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[Solve et Coagula]

Secret Societies & Occult Politics
Dream of the Sages

By Robert Richardson

To students of history, religion, or the occult, a pattern of individual names and esoteric movements appears on the canvas of time like a sudden flash of light, then just as quickly vanishes. A group of disparate people – sometimes famous, sometimes obscure, sometimes solitary, sometimes united, but always engaged in some amorphous activity – spontaneously surfaces. Just as suddenly their traces evaporate, their true purpose and the scope of their actions never comprehended. Understanding their reality seems to be beyond our grasp. Further study may grudgingly yield information – but it is inconclusive, incomplete, perplexing. Their nature and purpose seems to forever remain a mystery. The search for a solution only leads to speculations, not genuine answers.

For us to intellectually apprehend how and why esoteric groups work and influence the world requires a different type of thinking, a thought process that sees these organisations and their activities as an ebb and flow of an ideal. Most of us have approached the inquiry into the nature of how esoteric groups actually work and influence history by studying the limited and grossly distorted documentation available about them, like an investment analyst abstractly examining from afar the sterile financial structure of a multi-national corporation. But for us to understand the nature of historical esoteric groups, we should first attempt to find their underlying purpose. If we approach their study through that avenue, we may be able to understand why and how they work to achieve their purposes.

All of the positive esoterically tinged movements that have influenced history share one common characteristic. They seek to positively impact and alter, in a transformational way, the entire structure and direction of society. Their impetus is to interject into day to day living a transcendent awareness and communion with the spiritual element of life, to give a spiritual orientation and focus to the material activities of day to day living – to, in effect, spiritualise the material. The reason for this direction is to correctly align man with the necessary spiritual path to fulfill his spiritual destiny. Their motives are highly altruistic, despite the wildly imaginative suspicions and innuendoes of many writers and even some church leaders. The methods employed by many powerful Western spiritual movements are always entirely in keeping with these goals.

The best known of these movements have manifested at key transitional points in Western history. The Rosicrucian movement on continental Europe. The less obvious but equally influential hermetic academies in Renaissance Italy and England. The Cathars in southern France. The Essenes at the dawn of the Christian era. And the best known, and by far the most misunderstood, of these groups, the Order of the Poor Knights of Christ and The Temple of Solomon – The Knights Templar. Each of these groups formed, existed, and survived a certain duration to accomplish a particular mission, then vanished. Through their actions, each of them positively influenced society as we know it today.

Historians and spiritual writers have expended a great deal of ink unsuccessfully trying to explain what these groups were about and what they believed. Each of these groups encountered considerable opposition and conflict and, seemingly, was superseded by rival groups. History is invariably altered by the victors to suit their goals and needs. Most of the existing works about esoteric groups have been based on deliberately distorted records left by the supposed victors. For example, as has been very aptly stated, attempting to draw an accurate picture of the activities of the Knights Templar by studying the records of the Inquisition is like trying to get an accurate picture of the activities of the wartime French resistance solely by studying the records of the Gestapo.1

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