The College of Seth
A Profile of a Modern Secret Society
Our civilization possesses a curious penchant for attributing any and all unusual happenings and historical developments to the “hidden hand” of conspiracies and secret societies.
Given that the moderns affect to eschew all superstition, this fact is amusing to say the least; it would certainly make for an interesting study, and I may even undertake to explore this theme further in a future essay. If nothing else, it belies the pretense to scientific objectivity and unfettered rationalism that modern civilization incessantly claims for itself.
In any case, the evidence of this mindset is everywhere to be found: from the bizarre theorizing of the “QAnon” conspiracists, to allegations that hidden right-wing extremists are working to topple Western governments, to the more general notion of a shadowy cabal of unspecified “Elites” acting to manipulate history and bring about a technocratic and dystopian future—although this last, admittedly, does broadly seem to comport with the reality we have lived in recent years.
The sinister activities of secret societies and hidden organizations abound in these theories, and we all know their names: the Freemasons, the Illuminati, the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, the Muslim Brotherhood, and even such dubious entities as Majestic 12 and “The Collins Elite.” It’s all great fun, but one has to wonder just how secret a society can be when its name and even its member lists and purported agenda are so well known?
That is not to say, of course, that there aren’t real secret societies in the world, working in a more or less shadowy fashion behind the stage of history; these organizations, moreover, are much less familiar than the usual suspects. In fact it surprises me how little-known they really are; I have spent the better part of my life researching them, publishing obscure articles on them in even more obscure academic journals, and have become good friends with quite a few of their members.
None of these societies have forbidden me to write about them, or to publish their names and missions abroad. Still, nobody has ever expressed any interest in these organizations, and so I feel no qualms in writing about them here, where I suspect no one will take notice. I’ve decided to speak about these groups intermittently in this newsletter, and I’ll begin with what I believe is the largest and by far the most important secret society operating in the world today: the College of Seth.
Though I am not a member, I have cooperated with the College for a great many years, and they have greatly facilitated my researches and directed me toward important leads that I would otherwise have overlooked. For this reason I am extremely grateful toward the College of Seth and its members, and this may to some extent color my observations about them.
Anyhow, the College of Seth is not, strictly speaking, a Traditionalist organization, although their worldview is, I suppose, broadly in consonance with the cosmology of Evola and Guénon, particularly regarding the concept of the Counter-Tradition and the Counter-Initiation. The College is rather more scientistic and materialistic in its philosophical tendencies; this is a consequence of its intellectual genealogy, together with its membership, which consists of academics and specialists in many fields.
And with such a broad roster of members, it’s perhaps inevitable that the College should partake of the general intellectual errors of the modern age. Nevertheless, the College of Seth is responsible for the most comprehensive and systematic investigations into occult and paranormal phenomena of any organization in the modern world, even though its findings are little heralded and its existence is practically unknown.1
So what is the College of Seth, and what is its history? It was founded in London in the late 1920s, and was intended to be the larger and more systematic successor organization to an earlier—and much more informal—investigative body that operated from the early 1890s to about the time of the First World War. In fact, I’ll probably describe that organization in a future article; suffice for now that it consisted of a handful of late Victorian dilettantes, of typically eclectic and wide-ranging interests, who gathered to discuss and explore various occult mysteries.
In any case, it was the research notes, extensive library, and even meeting room of this predecessor group that formed the nucleus of the College of Seth. It was named after the so-called “Seed of Seth,” that is, the Gnostics of late antiquity; the Gnostics understood themselves to be the “kingless generation,” enlightened beyond normal mankind (as their name suggests), and descended from Seth, the third child of Adam and Eve.2 One of the members of the College’s predecessor organization was deeply influenced by the thinking and mythology of the so-called Sethian Gnostics, and this symbolism carried over to the new secret society.
For one thing, the mission of the College of Seth was to dispel mystery and elucidate the unknown, which was conceived as a continuation of the Gnostics, haters of ignorance. Even the rituals of the College were derived from Gnostic symbology; the perfecti—that is to say, members who have graduated beyond the lowest rank, audientes (“listeners”)—are required to signal their membership in the organization by wearing a gold ring with a Gnostic amulet of the serpent-bodied, lion-headed demiurge Yaldabaoth (also known in the Sethian tradition as “Sakla(s)” or “Samael”). Conversely, should members be lacking the ring for whatever reason, they may recognize one another by repeating a ritual formula: “I am God; there is no other beside me,” to which the appropriate response is “Thou art wrong, Samael.”3
As I stated before, the purpose of the College of Seth is to investigate the occult and paranormal mysteries that still abound in the world, and to chronicle something of what might be called the secret history of the world—I have read an astounding document compiled by a prominent member of the College, and it is impossible to view human history in the same way after assimilating its remarkable contents. In their own way, members of the College have dedicated themselves to combatting the forces of the Counter-Initiation in the world, though they often fall into the errors of the Counter-Tradition.
The College’s motto is an old one, and it is: Ne mysterium sis passus—“Sufferest not a mystery.” That is, I am told, supposed to be the motto of the true explorer, who seeks indefatigably to ferret out the mysteries of the Unknown. But I have also seen a more enigmatic and perhaps darker motto inscribed upon the lintel of the College’s headquarters: ΜΗ ΦΥCΙΝ ΕΜΒΛΕΨΗC • ΕΙΜΑΡΜΕΝΟΝ ΟΥΝΟΜΑ ΤΗCΔΕ—“Lookest not upon Nature: her name is Destiny,” which is a rather sinister-sounding quotation from the Chaldean Oracles.4
The College’s members consist of archaeologists, anthropologists, folklorists, historians, teachers, writers, scientists from many fields, doctors, psychologists, parapsychologists, politicians, researchers, police detectives, cryptozoologists, and just an eclectic mix of men and women from every stratum of society—from the elite echelons to the most humble and unprepossessing working classes. They make themselves known to one another through the possession of a curious gold ring, or the repetition of certain recondite formulae. Their society, still headquartered in London, is immense, numbering over 10,000, and with a complicated hierarchy, extensive archives and museum departments, and with a budget that many of the world’s most prominent NGOs would envy.
Despite the College’s Gnostic ideography, which would seem to indicate a traditional genealogy, it isn’t actually the descendant of any regular initiatic tradition.5 So the College of Seth is an entirely secular organization, unlike some of the secret societies I will treat of in future posts; it doesn’t participate in the suprahuman Tradition like a true initiatic body, as explained in such works as René Guénon’s Aperçus sur l’initiation. In this way, the College of Seth could be regarded as “pseudo-initiatic;” but as the pseudonymous “Ea” explains in the essay “On the Limits of Initiatic ‘Regularity,’” there are precious few initiatic chains surviving in the modern world, especially in the West, where “[the seeker] finds himself in an environment from which the spiritual forces have withdrawn.”6
So, in its own way perhaps, and in spite of its generally materialistic ideology, the College of Seth may be in the process of resurrecting a unique initiatic linkage to Tradition, which may yet bear fruit in some future civilization.
I mention all of this because the College of Seth does seem to have a metaphysical orientation of some sort, although I was able to learn very little about it; those to whom I spoke of it were curiously reticent, and were unwilling to speak of such matters to the uninitiated—or, as the Collegians call us, the “skoteinoi.”7 There is an eschatology of some sort connected to this metaphysics; the little that I could learn was that there is to be something called “the Event,” which seems to be associated with the end of time or at least the end of our present cycle, as well as some great evil or demiurgic being known as “the Inhabitant,” which I assume is meant to usher in the end of our age.
I should add that I have heard rumors about the College of Seth, particularly that it has acquired land on remote Arctic islands—or even the islands themselves—in order to establish a kind of fortress or Last Redoubt, called “Home,” which I suppose is meant to act as an Ark of sorts during the transition from this cycle to the next. It is said that certain highly-placed members of the College have bribed or otherwise prevailed upon members of foreign governments to acquire this land; these rumors are the only hints of conspiratorial or political activities that have so far attached to the College of Seth, but I can state here categorically that I have found no evidence of their truthfulness.
Despite the notoriously unsecretive nature of secret societies, the College of Seth has remained virtually unknown to all save a few nosy historians and insufferable researchers, such as myself. It is largely invisible even to the most enthusiastic conspiracy theorists, and I can’t help but see something providential in this fact. Perhaps the College really is an enemy of the true conspiracy back of all history—the Counter-Initiation.
As a final note, the College has been curiously quiet in recent years. My friends in the organization tell me they are busy preparing for “the Event,” and that the College’s regular activities have been mainly diverted to that end.
My thoughts on the paranormal, expressed in an earlier essay for this newsletter, were in large part informed by research into the occult and paranormal investigations of the College of Seth.
Cf. The Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit: “Then the incorruptible human Adamas requested that a child come from himself, so that the child may be father of the immovable incorruptible generation, and through this generation silence and speech may appear and through it the dead realm may rise and then fade away. So the power of the great light came from above. She was revelation, and she gave birth to Four Great Luminaries…along with great incorruptible Seth, son of the incorruptible human Adamas” (The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: The International Edition, ed. Marvin Meyer. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2007, pg. 258).
I repeat this ritual here since there is little danger that readers will be able to misrepresent themselves as members of the College of Seth. There are many more secondary rituals and formulae by which a true member can be recognized, which I choose not to publish here.
Fr. 102 (The Chaldean Oracles, trans. Ruth Majercik. Wiltshire, UK: The Prometheus Trust, 2013).
There are some who trace the College’s genealogy to Medieval antecedents, such as the Cathars or Albigenses of southern France, or even the Sodales Chaldaici of the Roman Empire. But even if this were true, neither the Albigenses nor the Chaldean Brotherhood belong to a regular initiatic tradition themselves, thereby invalidating this argument altogether.
Julius Evola and the UR Group, Introduzione alla Magia, Volume Terzo (Rome: Edizioni Mediterranee, 1971). [Introduction to Magic, Volume III: Realizations of the Absolute Individual, trans. Joscelyn Godwin. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2021, pg. 180.]
The term derives from the Greek “οἱ σκοτεινοί,” meaning “the blind ones,” or “those who are in darkness.” It is, I’ve been told, not necessarily meant in a pejorative or derogatory sense; it is strictly a technical term, and can be compared to the Gnostic use of “hylics” or “choics,” or the use of “ἡ ἀγέλη” (“the herd”) by the Chaldean sect in late antiquity, to designate the “unenlightened” or “unawakened.” Even so, I have to admit there’s an unmistakable sting that comes with being called a “skoteinos” by a member of the College.