The Trail of the Serpent

334 Pages·1936·5.56 MB·English

by  Inquire Within

The Trail of the Serpent
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
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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