The Bloody Mill of International Banker Backed World Revolution in Mediaeval England

 

THE BLOODY MILL OF WORLD REVOLUTION IN MEDIAEVAL ENGLAND

 

I always wondered about the Russian revolution and in what way could the interests of a people and nation ever be said to have been served by the deaths of millions of people and the innumerable terrible atrocities committed against Russians by fellow Russians. It made no sense to me but I knew that there must be a reason for it because it happened after all and for something to take place some groups of very rich and powerful people must have a specific desire to make it occur.

The main thing that strikes me about the Russian revolution is that it seemed to hate Russians. It cut them down mercilessly, executed the best of the officers and generals, imprisoned the best of intellectuals and sent them to far off Siberian gulags where their intelligence could be safely contained and not a threat to the new regime.

The revolution seemed determined to kill the best of people, and had no compunction about bloodying its hands and without shame to achieve its goals and to a disinterested observer those goals appeared to be to murder Russians and strip their country of anything noble, valuable, intelligent and worthwhile. If one reaches the understanding and follows the evidence that indicates that the Russian revolution was not planned, funded and largely carried out by Russians, nor was it carried out for their interests but planned, funded and carried out by non-Russians who had their own reasons for destroying Christian Tsarist Russia, then working backwards one can examine all so called revolutionary movements: the French Revolution and even the English Civil war and the execution of King Charles I, we realise that there has always been some ‘other’ group operating on the world-stage, using their puppets, whether Oliver Cromwell one minute, a Duke of Orleans the next, then Lenin. In the case of Cromwell and Lenin, there is the lingering suspicion that their deaths were not entirely natural but were carried out once the puppets had served their turn and had literally outlived their usefulness. All of these revolutions were said to involve international banking interests. In Cromwell’s case, his great great grandfather, Morgan Williams married Thomas Cromwell’s sister. Thomas Cromwell as chief minister to Henry VIII is known for being the instrument of the schism from the church of Rome.

Thomas Cromwell, as a boy, left his family to travel to the continent and found himself joining the French mercenary army at 13. Leaving the army and starving on the streets of Florence he escaped destitution by taking up service in the household of Florentine banker Francesco Frescobaldi, whose family were said to have once financially conquered England:

"not only in holding the purse-strings of the kings of England, but also in controlling sales of English wool which was vital to continental workshops and in particular to the Arte della Lana of Florence." Braudel, The Wheels of Commerce (‘Civilization and Capitalism’).

The Frescobaldi family financed the wars of King Edward I and were also receivers of customs in England from 1307 and they were also collectors of the papal tax and helped finance the crusades. Amedeo de Frescobaldi absorbed many of the debts incurred by the King and after his death and negotiated all of the customs duty on wool from Ireland and Scotland, no doubt in service to the late King’s debts. However, with the fall of King Edward II and suspicion of foreigners he was eventually arrested and had all his goods seized. He fled England and the royal debt was never paid and the Frescobaldi’s went bankrupt. It seems curious then that such a man as Thomas Cromwell, on the verge of absolute destitution should be ‘rescued’ by a member of the family who once had had such a powerful hand in the Kingdom of England only to lose everything, on the turn of politics. Did they sponsor Thomas Cromwell to return to England and manoeuvre him into setting up a continental mercantile and legal network and to return to London a very influential man with extensive contacts, destined for power by his own evident usefulness. In a sense was the advent of Thomas Cromwell the first time the bankers had wrestled control of the course of England and its destiny, whispering policy into the ears of the king. If so then what do the bankers want? What is their policy?

If we look at what Thomas Cromwell ultimately did to England, we might be able to trace a course which might outline their ultimate agenda and motivations. Renowned English historian Dominic Selwood, Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries, in his book Spies, Sadists and Sorcerers states that Thomas Cromwell pursued an agenda of destruction:

“No one can be sure of the exact figure, but it is estimated that the destruction started and legalized by Cromwell amounted to 90% of the English art then in existence. Statues were hacked down. Frescoes were smashed to bits. Mosaics were pulverized. Illuminated manuscripts were shredded. Wooden carvings were burned. Precious metalwork was melted down. Shrines were reduced to rubble. This vandalism went way beyond a religious reform. It was a frenzy, obliterating the artistic patrimony of centuries of indigenous craftsmanship with an intensity of hatred for imagery and depicting the divine that has strong and resonant parallels today.”

This was a period of time when the so called ‘dark-ages’ were perhaps still brightly illuminated in the cultural memory, a time before what I would term the European banker Conquistador: William the Conqueror.  What would be the purpose of effacing more than a thousand years of history leaving nothing but darkness and giving the impression that British history began in 1066?

The first Jews arrived in the country in 1066 and the first written record of a Jewish settlement in the country dates to 1070: there is no record of Jews in England before this time. During the reign of Henry I, Jews tended to represent the King’s financial interest and they had supremacy over Christians: a Jewish person’s oath was worth that of twelve Christians, so in effect, Jewish people during this period had a kind of diplomatic immunity and Jews were to be treat with special consideration as if they were the King’s own property.

One of the oldest town-houses, if not the oldest town house in England is known as the Jew’s House in Lincoln and was built in the 12th Century. It was in Lincoln in 1255 that one of the first instances of the ritual murder of a Christian child occurred. Nine-year-old Hugh disappeared from his home on 31st July and was discovered in a well on 29th August. He had been tortured and crucified in a re-enactment of the crucifixion of Jesus according to the confessions of those found guilty. There have been at least 150 accounts of children sacrificed by Jews as part of a ritual murder; though now all such accounts are now classed as ‘blood libel’ and antisemitic canards, as if these children never existed and their murders never happened.

From a logical and rational perspective, not to mention a scholarly and academic one, it is one of the axioms of historical research that the closer you are to the time the events took place the more accurate the recording of the facts. Conversely how can we be expected to believe an analysis that these events never happened 800 years after the facts? On this sound logical basis alone the canard of ‘blood-libel’ should be summarily dismissed as some kind of deliberate mental distortion of reality.

The accounts of these murders have endured for hundreds of years and such reports pervade history throughout the centuries and the different countries of a whole continent. To imagine that tens of thousands of people, for the past thousand years in all the countries of Europe where these blood-sacrifices have been reported have all been engaged in some huge and coordinated plot against Jews is possibly the most paranoid conspiracy theory anyone could imagine, but the Jews are permitted their paranoid conspiracy theories and even questioning them has become a criminal offence in many countries throughout the world.

Blood libel is a contemporary concept which has been summarily invented in order to efface these truths which expose the nature of a people who are not only actively opposed to our best interests, but are hostile to us and will seek to kill our people at any opportunity, whether they pick off a lost child or manage to slay millions in an organised a murderous organisation of engineered social revolution and destruction of institutions and civilisation. It is a common evil to be murdered by an antagonistic force, but to demonise the victims and victimise the demons, this elevates the whole story to a kind of infernal satire and such a level of evil to be permitted in this world convinces me indeed that this world is literally under the thrall of a supernatural diabolical force of malicious evil constantly seeking human blood through revolutions, genocides and wars which seems to have sided with a particular human group claiming ethnic and religious privilege and supremacy, at the expense of everybody else on Earth whose blood is let as remorselessly and without a second thought, as the butchering of animals.

There is an enormous effort to conceal and obfuscate these crimes and call them ‘blood-libel’ and insinuate that they are not true, or were invented in order for certain royal elements to profit by the confiscation of Jewish property. This alone is interesting and a fact worthy of note, and perhaps indicates how deeply our culture and society is controlled by elements which do not share our well-being and interests but instead the preservation and supremacy of their own. If reality can be rewritten to the extent that historical torture and murder of children by known parties can be spun into some kind of bizarre accusation of antisemitism then we are living in a world where a caste system obviously exists and we are not at the top of that system. It might be the kind of behaviour one might expect in a strange parallel world where a literal slave-race comprising 99.8 percent of the world exists, while the other 0.2 percent are the master-race. Any crime reported by the slaves against the master-race would face the full force of the master-race’s machinery of control to silence the complaints of the slave-race.

Thomas Cromwell weakened Europe by encouraging the great schism which would riven it in two and lead to hundreds of years of wars, intrigues and conflict. If there were another force, neither part of England nor of Europe which did not have their interests in mind, then it would likely want to encourage a policy in England of supporting the Protestant reformation and weakening the power-base of the Roman Catholic Church.

It seems strange that on his execution, the man who had been so instrumental in taking England out of the Roman Catholic Empire would declare:

“And now I praie you that be here, to beare me record, I die in the Catholicke faithe, not doubtyng in any article of my faith, no nor doubtyng in any Sacrament of the Chirche.”

Dominic Selwoood in his book Spies, Sadists and Sorcerers is very critical and states frankly that: “Thomas Cromwell was the Islamic State of his day”.

He says of Cromwell whom he describes as Henry VIII’s ‘chief enforcer’:

“..one whose record for looting, murder and destruction ought to have us apoplectic with rage.”

He goes on to describe some of the outrages against history and culture which Thomas Cromwell committed and with this analysis, which we being remote in the far distance of history, can see that what Thomas Cromwell achieved was hardly different from the work of the French or Russian Revolution and indeed, could well be seen as part of a single continuum or ongoing project against the religion, culture and lives of the state’s citizens.

As hypothesised before one wonders whether Thomas Cromwell was acting as an agent of the Frescobaldi banking family all along; it is certain that their returns on their investment in the person of Thomas Cromwell had proved highly profitable, aside from any ideological and political agendas they may or may not have had the sequestering of the whole wealth of the Roman church in England must represent one of the world’s greatest booties, and any losses the family may have incurred as a result of the Barons acting against what they considered corrupting foreign elements in the English court had  been well and truly repaid with interest, I therefore consider Thomas Cromwell to be an instrument of banker-vengeance:

“Flushed with the success of engineering Henry’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon and his marriage to Anne Boleyn, Cromwell moved on to confiscating the Church’s money. Before long, he was dissolving monasteries as fast as he could, which meant seizing anything that was not nailed down and keeping it for himself, for Henry, and for their circle of friends. It was the biggest land-grab and asset-strip in English history, and Cromwell sat at the centre of the operation, at the heart of a widely-loathed, absolutist, and tyrannical regime. When Anne Boleyn pointed out that the money should be going to charity or good works, he fitted her up on charges of adultery, and watched as she was beheaded.”

And whether there is something innate in human nature or something innate in the ‘revolutionary’ system which has historically always been sponsored by international banking fraternities, the same casual attitude to the liquidation of perceived political opponents with the detached nonchalance of the administrator or clerical functionary.

“With lazy strokes of his pen, he condemned royalty, nobles, peasants, nuns, and monks to horrific summary executions. We are not talking half a dozen. He dispatched hundreds under his highly politicized ‘treason’ laws.”

It is also strange that the barbarousness of the French Revolution s closer to us in time and there are more cultural connections with our present day since there are constant cultural reminders through Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities or musicals like Les Miserables which evoke the post-revolutionary period, there has been a recent interest in the Tudor period through the work of popularising historians such as Dr David Starkey and the television programme Wolf Hall, but these media portrayals serve only to show how remote and estranged from our present period these distant bloodthirsty and quarrelsome Tudors were, it’s almost as if a certain level of barbarity is expected of our mediaeval kings and queens, but what if they were only following the instructions of their advisors and chief ministers, what if the barbarity of tortures and summary beheadings were really the work of some other group with their own interests. This is what I believe.

I do not believe that monarchs have the level of intelligence or malice necessary to have created the deep rivers of blood which have led us to our present moment, nor do I believe their motivations would be so great to kill so many people. Most people are content enough to get through their life with the least possible grief as long as they receive a reasonable degree of respect, understanding and value from other people. A monarch has little to prove to acquire that respect, but they have every chance of losing it by acting poorly, what if they were guided into acting poorly? Then faced with the consequences of popular discontent, the monarch feels alienated from his people, resentful, even possibly fearful, then his minister is on hand to suggest the correct punitive dissuasive remedies. 

Thomas Cromwell was an example of one of the ‘Manipulators’ of his day using a puppet king to do his bidding and the bidding of his owners. We can only speculate as to what kind of international merchant banking fraternity might have existed in the middle-ages, or whether he was indeed really employed in some way by the Frescobaldi family nursing old grievances and eager to exploit an opportunity to train and infiltrate an agent into the very highest echelons of the English royal court. What is known is that both Edward I and Edward III defaulted on their loans and led to the bankruptcy of several large Italian banking firms; Edward I had sought more loans from the banker Ricciardi of Lucca for his war with France in 1294 but they were either unable or unwilling to extend him more credit whereupon he seized their English assets, bankrupting them.

King Edward III defaulted on a debt of 900,000 gold florins to the Peruzzi banking family and 600,000 to the Bardi banking family, this led to the collapse of several Italian banks, along with the ruination of the wealthy patrons who held their money with the collapsed banks. It is argued that this led to a general Europe-wide economic decline, also termed a ‘great depression’ which began in 1340. Considering the toll three terms of English Monarchs had had on the Florentine banking industry and the vast quantity of unpaid debts is it really so unusual to make the suggestion that a member of this deposed banking empire uses an English agent to belatedly settle the bill with ample interest. It’s just an idea, but it is a strongly persuasive one, at least to my reasoning. In history a ‘coincidence’ is often a sign that there is a conspiracy, and can it be a conspiracy that we have witnessed several bloodthirsty attacks on Christian nations in which the priority seems to be the destruction of the church and the murder of fellow Christians? The French Revolutionary moto was based on the phrase of French philosopher and Freemason, Denis Diderot ‘hang the last noble with the entrails of the last priest’.

Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich was a Jewish communist and Stalin’s ‘chief enforcer’ responsible for the deaths of millions of Christian Russians and Ukrainians in the Holodomor along with the destruction of Christian monuments, churches and over a thousand years’ of Russian history, perhaps most notably the great Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow when he proclaimed “Mother Russia is cast down. We have ripped away her skirts.” This is clearly a victory cry of triumph against Russia and the Russian people, along with her culture and history by the outside element which is antithetical to their existence and will employ all the machinery of the modern age to create horrors of bloodshed and destruction.

Like the Guillotine of the French Revolution, named after a French Freemason who was not the actual inventor of the machine, as guillotines had been in use as a means of execution in England since 1280, but as the man who first suggested its use in the Revolution, we find the endless need for piles upon piles of heads of Christians in these revolutions.

This is echoed back in the time some two hundred years previously where Selwood describes, what I would term the ‘revolutionary legacy’ of Thomas Cromwell:

“We only have to survey the smashed up medieval buildings the length and breadth of the country, or contemplate Cromwell’s record of public beheadings and other barbarous executions.”

Thomas Cromwell was eventually beheaded at Tower Hill on the 28th July 1540 prior to his execution he begged the king for mercy, perhaps he asked for the same mercy he had shown those he had executed for there was none and for once justice was done, although Henry apparently regretted killing such a useful and important minister. It is curious that on the same day as his death one of his protegees, Lord Hungerford of Heytesbury, who had reached his position through the patronage of Cromwell, was also executed, ostensibly for buggery but he was also known to have been part of a seditious group which had even practiced magic to attempt to shorten King Henry’s life and ascertain the chances of success of a Catholic rebellion in Lincolnshire.

This brings us to another strange element to this story which might cause us to wonder that perhaps Cromwell was just employed to disrupt the Kingdom and had no particular deep ideological reasons for causing the split from the Roman Church since he (and even King Henry himself) confessed that they had remained Catholic.

The man who was executed: Lord Hungerford, whom Cromwell brought to prominence and patronised, was connected to people sympathetic to The Pilgrimage of Grace rebellion against Henry’s break with the Roman church and the policies of Thomas Cromwell himself. This uprising began not far from where I was born in Lincolnshire in a pleasant market town called Louth at the Saint James church and as many as 40,000 people marched on Lincoln to demand the freedom to practice as Catholics (just like King Henry and Thomas Cromwell himself) and protection for the Church treasures of Lincolnshire.

Ultimately Hungerford was executed for his suspected involvement or sympathy with the Pilgrimage of Grace rebellion since he employed William Bird his chaplain, and it was claimed that Hungerford knew the man to be a traitor, and such associations, along with the Rector of Fittleton and the Vicar of Bradford, cast doubts on his loyalty to the king.

Oliver Cromwell, like his great great grand-uncle, was a pawn and puppet of international finance. Why was King Charles murdered? Follow the money. He had angered the merchants and bankers by seizing gold coins from the Royal Mint which were destined to the merchants and creditors of Government debt and just as King Henry had ordered Cromwell’s death, Oliver Cromwell ordered King Charles’ death. There are no coincidences in history, instead, evidence of an underlying agenda.

The Mystery of Adrenochrome

 

OPERATING BEYOND SAFE PARAMETERS

In the free Tokyo English language ex-pat newspapers and magazines one finds, at least when I lived there, advertisements and notices which raise many questions in themselves. If you were to go there now and thumb through the classifieds and jobs sections, the chances are you will find offers of certain kinds of special employment available exclusively to Filipino women. One such advert I found said something along the lines of: “wanted, psychically gifted Filipinos for ethical work in Tokyo area...” This raises two main questions immediately. Firstly, are there various agencies which know that psychic powers exist and they can use them for some purpose? Secondly if it is necessary for them to make the distinction that the work offered is ‘ethical’ then what else is going on out there behind the scenes involving ‘psychically gifted Filipinos’ which is not ethical?

What these ‘psychically gifted’ women or ‘witches’ as I would classify the bunch I happened to be sharing a house with, seemed able to do: and a South African Shaman friend of mine later confirmed to me that it was something she could also do, was to be able to project their consciousness into the mind of another person.

In the book The Chasm of Fire, Irene Tweedie documents a woman’s experience in India studying under a Sufi shaman. In the account she details the occurrence of her mentor actually entering her mind at night time and projecting all sorts of unsettling and unpleasant images into her mind. Most of the images are of a sexual nature and Tweedie fails to understand the process and why her mentor is doing such a thing to her. Eventually she comes close to a nervous breakdown and becomes very lonely and depressed to such an extent that she abandons the training.

The process which Irene Tweedle had chosen to enrol herself in and later abandoned, was a deliberate attempt by her Sufi mentor to drive her insane through the relentless terror and shock of the visions he was implanting in her mind. To Tweedle this made no sense, but if she had known perhaps that schizophrenia is the key to the Sufi ‘enlightenment’ and indeed the key goal of all such secret society initiatory programmes, then this knowledge would have allowed her to make sense of what was happening to her, although perhaps knowing the method to the madness may actually impede that goal. It is harder to be scared of the unknown if the unknown becomes known and difficult to remain in a state of confusion about the purpose if one can see that confusion IS the purpose.

But madness or schizophrenia isn’t quite the mystery it appears, in fact there is a clear bio-chemical origin behind the transformation from sanity to what is generally termed ‘insanity’. Barbara O’Brien reveals in her book that she:

“…became very curious about the psychiatrists who suspected a relationship between schizophrenia and a dysfunction of the adrenal gland.”

Under conditions of mental or physical stress the body produces adrenalin. There’s no mystery here and this process is well understood by most people. What is slightly more arcane and what has caused a stir in the truth community is adrenochrome. Unfortunately, a lot of what the truth movement is saying about adrenochrome is unfortunately wrong. The elite do not drink it as some kind of elixir of eternal youth, this is all disinformation and nonsense.

Adrenochrome is oxidised adrenalin, that is adrenalin which has gone bad. It is a neurotoxin and free-radical and is not something you want in the body. Adrenalin is produced in the body as a result of stress and anxiety, and it naturally degrades to adrenochrome, however in a healthy body and with a small release of adrenalin, it is safely scavenged by anti-oxidants in the body and excreted. However, if the period of stress, anxiety or prolonged uncertainty, can be sustained over a long time, then the release of adrenalin becomes continuous and the body can no longer safely scavenge the adrenochrome toxin and it starts to build up in the body. 

Adrenochrome is a psychoactive compound; its effects are somewhat like LSD but whereas a bad LSD trip will eventually wear off, adrenochrome build up, in a suitably stressed or terrorised individual, will not wear off: leading to a potentially permanent condition of what is effectively intoxication by a powerful psychoactive compound running perpetually through the bloodstream. This condition is known as schizophrenia. Dr Abraham Hoffer’s work in identifying adrenochrome as the ‘schizophrenia’ toxin as well as the possibility of treatment with high doses of niacin also known as vitamin B3, would clear up some of the great mysteries of our times as well as almost instantly solving the world-wide mental illness epidemic; but there are powerful vested interests who perhaps would lose countless millions of dollars in such an event.

Adrenochrome is not an elixir of life, it does not have any positive effects on the body. Hoffer conducted experiments with the ingestion of Adrenochrome and reported his findings in his research paper entitled The Effect of Adrenochrome and Adrenolutin on the Behavior of Animals and the Psychology of Man.

Previously Hoffer had apparently administered adrenochrome to various creatures including spiders, fish, and pigeons to the mammals including rats, cats, dogs, monkeys.  One wonders how the spiders felt about being given adrenochrome, one suspects none of the animals had a particularly good trip.

To quote from the paper:

“Some of the changes produced by adrenochrome may persist several days, and in some cases, the effects lead to nearly disastrous results.

The changes in thinking induced by adrenochrome are similar to those observed in schizophrenia. Adrenochrome causes an elective inhibition of the process, which determines the content of associative thinking.”

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0074774208600252

The mind under a burden of adrenochrome enters a different state of consciousness. Schizophrenia is basically a form of consciousness and it is precisely this state which the UFO cults, the secret societies and Sufi mentors are trying to induce.

The scientific explanation for how it works is complex but basically adrenochrome is antagonistic to GABA fluid. GABA fluid is an electrical brain insulator which keeps the brain synapsis and neurons under control by reducing electrical charge. With adrenochrome the electromagnetic structure of the mind is totally changed. The usual natural dampening mechanisms of the brain’s physiology which control the mind, and one might even say, protect the soul from too much awareness in the physical realm, are bypassed leading to a break-down in the mechanism of control over the mental processes of the mind and that sense of estrangement from reality which so familiar to the schizophrenic.

Where things get really strange is that some of the experiences which go along with this altered state of consciousness are not necessarily unreal because they are taking place in altered consciousness. For instance, if you are sleeping you are in a different level of consciousness. What is happening in your dream to your unconsciousness mind is real for that level of consciousness. When you are awake you are in a different level of consciousness, and in effect, a different level of reality.

The adrenochrome experience, actually puts you in a different level of reality and this level of reality is shared by high level Illuminati people and other types who have had specific experiences which have put them in this same level of reality. While in this level of reality they can hear each other's thoughts and are able to perceive demonic and spiritual energies. The Illuminati consider this the peak of human development and call it ‘Illumination’. They deliberately induce this state because they find it allows them to have psychic and clairvoyant faculties because the brain is operating beyond its normal limits. We find this curious attitude even within the scientific community as attested by Barbara O’Brien:

“Consider the most extreme of the theories. ‘I am almost convinced,’ said one biologist, ‘that the schizophrenic is an attempt on the part of nature at forming a mutation.’

Historically, the ancient cults believed that there were ways to access altered states of consciousness and in these states, they could communicate with the unseen spirits, or ‘Gods’. Every culture in the world has a mythology that the Gods taught them the various crafts, arts and skills which enabled the human race to create the first civilisations within a time frame reaching back to the last 10,000 years, a period which coincides with the end of the last ice-age.

The oracles of the ancient world were usually people who through various methods, existed in a semi-permanent state of altered consciousness which allowed them to see the future and contact the unseen spirit world. Such abilities have always been lauded by the occult and secret-world which has always existed since the very dawn of human civilisation, after all, it would seem that these people were instrumental in gaining such knowledge using occult methods, if the ancient records which come up time and time again are to be believed and since the records all seem to say the same thing regardless of the geographical location, then there must be some truth behind these myths.

“According to the psychoanalyst who treated me, spontaneous recoveries are rare and weird events in advanced schizophrenia and when they occur they present a mysterious spectacle – that of a mind walking out of a fourth dimension into which it has been propelled”

For a schizophrenic to describe their condition as being propelled into the fourth dimension is quite apt, though for some they consider the feeling like being in hell, or even like being in a state of living death. One can see how such an enigmatic and mysterious state of reality might have become the interest and domain of a particular group of people a very long-long time ago in human history. There is even the possibility that the ‘curse of Cain’ refers to this condition but this is superstition and theorising and nothing more.

Perhaps a brief psychotic episode was also a feature of many of the ancient mystery school initiations: a figurative period in the underworld mired in despair and the fear of death only to pass beyond and out of this realm, back to the realm of life, but this time transformed and with the sure knowledge that there is a whole mysterious hidden realm behind the scenes or normal consciousness; this state being induced either through various trials and tribulations, or through fasting and the ingestion of psycho-active compounds.

Barbara O’Brien seems to see her experience in these terms, almost like a kind of journey through madness and return to normalcy:

“The guidance was clearer than the planning. I had been maneuvered into a hospital when I unconsciously suspected pneumonia; maneuvered into visiting a doctor when I unconsciously suspected a mastoid; maneuvered to a mountain cabin when I was exhausted from bus traveling; provided with a flashlight so that I wouldn’t fall on a dark road; rescued from a mountain lion; maneuvered out of the mountain cabin the morning after the mountain lion incident; reminded punctually of meal times and the necessity for eating; reminded punctually (during the last month) of the need for brushing my teeth and other grooming. Whatever mental level the guidance had come from, it was clearly some level other than the this-is-I dry beach, and it had made certain that the organism was kept in good physical condition while the dry beach was incapable of providing the car

The planning was almost as obvious. Even on the first day, the voices had sketched in the picture of things to come. This was an experiment the Operators had told me. My mind was going to be controlled by Operators and I should have to be cooperative for my own sake as well as for theirs. And Nicky had added, as if the success of the experiment were being weighed, I would have one chance in three hundred of escaping the Operators and I would have to be lucky in the bargain. I had been manoeuvred away from home, where publicity of my insanity would have made life difficult after sanity had been regained, and where also there existed a company for which I persisted in working and toward which I had developed long established, difficult-to-change attitudes. I had been induced into riding Greyhound buses, where I could sit in schizophrenic apathy while I lived in my mental world, a state of being almost identical on the surface with the usual bus passenger who stares at the landscape, his mind on inner reflections. I had been coaxed into writing letters that would keep the home folk happy, manoeuvred to California by the Lumberjacks, figures apparently created for that very purpose, and had been induced to stay in California for the final act. And when the fall of the final curtain was sense

It had occurred in an article by a psychiatrist who had cautiously avoided jumping into the lake of guesswork and who, instead, had stood on the center of a seesaw and observed carefully both sides of all the mysteries of schizophrenia. One of these observations was, “Whether the schizophrenic really creates a dream world intentionally and purposefully, or whether he finds himself in one is debatable.”

It is possible that she has rationalised it thus since she has the luxury of having sanity to put the experience into some kind of rational framework. Most people having such an experience of schizoid-psychosis of this kind are not so lucky and have to remain permanently in the underworld.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Mystery of the Alumbrados: Spectres in the Quiet Gloom.

 

The Mystery of the Alumbrados 

 Once again the word 'chew' has been substituted to circumvent Google censorship and shadow banning of this wesbite.

An interesting historical character to emerge from the gloom of the Jesuits is Miguel de Molinos. As a youth he was educated by the Jesuits and ordained as a Jesuit priest in 1652, joined the brotherhood of the School of Christ. He was sent to Rome where he became very influential and soon developed a powerful network of patrons including the exiled Queen of Sweden.

While in Rome he developed the ‘philosophy’ or perhaps more accurately, the heresy for which he has become recorded in history: ‘Quietism’, the details of which he thoroughly outlined in his book ‘The Spiritual Guide which Disentangles the Soul’.

The key point of the book is Miguel’s advocacy for what he terms ‘contemplation’ over the ‘meditation’ of the Jesuits. Meditation in his terms refers to the Jesuit techniques of visualising key scenes from the Bible, specifically the Passion of Christ and also visualising hell itself as we have just read in the Spiritual Exercises of Ignacio Loyola. The ostensible purpose of Molino’s Spiritual Guide was to teach man a method of drawing closer and knowing God by curtailing the activity of the mind and the personal will.

After a hitherto successful career in the church and Molinos’ doctrine of Quietism having become broadly accepted and not then considered heretical, something changed. Jesuits felt they needed to rebut the specific attacks made in the book about their methods of ‘meditation’ and there was a lively back and forth between Quietists and Jesuits as to which method was the best, whether the ‘meditation’ (which is more like a form of contemplation) of the Jesuits or ‘contemplation’ (which is really a form of meditation) of the Quietists. The Inquisition took an interest and investigating in 1681 declared the Spiritual Guide of Miguel de Molinos orthodox and compatible with the teachings of the Church. However, in 1685 the tide turned against him and he was arrested under instruction from French authorities and while many in Rome were sympathetic to Molinos in 1687 he confessed his errors to the Inquisition and died after spending nine years in prison. At his trial according to Britannica.com:

“Molinos defended sexual aberrations committed by himself and his followers as sinless, purifying acts caused by the Devil. He claimed they were passively allowed in order to deepen a quiet repose in God.”

Pope Innocent XI wrote of Molinos:

“….these doctrines were leading the faithful from true religion and from the purity of Christian piety into terrible errors and every indecency.”

The Catholic Herald online summarises thus:

“In that same year, however, he published his Spiritual Guide, which purported to lead the reader through the various stages of the spiritual life to perfection in this world, whereby one would remain perfectly passive before God as the highest state. Once there, a person need not fear sins committed under the temptations of the Devil, but should remain at peace, even after committing the vilest acts.”

This ‘doctrine’ if we can call it that, ought to recall what we have seen of the Kabbalah and the idea of ‘holy sin’ or sin even serving a useful purpose in making a person more righteous before God.

We even find this very dangerous idea had crept into the theology of Pope Gregory I to whom Molinos refers:

“That we may not make Poison of Physick, and Vices of Vertues, by becoming vain by ‘em; God would have us make Vertues of Vices, healing us by that very thing which would hurt us: So says St. Gregory.”

And Pope Gregory reaches this conclusion by some highly Kabbalistic logic worthy of Simon Magus himself:

“I'd like to look inside the fortified bosom of grace with how much God keeps us by the favor of mercy. Behold, he who exalts himself about virtue returns through vice to humility. But he who is extolled for his virtues, is wounded, not by the sword, but, so to speak, by medicine. For what is virtue but medicine? and what is vice but wound? Because, therefore, we treat the wound as a medicine, he makes the medicine of the wound, so that we who are smitten by virtue may be cured by vice.” 

It is all rather unfortunate because most of the early elements of the Spiritual Guide and the core of Quietism is basically a form of Zen meditation which is an extremely useful spiritual and psychological tool which can be used to experience other states of being once the mental chatter of the brain has been quietened, however this is not an idea original to Molinos and it is likely he learned about it in his studies and decided to adopt it as a plausible cover for his true aims which may have been deliberate subversion or at least, an excessive enjoyment of physical pleasures. The Catholic Herald reports how:

“Cardinal Benedetto Odescalchi and the exiled Queen Christina of Sweden became admirers (although the Queen regarded Fr de Molinos’s huge appetite for food with sceptical amusement).”

The true origins of Molino’s ‘Quietism’, or at least those to emerge in the West, are to be found in the works of a late 5^th Century Greek philosopher using the pseudonym of a 1^st Century Greek convert to Christianity by Saint Paul known as ‘Dionysius the Areopagite’. Pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite as he is known was a philosopher who apparently was both a Christian and conversely, a Neo-Platonist. He expounded proto-Kabbalistic ideas which we can derive from the following from Corrigan & Harrington (2014):

“According to pseudo-Dionysius, God is better characterized and approached by negations than by affirmations. All names and theological representations must be negated. According to pseudo-Dionysius, when all names are negated, ‘divine silence, darkness, and unknowing’ will follow.”

A PHD thesis by R. A. Agnew for the University of Edinburgh comments on Pseudo-Dionysus linking his philosophy to the ‘Illuminati’:

“He, further, explains that Quietude and Silence are necessary, since ‘only like can know like’; and ‘God is peace’ and ‘Repose’, ‘the One all perfect source ... of the Peace of all’; and He is Silence ‘the angels are, as it were, the heralds of the Divine Silence’.

In silence then ‘let the intelligent soul transcend intelligence and it forgets itself ... Closed, ... mute and silent ... and sheltered, not only from exterior but also from interior impulses; he is made God.’ This is deification, the principle of Eckhart, the doctrine of the Brethren of the Free Spirit, and the teaching of the Illuminati.”

Agnew in his PHD paper writes, citing Pseudo-Dionysius:

“We find in Dionysius the doctrine of the three ways: the Purgative; the Illuminative; and the Unitive. Through him this division has become the standard for all later exponents of mysticism. To explain it, he writes Moses was enjoined first to purify himself, then he saw the light from the smoking mountain, and then the face of God. It is after the soul has been freed from the world of sense that it enters the mysterious obscurity of holy ignorance ... to be lost in Him, who can neither be seen nor felt."

Molinos writes, showing the debt he owes as does the mediaeval hermetic tradition which had infiltrated the church, to the mysterious Greek philosopher in his quasi-alchemistic references to a three-step path (one might say degrees) of ‘cleansing’ or ‘purgation’, ‘Illumination’ and finally ‘unity’.

“Because if thou wilt serve God, and arrive at the sublime Region of Internal Peace; thou must pass through that rugged Path of Temptation; put on that heavy Armor; fight in that fierce and cruel War, and in that burning Furnace, polish, purge, renew, and purifie thy self.

For which reason St. Ignatius Loyola said very well in his Exercises, that in the cleansing way, Corporal Penances were necessary, which in the illuminating way ought to be moderated, and much more in the unitive.”

All of this was of course probably very novel for the church of 17th Century Europe: the introduction of what we might consider techniques of transcendental meditation, and it is a pity that Molinos tarnished these valuable techniques (as indeed to this day many Christians consider meditation of this kind to be dangerous and a way for permitting ‘demonic’ influences). It could be that Molinos having found the genuine peace of meditation, misinterpreted the reward of having a still mind and extrapolated that it is necessary to surrender the will as well, that is to abandon any objective frame of morality or reference and surrender the mind. Either that or like so many people who achieve notoriety, success and a throng of admirers, he wasn’t devoted enough to resist the Earthy temptations such a position can present:

“You must know, that this Annihilation to make it perfect in the Soul, must be in a man’s own Judgment, in his Will, in his Works, Inclinations, Desires, Thoughts, and in it Self: so that the Soul must find it self dead to its Will, Desire, Endeavour, Understanding and Thought; willing, as if it did not will; desiring, as if it did not desire; understanding, as if it did not understand; thinking, as if it did not think, without inclining to any thing, embracing equally Contempts and Honours, Benefits and Corrections. O what a happy Soul is that which is thus dead and annihilated! It lives no longer in it self, because God lives in it: And now it may most truly be said of it, that it is a renewed Phenix; because ‘tis changed, spiritualized, transformed and deified.”

We have a further ‘alchemistic’ reference, this time to the ‘Phenix’ which informs me, as well as references to a spiritual guide, that Molinos was actually a disciple or novice of some mentor figure who was guiding him through some ongoing transformative, alchemical process. A process which has existed since the earliest records of history and shrouded in mystery even until the present day where this process has now taken on almost industrial proportions in terms of its influence on many members of the public institutions, media and political realm, but is still a complete mystery to the vast majority.

Unfortunately, there is perhaps something in the character of Miguel de Molinos which allowed itself to justify his ceding repeatedly to temptation by blaming the devil and refusing to take personal responsibility. But there is much in his ‘Guide’ which suggests a background in Kabbalah as there are too many obvious Kabbalistic elements which show themselves partially submerged in his doctrine. We can also see how in recent times Molinos has been upheld as some kind of prophet by certain hermetic movements and Aleister Crowley wrote extensively in praise of him:

“In more remote times, the constituent originating assemblies of the O.T.O. included such men as … Molinos” Liber LII Manifesto of the O.T.O.

Crowley considered Miguel de Molinos to be one of his ‘Gnostic Saints’ as detailed in Liber XV and refers to the Spiritual Guide in the following terms:

“That you may gain some insight into the nature of the Great Work which lies beyond these elementary trifles, however, we should mention that an intelligent person may gather more than a hint of its nature from the following books, which are to be taken as serious and learned contributions to the study of Nature, though not necessarily to be implicitly relied upon.”

Indeed, Crowley’s reference to ‘crossing the abyss’ which was a personal spiritual boast for him may have been inspired by the writing of Molinos in his reference to mediation:

“By not speaking, not desiring, and not thinking, one arrives at the true and perfect Mystical Silence, wherein God speaks with the Soul, communicates himself to it, and in the Abyss of its own Depth, teaches it the most perfect and exalted Wisdom.”

Molinos refers to the ability to better deal with anxiety and worry, which might be termed ‘invisible enemies’:

“The strong Castle, that will make thee triumph over all thine enemies, visible and invisible, and over all their snares and tribulations, is within thine own Soul, because in it resides the Divine Aid and Sovereign Succour. Retreat within it and all will be quiet, secure, peaceable and calm. When thou seest thy self more sharply assaulted, retreat into that region of Peace, where thou’lt find the Fortress. When thou are more faint-hearted, betake thy self to this refuge of Prayer, the only Armor for overcoming the enemy, and mitigating tribulation: thou ought not to be at a distance from it in a Storm, to the end thou mayest, as another Noah, experience tranquillity, security.”

It would seem to me that Molinos despite apparently fully engaging in a kind of pure Zen meditation and breaking through the threshold of darkness to the realm of mental bliss beyond, something seemed to have gone wrong and at a certain point reading through the Spiritual Guide we find a very different tone emerge, one which I myself cannot reconcile with my experience of such meditation and can only assume that something went wrong somewhere with Molinos, that either he was not able to master his will and became a prey to some negative force which was able to take control of his mind. We notice a corner being turned and suddenly, something appears to have gone wrong somewhere with Molinos’ meditation because he starts to speak of pain and adverse physiological effects.

“With new efforts thoul’t exercise thy self, but in another manner than hitherto, giving thy consent to receive the secret and divine operations, and to be polished, and purified by this Lord, which is the only means whereby thou will become clean and purged from thine ignorance and dissolutions. Know, however, that thou art to be plunged in a bitter sea of sorrows, and of internal and external pains, which torment will pierce into the most inward part of thy Soul and Body.”

It is possible that Molinos was unduly influenced by the Alumbrado tradition of ‘ecstatic’ rites and believed that this was the way to experience the divine and he refers in his book to a certain “Illuminated Mother of Cantal” which is not traditional clerical terminology but more of the mystical and occult. Perhaps he was part of this tradition or at least sought out this experience, much to his cost I would say since whatever it was which possessed him and gave him ‘pains’ and ‘torment’ also seemed to influence his life and lead him to moral dissolution which was ultimately his undoing:

“Thou wilt think verily, that thou art possessed by an evil Spirit; because the signs of this interior exercise, and horrible tribulation, seem as bad as the invasions of infernal Furies and Devils. Then take care to believe thy Guide firmly, for thy true Happiness consists in thy obedience.”

“The invisible enemies will pursue thee with scruples, lascivious suggestions, and unclean thoughts, with incentives to impatience, pride, rage, cursing and blaspheming the Name of God, his Sacraments, and holy Mysteries. Thou’lt find a great lukewarmness, loathing, and wearisomness for the things of God; and obscurity and darkness in thy understanding; a faintness, Confusion and narrowness of heart; such a coldness and feebleness of the will to resist, that a straw will appear to thee a beam. Thy desertion will be so great, that thou’lt think there is no more a God for thee, and that thou are rendered incapable of entertaining a good desire: so that thou’lt continue shut up betwixt two walls, in constant streights and anguish, without any hopes of ever getting out of so dreadful an oppression.”

And the tenor of the book changes and now Molinos speaks of acquiring a spiritual guide, one who will apparently think on your behalf and in whose judgment, one should trust even above one’s own:

“Thou shalt find thy self encompassed with troublesome scruples, griefs, anguish, distress, martyrdoms, distrusts, forsakings of the Creatures, and troubles so bitter, that thy afflictions shall seem past comfort, and thy torments unconquerable. O blessed Soul! how happy wilt thou be, if thou dost but believe thy Guide, and subject thy self to to him and obey him? Then wilt thou walk safe by the secret and interiour way of the dark night, altho thou may’st seem to thy self to live in Errour, and that thou art worse then ever; that thou seest nothing in thy Soul, but abomination and signs of condemnation.”

And Molinos now, with a dim awareness of his true condition, namely that of being in the thrall of some kind of demonic control, yet this is still within his ‘system’ of Quietism and is a necessary part of some mystical process. I suspect something in his earlier Jesuit training and the endless contemplation of hell and his sins had evoked some spirit of the mind or of some other realm which perhaps has been fully loosened with the quietening of the controlling faculty of the mind and the will:

“Here thou wilt see thy self forlorn and subject to Passions of impatience, anger, rage, swearing, and disordered appetites, seeming to thy self the most miserable Creature, the greatest Sinner in the World, the most abhorred of God, deprived and stript of all Vertue, with a pain like that of Hell, seeing thy self afflicted and desolate, to think that thou hast altogether lost God; this will be thy cruel cutting and most bitter torment.”

We also find a comment which may recall to experiences of Swedenborg and his being assaulted by the voices of demonic spirits:

“…because it would naturally be impossible, considering the force and violence wherewith sometimes they attack, to resist one quarter of an hour.”

We find a similar account in the story of the Catholic Saint Teressa whom Molinos references and praises and calls ‘the great Doctoress, and Mystical Mistress.’ It also seems that she like Molinos was continually affected by ‘troublesome thoughts’:

“There is a necessity of suffering the trouble of a Troop of Thoughts, importune Imaginations, and the impetuosities of natural Notions, not only, of the Soul through the dryness and disunion it hath, but of the Body also, occasioned by the want of submission to the Spirit, which it ought to have.”

She also wrote, or rather her confessor who recorded her words wrote:

“Devotion of Ecstasy, is where the consciousness of being in the body disappears. Sensory faculties cease to operate. Memory and imagination also become absorbed in God, as though intoxicated. Body and spirit dwell in the throes of exquisite pain, alternating between a fearful fiery glow, in complete unconscious helplessness, and periods of apparent strangulation.”

It would be a good idea at this point to examine this Catholic saint, one of the few women to have been sanctified and furthermore declared a ‘Doctor of the faith’ by the Catholic church. Teresa Sanchez de Cepeda y Ahumada was born in Avila Spain in 1515. Her paternal grandfather was a Marrano, a Chew forced to convert to Christianity under pain of expulsion. In a fine example of the illusory nature of many of the Chews’ conversions to Christianity, her grandfather apparently returned to the Chewish faith after ‘conversion’ and was investigated by the Inquisition but later managed to reintegrate himself into Christian life. Teresa’s father was a wool merchant and one of the richest men in Avila and was knighted.

At 20 she entered the Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation which had been built on top of land which had been used as a Chewish burial ground. It was here that she started to experience ‘spiritual ecstasy’ combined with debilitating physical illness brought on by self-imposed physical mortification including excessive fasting which was to lead to continual ill-health throughout her life. Her fondness for self-flagellation was such that when she received Papal sanction for her principles; she created a new constitution for her convent which involved stricter rules and three lots of ceremonial flagellation every week.

During her illnesses she believed she had reached a ‘perfect union with God’ although many at the time suggested these experiences could be the result of diabolical rather than divine influence. She became convinced that Jesus Christ himself had physically presented himself to her although he was invisible to others and one vision in particular caused her further pain when an invisible seraph or angel repeatedly stabbed her in the heart with a golden lance:

“I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it …”

Naturally this has nothing to do with God or anything divine and quite rightly the suspicions of some of her friends at the time seem well founded that there was a diabolical origin to these visions and torments. It was even reported that she experienced levitation and sometimes the other sisters at the convent had to physically hold her down.

Another female mystic later made ‘Doctor of the Catholic church’ was Saint Catherine of Siena. She was an early Christian mystic who emerged long before the Alumbrados and died a 100 years before the birth of proto-Alumbrado Maria de Santo Domingo. From her we can also find a development of the work of Pseudo-Dionysius and she may also have influenced the work of Molinos; in a letter to leader of the Dominican order, Raymond de Capua, who acted as her mentor and confessor, she wrote:

"Build a cell inside your mind, from which you can never flee."

However, this ‘cell’ that Catherine created was a theatre of nonsense and delusions where her mother was turned into the Virgin Mary, her father was Christ and her brothers became the apostles.

Like Saint Teresa she practised self-mortification and fasted to an extreme degree. Her confessor ordered her to eat properly but in the final year of her life she could no longer even eat or swallow water; whether this was psychosomatic and a kind of self-induced mania is unknown but is probably likely. Shortly before her death she suffered a stroke which paralysed her from the waist down and she died at the pitiably young age of 33 years old. Here we have to wonder why a woman could consider it useful to fast and abstain from food and even water to the point at which she eventually becomes crippled and incapable of even walking, then dies. There can be nothing inspired from God in any of this and I find the cases of these women, (some of whom have been canonised and are recognised as saints of the Catholic church) and those women who were persecuted and imprisoned as Alumbrados to be one and the same and to be inspired by a diabolical doctrine which is antagonistic to humanity and the message and ministry of Jesus Christ.

Catherine of Sienna was said to give away the clothing and food from her family without asking their permission and she pointedly refused to eat with her family claiming she preferred to eat in heaven with her ‘real family’. In her own writings she also claimed that she was married to Jesus Christ as her mystic husband and that she had received a ring made of the 8 day old boy Christ’s foreskin, which of course, was invisible to other people, like Saint Teresa whose physical Christ companion was also invisible to other people.

What we are dealing with here are, at best, psychotic delusions or at worst some kind of genuine contact between a human who has chosen to deprive himself of psychic protection in order to make contact with what he or she thinks is God, but something which perhaps does not have their best wishes at heart. Like those first seen at the beginning of this book with Barbara O’Brien but here we can trace them to a specific Alumbrado root which in turn has its root in the Chewish community and is likely an externalisation of the community practising the doctrines of the Kabbalah. It can be no coincidence that the Kabbalah in its final form also emerged from mediaeval Spain.

The result of this pathway seems to hint at a loss of personal volition but more pertinently, as Molinos records in a letter from “an illuminated Mother of Cantal wrote to a Sister, and great Servant of God” who is following some kind of Illuminati doctrine, provides some kind of demonic bridgehead which I would claim is the purpose of the Jesuit movement and these mystical movements arising from mediaeval Spain:

“To this purpose I remember, that a few days since, God communicated to me an Illumination, which made such an impression upon me, as if I had clearly seen him; and this it is, That I should never look upon my self, but walk with eyes shut, leaning on my Beloved, without striving to see nor know the way, by which he guides me, neither fix my thoughts on any thing, nor yet beg Favours of him, but as undone in my self, rest wholly and sincerely on him. Hitherto that Illuminated and Mystical Mistress, whose Words do Credit Authorize our Doctrine.”

But what is that ‘doctrine’? What has been specifically recorded about the Alumbrado’s by history? The inquisition found the Alumbrados had some strange ideas which might conflict with what we today might imagine as a group of free-thinkers and pleasure seekers, but there seems to be something stranger and more complex at work. A strange kind of psychological journey which I hope this volume has at least partially tried to illuminate. It seems, at least from reports, that the sexual excesses of the Alumbrados and people like Miguel Molinos and the Kabbalists in general, could be, if Miguel is to be believed, a result of being wholly under the control of demonic impulsions. Naturally it might seem like a bit of an easy cop-out to say ‘the devil told me to do it’ as a way to evade responsibility, but the fact that we see the same trends occur again and again: the lack of conscious physical control of the body resulting in various kinds of hysteria and even attempts at levitation indicate that there is something more than a person’s own will.

If one has a difficult time accepting the reality of discarnate spirits, one could say that subconscious psychological forces may have been unleashed as a result of the rigours of the various self-mortifications and repeated morbid Jesuit style visualisations of the horrors and terrors of hell, and that it is this which may lead to the wanton licentious excesses which the church authorities reported in connection with Alumbrado doctrines, doctrines which Molinos more or less explicitly alluded to being a follower of.

The book The Spanish Inquisition, 1478-1614: An Anthology of Sources, compiled and translated by Lu Ann Homza is an invaluable resource for first-hand recorded documentation about the Alumbrados. Naturally the information is that which was recorded by the church authorities and the Inquisition during the court processes against those Alumbrados suspected of heresy but there are many witness statements which are brought to bear and feature the words of the Alumbrados themselves.

All in all it paints a strange picture of those involved in the Alumbrados, with many apparent contradictions in the words of the defendants themselves and paints a tragic picture of people who, for whatever reason, whether an intention to subvert Spanish society and the church or from a genuine experiment in free-thinking, regardless the end result is the same: a picture of confused, disordered thinking, with some genuine wisdom which appears in sharp relief to the blurry mental background with a certain sense of emotional estrangement and likely mental impairment.

In 1525 the Inquisition published an edict on the numerated heresies of the Alumbrados which had been elicited from Alumbrado members themselves with the promise that “no punishment, public penance, or confiscation of goods would be imposed upon them”. The most common response from the church authorities to each proposition or heresy was a familiar refrain: “This proposition is erroneous, false, heretical ….” and sometimes with more apt descriptions, in the instance of proposition 46 “That the end of the world had to occur in twelve years.” The church authorities were succinct: “This proposition is crazy.”

And indeed, a lot of them are; it really is a poor reflection on your particular brand of mysticism if you manage to make the Catholic Church look sensible.

Some of the propositions are strange and hint at something almost anti-human; a list of directions one would follow in order not to take pleasure from life or possibly, propositions which had been arrived at as a result of a certain psychological transformation which may indicate some kind of schizoid illness. How else can one explain such items as proposition 31:

“That he held it as a mortal sin if he read some book to console his soul.”

Or proposition 36: “That a man sinned mortally every time he loved a son, daughter, or other person, and did not love that person through God.”

Or proposition 40: “Because a girl crossed the street, he said she had sinned, because in that action she had fulfilled her will.”

Proposition number 1 is fairly unambiguous and quite a statement of intent:  “There is no Hell, and if they say there is, it is to frighten us, just as they tell children, “Watch out for the bogeyman.”

It is clear however that anyone believing such a thing in all its bald and unnuanced simplicity would feel no compulsion to moderate their behaviour and attempt to lead a good life nor any compunction about leading a bad one.

Such a statement really calls into question the whole of creation itself to some extent and that, if one is to believe there is a spiritual component to life and that another state of higher reality exists, then one is hardly likely to want to spend that in the company of the spirits of evil rogues looking to continue committing atrocities against their fellow spirits for all eternity. Clearly there must be some kind of spiritual filtering mechanism and a kind of like-with-like which is one of the most natural and readily comprehendible principles of reality, and such a mechanism would necessarily relegate those with irredeemably malicious or evil inclinations to be with their own kind where they can furnish and fashion their own mutually unpleasant spiritual reality.

Proposition 6 reported that one of the Alumbrados:

“…was sorry he had not sinned more; and knowing what God’s mercy was, he wished he had sinned more in order to enjoy that mercy more. Because the greater the sinner, the more God loves him.”

This Kabbalistic thinking should be very familiar to us by now after reading through this volume and indicated perhaps, the element of Kabbalistic Chewish ‘Oral Tradition’ working into Spanish society through the current of those who had only superficially converted to Christianity.

The picture which emerges of the Alumbrados is that they believed themselves infallible, since according to them: “God could not make a person more perfect or more humble than he already was,” and also unrepentant of any wrong doings since “They call those people who lament their sins ‘penance-addicts,’ ‘proprietors of themselves,’ and ‘weepers.’

They also believed that sex was a kind of holy sacrament: “married people were more united to God while making love than if they had been praying.” And temptation should be welcomed:

“They did not have to renounce temptations and evil thoughts, but rather should embrace them and take them as a burden, and walk onward with this cross.”

This particular Alumbrado trap is the snare which caught Miguel Molinos and cemented his reputation as a heretic and caused him to be sentenced to prison where he died. It is likely that without the stain of personal immorality which cast the whole of his life’s work into disrepute, his Spiritual Exercises and the benefits of the kind of transcendental meditation could well have become part of the liturgy of the Catholic Church and have developed into a useful way to contact the divine principle for, in the words of Jesus: “…nor will they say, ‘See here!’ or ‘See there!’ For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you.”

But pure nonsense cannot survive without the oxygen of truth and like all attempts at subversion or deceptive stratagems, it is necessary to accompany the lies with a bodyguard of truth and so this is why within the doctrines of the Alumbrados we find some very reasonable and evident truths such as Maria de Cazalla saying of the Catholic Church:

“I believe that the Child Jesus is lost in the sophisms and arguments that you pronounce.”

Or of her “considering papal bulls, indulgences, and pardons to be a joke, and believing they benefited no one and achieved nothing, said, ‘Look, I’ve bought Christianity and am carrying it around, for one is not a Christian unless you have these bulls; I’d rather throw the money into something else.’”

She was quite right of course, but even now we as a modern reader with a delicate taste for nuance might detect that the mockery goes a little too far and we can perhaps detect a veiled disdain not only for the Church but for Christianity itself. But there is something more, some of Maria de Cazalla’s statements betray something more than scepticism or irreverence:

“María de Cazalla and others believed that there was no Mary Magdalene, nor a St. Anne who married three times, nor were there three Marys; they thought the whole thing was a joke. When she was told that the Church held such matters as true, she replied that it was a joke, and some stupid people had so ordered it….”

They seem to indicate a claim to some other information or knowledge since it is unlikely that most church goers of the time would question such things, but what if someone were part of a tradition which had its own information about such things, quite outside of the Catholic Church. Again, the connection to the Chewish community with its own extensive written historical records and oral traditions would fit this bill perfectly.

But if the accounts of Maria de Cazalla can’t help but reveal a parallel knowledge-stream they also show again a certain inhumanity, one would also say, sociopathic or even borderline psychotic aspect of the Alumbrado tradition. What are we to make of such statements, which even the dreaded Inquisition rightly described as ‘horrific’:

“She heard from Bishop Cazalla that María de Cazalla said she conceived her children without carnal pleasure and did not love them as if they were her own, but rather as if they were her neighbors’. 

And another similar reported statement from Maria de Cazalla:

“She reprehended a certain lady who deeply loved her own children, calling that lady a butcher of the flesh who had a piece of her heart in each child.”

And after giving birth, instead of feelings of joy or such as might be normal this report similarly evokes a singular anti-human perspective:

“Likewise, when asked why people didn’t come to see her after she had given birth, María de Cazalla said, ‘May God remove that disgrace from me,’ as if she considered childbirth disgraceful.”

From this we can create a psychological profile strongly suggestive of Maria de Cazalla being in the population percentile suffering from a degree of psychopathy since an inability to feel emotions and even being repelled by them is a strong marker of such a disorder, also it was reported that “she felt no carnal pleasure in sex,” a dissociative condition known as sexual anhedonia and if we factor in this dissociative element we might not be far from the mark if we consider that Maria de Cazalla may have been a schizophrenic.

It is possible however that she was not always like this, reports indicate that Cazalla was somehow ‘changed’ by conversing with other Alumbrados:

“Asked how she knew that María de Cazalla held the opinions of the Alumbrados, she said she knew because she saw María de Cazalla converse in secret with Isabel de la Cruz and Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz. She saw them confer night and day, and saw her altered in all her habits and spiritual exercises, so much so that the needleworkers of Orche said María de Cazalla was crazy.”