
Historical Reprints
Trail of the Serpent
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Though pro-Christian slanted, this author brings many details and facts of history about various secret societies and cults to the forefront, and showing their connections and impact on the world and history.
Excerpt: HiddenMysteries
From the Foreword:
FIVE years ago we published Light Bearers of Darkness, largely based on articles appearing in the Patriot from 1925 to 1930, being the result of our own experiences and investigations into various individual secret societies, their affiliations, their occult practices, their pseudo-religious and political activities.
To-day, in The Trail of the Serpent, we issue a further instalment of these researches, built up almost wholly from contributions to the Patriot from 1930 to 1935. Going back to Patriarchal times, we attempt to trace, step by step, the worship of the ancient Serpent, the Creative Principle, the God of all initiates, from the early Cabin, through Paganism to the pseudo-Christianity of the Gnostics and Cabalists, these latter largely emanating under the influence of the Hellenised Jews of Alexandria.
We have endeavoured to prove That the aim, in the higher grades of these varied mysteries and cults, is to awaken this serpent, the sex-force or "God within" man, raising it by processes and yogic methods, uniting it with the Universal Creative Principle without developing the latent senses or, so to say, deifying the adept, but only that lie may be enslaved by some astute, outside, and stronger mind or group of minds, who, it would seem, seek to rule the nations through hypnotically controlled adepts. For one and all of these modern mysteries are dominated and ruled by some unknown hierarchy, just as in the Ancient Mysteries the Egyptian high-priests were the masters of the old world through their knowledge and power to manipulate these invisible serpent forces; the magnetic forces of all nature, by means of which they bound and dominated the mystes and even the epoptes and through them the masses.
These revolutionary mysteries first appear as pseudo-religions, until by means of some kind of seemingly religious uplift the necessary link with the master-mind is formed. Then it becomes openly political and revolutionary, subverting all aspects of the nation's life, seeking by internationalism and universalism to unify all peoples, socially, economically, politically, in arts and religion, preparing for some New Era, some New Heaven and New Earth.
We have finally sought to materialise these invisible masters and allowing the Cabalists to speak for themselves, we arrive at the revolutionary and cabalistic Jew, the most cosmopolitan of peoples, who look for the Coming of their Messianic Era. To some of these the Messiah is their race and their race is their God, the Tetragrammaton, the Creative Principle, this Serpent Power, binding and unifying, leading to the hope of merging all races, all faiths under the Law of this their Unity of Race, thus creating the "Greater Judaism" spoken of by the Jewish World, 9 and 16 February, 1883.
SABEISM, ELEUSIS AND MITHRAS
IN 1871 General Albert Pike, Grand Master of the Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction, U.S.A., wrote in Morals and Dogmas:
"Among the early nations a wild enthusiasm and a sensual idolatry of nature soon superseded the simple worship of the Almighty God. ... The great powers and elements of nature and the vital principle of production and procreation through all generations; then the celestial spirits or heavenly host, the luminous armies of the stars, and the great Sun and mysterious, ever-changing Moon (all of which the whole ancient world regarded, not as mere globes of light or bodies of fire, but as animated living substances, potent over man's fate and destinies); next the genii and tutelar spirits, and even the souls of the dead, received divine worship ... the heavens, earth, and the operations of nature were personified; the good and bad principles personified became also objects of worship."
Further, in New York, 15 August, 1876, at the Supreme Council of the 33rd degree, he declared
"Our adversaries, numerous and formidable, will say, and will have the right to say, that our Principe Créateur is identical with the Principe Génêrateur of the Indians and Egyptians, and may fitly be symbolised as it was symbolised anciently, by the lingae ... To accept this in lieu of a personal. God is to abandon Christianity and the worship of Jehovah, and return to wallow in the styes of Paganism."
In his book, Dieu et les Dieux, 1854, Le Chevalier Gougenot des Mousseaux gives an exhaustive account of these many pantheistic, pagan, and phallic forms of ancient worship. He tells us that Sabeism thrust its roots deep into the heart of Patriarchal traditions, perverting the early revelations. This Sabeism, which took its name, not from the country of Saba, but from Tzaba, an armed troop, made men bow the knee to the starry army of the firmament; it was Stellar before it became Solar and worshipped the Pole Star, known in Chaldea as I.A.O., the creative principle. Somewhat later it mingled with the more corrupt cult of Nature-Sabeism, or the cult of the Stars and Naturalism. To follow the gradual corruption of the early Patriarchal traditions, the Stone is one of the surest guides, for at the time of its splendour it was worshipped from the Empire of China to the extreme confines of the West. It began by being the rude block detached- from the rock; it became the column, the flange, the pedestal surmounted by first one and later two human heads (hermaphrodite god), and was finally shaped in the magic lines of Apollo and Venus.
The religion of the Jews is based on revelation: their writings and traditions say that God appeared in diverse places to the Patriarchs and spoke to them; there the Jews raised altars, taking the form of rude stones, generally called Beth-el - the House of God. But soon it was imagined that God resided in these Stones; thus it became the Beth-aven - the House of Falsehood - entirely material. The Beth-el abounded in Chaldea, Asia, Egypt, Africa, Greece, even in the remotest parts of Europe, among Druids, Gauls, and Celto-Scythians, and in the New World, North and South. Man's sensual imagination soon allowed him "to collect his gods in the dust and fashion them as he pleased." The Pagans imitated the Beth-el of Jacob and consecrated them with oil and blood, making them gods, calling them Betyles or Both-al - Jupiter, Cybele, Venus. Mithras. The greater part of the natural Betyles were the black meteorites or fire-balls fallen from the heavens and regarded by the Sabeists as heavenly divinities. These meteorites were the Cabiri, and the Pelasgi - wandering or dispersed men - were their most noted worshippers.
Further, in these Cabin, even as in Sabeism, we recognise the cult of the stars. Sabeism came from the Principle of Unity transferred from the Invisible God ---
320+pages - 8.25 x 5.25 inches SoftCover