The Most Evil Secret Societies in History Read online

  Despite these fighting words however, once banished there was little Weishaupt could do to keep the Illuminati going. At this point the entire society appears to have faded gently from view.10 That is, until recently, when a handful of contemporary researchers have claimed that the Bavarian Illuminati is up and running again, still aiming to establish a New World Order. Their evidence appears to lie with the emergence of several organizations as varied as the Yale Skull and Bones Society and the Bilderberg Group.

  The former is an elite club that includes some of the most powerful men of the twentieth century including several American presidents. Established in 1832, not long after the abolition of the Bavarian Illuminati, it is said that the Skull and Bones was none other than a new-world version of the type of societies so rife in Germany during the mid-nineteenth century. No wonder then, that outsiders claim this group to be a hotbed of Illuminati plottings and conspiracies. Several critics continue to demand the club’s termination, much as detractors did back in the eighteenth century. One such is Ron Rosenbaum, a columnist for the New York Observer.‘I think,’ says Rosenbaum, ‘there is a deep and legitimate distrust in America for power and privilege that are cloaked in secrecy. It’s not supposed to be the way we do things. We’re supposed to do things out in the open in America. And so that any society or institution that hints that there is something hidden is, I think, a legitimate subject for investigation.’11

  Another good reason for investigating the club is that several American presidents, including the present incumbent of the White House, George W. Bush, as well as his father George Bush Senior, and his grandfather, are alleged to have belonged to this group and have been said to have invited other Skull and Bones members to join them in government.

  But the Skull and Bones is not the only secretive organization potentially at work in the upper echelons of government. The Bilderberg Group, an elite coterie of power brokers, bankers, economists and world leaders who meet in secret to discuss world affairs was formed shortly after the end of World War II. In 1954, the Bilderberg’s agenda was to promote transatlantic cooperation so that future wars could be averted. Meeting in secret, usually in Holland, where the group held its first meeting at the Bilderberg Hotel, not a word of what is discussed ever reaches the general public. Is it any wonder that conspiracy theorists have linked this organization with shady goings-on, not to mention the establishment of a New World Order second only to that espoused by the Illuminati? Both the Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh, and international terrorist Osama Bin Laden, are said to have believed in the theory ‘that Bilderberg pulls the strings with which national governments dance.’12 In response to this assumption, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer in Britain, Denis Healey, who was one of the founding members of Bilderberg, vehemently denies the group exerts any sinister influence on world affairs. ‘There’s absolutely nothing in it,’ he said. ‘We never sought to reach a consensus on the big issues at Bilderberg. It’s simply a place for discussion.’13

  Similarly, a group calling itself the Trilateral Commission, formed in 1973 by private citizens from Japan, Europe and North America, insist that their group’s sole function is not to act as a screen shielding the evil machinations of the Illuminati, but as a think-tank established to foster greater cooperation amongst the democratic, industrialized countries of the world. The European Union has also been accused of being involved in Illuminati-managed decisions, as has the UN and the Council on Foreign Relations. This latter group, which was founded in 1921, is yet another independent, non-partisan organization for scholars dedicated to promoting a better understanding of the world and the foreign policies adopted by the United States and other governments. That is what the CFR professes to be. On the other hand, conspiracy theorists are more inclined to believe that it is the promotional wing of the ruling elite in America who use its members (all of whom are influential politicians, academics or economists) to further the cause of the New World Order and surreptitiously transplant its doctrines into mainstream American life. The conspiracy theorists’ websites use quotes by any number of influential persons to support their ideas. The following, for instance, was written on February 23, 1945 by President Roosevelt: ‘The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson.’ Or how about this from Felix Frankfurter, Justice of the Supreme Court in America (1939–62): ‘The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes.’ Neither quote is a shattering exposé of anything even remotely underhand, yet time and again what these people say is presented to us as concrete evidence that a secret society is at work, attempting to dominate the world. Be it the EU, the Commonwealth Institute or any other multi-national gathering – whether political or economic, conspiracy theorists continue to insist that the Illuminati (amongst others) are involved. They also point to acts of terrorism such as 9/11, assassinations such as John F. Kennedy’s and all manner of other world-shattering events as having been orchestrated by the Illuminati.

  David Icke, a British ex-footballer turned author, states in an article which appears on a website called appropriately enough, www.propagandamatrix.com, that ‘It was clear that something of enormous magnitude was being orchestrated that would so devastate the collective human mind with fear, horror, and insecurity, that “solutions” could be offered that would advance the agenda in a colossal leap almost overnight. This is what we saw in America on the ritually-significant eleventh day of the ninth month – 911 is the number for emergencies in the United States. Ritual and esoteric codes are at the heart of everything the Illuminati undertakes.’14

  So does such a society really exist and if it does, is it really attempting, as Robert Langdon would have us believe, to control world freedom? The idea of a secret organization attempting to rule the world seems a deep-seated one in the psyche of modern-day man. After all, this is the premise, give or take a few plotlines, behind all of the James Bond movies, not to mention thousands of other books and films that would have us believe in such hidden agendas.

  There is scant evidence, however, to back up such speculation but, given the freedom of speech we have in most democratic countries, conspiracy theorists will always be able to point at men of power and influence and accuse them of pursuing a hidden agenda. Perhaps this is evidence in itself that mankind has a deep-rooted need for conspiracy theories; we want to blame the problems of the world on a faceless organization more than any thing else; we want there to exist a sinister secret organization, the eradication of which would solve all our problems overnight. The Illuminati fits the bill and, even if it no longer exists as a covert group, it will live on in the minds of many as a convenient scapegoat for all the world’s ills.

  ARGENTEUM ASTRUM – ORGIES IN SICILY

  I took an immediate dislike to him [Crowley], but he interested and amused me. He was a great talker and he talked uncommonly well. In early youth, I was told, he was extremely handsome, but when I knew him he had put on weight, and his hair was thinning […] He was a fake, but not entirely a fake. […] He was a liar and unbecomingly boastful, but the odd thing was that he had actually done some of the things he boasted of.

  W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM, Introduction to the 1986 edition of The Magician

  The story of Argenteum Astrum is really the story of one man: Aleister Crowley, also known amongst other things as ‘The Great Beast’ and ‘The Wickedest Man on Earth’. Both soubriquets were earned through his involvement not only with Satanism and illicit drugs, but also with a sinister type of ‘magick’ whose central credo was best summed up in one of Crowley’s own teachings, ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.’ Indeed Crowley saw himself as the Prophet of a New Aeon, a man whose wisdom would supplant that of the Christian era and reveal a new, more libertarian dawn. No wonder that he cast such a dark shadow over the early twentieth century or that he has since been presented as one of the most vile cult
leaders of all time, the type of character who caught the eye of the writer Somerset Maugham, said to have based his novel, The Magician (1906) on The Great Beast.

  Born in Leamington, in Warwickshire, England on October 12, 1875, Crowley was named Edward Alexander by his doting parents, Emily and Edward Snr. His was a relatively wealthy family and the youngster enjoyed a comfortable Victorian childhood, if not a typical one, as both parents belonged to a strict branch of the Quakers, also known as the Plymouth Brethren.

  Religion played an important role in Crowley’s formative years, although as time went on he grew to despise the faith his parents so obviously adored. In his book The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, he wrote that the repressive atmosphere he experienced at home made him, ‘prepared to go out of my way to perform any act which might serve as a magical affirmation of my revolt’.1Even more bizarrely, it was Crowley’s mother, Emily, who seemingly first implanted the idea into her son’s mind that he was some type of antichrist, one whom she hoped would soon see the light and be redeemed but who instead began to revel in his role as Beast.

  In 1895, at the age of twenty, Crowley entered Trinity College, Cambridge where he spent the next three years enjoying his newly acquired freedom. These were good years where he read widely (if somewhat esoterically) and dabbled with the idea of eventually joining the diplomatic service. This was, however, only one of several career plans that never quite reached fruition. Instead, at the age of twenty-three, Crowley decided to join an occult secret society known as The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a relatively new group founded in 1887 by William Wynn Westcott and Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and which boasted among its members such luminaries as the Irish poet, W. B. Yeats. The Golden Dawn was a highly influential society, one that claimed to synthesize several branches of religion and magic such as the Kabbalah, alchemy, tarot, astrology, divination, numerology, Masonic symbolism and ritual magic into one cohesive, logical whole.

  Adopting the magical name of ‘Perdurabo’, which in Latin means ‘I will endure’, Crowley was eager to submerse himself in study and spent many hours poring over various of the society’s core tomes. The reward for this hard work was that he rapidly rose through the Golden Dawn’s ranks, but his presence wasn’t always seen as beneficial and soon enough Crowley had managed to fragment the group to the extent that barely two years after he had first joined, he was expelled. Understandably angry, he decided to travel to Mexico to continue his magical studies. He also decided to form what would become the first in a long line of societies, the Lamp of the Invisible Light, albeit that this was still affiliated to the Golden Dawn. Better known by the abbreviation LIL, according to Crowley it was begun with the full knowledge and encouragement of Samuel Mathers, although LIL never seems to have numbered more than two members. The first was Crowley and the second was someone known as Don Jesus Medina (undoubtedly a pseudonym). Having established the society, Crowley quickly grew bored of it, preferring instead to pursue his own studies and fulful his wish to learn how to render oneself invisible. ‘I reached a point,’ wrote Crowley, ‘where my physical reflection in a mirror became faint and flickering. It gave very much the effect of the interrupted images of the cinematograph in its early days.’2 Whether this reveals early signs of psychological disturbance has been debated over many years, but what these words do illustrate is Crowley’s unremitting sense of himself, his own abilities and power.

  After Mexico, the great magician then moved on to India and a little later to France, only returning to England in 1903. He then met and married a woman by the name of Rose Kelly. The following year, the couple traveled to Egypt and it was here, according to Crowley, that he had the most formative experience of his entire career.

  Aleister Crowley began his life as an occultist at the age of twenty-three when he joined an organization known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, but was expelled from the order after only two years for causing turmoil within its ranks.

  For quite some time, Crowley had been attempting to call up his Holy Guardian Angel, something he believed everyone possessed, though few were fortunate enough to experience. His experiments had met with little success until his stay in Egypt where he tried to summon up sylphs for Rose’s enjoyment. Suddenly, Rose said she began to experience some type of psychic message from the Egyptian god, Horus. At first, Crowley was sceptical. Rose, after all, had never displayed any type of psychic or clairvoyant gift before but, following several days of intensive questioning, Crowley became convinced that his wife had indeed become the conduit for messages between himself and the god. For three days, Crowley took dictation from an emissary of the god, a ‘personage’ by the name Aiwass, dictation that resulted in a text, Liber Al vel Legis, which is now commonly referred to as The Book of the Law. In it Crowley (or Aiwass) lays down three basic philosophies, the first being ‘Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole of the Law,’ the second, ‘Love Is The Law, Love Under Will’ and the third, ‘Every Man And Every Woman Is A Star.’

  The book also names Crowley as the prophet of a New Aeon and, therefore, the supreme magical authority, over-ruling all others. Given Crowley’s megalomaniac tendencies, it wasn’t long before he gleefully reported this ‘promotion’ to his onetime friend and Golden Dawn founder, Samuel Mathers. The result was instant warfare; a kind of magical duel in which it is said the two men cast spells over each other. Mathers was supposed to have sent an evil force to attack Crowley’s hunting dogs, which he kept back in England, causing them to die as well as making Crowley’s servants fall seriously ill. In retaliation, Crowley summoned the help of Beelzebub and his forty-nine servitor spirits, after which Mathers’ attacks ceased and peace was restored.

  By this time Rose had fallen pregnant and, on July 28, 1904, having returned to England, she gave birth to a daughter whom Crowley named Nuit Ma Ahathoor Hecate Sappho Jezebel Lilith. To explain himself Crowley wrote the following note:

  Nuit was given in honor of our Lady of the Stars; Ma, goddess of justice, because the sign of Libra was rising; Ahathoor, goddess of Love and Beauty, because Venus rules Libra; I’m not sure about the name Hecate, but it may have been a compliment to the infernal gods; a poet could hardly do less than commemorate the only lady who ever wrote poetry, Sappho; Jezebel still held her place as my favorite character in Scripture; and Lilith, of course, holds undisputed possession of my affections in the realm of demons.

  Perhaps due to the birth of his daughter, Crowley grew less and less interested in the realms of magic and in 1905 he decided to take part in a climbing expedition to Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas. The climb was to prove fatal for several members of the team but, seemingly unperturbed by these deaths, Crowley continued his travels through India then on to Japan and China, from where he went to North America before sailing back to England. It was not until his return that he learned of his daughter’s death. Rose and Nuit had followed Crowley out to India for the first leg of his tour, but the little girl had contracted typhoid in Rangoon (now Yangon) and, although hospitalized, had died shortly afterwards.

  Grieving the death of his daughter and increasingly estranged from Rose, who had begun to drink heavily, Crowley renewed a ‘magical collaboration’ with an old friend of his from his time with the Golden Dawn, a man called George Cecil Jones. The two friends decided to form a new magical order, one whose driving force and leadership would be left in Crowley’s capable hands and whose name was to be Argenteum Astrum or the A. IA.I

  In many respects the A. IA. I was a continuation of the Golden Dawn. Crowley and Jones reintroduced the Golden Dawn Neophyte Ritual, the purpose of which was ‘to transform the consciousness of the “Candidate” by severing the continuity of his life and directing him upon the hitherto invisible spiritual path.’3 Robed and blindfolded, the new recruit was led into a consecrated temple. He would then choose a motto, just as Crowley chose ‘Perdurabo’ at his initiation, after which the candidate took an oath swearing that he would keep secret all the mysteries of the
group. He was made to listen to various chants and instructions, before being asked to kneel. The blindfold was then removed and the candidate welcomed into the order.

  One of the first men to undergo this ritual was Captain John Frederick Charles Fuller who joined the A. IA. I in 1906, taking the magical name of Per Ardua Ad Astra, ‘through effort to the stars.’

  Meanwhile, Rose, having fallen pregnant for a second time, gave birth to another daughter, this time named Lola Zaza. Due to Rose’s heavy drinking, Crowley had all but left the family home and set himself up in a bachelor flat where he entertained several lovers, two of whom, Ada Leverson and Vera Snepp, were written about extensively in his poetry. But Crowley’s verses weren’t the only writing he produced during this period for, in 1907, what later became known as the Holy Books began to be ‘received’ much as had happened with The Book of the Law. Crowley claimed to write the texts as though they were dictated from another dimension through a type of unconscious channeling of ideas. At the same time, he also produced what he considered one of his finest works, a satirical drama called The World’s Tragedy, in the preface to which he expounded some of his more outrageous theories. It included a defence of sodomy in the context that ‘there seems no better way to avoid the contamination of woman and the morose pleasures of solitary vice. (Not that women themselves are unclean. It is the worship of them as ideals that rots the soul).’4 The preface also contains a reference to the seduction of young boys (Crowley had always been attracted to men as well as to women and through his life conducted several homosexual affairs), indeed one of his main goals during this period was the recruitment of such into the A. IA. I Both he and Fuller traveled to Oxford and Cambridge Universities with the intention of signing up new members, one of whom Crowley immediately fell in love with, a man by the name of Victor Neuberg (whose chosen A. IA. I soubriquet was Omnia Vincam meaning ‘I shall conquer all’.) The hapless Neuberg thereafter followed Crowley to Paris (where the latter was living temporarily), where a bizarre type of sexual initiation took place.