| Episode number | MB42 (Part 42 of 42 — Series Finale) |
|---|---|
| Original air date | September 20, 1996 |
| Broadcast | Hour of the Time, WWCR shortwave |
| Chapter title | Darkness |
| Primary text read on air | W. Winwood Reade, The Veil of Isis; or, Mysteries of the Druids (1861), opening chapter |
| Time between MB41 and MB42 | Approximately two and a half years (March 1994 to September 1996) |
| Listen | Stream the series on archive.org |
Episode Summary: The Series Finale
Episode 42, titled Darkness, is the concluding broadcast of William Cooper’s Mystery Babylon series. It aired on September 20, 1996, more than two and a half years after the previous episode, MB41. Cooper had announced the series complete at the end of MB41, but MB42 represents a final return to the themes that opened the series in February 1993. Cooper reads from W. Winwood Reade’s 1861 book The Veil of Isis; or, Mysteries of the Druids, which traces the origins and progressive corruption of religion from its earliest, purest form to the elaborate priestly systems that, Reade argues, had by his time utterly replaced the original simple worship of God in nature.
Cooper opens with the series title format and announces the episode is called Darkness. He then begins reading from Reade, and the structure of the broadcast is that of all the earliest Mystery Babylon episodes: Cooper reads aloud from a primary text, pausing to interject his own commentary in his own voice, marked clearly in the transcript by his name. This page summarizes what Cooper says and the argument he develops through his choice of text and interjections. The underlying prose is Reade’s, under copyright until 1861 publication makes it fully public domain; short quotations are used for critical commentary only.
Reade’s text opens with a description of the earliest human religion as a form of wordless gratitude toward a Great Soul animating all nature. Ancient people, Reade writes, worshipped only the sun, the moon, and the stars as visions of the Divine Essence, not as gods in themselves, but as windows onto the one power that ruled earth, sky, and sea. They built no temples, offered no sacrifices, and prayed with hearts full of awe in the open grandeur of the natural world. Cooper interjects that the God these first people worshipped was nature’s God, and he frames this original pure religion as the starting point of the corruption the entire series has traced.
The narrative in Reade’s text then introduces the first agents of religious corruption. Prayer, once spontaneous, fell into a system. Men who had grown wicked turned prayer into petition for material advantage and the destruction of enemies. Those who occupied high places, mountaintops and towers, acquired power over those who could not reach them, and Reade identifies this as the origin of the universal heathen reverence for high places. Cooper interjects: someone came forth from among the people and began to subvert and twist so as to control the others around them. This unnamed figure, represented in the text by the poet-priest Orpheus, taught precepts of obedience and loving-kindness but in doing so acquired power. Others watched Orpheus and envied his influence over the crowd, and they banded together and called themselves priests. Religion, Reade writes, is divine, but its ministers are men. Cooper adds: the idea that imperfect men can rule imperfect men is flawed from the beginning.
The priests taught the people to sacrifice and to worship the sun and moon as emblems of the Divine. They developed a language of symbols, which Reade argues may have been necessary in a pre-literate age but which perplexed the people and drew them away from worship of the one God. Cooper interjects that those symbols are still used upon the sheeple of the world today. The episode’s connection to the series’ central thesis is made explicit here: the same symbols Cooper has been cataloguing throughout Mystery Babylon, in Masonic lodges, in the United Nations meditation room, in the architecture of Washington, are the same symbols these earliest priests developed to mystify and control the uninitiated.
The text moves through the degradation of religion in Egypt, where the sun became Osiris and the moon became Isis, and Reade’s account of the Osiris myth is read at length. Cooper pauses and deliberately substitutes the names Nimrod and Semiramis for Osiris and Isis to read the myth in the version the series has used throughout, and then reads it again with the original Egyptian names. This double reading is Cooper’s way of demonstrating what he has argued since the earliest episodes: that the Osiris-Isis myth and the Nimrod-Semiramis myth are the same story under different names, the foundational myth of Mystery Babylon operating across cultures. The phallus of Osiris, which became a ritual object after the dismemberment of the god, is mentioned in the text; Cooper connects it to the Washington Monument and to Dealey Plaza in Dallas, as he has elsewhere in the series.
The latter part of the episode traces the global spread and progressive corruption of this original religion through India, Greece, Rome, and among the Jewish people. Reade’s text describes each religious tradition as having begun in relative purity and then been corrupted by the avarice and lewdness of its priests until temples became dens of thieves. Cooper interjects that no race, no people, no religion has been exempt from this corruption, and that none of the world’s religions resemble in the slightest what they originally were. This is Cooper’s summation of what the entire series has argued: not that any one religion or secret society is uniquely guilty, but that the corruption of the simple worship of God has been universal, and that the same pattern of priestly manipulation, occult symbolism, and hidden control runs through all of human history.
Cooper closes the episode with a forward-looking passage from Reade describing a land of pristine religious practice, identified as the White Island surrounded by the German and Atlantic seas and the Land of Green Hills, which in subsequent broadcasts Cooper says he will identify as Britain and will explore its ancient Druidic religion. He tells his listeners that religion has absolutely nothing to do with any lost tribe of Israel, and that he will return on some propitious evening to that story. He then closes with his familiar farewell: Good night, ladies and gentlemen, and God bless each and every single one of you.
That promised return never came within the formal Mystery Babylon series. The broadcast of September 20, 1996 is the last numbered episode. It leaves the series open-ended rather than resolved: the corruption of religion has been traced from its origins through the present, but the promised journey to Britain and the ancient Druids remained unbroadcast under the Mystery Babylon heading. Cooper continued broadcasting on the Hour of the Time until his death in November 2001.
What the Series Amounted To: Cooper’s Summary Argument
Across forty-two broadcasts spanning February 1993 to September 1996, Cooper’s series argued the following: that all the world’s major religions, secret societies, political ideologies, and occult movements share a common origin in an ancient Mystery Religion whose symbols and doctrines can be traced from Babylon and Egypt through the mystery schools of Greece, the Templars, the Rosicrucians, and Freemasonry into modern institutions. Cooper argued that this system is not extinct but operational, that it controls world government through interlocking organizations, and that its fundamental doctrine is the worship of Lucifer under various names. Episode 42 does not present new evidence for this thesis; it serves instead as a meditation on why such a system is possible at all. Cooper’s answer, drawn from Reade, is that the manipulation of religion for purposes of control is as old as the first priests, that the symbols used are the same symbols used today, and that the great majority of people, whom Cooper throughout the series calls the sheeple, have never understood what is being done to them. The series ends not with a call to action but with a statement that truth has no mysteries, and that it is deceit alone that lurks in obscurity.
Key Claims Made in This Episode
Cooper’s commentary and argument, developed through his reading of and interjections into Reade’s text, are recorded below. The site records these claims; it does not endorse them. Dated claims also appear in the series timeline.
- Cooper claims, through his reading of Reade, that the earliest human religion was a pure, simple worship of God as the animating force of nature, without temples, sacrifice, or priesthood, and that all subsequent religious history is the story of this pure original being corrupted by priestcraft.
- Cooper claims that the Osiris-Isis myth and the Nimrod-Semiramis myth are identical stories, demonstrating by reading both aloud that Mystery Babylon operates under different names in every culture.
- Cooper claims that the priestly symbols developed in ancient Egypt, including the sun, moon, serpent, bull, and phallus, are the same symbols in use today in Freemasonry, government architecture, and occult organizations.
- Cooper claims that the Washington Monument and the obelisk in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, are representations of the phallus of Osiris, the object Isis fashioned after Osiris was dismembered by Typhon.
- Cooper claims that no religion in the world today resembles what it originally was, and that all have been corrupted by their priests without exception, from Brahmanism and the religions of Greece and Rome to Judaism and modern Christianity.
- Cooper claims that most religious services in the modern world are forms of spiritual consumerism in which the problem presented at the beginning of the hour has been solved by the end and the coffers of the minister have been filled.
- Cooper claims that the ancient religion of Britain has nothing to do with any lost tribe of Israel and promised to reveal the truth of Druidic religion in subsequent broadcasts.
- Cooper uses Reade’s formulation that a religion is lost as soon as it loses its simplicity, and that truth has no mysteries, only deceit lurks in obscurity, as the series’ closing statement of purpose.
Primary Sources Cited in This Episode
| Source | Status | Where to find it |
|---|---|---|
| W. Winwood Reade, The Veil of Isis; or, Mysteries of the Druids (1861); read at length throughout the episode | Public domain (1861 publication) | Search archive.org; also at sacred-texts.com per Cooper’s own reference |
Notable Quotes
Religion is lost as soon as it loses its simplicity: truth has no mysteries — it is deceit alone that lurks in obscurity.
W. Winwood Reade, The Veil of Isis (1861), read by William Cooper on MB42, September 20, 1996
Those symbols are still used upon the sheeple of the world today — the great herd.
William Cooper, MB42, September 20, 1996, interjecting into Reade’s text on the priestly language of symbols
Historians’ View
Reade’s 1861 book is a work of Victorian comparative mythology and anticlerical history. The broad framework Reade uses, tracing the origin of religion to natural phenomena and its degradation to priestcraft, was common among nineteenth-century rationalist writers and predates the academic discipline of the history of religions. His identification of Osiris with Nimrod and the conflation of multiple mythological traditions reflects the comparative mythology of his era; modern scholars of Egyptology and Near Eastern history do not support the equation of Osiris and Nimrod as literally the same figure, and treat the Osiris myth and the Nimrod traditions as historically distinct. Cooper’s interjections connecting the text to present-day institutions, including the Washington Monument as a phallic symbol of Osiris, are his own interpretive additions to Reade’s text. Reade himself makes no claims about Freemasonry, the New World Order, or modern secret societies. Cooper’s closing promise to reveal the true Druidic religion of Britain was never fulfilled in a numbered Mystery Babylon episode. We record all claims as broadcast; we do not endorse them.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Mystery Babylon episode 42 about?
Episode 42 is the series finale, aired on September 20, 1996, more than two years after the previous episode. Cooper reads from W. Winwood Reade’s 1861 book The Veil of Isis; or, Mysteries of the Druids, which traces the corruption of religion from its original pure form to priestcraft and idolatry. Cooper uses the text as a meditation on the central theme of the entire forty-two episode series: that a simple original truth about God was captured by a priestly class and used to control humanity, and that the symbols of that control are still operative today. The episode closes with a promise to address ancient Druidic religion in future broadcasts, a promise that was never fulfilled within the series.
Why did so much time pass between episode 41 and episode 42?
Episode 41 aired March 2, 1994 and Cooper announced it as the last episode of the series. Episode 42 aired September 20, 1996, approximately two and a half years later. Cooper had been continuing to broadcast on the Hour of the Time during this period on other subjects. The transcript does not explain why he returned to the Mystery Babylon format for this single additional episode. The gap and the open-ended close are simply facts of the series’ broadcast history.
What does Cooper conclude the Mystery Babylon series meant?
Cooper does not deliver a formal summary conclusion in episode 42. The episode functions as a meditation rather than a recapitulation. The closest he comes to a summary statement is his use of Reade’s formulation: a religion is lost as soon as it loses its simplicity, and truth has no mysteries, only deceit lurks in obscurity. Throughout his commentary he reiterates the series’ central claim: that the same priestly symbols and the same system of occult control have operated continuously from ancient Babylon to the present day, and that the great majority of people have never understood what is being done to them. The series’ ending is open rather than resolved.
Where can I listen to episode 42?
The full series audio is preserved at archive.org. This site never hosts or distributes the audio; see our content policy.
End of the Series
Episode 42 is the final broadcast in the Mystery Babylon series. William Cooper continued broadcasting on the Hour of the Time until his death on November 6, 2001. The complete episode archive is preserved at archive.org. For the full index of all forty-two episodes, see the Mystery Babylon complete episode guide.
Further Reading: Behold a Pale Horse
Cooper’s 1991 book Behold a Pale Horse remains the written companion to the claims explored across all forty-two episodes of the series — the same bibliography, the same sources, presented in book form. It is the standard starting point for readers who want Cooper’s full argument in one place rather than assembled from broadcast transcripts. View on Amazon. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
Continue the Series
- Previous: MB41: The Occult and the Third Reich Part 3 (Himmler the Mystic)
- Full episode index: Mystery Babylon complete episode guide
- Topic hub: Mystery Schools and Ancient Religion
- Related hub: Luciferian Doctrine and New Age
- Source read in this episode: Mystery Babylon sources hub
- Every dated claim from this episode: series timeline
- Background: Who was William Cooper?
