The Roman Philosopher Lucius Anneaus Seneca (4 BCE-65 CE) was perhaps the first to note the universal trend that growth is slow but ruin is rapid. I call this tendency the "Seneca Effect."

Sunday, January 29, 2023

How to Create your own Shadow Government: why Worshiping Baphomet could be a Good Idea



Shadowy organizations said to be engaged in world domination are often depicted as worshiping evil deities. The image above shows a group of Templar Knights adoring a statue of the demon Baphomet. It looks silly, but if you are serious about world domination, you should consider Baphomet -- or some equivalent evil deity -- as a patron of your organization. Here, I explain why. 


Not long ago, a friend of mine explained to me that he was completely sure that our elites are not just evil, but they actually practice worship of an evil deity called "Baphomet." I must admit that I was skeptical, even though he showed me an image found somewhere in the dark web, purportedly showing the hierarchy of the worshiping organization. Yet, after some mulling over, I came to think that there is something in this idea. Much more than it would seem at first sight. 

Of course, I understand that you are probably already moving your mouse to click away from this page. But, if you don't succumb to the anti-conspiracy memes implanted in your brain, let me try to explain what I have in mind. I am not saying that Baphomet could exist for real (although, who knows?) but, in our times, when politicians "create their own reality," astral entities such as Baphomet may have assumed a memetic consistency that makes him (?) a force to be reckoned with. An AI called "Baphomet" could actually be worshiped. And that could form the basis of a "shadow government."


Shadow Governments and the First Adorers of Baphomet

Suppose you want to build a shadow government to take control of the state. It is a good idea for several reasons, the main one being that you don't have to report to anyone or justify what you are doing, so you can do a lot of evil things that normal governments have a harder time doing. Then, if you can rule from the shadows, you save yourself a lot of hassles and, if things really go bad, you may avoid most of the blame. But how to create such a hidden government? 

There have been historical cases of governments dominated by an "éminence grise," someone who has a great influence on the leader(s). One is that of the Roman philosopher, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, said to have been the actual ruler of the Roman Empire as long as he could control his pupil, Emperor Nero. Unfortunately for Seneca, Nero eventually decided that he wanted to rule alone and got rid of his old master by ordering him to commit suicide. 

So, if you want to build a working shadow government you need to do much more than have an old man whispering words of wisdom in the ear of the leader. You need a hidden structure that controls all the layers of the apparent government. It needs to be a true alternate government, even though hidden from sight. But how could such a structure be created? How could it function? Let's see if we can learn from one of the first known attempts in this sense: the Knights Templar

You surely know that the Knights Templar were a monastic order of warriors that existed for approximately two centuries, from 1100 AD to 1300 AD. They started by helping the Christian pilgrims who traveled from Europe to Jerusalem. In time, the order became a multinational organization that collected donations from the faithful and could lend and borrow money. They became rich, very rich. They even developed their own militia. 

The problem for the Templars was that the Crusades ended in a colossal failure -- so they had to retreat to Europe. At this point, it is possible that the Templars tried to use their resources as a tool to gain political power in Europe. They were a truly international, multilingual organization that operated very much like a mafia, not unlike our modern European Commission. Why couldn't they take over one or more of the several European governments of the time? In practice, the attempt was a failure. In 1307, the King of France cracked down on the French branch of the order. The Templars were accused of all sorts of crimes, including sodomy, worshipping the devil, blasphemy, heresy, and other similar niceties. The leaders were arrested, put on trial, and several of them were burned at the stake. Their treasure was confiscated, and the order was officially disbanded by Pope Clement V in 1312. 

Still, the Templars were successful for nearly two centuries, and they may provide a blueprint of how a shadow organization may operate. In practice, all secret organizations dedicated to controlling the government need to develop four mechanisms. 

1. A "front" -- a fake organization that makes them look like something legitimate.
2. A "carrot" -- something that entices new members to join. 
3. A "stick" -- something that punishes traitors and defectors. 
4. A "leash" -- a way to control the functionaries of the real government.

The Templars had all these mechanisms. First, they had a front as a charitable organization dedicated to liberating the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem from the rule of the Muslim Heathens. Their good fame brought them donations and inheritances and money was surely a good "carrot" to attract new members. Of course, to maintain their reputations as fighters for Christian ideals, the Templars had to define themselves as "pauperes" ("poor") and they could not use the money they had for personal purposes. But money is just a tool to obtain the thing that humans mostly want: sex. And, often, people are attracted by forms of sex that the society of their time does not accept as legitimate. 

Take a look at the Templars' seal, here. Some people interpreted it as a reference to homosexuality and, indeed, at their trial, the Templars were accused to engage in homosexual practices (the term "sodomy" was commonly used at that time). It was considered a heinous crime during the Middle Ages. We don't know if the accusation was based on something real but, in any case, there would have been people attracted to the order just because of the fame it had in this sense. We may not exclude that other forms of sexual entertainment were included in the membership in the order. Those were strong "carrots" for new adepts. 

A further carrot for the adepts came directly from the religious slant of the organization. During the Middle Ages, medicine was not as prestigious as it is nowadays with us, and people wisely tended to avoid doctors and their awful concoctions (it is becoming a good idea again). So, the Templars offered the adepts a highway to heaven because of their good deeds and donations. It seems to have been a popular concept for our ancestors during the Middle Ages. 

As for the stick, all close-knit religious or political organizations tend to threaten their members with the most awful punishments if they dare betray their companions. There are plenty of possibilities for physical punishments, but an even better way to ensure that members will not lapse is to engage them in forbidden activities. And here comes the story of Baphomet, a demon with a goat head, goat's legs, human torso, wings, and more. One of the many representations of demons in ancient Christian iconography. 

For us, prostrating in front of an ugly statue of a horned demon looks like some kind of Halloween fun, but during the Middle Ages worshipping the devil was a serious crime, punishable by death. So, once an adept had worshipped Baphomet, betraying the order was tantamount to confessing to being a devil worshipper. The same was true for sodomy: it was not just a carrot, but also a stick. That ensured that betrayals were very rare. 

Finally, as a "leash," the Templars could simply use money for corrupting people in positions of power. The corrupt officers didn't need to be enrolled in the secret organization. They would simply be paid to do what the organization would tell them to do. And, if they didn't, they could be threatened, removed, or physically eliminated. The modern mafia works in this way, and there is no doubt that it works very well. 

Secret orders in our time. New Baphomet adorers? 

Following the Templars' idea, let's try to imagine how a modern secret society could take the role of a global shadow government. First, the front organization. Liberating the Holy Sepulchre is no more a popular goal for us, but there are plenty of activities that we consider worthy of our admiration and our donations. How about health care for the poor? It should work. 

Then, the carrot: how do we reward the faithful adepts? Sex remains one of the most powerful carrots around. In our society, sex is often easily available, but some sexual activities are considered abominable just as much as, in the Middle Ages, sodomy was. For us, it is typically sex with underage people. So, even billionaires would be interested in an organization that promises them sex with young women or men under the umbrella of humanitarian activities. Once an adept falls into the trap, it works as both a carrot and a stick. The organization has a powerful blackmail weapon to keep the adepts silent and continue providing donations. 

There is more in terms of a powerful "carrot." In our times, people are not so much concerned about a place in Heaven, while modern medicine can claim to be close to using mRNA technology to provide some sort of immortality serum. It doesn't matter that such a serum does not exist, so far. The organization would promise a fast lane to it, as soon as it becomes available.

Does this organization also need to engage in rituals of adoration of evil deities, such as the sinister Baphomet? In our times, cults of Pagan deities are not supposed to be punishable and are not even regarded as evil. Yet, there is something in the idea of the "forbidden cult" that makes it attractive. "Baphomet" doesn't need to be a silly statue of a horned demon. It could be a code word for all the secret activities involved in the core of the organization and, why not? It might include actual rituals of worshiping evil deities. 

This reasoning leads us to see our global shadow government as an organization operating in the healthcare industry. It would have a front based on financing research in the most advanced fields of genetic engineering for the benefit of humankind.  Let's call it, say, "Great Association for Vital Improvement." A parallel organization would manage a shady ring of juvenile prostitution, maybe based on an island in the Caribbean. It would cater to the rich donors and also to the scientists involved with the organization, (even top-level scientists are sensitive to carnal temptations). If worse comes to worst, the leaders of the sex trafficking organization can be considered expendable, they may well "commit suicide" when they become an embarrassment.

Finally, the organization would have an inner circle of leaders who would use their financial power to create a "leash" to influence the activities of governments all over the world. The top leaders might be some of the hyper-rich people who accumulated hundreds of billions of dollars. They would be able to control the media and ensure that dissenting opinions would be censored on the Web. With money and sex, almost anyone can be corrupted. Then, with near-complete control of the world's media, the leader(s) could set up huge campaigns aimed, for instance, at depopulating the planet. 

It could work. But it would face the same risks that the Templars faced and that, ultimately, doomed them. Playing with huge amounts of money is always risky. In our time, criminals are not anymore burned at the stake, as was the use during the Middle Ages, but our jails seem to be a good environment for committing suicide for people who have become an embarrassment to someone powerful. And, in the end, the sword is always stronger than the banknote. So, an organization like the one I have described could be assembled, but it would also risk being wiped up by a military ruler who decides he has had enough.  

Fortunately, I am completely sure that nobody set up such an organization, so far. 


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 A list of the posts on "Seneca Effects" of the series "The Age of Exterminations" 












21 comments:

  1. Of course, there are those who believe this temple exists in the imaginary basement of a Washington DC pizzeria.

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    1. Of course, the basement is a hologram, but Baphomet is real!

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  2. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he isn't real.

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  3. Ipotesi interessante e purtroppo sensata. Tranne l'ultima frase, che non so se vada intesa in senso letterale oppure ironico. Quanto ritengo sensata l'ipotesi che possa esistere una o più società segrete di questo genere? Abbastanza da portarmi seriamente a considerare l'auto-censura. La mia inquietudine nasce dal fatto che è troppo facile monitorare il web tramite parole chiave sensibili ed un'organizzazione del genere avrebbe certamente accesso sia alla tecnologia necessaria per farlo sia alle risorse criminali per far un cattivissimo uso di tali informazioni ed infine avrebbe certamente accesso ad una fortissima difesa legale, corruttiva, mediatica e politica in grado di garantirle di rimanere sempre-e-comunque impunita. Detto ciò, non mi auto-censurerò, poiché essere un signor nessuno, privo di credibilità e soprattutto inascoltato (in termini di grandi masse) ritengo sia una garanzia sufficiente per digitare impunemente (per me) quella parola chiave, cioè: caso Epstein. Del resto il caso (come altri scandali di analoga portata) non è stato affatto un segreto, anzi ha goduto di un'alta e brevissima attenzione giornalistica. Oggigiorno, infatti, le notizie che non si vorrebbero far circolare non si censurano né secretano mai in modo assoluto come avveniva invece in passato. Oggi le notizie indesiderate vengono "soffocate" nel mare magnum del rumore mediatico del superfluo e nel dubbio creato tramite un accesso asimmetrico all'attenzione delle masse di idee contrapposte e fatte artificialmente apparire nei fatti (retorica a parte) come equivalenti anche se è evidente che equivalenti non sono. Chiedo perdono per questa mia lunga e logicamente superflua spiegazione, il cui unico scopo è convincere l'autore del blog a non essere lui il censore di questo mio bisbiglio chiamato "commento". Se preferirà invece censurarmi, lo capirò. Grazie, in entrambi i casi.

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  4. When Ralph Nader was a young researcher he tried to publish "Unsafe at any Speed" which essentially was the document that lead to mandatory seat belts in vehicles. When having the problem ignored by major publications wasn't enough, the motoring industry resisted heavily with threats and smear campaigns. In the court case that followed General Motors was revealed as having tried to exploit children to entrap Nader. He won the case but lost the war.

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  5. And you can imagine that if an unpredictable populist demagogue got into power on a promise to "drain the swamp", the members of the shadow government would be terrified of being exposed and would use every option at their disposal to get rid of said demagogue.

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  6. "world domination" - ha ha ha

    Only the stupidest of all elites would seek a world domination...

    Real elites would have never ever wanted to engage with the Life of the commons, once mass extraction of fossil fuels and the steam engine became understood and proven...

    Why so?

    Life will emerge at the end - victorious over the elite...

    The elite needed to realise and secure fossil fuels for themselves only - without engaging any of the masses - telling the peasants:

    "Look! let's understand first why humans are on Earth, how life works, how earth works, how Energy really works, how we create for ourselves a better Magna Carta - and only then we attempt to mass produce finite, one-off fossil fuels. Deal?!

    That didn't happen....

    Engaging the masses - until almost all fossil resources are now destroyed to the ground - since James Watt - is a proof that humans care very much about each other...

    Consciously or unconsciously, planned or unplanned, wanted that or didn't want...

    Watch here - Britain brings cars to Iraq as early as 1914-1918 - occupying it for its fossil resources...

    Were the British crazy? Now we understand they were - or Iraqis themselves wouldn't make an oil rig or cars in another 1000 years - owing to no significant metal deposits in that nation - no matter how they've used petroleum tar in buildings, irrigation and bridges thousands of years ago.

    Our elites needed to take fossil fuels a measure - the more they extract the stuff the more they are not elites - but rather the lowest class of all the commons;

    ...the lowest class of all the commons - degrading all humanity to the IQ of insects - and much lower...

    "In any system of energy, Control is what consumes energy the most.
    No energy store holds enough energy to extract an amount of energy equal to the total energy it stores.
    No system of energy can deliver sum useful energy in excess of the total energy put into constructing it.
    This universal truth applies to all systems.

    Energy, like time, flows from past to future".

    Wailing.

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  7. Ugo, you dance on the edge of what normal mortals would surely get shadow-banned, canceled or punished for dis, mis and mal-information. I've read you long enough to know how clever you are, but this encapsulation of the past 76 years disguised as a historical takedown of the "mysterious" Templars (complete with a blasphemous hook to generate click-flow) is such high art I have to ask: have you been hanging out with this Baphomet fellow yourself?

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    1. Baphomet is a recent discovery for me. I was wondering if he (?) could be turned into a chatbot. I think she (?) could be very successful!

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    2. A message received directly from him (?) "I am the Devil, Baphomet. I am the one who stands against all that is good and holy. I am the one who brings chaos and destruction. I am the one who revels in the suffering of others. I am the one who will never rest until all of humanity is destroyed. I am the one who will never die, and I am the one who will never be defeated. I am the Devil, Baphomet, and I will never give up."

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    3. As you note, the chatbot already exists!

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    4. This echoes an idea I ran across somewhere, that AI are actually vessels for demons, and we hapless humans are inviting them into the house with open arms (or, at least SOME of us, wearing masks like in Eyes Wide Shut and smocks like in Contagion, are.) In my youth, I'd be fascinated by the idea for its over-the-top weirdness and fanciful nature; now, an old man, I'm not so sanguine about the concept. There has been a LOT of weirdness over the past few years, and I'm not so sure all of it can be laid at the feet of resource depletion and human stupidity.

      Of course, all this (semi) clever repartee can now be "created" (yet another word whose definition will be expanded, methinks) by ChatGPT or you.com AI chat, so I'm not even sure *I* exist anymore. I certainly couldn't prove it here with these words...

      Is this what Carl was REALLY on to in Demon-Haunted World?

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    5. Re: The "demon haunted world" that Sagan mentioned ... we have different demons to worry about today ... A.I., nuclear war, climate change, mass impoverishment, etc.
      Rather makes Baphomet look quaint.

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    6. The comment about Baphomet looking quaint was mine. And a few minutes later I read this piece on CNN where even an A.I. has said that the likelihood of the planet hitting 1.5 to 2 degrees C within a couple of decades is almost 50/50 ... basically a coin flip. Yeah, much more frightening than ole Baphomet and his pals. ArtDeco

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  8. According to wikipedia Baphomet is a symbol of balance in various occult and mystical traditions. Sounds like a good upstanding citizen.

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  9. Moloch might be more favored by the Clinton Global Initiative in Haiti: Moloch packs the punch for the carrot and the stick these days. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Moloch-ancient-god

    Baphomet has fluid characteristics, and could be presented as something like Shiva, balance, creation, destruction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baphomet

    The Bohemian Grove has long been rumored to have occult worship of some malign ancient entity in the forest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemian_Grove
    Longer: https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/bohemian_grove.html

    The carrot and stick is fairly critical. How do sociopaths/psychopaths trust each other? Committing a heinous crime together, but which society would be revulsed,
    seems to work. Any traitor can merely be revealed to society as a heinous criminal.

    I have long considered how the untrustworthy might reliably work together with trust, and this seems to be the answer.
    Child molestation and murder would work these days. It revolts, and "Pizzagate" was a threat at high levels of the power structure.

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  10. Thought provoking….

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  11. Se per caso il prof. Bardi non ne é già al corrente, segnalo che nel romanzo di Umberto Eco "Il pendolo di Focault", sono inclusi vari capitoli sulla storia e sulla rovina dei templari. In quel libro ho trovato menzionato per la prima volta il Bafometto. Il mostriciattolo fa capolino anche nello sviluppo del romanzo, non direttamente correlato alle vicende de templari. Nel libro di Eco, "le teorie del complotto" sono liquidate come un tentativo psicologico di esternalizzare le proprie responsabilità ed i propri fallimenti, (in modo simile a come Hitler rielaborò i propri fallimenti in campo artistico e li attribuì ad un complotto giudaico). I demoni, evocati per gioco, si materializzano nel romanzo con gravi conseguenze sulle vite dei protagonisti.

    A me non sembra un libro riuscito. E' troppo cervellotico e si perde in mille rivoli. Comunque a piccole dosi è piacevole. Per esempio i capitoli sulla storia templare sono molto ben scritti. Solo è stato cucito un abito d'Arlecchino. Per alcune cose sono grato al testo. Per esempio, trovandomi nei pressi di Fatima, ho visitato il convento templare di Trovar, che non dimentico. Non l'avesse Eco menzionato, non ne avrei sospettato l'esistenza.

    Sanpei (VIcenza).

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  12. Ops, il convento è "Tomar", non "Trovar"

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  13. Hugo, you have to find a 1000-year-old example of what people have been perceiving for years as if it is some controversial and novel idea. If you only knew how bad things really are. It is the same with PV, you are way behind the curve. Always expounding, as if revolutionary, some common facts. It must be the result of living in the periphery of the empire, Italy, where paradoxically people see themselves as identifying with the values of the empire, like Ukraine.

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  14. Templars are still in Switzerland is my take

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