Ferdinand married Anna of the Jagellon dynasty, which descends from the Piasts, who between the fourteenth century and sixteeth century reigned, as grand dukes of Lithuania, kings of Poland, of Hungary and of Bohemia. Ferdinand gained the title of King of Hungary in 1526. Jogaila, Grand Duke of Lithuania, and the founder of the dynasty in Poland, became king of Poland as Ladislaus II of Poland after converting to Christianity. He married Jadwiga of Poland, who is venerated by the Catholic Church as Saint Hedwig the Queen, patron saint of queens and united Europe. She was the youngest daughter of Louis I of the House of Angevin, King of Hungary and Poland. Louis was the great-grandson of Charles II, King of Jerusalem and Sicily, and Maria of Hungary. But the Habsburgs split into two branches, being the Austrian Habsburgs and the Spanish Habsburgs. After 1556, the Austrian Habsburgs held the title of Holy Roman Emperors, as well as the Habsburg Hereditary Lands of Austria and Slovenia, as well as the Kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary, while the Spanish Habsburgs ruled over the Spanish kingdoms, the Netherlands, the Habsburgs’ Italian possessions, and, for a time, Portugal. Hungary, nominally under Habsburg kingship from 1526, was mostly under the turks of the Ottoman Empire for 150 years. 12 : Rosicrucians and Freemasons The House of Stuart Though effectively suppressed, the occult underground made its first move at subversion through the development of Protestantism, a schism that would forever divide the Catholic Church, and liberated parts of Europe, where these occult influences could then begin to make inroads. It was largely as an attempt to bolster this emerging Protestant movement, that, following the union of the Stuart and Guelph bloodlines, that they formed the Order of the Rosy Cross, to mark that underground’s entry into public attention, and begin the concerted effort to incept the conspiracy to, first, supplant the power of the Catholic Church, and ultimately erect a New World Order. The Habsburg realm became internally divided when the German princes of the Empire had supported the Protestant movement against the Catholic Church, which was ostensibly defended by the Habsburg rulers. The rising tide of the Protestant movement came to a head in Bohemia, where the Kabbalistic underground surfaced in the manner of the Order of the Rosicrucians, otherwise known as the Order of the Rosy Cross. The ultimate aim of the Order was that of abolishing the Church, and replacing it with a government of “wise” rulers. As explained by occult historian Laurence Gardner: It was by no chance that Martin Luther’s protest gained support in some very influential circles, for Rome had many enemies in high places. Not the least of these enemies were the Knights Templars, and the underground Hermetic societies whose esoteric crafts had been condemned by the Catholic Inquisition. The truth was not so much that Luther gained the support of others, but that he was the willing instrument of an already active movement which endeavored to dismantle the rigid international domination of the Pope.1 In England, the most significant consequence of the Reformation was the establishment of the independent church, created by King Henry the VIII, the son of Elizabeth of York and Edward VII. It was followed by the establishment of the Church of England under his daughter, Queen Elizabeth I. Queen Elizabeth I’s court was steeped in esoteric thought. An important source of these tendencies, as well as much of Rosicrucian philosophy, was a famous occultist John Dee. Dee believed that he found the secret of conjuring angels by numerical configurations in the tradition of the Kabbalah, and claimed to have gained contact with good angels, from whom he learned advancement in knowledge. While acting as Astrologer Royal to Queen Mary, who had succeeded Henry VIII to the throne, Dee was accused of high treason and practicing sorcery against Mary’s life. He was thrown in prison, but managed to clear himself of the charges, though he continued to be strongly suspected of being a magician and a conjurer. When Elizabeth became Queen after Mary’s death, Dee was fortunate enough to have the benefit of her favour, and subsequently tutored the new queen in the understanding of his own mystical writings. Elizabeth did not marry, and therefore had no direct heir. Mary Stuart, also known as Mary Queen of Scots, the granddaughter of Henry VIII’s sister, was the nearest relative, but she was Catholic. Elizabeth of York and Henry VII of England were the parents of Henry VIII, but also of Margaret Tudor, who married James IV of Scotland, thus introducing the Armenian heritage of Lusignan, and the Fisher Kings of Brittany, to the Stuart line. Their son James V of Scotland, a member of the Order of the Garter, married Marie de Guise to father Mary Queen of Scots. Revealing her affiliation to the bloodline, in 1546, Marie Guise, had signed an unusual Bond and Obligation to Sir William Sinclair Baron of Rosslyn: “In likewise that we sall be Leal and trew Maistres to him, his Counsill and Secret shewn to us we sall keep secret--and in all mattres gif to him the best and trewest Counsell we can as we sall be requirite thereto…and sall be reddy att all tymes to maintain and defend him…”2 The House of Guise was an important branch of the Guilhemids. It had been founded in the sixteenth century, as a cadet branch of the House of Lorraine by Claude, first Duke of Guise. Claude’s great-grandfather was Rene d’Anjou, whose combined heritage provided him with the titles of Count of Provence, Count of Guise, Duke of Anjou, Duke of Lorraine, King of Hungary, King of Naples and Sicily, King of Aragon, Valencia, Majorca and Sardinia and King of Jerusalem. One of Rene’s daughters, Marguerite d’Anjou, in 1445, married Henry VI of England, and played a prominent role in the Wars of the Roses. Rene d’Anjou at one time employed Christopher Columbus, and was associated with Joan of Arc, who was the daughter of Edward I King of England and Eleanor of Castile. Edward was the son of Henry III of England and Eleanor of Provence, whose father, Raymond Berengar V Count of Toulouse, was the great-grandson of Alfonso VII King of Castile and Richenza of Poland.3 Rene, who was well-versed in the occult, included at his court a Jewish Kabbalist known as Jean de Saint-Remy, who, according to some accounts, was the grandfather of Nostradamus. Rene’s interests also included Arthurian and Grail romances. Through his intimate relationship with the ruling Sforza family of Milan, he established contact with the Medicis of Florence, and it seems to have been largely through his influence that Cosimo de Medici embarked on the projects of translating the Neoplatonic, Gnostic and Hermetic texts that set off the so-called “Humanistic” tradition of the Renaissance. The Habsburg King Philip of Spain and the Catholics in France plotted for Mary Queen of Scots’ accession to the throne of England, and when Elizabeth discovered that plots to place the Scottish queen on the English throne threatened her life, she had Mary Stuart imprisoned and eventually executed. However, Mary had married Henry Stuart, who was the great-grandson of Eleanor Sinclair, the daughter of William Sinclair, and John Stewart. And, following Elizabeth’s childless death in 1603, the throne was left vacant. Thus, James VI of Scots, the son of Mary Queen of Scots and Henry Stuart, was deemed to be Elizabeth’s closest living relative. He became King James I of England, the first monarch of England of the Stuart line. It would be concern for the preservation of this line which would become the central theme of that branch of the Illuminati at the center of all its intrigues, Scottish Rite Freemasonry. Bohemia King James did not share Elizabeth’s sympathies for John Dee, and when he appealed to the king for help in clearing his reputation from charges of conjuring devils, the King ignored him. Dee finally died disgraced and in abject poverty in 1608. Prior to his death, though, and after his career in England had come to an end, John Dee had found his way to Prague, then under Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, where he influenced the Rosicrucian movement. Rudolph II, like his father, Maximilian II, was a member of the Order of the Garter. And, he chose to move his capital from Vienna to Prague, in Bohemia, which became an occult oriented court, a center of study in alchemy, astrology, and magic. Rudolph II devoted vast sums of money to the building of his library, which comprised of the standard corpus of Hermetic works, as well as the notorious Picatrix, an Arabic work expounding on Sabian themes. The Emperor Rudolf II’s fascination with Hermeticism was matched by his interest in Kabbalah, when his reign became a “golden age” of Jewry in Prague in Bohemia. Despite their initial persecution during the Crusades, the Jewish community of Bohemia often enjoyed exceptional privileges. Although originating in southern France, it was in Spain that the Kabbalah would develop, and where the most important medieval Kabbalistic text, the Sepher ha Zohar, or Book of Light, was produced in 1286 AD. Ultimately, the spread of Kabbalistic influence, and the occult rites it involved, or mysteries, generally known as “witchcraft”, caused the Church to become increasingly suspicious, and to eventually attempt its brutal suppression. Therefore, a year before the Templars were arrested, in 1307 AD, France expelled its Jewish population. The Jews had already been expelled from England in 1290 AD, by King Edward, when all the crowned heads of Europe followed his example. Saxony followed suit in 1348. On the extinction of the house of Arpad of Hungary, and under the Angevin kings who then occupied the throne, the Hungarian Jews suffered many persecutions, and were expelled in 1360, and in 1370 Belgium, in 1380 Slovakia, in 1420 Austria, and in 1444 the Netherlands. However, the anti-Jewish offensive of the papacy in the early thirteenth century little affected the conditions of Bohemia’s Jewish community. The Bohemian monarchs ignored the resolutions of the Lateran Council of 1215 AD, which set out to limit the economic and social influence of the Jewish Communities in Europe. In return, the Jews were careful to guard the independence of the Bohemian aristocracy, and became the true servants of the royal Chamber. They were given a number of concessions and freedoms by the charter issued by Ottokar II, and the tolerant government of the last Premyslid kings proved favorable to the development of the Jewish community. With the end of the Premyslid dynasty, however, the first few decades of the fourteenth century became a period of general insecurity. The long reign of Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, though, again brought the Jews of Prague new privileges. Charles IV ensured their protection, and allowed them to settle within the walls of Prague’s New Town, which he founded in 1348. And, in 1357, Charles IV, allowed the Jews of Prague to have their own city flag, a red banner that featured, in gold, the Kabbalistic six-pointed star, known as the “Star of David”, or “Seal of Solomon”, being the first Jewish flag of its kind. Red, as demonstrated by Andrew Colin Gow, author of the Red Jews: Anti-Semitism in an Apocalyptic Age: 1200-1600, had become a color distinctly associated with the Jews. Between the thirteenth and sixteenth century, as he has shown, it became popular in German literature to identify Gog and Magog with the Lost Tribes of Israel, who collectively were referred to as “Red Jews”. As he further noted, Jews were often portrayed by medieval illustrations in Christian texts with red hair and in red clothes. According to Gow: This connection was so widely-accepted as to be included prominently in illustrations of Hebrew manuscripts, though in such cases, these depictions presumably lacked or did not evoke the negative associations generally marked by red hair. The Jews by whom these manuscripts were made and for whom they were intended seem to have attached no negative significance to the color red. Yet as we have seen, Christian iconography “saw red” in connection with Judas. The Metzgers’ manuscript illuminations suggest that to Jews as to Christians, Jews were typically red-headed and wore red clothes; it was taken for granted.4 In 1557, Ferdinand I, at the instigation of his younger son, the Archduke Ferdinand, who was governor of the region, issued a decree exiling all Jews from Prague and Bohemia. Many Jewish families departed, but a number of families who managed to earn exceptions remained. This situation lasted until the Archduke’s brother, Maximilian II ascended the throne. The new king revoked all decrees of expulsion by degrees, and instead confirmed many of the forgotten privileges originally granted to the Jews. Under Rudolf II, many Jewish refugees who had been expelled from Moravia, Germany, Austria and Spain came to Prague. In Prague, Jews studied Kabbalah undisturbed. The city, says Frances Yates, “was a great center for Jewish Cabalism, and a very remarkable personality, Rabbi Loew, was prominent in Prague in the late sixteenth century.”5 Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, also known as the Maharal of Prague, published more than fifty religious and philosophical books. Rabbi Loew became legendary as the mystical worker who created the Golem, an artificial man made of clay brought to life through magical combinations of the sacred letters of the Hebrew alphabet, which acted as a guardian over the Jews. Lurianic Kabbalah It was in Bohemia, therefore, that the most important modern development in Kabbalah took root, known as the New Kabbalah, derived by Isaac Luria. Luria’s revolutionary knew conception of Zionism and the purpose of the Jewish people in history would become the fundamental creed of two important new heresies that would go on to become the basis of all Illuminati intrigues. These were, first, the heresy in the seventeenth century, of the false messiah Shabbetai Zevi, and in the following century, that developed by one of his successors, Jacob Frank. Luria’s novel interpretations essentially fired new Messianic hopes, which were accepted positively by Jews who recently endured the expulsion from Spain. As in other parts of Europe, violent persecution had been growing in Spain and Portugal, where in 1391, hundreds of thousands of Jews had been forced to convert to the Catholicism. Publicly, the Jewish converts, known as Marranos, were Christians, but secretly they continued to practice Judaism, including following the Kabbalah. After 1540, many Marranos fled to England, Holland, France, the Ottoman Empire, Brazil and other places in South and Central America. These Marranos maintained strong family ties and became influential where they lived. In Spain, during the fifteenth century, the Marranos “crypto-Jews”, founded the Christian heresy of the Alumbrados. The Illuminati Order was not invented by Adam Weishaupt, but was rather renewed and reformed.6 The Alumbrados, or Illuminati, claimed to have direct intercourse with God. All external worship, they declared, is superfluous, and sin impossible in this state of complete union with Him. Therefore, like all Gnostics before them, they believed carnal desires could be indulged in, and other sinful actions committed freely without corrupting the soul. As young man, Ignatius of Loyola became a member of the Allumbrados, though, as a cover for his activities, he became very active as a Roman Catholic. Ignatius of Loyola was born in 1491, from wealthy Marranos parents a year before the expulsion of the Jews from Spain.7 Loyola moved to Rome where he founded the Order of Jesus, known as the infamous Jesuits, which was approved by Pope Paul III in 1540. In setting up the Jesuit order, Loyola devised an elaborate spy system, so that no one in the order was safe. If there was any opposition, death was meted out swiftly. The Jesuit order not only became a destructive arm of the Roman Catholic Church, but developed into a secret intelligence service. Ultimately, the Jesuits would follow the same conspiratorial methods as the Ismailis, to undermine the religion they were purportedly representing, and for indoctrinating dupes into their subversive mission, as the following, taken from the secret oath of the Jesuits, demonstrates: You have been taught to insidiously plant the seeds of jealousy and hatred between communities, provinces, states that were at peace, and incite them to deeds of blood, involving them in war with each other, and to create revolutions and civil wars in countries that were independent and prosperous, cultivating the arts and the sciences and enjoying the blessings of peace. To take sides with the combatants and to act secretly with your brother Jesuit, who might be engaged on the other side, but openly opposed to that with which you might be connected, only that the Church might be the gainer in the end, in the conditions fixed in the treaties for peace and that the end justifies the means. Rabbi Isaac Luria was a faithful follower of Ignatius Loyola.8 Luria’s father, a member of an Ashkenazi family from Poland and Germany, emigrated to Jerusalem. Following his father’s death, as a child, Luria was taken to Egypt. Egypt has always harboured an important Jewish community, and of Gnostic speculation, from Hellenistic times, to the Ismailis of the Fatimids, as it was in Luria’s time. It was for this reason that Egypt would figure so prominently as one of the focal points of Illuminati, even into the twentieth century, with the creation of Islamic fundamentalism. In Egypt, here he became versed in rabbinic studies, engaged in commerce, and eventually concentrated on study of the Zohar, the central work of the Medieval Kabbalah. In 1570, he went to Safed in Galilee, where he studied under Moses ben Jacob Cordovero, the greatest Kabbalist of the time, and developed his own Kabbalistic system. Although he wrote few works, Luria’s doctrines were recorded by his pupil Hayyim Vital, who presented them in a large posthumous collection. Because of this work, Lurianic Kabbalah became the new thought that influenced all Jewish mysticism after him, competing with the Kabbalah of Cordovero. Luria initiated a new interpretation of the role of the Kabbalah in preparation for the arrival of the messiah. In Luria’s system, all being is said to have been in exile, that is, separated from God, since the very beginning of creation, and the task of restoring everything to its proper order is the specific role of the Jewish people. The final redemption, however, cannot be achieved merely through the advent of the Messiah, but must be brought about historically, through a long chain of actions that prepare the way. Essentially, the important notion that was transmitted to the Kabbalists was this, that they must not merely await the fulfillment of prophecy with regards to the coming of the Messiah, and the restoration of the Jewish people in the Promised Land. Rather, they ought to work actively to prepare for his appearance. First, this meant manipulating the course of fate through the use of magic, and finally, of preparing the necessary political and moral circumstances to receive his coming, that is, a New World Order.
Posted on: Thu, 01 May 2014 03:14:42 +0000
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