Helvetius, the grandfather of the celebrated philosopher of the same name, was an alchemist who labored ceaselessly to fathom the mystery of the "philosopher's stone," the legendary catalyst that would transmute base metals into gold. One day in 1666 when he was working in his laboratory at the Hague, a stranger attired all in black, as befitted a respectable burgher of North Holland, appeared and informed him that he would remove all the alchemist's doubts about the existence of the philosopher's stone, for he himself possessed such an object.

The stranger immediately drew from his pocket a small ivory box, containing three pieces of metal the color of brimstone. With those three bits of metal, he said, he could make as much as twenty tons of gold.

The alchemist examined the pieces of metal and seeing that they were very brittle, he surreptitiously scraped off a small portion with his thumbnail. He then returned the three pieces of metal to his mysterious visitor and invited him to perform the process of transmutation.

The stranger answered that he was not allowed to do so. It was enough that he had verified the existence of the metal to Helvetius. It was his purpose only to offer him encouragement in his experiments.

After the man's departure, Helvetius procured a crucible and a portion of lead, into which, when in a state of fusion, he threw the stolen grain he had secretly scraped from the alleged philosopher's stone. He was disappointed to find that the grain evaporated, leaving the lead in its original state.

Thinking that he had been made a fool by the mad burgher's whimsy, Helvetius returned to his own experiments in attaining the philosopher's stone.

Some weeks later, when he had almost forgotten the incident, Helvetius received another visit from the stranger. Impatiently, the alchemist told the man that if he could not do as he claimed, then please leave the laboratory at once.

"Very well,” the stranger said, consenting to perform a demonstration of the philosopher's stone for the skeptical Helvetius. “I shall show you that that which you most desire does truly exist.”

The mysterious visitor said that one grain was sufficient, but it was necessary to envelope it in a ball of wax before throwing it on the molten metal; otherwise, its extreme volatility would cause it to vaporize.

To Helvetius's astonishment, the stranger transmuted several ounces of lead into gold. Then he permitted the alchemist to repeat the experiment by himself, and Helvetius converted six ounces of lead into very pure gold.

Helvetius found it impossible to keep a secret of such immense value and importance. Soon the word of the alchemist's remarkably successful experiments spread all over the Hague, and Helvetius demonstrated the power of the philosopher's stone in the presence of the Prince of Orange, and many times afterward, until he had exhausted the supply of catalytic pieces that he received from the mysterious burgher.

And search as he might, Helvetius could not find the man in all of North Holland nor learn his name. And pray as he might, the stranger never again visited Helvetius in his study.

Down through the centuries, very mysterious individuals have appeared at certain moments in human history and provided convincing demonstrations that "impossible" inventions are possible.

The "respectable burgher of North Holland" appeared "modest and simple" to the alchemist Helvetius. It was his incredible knowledge that startled and inspired the alchemists of Helvetius's day, and though these learned and determined men never did acquire the philosopher's stone that would transmute lead into gold, they did fashion the seeds of the science of chemistry that has accomplished so many transmutations of the human environment and the human condition in the last three hundred years.

Out of the smoky laboratories of the alchemists, Albert le Grand produced potassium lye; Raymond Lully prepared bicarbonate of potassium; Paracelsus described zinc and introduced chemical compounds in medicine; Blaise Vigenere discovered benzoic acid; Basil Valentine perfected sulfuric acid; and Johann Friedrich Boetticher became the first European to produce porcelain.

While each of the above is an important discovery, there are rumors that lying amidst the musty pages of certain ancient alchemical laboratories there are recorded experiments with photography, radio transmission, phonography, and aerial flight.

Throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, there were many scholars who claimed that they had received late-night visits from mysterious members of a secret society that had accomplished the transmutation of metals, the means of prolonging life, the knowledge to see and to hear what was occurring in distant places, and the ability to travel across the heavens in heavier-than-air vehicles.

Some students of the history of alchemy have stated that crumbling, yellowed records of the alchemists remain in dusty libraries--more than 100,000 ancient volumes written in a code that has never been sufficiently deciphered.

Numerous occult groups have been created around the belief that centuries ago a secret society achieved a high level of scientific knowledge that they carefully guarded from the rest of humanity. According to these occultists, certain men of genius in ancient Egypt and Persia were given access to the records of the advanced technologies of the antediluvian world of Atlantis. Many hundreds of years ago, these ancient masters learned to duplicate many of the feats of the Titans of the lost continent.

There are persistent legends in nearly every culture that tell of an Elder Race that populated the Earth millions of years ago. The Old Ones, who may originally have been of extraterrestrial origin, were an immensely intelligent and scientifically advanced species who eventually chose to structure their own environment under the surface of the planet's soil and seas. The Old Ones usually remain aloof from the surface dwellers, but from time to time throughout history, they have been known to visit certain of Earth's more intelligent members in the guise of alchemist or mysterious scientists in order to offer constructive criticism and, in some cases, to give valuable advice in the material sciences.

The Buddhists have incorporated Agharta, a subterranean empire, into their theology and fervently believe in its existence and in the reality of underworld supermen who periodically surface to oversee the progress of the human race. According to one source, the underground kingdom of Agharta was created when the ancestors of the present day cave dwellers drove the Serpent People from the caverns during an ancient war between the reptilian humanoids and the ancient human society.

The decision to form an ancient secret society may have been based on the members' highly developed moral sense and their recognition of the awesome position of responsibility that the discovery of such applications of ancient knowledge had placed upon them. They may have decided to keep their own counsel until the rest of the world had become enlightened enough to deal wisely with such a high degree of technical accomplishments.

From time to time, the secret society may decide the time is propitious to make one of its discoveries known to the "outside world." Such intervention in the affairs of humankind is usually accomplished by carefully feeding certain fragments of research to "outside" scientists whose work and attitude have been judged particularly deserving. When these scientists accomplish the breakthroughs in their research, they credit the success of the experiments to their own diligence, and the secrecy the society prizes so highly is maintained.

On the other hand, the secret society may feel little or no responsibility of any kind to those humans outside of their group. They may be merely biding their time until they turn the great mass of humanity into their slaves.

By the 1840s, the legend of Agharta had already been widely circulated among the mystically minded in Germany. According to this ancient tradition, the Master of the World already controlled many of the kings and rulers of the surface world by exercising his occult powers. Soon this Master and his super race would launch an invasion of Earth and subjugate all humans to his will.

If certain master magicians, disciples of the Titans, individuals of exceptional intellect, power, and wealth, actually did achieve a high degree of technical accomplishment several centuries ago, then they could very well be responsible for a good many of the strange and mysterious vehicles seen in our skies. And if alien life-forms apprehended their advanced technology at the end of the previous century, then they might have established an alliance with the society of humans that easily appeared to be the more advanced and worthy to receive the benefits of their extraterrestrial superscience.

The year 1897 may have seemed an ideal time to show the “outsiders” just how far advanced the members of the ancient secret society really were.

The science of the outsiders seemed as though it had gone about as far as it could go, and it was poised confidently on the brink of the twentieth century. Many of the world's most learned men and women were filled with pride over a host of new technological accomplishments.

In 1893, Karl Benz and Henry Ford built their first fourwheeled automobiles. Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope (1889) was among the first practical systems of cinematography, and in 1895, Louis and Auguste Lumiere presented the first commercial projection. In that same year, Wilhelm Roentgen discovered X rays, Marconi invented radio telegraphy, and Konstantin Tsiolkovsky formulated the principle of rocket reaction propulsion. In 1896, William Ramsay isolated helium, Ernest Rutherford accomplished the magnetic detection of electrical waves, and Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity. The Royal Automobile Club was founded in London in 1897, and cars were going faster every year.

However, with all of these scientific marvels about which to boast, there were as yet no heavier-than-air aerial vehicles to occupy the efforts and the interests of potential aviators; and a good number of brilliant scientists of great reputation had gone on record with their arguments that it was aerodynamically impossible to build such a flying machine. On the other hand, the future of balloon transport seemed promising, and gondolas could be attached to carry passengers. With all the other wonders of modern science, how could anyone bemoan the lack of heavier-than-air flying machines?

And yet, in March of 1897, a bizarre aircraft, often described as resembling a cone-shaped steamboat, was seen flying across the United States and later throughout the world.

The German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin did not build his famous airship, a rigid dirigible, until 1898. Could some mysterious unknown inventors have beaten Count von Zeppelin to the drawing board with a much more impressive vehicle, a forerunner of the modern passenger plane? Or was a secret terrestrial society of master magicians once again displaying their superiority over the outsiders?

The flights of the enigmatic airship continued until August of 1897 when the craft was sighted off the coast of Norway and over Vancouver, British Columbia on the same day.

After a twelve-year absence, the airship reappeared over England in 1909. Within a matter of days, it was sighted over New Zealand, Arkansas, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, West Virginia, and Tennessee. It’s final appearance seems to have been over Memphis on January 20, 1910.

In 1871, occultist Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote The Coming Race, a novel about a small group of German mystics who had discovered a race of supermen living within the Earth’s interior. The super race had built a paradise based on The Vril Force, a form of energy so powerful that the older beings had outlawed its use as a potential weapon. The Vril, was derived from the Black Sun, a large ball of “Prima Materia” that provided light and radiation to the inhabitants of the inner Earth.

In 1919, Karl Haushofer founded the Brothers of the Light Society in Berlin, and soon changed its name to the Vril Society. As Haushofer’s Vril grew in prominence, it united three major occult societies, the Lords of the Black Stone, the Black Knights of the Thule Society, and the Black Sun and chose the swastika, the hooked cross, as its symbol of the worship of the Black Sun. As with many secret groups, there appears to have been more than one order--those who followed the Golden Sun and those who followed the Black Sun. The Black Sun, like the Swastika, is a very ancient symbol. While the Swastika represents the eternal fountain of creation, the Black Sun is even older, suggesting the very void of creation itself. The symbol on the Nazi flag is the Thule Sonnenrad (Sun Wheel), not a reversed good luck Swastika. The Black Sun can be seen in many ancient Babylonian and Assyrian places of worship.

While these societies borrowed some concepts and rites from various Hermetic groups, they placed special emphasis on the innate mystical powers of the Aryan race. The Vril and its fellow societies maintained that the Germanic/Nordic/ Teutonic people were of Aryan origin, and that Christianity had destroyed the power of the Teutonic civilization.

The secret societies formed in Germany wanted desperately to prove themselves worthy of the super humans that lived beneath the surface of the planet and they wished to be able to control the incredibly powerful Vril force. This ancient force had been known among the alchemists and magicians as the Chi, the Odic force, the Orgone, the Astral Light, and they were well aware of its transformative powers to create supermen of ordinary mortals.

The Vril Lodge believed that those who learned control of the Vril would become master of themselves, those around them, and the world itself, if they should so choose. Such members of the Lodge as Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Goring, Dr. Theodor Morell, Hitler’s personal physician, and other top Nazi leaders, became obsessed with preparing German youth to become a Master Race so the Lords of the Inner Earth would find them worthy above all others when they emerged to evaluate the people of Earth’s nations.

In 1921, Maria Orsic (Orsitch), a medium in the society, now renamed Vril Gesellschaft, began claiming spirit messages originating from Aryan aliens on Alpha Tauri in the Aldeberan star system. Orsic and another medium named Sigrun, learned that the aliens spoke of two classes of people on their world--the Aryan, or master race, and a subservient planetary race that had evolved through mutation and climate changes. A half billion years ago, the Aryans, also known as the Elohim or Elder Race, began to colonize our solar system. On Earth, the Aryans were identified as the Sumerians until they elected to carve out an empire for themselves in the hollow of the planet.

Students of the Vril Society also insist that extraterrestrials worked with Nazi scientists to create early models of flying saucers. According to some researchers, an alien tutor race secretly began cooperating with certain German scientists from the Thule, the Vril, and the Black Sun societies in the late 1920s. Working in underground bases with the alien intelligences, the Nazis mastered antigravity space flight, established space stations, accomplished time travel, an developed their spacecraft to warp speeds.

In 1922, members of Thule and Vril claim to have built the Jenseitsflugmaschine, the Other World Flight Machine, based on the psychic messages received from the Aldebaran aliens. W. O. Schulmann of the Technical University of Munich was in charge of the project until it was halted in 1924, and the craft was stored in Messerschmitt’s Augsburg. In 1937, after Hitler came into power, he authorized the construction of the Rund flugzeug, the round, or disk-shaped vehicle, for military use and for spaceflight.

In April, 1942, Nazi Germany sent out an expedition composed of a number of its most visionary scientists to seek a military vantage point in the hollow earth. Although the expedition of leading scientists left at a time when the Third Reich was putting maximum effort in their drive against the Allies, Goering, Himmler, and Hitler are said to have enthusiastically endorsed the project. Steeped in the more esoteric teachings of metaphysics, the Fuehrer had long been convinced that Earth was concave and that a master race lived on the inside of the planet.

The Nazi scientists who left for the island of Rugen had complete confidence in the validity of their quest. In their minds, such a coup as discovering the opening to the Inner World would not only provide them with a military advantage, but it would go a long way in convincing the Masters who lived there that the German people truly deserved to mix their blood with them in the creation of a hybrid master race to occupy the surface world, truly a New World Order.

In 1991 when President George H.W. Bush began speaking about a New World Order to beef up his campaign for reelection, evangelist Pat Robertson, who was briefly a presidential candidate, passionately spoke out that "new world order" was actually a code for a secret group that sought to replace Christian society with a worldwide atheistic socialist dictatorship.

Bush, the conspiracy buffs charged, was a member of one of the world's most devilish and powerful secret societies: the Order of Skull and Bones. What was more, according to these same conspiracists, Bush was linked to the Bilderbergers and the Trilateral Commission, dangerous elitist organizations.

At about the same time that President Bush's alleged secret affiliations were being exposed, a number of fundamentalist evangelists began to take their first real notice of the UFO phenomenon and saw the mysterious aerial objects as the "signs in the skies" referred to in apocalyptic literature and in the book of Revelation. It was a short leap or many evangelists to

begin to blend accounts of UFOs with the secret societies of top U.S. government officials, politicians, corporate chairmen, international bankers, and many others who sought to bring into being the dreaded "New World Order."

According to the proponents of this cosmic conspiracy, when President Ronald Reagan gave his famous "alien invasion" speech to the entire United Nations General Assembly in September of 1987, he had already secretly advised representatives of the 176 member nations that the leaders of their respective governments must meet the demands of the technologically superior extraterrestrials or be destroyed.

As Reagan said in his speech: "I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet I ask you, is not an alien threat already among us?"

Some UFO researchers have warned that highly placed members of an ancient secret society that can trace its origins beyond the temples of ancient Egypt to Atlantis have established a plan to create a carefully staged "alien invasion" that will convince the masses of the world that a real-life War of the Worlds alien attack is about to begin. People of all nations will believe their leaders who say that it has been learned that the aliens are a benevolent species and that unconditional surrender to them is for everyone's own good.

Immediately following the "surrender" to the aliens, the leaders of the ancient secret society will form a One World Government, a New World Order, thus fulfilling biblical prophecies about a return to the days of Babylon.

Concern over interference by secret societies in the affairs of government was considered very real long before our present-day paranoia. For hundreds of years, certain scholars have worried about global conspiracies being conducted in secret by such groups as the Knights Templar, the Vril, the Thule, the Black Sun, and the Illuminati--who may all be waiting until the propitious time to complete world domination.

In 1876, Benjamin Disraeli, British prime minister, warned: "The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings, and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments' plans."

Brad Steiger is the author/coauthor of 154 books with over 17 million copies in print. His first published articles on the unexplained appeared in 1956, and he has now written more than 2,000 articles with paranormal themes. From 1970-'73, his weekly newspaper column, The Strange World of Brad Steiger, was carried domestically in over 80 newspapers and overseas from Bombay to Tokyo. He was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa, on February 19,1936. He is married to Sherry Hansen Steiger, a licensed and ordained minister, herself the author or coauthor of over 22 books. He has two sons, three daughters, and five grandchildren. Visit Brad Steiger's website: http://www.bradandsherry.com/ and also read Evidence for a New History. Read Brad Steiger's latest book Revelation: The Divine Fire.

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