22. Sophia Perennis

Perennial Philosophy

The foreword to Sheikh Kabbani’s The Golden Chain was written by another important member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Iranian Islamic scholar and Traditionalist, Seyyed Hossein Nasr.[1] Wikileaks recently published four cables relating to Nasr which establish his connections to Henry Kissinger and CIA Director Richard Helms, back in 1976.[2] Among his many works, Nasr is the author of Isma’ili Contributions to Islamic Culture. Nasr has been a close friend of Prince Karim, the Aga Khan IV. Nasr’s uncle Seyyed Ali Nasr became Iran’s first ambassador to the newly founded nation of Pakistan and became close friends with Prince Karim’s grandfather Aga Khan III. At Harvard in 1954, Nasr founded the Harvard Islamic Society, the first Islamic Society at an American University, whose seven original members included Prince Karim’s uncle, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, with whom he became good friends.[3] Under Prince Karim’s recommendation, Nasr served as Aga Khan chair of Islamic studies at the American University at Beirut in 1964-65, and Rockefeller Lectures at the University of Chicago in 1966.[4] Prince Karim asked Nasr to prepare the formal written version of his lectures which were published in London as Ideals and Realities of Islam.[5]

Nasr is also an important representative of the school of Traditionalism influenced by René Guénon, and connects the disparate pseudo-Sufi traditions of the Maryamiyya—dedicated to the Virgin Mary—the Naqshabandi Sufi Order, and even Discordianism. As explained by Robert Dreyfus:

 

The Muslim Brotherhood is a London creation, forged as the standard-bearer of an ancient, antireligious (pagan) heresy that has plagued Islam since the establishment of the Islamic community (umma) by the Prophet Mohammed in the seventh century.

…The real story of the Muslim Brotherhood is more fantastic than the mere imagination of the authors of espionage novels could create. It functions as a conspiracy; its members exchange coded greetings and secret passwords; although no formal membership list exists, its members are organized into hierarchical cells or “lodges” like the European freemason societies and orders. The Muslim Brotherhood does not respect national frontiers; it spans the entire Islamic world. Some of its members are government officials, diplomats, and military men; others are street gangsters and fanatics. While the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood are at home in plush-carpeted paneled board rooms of top financial institutions, at the lower levels the Muslim Brotherhood is a paramilitary army of thugs and assassins.

At its highest level, the Muslim Brotherhood is not Muslim. Nor is it Christian, Jewish, or part of any religion. In the innermost council are men who change their religion as easily as other men might change their shirts.

Taken together, the generic Muslim Brotherhood does not belong to Islam, but to the pre-Islamic barbarian cults of mother-goddess worship that prevailed in ancient Arabia. As much as the peddlers of mythology might want us to believe that the Muslim Brotherhood and Ayatollah Khomeini represent a legitimate expression of a deeply rooted “sociological phenomenon,” it is not the case.[6]

 

Nasr is a leading exponent of Traditionalism, also known as also sometimes known as Perennialism, which can be traced back to the philosophy of René Guénon. Guénon’s Traditionalism was developed from the notion, shared with the fascists, of the belief in the decadence of the modern world. Through the influence of Papus, Guénon insisted on the idea, already formulated before him by Joseph de Maistre and Fabre d’Olivet, of a primordial Tradition. By tradition, Guénon meant the Perennial Philosophy. This notion was the same as the Prisca Theologia, or “Ancient Wisdom,” of Renaissance philosopher Marisilio Ficino. In reality it was the Jewish Kabbalah, which Ficino considered to be a pure tradition imparted to the wise men of antiquity, and the key to establishing a universal religion that could reconcile Christian belief with ancient philosophy. It was also known to Blavatsky as “Ancient Wisdom” or “Wisdom-Religion.” Blavatsky wrote in her essay “What is Theosophy?” that the “Wisdom” referred to is “an emanation of the Divine principle” typified by “some goddesses — Metis, Neitha, Athena, the Gnostic Sophia…”[7] The Greek word for wisdom is Sophia, a central idea in Hellenistic philosophy and religion, Platonism, and Gnosticism, where it is a feminine figure, and corresponds to the Shekhinah of the Kabbalah, where she is identified with Lilith, equal to Kali of Hinduism. Tradition is often referred to as philosophia perennis (“perennial philosophy”), where Absolute Truth is “the perennial wisdom (sophia perennis) that stands as the transcendent source of all the intrinsically orthodox religions of humankind.”[8] In this sense, the esoteric branches of all the primary religious traditions, including Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and Vedanta, share a single primordial truth.[9]

In 1974, Empress Farah Pahlavi commissioned Nasr to establish and lead what is now the Institute for Research in Philosophy, the first academic institution conducted in accordance with the principles of the Traditionalist School, the mystical philosophies inspired by René Guénon. Participating were William Chittick, Peter Lamborn Wilson, Kenneth Morgan, Sachiko Murata, Toshihiko Izutsu, and Henry Corbin. During the days of the Shah, Nasr directed the academy’s journal, Sophia Perennis. Nasr offered Wilson, who studied under Corbin in Iran, the position of editorship of the journal, which he edited from 1975 until 1978.[10]

Nasr was also a friend of Esalen regular Huston Smith (1919 – 2016), professor of Philosophy and Religion at Syracuse University, who introduced the Dalai Lama to the West, who was a regular at the Esalen Institute, which according to its founder Michael Murphy, was a prototype for its development was the Eranos Conferences.[11] The Esalen Institute was established in 1962, in Big Sur, California, by two transcendental meditation students, Michael Murphy and Richard Price, who were given networking support by Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley and his wife Laura, as well as by Gerald Heard and Gregory Bateson.

In 1937, Huxley moved to Hollywood with his wife Maria, son Matthew and friend Gerald Heard. In 1938 Huxley befriended Jiddu Krishnamurti whose teachings he greatly admired. After Annie Besant’s death, Huxley and Krishnamurti, along with Guido Ferrando, and Rosalind Rajagopal, built the Happy Valley School in California, now renamed the Besant Hill School of Happy Valley in her honor. Beginning in 1939 and continuing until his death in 1963, Huxley had an extensive association with the Vedanta Society of Southern California, founded and headed by Gerald Heard, a disciple of Swami Prabhavananda, of the Ramakrishna Order founded by Vivekananda and his master Ramakrishna. Prabhavananda was able to attract an illustrious following which included Igor Stravinsky, Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh and W. Somerset Maugham, which led to his writing The Razor’s Edge in 1944. Together with Heard, Isherwood, Huxley and other followers were initiated as well by Prabhavananda and taught meditation and other mystical Hindu practices.

Inspired by the universalist teachings of the neo-Vedanta of Vivekananda, as well as Sir John Woodroffe (Arthur Avalon), Huxley set out to translate Indian ideas into Western literary and intellectual culture with the writing of The Perennial Philosophy (1945), an anthology of short passages taken from traditional Eastern texts and the writings of Western mysticism. Huxley’s book insists on the truth of the occult, suggesting that there are realities beyond the generally accepted “five senses.” “Perennial Philosophy” is another name for prisca theologia of the Renaissance mystics or the Traditionalism developed by René Guénon. Mirroring the teachings of Guénon, who is quoted in the book, Huxley explains: “rudiments of the Perennial Philosophy may be found among the traditionary [sic] lore of primitive peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions.”[12] Huxley relates that the doctrine that God can be incarnated in human form is found in most of the principal historic expositions of the Perennial Philosophy in Hinduism, in Mahayana Buddhism, in Christianity and among the Sufis.

Huxley’s Brave New World and The Doors of Perception, about the “mind-expanding” potential of psychoactive drugs, served as inspiration for the CIA’s MK-Ultra program, of which Leary was the chief evangelist. After leaving Harvard in 1962, Leary then moved his operations to the Hitchcock Estate in Millbrook. Ownership of the estate passed from oilman Walter Clark Teagle, president of the Rockefellers’ Standard Oil of New Jersey and then to Tommy Hitchcock Jr. (1900 – 1944), a partner in the Lehman Brothers investment firm.[13] Ownership of the estate passed from oilman Walter Clark Teagle, president of the Rockefellers’ Standard Oil of New Jersey and then to Tommy Hitchcock Jr. (1900 – 1944), a partner in the Lehman Brothers investment firm.[14] Tommy married Margaret Mellon Hitchcock, the daughter of William Larimer Mellon Sr., the founder of Gulf Oil, and the grandson of Thomas Mellon, the patriarch of the Mellon family. Thomas’ on, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, was Paul Mellon, who served with Allen Dulles the OSS during World War II, and who with his wife Mary was a supporters of the Eranos Conferences[15] A number of Mellons served in the OSS, notably Paul’s brother-in-law David Bruce, the OSS station chief in London and later American ambassador to England. After the war, a number influential members of the Mellon family maintained close ties with the CIA, and Mellon family foundations have been used repeatedly as CIA fronts. During his tenure as CIA director, Richard Helms was a frequent guest of the Mellons in Pittsburgh.[16]

Tommy’s children were William Mellon “Billy” Hitchcock, Tommy Hitchcock III, and Margaret Mellon “Peggy” Hitchcock, who became heirs to the Mellon fortune. By 1962, David Bruce, who was appointed as ambassador to the United Kingdom by President John F. Kennedy, was becoming concerned about allegations swirling about Profumo Affair, and dispatched Thomas Corbally, and William Mellon Hitchcock, his nephew by marriage, to a meeting with Dr. Stephen Ward, who pimped Christine Keeler to John Profumo and Yevgeny Ivanov at Masonically-themed “black magic” orgies, and who claimed to have played during the Cuban Missile Crisis for the British and Soviet governments.[17] Ward had also pimped Mary Anne MacLean, co-founder of the satanic Process Church of the Final Judgement, which was linked to the Manson Family atrocities, which connected numerous Hollywood celebrities and musicians, like the Mamas and the Papas and the Beach Boys, to Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, a film about a coven who bring about the birth of Satan’s child.[18]

William Mellon Hitchcock funded Leary and Richard Alpert’s International Federation for Internal Freedom (IFIF) and later financed an LSD manufacturing operation.[19] Peggy was director of the IFIF, later renamed the Castilia Foundation.[20] In early 1963, when IFIF filed incorporation papers, Leary was designated president, Alpert, director, with Gunther Weil, Ralph Metzner, George Litwin, Walter Houston Clark, Huston Smith, and Alan Watts listed as members of the Board of Director.[21] Leary believed he was Aleister Crowley reborn and was supposed to complete the work that Crowley began.[22] His autobiography, Confessions of a Drug Fiend, was a composite of Crowley’s Diary of a Drug Fiend and Confessions of Aleister Crowley. Leary confessed in an interview with Late Night America on PBS:

 

Well, I’ve been an admirer of Aleister Crowley; I think that I’m carrying on much of the work that he started over 100 years ago. And I think the 60’s themselves you know Crowley said he was in favor of finding your own self and “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law” under love. It was very powerful statement. I’m sorry he isn’t around now to appreciate the glories that he started.

 

According to Jay Stevens, author of Storming Heaven, “Anyone who was hip in the 1960s came to Millbrook. On any given weekend there were a hundred people there floating through. Strange New York city types, bohemians, jet setters, German counts. You name it, you could find it at Millbrook.”[23] Among the musicians who visited the estate were Maynard Ferguson, Steve Swallow, Charles Lloyd and Charles Mingus. Other guests included Alan Ginsberg, Alan Watts, psychiatrists Humphry Osmond and R.D. Laing, cartoonist Saul Steinberg, and actress Viva Superstar, a prominent figure in Andy Warhol’s circle in New York City..[24] In 1964, Leary married fashion model Nena von Schlebrügge. D.A. Pennebaker documented the event in his short film You’re Nobody Til Somebody Loves You. The marriage lasted only a year before Schlebrügge divorced Leary. In 1967, she married Indo-Tibetan Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman, a close friend of the Dalai Lama.

Watts became an Episcopal priest in 1945, but left the ministry by 1950, partly as a result of an extramarital affair and because he could no longer reconcile his Buddhist beliefs. He then became acquainted with Joseph Campbell and his wife, Jean Erdman, as well as the composer John Cage. In early 1951, Watts moved to California, where he joined the faculty of the American Academy of Asian Studies (the precursor to the California Institute of Integral Studies) in San Francisco through which he helped popularize Zen among the beatnik scene. At the academy, Watts taught from 1951 to 1957 alongside Frederic Spiegelberg (1897 – 1994), a refugee from Hitler’s Germany and Stanford University professor of Asian religions, whose teachers included a cross-section of the Eranos conferences, such as Rudolf Otto, Paul Tillich, Martin Heidegger and Carl Jung. In India he had visited Sri Aurobindo and Sri Ramana Maharshi. He also wrote a book, heavily influenced by D.T. Suzuki, on the art of Zen, with a foreword by the Eranos lecturer Herbert Read. He was also the author of a book on alchemy, which he illustrated with magical sigils from the sixteenth-century Kabbalistic-magical text Liber Raziel, attributed to Eleazar ben Juda ben Kalonymos, known as Eleazar of Worms.[25]

As explained by Hans Thomas Hakl in Eranos: An Alternative Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century, “Spiegelberg not only lectured at Esalen, as also did the Eranos speaker Paul Tillich, the historian Arnold Toynbee or the parapsychologist J.B. Rhine, but he also steered Esalen’s founder, Michael Murphy, on to the spiritual path that would lead him to Esalen.”[26] At Esalen, Murphy and Price hosted a lineup of speakers that effectively also mirrored the list of New Age influencers identified in the survey that was the basis of Marilyn Ferguson’s Aquarian Conspiracy. These included B.F. Skinner, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Aldous Huxley, Alan Watts, Gregory Bateson and Carlos Castaneda. The more famous guests of Esalen would also include mystically inclined scholars like Carl Sagan, Fritjof Capra, as well as astronauts and Apple executives, Christie Brinkley and Billy Joel, Robert Anton Wilson, Uri Geller, Erik Erikson, as well as numerous countercultural icons including Joan Baez (a former girlfriend of Steve Jobs), Hunter S. Thompson and Timothy Leary.

When Leary had inquired about Tantra from Huxley, he recommended to him the works of Sir John Woodroffe (aka Arthur Avalon), Mircea Eliade, and Heinrich Zimmer’s chapter on Tantra in Philosophies of India, ghostwritten by the mythologist Joseph Campbell.[27] Campbell first became interested in oriental religions after a meeting in 1924 with Jiddu Krishnamurti. Campbell also helped Swami Nikhilananda with the translation of the Upanishads and a book about Ramakrishna. At the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda center in New York he came to know Heinrich Zimmer, one of the founding personalities of Eranos. Campbell edited the first papers from Jung’s annual Eranos conferences, where he was an attendee. Campbell helped Mary Mellon, the original sponsor of the Eranos conferences, found Bollingen Series of books on psychology, anthropology and myth. Mary was the wife of Paul Mellon.

According to Robert Ellwood, in The Politics of Myth, the three “sages,” the most widely read popularizers of myth in the twentieth century above all were: C.G. Jung, Mircae Eliade and Joseph Campbell.[28] Although the Bollingen Series was not a Traditionalist organization, it published the works of central figures in Traditionalism, like René Guénon’s leading disciple Ananda Coomaraswamy, and Ur Group member Mircea Eliade, who described Eranos as “one of the most creative cultural experiences of the modern Western world.”[29] Eliade also co-edited the Antaios magazine with Ernst Jünger. Eliade collaborated with Carl Jung and the Eranos circle after Henry Corbin recommended him in 1949.

Huston Smith had been a participant in Leary’s Marsh Chapel Experiment under the Harvard Psilocybin Project. Smith developed an interest in the Traditionalism of René Guénon and Ananda Coomaraswamy, and was influenced by the writings of Gerald Heard, who arranged for him to meet Aldous Huxley, who introduced him to Vedanta.[30] Smith’s World’s Religions (originally titled The Religions of Man) has sold over two million copies, and remains a popular introduction to comparative religion. Bill Moyers devoted a 5-part PBS special to Smith’s life and work, The Wisdom of Faith with Huston Smith. Smith has produced three series for public television: The Religions of Man, The Search for America, and Science and Human Responsibility.

 

Maryamiyya

Nasr, like his friend Huston Smith, was a member of the pseudo-Sufi Maryamiyya order, based on his veneration of the Virgin Mary, established by Frithjof Schuon (1907 – 1998), another member of the Traditionalist school, who was initiated into the Shadhili Sufi Order by Ahmad al-Alawi (1869 – 1934), who had been recommended to him by Guénon.[31] At primary school, Schuon met the future metaphysician and art specialist Titus Burckhardt (1908 – 1984), a leading member of the Traditionalist school, who remained a lifelong friend. Burckhardt was the author of numerous works on metaphysics, cosmology, anthropology, esoterism, alchemy, Sufism, symbolism and sacred art. From the age of ten, his search for led him to read not only the Bible but also the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and the Quran, as well as Plato, Emerson, Goethe and Schiller. Schuon then immersed himself in the world of the Bhagavad Gita and the Vedanta, which would profoundly influence his philosophy. In 1924, he discovered the works of Guénon, who he would later refer to as “the profound and powerful theoretician of all that he loved.”[32] Burckhardt and Schuon were contributors to Antaios, published by Ernst Jünger and Mircea Eliade. Besides Eranos speakers such as Henry Corbin, Karl Kerényi, Joseph Campbell, Mircea Eliade, and Ernst Benz, in the journal featured Julius Evola.[33]

Through his many books and articles, Schuon became known as a spiritual teacher and leader of Traditionalism. Some of Schuon’s most eminent students include supposed converts to Islam, Titus Burckhardt and Martin Lings (1909 – 2005). Lings is best known as the author of a very popular and positively reviewed biography of Muhammad, first published in 1983. But according to Andrew Rawlinson, in Book of Enlightened Masters: Western Teachers in Eastern Traditions, Schuon was not as a pious Sufi but as a charlatan. Burckhardt expressed concerns about Schuon and episodes “involving women,” but reminded other Maryamiyya that the followers of a Sheikh [Sufi master] should judge him by his teachings, not his actions![34]

As Sedgwick noted, “And, though Schuon does not make this identification himself, the Virgin Mary approaches the Kabbalistic understanding of the Shekhina.”[35] The cult of the Virgin Mary was of especial importance to Jacob Frank, particularly the Black Virgin, which he equated with Lilith of the Kabbalah. According to Gershom Scholem, “The introduction of this idea was one of the most important and lasting innovations of Kabbalism.”[36] In the Dictionary of Jewish Lore and Legend, Alan Unterman explains:

 

In the imagery of the Kabbalah the shekhinah is the most overtly female sefirah, the last of the ten sefirot, referred to imaginatively as “the daughter of God”… The harmonious relationship between the female shekhinah and the six sefirot which precede her causes the world itself to be sustained by the flow of divine energy. She is like the moon reflecting the divine light into the world.[37]

 

Schuon hoped to realize nothing short of a New World Order, what he often referred to as a “New Civilization.”[38] Although ostensibly a Sufi Muslim, Schuon held a Kabbalistic view of the universe where everything in it, from the heights of the Absolute Reality to the lowest depths of the material world, is based on a hierarchical order. Therefore, Schuon posited, so too is the authentic human society, a subject to which he devoted an entire book: Castes and Races. To Schuon, it is the rejection of this natural order that leads to the present crisis in modern Western society. The modern West is nothing less than “Luciferian,” “rotten to the core,” and a “monstrosity,” because of its turn away from the true “primordial tradition.” He believed that we are now fast approaching the end of the Kali Yuga, when the world will be consumed in the final conflagration, and the Messiah will return for the final judgment. According to his disciples that Messiah is Schuon.[39]

Schuon was also interested in Native American sacred traditions, and was adopted by a Sioux family and Crow medicine man and Sun Dance chief. Mark Sedgwick, author of Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century, discovered photos sent to him by Andrew Rawlinson, a retired English academic, showing Schuon dressed up as a Native American chief, surrounded by young women in bikinis. Another showed Schuon naked, except for what looked like a Viking helmet. Another showed a painting by Schuon of a nude Virgin Mary. The group was disbanded on October 15, 1991, after Schuon (then eighty-four years old) was indicted on charges of sexual battery and child molestation in connection with the group’s ritual dances. Because of certain legal technicalities, however, the case was dropped and the charges were never actually proven.[40]

Schuon’s order also attracted Maryam Jameelah (1934 – 2012), born Margaret Marcus, another Jewish convert to Islam who became a close friend of Maududi. According to Deborah Baker, author of The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism, Maryam, who was autistic, spoke complete sentences when she should have started baby talk, was probably a savant.[41] In Spring, 1953, she entered New York University. There she explored Reform Judaism, Orthodox Judaism, Ethical Culture and was briefly interested in the Bahai Faith, but later rejected it due to its support for Zionism. It was at this juncture that she turned again to Islam. Marmaduke Pickthall’s translation of the Quran, along with the two books by fellow Jewish convert to Islam, Muhammad Asad’ The Road to Mecca and Islam at the Crossroads, also proved instrumental in cultivating her interest in the religion.[42] However, her mental health deteriorated, she dropped out of the university in 1956 before graduating, and from 1957 to 1959 she was hospitalized for schizophrenia.[43]

After her release, Marcus began corresponding with Muslim leaders abroad, in particular Mawlana Abul Ala Maududi, at the recommendation of Syed Qutb of Egypt.[44] Finally, in 1961, she converted to Islam and adopted the name Maryam Jameelah, meaning “beautiful,” apparently in reaction to a rape she suffered in her pre-teens and to compensate for her impaired looks.[45] After corresponding with him for two years, Maryam accepted an invitation from Maududi to come live in Pakistan. In this decision she was supported by her many Muslim friends in New York as well as prominent Muslim leaders internationally, such as Said Ramadan.[46] She emigrated to Pakistan the following year, where she initially resided with him and his family. In 1963, she married Muhammad Yusuf Khan, a member of Jamaat-e-Islami, becoming his second wife. Maududi finally changed towards her, eventually consigning her to a Pagal Khana, Lahore’s well-known mental hospital. Maryam later confessed to Baker that she had struck the lady of the house on the head with a frying pan.[47]

Having become disillusioned with the revivalists, fortunately or otherwise, Maryam became deeply impressed with Schuon’s works.[48] She even defended Schuon when accusations were revealed against him. Schuon’s writings remained her favorite books until she met with his divorced third wife. They became close friends and she revealed all the sordid details of their life together. Nevertheless, she confided that Schuon’s books “attract me but I cannot look at them without a profound sense of shame.” Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and Martin Lings continue to fascinate her for, in her own words, “More profound criticism of Western philosophy, science and technology is not found among any of the revivalist writers. Martin Lings Seerat is by far the best in English—based entirely on Qur’an and Hadith.”[49] Guénon, however, occupies a special place in Maryam Jameelah’s education. “No sensitive, intelligent mind can study René Guénon’s Crisis of the Modern World and Reign of Quantity and Signs of the Times,” she noted, “without being changed forever.”[50]

 

Nostra aetate 

Another member of the Maryamiyya was Rama Coomaraswamy, the son of Guénon disciple and friend of Aleister Crowley, Ananda Coomaraswamy. Rama was of mixed Tamil, English and Jewish ancestry, was the son of Ananda and of his fourth wife Luisa Runstein, an Argentine-born woman of Jewish descent. Although raised in the Hindu tradition, after the death of his father, Rama would convert to Catholicism. Following his disagreements with Vatican II, Coomaraswamy was drawn to the Traditionalist Catholics. When his wife was displeased with this conversion, she sought the intervention of Mother Teresa, thus beginning a series of polemics between them. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre appointed Coomaraswamy Professor of Church History at the St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), in Ridgefield, Connecticut, a position he held for about five years until 1983. Along with the Traditionalist Catholic movement, Coomaraswamy remained involved with Traditionalism, and a member of the Foundation for Traditional Studies and was a regular contributor to the foundation’s journal Sophia.

Coomaraswamy was a close friend of the notorious Irish Jesuit and exorcist Malachi Martin (1921 – 1999), who has been accused him of being an Israeli spy.[51] Martin also served as religious editor for Skull and Bones member William F. Buckley’s National Review.[52] Martin took part in the research on the Dead Sea Scrolls, and published a work in two volumes, The Scribal Character of The Dead Sea Scrolls (1958). According to Martin, some of his work involved intelligence gathering behind the Iron Curtain and throughout the Middle East, and at times threatening cardinals with blackmail if they didn’t want to do what Cardinal Bea and the Pope John XXIII wanted from them at the council. “I saw cardinals sweating in front of me,” Martin recalled, “And I began to enjoy it.”[53]

Apparently disillusioned by Vatican II, Martin asked to be released from certain aspects of his Jesuit vows in 1964 and moved to New York City, where he worked for the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and its Commentary Magazine. In his 2007 book Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, Edward K. Kaplan confirmed that Martin cooperated with the ACJ during the Council “for a mixture of motives, both lofty and ignoble… [He] primarily advised the committee on theological issues, but he also provided logistical intelligence and copies of restricted documents.”[54] The AJC’s Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel walked arm-in-arm with Dr. Martin Luther King at the march from Selma, and presented King with the Judaism and World Peace Award in 1965. King called Heschel “my rabbi.”[55] Martin served as private secretary to fellow Jesuit Cardinal Bea (1881 – 1968), who was highly influential during Vatican II as a decisive force in the drafting of Nostra aetate, was the result of Bea’s extensive discussions with Rabbi Heschel. Nostra aetate was only supposed to focus on the relationship between the Catholic Church and Judaism, but Cardinal, decided to create a less contentious document which would stress ecumenism between the Catholic Church and all non-Christian faiths, including Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam.[56] Heschel arranged for Farrar, Straus and Giroux printing company to publish a “kiss and tell” book by Martin under pseudonym Michael Serafian, titled The Pilgrim, about the internal workings of Vatican II and an apologia for the Jews, in hopes that it would influence the deliberations.[57] Martin also claimed to expose secret satanic rites performed inside the Vatican in books like his 1990 non-fiction best-seller, The Keys of This Blood: Pope John Paul II Versus Russia and the West for Control of the New World Order.

 

Traditionalist Freemasonry 

During the days of the Shah, Nasr directed the academy’s journal, Sophia Perennis, the the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy in Teheran, which at the time a “Mecca,” explains Hans Thomas Hakl, “of Islamic wisdom, and also of the so-called Integral Tradition.”[1][58] In the pages of the journal one finds contributions by as roster of Eranos speakers, including Massignon’s former student Henry Corbin. In his short biography of Corbin, Nasr describes how at that time the writings of Guénon and soon after of Frithjof Schuon, who were both his own teachers, were widely discussed in French intellectual circles.[59] Before moving back permanently to France, Corbin visited Teheran for three months every year between 1955 and 1973 under the auspices of the Franco-Iranian Institute. There he founded the Bibliothèque Iranienne, a book series in which appeared numerous important writings on Iranian spirituality. Nasr even claimed the Corbin’s work is altogether the most impressive achievement of orientalist scholarship in the field of Islamic philosophy.[60]

In his short biography of Corbin,, Nasr describes how at the time of his academic activity, the writings of Guénon and soon after of Schuon, who were both his teachers, were widely discussed in French intellectual circles.[61] Shortly after the end of World War II, a Russian Traditionalist living in Paris, Alexandre Mordiof, wrote to the French Grand Lodge, after which the Grand Master, Michel Dumesnil de Gramont (1888 – 1953), and some other senior Masons, who evidently appreciated the work of Guénon as they had that of Oswald Wirth—a founding member of the Rosicrucian Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Croix (OKR+C)—in 1947 authorized the founding of a new Masonic lodge on Traditionalist lines, La Grande Triade (“The Great Triad”), named after Guénon’s book on Masonic initiation, La grande Triade (1946).[62] On Guénon’s instructions, his disciple Jean Reyor (1905 – 1988), a specialist in Freemasonry, esotericism and Christian Hermeticism who had converted to Islam in 1943, joined the Grande Triade shortly after its foundation. However, in Reyor was asked to leave in 1950 after he condemned the lodge for failing to achieve its objectives.[63]

With Jean Tourniac (1919 – 1995), another Traditionalist correspondent of Guénon, Reyor embarked on a second Traditionalist attempt at establishing a Masonic esoteric practice, the Trois Anneaux (“Three Rings”), a fringe lodge not answering to any obedience.[64] Tourniac was initiated in the lodge Tolérance et Cordialité No. 39 of the Grand Lodge of France in Lyon. He became a member in 1951 of the lodge Centre des Amis No. 1 of the French Grand Lodge, in which he was several times an officer from 1959 as well as president of the commission of the Rectified Scottish Rite, founded in 1778 by Jean-Baptiste Willermoz, an initiate of Martinez de Pasqually.[65]

When the death of Guénon in 1951 removed a mediating influence, the Trois Anneaux collapsed in 1953 as Tourniac and Reyor had a falling out. While Reyor ended his participation in Masonry, Tourniac continued as the major figure in Traditionalist Masonry, bringing it closer to the heart of the Grand National Lodge of France. The Grand National Lodge of France was a third obedience—distinct from the French Grand Lodge—established in 1918 by Masons who left the Grand Orient, and it required belief in the Grand Architect of the Universe. It was smaller than either of the other two obediences, and unlike them, was officially recognized by the Grand Lodge of England. Tourniac occupied various official positions in the Grand National Lodge beginning in 1960, and in 1977 became Grand Prior, an office junior only to the Grand Master.[66]

In 1964, Tourniac, with Paul Naudon, Pierre Mariel, Jean Saunier, Jean Baylot and others, founded the study and research lodge of the French Grand National Lodge “Villard de Honnecourt” No. 814.[67] In 1959, Jean Baylot (1897 – 1976), a parliamentary deputy, and the Paris chief of police, was also affiliated with the Grand Lodge Amon-Râ for France of the Supreme Council of Oriental and Primitive Rites of Memphis and Misraïm, and in 1963 he was received in the Martinist Order under the name of Libertas.[68] In 1963, with Marius Lepage, he was a founding member of the Ambroise Paré lodge at the Laval Orient, working at the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.[69] In 1964, Baylot established the Loge nationale de recherches Villard de Honnecourt (“Villard of Honnecourt Research Lodge”), named after the early thirteenth-century architect Villard de Honnecourt, which held lectures and published a scholarly journal devoted to Masonic and Traditionalist questions, titled Les Cahiers Villard de Honnecourt, the quarterly review of Masonic, philosophical and symbolic studies of the French Grand National Lodge which Baylot belonged to.[70] The keynote speaker at its opening meeting was Mircea Eliade.[71] In 1973, Baylot would become Grand Prior of the Grand Prieuré des Gaules, a Masonic obedience founded in 1935 to reactivate the Rectified Scottish Rite that fallen into disuse in the 1830s in France. He was succeeded in the office by Tourniac and then Naudon. Passionate about esotericism, Saunier, a member of the Grand Prieuré des Gaules and Rectified Scottish Rite, became interested in Saint-Yves d’Alveydre and Synarchism, writing two works, La Synarchie (1971) and Saint-Yves d’Alveydre ou une synarchie sans énigme (1981).

Henry Corbin was an honorary member of Villard de Honnecourt.[72] “There can be just as little doubt,” writes Hakl, “that the temple symbolism of Henry Corbin is related to Freemasonry and the Régime Ecossais Rectifié in particular.”[73] In a homage to his friend, published in the Travaux de la loge de recherches Villard de Honnecourt, Gilbert Durand described Corbin’s intense preoccupation with the Templars, the Grail, and the rituals of Pasqually’s order. He also describes how Corbin’s effort to build a community of kindred spirits resulted in the founding of the Université de Saint-Jean de Jérusalem, whose first vice-president he was. Durand goes on to recount that Corbin had already told him of such plans at Eranos in 1964.[74]

In the same year that Nasr established his academy in Tehran, Corbin and Antoine Faivre, along with Durand, Richard Stauffer, and Robert de Chateaubriant, established in Paris an International Center for Comparative Spiritual Research, also known as the Université Saint-Jean de Jérusalem, whose objectives were, in the words of Eliade, who served as an intellectual advisor, “the restoration of traditional sciences and studies in the West.”[75] Ernst Benz, Kathleen Raine, and Jean Brun, also Eranos participants, were also collaborators. The university was under the aegis of the Chivalric Order of Saint John of the Hospital at Jerusalem, also known as the Knights Hospitaller, and had its seat at the abbey of Vaucelles, where the French priory of the order was also situated.[76] The order was peripherally connected with Order of St John of Jerusalem (SOSJ).[77] According to a leaflet published by the university, the order inherited the spiritual legacy of the Templars, as well as the so-called Friends of God, German mysticism, and also the Grail cycle.[78] The Friends of God was a medieval mystical group founded between 1339 and 1343 which grew out of the preaching and teaching of Meister Eckhart.

Despite the predominantly Christian orientation to be supposed by these associations, the work of the university centered upon the commonalities between the three “religions of the book,” meaning, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.[79] The stated goal of the university was establish a “spiritual knighthood” that opposes “the utter confusion in the spirit, in the souls and in the hearts” of the people—“precisely the confusion that has resulted from the debacle of secular institutions in the West.”[80] In a far more detailed draft of the leaflet, titled Pour le concept de l’université Saint Jean De Jérusalem, Corbin adds that he envisions an “inner church” of the kind that has emerged “from Joachim of Fiore through Schelling to Berdyaev.”[81] The mystics of Shia Islam as well, he claimed, were inspired by the same mission. The aim is the rebuilding of the “destroyed Temple” in accordance with the ideal of the “heavenly Jerusalem.”[82] From July 12, 1974, the journal Combat, created by Albert Camus, described the inauguration of the university in the following way: “Jews dedicated to the tradition of the Kabbalah sat next to Muslims from Iran and Mali; the Archbishop of Cambrai and theologians of all obediences shared the same uncomfortable benches with Freemasons and other Masonic members.”[83]

Combat was a French newspaper created in 1941, during World War II, as a clandestine newspaper of the French Resistance. Among its leading contributors were leading Non-Conformist synarchists like Emmanuel Mounier of Esprit and Robert Aron of Ordre Nouveau. Mounier was a protégée of Jacques Maritain and Esprit also published the work of Pierre Klossowski and de Rougemont.[84] Jean-Paul Sartre as well as a contributor, and from 1943 to 1947, its editor-in-chief was Albert Camus. Combat also shared an office with L’Esprit Public of Roland Laudenbach, a periodical that served as the voice for the OAS. Combat published many of articles the synarchist Jean Parvulesco, a protegee of Raymond Abellio.[85] Louis Pauwels joined the work groups of Gurdjieff for fifteen months, until he became editor-in-chief of Combat in 1949 and editor of the newspaper Paris-Presse.[86]

In 1954, while he was the literary director of Bibliothèque Mondiale, Pauwels met Jacques Bergier, a former member of the French Resistance, spy, journalist and writer. And according to Pauwels, it was Andre Breton who was responsible for bringing them together, and who influenced their interest in “Fantastic Realism.”[87] Bergier claims that, in return for certain important services rendered during World War II, he was given the rare privilege after the war by all the governments who had fought against Hitler to consult their “file and forget” (FF) files, being documents about unexplained phenomena. These provided the material for The Morning of the Magicians, which he co-wrote with Pauwels, and which was first published in 1960. The book became a best seller, first in French, and was then translated into English in 1963 as The Dawn of Magic, and in 1964 released in the United States as The Morning of the Magicians, in 1968 in paperback by Avon Books.

Bergier and Pauwels also created Planète, a French fantastic realism magazine, launched the year after the Morning of the Magicians, running from 1961 to 1972. Mark Sedgwick has pointed out that Planète, which featured Guénon as the centerpiece of its second issue, “was responsible for spreading simplified Traditionalism throughout Latin Europe,” achieving a wide circulation of as many as 100,000 copies within its first few months.[88] Philosophers, sociologists, and writers, such as Eliade, Edgar Morin, Odile Passeron, Jean-Bruno Renard, Umberto Eco, and Jean d’Ormesson, considered this the leading phenomenon of the sixties.[89]

Nasr was part of the Istituto Ticinese di Alti Studi or ITAS (Ticinian Institute for High Studies), which held summer seminars in Lugano, an hour’s travel from Ascona, between 1970 and 1973, which included several Eranos speakers, such as Jean Servier, Hans Sedlmayr, Karl Kerényi, Margarethe Riemschneider, Elémire Zolla, Ronconi, Marius Schneider, and Armando Plebe. The idea for these conferences came from Elémire Zolla (1926 – 2002), an Italian historian of religion, along with the son-in-law of Ezra Pound, Prince Boris de Rachewiltz (1926 – 1997), an Egyptologist and esotericist, and Pio Filippani-Ronconi (1920 – 2010), a cryptographer with the Italian Defence Ministry and the SID.[90] Born to a family of Italian Black Nobility, Ronconi’s interests in occultism led him to study and practice Tantra, and to know Julius Evola, Arturo Reghini and other members of the Ur Group. He was a follower of Mussolini and fought in the Waffen SS during the World War II.[91] After the war he was appointed lecturer of Sanskrit Language and Literature, and continued his studies, getting to know Ur Group member and mentor to Evolva, Massimo Scaligero (1906 – 1980),  and through him the works of Rudolf Steiner. In 1959, he became a key pupil of Giuseppe Tucci (1894 – 1984), Italy’s foremost orientalist, who specialized in Tibetan culture and the history of Buddhism. In addition to books on magic, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism and Tantra, Ronconi was also the author of Ismaeliti ed Assassini (“Ismailis and Assassins,” 1973). In 1970, he became Extraordinary Professor of Iranian Dialectology, and in 1972 Full Professor at the chair of Religions and Philosophies of India.[92]

In 1965, Ronconi was one of the lecturers at a conference on “Revolutionary Warfare” held at the Hotel Parco dei Principi in Rome, organized by the Alberto Pollio Institute of Military History. Prominent figures who attended included Pino Rauti, one of Evola’s closest disciples, who founded the Ordine Nuovo, which played a central role in the CIA’s “Strategy of Tension” in Italy during the 1970s. Also invited were Guido Giannettini, journalist and SID agent; and Edgardo Beltrametti and Enrico De Boccard, two journalists who went on to set up the Nuclei di Difesa dello Stato (“State Defence Nuclei”).[93] Also attending was Le Cercle member and chief Gladio operator Stefano Delle Chiaie, a friend of Licio Gelli—an Italian financier who had served as a liaison officer between the Italian government and Nazi Germany, and Venerable Master the rogue P2 Masonic Lodge—who founded the Avanguardia Nazionale (“National Vanguard”), and his pupil, Mario Merlino. Otto Skorzeny’s Paladin Group, ostensibly a legitimate security consultancy, whose real purpose was to recruit and operate mercenaries for right-wing regimes worldwide, hired the services of Delle Chiaie, whose leadership qualities were immediately recognized by Skorzeny who took him under his wing as his protégé.[94]

The ITAS’s first conference in 1970 saw the official presentation of Conoscenza Religiosa, a journal established this by Zolla in 1969, which according to Hakl, “must surely be counted among the most important European publications to deal in a scholarly way with religious and above all esoteric themes.”[95] Topics covered ranged from shamanism to Satanism and included mysticism, numerology, Sufism, yoga, and the Kabbalah. Among the contributing authors were Nasr, Corbin, Faivre, Jean Servier, and Gershom Scholem. In 1973, Faivre, at that time a professor of German studies, spoke at Eranos for the first time, having attended the conferences regularly since 1967. Among the many books he has written, Faivre’s two-volume Accès de l’Ésotérisme occidental is regarded as the best introduction to Western esotericism.[96] Faivre is also responsible for two prestigious book series, the Bibliothèque de l’Hermétisme, and the Cahiers de l’Hermétisme. The original editorial team of the Cahiers included Eranos speakers such as Ernst Benz, Gilbert Durand, Mircea Eliade, and Henri-Charles Puech.[97]

 

Luciferian International

A further link between the Traditionalist circles and the Gladio networks was Claudio Mutti. Mutti was a follower of Gladio terrorist Franco Freda, a disciple of Evola, a member of Ordine Nuovo, and one of the leading neo-Nazi and neo-Fascist intellectuals of the post-war Italian far-right.[98] Mutti was a protégé Jean-François Thiriart, a member of the leading organization of the French Nouvelle Droite, known as GRECE, the Groupement de recherche et d’études pour la civilisation européenne (“Research and Study Group for European Civilization”), founded by de Alain de Benoist and others who belonged to the World Union of National Socialists (WUNS).[99] Some of the prominent names that have collaborated with GRECE include Arthur Koestler, MK-Ultra doctor Hans Eysenck, Konrad Lorenz, Mircea Eliade, Jeune Europe founder Jean-Francois Thiriart, Thierry Maulnier and Anthony Burgess, author of A Clockwork Orange. Koestler, like Raymond Abellio, leader of the Mouvement Social Révolutionnaire (MSR), was part of the patronage committee of GRECE journal Nouvelle Ecole.[100]

The Nouvelle Droite later spread to other countries, gaining a strong foothold in continental Europe, especially in Germany, where Pierre Krebs led the organization Thule-Seminar, promoting right-wing identity-politics based on the supposed cultural and historical roots of the Indo-Europeans.[101] As emblems, it uses the Black Sun, as well as the combined Tiwaz rune and Sig rune. Its ideology has been described as based on the Conservative Revolution and including elements of anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism and being close to apartheid.[102] The first publication of the Thule-Seminar was Krebs’ Das unvergängliche Erbe (“The Everlasting Heritage”), which featured a preface by Eysenck. Eysenck also wrote an introduction for Race, Intelligence and Bias in Academe by Roger Pearson, a British anthropologist, eugenics advocate and founder of the Northern League, an organization that recruited ex-officers of the SS and promoted Pan-Germanism, anti-Semitism and Neo-Nazi racial ideology.[103] Eysenck’s book The Inequality of Man and Race and Intelligence and Education was translated and published by GRECE’s publishing house, Corpernicus. In 1974, Eysenck became a member of the academic advisory council of Pearson’s Mankind Quarterly and a member of the comité de patronage of GRECE’s Nouvelle École.[104]

Mutti was also a friend Luc Jouret, who with Joseph di Mambro founded the infamous of the UFO religion and suicide cult the Order of the Solar Temple, which combined the traditions of Martinism, AMORC and the Polaires Brotherhood.[105] The Order of the Solar Temple was closely connected to the Luciferian movement.[106] According to Andre Wautier, a French author and Theosophist, after the World War II, the lodges of the Palladian Rite appear to have been integrated into the Lucifer Gesellschaft, a group of Luciferian sects based in Cologne, with branches in Belgium, France, Great Britain and other European countries. In 1976, the Lucifer Gesellschaft merged with the Green Order, founded in 1945 by followers of the Thule Society and the Polar Brotherhood, whose adherents honor Lucifer, Mithra, Kali, and Lilith.[107] According to Belgian former AMORC member and author Marcel Roggemans, the L’Ordre Vert Celtique (“Celtic Green Order) was founded in 1970 by René Lixon under the pseudonym Lug, which is Celtic for “fire.” The order also makes itself known under the name L’Eglise Européenne de Mithras (“European Church of Mithras”).[108]

On May 14, 1975, the representatives of the various Luciferian associations, who had international connections with Lopez Rega, were present in Brussels, at the temple of the Green Order, in order to seal the charter of unification of the Legions of Mithras.[109] Rega (1916 – 1989) was an Argentine politician who served as Minister of Social Welfare from 1973 to 1975, first under Juan Perón and continuing under Isabel Perón. Rega was known as El Brujo (“the Warlock”) and the Argentine Evola.[110] Rega was a friend of Licio Gelli and also a member of P2, which also had branches in France, Switzerland, the US and South America, and included among its members several Argentinian leaders. Rega was the founder of the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance (AAA), an organization of right-wing murder, terror, and propaganda whose activity was coordinated with the military regime. The AAA was also the Argentine branch of the WACL, and played a significant role in Operation Condor.[111] Officially launched in 1975 at a meeting in Santiago, Chile, between the chief of the political police, the Chilean secret police, DINA and representatives of the CIA, Condor was a secret operation whereby the right-wing dictatorships of Latin America united their “services” against activists and progressive opponents to military regimes.[112] Delle Chiaie and Skorzeny’s Paladin Group contributed personnel to Rega’s AAA, which was involved in that country’s Dirty War of 1973 to 1981.[113]

The goal of the gathering in Brussels was to “unite all the polar and solar forces before the Age of Aquarius, and the new man—the superman.”[114] A charter proclaimed the unification of the most important Luciferian societies: the Green Order, the Grand Lodge of the Dragon, the Celtic Brotherhood, the Aryan Order, the Sons of Fire, and the Luzifer Gesellschaft (“Lucifer Society”) based in Cologne. They all made a pact with Lug to prepare the advent of a “Luciferian International,” when the Green Order made the following announcement:

 

The time has come for a SOLID UNION of all our societies, it is high time that the sons and daughters of Hyperborea raise the flame of the new times and of the divine superman, heir of the Grail and of the boreal crown. From Shambhala, the holy city of Agartha, comes this polar message: UNITE![115]

 

Mutti, converted to Islam through the influence of Guénon, whom he discovered through his study of Evola, and took the name of Omar Amin, in honor of Johann von Leers, who had worked with Skorzeny managing anti-Israeli propaganda in Egypt.[116] Von Leers was welcomed in Egypt by al-Husseini and he became the political adviser to the Information Department under Nasser.[117] Also influenced by von Leers was former journalist who supposedly converted to Islam, Ahmed Huber. Huber’s views were strongly influenced by his meeting in 1965 with al-Husseini.[118] But Huber is also a member of a group composed of former SS veterans calling itself Avalon Gemeinschaft, whose founders also embraced the jargon of the Nouvelle Droite and Krebs’s Thule-Seminar.[119] Avalon Gemeinschaft claims to be based on the “great Celtic tradition,” and at every solstice he meets under the moon in a forest grove with a few hundred European Druids, with whom he is preparing the “end of our decline.” And with the Thule Society, he also works for the restoration of “greater Germany.”[120]

Mutti was also appointed Emir in another offshoot of the Shadhili Sufi order, the notorious Murabitun Movement, founded by a Scottish convert to Islam named Ian Dallas, a.k.a. Sheikh Abdalqadir al-Murabit.[121] Dallas spent his young adulthood working as a playwright and TV dramatist, and had a small role in Federico Fellini’s film 8½. In the 1960s, Dallas was part of the “Swinging London” scene, had an affair with the actress Vivien Leigh, seventeen years his senior, and became a close confidant of Edith Piaf.[122] He also befriended Eric Clapton, George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Kenneth Tynan, and R.D. Laing, a psychiatrist associated with the Tavistock Institute, and a highly admired teacher at the Esalen Institute.[123] Dallas converted to Islam in 1967 and became a member of the Darqawi branch of the Shadhili Sufi order, also descended from Guénon’s Ahmad Al-Alawi.[124]

Dallas celebrated Hitler as a “great genius and great vision,” praises Wagner as the “most spiritual of men among men in an age of darkness,” and regards the black stone of the Kabbah in Mecca as the Holy Grail. He referred to Carl Schmitt as “the greatest legalist of the last century,” and to Heidegger as “the last century’s greatest philosopher.”[125] According to Dallas, “And Heidegger—not Ibn Abdul-Wahhab!—was the one to say ‘Allah’ after Nietzsche had said ‘le ileha’ [no god]. One billion Muslims are enslaved because they think that the idea that they have of God is God!”[126] In 1990, Dallas held a symposium in honor of Ernst Jünger—one of the godfathers of the German Conservative—which ended with a Masonic ceremonial. Also in attendance was Albert Hofmann, the scientist who discovered LSD.[127] Hofmann had told Timothy Leary about his informal “wisdom school” centered around psychedelic sessions with leading European intellectuals, which included Jünger.[128]

 


[1] Dreyfuss. Hostage to Khomeini, p. 211.

[2] Wahid Azal. “Wikileaks on Seyyed Hossein Nasr.” wahidazal.blogspot.ca (December 1, 2016).

[3] Seyyed Hossein Nasr. “His Highness the Aga Khan: Reminiscences of over Six Decades.” Sacred Web. Retrieved from https://www.sacredweb.com/tribute/his-highness-the-aga-khan/

[4] “Sacred Web: Special Tribute to Hazar Imam by Dr Seyyed Hossein Nasr.” IsmailiMail (June 26, 2016). Retrieved from https://ismailimail.blog/2018/06/26/sacred-web-special-tribute-to-hazar-imam-by-dr-seyyed-hossein-nasr/

[5] Seyyed Hossein Nasr. “His Highness the Aga Khan: Reminiscences of over Six Decades.” Sacred Web. Retrieved from https://www.sacredweb.com/tribute/his-highness-the-aga-khan/

[6] Dreyfuss. Hostage to Khomeini, p. 101.

[7] H.P. Blavatsky. “What is Theosophy?” (Age of the Sage). Retrieved from http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/theosophy/what_is_theosophy.html

[8] Martin Lings & Clinton Minnaar. The Underlying Religion: An Introduction to the Perennial Philosophy (World Wisdom, v), p. xii.

[9] Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Knowledge and the Sacred (State University of New York, 1989), p. 70.

[10] Ramin Jahanbegloo. In Search of the Sacred: A Conversation with Seyyed Hossein Nasr on His Life and Thought (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010), p. 114.

[11] Hakl. Eranos, p. 106.

[12] The Perennial Philosophy. Introduction (London: Chatto & Windus, 1946) p. 1.

[13] Carrie Hojnicki. “Timothy Leary’s Hitchcock Estate in Millbrook, New York, May Be the State's Strangest Home.” Architectural Digest (July 28, 2017).

[14] Ibid.

[15] Wasserstrom. “Defeating Evil from Within,” p. 49.

[16] Martin A. Lee & Bruce Shlain. Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD : The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond (Grove Press, 1992). p. 190.

[17] David Livingstone. Ordo ab Chao. Volume Four, Chapter 9: JFK Assassination.

[18] Nigel Cawthorne. Cults: The World’s Most Notorious Cults (London: Quercus Publishing, 2019).

[19] Kerry Bolton. Revolution from Above (UK: Arktos Media, 2011) p. 125.

[20] Lee & Shlain. Acid Dreams, pp. 97–98.

[21] “in my opinion  …” Solomon, p. 78. Cited in Jay Stevens. Storming Heaven: LSD & The American Dream (Perennial Library, 1988).

[22] Robert Anton Wilson. Cosmic Trigger (1977) p. 175.

[23] Timothy Leary — The Man Who Turned On America. BBC Prime documentary.

[24] Lee & Shlain. Acid Dreams, p. 85.

[25] Hakl. Eranos, p. 106.

[26] Ibid.

[27] Jeffrey J. Kripal. Esalen, America and the Religion of No Religion  (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), p. 128.

[28] Robert Ellwood. The Politics of Myth (SUNY Press, 1999).

[29] William McGuire. Bollingen: An Adventure in Collecting the Past (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1982), p.151

[30] Dana Sawyer. Huston Smith: Wisdom Keeper (Fons Vital, 2014), p. 49.

[31] Martin Lings. A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century: Shaikh Ahmad al-Alawi (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1973).

[32] Jean-Baptiste Aymard. Frithjof Schuon: Life and Teachings (SUNY, 2002), p. 10.

[33] Hakl. Eranos, p. 284.

[34] Mark Sedgwick. Against the Modern World, p. 153.

[35] Mark Sedwick. Traditionalism: The Radical Project for Restoring Sacred Order (Oxford University Press, 2023), p. 278.

[36] Gershom G. Scholem. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Jerusalem: Schocken 1941, 3d revised ed: reprint 1961), p. 229.

[37] Alan Unterman. Dictionary of Jewish Lore and Legend (London: Thames and Hudson 1991), p. 181. Cf. p. 175.

[38] Hugh Urban. “A Dance of Masks: The Esoteric Ethics of Frithjof Schuon.” Crossing Boundaries: Essays on the Ethical Status of Mysticism, G. William Barnard & Jeffrey J. Kripal, (eds.) (New York: Seven Bridges Press, 2002), p. 415.

[39] Hugh Urban. “A Dance of Masks: The Esoteric Ethics of Frithjof Schuon.” Crossing Boundaries: Essays on the Ethical Status of Mysticism, G. William Barnard & Jeffrey J. Kripal, (eds.) (New York: Seven Bridges Press, 2002), pp. 406-40.

[40] Ibid.

[41] Deborah Baker. The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism (Graywolf Press Canada, 2011), p. 90.

[42] “Maryam Jameelah (b. 1934 CE).” Islamic Encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://islamicencyclopedia.org/public/index/topicDetail/page/13/id/634

[43] John L. Esposito & John O. Voll. Makers of Contemporary Islam (Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 56.

[44] Khaled Ahmed. “Maududi and Maryam Jameela.” The Express Tribune (June 11, 2011). Retrieved from https://tribune.com.pk/story/186920/maududi-and-maryam-jameela

[45] Ibid.

[46] Esposito & Voll. Makers of Contemporary Islam, p. 57.

[47] Khaled Ahmed. “Maududi and Maryam Jameela.” The Express Tribune (June 11, 2011). Retrieved from https://tribune.com.pk/story/186920/maududi-and-maryam-jameela

[48] Biju Abdul Qadir. “Despair and Hopelessness Forbidden, Tread the Future with Caution: Maryam Jameelah.” Young Muslim Digest (July 2025). Retrieved from https://www.youngmuslimdigest.com/interview/07/2005/despair-and-hopelessness-forbidden-tread-the-future-with-caution-maryam-jameelah/

[49] Ibid.

[50] Ibid.

[51] Brian Doran. “Malachi Martin: God’s Messenger – In the Words of Those Who Knew Him Best.” (cassette) (Monrovia: Catholic Treasures, 2001); “How Could ‘Cardinal Siri’ (A.K.A. Pope Gregory XVII) Have Been a Pope in Exile You Ask? Look at History.” Today’s Catholic World (TCW) (December 30, 2005).

[52] Malachi Martin. “On Human Love.” National Review (September 2, 1977).

[53] Ben L. Kaufman. “Jesus Now Author Not A Swashbuckler.” The Cincinnati Enquirer (December 22, 1973).

[54] Edward Kaplan. Spiritual Radical, Abraham Joshua Heschel in Americal, 1940-1972 (Yale University Press, 2007), p. 243.

[55] Peter Dreier. “Selma ‘s Missing Rabbi.” Huffington Post (January 17, 2015).

[56] Lauren Markoe. “The ‘Splainer: What is ‘Nostra Aetate,’ and what does it have to do with Catholic-Jewish relations?” Religious News Service (December 10, 2015). Retrieved from https://religionnews.com/2015/12/10/splainer-nostra-aetate-catholic-church-makes-nice-jews/

[57] Ibid., p. 254.

 

[58] Hakl. Eranos, p. 230.

[59] Ibid., p. 162.

[60] Ibid.

[61] Ibid.

[62] Sedgwick. Against the Modern World, p. 127.

[63] Ibid.

[64] Ibid.

[65] Jean Baylot. Grande Loge Nationale Française. Le livre du Centenaire (Paris: Scribe, 2013), p. 251.

[66] Sedgwick. Against the Modern World, p. 143.

[67] Baylot. Grande Loge Nationale Française. Le livre du Centenaire, p. 251.

[68] Ibid., pp. 250–253.

[69] Ibid., pp. 250–253.

[70] Sedwick. Against the Modern World, p. 143.

[71] Ibid.

[72] Hakl. Eranos, p. 277.

[73] Ibid., p. 278.

[74] Ibid., p. 278.

[75] Sedgwick. Against the Modern World, p. 156.

[76] Hakl. Eranos, p. 275.

[77] Arnaud Chaffanjon & Galimard Flavigny. Ordres et contre-ordres de chevalerie  (MercFrance, 1982)

[78] Hakl. Eranos, p. 275.

[79] Ibid., p. 276.

[80] Giuliano Glauco: “Il Santo Graal del Cavaliere Henry Corbin.” Atrium, 2: 2 (2000), pp. 14–26; cited in Hakl. Eranos, p. 276.

[81] Hakl. Eranos,  p. 276.

[82] Ibid.

[83] Ibid.

[84] John Hellman. “Jacques Maritain and the Rise of Fascism,” p. 37

[85] “Le décès de Jean Parvulesco.” Le Magazine littéraire (novembre 23, 2010).

[86] Alexandre Devecchio. “Louis Pauwels, la liberté de penser.” Le Figaro (August 20, 2021), pp. 23-24. Retrieved from https://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lefigaro.fr%2Fvox%2Fculture%2Flouis-pauwels-ou-la-liberte-de-penser-20210820

[87] Gary Lachman. “The Fantastic Reality of Pauwels and Bergier.” New Dawn (September–October, 2017), 164. Retrieved from https://www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/secret-history/the-fantastic-reality-of-pauwels-and-bergier.

[88] Sedgwick. Against the Modern World, 208.

[89] Umberto Eco. “La mystique de Planète.” La guerre du faux (Le Livre de Poche, 1985).

[90] Hakl. Eranos, p. 274.

[91] Francesca Greco. “Histories of Philosophy and Thought in the Italian Language: A Bibliographical Guide from 1480 to 2024.” Histories of Philosophies in Global Perspectives, Series I Bibliographies I/3 (Universitätsverlag Hildesheim, 2024), p. 71 n. 223. Retrieved from https://philarchive.org/archive/FRAHOP

[92] Ibid.

[93] “Bombs and Secrets.” Centro studi libertari. Retrieved from http://cdn.centrostudilibertari.it/llbs/Secrets_and_bombs.pdf

[94] Stuart Christie. General Franco Made Me a ‘terrorist’: The Christie File: Part 2, 1964-1967 (Stuart Christie: 2003), p. 33.

[95] Hakl. Eranos, p. 275.

[96] Ibid., p. 236.

[97] Ibid.

[98] Sedgwick. Against the Modern World, p. 181.

[99] Nicola Lebourg. “The French Far Right in Russia’s Orbit.” Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs (May 15, 2018).

[100] Tamir Bar-On. “The Ambiguities of the Nouvelle Droite, 1968-1999”. The European Legacy 6 (3) (2001), pp. 333–351, 2001.

[101] Pierre Krebs. Mut zur Identitat: Alter nativ en zum Prinzip der Gleichheit (Stuckum: Thule Bibliothek, 1988).

[102] Cyprian Blamires. World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia (ABC-CLIO, 2006). pp. 665–666.

[103] Ryback Timothy. Hitler’s Private Library: The Books that Shaped His Life (New York: Knopf, 2008), p. 110.

[104] Michael Billig. Psychology, Racism, and Fascism (A. F. & R. Publications, 1979).

[105] Jim Keith. Mind-control, World Control (Adventures Unlimited Press, 1997), p. 193.

[106] Milko Bogard. In the Wake of the Astral Force: La Fraternité des Polaires (Milko Bogard, 2020).

[107] Andre Wautier. Dictionnaire des Gnostiques et des principaux inities (2004). Retrieved from http://www.livrespourtous.com/e-books/view/Dictionnaire-des-gnostiques-et-des-principaux-inities.html

[108] Marcel Roggemans. Geschiedenis Van de Occulte En Mystieke Broederschappen (Lulu.com, 2010), p. 238.

[109] Ibid.

[110] (Spanish) En el mismo barco (December 14, 1998), p. 12.

[111] Russ Bellant. The Coors Connection (South End Press, 1988), p. 85.

[112] Gérard Devienne. “Latin America in the 1970s: ‘Operation Condor,’ an International Organization for Kidnapping Opponents.” L’Humanite in English (January 1, 2007). Retrieved from http://www.humaniteinenglish.com/article478.html

[113] Stuart Christie. General Franco Made Me a ‘terrorist’: The Christie File: Part 2, 1964-1967 (Stuart Christie: 2003), p. 132.

[114] Jean-Paul Bourré. Les sectes Lucifériennes aujourd'hui (Belfond, 1978), p. 100.

[115] Ibid.

[116] “Neofascismo e Islam.” Online Gnosis: Rivista Italiana di Intelligence (n. 4/2005).

[117] “Who’s who in Nazi Germany,” Robert Solomon Wistrich (Psychology Press, 2002). p. 152-153.

[118] “Group Forms Ties Between Islamic, Neo-Nazi Extremists.” CNN.com/Transcripts (Aired February 28, 2002).

[119] Kerry Koogan. “Achmed Huber, The Avalon Gemeinschaft, and the Swiss ‘New Right’.” Spitfire List (May 1, 2002). Retrieved from: http://spitfirelist.com/news/achmed-huber-the-avalon-gemeinschaft-and-the-swiss-new-right/

[120] Labeviere. Dollars for Terror (New York: Algora Publishing. 2000), p. 143.

[121] Othman Abu-Sahnun the Italian. “The Murabituns & Free Masonry.” Murabitun Files. Retrieved from http://web.archive.org/web/20060906091722/http://murabitun.cyberummah.org/index.htm

[122] Alan Howe. “Ian Dallas gave Eric Clapton a book — and Layla was born.” The Australian (August 7, 2021). Retrieved from https://amp.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/ian-dallas-gave-eric-clapton-a-book-and-layla-was-born/news-story/678f6cb3bebaf5ae58d5fffeac133311

[123] Walaa Quisay. Neo-Traditionalism in Islam in the West: Orthodoxy, Spirituality and Politics (Edinburgh University Press, 2023), p. 29.

[124] Ibid.

[125] Shakyh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi Media. “The Lebanon Crisis II” (July 25, 2006). Retrieved from https://shaykhabdalqadir.com/2006/07/25/the-lebanon-crisis-ii/

[126] Ian Dallas. El Camino Hacia El Manana. Cited in Othman Abu-Sahnun The Italian. “Ian Dalla and Free Masonry.” Murabitun Files. Retrieved from http://web.archive.org/web/20060906091949/http://murabitun.cyberummah.org/free-masonry/ernst_junger.htm

[127] Othman Abu-Sahnun the Italian. “The Murabituns & Free Masonry,” Murabitun Files. Retrieved from http://web.archive.org/web/20060906091722/http://murabitun.cyberummah.org/index.htm

[128] Lee & Shlain. Acid Dreams, p. 171.

Divide & Conquer