One of the most persuasive testimonials we
found to the existence and activities of the Prieuré de Sion dated from
the late nineteenth century. The testimonial in question is well known –
but it is not recognized as a testimonial. On the contrary it has always
been associated with more sinister things. It has played a notorious role
in recent history and still tends to arouse such violent emotions, bitter
antagonisms and gruesome memories that most writers are happy to dismiss
it out of hand. To the extent that this testimonial has contributed
significantly to human prejudice and suffering, such a reaction is
perfectly understandable. But if the testimonial has been criminally
misused, our researches convinced us that it has also been seriously
misunderstood.
The role of Rasputin at the Court of Nicholas and Alexandra of Russia is
more or less generally known. It is not generally known, however, that
there were influential, even powerful esoteric enclaves at the Russian
court long before Rasputin. During the 1890s and 1900 one such enclave
formed itself around an individual known as Monsieur Philippe, and around
his mentor, who made periodic visits to the imperial court at Petersburg.
And Monsieur Philippe’s mentor was none other than the man called Papus
(See Note) – the French esotericist associated with Jules Doinel (founder
of the neo-Cathar church in the Languedoc), Péladan (who claimed to have
discovered Jesus’s tomb) Emma Calvé (eminent opera singer and supposed
lover of the Priest of Rennes le Chateau Béringer Saunière) and Claude
Debussy (Composer and supposed Grand Master of the Prieuré de Sion). In a
word the ‘French occult revival’ of the late nineteenth century had not
only spread to Petersburg. Its representatives also enjoyed the privileged
status of personal confidants to the czar and czarina.
However, the esoteric enclave of Papus and Monsieur Philippe was actively
opposed by certain other powerful interests – the Grand Duchess Elizabeth,
for example, who was intent on installing her own favourites in proximity
to the imperial throne. One of the grand duchess’s favourites was a rather
contemptible individual known to posterity under the pseudonym of Sergei
Nilus. Sometime around 1903 Nilus presented a highly controversial
document to the czar - a document that supposedly bore witness to a
dangerous conspiracy. But if Nilus expected the czar’s gratitude for his
disclosure, he must have been grievously disappointed. The czar declared
the document to be an outrageous fabrication, and ordered all copies of it
to be destroyed. And Nilus was banished from the court in disgrace.
Of course the document - or at any rate, a copy of it – survived. In 1903
it was serialised in a newspaper but failed to attract any interest. In
1905 it was published again – this time as an appendix to a book by a
distinguished mystical philosopher, Vladimir Soloviov. At this point it
began to attract attention. In the years that followed it became one of
the single most infamous documents of the twentieth century.
The document in question was a tract, or, more strictly speaking, a
purported social and political programme. It has appeared under a variety
of differing titles, most common of which is the ‘Protocols of the Elders
of Sion’. The Protocols allegedly issued from specifically Jewish sources.
And for a great many anti-Semites at the time they were convincing proof
of an ‘international Jewish conspiracy’. In 1919, for example, they were
distributed to the troops of the White Russian Army - and these troops,
during the next two years, massacred some 60000 Jews who were held
responsible for the 1917 Revolution. By 1919 the Protocols were also being
circulated by Alfred Rosenberg, later the chief racial theoretician and
propagandist for the National Socialist Party in Germany. In Mein Kampf
Hitler used the Protocols to fuel his own fanatical prejudices, and it is
said to have believed unquestioningly in their authenticity. In England
the Protocols were immediately accorded credence by the Morning Post. Even
The Times, in 1921, took them seriously and only later admitted its error.
Experts today concur - and rightly so, we concluded - that the Protocols,
at least in their present form, are a vicious and insidious forgery.
Nevertheless, they are still being circulated – in Latin America, in
Spain, even in Britain - as anti-Semitic propaganda.
The Protocols propound in outline a blueprint for nothing less than total
world domination. On first reading they would seem to be Machiavellian
programme – kind of inter-office memo, so to speak. For a group of
individuals determined to impose a New World Order, with themselves as
supreme despots. The text advocates a many-tentacled hydra-headed
conspiracy dedicated to disorder and anarchy, to toppling certain existing
régimes, infiltrating Freemasonry and other such organizations, and
eventually seizing absolute control of the Western World’s social,
political and economic institutions explicitly that they ‘stage-managed’
whole peoples ‘according to a political plan which no one has so much as
guessed at in the course of many centuries.
To a modern reader the Protocols might seem to have been devised by some
fictitious organization like SPECTRE – James Bond’s adversary in Ian
Fleming’s novels. When they were published, however, the Protocols were
alleged to have been composed at an International Judaic Congress that
convened in Basle in 1897. This allegation has long since been disproved.
The earliest copies of the Protocols, for example, are known to have been
originally written in French – and the 1897 Congress in Basle did not
include a single French delegate. Moreover, a copy of the Protocols is
known to have been in circulation as early as 1884 – a full thirteen years
before the Basle conference met. The 1884 copy of the Protocols surfaced
in the hands of a member of a Masonic lodge – the same lodge of which
Papus (See note) was a member and subsequently Grand Master. Moreover, it
was the same lodge that the tradition of Ormus had first appeared – the
legendary Egyptian sage who amalgamated pagan and Christian mysteries and
founded the Rose-Croix.
Modern scholars have established in fact that the Protocols, in their
published form, are based at least in part on a satirical work written and
printed in Geneva in 1864. The work was composed and printed as an attack
on Napoleon III by a man named Maurice Joly, who was subsequently
imprisoned. Joly is said to have been a member of the Rose-Croix order.
Whether this is true or not, he was a friend of Victor Hugo, and Hugo, who
shared Joly’s antipathy to Napoleon III, was a member of a Rose-Croix
order.
It can thus be proved conclusively that the Protocols did not issue from
the Judaic Congress at Basle in 1897. That being so, the obvious question
is whence they did issue. Modern scholars have dismissed them as total
forgery, a wholly spurious document concocted by anti-Semitic interests
intent on discrediting Judaism. And yet the Protocols themselves argue
strongly against such a conclusion. They contain, for example, a number of
enigmatic references – references that are clearly not Judaic. But these
references are so clearly not Judaic that they cannot plausibly have been
fabricated by a forger either. No anti-Semitic forger with even a modicum
of intelligence would possibly have concocted such references in order to
discredit Judaism. For no one would have believed these references to be
of Judaic origin.
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Thus, for instance, the text of the Protocols
ends with a single statement. ‘Signed by the representatives of Sion of
the 33rd Degree.
Why would an anti-Semitic forger have made up such a statement? Why would
he not have attempted to incriminate all Jews rather than just a few – the
few who constitute ‘the representatives of Sion of 33rd Degree’? Why would
he not declare that the document was signed by, say, the representatives
of the International Judaic Congress? In fact, the ‘representatives of the
Sion of the 33rd Degree’ would hardly refer to Judaism at all, or to any
‘international Jewish conspiracy’. If anything, it would seem to refer to
something specifically Masonic. And the 33rd Degree in Freemasonry is that
of the so-called ‘Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite’ which emerges
mysteriously out of French Freemasonry in the mid eighteenth century.
The Protocols contain other even more flagrant anomalies. The text speaks
repeatedly, for example, of the advent of the ‘Masonic Kingdom’ and of a
‘King of the blood of Sion’. It asserts that the future king will be of
the ‘dynastic roots of King David’. It affirms that the ‘King of the Jews
will be the real Pope’ and ‘the patriarch of an international church’. And
it concludes in a most cryptic fashion, ‘Certain members of the seed of
David will prepare the kings and their heirs… Only the King and the three
who stood sponsor for him will know what is coming’.
As an expression of Judaic thought, real or fabricated, such statements
are blatantly absurd. Since Biblical times no king has figured in Judaic
tradition, and the very principle of kingship has become utterly
irrelevant. The concept of a king would have been meaningless to Jews of
1897 as it would to the Jews of today: no forger can have been in
ignorance of this fact. Indeed the references quoted would appear to be
more Christian than Judaic. For the last two millennia the only ‘King of
the Jews’ has been Jesus himself - and Jesus, according to the Gospels,
was of the ‘dynastic roots of David’. If one is fabricating a document and
ascribing it to a ‘Jewish Conspiracy’, why include such patently Christian
echoes.
Why speak of so specifically and uniquely Christian a concept as a pope?
Why speak of an ‘international church’ rather than an international
synagogue or an international temple? And why include the enigmatic
allusion to ‘the King and the three who stood sponsor’? – which is less
suggestive of Judaism and Christianity than it is of the secret societies
of Johann Valentin Andrea and Charles Nodier? If the Protocols issued
wholly from a propagandist’s anti-Semitic imagination, it is difficult to
imagine a propagandist so inept, or so ignorant and uninformed.
On the basis of prolonged and systematic research, we reached the
conclusions about the ‘Protocols of the elders of Sion’. They are as
follows:
1. There was an original text on which the published version of the
Protocols was based. This original text was not a forgery. On the contrary
it was authentic. But it had nothing whatsoever to do with Judaism or an
‘International Jewish conspiracy’. It issued rather from some Masonic
organization or Masonically oriented secret society which incorporated the
‘Sion’.
2. The original text on which the published version of the Protocols was
based need not have been provocative or inflammatory in it language. But
it may well have included a programme for gaining power, for infiltrating
Freemasonry, for controlling social, political and economic institutions.
Such a programme would have been perfectly in keeping with the secret
societies of the Renaissance, as well as with the Compagne du
Saint-Sacrement and the institutions of Andrea and Nodier.
3. The original text on which the published version of the Protocols was
based fell into the hands of Sergei Nilus. Nilus did not at first intend
it to discredit Judaism. On the contrary, he brought it to the czar with
the intention of discrediting the esoteric enclave at the imperial court –
the enclave of Papus, Monsieur Philippe and others who were members of the
secret society in question. Before doing so, he almost certainly doctored
the language, rendering it more venomous and inflammatory than it
initially was. They had failed in their primary objective of compromising
Papus and Monsieur Philippe. But they might still serve a secondary
purpose - that of fostering anti-Semitism. Although Nilus’s chief targets
had been Papus and Monsieur Philippe, he was hostile to Judaism as well
4. The published version of the Protocols is not, therefore, a totally
fabricated text. It is rather a radically altered text. But despite the
alterations certain vestiges of the original text can be discerned – as in
a palimpsest, or as in passages in the Bible. These vestiges – which
referred to king, a pope, an international church, and to Sion – probably
meant little or nothing to Nilus. He certainly would not invented them
himself. But if they were already there, he would have no reason, given
his ignorance, to excise them. And while such vestiges might have been
irrelevant to Judaism, they might have been extremely relevant to a secret
society. As we learned subsequently, they were – and still are – of
paramount importance to the Prieuré de Sion.
Note
Papus: Papus was born in Spain on July 13th 1865. In 1887 he joined the
Theosophical Association but in 1888 left to found his own group – on
Martinist Principles. In the
same year he was one of the founding members of the Ordre Kabbalistic de
la Rose-Croix along with Péladan and Stanislas de Guaïta. In 1889,
together with these two and Villiers de l’Isle-Adam he founded the review
L’Initiation. In 1891 a ‘supreme council’ of the Martinist Order was
formed in Paris with Papus as Grand Master. At about this time Papus
helped Doinel found the Gnostic Catholic Church. In 1895 Doinel withdrew,
leaving the church in the care of a patriarch. Doinel then went to
Carcassonne. This same year Papus became a member of the Order of the
Golden Dawn, in the Paris lodge Ahathoor. During the 1890s Papus was a
friend of Emma Calve. In 1899 one of his close friends, Philippe de Lyon,
went to Russia and established a Martinist lodge at the Imperial court. In
1900 Papus himself went to Petersburg, where he became a confident of the
czar and czarina. He visited Russia on at least three occasions, the last
being 1906. During this time he made the acquaintance of Rasputin.
Papus later became Grand Master in France of the Ordo Templi Orientis and
the lodge of Memphis and Misraim. He died October 25th, 1916 |