Vincent Bridges

By Vincent Bridges (02/20/03)

Omen Update: Nostradamus’ Comet

II: 46
Apres grad troche humain plus grad s’appreste,
Le grand motor des siecles renouuelle:
Pluye, sang, laict, famine, fer & peste,
Au ciel veu feu, courant longue estincele.

After a great misery, an even greater approaches,
The great motor of the cycles is renewed:
Raining blood, milk, famine, iron and pestilence,
In the sky will be seen a fire, dragging a trail of sparks.

II: 62
Mabus puis tost alors mourra, viendra,
De gens & bestes une horrible defaite:
Puis tout a coup la vengeance on verra,
Cent, main, soif, faim, quand courra la comete.

Mabus will soon die, then will come,
A horrible “undoing” of people and animals,
At once one will see vengeance,
One hundred (days) of power, thirst, famine, when the comet will pass.

VIII: 77
L’antichrist trios bien tost annichiliez,
Vingt & sept and sang durera sa guerre
Les heretiques morts, captifs, exilez,
Sang corps humain eau rogie gresler terre.

The Third Antichrist soon annihilated,
Twenty-seven years his bloody war will last:
The heretics dead, captives exiled,
Blood soaked bodies, and a reddened, icy hail covering the earth.

These three quatrains from the Seer of Provence point to a connection between a comet, the death of a “Mabus” who is the third antichrist, and the 27 year long war with Islam, the Final Crusade of World War III, with its very, very destructive scenarios. While the space shuttle Columbia disaster was indeed a mythic event that could be seen as a comet-like trail of fire and sparks n the sky, it is possible that Nostradamus, in his crafty way, is also directing us to a real comet. This added coincidence, a real comet, a mythic disaster to the faux goddess Columbia, and the impending war and probable sudden death of one of the three Mabus archetypes, leaves one simply gasping for breath at the strength of the insight.

What real comet? Well, chances are, you haven’t heard of C/2002 V1, or Comet NEAT yet, but you will‚Ķ

In the middle of September 2002, around the equinox, a large cometary body, twice the size of Pluto, plunged through the asteroid belt into the inner solar system headed on what could only be called a close encounter trajectory with our sun. It brightened rapidly and on November 6th 2002 was discovered by NASA’s Near Earth Asteroid Tracking, or NEAT, program as it emerged from the asteroid belt. Closer examination showed that it was not an asteroid, but a strange nickel/irridum rich snowball of a comet.

It came from the direction of the constellation Pegasus and after swooping around our sun inside the orbit of Mercury would head off again in a long, one and one half a precessional cycle orbit of between 37,000 thousand and 39, 000 years. The last time it visited, modern man had yet to develop from the earlier homonids. A few thousands years later, the Neanderthal was extinct and Homo sapiens sapiens, or monkey too smart for his own good (also known as killer monkey for what they did to the Neanderthal), was the lord and master of the planet. Is it our turn, when, as Nostradamus reminds us, the comet shall pass?

The comet was visible, though not with the naked eye, to those who knew where to look when the space shuttle went down. As the Columbia streaked east into the dawn and her doom, the faintest traces of the glow of the comet could be seen just below Pegasus and just above the juncture of Pisces and Aquarius. Ten days later, it could be seen with the naked eye in the moments just before dawn, a tiny silver star on the horizon.

And then it plunged too close to the sun to be seen, except by NASA’s SOHO solar observatory. As SOHO watched the object’s close encounter with the sun, pulses and flares erupted and on February 18th an enormous coronal mass ejection surged out from the sun and swatted the comet as it passed. And then the fun began‚Ķ

One day after the CME struck the comet, the Homeland Security folks issued a very serious toned warning about preparing for a disaster or a terrorist attack. Included were provisions for “clean air” such as “sealing doors and windows with duct tape and using heavy-duty plastic bags. The person should also try to keep the nose/mouth clear of any dust (you should have a dust/comfort mask handy). Read the steps for ‘clean air’ as advised by the Homeland Security Department.” http://www.ready.gov/clean_air.html

Other items included:

¬©¬£ “Be prepared to improvise and use what you have on hand to make it on your own for at least three days, maybe longer.” http://www.ready.gov/overview1.html

¬©¬£ “Some of the things you can do to prepare for the unexpected, such as assembling a supply kit and developing a family communications plan, are the same for both a natural or man-made emergency. http://www.ready.gov/overview.html

¬©¬£ “You may have trouble getting through, or the phone system may be down altogether, but be patient.” http://www.ready.gov/overview2.html

¬©¬£ “If you see large amounts of debris in the air, or if local authorities say the air is badly contaminated, you may want to “shelter-in-place” http://www.ready.gov/overview2.html

These are rather curious suggestions if your talking about a terrorist attack, even a nuclear one. But they just might make sense if NASA had suddenly decided that a period of cometary debris was about to hit. The Homeland Security folks didn’t get the timeframe correct and set off a panic too early. At the height of that over the top alert panic, a small story appeared concerning a think tank scientist whose study suggested that the government not tell the people of an imminent and unavoidable world-class event was due.

Also we are reminded, as the world hovers between war and cometary cataclysm, of Fulcanelli’s season of the double catastrophe, and even more sharply of “Paul Mevryl’s” comet or asteroid interpretation in K. R. Johnson’s Fulcanelli Phenomenon. There he connects the comet, eerily enough, with the constellation of Pegasus and the idea of a fiery hail falling on the Middle East. And the timing of the prediction is nothing short of astounding for a pre-modern astronomy. Fulcanelli pinpoints the 20 years from 1992 to 2012 as the season of the double catastrophe, with the most likely time being around the fall equinox of 2002. Being off by only a few months on a cometary period of 37,000 years is remarkable by any standard.

And there is also the Egyptian goddess aspect, the return of the goddess Sekhmet, the Eye of Ra…

In the oldest of Egyptian catastrophe myths, the lion headed Goddess Sekhmet is dispatched by Ra to destroy mankind because of their insistence on following Set instead of Ra’s governors, Osiris and his son Horus. She was distracted from her duty, and became instead the goddess of love and healing, Hathor. But the secret catastrophic Sekhmet retained a special place in Egyptian theology. It was thought that she would return to finish her task at some future date, and so should be worshipped and propitiated just in case.

The Egyptians left no clue as to when this could be expected, except that the sky would be the opposite from that of the Zep Tepi, or the first time. Given the period of the comet, close to one and one half a precessional cycle, just a little more than one zodiacal age off, the sky on its return, in terms equinox and solstice alignments to the zodiac and galactic center, will always be exactly opposite each time. In other words, 37,000 thousand years ago, when it last appeared out of Pegasus, the fall equinox was at the cusp of Aquarius/Pisces not the spring, which was in Leo/Virgo, hence the Sekhmetian image of half lion, Leo, and half woman, Virgo, and the tilt was toward galactic center. Now it is reversed: spring equinox in Aquarius/Pisces and fall equinox in Leo/Virgo, with the tilt away from galactic center.

Is the comet, with its nickel/irridum redness and its possible debris storm the destructive “goddess” the Egyptians called Sekhmet? And is she now returning for a second run at cleansing the planet?

Curiously enough, the SOHO photos taken on February 18th of the CME that struck the comet also show a sign, if we can see it. The fiery mass of force surges up from the sun and swirls, as it gets closer to the comet, into a rough but recognizable eye of Ra.

So, sometimes within that hundred-day framework Nostradamus predicted, while the world watches the lock step to war and possibly over the brink to that 27-year war of global destruction, the earth will pass through at least the tail of the comet. It is almost impossible that the comet itself could have been skewed enough to actually hit the earth, but passing through its tail, full of heavy metal meteors that may precipitate as dust, and probably as chunks much larger as well, maybe disaster enough. A double disaster, in fact, just as Fulcanelli predicted, or an omen, a sign from the Goddess, that if we don’t work together, we just might die together, whether we like it or not.

From my best guess based on the information at the websites listed below, we will pass through the tail of the now deflected comet anytime from late April through June. The earlier it starts after the next closest approach to earth around the spring equinox, the more disastrous the consequences. The closer to the summer solstice, the more likely it is that it just be a good light show in the sky with millions of bright red meteors streaking down like hail. If nothing shows up by the summer solstice, we have dodged the bullet once again.

At the very least though, these signs and portents in the sky, these omens, should be a wake up call. If we understand the myth and its metaphor, then we just might be better prepared to face the perilous times and navigate them safely. All we can really do, however, is hope the goddess is lenient and cautionary, rather than vengeful and destructive…

The Night of Sekhmet is coming to a reality near you this spring or early summer… What kind of world would you like to awake to?

Sources for Comet NEAT:

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/hotshots/2003_02_12/
http://sci.esa.int/content/news/index.cfm?aid=14&cid=37&oid=31434
http://www.free-minds.org/comet_story.htm
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/neat_soho_030218.html
http://www.astrocy.com/kudo.htm
http://cometography.com/lcomets/2002v1.html

By Vincent Bridges (02/20/03)

Part VII – The Center of the Labyrinth

By following our thread of Ariadne, the hidden 17 that connects the shuttle Columbia’s fiery death with Nostradamus’ warning of a comet as a harbinger of the world war with Islam to the Illuminati inspired idea of a faux goddess of Freedom called Columbia and on to Crowley’s Book of the Law, we have arrived at long last at the center of the labyrinth. Instead of the Minotaur however, that perennial symbol of overbearing, virgin eating, masculine authority, we find instead the Star Goddess, offering us a choice: extinction or enlightenment, take your pick.

I mentioned the great conspiracy above, In essence, it boils down to this basic dualism: those who would even aid in the extinction of humanity if it served the purposes of their own greed and ego and those who would rather see humanity attain a degree of enlightenment and save itself from what appears to be approaching extinction. Does anyone really believe that even a small nuclear exchange in the Middle East, South-East Asia or the Far East would not bring on a near total collapse of an already fragile planetary ecology? Does anyone really want their children and grandchildren to live through that?

The message of the Star Goddess is very simple. “Invoke me under my stars! Love is the Law, love under will. Nor let the fools mistake love; for there are love and love. There is the dove, and there is the serpent. Choose ye well!”

“Invoke me under my stars!” This is a clear direction to re-establish the sense of wonder and awe at the universe visible in the night sky that led out ancestors to create religion and spirituality in the first place. Let us celebrate the seasons, let us mark the rising and setting of those stars significant in our myths, let us come once again to understand ourselves in terms of the cosmic mill, the great wheel of time that marks the precessional year. As the very elements that make up our bodies and our planet came originally from the fusion factories at the center of stars, The Goddess is nothing less than factual when she announced that every man and every woman is a star. Therefore “Invoke me under my stars,” is an injunction to celebrate the unity of all life, all mind, in the universe.

“Love is the Law, love under will,” is a simple and direct statement of the basic tenet of Mahayana Buddhism, “all life is holy; all minds are capable of enlightenment,” in a new and radical form. However, the concept itself is as old as the original founding of Buddhism in Tibet by Guru Rinpoche, Padmasambhava, in the 8th century. The mantra for his Guru puja is a Sanskrit phrase, “vajra guru padma sidhhe hum,” which translates, as “The Indestructible Will of the Enlightened Teacher is the Power of Fearless Compassion in Realization.” Another version makes the connection even clearer: “padme dharma vajra citta hum,” or “Fearless Compassion is the Law, the Indestructible will to realize enlightenment.” In the west, this idea has surfaced, as in St. Paul’s “All things are lawful for me, but I will be dominated by nothing,” and St. Augustine’s “Love: and do what thou wilt,” even among the Christians. The idea is that no action, no choice, should ever be undertaken that is not simply and purely an act of Fearless Compassion.

“Nor let the fools mistake love; for there are love and love.” Here the Star Goddess is playing on English’s paucity of words for the concepts related to “love.” There should be no mistake as to what kind of “love” is declared the very essence of the Law or Dharma. Fearless compassion, the deep understand than even a single person’s pain and suffering diminishes everyone else, is the very nature of the “substance of we-feeling,” which, according to Doris Lessing, is the main indicator of sentience in the universe. And there are, as the Goddess reminds us, many things that are called love that fall far short of fearless compassion, many ways in which the wrong use of “love” leads not to we-feeling, but isolation and ignorance. Only fools mistake such things for the Love, which is the Dharma itself.

“There is the dove, and there is the serpent. Choose ye well!” And this is of course the point of the lesson. Love, in the sense of fearless compassion, is not choosing the dove and casting out the snake, but rejecting the duality itself as presented by the choice. Choosing either is limited and limiting; it does not lead to an increase of the substance of we-feeling, but to an increase in isolation and distance. A third choice is indicated, one that resolves the paradox of the dove and the snake.

It has been almost a century since the Star Goddess spoke, and in that time we have seen all too clearly the results of choosing up sides for a deadly game of doves and serpents. Untold millions died in the most cataclysmic century that humanity has ever known, including all the plagues and barbarian invasions of the past. Now, 57 years after mankind attained the ability to destroy itself and all life on the planet through nuclear annihilation, the possibility of that happening seems more likely than at any time since the bad old days of the standoff with the Rooskies over Cuba.

Crowley at least understood that the advent of the new aeon meant a time of cataclysmic change. “The Secret Chiefs had informed me that a new aeon implied the breaking up of the civilization existing at the time‚Ķ The first act‚Ķ would be to plunge the world into the catastrophe of a huge and ruthless war‚Ķ The Secret Chiefs told me this war was imminent‚Ķ” he informs us in his Confessions. In fact it was just over a decade away as the Star Goddess spoke and its final act was not played out until 1999 and the last Balkan War.

At height of the Great War, phase one of the century of destruction, and 13 years after the Book of the Law, Crowley had an experience of samadhi on the nature of the Star Goddess. This experience was mentioned only once, in the 1922 commentary on the Book of the Law, but clearly formed an important part of Crowley’s understanding of the meaning of the Star Goddess’ message.

He called it the “Star Sponge,” a most curious title, and while meditating on the starry night sky in New Hampshire had the realization that the physical universe is but a representation of the essential structure which lay behind it. “I exclaimed: ‘Nothingness with Twinkles!’ I concentrated upon this vision, with the result that the void space which had been the principal element of it diminished in importance; space appeared to be ablaze, yet the radiant points were not confused, and I thereupon completed my sentence with the exclamation, “But what Twinkles!’ ”

This realization led him to the idea of a quantum inseparability principle in which “every thought possesses a necessary relationship with every other thought,” and all stars are connected to all other stars by rays of light. In a flash, Crowley also saw that the universe was highly organized, with light as the organizing principle, the mind or nervous system as it were, of the universe. Crowley would never be closer to the Star Goddess than he was at that moment.

Crowley relates this vision while discussing verse 59 of the first section of the Book of the Law: “59. My incense is of resinous woods & gums; and there is no blood therein: because of my hair the trees of eternity.” He comments before relating his vision that “it seems possible that Our Lady describes Her hair as the trees of eternity because of the tree-like structure of the cosmos.” At the precise moment that Crowley had his samadhi on the goddess of space, in a hospital back in England, a new mythology of trees and stars and a goddess of space was emerging from the pen of a shell-shocked young infantry officer suffering from a bad case of trench fever, J. R. R. Tolkien.

Lt. Tolkien, a newly married Oxford graduate, had been in the line with his regiment, the 13th Reserve battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers since late 1915, fighting through the Battle of the Somme with its senseless carnage and Morder-esque landscapes. In the fall of 1916, he came down with trench fever and was evacuated back to “Old Blighty” as the Tommies in the trenches called England. Trench fever was a serious illness caused by vermin and related to Lime Disease and typhus. Tolkien did not fully recover until the early 1920s.

But he put his time in hospital to good use, exploring what would be the key to his literary works, that all language had its origins in, and was shaped by, the mythology it was used to express. Tolkien had unknowingly stumbled on the essential truth behind all magickal philosophy: myth evokes language, language invokes myth; one does not survive without the other.

As an example, Tolkien discovered that the words for tree and star were related in Finnish, and he speculated on the myth that could account for the connection. As he created his own language, High Elven, based in part on Finnish, he wove this philological point into the story. In the Silmarillion, the long and complex tale Tolkien wrote during his recovery, Varda, one of the Valar, the gods of Middle Earth, creates the stars from the leftover debris from the destruction of the pair of light emitting Trees at the center of the original paradise that was Arda, or Middle Earth.

The struggle at the heart of the story is over the remaining Light from the Trees, locked eternally into three fantastic jewels called the Silmarils. In the end, only one of the Silmarils remain, and the Valar place it in the sky as the Morning and Evening star, symbol of hope unlooked for and a sign of the Valar’s continuing concern for the Children of Iluvatar.

Some of Tolkien’s earliest poetry concerned these themes and as he wrote the Silmarillion in the winter of 1917, he sketched out the earliest form of what became the Hymn to Elbereth in The Lord of the Rings. The Hymn in its finished version has some fascinating points of congruence with the Star Goddess from the Book of the Law.

Here’s the Hymn in Elvish, followed by my translation:

Ah elbereth gilthoniel
Silivren penna miriel
O menel aglar elenath!
Na-chaered palandiriel
O galadhremin ennorath
Fanuilos, le linnathon
Nef aear, see nef aeron!

O star queen, star kindler,
White light glitters down like sparkling jewels
From the glorious firmament of the star-host!
Looking out to infinity
From the tree-woven middle earth,
White Brilliance, to thee I will chant
On this side of the ocean, here on this side of the great sea!

Elbereth is the name the Elves use for Varda, meaning simply Star Queen. The Elves are the firstborn, the eldest and immortal Children of Illuvatar and they awoke to life when Orion and Sirius rose in the sky for the first time. They therefore worshiped Elbereth/Varda as the great Goddess of the night sky. The Elves Frodo and Sam met in the Woody End of the Shire also sang of Elbereth: “O Light to us that wander here/ Amid the world of woven trees‚Ķ” And it is Sam, at a moment when all seems lost, who calls out to Elbereth:

“O Star Queen, star kindler,
From the firmament of Infinity
To thee I cry here beneath the death-horror!
O watch over me, White Brilliance!”

The message of the Elven Star Queen was one of hope, and to make this point even clearer, Tolkien makes the Low Elven word for hope, estel, out of the Latin root for star, stella. In what is perhaps the most poignant moment of the entire epic, Sam Gamgee looks up from the depths of Mordor and sees a single bright star through the murk. He thinks of Elbereth, and finds both hope and enough water to continue the quest. In this one symbolic image, Tolkien conveys to us the message of the Star Queen, a light to those who wander here below, and the true evil of Mordor and Sauron. They would blot out the sky and bring on eternal darkness through which no star could shine, a darkness in which no hope can be found.

The pronouncement of the changing Equinox of the Gods and the Book of the Law, with its message from the Star Goddess, was heralded by the celestial phenomenon of the Morning Star shining in daylight as an eclipse darkened the sun itself on the morning of March 17th 1904. It was a sign of hope, and an omen of warning: the first act of the apocalypse was about to begin.

While Crowley may have missed the event in the sky, in what is perhaps the strangest coincidence of all, another Cairo resident did not. Khalil Ibrahim Pasha, a wealthy and successful Coptic lawyer from Assiut, was out that morning surveying his newly acquired property in the Cairo suburb of Ezbet El-Zeitoun. As the sun dimmed that morning, Ibrahim had a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She commanded him to build her a church on that spot. It was to take 20 years, and was finished by his son Tawfik Bek Khalil after his father’s death. Built in an unusual Italian style, the Church of the Virgin Mary was a quiet oasis of peace and contemplation for generations of Cairo Copts, until the strange events began in 1968, 64 years after Ibrahim’s vision and the Book of the Law.

A resident of Tumanbay Street in Zeitoun described his recollection of the miracle in a 1968 newspaper interview. “There used to be a big garage for public buses opposite the church, and on 2 April, an hour and a half after sunset, the mechanics and drivers of the garage were alarmed by a disturbance in the street. They ran outside and looked in the direction of the raised faces of the people. A young woman dressed in white had appeared on the church dome. They saw her moving on it and thought that she was about to throw herself off. ‘Be careful, take care, you may fall! Wait!’ they cried, before they realised that the dome was curved and that no human being could walk on it. Then some of the people watching cried out, ‘The Virgin Mary, the Virgin Mary!’ The traffic in Tumanbay Street stopped and the crowd grew bigger and bigger. The whole street was closed and public buses were not allowed to pass through. People would come to Zeitoun and spend the night in the garage opposite the church.”

The apparitions continued for years, recurring sporadically at the Church in Zeitoun and at other places in Egypt, the most recent in 2001 at Assiut, Ibrahim’s birthplace. They were seen by thousands and photographed and in recent years videotaped. From our point of view, the most interesting component of the apparition is that she almost always appears with, or sometimes in the form of, a dove of light. The Star Goddess and the “Christ Bearing Dove” of the Virgin Mary appearing in Egypt are all part of the same archetype.

And it is this same archetype that was both used and misused by the illuminated founders of our country and their symbolic successors at the time of the Civil War. And this same archetype was re-used again by the space program for the first of its reusable spacecraft. By the time of the shuttle Columbia’s synchronistic demise however, the mindset of the mass consciousness was oblivious to the implications, numbed and saddened in a way that did not allow for an expression of the meaning of the event.

Sad as it was, the deaths of seven of the brightest minds on the planet, the psychic impact of the disaster is that of hope, if we can but see it. When the Columbia streaked from darkness into light last Candlemas morning and ignited into a fiery comet of doom and death, it was also a sign of hope and a warning of an approaching apocalypse.
A sign of hope, because if we can read the message and take it into our hearts, then it might be possible to stop the plunge to war. Two weeks after the disaster, between 4 and 10 million people worldwide protested the war on Iraq, and even though President Bush says that the voice of the people don’t account for much in his plans, it is clear that something has shifted, some choice for life, has been made.

But also a warning - If one of the three fools that compose Nostradamus’ Mabus should attack the other and kill one, then the resulting bloodshed and vengeance would be beyond our worst nightmares.

The message of the Star Goddess is not one of despair; no matter how bleak the situation, like Sam in Mordor, we have but to look up at the night sky, while we still can, to find both light and hope.

Let us hope it will be enough,

“O Star Queen, star kindler,
From the firmament of Infinity
To thee I cry here beneath the death-horror!
O watch over me, White Brilliance!”

By Vincent Bridges (02/20/03)

Part V – Young, English and Rich: Cairo, 1904, on the eve of Armageddon…

We face in the near future not the end of the world, although it could be that as well, but the death of History, the bragging chatter of alpha-male apes huddled around their primary techno-achievement, fire, and the birth of Myth, which is the collective dream of a new kind of “humanity.” Many ancient cultures from around the planet, including some of the most sophisticated, have assigned to this time period the label, “THE END.” The temporal calculations from the Great Pyramid end in 2001, and the Mayan calendar hits reset in 2012, a year that also adds to five, with the helical alignment of the winter solstice sun and the center of the galaxy.

The year 1987, the year of the faux Mayan Harmonic Convergence, was also the last year of the traditional Kalachakra calendar of ancient Tibet, the end of 16 cycles of 60 years since the Kalachakra teachings were released from the mythical kingdom of Shambala in 1027. The Black Hat sect of the Nyngma-pa, or Ancient Ones, teach that the 17th cycle, which began in 1987, will be the last. This cycle will be brief, ending in the emergence of Shambala after a period in which each element will be exalted in every other element. This comes to 25 years, 5 years for each of the five elements, and brings us to 2012…

Curiously, the legend of Shambala gives some meaning to the seemingly nonsensical astrological information in the song, Age of Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In from the hippie musical Hair. The Vishu Purana, one of the oldest of the Hindu classics, mentions Kalki, the Hindu Messiah, an avatar of Vishu who will be the last King of Shambala. Kalki is very similar to Kulkan, the Mayan White Messiah, and he is shown leading a great army of enlightened beings against the barbarians. “He will then re-establish righteousness upon the earth; and the minds of those who live at the end of the age of strife shall be awakened, and shall be as pellucid as crystal… As it is said ‘When the sun and the moon, and …Tisha, and the planet Jupiter are in one mansion, the golden age shall return.’”

We are living at the end of a great cycle of strife. In 1999 The Great War, the War to End all Wars we thought, finally wound down in the Serbo-Croatian hills where it began 85 years before. The rumble of mortar fire in the streets of Sarajevo and Kosovo were the dying echoes of the thunder from the Western Front of the Great War. The barbarian Communist Chinese vandalize and commit genocide at will in Tibet, the land of the Dharma, as the Precious Guru Padmasambhava foresaw. And that last bastion of freedom and democracy, America, is rapidly slipping into rogue nation status as it pushes its oil dollar hegemony into military action. To awaken, to receive that clarity “pellucid as crystal,” it is clear that we must resolve the problem of power.

Nostradamus said that after a cycle of great disaster, at the moment when the motor of the centuries engages for the next round, a new and even greater cycle of disaster looms ahead. The comet is the sign of the coming moment of truth, our last chance to stop the impending cataclysm of all out war along religious lines. To do that we must understand the message behind the omen in the sky; we must traverse that last arc of the spiral, that last corner in the labyrinth and come face to face with what awaits us at the center…

In 1904, the first “five” year in the 20th century, Edward Alexander “Aleister” Crowley and his new bride, the former Miss Rose Edith Kelley arrived in Cairo on an extended honeymoon. The young Crowley, still shy of 30 and in the midst of a Saturn return, was already an accomplished Alpinist, a celebrated, in some circles at least, minor poet and a veteran of several occult societies. Little did he and Rose suspect, as they checked into the second floor corner room at Shepherd’s Hotel in the heart of downtown Cairo that they were about to make magickal history and inaugurate a 93-year period that would serve as the prologue to the Apocalypse

.
To give the reader an idea of how fast the change occurred, in just over a decade, the world would be at war and Shepherd’s would become British Imperial headquarters, a vital link in the chain of command between London and Delhi. The suite of rooms occupied by the Crowleys became part of the offices of the Arab Bureau, a semi-secret group of spies and plotters that included T. E. Lawrence. Out of the Arab Bureau’s manipulation would come in time all the complications found today in the Middle East, including the nation of Israel and the royal families of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the deposed royal family of Iraq. But of course, that’s just another coincidence‚Ķ

For the first month or so, it was great fun. “Eddie,” as Rose insisted on calling Crowley, posed as a Persian nobleman and went in search of Arabic instruction from the masters at Al Ahazr mosque. Rose wandered the markets in Khan il Khalili and visited the chic set who lived on houseboats and in new French-looking mansions over in Giza. They played golf at Helwan, and decorated their new flat in the fashionable European section of Cairo, a few blocks north and east of the Boulak Museum and a short walk from the terrace restaurant at Shepherd’s where Cairo society met for lunch.

Rose and “Eddie” were young Edwardians loose in Cairo for the season after a lengthy honeymoon that had already included a stay in Egypt the previous fall, as well as Paris, Naples, and Ceylon. They were young, English and rich, the world was their playground, and, as Crowley commented, their “marriage was an uninterrupted sexual debauch” until the strange events began in Cairo. But by early March, Rose was three months pregnant and things had changed.

The previous November’s whirlwind tour of Egypt had been wonderful, full of excitement and flash. The best hotels and romantic excursions such as riding the Pullman to Aswan and on by camel to Abu Simbel, where, at the end of the known world, the great Pharaoh still looks down on the barbarians in awe inspiring solemnity. And then, as a special treat, “Eddie” arranged for them to spend the night of November 22nd/23rd in the Great Pyramid. It was terribly romantic, even if a little silly when “Eddie” began to chant and read poems, and Rose was sure to her dying day that this was the moment when she conceived. Two days later, they were on the train to Port Said, bound for India and on to China.

In Bombay, Rose broke it to “Eddie” that she was pregnant. He replied, right-o then, let’s go kill something for a month or two and then if you’re right, it’ll be back to doctors and nurses. And off they went to Ceylon. By mid January, it was obvious she was right, and so they headed back to Cairo. They rented the new flat, and moved out of Shepherd’s, on March 14th and Rose settled in to nest.

But “Eddie,” who had continued his playboy lifestyle, off studying Arabic and playing golf while Rose nested, suddenly decided it was time for a little magickal sex play, ala last November’s memorable evening in the pyramid. On the evening of March 16th, he tried the same invocation and found that Rose was suddenly very upset by the whole thing. She fell into a trance and kept repeating: “They are waiting for you‚Ķ”

This was not the result Crowley was looking for; he wanted her to see the sylphs and was annoyed when she didn’t. The next day, he tried again with similar results. Crowley said later that his intent was to entertain her, showing her the sylphs was like going to the cinema or the music hall. It didn’t work, and on the 17th Rose was even more distressed, insisting that They were waiting, and adding that it was all about the Child, all about Osiris‚Ķ

So just what was it Crowley was invoking that produced this reaction? He calls them sylphs or the elementals of Air, which is technically correct, but they are really the “angelic” beings who inhabit the Air quadrants of the Enochian Tablets, which is actually something quite different. To evoke them, one must use various calls or keys in the Enochian language, received from “angelic” beings by Dr John Dee in the 16th century. These calls have profoundly apocalyptic language and context and their use in such a way, and at such a time and in such a place, is in fact a request to “higher intelligence” to supply information on that apocalypse. And this, seemingly, is just what the “angels” proceeded to do‚Ķ

This is an important point to keep in mind, and it helps make sense of what happened later. On the night of November 22nd/23rd 1903, Crowley vibrated Enochian in the King’s Chamber, producing amazing results. The chamber was filled with an odd violet blue light that grew bright enough for Crowley to read the invocations without the aid of an electric torch. And Rose conceived a child‚Ķ “It’s all about the Child‚Ķ” Rose responded to the invocations in March.

Perhaps it was for Rose, but Crowley wanted to know what was going on. He invoked Thoth, and received a more coherent response. Rose announced that it was Horus who was waiting, that Crowley had offended him and he should be invoked in a new way as the sun. While Crowley protested that he found this absurd, in truth Rose had struck a nerve. Crowley had offended Horus.

Not only had Crowley never invoked him, but also just four years before, Crowley had been involved in the messy break-up of one of Victorian England’s most influential occult societies, The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Crowley had at first sided with S. L. “McGregor” Mathers in the dispute, but they soon had a falling out and were on the verge of all out psychic warfare by 1904. Mathers identified with Horus, the Horus the Elder of Upper Egypt, the war god who slew the serpent of chaos. To be in conflict with Mathers was indeed an offence to Horus.

But to Crowley the psychic and psychological ramifications went even deeper. Young Alex, as his family called him, had had a troubled relationship with his father and had never gotten over his father’s death just when he was just hitting adolescence and needed a father figure most. Mathers, in his own quirky way, had filled that missing father role for the young Crowley. Now, as happens to most fathers and sons, it was time for Crowley to rebel and find his own way. On the verge of becoming a father himself, and perhaps denying it subconsciously, this reference to the complex emotions around Horus was guaranteed to grab Crowley’s attention.

Crowley took Rose’s advice seriously and on March 20th attained spectacular results after a disappointing first try on the 19th. This ritual was outlined by Rose and filled in by Crowley following her suggestions. It was indeed a new way, as it was quite emotional in tone, much closer to the devotional style of bhakti yoga than the crisp and commanding postures of ceremonial magick. In it can be found in embryo most of the motifs and metaphors that would blossom forth in a few weeks as the Book of the Law.

Perhaps Rose, with her shrewd womanly intuition and keen emotional intelligence, simply devised a powerful and effective way to keep her dear “Eddie” at home and focused on her and at the same time exorcise some of his own internal fears and guilt about fatherhood. Or perhaps the invocations in the Great Pyramid had made contact with some sort of “higher intelligence” who did indeed have a message for anyone who would, or could, listen.

At any rate, the ritual brought amazing results. Here’s how Crowley summed it up in his small diary, The Book of Results: “20: Revealed that the Equinox of the Gods is come, Horus taking the throne of the east and all rituals, etc. being abrogated. 20: (contd.) Great Success in midnight invocation. I am to formulate a new link of an order with the Solar Force.” In another diary, he recorded: “Hoori (Horus) now Hpnt (Hierophant), ” another reference to the changing of the officers of the Golden Dawn on each equinox. Now, Horus is the Hierophant of the Age, not just the season

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Crowley wrote these notes in the early morning hours of the vernal equinox, March 21st, 1904. Clearly his reference to the Equinox of the Gods referred to both the events of that equinox, and the larger Great Year of precession. His successful invocation of Horus had inspired in him a new understanding of the coming precessional shift in the zodiacal age. Just as Pisces had been the age of Jesus/Osiris, the Dying God, the new age was to be one of the Crowned and Conquering Child, the New Horus.

One other curiosity must be noted. On the morning of March 17th, 1904, Cairo experienced a beautiful annular eclipse of the sun. As the sun rose that morning the eclipse was already in progress. Venus, the morning star in Aquarius, faded briefly and then reappeared as the eclipse strengthened. The effect was that of a beautiful ring of fire, bulging slightly toward the silvery glow of a morning star that refused to fade. This strange portent in the dawn sky was discussed in the local papers, including the Cairo edition of the London Times, on March 18th and 19th. Crowley could not have missed the news articles even if he had missed the event itself.

And so, by the 21st of March, Crowley was hooked. He had smacked the Tar Baby and was on his way to the briar patch. For the next 43 years, the rest of his life, Crowley lived in the shadow of what happened in those next few weeks. He followed the will-o-wisps whispers of the illuminati elves down a long twisted path toward a kind of reverse sainthood, in which his most perverse jokes would become religious movements and his most profound philosophical musing would become fuel for the rantings of disaffected and overindulgent punks the world over.

By Vincent Bridges (02/20/03)

Part Three - Weishaupt’s Illuminated Goddess

We have progressed from the prophecies of Nostradamus to the astrology of a synthomorphic goddess’ birth, awakening and death, and yet we have taken only the first few halting steps into the labyrinth of synchronicity and strangeness surrounding the space shuttle disaster. Sensing greater wonders still to be found in the grisly deaths of seven of the planet’s brightest minds, let us arm ourselves with the irrational and plunge ahead toward the beast at the epicenter of the maze.

Mr. Prellwitz’ account of his encounter with the goddess Columbia concludes with a climactic confrontation between the goddess and President Weishaupt in which Weishaupt is freed from alien lizard-like beings who are controlling him. In this one metaphor, we glimpse the true genius of Prellwitz’ vision. In the realm of the collective unconscious, any symbolism with juice is fair game.

The introduction of Adam Weishaupt, founder of the Bavarian Illuminati, takes us around another corner of the maze, and strange as it may seem, we can now begin to sense a larger pattern. Suddenly, the bare facts of history, the esotericism of the founding fathers, the creation of a faux goddess identified with the new republic, the care lavished on the installation of the statue on the Capitol Dome, and the number synchronicities concerning the space shuttle Columbia’s last flight, loose their solidity and became vague wisps of mysterioso steam marking the passage of the illuminati elves as they arrange and re-arrange reality for their amusement, and our amazement.

And so, ever vigilant for the whisper of the elves and the sharp burnt metal tang of mystery on the breeze, let us go even deeper into the labyrinth…

Perhaps the most curious part of the creation of the goddess Columbia is the immediate and passionate association of the archetype with George Washington. Phyllis Wheatley wrote her poem while Washington was still a simple member of the Continental Congress from Virginia. Washington however was a Master Mason of the Alexandria 22 lodge, chartered as a Scottish Rite, Royal Arch Temple in the tradition of the French lodges founded by the Chevalier Ramsey. This branch can only be called “illuminationist,” that is expressing a connection to or sympathy with Rosicrucian or Illuminati philosophy. Its practices and initiations, spiritually, would be more along the lines of what today would be called ceremonial magick. Washington would have felt right at home in a Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn Temple circa 1900.

This Illuminationist connection brings us to the aforementioned Adam Weishaupt and the Bavarian Illuminati. Weishaupt, a professor of canon law at the University of Ingolstadt and a former Jesuit, had an illumination over the night of February 1st/2nd 1776. This flash of insight led to the founding, on the 1st of May 1776, of the Order of the Illuminati, a secret society within the secret society of Masonic Orders. By 1785, when they were banned by the government of Bavaria for plotting the overthrow of all the crowned heads of Europe, starting with the Hapsburgs, they had infiltrated Masonic groups in a dozen countries, including France, Britain and the fledgling United States of America. No one knows precisely what happened to either Weishaupt or the Illuminati after that.

This of course is a very good thing for the conspiracy theorists. More outright nonsense has been written about the Illuminati than any other such secret society. Which is a shame, because its real history is quite extraordinary enough. An unbiased look at the documents we do have from Weishaupt and his fellow travellers reveals something quite different from what most of the Illuminuts have been prattling about.

From Weishaupt’s early writings, we find an amazing awareness of the pagan mysteries, particularly those of Eleusius and the Kabiroi of Argos and Samothrace, as well as familiarity with the theories of Pythagoras. We even have a draft for a secret society based on those pagan mystery schools done by Weishaupt while a student at Ingoldstadt. After graduating and a brief stint in the College of Jesus, Weishaupt found his way in 1774 to a neo-Templar Masonic Lodge in Hanover. While not overly impressed by the quality of the vibe at the local lodge, its superiors soon passed Brother Adam on to the Head of the Order, one Johann Augustus Starck.

Starck was a key figure in the neo-Templar revival of the mid 18th century. His patrons included such royal figures as Gustav III of Sweden and Frederick the Great of Prussia. Under his influence, Frederick of Prussia founded several occult societies in the late 1760s. One of them, The Knights of Light, practiced magick and alchemy, and used the grade name Illuminati for an adept. Around the time Phyllis Wheatley addressed her poem to George Washington, Weishaupt met Starck and was initiated into his peculiar blend of neo-Templar illuminism.

Peculiar because Starck claimed to have met, and been initiated and instructed by, a group of Catharist Templars surviving in southern France. From them Starck learned that the original Templars inherited their occult wisdom from an secret society of Essenes in Jerusalem who were in fact identical with the Cathars of southern France. Starck’s Cathars however were a pagan goddess-worshiping cult, who hated the Roman Church because it stole the true identity of Christ, held by them to be St. John. It was this magickal blend into which Weishaupt was plunged by his initiation, and to his credit, he seems to have risen to the occasion.

His illumination on the night of 1st/2nd February 1776, the ancient pagan feast of Imbolc, is our first clue. To clinch it, Weishaupt founded his order, called originally the Order of the Perfectibilists as nod to his Catharist sources, on the 1st of May, Beltane in the pagan calendar. And to make the point even more obvious, the holiest day of all in the Illuminati order is The Feast of St. John on June 23rd/24th, mid-summer night’s eve in the northern latitudes and marking another pagan feast, that of the summer solstice.

Curiously enough, due to the calendar change in the mid 18th century that added 11 days, what in the Old Style was June 24th is now in the New Style July 4th. Since the Declaration of Independence was not signed or ratified or anything else but approved as a draft on July 4th, we might wonder at how it became Independence Day. The more likely choices include August 2nd, when the signings began, or July 2nd when Independence was actually voted upon, or even January 17th when the document was presented, completed and signed, for ratification by the Congress.

This has led some conspiracy theorists to call July 4th Illuminati Day, and some have even gone so far as to claim that Weishaupt immigrated to America and whacked Washington while he was working out back of Mt. Vernon on his private hemp patch and took his place, resulting in Weishaupt as our first president. Needless to say this is one of the more imaginative fantasies generated around the Illuminated, but it does, in a mythic sense, have the ring of truth.

July 23rd/24th 1776 was the first official meeting of the original five members of the Order of the Illuminati. On the New Style date of July 4th, 1776, the Continental Congress approved the draft of a resolution on Independence written by a committee of five, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Roger Sherman and Robert B. Livingston. All five were Masons, and three, Franklin, Jefferson and Adams, had deep overt and covert connections with the illuminist underground of the day. To complete the synchronicities, the completed and signed Declaration of Independence was submitted to the Congress for ratification on January 17th, 1777, and two of the five, Jefferson and Adams, died on the same day, July 4th, exactly 50 years later.

Washington was also thoroughly familiar with, and probably quite sympathetic to, the basic concepts of Illuminism as preached in the Masonic Lodges of the day. Alexandria 22, Washington’s home lodge, was affiliated with several German Illuminist lodges, including the neo-Templars of Johann Starck. It’s French connections led through Lafayette and the Comte de Mirabeau, both prominent Illuminists, back to the Templarisms of the Scottish Chevalier Ramsey. Although we can’t say for sure - the records are incomplete - Washington’s election to Master Mason status in Alexandria 22 may have reflected this new Illuminist shift of focus.

But even more than Washington, it is Thomas Jefferson, the main voice behind the Declaration of Independence, who connects Illuminism, and pagan goddess worship, with the beginning steps toward the creation of the goddess Columbia. The Federalists prior to the election of 1800 quite correctly branded Jefferson an Illuminati sympathizer, if not stooge. Their evidence was flimsy, and probably meaningless in any case as the anti-Illuminati forces did not completely understand the Illuminist agenda, but Jefferson, along with Franklin and Washington, did indeed have such connections and inclinations.

Jefferson was also friendly with Phillip Freneau, who popularised the idea of Columbia as the Goddess of Freedom in the 1780s and 1790s. And Jefferson was instrumental in having the US Capitol building designed as the Roman Parthenon, complete of course with a goddess on the dome. The goddess Minerva, in a form very close to that of Columbia, appears on the seal of the University of Virginia, designed by Jefferson. The Great Hall of the Jefferson Building at the Library of Congress, which houses Jefferson’s books, is a miniature shrine to the goddess.

If there is one piece of art in all of Washington that sums up the basic illuminist idea behind the goddess Columbia and her role in America, it is in the top of the dome of the U.S. Capitol; a fresco entitled “The Apotheosis of George Washington,” painted by Constantino Brumidi in 1865 soon after the dome was completed. The central grouping in the highest part of the dome depicts Washington being taken up to heaven, done by Italian artist Brumidi in a style strongly reminiscent of paintings of the Assumptions of Jesus or Mary Brumidi had previously painted in the Vatican. In this case, it is not angels of God who accompany Washington in his assumption, but the female figures of Liberty and Victory. Surrounding these three figures are 13 female figures representing the original 13 states. Around the edge of the dome are painted 6 groups of figures representing war, commerce, marine, agriculture, science, and mechanics. Included in these groups of figures are the gods Mercury, Neptune, Ceres, Minerva, and Vulcan.

Aside from the obvious paganisms, there are two fascinating illuminati clues here. The first is Victory, the Samothracian mother goddess of the Kabiroi, who often shows up alongside Columbia. Weishaupt and Starck thought her to be the original Mother Goddess on which all the pagan mysteries were based. The second is that numerical arrangement of figures. If we take the six figures of the outer rim and multiply by the 13 figures on the second rim, we get 78. Among the papers seized by the Bavarian government in 1785 was an alphabetic code based on three times 26, or 78. This is also the number of cards in a Tarot deck, leading this type of code to be called the Tarot Cipher.

This is not to say that the United States of America is an illuminati plot, and by no means am I saying that the Illuminati control any part of the US government. But it is a fact that the Founding Fathers had such inclinations and that somehow those aspirations were transmitted through the years into many of official Washington’s finest works of public art. Call it an accidental conspiracy if you like, a synchronicity born of similar inclinations and understandings concerning the meaning of “America” as the New World for the New Age.

Weishaupt’s view of a perfect society is very similar in many respects to Adams, Jefferson and Washington’s view of America. Weishaupt foresaw a utopian world state where property, authority and nationalism had been abolished. In this pre-Eden natural state, mankind would join in the brotherhood of man, based on free love, peace, spiritual wisdom and equality of classes and sexes. At the spiritual center of this society was the great goddess of Freedom and Reason. One of Weishaupt’s French followers, the Comte de Mirabeau, would preside during the revolution in Paris over the enthronement of a new Goddess of Reason in Notre Dame de Paris, newly renamed the Temple of Reason.

And so, Weishaupt’s ideas and influence seems to have had a profound effect on the creation of the goddess Columbia, and the general iconography of the archetype of America. In the immediate post-revolutionary era, this is not surprising given the many and well-documented connections and sympathies between the Founding Fathers and the illuminist underground. What is surprising is that these ideas and practices continued intact through the 19th century. Crawford’s original design for the Capitol had Columbia wearing a Phyrigian cap, the symbol of illuminated status conferred in the adeptus major grade of both Starck’s neo-Templars and Weishaupt’s Perfectibilists. And someone worked out very carefully the astrology of the monument’s installation on the Capitol Dome back in 1863.

Wouldn’t that same person, or group of initiates, have also worked out the future astrology of Columbia? Did they see the moment of awakening on the fall equinox of 2002? And even more important, did they see the moment of danger on January 23rd 2003?

Perhaps they did, because there is one curious clue that takes us directly into the number synchronicities of the illuminati elves themselves. The statue of Columbia was first displayed to the public on the Capitol grounds on October 23, 1862. Added together, 10 + 23 = 33, and 1 + 8 + 6 + 2 = 17. Now, 17 is a very curious number, as we will get to in a moment. But first, the mystery of 23 “skidoo.”