The Occult Conspiracy

By Michael Howard. Century Hutchison, 1989. 196 pp. $45.95.

(Reviewed by Denis Dutton)

Move over parapsychology, parapolitics is here. Just as parapsychology shuns mundane physical laws to account for apparent cases of ESP or precognition, parapolitics does away with the usual explanations of historical events in terms of political and economic ambitions, personal greed, and military prowess. Instead, it offers a new level of historical understanding: an occult conspiracy of individuals and secret societies. Michael Howard, a British writer not to be confused with an eminent Oxford historian of the same name, has been studying parapolitics for the last quarter century. He claims that, though few of us are aware of it, since the dawn of recorded history the destiny of nations has been decided by "shadowy figures who have often been obsessed with the pursuit of power."

The story begins over 30,000 years ago, with "the colonization of Asia and Australasia by inhabitants of the lost continents of Lemuria or Mu." Evidence suggests "early contact between extraterrestrials and Stone Age Tribes in Tibet" and a priesthood which fled from Atlantis to Britain, South America, and elsewhere. Later on, the ETs are at it again with the Sumerians. Isis and Osiris in Egypt, the mysteries of Mithra, and founding of the first Celtic church in Glastonbury by Joseph of Arimathea all cited as proof of "the influence, of the occult tradition and secret societies on world history."

But it's a long way from Mu to you, and Howard spends much space explaining the influence of more recent secret societies on world events. The Nazis and the Vatican naturally figure large in the sorry, and there is a chapter on American history. Howard recounts the well-known fact that Franklin, Washington, and most signers of the Declaration of Independence were Freemasons. That Masonic ideas had very little to do with the political and economic development of the United States, even in these early years, doesn't deter Howard from doggedly pursuing his hypothesis of a sinister plot controlling American history. Though he may not have been a Mason, Abraham Lincoln, we were told, "possessed powers, including clairvoyance, or precognition, and the ability to heal the sick." Moreover, a neo-Rosicrucian named Pascal Beverly Randolph was a "close friend" of Lincoln. (1 could find no mention of this close friend's name in two Lincoln biographies.) Randolph believed that ritual sex could be used to produce spiritual enlightenment. How this affected post-Civil War reconstruction is left to the reader's imagination.

Howard also explains that Lincoln's assassin, John 'Wilkes Booth, was shot dead by a soldier named Boston Corbett. It turns out that Corbett had previously castrated himself for spiritual reasons. In fact, he might possibly have been a member of the infamous Russian Skoptsi sect, whose priests castrated themselves and dressed in women's clothing! Corbett was later committed to an insane asylum, from which he escaped never to be found. Howard, of course, does not mention that thousands of soldiers were frantically searching for

Booth, hoping to pump some lead into him, nor does he explain how Corbett's status as castrato helped him to be the lucky one. We just have to accept that it's all part of the mysterious but undeniable occult manipulation of global destiny.

On to the administration of Franklin Roosevelt, whose Agriculture Secretary and sometime Vice-President, Henry Wallace, had an interest in the occult. According to Howard, it was Wallace who suggested to Roosevelt that the symbol of an Egyptian pyramid with the eye of God appear on American currency. Wallace had contact with a Russian artist who had studied with lamas in Tibet while searching for the lost city of Shambala. Howard concludes the chapter by informing us that Wallace also supported the "pioneering work" of Dr. Andrija Puharich, the very investigator who later on fostered "the psychic talents of a young Israeli called Uri Geller." Thus the parapolitical history of America culminates in a bent spoon.

Laugh if you will, but this is a sad, sick little book. It will encourage feverish, ignorant people of the type who read the Book of Revelation and speculate how the Masons, the Templars, or Illuminati are, with the Vatican and the Club of Rome, involved in a satanic conspiracy to install a Jewish Antichrist and take over the world. It's not a pretty sight.