Knights of Eulogia
Alexandra Robbins, the author of several books on the subject Skull and Bones, says: "According to Skull and Bones lore, and this is something that both Senator Kerry and president Bush would have learned, in 322 B.C., a Greek orator [Demosthenes] died. When he died, the goddess Eulogia, the goddess, whom Skull and Bones called the goddess of eloquence, arose to the heavens and didn't happen to come back down until 1832, when she happened to take up residence in the tomb of Skull and Bones. Now Skull and Bones does everything in deference to this goddess. They have songs or they call them that sacred anthems that they sing when they are encouraged to steal things, some remarkably valuable items, supposedly, they are said to be bringing back gifts to the goddess. They begin each session in the tomb, and they meet twice weekly by unveiling a sort of a guilt shrine to Eulogia. That's the point of the society. They call themselves the Knights of Eulogia. That's where the 322 comes in."

Bavarian Illuminati background
Although the Bavarian Illuminists did have a real historical existence (from 1776 to 1785 they were an esoteric secret society within the more mystical freethinking lodges of German Freemasonry), they have also had a paranoid fantasy existence throughout two centuries of conspiracy literature. They are the imagined megacabal that manipulated such alleged plots as the French and Russian revolutions, the elders of Zion, the rise of Hitler and the House of Morgan. Yes, the Bilderbergers and George De Mohrenschildt, too. Silly as it may sound, there are suggestive links between the historical if not mytho-conspiratorial, Illuminists and Bones.

First consider the account of the origins of Bones to be found in a century-old pamphlet published by an anonymous group that called itself File and Claw after the tools they used to pry their way inside Bones late one night. I came upon the File and Claw break-in pamphlet in a box of disintigrating documents filed in the library's manuscript room under Skull and Bone's corporate name, Russell Trust Association. The foundation was named for William H. (later General) Russell, the man who founded Bones in 1832. I was trying to figure out what mission Russell had for the secret order he founded and why he had chosen that particular death-head brand of mumbo jumbo to embody his vision. Well, according to the File and Claw breakin crew, "Bones is a chapter of corps of a German university. It should properly be called the Skull and Bones chapter. General Russell, its founder, was in Germany before his senior year and formed a warm friendship with a leading member of a German society. The meaning of the permanent number 322 in all Bones literature is that it was founded in '32 as the second chapter of the German society.

But the Bonesman has a pleasing fiction that his faternity is a descendant of an old Greek patriot society founded by Demosthenes, who died in 322 BC." They go on to describe a German slogan painted "on arched walls above the vault" of the sacred room 322. The slogan appears above a painting of skulls surrounded by Masonic symbols, a picture said to be "a gift of the German chapter." "Wer war der Thor, wer Weiser, Bettler oder Kaiser? Ob Arm, ob Reich, im Tode gleich," the slogan reads, or, "Who was the fool, who the wise man, beggar or king? Whether poor or rich, all's the same in death." Imagine my surprise when I ran into that very slogan in a 1798 Scottish anti-Illuminatist tract reprinted in 1967 by the John Birch Society. The tract (proofs of a conspiracy by John Robinson) prints alleged excerpts from Illuminist ritual manuals supposedly confiscated by the Bavarian police when the secret order was banned in 1785. Toward the end of the ceremony of initiation in the "Regent degree" of Illuminism, according to the tract, "a skeleton in pointed out to him [the initiate], at the feet of which are laid a crown and a sword. He is asked 'whether that is the skeleton of a king, nobleman or a beggar'. As he cannot decide, the president of the meeting says to him, 'The character of being a man is the only one that is importance'". Doesn't that sound similar to the German slogan the File and Claw team claims to have found inside Bones?

Now consider a haunting photograph of the altar room of one of the Masonic lodges at Nuremburg that is closely associated with Illuminism. Haunting because at the altar room's center, approached through the aisle of hanging human skeletons, is a coffin surmounted by - you guessed it - a skull and crossed bones that look exactly like the particular arrangement of jawbones and thighbones in the official Bones emblem. The skull and crossbones was the official crest of another key Illuminist lodge, one right-wing Illuminist theoretician told me.

Three possible explanations
Now you can look at this three ways. One possibility is that the Bircher right - and the conspiracy-minded left are correct: The Eastern establishment is the demonic creation of a clandestine elite manipulating history, and Skull and Bones is one of its recruiting centers. A more plausible explanation is that the death's-head symbolism was so prevalent in Germany when the impressionable young Russell visited that he just stumbled on the same mother lode of pseudo-Masonic mummery as the Illuminists. The third possibility is that the break-in pamphlets are an elaborate fraud designed by the File and Claw crew to pin the taint of Illuminism on Bones and that the rituals of Bones have innocent Athenian themes, 322 being only the date of the death of Demosthenes. (In fact, some Bones literature I've seen in the archives does express the year as if 322 BC were the year one, making 1977 anno Demostheni 2299.) Book and Snake is the secret society of Deep Throat's friend Bob Woodward. several Deep Throat theories have postulated Yale secret-society ties as the origin of Woodward's underground-garage connection, and two Bonesmen, Ray Price and Richard Moore, who were high Nixon aides, have been mentioned as suspects - perhaps because of their experience at clandestine underground truth telling.

322 as classified number
Skull and Bones adopted the numerological symbol 322 because their group was the second chapter of the German organization and founded in 1832. They worshiped the goddess Eulogia, celebrated pirates, and plotted an underground conspiracy to dominate the world. Under the society’s direction, Bonesmen developed and dropped the nuclear bomb and choreographed the Bay of Pigs invasion. Skull and Bones members had ties to Watergate and the Kennedy assassination. They control the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission so that they can push their own political agenda. Skull and Bones government officials have used the number 322 as codes for highly classified diplomatic assignments.

Bronnen: Common dreams, Esquire magazine, Bilderberg

Common dreams

Esquire

Bilderberg