Occult Olympics, Solar Deities and the French Pagan Revolution
Occult Olympics, Solar Deities and the French Pagan Revolution
Many people were aghast at the blatant occult symbolism on display during the opening ceremonies of the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Written By Matt Ehret
After a worldwide backlash from disgusted Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike, the official website of the Paris Olympics removed all recordings of the ceremonies, and while that may be considered a small victory for basic common sense, the damage was done. Not only were Christian-oriented populations of the world revved up by this intentionally provocative operation, but an arrogant celebration of a restoration of paganism under an occult priesthood was conveyed publicly, and the implications of this ritual has not been fully appreciated to this writers best knowledge.
The first clue to the deeper implications of this ritual could be seen in the clear celebration of the French Revolution throughout the event. From the announcement months ago, that the mascot for this years' Olympics would be "the Phryges" (named after the Phrygian caps worn by Jacobin mobs during the bloodbath of 1792-1794), or the severed head of a singing Marie Antoinette, to the strange song extolling the virtues of equality and fraternity ("if we were all only naked"), references to the revolution were everywhere.
However, it is only when we realized that the French Revolution itself was a perverse attempt at a global 18th century Great Reset that a fuller appreciation for its celebration in 2024 can occur. So let's start with the question: why did the French Revolution get turned into a bloody terror?
How France's Revolution Turned into a Great Reset Bloodbath
In 1789, the world was ripe with potential for a new age of cooperation and reason based on the successful overthrow of British Imperial rule over the American Colonies, and more importantly, the implementation of the first ever system of republican democracy founded upon a rejection of hereditary institutions, and based upon the consent of the governed.
As flawed as the young republic was in putting those ideals into practice, they did represent a success for the cause of freedom and a loss for the systems of feudal oligarchism that had latched onto humanity since time immemorial. What made the American successes of 1776-1781 even more threatening to the hereditary oligarchy of Europe was that it wasn't simply "an American affair" but involved the active participation of leading republicans of France, Ireland, Prussia, Russia, and even southern India. Of all the international support for the young republic, the biggest by far was France, due in large measure to the brilliant organizing efforts of Benjamin Franklin who was able to create a movement within France's intelligentsia to give national support to the American cause.
It was thus hopeful that those same leading French revolutionaries aligned with Ben Franklin and Washington would be able to replicate the American revolutionary experience in 1789.
By July 20, 1789 the first act of the French revolution had occurred known as the Tennis Court Oath, led by Jean Sylvain-Bailly, then Mayor of France and first president of a new organization called the National Assembly – the first representative institution in France’s history endowed with the authority co-equal to that of the king. This assembly resolved to create a constitution that soon formulated a beautiful founding document co-authored by Thomas Paine and inspired by America's Declaration of Independence, known as the Declaration of the Rights of Man. The Marquis of Lafayette became the head of the new National Guard and a program to educate the citizenry was begun. A constitutional monarchy with a King (Louis XVI) who believed in natural law and the general welfare as a principle of law was coming into existence for the first time in centuries.
With this 1789 revolutionary development, a new set of values was introduced quite incompatible to any system built around a hereditary elite… and it was actually being done without bloodshed!
But something didn’t go as planned.
By 1793, Bailly and the majority of his closest allies had been decapitated, as France slid into a civil war at home and forever wars abroad.
Scientists like Antoine Lavoisier were included in the murders with the Jacobin motto shouting “the revolution needs no scientists” (science was elitist after all).
Marquis Lafayette chose to save his head by escaping on August 19, 1792 becoming a prisoner in a Hapsburg dungeon for 4 years.
The King Louis XVI -- who was the great friend of the American cause and participant in the constitutional monarchy -- lost his head by January 1793, joined by his wife 9 months later.
By 1794, the revolution was only known as the “Terror” and earned that name as over 40,000 people were executed over a very short period. France was bathed in blood while power alliances bounced back and forth between “left” wing Jacobins under the control of Maximilian Robespierre, Jean-Paul Marat and Georges Danton, and opposing “right” wing Girondins and monarchists. With each change in power, waves of executions struck all sides. France became a police state with secret police embedded throughout breadlines and markets taking note of every criticism of the government, the price of bread and scowl, with the unsuspecting complainers carried off to prison at best, or the guillotine at worst.
Soon a total power vacuum caused a young republican general named Napoleon Buonaparte to take power and institute himself in most un-republican fashion as hereditary Emperor of France, unleashing a 15 year reign of war on Europe.
When French troops opened fire on the armed starving masses that had surrounded the fortress of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, all hell broke loose, and a genie was fully released that no one could ever put back into the bottle. The fortress was stormed, its soldiers and governors decapitated, and the people began screaming for Necker and Orleans to become the saviors of France. Jacobin press had been spreading idea to the masses for some time.
The remaining years of the revolution were characterized by wars abroad, and chaos within. The inflammatory pens of hundreds of Anglo-Swiss radical writers maintained by Jeremy Bentham were brought in becoming the voices of rage that would steer the Jacobin terror. Soon waves of beheadings became a normal part of life under the tyrannical authority of Maximillian Robespierre who’s “profound” philosophical contribution to the revolution was that all revolutionary citizens must have virtue, but that virtue must be led by terror.
His bloodlust only increased leading to his conclusion that the real cause of the injustices of France was Christianity itself, leading to his creation of a new religion of perverted reason called “the Cult of the Supreme Being” and the complete overhaul of the calendar system using a decimal system. “The French Revolutionary Calendar” was based on a radical rejection of Christianity which was entirely banned under the new regime.
All Christian holidays were replaced with pagan solstice rituals and the new calendar used 10 days/week and based itself on the seasons. The hope was that the population would soon lose all sense of the existence of Sunday and be cleansed of the parasite of superstition. Even Robespierre’s closest supporters thought he went too far with this one, and he soon found himself in a guillotine. After years of left vs right bloodbaths, such a vast vacuum of leadership was created that only a "strong man" such as Napoleon could enforce order onto the chaos of revolution.
Napoleon wasted no time in declaring himself an emperor of the world and even the head of the Gallic church professing to extend his empire across the globe uniting fully the east and the west under one rule. This God-man image, which Napoleon believed himself to be the living incarnation of, was itself simply a revival of the Sun King cult established by his predecessor King Louis XIV who portrayed himself as a solar deity alongside a gnostic pagan revival in his Kingdom.
As the french revolution was turning into a British-directed bloodbath, the Church itself was banned and protecting priests from the mob became a capital punishment.
But contrary to popular belief, the french revolution was not atheistic, only anti-Christian. Otherwise this 'revolution of reason' was extremely religious. It was just that the religion that was supposed to replace Christianity were the gnostic mystery cults that rivaled the early Christian church in the first few centuries of the common era.
The Cult of Isis Gets its Revenge
In the fires of anti-Christian purges of France, and amidst the blood of over 40,000 decapitated French citizens, a vast revival of pagan mystery cults occurred between 1790 and the bloodiest days of France's civil war leading up to Napoleon Bonaparte crowning himself king of the world in 1804. The most aggressive mystery cult during this time was the Cult of Isis.
Over the wreckage of the Bastille (the prison invaded by the mob in 1789), a monument to the Egyptian Goddess Isis was erected in 1793 which featured water fountains spouting "sacred water" out of her nipples.
In 1790, as the revolution was sinking into anti-Christian insanity, a committee was formed to modify the official crest of Paris to showcase a boat featuring the goddess Isis sitting on the bow as an homage to the deity of navigation and the moon.
The Notre Dame Basillica was itself an immediate target of the anti-Christian revolutionaries, who tore down the spire, destroyed as many Christian symbols and statues that could be found and in 1793 converted the site into the headquarters of the "Festival of Reason" where Christianity was mocked. The cathedral was even renamed 'The Temple of Reason' where scantily clad women danced around a high priestess dressed as the Goddess of Reason sitting atop a mountain with new statues to the secular saints of Montesqieu, Descartes, Newton, and Voltaire. In fact this Goddess of Reason was merely a revised version of Isis. It wasn't a coincidence that the Notre Dam Basillica became the focus of this Isis revival, as the cathedral was itself built atop the site of the former temple of Isis in 1163 AD and stood as a symbolic victory of Christianity against it's pagan rival for centuries.
Paris itself received its name in 360 AD by Emperor Julian the Apostate, nephew of Constantine and grand nephew of Emperor Diocletian. During his short but active period as emperor from 360-363 AD, Julian embraced not only an anti-Christian worldview favoring the restoration of paganism, but made himself a sun-king, whose cult would stand above all other sanctioned mystery cults of the realm. It was in fact while staying in the city of Lutetia on the Seine, that Julian the Apostate was made emperor, and in the same breath renamed the town 'Civitas Parisorium' and sometime shortened to simply 'Par-Isis'.
Julian the Apostate became known as the last emperor that went to war with Christianity by making himself a solar deity in the form of Helios whom he believed himself to have incarnated as an avatar -- similar to the belief of Louis XIV or Napoleon later. Not only did Julian promote his image as a solar deity, under a revived Cult of the Emperor, but gave total state patronage to the dominant mystery cults that rivaled early Christianity, with special attention to the Cult of Mithra, the Cult of Cybele-Attis and of course, Julian's favorite... the Cult of Isis.
It was also during this period that Julian worked hard to revive Solomon's third temple which failed to be rebuilt due to the ruler's death at the age of 32... and in case you are confused, the mission to destroy Christianity, revive pagan mystery cults and restore Solomon's Temple are absolutely related. More on this will be discussed shortly.
It has long been known that the name of Paris itself derives from the name 'Par-Isis' (meaning literally 'From Isis') and had much to do with the large temple of Isis which existed on the banks of the river Seine which was built by a large sect of Celtic Isis worshippers centuries earlier.
The other dominant Isis sanctuary of the Roman Empire was found in England off the River Thames, which in ancient times was known only as 'The River Isis' due to the site of the Temple of Isis in Londonium -- the capital of Roman Britain that was created after the Claudian invasion of 47 AD and located at the site of the current ‘City of London’ (aka: ‘The Square Mile’). In the 19th century, an Obelisk imported from Alexandria was installed in the town of Delphi in England known as 'Cleopatra's needle.'
In 508 AD, the Merovingian King Clovis I, known both prior to and after his supposedly 'Christian' conversion, as a 'sorcerer king' established Paris as the capital of his new Frankish kingdom. The Merovingians would attain prominence among occult secret societies in later years as the mythical descendents of the surviving children of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, who according to gnostic traditions created in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, lived out their days in Southern France, seeding Europe with the "noble families" of which all seem to claim a portion today as justification for their own presumed superiority over the masses. This thesis was popularized in such freemasonic books as Holy Blood Holy Grail, which inspired the novel and film DaVinci Code by Dan Brown.
Julian the Apostate's efforts proved unsuccessful however, and Emperor Theodosius I (as well as the powerful Christian general Stilicho) laid down a crushing blow to those pagan mystery cults promoted by Julian from 394-400 by burning the Sibylline Books, and banning the mystery cults from the realm. This didn't mean that Mithra, Cybele, or Isis disappeared, but simply went underground, often emerging over the coming centuries as gnostic Christian sects within such 'monastic orders' as the Benedictines, Cistercians, Fransciscans, Dominicans, and especially Jesuits.
Let's now review a bit more deeply, those cults in order to gain a better appreciation for not only the true meaning of the French Revolution, but also the shenanigans on display at the Olympics.
Earth Mother Cults Introduced into Rome
This lesser appreciated, yet more important factor is found in the importation to Rome of the cult of Cybele-Attis -- sometimes referred to as the Cult of Gaia, or the cult of Magna Mater (ie: Great Earth Mother) in 205 BC.
This event was extremely important, as it involved the most virulent eastern cult (also affiliated with Isis) to become a dominant force shaping Roman customs and the behavior of the elite. Quintus Fabius Maximus didn’t import the Cybele cult alone, but was responding to the commands of the Sibylline priests… who were a committee of 15 who had sole authorization to interpret the writings of the sacred Sibylline books (now long destroyed). By the 3rd century BC, the Sybelline Books were housed in the Temple of Apollo on Palatine Hill in Rome and it was on this same hill that the Temple of Cybele was soon constructed following the prophecy of the Sibylline priests.
The 15 initiated priests were alone permitted to touch and interpret the messages within the Sibylline books which shaped every major decision Rome took in times of crisis, and also oversaw which cults received permission to operate in Rome. It was during the 2nd Punic War that the Sibylline priests told the senate and Fabius that unless the cult of Cybele were imported from Anatolia, then Hannibal was sure to win. Although it took several years to negotiate the new cult, it was finalized in 205, and within two years, Hannibal was defeated.
These elite high priests thus influenced the Senate for nearly 900 years (until the Roman General Stilicho ordered their destruction along with the banishment of the Mithraic Cult in 405 AD).
Note below the portrayal of the Phrygian Cap on both the God Attis, as well as the warrior God Mithra. The revival of this cap in the French Revolution signifying a 'color revolutionary symbol' to unify a weaponized mob should not be lost, nor should its role within the Paris Olympics of 2024.
The Roots of the Sibylline Books
According to the Roman historian Livy, the Sibylline books were acquired by Rome’s last king Tarquinius Superbus during the 6th century BC, although the details are wrapped in mystery.
Mate Marton of Eötvös Loránd University notes that: “By the end of the 3rd century they were connected with Greek rituals, Apollo, and, by association, prophecy.’ As Rome set foot on Greek soil, and with it Roman ambassadors and generals became regular visitors of Delphi, the books slowly began losing their unique monopoly as state oracle and started to be affiliated with a Sibyl or Sibyls.”
A Sibyl is a term for a priestess/prophetess that acted as a medium channelling messages from the Gods to man. Like modern “channelers”, mediums, clairvoyants, or Theosophists surfing the astral plane and speaking to spirit demons and the dead, the Sibyls played a similar role in the ancient world.
As Cynthia Chung outlined in The Ancient Roots of Occult Societies, one major Sibyl of the ancient world was the pythian priestess of Apollo at Delphi which coordinated a network of mystery cults shaping the geopolitical landscape of the kingdoms surrounding the Mediterranean.
The Sibylline books delivered a prophecy in 45 BC, during Rome’s war against the Parthians, that only an emperor would be capable of winning the war. Since Rome had not had a king since Tarquinius’ disposal in 579 BC, this prophecy was used to justify the creation of the roman emperor with a god-man as Caesar standing, like Egypt’s Pharaohs, as a godhead. The pressure to accept this emperorship was placed on the war hero Julius Caesar (100-44 BC)… who by all accounts, really did not want the position, turning the offer down three times before accepting. His final acceptance of the position of emperor was used by a group of senators led famously by Brutus and Cassius to justify his assassination.
Brutus’ foolish actions led to a bloody civil war (32-30 BC) followed by Rome’s submersion into an imperial hell managed by mystery cults and war.
These same priests oversaw the introduction of the Persian mystery Cult of Mithra into Rome which every member of the Praetorian guard and Roman legions soon joined. The earlier Phrygian mystery cult of Cybele-Attis, which the priests at the Temple of Apollo demanded be introduced into the Roman pantheon, coordinated closely with the priesthood of Mithra, with many of the wives and daughters of the Mithraic (male-only initiates) enmeshed into the rites of Cybele.
The Cult of Mithra had been introduced into Rome by Pompey the Great in 63 BC, but appears to have faced a setback when Julius Caesar defeated Pompey’s forces amidst a civil war in 45 BC.
While there are outward differences in the rites of the two cults (Cybele and Mithra), there were also many similarities. Both featured exoteric (outward) teachings for the lower degrees and uninitiated and esoteric (secret) teachings for the higher degrees of initiated. Both pagan cults featured sacrifices, self-denying stoicism mixed with hedonistic release, following Apollonian-Dionysian models of behavior, and something called the Taurobolium.
The Taurobolium were gruesome ceremonies involving the sacrifice of bulls, which bled onto the priests overseeing the mystery rites, which featured prominently in the rituals of both cults.
The early Christian polemicist Prudentius, 348- 410 CE described the rites of Cybele in the following terms:
“There are rites in which you mutilate yourself and maim your bodies to make an offering of the pain. A worshipper possessed thrusts the knife into his arms and cuts them to propitiate the Mother goddess. Frenzy and wild whirling are thought to be the rule of her mysteries. The hand that spares the cutting is held to be undutiful, and it is the barbarity of the wound that earns heaven. Another makes the sacrifice of his genitals; appeasing the goddess by mutilating his loins, he unmans himself and offers her a shameful gift; the source of the man's seed is torn away to give her food and increase through the flow of blood. Both sexes are displeasing to her holiness, so she keeps a middle gender between the two, ceasing to be a man without becoming a woman.” (Prudentius, Perist. 1059-1073)
This again, is yet another parallel ritual practiced by both Mithra worship (as Mithra was featured killing a bull on behalf of the Sol Invectus/Solar Deity Helios upon whose face his eyes are gazed on the majority of statues found in the hundreds of Mithraeum under Europe and the Holy land today.
Again, the revival of this motif in the Paris Olympics featuring a strange severed bull's head next to the Olympic logo appears to have this direct reference known to all initiates.
Additionally, both sects (Mithra and Cybele) featured death and rebirth rituals, involving the shedding of old identities of initiates in favor of new constructs groomed by a higher priesthood.
The priests -- dubbed ‘Hierophants’ of the Cybele Cult (called ‘Galli’) were all castrated as part of their initiation which is why the conservative families of Rome ultimately demanded the cult be removed after too many of their sons were given over to ritual castrations. Wasson notes that “Followers of her cult would work themselves into an emotional frenzy and self-mutilate, symbolic of her lover’s self-castration.”
One of the main features of the castrated galli priests were belts of knucklebones used for self-flagellation. This would be a practice adopted by the Benedictines, Franciscans, and Jesuits, whose ropes would serve an identical purpose in later years.
Historian Molly Dowdeswell writes: “After their act of castration, the galli wore exclusively women’s clothing. As signs of their positions, they wore a type of crown, maybe a laurel wreath, as well as gold bracelets called an occabus. The women’s clothing they wore was often yellow and accompanied by a turban and earrings. It is thought that these men also bleached their hair, which they kept long, and that they wore makeup. They would have walked around in groups telling fortunes in exchange for charity.”
Within 200 years of its official acceptance by the Romans, worship of The Great Mother had become one of the three important cults of Rome, though it had few priests, its influence was extreme. The other two cults were those of Isis and Mithra and all were united in their common hate of Christianity and Judaism.
However, by the reign of Emperor Claudius in 41 CE, the Cult of Cybele and Attis was given full support and the rampant orgies, hallucinogenic cocktails, and bloodlust sacrifices overseen by elite eunuchs created a culture of insanity throughout Rome.
Temples of Mithra and Cybele (better known as Gaia in our modern age) have been found linked together by archaeologists during the past century implying that where one Cult went, the other always followed.
The famous researcher Jessie Weston who’s 1920 Ritual to Romance demonstrated the Mithraic origins of the Grail Myths, noted this synergy between Mithraic and Cybele/Attis cults:
“Between the cults of Mithra and of Attis, there was a close and intimate alliance. In parts of Asia Minor the Persian god had early taken over features of the Phrygian deity… The union between Mithra and the goddess Anahita was held to be the equivalent of that subsisting between the two great Phyrgian deities Attis-Cybele. The most ancient mithreum known, that at Ostia, was attached to the Metroon, the temple of Cybele. At Saalburg the ruins of the two temples are but a few steps apart.” [From Ritual to Romance p. 137-138]
The Cult of Apollo-Dionysius
Lastly, a word should be said about the Cult of Apollo-Dionysius on display at the Olympics featuring a naked blue Dionysius (aka: the God of the Vine, ecstasy, and night pleasures of Greece) who's song calling for nudity alongside drag queens and children dancing on a cat walk surrounding an obese lesbian portraying the god Apollo should also be referenced.
While many people who identified the motif of the Last Supper of Leonardo DaVinci portrayed within the Olympic heresy have been ridiculed as crackpots by defenders of the Olympics who have tried to advance the thesis that it is not Jesus but rather Apollo being portrayed, I would say that both observations can be true at the same time.
In all three dominant mystery cults rivaling Christianity, the Apollo-Dionysian rites of 'celebrating' sacred orgies and ecstasy at night (under a lunar deity) while reverting to stoic self-flagellating duty during the day under the light of Apollo, was promoted.
In Mithra, the lunar-solar cult of day/night ritual was featured as Mithra looked onto the solar god Helios/Apollo while killing the bull, while the lunar deity was typically portrayed on the upper right hand side of Mithra's statues.
In the Isis-Serapis Cult, Isis is conveyed as the lunar deity, worshipped through erotic rituals and 'sacred' prostitutes at night, while Serapis (a Romanized Osiris- father of Horus) is portrayed as a God of the dead and also a solar deity. In all cases, ALL three cults permitted open membership with each other and each practiced the rites of Apollo-Dionysius, as well as the rites of Eleusis which all members were expected to engage in at the lower degree. Only a select few would be permitted to rise to higher degrees of 'esoteric'/ hidden teachings, whereby the 'true' hidden meanings and rites would be revealed to higher initiates.
The Mithraic Cult
The Mithraic Cult had been introduced to Rome during the 1st century BC and oversaw Rome’s transformation from a republic into a full empire.
The late philosopher Lyndon LaRouche noted a particular meeting between priests from the mystery cults and emperor Tiberius (42BC-37AD) held on the Isle of Capri, which was a central command for the Cult of Mithra:
“The first century B.C. was a time of great troubles throughout the Mediterranean littoral. The priesthoods of the various forms of Great-Mother worship, the Syrian-Caananite Magi, the Ptolemaic cult of Isis, and of the cult of Apollo, were engaged in the effort to combine the conquests of Rome, Egypt, and Syria into a single world-empire. The bloody issue was, what would be chosen as the capital of this new empire? The leading contenders were Alexandria and the city of Rome. The decision was settled on the battlefield against Mark Antony and Cleopatra; Rome’s victory had been negotiated earlier, at a meeting on the Isle of Capri.”
The Smithsonian website describes the Isle of Capri under the reign of Tiberius:
“In A.D. 27, at the age of 69, Tiberius moved to Capri to govern the enormous Roman empire from his dozen villas here. For more than a decade, according to his biographer, Suetonius, Tiberius wallowed in hedonism—decorating his mountaintop Villa Jovis, or Villa of Jupiter, with pornographic paintings and statues, staging orgies with young boys and girls and torturing his enemies. (The ruins of the villa still exist; its tunnels, arches and broken cisterns crown the island’s eastern cliffs, from which the emperor was said to have tossed those who displeased him to their deaths.)”
Throughout the middle ages, the Isle of Capri was the property of the the Benedictine Abbey of Montecassino and to the republic of Amalfi before passing to the Kingdom of Naples. Today, over 400 Mithraeum have been discovered across Europe, North Africa and the Holy land.
St. Bernard’s Benedictines and the Templars
When the Mithraic cults were illegalized in the early 5th century, they went underground and emerged in various Christian covers. It is likely that the Order of Benedict (founded in the early 6th century) served as a cover for the Mithraic rites.
In 523 AD, the Benedictines were gifted the Isle of Capri – with its vast catacombs, and Cybele-Attis temples, by a patrician devoted to St. Benedict named Patrizio Tertullo. The first official Benedictine Monestary was Monte Cassino Abbey built in 529 in the location of a shine to Apollo (a solar deity akin to Mithra and Lucifer). Like Tertullo, Benedict and his sister Scholastica were also from noble Roman Patrican families.
The bodies of St. Benedict and his twin sister Saint Scholastica (the founder of the order of sacred virgins called ‘nuns’) were discovered together in a massive urn which “was initially located underneath the primitive oratory of St. John the Baptist, built above the ancient acropolis’ pagan altar to Apollo.”[1]
Like Mithra, Horus and Lucifer, Apollo is a re-branded fallen solar deity dominant in ancient Rome and Greece.
Like Ignatius Loyola, who founded the Society of Jesus (aka: The Jesuits) 1000 years later, Saint Benedict isolated himself in a ‘sacred cave’ where, over the course of three years, he went through his mystical experience leading to the founding of new order. Also noteworthy was that it was at the Benedictine Monastery of Our Lady of Montserrat in Spain, that the Spanish mercenary Ignatius Loyola devoted himself to establishing his new society (more to be said on this below).
In the year 1098 AD, (coinciding with both the first Crusade and founding of the Kingdom of Jerusalem), a new, more strict Benedictine order calling itself the Cistercians was created.
Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) -- a grand strategist of his time -- soon became a leader of this sect, and devoted himself to the cause of organizing another Crusade to take full control of the Holy Land, expel the Muslims, and reconstruct Solomon’s Temple.
Clairvaux was known as an Ultramontanist who held the belief that the Pope was akin to an ineffable demigod beyond the reproach of any considerations of right or wrong. In this sense, Ultramontanists believe the papacy holds all the power enjoyed by the cult of the Roman Emperor and thus had a mandate to control both spiritual and material realms.
Clairvaux soon acquired the support of the powerful Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122-1204) and a network of powerful European noble families, installed his own Cistercian disciple as Pope (Eugene III) and created a new order of Christian mercenaries to become his instrument for managing the Crusades as well as the control of banking across Europe. This order was known as the Templars.
In 1128, Clairvaux wrote the charter for the Templars and created the legal arguments justifying the notion that Christians killing non-Christians was a ticket into heaven. In the Templar charter, Clairvaux was quick to ignore Christ’s mandate to “turn the other cheek”, forgive and love your enemies by saying:
“The knight of Christ, I say, may strike with confidence and die yet more confidently, for he serves Christ when he strikes, and serves himself when he falls. Neither does he bear the sword in vain, for he is God’s minister, for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of the good. If he kills an evildoer, he is not a mankiller, but, if I may so put it, a killer of evil. He is evidently the avenger of Christ towards evildoers and he is rightly considered a defender of Christians. Should he be killed himself, we know that he has not perished, but has come safely into port. When he inflicts death it is to Christ’s profit, and when he suffers death, it is for his own gain.“
The Templars were, not so much Christian, as a pagan order of gnostic Christian mercenaries who ended up controlling the majority of banking and the administration of the Kingdom of Jerusalem until they were abolished in 1314, with their leaders burned at the stake.
Like the earlier abolishment of the Cult of Mithra, the Templars didn’t disappear, but turned up again in various other forms across the centuries which will be discussed shortly.
It was also known that the Templar Knights of Solomon's Temple colluded with another gnostic mystery religion dubbed 'The Order of the Hashashins' which derived their name from the altered mystical states they achieved through copious use of Hashish. The order of the assassins was nominally muslim, although assisted the Templars in continuing the forever wars of the Crusades by periodically murdering political targets among both Muslim and Christian communities alike who were typically organizing for peace. While the Templars were abolished in 1307, a similar crackdown occured against the pagan Hashashins striving to revive a pagan world religious order (which such gnostics and mystery cult initiates always understood as the essence of Solomon's Temple). In the minds of occultists, Solomon does not represent the man and monotheist of the Old Testament, but rather "Sol-Amon."
This translation of Solomon reverts the king into a sorcerer overseeing a cult of the Sun and Moon, who became a necromancing controller of demons as outlined in the Apocryphal 'Testament of Solomon' so cherished by Rosicrucians, and occultists across the ages.
Contemporary Freemason (and author of The Secrets of Solomon’s Temple) Kevin Gest writes of the origins of Solomon’s name as a metaphor for the cult of the Sun and Moon (or light and darkness) stating: “Because of its special features, the temple became known as the ‘Temple of Sol and Amon’. Sol meaning Sun, Amon meaning Moon. After his death Jedidiah was referred to as the man who built the Sol and Amon Temple, which became corrupted over time to Sol-amon and then to Solomon.”
It must be recalled that the cult of the sun and moon was a key attribute of Rosicrucian cosmology and all Manichean sects which presume evil and darkness to be infused with ontological power counterbalancing the forces of good and light requiring occult adherents of Rosicrucianism to come to the unfortunate conclusion that evil is a necessary component for the good, meaning evil is in a sense the cause of good.
The coincidence of moral opposites in this sick worldview quickly leads its disciple into a belief that enlightenment can only be achieved by infusing moral opposites together in a bid for a perverse Tao of creative destruction.
The presence of BOTH the Hashashin character carrying the torch as well as the rapper Snoop Dog's decision to wear the Baphomet pendant around his neck at the Olympics where he was also invited to carry the torch should give any thinking person pause.
Like the Templars, the Hashashin order had an exoteric 'public' muslim face and a pagan esoteric face, and like the Templars, the Hashashin were finally purged by authentic muslim leaders who were sick of being trapped in forever wars by these occultists. After the purge of Hashashins, their order was rebranded and is today most actively known as the Order of Ismailis under the Aga Khan.
The Order of Malta
While Bernard de Clairvaux used the Cistercine Order (an extreme group of Benedictines) to place two popes on the throne of the Vatican, organized the Crusades, and establish a gnostic paramilitary order, another Benedictine strategist named Gerard Sasso (1040-1120 AD) had founded a sister order just a few years earlier dubbed the Knights Hospitaler (aka: The Order of St. John of Jerusalem).
Founded officially in 1099, just as the first Crusade had ended, Sasso’s order eventually took the name The Sovereign Order of Malta when their headquarters were positioned on the Isle of Malta. Sasso was a Grand Master based on the City State of Amalfi, which at the start of the Crusades was still more dominant than their rival Venice.
The City State of Amalfi had won its sovereignty from the Byzantium empire in 839 AD and became the driving force of maritime commerce, while also becoming a center of mystery cults. From 834 until the end of the third crusade, Amalfi was also owner of the infamous Isle of Capri. Additionally, it was Amalfi’s leading merchants that arranged entry into the Holy Land through negotiations with a feeble minded Caliph as-Zahir who in 1023 gave them permission to rebuild the Church of the Holy Sepulcre of St. John.
The logo of the ‘Maltese Cross’ associated with this rival order to the Knights Templar thus originates from the City Crest of Amalfi (see image), and it was Benedictine ultramontanists who founded both orders at the same time, and for the same reasons.
While the Templars found themselves purged in 312-316 AD, having grown too large, and unwieldy for the comfort of their controllers, many of the Templar assets were swiftly given over to the Knights Hospitaler/Malta while other branches of the Templars simply went underground.
The Strategic Importance of Archangel Michael as New Mithra
The patron saint for the templars was the “celestial warrior” Archangel/Saint Michael, whose cult had been established in 494 AD by Pope Gelasius and Bishop Sipontum in Apulia.
As the story goes, in 493, the Bishop of Sipontum received three visions of the Archangel demanding that the church leader go into an obscure cave and transform a Mithraeum into a new holy site which became the Basilica at Monte Gargano in Puglien on the Adriatic.
According to the apocryphal tale, in 490, a hunter near the Mithraeum was hunting for a bull, as the Bull was emerging out of a cave, the Archangel Michael magically appeared causing the arrow to strike the hunter… converting him to Christianity.
After this cavern incident, the Mithraeum and new monastery of San Michael at Monte Gargano became the representative of the new warrior cult with Michael depicted as a heavenly demiurge draped in armor killing a dragon-figure representing Satan instead of a bull.
Another incarnation for Saint Michael became Saint George famously rendered as a knight killing a dragon which gave rise to the British Empire’s Order of St. Michael and St. George (est. 1818) for elite knights of the empire… such as Sir Henry Kissinger.
The shrine at Monte Gargano became a pilgrimage site for Gnostics for centuries with Bernard de Clairvaux, Thomas Aquinas (who authored the legal arguments justifying the Crusades for Pope Innocent III) and Francis of Assisi all making the sacred journey to the Mithraic shrine.
In the 6th century the Lombards, formerly pagan Odin worshipping warriors, spread the Cult of Michael westward and embraced it as the closest embodiment to Odin
Within the first several centuries of its founding, seven major Monastaries dedicated to St. Michael were constructed along a solar path (of the sun’s position during Summer Solstice) stretching from the tip of Ireland to Jerusalem dubbed ‘The Sword of Saint Michael’, or ‘The Apollo/St Michael Axis’.
One interesting Russian orthodox website has the following to say about this construction:
“According to religious teachings, the Archangel Michael will descend to earth with a sword and pass this way for the great battle on the site of the ancient city of Megiddo (Armageddon) in northern Israel.”
The Mithraic Rites and Masonry
Among its various rites, the Mithraic Mysteries acted as a precursor to later developments of freemasonry featuring seven degrees of initiation. According to An Encyclopedia of Archetypal Symbolism, “Ascension was symbolized by seven grades of initiation, each stage governed by a ‘plant’: Raven (Mercury); Bride (Venus); Soldier (Mars); Lion (Jupiter); Persian (the moon); Courier of the Sun (the sun); and Father (Saturn). The ultimate goal was to transcend all levels of the cosmos and to attain the level of the fixed stars, or aeternitas.”
The fact that the seventh gate is defined by Saturn is indicative of the dark underpinnings to the Mithraic rites -- as Saturn was known as the God that devoured his children after deceitfully murdering his own father by castration (under Gaia’s influence) and is recognized as a source of evil by many cultures. Saturn (sometimes called Chronos or Ahriman in Persia) is commonly attributed to the figure of Satan, and possibly the true source of Freud’s theory of the Oedipal Complex.
While great secrecy was maintained, it is known that this sect conducted their rites to the Sun God Mithras in underground crypts (known as mithraeum), and featured the castration of a bull, and a birth-death ceremony of initiates not unlike the practices of modern secret societies like the Skull and Bones or Scottish Rite. A sacred sacrament, likely involving a near death experience of higher initiates, and possibly a hallucinogenic cocktail imply that some form of Eleusinian mystery ceremony had been incorporated into the Mithra cult.
Grand Master of the Scottish Rite, and Confederate General Albert Pike stated of the rites in his Morals and Dogma:
“The Mithraic Mysteries were celebrated in caves, where gates were marked at the four equinoctial and solstitial points of the Zodiac; and the seven planetary spheres were represented, which souls needs must traverse in descending from the heaven of the fixed stars to the elements that envelop the earth; and seven gates were marked, one for each planet, through which they pass, in descending or returning.”
Mithra, sometimes dubbed ‘Sol Invectus’ (the invincible sun) was a Zoroastrian Sun God imported into Persia from India and then into Rome under the reign of Pompeii in 63 BCE. In other ancient cultures, the god Mithras took the form of names like Horus, Marduk and Apollo.
However, the particular form of the Mithra cult as it appeared after the murder of Julius Caesar in 44 BC, has distinct features unknown in its previous Persian or Indian incarnations. Unlike the earlier Persian, Phrygian, or Indian variants, the Roman cult of Mithra maintained supremacy in heaven by periodically castrating a bull figure which represented Mithra’s rival Ahura.
Various theories have circulated attempting to explain the meaning of Mithra’s slaying of the bull (portrayed on hundreds of Mithraic temples), ranging from the ending of the age of taurus (around 2200 BC), to the victory of good over evil. While both of these explanations may have a touch of truth, as occult myths tend to have multiple meanings, a body of scholars have pointed out that the symbolic meaning of the portrayal of Mithra’s sacrifice of the bull actually points to the murder of Julius Caesar who represented himself as a bull (featured on Roman coins).
Additionally, evidence of human sacrifice in Roman Mithraeum was also not known in eastern pre-Roman Mithraic ceremonies.
Over the next centuries, the Cult of Mithra and the new Christian movement would compete- with Nero becoming the first Emperor to be (officially) initiated into the Mithraic mysteries as part of his broader program to wipe out the early Christians.
The Compromise of the Council of Nicaea (325 AD)
Christianity found major victories with Constantine’s edict of toleration in 312 AD, and the 325 AD Council of Nicaea which created a central governing agency for Christianity which had formerly been a highly decentralized and infiltrated movement with many gnostic pseudo Christian cults like that created by Simon the Magus which sought to destroy the new movement from within.
(Note: For an invaluable lesson into the principled battles shaping the early church and the countless mystery cults infiltrating Christianity, see: St Irenaeus of Lyon’s Against Heresies.)
While the political power gained by the Council of Nicaea ensured Christianity’s survival, many unfortunate compromises were made by early Church leaders, who agreed to infuse already existent Pagan rites such as the establishment of sacred meals (called Sacraments). The creation of Popes based in the Vatican dubbed ‘Holy Fathers’, and edicts of celibacy for Hierophants, and a myriad of other rites were infused into Church practice which were not found anywhere in the gospels.
The compromises were certainly painful, but a demonstration in real politick, arguably necessary for the establishment of the Nicene Creed as a form of universal pre-amble upon which the Church would now be based. Just as the American constitutional convention could be seen as an assortment of compromises with evil (giving slaves only 3/5 the status of citizens for example), it was a victory in establishing a federal nation for the first time centered around a constitution with a moral pre-amble. So too, must the convention of 325 be seen.
The Nicene Creed stipulated that the central doctrine of Christianity would be the faith that all mankind were made in the living image of God (Imago Viva Dei) and had the mandate to participate in creation (Capax Dei). This doctrine was a major departure from the norms of all pagan cults which tended to reduce humanity to the status of other beasts under various types of nature worship rituals. The Christian doctrine generally, and the Nicene creed specifically, placed humanity on a divine pedestal as steward of nature instead with many higher moral responsibilities to both be fruitful and multiply.
Anything positive that Christianity generated across the last two millennia was directly related to the active principles outlined in the Nicene Creed and every successful win against the western oligarchy carried out by Christians during the past two millennia is due entirely to those principles. This non-negotiable concept of a single Creator with a moral mandate on all of his children to walk and integrate the devotion of Jesus into their essence while alive has been the 'secret sauce' that has given every movement against feudal oligarchism the edge it needed to lift humankind up to a better way and reduce the influence of the pagan mystery cults.
This is what the French Revolution, followed by Napoleon sought to destroy and this is what the occultists controlling Paris, NATO and the western empire today are desperate to ensure never emerges to life again.
This presentation was adapted from Matt's recent interview with Del BigTree's HighWire. That interview can be viewed here