates were expected to obey commands of superiors without question or hesitation. Furthermore, like all other secret societies, those who controlled it possessed secrets about which ordinary members were ignorant. In 1128, the Council of Troyes approved the Templars as an official military and religious order.

Like the Assassins, the Templars were established to serve their religious faith as an independent power. Moreover, some of the Templars’ esoteric dogmas and ceremonies seemed to have come from the Assassins. The Templars and Assassins were allies in several battles—and at times to the detriment of the Christians.

Hugues de Payens, a member of the Priority of Sion, and his knights established the Templars ostensibly to protect pilgrims as they journeyed to the Holy Land. However, for some years they provided little protection to travelers; they left this task to the Hospitalers, an order established earlier for the protection of pilgrims. The Templars’ primary objective was to search for treasurer among the ruins of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. They apparently found ancient scrolls that contained hidden knowledge and other holy artifacts. They also found much gold. The manuscripts that they found conflicted with much of the teachings of the Catholic Church. With this new knowledge, they intimidated church officials. These discoveries brought them immense power and wealth. Later the Crusaders of Jerusalem saw the Templars as a military resource to be used to defend against Moslem incursions. Although they only owed allegiance to the pope, they offered their services to defend the Crusaders.

Because of the services provided by the Templars, Crusaders begin bequeathing their estates to the Templars. Soon the Templars had amassed enormous wealth although they had taken a vow of poverty. This wealth enabled them to become bankers. They lent money to the kings of Europe and even to Moslems. With their enormous wealth scattered throughout Europe, the Templars had become the international financiers or bankers of their era. They performed the same functions as international financiers and banks perform today.

The Templars also became analogous to a modern multinational corporation. They imported into Europe new knowledge of architecture, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, and metallurgy that they had acquired in the Middle East.

Not only had they been given castles and other buildings across Europe, they were also avid builders. The Templars were the prime movers behind building the great medieval cathedrals and were probably responsible for introducing Gothic architecture in Europe. (Missing from the cathedrals built by the Templars were depictions of the Crucifixion.) Templars were behind the formation of the medieval stonemason and other building guilds, whose members became members of the Templar Order.

The Templars began deteriorating with its fourth Grand Master. As the wealth and fame of the Templars grew, fewer desirable men began to join and rise to control the Order. Gnostic dogma eventually replaced Christian doctrine. (Some Templar authorities contend that the Templars were Gnostics from the beginning.) The Templars, especially those in the inner most circle, believed that “the true church, one that taught mysticism, reincarnation, and good works, was being suppressed by a dark power that called itself the one true faith.”[2]

The Templars answered to no one but the pope. In Europe their holdings were independent of secular authority. With the passage of time, the Templars became more independent and more isolated as the popes granted them more privileges. The Templars were exempted from tithes and church taxes. They were exempted from feudal oaths and services. Of these privileges, the most irritating one to bishops and archbishops was the authority of Templars to suspend interdicts wherever they traveled. In short, Templars owed allegiance only to the pope. They were rich and powerful, and their persons were sacred.

In Palestine, negotiations with the Saracens fell to the Templars. Thus, the Templars and Saracens became well acquainted. At times the Templars even allied with the Moslems against the Christians.

After the fall of Jerusalem to the Moslems, which was due in large part to the incompetence of Gerald de Ridfort, Grand Master of the Templars, the Templars lost what remained of their religious virtue. They eventually became politicians. As their power grew, their own independent power became more important than Christian unity.

By 1303, the Moslems had driven the Templars and the Christian Crusaders from the Holy Land. After being driven from the Holy Land, the Templars no longer functioned as guardians of the Crusaders. However, the Order still had 20,000 members and enormous wealth scattered throughout Europe.

After the Templars left the Holy Land, the pope saw them as a force to be used to keep recalcitrant princes in line. He would use them to expand and maintain his secular sovereignty. They would be soldiers of the Church at home.

In France the Templars served as the king’s banker in exchange for his protection from the envious. To escape from civil disorder, the bankrupt King Philip IV (Philip the Fair) fled to their temple in Paris. Here he witnessed their enormous wealth. Finally, King Philip’s lust for their wealth (he needed money for his wars), and perhaps his fear of their independence, came so great that in 1307 he proceeded to expropriate their wealth in France. The Templars had defied his orders and refused to pay taxes. Moreover, the Templars had denied him membership in the Order. He charged them with heresy and turned them over to the Inquisition. (The evidence seems to have supported Philip’s claim of heresy. The highest degree Templars were probably Gnostics, and many lived licentious lives.) Other kings followed Philip when in 1312 at the Synod of Vienna, the pope abolished the Order of the Templars and ordered the kings of Europe to arrest the Templars in their domains. Much of the Templar’s wealth fell to the kings of Europe although most of it was supposed to go to the Hospitalers. Poor Philip seems to have confiscated little of their vast wealth in France. Most of their wealth, which included not only money, but also artifacts and ancient writings, vanished.

Some of the surviving Templars joined the Hospitalers, the Knights of Christ, and the Teutonics Knights. Some joined other secret societies that Freemasonry or other illuministic societies later absorbed. Some Templars fled to Scotland; from them the York Rite and Scottish Rite of Freemasonry probably came. Today the Order of the Knight Templar survives in the highest degree of the York Rite Freemasonry.

Appendix. Cathari
An important religious movement associated with the Templars was the Cathari (Pure Ones), whom the Catholic Church condemned as heretics. The Cathari, who were also known as the Albigenses, arose to prominence during the twelfth century in Languedoc in southern France.

They lived a simple, religious life. Instead of meeting in elaborate buildings, they meet in the open. Their beliefs were similar to Buddhism and closely related to the Mithras and Manichaeans. Among their beliefs was reincarnation, abstention from meat except fish, and nonresistance. Jesus was the spiritual Son of God; he existed in a spiritual body and not a human body. They also taught that Jesus had married Mary Magdalene and had children by her. Mary and her children migrated to Languedoc after Jesus’ execution. Their theology was a dualistic theology. An evil god created the material world and man; a good god created and ruled the heavens. Thus, the God of the Old Testament was Satan. They were also followers of the Cabala. To the Cathari, all baptized members were spiritually equal and were priests. As itinerant preachers, they traveled in pairs. In the utmost poverty and simplicity, they lived. They refused to acknowledge the authority of the pope. The Templars have been accused of having the same religious beliefs as the Cathari. St. Bernard may have been a secret adherent of the Cathari’s beliefs.

The pope had Philip II, King of France, to declare the Cathari heretics and to exterminate them. The war against the Cathari began in 1209 and became known as the Albigensian Crusade. The crusade ended in 1229, and the Cathar heresy was finally eradicated in 1244 with the fall of Montsegur. More than 100,000 Cathari were killed during the crusade.

Endnotes
1. Boyd Rice, "The Prophet," http://www.dagobertsrevenge.com/prophet.html, Jan. 31, 2001.

2. Jim Marrs, Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids (New York, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2000), p. 291.

References
The Cause of World Unrest. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1920.

Dennis L. Cuddy, Now Is the Dawning of the New Age New World Order. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Hearthstone Publishing, 2000.

Daraul, Arkon. A History of Secret Societies. New York, New York: The Citadel Press, 1961.

Frost, Thomas. The Secret Societies of the European Revolutions, 1776–1876. Two volumes. London, England: Tinsley Brothers, 1876.

Froude, James Anthony. The Spanish Story of the Armada and Other Essays. New York, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1892.

Kah, Gary H. En Route to Global Occupation. Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House Publishers, 1992.

Kah, Gary H. The New World Religion. Noblesville, Indiana: Hope International Publishing, Inc., 1998.

MacKenzie, Norman, ed. Secret Societies. New York, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967.

Marrs, Jim. Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids. New York, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2000.

Monteith, Stanley. Brotherhood of Darkness. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Hearthstone, 2000.

Queenborough, Lady (Edith Starr Miller). Occult Theocracy. Two Volumes. Hawthorne, California: The Christian Book Club of America, 1933.

Webster, Nesta H. Secret Societies and Subversive Movements. Palmdale, California: Omni Publication, 1924.

Copyright © 2009 by Thomas Allen.

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The Assassins and Roshaniya

The Assassins and Roshaniya
Thomas Allen

[Editor’s note: Footnotes in the original are omitted.]

During the seventh century, a great disturbance came out of Arabia and swept across North Africa into Spain and across the Middle East to Afghanistan and into the Balkans eventually to Austria and Hungary. It was Islam. Mohammed founded Islam, which he built on three basic dogmas: monotheism, belief in the Prophet (Mohammed), and the law of retribution.

Assassins
Out of Islam came the Assassins. The Assassins formed a secret society that appeared in the eleventh century in Persia. The Assassins were drug users; they used hashish. They grew out of Ismailism.

In the middle of the seventh century following Mohammed’s death, the Moslem world split between the Sunni and the Shia (Shiite) sects.

The Sunni were the orthodox Moslems. They believed that Mohammed was the giver of divine revelation.

The Shia believed in absolute obedience to the imams, or priest-kings, who were the direct descendants of Mohammed through his daughter. They regarded Ali, the fourth imam, more highly than Mohammed.

In the eighth century the Shia sect split into the Twelvers (the majority) and the Seveners or Ismailis. The Twelvers believed that the millennium would come with the twelfth imam of the Mohammedan line. The Seveners believed that the millennium would come with the seventh imam of the Mohammedan line.

The Sunni far out numbered the Shia. To survive, the Shia resorted to secret societies. With secret societies, the Shia sought to gain control of the Moslem world and, eventually, the whole world.

One of their most successful secret societies of the Shia was the House of Wisdom (Abode of Learning, House of Knowledge) in Cairo. In 1004, the sixth Caliph, Hakim, established the House of Wisdom, which was a repository of ancient illuministic knowledge. It trained Moslems to become fanatics. This society operated under the direction of the Caliph of the Fatimites. The instructors in this society were high-ranking officials and included the supreme judge, the commander-in-chief of the army, and the minister of the court. The House of Wisdom had nine degrees of initiation. The Fatimites endeavored to substituted a natural religion for a revealed religion. To do this, they instilled doubt in the minds of their followers. Nothing was to be believed, and everything was lawful. The House of Wisdom provided the foundation for the Assassins.

Hasan-i Sabbah, founder of the Assassins, was reared in a Twelver Shia family in Khorasan of western Persia. As a young man he converted to Ismailism. After the Sultan of Persia exiled him for accounting irregularities, Hasan went to Cairo in 1078 and asked the Caliph’s permission to carry Ismailism to Persia. Permission was granted. Hasan went to Persia and the Assassins or Nizaris were born in 1090. (Abu Mansur Sadakah ibn Yussuf, a Jew and vizier of the Caliph of Egypt, was Hasan’s protector during his missionary work in Persia.[1])

Hasan began using political power to gain spiritual power. To achieve this power, he changed the role of the Ismaili initiate to the role of assassin. He eventually made himself the absolute ruler of the territory around Alamut on the Caspian Sea.

He established a loyal obedient following of assassins through the awesomeness of his authority and the use of drugs. These followers unhesitantly obeyed his commands even unto death. The lower ranks of the uninitiated were required to follow strict Islamic beliefs. The higher-ranking adepts believed in nothing but power. They disregarded all acts or means with indifference. (A basic tenet of the higher initiates of the Assassins was “nothing is true and all is allowed”—the end justifies the means.) Only the ultimate goal of world donation was considered. Concealing their lust for power in religious piety, a few men sought to achieve world donation. The method by which this was to be established was the wholesale assassination of those who opposed them.

The murderous practices of the Assassins lead to a divided disorganized Moslem world, which aided the Christian Crusaders when they arrived in the Holy Land.

By the twelfth century, the Assassins had fractured. The Persian Assassins had adopted the Sunni version of Moslem law. The Syrian branch had become assassins for hire.

When the Mongols conquered Persia and Syria in the thirteenth century, they destroyed the Assassins. The Mongols utterly slaughtered the Persian Assassins. Sultan Baybars turned all the Syrian Assassins into his hired killers.

The Assassins provided a model for the Templars, Bavarian Illuminati, Carbonari, and Irish Republican Brotherhood.

Roshaniya
In the sixteenth century a powerful secret society called the Roshaniya, or Illuminated Ones, arose in Afghanistan. Its roots go at least as far back as the House of Wisdom at Cairo. Bayezid Ansari founded this society after he had converted to an Ismaili cult that claimed to hold a secret doctrine handed down in the family of Mohammed.

Ansari established a school near Peshawar where he instructed initiates in the knowledge of the supernatural. During the course of instruction, the initiate “was to receive the illumination which was emanated from the supreme being, who desired a class of perfect men—and women—to carry out the organization and direction of the world.”[2]

The Roshaniya planned to reform and reorganize the social system of the world by taking control of individual countries one by one. Among its basic tenets was the abolition of private prosperity, religion, and nation states.

Members of the Roshaniya did not worship any particular deity. They “believe that there was a supreme overall power, which was known by the sum of its individual powers (lordship, protection, and so on) and when one had meditated upon them all, and they had become the ‘property’ of the invocant, he would thence forward be a man of complete power.”[3] Once an Illuminists reached this state (the Enlightened One of the fourth degree in the Roshaniya), he was no longer limited by any theological or social bonds. He was free to do as he pleased. Once an adept reached the fourth degree, he could communicate directly with the unknown superiors who had revealed secret knowledge to their followers throughout the ages.

Later Ansari moved his headquarters to the Hindu Kush of Afghanistan. From here he directed his empire to conquer the East. Many merchants and soldiers joined his society. As his society grew more powerful, Ansari began to preach a hedonistic doctrine: eat, drink, and be merry; look after yourself; gain all the power you can; your only allegiance is to the Roshaniya; anyone not a member of the Roshaniya is lawful prey.

Ansari created much havoc in the Mogul Empire. Eventually, Mohsin Khan, Governor of Kabul, arrested and imprisoned him. On the advice of Sheikh Attari, the Governor’s religious guide, Ansari was allowed to escape. (Attari was suspected of being a secret adherent of the Roshaniya.)

After his escape, his power and popularity grew. He set about to take India and Persia by force. He later died of a wound that he received in India in an encounter with Mohsin Khan’s army. His son and grandson in turn became leaders of the society, and each in turn died in battle against the Moguls.

The basic structure and tenets of the Roshaniya appeared in Europe in various Illuminati orders of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as the Alombrados or Illuminated Ones of Spain, the Illuminated Guerinets of France, and the Order of the Illuminati of Bavaria.

Endnotes
1. Lady Queenborough (Edith Starr Miller), Occult Theocracy. (Two vols. Hawthorne, California: The Christian Book Club of America, 1933), p. 140.

2. Arkon Daraul, A History of Secret Societies (New York, New York: The Citadel Press, 1961), p. 221.

3. Ibid., p. 222.

References
Daraul, Arkon. A History of Secret Societies. New York, New York: The Citadel Press, 1961.

Frost, Thomas. The Secret Societies of the European Revolutions, 1776–1876. Two volumes. London, England: Tinsley Brothers, 1876.

Larson, Bob. Larson’s Book of Cults. Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. 1982.

MacKenzie, Norman, ed. Secret Societies. New York, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967.

Marrs, Jim. Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids. New York, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2000.

Queenborough, Lady (Edith Starr Miller). Occult Theocracy. Two Volumes. Hawthorne, California: The Christian Book Club of America, 1933.

Ward, J. S. M., Freemasonry and the Ancient Gods. London, England: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co. Ltd., 1921.

Webster, Nesta H. Secret Societies and Subversive Movements. Palmdale, California: Omni Publication, 1924.

Copyright © 2009 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Pharisees and the Cabala

Pharisees and the CabalaThomas Allen

[Editor’s note: Footnotes in the original are omitted.]

The father of all modern-day secret societies of any importance came out of Babylon about 517 BC. It was Pharisaism. During the 70 years of captivity, Judaism began to develop. During this time a sect known as the Pharisees arose. The theology that they developed became the Talmud, which the New Testament calls the “traditions.” The Talmud became superior to the Old Testament.

The Pharisees were preachers of Talmudic Judaism. Judaism is a cabalistic (occult) religion. It is based on the Talmud, which the Jews brought to Jerusalem when they were freed from the Babylonian captivity. The Jewish Talmud is based on the Babylonian religion. It replaced the Torah of Moses as the foundation of the Pharisees’ religion. Pharisaism became Judaism after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.

The Talmud contains the oral traditions that God supposedly gave Moses to interpret and apply the written law that He had given Moses. Part of these traditional oral interpretations of the Old Testament was written down as the Mishnah in the second or third century A.D. Soon after that, the Gemara, a commentary, was added. These two works formed the Jerusalem Talmud. The Jerusalem Talmud was revised between the third and fifth centuries. This revised work is the Babylon Talmud, which is the Talmud used today. The Talmud pertains to everyday matters. It contains the rules of the rite of the Jewish masses. The Talmud also contains derogatory remarks on Jesus.

Using Chaldean Pantheism, the Pharisees molded the laws that God had given Moses into Jewish Pantheism, modern-day Judaism. Thus, they develop the doctrine that Jews are superior beings who are predestined to rule the world. They rejected the Old Testament teaching of God ruling the nations and replaced it with the doctrine of the Jews dominating the material universe. Instead of redeeming man from sin, the Messiah became a mighty king who would lead the Jews in the conquest of the world.

The moral code of the Old Testament applied to the relationship between Jews and between non-Jews. It also applied to non-Jews in their treatment of Jews. However, it did not apply to Jews in their treatment of non-Jews; Jews could morally treat non-Jews anyway that they desired.

The Pharisee (correctly) did not envision the God to whom Jesus prayed, the God of the Old Testament, whom they rejected, subjecting the nations to their rule. They were to achieve world domination by human means—hence, their use of secret societies and conspiracies. Like all secret societies, the Pharisees restricted their membership and maintained “the religion of the secret.”

Pharisees practiced a naturalistic religion. They taught that man is God, man rules the Universe, and man defines reality. They had no choice but to reject Christ. Jesus’ teachings were completely opposite of theirs.


Book of Zohar
Several decades before the pope abolished the Order of the Templars another important event in the history of Illuminism happened. The Book of Zohar was published.

A new dialectic of mysticism appeared during the Middle Ages. This mysticism was the Cabala. In 1280 Moses de Leon, a Jewish mystic, published the Cabala in the Book of Zohar. According to legend, God gave Moses two revelations. The first revelation was the written law of Moses, which is given in the Pentateuch. The second revelation was the secret meaning of the Law. The secret meaning was not written down for many centuries. It was past down orally through a chosen group of initiates. This secret meaning became the Cabala.

The Cabala is part of the oral tradition, dealing with the speculative, philosophical, and theosophical doctrines of Judaism and is a mystical commentary on the Pentateuch. It is an occult system of Jewish religious philosophy based on theosophy, mysticism, and magic and marked by belief in creation through emanation and a cipher method of interpreting Scripture. The Cabala contains the esoteric and occult teachings for the higher initiates of Judaism. These doctrines are related to Neoplatonic philosophy, Gnosticism, Hermetism, and the Mysteries. The Cabala teaches a sacred doctrine about the spiritual nature of man. Like Gnosticism, the Cabala teaches that divinity is found within man. It connects Judaism with the Mysteries of Egypt. According to the Cabala, not only is the nation of Israel and rest of the Universe in need of salvation, so is God Himself. It also teaches that every living and nonliving thing has a divine spark that seeks to return to its origins. One of its goals is to hasten the coming of a great universal ruler when Jews will rule the world. Also, it teaches humanism, the worship of humanity.

From the very beginning of the Christian era, the Jewish Cabala has played an important part in the occult and anti-Christian sects. According to Albert Pike, a Freemason, “The Kabala is the key of the occult sciences.”[1] It has greatly influence Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, and New Age religions.

Endnote
Gary H. Kah, En Route to Global Occupation (Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House Publishers, 1992), p. 99.

References
Cahill, E. Freemasonry and the Anti-Christian Movement. 1930 ; Reprint. Second edition. Dublin, Ireland: M.H. Gill and Son, Ltd., 1952.

Hoffman, Michael A., II. Judaism’s Strange Gods. Coeur d’Alene, Idaho: The Independent History and Research Co., 2000.

Inquire Within. Light-Bearers of Darkness. Hawthorne, California: The Christian Book Club of America, 1930.

Kah, Gary H. En Route to Global Occupation. Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House Publishers, 1992.

Kah, Gary H. The New World Religion. Noblesville, Indiana: Hope International Publishing, Inc., 1998.

Kirban, Salem. Satan’s Angels Exposed. Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania: Salem Kirban Inc., 1980.

McKilliam, K.R. Conspiracy to Destroy the Christian West. London, England: The Board of Anglo-Saxon Celtic Deputies.

Marrs, Jim. Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids. New York, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2000.

Mohr, Gordon. The Hidden Power Behind Freemasonry. Second edition. Burnsville, Minnesota: Weisman Publication, 1993.

Mullins, Eustace. The Curse of Canaan: A Demonology of History. Staunton, Virginia: Revelation Book, 1987.

Queenborough, Lady (Edith Starr Miller). Occult Theocracy. Two Volumes. Hawthorne, California: The Christian Book Club of America, 1933.

Webster, Nesta H. Secret Societies and Subversive Movements. Palmdale, California: Omni Publication, 1924.

Copyright © 2009 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Rosicrucians

Rosicrucians
Thomas Allen

[Editor's note: Footnotes in the original are omitted.]

One of the great secret societies originating in ancient times was the Rosicrucian society. The Rosicrucians (the Great White Brotherhood) trace their origin back to the ancient Egyptians—at least as far back as Ahmose I, who reigned from 1580 B.C. to 1557 B.C. Thutmose III, who reign from 1500 B.C. to 1447 B.C., is credited with organizing the present physical form of the secret society of the Rosicrucians.[1]

Several centuries later the Rosicrucians began to spread to other lands. Those who went to Palestine became known as the Essenes. Those who went to Greece became known as the Therapeuti.[2]

The Essences were ascetics. They held their goods in common and rejected marriage. Living in an egalitarian community, members were prohibited from exercising authority over one another and were required to serve one another mutually. They were associated with esoteric healing traditions. Bounded by a horrific secret oath, they were forbidden to reveal their sacred mysteries and secret doctrines. The sect divided itself into three degrees through which members progressed. Using secret spiritual keys, the Essences reinterpreted the Pentateuch. They were Cabalists and Gnostics and practices a primitive form of Communism.

On Mount Carmel, the Essenes built their monastery and temple in the ninth century B.C. Shortly before the birth of Jesus, they built a new monastery and temple at Heliopolis, which became the center of their activity. Several centuries after the birth of Christ, the Rosicrucians moved their headquarters to Tibet.

During the reign of Charlemagne, Rosicrucian Order came to France when Arnaud established a Rosicrucian lodge in Toulouse in 804 A.D. Soon afterwards, Charlemagne introduced Rosicrucianism in Germany. In 1100 a lodge was established in Worms.

After the twelfth century, Rosicrucianism was mostly inactive until the sixteenth century. It had a revival in Protestant circles in Germany during the Counter Reformation. Many people began looking to the Orient, past civilizations, and speculative ideas of contemporaries for a hidden wisdom to counteract the disquieting events of the day. They consulted alchemy, the Egyptian Mysteries recorded by Hermes Trismegistus, Sufism, and the Cabala. A synthesis of alchemy, astrology, Cabalism, mysticism, and Theosophy provided the basis of the revived Rosicrucianism.

In 1586, Simon Studion, a Rosicrucian of the high degree of Imperator in Germany, planned and called an international convention. This convention was known as the Cruce Signatorum Conventus and was held in Hanover. The ostensible purpose of the convention was to prevent the misuse and abuse of the cross. Henry IV, King of France, Elizabeth I, Queen of England, and Frederick II, King of Denmark, sponsored this convention.[3]

As a result of this convention, the Militia Crucifera Evangelica was established to defend the cross and stop its use in religious warfare, religious persecution, other destructive contests. It opposed persecution because of religious or scientific teaching. This Militia was an organization of loyal Rosicrucians. It became the protector of the Rosicrucians and revived their pure physical mystical teachings.

The Militia Crucifera Evangelica became the inner circle, the secret organization, within the Rosicrucian Order. Its membership was, and continues to be, limited to advanced adepts of Rosicrucian teachings, who had devoted their lives to the Rosicrucians, and who loyally supported the Imperator in each country where the Militia existed.

The first written document of Rosicrucianism, the Fama Fraternatis (the history of the founding of Rosicrucianism), appeared in 1614 at Cassel. It urged the learned to abandon the false teachings of the pope, Galen, and Aristotle and to join the Rosicrucians. It promised “a deeper knowledge of nature and a share in bringing about a general reformation of the world.”[4] This document was read widely throughout Europe.

A stated objective of the Rosicrucians was to restore the lost secrets of science, especially in medicine. They also sought to provide rulers sufficient wealth to take care of their subjects.

Johann Valentine Andrea is believed to be the reviver of the Rosicrucians. He had been a student of astronomy, mathematic, optic, and philosophy at Tubingen. Millenarian and visionary forms of religion gained his interest. Later he became a Lutheran deacon, after which he became a faithful upholder of Lutheranism and apparently remained such for the remainder of his life. He seemed to have used the Rosicrucian Order to advance Protestantism and abandoned the Order when Catholics captured it and started to use it to advance Catholicism.

Whatever its use to advocate Protestantism or Catholicism, the Rosicrucian Order was an anti-Christian society. It was Gnostic in nature and promoted Theosophy and Cabalism. It taught that “the soul of man moves in a spiral upward through spheres of angelic hierarchies toward God,”[5] who is not the God of the Christians. Rosicrucianism is a convoluted system of rituals and ceremonies combined with enigmatic teachings laced with Judaic and Christian tenets and merged with occult practices and pagan mythology. It is a mixture of the tenets of the Egyptian Mysteries, paranormal and psychic phenomena, and pseudo-science like alchemy. The god of Rosicrucianism is an impersonal god who is the “Supreme Intelligence,” a form of “pure energy,” and “the First Cause of All.”

Rosicrucians of this era included Dante Alighieri (author of The Divine Comedy), Sir Francis Bacon (philosopher), Dr. John Dee (scientist and a spy for Queen Elizabeth I), and Robert Fludd (one of the translators of the King James version of the Bible and a Jesuit).

By 1630, Rosicrucianism seemed to have ceased to exist. It next surfaced in the early eighteenth century when two detailed sets of rules were published, one in 1710 and another in 1777, in Germany. It also appeared in England, France, and Russia. This revived Rosicrucianism stressed superstition and ceremony. It possessed little of the ideals of the early Rosicrucians.

Modern Rosicrucianism appeared in 1865 with the establishment of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (Rosicrucian Society in England). Actually, it was not a true Rosicrucian society. It was not a direct descendant of earlier Rosicrucian orders. Rather, it was an off shoot of Freemasonry. However, the difference between Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry is not much. Philosophically, both are illuministic, pantheistic, and gnostic. Only Master Masons could be members. Robert Wentworth Little, a Freemason, was the primary organizer of this society. Its stated aims were “to afford mutual aid and encouragement in working out the great problems of life, and in discovering the secrets of nature; to facilitate the study of the systems of philosophy founded upon the Cabala and the doctrine of Hermes Trismegistus.”[6] Its structure was similar to that of the Bavarian Illuminati.

A related society, the Order of the Golden Dawn (or the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn), a Hermetic society, was founded about 1887. Dr. William Wynn Westcott, a London corner and third Supreme Magus of Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, founded this society. Westcott, Dr. Robert Woodman, and MacGregor Mathers (all three were Freemasons) ran the Order. (Mathers became the sole leader after the death of Woodman and the resignation of Westcott and remained so until the Golden Dawn lodge in London ousted him and selected three new chiefs.)Kenneth MacKenzie, who died in the 1870s was probably the mind behind the creation of the Golden Dawn and its tents and practices. The purpose of this society was to study Cabalistic doctrine and magic rites. The Golden Dawn has been credited with bringing about the modern expansion of ritual magic and the occult explosion in the West. Philosophically, it was close to the Theosophical Society except it studied magic, which the Theosophical Society denounced. It was connected with the Martinists of France. An order in Germany known as the Hidden and Secret Chiefs of the Third Order, whose members were unknown, was the real controller of the Golden Dawn. Members of the Golden Dawn included Algernon Blackwood (novelist), Aleister Crowley, Maud Gonne (Irish patriot), Annie Horniman (theater manager), George Russell (Irish poet, artist, and conservationists), and W. B. Yeats (a poet).

In 1903, the Golden Dawn split into the Golden Dawn with Arthur E. Waite as its leader and the Stella Matutina with Dr. R. Felkin as its leader. Waite, MacGregor Mathers, and their followers denied the existence of the Third Order, rejected the occult, and insisted on working along mystic lines. Felkin, Crowley, Westcott, and their followers retained the belief in the Third Order and continued their occult works. The two societies reunited in 1912.

Endnotes

1. H. Spencer Lewis, Rosicrucian Questions and Answers with Complete History of the Rosicrucian Order (Second ed. San Jose, California: Rosicrucian Press, 1932), pp. 21-22.

2. Ibid., p. 53.

3. Ibid., pp. 96-98.

4. Norman MacKenzie, ed., Secret Societies (New York, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967), p. 137.

5. Dennis L Cuddy, Now Is the Dawning of the New Age New World Order (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Hearthstone Publishing, 2000), p. 16.

6. Lady Queenborough (Edith Starr Miller), Occult Theocracy (Two Vol. Hawthorne, California: The Christian Book Club of America, 1933), p. 499.

References
Carrico, David. “Freemasonry and the 20th Century Occult Revival.”

Chaitkin, Anton. Treason in America From Aaron Burr to Averell Harriman. New York, New York: New Benjamin Franklin House, 1984.

Cuddy, Dennis L. Now Is the Dawning of the New Age New World Order. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Hearthstone Publishing, 2000.

Daraul, Arkon. A History of Secret Societies. New York, New York: The Citadel Press, 1961.

Kah, Gary H. En Route to Global Occupation. Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House Publishers, 1992.

Kirban, Salem. Satan’s Angels Exposed. Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania: Salem Kirban Inc., 1980.

Larson, Bob. Larson’s Book of Cults. Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. 1982.

Lewis, H. Spencer. Rosicrucian Questions and Answers with Complete History of the Rosicrucian Order. Second Edition. San Jose, California: Rosicrucian Press, 1932.

MacKenzie, Norman, ed. Secret Societies. New York, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967.

Marrs, Jim. Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids. New York, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2000.

Monteith, Stanley. Brotherhood of Darkness. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Hearthstone, 2000.

Mullins, Eustace. The Curse of Canaan: A Demonology of History. Staunton, Virginia: Revelation Book, 1987.

Preuss, Arthur. A Dictionary of Secret and Other Societies. St. Louis, Missouri: B. Herder Book Co., 1924.

Queenborough, Lady (Edith Starr Miller). Occult Theocracy. Two Volumes. Hawthorne, California: The Christian Book Club of America, 1933.

Webster, Nesta H. Secret Societies and Subversive Movements. Palmdale, California: Omni Publication, 1924.

Copyright © 2009 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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The Mysteries

The Mysteries
Thomas Allen

[Editor's note: The footnotes in the original is omitted.]

Secret societies may be said to begin with Nimrod and his worship of Lucifer—or, perhaps more correctly, with the death of Nimrod. Nimrod is often credited with founding Freemasonry; he invented it with the building of the Tower of Babel. This Nimrod is the infamous Nimrod of the Bible (Genesis 3:21), who established a great empire. Among the names given to Nimrod in later history are Marduk, Bel, and Merodach.[1]

Nimrod was a master of the occult and other Satanic practices. He employed genocide—especially of Aryans—and encouraged miscegenation—especially with Aryans. Ritual murders, human sacrifices, and cannibalism were also among his practices.

Legend has it that Shem, Nimrod’s great-uncle, beheaded Nimrod. Then he cut up Nimrod’s body and sent the pieces to Nimrod’s priest as a warning of what would happen to them if they did not cease their vileness and demonic worship. The priests hid the pieces of Nimrod’s body in their groves and shrines. They revered these relics of Nimrod’s body as objects of worship. The worship of these relics became the first “Mysteries.” These Mysteries were made known to initiates only after long indoctrination. When the Illuminists were convinced that an initiate could be trusted not to betray the true object of worship, they enlightened the initiate. Masonic rites originate from these Mysteries.[2]

Some of the secret societies counted among the Mysteries are the Persian Mysteries (Zoroastrianism and the cult of Mithra and Semiramis Mysteries), Greco-Thracian Mysteries of Eleusis (the Mysteries of Demeter, Persephone, and Dionysus), the Babylonian Mysteries (the Mysteries of Ishtar and Tammuz in Babylon), the Egyptian Mysteries (the Mysteries of Isis and Osiris), the Phoenician Mysteries (Mysteries of Baal and Ashtoreth in Canaan), Arabian Mysteries (from which comes Islam[3]) and Gnosticism. Much of the mystery cults survives in the Babylonian Talmud, the Zohar, and the Cabala. The Mysteries, especially the Egyptian Mysteries, also appear in the symbolism and rituals of Freemasonry.

Many of the Mysteries imitated the death of resurrection of Christ. Most Mysteries were built around the death of a god or goddess who later rose from the dead. Followers of this god or goddess would receive eternal life if they acquired the appropriate knowledge and performed the proper rite. The Mysteries ranged from extreme hedonism to extreme austerely, from satisfying all the lusts of the flesh to hating and mutilating the flesh because it was the enemy of salvation. At the heart of the Mysteries were regeneration, procreation, and reproduction. The Mysteries promised that the practitioner, with proper ritual magic, which was the secret of the Mysteries, would gain wealth and power. They promised the ability to control the fate of men and countries. The objective of the Mysteries was to make man god. Another basic tenet of the Mysteries was the idea of universal brotherhood.

Entry into the priesthood required the initiate to pass through a series of occult rituals. Secret doctrines were only revealed to the initiate once he reached the highest level of the priesthood. This secret doctrine always included the worship of Lucifer although he was frequently called by a different name, such as the God of Hades or the God of the Underworld. (Freemasons call Lucifer the Great Architect.) While in a trance, the high priest communicated with Lucifer or his demon messengers. These demons became the god or goddess of the Mysteries religion. Kah believes that the idols worshiped were more than pieces of stone, clay, or metal; they were actually images of the demons themselves.[4] The Mysteries would go on to form the foundation of the secret societies that followed.

Canaanites
The Canaanites partook of the Mysteries and more literally followed the hideous and evil practices of Nimrod than most others. Afterwards, the Nimrodic cult appeared in the Phoenicians, an offshoot of the Canaanites.

The Canaanites seemed to vanish from history around 1200 B.C. However, they essentially merged with their kindred the Phoenicians. With the fall of Carthage in 146 B.C., the occulted society of the Canaanites suffered a great set back, but it was not destroyed. The Luciferian occult of Nimrod would later appear in Freemasonry, various societies of the Illuminists, and other secret societies. Among the groups that later instituted various practices of Nimrod were the Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, Essenes, Herodians, Scribes, and Assassins.

Zoroastrianism Zoroastrianism arose around 600 B.C. Zoroaster taught the existence of two gods, a good god and an evil god, or the God of Light and the God of Darkness. These two gods constantly struggled against each other. Zoroastrianism is an ancestor of Freemasonry. (In Freemasonry, the God of the Christians is the God of Darkness. Lucifer is the God of Light That Lucifer is the God of Light who enlightens, illuminates, and frees man is the great secret of Freemasonry and other illuminated societies.) Zoroastrianism is also an ancestor of the Jewish Cabala and Talmud, i.e., Judaism.

MithraA branch of Zoroastrianism was the cult of Mithra. Mithra was the god of light and truth and intercessor between man and Ormuzd or Ahura Mazda. Ormuzd was the supreme god and creator and the good principle or light. Mithra became worshiped as a solar deity. He promised his worshipers worldly success and happiness and security in the next world. This cult contained seven grades of initiation. It became popular in the Roman Empire and was particularly strong among the Roman Praetorian Guard.

GnosticismGnosticism flourished several centuries before and after Christ. Gnostics claimed knowledge of the secrets of the Mysteries. Gnosticism taught that only by developing certain facets of his mind can man come to his full power. Knowledge is not merely the collection of facts; it is also mystical. Gnostics stress personal mystical experience, and initiates were guided to and through this experience under great secrecy. The secret knowledge of the Gnostics was how to contact the supreme being or power; contact with this power enabled man to work out his destiny. Once an initiate learned to contact this power, he became a vehicle for its use. He became identified with and part of the power. Accordingly, he attained his true purpose as a purified personality and became infinitely superior to the unenlightened masses. Gnostics believed that a person gained salvation through knowledge of his spiritual nature. Thus, Gnosticism taught that salvation came from knowledge, especially from “knowledge of the mysteries of the Universe and of magic formula indicative of that knowledge.”[5] Gnosticism promised the initiate that he could fully realize his divine nature and achieve oneness with God, “who is the Universe in all its phases and in its wholeness and completeness.”[6] Through knowledge, man could become God. Pantheism is the chief dogma of Gnosticism.

Gnostics considered themselves intellectual aristocrats; only a few were capable of receiving their knowledge. They saw themselves more enlightened and, therefore, more important than the unenlightened. While believing the basic principles of Gnosticism, they could easily participate in the outward ceremonies and teachings of the prevailing political and religious system. Gnosticism was the forerunner of a universal religion. Many held that they had a license to sin and that God’s law taught promiscuity. Gnostic masters often used drugs to debauch their followers and to make them easier to control.

During the Christian era, Gnostics attempted to supplement the Christian faith with the knowledge of the eternal and to give Christianity a wider meaning by linking it to earlier religions. Because Gnosticism was more deceptive and clever than other forms of Pantheism, it became the most effective and widely accepted form and the occult’s only major counter explanation to the message and person of Christ. Its primary objective was to subvert and destroy the person of Christ and Christianity and to replace Christianity with the worship of Lucifer. Gnostics taught that Jesus was an ascetic, a magician, or a sexual deviate who used secret ceremonies to initiate his followers. Jesus, who had found the secret knowledge of the Universe and thereby obtained higher consciousness, was not the savior of man. The fundamental principle of Gnosticism was the double divinity or dual principle: Lucifer is the good god; Christ is the evil god, the devil. Gnostics claimed that what Christians called vice was for Gnostics really virtue. For some Gnostics, good and evil were meaningless labels; experiencing everything was the way to perfection. Gnostics rejected the Christian idea of absolute morality.

Gnosticism descended from the Cabala. It was religious existentialism. The seal of Lucifer marked Gnosticism. Originally, the Gnostics were Jewish occultists, but non-Jewish followers soon dominated Gnosticism. Gnosticism is also part of the ancestry of Freemasonry and modern-day occultism, New Age religion. Experimentalism, which was popular among the hippies of the 1960s, is a modern-day form of Gnosticism.

Some notable Gnostics were Simon the Magician and Basilides. Simon merged Greek philosophy with Christianity and taught that the human soul existed outside the physical body. Thus, it had access to universal knowledge. He also taught that wisdom came from the heavens to Earth. Basilides was an Egyptian “Christian” who merged the ancient Mysteries with Christianity. He believed in extraterrestrial beings who were messengers between the heavens and Earth.

Carpocratians
An important Gnostic cult was the Carpocratians of the second century A.D. This group held the laws of Christianity and Judaism in contempt. Carpocratians recognized only the knowledge of great men, such as Plato, Pythagoras, Moses, and Jesus, freed from the taint of religious doctrines. They made man God’s equal and approached the deification of humanity. (Man as God’s equal or man as god is a key doctrine of illuministic secret societies.) Since man is a god, he needs no revelation or guidance from God. Man only needs introspection about his own nature. As nature is divine, natural man is praiseworthy. For man to hold land, goods, women, and everything else in common is natural. Human laws to the contrary are unnatural. Carpocratians lived a lascivious lifestyle.

Valentinians
Another important Gnostic sect was the Valentinians who dressed their Gnostic beliefs in Christian terminology. Unlike the Carpocratians, who practices extreme licentiousness, the Valentinians practiced extreme asceticism.

Gnosticism eventually merged with Manichaeanism. Manichaeanism taught syncretistic religious dualism and releasing the spirit from matter through asceticism.

Greek Mysteries
In Greece the illuministic cult of Nimrod surfaced about 1400 BC in the Eleusinian Mysteries, which were also known as the Mysteries of Demeter, Persephone, and Dionysus. These Mysteries were the principal religious mysteries of the ancient Greeks. They began as agricultural rites combined with the afterlife. The Eleusinian Mysteries did not appear to have expressed any special metaphysical, ethnical, or social message.

A descendant of the Eleusinian Mysteries was Orphism, which was the next important Greek Mysteries. Orpheus introduced the Orphic Mysteries in the sixth century B.C. Orphism was centered around Dionysus and Zagreus, the son of Zeus and Persephone. Orphism dealt with man’s dual nature of good and evil and sought to deliver the divine soul of man from his evil flesh. Nevertheless, it glorified evil. (The glorification of evil is an important component of modern Illuminism.)

Related to Orphism was the Pythagorean School founded by Pythagoras, a Rosicrucian,[7] at Crotona in the six century B.C. The Pythagorean School was much more of a secret society than the earlier Mysteries. It was more like most modern-day secret societies in its concern for esoteric doctrines. Members of this school were carefully initiated. It emphasized the mystery aspects of philosophy. This school was an early school of secular humanism and an early school of dialectic. It was a communistic aristocratic community. Men and women held their goods in common and believed that they were the guarding rulers of the state. One of its key teachings, salvation through special knowledge, is a key doctrine of modern secret societies. Its two primary tenets were transmigration of souls and that numbers were the true essence of all things. Also, it stresses such virtues as truthfulness, temperance, fortitude, prudence, justice, and abstinence from vice. Many of its precepts, such as numerology, later appeared in the Book of Zohar and the Cabala. Theosophy is a modern-day version of the Pythagorean School. Pythagoras “may have been the first to predict a ‘New World Order.’”[8]

Following Pythagorus as a secret society leader was Plato. Plato was an important figure behind the scene of the political maneuvering occurring in his day. He wrote The Republic as a guide for humanist rulers.

In Plato’s ideal society, a small elite ruling class supported by a powerful army ruled the state. The ruling elite exercised absolute power over the masses. Women were completely equal to men and did the same labor as men including fighting wars along the side of men. Marriage and family were eliminated. Sex was promiscuous, and the government reared the resulting offspring when they were weaned. The government undertook a program of selective breeding. Children considered inferior were killed. Plato’s society had three classes: the ruling elite, the military, and the workers. The rulers assigned each person to one of these classes.

Illuministic Greek Governments
An early government established by Illuminists was the government of Sparta established by Lycurgus in the seventh century B.C. This government operated under the authority of superstition mixed with violence. It was an early form of Communism. Sparta became one great camp. All citizens shared in public meals and public sleeping quarters. Everyone held an equal share of land. Slaves worked the land to support the family of the holder. Although marriages existed, promiscuity was encouraged. (Marriage was permitted after age 20 and compelled for the unmarried at age 30.) When a child was born, a committee examined the infant to decide if it should live. Boys were separate from parents at an early age and underwent a uniform militaristic training program directed by the government. To prevent the accumulation of wealth, business enterprise was prohibited, and all male citizens essentially live a militaristic life.

Athens also fell victims to Illuminists. Its form of government differed greatly from Sparta, at least on the surface. In Athens the form was democracy. The Illuminists indoctrinated the Athenians with the idea that government should be by consent, so they became a democracy. Once democracy was in place, the Illuminists could manipulate the masses through demagoguery. Thus, Athens was reduced to a government of men and their immediate whims. The rule of law vanished.

Sparta provided the model for communistic Russia. Athens provided the model for democratic America.

Appendix. Garden of EdenIlluminism goes back before recorded history. Perhaps the earliest record of Illuminism is the story of the Garden of Eden and Eve eating the forbidden fruit. Lucifer sent his agent, an Illuminist named Nahash, who was a pre-Adamic human, to persuade Eve, the mother of the Aryan people, to rebel against her Master, and Lucifer’s arch enemy, the God of the Christians. Eve fell for Nahash’s illuministic deception, rebelled against God, and ate the forbidden fruit.

Nahash deceived Eve with two lies, which are the foundation of Pantheism, the religion of the Illuminists. They are (1) that she would not die, and (2) that she would become like God. Thus, Lucifer won his first battle in his war to destroy the race that God created in His image. By destroying the Aryans, Lucifer hoped to defeat God and supplant Him. If he could not defeat God, at least he would have the satisfaction of destroying God’s special people. Unfortunately for Lucifer, but fortunately for Christians, God foiled Lucifer’s scheme by sending His Son, Jesus, into the world.

Endnotes
1. Eustace Mullins. The Curse of Canaan: A Demonology of History (Staunton, Virginia: Revelation Book, 1987), p. 11

2. Ibid., p. 37

3. Gary H. Kah, The New World Religion (Noblesville, Indiana: Hope International Publishing, Inc., 1998), p, 246

4. Gary H. Kah, En Route to Global Occupation (Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House Publishers, 1992), p. 74

5. James W. Wardner, Unholy Alliances: The Secret Plan and the Secret People Who Are Working to Destroy America (James W. Wardner, 1996), p. 82

6. Ibid., p. 226

7. H. Spencer Lewis, Rosicrucian Questions and Answers with Complete History of the Rosicrucian Order (Second Ed. San Jose, California: Rosicrucian Press, 1932), p. 49.

8. Jim Marrs, Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids (New York, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2000), p. 350

[Editor's note: The list of references in the original is omitted.]

Copyright © 2009 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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