Sinister Forces-The Nine: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft
432
Sinister Forces-The Nine: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft
432Paperback
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780984185818 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Trine Day |
| Publication date: | 05/16/2011 |
| Series: | Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft (Paperback) , #1 |
| Pages: | 432 |
| Sales rank: | 363,304 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Sinster Forces Book One: The Nine
A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft
By Peter Levenda
Trine Day LLC
Copyright © 2011 Peter LevendaAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-9841858-1-8
CHAPTER 1
The Dunwich Horror: An Occult History of America
When a rise in the road brings the mountains in view above the deep woods, the feeling of strange uneasiness is increased. The summits are too rounded and symmetrical to give a sense of comfort and naturalness, and sometimes the sky silhouettes with especial clearness the queer circles of tall stone pillars with which most of them are crowned.
— "The Dunwich Horror," H.P. Lovecraft
Lovecraft was writing in the 1920s, when most of his more famous stories were published. He was writing of a New England that, in his imagination, had ancient roots in unknown cultures; where Druidic circles and pagan chants would infest the countryside; where a kind of subterranean culture existed, parallel to the world of our own reality. He peppered his stories with references to the works of archaeologists and anthropologists (some real, some fictitious), and connected the American Indian culture to the worship of strange, perhaps extraplanetary or extradimensional beings who viewed humans as little more than undercooked hors d'ouevres. His work has attracted a great deal of attention in the past 30 years or so, oddly enough in France where — like the films of Jerry Lewis — he is an adopted obsession, but also certainly in America where he maintains a cult status even now, more than sixty years after his death. He has attracted serious, albeit fringe, attention from academics and historians of both literature and mysticism, and has even been graced with an anthology of his work prefaced by no less a literary light than Joyce Carol Oates. The blind Argentine author of many essays and stories on the macabre — Jorge Luis Borges — has written in the Lovecraftian mode in homage to the cranky Yankee master. In addition, there are several hard-core occult organizations in Europe and America that owe allegiance to the bizarre principles outlined in his works. They have taken their names and identities straight from his published work, with cults like Dagon and Cthulhu, and occultist emeritus Kenneth Grant has written extensively on the relation between the works of Lovecraft — an author of gothic horror fiction — and the rituals of modern ceremonial magic and communication with extraterrestrial intelligences.
Part of the reason for Lovecraft's popularity among serious occultists is due to the fact that many of the ideas he put forward in his stories have found some basis in reality: in historical, archaeological, anthropological reality. While there is no evidence at this time for the existence of the beings of which he wrote — Cthulhu chief among them, but let's not forget Yog Sothot or Shub Niggurath — there is evidence that America was visited, and possibly inhabited for some time, by peoples who are not racially (or, at least, culturally) identical to the Native American "Indian" tribes that exist today. The schools of thought over this are contentious and emotional in defending their respective positions. The group most consistently under attack are the Diffusionists (whose most famous proponent was the late Harvard Professor Barry Fell), who adhere to the idea that America was not settled by a single group of wanderers from Asia across the Bering Straits, but by different groups of people from different parts of the globe. There is growing archaeological evidence that people from Europe and North Africa settled in North and South America thousands of years ago, bringing with them their languages, their culture, and their religious and mystical beliefs. And therein lies a tale. We will examine all of this in detail in Chapter Two. For now, though, let us look at some well-known stories, but from a different perspective and with additional data that bear directly on the theme of this work. Seen in this sometimes unsettling light, they provide a basis for the revelations that will come. But before we examine the archaeological evidence, let us look at the purely historical, the evidence that can be supported by unimpeachable, primary sources.
1492
Lost Americans learn very early in their primary school education that America was "discovered" by Christopher Columbus on October 12, 1492. Some of them remember that he was supposed to be finding a more direct route to India — by going west instead of east — and that is why we call Native Americans "Indians" to this day: the result of Columbus's blunder in believing that the small Bahamian island he discovered was part of the Indian subcontinent. In the following weeks he would similarly "discover" Cuba and Hispaniola, the island now comprising the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
What is not well-known is the real reason for his expedition.
Yes, he wanted to find a fast route to India and China. At that time, the great seafaring nations of Europe — in particular Portugal, but also Holland and other maritime powers — were going south along the African coastline, rounding South Africa at the Cape and going north and east to reach India. Columbus — based on what are believed to be faulty geographic measurements and a faith in some of the apocryphal books of the Bible — thought he could make it to India much more quickly by going due west from the European coast. The Portuguese had turned this idea down, realizing that his math was faulty, and the Spanish at first rejected him as well, but he later had an audience with King Ferdinand of Spain, who agreed to fund his expedition and to grant him titles, land and a tenth of whatever precious metals he found: an agent's commission.
This much is consistent with what our schoolchildren know.
However, Spain in 1492 was in the middle of one of the greatest upheavals in its history. To understand what Columbus was doing, and the hidden agenda of his voyage — and thereby to begin to understand American history from a European perspective (most Americans being, after all, descendants of European ancestors) — we need to understand a little of what was happening in Spain.
And to understand Spain, we have to understand the history of Islamic "imperialism" and its stormy relationship to Europe in general and Christianity in particular.
While such a topic deserves much more space and much more attention to its detail than the author can ever hope to provide in these pages, we can summarize the situation as follows. Interested readers are urged to follow up with their own research, and several very good texts are recommended in the bibliography. Essentially, we must address the birth and expansion of Islam.
Muhammad, the prophet who created the religion known as Islam, had a vision of the Angel Gabriel while meditating in a cave in what is now Saudi Arabia. He was forty years old, a tradesman, a pagan, and troubled by hearing Jewish and Christian tradesmen and others around them discussing their respective religions. Monotheism was a new concept, and the year was 610 A.D.
The vision of Gabriel ignited something in Muhammad's heart and soul. He began preaching a personal and unique amalgam of Jewish, Christian and native Arab mythology and religious and moral principles to anyone who would listen. These principles included better treatment of slaves and women, a life of moderation, a "surrender" to the one true God (the word "Islam" means "surrender"), and other spiritual doctrines. Abstinence from alcohol and the eating of pork were also included, the latter a probable borrowing from Jewish law.
The people in his native Mecca found Muhammad to be something of a problem, because his doctrines interfered with trade and with the status of the social elite. Much as Christianity had evolved from a Messianic Jewish cult to a world religion and was about to conquer much of Europe as a political power, so too Muhammad and his followers were seen as a political and economic threat to the status quo.
Muhammad escaped a murder plot in Mecca and, with some of his followers, fled to Medina. This was in the year 622 A.D., the year of the "flight," the Hegira from which year Islam now counts its calendar.
Muhammad found a slightly better reception in Medina, settled several tribal disputes, and gradually converted many of these tribes to his new religion. He tried to win the allegiance of the Jews in Medina, but the Prophet was an illiterate Arab tradesman, and the Jewish elite scorned him and his new religion which they found at odds with the Torah. Although Muhammad initially had his followers face Jerusalem when they prayed, and made them adopt the practice of the Yom Kippur fast, his experience with the Jews in Medina led him to change these practices. The Muslims now face Mecca, which is the site of an ancient Arab relic, the Qa'aba (at the time of Muhammad a pagan shrine containing 360 idols and a piece of black, probably meteoric, rock), and they fast for the entire month of Ramadan. Thus, Islam became gradually more "Arab," as Muhammad's initial desire to wed Judaism, Christianity and indigenous Arab religious ideas and forms met opposition on all sides. Due to this very early contact with Jewish religious and economic leaders, the Koran has many citations specifically targeted against the Jews. Thus, some modern-day Muslims feel they have religious approval — if not an out and out license — for their antagonism against Israel.
As his religion grew in numbers, so did Muhammad grow in political power. At the time of his death, Islam was virtually the state religion in Saudi Arabia. During the next hundred years after his death, Arab armies would give the idea of missionary work a new meaning as they conquered — with fire and sword — nation after nation, extending their faith and the Arab culture as far afield as France, where they were finally defeated by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in the year 800 A.D. They had to fall back to Spain and Portugal in the west, and in the east as far as Samarkand, Tashkent and Turkey. Europe would hear again of the Arab legions when the Ottoman Empire reached its height in the sixteenth century A.D., going as far inland as the outskirts of Vienna and running over the Balkans, Romania and everything in between.
It would be nearly another three hundred years after the Battle of Tours before the first Crusades were mounted by the Catholic Church to "take back" the holy city of Jerusalem. Jerusalem was also sacred to the Muslims, due to a tradition that Muhammad had ascended to heaven from a site in Jerusalem that was also sacred to Jews and Christians: the site of King Solomon's Temple. This scenario may be a borrowing from the legend of Jesus and some stories of the Virgin Mother and of the prophet Elijah, who were all bodily carried into heaven.
Muhammad's descendants — both familial and spiritual — then fought over the growing Islamic empire. Europe saw Islamic forces on their soil within a century after the death of Islam's founder. And, in Spain, it would be another eight hundred years before the last Islamic rulers would finally leave their country.
Specifically, in the year 1492.
Tales of the Alhambra
In the spring of 1829, the author of this work, whom curiosity had brought to Spain, made a rambling expedition from Seville to Granada in company with a friend, a member of the Russian Embassy at Madrid. Accident had thrown us together from distant regions of the globe and a similarity of taste led us to wander together among the romantic mountains of Andalusia.
— Washington Irving, Tales of the Alhambra
In the spring of 2001, the author of this work, whom business had brought to Spain, made a fast expedition from Seville to Granada in company with a colleague, an executive of an American corporation that has a factory in Seville. Accident had thrown us together from distant regions of the globe (he from North Carolina, me from my temporary base in Malaysia), and a similarity of taste and a tightness of schedule led us to hire a car and drive across Spain in search of Granada and the fabled palace of the Alhambra.
My Spanish is okay, my driving ability perhaps less so, yet I found myself doing all the driving that day, getting us out of Seville at an early hour and making good time to Granada. As was the case with that earlier tour to Rome in company with another such executive, I found myself less of a chauffeur and more of a tour guide and ad hoc historian as we wandered the fabulously decorated halls and courtyards of one of the most striking examples of Arab architecture anywhere. It is always interesting for me to watch American executives abroad, and to marvel at how little they really know of the world outside their borders. This case was no exception.
The executive in question has a mother who is fascinated by church history, and who has a passionate attachment to the Holy Land and especially to Jerusalem and to the Holy Sepulcher, the site where Christ is supposed to have been laid to rest after the Crucifixion. Yet, her son — a tall, self-important man of heroic proportions, with paranoid demeanor and somewhat lacking in social skills — seemed relatively unaware of Arab conquests in Europe, even though he had accompanied his mother on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and is the beneficiary of her knowledge of the subject. I found myself filling in odd gaps in his understanding of the stormy relationship that has existed between Muslims and Christians virtually since the death of Muhammad, and particularly since the "Moorish" invasion of Europe in the eighth century A.D.
It was a revelation to stand in the Alhambra, in Spain, and realize that there had been an Islamic government in charge of large parts of the country for eight hundred years. That is nearly as long as the time since the Norman conquest of England in 1066, and is certainly much longer than the time elapsed since Columbus' landing on San Salvador in 1492 and ... the present. The cities of Seville, Cordoba, and Granada are testimony to the once-strong but now fading legacy of the Caliphs of the Alhambra.
Washington Irving — the American author perhaps better known for his frightening Legend of Sleepy Hollow and the somewhat comical and perceptive story of Rip Van Winkle — in his celebrated combination of short stories and travelogue Tales of the Alhambra makes justified recognition of the generally benign rule of the Moors in Spain, a reign that was famous for learning, science and the arts, and which attracted scholars and artists from all over Europe in its time. Nonetheless, it was an alien transplant in Europe and — surrounded as it was by hostile Christians on every side and separated by sea and land from its spiritual home in the Middle East — it eventually succumbed to pressure from without and within.
The Moors were vanquished, finally, in January of 1492, the same year that Columbus set sail on his first voyage to the New World, and that was not a mere coincidence. King Ferdinand was triumphant in removing the last vestige of Muslim political influence from western Europe ... and began to dream of another conquest.
This is what American schoolchildren never learn, and what scholars have been slow to report. From the Diario of Christopher Columbus, then:
And [Columbus] says that he hopes in God that on the return that he would undertake from Castile he would find a barrel of gold that those who were left would have acquired by exchange; and that they would have found the gold mine and the spicery, and those things in such quantity that the sovereigns, before three years, will undertake and prepare to go conquer the Holy Sepulcher; for thus I urged Your Highnesses to spend all the profits of this my enterprise on the conquest of Jerusalem, and Your Highnesses laughed and said that it would please them and that even without this profit they had that desire.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Sinster Forces Book One: The Nine by Peter Levenda. Copyright © 2011 Peter Levenda. Excerpted by permission of Trine Day LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Foreword Jim Hougan vii
Introduction: A Study In Scarlet xii
Section 1 Deep Background 1
Chapter 1 The Dunwich Horror: An Occult History of America 3
Chapter 2 The Mountains of Madness: American Prehistory and the Occult 43
Chapter 3 Red Dragon: The Ashland Tragedy 79
Section 2 Agents of the Devil 113
Chapter 4 Unholy Alliance: Nazism, Satanism and Psychological Warfare in the USA 115
Chapter 5 Bluebird 167
Chapter 6 The Doors of Perception 215
Section 3 Crossfire 255
Chapter 7 JFK 257
Chapter 8 Rosemary's Baby 291
Appendix: A Field Guide to Wandering Bishops 333
Index 347
