15 WiH Chapter 15: The History of Theocracy

1 A. Theocracy on Earth has passed through four different stages of development so far, and is now entering a fifth. We will describe the first four stages here, leaving the fifth for a later chapter.

2 The first stage was tribal shamanism of the type that produced the Alta Mira cave paintings thousands of years ago. First-stage Theocratic religions have never entirely died out, and still exist today among certain tribes of North American Indians, Africans, and Australian Aborigines. Most of them, though, have been evolving into more advanced types or have been replaced with outside religions since these peoples came into ever-increasing contact with foreigners over the past few hundred years.

3 Q. In the course of my training as a magician, I've worked with people who practice a number of these "primitive" systems and found that many of them are as skilled at telepathy, psychic mind control, psychic healing, etc., as highly trained Eastern and Western occultists. I've also read extensively about dozens of other shamanic spiritual systems, and they all seem to be designed to teach advanced operational magic techniques as a routine part of religious practice. What's primitive about that? When it comes to magic, it is Christianity and the other modern mainstream religions that are primitive, not the shamanic systems.

4 A. First-stage Theocratic religions are not primitive from a human perspective, but they are from a Theocratic perspective. As you point out, most of them teach extremely sophisticated and effective psychic-development systems. This is what makes them primitive - in the sense of "crude and inefficient" - from the viewpoint of the Theocrats, who judge a religious system by how well it allows them to control every phase of human thinking and behavior, especially the conscious use of the psychic powers.

5 In any society with a first-stage Theocratic religion, the majority of people who learned significant psychic skills in a previous lifetime have an opportunity to develop them consciously during the present lifetime, because the shamans who serve as clergy are conscious psychics themselves. Religious services in a first-stage Theocratic religion are usually conducted with the entire congregation in a psychic trance. This is in direct contrast to the more advanced forms of Theocratic religion, which discourage conscious, independent psychic activity, and employ the religious trance rather than the psychic trance.

6 A religious elite composed of shamans is much harder for the Theocrats to control than one composed of clerical or secular rulers who submit to religious mind control. A shaman is much more likely to put his or her own psychic development above the telepathic commands of the Theocrats. Also, shamanic mythologies often contain major elements of the truth about Theocracy, and so teach people an instinctive aversion for mind control and enslavement by spirits.

7 Q. I know from my reading on the subject that most such religions teach that some disembodied spirits eat others.

8 A. They do, but the information is usually encoded in such a way that the believers, including the shamans who channel it, do not realize that the "Eaters of Souls" are their own gods. Instead, the Eaters of Souls are said to be the gods of enemy tribes, or spirits that are very different from human beings such as the Windigos of various Amerindian tribes), or the ghosts of human criminals and outcasts. The shamanic religions usually teach that a tribe's gods protect their own people from the Eaters of Souls.

9 Also, the powers of the Eaters of Souls are exaggerated. Most of the legends say they can steal the souls of living people, except those of the most powerful shamans. And this idea hasn't died out at all. It's present in the writings of Lovecraft, in the modern Fundamentalist propaganda about demonic possession, and in the extant first-stage religions themselves. For example, the present-day Navajos still have powerful instinctive fears of witches and shape-changers, and much of their traditional religious practice is intended as a defense against these evil beings.

10 Q. When you come right down to it, I myself feel deep instinctive fears that maybe the Theocrats can in fact forcibly take over the minds of living people or somehow damage their souls.

11 A. Of course you have these fears. You learned them from a psychic and social environment still dominated to some extent by the Theocrats and their propaganda. However, the very fact that you are able to write about this is evidence that the Theocrats are liars. Their control over people is indirect, exercised mostly by programming the subconscious mind. They can't overwhelm the conscious will of any normal person, only the wills of people with seriously damaged physical or astral minds; and they can't directly harm or enslave the soul when it is incarnated.

12 However, at a certain point in the future, the Theocrats will probably become more powerful; but this has nothing to do with the history of Theocracy so far. We'll deal with this subject in Part Three. For the time being, we will just say that it is nothing to be unduly alarmed about, because we're prepared to deal with it.

13 Q. OK, let's leave it alone for now and go back to the description of first-stage Theocratic religion.

14 A. First-stage Theocratic religion is far less efficient than the more advanced stages of Theocratic religion in providing nourishment for the Theocrats, because it doesn't provide much opportunity for them to enslave and devour the souls of believers after death. The souls of shamans often don't allow the Theocrats to control them on the astral plane: either they reincarnate, or they set themselves up as independent Theocrats in competition with the existing ones hanging around that particular tribe.

15 The whole religious system encourages people to practice conscious psychic development techniques and to become shamans themselves if they have the necessary talent. Since the shamans enjoy political power and social prestige, there is strong motivation for psychic development, even though the training methods such primitive societies employ are usually extremely laborious, painful, and dangerous.

16 Q. I can see proof of Theocratic mind control and group minds by observing what happens when Amerindians move from isolated reservations to "red ghettos" in the big cities. They suffer more from culture shock than do rural black people when moving to the city, because they are entering a totally alien environment on the psychic level as well as on the physical level. The blacks are already familiar with Christian group minds, but Amerindians who have been raised as believers in a first-stage religion are not. That is why many "City Indians" are skid-row alcoholics, or spend much of their lives in prisons or mental hospitals. It also explains why a large number of City Indians who do adjust to the urban environment become Christian Fundamentalists: they don't have the experience to resist Theocratic propaganda and religious mind control. This leads me ask: do the Theocrats who pose as the gods of a tribe with a first-stage religion find it easy to enslave tribal members who haven't have highly developed shamanic powers?

17 A. Not often, because such people's fears of the Eaters of Souls keep them from approaching their gods after death. They expect to become fearful wanderers after death, and that's exactly what happens. Sometimes the Theocrats manage to catch them and persuade them to put themselves under direct telepathic hypnosis, but that's the exception rather than the rule. The Theocrats of a primitive shamanic religion are usually quite short-lived. Often, deceased shamans try being Theocrats for a while; then they have to reincarnate to keep from literally starving to death.

18 Q. OK. What, then, the second stage of Theocratic religion, and what cultures have practiced it?

19 A. The second stage of Theocratic religion involves mass human sacrifice and usually cannibalism on a large scale as well. The Aztecs practiced it until about five hundred years ago, and some of the ancient Middle Eastern people did also, starting about five thousand years ago.

20 Q. I'm familiar with the practice of large-scale human sacrifice by the Aztecs, the Assyrians, some of the Babylonian and Punic tribes, and others; but don't human sacrifice and cannibalism go back much earlier as common religious and social practices?

21 A. They do. Such practices were part of many primitive shamanic religions. The difference is in the scale of the sacrifices and cannibalism. The second-stage Theocratic religions became possible only when human societies started to become densely populated and highly organized. Such societies built cities and had reasonably sophisticated farming techniques. They also had large, powerful governments and highly organized armies that fought major wars.

22 Q. For some reason, less is known about these societies and their religions than about either primitive shamanism or more advanced societies that existed simultaneously. I take it that the ancient Egyptians and Hebrews were not societies with second-stage Theocratic religions?

23 A. No, both were in the third stage when they first appeared in written historical records, and archaeological evidence shows that they probably went directly from the first stage to the third, as did the Greeks and the rest of the Western Aryan peoples. The second stage of Theocratic religion was a failed experiment from the Theocratic point of view. And from the human point of view, such societies were so repugnant that few people want to learn much about them. This is why historians have written so little about them.

24 For example, the historians of ancient Rome reported that their leaders said, "Carthage must be utterly destroyed," and that the city was eventually torn down stone by stone, the population slaughtered, and the surrounding agricultural area sown with salt. But they didn't explain in much detail what it was the Carthaginians did that justified this genocide, except that they practiced human sacrifice. Now, the Romans also practiced human sacrifice through most of their history: gladiatorial fights to the death and throwing people to the lions are definitely in that category, but the Roman religion was still third-stage, not second-stage. Human sacrifices were only a small, atavistic detail in Roman paganism, not the main focal point of the whole religious system that they were to the Carthaginians.

25 Q. As I understand a second-stage Theocratic religion, it's usually a literal theocracy, with the despotic rulers of the earthly society claiming to be god-like beings superior to the rest of the population. Is this significant?

26 A. No. Third-stage Theocratic religions may also be ruled by "God-Kings." The ancient Egyptians are the best-known example. And the rulers of many societies with fourth-stage religions have also claimed divine descent: the feudal emperors of both China and Japan are examples. Nor do the rulers of a second-stage Theocratic society always pose as divine beings. They may claim only to be a mortal priesthood acting out the will of disembodied gods; or such a society may have separate clergy and secular rulers. This is not a factor in determining whether or not a society has a second-stage Theocratic religion.

27 Among the determining factors are a large, densely populated, totalitarian society and the practice of human sacrifice on a large scale. The most important factor is deism as we defined it previously: belief in gods that are omnipotent or at least significantly superhuman. This separates the three higher levels of Theocratic religion from primitive shamanism, which considers the gods rather similar to earthly shamans, except that they are disembodied spirits. Often they are simply called "The Spirits of Our Ancestors" or "The Shamans in the Spirit World."

28 Q. OK then, under a second-stage religion, people believe in superhuman gods who must be placated with mass human sacrifices that also often involve cannibalism. Is the cannibalism a significant factor?

29 A. No. It was practiced only by those second-stage Theocratic societies that were short of red meat in their diet: the Aztecs and the ancient Polynesians, for example, who didn't have many domesticated food animals. The reason that second-stage Theocratic religion practiced mass human sacrifice was to supply the Theocrats with a constant food supply. When the victims were killed as part of a large public religious ceremony, the telepathic chain-reaction generated by a congregation in the religious trance was sufficient to put the victims' astral souls into a hypnotic trance before death. When they were suddenly and violently killed, the Theocrats were usually able to get control of the souls before they had a chance to flee. This is one of the few examples in the history of Theocracy where the Theocrats were able to seize souls by force, and they could do it only with the help of large numbers of living people.

30 Q. This makes sense. Does it also mean that human sacrifices performed by some of the more odious cults today don't have the support of the Theocrats?

31 A. Well, the Theocrats, all of them, like to see cultists do terrible things like this because it gives occultists and everyone else outside Theocratic religion a bad name, but they don't usually get control of the soul of the sacrificial victim. There simply aren't enough people at such ceremonies to generate sufficient psychic power.

32 The main reason that second-stage Theocratic religion has been quite rare in history is simply that it's so cruel and violent. Societies like that had to fight endless wars against their neighbors, or else enslave and sacrifice a significant portion of their own population. Either way, they tended to become unstable because of the mass violence, or to be conquered by their enemies. However, the real reason such religions were short-lived is that they couldn't compete with third- or fourth-stage Theocratic religions when they came in contact with them.

33 Q. OK. It's time to go on to discussing the third stage.

34 A. The third stage of Theocratic religion involves mass animal sacrifices. Although they prefer human souls, Theocratic spirits can nourish themselves off the astral souls of lower animals to some extent. And these souls are easier to paralyze and control with religious rituals than human souls are. However, the astral tissues of animal souls aren't very compatible with the astral souls of the Theocrats, so they are not a good food source. The main reason the third stage is considered higher than the second is simply that societies with such a religion can remain stable for long periods of time.

35 Q. If the nutrition from animal souls isn't really adequate, do third-stage Theocrats tend to be short-lived?

36 A. Yes, except that they also receive some nourishment from the psychic energy generated by their worshippers, which is better for them than the animal souls alone. Even more important, most of the major third-stage religions have had some fourth-stage components as well. This was especially true of the ancient Egyptians, Hebrews, Hindus, and Western Aryan Pagans. Judaism and Vedanta eventually evolved into fully developed fourth-stage religions. The others survived for a long time with a mixture between the two.

37 One of the chief characteristics of all third-stage Theocratic religions is their lack of concern for life after death. Greek and Roman mythology, for example, gives an extremely accurate description of what the afterlife was actually like for believers in those religions. Most people simply wandered aimlessly in Hades - the astral plane - for a few years and then sank into "forgetfulness." The concept of reincarnation was known, but only a few elite groups comparable to modern occultists put much stress on it: the Greek mystery cults, and a number of similar Roman sects, for example.

38 Religious practice in third-stage religions was concerned almost entirely with gaining the favor of the gods during earthly life, not with life after death. The Theocrats running such religions didn't know how to enslave souls on the astral plane, so they ignored them. Instead, they programmed living people to send them the souls of sacrificed animals, and to broadcast psychic energy during orgiastic rituals.

39 Q. What about the Fourth stage of Theocratic religion?

40 A. The fourth stage of Theocratic religion is the one represented by all the major modern religions. Its most important characteristic is that the Theocrats use religious mind control to delude souls into deliberately putting themselves under Theocratic control after death, thinking they are entering "eternal bliss in Heaven" or "union with the Godhead."

41 The nature of fourth-stage Theocratic religions has already been adequately discussed in previous chapters, so we will now leave the history of Theocracy and discuss the other side for a while: the Invisible College.