Bohemia | Surrendering Islam
Bohemia
Prior to his death, John Dee had found his way to Prague, then under Habsburg rule, where he helped bring about the rise of this Rosicrucian movement. The Habsburgs had moved their capital from Vienna to Prague, in Bohemia, which became an occult oriented court, a centre of study in alchemy, astrology, magic and the notorious Picatrix, an Arabic work expounding on Sabian themes.
Interest in the Kabbalah was coupled with the “golden age” of Jewry in Bohemia. Despite their initial persecution during the Crusades, the Jewish community of Bohemia often enjoyed exceptional privileges. Although originating in southern France, it was in Spain that the Kabbalah would develop, and where the most important medieval Kabbalistic text, the Sepher ha Zohar, or Book of Light, was produced in 1286 AD. Ultimately, the spread of Kabbalistic influence, and the occult rites it involved, or mysteries, generally known as “witchcraft”, caused the Church to become increasingly suspicious, and to eventually attempt its brutal suppression.
Therefore, coincidentally, a year before the Templars were arrested, in 1307 AD, France expelled its Jewish population. The Jews had already been expelled from England in 1290 AD, by King Edward, when all the crowned heads of Europe followed in his example. Saxony followed suit in 1348. On the extinction of the house of Arpad of Hungary, and under the Angevin kings who then occupied the throne, the Hungarian Jews suffered many persecutions, and were expelled in 1360, and in 1370 Belgium, in 1380 Slovakia, in 1420 Austria, and in 1444 the Netherlands.
However, the anti-Semitic offensive of the papacy in the early thirteenth century little affected the conditions of Bohemia’s Jewish community, who enjoyed immunity for years. The Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV ensured their protection and allowed the Jews of Prague to have their own city flag, a red banner that featured, in gold, the Kabbalistic six-pointed star, known as the “Star of David”, or “Seal of Solomon”, being the first Jewish flag of its kind.
Red, as demonstrated by Andrew Colin Gow, author of Red Jews: Anti-Semitism in an Apocalyptic Age: 1200-1600, had become a color distinctly associated with the Jews. Between the thirteenth and sixteenth century, as he has shown, it became popular in German literature to identify Gog and Magog with the Lost Tribes of Israel, who collectively were referred to as “Red Jews”. As he further noted, Jews were often portrayed by medieval illustrations in Christian texts with red hair and in red clothes. According to Gow:
This connection was so widely-accepted as to be included prominently in illustrations of Hebrew manuscripts, though in such cases, these depictions presumably lacked or did not evoke the negative associations generally marked by red hair. The Jews by whom these manuscripts were made and for whom they were intended seem to have attached no negative significance to the color red. Yet as we have seen, Christian iconography “saw red” in connection with Judas. The Metzgers’ manuscript illuminations suggest that to Jews as to Christians, Jews were typically red-headed and wore red clothes; it was taken for granted.58
It was in Bohemia, therefore, that the most important modern development in Kabbalah took root, known as the New Kabbalah, derived by Isaac Luria. Luria’s novel interpretations essentially fired new Messianic hopes, which inspired Jews who recently endured the expulsion from Spain. As in other parts of Europe, violent persecution had been growing in Spain and Portugal, where in 1391, hundreds of thousands of Jews had been forced to convert to Catholicism. Publicly, the Jewish converts, known as Marranos, were Christians, but secretly they continued to practice Judaism, including following the Kabbalah. After 1540, many Marranos fled to England, Holland, France, the Ottoman Empire, Brazil and other places in South and Central America. These Marranos maintained strong family ties and became influential where they lived.
In Spain, during the fifteenth century, the Marranos “crypto-Jews”, founded the Christian heresy of the Alumbrados, or the Illuminati, the same name applied by Adam Weishaupt, to his diabolical order two centuries later. Ignatius of Loyola, born in 1491, from Marranos parents, was a member of the Allumbrados, though, as a cover for his activities, he became the founder of the Order of Jesus, known as the infamous Jesuits in 1540.59 The Jesuit order not only became a destructive arm of the Roman Catholic Church, but developed into a secret intelligence service.
Ultimately, the Jesuits would follow the same conspiratorial methods as the Ismailis, for indoctrinating recruits into their subversive mission, as the following, taken from the secret oath of the Jesuits, demonstrates:
You have been taught to insidiously plant the seeds of jealousy and hatred between communities, provinces, states that were at peace, and incite them to deeds of blood, involving them in war with each other, and to create revolutions and civil wars in countries that were independent and prosperous, cultivating the arts and the sciences and enjoying the blessings of peace. To take sides with the combatants and to act secretly with your brother Jesuit, who might be engaged on the other side, but openly opposed to that with which you might be connected, only that the Church might be the gainer in the end, in the conditions fixed in the treaties for peace and that the end justifies the means.
Luria initiated a new interpretation of the role of the Kabbalah in preparation for the arrival of the Messiah. In Luria’s system, all being is said to have been in exile, that is, separated from God, since the very beginning of creation, and the task of restoring everything to its proper order is the specific role of the Jewish people. The final redemption, however, cannot be achieved merely through the advent of the Messiah, but must be brought about historically, through a long chain of actions that prepare the way.
Essentially, the important notion that was transmitted to the Kabbalists was this, that they must not merely await the fulfillment of prophecy with regards to the coming of the Messiah, and the restoration of the Jewish people in the Promised Land. Rather, they ought to work actively to prepare for his appearance. First, this meant manipulating the course of fate through the use of magic, and finally, of preparing the necessary political and moral circumstances for the world to receive his coming, that is, a New World Order.
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