The World's Most Dangerous Secret Societies: The Illuminati, Freemasons, Bilderberg Group, Knights Templar, The Jesuits, Skull And Bones And Others

by James Jackson

  Numerous theories abound for the presence of Baphomet. These include, a linguistic corruption of the prophet Muhammed, or Mahomet; a symbol of the “baptism of wisdom” (the direct translation of the Greek term “baphe-metis”); and a literal idol (it is interesting to note that in cabalistic theory, the lesser countenance of God—the “Zaur Anpin”—is revealed as a human head.) Regardless of these elaborations, one thing is certain. On Friday, October 13th of 1307 (the origin of the superstition of Friday the 13th), King Philip ordered the arrest of several hundred Knights Templar, including their grandmaster Jacques de Molay, and formally charged them with heresy, financial corruption, bribery and secrecy. Their assets were seized, members were tortured and burned alive at the stake (including de Molay) and the order was formally dissolved. The few Templars who survived the extermination went underground into recluse, reemerging a few years later to forge alliances with other military Christian orders prevalent in Europe at the time, such as the Order of Teutonic Knights and the Knights of St. John.

  The Templars may have died in the most ignominious of manners. But their legacy—and some say their secret teachings—continue to this day. Sometimes in the most sinister form imaginable, as you will soon see.

  The Legacy of the Templars

  The Templar mystique continues to this day, permeated through the teachings of esoteric orders and secret societies as well as seemingly innocuous entities. The international youth organization Order of de Molay (a Freemasonic offshoot), professing to teach young men to become better and more responsible community leaders and organizers, takes its name from the “martyred” Templar, Jacques de Molay. The Catholic fraternal organization the Knights of Columbus freely admit that their structure is modeled after the spirit of the Knights Templar. And the French Revolution—widely held to be masterminded by the Order of Illuminati (of whom we’ll go into detail in subsequent chapters—found an unlikely ally in the Templars when, during the public execution of Louis XV, an unknown man lept onto the scaffolding to yell, “Jacques de Molay, thou art avenged!” before the applauding crowd before disappearing back into mystery. A blood-drunk boast? Or a Templar descendant?

  Freemasonry and the Knights Templar

  Certain traditions hold that some surviving Templars—who were widespread in their travels and most certainly held alliances and links with numerous European countries—went on to the British Isles (in particular Scotland) where they perpetuated their teachings and practices in secret, eventually forming the nucleus of one of the most powerful and influential secret societies in the West: the Ancient and Accepted Rite of Freemasonry.

  The link between the Templars and Freemasonry became even more brazen in the 18th century when the High Knights Templar of Ireland Lodge accepted a charter from the Mother Lodge of Freemasonry in Ireland (itself said to be received from a reconstituted Templar order in Paris) establishing and recognizing their claims of Masonic jurisdiction, eventually incorporating their rites into what has been known as York Rite Masonry.

  This rite is only available by invitation only, and ostensibly, only Freemasons who profess belief in Christianity (as opposed to standard Freemasonry which is available to anyone who professes belief in a higher power of any sort) are eligible. Yet the historical Knights Templar, who were also a nominally “Christian” organization, were alleged to hold beliefs diametrically opposite to conventional Christian doctrine, including the rejection of Jesus Christ (perhaps influenced by contact with the nearby heretical Cathar sect of Gnostics active in the 12th and 13th centuries in the region.) Could it be that their Masonic descendants also teach similar doctrines in their lodge meetings? Doctrines hidden, even from the eyes of the sincere but misguided new recruit?

  The Priory of Sion

  Exposed in the early 1980s by writers Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln in their best-selling Holy Blood Holy Grail, the Priory of Sion fulfills the ultimate archetype of a secret society: a hereditary, and generational group of French monied elite who claim a lineage directly back to the Knights Templar guarding a central and highly damaging secret. A secret so damning, it could bring down the foundations of Christianity itself. Namely, the Priory of Sion holds that Jesus did not die on the cross, but survived; and furthermore, established a bloodline with the otherwise vilified Mary Magdalen that formed both the Merovingian dynasty, and through successive generations, the Templars themselves. They purport that this bloodline is the true “secret” behind the Templar persecution, and that they are sworn to preserve this secret bloodline.

  While very little historical or scholarly data has been published on the Priory of Sion (critics have accused the group of establishing a complex hoax,) there has been a slew of mysterious deaths and kidnappings related to allegedly prominent members and Grandmasters of the Priory that beg a closer examination. If it is an elaborate hoax, why would members go to such lengths to both conceal and perpetuate its myths? Perhaps not surprisingly, the Priory’s membership roster also includes a number of figures alleged to also be functioning within the structure of the dreaded Illuminati. Certainly, the wealth accumulated by the Priory is enough to make even the most casual observer view their activities with suspicion.

  New Order of Templars

  Formed by defrocked Cistercian monk and homosexual Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels in Austria in 1905, the Ordo Novi Templi, or New Order of Templars was a bizarre concoction of Germanic neopaganism, quack science, virulent racism, creative Biblical interpretations and supposedly divine revelations dedicated to “further the racial self-confidence by doing pedigree and racial research, beauty contests and the founding of racist future sites in underdeveloped parts of the Earth.” To this end, Liebenfels regularly published a magazine entitled Ostara (named for the pre-Christian holy day of the vernal equinox), which found its strongest support among brooding pseudo-intellectuals of racist and anti-semitic circles; including a young and impressionable Adolf Hitler. In it, Liebenfels regularly upheld the superiority of the “Aryan” race, and made military and religious vows to safeguard the sanctity of the race by sterilizing and eradicating the presence of “lower” and “inferior” races.

  What would seem like absurd jabberwocky of the most inane caliber by any sensible human was obviously taken quite seriously by the Third Reich. And it is safe to say that by “just following orders,” the Templar concepts of sacred duty and unswerving devotion to an ideal found a tragic and convoluted conclusion in the gas chambers of Dachau and Auschwitz.

  Ordo Templi Orientis

  A pseudo-Masonic occult society of self-styled “Warrior Monks” sworn to uphold the religion of Thelema (an outlandish mixture of pseudo-Egyptian divine revelation supposedly received by British occultist Aleister Crowley in 1904 via a channeled text entitled The Book of the Law, whose central tenet can be summed up by the statement “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law”), the Ordo Templi Orientis (literally “Order of the Temple of the East”) seems about as far away from the Christian ideology behind the historic Knights Templar as possible. Yet its manifesto (published in 1919) maintains that in its hands is “concentrated the wisdom and knowledge” not only of several esoteric schools of thought (some entirely fictional) but also, most significantly, of the Knights Templar (of whose last Grandmaster, Jacques de Molay, was elected as “saint” in their central religious rite, the Gnostic Mass. It is also worth noting that their website indicates a physical presence in the greater Boston area called the Knights Templar Oasis.) It is also worth noting here that the same manifesto includes the Order of the Illuminati and indeed, one of their degrees is referred to as “Illuminated.”

  While in terms of social influence, the O.T.O. seems somewhat small (current worldwide numbers are estimated at a little more than 3,000 and most members tend to be categorized as disenchanted members of lower or middle class families), reports of drug abuse and sexual misconduct have been plaguing the cult for well over 30 years. Numerous mysterious deaths have been not
ed in conjunction with the O.T.O., and allegations of rape and intimidation (sometimes by higher-ups within the ranks) have been launched by former members on numerous occasions over the years.

  Other Manifestations

  Other recurrences of the Templar mysteries have included the Supreme Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem (a Christian defense and charitable organization which traces its roots to the historical Knights Templar, and officially registered in France in 1919. Members have been implicated in numerous racist and anti-immigrant attacks); the Order of the Solar Temple (a secret society devoted to New Age philosophy, reincarnation, “Rosicrucian” practices and UFO contact with ties to the French far Right, many of whose members famously committed mass suicide in Switzerland in 1994 and 1995); The New Esoteric Order of the Knights Templar (a New Age and neo-Gnostic cult with ties to a noted author within the genre whose works have praised incest and whose followers have been accused of bribery and embezzlement); and the Ancient Order of Black Templars (a South American sect that practices an offbeat blend of Voodoo and Santeria, Freemasonry and neo-Gnosticism, with links to the O.T.O. and a noted Chicago cult leader known for allegations of extreme sexual misconduct and prostitution.)

  Not to mention numerous groups with highly dubious claims of being the reconstituted Knights Templar, including one outfit whose membership included the Norwegian Anders Breivik, who murdered over 75 people—many of them teenagers and pre-teens—in Norway during a mass killing in 2009, citing extreme anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant motives as rationale for his attack. His manifesto, some 1500 pages of rambling and vitriolic far Right acerbity, makes numerous references to the ideals of the Templars.

  Members

  Since their official dissolution in 1312, the names of the original Knights Templar have been lost to history, with the exception of the more prominent members. However, members of Templar-derived ideologies and organizations are too wide to list here. Some who have been alleged to have been members have included French film maker and painter Jean Cocteau (Priory of Sion); actor John Wayne (Freemason, Order of de Molay); baseball player Babe Ruth (Knights of Columbus); composer Claude Debussy (Priory of Sion); cartoonist Mel Blanc (Order of de Molay); musicians Daryl Hall, John Frusciante and Mick Fleetwood (Ordo Templi Orientis); actor Roy Rogers (Freemason); far Right Belgian politician Jean Francois Thiriart (Order of the Solar Temple); actor Ernest Borgnine (Freemason); Chicago mayor Richard Daley (Knights of Columbus); journalist Ed Bradley (Freemason); musician Todd Rundgren (Ordo Templi Orientis); former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (Freemason, Illuminati); author John Steinbeck (Order of de Molay); cartoonist and innovator Walt Disney (Freemason); former Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush (Freemasons, Illuminati); painter and inventor Leonardo da Vinci (Priory of Sion); filmmaker Kenneth Anger (Ordo Templi Orientis); actor Jerry Orbach (Order of de Molay, Freemason); General Douglas M. MacArthur (Freemason); author Victor Hugo (Priory of Sion); singer and actor Burl Ives (Order of de Molay); photographer Robert Mapplethorpe (Ordo Templi Orientis); actor Sylvester Stallone (Freemason); composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Freemason, Illuminati); American Revolutionary Paul Revere (Freemason); Prime Minister Cecil Rhodes (Freemason, Illuminati) and Church of Mormon founder Brigham Young (Freemason).

  Chapter Three: THE ILLUMINATI

  The Illuminati. The very name is enough to cause fear and revulsion in the heart of any sensible, free-thinking individual. Rumored to be the impetus behind both the American and French revolutions of the 18th century as well as both world wars, the notion of a secretive shadow organization of puppet masters pulling the strings behind every social movement—progressive or not—and every mass calamity has been the source of mass speculation and paranoia throughout history. How did an obscure Masonic offshoot established by a rogue Jesuit priest in 1776 come to encapsule world power the likes of which is beyond the wildest dreams of even the most greedy of would-be dictators?

  The truth is, as far as the Illuminati is concerned, very little bedrock evidence for their continued proliferation can be found. The ultimate nature of a secret society is just that; a secret. And perhaps no other society has been so successful in shrouding themselves in mystery, deceit and misinformation than the Order of the Illuminati. So successful that millions of Americans don’t even realize they hold their trademark right in the folds of their wallet: the dollar bill. Look at the backside and observe the enigmatic eye in the pyramid, crowned by the banner “Novus Ordo Seclorum”—the New World Order. If that’s not enough to convince you of the ultimate plot of their designs, then read on. What you refuse to admit just might haunt you in the end.

  Origins of the Illuminati

  The story of the Illuminati begins in Bavaria in 1770. A Jewish convert to Roman Catholicism, Adam Weishaupt was elected as Professor of Canon Law at the University of Ingolstadt—a chair traditionally held by a Jesuit priest. Despite a subsequent conversion to the Jesuit faith, the 22-year old Weishaupt still found himself victim of repeated rebukes and character assassination by Jesuit colleagues and superiors. Rather than retaliate, the prank-minded Weishaupt decided to form an exclusive cadre of so-called “enlightened ones” or Perfectibilists (literally, “the perfected ones”) on May 1, 1776—coincidentally, the pagan holiday of Beltane—modeled after the degrees and structure of Freemasonry. The overall goal of the Illuminati was to establish a free and just society, without ecclesiastical or political tyranny in which both men and women were considered equal, and church authorities had no say. To this end, they allegedly sought freedom of speech and a complete overthrow of existing power structures, receiving funding from the House of Rothschild—both historically and currently the leading financiers in global banking—and forging alliances with Freemasonry, whose degree system they adopted into a series of ten symbolic levels: Novitiate, Minerval, Illuminated Minerval, Illuminatus Minor, Illuminatus Major, Illuminatus Drigens, Priest, Regent, Magus and Rex.

  The initial six degrees appear steeped in the biblical and cabalistic mysteries of Freemasonry. Indeed, it is from these initial degrees that Weishaupt’s Illuminati structure found the strongest support from existing Masonic lodges. However, at the level of Priest, the candidate was required to renounce and sever all Masonic ties, wearing an oath of devotion solely to the Illuminati. The degree of Regent extended this renunciation from conventional political and religious structures even further, with the candidate formally denouncing all ties to social, religious and political affiliations and was expected to extend the influence and aims of the Illuminati even further, subverting and infiltrating those very structures they denounced (a practice reminiscent of the Hashishins covered in Chapter One.)

  The order soon grew support from some of the leading political, literary and social figures of the time, including Ferdinand of Brunswick, foreign diplomat Xavier von Zwack, the writers Wolfgang von Goethe and Gottfried Herder, Duke Karl August of Saxe-Weimar, philosopher Georg Hegel, mystic Karl von Eckartshausen, the elusive Comte de Saint-Germain, and numerous Princes, Dukes and Barons from Bavaria and beyond.

  Yet in 1782, delegates from a Bavarian Masonic conference—who had apparently been denied entrance to the upper echelon of the order—formally denounced the Illuminati. Pressure from both the Catholic hierarchy and Masonic lodges forced then ruler Karl Theodor to ban the Illuminati altogether, and the order was announced as dissolved in 1785. Yet there is substantial evidence that this dissolution was simply a ruse to hide the activities of the order internationally—particularly in France and the nascent America, where Illuminati tenets and doctrines had a substantial influence on both revolutions (it is known that one of the architects of the French Revolution, Jean-Joseph Mounier was a member, and there is strong evidence that Thomas Paine, John Hancock, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson were secretly affiliated with the order.) Weishaupt himself fled to Gotha, where he was granted amnesty by Duke Ernst II and from which he continued his base of operations until his 1811.

  As no
ted previously, Weishaupt drew initial support from the banking dynasty of the Rothschilds, and there is considerable evidence that members of the family took formal initiation into the lodge at its early stages. Other merchants and bankers were well known to have connections to the lodge, including the Swiss Jean Gaspard Schweizer and the Austrian Ludwig von Goldman. However, it is through the Rothschilds (whose scion, Mayer Rothschild is known to have stated, “Give me control over a nation’s currency, and the law is meaningless”) that Weishaupt drew his strongest financial and social support—a family dynasty that perhaps not-so-coincidentally were responsible for financing the Napoleonic wars, the establishment of the U.S. Federal Reserve in 1913 and currently own an estimated 220 banks, including the Bank of England, the Bank of Israel and the People’s Bank of China, as well as controlling interests in such corporations as Microsoft and IBM. And it is from the Rothschilds that the Illuminati perpetuates its most insidious scheme of all—a dynasty consisting of 13 distinct bloodlines.

  The Illuminati in Doctrine and Practice

  At this point, the reader will probably ask, “Freedom? Equality? Liberty? Isn’t that the basis of our modern society? What’s so insidious about freedom of speech and justice for all?” And truth be told, the ideals of freedom of opportunity and discourse ostensibly proposed by the historical Illuminati are noble and commendable. It is well worth noting that Weishaupt was a noted admirer of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza, and his fundamental text The Ethics. Ideally, a free market would uphold legitimate and fair trade mutually beneficial to consumers and financiers.