| Episode number | MB08 (Part 8 of 42) |
|---|---|
| Chapter title | Initiation |
| Original air date | February 24, 1993 |
| Broadcast | Hour of the Time, WWCR shortwave |
| Primary text read on air | A History of Secret Societies by Arkon Daraul (1961) |
| Transcript length | About 7,070 words |
| Listen | Full series audio on archive.org |
Episode Summary
Episode 8 aired on February 24, 1993, and is the first broadcast in the series to shift from tracing the political and religious ambitions of Mystery Babylon to examining its internal mechanism: the initiation ceremony. Cooper reads almost entirely from Arkon Daraul’s A History of Secret Societies, using Daraul’s survey of ancient mysteries to argue that the conditioning of initiates through psychological manipulation is the real secret that the mystery schools have preserved across six thousand years.
The opening frames the subject with Daraul’s observation that the classical mysteries possessed a strange power to attract permanent devotees across Egypt, Greece, India, and Rome, and that historians had previously dismissed this as symbolic teaching or degenerate religion. Daraul’s more disturbing thesis, which Cooper endorses, is that modern research into brainwashing and mind conditioning has revealed what the mysteries actually were: systematic programs for reshaping the beliefs and loyalties of initiates. Cooper draws on Daraul’s citation of psychologist William Walters Sargant’s Battle for the Mind, which Daraul presents as demonstrating that the excitatory drumming, dancing, fasting, terror, and exhaustion common to ancient mystery initiation ceremonies are physiologically identical to the techniques used in modern brainwashing and totalitarian re-conditioning programs. Aristotle, Daraul notes, was exiled for allegedly revealing something of the mysteries, and left behind the observation that initiates do not so much learn anything as experience certain emotions and are thrown into a special state of mind.
Cooper uses this framework to reinterpret everything listeners may have believed about fraternal organizations. If the secret of the mysteries is not symbolic wisdom but a carefully engineered alteration of the mind, then anyone who has been through such an initiation, from ancient Eleusinian candidates to modern Freemasons, has undergone a conditioning process they were not told about. He addresses Freemasons directly mid-broadcast, suggesting their confidence in their own wisdom is itself evidence the conditioning worked.
The second major section covers the Mithraic mysteries at length. Daraul’s account, read with Cooper’s commentary, describes Mithraism as the original sun cult, originating in Persia and spreading through Babylonia, Greece, and the Roman Empire, where it competed with early Christianity for centuries. Cooper interprets the bull in Mithraic iconography through his astrological framework: the first two thousand years of the six-thousand-year cycle of Mystery Religion corresponded to the sun’s position in Taurus, making the bull the exoteric symbol of the period, the same as the golden calf of the Old Testament and the Baal worship of the ancient Near East. The goat then followed as the sun passed through Aries, and Pisces brought the fish symbols that early Christians adopted.
The Mithraic initiation sequence receives detailed treatment. A candidate descended seven steps into an underground cave fashioned to resemble a natural cavern, where he was pursued by priests in animal skins acting as wild beasts and demons, fasted for three days to reach a state of debilitation, and was then lectured on his responsibilities. Central among them was the obligation to call brother only those who had been initiated. Cooper pauses here to relay a personal account: the son of a Freemason he knew told him his father said, when asked why local Masons were persecuting a businessman, that if you are not one of us, you are nothing. The degrees of Mithraic initiation are then described in sequence: Crow, Secret, Soldier, Lion, Persian, Runner of the Sun, Father, Father of Fathers, and at the pinnacle, King of Kings. Cooper observes that this final title has an obvious resonance with Christian scripture.
A passage from the third-century Christian writer Tertullian’s De Corona, preserved in Daraul, records a Christian complaint that the Mithraists put Christians to shame by the fidelity of their initiates. Cooper reads this as evidence that the sun cult’s conditioning program produced its intended result. He then returns to a comment from the Egyptian degree sequence, noting that the initiation ended at a resplendent Temple of Isis, and restates his interpretation: Osiris is the doctrine, Isis is the church, and Horus is the body of illumined initiates.
The broadcast closes with a brief astronomical note. Cooper suggests that the stardust imagery threading through American culture, from George Bush’s Thousand Points of Light speech to the song played as an opening, points back to the morning star. He leaves the identification ambiguous but implies it is the sun itself, the original object of the six-thousand-year Mystery Religion. The initiation material continues to be directly relevant to the secret societies thread and is revisited in episode 13 on Skull and Bones, where Cooper uses Daraul’s initiation descriptions again, inserting George Bush’s name as he reads.
Key Claims Made in This Episode
Documented from the broadcast. The site records these claims; it does not endorse them. Dated claims also appear in the series timeline.
- Cooper claims the secret of the ancient mystery schools was not hidden wisdom or symbolic teaching but a deliberately engineered program of mind conditioning and brainwashing, functionally identical to modern totalitarian reconditioning techniques.
- Cooper claims Aristotle was exiled for allegedly revealing something of the mysteries, and observed that initiates do not so much learn as experience emotions and enter a special plastic state suitable for conditioning.
- Cooper claims the Mithraic cult has a history of over six thousand years, originating in Persia, and is the original sun cult from which more than one present-day secret society is derived.
- Cooper claims the bull in Mithraic and ancient Near Eastern symbolism represented the house of the sun during the age of Taurus, the first two thousand years of the six-thousand-year Mystery Religion cycle, making the Baal worship of the Old Testament and the golden calf the same religion under different names.
- Cooper claims the Egyptian pyramids were never tombs of pharaohs but were from their beginning until the end of their use temples of initiation.
- Cooper claims early Christianity was itself a secret society, and did not require universal open admission to its worship until a church council ruling in AD 692.
- Cooper claims the Mithraic initiation produced the obligation to call brother only those who had been initiated, and quotes a Freemason as telling his uninitiated son that if you are not one of us, you are nothing.
- Cooper claims the highest rank of Mithraic initiation carried the title King of Kings, and that the twelfth degree could properly be held only by the supreme king, the Shahinshah of Persia.
- Cooper claims that at the highest levels of Freemasonry, a member belongs to only one religion, regardless of the ostensible openness of the lower degrees to initiates of any faith.
- Cooper claims George Bush was initiated in the crypt or tomb at Yale University into the Skull and Bones, identified as the Russell Trust and the Brotherhood of Death.
Primary Sources Cited in This Episode
| Source | Status | Where to find it |
|---|---|---|
| Arkon Daraul, A History of Secret Societies (1961) | Not public domain; read at length on air, treated here under quotation only | Library copies; see the sources and bibliography hub |
| William Walters Sargant, Battle for the Mind (1957) | Not public domain; quoted within Daraul’s text | Library copies; sources hub |
| Tertullian, De Corona (c. AD 211) | Public domain | Search archive.org for Latin editions and translations |
| Tertullian, Apology (c. AD 197) | Public domain | Scans on archive.org |
| Apuleius, The Golden Ass (c. AD 158) | Public domain | Scans on archive.org |
| St. Basil, De Spiritu Sancto (c. AD 375) | Public domain | Search archive.org |
From the Broadcast
“The real mystery of the mysteries is how and when man first discovered the use of certain procedures to condition other men, and whether the discovery was instantaneous or gradual, or simultaneous or at different times or places.”
Cooper, MB08, February 24, 1993, summarizing Daraul’s thesis
“If you are not one of us, you are nothing.”
Cooper, MB08, February 24, 1993, quoting words attributed to a Freemason speaking to his uninitiated son
Historians’ View
Arkon Daraul’s A History of Secret Societies is a popular synthesis rather than a work of academic scholarship, and historians of ancient religion do not accept the claim that the Eleusinian and other classical mysteries were primarily brainwashing programs. The parallel Daraul draws to Sargant’s work on brainwashing is his own interpretive frame, not a consensus view. The claim that Mithraism has a history of over six thousand years is not supported by the archaeological record, which traces the Roman mystery cult of Mithras to the first or second century AD; its relationship to older Iranian traditions remains debated. The identification of the bull with the astrological age of Taurus and the equation of the golden calf with Mithraic religion is Cooper’s own synthesis, not a claim found in mainstream scholarship. Most archaeologists and Egyptologists reject the interpretation of the pyramids as initiation chambers, a claim associated with popular esoteric writers rather than peer-reviewed research. We record all claims as broadcast; we do not endorse them.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Mystery Babylon episode 8 about?
Episode 8 presents the initiation ceremony as the practical mechanism of Mystery Babylon: a systematic mind-conditioning program that ancient mystery schools and modern secret societies have used to ensure permanent loyalty and reshaped belief in their members. Cooper reads from Arkon Daraul’s A History of Secret Societies throughout. Related material is collected on the Mystery Schools and Ancient Religion hub.
What is Mithraism and why does Cooper discuss it?
Mithraism was a mystery religion that spread across the Roman Empire and was a significant rival to early Christianity. Cooper uses Daraul’s account of its seven-degree initiation structure to argue that the conditioning techniques of all mystery schools are fundamentally the same, and that present-day secret societies including Freemasonry are derived from these ancient cults.
Why does Cooper mention George Bush in this episode?
During a description of the Mithraic initiation in an underground crypt, Cooper inserts a reference to George Bush’s initiation in the crypt at Yale in the Skull and Bones society. The connection between that ceremony and the Mithraic rite is Cooper’s own; the fuller treatment of Skull and Bones appears in episode 13, where Cooper reads a Daraul initiation description with Bush’s name inserted as he reads.
Where can I listen to Mystery Babylon episode 8?
The series is preserved at archive.org. The site never hosts or distributes the audio; see our content policy.
Continue the Series
- Previous episode: MB07: Ecumenism
- Next episode: MB09: Gnosticism
- All 42 episodes: Mystery Babylon complete episode guide
- Topic hub: Mystery Schools and Ancient Religion
- Skull and Bones episode: MB13: The Skull and Bones
- Every dated claim in the series: Mystery Babylon timeline
- Books Cooper cited: sources and bibliography
