The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion and the Harran Colony
In my previous article, Abbé Saunière and the Rosicrucians, I looked at Abbé Berenger Saunière’s links with the Martinists, a pseudo-Masonic organisation with Monarchist and Catholic leanings, and his possible links to the Heiron du Val d’Or, a strange cult that sought to erect a Catholic hermetic freemasonry, which worked to prepare the way for the social and political reign of Christ the King in the year 2000. The Heiron also attempted to demonstrate that the origins of Christianity lay in the mystical Atlantis. However, the Heiron’s aims would seem to have something in common with another group, whose origins lie far back in history and who were responsible for one of the most controversial documents in modern history – one whose contents are currently being implemented before our eyes.
The Heiron du Val d’Or
Quoting from
Tracy R Twyman’s article on the Hieron of Val d'Or:
“Furthermore, there was during this period in time a secret society with stated goals very similar to those enumerated in The Protocols of Zion, and they were in fact, apparently, an auxiliary order of the Priory of Sion. They were called “The Hieron du Val d’Or…”
As I pointed out, Jean-Luc Chaumeil in his 1979 book Le Tresor du Triangle d’Or (The Treasure of the Golden Triangle), states that the Hieron practiced a version of Scottish Rite Freemasonry, and the upper degrees of this order constituted the lower degrees of the Priory of Sion itself.
According to authors Henry Lincoln, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, writing in the ‘The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail’, the Hieron’s mystic teachings contained:
“a characteristic emphasis on sacred geometry and various sacred sites... an insistence on a mystical or Gnostic truth underlying mythological motifs”, and “a preoccupation with the origins of men, races, languages, and symbols... .”
An emphasis on sacred geometry suggests a similar philosophy to the Freemasons and the Rosicrucians of Sir Francis Bacon who saw in geometry something sacred. Moreover, the reference to the Hieron having a preoccupation with the origins of men, races, languages, and symbols reminds me of another group that placed great emphasis on these things and that was the Theosophists of Madam Blavatsky.
Continuing with Henry Lincoln, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh’s description, the Hieron was:
“Simultaneously Christian and ‘trans-Christian.’ It stressed the importance of the Sacred Heart... sought to recognise Christian and pagan mysteries”, and “Ascribed special significance to Druidic thought - which it... regarded as partially Pythagorean.”
As Tracy Twyman tells us, the Hieron was also unabashedly pro-monarchist and sought a restoration of the Holy Roman Empire. The new empire would have been a reflection of Heaven on Earth, that specifically of the Hermetic Arcadian ideal. This last point will become more relevant below.
Jean-Luc Chaumeil described the Hieron’s ideals as:
“...a theocracy wherein nations would be no more than provinces, their leaders but proconsuls in the service of a world occult government consisting of an elite. For Europe, this regime of the Great King implied a double hegemony of the Papacy and the Empire, of the Vatican and of the Habsburgs, who would have been the Vatican’s right arm.”
The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion
The idea of a world occult government consisting of an elite does sound suspiciously familiar. After all, did not the late
David Rockefeller, the long-time Chairman of the Bilderberg Group, say “
You will have World Government whether you like it or not”. So, if the Heiron du Val d’Or were an offshoot of the Priory of Sion (forming the lower degrees of the latter), what does this say about the Priory? Remember, Pierre Plantard only registered the Priory of Sion in the 1950’s or early 1960’s, whereas the Heiron du Val d’Or dates back to 1873 and the Martinists even earlier to the mid-18th Century. It would suggest that the real Priory of Sion continued to survive after its departure from the Holy Land with the end of Christian
Outremer and the Crusader states but in a different form. Did it become the Rosicrucians who “
moved like a thief in the night” against the Templars?
Tracy Twyman commenced her article on the Heiron du Val d’Or by referring to the notorious
Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. She made the following comments about the Protocols:
They lay out in straightforward rhetoric the Machiavellian steps which an international conspiracy would go through to take control of the world’s governments and institutions, and to maintain power, largely through the manipulation of the masses, as well as those already in power.
It recommends the proliferation of dangerous creeds, philosophies, religious and political ideas such as Marxism, Anarchism, Atheism, and Darwinism, all to sow discord and cause the breakdown of traditional institutions, clearing the way for the new hierarchy of which the Protocols speak.
It is bone-chilling to read such a document as this, written in the nineteenth century, which predicts perfectly the results of a conspiracy that in every way resemble the world in which we currently live.
But what the Protocols outline is much more than your typical paranoid New World Order scenario. They speak of a global monarch, the “King of the blood of Sion”, of “the dynastic roots of King David”, who as ruler of a new “Masonic kingdom” will be both the “King of the Jews” and “the real Pope”, acting as “the patriarch of an international church.”
Of him, The Protocols state,
“Certain members of the seed of David will prepare the Kings and their heirs... Only the King and the three who stood sponsor for him will know what is coming.”
Finally, the Protocols end with a curious postscript: “Signed by the representatives of Sion of the 33rd Degree.”
The authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail presented a theory regarding The Protocols with which I overwhelmingly concur. They proposed that the “Learned Elders of Zion” were in fact the Priory of Sion, and that this document had been, originally, the minutes of one of their meetings, which fell into the wrong hands and was subsequently transformed into a weapon for anti-Semites.
It certainly bears all of the earmarks and catch phrases for a “Priory document”, and over all the goals that are set forth within, as well as the methods proposed for achieving them, fit my conception of the Priory’s own objectives, although I imagine that in certain sections of the document the original version might have been phrased more delicately.
Furthermore, there is circumstantial evidence to indicate that this was indeed the case. The earliest known version of The Protocols was actually written in French, and most scholars believe it to have been partially based on a political satire written by Maurice Joly against Napoleon II which was published in Geneva in 1864. Maurice Joly was also a member of the Rose-Croix order, and good friends with Victor Hugo.
But perhaps it was the other way around. Perhaps the “Protocols of Sion” and the anti-Napoleon satire were themselves based on the same Priory of Sion document, which Joly, as a potential member of the Priory, could possibly have had access to.
We cannot know for sure, but it is known that in 1884, copies of The Protocols of Zion were found circulating amongst the members of a Masonic lodge to which Papus himself belonged - the lodge where the aforementioned legend of the wise Egyptian sage named Ormus (whom the Priory of Sion called themselves after) first surfaced.
After this Twyman makes the connection to the
Hieron du Val d’Or already mentioned:
“Furthermore, there was during this period in time a secret society with stated goals very similar to those enumerated in The Protocols of Zion, and they were in fact, apparently, an auxiliary order of the Priory of Sion. They were called “The Hieron du Val d’Or…”
However, as mentioned above, we know that Pierre Plantard only established the ‘’Priory of Sion’ (whose ‘Dossiers Secrets’ Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln were loaned) as a society under French law in the 1950’s or early 1960’s. So, unless we are looking here at the survival of the original medieval Priory of Sion, we need to look at its modern front, which I have suggested is the Rosicrucians. It is therefore noticeable that we see the Protocols circulating amongst the members of a Masonic lodge to which Papus belonged. You may recall that Papus was the brilliant young Parisian doctor, Gerard Encausse, who although born in Spain was brought up in Paris and went on to establish the Mystical Order called the ‘Ordre Martiniste’. After being initiated into Martinism, Papus started to reorganise it, setting up a network of lodges. He also assisted Joseph Péladon in founding the cabbalistic Rosicrucian order and became a central figure in the distribution of occult ideas, even ending up at the Russian Court of Czar Nicholas II. But if the Priory of Sion became or morphed into the Rosicrucians and the Martinists, where did its roots ultimately lie?
The Colony at Giza
Although the Protocols are generally held to be a Czarist secret police hoax, the Cassiopaeans have confirmed that they were genuine but not Zionist in origin, having been composed in Turkey. They did not confirm though which group had written them until the session dated 22 August 1998:
Q: One of the things I noticed in this book was that they said that there was a colony from the city of Harran in what is nowadays Turkey, and that this colony formerly resided on the Giza plateau. Is there any connection between this colony they mention and the fact that you said that the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ were composed in Turkey by an ‘Aryan’ source?
A: Yes.
Q: What relationship is there?
A: One and the same.
Harran and Arcadia
Hence, we learn that this group formerly occupied the Giza Plateau but subsequently moved to the City of Harran in today’s Turkey. The City of Harran has an ancient history dating back to circa 6200 BC. During the Early Bronze Age (3000-2500 BC), Harran grew into a walled city. The city-state of Harran was part of a network of city-states, called the Kish civilisation, centred in the Syrian Levant and upper Mesopotamia. Its life as a sovereign city-state came to an end when it was annexed into the
Akkadian Empire (founded by
Sargon the Great) and its successors, the
Neo-Sumerian Empire and
Old Assyrian Empire. After this it was again independent for a time, until it was abandoned in the
Amorite expansion in 1800 BC. It was later rebuilt as the
Assyrian city of
Harrānu, meaning
'cross-roads' in the Akkadian language.
For at least one Forum member who has followed the Alton Towers thread, this last reference would certainly support his proposal that Akkadia may have been Arcadia, where the Aryan one of Trent traversed their crossroads:
Please note that I am not unsympathetic to this view since, as I have said before, Arcadia can mean different things to different people depending on the age in question. To the Greeks of the Classical Age, for example, Arcadia was in the Peloponnese. Moreover, I appreciate that the C’s like puns and the fact that Harran means “crossroads” would certainly fit this pattern.
In the
Session dated 28 November 1998, Laura also took the view that Arcadia was in Turkey:
A: Well, quite simply we would say, where is Arcadia?
Q: (L) Arcadia was Turkey. You have made many references to Turkey, to Troy, which was located in what is now Turkey. A lot of funny stuff tracks back there. And, Troy means ‘three.’ Interesting. [
MJF: Compare “Troy” to “Trent” here, which can also mean three.]
A: Tis a clue for you, not a destination!
Why did the C’s use “Tis” here instead of “this is”? Did they intend to point us towards England and specifically Yorkshire and the Trent River? I say this because “Tis” is old English expression, which is not used much today. However, the one place in the country where it is still commonly used is Yorkshire along with other old expressions such as “Thee” and “Thou”. Could this have been a clue to who the one true Essene is? If so, it would seem to suggest a connection between that person and Britain.
However, Laura subsequently drew a connection in a later session between the Arcadians and the Trojans, who were the enemies of the Arcadians in Homer’s Iliad. This would seem to place Arcadia in western Europe, most probably France, where the Achaeans (Celtic tribes) dwelt at that time. Please note that this was before Laura had read Iman Wilkens’ book ‘Where Troy Once Stood’, which would change her view of Troy being located in Turkey as Heinrich Schliemann had proposed when he found what he thought was the ancient city of Troy in Anatolia.
Session dated 5 December 1998:
Q: Then, you also said: 'quite simply we would say, where is Arcadia?' Arcadia ...
A: You need to work on that one. The answers to these mysteries are not easily solved, but well worth it!
Q: The chief thing I noticed about Arcadia was, the Arcadians were the enemies of the Trojans, they were the creators of the Trojan Horse - a huge deception... and the Celts are supposed to be the descendants of the refugees from Troy. And, when Hitler came along, one of his ideals was to resurrect Arcadia, and that Germany was going to be the new Arcadia and destroy the 'old corrupt civilization,' which was Troy. Troy is 'three' and is connected to 'Ilium,' and I guess what my question is here is: just who's on first?
A: Who is on second?
I think the major clue for us here is the C’s statement “Who is on second?” For those not aware, “who’s on first” is a Baseball reference meaning who is on first base. In my view, the fact that the C’s response was to ask: “Who is on second?”, suggests that Arcadia could have previously been in Akkadia but by the time of the Siege of Troy in the late Bronze Age, it was now located in Europe – i.e., second base.
If this view is correct, then this points to the Biblical character of Abraham being the “one Essene, the Aryan one of Trent [Troy?]”. This is supported by the C’s when they confirmed that Abraham/Moses could also be viewed as Paris, the Trojan Prince who instigated the Siege of Troy by kidnapping Helen:
Q: (Galahad) Well, we got that part right. (L) Once before we discussed Nefertiti and Sarah being one and the same person. We have now been discussing the idea, based on some significant clues in ancient documents, that this individual was also Helen of Troy. Is this, in fact, a useful idea to follow? Is it a correct assessment of the clues?
A: Indeed!
Q: (L) That would mean that, according to the story, that Paris/Alexander would be the same individual as Abraham and that Herodotus' story of Paris and Helen sojourning in Egypt was true?
Harran in the Bible
So, was Harran a crossroads for Abraham? Even though Haran is no more than a ruin next to a small village today [MJF: and is largely unexcavated – which in itself may be suspicious], during the time of Abraham, it was a city positioned on a major road intersection connecting a number of large cities. In the Bible, Harran first appears in the Book of Genesis as the home of Abraham’s father
Terah along with his son Abraham (at that time called Abram), his nephew Lot and Abram's wife Sarah (at that time known as Sarai) prior to their planned journey from Ur Kaśdim (
Ur of the Chaldees) to the Land of Canaan in response to God’s command. Moreover, in Genesis 28:10–19, Abraham's grandson Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran. Along the way he had his dream of Jacob’s Ladder. Of course, the C’s view Jacob and Abraham as one and the same person. Hence, it would appear from the Biblical story of Abraham that Harran was a crossroads both literally and metaphorically for him.
[
MJF: In passing I would just note how etymologically similar Beersheba a town in Canaan is to Bathsheba, the wife of King David. I would briefly refer back here to Andrew Gough’s blog and his informant Will’s account of the high-tech treasure hunt he participated in:
“Before long the team discovered a tubular capsule imprinted with what appeared to be a Knights Templar seal. The capsule, which was made of extremely hard balsa wood and secured with hardened tar, contained 14 crest-wraps each emblazoned with a family crest; one of which appeared to be that of the biblical patriarch King David. Curiously, shortly after this disclosure, Will encouraged my Forum bloggers to study the significance of King David’s wife, but did not say why.”
Is there a link here between Beersheba the town and Bathsheba, King David’s seventh wife and the mother of King Solomon?
Bathsheba (/bæθˈʃiːbə/ or /ˈbæθʃɪbə/; Hebrew: בַּת שֶׁבַע, Baṯ-šeḇa‘, Bat-Sheva or Batsheva, means "daughter of Sheba" or "daughter of the oath”.
Beersheba or Beer Sheva, officially Be'er Sheva which is the 'Well of the Oath/the Seven'. In Modern Hebrew, be'er means a well or pit, and sheva is the number seven. It is believed by some, however, that the second part of the name was originally shvu'a, which means “oath”.
According to the Hebrew Bible, Beersheba was founded when Abraham and Abimelech settled their differences over a well of water and made a covenant (see Genesis 21:22–34). Abimelech's men had taken the well from Abraham after he had previously dug it so Abraham brought sheep and cattle to Abimelech to get the well back. He set aside seven lambs to swear that it was he that had dug the well and no one else. Abimelech conceded that the well belonged to Abraham and, in the Bible, Beersheba means "Well of Seven" or "Well of the Oath". Beersheba is further mentioned in following Bible passages: Isaac built an altar in Beersheba (Genesis 26:23–33). Jacob had his dream about a stairway to heaven after leaving Beersheba. (Genesis 28:10–15 and 46:1–7).
So, it is curious that Bathsheba’ was David’s seventh wife and her name means “daughter of the oath”, whilst Beersheba is associated with the number seven, as in "Well of Seven", and with an oath too, as in “Well of the Oath". Moreover, Jacob had his dream about the stairway or ladder to heaven, which involved the contending with the angel, after leaving Beersheba. Thus, given what the C’s have told us, there is more going on here than the Bible narrative relates. We also know from the C’s that Solomon was an Egyptian Pharaoh, which means Bathsheba is unlikely to have been his mother – so is she just a fiction disguising something else, something perhaps connected to Abraham/Moses’ return of the Ark of the Covenant to the STS forces that had originally created it?]
However, the question we need to ask ourselves is whether Abraham was originally from Troy (Cambridge in England) or was he descended from Trojan migrants who had settled in that part of the Middle East? Remember, from a Biblical perspective Abraham was supposedly a Semite, which for our purposes would be a Scythian-Celt like Sargon. So, apart from Abraham and his family, who else was based at Harran at that time? Well one group who lived there were amongst the best-known astronomers or star gazers of the ancient World, the Sabians.
The Sabians of Harran
Who were the Sabians of Harran? Wikipedia tells us:
“The Sabians, sometimes also spelled Sabaeans, are a mysterious religious group mentioned three times in the Quran as a 'people of the book’ (ahl al-kitāb), along with the Jews, the Christians and the Zoroastrians. Their original identity seems to have been forgotten at an early date. Modern scholars have variously identified them as Mandaeans, Manichaeans, Sabaeans, Elchasaites, Archontics, ḥunafāʾ (either as a type of Gnostics or as "sectarians"), or as adherents of the astral religion of Harran.
At least from the ninth century on, the Quranic epithet 'Sabian' was claimed by various religious groups who sought recognition by the Muslim authorities as a people of the book deserving of legal protection. Among those are the Sabians of Harran, adherents of a poorly understood pagan religion centred in the upper Mesopotamian city of Harran, who were described by Syriac Christian heresiographers as star worshippers. These Harranian Sabians practiced an old Semitic form of polytheism, combined with a significant amount of Hellenistic elements.
Apart from the fact that it contains traces of Babylonian and Hellenistic religion, and that an important place was taken by planets (to whom ritual sacrifices were made), little is known about Harranian Sabianism. They have been variously described by scholars as (neo)-Platonists, Hermeticists, or Gnostics, but there is no firm evidence for any of these identifications.
Hence, the Harrian Sabians, as star worshippers, can be seen to share something in common with the
Persian Magi who also placed great relevance on the stars (think of the Magi who attended on Christ’s birth after being drawn there by the appearance of the Star of Bethlehem).
Star or astral worship, also known as
Astrotheology, astral mysticism, astral religion, astral or stellar theology, is the worship of the stars (either individually or together as the night sky), the planets, and other heavenly bodies as deities, or the association of deities with heavenly bodies.
The most common instances of this are sun gods and moon gods in polytheistic systems worldwide. Also notable is the association of the planets with deities in Babylonian, and hence in Greco-Roman religion, viz. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Gods, goddesses, and demons may also be considered personifications of astronomical phenomena such as lunar eclipses, planetary alignments, and apparent interactions of planetary bodies with stars.
Archibald Sayce (1913) argues for a parallelism of the "stellar theology" of Babylon and Egypt, both countries absorbing popular star-worship into the official pantheon of their respective state religions by identification of gods with stars or planets.
The term
astro-theology was first used in the context of 18th-19th century scholarship aiming at the
discovery of the original religion, particularly primitive monotheism. Astro-theology is any "
religious system founded upon the observation of the heavens," and
in particular may be monotheistic. More recently, the term
astrotheology is used by Jan Irvin, Jordan Maxwell and Andrew Rutajit (2006) in reference to "the earliest known forms of religion and nature worship," advocating the
entheogen theory of the origin of religion.
According to
Seyyed Hossein Nasr,
"
the Harranians who were the principal inheritors in the Middle East of what has been called "Oriental Pythagoreanism" and who were the guardians and propagators of Hermeticism in the Islamic world" practiced "the religion of the heirs of the prophet Idris [i.e. Enoch]
." [
MJF: recall here that the C’s said that the Book of Enoch, an apocryphal work excluded from the Bible, was based on Sanskrit writings from India and might therefore have had an Aryan source.]
However,
Kevin van Bladel has extensively argued that the
Sabians of Harran cannot be associated with Hermeticism in any meaningful way. Although they did regard
Hermes Trismegistus as a prophet and may even have thought of him as
the founder of their sect, there is no evidence that they had knowledge of any Hermetic text or were involved in the writing of such texts in any way (see more below on this).
Recall here though that according to the C’s, Hermes Trismegistus was a traitor to the Court of
Pharaoh Rana (the Egyptian leader of a spiritual covenant), having broken a covenant of spiritual unity between all the peoples in the area now known as the Middle East by inspiring divisions within the ranks of the Egyptians, Essenes, Aryans, and Persians etc. You will note that the C’s refer to the Essenes here as if they were a separate people or racial group rather than the monastic body they later became in Judea and Palestine.
So, we learn that the Sabians may have regarded Hermes as the founder of their sect. However, the C’s have pointed out that the real founders of their sect may ultimately have been another group, a
Brotherhood who today we would refer to as the
Illuminati.
From the
Session dated 16 October 1994:
Q: (L) Who did Hermes betray?
A: Himself; was power hungry.
Q: (L) What acts did he do?
Q: (L) What was his purpose in doing this?
A: Divide and conquer as inspired by those referred to as Brotherhood in Bramley book you have read.
Q: (L) Is this the Brotherhood of the snake Hermes formed in rejection of unity?
A: Hermes did not form it; it was long since in existence.
Q: (L) Who was the originator of the Brotherhood of the Serpent as described in the Bramley book?
A: Lizard Beings.
For those who have not read
William Bramley’s book ‘
The Gods of Eden’, he describes in it a group or brotherhood who throughout known history have acted as power brokers and have been a hidden influence on major political and economic events, acting from behind the scenes. He identified them with the ‘
Brotherhood of the Serpent’, the oldest known secret society in history.
The Sabians had a long history and were not destroyed until 1032-33 when the temple of the Sabians was destroyed and the urban community extinguished by an uprising of the rural '
Alid-
Shiite population and impoverished Muslim militias. However, during the 9th and 10th centuries AD, there were many different religions operating in Harran during this period. Apart from the Sabians, there were also Muslims, Christians, Jews, Samaritans, Zoroastrians, Manicheans and many other religious groups. No doubt this led to a cross fertilisation of ideas and philosophies (including Hermeticism) that may eventually have been carried over into Europe through the Crusaders. Indeed, the Knights Templar and other Crusader groups may have been a major conduit for this process. During this period, there were two prominent Sabian families from Harran who worked at the Abbasid and
Buyid courts in Baghdad as court physicians and astronomers, among them the famous astronomer and mathematician
Thabit ibn Qurra (c. 830–901). This suggests the Sabians may have had a significant influence on the transmission of scientific ideas like the Druids before them or the Rosicrucians after them, at a time when Baghdad was one of the most important commercial and cultural centres in the Middle East.
Finally, it should be noted that the decisive battle commonly known as the
Battle of Harran, which saw a disastrous defeat for the Templars from which the Crusaders never recovered, was fought in the
Balikh River valley on May 7, 1104, near to the city of Harran.
Curiously, Harran is also famous for its beehive houses, which makes one wonder whether there could be a connection here to the Freemasons and Merovingians, who also paid homage to the humble bee, often using it as a sacred emblem in their iconography or decoration.
Beehive houses at Harran
Can we link the Harrian Sabians, this mysterious religious group whose original identity seem to have been forgotten, with the colony from Harran the C’s spoke of that formerly resided on the Giza plateau, who subsequently wrote the
‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’? Yes, I think we can. The answer for me came in an article written by
Donald H. Frew, from which I set out extracts below.
See:
Harran: Last Refuge of Classical Paganism – part I | Wiccan Rede
In his article, Drew tells us that as early as the middle of the second millennium BC (which places it in the late Bronze Age, 1600-1200 BC), the Harranians established a pilgrimage site at the Giza Plateau in Egypt (Hassan 1946: 34). In later centuries, they would say that the Pyramids were the tombs of their gods, Idris (Hermes) and Seth (Agathodaimon) (Green 1992: 110, 174, 212).
Drew goes on to state that as:
“An etymological aside … The very early connection between Harran and Egypt mentioned above, while noted by Egyptologists, has been largely ignored by those studying Harran. As a result, a possible source for the name “Sabian” has also been ignored. Most have focused either on the Arabic verb saba’a to “convert”, the Hebrew word saba, meaning “troops”, the Ethiopic word sbh, meaning “dispensing alms”, or the Syriac verb sb’, meaning “to baptize”. I lean towards the Egyptian root sba, meaning “star”, “star-god”, and “teacher”. As both followers of what has been called “astral” religion and renowned teachers and scholars, this would seem to be appropriate and fitting.”
Drew therefore notes that a group of Harrians in the Late Bronze Age established a pilgrimage centre at Giza. This would comfortably place it at the time of Abraham/Moses and Akhenaten. Moreover, we know that Abraham in the Bible was supposed to have come from Harran to Egypt. Does this mean that Abraham and the group he travelled with were Sabians?
Drew set out his premise for writing his article at the beginning by saying:
For many years, I have been researching and writing a book on the subject of the origins of the modern Witchcraft movement. I now believe that a direct line of transmission can be traced from the Hermetic and Neoplatonic theurgy of late antiquity to the beginnings of the modern Craft movement in the 1930s. Of course, any such transmission must be embedded within the wider context of the transmission of Hermeticism in general from the Classical world to the European Renaissance and the beginnings of the Enlightenment.
Anyone looking into this history cannot help but be struck by a glaring gap. At the end of the Pagan world in the latter days of the Roman Empire, so the sources tell us, several Hermetic and Neoplatonic scholars left the Empire to go “to the East”. At the beginning of the revival and rediscovery of Classical knowledge in Europe, Classical texts in Arabic translations, including the Hermetica (the revealed teachings of Hermes Trismegistus), came back to Europe “from the East”. What happened during the 500 or so years in-between? And where “in the East” did classical Graeco-Roman knowledge (and possibly classical Greco-Roman Paganism) survive?
One name comes up over and over again: Harran. Even so, there is relatively little information about this ancient city in Western sources. As more and more of my sources pointed to Harran, and in the face of an almost total lack (in the 1990s) of available information about the city and its people, I resolved to go and see for myself, talk to the local authorities and scholars, and find what I could. Anna Korn and I visited the area in January of 1998. This article incorporates many of our findings.
He goes on:
The city of Harran was founded c. 2000 BCE as a merchant outpost of Ur, situated on the major trade route across northern Mesopotamia (Green 1992: 19). The name comes from the Sumerian and Akkadian “Harran-U”, meaning “journey”, “caravan”, or “crossroad” (Kurkcuoglu 1996: 11). For centuries it was a prominent Assyrian city, known for its Temple of “Sin”, the Moon God.
In this baking, desolate landscape, the Sun was an enemy and the Night a comforter. The Moon, the ruler of the Night, must therefore be the supreme deity and therefore, to a patriarchal culture, male. Sin was the giver of fertility and of oracles. In this latter capacity, he also served as kingmaker.
In the Bible, Abraham’s father Terah was meant to have been an idol maker. Could he have been making idols for the Temple of Sin?
This complex history of Harran is important in order to understand the city’s eventual fate. For much of its history, Harran welcomed any would-be conqueror that came along, switching allegiances at the drop of a hat, and so went peacefully on about its own business.
Drew then goes on to discuss the Neo-Platonists:
…The Neoplatonists were polytheistic monists, understanding and relating to the many Gods & Goddesses as multiple faces or manifestations of a singular, all-encompassing Divine – the One. [MJF: This approach would also seem to reflect the Druids’ beliefs as well, whose chief god was Bel.]
Neoplatonic theurgy used techniques that we would recognize as “natural magick” in rituals designed to facilitate union with the One. Its source material consisted of the writings of Plotinus, Porphyry, and Iamblichus (as well as earlier Platonists), the Egyptian writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus (the Hermetica), the texts collected as the Greek Magical Papyri (PGM) and collected teachings (the Chaldean Oracles) “channelled” from Hekate and other deities by two 2nd century Roman theurgists (the Julianii). With these texts as guides, Neoplatonic theurgy focused on two forms of “god-making”: deity possession and the creation of animated statues. The former was very similar, if not identical, to the practice modern Witches know as “Drawing Down the Moon”, and indeed this phrase was used in antiquity to describe this practice. The latter involved techniques that we have all but lost, but vestiges of which remain in certain contemporary Craft traditions.
Neo-Pythagoreanism was a 1st century CE revival of the number mysticism of Pythagoras. Incorporating elements of astrology and Eastern magical lore, it was very popular with Iamblichus and was eventually subsumed into Neoplatonism.
Proclus of Athens (b. 412 CE) was the last major Neoplatonic writer before the closing of the School at Athens and the flight of the surviving Neoplatonic theurgists to safety in the Persian Empire.
The Neoplatonists sought to incorporate and synthesize the practices of all Pagans known to them, believing that all were divinely inspired. In this, they were in tune with the syncretic nature of their age, in which composite, cross-cultural deities such as Serapis and Jupiter-Ammon came to predominate. Accordingly, most Neoplatonists not only continued to practice traditional popular Paganism, but were also initiates of the Mysteries of Mithras, Isis, and others. The 4th century Neoplatonist, Macrobius (writing in Saturnalia), reconciled the mythologies of the many Pagan traditions by asserting that all Gods were actually aspects of a single Sun God, and all Goddesses aspects of a single Moon Goddess, and that really there was just the God and the Goddess – and beyond them, of course, the One.
Harran under Islam
In 717 CE, the Muslim caliph Umar II founded the first Muslim university in the world at Harran. To give this university a good start, Umar brought many of the last remaining scholars (including Hermeticists) from Alexandria and installed them at Harran. A later Harranian author, Ibn Wahshiya, would write about these Hermeticists in the mid-9th century CE:
The Hermesians let nobody into the secrets of their knowledge but their disciples, lest the arts and sciences should be debased by being common amongst the vulgar. They hid therefore their secrets and treasures from them by the means of this alphabet, and by inscriptions, which could be read by nobody except the sons of wisdom and learning.
These initiated scholars were divided into four classes. The first Class comprehended the sect Hara’misah Alhawmiyah, who were all descendants of Hermes the Great. … No man in the world was acquainted with any of their secrets: they alone possessed them. They were the authors of the books commonly called the books of Edris (Enoch) [Hermes – DHF]. They constructed temples dedicated to spirits, and buildings of magical wisdom. …
The second class of the Hermesians, called Hara’misah Alpina’walu’ziyah, the sons of the brother of Hermes, whose name was Asclibianos. … They never communicated their secrets, and Hermetic treasures to anybody, but they preserved them from generation to generation, till our days. …
The third class was called Ashra’kiyu’n (Eastern) or children of the sister of Hermes, who is known amongst the Greek by the name of Trismegistos Thoosdios. … Their sciences and knowledge are come down to us.
The fourth class, denominated Masha’wun (walkers, or peripatetic philosophers), was formed by the strangers, who found means to mingle with the children and family of Hermes. They were the first who introduced the worship of the stars and constellations, … From hence came their divisions, and everything that has been handed down to us, proceeds originally from these two sects, the Ashra’kiyu’n, eastern, and Masha’wun, peripatetic philosophers (Hammer-Purgstall 1806: pp 23-30). In the mid-8th century, the Caliph Marwan made Harran his home and temporarily moved the capital of the Umayyad Empire from Damascus to Harran.
Later in the 8th century, Harun al-Rashid (the Caliph of Arabian Nights fame) founded the Bayt al-Hikmah (“House of Wisdom”) at Baghdad to be a centre for the translation of Greek and Latin texts into Arabic. Scholars from Harran would later be brought there.
The Harrian Religion travels to Spain
In the 11th century, after the Muslim conquest of North Africa and Spain, the Ghayat al-Hakim (“Aim of the Sage”), a book known in Latin as the Picatrix, was written in Spain by “al Majriti” (Pingree 1980; 1986). Considered the basis of the grimoire tradition of Europe (including material that survives down into the Books of Shadows of certain modern Craft traditions), the Picatrix includes significant material about the religion and rites of the Harranians. This same “al Majriti” is also our source for the Rasa’il Ikhwan al-Safa (“Epistles of the Brethren of Purity*”), a mystical Muslim order incorporating teachings from Neoplatonic, Hermetic, and even Buddhist sources (Netton 1991). Both books contain material from each other and have a Harranian source (Nasr 1993: 25-104). Whether “al Majriti” was himself a Harranian Sabian is unknown.
David Pingree has pointed out that many of the Greco-Roman magical texts evident in the Picatrix passed into Arabic by way of Sanskrit, picking up Indian magical terms and Sanskrit names for the Gods along the way (Pingree 1980). Truly, Harran deserved the name “crossroad”.
*Could this work be connected to the Cathar ‘Parfait’ (the Perfect Ones) who emerged in the Langedoc and the Pyrenees area during the 12th century?
The Last Days of Harran and the Return of Paganism to Europe
Later in the 11th century, 1081 CE, the Temple of the Moon God was finally destroyed by al-Shattir, an ally of the Seljuk Turks, contemporaneous with the rise of Ash’arism (Green 1992: 98-100). At this point, the “con-job” story became the “official” Muslim view. Also late in the 11th century, c. 1050 CE, the Christian writer Michael Psellus, studying in Constantinople, received an annotated copy of the Hermetica from a scholar from Harran. It is quite possible that these were sacred texts that had escaped the decline and ultimate destruction of the temples (Scott 1982: 25-27, 108-109; Copenhaver 1992: xl; Faivre 1995: 182). Copies of the Hermetica eventually made their way to Western Europe, igniting the interest of Cosimo de’Medici who, in 1462, set a young Marsilio Ficino to the task of their translation. Thus began Europe’s fascination with the Hermetica (Copenhaver 1992: xlvii-l; Faivre 1995: 30, 38-40, 98), a fascination that would help fuel the Renaissance.
During the First Crusade, Harran was often contrasted with its neighbour to the north, Edessa (known today as Urfa). Edessa was the birthplace of the prophet Abraham and the first city to convert to Christianity (Segal 1970: 60-81). Edessa converted after its king, Abgar, wrote to Jesus requesting healing. The apostle Thaddeus came with a cloth bearing the image of Jesus’ face. Abgar was healed and his kingdom converted. The cloth, known as the Mandylion, was an important relic during the Crusades (Segal 1970: 215; Wilson 1998: 161-175). (Recently discovered documents have led some to believe that it is the same cloth that later came to be called the Shroud of Turin.)
In the 12th century, Edessa was the capital of the short-lived Crusader County of Edessa. The Crusaders occupying the city were described as “roaming about the countryside at will”. Their presence might explain an unusual architectural feature that survives at Harran.
In Harran’s Citadel, there is a Christian chapel of Crusader architecture (Lloyd & Brice 1951: 102-103). There is no record of any Crusaders ever conquering the city (Segal 1970: 230-251; Green 1992: 98; Gunduz 1994: 133). The presence of the chapel would appear to indicate a peaceful Crusader presence. The fact that the chapel is side-by-side with the Citadel’s mosque, even sharing an entry hall, is even more striking. It was far more common for chapels and mosques of that time to be built on top of each other or to be co-opted one from the other. Is this another example of the city’s remarkable religious tolerance*?
* Recall here that one of the aims of the Knights Templar was to promote a union between Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Does this suggest that Harran could have been one of the places where the Templars imbibed the Hermetic philosophy and wisdom, which they then took back to Europe with them?
Drew goes on to add that:
"Harran was a thriving Mesopotamian and later Hellenistic city of some 10 to 20,000 people for nearly 3000 years. Towards the end, for about 500 years, Harran would appear to have been a kind of intellectual refugee camp for educated members of the mystery cults of late antiquity, eventually becoming the font from which Hermetic and Neoplatonic learning returned to Europe.
Many of the Pagans of Harran had fled the triumph of Christianity in the West. All of them, including the practitioners of the indigenous Moon cult, were surrounded by an ever-expanding Islam. The Pagan community of Harran must have lived with a constant awareness of being the last refuge of the old Pagan religions. These “Pagan refugees” would have had every reason to preserve their traditions for future generations. Some were Mithraists, well aware of the concept of turning cycles of ages. Others would have known that their own sacred texts, the Hermetica, predicted the fall of Paganism, and its eventual return."
So, was the colony at Harran which Laura and the C’s spoke of the same group as the party of Harrians who Drew tells us established a pilgrimage centre at Giza in the Late Bronze Age and, if so, were they Sabian star worshippers? If the answer is yes, as I think it is, can we take it that it was their descendants or successors who drew up the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion in Turkey? This then begs the question - just how old is this document, which serves as a blueprint for world domination?
Can we also see a line of succession here starting with the evil magicians of Atlantis, running through the Brotherhood of the Serpent in Mesopotamia, then into Giza and the Egypt of the Pharaohs and Osirians and then back to Harran in modern Turkey, to the mystery schools of the ancient world including the Pythagoreans, where with help later from Alexandria, the Harrian Sabians spread Hermeticism to Europe at the Renaissance and through the Arabs/Moors into Spain and France, where it emerges as the Priory of Sion and later, via the Templars, as Freemasonry and then the Rosicrucians, with subsequent spin-off groups such as the Martinists and the Heiron du Val d’Or emerging afterwards, bringing us down to the present day with groups like the Illuminati, the Round Table Group, the Bilderbergers, the Committee of 300 and a myriad assortment of other front groups who are currently creating the New World Order?
Abraham the Essene
So, where the C’s tell us that “Arcadia is a crossroads for the one Essene, the Aryan one of Trent”, does this suggest that Abraham was a Harrian Sabian and, if so, does this mean that the Sabians, whose origins seem to have been lost in the mist of time, were Essenes? As I said above, where the C’s tell us about Arcadia saying that “Tis a clue for you, not a destination!”, this suggests to me that the C’s are pointing us back to Britain as the place of origin of “the one Essene, the Aryan one of Trent”, as Arcadia is not the destination but is a crossroads. Since Laura also makes the observation that “Troy means three” as can “Trent”, this again would suggest a link between this one Essene and the city of Troy in Cambridge, England. In turn, does this establish a link between the Trojans and the Essenes?
We learned above that the Harrian Sabians were star worshippers or astrotheologians. Can we establish a link between the Sabians and Britain through any group who could also be viewed as astrotheologians? I think we can for that group is the Hyperborians and their Druid priesthood. Here is what the C’s said about Stonehenge:
Session 3 October 1998:
Q: So, it is was an unfriendly 4th density dude. Now, he quotes from John Keel’s book ‘Our Haunted Planet’. It says: “The para-human Serpent People of the past are still among us. They were probably worshipped by the builders of Stonehenge and the forgotten ridge-making culture of South America”. Were the Serpent People worshipped by the builders of Stonehenge?
A: No
Q: Who was worshipped by the people who built Stonehenge?
A: Complicated.
Q: Give me some key words to work it out.
A: Spirits, stars, energy.
Thus, the Druid builders of Stonehenge in England can also be viewed as star worshippers and astrotheologians. Does this then forge a link between the Essenes and the Druids of Britain? I think it does.
William Henry in his intriguing book ‘
Blue Apples - A Search for the Lost Stargate Technology and Spiritual Teachings of Jesus and Mary Magdalene’ states that:
“Long before the Greeks, and hundreds of years before Jesus, the tau* was adopted by the Druids, the ‘men of the Oak Trees’, who came from Hyperboria, the Greek name for Heaven”.
*
The Tau, as we know, was also a symbol commonly used in ancient Egypt.
"The Druids were well known as wise men to the Roman philosophers. As we have noted, scholars have long debated the origin of the word ‘Druid’. Larousse’s World Mythology says it came from daru-vid, meaning ’skilled’.
One art in which the Druids were highly skilled was the manufacture of Tau crosses made of oak trees -- the symbolic Tree of Life --stripped of their branches. Upon the right branch they cut in the bark the word Hesus, upon the middle or upright stem the word Taramis, and on the right Belenus. Over this, above the going off arms, they cut the name of God, Thau or Tau. This configuration matches that of the Crucifixion with Jesus accompanied by two thieves and God above. However, it was in use hundreds of years before Jesus’s time.
In northern Israel the Druid name Hesus or Jesus was the same as Ieud or Jeud, the “only begotten son” who was dressed in a royal robe and sacrificed. Greek versions of this name were Jason and Iasus, signfiying a healer or therapeutae, a physician of the soul."
So, we encounter in the above quote a link between the Druids and the Egyptian ‘Therapeutae’ and by extension to the later Jewish Essenes, who seemed to have derived from the Egyptian Therapeutae. However, there may also be a link to the Persian Magi too, as Henry states:
"Third century classical scholar, Diogenes Laertius, also tells us that the Druids were the cult of the Magi, the same sect as that of the ‘Three Wise Men’ who sought out the Christ child. It was Druid prophecy, therefore, that seems to have predicted the arrival of Jesus."
The Kibeiri
Let us not forget that Abraham’s destination was not Arcadia (Akkadia) but Egypt, where I believe he may have become a priest in the Temple of Heliopolis or On (N.B. I aim to cover this point in a future post since it may explain a lot about the Exodus). However, it is the Temple of Thebes that provides us with another clue as to the origins of the Therapeutae and the Jewish Essenes. In 1888, excavations at the Temple of Thebes revealed a statue of the god
Kabeiros with a
hammer in his hand (who may in turn be linked with the Egyptian god
Ptah) attended by a boy
cupbearer. Many esoteric scholars believe that Kabeiros was worshipped by the ancient Egyptian-Hebraic sect of the Kibeiri, who were the precursors of the Therapeutae and the Essenes. The
Cabiri (or
Cabeiri) were also a group of minor deities supposedly of Greek origin. However, the name appears to be of
Semitic origin, signifying the "great gods," and the Cabiri seem to have been connected in some manner with the sea, protecting sailors and vessels. The Egyptian link is further strengthened by the fact that a temple of Memphis in Egypt was found consecrated to them as well. The Cabiri also belonged also to the Phoenician theology too. This connection between the Essenes and the Kibeiri produces a load of amazing links, which includes the Greek god Hermes connected to Hermeticism. There is also a potential link to Troy and therefore to Abraham/Paris, since there are traditions that the worship of the Cabiri originally came from
the Troad (i.e., territory surrounding the ancient city of Troy), which we now know was in Britain and not Turkey.
I will explore these links in a future post. Suffice to say for now that as with Ptah (see my earlier post of 27th May), these links lead us to a
dwarfish figure with a hammer and short apron, and sometimes a
radiated head. Does that sound like an alien Grey to you? Given that Abraham was, according to the C’s, deceived by Lizard (Alpha Draconian) projections, and the cyber-genetic 4D Greys serve the Lizards, should this really come as a surprise to us (see images below). As we say in England – the plot thickens. But for now, I will leave this fascinating subject to another day.
Which brings us back to Abbé Saunière again and the strange goings on at Rennes-le-Chateȃu. Although Saunière was an ordained Roman Catholic priest, he was a local man in an area which was steeped in Cathar and Templar history and tradition. Indeed, the authors Henry Lincoln, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh tell us in ‘The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail’ that the Cathar church still survives today even in Rennes-le-Chateȃu. It would be surprising, therefore, if some of this had not seeped through into his philosophical make-up. Hence in my next article, given what we have learned above about the role the Sabians of Harran played in the dissemination of Hermeticism to Europe, I want to take a closer look at Abbé Saunière and his belief system and his links over the border in Spain with another secret group.
