Month: August 2025

The Secret Religion of America’s Founding Fathers

mim

When we are taught the story of America’s birth, it is usually a tale of idealism. Enlightened men gathered in Philadelphia to declare independence, draft a Constitution, and form a free republic unlike any other. They were men of reason, we are told, men who broke the chains of monarchy and dogma. That is the official version.

There is another version though, one that rarely finds its way into the nation’s history textbooks. It is a story of secret societies, hidden rituals, and a shadow religion that shaped the foundations of the republic. Many of the founders were not only statesmen but initiates of the Masonic lodges. They swore oaths in candlelit chambers surrounded by symbols older than Christianity, and they believed in occult truths that they encoded into architecture, city plans, and perhaps even the clauses of the Constitution itself.

It is sometimes claimed that these men were “33rd degree Freemasons,” but that phrase is an anachronism. The Scottish Rite’s 33rd degree did not exist until the early 1800s, after the Revolution. In the America of Washington and Franklin, the system of Masonry offered three primary degrees, with Master Mason as the highest level attainable. Yet to dismiss these three degrees as merely entry level would be a mistake.

George Washington, for example, was a documented Master Mason and conducted the laying of the Capitol’s cornerstone in 1793 with a full Masonic ritual, apron and all. Benjamin Franklin advanced even further, becoming Grand Master of the Lodge of Nine Sisters in Paris, where Masonry blurred into Rosicrucianism and the hidden philosophies of Europe. Paul Revere and John Hancock also became Grand Masters in Massachusetts, placing them at the pinnacle of the craft in the colonies. Thomas Jefferson, though never conclusively proven to be a Mason, was deeply immersed in esoteric literature and deistic philosophy, moving in the same intellectual currents. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were both confirmed Masons, carrying the symbols of the lodge as they mapped the continent at Jefferson’s command.

So while the founders were not 33rd degree in the technical sense, many were far more than casual lodge members. They were Masters and Grand Masters, men who presided over rituals, commanded respect, and carried with them the authority and secrecy that would later be associated with the highest degrees of Masonry. In their time, these roles carried the same aura of power and hidden knowledge. To understand their position is to see the founding not just as a political act, but as an occult project guided by initiates of a secret order.

Liberty As A Shield

The First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom can be seen as more than just a shield against sectarian conflict. For men who belonged to lodges that drew on symbols and allegories older than Christianity, it also functioned as legal protection for their own rites. The Constitution made it impossible for the government to persecute secret gatherings, whether they were Masonic initiations or other esoteric practices. What looked to the public like a safeguard for Protestant dissenters doubled as a safeguard for the private rites of the elite.

This was no small matter, because in Europe such societies had been hunted and suppressed for centuries. The Knights Templar, once one of the most powerful military orders of Christendom, were destroyed in 1307 when King Philip IV of France moved to seize their wealth and eliminate their independence. On October 13 of that year, hundreds of Templars were arrested, tortured, and forced to confess to strange crimes: spitting on the cross, engaging in forbidden rites, and worshipping an idol called “Baphomet.” The name may or may not have been drawn from an actual deity worshipped at that time in Europe. Most scholars believe it was a corruption of “Mahomet,” a medieval way of referring to Muhammad, used to smear the Templars as crypto-Muslims and heretics. Some trial records describe a head or strange effigy, but no evidence of such an idol was found, and the confessions were extracted under brutal torture.

Much later, in the nineteenth century, occult writers revived the legend. The French magician Eliphas Lévi reimagined Baphomet as the goat-headed figure known as the Sabbatic Goat, a symbol of esoteric balance and hidden knowledge. That image, now iconic in the modern occult imagination, had little to do with the medieval Templars, but it grew out of the accusations against them. The effect of the original charges, true or not, was devastating. Many Templar leaders were burned at the stake, and the order was annihilated. More importantly, the spectacle set a pattern: when the Church encountered a secret society it could not control, it branded it as diabolical and destroyed it.

That suspicion carried forward into the Enlightenment. Freemasonry faced the same hostility. In 1738, Pope Clement XII issued the first papal bull banning Catholics from joining the lodges, condemning them as heretical and politically dangerous. Pope Benedict XIV reinforced the prohibition in 1751, ensuring that Masons remained under suspicion across Catholic Europe. Lodges were forced underground, their rituals hidden from the public eye, even as whispers linked them to the same dark charges once leveled against the Templars. By the time of America’s founding, the memory of suppression was fresh, and the lodges in the colonies offered a freedom their European counterparts could only dream of. Writing religious liberty into the Constitution was therefore not just an Enlightenment ideal, but also a coded guarantee that the persecutions of the past would not be repeated on American soil.

Esoteric Echoes In The Constitution

There is another layer to the founding philosophy. In occult traditions there is a split between the exoteric, the outer teachings for the public, and the esoteric, the inner teachings for initiates. By separating church and state, the founders created a dual structure: an outer civic faith in liberty and equality that everyone could see, and an inner realm of private belief where initiates could pursue forbidden truths. Even the structure of government can be read symbolically in this light. The Constitution divided power into executive, legislative, and judicial branches, a design openly inspired by Montesquieu’s philosophy. Yet the pattern also echoes older currents of Hermetic and alchemical thought, where balance is achieved by setting opposing forces against one another and resolving them into harmony. Whether by design or coincidence, the republic’s framework resonates with the esoteric idea that true order emerges only when tensions are held in careful balance.

The Name Of A Hidden God

The Masonry Washington practiced was limited to three degrees, and the records of his lodge never mention anything beyond them. Yet as the Craft expanded into higher rites during and after the Revolution, a curious word surfaced: Jahbulon. Introduced in the Royal Arch degree and whispered as a “sacred name,” it fused Jehovah, Baal, and an Egyptian sun god into a single blasphemous trinity. To Masons it was defended as a symbol of universality, a way of joining together divine names from different traditions. To outsiders, it looked like sorcery and proof that the Craft concealed a god of its own. The charge of demonism attached itself to Jahbulon, and for generations pastors and ex-Masons would point to it as the true hidden lord of the lodge.

Franklin’s Bones In London

In 1998, during renovations at Benjamin Franklin’s former London home, workers discovered a pit filled with skeletal remains. More than a dozen bodies, many of them children, were buried beneath the house where Franklin lived for nearly two decades. The accepted explanation is that an acquaintance of Franklin’s was performing medical experiments. Yet the image of one of America’s most celebrated founders living above a hidden grave is hard to shake. Franklin was a Freemason and a member of elite clubs in both London and Philadelphia. Did he share in these experiments, or was something else taking place in the basement of his home?

Jefferson, Lewis, And Clark: The Quest For Giants

Thomas Jefferson publicly presented himself as a rationalist, skeptical of superstition. In private he was fascinated with bones, especially those of giant stature. Reports circulated among Native nations of colossal beings who had once walked the continent. Mounds in the Ohio Valley yielded bones that seemed to support the legends. Jefferson tasked Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, both Freemasons, to gather evidence as they explored the new territories. The expedition is remembered for mapping, diplomacy, and science, but it was also a search for remnants of a forgotten race. Set beside Europe’s long history of suppressing heterodox knowledge, that search reads like a counter-move: recovering what the Old World had buried.

Francis Bacon And The Vision Of A New Atlantis

A century before the Revolution, the philosopher Francis Bacon had sketched the outlines of a world that looked suspiciously like what America would become. In his unfinished work New Atlantis, published in 1627, he imagined a secretive island nation ruled by an invisible order of wise men. Knowledge was their power. They collected information from across the globe, preserved hidden sciences, and governed not through kings or priests but through an unseen hierarchy of initiates. For Bacon, this was not just a utopian dream. It was a blueprint.

Bacon was tied to the Rosicrucian movement, an esoteric current that preached secrecy, symbolic architecture, and the union of science and spirituality. These ideas filtered into Freemasonry, which in turn shaped the worldview of many of America’s founders. The New World, far from the reach of papal bulls and European monarchs, offered the perfect stage on which to bring Bacon’s vision to life.

When Washington, D.C. was laid out in the 1790s, it bore the fingerprints of an esoteric tradition. The Capitol’s cornerstone was set with full Masonic ritual by George Washington in 1793. The city’s street plan, designed by Pierre Charles L’Enfant and later adjusted by Masonic surveyors, is filled with geometric alignments. Triangles, squares, and compass shapes radiate through the avenues. The Washington Monument, an obelisk borrowed from ancient Egypt, rises as a stone needle between the Capitol and the White House. And on the nation’s Great Seal, later emblazoned on the one-dollar bill, an unfinished pyramid crowned with the all-seeing eye declares in Latin: Novus Ordo Seclorum, a New Order of the Ages.

For those steeped in Bacon’s writings, this was more than civic planning. It was sacred geometry, an attempt to encode cosmic truths into the stones and avenues of the capital. The city itself became a temple, a visible New Atlantis built on the banks of the Potomac. America was not only a republic in the political sense, but also an experiment in hidden architecture and esoteric governance. In the vision of Bacon and the Masons who followed him, the United States was to be both a nation and a ritual machine, replete with symbols that would shape its destiny.

The Hidden Pantheon

The secret religion of the founders was not a single system. It was a mixture of Enlightenment deism, Masonic ritual, Templar legends, Rosicrucian utopianism, and an obsession with the lost giants of the New World. They spoke in public of reason and progress. In private they gathered in lodges, invoked symbols, and swore oaths that bound them to a different order altogether. The nation they built was more than a republic. It was an occult machine written into stone, ritual, and law.

America was born with the promise of liberty and justice for all. Yet as the centuries unfolded, that mandate became overshadowed by a darker reality. Eisenhower’s warning of a “military-industrial complex” has long since hardened into fact. From Vietnam to Iraq, from the deserts of the Middle East to the hidden prisons of the modern empire, America has become feared as much as it was formerly admired.

Was this corruption a hostile takeover by dark forces, or were the seeds of it sown from the very beginning, in the secret oaths and hidden gods that shaped its founding? Perhaps the two Americas were always there: the outer republic of freedom, and the inner machine of ritual power. One speaks of liberty and equality, while the other feeds on secrecy, empire, and control.

Which America do you live in? And which America will prevail?

Beyond Bigfoot: DNA Breakthroughs, Nephilim Myths & Scott Carpenter’s Warning

mim

When most people hear the word Bigfoot, they picture a shaggy giant slipping through the misty forests of North America. But the legend is far older and wider than that. Across the globe, cultures tell of towering, manlike beings who walk the line between human and beast. In the Pacific Northwest, he is Bigfoot or Sasquatch, keeper of the deep woods. High in the Himalayas, mountaineers whisper of the Yeti, the Abominable Snowman. In China’s shadowed valleys roams the Yeren; in the outback of Australia, the Yowie stalks the night. The Amazon has its Mapinguari, Siberia its Almas, and medieval Europe carved the Woodwose, the wild man, into stone cathedrals as if to warn future generations.

The sheer spread of these accounts, from mountains to jungles to deserts, suggests a phenomenon far deeper than campfire stories. For the late Scott Carpenter, one of the most respected yet controversial Bigfoot researchers, the truth was darker still. His work pointed to a being not just of flesh and blood, but something supernatural: an entity at once physical and otherworldly.

In this article, based on a two-hour conversation with Carpenter’s son, we explore the evidence, the warnings, and the spiritual dimensions of Bigfoot research that most mainstream outlets won’t touch. [1]

From Survivalist to Supernatural Researcher

Scott Carpenter didn’t start out as a paranormal investigator. He was a survivalist, outdoorsman, and common sense skeptic. His interest in Bigfoot was at first just a way to spend time in the woods. But his encounters forced him into a paradigm shift:

“This isn’t just flesh and blood. This isn’t just an ape. It’s something more: flesh and blood and something supernatural.”

That realization set him apart from other researchers and drew him into a spiritual battle that would last the rest of his life.

The Survivorman Bigfoot Episode

One of Carpenter’s breakthroughs came when survival expert Les Stroud featured him in Survivorman Bigfoot (Episode 7, Smoky Mountains). Stroud not only allowed Carpenter to share his evidence but even let him discuss it in terms of Genesis 6, the infamous “Nephilim” passage.

In Genesis 6:1–4, the text describes how the “sons of God” came down to earth and took human women as wives, producing offspring known as the Nephilim. These beings are often interpreted as giants: hybrids of divine and human lineage. Some traditions see them as fallen angels mating with women, others as divine beings creating a corrupted bloodline that spread violence and chaos across the earth. This was one of the driving reasons for the Flood of Noah: to wipe out this distorted genetic legacy.

Carpenter and Stroud’s willingness to bring Genesis 6 into a Bigfoot discussion was groundbreaking. It suggested that Sasquatch might not be just another undiscovered primate, but instead tied to ancient accounts of hybrids that were part human, part “other.” For many, that biblical connection reframed Bigfoot research from zoology into theology, raising the unsettling possibility that the phenomenon could be as much spiritual as physical.

That moment shocked many viewers. Mainstream Bigfoot media usually avoids biblical or supernatural frameworks, but Stroud leaned into it. Carpenter’s evidence, including sound bites, strange photographic captures, and face reconstructions, challenged the simplistic “big ape in the woods” narrative.

DNA and the Sasquatch Genome Project

Carpenter contributed samples to the Sasquatch Genome Project, led by Dr. Melba Ketchum, a veterinarian and DNA scientist with more than 30 years of experience in genetics and forensics. Before turning her attention to Sasquatch, Ketchum had built a reputation in the professional DNA world: her laboratory, DNA Diagnostics, worked on animal forensics cases, breed verification, and even high-profile wildlife investigations. She had published in peer-reviewed journals, testified in court as an expert, and earned respect for applying human forensic standards to animal DNA.

In 2012, Ketchum announced the results of the Sasquatch Genome Project, claiming the sequencing of three complete nuclear genomes pointed to a mysterious human/primate hybrid. The team initially submitted the paper to major journals such as Nature, but Ketchum later reported it was rejected without review. Facing repeated barriers, her group launched their own journal, DeNovo Scientific Journal, to get the findings into print. That decision only fueled criticism: mainstream scientists dismissed the work as self-published and riddled with contamination, while supporters argued it was blackballed precisely because its conclusions were too disruptive.

Whatever one believes about the controversy, the scale of the project was unprecedented: it involved more than 100 samples collected across the United States that were analyzed using forensic-level protocols. Carpenter’s contributions placed him at the center of one of the most ambitious and debated attempts to prove Sasquatch through genetics. The results stunned both researchers and skeptics: the mitochondrial DNA consistently read as human, but the nuclear DNA defied classification, pointing to something nonhuman and previously unknown. If true, this would mean Sasquatch was neither myth nor mere ape, but a hybrid: a creature with human maternal lineage and a mysterious paternal source. For Carpenter and others reading through a biblical lens, this echoed the ancient warning of Genesis 6, where the “sons of God” took human women and produced hybrid offspring: the Nephilim. In that framework, the genome data was not just a curiosity but a genetic fingerprint of a story as old as Scripture.

  • Mitochondrial DNA (from the mother) came back human.
  • Nuclear DNA (from the father’s side) was unknown.
  • GenBank, the global DNA database, couldn’t match it to any known species.

A Land Charged with Ancient Spirits

Carpenter’s main research area sat near Morganton Cemetery in East Tennessee, on a peninsula surrounded by Cherokee land now drowned under Tellico Lake. Beneath the water lie the ancient towns of Chota, Tanasi, and Citico that had been excavated in the 1970s before the flooding. Archaeologists uncovered Cherokee council houses, plazas, burials, and artifacts from both Native and earlier Mississippian cultures, including temple mounds and ritual sites. Nearby, at Icehouse Bottom, human activity stretched back nearly ten thousand years. To Carpenter, this wasn’t just history but sacred ground, a spiritually charged landscape where human and nonhuman beings had mingled for millennia. Even the state’s name, Tennessee, traces back to Tanasi.

Local lore adds a darker layer. Legends speak of the Citico giants, towering figures tied to Canaanite-like practices of sacrifice. In the 19th century, Smithsonian surveyors and local antiquarians reported unusually tall skeletons, some approaching seven feet, uncovered in Tennessee Valley burial mounds. While mainstream archaeology explains these finds as exaggerations or natural variation, oral traditions preserved them as memories of a prehistoric race of great size and power. Citico (or Sitiku), later drowned beneath Tellico Lake, became the center of these stories, with settlers claiming to find oversized remains there. To some, the submerged cities of Chota, Tanasi, and Citico are not only Cherokee towns but remnants of an older, stranger presence, one that resonates uneasily with the biblical accounts of the Nephilim.

Carpenter’s son said:

“No wonder that area is a hotspot. The veil is thin there. Whatever was done there, it still lingers.”

Portals, Oak Ridge, and UFOs

As Carpenter’s research deepened, he began recording anomalies that looked like portals or openings through which beings appeared or vanished. These were like fleeting windows into another dimension. Strangely, this idea is not without precedent in Native tradition. Accounts of the Apache leader Geronimo describe him as more than a warrior; he was said to possess mystical knowledge of the land itself. According to oral histories, Geronimo could locate “spirit doorways” in the mountains and deserts and pass through them to evade capture. Some stories claim he used chants or songs to activate these portals, stepping into hidden realms before reappearing miles away. Whether literal or symbolic, such traditions mirror the kinds of interdimensional phenomena Carpenter reported: beings that could not be tracked or cornered because they moved in ways outside ordinary space. To those who take these parallels seriously, Geronimo’s legends suggest that what Carpenter encountered may have been part of a much older, indigenous understanding of the land’s supernatural architecture.

The geography adds another layer: just upriver lies Oak Ridge, Tennessee, one of the central sites of the Manhattan Project. While Los Alamos, New Mexico, gets most of the attention as the place where the bomb was assembled, Oak Ridge was where uranium enrichment took place on an industrial scale. Locals whisper that Oak Ridge is still conducting experiments in dimensional physics.

Carpenter’s own grandfather reported seeing UFOs “like ships battling” in the skies over Norris Lake decades ago. This wasn’t just folklore but lived experience.

Bigfoot Encounters: More Than Harmless Giants

Not all encounters are benign. Reports include:

  • Bigfoot revealing itself more often to women than to men.
  • Instances of sexual advances toward women.
  • Encounters where couples were watched or even escorted out of the woods.

These beings aren’t cartoonish “gentle giants.” They are unpredictable, intelligent, and capable of menace. As Carpenter warned:

“Killing you might be way down the options list… but it’s still on the list.”

This perspective ties directly into the Missing 411 phenomenon, the thousands of unexplained disappearances in North America’s national parks and wilderness areas. Researcher David Paulides, a former police investigator and close friend of Carpenter’s, has spent more than a decade compiling these cases. The patterns are chilling: people vanish without a trace, often leaving behind neatly arranged clothing or possessions, sometimes reappearing dead in areas that had already been thoroughly searched. Weather, terrain, and predators can’t account for the sheer number of anomalies.

Paulides mapped “cluster zones” of disappearances across the continent. Some of the most active are places steeped in both natural beauty and paranormal lore: Yosemite National Park in California, Crater Lake in Oregon, the Great Smoky Mountains along the Tennessee/North Carolina border, and Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. These regions share rugged terrain, deep caves, and long histories of indigenous legends about otherworldly beings.

While Paulides has always stopped short of naming a single culprit, his research repeatedly points to something more than accidents or foul play. Among the possibilities, he has floated Bigfoot as a key player because it is an intelligent, powerful being with abilities beyond human understanding. Carpenter’s evidence of portals and supernatural qualities dovetailed with this idea, suggesting that Sasquatch might not just be an elusive primate but a creature capable of moving in and out of our reality. For those who see the overlap, Missing 411 is not only about human disappearances but also about encounters with beings that share the wilderness with us, such as the Bigfoot phenomenon that Carpenter dedicated his life to studying.

A Spiritual Battle

The deeper Carpenter went, the more convinced he became that Bigfoot was not simply a zoological mystery but a spiritual one.

“This is not a pastime. This is a spiritual being. When you open yourself to it, you open yourself to spiritual warfare.”

Carpenter never set out to be a prophet of the paranormal, but his path led him into a mystery that defied biology and crossed into the realm of the supernatural. His work left behind evidence, stories, and warnings that Bigfoot is not just an ape, but something entangled with ancient powers.

In his final years, Carpenter faced the very battles he had long warned others about. The strange phenomena he spent decades documenting seemed to turn inward, manifesting as spiritual oppression, sleepless nights, and a heavy sense of being pursued. Friends recalled how he spoke of attacks that weren’t merely physical but psychological and spiritual: the kind of warfare described in scripture as coming from “principalities and powers.” For Carpenter, the line between research and personal cost blurred; the entities he had studied were no longer distant mysteries but forces pressing against his own life.

His son believes that, in the end, God lifted the hedge of protection (a biblical phrase for divine safeguarding). Not as punishment, but as mercy, releasing Carpenter from the relentless fight and bringing him home.

His legacy remains one of courage and conviction: to look unflinchingly at the unknown and to remind others that what walks in the forests may not simply be flesh and blood, but part of a deeper, spiritual war. For his family, the lesson is clear: do not seek these beings lightly.

Carrying the Legacy

Scott Carpenter’s son never intended to follow in his footsteps. He wanted to be a survival expert, not a Bigfoot researcher. But, as he put it:

“God said, ‘Nope. You’re not going to sit on the sidelines. You’re going to talk about me, and Bigfoot is the way you’ll do it.’”

Now, through the Sasquatch Awareness Project and his survivalist channel, Tarp1616, he carries forward his father’s mission: warning others that Bigfoot is real, but not in the way they have been conditioned think about it.

The story of Scott Carpenter sits at the crossroads of science, faith, and the supernatural. His evidence, from DNA to video to eyewitness accounts, forces us to consider whether Bigfoot is a relic hominid, a hybrid, or something that slips through portals from another realm. Whatever the answer, one truth remains: to pursue Bigfoot is to enter into a world of spiritual warfare.

[1] Nephilim In Tennessee, Portals, & Abnormal Settlers w/ Travis Carpenter, Six Sensory Podcast, Aug 23, 2025

America’s Freemasonic Roots and the Hidden Rise of Tantra

mim

The United States was founded as a nation with Christian underpinnings. Though explicitly rejecting a state church, the culture, law, and moral sensibilities of the early colonies were undeniably rooted in European Christianity. The Puritans brought Calvinism to New England, Anglicans established themselves in the South, and Catholic missions flourished in Spanish-controlled territories such as California and the Southwest. Later waves of immigration brought Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists who carved out religious strongholds across the Midwest and South.

By the 19th century, the so-called “Bible Belt” had emerged in the South, Methodism had spread explosively through revivalism, and Catholicism had grown with Irish and Italian immigration. By the mid-20th century, America was demographically and culturally a Christian nation. According to Gallup polls from the late 1950s and early 1960s, more than 90% of Americans identified as Christian, with the largest groups being Protestants (roughly 70%) and Catholics (about 25%).

The Cultural Explosion of the 1960s

Then came the 1960s, a decade that tore through old structures. The Vietnam War, the civil rights struggle, the sexual revolution, psychedelic experimentation, and anti-establishment sentiment all converged. The cultural consensus rooted in old forms of Christianity began to fracture. Simultaneously, the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) radically reformed Catholicism, introducing liturgical changes, opening the Church to interreligious dialogue, and softening the rigid boundaries between Catholic identity and “the other.” For the first time in history, the Catholic Church officially entertained the possibility that truth could exist outside its walls. This, in turn, prepared the ground for interfaith openness and even syncretism.

At the same time, young Americans disillusioned by the war machine were searching for new sources of peace and meaning. Buddhism, with its emphasis on compassion, nonviolence, and meditation, arrived at exactly the right moment. For the counterculture, it offered a path to peace and love in stark contrast to the devastation of the Vietnam War.

Gurus, Lamas, and the Tibetan Diaspora

The timing was uncanny. In 1959, Tibet fell to the Chinese Communist takeover, and a vast exodus of Tibetans fled into India and Nepal. Among the refugees were lamas who carried tantric teachings preserved for centuries in their monasteries. In the late 1960s and 1970s, the first wave of Western seekers, hippies from the US and Europe, traveled to India and Nepal, encountering these masters in exile. For the Tibetans, these were years of profound trauma, dislocation, and cultural upheaval. For the Westerners, it was a spiritual gold rush.

Out of this strange meeting of East and West emerged the first Tibetan Buddhist centers in America. By the mid-1970s, figures such as Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and the 16th Karmapa had established institutions across the country, often structured exactly like churches: religious nonprofits with tax-exempt status, complete with community rituals, hierarchies, and devotional practices. The Dalai Lama’s influence would come slightly later, after his first U.S. visit in 1979. Scores of young Americans, many from Christian families, converted to Tibetan Buddhism, convinced they had found something far superior to the “hollow faith” of their parents.

The Hidden Face of Tantra

Buddhism, in its ethical and philosophical dimensions, does indeed share much with Christianity such as compassion, ethical restraint, and renunciation of greed and hatred. But hidden within the Tibetan stream lies tantra, a system of occult practices and magical invocations that have no basis in the teachings of the historical Buddha. Instead, they represent a grafting of Indian tantric traditions onto Buddhism. Tibetan shamanic practices were also woven into the mix—rituals of spirit invocation and magical rites—which only reinforced the occult dimension and pushed the system even further from the teachings of the historical Buddha.

Some early Tibetan teachers in the West even made cryptic statements hinting at the true nature of their teachings. One unsettling quote, difficult to substantiate, yet chilling in its cynicism, was attributed to a Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhist master: “Satan is Vajra Jesus.” Indeed, after decades of immersion, it became clear to me that “Vajra” is not merely a symbol of indestructibility as is taught, but a coded reference to occult power, Satanic at its core. The genius of the system lies in its camouflage: cloaked in the ethics of Buddhism, the darker currents of tantra flow undetected.

Tibetan Buddhism and Freemasonry: A Parallel

The comparison with Freemasonry is instructive. Many of America’s Founding Fathers were Freemasons, and while the fraternity appeared on the surface to be a benevolent society, its higher degrees revealed allegiance to Lucifer.* At the lower levels, members encountered moral lessons and fraternity; only later, through oaths and initiations, was the deeper reality disclosed.**

Tibetan Buddhism operates in a strikingly similar way. Entry-level students learn meditation, ethics, and compassion. Only after deeper commitment, vows, and initiations are they gradually exposed to tantric practices: rituals involving wrathful deities, consorts, and occult visualizations. By then, they are bound by vows and loyalty to their teachers.

Full Circle: From Freemason Roots to Tantric Fruits

In this light, the embrace of Tibetan Buddhism in America seems less like an alien import and more like a continuation of an esoteric undercurrent already present in the nation’s DNA. The United States, born with strong Christian roots but also intertwined with Freemasonic structures, has become fertile ground for tantric infiltration. Just as Freemasonry concealed its Luciferian essence under a philanthropic veneer, Tibetan Buddhism cloaks its demonic core under Buddhist compassion.

The cultural revolution of the 1960s cracked open the shell of Christianity in America. Into that breach poured the lamas and their tantric systems. What appeared to be a message of peace and healing, at precisely the moment of American disillusionment, carried with it an occult agenda. In that sense, the story of tantra in America is not just about East meeting West, but about a deeper pattern repeating itself: a hidden, Luciferian tradition resurfacing under new guises.

*Not every Freemason engages in satanic practices, or even knows about that aspect of it. It is only at the 33rd degree and beyond that initiates are allegedly confronted with a Luciferian element. This is somewhat like the staged vows and initiations of Tibetan Buddhism that lead beyond basic Buddhism into communion with a pantheon of tantric gods that are not merely symbols or archetypes. Each level of Freemasonry opens the way to higher oaths and allegiances, ultimately directed toward Lucifer and other demons.

**While many of the Founding Fathers were Freemasons, probably some of them really did have noble intentions and wanted to make Washington, D.C. a kind of beacon of light. But there were very deep, dark, hidden forces that lurked within Freemasonry.

Between Mount Athos and the Ashram: An Exploration of Deception and Deliverance

mim

In 2008, the Holy Monastery of Saint Arsenios on Mount Athos published The Gurus, the Young Man, and Elder Paisios.¹ It tells the true story of a young Greek man whose hunger for spiritual depth led him from the monasteries of Athos to the ashrams of India, where he fell under the sway of a Hindu guru. This book resonated with me because it mirrors the restlessness of many modern seekers. It traces the arc from yearning for authentic experience, through dangerous detours into counterfeit light, and finally to deliverance through Christ. That theme, the need for discernment in a world of spiritual seductions, is central to my own story and to the explorations I share.

The First Encounter with Elder Paisios

The young man first encountered Elder Paisios on Mount Athos, the spiritual heart of Greek Orthodoxy. Athos is not simply a monastic peninsula but a living continuation of the desert fathers, a land saturated with centuries of prayer. Elder Paisios was already known as a man with the profound gifts of clairvoyance, discernment, and love. At the heart of Orthodoxy, he explained, lies the invocation of the name of Christ: “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.”² This is not a spiritual technique but a cry from the heart. As Paisios emphasized, “With the name of Christ we experience divine Grace, divine illumination, and union with God.”³

Life on Mount Athos

Mount Athos rises from the Aegean like a fortress of prayer. Approaching by boat, pilgrims see monasteries clinging to cliffs, their domes catching the morning sun. Bells toll at dawn, summoning monks from their cells to the katholikón, the central church. Inside, the air is heavy with incense; oil lamps flicker before icons blackened with centuries of smoke. The chanting is slow and unhurried, carrying the words of the Psalms like waves rolling in from the sea.

The rhythm of Athonite life is simple but relentless. To walk its paths is to feel the weight of prayer, as if the very stones are steeped in the remembrance of God. When the young man would meet Elder Paisios in his cell at Panagouda, he encountered not pomp or grandeur but humility. The elder sat on a rough stool, his clothes patched, his face lined with suffering yet radiant with joy. Paisios was accessible, direct, and utterly unpretentious. His authority did not come from outward spectacle but from the depth of grace shining through him.

Despite these encounters, the young man was restless. His desire for spiritual experience drew him beyond Orthodoxy and into Hinduism in India.

Life in the Ashram

India overwhelmed his senses. It was a riot of bright colors and potent scents. Bells clanged rhythmically at dawn, mingling with the chant of myriad voices repeating mantras. Bare feet shuffled across dusty courtyards as disciples hurried to gather at the feet of the guru, who sat elevated on a dais draped in silk and garlands of marigolds. The air around him was charged with expectancy.

Daily life in the ashram followed ritual precision. Before sunrise, disciples bathed in cold water, then filed into meditation halls where they repeated mantras by the thousands. Each syllable, they believed, vibrated with cosmic energy. The guru’s followers bowed low, sometimes lying full-length on the ground, convinced that to touch even the dust beneath his feet was a blessing.⁴ His faintest smile was received as a gift, his disapproval a knife wound.

The guru’s teachings promised transcendence. He insisted that the repetition of mantras would dissolve the ego and merge the self into the divine. He was not merely a teacher but the embodiment of truth itself. Service was considered worship: cooking his meals, arranging his seat, or waving fans before him was thought to create conditions conducive to liberation. At first, the young man was drawn in by the atmosphere of devotion and the apparent serenity of the disciples. The charged rituals, intense and mystical, seemed to hum with power.

Yet Elder Paisios had already warned him: “The invocation of the name of any other god apart from Christ is communion with demons. The person who invokes that name calls upon the demon corresponding to it and is possessed by it.”⁵ What seemed like nectar would prove to be poison.

Paisios explained that deceptive energies imitate grace: “They give a sweetness, a supposed peace, but afterwards they bring turmoil.”⁶ This was the young man’s experience. The chants that once filled him with calm soon unsettled him. His thoughts scattered, his dreams grew dark, and the guru’s gaze, once a source of comfort, became suffocating. The ashram that had promised freedom now felt like a dangerous place.

The Return to Mount Athos

When the young man finally returned to Athos and told Paisios everything, the elder spoke with clarity. “In Orthodoxy we have the invocation of the name of Christ. With it we experience illumination and union with God. All other invocations, all other names, apart from Christ, lead to deception.”⁷

Paisios prayed for him, invoking Christ. In that moment, the torment that had hounded the young man since the ashram lifted. He felt the peace of God return, and the tormenting voices were silenced. What the guru’s gaze and mantras had invoked, the simple name of Jesus restored.

Why It Resonates

This story mirrors my own path. Like the young man, I wandered away from Christ into Eastern occult traditions that promised transformation through techniques such as deity yoga, mantra repetition, and breath manipulation. The initial sweetness was very real followed by years of difficulties alternating with mystical heights, but all of that led to demonic possession by entities I once thought were buddhas.

In a world where esoteric practices are commonplace, Paisios’s warnings are urgent. Many today seek mystical experiences, but as Elder Paisios said, “Grace brings deep humility, contrition, tears, and love for Christ.”⁸ The counterfeit, by contrast, produces disturbance and bondage. The young man’s deliverance is not his story alone; it is a caution to the world that spiritual deceptions come at a terrible price.

Notes

  1. Dionysios Farasiotis, The Gurus, the Young Man, and Elder Paisios, trans. and adapted by Hieromonk Alexis (Trader), ed. Philip Navarro (Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2011).
  2. Farasiotis, The Gurus, the Young Man, and Elder Paisios, chap. 3.
  3. Farasiotis, The Gurus, the Young Man, and Elder Paisios, chap. 4.
  4. Farasiotis, The Gurus, the Young Man, and Elder Paisios, chap. 5.
  5. Farasiotis, The Gurus, the Young Man, and Elder Paisios, chap. 4.
  6. Farasiotis, The Gurus, the Young Man, and Elder Paisios, chap. 4.
  7. Farasiotis, The Gurus, the Young Man, and Elder Paisios, chap. 4.
  8. Farasiotis, The Gurus, the Young Man, and Elder Paisios, chap. 4.

The Question of the Soul: Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism

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The question of what the soul is, whether it exists, and what happens to it after death lies at the center of the world’s major religious traditions. Christianity, especially in its Catholic tradition, affirms the soul as eternal and God-given. Hinduism has multiple schools, often affirming an eternal self or ātman. Buddhism, including Tibetan Buddhism, rejects the idea of a permanent self or soul and instead speaks of mind and consciousness as a conditioned stream of awareness without enduring essence.

The Christian and Catholic Understanding of the Soul

Christianity teaches that every human being has a unique, immortal soul created by God. According to Catholic doctrine, the soul is the spiritual principle of the human person. It is eternal in destiny, surviving bodily death, and directed either toward communion with God or separation from Him.

Scriptural sources include Genesis 2:7, where God breathes life into Adam and he becomes a living soul [1]; Matthew 10:28, where Jesus warns of the danger of losing the soul [2]; and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which affirms that the soul is created by God and immortal [3]. In this view, the soul is not an impersonal principle but a personal identity, judged and redeemed by God.

Hindu Views on the Self (Ātman)

Hinduism is diverse, but most of its classical schools affirm the existence of ātman, the true self. The Chandogya Upanishad teaches “tat tvam asi” (you are that), affirming the identity of the self with Brahman [4]. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad declares, “This self (ātman) is indeed Brahman” [5]. The Bhagavad Gita teaches that the self is eternal and indestructible [6].

Distinguishing Hindu and Christian Concepts

Both Hindu and Christian traditions speak of something enduring at the core of human existence, but they do so in different ways.

Christianity teaches that the soul is created by God, personal, and accountable before Him. It does not preexist from eternity but comes into being by His will and remains dependent on Him for existence, judgment, and salvation.

In Hindu thought, Advaita Vedānta emphasizes the identity of the self (ātman) with Brahman, dissolving individuality into the absolute. Dvaita and many Bhakti traditions instead teach that the self remains distinct yet eternal, existing in relationship with the divine. In all of these cases, the ātman is uncreated and co-eternal with ultimate reality, not brought into being by God.

Thus, while both traditions sometimes use personal and sometimes abstract language, the Christian soul and the Hindu ātman play very different roles. The soul in Christian theology is a created person before God; the ātman in Hindu philosophy is an eternal essence, whether one with Brahman or distinct in devotion.

The Creator God in Christianity and Hinduism

Christianity affirms one personal Creator God who brings the universe into being from nothing and sustains it in existence.

Hinduism presents a wide range of views. In Bhakti traditions, deities such as Vishnu, Shiva, or Devi are worshiped as supreme creators. Vedānta schools affirm Brahman as the ultimate source, though in Advaita this is not a personal act of creation but the manifestation of māyā. Other schools such as Sāṃkhya and Mīmāṃsā reject a creator altogether, viewing the universe as self-arising.

Thus, while Christianity grounds the soul in a personal God who creates and judges, Hindu thought ranges from devotion to a personal creator to cosmologies where no creator is necessary.

Buddhist Rejection of the Soul

Buddhism arose in part as a rejection of the Hindu doctrine of ātman. In the Anattalakkhana Sutta, the Buddha declared that none of the five aggregates of existence constitute a self [7]. The doctrine of anātman (no-soul) became central.

Mind and Consciousness

In Tibetan Buddhism, mind and consciousness are viewed as a stream of awareness, conditioned by karma. The Abhidharma-kośa describes consciousness as momentary and dependent [8]. Unlike Christianity and Hinduism, which affirm an eternal principle (soul or self), Buddhism denies it, calling belief in permanence a delusion.

Yet questions arise. If there is no soul, then what suffers in the hell realms described in Tibetan texts? The Bardo Thödol warns of the horrors of the Vajra Hell, a realm said to be utterly without escape [9]. The Hevajra Tantra declares that those who violate tantric commitments “will not be liberated for as many eons as there are atoms in the universe” [10]. The Cakrasaṃvara Tantra and later commentaries also teach that breaking tantric vows leads to vajra hells without release [11].

This presents a paradox: if there is no enduring self, who is suffering eternally?

Tibetan Buddhist Schools Under Examination

Madhyamaka – Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā argues that all phenomena, including the self, are empty of inherent existence [13]. But if the self is an illusion, how does karma persist? If Vajra Hell is eternal, how can something that does not exist suffer forever?

Yogācāra (Mind-Only) – The Yogācārabhūmi Śāstra introduces ālayavijñāna, the “storehouse consciousness,” which preserves karmic seeds [14]. Though intended to avoid affirming a self, it functions much like one: carrying memory, identity, and karma. Hinduism here provides a comparison: the Bhagavad Gita teaches that the self carries karma through many births [6]. Yogācāra denies the term “soul,” yet reintroduces something strikingly similar. Christianity differs again: not a karmic storehouse, but a personal soul created by God.

Dzogchen (Great Perfection) – Dzogchen teachings, such as the Kunjed Gyalpo (All-Creating King), speak of rigpa, primordial pure awareness that is timeless and luminous [15]. Though Dzogchen denies that rigpa is a soul, the resemblance is striking. If rigpa is eternal, pure, and the ground of all experience, how is this different from what Christians call the soul or Hindus call ātman? The denial seems rhetorical rather than substantive.

Vajrayāna and Deity Possession – Tantric scriptures describe deity yoga, in which practitioners invite deities to merge with them [16]. If there is no self or soul, what exactly is being merged with or possessed?

Conclusion

Across Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism, the question of what endures, what we might call the soul, self, or consciousness, reveals fundamentally different views of human identity. Christianity anchors personhood in a created, immortal soul made by God and accountable to Him. Hinduism envisions an eternal ātman, uncreated and either one with or distinct from the divine. Buddhism, in contrast, denies any enduring essence, seeing the sense of self as a conditioned process. Yet in its Tibetan forms, teachings on karmic continuity, primordial awareness, and tantric transformation often edge back toward affirming something that functions like a self.

From long immersion in both Catholic and Tibetan Buddhist traditions, I have come to believe that the Christian vision alone sustains coherence between moral responsibility, continuity of consciousness, and the promise of redemption. It affirms not only that we exist, but that we are known and loved by the One who created us. Against the shifting alternatives of an impersonal absolute or an empty stream of awareness, in my opinion, the Christian understanding of the soul remains the clearest expression of what it means to be human before God.

References

[1] Genesis 2:7, The Holy Bible (ESV).
[2] Matthew 10:28, The Holy Bible (ESV).
[3] Catechism of the Catholic Church, Part I, Section Two, Chapter One, Article 1, §366.
[4] Chandogya Upanishad 6.8.7, in Radhakrishnan, S. (trans.), The Principal Upanishads.
[5] Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4.4.5, in Olivelle, P. (trans.), The Early Upanishads.
[6] Bhagavad Gita 2.20, in Zaehner, R. (trans.), The Bhagavad-Gita.
[7] Anattalakkhana Sutta (Samyutta Nikaya 22.59), in Bhikkhu Bodhi (trans.), The Connected Discourses of the Buddha.
[8] Vasubandhu, Abhidharma-kośa.
[9] Bardo Thödol (Tibetan Book of the Dead), in Evans-Wentz, W.Y. (ed.).
[10] Hevajra Tantra, Snellgrove, D.L. (trans.), The Hevajra Tantra: A Critical Study.
[11] Cakrasaṃvara Tantra, in Tsuda, S. (trans.), The Samvarodaya Tantra.
[12] Hevajra Tantra, ibid.
[13] Nāgārjuna, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, Kalupahana, D.J. (trans.).
[14] Yogācārabhūmi Śāstra, Xuanzang (trans.).
[15] Kunjed Gyalpo (All-Creating King), in Namkhai Norbu (trans.), The Supreme Source.
[16] Cakrasaṃvara Tantra and Hevajra Tantra, ibid.

Lin Kai’s: “Meanings of Violence in Tibetan Buddhism”

mim

In his essay Meanings of Violence in Tibetan Buddhism, Lin Kai develops themes first raised by Elliot Sperling: Tibetan Buddhism has never been simply the peaceful, pacifist tradition imagined in Western romantic projections. Both history and ritual demonstrate how violence was woven into Tibetan religious and political life¹, continuing into the present. As Kai underscores, and as Sperling noted before him, both Western interpreters and Tibetan voices have often gone to great lengths to overlook or obscure this troubling facet of Tibetan Buddhism.

Kai highlights how rulers, including the Fifth Dalai Lama, relied on military force to consolidate power and punish rebellion. As Sperling documented, the Dalai Lama issued explicit orders in the seventeenth century to annihilate enemies, words that expose a stark contrast to the modern image of Tibet².

The Fifth Dalai Lama’s commands were phrased in brutal, almost ritualistic terms:

Make the children and grandchildren like eggs smashed against rocks;
Make the servants and followers like heaps of grass consumed by fire;
In short, annihilate any traces of them, even their names.²

This edict was aimed at other Tibetan Buddhists, mind you. Amidst such warfare, Kai notes, not all monks accepted this with ease. Some were unsettled by the amount of time and resources demanded for war rituals, though few dared openly resist their lamas. A particularly striking passage from the Fifth Dalai Lama’s autobiography shows him wrestling with his own position as a Buddhist leader at war. He recounts the following dream:

“Looking through an open window on the eastern side of the protector-chapel, stood the treasurer [Sonam Rabten] and a crowd of well-dressed monks with disapproving looks. Shoving the ritual dagger into my belt, I went outside. Thinking that if any of those monks said anything, I would strike him with the dagger, I walked resolutely straight through them. They all lowered their eyes and just stood there. When I awoke, my illness and impurities had been completely removed; not even the slightest bit remained. I was absolutely overflowing with amazement and faithful devotion.” — Fifth Dalai Lama¹

This moment captures the tension at the heart of Tibetan statecraft: the bodhisattva ideal of compassion colliding with the felt necessity of violence. Kai also emphasizes ritual violence, where wrathful deities and fierce imagery symbolize the annihilation of obstacles to enlightenment. These practices were not simply symbolic. They paralleled real political campaigns, where violent suppression against human beings was justified as protecting the Dharma¹.

Western audiences, however, have often distorted this history. Kai argues that Orientalist fantasies, especially those that cast Tibet as a timeless land of peace, obscure the record of blood and retribution¹. Sperling made the same point, noting how the Dalai Lama’s reputation as a Nobel Peace laureate stands in sharp tension with the historical evidence².

“Violence in Tibetan Buddhism cannot be neatly categorized as either barbaric or compassionate. It exists within a worldview where wrathful action and compassion may coincide, depending on context and intent.” —Lin Kai¹

In this worldview, compassion and violence were not opposites. Wrathful action could be seen as alright when it was thought to protect the Dharma or eliminate obstacles, even human ones. What emerges, then, is a very complicated and unsettling picture: violence was not an exception but an integral part of Tibetan Buddhist practice.

Kai’s work reinforces Sperling’s warning: if we want to understand Tibetan Buddhism as it is, rather than as we wish it to be, we must confront the ways in which violence was and still is sacralized within the tradition.

This type of linga resembles one depicted in the Secret Visions of the Fifth Dalai Lama, a visionary autobiography. It shows two figures to be ritually ‘liberated’ or killed, typical of effigies used in Tibetan Buddhist rites against so-called ‘enemies of the dharma.’ Such effigy sacrifices remain part of Tibetan Buddhist ritual practice today.

Footnotes

¹ Lin Kai, Meanings of Violence in Tibetan Buddhism, Substack, 2025.
² Elliot Sperling, Orientalism and Aspects of Violence in the Tibetan Tradition, Info-Buddhism, 2004.

Truth Behind the Myth: Violence in Tibetan Buddhism

mim

In his article Orientalism and Aspects of Violence in the Tibetan Tradition, Elliot Sperling uses the term Orientalism in the sense made famous by Edward Said. It describes how Western scholars, writers, and media have often portrayed Asian and Middle Eastern societies in ways that are exotic, stereotypical, and distorted (Sperling 2001, p. 317). [1]

In this context, Elliot Sperling is pointing out that Tibet, especially Tibetan Buddhism, has been framed in the West not as a complex, politically active society but as a mystical and pacifist Shangri-la (Sperling 2001, p. 318). That romanticized portrayal fits the Orientalist mold because it projects Western fantasies and agendas onto a culture instead of showing it in its full, often messy, historical reality.

Here, Orientalism is not just about misunderstanding or stereotyping. It is about how those misconceptions feed into selective histories, in this case downplaying or erasing the tradition’s capacity for political maneuvering, power struggles, and violence.

It is important to cut through the sugar-coated narratives about Tibetan Buddhism as an always peaceful, otherworldly faith. Historian Elliot Sperling, a top authority on Tibet and China history, attempts to do this in his essay. He shreds the romanticized “compassionate lama” image and reintroduces the messy, political, and yes, violent realities of Tibetan history (Sperling 2001, p. 320).

  • Tibetan Buddhism was not pacifism incarnate. Sperling points out that the Fifth Dalai Lama did not shy away from military force when Gelugpa interests were on the line in the 17th century. In the early 20th century, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama actively sanctioned armed resistance against Qing forces in Lhasa (Sperling 2001, pp. 323–324).
  • Modern Western portrayals have softened the truth. The prevailing global image of Tibetan Buddhism, as inherently gentle, infallibly peaceful, and untouched by politics, is largely a product of Western assimilation and the Tibetan exile community’s framing of their own image (Sperling 2001, pp. 317–318).

Why It Matters

If you are buying into the “peace only” ideal, Sperling’s essay demands reconsideration. He forces you to recognize Tibetan Buddhism as a tradition entwined in power and violence when necessary (Sperling 2001, p. 317). The strident idealism selling Tibet as a spiritual Shangri-la does not hold up under scrutiny. In 1660, the Fifth Dalai Lama faced a rebellion in Tsang. Declaring he acted for the good of the people in the region, he issued uncompromising orders for the complete destruction of his enemies, men, women, children, servants, and property, leaving no trace of them. This directive, written in his own hand, reveals a leader willing to use extreme military force to secure his government’s power, a stark contrast to the modern image of the Dalai Lama as an unshakable symbol of peace.

[Of those in] the band of enemies who have despoiled the duties entrusted to them:
Make the male lines like trees that have had their roots cut;
Make the female lines like brooks that have dried up in winter;
Make the children and grandchildren like eggs smashed against rocks;
Make the servants and followers like heaps of grass consumed by fire;
Make their dominion like a lamp whose oil has been exhausted;
In short, annihilate any traces of them, even their names (Sperling 2001, p. 325).

This brutal passage, is a powerful and chilling indictment. It underscores the darker potential within any ideology. When power, anger, or fear take hold, even so-called peaceful spiritual traditions can sanction annihilation. Sperling’s work reminds us to stop buying into the marketing of Tibetan Buddhism as a compassionate, peaceful idyll. His historical analysis and the many examples of tantric annihilation rituals used against human targets says otherwise. It is time to drop the myth and acknowledge the tradition for what it truly is: a living, political, and sometimes violent force (Sperling 2001, p. 329).

  1. Elliot Sperling, “Orientalism and Aspects of Violence in the Tibetan Tradition” (2001), info-buddhism.com, originally published in Imagining Tibet: Perceptions, Projections, & Fantasies, ed. Thierry Dodin and Heinz Räther, Wisdom Publications. Available at: https://info-buddhism.com/Orientalism_Violence_Tibetan_Buddhism_Elliot_Sperling.html

When Devotion Becomes a Cage: Abuse in the Guru–Disciple Relationship

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Based on Mary Garden’s article “The Potential for Abuse in the Guru-Disciple Relationship,” Cult Recovery 101

“No amount of evidence, nor the quality of it, will serve to un-convince the true believer. Their belief is something they not only want, they need it.” –James Randi

For decades, the Western imagination has romanticized the guru-disciple relationship: the wise, enlightened master guiding the humble seeker toward liberation. Yet beneath the rosy image lies a power dynamic that can turn toxic, even violent. Mary Garden’s searing account strips away the mystique, showing how devotion can be exploited to serve the ego, desires, and domination of the so-called spiritual elite.

A Pattern Hidden in Plain Sight

The dynamics Garden describes are not confined to Hindu ashrams or Indian gurus. They echo almost perfectly the same mechanisms of control found in certain strains of tantric practices within Tibetan Buddhism. These are systems where teachers are often elevated to godlike status and obedience is framed as the fast track to enlightenment. In both cases, devotion becomes a weapon that protects the guru from scrutiny, while binding the disciple to them even in the face of blatant harm.

Surrender Without Safeguards

Garden recalls her own journey in the 1970s, moving between ashrams in search of enlightenment. She describes the intoxicating joy of initiation, the chants, the sense of belonging, and the ecstatic highs that felt like spiritual transformation. But once she became a guru’s favored consort, the darkness emerged. The same man who preached divine wisdom alternated between seduction and brutal rage, even physically assaulting others in her presence. At one point she became pregnant by him and he blamed her for it and forced her to have an abortion.

The culture of total surrender made resistance almost unthinkable. Cruelty was reframed as a test of faith, abuse as a blessing, and every whim of the guru as cosmic law. The environment rewarded silence and punished doubt. Those who questioned were shamed, isolated, or cast out.

How Control Works

Her experience, echoed in countless other testimonies, reveals the common mechanics of spiritual exploitation:

  • Deification of the teacher silences doubt and criticism
  • Induced dependency through mystical highs and identity fusion
  • Rationalized harm presented as discipline or “divine play”
  • Social entrapment that makes leaving a spiritual, financial, and emotional crisis

The Cost of Leaving

Breaking free meant dismantling not only her faith in the guru, but also her connection to the community, the esoteric practices, and the sense of higher purpose she had built her life around. Even after witnessing violence firsthand, many of her peers remained loyal, their belief immune to any evidence of harm.

Lessons for the Seeker

Garden’s testimony is not a blanket condemnation of spiritual practice. It is a warning: any system that demands unquestioning obedience to a single human being, no matter how radiant their smile or lofty their words, contains the seed of abuse. Without discernment and the freedom to question, devotion can slide into bondage.

In her closing words, Garden writes, “The guru-disciple relationship is probably the most authoritarian of all in its demands for surrender and obedience. Hence it can be the most destructive. Far from achieving the enlightenment and freedom that many of us ‘wannabe’ spiritual pioneers of the 1970s sought and were promised, we experienced mental imprisonment and confusion. We were seduced by yogis and swamis telling us what we wanted to hear: that we were special and that they were God incarnate. Our need was our downfall. And if we escaped, we often carried lingering doubts: Was it just me? Did I fail? Did I give up too soon?”

Source: Mary Garden, The Potential for Abuse in the Guru-Disciple Relationship, Cult Recovery 101. Read the original article here.

Yamantaka and the Truth About Violent Rituals in Tibetan Buddhism

mim

The following is based on Aleksandra Wenta’s article “Tantric Ritual and Conflict in Tibetan Buddhist Society: The Cult of Yamāntaka” (2022).

Public perception paints Buddhism as the ultimate religion of compassion. The Dalai Lama’s cheerful smile and monks chanting in maroon robes conjure images of peace in the Western imagination. But the historical record tells quite another story, one most Buddhist institutions would prefer to bury. Violent ritual has always had a place in Tibetan Buddhist practice, and the cult of the wrathful deity Yamantaka is one of the clearest examples.

The Deity of Destruction

Yamantaka, whose name means “Ender of Death,” is no serene Buddha. In tantric lore he is a ferocious, multi-headed, weapon-wielding deity invoked to annihilate enemies. These enemies might be inner demons in metaphor, but in many cases they were very real human targets. As Wenta’s research shows, Tibetan Buddhist ritual specialists used Yamantaka rites as deliberate acts of destruction, both spiritual and physical.

Politics and Ritual Warfare

The historical examples are difficult to dismiss. In the ninth century, the Buddhist master Gnubs chen Sangs rgyas yeshes allegedly used Yamantaka magic against King Lang Darma, a ruler seen as hostile to the Dharma. Centuries later, during the political struggles of the seventeenth century, the Fifth Dalai Lama employed Yamantaka rituals to consolidate power over rival factions. These were not fringe experiments, but state-linked religious acts intended to remove opponents.

The reach of these rites went beyond Tibet. The Manchu Qianlong emperor adopted Yamantaka worship to project legitimacy over his subjects, while Mongolian and Japanese traditions incorporated similar ritual violence into their own religious-political frameworks.

Violent Compassion as Justification

Practitioners did not see these rites as morally corrupt. They justified them through the doctrine of “violent compassion,” the belief that killing or harming could liberate an enemy from a worse rebirth. Wenta notes that tantric philosophy, particularly the doctrine of emptiness, was used to argue that concepts like killer or victim do not ultimately exist. In this logic, an enlightened being could commit an act of violence without accruing negative karma.

Ritualized Destruction

From the Mañjuśriyamūlakalpa’s “Ritual Against the Wicked Kings” comes one of the most explicit and brutal examples. The text instructs the practitioner to paint Yamantaka in terrifying form, then perform fire offerings of human blood, flesh, and powdered bone mixed with poisons and toxic plants to unleash plague, famine, storms, and demonic infestations upon the target. The king’s family is to die in sequence: son on the first day, wife and ministers on the second, the king himself on the third, while his court is overrun by flesh-eating spirits and his land struck by drought, fire from the sky, rockfall, and invasion. A human effigy bearing the victim’s birth star in cremation-ground charcoal is trampled during mantric recitation so the enemy dies, goes mad, or is devoured by demons. This is ritualized destruction in its most literal, calculated form.

One section of the same text reads like a manual for calculated devastation. The practitioner is instructed to heap human blood, flesh, powdered bone, poisons, and the roots of deadly plants onto a ritual fire in front of the painted deity. After 1008 offerings, not only is the enemy destroyed, but their family, ministers, and allies are swept away as well. The text promises droughts, plagues, famine, and storms, even fire and rocks falling from the sky, while demonic forces overrun the victim’s court. In some variations, a single datura root is enough to drive the target insane, or a few spoonfuls of spiced offerings can induce fatal fevers within days.

The text also states, “If he wants to kill someone, then having made a puppet (kṛtiṃ) he should write a name: the deity name or a nakṣatra (‘asterism under which the target was born’) using a charcoal of the cremation ground, which should be placed on the ground in front of the paṭa. Standing on [the puppet’s] head with his foot, he should be in a wrathful state, and do the recitation. He (the king) will become overpowered by a major disease, or he will die on the spot. That lord of men will be seized by piercing pains for no apparent reason, or he will be killed by an animal, or he will become crippled. He will be eaten by fierce rākṣasas, and various impure beings that have arisen from non-human birth (kravyādin), pūtanas, piśācas, pretas and the mothers, or he will be killed immediately by his own attendants.” 1

Conflict Inside the Tradition

Even within Tibetan Buddhism, the legitimacy of destructive rituals such as these was contested. Some figures, such as Rwa lo tsā ba, became famous for their wrathful practices but were denounced by peers as frauds or heretics. Reformers like Yeshes ’od tried to curtail the most extreme acts, replacing “live liberation” killings with symbolic substitutes like effigy destruction. But these reforms did not erase the underlying acceptance of ritual violence; they only tamed it for public consumption.

Another Piece of the Puzzle

Wenta’s work adds yet another piece of hard evidence to the growing pile that Tibetan Buddhism has long included practices designed to harm or destroy. These rituals were not simply metaphorical, and they were not limited to obscure sects. They were woven into the political and religious fabric of Tibet and beyond.

For those willing to look past Tibetan Buddhism’s carefully crafted PR image, the cult of Yamantaka exposes a reality in which the language of compassion hid a persistent undercurrent of deliberate harm.

Footnotes

1) Aleksandra Wenta, Tantric Ritual and Conflict in Tibetan Buddhist Society: The Cult of Yamāntaka, in Esimoncini, 19 Wenta CHIUSO, available at https://tibetanbuddhistencyclopedia.com/en/images/0/0b/Esimoncini%2C%2B19_Wenta_CHIUSO.pdf. ↩

Occult Parallels Between Freemasonry and Tibetan Tantric Buddhism

mim

When most people hear the term Freemasonry, they think of an old-world fraternity, moral instruction through symbolism, and discreet handshakes. When they hear Tibetan tantric Buddhism, they imagine serene monks, compassion, and meditation. The public image of both is carefully cultivated, and in both cases, that image obscures a deeper, more esoteric reality.

Layers of Secrecy

Freemasonry is famously structured in degrees. Early initiates learn benign moral allegories; the deeper teachings are said to be revealed only at the highest levels, with rumors persisting about a Luciferian current unveiled around the 33rd degree. Likewise, Tibetan tantric Buddhism presents an accessible outer face, with philosophical teachings and an emphasis on compassionate practices, while reserving its most potent techniques for advanced initiates. These require formal empowerment ceremonies (wangkur) and vows (samaya) that bind the disciple not only to the guru but also to the unseen entities invoked in the practice.

Initiations and Oaths

In both systems, entry into the deeper mysteries requires swearing oaths. In Masonry, the vows historically invoked dire consequences for betrayal, couched in symbolic language. In tantric Buddhism, the initiatory vows carry the threat of karmic ruin, disease, or worse for breaking them. From a critical perspective, these oaths are more than quaint tradition. They function as binding contracts with what practitioners believe are spiritual forces. Those who view the occult with suspicion might identify these forces not as enlightened beings or symbols, but as demonic entities.

Hidden Entities and Magical Practice

Strip away the Buddhist philosophical overlay and Tibetan tantra reveals a highly ritualized form of magic. Complex visualizations, mantras, and mudras serve not merely as meditation aids, but as precise methods of summoning and merging with non-human intelligences. This is not unlike the ceremonial magic that underpins parts of Masonic symbolism, particularly in its higher degrees, where the initiate engages with archetypes, symbols, and names drawn from older mystery traditions. Both traditions cloak these operations in the language of self-improvement and enlightenment, but the mechanics of calling upon unseen forces, entering altered states, and channeling power remain strikingly similar to ancient magical rites.

Shared Roots in Ancient Occultism

Freemasonry draws openly from the Hermetic and Kabbalistic streams of Western esotericism, both of which trace their roots back to the mystery schools of the ancient world. Tibetan tantric Buddhism, though filtered through the Buddhist canon, absorbed elements from pre-Buddhist Bön shamanism, Indian Tantra, and Himalayan spirit-worship. From this angle, both may be considered descendants of the same primordial magical worldview: that reality can be manipulated through ritual, symbol, and alliance with non-physical beings.

The Public Face vs. the Hidden Core

The genius of both systems is their dual-layered structure. The public face draws in seekers with ideals of morality, compassion, and personal growth. The hidden core, accessible only through successive initiations, operates in a world of occult allegory, ritual precision, and spirit interaction. Whether one calls those spirits Buddhas, angels, demons, or archetypes depends largely on one’s interpretive lens. From a Christian lens, it is clear that both systems engage with fallen angels.

Freemasonry and Tibetan tantric Buddhism, at first glance, seem to occupy opposite ends of the cultural spectrum, one a Western fraternal order, the other an Eastern spiritual tradition. Yet both can be read as initiatory magical systems that mask their deeper workings behind an accessible moral or philosophical front. For the uninitiated, this outer layer is all they will ever see. For those who pass through the degrees or empowerments, the real initiation may lie in forging a relationship with the very forces their public image denies. And that is where the parallels become most disturbing.

These similarities are not vague or coincidental. They are structural, symbolic, and functional. Strip away the public image and both systems follow the same blueprint: they lure the seeker with ideals, bind them with oaths, then initiate them into rituals that channel demonic forces. Below is a side-by-side look at how the two traditions mirror each other in startling detail.

Freemasonry vs. Tibetan Tantric Buddhism: Structural & Occult Parallels

AspectFreemasonryTibetan Tantric Buddhism
Outer PresentationFraternal order promoting moral improvement, philanthropy, brotherhoodCompassion-based philosophy, meditation, cultural preservation
Initiatory Structure3 public degrees (Entered Apprentice → Master Mason) followed by higher Scottish Rite or York Rite degrees culminating in the 33rd degreeThree turnings of the wheel of Dharma leading to tantric initiation (Vajrayana), then advanced empowerments and yogas
Vows/OathsOaths of secrecy and loyalty; historical versions included symbolic penaltiesSamaya vows taken during empowerments, with karmic penalties for violation (illness, misfortune, spiritual ruin)
Hidden CurriculumEsoteric symbolism, Kabbalistic and Hermetic philosophy, rituals involving archetypal forcesAdvanced deity yoga, mantra recitation, visualization, and energy-body work aimed at merging with yidams (tutelary deities)
Entities InvokedAllegorical architect figure, angels, and names from older magical traditions; higher degrees hint at Lucifer as light-bearerDeities, protectors, and Buddhas invoked in ritual, often fierce or wrathful forms with clear pre-Buddhist shamanic traits
Magical ToolsCompass, square, tracing boards, symbolic implements; ritual words and gesturesVajra (dorje), bell, mandalas, mudras, mantras, tormas (substitutes for sacrificial offerings), visualized palaces
Source TraditionsHermeticism, Kabbalah, Rosicrucianism, medieval guild ritualBön shamanism, Indian Tantra, Himalayan spirit practices overlaid with Buddhist philosophy
Outer vs. Inner TeachingsPublicly moral, privately esoteric; higher levels teach occult philosophyPublicly compassionate, privately tantric; higher levels teach deity invocation and magical union
Binding MechanismOaths tie member to lodge and brotherhood, reinforced through ritual dramaSamaya ties disciple to guru and the deities invoked, reinforced through ritual visualization and mantra
Potential Root ParallelsMystery schools of antiquity, ritual magic, symbolic initiationsMystery schools of antiquity, ritual magic, symbolic initiations (via Eastern streams)

When we see these parallels laid bare, the comforting illusion of ancient wisdom starts to crumble. The robes and rituals, whether in a Masonic lodge or a Himalayan temple, are not neutral cultural artifacts. They are technology for binding humans to hidden powers, likely demons. Those who hold the keys to these systems know exactly what they are doing. The question is not whether the forces behind them exist, but whether the seeker truly understands who or what is answering when the call is made.