MAGONIA REVIEW: secret societies

Showing posts with label secret societies. Show all posts

23 August 2020

ROSICRUCIAN AMERICA

Steven Sora. Rosicrucian America - How a Secret Society Influenced the Destiny of a Nation. Destiny Books, 2019.

It is mid-August 2020 as I complete this review. I've been thinking a lot about America in these past few months. Here in the UK we get news from there every day, and it's usually not good. These are strange times, with pandemic lockdowns, rising unemployment, economic hardship, violent crime and social unrest in many places, but nowhere more so than the most prosperous nation on earth, the United States of America.
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AN EVERYDAY STORY OF COUNTRY FOLK

Helen J. Nicholson, The Everyday Life of the Templars: The Knights Templar at Home. Fonthill, 2017.

Full marks to whoever came up with the title, which gives colour and promise to what is a fairly arid academic study of the routine and domestic side of the Knights Templar. Helen Nicholson is a professor of history, currently at Cardiff University, who since 2003 has been working her way through the records made by Edward I’s officials during the round-up of Templars in England, Ireland and Scotland and its aftermath.
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SECRETS AND LIES

Mark A. Lause. A Secret Society History of the Civil War. University of Illinois Press, 2011

The influence of Freemasonry on American Independence is fairly well-known (e.g. from Baigent and Leigh, The Temple and the Lodge, which formed the basis for Dan Brown’s latest novel), but not much has been published, at least in Britain, about the involvement of secret societies in the American Civil War.
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THE EAST IS RED

Andrei Znamenski. Red Shambhala: Magic, Prophecy and Geopolitics in the Heart of Asia. Quest Books/Theosophical Publishing House, 2011.

This is a book which overturns many common perceptions about the world and politics, it is a revelation of a topsy-turvey world in which Tibetan Buddhist jihadists meet mystical Communists and Russo-American mystics in the pursuit of the dream of a perfect society peopled by new model human beings.
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SECRETS, SHRINES AND SAUCERS

Joel Levy. The Secret Societies Bible. Godsfield Books, 2010.

Anthony J. Taylor. The Sacred Sites Bible. Godsfield Books, 2010.

William J. Birnes. Aliens in America. Adams Media, 2010.

The first two titles, although weighing in at 400 pages each, are compact but comprehensive guidebooks to their topics. Secret Societies divides its subject into two sections; firstly religious, mystical and occult, and then rather pointedly, political and criminal. Both sections are arranged roughly chronologically, from the Templars to Opus Dei and from the Assassins to the triads and the mafia.

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UFOs: WHAT THE HELL'S GOING ON?

Nick Redfern. Final Events and the Secret Government Group on Demonic UFOs and the Afterlife. Anomalist Books, 2010.

Nick Redfern meets the whistle blowers yet again. This time they are from the self styled 'Collins Elite' who, since the 1940s, have been combating the nasty old demons behind the UFOs unleashed by the magical workings of Jack Parsons, the rocket scientist and disciple of Aleister Crowley.
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