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Does your next-door neighbour make strange noises behind drawn shades late at night? Have you ever seen him wandering across a darkened cemetery dressed in a long robe, carrying a candle? Maybe he is just plain crazy. Then again, maybe he is a member of one of the thousands of secret societies and cults which still flourish everywhere on this haunted planet. If these cults were not a permanent part of the human condition it is highly unlikely that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would have left their footprints on the moon. And it is equally unlikely that we would have been able to watch the event on a screen painted with moving electrons in our living rooms. Many of the true secret cults, are founded upon rites designed to conjure up unearthly entities. Over the centuries various fugitives and defectors from these hidden organizations have published fragments of these rites and beliefs. There are hundreds of fascinating books available which spell out these strange truths. In addition, there is a wealth of so-catled inspired literature purportedly dictated by the entities themselves or produced through automatic writing. The previously mentioned Oahspe is one such book and was typed by a New York dentist, Dr John Ballou Newbrough, in 1880. It is an enormous work, offering a history of the human race plus a complicated cosmology which amazingly has proven to be at least partially valid. It describes, for example, the Van Allen Belt, a belt of radiation encircling the Earth which was not discovered until the advent of man-made satellites. It also contains long chapters describing wwe There are isolated groups of rather paranoid researchers who make a hobby of investigating secret societies. Foremost of these are the superbuffs who believe that a super-secret government runs the entire world. The death rate of these researchers is unreasonably high, so their paranoia is understandable. Factions of the superbuffery overlap into ufology, the John Birch Society, and the assassination investigators. All fringe groups seem to overlap, even though they tend to ignore, and are even opposed to, each other. Each secret society has its own vocabulary and explanations. Each has developed a system of lessons and degrees to educate its members slowly and lead them upwards to their own particular cosmic truth. Some of these organizations are dedicated to the devil and his work. Others are theologically oriented and aim at acquiring a closer relationship with God. The Orient is filled with such groups, ranging from the esoteric cultists in the Himalayas to the secret assassins of Persia and India. Advanced members of some of these groups allegedly possess powers of telepathy and astral projection. The lamas of Tibet are supposed to be able to whip up thought forms and elemental at will through sheer force of mind. The Gipsies have a secretive habit of congregating on isolated hilltops to meet and converse with materializations. The Voodoo rites of Africa and Haiti also call upon such entities. In Voodoo demonic possession seems to be commonplace, and the zombie myths may have a solid basis in fact. Evil entities are supposedly called forth by the feared Voodoo priests to perform sinister deeds. Papa Doc Duvalier, the late President of Haiti, maintained power by fostering the belief CHAPTER THIRTEEN THE SECRET OF THE AGES prehistoric secret societies.