Post by Yona Maro on Jan 11, 2006 8:04:27 GMT -5
The Secret of Eurasia - The Key to Hidden History and World Events
by MEHMET SABEHEDDIN
Beneath the broad tide of human history there flow the stealthy undercurrents of the secret societies, which frequently determine in the depths the changes that take place upon the surface.
— A.E. Waite1
Have secret societies and occult brotherhoods been active behind the scenes of world events for thousands of years? Do these guardians of secret wisdom shape the growth of human consciousness and influence the destiny of nations? Are hidden masters of occult knowledge empowering and infiltrating certain political, cultural, spiritual and economic movements, in fulfillment of an ancient plan? Could it be that man’s great upheavals, wars, and revolutions, as well as his pioneering discoveries in science, literature, philosophy and the arts, are the result of a ‘hidden hand’? Can we decode history and find the mysterious interface between politics and occultism, thereby uncovering the real movers and shakers in our modern world?
The German philosopher Oswald Spengler warned of a "mighty contest" between groups of men of "immense intellect" who the "simple citizen neither observes nor comprehends." Back in 1930 Ralph Shirley, the editor of the London Occult Review, Britain’s leading journal of esoteric sciences, endorsed "the suspicion that the ranks of occultism are secretly working for disintegration and revolution. Positive proof in the shape of a group of occultists working with this objective in view recently came under the notice of the present writer."
Major-General Fuller, a former disciple of Aleister Crowley, who had links to British military intelligence, wrote about an insidious force using "Magic and Gold" striving "to gain world domination under an avenging Messiah as foretold by Talmud and Qabalah." Fuller’s former chief Crowley worked as a secret agent for both Britain and Germany, although his British handlers noted his ‘unreliability’ warning he should only be used in espionage operations with the utmost care. During the First World War the German Foreign Office secretly requested the occultist Gustav Meyrink to write a novel blaming the Freemasons of France and Italy for the outbreak of war.
Madame Blavatsky believed the Catholic society of Jesuits had transferred their headquarters from the continent to England where they plotted to plunge man into passive ignorance and institute "Universal Despotism". The founder of the Theosophical Society, a woman of immense intellect and first hand experience of secret societies, warned:
Students of Occultism should know that while the Jesuits have by their devices contrived to make the world in general, and Englishmen in particular think there is no such thing as Magic and laugh at Black Magic, these astute and wily schemers themselves hold magnetic circles and form magnetic chains by the concentration of their collective WILL, and when they have any special object to effect or any particular and important person to influence.2
The French Revolution, one of Europe’s most important political upheavals, was largely the work of Masonic lodges dedicated to the overturning of the monarchy and an end of the established Catholic religion. In Proofs of a Conspiracy (179, John Robison showed that the political clubs and correspondence committees during the revolution, including the famous Jacobin Club, sprang from these Masonic lodges.
The influence on history of mysticism, the occult and secret societies is generally dismissed by Western academics. Mainstream historians choose to ignore this aspect because they believe it has no real significance to world politics. In fact it is only through acknowledging the role and influence of the ‘occult underground’ that important world events can be fully understood and placed in their real historical perspective.
Atlantism Verses Eurasianism
Secret societies and the teachers of occult wisdom consistently trace their origins back to the very dawn of civilisation. Within Judeo-Christian culture, the secret schools speak of Adam, Seth, Moses and the Patriarchs as initiates of a divine wisdom carefully passed from one generation to the next. Other occult groups look back beyond ancient Egypt and the Mystery schools of Greece, to the lost continent of Atlantis. Still others trace their lineage to Sumeria or Babylon and the mysterious plains of Tartary.
Examining mankind’s myths, legends and arcane stories we encounter countless references to a vanished primordial civilisation. The brilliant French metaphysician Rene Guenon wrote of a great Hyperborean culture that flourished around the Arctic Circle and of its outposts Shambhala in the East and Atlantis in the West. Plato wrote of Atlantis, describing it as the heart of a great and powerful empire which, due to the indiscriminate mixing of "the sons of God" with "the children of men," suffered "violent earthquakes and floods" and "disappeared beneath the sea". According to occult tradition, Atlantis came to an end after a lengthy period of chaos and disaster brought about, in the words of Madame Blavatsky, because the "Atlantis-race became a nation of wicked magicians." Atlantis was destroyed by a conspiracy of evil magicians who had seized control of the mighty continent.
Long before the final end of Atlantis, great migrations took place to different centres of the earth. In one legend we are told of a righteous remnant journeying from the Arctic Circle to Shambhala, in the remote fastness of Central Asia. Other legends suggest Atlantean survivors established the ancient Egyptian civilisation.
Victoria LePage, the author of one of the most comprehensive studies of Shambhala explains how Atlantis and Shambhala are more than mere geographic locations:
In folklore Atlantis and Shambhala are implicitly linked together as charismatic images of heart’s desire, two shining mirages that lie on the farthest horizon of human longing, unattainable, always receding as we reach for them; at best no more than ideal states of consciousness never realized. But their association seems to have a far more real and historically concrete basis than that. Initiatic tradition affirms they have both genuinely existed, one in the western sea, the other in the eastern mountains, as lynchpins of what was once a network of Wisdom centers located on a great power-grid extending around the globe. Further, Shambhala still exists within a framework that awaits reactivation.3
In order to identify the historical activities of secret societies we need to appreciate the origin of a most powerful idea. Occult lore speaks of Shambhala as the positive centre of the Brotherhood of Light, and Atlantis the negative centre of the evil magicians, the Brothers of the Shadow. Wherever we look we see the division of secret societies and occult endeavours into these two opposing ‘Orders’. All occult movements and teachings inevitably serve either the "Order of Eurasia" or the "Order of Atlantism", with their respective symbolic centres of Shambhala and Atlantis. Concealed behind a multitude of different forms and represented by an array of unsuspecting agents of influence, these two centres – Shambhala and Atlantis – represent two different impulses in human evolution.
Viewed from the perspective of sacred geography, in our present historical cycle, Atlantism is the triumph of the most destructive and diabolical elements in the civilisation of the West. One modern authority on sacred geography and geopolitics observes:
Sacred geography on the basis of "space symbolism" traditionally considers the East as "the land of Spirit", the paradise land, the land of a completeness, abundance, the Sacred "native land" in its fullest and most perfect kind. In particular, this idea is mirrored in the Bible text, where the eastern disposition of "Eden" is treated.
Precisely such understanding is peculiar also to other Abrahamic traditions (Islam and Judaism), and also to many non-Abrahamic traditions – Chinese, Hindu and Iranian. "East is the mansion of the gods", states the sacred formula of the ancient Egyptians, and the same word "east" ("neter" in Egyptian) meant at the same time "god". From the point of view of natural symbolism, East is the place where the sun rises, Light of the World, material symbol of Divinity and Spirit.
The West has the opposite symbolical meaning. It is the "country of death", the "lifeless world", the "green country" (as the ancient Egyptians called it). West is "the empire of exile", "the pit of the rejected", according to the expression of Islamic mystics. West is "anti-East", the country of decay, degradation transition from the manifest to the non-manifest, from life to death, from completeness to need, etc. West is the place where the sun goes, where it "sinks down".4
Russia & the Magical Universe
Russia, geographically the largest country on earth, occupies a unique position in the study of human history furnishing us with a window into the world of secret societies, occult teachers, and subterranean political currents.
Ideas and practices drawn from magic and the occult have always been a part of Russian life. In the sixteenth century Tsar Ivan IV consulted magicians and was aware of the occult significance of the precious stones set in his staff. His reign was the culmination of the dream of building a prophetic, religious civilisation in the Eastern Christian tradition of Byzantium. Surrounded by secret orders of apocalyptical monks, Ivan saw himself as heir to the Israelite kings and attempted to transform Russian life in accord with his magical view of reality. Ivan was convinced the Russian nation had a special mission to accomplish, nothing short of the redemption of the world.
In 1586, Tsar Boris Godunov offered the huge salary of 2000 English pounds a year, with a house and all provisions free, to John Dee, the English magus and spy master, to enter his service. Dee’s son Dr. Arthur Dee, who like his father was an alchemist and Rosicrucian, went to Moscow to work as a physician. Mikhail Romanov, the first Tsar of the Romanov dynasty, allegedly ascended the throne with the help of Dr. Arthur Dee and the British Secret Service. Before their rise to power the Romanovs were accused by their enemies of practising magic and possessing occult powers.
The legendary Count of Saint Germain, described as an alchemist, spy, industrialist, diplomat and Rosicrucian, became involved in several political intrigues in Russia and was, according Nicholas Roerich, "a member of the Himalayan brotherhood." In 1755 he traveled throughout Eurasia to study occult teachings, and may even have visited Tibet. It is said that while studying occultism in Central Asia the Count was introduced to the secret rites of Tantric sex magic which provided him with a technique to prolong his youth. He also engaged in spying operations against the notorious British India Company. Saint Germain founded two secret societies called the Asiatic Brethren and the Knights of Light. As early as 1780 he warned Marie Antoinette that the French throne was in danger from an international conspiracy of ‘Brothers of the Shadow’. Rumours continued to circulate for many years after his alleged death that Saint Germain was still alive working behind the scenes in European politics or studying occult doctrines in Central Asia.
West Meets East
Occult powers seem to be a matter of national temperament… Russia tends to produce mages – men or women who impress by their spiritual authority; no other nation has a spiritual equivalent of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, or even of Rozanov, Merezhkovsky, Soloviev, Fedorov, Berdaev, Shestov. Certainly no other nation has come near to producing anyone like Madame Blavatsky, Gregory Rasputin or George Gurdjieff. Each is completely unique.
— Colin Wilson, The Occult
The process of synthesis of the occult traditions of East and West is seen in the work of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society and the author of the magnus opus The Secret Doctrine. Born Helena von Hahn, the daughter of a Russian military family and cousin to the future Russian Prime Minister Count Witte, she is a true emissary of the Eurasian Order. Nevill Drury says of the Russian occultist:
Her main contribution to mystical thought was the manner in which she sought to synthesise Eastern and Western philosophy and religion, thereby providing a framework for understanding universal occult teaching.5
Madame Blavatsky traveled throughout Asia and Europe, joined Garibaldi’s national revolutionary militia, fighting in the battle of Mentana, in which she was severely wounded. In the late 1870s, shortly after the publication of her first book Isis Unveiled, a compelling indictment of contemporary Western religion as spiritually bankrupt, she moved from the United States to India where the headquarters of the Theosophical Society remains until this day.
In 1891 the future Tsar Nicholas II, in the company of the mystic Eurasian scholar Prince Ukhtomsky, visited the headquarters of the Theosophical headquarters at Adyar. Prince Ukhtomsky’s description of the society is revealing:
At the insistence of H.P. Blavatsky, a Russian lady who knew and had seen much, the idea sprang up of the possibility, and even the necessity, of founding a society of theosophists, of searchers for the truth in the broadest sense of the word, for the purpose of enlisting adepts of all creeds and races, of penetrating deeper into the most secret doctrines of oriental religions, of drawing Asiatics into true spiritual communion with educated foreigners in the West, of keeping up secret relations with different high priests, ascetics, magicians, and so on.6
Madame Blavatsky wanted to unite Central Asia, India, Mongolia, Tibet and China, in order – with the involvement of Russia – to create a grand Eurasian power able to oppose British ambitions. Traveling across India Blavatsky agitated against British rule and found herself accused by the colonial authorities of being a Russian spy. Prince Ukhtomsky saw support for Eurasia in the "readiness of the Indians to group themselves under the banner of the strange northern woman." He believed Madame Blavatsky had been forced to leave India by "the suspiciousness of the English."
As early as 1887 H.P. Blavatsky had become a topic of debate in "mystic Petersburg" and received the prestigious support of Ukhtomsky’s friend the mysterious Tibetan Dr. Badmaev, soon to become notorious for the favour he received at the Russian imperial court and his relationship with Rasputin. Madame Blavatsky’s sister insisted that the Russian Orthodox Metropolitan of Kiev had recognised the young Helena’s psychic gift, and admonished her to use her powers with discretion, as he felt sure they were given her for some higher purpose.
Dr. Stephan A. Hoeller, a scholar of comparative religion and a Gnostic Bishop, reminds us that Blavatsky, was a true daughter of Mother Russia. Some feel that her life and character correspond strongly to the archetype of the traditional Russian wandering holy person, known as the staretz (literally ‘old one’), denoting a wandering, non-clerical ascetic, or pilgrim, who travels about the countryside, exhorting people concerning spiritual matters, sometimes in a decidedly unorthodox manner.7
After H.P. Blavatsky’s death in London in 1891, the Theosophical Society came under the firm control of the English occultists Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater, a confirmed British imperialist. The Eurasian orientation given to early Theosophy by H.P. Blavatsky was compromised by the influence of British Masonry and Leadbeater’s esoteric High Anglicanism. In the great struggle of the magicians the Eurasian impulse found new historical agents in the West, among them the celebrated French magus Papus.
Grand Battle of the Magicians
When the 19th century will have come to an end, one of the Brothers of Hermes will come from Asia to unite humanity again.
— Nostradamus
Papus, together with Oswald Wirth and De Guaita, dreamed of uniting occultists everywhere into a revived Rosicrucian brotherhood, an international occult order in which they hoped the Russian Empire would play a leading role as the bridge between East and West.
Papus was the pseudonym of Dr. Gerard Encausse (1865-1916), a disciple of Joseph Saint-Yves d’Alveydre (1842-1910), an initiate of the French Gnostic Church and often the instigator of many of the occult groups of his time. One of the most famous turn-of-the century occultists, he was the founder of the Hermetic School in Paris, which attracted many Russian students, and directed the leading French occult review, L’Initiation. Papus was also the head of two secret societies, the L’Ordre du Martinisme and the L’Ordre Kabbalistique de la Rose-Croix.
When the Russian Tsar and Tsaritsa visited France in 1896, it was Papus who sent them a greeting on behalf of "the French Spiritualists," hoping that the Tsar would "immortalise his Empire by its total union with Divine Providence." This greeting was reminiscent of the hopes of mystics at the time of Tsar Alexander I’s Holy Alliance.
Papus made his first visit to Russia in 1901 and was introduced to the Tsar. He quickly set up a lodge of his Martinist Order in St. Petersburg with the Tsar as the president of the "Unknown Superiors" who controlled it. The historian James Webb says Papus "was merely reviving a devotion to a philosophy that had flourished in Russia at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries before being suppressed."
As the foremost student of Saint-Yves d’Alveydre, Papus knew of the key role to be played by Russia in unifying Eurasia and her occult destiny as the Empire of the End, the outward manifestation of the enigmatic power of ‘Northern Shambhala’.
Through Papus the Imperial family became acquainted with his friend and spiritual mentor Master Philippe (Nizier Anthelme Philippe). A sincere Christian mystic, he was given rank and honours by the Russian Tsar, and maintained contact with the imperial court until his death in 1905.
Papus returned to St. Petersburg in 1905 where it was rumoured he, in the presence of the Imperial couple, evoked the spirit of the Tsar’s father, Alexander III, who offered practical advise on handling a political crisis.
Both Master Philippe and Papus played an important political role at the Russian court. They not only advised the Tsar on affairs of state but maintained contact with influential Russian initiates of the Martinist Order, among them two of the Tsar’s uncles and numerous relatives. The German occultist Rudolf Steiner, who had his own disciples among the German General Staff, followed the mission of the two Frenchmen, disturbed by Papus’ "extensive influence in Russia". A strong advocate of the alliance between France and Russia, Papus warned the Tsar of an international conspiracy aimed at world domination.
He believed that the vast Russian Empire was the only power capable of thwarting the conspiracy of the ‘Shadow Brothers’. He also urged the Tsar to prepare for the coming war with Germany, then being engineered by sinister forces in Berlin. According to one account, he promised the imperial family that, the Romanov monarchy would be protected as long as he, Papus, was alive. When the news of his death reached Alexandra in 1916, she sent a note to her husband (at the time commanding the Russian armies at the front in World War I) containing the words ‘Papus is dead, we are doomed!’8
Papus promoted his Martinist Order as a counter to the Masonic lodges which, he believed, were in the service of British imperialism and the international financial syndicates. From his papers it is known that he furnished documentation to the Russian authorities about Masonic activities in Russia and Europe. Papus condemned Freemasonry as atheistic in contrast to the esoteric Christianity of the Martinist Order. He castigated "our epoch of scepticism, adoration of material forms, so vitally in need of a frankly Christian reaction, independent of all priesthoods." Shortly after returning from his first visit to Russia in 1901, a series of articles appeared in the French press for which Papus was largely responsible. They warned of a "hidden conspiracy" the existence of which the public was totally unaware and of the machinations of a sinister financial syndicate trying to disrupt the Franco-Russian alliance. The public is blind to the real forces of history:
It does not see that in all conflicts whether arising within or between nations, there are at the side of the apparent actors hidden movers who by their self-interested calculations make these conflicts inevitable….
Everything which happens in the confused evolution of nations is thus prepared in secret with the goal of securing the supremacy of a few men; and it is these few men, sometimes famous, sometimes unknown, who must be sought behind all public events.
Now, today, supremacy is ensured by the possession of gold. It is the financial syndicates who hold at this moment the secret threads of European politics…
A few years ago there was thus founded in Europe a financial syndicate, today all-powerful, whose supreme aim is to monopolise all the markets of the world, and which in order to facilitate its activities has to acquire political influence.
The Papus inspired articles in Echo de Paris revealed the role of the British Secret Service, which was exposed as being behind British Freemasonry, to isolate and weaken Russia. In France British agents concentrated on anti-Russian propaganda, while in Russia they used "financial trickery" to infiltrate all levels of society. Every effort was required "to preserve the Russian Emperor – so loyal and so generous – from the evils… [of ] the syndicate of financiers… which at present controls the destinies of Europe and the world."
www.geocities.com/integral_tradition/key.html
by MEHMET SABEHEDDIN
Beneath the broad tide of human history there flow the stealthy undercurrents of the secret societies, which frequently determine in the depths the changes that take place upon the surface.
— A.E. Waite1
Have secret societies and occult brotherhoods been active behind the scenes of world events for thousands of years? Do these guardians of secret wisdom shape the growth of human consciousness and influence the destiny of nations? Are hidden masters of occult knowledge empowering and infiltrating certain political, cultural, spiritual and economic movements, in fulfillment of an ancient plan? Could it be that man’s great upheavals, wars, and revolutions, as well as his pioneering discoveries in science, literature, philosophy and the arts, are the result of a ‘hidden hand’? Can we decode history and find the mysterious interface between politics and occultism, thereby uncovering the real movers and shakers in our modern world?
The German philosopher Oswald Spengler warned of a "mighty contest" between groups of men of "immense intellect" who the "simple citizen neither observes nor comprehends." Back in 1930 Ralph Shirley, the editor of the London Occult Review, Britain’s leading journal of esoteric sciences, endorsed "the suspicion that the ranks of occultism are secretly working for disintegration and revolution. Positive proof in the shape of a group of occultists working with this objective in view recently came under the notice of the present writer."
Major-General Fuller, a former disciple of Aleister Crowley, who had links to British military intelligence, wrote about an insidious force using "Magic and Gold" striving "to gain world domination under an avenging Messiah as foretold by Talmud and Qabalah." Fuller’s former chief Crowley worked as a secret agent for both Britain and Germany, although his British handlers noted his ‘unreliability’ warning he should only be used in espionage operations with the utmost care. During the First World War the German Foreign Office secretly requested the occultist Gustav Meyrink to write a novel blaming the Freemasons of France and Italy for the outbreak of war.
Madame Blavatsky believed the Catholic society of Jesuits had transferred their headquarters from the continent to England where they plotted to plunge man into passive ignorance and institute "Universal Despotism". The founder of the Theosophical Society, a woman of immense intellect and first hand experience of secret societies, warned:
Students of Occultism should know that while the Jesuits have by their devices contrived to make the world in general, and Englishmen in particular think there is no such thing as Magic and laugh at Black Magic, these astute and wily schemers themselves hold magnetic circles and form magnetic chains by the concentration of their collective WILL, and when they have any special object to effect or any particular and important person to influence.2
The French Revolution, one of Europe’s most important political upheavals, was largely the work of Masonic lodges dedicated to the overturning of the monarchy and an end of the established Catholic religion. In Proofs of a Conspiracy (179, John Robison showed that the political clubs and correspondence committees during the revolution, including the famous Jacobin Club, sprang from these Masonic lodges.
The influence on history of mysticism, the occult and secret societies is generally dismissed by Western academics. Mainstream historians choose to ignore this aspect because they believe it has no real significance to world politics. In fact it is only through acknowledging the role and influence of the ‘occult underground’ that important world events can be fully understood and placed in their real historical perspective.
Atlantism Verses Eurasianism
Secret societies and the teachers of occult wisdom consistently trace their origins back to the very dawn of civilisation. Within Judeo-Christian culture, the secret schools speak of Adam, Seth, Moses and the Patriarchs as initiates of a divine wisdom carefully passed from one generation to the next. Other occult groups look back beyond ancient Egypt and the Mystery schools of Greece, to the lost continent of Atlantis. Still others trace their lineage to Sumeria or Babylon and the mysterious plains of Tartary.
Examining mankind’s myths, legends and arcane stories we encounter countless references to a vanished primordial civilisation. The brilliant French metaphysician Rene Guenon wrote of a great Hyperborean culture that flourished around the Arctic Circle and of its outposts Shambhala in the East and Atlantis in the West. Plato wrote of Atlantis, describing it as the heart of a great and powerful empire which, due to the indiscriminate mixing of "the sons of God" with "the children of men," suffered "violent earthquakes and floods" and "disappeared beneath the sea". According to occult tradition, Atlantis came to an end after a lengthy period of chaos and disaster brought about, in the words of Madame Blavatsky, because the "Atlantis-race became a nation of wicked magicians." Atlantis was destroyed by a conspiracy of evil magicians who had seized control of the mighty continent.
Long before the final end of Atlantis, great migrations took place to different centres of the earth. In one legend we are told of a righteous remnant journeying from the Arctic Circle to Shambhala, in the remote fastness of Central Asia. Other legends suggest Atlantean survivors established the ancient Egyptian civilisation.
Victoria LePage, the author of one of the most comprehensive studies of Shambhala explains how Atlantis and Shambhala are more than mere geographic locations:
In folklore Atlantis and Shambhala are implicitly linked together as charismatic images of heart’s desire, two shining mirages that lie on the farthest horizon of human longing, unattainable, always receding as we reach for them; at best no more than ideal states of consciousness never realized. But their association seems to have a far more real and historically concrete basis than that. Initiatic tradition affirms they have both genuinely existed, one in the western sea, the other in the eastern mountains, as lynchpins of what was once a network of Wisdom centers located on a great power-grid extending around the globe. Further, Shambhala still exists within a framework that awaits reactivation.3
In order to identify the historical activities of secret societies we need to appreciate the origin of a most powerful idea. Occult lore speaks of Shambhala as the positive centre of the Brotherhood of Light, and Atlantis the negative centre of the evil magicians, the Brothers of the Shadow. Wherever we look we see the division of secret societies and occult endeavours into these two opposing ‘Orders’. All occult movements and teachings inevitably serve either the "Order of Eurasia" or the "Order of Atlantism", with their respective symbolic centres of Shambhala and Atlantis. Concealed behind a multitude of different forms and represented by an array of unsuspecting agents of influence, these two centres – Shambhala and Atlantis – represent two different impulses in human evolution.
Viewed from the perspective of sacred geography, in our present historical cycle, Atlantism is the triumph of the most destructive and diabolical elements in the civilisation of the West. One modern authority on sacred geography and geopolitics observes:
Sacred geography on the basis of "space symbolism" traditionally considers the East as "the land of Spirit", the paradise land, the land of a completeness, abundance, the Sacred "native land" in its fullest and most perfect kind. In particular, this idea is mirrored in the Bible text, where the eastern disposition of "Eden" is treated.
Precisely such understanding is peculiar also to other Abrahamic traditions (Islam and Judaism), and also to many non-Abrahamic traditions – Chinese, Hindu and Iranian. "East is the mansion of the gods", states the sacred formula of the ancient Egyptians, and the same word "east" ("neter" in Egyptian) meant at the same time "god". From the point of view of natural symbolism, East is the place where the sun rises, Light of the World, material symbol of Divinity and Spirit.
The West has the opposite symbolical meaning. It is the "country of death", the "lifeless world", the "green country" (as the ancient Egyptians called it). West is "the empire of exile", "the pit of the rejected", according to the expression of Islamic mystics. West is "anti-East", the country of decay, degradation transition from the manifest to the non-manifest, from life to death, from completeness to need, etc. West is the place where the sun goes, where it "sinks down".4
Russia & the Magical Universe
Russia, geographically the largest country on earth, occupies a unique position in the study of human history furnishing us with a window into the world of secret societies, occult teachers, and subterranean political currents.
Ideas and practices drawn from magic and the occult have always been a part of Russian life. In the sixteenth century Tsar Ivan IV consulted magicians and was aware of the occult significance of the precious stones set in his staff. His reign was the culmination of the dream of building a prophetic, religious civilisation in the Eastern Christian tradition of Byzantium. Surrounded by secret orders of apocalyptical monks, Ivan saw himself as heir to the Israelite kings and attempted to transform Russian life in accord with his magical view of reality. Ivan was convinced the Russian nation had a special mission to accomplish, nothing short of the redemption of the world.
In 1586, Tsar Boris Godunov offered the huge salary of 2000 English pounds a year, with a house and all provisions free, to John Dee, the English magus and spy master, to enter his service. Dee’s son Dr. Arthur Dee, who like his father was an alchemist and Rosicrucian, went to Moscow to work as a physician. Mikhail Romanov, the first Tsar of the Romanov dynasty, allegedly ascended the throne with the help of Dr. Arthur Dee and the British Secret Service. Before their rise to power the Romanovs were accused by their enemies of practising magic and possessing occult powers.
The legendary Count of Saint Germain, described as an alchemist, spy, industrialist, diplomat and Rosicrucian, became involved in several political intrigues in Russia and was, according Nicholas Roerich, "a member of the Himalayan brotherhood." In 1755 he traveled throughout Eurasia to study occult teachings, and may even have visited Tibet. It is said that while studying occultism in Central Asia the Count was introduced to the secret rites of Tantric sex magic which provided him with a technique to prolong his youth. He also engaged in spying operations against the notorious British India Company. Saint Germain founded two secret societies called the Asiatic Brethren and the Knights of Light. As early as 1780 he warned Marie Antoinette that the French throne was in danger from an international conspiracy of ‘Brothers of the Shadow’. Rumours continued to circulate for many years after his alleged death that Saint Germain was still alive working behind the scenes in European politics or studying occult doctrines in Central Asia.
West Meets East
Occult powers seem to be a matter of national temperament… Russia tends to produce mages – men or women who impress by their spiritual authority; no other nation has a spiritual equivalent of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, or even of Rozanov, Merezhkovsky, Soloviev, Fedorov, Berdaev, Shestov. Certainly no other nation has come near to producing anyone like Madame Blavatsky, Gregory Rasputin or George Gurdjieff. Each is completely unique.
— Colin Wilson, The Occult
The process of synthesis of the occult traditions of East and West is seen in the work of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society and the author of the magnus opus The Secret Doctrine. Born Helena von Hahn, the daughter of a Russian military family and cousin to the future Russian Prime Minister Count Witte, she is a true emissary of the Eurasian Order. Nevill Drury says of the Russian occultist:
Her main contribution to mystical thought was the manner in which she sought to synthesise Eastern and Western philosophy and religion, thereby providing a framework for understanding universal occult teaching.5
Madame Blavatsky traveled throughout Asia and Europe, joined Garibaldi’s national revolutionary militia, fighting in the battle of Mentana, in which she was severely wounded. In the late 1870s, shortly after the publication of her first book Isis Unveiled, a compelling indictment of contemporary Western religion as spiritually bankrupt, she moved from the United States to India where the headquarters of the Theosophical Society remains until this day.
In 1891 the future Tsar Nicholas II, in the company of the mystic Eurasian scholar Prince Ukhtomsky, visited the headquarters of the Theosophical headquarters at Adyar. Prince Ukhtomsky’s description of the society is revealing:
At the insistence of H.P. Blavatsky, a Russian lady who knew and had seen much, the idea sprang up of the possibility, and even the necessity, of founding a society of theosophists, of searchers for the truth in the broadest sense of the word, for the purpose of enlisting adepts of all creeds and races, of penetrating deeper into the most secret doctrines of oriental religions, of drawing Asiatics into true spiritual communion with educated foreigners in the West, of keeping up secret relations with different high priests, ascetics, magicians, and so on.6
Madame Blavatsky wanted to unite Central Asia, India, Mongolia, Tibet and China, in order – with the involvement of Russia – to create a grand Eurasian power able to oppose British ambitions. Traveling across India Blavatsky agitated against British rule and found herself accused by the colonial authorities of being a Russian spy. Prince Ukhtomsky saw support for Eurasia in the "readiness of the Indians to group themselves under the banner of the strange northern woman." He believed Madame Blavatsky had been forced to leave India by "the suspiciousness of the English."
As early as 1887 H.P. Blavatsky had become a topic of debate in "mystic Petersburg" and received the prestigious support of Ukhtomsky’s friend the mysterious Tibetan Dr. Badmaev, soon to become notorious for the favour he received at the Russian imperial court and his relationship with Rasputin. Madame Blavatsky’s sister insisted that the Russian Orthodox Metropolitan of Kiev had recognised the young Helena’s psychic gift, and admonished her to use her powers with discretion, as he felt sure they were given her for some higher purpose.
Dr. Stephan A. Hoeller, a scholar of comparative religion and a Gnostic Bishop, reminds us that Blavatsky, was a true daughter of Mother Russia. Some feel that her life and character correspond strongly to the archetype of the traditional Russian wandering holy person, known as the staretz (literally ‘old one’), denoting a wandering, non-clerical ascetic, or pilgrim, who travels about the countryside, exhorting people concerning spiritual matters, sometimes in a decidedly unorthodox manner.7
After H.P. Blavatsky’s death in London in 1891, the Theosophical Society came under the firm control of the English occultists Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater, a confirmed British imperialist. The Eurasian orientation given to early Theosophy by H.P. Blavatsky was compromised by the influence of British Masonry and Leadbeater’s esoteric High Anglicanism. In the great struggle of the magicians the Eurasian impulse found new historical agents in the West, among them the celebrated French magus Papus.
Grand Battle of the Magicians
When the 19th century will have come to an end, one of the Brothers of Hermes will come from Asia to unite humanity again.
— Nostradamus
Papus, together with Oswald Wirth and De Guaita, dreamed of uniting occultists everywhere into a revived Rosicrucian brotherhood, an international occult order in which they hoped the Russian Empire would play a leading role as the bridge between East and West.
Papus was the pseudonym of Dr. Gerard Encausse (1865-1916), a disciple of Joseph Saint-Yves d’Alveydre (1842-1910), an initiate of the French Gnostic Church and often the instigator of many of the occult groups of his time. One of the most famous turn-of-the century occultists, he was the founder of the Hermetic School in Paris, which attracted many Russian students, and directed the leading French occult review, L’Initiation. Papus was also the head of two secret societies, the L’Ordre du Martinisme and the L’Ordre Kabbalistique de la Rose-Croix.
When the Russian Tsar and Tsaritsa visited France in 1896, it was Papus who sent them a greeting on behalf of "the French Spiritualists," hoping that the Tsar would "immortalise his Empire by its total union with Divine Providence." This greeting was reminiscent of the hopes of mystics at the time of Tsar Alexander I’s Holy Alliance.
Papus made his first visit to Russia in 1901 and was introduced to the Tsar. He quickly set up a lodge of his Martinist Order in St. Petersburg with the Tsar as the president of the "Unknown Superiors" who controlled it. The historian James Webb says Papus "was merely reviving a devotion to a philosophy that had flourished in Russia at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries before being suppressed."
As the foremost student of Saint-Yves d’Alveydre, Papus knew of the key role to be played by Russia in unifying Eurasia and her occult destiny as the Empire of the End, the outward manifestation of the enigmatic power of ‘Northern Shambhala’.
Through Papus the Imperial family became acquainted with his friend and spiritual mentor Master Philippe (Nizier Anthelme Philippe). A sincere Christian mystic, he was given rank and honours by the Russian Tsar, and maintained contact with the imperial court until his death in 1905.
Papus returned to St. Petersburg in 1905 where it was rumoured he, in the presence of the Imperial couple, evoked the spirit of the Tsar’s father, Alexander III, who offered practical advise on handling a political crisis.
Both Master Philippe and Papus played an important political role at the Russian court. They not only advised the Tsar on affairs of state but maintained contact with influential Russian initiates of the Martinist Order, among them two of the Tsar’s uncles and numerous relatives. The German occultist Rudolf Steiner, who had his own disciples among the German General Staff, followed the mission of the two Frenchmen, disturbed by Papus’ "extensive influence in Russia". A strong advocate of the alliance between France and Russia, Papus warned the Tsar of an international conspiracy aimed at world domination.
He believed that the vast Russian Empire was the only power capable of thwarting the conspiracy of the ‘Shadow Brothers’. He also urged the Tsar to prepare for the coming war with Germany, then being engineered by sinister forces in Berlin. According to one account, he promised the imperial family that, the Romanov monarchy would be protected as long as he, Papus, was alive. When the news of his death reached Alexandra in 1916, she sent a note to her husband (at the time commanding the Russian armies at the front in World War I) containing the words ‘Papus is dead, we are doomed!’8
Papus promoted his Martinist Order as a counter to the Masonic lodges which, he believed, were in the service of British imperialism and the international financial syndicates. From his papers it is known that he furnished documentation to the Russian authorities about Masonic activities in Russia and Europe. Papus condemned Freemasonry as atheistic in contrast to the esoteric Christianity of the Martinist Order. He castigated "our epoch of scepticism, adoration of material forms, so vitally in need of a frankly Christian reaction, independent of all priesthoods." Shortly after returning from his first visit to Russia in 1901, a series of articles appeared in the French press for which Papus was largely responsible. They warned of a "hidden conspiracy" the existence of which the public was totally unaware and of the machinations of a sinister financial syndicate trying to disrupt the Franco-Russian alliance. The public is blind to the real forces of history:
It does not see that in all conflicts whether arising within or between nations, there are at the side of the apparent actors hidden movers who by their self-interested calculations make these conflicts inevitable….
Everything which happens in the confused evolution of nations is thus prepared in secret with the goal of securing the supremacy of a few men; and it is these few men, sometimes famous, sometimes unknown, who must be sought behind all public events.
Now, today, supremacy is ensured by the possession of gold. It is the financial syndicates who hold at this moment the secret threads of European politics…
A few years ago there was thus founded in Europe a financial syndicate, today all-powerful, whose supreme aim is to monopolise all the markets of the world, and which in order to facilitate its activities has to acquire political influence.
The Papus inspired articles in Echo de Paris revealed the role of the British Secret Service, which was exposed as being behind British Freemasonry, to isolate and weaken Russia. In France British agents concentrated on anti-Russian propaganda, while in Russia they used "financial trickery" to infiltrate all levels of society. Every effort was required "to preserve the Russian Emperor – so loyal and so generous – from the evils… [of ] the syndicate of financiers… which at present controls the destinies of Europe and the world."
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