by Kris Millegan
August 2003
Walking around Yale, I found myself in amazement at the architecture and was thinking, “When did the Goths invade?” If a person hasn’t been to the Yale campus one truly has no idea at the many awe-inspiring buildings — many resembling Gothic cathedrals. A cathedral is a sanctified church containing the cathedra, the bishop’s seat of power from which is ruled the diocese.
The Saint Denis Basilica near Paris is considered by many to be the first example of Gothic architecture. It was begun in 1136 and finished near the end of the thirteenth century. It was built on the site where, according to legend, Saint Denis, the patron saint of France and legendary first bishop of Paris, stopped preaching, lay down his head and died. Quite literally, or so the tale goes (according to Golden Legends, compiled in the 13th century and destined to be a bestseller in the 15th century, second only to the Bible) that, around the year 250 AD, St. Denis went to convert the Gauls and was beheaded by the Romans for his ministrations. The decapitated St. Denis began to preach a sermon and, carrying his head in his hands, he then walked to the cathedral site and expired.
It eventually became known as the “royal necropolis of France” because of all the bluebloods buried there. From the Merovigans to Carolingians to Carpetians to Valois to Bourbons, they are all there, all mixed together it seems. This is because, during the revolutionary fervor of the late 1700s in France, the tombs were opened and the remains were all dumped into two mass graves. When the Bourbons were briefly restored they weren’t able to tell who’s who and, so, buried them all together in a big vault with brass plaques on the outside telling us who all is inside. It’s sort of like a big bone pile. Funny, there are lots of bones in this story.
These massive stone buildings, cathedrals, especially ones such as Chartres, are known for their mathematical and alchemical aspects. The rise of the cathedrals — some of the most significant buildings of the medieval period — are linked by many historians and researchers with the rise of the Knights Templar and, later, the Freemasons. The builder of St. Denis, Abbot Suger, used the Templars for a capital transfer transaction with King Louis VII of France in 1148, while he was on the Second Crusade.
In the 1430s Johannes Gutenberg took four years building his press and then, in another fifteen years (1455), printed his famous Bibles. This helped to usher in the Renaissance and the downfall of the Papacy and its fiefdoms. On Halloween in 1517, a well-read Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the church door, marking the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. Later, in the early 1530s, when snubbed for a divorce, Henry VIII started his own church, the Church of England. By the 1550s people were going to jail in London for practicing their faith differently from proscribed ecclesiastical tradition.
As time and Gutenberg’s press spread the Word, the Reformation increased the ferment for social, religious and political change. Around the 1560s in England there emerged a group who were, because of their endeavors to purify the Church of England in theological and liturgical matters, derisively called Puritans. They called themselves Saints and people of God. Other of the faithful wished to separate completely from the mother-church and start a new church. They were called Pilgrims and settled in New England in Massachusetts, landing at Plymouth Rock on December 21, 1620.
Not quite twenty years later a very devout group of Puritans settled in Connecticut on land purchased from the Quinnipiac Indians in 1638. The land was not theirs by legal right and they had no deed. The new colony, named New Haven, based part of its claim on the discovery by John Cabot, who had landed somewhere on the North American shore on the feast-day of St. John the Baptist, June 24, 1497. The New Haven Colony was the wealthiest group to settle in the new world so far. The leaders and their congregation wished to build a new Zion on biblical principles and prepare for Christ’s return and final judgment.
The story of New Haven begins in the parish of Saint Stephen’s, Coleman Street, London. Saul/Paul stoned St. Stephen to death outside Damascus. St. Stephen was one of the original seven deacons and the first Christian martyr. Saint Stephen’s feast day is December 26th.
Saint Stephen’s was “one of London’s most influential” pulpits at the time. In October of 1624, 27 year-old, John Davenport was elected vicar. After fending off accusations of being a Puritan, he was allowed his position and became quite celebrated.
Later in 1633, when Charles I appointed William Laud to the office of Archbishop of Canterbury with complete authority to deal with dissenters within the Church of England, Davenport left England for exile in the Netherlands. While there, Davenport read the impassioned accounts from his friend John Cotton about New England and soon proceeded back to England to gather his flock to save them from the coming punishment from God soon to be visited upon England in retribution for its manifold and persistent wickedness. He was hoping to congregate the faithful and seek shelter in New England where the saints could prepare for Christ’s return and the final judgment.
Puritans were true believers and proponents of the strict doctrines of John Calvin, a French-born, theologian whose influence can be still felt today. Calvinism beliefs codified at the Synod of Dordt in 1618/19 are based on total dependence on God and predestination. These are:
that all humans are, inherently wicked and offend God;
that there is an elect that God chose to be saved regardless of their actions and how deserving;
that Jesus died just for those special elect, not for everyone;
that once God has chosen an elect they are saved by irresistible grace no matter what;
that these elect or Saints cannot fall from grace once saved.
The most pious, the Hyper-Calvinists (which the New Haven Colony were) hold to the tenet of the doctrine of reprobation, the belief that God purposefully foreordains damnation. In other words, there are those who are predestined to Hell. Some being the Elect doing “God’s work” through “sanctified” devilish activities. Regular Hell’s Angels ….
Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars.
Davenport’s main ally was his childhood playmate Theophilius Eaton, a commercial agent handling James I affairs in Denmark and the London agent for Christian IV of Denmark. Eaton was deputy-governor of the Eastland Company, an original subscriber to the Massachusetts Bay Company and a fervent Puritan
This group didn’t starve their first winter, and Eaton was Governor of the colony until his death in 1658. Mr. Eaton had married Anne Lloyd, widow of Thomas Yale and grandmother of Elihu Yale, benefactor and namesake of Yale University.
New Haven was a theocracy with only male church members — The Elect — allowed to vote and hold office. Although they were a small fraction of the total population, they ruled over the majority. No matter their actual piety, to the people of God, the rest of the populace was considered hopelessly damned. A person only became one of the Saints through pre-ordained mystical unavoidable grace that was made manifest through a somewhat mystical “born-again” experience. Mosaic Law was the rule of the colony with Mr. Eaton as “Judge” and Rev. Davenport their preacher/prophet. They were the two main players of the New Haven plantation’s original “seven pillars.” This all eventually fell apart when the contested title to the land and other forces led to absorption of the Colony by Connecticut in 1664.
The town of the New Haven Colony was laid out in 1638 into nine squares using magnetic north. The first street “was laid out half a mile in length and upon it as a base, a square was described.” Plot allocations were completed by 1641 with the center square being public. The four streets State, Church, College and York run east/west, with George, Chapel, Elm and Grove as cross streets. New streets bisecting the originals in 1784 were named Orange, Wall, Crown, Temple and High.
A 1748 map of New Haven by General Wadsworth. Yale College is one building on the corner of College and Chapel.
In 1640 in the middle of the public square there was built a wooden meetinghouse. Over the years there have been many different congregations on the green: the “Prime Ancient Church,” the “First Society,” the White Haven Society,” the “New Lights,” the “Old Lights” and others. Over the years there has been much theological discord about just who was saved and who wasn’t, and through the many revivals the congregations split, reformed and reunited several times.
Behind the center church is the “Old Burying Ground,” directly opposite Yale College. By 1800, in this relatively small area, there were packed more than 5,000 skeletons and, as time passed, the overcrowding became a problem. A new center church was built “on top over some of the graves” in the early 1810s when it ”was not an uncommon sight to see animals digging up the bones.”
The “official” founding date of the Masonic Grand Lodge of England, June 24, 1717, is the feast day of their primary patron saint, St. John the Baptist. The oldest lodge in Connecticut is New Haven’s Hiram Lodge. It was given its charter November 12, 1750 and held it’s first meeting on Thursday, December 27, 1750, the feast day of the other patron saint of Masonry, mystic and apocalyptic writer, St. John the Evangelist. The Masons still meet on Thursday nights, the same night another secret society also gathers together in a Temple on High Street surrounded by the Yale campus and New Haven, The Order of Skull & Bones.
When New Haven grew from a town to a city in 1784, the first new street was High Street, going only within the original town square area from George to Grove.
In the middle of town at the corner of High and Chapel Streets, turning-up High and going under the Art Gallery bridge, on the west side of the street, is the Tomb, built in 1856 and expanded several times. Behind it is the Secret Courtyard and towers of Weir Hall. Down High Street is the world famous Sterling Library. At the next corner down High St. is the Yale Law School, alma mater of Bill & Hillary Clinton, Gerald Ford, Joe Lieberman and Clarence Thomas, among others. Across the street, on the other corner, is a three story white-marble mausoleum-looking building. This is the “meeting-hall” of the secret society, Book & Snake. Reporter Bob Woodward and former Treasury Secretary Nicklaus Brady are members.
Directly at the end of High Street is the oldest family-plot cemetery in the country, built in 1797 as a garden for the dead. This “New Burying Ground” was built “in the country” at the end of High Street at Grove Street by a syndicate of 32 prominent families. The old graves were relocated there from the old churchyard on The Green in 1821. Many famous persons are buried there, including Eli Whitney, Roger Sherman, Charles Goodyear and many of Yale’s presidents. Surrounded by Yale University, it encompasses 16 acres in downtown modern New Haven, and has hundreds of obelisks and monuments.
The entrance is via a huge Egyptian Revival-style gate built by Henry Austin in 1845 out of the same type of brownstone as the “Tomb.” It displays the inscription “The Dead Shall Be Raised” beneath the outstretched winged-sun disk.
Horus, was one the main Egyptian gods, son and heir to Ra. There was a Horus the elder and a Horus the younger. He was generally depicted as a falcon headed being, but Horus had at least seven different forms. Asked by his sister, Isis, to avenge the death of her brother/husband, Osiris, Horus asked the god Thoth, the master magician, for help. With Thoth’s aid, Horus became “a great sun-disk, with resplendent wings outstretched on either side.” After many battles, Horus defeats Set and Osiris is resurrected.
“Horus then commanded Thoth that the Winged-Sun-Disk, with Uraei [snakes], should be brought into every sanctuary wherein he dwelt, and into every sanctuary of all the gods of the lands of the South and the North, and in Amentet, in order that they might drive away evil from therein …”
Ezra Stiles, president of Yale College, was the first to suggest that freed slaves be sent back to Africa. Funds for such a colony began to be collected in 1776 and the American Colonization Society was founded in 1817. This was not some altruistic crusade but was “formed solely for the sending to Africa of free Negroes, who were considered extremely dangerous.”
Ezra Stiles is buried at the New Haven Burying Ground, so is Jehudi Ashmun, who some consider the “founder” of Liberia (1822). Some praise him, others say he was dictatorial and “convinced that African-Americans were not capable of running their own political affairs.” He rescheduled an election after his candidates lost and fixed the next one. This set the stage for years of factional strife.
Jehudi left Africa ill with fever and died just a few days after landing, in Boston on August 25, 1828. His funeral was held two day later in New Haven and he was interned in a sarcophagus that today lies just inside the massive Egyptian gate.
The Ashmun tomb just inside the gate.
Jehudi wasn’t a Yalie, (his Whitney family connection may be what brought him to rest in New Haven) but the main road curving around the outside of the cemetery was renamed in the 1840s Ashmun Street, near the time when the Egyptian gate was built.
Ashmun is the Egyptian name for Hermopolis, the home of the sacred eight, the site of the world’s creation out of chaos, the cosmic egg. Hermopolis, believed to be city “where the sun first rose on earth,” was also the center of the god of wisdom and learning, the ibis-headed moon-god Thoth. The Greeks called him Hermes Trismegistus, the god of time and “conductor of the dead,” the inventor of alchemy and magic, and a traditional source for Western ritual magic
In the middle of the “garden for the dead” is a most interesting mausoleum dating from the 1870s: the crypt of St. John. It seems to be built of the same brownstone as both the Skull & Bone’s “Tomb” and the massive Egyptian entrance gate. Note that the winged-sun disk with snakes is prominently displayed. On each side are flanking white marble sepulchers, and the plot is completely enclosed by an iron fence and stone pillars. The stone pillars are similar to those along the cemetery fence. This bone house is in Yale’s section of the cemetery with many Bonesmen nearby.
No other headstones or crypts in the cemetery use the winged-disk motif. Buried inside are Samuel St. John and wife and on either side in non-identical white sarcophagi are Sheffields.
Joseph Sheffield’s many bequests to Yale earned for him the honor of having the science department, the Sheffield Scientific School (SSS), named after him. It was through the ‘SSS’ that Skull & Bones came to control Yale. Daniel Gilman, an incorporator of the Russell Trust Association, officially incorporated SSS in 1871, with two other Bonesmen including William W. Phelps financier, congressman, ambassador and son-in-law of Mr. Sheffield. Soon Yale, as written in 1873, became “controlled by a few men who shut themselves off from others, and assume to be their superiors …”
The secret society, Book & Snake, began at ‘SSS’ in 1865. The founding club’s picture shows them gathered around a similar skull, one without a jawbone, as does Bones in its annual photos. Across from the cemetery’s gate in 1901, Book & Snake built their huge Greek Ionic white windowless mausoleum clubhouse surrounded by iron fencing using iron Thoth’s staff as posts. When you put together the winged circle and the entwined snakes you have the caduceus or staff of Mercury.
A connection between Book & Snake and Skull & Bones appears to exist. There is the very simple reversal of the initials of the groups, S&B and B&S. For many years Book & Snake had a living-quarters house further down Grove Street known as the Cloister Club, which associated itself with the symbol of the jawless skull chained to a cross.
The Book & Snake seven founders.
Looking north up High Street - 1947 at the top on the right is the back of Book & Snake
According to the US News & World Report, May 13, 1991 When asked by a reporter “if he had news about the rebellion in Iraq?” George HW Bush answered only with the code-word seven. According to the magazine’s source seven refers to the fact that, because Skull & Bones has fifteen members, a majority eight vote means yes and seven votes represents a no, lose or fail. “The source also reports that when the president was invited to a meeting in the Tomb, … he declined because he could not enter its inner sanctum without his Secret Service officers, none of whom are members. Bush was then fined — and he subsequently paid — $3.22 for missing a meeting.”
“322” is the Order’s particular, peculiar number, and is on the door and inlaid on the floor of their sanctum sanctorum in the upstairs of the original hall. What “322” means has been debated for years. Some say that it relates to the year 1832 when the Yale society was founded and the second ‘2’ meant it was a second chapter of a German secret society. Some say it represents the date of the death of Demosthenes, claiming it was upon his philosophy that Bones was founded. Others point to the occultic and numerological aspects of the number. Again there are several differing explanations. One being that 322 represents “the symbolic dimensions for an isosceles triangle with three as the base and the twos becoming equal sides. “In an isosceles triangle with the point of the apex representing a Logos, and the two equal sides flowing from it representing the masculine and feminine rays, the horizontal base-line stands for the physical foundation from which the manifested objective world starts into existence.”
The most visible and recognized symbol of the group is the skull and crossbones. A symbol of death, that is found on bottles of poison, pirates flags and the Nazi totenkopf, “death’s head” the insignia of the Nazi Schutzstaffel or, as commonly known, the SS. It has been used in Prussia for elite troops as far back as 1740.
Some historians date the origin of the skull and crossbones to the late Middle Ages, during that period doctors were using the symbol as a sign of quarantine. It was drawn on doors of patients with strange and/or deadly maladies. After the Inquisition began in the 13th century, and the persecution of heretics by ecclesiastical tribunals drove non-Catholic thought underground, the heretics began using skull and crossbones to ward off persecutors. There was a slight difference in the heretic’s skull and crossbones. It had no lower jaw, which signified secrecy and silence. Many don’t even notice the missing mandible. The symbol soon began showing up on ship’s masts, at first used to keep people away. Later it was used by privateers and pirates.
An understanding of Masonry, the Knights Templars and the preservation of the old mystery schools is emerging, and evidence is accumulating about the Knights Templars devotions to St. John, Mary Magdalene and their use of the Skull and Crossbones in their symbology, both by the original Knights Templars, who were disbanded in 1307, and by the current Masonic commanderies. I have a Xeroxed page from a very old Masonic book that uses the same exact skull and bones woodcut that Bones uses as a symbol of Knights Templars.
From a private paper on Skull & Bones:
the skull represented the Temple of wisdom, which was later Christianized for concealment and referred to as the upper room. It is the room at the top of the 33 vertebra of the spine which represented the path to the upper room; the equivalent of the journey through life or the road to enlightenment.
… The crossed bones represents the two pillars, which stand at the threshold to the pathway to the Temple of Wisdom. One bone represents Knowledge the other represents Understanding. This Temple of Wisdom is believed by the occultists to be the structure within which the human consciousness resides. When the neophyte becomes the dweller at the Threshold, he symbolically stands at the intersection of the crossed bones. If he chooses to pass through the threshold, he no longer resides only in the outer, material world; but he has become a dweller in a land of new consciousness to grow in self-awareness through Knowledge and Understanding. The neophyte symbolically dies or falls asleep to the outer world as the consciousness turns from outward concerns to inner concerns, knowing when he arrives at the Temple of Wisdom he will awaken or become resurrected to a new world order.
A new world order! Illuminatist Adam Weishaupt called for cosmopolitanism. Hitler and Goebbels proclaimed the Third Reich a New World Order. George HW Bush, an Order of Skull & Bones member, used the term several times during his US presidential term. On September 11, 1990 in an address to a Joint Session of the US Congress, exactly eleven years before Flight Eleven crashed into the twin towers, President George HW Bush said:
We stand today at a unique and extraordinary moment. The crisis in the Persian Gulf, as grave as it is, also offers a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times, our fifth objective — a new world order — can emerge: a new era — freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the world, East and West, North and South, can prosper and live in harmony. A hundred generations have searched for this elusive path to peace, while a thousand wars raged across the span of human endeavor. Today that new world is struggling to be born, a world quite different from the one we’ve known.
Some of the most interesting research to come out about the Knights Templars and Freemasons are the researches by Christopher Knight & Robert Lomas in their books the Hiram’s Key and The Second Messiah. The books of Michael Baigent, Richard Lee and Henry Lincoln were some of the first to explore these topics. Also there are the books by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince, The Templar Revelation and The Stargate Conspiracy. And one last one I would like to mention by name, The Warriors and the Bankers by Alan Butler and Stephen Dafoe. Many others are also relevant to understanding this history of secret societies, some specifically about the chapel at Rosslyn, Scotland and the chapel of Sauniere at Renne-le-Chateau, France. First century studies, the study of intelligence services and methods, financial studies and banking histories are helpful in understanding the reach and rolodexes of these small but powerful secret organizations.
The basic story is that in 70 AD, when Titus was sacking Jerusalem various familial groups responsible for differing duties, generally connected with Temple obligations, gathered their items of diligence such as sacred oils, treasures, and hid them in caves in the Temple Mount and other areas of the country. These families comprised of members of the various priesthoods and royal lines then dispersed, many towards Europe, producing the “bluebloods.” According to Knight and Lomas, a familial secret society existed named Rex Deus that was revealed by a father to his chosen son, upon this son reaching the age of 21. This group emerged above-ground with the Crusades, supposedly in accordance with prophecies in Daniel and Isaiah.
From The Second Messiah:
The picture that was emerging was of a group of European noble families, descended from Jewish Lines of David and Aaron, who escaped from Jerusalem shortly before, or possibly even after, the fall of the Temple. They had passed down the knowledge of the artifacts concealed beneath the Temple to a chosen son (not necessarily the eldest) of each family. Some of the families involved were the Counts of Champagne, Lords of Gisors, Lords of Payens, Counts of Fontaine, Counts of Anjou, de Bouillon, St Clairs of Roslin, Brienne, Joinville, Chaumont, St Clair de Gisor, St Clair de Neg and the Hapsburgs.
From this group developed the Knights Templar, who went to Jerusalem, were housed on the Temple Mount, later returning to Europe to become what many call the first international bankers, They were soldiers, sailors and large landholders and were a very strong political force. The Templars were arrested by Phillip the Fair, King of France on Friday, October 13, 1307 and driven underground or into exile.
The Templars, according to several sources, had knowledge and had explored the North American continent before Columbus. The Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, built between 1440 and 1490, has stone reliefs of plants found only in the Americas. John Cabot, whom many of the major Bones players claim as a relation, sailed from Bristol, England (a port very beholden to the Templars) and Cabot named his American settlement, St, John.
The history of Freemasonry is long and tedious. Nevertheless, we know that Freemasonry emerged officially in 1717 in England and soon enjoyed royal protection. During the preceding and proceeding centuries much activity took place in various secret societies both fraternal and magickal orders. One very interesting ideology that developed out of these circles is synarchy.
An excerpt from Picknett and Prince’s The Stargate Conspiracy:
… a specific politico-esoteric system, a movement known as Synarchy. This is ‘government by secret societies,’ or by a group of initiates who operate from behind the scenes. It is an analogue of ‘theocracy,’ or rule by a priesthood. …
The founder of Synarchy, a Frenchman named Joseph Alexandre Saint-Yves d’Alveydre (1824-1909), explained that the term was the opposite of anarchy. Whereas anarchy is based on the principle that the state should have no control over individuals, Synarchy proposes that it should have complete control. He proposed that Synarchists achieve power by taking over the three key institutions of social control: political, religious and economic. With its own members in positions of power, the Synarchists would, in effect, secretly govern entire states. And why stop there? One of the aims of Synarchy, from its very inception, was — from the words of a Synarchist document — the creation of a ‘federal European Union.’ Is it any coincidence that we are now moving rapidly towards such a European state? Significantly, those words were written as far back as 1946. …
As might be expected from a movement dedicated to governing by secret societies, Synarchy had close ties with some of the most powerful of such organizations, including the Martinist Order, of which Saint-Yves d’Alveydre was Grand Master. As the French writer Gerard Galtier states: “The synarchic ideal influenced all the Martinists and occultists of the beginning of the century.”25 Not unexpectedly, Synarchists were also members of French Masonic Lodges, …
Synarchy is by definition a shadowy group lurking behind many uprisings and revolutions, and whose jealous gaze is automatically fixed on any stable regime or established government unless it already conforms to their ideals. …
There is another aspect to Synarchy. The concept of nine legendary leaders plays a large part in its philosophy. … the Knights Templar, founded by nine French knights shortly after the First Crusade. The Templars were believed by Saint-Yves d’Alveydre to have represented the supreme expression of Synarchy in the medieval world, because they had almost total political, religious and financial control during the two centuries of their existence yet remained at heart a secret, heretical order whose real agenda was known only to its membership.
In nineteenth-century France several secret societies all claimed to be the true descendants of the medieval Knights Templar. Saint-Yves drew upon their ideals and practices for his movement, especially those of certain types of occult Freemasonry known as the Strict Templar Observance and its successor, the Rectified Scottish Rite, thus bestowing on the primarily political movement a strong undercurrent of mysticism And magical rites. This proved to be a two-way traffic, for the Synarchist ideal was adopted by several occultists and their organizations, such as Papus Gerard Encausse, (1865-1916), an enormously influential figure who was the French Grand Master of both the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) and the Masonic Order of Memphis-Misraim, whose rituals, significantly, were based on the rites and ceremonies of the ancient Egyptian priesthood. Papus considered Saint-Yves to be his ‘intellectual Master.’ As Gerard Galtier wrote: “Without doubt, the Martinist directors such as Papus … had the ambition to secretly influence the course of political events, notably by the diffusion of synarchic ideals.”
Papus put the Synarchist ideals into practice by working to bring together the various secret societies of his day, merging orders where possible and creating ‘confederations’ where representatives of the organizations could meet. The bodies he created fragmented during the First World War, but others, notably Theodore Reuss and H. Spencer Lewis, created similar groups afterwards.
Undoubtedly, Saint-Yves was hugely influential on the development of Western occultism. Theo Paijmans, an authority on nineteenth-century European esotericism, pointed out to us that Saint-Yves introduced the seminal idea of Agartha, the mysterious underground realm from which highly evolved Adepts psychically direct the development of the human race. This was to become a common feature of Western occultism — as in the works of Madame H.P. Blavatsky — and was the basis for a belief in Hidden Masters, or Secret Chiefs, which we will discuss shortly. Saint-Yves claimed that he had travelled astrally to Agartha, and that he was in telepathic contact with its inhabitants. He also claimed that he had derived his Synarchist ideology from them.
… The twentieth-century legacy … involves one of the most flamboyant and controversial figures of our times — the ritual magician Aleister Crowley.
Conjurations of the ‘Beast’
In March 1904 the — even by then — notorious occultist Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) and his new wife Rose paid a visit to Cairo where they carried out a ‘magickal’ operation (a ‘working’) in their rented apartment. The result was unexpected. The untrained Rose, totally ignorant of magickal workings (and, if Crowley’s somewhat disloyal description is anything to go by, of much else too), went into trance, repeating, ‘They are waiting for you.’ During the next few days, she revealed that ‘they’ were primarily the god Horus, who had chosen Crowley for a special task, telling him the ritual to facilitate contact. At first Crowley was irritated by Rose’s words — after all, he was the great magus, not her — but then he gave her a series of questions to test the authenticity of the communicator. When he asked her which planet was traditionally associated with Horus, she answered, correctly, Mars.
A few days later, in the Cairo Museum, Rose — who had never visited it before — confidently led her husband through the halls to stand before one particular exhibit, a rather unremarkable Twenty-Sixth-Dynasty painted wooden stele showing an Egyptian priest standing before Horus in his form of Ra-Hoor-Khuit (a variation of Ra-Horakhti, who is closely associated with the Sphinx). This has been known ever since in the occult world as the Stele of Revealing. Crowley was impressed by the synchronicity of the exhibit’s number — 666, the number of the Great Beast of Revelation, which also happened to be Crowley’s own proud alter ego, thanks to an overliteral interpretation of the Bible by his religious-maniac mother. (When we saw the stele in April 1998, we were amused to note that, although it is now exhibit 9422, the original 1904 label, bearing the number 666 in a beautiful but faded copperplate hand, has been laid beside it in the display case. Could there be Crowleyite sympathizers; on the staff of the Cairo Museum?)
This led Crowley, somewhat reluctantly, to take his wife’s words seriously. He duly carried out the magickal ritual — now known simply as the Cairo Working — which turned out to be a pivotal moment not only in his own bizarre career, but also in the whole history of modern occultism. As a result of this working, he came into contact with an entity called Aiwass (sometimes, for magickal reasons, spelt Aiwaz) who over the course of three days —8-10 April 1904 — ‘dictated’ to Crowley what has become his ‘gospel,’ The Book of Law. pp 264-269
The works of Aleister Crowley still carry a profound effect upon Western occultic traditions and practice.The Book of Law redeveloped a theme written in 1532, by Francois Rabelais in Gargantua and Pantragruel, wherein a story speaks of the “Abbey of Thelma,” and the only rule is “do what thou wilt.” Crowley reworked it into his famous codex “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”
Yale and Harvard, both schools were founded and run for many years by Calvinist clerics soon became hot beds of secret societies and magical ritual.
From Washington Allston — Secret Societies and the Alchemy of Anglo-American Painting:
Allston was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, which not only organized the leading members of the New England intelligentsia, but closely associated them with the broader, middle class social base of Freemasonry. A secret fraternity of students and alumni, Phi Beta Kappa derived its rituals and symbols from the Masonic brotherhood. Like Masonry, the “master image” of Phi Beta Kappa was the animating sun, symbol of alchemical wisdom originated from Ancient Egypt.
… They [Masons] celebrated the arts for transmitting an ancient body of original truths, deriving not only from the Jews and the masons who built Solomon’s Temple, but also from Pythagoras and the Greeks, and from the ancient Egyptian mythology of Isis, Osiris, and Hermes Trismegistus.
…
The society [PBK] created a magical aura to honor wisdom through initiation ceremonies that led blindfolded candidates toward sudden illumination and arcane emblems expressing esoteric truths. [emphasis added]
The whole art community that surrounded the birth of Bones and later surrounded the Tomb were largely members of Phi Beta Kappa (PBK). Many being both Bones and PBK. Such as founders Russell and Taft, plus the ever-handy Daniel Coit Gilman.
Charles Tracy, an 1832 Yale graduate writes in his Yale College, Sketches from Memory:
In those days free-masonry and anti-masonry fought their battles: and a grave question of consience [sic] arose about the promise of secrecy exacted on initiation to the Phi Beta Kappa Society. Harvard was for dissolving the secrecy, and it sent Edward Everett to the private meeting at Yale to advocate the cause. He used a tender tone stood half drooping as he spoke, and touchingly set forth that the students at Harvard had such conscientious scruples as to keep them from taking the vow of secrecy, and the society’s life was endangered. There was stout opposition, but the motion prevailed, and the missionary returned to gladden the tender consiences[sic] of the Harvard boys. The secret was of course out. The whole world did not stare at the discovery; and a few years had passed the society took back its secrecy and revived its grip.
Most secret societies have structure akin to an onion or pyramid with a large base or outer layer that makes-up the majority of the members. These members, called porch brethren in Masonic circles are there for window-dressing and generally have very little idea of the true function of the organization. Then there are the administrators and then at the core a “secret society within a secret society” with many times certain key personnel overlapping into several secret societal organizations.
The Yale secret society Wolf’s Head’s logo is the head of a wolf over an upside down ankh. “In the Egyptian mysteries a candidate would assumed the mantle of Osiris and wore a wolf skin. Wolf in French is louve and the word louvteau means “the son of a Mason.” The ankh is an old Egyptian symbol generally associated with life and eternity. The mystical and ritual magickal significance of the Wolf’s Head logo is there for all to see.
There are those who say this is just folderol, just “fads and fancy” of students. To others it adds to the evidence that the secret societies at Yale are much more than a supplemental educational program of Yale University or even just a crazy college “club.” Demonstrative links to the mystery schools and ritualistic initiatory paraphernalia abound. Do some Bonesmen experience an initiatory death and rebirth through Yale’s underground? Is the crypt of Saint John part of that ritual?
Do we find in New Haven a multi-generational cult that uses conspiratorial tactics and ritualistic magic in its drama for control?
A bigger picture emerges when you look in depth at the historical, architectural and genealogical threads, and at the physical geomantic forces at play in New Haven.
You could make a case that what exists at Yale is a multi-generational cult that believes in the power of death to bring about change, a group of Zeitgeist initiates believing that the ends justify the means, and using massive deaths to feed their necromancy.
Just a bit farther up the geographical draw from the cemetery is the Winchester Repeating Arms plant, where many of the rifles for deadly warfare have been manufactured, producing many piles of bones — many through conflicts with Bones members playing major political roles.
Ron Rosenbaum reported in the New York Observer, April 23, 2001, this chant used in the Order’s initiation rites:
The Hangman Equals Death!
The Devil Equals Death!
Death Equals Death.
In Alexandra Robbins’ apologia for the Order, Secrets of the Tomb, Bonesmen claim that they just played a joke on Rosenbaum and the ritual was a show. Scroll & Key member Ms. Robbins, after saying that she thought “the ceremony described in Rosenbaum’s article sounded much to vulgar for Skull and Bones, then quotes a Bonesman “laughing heartily” and saying, “We wanted to fuck with that prick.”
As Governor of Texas, George W Bush “hung” all prisoners sentenced to death that he had an opportunity to kill, except one, Henry Lee Lucas — a confessed serial killer for a shadowy cult. Bonesman and US political power player Henry L Stimson takes credit for talking President Truman into dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These are just two of the Order’s death-dealing activities.
The primary families of the Order are all inter-related and related to European royalty. In a private letter* from one Bonesman to another, a member does treat another of its members as royalty. When one takes into consideration that George W Bush has more royal relations that any other US President, along with royalty’s heavy involvement in Masonry and other western ritual magical circles, one wonders about the mindset created from the influences of the Hyper-Calvinist beliefs of Hell predestination, and infallible salvation mixed with potent duality of Western Ritual Magic tradition. Is our republic being undermined by a fervent multi-generational death-magic cult that is trying to bring about an apocalyptic New World Order through synarchical means — with themselves playing the leading roles — no matter the cost to the rest of us? Do they know?
The Order of Skull & Bones is a secret society and they aren’t saying.
To the tables down at Mory’s
To the place where Louie dwells
To the dear old Temple bar we love so well
Sing the Whiffenpoofs assembled
With their glasses raised on high
And the magic of their singing casts its spell
Yes, the magic of their singing
If the songs we love so well
“Shall I Wasting” and “Mavourneen” and the rest
We will serenade our Louie while life and voice shall last
Then we’ll pass and be forgotten with the rest
We are poor little lambs who have lost our way
Baa, baa, baa
We are little black sheep who have gone astray
Baa, baa, baa
Gentleman songsters off on a spree
Doomed from here to eternity
Lord have mercy on such as we
Baa, baa, baa
**