Throughout the pages of this Substack, I have talked about Traditionalist orders, such as the Order of Janus or The Chaldean Fellowship, or even non-Traditionalist but certainly not inimical or subversive organizations such as the College of Seth.
I’ve also mentioned certain Counter-Traditional and Counter-Initiatic orders, such as the Order of the Red Glyph, and alluded to others of their ilk. Among the latter is the Fraternitas Chnoubis, which is a name that I do not speak lightly…and whose inclusion amongst my scattered writings on this Substack I have long hesitated and fretted over.
It is enough to speak of the Order of the Red Glyph; to mention the Fraternitas Chnoubis, still less to discuss it in any detail and at any great length, is to court unwelcome notice and perhaps even reprisals. I say this because the Fraternitas belongs to a blacker inner circle of Counter-Traditional and Counter-Initiatic organizations than even the votaries of the Red Glyph have access to.
But I guess I should explain further what I mean, for most readers are doubtless confused and perplexed at this point.
Briefly put, the Fraternitas Chnoubis is a Counter-Initiatic order of long standing; its history and genealogy, as is frequently the case with these organizations, is muddled, mysterious, and rather tortuous, if one is even able to glean a sure understanding of what it is and whence it came.
As far as I can unravel the story (and I am indebted to several members of the Order of Janus, from whom much of the following information is derived), the Fraternitas Chnoubis originated as a fairly “orthodox” Sethian Gnostic sect in the first or second century—and, naturally, I use the term “orthodox” advisedly, so far as any Gnostic sect can be considered to follow an authentic tradition and conform in any way to orthodoxy.
But there was a serpent in the garden, so to speak; the original sin was already very much present in the aboriginal sectarians of the Fraternitas Chnoubis. The originary sect was, so far as I can tell, something similar to the Ophites or Naasenes; that is to say, they viewed the Serpent of the Garden of Eden not as a figure of evil, contrarius Deo, but rather as a font of gnosis, a salvific figure of sorts, emissary of the Deus Alienus, and an enemy of the Demiurge, contrarius Deo huius mundi—opposed to the god of this world.
It is but a short step from this heresy, as the early fathers well knew, to the next, and this is precisely what occurred with the sect of the Fraternitas Chnoubis. Over time, the heresiarchs of the Fraternitas evolved a kind of Gnostic exegesis that came to regard the serpent not merely as the source of gnosis and the emissary of the Deus Alienus, the “stranger god” of the pleroma, but they came to identify it with the Demiurge itself, and began to sympathize with that latter being as the true source of wisdom and rebellion against a universe and a cosmic schema from which they felt themselves to be irreconcilably estranged.
It is here that the degraded and corrosive nature of our position in the cosmic cycle, and our situation in the Kali-Yuga near the close of our Manvantara, becomes most tragically manifest. The heresiarchs and votaries of the Fraternitas Chnoubis were preyed upon by the forces of the Counter-Tradition and the Counter-Initiation—both the human forces, and the forces that arise from below, from the subtle inferior realms wherein those “Pestilences That Walketh in Darkness” have their origin.
The founder of the Fraternitas Chnoubis, a known historical figure, was—I was informed by my sources in the Order of Janus—a cynical and unrepentant agent of the Counter-Initiation, and it was her motive from the inception to create just such a powerful organization to counteract such societies as the Order of Janus and The Chaldean Brotherhood.
To make a long story short, the Fraternitas Chnoubis came to worship the Demiurge, which was invested with all the material and incarnated characteristics of the Kali-Yuga and, therefore, the Counter-Initiation; Chnoubis or Chnoumis is, in some Gnostic traditions, the name of the leontocephaline Demiurge, which is also known under the names of Iaō, Yaldabaoth, Samaël, Sakla or Saklas, Abraxas or Abrasax, Nebro, Nebruel, and others. It is often represented, suggestively, as a great serpent with a gore-covered lion’s head and eyes that emit lightning.1 The being is famous from Gnostic intaglio gems, amulets, and talismans,2 but few are aware of its true symbolism, drawn as it is from the psychical manifestation of certain of the subtle inferior forces or entities that beleaguer mankind. But that is another story that I do not wish to go into at this time.
The Fraternitas Chnoubis survived the extirpation of the Gnostic sects in the early centuries of the first millennium; in the histories preserved by the Order of Janus, which includes much detailed material on the Fraternitas, there are hints that it reappeared under a different name in the third century, and was instrumental in the breaking apart of the Roman Empire in the middle part of that century, particularly through the barbarian incursions, as well as the usurpations of Odaenathus and his wife Zenobia, and Postumus and his breakaway Gallic Imperium.
The Fratres were virtually exterminated by the efforts of Aurelian and Probus, but they survived nevertheless, apparently fleeing south of the great African desert, before returning in a new guise some centuries later. It is believed that the Fraternitas constructed a small city near an oasis in the Sahara; the city was entirely ruled by the Counter-Initiatic order, with a slave under-caste comprising abducted men and women of nearby tribes and polities. For several hundred years, the Fraternitas grew in power in its desert redoubt, ere the neighboring tribes—which feared and hated the order—eventually combined against the city, slaughtering its inhabitants and putting it to the torch.3
Those of the order who survived fled to the North African littoral, which was by then a part of the Muslim empire of the Umayyad Caliphate. They blent easily among the people of the coastal cities, adopting a lower profile; thence, they made their way to Spain and Europe, infiltrating the merchant and trading cities of Italy and elsewhere along the Mediterranean. Many of the great banking guilds and trading houses of the Mediaeval and early modern period are made up of members of the Fraternitas Chnoubis;4 this is something that continues to this day.
I hesitate to say more about the Fraternitas and its current activities; it is greatly involved in the disorder and chaos and degeneracy of the present day, but its role is even more secretive and closely hidden than that of the Order of the Red Glyph. In some cities of Europe as well as America, you will find buildings or old homes with a stylized symbol of a serpent with a shining lion’s head over their doors; these are lodges of the Fraternitas, and you are strongly advised not to make any mention of the fact that you are aware of this.
I am told that the Fraternitas was heavily involved in the instigation and financing of the Thirty Years’ War, the American War of Independence, and the French and Russian Revolutions. The Fratres are also at the heart of the so-called “cryptocracy” that essentially controls the present-day political, cultural, and financial constitution of the globe—a clandestine and sinister “conspiracy” that continues to the nudge the world and its peoples in a Counter-Traditional and Counter-Initiatic direction.
I may have more to say about the Fraternitas Chnoubis and its activities in the future; for now, suffice that it is among the very most powerful and influential Counter-Initiatic orders in the history of mankind…
Cf., the description of Yaldabaoth in The Secret Book of John: “When Sophia saw what her desire had produced, it changed into the figure of a snake with the face of a lion. Its eyes were like flashing bolts of lightning…;” and the description of Nebro in The Gospel of Judas: “And look, from the cloud an [angel] appeared, whose face blazed with fire and whose countenance was fouled with blood. His name was Nebro, which is interpreted as ‘rebel,’ but others name him Yaldabaoth…” (The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: The International Edition, ed. Marvin Meyer [New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2007], pp. 115, 766.)
It’s worth mentioning here that the Fratres of the Fraternitas Chnoubis are accustomed to wearing these ancient Gnostic amulets and gems bearing the image of the lion-headed snake Demiurge mounted in golden rings, whereby they are enabled to identify members of their order. The custom is nearly identical to a similar habit among the members of the College of Seth, but which of these groups originated the custom, and which imitated it—unless indeed they each developed it independently—is impossible for me to say. In any case, the gem is always of antique origin, with the intaglio image of Chnoubis etched into the gem and bearing above it the characters Χ | Ν | Ο | Υ | Β | Ι | Ⲥ; or, somewhat more rarely, Χ | Ν | Ο | Υ | Μ | Ι | Ⲥ. There is, as with the College of Seth, a formula that goes along with recognition of a fellow Frater’s insignia; that is something, however, that I cannot publish here.
The ruins of this city—which is called az-Uzzounebröeth in the accounts (“The City of Nebruel” in the Aius Infandus, the ur-language of mankind)—have yet to be discovered and formally described by modern scientific institutions; the College of Seth, however, has located it in the Sahara, and has performed desultory excavations. The archaeological digs, which were carried out in the 1980s, were called off shortly after they began, possibly in connection with the disappearance of several members of the excavation team.
I am told that many of the famous houses and doges of Venice—including many Cornaros, Tiepolos, Contarinis, Morosinis, Dandalos, and Mocenigos—were initiated into the Fraternitas Chnoubis.