Comité des Scientifiques Lumières (CSL) has over the years has been Dr. Cagliostro's Cabinet of Curiosities' main antagonist. CSL is an extremely secret initiatory society acting to eradicate superstition, religion and delusions. They originated in the French post-revolutionary sect Culte de la Raison, The Cult of Reason.

Culte de la Raison was founded in France during the first years of the French Revolution. The sect was supposed to be the new atheist state religion for the new, enlightened France. Culte de la Raison was created to eradicate religion and mystism. They plundered and destroyed churches and synagogues, which was sometime turned to one of their very strange Temples of Reason.

Some of the most prominent leaders were Jacques Hébert, Antoine-François Momoro, Pierre Gaspard Chaumette and Joseph Fouche. The movement was opposed by Robespierre, who wanted to make room for his own religion, the Cult de l'être Supreme (The Cult of the Supreme Being). In 1794 Robespierre orders the execution of several of the leaders of the Cult de la Raison and the organization is forced underground.

In 1802 the organization is banned by Napoleon, but it changes its name to Comité des Scientifiques Lumières and continues to work in secret. During the organization's first years the motto Tueri illuminatntur, (Enlighten and protect) is adopted.

CSL has also been known to repeatedly cover up real occult and religious phenomena.

They have even infiltrated many movements and organizations, and given them a new course. An excellent example of this is the Freemasons, who for the most part have been diminished from a once mighty esoteric, occult order to a harmless private gentlemen's club.

Organization

CSL are possibly based in Paris and have only a few initiated members. The exact number is unknown, but various sources mention numbers between 9 and 144. In addition to these initiates the CSL have a great number of "blind agents" who, totally unaware of their true masters, serves the organization. They are guided and financed through complicated channels.

Through out history, only a handful of CSL's members and agents are known. One of the most prominent was the stage magician Harry Houdini who was recruited in 1918 or 1920 and died under mysterious circumstances in 1926.

"The only time you can be sure that they are right behind the corner, is when you are certain that they are not there".

Henry Kissinger om CSL, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, 1974(1)

Since the dawn of time, people have been able to recognise omens and have learned to see connections between specific phenomena in time to make preparation against approaching danger. There is no doubt that the threat of the unknown now is greater than ever and that it continues to grow.

Many experts believe that humanity is standing on the shore of our Rubicon and that we now must choose to take up arms against the darkness, or accept our doom. But for more than 200 years, the Comité des Scientifiques Lumière has drawn a veil of ignorance over our eyes. Ancient knowledge is lost. Traditions have become fairy-tales. Will has turned into apathy.

Our only chance is to open our minds to new possibilities and let reason to lead the way.

O. H. Hejll, Curator

(1): The quotation was censored prior to publication due to legal action by the American government.

Hassan-i Sabbah´s power increased quickly in the political chaos that followed in the wake of the Crusades. The Assassin attacks struck Shiites, Sunnis and Franks alike. Hassan-i Sabbah had no interest in any of the groups that was fighting over the Holy Land. The old man on the mountain, has a plan of his own...

The use of assassination as a political tool made the Order of Assassins a very influential organization. Their Assassinations was carried out in such a way that it got maximum political effect. Their well-trained assassins always struck in public places, where the deed would be witnessed by a large audience. The murderers also allowed themselves get killed after the attack. This approach struck fear in the entire Arab world. Saladin himself had to use a throne that was constructed like a wooden cage on high legs, in order to to escape the assassin's attempts on his life.

The Assassins stated purpose was to destroy the enemies of the true faith. Since these enemies where everyone but the Assassin's own members, they where waging a constant war on the rest of the world. Their few allies where those who for the moment could be of use to the Assassins in achieving their goals and enhancing their power.

The growing wealth of The Assassins allowed The Old Man on the mountain to gather one of the world's finest libraries at Alamut. The Assassins great learning in mysticism, religion, magic, alchemy and astrology is still unsurpassed. They also had vast knowledge of medicine, toxicology, architecture and mechanics. During The Order's golden years in Alamut the Assassins created many strange and horrible things.

In 1256 an invading Mongol army destroyed the Assassin fortress at Alamut, and in 1271 the Egyptian Sultan Baybars crushed the Syrian branch of the Assassin Order after a failed attempt on the Sultans life. Many of the assassins are forced to serve the Sultan, but several of the leading assassins escapes to Europe where they, according to several sources, attains protection by the Templars, with whom they previously had much affairs. When the Templars dissolve in 1309, the Assassins momentarily lose their ground but soon reappear as a network of cells in several European organizations and secret societies.

Over time, the assassins have become more and more estranged from their Arabic origin. Their previously fanatical Islamic missionary movement is slowly changed toward an oriental mystical initiatory system. The known members during the 19^th and 20^th century are very rarely of Arab origin.

Although there are good reasons to suspect Assassin involvement in many political assassinations in Europe during the 16^th, 17^th and 18^th centuries, it is very difficult to say anything with certainty about the organization's activities during this period.

It is not until 1834 the first real proof of the existence of the Order of Assassins is uncovered, when French agents discover the mysterious Hebron letters.

Organization.

Assassin Order is a strict hierarchical organization. The members of the lowest degree are called fidai, or devotees. They are the ones that carry out the Order's assassination and attacks. Above them are lasiq, lay brethren and rafiq, companion and da'i, teachers. The Order is governed by The Old man on the mountain and the wisest of the da'i. This group is often referred to as The Mountain and is believed to be the Assassins religious, ideological and strategic centre. Authorities on the assassins believe that Mountain is situated somewhere in Eastern Europe or northwestern Asia. There is also reliable information indicating that The Mountain is located, or have been located in northern Africa.

The Assassins has infiltrated many powerful societies and powerful organizations. Several Assassin cells are believed to exist within both the UN and several of the Masonic Orders. The Assassins have also with great success infiltrated The Order of the Green Dragon and the Jesuits. The infiltrators are working as individual cells, but can be coordinated and directed from The Mountain.

The Assassins are financing their work and increasing their power by accepting assignments from states and other powerful organizations. We know with certainty that The Assassins where involved in the transactions between Count Axel Wrede-Sparre and the strange Ismaili cult who helped the Swedish king Charles XII to escape from Turkey in 1714. There are also indications that it was assassin agents who, on behalf of The Order of the Green Dragon murdered the famous Swedish industrialist Ivar Kreuger in Paris 1932.

The Assassins are also adept in deceiving others to commit murder and terrorism. Many groups who think that they are fighting for their own objectives are actually just pawns in the grand Assassin game. The modern Assassins are completely unconcerned in wining public political power; their operations are always cleverly hidden by the purposes of others.

To be able to continue working in the shadows, The Mountain spreads cleverly planted rumours that consist of truths mixed with carefully calculated lies. In this way, those with the power to harm them dismiss the very existence of The Assassins as a myth.

The Hebron letters and the Assassin plan.

During the end of the Arab revolt in Palestine 1834 a remarkable document was seized from an alleged Assassin courier in Hebron. The document was a transcript of 24 letters that supposedly described the Assassin plan to overthrow the European world domination. The document was brought to Cairo where it was translated by French agents. The original was taken to Constantinople where it disappeared. Probably stolen by the Russian Czar's secret police, the Okhrana. 

A few years later the French translation, in a curious way, ends up on the table of the French lawyer and state official Maurice Joly.  Joly based his satirical book The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu on the strange Assassin document. Joly's book, and the original French translation were seized by Napoleon's secret police. A few printed copies of Joly's book survived, but the original text is still missing.

The Tsar used Hebron Letters to fabricate the anti-Semitic text The Protocols of the Elders of Zion that was published in Russia 1903. Although the original text is lost, we can, by comparing Joly's text with the falsified Protocols of the Elders of Zion, recreate the Assassin plan to overthrow world order. We cannot with certainty say if the plan is still in use, or if the document from the beginning was allowed to fall into our hands in order to distract our attention from another, even bigger and more horrific plan.

O. Hejll, Curator.

In many cultures a living human being consists of two parts, the body and the soul. The soul can be divided into two parts. In old Scandinavian folklore the first part is called the huge, the drive and basic will. The second part of the soul is our memory, the personality we have developed. But for the soul's second part, we have lost the word. Odin's raven, Munin gives us a clue. Many researchers claim that this word can find in the English language, which has many words that are borrowed from the Old Norse. The name Munin is perhaps related to the English word "immune". Immune describes the inability to absorb anything beyond what we were born with. Im in the English language creates an antonym of a word. As an example, immaterial, as opposed to material, but the English antonyms to immune is susceptible, receptive or vulnerable. We can therefore assume that at some time in the history of the English language, there has been a word that was similar to the Old Norse name Munin, and described the ability to absorb things. This word could have been mune.

So, we now have the a definition of human life that is divided in the body, also called hamn or shape, and the soul that is divided into the huge, and what we in this article will refer to as mune.

Huge stands for drive, the initial cravings, hunger and sexual desire, the need to move forward. Mune is the memory, the properties we acquire, that what makes us who we are.

When we try to understand the concept of undeadness, the understanding of the concept of huge and mune is of great benefit. A body without mune becomes what in Scandinavian folklore was called a Draug, a creature also known as a ghoul. A dead body that was kept alive by its basic instincts, but almost completely lacked traces of the mind of the person that the body once belonged to. Throughout the world there are stories of walking corpses that rush through the world of the living like raging animals, driven by their primal needs and searching for the few things they remember about the life they once lived. On the other hand, we have ghosts, spirits, who has retained all their memories, but have lost their bodies.

The many faces of the undead.

Many other strange phenomena such as shape shifting, is also based on these ideas of the dualistic soul. As an example, when a shape shifters turns into a werewolf, they transfer their mune to a wolf. The new soul is then a fusion of the shape shifters mune, and the wolf's huge. A werewolf can therefore be described as a human intelligence in a wolf's body with a wolf's instincts.

Mune, memory, is something that must be formed during a long time. It is the sum of a living being´s accumulated memories and experiences. It cannot be created artificially.

When a magician creates an artificial living being, they can therefore only give it huge. A golem, that has an animated body made from clay, can only perform simple tasks and must always have clear instructions. It has no mind, no self-awareness.

To activate a Golem the Hebrew word Emet is used. Emet stands for God's primordial will, God's driving force, but also the human soul's most primitive instincts. A golem has huge, but has no mune. An example from literature that describes this phenomenon in an excellent way, is Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. Victor Frankenstein creates a body of flesh and blood but he only succeeds in providing it with huge. Once he understands that real life cannot exist with half a soul, it is already too late...

The Haitian Zombie has been deprived its mune through the use of vodou  and is only a body with the ability to move. A kind of golem constructed out of a human body. 

The Haitian Bizango priests are known to drug their zombies to dampen their huge. In Haiti, there are also several examples of how mune completely or partially has returned to an undead body and thereby restoring it to life. In most cases these people lose their minds, and never fully recover.

Ghosts and immaterial spirits seem to be the opposite of the Draug, the zombie and the vampire. Incorporeal ghosts have a very strong mune, but no huge. They do not need to eat or sleep, but often have all their memories from their lifetime. Some ghosts have through a traumatic death lost their minds, but nevertheless have very strong bonds to the person they once were. There are of course exceptions. For instance the so-called poltergeist who is a immaterial being, but displays a behaviour pattern that is completely different from normal ghosts. Many believe that the explanation for this is post euthanasic stress, but much research remains to be done.

Although the term Draug disappears sometime during the Middle Ages, these creatures continue to haunt the living in isolated regions. The dreaded Takstainarn on The island of Gotland, the wealthy farmer Pellikka and old Vittiko from Tornedalen in northern Sweden, who all lost their mune, but by an extremely strong huge managed to roam amongst the living after their deaths. 

Even in the 20^th century there are numerous reports about of corpses who physically rise from their coffins or graves, and like mindless fools start to terrorize their surroundings. In densely populated areas, both the living and the undead have strong interest in ensuring the swift destruction of these creatures, and they are therefore extremely rare in such areas.

Sometimes the huge so strong that it can keep a body alive, even though it has started to decompose due to a lack of real life. However, there are many cases where the dead body in a strange way is regenerated when the undead are developing their mune, their memory and their personality. The famous Tornedalen draug Pellika began, after a period of undeadness, be able to carry out conversations and even regained vague memories of his previous life.

This type of creature is completely dependent on their body. The only way to stop these undead rampages is by compromising their physical body. Methods to destroy the undead will vary from case to case, but the procedures are remarkably consistent all over the world. Examples of such methods are the removal of the head, turning the body upside down in the grave, impaling the body with wooden stakes or cremating the body. Vittiko and Pellikka were turned upside down in their graves and bound with spells by the local priest. In many cases, the heads of executed criminals have been carefully placed at the grave's foot side to prevent them from returning from the grave.

However, studies have shown that certain personality traits that are very deeply rooted in a human´s soul, can survive in the undead creature's instincts. Basic components of mune can thus become a part of huge. Wrath is an example of a trait that often accompanies the deceased to the other side.

The Eastern European vampires are basically the same creature as the Norse Draug. Eyewitness accounts of vampires describe very clearly that the person who once had been associated with the vampire's body no longer exists, leaving only the original impulses that the body once had. However, we have come to associate vampires only with the type of undead who developed a personality, a mune.

To drink blood.

The type of undead we call vampires do not seem to be completely dependent on the consumption of blood to survive, they do it because they initially have a tremendous strong desire to hunt and eat. They are also able eat meat, but the undead´s almost non-existent body functions make it difficult to digest solid food. A living person would have difficulty surviving on a diet of pure blood, but the undead have a very low metabolism, which makes blood a very suitable sustenance for them. For many vampires, the drinking of human blood has a ritual significance, an act that puts them above humans in the food chain.

An immortal personality.

There are many examples of undead who have developed a personality, which is by no means surprising. All a living creature needs to acquire a memory is time. If you give an undead enough time it will be able to blend in at a cocktail party at any time.

Here we are approaching the state where the concept of undeadness becomes very confusing, and arguably should be repealed. A living dead with memories and a personality has all the requirements of a living creature; it has just undergone a strange mental re-birth. In many older members of the undead society, it is notable how their huge is declining as their personality is developing. The desire to hunt, kill and eat decreases as their "human" characteristics are developing.

The strange thing about all this is that what really distinguishes undead with mune from ordinary living people is the undead's inability to die from normal causes such as disease and old age. They also seem to have strong resistance to physical injuries. This is why the common definition of undeadness and the undead is strangely indistinct.

The undead with strong mune, which are often referred to as vampires, has proven to be a surprisingly minor problem in modern society. The undead nations in Europe, Asia, Africa and America work hard to control their population and keep a low profile. There is, however, fear amongst both the Undead nations and the International community of a major outbreak of uncontrolled undeadness An situation that in popular culture has come to be known as The Zombie Apocalypse.

The causes.

Nobody has in a satisfactory way been able to fully explain undeadness, its mechanisms and causes. On the other hand, the same can be said about life.

Undeadness is attributed to different causes in different cultures. One common factor is usually that humans seem to be the most receptive to undeadness in the exact moment between life and death. 

The ancient Egyptians also feared for the moment when the dead returned to life in the afterlife. At that time, body and soul were vulnerable, and an incorporeal spirit in search of a new body could easily steal the body. The Haitian Bizango necromantics need access to the body at the exact right moment to be able to create a zombie.

Many European noblemen and other high society people made sure that their bodies would be "incapacitated" before they were buried. Alfred Nobel wrote in his will that his throat and wrists would be cut immediately after his death. This approach is well-known in many other cultures where there is fear of an uncertain death.

Usually it takes about three to four days for the undead life form to evolve. Many Western cultures therefore have traditions and laws, which require that the deceased must wait at least three days to be buried. In places where undeadness has been a major problem there are strong traditions of holding a wake.

Undeadness is mostly spread through transfer of body fluids from an undead. It is established that the Haitian Bizango priests use body parts of zombies as an ingredient in the powder they use to create new undead. Those who are “infected" by undeadness before their death seem to more often be able to develop their mune, their personality. The longer the period between death and the resurrection of the body, the stronger the undead seems driven by its huge. According to well-informed sources, it is rarely successful to create an undead from a body that has been deceased for more than 3 days. Many undead also seem to be suffering from severe post euthanasiatic stress caused by a traumatic death.

The Zombie apocalypse.

A pandemic of uncontrolled undeadness has been found to be a very serious threat to our society. A creature that is driven solely by its basic instincts is very dangerous to his surroundings.

Many such creatures can cause tremendous damage if the outbreak is not controlled. As undeadness often seems to spread through bodily fluids, the aggressive behaviour of the infected makes the plague spread very rapidly in large populations. To this date, concerted efforts by both the undead nations and the international community have prevented major outbreaks, but due to the global urbanization and local overpopulation the risk of uncontrolled outbreaks is increasing. Many experts believe such an outbreak is inevitable.

O. Hejll, Curator.

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In Northwest-American folklore there are the Ts'emekwes, Skoocooms, Sasquatchand Bigfoot. From Siberia come reports of the elusive giant Chuchunya. Until his mysterious death in 2002, the Spanish crypto-zoologist Jordi Magraner studied a yeti-like creature called Barmanou in the northern Pakistani and Afghan mountain regions.

Out of all these so-called cryptids, the Himalayan Yeti is unquestionably the most famous.

The Yeti has been a part of the Tibetan mythology for hundreds of years. The Western world didn’t discover it until the 19^th century when the British began exploring the Himalayas. One of the first Yeti accounts is found in Lieutenant Colonel Laurence Austine Waddell’s book Among the Himalayas [1889]. Waddell describes how he observes strange footprints in the snow by the lake Sikkim, at 16400 feet above sea level. According to Waddell’s local guides, the footprints had been made by a large ape-like creature they call Mi-go.

The Yeti in Tibetan folklore

The pre-Buddhist shamanic mystics in the ancient Tibetan Bön religion called the Yeti Mi rgod and described it as a fury giant that makes a whistling sound. The Mi rgod’s were allegedly guardians of the hidden city Olmolungring, where the Old Gods were still dwelling and great libraries harboured ancient wisdom.

The Bön shamans were known to use the sacred blood of the Mi grod for various magical purposes. The Mi rgod was said to be able to lie dormant for a very long time, and according to the Bön mythology, it had also changed its shape several times since its creation. The Bön mystics claimed that, the Mi grod race was older than man.

The Lepcha people of Sikkim worshiped the Yeti as a hunting god in pre-Buddhist times. According to their myths, anyone who saw the Yeti often died or disappeared.

Increasing reports

As more and more Westerners began making attempts to scale the many mountains of the Himalayas, reports of the Yeti became increasingly common.

In the book, Mount Everest The Reconnaissance, 1921, Howard-Bury includes an account of crossing the Lhakpa-la pass at 21,000 ft. where he found footprints that he believed "were probably caused by a large 'loping' grey wolf, which in the soft snow formed double tracks rather like a those of a bare-footed man".

He adds that his Sherpa guides "at once volunteered that the tracks must be that of The Wild Man of the Snows, to which they gave the name Metoh-kangmi".

Among the many other mountaineers who have reported evidence of the Yetis existence, are Edmund Hillary and the Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, who were the first to climb Mount Everest in 1953. Hillary claimed that he saw footprints made by the creature an altitude of more than 19 000 ft.

The Nazi search for Atlantis

In 1938 the German organization Ahnenerbe, organized a expedition to Tibet. The famous German hunter and zoologist Ernst Schäfer was selected to lead the expedition. The official mission was to study Tibet's climate, geography and culture but many reliable sources claim that the expedition's true purpose was to search for the fabled cradle of the Aryan race, the ancient Atlantian colony, that Buddhists call Shambhala.

The expedition's anthropologist, Bruno Beger, was convinced that the secret road to Shambhala was guarded by ancient creatures, known to Buddhist sages as The Mi-go. Beger was confident that the search for the Mi-go would lead the expedition to Shambhala.

The Schäfer expedition's results in the search for Mi-go and the lost city of Shambhala are debated. The rumours are many and the facts few, since much of the expedition's reports and files on the subject were lost or destroyed in the Second World War.

The pysical evidence

Despite numerous reports of footprints, and even eyewitness accounts from both locals and Western mountaineers and adventurers, there is little tangible physical evidence that "The Abominable Snowman” actually exists.

Among the physical evidence that has been presented, is a scalp that Edmund Hillary found in The Khumjung monastery in 1960, and the skeleton of a Yeti-hand that was smuggled to London by actor Jimmy Stewart 1957. Certain scientists have dismissed both objects as forgeries.

The best evidence so far is the photographs of footprints taken by mountaineer Eric Shapton in 1951. The images, taken at nearly 21,000 ft. above sea level showed clear footprints left by a two-legged creature.

No one has yet been able to prove that the photos are forgeries. Hairs, possibly from a Yeti, have also puzzled scientists, and are still classified as coming from an unknown Himalayan animal.

The Dr Oudot footprint

In The Dr Cagliostro collection there is a plaster cast of a strange footprint. The cast was purchased in 1954 and have allegedly belonged to a Dr Jacques Oudot. Dr Oudot participated in Maurice Herzog's Annapurna Expedition in 1950. 

The cast is about 19 inches long and 8,5 inches wide. According to estimates, a creature that makes such a print should be almost 10 feet tall and weigh nearly 40 stone. 

In 1953 Dr Oudot tried to publish an article about his findings in the Journal de Chirurgie, but was refused. He was killed shortly afterwards in a car accident, only 39 years old.

We are presently negotiating with an anonymous source who has the only surviving manuscript of Dr Oudots article in his possession. We hope to soon be able to publish it, in connection with a planned exhibition of the strange footprint.

O. Hejll, Curator.

The Jivaros are the only tribe known to have successfully revolted against the Spanish Empire and to have been able to thwart all subsequent attempts by the Spaniards to conquer them. They have withstood the armies of gold-seeking Incas, and defied the early conquistadors.

The Jivaro tribe are comprised of four sub-tribes. The Shuar, Aguaruna, Huambisa, and the Achuar. Of these, the Shuar, are most commonly referred to when speaking of the Jivaro Indians. The Shuar have achieved their notoriety through their strange practice of head shrinking.

The Jivaro Indians are known to be an intensely warlike and proud group, tremendously protective of their freedom and unwilling to subordinate themselves to other authorities.

The Jivaro's fierce fighting reputation and head-shrinking practice has always discouraged outsiders from entering their territories.

HEAD-SHRINKING AND THE PURPOSE OF TSANTSA

Most Jivaro Indians would consider any victory over the enemy as incomplete, if they were unable to capture the heads of their fallen victims. Possessing the shrunken head, the so called tsantsa, will benefit the warrior's good fortune as well as please the spirits of his ancestors.

The Jivaros also believe that the tsantsa itself possesses tsarutama or magical power.

Most importantly, the reason behind the preparation of the tsantsa is to paralyze the spirit of the enemy, which is trapped in the head, so that it cannot escape and take revenge upon the murderer. The tsantsa ritual also prevents the spirit from continuing into the afterlife where it could harm the soul of dead ancestors. When the warrior kills his enemy, he is not only after the victim's life, but more importantly he seeks to possess the victim's soul. 

HOW THE TSANTSA IS MADE

Excerpt from an article by H.E. Anthony in The National Geographic Magazine. October 1921.

The head of the victim is cut off, and later, in the seclusion of his hut, the victor prepares it into a lasting war trophy, attaching to it the significance which the North American attached to scalps. The skin is opened up from the base of the neck to the crown, and the skull is removed entire, leaving only the soft, pliant skin.

The skin is now dipped into a vegetable extract which dyes it a blue-black and probably has some action preservative, and then the cut skin is sewed up along the neck to restore the head to its original form.

The cavity is filled with hot sand or pebbles, after which the head is constantly turned and moved, so that the drying goes on uniformly. When the sand has cooled, hot sand takes its place, and this process may last for several days before the head is completely cured.

Shrinking to an unbelievable degree takes place, but it is so regulated that the features retain their individuality to a great extent, and the finished head is about the size of a man¹s fist.

The lips have been sewed shut with a series of long cotton cords, the exact pattern of this stitching varying with the locality and seeming to have some significance.

H.E. Anthony, 1921 

THE TSANTSA CEREMONIES

The rituals surrounding the tsantsas have only been witnessed by outsiders on a few occasions, and our knowledge about these ceremonies are therefor very limited. The information we have, is gathered by explorers and missionaries, active in the Jivaro area. The latest known eyewitness is Polish documentary filmmaker Edmundo Bielawski, who captured footage of a human head shrinking ritual in 1961.

A successful raid on an enemy village is immediately followed by a series of tsantsa feasts. The tsantsa ritual where divided in three parts, each lasting several days with the second feast separated by an intermission of approximately a year.

The first of these feasts is referred to as "his very blood" or numpenk. This feast is held at the house of a previously appointed wea, or master of ceremonies who had agreed to act as the host.

The second feast is known as fulfilment or amianu, which is celebrated approximately a year later in the house of one of the tsantsa takers. The host of this ceremony usually builds a new house in celebration of the occasion.

After several months, if enough resources can be gathered, the third and largest feast is given. This is the final feast and is called napin. The feast includes a ceremony where the pins are removed from the lips and eyes of the tsantsa, and strings are passed through the holes.

The third and final of these feasts is called the napin, which is the largest of all feasts with the head-takers supplying all the food and drink for the next six days. The warriors smeared themselves with blood and danced with the heads of their enemies dramatizing the killing.

With the completion of the third ceremony the spirit of the fallen enemy has lost its strength, and is sent of to the afterlife with no ability to take revenge on its murderer or his ancestors.

Despite the amount of preparation of the trophy and feasts, immediately following the final celebration, the heads were discarded and used as toys by children or dogs and are eventually lost.

THE SHRUNKEN-HEAD TRADE

By the end of the nineteenth century, very little was known about the Jivaro Indian clans in South America, except for their gruesome practices of taking the heads of their enemies. The shrunken heads, and the mystical ceremonies and myths surrounding them, intrigued adventurers and collectors and compelled them to visit the Jivaro tribes in order satisfy their morbid curiosity.

The sudden contact with the civilized world helped revolutionize the Jivaro's methods of warfare. They began trading firearms and ammunition for shrunken human heads. The Jivaros soon become aware that the demand for their tsantsa was growing, and were quick to comply the traders in order to satisfy their rising need for firearms.

As the gruesome trade escalated, it soon became necessary for the Peruvian and Ecuadorian governments to pass new laws prohibiting the traffic of human heads. The laws were intended to discourage tourists and travellers who bought the tsantsa as curios, unaware that their trade was perpetuating warfare against the Jivaros neighbouring tribes. When the tsanta trade reached its peak, the Jivaros demanded a rifle for each tsantsa, which allowed them to expand modernize their headhunt.

In the 1930s shrunken heads was sold in Northern America for approximately $25.00 a piece. This would equal about $300 today.

Soon, the demand for new heads excided the neighbouring population, and the headhunters turned to grave robbery and plundering of morgues.  Also, shrunken head manufactures outside the Jivaro tribes joined the thriving market and the situation soon got out of control.

Towards the end of the 1930^th the Peruvian and Ecuadorian governments managed to put a stop to the tsantsa trade. However, the tsantsa tradition survived amongst the Jivaros for its original, mystical purposes.

In 1942, Norwegian etnografer Thor Heyerdahl recounts in his book Kon-Tiki that he had difficulty getting into the Jívaro area. Local people would not guide his team into the jungle for fear of getting killed and having their heads shrunk.

Apart from the great los of human life, the enormous tsantsa trade during the first decades of the 20^th century caused a horrible and unforeseen problem. In order to produce shrunken heads in great numbers, the Jivaro only preformed the first part of the tsantsa ritual, in which the soul of the slain is captured in the sealed head. The heads was then sold before the vengeful ghost was neutralized in the final ritual.

Many fatal hauntings can be contributed to the carless purchase of an alluring souvenir from the dark jungles of the Amazon…

The Swedish Air Force was finally forced to deploy several reconnaissance airplanes. For three months the planes patrolled northern Sweden, hunting the mysterious ghost fliers. Patrols where also sent out on skis to different mountains, for instance Degerberget, to man the 34-inch searchlights that was mounted on the peaks.

The Finnish army also sent up scouting planes trying to identify the unknown aircrafts. The first report came from Kemi on January the 23th 1934 and described "A shining bright light, just like a blowtorch ". In mid-February one of the Army's aircraft patrolled the route along Kemi-Rovaniemi-Ranua-Simojärvi-Oulu, but with no result.

On the 5th of February 1934, an unknown aircraft was reported to have made an emergency landing on the nearly inaccessible Fagerfjell-mountain, about ten miles from the Norwegian town of Trømsø. When rescuers finally arrived however, they only found two sets of gigantic grooves in the snow. The grooves were about 250 feet long, and fourteen feet wide, and appeared to be deep sliding marks or tracks. Several credible witnesses, whom had seen the crash through their binoculars, reported that they had observed two or more people moving around the downed craft .Footprints collaborating this were also found in the snow. Two days later, experienced aviation experts, who had climbed up the mountain to investigate the site of the incident, stated that it was impossible for a plane to take off from the site. Despite this the Norwegian General Staff later announced that the craft had in fact been a German prototype airplane and not a ghost-flyer.

On the second of February 1934, in a parliamentary debate about the ghost-flyers, the Swedish Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson declared that since it was not yet proven that the ghost-flyers actually existed, there was absolutely no reason to take any action. However, only a few days earlier, the military commander of Northern Sweden, General Pontus Reuterswärd claimed the opposite in an interview with the newspaper Norrbotten Kuriren:

"Aircrafts have been observed by credible people, both military and civilian. There for, I am certain that that these flights have been taking place within the restricted area".

Swedish and Norwegian authorities were also exchanging secret information with each other, and a large number of Swedish police reports and newspaper clippings can been found in the Norwegian archives. Among them is a classified Swedish list of 96 unexplained but confirmed sightings of ghost-flyers between September 1933 and 23 February 1934.

In 1934 major Gösta von Porat was commissioned by the Swedish Royal Air Force to form a secret committee, to investigate the strange ghost flier phenomenon. The committee was code named Project Searchlight. Many critics have subsequently claimed that the enormous magnitude of the ghost flier phenomenon in northern Sweden could be directly linked to certain objects that von Porat recovered from the Svea mine on Spitsbergen in 1927. These mysterious objects were supposedly stored in the area of Luleå or Boden at the time of ghost flier activities.

 In Finland the general staff presented their report on the ghost-flyers at a press conference on January the 4th, 1937. Their conclusion was that most of the ghost-flyer sightings could be explained by weather conditions and inaccurate observations.

Largely as a result of the ghost-flyer phenomenon, however, politicians and military officers agreed on the importance of improved air defences in northern Sweden. In 1939 construction began on the country's northernmost air force base - the F21 in Luleå. It's first commander was to be Colonel Gösta von Porat, who had been involved in the hunt for the ghost fliers for more than a decade.

On the 19th of July 1946, an unknown craft crashes into lake Kölmjärv. Air Force officer Karl-Gösta Bartoll is in charge of Project Searchlight's three week salvage of the craft. A civilian survey later discovered that "the bottom of the lake had been disturbed by a large object". The Air Force and Bartoll were finally forced to admit that something had indeed crashed into lake Kölmjärvi, but that the object probably had disintegrated.

The event aroused such an enormous amount of attention that two U.S. experts on aerial warfare - aviation legend General Jimmy Doolittle and General David Sarnoff, president of RCA, travel to Stockholm independently of each other, both allegedly on unrelated personal business. However, The New York Times can confirm that the two generals on numerous occasions were briefed by the Swedish National Defence Headquarters concerning the ghost-flyer phenomenon, and that they were also given access to several highly classified reports. Anonymous sources also claim that the two generals were presented with top secret material during a meeting with Colonel von Porat at The Boden Fortress in August 1946.

In 2010, the Swedish Armed Forces attempted once and for all to squash the idea of the existence of alien spacecraft in Swedish airspace, by publishing secret FOI (The Swedish Defence research agency) files concerning the ghost-flyers and other unidentified flying object. However, the published part of the material contains mostly reports of the public's observations, and extracts from public records - all non-classified material with little or no interest to researchers in the area.

What Project Searchlight really know out about the ghost-flyers, and what Colonel von Porat hid deep in The Boden Fortress will, for now at least, remain a mystery...

O. H. Hejll, Curator.

After his defeat at the Battle of Poltava in 1709, The Swedish King Charles XII managed to escape with a just a few hundred Swedes and a large number of Cossacks. The King led the remainder of his troops to the Ottoman Empire, where they stayed for almost four years. In February 1713 the Turks, due to their complicated relationship with King Charles XIIs’ enemies, tried to persuade the king to leave by force of arms. But the King´s war funds were dry, and for their return trip to Sweden Charles XII was forced to borrow a considerable sum of money. According to historians, the money was borrowed from the Grand Visor Ali Pasha and some Europeans in Constantinople, but from the Swedish camp in Bender, Maj. Gen. Anders Lagerkrona writes in a letter to his sister:

The visor lets us know that he is unwilling to bestow the King the necessary funds for the trip, but that damned Sparre has nocturnal negotiations with the dogs. Dogs, I say, for nothing else can they be called. No beautiful Christian virtues are known to them. It is whispered that they worship a demon with the animal's head, but further details will I spare you dearest sister.

At the time of King Charles XII stay in Bender, the mystical Sufi Order of Mukashafa is striving to survive in northern Persia. The order has been declared blasphemous and banned by several Persian kings, and has finally been forced to take refuge in secluded areas south of the Caspian Sea. The Order of Mukashafa had its roots in the Ismalitic assassin movement, but they also claims to be heirs to the mystical traditions of Ahmad al-Buni. Their banishment was earned from their disturbing and devoted exploration of the forbidden knowledge of ancient Egyptian and Babylonian magicians. Their strange rituals were dedicated to forgotten spirits, for whom Islam has no name.

The Order of Mukashafa was known as eminent astrologers but also for their profound knowledge of the dark necromancy of old Egypt. Their enemies accused them of worshiping the Egyptian God Anubis. Many people also claimed that the Order was able to resurrect the dead and use them as servants and assassins.

Was it of these Sufi mystics, the Dogs, that Maj. Gen Lagerkrona was referring to in his letter? We can not know for sure, but we know that representatives of the king's creditors were travelling with the King to Sweden, in order to ensure that the debt was paid. The negotiations with the Arabs were managed by Count Eric Sparre of Sundby.

In 1716 the Jesuit priest Martin Gottseer writes in a letter to Michelangelo Tamburini about Arab mystics secretly visiting the Royal Palace in Stockholm. Gottseer is deeply concerned about their influence over the court and King Charles the XII.

Almost immediately after the king's return to Sweden, the rumours about the mysterious disappearances are starting to spread. It is said that the King must pay his debt to Turkey with the flesh from orphans, captured at night in the streets Stockholm. The meat is allegedly salted and shipped in barrels via Malta to an unknown port in the Middle East.

But that the Swedish royal family would pay a debt with human flesh, does however seem incredible. And that the debt was so great that it had to be paid even many years after King's death seems even more unlikely.

So what was it that the mysterious Sufis had to offer, that made Charles XII want to pay such a horrible price?

It was said about Charles XII that he was "hard against shots", that bullets could not harm him. It was rumoured that the King was protected by a higher spirit, whom had made him immortal.

On his deathbed in Stockholm 1726, Count Eric Sparre of Sundby summons a priest to confess his sins. Many years later the priest Nicolaus Lagerlund, records his life story, in which we find Count Sparres´ horrible confession.

Count Sparre tells how he, in 1715, was called home to

Sweden from Paris to take over negotiations with Persian diplomats that was initiated in Bender a few years earlier by his brother, General Axel Sparre. The negotiations concerned payment to oriental magicians for preforming several gruesome rituals that was to make the Swedish king Karl XII immortal. The payment was to be annual deliverances of human flesh in certain amounts. Sparre called himself The advocatus of Lucifer and was deeply repentant. He also revealed to Lagerlund that the annual shipments of meat still were sent to the East, but that the matter now was handled by Count Sparre's son, the young Axel Wrede-Sparre. Count Sparre feared that his son now had entered into an agreement of his own with the Oriental demons as a mean to attain forbidden knowledge.

In Lagerlund´s account of Count Sparre's story he comments that, despite many new disturbing elements, the story is simply another variation on an already well-known myth. Many stories of Charles XII invulnerability have been circulating for some time. It is rumoured that he had eaten a wolf´s heart in a ceremony with Sami shamans, and that he possessed a magic shirt that bullets could not penetrate.

But in November 1718 Charles XII finally falls for bullet when he is shot with a button stolen from his own uniform. It is a widespread belief in Scandinavia that people protected by magic only can be killed or injured by something that have been stolen from them, e.g. a button. If the stolen button actually was made into a magical weapon capable of breaking the powerful Egyptian spell we can´t possibly know. However, we can be certain that the King's murderer believed in the stories of Charles XII invulnerability, and thus killed the king in the only way he thought possible.

It would seem likely that the death of the king would end the stories about missing children and the dreaded Dog-Turk, but strangely enough the rumours only escalate. If Count Sparre's last confession to the priest Nicholas Lagerlund was not only a dying man's feverish delirium, we have reason to suspect that Swedish noblemen attempted to attain dark oriental secrets, even after the death of king Charles XII.

In 1735, Count Sparre's son, Axel Wrede-Sparre founded the first Swedish Masonic lodge. In 1752 most of the members of his original lodge transferred to the newly founded masonic lodge of St. Jean Auxiliaire. Only two years later the St. Jean Auxiliaire lodge founded the first Freemason Orphanage in Stockholm. This is when the rumours of the Freemasons´ association with the Dog-Turk and their trade with human flesh really accelerates, and does not fade until the early 1800s when the Swedish Freemasons dissolve St. Jean Auxiliaire lodge. The Freemasons Orphanage is still in use until 1945 when it is bought by the Stockholm city council.

If the stories we are describing here are connected, and if there is the slightest element of truth behind all the strange rumours, there is good reason for us to return to our story to explore the effects that this well-hidden occult conspiracy may have had. And maybe still has ...

O. Hejll, Curator Dr Cagliostro’s Cabinet of Curiosities. Secret location, 2011