The Trail of the Serpent By Inquire Within For some years a Ruling Chief of the Mother Temple of the Stella Matutina and R .R . et A.C . Author of " Light Bearers of Darkness " "That which is above is like that which is below, and that which is below is like that which is above for the accomplishment of the wonders of one thing . " Its father is the Sun ; its mother is the Moon ; The wind beareth it in the belly thereof ; the earth is its nurse ; It is the Universal Principle, the Telesma of the World." The Emerald Tablet of Hermes . "The Serpent, inspirer of disobedience, of insub- ordination, and of revolt, was cursed by ancient Theocrats, although it was honoured among initiates . To become like unto Divinity, such was the goal of the Ancient Mysteries . To-day the pro- gramme of initiation has not changed ." OSWALD WIRTH-Le Livre du compagnon . Boswell Publishing Co . Ltd . Io Essex Street, London, W .C .2 1936 Printed in the United States of America FOREWORD FivE years ago, we published Light Bearers of Darkness, largely based on articles appearing in the Patriot from 1925 to 1930, being the result of our own experiences and investigations into various individual secret societies, . their affiliations, their occult practices, their pseudo- religious and political activities . To-day, in The Trail of the Serpent ; we issue a further instalment of these researches, built up almost wholly from contributions to the Patriot from 1930 to 1935 . Going back to Patriarchal times, we attempt to trace, step by step, the worship of the ancient Serpent, the Creative Principle, the God of all initiates, from the early Cabiri, through Paganism to the pseudo-Chris- tianity of the Gnostics and Cabalists, these latter largely emanating under the influence of the Hellenised Jews of Alexandria . We have endeavoured to prove that the aim, in the higher grades of these varied mysteries and cults, is to awaken this serpent, the sex-force or " God within " man, raising it by processes and yogic methods, uniting it with the Universal Creative Principle without develop- ing the latent senses or, so to say, deifying the adept, but only that be may be enslaved by some astute, outside, and stronger mind or group of minds, who, it would seem, seek to rule the nations through hypnotically con- trolled adepts . For one and all of these modern mys- teries are dominated and ruled by some unknown hierarchy, just as in the Ancient Mysteries the Egyptian high-priests were the masters of the old world through their knowledge and power to manipulate these invisible serpent forces, the magnetic forces of all nature, by means of which they bound and dominated the mystes and even the epoptes and through them the masses . These revolutionary mysteries first appear as pseudo- V Vi FOREWORD religions, until by means of some kind of seemingly reli- gious uplift the necessary link with the master-mind is formed . Then it becomes openly political and revolu- tionary, subverting all aspects of the nation's life, seeking by internationalism and universalism to unify all peoples, socially, economically, politically, in arts and religion, preparing for some New Era, some New Heaven and New Earth . We have finally sought to materialise these invisible masters and, allowing the Cabalists to speak for them- selves, we arrive at the revolutionary and cabalistic Jew, the most cosmopolitan of peoples, who look for the Coming of their Messianic Era. To some of these the Messiah is their race and their race is their God, the Tetragrammaton, the Creative Principle, this Serpent Power, binding and unifying, leading to the hope of merging all races, all faiths under the Law of this their Unity of Race, thus creating the "Greater Judaism " spoken of by the Jewish World, 9 and 16 February, 1883 . CONTENTS PAGE Foreword • V CHAPTER I Sabeism . Eleusis and Mithras • I CHAPTER II Cabalists, Gnostics, and Secret Syrian Sects . • 20 CHAPTER III Rosicrucians and Illumines . • 50 CHAPTER IV Weishaupt's Illuminati and the French Revolution 67 CHAPTER V Carbonari, Mazzini, 1'Alliance-israelite-universelle and Karl Marx . 91 CHAPTER VI The Jewish Question . • . 114 CHAPTER VII 'Continental Freemasonry . • 137 CHAPTER VIII Theosophy and India . Co-masonry . 170 vii Vlll CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER IX Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy . 203 CHAPTER X Fraternity of Inner Light and Yoga . 230 CHAPTER XI Aleister Crowley and the Golden Dawn . 256 CHAPTER XII American Groups . 270 CHAPTER XIII Secret Societies in America, Tibet, and China 294 CHAPTER XIV The Synarchy of Agarttha . 310 Index . 319 CHAPTER I SABEISM . ELEUSIS AND MITHRAS IN 1871 General Albert Pike, Grand Master of the Scot- tish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction, U.S .A., wrote in Morals and Dogmas : " Among the early nations a wild enthusiasm and a sensual idolatry of nature soon superseded the simple worship of the Almighty God . .. The great powers and elements of nature and the vital principle of production and procreation through all generations ; then the celestial spirits or heavenly host, the lumin- ous armies of the stars, and the great Sun and mysterious, ever- changing Moon (all of which the whole ancient world regarded, not as mere globes of light or bodies of fire, but as animated living substances, potent over man's fate and destinies) ; next the genii and tutelar spirits, and even the souls of the dead, received divine worship . .. the heavens, earth, and the operations of nature were personified ; the good and bad principles personified became also objects of worship." Further, in New York, 15 August, 1876, at the Supreme Council of the 33rd degree, he declared : "Our adversaries, numerous and formidable, will say, and will have the right to say, that our Principe Createur is identical with the Principe Generateur of the Indians and Egyptians, and may fitly be symbolised as it was symbolised anciently, by the lingae . To accept this in lieu of a personal God is to abandon Christianity and the worship of Jehovah and return to wallow in the styes of Paganism ." In his book, Diem et les Dieux, 1854, Le Chevalier Gougenot des Mousseaux gives an exhaustive account of these many pantheistic, pagan, and phallic forms of ancient worship . He tells us that Snh ism thrust its roots deep into the heart of Patriarchal traditions, per- verting the early revelations . This Sabeism, which took I 2 THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT its name, not from the country of Saba, but from Tzaba, an armed troop, made men bow the knee to the starry army of the firmament ; it was Stellar before it became Solar and worshipped the Pole Star, known in Chaldea as I .A.O ., the creative principle . Somewhat later it mingled with the more corrupt cult of Nature-Sabeism, or the cult of the Stars and Naturalism . To follow the gradual corruption of the early Patriarchal traditions, the Stone is one of the surest guides, for at the time of its splendour it was worshipped from the Empire of China to the extreme confines of the West . It began by being the rude block detached from the rock ; it became the column, the flange, the pedestal surmounted by first one and later two human heads (hermaphrodite god), and was finally shaped in the magic lines of Apollo and Venus . The religion of the Jews is based on revelation their writings and traditions say that God appeared in diverse places to the Patriarchs and spoke to them ; there the Jews raised altars, taking the form of rude stones, generally called Beth-el-the House of God . But soon it was imagined that God resided in these Stones ; thus it became the Beth-aven-the House of Falsehood-entirely material . The Beth-el abounded in Chaldea, Asia, Egypt, Africa, Greece, even in the remotest parts of Europe, among Druids, Gauls, and Celto-Scythians, and in the New World, North and South. Man's sensual imagination soon allowed him " to collect his gods in the dust and fashion them as he pleased ." The Pagans imitated the Beth-el of Jacob and consecrated them with oil and blood, making them gods, calling them Betyles or Both-al-Jupiter, Cybele, Venus, Mithras . The greater part of the natural Betyles were the black meteorites or fire-balls fallen from the heavens and regarded by the Sabeists as heavenly divinities . These meteorites were the Cabiri, and the Pelasgi-wandering or dispersed men-were their most noted worshippers . Further, in these Cabiri, even as in Sabeism, we recognise the cult of the stars . Sabeism came from the Principle of Unity transferred from the Invisible God to SABEISM . ELEUSIS AND MITHRAS 3 the God of Nature, the Sun-God ; then followed duality, male-female, Sun-Moon, God-Goddess of Nature . This passed on to multiplying the gods by the number of the stars, and led back to unity . For, " soon all the stars together were merely the God of Light, the God of Nature, the God of Phenomena ... everything was emanation, each thing was God-part-of-God-Pantheism was created ! " M. Creuzer held the idea that the Cabiri of Egypt and Phoenicia, as well as the Pelasgic Greek Cabiri (Japhetic), are the great Planetary Divinities that is, the Gods of Heaven, universal gods, the many gods in One which dominate air, earth, and the waves, and they mingled with those of the Betyles . They were always the seven Planets-Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon-which together with the Earth formed the eight Cabiric Gods . Having made the Creator the God of Matter the God of Nature, his principal function was to produce ; therefore, the organs of generation became the symbol of divinity.