Cydonia Quest

The Conspiracy

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Part Two - Guide to Secret Societies

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"We are not a secret society, but a society with secrets"

"Just men made perfect" - The Freemasons

As I have no connections with Freemasonry I've had to do a little reading. Most of what follows has been taken from Secrets Of the Lodge: Origins, Practices & Beliefs of Freemasonry written under the pseudonym of Tubal Cain and published by Delphi Publishing of Wales. A history book called Heresy which I read at least ten years ago also proved helpful.

The spiritual beliefs of Freemasonry (and other esoteric societies) are unlike anything experienced by those brought up in Christian, Jewish or Moslem belief systems. Freemasons must believe in a Supreme Being - or at least acknowledge that everything is governed by an exterior force greater than ourselves. However there appears to be no fixed theology on what exactly God "is", unlike the mainstream monotheistic religions. Indeed this lack of a very prescriptive theology is an important feature of Freemasonry with members being largely free to speculate as they wish. Freemasons believe that social, political and theological issues are completely irrelevant to their movement and so such matters are not discussed within the Lodge.

The basic starting point of Freemason belief (and that of all other esoteric societies) is that the soul is a subconscious (or embryonic) entity that can't be influenced to the good by conscious reasoning. Effective communication with the soul is only possible through the use of myth, ritual and symbolism which are incomprehensible to the conscious mind, but are perfectly understood at the subconscious level. It therefore doesn't matter whether or not the intellectual mind accepts these myths and rituals as true because the soul recognises the deeper truths buried within them. Freemasons believe that this is a superior form of spirituality over today's mainstream religions and that its roots lie in the esoteric cults of ancient Egypt. Indeed, they believe that the Egyptians acquired their esoteric knowledge through it being handed down to them by the survivors of the golden age of the mythical Atlantis.

Esoteric religions are so called because the soul's enlightenment is attained by being initiated through a progression of rituals, each of which prepares the initiate for new disclosures. This is referred to as Gnosticism (from the Greek word for knowledge) and was practised in the Osiris cult of the Egyptians and forms the basis for Freemasonry today.

The following "history" section is quite long. Readers who are in a hurry can skip past it to the next section without losing too much.

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The History of Freemasonry......... According to the Freemasons

Moses and the Egyptian Gnostics. Higher degree Masons believe that as a member of the Egyptian royal family Moses was initiated into the highest levels of esoteric knowledge and that he in turn initiated his deputies into them. These Gnostic practices then formed the basis of the rituals carried out by the priesthood in Solomon's Temple (according to the Freemasons). Whereas Freemasons take the stories in the Bible's Old Testament as truthful descriptions of actual events, they view the New Testament Gospels as a travesty of the truth.

The Gnostic Christians. The roots of orthodoxy in Christianity arose in the second century as a reaction against Christian teachings being synthesised with Gnostic belief in Egypt to form Gnostic Christianity. According to the beliefs of the Gnostic Christians Jesus passed down a secret body of esoteric teachings to be imparted to those worthy of initiation. In common with their pagan Gnostic counterparts, the Christian Gnostics believed that some people were more enlightened than others and that myth was spiritually more effective than factual truth. Indeed, of the fourteen gospels known to have been written in the second century, almost all of them are Gnostic reworkings of the original tale. In marked contrast to this the formal Church of the bishops followed the oral traditions passed down by Jesus's Apostles, finished off with some on-the-hoof theology from St.Paul. These stressed that the conventional story of Jesus's life was a factual one and that the message shouldn't be muddied by the spreading of mythological versions of his life. (Besides Christians had enough to worry about due to the Roman persecutions).

The tradition of the Apostles also taught that humans could only ever achieve partial enlightenment in this life because total enlightenment was a fair definition of Heaven and divinity. Only the resurrected Jesus possessed this level of perfection and by being so had "justified" the souls of all people of goodwill throughout all time - the living and the dead. (The increasing toleration of the Catholic church towards other religions suggests that the meaning of this doctrine has begun to sink in). Other Christians also charged that the Gnostic Christians were guilty not only of self delusion, but also of elitism in practising esoteric initiation.

The origins of the Catholic Church. The tide turned against Christian Gnosticism when the first bishop of Avignon put forward a logical refutation. His argument was that he had been taught his Christianity by people who had learnt their's directly from the Apostles. He knew of many other people who had learnt their faith by this direct route yet none of them had heard a word spoken about Jesus having esoteric teachings. If those with the best access to Jesus during his ministry, the Apostles, weren't Gnostics why was there any reason to believe that Jesus was? This was the small beginning of Christian orthodoxy and a more tightly controlled church. As part of this counter attack the Church only sanctioned the use of the four earliest known Gospels and corralled mystics into monasteries.

Naturally the Freemasons side with the Gnostic Christians in this argument. In their version of events Jesus was the leader of a small esoteric group within the Jerusalem Temple who believed that it was unfair that the benefits of Gnostic teachings were restricted to a small group of families and their friends. He therefore set out to start an esoteric movement that would make Gnostic initiation available to everyone that was ready for it. The Temple hierarchy objected to this and finally framed Jesus for sedition, which led to his arrest and execution (perhaps). It is because of these beliefs that higher degree Masons refer to Jesus as the Father of Freemasonry.

The Catholic Church as a Roman Conspiracy. The "bad guy" in the Mason's story is St. Paul who the Mason's see as a Roman collaborator who worked with the Empire to create a Christian religion that would capture the hearts and minds of the subject peoples for the Emperor. Now it is certainly true that Paul tried to point Christianity in a direction that would allow it to "conquer" the Empire, but I personally think the Roman elites would have been violently opposed to the idea - which just may explain why they slaughtered so many common people to stamp it out. (Freemasonry holds many beliefs that were never held by the Christian Gnostics).

The higher degree Mason's belief in such conspiracy theory may derive from the Emperor Constantine's hijacking of Christianity as the Empire's state religion. Constantine envisaged Christianity as a way of uniting all the Empire's people in a common bond. For this reason he forced all the different theological factions of the faith to synthesise their opposing doctrines into a single Catholic one. So although Gnosticism is a heresy, a little bit of it may have been sublimated into modern Christian practices.

Christian Gnosticism itself went underground to allegedly reappear in the 9th century in the Bulgarian Bogomils. However the Bogomils are generally regarded as followers of the 3rd century religion known as Manichaeism in which the world of matter is the evil work of the Devil and in which the outcome of the battle between good and evil is not at all certain. This idea itself was directly taken from the Mazdian heresy that was eating away the Zoroastrian religion from within, (but more of this below when we consider the Nazis).

The Cathars. The Mason's see the Cathars as being the next torch bearers for Gnostic ideas, although the Cathars of northern Italy and southern France are also generally regarded as followers of Manichaeism. (However, it should be noted that some of the very early Christian Gnostics believed the creator god of the universe who appears in the Biblical Old Testament was a morally incompetent, lesser god - a kind of sorcerer's apprentice. They believed the ultimate, true God had sent Jesus to rescue humanity from the mean spirited teachings of His underling.) In the 13th century the Pope launched a vicious Crusade against the Cathars of southern France in which thousands died and the movement was stamped out.

The "Grail" bloodline. Freemason's believe that the real reason the Church was so zealous in destroying the Cathars was the Cathar legend that Mary Magdalen had settled in southern France with her children fathered by Jesus. In some versions of this legend Jesus escaped death on the cross and went with her. In any event an important part of the legend is that Jesus's descendants had gone on to dominate the royal bloodlines of Europe. Many Mason's believe that the best bloodline from Jesus runs through the British royal family - so, the House of Windsor as a continuation of the House of David/Jesus. This seems complete fantasy, but it would explain the high regard in which Mason's hold the British royal family. (Ironically Queen Elizabeth II does have a documented genealogical link to the Prophet Mohammed through the House of Seville. The current Saudi royal family cannot show any family link with the Prophet). It may also explain the American media's obsession with making genealogical links between US presidents and distant Kings of England.

The Knights Templars. The short success of the Cathars in southern France was partly due to the local nobility embracing this faith. Interestingly, it was members of this same nobility that founded the Knights Templars. There is a suspicion that this highly successful order of knights was founded by the Cathar nobles as a way of infiltrating Cathar ideas across Europe under the very nose of the Church. This could explain the rumours that the Templars practised a series of initiation rituals - they would act as a way of sifting out knights who were too loyal to Catholic doctrine from discovering the order's true business. The Templars do seem to have had some esoteric mystical ideas. For example they were the first in medieval Europe to incorporate mystically symbolic geometry into architectural design.

Eventually the Templars became too rich and powerful for their own good. In order to clear his debts with them King Philip of France had them pronounced as heretics and devil worshippers. Thanks to a tip-off a large number of French Templars were able to escape France for Portugal and Scotland. In other European countries the authorities merely made the Templars disband, but in France the remaining knights suffered terrible punishment. (As a footnote, the round-up of the Templars occurred on Friday 13th which is why this date is held in such fear).

Freemasonry as inheritors of the Templars. The Freemasons believe that the descendants of the Templars who survived the crushing of the order form a very secret society even today. More importantly they believe that the ideas that the Templars passed on to people engaged in architecture and building trades formed a core set of beliefs for the secret guilds of stone masons known as the Freemasons. In the 17th century the membership of these societies gradually widened out to encompass more educated gentlemen and in 1717 a number of London lodges decided that it was safe to publicly embrace the kind of "speculative" Freemasonry that we see today.

Comments. I have to admit that I'm very sceptical of the Masonic belief that they are the inheritors of an unbroken line of esoteric knowledge that goes back 5,000 years to ancient Egypt - and that's even before we even consider Atlantis. In the European Renaissance there was a renewed interest in the occult, magical, religious and mystical ideas of ancient times among the rich and educated. Bizarre secret societies were not unknown. As an example, the Rosacrucians were formed in Elizabethan times when a mysterious manifesto purporting to come from the (then non-existent) Rosacrucians was published throughout Europe. It is thought that Queen Elizabeth's astrologer John Dee was behind the hoax. It seems more than a coincidence that Freemasonry adopted its highly esoteric and speculative practices just as its membership of working men was being replaced by gentlemen. It seems to me that Masonic beliefs are a synthesis of a whole range of traditions that could not be aired publicly in a Christian Europe. The fact that Egyptian Gnosticism came to dominate the spiritual core of Freemasonry is probably because it is the most ancient belief system that Masons know of and because Gnosticism allows for the practice of "magical" ideas without guilt or embarrassment.

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Masonic Beliefs & Practices that are Relevant to the Theories of Hoagland & Bara

A "star" is born. The practices that are important to the Hoagland / Bara theory derive from Freemasons beliefs about the afterlife. Members of the mainstream religions believe that their souls will be resurrected into supernatural bodies inhabiting a supernatural realm where they can only experience supreme joy. However, Freemasonry believes in spiritual resurrection rather than this kind of bodily resurrection. Higher degree Freemasons believe that when they shuffle off this mortal coil their souls will become "stars". This seems to be a metaphor for saying that their souls will become free agents. It also seems to mean that their souls will become "one" with the physical universe - but at a higher astral plane that will afford a heavenly experience. (When I think of this the analogy of those godlike aliens in 2001 or the "Q" in Star Trek pop into my head).

Higher degree Freemasons believe that their soul receives such a revelation from this ritual that it is actually spiritually resurrected there and then. The oaths of secrecy and the reason for Hiram Abiff's death also drive home to both the conscious and sub-conscious mind that these mysteries are too sacred to be revealed to outsiders.

Astrology and the higher degree Freemasons. About 60% of Freemasons don't progress beyond the third (Master Mason) degree. There are many rites of Freemasonry, but it is the Scottish Rite with 33 degrees of initiation that has come to dominate. Those who progress beyond Master Mason into the higher degrees have a better understanding of the true Gnostic nature of Freemasonry. The Royal Arch Mariners degree is particularly involved with educating the soul about its true place in the universe by dealing with astrology, astronomy and stellar navigation. Astrology is very important to higher degree Masons as they ascribe to the philosophy of "as above, so below". This is the idea that the macrocosm and microcosm are inextricably linked. What happens in the universe affects what happens on Earth and vice versa. Astrology therefore teaches a Mason's soul about this harmony in nature. (This belief that reality has a twin nature is termed Dualism).

Freemasons practice electional astrology. That is, they choose to do things when the signs in the heavens are particularly harmonious. This matches the Hoagland/Bara model that says NASA and certain politicians seem to be slaves to electional astrology and Masonic symbolism. Higher degree Freemasons are fascinated by the symbolic power of astrology, sacred geometry, geomancy, numerology and the Osiris resurrection myth. Even their view of the afterlife owes much to that of the ancient Egyptians. We find all these elements in the patterns that Hoagland and Bara claim to have found in the operations of NASA. Given the Masonic spiritual obsession with the heavens and the fact that NASA's mission is the exploration of those same heavens, then it is not beyond the bounds of reason that Freemasons might be drawn to the space business like bees to honey.

Freemasons and aliens? Surely you're joking Mr. Harrison? In the Chapter degree of Freemasonry, initiates are asked to consider the idea that in the distant past there was extraterrestrial meddling in human affairs. Chapter initiates are recommended to speculate on those parts of the Biblical Old Testament where God seems to use instrumentalities to achieve His ends (such as that UFO sounding thing in Ezekiel). If this is true then the initiate is being pushed towards the idea that the activities of aliens have been mistaken for the activities of a personal, revelatory God.

When I first read this account of modern Freemasons alleged beliefs about aliens I was very sceptical. Then I read Robert Temple's The Sirius Mystery which looks at the best evidence that ancient Middle Eastern civilisations were contacted by an alien expedition in their early days. Temple's book contains an appendix in which he sets out his extended family's involvement with Freemasonry going back over two hundred years, (although Temple's father broke with this tradition). Temple recalls how he was contacted by a family friend, Ted Webber, who was a full 33 degree Mason and a colleague of America's most important Masons. According to Temple, Webber told him the following.

....."We are very interested in your book The Sirius Mystery. We realise you have written this without any knowledge of the traditions of Masonry, and you may not be aware of this, but you have made some discoveries which relate to the most central Masonic traditions at a high level, including some things that none of us ever knew. We would very much like to get you to exchange some ideas and research with some of the people in our headquarters. But unfortunately because you are not a Mason we cannot discuss any of these matters with you, as it is forbidden.".....

His curiosity piqued, Temple joined the Freemasons, but Ted Webber died and this apparent attempt to contact him by those who really know Freemasonry's deepest secrets went cold. However, the episode does suggest that Freemasonry does have a deep interest in the subject of alien contact. One would imagine that they would be very excited about the Cydonian discoveries. One reason why American Freemasons may be so interested in the idea of aliens from Sirius is the influence of the Theosophical channeller Alice Bailey who claimed that Masonic beings in the Sirius system were helpfully guiding events on Earth. Alice was married to a prominent Freemason, Foster Bailey, who tirelessly promoted her ideas to other Freemasons. An account of Robert Temple's researches into Alice Bailey and the Freemason/Sirius connection can be read by clicking the next "stargate", µµµ.

In the first chapter of The Sirius Mystery Temple also recounts a "dirty tricks" campaign against his book by two NASA employees that seems to fit in well with parts of the Hoagland/Bara theory. One of these men was Baron Jesco von Puttkamer who was one of Werner von Braun's team of rocket scientists. Temple has not revealed the identity of the other man, but TEM has recently claimed it was Carl Sagan. This would be rather surprising behaviour on Sagan's part, as in 1966 he published a book on the possibility of alien contact with our ancestors called Intelligent Life in the Universe, µµµ.

I have since discovered that the belief that humanity is guided by "higher" beings is a common one in esoteric societies. The Rosicrucians believe these are angelic beings µµµ . It is also part of the belief system of societies associated with the formation of the Nazis: and communing with "higher" beings seems to be the most important objective of the Alister Crowley crowd. One Crowley'ite group, the Typhonian O.T.O., places the origin of these entities in "outer space" (as a metaphor for another dimension driven by an "imagination" with an imagination all of its own).

It's all Erol Torun's fault. Richard Hoagland recounts in The Monuments of Mars how he and his associates were initially encouraged in their researches of Cydonia by NASA institutions such as the Lewis Research Centre. In early 1990 the Director of that facility, Dr.John Klineberg, asked Hoagland to give a presentation of Cydonia findings to the whole of the Centre's 4,000 staff. It was even arranged for a video to be made that could be broadcast on television. Then suddenly, after protests from NASA's JPL, the work of Cydonia researchers was cold shouldered by NASA.

It could be argued that certain elements in NASA thought that the notion of alien ruins on Mars was too speculative a matter for NASA to be involved with. However, if we entertain Hoagland's theory that NASA is in the grip of esoteric societies then there may be an esoteric reason. In 1989 Erol Torun completed a geometric study of the apparently five pointed D&M Pyramid at Cydonia. He concluded that amongst its many interesting geometries the D&M incorporated both fivefold and sixfold symmetry. In other words, it seemed to cleverly incorporate both a Star of David and a Pentacle (five pointed star) in its floor plan µµµ. Now both these designs have a very powerful symbolism in Freemasonry and other esoteric societies. They also seem to have their roots in ancient Egypt. So just imagine what Hoagland's hypothetical, esoteric conspirators would have thought when he started to innocently present evidence that the "builders" of Cydonia were into esoteric geometry. A credible prediction is that "they" would want to selfishly take ownership of the whole thing. In this scenario only the esoterically initiated would be deemed worthy to have knowledge about Cydonia's "ancient civilisation".

An obsession with Giza. To the ancient Egyptians Giza was were human consciousness began. It therefore has the best and most ingenious pyramids that the Egyptians ever built. The Egyptian obsession of Freemasonry means that some Masons have a very strong interest in the Giza Pyramids. Over time Egyptologists have discovered that these pyramids have been constructed with amazing precision as regards compass bearings, star alignment, geometric formulas, as well as ingenious light and shadow effects.

This has been enough to set off a whole cascade of speculation by Masons with an interest in the subject. Some are interested in the idea that the builders of the Giza Pyramids were able to use telekinesis to modulate the Earth's magnetic fields to create reduced gravity around Giza during the construction phase. Others speculate the Great Pyramid at Giza is some kind of fantastic machine that will one day be activated to link humanity with a higher astral existence. Yet others are just intrigued by the idea that there is some great, paradigm shifting secret to be discovered at Giza.

The Enterprise Mission has drawn attention to the rumours of deep involvement by Masons and certain NASA officials with secretive excavations at Giza. Although TEM has provided evidence of these covert excavations it would be helpful if they would also provide their evidence of NASA involvement µµµ.

There does seem to have been an attempt by Masonic groups to turn the year 2000 New Years Day celebrations at Giza into a Masonic ceremony. The original plan was to replace the lost capstone from one of the Giza Pyramids and to place a golden pyramidion atop each of the three large pyramids µµµ. This plan was dropped when prejudiced Egyptian public opinion became convinced that this was some sort of Jewish magical ritual (according to the Economist magazine).

The importance of independent Masonic Orders. The role of the independent Masonic Orders did not become clear to me until I read David V. Barrett's Secret Societies: From the Ancient & Arcane to the Modern & Clandestine. Basically Masonic Orders are secret societies to which only Master Freemasons (or above) are admitted - and on an invitation only basis. The Masonic Orders offer additional "side degrees" to their members and allow Freemasons with similar esoteric interests to get together. A large number of these Masonic Orders are Neo-Templar orders arising from a 19th century fascination with chivalry, which the Templars are supposed to have invented. In contradiction to Masonic ideals these Templar orders are Christian only societies. The August Order of Light deals with those interested in ancient religions. Egyptophiles are catered for by the Ancient & Primitive Rite and by the Rite of Memphis Misraim (with 99 degrees).

These Masonic Orders are very important for the spinning off of new secret societies. The original Ordo Templi Orientis (which looms very large in the story of Aleister Crowley) was formed by two German Freemasons. Perhaps the most important Masonic Order in terms of its spin-off societies is the magical Rosicrucian order called Societus Rosicruciana, usually known as just Soc Ros. In the late 19th century three of its members, including two who had been Supreme Magi, formed a new secret society open to non-Masons (both men and women) called the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. This was probably the most influential source of magical and New Age practice in the modern world - and it was where Aleister Crowley was first introduced to occult practices. The American wing of Soc Ros was responsible for the amazing upsurge in interest in Rosicrucianism in the United States when it created its own non-Masonic society. However, it is believed that the biggest of the resulting Rosicrucian societies, AMORC, actually got its authority from the German branch of the O.T.O. (It seems that any secret society worth its salt has to prove a long line of succession, much as all the World's bishops can trace a line of consecration back to the Apostles).

The importance of independent Masonic orders and spin-off societies to Hoagland and Bara's theories is that groups of Freemasons can be involved in projects which the vast majority of their fraternity are not aware of. In fact one could envisage independent orders that are totally unknown outside their own membership. Seen in this light the notorious Propaganda Duo (P2) lodge in Italy can more properly be viewed as being a secret independent order of Grand Orient Freemasons. (Grand Orient Freemasonry is a Continental European form of Freemasonry whose members do not have to profess a belief in a Supreme Being). Despite the fact that all the members of P2 were Grand Orient Freemasons, the Grand Orient hierarchy only discovered its existence when approached by investigative journalists - and the rest is history.

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Freemasonry and the Dangers of Superstition, Infiltration & Moral Jeopardy

This section is really a collection of speculations and musings on my part. It does not impart any new information about secret esoteric societies. However, these musing are relevant to the Hoagland/Bara theory so the reader may find them thought provoking.

Superstition. Some people would say that any religious belief in God or an afterlife is superstition. However, I'm using the term in a limited sense to mean the belief that one can achieve material benefit or avoid material harm by performing "rituals" that have no rationality. An example would be somebody carrying around a lucky rabbit's foot from an unlucky rabbit in the expectation of good fortune.

In considering why intelligent people, such as higher degree Freemasons, might organise their affairs around rituals that are basically superstitious I have thought of five possible motivational types. (A) People who have no real belief in an afterlife or a Supreme Being and think all the rituals are superstitious nonsense. These deceitful people are primarily interested in making their way up the ladder of degrees because they believe their power and influence will be increased. (B) Those who aren't very interested in the spiritual side of Freemasonry but are fascinated by the Freemason's alternative "knowledge" of history and science. They want to learn more. (C) The True Believers. These people believe that they get a substantial spiritual benefit from Freemasonry, but don't believe that rituals (such as electional astrology) will provide them with any material benefit in this life. (D) There will always be people who are naturally superstitious and believe that the movement of the stars (for example) control the finest details of their lives. (E) The Magicians. These believe that they can magically control events to their material advantage through the use of ritual.

"Magicians" might rationalise their belief in one of two ways. Firstly, they may believe that as their souls reach higher astral levels with each degree initiation, inherent powers such as ESP and the subconscious ability to psychically control the outcome of events will increase. The second possibility derives from the observation that the speculations of Freemasonry seem to push higher degree initiates towards a belief in Pantheism. If the interventionist God of the Old Testament is really just the activity of advanced extra-terrestrials, and if Jesus really didn't die on the cross and then miraculously rise from the dead to address his followers.......then there isn't much left in the Bible of an intelligent, revelatory God.

In Pantheism the universe is mystically identified with the Supreme Being. The Pantheist believes that the universe has some kind of a subconscious mind, but not one capable of detailed decision making. So our hypothetical "Magicians" could believe that by performing symbolic rituals they will become subconsciously attuned with the highest power there is. The Pantheistic, subconscious "God" then acquires the desires of the "Magicians" and "God" becomes their all powerful "tool". (Yes, they did burn people for this kind of belief).

Infiltration. Although there are checks and balances in Freemasonry to keep out unpleasant people they can never be entirely effective. One of the biggest Masonic scandals involved the P2 lodge in Rome during the 1980's. A police investigation showed the membership of this lodge was heavily weighted towards politicians in the ruling party, secret intelligence officers, members of the Mafia, right wing terrorists and bankers of dubious honesty. These were exactly the groups involved in a series of major corruption scandals at the time including the theft of $80 million from the Vatican Bank and the misuse of secret NATO arms caches. As for Italian politicians on the Mafia payroll.......µµµ

However, the main danger to the internal integrity of the Freemasons probably doesn't come from the infiltration of inappropriate people, but from the infiltration of inappropriate ideas. As we shall see there are wilder and nastier parts of the esoteric movement that embrace darker magical ideas. If groups of people within the Freemasons wish to secretly follow these same ideas then there is not much that can be done about it. A secret society within a secret society of this sort could set out to manipulate the brotherhood principle of Freemasonry to their own ends.

Moral Jeopardy. Economists use this term to describe actions by authorities that create unintentional incentives for people to act badly. An example would be the way in which the combination of the European Single Market and differing alcohol taxes between member countries has created a greater number of smugglers.

In the case of esoteric societies the division between the conscious mind and the soul may provide comfort to those minded to act immorally. It would be easy for an esoteric initiate to believe that their actions in this life will not undermine their happiness in the afterlife because the soul is innocent of the sins carried out by the conscious mind. In fact this is probably one of the main reasons why, theoretically, Freemasonry tries to admit only the "just" and deserving.

µµµ A website to calm those with a fear of Freemasonry

µµµ Why the Catholic Church and Freemasons will never kiss and make up

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"Do as thou wilt" - the "Beastly" Aleister Crowley and his Disciples

"Do as thou wilt. That is the whole of The Law"

Aleister Crowley (1875 - 1947). "The wickedest man in Britain". Aleister Crowley was brought up by parents who seemed to think that they were the World's only faithful Christians. This must have been Hell for the young Aleister, and out of that Hell came.....At the age of fourteen Crowley became convinced that he was the Beast whose number was 666, foretold in the Biblical Book of Revelations. However, despite this self identification, Crowley never showed any inclination towards World domination or tattooing numbers onto people (unlike Hitler, who had a talent for these things). We can only conclude that Crowley thought that, because he was a Christian, St.John The Divine had deliberately given him a bad press.

As a young man Crowley joined the occultist Masonic group The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. This group had much the same interests in astral projection, astrology, numerology and geomancy that the more speculative Freemasons indulge in µµµ. During a retreat on the bonny banks of Loch Ness, Crowley had discussions with "angels" who informed him that he should have a more prominent position in the hierarchy of the Golden Dawn. On his return Crowley was listened to and was then thrown out of the Golden Dawn as a disruptive influence.

Crowley, prophet of the New Age. Crowley travelled extensively in the Far East where he was much influenced by things such as the practice of Tantric sex. He took his honeymoon in Egypt and it is said the first night of wedded bliss was spent in the Kings Chamber of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Whilst visiting Cairo museum his wife "came over all funny" when viewing the sculpture of an ancient Egyptian sorcerer and had visions - and who can blame her. That night and for the next two nights Crowley was visited by a strange astral being by the name of Aiwass who dictated the Book Of The Law to him. (I've appended Crowley's own sketch of this cheerful little chap at the top of this section. Don't have nightmares.)

The main principle of Crowley's philosophy was "Thelema", the Greek word for "Will". This is summed up in his slogan "Do as thou wilt. That is the whole of The Law". Crowley's concept of the "Will" had more to it than just freewill. He believed that we all had our own special destiny that we naturally aligned with when we were allowed to exercise our freewill. To Crowley it was very important for people to discover the true inner motives that led them to adopt the life that they did in order to align their actions more fully with their own special destiny. The biggest sin in Crowley's philosophy was to interfere in the life of another person who was acting under "Will". He used the analogy that we should all be "stars". Stars, which are separated by great distances, move in their paths without impeding one another. Crowley published a short Thelemic manifesto that was extremely liberal demanding, amongst other things, the right to experiment with drugs and sex as the mood took us. It is hardly surprising that Crowley's writings were most popular during the hippy and punk periods.

However, there was a darker side to Crowley's Law of Thelema. As Crowley put it, if a higher force had decided it was Napoleon's special destiny to rule Europe then those who stood in his way were in the wrong. (Hitler, of course, would claim this also applied to his life's work too). Crowley's "Law" thus made total amorality a virtue. Another of Crowley's slogans is "Love is the Law. Love under Will". This sounds very nice until we remember that Crowley's definition of "Will" means that trying to love some people may get in the way of our own special destiny. Attempting to "love your enemies" would be a futile exercise in most circumstances under Crowley's "Law".

Crowley the magi-ickian. Crowley was convinced that the practice of magic was a crucial aspect of developing one's own special destiny. However, Crowley defined magic as being any action that was intended to have an effect under "Will". To Crowley using a mobile phone was just as much magic as using a ouija board. The aim of Crowley's efforts was to make magic scientific. To emphasise this philosophy he spelt magic as "magick" and pronounced it magi-ick to draw attention to the word's derivation, i.e. the Magi. Crowley's own writings on magick range from human and blood sacrifice to a geometrical kind of astrology, (but not the type of astrology observed by TEM in NASA missions).

The Thelemic movement. Aleister Crowley founded three societies that follow his Law of Thelema. The first of these was the secretive A.'.A.'., which although having a Masonic structure of degrees does not have any lodges. Novices are developed into full magickians by teachers who are already fully initiated and then sent out to practice magick for themselves. The lack of lodges is fully consistent with Crowley's cult of individualism. The A.'.A.'. claims to follow the oldest and best spiritual system, much as the Freemasons do. (The actual proper name of the A.'.A.'. is supposed to be a secret, but it generally accepted as being the Argenteum Astrum or Order of the Silver Star, which is taken as a reference to the star Sirius. The seven pointed star used by the A.'.A.'. and the blazing star emblem in Freemason lodges are both thought to represent Sirius).

After attending, and being impressed by an Orthodox Mass, Crowley set up the Catholic Gnostic Church. However, as Jesus is never mentioned in Crowley's "Mass", modern Christian Gnostics do not recognise the Catholic Gnostic Church as one of their own. Crowley's "Mass" is a rather pagan affair invoking ancient Egyptian gods and daemons.

Aleister Crowley's first love was the Ordo Templi Orientis (or the O.T.O, which was founded in Germany - like so many other secret societies - by a group of local Freemasons). Crowley was granted the "franchise" to develop it in the english speaking world. The main speciality of Crowley's O.T.O. was sexmagick, drawing on Crowley's interest in Tantric sex. Crowley believed that sex, properly ritualised, released powerful supernatural forces. As originally devised by Crowley the Catholic Gnostic Church and the O.T.O. were both organised around lodges.

µµµ Aleister Crowley in his own words (a full set of the "Beast's" writings)

µµµ The Ordo Templi Orientis Phenomenon research website

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Sexmagick and Rockets: "Jack" Parsons and the JPL

A new aeon. Aleister Crowley believed that history moved in spiritual cycles that he called aeons. He believed that the Christian era, which he called the Osiris aeon (because Osiris was a resurrected god), was coming to an end to be replaced by the aeon of Horus. To the ancient Egyptians Horus was associated with the Sun, its life giving power and its role as a symbol of spiritual enlightenment. To Crowley the aeon of Horus was also one were those strong in magick would rule the World. One place where Crowley was optimistic that this new aeon of "enlightenment" would take off was America, especially California. However, his British stereotyping of Californians proved wrong and he blamed the head of the California (Agape) lodge Wilfred Smith for the lack of success.

Jack the lad. Enter John Whiteside Parsons, known as Jack Parsons. Jack Parsons was a brilliant chemist and the "father" of modern solid rocket fuels. He was part of the team that developed the American WAC Corporal rocket that was attached as a second stage to a V2 rocket to achieve a new altitude record. There is a crater on the dark side of the Moon named after him. Jack Parsons was also a co-founder with Dr. Theodore von Karman (who claimed his father had created a golem) of the Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena. Parsons is also remembered for his leadership of the O.T.O. in America for a time. It is this interest in the occult by the founding fathers of the JPL that draws the JPL into the Hoagland/Bara theory that the American space programme has been ritualised.

Parsons was introduced to the Agape Lodge by a fellow scientist and soon became a great admirer of Crowley. Crowley for his part was impressed by Jack Parsons intelligence (but not by his impetuousness) and arranged for him to replace Wilfred Smith as the head of the Agape Lodge. Sexmagick was a staple activity of the lodge under Jack Parsons (as he was a young man). Rituals involved a "channeler" having sex until they were exhausted......and then having more sex until they entered a trance like state in which they channelled messages and prophesies from beings in the astral plane. (Or as British tabloid newspapers might put it - they were bonked 'til they were zonked). Parsons discovered that another young man named L.Ron Hubbard - who later founded Scientology - was very good at this channelling and between them they channelled messages from the goddess Babalon. This resulted in the book known as the Babalon Workings which Parsons considered his life's work.

Jack fell down and broke his crown.... Crowley considered Hubbard to be a confidence trickster and branded Parsons a fool. Parsons had been very keen to succeed Crowley as head of the O.T.O., but instead he was slowly squeezed out of the Agape Lodge. However, he continued to practice as a magi-ickian and still considered himself to be part of the movement. After this Parsons appeared to busy himself with a project to set up a new Order to ensure that the prophesies about the Beast and the Anti-Christ in the Book of Revelations would come to pass. However the outcome of all this is shrouded in mystery.

In 1948, after an investigation by the FBI into his occult activities, Parsons had his top secret security clearance revoked, had it reinstated again in 1949 after an appeal, and then lost it again in 1952. This effectively ended his career as a rocket scientist. In July 1952, whilst packing for a move to a new venture in Mexico, he dropped a tin of fulminate of mercury onto a work bench in his garage and blew a hole in his chest. He died an hour later to be shortly followed by the suicide of his mother.

Comments. It would be a very scary situation if there were a lot of intelligent and successful people practising the ideas of Crowley and Parsons. The whole aim of their philosophy appears to be to gain magical power over others, but to no moral end. Apparently Crowley was impressed by Hitler's achievements, which gives some idea of how he viewed his new aeon of Horus. The formal Crowley'ite lodges haven't flourished in numbers. On the other hand Crowley's writings have been hugely popular and have been read by a large number of young people, many of whom will have gone on in their later life to join esoteric societies such as the Freemasons.

TEM has not provided any evidence that Parsons was able to recruit a significant number of people in the JPL or other parts of the space programme into the Crowley'ite movement. Considering the problems that Parsons had with the FBI it is possible that Parsons was more successful than is believed and that converts preferred to remain as a secretive underground movement. However, this lack of evidence of a flourishing Crowley'ite movement in the American space programme is a major weakness in TEM's argument that there is a Magickian faction at work in NASA's rituals.

µµµ An excellent Fortean Times article about Jack Parsons

µµµ A more detailed description of Jack Parsons occult activities

µµµ An internet novel about Parsons (contains some useful information)

µµµ A conspiracy web page about Jack Parsons and age of Horus

µµµ L. Ron Hubbard and the occult

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The Nazis : A Warning from History

"Those who see in National Socialism nothing more than a political movement know scarcely anything of it. It is more even than a religion: it is the will to create mankind anew." - Adolph Hitler

The Esoteric & Secret Society Roots of the Nazi Movement

Introduction. It is fairly common knowledge that many members of the Nazi leadership were highly interested in matters of the occult. Hitler is often referred to as a mystic by historians and his dependency on using portents, prophesy and astrology for guidance is well known. In books, articles and television documentaries Himmler's SS is portrayed as "the Sons of Light" with its leader actively attempting to organise it as an occult brotherhood - a secret society in itself. This explains the SS actively undertaking paranormal experiments to discover psychic weapons and its headquarters being based in a triangular shaped castle at a location where Himmler believed all the ley lines of the World converged.

What is less well known is that the Nazis' seemingly chaotic political ideology was based on the esoteric doctrines of a number of Theosophy based secret societies with which the Nazi leaders were very familiar. Indeed Hitler, his deputy Rudolph Hess, the Nazis' chief ideologue Alfred Rosenberg and Herman Goering are all believed to have been initiates of one of these societies; the Thule Society. Moreover, it was members of Thule that had set up the proto-Nazi party in the first place as one of a number of projects to carry their doctrines into the political sphere.

Most of us assume that the race of "Supermen" that Hitler was trying to create were something like the "Alphas" in Huxley's novel Brave New World. The factory produced "Alpha" humans in that novel are genetically enhanced individuals who are incredibly healthy, handsome, intelligent and born to rule. This vision was the way the "Master Race" project was sold to the German public. However, Hitler's project was not based on scientific ideas such as genetics, but on esoteric doctrines that viewed reality as a duality between the physical plane and a more powerful astral/spiritual plane. Hitler's esoteric agenda was to create not a race of "supermen" but a race of ascended god-men with paranormal powers. To this higher cause he was willing to sacrifice any number of ordinary humans. In pursuing this object the Nazis were greatly helped by the fact that the German medical profession of the time was in the grip of an immoral form of bad science that can be characterised as "killer eugenics". Dr. Alfred Hoche's and Professor Rudolph Binding's 1920 book Destruction of Lives Not Worth Living was pared down to the contemptuous diagnosis "lives unworthy of life" by the medical profession in the Nazi era. This endorsement of Nazism's cruel policies by a trusted and prestigious profession gave the occult Nazi project a cloak to hide behind.

Let us now explore the esoteric ideas that shaped the Nazis.

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"May the Force be with you" - the power of the Vril. Perhaps one of the strangest elements in this story is how a fantasy novel written by Sir (later Baron) Edward Bulwer-Lytton created a whole new esoteric line of belief. Lytton was a fairly popular 19th century writer of historical and occult novels (µµµ) who - on a lighter note - is credited with writing the worst opening sentence of any novel in history µµµ.

In 1871 Bulwer-Lytton published his fantasy novel Vril'ya: The Power of the Coming Race in which a mining engineer stumbles across a subterranean world inhabited by people whose ancestors took refuge there from the ancient Deluge. Deprived of resources the Vril'ya race have learnt to harness a great energy resource, which is hidden within the fabric of existence, that they use to power a technologically advanced civilisation. In some ways this Vril power is rather like the zero vacuum energy of quantum physics for which a number of hyper-dimensional theories (including Richard Hoagland's) provide an explanation. However, the Vril power that permeates the Universe of Bulwer-Lytton's novel is more than a matter of physics, it also has a physical/spiritual duality. The hero of the novel finds that the highly civilised Vril'ya have learnt to harness the mysterious Vril power with their minds so that they are already telepathic and are learning to levitate. One important aspect of the novel is that whilst the Vril'ya are rapidly evolving to a god-like level, they share their world with de-evolving barbarian people with whom they are in conflict. This aspect of the novel was just as important in influencing subsequent esoteric thought as the concept of the Vril.

So why did Lytton's novel help create an esoteric movement in much the same way as the hoaxed Rosacrucian manifestos created the Rosacrucians themselves? Well, mainly because Bulwer-Lytton was a respected Rosacrucian and he was probably writing in fictional form beliefs that he held in private. In the Gnostic circles in which he moved his story seems to have been taken as containing revealed truth. Very soon it became a common belief within a certain strand of esoteric thought that we already share this Earth with a secret race of god-like humans. Samuel Mathers, one of the Freemason founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, even claimed to have met them. In a manifesto addressed to the members of the "Second Order" in 1896 Mathers wrote -

"As to the Secret Chiefs with whom I am in touch and from whom I have received the wisdom of the Second Order which I communicated to you, I can tell you nothing. I do not even know their Earthly names, and I have very seldom seen them in their physical bodies....They used to meet me physically at a time and place fixed in advance. For my part, I believe they are human beings living on this Earth, but possessed of terrible and superhuman powers....My physical encounters with them have shown me how difficult it is for a mortal, however "advanced," to support their presence....I do not mean that during my rare meetings with them I experienced the same feeling of intense physical depression that accompanies the loss of magnetism. On the contrary, I felt I was in contact with a force so terrible that I can only compare it to the shock one would receive from being near a flash of lightning during a great thunder-storm, experiencing at the same time great difficulty in breathing....The nervous prostration I spoke of was accompanied by cold sweats and bleeding from the nose, mouth and sometimes the ears."

This quote gives us an idea of the level of fantasy into which secret societies can descend. As we shall see later the concepts expressed in Bulwer-Lyttons novel also directly influenced lines of Theosophical thought that led to Nazism.

The strange case of the Vril Society. In 1947 Dr.Willy Ley (µµµ), Werner von Braun's pre-war rocketeering collaborator, wrote an article with the title of Pseudoscience in Naziland . In this he admitted a youthful association with a hitherto unsuspected secret society known as the Vril Society or Luminous Lodge, based in Berlin. As well as practising the usual magical stuff, such as Cabala, the Vril Society members also attempted to harness Vril power through mental exercises. In Ley's account members of the Luminous Lodge believed that a race of god-like beings would one day emerge from their underground bases to rule over humanity. Vril Society members were therefore racing against time to perfect their harnessing of Vril power in the hope that they would be amongst the rulers and not the ruled.

There is actually very little other evidence for the Vril Society's existence. One author on the subject of Nazism and the occult has actually opined that there never was a Luminous Lodge. Due to the mystery surrounding the Vril Society all sorts of fantasy have rushed in to fill the information vacuum. These usually involve Vril scientists perfecting flying saucers, allowing a hidden Nazi organisation to hide out in remote secret bases. (An example of this kind of thing can be read by clicking on the next "stargate" µµµ). Whether or not there actually was a super secret Vril Society in Nazi Germany is in any case irrelevant. The concept of Vril power was already deeply ingrained in the occult tradition that upwelled into Nazism and still captures the imagination today in a less sinister form as the "Force" in the Star Wars movies.

µµµ Vril'ya: The Power of the Coming Race - the novel on the internet

µµµ The Vril Society and the Nazis

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The "Abominable" Madame Blavatsky. Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891) was a tempestuous and insufferable person with a fine imagination. Born as Helena Petrovna von Hahn in southern Russia, she was married off at age 18 to a provincial vice-governor of the Russian Empire. She almost immediately ran away to pursue a career as a wandering mystic, medium and scholar of the esoteric. In 1873 she met Colonel Henry S. Olcott (who had served on the commission into Lincoln's assassination, µµµ) in New York and two years later they set up the Theosophical Society together.

The 19th century was a time of great public interest in spiritualism. Blavatsky's achievement was to popularise the idea that more than just the souls of the dead could be channelled by mediums. Blavatsky claimed to be in telepathic communication with long lived adepts of the Great White Brotherhood who were secreted away in remotest Tibet. These telepathic teachings were set out in 1888 in her book The Secret Doctrine. According to Blavatsky the Great White Brotherhood were in turn channellers for non-corporeal beings living on other planets in the Solar System who wished to help mankind to escape its terrible plight. According to Blavatsky humans had once been as spiritual and non-corporeal as beings on the other planets, but had de-evolved to become increasingly trapped in the world of matter. This vicious circle of de-evolution had been worsened (as people became more like animals) because our ancestors had not always been careful enough with who they procreated.

The history of Man on the Earth in The Secret Doctrine was extremely complicated due to seven cycles of continental destruction. The highest forms of people between these cataclysms were named "Root Races" by Blavatsky. The previous Root Race, the Atlanteans (the 4th Root Race), had been fully telepathic and psychic people. With the guidance of the spiritual beings on other worlds our era's 5th Root Race (the Aryans) was to set the scene for the re-ascendence of Man back to the spiritual world through the succeeding 6th and 7th Root Races. In our own era Blavatsky taught that lighter skinned people were more spiritually advanced than darker skinned people and that the most advanced spiritual system was practised by the Brahmins, with the least spiritual being the Jewish religion.

Helena Blavatsky's views were essentially Manichean in character with her insistence of "spiritual world good / world of matter bad" dichotomy. For this reason she was very anti-science as it dealt with explaining existence in material ways. She was particularly incensed with Darwin's theory of evolution with its progression of life from single celled life forms towards humans. The animal kingdom in her account was made up of creatures who had de-evolved far further away from our non-corporeal spiritual ancestors than even humans had.

Scholars of the occult say that Blavatsky's work was not derived from Tibetan adepts but from the writings (among many others) of people such as Edward Bulwer-Lytton and Eliphas Levi (1810-1875). The latter taught that there existed a "secret doctrine" that united all religion and magic which was being broadcast into the World by long lived adepts, µµµ. Blavatsky's idea of de-evolution was probably derived from her interest in Tibetan Buddhism which preaches that a very low level of spiritual development within a person can lead to them being reincarnated as very lowly life forms. The previous publication of Ignatius Donnelly's popular book Atlantis: The Antediluvian World in 1882, which attempted to prove that Plato's Atlantis actually existed, may also have been an influence, µµµ. (Time has not treated Donnelly's scientific arguments very well, µµµ).

Despite her genius for the telling of tall tales Helena Blavatsky has had a powerful effect on New Age thinking from her age through to our own. The following link to a biography of her on a Theosophy site shows the extent to which, even today, followers accept her descriptions of her "adventures" without quibble, µµµ. It is difficult to say whether Blavatsky was a fantasist or whether her attitudes were so Gnostic that she saw myth making as a valid way of bringing people to her version of spiritual truth. What is certain is that the direction that Theosophy took in German secret societies was entirely disastrous.

µµµ Helena Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine on the internet

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Ariosophy - "The wisdom of the Aryans". In Germany the term Aryan had a rather narrower meaning than for Madame Blavatsky. In the 1780's William Jones had discovered the Indo-European group of languages and proposed that they had evolved from a single language. This discovery led to the erroneous assumption that in the distant past a single race had spread out from East to West carrying the gift of civilisation with it. In 1819 Friedrech von Schlegel dubbed this civilising race the "Aryans", a term that was usually applied to the Persians but which Schlegel associated with the German "Ehre" or "honour". It quickly became popular in Germany to believe that the Germans were the purist bred Aryans and therefore superior to anybody else.

At the end of the 19th century two Viennese occultists drew together the German's Aryan idea with Theosophy. Guido von List (1848-1919) was a follower of Blavatsky's scheme of root races who believed that a psychic life force (the Vril!) pervaded nature and that only the Aryan Germans could tune into and control it. List was an anti-semite who saw no spirituality within the Jews. He suggested that laws should be passed to prevent inter-marriage between Aryans and lower races to keep the Aryan spirit pure. In his proposed Aryan state only the Aryans should have civil rights and hold positions of power. List claimed to have divined a lost pagan history of the ancient Germans and claimed that he was the last of the "Armanist" magicians that originated in that time. To this end he set up his own pagan religion based on the rituals of the Armanenschaft (or priest-kings) that he claimed ruled Germany in pre-history. List's Armanenschaft society was influential in middle class circles and there is a lot of similarity between the pagan religion that Himmler attempted to devise for the SS and List's ideas. Even the SS logo was made up of ancient rune symbols popularised by List.

Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels (1874-1954) coined the term Ariosophy and injected an overtly sinister Manichean element into it. The 3rd century A.D. Persian mystic Mani had synthesised a new religion from Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Buddhism which proposed that there was a dualism of two equally powerful gods, an evil god and a good god, who were in perpetual conflict with one another. In many ways this was more of a duellist religion than one of dualism. The good god had given humans their souls and the bad god had ensnared people with their material bodies, (click "stargates" for Manicheanism "light" µµµ and Manicheanism "heavy" µµµ). Obviously, there is similarity between this and a belief of many earlier Christian Gnostics that the Universe had been created by one of God's morally incompetent underlings, the Deimurge.

(Footnote: Manichean teachings are strongly allied to the Mazdean heresy in the last centuries of Zoroastrian Persia. More than two and a half thousand years ago Zoroaster preached that there was only one supreme God who cared only how people led their lives morally and not how they worshipped Him. Hence the Zoroastrian creed of "Think only Good. Speak only Good. Do only Good". Zoroaster demoted the seven gods that were worshipped in his region of Persia to spiritual principles. However, two of these spirits were intelligent; the good "Beneficent spirit" and the "Liar" who like Lucifer had joyfully embraced evil. In this cosmogony good had God on its side and the outcome of the struggle between good and evil was a forgone conclusion. The decline of Zoroastrianism began when the Mazdean heresy demoted God to the position of the "Beneficent Spirit", the outcome was no longer certain and people turned to the magic of the pre-Zoroastrian Magi priesthood to protect themselves from demons.)

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Lanz's Manichean writings described the supernatural in terms of emanations from the "Astral Light" and "Astral Darkness". God was described as a "pan-psychic" energy that animated the Universe. This was therefore a pantheistic doctrine in which the Vril/Force had replaced a personal God . Moreover, as we can see, Lanz's "Force" had its Manichean "Light" and "Dark" side which emanated good and bad creations. Lanz did not keep with Blavatsky's complex scheme of seven root races but developed his own form of Theosophy that he called Theozoology (which presumably came from his own personal channelling). These ideas were set out in Theozoology: or The Lore of the Sodom-Apelings and the Electron of the Gods. According to Lanz there were originally only two races on Earth. The blonde, blue eyed Aryans (or god-men) were the creation of emanations from the Astral Light, whilst the Astral Darkness created a race of pygmies (or beast-men). The Aryans had once had the natural ability to tap into the pan-psychic energy. However this ability was lost when Aryan Satanists interbred with specially bred "love-pygmies" during occult rites. In Lanz's bizarre cosmogony the spectrum of races existing on Earth today was due to the continuation of this interbreeding, with the different racial characteristics being a sign of how much Aryan and how much beast-man each race contained. All the unhappiness in the World was due to the evil of the beast-men and there was only one policy solution. All traces of the beast-men had to be exterminated and the Aryans had to be selectively bred back to their former god-like glory. He advocated the setting up of breeding "farms" for true blood Aryans and that those who had sex with inferior races should be starved to death. (In the event the Nazis settled for quicker forms of execution). Inferior races should be used as slaves, deported to Madagascar or incinerated as a sacrifice to God. (This latter suggestion is probably the source of the present day notion, held by some, that the Nazi death camps where places of human sacrifice to the Devil). According to Lanz, Jesus's miracles proved that he was a genetic throw back to the time when the Aryans were gods.

Formerly a Cistercian monk and teacher, Lanz is likely to have had a direct influence on the young Adolph Hitler when the latter was a "slacker" living in Vienna before the First World War. In order to spread his extreme ideas Lanz had set up a secret society - the Order of the New Templars - and published a journal called Ostara which reached an incredible print run of 100,000 in 1907. According to Lanz the young Hitler had visited the Ostara offices to chat and chase up on back copies of Ostara in 1909. (In Mein Kampf Hitler writes of buying pamphlets of this type in his Viennese days and there is apparently some other corroboration of Lanz's story in official records). In later years Lanz was quick to pick up on the amazing similarity between the Nazis policy and rhetoric, and his own ideas. In 1932 he wrote to a fellow member of the New Templars -

"Do you know that Hitler is one of our pupils? You will still live to see that he, and thereby we, also will triumph and kindle a movement that will make the world tremble."

Hitler was never very pleased by Lanz's tendency to draw attention to Nazism's occult roots or by Lanz's demands that his own role should be given greater recognition. When Hitler invaded Austria in 1938 Lanz wisely moved to Switzerland.

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The Thule Society and the Genesis of the Nazis

Occultists of the World unite! In 1912 the more ruthless of List's and Lanz's followers came together to form the Germanen Order (or Order of the Teutons) to bring about the two occultists' vision by whatever methods it took. This Order was apparently involved in a series of political assassinations which were only disrupted by the outbreak of the First World War. In 1918 wealthy members of the Bavarian lodge of the Germanen Order created the Thule Society as a front to spread their ideas into working class politics in order to counter the growing influence of Marxism. Between 1919 and 1923 there were a number of communist uprisings in Germany and central Europe, one of which led to the proclamation of the short lived Bavarian Soviet Republic. Thule Society backers were highly important in the crushing of this Soviet by their organisation and financial backing of death squads drawn from the army.

The Thule Society followed the Theosophical script, concentrating on the supposed descent of the Germans from the Atlantean super men. In the most complex version of Thulean "history" the Aryan Atlantean race had lost their psychic powers through intermarriage with lesser races. After the destruction of Atlantis some survivors made their way to the cold, Arctic land of Ultima Thule where the extreme conditions and isolation from other races reversed some of the racial "degeneracy" that had previously occurred. (Lanz had placed the origin of the Aryans in a destroyed polar continent of Arktogaa). Eventually these racially "refreshed" Aryans migrated South to become the Germans.

In 1930 the Nazis chief ideologue, Alfred Rosenberg, published The Myth of the 20th Century which set out what Nazis were supposed to believe in, (µµµ). The book essentially sets out the Thulean pseudo-history as Nazi ideology. It also set out an occult notion that explains why Hitler and the Nazis were so determined to exterminate the Jews. According to Rosenberg humanity existed as races and not individuals. It was only races and not individuals that possessed souls, so that all members of a race shared a common psychic link and a common underlying personality. Rosenberg's book further forced this idea into a Manichean schema. The race soul of the Germans epitomised everything that was good and creative. The soul of the Jews was entirely evil, destructive and malevolent towards the good soul of the Aryan race. (Apparently the Jews are being portrayed as the most evil creation of Lanz's "Astral Darkness"). As Rosenberg was an early initiate of the Thule Society it is not unreasonable to assume that this is what propelled the Nazis' extreme anti-Semitism.

We can note here that whilst Freemasonry looks towards the spiritual resurrection of the individual soul, this Thulean/Nazi belief system is directed at the spiritual resurrection of a collective racial soul. The fate of individuals does not matter very much. Perhaps one of the most surprising assertions in The Myth of the 20th Century was that 1st century Galilee was an Aryan enclave and that Jesus, therefore, was an Aryan god-man persecuted by Jews, (also an idea similar to Lanz's teachings).

You must learn to harness the Dark Side of the Force young Adolf. Thule Society members founded a number of fledgling political movements in their attempts to bring their ideas to the masses. One of these was the German Workers Party which a young corporal by the name of Adolf Hitler was sent to spy on by army chiefs. Hitler quickly realised that the ideas of this movement chimed very well with his own. The Thule Society organisers of the party also quickly realised when Hitler began to join in debates that they had found the German messiah figure that they had been awaiting to lead Germany into an Aryan utopia. They quickly initiated Hitler into the Thule Society and introduced him to Dietrich Eckart, an accomplished occultist, to act as his mentor, (µµµ). Eckart taught Hitler the arts of rhetoric, body language and crowd psychology - practical magic indeed. (Rhetorical techniques are valued in many secret societies. It is one of Freemasonry's "seven liberal arts" and it is probably no coincidence that Winston Churchill, President Roosevelt and General McArthur - all masters of the sound bite - were Freemasons).

In an interesting twist Eckart was a friend and student of Aleister Crowley who often visited Germany in a doomed campaign to win leadership of the O.T.O.'s German branch. Crowley was so impressed by Eckart's reports of his young protégé that he asked to meet Hitler, but it is unlikely that the aspiring young politician would have wanted to be publicly associated with the World's most notorious occultist. It is said that Eckart had an interest in sexmagick and if he shared any of this with Hitler then it may partly explain why Hitler's girl friends had a tendency to kill themselves or attempt suicide. It is known that Hitler played cruel mind games with their affections, but there also seemed to be something unsavoury going on in the bedroom.

Eckart died in 1923 whilst Hitler was in prison for leading the failed Nazi putsch of that year but not before telling friends - "Follow Hitler! He will dance, but it is I who have called the tune! Do not mourn for me: I have influenced history more than any other German." Hitler dedicated the second volume of Mein Kampf to his late mentor.

During Hitler's internment his deputy Rudolph Hess (who had fingers in many an esoteric "pie") introduced him to Professor Karl Haushofer who acted as another mentor. Haushofer invented the idea of Geopolitics and it was from his own interpretation of these theories that Hitler proposed a policy of "living space" in the East in Mein Kampf, µµµ. Professor Haushofer was also an esoteric practitioner and it is claimed that he was actually the leader of the Vril Society/Luminous Lodge,µµµ. From his associations with Lanz, Eckart, Haushofer and the Thule Society we have every reason to believe that Hitler was very well informed about esoteric thought. This can perhaps be seen in Hitler's insistence, against the wishes of his colleagues, that the Nazi swastika should have a sinistroverse rotation (as favoured by Haushofer). In most societies using the swastika the direction of spin is largely unimportant, but in cabalistic and other esoteric circles a sinistroverse rotation is believed to attract occult destructive power to the user.

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The Nazis as an Apocalyptical "New Age" Cult Movement

Once in power Hitler used ridicule to distance himself from the esoteric movement that had supplied the Nazis with their ideology - but as Mandy Rice-Davies said, "He would say that. Wouldn't he?". He quickly moved to suppress the secret society movement. Challenged as to why he had banned Freemasonry Hitler was reported to have explained -

"Their hierarchical organisation and the initiation through symbolic rites, that is to say without bothering with the brains but by working on the imagination through magic and the symbols of a cult - all this is the dangerous element and the element which I have taken over. Don't you see that our party must be of this character?"

From this statement we can conclude that Hitler had a very good grasp of the Gnostic principle. (The Thule Society had been organised like a Masonic Lodge). We can also see that he intended to initiate millions of Germans into his own personal esoteric doctrine without their knowledge. (It is also interesting to note that a large number of Freemasons were willing to pay the ultimate price for defying Hitler's ban. Obviously for many Freemasons the Craft is much more than just a good gentleman's club).

Hitler also seems to have held a particular magical (Thulean?) idea about the "race soul" and Lanz's "pan-psychic energy". He liked to emphasise that he had been brought forth by the "will" of the German people. It seems probable that Hitler believed that "race souls" had their own agendas made up of all the subconscious dreams and aspirations of the people sharing them. So if the German people subconsciously desired a messiah then their combined "psychic energy" would bring one into existence. In the following statement to a Leipzig newspaper editor in 1931 Hitler ascribed miraculous properties to a people's "spiritual energy". It is unlikely that those initiated into Madame Blavatsky's way of thinking would have read this as a metaphor.

"The Frenchman Gobineau and the Englishman Chamberlain were inspired by our concept of a new order - a new order, I tell you, or if you prefer, an ideological glimpse into history in accordance with the basic principle of the blood. We do not judge by merely artistic or military standards or even by purely scientific ones. We judge by the spiritual energy which a people is capable of putting forth, which will enable it in ten years to recapture what it has lost in a thousand years of warfare. I intend to set up a thousand year Reich and anyone who supports me in battle is a fellow-fighter for a unique spiritual - I would almost say divine - creation. At the decisive moment the decisive factor is not the ratio of strength but the spiritual force employed."

There are also many clues that Hitler, in his proclaimed role as German messiah, saw himself as a "lightening rod" or "focusing lens" for the collective psychic energy of the German people as they tapped the Vril/Force. This had tragic consequences as Hitler became increasingly convinced that no military challenge was too great to be overcome. As the war turned against him, Hitler expressed great faith that Germany would be saved by a miracle, which helped prolong the war. One could speculate that as the German people were put under increasing threat, Hitler expected their collective will to survive to psychically control events to their advantage and save themselves at the eleventh hour. Perhaps there is a clue to how Hitler saw himself in the Nazi poster that begins this section. Readers may like to compare it with the traditional artistic representation of the newly resurrected Christ, carrying a banner and illuminated from above by the symbolic dove of the Holy Spirit. Another poster of Hitler at the time was entitled "In the beginning was the Word", a phrase that Christian readers will instantly recognise.

The Hitler quotes below reveal that he and his Nazi hierarchy believed that the arrival of the age of Lanz's Aryan god-men was imminent, that existing humanity would soon pass away, and that the Nazis were the "midwives" to these coming events. In the last quote Hitler actually describes Jews as having been created by Satan - creations of Lanz's "Astral Darkness". The extermination of the Jews was a primary Nazi war aim and this lunacy only seems understandable when viewed from this kind of esoteric angle. The policy against the Jews went much further than the usual bounds of race hatred. Himmler would give pep-talks to his officers pleading with them to stop sheltering Jewish friends. It was irrelevant if individual Jews could be proven to be very nice people, he would explain, the very existence of Jews threatened the Aryan race's true destiny. The increasingly panicky tempo of the extermination policy as the allied victory became inevitable shows how seriously he and Hitler believed in this proposition.

n "Those who see in National Socialism nothing more than a political movement know scarcely anything of it. It is more even than a religion: it is the will to create mankind anew."

n "Creation is not finished. Man is clearly approaching a phase of metamorphosis. The earlier human species has already reached the stage of dying out.... All of the force of creation will be concentrated in a new species... [which] will surpass infinitely modern man.... Do you understand now the profound meaning of our National Socialist movement."

n "The two types [of humanity] will rapidly diverge from one another. One will sink to a sub-human race and the other rise far above the man of today. I might call the two varieties the god-man and the mass-animal."

n "Two worlds face one another - the men of God and the men of Satan. The Jew is the anti-man, the creature of another god. He must have come from another root of the human race. I set the Aryan and the Jew over against each other; and if I call one of them a human being I must call the other something else. The two are as widely separated as man and beast. Not that I would call the Jew a beast. He is much further from the beasts than we Aryans. He is a creature outside nature and alien to nature."

There are indications that the Nazis hierarchy were attempting to "soften up" the German people to accept their strange apocalyptical Blavatsky/Thulean theology. They actively promoted the publication of millions of copies of Paul Alfred Mueller's pulp adventure saga about the uncovering of the Aryan race's Atlantean "origins" (written under the name of Lok Myler). Although a work of fiction they hoped that the ideas in Mueller's adventure story would be taken seriously. Mueller added some interesting elaborations to the usual Thulean pseudo-history of the Germans. In the story the "seed" of the Atlanteans is brought to Earth by the impact of an "ice moon". (There are obvious echoes here of our modern scientific interest in the dangers of cometary collisions and the theory of panspermia). The Atlantean civilisation is ultimately destroyed by the impact of another "ice moon", but the conclusion of the story is that Atlantis is about to rise again - an obvious reference to the Nazi project.

The links below provide further information on the esoteric and occult roots of the Nazis.

µµµ The Nazis and the occult

µµµ History of the Thule Society

µµµ The origins of the Nazi Swastika

µµµ Hitler's racial ideology and its occult roots (recommended)

µµµ A more controversial view of Hitler, the Nazis and the occult

Comments. We would think it very unwise to take actions based on voices in our heads: yet for over one hundred years many people seeking positions of power and influence have been quite happy to base beliefs and take actions based on voices inside other peoples heads. The fanaticism with which the Nazi hierarchy followed their policies, which were ultimately derived from "celebrated" channellers, shows how dangerous it is to uncritically surrender ourselves to the imaginative notions of New Age occultists in the Blavatsky mould. The anxiety provoking thing is that there are still New Age gurus out there putting out the same old messages of final battles between good versus evil, and the imminent spiritual ascendency of the enlightened ones, that so enticed the Nazi founders.

....and finally. This brings to a close the Cydonia Quest guide to secret societies which has been sitting unfinished on the web-site for over a year since the Summer of 2000. It is much longer than I originally intended it to be, yet I feel that I've only scratched the surface of this extremely complex subject. The section on Nazi esotericism in particular is more detailed than envisaged, but the more the subject was researched the more I realised that the Nazis were just a single "colour" in a spectrum of similar cults. The Enterprise Mission seems pretty convinced that esoteric "black hats" hold responsible positions of power within the United States. The likelihood is that these hypothetical "black hats" would hold similar beliefs to the Nazis: namely that enlightened members of a specific race will give rise to a new kind of psychically powerful humanity in the aftermath of an approaching apocalypse.

In Part Three (linked below) this study will now turn to investigating the Enterprise Mission claims that NASA is secretly manipulated by esoteric societies for mysterious purposes. Part Three will also investigate claims by TEM that murderous esoteric cults have heavily infiltrated the secret programmes of American government and the body politic in general.

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