By MICHAEL HOWARD—

Today, especially in New Age circles, the term ‘shamanism’ is often used in a generalised way to describe all kinds of indigenous magical practices in a wide range of cultures worldwide. It has also been projected back into a past that it never had, so we can find modern books on so-called ‘Celtic shamanism’ and even ‘Ancient Egyptian shamanism’. Modern writers on the subject such as Dr. Michael Harner have also created what is called ‘core shamanism’ or ‘urban shamanism’. 

This takes the essence of shamanic beliefs and practices and repackages them in a safe, sanitised and often diluted form that is acceptable for Western seekers of alternative spirituality. In this article, however, we examine and describe the real ‘core shamanism’ as it has been practised for hundreds of years in its homeland of Siberia and the Turkic-speaking areas of Mongolia, and where it is now being revived.

In the late 16^th and early 17^th centuries the area known as Siberia was colonised by the Russians. They were led there by its abundance of wild animals that created a flourishing trade in animal skins and furs. The Tsars used the income from this enterprise to boost their economy and access the foreign currency that helped create the Russian empire. The influx of Russian hunters, fur traders and merchants drastically affected the local population, which consisted of many different tribes. By the 1900s the native population had dwindled to about 10% of the total people living in Siberia. Along with the fur traders there also came missionaries and, in later times, anthropologists. The former were interested in converting the indigenous population to Orthodox Christianity, while the latter wanted to study their tribal culture, spiritual beliefs and ritual practices. Both these groups of outsiders contacted the tribal shamans of Siberia and, for totally different reasons, recorded and commented upon their religious observances.

The earliest references to magical practitioners that could be described as shamans in fact date back to the 13^th century. It was then that the first Western travellers penetrated Central Asia and visited the court of the Mongol rulers. The explorer Marco Polo, for instance, met magicians who were healers and could diagnosis diseases by the use of divination. Polo says they became possessed by what he described as “a devil,” who then used their vocal chords to speak through them.

However, it was an English explorer called Richard Johnston in the 16^th century who first described what sounds very like the activities of shamans proper. He reported witnessing a tribal priest wearing animal skins and playing a drum “shaped like a great sieve” in “devilish rites.” During the ritual the drummer fell into a trance and was possessed by “evil spirits.”

In 1692 another Western explorer, Nicholas Witsen, described seeing a “shaman” or “priest of the Devil.” He was clad in ritual regalia, consisting of an antlered head-dress and a richly decorated robe, and chanted and beat on a drum to attract the spirits. Generally, reflecting the Catholic culture they came from, these Westerners regarded the shamans as fanatical “devil worshippers” who forced their ignorant and uneducated followers to serve evil spirits and demons.

What is Siberian Shamanism?

The meaning of the word ‘shaman’ is shrouded in linguistic mystery and various explanations have been put forward for its origin. One theory is that it is possibly derived from an ancient Chinese term for a Buddhist priest or monk. The Oxford English Dictionary defines its meaning as “a priest or witch-doctor [sic] of (a) class claiming to have sole contact with gods etc.” It says the word comes from the Russian “shaman” and is a translation of the Tungusion word “saman.” In Siberia and Mongolia, shamanism was known as Tengerism, meaning a reverence for sky spirits. It reflected an animistic belief system where everything in the natural world was alive, permeated by spirit force or, in simple terms, inhabited by spirits.

These spirits had to be respected and appeased or else the land would become infertile and barren, the animals relied upon for food would disappear and eventually the world would come to an end. To achieve this essential and vital balance between humans, nature and the spirit world, a magical specialist was required and the shaman took that role. He or she acted as an intermediary or middle person between humanity and the Other, and a caretaker of cultural and magical tradition. Their job involved conducting blessings, especially on new-born babies, performing rituals of protection, divining the future, healing the sick, exorcising ghosts and demons, overseeing the burial of the dead, and generally communicating on behalf of the tribe with the spirit world and its denizens.

Initiation into the shamanic cult could be achieved in several different ways. The easiest was the hereditary route where magical knowledge, power and skill were passed down from grandfather or father to son or, more rarely, from grandmother or mother to daughter. Sometimes children were chosen at a very early age or even at birth by the spirits and instructed by them through the medium of visions and dreams. Young people who suffered a serious illness or disease or from epileptic fits, were introverted and dreamy, or had any form of mental condition or disability, were regarded as natural shamans who had been specially chosen by the spirits.

In later life those who felt a strong calling to become a magical practitioner would retreat from society, usually to a remote place in the wilderness, and undergo a vigil during which they invited the spirits to contact them and teach them the shamanic ways. When a person was actually taken on by another shaman as his assistant or sorcerer’s apprentice, a formal initiation rite was often carried out. The candidate offered an animal sacrifice, called on the spirits to aid them in their task, took an oath of loyalty to their shamanic master or spiritual clan, and accepted the special ritual regalia of a shaman’s office.

Often these initiations by either another shaman or the spirits involved a traumatic visionary death and rebirth experience. Sometimes this included a journey to the underworld, meetings with deities and the would-be shaman’s body being dismembered and then put together again.

The ritual regalia given to the new shaman reflected the fact that he or she was a special person who was separate and different from other members of the tribe. Siberian shamans wore robes made from animal hide and fur and decorated with embroidery, bird’s feathers, silk tassels, ribbons, bells, small mirrors, jewellery representing symbolic motifs such as the World Tree, and assorted metalwork such as copper discs. Headwear consisted of a conical or pointed cap made from felt or fur or the antlers of a reindeer. Some shamans wore iron-shod fur boots so when they stamped their feet they could drive away evil spirits.

The majority of shamans carried a ritual drum similar in shape to the traditional Irish bodhran. These were made from an animal skin stretched over a wooden frame and decorated with feathers and magical symbols representing spirit journeys to the Otherworld or the shamanic cosmology. The drum was very important and represented the symbolic and magical steed that enabled the practitioner to travel from Middle Earth to the realm of the spirits. It was also a magical object in its own right that contained and focused spirit force or energy. By playing it the shaman could both attract spirits and exorcise them. In addition to the drum a magical staff was often carried. This was made of either wood or metal and was decorated with feathers, bells, ribbons and the pelts of small woodland animals.

Different Types of Shaman

Although Westerners used the generic term ‘shaman’ to describe all the tribal magical practitioners of Siberia and Mongolia, in practice they were divided into several different types, categories or classes with specific magical duties and responsibilities. Using English terminology, these included ‘conjurors’ who summoned and controlled spirits, prophets or psychics who foresaw the future, sorcerers who practised ‘black magic’, trance-workers who travelled in spirit form to the Otherworld, healers who were experts in folk medicine and herbalism, and guides to the dead who laid out corpses and conducted funeral rites.

The shaman-healers were often female and they specialised in health matters connected with human and animal fertility, sexuality and children. They were recognisable by their distinctive skirts made from animal hide and brightly coloured woollen hats. Instead of the ritual drum used by the male shamans, they carried a silk fan and prayer beads. Unfortunately when Buddhism came to Siberia and Mongolia many of these female healers were ruthlessly persecuted and exterminated by the misogynist monks. As a result their extensive knowledge of herbs and plants used for natural healing was either lost completely or taken over by Buddhist healers and only practised in a debased or diluted form.

Another female practitioner was the shaman-midwife, who inherited her power from the maternal line of familial descent. As well as ensuring that babies entered this world safely in a physical sense, she was also responsible for their spiritual protection from evil influences during birth and their well-being as children. In this sense she took on the role of a human fairy godmother. Immediately after a birth the shaman-midwife cut the umbilical cord and then purified the new-born baby with salt water and fire. Any (female only) witnesses to the birth could only be present if they had first been ritually purified by the midwife with fire and water. During the first few weeks of a baby’s life it was very important that the proper rituals were performed to protect the child until its spirit was fully established in the material world. If they were not performed properly then the baby’s spirit might return from whence it had come. These essential rites were the responsibility of the shaman-midwife and her assistants.

Another type of shamanic healer was a bone-setter who called upon spirit guides to help them in their healing work. They mainly repaired broken and dislocated bones and torn ligaments, healed back pain caused by spinal injuries or disease and also skin infections such as boils, rashes, psoriasis and eczema. These gifts were inherited from the paternal side of the family and, because the bones of the human body were considered to be spiritually ‘masculine’ in nature, these shamanic bone-setters were always male.

Most of the shamans worked with what modern New Agers call animal allies or spirit-helpers in animal form. These entities assisted them with their magical work and also taught them. For instance, the shaman-midwives described above worked with an animal spirit in the form of a mountain fox. The first bone-setter is supposed to have been taught his skills by a snake so that creature was sacred to the clan. Other shamanic practitioners were assisted by reindeer or wolves for attacking and destroying evil spirits, and ravens for getting rid of diseases. Other important animal spirit helpers included owls, wild ducks, geese, squirrels, bears, frogs and toads, dogs, seagulls and eagles.

One of the most important and respected types of magical practitioners was the shaman-smith. In all cultures all over the world from Europe to Africa the smith took a central role in tribal society and was regarded as a powerful magician or sorcerer because of his mastery over fire and skill in working with metal. There are many legends about blacksmiths making pacts with demons, gods or the Devil or tricking and outwitting them to acquire their skills. There are also many smith gods in ancient mythology who were magicians, made weapons for the Gods or acted as cultural exemplars by inventing agricultural tools. In Siberia the shaman-smiths made and magically consecrated the ritual metal objects used by other shamans. They were only chosen by the spirits and instead of a drum they used their anvils to communicate with the spiritual realm.

‘Black’ & ‘White’ Shamans

As well as the different types of magical practitioner, the shamans were also divided into two separate, but sometimes overlapping, categories – ‘black’ or ‘white’ shamans. The former were regarded as the most powerful of the two and were sometimes known as ‘warrior-shamans’ because they battled evil forces and were consulted as military advisors. They obtained their power from the north (possibly the North Pole or the North Star) and could be easily identified as they always wore black robes with very little, if any, decoration. The primary function of the black shaman was to deal with demons and the dark gods on behalf of their clients. In this role they were hired to curse their enemies and blight their crops and livestock.

In wartime the black shamans attached themselves to the army rather like the modern padres and helped to win battles using their occult powers. In peacetime they took a more positive role as diplomats, political advisors and emissaries and they oversaw the preparation and signing of treaties with the appropriate magical rites. Black shamans were greatly feared, even after their deaths. In the 19^th century when a famous one died she was placed in a coffin made from the ‘unclean’ wood of an aspen. Her corpse was then nailed down with aspen stakes so she could not become a ‘night walker’ and haunt the living.

In contrast, the so-called ‘white’ shamans obtained their magical power from a westerly direction, the home of the benevolent deities and spirits. They operated at a tribal level almost exclusively as healers and diviners and they only had dealings with beneficent entities. It was their role to pacify angry or evil spirits, exorcise them if they possessed human beings and help the tribe live in harmony with their natural environment and the spirit world. To this end on a physical level they were often employed in an administrative role to oversee tribal affairs.

The Yurt, the World Tree & Spirit Flight

In Siberian and especially Mongolian shamanism the yurt, a traditional dwelling constructed from a framework of wooden poles covered with animal skins and with a central smoke-hole in the roof, was a microcosmic symbol or representation of the universe. For this reason all movement inside the yurt was conducted, if at all possible, in a deosil or sunways direction. This also reflected the traditional direction of movement used in shamanic rituals and dances. The centre of the yurt, where a fire burnt in a hearth and was seldom extinguished, was symbolic of the actual centre of the world or universe. The column of smoke that drifted up from the fire and left the yurt through the central smoke-hole in the roof was symbolic of the axis mundi – the World Mountain, World Pillar or World Tree. This links the underworld below with the heavens above and ends at the North and Pole Star around which all the other stars revolve in the night sky.

The shamans believed in three worlds of existence connected together by the World Tree or Tree of Life. They were the lower world or underworld inhabited by the dead who are awaiting reincarnation, the middle world or Middle Earth, the material plane of existence in which human spirits are incarnated, and the upper world or Heaven, the dwelling place of the Gods. Numerous non-human spirits also inhabit each of these three worlds. The shaman can access these other worlds in trance by means of spirit travel. His soul body ascends the column of smoke from the fire and passes through the aperture in the roof of the yurt. It is interesting to note that in medieval times European witches were supposed to fly to their Sabbats by ascending the chimney on their broomsticks. It is obvious that this was not done physically so they also were practising a shamanic type of spirit flight.

Shamans can also fly through the air when they spirit travel, either by shapeshifting into the form of birds (such as geese) or by riding on the back of a flying deer, horse or some other large animal. Again, there are many woodcuts dating from the Middle Ages depicting witches riding through the night sky on the backs of goats and rams. Sometimes the shaman visited the spirit world by ascending the World Tree itself or by travelling along a rainbow. This is another symbol that is found in Northern European paganism where a rainbow bridge connects Midgard (Middle Earth) with Asgard, the realm of the Gods.

One of the methods used by the Siberian shamans to achieve trance and spirit travel was the hallucinogenic fungi amanita muscaria or fly agaric. This red capped white-spotted toadstool has a symbiotic relationship with both birch and fir trees, which grow profusely in northern and arctic climes. It is so closely associated with magical properties in myth and fairy tales that it is frequently depicted in illustrations to modern children’s stories about woodland elves, faeries and goblins. Fly agaric is reputed to be able to open up the ‘crack between the worlds’ and experiments in the 20^th century by the two well-known ethonomycologists Gordon and Valentina Wasson revealed the ethenogenic qualities of this most famous of ‘sacred mushrooms’.

In Siberia fly agaric was sometimes fed to reindeer and then the animal’s toxic urine is drank. The shamans said that taking it put them in touch with the spirit of the plant, who appeared as small mushrooms with eyes and arms and legs attached. Needless to say that in large quantities fly agaric is highly poisonous and can be deadly. It must, as with all hallucinogenic plants used in magical practice, be used in small quantities, treated with respect and only taken after the proper spiritual preparation and then only under expert supervision. It should also be noted that in many countries fly agaric and other psychedelic fungi are classified as dangerous drugs and the possession or partaking of them is illegal.

In common with indigenous folk beliefs in the West, it was accepted in shamanism that the spirit world was not entirely separated from the material one. There are special places in the natural environment – sacra loci – where the two realms meet and touch and interconnect. These can be a sacred mountain or hill, a stone, a river, a lake, a forest or any natural landmark in the countryside. While the shaman may be able to access such ‘gateways’ or ‘portals’ between here and there easily, lesser mortals may be unaware of them or, if they are sensitive, they may feel they are ‘different’ or ‘other’. Spooky places, whether natural sites in the landscape or buildings, associated with folklore, paranormal phenomena and hauntings are usually spirit gateways.

In shamanistic belief all inanimate objects were inhabited or possessed by spirit energy or force who controlled their environs. Some shamans taught that living beings, especially human ones, could have more than one spirit inhabiting their physical body. Many accepted that humans had an etheric, astral or spirit double and this could be projected in trance or spirit travel to roam over the Earth and also enter the Otherworld. The shamans believed that the soul of a human being resided in a spherical or ovoid energy field that surrounds each of us. It is probably what Western occultists would refer to as the auric field or aura. It was this energy field that was attacked by demons or black shamans when they psychically attacked their victims and in that way they could cause illness or death. It was the task of the white shaman to redress the balance by healing the damaged aura and if possible bring the victim back to full health.

Earlier we saw how animals were important clan totems and spirit guides to the shaman. Before the 20^th century and the rise of industrial scale food production, hunting was widespread on the Siberian steppes and in the forests. Unlike Christian belief, it was accepted without question that animals had souls and when hunting them down and killing them it was essential that their sprits were respected and appeased. If they were not, disaster and misfortune could befall the hunter, his family and tribe. When a hunter killed his prey it was always despatched quickly, cleanly and without cruelty. Before it was killed the hunter apologised for having to do so and after death its remains were treated with care and respect. The same rule applied to domestic animals. A master animal spirit ruled each species and prayers and sacrificial offerings of incense and fire were made to them before the hunt began. Hunting purely for pleasure, as practised in the West, was an unknown concept.

Buddhism & the Stamping Out of Shamanism

Despite the early arrival of the fur traders and merchants in Siberia and Mongolia, shamanism survived. In the 16^th century, however, a Mongolian ruler called Altan Khan invited a Tibetan Buddhist mission to the country. His motives were political as he wanted to consolidate his own position as the supreme tribal leader by claiming to be the reincarnation of the great Kubla Khan. The Buddhists agreed to recognise his claim and in return the Khan gave the head of the Buddhist Order the spiritual title of Dalai Lama, which of course exists today even though the present holder is in exile in India. As a result of the Khan’s one conversion, he passed laws banning shamanic rituals and granted the Buddhist priesthood a special status in society and privileges that were not granted to the shamans.

In the 17^th century attempts were made by the Mongolian rulers to eradicate shamanic survival entirely. The black shaman brotherhood refused to submit to the new religion and many were killed. Some of the white shamans came to an accommodation with it. This led to the creation of a third way called ‘yellow shamanism’ that submitted to the control of the lamas and combined shamanic beliefs and practices with Tibetan Buddhism.

During the 18^th century in Siberia, Buddhist, Orthodox Christian and Muslim missionaries attempted to convert the native population and opposed the practice of all rival religions. Considering their modern peaceful and pacifist image, the Buddhist monks were the most severe in this respect and they hunted down shamans, beat them and destroyed their sacred sites, replacing them with their own image-filled shrines. The Russian Orthodox Church also forced the pagan tribes to accept baptism at the point of a sword and they flogged or imprisoned anyone who dared to practice shamanic rites such as divination and animal sacrifice.

Despite this religious persecution, shamanism survived the forced conversions and it continued underground in remote rural areas. Sometimes shamanic elements were incorporated into an unorthodox form of folk Christianity that flourished despite the censure of the priests. This movement produced hybrid sects who coincided their sacrifices with Church festivals and made offerings to saints. Some shamans accepted the patron saints of Russia, SS George and Michael, as their deities. St Michael was even given the honorary title of ‘Master of the Shamans’ and blood sacrifices were made to his icons.

After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, shamanism had a brief revival as the power and influence of the Orthodox Russian Church and Buddhism in Siberia faded away. However, with the beginning of the bloody Stalinist regime in the 1920s, the new policy of agricultural collectivism caused drastic changes in Siberian society. The Soviet communists regarded the shamans as an example of primitive superstition and social inequality and they were condemned as enemies of the state. There are horrific stories of KGB agents throwing shamans out of helicopters to prove to their followers that they could not fly and also randomly executing them by firing squad. In 1980 the central government in Moscow claimed that shamanism was extinct in Siberia.

When Professor Ronald Hutton of Bristol University visited Siberia in the early 1980s he was told by experts in the field that there were no more shamans alive and shamanism had died out. At the time he accepted this, but later he came to believe that a number of former shamans had managed to survive the pograms. With the collapse of Soviet communism in the later 1980s and early 1990s there was a revival of traditional culture among the ethnic peoples of the former USSR. Professor Hutton has described an encounter by some British musicians visiting Siberia in 1997 with a person who claimed to be a hereditary shaman. He said he had inherited his powers and knowledge from his grandfather, who had been a blacksmith, and he used his skills for healing and exorcising evil spirits.

Tengrism

In the 1990s a neo-shamanic movement known as Tengrism arose in Central Asia and the new Russian Federation. It quickly organised itself and now claims a rather inflated membership of 500,000. One of its prominent leaders is a Kyrgyzstan Member of Parliament called Dastan Sarygulov, who also runs an international scientific centre for Tengrist studies. Its members have a political agenda and attempt to spread their beliefs and ideology in government circles. Apparently they have had some success as a former Kyrgyz president and the present President of Kazakhstan have both declared that Tengrism is the natural and national religion of the Turkic population.

Unlike the shamanism of former times, Tengrism is a monotheistic form of religion with a cosmology that is suitable for the modern world. It is firmly based on trendy ‘green’ or environmental concerns and believes that humanity should live in harmony with the natural world. Forgetting or ignoring the persecution of the past, it also preaches tolerance towards other religions and seeks to co-exist with them in the spirit of interfaith. Strangely it is also a religion without dogma, prayers or a priesthood. The American academic Marlene Larvelle, who has studied Tengrism, claims that it has been influenced by the atheism of the Soviet years and contemporary ideas about modernity. Its political agenda calls for a recognition of Turkic national ideals and the ultimate unification of all Turkic-speaking peoples.

The revival of shamanism in its modern Tengrist form would seem to hearken back to a romantic past that probably never existed in reality. Its increasing popularity among urban Russians is based on an idyllic image of yurts on the steppes, a nomadic lifestyle and living in harmony with nature. This is in direct contrast to the struggle of daily existence in a modern neo-capitalist and corrupt society governed by autocratic rulers.

An inner desire to reconnect with the natural world and follow spiritual values in a technocratic consumer society, a romantic view of the past and an urge to ‘save the planet’ is also the driving force behind so-called ‘urban shamanism’ in the West. However, the Siberian shaman and his Mongolian counterpart were not so much interested in preserving the environment than surviving day by day appeasing the spirits they believed inhabited it. In that sense the shamanism of the past was an essential part of daily life.

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Select Bibliography

Dr. Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (Princetown University Press, USA, 1972)

Professor Ronald Hutton, Siberian Shamanism and the Western Imagination (Hambledon and London, UK, 2001)

Terence McKenna, Food of the Gods: A Radical History of Plants, Drugs and Human Evolution (Bantam Press, USA 1992)

Marlene Laurelle, ‘Tengrism: In Search of Central Asia’s Spiritual Roots’ in Central Asia-Caucasus Institute Analyst, www.cacianalyst.org/?q=node/3837 (22 March 2008), and www.tengerism.org.

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MICHAEL HOWARD has been studying occultism, magic, folklore and witchcraft for over forty years and lives in England. He is the editor and publisher of the witchcraft magazine The Cauldron and can be contacted by writing to BM Cauldron, London, WC1N 3XX, England or emailing: mike@the-cauldron.fsnet.co.uk.

The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 110 (September-October 2008).

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By Chris Morton & Ceri Louise Thomas—

An old native American legend describes the existence of thirteen ancient crystal skulls, the size of human skulls, with moveable jaws that were said to speak or sing. The legend tells that these crystal skulls contain important information about some of the great mysteries of life and the universe. They contain knowledge about the past history of our species on this planet, and information about mankind’s true purpose and future destiny.

The Cherokee version of the legend says that there were originally twelve planets in the universe inhabited by human life and that there was one skull for each of these planets, together with a thirteenth skull which was vital to reconnecting all of these worlds.

The legend also says that one day, at a time of great need, all of these crystal skulls will be rediscovered and brought back together to reveal their information vital to the very survival of the human race. But the legend also warns that when that time arrives mankind must first be sufficiently developed, suitably evolved both morally and spiritually, so as not to abuse this great knowledge.

When we first heard this legend, whilst visiting the ancient Mayan ruins of Tikal in Guatemala, we considered it merely a colourful story, until we found out that a real crystal skull had actually been discovered on an archaeological dig in Central America, way back in the 1920’s.

The Mitchell-Hedges Crystal Skull

Frederick Mitchell-Hedges (1882-1959) was your archetypal British adventurer-explorer; a member of the Maya Committee of the British Museum and a real Indiana-Jones type character determined to make his mark in the twilight years of the British Empire. He was of the opinion that the cradle of civilisation lay not in the Middle East, as is commonly supposed, but instead he was convinced that Atlantis was a real civilisation which had disappeared after some natural catastrophe. He believed that the remnants of this Atlantean civilisation could still be found somewhere in Central America, and he was determined to prove it.

To this end, he gathered together a party of explorers who set sail from Liverpool in 1924 bound for British Honduras (now Belize). One day, deep in the jungle, his party stumbled upon some mounds of stone overgrown with moss and foliage, and suffocated by roots and vines. So they set fire to the undergrowth. When the fire had subsided the ruins of a once great city emerged from the flames.

It was a place known to the local Mayans as ‘Lubaantun’ or ‘The City of Fallen Stones’, and it was in this lost city that Mitchell Hedges’ adopted daughter Anna found a magnificent and perfect crystal skull, buried beneath an altar in the ruins of one of the great temple-pyramids. The Mayan helpers on the dig went wild with joy on the emergence of the skull. They seemed to recognise it. They kissed the ground crying, placed it on an altar, and performed ceremonial rituals and dances around it.

But what was this mysterious object and did it have anything to do with the ancient legend?

(Article Continues Below)

The crystal skull is a mystery as profound as the Pyramids of Egypt, the Sphinx, the Nasca Lines of Peru, or Stonehenge. Ever since its original discovery the crystal skull has been the source of much archaeological controversy – nobody seems to know quite how old it really is, how it was made, what it was used for, and where it originally came from. All that is known for sure is that ever since it emerged from the temple ruins, the most incredible claims have been made about the crystal skull and there have been a whole host of reports of strange and unusual phenomena surrounding the skull.

As mentioned above, Anna Mitchell-Hedges is the woman who first uncovered the crystal skull as a teenager back in the 1920’s. Although the crystal skull was found on what most archaeologists consider to be a Mayan site, Anna Mitchell-Hedges and many others like her believe that it is actually much older than this, and that it belonged to some mysterious pre-Mayan civilisation that has now long since disappeared from this Earth.

The crystal skull has been valued at several millions of dollars, but it is far more than just an expensive and exotic ancient artefact. For, over the years, people have reported all kinds of strange and unusual experiences in the skull’s presence. In particular, it is said to have incredible ‘psychic’ and ‘healing’ powers. According to Anna Mitchell-Hedges, who passed away at the age of 100 in 2007, it is thanks to the ‘healing power’ of the skull that kept her alive. She said that all through her life the skull kept her in good health and happiness. The skull, she said, ‘protected’ her and ‘communicated’ with her all through her long life, and she is not the only person to have reported such experiences.

Anna allowed many visitors into her home and she accumulated hundreds of letters from the many people who came to her house to sit with the skull and who claim to have been ‘healed by the skull’ or that it somehow ‘communicated’ with them. Many of those who have spent time alone with the skull claim to have seen or heard things in its presence. Many say they have seen a gentle glow, like an aura, extending around the skull, or that they have heard sounds, like the soft chanting of human voices, emanating from it, such that it has now earned the title ‘the talking’ or ‘singing skull’, just as in the old legend.

Others claim to have seen things inside the skull. When they have sat with the skull for a long time it has started to present them with images, almost like watching a bit of cinema film. Hundreds of visitors attest to having seen incredible images from the past or the future deep inside its crystalline structure. The reports include images of ancient sacred sites, with ceremonies being performed beneath great pyramids. Others say they have seen whole periods of planetary history with great shifting of continents, the rising of sea levels and destruction of land masses, and geological cataclysm on a global scale. One of the most commonly reported images is considered by many to be the holographic image of a UFO appearing within the crystal skull – and this has even been photographed! This image in particular has led many to suggest that perhaps the crystal skull has some kind of strange unearthly origin?

But, just as the ancient legend suggests, this is not the only crystal skull to be discovered. Several other crystal skulls have since come to light. All are of mysterious origin and all are surrounded by claims of strange or unusual phenomena and tales of inexplicable, paranormal powers.

Max, the ‘Talking’ Crystal Skull

A woman named Joann Parks, who lives in Houston, Texas, also has a crystal skull. She, too, claims that her crystal skull has the power to heal and can communicate with her telepathically. The story of how Joann Parks came into possession of her crystal skull starts with a very sad story. In 1978 Joann’s eldest daughter, Diana, was diagnosed as having bone cancer and the conventional medical doctors gave her only three months to live. Joann turned to the help of a Tibetan Lama and healer named Norbu Chen. This man owned a crystal skull, and with the help of this healer and his crystal skull, her daughter managed to live for a further three years. When her daughter eventually died, the healer gave Joann the crystal skull, telling her nothing about it except that he had originally received it from a Guatemalan shaman and that one day Joann would understand it and know what it was for.

Not knowing what to do with it, Joann put the crystal skull in a box in the bedroom closet. A few years later the skull started to appear in her dreams. Then it started “speaking to her,” saying that it wanted out of the closet. She tried to ignore this ‘voice’ but it started “talking to her” at all times of day, saying “You must let me out of this closet. I am important to mankind,” and “I will be remembered.” Joanne thought she was losing her mind and even spoke to her family doctor about it, but the voice just wouldn’t go away, and so she eventually found herself sitting in the bedroom closet “talking to this lump of rock” and telling it to go away, saying “Just leave me alone skull!” She slammed the skull away in a case and pushed it to the back of the wardrobe, but as she ran back down the stairs the skull kept talking to her. “It was very persistent,” explained Joann and it was determined that I take it out of the closet and “tell mankind” of its existence. It even added that, “By the way, my name isn’t skull, it’s Max!” And since that time Joann has been showing the skull all over the United States where she says “Max has now spoken to and healed many people.”

The skull had also told Joanne that it came many thousands of years ago from a civilisation far in advance of our own, and from a dimension different from our own, and that one day soon this is something mankind would understand!

What can we learn from the other crystal skulls that have now been discovered? Recently a massive crystal skull turned up at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington under very sad and mysterious circumstances. It had been sent through the post by an anonymous donor whom it transpired had taken his own life, apparently on account of the ‘curse’ the skull had brought on him since it came into his possession.

The British Museum also has a crystal skull which is kept in The Museum of Mankind, just off Piccadilly Circus, in London. Like the Mitchell-Hedges specimen, this skull is made from highly transparent crystal and displays an incredible degree of anatomical accuracy. This skull has been in the museum’s possession since 1898 and is reported by staff to have been seen moving around by itself in its sealed glass case. The museum’s cleaners are said to be so frightened of this skull that it has to be covered by a cloth before they will go anywhere near it. Where did this skull come from?

The British Museum have always considered their skull to be of Aztec origin. The note accompanying the Smithsonian skull also said that it had once belonged to the mighty Aztecs of Central America. Anna Mitchell-Hedges and Joann Parks said their skulls are at least as old as the ancient Mayan civilisation of Central America, if not far older and perhaps of extraterrestrial origin.

The ancient Aztec and Mayan people built up highly developed civilisations in an incredibly short period of time. These civilisations appeared as if from nowhere and the Mayan civilisation, just as suddenly, mysteriously disappeared.

Many archaeologists are baffled as to where they got their advanced knowledge from and why they suddenly disappeared. All the evidence that remains of this civilisation suggests they were great watchers of the skies and the heavenly bodies. They were great scientists, mathematicians and astronomers. They had a complex calendar based on the movements of the planets and the stars and which they used to predict the future. They were able to predict eclipses, even ones they could not see and that were happening elsewhere in the world. They even managed to accurately predict eclipses that have happened recently – over a thousand years after their own civilisation mysteriously disappeared.

Some researchers claim the Mayan records say their people came from Atlantis and their ancestors before that ‘came from the stars’. The Mayan civilisation was also obsessed with the image of the skull, which made up an important part of their sacred, divinatory calendar.

Modern Fakes?

Many archaeologists, however, unable to explain the strange phenomena associated with the crystal skulls, claim they are simply ‘modern fakes’. So how old are the crystal skulls and where did they really come from? Are they modern, Aztec, Mayan, or did they come from some other civilisation altogether?

In an attempt to try to answer these questions, Anna Mitchell-Hedges loaned her skull to one of the world’s leading computer companies, Hewlett-Packard, for rigorous scientific testing. The scientists in their crystal laboratories were completely unable to determine the age of the skull, as crystal cannot be carbon-dated. But what surprised the scientists was that both the skull and its detachable lower jawbone were made from the same massive piece of pure, natural rock crystal. As crystal is only slightly softer than diamond, this finding was truly incredible.

The scientists concluded that even with modern diamond-tipped power tools, it would have been impossible to carve such an object without it shattering. At first they thought the skull must have been made by hand using sand and water to slowly abrade the material over several generations – a process they estimated must have taken around “300 man-years of effort!” But soon they were forced to revise even this conclusion. For when the skull was examined under intense magnification the scientists were in for an even bigger surprise – they were completely unable to find any evidence of tools having been used to make the skull at all! A fact which led one member of the team to comment: “This skull shouldn’t even exist!”

The crystal skull challenged all conventional opinion. Here was an object that simply defied explanation. It showed no evidence of any existing technology used in its construction, no evidence of tool markings either ancient or modern. But the scientists at Hewlett-Packard said they were simply not prepared to countenance the only alternative explanation – that the skull had not even been made by humans.

The scientists other interesting discovery was that the skull had been made from precisely the same type of quartz now used in modern electronic equipment. Modern science has established that among the unusual properties of quartz crystal is its ability to hold under control electrical energy and to oscillate at a constant and precise frequency. In other words, the crystal skull is able to hold electrical energy – potentially a form of information – and send out vibrating impulses – or waves of energy information. This is why quartz crystal is used for the ‘brain cells’ of electronic equipment such as watches and computers. The silicon crystal chip inside a computer, for instance, is where the information is actually stored. This finding raised the distinct possibility that the crystal skulls are in fact some kind of information storage system, just as the ancient legend suggests. But what might that information be, and where do the crystal skulls really come from?

The Legend of the Crystal Skulls

Native Americans have long believed in the power of quartz crystal. They refer to quartz crystals as “the brain cells of Mother Earth” and have traditionally used them for healing. The crystal skulls have long been a part of Native American teachings but until now they have been forbidden to speak about them. Now, they say, the time has come for them to speak out about these amazing artefacts and to reveal their secret knowledge.

Professor Paula Gunn-Allen of the University of California is of Laguno Pueblo origin. She specialises in Native American literature and is well versed in the mythology and oral history of Native America. According to her the crystal skulls were created by beings “who are not humans like we are.” She says the crystal skulls were designed specifically for the purpose of communication with extraterrestrial life. As she explains, “What they are is transceivers – devices to help us communicate with the other quadrants of the galaxy.” She said that we might think of them “as like telephones” that get you connected with Galactic Central and enable you to stay in touch with “civilisations beyond our littie bitty modern world.”

Native American medicine woman Jamie Sams says that “the crystal skulls contain information about our own ancestors, about our own past and our own future that will very soon change the whole way we see ourselves, our world, and our true place in the universe.”

According to Metis Cherokee medicine man Harley Swiftdeer, the full version of the legend of the crystal skulls says that there were originally twelve planets in the universe inhabited by human life; that there was one skull for each of these planets, and a thirteenth skull which was vital to finally reconnecting all of these worlds. According to Harley Swiftdeer and other native Americans, the crystal skulls were brought to this Earth as “gifts from the gods” – brought long ago by these beings from elsewhere in the universe.

These crystal skulls contained the wisdom necessary to found civilisation on this Earth and when all thirteen crystal skulls are brought back together again, we will have finally found the key to reconnecting with our brothers and sisters elsewhere in this beautiful universe.

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CHRIS MORTON & CERI LOUISE THOMAS are independent television producers who specialise in making films with a philosophical, spiritual or environmental emphasis. Their highly-acclaimed documentary ‘The Mystery of the Crystal Skulls’ has been shown around the world. They are also the authors of the best selling book, The Mystery of the Crystal Skulls.

The above article appeared in New Dawn Special Issue 8

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By DR KR BOLTON

There are numerous difficulties in trying to discern what among the proliferation of new or revived faiths might be regarded as working to usher forth a New Age based on eternal values, and those that work to establish the rule of malignant, matter-bound forces. The problem is that there are often superficial resemblances that occur between them. Even within the same occult orders, such as Freemasonry, there are a range of views that might be in opposition but are mistaken as being part of a single, all-embracing conspiracy. There is a tangle of terminology, groups, personalities, ‘Hidden Masters’, accusations and counter-accusations of black magic, and so forth. This article considers ways in which the positive and negative currents within the ‘New Age’ might be identified.

The Cycles of Rise and Fall

The school of Perennial Tradition regards traditional cultures, religions and spiritualities as sharing core beliefs, values of an eternal nature, on which are founded Civilisations and societies in their cycles of health. Hence, in the analogous cycles of cultures as far removed geographically and ethnically as the Japanese, Hindu, Norse, and Arabian, all will possess analogous beliefs in regard to social hierarchy, chivalric ethos, and a nexus that exists between the Divine and the temporal. In such a society one’s highest calling, whether as peasant or prince, is to work in accord with one’s cosmic duty, or what the Hindus call dharma. In such a society castes reflect the Divine order on earth: ‘as above, so below’, and degenerate into contending economic classes in the cycle of decline.¹

This cyclical view of history² is another shared featured of various Traditional cultures, expressed in the Norse,³ Hindu,⁴ Hopi oral lore,⁵ and many others. In our own era the German historian-philosopher Oswald Spengler provided empirical evidence for the cyclicity of cultures.⁶ The two primary Traditionalist exponents of cultural cyclicity in our era are Rene Guenon⁷ and Julius Evola.⁸ Esoterically, it is the cycle of life expressed in ‘The Wheel’ of the ‘Major Arcana’ of the Tarot, which is derived from the Medieval ‘Wheel of Fortune’ or Rota Fortuna depicted in Gothic Churches.⁹ 

Tradition, Anti-Tradition & Counter-Tradition

A glance at cultural cycles is necessary to identify the occult forces that work in the context of Tradition for a return to eternal values based on a reconnection with the Divine, and those that want to enslave humanity to matter. Again, recourse to Tarot symbolism is instructive. Here we see that the Counter-Tradition that stands behind Anti-Tradition, is in the esoteric sense, literally satanic. Paul Foster Case¹⁰ provides a meaning for ‘The Devil’ trump that is particularly relevant:

In its most general meanings, it signifies Mammon and thus big business, the conventions of society, the injustice and cruelty of a social order in which money takes the place of God, in which humanity is bestialised, in which war is engineered by greed masquerading as patriotism, in which fear is dominant. Students of astrology will have no difficulty in seeing how this corresponds to Capricorn, the sign of big business, and the sign of world fame.¹¹

In this one paragraph Case says much. He cogently differentiates the Traditionalist from the Anti-Traditionalist in what is an occult war. Case identifies the Counter-Tradition that controls Anti-Tradition as ‘Mammon’. Mammon infers something more than simply plutocracy; it is the spirit behind plutocracy. Plutocracy controls the present era. Oswald Spengler pointed out that Money rules in the epoch of decline of a Civilisation. It is not merely the temporal influence of Money which Spengler is referring to, but the spirit behind Money, or what Case calls Mammon. “The dictature of money marches on, tending to its material peak in the Faustian [Western] Civilisation as in every other.”¹² 

The other significant point raised by Case is the ‘bestialisation’ of humanity. In this trump ‘The Devil’ is depicted enchaining the human pair to matter. Like the ‘Devil’, the human pair is depicted with tail and horns. This is suggestive of the esoteric belief in cyclic regression rather than lineal progression, when humanity regresses from a higher state of Being, of a spiritual mode, descending ever more into a baser, material existence. Anti-Tradition is the agency for this decline and enslavement. The modern world is therefore, according to the Traditionalist perspective, not ascending upward toward the Godhead, nor toward manifesting the God within; but is in a downward spiral towards – metaphorically – ‘The Devil’ – the master of our base drives.

A problem of identifying who belongs to what arises because forces work behind the guise of Tradition, while they are in reality the initiates of Anti-Tradition and Counter Tradition, or what Aleister Crowley called the ‘Black Magick School’. The purpose of Anti-Tradition is that of subversion and the sowing of confusion to pave the way for Counter-Tradition. ‘Anti-Tradition’ was stated by Perennial Traditionalist scholar and initiate Rene Guenon to be “pure negation and nothing more.”¹³ In regard to Counter-Tradition there is a “counter-initiation,”¹⁴ representing a satanic current of those who seek the severing of the nexus between the terrestrial and the divine. Guenon wrote of this:

After having worked always in the shadows, to inspire and to direct invisibly all modern movements, it will in the end contrive to ‘exteriorise’, if that is the right word, something that will be as it were, the counterpart of a true tradition, at least as completely and as exactly as it can be so within the limitations necessarily inherent in all possible counterfeits as such.¹⁵

To Guenon the Counter-Traditionalist movements are void of spiritual content. This can be seen in the many movements and ‘orders’ professing a ‘tradition’ and having a mystical or spiritual façade, yet who expound a materialistic universal republic. This is why various esoteric orders can be seen to be promoting materialistic doctrines such as Marxism, and such Anti-Traditional dogmas as those expressed in slogans like “liberty, equality, fraternity,” to usher in the “reign of quantity.”¹⁶ Anti-Traditionalist movements and ideologies are only a means, and not the end. Guenon aptly uses the term “satanic”¹⁷ to describe these currents.

Of these Counter-Traditions, Guenon states that they can never be anything other that a “parody,” an “inverted spirituality” involving organisations of “counter-initiation.”¹⁸ Guenon regarded these movements as being of supernatural origin, as satanic and believed that a figure analogous to the “The Anti-Christ” will manifest at the head of a world order.¹⁹

Guenon described the order which Counter-Tradition tries to impose by at first using the doctrine of “egalitarianism” as a means of overthrowing the remnants of Tradition and spirituality, after which will be erected in place of the divine hierarchies a “counter-hierarchy,” atop which sits an individual that seems analogous to “The Anti-Christ,” Guenon describing him as “nearest to the very bottom of the ‘pit of hell’.”²⁰

Of the numerous orders that were emerging, especially in France during the 19^th century, Guenon referred to them, regardless of their pretensions, as “anti-tradition.” One might say that they reflect the zeitgeist²¹ of the present epoch of Western decline. Guenon refers to the numerous orders that claimed to be “Rosicrucian.”²² Of these, the primary order is that of Freemasonry, from which much of the current “occult revival” derives, including cults purporting to represent a “New Age.” They are, in Guenon’s term, “counterfeits,” and as counterfeits are intended to be, often difficult to detect.

Profanation of Tradition

Eliphas Levi²³ was one of the primary theoreticians of the modern occult revival. Among Levi’s books, The History of Magic provides insights into the history, nature and influence of Anti-Traditional, Counter-Traditional and counter-initiatory currents. Levi was well-placed to offer informed opinion. He had been a prominent socialist propagandist, having been jailed for his views²⁴ and seems to have been a highly initiated Freemason.²⁵ However, Levi rejected socialism in favour of a conservative, monarchical position, and came to see Freemasonry as having had a noble tradition that had been “profaned” by Anti-Tradition. Having defended what he regarded as the genuine traditional and spiritual legacy of Masonry, Levi then posed and answered the question:

Now if Masonry is thus holy and thus sublime, we may be asked how it came to be proscribed and condemned so often by the Church?… Masonry is the Gnosis and the false Gnostics caused the condemnation of the true.²⁶

Levi contends that the Traditionalists were driven underground for fear of being associated with the “sacrilege” of the “false interpreters… the enemies of all belief and all morality”:

Masonry has not merely been profaned but has served as the veil and pretext of anarchic conspiracies descending from the secret influence of the vindicators of Jacques de Molay,²⁷ and of those who continued the schismatic work of the Temple. In place of avenging the death of Hiram²⁸ they have that of his assassins. The anarchists have resumed the rule, square and mallet, writing upon them the words Liberty, Equality, Fraternity – Liberty, that is to say, for all the lusts, Equality in degradation and Fraternity in the work of destruction. Such are the men whom the Church has condemned justly and will condemn forever.²⁹

Levi states that during the 18^th century,

A schism took place in illuminism:³⁰ on the one hand, the wardens of the traditions concerning Nature and science wished to restore the hierarchy; there were others, on the contrary, who desired to level all things by disclosing the Great Arcanum, thus rendering the royalty and priesthood alike impossible in the world. Among the latter, some were ambitious and unscrupulous, seeking to erect a throne for themselves over the ruins of the world. Others were dupes and zanies. The true initiates held with dismay the launching of society toward the abyss, and they foresaw all the terrors of anarchy.³¹

Levi is here referring to the Order of the Illuminati, founded in Bavaria in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt, with the purpose of inaugurating a communistic universal republic; and similar cabals generally emanating from Freemasonry, including the French revolutionary Jacobin Club and Lodges that formed after the French revolutionary tumult from whence came the subversive creeds, including that of Karl Marx.

The revolutionary atheists, rationalists and humanists flocked to the Lodges during the 18^th and 19^th centuries, where they “worked the degrees” of the ancient Mysteries for their own counter-initiatory purposes. Of the type of profanation Levi referred to, we can state the following.

Philippe Buonarroti, the Italian exponent of the French Revolution, was initiated into Masonry in 1786. In 1808 he formed Les Sublimes Maîtres Parfaits. Buonarroti had a major influence on revolutionist Auguste Blanqui, and through his book Conspiration pour l’Egalité dite de Babeuf, suivie du procès auquel elle donna lieu he was also a seminal influence on the revolutions that erupted throughout Europe in 1848. Buonarroti also advised Mazzini and other revolutionaries in Italy.³²

Buonarroti had co-founded with Francois Babeuf, another significant revolutionist, the Society of the Pantheon, one of the first of the revolutionary secret societies to emerge from the French Revolution, believing the Revolution had failed; and he organised a group of ‘Philadelphe’ Masonry within the Lodge ‘Amis Sincères’. Dr. J M Roberts states:

What may be termed the first international political secret society, the Sublimes Maîtres Parfaits, was founded by Buonarroti, perhaps in 1808. Only freemasons were admitted to it. The Elect were aware that they were to work for a republican form of government; only the Areopagites knew that the final aim of the society was social egalitarianism, and the means to it the abolition of private property.³³

Marxism was the 19^th century culmination of this Anti-Traditional current of a long line of secret societies. Although numerous conspiratologists have written of the alleged role of the Illuminati in ‘hiring’ Marx to write the Communist Manifesto, via the League of the Just, reliable documentation is infrequent. However, there is scholarly evidence that Marx was part of the Anti-Traditionalist current. Blanqui organised the League of the Just, which was called the League of Outlaws by German exiles in Paris. This became the Communist League, and in 1847 this cabal asked Marx to write the Communist Manifesto. It is from Blanqui that the dictum now credited to Marx, the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” originated.³⁴ Marx was initiated into the Mysteries of Memphis-Mizraim Masonry. Prof. Mark Lause, a scholar of labour history,³⁵ writes:

…Certainly, the tangled history of freemasonry has largely mirrored the political and social views of those drawn to the craft, and some of those drawn to the more peculiar pseudo-Egyptian forms of the order reflected views that were accordingly distinctive.³⁶

The 18th century Cabalistic mystic Cagliostro founded the Rite of Memphis in 1779. He insinuated himself into the French Court, like Philippe de Lyon insinuated his way into the Court of the ill-fated Czar Nicholas II.³⁷

Lause cites I Nicolaevsky³⁸ as an authoritative source in stating “that the nineteenth century Order of Memphis actually did mask the ongoing revolutionary activism of French radicals both at home and abroad, strikingly so in the case of émigré circles at London.”³⁹ This confirms the statement by occult historian Lewis Spence, who in a laudatory entry on Cagliostro writes that the Mizraim Rite included the communistic doctrines of the Illuminati.

In 1785 Cagliostro was implicated in a scandal in the French Royal Court and exiled himself to England where he wrote revolutionary propaganda against the monarchy and declared that the French Throne would be overthrown. His 1786 ‘Letter to the French People’ declared prophetically that the Bastille would be stormed and the governor killed.⁴⁰ 

Spence states that Mizraim had been set up to subvert the traditional society of Europe and, significantly, received large financial backing:

There is a small question that the various Masonic lodges which he [Cagliostro] founded and which were patronised by persons of ample means, provided him with extensive funds, and it is a known fact that he was subsidised by several extremely wealthy men, who, themselves dissatisfied with the state of affairs in Europe, did not hesitate to place their riches at his disposal for the purpose of undermining the tyrannic powers which then wielded sway.⁴¹

London was the centre of revolutionary intrigue where political refugees from throughout Europe sought refuge and, with the help of English Masons, founded the Internationale.⁴² Masonry provided acceptance for diverse and radical views, and a model for a secret revolutionary structure. Lause writes of this:

In any event, if your declared purpose was something as radical as that of the Philalethes, the perfection of the human race, it helped legitimise the goal by describing oneself as an “Ancient and Primitive Rite of Masonry.”⁴³

Lodges were established in England and elsewhere, the most important being La Grand Loge des Philadelphes at London in 1851. Lause states that the Order of Memphis “fostered what became the International Association in March 1855 [and] provided almost all of the French members of the General Council of the later International Workingmen’s Association.”⁴⁴ Another prominent socialist historian, Dr. Bob James, identifies as Masons Garibaldi, Mazzini,⁴⁵ Charles Bradlaugh⁴⁶ and Karl Marx, stating this was “neither an accident nor an aberration.”⁴⁷

Crowley on the Schools of Black and White Magick

Aleister Crowley is perhaps the best example of how unclear can be the identification of Traditional, Anti-Traditional and Counter-Traditional currents.⁴⁸ Crowley claimed Adam Weishaupt, the founder of the Illuminati, among the “saints” of his religion, Thelema.⁴⁹ However, the doctrines of Thelema and the Illuminati are polar opposites. Crowley, in contrast to the communistic doctrines of Illuminism, sought the establishment of a neo-aristocratic society: the revival of hierarchy.⁵⁰ It is notable that the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, the antithesis of communistic and liberalistic doctrines, is also a “Saint” of Thelema.⁵¹

Evola acknowledged Crowley as a genuine initiate of Tradition. Evola also regarded the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, under which Crowley served his magickal apprenticeship and which was a seminal influence on the modern occult revival as, “to some extent,” a successor “to those of an initiatic character.”⁵² Evola granted that Crowley’s system of Magick was drawn from Traditional initiatic practices: “It is certain that in Crowleyism the inoculation of magico-initiatic applications is precise, and the references or orientations of ancient traditions are evident.”⁵³

Why then did Crowley identify with Adam Weishaupt and the Illuminati, whose doctrines are antithetical to Thelema? Perhaps the reason is that Crowley took on a certain role when assuming the mantle of leadership of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) founded by Theodor Reuss, who was in the employ of the German secret service. Reuss is said to have revived the Order of the Illuminati by virtue of what he claimed to be family connections with the 18^th century cabal.⁵⁴ He was an initiate of Martinist and Mizraim Masonry headed by ‘Papus’.⁵⁵ He was also in contact in 1902 with Dr. William Wynn Westcott, a high initiate of Grand Lodge Masonry, head of the Societas Rosicrucia in Anglia and founder of the Golden Dawn.⁵⁶ Reuss had influential international connections.⁵⁷ As Dr. Richard Spence of the University of Idaho has shown, Crowley was involved with the British secret service at least from 1913, when he was acting for British interests in Moscow,⁵⁸ and was called on during both World Wars.⁵⁹ Reuss was obviously a valuable asset to the Germans, and Crowley was ideally placed to track him.⁶⁰ 

At any rate, Crowley’s identification of the White, Yellow and Black Schools of Magick show that the Illuminati and Freemasonry can be identified with the Black School or what Guenon called the Counter-Tradition and Anti-Tradition. Crowley explained that each School has its own “Hidden Masters.” While the Yellow School “stands aloof,” “the Black School and the White are always more or less in active conflict.”⁶¹ The Yellow School regards the universe as “neutral.” The Black regards it as a curse and a sorrow.⁶² Hence we might summarise the three Schools of Magick in regard to their philosophy of life as being: Yellow: Neutral, Black: Negative, White: Positive.

Crowley, like Eliphas Levi and Guenon, saw Masonry as having been subverted by the ‘Black School’ and referred to English Masons as being “in official relationship with certain masonic bodies whose sole raison d’etre is anti-clericalism, political intrigue and trade benefit,” despite English Masonry supposedly eschewing such motives.⁶³ These critical sentiments towards the subversion of English Masonry are not consistent with anyone who would be an adherent of Weishaupt and Illuminism, whose raison d’etre was anti-clericalism and political intrigue.

Crowley saw anarchism sweeping the world of the type that had been initiated by the Illuminati and other forms of Masonry during the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Again, it can be seen that Crowley’s attitude was anything but Illuminist. “The last quarter of a century had swamped”⁶⁴ the monarchies, and for Crowley the world was poorer for it:

The world is seething from the dissatisfaction that springs from insecurity. Men can adapt themselves to pretty well any conditions, but when they do not know from one day to another where some fundamental principle may not be abolished in the interests of progress, they no longer know where they are. They tend to adopt the principles of the man who flits from one place to another… Civilisation has become a hysterical scramble for momentary material advantage…⁶⁵

Syncretic Religion and the Perennial Tradition

The centuries of subversion of Tradition by Black adepts and their dupes has caused a confusion of cults, religions, and spiritualities, most of which claim to offer humanity the path to peace and happiness, and even to Godhood. As has been indicated throughout this article, it is not an easy matter to determine the real motives of many claiming the mantle of the Ageless Wisdom.

There is an abysmic gulf between adherents of the Perennial Tradition and the Anti- and Counter-Traditions, yet they will often appear similar, because of the ‘counterfeit’ nature of the latter. The Perennial Traditionalist sees a commonality between faiths over expanses of time and space, the assumption generally being that they all derived from a primordial source and differ in so far as they reflect differences of ethnos, geography and historical circumstances. The Perennial Traditionalist will seek to maintain the distinctiveness of these faiths.

The Black adept, while masquerading as a Traditionalist, aims to amalgamate the world’s faiths into one new syncretic faith, the altar to which all humanity will be chained under the guise of ‘universal brotherhood’, preludes of which were the bloody Reigns of Terror in Jacobin France and Bolshevik Russia. Therefore, when a State’s secular politicians, who also happen to be adherents of the aim of a ‘new world order’, start talking about ‘inter-faith dialogue’, under the guise of ‘representing all religions’, and of ‘tolerance’, one should be suspicious.

Those who adhere to the Ageless Wisdom of many faiths eschew materialistic agendas. The World Forum of Spiritual Culture, formed on the initiative of the President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, brings together those who seek a new civilisation, in the aftermath of what they regard as a technical civilisation that is “anti-cultural.”⁶⁶ Significantly, Nazarbayev is also a champion of a Eurasian geopolitical bloc⁶⁷ that would challenge the very possibility of a ‘New World Order’. Such a bloc could serve as the axis for a New Age founded on spiritual and cultural principles, and freed from the bonds of matter.

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Footnotes

1. J Evola, Revolt Against the Modern World, Inner Traditions International, 1995.

2. In contrast to the progressive-lineal, darwinistic view of history as a straight line running from primitive to modern.

3. Voluspa, reprinted in The Masks of Odin: Wisdom of the Ancient Norse, Elsa-Brita Titchenell, Theosophical University Press, 1985.

4. Bhagavad-Gita, Ch.9:8.

5. G Hancock, Fingerprints of the Gods: A Quest for the Beginning and the End, Mandarin, 1996, 532-533.

6. Oswald Spengler, The Decline of The West, George Allen & Unwin, 1971.

7. Rene Guenon, The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, Sophia Perennis, 2001.

8. J Evola, Revolt Against the Modern World, op. cit.

9. D Phillips, ‘Wheel’, Man, Myth & Magic, Purnell, 1970, Vol. 7, 3014-3015.

10. Case can be regarded as an adept of Tradition. He was initiated into the Golden Dawn, Crowley’s OTO, and in 1926 into 3º Masonry, and founded the Builders of the Adytum. His adherence was to the ‘Ageless Wisdom’. Lee Moffitt, Case Timeline, 26 September 1997, http://kcbventures.com/pfc/documents/timeline.pdf

11. John Foster Case, Oracle of The Tarot: A Course on Tarot Divination, Chapter 6, ‘The Major Trumps: 15. Le Diable’, http://tarotinstitute.com/free/Oracle2.pdf

12. However, Spengler also points out that at the cycle of decline – Kali Yuga, etc. – Money exhausts its possibilities and is met by a Traditional resurgence which he called “blood”: “the conflict between money and blood.” Oswald Spengler, op. cit., Vol. II, 506.

13. Rene Guenon, The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, Sophia Perennis, 2001, 260.

14. Ibid., 261.

15. Ibid., 261.

16. Ibid., 271.

17. Ibid., 261.

18. Ibid., 267.

19. Ibid., 271-273. Guenon draws on both Islamic and Christian traditions here.

20. Ibid., 271.

21. ‘Spirit of the Age’ which, as Spengler, Evola and Guenon showed is, in the epoch of Western decline, materialism and the rule of money. This ‘spirit’ will be reflected even in movements intended to be in opposition to it. Hence as Oswald Spengler pointed out, Marxism is the mirror image of capitalism, both being doctrines of the materialistic zeitgeist. Oswald Spengler, op. cit. Vol. 2, 402, 464.

22. Rene Guenon, op. cit., 251.

23. The pseudonym of Alphonse Louis Constant (1810-1875).

24. J W Revak, ‘Eliphas Levi: Clergyman, Radical, Magus’, www.villarevak.org/bio/levi_1.html

25. Levi’s Masonic initiation can be construed from a comment he makes in The History of Magic (1860), indicating that he was an initiate of the 18º of Knight of the Pelican & Eagle & Sovereign Prince Rose Croix of Heredom. Levi writing: “Having attained by our efforts to a grade of knowledge which imposes silence, we regard ourselves as pledged by our convictions even more than by an oath… and we shall in no wise fail to deserve the princely crown of the Rosy Cross….” The History of Magic, Rider, 1982, 286.

26. Eliphas Levi, Ibid., 286.

27. Last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, executed for heresy.

28. Hiram Abif, one of mythical architects of the Temple of Solomon whose murder Masons are sworn to avenge; a central motif of Masonic ritual.

29. Eliphas Levi, op. cit., 286.

30. By which Levi here means adepts of Gnosis; not the Order of Illuminati, the ‘schism’ among the adepts resulting in the formation of the Illuminati by “the ambitious and unscrupulous.”

31. Eliphas Levi, op. cit., 305.

32. Dr. John M Roberts, The Mythology of the Secret Societies, Secker & Warburg, 1972, 230.

33. Ibid., 266.

34. D Conway, A Farewell to Marx, Penguin Books, 1987, 146.

35. Lause specialises in the history of the labour movement. An associate professor of history at McMicken College of Arts & Sciences, University of Cincinnati, his faculty biography states that he “teaches specialised courses in American Labor History, Comparative Labor History, and the Age of Jackson… For years, he has presented his work or participated in panels at the Annual North American Labor History Conference at Detroit… and the centennial conferences on Eugene V. Debs and Henry George.”

36. M A Lause, ‘Walking Like an Egyptian: The American Destinies of a Revolutionary French Secret Society’; http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2004w23/msg00109.html

37. Philippe de Lyon was the protégé of Gerard Encausse, alias Papus, 33º Mason, who became Grand Master of Memphis-Mizraim, and the Grand Master of the Supreme Council of Martinist Masonry. Martinism had been founded in 1754 by Martinez de Pasquales who was, according to Bernard Lazare, an Illuminist who established Lodges of the Order in France. B Lazare (1894) Antisemitism: Its History & Causes, Britons, 1967, 153. Hence, there is a line of descent from the Illuminati to Memphis-Mizraim and Martinist Masonry. It is from this milieu, incidentally, that the Protocols of Zion might have emerged, rather than either as ‘Zionist’ records or a Czarist forgery.

38. According to Lause, I Nicolaevsky based his work on the origins of the Internationale on the records of the organisation: “Clearly, when Nicolaevsky found the manuscript records on this society a century later, he opened a window into a genuine revolutionary conspiracy with far-reaching influences.”

39. I Nicolaevsky, Secret Societies and the First International, The Revolutionary Internationals, 1864-1943, ed. Milorad M. Drachkovitch, Stanford University Press for the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, 1966, 37.

40. L Spence (1920), An Encyclopaedia of Occultism, Citadel Press, 1960, ‘Cagliostro’, 90.

41. Ibid., 92.

42. International Workingmen’s Association, which included the rival followers of Karl Marx and of the anarchist Bakunin.

43. M A Lause, op. cit.

44. Ibid.

45. The Italian revolutionaries.

46. With Charles Braudlaugh there is another intriguing example of England’s leading atheist professing the arcane Mysteries as a Freemason. Annie Besant, who assumed the presidency of the Theosophical Society and leadership of Co-Masonry, was a close colleague. J J Lewis, ‘Annie Besant – Heretic’, http://womenshistory.about.com/od/freethought/a/annie_besant.htm

47. Dr. Bob James is the Convenor and Co-ordinator of the Australian Centre for Fraternal Studies. He states of himself: “I make these claims on the basis of 25 years of research, of ten years or so as Secretary of the Hunter Labor History Society, and as organiser of a National Labor History Conference.”

48. Nicholas Roerich, the Russian mystic, is another significant example of a Traditionalist initiate with anti-Traditionalist connections, which included US President F D Roosevelt and Vice President Henry Wallace and Soviet luminaries Maxim Gorky, Education Minister Lunarchsky, and Foreign Minister Chicherin. Roerich aimed to create a pan-Buddhist geopolitical and spiritual bloc that would embrace parts of the USSR. He seems to have been a genuine initiate of the Perennial Tradition trying to resist those of the Counter-Tradition through his own high level diplomacy. See: M Pashkovsky, ‘Nicholas Roerich: Secret Agent of Hidden Masters’, New Dawn Special Issue No. 3, Winter 2007, 9-14.

49. A Crowley (1911), ‘Liber XV OTO Ecclesiae Gnosticae Catholicae Canon Missae’, Magick, Samuel Weiser, 1984, 430. Appendix VI, ‘The Saints’.

50. K R Bolton, ‘Aleister Crowley as Political Theorist’, Crowley: Thoughts & Perspectives Vol. II, ed. T Southgate, Black Front Press, 2011, 5-28. Also: K Preston, ‘The Whole of the Law: The Political Dimensions of Crowley’s Thought’, ibid., 68-85.

51. A Crowley (1911), op. cit.

52. J Evola, ‘Aleister Crowley’, Crowley: Thoughts & Perspectives Volume 2, op. cit., 208.

53. Ibid., 212.

54. Reuss claimed in 1914 in his magazine Oriflamme to have ‘revived’ the Illuminati in 1880. It had been founded in Munich and called the Ludwig Lodge. It was from these origins that the OTO emerged.

55. Lady Queenborough, Edith Starr Miller (1933), Occult Theocracy, California: 1980, Appendix IV, 42-43.

56. Letters between Reuss and Westcott reproduced in: Lady Queenborough, ibid., Appendix IV, 8-35.

57. According to testimonials for Reuss reproduced by Lady Queenborough, he was commended by the Military attaché to the US Embassy in Germany, and in 1896 was recommend by the First Secretary of the Embassy in Berlin to be Berlin correspondent for the NY Herald. Central News Ltd. (London), United Press and many others accredited him as a journalist. Lady Queenborough, ibid., Appendix IV, 2-5.

58. Dr. R Spence, ‘The Magus Was A Spy: Aleister Crowley & the Curious Connections Between Intelligence and the Occult’, New Dawn 105, November-December 2007, 26.

59. Crowley, masquerading as an Irish republican, served British Intelligence during World War I by infiltrating a German propaganda coterie in the USA. That the OTO under Crowley’s leadership served as a means of keeping tabs on esoterically inclined German agents is indicated by the involvement of Hanns Heinz Ewers, a German agent in New York. R Spence, ibid., 27. As for Reuss, Spence states that this association may have enhanced Crowley’s credibility among German agents. Reuss had worked for the German secret service since the 1880s, when he infiltrated the Socialist League in London. Crowley maintained contact with Ruess during World War I. Interestingly Reuss went to Switzerland where he attempted to recruit exiled radicals via another occult order, the Anational Lodge and Mystic Temple, where Crowley’s Gnostic Mass was among the ceremonies (Spence, ibid., 28). Again we see an example of a crypto-Masonic order being used for political purposes. Crowley meanwhile denounced Reuss to New York authorities as a German agent.

60. Dr. Spence replies in this regard: “Basically, yes, I think your supposition about Crowley and Reuss is correct though the spying went both ways. The nagging question to me is Reuss’s exact connection to German Intelligence. He fits the profile of a spotter/recruiter and Crowley, with his connections… would have been a useful asset. From that vantage, Crowley could then funnel information back to his British handlers. The man who likely held the strings in all this was the eminence grise of pre-war British Intelligence, William Melville. In the 1880s and 90s, Melville had led Scotland Yard’s efforts against the anarchists, many of whom were German. He had informants among the German anarchists and it’s not inconceivable that Reuss was one of them. German and British Intelligence were generally very cooperative prior to 1900.” R Spence to K R Bolton, e-mail 10 September 2011. It could therefore be that both Reuss and Crowley were working against the anti-Traditional current, and that the crypto-masonic societies founded by Reuss were a means of subverting the subverters.

61. A Crowley, Magic Without Tears, Falcon Press, 1983, 66.

62. Ibid., 72-73.

63. A Crowley, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986, 697.

64. Ibid., 284

65. Ibid.

66. ‘World Forum of Spiritual Cultures’, New Dawn 126, May-June 2011, 7-8.

67. Régis Genté, ‘Kazakhstan or Eurasian geopolitics’, Le Monde Diplomatique, 18 November 2010, http://mondediplo.com/2010/11/18osce

DR. KR BOLTON has doctorates in theology and related areas, Ph.D. honoris causa, and certifications in psychology and social work studies. He has been widely published by the scholarly and broader media on a variety of subjects. He is a ‘contributing writer’ for Foreign Policy Journal, and a regular writer for New Dawn. Books include: Revolution From Above (London: Arktos Media Ltd., 2011), Stalin: The Enduring Legacy (Black House Publishing, 2012), ‘Introduction’ to Oscar Wilde’s The Soul of Man Under Socialism (Black House, 2012), with books pending on the conflict between tradition and counter-tradition, and psychopathy in Left-wing politics.

The above article appeared in New Dawn Special Issue Vol 6 No 6.

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By JAMES WASSERMAN

Did Zanoni belong to this mystical Fraternity, who, in an earlier age, boasted of secrets of which the Philosopher’s Stone was but the least; who considered themselves the heirs of all that the Chaldeans, the Magi, the Gymnosophists, and the Platonists had taught; and who differed from all the darker Sons of Magic in the virtue of their lives, the purity of their doctrines, and their insist­ing, as the foundation of all wisdom, on the subjugation of the senses, and the intensity of Religious Faith?

– Zanoni, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton

The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other govern­ments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments’ plans.

– British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, 1876

Two very different views of secret societies are revealed in the quotations above. The first describes a spiritual brotherhood pledged to Wisdom and guiding humanity toward the realm of the Infinite; the second seeks to expose the machinations of power-seekers who cloak their manipulative agendas in darkness. In addition to spiritual and political secret societies, one could add criminal secret societies such as the Mafia, or even clandestine elite military units – neither of which will be discussed here.

All secret societies share certain fundamental themes. Membership is restricted to those who have an abiding interest in the subject. Thus, a spiritual group will attract people seeking more knowledge of a particular teacher or type of practice. The student is aware of the subject matter in advance and will approach the group for further instruction. More rarely, an individual may be “tapped” by the group because of a perceived affinity to its purpose.

In a political secret society, membership is restricted to those who share an ideological affinity with the goals the group represents. At the furthest end of the political spectrum, the mission will be revolution. Such a society will go to great lengths to defend itself. Generally there will be small semiautonomous cells working in overall concert but with cut-outs introduced at all levels to pro­tect other members from exposure or betrayal. This type of society is represented by a contemporary group such as al-Qaeda. The infamous Weathermen of the 1960s and 1970s had a sim­ilar structure. The clandestine revolutionary model was developed and perfected by Hasan-i-Sabah, leader of the Nizari Ismaili Order of Assassins between the late 11th and early 12th centuries.

On another political plane are ideological groups such as the Council on Foreign Relations, or participants in the World Economic Forum. Here we find leaders in politics, business, finance, education, and the media who may share a belief in the value of global solutions; are in high positions of authority and influence; and represent different levels of involvement with the inner circle of the group. Most members simply welcome the opportu­nity to associate with other well-known luminaries and are honoured by being offered membership or attendance privileges. Yet, the ideology at the highest levels of such groups supports a world government – to be adminis­tered by a class of experts and planners, entrusted with running centrally organised social and political institu­tions. Although members may be persuaded to add their considerable voices to certain transnational political and economic policies, they may not be as supportive (or even aware) of the long-range ambitions of the inner circle. While these groups quite often hold their meetings in secret, their membership lists are a matter of public record. It is the central agenda that is disguised.

Adam Weishaupt founded the Bavarian Illuminati in 1776. The Illuminati are perceived by many as spanning the chasm between the spiritual and the political secret society. Often credited (or blamed) for influencing the French Revolution in 1787, the Illuminati taught a doctrine of social and political liberation that hinged on the equal­ity of man, the embrace of rationalism, and the denial of crown and church as the legitimate institutions for the regulation of social and moral values. The bitterness of life in Europe at this time – when church and state monopolised resources and often acted in an irresponsi­ble manner toward the citizenry – created widespread resentment among all classes. While the views of the Illuminati may sound quite advanced for the time, the European revolutions they are believed to have encour­aged degenerated into brutal bloodbaths whose singular lack of moral compass was appalling.

Reprinted with permission from The Mystery Traditions: Secret Symbols and Sacred Art by James Wasserman (Destiny Books, 2005).

The above article appeared in New Dawn Special Issue Vol 6 No 6.

Read this article and much more on the New World Order by downloading

your copy of New Dawn Special Issue Vol 6 No 6 (PDF version) for US$5.95

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