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THE PEOPLE OF THE SECRET
by
ERNEST SCOTT
Introduction by
COLIN WILSON
THE OCTAGON PRESS
LONDON
Copyright © 1983 by The Octagon Press Ltd
All rights reserved
Copyright throughout the world
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical or photographic, by recording or any information
storage or retrieval system or method now known or to be invented or adapted,
without prior permission obtained in writing from the publisher
except by a reviewer quoting brief passages in a review written for
inclusion in a journal, magazine, newspaper or broadcast.
Requests for permission to reprint, reproduce, etc., to:
Permissions Department, The Octagon Press Ltd.,
PO. Box 227, London N6 4EW, England
ISBN 0 863040 38 1
First Published 1983
First Published in Paperback 1985
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Redwood Burn Limited, Trowbridge, Wiltshire
ee
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CONTENTS
’ Page
Introduction
CHAPTER
The Hidden Tradition
=
A Secret Directorate?
39
The Inner Alliance: Rome, Christianity and Islam 53
The Vehicles: The Jewish Cabbala, the Tarot,
eNOmD F
Nostradamus 67
Love Courts, Troubadours and Round Tables 81
Alchemy: The Disguised Path | 105
What Gold did They Make? 129
Gurdjieff and the Inner Circle of Humanity 155
Freemasons, Sufis, Initiatory Societies 173
Assassins, Kali-Worshippers, Dervishes 192
Sufi Discourses, Rituals, Initiation 219
Science Fiction and the Ancient Tradition 232
13 The Executive of the People of the Secret 250
Appendix A Some Important Figures in the Sufi
Tradition 254
AppendixB ‘The Khwajagan 260
INTRODUCTION
Colin Wilson
The notion of an ‘ancient wisdom”, guarded by hidden
custodians or Masters, is usually attributed to that remarkable
and inventive old lady Madame Blavatsky — perhaps because
her disciple Annie Besant wrote a book of that title. And when,
more than thirty years after her death, the Theosophical
Society decided to publish The Mahatma Letters' — purportedly
written by two oft hese ‘‘Masters”’ to A. P. Sinnett— most critics
seemed to feel that Sinnett must have been singularly gullible to
be taken in by them. The modern view of the matter is stated
in Richard Cavendish’s Encyclopaedia of the Unexplained:?
“Through the Theosophical Society the idea of an occult
Master first became popular in the West. It was a glamorous
simplification of the tradition common to both East and West
from time immemorial, of the searching spirit who asked,
‘Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’”’ In short, the
Masters are the product of wishful thinking.
The idea sounds eminently reasonable. What it fails to take
into account is that the tradition is far more than as tory abouta
“searching spirit” who wanted to be saved. It is a specific and
widely held doctrine that can be traced throughout many
centuries and many countries. And modern mythological
science is inclined to believe that when a “‘legend”’ is as
widespread as this — the Flood is another example — then it
probably has at least some basis in reality.
There can be no doubt, of course, that according to the
ordinary laws of common sense, the whole idea is preposterous.
Human beings possess the highest intelligence on the surface of
this earth; and the highest human beings — certain teachers,
priests, philosophers — have exhibited an intelligence that goes
' The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, Ed. A. T. Barker, Theosophical
Publishing House, London, 1932.
? Richard Cavendish, Encyclopaedia of the Unexplained: Magic, Occultism and
Parapsychology, Routledge, London, 1974.
. S fe
2 The People of the Secret
far beyond that of “‘the mob” as the average human intelligence
is beyond that of a chimpanzee or porpoise. The highest know-
ledge we possess is to be found in the works and sayings of these
philosophers and teachers. A book like Whitehead’s Adventure of
Ideas3 deals with the impact of these ideas on civilization; and it
explains the history of civilization perfectly adequately in terms
of ideas. The notion of ‘‘hidden masters”’ seems superfluous.
Worse still, it seems indefensible. Anyone can see that we would
all like to believe in the existence of superhuman intelligences,
because it would provide us with a comforting sense of meaning
and purpose. We can recognize this element of wishful thinking
in a poet like W. B. Yeats. As a young man, he found the real
world — of Victorian London — crude and unbearable; so he
insisted on the real existence of fairies. He also quotes Shelley’s
lines about an old Jewish cabalist, hundreds of years old, who
lives ‘‘in a sea cavern ’mid the Demonesi’’, and who
May have attained to sovereignty and science
Over those strong and secret things and thoughts
Which others fear and know not . . .,
and admits that he was attracted to the Theosophists because
they insisted on the real existence of the old Jew and his like.
Since this is so self-evident, how is it possible to defend the
real existence of hidden masters — of the proposition that there
exists “in some hidden centre, perhaps in the Highlands of
Central Asia ... a colony of men possessing exceptional
powers’”’, and that these men are “‘the secret government of the
world’’? For this is, in fact, the central thesis of the present
book, and it is argued with an intelligence and persuasiveness
that leave no doubt that its author — a lifelong student of the
so-called “occult sciences” — is fully aware of all the obvious
objections to his thesis. He argues for this secret tradition, not
because he thinks it ought to exist, but because he thinks there
_1s convincing evidence that it probably does.
Let me say at once that my own view on the matter is neutral.
I found the book absorbing, and its erudition impressive. In my
own book Mysteriest I have argued that alchemy cannot be
dismissed as a crude form of chemistry, but needs to be
3A. N. Whitehead, Adventure of Ideas, C.U.P., Cambridge, 1933.
* Colin Wilson, Mysteries, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1978.
