Intriguingly enough, it wasn’t until the rise of the Enlightenment in the 18th century—which, as Chapter Three and Chapter Four demonstrated, was in no small part a result of Masonic and Illuminati influence—that Jesuit conspiracies began to be more widespread. Conflicts between Catholicism and Freemasonry had been festering for numerous years prior; and indeed, to this date, there is a mutual enmity between the Vatican and the vast majority of Masonic lodges. Accusations of Jesuit support was a popular rebuttal to church-abetted attacks on the rationalism of Rousseau and Voltaire; and the term “Jesuit” became an increasingly derogatory epithet well into the 19th century, when anti-clericism became a common facet of French intellectual life, thanks to such writers as famed French historian and ‘philosopher of pessimism’ Jules Michelet. Conversely, Jesuit supporters had a ready counter-argument in their own nemesis of Adam Weishaupt but by then, it was too late; Masonic and Illuminati ideals had come into their own rarely-waning vogue both in the New World and the old.
Yet, much like other secret societies—as well as the Catholic church itself—the Jesuits maintain their own secretive rites of induction. After all, what is a military order without some sense of pageantry, some sense of formal ritual decorum, that defies the rational and instead reminds the candidate that he is no longer invested with mortal indenture but instead serves a higher calling? This is as true for the Marine as it is for the Freemason; and subsequently, the Jesuit.
One account states that a Jesuit called to the rank of command swears an oath of fealty not to God or to the betterment of mankind, but to the direct authority of the Pope, whom is viewed as the mortal representative of the Lord on Earth. He does so beneath two banners: one being a banner bearing the official papal colors, the other a black banner emblazoned with the image of a dagger and a skull and crossbones (a curious image, given Chapter Seven.) Directly above this image is the legend INRI, often found on images of the crucifix and generally held to be shorthand for the Latin Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum or “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” However, this account states that the legend is actually shorthand for Iustum Necar, Reges Impious or Latin for “It is just to murder an impious king” (it is interesting to compare this legend with the hermetic and qabalistic practice of notariqon, whereby the acronym of a popular phrase is held to have numerous mystical meanings to be discovered through a complex numerological analysis.)
This same account goes on to quote the “Extreme Oath of the Jesuits” which states, among other things, that the candidate is sworn to “plant the seeds of jealousy and hatred between communities, provinces, states that were at peace, and incite them to deeds of blood, involving them in war with each other, and to create revolutions and civil wars in countries that were independent and prosperous, cultivating the arts and the sciences and enjoying the blessings of peace. To take sides with the combatants and to act secretly with your brother Jesuit, who might be engaged on the other side, but openly opposed to that with which you might be connected, only that the Church might be the gainer in the end, in the conditions fixed in the treaties for peace and that the end justifies the means.”
At the conclusion of this oath, the candidate is questioned through a series of direct interrogations regarding his motivations and his obligations that is strikingly reminiscent of Masonic oaths (perhaps the latter being a perversion of pre-existing Jesuit obligations?) including being received by a mysterious “venerable man with white hair” (itself, reminiscent of the Templar oath to Baphomet), and concludes with the charge, “Go ye, then, into all the world and take possession of all lands in the name of the Pope. He who will not accept him as the Vicar of Jesus and his Vice-regent on earth, let him be accursed and exterminated.”
The Catholic Church and the CIA have long enjoyed a mutually respectful relationship; and some say, a mutual vying for power. This relationship dates all the way back to the 1940s in the midst of WWII when General William Donovan, then head of the Office of Strategic Services (the precursor of the CIA), was received by Pope Pius XII to be granted the Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Sylvester, the oldest and most prestigious of papal knighthoods, on accounts of his alliance with the Catholic intelligence service Pro Deo.
Since then, the links between the CIA and the Vatican have been marked by a pronounced, if at times competitive, alliance, particularly in regions such as Latin America and Eastern Europe where Catholicism has garnered an unwavering popularity, especially in the face of documented CIA activity during the 1970s and 1980s. Both Vatican funding of covert CIA operations as well as CIA sponsorship of the traditionalist “Opus Dei” movement, which helped infiltrate and combat Communist sympathies during the Cold War, has been ably documented; and the relationship between the Vatican and Licio Gelli’s Masonic “Propaganda Due” lodge has been linked to discretionary CIA funding, with a number of unanswered questions regarding Gelli’s dismissed criminal charges and CIA involvement still lingers for many.
Former CIA director William Casey as well as his close colleague, former Secretary of State Alexander Haig, were both noted members of the Knights of Malta, a Jesuit-allied military order who also were responsible for the smuggling of thousands of Nazi war criminals into South America immediately following WWII through Catholic Bishop Alois Hudal’s “underground railroad”, including noted Jesuit father Martin Bormann (despite the fact that Jesuits were a frequent target for Gestapo persecution in WWII, this appears only on account of Catholicism’s popularity in Germany at the time. The truth of the matter is that the Nazis openly cooperated with the Vatican, and by default Jesuits, as documented evidence has proven time and time again. Benito Mussolini, the Fascist Italian dictator and close ally of Hitler, as well as the openly-Fascist admirant and Nazi criminal harborer Argentinian President Juan Peron.) Other members of the Knights of Malta have included Nixon-era CIA Director William Colby, Lee Iacocca, William F. Buckley, Pat Buchanan, J. Patrick Grace, Cold War-era CIA Director John A. McCone and Cardinal John Joseph O’Connor; all of whom have had noted ties to the Council on Foreign Relations.
Certainly, adherence to the Jesuit faith does not imply nefarious or conspiratorial intent anymore than adherence to Catholicism implies pedophilia or Nazi war crime-support. But it is curious how a supposedly secular (and some would argue Masonically-derived) nation such as America and an allegedly secular (and unquestionably unethical) nation such as that of Nazi Germany could openly cooperate with the Vatican , and by default, their own “Secret Service”, the Society of Jesuits? Unless there was another, perhaps “hidden”, mechanism at hand…
That mechanism will be better left for the more astute reader to ascertain.
Members
Other members of the Society of Jesuits and allied Vatican organizations have included: Mathematician (and peer of Galileo) Luca Valerio; St. Francis Xavier; author Garry Wills; former Senator Frank Lausche (Knight of Malta); political pundit John McLaughlin; Prince Laurent of Belgium (Knight of Malta); controversial author Father Malachi Martin; Belgian physicist Georges LeMaitre; French Minister of Defense Patrick Levaye (Knight of Malta); Hitler biographer Franz Jetzinger; linguist Peter Hans Kolvenbach; scientist, mystic and discoverer of microbes Athanasius Kircher; writer Augustin Barruel; former German Chancellor Franz von Papen (Knight of Malta); philosopher Yves Marie Andre; philosopher Joseph de Maistre; Cardinal Avery Dulles; King Juan Carlos I of Spain (Knight of Malta); former Congressman Robert Drinan; physicist and astronomer Francesco Maria Grimaldi; philosopher Baltasar Gracian; Crown Prince Otto von Habsburg (Knight of Malta); author John Powell; Congressman Gabriel Richard; poet Gerald Manley Hopkins; Bloomingdale’s founder Alfred Bloomingdale (Knight of Malta); philosopher Martin Heidegger; explorer Simon le Moyne; philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin; former CIA Counterintelligence Chief James Angleton (Knight of Malta); Gregorian calendar architect Christopher Clavius; former Secretary of the Interior Walter Hickel (Knight of Malta); labor activist John Corridan; scientist Louis Bernard Castel;
author James Martin; mathematician Andres Tacquet; former Senator Rick Santorum (Knight of Malta); Belgian political leader and SS officer Leon Degrelle; artist Andreas Pozzo; former Inspector General of the Department of Defense Joseph Schmitz (Knight of Malta); poet Robert Southwell; and former U.S. Secretary of Energy James D. Watkins (Knight of Malta).
Afterword
It’s been almost a thousand years since Hassan-i-Sabbah first oversaw his elite cadre of highly trained and highly indoctrinated Hashishin from his mountain fortress at Alamut, inaugurating a dynastic reign of terror that lasted less than only two hundred years. And it’s been almost 250 years since the mercurial presence of Adam Weishaupt flickered in and out of seminaries and secretive candle-lit lodges to inaugurate what may be the world’s longest concurrently running shaggy dog story, or such a substantial threat to global freedom that the human mind would prefer to keep its head in the sand rather than address its ramifications. Since that time, the world has been baptized both in blood and peace time and time again; seen the establishment of new nations, new ideologies, new faiths, world wars and the development of weapons and diseases that could potentially spell the demise of existence of the human race as we know it; and at the crux of each cataclysm, names occur and reoccur in strange and mysterious configurations, a cuneiform that only time and dedicated research can decipher.
It’s been said that when Swiss psychologist Carl Jung first read James Joyce’s virtually impenetrable and nonsensical Finnegan’s Wake, he commented that “this is either an example of severe mental illness or a degree of mental health inconceivable to most people.” And for millions of people, the analogy can be extended to the idea of secret societies; either they are a fertile example of the paranoid human imagination to distort and skew coincidence to an absurd degree, or they are a byproduct of the human imagination’s ability to distort, skew and control human society to a degree unfathomable to paranoia and absurdity. Time and time again, names, events and occurrences occur in such close proximity to one another to make the factor of coincidence a virtual improbability; and time and time again, the average person ascribes to these confluences the magical property of “coincidence”, demonizing believers as paranoid cranks and gullible swallowers of a dissociative brand of snake oil.
There’s no doubt that some of the more fanciful descriptions of these societies are no doubt figments of the author’s imagination, and highly profitable figments at that. But beyond the inane absurdity of certain allegations (the notion of a dynasty of shape-shifting reptilian/human hybrids responsible for the infiltration of every conceivable social mechanism since time immemorial instantly comes to mind), the very real question when faced with the plausibility of detailing secret societies is best summed up by the question, who gains? The author, who faces the distinct probability of a lifetime of ostracism, ridicule and marginalization for daring to ‘suggest’ that there may be figures who stand to gain and historically have gained by the non-judicious exercise of control, nepotism and influence and who have perpetuated a far-reaching vision and schematic of that control and are willing to sacrifice the lives of others to ensure that control remains forever cemented? The architects of that control, whose movements are forever under scrutiny being public figures who continue to exist in an age of diminished privacy? The subjects of that control, who knowingly or unknowingly trade personal liberty and freedom of both thought and expression in exchange for an illusion of security? Or the unseen hand which, by its very inconspicuousness, gains profit and power in full public purview according to the age-old designs of greed and authority?
I am often asked whether or not I take the subject of secret societies with a grain of salt. I typically answer no; but it’s likely that they take me with a grain of salt. What I mean by that, is that despite the threat of public exposure from numerous sides, both as often politically or religiously non-sectarian as they are sectarian, these same architects of control and domination continue to act with impunity, fulfilling designs as brazenly and predictably as any poorly scripted Hollywood thriller. It’s not that I believe they are oblivious to criticism or exposure; it’s just that I believe they have become so adroitly capable of mastering misinformation and miscommunication that even criticism, exposure and widespread public outcry can be easily skewed and twisted so as to be grafted on to their schemes to suit their best interests.
As I mentioned earlier in the introduction, the notion of secret societies is no longer a distinctly underground phenomenon; but then again it never has been. Not only have many so-called “shadow” organizations operated out in the open, but warnings as to their threats have appeared since at least the 18th century. What has changed is public perception of these threats. The secret society is now enjoying a semi-ironic prestige in popular culture, with numerous movies, novels, musicians and internet sites celebrating (often smugly and frequently superficially) the lore of these entities with all the free abandon and self-conscious winking and nudging one has come to expect in the digital age. I say, “semi-ironically” because these same purveyors of Illuminati chic seem to play right into the ploys and designs of those power barons they choose to blithely dismiss as nothing more than a fashion statement.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, the explosion in popularity of the subject has fostered a plethora of books; some meticulously researched, some novel and some fundamentally prejudiced. Which has led to a great question: if these organizations are so powerful, why aren’t the authors of these exposes dead yet? The answer is simple; the most critical way to deflect your opponent’s arguments is to denigrate them. Silencing your opponent won’t stifle his or her argument; but by deriding that argument, you make it known (through a somewhat curious twist of logic) that disagreement with your own is nothing more than a cause for public humiliation. And public humiliation is par for the course for these organizations.
My personal stance on the subject matter is that there are, indeed, elements beyond our conscious control which seek to manipulate information and public opinion to best serve the needs of an authority which seeks to consolidate power through the process of globalization and the direct silencing of dissenting opinions. As to the motivation behind these entities, I don’t believe that they are necessarily exclusive to one particular political, cultural or religious ideology, but are much more abstract in their outlook, seeking power for its own sake. My personal opinion is that we are currently living in a world where freedom of expression and livelihood are being threatened by these very entities, and it is the distinct duty of anyone possessed with the slightest semblance of conscience to combat these entities by any and every means necessary.
I don’t pretend that this is either the first or the last book to be written on the subject. I don’t pretend that somewhere down the line, a much abler researcher will not compose a work that will not only be much more resolutely documented, but will provide irrevocable evidence for the existence of these societies and the dangers they pose to the very foundations of the world as we know it. Not only do I not pretend this, I actively hope and welcome it. The wool can only be pulled over the eyes for so long until somebody wakes up. The lie may seduce sweetly for now, but its neck will eventually be pierced by truth. And like freedom, the truth, as much wiser men have noted, is a two-edged sword.
The World's Most Dangerous Secret Societies: The Illuminati, Freemasons, Bilderberg Group, Knights Templar, The Jesuits, Skull And Bones And Others Page 12