I've made a clumsy shot at writing a little bit about Islam and the occult
lodges of the West:
http://www.uncletaz.com/seclodg.html

My knowledge of Islam itself is very limited; I am trying to follow the
public debates. We're talking about a billion Muslims, and a religion I'm
beginning to consider with an apprehension not dissimilar to what I
associate with scientology, although the systems don't have much in common
theologically or philosophically (except, perhaps, a common denominator in
the Jesuit order, also found in Nazism - the key concepts being blind
obedience and unconditional surrender). But what is very interesting is
that the warriors, or terrorists, who may be sitting at the restaurant
table next to you in any European city and you wouldn't have a clue,
explain that the difference between "us" and "them" is that "we" love life,
but "they" love death, and their highest goal is to die for Allah and thus
get into his Paradise. So we have Christians, Agnostics, Buddhists,
Atheists etc., i.e. non-Muslims, on the one side, who love life, and the
true believers of Islam on the other, who love death and plan to die in
battle against the infidels: The world for Islam.

When I wrote this about six months ago, Al Qaida had just announced Norway
as a target along with the United States, the United Kingdom, and
Australia, with attacks soon-to-come. What is interesting is that Norway
was the only non-English-speaking nation thus targeted, probably because of
its close ties to the United States. According to Rudolf Steiner, the
connection between Norway and the Western hemisphere was established as
early as the third or fourth century AD - anyway, long before Leiv
Eriksson's famous arrival in the year 1000.

Anyway, the article related to Islam is very brief. The other article,
which is about the Western lodges, is something I wrote in 1996 or '97,
based upon "The Challenge of the Times", lecture III: "The Mechanistic,
Eugenic, and Hygienic Aspects of the Future" (December 1, 1918, GA 186).
When translating these articles, that were first written in Norwegian, into
English, I blended them into one article at the URL above.

The link between this lecture and current events is apparent from a quote
that I'll give you below. In the lecture at hand, Steiner describes how the
secret lodges of the English-speaking polulations of the West strive to
manipulate the occult evolution of humanity by stealing the latent
capacities of the Eastern peoples and at the same time by making sure that
such occult capacities among Eastern peoples are thwarted. There is little
doubt, if we take Steiner's words about initiates and secret lodges in
earnest, that such lodges and their initiates are involved in the present
explosive drama between Islam and the West, with Israel in the middle. And
I have considered the idea that Eastern lodges may be invloved, thus
launching an assault against the dominant position of the Western powers.
But on the other hand, this doesn't make sense, because antipathy and
hatred against the West among the Eastern peoples acts as a hindrance for
their evolution, and the Eastern lodges would logically be striving for the
opposite: the hindrance of Western occult progress to the benefit of the
East. For this reason, it is most probably the Western lodges that are the
architects of Islamic hatred and extremism. I believe this is sensed
subconsciously by the Eastern peoples, which is why they blame Israel and
the West even for the WTC attack, although Eastern Muslims were sitting in
the very cockpits! They sense that the West is to blame for it all, but the
West doesn't know about their very own secret lodges.

And now for the real fire, from RS himself:

********************************************************************************\
********
For example, in the case of the people of the Central countries and the
Eastern lands it is an important hindrance to the evolution of these
capacities, especially their evolution in a knowing way, when strong
antipathies against the people of the Western countries are active within
them. Then these things cannot be viewed objectively. This is a hindrance
in the evolution of these capacities. But the potentiality of developing
another occult capacity is also even strenghtened in a certain way if it is
developed out of a certain instinct of hatred. This is a strange
phenomenon. We often ask ourselves, and we are dealing here with something
that must be considered quite objectively, why such senseless abuse has
been practiced in the Western countries. This also comes out of the
instinct leading toward these capacities. For what constitutes the
profoundest impelling forces in Western occultism is fostered by nothing
more powerfully than by the development of feelings that are untrue but are
sensed as in some way holy, and that can represent the people of the East
and especially those of the Central countries as barbarians. the
potentialities of material occultism, for example, are fostered by the
attitude of mine constituting the so-called crusading temperament in
America. This consists in the feeling that America is called to spread over
the whole earth freedom and justice and I know not what other beautiful
things. Of course, the people there believe that. What I am saying here has
nothing to do with fault finding. The people believe that they are engaged
in a crusade, but this belief in something false constitutes a support
working in a certain direction. If a person should consciously make an
untrue statement, he would not have this support. For this reason, what is
now happening is tremendously helpful on the one side and a hindrance on
the other in the development of those capacities that we must assert to be
still latent at the present time in the case of most individuals who bear
within themselves the will toward evolution in the future and are destined
to influence profoundly the social structure of humanity.

********************************************************************************\
**********
Although this was said more than eighty years ago, it is not outdated if we
take into consideration that we're talking about a kind of occult
conspiracy whose aims and purposes reach 1500 to 2000 years into the future.

I have received some very healthy and informative criticism with regard to
the article in question. The Steiner-quotes do get longer and longer, and
eventually the author (myself) essentially disappear. It may easily be felt
that when these words by RS are quoted almost a hundred years later, they
cannot stand for themselves. If Steiner is talking about something real, it
must in some way be corroboratable.

So there's a question of where we can find literature that corroborates
Steiner's claims about such occult lodges of the West.

So here are two books:

Quigley, Carroll. The Anglo-American Establishment. New York: Books in
Focus, 1981. 354 pages. Carroll Quigley (1910-1977) taught history at
Georgetown's School of Foreign Service since 1941. This book was written in
1949 and covers the Rhodes-Milner Round Table Groups, a secret
Oxford-related cabal that had tremendous influence in British foreign
policy from the time that Cecil Rhodes began funding it at the turn of the
century. In 1919 the Council on Foreign Relations became the American
branch of the Round Table. Quigley is better known for "Tragedy and Hope"
(1966), which reaffirms his earlier suspicions (he says he had access to
the Round Table's secret archives), but lacks the rich detail of the
earlier work. Quigley basically agreed with the goals of these high-minded
internationalists, but disliked their inherited wealth and power, their
methods, and particularly their secrecy. Quigley became a darling of the
anti-internationalist Right in the U.S., from Cleon Skousen (The Naked
Capitalist, 1970) through Pat Robertson (The New World Order, 1991). Then
to top it off, Bill Clinton mentioned Quigley as his mentor in his
nomination acceptance speech on July 16, 1992. Clinton studied under
Quigley at Georgetown in the middle 1960s, and then became a Rhodes Scholar
at Oxford. Now he's a member of CFR, Trilateral Commission, and Bilderberg,
and many of his appointees are from the same Rhodes-CFR-Trilateral circles.
We don't know what this means, if anything. ISBN 0-916728-50-1 (from
http://www.namebase.org/sources/TA.html)

Here is a synopsis of the book:
http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/quigley.html

Then there are the books by Sutton:
http://skull-and-bones-books.com/americas_secret_establishment/about_the_book.ht\
ml

(The link to Membership of Yale's Skull and Bones Society does not work,
the correct link is
http://www.angelfire.com/az2/TruthPage/boneslist.html).

Sutton is a weird guy. He hates Hegel and the rest of German idealistic
philosophy, for example. He comes close to being an anarchist ("The state
is a fiction sanctified by Hegel and his followers to CONTROL the individual"
http://www.freedomdomain.com/secretsocieties/suttoninterview.html). He once
wrote a book for the Hoover Institute. Not exactly a neutral historian!
But he published a lot of interesting documents and asked a lot of
interesting and tabu questions (like why the US financed the Soviet Union
.. and Hitler).

The subject is difficult, because there is almost no real historical
scholarship except for a few weird outsiders. In that sense they have
remained secret! We have to piece it together ourselves.

It is not being claimed that the ilk of Cecil Rhodes and his cohorts may
have been initiates. But who inspires such circles? These are the circles
that truly wield the power. Behind them stand spiritual forces (and other
circles) that work directly into these circles.

Some of this stuff appears reminiscient of the background for the movie
"Skulls", but both part 1 and part 2 miss the main point.

George Bush Sr. was a member of such a group in his youth, and so were many
other former presidents, who had similar affiliations. They get to them
when their young and malleable. That's why it starts there. Remember the
"new world order"? This is not something invented by Bush.

Incidentally, someone just sent me a link to a webpage that may deserve a
closer look:

http://www.serendipity.li/wtc.htm


Cheers,

Tarjei
http://uncletaz.com/