Secret and Suppressed: Banned Ideas and Hidden History (17 page)

Source:
Associated Press

In Israel a new computer game called Intifada — developed by a Russian-born supporter of Meir Kahane, who immigrated to Israel from the U.S. after a stint in the Jewish Defense League — has become a bestseller. Players score points for successfully using tear gas, plastic bullets, rubber bullets and/or live ammunition to disperse Palestinian demonstrators throwing rocks and gasoline bombs. Unlike real life, the game’s rules penalize excessive zeal: players lose points if, for example, they shoot to kill when only tear gas is authorized.

High scorers “win” a progressively more hard-line Israeli government, culminating in the installation of Kahane as defense minister, and restrictions on the use of lethal force are eased as the right gains strength. Responding to criticism, the game’s inventor told the
Jerusalem Post:
“When people started calling it a Nazi game, I felt I had to come forward to put the record straight… [The education ministry] is turning all the children into leftwingers. The only hope for the country is if the right is strong.”

Source:
Middle East Report

The five murders attributed to Jack the Ripper were accomplished by left-to-right knife strokes across the victim’s throat.

In Freemasonry, at the various levels of initiation, the initiate performs certain “mimes” depicting the penalties he must pay if he violates the oaths of the order. In the beginning degree, that of “Entered Apprentice,” the mime is a left-to-right stroke of the hand across the neck.

Exact information on only three of the five victims of the Ripper exists. A report on the condition of the second corpse states: “The intestines, severed from their mesenteric attachements, had been lifted out of the body and placed on the shoulder of the corpse.” The inquest report on the fourth victim, Catherine Eddowes, details in grisly fashion: “The abdomen wall was exposed. The intestines were drawn out to a large extent and placed over the right shoulder.”

The protocols of the Freemasons state the method for dealing with traitorous Master Masons: “…by the breast being torn open and the heart and vitals taken out and thrown over the left shoulder.”

The exposed location of the Eddowes murder (at Mitre square, in itself not without Masonic significance), as well as the possible use of a non-Masonic accomplice may explain the discrepancy between the left and the right shoulders.

The inquest on Eddowes also stated: “A triangular flap of skin had been reflected from each cheek…”

Two triangles comprise the sacred sign of Masonry.

The murder of Marie Kelly can be compared in its details to an engraving by William Hogarth, one of the first persons to expose the workings of the Masons. Hogarth’s engraving, “The Reward of Cruelty,” shows a victim laid out naked with a Masonic cable (a Masonic symbol of throat-cutting) wrapped about his neck. In the engraving the victim is in the midst of having his face mutilated, while one of the three Masonic killers is mutilating his eyes with a knife. The stomach and abdomen are ripped open, the heart cut out, and the left hand lays across the chest in the same position that Kelly’s was found in. The legs and feet are being skinned. These mutilations describe perfectly the condition of the corpse of Marie Kelly when it was found.

“Leather apron,” a name the press dubbed the Ripper with at the time, parallels a description of the Masonic vestment, also referred to as a leather apron, although actually being comprised of lambskin. A portion of the cloth apron worn by Eddowes was carefully cut off by the murderer or murderers and was found in the passage of Wentworth Dwellings, a message in chalk scrawled on the wall behind.

The message was:

The “Juwes” is not a misspelling of “Jews,” as has always been assumed, but are in Masonic lore three apprentice Masons who killed the master builder Hiram Abiff.

Jack the Ripper, the Final Solution
by the late Stephen Knight, published in 1976, brings forth these and other elements which suggest the Ripper slayings may not have been the work of a lone madman, but the commission of a plot hatched by extremely influential Freemasons of the day.

As Knight explains it, Joseph Sickert revealed to a BBC reporter a story that his deceased father, Walter Sickert, allegedly had told to him. Walter Sickert, a famous English painter, had been a friend of Prince Eddy, Duke of Clarence, the son of Prince Albert, heir to the throne at the time of the Ripper murders. Sickert kept a studio at No.22 Cleveland Street, where Anne Elizabeth Crook as well as Marie Kelly worked — Kelly being the last victim of the Ripper. Here it is said that Prince Eddy met Crook (a Roman Catholic commoner), became romantically involved with her, and was then married to her in a secret ceremony in St. Saviour’s Chapel. A child, Alice Margaret, was born.

Shortly thereafter a police raid took place in the area and two people were arrested: Prince Eddy and Crook. Eddy was released, while Anne Elizabeth Crook, as confirmed by records of the period, was confined to workhouses and mental institutions until her death in 1920.

Marie Kelly, the last victim of the Ripper, was said to have fled with the child and hid in a convent. The child was later given to Walter Sickert and placed in the care of his relatives.

According to Knight, the reason for the Ripper murders was that Marie Kelly, along with three cohorts, tried to betray the throne with information about the marriage of Prince Eddy to a Roman Catholic, then a despised minority, and the birth of the child.

The disposal of Marie Kelly and her partners in blackmail was entrusted to Sir William Gull, Physician Ordinary to Queen Victoria, whose previous services to the Queen included the signing of the document certifying Anne Elizabeth Crook as insane, and the performance of royal abortions.

Gull was a prominent Freemason, and his responsibility for dealing with the threat was additionally dictated by his Masonic vows. Any threat to the throne was seen as a threat to Freemasonry. The Masons were the secret power behind the British throne and if the throne fell (which was a distinct possibility at that time, due to general unrest and the rising popularity of Socialism) then the Masons would fall, too.

Gull enlisted the help of fellow Masons in the commission of the murders.

The location of the last murder, Mitre Square, is of particular significance. For an ordinary criminal the choice of Mitre Square would have been extremely improbable, completely exposed as it is to passers-by. But Mitre Square comprises the second most important Masonic locale in London, after the Great Hall of the Grand Lodge.

Since the appearance of Knight’s book a number of television documentaries and even a movie have been made, bringing forth some details of the Masonic Ripper theory. Curiously, all of the productions have attempted to some extent to discredit Knight’s explanation, leaving out relevant details so as to make it seem that the theory rests only upon one or two coincidences, eliminating any mention of the part played by Freemasons in the crimes, or glossing over the connections to the British throne.

Soon after the publication of this book the supposed Ripper diaries will emerge from a major American publishing house. It remains to be seen if the Masonic connection rears its head or is quietly “put to rest.”

Throughout the history of Western occultism, there has been a constant and intriguing tendency toward heterodox sexual suppression, ranging all the way from the wandering Gnostics of the Second Century, EC, with their prostitute “Sophias” and “Shekinahs” to the orgiastic self-mutilation of the Eighteenth Century Russian Skoptsi. From the psychological and mystical viewpoints alike, it is clear that asceticism and libertinism are simply the two opposing poles in a larger archetypal constellation, based upon the experience of ecstacy.

The legend of John the Baptist, holy man extraordinaire and his perversely and insistently erotic relationship with his seductive decapitator, Salome, is one of the most powerful examples in the Western Tradition, of this complex relationship between sadism, sexuality, asceticism and mysticism.

Exstasis, the freedom of the soul from what gnostics considered to be the prison of the flesh, can be sought through either pole of this complex and in certain rare instances, both asceticism and libertinism can operate together to produce extraordinary states of altered awareness. As the great Viennese sexologist, Krafft-Ebing pointed out; “Religious and sexual states of excitement show, at the height of their development, a conformity in the quality and quantity of excitement; therefore, under suitable circumstances, [they] may be interchanged.” Ecstacy, considered as a particular and complex set of altered states of awareness, is the traditional working tool for all occult work. Through its gateway, many other alternate states of reality may be touched upon, entered and worked with. This ecstatic frame of mind has traditionally been sought in three distinct yet interrelated contexts. The Mystical, Magical and Mystery Religion workings of the West form the basis for virtually all of the esoteric groups and individuals in our history. Working through passive or receptive, active and cathartic means, respectively, they all seek to reach the same great gnostic goal; direct experience of the Numinous. For our interests, Freemasonry stands out as one of the great representatives of the Mystery Religion, or “Cathartic” approach. Speculative Masonry can be most succinctly defined as a Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century antiquarian revival of the old Mystery School systems of the Ancient World. By presenting the initiate with vivid and cathartic scenes of such archetypal matters as life and death and inducing their direct participation, it was hoped to instill certain gnostic and epiphanous experiences deeply within the subconscious. The effectiveness of this system has been proven for centuries, and follows certain sound psychological principles of great power. How could this archeological-psychological amalgam have anything to do with libertine and antinomian eroticism?

The history of Freemasonry is riddled with rites and rituals which can, only be safely described as “curious” and within that tradition, there is a long and well-documented stream of “adoptive,” “androgynous,” or other rites which allowed for the practice of men and women, either together or in separate rituals. Along with this historically significant trend, there exists a “shadow history” of covert masonic eroticism and antinomianism. To be quite fair, it is important to point out that these rituals did not generally have the support of official or mainstream masonry, but existed out on the fringes of the masonic world. I must also make it quite clear that the majority of androgynous rites had nothing to do with such matters, either. There do exist two important masonic rites, back in the Eighteenth Century masonic world, which have had persistent rumors of erotic practice attached to them. Again, I must use the term “rumors” since unambiguous internal evidence is only available for one of these rites.

Cagliostro’s Egyptian Rite was a very complex system of oracles, quasi-Egyptian rituals and ceremonial magic, formed during the apex of the great period of revolutions during the last third of the Eighteenth Century. In this case, the masonic ritual was divided into men’s and women’s lodges, however it is still classed as an androgynous rite on the following remarkable basis. According to sexologist Paul Tabori, in his
Secret and Forbidden,
the main degree initiation ceremony in the so-called “ladies lodges” of the Egyptian Rite was openly orgiastic. To quote Tabori: “After passing through several tests, novices assembled at dawn in the ‘temple.’ A curtain rose and the spectators gazed at a man seated on a golden globe, completely nude, holding a snake in his hand.