William Dudley Pelley, International Fascism & Sirius

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

William Dudley Pelley, International Fascism & Sirius

Postby American Dream » Sun Jan 26, 2014 4:01 pm

http://visupview.blogspot.com/2014/01/w ... ional.html

William Dudley Pelley, International Fascism and the Sirius Tradition Part I

Image

William Dudley Pelley is surely high in the rankings for most bizarre figures of the twentieth century. Chiefly forgotten in the early decades of the twenty-first century, Pelley none the less has had a vast and long-lasting influence on both far right ideology as well as what would eventually become known as the New Age movement. Pelley's influence on the latter is very rarely acknowledged, and understood even less. Over the course of this series I would like to present the reader with a more in depth picture of this strange little man and the curious influence he still wields on America's culture nearly 50 years after his death in 1965.

Of Pelley, the acclaimed researcher of right wing extremism Daniel Levitas remarks:
"As the son of a New England Methodist minister, William Dudley Pelley was a somewhat unlikely candidate to lead one of the largest openly pro-Nazi groups in America. But he also became a Vermont newspaper editor, a novelist, a Hollywood screenwriter, and a well-known writer of pulp fiction before he experienced a 'clairaudient' episode one night in May 1928 and reported conversations with the souls of the dead. Metaphysical experiences over the next four years further 'unlocked' Pelley's 'mental powers,' and led him to Asheville, North Carolina, where he promoted himself and his eclectic theology. On January 31, 1933, the day after Hitler became chancellor of Germany, he founded the Silver Shirt Legion of America. Although Pelley claimed twenty-five thousand members and seventy-five thousand sympathizers, actual membership in the Silver Shirts probably never exceeded fifteen thousand. Pelley's avid followers wore shirts emblazoned with an oversized scarlet L across the left breast signifying Love, Loyalty, and Liberation, as they denounced President Roosevelt, calling him a Jew, and praised Hitler as an enemy of communism. The agitations of Pelley's group concerned government authorities and others who feared the Silver Shirts might emerge as a fascist fifth column in America. Pelley's rantings gave them good reason:

"'I propose, from this date onward, to direct an aggressive campaign that shall arouse America's Gentile masses to a wholesale and drastic ousting of every radical-minded Jew from United States soil!' Pelley declared in 1938. He also pledged to establish 'the fullest and friendliest understanding and international relationships with all rightist and anticommunist nations abroad – particularly Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, and Japan...'"

(The Terrorist Next Door, Daniel Levitas, pg. 117)


Image
Pelley

Before getting to the notorious Silver Shirts let us first consider a few points about Pelley's early life. As noted above, Pelley initially earned a living as a professional writer. He began publishing short stories in the late 1910s and eventually graduated to full-fledged novels. Eventually his successes in these fields enabled Pelley to find work as a screenwriter in Hollywood during the end of that decade.

"Pelley's first three films were neither particularly significant nor overwhelmingly successful. Released in 1917, A Case at Law was a trite Western that starred Dick Rosson in one of his patented anti-alcohol 'message' films. The June 1919 release of One-Thing-at-a-Time O'Day, based on a Pelley's Saturday Evening Post story of the same name, featured future 'Lone Wolf' detective series star Bert Lytell as a well-meaning buffoon who falls in love with the circus bareback rider, only to have to sway her affections away from the circus's nefarious strongman. What Women Love provided Pelley with the most acclaim of the three films. Released in August 1920, the film starred the notorious Annette 'Diving Venus' Kellerman as bathing suit-wearing libertine wooed by a chaste young man who saves her from the clutches of an aggressive professional boxer. Thanks to Kellerman's drawing power and exciting aquatic sequences (including an underwater fight and a seventy-five-foot dive into the Pacific by the film's heroine), What Women Love proved to be a mild critical and commercial success.

"Unlike these earlier films, however, the 'White Faith' project allowed Pelley to delve into the motion picture business as an active participant. Contracted to rewrite the serial into workable script, Pelley quickly realized the money-making potential of turning his writing attentions towards film. With his short-story career foundering, Pelley also understood that his seminal style fit better with the prevailing mood in film than with the magazine fiction market. With The Light in the Dark (the script's new title) Pelley's 'seven-year submergence in movies had begun.'

"Pelley's shift towards motion picture work was aided immeasurably by the one lasting friendship that developed from working on The Light in the Dark. Although Jules Brulatour intended the film to showcase his wife, he also understood the need to flesh out the cast with more familiar names. Therefore, he contacted Lon Chaney, 'the man of a thousand faces,' to costar. Cheney, who began making films in 1912, became a featured performer after his appearance in The Miracle Man. Working together on the film, Pelley and the 'soft-spoken, jovial-mannered' Cheney became fast friends. When they were not filming, their two families spend evenings and weekends together in New York (with Cheney often cooking dinner for them). Their friendship ebbed at that the end of the decade as Pelley became increasingly anti-Hollywood in his outlook."

(William Dudley Pelley: A Life in Right-Wing Extremism and the Occult, Scott Beekman, pgs. 37-38)


Image
Lon Chaney Sr in The Phantom of the Opera, one of his most well known films

Horror icon Lon Chaney was but one curious acquaintance Pelley would make during his lifetime, as we shall see. For now, let me wrap up with Pelley's time in Hollywood. Naturally the future Silver Shirt fuhrer's eventual disillusionment with Hollywood was partly driven by his budding anti-Semitism.

"Pelley's daily interaction with the 'glamorous, cockeyed, crazy gang, booze-lit, and money-drunk children in Arabian nights palaces of papier-mache, however, proved significant for the screenwriter. Increasingly distressed over the actions of screen stars and Jewish studio moguls, and their influence on American society, Pelley began to develop the racist attitudes that shaped the rest of his life. Already deeply troubled by the changes being wrought in America, in Hollywood Pelley found a ready scapegoat on which to pin the blame for 'isms.' It was his only extended contact with Jews, but it left a permanent impression on him. As he later noted, 'for six years I toiled in their galleys and got nothing but money...'"

(ibid, pg. 41)

Image
the longstanding far right obsession with Jewish domination of Hollywood, of which Pelley did his share to promote, continues to this very day

This was not, however, Pelley's first brush with anti-Semitism. Like many Americans during this era, Pelley's impression of Jews seems to have been heavily influenced by contact he had with White Russians in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution. Pelley even seems to have aided the White Russian war effort at one point, possibly on behalf of US intelligence. These events occurred in 1918 while Pelley was on a writing assignment in Japan. After the Russian Revolution broke out, he was sent to Siberia to cover the hostilities on behalf of the YMCA.

"Stranded in Japan, Pelley undertook a cross-country tour, traveling to as many missions as possible to obtain material for his articles. While in Karuizawa he was approached by George S. Phelps, International YMCA Secretary for the Far East. Phelps offered Pelley the chance to see the war firsthand by going to Siberia under the auspices of the YMCA. The organization would help underwrite his journey and arrange for transportation in return for Pelley's writing reports on YMCA activities in the region and scouting out possible locations for canteens the organization hoped to establish for American servicemen stationed in Russia.

"Pelley sailed for Russia aboard the Penza from the Japanese port city of Tsuruga. He later claimed that it was while spending a few days in Tsuruga waiting for the ship that he was first exposed to the 'world-wide Jewish question.' According to Pelley, it was an unnamed American surgeon heading for Siberia, previously attached to Polish forces, who explained the cause of the war to the young New England newspaperman. The surgeon told Pelley the Jews had orchestrated the assassination of Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand in order to bring about a bloody and profitable war. Jewish plans during the war involved overthrowing the Russian czar and creating a Jewish homeland in Russia. From this Russian base of operations, Jews would launch their plan for world domination. Pelley's confidant informed him that the Russian Revolution was part of this program (and entirely funded by the Jewish-American banker Jacob Schiff), and that V. I. Lenin was also a Jew.

"Pelley debarked in Vladivostok (which reminded him of the docks of Hoboken, New Jersey) to receive specific instructions from the staff at the headquarters of the YMCA's Red Triangle in the Siberian city. He later claimed he was immediately besieged with anti-Semitic pronouncements in Vladivostok. Pelley noted that these sentiments prevailed among the American and Czech troops in Russia as well as with his traveling companion from Japan, George Gleason.

"Pelley's commission with the Red Triangle involved traveling throughout Siberia in a canteen car attached to Allied troop trains. He was instructed to take pictures of conditions in the region and to write reports for the YMCA on the most efficient means of turning the youth of Russia away from 'satanic Leninism.' Pelley claimed he was a combination 'Red Triangle secretary, war correspondent, espionage agent, secret photographer, canteen proprietor, and consular courier... Striving to plant sanity, decency, and political stability in a land being slowly mutilated and mangled by Communism.'

"Pelley's excursions kept him primarily behind the Allied lines, but the frequently shifting positions of the front often left him dangerously close to combat. His first and most significant experience in a combat zone occurred in the city of Blagoveshchenck. Pelley's car was attached to a Japanese troop train sent in as reinforcement during the fight for the city. Arriving after most of the fighting ended, Pelley witnessed the entire city go up in flames. He was deeply moved by this 'terrible and unforgettable sight... as magnificent as it was tragic.'

"In November 1918 the most picturesque episode of Pelley's Siberian adventure began while he was staying in Irkustsk to watch the ceremonies that gave Admiral Aleksander Kolchak formal control of all the White Russian forces. At the American consulate he was persuaded to accompany two representatives of the International Harvester Company, three-quarters of a million dollars in company funds, and Washington-bound diplomatic documents from American bastard David R. Francis to Harbin, Manchuria. Harvester officials sought to rush the money out of the country before it fell into Bolshevik hands. Pelley's credentials, local authorities believed, would prevent the funds from seizure along the road to Harbin. Pelley chaperoned a money-loaded canteen for twenty-six days. Already fearful of being robbed, Pelley found the journey even more harrowing because of the vicious weather of the Siberian winter. When the cold and hungry trio reached Harbin, they learned that the war had ended during their treacherous trip.
"While he possessed nothing but scorn for either the red Bolsheviks or the white Cossacks ('predatory hetmen'), Pelley's accounts demonstrated genuine sympathy for the Russian peasants. He decried the treatment of these people caught in the middle of a war they neither understood nor wished to participate in. Much as he did the rural folk of the American southwest, Pelley found the Russian peasants to be hard-working, friendly, and quietly noble. To Pelley they were the 'prototypes' of the generous New Englanders he grew up with, and their wholesale dislocation was a pitiable consequence of the Revolution.

"Pelley blamed only the Jewish Communist for the tragic destruction of the peasantry. He argued that the boxcar loads of refugees he traveled with were victims of a revolution perpetuated by 'two hundred and seventy-six Jews from New York's East Side.' Pelley later claimed that witnessing the actions of the 'scavenger Jews' in Siberia led him to understand the Jewish plot to take over the world, the Russian Revolution being merely the first step in this program. He used his experience in Siberia as first-hand 'evidence' of the fate awaiting Americans at the Communists took over the country. Pelley believed that Russian atrocities could 'happen in Kansas, Indiana, New Jersey... if this Communist peril becomes guerrilla warfare.'

(ibid, pgs. 26-28)

Image
the legendary city of Harbin prior to 1945

That Pelley would pop up in Harbin, Manchuria, China is most curious. Manchuria is of course the name of the region that inspired the name of Richard Condon's The Manchurian Candidate. Some researchers such as the great John Bevilaqua have insisted that Condon's use of Manchuria as a brainwashing center had a basis in reality. What's more, Bevilaqua has noted that Harbin became one of the chief centers of Russian fascism after the Russian Revolution.

"... Also recalled that the headquarters of Vonsiatsky's Russian Fascist Organization was Harbin, Manchuria, China. The birthplace of George deMohrenschildt's wife was also Harbin, which makes it highly likely that her parents were expatriate Russian Fascists who must have known Vonsitsky as the leader of their klan during their disporia there. George's favorite pseudonym was Philip Harbin."

(J.F.K. -The Final Solution, John Bevilaqua, pg. ci)

Image
George de Mohrenschildt

George de Mohrenschildt is a curious figure frequently linked to the JFK assassination. I addressed him briefly before here. "Count" Anastase "Annie" Vonsiatsky was America's premier Russian fascist in the years between the World Wars, with his All-Russian Fascist Organization (VFO) being based out of Putnam, Connecticut. Like Pelley, he was imprisoned for sedition in 1942. Harbin, Manchuria was in fact home to a Russian fascist organization --the All-Russian Fascist Party --but there is some dispute as to how closely linked this organization was to Vonsiatsky's.

Image
the headquarters of the All-Russian Fascist Party, which was located mere miles from the Siberian border in Manchuria

Unsurprisingly, there is evidence that the organizations of Pelley and Vonsiatsky were linked in some way. The FBI's official website notes:
"During the FBI's investigation of Vonsiatsky's activities, evidence was obtained that he had had some dealings with William Dudley Pelley's organization. In fact, upon one occasion Vonsiatsky sent several copies of his publication, 'The Fascist,' to Pelley's organization in Asheville, North Carolina. On one occasion at least, Vonsiatsky ordered a hundred copies of Pelley's publication. During 1936, a representative of the Pelley Publishers wrote Vonsiatsky stating, 'Your work for the Cause we are mutually serving, publishing your Russian Fascist, has just come to our attention. From reports given us it seems you are fighting a rather lone battle, and a little camaraderie is not amiss.' The letter further stated that Pelley's organization had been in battle 'militantly' for over four years and was 'determined to block Judah in government and the Jewish bankers by the coming national election.'"


Even biographer John J. Stephan, who generally goes out of his way to depict Vonsiatsky in the most buffoonish light possible, grudgingly acknowledges there was some type of contact between Pelley and the Count from a relatively early date. A Pelley representative, for instance, approached the Count during the onset of one of his world tours to forge an international Russian fascist network.

"... John Eoghan Kelly, New York representative of Pelley's Silver Shirts, was also on hand to wish the vozhd well. Pelley had approached Vonsiatsky in January 1934 with an offer to get together, but Alex preferred to postpone any meeting until after his global pereginations. Kelly's appearance at the Vanderbilt probably reflected his chief's desire to be remembered as a friend – and beneficiary."

(The Russian Fascists, John J. Stephan, pg. 140)

Image
"Count" Vonsiatsky

Naturally this encounter occurred just before Vonsiatsky was setting off to meet with the All-Russian Fascist organization in Harbin, Manchuria. Perhaps Pelley's representative was there to pass off contacts the Silver Shirt head had made there during his time in Harbin as well. Regardless, it is curious how many bizarre figures appear in Harbin, Manchuria between the World Wars. But back to Pelley and his Silver Shirts organization.

While there were over 700 pro-fascist groups in these United States in the 1930s Pelley's Silver Shirts remain among the most notorious. No doubt this was partly due to Pelley's grandiose vision for the organization.

"... The Legion was to be headed by the national commander (Pelley), a treasurer, and a secretary. Pelley was to be assisted by the General Staff, consisting of the chief, the chamberlain, the quartermaster, the sheriff, and the censor. Elected for ten-year terms, the General Staff possessed the authority to appoint Divisional Executive and Local Executive Staffs. The Legion maintained its headquarters in Asheville and divided administrative duties, handled by the Divisional Executive Staff (DES), into nine divisions. Each DES was presided over by a Divisional Commanding Officer, assisted by a treasurer and clerk. Although answerable to officials at the national headquarters, each division maintained Departments of Local Posts, Silva Rangers, Industrial Relations, Junior Activities, and Foreign Affiliates. The Silver Rangers, consisting of paramilitary bands of one hundred 'arsonists,' would, in particular, cause Pelley future difficulties.

"Anticipating that the Legion would serve as the foundation of a new theocratic state, Pelley also created departments to handle specific issues, including Public Enlightenment, Patriotic Probity, Crime Erasement, and Public Morals and Mercy. The Department of Public Morals and Mercy was seen by Pelley as especially important as it would be in charge of placing all 'vagabonds' in concentration centers, censoring the press, and arresting persons responsible for motion pictures that depicted violence.

"Membership in the Legion was open to all, save Jews and Blacks, over the age of eighteen who could afford the $10 annual dues and the $6 for a uniform. Prospective members submitted a photograph and personal information, including racial heritage, military experience, financial records, and the exact hour and minute of birth, and signed a document agreeing to abide by the organization's principles. These 'Christian American Patriots' pledged to 'respect and sustain the sanctity of the Christian Ideal, to nurture the moral tradition and Civic, Domestic and Spiritual life and the culture of the wholesome, natural and inspirational in Art, Literature, Music and Drama; to adulate and revere an aristocracy of Intellect, Talent and Characterful Purpose, and the Body Politic; to sponsor and acclaim aggressive ideals and pride of Craftsmanship rather than the golden serpent of profit, that the lowliest individual may aspire to a life of fullest flower; to exalt Patriotism and Pride of Race, and in the interest of progress and evolution, to recognize the integrity of every nation and seek to preserve his place in the Fellowship of Peoples...'

"New recruits attended nine weekly indoctrination meetings. Local Councils of Safety directed the proceedings at these meetings. The recruits received instruction on the threat of Jewish Communism and their responsibilities as Christian patriots. The bulk of these nine meetings was discussions of the 'four primers' with which all Silver Shirts must be familiar: the anti-Semitic standards The Hidden Empire and The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion and two Pelley works. The Pelley writings, The President Knows and No More Hunger, outlined the theocratic (or 'Christ Democracy') state the Silver Shirt chief hoped to create in the United States.

"No More Hunger detailed Pelley's program for establishing the Christian Commonwealth. With moderate alteration, Pelley maintained this governmental plan, like his religious system, throughout his public career. The Commonwealth, then, should be considered one of the twin pillars of Pelley's thought (Liberation/Soulcraft doctrine is the other). He never let the book go out of print during his lifetime and claimed it had sold over eighty-thousand copies by the early 1950s.

"Pelley claimed that the Commonwealth was 'a social system that is neither Capitalism, Socialism, Fascism, or Communism.' In fact, the Commonwealth blended elements of all these ideas into a composite, not unlike the ideas expressed by his adolescent hero Edward Bellamy and the iconoclastic Populist-Social Gospeler Richard T. Ely. The system meshed a theocratic, corporate state; centralized production control of government-owned industry; civil service-style employment protection with private ownership of personal property; and an all-encompassing social welfare program."

(William Dudley Pelley: A Life in Right-Wing Extremism and the Occult, Scott Beekman, pgs. 81-83)

Image
some Silver Shirts

Easily the most militant branch of the Silver Shirts was the one based in California. It was this section that would generate much of the organization's (somewhat over exaggerated) reputation for violence.

"Of all the large state organizations, California created the most problems for Pelley. The first Silver Shirt branch opened in Los Angeles in 1933 and met with surprising initial success, with statewide membership reaching a peak of three thousand in 1934. Pelley was so pleased with the progress in southern California that in February 1934 he moved the Silver Ranger, his newest magazine, from Oklahoma City (which had become the organization's 'second headquarters') to Los Angeles. That city eventually house six different local branches. This concentration of units in one city, the most in the country, allowed Pelley to organize the branches with specializations. For example, there was a Los Angeles branch for those most interested in Pelley's religious system (the astrology-minded Nazi William Kullgren was associated with this group) and another unit, headed by 'Captain' Eugene Case, for the violent 'arsonists'...
"While the Los Angeles branches created internal strife for Pelley and his organization, the San Diego branch foisted a surfeit of complications on the Silver Shirt chief. The San Diego group leader, Willard Kemp, had little use for Pelley's esoteric writings and focused his membership on preparing for armed struggle with Communist invaders. Not content to wait for the Communists to strike first, the San Diego chief proposed a series of violent schemes to his followers. In anticipation of bloodshed, Kemp armed his two hundred followers with rifles allegedly bought illegally from unscrupulous attendants at the North Island Naval Base armory and drilled them at a heavily fortified ranch near El Cajon. To ensure that his men were ready for action, Kemp hired to U.S. Marine Corps drill instructors (Virgil Hayes and Edward T. Grey) to train his men in military tactics and offered to buy any stolen weapons the two could procure.
"Kemp's indiscretions proved costly. Hayes and Grey reported Kemp's offer to their superiors, who instructed the two to infiltrate the Silver Shirts and report their findings to Naval Intelligence. The two marines and a number of Silver Shirts eventually testified about the San Diego unit's actions before an executive session of the Special House Congressional Subcommittee on Un-American Activities (the McCormick-Dickstein Committee) in August 1934. Already investigating Nazi propaganda in the United States, committee members were appalled by the schemes of the San Diego Silver Shirts, which included assassination of Jewish public officials and an armed march on San Diego during a May Day celebration. It proved to be the beginning of close governmental scrutiny of Pelley's organization. Investigators quickly discovered irregularities in Pelley's financial activities. As 1934 dawned, Pelley began twenty years of legal entanglements."

(ibid, pgs. 102-104)

And it is here that I shall wrap things up for now. With an outline of Pelley's background and the Silver Shirts out of the way, I shall focus my attention upon Pelley's ties to Nazi Germany as well as his extensive links within far right circles at the onset of the next installment. From there I will then address the metaphysical parts of Pelley's life, a dominate if little examined aspect of it. Stay tuned.
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: William Dudley Pelley, International Fascism & Sirius

Postby Searcher08 » Sun Jan 26, 2014 6:14 pm

That is a FANTASTIC post with much to digest - thank you - If you have any about Guy Ballard or in particular (the extremely strange and very interesting ) George Hunt Williamson, this would be a great thread for them.
Cheers!
User avatar
Searcher08
 
Posts: 5887
Joined: Thu Dec 20, 2007 10:21 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: William Dudley Pelley, International Fascism & Sirius

Postby American Dream » Sun Jan 26, 2014 11:11 pm

Searcher08 » Sun Jan 26, 2014 5:14 pm wrote:That is a FANTASTIC post with much to digest - thank you - If you have any about Guy Ballard or in particular (the extremely strange and very interesting ) George Hunt Williamson, this would be a great thread for them.
Cheers!

I'm sure Recluse will get to some or all of that in future installments, which will be posted here.

Interestingly enough, I was once really taken with George Hunt Williamson (back when I had way too much stardust in my eyes), after some pretty questionable hippies turned me on to Secret of the Andes by "Brother Phillip" and I took it all to heart, and quite literally.
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: William Dudley Pelley, International Fascism & Sirius

Postby American Dream » Mon Jan 27, 2014 12:29 am

Here is more on what I was talking about just above:

George Hunt Williamson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

George Hunt Williamson (December 9, 1926 – January 1986), aka Michael d'Obrenovic and Brother Philip, was one of the "four guys named George"[1] among the mid-1950s contactees. The others were George Adamski, George King, and George Van Tassel.

Williamson, born in Chicago, to parents George Williamson and Bernice Hunt, was mystically inclined as a teenager, but transferred some of his occult enthusiasm to flying saucers in the late 1940s. In early 1951 Williamson was expelled on academic grounds from the University of Arizona. Having read William Dudley Pelley's book Star Guests (1950), Williamson worked for a while for Pelley's cult organization, helping to put out its monthly publication Valor. Pelley had generated huge quantities of communications with "advanced intelligences" via automatic writing, and very clearly was an immediate inspiration to Williamson, who combined his fascination with the occult and with flying saucers by trying to contact flying saucer crews with a home-made Ouija board. After hearing about the flying-saucer-based religious cult of George Adamski, perhaps through Pelley, Williamson and his wife, and fellow saucer believers Alfred and Betty Bailey, became regular visitors to Adamski's commune at Palomar Gardens and eventually members of Adamski's Theosophy-spinoff cult. They witnessed Adamski "telepathically" channelling and tape-recording messages from the friendly humanoid Space Brothers who inhabited every solar planet. The Willamsons, the Baileys and two other Adamski disciples became the "witnesses" to Adamski's supposed meeting with Orthon, a handsome blond man from Venus, near Desert Center, California on November 18, 1952. In fact the "witnesses" experienced nothing more than Adamski telling them to wait and stay put while he walked over a hill, then came back into view an hour later, with a preliminary story of his experiences--- a story subsequently greatly changed for book publication in Flying Saucers Have Landed (1953), as Williamson himself later pointed out.

The initial publication of Adamski's tale in an Arizona newspaper on November 24, 1952, triggered an explosive growth in the membership of Adamski's cult. The Williamsons and Baileys continued their Ouija-board sessions, getting their own personal revelations from the Space Brothers, which led to a drastic falling-out with Adamski.

In 1954, Williamson and Bailey published The Saucers Speak which emphasized supposed short-wave radio communications with friendly saucer pilots, but in fact depended for almost all its contents on the ouija-board sessions Bailey and Williamson held regularly from 1952 onward. They heard from Actar of Mercury, Adu of Hatonn in Andromeda, Agfa Affa from Uranus (presumably not the same Affa who was the exclusive contact of Frances Swan), Ankar-22 of Jupiter, Artok of Pluto, Awa from Outer Space, Garr from Pluto, Kadar Lacu from Saturn, Karas the Space Brother, Lomec of Venus, Nah-9 from Neptune, Noro of the Saucer Fleet, Oara of Saturn, Ponnar of Hatoon (presumably not the same Ponnar who was the exclusive contact of Frances Swan), Regga of Mars, Ro of Torresoton, Sedat of Hatonn, Suttku of Saturn, Terra of Venus, Wan-4 of the Safanian planets, Zago of Mars and Zo of Neptune. The "board" contacts were in good if uninformative English, but the few reported radio contacts, in International Morse code, left a little to be desired. Sample: "AFFA FROM THE P. RA RRR OK K5 K5 FROM THE PLA CHANT RRT IT." Perhaps influenced by the Shaver Mystery, Williamson also reveals that while most space aliens are helpful and good, there are some very bad ones hanging out near Orion and headed for earth in force, bent on conquest.

Williamson became a more obscure competitor to Adamski, eventually combining his own channelling and the beliefs of a small contactee cult known as the Brotherhood of the Seven Rays, led by Marion Dorothy Martin, to produce a series of books about the secret, ancient history of mankind: Other Tongues--- Other Flesh (1957), Secret Places of the Lion (1958), UFOs Confidential with John McCoy (1958), Road in the Sky (1959) and Secret of the Andes (1961). These books, when not rewriting the Old and New Testaments to depict every important person as a reincarnation of one of only six or eight different "entities," expanded on the usual late 19th Century Theosophical teachings (borrowed without credit from Thomas Lake Harris) that friendly Space Brothers in the distant past had taught the human race the rudiments of civilization--- and, according to Williamson, spacemen had also helped materially in the founding of the Jewish and Christian religions, impersonating "gods" and providing "miracles" when needed. Williamson spiced his books with additional Ouija-revelations to the effect that some South, Central and North American ancient civilizations actually began as colonies of human-appearing extraterrestrials. Williamson can be considered a more mystically-inclined forerunner of Erich von Däniken; Secret Places of the Lion also displays the clear and explicit influence of Immanuel Velikovsky.

Like his role-model Adamski, Williamson enjoyed referring to himself as "professor," and claimed an extensive academic background, which in fact was completely non-existent. In the late 1950s he withdrew from the contactee scene and even changed his name, concocting a new fictitious academic and family background to go along with the new name, while continuing to live in California. His 1961 book was published under a still different pen name. Little is known about his life between 1961 and his reported death in 1986, other than that at one time he became a priest of the Nestorian Church, actually the Assyrian Church of the East.



An excerpt from the book Secret of the Andes written by Brother Philip:

The Origin of the Brotherhood of the Seven Rays.

Lemuria is the name for the last part of the great pacific continent of Mu. The actual destruction of Mu and its submergence began before 30,000 BC This action continued for many thousands of years until the final portion of old Mu known as Lemuria was also submerged in a series of new disasters that were terminated between 10,000 and 12,000 BC This occurred just prior to the destruction of Poseidonis, the last remnant of the Atlantic continent, Atlantis. Lord Amaru-Muru(God Meru) was one of the great Lemurian sages and the Keeper of the Scrolls during the last days of doomed Mu.

It was well known to the masters of Lemuria that the final catastrophe would cause gigantic tidal waves to take the last of there land down into the angry sea and oblivion. Those working on the Left Hand Path continued diabolic experiments and heeded not 'the handwriting on the wall,'

The Masters and Saints working on the Right Hand Path began to collect the precious records and documents from the Libraries of Lemuria. Each Master was chosen by the Council of the Great White Hierarchy to go to a different section of the world, where, in safety, he could set up a School of the Ancient and Arcane Wisdom. This was to preserve the scientific and spiritual knowledge of the past. At first, for many thousands of years, these schools were to remain a mystery to the inhabitants of the world; their teachings and meetings were to be secret. Hence, they are called even today Mystery Schools or the Shan-Gri-Las of Earth.

Lord Meru, as one of the teachers of Lemuria, was delegated by the Hierarchy to take the Sacred Scrolls in his possession along with the enormous golden disk of the Sun to the mountainous area of a newly formed lake in what is now South America. Here he would guard and sustain the focus of the illumination flame. The Disk of the Sun was kept in the great Temple of Divine Light in Lemuria and was not merely an object of ritual and adoration, nor did it serve that single purpose later on when it was used by the High Priests of the Sun Among the Incas of Peru Amaru-Muru journeyed to the new land in one of the silver needle airships of the time.

While the final portions of the former continent were breaking up in the Pacific Ocean, terrible catastrophe was taking place all over the Earth. The Andean range of mountains was born at this time, and disfigured the west coast of South America. The ancient city of Tiahuanaco (Bolivia) was at that time a great seaport and a Lemurian empire colonial city of magnificence and importance to the motherland. During the ensuing cataclysms it was raised from the sea level and a mild, and a mild tropical climate to high on a barren, wind-swept plain and a frigid arctic-like climate. Before this took place, there had been no Lake Titicaca, which is now the highest navigable lake in the world, over twelve thousand feet above sea level.

So, it was to a newly-formed lake that Lord Meru arrived from sunken Lemuria. Here, now known as Lago Titicaca, the Monastery of the Brotherhood of the Seven Rays came into being, organized and perpetuated by Amaru-Muru. This Monastery, which was to be the home of the Brotherhood throughout all ages on Earth, was placed in a immense valley that had been created during the days of the birth of the Andes, and was a strange child of Nature in that its exact disposition and altitude gave it a warm, semi tropical climate where fruits and nuts could grow to phenomenal size. Here on top of ruins that had once been at sea level, like the city of Tiahuanaco, Lord Meru had the Monastery constructed of gigantic blocks of stone cut only by the energy of primary light force. This cyclopean structure is the same today as it was then, and continues to be a repository or Lemurian science, culture, and arcane knowledge.

The other Masters of Lemuria, the Lost Continent, journeyed to other parts of the world and also set up Mystery Schools, so that Mankind would have throughout all time on Earth the secret knowledge hidden away, not lost, but hidden, until the children of Earth had spiritually progressed to study again and to use the Divine Truths.

The secret science of Adoma, Atlantis, and other highly advanced world civilizations is to be found today in the libraries of these schools, for these civilizations also sent out wise men to found Inner Retreats and Sanctuaries throughout the world. Such Retreats were under the direct guidance and guardianship of the Great White Brotherhood, the Hierarchy of Earth's spiritual Mentors.

The valley of the Monastery of the Brotherhood of the Seven Rays is known as the valley of the Blue Moon and is located high in Andes Mountains on the northern, Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca. Lord Meru did not immediately set up the Monastery on his arrival at Lake Titicaca, but he wandered for many years, studying and fasting in the wilderness, where he was joined by others who had escaped the catastrophes. He was originally accompanied by his feminine aspect, Amara-Mara (Goddess Meru), when he departed from Lemuria in the needle-like airship. These were not space craft, but were used by the Motherland for trade between the colonies.

The Brother hood of the Seven Rays had known existence countless ages before the time during the time of the Elder Race upon the Earth about one billion years ago. However, it had never before had a monastery where students of life, highly advanced on the Great Path of Initiation, could come together in spiritual harmony to blend the flow of their life streams. Each student came into existence one of the Seven Great Rays of Life, as we all do, and these rays were to be blended by each student weaving his, or her, Ray, as if it were a colored thread, into the tapestry which symbolized the Spiritual Life of the Monastery. Therefore, it was called the Brotherhood of the Seven Rays, also known as the Brotherhood of Illumination.
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: William Dudley Pelley, International Fascism & Sirius

Postby Searcher08 » Mon Jan 27, 2014 8:13 am

American Dream » Mon Jan 27, 2014 3:11 am wrote:
Searcher08 » Sun Jan 26, 2014 5:14 pm wrote:That is a FANTASTIC post with much to digest - thank you - If you have any about Guy Ballard or in particular (the extremely strange and very interesting ) George Hunt Williamson, this would be a great thread for them.
Cheers!

I'm sure Recluse will get to some or all of that in future installments, which will be posted here.

Interestingly enough, I was once really taken with George Hunt Williamson (back when I had way too much stardust in my eyes), after some pretty questionable hippies turned me on to Secret of the Andes by "Brother Phillip" and I took it all to heart, and quite literally.


!!! (= jaw on floor)
My heart jumped out of my chest when I read that - that book has been deeply intertwined with my life; that story has layers upon layers of interwoven truth, falsity, Indiana Jones, Nazis, adventure trails, channelled nonsense, modern edge psychology, ancient mysteries...
I was going to go to Peru, but then the Sendero Luminoso arose...
I appreciate this may be very private stuff (for both of us) - would you be willing / prefer to share via PM?
User avatar
Searcher08
 
Posts: 5887
Joined: Thu Dec 20, 2007 10:21 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: William Dudley Pelley, International Fascism & Sirius

Postby Sounder » Mon Jan 27, 2014 9:41 am

AD wrote...
Interestingly enough, I was once really taken with George Hunt Williamson (back when I had way too much stardust in my eyes), after some pretty questionable hippies turned me on to Secret of the Andes by "Brother Phillip" and I took it all to heart, and quite literally.



I am not one to devalue the subjective world of another person, and now see AD from this admission that your current response to previous involvement in these strains of thought makes perfect sense, given the context of your life. So I apologize for comparing Pelley with Rockefeller in the way I did on that other thread.

It’s also good to see seacher08 and AD find some common ground. So big up on that, I will retreat for a bit and maybe find a better time to post my reflections on the ubiquitous influence of (the synthetic) dominant narrative that drives nearly all discourse while setting effective limits on discourse.
All these things will continue as long as coercion remains a central element of our mentality.
Sounder
 
Posts: 4054
Joined: Thu Nov 09, 2006 8:49 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: William Dudley Pelley, International Fascism & Sirius

Postby American Dream » Sun Feb 02, 2014 2:09 pm

http://visupview.blogspot.com/2014/01/w ... al_30.html

William Dudley Pelley, International Fascism and the Sirius Tradition Part II

Image

Welcome to the second installment in my examination of the life and times of the notorious World War II-era fascist William Dudley Pelley, a man convicted of sedition in 1942. Pelley is most well known in this day and age for his founding of the Silver Shirts, an outfit with paramilitary trappings that self-consciously echoed Hitler's Brownshirts even if it was not remotely as militant. During the first installment of this series the founding, structure, and violence associated with the Silver Shirts was considered as well as a few key points from Pelley's pre-fascist days. As was noted there, the trip he made to Harbin, Manchuria, China, in the midst of the Russian Revolution was likely a far more significant event in the former screenwriter's life than is generally acknowledged.

In this installment I want to finish fleshing out the role Pelley played in both the pre- and post-World War II fascist scenes. With that in mind, let us first consider one of the longstanding charges concerning Pelley: that he was an agent of Nazi Germany. Pelley's biographer, Scott Beekman, found this charge to be a rather murky one.

"Despite Pelley's vocal championing of Hitler in early 1933, the Silver Shirts had no sustained contact with Nazi Germany until the middle of the decade, and even then he did not receive direct financial support. Still, reporters took Pelley's pronouncements as evidence of official connections between Pelley and Hitler. Pelley did nothing to correct these reports, believing they only increased his stature in extremist circles here and abroad. While Pelley's reputation among rightist may have improved by celebrating and imitating Hitler, it also gained the attention of authorities. Concerned over these purported linkages between domestic fascists and Nazi Germany, various state and federal governmental agencies began investigating American extremists in 1934. This proved to be the beginning of a costly battle that would land many domestic Nazi sympathizers, including Pelley, in prison."

(William Dudley Pelley: A Life in Right-Wing Extremism and the Occult, Scott Beekman, pgs. 99-100)

Image

Beekman would later expand on this point, noting:
"Pelley's relationship with Nazi Germany also intensified at the end of the decade. The Germans approach Pelley with some trepidation, not wanting a potential ally to be branded an enemy agent. Pelley's religious thinking also contributed to this arm's-length relationship. Although the Nazis invited Pelley to the Third Reich's Erfut Anti-Comintern Congress in 1938, the Silver Shirt leader's espousal of Christianity and spiritualism gave the Nazis pause. Pelley exchanged large amounts of material with German propaganda outlets, including the German World Service and, in particular, Oscar Pfaus of the Fichte Bund, but these Third Reich agencies specifically requested only his anti-Semitic works (and never directly sent him cash payments). This relationship (and Pelley's vocal championing of Hitler) aside, claims that the Silver Shirt leader was an agent of Nazi Germany, as the federal government announced in 1944, were clearly erroneous."

(ibid, pg. 123)

Other researchers believe that Pelley was much more than a mere fellow traveler of Nazi Germany. Consider, for instance, the curious working relationship that developed between Pelley and a human being known as Sidney Brooks.
"By 1934, the Nazis had only been in power for less than a year, but already were active in placing their agents or pro-Nazis in positions of power. On Feb. 22, 1934, Sen. Daniel Hastings of Delaware and Rep. Chester Bolton announced the Republican Party had merged their Senatorial and Congressional Campaign Committees into a single organization, independent of the Republican National Committee. Just before the merger, the two campaign committees hired Sidney Brooks, longtime head of research at International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT). ITT was one of many American corporations that went to extraordinary means to continue trading with the Nazis after war broke out.

"Brooks soon made a frantic visit to New York. On March 4, 1934, he went to Room 830 of the Hotel Edison, rented to Mr. William Goodales of Los Angeles, who was actually William Dudley Pelley. The meeting ended with an agreement to merge Brooks' Order of 76 with the Silver Shirts. Then Brooks stopped at 17 Battery Place, the address of the German Consulate General.

"The Order of 76 was a pro-fascist group. Its application form required the fingerprints and certain biographical details of applicants. Brooks' application revealed that he was the son of Nazi agent Col. Edwin Emerson, and that he chose to use his mother's maiden name to hide his father's identity. Emerson was a major financial backer of Furholzer and his paper. The Republican Party was employing Nazi collaborators and pro-fascist groups at a high level."

(The Nazi Hydra in America, Glen Yeadon & John Hawkins, pg. 184)

Image
Sidney Brooks' application of the Order of 76

Beekman confirms these connections to the Colonel Edwin Emerson and the Order of 76, but down plays such affiliations.

"Pelley developed connections to a number of these extremist groups. He cultivated relationships with, among others, C. Leon de Aryan of The Broom magazine, American White Guard leader and convicted forger Henry D. Allen, the 'Wichita Fuehrer' Gerald Winrod, Reverend Gerald L. K. Smith, Colonel Edward Emerson, Harry Jung, James True (the inventor of the patented 'kike killer' billy club), Royal Scott Gulden of the Order of 76, and various Bund leaders. Always jealous of his own status, Pelley frequently quarreled with other right-wing leaders. Usually these friendships ended either when Pelley tried to absorb their organizations into his own or when his esoteric religious beliefs became too much for his compatriots to stomach..."

(William Dudley Pelley: A Life in Right-Wing Extremism and the Occult, Scott Beekman, pg. 98)

But in the case of the Order of 76, a pro-fascist organization founded by a former ITT executive with sway within the upper echelons of the Republican Party, the merger was pushed by both parties. That Pelley was in contact with "Overworld" figures such as Sidney Brooks, who in turn seems to have clearly been working on behalf of Nazi Germany, would seem to indicate that the Nazis viewed Pelley as something more than a rabble rouser. For this reason, they may have avoided forging direct ties with Pelley so that the Silver Shirt fuehrer would maintain some degree of "plausible deniability" throughout his decades-spanning career in various fringe movements.

Certainly Pelley was linked to any number of significant fascists and fascist organizations both before and after World War II. Of course there were the inevitable links to the German American-Bund, an organization linked directly to Nazi Germany.

"... Although his unorthodox religious beliefs gave concern to Bundists, Pelley's commitment to Hitler and anti-Semitism gave the Silver Shirt leader cachet among Nazi supporters in the United States. As a result the Bund (and, to a lesser extent, the Third Reich) began to cultivate a closer relationship with Pelley at the tail end of the decade.

"Rocked by defections, exposés, and government investigations, the Bund, beginning at its 1938 convention, adopted a 'Free America' approach as a means of self-preservation (which included changing the name of its newspaper to Deutscher Weckruf und Beobachter and the Free American). Nazi Germany ended all official ties with the organization that year, and the Bund inaugurated a campaign to reach out to other domestic supporters of Hitler, including Pelley. Beginning in the summer of 1938 the Bund began purchasing large quantities of Silver Shirt literature – thirty to fifty copies of every pamphlet Pelley issued and twenty-five to thirty copies of each issue of New Liberation."

(ibid, pgs. 122-123)

Image
the banner of the German-American Bund

An early member of the Silver Shirts was Gerald L.K. Smith, possibly the most prominent American clerical fascist of the twentieth century. Smith first rose to national prominence in the mid-1930s when he became a key figure in Senator Huey Long's Louisiana "Machine". After Long's assassination Smith became involved with the Union Party, an unsuccessful third party that field presidential candidate William Lemke in 1936. The Union Party was backed by another prominent American clerical fascist, Father Charles Coughlin, who even found Smith to be to extreme in his views.

Image
Huey Long

From there Smith moved to Michigan, where he received some patronage from Henry Ford. From there Smith ran for the U.S Senate, initially on the Republican Party ticket and later as an independent, in 1942 and for the presidency in 1944 on behalf of the Christian Nationalist Party. In the post-World War II era Smith would become involved with the House Un-American Activities Committee and played a role in the Hollywood blacklisting scandal that raged in the late 1940s and early 1950s. During this time he would make contact with "ministers" such Wesley Swift (of whom I've seen also mentioned as a member of the Silver Shirts, but have been unable to reliably confirm) and William Potter Gale (of whom I've written much more on here) who would go on to champion Christian Identity "theology," the most popular religious movement in American white supremacist circles in the post-WWII era. Smith never fully embraced Identity theology, but he had a heavy influence on it none the less.

Image
William Potter Gale, a former military intelligence officer

Later in life he would retreat to Eureka Springs, Arkansas where he would built his "Christ of the Ozarks" statue and eventually pair it with an outdoor Passion Play nearby. It became a major tourist attraction even after Smith's death while the Ozarks region would become a major area for militant white supremacists. Both the compounds of the Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (CSA) and Elohim City would eventually be built in this region.

Image
"Christ of the Ozarks"

But before all of this Gerald L.K. Smith was a member of the Silver Shirts. Over the years there has been much dispute over the extent of the relationship, if any, between Smith and William Dudley Pelley. Indeed, Smith long denied having ever been a member of the Silver Shirts. There is little dispute in this day and age, however, about his membership. What still remains something of mystery is the extent of his relationship with Pelley. Pelley's biographer, Scott Beekman, believed that it was a brief one.

"A representative example of Pelley's difficulties in dealing with other right wing leaders was his relationship with Gerald L. K. Smith. A highly active 'nationalist' fundamentalist minister of the era, Smith had connections to Huey 'Kingfish' Long, Father Francis Coughlin, and William Lemke. Pelley actually contacted Smith to organize a deep south outpost of the Silver Shirts in 1933; the two, however, rapidly turned on each other over finances and Pelley spiritualist system. Smith then left Pelley's organization and began ingratiating himself to Long."

(William Dudley Pelley: A Life in Right-Wing Extremism and the Occult, Scott Beekman, pgs. 98-99)

Smith's chief biographer, one Glen Jeansonne, did not believe the two men's relationship, or lack therefore, was this simple, however.

"There is strong evidence that Smith at least considered forging an alliance with Pelley. Avedis Derounian, for his exposé Under Cover, examined the files of Reverend Leon M. Birkhead, whose Peoples' Institute of Applied Religion investigated Smith. Birkhead wrote Pelley directly, asking if Smith had ever been connected with his movement. On August 5, 1936, H. E. Martin, then executive director of Pelley's Weekly, sent the following letter on Pelley's stationary:
Answering your letter on the 3rd regarding Mr. Gerald L. K. Smith's connection with the Silver Shirts, which you say he denies, we have on file certain letters and telegrams from him received during July and August 1933. The letters are all written on Silver Shirts of American letterheads and signed by him. His registration number as a member of the Silver Shirts was 3223 and his wife's number was 3220...

"Among the extracts was one from a letter Martin claimed Smith sent to Pelley on August 15, 1933: 'By the time you receive this letter, I shall be on the road to St. Louis and points north together with a uniformed squad of young men composing what I believe will be the first Silver Shirt storm trooper in America.
"According to Martin, Smith wrote Pelley two days later from Hot Springs, Arkansas: 'We have held three mass meetings, two street meetings, and appointed key men for literature in six towns; no, seven towns.'

"Clearly, Smith had some contact with Pelley. There are, however, some discrepancies. Derounian's account of Martin's letters to Birkhead places Smith in Pelley's employ in August 1933. However, an article by Pelley himself in the Weekly, in the files of the American Jewish Committee, indicates that Smith did not appear at his General Headquarters in Asheville, North Carolina, until August 1934. This date appears more likely: Smith had by this date recently left the Kings Highway Church, whereas the Derounian account puts him with Pelley prior to his resignation from the church.

"In the article in his Weekly, Pelley describes his relationship with Smith in some detail. According to him, Smith appeared uninvited and asked to become the Silver Shirt leader, claiming the sponsorship of a prominent Shreveport man, Major Luther Powell. Elna also applied for membership, as did her brother. Major Powell and a mutual friend from Dallas served as character witnesses, and Pelley issued membership cards to Smith, his wife, and her brother.

"Smith signed an agreement that, in return for an advance oo expenses, he would proselytize in Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, and Iowa for the Silver Legion. He would hold open-air recruitment meetings throughout the Midwest and would keep the money he collected by passing the hat. Smith started from Shreveport, and soon sent Pelley several telegrams advising him of his progress. After only a few days, however, Smith became discouraged and return to Shreveport, abandoning the followers he had recruited. Pelley swore that this account was true and could not understand why Smith denied it.

"Smith gave different accounts at different times. In 1946 he told the House Un-American Activities Committee that the Silver Shirts had issued him an unrequested 'complimentary' membership card, which he had returned within six weeks. In 1942, however, Smith wrote former U.S. Senator Robert R. Reynolds the following account: 'In 1933 William Dudley Pelley made overtures to Huey Long and me. At the suggestion of Huey Long, I investigated Pelley for about six weeks, at the end of which time I repudiated his organization and shortly after that he wrote an article repudiating me. This was about nine years ago. I have not seen the man from that day to this.'

"In 1950, when both men were middle-aged, Smith and Pelley reconciled. Pelley wrote that he was over any ill feeling and understood that Smith had left him because he had seen better opportunities with Huey Long. This seems to verify that a relationship existed. Pelley wrote in response to a letter from Smith stating that he was happy Pelley had been paroled after spending time in prison for sedition. Pelley invited Smith to visit him and to discussed how they could support their common cause. He specified, however, that he did not want Smith to publish anything linking them publicly."

(Gerald L.K. Smith: Minister of Hate, Glen Jeansonne, pgs. 28-30)

Image
Gerald L.K. Smith

Thus, the relationship between Pelley and Smith seems to have been much more long lasting that is commonly thought. Smith, while never a hugely successful figure, never wanted for finances throughout his career. Thus, it is most interesting that he sought reconciliation, and even possibly the council of, Pelley. Pelley was already a very marginal figure by this point and had to avoid his prior activism as part of the terms of his parole. And yet Gerald L.K. Smith, a major figure in the far right circles well into the post-WWII era, sought him out. This is especially curious considering how many Identity minsters, such as the above-mentioned Wesley Swift and William Potter Gale, would incorporate creatures from outer space into their theologies around the same era that Pelley became involved in the UFO Question (more information on Gale's beliefs in this regard can be found here). But more on that later.

Before wrapping up with Smith, its interesting to note Smith's membership number in the Silver Shirts: 3223. His wife's number was 3220. 322 is of course the number long associated with the notorious Yale fraternity commonly known Skull and Bones. Some researchers such as the great John Bevilaqua in his classic JFK -The Final Solution have suggested that the Smiths number may well have been linked to Skull and Bones. As outlandish as this may sound, this researcher is convinced that Skull and Bones is far more bizarre than the Hegelian fever dreams that researchers such as Anthony Sutton have long put at the heart of the order. Such a topic is far beyond the scope of this article, however, but the curious reader may wish to consider my examination of the role Skull and Bones played in the Kennedy assassination for more curious information about the order. But moving along...

Image

Another notorious, if little known, mid-twentieth century fascist who came within Pelley's orbit was Francis Parker Yockey. Suspected of being an agent of Nazi Germany during the war years, Yockey's 1948 book Imperium would have an enormous influence on the post-WWII fascist underground despite being little read by mass audiences. This was especially true in Europe while Willis Carto and his Liberty Lobby embraced Yockey's writings on this side of the Atlantic. Yockey died via cyanide capsule after being arrested by the FBI in 1960. It is now virtually certain that Yockey had done some work for Czech intelligence before his death and its curious nature has led to much speculation in recent years that Yockey was an agent of a widespread and well-funded international fascist group.

But before all of this Yockey became involved with the Chicago branch of the Silver Shirts in the late 1930s, an especially militant wing of the organization.

"... The action faction was particularly strong in Chicago. Chicago Daily Times reporter John Metcalfe attended a Silver Shirt rally on 8 August 1938, where he heard the group's 'Field Marshal,' Roy Zachary, tell some 200 followers that the Roosevelt administration was on the brink of setting up a full-scale Communist dictatorship. Zachary claimed that the day was soon coming 'when the Silver Shirts will succeed to the point that no orthodox Jew will be permitted to testify in court or cast a ballot in America,' and advised his supporters 'to go out and get guns' and 'plenty of ammunition' to 'prepare for the Communist revolution that is coming to America.'

"The ties between the Bund, the Silver Shirts, and Newton Jenkins became especially evident after Jenkins took up the cause of four Chicago Silver Shirts who had been arrested in late October 1939 for painting swastikas and smashing windows at a Jewish-owned department store. The incident generated considerable notoriety because it reminded many Americans of the horrors of Kristallnacht ('The Night of Broken Glass,' when German mobs destroyed Jewish stores and in a pogrom-like outburst) just a year earlier. In his book I've Got the Remedy, Jenkins minimized the department store incident as a late-night prank that occurred after the men had attended 'some sort of anti-Jewish Halloween dance...'

"In the late 1930s, Yockey became a regular speaker at far-right functions in the Chicago area. In a 13 December 1951 FBI summary of Yockey's activities, an informant (described as 'having considerable contact' with the Bund), reported that in 1940 Yockey 'traveled under the name of Francis Parker and lectured under that name and post as an international law authority at meetings where he lectured.' The source also said that in 1939 he 'had attended a meeting of the Silver Shirts at WILLIAM A. WERNECKE's farm near Chicago at which meeting FRANCIS PARKER YOCKEY was the speaker. The source advised that YOCKEY had told him that he was the author of several articles for Social Justice.'

(Dreamer of the Day, Kevin Coogan, pg. 93)

Image
Yockey

Yockey would continue praising the ideology of William Dudley Pelley even after he joined the army in 1942.

"Yockey's legal career came to a halt on 20 May 1942, when he enlisted in the U.S. Army at Kalamazoo, Michigan. Private Yockey then spent part of his basic training at Camp Custer, Michigan, where he taken ROTC classes in the summer of 1936. Enlistment, however, did not signal a change in Yockey's these political convictions. One FBI report noted that a 'confidential informant' had met 'a FRANCIS YOCKEY... at Camp Custer, Michigan, while on a tour of duty,' and remembered him as 'a young radically minded individual who was constantly stirring up discord and was an admirer of WILLIAM DUDLEY PELLEY.'"

(ibid, pgs. 107-108)

Clearly there seems to have been some type of contact between Yockey and Pelley's organization, but how involved Yockey was with the Silver Shirts and what influence they had on his later career is impossible to say. Still, its interesting to note that Yockey seems to have been devising some type of occult doctrine around the time of his death that was meant to sever as a spiritual counterpart to the political sentiments of Imperium.

"The extent and nature of Yockey's own belief in the occult remains unknown because we lack access to his writings on the subject. What seems clear, however, is that occultism played a real role in his thinking, as the titles to his essays on 'polarity' strongly suggest. The FBI discovered that he was caring in his suitcase a list of book titles like Cosmic Rays, Your Second Body, and Reincarnation. His Oakland friend Alexander Scharf also recalled his alluding to paganism, telling him that he believed not in one god but in many gods.

"Equally interesting is a cryptic reference to item 23 in the FBI catalog of Yockey's possessions that reads: 'One page captioned Theosophical Forum 6/37.' This was the June 1937 issue of the Theosophical Forum, an American Journal of the use of the Theosophy Society. Although the FBI summary does not say what extract Yockey had from the publication, it was almost certainly from an essay called 'Central Asia: Cradleland of Our Race' by 'G. de P.' – Gottfried de Purucker, the leader of the Point Loma, California, Theosophical Lodge."

(ibid, pg. 291)

Image
the banner of the Theosophical Society

The Theosophical Society, an organization founded by the Russian occultist Helena Blavatsky in the late nineteenth century, and its ideology would have an enormous influence of the modern occult revival in general, but especially amongst fascist strands. Certainly William Dudley Pelley's system was heavily influenced by it, as shall be examined in the next installment.

For now let us examine two final instances from the fascist underground where William Dudley Pelley appears. The first concerns a bizarre organization known as the Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, Knights of Malta (SOSJ), sometimes known simply as the Shickshinny Knights of Malta. This organization did in fact claim descent from the Medieval Knights Hospitaller order, but via the Russian line of succession, and was thus distinct (in theory) from the far more well known Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM, the "official" Knights of Malta). The peak of the SOSJ's influence occurred in the 1960s when it featured several high ranking and fanatically far right former military officers as members. The SOSJ played an enormous role in shaping the modern day "Patriot movement" all the while aiding and abetting the Pentagon and US Intelligence community. Much more information on the SOSJ can be found here and here.

Image

For much of the twentieth century the Order featured a Grand Master known as Charles Pichel. The Order was active in the 1930s and Pichel claimed to be in contact with Nazi Germany during this time. During the same period Pelley was a close associate of a reputed member of the SOSJ.

"... According to the anti-fascist Friends of Democracy group, the Ancient and Noble Order of the Blue Lamoo of was a White Russian fascist organization, one of whose members was the 'Count V. Cherep-Spiridovich.' The 'Count' was born Howard Victor von Boenstrupp. A former patent lawyer, Boenstrupp was also known as 'the Duke of St. Saba,' 'Colonel Bennett' and 'J. G Francis.' A close associate of Silver Shirt leader William Dudley Pelley, he was indicted along with Pelley on sedition charges and 21 July 1942. Nor was this his first encounter with the law. In 1933, when he was just plain Howard, he was charged with grand larceny for allegedly stealing a valuable book and other crimes. During the House Committee on Un-American Activities questioning of Fritz Kuhn, Cherep-Spiridovich's name came up in connection with two publications, Intelligence and American Tribunal. He was also linked to 'the Order of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem.'"

(Dreamer of the Day, Kevin Coogan, pg. 607)

In theory the SOSJ was a hard line Catholic order but, as Ross Bellant notes in Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party, it was long accused of being a Masonic-like secret society with bizarre occult rituals. One of its most notable members during the 1960s was Colonel Philip J. Corso, a reactionary military intelligence officer who is best known today for his book The Day After Roswell.

Image

Finally, we come to Henry Lamont "Mike" Beach. Beach, a Silver Shirt member in the 1940s, is best known in this day and age as the founder of the Posse Comitatus movement. This is inaccurate --Posse Comitatus was in fact devised by the above-mentioned William Potter Gale, as I noted before here. Still, Beach was the figure chiefly responsible for spreading the ideology.

"At the same time, whatever credibility Beach lacked among true believers, he more than made up for it in chutzpah and merchandising talent. After stealing Bill Gale's writings and ideas in 1973, making them his own, Beach spent the next three years marketing Posse paraphernalia and providing good copy for the press. In sharp contrast, Gale's disdain for the media virtually guaranteed that Beach would get the credit for originating the Posse Comitatus. Even the ADL, which prided itself on exposing the leaders of the radical right, described Beach as the group's 'apparent founder,' although it did acknowledge that Gale, whom he described as a 'veteran anti-Semite,' had established a 'second home base' for the Posse in California.

"Beaches appropriation of credit for starting the Posse was so complete that even when he wasn't identified by name, the media invariably followed his script when describing the organization's roots. According to the Washington Post, the Posse had started in Portland, Oregon, in 1968. And according to a widely reprinted Los Angeles Times article about the 'new vigilante group,' Beach was 'the man behind the movement who began chartering posses in 1969.' By 1976 erroneous descriptions of the origins of the Posse appeared so frequently they were tantamount to historical fact. And with the exception of the ADL, which was aware that Beach had been a Silver Shirt, this important fact is almost universally ignored in media reports about Beach and the history of the Posse. Instead, reporters relied on Beach's innocuous descriptions of himself as retired laundry-equipment salesman or a machinist."

(The Terrorist Next Door, Daniel Levitas, pg. 147)

Image

While the organizational skills Beach learned with the Silver Shirts no doubt aided his efforts in spreading Posse ideology its entirely possibly that the theology of Pelley indirectly influenced it via Gale. Posse ideology was heavily influenced by Christian Identity theology, a proto form of which Gerald L.K. Smith preached. Smith, who as noted above was briefly a member of the Silver Shirts, associated with William Gale in California during the 1950s. Thus, its possible a Pelley influence was present in Posse ideology even before Beach became involved. What's more, the paramilitary nature of certain aspects of the Silver Shirts undoubtedly had a heavy influence on the post-war "Patriot" militias that first began to appear in the 1960s.

And it is here that I shall wrap things up for now. I hope these examples as well as my examination of Pelley's ties to "Count" Anastase Vonsiatsky and his All-Russian Fascist Organization in the first installment have put in perspective the scope and longstanding influence Pelley's far right activism had in such circles. In the next installment I shall begin examining the incredible metaphysical aspects of Pelley's career in earnest. Stay tuned.

Image
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: William Dudley Pelley, International Fascism & Sirius

Postby Nordic » Sun Feb 02, 2014 10:54 pm

Image

Image
"He who wounds the ecosphere literally wounds God" -- Philip K. Dick
Nordic
 
Posts: 14230
Joined: Fri Nov 10, 2006 3:36 am
Location: California USA
Blog: View Blog (6)

Re: William Dudley Pelley, International Fascism & Sirius

Postby American Dream » Mon Feb 03, 2014 8:32 pm

On Silver Shirts-Nazis-I Am Activity-Summit Lighthouse:


Popular Paranoia
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: William Dudley Pelley, International Fascism & Sirius

Postby American Dream » Sun Feb 09, 2014 1:44 pm

http://visupview.blogspot.com/2014/02/w ... ional.html

Thursday, February 6, 2014
William Dudley Pelley, International Fascism, and the Sirius Tradition Part III

Image

Welcome to the third installment in my examination of the notorious 1930s-era fascist William Dudley Pelley. Pelley is chiefly known in this day and age for founding the Silver Shirts, one of the most notorious fascist organizations in pre-World War II America, and his eventual imprisonment after being charged with sedition in 1942. During the first installment in this series I considered a bit of Pelley's background (with a special emphasis on his time spent in the East around the time frame of the World War I) as well as the founding, structure and goals of his Silver Shirts. In the second installment I broke down the allegations of Pelley being a Nazi collaborator as well as his extensive ties to both the pre- and post-WWII fascist underground.

In this installment I would like to begin considering in earnest one of the least examined aspects of Pelley's life: his dabblings in the occult. Many researchers treat the occult and metaphysical aspects of Pelley's life as a minor footnote in relation to his fascist activism when in fact the former consumed far more of his life than the latter. Pelley had already developed his own bizarre metaphysical system well before the founding of the Silver Shirts and he would continue to promote it to literally the end of his life. By contrast, Pelley effectively ceased publicly promoting fascism after being imprisoned in the 1940s (though he never ceased supporting the ideology). That being said, both obsessions were closely entwined in Pelley's mind throughout his life.

[img][img]http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2aEnu4jajBY/UvRF0WLCy-I/AAAAAAAAJp4/ZYY_fxKBf7g/s1600/William+Dudley+PelleyII.jpg[/img][/img]
Pelley with the Silver Shirts

As there has been very little written about Pelley's metaphysical beliefs I will devote much of this article toward examining the origins of Pelley's occult doctrines and the groups that he came into contact with in the early years. With that in mind, let us begin examining the event that sent Pelley on his curious journey into the arcane. It occurred in 1928 while Pelley was living in a bungalow in Altadena, California. This was toward the tail end of Pelley's career as a Hollywood screenwriter (which was discussed in part one) when he was first beginning to discover his latent anti-Semitism and racialism. In point of fact, Pelley was literally in the midst of "studying" the question of race in his bungalow when he slipped into a mystical experience (seriously).

"On the night of his conversion experience, Pelley went to bed early and read ethnological tracts until dozing, only to be awakened early in the morning by an inner voice shrieking 'I'm dying.' He felt a physical sensation like a 'combination of heart attack and apoplexy.' This physical distress subsided as Pelley plunged 'down a mystic depth of cool blue space not unlike the bottomless sinking sensation that attends the taking of ether for anesthetics.'

"'Whirling madly' into the blue mist, Pelley closed his eyes and hoped for the quick end of the experience. Feeling hands holding him up, he opened his eyes and found himself lying naked on a marble slab in an environment reminiscent of a Maxfield Parrish painting, with two men in white uniforms attending to him. The two vaguely familiar helpers told Pelley not to be afraid and not to try to see everything in the first 'seven minutes.' They instructed him to bathe in a nearby reflecting pool, which caused Pelley to lose his self-consciousness over being naked.

"One man left, and the remaining white-clad individual, 'William,' explained to Pelley that he had gone 'over' while stationed at a military camp in 1917. William told Pelley that everyone has lived hundreds of times before, because earth is a classroom where souls learn and move up the spiritual hierarchy. This hierarchy accounts for human races, which are simply 'great classifications of humanity epitomizing gradations of spiritual development, starting with the black man and proceeding upward in the cycles to the white.' Having completed his first spiritual lesson, the blue mist appeared to return Pelley to the bungalow.

"Although Pelley awakened to conscious awareness of his earthly existence, he remained in contact with the spirit world, as William continued to speak to him clairaudiently. He instructed Pelley to relax and return to the 'Higher Reality.' This time the marble portico was full of people, and Pelley realized that he knew all of them and that they were all saintly individuals, with 'no misfits, no tense countenances, no sour leers, no preoccupied brusqueness, nor physical disfigurements.' After a brief chat with these folks Pelley, again enveloped by the blue mist, returned to his bedroom, but now possessing 'strange powers of perception' to assist him in completing a specific errand on the material plane.

"Shaken by the experience, Pelley determined to regain his sense of the material world by visiting his office the next morning. He related that his employees found him to appear like a different person who stood straighter and healthier and less wrinkled. The experience also eliminated his troubling insomnia and anxiety."

(William Dudley Pelley: A Life in Right-Wing Extremism and the Occult, Scott Beekman, pgs. 53-54)

Image
Maxfield Parrish's Daybreak

At this point let me pause and note that Pelley had little experience concerning Spiritualism or the occult (although greater than he long admitted) when the events of May 28-29, 1928 transpired. Its also interesting to note the location of where Pelley's "seven minutes in eternity" occurred: Altadena, California. Altadena is located about fourteen miles from downtown Los Angeles and is directly north of the city of Pasadena.

Image

As I'm sure many of my readers are aware, Pasadena was the long time home of Jack Parsons, the notorious rocket scientist and Crowley disciple who has long obsessed conspiracy culture. Parsons was barely a teenager when Pelley's mystical experience occurred, but he displayed an interest in the occult at a very young age. Pelley's experience would make him something of a minor celebrity in the late 1920s and early 1930s and Pelley's mystical teachings would continue to be propagated in the Los Angeles area by the Silver Shirts well into the 1930s. I've found nothing to indicate that Parsons was aware of Pelley, but given the closeness of Pelley's initial experience, it does not seem totally beyond the realm of possibility that Parsons was at least aware of Pelley on some level.

Image
Jack Parsons

But back to the matter at hand. Pelley underwent a second experience not long after the first when he was in the midst of traveling cross country.

"Pelley decided that the 'fleshpots' of Hollywood could not help him understand his metaphysical experience, so he traveled to New York to meet with his friends there. While crossing New Mexico by train, he underwent a second experience. As he was reading Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay 'The Over-Soul,' a brilliant shaft of white light poured down on Pelley. A disembodied presence explained to Pelley that Jesus Christ was an 'actual Personage,' and that existing churches and ministers were not only wrong about Christ's teachings, but were leading millions of people astray. The presence instructed Pelley to continue to receive clairaudient messages by utilizing the 'hidden powers' within him, and to spread the correct understanding of Christ.

"In New York, Pelley met with his friend Mary Derieux, fiction editor for the American Magazine. Deeply immersed in spiritualism herself, Derieux excitedly joined Pelley in exploring his new powers. During the summer of 1928 they spent two weeks engaged an automatic writing.

"The beings from the other side instructed them that the Music of the Spheres (a concept swiped from Pythagorus) is the very center of the mystery of universal creation. Within this universe there is no force but love; hatred and evil are merely the absence of love. These beings also explained to Pelley and Derieux that they dwelled on the 'harmonious plane' (which is the next level above the earth) and communicated with certain earth-dwelling souls to promote love and harmony.

"A large portion of these messages focused specifically on the role of Pelley in spiritual history. The voices allegedly explained to Pelley that he would apprentice in tribulation, then achieve financial independence so he might be ready for freedom and service to higher beings. He had been chosen because art is the 'handmaiden of God,' and artists like himself are the true chosen priesthood."

(William Dudley Pelley: A Life in Right-Wing Extremism and the Occult, Scott Beekman, pg. 55)

Image

In either late 1928 or early 1929 Pelley would write down his initial "seven minutes in eternity." It would go on to become his most successful piece of writing.

"Returning to New York, Pelley rented a room at the Commodore Hotel and, through a process he later called 'super radio,' wrote the narrative of his 'seven minutes in eternity' in less than two hours. Derieux presented the article to her boss, American Magazine editor Merle Crowell, who agreed to run the story and pay Pelley $1,500 for it. Appearing in the March 1929 issue of American, Pelley's tale of travel to other planes of reality generated a mass of mail both to the editor and to the writer. The American boasted a subscription list of over 2,200,000 people at the time, and Pelley's tale became one of the most widely read accounts of paranormal activity in American history.

"Stunned by the response to his article – the American's offices received thousands of letters concerning the 'seven minutes' – Pelley decided to move to New York in summer 1929. He rented part of a 53rd Street brownstone for himself... Pelley spent much of 1929 responding to his voluminous correspondence and participating in Manhattan séances and spiritualist meetings.

"During one of these meetings, Pelley made the acquaintance of the trance medium George Wehner. Something of a 'psychic to the stars,' Wehner carved out a very successful career for himself during the 1920s. Pelley attended séances in which Wehner served as amanuensis for such diverse celebrities as Joseph Conrad, film scenarist June Mathis, various prominent American Indians, and Robert Louis Stevenson.

"Pelley eventually began contacting many of these same people during his own sessions. He claimed that Robert Louis Stevenson provided him with an unused chapter and asserted that Joseph Conrad clairaudiently dictated an entire novel to him. Pelley published this work of fiction in summer 1929 as Golden Rubbish, allegedly to answer many of the questions readers raised in response to his American Magazine article."

(ibid, pgs. 57-58)

Image


Pelley had become involved in the then thriving New York spiritualist movement even before his description of his "seven minutes in eternity" appeared in American Magazine in 1929. His most notably contact was with the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR). This association began due to the active involvement of Pelley's friend Mary Derieux in the Society.

"As chair of the publications committee of the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR), Derieux provided Pelley with entry into New York spiritualist circles. These contacts garnered Pelley's exposure to current theories and writings on psychical research and undoubtedly helped him develop his own ideas. Further, Pelley's account of visiting another plane made an immediate splash in the psychical community, as it placed him squarely within the debate over the most divisive spiritualist issue of the period – reincarnation.

"Established in 1884 by, among others, physicist William Barrett and psychologist William James, the ASPR staggered through a tumultuous early career. Unlike the older English Society for Psychical Research, the ASPR faced chronic underfunding and a lack of full-time psychical researchers. Owing to financial difficulties, the ASPR was absorbed by the English society in 1889, only to reappear as an independent organization in 1909, thanks primarily to the dynamic leadership of Columbia professor James Hervey Hyslop.

"Although Hyslop died in 1920, the Society reached the pinnacle of its public success in the ensuing decade, propelled by vigorous researchers such as Walter F. Prince and Lamarkian psychologist William McDougall. A spate of best-selling books, including Sir Oliver Lodge's Raymond and Baird T. Spaulding's five-volume Life and Teachings of the Masters of the Far East; successful speaking tours by Lodge, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and the playwright Maurice Maeterlinck; and the publicity surrounding annual international congresses help push psychical research into the headlines. In the early 1920s, even Thomas Edison became involved, spending part of his final years working on a spiritual communication machine.

"The seriousness with which psychical research was taken is illustrated most clearly by the establishment of the first university-affiliated psychical laboratory, at Duke University in 1928. Headed by J. B. Rhine, who originally moved to Duke to work with McDougall, the lab investigated scores of mediums and psychics. Rhine initially studied the question of life after death but, realizing the pitfalls of this line of inquiry, quickly restricted his focus to 'corporeal parapsychical' material (mental or subjective phenomena, including spiritualism). Rhine, who worked at Duke until 1965, published a series of best-selling books and coined the terms 'parapsychology' and 'extra-sensory perception.'

"Despite growing public awareness of the Society, psychical researchers faced increasing schisms within the movement. Issues such as reincarnation and ectoplasmic evidence divided the ASPR into warring factions. When disputes arose over the validity of trance medium (and ectoplasmic material spewer) 'Margery,' local branches of the Society left to organize themselves into independent organizations.

"Although never a member of the ASPR, Pelley found a great deal of interest in the debates swirling within the society during the late 1920s. Needing to get his business affairs in order, however, he returned to California in summer 1928. Pelley and Mina began automatic-writing sessions almost as soon as he returned to the Pacific coast. During the sessions Pelley became increasingly convinced of his own spiritual importance. Pelley related that one of his California spirit contacts noted that, in numerous previous incarnations, he had been one of those 'people who kicked up more of a rumpus on the human stage than humanity especially liked at the time, and always in some proselytizing capacity that wrought alterations in the mode of humanity's living.' This developing sense of self-importance, coupled with the urging of Mary Derieux, led Pelley to publish the account of his conversion experience."

(ibid, pgs. 55-57)

Image

By 1930, in the wake of the success of his American Magazine article recounting his "seven minutes in eternity", Pelley began publishing his own metaphysical-centric magazine. It was was called the New Liberator and purported to promote Christ's teachings (as defined by Pelley) and the "vast machinery, operating with infinitesimal precision and accounting for every event on our present plane of consciousness." These were bold objective to be sure, but the magazine experienced financial difficulties from the onset. Eventually he worked through these difficulties after he started receiving advertisement revenue from other metaphysical organizations.

"The issuance of the October New Liberator inaugurated a short period of stability, and Pelley published the magazine on a monthly basis for the rest of the year. Pelley reorganized the editorial staff during this period, and brought Olive E. Robbins on board as business manager. Robbins, in a move that greatly aided the magazine's continued existence, managed to increase advertising revenue. The advertisements, however, proved to be something of a double-edged sword. In no position to refuse advertising dollars from any source, Pelley accepted money from a variety of shady metaphysical organizations, including the Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Cruces (AMORC) and Psychiana. Although the advertising revenue was desperately needed (and Pelley agreed with significant aspects of the teachings of these groups), affiliation with such organizations did nothing to promote the acceptance (or perceived validity) of Pelley's religious doctrine.

"Established by New York advertising man H. Spencer Lewis, also known as Wishar Spenle Cerve, the AMORC represents one of several Rosicrucian groups active in the United States. All of these groups claim that their teachings are based upon writings ascribed to the mythical seventeenth century mystic Christian Rosenkreuz. Lewis, however, went on to persist that his organization's teachings actually dated from the reign of Thutmose III, circa 1500 B.C. In a sort of spiritual alchemy, the AMORC blends Christianity with Kabbalism and Hermetic theories, with the ultimate goal of transcending material form. Lewis skillfully mixed in Theosophical elements to separate his version of Rosicrucianism from his competitors (completing a circle begun with Theosophy founder Helena P. Blavatsky, who earlier swiped elements from European Rosicrucianism for her movement). During the 1930s Lewis oriented much of his teachings towards the spiritualist mecca of Mount Shasta. His 1931 volume Lemuria:The Lost Continent of the Pacific placed the Atlantis myth in the Pacific Ocean, with Mount Shasta as the continent's peak and current home of cavern-dwelling Lemurian survivors. Owing to its image as a mail-order religion, AMORC has never been respected within the esoteric religious community."

(William Dudley Pelley: A Life in Right-Wing Extremism and the Occult, Scott Beekman, pgs. 64-65)

Image

The AMORC is most well known in this day and age to conspiracy buffs for a certain alleged assassin who attended in single meeting of the order in either 1966 or 1968.

"On May 28, 1966, a young Palestinian immigrant fascinated with the occult had attended his first meeting of the Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis (AMORC) at the society's Akhnaton Lodge in Pasadena, and was the subject of an experiment in sensory perception, sitting blindfolded while attempting to identify objects by touch. AMORC was one of the many splinter groups that broke off from the SRIA in England; they had OTO and Golden Dawn connections, but created a distinctly American style of recruiting: direct-mail. Most people of a certain generation are familiar with those ads in all sorts of magazines with the tag 'What Secret Power Did These Men Possess?' and a P.O. box where one could send for information and began a correspondence course in mental telepathy, meditation and, eventually, magic.

"This interest continued for the next few years. In March 1968, the Palestinian was in Pasadena – where he lived with his mother, some blocks north of where Jack Parsons had lived in the 1940s and 1950s – attending a meeting of the Theosophical Society's Adyar Lodge...
"A few months later, he would be arrested for the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy. The Palestinian, of course, was Sirhan Bishara Sirhan."

(Sinister Forces Book I, Peter Levenda, pgs. 297-298)

Image
Early ads for the AMORC

Other accounts hold that it was May 28, 1968 that Sirhan Sirhan attended his first (and reportedly only) AMORC meeting. This date is most striking as May 28, 1928 was the day upon which Pelley claimed to have had his "seven minutes in eternity" experience. Thus, Sirhan Sirhan attended at AMORC meeting either 38 or 40 years to the day of Pelley's experience beginning. I have been able to determine whether Pelley ever attended meetings at the group's Pasadena lodge, but its hardly beyond the realm of possibility as Pelley lived in Altadena during the final years of his Hollywood days. As noted above, Altadena is directly north of Pasadena.

Image
Sirhan Sirhan

If nothing else, the AMORC seems to have had a long lasting influence of Pelley in one way: How to raise funds via direct mail. Pelley's metaphysical work would be subsidized for much of his life through revenues generated from direct mail beginning in the early 1930s.

Before leaving the AMORC, its also worth noting an organization Levenda notes in the above quote: SRIA, which stands for Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia. This outfit arguably has an even more colorful history than its AMORC offshoot.

"The SRIA was an occult lodge founded in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century as an outgrowth of the British lodge, the Societas Rosicruciana In Anglia (also known as SRIA). The British SRIA was the breeding ground of the Golden Dawn, which itself was the breeding ground of Aleister Crowley. Without going into too much detail about the creation and history of these orders, which is certain to bore and confuse the reader, let us summarize by saying that the head of the American SRIA was, for quite some time, one George Winslow Plummer, a devoted occultist and Hermeticist who edited a magazine of all things alchemical and Rosicrucian called Mercury. Plummer was also interested in Christian mysticism, and aligned himself with several renegade Christian churches, including something called the Holy Orthodox Church. He was also a member of Aleister Crowley's OTO, and thus fits the mold of occultists everywhere: the inveterate joiner and accumulator of dignitaries. Plummer died in 1944, and was succeeded in the SRIA by his widow, the ethereal Mother Serena, who played the organ at the church's headquarters at 321 West 101st Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan when the author knew her. Mother Serena later married Theodotus Stanislaus de Witow (1890-1969), who then became the Patriarch of the Holy Orthodox Church, as well as the head of the SRIA until his death in 1969."

(ibid, pg. 278)

Image
George Winslow Plummer (left), founder of the American branch of the SRIA

The SRIA opens up a series of curious synchronicities. Another member of SRIA was Francis Israel Regardie, a prominent occultist and author who was both a member of a successor organization to the Golden Dawn as well as Aleister Crowley's personal assistant for some years. Regardie was initiated into the SRIA in Washington D.C. in 1926, according to Levenda.

Image
Regardie

Then, in 1964, the above-mentioned Patriarch Theodotus Stanislaus de Witow would consecrate a man named Walter (Vladimir) Propheta a bishop of the American Orthodox Church. Shortly thereafter Bishop Propheta would incorporate this church as the American Orthodox Catholic Church (AOCC). The AOCC was a curious domination that was along alleged to have had ties to the US intelligence community as well as the assassination of JFK (both Jack S. Martin and David Ferrie were bishops of the AOCC). Much more information on the AOCC and its ties to the JFK assassination can be found here.

Image
Propheta

The AOCC also had some type of connection to the Sovereign Order of Saint John (SOSJ), a secret society than claimed descent from the Medieval Knights Hospitallers via the Russian line of succession. The SOSJ has existed since at least the 1930s, but during its heyday in the 1960s it counted numerous "former" high ranking military officers and a few CIA assets as members. The SOSJ has also been linked to the Kennedy assassination. More information on the Order can be found here and here.

[img][img]http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Q2jTShzycbM/UvRQfaCkexI/AAAAAAAAJrs/bJzUm5xOPd8/s1600/Knights+Hospitlers.png[/img][/img]

Thus, Pelley was involved in the AMORC, an organization that gained infamy through its brief affiliation with Sirhan Sirhan in 1966/68. But beyond this, the AMORC had ties to the SRIA during the time period Peley was involved with the former. The SRIA featured members linked to both Aleister Crowley and the Golden Dawn and eventually became involved in the bizarre netherworld of fringe Christian churches and military orders claiming Medieval descent. What's more, Pelley was reportedly a close associate of a reputed member of the SOSJ during the 1930s, as was noted in the second installment of this series. Thus, this web of strange connections comes full circle.

Another famous occult organization Pelley became involved with on some level was the Theosophical Society. At a minimum the Society had an influence on his own theology.

"... Although Pelley steadfastly refused to admit that his teachings came from any source other than clairudient messages, he did admit his familiarity with Theosophical writings. While decrying their relegated status of Christ, Pelley noted that 'the Theosophists are nearest to the true facts about the forces operating behind life of any of the so-called theological creeds or sects.'

"Established by Russian émigré Helena P.Blavatsky (HPB), and Henry S. Olcott in 1875, Theosophy became the most successful occult system in American history. Blavatsky's bombastic writings attracted thousands of followers in America, India, and Europe. Like Pelley she claimed that her writings came to her through messages received from Ascended Masters. Blavatsky's system was a syncretic blending of Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, spiritualism, Egyptian Hermeticism, Kabbalism, and occultism. Theosophy is generally Buddhist and Hindu in doctrine and Christian in morality. Her cosmology outlined the development of seven root-races of humanity, each with seven subroots. These human forms (d)evolved from a purely spiritual form to a material one, with the ultimate, emanationist end of returning to immaterialism. Like Pelley, Theosophy promoted evolution, karma, reincarnation, and after-death states.

"Pelley's debt to Theosophy cannot be underestimated, yet he frequently decried Blavatsky's contention that Jesus represented simply one of many equally important Ascended Masters. Although at least two Theosophical splinter groups developed a Christocentric cosmology not unlike Pelley's system, Pelley never mentioned either Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophical Society or the Arcane School of Alice Bailey in his writings. Given Pelley's voluminous appetite for metaphysical books (and the esoteric circles he moved in), it seems highly unlikely that he did not possess at least a rudimentary knowledge of these groups, particularly Bailey's group, which (like the Theosophists) was active in Los Angeles during the 1920s. Pelley's silence regarding these groups may have been an attempt to separate his movement from two theologies so similar to his own beliefs (and potentially capable of siphoning off Liberation followers).

"Pelley, like many other esoteric writers of the period, also borrowed the notion of ancient, advanced civilizations from the Theosophists (and buttressed these beliefs with evidence from the works of Isaac Newton Vail). He persisted that global cataclysms resulted in the destruction of highly developed societies in Atlantis and Lemuria. According to Theosophical teachings, Lemuria housed the third root-race (the first race to possess physical bodies, reproduce sexually, and bear responsibility for good and evil), while the fourth root-race, the last remnant of whom perished a few thousand years ago, called Atlantis home. The Atlantians are especially significant to Theosophists because they were the alleged composers of the 'Stanzas of Dyzan,' the book of knowledge upon which all world religions were based."

(William Dudley Pelley: A Life in Right-Wing Extremism and the Occult, Scott Beekman, pgs. 74-76)

[img]http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Rd5jO9M7Q5s/UvRRAud7i0I/AAAAAAAAJsA/ZXbPL1dYcAE/s1600/Theosophical+Society.jpg
[/img]
It's interesting to note that the above-mentioned Rudolf Steiner was also a member of the eventually Crowley-dominated OTO. And of course the blogosphere is awash with countless conspiracy theories concerning Alice Bailey, a long time bugaboo of the conspiratorial right. But back to Pelley.

Pyramidism would also be heavily incorporated into his theology.

"For Pelley tangible proof of the existence of these ancient civilizations can be found by studying the timeline preserved in the Great Pyramid of Giza. Pyramidists believe the passageway from the pyramid's entrance to the king's chamber is a prophetic account of the history of humanity. They discern the course of human history by dividing this time line into 'pyramid' inches. The 'pyramid' inch, slightly larger than the English inch, as one five-hundred-millionth of the Earth's axis. Using this measurement, the pyramidists determined that the time line runs from 2624 B.C. to A.D. 2001. For most of its course the time line is one inch per year, but, at the year 1909, it becomes one inch per month, thereby giving even more specific prophetic messages. Although pyramidism reaches back into the nineteenth century, Pelley developed his ideas on the matter from David Davidson, pyramidism's leading twentieth-century proponent. Pelley's views on the Great Pyramid were taken almost verbatim from Davidson's writings.

"Pelley's support for Davidson's theories derived in part from the pyramidist's claim that May 29, 1928, represented a significant date in human history. This, of course, was the night of Pelley's 'seven minutes in eternity.' Following this lead, Pelley promoted the idea that this date began the 'Time of Tribulation,' which would end on September 16, 1936. Pelley placed great significance upon these dates, as well as several other 'pyramid dates,' such as January 31, 1933 (the day Hitler took power), August 20, 1953 (the potential end of the Piscean Age), and September 17, 2001. Pelley believed the 2001 date denoted the Second Coming of Christ or, as Davidson declared, 'the final cleansing of the whole world for the full extension of the Kingdom of Heaven to all the earth.'"

(ibid, pgs. 76)

Image

Before wrapping things up I would like to briefly consider one final group Pelley became involved with during the early days: the Mighty I AM movement.

"Established by former Chicago fortune-teller Guy Ballard and his wife, Edna, the Mighty I AM (the 'inner reality of the divine') achieved startling success during the 1930s. The Ballards' cult melded Christian Science, Unity, Rosicrucianism, and Pelley's teachings (which they borrowed freely) with Theosophy. While I AM represented the most popular diffusion of Theosophy ever attained in this country, one scholar has quite accurately persisted that the Ballards 'reduced the resulting mishmash to the mental level of the comic-books.' The cult began in 193o when Guy Ballard allegedly met the legendary Comte de Saint Germain on Mount Shasta. Ballard swiped most of Helena Blavatsky's religious system, placing Saint Germain and Jesus Christ at the top of a pantheon of Ascended Masters. While Guy Ballard developed ideas from Theosophy (and a few meetings with Psychiana's Frank. B Robinson), Edna Ballard began holding esoteric classes based on material she lifted from Pelley's League for the Liberation writings. The group peaked in the mid-1930s. At the height of its success their meetings attracted more than six thousand devoted followers. Guy Ballard's death in 1939 and a series of fraud trials against Edna, beginning the next year, spelled the end of their prominence. The I AM Foundation continues to this day, but only with a shadow of its former grandeur.

"Although the Ballards claimed that their teachings came directly from Saint Germain, they did reveal a debt to Pelley. Their writings included references to 'Christian Democracy,' citations of No More Hunger, and a decidedly Pelley-like, anti-New Deal, conservative political perspective. Part of the Ballards' appeal was the nationalistic overtones of I AM doctrine. They argued that the Masters lived in the United States (primarily in the far West), that humanity began in America, and that this country would be the vessel of spiritual light. The Ballard essentially filled the void (with admittedly much greater success) left by Pelley when he formed the Silver Shirts. Their doctrines were almost interchangeable, and the Ballards promoted a pro-American, conservative agenda very similar to Pelley's pre-anti-Semitic position. It was not surprising, then, that Pelley spiritualist followers deserted him for the I AM organization.

"As a tribute to Pelley, Guy Ballard, in his second book of I AM doctrine, even named a lesser Master 'Pelleur.' The Ballards' acknowledgment of influence, however, did not prevent them from raiding Pelley's membership for I AM converts. The Ballards attracted both rank-and-file League for the Liberation veterans and close Pelley associates. For example, Harry Seiber, the man who burned the Galahad Press's records in anticipation of the bankruptcy proceedings, left his post as Silver Shirt treasurer in the wake of Pelley's trail to become the associate director of the Saint Germain Activities."

(William Dudley Pelley: A Life in Right-Wing Extremism and the Occult, Scott Beekman, pgs. 110-111)

Image
Guy and Edna Ballard

The Mighty I AM cult plays a crucial role in a latter part of this saga, so do keep them in mind. At this point I shall wrap things up for now. In the next installment I shall finish outlining Pelley's theology by the early 1930s, from which point it went through few variations for the rest of his life. From there I shall consider Pelley's role in the post-WWII New Age and Ufology scenes as well as the possible interest powerful figures in the American national security establishment took in his work at the onset of the Cold War. Stay tuned.
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: William Dudley Pelley, International Fascism & Sirius

Postby American Dream » Sun Feb 16, 2014 4:50 pm

William Dudley Pelley, International Fascism and the Sirius Tradition IV

Image


http://visupview.blogspot.com/2014/02/w ... al_16.html
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: William Dudley Pelley, International Fascism & Sirius

Postby American Dream » Sun Feb 23, 2014 1:40 pm

http://visupview.blogspot.com/2014/02/w ... al_23.html

William Dudley Pelley, International Fascism, and the Sirius Tradition Part V

Image

Welcome to the fifth installment in my examination of the life and times of Silver Shirt founder William Dudley Pelley. Over the course of the first two installments in this series (which can be found here and here) I examined Pelley's time with the Silver Shirts and his ties throughout the fascist underground both before and after World War II. Beginning in the third installment I began to consider Pelley's metaphysical pursuits, one of the least examined or understood aspects of his life.

After breaking down Pelley's early involvement in such endeavors and his extensive contacts through out esoteric circles after his "seven minutes in eternity" in 1928 in that installment I began to get into the really incredible elements in Pelley's belief system. As revealed in part four, as early as 1932 Pelley was proclaiming that humanity (or at least the white race, anyway) was descendant from beings that migrated from the Dog Star Sirius centuries before recorded history. This was one of the key features of a theological system he devised that combined elements of Theosophy, Spiritualism, Rosicrucianism, pyramidism along with Christian Gnosticism and Millennialism and a good dose of alternative planes of existence.

In other words, Pelley combined a belief in ancient astronauts with a host of occult system and claimed to be informed of these revelations by "Hidden Masters" whom he frequently contacted through automatic writing. Needless to say, this was a remarkably modern metaphysical system that likely had a large, if little acknowledged, influence on the modern New Age movement. What's more, it seems to have drawn the interest of groups with ties to the United States national security apparatus.

Image
an aged Pelley

One such group, which I began to explore in the previous installment, was known as the Collins Elite. The existence of the Collins Elite is still highly debatable and information about the group is largely the result of several insider informants who became involved with the great Fortean researcher Nick Redfern. This group was allegedly formed in the early 1950s after a group of military intelligence officers became convinced that there was a connection to the modern wave of UFO sightings that had gone into overdrive in 1947 and occult workings, especially those related to Aleister Crowley and Jack Parsons. An excellent rundown of the group can be found on the Secret Sun via an interview the invaluable Christopher Knowles conducted with Redfern.

Image
Redfern

With that out of the way, let us now begin to consider whether the ideology of Pelley was of interest to the Collins Elite, if it did in fact exist. Certainly there is some rather obvious, superficial overlap: Pelley's theology featured celestial beings who migrated to Earth from Sirius and advocated the imposition of a theocracy on the United States based around the teachings of Jesus Christ (as prounced by Pelley) in order to prepare the nation for the Second Coming. The Collins Elite believed that demonic beings were masquerading as extraterrestrials and have allegedly considered imposing a theocracy on the United States (possibly via a faked Second Coming, Project Blue Beam-style) in order to save the citizens of this nation from these beings, who are allegedly repelled by the figure of Jesus Christ.

Image

But aside from a taste for theocracy and dreams of a cult of personality centered around Jesus Christ, there are more tangible links between Pelley and the Collins Elite. According to one of Redfern's informants, a "Richard Duke", the Collins Elite became convinced that heightened states of consciousness were crucial to understanding the UFO phenomenon after examining the accounts of three alleged contactees from the early 1950s: George Van Tassel, George Adamski, and George Hunt Williamson.
"In order to understand how and why the beliefs of the Collins Elite came to fruition, it is important to keep in mind the point that Adamski, Williamson, and Van Tassel had made claims that their presumed-alien visitors communicated with them by telepathy, ESP, and Ouija boards. And it is equally important to note that – as FBI records declassified under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act demonstrate – the trio was investigated by the FBI determine if they had communist leanings, or knowingly or unknowingly spreading propaganda on behalf of the Soviet Union.

"Richard Duke said that as far back as 1948, the FBI began to receive reports and stories very similar to those of Adamski, Williamson, and Van Tassel – that human-like aliens were among us, that they were communists, and that their means and modus-operandi of contact seemed to utilize the occult, as well as advanced science. Duke further stated that certain elements within the FBI came to a startling, albeit tentative, conclusion: that the claimed encounters with Communist extraterrestrials had nothing to do with visitors from other worlds, but were instead the outcome of Soviet mind control and 'brain-to-brain contact' projects, in which U.S. citizens were being 'implanted with thoughts' by Russian 'mind-soldiers' that led the contactees to think they were having real-life experiences with aliens who wanted to tell us how wonderful communism was...

"Duke maintained that this theory came to fruition in 1952, specifically after cleared FBI agents had attended 'two of seven or eight' lectures that have been held in the Pentagon that year on the utilization of ESP for psychological warfare purposes. That such lectures held in the Pentagon did occur, and that U.S. Intelligence was aware of Hitler's interest in such matters, is not in any doubt. In 1977, in a document titled 'Parapsychology in Intelligence,' Kenneth A. Kress, an engineer with the CIA's Office of Technical Services, wrote: 'Anecdotal reports of extrasensory perception (ESP) capabilities have reached U.S. national security agencies at least since World War II, when Hitler was said to rely on astrologers and seers. Suggestions for military applications of ESP continued to be received after World War II. For example, in 1952, the Department of Defense was lectured on the possible usefulness of extrasensory perception and psychological warfare...'

"It was during these lectures, said Duke, that a new theory began to emerge to explain the truth behind the contactee puzzle – and it was a theory that finally led to a complete discarding of the notion that the Soviets were somehow involved and the development of one that was more in-keeping with the views of the Collins Elite involving a demonic presence, and how it was all tied in with flying saucers. And, in view of this, said Duke, the Collins Elite decided that the only viable alternative available to them was to delve further into the murky and controversial realms of altered states and ESP and see what might potentially be uncovered, regardless of the outcome."
(Final Events, Nick Redfern, pgs. 56-58)



Image

Apparently Williamson's use of Ouija board to contact these alleged extraterrestrials was of especial interest to the Collins Elite because it was also highly regarded by Aleister Crowley.
"It may not be without significance that, just like contactee George Hunt Williamson, Aleister Crowley was a user of Ouija boards. Jane Wolfe, who lived with Crowley at his infamous Abbey of Thelema, also used the Ouija board. In fact, she credited some of her greatest spiritual communications to the specific use of the device. Crowley also discussed the effectiveness of the Ouija board with another of his students, Charles Stansfeld Jones – otherwise known as Frater Achad – who was an occultist and a ceremonial magician. In 1917, Achad experimented with the board as a means to summon angels, as opposed to elementals."
(ibid, pg. 61)


Image

Curiously, possibly two of the individuals who alerted the Collins Elite to the significance of ESP, telepathy and the occult in general in relation to the UFO phenomenon, George Adamski and George Hunt Williamson, had ties to William Dudley Pelley. Let us begin with Williamson, whose ties to Pelley are a matter of public record.
"As for George Hunt Williamson, also known as Michael d'Obrenovic and as Brother Philip, Williamson became fascinated by the occult world as a teenager, and ultimately became a leading, albeit relatively brief, figure in the contactee movement. In early 1951, Williamson was summarily ejected from the University of Arizona on the grounds of poor scholarship. Having been deeply moved by William Dudley Pelley's 1950 book Star Guests, he went on to assist in the production of the organization's monthly journal, Valor.

"At the time, Pelley had been recently released from prison after serving eight years for his wartime opposition to the government and to the policies of President Roosevelt. The leader of a fascist body called the Silver Shirts, Pelley, like Williamson, was hypnotized by occult matters and compiled massive volumes of material on contact with allegedly higher forms of intelligence. Pelley became a major influence in the life of Williamson, who ultimately combined his fascination with the occult and flying saucers by trying to contact extraterrestrial-intelligences with the help of a home-made Ouija board and channeling. Commenting on the subject of Williamson's reported channeling of extraterrestrials, researcher Sean Devney stated: 'When Williamson started to channel, it was something truly inexplicable. [He] would begin speaking in several different voices, one right after the other.'

"In 1954, Williamson published his own saucer-dominated volume, The Saucers Speak, which focused upon his well-publicized attempts to contact extraterrestrials via short-wave radio and Ouija boards. Actar of Mercury, Adu of Hatonn in Andromeda, Agfa Affa of Uranus, Ankar-22 of Jupiter, and Artok of Pluto were just some of the many purported extraterrestrials with whom Williamson claimed interaction. Then, in the latter part of the 1950s, Williamson changed his name, drafted a wholly fictitious academic and family background to accompany his latest identity, and essentially disappeared. He died in 1986, largely forgotten by the UFO research community that had briefly welcomed him into the fold in the 1950s. The Collins Elite never forgot him, however."
(Final Event, Nick Redfern, pgs. 55-56)


Image
Williamson

Williamson's cosmology, while firmly rooted in Pelley's ideology, would adopt some interesting features of its own that would influence a host of ufologists over the years.
"George Hunt Williamson took Pelley's ideas into areas far beyond... orthodox Soulcraft system, but throughout his electric career Williamson maintained beliefs firmly grounded in the teachings of his former employer (despite his claims to have distanced himself from the Soulcraft Recorder). While Pelley utilized the flying saucers as supportive evidence for his religious system, Williamson focused his attentions on the spaceman, then worked a religious system into the 'reality' of the saucers. His ufological studies involved receiving transmissions from Martians via short-wave radio. These messages instructed him that humanity developed as Pelley had depicted in 'Star Guests' – by the mixing of apes and aliens. However, Earth had been visited by three types of extraterrestrial since then. According to Williamson, the 'Harvesters' traveled to earth from Sirius and help defeat evil on this planet. Earthly evil is a product of the violent machinations of the 'Intruders,' from Orion. Humanity is assisted in its spiritual development by the 'Migrants' (Williamson occasionally adopted Pelley's terminology and referred to this group as the 'Goodly Company'). Like Pelley, Williamson stressed reincarnation and the golden 'New Age' that will dawn after the apocalyptic battle that inaugurates the Aquarian Age.

"Williamson eventually became obsessed with uncovering artifacts from the lost continent of Lemuria and spent much of his time exploring Himalayan ruins. Although his later works focused on these endeavors, his 1950s works on 'Star Guests' activities resonated with a number of writers. Williamson's Pelley-inspired notions encouraged metaphysical oriented ufologists such as George Van Tassel, Max Flindt, and Erich von Daniken and insured an audience for his creation theories well beyond the limited sphere of Soulcraft."

(William Dudley Pelley: A Life in Right-Wing Extremism and the Occult, Scott Beekman, pg. 161)



Image
some of Williamson's latter works
(i.e., the late 1950s, very early 1960s)


The naming of the extraterrestrials from Sirius as "Harvesters" is interesting in this context as the Collins Elite apparently came to believe that the beings masquerading as extraterrestrials were effectively harvesting human souls for their own ends. And of course, more than a few elements from Williamson's system have been adopted by many of the more revered ancient astronaut theorists, as shall be examined a bit in the next installment. For now, let us move along to George Adamski, one of the most controversial figures in all of ufology.
"In 1952, the world found out, thanks to George Adamski, a sixty-one-year-old Polish-American who ran the Palomar Gardens Café at the base of Palomar Mountain, between San Diego and Los Angeles. Atop the mountain was the 200-inch Hale telescope, then the largest in the world, though Adamski liked to set up his own fifteen and six-inchers for passers-by to peer through at the heavens. Adamski also ran a theosophically inclined mystical order, the Royal Order of Tibet, and lectured regularly at the café on esoteric topics to a small coterie of followers who knew him as the 'Professor.'

"In 1949 Professor Adamski published a science-fiction novel, Pioneers of Space: A Trip to the Moon, Mars and Venus, under his own name, though it was actually written by his secretary, Lucy McGinnis. Soon afterwards he began incorporating flying saucers into his lectures, claiming to have seen and photographed the spacecraft. His reputation as a saucer spotter began to grow locally until, in 1950, he featured in Ray Palmer's Fate magazine. Adamski was fast becoming California's one-man flying saucer industry: business at the café was booming.

"With flying saucers very much in the news, Adamski's mystical saucer group began to attract new members, among them George Hunt Williamson...

"It was at that time Williamson and his wife, who had been attempting to contact the flying saucer occupants with an Ouija board, heard Professor Adamski's own tape-recorded communications with the Space Brothers. Deeply impressed, they joined the group and had become key members when, on 20 November 1952, Adamski, Lucy McGinnis, the Williamsons and fellow saucerers Alfred and Betty Bailey saw a large cigar-shaped object drifting over their cars as they drove through the California desert. Adamski told his passengers that it was one of the Space Brothers' airships and asked to be left behind.

"An hour later, the Professor returned with an incredible story. Alone in the desert with his telescope and camera, Adamski had seen a smaller, beautiful, craft land in the desert about half a mile away. Emerging from the craft was a human being from another world, about five feet six inches tall, in his late twenties with long blond hair, high cheekbones and a high forehead. He wore a one-piece brown outfit, red shoes and a perfect smile. Only a few words were spoken, much of the exchange taking place through telepathy and body language.

"The Nordic-looking spaceman was called Orthon. He had come to California from his home planet Venus to express his race's concerns for humankind and, in particular, its use of the atom bomb. Orthon asked Adamski to help them spread their message, then, their meeting over, Orthon and his craft took off, leaving behind only the imprint of a single shoe, which Adamski and his friends were able to preserve in plaster of Paris. Strange symbols were visible in the cast, including a star and a swastika.

"Adamski was as good as his word and immediately began to talk about his amazing encounter. In 1953 his account (again ghost written, this time by Claire L. John) was included in a best-selling book, Flying Saucers Have Landed, along with an essay on flying saucers and antiquity by the Irish peer Desmond Leslie. Adamski traveled the world talking about his meetings with the Space Brothers, which continued after his initial contact. Among those seeking an audience with the Professor were Queen Juliana of the Netherlands and, allegedly, Pope John XXIII. Meanwhile the Space Brothers kept in touch, occasionally dropping by the café to catch up with their new Earthling friend, and taking him on trips into Outer Space, which he described in another book, Inside the Space Ship (1955).

"Later investigations haven't been kind to the Polish professor – his iconic UFO photograph looks uncannily like a chicken feeder and a flying saucer design depicted in a technical paper that was widely circulated in early 1952. What really happened that day in the desert only Adamski, and perhaps Orthon, knew, but the timing of his encounter couldn't have been better, occurring just months after the Washington DC flap and just as the CIA and the US Air Force were discussing how to defuse the saucer issue.

"Adamski stories provided a much-needed answer to the flying saucer question: the occupants weren't evil Russians, they were peace-loving Venusians. While the burgeoning science-minded UFO community, epitomized by Leon Davidson, derided his account, the more spiritually minded tended to accept it, as did the general populace. As Adamski's fame spread, a number of other 'contactees' emerged, all telling similar stories of benevolent Space Brothers and joy rides into Outer Space."

(Mirage Men, Mark Pilkington, pgs. 100-102)


Image
"Orthon"

Unsurprisingly, there has been some question as to whether or not Adamski was merely a disinformation agent for US intelligence.
"Speculation that Adamski, and some of the other contactees were embroiled in intelligence games has existed since the 1950s. Leon Davidson contacted Adamski shortly after he went public with his encounter, exchanging several letters with him over the years. Asked by Davidson if there was anything at all unusual about Orthon and his fellow Space Brothers, Adamski replied that he was 'very definitely a human being... with his hair cut and in a business suit as men here wear he could mingle with anyone, anywhere.'

"Davidson naturally sensed Allen Dulles's stagecraft behind Adamski's encounters. His later 'trips' to Outer Space, documented in Inside the Space Ships, always began with the Space Brothers picking him up in a black Pontiac and driving him out into the desert. Here, Adamski would encounter a landed 'scout craft', inside which he would sit in a chair and watch the stars zoom by on a pair of screens (the craft's portholes were always closed), though he sensed 'no motion at all' while flying. During these trips 'newsreels' from Venus would be shown on the screens and the Space Brothers would lecture on various topics, all the while serving Adamski oddly coloured drinks. A suspicious Davidson noted that in 1955, a 'Rocket to the Moon' ride had opened at Disneyland that used black-projections to create the sensation of spaceflight. Were Adamski's space journeys concocted using similar Hollywood special effects? And just what was in those in-flight drinks that the Space Brothers were serving up to him?

"Whoever was behind Adamski's adventures, the involvement of Silver Shirt George Hunt Williamson and his circle, combined with persistent rumors that the Royal Order of Tibet masked a moonshine operation during Prohibition, would have been enough on their own to warrant the FBI's undivided attention. And Adamski had it, from an early stage in his career. A September 1950 FBI report paints a vivid picture. 'If you ask me,' the Professor told an FBI agent, 'they probably have a communist form of government... That is a thing of the future – more advanced. He also predicted that 'Russia will dominate the world and we will then have an era of peace for 1,000 years.'"
(ibid, pgs. 103-104)


Image

The FBI contact of Adamski was echoed in Redfern's account, which noted that originally elements of the national security apparatus were concerned that the UFO encounters were some type of communist mind control plot. No doubt Adamski's observations about communism would have raised a few eyebrows during this era (though he never seems to have run afoul of the red hunters significantly) and its entirely possible those curious drinks he was served by his Space Brothers was a part of an enhanced interrogation the US intelligence community subjected him to to get to the bottom of his claims.

Still, Redfern insists that the intelligence community (or at least the Collins Elite) had a serious interest in Adamski. They seem to have become especially taken in by his claims due to his association with the above-mentioned Desmond Leslie.
"... Richard Duke told me that the CollinsElite quickly became concerned by the working relationship that existed between Adamski and Leslie, and for one very stark and eye-opening reason: Desmond Leslie had a long and rich link to the world of the occult, including Aleister Crowley himself.
"Leslie's father, Sir Shane, who was a second cousin to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, was a truly colorful character who caused a sensation by converting to Roman Catholicism and the Nationalist cause. In addition, he spent part of his early years in Russia, where he became friends with Leo Tolstoy, before traveling across Europe. It was during these travels that Sir Shane became obsessed with the world of the supernatural, which led him to carefully collect stories of his Ghost Book, published in 1955. Sir Shane's closest friends at this time included the acclaimed paranormal novelist, M. R. James and the eccentric Lord Tredegar, who dabbled in the black arts, under the influence of Aleister Crowley's teachings, at his country estate in Wales.
"So Desmond Leslie was, in reality, someone who had been firmly exposed to the occult and the teachings of Crowley. Just like Jack Parsons, in fact."

(Final Events, Nick Redfern, pgs. 54-55)

Image
Leslie

Leslie may well have been a key influence on Adamski's belief system. Another was potentially William Dudley Pelley himself. There have been allegations floating around for years that Pelley and Adamski had had some type of relationship even prior to the post-WWII UFO era.
"According to my information, contactee George Adamski had connections with American fascist leader William Dudley Pelley, who was interned during the war. Another seminal contactee, George Hunt Williamson (whose real name was Michel d'Obrenovic), was associated with Pelley's organization in the early 50s. In fact, Pelley may have put Williamson in touch with Adamski. Other associates of Williamson during the great era of the flying saucers were such contacteess John McCoy and the two Stanford brothers, Ray and Rex.

"The connections among all these men, who have been very influential in shaping the UFO myth in the United States, are quite intricate...
"It was about 1950 that Williamson is said to of begun working for Pelley at the offices of Soulcraft Publications in Noblesville, Indiana, before moving to California, where he witnessed Adamski's desert contact on November 20, 1952, with a Venusian that had long blond hair. Williamson, however, has assured me that he never embraced any of the racist theories that the pro-Nazi movements promoted..."

(Dimensions, Jacques Vallee, pg. 250)

Pelley's biographer, Scott Beekman, does not agree with Vallee's time frame. He places Pelley's meeting with Williamson in 1953, after the Adamski close encounter. Still, Beekman seems to believe that there was some type of connection between Pelley and Adamski as well.
"... a young anthropologist named George Hunt Williamson, who began working for Pelley in 1953. Williamson was deeply interested in ufology and wrote a regular column on UFO sightings in Valor until 1954. Williamson then left Pelley's orbit and began a long and eccentric career investigating ufology, unexplained phenomena, and the occult.

"Williamson was already well-known in 1953 because of his connections with one of the most controversial figures in the UFO movement, George Adamski, who died in 1965. An opportunist of dubious morals, Adamski established himself as a minor metaphysical teacher in the 1930s, when he created the Royal Order of Tibet. 'Professor' Adamski's teachings were swiped whole cloth from the I AM movement, and the Royal Order eked out a meager existence until the late 1940s. Inspired by the Arnold sightings, Adamski began lecturing on flying saucers (of which he claimed to have seen 184 by 1950) and writing science-fiction stories.
"During the early 1950s, Williamson had traveled to California to meet Adamski, and discuss UFOs. In November 1952 Williamson, Adamski, and five others ushered in the 'contactee era' by allegedly conversing with a Venusian near Desert Center, California. The spaceman encountered was described as 'Aryan' looking, with long blond hair and blue eyes, a point that critics familiar with the backgrounds of Adamski and Williamson quickly seized upon as evidence both fraud and racism. Adamski spent the rest of the decade writing about his frequent encounters with aliens (including rides into outer space) and promoting the spiritual teachings the spacemen allegedly imparted to him. That the spacemen's religious system was identical to Adamski's prior Royal Order of Tibet teachings (and that his pictures of the spaceship bore a striking resemblance to out-of-focus ceiling light fixtures) is usually cited as irrefutable evidence of Adamski's chicanery.

"Despite the highly questionable aspects of Adamski and Williamson's stories, Pelley continued to trumpet his association with them and the validity of their alien encounters. In Valor, Pelley recounted their adventures and reprinted letters he received from Williamson, Adamski, and Adamski's secretary, Lucy McGinnis (who ghostwrote all of his books). When Adamski began publishing accounts of the spacemen's spiritual system, which, being I AM derived, bore close similarities to Soulcraft, Pelley approvingly noted the material as further extraterrestrial evidence of the validity of his own religious teachings."

(William Dudley Pelley: A Life in Right-Wing Extremism and the Occult, Scott Beekman, pgs. 154-155)

Image
Adamski

Thus, Pelley and Adamski clearly seem to have been aware of one another, though whether this was merely by reputation, or a more personal relationship, is difficult to discern. As was noted in part one of this series, the Silver Shirts were very active in California during the 1930s, especially in Los Angeles and San Diego, and thus its possible Adamski may have been aware of Pelley's teachings for quite some time. And Pelley himself was based out of California throughout the 1920s and very early 1930s (and continued to travel there semi-regularly for some time afterwards), making the possibility of a personnel association certainly within the realm of possibility.

So to recap, the Collins Elite allegedly became convinced of the occult nature of the UFO phenomenon as a result of the experiences recounted by several contactees in the early 1950s, but most notably those produced by the three Georges: Van Tassel, Williamson, and Adamski. Of these three, Williamson most certainly had ties to Pelley and Adamski most likely did as well. Further, the metaphysical aspects of their respective systems, which most fascinated the Collins Elite, seem to have been largely based upon the system Pelley originally devised in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and which was later adopted wholesale by the much more successful I AM movement.

Image
Guy Ballard, the founder of the I AM movement

Given the Collins Elite's obsession with occult connections to the UFO phenomenon, it seems hard to believe that they would not have had interest in the work of a man who claimed by at least 1932 to be receiving messages (frequently delivered via automatic writing) from "higher" intelligences alleging that the white race's origins derived from extraterrestrial beings from Sirius. Certainly, they seem to have given much credence to the systems influenced by Pelley and even toyed with another of his tenets, namely that of theocracy.

But of course the very existence of the Collins Elite is still highly debatable, and thus can hardly be held up as confirmation of the American national security's apparatus' interest in Pelley's work. The existence of the next network we shall consider is not only certain beyond a shadow of a doubt, however, but evidence pointing to their interest in Pelley's theology is also much more compelling as well. Stay tuned for further revelations.

Image
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: William Dudley Pelley, International Fascism & Sirius

Postby American Dream » Sun Mar 02, 2014 6:21 pm

William Dudley Pelley, International Fascism, and the Sirius Tradition Part VI


Image


http://visupview.blogspot.com/2014/03/w ... ional.html
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: William Dudley Pelley, International Fascism & Sirius

Postby American Dream » Sat Mar 08, 2014 12:24 am

Occult America: The Secret History of how Mysticism Shaped Our Nation

By Mitch Horowitz, 2009

By the mid-1930s, the Silver Shirts reached a peak membership of about 15,000. Pelley had become sufficiently infamous to serve as the model for novelist Sinclair Lewis's American dictator, Buzz Windrip, in IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE. In the pages of LIBERATION--whose subscriber list may have run as high as 50,000--Pelley repeatedly hammered the Roosevelt administration for its support of England, declaring that the president was a puppet of the "house of Judah" and calling him a scheming, Dutch-descended Jew. Pelley finally pushed a button that Roosevelt would not ignore. In a 1939 pamphlet, "Cripple's Money," Pelley wrote that the polio-stricken president was personally pocketing money raised through his Warm Springs Foundation for Crippled Children (and, of course, sharing it with his Jewish puppeteers). Roosevelt asked Attorney General Frank Murphy and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover about prosecuting Pelley for libel. But the plans were dropped for fear that Roosevelt subpoenaed to testify.

At the dawn of WWII, however, with the nation reeling from Pearl Harbor and Pelley praising Hitler as the "outstanding statesman of the world," the federal government was ready to strike. "Now that we are in a war," Roosevelt wrote Hoover in January of 1942, "it looks like a good chance to clean up a number of these vile publications." In April the FBI raided Pelley's offices, and by August a circuit court in Indianapolis sentenced him to fifteen years in federal prison on eleven counts of sedition.

The government had made Pelley an example in a general mop-up of racist cults and paramilitary movements at the start of the war. He was likely seen as an easier target than the better-known Axis sympathizers such as the "Radio Priest" Father Charles Coughlin, who had far more followers and political connections. The Pelley prosecution was a warning shot--and it seemed to work.



As the war wound down and America faced a new foe in Communism, the controversy around Pelley ebbed. In early 1950, friends and supporters--recasting their jailed chief as a pioneering foe of Bolshevism--secured his release on parole. He had served about 7 and a half years. Legally barred from political activity, Pelley spent the rest of the decade creating a massive output of channeled writings from his higher messengers, which he called the Soulcraft teachings. Moving with the times, Pelley saw the burgeoning phenomenon of UFOs as evidence of divine intelligences--or "Star Guests." For the remaining years of his life, the "beloved Chief" crafted an astral-Spiritualist religion based on cosmic messages from interstellar guides.

Pelley's brand of paranoid pseudopatriotism touched the imaginations of other mystical sects that also attempted to "save" America under the guidanceof hidden powers. The largest was the Chicago-based "Mighty I AM" movement, which offered a melange of teachings from "Ascended Masters" who extolled prosperity, ultra-patriotism, and mystical awakening. As will be seen, the group gained and quickly lost wide popularity during the 1930s under the leadership of a husband-wife team, Guy and Edna Ballard.

By far the grimmest legacy of the career of William Dudley Pelley was the influence he left among America's emerging hate groups. The Silver Shirts were an identifiable starting point for the careers of at least two figures whose names became synonymous with violence and bigotry later in the 20th century. Henry L. Beach, a former Silver Shirt chapter leader, cofounded the white hate group Posse Comitatus, known for a series of 1983 shootouts that killed two federal marshals in North Dakota and a sheriff in Arkansas. Another ex-Silver Shirt, Richard Butler, founded the violent Aryan Nations, which he directed from Idaho until his death in 2004, going to his grave as the most visible leader of white hate. Pelley's writings and theories, and the Silver Shirts uniforms and paramilitary posturing, gave post-Klan hate groups a style, a language, and an aesthetic.

Those were the most lasting bequests of a man who, while still in the initial glow of his out-of-body episode, enthused in 1929: "I know that the experience has metamorphosed the cantankerous Vermont Yankee that was once Bill Pelley and launched him into a wholly different universe that seems filled with naught but love, harmony, health, good humor, and prosperity."
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: William Dudley Pelley, International Fascism & Sirius

Postby American Dream » Sat Mar 08, 2014 10:34 am

The Controllers

by Martin Cannon

"I strongly urge abduction researchers to examine closely any small 'occult' groups an abductee might join. For example, one familiar leader of the UFO fringe -- a man well-known for his espousal of the doctrine of 'love and light' -- is Virgil Armstrong, a close personal friend of General John Singlaub, the notorious Iran-Contra player, who recently headed the neo-fascist World Anti-Communist League [...]

"Even more ominous than possible ties between UFO cults and the intelligence community are the cults' links with the shadowy I AM group, founded by Guy Ballard in the 1930s. According to researcher David Stupple, 'If you look at the contactee groups today, you'll see that most of the stable, larger ones are actually neo-I AM groups, with some sort of tie to Ballard's organization.' This cult, therefore, bears investigation.

"Guy Ballard's 'Mighty I AM Religious Activity,' grew, in large part, out of William Dudley Pelley's Silver Shirts, an American NAZI organization. Although Ballard himself never openly proclaimed NAZI affiliation, his movement was tinged with an extremely right-wing political philosophy, and in secret meetings he 'decreed' the death of President Franklin Roosevelt. The I AM philosophy derived from Theosophy, and in this author's estimation bears a more-than-cursory resemblance to the Theosophically-based teachings that informed the proto-NAZI German occult lodges.

"After the war, Pelley (who had been imprisoned for sedition during the hostilities) headed an occult-oriented organization called Soulcraft, based in Noblesville, Indiana. Another Soulcraft employee was the controversial contactee George Hunt Williamson (real name: Michel d'Obrenovic), who co- authored UFOs CONFIDENTIAL with John McCoy, a proponent of the theory that a Jewish banking conspiracy was preventing disclosure of the solution to the UFO mystery.

Later, Williamson founded the I AM-oriented Brotherhood of the Seven Rays in Peru. Another famed contactee, George Van Tassel, was associated with Pelley and with the notoriously anti-Semitic Reverend Wesley Swift (founder of the group which metamorphosed into the Aryan nations).

"The most visible offspring of I AM is Elizabeth Clare Prophet's Church Universal and Triumphant, a group best-known for its massive arms caches in underground bunkers. CUT was recently exposed in COVERT ACTION INFORMATION BULLETIN as a conduit of CIA funds, and according to researcher John Judge, has ties to organizations allied to the World Anti-Communist League. Prophet is becoming involved in abduction research and has sponsored presentations by Budd Hopkins and other prominent investigators. In his book THE ARMSTRONG REPORT: ETs AND UFOs: THEY NEED US, WE DON'T NEED THEM[sic], Virgil Armstrong directs troubled abductees toward Prophet's group. (Perhaps not insignificantly, he also suggests that abductees plagued by implants alleviate their problem by turning to 'the I AM force' within.) "Another UFO channeller, Frederick Von Mierers, has promulgated both a cult with a strong I AM orientation and an apparent con-game involving over-appraised gemstones. Mierers is an anti-Semite who contends that the Holocaust never happened and that the Jews control the world's wealth.

"UFORUM is a flying saucer organization popular with Los Angeles-area abductees; its founder is Penny Harper, a member of a radical Scientology breakaway group which connects the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard with pronouncements against 'The Illuminati' (a mythical secret society) and other BETES NOIR familiar from right-wing conspiracy literature. Harper directs members of her group to read THE SPOTLIGHT, an extremist tabloid (published by Willis Carto's Liberty Lobby) which denies the reality of the Holocaust and posits a 'Zionist' scheme to control the world.
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Next

Return to General Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 41 guests