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BURIED BACON
American Occultist, Rosicrucian and
Freemason, Manly Palmer Hall, became very active in the
1920s-1930s. Amongst many other things, he believed that ancient
Egyptians planned the founding of America thousands of years ago, and that
Sir Francis Bacon, Viscount St
Albans (1561-1626), wrote most of Shakespeare’s dramas. Hall was
enamoured with Bacon, believing him to be a mystical master of great
secret knowledge and power. He passed this fascination for Bacon to his
wife, Marie Bauer Hall, who claimed that secret documents by Bacon
were buried in a hidden vault under a private church cemetery in
Williamsburg, Virginia. She claimed that various tombstones contained
coded information – which she, apparently, was able to decipher, revealing
the location of Bacon’s secret vault.
In 1938 Mrs Hall managed to persuade
officials of the Bruton Episcopalian (Anglican) Parish Church to dig in
their cemetery to locate the vault. They located the original church
foundations, but no vault.
Francis Bacon was born in England in
January 1561. He became a writer – ‘a man of letters ‘ - an essayist; a
lawyer, and a Parliamentarian. Other than a brief term in France at the
English Embassy, he never travelled much beyond Britain, and certainly
never to the Americas. He died childless in 1626.
Yet, American occult mystics, especially
those influenced by Manly P Hall and his wife, Marie Bauer Hall, believe
that Francis Bacon edited the King James Version of the Bible and also
wrote the Magna Carta [a little difficult seeing it was written almost 350
years before Bacon’s birth] and, as a result, greatly influenced
developments in the USA.
As one American occultist claimed:
‘When we
realize that Francis Bacon wrote the Magna Charta and also inspired the
movement to the American Colonies and Virgina, we can seriously consider
Francis Bacon as one of the Fathers of this Country, along with George
Washington and Benjamin Franklin.’
One such believer in the Hall’s theories
has been Fletcher Richman, who, with a small vocal group of fellow
believers managed to persuade the Bruton Parish Church authorities to,
once again, dig in their cemetery to locate the vault in 1992.
This followed a clandestine night-time
digging raid on the cemetery by a couple of believers from another state.
Just as in 1938, no vault was found in
1992.
But such little matters are of no
significance for true believers.
Earlier in 2003, with fear of a Third
World War as America entered Iraq, Richman and six other self-styled
metaphysicians, calling themselves ‘Sir Francis Bacon’s Sages of the
Seventh Seal’, tried for the third time to dig up some ‘buried
Bacon’.
They believed that Bacon’s buried papers
held the secret power for ushering in a new and peaceful world order. The
future hope of the world was concealed in the hidden vault and needed to
be recovered with some urgency.
The failures to find anything in 1938 and
1992 were because of digging in the wrong places. Apparently some of the
tombstone codes had been misread. Now they believed they were on the right
track as a result of prayer and meditation.
Gesturing towards the pyramid shaped
monument covering the centuries-old graves of David and Elizabeth Bray,
Richman claimed, ‘Underneath here is a spiral staircase that goes down to
a freemasonry library’ – referring to the supposed 10-by-10-foot secret
vault containing supposed buried Bacon document.
Church officials were not too impressed
with the claims of the ‘Sages of the Seventh Seal’, which led
Richman to threaten possible metaphysical retaliation. He suggested that
students of metaphysics from around the world could use pressure tactics
if church officials refused to co-operate.
‘If we have to, we will
surround this churchyard 24 hours a day with thousands of metaphysicians,’
he claimed.
No ‘buried Bacon’ has yet been
discovered, nor have the thousands of metaphysicians ever materialisied –
but then, neither probably ever will.
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