HIGHER THAN TRUTH
[S1E9] MURPHY RANCH — LIGHT BRINGER
DID NAZI OCCULTISTS BUILD A MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR DOOMSDAY MANSION IN LOS ANGELES DURING WWII?
Note: Higher Than Truth is an ongoing series taking deep dives into strange mysteries, conspiracies, and forgotten history. Please refer to the table of contents for all articles in their chronological order.
“Any technological advance can be dangerous. Fire was dangerous from the start, and so (even more so) was speech — and both are still dangerous to this day — but human beings would not be human without them.” ― Isaac Asimov
If you were one of the dozens of people who made it all the way through my last article, [S1E8] The Planetary Hierarchy, please take a bow. You earned it. As perplexing as the evolutionary mythology that Blavatsky laid out in The Secret Doctrine appears to be, understanding it is the first step to making sense of this story as we move forward. Because once you have, you can understand just how improbably influential that mythology was on the events of the 20th Century all the way up to today.
It was a lot to digest, but the details matter — and I hope they better prepared you for the story that lies ahead.
To recap: the founder of the Theosophical Society was the Russian mystic, Helena Blavatsky, who proposed that everything in existence was and is going through cycles of evolutionary change. According to Blavatsky, humanity had already gone through four full evolutionary cycles called Root Races, each of which was exemplified by different spiritual and racial characteristics. As of her writing at the end of the 19th Century, the most spiritually and racially advanced beings on the planet were the Fifth Sub-Race of the Fifth Root-Race, the Teutonic Aryans, who were:
…tall, fair, long-headed, with light hair and blue eyes…the Germanic…the Scandinavian…the Anglo-Saxon.
But Blavatsky said humanity was destined to evolve to the Sixth Sub-Race and that evolutionary leap would be heralded by the arrival of a new “torch bearer of truth” who some called Maitreya and others called The Christ. Because, in Blavatsky’s teaching, human evolution is connected to the planet’s evolution, the shift to the Sixth Sub-Race would mean cataclysmic changes on Earth.
Otherwise known as Armageddon.
Should all of this seem too difficult to understand, if you’ve ever spent an afternoon on the couch zoning out to Ancient Aliens on the History Channel, it’s likely you already know the very basics. Bear with me.
In addition to books like Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine, in September 1887 Blavatsky began publishing a magazine in London titled, controversially, Lucifer. Later theosophical sects, such as Alice Bailey’s Lucis Trust, made this same reference. But why? The decision would form the basis of conspiracy theories about devil worship and allegations about the Theosophical Society’s demonic origins for decades to come. Those accusations, according to Blavatsky, miss the point:
Lucifer is a translation of the Latin words lucem ferre (from lux “light” and ferre “carry”) meaning the “light-bearer”. It was the name given to the morning star, i.e., the planet Venus when seen at dawn.
Because theosophy views history cyclically, the reference to Lucifer contains multiple allusions which link everything from Greek mythology to The Book of Revelation—tellings and re-tellings of the same story: the creation of man. The “eating of the apple” isn’t viewed as the Fall of Man, but rather the act which separates humanity from the rest of the animal kingdom.
The Greeks have all this depicted in their great fable of Prometheus stealing the heavenly fire — which, be it known, is divine intelligence, not the physical flame we cook our suppers with! — from the gods and bringing it to man for his behoof. It was what the Theosophists call Manas, the spark of thinking intelligence which made “man”…capable of abstract thought.
She points out further that this terminology can be found in Revelation 22:16, in which Jesus says—
I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star.
—which may be understood as Jesus being the “root” or originator of the Christian church as well as the rising “Morning Star” heralding a new Kingdom of God when Jesus returns.
After eight full episodes, by now we should understand that the construction of Murphy Ranch in 1933 was almost certainly related in some way to Norman and Winona Stevens’ belief that the process of Armageddon and the return of The Christ had already begun in 1932. But in light of the above, we might better understand Norman’s statement in regard to events that theosophists believed took place during the Fourth Root-Race, when an evolutionary “jump” occurred, separating man from animal.
Norman writes:
In His vast cosmos there are many methods, processes and forms of evolution. We are concerned with one of them. Twenty-one million years ago, inconceivably long ago to our short lives, a successful experiment was completed in an earlier cycle on the planet Venus. A portion of the humanity of that cycle, having submitted and cooperated in a forcing process, attained a degree far beyond what was considered normal for that planetary cycle.
A group of forty-nine Venusians volunteered to assist in the application of the forcing process to Earth, and a vanguard crossed space to this planet in physical form; the Hierarchy was founded here on Earth by these forty-nine pioneers.
In this telling, the mythologies of Lucifer, Prometheus, Jesus, and the Morning Star all combine to tell a new myth in which evolved beings from Venus known as The Hierarchy were the ones who engaged in a process that “forced” human evolution, and gave it the divine spark—“the light”—of intelligence that made humanity more than just animals.
You don’t have to believe any of this—the Greek myths, the Bible, theosophy—but I hope by now it’s clear that Norman’s writings have a basis to them beyond just “meaningless” New Age ramblings.
And his goal—“The Goal”—was to recreate the same “forcing process” as the Venusians did, causing an evolutionary jump in humanity to the Sixth Sub-Race, enabling the return of “the torch bearer” or “light bringer” Christ, and initiating the End of Days—which, in Norman’s mind, wouldn’t be the end, so much as the beginning of a new planetary cycle for those people spiritually evolved enough to survive it.
Even if you’re unfamiliar with the real history of these beliefs, it’s very likely you already know this aspect of the story because it features so prominently in modern pop culture and science fiction, most obviously in TV shows like Ancient Aliens:
Why are humans so different from every other species on Earth? Did we evolve from ape — or is our intelligence the result of contact with an otherworldly source? Could unexplained advances in human evolution be the work of interstellar beings? 10,000-year-old petroglyphs link our ancient ancestors with star beings. Might evidence of alien contact help unlock the mystery of the Creation of Man? [S3E16] Aliens and the Creation of Man
The similarity is no coincidence.
In 1965, a 30-year-old Swiss hotel manager named Erich von Daniken began working on a manuscript that would eventually be titled Chariots of the Gods? In it, he proposed that hundreds of thousands of years ago, aliens visited earth and aided in the evolution of humanity.
Could it be that God was an extra-terrestrial? What do we mean when we say that heaven is in the clouds? From Jesus Christ to Elvis Presley, every culture tells us of high-flying bird men who zoom around the world creating magnificent works of art and choosing willing followers to share in the eternal glory from beyond the stars. Can all these related phenomena merely be dismissed as coincidence?
Published in 1968, Chariots of the Gods? would go on to be made into a full length film first released in West Germany, then nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1971. More books, television series, and films on the subject arrived in the decades that followed—and Chariots of the Gods? would go on to sell over 70 million copies worldwide. As of this writing, Erich von Daniken has appeared in 102 episodes of Ancient Aliens over its eighteen seasons.
Among the sources for his extraordinary claims that aliens aided human evolution—which included the Sanskrit epic, The Mahabharata; and the Kabbalistic work, The Zohar—was an obscure and ancient text he said was “older than the Earth” called The Book of Dzyan. Where did von Daniken come across it? The first mention of this mysterious book can be found in 1877:
There exists somewhere in this wide world an old Book — so very old that our modern antiquarians might ponder over its pages an indefinite time, and still not quite agree as to the nature of the fabric upon which it is written. It is the only original copy now in existence.
But it wouldn’t be until 1888 that it was finally translated and published:
Tradition says, that it was taken down in Senzar, the secret sacerdotal tongue, from the words of the Divine Beings, who dictated it to the sons of Light, in Central Asia, at the very beginning of the 5th race; for there was a time when its language was known to the Initiates of every nation, when the forefathers of the Toltec understood it as easily as the inhabitants of the lost Atlantis, who inherited it, in their turn, from the sages of the 3rd Race, the Manushis, who learnt it direct from the Devas of the 2nd and 1st Races.
If any of that sounds familiar and unexpectedly makes sense, that’s because you read [S1E8] The Planetary Hierarchy—because The Book of Dzyan was actually a non-existent “ancient text” that was telepathically communicated to Helena Blavatsky to form the basis of her theosophical evolutionary model in The Secret Doctrine (1888) and Isis Unveiled (1877).
Accusations of plagiarism against Blavatsky arose almost as soon she began publishing. In 1895, author William Emmette Coleman wrote:
During the past three years I have made a more or less exhaustive analysis of the contents of the writings of Madame H. P. Blavatsky; and I have traced the sources whence she derived — and mostly without credit being given — nearly the whole of their subject-matter.
…In Isis Unveiled, published in 1877, I discovered some 2000 passages copied from other books without proper credit. By careful analysis I found that in compiling Isis about 100 books were used. About 1400 books are quoted from and referred to in this work; but, from the 100 books which its author possessed, she copied everything in Isis taken from and relating to the other 1300. There are in Isis about 2100 quotations from and references to books that were copied, at second-hand, from books other than the originals; and of this number only about 140 are credited to the books from which Madame Blavatsky copied them at second-hand.
These accusations have been countered by members of the Theosophical Society at length—
As to the plagiarism charges, it should be understood that as applied to [Blavatsky], Coleman’s use of the term extends far beyond its dictionary definition: “To steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own.” This Blavatsky did not do.
—but perhaps most convincing to this day is the simple fact that The Book of Dzyan has never actually been found. One researcher, David Reigle, claims in his 2012 blog, “I have come across significant circumstantial evidence in favor of the authenticity of the Book of Dzyan,” but even if his circumstantial evidence turns out to be true, Erich von Daniken had no access to the primary material in 1965—and still doesn’t. No one does. In fact, as Ancient Alien debunker Jason Colavito points out:
As to von Daniken’s question about the similarities among the Mahabharata, the Cabbala, the Zohar, and the Book of Dzyan: They seem to cover the same ground not because they are all reports of alien visitation but because Blavatsky used the first three as the source for the fourth, giving them a spurious connection via her fake ancient text.
The entire premise of Ancient Alien theory then, is quite clearly a plagiaristic reimagining of Blavatsky’s work, which at best was created by telepathic messages transmitted to her via Ascended Masters hiding in the Himalayas, and at worst was itself a forgery plagiarized from hundreds of pre-existing sources.
Unsurprisingly, when von Daniken completed the first draft of Chariots of the Gods? he was, like many struggling authors, rejected by publishers. The fact that he had already served a four month suspended sentence for stealing from both an innkeeper and youth camp at the age of 19, and then later received a nine month sentence for fraud and embezzlement during a jewelry deal in Egypt must have only added to his stress.
In a 1974 interview with Playboy, von Daniken says it was during his time in jail that he experienced an “intense vision” which he appears to imply played some role in his transition to becoming a writer. Twelve years after his time in prison, he found a company willing to publish his manuscript—but only after extensive re-writes by a professional author. The published version of Chariots of the Gods? was completely reworked by Utz Utermann, former editor of the Nazi Party’s newspaper, The Völkischer Beobachter. Upon publication, von Daniken received 7% of the book’s profits, while Utermann got 3%.
The timing couldn’t have been better, because it was soon revealed that for twelve years von Daniken had been falsifying the expense sheets of the hotel he managed, and he was convicted for “repeated and sustained acts of embezzlement…fraud…[and] forgery” totaling $130,000—or nearly $1,000,000 when adjusted for inflation today. Von Daniken used the book profits to pay back the money he’d stolen, and he wrote his next book, Gods From Outer Space, while serving twelve months of his three-and-a-half year prison sentence.
That von Daniken’s co-author, Utermann, was a bestselling Nazi author and editor of The Völkischer Beobachter comes as no real surprise. Just as Chariots of the Gods? has gone on to influence not just the literary world, but a whole modern subculture of conspiracy theories and alternate histories, Blavatsky’s racial hierarchies played their own role in the conspiracy culture of the early 20th Century as their complex mythology was interpreted, reinterpreted, and misinterpreted over the ensuing decades. In von Daniken’s 1980 book, Sign of the Gods? he first proposed the idea that aliens didn’t just help us technologically, but they altered our DNA—
“Was the black race a failure…and did the extraterrestrials change the genetic code by gene surgery and then programme a white or yellow race?”
—but by now you will recognize his theory as just another rehash of Blavatsky’s description of the “torch bearing” Venusian Hierarchy providing an evolutionary jump to humanity from the early “negroid” black-skinned Fourth Root Races to the more advanced yellow and white-skinned Root Races to come.
While it would be absolutely incorrect to broadly paint all theosophists or all ancient astronaut theorists as racist, it would be equally wrong to ignore the clear racist implications built into each mythology’s core teachings. Published a century apart, Blavatsky and von Daniken’s message is the same.
And while von Daniken’s personal history of fraud and embezzlement is most likely revealing of his character and motivations, as we continue in our investigation into the story of Murphy Ranch and its broader meanings, it might be worth looking at an unusual detail to Blavatsky’s life: Although no physical copy of the allegedly forged Book of Dzyan has ever been located, a document connected to Blavatsky five years before she founded The Theosophical Society did turn up—in 1993, a century after her death.
The document was located in the Tsarist intelligence archives, dated 1872, and was written by Mikhail Loris-Melikov, chief of Tsar Alexander II’s commission to deal with societal unrest in Russia at that time. Melikov writes:
Madame Blavatsky offered her services as an agent to “my native land” and candidly explained her technique of exploiting people’s spiritualist beliefs to uncover their secret thoughts. She went on to state: “I have played every role, I am able to represent myself as any person you may wish.”
After Blavatsky died, Annie Besant took over the Theosophical Society and, with the help of Charles Webster Leadbeater, realigned it from Blavatsky’s Eastern/Buddhist religious model into a more Western/ Christian organization. The “light bringing” Maitreya coming to usher in the New Age became The Christ.
Among the more Christian leaning theosophists was Rudolf Steiner, who in 1899 had experienced a life-transforming vision of the Christ. In 1904, Besant appointed Steiner as head of the German branch of the Theosophical Society, but—as discussed in [S1E5] Maitreya—the decision to anoint the young Indian boy, Krishnamurti, as the physical vehicle for the messiah was met with resistance by some theosophists, and Steiner resigned in 1912. He would go on to form the Anthroposophical Society, just one in a growing German subculture that would, to varying degrees, combine Aryan mythology with nationalist ideology.
As author Eric Kurlander describes it, the eventual creation of the Nazi Party was shaped and inspired by:
…occult forces, mad scientists, fantastical weapons, a superhuman Nazi master race, a preoccupation with pagan religions, and magical relics supposed to grant the Nazis unlimited powers.
And it was within that culture in 1936 that two eager supporters of the Nazi Party, Ludwig Roselius and Bernhard Hoetger, decided to honor Adolph Hitler with a public sculpture of a falling angel beneath a shining star, whose message read: “Our leader’s victory over the powers of darkness.”
They called it: The Light Bringer.
How did occult myths evolve into Nazism? Find out next, on:
