The Knights Templar formed in the 1000s AD and were sanctioned by the Pope in 1128. However, the power and rituals of the Knights soon began to unnerve both the Pope and the King of France, who tried to overthrow the Order through persecution and arrests. Historian N. Webster tells us more:

The King of France, Philippe le Bel, who had hitherto been the friend of the Templars, now became alarmed and urged the Pope to take action against them; but before the Pope was able to find out more about the matter, the King took the law into his own hands and had all the Templars in France arrested on October 13, 1307. The following charges were then brought against them by the Inquisitor for France before whom they were examined:

1. The ceremony of initiation into their Order was accompanied by insults to the Cross, the denial of Christ, and gross obscenities.
2. The adoration of an idol which was said to be the image of the true God.
3. The omission of the words of consecration at Mass.
4. The right that the lay chiefs arrogated to themselves of giving absolution.
5. The authorization of unnatural vice.ⁱ

Despite the best efforts of monarchies, the Templars were not extinguished. In fact, offshoots of the Order are still in existence today. Learn more about the Templars in The Pope's Knights

Papal Politics See the album Less...More...

As always, the Freemasons are in the foreground while the Jesuits and their Knights of Malta are in the background (emphasis added).ⁱⁱ

Headquartered in Rome these Knights of the Papal Caesar control the Banking, Industry and Military Complexes of the world. They oversee Chase Manhattan Bank with branches in Moscow and New York. They rule the International Intelligence Community, the KGB in the east and the CIA in the west, in restoring the despotism of the Dark Ages.ⁱⁱⁱ

Take note of this list of a few Knights of Malta:

Primary sources collected by Tim and Barb Aho, Michael Biagent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln,...

Learn more about the Knights of Malta in The Pope's Knights

The Knight of the Rose Croix is the 18th degree of Scottish Rite Masonry. Source:...

The Rosicrucians are another ancient organization still in existence today. Founded in the 1400s, this secret society's spirituality is a combination of magic, alchemy, Jewish mysticism, and Gnosticism.

The website for the Rosicrucian Order offers this promise to prospective members:

Through our teachings you will gain specific knowledge of metaphysics, mysticism, philosophy, psychology, parapsychology and science not taught by conventional educational systems or traditional religions...

The Rosicrucian system of study provides a foundation that ties together all different aspects of metaphysical study and demonstrates their interconnectedness. You will understand the natural laws that govern all realms. You will understand Your Self.^iv

Many of the newer esoteric societies were formed out of Rosicrucian philosophy, and it is thought that Rosicrucianism had a large influence on the creation of Scottish Rite Freemasonry. The Knight of the Rose Croix is the 18^th degree of Scottish Rite Masonry.

The logo of the Skull and Bones consists of a skull and crossbones, along with...

The Skull and Bones secret society, which started in 1832 at Yale University, is chapter 322 of a much larger worldwide organization based in Germany:

Those on the inside know it as The Order. Others have known it for more than 150 years as Chapter 322 of a German secret society. More formally, for legal purposes, The Order was incorporated as The Russell Trust in 1856. It was also once known as the "Brotherhood of Death". Those who make light of it, or want to make fun of it, call it "Skull & Bones", or just plain "Bones".

The American chapter of this German order was founded in 1833 at Yale University by General William Huntington Russell and Alphonso Taft who, in 1876, became Secretary of War in the Grant Administration. Alphonso Taft was the father of William Howard Taft, the only man to be both President and Chief Justice of the United States.

Notably the British establishment was also founded at a University—Oxford University, and especially All Souls College at Oxford. The British element is called "The Group."

The Group links to the Jewish equivalent through the Rothschilds in Britain (Lord Rothschild was an original member of Rhodes' "inner circle"). The Order in the U.S. links to the Guggenheim, Schiff and Warburg families. There were no Jews at all in The Order until very recently.^v

Former American presidents George Bush Sr. and George Bush Jr. are both members of Skull and Bones. The skull and crossbones symbolizes the god of death—Jupiter, or Lucifer.

The initiation into Skull and Bones includes bowing to a figure dressed in papal garb, as well as many sexual rites, as we learn in the following video:

Watch more videos on the Skull and Bones Society

Researcher and journalist Anthony Sutton (1925-2002) reveals the purpose and power of the Order:

The Order has either set up or penetrated just about every significant research, policy, and opinion-making organization in the United States, in addition to the Church, business, law, government and politics...

The evolution of American society is not, and has not been for a century, a voluntary development reflecting individual opinion... On the contrary, the broad direction has been created artificially and stimulated by The Order...

The Order gets the ball rolling in new organizations; [it] puts in the FIRST President or Chairman, and the ideas, and then when operations are rolling along, often just fades out of the picture...

The FIRST Chairman of the American Society for the Judicial Settlement of International Disputes was member William Howard Taft (1878). The Society was the forerunner of the League to Enforce the Peace, which developed into the League of Nations concept and ultimately into the United Nations. In the United Nations we find, for example, Archibald MacLeish (1915) who was the brains behind the constitution of the UNESCO organization.^vi

The Bohemian Club, established in 1872, is related to the Skull and Bones Society. The August 2, 1982 edition of Newsweek magazine tells us this:

The world's most prestigious summer camp—the Bohemian Grove—is now in session 75 miles north of San Francisco. The fiercely guarded, 2,700 acre retreat is the country extension of San Francisco's all-male ultra-exclusive Bohemian Club to which every Republican President since Herbert Hoover has belonged.

Is the Bohemian Club really just an exclusive all-male summer camp? As we can see from the following video, the Club's occult flavor and demonic rituals say otherwise.

In 1981, Mother Jones magazine published a list of some of the Bohemian Club's more prominent members:

George P. Shultz, Stephen Bechtel, Jr., Gerald R. Ford, Henry Kissinger, William F. Buckley, Jr., Fred L. Hartley, Merv Griffin...Ronald Reagan, A. W. Clausen, George Bush, William French Smith, John E. Swearingen, Caspar W. Weinberger, Justin Dart, William E. Simon.^vii

Another Order, the Knights of Columbus, was founded in 1882 by Father Michael J. McGivney.

The Knights of Columbus, founded at New Haven, Connecticut, February 2, 1882, by Rev. M. J. McGivney, curate of St. Mary's Church...had on January 1, 1905, a total membership of 127,206 persons, 43,537 of whom were insured and 83,669 were associate members. They are now (1912) said to be over 300,000 strong.^viii

The crest of the Knights of Columbus. Notice the Maltese Cross and the bound bundle...

Like in other secret societies, these Knights must be initiated through various degrees, and have a political purpose involving the edification of the Papacy:

But an adroit feature of this organization, to which Roman Catholics only are eligible, is the initiative service of four degrees, calculated to impress upon candidates their sacred obligations to uphold the Church on this western continent discovered by the great Columbus.

The relations of the Knights and the Church are supposed to be mutual and reciprocal, the Church using the order to further its ends of capturing America, and the Knights using the Church to exalt the glory of Columbus, and more particularly for their own political preferment...

they work in collusion with the Hierarchy, and are heart and soul in politics. This fact is well known to political machines and non-Catholic politicians, whose candidates must receive the approval of Rome and the Knights before they dare nominate them for either dog pound or presidency...

Notwithstanding these facts, the innocent Knights, like their Jesuitical spiritual advisers, publicly declare that they are not in politics...Knights, whose principal business is politics, aye, Jesuitical politics (emphasis added).^xi

Spanish Priest Josemaría Escrivá (1902-1975) founded Opus Dei (The Prelature of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei) in 1928. Opus Dei membership reached over 90,000 in 2009. Members include many government officials and clergy from Spain and throughout the world.

Opus Dei has been criticized for the extreme right-wing political agenda of its members, and also for its practices of corporal mortification—self-inflicted pain—which is described in TIME magazine:

But numeraries are expected, although not compelled, to wear a cilice, a small chain with inward-pointing spikes, around the upper thigh for two hours each day, and to flail themselves briefly weekly, with a small rope whip called a discipline.^x

Philosopher, historian, and Knight of Malta Avro Manhattan reminds us that Opus Dei is also under the control of the Jesuits and the Papacy:

The Opus Dei is a semi-secret religious lay order whose paramount objective is total support of the papacy and of the most conservative principals of the Catholic Church [the Council of Trent]...its members have dedicated themselves, with their personal and corporate wealth, to the blind instrument of the church [the Jesuit general].^xi