I want to talk today about another secret society that is little known outside of its restricted membership or certain esotericist circles.
Really, “secret society” is not the correct term; it is properly an initiatic order, of indisputably Traditionalist orientation, and one that lays claim to a very ancient pedigree and genealogy. I’m talking about “the Order of Janus,” and if that is a name that is unfamiliar to you, you’re hardly alone; it is an Order whose furtiveness is almost scientific in its thoroughness, and its membership lists are restricted to a very small number of men, largely if not exclusively in Europe.
The Ordo Iani Bifrontis, to use its official title, is principally an Italian secret organization, for it is upon that peninsula that the Order’s ancientmost seat was located, and it has been headquartered there ever since. The Order is known in Italy as il più antico Ordine di Giano, but it is also known as l’Ordre de Janus in southern France, where the Order maintains several local chapters. Despite rumors of a chapter in North America, I have found no evidence that the Order exists outside of Europe.
The Order of Janus is, as I mentioned, very ancient, and recognizes its antecedents in certain groups that were active in Rome nearly two thousand years ago, and very probably much earlier than that—by some accounts, the Order existed in the earliest days of the Republic. Whether that is accurate or not is debatable, but it is certain that the Order of Janus was active in third-century imperial Rome, for there is ample epigraphic evidence linking the Ordo Iani with some members of the Sodales Chaldaici, the “Chaldean Fellowship,”1 who were also active in Rome during the same period.
The Order of Janus claims a genuine initiatic tradition, and I am satisfied that this linkage is both correct and sufficiently maintained so as to confer the true powers of a “magical chain” upon the workings of this Order. I have beheld the effects of such a magical chain performed by the Order myself, and can attest to its extraordinary efficacy.2
The original purpose of the Order, so I’ve been told by current members, was to preserve the ancient pagan Tradition of the Roman and Italic peoples, and to guard Roman civilization against the corrupting influence of the anti-traditional philosophies, schools of thought, and syncretic “religions” flowing out of Greece and the Near East. Moreover, its initiates were charged with preserving the best of Roman civilization, and transmitting it to future ages.
It was for this reason that they adopted Janus Bifrons as their patron divinity—for Janus is the Roman god of time, the lord of the future and of eternity, whose twofold visage looks both toward the past (Tradition), and toward the future (the close of the present cycle and the ensuing Golden Age).3
The history of the Order of Janus from about the reign of the emperor Aurelian to the latter part of the nineteenth century is rather sketchy; it clearly survived intact throughout the Middle Ages, and seems to have largely avoided notice by the Catholic Church. What little I’ve seen of the Order’s early medieval history indicates that it often survived with only a handful of members; for long stretches of time, I believe the Order was almost entirely a family affair, transmitted from father to son or other male relatives with few new initiates being admitted to its ranks.
Among its roster of claimed initiates I recognized a few famous names, including several that were quite illustrious: the late Roman statesman Flavius Aetius, the famous Byzantine general Belisarius, and even the emperor Constans II. In later periods its initiates included Byzantine exarchs in Italy, Venetian doges, and an unusually large number of crusaders and Templars.
The Order of Janus seems to have enjoyed its high water mark during the period of the Norman Kingdom in Sicily, and especially during the reign of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen. But after the expulsion of the crusaders from the Holy Land, and the decimation of the Order of the Temple in the early fourteenth century, the group’s fortunes once again waned, and we hear little of it until the late nineteenth century.
Since that time, the Order of Janus has become more active in world affairs; it is still dedicated to the transmission and revival of ancient Roman values and civilization, and has in no way forgotten its charge and its mandate. Furthermore, the Order has devoted itself to combating the Counter-Tradition and the Counter-Initiation—the Satanic, involutionary, materialistic, and anti-metaphysical forces that have virtually gained the upper hand in the Dark Age of our world.
It is these efforts that first brought the Order of Janus to my attention, aside from my general interest in little-known esoteric and initiatic organizations. For one thing, the Order preserves a fascinating history of its magical efforts to counteract certain world-historical events and upheavals—including failed attempts to prevent the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), the formation of the anti-traditional American Republic (1783) (its most egregious failure), and the French Revolution (1789), and more successful endeavors to thwart the European revolutions in the middle of the nineteenth century, and postpone at least the Russian Revolution until the period of the First World War.
The group also had some role in the rise of the Fascist Regime in Italy, which was intended to pave the way for the resurrection of a traditional Roman civilization in the twentieth century; in this effort, however, the group acted prematurely, with inevitable results. I’ve also recognized the “invisible hand” of the Order of Janus in the recent challenges to the counter-traditional Liberal Democratic world order, and the unexpected resurgence of a Right that is more truly worthy of the name; the growing interest in Traditionalism around the world, which cannot be denied, is also surely due to their ulterior machinations.
As for the Order itself, it is as I said extremely secretive and mysterious, but there are some things that I can say about it. It is thoroughly Traditionalist in orientation—although its “Traditionalism” is far more ancient than the school of that name more or less connected with René Guénon and Julius Evola—and is committed both to preserving metaphysical knowledge and transmitting it to the future, and in training those skilled in interpreting its abstruse doctrine so as to form an intellectual clerisy that can assist in rebuilding the world upon the close of the Kali-Yuga or Dark Age, the aevum ferreum or “Iron Age” of Hesiod’s and Ovid’s mytho-chronography.
I am not authorized to say much about the Order’s interior organization, save that its membership worldwide is restricted to a symbolic ninety-nine individuals (many of whom are prominent in society and whose names you would surely recognize), and that il più antico Ordine di Giano (the chief chapter of the Order of Janus) is organized into inner and outer circles, with a governing council of seven maestri. As far as rituals, I was not permitted to learn them; but I can say that members of the Order commonly recognize one another by the use of a special token, which consists of an ancient Roman silver denarius bearing an image of Janus, but “chop marked” with the initials “O. I.” (“Ordo Iani”). I’m told that this is the reason old Roman coins with the image of Janus are rather difficult to come by, and are unusually expensive when found.
Although few have ever heard of the Order itself, it does have connections with more “mainstream” organizations, including the Movimento Tradizionale Romano (whose members monotheistically worship the god Janus), the Associazione Romània Quirites, and even such defunct groups as the Ordine Nuovo, the Gruppo dei Dioscuri, and the Centro Studi Tradizionali Arx. The Order of Janus also maintains a “research center” in Rome devoted to the study of the Counter-Tradition, the Counter-Initiation, as well as occult, spiritual, religious, and paranormal phenomena of every sort.
I rank the Order of Janus as being among the most powerful and influential secret societies in the world—even more so than the much larger and better-known College of Seth.
I will certainly write more about this fascinating group in a future post.
Cf. the pseudonymous Iagla’s “On the ‘Law of Beings’” in Introduction to Magic, vol. III, pp. 141-49, as well as the article “Instructions on Magical Chains,” op. cit., vol. II, pp. 42-52.
This is also why I chose an image of Janus for my Substack author profile—although I hasten to add that I am not a member of the Order of Janus, nor affiliated with them in any way.