America, Land of the Feathered Serpent (6 of 6)

Part 6: Francis Bacon, the Mastermind Behind the American Revolution

37. Oligarchy, the Shadow of Democracy

Originally, society was integrated like a great organism, with all institutions and organizations working together to fit each person and group into its proper place within the context of the whole.

• Here, we find that each individual lived as a cell in the body of a great collective organism, with institutions serving as the greater organ systems which specialized these cells and brought them into coordination on a macroscopic level.

• This was the old pattern of Atlantis, with its caste system allocating each individual and group into a pre-specified social role, each with its own task to accomplish on behalf of the overall collective.

Gradually, however, as the Age of Atlantis transitioned into the Cycle of the Arya, and the fifth root race rose to replace the fourth, this traditional social pattern began to change.

• With the changing of ages, the old caste system gradually began to break apart, and individuals began to become detached from the traditional social and psychological patterns that their ancestors had originally developed within.

In the old caste-based social order, the human being’s innate capacity to develop and express their own God-given power of individuality had been kept latent: instead, each lived to serve the larger collective entity they were a part of. This was the pattern of Atlantis.

• In our current age, the Arya, each individual is destined to now bring their innate power of individuality into active development.

• In order to realize this God-given capacity for individuality, each must gradually shed the “mask of the persona” that psychologically binds them to the traditional caste pattern. Only in this way is the soul able to fully self-actualize or “individuate”.

Historically, this long-term process of “persona-shedding” took place especially intensely in the civilization zones of Eurasia, where the constant churn of empires, rising and falling in continuous cycles across its vast landmass, served to interconnect, through both trade and conquest, various cultural groups previously kept separated apart.

• As a result of this constant “clash of civilizations” across Eurasia, old social orders were continually being upended, with modified new ones rising to take their place, only to once again succumb to the same fate. As a consequence of all this change, people of different cultures mixed and mingled at a rapid pace - often in less than ideal circumstances (war, conquest, and pillage were constants), but nevertheless change was taking place.

• All this churn and burn lead to people being continuously thrown out of the old, familiar social contexts that their ancestors had lived in. Consequently, social and cultural identities ceased to be passed down in as fixed and rigid a manner as they had traditionally been.

• Becoming detached from their traditional social backgrounds, people were left more and more to fend for themselves and to develop a sense of personal identity unique to themselves. They were also forced to develop other latent aspects of the psyche, such as the intellect, which had also previously been kept in an underdeveloped state.

In this way, through rise and fall of empires over the course of the Axial Age, the old caste-based social order was gradually deconstructed across Eurasia. Meanwhile, the foundations for the development of individuality - a necessary element for philosophic democracy - was incrementally seeded into place.

• One of the dominant forces that drove this large-scale motion was the emergence of a new oligarchical power structure, which rose to power by taking down the traditional monarchial pattern and replacing it with an oligarchical order who ruled by means of their monopolistic control of the institutions of capitalism.

• With the rise of this new oligarchical pattern, the traditional caste system of ancient civilization was deconstructed and rebuilt into a new form: a capitalistic class structure organized by monetary wealth and socioeconomic status.

Here, in this new institutional paradigm, social roles were no longer as static as they had been; change was now becoming rapid and continuous.

• The constant churn and burn caused by the rise and fall of capitalist empires across Eurasia would continuously destabilize social orders across the landmass, thereby upending the traditional caste roles of the people living within its various cultures.

• This state of constant change, which was especially strong in Europe, forced its people to become increasingly resourceful and adaptive on an individual and personal level.

• The oligarchs who were the cause of all this transformation emerged as concentrated expression of these newly-emphasized characteristics of individuality and self-resourcefulness. But unfortunately, they manifested these attributes in their negative forms of expression, with greed, selfishness, egotism, and materiality becoming the dominant characteristics of the oligarchy.

From a philosophical standpoint, oligarchy and democracy are related, but opposites; the former being the “Shadow” of the latter.

• Compared with monarchy, both oligarchy and democracy represent a shift toward pluralism. With oligarchy, however, the shift is only partial: most of the population remains disenfranchised, with only a small capitalistic elite being truly “sovereign”. Democracy, on the other hand, represents the full expression of pluralism; it is its highest ideal.

• Therefore, oligarchy is the negative, materialistic Shadow of democracy. It is a necessary, intermediate stage that mankind passes through as it moves away from monarchy and toward democracy.

As Plato and others have taught us, democracy can only come about through the creation of self-governing individuals; philosophers, in other words. These are the only ones fit to lead.

• But philosophers must be created; they need time to develop. Until they are ready to emerge as leaders, we are left with oligarchy.

• While the philosopher’s sight remains on fulfilling various philosophical ideals, the oligarchs are characterized by an utter lack of ideals, seeking to enrich and empower themselves at the expense of everyone else, showing no loyalty to anything or anyone.

• Therefore, oligarchy exists as a Shadow of the democratic ideal. The oligarchs wield power not wisely, in pursuit of collective and spiritual goals; rather, they hoard it jealously, seeking to leverage it for their own increased grandeur at the expense of the health and well-being of everyone else.

• This is classic Shadow behavior. This is why, for modern man, the oligarchs and their capitalist machine represent the archetypal “Adversary” that we must confront and overcome before a greater world beyond can be reached.

Zooming out, we discover that oligarchy and capitalism together represent the “Collective Shadow” of the Aryan motion of civilization, which seeks ultimately to establish World Democracy.

• As an embodiment of “Tezcatlipoca”, the Oligarchs personify entropy: a force of negation within humanity which emerges in order to deconstruct and destroy.

• Capitalism, the foundation of oligarchy, is therefore the “Adversary” of human growth and progress. It plagued us back in the time of Rome and it still it lingers, plaguing us today. This is the Shadow that we must together confront and overcome as we quest to establish the great dream of the ages: philosophic democracy.

38. The Competition to Colonize the West

During the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, the banking dynasties of Venice and North Italy gradually transferred their base of operations westward, first up to Amsterdam and then over to England. Subsequently, they established the British Empire, and through it they expanded their economic imperium to cover most of the world.

• Once established in England, the Venetian banking oligarchs conspired to create the first modern central bank, the Bank of England, which was founded in 1688. By means of it, as historian Joseph P. Farrell informs us, they sought “to establish in England a high aristocratic republic on the model of Venice, making the kings into doges, and with a ‘Venetian constitution.’”

• As the new headquarters of the international banking oligarchy, the Bank of England served as the main financial engine of the British Empire, which expanded around the globe to establish a transnational capitalist imperium the likes of which had not been seen in the world since Roman times.

• As Farrell further comments, “the oligarchical system of Great Britain is not an autonomous product of English or British history. It represents rather the tradition of the Babylonians, Romans, Byzantines, and Venetians, which has been transplanted into the British Isles through a series of upheavals.”

• In this way, Britain’s rise as a global empire is “due in particular to the sixteenth and seventeenth century metastasis of the Venetian oligarchy into England and Scotland, along with its philosophy, political forms, family fortunes, and imperial geopolitics.”

Just as they had done centuries earlier with the Templars, the Venetian oligarchs piggybacked off the nation-building work that Francis Bacon and his Rosicrucian Order had previously accomplished in England.

• In both cases, the esoteric societies had worked to implement the institutional foundations for philosophic democracy; but each time, their ambitions were coopted by the ascendency of “Tezcatlipoca” (the banking oligarchs), who repurposed the social, political, and economic institutions that the esoteric fraternities had set up in order to implement their own oligarchy-controlled capitalistic paradigm.

Two main events inspired the decision by the financial oligarchs of Italy to shift the base of their operations away from their homeland and toward England (stopping in Amsterdam in between).

• One was the fact that, as Joseph Farrell informs us, “during the War of the League of Cambria of 1509-17, an alliance of virtually every power in Europe threatened to wipe out the Venetian oligarchy.” This was an existential threat that the Venetians had to maneuver their way out of.

• The other factor was the onset of the age of exploration and colonization. In terms of Eurasian geopolitics, the re-discovery of the Americas changed everything. Now, the promise of expanding world trade into the Americas became the great prize for the banking oligarchs.

• To realize this goal and put into place a new world order controlled by them as an oligarchy, they had to relocate their wealth to somewhere strategically well-positioned to become a global maritime power, one that could dominate the sea lanes and militarily enforce the capitalists’ extractive debt-based monetary system.

• In England, they found their ideal location. Through the British Empire, centered in London, the oligarchs spread their capitalist model around the world, mandating its use through coercion and force, and further enriching and empowering themselves in the process.

The story of how the Italian banking oligarchs avoided extermination by the Church and the various crowns of Europe, who had collectively turned against them as a result of becoming dangerously indebted to them, is important, because it reveals a different aspect of the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation movements than what is traditionally taught.

• While the ideological, cultural, and philosophical divisions between Protestantism and Catholicism were very real, underlying this truth is an unassailable fact: both sides of the division were funded by a common set of oligarchical interests, whose motivations were secular, political, and economic - not religious.

• In short, the centuries-long, Europe-dividing conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism was conspiratorially planned and carried out by the Italian oligarchs as part of a classic divide-and-conquer strategy, where Europe’s various states were prevented from uniting against the banking oligarchs because they were too busy fighting each other.

As Joseph P. Farrell further explains, “Venice’s promotion of both sides of the emerging religious conflict during the sixteenth century was deliberate.”

• "Then, as now, the world was entering a new era of rapid dissemination of information, (in their case) made possible by the movable-type printing press. Then, as now, this threatened the power of oligarchical financial elites, particularly that of Venice, and then, as now, that elite moved quickly to inject its influence into the information stream by acquiring the technology of the printing press, and quickly promoting the publication of works of both sides in the religious controversy.”

• “Why would Venice have played both sides against the middle, backing both Protestant and Catholic causes? As noted previously, the discovery of the New World spelled the end of the Venetian trade and financial empire,” for the reason that the American continents became a major new source of bullion moving into Europe, “ending the Venetians’ monopoly on international bullion trade. And it would also represent an end to the Venetian’s near-monopoly on trade with the Far East, since Venice, isolated as it was, had no easy access to the Atlantic Ocean and the trading possibilities it represented.”

As a result of these calculations, “the strategic decision was therefore taken to quite literally transfer the headquarters of their financial oligarchy northward, under the cover of deliberately exacerbated religious tensions in Europe.”

• It thus became “a goal of Venetian policy to foment a general religious war in Europe,” and thereby “to facilitate the transfer of the vast family oligarchical fortunes northward.”

• Consequently, we find that, “during the religious upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (which Venice certainly helped exacerbate), Venice was quietly creating new corporate fronts in Amsterdam and England, and transferring the bulk of the oligarchical family fortunes from the swamp in the Venetian lagoon”.

Thus, we discover that “a significant geopolitical and financial game is being played out behind the scenes, for it would appear that the financial powers of the day, Venice, Florence, and Genoa, have realized that to maintain their financial power and political influence, they must gain influence over the military and naval powers able to expand trade and commerce to the New World and Asia.”

• “The pattern thus becomes apparent: Genoa and Florence attempted to gain influence in Spain, while Venice attempted to do so in England. Or to put the same point ‘country simple,’ Genoa and Florence have chosen Spain to be their corporate front and base of operations, and Venice has chosen England.”

• By playing both sides of a dialectic against each other - the Catholics and the Protestants; the Spanish and the English - the oligarchs ensured that, no matter who won the competition to colonize the west, either way they were going to take control of world trade and install their brand of financial capitalism everywhere, with them lording over it as the “gods of money”.

39. The Great Game for Global Conquest

The grand conspiracy by the oligarchs for economic domination of the world, outlined above, establishes one of the key background circumstances informing England’s colonization of North America and the subsequent American Revolution that would follow.

• Countering this global scheme of the oligarchy was the long-term vision of the Mystery Schools. As Manly Hall informs us: “Thousands of years ago, in Egypt, these mystical orders were aware of the existence of the Western Hemisphere. The bold resolution was made by them that this western continent should become the site of the Philosophic Empire.”

• Alongside the bankers and the esotericists, the monarchs of Europe were also competing to extend their kingdoms into the Americas, as was each faction of now-divided Christendom: the Catholics and the Protestants.

Despite opposing each other in their long-term visions, goals, and strategies, the esoteric fraternities and the banking oligarchs both shared one common goal: to bring about the overthrow of monarchy and Church hegemony.

• Both sought to replace monarchy with a republican model of governance, one premised around scientific knowledge and economic development.

• Consequently, during the “Age of Revolutions”, when the nation-state model of republican governance was first brought into being around the world and the old monarchial and ecclesiastical world order overthrown, there seems to have been a certain level of collaboration between the oligarchs and the esoteric societies.

• But, after the revolutions were complete and the overthrow of the old institutional order had taken place, the differences in goals and motivations between the oligarchs and the esotericists soon became clear. Consequently, the two became competitors, with the esotericists seeking to install democracy and the oligarchs working to prevent it.

In the original age of exploration and colonization that preceded this global Age of Revolutions, we find four main power players present: the monarchs, the Church, the esoteric societies, and the banking oligarchs.

• Both the esoteric societies and the banking oligarchies appear to have had foreknowledge of America’s existence, with the Church and monarchs discovering it only later, at a pre-appointed time.

• But, compared to the oligarchs, the esoteric orders may have had a leg up in their effort to take control of America’s colonization: Manly Hall states that, in the centuries preceding the onset of the age of exploration and colonization, the esoteric societies in Europe were in direct contact with their counterparts in the native American civilizations.

• Offering further elaboration, he writes that: “The Mystery Schools of antiquity were represented in the Americas by institutions identical (to those) of Asia and the Mediterranean countries.” In fact, “the Esoteric Orders of Europe, Asia, and the Near East were in at least irregular communication with the priesthoods of the more advanced Amerindian nations.” Working together, “plans for the development of the Western Hemisphere were formulated”, this taking place long before most Europeans were even aware of the continent’s existence.

• The oligarchs, meanwhile, while not tuned into this tran-Atlantic connection between esoteric orders, likely came across their own sources of knowledge about America and its wealth of resources during their sacking of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade. Consequently, they may have quietly and secretly sent scouting expeditions over to the Americas during the decades and centuries preceding the “official” voyages of Columbus and his peers.

As Manly Hall further explains, “The explorers who opened the New World operated from a master plan and were agents of rediscovery rather than discovery.”

• Indeed, “many early explorers and colonizers are known to have been associated with Secret Societies. When the appointed hour came, these esoteric orders selected their own agents to initiate the program of exploration.”

• “The work was in the hands and keeping of a few initiated leaders. They were responsible for the results, and they built slowly and wisely, thinking not of their own days or of their own reputation, but of the future in which the Great Plan would be fulfilled.”

• More specifically, “the secret preparations for the colonizing of the ‘Fortunate Isles’ or the ‘Blessed Isles of the West’ were in the keeping of the Albigenses, the Troubadours, and the chivalric Orders of Knighthood. The final phase of the exploration project was left largely to the erudition of Lorenzo de’ Medici and the skill of Leonardo da Vinci. Medici was a distinguished Platonist, a patron of Secret Societies, the founder of an important philosophical school, and a subtle adversary of the Borgias. Leonardo, meanwhile, was a faithful agent of the great Florentine prince.”

• Meanwhile, countering this idealistic project was the grand conspiracy of the secular capitalist oligarchs, who sought to make the Americas the seat of a global Venetian-style republic, with them lording over the world economy as the “gods of money.”

Keeping these geopolitical factors in mind, we find that the story of the United States’ founding is much more interesting and complex than what we are commonly taught in school.

• As Manly Hall emphasizes in his writings and lectures, “prevailing historical accounts about the discovery and colonization of the Western Hemisphere must someday be completely revised. Modern scholars have accepted a fabrication of lies fashioned to deceive and to prevent the recognition of facts detrimental to the ulterior motives of powerful interests.”

• In truth, the American continents “were actually discovered and explored more than a thousand years before the beginning of the Christian Era. The true story was in the keeping of the Mystery Schools, and passed from them to the Secret Societies of the medieval world. The Esoteric Orders of Europe, Asia, and the Near East were in at least irregular communication with the priesthoods of the more advanced Amerindian nations.”

• When the appropriate hour came, the Secret Societies selected their own agents to initiate the program of exploration. It was then, at this appointed hour, that Lorenzo De’ Medici “spoke the magic word which opened for Columbus the most exclusive institutions in Europe.”

Overall, “the explorers who opened the New World operated from a master plan and were agents of rediscovery rather than discoverers. Very little is actually known about them, as they saw fit to either remain silent or to invent plausible accounts without substance.”

• As the age of exploration and colonization commenced, “a secret machinery which had been held in readiness for centuries was put in motion. The disciples of the Esoteric Orders throughout Europe, the Near East, and even distant Asia were called to their appointed tasks. The bell had wrung, and the wits gathered.”

• But “because various Societies, devoted to the same cause, appeared spontaneously in different places, the unity of the project passed unnoticed.” Consequently, the true story of the founding of the United States has remained obscure.

40. Francis Bacon Orchestrates the American Revolution

When Francis Bacon was born in England during the late 16th century, this “great game” between the monarchs, the Church, the oligarchs, and the secret societies was already well underway.

• Consequently, when Bacon took control of the Rosicrucian Brotherhood, it was not only against the schemes of the Church and monarchs that he was battling; it was also against the oligarchical agenda of the bankers.

• By the late Middle Ages, the power of the bankers was growing: they had gained leverage over the Church and monarchs, and had their sights set on creating a global oligarchical empire based on the model of Venice.

• America was to be the centerpiece of the oligarchs’ desired world power structure. This, of course, was in diametrical opposition to the plans of the esoteric societies, who sought to instead make America the headquarters of their Philosophic Empire, which was to be built around democratic and socialistic principles, rather than oligarchical and capitalistic ones.

But before either policy could be pursued, the American republic first had to be established. Meaning: the Church and monarchs had to be defeated and their plans for America’s colonization overthrown.

• As previously discussed, the first step in defeating the Church was accomplished by the division of Christendom into two opposing camps: the Protestants and the Catholics.

• The Protestant reformers were a natural ally of the esoteric orders, while the Catholics were a natural enemy. As Hall further explains, the “Protestant denominations shared many of the concepts which had been fostered by the guilds, so these two groups drifted into closer sympathy, causing a demarkation between the forces of reaction and innovation in the spheres of both religious and social convictions.”

• Notably, the regions that became most heavily influenced by the reformational spirit of Protestantism - England and Germany - were correspondingly the ones where, during the Middle Ages, masonic guilds and trade unions had once flourished to the greatest degree.

In England, the conflict between itself and the Catholic Church dates back centuries before the Reformation and Counter-Reformation: back to the time of the original signing of the Magna Carta in the 13th century.

• This fortuitous event pitted the aristocrats of the country in opposition to the absolute rulership of the Church, which at the time was the power behind the English crown. Ever since, the Church had been seeking to overthrow England’s domestic political order.

• Over the centuries, this conflict would intensify, with events culminating in the reign of the English king Henry VIII, who, as Manly Hall informs us, “rebelled against the papacy, ousted its clergy, closed its monastic houses, confiscated its properties, and established the Church of England.”

As a consequence of these events, Spain, a vassal state of the Catholic Church, was resolved to control England. As part of their plan, they conducted “an elaborate program of espionage” within the country.

• Due to this tense political situation, English mastermind Francis Bacon “protected his cause and country by acting privately and cryptically.” This explains the elaborate efforts that Bacon and his literally group adopted to cryptically conceal their messages.

• Meanwhile, “The pope had already claimed the three Americas for the Church, but the English colonizers were resolved to dispute this claim with every resource at their disposal.”

This was the situation that Francis Bacon and his Rosicrucian Order inherited at the point when they first launched their campaign for world reformation.

• Hall informs us that Bacon, “when the moment was propitious, threw the weight of his literary group behind the English colonization plan for America”, the goal being to prevent Spain, with the Church behind them, from gaining dominion over the New World.

• Hall then notes that “these same political considerations apparently also induced him to develop Freemasonry as a further bulwark against the encroachments of the Spanish plot. Cherishing as he did the dream of a great commonwealth in the “New Atlantis” (America), Bacon was resolved to prevent his plan from being frustrated by a dominant clergy, supporting and supported by an entrenched aristocracy.”

As part of his strategy for claiming North America as the future homeland of philosophic democracy, Bacon resurrected and repurposed the already entrenched network of Masonic guilds that the Templars and other Medieval secret societies had in previous centuries developed across the European continent.

• In this way, “the spirit of the Masonic descent became dominated by the motives, ideals, concepts, and purposes of Francis Bacon.”

• Bacon used Masonry as a coordinating network for his American colonization scheme. As Hall further explains, “having set up the machinery of Freemasonry, (Bacon and his Rosicrucians) used this institution as a philosophical sieve, by which they could attract and repel at will various individuals useful or dangerous to their purposes.”

Another branch of Bacon’s strategy involved founding the “Knights of the Helmet”: his literary society of poets, artists, and philosophers, who together formulated the Shakespeare plays, the Rosicrucian manifestoes, the revised Freemasonic rituals and myths, and other important literary works of the period.

• Simply put, Bacon “desired to set up a new way of life in which all men should abide together in an enlightened scientific commonwealth. It was his dream that men should discover all that is possible to man, and should apply this to all useful ends, thus satisfying all the natural requirements of humankind.”

• Toward this effort, “Francis Bacon and a small group of kindred spirits (scholars, mystics, poets, scientists, and related intellectuals) united together to accomplish the universal reformation of the world, not by violence but by the transmission of essential learning.”

• This group “acknowledged themselves as the custodians of a sacred tradition related to the future state of man, the perfection of his human institutions, and his regeneration in the light of universal wisdom. They desired to attain their ends by evolution rather than revolution.”

Overall, Hall emphasizes that "Bacon’s genius was not as creator but as coordinator. He gathered the fragments of tradition, vitalized them with his own dynamic personality, and set up the machinery to bring about the fulfillment of man’s fondest aspiration. Literally, he brought the ‘wits’ together.”

• “By organizing an ideal, Bacon gave it form and substance and released through it an energy suitable for its completion.” Through the machinery he set up, “mystics, philosophers, and alchemists were all bound together with a secret tie, and dedicated to the emancipation of humanity from ignorance and oppression.”

• Mobilized behind this shared ideal, Bacon’s esoteric society “moved across the face of Europe under such names as the ‘Illuminati’, the ‘Rosicrucians’, and the ‘Freemasons’.” Its goal was to “undermine in a subtle manner the entire structure of regal and sacerdotal supremacy”.

In this way, Bacon became “the head of a secret society including in its membership the most brilliant intellectuals of his day. All these men were bound together by a common oath to labor in the cause of a world democracy.”

• Incorporated into the membership of Bacon’s Invisible College were “men of high rank and broad influence.” This network extended beyond England into Germany, France, and the Netherlands. In fact, “most of the leaders of European thought were involved in the purpose.”

• At the appointed time, Bacon’s network of secret societies, strategically placed across Europe, maneuvered themselves into North America to become the secret Founding Fathers of the democratic nation that was to be established there.

• As Hall elaborates, “Alchemists, Cabalists, Mystics, and Rosicrucian representatives all migrated to the colonies at an early date.” Under Bacon’s leadership, they together orchestrated the original English colonization scheme, before later carrying out the American Revolution.

As we discover, the strategic infiltration of America by Bacon-connected secret societies took place from the very beginning. Indeed, “many early explorers and colonizers are known to have been associated with Secret Societies.”

• For example, the first permanent English settlement in North America, Jamestown, was set up by Francis Bacon in 1607 through the vehicle of the Virginia Company. He drafted the first charter of government for this colony, which would in turn serve as “the beginning of constitutionalism in America and therefore the germ of the Constitution of the United States.”

• Later, “after the Jamestown settlement had gained some semblance of order and permanence, descendants of those men who formed the original Baconian Society left England and settled in the colony. It was through them that the Great Plan began to operate in America. … Lord Bacon guided the project and probably outlined the program to be followed after his death.”

In sum, “Bacon’s secret society was set up in American before the middle of the seventeenth century.”

• “Through carefully appointed representatives, the machinery of democracy was set up at least a hundred years before the period of the Revolutionary War. … He made sure that the American colonists were thoroughly indoctrinated with the principles of religious tolerance, political democracy, and social equality.”

• “The work, then as always, was in the hands and keeping of a few initiated leaders. They were responsible for the results, and they built slowly and wisely, thinking not of their own days or of their own reputation, but of the future in which the Great Plan would be fulfilled.”

41. The American Revolution: a Freemasonic Project

As previously discussed, Medieval “guilds and trade unions were drawn into the pattern of esoteric descent as peculiarly suitable vehicles to advance the cause of the long-projected Philosophic Empire.” (MPH)

• This union between a higher Order of initiates (Bacon’s Invisible College) with those of a lower order of workmen’s associations (the Masons) took place at the precise time when the worldwide reformation was first being announced through the Rosicrucian manifestoes.

• As Hall informs us, “Francis Bacon was the instigator of this significant project. Several ancient groups were ‘raised’ by his lordship and received from him the Word of Power. After him, his descendants advanced and perfected the work.”

• Bacon’s custodianship over the revision of the Masonic order resulted in the “sudden enrichment of the mystical and symbolic side of Freemasonry and in the elaboration and beautification of its rituals.”

Overall, Hall concludes that “the modern Freemasonic Order was profoundly influenced by, if not an actual outgrowth of, Francis Bacon’s secret society, and its symbolism is undoubtedly permeated with Bacon’s two great ideals: universal education and universal democracy.”

• As we discover, the Rosicrucian and the Freemasonic Fraternities overlapped but were not identical: the former existed as a more ideal representation of the Mystery School archetype, while the latter (the Masons) provided an ideal outer body for its mystical counterpart to inhabit and express its will through.

• In other words, Masonry provided a social, cultural, and political vehicle for the higher esoteric order (the Rosicrucians) to utilize in carrying out its grand mission for World Reformation.

• In this way, “the Orders of Fraternity (the Masons) were attached by slender and almost invisible threads to the parent project (the Rosicrucians). They were not actual embodiments of the esoteric associations, but rather instruments to advance certain objectives of the Divine Plan, especially the accomplishment by man of such self-improvement as was immediately necessary.”

Hall explains that the larger institutional transformations taking place across Europe during this period helped support Bacon’s mission, giving wind to its sails:

• “Europe, at about the year 1600 AD, was in the midst of a transition period: the Renaissance had cleared the cultural atmosphere, the Reformation had thinned the theological air, and the human mind was already at work on the foundations of modern science.” Furthermore, the Crusades had broken up the structure of feudalism, and principalities were starting to form into nations.

• In short, “larger motions were moving beneath the surface of European life. Men, long oppressed, were rising to avenge a thousand years of corruption and infamy. Throughout western civilization, dissatisfaction created a variety of subterranean states that finally came to the surface with a force that even entrenched systems and institutions were unable to withstand.”

The main theme behind this European transformation period was that the closed, crystallized state of mind that Europe had fallen into during the Dark Ages was now being thrust back open.

• The transformation of Europe’s psychological situation was then catapulted forward with the “official” discovery of the Americas by the early royal explorers.

• America became a focal point for the new psychological energies developing in Europe. There, it became seen as “a land of infinite opportunity, fresh and free.”

Zooming out, we find that these outbursts “were the result of a deep-laid plan, which derived its pattern and authority from the trestle board of the mysteries.”

• Freemasonry would play a significant role in the enaction of Europe’s transformation, serving as an important coordinating vehicle for secret agents of the esoteric societies to work through.

• To prepare Masonry for this task, Bacon reformatted the system of religious philosophy practiced by the Masons, shifting it from an emphasis on constructing physical buildings to instead building a new social order.

Shifting its focus away from the traditional building trades, Masonry’s attention was turned “to the pressing problems of social reform and representative government.”.

• Its orientation was now to involve itself with “the collective emergencies of contemporary living: international accord, the arbitration of religious and social differences, and the systematic advancement of the plan for world welfare - these now supplied the ingredients for a new application of Hermetic chemistry.”

• As Manly Hall summarizes, “the true spirit of modern Masonry arose when these guild artisans first recognized the possibility of applying the rules of the architectural unions and other trade guilds to society in general. The burden of progress was shifted from the physical to the ethical level, and the builders of temples became the builders of man’s democratic destiny.”

Guided by Bacon’s vision for a worldwide reformation, the Freemasons established themselves in America at a very early date:

• Manly Hall writes that, according to Masonic tradition, “Freemasonry existed in the Western Hemisphere as early as 1606. If so, it must have entered America by way of Jamestown and Williamsburg.”

• He further remarks that, “between 1610 and 1660, a mass of material concerned with the development of the Great Plan for America was transferred from Europe to the Western Continent for preservation and future use.”

With assets distributed across Europe, and with their reach now extending into America, the Freemasons were well-positioned to become the primary organizing force behind the revolutionary movements of the late 1700s.

• This wave of global revolutions was to begin with the American Revolution, with an ideal representation of a democratic republic set up in America as a result of it, one free from the control of the monarchies or ecclesiastical authorities.

• Based on its shining example, similar models were to be established around the world. Therefore, “the rise of American democracy was necessary to a world program. At the appointed hour, the freedom of man was publicly declared.”

Throughout the Revolutionary period, American patriots worked hand in hand with members of English and European secret societies, “with the members in the two hemispheres bound together with the strongest bonds of sympathy and understanding.”

• Once tensions between the colonies and the crown escalated, the Lodge rooms became places for coordination and consensus-building. “Here, also, Revolutionaries could learn that they had staunch supporting brethren in England and on the Continent.”

• In this way, as Hall further informs us, “not only were many of the founders of the United States Government Masons, but they received aid from a secret and august body existing in Europe, which helped them to establish this country for a peculiar and particular purpose known only to the initiated few.”

• Hall emphasizes that this was all according to Bacon’s plan; “America was being conditioned for its destiny - leadership in a free world.”

One prominent example of the mutual coordination that played out between the American and European branches of this Masonic project comes with Benjamin Franklin, a prominent pro-revolutionary figure in America who, during the Revolutionary War, travelled to France to serve as an ambassador and delegate.

• Hall notes that a famous Parisian esoteric society called “the Lodge of the Nine Sisters” became an important center for coordinating activity between America and Europe during the Revolutionary Era. Notably, it was also here, in the French “Courts of Love,” that Francis Bacon had earlier received his higher initiations.

• Later, during the Revolutionary Era, this lodge became an important international Masonic coordinating ground, “with Ben Franklin among its notable American members and Voltaire and Lafayette as its most prominent French ambassadors.”

As both a member of this famous Parisian lodge and as a Masonic Grand Master back in America, Benjamin Franklin was able to coordinate Masonic operations in America with those taking place in Europe.

• In this way, both he and Lafayette were able to serve as “a link between the European Secret Societies and the American democratic experiment”.

• Delving deeper, Hall notes that “Franklin was in contact with certain obscure gentlemen in the colonies, who took no obvious action in the formation of the American government, but were secretly advancing the cause.” According to Hall, Franklin “acted as a confidential agent for this group on numerous occasions.”

• Meanwhile, famous Founding Fathers Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Thomas Paine, Paul Revere, and John Hancock were all Masons. In fact, of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence, nearly all were Masons. The same is true of the fifty-five members of the Constitutional Convention.

• One other notable point: Hall declares that the Grand Masters of the French Lodge, “the mysterious adepts St. Germain and Cagliostro, were the overseers of the whole project.”

Before moving on, I’d like to point out an important, yet mostly forgotten, historical fact, one that students of Manly P. Hall should appreciate:

• In his 1927 encyclopedia of esoteric philosophy, “The Secret Teachings of All Ages”, Manly P. Hall revealed a long-hidden truth: that the twin images that together constitute the Great Seal of the United States, the Eagle and the All-Seeing Eye, were first established in the 18th century at the behest of the Founding Fathers of the country.

• This imagery was drawn directly from the symbolism of Francis Bacon’s Rosicrucian and Freemasonic societies, which had moved into and began operating within this country since the point of its first founding. As Hall transparently reveals, “The Great Seal is the signature of this exalted body - unseen and for the most part unknown.”

• In terms of its symbolism, the unfinished pyramid upon the Seal’s reverse side - the “All-Seeing Eye” - represents the grand spiritual mission “toward which the United States Government was dedicated from the day of its inception.”

• Meanwhile, its twin image, the American eagle, “is but a conventionalized phoenix” - this being a traditional symbol of the Mystery Schools and the order of enlightened Adepts that rule over them.

Approximately ten years after Manly Hall first publicly revealed these forgotten truths, these two images were placed on the Dollar Bill of the United States.

• The government officials directly responsible for putting it there - Henry Morgenthau, Henry Wallace, Franklin Roosevelt, and Nicholas Roerich - were all Freemasons who held direct or indirect connections to Manly P. Hall himself.

• Could Manly Hall have been the guiding inspiration behind the placement of these important esoteric symbols on the reverse of the Dollar Bill?

42. The Illuminati: the Revolution Comes to Europe

As explored above, the Freemasons played an important coordinating role between Europe and America during the Revolutionary Era of the 18th century.

• Its dream of world democracy and universal education, instilled into it by Francis Bacon, was heretical to the Church and treasonous to the European monarchies. For this reason, during this period the Freemasons were subject to heavy persecution.

• Consequently, as Manly Hall informs us, “the individuals who made up its councils and bodies met at great hazard to themselves. … It was necessary for them to work in silence and in secrecy and to build their foundations securely, for it was their aim to create in the world a philosophical basis upon which men might build an empire of science, philosophy, literature, and art.”

Due in large part to the covert influence of groups like the Freemasons, the Rosicrucians, and, as we will see, the Illuminati, during the Revolutionary Era “a school of thinking came into existence which questioned the infallibility of every man-made limitation imposed upon the universality of knowledge.”

• For example, during this period: "printing was invented; Copernicus defined the physical proportions of the solar system; Galileo overthrew the fallacy that the sun moved about the earth; Andreas Vesalius corrected the prevalent errors regarding the internal structure of the human body; Ambroise Pare elevated surgery to a science and rescued it from the barbers; Francis Bacon established the foundation of inductive reasoning; Natural sciences contested the solemn pronouncements of empiric scholasticism; Rene Descartes turned men’s mind to the analysis of themselves; and Sir Thomas More envisioned a utopian society for mankind. Each of these changes in attitude and viewpoint attacked long sequences of error, and the total result was a loss of veneration for the sanctity of the status quo.” (MPH)

• The underlying theme behind these events - “the moving spirit of its philosophy - was a sincere dedication to the basic premise that only education could release the human mind from bondage to ignorance, superstition, and fear. The whole school was dominated by an earnest humanism.”

This milieu served as the backdrop for the American Revolution; likewise, it also informs the context for the French Revolution.

• As noted previously, the Lodge of the Nine Sisters in Paris served as an important coordinating ground during the Revolutionary Era, with French and American Freemasons meeting here, along with other European counterparts, in order to coordinate actions and strategies.

• According to Manly Hall, the enigmatic occult figures Cagliostro and St. Germain were working behind the scenes of this lodge, quietly directing the course of world events from their position as its Master Masons.

• While most have never heard their names, in the two centuries or so since they masterminded the activities of this important Parisian lodge, “a complete transformation has taken place in the affairs of nations and the social state of individuals. The concept of democracy has emerged.”

• On this subject, Hall emphatically states that, “there are no accidents in nature, and there is a reason for the men who stand behind the men who change the course of history. The deeper projects of St.-Germain and Cagliostro will never be captured between the covers of a printed book. … These august Adepts are the actual preservers of those secret operative processes of the Greeks. whereby the illumination and completion of the individual is effected. They are the veritable guardians of the ‘Lost Word’ - the Keepers of the Inner Mystery.”

• Helena Blavatsky, writing in 1883, further expands on these points, stating that “several Brothers of the Rosy Cross - or ‘Rosicrucians’ - did take a prominent part in the American struggle for independence, as much as in the French Revolution during the whole of the past century. We have documents to that effect, and the proofs of it are in our possession. … It is our firm conviction … that the French Revolution is due to one Adept, … namely, the Count de St. Germain.”   

In America, the Freemasonic Order served as a well-formulated instrument specially-prepared to instigate the Rosicrucians’ revolutionary project. But in Europe, the Masonic Order was less well-organized, and characterized by diverging and conflicting sub-orders.

• Because of this situation, European Masonry needed extra incentive, motivation, and inspiration to congeal together around a common revolutionary cause. The rise of a new esoteric fraternity in Bavaria, Germany - the “Order of the Illuminati” - provided this impetus.

• As Hall describes, the events involving this small secret society, founded as an offshoot of German Masonry, were “destined to play a strange part in the political and social drama that eventually resulted in the overthrow of most of the monarchies of Europe, and the breaking of the temporal power of the Church.”

The Order of the Illuminati was initially founded by a Bavarian law professor named Adam Weishaupt.

• Manly Hall introduces his discussion of the topic by noting that: “It was a day of new ideas, new courage, and new attitudes toward the known and the knowable.” Professor Weishaupt and his students rode this wave and responded to this idealism.

• “Dr. Weishaupt was master over a classroom filled with the sons of well-to-do burghers and merchants, and the scions of wealthy aristocratic and noble families. These young men were keenly aware of the social motions of their time. A revolution was pending in America where taxation without representation had turned an enraged group of Colonials against their motherland. There were also rumblings of rebellion in France, whose citizens were organizing themselves for a struggle to the death against the tyranny and corruption of a decadent aristocracy.”

Weishaupt’s political discussions with his students, which were sympathetic to the revolutionary motions of the time, were censored by the university and eventually he was forced to move his activities off-campus.

• Because of the status and influence of his students, he was seen as a threat to the orthodox powers of the day. As Hall further describes, “many of Weishaupt’s pupils came from influential families, and these pupils wanted Weishaupt and his message.”

• Threatened by his growing influence, the university and the entrenched religious and political powers behind it organized a secret plot to destroy the professor. He decided to fight fire with fire and organized his own counter-reaction to the conservatives’ plot. This counter-plot became the “Order of the Illuminati”, founded on May 1st, 1776.

At the beginning of this enterprise, Weishaupt gained the assistance of two prominent Masons, who “took Weishaupt’s basic material and elaborated the degrees and rituals of the society.”

• Their enthusiasm converted other Masons to join the new order and its revolutionary cause. In this manner, the Illuminati soon expanded in influence beyond its initial group of university students, founding other lodges in adjacent countries, notably France.

• Weishaupt himself was not initially a Freemason but was initiated into a local lodge the following year. The two sects overlapped in their members, with the order spreading from Bavaria into France and Italy.

• As Hall explains, Weishhaupt and the influential and knowledgeable Masons working behind him together “fashioned a secret society patterned after a hundred already in existence, some of them dedicated to parallel purposes. … The primary purpose was simply to profit by experience and to build a structure that could endure the constant and intense pressure of the Church and State.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Church branded them as anarchists and heretics and made their members to appear as criminals and outcasts so as to imprison them. The state, made nervous by the revolutionary events in next door France, also moved to quell this motion.

• The ultimate consequence of these events was that, in Germany, both Illuminism and Freemasonry became banned. For this reason, the official history of the Order of the Illuminati lasted only 12 years. But, in those years, it played an important and useful role in the larger project for World Reformation first instigated by Bacon’s Rosicrucian group over a hundred years prior, particularly in the European theater of activity.

• Regarding the idea that the Illuminati were over-souled and guided by a larger esoteric body, Hall points out that “all efforts to discover the members of the higher grades of the Illuminist Order have been unsuccessful. Is it possible that a powerful group of men that resolved to remain entirely unknown moved behind Weishaupt and pushed him forward as a screen for its own activities?”

Hall indicates that Count St. Germaine and Cagliostro may have been two of the hidden hierarchs quietly guiding the actions of this order.

• “Certainly, there was an undercurrent of things esoteric, in the most mystical sense of the word, beneath the surface of Illuminism. In this respect it followed exactly in the footsteps of the Knights Templars.”

• In short, “the Illuminati was part of an esoteric tradition which had descended from remote antiquity and had appeared for a short time among the humanists of Ingoldstadt.” Having served its purpose, it vanished away, with the larger project for World Reformation it was a part of continuing on, to live another day.

43. The Secret Destiny of America

Thousands of years ago, well before the time of Christianity, the esoteric schools planned and began carrying out a grand vision for the worldwide reformation of man.

• This motion, which Hall states began within the Mystery Schools of Egypt, lead to the rise of philosophy; it also lead to the fall of pagan civilization and the rise of the Abrahamic religions; it was responsible for breaking down the old caste order; and it brought about the separation of church, state, and economy, shifting mankind into an increasingly pluralistic way of life.

• Ultimately, this great historical motion would culminate in the founding of the democratic republic in North America: the United States.

As Many Hall first publicly revealed to the world in the 20th century, since the onset of this plan for a worldwide reformation in human affairs, the American continents have been set aside for a particular purpose.

• Hall writes that “the blessed lands of the West were set apart, for none of the great civilizations of the past rose in North America to overshadow the continent with the ruins of old tradition. … Foreign nations came to this continent in times long ago, but they formed no permanent settlements nor attempted any program of colonization.”

• In his teachings, Hall states that the reason for this “setting aside” of America was that here, the great dream of the Aryan Adepts - the Philosophic Empire - was to finally be established. It was to take root here first, in this nation, before then extending out around the world, elevating human civilization into a higher, global state of evolutionary expression as a result.

• This “secret destiny of America” has passed down through the ages; we inherit it today. Hall therefore emphasizes that it is our duty as Americans to “perfect the plan of the ages, setting up here the machinery for a world brotherhood of nations and races.”

In his astrological prophesies, Nostradamus predicted that America would indeed accomplish this mission, thereby establishing the formal beginnings of world civilization.

• According to him, America was to fulfill its destiny by founding a “great league or assembly of world powers” - a world commonwealth of nations, in other words. The purpose of this United Nations is to bring mankind to “that state of personal and collective behavior in which men can live together harmoniously and constructively, united for the betterment of all.”

• This World League was to be established upon democratic foundations. It “is to be the only human hope of peace, the only solution to a competition between nations. The formation of this league begins the new life of the human race, and will allow the human being at last to emerge into the estate for which he was fashioned.”

Through the work of the Founding Fathers, the seeds of this idealistic dream were planted in the American republic from the point of its first beginning.

• Later, after the American states had secured their footing and the gates were opened for mass immigration, streams of immigrants from nearly every country on Earth piled in. In a comparatively short time, here in America peoples from many racial and national backgrounds began to mingle and intermix.

• Through them, a new pattern of human identity has been born: the post-racial democratic citizen. As Manly Hall further explains, “the American ‘race’ is not one to be determined by an analysis of blood or the proportions of the cranium. Americans are a race determined by the measure of a conviction. They are set apart by that conviction; it is the conviction that human beings are created free, and are entitled to equal opportunity to perfect themselves in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Having first established this new pattern of psychological self-identity at home, American missionaries have travelled around the world, extending this ideal globally.

• Today, “the ‘race’ of democracy is one distributed throughout the whole world.”

• “Among men and women of all races and all nations are those who share our conviction, and because they share it they are of our kind and belong to our race. In this realization, we mark the beginning of world democracy.”

The World Nation, once established, will be inclusive of all people: everyone, from every type of background, must be prepared for citizenship in it.

• This is the ideal of the New Atlantis: a global empire, grounded in Philosophy, centered in America, dedicated to the spiritual progression of the human race.

• As the Philosophic Empire, this World Nation will extend around the globe, transcending all the false boundaries and barriers we have set up in our psychologies that divide us.

This remains the task for us to accomplish today: we must come together, first as Americans, then as citizens of a global nation.

• The way of life we must establish in America and then the world must be one grounded in philosophic education, democratic cooperation, scientific coordination, and shared economic prosperity.

• Hall emphasizes the point that “there can be no enduring security, no lasting peace, no practical cooperation between the classes of a society or the sovereign states of the political sphere without the conviction that all men share a common heritage of opportunity and responsibility.”

Consequently, we must begin the work today to build an “ideological empire” without physical boundaries, dedicated to philosophy and lead by citizens guided by a common vision and mutual purpose.

• In short, “The brotherhood of man must become a social reality before the New Atlantis can exist as an ideal commonwealth in the world”. We can begin establishing this today, but it is a process to achieve and must be carefully and patiently built toward.

• Those in charge of the project must rise forth from the body of the citizenry to become the “Philosophic Elect”. These leaders will be elected democratically (hence “elect”), and they will work together to re-orient the political, economic, and cultural institutions of the world toward the archetypal ideal first established by the Aryan Manu and his Rishi back at the beginning point of the current world cycle.

This lofty ideal not only can be achieved, it must be achieved. It is our collective destiny to accomplish it. And it is America’s particular mission to catalyze it.

• But before we can successfully fulfill this mission, either as Americans or as a world nation, we must first confront and overcome the Shadow: the great karmic embodiment of our own internal weaknesses, reflecting back to us our unresolved psychological complexes in the form of a great Adversary that we must address and overcome.

• The Founding Fathers of America, in establishing this country, had to battle and overcome two of the three primary Adversaries that have emerged in the modern era to block World Democracy from coming forth: the Church and crown.

• But now, two Adversaries still await defeat: one is the capitalist oligarchy, which we began exploring in this chapter and will continue our examination of in the next one to follow; the other is one we have briefly discussed in other chapters and which will now become a central topic of discussion in subsequent chapters: the Cult of Scientific Materialism, the dominant “religion” of the modern world.

In conclusion, Manly Hall, the great philosopher and initiate of 20th century America, taught that mankind must earn its own peace: if we are to attain the evolutionary destiny Nature has set aside for us, we must accomplish it ourselves.

• Hall writes that: “All the great leaders of ancient times rallied and taught that the establishment of a state of permanent peace depended upon the release of human ideals through disciplined minds capable of interpreting these ideals in terms of the common good.”

• In short, “the security the world seeks cannot be bestowed; it must be earned. When a sufficient number has attained this degree of true leadership, the imperishable democracy of the sages will become a fact in the mortal sphere.”

This imperishable democracy must emerge as a Philosophic Empire, for the reason that, “under a democratic concept of living, the responsibilities for progress pass to the keeping of the people.”

• As Manly Hall informs us, “the democratic commonwealth can be a reality only when our world is a world of self-ruling men. The mind has to be trained in the laws of thinking before men can be capable of self-rulership.”

• In other words, humanity must embrace philosophy before it can sustain true democracy.

This is why, today, the resource we are most in need of is philosophy: as individuals, as collectives, as a race.

• Philosophy is the ultimate vehicle of the Dharma; the instrument by means of which we achieve our own salvation.

• This salvation will come to us in the form of a state of permanent peace. This marks the beginning of a new golden age for man: the culmination of our current cycle of history.

• As Americans, it is our responsibility to bring this great dream into reality. We have a date with destiny, and time won’t wait.