stories of pope John’s occult involvement abound, but it is only recently that i have begun to take them seriously. some of you may think i am foolish for even considering the prospect.

As time has gone on and I have undertaken more research, this accusation seems somewhat more credible than it first appeared to be. Certainly, to my knowledge, Rome has never put out a statement denying the story of John’s occult initiation.

The following is taken from Pier Carpi’s ‘Les Propheties du Pape Jean XXIII’, which was written in the late ’70’s. Along with the alleged prophecies is an account of the Rosicrucian initiation ritual apparently undertaken by Angelo Roncalli when he was stationed in Bulgaria.

I present it here for you in the interests of pursuing the truth about Pope John, the Council and the influence of the occult on the Church during the twentieth century.

We pick up the story at a conversation between Carpi and an occultist. (The text has been run through an online translation tool so may be a bit rough in places.)

The old man took up the document and put it back in the azure blue napkin. “I must not add anything to that. You will have understood the fundamental importance of this table. It constitutes a real restoration of the esoteric tradition that allows the initiates to be free initiators. To choose their disciples, to to form the chain — down through their descendants.”

I knew the tradition but I knew nothing about this document and the reality of the meeting between the three masters in Paris. The old man put down his napkin, got up and went to the window, set aside the white curtains that hid the night, as if he was looking for someone or something in the darkness. He turned around, stood and looked at me. “The evening I met you in Saint-Léon, I told you about the books of ‘T’ and ‘M’.”

“You told me that, like my other friend, you had read them in a dream”.

“If it can be called a dream. Alas! We must use secular terms that betray the content of our thought. However, I feel that we understand each other. If I am here, it is because I have something else to show you, something that needs to be disclosed, that must be made public. But, before I demonstrate it to you, I must tell you the facts.”

He returned to his seat, took up his napkin, which he pressed still more tightly against him and stared at me intensely: “I have to tell you about a man that everyone knows. Angelo Roncalli.”

“John XXIII?”

Here we pause to consider the motivation Carpi may have had for writing a book about John XXIII. By this time, John had been dead for almost fifteen years so it could not undermine his papacy. Carpi does not attempt to taint John’s legacy: from the point of view of an occultist, the book actually benefits John’s image. This leads us to wonder if Carpi had no other motivation than to tell the truth.

He hesitated for a moment, his eyes half-closed: “Jean,” he murmured. “1935 ….. Life was not easy for Angelo Roncalli, Archbishop of Mesembria, delegate in Turkey. Like all other religious, he was made to wear civilian dress, because of persecutions. Under constant surveillance, it was difficult for him to move: the spies were everywhere. Yet all those who approached him at that moment found in him a great serenity, which was not only that joy which he knew so well how to transmit, especially in difficult times.

“It was precisely at this time that his first contact with the unknown world took place.

“That evening Angelo Roncalli hastily retired to his apartments, as if he had an appointment. He lay down on his bed after undressing without the help of anyone – he had always done so and was to continue to do so, even when he became pope.

“Before turning off the light, he looked at the pictures on the walls, images of the extended family. He closed his eyes and, while continuing his prayer, all the faces encountered that day flashed through his mind, especially those of the most humble people. Could he have expected it? More faces, smiles, sad eyes. Then sleep invaded him. But he would never know if it was really sleep. He had an appointment with the old man of sleep.

“Six nights in a row he had seen him. It was the seventh. The most important and perhaps the last.

“He appeared; old, very white hair, thin face, dark skin, eyes sweet and piercing.

” “Will you be able to recognize me?” he asked.

” “Always, master.”

“Then, suddenly, the sacred books of ‘T’ and ‘M’ appeared in his hands. He leafed through. Inscribed on paper, knowledge, the words of knowledge, in a a language that Angelo had never known, never read before. But from his first rendezvous with the old man, in a dream which was perhaps not a dream, Angelo had known how to decipher it.

“He read and everything became simple. God, how simple everything was, how clear everything was! If the other men might have known, the world could have been very different. But Angelo realised it was not given to everyone to know, because these things could be dangerous. Only a few could give them a correct meaning, use them to the good of all. In malevolent hands, they could become terrible weapons against man.

“The two books closed. An intense light illuminated their covers on which were inscribed the two silver letters in relief – a light like the one Angelo felt within him. Impalpable, intransmissible by the poor instruments at man’s disposal; for millennia, has man not renounced forces, powers, and knowledge to replace them by a way as difficult as it is useless?

” “Now you are ready,” said the old man. “And you’re on your way. I came because you called me. Now you know. But you still have a lot to learn, to see, to live. That’s why we’ll see each other again.”

” “I’m waiting for you, master.”

“The old man smiled. “Will you be able to recognize me?”

“He repeated the same question three times. Three times Angelo gave the same answer. Then he woke up. He was alone in his room. He got up from the bed, went to the table, took some sheets of paper of paper and a pencil. He tried to write down what he had read in the books of knowledge. But his hand remained inert, his mind empty.

“It was not possible. Words did not exist. Yet he had something in him – something that no one, could ever erase. That light had made him another man. He knew that the dream would never happen again. That the old man would return, but in reality. What else awaited him? He was not afraid because he knew he was on the the right way, that of the Good. He put down the pencil and thought.

“He thought of the saints, the mystics, the men of faith, of the Church, men of truth and of peace. He took pleasure in remembering St. John the Evangelist, St. Anthony, St. Albert the Grand, St. Teresa, St. Francis. He rose, stopped in front of the crucifix, knelt down and prayed to the Virgin Mary for a long time.

“She too had an apparition. Was it not in a dream that her destiny was fulfilled, when someone appeared to the sleeping Joseph to explain to him, in very simple words, the greatest of mysteries of faith, of all humanity?

“He felt happy. And for the first time that night, he knew that someone was praying for him, in a big secret way.”

The old man had finished his story. I looked at him: “They met?” I asked.

He confirmed it. Seven days later, to be exact. Angelo Roncalli celebrated the sacraments in his humble house, before an even more humble community. While the others were going to work before lunch, Angelo went downstairs. In the hallway, sitting on a chair, stood the old man of his dream. No one had heard him knock or ring. But Angelo didn’t even wonder how he could have gotten in. He approached him and kissed him, as one embraces a brother who returns after a long absence. He invited him to his table but the other shook his head, smiling: “We must sit at a completely different table,” he said. Angelo looked at him. As the old man of his dream had asked him, he had immediately recognized him, and he listened.

“Are you ready?”

“I don’t know”.

“Then you are.” Leave everything and follow me. He followed him, without telling anyone. For a long time they marched through the deserted city. The old man stopped in a small narrow square, with its low houses. He who, until then, had guided Angelo, turned and said:

“Since you are ready, since you will soon be my equal, since the path we have to follow will be the same, you know it too. It is now up to you to lead me.”

Angelo hesitated, looking around him. The man encouraged him:

“Let’s go”.

He advanced and chose without hesitation an alley, and entered it. Behind him, he could hear the footsteps of the old one. He stopped in front of a door of rough wood.

“Is it there?” he asked. The other smiled.

“Push the door, it’s only half closed. Climb up the stairs and don’t wait for me”.

Angelo let himself be led by the voice he felt within him. He climbed two small staircases in almost total darkness, found himself in front of a new door, even smaller and lower than the other, and pushed it. It was ajar and he knew it. He entered.

The room was large and pentagonal. The walls were bare. There were two large windows, closed. In the middle of the room, there was a large cedar table, also pentagonal. There were three chairs, leaning against three of the walls. On the chairs, a linen tunic, coloured belts and envelopes sealed with red. On the table, a Bible opened at the beginning of the Gospel of Saint John. There was a flaming sword with silver hilt; a censer; coloured ribbons; two bronze candelabra with three branches, each bearing three red candles. Then the magical and esoteric symbol of the Order to which Angelo would shortly be initiated. Under the symbol, there were three crossed roses, made of fabric. One white, one red, one black.

The only dim lighting came from the three candles lit on one of the two lampposts. The others were extinguished. Angelo stood in front of the table. He looked at these objects, which, since he had read the sacred books in his dream, meant many things to him. He hardly dared to touch them. He began to read the first chapters of the Gospel of St. John, which had always fascinated him; he had, moreover, penetrated its most secret keys.

He detached himself from it when he heard light footsteps behind him. It was the master, who smiled. He had recently entered the room, behind him the door was closed. He wore a long linen tunic – the protective fabric of any initiation ceremony – down to his feet. Around his neck, there was the magic symbol of the Order, in silver, hung at the end of a chain fromTemplar knots. With his hands gloved in white, his head bare, he approached, and without ceasing to smiled, placed a hand on Angelo’s right shoulder:

“Kneel, on your right knee only”.

Angelo obeyed, and the ceremony began.

The master gave the meaning of each object, explained their symbolism. He took sealed envelopes, opened them and read their contents. On a sheet of blue paper were the ancient regulations of the Order. He opened another envelope, handed the sheet of paper to Angelo, who read what it said: seven questions.

“Do you feel able to answer them?” the master asked him.

Angelo replied in the affirmative and gave him back the paper. Then with the help of a candle, master lit the candles of the second candelabra.

“These lights are for the masters of the past who are among us”.

He put incense in the censer, purified the room by its four corners: then he turned three times and at each turn waved it three times. He returned to the table, and placed his hands on the profane man’s head and began to speak. He told him the mysteries of the Order. He asked questions. He received answers. At last the old master bent over him.

“As you know, we call each other by the name we have chosen. Each one thus signs his freedom, his work program, the new link in the chain. What will your name be?”

The layman did not hesitate: “John.”

Here, we pause to consider the name that Angelo Roncalli chose for himself on being elected as Pope. It was John XXIII. That name had in fact been used once before: by an antipope in the fifteenth century. That John XXIII was eventually tried for  “piracy, rape, sodomy, murder and incest” with “the more scandalous” charges being “suppressed”!!

We continue our narrative, making note that the ‘peculiar and complex ritual’ is the great Secret of the Rosicrucians, something so depraved and unnatural that it cannot be mentioned outside of the brotherhood.

“John”, repeated the master. And he then undertook the peculiar and complex ritual of the initiation ceremony.

Finally, he put his sword on the neophyte’s head. At that moment, some new, elusive thing happened in John, something exploded in him. He was quite stunned and confused while reaching the height of serenity and happiness.

“What you are experiencing at this moment, Brother John, many others have experienced before You: Myself, the masters of the past, the other brothers around the world. That thing, call it Light, but it has no name”.

The master helped the disciple to his feet, kissed him seven times, and exchanged fraternal greetings with him. Then he taught him the secret words, the signs of recognition, the touching, the ritual of group work. Verbally, according to tradition.

He then taught him the daily rites to be performed at three very specific moments of the day — which correspond to the three points of the operation of the sun — and in the most great secret, a Greek sentence and gestures to repeat.

“At these three moments precisely,” explained the master, “our brothers and sisters all over the world make the same gestures, say the same sentence. Their strength is great, it comes from afar and is goes very far. Day after day, it acts on humanity.

Finally, the master took the last envelope, opened it, and read its contents to John. On a sheet of paper was inscribed the formula of the oath: an oath not to reveal the secrets of the Order, to follow tradition, to always act for good, to be always strong, to help the brethren and the unfortunate, to respect above all the law of God and his ministers.

Without hesitation, John signed at the end of the formula. He was animated by great strength. Near his signature, he wrote the number and the acronym that the master indicated to him. These two elements codified his initiation and rank. The master took the sheet back, folded it seven times, and asked the disciple to put it with the tip of his hand onto the flaming sword. This was done.

The master brought the sword close to the candelabra where it was burning the candles for the masters of the past; the fire licked the paper. In a few seconds, the Oath was taken, reduced to ashes which the master scattered. “You have sworn, John, but know that the freedom of the brothers is far superior to all oaths. Today, you really know what freedom is. He kissed him again. John began to cry.

The last consideration I will present here is that even if the described events did not not involve Angelo Roncalli, they do offer us an insight into the diabolical world of the mystery religions. We catch a glimpse of the mindset of those involved: their disdain for true religion, their arrogance in believing that the occult offers a solution to life’s problems that is superior to that of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is the Way, Truth and the Life.

IMAGE CREDIT: Abzeronow, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons