The Nine Unknown

1/31/2007 at 8:54 PM

The Nine Unknown Men

In occult lore, the Nine Unknown Men are a millennia-old secret society founded by the Indian Emperor Asoka c. 270 BCE. According to the legend, upon his conversion to Buddhism after a massacre during one of his wars, the Emperor founded the society of the Nine to preserve and develop knowledge that would be dangerous to humanity if it fell into the wrong hands. Some versions of the story include an additional motivation for the Emperor to conceal scientific knowledge: remnants of the Rama Empire, an Indian version of Atlantis, which according to Hindu scripture was destroyed by advanced weaponry 15000 years ago. Theories have also begun to surface claiming that Rama and Atlantis might have had war using Nuclear technology, and destroyed each other.

History

Numerous figures who straddled the line between occultism and science fiction writing, most prominently (and apparently first) Louis Jacolliot, Talbot Mundy, and later Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier in their Morning of the Magicians, propagated the story of the Nine claiming that the society occasionally revealed itself to wise outsiders such as Pope Sylvester II who was said to have received, among other things, training in supernatural powers and a robotic talking head from the group. In more recent times, according to this circle, the Nine assisted humanity by revealing the secret of the Cholera vaccine.

Among conspiracy theorists the Nine Unknown is often cited as one of the oldest and most powerful secret societies in the world. Unusually for the conspiracy subculture, the image of the group is largely though not entirely benign. Theosophists also believe the Nine to be a real organization that is working for the good of the world.

Some modern Indian scientists such as Jagdish Chandra Bose were said to believe in or even to be members of the Nine although documentation on this issue is predictably scant. Believers in the Nine also point to the mysterious Delhi iron pillar, which is said[Please name specific person or group] to have been constructed at a time before the technology to create it existed in common circulation. However, this is disputed by other scholars and researchers.


The nine books

Each of the Nine is supposedly responsible for guarding and improving a single book. These books each deal with a different branch of potentially hazardous knowledge. Traditionally, the books are said to cover the following subjects:

Propaganda and Psychological warfare.
Physiology, including instructions on how to perform the "touch of death." One account has Judo being a product of material leaked from this book.
Microbiology, and, according to more recent speculation, Biotechnology. In some versions of the myth, the waters of the Ganges are purified with special microbes designed by the Nine and released into the river at a secret base in the Himalayas.
Alchemy, including the transmutation of metals. In India, there is a persistent rumor that during times of drought or other natural disasters temples and religious organizations receive large quantities of gold from an unknown source. The mystery is further deepened with the fact that the sheer quantity of gold throughout the country in temples and with kings cannot be properly accounted for, seeing that India has only ever had one gold mine.
Communication, including intercourse with extraterrestrials.
Gravitation. Book 6 is said[Please name specific person or group] to contain the instructions necessary to build a Vimana, sometimes referred to as the "ancient UFOs of India."
Cosmology
Light
Sociology, including rules concerning the evolution of societies and how to predict their downfall.

The Nine in popular culture

Edward Bulwer-Lytton (of "It was a dark and stormy night" fame) wrote a parody of the Nine Unknown Men that many, including perhaps Madame Blavatsky, took as fact.

The society is mentioned several times in the Illuminatus Trilogy and is a resource card in the Illuminati card game.

The Nine are also mentioned in the videogame The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion as 'The Nine Divines'.

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