Mysterium Coniunctionis: 10 Secret Adepts

“It is the unvarying rule of secret societies that the real authors never show themselves.” So reported 19^th-20^th-century British historian Nesta Helen Webster, who researched “subversive movements” for over two decades.

Esoteric and occult organizations can be curious and obscure enough on their own. But, when they seem to crystallize – and gain momentum – seemingly out of nowhere, or when they turn out to be world-historic in their impact, mysteries ramify.

In this video, I will sketch profiles of ten (10) people who are, for all intents and purposes, ciphers. Yet, their influence – meditated through heirs that are much better known – is nearly incalculable.

Caveats and Disclaimers

There are serious doubts about the lives – and even the existence – of some (or perhaps most) of the individuals here profiled. The video is intended for educational or entertainment purposes, only, and should not be understood as the final word on any of the events or people it discusses. The aim is to provide viewers with informational background and research leads for their own investigations.

Additionally, given the arcane nature of the topic, trying to find a credible way to rank our entrants proved difficult. Therefore, with only one major exception (to be identified in good time), the list has been arranged in more or less chronological order. But, without further ado…

          The Top Ten

             1. The Man Behind Gnosticism: Dositheos

Gnosticism has been a major current in the Western occult tradition.^[1]

We introduced the constellation of ideas, and tried to distinguish it from other terms with which it is >often confused,^[2] in our video “10 Arcane Words.”

>For a crash course – or a refresher – see, also, “Gnosticism Explained in 5 Minutes.”

Those with more interest, and a little more time, may be interested to note that we also explored the erotic fixations of so-called “Spermo-Gnostics” in “Top 10 ‘Sex-Magic’ Cults.”

Because these other materials provide an adequate foundation for the relevant concepts, I won’t spend much energy reinventing the wheel, here. Suffice it to say that Gnosticism was a religious worldview – flourishing around the second century A.D. – that focused on spiritual advancement through the acquisition of hidden knowledge. It combined Christian, Jewish, and pagan elements.^[3]

Here’s the relevant bit. The reputed founder of Gnosticism was the Biblical figure Simon Magus. (He’s

also called “Simon, the Sorcerer,” since magos is a Greco-Roman word for “magician.”^[4])

Simon appears in the New Testament Book of the Acts of the Apostles, where it says (chapter 8, verse 13) that he became a believer in Jesus Christ. Simon observed the apostles Peter and John effecting the reception of the Holy Spirit. Verse 18 explains that Simon “offered them money” for knowledge of the power they possessed.

This episode that was the seminal instance of Simony, which today is defined by Catholic sources as the sin of buying or selling church favors.

In the Bible, Peter immediately rebukes and dismisses Simon.^[5] Thus, our “prototype …heretic and black magician”^[6] began traveling with a Phoenician prostitute, gathering his own disciples who were impressed with his occult prowess.

But, would you believe that the story doesn’t actually stop there? – even if it’s telling often does.

For, at some point, the enigmatic Simon Magus was reputed to have been taught by an even more secretive adept named Dositheos.^[7]

Although Dositheos was reputed to have been a Samaritan,^[8] some legends speak of an Egyptian sojourn, where he – and his disciple, Simon – allegedly acquired fantastic abilities such “as invisibility, levitation, and shape-shifting into …animal” form.^[9]

At least some of our modern knowledge about the obscure Dositheos – who was acquainted with John the Baptist and may have had connexions to Essenism – comes by way of discoveries made in caves at Qumran, an archaeological site in the Palestinian Occupied Territory known as the “West Bank.”^[10]

The Wikipedia article on Dositheos^[11] quotes from the book The Dead Sea Scrolls and Primitive Christianity by the Jesuit Modernist theologian – and later Catholic Cardinal – Jean Daniélou.^[12] As a crypto-political aside, Daniélou was discovered dead in 1974, under suspicious circumstances, in the house of a known prostitute.

But speaking of Dositheos and Simon Magus, the duo’s impact was remarkable. Not only did Simonian >Gnosticism persist for centuries, but later writers such as 19^th-century French occultist Jules Doinel, 19^th-20^th-century British Theosophist G. R. S. Mead, and even the “Great Beast” himself, British magician Aleister Crowley, would resurrect it for their own esoteric purposes.

We got into greater detail on Crowley in “Top 10 Occultists of All Time,” “10 ‘Sex-Magic’ Cults,” and “10 Occultists Who Were Accused Spies.”

             2. The Man Behind Neoplatonism: Ammonius Saccas

Another hugely influential belief system with an ancient pedigree is Neoplatonism.

We introduced this in “10 Arcane Words.”

Most simply characterized as an expanded and mystified variety of the famous Greek philosopher Plato’s Theory of Forms, Neoplatonism – as a contributor to the “core” of Western esotericism – has few rivals. One thinks only, for instance, of Hermeticism or Pythagoreanism, …

…the latter being our focus in the video “Pythagoras.”

Generally speaking, Neoplatonism presents a picture of a world in which true reality is hidden behind (or above) the mundane realm of appearances. In this way, the worldview underwrites practical magic. For consider that, on Neoplatonic assumptions – several of which are echoed in Eastern thought – “…every event in the visible world is the effect of an ‘image,’ that is, of an idea in the unseen world. …[E]verything that happens on earth is only a reproduction, as it were, of an event in a world beyond our sense perception… [S]ages …have access to these ideas …and are …able to intervene decisively in events in the world.”^[13]

I intend to expound on the history and philosophy of Neoplatonism in a future video. But, for now, I’ll just say that there are four names usually listed as being among “the most visible [ancient] Neoplatonists in later esoteric literature.”^[14]

In reverse chronological order, these are the 5^th-century expositor Proclus, the 3^rd-4^th-century magician Iamblichus, the 3^rd-4^th-century codifier Porphyry, and the man usually regarded as the wellspring for the whole enterprise, the innovative, 3^rd-century theorist Plotinus.

However… Plotinus’s speculations didn’t arise in a vacuum. It turns out that he received instruction from a shadowy autodidact by the name of Ammonius Saccas.^[15]

Vanishingly little is known about his personal views. Yet, he is routinely cited for the profound impact he is alleged to have exerted upon Plotinus and, by extension, on the establishment of Neoplatonism.

Ammonius was later claimed as a fellow traveler by adherents of both Christianity and paganism. This presents a puzzle and leads some scholars to suppose that there may have been two thinkers with the same name who were contemporaries.

Of Ammonius’s origins, no one can say for sure. He taught Plotinus in the important city of Alexandria, Egypt which was then under the control of the Roman Empire.

The city had a large Greek population, suggesting that Ammonius Saccas was ethnically Greek.

But, some analysts have observed that his given name, “Ammonius,” contains a Latinized reference to the Egyptian deity, Amun – the primordial god of air. This raises the possibility that he may have been a Copt. (Similar questions surround Plotinus’s background.)

Stranger still, a few have proposed that Ammonius Saccas may actually have been of Indian extraction.

If true, this would help to explain two curious pieces of data. Firstly, Ammonius Saccas had an affinity for Indian thought that he apparently transmitted to his pupil. According to the biographer and systematizer, Porphyry, Plotinus’s decade-long training by Ammonius Saccas primed him “to make acquaintance with the Persian philosophical discipline and that prevailing among the Indians.”^[16]

Secondly, tenets of Neoplatonism are redolent of Vedanta, the dominant stream of philosophical Hinduism which was derived from a collection of sacred texts called the Upanishads.

A core notion of this viewpoint is often (albeit opaquely) articulated as the slogan “Atman is Brahman.” This is to say that all individual souls (Atman) – yours, mine, and everyone else’s – are identical with the ultimate principle of reality (designated Brahman).

There is a striking similarity between this doctrine and the crucial Neoplatonic notion that all reality is an “emanation” of, and seeks to “return to” unity with, the One. Stay tuned for further explorations of these abstractions.

According to academic Arthur Versluis, the traditions of Indian religion and Neoplatonism coalesced in the 19^th-century American Transcendentalist movement – famously associated with American writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. It’s interesting to entertain the possibility that this represented a reunion of divergent strands that previously emerged from the same basic source.

             3. The Man Behind Renaissance Magic: Johannes Trithemius

One of the most epochal textbooks on magic theory ever published was the three-volume De Occulta Philosophia, by the 15^th-16^th-century German Kabbalist and Neoplatonist Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa.

We showcased Agrippa twice already. First, he appeared in our video “Top 10 Occultists of All Time,”

…and then again in “10 Occultists Who Were Accused Spies.”

Agrippa was born and received his early education in the German city of Cologne.

This is significant because Cologne had been a stronghold of Medieval Scholasticism, a composite philosophical-theological system expounding Christianity using the logical apparatus of Aristotle.

Within that context, debates still broke out. At Cologne, the majority of the faculty followed the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas, known as “Thomism.” But a minority of school men opted instead for “Albertism,” a competing system drawn from Aquinas’s most distinguished teacher, Albert the Great (also known by the Latinized version of his name, Albertus Magnus).^[17]

Although Albertism is little-mentioned today, it was (for a time) preserved in Cologne – where Albert had spent time lecturing – by a coterie of scholars devoted to his outlook. A key point, here, is that Albert was regarded as having been sympathetic to both alchemy and astrology.

We touched upon the former in “Top 10 Gold-Making Alchemists.”^[18]

As for the latter, in his Speculum Astronomiæ (“The Mirror of Astronomy”), published circa 1260, Albertus Magnus had argued that astrological investigations were compatible with Christianity. Much  later, Agrippa read this work and cited it as instrumental on his thinking.

In the 14^th century, Albertism was combined with Neoplatonism by the largely unknown Dominican Berthold of Moosburg (ca. 1300-1361). Thus, Agrippa would have been trained in what is now referred to as the “Cologne Tradition of Neoplatonism.”

Simultaneously, Agrippa mastered – and would also lecture on – humanist-Catholic thinker Johann Reuchlin’s seminal Kabbalistic treatise, De Verbo Mirifico, printed in 1494.^[19] Incidentally, that title roughly translates to “About the Miraculous Word” and is a sustained explication of the alleged magical power of the name “Jesus.”^[20]

Reuchlin had been introduced to Jewish mysticism by the found of so-called “Christian Cabala,” the Italian Renaissance innovator, Pico della Mirandola, whom we will discuss further in a bit.^[21]

It is difficult to overstate Agrippa’s significance. Occult Philosophy was, in effect, the first attempt at a comprehensive encyclopedia of esotericism and magic.^[22] His thesis? “…[T]hat the hermetic texts …and the Kabbalistic writings… were the gateway to true wisdom” and would restore the control of nature to humanity, who had lost it due to the sin of Adam.^[23]

Early 20^th-century English historian Frances Yates relates the opinions of two specialists who believed that Agrippa “and his associates formed some kind of secret society…”.^[24] Incredibly, “[s]ome historians of the origins of Protestantism in Geneva have regarded Agrippa and his circle … ‘as the seed-bed of the reformed faith’.” Of course, “Reformed Christianity” is merely another name for Calvinism, or the branch of Protestantism owing to 16^th-century French theologian John Calvin.

Not only was Agrippa at ground zero for what developed into Calvinism, but he was also operating in humanist circles in England.^[25] This would have placed him in the orbit of the unfortunately named “Oxford Reformers”:^[26] provocative New-Testament translator Desiderius Erasmus, English statesman and Catholic martyr Sir Thomas More, and – particularly – Renaissance standard bearer, John Colet.

And once again, behind Agrippa – the figure who was apparently so pivotal for preparing the ground for momentous religious changes on the continent and the British Isles^[27] – we find a more obscure intriguer lurking in the shadows.

For, before writing his magnum opus, “[i]n 1509-10, Agrippa was in Germany, visiting the learned [Benedictine] abbot [Johannes] Trithemius,” to whom De Occulta Philosophia would be dedicated.^[28]

             4. The Man Behind Trithemius: Pelagius of Majorca

19^th-century French occultist Éliphas Lévi, on whom see “Top 10 Occultists of All Time,” …

…praised Trithemius as having been the most accomplished magician of his era.

Besides Agrippa, Trithemius had at least one other illustrious student. The revolutionary alchemist and medical reformer Paracelsus (born Theophrastus von Hohenheim) – regarded as the Martin “Luther of the Physicians” – “…identified… the famous Cabalist Johannes Trithemius… [as] among his tutors.”^[29]

Additionally, Dr. John Dee, Queen Elizabeth I’s astrologer royal, whom we also ranked one of the occult practitioners with the most enduring legacies.

Dee’s extensive library, one of the world’s largest of his time, contained several of Trithemius’s books on its shelves. This included Trithemius’s the Steganographia (written ca. 1500),^[30] which “contained many numerological and astrological calculations connected with angels as well as instructions on how to summon them, to gain knowledge, and how to send messages over long distances by means of angelic agency.”^[31]

Because of these alleged angelological dealings, Trithemius garnered a reputation as “a demonic magician,”^[32] necromancer, and “sorcerer.”^[33]

Like the mysterious abbot himself, Dee developed a reputation as a sorcerer.

We touched on these cipher texts in “10 Occultists Who Were Accused Spies.”

and De Septem Secundeis (1508), a treatise on astrology and Kabbalistic magic; 

And, as we noted in “10 Occultists Who Were Accused Spies,” Dee may have exploited Trithemian ciphers to send coded messages for the English crown.

Along with his students, Agrippa and Paracelsus, Johannes Trithemius would be cited by the previously named Lévi in his influential Histoire de la magie (1860).

Confidence in his monumental importance for later streams of occultism is inversely proportional to relative uncertainty about the details of his early life and intellectual formation. In various biographical “snippets” readily available online, one finds unfailingly repeated a fairy-tale-like anecdote about Trithemius’s unlikely – and inexplicably swift – ascent. A twenty-year-old Trithemius was supposedly returning home from university when he was caught in a snowstorm. The ferocity of the storm was such that he sought refuge in a Benedictine Abbey. The story goes that he decided to stay there, and – within a year – he was made “Abbot,” or head monk.

Trithemius himself claimed that he had been schooled in various esoteric arts by one “Libanius Gallus,” an otherwise unknown adept. But the autobiographical questions ramify when we learn that Libanius Gallus himself was said – again, by the precocious abbot himself – to merely have been an intermediary between Trithemius and an even more secretive mage.

Allegedly named “Pelagius of Majorca,” after Mallorca, the Spanish island that is one of the top-ten largest in the Mediterranean Sea.

Stay tuned for more on these sorts of crypto-politically magnetic areas.

Some historians, such as Paola Zambelli, have concluded that “both Pelagius and Libanius were fictions invented by our abbot.”[34]

Another possibility is that they are veiled acknowledgements of real people. One thinks, for instance, of the 13^th-century “proto-Cabalist” Ramon Llull who happened to be from Mallorca.

Still, as Michael Hoffman remarks, due to Trithemius’s preposterous account of his own rise and influence, we must assume that the abbot was assisted by a person (or persons) unknown.[35]

Along a similar line, writer Rosemary Guiley states that, early in his own intellectual formation, Trithemius went to Heidelberg – a center of alchemy and occultism – where he became the student of an unknown teacher.”^[36]

             5. The Man Behind ‘Christian Cabala’: Flavius Mithridates

Speaking of Kabbalists, the short-lived Renaissance syncretist, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, exercised an outsized influence on subsequent esotericism – especially in its Neoplatonic incarnations.

His main contributions were twofold. Firstly, particularly via his captivating Oration on the Dignity of Man,^[37] Pico gave expression to his “…magical view of man as master of the created world.”^[38]

Later interpreters understood Pico to have been asserting “…that man is set apart from the rest of creation, and is completely free to form his own nature.”^[39]

This arguably becomes a major component of later philosophies – such as those of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche – which place an emphasis upon will.

But, it also forms the part of the foundation for various occult currents, such as those involving figures like Éliphas Lévi – according to whom the Pentagram symbolized “[t]he sovereignty of the will…”[40] – and Aleister Crowley, both of whom we surveyed in “Top 10 Occultists.”

Secondly, Pico is credited with introducing the Jewish mystical Kabbalah into Western occultism. This would have a monumental impact. In the first place, it created – right away – the curious amalgam known as “Christian Cabala.”

Of course, predictably, it seems that Pico wasn’t acting on his own hook. Standing behind him were several figures about whom little else is known – beyond their tutelage of the young Italian.

One of them was the noteworthy Jewish Averroist, Elijah Delmedigo. Among other effects, Delmedigo seems to have primed Pico for his interest in an Aristotelianism that was separate from the usual Catholic framework set in place by the great Dominican theologian St. Thomas Aquinas.

Another was Rabbi Yohanan Alemanno, from whom Pico learned the rudiments of Hebrew. Alemanno was also known for his view “…that natural magic was inferior to the Kabbalah, which provides the keys to a ‘divine’ magic.”^[41]

But, it was from one Samuel ben Nassim Bulfarag, alias Guglielmo Raimondo de Moncada, alias Flavius Mithridates, Pico’s tutor in Aramaic, that Pico would learn the most about Kabbalistic secrets.

British Renaissance historian Frances Yates reports that, “[c]hief among …[the Spanish Jews who instructed Pico] was the mysterious character known as Flavius Mithridates who provided Pico with Cabalist manuscripts.”^[42]

In the words of University of California, Los Angeles Professor Brian Copenhaver, “Flavius Mithridates …[was] his [Pico’s] most prolific Jewish informant, [who] translated (and mistranslated) thousands of pages of Kabbalah into Latin for him.”^[43]

Copenhaver’s aside raises questions about Flavius’s honesty. A commentator (of unknown reliability) introduces a record of one of Flavius’s speeches, delivered on Good Friday in front of the pope no less, by saying that – although he “dazzled the clerics” with his linguistic abilities – he fabricated evidence in the manner of “[a] clever charlatan.”^[44]

As an added layer of intrigue, the Encyclopædia Judaica observes that, in Rome, Flavius had once been “…under the patronage of Giovanni Battista Cibo, bishop of Molfetta, [who] later [became] Pope Innocent VIII.”[45]

Yates draws attention to the high strangeness of the relationship between Pico and Flavius,[46] stating that the latter “…encouraged Pico in the Christian interpretation of Cabala, even to the point of inserting into the texts interpolations of his own pointing in a Christian direction.”^[47]

Yates candidly confesses her own astonishment, asking: “What can have been Flavius’s motive in thus encouraging and directing Pico towards his momentous adoption of Cabala into Christianity…[?]”^[48]

             6. The Man Behind Renaissance Neoplatonism: Elissæus

Similar weirdness also surrounds the earlier, 14^th-15^th-c. Constantinopolitan scholar Gemistos Pletho (circa 1355-1452). He was a well-connected, Byzantine Greek who rejected Eastern Orthodoxy and advocated a return to paganism – ostensibly combined with a Neoplatonic form of Christianity.

Pletho – sometimes alternatively called Plethon – was a major catalyst for Italian Renaissance interest in Plato.^[49] First of all, he was a celebrated participant in the Council of Ferrara-Florence – held over almost a twenty-year period from 1431 to 1449. The council was called to try to undo the Great Schism of 1054. Also called the “East-West Schism,” you’ll recall that this separated Christianity into Eastern Orthodoxy, on the one hand, and Roman Catholicism, on the other.

Secondly, Pletho gave numerous, well-attended lectures “On the Difference Between Aristotle and Plato,” some of which were apparently heard by Florentine banker Cosimo de’Medici.

De’Medici proceeded to establish a Platonic Academy in Florence. Subsequently, he funded the research-and-translation projects of Italian priest-scholar Marsilio Ficino. Ficino, along with the previously mentioned Pico della Mirandola, would basically open wide the doors for mysticism, magic, and revived Neoplatonism in the Catholic Church.

In fact, Pletho arguably paved the way for Pico.

And, wouldn’t you know it? According to Pletho’s dogged ideological adversary, Georgios Scholarios (ca. 1400-1473), a man who would later become Patriarch of Constantinople under the name Gennadios II, some of Pletho’s ideas had been suggested to him by a Kabbalist named Elissæus.^[50]

Of course, the allegations, while provocative, are far from historically certain. Nevertheless, if true, they would mean that two major esoterically oriented streams – Kabbalism and Neoplatonism – were introduced into Western Christianity partially under Rabbinic superintendence.

             7. The Men Behind Cagliostro (I): Altotas

Fast-forwarding to the Enlightenment, Count Alessandro di Cagliostro, allegedly born with the more modest name Giuseppe Balsamo was an 18^th-century Sicilian-Jewish adventurer and Hermeticist.

We covered Cagliostro, who was recently incorporated into the Dr. Strange story line in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in our video titled “Top 10 Occultists of All Time,” where we noted his institution of a so-called “Egyptian” variety of Freemasonry with Kabbalistic-sorcerous overtones.

“Some accounts suggest that Cagliostro” – who was allegedly trained in sex magic by an adept whose identity will be disclosed in a few minutes – “forced his wife to sell sexual favors in order to augment his income.”[51]

According to his critics, he was a swindler who gallivanted about Europe engaging in confidence scams and evading his creditors. That is… until he ran afoul of the Roman Inquisition – allegedly trying to found a lodge of the “Brotherhood” right in the Vatican’s backyard – and, for his efforts, was imprisoned in the Castel Sant’Angelo.

Viewers of Ron Howard’s 2006 film, Angels and Demons – Dan Brown’s sequel to the wildly successful The Da Vinci Code – will recognize the imposing, cylindrical mausoleum from an exciting scene as the movie builds toward its climax.

In any case, some say that Cagliostro was eventually moved to the Fortress of San Leo, where he died.

But legends suggest that Cagliostro possessed coveted secrets for the attainment of limitless wealth and miraculously long life – if not immortality.

For more information on these fabled goals of alchemy, see “Top 10 GOLD-MAKING Alchemists.”

No prison could hold a man so supernaturally empowered as Cagliostro. Or… so some say. Therefore, rumors of his magical escape and subsequent reappearances gained currency in esoteric circles.

From where – or who – had he acquired his arcane knowledge?

According to one persistent account, young Guiseppe Balsamo had served as famulus to a mysterious Greek adept named Altotas.^[52]

Versions of the story differ slightly. Either the future Count Cagliostro had apprenticed with Altotas on the Island of Malta, or, to advance their learning, the two had journeyed to Malta together.

Malta, of course, was the headquarters for one of the Catholic Church’s oldest military-religious orders. Originally founded as the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, otherwise known as the Hospitallers, a string of defeats prompted their periodic relocation. First they ended up on the island of Cyprus, then Rhodes, and – finally – Malta.

Supposedly, Altotas was so connected that he was able to effect Cagliostro’s introduction to the Grand Master of that august organization, into which our mysterious count claimed to have been initiated.

What happened to Altotas after this, no one seems to have discovered. He simply receded into the background while his pupil proceeded to revolutionize the ritualism of Masonry. Unless, well… hold that thought.

             8. The Men Behind Cagliostro (II): Comte de Saint-Germain

Cagliostro is perhaps the best-known of a number of 18^th-century adventurers who were able – at least for a short time – to capitalize on the venality of European nobles.

Among this group, also, were the prodigious “lover” Giacomo Casanova, and the curious Comte de Saint-Germain.

In fact, Saint-Germain is often said to have initiated Cagliostro into some form of Illuminism. “Illuminism” is a somewhat opaque synonym for Enlightenment. During the heyday of the intellectual movement by that name, which occurred roughly in late-17^th and 18^th centuries, there was an exaltation of the powers of the human mind. This illumination could take the form of a Gnostic-like “awakening” precipitated by contact with some tantalizing bits of “hidden knowledge” – …

…as we have covered in out several videos on Gnosticism.

Or, Illuminism could depend, instead, on an exaggerated confidence in human brain power and ingenuity. This “rationalism” in a broad sense was typical of philosophers of the period, regardless of whether they favored a priori argumentation, as was pioneered by René Descartes and carried on by such thinkers as Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,

…or whether they leaned more heavily on a posteriori, empirical methodology, as did John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume.[53]

The difficulty with a figure like the Comte is situating him along this continuum. In the words of Antoine Faivre, men like Saint-Germain were “expert in exploiting the taste for the marvelous…” that prevailed in their age.^[54] The consensus Ivory-Tower view seems to be something like this: Saint-Germain used early developments in science, to dazzle the mob and pretend spiritual Enlightenment.[55]

Were we previously to have catalogued the top eleven occultists, instead of ten, he would have contended for extra spot.

And, given rumors that he was an agent in the service of Prussian ruler Frederick the Great, we could have featured him in “10 Occultists who Were Accused Spies.”

Saint-Germain’s pedigree is as debated as other aspects of his life. At various times, and by diverse observers, he has been labeled a Hungarian prince or the fabled “Wandering Jew” – and quite a few things in between.

A preposterous array of “past lives” have been assigned to Saint-Germain – whether by popular acclaim or by retelling of his own autobiographical declarations. These include: Joseph, the human father or (depending on the source) step-father of Jesus Christ; the 13^th-century proto-scientist Roger Bacon; and the 16^th-17^th-century English essayist and statesman, Sir Francis Bacon…

…who we have mentioned before.

Saint-Germain was a reputed Rosicrucian and, like Cagliostro, maintained numerous connexions to Freemasonry.

Perhaps more than his contemporaries, Saint-Germain seemed to become larger than life in the years following his alleged death around 1784 or 1785. I say “alleged death” since stories of “sightings” of the miracle-worker pile up in a manner similar to those about Elvis Presley.

A year after his reported demise, Saint-Germain was supposedly elected by Masons – including the groundbreaking hypnotist, Franz Anton Mesmer – to represent their order at an upcoming convention.

Subsequently, he was also supposedly seen retiring to Tibet, which seems to have given rise to – or at least encouraged – the belief that Saint-Germain had joined the ranks of an exalted class of mystics variously designated “Ascended Masters” or Mahatmas.

Indeed, Helena P. Blavatsky, whom we covered in “Top 10 Occultists,” …

…principal founder (in 1875) of the Theosophical Society, which we discussed in “10 Arcane Words,” …

…references Saint-Germain along with other supposed Masters – Morya and Koothoomi – as collectively directing earth’s affairs behind the scenes as the “Great White Brotherhood.”

Madame Blavatsky’s intellectual and spiritual heirs, including Annie Besant and Charles Webster Leadbeater, claimed to have had dealings with the Count.

Saint-Germain’s influence extends even further. Several key “New Agers” professed the Comte’s involvement in their enterprises. For instance, Guy and Edna Ballard established the I AM Movement under the auspices of the Saint Germain Foundation.

Elizabeth Clare Prophet, matron of the Church Universal and Triumphant, articulated a complicated lore surrounding “Saint Germaine,” including the belief that he somehow “inspired” the Constitution of the United States. Throughout her tenure as “Guru Ma,” Prophet claimed continual – or periodic – contact with various Ascended Masters, especially Saint-Germain.

These tales have cemented Saint-Germain’s legacy as one of the most powerful and proficient adepts of all time.

Runner Up: The Man Behind Éliphas Lévi

Let me momentarily interrupt the Cagliostro saga, with all the various behind-the-scenes operators. For there is one aspect of it that is probably best introduced by way of example.

For the illustration, we’ll turn to the man who, for all intents and purposes, kickstarted the so-called “Occult Revival” in the 19^th-century – which we highlighted in the video “10 Arcane Words.”

Born Alphonse Louis Constant, he is far better known under his assumed (and “Hebræcized”[56]) name, Éliphas Lévi.

Of course, Lévi was a major name in “Top 10 Occultists of All Time.”

His chief contribution to occultism was his suggestion that there were “…esoteric correspondences between the twenty-two paths on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life and the twenty-two major trumps in the Tarot pack of cards.”[57]

>Lévi’s synthesized a “transcendental” magic out of material gleaned from a wide variety of sources. These included: idiosyncratic 16^th-17^th-century German mystic Jakob Böhme, 17^th-18^th-century Swedish theosopher[58] Emanuel Swedenborg, 18^th-century Freemason and Tarot enthusiast Antoine Court de Gébelin, 18^th-19^th-century German “animal-magnetism” theorist and hypnotist, Franz Anton Mesmer; 18^th-19^th-century French poet Antoine Fabre d’Olivet; and 18^th-19^th-century French esoteric Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, founder of Martinism.

These were centered around the Jewish-mystical Kabbalah, which we have repeatedly encountered. What was additionally unique about Lévi, however, was that he seems to have fused two Kabbalistic streams together.

On the one hand, Lévi was acquainted with “Christian Cabala,” as it had originated with Pico and filtered down to the 17^th-century German Hebraist Christian Knorr von Rosenroth. In 1684, Rosenroth had published the influential compendium Kabbala Denudata, or “Kabbalah Uncovered.”[59]

On the other hand, there were several separate strands of Kabbalah originating in Poland. One of these owed to Jacob Frank, a follower of the curious, 17^th-century Messianic pretender, Sabbatai Zevi.[60]

We touched on both Zevi and Frank in “10 ‘Sex-Magic’ Cults.”

Another Polish current came from Hasidism. Fittingly for the present topic, its history is complex and obscure. But it seems to have been introduced into Poland from Prague, during its so-called “Golden Age” in the 17th century. At that time, the community presumably was in custody of the teachings of the 16^th-century Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, known as the Maharal of Prague. He is still remembered for his supposed magical creation of a Frankenstein-like monster called a “Golem.”

Again, for more, see “10 ‘Sex-Magic’ Cults.”

From the Bohemian capital of Prague, Kabbalistic teachings passed to a line of practitioners known as “Baal Shem.” Literally signifying “Lord of the Name,” the specific reference is to the Tetragrammaton, or the four letters making up the name Yahweh – which is regarded as the ultimate magical formula.

Various Baal Shem are reputed to be adept at such things as manufacturing magical amulets and talismans, casting – and averting – the “evil eye,” summoning and controlling demons, and so on.

In any case, the Hasidic movement was founded in the 18^th century Poland by one Israel ben Eliezer, better known as the Baal Shem Tov. In the words of the late historian James Webb, the Baal Shem Tov fashioned “…Hassidism [sic] …[into] a mass movement” by “placing …emphasis on an interpretation of the popular elements in the Cabala…”.[61]

As a consequence, “…the often abstruse doctrines of the Jewish mystical philosophers …[were] rendered …more intelligible to …Gentile[s]. Judæo-Christian sects sprang up throughout Poland and Russia, with rituals based on [these] esoteric doctrines…”.[62]

Our magus – Éliphas Lévi – was initiated into this form of Kabbalism by the 18^th-19^th-century Polish-born French émigré Józef Maria Hoëne-Wroński.

Among other things, Wroński was a mathematician. He therefore brought a dose of Neo-Pythagoreanism into his metaphysician speculations, which he also communicated to Lévi.

Similarly to his star pupil (Lévi), Wroński himself “was well versed in Kabbalah, Boehme, and Gnosticism.”[63]

No word on what would have become of Alphonse Louis Constant without his fateful encounter with his obscure Polish master. But it may well be that just as it was Lévi’s “work [which] formed ‘the narrow channel through which the whole Western tradition of magic flowed to the modern era’,”[64] it was Wroński’s work through which important aspects of that tradition were communicated to Lévi.

             9. The Men Behind Cagliostro (III): Baal Shem of London

With those, later historical developments in place, let’s return to Cagliostro. You see, among the mysterious count’s teachers was yet another rabbinical “Shem Tov.”

In this case, we’re referring to Rabbi Ḥayyim Samuel Jacob Falk,[65] otherwise called the “Baal Shem of London.”

Apparently, Londoners referred to him as “Doctor Falken”[66] – which creates a curious “synch” with the reclusive computer genius by the same name from the 1983 movie War Games.

He “claimed descent from King David.”[67]

Rabbi Falk emerged out of “Shabbateanism,”[68] that is, a modified, messianic form of Judaism.

Shabbateanism sought to preserve the legacy of Sabbatai Zevi, whom we mentioned in passing moments ago, and whom we sketched in “Top 10 ‘Sex-Magic’ Cults.”

Like several entrants on this list, Falk “became known early as a magician…”.[69] And like Cagliostro and Saint-Germain, specifically, Falk had numerous run-ins with civil authorities. Apparently, he was almost executed in Germany for practicing sorcery and witchcraft.

In one dark episode, for example, Falk supposedly “sacrifice[d]… [a] black calf” in the presence of several noblemen,[70] one of whom saw his valet suffer a fatal injury to his spine.[71] According to the report, the unnamed “young man” had his neck so “twisted” that, “had he lived after the accident that [in fact] took his life, could have only seen backward.”[72]

Falk decamped for England where, initially, he was on the “outs” with the Jewish community in London,[73] perhaps because he was laboring under suspicion of “fraud” and heresy – accusations that had been thrown at him by influential German Talmudist Jacob Emden, who had ties to the city.[74]

However, again as with Cagliostro and Saint-Germain – as well as with numerous other occultists, such as Jacob Frank – Falk managed to secure financial assistance from a wealthy family.[75] When he died, Falk was “in relatively affluent circumstances…”.[76]

Falk’s relationship with the broader community improved when he reportedly “saved the Great Synagogue from destruction by fire by means of a magical inscription” – presumably, representation of the Tetragrammaton – “which he [applied] to the doorposts.”[77]

Doctor Falken supposedly had an unnatural-seeming silver candelabrum that illuminated his study without visible use of conventional oil or wax. And – like Saint-Germain – it was said of him that he could subsist for long periods of time without eating or drinking.[78]

By feats such as these, “…he achieved notoriety in both Jewish and non-Jewish circles for his Kabbalistic practices based on the used of the mysterious Name of God, hence becoming known as a Ba’al Shem (‘Master of the [Divine] Name’).”[79]

Among other things, Falk was believed to be able to effect cures by manufacturing and using “Kabbalistic talismans”.[80] By wielding a magic wand constructed from a “rolled-up scroll,”[81] the Baal Shem of London seemed to exert “control over angelic spirits”.[82]

According to the esteemed British Jewish historian Cecil Roth, Falk maintained some sort of “kabbalistic laboratory on” the symbolically charged London Bridge.[83] 

It may have been Saint-Germain who “personally initiated” Cagliostro “into the Lodge of Illuminists at his castle in Holstein,”[84] but it was “[t]he Rabbi Jacob Falk [who] taught [him] sex magic…”.[85]

             10. The Man Behind the ‘Illuminati’: Kolmer

Perhaps no word provokes as many strong reactions – whether out of curiosity, derision, or enthusiasm – as “Illuminati” (and its cognates).

The term has so many colloquial and technical variations that it would be best if I saved its exploration for a dedicated study. Still, I can’t help but to introduce it, here, on account of its relevance for this particular investigation.

Often imagined representing the upper echelon of an all-encompassing, global, economic-and sociopolitical control apparatus, it was established in Bavaria, in what is now Germany – as a bona fide, quasi-Masonic organization.

It was founded in 1776, no less (which, you’ll probably agree, was a pretty important year as far as world-historic events go).

The key player was a twenty-something year old law professor named Adam Weishaupt.

The story of the Illuminati is extraordinarily tangled and it is frequently difficult to separate fact from fiction. The “official record” – if there is such a thing – associates the group with some minor characters such as the German writer Adolph Knigge.

Its goals were said to be furtherance of the sort of anti-clerical and anti-monarchical program that one would expect from an Enlightenment-era movement.

And, according to the surface-level narrative, the Bavarian Order of the Illuminati was outlawed – along with other secret societies – and disbanded sometime between 1784 and 1787.

There is, however, no shortage of dissenting opinions on these – and other – pertinent matters. But, more interesting for us, at present, is the observation that the Order of the Illuminati was linked with more prominent individuals: for example, the 18^th-19^th-century German “animal-magnetism” theorist, Franz Anton Mesmer, and the previously named Count Cagliostro. That, and (of course) the further fact of the claimed influence of yet another “mystery man.”

Nesta Webster wrote of him: “Kolmer remains the most mysterious of all the mystery men of his day…”.^[86]

That such a man may have been behind Weishaupt is extraordinary. For consider that Weishaupt has been linked both to the Jesuits^[87] and to the Rothschild banking powerhouse.^[88]

We intend to probe these topics more fully in upcoming videos. For example, stay tuned for “10 Precursors to the Bavarian Illuminati.”

Copyright 2023, TheSynchroMystic. All rights reserved.

^[1]    The term “Gnosticism” was said to have been coined by Cambridge Neoplatonist Henry More. See Michael Williams, “Gnosticism,” Encyclopedia Britannica, <https://www.britannica.com/topic/gnosticism>.

^[2]    Such as “Esotericism,” “Hermeticism,” “Mysticism,” and “Neoplatonism.”

^[3]    It fed into various streams of philosophy as well and, along with other currents (such as Aristotelianism, Cynicism, and Stoicism), resulted in so-called “Middle Platonism.” Middle Platonism, in turn, combined with Neo-Pythagoreanism and issued in Neoplatonism which, confusingly enough, “back fed” into Gnosticism.

^[4]    It derives from even older forms, such as those of Media and Persia. It shows up in references such as to the “Magi” who paid tribute to the Christ child in the New Testament.

^[5]    Acts 8:20; New International Version.

^[6]    Rosemary Ellen Guiley, The Encyclopedia of Magic and Alchemy, New York: Infobase; Checkmark Books, 2006, p. 294.

^[7]    Alternately spelled “Dositheus.” His Wiki article (“Dositheos (Samaritan),” Jun. 25, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dositheos_(Samaritan)>) gives “Nathanael” as an alias, justifying the variant by remarking that both names mean “gift of god.” 

^[8]    Samaritans have an interesting history. You’ll recall that King David had ruled over a united kingdom (ca. 11^th – 10^th centuries, B.C.) – as did David’s son, Solomon (10^th c. B.C.). But when Solomon died (a typical date given is 930 B.C.), the kingdom split into Northern and Southern halves, both of which were eventually conquered. The Southern Kingdom, called Judah, is usually said to have survived until around 587 or 586 B.C., when it was taken over by Neo-Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar II. But the Northern Kingdom of Israel didn’t last as long. It fell to Neo-Assyria; the Northern Kingdom’s capital, Samaria, was overrun circa 722 / 721 B.C. So, the story goes that the “Samaritans” were (and, I suppose, still are) a remnant that claims descent from the original inhabitants of the Northern Kingdom who managed to remain in Samaria after the arrival of the Assyrian invaders. The history is complicated by the “return” of exiled Jews from Babylon after the Neo-Babylonian Empire was displaced by the Persian. A number of factions arose within the religion of Judaism, with the Pharisees and Sadducees being prominent representatives. Main differences lie in the facts that the former maintained bases of operation in small assembly houses (called “synagogues”) and insisted on adherence to a so-called “Oral Law” in addition to the written books of (what we would commonly know as) the Old Testament; Pharisaic Judaism morphed into Rabbinic Judaism. The latter Sadducees – as high priests – were headquartered in the Temple. Both the Sadducees and the Samaritans rejected the “Oral Torah,” but had other differences (including ethnic / racial). These were exacerbated by military conflicts (especially the campaign of John Hyrcanus, circa 128 B.C.). By the time of Jesus of Nazareth, the Samaritans held to their pre-rabbinical form of Judaism and were considered “outsiders” from the viewpoint of mainline Judaism.

^[9]    Guiley, loc. cit.

^[10]  “Dositheos…,” op. cit.

^[11]  Loc. cit.

^[12]  New York: Mentor Omega Books, 1962. Cf. <https://books.google.com/books?id=d6C5DgAAQBAJ>.

^[13]  Richard Wilhelm, “Introduction,” The I Ching, or Book of Changes,” [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1967, n.p.,] qtd. by Mitch Horowitz, Occult America, New York: Bantam, 2010, p. 8. Wilhelm is writing on the views of Confucius and Lao-tse, but could just as easily be discoursing on Platonism.

^[14]  Antoine Faivre, Western Esotericism: A Concise History, Christine Rhone, transl., Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 2010, p. 26.

^[15]  He may also have once been a student of the Alexandrian Christian theologian, Origen.

^[16]  Elizabeth DePalma Digeser, A Threat to Public Piety: Christians, Platonists, and the Great Persecution, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press,  2012, <https://books.google.com/books?id=K_2tDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA74>; citing Porphyry, Plotinus, 3.16.

^[17]  See Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction, New York & Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2008, p. 55.

^[18]  Some alchemical – or, at least, pro-chemical – opinions presented in Albert’s De mineralibus (ca. 1248-1262). However, more overtly alchemical-magical texts – preëminently, the grimoire known variously as the Grand Albert or the Secreta Alberti – are now believed to have been falsely attributed to Albertus Magnus (and, thus, belong to what is called the pseudo-Albertine literature).

^[19]  Reuchlin’s mature thought, including Neo-Pythagorean elements, is on full display in De Arte Cabalistica (“On the Art of the Cabala”), published in 1516.

^[20]  “Jesus” is rendered as an expansion of the holy Tetragrammaton, or the “Four Letters” – YHWH or JHVH – which signify Yahweh or Jehovah. In the Christian-Cabalist analysis, the name of Jesus (IESU) is Kabbalistically equivalent to (or may be rendered as) the Pentagrammaton: “Five Letters,” given as YHSWH or IESVE, and yielding (something like) “Yeshua,” which is a Hebrew name translating to “Joshua” …or Jesus.

^[21]  Though, Agrippa also knew the brothers Agostino and Paolo Ricci, the latter responsible for translating (1515) a major Kabbalistic work titled (in Latin) Portæ Lucis, and (in Hebrew) Sha’arei Ora, both meaning “Gates of Light,” written by the 13^th-century Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla. Giktilla had studied under Abraham Abulafia.

^[22]  Book 1 dealt with “natural magic,” such as the use of herbs and stones, as pertained to the terrestrial elements. Book 2 concerned itself with “mathematical magic,” including “magic squares” and numerology, imported from Neo-Pythagoreanism (via Reuchlin), and linked with the “celestial” spheres. Finally, Book 3 focused on “angel magic” – invocations, summonings, and the like – associated with what Agrippa termed the “super-celestial” realm. This book, in particular, earned him a reputation as a black magician who made pacts with demons. A “Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy” – pertaining to ceremonial magic and geomancy – was published several decades after Agrippa’s death. However, Agrippa’s student Johann Weyer maintained that it was falsely attributed to his former master.

^[23]  Goodrick-Clarke, op. cit., p. 59.

^[24]  Or, even, that Agrippa “…may have been the centre of [several] secret societies,” all according to Frances Amelia Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age, London and New York: Routledge, 1999, p. 44.

^[25]  Additionally, of course, Agrippa influenced later occultists such as Éliphas Lévi, Francis Barrett, and the members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, among others.

^[26]  “It is usual to speak of Colet, Erasmus and More as the ‘Oxford Reformers,’ but the title is misleading. If they advocated reforms, they did not undertake any. Although they had all three been in Oxford, London was the real centre of their influence.” H. Maynard Smith, “The Catholic Reformers,” chapt. 11, Pre-Reformation England, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1963, <https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-00406-5_12>; <https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-00406-5_12>. 

^[27]  Agrippa was convinced that Roman Catholicism has lost the true faith – as, he believed, was evidenced in the inability of Churchmen to perform miracles. See Goodrick-Clarke, op. cit., p. 59.

^[28]  Yates, op. cit., p. 45.

^[29]  Goodrick-Clarke, op. cit., p. 74.

^[30]  But only officially published in 1606.

^[31]  Goodrick-Clarke, op. cit., pp. 51-52.

^[32]  Goodrick-Clarke, op. cit., p. 52.

^[33]  Guiley, op. cit., p. 321.

[34] See P. Zambelli, “Chapter Three. Magic, Pseudepigraphy, Prophecies and Forgeries in Trithemius’ Manuscripts. From Cusanus to Bovelles?” in the volume White Magic, Black Magic in the European Renaissance, Leiden: Brill, 2007, pp. 73-100, <https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004160989.i-282.11> and <https://brill.com/display/book/9789047421382/Bej.9789004160989.i-282_008.xml>. Trithemius refers to a mysterious, “now lost” text, “attributed to Pelagius of Majorca,” for whom our “only witness is Trithemius”, ibid. Cf.  Michael >Hoffman, The Occult Renaissance Church of Rome, Coeur d’Alene, Id.: Independent History and Researc, 2017, p. 243, who calls both Labanius and Pelagius “imaginary sages,” as well as “Frater Acher,” who refers to Pelagius as an “invented persona” in “Paracelsus & Trithemius – Musings on a Bewitched Relationship,” Theo Magica [weblog], Feb. 1, 2022, <https://theomagica.com/blog/paracelsus-and-trithemius>.

[35] See Hoffman, op. cit., pp. 238ff, where he repeatedly refers to Trithemius’s unnamed “handlers.”

^[36]  Guiley, op. cit., p. 321.

^[37]  The title was affixed posthumously.

^[38]  Goodrick-Clarke, op. cit., p. 59.

^[39]  E. J. Ashworth, “Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni,” p. 619. Significantly, Ashworth demurs on almost all the standard summaries of Pico. Pico “…hoped to write a Concord of Plato and Aristotle”; so, he shouldn’t be considered a “Neoplatonist” in an unqualified sense. Pico “is often described as a syncretist” – as I have done – “but in fact he made it clear that the truth of Christianity has priority over the prisca theologia or ancient wisdom found in the hermetic corpus and the cabala.” Finally, Ashworth thinks that the interpretation of Pico as announcing an almost unrestricted capacity for individual liberty has to be checked by the facts that: firstly, in his Heptaplus (1489), Pico downplays human freedom. Secondly, Ashworth insists that Pico’s anthropology interprets mankind “as a microcosm” of the universe and “thus firmly within the hierarchy of nature…”. (All quotations, ibid.) It seems to me, however, that the stated aim of reconciling Aristotle and Plato belies Ashworth’s rejection of Pico’s syncretism. Furthermore, that Pico gave “Christianity …priority” over Hermeticism must be assessed in light of the Pico’s overall Neoplatonizing tendencies and his “Christian Cabalism.” In other words, it would be a colossal mistake to read Pico’s supposed ranking of “Christianity” over Hermeticism as a preservation of Medieval Scholasticism or Thomism. The caveats about Pico’s endorsement of the notion of alchemical correspondence between humans (as microcosm) and the universe (as macrocosm) are well taken. But, maybe the point is that, divested of his Hermeticism (as occurred during the Enlightenment), Pico’s praise of human freedom takes on larger proportions.

[40] Goodrick-Clarke, op. cit., p. 193. In Lévi’s conception, “…the primary function of magic was to enable the magician to focus and direct his will.” Ibid.

^[41]  Colette Sirat, A History of Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages, reprint ed., New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996, p. 410, <https://books.google.com/books?id=XKkSDZNVXX4C&pg=pa410>. Alemanno was also regarded as a Neoplatonist.

^[42]  Frances Amelia Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age, London and New York: Routledge, 1999, p. 22.

^[43]  Brian Copenhaver, “Giovanni Pico della Mirandola,” Edward N. Zalta, ed., Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Summer 2020 ed., <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2020/entries/pico-della-mirandola/>. Copenhaver elsewhere remarked: “Kabbalah, which Pico saw as the holier Hebrew analog of the gentile ‘ancient theology’ revealed by Marsilio Ficino, is provocatively on display in the 900 Conclusions: 119 of them, including the final and culminating 72, are Kabbalist theses—outlandishly Kabbalist from a Christian point of view. …Because of its Mosaic origin, Kabbalah was holier to Pico than the pagan wisdom that Ficino had traced to Zoroaster and Hermes Trismegistus, in ancient Chaldaea and Egypt, where Ficino found the beginnings of Platonic philosophy.” Ibid. At the same time, Pico wrote subtly. Again, Copenhaver: “Large portions of the Oration, drawing on these texts, are also informed by Kabbalah in ways that no contemporary Christian could have detected—least of all a Christian who lacked the clues provided by the Conclusions.” Ibid.

^[44]  “A Wider World, I,” <http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/vatican.exhibit/exhibit/h-orient_to_rome/Orient_to_rome.html>.

[45]  Menachem E. Arton, updated by Nadia Zeldes, “Mithridates, Flavius,” Fred Skolnik and Michael Berenbaum, eds., Encyclopedia Judaica, 2^nd ed., vol. 14, Detroit: Thomson Gale; Jerusalem: Keter Publ. House, 2007, p. 370.

[46] Arton and Zeldes (ibid.) state that “…in his writings, Mithridates in very explicit about his homosexuality…”. This is suggestive, since Pico is also alleged to have had male lovers. “Quattrocento humanists, based largely in Florence and including such notable figures as Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, vigorously explored a Neo-Platonism with …inherent homosexual overtones. … See Leonard Barkin’s Transuming Passion: Ganymede and the Erotics of Humanism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991) and James Saslow’s Ganymede in the Renaissance: Homosexuality in Art and Society (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986). Marsilio Ficino (1443-99), whose influential commentary on Plato’s Symposium, 1469, questioned (in the form of a dialogue) the inclusion of “desire” in [“?]friendship.” Pico della Mirandola (1463-94) and the poet Girolamo Benivieni “wrote passionate sonnets to each other and were buried in the same tomb in San Marco, like husband and wife,” although the poet died 40 years after Pico. Saslow admits that there is “little concrete evidence to suggest that Ficino’s deep love for Giovanni Cavalcanti—whom he enthroned as the hero of his annual symposium commemorating the death of Plato on November 7—was anything other than chaste.” Likewise, there are no explicit accounts of sexual activity between the Pico and Benivieni. (Saslow, Ganymede, 29).” From Robert Diamond, A Gay Neoclassical Movement, thesis, master of arts, Stony Brook, N.Y.: Stony Brook Univ., May 2012, p. 6, footnote 14, <https://ir.stonybrook.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11401/76793/Diamond_grad.sunysb_0771M_10949.pdf>.

^[47]  Yates, op. cit., p. 22.

^[48]  Ibid.

^[49]  “Through Pletho,” also, “ancient doctrines of the Chaldeans and Pythagoreans were transmitted to the West.” According to Deno J. Geanakopols, “Pletho, Giorgius Gemistus (1355-1452),” 1967; updated by Katerina Ierodiakonou, Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2005; archived at Encyclopedia.com, <https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/pletho-giorgius-gemistus-c-1355-1452>.

^[50]  See George Karamanolis, “George Gemistus Plethon,” Henrik Lagerlund, ed., Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy: Philosophy Between 500 and 1500, Dordrecht & New York: Springer, 2011, p. 390, <https://books.google.com/books?id=x5FiMR3kd_8C&pg=PA390>. Alternative spellings are: Elisaeus and Eliseus.

[51]  Mysteries of the Unknown: Secrets of the Alchemists, vol. 21, Time-Life, p. 102.

^[52]  Or Athotas.

[53] We would also want to situate many important French thinkers – e.g., Denis Diderot, Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Voltaire – in the vicinity. And, of course, we would need to deal with Immanuel Kant.

^[54]  Op. cit., p. 59.

[55] To put it another way, Saint-Germain, and – perhaps – his students (such as Cagliostro), essentially utilized the results of Illuminism in sense number two (rational-empirical investigation and the primitive – by our lights – technology that it produced) to fake possession of Illuminism in sense number one (i.e., “Gnosis”)!

[56] That is, the alleged attempt to transliterate “Alphonse Louis” into Hebrew letters.

[57] Goodrick-Clarke, op. cit., p. 195.

[58] “Theosophy” merely designates the “wisdom of God.” I write “theosopher” in order to distinguish Swedenborg from the disciples (and offshoots) of H. P. Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society (founded 1875), who are generally called theosophists.

[59] Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany.

[60] Or Shabbetai Ẓevi, Shabbeṯāy Ṣeḇī, Shabsai Tzvi, Sabbatai Zvi, etc.

[61] The Occult Underground, La Salle, Ill.: Open Court Publ. Co.l Library Press, 1974, p. 253.

[62] Ibid.

[63] Goodrick-Clarke, op. cit., p. 192.

[64] Goodrick-Clarke, op. cit., p. 195; quoting Ronald Decker, Thierry Depaulis, and Michael Dummett, A Wicked Pack of Cards: The Origins of the Occult Tarot, London: Duckworth, 1996, p. 168.

[65] Alternatively spelled Chaim Schmul Falck.

[66] Or “Doctor Falckon.”

[67] Raphael Patai, The Jewish Alchemists, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1994, p. 456.

[68] Again, alternatively spelled “Sabbatæanism,” “Sabbateanism,” “Sabbatianism,” etc.

[69] Cecil Roth, “Falk, Samuel Jacob Ḥayyim,” Encyclopædia Judaica, vol. 6, Jerusalem: Keter, 1972, p. 1159. Cf. Patai, op. cit., p. 455: “early” in his “career” he was “primarily a magician and conjurer…”.

[70] Patai records the testimony as referring to the “Comte de Westerloh” and the “Duc de Richelieu,” p. 460. The latter appears to have been Louis François Armand de Vignerot du Plessis. I have so far been unable to ascertain the identify of the former personage. “Westerloh” could be Westerloo/Westerlo; if so, Jean Philippe Eugène de Merode might have been a candidate, except he seems to have died too soon. (Patai wrote that Rantzow recorded his impressions between 1736 and 1739; Jean Philippe Eugène de Merode died in 1732. Of course, it is possible that Rantzow’s observations were recorded some years after the events they purport to describe.) Jean Philippe’s son, Philippe-Maximilien, was born in 1729, which suggests that he would have been far too young to have been a perceptive or reliable observer.

[71] Patai, op. cit., p. 460; quoting George Louis Albert de Rantzow.

[72] Patai, op. cit., p. 457; quoting George Louis Albert de Rantzow

[73] Though, Joseph Jacobs and Herman Adler report that Falk was “[r]eceived in London with hospitality” and that “Falk rapidly gained fame as a cabalist and worker of miracles, and many stories of his powers were current.” Joseph Jacobs and Herman Adler, “Falk, Ḥayyim Samuel Jacob (Also Known as De Falk, Dr. Falk, or Falkon),” Jewish Encyclopedia, 1906, <https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/5992-falk-hayyim-samuel-jacob>.

[74] For example, Jacob Emden’s son, Israel Emden (known as Meshullam Zalman, or Meshullam Solomon) was Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom from about 1765 to 1780. See “Emden, Jacob,” Wikipedia, Nov. 22, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Emden>; citing Jacob Emden, Megilat Sefer: The Autobiography of Rabbi Jacob Emden (1697–1776), PublishYourSefer.com, p. 353, <https://books.google.com/books?id=dOfOc56BFdkC&pg=PA353>.

[75] In Falk’s case, the Goldsmids: “Falk’s principal friends were the London bankers Aaron Goldsmid and his son.” Jacobs and Adler, loc. cit.

[76] Roth, op. cit., p. 1160.

[77] Roth, op. cit., p. 1159.

[78] Jacobs and Adler, loc. cit.

[79] Roth, op. cit., p. 1159. Falk seems to have seen himself as a liberator for his coreligionists. See Patai, op. cit., p. 458.

[80] Patai, op. cit., p. 458.

[81] Patai, op. cit., p. 584, end note #3 (for chapt. 36).

[82] Patai, op. cit., p. 459.

[83] At least, according to Roth! (Op. cit., p. 1159; emphasis supplied.) Falk also operated “a private synagogue in his house in Wellclose Square…,” ibid.

[84] Guiley, op. cit., p. 283.

[85] Gary Lachman, “Why Mrs. Blake Cried by Marsha Keith Schuchard: The Lineaments of Gratified Desire,” book review, Independent (U.K.), Mar. 12, 2006, <https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/why-mrs-blake-cried-by-marsha-keith-schuchard-469652.html>; archived at <https://web.archive.org/web/20100426235430/https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/why-mrs-blake-cried-by-marsha-keith-schuchard-469652.html>.

^[86]  Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, London: Boswell, 1924, pp. 131 and 139.

^[87]  For instance, the Wikipedia article “Adolph Freiherr Knigge,” states that, upon his falling out with Weishaupt: “He [i.e., Knigge] accused Weishaupt of ‘Jesuitism’, and suspected him of being ‘a Jesuit in disguise’.” In fact, this is simply lifted from the entry “Illuminati,” in the Catholic Encyclopedia. See Hermann Gruber, “Illuminati,” Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 7, New York: Robert Appleton Co., 1910, [p. 661b]; online at <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07661b.htm> and <https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/tce/i/illuminati.html>. The encyclopedist’s parenthetical citation (in situ), reads: “Nachtr., I, 129.” Presumably, this stands for “nachtrag” and works out either to Adam Weishaupt, Nachtrag von weiteren Originalschriften [“Addendum of Other Original Writings”], München: Zu haben bey J. Lindauer, 1787 (see <https://www.worldcat.org/title/6760782>) or Nachtrag zur Rechtfertigung meiner Absichten (“Addendum Justifying My Intentions”), Frankfurt und Leipzig,: privately printed, 1787 (see <https://www.worldcat.org/title/919702064>). Cf. <http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:xWl8a9Jl-1kJ:worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n84193453&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us>.

^[88]  See the comments from Joseph “Doc” Marquis, in Christian J. Pinto, Eye of the Phoenix, dvd, N.p.: Antiquities Research Films, 2008; <https://www.worldcat.org/title/430836014>.

(And 10 of America’s Elite Brotherhoods)

Preface

In 1961, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy spoke to the American Newspaper Publishers Association, remarking, in part: “The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.”[1]

That these comments issued from JFK is interesting for several reasons. A main one is that his life would be publicly and violently snuffed out two and a half years later in what the United States House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations concluded was “probably” the “result of a conspiracy.”[2]

For more, see “10 Reasons to Believe JFK Was Killed by Conspiracy.”

That JFK would direct this message to newspaper men is also intriguing, not least because of post-Watergate-scandal revelations, reported by journalist Carl Bernstein, of collusion between the intelligence community and the press. More on these disquieting disclosures in a future video.

I take these – and myriad other – tidbits as indications of just how often the American people are kept in the proverbial “dark” about the inner workings of their own government.

This can be quickly – albeit roughly and even playfully – illustrated by surveying some of the ostensible “public servants” who were devotees of various organizations that, well… let’s just say aren’t entirely forthcoming about the goings on at their meetings. In this presentation we’ll do just that, by looking at the top ten Presidents of the United States alleged to have been card-carrying members of secret societies.

Caveats

This is intended for educational or entertainment purposes only. No allegations of wrongdoing, on the part of any individual or organization, are expressed or implied. The information supplied herein has been gleaned from public records. Its factuality is assumed. Referenced rankings and statistics are for comparison or illustration and have not been calculated with scientific rigor.

Introduction

According to authors Craig Heimbichner and Adam Parfrey, at “…the beginning of the twentieth century, …as many as one-third of all Americans belonged to a secret society…” of some kind.[3]

Without a doubt, the largest and best-known of these groups is Freemasonry.

Freemasonry, or the “Ancient Free and Accepted Masons,” are bundle of traditionally fraternal – that is, male-member-only – associations. The complicated origin story is not without interest and has been the subject of endless debate and speculation. To do it justice, it should probably have its own devoted presentation. But a few brief comments are in order, here.

Some historians trace Freemasonry, sometimes called the “Craft,” back to various societies of artisans, called collegia, that existed in Roman times. These may – or may not – have segued into Medieval trade guilds, specifically ones organized for stonemasons. These are craftsmen who have been trained to build, cut, and otherwise work with stone.

Allowing for technological developments and stylistic innovations, stonemasons have been credited with construction projects ranging from Europe’s great cathedrals, all the way back to the pyramids of Egypt and even the Biblical Tower of Babel.

At some point, approximately during the 17^th century, groups of work-a-day masons began to fellowship with select men who did not have anything to do with stone, professionally. These first “non-operative” inductees were likely nobility or other wealthy patrons and their admission into the “order” launched so-called “speculative freemasonry.”

This is a fitting name since much has been conjectured about possible links between Freemasonry and streams of bona fide esotericism, such as alchemy, Kabbalah, and Rosicrucianism.

And many colorful connexions are asserted – with varying degrees of credibility – with all manner of predecessors from Gnostic-heretical groups like Catharism and Manichæanism, …

…military-religious orders such as the Knights of Malta and the Knights Templar, and other things besides.

The official emergence of institutional Freemasonry, as it’s known today, dates to the founding of what was then called the Grand Lodge of London but is today – after various growth and mergers – the United Grand Lodge of England. Masonic assemblies are termed “lodges.”

For various socio-political reasons, the order experienced explosive growth and even migrated across the ocean to America where many of the United States’s Founding Fathers, including Benjamin Franklin,[4] eagerly joined.

We highlighted Franklin in the video “10 Occultists Who Were Accused SPIES.” In that place we get into the possibility that was decidedly more satanic than the usual portrayals of him let on.

Ignoring, presently, the several U.S. Presidents who were members of multiple secret societies, we may name at least nine who almost certainly belonged to the Freemasons.

These include our first head of state, the Revolutionary War hero, George Washington;[5] …

…James Monroe, whose “Monroe Doctrine” arguably became the foundation of U.S. Imperialism; …

…Andrew Jackson, the hero of the War of 1812…

…whose opposition to the Second Bank of the United States is largely forgotten, but which loosened the grip of private interests over the nation for 80 years (until the creation of the Federal Reserve System); …

…James Polk, who spearheaded the country’s expansion into the south and west; …

…James Buchanan, whose legacy was, in part, the disastrous fratricidal conflict known as the “Civil War”; …

…Andrew Johnson, reportedly so inebriated at his vice-presidential inauguration he was nearly unable to recite his oath of office,[6] who became president after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln; …

…James Garfield, one of four “commanders in chief” to have been assassinated, and the only White-House occupant to have created a unique proof of the Pythagorean Theorem; …

For more information on the esoteric importance of Pythagoras, see our dedicated video.

…Lyndon Baines Johnson, Kennedy’s successor – allegedly implicated in the assassination by former Central Intelligence Agency asset E. Howard Hunt – whose “Great Society” program ushered in the Civil Rights Act and Medicare; …

…and Gerald Ford, birth name “Leslie Lynch King, Jr.,” remembered mainly for his participation in the Warren-Commission whitewash and for “pardoning” Richard Nixon who, you’ll recall, had been charged with abusing presidential power and obstructing justice to cover up the Watergate burglary.[7]

There are also a few others with possible masonic affiliations. Depending on the prejudices of the source, these possibilities may be leveraged into affirmations (as with some anti-Masonic authors) or are vociferously denied (as is the standard line from Masonic apologists).

Prominent, here are Thomas Jefferson, drafter of many of the nation’s important foundational documents (including the Declaration of Independence), and James Madison, who (alongside Alexander Hamilton and John Jay) helped write the Federalist Papers; …

…as well as Ulysses S. Grant and Rutherford B. Hayes, both of whom presided over the so-called “Reconstruction” era.

If we expand our list slightly, we might include William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton, born William Blythe III, to bring our count to fourteen.

You see, “Slick Willie” is touted as perhaps the most famous past member of the Order of DeMolay (now “DeMolay International”).

This group, which is basically Freemasonry for boys, was founded in 1919 and named after Jacques de Molay, a 14^th-century of Knight Templar whose tenure as head (or “Grand Master”) of that military order coincided with its dissolution at the hands of King Philip IV of France and Pope Clement V. High-ranking Templars were accused of assorted crimes – such as desecrating Christian icons and sodomy – and many, including de Molay himself, were burned at the stake.

The junior masonry named in de Molay’s honor claims to instill values such as fierce loyalty, even in the face of death. It seems to have helped form our 42^nd President, perhaps priming him for his instruction, under Georgetown University Professor Carroll Quigley, …

…in the history of the shadowy Round Table Group, a consortium of “think tanks” that were ostensibly the brainchild of 19^th-century British colonialist and diamond magnate, Cecil Rhodes.

So far, we’ve limited ourselves to men who supposedly confined their fraternal horizons to Freemasonry. And we’re already knee deep in cryptopolitical intrigue!

The ‘Top-10’

But there are eleven others who apparently took to oaths and secret handshakes with more enthusiasm. These fellows were connoisseurs of confidential information and the societies that purport to guard it. I’ve loosely arranged the names as a “top-ten” list, where the entrants are ranked in descending order according to the number of societies they belonged to.

Admittedly, though, this list is a bit awkward.

Firstly, there are only five numerical positions represented. This is because there are so many “ties” – that is, occasions where a president has the same number of fraternal affiliations as one or more of his confrères.

Secondly, I’m not pretending to have plumbed the depths of each president’s membership profile. To put it another way, I may have neglected a few connexions.

I wasn’t especially concerned with thoroughness because, thirdly, this list is intended to be on the lighthearted side and doesn’t give any consideration to the possible cryptopolitical “weight” of any of the organizations included.

Finally, for expedience, I have only counted ten (or so) secret societies. While the inclusions are, I think, justifiable and representative of the field of options, they are not exhaustive.

In other words, the entire list is open to question. So, don’t take it too seriously!

Number 8

All that said, coming in at “number eight” (or, #s 8, 9, 10, and 11), we have a four-way tie among William Howard Taft, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Richard Milhouse Nixon, and George W. Bush who each belonged to at least two, publicly identifiable secret societies.

Infamous for his Watergate shenanigans – which we got into in “10 Occultist Spies” – …

…Nixon is routinely found on lists of the most hated or worst U.S. presidents.

One story has it that Nixon – who was supposedly self-conscious of his humble origins – was launched into power by the secretive “Committee of 100.” Not to be confused with the contemporary association of Chinese-American businessmen, the earlier incarnation was allegedly a consortium of rich California Republicans looking to unseat a popular “New Deal” Democrat named “Jerry” Voorhis.

As he rose to prominence, Nixon made his way onto the ticket with Dwight Eisenhower. However, revelations that Texas oil men had established a slush fund for him worth about $18,000 threatened to stop his career in its tracks.

He went on “air,” as it were, and delivered his now famous “Checkers speech.” Among other things, Nixon admitted receiving a cute puppy as a political gift but stated that, due to his family’s newfound affection for it, he resolved to keep it regardless of the consequences. The comments saved him and ultimately paved the way to the presidency over a decade later.

An interesting side note is that ol’ Tricky Dick himself “just happened” to be in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. Officially, he was there in his capacity as legal counsel for the Pepsi Corporation.

Unofficially, well… there’s a video presentation that gets into the topic, if you’re interested.

Speaking of JFK, his inclusion on this list may seem odd given our opening quotation.

Then again, politicians have a generally poor reputation for consistency. As the 15^th-16^th-century Italian Renaissance philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli argued, political rhetoric is “…power-oriented in the sense that the orator’s mission was to mold his listeners’ responses and work on their wills.”[8]

It has long been rumored that JFK was, well… let’s say… given a “boost” on election day from certain “fixers” in the Chicago mob. Word on the street once was that JFK’s dad, Joseph Kennedy, made a deal with mafioso Sam Giancana to help get “Jack” into the White House. Apparently, someone either forgot to tell JFK, or he and his family decided to double cross La Cosa Nostra.

For, when JFK leveled up, his brother “Bobby” Kennedy continued his longstanding crusade against the “Outfit.” Usually pooh-poohed by academic types, this theory has been advanced to explain the spate of high-profile assassinations that seemed to disproportionately affect the Kennedys in the 1960s.

Perhaps, however, one may be tempted to give JFK a “pass.” For besides his membership in a group (to be discussed in a few minutes) that, by most accounts, was simply a drinking club, his primary affiliation seems to have been with the Fraternal Order of Eagles.

This group, initially formed in 1898 by a half dozen theater proprietors, subsequently became more politically active. It claims to be staunchly anti-Communist and claims credit for the institution of the Mother’s Day holiday as well as for campaigning in support of Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” policies, including Social Security. In other words, the Fraternal Order of Eagles seems to operate fairly transparently – by secret-society standards, anyway.

Things are a bit different, however, the Yale-University-based order called “Skull and Bones,” which was introduced in the aforementioned “10 Occultists Who Were Accused SPIES.”

Founded by Connecticut businessman and politician William Huntington Russell, …

…it conducts its secretive rituals inside a windowless stone building cheerfully named the “Tomb.”

Sometimes referred to as “Chapter 322,” speculation abounds that this Ivy-League frat house functions as an American arm of the legendary New-World-Order architects known as the “Illuminati.”

In fact, according to a recent edition of Heart’s Biography magazine: “It is speculated that the number refers to the year 322 BCE, when Athens transformed from democracy to plutocracy following the death of the Greek orator Demosthenes.”[9]

Be that as it may, it is exceedingly interesting that Skull and Bones, with all its bizarre and – reportedly, sexualized – initiations, “just happened” to spring up in the aftermath of the William Morgan Affair that precipitated organized anti-Masonry in the United States.

The sordid scene unfolded in the town of Batavia, New York in 1826. One William Morgan – either a disgruntled ex-Mason or a lodge crasher, depending on the account you read – was arrested on a flimsy pretext. He was subsequently kidnapped by a posse of Freemasons who apparently gained access to him by posting his bail. Like that of Teamster boss James Riddle “Jimmy” Hoffa, Morgan’s fate is often said to be “unknown.” But the presumption, partially informed from a deathbed confession of one of the alleged perpetrators, was that Morgan was murdered.[10]

The motive was Freemasonic resentment toward Morgan because of a book-length exposé he wrote disclosing the secrets of their order.

In any event, the first “Third” political party in the U.S. was the short-lived Anti-Masonic Party, established in 1828. So it was, in 1832, during the ensuing anti-Freemasonic furor, that Skull and Bones cropped up in New Haven.

Its membership roster is a “Who’s Who” of American finance, industry, and politics. So-called “Bonesmen” have included Central Intelligence Agency “counter-intel” chieftain, James Jesus Angleton, Time-Life publisher Henry Luce, and Stephen Allen Schwarzman, the founder of the private-equity powerhouse Blackstone.

Numerous other names could be added to the list. But, for our purposes, we draw attention back to two. Number one, there’s William H. Taft, the only U.S. President to also have been a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

William Taft’s father, Alphonso Taft, helped get Skull and Bones going.

Number two, we have George W. Bush. Of course, “Dubya” was the son of George Herbert Walker Bush, …

…who we’ll get to shortly.

Both Bushes followed in the footsteps of Bush I’s father, Prescott, who – in 1917[11] or 1918[12] – allegedly used him time as a “Yalie Bonesman” to dig up the skull of the famous Apache Indian Geronimo and whisk it back to New Haven as an ornament.

The 2004 presidential election pitted Bonesman John Kerry against Bonesman George W. Bush.

Number 5

At number five,[13] we have a three-way tie. This triad is distinguished for the trio of secret fraternal organizations that make up its curriculum vitæ. And it is comprised of William McKinley, Ronald Reagan, and the previously named George Herbert Walker Bush. There are a few highlights – or lowlights – from this group.

For one thing, we have yet another president (McKinley) who was outright assassinated; …

…one president (Reagan) who was almost assassinated; …

…and a third (Bush I) who – at one time – was the director of a government agency that specializes in spycraft, covet action, and so-called “black ops,” including assassination.

All three were Republicans.

By way of a little background, we may turn to the History Channel which, in 2012, aired a series titled The Men Who Built America.

Over eight installments,[14] the “docudrama” staged fictionalized reenactments – purportedly based on real events – of portions of the lives of some of America’s “robber barons.”

The individuals spotlighted were 19^th-century shipping and railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt; …

…19^th-20^th-century oilman John D. Rockefeller; …

…19^th-20^th-century industrialist Andrew Carnegie; …

…financier and Rothschild-banking asset J.P. Morgan; …

…and pioneering automobile manufacturer Henry Ford.

Episode #7, titled “Taking the White House,” centers on the attempt, by “Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Carnegie and Morgan” to “unite in a bid to buy the White House by striking a lucrative deal with Ohio Governor, William McKinley.”[15]

According to the History Channel, this “bid” consisted at least partially of a “donation” of $30 million to McKinley courtesy of the above-named money trust.[16]

McKinley’s close ties to finance and industry, and his opposition by populist-Democrat and master orator William Jennings Bryan created – or, at least, cemented – the idea that Republicans are the “party of the rich.”

Further reinforcing this notion has been the tendency of Republican presidents – including Nixon,[17] Reagan and Bush I – to belong to yet another cryptic and private group. In this case, it is one that annually meets in Sonoma County, California, in the shady surrounds of imposing redwood trees.

Called the “Bohemian Club,” it hosts a summer retreat at the eponymous “Bohemian Grove” in Monte Rio, some 70-odd miles north of San Francisco.

Originally founded in 1872 by a cadre of newspaper men, it morphed into a clique for economic heavy-hitters and kingmakers. The “Grove” is an interesting symbol in its own right – one which I hope to explore in a future installment.

But as a literal forest hideaway, it appears to date from around 1901.

This was the era of President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, among whose claims to fame is launching the “conservationist movement,” which reclassified massive tracts of the country’s land as “National Parks,” making them off limits to developers.

…Unless, that is, you’re among the privileged class. Then you can go ahead and build your magnificent woodland haven in the middle of the John Muir Woods and have the grounds cared for by the National Park Service.[18]

As Mel Brooks’ character repeatedly exclaims in The History of World, Part 1: “It’s good to be the king.”

By some accounts, until Donald Trump took office, “[e]very Republican president since Herbert Hoover [had] belonged to the club.”[19]

A centerpiece of the “Summer High Jinks” spectacle performed at the Grove every year is a psychodrama titled the “Cremation of Care.” It features the supposedly mock-sacrificial immolation of a figure – designated “Dull Care” – below a humongous wooden owl (whose character, at one time, was voiced by a recording of longtime Columbia Broadcasting System anchorman Walter Cronkite).

For more on this conscience-banishing ritual, see “10 Occultists Who Were Accused SPIES.”

Number 3

In third place,[20] we have a two-way tie of those who belonged to no fewer than four secret societies.

Here, we’ll recall “Rough Rider” Teddy Roosevelt, whose corporate “monopoly-busting” is reputed to have struck a blow for the little guy, …

…but which resulted in John D. Rockefeller’s net worth skyrocketing to levels it hadn’t hit previously. I won’t hazard any guesses about whether this outcome was foreseen or unforeseen, intended or not intended. It is routinely asserted that Roosevelt took a turn to the left.

Indeed, he eventually opposed his former protégé, Bonesman William Howard Taft, in the 1912 election.

When the Trust Buster failed to obtain the Republican nomination, in the contest that wound up in the favor of Democratic Woodrow Wilson, he created his own third party.

Officially named the “Progressive Party,” it was popularly nicknamed the “Bull Moose Party,” after a bombastic comment from Roosevelt who defiantly claimed that he remained “strong as a bull moose” after being thrown over for Taft at the Republican Convention.

The bombastic phrase was typical for Roosevelt. But it’s noteworthy that he was a member of the Loyal Order of Moose.

The secret society, now known as Moose International, follows the overarching pattern – for initiations, advancement, and meetings – long established by Freemasonry.

Like numerous other groups, however, it appears to have been primarily catered to men who wished periodically to blow off steam and get loaded. In this vein, it is usually depicted as a rival to another, similar drinking club called the Order of Elks.

In the mold of social organizations with quirky beginnings, the Elks is said to have begun life in 1868 as a get-together of a minstrel troupe that called itself the “Jolly Corks.”

Once upon a time, justifiably or not, the group had a reputation for ribaldry. It was thought that their meetings were occasions – or even pretexts – for drunkenness, indecency, and even orgies.

This description hearkens to tales of the 18^th-century “Hell-Fire Club,” one incarnation of which boasted Benjamin Franklin as a member.

We got into this in a little more detail in “10 Occultists Who Were Accused SPIES” and we mentioned it in passing in “10 ‘Sex-Magic’ Cults.”

After the passage of some time, and a dash of remedial “P.R.,” the modern association “rebranded” itself as benefit society, under the expanded named “Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.”

Minimally, that means insurance sales.

One of the Elk’s members, at some stage of its evolution, was 33^rd U.S. President, and 33^rd-Degree Freemason, Harry S. Truman – who, …

…some say, had his early governmental ambitions bankrolled by fraudster “political boss” Tom “T. J.” Pendergast.

As Michael Hoffman once noted, “Give ‘Em Hell Harry” – true to his nickname – “did just that” by authorizing the vaporization of several hundred thousand Japanese at Hiroshima and Nagasaki when the United States of America became the first and (so far!) only country in world history to use atomic weapons in war.

Perhaps it’s meaningful that Truman was also a prominent member of Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, colloquially called the “Shriners.”[21] Their presumably once-secret vow, the alleged text of which is now widely available from online and print sources, reads like a blood oath invoking “…Allah, the God of Arab, Muslim and Mohammed…”.[22]

In any case, their characteristic headgear, a tasseled conical red hat called a “fez” is often adorned with Islamic-esque symbols like the curved sword (called a “scimitar”) and the crescent moon. Some anti-Masons, Protestant Fundamentalists, and others of a generally paranoid bent sometimes fret about the deep color of the hat. Occasionally, it is suggested that it is blood red – in commemoration of some past, but difficult to precisely identify, Muslim-instigated slaughter of Christians.

Nowadays, the name “Shriner” is perhaps more frequently conjoined with the word “hospital” than with anything else.

Though, to be fair, this talk sometimes invites “Moolah clowns” – and they can be horrifying enough.

Who said secret societies were only for Republicans? Right, just ask Kennedy or Truman!

Sidelight: Royal Order of Jesters

Some secret organizations contain even more reclusive societies within the larger society. In at least one case, these are nested several layers deep – like “Russian dolls.”

Take, for example, the fact that the Shriners only accept “master masons” in good standing. These are men who have attained the Third Degree within basic, Blue Lodge (or “Craft”) freemasonry.

But – by invitation only – a select few Shriners may be asked to join the more obscure Royal Order of Jesters which, by its own admission, is dedicated to enjoyment and merrymaking.

The Jesters were reportedly founded in 1911, adopting for themselves a vaguely sinister totem called the “Billikin” …

…– among other symbols, some of which evince an apparent fascination with death (one apparently shared by other orders, such as the previously named Skull & Bones).

Weirdly, the Billiken isn’t unique to the Jesters. In fact, earlier claim to it may have been made by the Catholic, Jesuit-controlled Saint Louis University, which refers to the Buddha-looking sigil – and stylized variations, thereof – as its “good-luck charm” and mascot.

Once prosecuted back east on charges of prostitution and human trafficking (with hints of deadlier antics), the Royal Order of Jesters has been investigated for its – shall we say? excessive partying – by now-absentee researcher Sandy Frost.

However, as of this recording, an eye-opening piece is readily available at Medium.com, the “blogging” website started by Twitter cofounder Evan Williams. No fewer than two U.S. Presidents are said to have had connexions with these exclusive fun-seekers.

The first was Missourian Harry S. Truman.

The second? Gerald R. Ford – whose wife, Betty Ford, became something of a byword for alcoholism – not least through her own struggles and via her eponymous “substance-abuse” clinic.

Number 2

Now we’re really “up there,” as it were, on our list. One, two, …even four secret-society affiliations is small potatoes for our next president who, according to the record, maintained at least six such memberships.

We’re speaking of 29^th President, Warren Gamaliel Harding – who popularity at the time of his election quickly eroded in the face of numerous, unflattering posthumous disclosures.

Among minor accomplishments, Harding is remembered for the creation of the Veteran’s Bureau which, through various twists and turns, has become the United States Department of Veterans Affairs.

Though, it is arguable that the most distinctive things about him were the strangeness of his death and the brevity of his presidency that, nonetheless, was riddled with scandal.

In one writer’s bitingly sarcastic appraisal, Harding was “[a] newspaper publisher who became president of the U.S. And gave dirty politics a bad name by surrounding himself with some of the most dishonest and corrupt chiselers of all time.”[23]

He wasn’t even close to having occupied his office for the absolute shortest amount of time – that dubious “award” goes to 9^th President, William Henry Harrison.

Still, he’s one of ten presidents to have served less than a single full term, for one reason or other.

In the case of Warren G. Harding, accounts vary slightly. The cause of death has various been attributed to any, or some combination, of the following: cardiac arrest, cerebral hemorrhage, food poisoning, and pneumonia. I plan to spend just a tad more time with this curious story in a forthcoming video.

But, for now, suffice it to say that Harding’s peculiar demise punctuated a presidency the climax of which was, at least retrospectively, the bribery fiasco known as “Teapot Dome.” The upshot of the affair was that Harding’s Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, was convicted of accepting money from oil men – including Harry Ford Sinclair – to secretly transfer land rights from the Navy to private business interests.

Well, to be precise, Harding gave Fall control of Teapot Dome by executive order. Then Fall handed it over to Big Oil. I suppose that provides a veneer of “deniability.”

Maybe that would be giving Harding too much credit. One source alleged that he spent more time playing poker than governing the nation. Harding hosted regular poker games attended by a fair few of his “Ohio Gang,” including “…Fall, Attorney General Harry Daughtery, [gofer] Jesse Smith, and Veterans Bureau head Charles R. Forbes. After the Teapot Dome scandal, Fall and Forbes went to jail, Daugherty got two hung juries, and Smith committed suicide.”[24]

Or…was it murder?

Anyway, Harding loved his secrets. Like McKinley before him, he was a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, a group whose origins are as mythologized as those of Freemasonry – from which it may have emerged.

Ignoring the surely fantastical claims of 11^th-century beginnings, the Odd Fellows can be documented in 18^th-century England, where it attracted such members as dissident journalist and politician, John Wilkes.

Wilkes was also a member of the previously mentioned Hell-Fire Club, which we covered in greater depth in “Top 10 Occult Spies.”

The Odd Fellows was subsequently associated with the rakish British monarch George IV. In turn, King George had dealings with portrait artist Richard Cosway.

Cosway was connected to an erotic-mystical circle via English Romantic artist, poet, and Emanuel-Swedenborg enthusiast William Blake…

…whom we discussed in “Top 10 ‘Sex-Magic’ Cults.”

The Odd Fellows crossed the Atlantic with Thomas Wildey, who founded a lodge in Baltimore.

This North American progenitor initially catered more to the blue-collar set than had its ancestor from London. This explains Harding’s involvement, since he started off as a “working man,”[25] selling insurance and doing other odd jobs in his youth.[26]

Like the exclusive Skull-and-Bones fraternity, the Odd Fellows has – or had – a fascination with death symbolism. According to the Washington Post, human “…skeletons …reside in closets, drawers, attics and crawl spaces in Odd Fellows lodges nationwide.”

Reportedly, these remains are invoked as emblems “of mortality” during initiation ceremonies. According to one member, the skeletons are hidden and only make their appearances when a prospective candidate actually goes through the secret admission ritual.

The Odd Fellows appear to have derived these practices from the Freemasons – at least, those of the higher-degree Scottish Rite. In Masonic ritual materials, one can find innumerable references to coffins, “death’s head” skulls, skeletons, and other ritual paraphernalia.

Commentators as far flung as the 19^th-century Presbyterian preacher Charles Finney and 21^st-century writer John “Ed” Decker have asserted that members of the “Brotherhood” go so far as to drink wine from a human skull during the 30^th-degree ceremony.

Predictably, this is denied by Masonic apologists, like S. Brent Morris.

But, the macabre spectacle was given credence by novelist Dan Brown, whose book The Lost Symbol – which Morris admitted “showed Masons in a pretty good light” – incorporates the scene into its opening pages.

Similarly to the Elks, the Odd Fellows were believed to incline toward the Bacchanalian.

One aspect of this suspicion was the fact that it was the Odd Fellows, rather than the Masons per se, who were accused of incorporating goats into their outrageous ritualism.

This would be an amusing irrelevance were it not for curiously recurring links between goat symbolism and devil worship. Notable mentions include: Aleister Crowley’s rendition of the #15 “Devil” card in the Tarot deck as well as Éliphas Lévi’s drawing of Baphomet, …

We can’t neglect the related, so-called “Goat of Mendes” or “Baphomet sigil” originally published – if not drawn by – occultist Stanislas de Guaita.

Reportedly, there’s also an obscure reference, in Masonry, to a “God of All Things” that later morphed into a “Grand Architect Of The Universe.” Those initials are awfully GOAT-like.[27]

Number 1

But even Warren G. Harding, with his half-dozen affiliations, can’t hold a candle to Theodore Roosevelt’s fifth cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. By my (admittedly rough and unscientific) count, F.D.R. was a veritable aficionado of secret societies, having been actively involved with no fewer than seven of them over his lifetime.

A Democrat – in fact, the ultimate Democrat in the minds of his many admirers – F.D.R. was famously elected for a whopping four presidential terms. Of course, he only served three of them since he died a few months into 1945.

Officially, he is said to have died from an “intracerebral hemorrhage.”

He also suffered from diseases of his arteries and heart, and recent medical revisionists have suggested that, perhaps due to his longtime tobacco smoking, he may have died of cancer.[28] We may have an additional possibility to float in a follow-up presentation. Stay tuned.

In any case, and justifiably or not, F.D.R. is credited with helping to bring the United States out of the Great Depression. His so-called “New Deal” policies enlarged the federal government in the name of economic recovery and future stability.

He instituted the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC, ostensibly to safeguard bank accounts.[29]

Though… according to financial advisor and writer Fredric Mark “Ric” Edelman, writing in his The Truth About Money (originally published in 1997): Nowadays, “…FDIC …has only $1.25 per $100.”[30]

FDR created the Social Security Administration as a sort of “social-insurance” program, including various old-age benefits.[31]

Not all these achievements were universally acclaimed. Some have proved more lastingly controversial than others.

For example, FDR is remembered for confiscating most privately held gold under the guise of rebooting the economy.

Meanwhile, some wealthy gold bugs – especially (one presumes) those within FDR’s Blue-Blood circle – were at least partially exempted from complying with the Executive Order 6102. You see, some holdings were treated as collector’s (or “numismatic”) pieces, rather than as circulating coin.

The Great Depression itself was a suspiciously selective catastrophe. Noble-Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman was among the more prominent people to call attention to the rôle of the Federal Reserve in crashing the America economy – despite the uncomfortable fact that the “Fed’s” whole reason for existing was ostensibly to prevent such misery.

All this led to the charge, from many of the “right side” of the politic spectrum, that Franklin Roosevelt was either an out-and-out Communist or, at the least, a sympathizer.

In fact, it seems that some American industrialists and money men became so fed up, that they attempted to orchestrate a coup d’état to remove Roosevelt from power.

In the basic narrative, which I hope to expound in a follow-up presentation, a highly decorated marine-corps officer, General Smedley Darlington Butler, was approached to lead the American Legion to facilitate this “regime change.”

[Video clip of Butler]

That F.D.R. came through the event unscathed testifies to the diligence of his attendant angel. The entire story – sometimes referred to as the “Business Plot” or the “Capitol Hill Coup” – is a fascinating chapter of American history. It seems to be a part of the complicated crypto-political backdrop for the so-called “January 6^th Riot,” the symbolism surrounding which we sketched in a dedicated video.

Although we intend to tug on some conspiratorial threads in this tangled yarn in future installments, for now, we return to the fact that FDR maintained numerous secret-society connexions.

One of these was with the Knights of Pythias,[32] which organization Roosevelt is said to have joined during his long presidential tenure.

The Knights of Pythias, instituted during the fratricidal waste that is euphemistically termed the “civil war,” was apparently “chartered” – whatever that comes down to – by the federal government (either Abraham Lincoln or, more likely, Congress).

Its ritualism is based on the so-called Pythagorean ideal of friendship, as exemplified in the myth of Damon and Pythias.[33] This is just a single example of the abiding fascination with Pythagoras one discovers in esotericism. For examples, & for the reasons, see “Top 10 Occultists of All Time” …

…as well as the dedicated “Pythagoras.”

The Knights were founded in 1864 by a U.S. Treasury Department clerk named Justus Henry Rathbone. Rathbone was also a member of the so-called Improved Order of Red Men…

…which F.D.R., some years later, would also join.

The society adopted some of the symbols and vocabulary of Amerindians in a manner similar to the embrace of the trappings of Islam by the Masonic Shriners or – for that matter – like the Knights of Pythias’s own Knights of Khorassan.

The word “Khorassan” is interesting. It supposedly signifies the “east” or “sunrise.”[34] One author has it that “Khorassan signifies, in the old Persian language, Province or Region of the Sun.”[35]

It crops up in the romantic lore of St. Louis’s “Veiled Prophet Parade.”

And, more recently, we’re told there’s an offshoot (or upper echelon) of the dangerous al-Qaeda organization: an “ISIS”-like operation supposedly calling itself the Khorasan Group.

The name is explained as an obscure reference to the same general area that has been the key geo-political node and espionage epicenter for over a hundred years – and which you can discover more about in the video “10 Occultist Spies.” It was of great interest to mason and novelist Rudyard Kipling.

And this leads us back to F.D.R. for whom, arguably, a major preoccupation was Freemasonry.

The most flamboyant attestation of this is the fact that it was during Roosevelt’s presidential incumbency that the all-seeing eye symbol was placed on the U.S. dollar bill.

Well in advance of its implementation in the design of the dollar, eminent 19^th-century Harvard art professor, Charles Eliot Norton, labeled eye-and-pyramid amalgam a “dull emblem of a masonic fraternity.”[36]

There are a few other key players in that drama, including FDR’s third-term vice president and mystic, Henry Agard Wallace; Wallace’s one-time personal, spiritual “guru,” the Russian Theosophist Nicholas Roerich…

…to whom we devoted a segment in the previously named “…Occultist …SPIES…” video…

…and hearkening back to the Knights of Pythias, FDR’s treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau Jr. (You’ll recall that the Knights get their start in the imagination of a treasury clerk.)

According to Dr. Robert Hieronymus, a specialist on the United States Great Seal, Roerich likely suggested placing the all-seeing-eye symbol on the dollar. And then Wallace brought the idea to FDR, who simply instructed Morgenthau to use it.

The upshot is that presidential secret-society affiliations literally stare us in the face whenever we pay with cash – an occurrence that (admittedly) happens less and less often with each passing day. And, of course, it’s far from the only association between our currency and occultism. See “Top 10 Gold-Making Alchemists” for the magical origins of the serpentine “dollar sign.”

Conclusion

Did we miss – or miscount – anyone? What order would you have preferred? Feel free to drop us a comment, below.

But if you found something of interest, please be sure to “Like” the video and, if you’re not already subscribed to the channel, consider doing so in order to see more content similar to this.

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Copyright 2023, TheSynchroMystic. All applicable rights reserved.

[1]President John F. Kennedy, “The President and the Press: Address Before the American Newspaper Publishers Association,” Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York City, April 27, 1961; online at <https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/american-newspaper-publishers-association-19610427>.

[2]House Select Committee on Assassinations, Investigation of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: Hearings Before the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives, United States Congress, Ninety-Fifth Congress, Second Session, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Govt. Printing Office, 1978-1979; online at <https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report>.

[3]Adam Parfrey and Craig Heimbichner, Ritual America: Secret Brotherhoods and Their Influence on America, Port Townsend, Wash.: Feral House, p. xviii.

[4]For his part, Franklin presided over Masonic assemblies both in America and in Europe.

[5] According to the official website of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc., the third U.S. president “is frequently, yet falsely, linked to the Freemasons.” (“Fraternal Organizations,” Monticello.org, n.d., <https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jefferson-encyclopedia/fraternal-organizations/>.) No initiation records are extant that would be evidence of the contrary, as is usually pointed out by Masonic apologists (such as S. Brent Morris). Despite these protests, Jefferson is sometimes found on rosters of Masonic presidents. (See, e.g., “Masonic Presidents of the United States,” Harry S. Truman Library and Museum, National Archives, <https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/photograph-records/58-11>. Notice that James Madison is also depicted on the image.)

[6] Amy Wallace, David Wallechinsky, and Irving Wallace, The Book of Lists #3, New York: Bantam, 1983, p. 28.

[7] Jimmy Carter is sometimes listed as a Freemason. However, supposedly, this is based upon a misreading of the significance of that fact that he was sworn into office using George Washington’s Inaugural Bible, which was in the custody of a Masonic Lodge (St. Johns No. 1, New York). Carter is best remembered for brokering a peace deal between Egypt and Israel that concluded three decades of hostility – but also served as the catalyst for the creation of Baptist minister Jerry Falwell’s “Moral Majority,” which signaled a new partnership between Protestant Christians and the Republican political party. Fundamentalists were professedly dissatisfied with what they interpreted as a betrayal of the Israeli state.

[8]Virginia Cox, “Rhetoric and Ethics in Machiavelli,” John M. Najemy, The Cambridge Companion to Machiavelli, chapt. 11, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2010, <https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-companion-to-machiavelli/rhetoric-and-ethics-in-machiavelli/9F3D60D530A02EDF192819DB3FC3C40A>.

[9] “Skull and Bones, Yale University,” Biography Presents Secret Societies, New York: Hearst Specials, 2023, p. 43.

[10]The confession is from Henry L. Valance, as published in Charles G. Finney, The Character, Claims, and Practical Workings of Freemasonry, Cincinnati: Western Tract & Book Society, ca. 1869, <https://www.gospeltruth.net/1869Freemasonry/freem_chap2.htm>.

[11]Marcus Baram, “Did Bush’s Grandfather Steal Geronimo’s Skull?” ABC News, Jun. 20, 2007, <https://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=3299671&page=1>.

[12]“Geronimo’s Kin Sue Skull and Bones,” Associated Press via NBC, Feb. 18, 2009, <https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna29265600>.

[13]Numbers 5, 6, and 7!

[14]Or, four parts over eight hours of broadcast time.

[15]For the quote, available (at time of writing) via a Google search, see: <https://www.google.com/search?q=history+channel+men+who+built+america&rlz=1C1UEAD_enUS946US946&oq=history+channel+men+&aqs=chrome.0.0i355i512j46i512j69i57j0i22i30l7.3870j0j9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#wptab=si:AEcPFx7344W7I-FdyS_HaKiRPRHW9DfKDEEkRfxriy8TgoDRa69ZGfZQIjCsemp_VNl8HxbR9–Jc26PvlJUYJ3419Wj6u34i4-RRRNnqywV-cPZJYZLgeSqX-E0y9v8E3NQbyGstGBps9sXrC-Im-8F8adJLrRmUNvFjArWMbGl3DD1usg-4AA%3D>.

[16]See, e.g., the episode summary available at the Internet Movie Database, “Taking the White House,” History Channel, season 1, episode 7; “Storyline” at IMDB, <https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18298200/>. Cf. The 1913 Pujo Committee Report, details about which can be found at “Money Trust,” Wikipedia, Feb. 3, 2023, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_trust>.

[17] According to Wikipedia’s summary of the “historical drama” Secret Honor, “…Nixon admits that he has been the willing tool of a political network he alternately calls ‘the Bohemian Grove’ and ‘The Committee of 100’.” “Secret Honor,” Wikipedia, Aug. 27, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Honor>; see Donald Freed and Arnold M. Stone, Secret Honor, Robert Altman, dir., New York: Cinecom, 1984, film.

[18]See “Bohemian Grove,” National Park Service, Nov. 7, 2021, <https://www.nps.gov/places/000/bohemian-grove.htm>.

[19]Devon Jackson, “Bohemian Club,” Conspiranoia, New York: Penguin; Plume, 2000, p. 33.

[20]#s 3 & 4.

[21]Cofounding credits are given to surgeon Walter Millard Fleming, allegedly a Masonic-degree collector almost as enthusiastic as John Yarker, and playwright William J. Florence (born William Jermyn Conlin).

[22]Parfrey and Heimbichner, p. 119.

[23]Laurence J. Peters, qtd. in David Wallechinsky, Irving Wallace, and Amy Wallace, The Book of Lists, New York: Bantam Books, 1980, p. 15.

[24]Wallechinsky, Wallace, and Wallace, op. cit., p. 374.

[25]“JFK and the U.S. Presidents Who Died in Office,” History (U.K.), <https://www.history.co.uk/articles/us-presidents-who-died-in-office>.

[26]“Warren G. Harding,” Wikipedia, Mar. 5, 2023, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_G._Harding>.

[27]On the latter, see Parfrey and Heimbichner, op. cit., p. 51.

[28]Barron H. Lerner, “Roosevelt’s Last Days: Did cancer kill FDR?” Slate, Nov. 24, 2009, <https://slate.com/technology/2009/11/did-franklin-d-roosevelt-actually-die-from-cancer.html>.

[29]“History of the FDIC,” Fed. Deposit Insurance Corp., Jun. 6, 2022, <https://www.fdic.gov/about/history/>.

[30] Ric Edelman, The Truth About Money, 3^rd ed., New York: HarperBusiness; Rodale, 2004-2005, p. 63. (Earlier editions read: “…$1.22 per $100,” ibid.) The figure may have been updated for the 4^th edition, published in 2010.

[31]“Social Security History,” Social Security Administration, n.d., <https://www.ssa.gov/history/50ed.html>.

[32]Established in 1864 by a school teacher named Justus Henry Rathbone.

[33]The story goes that Pythias was sentenced by a tyrant to death for treason. Pythias accepts his punishment, but asked only for the latitude to conclude his personal business. The tyrant only agreed on the condition that Pythias’s bosom companion, the innocent Damon, submit to arrest to guarantee Pythias’s return. The tyrant is initially surprised that both men agree to this condition. The tyrant, expecting Pythias to simply disappear, anticipates Damon’s execution. But Pythias does come back. The astounded tyrant frees both men in admiration of their friendship.

[34] “Khorasan,” Wiktionary, Mar. 16, 2023, <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Khorasan>.

[35] Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookh: The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, London: Hurst, 1817; online at <https://fiftywordsforsnow.com/ebooks/lalla/prophet.html>.

[36]Qtd. by Gaillard Hunt, ed., The History of the Seal of the United States, Washington D.C.: U.S. Dept. of State, Govt. Printing Office, 1909, p. 55; archived online at <https://books.google.com/books?id=jUZmAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA55>.

10 Quick Reasons to Believe There Really WAS a Conspiracy

According to press reports, the majority of Americans believe that thirty-fifth United States President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was murdered as part of some sort of conspiracy.

However, there’s always that one holdout: a colleague, friend, or other acquaintance who insists that accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.

In this video, in commemoration of the 59^th anniversary of JFK’s untimely death, I’ll sketch ten (10) reasons to believe that there is more to the tale than one, Communist-sympathizing “lone nut.” The aim, here, is certainly not to break new ground or to favor one particular hypothesis over another. Rather, the points to be surveyed are merely intended as candidate “opening moves,” as it were. They may be used in circumstances – such as over holiday dinners – where partisans of the “official story” ask for justification for the skeptic’s position.

The first point could well be that it’s rational in this case to be in the majority. And although there are important, burden-of-proof-style considerations that probably ought to be raised, let’s begin with the following instead.

10. Oswald was never tried – let alone convicted.

Legend has it that there is a presumption of innocence in the legal system of United States of America. At a minimum, this is supposed to mean that a person is considered to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

According to the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, this is to play out via a “speedy …public trial” in front of “an impartial jury” in the relevant jurisdiction. The accused is to have the opportunity to address the evidence and testimony against him, with the help of a competent lawyer.

Of course, as now-deceased attorney Mark Lane vociferously pointed out, Lee Harvey Oswald received no such trial, was never afforded a robust legal defense, and – since he was essentially summarily executed while under the “protection” of the Dallas Police Department – never had the opportunity to confront or answer any of his accusers.

While these facts, by themselves, may not suffice to show that JFK was assassinated as part of a conspiracy, they persuade me that Oswald’s guilt was never established according to this country’s historical canons of judicial fairness.

9. The Warren Report didn’t satisfy everyone.

What about “The President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy”?

Better known as the Warren Commission, this was the body empowered to “investigate” the assassination.

As JFK’s immediate successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson would – in an impartial and sane world – surely have rated more than a passing glance as an accomplice or suspect himself.

Indeed, he would later be implicated by career CIA man, E. Howard Hunt in what has become known as Hunt’s deathbed confession.

Even setting aside the fact that Kennedy’s death catapulted Johnson into the highest office in the land, the new President’s “commission” initially resisted any attempt to allow Oswald, posthumously, to receive a fair hearing.[1]

That including an actual defense for the recently deceased defendant was (at best) an afterthought must surely cast doubt on the pretense that the Warren Commission approximated anything like a “fair trial.”

Furthermore, the commission was populated by at least one of JFK’s presumed enemies – namely, Allen Dulles.

Recall that Kennedy had fired Dulles from the über-secretive Central Intelligence Agency.

When one reflects on this fact, one can easily sympathize with then-influential columnist and television personality Dorothy Kilgallen who publicly ridiculed the Warren Commission’s Report as “laughable.”

Dorothy decided to bring her considerable investigative talents to bear on the matter. Unfortunately, on November 8, 1965, she turned up dead – in highly suspicious circumstances – before her potentially history-altering conclusions could see the light of day.

Or again, consider JFK’s brother, Robert F. “Bobby” Kennedy. According to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., RFK believed that the supposedly exhaustive report was a “shoddy piece of craftsmanship.”

Of course, RFK was short dead in June of 1968, when was – potentially – close to being nominated as the Democratic candidate for the office of the presidency.

The story goes that Bobby’s assassination led the U.S. Secret Service to offer to safeguard high-level political candidates.

A lot of good that does, seeing that JFK ostensibly enjoyed the same “protections” when he became the fourth president to be murdered in office – by official count, anyway – and the first to be assassinated since the Secret Service began shielding the commander in chief.

8. Even Warren Commission members didn’t believe it.

As if it weren’t bad enough to have prominent members of the public rejecting the Warren Commission’s authoritative-sounding pronouncements, the word is some of its own members may not have believed it, either.

For instance, according to various documents belonging to the late Richard B. Russell, a former Democratic senator from Georgia, Russell “was troubled by the Warren Commission’s conclusion that a single bullet killed President John F. Kennedy and wounded former Texas Gov. John Connally, even though he signed the commission’s report…”.[2]

Supposedly, however, Russell had been one of three commission members who at first refused to lend their names to the final report.[3]

The others were Senator John Cooper and Congressman Hale Boggs.

Although Hale Boggs would waffle and make contradictory claims – before his own mysterious disappearance (and presumed death) in an airplane crash in late 1972…

– at one time he disclosed his “strong doubts” about magic-bullet theory.

7. The Commission’s self-doubt engenders skepticism.

When nearly half of commission members had grave misgivings about signing their own “findings,”…

…it’s not surprising that upwards of half of the American public can’t bring themselves to believe it either.

Prominent people who have, in one capacity or other, expressed some measure of disbelief, include numerous celebrities – from Kevin Costner and Tommy Lee Jones to Oliver Stone and Bruce Willis – have made no bones about their incredulity.

In the political sphere, the quirky, left-leaning “independent” former professional wrestler and ex-governor of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura is a professed doubter of the System-approved account,…

…as are occasional presidential hopefuls John Forbes Kerry and Gary Warren Hartpence.

The latter, better known as “Gary Hart,” went so far as point out the (obvious) failure of mainstream “American journalism” to do any real “follow up” on the myriad indicators of widespread treachery.

In fact, this dereliction of press responsibility is so grievous and, on its face, so inexplicable that it deserves its own treatment – which I hope to provide. For now, suffice it to say that, at least since World War II, the relationship between the media and the intelligence services has been a little, well… murky.

6. The media seems long ago to have sacrificed any semblance of objectivity.

Let’s try to make this point more vividly. Case in point, consider a then-youthful CBS news correspondent Dan Rather speaking about his viewing of the film of the assassination captured by Ukrainian-born American clothier Abraham Zapruder.[4] Rather misrepresents the result of the second shot to hit Kennedy[5] – which he calls “the third total shot” – falsely claiming that it caused the president’s “head …to move violently forward”.[6]

[play]

In fact, Kennedy’s head was savagely blown back and to the left, in the memorable phraseology of director Oliver Stone’s film, JFK.[7] [play]

You’ll note that, in 1963, the Zapruder Film was purchased by Time-Life and essentially put on ice.

It’s an interesting story – and it involves a now seldom mentioned former O.S.S. operative, army psychological-warfare mastermind, and Eisenhower speechwriter named Charles Douglas “C. D.” Jackson.

But that will have to wait. For the time being, I’ll simply note that, except for the publication of odd still frames – several of which were reproduced out of their proper sequence – Dan Rather’s claims could not readily be exposed as fabrications.

In 2022, when Zapruder’s footage is easily discovered by anyone with a web browser, widely available references such as Wikipedia casually admit that there were “inaccuracies in his [Dan Rather’s] description” of the content of the film.[8] That’s an understatement.

5. Despite the disinformation, scattered admissions are intriguing.

Rather was far from unique. And the relentless Oswald-alone agitprop continues to be pushed by soulless apparatchiks like Peter Jennings well into the 21^st century. But, occasional interesting tidbits can be found.

For example, consider comments made by Lyndon Johnson to Walter Cronkite in 1969. LBJ stated that he couldn’t rule out the assassination involving “international connexions.”[9]

For some reason, Cronkite – billed as “the most trusted man in America” – was inexplicably standing by a news wire machine at around noon (Dallas time) when the JFK-assassination dispatch came thru.

4. Newsman admits the obvious: ‘there had to be a conspiracy.’

As we hope to excavate in a future video, even a partial accounting of the worrying interrelationships between major newspapers and television networks on the one hand, and the Central Intelligence Agency on the other, shows that among the worst offenders were some of the biggest names in the business: for example, CBS and the New York Times.

So, perhaps it isn’t all that surprising that this particular comment owes to a man who was a fixture of public broadcasting instead.[10]

In an interview with Diane Rehm, Jim Lehrer remarked:

“I went at my reporting or the idea that there had to be a conspiracy. The only issue was, what kind of conspiracy?”[11]

I would say that this is extraordinary. But, on the contrary, it seems to me that nothing could be more ordinary. Perhaps we should take it as an attestation of the adage (apparently falsely attributed to George Orwell) that “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”[12]

3. Even a pathological liar occasionally lets the truth slip.

Former President Richard M. Nixon isn’t exactly remembered for his honestly. The only president ever forced to resign his office, he – or someone in his administration – ran an espionage and sabotage campaign against his political enemies.

This culminated in the Watergate debacle, in which a group of burglars – including several central intelligence agents such as E. Howard Hunt – were arrested trying to bug the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee.

“Coincidentally” (quote, unquote), Hunt was also likely front and center in the JFK assassination – at least according to his own alleged deathbed confession, as told to his son Saint John Hunt.

Even some possible (and famous) photographic evidence exists.

It has long been suspected that E. Howard Hunt was one of the three so-called “hobos” or “tramps” present at ground zero on November 22, 1963.

In his secret audio tapes, Nixon made repeated references to his fear that the Watergate investigations would uncover the “whole Bay of Pigs thing.” To hear Nixon’s former White House chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, tell it, this was a code phrase for Kennedy’s assassination.

At one point, Nixon appeals for cover-up help to then-Director of Central Intelligence, Richard Helms. In his usual halted, rambling style, Nixon is heard to bring up: “The ‘who shot John?’ angle,” asking: “Is Eisenhower to blame? Is Kennedy to blame? Is Johnson to blame? Is Nixon to blame? Etc., etc. It may become, not by me, a very vigorous issue. But if it does, I need to know what is necessary to protect – frankly – the intelligence-gathering and the dirty-tricks department. And I will protect it. I have done more than my fair share of lying to protect you. And I believe it’s totally right to do it.”

So, here is the sitting U.S. President – Tricky Dick, himself – asking the head of the CIA for information on “who shot John” Kennedy. And of course, quite interestingly, Helms did not say: of course, it was Lee Harvey Oswald.

2. Some of the files are still sealed.

Which brings up another curiosity: After 59 years, some of the JFK-associated records are still off limits. This naturally brings a few questions to mind, such as: what are they still hiding?

At this point, establishment pundits typically scoff – as if the only reason to fret about secret archival information is the chimerical quest for a “smoking-gun” document. But such thoughts are wrongheaded – in two equal and opposite directions.

For one thing, the fact that some records remain hidden – even at this historical distance – displays the bad faith of certain government archivists. It’s already beyond question that there has been a cover up. That the same players still resist – or outright refuse – oversight is, frankly, insulting.

This leads to a second, and perhaps more important, point – one which moves in a diametrically different direction. Namely, it’s reasonable to think that the sealed files are an emblem of a pathological lack of volition on the part of the American people. We don’t need to wait for some smoking gun. The evidence already available is more than sufficient to show that President John F. Kennedy was murdered by conspirators – some of whom (or some of whose heirs) are yet in power. The problem isn’t sealed files; the problem is collective paralysis.

1. The government’s own most recent investigation concluded conspiracy!

As a final attestation to the fact that overwhelming evidence for conspiracy is widely available, we need look no further than the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Established in 1976, it looked into the JFK murder, among other things. It’s conclusions?

One was this: “The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.”

A second was that there is a “high probability” of a second gunman. – meaning… whatever conspiracy you favor, Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone.

A second was that there was a “high probability” of a second gunmen – meaning, of course, that (regardless of what conspiracy you favor) Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone.

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[1]    It only reluctantly appointed Walter E. Craig, then head of the American Bar Association, to the task when called out on the “oversight” by the previously named Mark Lane.

[2]    “Senator Russell’s Papers Show He Disagreed With Warren Report,” Rome News-Tribune, Oct. 17, 1993, p. 7A; online at <https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=bhMwAAAAIBAJ&pg=3085%2C4917493>.

[3]    Charles J. Sanders and Mark S. Zaid, “Disclosure Law at Last May Help to Clarify the Facts of the Kennedy Assassination,” South Texas Law Review, vol. 34, p. 412; reproduced in Hearing Before the Legislation and National Security Subcommittee of the Committee on Government Operations, The Effectiveness of Public Law 102-526, The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records, U.S. House of Representatives, 103^rd Congress, 1^st Session, Nov. 17, 1993, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1994, p. 141; archived online at <https://books.google.com/books?id=j6Z_LOsTRi8C&pg=PA141>.

[4]    “Dan Rather’s account from November 25, 1963,” HelmerReenberg (channel), YouTube, posted Jan. 28, 2010, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiSoxFHyjGY>.

[5] Between 2:01 and 2:17.

[6]    Ibid.

[7]    See “JFK Zapruder Footage: Slowed Down & Enhanced,” Wayne Robson (channel), YouTube, posted Sept. 28, 2011, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mwy6Q9_cUwc>.

[8]    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapruder_film>.

[9]    “Lyndon Johnson interview with Walter Cronkite, September 1969,” Michael Courtenay (channel), YouTube, posted Nov 23, 2013, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5psrZmT0tY>. The interview excerpt, though recorded in September 1969, was originally part of a CBS Nightly News broadcast dated April 24, 1975.

[10]  Tho, PBS had its share of odd characters. For instance, former White House Press Secretary – and ex-Council on Foreign Relations member – Bill Moyers deserves a careful look.

[11]  Jim Lehrer, interviewed by Diane Rehm, “Jim Lehrer: ‘Top Down: A Novel Of The Kennedy Assassination’,” Diane Rehm Show, Oct. 7 2013, <https://dianerehm.org/shows/2013-10-07/jim-lehrer-top-down-novel-kennedy-assassination>. Continuing, he said: “So I checked out every one of them, as did everybody else. And it was all said and done, I came away with a conclusion after several years, after a few years that there may have been a conspiracy,” ibid.

[12]  Cf. Brad Sylvester, “FACT CHECK: Did George Orwell Say, ‘Telling The Truth Is A Revolutionary Act’? We take a look,” National Interest, Jul. 29, 2019, <https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/fact-check-did-george-orwell-say-%E2%80%98telling-truth-revolutionary-act%E2%80%99-69896>.