THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE WEST

Nicholas Hagger is largely unacknowledged as one of the great writers and thinkers of our time. His prodigious literary output of nearly 50 books is based on his vision of the fundamental unity of the universe and of humankind, which he calls Universalism. This impacts on seven disciplines: literature, mysticism, history, comparative religion, philosophy, international relations/statecraft and culture, and his writings also extend to epic poetry and drama as well as autobiography. The last books of his reviewed in these pages were connected to a world constitution and a form of democratic world government. Jonathan Black works in publishing and this particular book has sold over half a million copies and has been followed by a Sacred History of the World, which I have just ordered. His focus is on imagination, esotericism and the evolution of consciousness. The reason for reviewing these books at this time is to gain a historical perspective on groups orchestrating or at least helping to steer current world events. The combined length of these books is over 2,000 pages, which only enables me to highlight some key spiritual and political themes related to the mission of the Network at the interface between science, spirituality, mysticism and esotericism.

Some of Nicholas's work covers the rise and fall of civilisations in relation to the laws of history as they mirror our moral, spiritual and social development originating in experiences of the Light and going through cyclical stages of 'genesis, growth, arrest of growth, breakdown, renewal, decline, decay and demise' through progressive secularisation. Since the appearance of Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West in 1917, major work has been conducted in cultural history by Arnold Toynbee, Pitirim Sorokin, Fernand Braudel and others, and the question now facing us is where we are in this process and what choices we have before us. In addition to Nicholas's books are reviewed here, he has also written The Secret American Dream (2011) The Secret American Destiny (2016), and is currently working on a third volume to bring the story up to date. The first book tells the story of the influence of secret organisations on Western history and especially on the genesis of revolutions, from the 13th to the mid 20th century. The second volume focuses on powerful groups and families forming what he calls the Syndicate, arguing that it is money and oil – along with technology and globalisation - that have driven events towards a New World Order and 'Great Reset'.

The scope of these books is sweeping and I think their overall arguments and analysis compelling in the light of the extensive historical evidence presented. The Protestant revolution as a whole was a (heretically driven) response to the hegemony of mediaeval Catholicism, and provides the first case study of Nicholas's revolutionary dynamic that requires a heretical occult inspiration with corresponding intellectual and political expressions followed by physical consolidation. The Puritan Revolution includes the Rosicrucian revolution, Oliver Cromwell, the rise of science and a further Rosicrucian revolution under William of Orange. The second part – Towards a Universal Republic – tracks Masonic influences on the American, French, Imperialist and Russian revolutions, which constitutes a real historical eye-opener. The sobering process is the corruption of early idealism when stepped down to political expression, whereby the driving process towards a better society tends to end in massacres due to violent means, as has been the case from the French Revolution onwards, where head is divorced from heart, and reason from compassion. The ideals of universal brotherhood, love and liberty run the risk of degeneration towards totalitarianism, subordinating the individual to a tyranny (p. 293) – more on this below.

For both authors, Francis Bacon plays a pivotal role. As early as 1579, he inaugurated a Rosicrucian fraternity based on the Knights Templar with a 9 degree ceremonial. This was based on the Advancement of Learning (also the title of one of his books), ethics instead of creeds, philanthropic goodness instead of credulous belief, brotherly love in place of hatred – he coined the term philanthropia, which was also expressed in his hugely influential New Atlantis. For fear of persecution by dogmatic Christianity, this 'invisible college' agreed in 1617 to maintain total secrecy for 100 years until 1717, when Freemasonry was officially launched – and one of its expressions was the founding of the Royal Society in 1660. Key figures were also grandmasters of the Priory of Sion: Robert Fludd, 1595–1637, J Valentin Andreae (Author of the 1614 Rosicrucian manifesto), 1637–1654, Robert Boyle 1654-1691, and Sir Isaac Newton 1691-1727. The point is that these men were all occultists and alchemists as well as scientists, with an interest in both spiritual experience and scientific experimentation. This Rosicrucian fraternity had three aims: abolition of monarchy and substitution by rulership of the philosophic elect (cf Plato), reformation of science, philosophy and ethics, and the alchemical discovery of universal medicine, all leading to 'the great instauration' where human mastery over nature is recovered.

Jonathan Black discusses magic in terms of the capacity to manipulate matter, a dynamic taken over by science and technology and including the refinement of intelligence through access to altered states by means of initiation. If esotericism represents imagination as the great creative force and mind before matter, scientific materialism inverts this perspective to insist on the priority of matter as reality. These two inner and outer/subjective and objective facets are represented by Shakespeare and Bacon, who Peter Dawkins strongly argues were the same person (The Enigma of Shakespeare). Significantly, Jonathan observes that the world of Shakespeare is the world of human values, while the world of Bacon is one where human values have been stripped out and gives rise to very different patterns that ultimately need to be harmonised as complementary aspects of the whole, one focusing on the structure of experience, and the other on the structure of the world.

As explained by both Nicholas and Jonathan, a central figure influencing both the French and American revolutions was Adam Weishaupt (my dictation system put 'vice heart'!) who founded the Illuminati in 1776 and, in the same year with Mayer Amshel Rothschild, The Order of the Perfectibilists. He was also initiated into French Grand Orient Freemasonry in 1777, which he subsequently infiltrated with his own members. His aims were subversive and revolutionary: abolition of government, private property, inheritance, patriotism, religion and family, all in the service of world government and the achievement of wealth and power. The hierarchical cell structure involved surrendering individual judgement and will, as well as spying on each other. Lucifer becomes the revolutionary archetype, the light bringer represented by the Enlightenment embodied in freedom, reason and a deism that rejects a personal God. The Secret Founding of America – also as the 'New Atlantis' - shows the influence of Weishaupt via Benjamin Franklin, especially in relation to the design of the Great Seal with its unfinished pyramid, all-seeing eye and inscription Novus Ordo Seculorum, the ancestor of the New World Order. Nearly all the founding fathers, including Washington, Jefferson and Adams, were Enlightenment Deists and advanced degree Freemasons (as were the French philosophes), while Freemasonic principles were applied to the federal political structure and the design of Washington – Franklin Roosevelt, a 33rd degree Mason (see List of Freemason Presidents p. 188) used the same design on the dollar bill.

Freemasonry continued to play a revolutionary and often divisive role through the 19th and 20th centuries, intertwined with the corresponding finance that included not only central banks but also philanthrocapitalist offshoots such as the Rockefellers and more recently Bill Gates, who alchemically transform money into power. Communism as the realisation of Weishaupt's agenda was instigated by 32nd degree Freemason (and Satanist) Karl Marx and Fellow Templar Grand Orient Mason Friedrich Engels, while Bakunin, Mazzini (originator of the Mafia), Garibaldi, Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin were all Masons (mostly 33rd degree). The American Civil War was carefully orchestrated, principally by 33rd degree Mason Albert Pike (p. 382), and the assassination of Lincoln by 33rd third degree Mason John Wilkes Booth was carefully plotted. Pike was a Luciferian, where Lucifer is what Jesus called the Prince of this World and acts as the God of Freemasonry – a secret apparently only revealed to those beyond the 30th degree (SFA, pp. 185-6). The hidden hand of all the revolutions discussed is Freemasonic: the ringleaders were able to operate in secrecy with confidence that their fraternity would not betray them – indeed there were and are severe penalties for doing so. (p. 470) If all this sounds quite incredible, the supporting detail is to be found in the books, along with the financial and political intrigue.

The endpoint of all this activity was envisaged as either a revolutionary communist one world empire or a world federation of states, both variants of Baconian utopianism and Freemasonry's Universal Republic. Nicholas defines a revolution (SHW, p. 355) as 'a sudden, violent transformation in society when its civilisation's religion is challenged by secularising progress. Societies can progress at the same time that civilisations decay…. Secularisation is progressive, but actually accelerates the decline and decay of civilisation, while bolstering human conditions…the hope is to bring about change by violent means to bring in a new order by destroying those who stand in the way.' As he emphasises, there is a radical difference between a spiritual and occult vision (SHW, p. 378). In the first, the self opens to the divine, the One, and channels divine energy, representing a force for good. In the occult vision, 'the self psychically contacts and controls the darkness of Luciferian energy that it manipulates to advance its worldly power – as a force to promote self-interest, to harm others', replacing God with Lucifer and imposing rather than surrendering their will, power over rather than power with.

During the 20th century there emerged what Nicholas calls sub-Masonic secret societies, all of which have urged world government: the Round Table dating from 1909, the Royal Institute of International Affairs 1919, the Council on Foreign Relations 1921, the Bilderberg Group 1954, the Club of Rome 1968 and the Trilateral Commission 1972. Almost all of the most influential people in the world belong to one or more of these bodies, and their overall vision is one of a top-down world government of self-interested control and all the seeing eye of technological surveillance courtesy of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. On the other hand, global democracy is rooted in political universalism 'that sees all mankind… in terms of the spiritual and metaphysical One, which pervades all religions and unifies the universe. Our current situation presents us with us a stark choice between two New World Orders, 'one in the revolutionary image of Lucifer and one in the spiritual image of Christ.' (TS, p. 283) And while science and the Silicon Valley mindset assume that materialism will remain the dominant philosophy until the end of time (Black, p, 540), for the esoteric perspective, materialism is a stage to be transcended in a wider and deeper worldview that marries cleverness with wisdom, ushering in an ultimately human rather than inhuman future. Steiner warned that Ahrimanic mechanistic thinking was bent on the denial and elimination of our spiritual component and moral conscience. By contrast, 'intuition is transformed intellect that perceives the spiritual beings as real.' (p. 543)

Jonathan Black reminds us of another possible direction of travel – Gandhi's force of truth as soul power, integrally relating inner spiritual principles with political action, as also embodied in our time in the work of Satish Kumar and Vandana Shiva. Gandhi believed that 'soul power could deflect the greatest military power, because the intention behind an action could have a greater and more widespread effects than the action itself.' (p. 536) On the final page of this book, Jonathan reminds us of the 'qualities that great writers, yes, poets but particularly the great novelists who are steeped in esoteric philosophy, have focused on and helped to evolve: empathy, sympathy, intelligence of the heart, intelligent care for others, being slow to judge, tolerance, decency, probity, moral imagination, moral courage.' (p. 577) These are what make us truly human, qualities that we derive from the Light and are required to translate from metaphysics into ethical politics.