Mozart's The Magic Flute: Illuminati Brainwashing

           

Brainwashing? Just a little night music. . .

I recently saw a performance of Mozart’s brilliant comic opera The Magic Flute put on by the Utah Opera. The Magic Flute is a favorite for opera lovers because of its remarkable contrapuntal score and rich coloratura arias. The most famous of these arias is the “Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen” or “Hell’s vengeance boils in my heart” aria sung by the Queen of the Night. This aria requires a virtuosic soprano able to ascend several octaves with very little breath and hit a very rare, and very high, F6 note. It is notoriously grandiose, and I’m happy to report that renowned soprano Audrey Luna, who was most recently in The Tempest at the Met, sang this aria with aplomb. Take a look at the great Diana Damrau absolutely slaying this aria here, and you’ll get an idea of how difficult this type of singing can be.

            Before seeing this opera I was aware of Mozart’s Masonic background. I knew him to be a basically observant Roman Catholic and a member of a Roman Catholic lodge. However, I was struck by The Magic Flute’s elaborate deployment of Egyptian symbols and signs, and the story seemed very much in accordance with my rather limited experience in secret rituals as a former Mason. The opera’s allegorical libretto seemed infused with esoteric messaging that I could only speculate on. I knew that I had to investigate further.

            Mozart was a member of not only a Roman Catholic lodge but several other lodges in Austria and Bavaria. In the course of graduating through the various rites of Freemasonry, Mozart met and befriended the infamous founder of the Bavarian Illuminati,

The Kissinger of the 1700's

Adam Weishaupt. In May, 1776, Weishaupt established a lodge within Freemasonry with its own particular rites. This lodge welcomed deists, agnostics, and atheists alike. The Illuminati focused on man’s potential and insisted that if mankind was meaningfully governed by a secret clique of wise, enlightened men within the order then a utopia of peace and happiness on earth could be established. Weishaupt’s ambition was none other than the covert takeover of governments in Europe and around the world by initiating the rich and powerful into his order and making them pledge allegiance to his cause of benevolent autocracy. This is merely the continuance of the proto-fascist visions of Plato and Rousseau that called for a new order of the ages controlled by a secretive inner coterie of philosopher kings.

            In the 1780’s Mozart grew to prominence quickly within the Illuminati owing to his international celebrity. Along the way he aggressively recruited other members into the order including his father and the composer Joseph Haydn.  

            On its surface The Magic Flute is the story of a handsome young prince, Tamino, and his sidekick, Papageno, who wish to gain entrance into a magical order and be united with their future brides. In order to join this benevolent order dedicated to wisdom, rationality, and harmony the two characters must overcome a series of trials and maintain their faith in the order to protect them from danger. They must outwit the forces of darkness commanded by the Queen of the Night if they are ever to attain entrance into the sacred brotherhood and get the girl.

            Aside from being shot through with Masonic ideology, another interpretation of The Magic Flute is that it is a bildungsroman; an allegory for maturation and the development of human sexuality. Tamino wishes not only to attain the knowledge of the sacred rites of the Temple of Sarastro; he also wants to attain knowledge in the biblical sense by wedding and bedding Pamina, the beautiful daughter of the Queen of the Night. Papageno represents the goyim, the uninitiated man, who only wishes to gratify his senses. This means that Papageno can be only partially initiated into the rite as a means of fulfilling his sexual imperative. He can discover carnal knowledge through ritual, but because he remains attached to the senses he cannot become a full-fledged member of the order. According to Enlightenment era Masonic philosophy sensual perception stands apart from reason and rationality. So, Papageno cannot enter into the secret society led by the wise and charismatic sorcerer, Sarastro.

            Tamino and Papageno are each given a magic flute and magic bells respectively by Sarastro’s followers. The acolytes promise the two adventurers that they will be protected from harm if they play the instruments. According to Masonic doctrine, music played a certain way can be used to subdue the dark side of man’s nature and enhance man’s faculty for reason and virtue. This, no doubt, was one of the reasons that Mozart became interested in Freemasonry in the closing years of his life. Entrance into the order meant access to an occulted musical tradition that few composers would ever know about. The Magic Flute incorporates Masonic music throughout but particularly in the opening overture, which relies heavily on the melodic restatement of three notes; three being a significant number in Freemasonry.

            The sexual double entendre of these magical instruments in the opera should not be overlooked. The instruments are played by the adventurers not just to keep them out of danger and lead them to the temple of knowledge, but also to lead them to their brides who will confer upon them the knowledge of the flesh. The flute, carried by Tamino, is a stand-in for the penis. The bells, carried by his sidekick Papageno, are a stand-in for testicles. A boy is led to his sexual awakening by manipulating and masturbating his instrument, his penis. Similarly, Tamino must play with his flute and Papageno his bells if they are to awaken their libidinal desires that will put them on the hunt for eligible mates. The very name of the opera is a sexual joke, immortalizing the cock as a sacred totem. This is well within the standard of Mozart’s other ribald comic operas and reflects the eighteenth century tradition of picaresque.

            The Magic Flute seems to also treat the nature of masculinity and its relation with the feminine. Sarastro encourages Tamino to keep the secrets of the order a secret from the uninitiated, but especially from women. He also encourages him not to spend too much time with women or allow women to occupy too much of his thoughts, lest his faculty for reason and intellect become impaired. Tamino must rescue Pamina from her mother, The Queen of the Night, who is an irrationally violent and vengeful shrew. Tamino must have faith in the order of Sarastro and the magic flute to achieve this task. His quest is to release Pamina from the bondage of spiritual darkness and superstition that she lives in with her mother, and initiate her into the lightness of good and reason that will be their marriage. In this context, masculinity can be seen as the oldest and most nefarious of secret societies in which boys are initiated into the order of men whose conspiracy is to seduce and abduct girls from their homes and their mothers and enlist them into the order of women who will fulfill the rites of wives and mothers. The oedipal conflict is dramatized. Maturation is a journey guided by libido whose object is independence from the family and the foundation of a fully realized sexuality with a monogamous partner.

Relax. I'm a sorcerer.

            The character Sarastro may represent several different people. The first and most obvious possibility is that he represents Zoroaster, or Zarathustra, the prophet and founder of the first monotheistic religion in ancient Iran. Zarathustra, along with other religious founders, is a prominent figure in Freemasonry. Another possibility suggested by Katherine Thomson is that Sarastro represents Mozart’s friend Ignaz von Born. Born was a famous metallurgist and probable alchemist who initiated Mozart into the Illuminist lodges. Still another and most compelling possibility is that Sarastro represents the charismatic and mysterious adventurer, Count Cagliostro.

            While accounts of Cagliostro’s life vary widely he is believed to have been a grifter and occultist of low birth who rose to the level of aristocrat and international celebrity in the eighteenth century due to his powerful associations among the Bavarian Illuminists. Mozart would have no doubt heard of Cagliostro and may have had occasion to meet him, though there are no accounts of this. Cagliostro was a conjurer who developed a specific rite within Freemasonry known as the Egyptian Rite. This is a rite that makes use of various Egyptian symbols and cosmology, particularly the cults of Isis and Osiris who are mentioned throughout The Magic Flute. The opera takes place in an Egyptian, Middle Eastern, or Near Eastern setting very similar to the regions invoked in the Egyptian Rite.

            In Cagliostro’s séances that he performed for his Illuminist friends and their various hangers-on, Cagliostro would wear a turban and an iridescent cape, not unlike Sarastro. He would summon two virginal youths, a boy and a girl around a crystal globe of clarified water and he would describe their destinies and perform various miracles, according to Masonic lore. This is very close to the story of The Magic Flute. Sarastro summons two virginal youths, Tamino and Pamina, to join him in his temple. If they trust in the sorcerer then no harm will befall them and they will each discover one another and fulfill their destiny to be married.

            It is quite possible that Cagliostro was a key figure in The Affair of the Diamond Necklace. This is an event that eventually led to the French Revolution and the execution of Louis XVI. It is almost indisputable that the Illuminati were instrumental in the French Revolution and that their senior members presided over the subsequent Reign of Terror. An excellent late eighteenth century account of these events can be found in Abbé Barruel’s “Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism.” Cagliostro was formerly charged and convicted for his collusion in the affair, but was later acquitted.  

            The official story of The Diamond Necklace Affair is that Marie Antoinette commissioned some jewelers to make an extravagant diamond necklace worth over 20,000 livres directly from taxes collected from the French people. This enraged the people of France when it was discovered and thus eased the way for a coup orchestrated by the Jacobins, a franchise of the then disbanded Bavarian Illuminati.

            However, according to Henry Evans’s official Masonic book “Cagliostro and the Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry” it was Cagliostro who presented the necklace to the powerful French nobleman, Cardinal de Rohan. De Rohan’s lover was a grifter and a prostitute who finagled her way into Marie Antoinette’s court. It was she that discovered the commissioning of the necklace and leaked its existence to authorities. Is Henry Evans suggesting that The Diamond Necklace affair was a frame-up orchestrated by Cagliostro, de Rohan, and the Jacobins? Could this event have been an elaborate false-flag operation to undermine the throne and pave the way for the French Revolution? Is The Magic Flute meant to memorialize Cagliostro and the Egyptian Rite? Is it meant to be propaganda worshipping the Illuminists and the Jacobins who were the wicked architects of the French Revolution; the very same puppet masters who were, by 1791, administering the Reign of Terror against the French people? 

Freedom has arrived.

            The Magic Flute is regarded today as an arch masterpiece of high culture, but we must see it for what it was originally meant to be. This was a pop-culture phenomenon that was meant for mass consumption and designed to have mass appeal. The opera exploits many cultural fads that existed in 1791. The Egyptian setting would have appealed to the cultural fascination with extinct empires as popularized by Marmontel’s novel The Incas. Yet, although meant to cater to the lowest common denominator, The Magic Flute also contains occult music, numerous symbols, and references that would have only been visible to the Illuminati clique of insiders. It was none other than Goethe, a fellow Illuminist, who had this to say of The Magic Flute “It is enough that the crowd would find pleasure in seeing the spectacle; at the same time its high significance will not escape the initiates.” One can only wonder if there are any 21^st century spectacles meant for mass consumption that might also have occulted significance to those who have been initiated into the dark mysteries.  

Egypt: The Old World New World Order

Bibliography:

            Watch a full production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute

            A Resolution of Mozart andFreemasonry: Enlightenment and the Persistence of the Counter Reformation by Peter Paul Fuchs

            Cagliostro and the Egyptian Rite ofFreemasonry by Henry R. Evans

            The Affair of the Diamond Necklace

            Mozart and Freemasonry

            Masonic Ideas in Mozart’s The Magic Flute by Malcolm Barnes

            Mozart: A Life by Maynard Solomon

            Mozart and Freemasonry by KatherineThomson

            Memoirs Illustrating the History ofthe Jacobins by Abbe   Barruel

            Alesandro Cagliostro

            Freemasonry in Egypt by Robert C.Wright