Every thread in the Mystery Babylon series eventually runs through this subject. Over 42 broadcasts on WWCR between 1993 and 1996, William Cooper argued that the world’s secret societies are not separate organizations with separate histories but successive masks worn by a single ancient religion. This hub documents that umbrella thesis, the episodes that name specific orders, and the sources Cooper read from on air. As everywhere on this site, the framing is documentary: these are the claims the series made, presented for study, not endorsement. The complete episode guide indexes all 42 broadcasts.

The series’ central thesis

Cooper’s claim, stated in the opening episodes and repeated to the end, was that an initiatory religion born in ancient Babylon and Egypt survived every empire that tried to suppress it by hiding inside fraternal orders. In the series’ chronology the line runs from the ancient mystery schools through the Gnostics, the Assassins and the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians, and Freemasonry, arriving finally at modern institutions: Yale’s Skull and Bones, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the United Nations. The series asserts that the membership changes, the names change, and the doctrine does not.

That is a historical claim, and it should be evaluated like one. Academic historians recognize that fraternal orders borrow each other’s symbols and origin legends constantly; documented institutional continuity across millennia is another matter entirely, and no evidence accepted by mainstream scholarship establishes it. The series’ own evidence is a chain of readings from books of very mixed reliability, which is exactly why this site links every source so you can weigh them yourself. The secret society lineage map diagrams the full claimed descent, episode by episode, and the series timeline dates each claim.

The core episodes

MB13: Skull and Bones (March 8, 1993)

The best known broadcast in this cluster, and the one with the most enduring search interest. Cooper opened by reading the introduction of John J. Robinson’s Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry, a 1989 popular history arguing that fugitive Knights Templar, suppressed in 1307, survived underground in England and eventually became Freemasonry. Robinson built his case on the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, the rebel attacks on the Knights Hospitaller, and the Masonic Old Charges read as a fugitive’s survival code.

Cooper then went beyond Robinson. Interrupting the reading, he announced research he attributed to a CAJI agent he called John Galt: “The connection, dear listeners, is in the genealogy of the families of the elite” (Cooper, MB13, March 8, 1993). From there the broadcast moved to the Order of Skull and Bones at Yale, which Cooper presented as an American chapter of the same lineage, bound to the older orders through family bloodlines rather than institutional charters. Skull and Bones itself is real and well documented: founded at Yale in 1832, it is a senior society whose membership has included presidents, senators, and intelligence officials. The genealogical bridge from the Templars to New Haven is the series’ claim, resting on the anonymous CAJI research, and cannot be independently verified.

MB14: The Roshaniya (March 9, 1993)

Aired the next evening, this episode covered the Roshaniya, the “illuminated ones” of sixteenth-century Afghanistan founded by Bayezid Ansari. Cooper drew on Arkon Daraul’s A History of Secret Societies (1961) and presented the Roshaniya as proof that the initiatory pattern, secret degrees, an inner doctrine, political ambition behind a mystical front, recurs far outside Europe. He claimed the movement’s methods and even its name fed into the European illuminist orders that followed. Daraul’s book is a popular survey, not an academic one, and remains under copyright; we treat it as a quoted source only.

MB34: Secret Societies and Vatican II (January 12, 1994)

The late entry in the cluster. Cooper read material asserting that secret society influence had penetrated the Roman Catholic Church and shaped the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. This episode shows the series at its widest reach, extending the infiltration thesis into the twentieth-century church. It pairs naturally with the Luciferian doctrine and New Age cluster, which covers the series’ claims about ecumenism and the UN Meditation Room.

Orders covered elsewhere on the site

Because the umbrella thesis touches nearly every episode, several societies have their own dedicated hubs:

• Freemasonry: six core episodes, the William Morgan affair, and Albert Pike’s Morals and Dogma.
• The Knights Templar and the Assassins: the medieval orders the series treats as the crucial bridge between East and West.
• The Rosicrucians: four episodes on the Rose Cross orders and their manifestos.
• Mystery schools and ancient religion: where the series locates the origin of the whole lineage.
• The occult and the Third Reich: the series’ three-part treatment of occult orders in Nazi Germany, handled on this site strictly as history-of-the-occult documentation with academic counter-sources.

Primary sources behind these episodes

• Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry, John J. Robinson, 1989. Under copyright; read at length in MB13. Robinson was a serious amateur historian and his Templar-survival argument is the most defensible piece of the episode, though it remains a hypothesis without documentary proof.
• A History of Secret Societies, Arkon Daraul, 1961. Under copyright; the backbone of MB14. “Arkon Daraul” is widely believed to be a pen name of the writer Idries Shah.
• Morals and Dogma, Albert Pike, 1871. Public domain. Scanned original on archive.org. Cited across the cluster wherever the series connects modern orders back to Masonic doctrine.

Every text the series cited, episode by episode, is cross-referenced in the sources and bibliography hub. Cooper devoted an entire broadcast, MB17, to reading his bibliography on air, which makes the series unusually checkable for its genre.

The historians’ view

Three things in this cluster are solid history: Skull and Bones exists and its membership rolls are studied; the Roshaniya movement existed in Mughal-era Afghanistan; the Templars were suppressed beginning Friday, October 13, 1307. What mainstream scholarship does not support is the connective tissue: a single continuous organization or doctrine linking them. Historians explain the recurring pattern of secret degrees and initiation as convergent social behavior, not inheritance. The series asserts inheritance. Readers should hold both explanations in view while studying the episodes.

Listen to the episodes

Surviving audio for the series is preserved at the Internet Archive: Mystery Babylon audio collection on archive.org. We embed from archive.org and never host or alter the recordings. For the broadcaster’s biography and the history of the Hour of the Time program, see Who Was William Cooper.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Skull and Bones episode of Mystery Babylon?

MB13, aired March 8, 1993. Cooper read from John J. Robinson’s Born in Blood on the Templar origins of Freemasonry, then presented claimed genealogical research connecting elite American families, including Skull and Bones members, to the older European orders.

What did Bill Cooper claim about Skull and Bones?

The series claimed the Yale society is an American branch of the same ancient religion carried by the Templars and Freemasonry, connected through family bloodlines. The society’s existence and influential membership are documented fact; the bloodline lineage is an unverified claim attributed to anonymous CAJI research.

Who were the Roshaniya?

A sixteenth-century religious and political movement in Afghanistan founded by Bayezid Ansari, covered in MB14. Cooper, following Arkon Daraul, presented them as an Eastern link in the chain of illuminist secret societies.

Did the series connect all secret societies into one organization?

Yes, that is its central thesis: one ancient religion wearing successive organizational masks. Mainstream historians do not accept a documented continuity of this kind, and this site presents the thesis as the series’ claim, with the lineage map showing exactly what was asserted and in which episode.

Where can I listen to these episodes?

The audio is freely available in the Internet Archive’s Mystery Babylon collection, linked above. Each episode page on this site embeds the archive.org player alongside an original study guide.