Deciphering the mysteries of The Order of Skull & Bones

Skull & Bones is held by many to be the most powerful organization in America. Variously described as everything from a "college fraternity" to an "occult lodge", President Bush is a member of this group, as his father and uncle are, and their father before them. It seems to be a fundamentally anti-Christian organization, believing in a number of patently anti-Christian principles such as the ideas that "might makes right" and that "true power must depend on confusion, secrecy, deception, ambiguity, and constructive chaos".

One of the most elitist societies in history, Skull & Bones has only inducted about 2,500 members since its founding. At any given time, only about 600 or so members of the Order are alive, who are always among the most powerful men of their generations.

Skull & Bones is steeped in occult symbolism and rituals. New inductees into the organization are ritually placed inside a coffin, chanted over, and then given a robe with occult symbols on it. The meeting place for the group is referred to as "the Tomb," and above the entrance is inscribed: "Who was the fool, who was the wise man, beggar or king? Whether poor or rich, all's the same in death". These words above the entrance reinforce the idea that Skull & Bones is anti-Christian. These words deny the very foundation of the Christian belief, that the afterdeath fate of one man is different from that of the next, depending on the moral quality of each person's life. Without that foundational belief, men are freed to view life as a satanic free-for-all with no consequences to those who lie, cheat, steal, and murder to get ahead, and that is, indeed, precisely the criticism most regularly leveled against the group's members. At the start of every meeting, a bone with the members's name on it is tossed into the bone heap, a tacit reminder of the group's belief that no matter what one does in life, it all ends in death anyway, and the same fate awaits all.

"My senior year, I joined Skull & Bones, a secret society,
so secret, I can't say anything more."
- George W. Bush

Although Bush professes to be a Christian, the central figure in his initiation into Skull & Bones, the social organization he still remains loyal to, was not Jesus, but the devil. The initiation ceremony of The Brotherhood of Death includes one figure dressed like the devil, another in a skeleton costume, and others in robes, who chant the following three-line initiation mantra : "The hangman equals death, the devil equals death, death equals death". Between their death's head symbol, their afterlife-denying credo, and the devil-like authority figure and the (staged?) human sacrifice in their initiation ceremony, there is certainly alot that seems satanic about this group. Inside their crypt-like meetingplace, one finds a pentagram adorning the wall, which, along with the death's head that serves as the symbol of the group itself, would seem to be indications of the true nature of the group. The same "death's head" symbol is used by pirates, poisons, the Nazis, and the "Skull & Bones" organization. Its diabolic symbolism is specifically designed to stir feelings of terror, which is why it appears on bottles of poison and is the chosen symbol of pirates and death squads. It was for this same reason that the death head was once the symbol of Hitler's SS (another group that may or may not just coincidentally also call themselves "the Brotherhood of Death").

The Bonesman of Yale share much more than just the death's head symbol with the SS Nazi elite; they also practice many of the same rituals and recruit their members from the same strata of society. And both groups hail from Germany. Just as the walls of Himmler's SS headquarters were heavily decorated with Nazi symbols and regalia, numerous reports maintain that the walls of the Skull and Bones' meetingplace are also covered with Nazi symbols and regalia, such as swastikas and SS iconography, almost as if it is a Nazi shrine.

Two questions hang over Skull & Bones :

(1) is the Skull & Bones group what it seems, a satanic, evil, anti-Christian organization, or is it just a bunch of frat boys pretending to be so?

(2) is the Skull & Bones group just a group of ordinary men, or is there something supernatural about it?

The study of DivisionTheory may provide us with a unique tool to test these questions. If DT is correct and Jesus' solution to mankind's spiritual dilemma revolved around healing, ending, and/or reversing mankind's inner and outer divisions, then one would have to assume that any truly ANTI- Christian order would seek to achieve the exact opposite, embracing, encouraging, and enlarging those divisions.

And that, unfortunately, seems to be exactly what Skull & Bones is all about. They embrace Hegelian philosophy, which advocates creating and maintaining a state of duality where one side is always able to play off the other. This philosophical approach tends to polarize societies into extremist equal-but-opposite sides that can never arrive at any common ground. America's last Presidential election is a perfect example of this philosophy in action; both candidates were Bonesmen, and they perfectly played their assigned roles of equal opposites. This approach to life, business, and politics is like a pendulum that is purposely kept swinging widely back and forth; each side of the swing receives its own share of power and energy, but there is never any balance for the middle. This approach allows people such as Bonesmen to ride the swinging pendulum of society just like they are surfing a wave, and as long as they always embrace one extreme or the other, they are able to build personal successes and fortunes from the energy that amasses on each side of the swing. In short, Skull & Bones believes that controlled conflict is good for business. But secrecy is essential to successfully create opposing forces and then manipulating them into engaging in a controlled conflict. All this, of course, is at the expense of keeping the societies in which they live in a state of perpetual disequilibrium, always buffeted about by one extreme after another. It is, in short, the recipe for the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. The rich not only keep the poor continuously off-balance and disoriented with this system, but they feed off the swing of the pendulum at the same time, growing stronger and stronger by sapping the strength of the whole like parasites sucking the life out of a defenseless host.

THE MYSTERY OF THE ORDER OF SKULL & BONES

What makes Skull & Bones so important to its members? Bonesmen are fiercely devoted to The Order, and remain steadfastly loyal to upholding its secrets throughout their adult lives, even, we learned during the recent election, at great personal cost. All initiates are sworn to secrecy, and they take this oath very seriously. They are obligated to leave the room if Skull & Bones comes into discussion, and cannot answer any questions on The Order and its organization. Even during their presidential campaigns, Bonesmen George W. Bush and John Kerry refused to break their vows of silence about this secret group.

We outsiders don't know precisely how this level of loyalty is achieved, but we do at least know when it begins. Each member of Skull & Bones is initiated at the same time in their lives, in their Junior year at Yale, just in time to spend their last year there together as "Bonesmen". Whatever it is that, year after year, convinces another group of fifteen spoiled and self-absorbed Yale students to devote the rest of their lives to this organization, it occurs in that single year. Whatever it is that compels this loyalty is far stronger than most of the other things that normally tug on the human heart; marriages and families may come and go, but a Bonesman's loyalty and commitment to The Order is apparently unassailable. Whatever it is that generates this dedication is far more powerful than the normal bonding that occurs in college fraternities. While most frat boys leave their bonds behind as they venture out into the world, Bonesmen do not. Even 20 years after leaving Yale, both Bush and Kerry remained so committed to this group that they chose to risk the 2004 election rather than disclosing Skull & Bones' secrets to the press. Neither would say anything about their memberships in Skull & Bones during their presidential campaigns, even though both of them had relied heavily on The Order in their lives. Kerry married two fabulously rich women who were both relatives of Bonesmen, and Bush repeatedly went to his Bones brothers when he needed money for his business ventures, and has appointed 10 members of Skull & Bones into his administration since becoming President. This is typical. Somehow, The Order inspires a loyalty that borders on fanaticism. Members have even been known to stab their Bones insignia into their flesh while showering or swimming. What could inspire this sort of loyalty?

Some say that the group is nothing more than a bunch of immature sons of America's most powerful families, and that the point of the club is just social bonding. But if so, where does the devout loyalty come from? Juvenile rich kids are not normally associated with personally demanding qualities like loyalty and dedication; on the contrary, they are more commonly portrayed as petty, shallow, and unaccustomed to strenuous effort, perseverence, or self-sacrifice.

INITIATION RITES

Fifteen new members are chosen in their junior years at Yale, but don't start meeting together formally until their senior year. When they are approached with an invitation to join The Order, they must respond with their decision immediately, which leads one to assume that prospective inductees are given some sort of advance notice of the invitation, with some indication of what the group has to offer them, and hopefully some idea of what The Order will require from them in exchange.

Three prerequisites for "Bonesmen" are (A) boarding school, (B) game hunting, and (C) military experience in war, insuring that everyone in the order possesses a common set of experiences, talents, and outlooks on life. They will all have (A) felt abandoned by their loved ones at an early age, and learned to view others as their inferiors; they will have (B) killed innocent creatures considered to be their inferiors; and they will have (C) participated in a group killing of other human beings. If the devil was going to design a curriculum to shape little followers for himself, he probably couldn't come up with a better plan than this.

In order to become members, they must be initiated into the group. These mysterious initiations are often described as being "harrowing". While my dictionary defines this word as "extremely upsetting because connected with suffering", one of the most frequent uses of that obscure term is a religious reference involving hell, and since so much of the symbolism and iconography of Skull & Bones revolves around death and the devil, this connection may be relevant. Scripture tells us that the "harrowing of hell" occurred when Jesus Christ died and descended to preach to the souls in hell before His Resurrection. The story of Christ's descent into Hades is found in both the Acts of Pilate and the Gospel of Nicodemas, two ancient scriptures from the earliest days of Christianity. Why do Skull & Bones members so frequently refer to their initiations with this term "harrowing"?

Their initiation rites are said to be quite strenuous and traumatic. Strange cries, screams, and moans are often heard coming from the Bonesmen's meeting place (which they call "the tomb") during these initiations. While we don't know all the details, their initiation ritual reportedly involves being immersed naked in mud, buried in a coffin, and witnessing a (hopefully staged) human sacrifice.

The initiation rites also involve a rite called "connubial bliss", when all 15 members review their sexual histories with one another in great depth. This communal sexual autobiography reportedly breaks down the psychological defenses of the new initiates, paving the way for a powerful bond to arise between them. Throughout the remainder of their lives, the allegiance they form in that one year is often given first priority, coming before family, friends, career, country, or even God. It is interesting that Bonesmen refer to the ritual that creates these strong ties as "connubial bliss", because this term usually refers to the consummation of a wedding night. Curiously, Bonesmen seem to use confession of their sexual histories as a sort of psychological glue that bonds them together in the same way that a wedding night's sexual consummation bonds a married couple. And considering that they identify so strongly with occult and Satanic rituals and symbolism, it is also curious that Bonesmen refer to their union together as a sort of marriage. In much the same way, Christianity also refers to the union of Christ and the church as a "marriage" between a bridegroom and a bride. Given this apparent parallel, one must ask if the real bonds being formed by this "connubial bliss" ritual is between the fifteen initiates themselves, or between their whole group and some other unnamed entity. Are they, together, a "bride" for some mysterious "bridegroom"?

It may be worth contemplating that forcing a group of college seniors to seriously review their sexual histories with one another would primarily achieve one thing : it would remind them of their unfulfilled needs. It would make them collectively aware that they each feel like they lack something urgently important. They tried to fill these barely-definable psychological needs with physical sex, but in the end sex failed to fill those needs. Now, considering that this ritual would have placed them in a position where they were acutely aware of their unfulfilled needs, it is all the more remarkable that they somehow emerge from these "group therapy" sessions apparently convinced that they have now in fact found, in and through Skull & Bones, what they had been erroneously trying to find via sex and sexual relationships.

These initiation rituals are commonly described as being "intensely, personally important" to Bonesmen, and seem to induce many of the characteristics of an authentic spiritual transformation (even though the spirituality involved may be the polar opposite of that found in Christianity).

On April 14th, 2001, the long-secret initiation rite of Skull & Bones was secretly videorecorded by a team of outsiders using high-tech night-vision equipment to peer into the inner courtyard of the group's meeting place in New Haven. Remarkably, the 2001 report of this initiation rite found its way into the New York Observer . The report described the initiation rite as primarily revolving around two figures, one dressed as the devil, and the other playing the role of George W. Bush. Can it merely be a coincidence that the Bonesmen have designed their initiation rites around these two figures, as if they already view them as belonging uniquely together? Do they view Bush as the devil's Antichrist? The figure dressed as George W. Bush issued death threats to the new initiates while another dressed as the devil commanded them to kiss a human skull while a human sacrifice was being very convincingly acted out. The following description ran on page one of in the 4/23/01 edition of The New York Observer : "The footage was ghostly, it was grainy, but from the angles of the night-vision cams, we were able to piece together a narrative of what happened when the initiates emerged one at a time from the preliminaries inside the Tomb. First they were led forward by a figure in a devil costume. [...] A shrill, menacing and sometimes blood-curdling chorus of cries and screams and imprecations accompanied the emergence: [...] The devil figure pulled them into a white tent in the courtyard [...] When they reemerged from the tent, they were led to the centerpiece of this part of the ritual. Whey were forced face-to-face with a shocking tableau: a guy holding what seemed like a butcher knife, wearing a kind of animal-skin "barbarian" look, stood over what seemed to be a woman covered in fake blood and not much else. The neophyte then approached a skull a few feet away from the knife-wielder-and-victim tableau. The neophyte knelt and kissed the skull, at which point the guy with the knife knelt and cut the throat of the prone figure. "

WEEKLY MEETINGS PRIOR TO GRADUATION

During their senior years, the fifteen new Bonesmen meet together every week at the Yale home of Skull and Bones, a stone building resembling a mausoleum. Members reportedly dine off Hitler's personal china and silverware, enjoying expensive gourmet meals cooked by their own private chef. Why do they eat off Hitler's dishes? On some level, this act must cause them to identify with Hitler, implanting ideas in their unconscious minds like "I have what Hitler had", "I value what Hitler valued", "My hands are touching what Hitler's hands touched", "This fork in my mouth was once in Hitler's mouth," and "I am tasting what Hitler tasted."

During their year together at Yale, Bonesmen call themselves "knights," and call everyone who is not in their organization "barbarians." The term "knight", of course, carries some hefty psychological weight behind it. Since a knight is a soldier sworn to loyal duty to a king, we are left asking "who is their king?" Secret societies are usually like pyramids. They have many members on the lowest levels, higher up they have a smaller number involved in administrative functions, higher still they have a core group, and still higher they usually have a single leader or ideal upon which their attentions are focused and to which their loyalties are promised. What, or who, is the singularity at the top of the Skull & Bones pyramid?

Who indeed? As far back as the 1870's, the organization was publically associated not merely with Satanism or devil-worship, but specifically with the Antichrist. In an editorial, the Yale newspaper the Iconoclast wrote :

And on their breasts they wear a sign
hat tells their race and name
It is the ghastly badge of death
And from his kingdom came
The son of Satan, son of sin
The enemy of man.

The Bonesmen at Yale seem thoroughly preoccupied with death; their group even fancies itself the "Brotherhood of Death". This sort of morbid preoccupation seems completely out-of-place for 20-something college students, most of whom usually act instead as if they were immortal and death did not even exist. But Skull & Bones' crypt-like "tomb" is decorated with innumerable human skulls, bones, skeletons, and the walls are awash in artwork depicting death. A figure dressed as the devil plays a prominent part in their initiation rituals, and Bonesmen even indulge in grave-robbery, stealing the bones of famous dead people to offer as sacrificial gifts to some mysterious figure they call "the goddess in the tomb". Why do they need the skulls of famous dead people, and who is this "goddess in the tomb"? According to numerous reports, George H. W. Bush stole the skull of the famous Indian Geronimo, and when this bizarre act of grave-robbery became public knowledge, the Skull & Bones organization went through quite a lot of trouble to avoid giving it back.

During their year together at Yale, Bonesmen are programmed to desensitize themselves from the world outside of Skull and Bones so they can cease identifying with it. Clocks in their "tomb" are intentionally set five minutes fast to reinforce the sense that the Bonesmen's space is a totally separate reality that is always one step ahead of the rest of the world outside.

I wonder if anyone has ever tried to see what would happen if the Bonemen's "Tomb" was sprinkled with Holy Water?

AFTER GRADUATION

Upon graduation from Yale, each new member of Skull & Bones receives a grandfather clock, and in their annual group photos each new class of Bonesmen are always photographed with a human skull and two crossed thighbones placed prominently in front of them and a grandfather clock prominently placed behind them. The fifteen new members are always posed exactly the same in each new class's photograph, and the clock is always set precisely at 8:00. Since they obviously make a special point to set the clock at the same time in each photo, it seems reasonable to suppose that doing so holds some special significance to them. At 8:00, a clock is exactly 2/3 of the way through its twelve hour cycle. Stated in decimals, 2/3 is .666, or 66.6%.

Why is the grandfather clock apparently so important to them, seemingly as important as the Skull & Bones symbol itself? And is there any significance to the fact that one of these symbols is in front of them and the other is behind them? A grandfather clock, of course, is a symbol of "Father Time". In astrology, "Father Time" is one of the names for the planet Saturn, and of course Satan and Saturn are really the same word, one merely being 'Early Latin' and the other 'Late Latin'. Many artistic depictions of "Father Time" are virtually indistinguishable from that of Satan, showing him wearing a shroud that hides his face and carrying a large scythe to harvest his crop of human souls. In mythology, Saturn was the son of Uranus (Heaven or Sky-Father) and Gaea (Earth-Mother), but Saturn castrated his father, separating Heaven from Earth. Thus it is that Father Time was mythologically credited for doing the same thing that Satan does in the Christian religion : coming between God and man. Given all the other occult and Satanic symbolism Skull & Bones surrounds themselves with at Yale, the prominent placement of a classic symbol of Satan in their class pictures and their graduation gifts cannot be mere coincidence.

Each year, every living member of the group receives a complete list of all the names of all the members. This membership list comes in two black leather-bound volumes, Volume One with the names and personal information of all living members, and Volume Two with the names and personal information of all deceased members. Why do they need a list of dead members? To call themselves "The Brotherhood of Death" is one thing, but to fastidiously update, publish, and distribute a new record of all the dead members of their society each year is quite another. This seems to make no more sense than a town publishing and distributing a second phonebook each year with the names and phone numbers of everyone who had once lived in that town but had since passed on, unless those dead Bonesmen can somehow still be contacted and interacted with. After all, what sort of a "Brotherhood of Death" would it be if they were not, indeed, maintaining fraternal ties with the dead?

If there is no such thing as a devil or an Antichrist, none of this makes any sense, or any difference. But if these legendary beings do exist, then all the bizarre details of Skull & Bones start to add up. And if, as DivisionTheory suggests, the devil is an amalgamation of the souls of the evil dead, for a person to be possessed by the devil would in turn be to possess the means of communicating and interacting with those departed souls, in which case some sort of directory might indeed come in handy.

What could possibly transform a group of self-absorbed, spoiled rich kids into lifelong devotees of a weird occult-leaning organization in less than a single year?

It is said that there are three stages of demonic possession. It starts out as obsession, in which the person's own thoughts start to experience some degree of overlap with the thoughts of another. In the final stage, the two sets of thoughts become one, but this degree of possession cannot occur unless the individual has willingly agreed to accept it. However, that agreement can be tricked out of a person, and once given, is irrevocable. All forms of exorcism are powerless against this level of possession, and depend on the individual having not yet given his consent to being fully possessed. It occurs to me that spoiled rich kids wanting to get into the most elite and powerful social club on the planet could easily be cajoled into granting that permission during the Skull & Bones initiation rituals, especially since they would not believe in it, and would be viewing the whole ritual as an elaborate charade.

But once those initiations are completed, what Bonesmen do with their lives after that suggests that it was no charade at all. Bonesmen regularly reach the heights of human status, power, and achievement; Jesus was offered similar worldly power if He would only worship the devil. While Jesus rejected the offer, there is much about the Skull & Bones organization to make one wonder if the devil has always made this offer to humanity's best and brightest, and indeed, if he might be building an empire for himself in such a fashion.

The creation of a New World Order is reportedly the ultimate goal of the Bonesmen; it is said that they intend to create a world empire ruled by America, which in turn will be ruled by Bonesmen themselves (who in turn are ruled by - - who?). If so, such a design would fit quite nicely into into the Biblical prophecies of the Antichrist, who is supposed to arrive on earth with a world-wide-empire already prepared and waiting for him to assume control over. Of course, throughout much of the last century members of Skull & Bones have dominated the American government, and so it would seem that the Antichrist's empire, based on secrecy and deception, the empire christened "Mystery Babylon" by the Bible, may already be in place.