ABOUT ANTIQUITIES OF THE ILLUMINATI

ANTIQUITIES OF THE ILLUMINATI

Antiquities of the Illuminati is an ongoing research project, originally created in August of 1992 c.e. It has been in-progress for ten years. What you see contained within this website is a portion of the work that its creator / compiler has produced. It was, in the beginning, spearheaded by Jonathan Sellers of Anaheim, California. Since then, Mr. Sellers has made himself most easily accessible in cyberspace. Mr. Sellers continues as Director of the Work, aka "AntiqIllum™", sometimes known by other names, epithets, and sometimes accompanied by colorful adjectives.

In the years since Mr. Sellers began the Project, as he calls it, he has added a few bright stars to his Illuminati Staff: WatcherAshera777, Krisatora, Alamantra, and some who choose to remain unnamed. From the beginning, and before that, even, his work has been encouraged by his fellow Magus, Frater UT.

What is the object of the Antiquities of the Illuminati project? We recommend you read the narrative contained on this web page, as well as the materials contained on the Antiquities Website. What? Not enough time? O. K.

Antiquities of the Illuminati seeks to tell The Story. What is The Story? The Story of the granting of Wisdom to humankind by its Benefactors, and the survival, in human incarnations, of said Benefactors. This Story includes making sense of the tangled web of sects, creeds, religious groups, secret societies, mystical associations, and other groups throughout the four thousand year period, beginning roughly 2050 B. C. E., and continuing beyond our present year, to 2050 C. E.

Another object of this, is to establish the Truth of History, concerning certain events in our past, which have led to the mess that is today. In a sense, this is a Textual Time Machine.

One of our predecessors, Major-General J. G. R. Forlong, did this, over a century ago, in his excellent work, Rivers of Life. Madame Blavatsky also attempted this, in her Isis Unveiled, and The Secret Doctrine. Albert Pike, too, presented his contribution to the Work, in his revisions of the corpus of rituals and teachings for the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. Numerous others, including Richard Payne Knight, Thomas Wright, Godfrey Higgins, Forlong, Hargrave Jennings, Gerald Massey, Albert Churchward, Thomas Inman, Sir James G. Frazer, and others too numerous to mention have contributed to the Work which now resides in your Temporary Internet Files directory. And, of course, the present Work, is to be seen as a complement to those practical works of Aleister Crowley, Israel Regardie, N. Meade Layne, Allen Greenfield, Max Theon, and others, and we would be amiss if we omitted to mention the pioneering works of William Foxwell Albright, Cyrus Gordon, Layard, Maspero, Budge, Raphael Patai, Robert Graves, W. Raymond Drake, Pauwels, Bergier, Bearden, Evans-Wentz, Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, Zecharia Sitchin and others.

ONCE UPON A TIME...

This work started ages and ages ago, from the point of view of today... Actually, though we had been reading up on the subject for many years, the work started in August of 1992 c.e., when we pieced together our first list of "Saints" of the EGC and compared them with the list of Grand Masters of the Priory of SION. It was certainly interesting. From that point on, our historical project started. Every time we found a name or a list of names, dates, places, we made notes, and periodically re-wrote the lists, and built our Library, until now, we have at least 5,000 pieces, from photocopies of articles in reference sets, photocopied library books, maps, periodicals, books, manuscripts, and online resources. Oh, yes, and audio and video tapes. [Some 600 videotapes, recorded from 1989 to the present.]

The objective of this memoir is to recount some of the milestones in our Work, as well as present a skeleton key to the Work as a whole, and our goals and hidden agendas... Well, maybe not hidden agendas.

FIRST THINGS

As long as we can remember we have been interested in both History and things Occult. So, it would be a natural for us to make a lifetime commitment to creating the definitive history of the Occult, or of Esoteric Traditions. Perhaps what we have to offer presently may not be what some consider definitive, but by today's standards, it surely leaves everyone else in the dust, much like Crowley left all his contemporaries in the dust, when he published Magick in Theory and Practice.

In the late 1980s we were involved with a small-scale Techno-Primitive organization, and its initial Indoctrination packet contained a reading list that had some interesting titles on it. Among these were Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Messrs. Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln; The Spear of Destiny by Trevor Ravenscroft; The Occult, by Colin Wilson; The Morning of the Magicians, by Pauwels and Bergier. As we read through these materials, we also found that we were obtaining many other works that weren't on the list, and from our magical practices and our reading, as well as from our creative work, we found some interesting things happening.

In fact, some of us contacted what Crowley referred to as Praeter-Human Intelligences, such as Aiwass. Not that we are saying that that is who or what we contacted, mind you. Before Father_ACME was one of the best pieces of web art around, he started out as a regular visitor to our Magical working space, and from him or through that species of direct influence that only those who have experienced it can understand or relate to, information suddenly became available that was definitely not available in the early 1990s of the Common Era. At least without the use of psychedelic drugs!

Changing to first-person singular, I was inspired to compile a history of what I've come to call The Authentic Tradition, more detailed and with more available information than anyone else (and presently for free, until more people start contributing to the Effort -- jab! jab!) --

"Research My human index. Become My human index," the Voice said, in the empty room, the night that a Precious Mystery was communicated to and through me by the Great Goddess.

"Tell the people what they want to know, then give them our story," said the Voice of the Grey Ancient, one year later to the day, on 05 July 1991 c.e.

A year later, after dealing with personal issues, a schism that destroyed the organization referred to above, and other things, I started compiling my information together. Unfortunately that first list no longer exists in the files, but the second version still exists, and a sample of it is provided on the next page. It was compiled during the autumn of 1993, just prior to obtaining a number of precious Masonic works, through a chain of mysterious circumstances.

It might be worth mentioning, that from that date in 1991 through fall of 1993, I was also working on a practical project, The ARARITA Arrangement, which catalogues all the Crowley works, in a tabular form, more suitable for formulating Initiatory Rituals like those in the Golden Dawn System. Some may say "who cares?" but WE Do. And, this material was originally received from the same Source.

The List above may seem like a scrap of note paper, but it has evolved into something much bigger than that.

With the Masonic books that became available to us, a wealth of additional information came forth, and we created List, Version 3.

Originally we conceived of the Work along the lines of a vast encyclopaedic history work. However, things changed when we actually got down to writing it.

Half of the Work will be encyclopaedic, in the form of the Timeline of the Authentic Tradition, in the Biographical Sketches that we plan to offer; in the Readings series. Yet the narrative that we are producing is much more along the lines of personal discovery, since it was being written down as the material was being discovered.

We have been told that we are a form of Terton. A Terton is a scholar who finds and interprets Termas, or hidden scriptures. In the Tibet of the dark ages, when Lang Dharma was persecuting Buddhists, the monks buried the sacred scriptures and other records, for safe keeping, until they could be discovered and revealed without the fear of persecution attached. The Bardo Thödol was one such text. We, too, have been discovering long buried Western texts. Buried through the process of amnesia, perhaps, but buried all the same.

In 1989 when we first read Holy Blood, Holy Grail, we were intrigued by what it said, on all levels. Particularly intrigued were we with the idea that an alternative tradition to that offered by traditional Christianity (Catholic, Protestant, or otherwise) has existed throughout the centuries, and that it was connected somehow to this bloodline of semi-divine personages. And, when we read the Earth Chronicles by Zecharia Sitchin, we were intrigued too, that humankind was engendered by the Sons of the Gods. Namely, that all of us are descendants of the Nephilim. Be that as it may, some have a higher percentage of descent, or so the story goes. We found parallels between the two sets of works.

At the time we were forming these ideas from our reading, we had been a self-proclaimed Thelemite, going back to February of 1988 c.e., and, probably interested in it going back to the first time we found out that Led Zeppelin put hidden messages in their fourth album. Fundamentalists are good for the Music Business, after all, because I instantly started developing a record collection based upon all the recordings that were considered evil by the Crouch family. Yecch!

Some of Crowley's writings, particularly in Book Four in all its parts, especially Part 3, and, too, those contraband texts that were released by Francis King, in 1973... (especially in the final third of that book), then the Holy Books, of course, The Vision and the Voice, and finally The Heart of the Master, all pointed to some very secret traditions, secret rituals for achieving contact, and the perpetuation of an alternate tradition concurrently with the established orthodox tradition, and the established esoteric tradition. Now, all you die-hard purists and sticklers for detail, who read this, rest assured that we aren't leaving out the rest of his works. [We were not, at that time, aware of the contents of such brilliant accounts, as the Abuldiz Working, the Amalantrah Working, and others that are now plentiful on the Internet!] There is something definite about some of his works that point to the Contactee experience. That creates grief for sticklers, so keep stickling, all you want, while we keep receiving the revelation! After all, Kabbalah is the received tradition, according to the Hebrews, is it not?

A THESIS IS FORMED.

By March of 1994 c.e., we made our way through chapter 30 of Morals and Dogma by Albert Pike. At that time, we did not know that it was penned by Fabré-Palaprat, and published in parts, in Nesta Webster, in Blavatsky, in MacKenzie, in Levi: even though we possessed each of those works.

What we read in that narrative suggested to us the story of an alternate tradition in Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and it suggested that contact was made in the Near East at the time the Temple was formed. And in HBHG, we read of the elusive Calabrian monks... What could this Order of the East be? Well, we found later, that it was probably referring to the Ordre de l'Orient, which Palaprat was acquainted with in Paris. Yet, there are traditions about the Templars and the Assassins, about the Yezidis, the Druzes, the Harranians, the Mandaeans, the Nusairi. Which one of these held a Johannite tradition? What exactly is the Johannite Tradition? Which of these groups hold to the Johannite Tradition, have a history of contact with the first Crusaders, and have traditions dealing with the Nephilim? That's a good question, and we are still uncovering new materials.

We set out to not only connect the past together, but to piece this tradition together, and to find if any paper trail was left behind that we could pick up, even from our disadvantaged position here in California (and no means of travelling to the appropriate places, either!) -- and we have not been disappointed. Indeed, we have been overwhelmed. But that comes later.

We came upon, in the later part of 1994, early 1995 c.e., the Sabians / Sabaeans. We realized that there was something to them, that was a part of this tradition we were seeking. We also realized that sometimes the term meant the Harranian Sabians, and at other times it meant the Sabians, or Mandaeans, or Mughtasilahs, or the Sabaeans, of Saba in southern Arabia, and the Sabaeans of Ethiopia. What a mess.

Later we found hidden allusions to the Benjaminites in The Book of the Words, for the 15°. This material we published in the chapter entitled The Wolf Tribe. In January of 1995 we discovered a copy of the Lambert de Lintot engraving which is so popular on our website, in our edition of Mackey's Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry. Though the ciphers are interesting, the most important thing is the suggestion of an alternate tradition, one that includes, among other things, sexual communion, and contact with entities.

1995 was a wash-out year due to personal (fiscal) failures and health issues. So, things didn't start again until early 1996, when we started discovering some interesting things in the Book of the Words -- this time pertaining to the Nephilim, in the words Ahiman and Rezon, which related that the Bible is clear on the fact that the Flood was a failure, since it didn't rid the world of the Giants that God got mad about in the first place, since we find the spies reporting seeing some of them when they were checking out the Promised Land! Yet, it appears again that there is an allusion to an alternate tradition that has existed concurrently alongside, and usually at odds with, the officially sanctioned belief system being promoted.

By August of 1996 we had assembled a number of notes, and then we started writing down our narrative. It began as an essay on Ahiman and Rezon, and ended up growing, until it became a manuscript of 500 plus pages. Important note: These pages were written by hand, single spaced, two sides per sheet, notebook paper. This is not something that people care to do anymore, particularly now that computers have possessed us all. I do not know if I could ever do it again that way. What a shame!

AN EXTRACT FROM "THE GRAY BOOK".

[not to be confused with 'Thee Grey Book'!]

"THE PLAN OF THE WORK"

What strange fate befalls humanity as it heads full-speed into the 21st Century? Are the "easy" futures dreamed up by the policy planners going to be a reality? Are we going to become one homogenized race, created in the test tube? Where the doctors plan our destiny before us by tampering with our DNA so as to weed out any suspect traits, such as individuality or tendencies towards genius of an unorthodox nature? Where we live in computer monitored fibre-optic utopias where problems in the system are corrected by swift eradication? Where we are implanted with nanotechnology devices and microchips while still in the womb that will make us better citizens from the start? Where we will no longer be able to think for ourselves, and Silicon shall be the Wish-Granting Gem, and the flow of information will be the elixir vitae?

Will we not bow down in the womb and worship our New World Gods of Technology gone mad, and will we not forget the warnings of those mad visionaries Orwell and Huxley? Will this be then the best of all possible worlds? We are constantly being urged and prodded to believe this to be the case, every channel we turn to as we surf the sea of information.

The Superstate that has been planned for us carefully by our Keepers like so many over-cooked school lunches -- is it not lunacy?

Am I mad myself? Perhaps, but not any more than the rest who are deeply concerned for the fate of humanity. Perhaps a few of us will end up like the Savage in Brave New World, never having given over to the Dark Side of the Technology that at one time could have saved Mother Earth and her children, rather than consigning us to the oblivion of homogeneity, like so many recyclable cans and bottles.

But, the dark irony of it all is this -- that this is the End result of events begun thousands of years ago, in humanity's dim past, and that before our race began as we have known it, this all happened before. Sounds too crazy to believe? Not to some of us.

Overpopulation, disease, famine, pestilence, food shortages, environmental destruction, increases in human evil, the disappearance of beauty, of gentleness, of all that is truly good, political skullduggery -- you name it, it's all happened before: and my job is to bear testimony to why we are where we are as a race -- or should I say as a species -- today by going into the past and relating the connections in the history, mainly of ideologies and religions which have shaped us.

You may say that religion has no place anymore in our society. The religions of the past are ancient relics that our ancestors believed superstitiously, because they didn't know any better -- that the Gods and Goddesses which played so important a role in our ancestors' times were merely personifications of the forces of nature or aspects of the psyche or soul.

After all, our predecessors didn't have the benefits that God Science has brought us: Cold Science, the same entity that paved the way for Hitler and Stalin and gave wind to the flames of the Fundamentalists superficially opposed to it.

But wait -- these same elements of Deity and the traditions they represent -- in the more secret, esoteric sense, are the way out of the cold abyss the technology has trapped us into.

When every choice open to us has a sinister side, and we are urged to choose even when the question of choice is a superficial matter like the elections in which we are always reminded of our democratic duty -- and we get more of the same that we were casting our votes to get out of office. In short, when we are urged to choose the lesser of two evils -- the Brave New World of Science or the Dark Ages of Fundamentalism -- is there not an alternate that few people realize in each generation yet many dream of?

This is the Golden Age, promised us all by the Adepts and Sages of all times. That is the Hope of the Race and its Perfection, and with the Knowledge of our Selves, and our potentials -- Will the Technology that renders humanity obsolete really be that necessary when the Masters of Wisdom have "surfed" the real "Net" for ages beckoning us to seek the Other Shore.

As we shall show, this Science of Divinity was possessed by all cultures the world over, and the cultures which our supposedly superior West has claimed for itself are not its exclusive possession, nor are they the exclusive possession of its self-appointed priests and masters.

Our treatise, therefore, is not so much a Technical Manual of Divine Science as it is a Survey Course on the History of this Divine Science, which we have termed the Secret Theology of the Ancients.

Once this survey is complete, then we will be in a position to offer the Technical Manual, first in outline form, and then elaborated upon more fully.

1. Since this is a personal Quest, we must outline our discoveries as we make them. In a sense, it is a form of Magical Record.

2. Then, we shall give the big picture scenario, because this ties geographically diverse groups together, relates them to specific periods of great importance not only in reference to the Wisdom Traditions, but also to the General History of Humankind.

3. The Deities who play a major role in this Story will be examined next, and their stories, related geographically as well. This will allow us to concentrate upon the historical figures who were their devotees and Initiates.

4. Following this, we will chronologically describe groups and persons who have carried on this Tradition, based upon the Model we shall elaborate in the previous point above.

5. This will be followed by a synthesis of the above in showing what brought about the 20th Century and what the portents for the future really are in light of these discoveries.

6. The Holy Doctrine as discovered shall then be outlined, but for the purposes of this work we shall only outline it.

7. Concluding, we shall show what is necessary and what is not in relation to the impending crises facing humankind, the ignorant masses asleep in the Magic Show that Sangsara really is. Any Appendices as necessary.

THE WRITING BEGINS.

We began writing in August of 1996 c.e., and we haven't stopped since. We have been continually updating our Work, as new material becomes available. We chose to create a suitable filing system to make this easier to accomplish. One item, was the Card File, which we placed index cards in, each with either a name, and some particulars about that personage, or with a date, and corresponding event.

As we stated, between April and November of 1997 c.e., we produced most of the manuscript. From November 1997 to October 1998, we concentrated on the Next Level, beyond Antiquities of the Illuminati, which is our reconstruction of the Time System, entitled The Code of the Eternal. It is not complete yet, but shall serve as the practical material promised in the extract, above. In January of 1998, while the rest of the world was finding out who Monica Lewinsky was, we were creating the giant work, Timeline of the Authentic Tradition, in its graphic form. It is 4 feet wide, and 16 feet in length. We present a couple of extracts below. From October of 1998 through fall of 1999 we key entered most a great deal of the Qadosh material from section one of Qadosh: The Johannite Tradition, and we key-entered Timeline Six, and some readings materials from The Code of the Eternal.

ENTER FATHER_ACME...

In June of 1999, we created the image known as "Father_ACME.jpg" -- and began turning our material into html documents for publication to the Web by the end of the year. We wanted to be on the Web by the time that the Year 2000 came into being, and we just made it, on 22 December 1999 at 10:44 P. M. Pacific Standard Time. That was when we had our first "free" site, the Xoom site. We still don't know how many people are still visiting, that first saw us in those days.

All new material. Including Was Albert Pike REALLY in France on July 14, 1889? ; What About Nietzsche? ; Is THIS The Holy Mountain?; and excerpts from the Timeline of the Authentic Tradition. Also included a no-longer published feature called "Info-Sheet", about the materials we have published and have planned to publish.

The first publication of material from The Brethren of the GIFT, starting with QADOSH: The Johannite Tradition. Back in those days, we had all three of the chapters we posted, in one document. Not any more! More excerpts from the Timeline. The Duku piece (no longer online). The Excellent Links page was created.

Jacobus Burgundus Molensis, Be Thou Remembered!, plus the Jack Burgers de Molé recipe, in honor of the Pope's apology. Holy Mountain Version 2, Albert Pike page, Version 2; Akitu;More Qadosh materials, and we moved over to the Geocities site, after we got sick and tired of the way Microsoft's web publishing wizard failed to get the pages in the targeted directory at the Xoom Site.

Who Was Adam Weishaupt? Crowley's Egg? A Curious Masonic Engraving; finishing off Section one of Qadosh; Timeline was restructured; Readings, table of Contents; Some of the Graphic Timeline for the Authentic Tradition in India (no longer online); The Excellent Links page was expanded.

New Appearance. We tested using Flash intros, and other newfangled gimmicks. People expect us to make things for 2.0 browsers, dammit, so we gave up on that sort of thing for a while. The Stone That Fell to Earth, Part One; we began publishing Legacy of the GIFT; Section Three of Book Two was begun; with material on the Mandaeans; How to Get Rich Quick Using Honesty and Morals (Satire, no longer online); Crowley's Egg part two, plus the cheap Flash piece we created; More timeline material, the Last editing of the Excellent Links section.

The Stone That Fell to Earth Part Two; Legacy chapters added; Qadosh material added; Crowley's Egg part 2a; more Timeline materials.

Two Legacy chapters; some Timeline parts; the creation of the antiquities_of_THE_ILLUMINATI Group on Yahoo Groups (was E-Groups back then).

New Items added to the Lambert piece; more chapters to Legacy; several segments of Timeline.

A Nag Message from Father ACME; began the Second-hand Book-stall section; chapters added to Legacy, and some more to Timeline.

My Card art piece (with sticker design suitable for printing); final chapters of Legacy; final installments of Timeline Six Part One.

Front Page artwork, revised, scan of the original drawing. Tribute Page to Rorschach Asmodeus.

New Index Page design; A Public Service Message from Father_ACME; Archives Section; graphics added to several earlier pieces; additions to the Lambert piece; Part three of The Stone that Fell to Earth; New Qadosh material. Retirement of the Links pages section.

Meeting of the Inner Circle art piece; addition of a piece to the Qadosh section.

Happy Halloween from Father_ACME; An Early OTO Lamen From France?; additions to Qadosh, including the Yezidi piece, cosmetic upgrades.

Happy Holidays from Father_ACME; A Curious Merovingian Engraving?; Additions to Qadosh; some cosmetic upgrades.

Some of the material presented in this document; The Harranian piece from Qadosh (in part); some cosmetic upgrades.

New Domain; The Crowley Conspiracy; the Madame Blavatsky Advertisement; the first and fourth numbers of The Dossier Series; finishing the article on the Harranians in Qadosh: The Johannite Tradition.

A Printable Cover for Version 3 of Antiquities of the Illuminati; Happy May Day from the Illuminati (Art Piece);Dossier Series gets its own page, with all four issues thus far listed; new Acknowledgments Page; conclusion to The Sabians of the House of Wisdom; New TimeLine material (pertaining to the Frankists / Asiatic Brethren); a few minor additions to Who Was Adam Weishaupt?

New formatting, new Links Section in its own sub-domain; new art pieces; A Curious Find at the Bibliothèque Nationale; revisions to The Johannite Legend of the Templars; to the John chapter; to the Adherents of the Hidden Dimension chapter in Qadosh; new Sons of the Serpent Tribe section in Qadosh; The World Tree and the Cosmic Pillar in the R+C part; this About section; Contact page, etc.

ABOUT...