via Rt.com:
Using an official Vatican car to transport cocaine and cannabis did not help two Italians to avoid justice. Diplomatic plates failed to protect the two smugglers as they were stopped and arrested in France. Two Italians, 30 and 41, whose names have not been revealed, are now in a French prison. There are varying reports on where the arrest was made. Local sources say the incident took place at a French border checkpoint, while AFP reported the two were detained at a toll station near Chambéry, in the French Alps. law enforcement searched the Vatican vehicle, they found four kilos of cocaine and 200 grams of cannabis.
It appeared that the car belonged to the Argentine Cardinal Jorge Maria Mejia, 91, retired librarian of the Holy See, who is now recovering after a heart attack. According to reports, the Cardinal’s private secretary had given the car to the two Italian men few days earlier, to take it for its annual checkup. French RTL radio said the two men used the car to drive to Spain to buy the drugs, assuming they would be protected by the diplomatic plates. They were reportedly on the way back when French police stopped them.
This information, however, has not yet been confirmed by legal sources. The Vatican confirmed that one of its official cars had been stopped in France with drugs on board, but stressed that none of its staff were involved in the incident. "Cardinal Mejia’s car carrying drugs was effectively blocked by the French police but the cardinal, who is ill… it is totally unrelated," the Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi said. When asked, both men failed to provide a Vatican diplomatic passport, so the Vatican was not directly implicated, French legal sources said.
Thursday, September 18, 2014
Monday, September 15, 2014
Organised crime in Italy: "I am an 'illuminato'"
via Spiegel:
The shadowy Calabrian mafia, the 'Ndrangheta, has become one of the most powerful criminal organizations in the Western world through its dominance of the European cocaine trade. For the first time, local syndicate bosses described their business model to SPIEGEL. It's a mixture of entrepreneurial talent, skillful management and deadly ruthlessness...For the meeting with SPIEGEL, Carlo has suggested a café in a town outside Munich. He is sitting in the shade of tall trees, a fit man in his late 50s, with alert eyes and a shaved head. He explains why men like him never go to prison, even though they bring cocaine to Germany by the ton...A diamond set in a gold ring flashes for a moment, and then Carlo continues where he left off: "I am an 'illuminato,'" he says, speaking German with an Italian accent. In mafia circles, a distinction is made between "illuminati" ("enlightened ones") and "manovali" ("henchmen"). The diamond is a sign of Carlo's high rank...Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) has long had its sights set on the 'Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia. The 'Ndrangheta was responsible for almost all of the attention-grabbing mafia crimes committed on German soil in recent years...According to an internal BKA report, Germany is a key hub in the European cocaine trade as a "transit and organization country."..He is wearing a black shirt, black trousers and black loafers -- elegant Italian products, all made of high-quality materials. He was baptized at 18, he says.
He is referring to the secret ritual in which he was accepted into the "onorata società," or "honored society," as the 'Ndrangheta calls itself. His uncle brought him into the organization. This is often the case in such organizations, where cohesion is based on kinship and there are few traitors as a result.
In Italy, such turncoats are known as "pentiti," or "the repentant ones." They are mafia members who, after being arrested, break the "omertà," or vow of silence, and tell all. They become key witnesses for the prosecution. According to statistics compiled by the Italian judiciary, until 2008 there were about 1,000 pentiti affiliated with the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, 2,000 with the Camorra in Naples -- but only 42 with the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta. Members of the 'Ndrangheta, known as 'Ndranghetisti, do not taint the blood of their families through betrayal.
..."Our customers in Germany are mostly pimps and a large biker gang," says Carlo. "We deliver in units of 50 to 70 kilograms (110 to 154 pounds), often to brothels." He says that he doesn't know what happens to the cocaine there. The 'Ndrangheta are careful not to take risks by committing ordinary crimes. "We don't deal drugs on German streets,"...The BKA report states that the Calabrian mafia has developed "deep-seated structures" in Germany, complete with "leaders from individual clans, as well as killers."...The experts with Germany's BKA have studied the current structure of the 'Ndrangheta. According to the BKA report, the syndicate is "no longer structured horizontally in individual family clans, but, like the Cosa Nostra, in the form of a pyramid."...To this day, strategic alliances are formed between families in the 'Ndrangheta through marriage..."We want to go to the source of government contracts and subsidies, politics," says Carlo.
Getting into Politics
A case that was uncovered in 2010 shows how the 'Ndrangheta is doing this. Italians who live in Germany have the right to vote in Italy. This prompted the Farao clan to send some of its members to Baden-Württemberg in 2008 with suitcases full of cash, which they used to buy their fellow Italians' votes in a parliamentary election.
This is how Nicola Di Girolamo, 51, a member of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom party (PDL), is believed to have gained his seat in the Senate in Rome. He was arrested in early 2010 on charges of having helped the 'Ndrangheta to launder about €2 billion through Italian telephone companies, with the help of straw men...
related, via The Economist. Ndrangheta is the same organization that the ITCCS has accused of supplying children for human hunting parties attended by royalty:
FROM modest beginnings as the local mafia of Calabria, at the toe of the Italian boot, the ’Ndrangheta has spread far and wide. It has penetrated Italy’s financial and industrial heartlands, Lombardy and Piedmont, more than any other organised-crime group. It has a dominant position in the transatlantic cocaine trade, building on alliances with Colombian and then Mexican mobsters. One study put its turnover in 2013 at over €50 billion ($69 billion).
But who controls the ’Ndrangheta? The question is central to one of Italy’s longest-running mafia trials, which is expected to end shortly after almost three years. The trial arose from an investigation code-named “Operation Goal” that led in 2010 to more than 40 arrests. Among the accused are members of the most notorious families in Reggio di Calabria...The earliest hint of a hidden ’Ndrangheta emerged in 2007, during an investigation overseen by Mr Lombardo into how the group tried to profit from the construction of a new motorway. Eavesdropping on a trade unionist, Sebastiano Altomonte, police heard him describe his contacts with ’Ndrangheta leaders and explain to his wife that they were split between “the visible and the invisible, which was born a couple of years ago”. He was among the “invisibles”, he said. It was previously believed that a co-ordinating body, the Provincia, was the ’Ndrangheta’s high command; it also has an assembly called the Crimine (“Crime”), believed to meet once a year during the pilgrimage to a sanctuary in the Aspromonte uplands.
As the judges who convicted Mr Altomonte and others noted, his remarks open up “an entirely new scenario” in which there exists a separate (and perhaps higher) level of ’Ndrangheta leadership previously unknown to investigators. The police began a painstaking process of revisiting old cases and reinterrogating state witnesses (known as pentiti). Some pentiti acknowledged the existence of a hidden level; others did not. But, says Mr Lombardo, that was to be expected: according to Mr Altomonte, even some bosses are unaware of the ’Ndrangheta’s invisible arm.
Not all the evidence in support of his view has been presented in court; what has been is tenuous yet intriguing. One pentito described a Fellini-esque visit with a top ’Ndrangheta man to an office like a notary’s in the posh Rome district of Parioli. He spoke of a “kind of confessional” in the corridor where he had to wait and a plaque bearing odd letters matching one in the home of his clan’s boss.
The shadowy Calabrian mafia, the 'Ndrangheta, has become one of the most powerful criminal organizations in the Western world through its dominance of the European cocaine trade. For the first time, local syndicate bosses described their business model to SPIEGEL. It's a mixture of entrepreneurial talent, skillful management and deadly ruthlessness...For the meeting with SPIEGEL, Carlo has suggested a café in a town outside Munich. He is sitting in the shade of tall trees, a fit man in his late 50s, with alert eyes and a shaved head. He explains why men like him never go to prison, even though they bring cocaine to Germany by the ton...A diamond set in a gold ring flashes for a moment, and then Carlo continues where he left off: "I am an 'illuminato,'" he says, speaking German with an Italian accent. In mafia circles, a distinction is made between "illuminati" ("enlightened ones") and "manovali" ("henchmen"). The diamond is a sign of Carlo's high rank...Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) has long had its sights set on the 'Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia. The 'Ndrangheta was responsible for almost all of the attention-grabbing mafia crimes committed on German soil in recent years...According to an internal BKA report, Germany is a key hub in the European cocaine trade as a "transit and organization country."..He is wearing a black shirt, black trousers and black loafers -- elegant Italian products, all made of high-quality materials. He was baptized at 18, he says.
He is referring to the secret ritual in which he was accepted into the "onorata società," or "honored society," as the 'Ndrangheta calls itself. His uncle brought him into the organization. This is often the case in such organizations, where cohesion is based on kinship and there are few traitors as a result.
In Italy, such turncoats are known as "pentiti," or "the repentant ones." They are mafia members who, after being arrested, break the "omertà," or vow of silence, and tell all. They become key witnesses for the prosecution. According to statistics compiled by the Italian judiciary, until 2008 there were about 1,000 pentiti affiliated with the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, 2,000 with the Camorra in Naples -- but only 42 with the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta. Members of the 'Ndrangheta, known as 'Ndranghetisti, do not taint the blood of their families through betrayal.
..."Our customers in Germany are mostly pimps and a large biker gang," says Carlo. "We deliver in units of 50 to 70 kilograms (110 to 154 pounds), often to brothels." He says that he doesn't know what happens to the cocaine there. The 'Ndrangheta are careful not to take risks by committing ordinary crimes. "We don't deal drugs on German streets,"...The BKA report states that the Calabrian mafia has developed "deep-seated structures" in Germany, complete with "leaders from individual clans, as well as killers."...The experts with Germany's BKA have studied the current structure of the 'Ndrangheta. According to the BKA report, the syndicate is "no longer structured horizontally in individual family clans, but, like the Cosa Nostra, in the form of a pyramid."...To this day, strategic alliances are formed between families in the 'Ndrangheta through marriage..."We want to go to the source of government contracts and subsidies, politics," says Carlo.
Getting into Politics
A case that was uncovered in 2010 shows how the 'Ndrangheta is doing this. Italians who live in Germany have the right to vote in Italy. This prompted the Farao clan to send some of its members to Baden-Württemberg in 2008 with suitcases full of cash, which they used to buy their fellow Italians' votes in a parliamentary election.
This is how Nicola Di Girolamo, 51, a member of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom party (PDL), is believed to have gained his seat in the Senate in Rome. He was arrested in early 2010 on charges of having helped the 'Ndrangheta to launder about €2 billion through Italian telephone companies, with the help of straw men...
related, via The Economist. Ndrangheta is the same organization that the ITCCS has accused of supplying children for human hunting parties attended by royalty:
FROM modest beginnings as the local mafia of Calabria, at the toe of the Italian boot, the ’Ndrangheta has spread far and wide. It has penetrated Italy’s financial and industrial heartlands, Lombardy and Piedmont, more than any other organised-crime group. It has a dominant position in the transatlantic cocaine trade, building on alliances with Colombian and then Mexican mobsters. One study put its turnover in 2013 at over €50 billion ($69 billion).
But who controls the ’Ndrangheta? The question is central to one of Italy’s longest-running mafia trials, which is expected to end shortly after almost three years. The trial arose from an investigation code-named “Operation Goal” that led in 2010 to more than 40 arrests. Among the accused are members of the most notorious families in Reggio di Calabria...The earliest hint of a hidden ’Ndrangheta emerged in 2007, during an investigation overseen by Mr Lombardo into how the group tried to profit from the construction of a new motorway. Eavesdropping on a trade unionist, Sebastiano Altomonte, police heard him describe his contacts with ’Ndrangheta leaders and explain to his wife that they were split between “the visible and the invisible, which was born a couple of years ago”. He was among the “invisibles”, he said. It was previously believed that a co-ordinating body, the Provincia, was the ’Ndrangheta’s high command; it also has an assembly called the Crimine (“Crime”), believed to meet once a year during the pilgrimage to a sanctuary in the Aspromonte uplands.
As the judges who convicted Mr Altomonte and others noted, his remarks open up “an entirely new scenario” in which there exists a separate (and perhaps higher) level of ’Ndrangheta leadership previously unknown to investigators. The police began a painstaking process of revisiting old cases and reinterrogating state witnesses (known as pentiti). Some pentiti acknowledged the existence of a hidden level; others did not. But, says Mr Lombardo, that was to be expected: according to Mr Altomonte, even some bosses are unaware of the ’Ndrangheta’s invisible arm.
Not all the evidence in support of his view has been presented in court; what has been is tenuous yet intriguing. One pentito described a Fellini-esque visit with a top ’Ndrangheta man to an office like a notary’s in the posh Rome district of Parioli. He spoke of a “kind of confessional” in the corridor where he had to wait and a plaque bearing odd letters matching one in the home of his clan’s boss.
Tuesday, September 9, 2014
Sex parties and ritual abuse at the Bohemian Grove
via Anthony Sanchez's Facebook status:
Back in the early nineties, my girlfriend worked for a venture capital firm whose two principals (Co-Owners) were members of something called the Bohemian Club. It was 1993 when she told me that the CFO secretly told my girlfriend who was the accountant that the two owners would literally get naked, play poker, have sex with the male wait staff, and meet with other members from all over which included politicians, CEOs, etc. to discuss plans affecting industry, and politics all across the country and the world, “New World Order” stuff.
I told her that it was bullshit... I was 23. Several years later I learned it was all true.
I remember one time when my girlfriend had a fall-out with the CFO I called the firm and spoke directly with one of the principals. He was creepy as Hell. He agreed with me and assured me that she had nothing to worry about, and then he damn near wanted to have me over for sex, along with my girlfriend. The emphasis was on me. No joke. He invited us both to his boat in Monterrey for the weekend. I declined.
A couple of years later the secretary, a friend of ours, admitted that she was attending sex parties (orgies) for the "old money - Stanford educated" crowd, initiated through the same guy. She said the money and trips, etc. fooled her into thinking it was okay. It was only after they began forcing her to attend weird ceremonies to get fucked by lots of men that she decided it was too much. We’re talking REAL "Eyes Wide Shut" scenarios.
I was so young back then, and I was not educated on the Bohemian Club nor did I realize how influential these Palo Alto people were. I was not impressed with the wealth, nor did I ever question how it was that these two guys alone determined the direction, fortune and failures of so many early Silicon Valley companies. The list of companies was unreal.
My girlfriend worked for them for close to six years. I learned so much about their inner workings through her. One thing she left with was having learned how to make tens of thousands each month simply handling large amounts of cash, moving it around from one type of account to another generating a lot of interest for these guys, a major portion of her job. And that was just one of the ways they educated her on generating insane amounts of money... they once gave us passes to Davies Symphony Hall to see the San Francisco Symphony perform Antonin Dvořák... we had opportunities like that all the time. We were invited to private wine tastings, parties, etc. and those assholes regularly tried to lure my girlfriend away from me...my girlfriend was a model who was asked personally by Eileen Ford for runway work... she was perfect for them... it is not a gay club as much as it is a Luciferian group of slave owners that like to indulge in strange rituals which possibly include homosexual encounters. I know that these same guys also like to have sex with women as well.
..I just met with my ex-wife yesterday and she told me she ran in to the former CFO (from that time, who she worked with) and was told that both the owners are STILL ALIVE and still in business. Age Imposition through child sacrifice? I mean come on!! These guys must be in their 90s now.*
Back in the early nineties, my girlfriend worked for a venture capital firm whose two principals (Co-Owners) were members of something called the Bohemian Club. It was 1993 when she told me that the CFO secretly told my girlfriend who was the accountant that the two owners would literally get naked, play poker, have sex with the male wait staff, and meet with other members from all over which included politicians, CEOs, etc. to discuss plans affecting industry, and politics all across the country and the world, “New World Order” stuff.
I told her that it was bullshit... I was 23. Several years later I learned it was all true.
I remember one time when my girlfriend had a fall-out with the CFO I called the firm and spoke directly with one of the principals. He was creepy as Hell. He agreed with me and assured me that she had nothing to worry about, and then he damn near wanted to have me over for sex, along with my girlfriend. The emphasis was on me. No joke. He invited us both to his boat in Monterrey for the weekend. I declined.
A couple of years later the secretary, a friend of ours, admitted that she was attending sex parties (orgies) for the "old money - Stanford educated" crowd, initiated through the same guy. She said the money and trips, etc. fooled her into thinking it was okay. It was only after they began forcing her to attend weird ceremonies to get fucked by lots of men that she decided it was too much. We’re talking REAL "Eyes Wide Shut" scenarios.
I was so young back then, and I was not educated on the Bohemian Club nor did I realize how influential these Palo Alto people were. I was not impressed with the wealth, nor did I ever question how it was that these two guys alone determined the direction, fortune and failures of so many early Silicon Valley companies. The list of companies was unreal.
My girlfriend worked for them for close to six years. I learned so much about their inner workings through her. One thing she left with was having learned how to make tens of thousands each month simply handling large amounts of cash, moving it around from one type of account to another generating a lot of interest for these guys, a major portion of her job. And that was just one of the ways they educated her on generating insane amounts of money... they once gave us passes to Davies Symphony Hall to see the San Francisco Symphony perform Antonin Dvořák... we had opportunities like that all the time. We were invited to private wine tastings, parties, etc. and those assholes regularly tried to lure my girlfriend away from me...my girlfriend was a model who was asked personally by Eileen Ford for runway work... she was perfect for them... it is not a gay club as much as it is a Luciferian group of slave owners that like to indulge in strange rituals which possibly include homosexual encounters. I know that these same guys also like to have sex with women as well.
..I just met with my ex-wife yesterday and she told me she ran in to the former CFO (from that time, who she worked with) and was told that both the owners are STILL ALIVE and still in business. Age Imposition through child sacrifice? I mean come on!! These guys must be in their 90s now.*
Monday, September 1, 2014
Federal Cybersecurity Director Found Guilty on Child Porn Charges
via Wired:
As the acting cybersecurity chief of a federal agency, Timothy DeFoggi should have been well versed in the digital footprints users leave behind online when they visit web sites and download images. But DeFoggi—convicted today in Nebraska on three child porn charges including conspiracy to solicit and distribute child porn—must have believed his use of the Tor anonymizing network shielded him from federal investigators. He’s the sixth suspect to make this mistake in Operation Torpedo, an FBI operation that targeted three Tor-based child porn sites and that used controversial methods to unmask anonymized users. But DeFoggi’s conviction is perhaps more surprising than others owing to the fact that he worked at one time as the acting cybersecurity director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services...DeFoggi became part of that sting after becoming a registered member of PedoBook in March 2012 where he remained active until December that year when the FBI shuttered it. During this time DeFoggi, who described himself as “having many perversions,” solicited child porn images from other members, viewed images and exchanged private messages with other members expressing interest in raping, beating and murdering infants and toddlers.
As the acting cybersecurity chief of a federal agency, Timothy DeFoggi should have been well versed in the digital footprints users leave behind online when they visit web sites and download images. But DeFoggi—convicted today in Nebraska on three child porn charges including conspiracy to solicit and distribute child porn—must have believed his use of the Tor anonymizing network shielded him from federal investigators. He’s the sixth suspect to make this mistake in Operation Torpedo, an FBI operation that targeted three Tor-based child porn sites and that used controversial methods to unmask anonymized users. But DeFoggi’s conviction is perhaps more surprising than others owing to the fact that he worked at one time as the acting cybersecurity director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services...DeFoggi became part of that sting after becoming a registered member of PedoBook in March 2012 where he remained active until December that year when the FBI shuttered it. During this time DeFoggi, who described himself as “having many perversions,” solicited child porn images from other members, viewed images and exchanged private messages with other members expressing interest in raping, beating and murdering infants and toddlers.
Sunday, August 17, 2014
International tribunal arrests organizers of human sacrifice ritual
via The International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State:
Public Announcement of the Central Command of the Direct Action Units established by the International Common Law Court of Justice
Global Communique No. 2: August 16, 2014 – Brussels
Striking in the early hours of Friday, August 15, one of our trained Direct Action Units (DAU) in Montreal, Canada successfully disrupted the preparations for a child sacrificial cult ritual at a private residence in the fashionable Outremont district.
In the course of the action and under the authority of warrants issued by the Court, the DAU arrested two cult members who are being held in protective custody prior to their questioning and possible indictment before the Court.
The DAU Commander who headed the action has issued the following report to our Central Office:
“At 0700 hours EST yesterday, 15 August, our Alpha team moved into action against the private residence in Outremont, Quebec that has been under surveillance by us since 4 August. We met no opposition or resistance from the single armed security guard at the said residence, who was immediately detained along with a male cult employee engaged in preparations for the upcoming midnight ritual.
“Under questioning, the private security guard identified the location of the ritual as within a small sub-basement chamber that was reconnoitered and filmed by our team. The chamber included two small prison cells with wall shackles, and a central sound proof chamber containing a stone altar awash with apparent blood stains that were sampled and bagged for analysis. An adjoining room held locked cabinets containing considerable child pornographic material, articles of children’s clothing that was bagged for analysis, metallic torture devices, ceremonial swords, and sophisticated film equipment.
“The male cult employee in our custody refused to answer any of our questions, but in the course of our action a second cult member arrived at the residence and was detained. This member, an older woman, was very unnerved by our presence and combat attire. She therefore admitted to the upcoming ritual that evening and identified three of its participants: a ‘local catholic bishop’ whom she refused to name, a Cargill corporation executive named Kerry Brick, and an American named Stephen Holding from Sun Valley, Idaho, apparently with Sinclair Oil, Ltd.
“This informant also claimed that the two children to be used at the midnight ritual were being held at a separate facility at McGill University, but she claimed not to know where. She said that the normal procedure was to deliver them in a drugged condition just before the ritual began, for security reasons. Finally, she confirmed that the cult members describe themselves as part of the Ninth Circle society and claim they all carry tattoos with a cult insignia of the said Ninth Circle.
“Our team restrained all three prisoners and locked down the premises, while taking more videos and samples from the underground chamber. We then secured a covert perimeter in the neighbourhood in anticipation of the arrival of the cult participants and their victims. Unfortunately, although we maintained our vigil until well after midnight, no-one else arrived at the premises for the rest of that day and evening. We must assume that the participants were somehow alerted to our presence and aborted the ritual.
“The security guard in our custody was released by us after he proved that he had been retained in a private commercial capacity. The two cult members are being held in our DAU prison facility in Montreal prior to their questioning by the Court Prosecutor and his Canadian affiliates. All samples and film we obtained are in transit to Brussels headquarters for analysis.
”We are maintaining our covert surveillance on these cult premises in Outremont until further orders are received from Central Command.
DAU Alpha Team Commander, Montreal 16/08/2014”
Supplementary Report of the Action at Pro Cathedral, Ireland by DAU Beta Team:
Our DAU Beta Team in Dublin, Ireland encountered no ritualistic activity at the Cathedral at the time and date reported by our two Diocese informants. The latter claim that the ritual was either cancelled or moved to another location, but could not confirm anything more. However, the identity of a Ninth Circle adherent in Dublin was shared by one of the Diocese informants: a priest named Damien O’Reilly who is an assistant to the acting head of the catholic church in Ireland, Dublin Archbishop Dermot Martin.
DAU Beta Team is continuing its surveillance procedures at the Pro Cathedral and other reported cult centres in Ireland, and is assisting the Common Law Court being established in Galway to investigate the apparent ritual slaying of babies at the catholic facility in Tuam.
……………………
The Court is proceeding to authorize further follow up actions by our DAU’s at other child sacrificial centres in Rome, Canada, the United States, Ireland, England, Belgium and Holland. Updates are forthcoming.
CC-DAU Communique No. 2
Issued 16/08/2014
Brussels
DAU Central Command Office
Public Announcement of the Central Command of the Direct Action Units established by the International Common Law Court of Justice
Global Communique No. 2: August 16, 2014 – Brussels
Striking in the early hours of Friday, August 15, one of our trained Direct Action Units (DAU) in Montreal, Canada successfully disrupted the preparations for a child sacrificial cult ritual at a private residence in the fashionable Outremont district.
In the course of the action and under the authority of warrants issued by the Court, the DAU arrested two cult members who are being held in protective custody prior to their questioning and possible indictment before the Court.
The DAU Commander who headed the action has issued the following report to our Central Office:
“At 0700 hours EST yesterday, 15 August, our Alpha team moved into action against the private residence in Outremont, Quebec that has been under surveillance by us since 4 August. We met no opposition or resistance from the single armed security guard at the said residence, who was immediately detained along with a male cult employee engaged in preparations for the upcoming midnight ritual.
“Under questioning, the private security guard identified the location of the ritual as within a small sub-basement chamber that was reconnoitered and filmed by our team. The chamber included two small prison cells with wall shackles, and a central sound proof chamber containing a stone altar awash with apparent blood stains that were sampled and bagged for analysis. An adjoining room held locked cabinets containing considerable child pornographic material, articles of children’s clothing that was bagged for analysis, metallic torture devices, ceremonial swords, and sophisticated film equipment.
“The male cult employee in our custody refused to answer any of our questions, but in the course of our action a second cult member arrived at the residence and was detained. This member, an older woman, was very unnerved by our presence and combat attire. She therefore admitted to the upcoming ritual that evening and identified three of its participants: a ‘local catholic bishop’ whom she refused to name, a Cargill corporation executive named Kerry Brick, and an American named Stephen Holding from Sun Valley, Idaho, apparently with Sinclair Oil, Ltd.
“This informant also claimed that the two children to be used at the midnight ritual were being held at a separate facility at McGill University, but she claimed not to know where. She said that the normal procedure was to deliver them in a drugged condition just before the ritual began, for security reasons. Finally, she confirmed that the cult members describe themselves as part of the Ninth Circle society and claim they all carry tattoos with a cult insignia of the said Ninth Circle.
“Our team restrained all three prisoners and locked down the premises, while taking more videos and samples from the underground chamber. We then secured a covert perimeter in the neighbourhood in anticipation of the arrival of the cult participants and their victims. Unfortunately, although we maintained our vigil until well after midnight, no-one else arrived at the premises for the rest of that day and evening. We must assume that the participants were somehow alerted to our presence and aborted the ritual.
“The security guard in our custody was released by us after he proved that he had been retained in a private commercial capacity. The two cult members are being held in our DAU prison facility in Montreal prior to their questioning by the Court Prosecutor and his Canadian affiliates. All samples and film we obtained are in transit to Brussels headquarters for analysis.
”We are maintaining our covert surveillance on these cult premises in Outremont until further orders are received from Central Command.
DAU Alpha Team Commander, Montreal 16/08/2014”
Supplementary Report of the Action at Pro Cathedral, Ireland by DAU Beta Team:
Our DAU Beta Team in Dublin, Ireland encountered no ritualistic activity at the Cathedral at the time and date reported by our two Diocese informants. The latter claim that the ritual was either cancelled or moved to another location, but could not confirm anything more. However, the identity of a Ninth Circle adherent in Dublin was shared by one of the Diocese informants: a priest named Damien O’Reilly who is an assistant to the acting head of the catholic church in Ireland, Dublin Archbishop Dermot Martin.
DAU Beta Team is continuing its surveillance procedures at the Pro Cathedral and other reported cult centres in Ireland, and is assisting the Common Law Court being established in Galway to investigate the apparent ritual slaying of babies at the catholic facility in Tuam.
……………………
The Court is proceeding to authorize further follow up actions by our DAU’s at other child sacrificial centres in Rome, Canada, the United States, Ireland, England, Belgium and Holland. Updates are forthcoming.
CC-DAU Communique No. 2
Issued 16/08/2014
Brussels
DAU Central Command Office
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Catholic charities' vanishing donations, inmate neglect
source: Forbes, via Occupy the Vatican:
They call her the ‘Angel of Mercy’. She was compassion incarnate; she didn’t think twice before touching a leper on the road or cleaning a festering wound on an unfortunate soul...The world knows her as Mother Teresa...When one pays a visit to Mother House, the heart of the 58-year-old Missionaries of Charity founded by Mother Teresa, one doesn’t see anything out of the ordinary... it is calm and pious, a world away from the cacophony outside on the busy A.J.C. Bose road.
But the cacophony is threatening to spill inside the Missionaries. Followers and volunteers are questioning the quality of service given in the care centers. They feel the Missionaries’ care centers are allergic to using modern-day therapy and technology to care for the inhabitants. Often untrained volunteers are given tasks that would normally require one to be trained in medicine and therapy...The discord is most pronounced in the first home that Mother Teresa set up in 1952–Nirmal Hriday, the Home for Dying Destitutes...It presently has 99 inmates, served by six sisters and dozens of volunteers, mostly young foreigners...It is the kind of work that inspired Hemley Gonzalez, who lived on the other side of the world in Miami, United States. A migrant from Cuba, Gonzalez had grown up in a poor neighborhood and was inspired after reading a biography of Mother Teresa. “I wanted to come to India and serve in Kalighat (the place where Nirmal Hriday is situated),” he recounts over the phone. Gonzales, who runs a real estate business in Miami, reached Kolkata in December 2008 and stayed for two months.
“I was shocked to see the negligence. Needles were washed in cold water and reused and expired medicines were given to the inmates. There were people who had chance to live if given proper care,” says Hemley. He narrates incidents of an untrained volunteer wrongly feeding a paralyzed inmate, who choked to his death; and another where an infected toe of an inmate was cut without anesthesia. “I have decided to go back to Kolkata to start a charity that will be called ‘Responsible Charity.’ Each donation will be made public and professional medical help will be given,” says Hemley, who now runs a campaign on Facebook called ‘Stop Missionaries of Charity,’ and has over 2,000 members...volunteers also cite the need for a well-planned rehabilitation for the sick who go back to the streets once they recover. “Some were sent back to the streets of their own will, but some against it,” says a European volunteer who has been coming to Nirmal Hriday since 2006. She cites the example of an “old lady” suffering from diabetes and incapable of walking. “We were told she was sent to another centre outside Kolkata but just few days later someone saw her on the street close to our centre… We were worried but could not do much.”
...Gonzalez questions why money can’t be used to improve the service at the homes run by the sisters. “Even the inmates soiled and infected clothes are washed by hands. Why can’t they buy a washing machine?” he asks.
It has become a sensitive issue since 2005 when a British television crew filmed children at Daya Dan, a care centre, tied to their beds. Questions arouse about the “primitive practices and lack of using modern methods of teaching.” The incident forced Mother House to release a statement saying, “We value constructive criticism and admit that there is always room for improvement.” Volunteers, who come in dozens from countries like Spain and Italy, have separately narrated incidents about sisters resorting to “shaking violently” or “beating” to discipline the challenged children..."Unfortunately, we are still in the dark when it comes to their financial records,” says Gonzalez.
In early 2000, Susan Shields, a former Missionaries sister who left the organization “unhappy”, created a furor by saying she herself had “written receipts of $50,000″ in donation but there was no sign of the “flood of money.” Forbes India talked to a volunteer in the Los Angeles office of Missionaries of Charity who admitted that “even when bread was over at the soup kitchens, none was bought unless donated.” A report in German magazine Stern, revealed that in 1991 only seven percent of the donation received at Missionaries of Charity was used for charity. Former volunteers and people close to the Mother House revealed that the Vatican, home to the Pope, has control over the “monetary matters” ever since Missionaries of Charity came under its fold in 1965.
When asked about how much money the Charity gets annually, the then superior general Sister Nirmala in a rare media interview a few years ago remarked “Countless.” When asked how much it was, she answered, “God knows. He is our banker.” Forbes India’s request for details was turned down at the Mother House.
They call her the ‘Angel of Mercy’. She was compassion incarnate; she didn’t think twice before touching a leper on the road or cleaning a festering wound on an unfortunate soul...The world knows her as Mother Teresa...When one pays a visit to Mother House, the heart of the 58-year-old Missionaries of Charity founded by Mother Teresa, one doesn’t see anything out of the ordinary... it is calm and pious, a world away from the cacophony outside on the busy A.J.C. Bose road.
But the cacophony is threatening to spill inside the Missionaries. Followers and volunteers are questioning the quality of service given in the care centers. They feel the Missionaries’ care centers are allergic to using modern-day therapy and technology to care for the inhabitants. Often untrained volunteers are given tasks that would normally require one to be trained in medicine and therapy...The discord is most pronounced in the first home that Mother Teresa set up in 1952–Nirmal Hriday, the Home for Dying Destitutes...It presently has 99 inmates, served by six sisters and dozens of volunteers, mostly young foreigners...It is the kind of work that inspired Hemley Gonzalez, who lived on the other side of the world in Miami, United States. A migrant from Cuba, Gonzalez had grown up in a poor neighborhood and was inspired after reading a biography of Mother Teresa. “I wanted to come to India and serve in Kalighat (the place where Nirmal Hriday is situated),” he recounts over the phone. Gonzales, who runs a real estate business in Miami, reached Kolkata in December 2008 and stayed for two months.
“I was shocked to see the negligence. Needles were washed in cold water and reused and expired medicines were given to the inmates. There were people who had chance to live if given proper care,” says Hemley. He narrates incidents of an untrained volunteer wrongly feeding a paralyzed inmate, who choked to his death; and another where an infected toe of an inmate was cut without anesthesia. “I have decided to go back to Kolkata to start a charity that will be called ‘Responsible Charity.’ Each donation will be made public and professional medical help will be given,” says Hemley, who now runs a campaign on Facebook called ‘Stop Missionaries of Charity,’ and has over 2,000 members...volunteers also cite the need for a well-planned rehabilitation for the sick who go back to the streets once they recover. “Some were sent back to the streets of their own will, but some against it,” says a European volunteer who has been coming to Nirmal Hriday since 2006. She cites the example of an “old lady” suffering from diabetes and incapable of walking. “We were told she was sent to another centre outside Kolkata but just few days later someone saw her on the street close to our centre… We were worried but could not do much.”
...Gonzalez questions why money can’t be used to improve the service at the homes run by the sisters. “Even the inmates soiled and infected clothes are washed by hands. Why can’t they buy a washing machine?” he asks.
It has become a sensitive issue since 2005 when a British television crew filmed children at Daya Dan, a care centre, tied to their beds. Questions arouse about the “primitive practices and lack of using modern methods of teaching.” The incident forced Mother House to release a statement saying, “We value constructive criticism and admit that there is always room for improvement.” Volunteers, who come in dozens from countries like Spain and Italy, have separately narrated incidents about sisters resorting to “shaking violently” or “beating” to discipline the challenged children..."Unfortunately, we are still in the dark when it comes to their financial records,” says Gonzalez.
In early 2000, Susan Shields, a former Missionaries sister who left the organization “unhappy”, created a furor by saying she herself had “written receipts of $50,000″ in donation but there was no sign of the “flood of money.” Forbes India talked to a volunteer in the Los Angeles office of Missionaries of Charity who admitted that “even when bread was over at the soup kitchens, none was bought unless donated.” A report in German magazine Stern, revealed that in 1991 only seven percent of the donation received at Missionaries of Charity was used for charity. Former volunteers and people close to the Mother House revealed that the Vatican, home to the Pope, has control over the “monetary matters” ever since Missionaries of Charity came under its fold in 1965.
When asked about how much money the Charity gets annually, the then superior general Sister Nirmala in a rare media interview a few years ago remarked “Countless.” When asked how much it was, she answered, “God knows. He is our banker.” Forbes India’s request for details was turned down at the Mother House.
Thursday, July 24, 2014
How Secret Societies Destroy Cultures, Communities and the Planet: updated
The introduction to this essay has been revised, and much will be added to the main body over the next week or so.
For as long as people have been organized under a centralized government, the personal lives of populations have been molded by the dictates of national and religious elites whose authority is replicated in miniaturized form within family structures. Despite this predictable pattern, large segments of the alternative media have identified the coordinated destruction of nations, religions and the family as the final game plan of the global "power elite", while ignoring how these same institutions have enabled the furthest extremes of political injustice. The cultural upheaval of the 60s, a favorite target of right-leaning conspiracy theorists, has been recognized for its emphasis on values such as social equality, civil rights and ecological sustainability, all of which are vital elements in any democratic society. However, there is a shadow side to its origins that has not been explored except by social conservatives whose underlying political agendas often fall in line with the neo-colonial maneuvers of corporate-military globalists.
Contrary to the story told by major media outlets, a significant component of modern cultural change was set into place by social scientists who received grants to engineer human consciousness through media experiments, as well as other forms of behavioral conditioning. In Eros and Magic in the Renaissance, the Romanian historian Ioan Coulianu traces the origins of modern state propaganda models to techniques utilized by Renaissance occultists, who saw desire as the universal common denominator capable of subliminally inducing mass hypnosis via the collective mind of entire nations. Coulianu credited the Rosicrucian Giordano Bruno for the development of proto-crowd control techniques that would later surface in the sphere of social sciences as public relations, market research, disinformation and espionage. Bruno believed that society could always be divided into its essential components, manipulator and manipulated, and it was the role of the occultist, who would later become the scientist, to enchain the spirit of the common people through the window of their imagination, more commonly recognized as the libido. Bruno envisioned these chains as “phantasms” capable of affecting and influencing human consciousness and, by extension, social behavior. The ultimate purpose of Bruno's phantasms was to replace the external coercion of the state with internal compulsion, thus creating a self-regulating system of government.
This paradigm can easily describe the guilt-driven compulsions underlying the belief systems of the religious right, just as it can the more permissive society of Alduous Huxley's Brave New World. Setting aside political differences, there is an extensive documented history of secret societies such as the Freemasons employing occult symbolism through corporate marketing campaigns. While the alternative media typically focuses on hidden symbolism in the entertainment industry, there remains a pervasive lack of discussion around the presence of occult symbolism in the logos of military contractors, agricultural companies and fossil fuel industries. What this coded media language amounts to is an avenue of social control for a shadow government comprised of elite fraternities attempting to bypass the democratic process through covert organizations. On either end of the political spectrum, the influence of fraternal orders rooted in ancient mystery cults can be discerned with careful observation.
Many mystery cults were composed of mystics who worked to provide a framework for enlightenment, a method to reach the divine through acts of mutual aid and service to others. Simultaneously, there were those within these schools for whom spiritual mastery was not a practice for managing the harmful qualities of the self, but instead a means by which to control the populace and create a class of subjugated people. Within these latter groups can be found the centuries old tradition of organized ritual abuse, whose existence is still disputed by the legal system in part because the phenomenon has been simplified as being primarily “satanic” in nature. Sophisticated mind control techniques are typically based around organized child abuse, where the developing mind of the child is shaped according to a combination of advanced scientific and occult principles. The science of trauma-based mind control is essentially an esoteric, or hidden, tradition, with widespread social control measures functioning as the exoteric (outer) expression of its ideas. In every case, fear-based conditioning is the basis of manipulation, whether those techniques are applied to individuals in a cult setting or to society as a whole.
The word "occultism" has traditionally been understood to convey practices such as astrology, divination, alchemy and spell-casting. The actual definition is a lot more multi-faceted, translating from the Latin word, occultus, to mean “knowledge of the hidden”. This definition contrasts occultism with the scientific method which can be defined as “knowledge of the measurable”. The Latin translation necessarily extends esotericism into the realm of Judeo-Christianity as well as indigenous cultures which, on the surface, have no commonalities with Western magical traditions. In truth, Western occultism was heavily influenced, and even shaped, by both monotheistic and polytheistic spiritual faiths. From its early origins in Hermeticism, occultism has drawn heavily from the field of what would come to be known as comparative religion, assimilating varied traditions into a methodology similar to what many contemporary occult practitioners describe as shamanism.
Because intensive study of non-Christian faiths was, during the early beginnings of the history of occult practice, considered to be potential evidence of impiety, religious institutions governed education and attempted to prevent the “heresy” of polytheistic faith. As a result, blanket condemnation of occultism carries with it the strong likelihood of racism even while many occultists have themselves been complicit in imperialism and cultural appropriation. As the history of occult orders is closely related to that of empires based on the practice of parasitizing the labor and psyche of their citizens, the details that follow are, in several passages, quite violent and difficult to absorb. Thankfully these more unpleasant aspects of the Western occult tradition have been balanced by the traditions of organizations that strive towards the creation of communities based around principles of social justice, while not limiting the process of enlightenment to a chosen few.
No history of the rise of religious elites, along with the mystery schools and fertility cults that formed around them, is complete without a basic understanding of how these societies were shaped by their surrounding ecosystem. Prehisorical indigenous cultures utilized sacred symbolism as a method to communicate with and appease spirits of nature. In contrast with later societal uses of symbolism, which were often divorced from their immediate meaning and form, indigenous cultures understood symbols as living embodiments of the unseen forces that shape the material world. Indigenous horticultural societies developed elaborate systems of forest gardening that preserved the biodiversity of surrounding riparian habitats, thus ensuring the continued existence and sustenance of their communities. Horticultural societies are typically perceived as a temporary development bridging the gap between hunter-gatherer cultures and agricultural societies even though many of them, such as the Native American Hopewell cultures, persisted for close to a millenium. While romanticized accounts of indigenous egalitarian utopias can be discounted as ahistorical fiction, the archaeological record does convey societal histories with far less social inequality than is characteristic of agricultural societies.
Historians have recognized that agriculture led to the rise of religious authorities because the availability of grain storage meant that power could be concentrated in the hands of whoever controlled the food supply, in contrast to earlier societies which relied upon perishable food. This oversimplified account of environmental history does not take into account the inevitable precarity of agricultural societies, whose very existence is based upon the degradation of their surrounding ecosystem, leading in turn to conditions that result in violent conflict for the control of natural resources. This process begins with the deforestation needed to clear way for agricultural fields, which over time suffer from soil salting and a loss of soil fertility, after which settlements are abandoned. In the Middle East, an area of the world once known as the “fertile crescent”, this loss of soil fertility has transformed the entire region into a desert unfit for sustaining human life. In other words, the mythology of “swords to plowshares” is an impossibility, because widespread tilling of the soil always results in a chain of events leading to famine, social stratification and violent conflict. These catastrophes of nature are then reflected in religious symbolism, in which seasonal procession is viewed as an inherently violent cycle governed by malevolent nature deities whose wrath must be appeased by the shedding of human blood. Therefore, any history of social inequality should be placed in a greater context of disruption of the ecological web of life, whereby the death of entire ecosystems through agricultural tilling results in a chain of events leading to warfare and human sacrifice.
As environmental collapse spread across the Fertile Crescent, a diverse pantheon of earth gods and goddesses were replaced by a smaller number of deities associated with remote planetary bodies. When the source of religious worship was transferred towards the heavens and away from the earth, mythological depictions of nature as benevolent provider were replaced by more frequent depictions of nature as a hostile, antagonistic force. The sky gods presided over a much larger domain, whose governance was in turn determined by sacred kingship, in which the chosen king was considered to be a representation of a given deity. Mesopotamian nation-states were the first centralized institutions to design tactics of mass social manipulation through ecstatic celebration. The religious ceremony common to the majority of Mesopotamian cultures was a sex rite symbolizing the sacred marriage of the king with a fertility goddess, variously represented as Inanna, Astarte and Ishtar, among others names. Astarte, or Asherah, the “Queen of the Stars”, was the sister and consort of Baal, the sun god associated with storms and agriculture, in whose honor human sacrifices were conducted in order to ensure an abundant harvest.
Although some well-intentioned neo-pagan authors have attempted to formulate visions of Mesopotamian empires as havens for individual rights, in particular the rights of women, the principles of the Babylonian law code describe a society in which fundamental human rights are almost entirely absent. For example, Babylonian law states that a woman who was convicted of adultery would be stoned to death, a practice that continues in many Islamic countries to this day. The Greek historian Herodotus also claimed that all Babylonian women were bound by law to sexually perform for strangers. Far from being an unrestrained celebration, sacred marriage rituals were strictly regulated and designed to reinforce the authority of the king over his citizens. The philosophy underlying Mesopotamian fertility rites was the divine right of kings, a concept that would later justify the establishment of feudal aristocracies throughout Medieval Europe.
The Mesopotamian pantheon exercised enormous influence on European society through Biblical mythology. Historians agree that Yahweh, the supreme god of the oldest surviving biblical literature, originated as an epithet for the Akkadian deity El, father of the storm god Baal. The Oxford Companion to World Mythology states “It seems almost certain that the God of the Jews evolved gradually from the Canaanite El, who was in all likelihood the 'God of Abraham'.”...If El was the high God of Abraham—Elohim, the prototype of Yahveh—Asherah was his wife, and there are archaeological indications that she was perceived as such before she was in effect 'divorced' in the context of emerging Judaism of the 7th century BCE.”
Like the Mesopotamian empires, Ancient Egypt was a theocracy supported by the subjugation of the lower classes whose agricultural labor enabled the comfortable lifestyle of the priests. Egyptian mythology contains the story of the sun god Osiris, who traveled to the land of the dead after being sealed alive inside a coffin and later dismembered by his brother Set. When his fragmented remains were reassembled by his sister-wife Isis, the only part she was unable to recover was his penis, leading her to create a golden phallus in its place. Isis then cast a spell that was used to resurrect Osiris, with whom she conceived another sky god, Horus. As a material embodiment of the sky, Horus contains the moon in his left eye and the sun in his right eye. To this day, the right Eye of Horus is a prominent solar symbol utilized by elite secret societies including the Rosicrucians and the Freemasons. The coffin of Osiris remains a common Freemasonic motif, and it is also used during initiations of the Freemason-derived Yale University fraternity, Skull and Bones. In Egyptian artwork Osiris is often depicted holding a sickle while enthroned and in the process of judging souls who pass through th underworld. Within religious and esoteric iconography, the sickle or scythe is commonly associated with death due to its agricultural use which invariably links the tool to seasonal cycles of floods, droughts and famines.
For as long as people have been organized under a centralized government, the personal lives of populations have been molded by the dictates of national and religious elites whose authority is replicated in miniaturized form within family structures. Despite this predictable pattern, large segments of the alternative media have identified the coordinated destruction of nations, religions and the family as the final game plan of the global "power elite", while ignoring how these same institutions have enabled the furthest extremes of political injustice. The cultural upheaval of the 60s, a favorite target of right-leaning conspiracy theorists, has been recognized for its emphasis on values such as social equality, civil rights and ecological sustainability, all of which are vital elements in any democratic society. However, there is a shadow side to its origins that has not been explored except by social conservatives whose underlying political agendas often fall in line with the neo-colonial maneuvers of corporate-military globalists.
Contrary to the story told by major media outlets, a significant component of modern cultural change was set into place by social scientists who received grants to engineer human consciousness through media experiments, as well as other forms of behavioral conditioning. In Eros and Magic in the Renaissance, the Romanian historian Ioan Coulianu traces the origins of modern state propaganda models to techniques utilized by Renaissance occultists, who saw desire as the universal common denominator capable of subliminally inducing mass hypnosis via the collective mind of entire nations. Coulianu credited the Rosicrucian Giordano Bruno for the development of proto-crowd control techniques that would later surface in the sphere of social sciences as public relations, market research, disinformation and espionage. Bruno believed that society could always be divided into its essential components, manipulator and manipulated, and it was the role of the occultist, who would later become the scientist, to enchain the spirit of the common people through the window of their imagination, more commonly recognized as the libido. Bruno envisioned these chains as “phantasms” capable of affecting and influencing human consciousness and, by extension, social behavior. The ultimate purpose of Bruno's phantasms was to replace the external coercion of the state with internal compulsion, thus creating a self-regulating system of government.
This paradigm can easily describe the guilt-driven compulsions underlying the belief systems of the religious right, just as it can the more permissive society of Alduous Huxley's Brave New World. Setting aside political differences, there is an extensive documented history of secret societies such as the Freemasons employing occult symbolism through corporate marketing campaigns. While the alternative media typically focuses on hidden symbolism in the entertainment industry, there remains a pervasive lack of discussion around the presence of occult symbolism in the logos of military contractors, agricultural companies and fossil fuel industries. What this coded media language amounts to is an avenue of social control for a shadow government comprised of elite fraternities attempting to bypass the democratic process through covert organizations. On either end of the political spectrum, the influence of fraternal orders rooted in ancient mystery cults can be discerned with careful observation.
Many mystery cults were composed of mystics who worked to provide a framework for enlightenment, a method to reach the divine through acts of mutual aid and service to others. Simultaneously, there were those within these schools for whom spiritual mastery was not a practice for managing the harmful qualities of the self, but instead a means by which to control the populace and create a class of subjugated people. Within these latter groups can be found the centuries old tradition of organized ritual abuse, whose existence is still disputed by the legal system in part because the phenomenon has been simplified as being primarily “satanic” in nature. Sophisticated mind control techniques are typically based around organized child abuse, where the developing mind of the child is shaped according to a combination of advanced scientific and occult principles. The science of trauma-based mind control is essentially an esoteric, or hidden, tradition, with widespread social control measures functioning as the exoteric (outer) expression of its ideas. In every case, fear-based conditioning is the basis of manipulation, whether those techniques are applied to individuals in a cult setting or to society as a whole.
The word "occultism" has traditionally been understood to convey practices such as astrology, divination, alchemy and spell-casting. The actual definition is a lot more multi-faceted, translating from the Latin word, occultus, to mean “knowledge of the hidden”. This definition contrasts occultism with the scientific method which can be defined as “knowledge of the measurable”. The Latin translation necessarily extends esotericism into the realm of Judeo-Christianity as well as indigenous cultures which, on the surface, have no commonalities with Western magical traditions. In truth, Western occultism was heavily influenced, and even shaped, by both monotheistic and polytheistic spiritual faiths. From its early origins in Hermeticism, occultism has drawn heavily from the field of what would come to be known as comparative religion, assimilating varied traditions into a methodology similar to what many contemporary occult practitioners describe as shamanism.
Because intensive study of non-Christian faiths was, during the early beginnings of the history of occult practice, considered to be potential evidence of impiety, religious institutions governed education and attempted to prevent the “heresy” of polytheistic faith. As a result, blanket condemnation of occultism carries with it the strong likelihood of racism even while many occultists have themselves been complicit in imperialism and cultural appropriation. As the history of occult orders is closely related to that of empires based on the practice of parasitizing the labor and psyche of their citizens, the details that follow are, in several passages, quite violent and difficult to absorb. Thankfully these more unpleasant aspects of the Western occult tradition have been balanced by the traditions of organizations that strive towards the creation of communities based around principles of social justice, while not limiting the process of enlightenment to a chosen few.
No history of the rise of religious elites, along with the mystery schools and fertility cults that formed around them, is complete without a basic understanding of how these societies were shaped by their surrounding ecosystem. Prehisorical indigenous cultures utilized sacred symbolism as a method to communicate with and appease spirits of nature. In contrast with later societal uses of symbolism, which were often divorced from their immediate meaning and form, indigenous cultures understood symbols as living embodiments of the unseen forces that shape the material world. Indigenous horticultural societies developed elaborate systems of forest gardening that preserved the biodiversity of surrounding riparian habitats, thus ensuring the continued existence and sustenance of their communities. Horticultural societies are typically perceived as a temporary development bridging the gap between hunter-gatherer cultures and agricultural societies even though many of them, such as the Native American Hopewell cultures, persisted for close to a millenium. While romanticized accounts of indigenous egalitarian utopias can be discounted as ahistorical fiction, the archaeological record does convey societal histories with far less social inequality than is characteristic of agricultural societies.
Historians have recognized that agriculture led to the rise of religious authorities because the availability of grain storage meant that power could be concentrated in the hands of whoever controlled the food supply, in contrast to earlier societies which relied upon perishable food. This oversimplified account of environmental history does not take into account the inevitable precarity of agricultural societies, whose very existence is based upon the degradation of their surrounding ecosystem, leading in turn to conditions that result in violent conflict for the control of natural resources. This process begins with the deforestation needed to clear way for agricultural fields, which over time suffer from soil salting and a loss of soil fertility, after which settlements are abandoned. In the Middle East, an area of the world once known as the “fertile crescent”, this loss of soil fertility has transformed the entire region into a desert unfit for sustaining human life. In other words, the mythology of “swords to plowshares” is an impossibility, because widespread tilling of the soil always results in a chain of events leading to famine, social stratification and violent conflict. These catastrophes of nature are then reflected in religious symbolism, in which seasonal procession is viewed as an inherently violent cycle governed by malevolent nature deities whose wrath must be appeased by the shedding of human blood. Therefore, any history of social inequality should be placed in a greater context of disruption of the ecological web of life, whereby the death of entire ecosystems through agricultural tilling results in a chain of events leading to warfare and human sacrifice.
As environmental collapse spread across the Fertile Crescent, a diverse pantheon of earth gods and goddesses were replaced by a smaller number of deities associated with remote planetary bodies. When the source of religious worship was transferred towards the heavens and away from the earth, mythological depictions of nature as benevolent provider were replaced by more frequent depictions of nature as a hostile, antagonistic force. The sky gods presided over a much larger domain, whose governance was in turn determined by sacred kingship, in which the chosen king was considered to be a representation of a given deity. Mesopotamian nation-states were the first centralized institutions to design tactics of mass social manipulation through ecstatic celebration. The religious ceremony common to the majority of Mesopotamian cultures was a sex rite symbolizing the sacred marriage of the king with a fertility goddess, variously represented as Inanna, Astarte and Ishtar, among others names. Astarte, or Asherah, the “Queen of the Stars”, was the sister and consort of Baal, the sun god associated with storms and agriculture, in whose honor human sacrifices were conducted in order to ensure an abundant harvest.
Although some well-intentioned neo-pagan authors have attempted to formulate visions of Mesopotamian empires as havens for individual rights, in particular the rights of women, the principles of the Babylonian law code describe a society in which fundamental human rights are almost entirely absent. For example, Babylonian law states that a woman who was convicted of adultery would be stoned to death, a practice that continues in many Islamic countries to this day. The Greek historian Herodotus also claimed that all Babylonian women were bound by law to sexually perform for strangers. Far from being an unrestrained celebration, sacred marriage rituals were strictly regulated and designed to reinforce the authority of the king over his citizens. The philosophy underlying Mesopotamian fertility rites was the divine right of kings, a concept that would later justify the establishment of feudal aristocracies throughout Medieval Europe.
The Mesopotamian pantheon exercised enormous influence on European society through Biblical mythology. Historians agree that Yahweh, the supreme god of the oldest surviving biblical literature, originated as an epithet for the Akkadian deity El, father of the storm god Baal. The Oxford Companion to World Mythology states “It seems almost certain that the God of the Jews evolved gradually from the Canaanite El, who was in all likelihood the 'God of Abraham'.”...If El was the high God of Abraham—Elohim, the prototype of Yahveh—Asherah was his wife, and there are archaeological indications that she was perceived as such before she was in effect 'divorced' in the context of emerging Judaism of the 7th century BCE.”
Like the Mesopotamian empires, Ancient Egypt was a theocracy supported by the subjugation of the lower classes whose agricultural labor enabled the comfortable lifestyle of the priests. Egyptian mythology contains the story of the sun god Osiris, who traveled to the land of the dead after being sealed alive inside a coffin and later dismembered by his brother Set. When his fragmented remains were reassembled by his sister-wife Isis, the only part she was unable to recover was his penis, leading her to create a golden phallus in its place. Isis then cast a spell that was used to resurrect Osiris, with whom she conceived another sky god, Horus. As a material embodiment of the sky, Horus contains the moon in his left eye and the sun in his right eye. To this day, the right Eye of Horus is a prominent solar symbol utilized by elite secret societies including the Rosicrucians and the Freemasons. The coffin of Osiris remains a common Freemasonic motif, and it is also used during initiations of the Freemason-derived Yale University fraternity, Skull and Bones. In Egyptian artwork Osiris is often depicted holding a sickle while enthroned and in the process of judging souls who pass through th underworld. Within religious and esoteric iconography, the sickle or scythe is commonly associated with death due to its agricultural use which invariably links the tool to seasonal cycles of floods, droughts and famines.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)