The Union of the Snake: Behold a Pale Horse pp. 72-74

This is the chapter where Cooper is going to impart to us the secret of the secret societies. A good portion of this is likely going to be familiar to long-time readers of this blog because the Robison book, "Proofs of a Conspiracy..." was all about this. Cooper has two hundred years of development to improve upon the utter dreadful arguments raised by Robison. The trick for Cooper is to make this more interesting than Robison...which shouldn't be hard because of how boring the Robison book turned out to be. Yet, the advantage of this type of conspiracy writer is that they can rely on complete fabrication to dazzle the reader. 

History is replete with whispers of secret societies. Accounts of elders or priests who guarded the forbidden knowledge of ancient peoples. Prominent men, meeting in secret, who directed the course of civilization are recorded in the writings of all people. 

Notice the bait and switch that is happening here. First, we are talking about a secret group of people but then we are talking about prominent people (priests or elders). Well, which is it? If it is the "Skola" class in ancient Egypt then the average Egyptian would know who they are. They aren't hiding their identities. In other societies, it's just the eldest people around that control everything. Secondly, how secret can these people be if their meetings are recorded in the writings of "all people." They are not doing very good in one half of the "secret society." 

Another problem with this is that there is nothing out of place here. Yes, people who make large-scale decisions in pre-democratic civilizations will make those out of public view. They do this today in democratic societies outside of public view. Why? In the former, it is because the people have no say in how things are run. In the latter, i.e. today, it's mostly because we can't be bothered. Governmental organizations and committees post their meetings, and no one is preventing anyone from going. In the matter of private corporations unless you have a reason to be there, i.e., you are a stockholder there is no reason for you to be there at all. 

The oldest is the Brotherhood of the Snake, also called the Brotherhood of the Dragon, and it still exists under many different names.

I'm quite happy. I was aware that Cooper was once a big UFO guy. I didn't think though, that he was a snake guy. As a coincidence, I have just finished reading "The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian" a compilation of the first dozen or so Robert E. Howard Conan stories from the magazine "Weird tales." In many of these stories, the Enemy is a snake cult that worshipped a Serpent god. This isn't laid out explicitly for a while, and in some of the stories it serves as mere background (I should note as a fun fact: Howard's world and Lovecraft's world overlap). When I read "Brotherhood of the Snake" I could only think of a bowl-cut barbarian cleaving society in two. It made me happy, not as happy as driving forth my enemies and hearing the lamentations of their women, but happy enough. 

Unfortunately, after this brief introduction, where he claims that the Brotherhood of the Snake guards the secret that Lucifer is the one true god, and then Cooper drops it for a bit. Hopefully, he's just teasing. 

He follows this up with a reminder that even if we do not believe in God, Lucifer, or Satan; we remember that many people do. He offers an argument from analogy, "I do not believe in racism but millions do and their beliefs and actions based upon those beliefs will affect me. It is clear that religion has always played a significant role in the course of these organizations. Communications with a higher source, often divine, is a familiar claim in all but a few." 

Here is a weird contradiction that I do not understand: how is it that these individuals--super conspiracy theorists can doubt every institution that exists, every fact of the world, but when it comes to religion--they are credulous to the point of absurdity. Cooper should be pointing out that religion, like his views on social institutions and government, is just another mechanism to keep you in your place. The ancient world is clear evidence of this: the institutions of the religious orders kept the population in fear of the gods in order to keep their power, which is why they fostered the belief that the monarch was always divinely appointed which is also why writers like Diderot claimed that humanity would only be free when the last king was strangled to death with the entrails of the last priest. 

Another weird claim by Cooper is that "I found it intriguing that in most, if not all, primitive tribal societies all of the adults are members. They are usually separated into male and female groups."

I would love to get a look at Cooper's sources here because his perspective on secret societies is so strange. Firstly, everyone knows who is in charge; but secondly, everyone in the society is a member?! He's already dispensed with the "secret" part and now he's dispensing with the "society" part. A secret society would necessarily have to exclude some people, but here, Cooper has everyone over a certain age as a member. That's not a secret society that's just society. In Cooper's world, my family is a secret society because my wife and I make decisions that affect my kids. 

I'm used to the idea of a "secret society" because of the work I do and I am aware of the original definition which just meant a private group that did not publish its membership. The definition that Cooper is trying to create is an utter mystery to me. Even he seems to recognize this when he claims that "very few fall into this category." Meaning that very few secret societies could exist that included the majority of the population. 

Cooper also seems to waver on how important this concept actually is, he speaks of "secret society" as a term applying to something like a football team where exclusivity, fraternal feelings, secret signs, and tools that only apply to the group concerned are all present. Similar to a country club or a private city club. 

The complaint that I am making is not Cooper's comparison between "secret societies" and any kind of exclusive group; it's that I do not understand the point of it. Cooper has already given us the "brotherhood of the Dragon/Snake" but now he's talking about country clubs, football teams, and basic training. We've already plowed through chapter 1 meaning that we've already bought into his idea (except in our case), so why dumb this portion of the book down? Cooper is trying to explain the concept of a "club" but it's not something any of us needed to read. We get it, it could have been dealt with in a couple of sentences. 

Cooper ends our section with an observation about the type of initiation he went through in the military, what is commonly called "boot camp." The reason it was so hard was not, primarily, to weed out the weak to form bonds between the group. I close on this because I've read it elsewhere. I've read about the bonds between people suffering in a common situation. I suspect, that this observation of his might be the last time he gets it right in this chapter. I'll even say that he got this one right on purpose.