The United States of Paranoia (48 page)

  8
. “Fama fraternitatis, or, A Discovery of the Fraternity of the Most Laudable Order of the Rosy Cross” (1614), trans. Thomas Vaughan, reprinted as an appendix to Frances A. Yates,
The Rosicrucian Enlightenment
(Routledge, 2003 [1972]), 307.

  9
. Karl von Eckartshausen,
The Clouds upon the Sanctuary
, trans. Isabel de Steiger (Book Tree, 2006 [1802]), 16, 27.

10
. A neo-Rosicrucian group in eighteenth-century Germany, the Order of the Golden and Rosy Cross, became influential for a time, with one member, Friedrich Wilhelm II, ascending to the throne of Prussia. In a clash that must have been made in conspiracy-theory heaven, members of the order played a significant role in the campaign against Weishaupt’s Illuminati. See Christopher McIntosh,
The Rose Cross and the Age of Reason: Eighteenth-Century Rosicrucianism in Central Europe and Its Relationship to the Enlightenment
(State University of New York Press, 2011 [1992]).

11
. Quoted in Joscelyn Godwin,
The Theosophical Enlightenment
(State University of New York Press, 1994), 259.

12
. Wallace, while serving as secretary of agriculture, persuaded President Franklin Roosevelt to add the eye-in-the-pyramid symbol to the country’s currency, thus giving ammo to generations of conspiracists convinced that the Illuminati control the money supply.

13
. Quoted in K. Paul Johnson,
The Masters Revealed: Madame Blavatsky and the Myth of the Great White Lodge
(State University of New York Press, 1994), 10. The full letter can be read at blavatskyarchives.com/blavatskyhartmann6.htm.

14
. Shambhala, which the Theosophists borrowed from a Buddhist legend, inspired Shangri-la, the hidden utopia in the book and movie
Lost Horizon
. Yes, it also inspired that Three Dog Night song.

15
. For a wonderful take on this sort of organization, read Charles Portis,
Masters of Atlantis
(Alfred A. Knopf, 1985). The hero of Portis’s satiric novel is introduced to the fictional Gnomon Society by a con man, fails to realize that the contact was a swindle, and guilelessly builds a Gnomon order of his own.

16
. H. Spencer Lewis,
Rosicrucian Questions & Answers
(Book Tree, 2006 [1929]), 63–64.

17
. The only portion of the story at the beginning of this chapter that does not appear in those two books involves the Invisible Government of the World. Hall alluded to the Invisible Government in
America’s Assignment with Destiny
, but he did not speculate about where it is located; that part of the story draws on other Benevolent Conspiracy texts.

18
. Hall,
The Secret Destiny of America
, 44.

19
. Even the British occultist Aleister Crowley fell prey to this, despite his antiauthoritarian reputation. Crowley, who had his own alleged encounters with the Secret Chiefs, was a radical individualist in many ways, famously proclaiming, “Every man and every woman is a star” and “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” But he was also able to propose a bizarre plan in which government-appointed experts would “work out, when need arises, the details of the True Will of every individual, and even that of every corporate body whether social or commercial, while a judiciary will arise to determine the equity in the case of apparently conflicting claims.” Quoted in Brian Doherty, “Do What I Wilt,”
Reason
, February 2001.

20
. On the intersection between Populism and Theosophy, see Charles Postel,
The Populist Vision
(Oxford University Press, 2007), 263–65. The preeminent Theosophist in the Populist Party was Ignatius Donnelly of Minnesota, a former congressman who wrote the preamble to the party’s 1892 platform and later ran for vice president on a Populist ticket. He was also the author of speculative books on Atlantis and on Francis Bacon’s alleged authorship of William Shakespeare’s plays.

21
. On Glinka’s relationship to Theosophy and the
Protocols
, see Norman Cohn,
Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World-Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion
(Harper & Row, 1967), 100–2.

22
. William Dudley Pelley,
Seven Minutes in Eternity
(Kessinger Publishing, 2006 [1929]), 12.

23
. Quoted in Jim Rodgers and Tim Kullman,
Facing Terror: The Government’s Response to Contemporary Extremists in America
(University Press of America, 2002), 44.

24
. Ferguson did allude in a foggy way to Rosicrucian legend, and that probably didn’t help matters. “At first,” she wrote, Aquarian “traditions were transmitted intimately, by alchemists, Gnostics, cabalists, and hermetics.” Marilyn Ferguson,
The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s
(J. P. Tarcher, 1980), 46.

25
. Constance Cumbey,
The Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow: The New Age Movement and Our Coming Age of Barbarism
(Huntington House, 1983), 61.

26
. Ibid., 53.

27
. Godfré Ray King [Guy Ballard],
Unveiled Mysteries
(Saint Germain Press, 1934), x.

28
. Ibid., 83. Robert Heinlein borrowed the concept of a Shasta-based Benevolent Conspiracy in his science fiction story “Lost Legacy,” published two years after Ballard’s death. Heinlein gave the idea a libertarian spin: In his tale, the secret order in the mountain is working to protect individual liberty and expand human potential. It is opposed by a Long Island–based psychic cabal that controls “the racketeers, the crooked political figures, the shysters, the dealers in phony religions, the sweat-shoppers, the petty authoritarians.” Robert Heinlein, “Lost Legacy” (1941), in Robert Heinlein,
Assignment in Eternity
(Baen, 1987 [1953]), 224.

29
. King,
Unveiled Mysteries
, 43. Pelley of the Silver Shirts also believed that the Benevolent Conspiracy was guiding the United States toward a special destiny, but in his case the idea was soaked in anti-Semitism. The United States, he proclaimed, was to be “a bright and shining light” that “cast a pattern visible to all races as the thing which all mankind can attain.” Before we could get there, though, we would have to defeat the “megalomaniacal Jew.” Quoted in Geoffrey S. Smith,
To Save a Nation: American “Extremism,” the New Deal, and the Coming of World War II
, 2nd ed. (Ivan R. Dee, 1992), 80.

30
. Quoted in Gerald Bryan,
Psychic Dictatorship in America
(Truth Research Publications, 1940), 193.

31
. Ibid., 194.

32
. Ibid., 21.

33
. Ibid., 194.

34
. Philip Jenkins has pointed out that the prosecution of the I AM leadership coincided not just with Bell’s and Pelley’s legal problems but with crackdowns on the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Nation of Islam, and various polygamist and snake-handling sects—a multifront war on minority religions that Jenkins calls “the purge of the forties” and that we could classify as an attack on the Enemy Within. See Philip Jenkins,
Mystics and Messiahs: Cults and New Religions in American History
(Oxford University Press, 2000), 149–60.

35
. “Interestingly,” one historian has pointed out, “Swedenborg visits each planet known to exist in the 1750s on his way beyond the solar system to the starry heavens, but fails to note the existence of Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto.” J. Gordon Melton, “The Contactees: A Survey,” in
The Gods Have Landed: New Religions from Other Worlds
, ed. James R. Lewis (State University of New York Press, 1995), 4.

36
. Perhaps I shouldn’t call them
Ascended
Masters. The “theosophical components are still there,” one scholar has noted, “but the highly evolved entity is not now understood to have originated on Earth and
ascended
, but rather to have originated on another planet and
descended
.” Christopher Partridge, “Understanding UFO Religions and Abduction Spiritualities,” in
UFO Religions
, ed. Christopher Partridge (Routledge, 2003), 36.

37
. Nick Herbert, “Nick Meets the Galactic Telepaths,” January 6, 2012, quantumtantra.blogspot.com/2012/01/nick-meets-galactic-telepaths.html.

38
. Decades after his death, as witch hunts were raging, Dee’s diary describing those contacts would be cited as evidence that he had been in league with the Devil. The Benevolent Conspiracy is always in danger of being recast as one of the Enemies.

39
. The most famous of the ancient-astronauts books is Erich von Däniken,
Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past
, trans. Michael Heron (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1970). (First published in German in 1968.)

40
. Sylvia Browne,
Sylvia Browne’s Book of Angels
(Hay House, 2003), 14.

41
. Gustav Davidson,
A Dictionary of Angels, Including the Fallen Angels
(Free Press, 1967); Peter Lamborn Wilson,
Angels
(Thames and Hudson, 1980); Hope MacDonald,
When Angels Appear
(Zondervan, 1982).

42
. Sophy Burnham,
A Book of Angels: Reflections on Angels Past and Present, and True Stories of How They Touch Our Lives
(Jeremy P. Tarcher/ Penguin, 2011 [1990]), 72.

43
. Author’s interview with Sophy Burnham, March 6, 2012. All subsequent Burnham quotes are from this interview unless otherwise noted.

44
. Burnham,
A Book of Angels
, 118.

45
. Wilson is an anarchist and a mystic, and his copiously illustrated piece of cross-cultural scholarship ultimately paid more attention to Islam and paganism than to anything in the Bible. Any reader who bought it expecting a piece of pop Christianity was in for a surprise.

46
. Joan Wester Anderson,
Where Angels Walk: True Stories of Heavenly Visitors
(Ballantine, 1992), ix.

47
. Doreen Virtue,
Healing with the Angels: How the Angels Can Assist You in Every Area of Your Life
(Hay House, 1999), 155.

48
. Bill Myers and David Wimbish,
The Dark Side of the Supernatural: What Is of God and What Isn’t
(Zondervan, 2008 [1999]), 16–17.

49
. Author’s interview with Peter Lamborn Wilson, March 4, 2012.

50
. Marie D. Jones and Larry Flaxman, “11:11—The Time Prompt Phenomenon and the Profound Nature of Numbers,”
Phenomena
, November 2009.

51
. “Do You See 11:11?” n.d., 1111angels.net.

52
. George Mathieu Barnard,
The Search for 11:11: A Journey into the Spirit World
(11.11 Publishers, 2004 [2000]), ix.

53
. “11:11: What Is It About? What Does It All Mean?” n.d., board.1111 angels.com/viewtopic.php?t=345.

54
. Jack Sarfatti, “Higher Intelligence Is Us in the Future,”
Spit in the Ocean
3 (1977).

55
. Yates,
The Rosicrucian Enlightenment
, 278–79. Yates also made a speculative argument that the Rosicrucian pamphlets were intended as propaganda for one side in the struggles shaking the Holy Roman Empire.

56
. Ronald Reagan, “Your America to Be Free” (1957), reagan2020.us/speeches/Your_America_to_be_Free.asp.

57
. Mitch Horowitz, “Reagan and the Occult,” April 20, 2010, voices.washingtonpost.com/political-bookworm/2010/04/reagan_and_the_occult.html.

58
. Ronald Reagan, “Speech Announcing Presidential Candidacy” (1979), in
Tear Down This Wall: The Reagan Revolution
, ed. Editors of
National Review
(Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004), 17.

Chapter 7: The Water’s Gate

  1
. Gil Scott-Heron, “H
2
O Gate (Watergate) Blues,” on
Winter in America
, LP, Strata-East Records, 1974.

  2
. San Diego special agent in charge, memorandum to FBI director, November 8, 1968. Declassified COINTELPRO files can be downloaded at vault.fbi.gov.

  3
. FBI director, memorandum to San Diego special agent in charge, November 26, 1968.

  4
. David Cunningham,
There’s Something Happening Here: The New Left, the Klan, and FBI Counterintelligence
(University of California Press, 2004), 32. See also William W. Keller,
The Liberals and J. Edgar Hoover: Rise and Fall of a Domestic Intelligence State
(Princeton University Press, 1989), 72ff.

  5
. Baltimore special agent in charge, memorandum to FBI director, March 28, 1969.

  6
. Baltimore special agent in charge, memorandum to FBI director, August 26, 1969.

  7
. Philadelphia special agent in charge, memorandum to FBI director, November 21, 1968.

  8
. Los Angeles FBI Field Office report, July 24, 1967.

  9
. Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, United States Senate,
Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans
(U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976), 9.

10
. On the deaths of Hampton and Clark, see Mike Royko,
Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago
(Signet, 1971), 209–13.

11
. John Dean, “Dealing with Our Political Enemies” (1971), in
Watergate: A Brief History with Documents
, 2nd ed., ed. Stanley I.
Kutler
(Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 30.

12
. Doyle Niemann, “Watergate: Excuse Us for Bragging but We Told You So!”
The Great Speckled Bird
, July 9, 1973.

13
. Quoted in Fred P. Graham, “F.B.I. Files of Surveillance of Students, Blacks, War Foes,”
The New York Times
, March 25, 1971.