Story Time

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Royal
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Story Time

Post by Royal » Sun Nov 04, 2018 4:44 am

Excerpt from The Secret History of the World by Mark Booth

Count Cagliostro. By a mixture of mesmeric charm, his habit of using as bait Seraphita, his beautiful young wife, and above all his rumored possession of the philosopher's stone, he rose to the top of European society.

To those at the bottom of society he seemed kind of saint. Healing miracles performed among the poor of Paris, unable to afford a doctor, made him a popular hero, and when, after a short imprisonment, he was released from the Bastille, some eight thousand people came to cheer. When Cagliostro was challenged to a debate in front of intellectual peers, his opponent Count de Debelin, a friend of Benjamin Franklin's and a renowned expert on esoteric philosophy, soon admitted he was up against a man whose erudition far surpassed his own.

Cagliostro also seems to have had remarkable powers pf prophecy. In a famous letter of 30 June 1786 he prophesied that the Bastille would be completely destroyed, and it is said that he even predicted the exact data of this event - 14 July - in graffiti found inscribed on the wall of the prison cell in which he died.

Anyone with supernatural power is bound to suffer temptation. Perhaps the most charismatic and disconcerting initiate of the twentieth century was G.I. Gurdjieff. He deliberately presented his ideas in an absurd way. He wrote of an organ at the base of the spine that enabled initiates to see the world upside down inside out, calling it the 'Kunderbuffer'. In this way he deliberately gave the power of the kundalini serpent, the reserve of unredeemed energy that lies coiled at the base of the spine, and which is central to tantric practice, a laughable name. Similarly he wrote of gods in giant spaceships and that the surface of the sun is cool. Anyone who dismissed these ideas showed himself unworthy. Anyone who persisted and was able to tune in, found that Gurdjieff's spiritual disciplines worked.

Since his death it had emerged that he sometimes used his undoubted powers of mind control to prey on vulnerable young woman.

A friend of mine journeyed to India, to visit the renowned teacher, adept and miracle-worker Sai Baba. My friend was travelling with his beautiful young girlfriend. After an exquisite dinner the servants withdrew and Sai Bab took his guests into the library. My friend was perusing a booke while his girlfriend talked to Sai Baba. He noticed that their host was standing unusually close to her and became anxious when Sai Baba tuned the conversation to the subject of the sexual dimension in Hindu myths. Suddenly Sai Baba reaches to ring a copper bell engraved with sigils and simultaneously seems to grab something out of mid-air. He turned his hand palm up to reveal a golden chain with a crucifix on it. He told the girl that this was real magic and held his palm out to her, offering her the object, which seemed to my friend to glow with a dark aura.

He also noticed tha tht esigils on the bell were Tantric, and realized that the intention was probably to bewitch his girlfriend with a view to seducing her. He asked where the chain came from. "it appeared before you very eyes,' said Sai Baba. My friend took the chain from him, to prevent his girlfriend from touching it. Holding it over his palm, he used the art of pychometry to determine its origins. He had a disturbing vision of grave robbers, and realized that his crucifix and chain had been dug up frpm the grave of the Jesuit missionary.

He confronted Sai Baba with this and so, by demonstrating his own magical powers, he was able to make him back down.

Telling me about this many years later, my friend said that since Prospero had broken his wand at the end of The Tempest, initiates have been forbidden to exercise their magical powers, unless in exeptional circumstances like these. There is a law that if a benevolent magician uses his occult power, an equal amount of power is made available to a malevloent magician.

Is there any other evidence to suggest that magic is still practised today? In a second-hand bookshop in Tunbridge Wells I recently came across a small cache of letters in which an occultist gave his correspondents advice on how to use magic spells to achieve their goals.


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Royal
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Re: Story Time

Post by Royal » Sun Nov 04, 2018 5:05 am

Excerpt from The Secret History of the World by Mark Booth

The worlds greatest library of occult literature is to be found in the Vatican. The Church has never believed that the occult sciences do not work. It only sought to keep exclusive control of them. Sociologists have attributed religion's power over the people to its ability to explain life's unknown, numinous dimensions and so keep dread at bay. Religion must seem to be able to manage the dark volcanic power of the spirits which sometimes erupts into the material world.

In Northern Europe many had made spiritual quests outside Roman Catholicism. Spain was galvanized by a mysticism equally dark and dangerous, but operating within the Church.

Teresa was born at Avila near Madrid in 1515, probably to a family of Jewish converts. She ran away from home to join the nunnery. There, while ill, she drifted out of everyday consciousness and into a mystical state. When the states kept returning, she used the manuals of medieval mystics and texts by Ramon Lull as guides to achieving a working knowledge of mystical experience.


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Royal
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Re: Story Time

Post by Royal » Sun Nov 04, 2018 5:44 am

Excerpt from The Secret History of the World by Mark Booth

One day the handsome, fearless boy with the burning eyes and leonine mane tamed a magnificent but fiery horse called Bucephalus that none of Philip's generals could even mount.

Phillip cast about for the greatest mind of the day to be his son's tutor, and chose Plato's greatest Pupil, Aristotle. Alexander and the older man recognized each other as kindred spirits.

A soon as Plato gave formal, conceptual expression to idealism, it was inevitable that its opposite would quickly be formulated. Instead of deducing the trust about the world from immaterial, universal principles, Aristotle collected and classified the data of the material world. He worked out physical laws by a process of abstraction. Aristotle was therefore able to invent an entirely new and modern way of describing the hidden powers that shape nature. It is often said that the Roman Empire provided a vehicle for the spread of Christianity, and, in the same way, Alexander created the largest empire the world had seen. This, then, became the vehicle for Aristotle's philosophy.

Philip was assassinated when his son was only twenty, but immediately Alexander established himself as a ruler of genius and unbeatable military commander. In 334 BC he led an army into Asia, defeating the Persians at the Battle of Issus, even though they were outnumbered by as many as ten to one. Then he swept south through Syria and Phoenicia, before conquering Egypt, where he founded the City of Alexandria. Wherever he went he founded city states on the Greek model, spreading Greek politics as well as Greek philosophy.

It was part of Alexander's mission to save the newly evolved consciousness, forged by initiates such as Plato and Euripides, from being swamped by the greater wealth, grandeur and military might of Asia. More particularly, he was to save the new rationality from being swept away by ancient ritualistic clairvoyance and picture-consciousness.

In 331 BC Alexander defeated the Persians again, destroying their ancient capital of Persepolis, before pushing further into Afghanistan and finally into India. There he debated with Brahmin philosophers, and descendants of the Rishis. Admitted to watch the sacred, initiatory rites of the Brahmins, Alexander's own priests were astonished to see how similar the ceremonies were to their own.

There is a story that Alexander sent a Greek philosopher to summon a Brahmin teacher into his presence, offering great rewards and threatening decapitation if he refused. The philosopher finally tracked down the Brahmin in the depths of the forest and received the following rather dusty response: 'The Brahmins neither fear death nor desire gold. We sleep deeply and peacefully on forest leaves. Were we to have any material possessions, this would only disturb our slumber. We move freely over the surface of the earth without conflict and with all our needs met as by a mother who feeds her baby her milk.'

There was a rare knockback for Alexander. Until near the end of his life it seemed no one could stand in his way. As has happened only a few times in history, an individual seemed able to bend the whole world to his will.


As I've suggested, Alexander's entire life can be seen as a quest to understand the origins of this divine power. At different times both Perseus and Hercules were claimed as his ancestors, according to variant traditions. Aristotle had given Alexander a copy of Homer's Iliad, which he learned off by heart, and he sometimes saw himself as a demi-god like Achilles.


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Royal
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Re: Story Time

Post by Royal » Tue Nov 06, 2018 4:25 am

Excerpt from The Secret History of the World by Mark Booth


As an Egyptian Prince, Moses was initiated in the Egyptian Mysteries. This is recorded by the Egyptian historian Manetho, who identified Heliopolis as the Mystery school. It is confirmed in Acts 7.22, where the Apostle Stephen says, 'And Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.'

Indeed the teachings of Moses are steeped in Egpytian wisdom. For example, Spell 125 in the Book of the Dead describes the judgement of the dead. The spirit is required to desclare Osiris that he has led a good life, then deny having committed a list of specific immoral acts to the forty-two judges of the dead. I have not robbed, I have not killed, I have not born false witness' and so on. Of course, this predates the Ten Commandments.

It is no denigration of Moses to point this out. His teaching could not have done otherwise that grow out of the given historical milieu. What is historically significant about Moses is the way he reframed the ancient wisdom with the aim of leading humankind into the next stage of the evolution of consciousness.

When Moses fled into exile in the desert, he encountered a wise, old teacher. Jethro was an African - Ethiopian - high priest, keeper of a library of stone tablets. When Moses married his daughter, Jethro initiated him to a higher level. This initiation is what is being alluded to in the story of the burning bush. When Moses saw the burning bush not being consumed by the fire, this was a vision of the self that is not destroyed by the purging fire that awaits on the other side of the grave.

A sense of mission arose out of Moses's vission of the burning bush, an impulse to work for the greater good of humanity, to lead us all to a land flowing with milk and honey.


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