13-04-2009, 03:59 PM
(This post was last modified: 13-04-2009, 04:02 PM by Ron Williams.)
One way to approach “conspiracy” books or books about the deep political structures is to have a plan.
I read a lot of books but I didn’t know much of anything useful until I was in my late 40s or so. That was when I discovered Lloyd Miller’s (appropriately named) Project journal. The Project is a periodical that was published in hard copy from 1984 to 1995 by Miller’s organization A-Albionic Consulting and Research.
An early masthead defined it:
[COLOR="Blue"]An Executive Summary of the Progress
Of a Private Network of Researchers and
Scholars Dedicated to Identifying the
Nature of the Ruling Class/Conspiracy.[/COLOR]
and the initial hypothesis (also on the masthead) was:
[COLOR="Blue"]The British Empire is the Central
Phenomenon of World History
Since the Fall of Rome.[/COLOR]
The May-June 1985 Project already had a slightly revised hypothesis:
[COLOR="Blue"]The British Empire is the Central
Phenomenon of World History
Since the Decline of the Vatican.[/COLOR]
…and it was the first “Book Review Issue.” And the first review was of The Empire of the City by E.C. Knuth. The first paragraph:
The Empire of the City: World Super State; 130 Years of Power Politics in the Modern Era by E. C. Knuth is the only book of which I am aware that explicitly approximates the overall conspiracy theory of history which the “Project” is pursuing. Needless to say, it is useless to read the “Project” if you have not read Empire of the City.
The Project is (among many other things) an open ended invitation to a lifetime of study that can lead one in many directions. For example, a student starting at the beginning will get to Lyndon LaRouche—who Miller doesn’t like or trust—in short order. A ground breaking study of Carroll Quigley (Tragedy and Hope, The Anglo-American Establishment) will also soon follow.
One book considered extremely important to The Project is The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age by Dame Frances Yates. This is an example of where I ran into some connections in later reading.
The Project’s study of “City” banking lead me to The Warburgs by Ron Chernow. A fascinating part of that work is to learn about the “black sheep” of the “fab five” Warburg brothers, Aby, who spent much of his life supposedly frittering away some of the hard earned banking wealth of his brothers collecting books, many of them about occult symbolism in art. This led eventually to the establishment of the Warburg Institute which was the publisher of The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age, a book the LaRouche publications also considered very important. So too Peter Levenda:
Dame Frances Yates—the aforementioned historian, of the University of London, the British Academy, the Warburg Institute, and the Royal Society of Literature—has written extensively on the Elizabethan period and the Renaissance, with a particular focus on occult literature, thus elevating the study somewhat above the usual relegation to the attention of cranks and publicity seekers. In her The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age she make an interesting, if daring, claim that the Puritan movement owed much to occult ideology current in England at the time… (Sinister Forces [book one], p. 16)
In addition to The Project journal, Lloyd Miller’s book catalogs are an education in themselves. I am attaching a copy of an early version. His organization was also in the book selling business at the time.
Does anyone else have an example of a plan they can recommend?
Ron Williams
I read a lot of books but I didn’t know much of anything useful until I was in my late 40s or so. That was when I discovered Lloyd Miller’s (appropriately named) Project journal. The Project is a periodical that was published in hard copy from 1984 to 1995 by Miller’s organization A-Albionic Consulting and Research.
An early masthead defined it:
[COLOR="Blue"]An Executive Summary of the Progress
Of a Private Network of Researchers and
Scholars Dedicated to Identifying the
Nature of the Ruling Class/Conspiracy.[/COLOR]
and the initial hypothesis (also on the masthead) was:
[COLOR="Blue"]The British Empire is the Central
Phenomenon of World History
Since the Fall of Rome.[/COLOR]
The May-June 1985 Project already had a slightly revised hypothesis:
[COLOR="Blue"]The British Empire is the Central
Phenomenon of World History
Since the Decline of the Vatican.[/COLOR]
…and it was the first “Book Review Issue.” And the first review was of The Empire of the City by E.C. Knuth. The first paragraph:
The Empire of the City: World Super State; 130 Years of Power Politics in the Modern Era by E. C. Knuth is the only book of which I am aware that explicitly approximates the overall conspiracy theory of history which the “Project” is pursuing. Needless to say, it is useless to read the “Project” if you have not read Empire of the City.
The Project is (among many other things) an open ended invitation to a lifetime of study that can lead one in many directions. For example, a student starting at the beginning will get to Lyndon LaRouche—who Miller doesn’t like or trust—in short order. A ground breaking study of Carroll Quigley (Tragedy and Hope, The Anglo-American Establishment) will also soon follow.
One book considered extremely important to The Project is The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age by Dame Frances Yates. This is an example of where I ran into some connections in later reading.
The Project’s study of “City” banking lead me to The Warburgs by Ron Chernow. A fascinating part of that work is to learn about the “black sheep” of the “fab five” Warburg brothers, Aby, who spent much of his life supposedly frittering away some of the hard earned banking wealth of his brothers collecting books, many of them about occult symbolism in art. This led eventually to the establishment of the Warburg Institute which was the publisher of The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age, a book the LaRouche publications also considered very important. So too Peter Levenda:
Dame Frances Yates—the aforementioned historian, of the University of London, the British Academy, the Warburg Institute, and the Royal Society of Literature—has written extensively on the Elizabethan period and the Renaissance, with a particular focus on occult literature, thus elevating the study somewhat above the usual relegation to the attention of cranks and publicity seekers. In her The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age she make an interesting, if daring, claim that the Puritan movement owed much to occult ideology current in England at the time… (Sinister Forces [book one], p. 16)
In addition to The Project journal, Lloyd Miller’s book catalogs are an education in themselves. I am attaching a copy of an early version. His organization was also in the book selling business at the time.
Does anyone else have an example of a plan they can recommend?
Ron Williams