The Parliament of World Religions would be a major victory for the Theosophists, who worked closely with leading esoteric societies such as the Scottish Rite Freemasons, Swedenborgians, Mormons and Unitarians in establishing a convention at the end of the Chicago World Fair of 1893.
The Chair of both the Chicago Columbian Fair and the World Parliament of Religions was a Swedenborgian mystic named Charles Bonney (1831-1903), Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Illinois. The Swedenborgian dimension to this story is additionally useful to consider.
Emanuel Swedenborg: Rosicrucian Precursor to Blavatsky’s Theosophists
Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) was the first modern guru of the west to coin the term ‘Theosophy’ and beginning in London in 1783, a network of Theosophy Society Lodges were set up to spread Swedenborg’s doctrine throughout the Anglo-American world.
Paralleling the later career of Madame Helena Blavatksy, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) was born of an affluent aristocratic house, was advisor to several monarchs and created a vast cosmology of angelic beings, channelling of spirits, astral projections, Kaballism and held as his goal the unification of “spirit and science” in the form of a radical sensual perversion of spirituality.
As researcher Marsha Keith Schuchard demonstrates in her essay Jacobite and Visionary: the Masonic Journey of Emanuel Swedenborg, the Swedish mystic was also Rosicrucian Freemason, having been initiated into the London Grand Lodge in 1710.
Moving through corridors of power, Schuchard also demonstrates that Swedenborg acted as a spy, organized a branch of the Rosicrucian Invisible College in Sweden, applied the cypher and channelling techniques of English Rosicrucian spy John Dee (embedded in his allegorical channellings) and set the groundwork for an elaborate new system of Freemasonic initiation ceremonies through the Swedenborgian Rite.
Like the Gnostic Plymouth Brethren, and esoteric branches of Anglican political hierarchies around Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper (aka: Lord Shaftesbury)[1], Swedenborg was obsessed with Armageddon, reconstituting the Jews back in Jerusalem and rebuilding Solomon’s Temple.
In his book Concerning the Messiah About to Come, Swedenborg wrote:
“They shall build a temple, not like the former, but one that shall endure as long as the world shall endure. And afterward, returning from the places of exile, they shall build up Jerusalem gloriously; and therein shall be built a temple.”
In his Arcana Coelistia, published in 1749, Swedenborg reinterpreted the entire Bible as a manuscript written entirely in code with an esoteric meaning knowable only to those elites who achieved Swedenborg’s revelatory form of gnosis. Describing the cryptic codes embedded in the Bible, Swedenborg followed the same Straussian method of thinking writing:
“The Lord spoke this way in order to keep people from understanding his words, for fear they would profane them. If they had understood the message when the church was spiritually devastated . . . they would have profaned it. (Secrets of Heaven §3898:2)
And preceding the work of Plymouth Brethren leader John Darby (founder of Pre-dispensationalist Millenarianism and Rapture theology), Swedenborg was among the first recorded theologians who taught a doctrine of Rapture at the end of times.[2]
Swedenborg exerted a vast influence on the thinking of the founder of America’s Transcendentalist Movement Ralph Waldo Emerson, which itself served as an inspiration for Blavatsky’s Theosophists. Blavatsky herself called Swedenborg “The Greatest among modern seers”… although criticized him for not abandoning Christianity.
William James (1842-1910), the founder of modern psychiatry, president of Harvard University and president of the American Society for Psychical Research, was a devoted student of Swedenborg shaping his conceptions of trance, hypnosis and altered states located within his 1901 Varieties of Religious Experience upon his studies of Swedenborg’s writings.
Additionally, the architect assigned by Charles Bonney to design the Chicago World’s Fair (Daniel Burnham) was also a Swedenborgian, as was the principal painter celebrated as the representative of America’s official aesthetical tastes (Barbizon opium-driven painter of dream states George Inness).
Transforming Religion into a Stew of International Mysticism
The 1893 World Parliament of Religions would bring together leading mystics of various esoteric religious orders around the globe to promote their peculiar interpretation of Islam, Hinduism, Taoism, Shintoism, Buddhism, Christianity, Jainism, Zen, Bahai, and Zoroastrianism. Each speaker would be vetted by Theosophists, and in many cases sponsored financially by Theosophists in order to attend the Parliament. This ensured that any interpretation of world religions which did not fit with the cosmology and mysticism demanded by Blavatsky were not represented.
Thus, it should be no surprise that Buddhism was represented by Esoteric Theosophist member Anagarika Dharmapala while Hinduism was represented by two Theosophists named Rai Bahadur Gyandendra and Noth Chakravarti. Annie Besant spoke at the congress as the representing global Theosophy, alongside William Quan Judge, Henrietta Müller (representing European Theosophists); and Isabel Cooper-Oakley, (representing Theosophist lodges of Australia and New Zealand.)
Even Swami Vivekananda, though not directly a Theosophist himself, promoted a vision for a world religion and esoteric/exoteric teachings for initiated and non-initiated which closely paralleled the Theosophist mission.
In Esoteric Dimensions of the World Parliament of Religions, Nic Laccetti writes of the importance of the parliament on world history:
“The Parliament is considered to be the birth of the modern interfaith movement, and the first formal interfaith gathering to be held in world history”.
Dr. Buck writes of the total influence which the Theosophical Society enjoyed over the Congress of Religions:
“All of the meetings were largely attended and that the platform of the World’s Congress of Religions was exactly that of the Theosophical Society in that the latter had for its object the establishment of a nucleus for the Universal Brotherhood of Man and desired to demonstrate the one common basis for all religions.”
Caption: From Wikipedia: Swami Vivekananda on the platform of the Parliament of Religions September 1893. On the platform (left to right) Virchand Gandhi, Anagarika Dharmapala, Swami Vivekananda,[3] G. Bonet Maury
Vivekananda: Superstar Kali Prophet of New World Religion
The undisputed star of the World Parliament of Religions was Swami Vivekananda who delivered dozens of speeches and became a world sensation.
Vivekananda had become a disciple of the leading Kali priest of India Ramakrishna Paramahansa in 1886, and after the old guru’s death claimed the mantle to lead his order as the new top Kali priest. Vivekananda’s initiation into the Kali Cult was transformative, and his obsession with uniting death, destruction, tantrism (spiritualized eros) and love under the cult of Mother Kali made Vivekananda a perfect conduit for a world religion.
Typical of the occult obsession with fusing moral opposites in order to overcome apparent dualisms, and secret initiation and gnosis, Vivekananda’s Kali worship and secret ceremonies were perfect. Merging Death/Chaos with Life/Sex, fusing hate and love, as well as darkness and life under the banner of Kali (portrayed as a warlike nude multi-armed female deity holding a severed head in one arm, swords in the other, belts of severed heads and presiding over the catatonic Shiva who lays under her feet in a drugged state).
In his poem Kali, The Mother, Vivekananda writes:
“For Terror is Thy name, Death is Thy breath, And every shaking step Destroys a world for e’ver; Thou ‘Time,’ the All Destroyer! Come, O Mother, Come! Who dares misery love, And hug the form of Death, Dance in Destruction’s dance, To him the Mother comes”.
Despite his many public messages of peace, brotherhood, love and understanding, one cannot help but question what sort of darker esoteric teachings Vivekananda was exposed to by his guru Ramakrishna.
By 1893 he was brought to Chicago to deliver a new spiritual message to the people of America saying:
“Our watchword, then, will be acceptance and not exclusion…We take in all that has been in the past, enjoy the light of the present, and open every window of the heart for all that will come in the future.”[3]
Vivekananda’s effect on the parliament was electric, assisted in no small measure by heavy doses of media propaganda, coordinated across all major press agencies of America’s major cities, as well as support (financial and otherwise) from the most powerful oligarchs of England and the USA.
Although Vivekananda was too nervous to speak publicly for the first several panels, newspaper coverage of Vivekananda’s effects across the United States projected a nearly Godlike image of the mysterious prophet of India. For example, one newspaper wrote how:
“The young, unknown monk of India was transformed overnight into an outstanding figure of the religious world. From obscurity he leapt to fame. His life-size portraits were posted in the streets of Chicago, with words ‘The Monk Vivekananda’ written beneath them and many passers-by would stop to do reverence with bowed heads.”
Another newspaper wrote:
“Christians say of him, ‘He is indeed a prince among men!’ and The New York Herald wrote that: ‘He is undoubtedly the greatest figure in the Parliament of Religions. After hearing him we feel how foolish it is to send missionaries to this learned nation.’”[4]
And Mr. Merwin-Marie Snell (president of the Scientific Section of the Parliament of Religions) stated:
“By far the most important and typical representative of Hinduism was Swami Vivekananda, who, in fact, was beyond question the most popular and influential man in the Parliament…He was received with greater enthusiasm than any other speaker, Christian or pagan.”
Vivekananda’s influence on leading shapers of world politics cannot be overstated. John D. Rockefeller (a sponsor of the World’s Fair and Parliament of Religions) attributed his meetings with Vivekananda as cause for his embrace of philanthropy.
Vivekananda’s meeting with Nikola Tesla apparently inspired the Serbian sorcerer to adopt a new language to describe scientific concepts. The author of ‘The Yogi and the Inventor’ writes of the first meeting held between Tesla and Vivekananda in 1896:
“Vivekananda and Tesla discussed the notions of prâna, âkâsha, and kalpas, three elementary concepts of the Vedantic doctrine. Respectively, these can be understood as vital energy, the ether, and the idea of the aeon. Prâna might be understood as a unit of energy, âkâsha as matter, and kalpas as time.”
As noted in my Occult Tesla series, Tesla’s peculiar concept of the Aether was deeply embedded in his pursuit of ‘ghosts’ and the Rosicrucian notion that an astral image of each person lives in eternity upon the subtle astral plane reducing the concept of spirit to little more than a form of material energy accessible to gifted mediums, necromancers and arcane technicians which he and his mentor Sir William Crookes believed themselves to be.
Vivekananda had a disproportionately large influence on leading members of the British Society for Psychical Research, including Swedenborgian mystic William James, and SPR member Carl Jung who spent four extended stays at Vivekananda’s Ramakrishna Mission in India, as part of his larger study of initiatory mystery cults, Kundalini Tantrism and black magic.
Carl Jung’s student Joseph Campbell became the Ramakrishna Society’s president, and Sigmund Freud’s ideas of ‘the oceanic feeling’ were entirely based on his studies of Ramakrishna’s self-induced trances and states of ecstasy while engaged in Kali worship.
Vivekananda’s disciple Swami Prabhavananada built a ‘Tiny Taj Mahal’ in Hollywood Hills, which became a spiritual mecca for such nihilistic luminaries as Gerald Heard, Aldous Huxley and Christopher Isherwood. This small but influential group served as a driving force, and incubator for many of the most perverse aesthetical conceptions that shaped 20th century Hollywood, music and literature.
Merwin-Marie Snell and ‘Integral Fellowship of the Mahacakra’
The President of the Scientific Section of the Parliament was a man named Dr. Merwin-Marie Snell, the scion of an elite New England family with unbroken connections to the Mayflower and Anglo-Dutch oligarchy, financial patron of Vivekananda and leading Rosicrucian of America.
In his inaugural 1893 Congress speech ‘The Future of Religion’, Snell called forth the world control that he imagined would coincide with the new world religion which he believed needed to be created through the work of the Congress:
“It is conceivable that all diversities of race and talent and thought and tendency and environment may ultimately be coordinated into a world-wide organization. Can the religious federation of humanity be regarded as within the limits of a rational and legitimate hope?”[5]
Outlining his future vision in further detail, Snell said:
“The religion of the future will be universal in every sense. It will embody all the thought and aspiration and virtue and emotion of all humanity. It will draw together all lands and peoples, all kindreds and tongues into a universal brotherhood of love and service; it will establish upon earth a heavenly order; and make all incarnate spirits vibrate with the harmony of the celestial spheres.”[6]
By themselves these words sound benign and even laudable- for who does not wish to see a world devoted to universal brotherhood, harmony, love and service?
However, when we read Snell’s November 6, 1891 ‘Man of The Future’, it becomes apparent that his notion of a “universal brotherhood” is not what it appears to be on the surface. In this article, Snell promotes radical eugenics and admonishes anyone who believes in keeping the sick and weaker members of society alive as “anti-progressive”. He writes:
“The care taken to preserve the sickly, imbicile, and otherwise useless or noxious members of society is… a powerful anti-progressive factor. The refinements of civilization place man out of the reach of natural selection, and operate to dimmish his vital energy, at the same time they promote delicacy of structure.”
When describing his ideal state of ‘scientific society’, Snell states that the only example available is the short lived Oneida Cult which practiced radical population control (dubbed ‘Stirpculture’) and which I described at some length in Victoria Woodhull’s Eugenical Christianity. Snell writes:
“The ruling ethical codes not only give rise to an unscientific tenderness, but they operate to prevent sexual selection. The only serious attempt at scientific human stirpculture was in the Oneida Community: and this has been a failure partly because fo the inevitable triumph of traditional instincts over speculative principles… and partly because of symptoms of a violent crusade against the experiment by exponents of the accepted morality.”
Of course even though eugenics failed under the weight of ‘accepted morality’ in the case of Oneida, Snell writes hopefully that future governments might wake up to the importance of the science of human breeding writing:
“If the government could follow the suggestion made by Professor Lester F. Ward and other savants, and relegate the whole business of the propagation of the species to individuals especially selected for the purpose, a very rapid improvement would naturally take place.”
If these appear to be the words of someone who doesn’t see themselves as a member of the human species, but rather a god trying to correct the human condition, then you are right. In this same article, Snell states his belief that the patrician class to which he belongs is quite literally, another species from the plebian class of servants:
“The differentiation of the patrician classes from the plebian is a continuation of the same process which, according to the evolutionary hypothesis, has differentiated from each other all the diverse forms of animal and vegetable life. The tendency in modern society to obliterate hereditary distinctions is detrimental to progress, for so far as it is carried out it makes impossible the production of any higher human type than the present.”
Thus, it should also surprise no one to learn that Snell believes that a radical caste system (not entirely different from Gandhi’s Varna system or Diocletian’s reforms of ancient Rome) is the only way to ‘scientifically’ organize society. Snell writes:
“The highest social condition would be one in which every social, industrial and political function was performed by a distinct class, concentrating upon that function all its energies. It is this principle alone which makes the man structurally superior to the Amoeba.”
In 1907 Snell formerly created a new society along Rosicrucian lines called ‘The Universal Brotherhood’- or the more discombobulated ‘Integral Fellowship of the Mahacakra’.
This was a self-professed ‘secret society devoted unifying all human knowledge and religious organizations.
On the organization’s current website we find that Snell created the order “to be the esoteric heart and integrative organism behind all other human organisation and endeavors”.
The Esoteric Meaning of Mahacakra
Before proceeding forward with our story, a word on the name ‘Mahacakra’ is needed.
Based on the occult obsession to unite the world’s mystery religions into a new unified and centralized world perennial religion, the necessary unification of holy and unholy (as well as moral opposites and even sexual opposites) into new unities was necessary. Many currents of eastern mystery cults paralleled western counterparts in carrying out this very difficult and unnatural task, which included those esoteric currents of Tibetan Buddhism explored by Olcott and Blavatsky (the Hidden Masters were after all Tibetan according to Blavatsky), and also Esoteric Hinduism.
We shouldn’t be surprised to find the term Mahacakra in four major occult systems, and it is likely that all four participate in the name given to Snell’s Universal Brotherhood.
In the worship of Shaktism (the female counterpart to Shiva), Mahacakra signifies “The Great Gathering” of divine beings incarnated in flesh.
In Shivaism (the male counterpart to Shakti), Mahacakra signifies ‘The Great Wheel’.
In the worship of Narayana (one of the thousand names of Vishnu), Mahacakra refers to a type of high initiation.
But most interesting and simultaneously disturbing, is the representation of Mahacakra in Tibetan Buddhism.
It is in this Tibetan variation which was a feature of obsession by Theosophists and later Nazis that we find what appears to be nearly a mirror counterpart to the female Hindu deity Kali, except with several variations. Namely, instead of Kali’s one head, the god Vajrapani Mahacakra has three faces, but like Kali, features a figure with four to six arms.
Integrated dualism of Shakti (male) and Shiva (female)
Caption: Three headed god Vajrapani Mahacakra engaged in sex, enrapt in flames and snakes while standing upon two victims (Shiva and Brahma)
Also akin to Kali in several major respects, we find the Buddhist deity standing on catatonic victims (two instead of the single figure of Shiva under Kali’s feet). In every rendition of the Vajrapani-Mahacakra, Brahma is one of the two victims, while the second victim vacillates between Mahesvara (ie: ‘The Giver of Knowledge’), and at other times is Shiva.
In both cases, we find deities which are expressing emotional expressions that infuse both war-like rage and ecstatic delight, and both feature prominent uses of snakes. Beyond the symbolic meaning of the serpent among occult circles both east and west, snake venom has been an integral component of initiatory rites.
In many (but not all) cases, the Tibetan Buddhist Vajrapani-Mahacakra is depicted copulating with a female consort named Yab Yum while engaging in acts of destruction again embodying the synthesis of opposites so adored by occultists.
In many representations, the deity is featured with necklaces, headbands or belts of severed heads, and skulls again giving truth to the hypothesis, that a male mirror image of Kali is being represented.
Prior to the more disturbing symbolic representations of Vajrapani-Mahacakra depicted in Tibetan Buddhism beginning in the early stages of Mongol Dominance over Tibet (and the same period that saw the Mongol Khans create the system of Dalai Lamas), an earlier, more healthy representation of the same deity is to be found in many parts of the Buddhist world.
One prominent early example is found in the recently re-discovered kingdom of Gandhara where the Hellenic fusion of eastern wisdom and Athenian aesthetics and philosophy transformed much of the world in the wake of Alexander the Great’s defeat of the Persian Empire.
Echoes of an Earlier Healthy Tradition
Located in today’s Pakistan and Afghanistan, Gandhara was a political, cultural capital of Asia starting in the 1st century BC.
The Mauryan Empire that united India and launched a golden age under Chandragupta Maurya (the founder of the Kingdom and ally of Alexander the Great) unleashed a vast renaissance which peaked during the 40-year reign of Chandragupta’s grandson Ashoka (rein from 268-232 BC).
Under Ashoka, Buddhism became the dominant religion of India and Mauryan Gandhara saw a blossoming of Hellenic aesthetics in art and architecture fused with Asian culture. Ashoka instituted vast legal reforms similar to those instituted earlier by Solon in Athens in the form of ‘Ashoke’s Edicts’, of which hundreds have survived in several languages (including Aramaic and Greek) to this day.
Ashoke’s Edicts drove the reformation of culture and focused on moral precepts and lessons in order to ground the people religiously in the practice of doing Good and loving each other.
Defining the concept of ‘Dharma’, Ashoke’s Edicts read:
Dharma is good. And what is Dharma? It is having few faults and many good deeds, mercy, charity, truthfulness and purity. (Major Pillar Edict No.2)
Thus the glory of Dharma will increase throughout the world, and it will be endorsed in the form of mercy, charity, truthfulness, purity, gentleness, and virtue. (Major Pillar Edict No. 7)
Ashoke’s reforms ended the slave trade, promoted leniency for prisoners, forbade the destruction of forests and abuse of animals. Ashoke also promoted an important paradigm of tolerance for neighboring states with different faiths outlined Edict no. 7 and 12:
“The Beloved of the Gods, the King Piyadassi, wishes that all sect may dwell in all places, for all seek self-control and purity of mind.” (Major Rock Edict No.7)
“For whosoever praises his own sect or blames other sects, — all (this) out of pure devotion to his own sect, (i.e.) with the view of glorifying his own sect, — if he is acting thus, he rather injures his own sect very severely. But concord is meritorious, (i.e.) that they should both hear and obey each other’s morals. For this is the desire of Devanampriya, (viz.) that all sects should be both full of learning and pure in doctrine. And those who are attached to their respective (sects), ought to be spoken to (as follows). Devanampriya does not value either gifts or honours so (highly) as (this), (viz.) that a promotion of the essentials of all sects should take place.” (Major Rock Edict No.12)
From King Chandragupta through Ashoke (and guided by the brilliant philosopher statesman Chanakya (375-283 BC), roads were built connecting the nation internally, schools, and health services were provided to all citizens and ports, new mining and textiles blossoms along with foreign trade. Wells, sanitation systems, reforestation and other major infrastructure projects increased the lives and opportunities of his people for decades.
It was during this time that the first artistic portrayals of Buddha began, and the protector deity of Vajrapani was also conveyed with heightened naturalism and dignity which are typically signs of cultures with both moral and creative vitality.
As a protector of Buddha, Vajrapani was portrayed artistically using the Greek model of Hercules (or in some cases Zeus, as the name literally translated into holder of lightning). The philosophical ideas of Gandhara and Mauryan Buddhism (which saw a revival with the Gupta Dynasty of the mid 3rd to mid 6th centuries, featured concepts of humanity, God, Law, Justice, Virtue, and Goodness which were antagonistic to the mystery cults that plagued the ancient world.
At left: the Buddha performing a miracle before ascetics protected by Vajrapani Bodhisatva. Kushan period, 2nd C-3rd C. At right: Special Hirayama Ikuo Silk Road Exhibit, Shaanxi History Museum, Xi’an featuring a bust of Vajrapani created in 3rd century.
Charles Joppen, Justus Parthes, Gotha. – Charles Joppen SJ, Historical Atlas of India, London: Longman Green Co., 1907
It is thus likely that the later representations of the Vajrapani-Mahacakra in Tibetan Buddhist representations features a coopting of sacred symbols in service to forces of darkness that likely never forgave Alexander or Chandragupta or Ashoke for their political defiance.
Martin Heidegger’s disciple Hans Jonas became a 20th century authority on the clash between Alexander’s Hellenistic influences into the east and the submergence of the Eastern mystery cults (from Babylonian, Persian, Indian, etc) into an underground network, which was expounded in his 1958 classic ‘The Gnostic Religion’.
The Revenge of the Mystery Cults
In this book, The Gnostic Religion, Jonas points to the clash which the eastern mystery cults faced as the superior culture of Hellenism swept through Asia.
Distinguishing Western Hellenic thought as ‘rationality-driven’, Jonas then characterizes the eastern cults as necessarily masking their intentions in the form of secret rites and symbols:
“Oriental thought had been non-conceptual, conveyed in images and symbols, rather disguising its ultimate objects in myths and rites than expounding them logically.”[7]
In a section dubbed ‘The Eastern Underground’, Jonas describes how these cults were forced underground if they would avoid extinction, but quickly learned to wrap their esoteric teachings in the garb of apparently Hellenistic forms, writing:
“Astrological fatalism and magic could be clothed in the garments of the Stoic cosmology with its doctrines of sympathy and cosmic law, religious dualism in the garment of Platonism.”[8]
This comment is insightful due to its admission that the Neo-Platonic School which emerged long after Plato had died was not actually Platonic, but rather a cover for the Manichean and other Hermetic mystery cults of Egypt and the East.
Before describing the revenge of these eastern mystery cults which emerged back onto the scene in the early 2nd century (in the form of Gnostic pseudo-Christian cults), Jonas describes at length their dual-esoteric/exoteric teaching systems created during the dark period of incubation.
“There was a another, perhaps still profounder, effect which Greek ascendancy had upon the inner life of the East, an effect which was to become manifest only much later: The division of the oriental spirit into a surface and a sub-surface stream, a public and a secret tradition. For the Greek exemplar had not only a stimulating but also a repressive effect… What was capable of Hellenization was passed and gained a place in the light, that is, became part of the articulate upper stratum of the cosmopolitan culture; the remainder, the radically different and unassimilable, was excluded and went underground… Thus the spiritual monopoly of Greece caused the growth of an invisible East whose secret life formed an antagonistic undercurrent beneath the surface of the public Hellenistic civilization”.[9]
Just as western ideas and institutions were to be co-opted by this esoteric underground, it is clear that those eastern traditions expressed by the likes of the Han, Morya and Gupta Empires of the East would also be infiltrated, and subverted by the arrogant high priests of the mystery cults.
This Hellenized tendency of undermining the mystery cults by imposing concepts of truthfulness, ontological Justice, and a Good and reasonable Creator onto pagan mysteries, was re-emphasized once more through the Platonic Christian movement of Jesus and his followers during the early phase of Rome’s plunge into Empire. When the mystery cults of Rome (of a Gnostic, Mithraic, Cybele-Attis, Isis variety) failed to crush the early Christian movement, they again were forced underground during the fifth century, and became the satanic esoteric underground as outlined in The Revenge of the Mystery Cults volume one.
By the late 19th century, and especially in the wake of Lincoln’s miraculous victory against the total force of the financier oligarchy, the subterranean cults went back on an offensive against Judeo Christian civilization (as well as Islamic, Persian, African, Chinese and Indian civilizations which all suffered terribly under the British East India Company’s drive to dominate the world throughout that same period.)
This brings us back to the forces that burned down Chicago in 1871, sparked the Rosicrucian occult revival, launched the 1893 World Parliament of Religions and created The Integral Fellowship of the Mahacakra in 1907.
What did this gnostic takeover of the United States do next?
[1] See Chapter 1 of Revenge of the Mystery Cults for the gnostic origins of Zionism and the Solomon Temple Revival Cult
[2] In Secrets of Heaven, Swedenborg wrote: “Two will then be in the field; one will be taken and one left symbolizes people in the church devoted to goodness and people in the church devoted to evil. Those devoted to goodness will be saved, and those devoted to evil will be damned . . . Two grinding in the mill; one will be taken and one left means that people in the church who focus on truth (or desire truth) for good reasons will be saved, while people in the church who focus on truth (or desire truth) for bad reasons will be damned.” Secrets of Heaven §4334:8, 9
[3] Vivekananda, Sw. Complete Works, Volume II: “The Way to the Realization of Universal Religion”. Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1971.
[4] Swami Vivekananda – A Biography by Swami Nikhilananda (1953), Advocateanmoy Library
[5] Merwin-Marie Snell, “The Future of Religion: A Farewell Address Delivered Before the Parliament of Religions at Its Last Session,” (The Open Court, a Quarterly Magazine, Oct. 5, 1893) 7, 319.
[6] Snell, The Future of Religion
[7] The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity by Hans Jonas, Beacon Press, 2nd Edition, 1963, p. 21
[8] Jonas, Gnostic Religion, p. 22
[9] Jonas, Gnostic Religion, p. 22