Do the Gods Leave Footprints?

The recent revisionist histories, especially Paul Johnson's The Masters, Joscelyn Godwin's "hidden hand" articles, and our own work with the "ciphers of the Secret Chiefs" (identical with that of the UFOnauts) have begun to restore the political component to historical understandings of the magical revival of the late 19th century.

For Westerners, especially in America, the separation of Church and State has been sufficient to make it difficult even to think in terms of spirituality and political philosophy as a continuous sphere. Even hardcore Bible-belters are unable to truly imagine an established religion in the European sense, let alone in the Asiatic. I believe most of us have virtually no idea of what makes Islamic Republicanism tick, and we stand appalled not only at the atrocities of Islamic Government, but at its sheer zeal. The idea of Pat Robertson driving a truck filled with explosives into an enemy military compound shouting "Jesus is Lord!" is ludicrous in our imaginations. Put Billy Graham behind the wheel ... but you get the point.

Yet, it has been shown that the founders of speculative freemasonry in the 18th century, especially in its continental version, were upholders of a radical spiritual, sometimes republican political vision that captured the imagination of many, including early socialists on the one hand and occultists on the other. These tendencies meet and overlap, and explain much about the nature of Masonic and occult secrecy, the cell structure common to political radicals and occultists, and the hostility of the established State and Church to both.

The Secret Chiefs of Theosophy, the Golden Dawn and the OTO may be able to, as Crowley said, "initiate a political movement to culminate in a world-war" (or prevent one), but if Paul Johnson's thesis is correct, one should not conclude from this that they are immune to arrest, torture and execution. Alessandro di Cagliostro, almost certainly a (rather more public than would seem judicious) Secret Chief, was arrested and condemned by the Inquisition, dying in a Roman prison.

Johnson observes of some of his successors: "They were all committed to an international effort to combat religious dogmatism, extend the range of democratic government, and direct public attention to the values of liberty, equality and fraternity ...Sotheran's acquaintance with HPB began in Europe among the disciples of Mazzini. Sotheran's account of Cagliostro makes it clear that he regarded the work of Mazzini and the Carbonari to be direct continuation of Cagliostro's mission..."

Johnson's cast of characters in early Theosophical history overlaps with occultist-magical history considerably. The great Magi Papus, P.B. Randolph and John Yarker all come under consideration by Johnson.

But before we inaugurate Karl Marx or Anarchist Emma Goldman as "Secret Chiefs," we do need to avoid losing sight of the fact that those who professedly encountered these hidden beings were apt to describe them in terms of, at the least, superbeings in human form.

Consider Henry Steel Olcott's account of an encounter at Lahore with the legendary "K.H.":

"I was sleeping in my tent, the night of the 19th, when I rushed back towards external consciousness on feeling a hand laid on me. The camp being on the open plain, and beyond the protection of the Lahore police, my first animal instinct was to protect myself ...'Do you not know me? Do you not remember me?' It was the voice of the Master K. H. A swift revulsion of feeling came over me, I relaxed my hold on his arms, joined my palms in reverential salutation, and wanted to jump out of bed to show him respect. But his hand and voice stayed me, and after a few sentences had been exchanged, he took my left hand in his, gathered the fingers of his right into the palm, and stood quiet beside my cot, from which I could see his divinely benignant face by the light of the lamp ...Presently, I could feel some soft substance forming in my hand, and the next minute the Master laid his kind hand on my forehead, uttered a blessing, and left ...I found myself holding in my left hand a folded paper enwrapped in a silken cloth..."

The letter, as it turned out, predicted the death of two enemies of the Theosophical Society, which swiftly came to pass. The actual identity of "Master K.H." seems to be one Thakar Singh, an enlightened radical Sikh leader, in contact with the worldwide network of radicals of the 19th century.

Contrast Olcott's encounter with S.L. MacGregor Mathers' account of his relations with the Secret Chiefs:

"It was found absolutely and imperatively necessary that there should be some eminent Member especially chosen to act as the link between the Secret Chiefs and the more external forms of the Order. It was requisite that such a member should be me who, while having the necessary and peculiar educational basis of critical and profound Occult Archaeological Knowledge, should at the same time not only be ready and willing to devote himself in every sense to a blind and unreasoning obedience to those Secret Chiefs..."

Israel Regardie described Mathers' fateful encounter in this way:

"While walking in the Bois de Bologne one day, meditating ... Mathers claimed triumphantly that he was approached by three men. He asserted that these were Adepts belonging to the hidden or Secret Third Order, and therefore belonged to that category of men described in The Cloud Upon the Sanctuary. Apparently, so he claims, they had materialized themselves, and in that tense emotional and spiritual atmosphere of Psychical phenomena, confirmed him in the sole rulership of the Order."

Mathers observed that, for his part, "I believe they are human beings living on this Earth, but possessed of terrible and super- human powers."

As outre as these tales are, they coincide remarkably with close encounter accounts from as early as St. Paul's fateful experience on the road to Damascus, to Albert K. Bender's three Men in Black.

The most intelligent discussion of what is delusion, dishonesty and deception in all this, and what is not, is in Crowley's Magick Without Tears. That it is scattered through the work and written under an implicit assumption that the proofs of a residue of concrete reality, however bizarre, are readily obvious to the reader is unfortunate, in today's (properly) more wary magical and UFOlogical circles. All that we attempt to demonstrate here is that a plausible case can be made for historical revision at this time. Johnson's tentative identification of Theosophical Masters both demythologizes them and adds to the credibility of their existence. If Johnson is correct, the Secret Chiefs are not only real but they probably have phone numbers -- doubtless unlisted.

Crowley observed dryly in a postscript: "A visitor's story has just reminded me of the possibility that I am a Secret Chief myself without knowing it: for I have sometimes been recognized by other people as having acted as such, though I was not aware of the fact at the time."

Brad Steiger observed in 1988, that, apparently, "...Space Beings have placed themselves in the role of messengers of God, or that we, in our desperation for cosmic messiahs who can remove us from the foul situation we have made on this planet, hope that there are such messengers who can extricate us from the plight we have brought on ourselves." Only with the coming of cipher knowledge can we decode the Pretended Saviors from Authentic Benefactors or, better Allies. Taking into consideration that UFO contactee George King and his Aetherius Society are earnestly engaged in the war being waged by the (Great White) Brotherhood against the Black Magicians, a group they feel seeks to enslave the human race," as Steiger puts it, the UFOlogy mythos and the magical mythos are shown clearly to be cut from the same cloth. The nature of that cloth, in the hands of Crowley or King, is now no longer obscure.

Excerpt from:

Secret Cipher of the UFOnauts
1994 by Allen H. Greenfeld
ISBN 1-881532-04-6
Illuminet Press, P.O.B. 2808, Lilburn, GA 30226