The Stargate Conspiracy

by Lynn Picknett

  Once again, this overt success with the counterculture of the 1960s was only half the story. The innocuous-sounding Harry Smith was also a member of both the American Crowleyite orders, the OTO and the A∴ A∴, and profoundly involved with esoteric subjects. He was a keen student of the Hermetica, in particular the writings of the great Renaissance occult philosopher Giordano Bruno. He spent sixteen years creating a magickal system to integrate Bruno’s work with the doctrines of the OTO and the Enochian magic of the Elizabethan magus, Dr John Dee. This is serious magick; modern adepts advise that Enochian workings must not be undertaken light-heartedly or by the ill prepared, as their sheer power can backfire, causing many mental and spiritual problems. (Curiously Smith’s notoriously haphazard lifestyle was completely at odds with the discipline required for such ‘High Magick’, which is characterised by months of preparation, intense focus and physical and mental privations.) But as usual, it was his membership of the OTO that attracted the most attention. Smith was a devoted follower of Crowley, helping republish some of his works, and designing a tarot pack still used by the OTO. He claimed to be Crowley’s son; although the Beast’s lifestyle virtually guaranteed the existence of illegitimate offspring, it is unlikely that Smith was actually one of that exclusive band. Both men liked to weave elaborate myths about themselves and pass them off as fact.

  Significantly, the man who introduced Smith to both the OTO and the A∴A∴ in 1940s California was Charles Stansfeld Jones,62 who, as we have seen, was extraordinarily influential in the life of Jack Parsons. It is very likely that Smith and Parsons knew each other. Parsons was head of the Californian OTO at the time and, like Parsons, Smith was a Master of the Temple of the A∴A∴.

  Smith studied widely in the fields of mysticism and esotericism, but always acknowledged that his beliefs remained rooted in Crowley’s works.63 Through all the vicissitudes of his remarkably eclectic career, he remained a staunch member of both the A∴A∴ and the OTO until his death in 1991. The OTO even performed a ceremony at his memorial service at St Mark’s Church in New York, which must have been something of a surprise for the Christian authorities.64

  The complex web of our investigation can now be seen to lead back to strangely few people and groups, some of whom — such as prime mover Aleister Crowley and the future founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard — have been linked with intelligence agencies. And both, in their own way, have also been connected with mind control. At the heart of this web was the occult order of the A∴ A∴, which nestled inconspicuously in the shadow of the more colourful OTO, yet which has had the most extraordinary effect, not just on our dramatis personae, but also through them, on many of the key events of the twentieth century.

  The A∴ A∴ emphasised the importance of Sirius - the order was obliquely named after it - and believed in non-human intelligences, which, in postwar California, came to be seen as extraterrestrials. These are the key themes of Robert Temple’s The Sirius Mystery, the inspiration for which, we now know, came ultimately from a member of the A∴ A∴, via someone who was involved with the Council of Nine. This cannot be a coincidence. It is also significant that, in the 1998 edition of his book, Temple has developed his original ideas to include the notion that the ‘space gods’ of the Dogon, the Nommo, did not return to the Sirius system after their civilising mission to Earth, but placed themselves in suspended animation in our solar system to return to check on our progress on their awakening. Temple hints that this time may not be far away, arguing that the spaceship containing the sleeping Nommo is orbiting Saturn.65 But why did Temple choose Saturn, of all places in the solar system, as the place where his space gods are hibernating? Perhaps an answer lies in the fact that Saturn was of great importance to both Crowley and the Nine.

  Voice of the Tibetan

  Sitters in the Phyllis Schlemmer circle — particularly Sir John Whitmore - often asked Tom questions about the work of the Anglo-American mystic Alice A. Bailey. We know that the Nine regard her very highly because her works appear on Tom’s own recommended reading list, along with the works of Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky.66

  Madame Blavatsky has been described as ‘the most influential single figure of the nineteenth-century occult revival’.67 Born in Russia (née Hahn), Madame Blavatsky soon revealed her characteristic appetite for food, magic and adventure, and the stories of her early life rival those of Aleister Crowley in their rakish and not always credible glamour. She finally settled in the United States in 1873, where she became a spiritualist medium, particularly good - one suspects - at either sleight of hand or, more charitably, at creating phenomena by artefact induction. However, mere table tilting was soon left behind, for she claimed to have made psychic contact with the Hidden Masters, or Great White Brotherhood, a group of adepts who secretly guided the human race from Tibet (derived from Saint-Yves d‘Alveydre’s Adepts of Agartha and the forerunners of the Secret Chiefs of the Golden Dawn). In a protracted torrent of words, she dashed out life’s works Isis Unveiled (1877) and The Secret Doctrine (1888), which revealed, according to her followers, an extremely erudite synthesis of Western occult traditions and Eastern mystical religions. (According to her many critics, however, the books are garbled hotch-potches.) Her doctrines blended concepts of karma with the legend of Atlantis and the idea of ‘root races’, of which ours, the ‘Aryan’, is the fifth, the immediate successor to the Atlantean. There are two more root races to come. These ideas were a profound inspiration for the Nazis, and through Karl Haushofer (who, with Rudolf Hess, helped Hitler to write Mein Kampf) shaped their concept of Aryan supremacy and the ‘master race’.

  Blavatsky founded the Theosophical Society in 1875, providing many future leading lights of the esoteric world with the basis of their ideology, including, as we have seen, Schwaller de Lubicz, whose early career as a French Theosophist influenced his later development of Les Veilleurs.

  It is the work of Alice Bailey with which the Nine are most impressed. Born in Manchester in England in 1880 as Alice La Trobe-Bateman, she had a strange experience at the age of fifteen that was to shape the whole of her life. One Sunday afternoon, a man dressed in Western clothes but wearing a turban came into her home and announced that she had been chosen for some great task that lay in the future.68 She emigrated with her first husband to the United States, they divorced, then she discovered the then relatively new Theosophical Society, which she joined in 1918. This was to prove a momentous decision on her part. She married Foster Bailey, a prominent American Theosophist, in 1919. He was to have a profound effect on the development of her ideology, not least because he was also a high-ranking Freemason.

  In 1915, while reading Madame Blavatsky’s work, Bailey had a revelation: suddenly she knew the identity of her mysterious visitor of twenty years before. He was none other than the Master Koot Hoomi, the personal guide of Madame Blavatsky. Here, by implication, was her task: the continuation of the work of the founder of Theosophy.

  In 1919 she made psychic contact with another of the Masters, a Tibetan called Djwhal Khul (often referred to simply as ‘The Tibetan’ or the ‘Master DK’). Through Bailey, the Tibetan dictated a series of twenty-four books of esoteric teaching, expanding Blavatsky’s doctrines into a system that included beings from other worlds who guide the evolution of the human race. They do this through a group of adepts called the Hierarchy of Brothers of Light (or simply, the Hierarchy), based in the Gobi Desert. Significantly, the Hierarchy is also sometimes referred to as the ‘Great Council’. Alice Bailey wrote of them in her Initiation, Human and Solar (1922): ‘[They are] the Group of spiritual beings on the inner planes of the solar system who are intelligent forces of nature, and who control the evolutionary processes.’69 Most significant, however, is the fact that much of Bailey’s teaching is identical to James Hurtak’s in The Keys of Enoch, and also echoes the work of Edgar Cayce.

  The key to Bailey’s esoteric philosophy was the concept of The Seven Rays, spiritual emanations from the ‘Seven Planes of
the Solar System’. Interestingly, as we have seen, Dorothy Martin, the contactee from Chicago, called her mystical organisation — cofounded with the Laugheads — “The Abbey of the Seven Rays’. And the concept of the sacred number seven features prominently in the philosophy of Arthur M. Young, who derived his idea of seven levels of material existence from the notable Theosophist A.P. Sinnett’s channelled The Mahatma Letters.70

  The Tibetan’s teachings centre on the coming ‘New Age, the Age of Aquarius’, for which the Hierarchy are preparing humanity. This process will be, he says, in three phases: the first was between 1875 and 1890, which was activated through Madame Blavatsky; the second 1919 (the Tibetan’s first contact with Alice Bailey) to 1949 (her death); and the third and final phase was to begin in 1975 and last until 2025. Early in the twenty-first century a great initiate, the World Teacher, is to appear, resulting in the emergence of a new root race. This is, of course, remarkably similar to the teachings of Edgar Cayce concerning the opening of the Hall of Records at Giza, which he claimed would usher in a New Age, the return of the ‘Great Initiate’ and the beginnings of a new race. The words of the Hierarchy after 1975 were to be transmitted to the world through the medium of radio.

  Bailey’s personal mission was to ‘prepare the world on a large scale for the coming of the World Teacher, and to take the necessary steps before They Themselves [the Hierarchy] come out among men, as many of them surely will towards the end of this century’.71 The similarity with the message of the Nine is glaringly obvious, but it grows even stronger. Part of Bailey’s work, as instructed by the Tibetan, was to set up a series of disciples to be known, for self-evident reasons, as the Groups of Nine, each group having specific roles such as healers, political organisers or educators of the New Age.72 There were to be nine such groups, with a tenth — also made up of nine initiates - to coordinate their work in the now-familiar pattern of nine plus one. Unfortunately, the process of setting up the Groups of Nine was interrupted by a curiously unforeseen circumstance - the Second World War.

  The emphasis on nine as the ‘number of power’ is, of course, significant. When the ‘Nine Principles’ first made contact via Dr Vinod, it was to a group of nine sitters assembled by Puharich. (The doctor himself always tried to surround himself with groups made up of eight others, such as the ‘nucleus’ of followers at Lab Nine in Ossining, made up of nine people on Tom’s instruction.) Sir John R. Sinclair, in a 1984 book about Alice Bailey, finds the similarities between her stress on the significance of groups of nine and Schwaller de Lubicz’s Nine Principles remarkable, illustrating these similarities by quoting from that bastion of the New Egyptology, John Anthony West, in his Serpent in the Sky.73

  But there are other significant connections: Bailey and Puharich’s communications reveal striking similarities that go much further, well beyond the realms of coincidence. The Masters in Bailey’s system, although led by a being called the Lord of the World, who comes from a higher realm, are spiritually evolved human beings who have been ‘promoted’ to the Hierarchy, and who have been incarnated as the great names of religion and esotericism, such as the ‘Master Jesus’. The Tibetan often used just their initials: the two Masters with leading roles in preparing the world for the final phase are known as the Master R and the Master M.74 The representatives of the Nine who spoke through Dr Vinod called themselves ‘R’ and ‘M’.75

  Does this suggest independent confirmation of contact with real beings through different people? Or have the more recent communications simply been deliberately shaped to fit the predictions of the Tibetan? Philip Coppens drew our attention to a lecture given by Puharich in Upland, California on 6 November 1982, in which he summarised his work and how it had developed. He admitted that his early experiments at the Round Table Foundation were inspired by reading the works of Alice Bailey76 — and this was before his work with Dr Vinod. At the very least, this proves that Puharich was already aware of the Tibetan’s teachings before his first contact with the Nine.

  Another significant aspect of Bailey’s work was the importance attached to Sirius. The star has a central role in Theosophical doctrines, where it is described as a kind of energy centre - likened to a cosmic equivalent of the human ‘third eye’ - with a powerful effect on our own solar system.77 In Bailey’s view, it similarly channels energy, from the ‘cosmic centre’ through our solar system to Earth. Although there are many such influences, it is Sirius that is by far the most powerful and important. In her book Initiation, Human and Solar, she describes a series of ‘paths’ taken by initiates as they develop spiritually. One of them is called the Path of Sirius, but as this is the most secret little is said openly about it. As she said:

  Very little can be communicated about this Path... In the mystery of this influence, and in the secret of the sun Sirius, are hidden the facts of our cosmic evolution, and incidentally, therefore, of our solar system...78

  First and foremost is the energy or force emanating from the sun Sirius. If it might be so expressed, the energy of thought, or mind force, in its totality, reaches the solar system from a distant cosmic centre via Sirius. Sirius acts as the transmitter, or the focalizing centre, whence emanate those influences which produce self-consciousness in men.79

  The Tibetan adds that this energy does not reach Earth directly from Sirius, but is first beamed to Saturn, before passing on to us.80 This agrees with the Council of Nine’s pronouncements through Carla Rueckert and with Hurtak’s teachings.

  The Tibetan, communicating through Alice Bailey, also makes another major connection — with the secret teachings of Freemasonry. According to the Tibetan, Freemasonry is a terrestrial version of an initiatory school that exists on Sirius, and that the various hierarchical degrees of Freemasonry are parallels, or analogues, of the different levels of initiation that an adept must go through in order to enter ‘the greater Lodge on Sirius’. The Tibetan claimed that the Masons have a very ancient connection with Sirius:

  Masonry, as originally instituted far back in the very night of time and long ante-dating the Jewish dispensation, was organised under direct Siriun influence and modelled as far as possible on certain Siriun institutions.81

  Such statements can, of course, be taken with more than a pinch of salt, but they may help to explain the frequent involvement of Freemasons in the events of this investigation, including those surrounding the Giza and Mars conspiracies. And Alice Bailey herself was no stranger to direct Masonic influence - her second husband, Foster Bailey, was not only a leading light of the Theosophical Society and a devotee of his wife’s channelled teachings, but also a prominent Freemason. His book The Spirit of Masonry (1957) stated his intention ‘to bring to the Craft certain inner meanings of our Order’, based on the Tibetan’s teachings.82 He also lectured on the subject to his brothers (who were members of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, the dominant form of American Freemasonry) and wrote that Freemasonry was a remnant of the ‘primeval religion’ that had once been common to the whole world, citing the pyramids of Egypt and South America as ‘witnesses’ of this ancient world religion.83 (The idea of a common wisdom tradition in the ancient world is, of course, a major feature of Graham Hancock’s increasingly fervent message, with its strong suggestion that the religion of old has some significance for our immediate future. This concept also underpins the largely Masonic belief in the coming New World Order.)

  This is a truly explosive mixture. On the one hand the hugely seminal channelled teachings of Alice Bailey appear to have been influenced by the Masonic beliefs of her husband, but on the other it seems that, through Foster Bailey, the American Masons themselves were influenced by Alice Bailey’s teachings, at least where Sirius was concerned. The result is a hybrid, based both on tradition and ‘revealed’ material, each in its way, perhaps, just as open to question. Could Foster Bailey have made sure that his brother Masons espoused his wife’s channelled teachings about the ‘Siriun’ origins of Freemasonry as their own? Could this also be th
e reason why Robert Temple’s The Sirius Mystery attracted so much interest from American Freemasons? And Henry Wallace, one-time Vice-President of the United States and sponsor of Andrija Puharich, was a high-ranking - and passionately committed - Freemason and Theosophist, just like Foster Bailey himself.

  Masons themselves may well claim that they knew about Sirius before Foster Bailey began to promote it. The American writer Robert Anton Wilson records that one of his many contacts from secret and esoteric societies both in the United States and Europe told him that the secret of the 33rd Degree - the highest rank in American Freemasonry - was that the Craft was in contact with intelligent beings from Sirius.84 Wilson himself pours scorn on this, but in any case, only other 33rd degree Masons will know whether or not it is true. Sirius does feature largely in Masonic lore, though, since every lodge room is decorated with a symbol called the Blazing Star, considered by Masonic authorities to represent Sirius.85

  The great nineteenth-century American Freemason, Albert Pike, records a Masonic legend that specifically links the number nine to a stellar tradition connected with Sirius. This tells of the ‘Nine Elect’, the apprentice Masons who sought to avenge the death of their Master, Hiram Abiff, tracking one of his murderers to a certain cave. The Nine Elect are symbolised by the sequential rising of nine bright stars, including those of Orion’s Belt, which precedes the rising of Sirius.86 (The Elect of Nine is the 9th degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.)

  What at first appears to be the Tibetan’s curious notion that Freemasonry is some kind of extraterrestrial institution is also found in other ‘inspired’ writings - this time those of H.C. Randall-Stevens, who way back in the 1920s wrote of secret chambers beneath the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid. Like Alice Bailey, he did not need to be in a trance to communicate with his guide, but simply took dictation from a voice in his head. The first of these dictation sessions happened on 9 February 1925, and they continued every night for several weeks, with little to show for it - just a page or so at a time. The communications always took place at, or around, nine o’clock in the evening. (Dr Vinod’s first contact with the Nine began at 9pm precisely.)