Into the Tomb
A Summary and Review of Alexandra Robbins' Book on Skull and Bones
In my last two posts I explored the work of John Robison in detecting and rejecting the Illuminati and in recognizing the patterns of top conspiracists. One of the most infamous secret societies in modern America, Skull and Bones, like the Illuminati, traces its heritage to Germany. In fact, there are some indications that Skull and Bones is an American branch of the Illuminati. Nicknames for Skull and Bones include Bones, the Order, Order 322, and the Brotherhood of Death.
In her book Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of Power, Yale graduate and investigative journalist Alexandra Robbins invites us into the inner sanctum of this scandalous secret society where she unfolds many of their mysteries. Although she is not a member of Skull and Bones, Robbins obtained special insights into this secret society because she was a member of another secret society at Yale, the Scroll and Key, and because she spoke with more than 150 different “Bonesmen” to gather information for her book.
Robbins begins her book by describing the origins of Skull and Bones:
Sometime in the early 1830s, a Yale student named William H. Russell - the future valedictorian of the class of 1833 - traveled to Germany to study for a year. Russell came from an inordinately wealthy family that ran one of America’s most despicable business organizations of the nineteenth century: Russell and Company, an opium empire. Russell would later become a member of the Connecticut state legislature, a general in the Connecticut National Guard, and the founder of the Collegiate and Commercial Institute in New Haven. While in Germany, Russell befriended the leader of an insidious German secret society that hailed the death’s head as its logo. Russell soon became caught up in this group, itself a sinister outgrowth of the notorious eighteenth-century society the Illuminati. When Russell returned to the United States, he found an atmosphere so Anti-Masonic that even his beloved Phi Beta Kappa, the honor society, had been unceremoniously stripped of its secrecy. Incensed, Russell rounded up a group of the most promising students in his class - including Alphonso Taft, the future secretary of war, attorney general, minister to Austria, ambassador to Russia, and father of the future president William Howard Taft - and out of vengeance constructed the most powerful secret society the United States has ever known. (p. 3)
Although she originally set out to debunk conspiracy theories about Skull and Bones, Robbins strikes me as utterly sincere in her exposé and in her recorded explanation of her exposé. Because she spoke to more than 150 members of Skull and Bones, and because she was harassed and threatened by some members of Skull and Bones, I have reason to believe that she did her best to unveil the truth about Skull and Bones in her book. She was even surprised to discover that many of what she considered to be conspiracy theories about Skull and Bones contained kernels of truth.
After a captivating introduction about “The Legend of Skull and Bones,” Robbins reveals the history of this secret society in seven chapters entitled: “Pomp and Circumstance: Yale’s Mystique,” “The Society System,” “Inside Headquarters,” “The Initiation,” “The Secrets of Skull and Bones,” “The Network,” and “The Order.”
One of the many reasons why it is difficult to disentangle the truth from the falsehoods in the history of Skull and Bones is because, as Robbins relates toward the end of her book, Bonesmen enjoy spreading rumors about their secret society in order to increase their prestige and the aura of mystery that surrounds them. Nevertheless, based on Robbins’ own observation that many conspiracy theories about Skull and Bones contain kernels of truth, the introduction to Secrets of the Tomb is perhaps the most interesting part of her book because in it she presents the legends of Skull and Bones in which such kernels of truth may be found:
The men called their organization the Brotherhood of Death, Robbins' explains, or, more informally, the Order of Skull and Bones. They adopted the numerological symbol 322 because their group was the second chapter of the German organization and founded in 1832. They worshiped the goddess Eulogia, celebrated pirates, and plotted an underground conspiracy to dominate the world. (pp. 3-4)
Robbins observes that in its almost two-hundred year history, Skull and Bones “has curled its tentacles into every corner of American society,” and that “this tiny club has set up networks that have thrust three members into the most powerful political position in the world.” (p. 4) These three members are William Howard Taft, George Herbert Walker Bush, and George W. Bush. Robbins devotes major portions of her book to descriptions of the activities and networks of these three former presidents of the United States of America.
According to the legend that Bonesmen want the rest of us “Barbarians” (as Bonesmen like to call everyone else) to believe, “Skull and Bones has already succeeded in infiltrating nearly every major research, policy, financial, media, and government institution in the country. Skull and Bones, in fact, has been running the United States for Years.” (p. 4) Although this might seem like an exaggeration, it is important to remember Robbins’ observation regarding kernels of truth. The fact that President Taft and the two Bush presidents were Bonesman, and that there are many other Bonesmen in positions of power in the United States, is already ample evidence that William H. Russell’s (and before him Adam Weishaupt’s) plan to rule the world has been more successful than he ever would have imagined.
We may rightly wonder: Which other major organizations, businesses, and institutions in the United States of America are directed or influenced by Bonesmen? But we might also wonder: Why does it matter whether or not our country and many of its organizations are directed by Bonesmen? What kind of secret society is Skull and Bones, and what do its member really do? Also in her introduction about the legends of Skull and Bones, Robbins explains:
Skull and Bones cultivates its talent by selecting members from the junior class at Yale University, a school known for its strange, Gothic elitism and its rigid devotion to the past. The society screens its candidates carefully, favoring Protestants and, now, white Catholics, with special affection for the children of wealthy East Coast Skull and Bones members. Skull and Bones has been dominated by about two dozen of the country’s most prominent families - Bush, Bundy, Harriman, Lord, Phelps, Rockefeller, Taft, and Whitney among them - who are encouraged by the society to intermarry so that its power is consolidated. In fact, Skull and Bones forces members to confess their entire sexual histories so that the club, as a eugenics overlord, can determine whether a new Bonesman will be fit to mingle with the bloodlines of the powerful Skull and Bones dynasties. A rebel will not make Skull and Bones; nor will anyone whose background in any way indicates that he will not sacrifice for the greater good of the larger organization. (p. 4)
Skull and Bones members congregate in a “dark, windowless crypt in New Haven” called “the Tomb,” a somber structure with a landing pad on the roof for the society’s private helicopter. Bonesmen are sworn to silence and secrecy about their activities, rites, rituals, and ceremonies, but, according to legend, initiation into the club involves “psychological conditioning” in which “the juniors wrestle in mud and are physically beaten,” in symbolism of death, and “they then lie naked in coffins, masturbate, and reveal to the society their innermost sexual secrets.” Initiates are then given robes and new names that symbolizes their rebirth into the order and their “new identities as individuals with a higher purpose.” New Bonesmen then peruse the artifacts of the Tomb, which include, in Robbins’ account of the legend, “a set of Hitler’s silverware - dozens of skulls, and an assortment of decorative tchotchkes: coffins, skeletons, and innards.” They are also introduced to the “Bones whore,” or “the tomb’s only full-time resident, who helps to ensure that the Bonesmen leave the tomb more mature than when they entered.” (p. 5)
Also according to legend, Bonesmen receive financial rewards and honors in exchange for their complete devotion to the society of which they are (under threat of blackmail) lifelong members. Robbins describes many other skull and bones legends before launching into her account of what she considers to be “the truth about Skull and Bones.” (p. 11)
Robbins’ opening chapter on “Pomp and Circumstance: Yale’s Mystique” outlines the history of Yale and the establishment of secret societies at Yale, including Skull and Bones, Scroll and Key, and Wolf’s Head. She describes Yale as a place of “strict traditionalism and conservative conformity,” and fierce competition that fosters “boundless, calculated ambition.” (p. 45) In the second chapter, “The Society System,” she describes the paradox that “members claim to be secret” and “insist they want privacy,” but they also “flaunt their membership in this elite group.” (p. 47) She explains why the culture at Yale enabled secret societies to flourish, and how secret societies proliferated in competition with one another. She describes many of the earliest members of Skull and Bones and other societies, as well as the selection process for new members.
In the third chapter, “Inside Headquarters,” Robbins elaborates upon the origins of Skull and Bones:
The society’s name and symbols were not entirely original. In the early 1800s, several American educational institutions followed German models of both schools and societies; the Germanic societies’ emphasis on song, for example, is clearly manifest at a place like Yale. When William Russell took some time off from Yale to study in Germany, he could very well have been introduced to a German student club with the death’s-head logo, and then returned to Yale and set up a branch of that club. The evidence is compelling: Nineteenth-century raids uncovered documents suggesting that Skull and Bones is but a chapter of a mother organization. (p. 82)
The organization started out as the “Eulogian Club,” and then eventually adopted the insignia of the skull and crossbones. Robbins describes the Skull and Bones building and the artifacts and decorations inside the Tomb. She explains why Skull and Bones adopted the symbolic number 322:
Sometime early on, the society took as its symbol the number 322. The Greek orator Demosthenes died in 322 B.C., when, according to Bones lore, Eulogia, the goddess of eloquence, ascended into heaven and did not return until 1832, when she happened to take up residence with Skull and Bones. Bones lore refers to the ‘First Miracle of the origin of Our Goddess’ and her arrival at Skull and Bones as ‘the equally miraculous transmigration of Her Spirit to Yale College two thousand one hundred and fifty-four years after her birth.’ Since then, Bonesmen have traditionally signed their intra-society letters ‘Yours in 322.’ The number gained such a mystical significance at the university that in 1967, the year George W. Bush became a member, a well-off graduate student with no connections to Skull and Bones reportedly donated $322,000 to the society. ‘A lot of guys use the number as a code to remember things by. John [Kerry] even uses it,’ said David Thorne (Bones 1966), who is the Massachusetts senator’s ex-brother-in-law, onetime campaign manager, and close friend. Thorne chose 322 and the number for his office telephone extension. (p. 85)
The Tomb is filled with many other strange objects, symbols, and documents. As the name of the secret society demonstrates, its members are obsessed with death. There are skeletons and skulls, mummies and coffins, and many other symbols of death inside the Tomb.
Robbins takes her reader on a tour of the rest of the Tomb, revealing other Skull and Bones treasures such as the alleged skeleton of Madame de Pompadour (“the Madame”). There is a place that Bonesmen call “the Inner Temple” where Robbins surmises that the most important documents and the most valuable possessions of the Skull and Bones may be kept. There is an underground tunnel at the Tomb that leads to a secret garden. In addition to their obsession with death, Bonesmen are also obsessed with locks or “puzzles”. One of the Bonesmen informed Robbins that there is a secret buzzer at the door of the Tomb and that the secret password to enter is “Uncle Toby sent me.” Skull and Bones even has its own private island on the St. Lawrence River called Deer Island. (pp. 93-99)
In chapter four of Secrets of the Tomb, “The Initiation,” Robbins elaborates upon the rituals of Skull and Bones, rituals that include robes, costumes, masks, and “The Yorick” or the “skull container named for the owner of the skull the gravedigger throws in Hamlet.” (p. 120) There is a picture of the goddess Eulogia, and a picture of a woman that Bonesmen call “Connubial Bliss.” Robbins’ detailed descriptions of the disgusting Skull and Bones ceremonies, oaths, and secrets are valuable for helping us to recognize more patterns of top conspiracists. (see here for video footage of a Skull and Bones ceremony)
In the fifth chapter, Robbins delves deeper into “The Secrets of Skull and Bones,” and she even reveals some of the bizarre new names of the “Knights” of the society, including Gog, Magog, Sancho Panza, Long Devil, Little Devil, Boaz, and so forth. I was interested to discover in this chapter that the Pulitzer-Prize winning author David McCullough is also a Bonesman (1955), and that Bonesmen initiated publications such as Time, Newsweek, and National Review. Bonesmen play a crazy sport that they call “boodleball,” which is “an aggressive soccer-hockey hybrid that has left members bleeding on the floor.” (p. 132) Autobiographies are important to Bonesmen in part because one of their rituals includes recounting one’s life story while other Bonemen probe, question, and criticize the storyteller.
Scrapbooks, Black Books, and Bones Bibles are among the books that are kept inside the Tomb. One day a more thorough exposé of the Skull and Bones will include whatever is written in those secret volumes. One of the most disgusting and bizarre secrets of the Tomb is that Bonesmen dug up and “crooked” (stole) the remains of the Apache chief Geronimo, and there is a skull in the Tomb that Bonesmen call Geronimo. Toward the end of the fifth chapter Robbins recounts the secret society’s long history of misogyny.
Chapter six of Secrets of the Tomb, “The Network,” unravels the connections of famous Bonesmen, particularly the Bushes, the Tafts, William Buckley, the Bundys, the Harrimans, and many others. In her final chapter, “The Order,” Robbins further explains how Skull and Bones cultivates its power, trains its members, breeds new “knights,” and maintains secrecy while planting rumors. Her conclusion is that “the great conspiracy surrounding the society is one of half-truths and our own willing complicity,” and that “its secret, great and terrible, is that Skull and Bones, unreal, has mastered both.” (p. 206)
I disagree with Robbins that “our own willing complicity” has anything to do with any of the evils that permeate Skull and Bones, because most curious people just want to know the truth. If members of Skull and Bones spread lies and falsehoods and rumors about themselves, that is not the fault of the general public, and it is even less the fault of the general public if Bonesmen engage in secret works of darkness.
Nevertheless, Robbins’ book Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of Power is an excellent introduction to the subject of Skull and Bones, and her research contributes much to our understanding of conspiracies or what members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints understand as “secret combinations.”
And it is the connection between Skull and Bones and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that we must explore in future posts…