William Cooper

Cooper says the mystery religion has one hidden god: Lucifer, the fallen angel of light, whom the initiates worship as the intellect and "the true good God"^[1]. The heart of the dogma is Eden reversed. An "unjust and vindictive" God held man prisoner in the garden, and Lucifer, through his agent Satan the serpent, freed him with the gift of intellect, promising that man will become God^[2]. Everything else in the pantheon is a mask for this. The sun was first the symbol of the unseen Creator, then of the intellect, and so of Lucifer^[3]. Osiris is the sun and the doctrine, Isis the moon and the church, and Horus the body of perfected initiates^[4]. Baal, Nimrod, Tammuz, Mithra, Apollo, Brahma, Odin and Hu are "the same gods worshipped under many different names"^[5]. Masonry calls this god the Great Architect of the Universe, a "concealed god who creates nothing". Cooper reads that phrase as Lucifer, god of the material world^[6]. The mysteries' god is bipolar and androgynous, good and evil in one^[7]. The goal of the tier below is to install Lucifer "incarnated in a human body" on the throne of the world, as the capstone of the pyramid^[8]. Cooper himself is a Christian who follows "simply and only the words of Christ". He rejects the initiates' claim that Christ and Lucifer are the same being^[9].

Below Lucifer, Cooper places the small body of fully illumined adepts at the top of every order's pyramid. They are the only ones who know that "the only secret is how to control those on the bottom"^[10]. They call themselves the guardians of the secrets of the ages, the illumined and "the only truly mature minds"^[11]. Cooper and his sources give them several names: a council of wise men or council of elders^[12], a council of nine hidden supervisors headed by Rex Mundi^[13], the Hidden Masters who are "always nine" (Maxwell)^[14], the Custodians of the Plan^[15], and the occult initiates who have run the Great Plan since the 12th century^[16]. In the coming order they will "remain untouched" behind a charismatic religious-political figurehead, whom the public can hate and topple while presidents act as "messenger boys"^[17]. Their program is the Great Work / Great Plan / New World Order: a one-world totalitarian socialist state and one-world religion, "benevolent despotism", to be completed by 1999–2000^[18].

Cooper also ties this level to ruling bloodlines. Rome "was really ruled by families", and so will the New World Order be^[19]. A secret society (the Priory of Sion, though Cooper does not name it there) protects a family claiming the divine right to rule^[19]. "The same people also rule this country, folks. They're all related"^[19]. Whoever rules the New World Order will claim descent from the House of David, the Grail bloodline^[20]. Through CAJI's genealogist "John Galt", Cooper traces George H. W. Bush from William the Lion and the Templar banker Robert de Ros, and says that "all, and I mean all without exception" of the U.S. political elite are related to each other and to the royal families of Europe^[21]. Maxwell and Hilder, Cooper's television guests, describe the old European banking dynasties, the Rothschilds and Romanovs with the Vatican, being replaced by the American "new world fraternal order"^[22]. The Rockefellers and "the banking families" fund both parties^[23].

The mystery schools and the Vatican are two factions of this level. They are "united in the efforts to bring about world government. The only point of contention is who is going to rule": a council of elders behind a puppet, or the pope alone^[24].

This tier is the priesthood proper: the "vast army of initiates" of the mystery schools^[25]. Cooper says it has existed under a succession of names since the first priest. He names the Mystery Schools, Mystery Babylon, the Invisible College, the guardians of the secrets of the ages, and today the Order of the Quest^[26]. In one list he gives its modern forms: the Order of the Quest, Freemasonry, the Ancient Order of the Rose and Cross, the Knights Templar, the Knights of Malta, the Order of St. John, the Priory of Sion, the Thule Society, Skull and Bones, the Russell Trust, the Jason Society, Scroll and Key and the Illuminati. "They are all one and the same", together with international socialism and communism^[27]. Clymer's Rose Cross text, read by Cooper as an admission from inside, says the Rose Cross, Freemasonry, the Eastern Star, the Illuminati, the Templars, Malta, Skull and Bones and the Mormon Church are one organization^[28]. The chain Cooper traces runs as follows. Nimrod's college of sun priests in Babylon was scattered and became the Egyptian priesthood and Osirian mysteries^[29]. From Egypt the initiates Pythagoras, Plato, Thales and Democritus carried the plan to Greece^[30]. The mysteries continued through Eleusis, Mithraism, Gnosticism, the Kabbalah and the Druids^[31]. In Islam the Shia secret societies and the Cairo "abode of learning" (House of Wisdom) produced the Assassins and later the Roshaniya^[32]. Through the Crusades the Templars and Hospitallers were initiated and "carried the guardians of the secrets" to Europe. "Everything that's happening today can be traced right to the door of the Knights Templar"^[33]. From the Templars came Freemasonry (14th century; public 1717), the Rosicrucians, the Alumbrados and Jesuits, and the Bavarian Illuminati (1 May 1776, Weishaupt). In the 19th century Pike and Mazzini "set up the core of the Illuminati within Freemasonry"^[34]. In the Americas a parallel lineage of feathered-serpent priesthoods, medicine societies and initiate kings shows the same mysteries (Hall)^[35].

Cooper's internal rule: "at the highest level, we are of one mind". The order "manifest[s] under many different names ... and sometimes even seem[s] to oppose ourselves" (after Weishaupt)^[36].

Cooper's operational tier is Freemasonry, "the one organization that needs to be dealt with". Its members "infiltrated the church and the educational field" and control both^[37], and it has "controlled [the United States] since this country was conceived"^[38]. He treats it as the modern body of the mystery school. "Freemasonry as an institution, is Isis, the mother of mysteries", and every Master Mason is a "widow's son", a Horus sworn to overthrow Christianity^[39]. Its degrees are a pyramid. The Blue Lodge Mason "really knows nothing"^[40]. The truth of the object of worship is withheld until the 30th degree. The 33rd, "for no one can rise higher than the sun", is given only for work on the Great Work^[41]. The Scottish Rite, with its House of the Temple "13 blocks from the White House", "now controls world Freemasonry"^[42]. Around the lodge Cooper places its feeder and front bodies: Skull and Bones, the Mormon Church ("the same rites ... the same goal")^[43], the New Age movement and Lucis Trust, the Stelle Group, the KKK, B'nai B'rith and the ADL (all attributed to Pike's rite), the World Council of Churches, the Rose Cross offshoots, and the British-Israel and Christian Identity movements that "stem directly from the mysteries"^[44]. Guest "William Morgan", a CAJI infiltrator who reached the 32nd degree, describes the lodge from inside^[45].

Below the orders sit the visible institutions that Cooper says the initiates have captured or created. The Roman Catholic Church is the Roman Empire renamed: "the Roman Empire never fell. It just became the Catholic Church", with the emperor now called pope^[46]. It practises "the corrupted worship of Mystery Babylon" and is the rival faction for world rule^[47]. The United States was created by the mystery schools to topple the monarchs and to be "the catalyst" of the New World Order^[48]. Its government is now permeated at every level by Masons, its intelligence services work behind "the veil of national security", and its money is issued by the privately owned Federal Reserve^[49]. The United Nations is "godless", has an Illuminati "pagan temple" at its heart, and its Charter "shall prevail" over the Constitution^[50]. Communism, socialism and National Socialism are the dialectic's controlled poles: "Communism and the Mysteries are the same entity"^[51]. They were created by the mysteries, which "control both sides of each conflict"^[52]. Media, Hollywood, universities and foundations mould opinion and education^[53].

Cooper's presidents, dictators, ideologues and "patriot" leaders are operatives or window dressing, not rulers. "The real leaders will remain untouched ... Bill Clinton is just a messenger boy"^[54]. Some are initiated servants of the plan (Bush, "born again" in the Skull and Bones coffin)^[55]. Some are raised by the lodges and then turn on them (Hitler and Stalin)^[56]. Some are "hack writers" (Marx and Engels)^[57]. Some are Masonic "window dressing"^[38]. And some are controlled opposition inside the Patriot movement, who tell people their government is no good so they will destroy it themselves: Tom Valentine, the Liberty Lobby, Bo Gritz^[58]. Cooper counts the Founding Fathers here as well, as initiates of the same mystery religion, though he argues their "great experiment" differed from the Anglo-Aryan faction's plan^[59].

At the bottom are "the profane", everyone not initiated. The adepts see them as "cattle to be herded and occasionally to be led to the slaughter"^[25], "beasts of burden and stakes on the table by choice and consent" (from Behold a Pale Horse)^[60], and "sheeple"^[61]. They receive only the exoteric meaning. They are fleeced by the shepherd's rod and crook, entertained with bread and circuses, frightened into surrendering rights, and destined for slavery, and for extermination if they refuse the new religion^[62]. The mob is one of the three enemies of the Great Work, with church and state^[39]. Cooper insists that the Jews, as a people, belong here as used scapegoats, not masters^[63].

Against the structure Cooper sets God, Christ, the Constitution and the family: "Allegiance: God and Jesus Christ first, the Constitution second, family third; the family is the basic unit of civilization. Period"^[64]. The targets the mystery schools have sworn to destroy are church, state and mob: Christianity above all, then the nation-states, then the people^[65]. He presents himself as the messenger and "the enemy of Mystery Babylon"^[66]. His Citizens Agency for Joint Intelligence infiltrates the lodges^[67], and he names his allies and sources: Jordan Maxwell, "William Morgan", A. Ralph Epperson, Texe Marrs, John J. Robinson and the "listeners of the Hour of the Time", whom he calls "the only illumined, truly illumined people in this world"^[60]. The people are "the Joker in the deck" and can decide "that neither one of them will rule"^[68].