The Black Death
THE CENTRALIZATION OF Papal power culminated under Pope Innocent IV,
who held the Papal reins from 1243 until 1254. Innocent IV attempted
to turn the Papacy into the world’s highest political authority by
proclaiming that the Pope was the “vicar [earthly representative] of
the Creator (to whom) every human creature is subjected.” It was under
Innocent IV that the Inquisition was made an official institution of
the Roman Catholic Church.
Despite the oppression of the Inquisition, Europe in the13th century
was beginning to recover from the economic and social disruption
caused by the Crusades. Signs of a European renaissance were visible
in the widening of intellectual and artistic horizons. Trade with
other parts of the world did much to enrich European life. Europe was
entering an era in which chivalry, music, art, and spiritual values
were playing greater roles. Hardly a century of this progress
had passed, however, before a disastrous event abruptly brought it to
a temporary halt. That event was the Bubonic Plague, also known as
the Black Death.
The Black Death began in Asia and soon spread to Europe where it
killed well over 25 million people (about one third of Europe’s total
population) in less than four years. Some historians put the casualty
figure closer to 35 to 40 million people, or about half of all
Europeans.
The epidemic first spread through Europe between 1347and 1350. The
Bubonic Plague continued to strike Europe with decreasing fatality
every ten to twenty years in short-lived outbreaks all the way up
until the 1700’s. Although it is difficult to calculate the total
number of deaths from that 400-year period, it is believed that over
100 million people may have died from the Plague.
Two types of plague are believed to have caused the Black Death. The
first is the “bubonic” type, which was the most common. The bubonic
form of plague is characterized by swellings of the lymph nodes; the
swellings are called ”buboes.” The buboes are accompanied by
vomiting, fever, and death within several days if not treated. This
form of plague is not contagious between human beings: it requires an
active carrier, such as a flea. For this reason, many historians
believe that flea-infested rodents caused the Bubonic Plague.
Rodents are known to carry the disease even today. A number of
records from between 1347 and the late 1600’s speak of rodent
infestations prior to several outbreaks of the Black Death, lending
credence to the rodent theory.
The second form of plague contributing to the Black Death is a highly
contagious type known as “pneumonic” plague. It is marked by
shivering, rapid breathing, and the coughing up of blood. Body
temperatures are high and death normally follows three to four days
after the disease has been contracted. This second type of plague is
nearly always fatal and transmits best in cold weather and in poor
ventilation. Some physicians today believe it was this second form,
the “pneumonic” plague, which was responsible for most of the
casualties of the Black Death because of the crowding and poor
hygienic conditions then prevalent in Europe.
We would normally shake our heads at this tragic period of human
history and be thankful that modern medicine has developed cures for
these dread diseases. However, troubling enigmas about the Black
Death still linger. Many
outbreaks occurred in summer during warm weather in uncrowded
regions. Not all outbreaks of bubonic plague were preceded by rodent
infestation; in fact, only a minority of cases seemed to be related
to an increase in the presence of vermin. The greatest puzzle about
the Black Death is how it was able to strike isolated human
populations which had no contact with earlier infected areas. The
epidemics also tended to end abruptly.
To solve these puzzles, an historian would normally look to records
from the Plague years to see what people were reporting. When he
does so, he encounters stories so stunning and unbelievable that he
is likely to reject them as the fantasies and superstitions of badly
frightened minds. A great many people throughout Europe and other
Plague-stricken regions of the world were reporting that outbreaks
of the Plague were caused by foul-smelling “mists.” Those mists
frequently appeared after unusually bright lights in the sky. The
historian quickly discovers that “mists” and bright lights were
reported far more frequently and in many more locations than were
rodent infestations. The Plague years were, in fact, a period of
heavy UFO activity.
What; then, were the mysterious mists?
There is another very important way in which plague germs can be
transmitted: through germ weapons. The United States and the Soviet
Union today have stockpiles of biological weapons containing bubonic
plague and other epidemic diseases. The germs are kept alive in
canisters which spray the diseases into the air on thick, often
visible, artificial mists. Anyone breathing in the mist will
inhale the disease. There are enough such germ weapons today to wipe
out a good portion of humanity. Reports of identical
disease-inducing mists from the Plague years strongly suggest that
the Black Death was caused by germ warfare. Let us take a look at
the incredible reports which lead to that conclusion.
The first outbreak of the Plague in Europe followed an unusual series
of events. Between 1298 and 1314, seven large “comets” were seen
over Europe; one was of “aweinspiring blackness.”1 One year before
the first outbreak of the epidemic in Europe, a “column of fire” was
reported over
the Pope’s* palace at Avignon, France.
* This was a second unauthorized pope
who assumed the title as the result of a schism within the Catholic
Church. The complete title is,
A chronicle of prodigies and
portents that have occurred beyond the right order, operation
and working of nature, in both the upper and lower regions of
the earth, from the beginning of the world up to these present
times.
Earlier that year, a “ball of
fire” was observed over Paris; it reportedly remained visible to
observers for some time. To the people of Europe, these sightings
were considered omens of the Plague which soon followed.
It is true that some reported “comets” were probably just that:
comets. Some may also have been small meteors or fireballs (large
blazing meteors). Centuries ago, people were generally far more
superstitious than they are today and so natural meteors and similar
prosaic phenomena were often reported as precursors to later
disasters even though there was no real-life connection.
On the
other hand, it is important to note that almost any unusual object
in the sky was called a “comet.” A good example is found in a
bestselling book published in 1557, "A Chronicle of Prodigies and
Portents..." by Conrad Lycosthenes. On page 494 of Lycosthenes’
book we read of a “comet” observed in the year 1479:
“A comet was
seen in Arabia in the manner of a sharply pointed wooden beam ...”
The accompanying illustration, which was based on
eyewitness descriptions, shows what clearly looks like the front half
of a rocketship among some clouds.
The object appears to have many
portholes. Today we would call the object a UFO, not a comet. This
leads us to wonder how many other ancient “comets” were actually
similar rocketlike objects. When we are confronted with-an old
report of a comet, we therefore do not really know what kind of thing
we are dealing with unless there is a fuller description. A report of
a sudden increase in “comets” or similar celestial phenomena may,
in fact, mean an increase in UFO activity.
The link between unusual aerial phenomena and the Black
Death was established immediately during the first outbreaks of the
Plague in Asia. As one historian tells us:
The first reports [of the Plague] came out of the East. They were
confused, exaggerated, frightening, as reports from that quarter of
the world so often are: descriptions of storms and earthquakes: of
meteors and comets trailing noxious gases that killed trees and
destroyed the fertility of the land...2
The above passage indicates that strange flying objects were doing
more than just spreading disease: they were also apparently spraying
chemical or biological defoliants from the air. The above passage
echoes the ancient Mesopotamian tablets which described defoliation
of the landscape by ancient Custodial “Gods.” Many human casualties
from the Black Death may have been caused by such defoliants.
The connection between aerial phenomena and plague had begun
centuries before the Black Death. We saw examples in our earlier
discussion of Justinian’s Plague. We read from another source about
a large plague that had reportedly broken out in the year 1117—almost
250 years before the Black Death.
That plague was also preceded by
unusual celestial phenomena:
In 1117, in January, a comet passed like a fiery army from the North
towards the Orient, the moon was overcast blood-red in an eclipse, a
year later a light appeared more brilliant than the sun. This was
followed by great cold, famine, and plague, of which one-third of
humanity is said to have perished.3 *
* I have seen no mention of this plague in any other history book. It
may have been a local plague which destroyed not a third of
humanity, but a third of the afflicted population.
Once the medieval Black Death got started, noteworthy aerial
phenomena continued to accompany the dread epidemic. Reports of
many of these phenomena were assembled
by Johannes Nohl and published in his book, The Black Death, A
Chronicle of the Plague (1926). According to Mr. Nohl, at least 26
“comets” were reported between 1500 and 1543. Fifteen or sixteen
were seen between 1556 and 1597. In the year 1618, eight or nine
were observed.
Mr. Nohl emphasizes the connection which people
perceived between the “comets” and subsequent epidemics:
In the year 1606 a comet was seen, after which
a general plague
traversed the world. In 1582 a comet brought so violent a plague
upon Majo, Prague, Thuringia, the Netherlands, and other places that
in Thuringia it carried off 37,000 and in the Netherlands 46,415.4
From Vienna, Austria, we get the following description of an event
which happened in 1568. Here we see a connection between an outbreak
of Plague and an object described in a manner remarkably similar to
a modern cigar or beam-shaped UFO:
When in sun and moonlight a beautiful rainbow and a fiery beam were
seen hovering above the church of St. Stephanie, which was followed
by a violent epidemic in Austria, Swabia, Augsberg,
Wuertemberg, Nuremburg, and other places, carrying off human beings
and cattle.5
Sightings of unusual aerial phenomena usually occurred from several
minutes to a year before an outbreak of Plague. Where there was a
gap between such a sighting and the arrival of the Plague, a second
phenomenon was sometimes reported: the appearance of frightening
humanlike figures dressed in black. Those figures were often seen on
the outskirts of a town or village and their presence would signal
the outbreak of an epidemic almost immediately.
A summary written in
1682 tells of one such visit a century earlier:
In Brandenburg [in Germany] there appeared in 1559 horrible men, of
whom at first fifteen and later on
twelve were seen. The foremost had beside their posteriors little
heads, the others fearful faces and long scythes, with which they
cut at the oats, so that the swish could be heard at a great
distance, but the oats remained standing. When a quantity of people
came running out to see them, they went on with their mowing.6
The visit of the strange men to the oat fields was followed
immediately by a severe outbreak of the Plague in Brandenburg.
This incident raises intriguing questions: who were the mysterious
figures? What were the long scythe-like instruments they held that
emitted a loud swishing sound? It appears that the “scythes” may
have been long instruments designed to spray poison or germ-laden
gas. This would mean that the townspeople misinterpreted the
movement of the “scythes” as an attempt to cut oats when, in fact,
the movements were the act of spraying aerosols on the town.
Similar
men dressed in black were reported in Hungary:
. . . in the year of Christ 1571 was seen at Cremnitz in the mountain
towns of Hungary on Ascension Day in the evening to the great
perturbation [disturbance] of all, when on the Schuelersberg there
appeared so many black riders that the opinion was prevalent
that the Turks were making a secret raid, but who rapidly
disappeared again, and thereupon a raging plague broke out in
the neighborhood.7
Strange men dressed in black, “demons,” and other terrifying
figures were observed in other European communities. The frightening
creatures were often observed carrying long ”brooms,” “scythes,” or
“swords” that were used to “sweep” or “knock at” the doors of
people’s homes. The inhabitants of those homes fell ill with plague
afterwards. It is from these reports that people created the popular
image of “Death” as a skeleton or demon carrying a scythe. The
scythe
came to symbolize the act of Death mowing down people like stalks of
grain. In looking at this haunting image of death, we may, in fact,
be staring into the face of the UFO.
Of all the phenomena connected to the Black Death, by far the most
frequently reported were the strange, noxious “mists.” The vapors
were often observed even when the other phenomena were not. Mr. Nohl
points out that moist pestilential fogs were “a feature which
preceded the epidemic throughout its whole course.”
8 A great many
physicians of the time took it for granted that the strange mists
caused the Plague. This connection was established at the very
beginning of the Black Death, as Mr. Nohl tells us:
The origin of the plague lay in
China, there it is said to have commenced to rage already in the
year 1333, after a terrible mist emitting a fearful stench and
infecting the air.9
Another account stresses that the Plague did not spread from person
to person, but was contracted by breathing the deadly stinking air:
During the whole of the year 1382
there was no wind, in consequence of which the air grew putrid,
so that an epidemic broke out, and the plague did not pass from
one man to another, but everyone who was killed by it got it
straight from the air.10
Reports of deadly “mists” and “pestilential fogs” came from all
Plague-infested parts of the world:
A Prague chronicle describes the epidemic in China, India and Persia;
and the Florentine historian Matteo Villani, who took up the work of
his brother Giovanni after he had died of the plague in Florence,
relays the account of earthquakes and pestilential fogs from a
traveller in Asia.
The same historian continues:
A similar incident of earthquake and
pestilential fog was reported from Cyprus, and it was believed
that the wind had been so poisonous that men were struck down
and died from it.12
He adds:
German accounts speak of a heavy
vile-smelling mist which advanced from the East and spread
itself over Italy.13
That author states that in other countries:
. .. people were convinced that they could
contract the disease from
the stench, or even, as is sometimes described, actually see the
plague coming through the streets as a pale fog.14
He summarizes, rather dramatically:
The earth itself seemed in a state of convulsion, shuddering and
spitting, putting forth heavy poisonous winds that destroyed animals
and plants and called swarms of insects to life to complete the
destruction.15
Similar happenings are echoed by other writers. A
journal from 1680
reported this odd incident:
That between Eisenberg and Dornberg thirty
funeral biers [casket
stands] all covered with black cloth were seen in broad daylight,
among them on a bier a blackman was standing with a white cross.
When these had disappeared a great heat set in so that the people
in this place could hardly stand it. But when the sun had set they
perceived so sweet a perfume as if they were in a garden of roses. By
this time they were all plunged in perturbation. Whereupon the
epidemic set in in Thuringia in many places.16
Further south, in Vienna:
.. . evil smelling mists are blamed, as indicative of the plague,
and of these, indeed, several were observed last autumn.17
Direct from the plague-ravaged town of Eisleben, we get
this amusing and perhaps exaggerated newspaper account
published on September 1, 1682:
In the cemetery of Eisleben on the 6th inst. [?]
at night the
following incident was noticed: When during the night the
gravediggers were hard at work digging trenches, for on many days
between eighty and ninety have died, they suddenly observed that the
cemetery church, more especially the pulpit, was lighted up by bright
sunshine. But on their going up to it so deep a darkness and black,
thick fog came over the graveyard that they could hardly see one
another, and which they took to be an evil omen. Thus day and night
gruesome evil spirits are seen frightening the people, goblins
grinning at them and pelting them, but also many white ghosts and
specters.18
The same newspaper story later adds:
When Magister Hardte expired in his agony a blue smoke was seen to
rise from his throat, and this in the presence of the death; the same
has been observed in the case of others expiring. In the same manner
blue smoke has been observed to rise from the gables of houses at Eisleben all the inhabitants of which have died. In the church of
St. Peter blue smoke has been observed high up near the ceiling; on
this account the church is shunned, particularly as the parish has
been exterminated.19
The “mists” or Plague poisons were thick enough to mix with normal
air moisture and become part of the morning dew. People were warned
to take the following precautions:
If newly baked bread is placed for the night at the end of a pole
and in the morning is found to be mildewed and internally grown
green, yellow and uneatable, and when thrown to fowls and dogs
causes them to die from eating it, in a similar manner if fowls
drink the morning dew and die in consequence, then the plague poison
is near at hand.20
As noted earlier, lethal “mists” were directly
associated with bright
moving lights in the sky. Other sources for the stenches were also
reported. For example, Forestus Alcmarianos wrote of a monstrous
“whale” he had encountered which was:
28 ells [105 feet] in length and 14 ells [33 feet] broad which,
coming from the western sea, was thrown upon the shore of Egemont by
great waves and was unable to reach the open again; it produced so
great a foulness and malignity of the air that very soon a great
epidemic broke out in Egemont and neighborhood.21
It is a shame that Mr. Alcmarianos did not provide a more detailed
description of the deadly whale because it may have been a craft
similar to modern UFOs which have been observed entering and leaving
bodies of water. On the other hand, Mr. Alcmarianos’ whale may have
been just that: a dead rotting whale which happened to wash up on
shore just before a nearby outbreak of the Plague.
It is significant that foul mists and bad air were blamed for many
other epidemics in history. During a plague in ancient Rome, the
famous physician Hippocrates (ca. 460337 B.C.) stated that the
disease was caused by body disturbances brought on by changes in
the atmosphere. To remedy this, Hippocrates had people build large
public bonfires. He believed that large fires would set the air
aright.
Hippocrates’ advice was followed centuries later
by physicians during the medieval Plague. Modern doctors take a dim
view of Hippocrates’ advice on this matter, however, in the belief
that Hippocrates was ignorant about the true causes of plague. In
reality, huge outdoor bonfires were the
only conceivable defense against the Plague if it was indeed caused
by germ-saturated aerosols. Vaccines to combat the Plague had not
been invented and so the people’s only hope was to burn away the
deadly “mists” with fire. Hippocrates and those who followed his
advice may have actually saved some lives.
Significantly, bubonic and pneumonic plagues were not the only
infectious diseases in history to be spread on strange lethal fogs.
The deadly intestinal disease, cholera, was another:
When cholera broke out on board Her Majesty’s ship Britannia in the
Black Sea in 1854, several officers and men asserted positively
that, immediately prior to the outbreak, a curious dark mist swept
up from the sea and passed over the ship. The mist had barely
cleared
the vessel when the first case of disease was announced.22
Blue mists were also reported in connection with the cholera
outbreaks of 1832 and 1848-1849 in England.
As mentioned earlier, plagues had a very strong religious
significance. In the Bible, plagues were said to be Jehovah’s method
of punishing people for evil. “Omens” preceding outbreaks of the
Black Death resembled many of the “omens” reported in the Bible:
Men confronted with the terror of the Black Death were impressed by
the chain of events leading up to the final plague, and accounts of
the coming of the14th-century pestilence selected from among all the
ominous events that must have occurred in the years preceding the
outbreak of 1348 those which closely resemble the ten plagues of
Pharoah: disruptions in the atmosphere, storms, unusual invasions of
insects, celestial phenomena. 23
In addition, the Bubonic form of plague was very similar, if not
identical, to some of the punishments inflicted by ”God ” in the Old
Testament:
But the hand of the Lord was heavy upon the people of Ashdod [a
Philistine city], and he destroyed them, and killed them with
emerods [painful swellings].
1 SAMUEL 5:6
. .. the hand of the Lord was against the city [Gath, another
Philistine city] with a very great destruction: and he killed the
men of the city, both young and old, and they had emerods in their
secret parts. 1 SAMUEL 5:9
. .. there was a deadly destruction throughout all the city; the
hand of God was very heavy there. And the men that survived were
afflicted with the emerods: and the crying of the city went up to
heaven. 1 SAMUEL 5:11-12
The religious aspect of the medieval Black Death
was enhanced by
reports of thundering sounds in connection with outbreaks of the
Plague. The sounds were similar to those described in the Bible as
accompanying
the appearance of Jehovah. Interestingly, they are also
sounds common to some UFO sightings:
During the plague of 1565 in Italy rumblings of
thunder were heard
day and night, as in a war, together with the turmoil and noise as
of a mighty army. In Germany in many places a noise was heard as if a
hearse were passing through the streets of its own accord .. .24
Similar noises accompanied strange aerial
phenomena in remarkable
Plague-related sightings from England. The object described in the
quote below remained visible for over a week and does appear to be a
true comet or planet (such as Venus); however, some of the other
objects can only be labeled “unidentified.”
Historian Walter George
Bell, drawing on writings from the period, summarized:
Late into dark December nights of the year 1664 London citizens sat
up to watch a new blazing star, with “mighty talk” thereupon. King
Charles II and his Queen gazed out of the windows at Whitehall.
About east it rose, reaching no great altitude, and sank below the
south-west horizon between two and three o’clock. In a week or two
it was gone, then letters came from Vienna notifying the like sight
of a brilliant comet, and “in the ayr [air] the appearance of a
Coffin, which causes great anxiety of thought amongst the people.”
Erfurt saw with it other terrible apparitions, and listeners
detected noises in the air, as of fires, and sounds of cannon and
musket-shot. The report ran that one night in the February following
hundreds of persons had seen flames of fire for an hour together,
which seemed to be thrown from Whitehall to St. James and then back
again to Whitehall, where after they disappeared.
In March there came into the heavens a yet brighter comet visible
two hours after midnight, and so continuing till daylight. With
such ominous portents the Great Plague in London was ushered in.25
Other less frequent “omens” were also reported in connection with
the Black Death. Some of those phenomena were obvious fictions.
Significantly, the fictions were not widespread and were rarely
reported outside of the communities in which they originated.
The preceding quotes provide evidence that UFOs (i.e. the Custodial
society) have bombarded the human race with deadly diseases. This
evidence is particularly intriguing when we consider claims made by
a number of modern UFO contactees who say that they are relaying
messages to mankind from the UFO society. Some of them claim that
UFOs are here to help mankind and that UFOs will eradicate disease on
Earth. The UFO civilization reportedly has no disease. If the
Custodial civilization is indeed so healthy, perhaps it is only
because it is not bombarding itself with germ weapons. If UFOs truly
intended to bring health to the human race, maybe all they needed to
do was to stop spraying infectious biological agents into the air.
The Black Death not only killed a great many people, it also caused
deep psychological and social wounds. People in the past were
convinced that the epidemics were God’s punishment for sin, and this
caused deep introversion. It was natural for people to accuse
themselves and their neighbors of wickedness and to wonder what they
had done to “deserve” their punishment. It rarely occurred to the
victims that plagues, even if deliberately inflicted, had nothing to
do with trying to make human beings more virtuous. After all, the
social and psychological effects of the Plague produced the opposite
result.
The misery and despair generated by the massive death tolls
brought about widespread ethical decay. In a dying environment,
many people will no longer care about whether their actions are right
or wrong; they are going to die anyway. In the fearful climate of the
medieval Plague, spiritual values noticeably declined and mental
aberration sharply increased. The same results are observed during
war. Although the Bible and other religious works may preach that
plagues and wars are created by “God ” to ultimately make the human
race more virtuous and spiritually advanced, the effect is always
the opposite.
The cataclysmic nature of the Black Death overshadowed another
disastrous occurrence of the Plague years: a renewed attempt by
Christians to exterminate the Jews. False accusations circulated that
Jews were causing the Plague by poisoning wells. These rumors
stirred up a fearsome hatred of the Jews inside those Christian
communities being devastated by the epidemic.
Many Christians
participated in the genocides, which may have claimed as many lives,
if not more, than the slaughter of Jews by the Nazis in the 20th
century. According to Collier’s Encyclopedia:
That country [Germany] figured... as the site of brutal
massacres on the widest possible scale, which periodically swept
the country from end to end. These culminated at the time of the
terrible plague of 1348-1349, known as the Black Death. Perhaps
because their medical knowledge and hygienic way of life rendered
them somewhat less susceptible than others, the Jews were
preposterously accused of having
deliberately propagated the plague, and hundreds of Jewish
communities, large and small, were blotted out of existence or
reduced to insignificance.
After this, only a broken remnant remained
in the country, mainly in the petty lordships which protected and
even encouraged them for the sake of financial advantages which they
brought. Only a few large German Jewish communities, such as
Frankfurt-am-Main or Worms, managed to maintain an unbroken
existence from Medieval times onward.26
The genocides were often instigated by German
trade guilds, which
excluded Jews from membership. Many of those guilds were direct
offshoots of the ancient Brotherhood guilds. In fact, membership in
Brotherhood organizations and European trade guilds still overlapped
heavily in the 14th century with leadership in the guilds often
being held by men who were members of other Brotherhood
organizations. Here again was an instance in which the
corrupted Brotherhood network was a significant contributor, if not
the primary source, of a major historical genocide.
Germany was not the only nation to host Jewish slaughters. The same
occurred in Spain. In 1391, a massacre of Jews was perpetrated
throughout much of the Spanish peninsula.
Although frightened Christians supplied the manpower for these
terrible genocides, their activities were not always endorsed by the
Papacy. To the credit of Clement VI, who served as Pope from 1342
until 1352, he tried almost immediately to protect the Jews from
massacre. Clement VI issued two Papal bulls declaring the Jews to be
innocent of the charges against them. The bulls called upon all
Christians to cease their persecutions. Clement VI did not fully
succeed, however, because by that time many of the secretive trade
guilds had become a united faction engaged in anti-Papal activity.
Pope Clement also did not dismantle the Inquisition, and the
Inquisition did much to create the generally oppressive social
climate in which such massacres could occur.
The combination of Plague, Inquisition, and genocide
provided all of the elements needed to fulfill apocalyptic prophecy.
The Catholic Church was on the brink of collapse due to the many
clergymen lost to the Plague and from the loss of popular faith in
the Church caused by the Church’s inability to bring an end to
“God’s Disease.” A great many people were proclaiming that the “End
Days” were at hand. True to prophecy, out of this tumult emerged new
“messengers from God” with promises of an imminent Utopia. The
teachings and proclamations of those new messiahs had an electrifying
effect on the ravaged Europeans and brought about an event of major
importance: the Protestant Reformation.
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Back to Viruses - An Instrument in World
Depopulation
Luther and the Rose
IN THE 14TH century, that region of Europe we know today as Germany
consisted of numerous independent principalities and city-states. By
that time, several of those principalities had emerged as the primary
centers of Brotherhood activity in Europe, with most of that activity
concentrated in the central German state of Hesse. In Germany and
elsewhere, the Brotherhood and some of its most advanced initiates
had become known by a Latin name: the “Illuminati,” which means
“illuminated (enlightened) ones.” *
*This Illuminati should not be confused with another iesser
“Illuminati” founded in 18th-century Bavaria by
Adam Weishaupt. The
true Illuminati and Weishaupt’s Illuminati are two distinct
organizations. Weishaupt’s Bavarian Illuminati will be briefly
discussed in an upcoming chapter.
One of the Illuminati’s most important branches in Germany was the
mystical Rosicrucian organization. Rosicrucianism was first
introduced to Germany by the emperor Charlemagne in the early ninth
century A.D. Germany’s first official Rosicrucian Lodge was
established in the city of Worms in the German state of Hesse in the
year 1100
A.D. Rosicrucians achieved fame for their dedication to alchemy,
their complex mystical symbols, and their secret degrees of
initiation. The links between the Illuminati and early Rosicrucians
were quite intimate in that advancement through the Rosicrucian
degrees often resulted in admittance to the Illuminati.
A number of Rosicrucian histories mistakenly state that the
Rosicrucians did not begin their existence until the year 1614—the
year in which German Rosicrucians published a dramatic pamphlet in
Hesse announcing their presence and inviting people to join them. One
reason this mistake is so commonly made, and why the Rosicrucian
Order has been so difficult to trace as one consecutive existence, is
a policy the Order adopted of engaging in 108-year cycles of
“activity” and “inactivity.”
According to the regulation, each major
branch of the Rosicrucian Order was required to establish an
official date of its founding. From that date, each branch was to
then compute successive 108-year periods. The first period would be a
time of well-publicized “outward” activity during which the branch’s
existence would be made widely known to the public and the branch
would openly recruit new members. The next period was to consist of
concealed, silent activity in which there was to be no publicity and
no one outside of the members’ immediate families would be admitted
to membership.
Each Rosicrucian branch would then alternate between
these two phases every 108 years. As Rosicrucian bodies switched back
and forth between their “outward” and “hidden” phases, it seemed to
observers that Rosicrucian Orders were appearing and disappearing in
history. According to Dr. Lewis of AMORC, “just why this new
regulation was brought into effect is not known.”1
The Illuminati and Rosicrucians were major powers behind a new wave
of religious movements during the
Plague years. One of the earliest of those movements was a mystical
religion known as the “Friends of God.”
The Friends of God appeared in Germany in the same year that the
Black Death first struck Europe. The Friends organization was
founded by a banker named Rulman Merswin who had begun his financial
career early in life and had made a sizable fortune from it.
According to Merswin, in the year 1347 he was approached by a
stranger claiming to be a “friend of God.” The identity of the
mysterious stranger was never revealed by Merswin, leading to
suspicion that Merswin had merely invented him. It appears, however,
that Merswin’s “friend” was quite real, and quite influential, as
evidenced by the sudden change in Merswin and by the considerable
support that the Friends movement was able to so quickly gather.
During one of their earliest encounters, Merswin’s mysterious
friend stated that he had had many mystical revelations directly
from God and that Merswin had been chosen to disseminate those
revelations to the rest of the world. Merswin was deeply impressed.
After that meeting, Merswin gave up his banking business, “took
leave of the world,” and devoted himself and his personal fortune
to spreading the new religion which the mysterious stranger was
bringing him.
As it turns out, what the stranger caused Merswin to create was
another branch of the Brotherhood network. The teachings of the
Friends were deeply mystical and were divulged through a system of
secret degrees and initiations. History records that “illuminated”
mystics and other Illuminati were among Merswin’s principle backers.
The teachings of the Friends of God were not only mystical, they
were also heavily apocalyptic. The Friends preached a powerful End
of the World message to gain converts. Merswin claimed to be the
recipient of many supernatural “revelations” in which he was told
that God had grown disgusted with the Pope and the Catholic Church.
God was now placing His faith in people like Merswin to carry out
His sacred plans. According to Merswin, God was
planning to severely
punish humanity in the near future because of
mankind’s increased corruption and sin.
Merswin had the sacred duty
of preaching the need for everyone to therefore become completely
obedient to God. Merswin was not alone in spreading this dire
message. Similar prophets also found their way into the Friends
movement bearing identical warnings. They all emphasized the need
to unwaveringly obey God on the eve of the world’s destruction.
Merswin and his fellow doomsayers were certainly correct about one
thing: the world was about to undergo a cataclysm. The Black Death
was just getting started.
The Friends of God attracted a large following in Europe. Adherents
were taught a nine-step program to become utterly and
unquestioningly obedient to God. They were made to believe that this
regimen would save them from the plague and resulting social
devastation occurring around them.
The first step of the program was a sincere confessional to restore
health. A properly-done confessional can have a highly beneficial
effect on an individual, although a poorly-done or unnecessary
confessional can be damaging. The second step was a resolution by
adherents
“to give up their own will and to submit to an illuminated
Friend of God, who shall be their guide and counselor in the place
of God.” 2
By the seventh step, a member had completely given up
all self-will and had “burned all bridges” to become
completely subservient to the Lord.
By the final step, all personal
desire was to be destroyed, the individual was to be “crucified to
the world and the world to them,” enjoying only what God does and
to wish for nothing else. These teachings were a program to make
human beings obedient to an ultimate degree. Members were taught that
obedience was a spiritual being’s highest calling and something to be
striven for as a quest.
Merswin’s conversion to his mysterious “friend’s” religion was very
damaging to Merswin, as it no doubt was to many others. Merswin soon
began to suffer strong “manic-depressive” symptoms: the phenomenon
of alternately being in a happy state and then inexplicably
experiencing mental depression, back and forth. In Merswin, these
symptoms
became severe and they were erroneously perceived by his followers as
a sign of religious transformation. Many people today would recognize
such symptoms as an indication that Merswin was connected to a
repressive influence—in this case, the corrupted Brotherhood and
probably his mysterious “friend.”
During his life in the Friends movement, Merswin continued to claim
many mystical experiences, including “joint revelations” with his
“friend.” In one of those revelations, Merswin was told to use his
money to buy an island in Strausberg for use as a Friends retreat.
Strausberg was Merswin’s home city and is located by the
southwestern French-German border. Five years later, Merswin had
another joint revelation in which he was told to turn the whole
Friends operation over to an organization called the Order of St.
John, which governed the Friends movement thereafter.*
*
Exactly what the Order of St. John was, and where it came from, is
quite a mystery. It has been described in Albert MacKey’s
Encyclopedia of Freemasonry as a 17th-century system of Freemasonry
with a secret mission. Is the Order of St. John described by MacKey
the same one which had taken over the Friends of God movement three
centuries earlier in the 14th century? I do not know.
The Friends of God religion was one of many mystical movements that
proliferated during the Plague years. Those movements were usually
Christian in nature, but they advertised themselves as an alternative
to the Catholic Church and attracted many disgruntled Catholics
on that basis. This began to split apart the Christian
world. Unfortunately, the split did not mean that Christians were
returning to Jesus’s maverick teachings. The new mystical religions
only strengthened the emphasis on obedience and apocalypticism. This
began to drive many people out of religion altogether and helped lay
the foundation for the radical materialism which began to arise out
of Germany shortly thereafter.
The Friends of God and other mystical practices of the time became a
juggernaut which brought about one of the greatest challenges ever
faced by the Catholic Church: the Protestant Reformation of Martin
Luther.
Luther began his famous ecclesiastical rebellion in the early
1500’s. By that time, the Catholic Church had fallen into the hands
of Pope Leo X, son of Lorenzo Di Medici. Lorenzo Di Medici was the
head of a wealthy international banking house in Florence, Italy.
The Medici family had become involved with the Papacy a generation
earlier when the Medicis financed an archbishop who later became the
schismatic (“anti-Pope”) Pope John XXIII. Under John XXIII, the
Medicis were awarded the task of collecting taxes and tithes that
were due this Pope. The Medicis operated a far-flung network of
collectors and sub-collectors to accomplish this undertaking. The
fees earned from this operation helped make the Medici family one of
the wealthiest and most influential banking houses in Europe.
The involvement of profit-motivated bankers in Church affairs
transformed many spiritual activities of the Catholic Church into
business enterprises. For example, Catholics believed in the
importance of paying “indulgences.” An indulgence is money paid to
compensate for sin. When paid in conjunction with a properly-done
confessional, monetary penance can often be effective in relieving
guilt, especially if the money is used to assist the injured party.
Most indulgences, however, went into Church coffers. Medici
collectors were more often concerned with how much money a person
could pay than whether or not the penitent achieved any spiritual
benefit from paying it. Understandably, many Catholics grumbled and
their discontent helped pave the way for Martin Luther.
History books tell us that Martin Luther was a German Catholic
priest and educator. He had begun his career as a monk in the
Augustinian Order and worked his way up to holding the chair of
Biblical study at the University of Wittenberg in the German state
of Saxony.
As a Catholic priest, Luther was subject to the
strict regimen
imposed upon all clergy of the Church. That included regular
attendance at confessional. In Catholic confessional, a person tells
a priest in confidence of wrongs that the confessor has committed.
This is designed to help unburden a person spiritually. As already
mentioned, a properly done confessional has a positive effect and,
interestingly, it does appear to be necessary at some point for
nearly everyone’s spiritual advancement. By Luther’s day, however,
confessionals were often done improperly or unnecessarily so that
people often felt little relief.
Luther eventually found going to confessional difficult. He had
already come to hate the angry condemning God of the Catholic
religion and, as a result, he began to lose his faith in the
Catholic way to salvation.
There was, however, another equally
important reason why Luther was having difficulty in confessional: he
had committed acts which he felt unable or unwilling to confess.
Luther claims that he tried to purge himself of every conceivable
sin, but some acts still “eluded” his memory when it came time to
divulge them to his confessor. In part because of this, Luther did
not feel himself advancing spiritually and he despaired of ever
achieving salvation. He felt compelled to seek another path to
spiritual recovery that would not force him to endure the
uncomfortable confessionals.
Although Luther voiced many legitimate
criticisms of the Catholic Church and claimed that he was trying to
re-establish the primitive Christian Church of Jesus, Luther was, to
an extent, a man driven by the demons of unconfessed wrongs. As a
result, he helped create a new form of Christianity that only
further departed from the true teachings of Jesus.
Despite the East Roman corruption of Jesus’s teachings and the brutal
methods of the Inquisition, Catholicism during Luther’s time still
retained several important elements of Jesus’s maverick lessons. For
example, the Catholic Church continued to preach that salvation was
up to the individual
to achieve. It taught further the importance of doing good works,*
the need to confess sin when sin had been committed, and the
importance of rectifying wrongs or compensating for them.
*Good works are important to the extent that they improve a person’s
environment and bolster his level of ethics, which in turn helps
provide a foundation for an individual’s ultimate spiritual
recovery. Unfortunately, the Catholic Church used good works as a
scorecard. Catholics believed that a person’s good works (“merits”)
were added up like points by God, and once a person had accumulated
enough merits in his or her “treasury,” the person was guaranteed
salvation (provided that a few other requirements were also met).
.
The Church taught that saints had a surplus of merits and that the
Pope could transfer merits from the saints’ treasuries to other
people whose treasuries were lacking. The lucky recipients were
naturally expected to contribute money to the Church for the favor.
Luther rightly rejected the notion of merits and treasuries, and
that became a major issue over which Luther was eventually
excommunicated. Unfortunately, Luther did not restore an
understanding of the true relationship of good works to salvation,
but instead he wrongly eliminated the doing of good works
altogether, even though it is one ingredient which can help lay the
foundation for a person’s spiritual recovery.
The
Catholic Church emphasized that man had the free will to either
accept or reject salvation, that salvation could not be imposed upon
anyone against his or her will (even by a monotheistic God), and
that all people were endowed with the right to seek salvation. While
Catholic teachings still had many serious flaws and lacked a true
science of the spirit, these ideas reflected some of the truth and
decency which were at the heart of Jesus’s message.
Luther’s key to reform would have been to reinforce the good tenets
still alive in Catholicism while eliminating the blatant
commercialization and the East Roman changes to Christian doctrine.
That was not the road Luther chose to take. He taught instead the
false idea that a person has no personal control over his spiritual
salvation. Luther convinced people that salvation is dependent
entirely upon the grace of a monotheistic God. There was only one
action an individual could take to obtain God’s grace, said Luther,
and that was to believe in Jesus as Saviour and to accept
Christ’s
agony and crucifixion as penance for one’s own sins.
Luther’s curious notion that Jesus’s crucifixion can be the penance
for other people’s sin is partially based upon the concept of
“karma.” “Karma” is the idea that all acts in this universe
eventually “come back” at a person in the future. People frequently
invoke the idea of karma when they ask, ”What did I do to deserve
this?” In modern science, “karma” has been expressed as: “For every
action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” In monotheism,
“karma” usually comes in the form of God’s inevitable punishments
for sin and rewards for good.
On a personal level, the principle of karma seems to hold true in the sense that the world one creates,
good or bad, through action or inaction, is ultimately the world
that comes back to one. Poor ethics seem to boomerang in the form
of spiritual degradation. A major benefit of a properly-done
confessional is that it actually seems to break the negative
“boomerang” effect and it will thereby help start a person back on
the road to spiritual recovery.
Because Luther’s confessionals were unsatisfactory, he felt
compelled to invent another way to escape the “karma” cycle
enforced by the rewards and punishments of his monotheistic God.
Luther therefore developed the idea that God would allow Jesus’s
pain and suffering on the cross to become the “boomerang” for
everybody. In other words, by “believing in” Jesus, you will not
spiritually suffer for the bad things you have done in the past
because Jesus has already suffered for you. This is a wonderfully
magical notion, but it is hardly a philosophy of responsibility, nor
is it fair to Jesus that he should be expected to take the brunt
for everyone else’s wrongs.
More importantly, Luther’s solution
simply
does not work. Many people do feel and act better after “proclaiming
Christ” because they have acknowledged their spiritual existences in
a way they had not done before and they often begin more ethical
behavior as a result, but their act of belief has not caused them to
overcome the many other barriers which stand in the way of
complete spiritual recovery.
Protestants continued to practice confessional, although
it was no longer considered vital for achieving salvation.
Practical knowledge of the spirit was also largely ignored.
Luther’s method amounted to “quickie salvation”: a simple
act of belief. Luther taught that salvation was guaranteed by
God for as long as a person continued to adhere to a belief
in Jesus as Saviour.
Luther’s ideas were clearly mystical. This is not surprising when we
consider that Luther had been greatly influenced by some of the
mystical religions which were so popular in his country. Luther’s
primary mentor in the Augustinian Order, Johann von Staupitz,
preached a theology containing many elements from the writings of
the prominent German mystics Heinrich Suso and Johann Tauler. Tauler
was one of the most widely-read mystics of the 14th century and he
was associated with the Friends of God movement. Luther became an
avid reader of Tauler’s works.
Evidence of a more direct connection
of Luther to the Brotherhood network is found in Luther’s personal
seal. Luther’s seal consisted of his initials on either side of two
Brotherhood symbols: the rose and the cross. The rose and cross are
the chief symbols of the Rosicrucian Order. The word “Rosicrucian”
itself comes from the Latin words “rose” (“rose”) and “crucis”
(“cross”).
Both during his life and after, Luther counted among his supporters
important individuals and families who were active in the Illuminati
and in Rosicrucianism. One of them was Philip the Magnanimous, head
of the powerful royal house of Hesse, whose descendants would later
hold important leadership positions in Brotherhood organizations,
especially in German Freemasonry, as we shall later see.
As one of
the prime leaders of the Reformation, Philip the Magnanimous
founded the Protestant University of Marburg and organized a
political alliance against the Catholic German Emperor, Charles V.
After Luther’s death, his religion was supported by
Sir Francis
Bacon (1561-1626), who was atone time the Lord Chancellor of
England. Bacon was also the highest executive of the Rosicrucian
Order in Great Britain. One of Bacon’s greatest contributions to the
Reformation arose from his efforts as the coordinator of a project to
create an authorized English Protestant Bible under his king, James
I. This Bible, known as the “King James Version,” was released in
1611 and became the most widely-used Bible in the English-speaking
Protestant world.
Luther and his supporters created the single largest schism in
Christian history. Enormous power was wrested from the Roman
Catholic Church. The Protestant sects today account for about one
third of all Christians worldwide, and nearly half of all Christians
in North America. The Catholic Church did not allow this to happen
without a fight, however. The Catholics launched a
Counter-Reformation in an unsuccessful attempt to squelch the
Protestant heresies. Leading the Counter-Reformation was,
interestingly, a new Brotherhood-style organization created for the
purpose: the Society of Jesus, better known as
the Jesuits.
The
Jesuit Order was founded in 1540 by a soldier-turned-cleric named
Ignatius of Loyola. The Jesuits were a Catholic secret society with
degrees of initiation, periods of probation, and many secret rituals.
It was also militant. Jesuits were encouraged to adopt a soldierly
spirit of loyalty to their “captain” Jesus. Ignatius was chosen to
be the first “general” of the Order in April 1741. The image of Jesus
as a quasi-military captain may seem rather humorous to anyone
familiar with Jesus’s teachings, but the image was helpful in making
the Jesuit Order an effective cadre for combating the Protestants.
Although it is true that the Reformation led the human race further
away from spiritual understanding, it did have one very beneficial
effect: it helped break the back of the Catholic Inquisition. The
Inquisition had been one of the most oppressive institutions to
burden the human spirit. Inquisitors meddled in nearly every human
endeavor—from religion to the sciences to the arts. The Inquisition
enforced some of the most hopelessly antiquated scientific thought
by
threatening people with torture and death. It hindered the
development of many of the fine arts, notably theatre. It probably
did not greatly matter what the Protestants taught; they would have
still been able to bring enormous relief to Europe as long as they
were able to reduce the power of the Catholic Inquisition. There was
an eventual price to be paid for this benefit, however, and that was
the price of an
ever-deepening materialism. Philosophies of “humanism,”
“rationalism,” and similar ideologies with a materialistic bent took
on renewed vigor in the Reformation climate.
Most importantly, many of the positive effects of the Reformation
were offset by the fact that Protestantism was yet one more human
faction placed in irresolvable conflict with other factions over
erroneous religious issues. Luther himself contributed to this by
hinting that the Pope represented the forces of the “anti-Christ.”
The result has been more war, this time between Catholics and
Protestants—notably today in Ireland.
Despite the Brotherhood network’s continued pattern of generating
conflict during the centuries discussed in this chapter, it is
important to note that a maverick influence had manifested itself in
the Rosicrucian organization by the early 1600’s. The Rosicrucian
goal of individual spiritual recovery and some of its teachings were
remarkably similar to some earlier maverick goals. Modern Rosicrucian
literature from the United States continues to reflect some of this
positive influence by attempting to propagate a more scientific view
of spiritual phenomena and by teaching that humans can intelligently
control their lives. Unfortunately, modern Rosicrucianism still
contains many Custodial elements which will prevent adherents from
achieving full spiritual rehabilitation.
Although Rosicrucians contributed to the success of the Reformation,
they did not achieve much fame until the year 1614 when, as noted
earlier, a lodge of German Rosicrucians began a phase of “outward”
activity by mass-producing a leaflet announcing the presence of
Rosicrucians in Hesse’s largest principality, Hesse-Kassel. The
pamphlet created a stir by urging all people to abandon their false
teachers, such as the Pope, Galen (a popular ancient Greek
physician), and Aristotle.
The pamphlet also told the story of a
fictitious character, “Christian Rosenkruez,” to symbolize the
founding of the Rosicrucian- Order. The pamphlet is best known by its
shortened name, the
Fama Fraternitas (“Noted Fraternity” or “Famous
Brotherhood”). The full title of the leaflet, translated to English,
is: Universal and General Reformation of the Whole Wide World,
together
with the Noted Fraternity of the Rosy Cross, inscribed to all the
Learned and Rulers of Europe. Despite the quaint high-sounding tone, the leaflet’s title revealed a
deadly serious intent: to create broad universal changes in human
society. By the time of the Fama Fraternitas, the Brotherhood
network had already launched its program to bring about this
transformation.
For the next several hundred years, the Brotherhood
network supplied the world with leaders who inspired and led violent
revolutionary movements in all parts of the world in an effort
to bring about a massive transmutation of human society. They
succeeded, and we live today in the world they created.
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