text:
by Thomas R. Horn
from RaidersNewsUpdate Website
Malachy's head was spinning; he was short of breath, gasping, and a cold chill flushed his face. He wondered: was he about to meet the Lord or was he having another sorcerous vision?
He wanted rest. Bernard, oh where is Bernard? Then he remembered, confusion…so much confusion over the papacy. The words came fast and furious again. Phrases in liturgical Latin danced in his mind. Had the devil taken the papacy?
Schismaticus, popes and antipopes, power-mad, political posturing in the house of God. The prophecies of the popes writhed in his feverish conscience; the dragon… oh no the dragon, Draco depreſſus and then Anguinus uir was this to be a serpentine pope?
Just last year, on the twenty-fifth of January, 1138, the antipope Anacletus had died, finally allowing the appointed Innocent II to ascend the Holy See. When the conspiring Cardinals had launched their coup, the opposed Innocent II fled Rome under his given name, Gregorio Papareschi, finding refuge with dear Bernard at the abbey.
It was just this year Pope Innocent had reclaimed the Holy See prompting this pilgrimage from Ireland to Rome.
The fatigue began to fade and Malachy recalled what led him here to Janiculum Hill on this day. After his arduous journey from Ireland to Rome, only a brief respite at the Clairvaux Abbey in the Vallée d'Absinthe had given him hope. Yet, despite his fondness for Bernard, the bitterness of wormwood had infected his soul.
He had requested permission from his holiness to end his days with his loyal friend Bernard in retreat at the abbey. Unfortunately, the Pontiff had only increased his responsibilities, making him Papal Legate for all of Ireland. But Malachy was weary of it all - so very tired.
What was driving the Pope so hard? Had not Christ admonished His disciples,
"but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister?"
(Matthew 20:26 KJV)
The beast was coming one day and Malachy knew it… Bellua infatiabilis.
It was then that he knew the popes had taken the unspeakable bargain and there was no taking it back. After the fullness of time, Petrus Romanus would mark the end of Mysterium Babylon magna.
The Man Who Foresaw the Final Pope?
In the modest settlement of Armagh, in the beautiful, sweeping, emerald lands of Northern Ireland, in the year 1094, a nobleman and chief by the name of Lector Ua Morgair and his well-cultured wife celebrated the dawning of new life in their son, Máel Máedóc Ua Morgair.
Neither of them could have known how the tiny boy they had just delivered would become a central figure in End-Times prophecy.
Little Máel Máedóc Ua Morgair (anglicized to the more modern "Malachy") lived his early, boyish days skipping amidst the comfortable sounds and familiar, candlelit ambiance of the Armagh Cathedral. He remained educated under the personal tutelage of his learned father, Lector of Armagh, until the fateful day of Lector's death in the year 1102.
Malachy and his brother and sister were then raised by his mother alone, a woman who had been described as "A dutiful, Christian woman" [i] by St. Bernard de Clairvaux.
As the years progressed, Malachy continued his studies under the mentorship of Imar (also spelled "Imhar") O'Haglan: a man who focused his teachings on renouncing earthly pleasures to preserve the eternal soul. Following in O'Haglan's ascetical footsteps, Malachy showed astute perception within the walls of the cathedral and the shabby cell beneath where O'Haglan spent his days like a hermit.
Despite the protests of his sister and school acquaintances when self-flagellation, penance, and other religious practices grew to be ultimately more important than becoming an inspired professor like his father before him, Malachy continued searching for opportunities to express his passion for the Church and the life he believed he was chosen to lead.
Drawing everyday nearer to the effects of O'Haglan's authority and vision, Malachy soon introduced Gregorian chants into his regime, and a zeal for Church reform.
By the age of twenty-two, the archbishop Cellach of Armagh (also spelled "Ceollach" and "Celsus"), a good acquaintance to O'Haglan, found such promise and exception in the young man that he put aside canonical law and ordained the youth as a deacon three years prior to custom. In 1119, he declared Malachy vicar-general and entrusted him with the duty of reforming the diocese while he was away.
The changes observed in the diocese were immediate and extraordinary. Malachy's sermons of penance ignited a passion in the common people and stirred the laity to respect canonical rules of the Church.
Eventually Malachy headed to Lismore to revise and sharpen his knowledge of the canon under the teaching and advice of well-known scholar Bishop Malchus.
Note: St. Bernard writes that Bishop Malchus was,
"an old man, full of days and virtues, and the wisdom of God was in him." [ii]
He goes on to further explain that the bishop was later acknowledged as performing two miracles, one wherein he healed a young boy of a mental disorder who later became his porter, and another wherein,
"when the saint put his fingers into his ears on either side he perceived that two things like little pigs came out of them." [iii]
These distinctions of Bishop Malchus' reputation are of importance to St. Bernard,
"that it may be known to all what sort of preceptor Malachy had in the knowledge of holy things." [iv]
Needless to say, Malachy worked and studied with associates whose names circulated within the Church as significant.
Though his trip to Lismore was meant for a time of quiet learning, Malachy's was not idle there, taking opportunities to speak out on current affairs within the Church that concerned him, and was often sent by Malchus himself,
"to preach the word of God to the people and to correct many evil practices which had developed over the years. He achieved notable success. To reform the clergy he instituted regulations concerning celibacy and other ecclesiastical discipline, and reinstituted the recitation of the canonical hours.
Most importantly, he gave back the sacraments to the common people, sending good priests among them to instruct the ignorant. He returned to Armagh in 1123." [v]
This same year, Malachy was appointed Abbot of Bangor where he assisted in helping rebuild the abbey and establish a seminary.
More importantly, from this time forward, a series of miracles and the gift of prophecy were attributed to him.
One notable prophecy, especially hard to chalk up to pure coincidence, finds fulfillment in the twentieth century:
Ireland will suffer English oppression for a week of centuries [700 years], but will preserve her fidelity to God and His Church.
At the end of that time she will be delivered, and the English in turn must suffer severe chastisement. Ireland, however, will be instrumental in bringing back the English to the unity of Faith.
Complete Anglo-Norman domination of Ireland was achieved a century after Malachy's prediction. Independence for the southern part of Ireland came 700 years later in the early 20th century.
If this utterance is not apocryphal, then it predates the schism between the Church of England and the Catholic faith by four centuries and implies that Anglicanism will falter sometime in our near future when the final pope finishes his reign. [vi]
Yet, Yves DuPont argues this began in the twelfth century and ended after WW2.
He says,
"The liberation has come in stages: World War I, independence within the British Empire; World War II, complete independence. Thus, Ireland was under British rule for seven centuries." [vii]
However, it just as likely applies to the rampant secularism in England ultimately being conquered by Christianity.
At thirty years of age, Malachy became Bishop Malachy of Down and Connor.
John Hogue says of Malachy's new position:
"The bishopric was considered one of Ireland's blackest holes for the faith. Malachy would face a moratorium on church tithes, a shortage of priests and an even greater shortage of celibate clerics; he would wince at the improvised performances of the sacraments based on the rejection of canon law in favor of native and often semi-pagan Irish rituals." [viii]
With passion, yet still humble as a true servant of God, Malachy spoke out about Church reform and continuously brought more and more attention to himself as a true trailblazer.
Never before had Malachy seen such lax cohesion to the laws of God within the walls of the Church. Discipline, offering, tithing, giving of the first-fruits, and going to confession were things of the past; marriages were made illegally.
Christians behaved like pagans.
"Never had he found men so shameless in regard of morals, so dead in regard of rites, so impious in regard of faith, so barbarous in regard of laws, so stubborn in regard of discipline, so unclean in regard of life." [ix]
Nevertheless, believing that he was a "shepherd and not a hireling," [x] Malachy fought the issues head-on and in his enthusiasm, discovered followers who were willing to flock to his side to reestablish devotion to the rituals.
About this time according to legend, Malachy had a dream in which a woman appeared to him and revealed her identity as Archbishop Cellach's wife.
She handed Mallachy a pastoral staff, and then disappeared. He shared this with those in his company and it was esteemed important because for approximately fifteen generations by this time in Armagh, people high up in both secular politics and the Church had maintained office within family hierarchies.
As a result, it was normal to nominate a successor to the seat of the archbishop by heritage instead of Church works. Archbishop Cellach, however, impressed by Malachy's ministry, rejected the expectations of his family in this regard. Hoping that Malachy could bring new life and hope to the Church, and wanting to put a stop to hereditary succession of the office, Cellach charged those under him with the task of spreading word that Malachy would be given his seat as Archbishop of Armagh.
When the word reached Malachy, it came as no surprise after the dream he'd had, and just days after Cellach passed away, Malachy received Cellach's staff (the one from his dream), and a letter confirming the news of his latest promotion.
Cellach's family was outraged. Feeling usurped by his decision to appoint someone outside the family as archbishop, tension rose between them and Malachy. Cellach's cousin, Murtagh (also spelled "Murtough" and "Muirchetrach"), fancied himself worthy of the role, and his family stood behind him in his campaign to become archbishop, ready even to use force to claim the position if necessary.
The people of the Church fell in support of Malachy, equally ready for the hereditary succession of the office to end.
Three years passed while Malachy remained at the monastery, not refusing the archbishopric but unwilling to participate in a war between Murtagh and the Church.
The papal legate eventually became revolted enough by Murtagh's tyranny that the Church ordered Malachy, by threat of impending excommunication, to take his position. Malachy conceded and in response to the order, accepted his bishopric from a distance to avoid the mayhem of political/religious war.
He made a deal with the legate that if the Church was ever fully restored to freedom in matters of succession, in return he wanted a leave from leadership so that he might find time to be alone in his studies and away from obligatory office.
Remaining safely just outside the city, he maintained governance as the acknowledged Archbishop of Armagh, without immediately taking possession of his See.
When Murtagh passed away in 1134, he revealed that Niall, Cellach's brother, would be his successor.
During this time, the people generally believed that anyone in possession of the crosier of St. Patrick (the Bachal Isu, of "Staff of Jesus") and the Book of Gospels (or Holy Book) was the true archbishop. In lieu of this, Niall saw and seized his opportunity to appear the legitimate and rightful archbishop by stealing these two artifacts from the cathedral of Armagh.
Although history is cloudy when it comes to the issue of retrieving the stolen artifacts from Niall (most records point to a small war between the two sides, which was rumored to be brought to an end by diplomacy from Malachy, followed by his purchasing the artifacts back from Niall), Malachy did eventually get them back and take his place as primate in the cathedral city of Armagh.
"In 1138, having broken the tradition of hereditary succession, rescued Armagh from oppression, restored ecclesiastical discipline, re-established Christian morals, and seeing all things tranquil, Malachy resigned his post as originally agreed." [xi]
Malachy retired to Bangor to live in rest for a time, among the camaraderie of his fellow monks, but with few demands on his schedule or solitary study.
Eventually Malachy felt the need to gain meeting with Pope Innocent II in Rome to officially recognize the archbishops (and the Sees) of Armagh and Cashel with a pallium, an official woolen cloak of authority, for each to signify the bishopric jurisdiction over the ecclesiastical provinces and to gain favor and blessing from the papal for the developments within the Church.
In 1139, he gathered a few traveling companions and pack animals and headed to Rome through Scotland, England, and France. It was during his travels that he arrived at the Cistercian Abbey of Clairvaux, where he met the future-saint Bernard (who would later be his central biographer). Resting there for a short time, Malachy became enchanted with the Abbey and made a very close friendship with its abbot.
Abbot Bernard was unusual in his approach to ministry.
He maintained fitness of the body by practicing martial arts and kept those in his presence ready at all times to be counted upon for defending the Church at all costs. He proved to be such a wellspring of religious passion for Malachy that when the time came for him to leave the abbey and continue his pilgrimage to Rome, Malachy made a secret plan to ask for retirement in the seclusion of Clairvaux.
Sixteen months after the journey began Malachy finally arrived in Rome, his heart and mind lifted and hopeful.
Quickly, he was brought to Pope Innocent II for official audience. Innocent approved Malachy's request for the pallia but with strict conditions: Malachy would take on new responsibilities.
He was now the Papal Legate of Ireland with all of its ensuing political intricacies. This was not what he had wanted; he so desperately desired the peace and serenity of the Abbey. It was upon leaving the seven-hilled city so frustrated, framed by the breathtaking Western view from Janiculum Hill that it came upon him.
Because of the impiety of the popes, Rome would burn.
As the legend goes, Malachy experienced what is today considered a famous vision commonly called "The Prophecy of the Popes." The prophecy is a list of Latin verses predicting each of the Roman Catholic popes from Pope Celestine II to the final pope, "Peter the Roman," whose reign would end in the destruction of Rome. According to this ancient prophecy, the very next pope (following Benedict XVI) will be the final pontiff, Petrus Romanus or Peter the Roman.
The final segment of the prophecy reads:
In persecutione extrema S. R. E. sedebit Petrus Romanus, qui pascet oves in multis tribulationibus: quibus transactis civitas septicollis deruetur et judex tremendus judicabit populum. Finis. [xii]
Which is rendered:
In extreme persecution, the seat of the Holy Roman Church will be occupied by Peter the Roman, who will feed the sheep through many tribulations; when they are over, the city of seven hills will be destroyed, and the terrible or fearsome Judge will judge his people. The End. [xiii]
The Good News and the Bad News
After studying the history of the prophecy of the popes and the surrounding scholarly literature, we have some good news and some very bad news, which we will begin discussing in the next entry.
[i] John Hogue, The Last Pope: The Decline and Fall of the Church of Rome (Boston, MA: Element Books Inc., 2000), 8.
[ii] H. J. Lawlor, St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh (New York, NY: The Macmillan Company, 1920), page 19, position 242.
[iii] Ibid., page 20, position 245.
[iv] Ibid., page 19, position 245.
[v] "Saint Malachy - Our Patron Saint," StMalachy.org, last accessed December 15, 2011, http://www.saintmalachy.org/churchpatronsaint.aspx.
[vi] Hogue, The Last Pope, 30.
[vii] Yves Dupont, Catholic Prophecy: The Coming Chastisement (Rockford IL: Tan Publishers, 1973), 15.
[viii] Hogue, The Last Pope, 11.
[ix] H. J. Lawlor, St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh, page 37, position 326.
[x] Ibid., page 37-38, position 329.
[xi] "Saint Malachy - Our Patron Saint," SaintMalachy.org.
[xii] M. J. O'Brien, An Historical and Critical Account of the So-Called Prophecy of St. Malachy Regarding the Succession of Popes (Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son, 1880), 82.
[xiii] "Prophecy of the Popes," Wikipedia, last modified, December 27, 2011, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophecy_of_the_popes.
After studying the history of the prophecy of the popes and the surrounding scholarly literature, we have some good news and some bad news.
What's that? You want the bad news first? Sure, no problem, let's get this unpleasantness out of the way.
The bad news is that part of the prophecy may be a forgery which was fabricated around 1590. We say forgery meaning that over half of the prophecies, the first seventy or so predictions, are vaticinia ex eventu (prophecy from the event).
It seems someone irrevocably altered the original medieval document and the original is either hidden away or lost to history. The first known publication of the "Malachy Prophecy of the Popes" was in Arnold de Wion's massive eighteen-hundred-page volume entitled Lignum Vitae (Tree of Life), which was published in 1595.
That text will be presented and examined below. Even though we have good reason to believe a much older document is still visible, we must accept that the earliest instance of the prophecy surfaced nearly four hundred years after its alleged origin in 1139.
Despite the legend which pleads it was locked away in a musty Vatican vault those four hundred years, the skeptics still have valid points. Even so, it very well could be the work of Saint Malachy coarsely corrupted by a forger. Of course, this would fall neatly in line with the Roman Catholic practice demonstrated by the Donation of Constantine and Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals.
Alternatively, some have suggested it was partially the work of Nostradamus cleverly disguised to protect his identity. While the identity of the actual prophet remains unclear, the author was a prophet whether he knew or not.
The exciting news is that the prophecy of the popes, although tainted, is still a genuine prophecy. Despite the superficial insincerity detectable in the first section of "prophecies," the post publication predictions show astonishing fulfillments. We have no critical analysis to explain away the sometimes jaw-dropping, post-1595 fulfillments. Indeed, we are currently at 111 out of 112 and believers argue they seem to have increased in precision over time.
However, we shall deal with bad news first. As we shall demonstrate, the Vatican's penchant for propaganda is undisputed in the record of history. In Rome's tradition of the altering ancient documents for political expediency, the prophecy of the popes was probably used as propaganda for Cardinal Girolamo Simoncelli papal ambitions.
Nevertheless, it was a ploy which did not work as Simoncelli lost to Gregory XIV, Innocent IX, and Clement VIII. While textual evidence for this conspiracy is provided, we suggest the reader remain objective and patient in lieu of the more astounding findings.
Historically, the prophecy has enjoyed mixed acceptance. Four hundred years ago, with so many more popes to go, it was a mere novelty. However, as time runs short, the forecast understandably becomes more urgent and the criticism more caustic.
Accordingly, beginning in the nineteenth century, the Jesuits, save one, have been outspokenly critical.
As a result, the most recent edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia suggests that the prophecy is a late sixteenth century forgery, while the older 1911 edition allows,
"it is not conclusive if we adopt Cucherat's theory that they were hidden in the Archives during those four hundred years." [i]
He refers to the nineteenth-century author, Abbé Cucherat, who is one of the few who argued for the authenticity of the prophecy in his book, Revue du monde catholique, published in 1871.
We will examine it and other positive assessments in the next chapter. Even so, most scholars point out that Malachy's biographer and dear friend, St. Bernard, makes no mention of the papal prophecy in Life of St. Malachy of Armagh. [ii] This argument from silence is ubiquitous in the literature.
Modern academic sources are also not very charitable.
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church bluntly states,
"The so-called Prophecies of Malachy, which are contained in a document apparently composed in 1590, have no connection with St. Malachy except their erroneous attribution to him." [iii]
Jesuit scholarship presents a united front.
M.J. O'Brien's An Historical and Critical Account of the So-Called Prophecy of St. Malachy Regarding the Succession of Popes is a thorough attempt at debunking.
Herbert Thurston, another Jesuit, was a prolific late nineteenth-century critic.
He argues that,
"not one scrap of evidence has ever been adduced to show that St. Malachy's prophecy about the Popes had been quoted, or even heard of, before it was published by Wion in 1595." [iv]
This is not necessarily the case as we will discuss a possible reference to the prophecy published by Nicholas Sanders in 1571.
Even so, most scholars bifurcate the list of 112 Latin phrases at number 76, due to the circumstances surrounding its publication. In so doing, two layers of context are established in the prophecy. This approach is adapted from biblical scholarship.
Exegesis in biblical studies is always an attempt to derive the original author's intention for his original reader and that is the methodology undertaken here. For instance, when scholars study the New Testament Gospels, they take into account layers of context.
There is the context in which Jesus is interacting in the original historical setting and then there is a layer of context in which the author of the gospel is presenting his account to a later audience. Careful study reveals that each evangelist author, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, frames the events of Jesus' life in unique ways for their own theological and evangelistic purposes.
The underlying context of Jesus can be assimilated by studying first-century Judaism in Israel. We study the Pharisees to understand Jesus' criticism of their traditions. In the same way, the upper level, the author's context, can be discerned by how he presents Jesus. Still, the order in which a certain account is presented in a Gospel is often unique.
This requires the careful student to "think vertically" for potential significance.
You might ask, "Is the author making a statement by where he places this parable?" The context of the evangelist author speaks to why and how he selected, arranged, and adapted the historical material about Jesus. Additionally, the scholar must "think horizontally" meaning to read each pericope with awareness of the parallels in other Gospels. [v]
While each of the four accounts preserves actual historical data, they are not always chronologically identical because of the secondary layer of context pertaining to the unique purpose of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. This methodology unveils new insights into the prophecy of the popes as well.
At first glance, there appear to be at least two levels of historical context, that of the original author and then that of the publisher. We will examine the possibility of even deeper contextual layers in the next chapter but for now we might accept the Malachy legend or perhaps a pseudepigrapher as the lower contextual level.
To determine the upper level, the context of the publisher/commentator, we discover that is has been suggested that a papal emissary, Nicholas Sanders (1530-1581), may have brought an original Celtic version of the prophecy to Rome during the reign of Pope Pius V (1566-72).[vi]
While he may have obliquely referred to the prophecy in a book published in 1571, it has also been suggested that the first specific mention of the prophecy was in a handwritten account by Don Alphonsus Ciacconus, a Spanish Dominican scholar in Rome, in the year 1590.[vii]
At the time, Ciacconus was a recognized expert on ancient Greco-Roman paleography and ancient manuscripts, as well as the history of the papacy.
Apparently the publisher, Dom Wion, had received the text from someone and turned to Ciacconus for his opinion. Ciacconus ostensibly authenticated the manuscript. We cannot know exactly when it was altered but the textual and circumstantial evidence points to the original manuscript being tampered with by 1589-1590, in time to promote a particular papabile. In the meantime (1590-1595), it circulated surreptitiously amongst the Cardinals creating quite a stir.
Wion published it with the previous popes named and interpretations of the fulfillments added in 1595.
Thus, we have discerned two layers of context:
Lower level of historical context: An original document possibly by St. Malachy or a pseudepigrapher circa 1139 -1571.
Upper level of historical context: Alterations imposed and interpretations added circa 1571-1595.
In examining the scans of the original 1595 Latin text, even with no comprehension of Latin, one can note that that explanations of the mottos with papal names cease at time of publication.
Wion claimed that Ciacconus was responsible for the interpretations but this has been called into serious question by O'Brien, who suggests it was someone else who simply copied from Onuphrius Panvinius' short history of the Popes, Epitome Romanorum Pontijicum usque ad Paulum IV, printed in Venice in 1557.
He bases this on the case that the interpretations presented by Wion match Panvinius' work but disagree with Ciacconus' own book about the popes, Viltae et res Gesltae Romanorum Ponlificum el Cardinalium, printed in 1601.
While Ciacconius' work resembles Panvinius', it disagrees in important areas that Ciacconius made explicit.
O'Brien ponders this issue:
"Now, if Ciacconius was the interpreter of the prophecies, as Wion asserts, Ciacconius must be pitching into himself, for we find reproduced in Wion's book the errors of which he complains. Who then is the interpreter? Is it Panvinius? Or may not the prophecy as well as the explanation have come from the same hand?
May not Wion have been merely duped (which could have been easily done considering his character); and may he not in good faith have given the prophecy as that of the great St. Malachy?" [viii]
Whoever the interpreter was, the last comment in Lignum Vitae referred to Urban VII who died in 1590 and the last papal name listed was Clement VIII who took office in 1592 just prior to the prophecy's 1595 publication.
In reading the Latin text, underneath "Crux Romulea…Clemens VIII," the last page simply lists the remaining mottos in three columns ending with the famous apocalyptic codex centered on Petrus Romanus and the destruction of Mystery Babylon headquartered on Vatican Hill in the seven-hilled city.
Here is the original 1595 Latin text from Lignum Vitae:
The second paragraph above reads:
"Three Epistles of St. Bernard addressed to St. Malachy are still extant (viz., 313, 316, and 317). Malachy himself is reported to have been the author of some little tractates, none of which I have seen up to the present time, except a certain prophecy of his concerning the Sovereign Pontiffs. This, as it is short, and so far as we know, has never before been printed, is inserted here, seeing that many people have asked for it." [ix]
The bottom two lines by Wion read,
"What has been added to the popes is not the work of Malachy, but of Father Alphonsus Giacon, of the Order of Preachers, the interpreter of this prophecy."
This may seem confusing in light of the above discussion about Ciacconius.
Gaicon is also Chacon or Ciacconius because he was from Spain, his original name, Alphonso Chacon, was Italianized to preserve the soft Spanish sound of "ch" in his name into Ciacconius or alternately as Wion has it "Giacon."
But this last line reveals that the original prophecy was a mere string of obscure Latin phrases, and that Giacon, Ciacconius, added each pope's name and explained how the prophecy applied to him. The comments end with to Urban VII who died in 1590 and the last papal name listed is Clement VIII.
Since the evidence points to the prophecy appearing in 1589-90, we observe the next prophecy after Urban was "ex antiquitate Urbis" which translates to "from the old city" and no interpretation is offered. This is the critical point where scholars detect an attempt to influence the conclave when Gregory XIIII was opposed by one Girolamo Simoncelli.
As a representative example of scholarly detective work, Louis Moreri, a native of Provence born in 1643 and doctor of theology, is chosen. He was the author of the acclaimed Dictionnaire Historique.
As his life's work, the dictionary contains such a wide variety of information it is considered to be an early forerunner of the modern encyclopedia.
In the 1759 edition, we read:
"They attribute to him [Malachy] a prophecy concerning the popes from Celestine II. To the end of the world, but the learned know that this prophecy was forged, during the conclave of 1590, by the partisans of Cardinal Simoncelli, who was designated by these words: 'De anlzguilale Urbis,' because he was of Orvieto; in Latin, 'Urbs vetus.'" [x]
The argument "from the old city" would arguably predict Girolamo Simoncelli who was at that time the Cardinal of Orvieto which also means "old city."
This is the dominant opinion of Malachy scholars. The scholars are right; it does seem a little too perfect. It seems that the conspirators hoped to rig the papal conclave by encouraging the voters to fall in step with the much venerated Saint Malachy.
The clever ruse failed when Simoncelli lost to Gregory XIV, albeit Gregory only lived a year to be followed by Innocent IX who similarly only lived a brief term dying in 1591. Because popes had a short life expectancy in those days, Simoncelli was a viable candidate in the conclaves in September and October-December 1590, and those in 1591 and 1592.
Altogether, he missed out on seven opportunities including the earlier conclaves of April and May 1555, 1559, and 1565-66. Even so, Simoncelli died February 24, 1605 never winning the pontificate. While the trail of the conspiracy seems evident, the coherence of the frustrated papbile's "old city" Cardinalate is not the most compelling reason we hold that it was tampered with.
To demonstrate why we can confidently discern that at least some of the pre-1590 mottos were written after the fact I will use an analogy from counter-cult apologetics, specifically in regard to Mormonism.
Joseph Smith claimed that he miraculously translated the book of Mormon directly from gold plates which were written by a divine hand. Thus, it was a one-generation translation from plates to Smith's manuscript.
Accordingly, one would then expect the book of Mormon to be sacred scripture of the most direct and pure translation. The insurmountable obstacle for the veracity of the book of Mormon is demonstrated by the fact that when the book of Mormon references passages from the Hebrew Bible, it follows the translated text of the King James Bible a little too perfectly.
For instance, where the King James italicized words, the Book of Mormon follows suit. Obviously, this proves that Smith copied his references from a King James Bible and not more ancient source material like the mythological golden plates.
We have a similar line of evidence with the prophecy of the popes.
Because we are examining the upper level of context from the time of publisher, specifically the interpretations offered prior to 1590, we can discern that they were manipulated in line with what was available at the time. Books were hard to come by. The prophecy follows the descriptions and details found in a work on the history of the popes by Onuphrius Panvinius: Epitome Romanorum Pontijicum usque ad Paulum IV, printed in Venice in 1557.
The prophecy transparently follows this reference work.
O'Brien argued,
"Any person who opens this work and compares the account of the popes in it from Celestine II to Paul IV, with the corresponding part of the 'Prophecy of St. Malachy' will come to the conclusion that the writer of the latter, if not Panvinius himself, must have been someone who followed Panvinius' account rather too closely." [xi]
This is more than just an assertion; his evidence is detailed and specific:
In Panvinius's Epitome, the popes' armorial bearings are given, but not in every case. When the arms are given, we usually find that they figure in the prophecy, when not given, the prophecy is a play upon or a description of the pope's name, country, family, or title, when cardinal.
Moreover, we find in Panvinius the very same antipopes as given in the prophecy. Even when the pope's family-name, armorial bearings or cardinalic title is wrongly given by Panvinius, we find the forger of the prophecy to perfectly chime in with him. [xii]
In other words, it matches too perfectly because, even in the few places where Panvinius' papal history makes mistakes, the interpretations of the prophecy follow those errors.
This only makes sense if someone was using Panvinius' book or if it were Panvinius himself. If we allow that they were following Rome's penchant for altering an authentic ancient document to meet their purposes, then we have two layers of context. The prophecy itself (the lower, an older level of historical context) seems to have been manipulated to match the interpretation (the upper, the late sixteenth-century level).
O'Brien's parting shot is a zinger:
According to Wion, Malachy's prophecy was a mere string of meaningless Latin phrases. How did the supposed interpreter know with what pope to commence? How was he persuaded to take up the antipopes? [xiii]
While O'Brien's incredulity is clear, the answer to the first question is trivial.
As the legend goes, Malachy was summoned to Rome in 1139 by Pope Innocent II (r. 1130-43). Thus, the prophecy commenced with the Pope following Innocent II who was Celestine II (r. 1143-44). The second quandary concerning antipopes is much more problematic.
For instance, in the Malachy prophecy, predictions,
6: Octavius ("Victor IV") (1159-1164)
7: Pascal III (1165-1168)
8: Callistus III (1168-1177),
...are antipopes.
Antipopes are alternative popes elected in opposition to a standing pope during various schisms and controversies.
The problem is that those antipopes listed opposed Alexander III (1159-81) but in reality there was another antipope Innocent III (1178-1180) who is not included in prophecy. [xiv] What makes this revealing is this is exactly the same way Panvinius recorded it. Panvinius neglected antipope Innocent III as well.
This state of affairs points to the fact that someone redacted the pre-1590 prophecies to conform to Panvinius' book. In light of their goal, it makes perfect sense. Panvinius' work was the authoritative source at the time and likely the only one most people had access to.
By manipulating all of the pre-1590 mottos to have obvious fulfillments that any semi-studious Cardinal could verify, they launched an ingenious conspiracy to promote papabile Simoncelli as the candidate of divine destiny. Because the lower level of historical context, the original text, was just a series of nebulous Latin phrases, how could someone like the alleged interpreter Ciacconus or the publisher, Wion (who discovered the list over four hundred years after their composition), know to include these and only these specific antipopes?
It is just not plausible. If the antipopes are not included, the whole list gets thrown out of sync. Of course, the original text left no such instructions. Even so, it is in sync… but not with actual history; rather, with Panvinius' book!
In summary, there is ample evidence pointing to a sixteenth-century pseudepigrapher who referenced Panvinius' book for all of the prophecies up until Paul IV in 1559 (when Panvinius' book ends). The five popes between him and Urban VII (Pius IV, Pius V, Gregory XIII, and Sixtus V) would in recent memory and easy for anyone to describe.
It is our belief that whoever perpetrated the ruse for the 1590 conclave used an actual prophetic document and modified all of the entries prior to coincide with the principle text on Pontifical history of that time. He then altered the next prophecy on the list "of the old city" to promote Girolamo Simoncelli who was the Cardinal of Orvieto (Latin urbs vetus = "old city") at the 1590 conclave.
While this evidence supports the conspiracy to promote Simoncelli, what it does not explain is what has happened over the last four hundred years since Wion's publication.
[i] Arthur Devine, "Prophecy," The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 12 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911). (Retrieved online, December 27, 2011 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12473a.htm.
[ii] Available free here: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25761.
[iii] F. L. Cross and Elizabeth A. Livingstone, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed. rev. (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 1029.
[iv] Herbert Thurston, "Prophecies of the Future Popes," The Month: A Catholic Magazine vol. XCIII (Jan.-June 1899), 565.
[v] Gordon D. Fee and Douglas K. Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1993), 135.
[vi] René Thibaut, La Mystérieuse Prophétie des Papes (Paris: J. Vrin, 1951), 23.
[vii] Benito Jerónimo Feijóo, Teatro Crítico Universal VI.38, http://www.filosofia.org/bjf/bjft204.htm. (Also corroborated at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfonso_Chac%C3%B3n, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophecy_of_the_Popes#Authenticity_and_skepticism.)
[viii] M. J. O'Brien, An Historical and Critical Account, 27.
[ix] Here is a copy of the massive 1595 Tree of Life Latin text: http://books.google.com/books?id=a4o8AAAAcAAJ&pg=507#v=onepage&q&f=false
[x] M.J. O'Brien, An Historical and Critical Account, 97-98.
[xi] Ibid., 14.
[xii] Ibid., 15.
[xiii] Ibid., 109.
[xiv] Compare the antipopes listed in the Catholic encyclopedia (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12272b.htm) with the Malachy Prophecy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophecy_of_the_Popes) and this is clearly visible.
EDITORS NOTE: While reading the entry below from January, 2012, keep in mind that we now know Pope Benedict secretly resigned last year, right when Tom Horn, Cris Putnam and Rene Thibaut (over 60 years ago) said he would. And this classified fact was held in strict confidence at the Vatican during 2012, which "no one could violate [NY Times 2/11/13]." The question is, why did Rome do this? You will be shocked by the answer when it is revealed in April in book 2 - Exo-Vaticana.
Acrostics, Anagrams, and a Real-Life Conspiracy Code?
Of the two layers of historical context discussed prior, now the lower older level demands our attention.
While we can see ample motivation for the redactor to modify the pre-1590 phrases, there is no logical reason that a sixteenth-century forger would craft a list so long into the future.
Even more so, there is no good reason he would forecast the destruction of Rome when the papists have an obvious vested interest to the contrary. This is a powerful argument that the post-1595 prophecies are indeed an accurate representation of the original document. We will likely never know for sure who wrote the original but it very could have been Malachy.
The reason the post publication prophecies have a different character and a stranger, ironic, even sarcastic realization is that they are very likely the genuine article.
It was suggested prior that an Englishman, Nicholas Sanders, may have referenced the original document in Rome after he journeyed from the British Isles. Sanders (1530-1581) was an Oxford professor from a staunch Roman Catholic background and a link in a long chain of missionaries sent to Ireland to combat the spread of Protestantism.
His writings are credited as the basis of most Roman Catholic histories of the English Reformation. Not surprising, given the dubious nature of that work, the large quantity of inflammatory spurious statements within earned Sanders the nickname of "Dr. Slanders" in England.
The historical context of this period is during the confusion and crisis surrounding the English reformation when Elizabeth I, Henry VIII's daughter, came to the throne of England and Ireland in 1558 advocating Protestant theology. Catholics fearing retaliation for their harsh treatment of Protestants panicked. This caused papal loyal, Sanders, to vacate his Oxford chair in 1560 and hightail it to Rome, where he became a priest and doctor of theology. While it lasted, Rome was good for Sanders.
While in Rome, he hobnobbed with influential papists like Cardinal Hosius whom he served for a time. It was during this time that he published his books that we will subsequently examine. Later, he conspired with James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald to launch a papal military invasion of Ireland.
They wanted to secure Ireland for the Pope and vacate Protestants. Sanders and Fitzgerald landed a force of some six hundred Spanish and Italian troops under papal authority at Smerwick harbor in Ireland, instigating the Second Desmond Rebellion.
While they enjoyed some superficial success, this campaign was ultimately unsuccessful and Sanders is believed to have died of cold and starvation hiding out in hinterland of Ireland in 1581.
It was during the heady days in Rome, around 1571, that Sanders' authored De Visibili Monarchia Ecclesiae ("From the Monarchy of the Visible Church") which provided the first account of the travails of the English Roman Catholics as a consequence of the reformation.
While the book's purpose was to generate sympathy for English Catholics, it leads scholars to suspect he could have had access to the original prophecy of the popes document.
The clue which suggests that he must have been aware of the prophecy of the popes is that, in his book, he argues,
"…to measure time, nothing is more advisable that the series of the Roman pontiffs!" [i]
This discussion derives from an extremely rare book written in French entitled, La Mystérieuse Prophétie des Papes ("The Mysterious Prophecy of the Popes"), published in 1951.
The authors of the coming new book Petrus Romanus were fortunate to find a copy of this sixty-plus-year-old work and to have worked diligently to translate it to English. What we found is astonishing: nothing short of a real-life conspiracy code.
Written by René Thibaut (1883-1952), a Belgian Jesuit, the book is a meticulous reading of the prophecy which comes to completely different conclusions than his skeptical predecessors. Adopting the methodology of a mystic as well as a mathematician and scholar, he makes a compelling case that the prophecy of the popes is a real supernatural prophecy.
Nevertheless, he argues the author of the prophecy is probably not Saint Malachy but someone who prophesied pseudonymously in his honor, in the same way a nameless second temple period Jew may have composed 1 Enoch, perhaps also redacting ancient source material. [ii]
What Thibaut took into account that his more severe Jesuit brothers neglected are the layers of historical context discussed prior. He appropriately recognizes an authentic, more aged layer of text which was massaged by a sixteenth-century interloper. Thibaut somewhat agrees with the former analysis that the earlier prophecies were subjected to tampering, but he argues that the last forty-one suggest a much older document of Celtic origin.
While he is reluctant to authenticate the legend, he refers to the author as Pseudo-Malachy, believing him to be Irish. He bases this on the stylistic use of numbers and word plays which form many acrostics and anagrams. [iii]
Commenting on the style, he observes,
"Note that this way of dividing the words to sort various meanings is a method dear to the ancient Irish." [iv]
A simple example of an anagram is seen in the Latin text "Peregrinus apostolicus" [v] which was the prophecy for the ninety-sixth pope on the list, Pius VI.
The anagram not only reveals the papal name, it does it twice: PeregIinUS aPostolIcUS. That's right! The name "Pius" is rather transparently embedded in the original Latin text twice! Can you imagine that perhaps we now have even a third level of context to examine?
This appearance of the name "Pius" is rather astounding considering we have a published copy dated almost two hundred years before Pius VI was elected. Furthermore, he argues the encrypted couplet within "Apostolic pilgrim" signifies both Pius VI and the very next pope Pius VII who were both forced into foreign exile (i.e., pilgrims).
He also suggests that the repetition serves as a poetic refrain. In other words, "Pius! Pius!" is similar to the excited binary "Mayday, Mayday!" that sailors cry out in dire circumstances. [vi]
He demonstrates many similar patterns of words and numbers embedded in the list incorporating them into detailed charts and illustrations. His work is challenging and numinous. The most electrifying is his calculation of the forty popes prior to Petrus Romanus. Most startling for us, he demonstrates that many of these cryptograms point to one particular year.
But first, he distinguishes the Malachian prophet from those who have set dates for the end of the world in the past:
But even if he believed that, one has no right to compare it to the false prophets who, in troubled times like today announced the imminent coming of the Antichrist and the Last Judgment.
For, unlike those birds of ill omen, our prophet has so little intent to frighten his contemporaries that he provides 40 popes before the supreme deadline! 40 popes, that is to say more than four centuries! Exactly, in the present case 440 years!
The Prophet has an average 11-year pontificate. How do we know? We shall see later, when, in many ways, we will go up from the election of Gregory XIII (1572) to 2012 and the Judgment of God. [vii]
As we begin the tedious job of translating the French codex, it is two days before Christmas, 2011.
At the risk of sounding like a "bird of ill omen," 2012 is here folks! Over sixty years ago, Thibaut derived the ominous date of 2012 by calculating the average length of papal reign up until the time he wrote his book circa 1950 to be eleven years.
We have verified his math and extrapolated it to our current time. Astonishingly, the average of eleven has held true to three decimal places, 1/1000th accuracy. For this simple derivation, allowing the average of eleven years per reign and a total of forty popes (11 x 40) he extrapolated 440 years from 1572 (1572 + 440) to arrive at the date for the arrival of Petrus Romanus in 2012.[viii]
In other words, 2012 was seen as an end-times "event horizon" by at least one Jesuit priest before most readers were born.
Back when gas was nineteen cents a gallon, and certainly well before the apocalyptic frenzy surrounding the Mayan long count calendar's finale, Thibaut derived 2012 from the prophecy of the popes.
Also note the quote above asserts, "in many ways" this means he derives 2012 from several distinct methods of cryptographic analysis. These will be examined after we survey some essential background, but as the final year, he derived 2012 exclusively. Indeed, while he (and us) acknowledges the folly of setting a date for Christ's coming, he still centers on 2012 but for no other reason than he believes the prophecy demands it.
Because this is a rare book and is written in French, few of you will be able to do as we have done to verify these claims. But, Google Books makes it available in snippet view where one can verify multiple instances of 2012.[ix]
As a means of illustration, when running a computer search on the original French text of the book, the search term "2012" returns a whopping twenty-four hits. He argues that so many factors point to 2012 as the culmination that the prophecy demands it. Even so, he represents it more as the conclusion of an age than the great tribulation. [x]
This seems like special pleading. Apparently, he did not want to accept Rome's prophesied demise.
[i] René Thibaut, La Mystérieuse, 23-24 (translation by Putnam).
[ii] René Thibaut, La Mystérieuse, 7.
[iii] Ibid., 92.
[iv] Ibid., 93 (translation by Putnam).
[v] In the Wion manuscript which reads Peregin' apostolic' the raised ' is a common scribal notation for an "us" ending. It looks similar to a fat comma placed after the letter on the median line represented us or os, generally at the end of the word being the Nominative case affix of the second declension sometimes is or simply s. The apostrophe used today originated from various marks in sigla, hence its current use in elision, such as in the Saxon genitive. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribal_abbreviation#Latin_alphabet.
[vi] René Thibaut, La Mystérieuse, 91.[vii] Ibid., 22 (translation by Putnam).
[viii] Ibid., 22-23.
[ix] See: http://books.google.com/books?id=lzQZAAAAIAAJ&q=2012#search_anchor.
[x] Ibid., 97.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This unedited excerpt from the new book manuscript "Petrus Romanus" is released in response to The Washington Post / Foreign Policy Report issued January 31, 2012 Iran, perceiving threat from West, willing to attack on U.S. soil, U.S. intelligence report finds
On this order, the man who in 2002 correctly predicted that the pope succeeding John Paul II would be named Benedict XVI, Ronald L. Conte Jr., believes the next pope will be Cardinal [redacted] and that he will take the name Pius XIII.
This name (Pius) is associated historically with Popes who emphasized authoritative doctrine during their Pontificates.
Cardinal [redacted] fits this description, and Conte interprets this qualification as best fulfilling "Peter the Roman" as a pope who,
"will reaffirm the authority of the Roman Pontiff over the Church; this authority is based on his place as a Successor of Peter" and "will emphasize the supremacy of the Roman Catholic Faith and the Roman Catholic Church above all other religions and denominations, and its authority over all Christians and all peoples of the world."
To this, Conte adds,
"During the reign of Pope Peter the Roman, the great apostasy begins" and this pope will mark "the first part of the tribulation, during our generation." [I]
Conte envisions this apocalypse beginning in 2012 when, as he sees it, Benedict suddenly dies or steps down and is replaced by Petrus Romanus.
This is followed by a series of cascading events resulting in World War III, which is triggered when Iranian backed terrorists explode a nuclear bomb in New York City. The Great Tribulation begins, and by July 2013, Rome is destroyed when it is struck by a nuclear missile.
Elsewhere in this book we have meticulously investigated a French codex entitled, La Mystérieuse Prophétie des Papes ("The Mysterious Prophecy of the Popes"), issued in 1951 by a Jesuit priest and mathematician named René Thibaut (1883-1952). Among his astonishing findings - hidden to the modern world until the publishing of our work - Thibaut found concealed in the Prophecy of the Popes a clever number of word plays that form many acrostics and anagrams.
An example of one of the linguistic codes may hold cryptic agreement with Ronald L. Conte's conclusion that Petrus Romanus will take the name Pius.
The code is discovered in the Latin text "Peregrinus apostolicus" which was the prophecy for the ninety-sixth pope on the list, Pius VI. The anagram not only reveals the papal name, it does so twice: PeregIinUS aPostolIcUS. This appearance of the name "Pius" is rather astounding considering we have a published copy dated almost two hundred years before Pius VI was elected.
But Thibaut suggests the repetition serves as an even farther-reaching poetic refrain. In other words, "Pius! Pius!" is similar to the excited binary "Mayday, Mayday!" that sailors cry out in dire circumstances and that may have prophetic implications concerning the name of the final Pope on the list.
In addition to being associated with Roman authoritarianism and cryptogramed in the Prophecy of the Popes, Conte bolsters his prognostication concerning the name "Pius" by pointing to the electrifying visions of another Pope named Pius - Pope Pius X who served as Pope from 1903 to 1914 and who saw a Papal successor carrying the same name Pius fleeing Rome over the bodies of dead priests at the onset of the end times. Pius X is widely reported to have said:
What I have seen is terrifying! Will I be the one, or will it be a successor? What is certain is that the Pope will leave Rome and, in leaving the Vatican, he will have to pass over the dead bodies of his priests! Do not tell anyone this while I am alive. [v]
In a second vision during an audience with the Franciscan order in 1909, Pope Pius X appeared to fall into a trance. After a few moments, he opened his eyes and rose to his feet, announcing:
I have seen one of my successors, of the same name [a future pope named Pius], who was fleeing over the dead bodies of his brethren. He will take refuge in some hiding place; but after a brief respite, he will die a cruel death. Respect for God has disappeared from human hearts. They wish to efface even God's memory. This perversity is nothing less than the beginning of the last days of the world.[vi]
The third part of the Secret of Fatima, which was supposedly released in total by the Vatican June 26, 2000, seems to echo the visions of Pius X. A section of the material reads:
…before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions. [vii]
The conceptual framework of these visions and their validity is volatile among many Catholics who believe Rome is complicit in an intentional cover-up involving the true Third Secret of Fatima as well as other suppressed catholic foresights that are rife with wildly different predictions concerning the future prophetic role of the Roman Catholic Church.
Marian apparitions, visions by Popes, interpretations by Cardinals of the apocalypse and approved mystical prophecies often stand at odds with recent Vatican publications.
Even the "Catechism of the Catholic Church" approved by the Church and promulgated by Pope John Paul II (released in English in 1994, the first catechism in more than 400 years), which draws on the Bible, the Mass, the sacraments, traditions, teachings, and the lives of the saints, states under the section The Church's Ultimate Trial:
675 Before Christ's second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers.
The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the mystery of iniquity in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the Truth.
The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in the place of God and his Messiah who has come in the flesh. [viii]
Possibly at the center of this prophecy and a "Vatican cover-up" of the complete vision of Fatima (and related prophecies) is a second and potentially more powerful papal contender for the role of Petrus Romanus…
[i] Ronald L. Conte Jr., "The Future and the Popes," Catholic Planet (November 14, 2004) (http://www.catholicplanet.com/future/future-popes.htm).
[ii] Ibid., 92.
[iii] In the Wion manuscript which reads Peregin' apostolic' the raised ' is a common scribal notation for an "us" ending. It looks similar to a fat comma placed after the letter on the median line represented us or os, generally at the end of the word being the Nominative case affix of the second declension sometimes is or simply s. The apostrophe used today originated from various marks in sigla, hence its current use in elision, such as in the Saxon genitive. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribal_abbreviation#Latin_alphabet.
[iv] René Thibaut, La Mystérieuse, 91.
[v] Ketchum, The Evidence for End Time Prophecy, (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2003), p. 81.
[vi] Ibid
[vii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_F%C3%A1tima#cite_note-33
[viii] Catechism of the Catholic Church: Second Edition, Catholic Church, Random House Digital, Inc. (2003), 193-194
Cardinal Manning, the Pope, and the Antichrist
Catholic experts say the title "Peter the Roman" is potent in that it indicates the last pope may satisfy the desires of Rome and its dominionist pals in America by reviving an authoritarian Babylonian State Religion.
On this order, the man who in 2002 correctly predicted that the pope succeeding John Paul II would be named Benedict XVI, Ronald L. Conte Jr., believes the next pope will take the name Pius XIII, and that "Peter the Roman" implies this pope,
"will reaffirm the authority of the Roman Pontiff over the Church" and "will emphasize the supremacy of the Roman Catholic Faith and the Roman Catholic Church above all other religions and denominations, and its authority over all Christians and all peoples of the world."
"During the reign of Pope Peter the Roman, the great apostasy begins" and this pope will mark "the first part of the tribulation, during our generation." [i]
Conte's eschatology seems to stem all the way back to Dr. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning who was Lord Archbishop of Westminster from 1865-1892.
Before conversion to Catholicism he was an influential Anglican cleric but lost faith in the Church of England in 1850, when,
"in the so-called Gorham judgment, the Privy Council successfully ordered the Church to institute an Evangelical clergyman who denied that the sacrament of baptism had an objective effect of baptismal regeneration. The denial of the objective effect of the sacraments was to Manning and many others a grave heresy."
This contradicting of tradition within the church by order of a civil, secular court was too much for Manning, who viewed it as evidence the Anglican Church
"was merely a man-made creation of the English Parliament." [ii]
After departing the Church of England, Manning converted to Catholicism and entered the seminary.
He was ordained a priest June 14, 1851, and by 1865, had risen to Archbishop of Westminster. He was a significant presence in setting the direction of the modern Catholic Church, and achieved particular fame for his doctrine of papal infallibility (the dogma that the pope is preserved from even the possibility of error when he speaks "ex cathedra"), which became dogma during the First Vatican Council of 1870.
Manning's unrelenting emphasis on the prerogatives and powers of the pope, including authority over local temporal and spiritual hierarchies such as local bishops, defined ultramontanism in his day - the idea that papal superiority should exist even over councils and kings.
Historians view the nineteenth-century revival of ultramontanism as progressing through three distinct stages:
1814. The revival of the Jesuit Order, which was always the mainstay of curial as opposed to local authority.
1864. The issuing by Pius IX of the Syllabus, in which Catholicism and any form of liberalism were held to be incompatible.
1870. The declaration by the First Vatican Council that the Pope is infallible when he makes, by virtue of his office, a solemn pronouncement on faith or morals. This declaration, though not conceding the claim of administrative infallibility which many Ultramontanes would have wished, marked a substantial triumph for their point of view. [iii]
These facts make Manning all the more remarkable given how during the 1800-1900s a series of scholarly opinions were published outlining how events in the Roman Catholic Church combined with long-time anti-papist goals by secret Masonic infiltrators would give rise in the last days to great apostasy in Rome and the advent of Antichrist.
Among the strongest proponents of this eschatology was Cardinal Manning himself, who delivered a series of lectures in 1861 under the title "The Present Crises of the Holy See Tested by Prophecy" (later incorporated into a larger study entitled "The Temporal Power of the Vicar of Jesus Christ") in which Manning foresaw a future crises in the Roman Catholic Church initiated by the type of ecumenism and flexible dogma that many modern conservative Catholics have loathed following the Second Vatican Council (October 1962 through December 1965).
Manning believed this change to orthodoxy would undermine the authority of the Church and finally result in a departure of the profession of Catholic faith by the nations together with the displacement of the true pope by a false prophet, thus ushering in the Antichrist and global apostasy.
Manning also believed secret societies like the Freemasons were part of this conspiracy.
"The secret societies have long ago undermined and honeycombed the Christian society of Europe, and are at this moment struggling onward towards Rome, the center of all Christian order in the world," [iv] he wrote.
But when he looked at the prophecy in Revelation 18 concerning the end-time destruction of Mystery Babylon, Manning saw it was the hand of God in judgment of worldwide apostasy emanating from Rome:
We read in the Book Apocalypse, of the city of Rome, that she said in the pride of her heart,
"I sit as a queen, and am no widow, and sorrow I shall not see. Therefore shall her plagues come in one day: death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be burned with fire, because God is strong who shall judge her."
Some of the greatest writers of the Church tell us that… the great City of Seven Hills… the city of Rome will probably become apostate…and that Rome will again be punished, for he will depart from it; and the judgment of God will fall…[v]
Thus, just as the Prophecy of the Popes and numerous other Catholic visionary conveyances do, Manning foresaw the destruction of the city of Rome as a result of its partnership with the Antichrist.
This doctrine would have been unfamiliar to most Catholics in those days, so Manning explained how Catholicism's greatest theologians agreed with this point of view:
The apostasy of the city of Rome…and its destruction by Antichrist may be thoughts so new to many Catholics, that I think it well to recite the text of theologians, of greatest repute.
First, Malvenda, who writes expressly on the subject, states as the opinion of Ribera, Gaspar Melus, Viegas, Suarez, Bellarmine, and Bosius, that Rome shall apostatize from the faith, drive away the Vicar of Christ, and return to its ancient paganism.
Malvenda's words are:
But Rome itself in the last times of the world will return to its ancient idolatry, power, and imperial greatness. It will cast out its Pontiff, altogether apostatize from the Christian faith, terribly persecute the Church, shed the blood of martyrs more cruelly than ever, and will recover its former state of abundant wealth, or even greater than it had under its first rulers.
Lessius says:
"In the time of Antichrist, Rome shall be destroyed, as we see openly from the thirteenth chapter of the Apocalypse;" and again: "The woman whom thou sawest is the great city, which hath kingdom over the kings of the earth, in which is signified Rome in its impiety, such as it was in the time of St. John, and shall be again at the end of the world."
And Bellarmine:
"In the time of Antichrist, Rome shall be desolated and burnt, as we learn from the sixteenth verse of the seventeenth chapter of the Apocalypse."
On which words the Jesuit Erbermann comments as follows:
"We all confess with Bellarmine that the Roman people, a little before the end of the world, will return to paganism, and drive out the Roman Pontiff."
Viegas, on the eighteenth chapter of the Apocalypse says:
"Rome, in the last age of the world, after it has apostatized from the faith, will attain great power and splendor of wealth, and its sway will be widely spread throughout the world, and flourish greatly.
Living in luxury and the abundance of all things, it will worship idols, and be steeped in all kinds of superstition, and will pay honor to false gods.
And because of the vast effusion of the blood of martyrs which was shed under the emperors, God will most severely and justly avenge them, and it shall be utterly destroyed, and burned by a most terrible and afflicting conflagration." [vi]
Throughout history including recent times, numerous Catholic priests have built on the foundation laid by Cardinal Manning and have often been surprisingly outspoken on their agreement regarding the inevitable danger not only of apostate Rome but of the False Prophet rising from within the ranks of Catholicism itself as a result of secret satanic "Illuminati-Masonic" influences.
(The term "Illuminati" as used here is not strictly a reference to the Bavarian movement founded May 1, 1776, by Jesuit-taught Adam Weishaupt, but as indicative of a modern multinational power elite, an occult hierarchy operating behind current supranatural and global political machinations.)
According to Catholic priests such as,
Father E. Sylvester Berry, whose book The Apocalypse of Saint John foretold the usurpation of the Papacy by a false prophet
Father Herman Bernard Kramer, whose work The Book of Destiny painted a terrifying scenario in which Satan enters the church and assassinates the true pope (possibly during conclave) in order that his false pope can rise to rule the world
as well as similar beliefs by priests like Father John F. O'Connor, Father Alfred Kunz, and Father Malachi Martin,
...this will happen because secret-society and sinister false Catholic infiltrators understand the geopolitical influence of Rome in the world is indispensable for controlling future global elements in matters of church and state.
The Roman Catholic Church represents one-sixth of the world's population and over half of all professing Christians, has its own diplomatic corps of ambassadors posted in industrialized nations globally, and over one hundred eighty nations of the world send their ambassadors to the capital city, the Vatican.
In a two-hour presentation (available on DVD), Father O'Connor gave a homily titled "The Reign of the Antichrist," in which he described how changes within society and in the institution were already at work before his death to provide for the coming of Antichrist.
In this sermon and elsewhere, O'Connor outlined the catalyst for this scheme unfolding as a result of "Masonic Conspirators" within the organization whose plan, called "Alta Vendita," would essentially take control of the papacy and help the False Prophet deceive the world's faithful (including Catholics) into worshipping Antichrist.
The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita (or simply the Alta Vendita) is a nineteenth-century Italian document, allegedly written by the highest lodge of the Italian Carbonari - a secret revolutionary society associated with Freemasonry - both of which had been publicly condemned by Rome.
The document clearly maps out a blueprint for infiltrating the Catholic Church in order to slowly turn it into an instrument of propaganda for the society's principles and goals, ultimately seeking to produce Catholic laity, clergy, and finally a pope who would be warm to the ideas of the Enlightenment - the eighteenth-century philosophical view of man as held by naturalists, atheists, deists, and Freemasons, who sought to reform society by elevating science and intellect over religion.
In the nineteenth century, Pope Pius IX and Pope Leo XIII both asked for the Alta Vendita to be published.
In 1859, Jacques Crétineau-Joly did so in his book, L'Église romaine en face de la Révolution, and in 1885 it was published in English by Monsignor George F. Dillon in The War of Anti-Christ with the Church and Christian Civilization.
Due to its importance to this chapter, we have provided a significant portion of the text below:
PERMANENT INSTRUCTION OF THE ALTA VENDITA
The Papacy has at all times exercised a decisive action upon the affairs of Italy.
By the hands, by the voices, by the pens, by the hearts of its innumerable bishops, priests, monks, nuns and people in all latitudes, the Papacy finds devotedness without end ready for martyrdom, and that to enthusiasm. Everywhere, whenever it pleases to call upon them, it has friends ready to die or lose all for its cause.
This is an immense leverage which the Popes alone have been able to appreciate to its full power, and as yet they have used it only to a certain extent. Today there is no question of reconstituting for ourselves that power, the prestige of which is for the moment weakened. Our final end is that of Voltaire and of the French Revolution, the destruction forever of Catholicism and even of the Christian idea which, if left standing on the ruins of Rome, would be the resuscitation of Christianity later on.
But to attain more certainly that result, and not prepare ourselves with gaiety of heart for reverses which adjourn indefinitely, or compromise for ages, the success of a good cause, we must not pay attention to those braggarts of Frenchmen, those cloudy Germans, those melancholy Englishmen, all of whom imagine they can kill Catholicism, now with an impure song, then with an illogical deduction; at another time, with a sarcasm smuggled in like the cottons of Great Britain.
Catholicism has a life much more tenacious than that. It has seen the most implacable, the most terrible adversaries, and it has often had the malignant pleasure of throwing holy water on the tombs of the most enraged. Let us permit, then, our brethren of these countries to give themselves up to the sterile intemperance of their anti-Catholic zeal.
Let them even mock at our Madonnas and our apparent devotion. With this passport we can conspire at our ease, and arrive little by little at the end we have in view.
Now the Papacy has been for seventeen centuries inherent to the history of Italy. Italy cannot breathe or move without the permission of the Supreme Pastor. With him she has the hundred arms of Briareus, without him she is condemned to a pitiable impotence. She has nothing but divisions to foment, hatreds to break out, and hostilities to manifest themselves from the highest chain of the Alps to the lowest of the Appenines.
We cannot desire such a state of things. It is necessary, then, to seek a remedy for that situation. The remedy is found. The Pope, whoever he may be, will never come to the secret societies. It is for the secret societies to come first to the Church, in the resolve to conquer the two.
The work which we have undertaken is not the work of a day, nor of a month, nor of a year. It may last many years, a century perhaps, but in our ranks the soldier dies and the fight continues.
We do not mean to win the Popes to our cause, to make them neophytes of our principles, and propagators of our ideas. That would be a ridiculous dream, no matter in what manner events may turn. Should cardinals or prelates, for example, enter, willingly or by surprise, in some manner, into a part of our secrets, it would be by no means a motive to desire their elevation to the See of Peter.
That elevation would destroy us. Ambition alone would bring them to apostasy from us. The needs of power would force them to immolate us. That which we ought to demand, that which we should seek and expect, as the Jews expected the Messiah, is a Pope according to our wants…. Do you wish to know the reason?
It is because by that we should have no more need of the vinegar of Hannibal, no more need of the powder of cannon, no more need even of our arms. We have the little finger of the successor of St. Peter engaged in the plot, and that little finger is of more value for our crusade than all the Innocents, the Urbans, and the St. Bernards of Christianity.
We do not doubt that we shall arrive at that supreme term of all our efforts; but when? but how? The unknown does not yet manifest itself.
Nevertheless, as nothing should separate us from the plan traced out; as, on the contrary, all things should tend to it - as if success were to crown the work scarcely sketched out tomorrow - we wish in this instruction which must rest a secret for the simple initiated, to give to those of the Supreme Lodge, councils with which they should enlighten the universality of the brethren, under the form of an instruction or memorandum.
It is of special importance, and because of a discretion, the motives of which are transparent, never to permit it to be felt that these counsels are orders emanating from the Alta Vendita….
It is to the youth we must go. It is that which we must seduce; it is that which we must bring under the banner of the secret societies.…
Now then, in order to secure to us a Pope in the manner required, it is necessary to fashion for that Pope a generation worthy of the reign of which we dream. Leave on one side old age and middle life, go to the youth, and, if possible, even to infancy. Never speak in their presence a word of impiety or impurity.
Maxima debetur puero reverentia. Never forget these words of the poet for they will preserve you from licences which it is absolutely essential to guard against for the good of the cause. In order to reap profit at the home of each family, in order to give yourself the right of asylum at the domestic hearth, you ought to present yourself with all the appearance of a man grave and moral.
Once your reputation is established in the colleges, in the gymnasiums, in the universities, and in the seminaries - once that you shall have captivated the confidence of professors and students, so act that those who are principally engaged in the ecclesiastical state should love to seek your conversation.
Nourish their souls with the splendors of ancient Papal Rome. There is always at the bottom of the Italian heart a regret for Republican Rome. Excite, enkindle those natures so full of warmth and of patriotic fire. Offer them at first, but always in secret, inoffensive books, poetry resplendent with national emphasis; then little by little you will bring your disciples to the degree of cooking desired.
When upon all the points of the ecclesiastical state at once, this daily work shall have spread our ideas as the light, then you will be able to appreciate the wisdom of the counsel in which we take the initiative.
Events, which in our opinion, precipitate themselves too rapidly, go necessarily in a few months' time to bring on an intervention of Austria. There are fools who in the lightness of their hearts please themselves in casting others into the midst of perils, and, meanwhile, there are fools who at a given hour drag on even wise men.
The revolution which they meditate in Italy will only end in misfortunes and persecutions. Nothing is ripe, neither the men nor the things, and nothing shall be for a long time yet; but from these evils you can easily draw one new chord, and cause it to vibrate in the hearts of the young clergy. That is the hatred of the stranger.
Cause the German to become ridiculous and odious even before his foreseen entry. With the idea of the Pontifical supremacy, mix always the old memories of the wars of the priesthood and the Empire.
Awaken the smoldering passions of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, and thus you will obtain for yourselves the reputation of good Catholics and pure patriots.
That reputation will open the way for our doctrines to pass to the bosoms of the young clergy, and go even to the depths of convents. In a few years the young clergy will have, by the force of events, invaded all the functions. They will govern, administer, and judge. They will form the council of the Sovereign.
They will be called upon to choose the Pontiff who will reign; and that Pontiff, like the greater part of his contemporaries, will be necessarily imbued with the Italian and humanitarian principles which we are about to put in circulation. It is a little grain of mustard which we place in the earth, but the sun of Justice will develop it even to be a great power, and you will see one day what a rich harvest that little seed will produce.
In the way which we trace for our brethren there are found great obstacles to conquer, difficulties of more than one kind to surmount. They will be overcome by experience and by perspicacity; but the end is beautiful.
What does it matter to put all the sails to the wind in order to attain it. You wish to revolutionize Italy? Seek out the Pope of whom we give the portrait. You wish to establish the reign of the elect upon the throne of the prostitute of Babylon? Let the clergy march under your banner in the belief always that they march under the banner of the Apostolic Keys.
You wish to cause the last vestige of tyranny and of oppression to disappear? Lay your nets like Simon Barjona. Lay them in the depths of sacristies, seminaries, and convents, rather than in the depths of the sea, and if you will precipitate nothing you will give yourself a draught of fishes more miraculous than his.
The fisher of fishes will become a fisher of men. You will bring yourselves as friends around the Apostolic Chair. You will have fished up a Revolution in Tiara and Cope, marching with Cross and banner - a Revolution which needs only to be spurred on a little to put the four quarters of the world on fire.
Let each act of your life tend then to discover the Philosopher's Stone.
The alchemists of the middle ages lost their time and the gold of their dupes in the quest of this dream. That of the secret societies will be accomplished for the most simple of reasons, because it is based on the passions of man. Let us not be discouraged then by a check, a reverse, or a defeat.
Let us prepare our arms in the silence of the lodges, dress our batteries, flatter all passions the most evil and the most generous, and all lead us to think that our plans will succeed one day above even our most improbable calculations.[vii]
In the wake of Vatican II, traditionalist Roman Catholic groups see evidence that the Alta Vendita has indeed succeeded,
"above even the most improbable calculations."
As a result, some have developed a critical attitude toward church hierarchy in the belief that post-Vatican II teachings contradict and infect solemn Catholic dogmas with modernism, ecumenism, collegiality, and religious liberty, which are clearly reminiscent of the secret society's objectives.
Such secessionists point to examples like John Paul II's 1982 prayer meeting at Assisi with over one hundred religious leaders including pagans, his meetings with the Dalai Lama (who placed a Buddhist statue on the altar in the Church of St. Francis), his receiving the mark of the adorers of the Hindu god Shiva, his meetings with devil worshipping voodoo high-priests (during which he even justified voodoo as possessing "truth and good, seeds of the Word") and so on, all in accordance with the principles of Vatican II.
Radical Catholic groups like the Sedevacantists (Latin: sede vacante, "the seat being vacant") consider such activity evidence that the popes following Vatican II are illegitimate heretics and that the Holy See of Rome has been technically "vacant" since the death of either Pope Pius XII in 1958 or Pope John XXIII in 1963 (with some classifying John XXIII a Modernist antipope).
Some believe this has even paved the way for a showdown during the next period of vacancy in the papal office that could witness frustrated traditionalists among the College of Cardinals desperate to elect a sitting Bishop of Rome as apostolic successor of Saint Peter (Petrus Romanus) who will institute a vigilant revival and reinstitution of pre-Vatican II authoritarianism.
This conflict seems to be boiling under the surface, largely unknown to the public, but seen by such mystics as Father Herman Bernard Kramer (mentioned earlier) in his work, "The Book of Destiny."
During a strange interpretation he made of the twelfth chapter of the Book of Revelation concerning "the great wonder" mentioned in verse one, Father Kramer writes:
The 'sign' in heaven is that of a woman with child crying out in her travail and anguish of delivery. In that travail, she gives birth to some definite 'person' who is to RULE the Church with a rod of iron (verse 5).
It then points to a conflict waged within the Church to elect one who was to 'rule all nations' in the manner clearly stated. In accord with the text this is unmistakably a PAPAL ELECTION, for only Christ and his Vicar have the divine right to rule ALL NATIONS…
But at this time the great powers may take a menacing attitude to hinder the election of the logical and expected candidate by threats of a general apostasy, assassination or imprisonment of this candidate if elected." [viii]
Although we disagree with Kramer's interpretation of the book of Revelation, the idea that a specific "person" was born and is now of the appropriate age to fulfill the incarnation of St. Malachy's Prophecy of the Popes, is without question.
Whatever one makes of the Petrus Romanus prediction - and its divine or demonic inspiration - the pope following Benedict XVI is the last on the list.
Furthermore, Kramer's fear that "great powers may take a menacing attitude to hinder the election of the logical and expected candidate" echoes the sentiment of priests mentioned elsewhere in the upcoming book Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope is Here who see a crises for the Church coming, and the Man of Sin rising as a result.
[i] Ronald L. Conte Jr., "The Future and the Popes," Catholic Planet, November 14, 2004, http://www.catholicplanet.com/future/future-popes.htm.
[ii] "Henry Edward Manning," Wikipedia, last modified August 28, 2011, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Edward_Manning.
[iii] "Ultramontanism" The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed. rev. ed. F. L. Cross and Elizabeth A. Livingstone (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 1667.
[iv] Cardinal Manning, The Present Crises of the Holy See Tested by Prophecy, reprinted in 2007 under the title, "The Pope & the Antichrist" (Tradibooks, Dainte-Croix du Mont, France), 75.
[v] Ibid., 79-80.
[vi] Ibid., 81-82.
[vii] "PERMANENT INSTRUCTION OF THE ALTA VENDITA," PUBLIC DOMAIN, viewable here: Catholic Voice, last accessed January 19, 2012, http://www.catholicvoice.co.uk/dillon/text.htm#14.
[viii] Rev. Herman Bernard Kramer, The Book of Destiny (Belleville, IL: Buechler Publishing Company, 1955), 277.
Rosemary's (Petrus) Baby and the Priests Who Were Dying to See Him
In the 1968 horror film Rosemary's Baby by director Roman Polanski, Mia Farrow plays Rosemary Woodhouse, a naive young housewife who agrees to become pregnant but through a series of spooky events comes to believe her husband has made a pact with eccentric neighbors Minnie and Roman Castevet (Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer) to use the unborn child in some sort of occult ritual.
On the night they have planned to try to conceive, Mrs. Castevet brings separate dishes of chocolate mousse to Rosemary and her husband Guy.
Rosemary takes a few bites, but disliking the chalky under-taste, quietly throws it away. A few minutes later, she becomes dizzy and passes out. She then has what she thinks is a nightmare in which the Castevets and other neighbors are in her bedroom watching as she is raped by a demonic presence.
The dream is so vivid she suddenly screams out,
"This is no dream - this is really happening!"
When she wakes, there are scratches all over her body, and her husband tells her that in order not to miss the opportunity for conception, he had engaged her body for sex while she slept.
(Note: Polanski had wanted his wife Sharon Tate to play the role of Rosemary, and Tate reportedly provided the idea for the key scene in which Rosemary is raped and impregnated. In tragic, real-life irony, on August 9, 1969, Tate was eight and a half months pregnant when she and her unborn child were brutally murdered by followers of Charles Manson - Susan Atkins and Tex Watson. When screenwriter Wojciech Frykowski, who was at Sharon Tate's home the night of the murders [and also murdered] asked Tex who he was and what he was doing there, Watson replied, "I'm the devil, and I'm here to do the devil's business.")
Following the horrific "nightmare" scene experienced by the movie character Rosemary, she learns she is pregnant and that the baby is due June 28, 1966 (666).
The Castevets recommend an obstetrician named Dr. Abraham Sapirstein (Ralph Bellamy) who prescribes a daily "vitamin drink" for her, which he assures is good for her and the unborn child. Minnie Castevet gives her an odd-smelling "good luck charm" to wear, which also smells of the main ingredient in the vitamin drink - tannis root (a phonetic play on the term Satanas; Satan).
When before long Rosemary's dear friend Hutch (Maurice Evans) notices her appearance becoming gaunt and hears her complaining of severe abdominal pains, loss of weight, and unusual cravings for raw meat and chicken liver (an ancient witches fertility prescription), he decides to research the "tannis root" concoction.
Mysteriously, before he can share what he finds, he falls into a coma and dies, but not before waking up long enough to ask a friend to deliver a book on witchcraft - in which he has marked photographs and passages - to Rosemary, along with a cryptic message:
"the name is an anagram."
From this, she deciphers that her neighbor Roman Castevet's name is the anagram and that he is actually Steven Marcato, son of Adrian Marcato, a former resident and devoted Satanist.
Her suspicions grow as she becomes convinced that her husband and neighbors really are practicing witchcraft, and that somehow this involves her unborn child.
Dr. Sapirstein and Rosemary's husband Guy learn of her mistrusts, and tell her that neither she nor the baby will be harmed so long as she cooperates. Right after, she goes into labor and is sedated, and when she awakens, her baby is gone. She is told the infant died, but she hears a baby crying in another room at the apartment. Finding a secret door connecting her residence to the neighbors, she discovers a congregation gathered around her infant son.
The baby boy's eyes are frighteningly deformed, and she is told that her husband is not the father, that the child is the spawn of Satan.
Although Rosemary's Baby is based on a novel, ritualized sexual magic is real and the plan to use it to incarnate the devil's seed has had a long and curious history among Satanists, secret societies, freemasons, and even, according to some Catholic priests, the Vatican.
Highly guarded instruction manuals used by secretive Satanist organizations such as The Order of Nine Angles, the Church of Satan founded by Anton LaVey, and even further back by members of Ordo Templi Orientis including works by infamous 33rd-degree freemason, Aleister Crowley, have described how it is through sex that a being is brought into the world and housed in a body of flesh.
Thus it is a mystical exercise that, when combined with magick rituals such as chanting of specific syllables to project proper vibrations (which open the inner mind and mesmerize the conscious mind), invite the nebulous spirit to fill the embryonic host.
As the participating priestess lies upon the ground or upon the altar and is aroused by activity of the priest, copulation proceeds while the priestess visualizes the opening of a celestial gateway and Dark Chaos flowing out of it downward upon her, providing the mystical seed. Like the ancient Pythian of Apollo, the priestess is also at this moment a portal to the abode of dark gods.
Rocket scientist and cofounder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Jack Parsons, and his pal L. Ron Hubbard (Church of Scientology founder) were disciples of Aleister Crowley and recorded one such event called the "Babalon Working," which they performed in hopes of incarnating the whore of Babylon - a demon child or gibborim - through a portal during ritual sex.
Parsons later wrote that the ceremony was successful and that,
"Babalon is incarnate upon the earth today awaiting the proper hour of her manifestation." [i]
According to Magick, Liber ABA, Book 4 - The Book of The Law (widely considered the magnum opus of occultist Aleister Crowley), ritual magic sex can include (what sounds like) cannibalism and human sacrifice.
Crowley says,
"It would be unwise to condemn as irrational the practice of devouring the heart and liver of an adversary while yet warm. For the highest spiritual working one must choose that victim which contains the greatest and purest force; a male child of perfect innocence and high intelligence is the most satisfactory." [ii]
As far back as 200 AD, the Christian apologetic work Octavius by Marcus Minucius Felix described apostate Christians participating in orgiastic rituals in a dark room while worshiping the head of a donkey and sacrificing a baby for the Host during Black Mass.
Most experts believe similar activity has secretly continued throughout the ages, and that true "Hosts" - that is, the bread and grape wine used after consecration, which is, according to dogma, changed into the literal substance of the Body and the Blood of Jesus Christ via transubstantiation - are given by Catholic priests, who have made diabolical pacts with Satanists, to the attendants of the Black Sabbath.
Among highly placed Church experts who assert such activity is real and even occurs inside the leonine walls of the Holy See would be:
Monsignor Luigi Marinelli (whose 1999 book Gone with the Wind in the Vatican sold one hundred thousand copies in just the first three weeks)
exorcist and Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, who in a speech at the Our Lady of Fatima 2000 International Conference on World Peace, charged high-ranking members of the Church hierarchy of being in league with "Satan"
the late exorcist and maverick professor of the Pontifical Biblical Institute, eminent Catholic theologian and former Jesuit, Malachi Martin
When the Manhatten magazine "The Fatima Crusader" asked Martin about the public alarm raised over Archbishop Milingo's claim that high-ranking Vatican officials were "followers of Satan," Martin replied,
"Anybody who is acquainted with the state of affairs in the Vatican in the last 35 years is well aware that the prince of darkness has had and continues to have his surrogates in the court of St. Peter in Rome." [iii]
While a few have tried to discredit Martin by claiming that he was everything from a double agent for Jewish lobbying groups during Vatican II (to effect the final draft of Nostra Aetate, which would, among other things, absolve the Jews of the death of Jesus) to maligning him as an outright "pathological liar" (which the dead cannot defend themselves against), Malachi was in fact a close personal friend of Pope Paul VI and worked within the Holy See doing research on the Dead Sea Scrolls, publishing articles in journals on Semitic paleography, and teaching Aramaic, Hebrew, and Sacred Scripture.
In 1965, Paul VI granted Martin a dispensation from his Jesuit and priestly duties, and Martin moved to New York, where he dedicated himself to writing about - and sometimes speaking out on - a variety of issues stemming from the Second Vatican Council, to detailed insider accounts of papal history, Catholic dogma, and geopolitics.
As a member of the Vatican Advisory Council and a formidable polyglot who could speak seventeen languages (not to mention being personal secretary to renowned Jesuit Cardinal Augustin Bea), Martin had privileged information pertaining to secretive church and world issues, including the Third Secret of Fatima, which Martin hinted spelled out parts of the plan to formerly install the dreaded False Prophet (Petrus Romanus) during a "Final Conclave."
On this, Martin's claim that an Illuminati-Masonic group made up of Western plutocrats called "The Assembly" or the "Superforce" had infiltrated the highest levels of Vatican administration and were working to bring about a New World Order, may have led to involvement by operatives of the same group concerning his untimely (some say "suspicious") death in 1999.
This raises questions as well about John Paul I, who was elected pope in 1978 but who died only thirty-three days later (33 is an occult masonic marker).
Shortly after becoming pope, John Paul I learned of cardinals, bishops, and high-ranking prelates that were Freemasons. He may have been murdered to keep him from exposing these men's plans and/or to deter an investigation he had launched into the Vatican bank connected with Roberto Calvi, a Grand Orient Freemason and the Chairman of the Ambrosiano Bank, which the Vatican Bank was primary shareholder of.
When in 1978 it was discovered that monies had been illegally laundered for the Mafia through that bank, Calvi fled Italy and three days later, the Bank's shares crashed. One day after that, Calvi's secretary conveniently committed suicide, and on June 18, Calvi himself was found hanging beneath the Blackfriar (connected to Freemasons) Bridge in London with a Masonic Cabletow around his neck and chunks of masonry (left as a symbol?) in his pockets.
John Daniel says of this in Scarlet and the Beast:
"At Masonic ritual murders, Masonic symbols are left at the scene for several reasons: (1) to show Masons that this was a Masonic murder; (2) to warn Masons to follow the Masonic code, or suffer like fate; and (3) to prove to Masonic paymasters that the "hit" was accomplished." [iv]
But was John Paul I, like Calvi may have been (and like Malachi Martin infers in Windswept House), murdered by a Masonic "Superforce" too large and too powerful for him to contain; one that Martin would later claim was behind the scenes, secretly working to use the Vatican to bring about a global Antichrist system?
"Suddenly it became unarguable that now… the Roman Catholic organization carried a permanent presence of clerics who worshipped Satan and liked it," wrote Martin.
"The facts that brought the Pope to a new level of suffering were mainly two: The systematic organizational links - the network, in other words that had been established between certain clerical homosexual groups and Satanist covens. And the inordinate power and influence of that network." [v]
[i] Alexander Mitchell, "SCIENTOLOGY: Revealed for the First Time…The Odd Beginning of Ron Hubbard's Career," The Sunday Times, October 5, 1969, viewable here: http://www.lermanet.com/scientologynews/crowley-hubbard-666.htm.
[ii] Aleister Crowley et al, Magick Book 4 part III (Chapter 12: Of the Bloody Sacrifice and Matters Cognate) Second one-volume edition (York Beach, ME: Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC, 1997 [2004]), 206-207.
[iii] Judi McLeod, "Scouting Out Satan," Canada Free Press, February 23, 2005, http://www.canadafreepress.com/2005/cover022305.htm.
[iv] John Daniel, Scarlet and the Beast, Vol 1, 3rd edition (Longview, TX: Day Publishing, 2007), 938.
[v] Malachi Martin, Windswept House: A Vatican Novel (Doubleday, 1996), 492-493.
Ten years before something "pulled his feet" out from under him while he was preparing for an exorcism and Malachi Martin fell and later died (at the time he was working on what he promised would be his most explosive book yet under the telling title:
Primacy: How the Institutional Roman Catholic Church became a Creature of The New World Order), he had become increasingly outspoken about pedophilic Satanism at the heart of the Vatican throughout the College of Cardinals and all the way down to local parishes, which he said were in league with a secret Masonic diabolicus that began following the "enthronement of the fallen Archangel Lucifer" in the Roman Catholic Citadel on June 29, 1963.
This horrid rituale, as Martin had called it, had two primary objectives: 1) to enthrone Lucifer as the real Prince over Rome; and 2) to assure the sorcerous inception and embodiment in flesh of that immaterial spirit that would fill the pope also known as Petrus Romanus.
In The Keys of This Blood: The Struggle of World Dominion, Martin had written:
Most frighteningly for John Paul, he had come up against the irremovable presence of a malign strength in his own Vatican and in certain bishops' chanceries. It was what knowledgeable Churchmen called the "superforce." Rumors, always difficult to verify, tied its installation to the beginning of Pope Paul VI's reign in 1963.
Indeed Paul had alluded somberly to "the smoke of Satan which has entered the Sanctuary"…an oblique reference to an enthronement ceremony by Satanists in the Vatican. [i]
Martin concealed even greater detail of this luciferic "enthronement ceremony by Satanists in the Vatican" in his book, Windswept House:
The Enthronement of the Fallen Archangel Lucifer was effected within the Roman Catholic Citadel on June 29, 1963; a fitting date for the historic promise about to be fulfilled.
As the principal agents of this Ceremonial well knew, Satanist tradition had long predicted that the Time of the Prince would be ushered in at the moment when a Pope would take the name of the Apostle Paul [Pope Paul VI].
That requirement - the signal that the Availing Time had begun - had been accomplished just eight days before with the election of the latest Peter-in-the-Line. [ii]
The specific date given by Martin - June 29, 1963 - and the combination of the specific names Peter (whom the Pope is successor of in Catholicism) and Paul, is important. June 29 is the Feast or Solemnity of both apostles, Peter and Paul. This is a liturgical feast in honor of the martyrdom of both Saints and a holy day of obligation in the universal Church in which (according to Wikipedia) the faithful are "obliged" to participate in Mass.
Among other things, this means on this specific date a perfectly timed sacrilegious parody of the Catholic Mass was completed during the Enthronement of the Fallen Archangel Lucifer (which occultists know would hold high satanic energy) as well as simultaneously an offense made against the martyrdom of Peter and Paul during the Church's Feast in their names.
This date is important for other reasons as well that readers of our work may be frightened by and that we are not yet ready to include in this online series.
Martin stated publicly on more than one occasion that this enthronement of Lucifer in Rome was based on fact, and that to facilitate the black magic, a parallel ceremony was conducted simultaneously in the United States in Charleston, South Carolina.
The reason this location was selected has remained obscure to many, but given what Malachi said about the Masonic connection, it makes sense that South Carolina was chosen: It is the site of the first Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite Freemasonry in the United States, called "the Mother Lodge of the World," where in 1859, champion of luciferian dogma for the Masonic-Illuminatus, Albert Pike became Grand Commander of the Supreme Council, where he served the Order of the Quest until his death in Washington DC on April 2, 1892.
Pike was known as a Satanist in his adopted state of Arkansas and loved to sit naked in the woods astride a phallic throne while participating for days in drunkenness and debauchery.
Today, his body is proudly entombed at the House of the Temple, headquarters of the Southern Jurisdiction of the Scottish Rite Freemasonry in Washington DC.
According to the logic of former Sirhan Sirhan attorney, Day Williams, this makes Charleston, at the thirty-third parallel, even more perfect for the sacrifice and parallel ceremony described by Martin because,
"If a life is taken close to the… 33rd Parallel, this fits with the Masons' demonic mythology in which they demonstrate their worldly power by spilling human blood at a predetermined locale." [iii]
Martin added additional reasons for the South Carolina location:
Such unobtrusive elements as the Pentagram and the black candles and the appropriate draperies could be part of the Ceremonial in Rome. But other Ruberics - the Bowl of Bones and the Ritual Din, for example, the sacrificial animals and the victim - would be too much.
There would have to be a Parallel Enthronement.
A Concelebration could be accomplished with the same effect by the Brethren in an Authorized Targeting Chapel. Provided all the participants in both locations "targeted" every element of the Event on the Roman Chapel, then the Event in its fullness would be accomplished specifically in the target area. It would all be a matter of unanimity of hearts, identity of intention and perfect synchronization of words and actions between the Targeting Chapel and the Target Chapel.
The living wills and the thinking minds of the Participants concentrated on the specific Aim of the Prince would transcend all distance. [iv]
Martin's chilling description in Windswept House of the methodical profanation of everything virtuous and innocent during the "Parallel Enthronement" between the Targeting Chapel and the Target Chapel included indescribably foul Invocations, sadistic animal sacrifices, and repeated violations of a young "Ritual Victim" on an altar.
For the uninitiated, the very idea this happened strains credulity.
Yet when John F. McManus, for The New American, June 9, 1997, asked Father Martin if the Black Mass in South Carolina had actually occurred, it led to an enlightening Q and A:
McManus: Your book begins with a vivid description of a sacrilegious "Black Mass" held in 1963 in Charleston, South Carolina. Did this really happen?
Martin: Yes it did. And the participation by telephone of some high officials of the church in the Vatican is also a fact. The young female who was forced to be a part of this satanic ritual is very much alive and, happily, has been able to marry and lead a normal life. She supplied details about the event...
McManus: In addition… you depict numerous other cardinals and bishops in a very bad light. Are these characterizations based on fact?
Martin: Yes, among the cardinals and the hierarchy there are satanists, homosexuals, anti-papists, and cooperators in the drive for world rule. [v]
Even more explosive, near the end of Windswept House there is an often overlooked section providing explicit details of the enthronement ceremony and its true purpose to create a satanic pope.
Martin provides details of the "Roman Phalanx," another name for the Vatican satanic cult, as well as describing their ultimate goal:
As a body, they had sworn "the Sacred Oath of Commitment" administered by the Delegate. Then each man had approached the Altar to give "Evidence" of his personal dedication. With blood drawn by the prick of a golden pin, each had pressed his fingerprint beside his name on the Bill of Authorization. Henceforth, the life and work of every member of the Phalanx in the Roman Citadel was to be focused on the transformation of the papacy itself.
No longer was the Petrine Office to be an instrument of the "Nameless Weakling" [Jesus]. It was to be fashioned into a willing instrument of the Prince, and a living model for "the New Age of Man." [vi]
Thus it appears frighteningly evident that, like in the movie Rosemary's Baby and in the visions and fears of so many Catholic seers, a ceremony for invoking the incarnation of Satan's seed - or installing it ritualistically inside a young person or chosen priest - was indeed performed, and a blood oath of dedication enacted for its goals by highly placed Satanists inside the Roman Catholic Citadel a little less than fifty years ago.
Whether Martin was killed and his death covered up for revealing this satanic scheme to use the Catholic Church as a launching pad for a luciferic novus ordo seclorum may never be known.
One year before he died, however, Martin's very good friend, Father Alfred Kunz, was brutally murdered at his St. Michael Catholic Church in Dane, Wisconsin. Kunz had been investigating the same Satanism among "priests" that Martin had warned about, and had told Martin in the weeks before his murder that he feared for his life.
When Kunz was found dead with his throat slit, Martin claimed in various media that he had "inside information" that the Vatican "luciferians" had murdered him because he was getting ready to blow the lid off their conspiracy.
The satanic animal sacrifice described by Martin in Windswept House as part of the "enthronement of the Fallen Archangel Lucifer in the Vatican" seems eerily comparable to what was indeed discovered in Dane County during the first hours of the murder investigation, including a calf which had been found sacrificed on a farm near St. Michael's Church exactly twenty-four hours before Kunz was last seen alive.
According to police reports, the calf's throat was slit, as was Father Kunz, and its genitals cut off. There are details we will not discuss in this book due to their horrific nature, but deep within occultism there are reasons for removing the genitals of a sacrifice having to do with blasphemy of the Old Testament description of animals being accounted unworthy as offerings to the Lord if their testicles are bruised, crushed, torn, or cut (Lev. 22:24).
According to survivors of ritual Satanic abuse (including Egyptian-Masonic Satanism), human sacrificial victims are sometimes laid on a table and their genitals likewise removed in order to make them "unworthy" or unfit for salvation (though versions of such abuse in South Africa are called "muti" murders, and some people pay large sums of money for genitalia from these human sacrifices in the belief it will bring them fertility, health, and good fortune).
Then there is the ancient occult idea that decapitated persons cannot partake in the resurrection, thus dark rituals can include mutilation of the head, throat, and genitals where damnation of the victim is meant as a magical curse.
In the case of the Dane County murder, was a black ritual performed between the hours of 10 p.m. March 2 and 4 a.m. March 3, 1998, to "target" Father Kunz and to "mark" him unfit for redemption?
During our investigative research for the upcoming book Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope is Here, we made formal requests of the Dane County Sheriff's Office for pertinent case files (DCSO Case # 98011295) pertaining to the ongoing investigation of the Father Kunz homicide. After first being told the files we requested would be given us, on December 15, 2011 we received a letter from the office of Lieutenant Mark Twombly signed by Sheriff Mahoney that the District Attorney would need to approve the release of the files (in other words it would take a court order) and therefore the request had been denied.
Since this is an active, ongoing case, the sensitive records are not to be made public at this time and this is understandable.
In filing a second request for less delicate documents, we were able to obtain a packet of files, but none of these provided solid clues to the larger question of conspiracy related to the murder of Father Kunz - specifically, was evidence discovered at the crime scene that his murder was somehow connected to his conservative position on Vatican II, and, more importantly, that he had information on certain pedophile priests and Satanists (that had earned him fierce enemies within the Church) reaching all the way to the Catholic hierarchy in Rome involved in ceremonies or behavior related to the enthronement of Lucifer and a ritual conducted for the purpose of transmigrating a particular spirit into Petrus Romanus?
"In the absence of an arrest, the Kunz case has developed into a sinister religious Rorschach for many - certainly among those close to the case who consider themselves traditionalists within the troubled Roman Catholic Church," [vii] wrote Chuck Nowlen in the 2001 cover story for Las Vegas Weekly, The Devil and Father Kunz.
At that time, Nowlen had interviewed Peter Kelly, a Monroe, Wis., attorney and master's divinity student who had produced Kunz's weekly radio show.
Given that Kelly was a good friend of Kunz and had spent substantial time with him in private conversations, his response to Nowlen's questions reveal a lot about what Kelly personally believed lay at the root of the murder:
"This is a time of major crisis within the church, and the breakdown tends to be along traditional and conservative versus liberal lines. I think it's getting almost to the point of complete collapse. And, yeah, I know: Some people delve into a so-called satanic influence in the church, and everybody sort of rolls their eyes and laughs. But, I tell you, the nexus is really there." [viii]
Still, Nowlen wondered, could someone within the Church really have killed Kunz - or ordered him killed?
"Absolutely," the lawyer confirmed, "as unbelievable as that might sound to some people." [ix]
[i] Malachi Martin, The Keys of This Blood: The Struggle for World Dominion (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, Sep 15, 1991), 632.
[ii] Malachi Martin, Windswept House, 7.
[iii] Day Williams, "Masons and Mystery at the 33rd Parallel" Hidden Mysteries E-Magazine last accessed January 19, 2012, http://www.hiddenmysteries.org/themagazine/vol14/articles/masonic-33rd.shtml.
[iv] Malachi Martin, Windswept House, 8.
[v] "The Catholic Church in Crisis," The New American, June 9, 1997, 6-8.
[vi] Malachi Martin, Windswept House, 600.
[vii] Chuck Nowlen, "The Devil and Father Kunz: An Easter Tale about Murder, the Catholic Church and the Strange Paths of Good and Evil," Las Vegas Weekly, April 12, 2001 (Radiant City Publications), viewable here: http://www.chucknowlen.com/kunz.htm.
From Christians to New Agers, skeptics to historians, the world is presently enthralled with what will happen during and following the year 2012. In general, the excitement (or dread, as the case may be) surrounds a variety of predictions made by ancient and modern sources concerning a portentous moment in time.
Mankind has entered a period of unprecedented global upheaval, according to these experts, when the earth and all life on it will undergo apocalyptica marked by the end of the "thirteenth baktun" of the Mesoamerican Mayan Long Count.
The exact end date of this calendar is December 21, 2012, when during the winter solstice at 11:11, GMT (Greenwich Mean Time), the New Age crowd says the sun will align with the galactic center of the Milky Way galaxy, an event that occurs only every thirteen thousand years. The precession of the equinoxes will conclude a twenty-six-thousand-year cycle, bringing the astrological Age of Pisces to an end and introducing the beginning of Aquarius, when the next cycle begins and the sun rises out of the mouth of the Ouroboros (great serpent of the Milky Way).
This is the sun rising in Sagittarius, the centaur with a bow - the symbol for Nimrod coming out from the mouth of Leviathan and the sun "god" rising again - Apollo/Osiris.
The Mayans predicted this conjunction, interpreting it as a harbinger of the end of the world as we know it and the beginning of a new "enlightened" pagan age. People from the world's greatest religions including Christianity and Islam also see current global developments as potential omens of an end-times scenario leading to the Apocalypse.
This includes catholic mystics who believe in the Prophecy of the Popes.
On this order and as discussed in an earlier entry, the Catholic seer who in 2002 correctly predicted that the pope succeeding John Paul II would be named Benedict XVI, Ronald L. Conte Jr., believes the next pope will be Cardinal Francis Arinze and that he will take the name Pius XIII. This name (Pius) is associated historically with popes who emphasized authoritative doctrine during their pontificates.
Cardinal Arinze fits this description, and Conte interprets this qualification as best fulfilling "Peter the Roman" as a pope who,
Conte envisions this apocalypse beginning in 2012 when, as he sees it, Benedict is assassinated and is replaced by Petrus Romanus.
This is followed by a series of cascading events resulting in World War III, which is triggered when Iranian-backed terrorists explode a nuclear bomb in New York City. The Great Tribulation begins, and by July 2013, Rome is destroyed when it is struck by a nuclear missile.
Elsewhere in our upcoming book we have meticulously investigated a French codex entitled, La Mystérieuse Prophétie des Papes ("The Mysterious Prophecy of the Popes"), issued in 1951 by a Jesuit priest and mathematician named René Thibaut (1883-1952).
Among his astonishing findings - hidden to the modern world until the publishing of our work - Thibaut found concealed in the Prophecy of the Popes a clever number of word plays that form many acrostics and anagrams. [ii]
The code is discovered in the Latin text "Peregrinus apostolicus" [iii] which was the prophecy for the ninety-sixth pope on the list, Pius VI. The anagram not only reveals the papal name, it does so twice: PeregIinUS aPostolIcUS.
This appearance of the name "Pius" is rather astounding considering we have a published copy dated almost two hundred years before Pius VI was elected.
But Thibaut suggests the repetition serves as an even farther-reaching poetic refrain. In other words, "Pius! Pius!" is similar to the excited binary "Mayday, Mayday!" that sailors cry out in dire circumstances [iv] and which may have prophetic implications concerning the name of the final pope on the list
[Editors note: Thibaut's book in French and an English translation will be provided free with numerous other research works exclusively from Raiders News Update with the release of Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope Is Here].
In addition to being associated with Roman authoritarianism and cryptogramed in the Prophecy of the Popes, Conte bolsters his prognostication concerning the name "Pius" by pointing to the electrifying visions of another pope named Pius - Pope Pius X who served as pope from 1903 to 1914 and who saw a papal successor carrying the same name Pius fleeing Rome over the bodies of dead priests at the onset of the end times.
Pius X is widely reported to have said:
I have seen one of my successors, of the same name [a future pope named Pius], who was fleeing over the dead bodies of his brethren. He will take refuge in some hiding place; but after a brief respite, he will die a cruel death. Respect for God has disappeared from human hearts. They wish to efface even God's memory. This perversity is nothing less than the beginning of the last days of the world. [vi]
The third part of the Secret of Fatima, which was supposedly released in total by the Vatican June 26, 2000, seems to echo the visions of Pius X.
A section of the material reads:
Marian apparitions, visions by popes, interpretations by cardinals of the apocalypse, and approved mystical prophecies often stand at odds with recent Vatican publications.
Even the "Catechism of the Catholic Church" approved by the Church and promulgated by Pope John Paul II (released in English in 1994, the first catechism in more than four hundred years), which draws on the Bible, the Mass, the sacraments, traditions, teachings, and the lives of the saints, states under the section The Church's Ultimate Trial:
675 Before Christ's second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the mystery of iniquity in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the Truth.
Possibly at the center of this prophecy and a "Vatican cover-up" of the complete vision of Fatima (and related prophecies) is a second and potentially more powerful papal contender for the role of Petrus Romanus or "Peter the Roman" - Cardinal Tarcisio Pietro (Peter) Bertone, who was born in Romano (the Roman) Canavese ("Peter the Roman").
Among other things, Cardinal Bertone is, at the time our new investigative book on this subject Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope Is Here heads to the printer, second in command at the Vatican. As the Secretary of State and the Pope's Camerlengo (Italian for "Chamberlain"), he is responsible during a papal vacancy to serve as acting Head of State of the Vatican City until "the time of agreement" and the election of a new pope.
Our interest for the moment is with his 2007 work, The Last Seer of Fatima that appears to have accomplished exactly the opposite of its primary objective, mainly, to refute another work by famous Italian media personality, journalist, and author Antonio Socci, whose manuscript The Fourth Secret of Fatima claims the Holy See has repressed information concerning the true secrets delivered in Marian apparitions to three shepherd children in the rural Portuguese village of Fatima in 1917.
The three young people were Lúcia (Lucy) dos Santos and her cousins Francisco Marto and his sister Jacinta Marto, whose visions - containing elements of prophecy and eschatology - are officially sanctioned by the Catholic Church.
[v] Ketchum, The Evidence for End Time Prophecy (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2003), 81.
[vi] Ibid., 81.
[vii] "Our Lady of Fátima," Wikipedia, endnote 34, last modified January 24, 2012, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_F%C3%A1tima#cite_note-33.
[viii] Catechism of the Catholic Church: Second Edition, Catholic Church (Random House Digital, Inc., 2003), 193-194.
In his uncharacteristically explosive response to Cardinal Bertone - Dear Cardinal Bertone: Who Between You and Me is Deliberately Lying? - we first discover how, after significant time and investigation, Antonio Socci concluded the Vatican had withheld an important part of the Fatima revelation during its celebrated press conference and release of "The Message of Fatima," June 26, 2000.
Socci describes in the introduction to his book how at first he truly believed the Vatican's official version of the Fatima Message, prepared at that time by Cardinal Ratzinger (current Pope Benedict XVI) and Monsignor Tarcisio Bertone (possible next and final pope), which with its release to the public claimed to be the final Secret.
Then Socci came across an article by Italian journalist Vittorio Messori, entitled "The Fatima Secret, the Cell of Sister Lucy Has Been Sealed," and a series of questions cast suspicions on the Vatican's authorized publication for which Socci had no answers.
Why would Messori, whom Socci describes as,
"a great journalist, extremely precise… the most translated Catholic columnist in the world," [i]
...want to challenge the Church's official version of the Third Secret without good cause, he reasoned.
Not long after, Socci came across a second similar thesis published in Italy by a young and careful writer named Solideo Paolini, which convinced Socci to begin a probe of his own focusing on the biggest question of them all - was a portion of Lucy's hand-written document, which contained the principal words "of the Blessed Virgin Mother" concerning end-times conditions at Rome, being withheld from public view by the Vatican due to its potentially explosive content?
Socci's suspicions only deepened after he requested an interview (well ahead of his work, The Fourth Secret of Fatima which later cast doubts on Rome's official story) with Cardinal Bertone, who, together with Joseph Ratzinger, had coauthored the June 26, 2000 Vatican document that purportedly released the final segment of the "The Message of Fatima." [ii]
"I've searched many influential authorities inside the Curia, like Cardinal Bertone, today Secretary of State in the Vatican, who was central to the publication of the Secret in 2000," Socci says.
"The Cardinal, who actually favored me with his personal consideration, having asked me to conduct conferences in his former diocese of Genoa, [now] didn't deem it necessary to [even] answer my request for an interview. He was within his rights to make this choice, of course, but this only increased the fear of the existence of embarrassing questions, and most of all, that there is something (extremely important) which needs to be kept hidden." [iii]
Though not expecting to uncover such a colossal enigma, in the end Socci was left convinced that two sets of the Fatima Secret actually exist: one which the public has seen, and another, which for reasons yet unknown, the Vatican is keeping buried.
At the beginning of this possible plot was a description of the Third Secret given by Cardinal Angelo Sodano a full five weeks before the June 26, 2000 "Message of Fatima" was delivered by Rome. Sodano's comments came during Pope John Paul II's beautification of Jacinta and Francisco at Fatima, when he surprised many in a speech, saying the vision of a "bishop clothed in white" who makes his way with great effort past the corpses of bishops, priests, and many lay persons, is only "apparently dead" when he falls to the ground under a burst of gunfire. [iv]
Using the added language "apparently dead," Cardinal Sodano went on to suggest the Fatima vision had been fulfilled in the 1981 assassination attempt against John Paul II.
"It appeared evident to His Holiness that it was 'a motherly hand which guided the bullet's path,' enabling the 'dying Pope' to halt 'at the threshold of death.'" [v]
Though some applauded Sodano's presentation that day, others saw in it, and him, a concerted cover-up, as the Fatima prophecy and the alleged fulfillment in 1981 bore significant differences.
The Washington Post was happy to point out these glaring contradictions on July 1, 2000 when under the stinging headline, "Third Secret Spurs More Questions: Fatima Interpretation Departs from Vision" the newspaper opined:
On May 13, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, a top Vatican official, announced the imminent release of the carefully guarded text. He said the Third Secret of Fatima foretold not the end of the world, as some had speculated, but the May 13, 1981, shooting of Pope John Paul II in St. Peter's Square.
Sodano said the manuscript…tells of a,
"bishop clothed in white" who, while making his way amid corpses of martyrs, "falls to the ground, apparently dead, under a burst of gunfire."
But the text released Monday (June 26) leaves no doubt about the bishop's fate, saying that he,
"was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him."
Everyone with the pontiff also dies: bishops, priests, monks, nuns and lay people. John Paul survived his shooting at the hands of a single gunman, Mehmet Ali Agca, and no one in the crowd was harmed in the attack. [vi]
Other facts the Washington Post did not point out is how according to the prophecy the pope is killed in "a big city half in ruins" while walking to the top of a mountain and kneeling at the foot of a cross.
John Paul was riding in the pope's car through St. Peter's square, not walking, there was no big mountain or kneeling at a cross, and the city was not half-destroyed.
And then there is the contradictory testimony by Cardinal Ratzinger (current Pope Benedict XVI) himself from 1984, which he gave in an interview with the Pauline Sisters' newsletter (Jesus Magazine) and which was re-published a year later in The Ratzinger Report, titled "Here is Why the Faith is in Crisis."
In this discussion, Ratzinger, who had read the actual Fatima Secret, said the vision involved "dangers threatening the faith and the life of the Christian and therefore [the life] of the world" as well as marking the beginning of the end times. [vii]
Additionally, he said,
"the things contained in [the] Third Secret correspond to what has been announced in Scripture and has been said again and again in many other Marian apparitions" and that, "If it is not made public, at least for the time being, it is in order to prevent religious prophecy from being mistaken for a quest for the sensational." [viii]
Concerned Catholics have since contrasted this 1984 testimony with the more recent report by Ratzinger, and have wondered when, where, and under what circumstance his account changed.
The 1981 assassination attempt against John Paul II certainly did not fulfill the published parts of the Fatima vision nor correspond to the "last times" as depicted in the Bible. And then there is the affirmation by the Vatican's most respected scholars who had deduced from years of studying the Fatima prophecy that it concerned an end-time global crisis of faith emanating from the highest echelons at Rome.
Celebrated Cardinal Mario Luigi Ciappi (1909-1996) served as the personal theologian to five popes including John Paul II and unreservedly held that in,
"the Third Secret it is foretold, among other things, that the great apostasy in the Church begins at the top". [ix]
Cardinal Silvio Oddi added in a March, 1990 interview with Il Sabato magazine in Rome, Italy:
"…the Third Secret alluded to dark times for the Church: grave confusions and troubling apostasies within Catholicism itself… If we consider the grave crisis we have lived through since the [Vatican II] Council, the signs that this prophecy has been fulfilled do not seem to be lacking." [x]
Even more impressive in his testimony was the late Father Joaquin Alonso who knew Sister Lucy personally, had conversations with her, was for sixteen years the archivist at Fatima, and who before his death in 1981, stated the following concerning the Third Secret:
…the text makes concrete references to the crisis of faith within the Church and to the negligence of the pastors themselves [and the] internal struggles in the very bosom of the Church and of grave pastoral negligence by the upper hierarchy… terrible things are to happen.
These form the content of the third part of the Secret… [and] like the secret of La Salette, for example, there are more concrete references to the internal struggles of Catholics or to the fall of priests and religious.
Perhaps it even refers to the failures of the upper hierarchy of the Church. For that matter, none of this is foreign to other communications Sister Lucy has had on this subject. [xi]
Perhaps most unvarying among those who actually had access to and read the Fatima message was Jesuit Malachi Martin, a close personal friend of Pope Paul VI who worked within the Holy See doing research on the Dead Sea Scrolls, publishing articles in journals on Semitic paleography, and teaching Aramaic, Hebrew, and Sacred Scripture.
As a member of the Vatican Advisory Council and personal secretary to renowned Jesuit Cardinal Augustin Bea, Martin had privileged information pertaining to secretive church and world issues, including the Third Secret of Fatima, which Martin hinted spelled out parts of the plan to formerly install the dreaded False Prophet (Petrus Romanus) during a "Final Conclave."
Comparing the conflicting statements between Cardinal Ratzinger and Malachi Martin, Father Charles Fiore, a good friend of the murdered priest Alfred J. Kunz (detailed in the upcoming book Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope Is Here) and the late eminent theologian Fr. John Hardon, said in a taped interview:
"We have two different Cardinal Ratzingers; we have two different messages. But Malachi Martin was consistent all the way through." [xii]
Wikipedia's entry on the Three Secrets of Fátima adds:
On a syndicated radio broadcast, Father Malachi Martin was asked the following question by a caller:
"I had a Jesuit priest tell me more of the Third Secret of Fatima years ago, in Perth. He said, among other things, the last pope would be under control of Satan… Any comment on that?"
Fr. Martin responded,
"Yes, it sounds as if they were reading, or being told, the text of the Third Secret."
In a taped interview with Bernard Janzen, Fr. Martin was asked the following question:
"Who are the people who are working so hard to suppress Fatima?"
"A bunch, a whole bunch, of Catholic prelates in Rome, who belong to Satan. They're servants of Satan. And the servants of Satan outside the Church, in various organizations; they want to destroy the Catholicism of the Church, and keep it as a stabilizing factor in human affairs. It's an alliance. A dirty alliance, a filthy alliance..."
In the same interview, Fr. Martin also said with respect to Lucia [Lucy of Fatima] that,
"They've (The Vatican) published forged letters in her name; they've made her say things she didn't want to say. They put statements on her lips she never made." [xiii]
[i] John Vennari, "The Fourth Secret of Fatima," Catholic Family News, last accessed February 13, 2012, http://www.cfnews.org/Socci-FourthSecret.htm.
[ii] See: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/
rc_con_cfaith_doc_20000626_message-fatima_en.html.
[iii] John Vennari, "The Fourth Secret of Fatima," Fatima.org, last accessed February 13, 2012, http://www.fatima.org/news/newsviews/010207fourthsecret.asp.
[iv] "Cardinal Sodano Reads a Text on the 'Third Secret,'" Fatima.org, May 13, 2000, http://www.fatima.org/news/newsviews/thirdsecret01.asp?printer.
[v] Ibid.
[vi] John Vennari "The Fourth Secret of Fatima," Catholic Family News.
[vii] "Joseph Ratzinger as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith," Wikipedia, last modified November 14, 2011, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Ratzinger_as_Prefect_of_the_
Congregation_for_the_Doctrine_of_the_Faith.
[viii] "Published Testimony: Cardinal Ratzinger (November 1984)," Fatima.org, last accessed February 13, 2012, http://www.fatima.org/thirdsecret/ratzinger.asp?printer.
[ix] John Vennari "The Fourth Secret of Fatima," Catholic Family News.
[x] "Cardinal Oddi on the REAL Third Secret of Fatima: 'The Blessed Virgin was Alerting Us Against the Apostacy in the Church," last accessed February 13, 2012, http://www.tldm.org/news7/thirdsecretcardinaloddi.htm.
[xi] Published Testimony: Cardinal Alonso (1975-1981)," Fatima.org, last accessed February 13, 2012, http://www.fatima.org/thirdsecret/fralonso.asp.
[xii] "Three Secrets of Fátima,"Wikipedia, last modified February 6, 2012, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Secrets_of_F%C3%A1tima.
[xiii] Ibid.
Sister Lucy Trapped Inside a "Mafia Code of Silence"
We ended the last entry by admitting that something unnerving did in fact seem to be happening around and with Sister Lucy in the lead-up to the release of the so-called Final Secret.
After all, the first two parts of the Message of Fatima had been publicly issued by her Bishop in 1941, and the Third Secret sent to the Holy See with instructions that it be made public in 1960. That year was chosen according to Lucy because the "Holy Mother" had revealed to her that it would then be when "the Message will appear more clear."
And lo and behold it was immediately following 1960 that Vatican II set in motion what many conservative Catholics today believe is a crisis of faith in the form of Roman heresies.
And though there could have been much more to the revelation than just a Vatican II warning, and the Secret was not released in 1960 as it was supposed to be anyway (so we may never know), when Pope John XXIII read the contents of the secret, he refused to publish it, and it remained under lock and key until it was supposedly disclosed in the year 2000.
If the first two Secrets were any indication of the scope and accuracy of the Third one, they had been amazingly insightful including the "miracle of the sun" that was witnessed,
"by over 70,000 persons (including non-believers hoping to dispel the apparitions), whereby the sun itself [seemed to be] dislodged from its setting and performed miraculous maneuvers while emitting astonishing light displays; the end of World War I; the name of the pope who would be reigning at the beginning of World War II; the extraordinary heavenly phenomenon that would be witnessed worldwide foretelling of the beginning of World War II; the ascendance of Russia (a weak and insignificant nation in 1917) to an evil monolithic power that would afflict the world with suffering and death." [i]
But something about the Third and Final Secret was different, a phenomenon evidently to be avoided and obfuscated at all costs by the hierarchy of Rome.
At a minimum, it spoke of the apostatizing of the clergy and dogma that followed Vatican II. And yet perhaps these were simply devices to lead to something more sinister, elements so dark that it was keeping Lucy awake at night.
When she finally had written down the Secret in 1944 under obedience to Rome, she had a hard time doing so because of its terrifying contents. It had taken a fresh visit from the "Holy Mother" herself to convince Lucy it was okay. Then in the years following, she had been ordered by the Vatican to remain silent concerning its disclosure.
Visits to her for hours at a time were made by Cardinal Bertone under orders from the pope during which the two of them would go over the diminutive aspects of the vision in private. This happened in 2000, again in 2001, and again in 2003.
When at age ninety-seven the Carmelite nun finally passed away (2005), taking whatever secrets remained with her to the grave, her behavior at the last seemed odd to Catholics who understood Roman doctrinal "salvation" implications.
Antonio Socci comments on this, pointing out how the long visits with the aged seer were not videotaped or recorded for posterity because viewers would have seen for themselves the psychological pressure that was being exerted on the cloistered Sister.
"These thoughts came back to my mind while I was reading a passage of Bertone's book, in which the Cardinal remembers that at one point the seer was 'irritated', and she told him 'I'm not going to confession!'"
About this, Socci wonders,
"What kind of question could Sister Lucy answer to so strongly? Maybe someone was reminding the old Sister of the ecclesiastical power, and hinting that she would 'not get absolution'? We don't know, because the prelate [Bertone] - who knows and remembers the Sister's (quite tough) answer very well - says he literally 'forgot' what his question was." [ii]
It appears in truth that poor Lucy was trapped inside a sinister ring of Romanita Omertà Siciliani or "Mafia Code of Silence" imposed by Rome.
Yet Socci believes the full truth of Fatima may have gotten out anyway, and based on his investigation he offers a brave theory in his book The Fourth Secret of Fatima about what actually transpired in 2000 behind the Vatican's walls.
John Vennari summarizes Socci's shocking hypothesis this way:
Socci believes that when John Paul II decided to release the Secret, a power-struggle of sorts erupted in the Vatican. He postulates that John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger wanted to release the Secret in its entirety, but Cardinal Sodano, then Vatican Secretary of State, opposed the idea. And opposition from a Vatican Secretary of State is formidable.
A compromise was reached that sadly reveals heroic virtue from none of the main players.
The "Bishop dressed in white" vision, which is the four pages written by Sister Lucy would be initially revealed by Cardinal Sodano, along with his ludicrous interpretation that the Secret is nothing more than the predicted 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II.
At the same time, at the May 13 2000 beatification ceremony of Jacinta and Francisco, Pope John Paul II would "reveal" the other part - the most "terrifying part" - of the Secret obliquely in his sermon.
It was here that John Paul II spoke on the Apocaplyse:
"Another portent appeared in Heaven; behold, a great red dragon".
(Apoc. 12: 3)
These words from the first reading of the Mass make us think of the great struggle between good and evil, showing how, when man puts God aside, he cannot achieve happiness, but ends up destroying himself…
The Message of Fatima is a call to conversion, alerting humanity to have nothing to do with the "dragon" whose,
"tail swept down a third of the stars of Heaven, and dragged them to the earth".
(Apoc. 12:4)
The Fathers of the [Catholic] Church have always interpreted the stars as the clergy, and the stars swept up in the dragon's tail indicates a great number of churchmen who would be under the influence of the devil.
This was Pope John Paul II's way of explaining that the Third Secret also predicts a great apostasy. [iii]
If Socci is correct in this analysis, Bishop Richard Nelson Williamson, an English traditionalist Catholic and member of the Society of St. Pius X who opposes changes in the Catholic Church brought on by Vatican II, may have verified his hypothesis in 2005 when he related how a priest acquaintance of his from Austria shared privately that Cardinal Ratzinger had confessed:
"I have two problems on my conscience: Archbishop Lefebvre and Fatima. As to the latter, my hand was forced."
Who could have "forced" Ratzinger's hand to go along with a false or partial statement on the final Fatima Secret? Was it pressure from the papal office, or, as Williamson questions,
"Some hidden power behind both Pope and Cardinal?" [iv]
If Pope John Paul II's sermon at Fatima did in fact speak to the "terrifying part" of the Final Secret - as in the Dragon's tail sweeping down a third of the clergy to do his bidding - we are left with the unsettling impression that at least 33 percent (Masonic marker) of the Vatican's hierarchy are committed to a Satanic Plan.
The Warning of La Salette
Most people are probably unaware that in addition to the Secrets of Fatima, a second, most renowned Marian apparition from La Salette, France, which was approved by Popes Pius IX and Leo XIII, revealed analogous information about a crisis of faith that would transpire within Roman Catholicism in the last days, during which Rome would become the seat of the Antichrist.
Delivered to Mélanie Calvat and Maximin Giraud on September 19, 1846, the Secret of La Salette reads in part:
The earth will be struck by calamities of all kinds (in addition to plague and famine which will be wide-spread).
There will be a series of wars until the last war, which will then be fought by the ten Kings of the Antichrist, all of whom will have one and the same plan and will be the only rulers of the world. Before this comes to pass, there will be a kind of false peace in the world. People will think of nothing but amusement.
The wicked will give themselves over to all kinds of sin…this will be the hour of darkness. The Church will suffer a terrible crisis… Rome will lose the Faith and become the seat of the Antichrist… The Church will be in eclipse, the world will be in dismay. [v]
In The Plot Against The Pope; Coup dé'tat in the Conclave-1958, Gary Giuffré discusses how French Masonic influences who had infiltrated the Catholic clergy in the 1800s were working overtime to suppress and discredit the Secret of La Salette, even though its message had been officially favored by two popes.
This was because at that time, prophetic references to Rome "becoming the seat of Antichrist" was forming a common eschatology among Catholic scholars like,
Cardinal Henry Manning (discussed elsewhere in the upcoming book Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope Is Here)
Bishop Salvator Grafen Zola
Frederick William Helle, who saw in these predictions the work of Masonically infested clergy who plotted the overthrow of the papacy and the use of the Church as a political vehicle for an occult World Order
"These kinds of details, found in the genuine, modern-day, Marian prophecies, would always generate the greatest opposition from the Church's enemies who had infiltrated her structures," wrote Giuffré.
"For they threatened to expose the satanic plot and long-time goal of the Masonic Lodge's agents in the Vatican, to usurp and control the papal chair." [vi]
And it has to be remembered that the specter of infiltration of the Roman Catholic hierarchy by members of Freemasonry's luciferian "light bearers" was a fairly well-established agenda historically, one which Pope Pius IX called the "Synagogue of Satan."
Pope Leo XIII went so far as to issue a damning encyclical (Humanum Genus) on April 20, 1884 against the efforts to invade and corrupt Roman Catholicism by Freemasons, and yet Leo's own Secretary of State, Cardinal Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro was later identified as a secret Freemason of the diabolical Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.) sect of whom Satanist Aleister Crowley belonged and later became leader.
When Pope Leo passed away in 1903, it was widely anticipated that Rampolla would replace him as pope, and Rampolla did receive the early votes during conclave.
Then something extraordinary happened, and the balloting was interrupted when Prince Jan Maurycy Paweł Puzyna de Kosielsko, a Polish Roman Catholic Cardinal from Kraków, rose on behalf of his Sovereign, Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, and shocked the assembly by declaring in Latin,
"…officially and in the name and by the authority of Franz-Josef, Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary, that His Majesty, in virtue of an ancient right and privilege, pronounces the veto of exclusion against my Most Eminent Lord, Cardinal Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro." [vii]
This Jus Exclusivæ ("right of exclusion" or papal veto) was an ancient rule of order claimed by Catholic monarchs to veto a candidate for the papacy.
"At times the right was claimed by the French monarch, the Spanish monarch, the Holy Roman Emperor, and the Emperor of Austria. These powers would make known to a papal conclave, through a crown-cardinal, that a certain candidate for election was considered objectionable as a prospective Pope." [viii]
It has since been suggested by some historians that the alert Emperor Franz Joseph knew something of Rampolla's masonic connection and saved Rome from usurpation.
It is also noteworthy that the official Liber LII Manifesto of the O.T.O. BAPHOMET XI° does indeed list Cardinal Rampolla among its members. [ix]
But was Rampolla just one of many covert Masons? The answer to that question appears to be yes according to experts like the late Canadian naval officer, author, and popular lecturer William James Guy Carr. In addition to his accounts of wartime activity as a Navigating Submarine Officer during World War One, Carr - though a conspiracy theorist - was a noted authority on the history of the Illuminati and its connection to Freemasonry.
He chronicled the movement from its founding in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt to its purported penetration of the Vatican.
In 1959, Carr published The Red Fog Over America, in which he said:
Weishaupt boasted that the Illuminati would infiltrate into the Vatican and bore from within, until they left it nothing but an empty shell…
Since I exposed certain events which indicate that agentur of the Illuminati have infiltrated into the Vatican, I have received a number of letters from priests who have studied in the Vatican…
Those who wrote assured me that the fears I express are more than well founded. One priest informed me that the Pope was surrounded by picked "Specialists", "Experts" and "Advisors" to such an extent that he was little better than a prisoner in his own palace.
Another priest informed me of the eternal surveillance exercised over the Pope… those who maintain the surveillance…give him no freedom of action even in the privacy of his own chambers. The priest said 'Those who exercise this surveillance are all hand-picked members of a certain order and they all come from the same institution… where Weishaupt… conspired.' [x]
Carr's description matches so closely to what Malachi Martin and similar priests have alleged on different occasions concerning a formidable Illuminati-Masonic group inside the Vatican that it is tempting to believe Malachi himself may have been one of Carr's informants.
But was this Illuminated council the unseen hand in Rome that "forced" Cardinal Ratzinger and Cardinal Bertone to issue what Antonio Socci thought was astuzia inganno (cunning deception) at Fatima?
And would this indicate both the current pope and his Secretary of State are clandestinely committed to, or being forced to go along with, the overarching scheme of a secret order inside the Holy See to deliver Petrus Romanus?
[i] Erven Park, "'Diabolic Disorientation' in the Church," New Oxford Review, October 2006, http://www.newoxfordreview.org/article.jsp?did=1006-park.
[ii] Antonio Socci, "Dear Cardinal Bertone: Who between You and Me is Deliberately Lying? And Please Don't Mention Freemasonry," last accessed February 13, 2012, http://www.fatimacrusader.com/cr86/cr86pg35.asp.
[iii] John Vennari, "The Fourth Secret of Fatima," Catholic Family News, last accessed February 13, 2012, http://www.cfnews.org/Socci-FourthSecret.htm.
[iv] Bishop Richard Williamson, "Bishop Fellay of the Society of St. Pius X to Meet Pope August 29," August 15, 2005, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1464382/posts.
[v] "Apparition of the Blessed Virgin on the Mountain of La Sette," last accessed February 13, 2012, http://www.thepopeinred.com/secret.htm.
[vi] As quoted in "Warnings from Heaven Suppressed," last accessed February 13, 2012, http://www.cardinalsiriandtheplotagainstthepope.com/warnings_from_heaven.htm.
[vii] Yves Chiron, Saint Pius X: Restorer of the Church (Angelus Press, 2002) 122.
[viii] "Jus Exclusivæ," Wikipedia, last modified December 7, 2012, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_exclusivae.
[ix] "Liber LII: Manifesto of the O.T.O.," last accessed February 13, 2012, http://lib.oto-usa.org/libri/liber0052.html.
[x] William Guy Carr, The Red Fog Over America (Hollywood, CA: Angriff Press, 1959), 225-226
The solidarity between Pope Benedict and Cardinal Bertone goes back a long way and it certainly appears to have continued - at least for the first few years of Benedict's papacy - in the time following the "Message of Fatima" controversy.
After being elected pope in April, 2005 and taking his place as successor of John Paul II as Sovereign of the Vatican City State and leader of the Roman Catholic Church, Ratzinger as "Pope Benedict XVI" quickly appointed Cardinal Bertone to replace Fatima co-conspirator Angelo Sodano as the Cardinal Secretary of State.
On April 4, 2007, Benedict also appointed Bertone as his Camerlengo to administrate the duty of the Pope in the case of a vacancy of the papacy. Benedict has since made decisions that indicate Bertone could be (or once was) his choice for successor, and both men have at times appeared to be stacking and massaging the Red Hats in Bertone's favor for the next (final?) conclave.
This was noted in the May 13, 2011 National Catholic Reporter article, "A Triptych on Benedict's Papacy, and Hints of What Lies Beyond," when NCR Senior Correspondent John L. Allen Jr. spoke of the shake-up inside the Roman Curia (the Curia is the administrative apparatus of the Vatican and, together with the pope, the central governing body of the Catholic Church) in which Italian Archbishop Giovanni Angelo Becciu was appointed the Substitute for General Affairs by Pope Benedict XVI.
Becciu, who replaced Archbishop Fernando Filoni for the job, seemed at first an odd selection to Vatican insiders. "Given how difficult it is to master the role [of Substitute], many observers found it curious that Filoni would be shipped out after less than four years, to be replaced by someone in Becciu who has no previous experience at all working inside the Vatican," observed the NCR. [i]
But then the nail was hit on the head when the news service added,
"When the dust settles, the most obvious beneficiary of these moves would seem to be Italian Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Secretary of State, who will not have to be concerned about the new substitute forming a rival center of power." [ii]
The job of the Substitute for General Affairs has been described as the most complicated and demanding responsibility in the Roman Curia due to the staggering amount of concerns the Substitute must carry on a daily basis.
Roughly compared to a White House Chief of Staff, the Substitute meets with the Pontiff usually once per day to administer Vatican affairs and also regularly reports to the Cardinal Secretary of State (currently Cardinal Bertone).
The organizational "success or failure of a papacy often rests on his shoulders," adds the NCR. And those who have handled the office well over the years "have been the stuff of legend: Giovanni Battista Montini, for instance, was the substitute under Pius XII from 1937 to 1953, and went on to become Pope Paul VI; Giovanni Benelli, who was Paul's own substitute from 1967 to 1977, was widely understood to be the power behind the throne" (emphasis added). [iii]
But if positioning a Vatican novice in the role of Substitute in order not to challenge future papal possibilities for the Italian Cardinal Bertone was telling, Pope Benedict even more-so aligned the group-type from which the next pope will come, when on January 6, 2012 he named twenty-two new cardinals, most of them Europeans, primarily Italians already holding key Vatican stations.
By elevating these advisors to the Sacred College of Cardinals at a February 18th ceremony in Rome, the German pope certified that,
"Europeans will now number over half of all cardinal-electors (67 out of 125), and nearly a quarter of all voters in a conclave will be Italian," reported Newsmax.com. [iv]
As a result, Benedict seemed to put his definitive stamp on an Italian successor and lined up those who could give Bertone the so-called apostolic chair of Saint Peter. And evidently this wasn't Benedict's idea alone.
Most Vatican experts,
"put the large number of Italian appointments down to the influence of the Pope's deputy, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, whose hand in these nominations, they say, is clearly visible." [v]
Also interesting in lieu of recent reports regarding Pope Benedict's health (and news that he might step down in April) was the February timing of the consistory for the new cardinals to receive their red hats, rings, and titular assignments in Rome.
As we hope to have Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope Is Here in print by mid April, we can only speculate why the February date was chosen. Of course the scheduling around the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter could be cited, but some who work with the pope had been pushing him for a June (Feasts of St. Peter and Paul) or November (Feast of Christ the King) consistory, and more often than not Benedict has held consistories in November (2007 and 2010).
So what was the hurry? If Pope Benedict truly is considering a 2012 departure and wants to significantly influence the papal conclave toward an Italian, the date and timing in February made perfect sense as the best and final opportunity to stack the sacred deck.
Of course, just when we thought it couldn't get any more obvious, another - and this time unprecedented - move to consolidate his power (and which also raises the question of a third contender for the throne of St. Peter) was made by Bertone himself.
It followed the October 24, 2011, document, "Toward Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of a Global Public Authority," which amounted to a call by the Vatican for a World Political and Financial Authority.
Published by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, which is headed by Cardinal Peter Turkson, the media was quick - inside and outside Christianity - to see the dark side of socialism raising its head, not to mention prophetic implications of the paper's call for a Global Authority seated inside the United Nations.
In a chapter of our upcoming book Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope Is Here we explain how this new unsettling directive attempts to devise a "moral" mandate for establishing "a global public authority" and "a central world bank" that would oversee individual and world pecuniary institutions through subjugation to a new global power made,
"at the cost of a gradual, balanced transfer of a part of each nation's powers to a world authority and to regional authorities". [vi]
The document was addressed at the 2011 G20 Summit in Cannes in comments by President Barack Obama and French President Nicholas Sarkozy, but nothing came of it there due to what Cardinal Bertone did just ten days later.
And this is where things start getting interesting, as some soothsayers were already predicting that the author of the document, Peter Turkson of Ghana (Peter the Roman?) could be the next pope, as he is considered papabile by the College of Cardinals.
Following the election of America's first black president in Obama, analysts around the world began speculating that perhaps Rome would follow suit and roll out the red carpet for a black pope, the first in fifteen hundred years, in somebody like Turkson.
Cardinal Francis Arinze, whom Ronald L. Conte Jr. believes will be the next pope and fulfill "The Prophecy of the Popes" by taking the name Pius XIII, is also a black man, an Igbo Nigerian considered papabile since before the 2005 conclave that elected Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI).
"The election of Barack Obama as the first African-American US President could pave the way for the election of [a] black Pope, according to a leading black American Catholic," wrote the Times Online in 2008.
"Wilton Daniel Gregory, 60, the Archbishop of Atlanta, said that in the past Pope Benedict XVI had himself suggested that the election of a black pontiff would 'send a splendid signal to the world' about the universal Church." [vii]
The Associated Press agreed.
"The pope has appointed Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana to head the Vatican's justice and peace office, a high-profile post that cements his reputation as a possible future papal candidate… Turkson told reporters three weeks ago there was no reason there couldn't be a black pope, particularly after Barack Obama was elected U.S. president." [viii]
Given that Turkson is popular in some circles, here is how the National Catholic Reporter heralded the release of his document on Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in their October 28, 2011, headline: A Papal Contender Grabs the Spotlight:
Rome saw a striking coincidence this week, which could be either simple luck or a sign of things to come. There were two big-ticket Vatican news flashes, Monday's note on reform of the international economy and Thursday's summit of religious leaders in Assisi. In both cases, the same Vatican official was a prime mover: Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.
Turkson, still young in church terms at 63, was the chief organizer of the Assisi gathering, just as he was the top signatory on the document blasting "neo-liberal" ideologies and calling for a "true world political authority" to regulate the economy. During Vatican press conferences to present both, Turkson was the star attraction each time.
Can anyone say, papabile? [ix]
Only a week following the National Catholic Reporter celebration, however, and only ten days after Turkson released his document calling for a global financial authority, an emergency summit at the Vatican was called by…you guessed it…the Secretariat of State - Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.
And this time he wasn't taking any prisoners. Bertone blasted the document by Turkson and laid down a new set of laws. From that day forward, he ordered, any new Vatican text would have to be authorized in advance by himself.
The popular Chiesa News in Rome said of the power play:
Precisely when the G20 summit in Cannes was coming to its weak and uncertain conclusion, on that same Friday, November 4 at the Vatican, a smaller summit convened in the secretariat of state… In the hot seat was the [Turkson] document on the global financial crisis released ten days earlier by the pontifical council for justice and peace…
The secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, complained that he had not known about it until the last moment. And precisely for this reason he had called that meeting in the secretariat of state.
The conclusion of the summit was that this binding order would be transmitted to all of the offices of the curia: from that point on, nothing in writing would be released unless it had been inspected and authorized by the secretariat of state. [x]
While Bertone convinced some Vatican watchers that his overreaching motives had to do with protecting the Holy See from confusion by claiming that he had been in the dark and thus side-swiped by the release of the document (a case Chiesa News thoroughly debunked), others saw in it another giant step in Bertone carefully solidifying his powerbase in Rome.
They also imagined that old enemy the Freemasons having something to do with it.
"It would seem that the dark forces in the Vatican are making their moves to seize control of the Catholic Church," wrote Catholic Jew Aron Ben Gilad.
"They are using the recent document of the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace on the global financial crisis as the excuse to seize autocratic control of all the congregations of the curia and putting them under the control of Cardinal Bertone and the Vatican's Secretariat of State. Whatever the merits or demerits of this document is not the important question, but its use as an instrument for ecclesiastical masonry to take control of the Roman Curia". [xi]
Top Vatican watcher and journalist Andrea Tornielli had stated as much earlier, documenting how Bertone had been consolidating his influence in the Vatican:
…through a number of actions: he appointed bishops who are well known to him and friends in key roles, especially in positions involving the management and control of the Holy See's finances.
The last individual appointed, was the Bishop of Alexandria Giuseppe Versaldinew, to the position of President of the Prefecture for Economic Affairs of the Holy See…
On the other hand, Bertone has done away with prelates who had moved against him in some way or another, such as Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who had left the Government office to become Nuncio (ambassador) to the United States, or Bishop Vincenzo di Mauro, who left the Office of Economic Affairs to become Archbishop of Vigevano. [xii]
Given what we have documented in the last few entries, one could think with some certainty that Bertone is thus a shoo-in for the end-times role of Petrus Romanus.
However, as we move into 2012, cracks are suddenly appearing in the foundation of his sand castle, and not everybody in the Curia - including Pope Benedict XVI, himself - may wind up as eager to support him as they once were.
So who else is rising on the radar as contender for the Final Pope?
[i] John L. Allen, "A Triptych on Benedict's Papacy, and Hints of What Lies Beyond," May 13, 2011, http://ncronline.org/blogs/all-things-catholic/triptych-benedict%E2%80%99s-papacy-and-hints-what-lies-beyond.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Edward Pentin, "Naming of New Cardinals Prompts Speculation about New Pope," Newsmax, January 10, 2012, http://www.newsmax.com/EdwardPentin/Cardinals-Pope-Benedict-Successor/2012/01/10/id/423629.
[vi] The full text of "Toward Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of a Global Public Authority" can be read at: Zenit: The World Seen from Rome, October 24, 2011, last accessed January 19, 2012, http://www.zenit.org/article-33718?l=english.
[vii] Richard Owen, "ROME: Black Pope Could Follow Barack Obama's Election, Says US Archbishop," Virtue Online, November 6, 2008, http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=9314.
[viii] The Associated Press, "Ghanaian Cardinal to Head Vatican's Peace Office," USA Today, October 24, 2009, http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2009-10-24-vatican-africa_N.htm.
[ix] John L. Allen, "A Papal Contender Grabs the Spotlight," National Catholic Reporter, October 28, 2011, http://ncronline.org/blogs/all-things-catholic/papal-contender-grabs-spotlight.
[x] Sandro Magister, "Too Much Confusion. Bertone Puts the Curia Under Lock and Key," Cheisa, November 10, 2011, http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1350080?eng=y.
[xi] "Cardinal Bertone Seizes Control of the Curia," November 14, 2011, http://aronbengilad.blogspot.com/2011/11/cardinal-bertone-seizes-control-of.html.
[xii] Andrea Tornielli, "Cardinal Bertone Turns 77," Vatican Insider, December 12, 2011, http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/homepage/the-vatican/detail/articolo/bertone-cardinale-vaticano-vatican-cardinal-cardenal-10436/.
Cracks in the Foundation, Dark Horses Appear
Having documented what we have in the last few entries, one could think with some certainty that Cardinal Bertone is a shoo-in for Petrus Romanus.
As Pope Benedict's health weakens, the sharks smell blood, and claims of mismanagement have been increasing from competing factions in the Church that are more than happy to seize opportunity to cast aspersion on Bertone in order to elevate their own standing among the College of Cardinals.
This may include Archbishop Vigano, whose personal letters to Pope Benedict and Cardinal Bertone concerning his reassignment as Nuncio were partially broadcast by an Italian television news program in January 2012.
The letters, confirmed by the Vatican as authentic, exposed a blistering relationship between himself and Bertone involving political jockeying and financial deal making including charges of,
"corruption, nepotism and cronyism linked to the awarding of contracts to contractors at inflated prices." [i]
One of the letters to Cardinal Bertone, dated March 27, 2011 (eight days before the letter to Pope Benedict), complained of Bertone removing him from his post and of Bertone,
"breaking a promise to let the archbishop succeed the then-president of the commission, Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, upon the latter's retirement. According to the letter, Cardinal Bertone had mentioned unspecified 'tensions' within the commission to explain Archbishop Vigano's reassignment, but [Vigano] suggested that a recent Italian newspaper article criticizing the archbishop [Bertone] as incompetent had contributed to the decision." [ii]
Most Vatican sources agree that an internal campaign involving Machiavellian manipulation and maneuverings - what Phillip Pullella for Reuters called "a sort of 'mutiny of the monsignors'" [iii] - is playing out behind the scenes against the pope's right-hand man, Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.
The same sources say,
"the rebels have the tacit backing of a former secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, an influential power-broker in his own right and a veteran diplomat who served under the late Pope John Paul II for 15 years." [iv]
If Sodano truly is behind a campaign to undermine papal possibilities for Bertone, suspicions deepen that something may be lingering between Fatima cover-up conspirators Ratzinger, Bertone, and Sodano, as the reader might recall Antonio Socci's belief that when John Paul II decided to release the Third Secret of Fatima, a power-struggle of sorts erupted in the Vatican when future Pope Benedict XVI (Cardinal Ratzinger) wanted to release the Secret in its entirety, but Cardinal Sodano, then Vatican Secretary of State, opposed the idea.
Whatever the case may be, the January 26, 2012 headline at The New York Times said it all: "Transfer of Vatican Official Who Exposed Corruption Hints at Power Struggle," [v] and echoed the fact that, just like in American presidential politics, today's rising star at the Vatican can all-to-soon become crushed under the juggernaut of ambitious and motivated men if one does not vigilantly maintain every bit as much cunning as their challengers.
Also suddenly blossoming are other dubious movements in Rome that seem to validate a game is afoot.
This includes a hasty appointment on January 11, 2012, by Pope Benedict XVI of another Italian, Archbishop Lorenzo Baldisseri, as the new secretary of the Congregation for Bishops (the branch of the Roman Curia that oversees the selection of new bishops).
Baldisseri is intriguing because his Principal Consecrator during his 1963 ordination was Bertone predecessor and Fatima deception accomplice, Cardinal Angelo Sodano. And Baldisseri's ordination to priesthood occurred June 29, 1963, eight (8) days after Giovanni Montini (Pope Paul VI) was elected. This is interesting on numerous levels. First, the number eight (8) is associated with destiny, divinity, occult fertility rites, resurrection, and the incarnation of Jesus (888), as any Bishop of Rome knows.
But more importantly, the exact date of Baldisseri's ordination - June 29, 1963 - is the very day on which Malachi Martin swore the "enthronement of the fallen Archangel Lucifer" took place in the Roman Catholic Citadel.
This rituale, as Martin had called it, had two primary objectives: 1) to enthrone Lucifer as the true Prince over Rome; and 2) to assure the sorcerous inception and embodiment in flesh of that immaterial spirit into a priest was made, one who would later become Petrus Romanus.
In his book, Windswept House, Martin wrote:
That requirement - the signal that the Availing Time had begun - had been accomplished just eight days before with the election of the latest Peter-in-the-Line. [vi]
The big problem with Baldisseri is that he is not yet papabile, so his role may be coincidental or that of a carrier collaborator, for the mystery of the 1963 conclave, which began June 19 and ended June 21 with the election of Pope Paul VI, carries a secret most in the public are completely unaware of but that Malachi Martin most courageously took on.
It is called in investigative circles, "The Siri Thesis," and involves whispered evidence that Cardinal Giuseppe Siri of Genoa actually received the majority vote in both the 1958 and 1963 conclaves but under mysterious pressure (presumably from Masonic influences) refused the papal office.
When asked twenty years later if in both conclaves he had initially been elected as pontiff, Siri responded,
"I am bound by the secret. This secret is horrible. I would have books to write about the different conclaves. Very serious things have taken place. But I can say nothing." [vii]
Malachi Martin wasn't so silent. He claimed to be an eye-witness of the 1963 Conclave and in his book, The Keys of This Blood, said that Siri was in fact elected pope in both 1958 and 1963, but that his election was "set aside" because of "interference" by an "emissary of an internationally based organization" (the Freemasons). [viii]
Given that our book (available April, 2012), Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope is Here, is based in part on the prophecy attributed to St. Malachy called "The Prophecy of the Popes," we would be remiss not to also point out how, in 1958, the inevitability of Siri's election was believed so strongly that in Italy,
"the prophesy of Saint Malachy, describing Pius' successor as 'Shepherd and Sailor' [#107 in the Prophecy of the Popes] (Pastor et Nauta), was commonly attributed to the illustrious Archbishop of Genoa [Siri].
The maritime city had been his life-long home, where he was born the son of a dockworker. It was the most important seaport in the country, and birthplace of Christopher Columbus.
A Genoan newspaper would write: 'No one better than Siri could symbolize this motto: he is a pastor of highest virtues, a captain of the ship, born and raised on the sea.'" [ix]
So how and for what purpose could the election of Siri have been set aside and covered up so completely? William G. von Peters, Ph.D., explains in The Siri Thesis:
Most Catholics today, simply cannot comprehend why or how such a crime could have been so successfully carried out almost undetected by the outside world, with the active participation of high princes of the Church, over the span of a generation, as alleged by the "Siri thesis". Surely such a long, drawn-out conspiracy would be beyond the ability of even the most evil of men.
But 130 years ago, Pope Pius IX explained that:
"If one takes into consideration the immense development which [the]…secret societies have attained; the length of time they are persevering in their vigor; their furious aggressiveness; the tenacity with which their members cling to the association and to the false principles it professes; the persevering mutual cooperation of so many different types of men in the promotion of evil; one can hardly deny that the SUPREME ARCHITECT [the god of Freemasonry] of these associations (seeing that the cause must be proportional to the effect) can be none other than he who in the sacred writings is styled the PRINCE OF THE WORLD; and that Satan himself even by his physical cooperation, directs and inspires at least the leaders of these bodies physically cooperating with them." [x]
Further speculation about the Masonic plot originally spelled out in the Alta Vendita does seem related to what went on in the 1958 and 1963 conclaves because it was under these secret meetings when the popes were "elected" that would implement the Second Vatican Council and its Vendita-like heretical decrees.
Of course we could cite once again a plethora of Church Fathers, Marian apparitions, and Catholic seers down through time that had forecast these events as a pre-game for the arrival of Petrus Romanus.
Even Saint Francis of Assisi - one of the most venerated religious figures in history - gathered his devotees shortly before his death and prophesied that:
"At the time of this tribulation a man, not canonically elected, will be raised to the Pontificate, who, by his cunning, will endeavor to draw many into error and death… Some preachers will keep silence about the truth, and others will trample it under foot and deny it…for in those days Jesus Christ will send them not a true Pastor, but a destroyer." [xi]
As we are now preparing to send our investigation Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope is Here to the printer, the Vatican enters the Golden Anniversary of Vatican II, a perfect time, Illuminati would say, to install Petrus Romanus and to exact their revenge.
And the unpleasant reality is that a conflict over who will become Petrus Romanus is at this moment boiling beneath the surface at Rome, largely unknown to the public but nevertheless foresaw by Catholic mystics such as Father Herman Bernard Kramer (mentioned in a previous entry) in his work, "The Book of Destiny."
Let us remind the reader of his frightening prophecy and strange interpretation of the twelfth chapter of the Book of Revelation concerning "the great wonder" mentioned in verse one. Father Kramer prophesied:
The "sign" in heaven is that of a woman with child crying out in her travail and anguish of delivery. In that travail, she gives birth to some definite "person" who is to RULE the Church with a rod of iron (verse 5).
It then points to a conflict waged within the Church to elect one who was to "rule all nations" in the manner clearly stated. In accord with the text this is unmistakably a PAPAL ELECTION, for only Christ and his Vicar have the divine right to rule ALL NATIONS…
But at this time the great powers may take a menacing attitude to hinder the election of the logical and expected candidate by threats of a general apostasy, assassination or imprisonment of this candidate if elected." [xii]
While we disagree with Kramer's interpretation of the book of Revelation, the idea that a specific "person" was born and is now of the appropriate age to fulfill the incarnation of St. Malachy's Prophecy of the Popes and to produce the Man of Sin, is without question.
Kramer's fear that "great powers may take a menacing attitude to hinder the election of the logical and expected candidate" also reverberates the sentiment of other priests, past and present, including Cardinal Archbishop Paolo Romeo, the leader of Sicily's Catholics, who made headlines February 10, 2012 when the Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano (which is famous for its breaking exclusives) published parts of a secret communiqué involving the Cardinal and a criminal conspiracy to assassinate Pope Benedict XVI before the end of 2012. [xiii]
Evidently at the center of the Mordkomplott (contract to kill the pope) is political machinations in Rome involving Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, whose growing thirst for power Benedict has come to hate according to the leaked document, and another Italian now favored as successor by Benedict, Cardinal Angelo Scola, currently the Archbishop of Milan.
The contract against the pope and the prediction by Cardinal Paola that was allegedly made in secret to his Italian and Chinese business partners in Beijing concerning Benedict not living past the end of 2012 was apparently believed serious enough that somebody among Paola's listeners "suspected that he himself was involved in a specific plot to assassinate Pope Benedict XVI.
At least one of those present therefore reported the Cardinal's words to Rome, and a special report on the incident - complied by Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos and written in German in an attempt to stop it from being leaked - was presented to the Pope on 30 December last year." [xiv]
Whether or not the threat whispered by Paola was actually formulated or will come true, the report illustrates once again how efforts are being made by at least some members of the College of Cardinals to manipulate events in order to align themselves as candidates for Petrus Romanus.
Besides Francis Arinze, Tarcisio Bertone, Peter Turkson, and Angelo Scola, other nominees for the Final Pope include Cardinals Gianfranco Ravasi, Leonardo Sandri, Ennio Antonelli, Jean-Louis Tauran, Christoph Schönborn, Marc Quellet, and the highly improbable but popular Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York City.
With this in mind, one thought each of these papal contenders may want to consider is how many Catholics believe the sixteenth-century seer Nostradamus was actually the author of "The Prophecy of the Popes."
If that is so, a point made by the National Catholic Reporter earlier in this series concerning the popular West African Cardinal Peter Turkson being "young" in terms of electability at age sixty-three may have a way of coming back around.
The "dark horse" candidate Turkson - and his ideas for a one-world financial and political authority housed in the United Nations - could become a remarkable and unexpected fulfillment of both the Prophecy of the Popes and Nostradamus's prediction of an end-times "young black pope" who seizes control of the Roman Hierarchy with the assistance of conspirators during times of darkness and war.
In Quatrain 6.25 Nostradamus wrote:
Through Mars adverse [a time of war] will be the monarchy
Of the great fisherman [the pope] in trouble ruinous
A young black red [a young black Cardinal] will seize the hierarchy
The predators acting on a foggy day
Besides the possibility of Nostradamus, most do not know that ancient occult societies throughout time speculated when the Antichrist and False Prophet would arrive.
A shocking number of them pointed to one year specifically - 2012.
[i] "Monsignors' Mutiny," revealed by Vatican leaks, Philip Pullella | Reuters - Mon, Feb 13, 2012.
[ii] Francis X. Rocca, "Vatican Downplays Charges of Financial 'Corruption,'" Catholic News Service, January 26, 2012, http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1200336.htm.
[iii] "Monsignors' Mutiny" revealed by Vatican leaks, Philip Pullella | Reuters - Mon, Feb 13, 2012.
[iv] Ibid
[v] Elisabetta Povoledo, "Transfer of Vatican Official Who Exposed Corruption Hints at Power Struggle," The New York Times, January 26, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/27/world/europe/archbishop-viganos-transfer-hints-at-vatican-
power-struggle.html.
[vi] Malachi Martin, Windswept House, 7.
[vii] Malachi Martin, The Keys of This Blood (New York, NY: Touchstone, 1991), 607-608.
[ix] The Siri Thesis, compiled by. William G. von Peters, Ph.D., 8; viewable here: http://www.cartesio-episteme.net/st/siri-thesis.doc.
[xi] Works of the Seraphic Father St. Francis of Assisi (1182-1226), Washbourne, 1882 AD, 248.
[xii] Rev. Herman Bernard Kramer, The Book of Destiny, (Belleville, IL: Buechler Publishing Company, 1955), 277.
[xiii] See: http://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2012/02/10/complotto-di-morte-benedetto-xvi/190221/.
[xiv] "'Within Twelve Months, the Pope Will Die' - What Are We to Make of These Alleged Words of Cardinal Paolo Romeo?" February 10, 2012, http://areluctantsinner.blogspot.com/2012/02/within-twelve-months-pope-will-die-what.html.
Petrus Romanus, the Antichrist, and the Years 2012 & 2016
Contemporaneous to the arrival of the False Prophet (Petrus Romanus) is a prophecy from what is widely considered the most important work of Jewish Kabbalah, the Zohar, a collection of books written in medieval Aramaic over seven hundred years ago containing mystical commentary on the Pentateuch (five books of Moses, the Torah).
In addition to interpreting Scripture, the "Vaera" section (volume 3, section 34) includes "The signs heralding Mashiach," or "The coming of the Messiah." The fascinating date for "his" appearance is set in the Zohar in late 2012!
Given the rejection of Jesus by orthodox Jews as Messiah, Christians understand this "coming" would herald the unveiling of Antichrist in 2012.
J.R. Church of Prophecy in the News called our office a couple years back and led us through verses 476-483 of this part of the Zohar to point out what nobody in the 2012 research community had written before - that the time of Jacob's trouble (the Great Tribulation, which some Catholic scholars say begins with the election of Petrus Romanus) will commence according to this ancient text in the year 2012 when the "kings of the earth" gather in Rome, possibly during a papal conclave, and are killed by fiery stones or missiles from the sky.
The prophecy in the Zohar, given by Jews hundreds of years separate from the divination of "the last pope," is amazing when compared with the Catholic prediction.
The final pope, "Peter the Roman," whose reign ends in the destruction of Rome, will assume authority during a time of great tribulation, and then,
"the city of seven hills will be destroyed, and the terrible and fearsome Judge will judge his people."
But Dr. Church pointed out how in the Jewish Zohar, this vision of the destruction of Rome is repeated, though one prophecy connects it to the coming of the False Prophet, and the other, the Antichrist:
This ancient rabbinical dissertation claims that Rome will be destroyed in the Jewish calendar year 5773, which, in our calendar begins with the new moon of September 2012 and concludes a year later:
"In the year seventy-three [2012/2013] the kings of the world will assemble in the great city of Rome, and the Holy One will shower on them fire and hail and meteoric stones until they are all destroyed, with the exception of those who will not yet have arrived there."
Is he hinting at the destruction of Mystery Babylon? He notes that not all kings will be destroyed. Of those remaining, he says: "These will commence anew to make other wars. From that time the Messiah will begin to declare himself, and round him there will be gathered many nations and many hosts from the uttermost ends of the earth." [i]
Thus the false messiah (antichrist) is predicted in a seven-hundred-year-old Jewish prophecy to appear in 2012.
Similarly, the nine-hundred-year-old Prophecy of the Popes looks to be unfolding in parallel fashion to provide Petrus Romanus in 2012. To these, we could add numerous other strange attractors from throughout history that also assigned apocalyptic importance to the year 2012, including:
The Mayan calendar ends in 2012 with the return of their flying dragon god Kulkulkan.
The Aztec calendar ends in 2012 and their flying dragon god Quetzalcoatl returns.
The Cherokee Indian calendar ends in the year 2012 and their flying rattlesnake god returns. The "Cherokee Rattlesnake Prophecies," also known as the "Chickamaugan Prophecy" or the "Cherokee Star Constellation Prophecies," are part of a series of apocalyptic prophecies made by members of the Cherokee tribe during 1811-1812. Like the Maya, the Cherokee calendar ends mysteriously in the year 2012 when astronomical phenomena related to Jupiter, Venus, Orion, and Pleiades cause the "powers" of the star systems to "awaken."
According to ancient Mayan inscriptions, in 2012, the Mayan underworld god Bolon Yokte Ku also returns.
The Hindu Kali Yuga calendar ends in the year 2012 at the conclusion of the age of "the male demon."
According to the book, Apollyon Rising 2012, the prophecy of the Cumaean Sibyl on the Great Seal of the United States (novus ordo seclorum) points to the coming of the Antichrist in 2012. (more notes on this below)
Over two hundred sixty years ago, the leader of the first Great Awakening in America, Jonathan Edwards, tied the arrival of the Antichrist and Great Tribulation period to the timeframe 2012 and 2016.
One hundred thirty years after that, in 1878, Reverend William J. Reid did the same, writing in his "Lectures on the Revelation" concerning the papal system: "…we are prepared to answer the question, When will the Papal system come to an end? [It] will be destroyed in the year 2012."[ii]
Also of interest is the Web Bot Project, which was developed in the late 1990s for tracking and making stock market predictions. This technology crawls the Internet, much like a search engine does, searching for keywords and following "chatter" in order to tap into "the collective unconscious" of the global community for tipping points regarding past, current, and future buying patterns. In 2001, operators began noticing what looked like more than coincidences, and that the "bot" was taking on a mind of its own, accurately predicting more than just stock market predictions, including June of 2001 when the program predicted that a life-altering event would be felt worldwide and would take place within sixty to ninety days. On September 11, 2001, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center fell. The Web Bot also predicted the 2001 anthrax attack on Washington DC; the earthquake that produced the December 26, 2004, tsunami; Hurricane Katrina; and more. The Web Bot has now foretold global devastation for late December 2012.
In 2008, Henry Kissinger predicted the arrival of the New World Order in four years - 2012 (watch video below)
In 2012, the United States elects a President.
In 2012, the United Nations gets new leaders.
And in 2012, Petrus Romanus is set to materialize during a Final Conclave.
Recurrence Of 2012 And 2016 - Prophetic Or Occult Significance?
Concerning early American writers like Jonathan Edwards and Reverend William J. Reid holding a postmillennial view that the most likely time for the reign of Antichrist was 1260 years after AD 756 (the acceding of temporal power to the Pope), it seems judicious to observe that 1260 + 756 = 2016 and falls in range of 3.5 years from June of 2012.
The book Apollyon Rising 2012 goes into much more detail concerning the occult significance of these dates than we will take time to do in this series, but the year-dates 2012 and 2016 reappear on numerous occasion in connection to a Masonic prophecy involving the coming of Hiram/Osiris/Apollo connected to the date 2016 and representing the "midst of the week" of the Great Tribulation period (see Daniel 9:27; Revelation 11-13) when Apollo (Antichrist) presents himself as God and sets up the "abomination" in the temple in Jerusalem.
Under this scenario, the year 2012 represents the beginning of the Great Tribulation period, three and one-half years before mid-2016.
That the year 2012 might mark the beginning of the Great Tribulation not only could fit with Bible prophecy, as it is in the "midst of the week" - three and one-half years into the Great Tribulation period - when Antichrist enthrones himself as God in the temple, this would also conform well with the Masonic and Great Seal prophecies (see Apollyon Rising 2012) forecasting the return of the Great Architect and Hiram Abiff (Apollo/Osiris/Nimrod), who enters the finished temple as god, in this case, mid-2016, which is three and one-half years following 2012.
Also consider that June 21, 2016, is exactly three and one-half years after the Mayan ending-date of December 21, 2012, and June 21 marks the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere and the winter solstice in the Southern Hemisphere when a cusp line is created between Gemini and Cancer, signs that celebrated Freemason David Ovason referred to as having deep astrological significance to the founding and secret destiny of America.
It is also important to recognize that, based on Daniel chapter 9 and related texts, scholars believe a period of not more than seventy years (a biblical generation) will elapse between the reformation of Israel as a nation and the return of Jesus Christ.
When seventy years is added to 1948 - the year Israel was formally recognized as an independent nation by the United Nations - it brings us through the year 2018. Does this mean the year 2019 - exactly seven years after 2012 - would mark the year that Jesus Christ returns with the armies of heaven to establish His rule over earth?
Islamic scholars also view this time as prophetically important. The author of The Day of Wrath, Safar Ibn 'Abd Al-Rahman Al-Hawali, writes at www.IslamicAwakening.com:
When Daniel specified the period between its distress and relief, between the era of anguish and the era of blessing, he put it as forty-five years! We have already seen that he specified the time of the establishment of the abomination of desolation as the year 1967, which is what in fact occurred. Therefore, the beginning of the end will be 1967 + 45 = 2012.
Another remarkable connection between these dates is how the ancient Maya themselves recognized a direct link between the number thirteen and the years 1776 and 2012 in cycles and illustrations in a way that academic Richard N. Luxton found to be similar to prophecies of the "Christian Last Judgment."
He translated and annotated The Book of Chumayel - The Counsel Book of the Yucatec Maya 1539-1638, and noted on katun 13 Ahau:
The dates that accompany the illustrations approximate real counts. Katun 13 Ahau ended in 1539 and began in the Colonial Count in 1776.…
The traditional theme of agreement as the end of the eastern katun cycle in 13 Ahau is intermingled here with elements of the Christian Last Judgment. Whether this paradigm was also intended for the end of the Long Count in 2012 is open to question. [iii]
Religious ceremonies and prophecies accompanied Mayan katuns, and Luxton's connection to the "Christian Last Judgment" and the thirteen katuns (a katun is approximately 19.7 years) between 1776 and 2012 is drawn from the prophecies of the Mayan prophet Chilam Balam.
Written down in about the year 1595, the oracular Chilam Balam, or "jaguar" shaman, said the end of this period would witness the judgment of God in the form of social collapse, epidemics, plagues, and famine. The same period would see the coming of two great prophets, one after the other, according to the Mayan prophecy.
Is this the False Prophet (Petrus Romanus) paving the way for the Antichrist?
It is no coincidence that the start and ending dates of the final thirteen katuns of the Mesoamerican Mayan Long Count calendar are reflected in the thirteen steps of the pyramid on the United States' Great Seal. That the steps of the pyramid were intended to convey units of time has been an open secret for many years.
Though he was not sure what to make of it himself, Paul Foster Case wrote many years ago that:
Since the date, 1776, is placed on the bottom course of the pyramid, and since the number thirteen has been so important in the symbolism of the seal, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the thirteen courses of the pyramid may represent thirteen time periods. [iv]
John Kehne made an even more intriguing observation, directly coupling the Great Seal's trestleboard date, 1776, and the Mayan ending date 2012:
This Seal shows a thirteen-step pyramid with 1776 in Roman numerals.… [The year] 1776 was not only the year that the Declaration of Independence was signed, but was also a special year in the Mayan calendar.
Just as the last katun in the Great Cycle is "katun 2012," the first katun in the cycle of thirteen was "katun 1776." In fact, the katun ended thirty-three days before the signing. So 1776 is the bottom level of the pyramid, where the date is actually inscribed - the top of the pyramid is therefore 2012. [v]
However, in order for the agents of these prophetic dates to materialize on time, certain wizardry and alchemical machines were required to invoke the coming of the destroyers.
Were such put in place at the Vatican and in Washington DC in anticipation of Petrus Romanus and his Antichrist master?
[i] J. R. Church, e-mail message to Tom Horn, 2009.
[ii] William J. Reid, Lectures on the Revelation (Stevenson, Foster, 1878), 306.
[iii] The Book of Chumayel: The Counsel Book of the Yucatec Maya 1539-1638, Richard N. Luxton, trans., Series: "Mayan Studies 7" (Laguna Hills, CA: Aegean Park, 1995), 307.
[iv] Paul Foster Case, The Great Seal of the United States, 10th ed. (Los Angeles: Builders of Adytum, 1976), 29.
[v] See (http://www.december212012.com/join_the%20believers_list.htm).
Where the Vitality of the Beast that Was, and
Is Not, and Yet Is Pulsates in
Anticipation of His Final "Raising"
We ended Part 13 of this series stating that, in order for the agents of the prophetic dates 2012-2016 to materialize on time, certain wizardry and alchemical machines were required to invoke the coming of the destroyers.
The three-hundred-thirty ton Obelisk in St. Peter's Square in the Vatican City is not just any Obelisk.
It was cut from a single block of red granite during the Fifth dynasty of Egypt to stand as Osiris' erect phallus at the Temple of the Sun in ancient Heliopolis (Ἡλιούπολις, meaning city of the sun or principal seat of Atum-Ra sun-worship), the city of "On" in the Bible, dedicated to Ra, Osiris, and Isis.
The Obelisk was moved from Heliopolis to the Julian Forum of Alexandria by Emperor Augustus and later from thence (approximately 37 AD) by Caligula to Rome to stand at the spine of the Circus. There, under Nero, its excited presence maintained a counter-vigil over countless brutal Christian executions, including the martyrdom of the apostle Peter (according to some historians).
Over fifteen hundred years following that, Pope Sixtus V ordered hundreds of workmen under celebrated engineer-architects Giovanni and Domenico Fontana (who also erected three other ancient obelisks in the old Roman city including one dedicated to Osiris by Rameses III - at the Piazza del Popolo, Piazza di S. Maria Maggiore, and Piazza di S. Giovanni in Laterano) to move the phallic pillar to the center of St. Peter's Square in Rome.
This proved a daunting task, which took over four months, nine hundred laborers, one hundred forty horses, and seventy winches.
Though worshipped at its present location ever since by countless admirers, the proximity of the Obelisk to the old Basilica was formerly,
"resented as something of a provocation, almost as a slight to the Christian religion. It had stood there like a false idol, as it were vaingloriously, on what was believed to be the center of the accursed circus where the early Christians and St. Peter had been put to death. Its sides, then as now, were graven with dedications to [the worst of ruthless pagans] Augustus and Tiberius." [i]
The fact that many traditional Catholics as well as Protestants perceived such idols of stone to be not only objects of heathen adoration but the worship of demons (see Acts 7:41-42; Psalms 96:5; and 1 Corinthians 10:20) makes what motivated Pope Sixtus to erect the phallus of Osiris in the heart of St. Peter's Square, located in Vatican City and bordering St. Peter's Basilica, very curious.
To ancient Christians, the image of a cross and symbol of Jesus sitting atop (or emitting from) the head of a demonic god's erect manhood would have been at a minimum a very serious blasphemy.
Yet Sixtus was not content with simply restoring and using such ancient pagan relics (which were believed in those days to actually house the pagan spirit they represented) but even destroyed Christian artifacts in the process.
Michael W. Cole, Associate Professor in the Department of the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania, and Professor Rebecca E. Zorach, Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Chicago, raise critical questions about this in their scholarly book The Idol in the Age of Art when they state:
Whereas Gregory, to follow the chroniclers, had ritually dismembered the city's imagines daemonem [demonic images], Sixtus fixed what was in disrepair, added missing parts, and made the "idols" into prominent urban features.
Two of the four obelisks had to be reconstructed from found or excavated pieces… The pope was even content to destroy Christian antiquities in the process: as Jennifer Montagu has pointed out, the bronze for the statues of Peter and Paul came from the medieval doors of S. Agnese, from the Scala Santa at the Lateran, and from a ciborium at St. Peter's.
[Sixtus] must have realized that, especially in their work on the two [broken obelisks], they were not merely repairing injured objects, but also restoring a type…
In his classic book The Gothic Idol, Michael Camille showed literally dozens of medieval images in which the freestanding figure atop a column betokened the pagan idol.
The sheer quantity of Camille's examples makes it clear that the device, and what it stood for, would have been immediately recognizable to medieval viewers, and there is no reason to assume that, by Sixtus's time, this had ceased to be true. [ii]
The important point made by Professors Cole and Zorach is that at the time Sixtus was busy reintroducing to the Roman public square restored images and statues on columns, the belief remained strong that these idols housed their patron deity, and further that, if these were not treated properly and even placed into service during proper constellations related to their myth, it could beckon evil omens.
Leonardo da Vinci had even written in his Codex Urbinas how those who would adore and pray to the image were likely to believe the god represented by it was alive in the stone and watching their behavior.
There is strong indication that Sixtus believed this too, and that he,
"worried about the powers that might inhabit his new urban markers." [iii]
This was clearly evident when the cross was placed on top of the Obelisk in the midst of St. Peter's Square and the pope marked the occasion by conducting the ancient rite of exorcism against the phallic symbol.
First scheduled to occur on September 14th to coincide with the liturgical Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross and not coincidently under the zodiacal sign of Virgo (Isis), the event was delayed until later in the month and fell under the sign of Libra, representing a zenith event for the year.
On that morning, a pontifical High Mass was held just before the cross was raised from a portable altar to the apex of Baal's Shaft (as such phallic towers were also known). While clergy prayed and a choir sang Psalms, Pope Sixtus stood facing the Obelisk and, extending his hand toward it, announced: "Exorcizote, creatura lapidis, in nomine Dei" ("I exorcize you, creature of stone, in the name of God").
Sixtus then cast sanctified water upon the pillar's middle, then its right side, then left, then above, and finally below to form a cross, followed by, "In nomine Patris, et Filij, et Spiritus sancti. Amen" ("In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen").
He then crossed himself three times and watched as the symbol of Christ was placed atop Osiris' erect phallus.
Yet if what Sixtus established in the heart of Vatican City gives some readers pause (numerous other signature events by Sixtus aligned the Sistine city with constellations sacred to Osiris and Isis, which we are not taking time to discuss here but that caused Profs. Zorach and Cole to conclude that, in the end, Sixtus wanted to remain in the good graces of the pagan gods), in Washington, DC near the west end of the National Mall, the Obelisk built by Freemasons and dedicated to America's first president brings the fullest meaning to the nephilim-originated and modern porn-industry impression that "size matters."
This is no crude declaration, as adepts of ritual sex-magic know, and dates back to ancient women who wanted to give birth to the offspring of the gods and who judged the size of the male generative organ as indicative of the "giant" genetics or divine seed needed for such offspring.
While such phallic symbols have been and still are found in cultures around the world, in ancient Egypt, devotion to this type "obscene divinity" began with Amun-Min and reached its crescendo in the Obelisks of Osiris.
Throughout Greece and Rome the god Priapus (son of Aphrodite) was invoked as a symbol of such divine fertility and later became directly linked to the cult of pornography reflected in the more modern sentiments about "size."
This is important because, in addition to the Washington Monument being intentionally constructed to be the tallest Obelisk of its kind in the world at 6,666 (some say 6,660) inches high and 666 inches wide along each side at the base, one of the original concepts for the Washington Monument included Apollo (the Greek version of Osiris) triumphantly returning in his heavenly chariot, and another illustrating a tower "like that of Babel" for its head.
Any of these designs would have been equally appropriate to the thirty-three-hundred-pound pyramidal capstone it now displays, as all three concepts carried the meaning necessary to accomplish what late researcher David Flynn described as,
"the same secret knowledge preserved by the mystery schools since the time of the Pelasgians [that] display modern Isis Osiris worship." [iv]
This is to say, the "seed" discharged from a Tower-of-Babel-shaped head would magically issue forth the same as would proceed from the existing Egyptian capstone - the offspring of Apollo/Osiris/Nimrod.
The greatest minds in Freemasonry, whose beliefs set the tone for the design of the capital city, its Great Seal, its Dome, and its Obelisk, understood and wrote about this intent.
Albert Pike described it as Isis and Osiris' "Active and Passive Principles of the Universe…commonly symbolized by the generative parts of man and woman," [v] and Freemason writer Albert Mackey described not only the Obelisk, but added the importance of the circle around its base, saying,
"The Phallus was an imitation of the male generative organ. It was represented… by a column [Obelisk] that was surrounded by a circle at the base." [vi]
In Egypt, where the parodies and rituals for raising Osiris to life through these magical constructs was perfected, Pharaoh served as the "fit extension" for the reborn god to take residence in as the "sex act" was ritualized at the temple of Amun-Ra.
The all-seeing eye of Horus/Osiris/Apollo above the unfinished pyramid on the Great Seal forecasts the culmination of this event - that is, the actual return of Osiris - for the United States during or closely following the year 2012, and the Dome and Obelisk stand ready for the metaphysical ritual to be performed in secret by the elite.
We use the phrase "performed in secret" because what the vast majority of people throughout America do not know is that the "raising" ceremony is still conducted inside the headquarters of the Scottish Rite Freemasonry in the House of the Temple by the Supreme Council 33rd Degree over Washington, DC for at least two reasons.
First, whenever a Mason reaches the Master level, the ritual includes a parody representing the death, burial, and future resurrection of Hiram Abiff (Osiris).
The world at large finally caught a glimpse of this custom when Dan Brown, in his book The Lost Symbol, opened with a scene depicting the start of the tradition:
The secret is how to die.
Since the beginning of time, the secret had always been how to die.
The thirty-four-year-old initiate gazed down at the human skull cradled in his palms. The skull was hollow, like a bowl, filled with bloodred wine.
Drink it, he told himself. You have nothing to fear.
As was tradition, he had begun his journey adorned in the ritualistic garb of a medieval heretic being led to the gallows, his loose-fitting shirt gaping open to reveal his pale chest, his left pant leg rolled up to the knee, and his right sleeve rolled up to the elbow.
Around his neck hung a heavy rope noose - a "cable-tow" as the brethren called it. Tonight, however, like the brethren bearing witness, he was dressed as a master.
The assembly of brothers encircling him all were adorned in their full regalia of lambskin aprons, sashes, and white gloves. Around their necks hung ceremonial jewels that glistened like ghostly eyes in the muted light. Many of these men held powerful stations in life, and yet the initiate knew their worldly ranks meant nothing within these walls. Here all men were equals, sworn brothers sharing a mystical bond.
As he surveyed the daunting assembly, the initiate wondered who on the outside would ever believe that this collection of men would assemble in one place…much less this place. The room looked like a holy sanctuary from the ancient world.
The truth, however, was stranger still.
I am just blocks away from the White House.
This colossal edifice, located at 1733 Sixteenth Street NW in Washington, D.C., was a replica of a pre-Christian temple - the temple of King Mausolus, the original mausoleum…a place to be taken after death. Outside the main entrance, two seventeen-ton sphinxes guarded the bronze doors.
The interior was an ornate labyrinth of ritualistic chambers, halls, sealed vaults, libraries, and even a hallow wall that held the remains of two human bodies.
The initiate had been told every room in the building held a secret, and yet he knew no room held deeper secrets than the gigantic chamber in which he was currently kneeling with a skull cradled in his palms.
The Temple Room. [vii]
While such drama makes for excellent fiction, The Lost Symbol turns out to be at best a love fest and at worst a cover up between Dan Brown and the Freemasons.
However, one thing Brown said is true - the Temple Room in the Heredom does hold an important secret.
We've been there, stood inside and prayed for protection under our breath, because according to our sources (who provided facts that have not been denied when we were interviewed by a U.S. Congressman, U.S. Senator, and even a 33rd-Degree Freemason on his radio show), in addition to when a Mason reaches the Master level, the ancient raising ceremony is conducted following the election of an American President - just as their Egyptian forefathers did at the temple of Amun-Ra in Karnak - in keeping with the tradition of installing within him the representative spirit of Osiris until such time as the god himself shall fulfill the Great Seal prophecy and return in flesh.
In the prologue of 33rd-Degree Freemason Manly P. Hall's book, The Lost Keys of Freemasonry, detailed recounting of the underlying and familiar story of Hiram Abiff (Osiris) is told, who sets out to construct the temple of the Great Architect of the Universe, but is killed by three spectres.
This story, impersonated every time an initiate reaches the level of Master Mason, is by admission of Freemasons a retelling of the death-epic of the god Osiris. In Lost Keys, Hall narrates how the Great Architect gives Hiram (Osiris) the trestleboard for the construction of the great temple, and when he is killed by three ruffians, the Great Architect bathes him in "a glory celestial," as in the glory surrounding the all-seeing eye of Osiris above the pyramid on the Great Seal.
The Great Architect follows this by charging those who would finish the building with the task of finding the body of Hiram (Osiris) and raising him from the dead.
When this has been accomplished, the great work will conclude and the god will inhabit the (third) temple:
Seek ye where the broken twig lies and the dead stick molds away, where the clouds float together and the stones rest by the hillside, for all these mark the grave of Hiram [Osiris] who has carried my Will with him to the tomb.
This eternal quest is yours until ye have found your Builder, until the cup giveth up its secret, until the grave giveth up its ghosts.
No more shall I speak until ye have found and raised my beloved Son [Osiris], and have listened to the words of my Messenger and with Him as your guide have finished the temple which I shall then inhabit. Amen. [viii]
Thus the appearance of the uncapped pyramid of Giza on the Great Seal of the United States echoes the ancient pagan as well as Masonic beliefs concerning the old mysteries and the prophecy of the return of Osiris/Apollo/Nimrod. In Rosicrucian and Masonic Origins, Hall, who had said in The Secret Teachings of All Ages that the Great Pyramid was "the tomb of Osiris," [ix] explains that Preston, Gould, Mackey, Oliver, Pike, and nearly every other great historian of Freemasonry were aware of this connection between Freemasonry and the ancient mysteries and primitive ceremonials based on Osiris.
"These eminent Masonic scholars have all recognized in the legend of Hiram Abiff an adaptation of the Osiris myth; nor do they deny that the major part of the symbolism of the craft is derived from the pagan institutions of antiquity when the gods were venerated in secret places with strange figures and appropriate rituals." [x]
In Morals and Dogma, Albert Pike even enumerated the esoteric significance of the Osiris epic at length, adding that lower-level Masons (Blue Masonry) are ignorant of its true meaning, which is only known to those who are "initiated into the Mysteries." [xi]
Pike also spoke of the star Sirius - connected to Isis and at length to Lucifer/Satan - as "still glittering" in the Masonic lodges as "the Blazing Star."
Elsewhere in Morals and Dogma, Pike reiterated that the,
"All-Seeing Eye…was the emblem of Osiris" [xii] and that the "Sun was termed by the Greeks the Eye of Jupiter, and the Eye of the World; and his is the All-Seeing Eye in our Lodges." [xiii]
[i] James Lees-Milne, Saint Peter's: The Story of Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome (Little, Brown, 1967), 221.
[ii] Rebecca Zorach and Michael W. Cole, The Idol in the Age of Art (Ashgate, 2009), 61.
[iii] Rebecca Zorach and Michael W. Cole, The Idol in the Age of Art, 63.
[iv] David Flynn, Cydonia: The Secret Chronicles of Mars (Bozwman, MT: End Time Thunder, 2002),156.
[v] Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma: Of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, (Forgotten Books), 401.
[vi] Albert Mackey, A Manual of the Lodge (1870), 56.
[vii] Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol (Anchor; Reprint edition, 2010), 3-4.
[viii] Manly P. Hall, Lost Keys, Prologue.
[ix] Manly P. Hall, Secret Teachings, 116-120.
[x] Manly P. Hall, "Rosicrucianism and Masonic Origins," from Lectures on Ancient Philosophy - An Introduction to the Study and Application of Rational Procedure (Los Angeles: Hall, 1929), 397-417.
[xi] Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma, 335.
Magic Squares, 666, and Human Sacrifice?
While finding the body of Osiris and resurrecting it - either figuratively or literally - is central to the prophetic beliefs of Freemasonry, until Apollo/Osiris return, formal procedures will continue in secret for installing within America's national leader the divine right of Kingship through the raising of Osiris ceremony.
But it is very important to note how, when this ritual is carried out in the Temple Room of the Heredom, it unfolds below a vast thirty-six-paneled skylight that forms a stylized Magic 666 Square. Around the four sides of the skylight can be seen the Winged Sun-Disc.
This positioning above the altar is in keeping with historical occultism. Egyptian magicians employed the same symbolism above the altar for invoking the sun deity.
In the St. Martin's Press book Practical Egyptian Magic it is noted:
"Emblematic of the element of air, this consists of a circle or solar-type disk enclosed by a pair of wings. In ritual magic it is suspended over the altar in an easterly direction and used when invoking the protection and co-operation of the sylphs." [i]
The Renaissance occultist Paracelsus describes these sylphs as invisible beings of the air, entities that the New Testament book of Ephesians (2:2) describes as working beneath,
"the prince [Lucifer/Satan] of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience."
In applied magic, the "magic square of the sun" itself was associated in antiquity with binding or loosing the sun god Apollo/Osiris and was the most famous of all magical utilities because the sum of any row, column, or diagonal is equal to the number 111, while the total of all the numbers in the square from 1 to 36 equals 666.
In the magical Hebrew Kabbalah, each planet is associated with a number, intelligence, and spirit.
The intelligence of the Sun is Nakiel, which equals 111, while the spirit of the Sun is Sorath and equals 666. It makes sense therefore that Freemasons built the Washington Monument Obelisk to form a magic square at its base and to stand 555 feet above earth, so that when a line is drawn 111 feet directly below it toward the underworld of Osiris, it equals the total of 666 (555+111=666) - the exact values of the binding square of the Sun God Apollo/Osiris installed in the ceiling above where the Osiris raising ceremony is conducted in the House of the Temple.
Freemason and occultist Aleister Crowley practiced such Kabbalah and likewise connected the number 111 with the number 6, which he described as the greatest number of the Sun or sun god.
He employed the magic square in rituals to make contact with a spirit described in The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, a work from the 1600s or 1700s that involves evocation of demons.
In Book Four of the magic text, a set of magical word-square talismans provides for the magician's Holy Guardian Angel who appears and reveals occult secrets for calling forth and gaining control over the twelve underworld authorities including Lucifer, Satan, Leviathan, and Belial.
In addition to Crowley, the most influential founding father and Freemason, Benjamin Franklin, not only used such magic squares, but according to his own biography and numerous other authoritative sources even created magic squares and circles for use by himself and his brethren.
Yet the gentle appearance and keen astuteness of America's most famous bespeckled Freemason might have hidden an even darker history than the story told by those magic squares, which his strong, deft hands once held.
Award-winning filmmaker Christian J. Pinto explains:
One of the most influential founding fathers, and the only one of them to have signed all of the original founding documents (the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris, and the U.S. Constitution) was Benjamin Franklin.
Franklin was…without question, deeply involved in Freemasonry and in other secret societies. He belonged to secret groups in the three countries involved in the War of Independence: America, France, and England. He was master of the Masonic Lodge of Philadelphia; while over in France, he was master of the Nine Sisters Lodge, from which sprang the French Revolution.
In England, he joined a rakish political group founded by Sir Francis Dashwood (member of Parliament, advisor to King George III) called the "Monks of Medmenham Abbey," otherwise known as the "Hellfire Club." This eighteenth-century group is described as follows.
The Hellfire Club was an exclusive, English club that met sporadically during the mid-eighteenth century. Its purpose, at best, was to mock traditional religion and conduct orgies. At worst, it involved the indulgence of satanic rites and sacrifices. The club to which Franklin belonged was established by Francis Dashwood, a member of Parliament and friend of Franklin.
The club, which consisted of "The Superior Order" of twelve members, allegedly took part in basic forms of satanic worship. In addition to taking part in the occult, orgies and parties with prostitutes were also said to be the norm.
On February 11, 1998, the Sunday Times reported that ten bodies were dug up from beneath Benjamin Franklin's home at 36 Craven Street in London. The bodies were of four adults and six children. They were discovered during a costly renovation of Franklin's former home. The Times reported:
"Initial estimates are that the bones are about two hundred years old and were buried at the time Franklin was living in the house, which was his home from 1757 to 1762 and from 1764 to 1775. Most of the bones show signs of having been dissected, sawn or cut. One skull has been drilled with several holes."
The original Times article reported that the bones were "deeply buried, probably to hide them because grave robbing was illegal."
They said,
"There could be more buried, and there probably are."
But the story doesn't end there. Later reports from the Benjamin Franklin House reveal that not only were human remains found, but animal remains were discovered as well. This is where things get very interesting. From the published photographs, some of the bones appear to be blackened or charred, as if by fire…
It is well documented that Satanists perform ritual killings of both humans and animals alike. [ii]
While many students of history are aware of the magic 666 square and its use by occultists down through time to control the spirit of Apollo/Osiris, what some will not know is how this magical binding and loosing of supernatural entities also extends to the testes of Washington's 6,666 inch-high phallic Obelisk, dedicated by Freemasons seventy-two years following 1776 (note the magic number 72), where a Bible (that Dan Brown identified as the "Lost Symbol" in his latest book) is encased within the cornerstone of its 666-inch-square base.
One wonders what type of Bible this is. If a Masonic version, it is covered with occult symbols of the Brotherhood and Rosicrucianism and the purpose for having it so encased might be to energize the Mason's interpretation of Scripture in bringing forth the seed of Osiris/Apollo from the testes/cornerstone.
If it is a non-Masonic Bible, the purpose may be to "bind" its influence inside the 666 square and thus allow the seed of Osiris/Apollo to prevail. The dedication of the cornerstone during the astrological alignment with Virgo/Isis as the sun was passing over Sirius indicates a high degree of magic was indeed intended by those in charge.
The First American Osiris
Through Masonic alchemistry, presidential apotheosis - that is, the leader of the United States (America's Pharaoh) being transformed into a god within the Capitol Dome/womb of Isis in sight of the Obelisk of Osiris (the Washington Monument to those whom Masons call "profane," the uninitiated) - actually began with America's first and most revered president, Master Freemason George Washington.
In fact, Masons in attendance at Washington's funeral in 1799 cast sprigs of acacia,
"to symbolize both Osiris' resurrection and Washington's imminent resurrection in the realm where Osiris presides." [iii]
According to this Masonic enchantment, Osiris (Horus) was rising within a new president in DC as Washington took his role as Osiris of the underworld.
This is further simulated and symbolized by the three-story design of the Capitol building. Freemasons point out how the Great Pyramid of Giza was made up of three main chambers to facilitate Pharaoh's transference to Osiris, just as the temple of Solomon was a three-sectioned tabernacle made up of the ground floor, middle chamber, and Holy of Holies.
The U.S. Capitol building was thus designed with three stories - Washington's Tomb, the Crypt, and the Rotunda - capped by a Dome.
Each floor has significant esoteric meaning regarding apotheosis, and the tomb of Washington is empty. The official narrative is that a legal issue kept the government from placing Washington's body there. However, just as the tomb of Jesus Christ was emptied before His ascension, Washington is not in his tomb because he has traveled to the home of Osiris, as depicted high overhead in the womb/Dome of Isis.
When visitors to Washington DC tour the Capitol, one of the unquestionable highlights is to visit the womb of Isis - the Capitol Dome - where, when peering upward from inside Isis' continuously pregnant belly, tourists can see hidden in plain sight Brumidi's 4,664-square-foot fresco, The Apotheosis of George Washington.
The word "apotheosis" means to "deify" or to "become a god," and explains part of the reason U.S. presidents, military commanders, and members of Congress lay in state in the Capitol Dome. The womb of Isis is where they go at death to magically reach apotheosis and transform into gods.
Those who believe the United States was founded on Christianity and visit the Capitol for the first time will be surprised by the stark contrast to historic Christian artwork of the ascension of Jesus Christ compared to the "heaven" George Washington rises into from within the energized Capitol Dome/womb of Isis. It is not occupied by angels, but with devils and pagan deities important to Masonic belief.
These include Hermes, Neptune, Venus (Isis), Ceres, Minerva, and Vulcan (Satan), of course, the son of Jupiter and Juno to which human sacrifices are made and about whom Manly Hall said brings,
"the seething energies of Lucifer" into the Mason's hands. [iv]
Beside those pagan gods which accompany Washington inside the Capitol Dome, the scene is rich with symbols analogous with ancient and modern magic, including the powerful trident - considered of the utmost importance for sorcery and indispensable to the efficacy of infernal rites - and the caduceus, tied to Apollo and Freemasonic Gnosticism in which Jesus was a myth based on Apollo's son, Asclepius, the god of medicine and healing whose snake-entwined staff remains a symbol of medicine today.
Occult numerology associated with the legend of Isis and Osiris is also encoded throughout the painting, such as the thirteen maidens, the six scenes of pagan gods around the perimeter forming a hexagram, and the entire scene bounded by the powerful Pythagorean/Freemasonic "binding" utility - seventy-two five-pointed stars within circles.
Much has been written by historians within and without Masonry as to the relevance of the number seventy-two (72) and the alchemy related to it. In the Kabbalah, Freemasonry, and Jewish apocalyptic writings, the number equals the total of wings Enoch received when transformed into Metatron (3 Enoch 9:2).
This plays an important role for the Brotherhood, as Metatron or "the angel in the whirlwind" was enabled as the guiding spirit over America during George W. Bush's administration for the purpose of directing the future and fate of the United States (as also prayed by Congressman Major R. Owens of New York before the House of Representatives on Wednesday, February 28, 2001).
But in the context of the Capitol Dome and the seventy-two stars that circle Washington's apotheosis in the womb of Isis, the significance of this symbolism is far more important.
In sacred literature, including the Bible, stars are symbolic of angels, and within Masonic Gnosticism, seventy-two is the number of fallen angels or "kosmokrators" (reflected in the seventy-two conspirators that controlled Osiris' life in Egyptian myth) that currently administer the affairs of earth.
Experts in the study of the Divine Council believe that, beginning at the Tower of Babel, the world and its inhabitants were disinherited by the sovereign God of Israel and placed under the authority of seventy-two angels (the earliest records had the number of angels at seventy, but this was later changed to seventy-two) which became corrupt and disloyal to God in their administration of those nations (Psalm 82).
These beings quickly became worshipped on earth as gods following Babel, led by Osiris/Apollo. Consistent with this tradition, the designers of the Capitol Dome, the Great Seal of the United States, and the Obelisk Washington Monument circled the Apotheosis of Washington with seventy-two pentagram stars, dedicated the Obelisk seventy-two years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and placed seventy-two stones on the Great Seal's uncapped pyramid, above which the eye of Horus/Osiris/Apollo stares.
These three sets of seventy-two (72), combined with the imagery and occult numerology of the Osiris/Obelisk, the Isis/Dome, and the oracular Great Seal, are richly symbolic of the influence of Satan and his angels over the world (see Luke 4:5-6, 2 Corinthians 4:4, and Ephesians 6:12) with a prophecy toward Satan's final earthly empire - the coming novus ordo seclorum, or new golden pagan age.
In order for the "inevitable" worship of Osiris to be "reestablished" on earth, the seventy-two demons that govern the nations must be controlled, thus they are set in magical constraints on the Great Seal, the Washington Obelisk, and the pentagram circles around the Apotheosis of Washington to bind and force the desired effect.
In The Secret Destiny of America, Hall noted as well that the seventy-two stones of the pyramid on the Great Seal correspond to the seventy-two arrangements of the Tetragrammaton, or the four-lettered name of God in Hebrew.
"These four letters can be combined in seventy-two combinations, resulting in what is called the Shemhamforesh, which represents, in turn, the laws, powers, and energies of Nature." [v]
The idea that the mystical name of God could be invoked to bind or loose those supernatural agents (powers and energies of nature, as Hall called them) is meaningful creed within many occult tenets, including Kabbalah and Freemasonry.
This is why the seventy-two stars are pentagram-shaped around the deified Freemason, George Washington.
Medieval books of magic, or grimoires such as the Key of Solomon and the Lesser Key of Solomon not only identify the star systems Orion (Osiris) and Pleiades (Apollo) as the "home" of these powers, but applies great importance to the pentagram shape of the stars for binding and loosing their influence. Adept Rosicrucians and Freemasons have long used these magical texts - the Key of Solomon and the Lesser Key of Solomon - to do just that.
Peter Goodgame makes an important observation about this in "The Giza Discovery":
One of the co-founders of the occult society known as the Golden Dawn[vi] was a Rosicrucian Freemason named S. L. MacGregor Mathers, who was the first to print and publish the Key of Solomon (in 1889) making it readily available to the public. Mathers describes it as a primary occult text:
"The fountainhead and storehouse of Qabalistic Magic, and the origin of much of the Ceremonial Magic of mediaeval times, the 'Key' has been ever valued by occult writers as a work of the highest authority."
Of the 519 esoteric titles included in the catalogue of the Golden Dawn library, the Key was listed as number one. As far as contents are concerned, the Key included instructions on how to prepare for the summoning of spirits including… demons...
One of the most well-known members of the Golden Dawn was the magician [and 33rd-degree freemason] Aleister Crowley. In 1904 Crowley published the first part of the five-part Lesser Key of Solomon known as the Ars Goetia, [vii] which is Latin for "art of sorcery."
The Goetia is a grimoire for summoning seventy-two different demons that were allegedly summoned, restrained, and put to work by King Solomon [according to Masonic mysticism] during the construction of the Temple of YHWH. [viii]
Unlike other grimoires including the sixteenth-century Pseudomonarchia Daemonum and the seventeenth-century Lemegeton, the Key of Solomon does not contain the "Diabolical Signature" of the devil or demons, which the Ars Goetia describes as numbering seventy-two and who were, according to legend, constrained to assist King Solomon after he bound them in a bronze vessel sealed by magic symbols.
Such books routinely contain invocations and curses for summoning, binding, and loosing these demons in order to force them to do the conjurers will.
Even members of the Church of Satan sign letters using the Shemhamforash, from the Hebrew name of God or Tetragrammaton, producing a blasphemous reinterpretation of the seventy-two entities.
And then there is Michelangelo, who painted what we have called the "Sign of the Sixth Knuckle" inside the Sistine Chapel (diagramed in our upcoming book Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope Is Here) that tied the prophecy on the Great Seal of the United States from the Cumaean Sibyl to the return of the Nephilim Apollo.
But incredibly, Michelangelo also produced the Shemhamforash on the Vatican's famous ceiling, as his fresco has,
"an architectural design of 24 columns. On each of these columns are two cherubs, which are mirror imaged on the adjoining column totaling 48 cherubs figures.
Then on the 12 triangular spandrels flanking the ceiling borders are an additional 24 nude figures (two bronze nude figures per triangular spandrel) also mirror imaging each other. This totals to 72 cherub figures or the 72 angels of God or names of God [or conversely, the 72 angels that fell and are now the demons or kosmokrators over the nations of the earth]." [ix]
Once one understands the importance that these mystical keys hold in Kabbalah, Rosicrucianism, Freemasonic mysticism, and other mystery traditions, there can be (and is) but one reasonable interpretation for the connection in the Vatican and the seventy-two pentagrams at the base of the Apotheosis of Washington.
These are there to bind and control the demons over the nations to honor the dedication made by early American Freemasons and certain Roman devotees for a New Atlantis and New World Order under the reign of the False Prophet (Petrus Romanus) and his antichrist master, Osiris/Apollo.
In the next entry we go from Seventy-Two Demons to Feathered Serpents: What You Do - and Do Not - Learn in School about American History
[i] Hope, Murry, Practical Egyptian Magic (New York: St. Martin's Press), 1984 p. 107. Quoted by Fritz Springmeier, The Watchtower & the Masons, 1990, 1992 pp. 113, 114.
[ii] Thomas Horn, Apollyon Rising 2012,, 7-10.
[iii] Martin Short, Inside the Brotherhood: Explosive Secrets of the Freemasons (UK: HarperCollins, 1995), 122.
[iv] Manly P. Hall, The Lost Keys of Freemasonry, 48.
[v] Manly P. Hall, Secret Destiny of America (Penguin Group, 2008), chapter 18.
[vi] See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermetic_Order_of_the_Golden_Dawn.
[vii] See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ars_Goetia#Ars_Goetia.
[viii] See: http://www.redmoonrising.com/Giza/DomDec6.htm.
[ix] "Shemhamphorasch," Wikipedia, last modified December 6, 2011, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shemhamphorasch.
From Seventy-Two Demons to Feathered Serpents
What You Do - and Do Not - Learn in School about American History
In public school, children are taught how a world map was created in 1507 by German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller.
On this map (below), the lands of the Western Hemisphere are first called "America," named so after an Italian explorer and navigator named Amerigo Vespucci.
According to the official account, the United States of America received the latter part of its name when Waldseemüller used the feminized Latin version of Amerigo to call this land America.
Or, at least that's what we are told.
What kiddies in public education are not taught, however (and which mainstream academia has yet been willing to accept), is a rival explanation for the origin of "America" related to Mesoamerican serpent-worship, biblical giants, Freemasonry, and even the year 2012.
The story begins long before the Spaniards arrived on this continent and was chronicled in the hieroglyphic characters (and repeated in oral history) of the sacred, indigenous Maya narrative called the Popol Vuh. Sometime between 1701 and 1703, a Dominican priest named Father Francisco Ximénez transcribed and translated the Mayan work into Spanish.
Later his text was taken from Guatemala to Europe by Abbott Brasseur de Bourbough where it was translated into French.
Today the Popol Vuh rests in Chicago's Newberry Library, but what makes the script interesting is its creation narrative, history, and cosmology, especially as it relates to the worship of the great "feathered serpent" creator deity known as Q'uq'umatz; a god considered by scholars to be roughly equivalent to the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl and the Yucatec Mayan Kukulkan.
According to Freemasons like Manly P. Hall, no other ancient work sets forth so completely the initiatory rituals of the great school of philosophic mystery, which was so central to America's Baconian dream of the New Atlantis, than the Popol Vuh. What's more, Hall says, it is in this region where we find the true origin of America's name and destiny.
In The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Hall writes:
This volume [Popol Vuh] alone is sufficient to establish incontestably the philosophical excellence of the red race.
"The Red 'Children of the Sun,'" writes James Morgan Pryse, "do not worship the One God. For them that One God is absolutely impersonal, and all the Forces emanated from that One God are personal. This is the exact reverse of the popular western conception of a personal God and impersonal working forces in nature.
Decide for yourself which of these beliefs is the more philosophical [Hall says sarcastically]. These Children of the Sun adore the Plumèd Serpent, who is the messenger of the Sun. He was the God Quetzalcoatl in Mexico, Gucumatz in Quiché; and in Peru he was called Amaru. From the latter name comes our word America.
Amaruca is, literally translated, 'Land of the Plumèd Serpent.'
The priests of this [flying dragon], from their chief centre in the Cordilleras, once ruled both Americas. All the Red men who have remained true to the ancient religion are still under their sway. One of their strong centres was in Guatemala, and of their Order was the author of the book called Popol Vuh.
In the Quiché tongue Gucumatz is the exact equivalent of Quetzalcoatl in the Nahuatl language; quetzal, the bird of Paradise; coatl, serpent - 'the Serpent veiled in plumes of the paradise-bird'!"
The Popol Vuh was discovered by Father Ximinez in the seventeenth century. It was translated into French by Brasseur de Bourbourg and published in 1861. The only complete English translation is that by Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, which ran through the early files of The Word magazine and which is used as the basis of this article.
A portion of the Popol Vuh was translated into English, with extremely valuable commentaries, by James Morgan Pryse, but unfortunately his translation was never completed. The second book of the Popol Vuh is largely devoted to the initiatory rituals of the Quiché nation.
These ceremonials are of first importance to students of Masonic symbolism and mystical philosophy, since they establish beyond doubt the existence of ancient and divinely instituted Mystery schools on the American Continent. [i]
Thus from Hall we learn that Freemasons like him believe "ancient and divinely instituted" mystery religion important to students of Masonry came to Amaruca/America - the Land of the Plumèd Serpent - from knowledge that the Red Man received from the dragon himself.
What Hall conceals is that when he refers to those "extremely valuable commentaries" made by James Pryes, he is referencing an article from Helena Blavatsky's Lucifer magazine, which was published by the Theosophical Society and that illuminated the inner doctrine of Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry, and all the secret orders - that Lucifer is the "angel of light" who, in the form of a serpent, bids mankind to partake of the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" so that their eyes would be open and they could become as gods.
Even to this day, in the secret societies, Lucifer is considered this benevolent serpent-god who has nothing more than the best intentions for man, while Jehovah is an evil entity who tries to keep mankind in the dark and punishes him if he seeks the truest wisdom.
Since these ancient serpent legends include the Mesoamerican feathered serpent gods and can be looked upon as a historical testament of that Angel thrown down by God, "then perhaps The Land of the Plumèd Serpent may also be known as the Land of Lucifer," concludes Ken Hudnall in The Occult Connection II: The Hidden Race. [ii]
This raises serious questions about what type of "divinely instituted" wisdom Hall had in mind for Amaruca/America, as part of the legitimate concern revolving around this disclosure stems from the fact that the Inca, Aztec, and Maya were either unquestionably gifted mathematicians and astronomers, or they really did receive advanced knowledge from someone or something.
They measured the length of the solar year far more accurately than did the Europeans in their Gregorian calendar, and precisely oriented their sacred buildings and cities with stars and star clusters, particularly Pleiades and the Orion Nebula associated throughout the ancient Middle East with Osiris/Apollo/Nimrod.
The pre-Columbian book, Codex Dresdensis (a.k.a. the Dresden Codex) by the Yucatecan Maya is famous for its first-known related illustrations of advanced calculations and astronomical phenomena. But how were the pre-telescopic Mesoamericans uniquely aware of such important knowledge? They themselves - like other archaic cultures did - credited ancient "gods" with bringing the heavenly information to Earth.
In 2008, late fellow researcher David Flynn may have uncovered important information related to this legend, the size and scope of which simply surpass comprehension.
It involves mammoth traces of intelligence carved in stone and covering hundreds of square miles: possibly the strongest evidence ever detected of prehistoric engineering by those who were known and feared throughout the ancient world as gods - the giant offspring of the Watchers.
In the same way modern archeologists only recently found the ruins of hidden Mayan temples in the Guatemalan jungle by using satellites, Flynn employed above-Earth orbiting satellites to image a vast network of patterns that surround Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, South America, which extend for more than one hundred miles south into the Bolivian desert.
The patterns display geometric repetition and intelligent designs, including interlocking rectangular cells and mounds, perfectly straight lines, and repeated sharp-angle turns that do not occur naturally. These cover every topographical feature of the high plateau surrounding the lake, over flood plains, hills, cliffs, and mountains.
The full report of this remarkable research plus numerous satellite images is available at 'The Geoglyphs of Tiahuanaco - Discovery of Vast Prehistoric Works Built by Giants?'
Twelve miles south of Lake Titicaca, located within the center of the array of geoglyphs, lies the megalithic ruins of Tiahuanaco. Known as the "American Stonehenge" or the "Baalbek of the New World," its architecture exhibits technological skill that exceeds modern feats of building.
At Tiahuanaco, immense stone works were joined with modular fittings and complex breach-locking levels that have never been seen in any other ancient culture. According to engineers, one of the largest single stones ever to be moved and put into a building anywhere on earth (about four hundred tons) was transported to Tiahuanaco from a quarry over two hundred miles away.
This feat is even more incomprehensible when one realizes the route of transport was through a mountain range up to fifteen thousand feet.
Conventional historians try to assign the age of the structures at Tiahuanaco to around 600 BC, postulating that a pre-Inca civilization, without benefit of the wheel, modern tools, or even a written language constructed these architectural marvels. But historian Arthur Posnansky studied the area for more than fifty years and observed that sediment had been deposited over the site to the depth of six feet.
Within this overburden, produced by a massive flood of water sometime around the Pleistocene age (thirteen thousand years ago), fossilized human skulls were unearthed together with seashells and remnants of tropical plants. The skulls have nearly three times the cranial capacity of modern man and are displayed in the La Paz museum in Bolivia.
In addition, when the first Spanish chroniclers arrived with the conquistador Pizaro, the Inca explained that Tiahuanaco had been constructed by a race of giants called "Huaris" before Chamak-pacha, the "period of darkness," and was already in ruins before their civilization began. They said these giants had been created by Viracocha ("Kukulkan" to the Maya and "Quetzalcoatl" to the Aztecs), the god who came from the heavens (a.k.a. the Watchers).
He (Viracocha) created animals and a race of giants. These beings enraged the Lord, and he turned them into stone. Then he flooded the earth till all was under water, and all life extinguished. This flood was called uñu pachacuti, by the Inca which means "water that overturns the land."
They say that it rained sixty days and nights, that it drowned all created things, and that there alone remained some vestiges of those who were turned into stones. Viracocha rose from the bosom of Lake Titicaca, and presided over the erection of those wondrous cities whose ruins still dot its islands and western shores, and whose history is totally lost in the night of time. [iii]
Near Lake Titicaca in the Hayu Marca Mountain region of Southern Peru at fourteen thousand feet exists a huge, mysterious, door-like structure carved into a solid rock face in an area long revered by Peruvian Indians as the "City of the Gods."
Shamans still come to perform rituals at this site, which they call Puerta de Hayu Marca or the Gate of the Gods.
It measures exactly twenty-three feet in height and width, with a recess in the center slightly smaller than six-feet high. Native Indians say the site is "a gateway to the lands of the Gods" through which, in their ancient past, great heroes arrived and then departed with a "key" that could open the mysterious doorway. Another legend tells of the first Incan priest - the Amaru Meru - or Aramu Meru - (note again the Amaru-ca/America connection) - who used a golden disk to open the portal, which turned the solid rock into a stargate.
According to local legend, this priest was the first of other "kings" who came to Earth from heavenly locations specifically associated with the Pleiades (Apollo) and Orion (Osiris). This disc-key section of the Gate of the Gods may be depicted by a small, circular depression on the right side of the recess of Puerta de Hayu Marca, which in turn could be related to another "portal" not far away - the Gate of the Sun at Tiahuanaco, identified by some historians and archaeologists as the gate of Viracocha who created the race of giants.
Mythology involving such giants, followed by world deluge, is universally recorded in the legends of the Inca, Maya, Olmec, and Aztec cultures of Mexico. These stories are consistent with Sumerian and Hebrew accounts of the Great Flood and of the subsequent destruction of giant nephilim whose history of human sacrifices parallel Mayan rituals (victims of Maya had their arms and legs held down while a priest cut their chests open and ripped out their hearts).
The Greeks likewise recorded how prehistoric giants were responsible for the creation of megalithic structures discovered around the world, and Islamic folklore ascribes this prehistoric "building" activity to a race of super beings called "jinn" (genies):
The Jinn were before Adam: They built huge cities whose ruins still stand in forgotten places. [iv]
In Egypt, the Edfu temple texts, believed to predate the Egyptians themselves, explain something of additional significance, reminiscent of nephilim activity before and after the Flood:
The most ancient of earth's temples and monuments were built to bring about the resurrection of the destroyed world of the gods[v].
Within the Inca religious paradigm, the oldest record of the Andean region available, the Tiahuanaco geoglyphs are therefore viewed as the vestiges of a lost civilization that knew its destiny…to be destroyed by world cataclysm. In this regard, the geoglyphs serve not only as a memorial of an ancient existence, but also as a warning for future humanity and the return of a destructive epoch, or as David Flynn concluded:
The geoglyphs seem to be physical evidence that supports the Middle and South American myths of world deluge and giants. Their discovery in modern times fits Inca and Mayan prophecies of an "awakening" to knowledge of the ancient past, of the "builder gods" and of their return.
It is perhaps testament to the accuracy of these prophecies that the date, December 21, 2012, is known so widely in modern times… the end of the Mayan calendar. [vi]
Secrets of Amaru-Ca in the US Capital Dome
That the Maya prehistory echoes the advent of the mysterious Watchers, their giant offspring, the end date 2012, and a connection between these histories and early American freemasonry could be beyond coincidence.
In fact, what appears to be fabulous evidence that early Freemasons and those working with them were not only aware of the Mesoamerican belief system and the calendar ending date 2012, but actually incorporated it directly into the design of the Capital Dome in Washington, DC, is vividly illustrated in the commissioned artwork of Constantino Brumidi, the artist who also painted the Apotheosis of George Washington.
The book Apollyon Rising 2012 explains:
Born July 26, 1805, in Rome, Brumidi was an Italian/Greek painter who made his name restoring sixteenth-century Vatican frescos, as well as artwork in several Roman palaces. Following the French occupation of Rome in 1849, Brumidi immigrated to the United States, where he became a citizen and began work for the Jesuits in New York (viewed at that time as the "hidden power and authority" of the Roman Catholic Church).
This work included frescos in the Church of St. Ignatius in Baltimore, Maryland; the Church of St. Aloysius in Washington DC; and St. Stephen's Church in Philadelphia, namely, the Crucifixion, the Martydom of St. Stephen, and the Assumption of Mary.
Abruptly in 1854, the Jesuits financed a trip for Brumidi to Mexico, where he… engaged in the curious task of making copious notes of the ancient Aztec Calendar Stone (also known as the "Stone of the Sun"), which ends in the year 2012.
Immediately upon his return from Mexico, Brumidi took his collection of notes and drawings to Washington DC, where he met with Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs, supervisor of construction over the wings and Dome of the United States Capitol.
Brumidi was quickly commissioned to be the "government painter," and began adorning the hallways and Rotunda of the Capitol with pagan frescos sacred to Freemasonry, including the Apotheosis of George Washington and the famous Frieze of American History.
Brumidi died in 1880 and three other artists completed the frieze, but not before Brumidi attached to his historic work - sometime between 1878-1880 - a scene called Cortez and Montezuma at Mexican Temple, featuring the Aztec Calendar Stone and other important symbolism.
The Stone of the Sun depicted in Brumidi's frieze (the circular object behind the figures on the right) is based on the actual twelve-foot tall, four-foot thick, twenty-four-ton, monolithic Aztec Calendar Stone. During the pinnacle of Aztec civilization when the Aztec dominated all other tribes of Mexico, this Stone rested atop the Tenochtitlan Temple in the midst of the most powerful and largest city in Mesoamerica.
Today, Mexico City's Cathedral, where Brumidi worked, occupies this site. The Spaniards buried the Stone there, and it remained hidden beneath the Cathedral until it was rediscovered in 1790.
Then it was raised and embedded into the wall of the Cathedral, where it remained until 1885. Today, the Stone of the Sun is on display in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City's Chapultepec Park.
The inclusion of this symbolism and its accompanying idols in the U.S. Capitol Dome is important. The sun god Tonatiuh, whose face and protruding tongue are seen at the center of the Sun Stone, is the god of the present (fifth) time, which began in 3114 BC and ends in 2012.
The Aztec solar calendar is second only in accuracy to the Mayan calendar, which also ends on December 21, 2012. Tonatiuh - who delivered important prophecies and demanded human sacrifices (more than twenty thousand victims per year were offered to him, according to Aztec and Spanish records, and in the single year of 1487, Aztec priests sacrificed eighty thousand people to him at the dedication of the reconstructed temple of the sun god) - was also known as the lord of the thirteen days (from 1 Death to 13 Flint), a number sacred to Aztec, Maya, and Freemasons for prophetic and mystical reasons.
Like the Maya, Aztecs believed the first age, or "First Sun," was a time when giants had lived on earth who were destroyed by a great flood or deluge long before the Mayan or Toltec civilizations came along. The final age, or "Fifth Sun," would end in 2012. While the Aztecs assimilated such knowledge from the Maya, they built their culture primarily on Toltec ideas.
Their great city of Tenochtitlan, on an island in Lake Texcoco with its causeways, canals, marketplaces, and vast towers and temples rising majestically into the air, was so spectacular that when the conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo, who wrote an eyewitness account of the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards, saw it, he exclaimed:
When we saw so many cities and villages built in the water and other great towns on dry land we were amazed and said that it was like the enchantments…on account of the great towers and cues and buildings rising from the water, and all built of masonry.
And some of our soldiers even asked whether the things that we saw were not a dream... I do not know how to describe it, seeing things as we did that had never been heard of or seen before, not even dreamed about. [vii]
Not only was the Aztec culture so advanced in engineering, astronomy, and mathematics, but the warriors of Montezuma outnumbered the expedition of Cortez by a thousand to one.
How then did the Spaniards conquer the Aztecs so easily?
Toltec prophecy had told of Quetzalcoatl, who would come from the east as a light-skinned priest to rule their civilization. Nezhaulcoyotl, a great astrologer who supported Montezuma, believed this vision, and when Cortez arrived exactly when the prophecy said the god would return, Montezuma received him as the coming of Quetzalcoatl, and surrendered.
This event is symbolized in the Cortez and Montezuma frieze by Brumidi.
Another connection between Brumidi's prophetic Stone of the Sun depiction and Freemasonry can be seen in the serpent coiled around the sacred fire, toward which Montezuma's left hand intentionally gestures. The sacred fire was connected to the seven-star Pleiades (Tianquiztli, the "gathering place") by the Aztecs, and represented the final year in a fifty-two-year cycle called "calendar round," which ended when the Pleiades crossed the fifth cardinal point at midnight that year.
At this time, the Aztecs would let the fires go out and conduct the "dance of the new fire" to start the cycle again. When the priests lit the new "sacred fire" as well as the hearth fires, it ensured the movement of the sun (the serpent coiled around the sacred fire in Brumidi's painting) along the precession anew. In the year 2012, not only will the Pleiades be in this zenith over Mesoamerica, but the alignment will come into full conjunction with the sun...
This sacred knowledge is why the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan near Mexico City also corresponds with the Pleiades.
Its west side and surrounding streets are aligned directly with the setting point of the Pleiades, a configuration held in high esteem by the Maya as well. They built the Kukulcan pyramid at Chichen Itza so that during the spring and autumn equinox, at the rising and setting of the sun, a slithering, snake-like shadow representing Kukulcan (Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent) would cast along the north stairway to the serpent's head at the bottom. Sixty days later, when the sun rises over the Pyramid at midday, it aligns with the Pleiades again.
By portraying the Stone of the Sun that ends in 2012, the sacred fire that ends in 2012, and the astrological alignment with the Pleiades in the Frieze of American History, Brumidi is telling us quite clearly that the designers of the Capitol were aware of the implications of 2012.
This adds clarity to the reasons the designers of the Great Seal of the United States similarly incorporated the Mayan 13 katun system - which started in 1776 and ends in 2012 - on the nation's primary cipher [the Great Seal of the United States and the Sibyl's 'Novus Ordo Seclorum' prophecy which predicts the return of Apollo as Antichrist in 2012]. [viii]
Yet a deeper and related message is also openly hidden in the Capitol Dome.
A third piece of imagery from Brumidi's Cortez and Montezuma scene that not only connects Mesoamerican belief to the Freemasons and prophecy, but to the Vatican, can be found in the drum behind the kneeling Aztec. The drum bears the shape of the Maltese cross, a symbol connected in history with the empire of Osiris as starting on the island of Malta.
The Maltese cross was adopted by the Knights of Malta (connected with Freemasonry) and the Vatican (where Brumidi first worked and found favor). We believe this is not by chance. Captain Montgomery C. Meigs, the engineer who placed Brumidi over the paintings for the new Dome, wanted artwork reminiscent of that at the Vatican.
With Brumidi's ties to the Vatican and the Jesuits, it was a match "made in heaven."
By including this well-known Mayan, Illuminati, and Freemasonic symbol, Brumidi cleverly connected the design of the Capitol Dome in Washington, DC with the Vatican, Masonic mysticism, and the year 2012 in more ways than one.
[i] Manly P Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages, 623-633.
[ii] Ken Hudnall, The Occult Connection II: The Hidden Race (Omega Press, 2004), 207.
[iii] Pedro Sarmiento De Gamboa, Acosta, Hint of the New World, Clements Markham, trans. (Cambridge: The Hakluyt Society, 1907), 28-58.
[iv] Koran, Surah 89: 9-15, 27.
[v] Thomas Horn, Apollyon Rising 2012.
[vi] "Discovery of Vast, Prehistoric Works Built by Giants?: The Geoglyphs of Teohuanaco," Raiders News Network, February 24, 2008, http://www.raidersnewsupdate.com/giants.htm.
[vii] "Tenochtitlan," Wikipedia, last modified January 16, 2012,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenochtitlan.
[viii] Thomas Horn, Apollyon Rising 2012, 278-284.
The Transnational Hand Behind The Rise of President Obama, The Coming Kingdom of Antichrist, and Petrus Romanus
On Monday, March 26 during what both men thought was a private communication; President Obama and President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia were recorded discussing how Obama would have "more flexibility" to negotiate a secret missile defense deal with Russia after the November election, which Mr. Obama somehow knows he will win.
"After my election I have more flexibility," the President was recorded saying during a portion of the conversation caught on camera.
"On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this can be solved, but it's important for him [Vladimir] to give me space," Obama could be heard saying to Medvedev, who then acknowledged, "I understand your message about space… I will transmit this information to Vladimir."
What most news sources that have chosen to carry this story will never acknowledge is how this unscripted conversation illustrates a veil of deception, which exists between public perception of free elections and involvement before and after U.S. presidential 'appointments' by unseen shapers of the World Order.
If they did, the vast numbers of people would not believe it anyway, the idea that behind the global chaos that originally gave rise to Obama's presidency and that continues to steer the United States and national governments down a specifically chosen and prophesied path is a secret network, a transnational hand directing the course of civilization.
Yet no account of history including recent times is complete or even sincere without at least acknowledging the behind-the-scenes masters who manipulate international policy, banking and finance, securities and exchange, trade, commodities, and energy resources.
Numerous works, including scholarly ones, have connected the dots between this ruling "superclass" and the integration of policy - especially that of the United States - handed down to governing bodies of nation-states and supra-national organizations.
The Economist newspaper in April 2008 pointed to research by academic David Rothkopf, whose book, Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making, documented how only a few thousand people worldwide actually dictate the majority of policies operating at a global scale.
The Economist described this comparatively small number of elites as being "groomed" in,
"world-spanning institutions…[who] meet at global events such as the World Economic Forum at Davos and the Trilateral Commission or… the Bilderberg meetings or the Bohemian Grove seminars that take place every July in California." [i]
Long-time radio host and author of Brotherhood of Darkness, Stanley Monteith, says such persons are part of an "occult hierarchy" that rules the world and directs the course of human events.
"The movement is led by powerful men who reject Christianity, embrace the 'dark side,' and are dedicated to the formation of a world government and a world religion," he writes. "They control the government, the media…many corporations, and both [U.S.] political parties." [ii]
Interestingly, Pope Benedict XVI may have admitted to the same group when, in 2008, he told United Nations diplomats that multilateral consensus needed to solve global difficulties was "in crisis" because answers to the problems were being "subordinated to the decisions of the few."
His predecessor, Pope John Paul II, may have acknowledged the same, believing a One-World Government beneath the guidance of a ruling superclass in league with spiritual influences (whether they perceived it that way or not) was inevitable.
If researchers like Dr. Monteith are correct, and world governments are to this day influenced by such dark angelic powers, the elite who head the current push to establish a New World Order are directly connected with an antichrist system currently unfolding.
Signs and evidence of such supernatural immersion in the present move towards worldwide totalitarian government have been increasing in political commentary, occult symbolism, and numerological "coincidences" in the United States and at the Vatican over the past decade.
As public opinion has been engineered toward final acceptance of international subordination, "mirrors" of occult involvement have produced so many open semiotic messages (visible signs and audible references that communicate subliminal ideas) that it is starting to feel as if the "gods" are mocking us, challenging whether or not we will willingly admit their connection.
This has been exponentially true since the election of U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama, whom news services (and church services) around the globe had hoped would become the "President of the World."
While the antichrist-sounding title granted Obama by euphoric crowds on election night remains to be prophetic, the glorified ideal behind it reflects the global hunger for and movement toward the arrival of Petrus Romanus and his master - "the one" who will bodily represent the invisible agencies mentioned above and who, for a while, will appear to be the world's answer man.
The book Apollyon Rising 2012 (Defender Publishing, 2009) documented this development and foresaw how this was preparing the world for the coming of Petrus Romanus and the Antichrist.
On pages 93-96 it states:
Consider the unprecedented messianic rhetoric that reporters, politicians, celebrities, and even preachers used in celebrating the "spiritual nature" of Obama's meteoric rise from near obscurity to U.S. president, and how this reflected people's strong desire for the coming of an earthly savoir.
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford characterized it as,
"a sort of powerful luminosity." In Morford's opinion, this was because Obama is "a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to…help usher in a new way of being on the planet." [iii]
The dean of the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel, Lawrence Carter, went further, comparing Obama to the coming of Jesus Christ:
"It is powerful and significant on a spiritual level that there is the emergence of Barack Obama.… No one saw him coming, and Christians believe God comes at us from strange angles and places we don't expect, like Jesus being born in a manger." [iv]
Dinesh Sharma, a marketing science consultant with a PhD in psychology from Harvard, appraised Obama likewise:
"Many…see in Obama a messiah-like figure, a great soul, and some affectionately call him Mahatma Obama." [v]
It would have been easy to dismiss such commentary as the New Age quiverings of loons had it not been for similar passion on the lips of so many people.
The following is a brief list of like expressions from a variety of news sources:
Barack's appeal is actually messianic… he… communicates God-like energy... What if God decided to incarnate as men preaching "hope and change"? And what if we… let them slip away, not availing ourselves… to be led by God!
- Steve Davis, Journal Gazette [vi]
This is bigger than Kennedy... This is the New Testament! I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often. No, seriously. It's a dramatic event.
- Chris Matthews, MSNBC [vii]
Does it not feel as if some special hand is guiding Obama on his journey, I mean, as he has said, the utter improbability of it all?
- Daily Kos [viii]
Obama, to me, must be not just an ordinary human being but indeed an Advanced Soul, come to lead America out of this mess.
- Lynn Sweet, Chicago Sun Times [ix]
He is not operating on the same plane as ordinary politicians…the agent of transformation in an age of revolution, as a figure uniquely qualified to open the door to the twenty-first century.
- Former U.S. Senator Gary Hart, Huffington Post [x]
He is not the Word made flesh [Jesus], but the triumph of word over flesh [better than Jesus?].… Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves.
- Ezra Klein, Prospect [xi]
Obama has the capacity to summon heroic forces from the spiritual depths of ordinary citizens and to unleash therefrom a symphonic chorus of unique creative acts whose common purpose is to tame the soul and alleviate the great challenges facing mankind.
- Gerald Campbell, First Things First [xii]
Obama was…blessed and highly favored.… I think that…his election…was divinely ordered.… I'm a preacher and a pastor; I know that that was God's plan.… I think he is being used for some purpose.
- Janny Scott, New York Times [xiii]
He won't just heal our city-states and souls. He won't just bring the Heavenly Kingdom - dreamt of in both Platonism and Christianity - to earth. He will heal the earth itself.
- Micah Tillman, The Free Liberal [xiv]
The event itself is so extraordinary that another chapter could be added to the Bible to chronicle its significance.
- Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., Politico [xv]
Though he tried to keep it subtle himself, Obama encouraged such public perception of him as an "anointed" one whose time had come.
Officially produced Obama campaign advertising consistently used such words as "faith," "hope," and "change." Republican nominee John McCain picked up on this during his run for office and put out a cynical video called The One.
Using some of Obama's own words against him, the video mocked Obama's play as a Christ-like figure, showing him in New Hampshire saying,
"A light beam will shine through, will light you up, and you will experience an epiphany, and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Barack!"
The video failed to mention that having an "epiphany" actually means the sudden realization or comprehension of an appearance of deity to man.
Another part of the video included Obama during his nomination victory speech in St. Paul, Minnesota, saying,
"This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."
Anybody who followed the presidential campaign would have picked up the same nuances:
angelic children organized to sing about Obama
logos depicting rays of sunlight beaming out from his O-shaped hand sign (a gesticulation Hitler used as well)
books such as Nikki Grimes' Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope (Simon & Schuster)
comparisons to Plato's "Philosopher King," without whom our souls will remain broken
comparisons to the "spiritually enlightened" Mahatma Gandhi
comparisons to the solar hero Perseus
comparisons to Jesus Christ
even comparisons to God Himself. [xvi]
Though at the time we are left wondering if Obama will be 'chosen' as the superhuman superstar the world has been hoping for, if symbolic gestures are any indication, there certainly were plenty of religious folks during his march into the White House that were ready to accept him as "The One."
Dozens of churches and faith groups, including mainline Protestants, organized activities to mark Obama's inauguration as a "spiritual" event. Randall Balmer, professor of religion in American history at Columbia University, admitted he had never seen anything like it before.[xvii] CNN went so far as to compare Obama's inauguration to the Hajj - the journey by Muslims to the holy city of Mecca, an obligatory pilgrimage that demonstrates their dedication to Allah. [xviii]
In Des Moines, Iowa, an inaugural parade for Obama included a simulation of the triumphant entry of Christ in which a facsimile of Obama rode upon a donkey. As the reproduction made its way down the streets, palm branches were handed out to onlookers so that they could wave them like Christ's adorers did in the twenty-first chapter of Matthew. [xix]
Several ministries, including the Christian Defense Coalition and Faith and Action, came together to perform what was heralded as a first for U.S. presidential inaugurations - applying anointing oil to the doorposts of the arched doorway that Obama passed through as he moved to the platform on the West Front of the Capital to be sworn in.
Congressman Paul Broun (Georgia) was part of the ritual, joining Rev. Rob Schenck, who said,
"Anointing with oil is a rich tradition in the Bible and…symbolizes consecration, or setting something apart for God's use." [xx]
Even the conventional inaugural prayers, which have been historically offered during U.S. presidential installation ceremonies, carried an unparalleled New Age flavor this time around.
Rick Warren, considered America's Christian pastor, rendered a blessing in the name of the Muslim version of Jesus (Isa), while the bishop of New Hampshire, Gene Robinson, invoked the "God of our many understandings."
While all this was highly unusual, even unprecedented, it was not surprising.
Obama had spent significant time during the campaign distancing himself from conservative Christians, evangelicals, and especially the Religious Right (which had held prominent sway over Republicans since Ronald Reagan held office), countering that his faith was more universalist and unconvinced of Bible inerrancy.
In a five-minute video available on YouTube, a pre-election speech by Obama was highly cynical of Bible authority and even derided specific Old and New Testament Scriptures.
"Whatever we once were," Obama says on the video, "we're no longer a Christian nation."
He then adds,
"Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific values.… This is going to be difficult for some who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, as many evangelicals do." [xxi]
Consequently, the conscious effort by Obama to reorient America away from conservative Christianity was widely embraced by people who identified with the man who carried a tiny idol of the Hindu god Hanuman in his pocket - whose blessings he sought in the race to the White House - together with a Madonna and child.
For Obama, who grew up in a household where the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagvat Gita sat on a shelf side-by-side, organized religion was best defined as "closed-mindedness dressed in the garb of piety," but a useful political tool nonetheless.
And so he used it masterfully, and earned a cult following while doing so. In February 2009, Obama temporarily replaced Jesus Christ as America's favorite hero according to a Harris poll, and dedication to his come-one, come-all mysticism was spreading like wildfire in esoteric circles, with evangelists of the new religion calling for the "tired" faith of our fathers to be replaced with a global new one.
Terry Neal, writing for the Hamilton Spectator, proclaimed boldly:
"The faiths of our fathers are tired now…only a global world view will suffice. The marriage of a believable faith with the husbandry of government [dominionism] is the union that must be contracted, for only then will there be peace on earth and goodwill toward all." [xxii]
Although it is more difficult to understand the broad appeal of Obama's New-Age philosophy to the many evangelical and Catholic voters who supported him, the phenomenon can be explained to some degree as the result of a changing culture.
Over the past fifty years, and especially as baby boomers listened attentively to pastors telling them to focus on human potential and the "god within us all," eastern philosophies including monism, pantheism, Hinduism, and self-realization grew, providing Americans with an alluring opportunity to throw off the "outdated ideas" of fundamental Christianity and to espouse a more "enlightened," monistic worldview (all is one).
Aimed at accomplishing what the builders of the Tower of Babel failed to do (unify the masses of the world under a single religious umbrella), God was viewed as pantheistic, and humans were finally understood to be divine members of the whole "that God is."
Pagans argue this principle of inner divinity is older than Christianity, which is true.
Even so, the gospel according to the Roman Catholic catechism [xxiii] and such New-Age concepts - a gospel of "becoming god" - is as old as the fall of man. It began when the serpent said to the woman, "ye shall be as gods" (Genesis 3:5), and it will zenith during the reign of the Man of Sin.
In the lead-up to his election, even Obama seemed secretly attuned to the esoteric "antichrist" underpinning people were applying to his destiny as president and god-king. An extraordinary example of this was when Obama gave his speech titled, "The World that Stands as One" in Berlin, Germany, on July 24, 2008.
More than a few students of occult history took notice of the symbolism and location of the event, even causing some who until then had rejected any "antichrist" labels hurled at Obama to reconsider their position.
This included well-known Catholic writer Michael O'Brien, best known for his apocalyptic novel, Father Elijah. O'Brien had received numerous letters and emails from subscribers and visitors to his website wondering if Obama was the Antichrist. At first, O'Brien wrote that this was not possible.
Then a friend who had seen Obama's speech in Berlin called him, talking about how mesmerizing the speech was, and stating that an announcer over German radio had said:
"We have just heard the next president of the United States…and the future President of the World."
By now, Obama was conveying an unusual likeness to the Antichrist character of his novel.
After watching the Berlin speech several times for himself, O'Brien sent out a newsletter in which he admitted that while he still doubted Obama was the prophesied ruler of the end times, he had come to believe he was,
"a carrier of a deadly moral virus, indeed a kind of anti-apostle spreading concepts and agendas that are not only anti-Christ but anti-human as well."
O'Brien finally conceded Obama could be instrumental in ushering in the dreaded Great Tribulation period, and worse, that he was "of the spirit of Antichrist."[xxiv]
Because it is true that any significant public political event requires both forethought and symbolic meaning, the location where Obama gave his Berlin speech in front of Berlin's Victory Column contributed to O'Brien's conclusions. The site was offensive to educated Germans as well as to Christians and Jews because of its ties to the modern antichrist Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.
It was nevertheless oddly appropriate, for it was upon this exact location that Hitler had planned to enthrone himself as the King of the World in the Welthauptstadt Germania - the new "World Capital" upon winning World War II.
During the 1930s, Hitler commissioned Albert Speer, "the first architect of the Third Reich," to design the new capital. As part of the plans, the Siegessäule, or Berlin Victory Column - a 226-foot monument topped by a golden-winged figure representing Borussia, the female personification of Prussia, and Victoria, the cult goddess of military victory - was removed from its location in front of the Reichstag building in 1939 and relocated to its current location in the Tiergarten, a 495-acre park in the middle of Berlin where Obama gave his speech in front of the Nazi symbol.
Rainer Brüderle, deputy leader of the liberal political party Free Democrats in Germany, complained to the newspaper Bild am Sonntag:
"The Siegessäule in Berlin was moved to where it is now by Adolf Hitler. He saw it as a symbol of German superiority and of the victorious wars against Denmark, Austria and France."
This represented a serious question in Brüderle's mind as to,
"whether Barack Obama was advised correctly in his choice of the Siegessäule as the site to hold a speech on his vision for a more cooperative world." [xxv]
Another German politician named Andreas Schockenhoff was equally disturbed, saying,
"It is a problematic symbol." [xxvi]
Evidently it was not problematic for Obama, who stood in front of it and saluted the German audience in a way eerily similar to what Adolf Hitler used to do, followed by thousands returning the salute, which is against German law.
When Obama ended his speech in front of the war goddess, he said,
"With an eye toward the future, with resolve in our hearts, let us remember this history, and answer our destiny, and remake the world once again."
This is exactly what Hitler had promised to do and exactly where he had planned to memorialize it.
Of greater significance and not far from where Obama delivered his rousing speech is the Great Altar of Zeus in the Pergamon Museum. According to several reports, Obama visited the Great Altar while in Berlin, which is especially important, given what he did on returning to the United States.
Before we examine Obama's revealing actions, consider carefully what the Bible says about the Altar of Zeus in the letter to the church in Pergamos (Pergamum, Pergamon):
And to the angel of the church in Pergamos write; These things saith he which hath the sharp sword with two edges; I know thy works, and where thou dwellest, even where Satan's seat is: and thou holdest fast my name, and has not denied my faith, even in those days wherein Antipas was my faithful martyr, who was slain among you, where Satan dwelleth.
(Revelation 2:12-13)
The Greek phrase,
"where Satan's seat is," literally means, "where a throne to Satan is."
Scholars identify this throne or "seat" as the Great Altar of Zeus that existed in Pergamos at that time.
So important was the worship of Zeus in ancient Pergamos that perpetual sacrifices were offered to him upon the towering and famous forty-foot-high altar. Antipas, the first leader and martyr of the early Christian Church, is believed to have been slain on this altar, slowly roasting to death inside the statue of a bull, the symbol and companion of Zeus.
The phrase in Revelation 2:13,
"wherein Antipas was my faithful martyr, who was slain among you, where Satan dwelleth," is considered a citation of this event.
Approximately two thousand years after Revelation 2:13 was written, German archeologists removed the massive altar of Zeus from the ruins of Pergamos and took it to Berlin, where it was restored as the centerpiece of the Pergamon Museum.
It is here that Hitler first adored it, later building an outdoor replica of it from which he gave a series of speeches that mesmerized many Germans.
"Fast forward about another seventy-five years," says blogger El Gallo.
"Another charismatic young politician mesmerizes huge German crowds with a rousing speech in Berlin. Barack Hussein Obama… [and] did Barack Obama visit… the Great Altar of Zeus…? Presumably he did." [xxvii]
Whether Obama received inspiration from the throne of Satan while in Berlin or not, what he did next was astonishing.
Upon returning to the United States, he immediately commissioned the construction of a Greek-columned stage from which he made his acceptance speech for his party's nomination. Because Greek temples such as those built to honor Zeus were thought to house the patron deity, the GOP ridiculed Obama, mocking him as playing Zeus of "Mount Olympus" and accusing his supporters of "kneeling" before the "Temple of Obama."
The New York Post ran an enlightening "Convention Special" supplement on August 28, 2008, with the telling headline:
"'O' My God: Dems Erect Obama Temple" blazoned across the front cover.
But it was not until blogger Joel Richardson pointed out how the design of Obama's stage was a dead ringer for the Great Altar of Zeus [xxviii] that Obama's campaign managers tried to explain away the design as being a conglomeration representing the portico of the White House with the U.S. capitol building.
"But experts agreed with Richardson," Gallo wrote. "It was a replica of the Great Altar of Pergamum." [xxix]
Thus incredibly, like Hitler, Obama honored the goddess Victoria with his presence before ordering a replica of the biblical throne of Satan, upon which he accepted his date with destiny.
An unusual discovery that may cast light on why Obama seemed fascinated with such anti-Christian symbolism in the lead-up to his election involves a Hadith (tradition) sacred to Shiite Islam from the seventeenth century.
It contains a prophecy from Ali ibn Abi-Talib, which predicts that just before the coming of the Mahdi (who some believe to be the Antichrist), a,
"tall black man will assume the reins of government in the West."
This leader will command "the strongest army on earth" and will bear "a clear sign" from the third imam, Hussein.
The prophecy concludes that:
"Shiites should have no doubt that he is with us." [xxx]
Does this Islamic prophecy identify Obama as the "promised warrior" who comes as a facilitator to set in motion world events that ultimately help the savior of Shiite Muslims (or an antichrist) conquer the world?
Amir Taheri asked this very question for Forbes Magazine in October 2008, pointing out how,
"Obama's first and second names - Barack Hussein - mean 'the blessing of Hussein' in Arabic and Persian" while his "family name, Obama, written in the Persian alphabet, reads O Ba Ma, which means 'he is with us,' the magic formula in Majlisi's tradition." [xxxi]
Leap forward to 2009, and Barack Hussein Obama on June 4 gave an unprecedented speech to the Muslim world from Cairo, Egypt, declaring that he was launching a new era between the United States and the Muslim world.
For the first time, Obama was forthright about his Muslim heritage and stated that the United States - which he is on record as saying is "no longer a Christian nation" - is now "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world."
Newsweek editor Evan Thomas followed the president's speech with a declaration, reflected in the passion of so many regarding their hopes for a global leader and the clear signal as to how ready the world is for the Antichrist, that,
"Obama is standing above the country, above the world, he is a sort of God." [xxxii]
[i] "The Global Ruling Class,"The Economist, April 24, 2008, http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11081878.
[ii] Stanley Monteith, "The Occult Hierarchy: Part 1," Radio Liberty, May, 2005, http://www.radioliberty.com/nlmay05.html.
[iii] Mark Morford, "Is Obama an Enlightened Being?" San Francisco Gate, June 6, 2008, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/06/06/notes060608.DTL.
[iv] Dahleen Glanton, "Some See God's Will in Obama Win," Chicago Tribune, November 29, 2008, http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-obama-godsend_glantonnov29,0,7660180.story.
[v] Dinesh Sharma, "Obama's Satyagraha: Or, Did Obama Swallow the Mahatma?" OpEdNews, June 27, 2008, http://www.opednews.com/articles/Obama-s-Satyagraha - Or - Di-by-Dinesh-Sharma-080626-187.html.
[vi] Steve Davis, "Barack's Appeal Is Actually Messianic," Journal Gazette, March 31, 2008, http://www.jg-tc.com/articles/2008/03/31/opinion/letters/doc47f0586a2fflb441328510.txt.
[vii] Chris Matthews, MSNBC, February 12, 2008, http://newsbusters.org/stories/Matthews-obama-speech-caused-thrill-going-
my-leg.html?q=blogs/brad-wilmouth/2008/02/13/Matthews-obama-speech-caused-thrill-going-my-leg.
[viii] Daily Kos, April 26, 2008, http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/4/26/83118/7371/654/503796.
[ix] Lynn Sweet, Chicago Sun Times, March 21, 2008, http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2008/03/sweet_richardson_in_endorsing.html#comments.
[x] Gary Hart, Huffington Post, February 13, 2008, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-hart/politics-as-transcendence_b_86490.html.
[xi] Ezra Klein, "Obama's Gift," January 3, 2008, Prospect.org (brackets in original Apollyon Rising 2012, not in original article), http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=01&year=2008&base_name=obamas_gift.
[xii] Gerald Campbell, "Obama: On Toughness and Success in Politics," First Things First, December 22, 2007, http://geraldcampbell.typepad.com/impact/2007/12/recently-on-npr.html.
[xiii] Janny Scott, "In 2000, a Streetwise Veteran Schooled a Bold Young Obama," New York Times, September 9, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/us/politics/09obama.html?pagewanted=print.
[xiv] Micah Tillman, "Plato, Obama, and Peters on the Question of Mighty Pens," The Free Liberal, July 10, 2008, http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/003418.html.
[xv] Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr., "On Obama's Winning the Democratic Presidential Nomination," Politico, June 5, 2008, http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=55D13D94-3048-5C12-00E851454E822F1E.
[xvi] Thomas Horn, Apollyon Rising 2012: The Lost Symbol Found and the Final Mystery of the Great Seal Revealed (Crane, MO: Defender Publishing, 2009), 93-96.
[xvii] Michelle Boorstein and Jacqueline Salmon, "A Rush of Spiritual Outreach, Spirited Partying," Washington Post, January 11, 2009, C04.
[xviii] Bob Unruh, "CNN Likens Inauguration to 'Hajj,'" WorldNetDaily, January 24, 2009.
[xix] Drew Zahn, "Obama Triumphal Entry: Gentle, Riding on a Donkey," WorldNetDaily, January 24, 2009.
[xx] "Doorway Anointed with Oil for Obama," EURweb, January 12, 2009, http://www.eurweb.com/story/eur50011.cfm.
[xxi] "Barack Obama Versus Fundamentalism & Religious Sectarianism," YouTube video, 4:57, posted by "thruthem," June 14, 2008, http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=LXcvbnzNIjg&feature=related.
[xxii] Terry Neal, "A New Faith Needed to Unify Humankind as We March Into Future," Hamilton Spectator, February 14, 2009, http://www.thespec.com/Opinions/article/513536.
[xxiii] Catechism of the Catholic Church (Second Edition) 460: The Word became flesh to make us "partakers of the divine nature":78 "For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God."79 "For the Son of God became man so that we might become God."80 "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods"81 (http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p122a3p1.htm#I).
[xxiv] "Many Have Asked: Is Obama the Anti-Christ? Famed Novelist Michael O'Brien Answers," LifeSiteNews.com, November 3, 2008, http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/nov/08110307.html.
[xxv] "Is Obama Speech Site Contaminated by Nazi Past?" Spiegel Online, July 20, 2008, http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,566920,00.html.
[xxvi] Ibid.
[xxvii] As quoted by J. R. Church, Prophecy in the News Magazine (December, 2008), 36.
[xxix] Ibid.
[xxx] Amir Taheri, "Obama and Ahmadinejad," Forbes, October 26, 2008,
http://www.forbes.com/2008/10/26/obama-iran-ahmadinejad-oped-cx_at_1026taheri_print.html.
[xxxi] Ibid.
[xxxii] See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr4VZ8xCzOg&eurl=http%3A%2F%2
Fwww%2Eraidersnewsupdate%2Ecom%2F&feature=player_embedded.
- Timing Is Everything -
by Gary Stearman
Things move at a glacial pace, until the time comes…
Author and publisher Tom Horn has repeatedly revealed a wonderful talent for discerning events that are ripe for disclosure. In combination with the scholarly research talents of Cris Putnam, they are now bringing a major development into the light of day. Working behind the scenes in a world characterized by swirling currents of challenging information, they have discovered that certain obscure documents now have a startling pertinence.
From these, they have distilled a clear stream of scholarship. A dark prophecy has now been illuminated as a real and present event on the verge of springing into reality. A great unveiling seems near.
As Solomon said in Ecclesiastes 3:1,
"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven."
In the pages of their new book Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope Is Here, you will be challenged by the assertion that the timing of a long-awaited event is about to crystallize before the unbelieving eyes of the world.
Something of gigantic proportion is shifting in the landscape. Institutions worldwide are discovering that their foundations are turning to sand. Everything is changing. There is a mad scramble for ascendancy.
One of those organizations, the world's oldest continuing bureaucracy, the Roman Catholic Church, has reached a critical point…a crucial turn…that many among its ranks have quietly whispered about for centuries. The predicted time has arrived. Soon, as you read, you will find answers that have lain dormant for centuries.
By careful design, the Vatican stands as a monument to timelessness. Its theology nurtures thoughts of ushering in a Golden Age, in which the pontiff reigning in the end times welcomes Christ at His Second Coming and hands Him the keys to the Kingdom. Until that precise moment arrives, the Catholic hierarchy is obsessed with maintaining the status quo.
It envisions itself as the guardian of the coming Millennium, and plans to be at the center of Christ's earthly reign from the rebuilt Royal City and the Third Temple.
It takes the role of this guardianship quite seriously, regarding the world outside as its enemy, the devil. It sees itself as the pure, strong preserver of the faith. Its traditions, though often self-generated and recent in origin, are deemed rock-solid. It has built what is perhaps the world's most convoluted, jurisdictional and bureaucratic barrier.
Its procession of popes, cardinals, and multileveled administrators extends back into the mists of the Dark Ages. Carefully, oh so carefully, it feels its way along as the centuries pass. Taught by the dramatic procession of passing eras, wars long and short, and delicate negotiations with the royal houses of Europe, its reflexes are finely tuned. It has perfected the art of camouflage, appearing as one thing while acting as another.
At the surface, it is a church with hundreds of traditions and beliefs. It is a teaching system with a global network of schools. Beneath that surface, it has a long history of manipulating power in ways that will accrue to its benefit.
Visually, the Vatican stands as an impassable monument to the religion of the Western world. Its labyrinthine archives are unequalled in historical scope. They are concealed beneath the layers of history…over a millennium and a half of history! Its libraries and laboratories are a maze of careful indexing and subterranean secrecy. It even maintains its own observatory, from which its directors issue occasional tantalizing announcements concerning the possibility that alien societies may soon visit Earth!
Viewed from the outside, the Vatican is implacable, inscrutable, and impenetrable. Those external to the faith see what the "Mother Church" wants them to see, and only that.
But on the inside, there are those who know. Institutionally, it is the originator of classified documentation, having invented the system that is known in our current parlance as "above top secret." The place is an amalgamation of vaults, rooms within rooms, and arcane traditions, stolid and self-righteous. It is the vision of quiet composure.
One is allowed to view its inner secrets only on a "need to know" basis. It is well known that the spoils of many wars are stored in its lower levels. They occupy many sites and secret locations, going back to the days of Vespasian's siege of Jerusalem, and the sacking of the Jewish Temple by his son Titus.
Near Capitoline Hill, and the Holy See of Vatican City, the Arch of Titus stands to this day as a memorial to the looting of Jerusalem in AD 70. Among other plundered items, it depicts the Temple Menorah in a triumphal parade through the streets of Rome. Illustrative of the Vatican's penchant for concealment is the following episode:
In 1996, during the tenure of Pope John Paul II, Shimon Shetreet, Israel's Minister of Religious Affairs drafted an official state letter, which was hand-delivered to the papal offices. In it, he asserted that he had uncovered clues in recent research from the University of Florence. He said that certain ancient documents had revealed that the Menorah and other valuable Temple artifacts were carefully and clandestinely stored in pristine condition, within the Vatican's underground vaults.
The mind reels in the attempt to imagine what might be in long-term Vatican storage.
It's a certainty that there are scrolls from the first century, lying in nitrogen atmospheres where the temperature never varies by more than a fraction of a degree.
Or, might there be cloth samples from robes once worn by the disciples?
Paintings from the first century?
Captured Hebrew scrolls that resided in Herod's Temple?
Original New-Testament manuscripts?
Its traditions are deep and complex, often verging into breathtaking mystery, punctuated by deceptive "leaks" that point in the wrong direction.
Recent motion pictures have publicized the dark and secret nature of this ancient institution. The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons have placed a strong suggestion in the public consciousness.
Something is about to be exposed!
As self-protective as the Vatican can be, it somehow never dampened the ancient twelfth-century prophecy of St. Malachy that spoke of a great evil that would spring forth one day from the Papal Throne - the final pope would appear, and with him, the events of the last days.
Petrus Romanus exists to throw a brighter light upon the famous prediction, along with captivating new information that makes sense in a chaotic world.
The future has arrived in a coalescing whirlwind of events which reveal a global background that seems aligned for the appearance of the prophesied pope. His mysterious figure appears on the brink of leaping full-blown into the modern world. When he does, he will be totally aware of the astonishing disclosures that are about to be laid wide open to the dumbfounded eyes of a naïve and deluded world.
Secrets from the vaults of history are about to erupt into a flood that flows through the streets of the world. Is this man of fundamental and solemn significance rising, even as the world is falling into moral, spiritual, and financial disorder? Some have called him "Peter, the Roman."
Who is he, really? Read Petrus Romanus and discover his secret.
His time seems to have arrived, and timing is everything.
Return to The Dark History of The Vatican
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