Wewelsburg Castle Himmlers Secret SS Occult HQ

The Nazis and the Occult, the hidden influences that ran deep through Hitler's race for power are now revealed. The Nazis had built for themselves an entire universe of beliefs, some of it factual, some of it semifactual, some of it from planet Mars. And the more you study the Nazis, the more it's like science fiction. What were the mysterious occult Nazi societies at the heart of the Third Reich? Key members of the Nazi party, in particular, Himmler and Hitler, were not just a little into the occult. They were absolutely obsessed by it. What's incredible is how

influential the secret societies were on the creation of the Third Reich. These ideas of occultism, spiritualism, and racism made for a toxic blend. Is it true that the Nazis had a top secret program to build flying saucers and UFOs? Did the Nazis take the blueprints to build these round flying machines? We have UFOs, rocket launching factories built underground. There appears to have been one successful fling. Short, not very far, but still a successful test flight. And were there plans to build a genetically pure white super race? The Nazis stole babies and they were broughten up

in the hands of people who would Germanicize them. That was the master plan. This is crazy stuff. It's way ahead of its time. It's because world domination is the goal. And it's just a shame it was driven by evil. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] the Nazis were a powerful dominant force across Europe and North Africa in the midentth century. Led by the charismatic Adolf Hitler, they rampaged through country after country, leading to the greatest conflict this world has ever known, the Second World War. But behind the huge parades and overwhelming military power, the Nazis had a

strong belief in ancient mysticism, magic, and the occult, there were two secret societies at the core of these esoteric beliefs, whose members were at the very top of the German high command, including the second in command to the furer, Hinrich Himmler. So Himmler had a vision of having a center where men could come and become true Germans. Really the sort of Aryan race that he had had envisioned. It was melded to the idea that this was their destiny tied up with the old Germanic gods demanding that they do this. This was a monument to the

the vulkish beliefs that founded the SS. This just wasn't textbook stuff. They were meditating. They were having seances. This is where they learned how to be the Germans of the past and the Germans of the future. The site for Himmler's secret Nazi project was Bevelsburg Castle in northeastern Germany. It was originally built back in the 10th century, then added to and adapted over the centuries before the infamous SS moved in in the 1930s and turned it into the stronghold that still stands today. [Music] The plans for Bevelsburg Castle was for it to be the center

of the Germanic ideology for hundreds of years into the future. Himmler spent a good couple of years with the help of concentration camp workers building into his vision, adding ritual crypts beneath the north tower in the design of a beehive hut that they felt was symbolic for all sorts of reasons. Theo Pimemans is a Dutch researcher and historian who is an expert on Nazi secret societies. He believes that Bevelsburg was at the heart of the Nazis esoteric and occult [Music] beliefs. Himmler and his generals needed places for the development of their own esoterical philosophies. The

SS had a number of castles and they called them ordens. Translation of that is castles of the order. And each castle would have a specific function in order to train the generals and the high officers of the SS. But this castle was the primarier ordinance, the primarier castle of the order, and only a select few would come here. The Nazis used Bevelsburg as a training center for elite members of the SS. Around a dozen or so high-ranking officers would spend time here, immersed in secret rituals, pagan worship, and paying homage to the sacred northern [Music]

gods. Castle was the home of the ultimate secret society. The SS was the ultimate secret society. They're very simple. A lot of people think it's just a fashionable design for SS. It's a rune. They took classes in runes. They took classes in these beliefs. This is where you would come if you were in the upper echelon of the Nazi party and you were being groomed for bigger and better things. This is where the rituals would take place. I mean, this is not a place they created. This is a place they modified. Everything about is symbolic

and is designed for the elite of German society. Had Nazi Germany won the war, Babelsburg would only be a small part in a huge complex of what was to be the ultimate training school of Himmler's esoterical SS. This was not to be a training school for the soldier. This was a training school for the elite of the SS. this whole concept of striving for the higher man, the more evolved man. And they didn't just mean on the physical level. They meant literally on on the psychological level. They believed that through using these various techniques, they

could make they could raise the human race to a higher level. All of the rituals in Wellsburg Castle um was basically to instill this this military regimented ideas into their heads that they bade orders. They obeyed the furer. They had no thoughts or feelings of their own. They were in themselves each the perfect Aryan warrior. We have one eyewitness uh account of a person who is inside this castle who stumbles upon a room who inadvertently opens the door and sees there 12 of his SS generals sitting there in strict silence and meditation. It's one of

those rare glimpses that we see what Himmler really was about. So these people were thought leaders, but they were also really into ritual. And that ritual included things like seances and included different ways of communing, whether that be drugs or just ordinary rituals to try to access information from other [Music] realms. Hinrich Himmler was an active occultist and took an intense and very personal interest in what went on at Bevelsburg. He visited the castle at every opportunity. [Music] Himmler would arrive across the gate. He would enter with the car and his generals. The car would

stop here. Himmler would enter uh leave the car. There would be an orchestra. There would be his generals. There would be soldiers. There would be a ceremony. Himmler would have been greeted. And then he probably would have gone through that door inside the main hall where there is a very important and secret symbol which is still here today. The inner core of the SS was always very secretive about what it did here in this hall in the castle of Avilsburg. And even today we don't know for sure what it was that they did here. We

have a slight inkling and that has to do with the symbolism of the number 12. There are 12 pillars and there are 12 ze runes. So we may assume that the group that got it here would be 12 including himler making it 13. The unholy number 13. The most sacred symbol to the SS was the black sun which they worshiped here at Bevelburg. The sun is represented by the wheel shape on the floor which gives off a purple afterglow. The black sun comes from the idea of the holo hollow earth. Within the hollow earth it

was a power source because without an external sun you can't grow crops. You can't survive. Some see the swastika as a symbol of the black sun. The energy this black energy it's the antithesis of the sun. So the mindset of the people in Germany around the start of the 20th century when these societies were were being formed is really no different than it was anywhere else in Europe. For about 50 100 years now there's been a slow buildup of interest in the occult and interest in the people who can talk to other realms and and

that information was actually quite credible. Downstairs under the main chamber is a crypt personally designed by Himmler himself to his specifications. It was here it's thought that the most intimate and powerful secret society ceremonies took [Music] place. This space is the crypt beneath the north tower at Welssburg and this was to be Himler's center of the world. Now had the Nazis won the war we could only imagine what kind of rituals they might have held here. [Music] This was built before and during the Second World War. Construction stopped in 1943 because of the defeat of

the Nazis at Stalingrad. Now, we don't know what the script may have been used for, but we could imagine certain things. And one of the things that people say is that highly ranked SS generals would be cremated here and the urns with their ashes would be standing alongside the wall. So this was to be Himler's well center of the world where he would keep his most trusted and loyal SS generals even after death. At the end of the war, Himmler gave instructions to blow up and destroy Bevelsburg Castle, not wanting the allies to find out

its secrets. But the team tasked to do this had far too little explosives to do the job, and the castle was spared, only to be sacked and paged by local people after Germany [Music] surrendered. The Nazis were deep into all sorts of ancient beliefs and occult rituals. [Music] They even restored a medieval castle Beevilsburg in northern Germany to house the holy relics that they were searching for across the world like the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail. Himmler and others saw themselves as descendants of the great white knights whose destiny was to rule

the world. [Music] Michael Fitzgerald is an author and historian who is an expert on Nazi occult activities and secret societies. He spent decades investigating and researching one of the most powerful groups, the Thu Society and their activities. The Thu Society was occult overtones but they were always primarily politically orientated. They wanted to make their racist and nationalist dreams come true through using occult methods among other things. There was all this fment of a strange romantic mixture of medieval grail stories, you know, Germanic folklore and bits of science fiction all melded together with politics and with

this huge desire to pull themselves out of this morass of of well kind of stagnation and and despair that the German people were in behind somebody who would be a focus. [Music] You're walking a fine line here in terms of occult beliefs and occult societies and and hidden and secret societies. When you're talking about societies like Thu, are they secret societies? Yes. Are they occult societies? Are they esoteric? Well, that depends on the society. That depends on on on what their their purpose for existence is. The tool society visualized their enemies as dead and they

used this technique to considerable uh extent. That was their primary thing that they tried to do. Obviously they also used physical means to try and encourage that and they did do a great number of murders themselves. [Music] The Thu Society members included the ruling elite of the Nazi party at the time, including well-known philosophers Alfred Rosenberg and Dietrich Echart. Ehart believed that the material world was evil and it was our duty to escape from it. So he and Rosenberg were very much on that wavelength. They believed in a higher spiritual realm that it was our

duty to aspire towards. Their perception of that world was very bizarre. because they thought human suffering on this realm was unimportant. This was the realm of illusion, the realm of reality was up there. They believed that their ancestors lived underground and were ruling the world from underneath the ground. And when the time is right, they would come back and make their rightful claim to society and rule the world above ground once more. The Four Seasons Hotel in Munich was one of the main meeting places for another important Nazi secret society known as the Vril. Like

the Thu Society, their members were the leading lights in the Nazi party. About a dozen men would meet together in total secrecy to carry out the secret agenda and rituals of the society. In the late 1930s, this would have included plans to take over and rule the world. The term real actually came from, you know, a novel written in the 19th century by the novelist Lord Littton called the coming race. He had this concept of underground dwellers who lived beneath the earth and they have this power called vu. This ancient culture very advanced technological culture

um is displaced by a cataclysm and is forced to flee the surface of the earth and creates a world within the earth powered by a black sun. People believed that there was a a doorway into this hidden world in the North and South Pole, that it was possible to get into this great subterranean cities that attracted these guys who actually literally believed that VR existed and was a real power that could be manifested and used to achieve domination over people and do even domination over the material world. It's all there. It's all there in his

books that were admired by these high Nazi leaders. Vril as a power, as a life source. They totally bought into this. The idea of this extraordinary force that was sort of almost occult. Uh it was mysterious, but it was very real in its outcome. It appealed to the German people and certain thinkers in particular. Andrew Goff has found evidence of a top secret VR Society meeting that took place outside Munich before the war. What occurred was truly bizarre. [Music] So imagine the scene deep in the Bavarian forest in a country house here. The event that

would serve as the genesis for the formation of the most evil society in modern times would be a [Music] seance. in attendance are representatives of the elite from Munich. But more importantly, all the secret societies are there. Thu, Veril, Brothers of the Black Stone, and the Black Sun, which is sort of the elite of the Thu Society. The atmosphere of the night would have been tense. The ambiance would have been full of anticipation. Just who was going to be this mysterious [Music] guest? Who is this? Who is this woman in the black veil? She would

reveal that she has been in contact with a planet called Alderbron, which is 64 light years away in the constellation of Taurus. and she's already channeled information in two different languages. One of which appears to be a German Templar script, but the other is ancient Samrian. And what they present to the group is they have been given a blueprint for an advanced spacecraft that uses free energy. They would call it veril energy. According to records, documents and declassified footage from the time, the Nazis took this connection to UFOs very seriously. Even it said building their

own flying [Music] craft. But from 1933 onwards, they gave huge priority to unconventional types of aircraft machine. The Germans were leading the world in rocketry. They were leading the world in unconventional anti-gravity research and they were leading the world in unconventional propulsion systems. There were certainly prototypes. There were plenty of blueprints and there appears to have been one successful flight. Short and not very far, but still a successful test flight. First of all, nobody else had a UFO program. only Germany, it would appear. And at first, as you might expect, it didn't really succeed. But

there's accounts of of spherical craft, UFO looking crafts launching into the air, but only a few feet and only for a brief period of time. But later in World War II, there's all kinds of accounts of these foo fighters, a generic term given to these spherical devices that were approaching Allied planes and and just causing a distraction, but also aggressively behaving and many instances attacking the Allied planes. The characteristics of the Foo Fighters, they were really bright like and not overly large, small sort of um inflamed looking spherical objects that behaved very erratically and and

that's the thing that really gave the allies the distinct impression and this is advanced technology. First of all, what is this ball of of light doing following my plane? And how can it possibly behave uh so so strangely? You can move so quickly and turn on a dime and go back the other direction and then attack. This was brand new and you can imagine how frightening it was to people who were flying conventional crafts at the time. Did the Nazis take the blueprints to build these round flying machines? And did they make them? And did

they fly them to their secret bases in Antarctica? It was so secret that very few people even within the the third right knew about it. It was it was top secret research. I mean only certain engineers were involved and the actual designers of this particular flying saucer went on to work in America and Canada. The super secretive Nazi VR Society used female mediums to contact ancient races, even it said extraterrestrial life forms. It's believed that this led to the Nazis development of real life UFOs which they hoped would win them the war. Researcher and historian

Theo Pimmans has collected a number of original documents from the Vril Society that avoided destruction at the end of the war and would shed a light on some of their secret activities. Now there's there's a huge amount of mythology surrounding the Frill Society and I've been researching this topic for more than 25 years after having first read it. And if you look upon the Frill Society, you see that there's various kinds of stories. There's there's a huge amount of tales. In fact, what I found out was that their main focus and their main thrust was

the development of a new kind of technology. And after many many years of research, I finally was able to find some documentary evidence. Reading these texts, what became immediately clear that the technology that they describe is a mixture of uh avanguard technology, but also esoteric thought, which is very interesting. It is as if these people discovered something so new and so different from everything there was before that they could only resort to certain esoteric phrases in order to describe what they had found. Now, and the key element of this technology was they only would be

needing one machine in order to give the whole world this form of technology. [Music] But it wasn't only technology and spacecraft at the heart of the Brill society. It was said that there were female mediums who claimed to channel messages from the extraterrestrials to the Nazis. They had what's now known simply as the real women. Apparently there was a kind of inner circle of mediamistic women. There was one called Mariah Orsk. There was one just known as Tigran and they were supposed to be rather beautiful. They had incredibly long hair which I mean I'm sorry

I am going to smile because it is mad. They believe that this this long hair acted as antenna for them to be in touch with these aliens. There were reports that in one particular seance, these female VR mediums contacted extraterrestrials from the constellation of Taurus who gave them through automatic writing messages. One was uh a message in Templar code allegedly. One was apparently ancient Sumerian writing and one which was really quite special was the blueprint for some form of flying saucer. What was interesting was attending that particular sales were Nazi engineers and people who would

seize on that and think we could maybe make something of this [Music] literally. When you analyze the few remaining VR society documents, it seems clear that its members were intent on developing a real flying saucer of some description. Theopo Pymans has unearthed a document from the archives which seems to point to some extraterrestrial force. This is a very obscure pamphlet. You can only find it in one library today. And in it, they describe this novel form of technology. And they even ask people if you are interested in this, come join us. Now people might wonder,

okay, why did such an organization or such a secretive group like the Phil society exist in Germany and not say in other parts of the world? Well, we must understand that there's a couple of factors involved. In the 1920s, 1930s, Germany was at the forefront of new discoveries. We must understand that even people like Albert Einstein originally came from the the German language areas. There's also the fact that German engineering was at the peak of what it was able to [Music] do. Although most of Nazi Germany was destroyed after the war, there are still some

important locations left. One of them is a beer hall in Munich where Hitler, Himmler, and other top Nazi officials met as part of a secret society. The man in charge was Dietrich Eckhart. Echart was one of the hugest, absolutely devastating influences on Hitler's thoughts. He was the man that not only introduced into these things, but he got him to take part in various rituals and to develop willpower and to develop the art of magnetism on not simply the ordinary level in which people can be magnetic, but to take it to another level. He believed that

he was in touch with the secret chiefs. These kind of beings that were according to various theories, they might be fallen angels. They might be living underground. They could be even extraterrestrials in some interpretations. Although at the very least they were seen as a kind of superior species above human beings. As a result of these techniques, if you want to call them that, that he was taught, he developed a far greater degrees of concentration, the greater of willpower. He developed the ability to make people change their minds, but not through using rational arguments. He would

kind of use a kind of force of not just a force of personality, but he genuinely believed it was a kind of external force that he could [Applause] [Music] control. One of the things that came out of the Nazi secret societies was a total and almost manic belief in a white or Aryan super race. Most people today are aware of the Nazi persecution of the Jews and other racial minorities during the war, but very few know that its origins lay in the highly esoteric meetings that took place behind closed doors in Germany. In the eyes

of Himmler and Hitler, the pure German was tall, blonde hair, blue eyes, racially pure, and this is the foundation of of of what became the Holocaust. This was the ancient Aryan archetype that they associate with their society that goes back hundreds of thousands of years and goes back to the lost civilization of Atlantis. That's how they were thinking of themselves. They believed the Aryan race probably went back 10,000 years. that they had soiled themselves by sleeping with lesser races, by joining with them, joining their blood with them, scattering throughout the world, and that they had

to come back together again. And that the best place to do that, the place where you found the most of them was Germany. They are so ambitious and they see that fertility rates are going down, the population is declining, but they want to do all this stuff. They want to dominate the world. So they create a program, the Lebansborg program, that's all about rapidly developing a racially pure Germany. The Leensborn program was founded in 1935 and was one of the most secretive projects of Nazi Germany. The plan was audacious and simple. Create a white, blondhaired,

blue-eyed master race that would take over the world. [Music] [Applause] Gazella Hidenrike is a product of this genetic engineering. Her father was a Nazi SS officer and he agreed to be part of the experiment which is believed to have created over 8,000 Aryan children. The mothers who wanted to give birth to their child, they had to have special attributes. They had to have a special height. They should be at least dark blonde. They should have blue eyes and they should claim the father of their children even if they were not married that he was also

kind of a Aryan race as many of the uh fathers actually were SS officers. So it was very simple because the SS officers they would even if they were not married to those women they would give them a kind of certification that they they said I am the father of this child which would be uh given birth to now. It was some of a special society from the very beginning. So I think even people who had not no knowledge about it they would say well something is very sinister about these homes but it was just

like a program for the ideal of the Aryan [Music] race. There was certainly an understanding with Leen's born. They they didn't think that that it was going to die in 1945. These people thought in terms of a thousand-year reich. It didn't stop there. The Lebans born program also stole babies. They stole thousands of them, mostly from neighboring countries to the north that they viewed were ethnically pure. When they went into Poland and found that many of these children were Aryanl looking, they were taken from their parents and they were put in in German homes for

a while and they were placed with German families so that they could be aryanized. It was the same. It was all the same program. It was all called Laben's Born. They still had a stringent selection criteria. The parents, the the father, the mother, they couldn't have any non-Caucasian blood tracing back three generations. They couldn't have any Jewish blood. These children were taken away, just robbed from their parents, and brought into houses that were developed in in many different countries. the Germans were controlling and they were broughten up in the hands of of people who would

Germanicize them. That was the master [Music] plan. As well as an Aryan race, the Nazis were driven to get their hands on important holy and occult relics. [Music] Ross Andrews is an author and historian and an expert on the Nazis occult plans. He says that Himmler, Hitler, and other leading generals were obsessed with the Knights Templar and their quests for both the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail. He believes that it's possible that the Templars buried those holy treasures in a cave under the village of Royston in Harfordshire before moving them to other

sites including Rosland Chapel in Scotland. Himmler was obsessed with the occults like a lot of the top brass of the the Nazi party. But he in particular wanted to appropriate pretty much all religion into his German religion that he was building. He wanted to get hold of as many relics as he possibly could get hold They'd already had the spear of destiny. They were after anything else that could possibly been had by the Templars. So if the Templars had had the ark, if they had had the Holy Grail, he wanted hold of it. If we

look at the castle that he built, he built a chamber very very similar to this. It was a circular room. It was a recessed floor as well for initiation purposes. So, it's like he he possibly wanted this room in his castle as well. Royston Cave was rediscovered in the 17th century and was thought to be a ritualistic space for the Templars as well as a storage facility and perhaps a strong room for their holy relics that they brought back from Jerusalem. Himler absolutely loved the Templars. was great at marketing to the extent that they would

have pictures of the Templars and on their arms they'd be carrying the the swastika and SS symbols and so they were almost like for Himler they were the pinup boys for his new religion. We know that the Templars were in charge of money. They invented banking. They were possibly the hoarders of vast treasures. Things they found under the temple m for example possibly came to this country and they needed somewhere to be held. Now, there's a distinct possibility that this room here in Royston was a vault that things were held in before they ended up

in Roslin Chapel in Scotland or ended up elsewhere. Ross is sure that Himmler sent agents to check out this cave using local contacts either before or during World War II, but found the empty chamber that we see today. Himmler spent a fortune and as archaeology goes, no one in the history of ever spent anywhere near as much as he did. He was obsessed with finding the ark. He was obsessed with finding as many holy relics as he possibly could. They paid millions in today's money to send a group out to Tibet. They went down into

Africa. They traveled the world searching for these things. Now, he also knew a lot of the legends and mysteries that the Templars talked of. So, he he had a belief that the Templars possibly had found the Holy Grail. He had a belief that they had found the Ark of the Covenant. He wanted to get to a place like this where he may have been able to pick up a few more clues and hopefully have found the things he needed. The Nazis were obsessed with finding the greatest holy relics of antiquity, including both the Ark of

the Covenant and the Holy Grail. They saw themselves as crusading Aryan knights who'd returned the world to a racial purity and a new golden age. Himler himself was very steeped in the occult and wanted to recreate the Tutonic Knights. The uniforms are designed that the entire look, the runic symbols, the essence of runes which were classed as a mystical language that could be used for divination and that created words of power. And there was a lot around power. the the idea that they were chasing holy relics like the spear of longness and the holy grow.

These are like any religious relics. They're items that supposedly hold power. So, it's this quest for power. This desperate need to find power in any form. Templars were massive relic hunters. They dug things up out of Jerusalem. They went into Africa, into Ethiopia. They possibly possibly got hold of the ark of the covenant. They possibly got hold of the holy grail. Now, if those things ended up in this country, there's a distinct possibility they would have come from the south coast heading up north, heading towards Scotland, for example. This would have been the perfect place

to have stored it on its journey as it headed north. What's also fascinating about this location is its similarity to the castle in Belesburg where the Nazis also built an initiatory crypt for their ceremonies but on a much larger scale. What we have here obviously the fascinating walls around us but what makes this truly fascinating is the floor which I know is a bizarre concept but if you see here you'll see the actual corners here have been carved out. This is an octagonal floor which is unlike any kind of religious building you would normally have

in this country. You normally have a cross- shaped. Now it meant that if you had an altar in here, it didn't have to be east west. This may have been some form of copy of the original temples they built at the temple mount which meant they didn't have to face towards Jerusalem. They were the center of the world. Which kind of leads us to think that this is some form of initiation or ritual building that templars would have come in to perform some form of ritual within their [Music] religion. In all of this purity, there's

something very nationalistic. There's a national identity that they're trying to protect. This ideal of almost the medieval German Tutonic knight. and they felt that there was a pure Germanic blood that had to be protected. Yeah. Himmler had obviously studied all the mysteries, studied the the legends. And to him, he had seen this group of knights. They were they were strong. They were white, which is mo one of the most important things that the Aryan beliefs could have had. Um, and he'd seen these people throughout history doing the things that he wanted. He wanted these treasures.

He wanted these relics and to him he almost wanted to be one of the [Music] Templars. Now if the Templars managed to get hold of the Ark of the Covenant, if they got hold of the the Holy Grail or something that they thought was that some form of holy relic, it's a distinct probability that it would have ended up here and it would have been placed in this lower area and they would have been down here worshiping it. Now we don't have proof of that. We haven't got photographs. We haven't got CCTV from the Middle

Ages down here, but just by using logic, that's the kind of thing that they obviously would have done down here. By the time World War II started in 1939, the Nazi party and its leaders were already firm believers in the powers of the occult. Hinrich Himmler, second in command only to the Furer, was intent on turning Beeberg into his own vision of a Grail castle. built to house the greatest holy relics of history, including the Ark of the Covenant, the Spear of Destiny, and the Holy Grail itself. Himmler and to some extent Hitler ardently believed

that if they could possess these almost mythical relics, then the world would fall at their feet and they could rule the world as a white super race, like modern-day Knights Templars. Their secret societies like Thu and Vril were wholly focused on that objective, mixing ancient texts and rituals with the occult. The Nazis were far more than bloodthirsty murderers. All these ideas, as crazy as they sound, and there's no justifying them, mind you, but they're the product of almost a hundred years of gradual sort of obsession about the occult. And combine obsession with the occult with

growing nationalistic pride, and this is what you get. It's a really twisted result from what was originally just a interesting idea about how the world is structured. I don't think those secret societies would have understood how distorted their view was. Their idea of purity and and correctness was in fact evil in a way. Pure evil. So many of these societies existed for the sole purpose of proving what what was termed arosophy, what was termed the ideal of the Aryan race and proving that what all those other scientists said was nonsense that we the German people

we do go back to Atlantis, we do go back 10 or 15,000 years and we can prove it. So that is how the occultism, the aryanism, the th it all began to play together. It was all playing the same long playing record. Well, the Nazis found a lot of stuff and stole it. So they've got artworks, statues, relics from all over the world. I think if they'd found something as important as the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy Grail, that would have been announced straight away. And it would have been such a morale boost for

the German public. But more importantly, it would have the morale of the people they were fighting would have just suddenly disappeared because how can you beat somebody that has the Ark of the Covenant. This is pure science fiction. I mean, just look at what we have. We have UFOs. We have rocket launching factories built underground. We have stormtroopers. I mean, this is crazy stuff. It's way ahead of its time. It's because world domination is the goal. And it's just a shame it was driven by evil. Behind the huge rallies and military might, Nazi Germany and

its leadership were firm if secret believers in the occult and its powers. They dedicated huge resources to tracking down holy relics and immersed its leaders in rituals and ceremonies to try and unleash supernatural forces to help its aims in taking over the world. It was a plan that came to a spectacular end in 1945. The Order of the Assassins was one of the most deadly, notorious, and elusive groups in the medieval world. Legend has it they were a highly trained group of ruthless killers who used ninja-like skills and stealth to silently kill political leaders across

the globe. Their assassination of Persian leader Nisam al-Mul in the 11th century shocked the Muslim world. The Israeli assassins are without doubt the most formidable secret society that's ever existed. With one political killing, they tore down an entire empire. These young men were were skillfully trained and they were the elite of the elite. They were the Navy Seals and Marines of their day. a organization of stealth political assassins who take out the head of an organization that creates a schism and causes the whole thing to crumble from the top. In this episode, we investigate these

brutally efficient killers, analyze their methods and tactics, and reveal how and why they were so feared across the Middle East. The whole approach of the assassins, I mean, it was replicated grandmaster by grandmaster for a few hundred years. They had tremendous success. In fact, their reputation and and successes just continued to grow. This was the elevation of political murder to the level of strategy to eliminate an individual who in fact was an important foe was intended to inspire fear among all others. These Israeli assassins were a formidable force. They were feared by the crusaders. They

destroyed a Persian empire and it required the superpower of the medieval age, the Mongols, to finally extinguish their threat. and we look at how their skills and tactics have been passed down and copied by today's Islamic terrorists. The acts may be very very different. We're talking about targeted political assassination on one point. We're talking about indiscriminate bombing in many cases on the other side. The end is terror. One could say that today's assassins are equally as effective as the order of assassins. They're taking out more people, but because of the media, they're having the same

impact. They're distilling fear in a nation instantly, but they're having the same effect. Psychological fear is the worst kind of warfare. Back in the 11th century, Hassan Isaba was the founder and leader of a mystical Muslim sect which was based in the lands which in now modern-day Syria and Iran. They were called the Nizari Ishmales, but also known as the Hashashin by their enemies. Today, we know them as the assassins, a highly trained group of expert killers. They were deployed to remove the leaders of rival religious sects. And their ruthless and stealthy assassinations have become

idolized by many of today's Muslim fanatics. The assassins really came to be due to the inspiration of of one man, Hassan Isaba. And and this is a guy who has traveled all over Persia. He's come from Cairo and now he's trying to find a place to really create an order. His motivation is going to be revenge for his Shia devout faith. He lived as he claimed to believe that he had no particular interest in the acquisition of political power or wealth uh or the the conquest of vast kingdoms. There are reports that he in fact

never even left his house for decades uh while he studied and elaborated the doctrine of the assassins. had a diamond hardness about him. This is a man who's used to living hard, to trusting very few people, to used to the concept of safe houses and knowing those people who he could trust and also therefore knowing that those would be the people who were highly indoctrinated in the same religious faith as him. an internal toughness bought of being a fugitive for much of his young life, but also has a hard hard hard intellectual edge. And I

think what comes through in the writings again and again is that he has a strategy and a vision that looks beyond so many of the people who are in the political sphere. At the same time, he isn't a military commander. He isn't he isn't the ruler of a great empire. He essentially starts out as a preacher. He's a teacher uh but he is charismatic and he has this ability to attract uh people to him and to inspire their loyalty. He uses religion in a sense to to to bring them on board to to his [Music]

group. Hassan set up a training facility for the assassins at Almut Castle in today's northern Iran. They used ancient drugs, meditation techniques, and the promise of an afterlife in paradise to create an elite and loyal band of killers with complete disregard for their own [Music] lives. Hassan's a really sharp sharp man. He realizes he doesn't have a huge army. It's not his intention anyway. He wants to be an organization of stealth political assassins who take out the head of an organization that creates a schism and causes the whole thing to crumble from the top. Clearly

this this this force would have been regarded as a special an elite unit or an elite group. uh that is people who had not only the devotion um but sufficient intelligence to to carry out these uh these missions. So it it would have been a recruiting process not vastly different from say recruiting from spies in the modern age or recruiting the kind of people who were dropped into occupied Germany during World War II that they had the knowledge of some other part of the world or language skills or the capability to get on by themselves.

It's the prototype for James Bond. You know, you you you're not going to go in there with a big loud marching army. You're going to go in there very subtly and and and become trusted. Um or at least not seen and and and then when the time is right, you're going to make your move. [Music] There is no doubt that the assassins themselves within the Israeli structure were an elite. These were not cannon foder. These were people who underwent specific and specialist training. These were people who had reached a very high level in terms of

uh their theology as well and in their understanding of the Ismaeli creed. Uh these were people who were identified within the organization with specific uniforms when they were on guard duty for the Grandmaster. Of course, when they were on active duty for assassination, their task was to blend in. The assassins were highly trained killers. They were trained to have the ability and skills to disguise themselves and blend in seamlessly in public places, making them lethally effective and almost impossible to detect. Surviving a mission was considered a deep dishonor, and it said that families rejoiced when

they heard their assassin sons had died. Having completed their deadly acts, the myth of the assassins grows out of their spectacular killings. The fact that they suddenly appear out of the crowd, have not been seen, have not been identified, make the killing, and then wait to be killed by the guards of their target. When they were doing an assassination, they like to do it in the broad light of day in a very public place, preferably a mosque or a church. The men who were sent out as assassins were the men who had passed through each

tier, each level of esoteric understanding as as we know it and had passed through each tier until um uh the lord of the mountain felt that they could be trusted with that sort of duty. But even the lowest initiate had to have that kind of absolute obedience. [Music] It was intended to inspire fear among all others. It was a deterrent strategy. That is if you come after us, the Israelis, that will be a death sentence upon you. The assassins didn't have a country of their own, so they took over castles and fortresses in strategic positions

across what is today's Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Jordan. creating a formidable defensive arc in the region. Historian James Wat takes us on a tour of one of their ruined sites near Aman in Jordan. I mean, a castle's strength only becomes important if you really want to batter your way into it. But the for the Ismilles, you know, a wall as thick as this, it really didn't matter because when they obtained their castles, they obtained them through subtifuge. They sneaked their way in, so to speak. The method that Hassan chooses to to get alamat in modern

day Iran, ancient day Persia, is quite indicative of the strategy he would use in his order of assassins. And that is he kind of infiltrates the local community. And then he makes a proposition to the owner of the castle saying, "I will give you a large sum of money, but you need to get out or else." that this was an offer that could not be turned down because when he looked around, he found that there were Israeli communities popping up all around him. Essentially, it had become a colony of the creed and the owner of

the castle, well, you may as well up and sell because they're coming for it anyway. Hassan was a brilliant tactician. He very slowly set up. He would go to the highest mountain. Um, the higher the better. uh the more inaccessible the better. Um because what he was trying to hold off was an army thousand times of what he could ever raise. And so he was using every tactic in the book to try to hang on. And what he ended up building was a series, oh maybe a dozen of what we know in that same arc,

that same Shia arc that exists today from the northwest of Iran across Iraq and into northern Syria. The Nazaria's Ismiley assassins would always have looked for a castle that was on a high natural peak because you've got every advantage of being so much higher than your enemy. That's what it's all about. It's not just the build of the castle. It's also the fact that this natural environment puts you up high. It's on solid rock, so they can't dig underneath the walls to make them collapse. It's really difficult for them to launch missiles up at you,

arrows, etc. But also, you're looking down upon them. You can see your enemy. You can see exactly what he's doing. Back in the 11th century, Hassan Isaba was the founder and leader of a mystical Muslim sect which was based in the lands which are now modern-day Syria and Iran. They were called Nazari Ishmales, but also known as the Hashashin by their enemies. Today, we know them as the Order of the Assassins, a highly trained group of expert killers who carried out dozens of high-profile assassinations across the Middle East. Primarily, they targeted leaders of rival Muslim

sex who they saw as not as devout as themselves or who had transgressed from the strict observance of their faith. Dr. Farad Daftari is head of research at the Institute for Ismali Studies in London and is one of the world's leading experts on the group. The Isi did go on assassinations on targeted assassinations to remove the key military enemies of their community because they could not raise and mobilize large armies as was the case with their opponents. And it was the name the name Hashishi which gave rise to the legend which has it that they

use hashish as part of their indoctrination and training. So Hassan is really quite brilliant in his strategy. He recruits young men in their early teens and they come into the castle and they see you know wealth and and and and just the coolness of the order that exceeds anything they've ever known. But then he plays on their psychological desire to have a comfortable life with Allah in the afterlife. And what he does is he drugs them with the drink. They pass out and he physically takes them takes their bodies to a garden that is literally

paradise on earth. And it was a beautiful place. It was literally a land of milk and honey. It was it was heaven as described by Muhammad. It was filled with beautiful women who gave you whatever you asked for. Wine was given them. They spent the night in that pleasure garden. They awoke the next morning lying in front of the sheep of the mountain, the old man of the mountain. And this is when he tells them, "If you would like to return to that state of ecstasy for eternity, then this is what you have to do."

Can you imagine the impact that this would have had on a young man? They probably have just had their first experience with women. They've just experienced something beyond their wildest dreams. And now they know they can have that again. And they've been shown this by a man who they respect anyways. He's pious. He's devout. He has the same faith that they do. So these guys will now do literally anything. they will gladly give up their life for the order. To to to go into enemy territory and to plan an assassination and to uh infiltrate uh

the staff or household of the intended victim to plan the operation to carry out the operation. This is not the kind of thing you would do on drugs. I mean, what what what what what people do on drugs is hold up convenience stores and and and usually screw it up. I mean, it's we do have whacked out people who who are violent criminal predators in our society. Um but planning something as elaborate as an assassination would be far beyond them. Um so it is doubtful. Certainly there's no there's no evidence. It appears to be stories

uh spread by individuals who are trying to explain the apparently bizarre behavior of these individuals or stories who were spread by the enemies of this sect in a in in a way to discredit them to say well they're all a bunch of crazy druggies or something like that. uh but doesn't appear to have any basis in fact and operationally would be contrary to the operation and also contrary to the belief [Music] system. The assassin's reputation for deception and swift kills spread like wildfire through the 12th century. They were highly trained to use both their reflexes

and assassination skills to complete their missions using a specific weapon, a curved knife with a poison blade. Professor James Wat has spent much of his academic life investigating and researching the lives of the assassins. He confirms they were expert knife handlers who were trained to strike fast with extreme stealth. The Israeli assassin's choice of weapon obviously was the dagger, and the dagger holds a number of advantages for them. They're going to get close to their victim anyway because they don't care about surviving the attack. Also, with a dagger, you can confirm the kill. Sure, it's

going to be safer using a sword to be at arms length, but with a dagger, this is the way that you finish people off and kill them on the battlefield as well. And of course, a dagger is going to be easy to conceal. Our assassins are disguised. They're disguised as holy men. They're disguised as ambassadors. They're disguised as bodyguards of the Sultans that they're actually going to dispatch and murder. Knives are still highly priced items in the Middle East. Abdel Razak Abu Hazen is a third generation knife maker based in Aman, Jordan. Myuh my family

makes the knife since uh five generation. Uh since my greatgrandfather learned how to make a knife. Well, yes. To make a good knife, you you should choose the good steel. It should be solid, flexible, uh you know, not too heavy. Well, uh, the best knife for Hashin to to kill is the double-edged sharp knife or dagger. The dagger that an ismiley assassin would have used is a double-edged blade. That means that you can stab down into the victim between if he's wearing a chain mail koif that covers the neck and head and then an armored

breast blade, you can get in between that with the double edge blade and stab downwards. But also, of course, you can slash as well. It could be that you've got to fight your way into your victim. We know that when they were attempting to kill the Sultan Saladin, they had to fight past several bodyguards to get into the room to kill him. That would have been a slashing motions to clear the way and then the stab down. So double-edged, very strong blade. And we know that the steel made in the Islamic world at this time

was of a high intensity, strong steel, carbon steel blade. And again, an ability to slash and also to stab down too. According to early written sources, the first of many political murders by the sect took place in 1092. An assassin disguised as a holy man, approached Nism Elm, a local leader, as he was being carried in a carriage by his guards. Without fear of the repercussions, and before the guards could act in defense, the assassin fatally stabbed Nisam in the chest. At this point, the assassin just stands absolutely stock still. He doesn't care about the

fact that the guards are closing in on him and they're going to kill him. He's completed his mission. And in fact, his sacrifice being killed by the guards is part of that blood right that's so important to the assassin modus operando. For somebody sent out from the assassins to do a killing, should he survive it, that was shameful. Um, if he survived it, it was often because he had failed. It was probably because he was caught. With the assassins, we have all those elements of a secret society. They are clear-minded about the mission. They spent

months, long periods of time getting close to their victims and then at that point seizing the moment to carry out the murder. If we have assassin sleeper cells that are waiting for the order from the grandmaster to actually undertake a political killing at the right time um and at an appropriate juncture then how do you get those messages to those sleeper cells and how do you keep sleeper cells safe? This is through the lay followers of the faith. Merchants we know were very commonly Ismileis and of course merchants enjoy free passage throughout the Islamic Empire.

Also the movement of money in the Islamic Empire was relatively simple and straightforward. Uh our word check is an invention of uh the Islamic word sack. It means I could draw money in a bank in Alexandria even if the bank is somewhere in western Persia. Um so these are the underpinning uh structures through which the assassin can move relatively freely to get safety then to get close to his target and then for the grand masters to send that message so that not only is the killing going to take place but it's going to take place

at the right strategic moment for the grandmaster. The message they were trying to leave was you're not safe. you think you're safe because in those days they had the same philosophy that infested the Middle Ages all the way through that they were hired they were surrounded by their own personal bodyguard and their personal troops and the message they were getting was it doesn't matter if we want to kill you you're dead. The Order of the Assassins were a highly feared Muslim medieval killing force who carried out targeted assassinations of Middle Eastern leaders in the 11th

and 12th centuries. Their leader was a semi- mythical figure, Asan Isaba, who used a wide range of training techniques, including the use of meditation and the drug hashish. Primarily, their targets were leaders of rival Muslim sex, who they saw as not as devout as themselves or who had transgressed from the strict observance of their faith. The assassins operated as small one or twoman teams who struck without warning and often without detection. One of their most infamous encounters was a deadly threat that was sent to the Turkish sultan Saladin, the ruler of Egypt at the end

of the 12th century. But rather than killing him, they relied on psychological intimidation. These guys are now the world's elite political assassins. And a great example of that is when they chose not to kill, but to incite fear. The Israeli assassins uh this time in Syria, they had a grandmaster called Sinar. He knew that even if he killed Saladin, there would be a replacement. one of his brothers would replace him, Cipherin for example, or one of his sons or even one of his nephews, and that they would still face a formidable foe. So what he

attempted to do, the Grandmaster in Syria was to bring Saladin to a point of negotiation. And he did this through psychological terror. this incredibly powerful man, Saladin, while he was laying siege to a Syrian city very close to where the assassins were in the west. He awoke one morning, rolled over and found, to his horror an assassin dagger in the sand next to him. Waking up beside a dagger implanted in the earth beside his bed uh with a short note saying that we already hold you. We can take you at any time. Imagine the fear.

How could they possibly have penetrated our security? How did that happen? They must be everywhere. The psychological fear totally changed the Sultan's behavior and policy. Result achieved. Nobody had to die, but he got exactly what he wanted. The Grandmaster did. As news spread across the Muslim world of their killings and more importantly their tactics of intimidation, the legend of the assassins was slowly born. Within the space of just a few years, they became the most feared military group in the world. Even at the height of its powers, the Ismaeli sect would have had very few

Fidian assassin operatives in the field. But what is important is the psychological impact of these spectacular killings. The fact that they suddenly appear out of the crowd, have not been seen, have not been identified, make the killing, and then wait to be killed by the guards of their target. There is also um an important part of this. Few of the killings in Syria take place in the courtyard of the Grand Mosques. These are the most public places. the crowd will spread these tales throughout Syria. It it's it's obvious in that respect. But what also happens

is there's becomes a myth of the Israeli assassin. They are start to acquire in these stories supernatural powers. There's a story of the Grandmaster of Syria who was known as cultivating these stories as well. um that he could turn into a gigantic glowworm, that he could levitate or if he could float um around the castle, etc. That he could metamorphos into a snake, that he could have conversations with horses. That he understood um the secret language of animals. And they lived on a potent reputation of being sorcerers, terrifying men with terrifying secrets and terrifying powers

that inspired detestation amongst the Sunnis especially and fear amongst the Franks. Everyone was afraid of them. They were oppressed a lot. So a lot of the motivation of the order appeared to be taking out political leaders who opposed their view of the world. Paranoia is a perfect word to describe the disorder and the chaos that occurred inside an Islamic royal court once an assassination had taken place. There was deep distrust of people that you worked with. People were looking over their shoulders at all times. There are stories of individuals wearing armor at all times of

the day and night to avoid assassination. Such was the fear of the blade of the Israelis. There were not thousands of assassinations. There were not hundreds of assassinations. Uh, by the best count that we have, during the decades that the original leader commanded the assassins, there were 50 assassinations. A small number. And yet, with those 50 targeted killings, this group was able to create this this legend, uh, this fear. [Music] So the aggressive nature of of the assassin warriors was actually a defensive posture. By taking out political leaders, they were preserving their religious turf as

as it were. the Ismaelis and and and the leader uh of of the Ismileis, his primary objective was not to go out and kill people. His primary objective was to awaken people, to call them to this belief system. The use of the assassins was a necessity to defend the followers. It wasn't the objective. To add to their mythological status and legend, the assassin's founder and grandmaster, Asani Saba, also had a favorite, if rather gruesome, party trick, which he would play on his followers. They would call together the faithful and and he would bury a man

in a hole very near where he sat and all you would see is the man's head and a plate closed on either side of his head and he would have the man talk and he would say, "You see this man is dead. It's only his head. I He's talking to you. The dead is talking to you." And he would tell all the faithful, "Get out. Go away." And and once they did, he'd pull the poor guy out and cut his head off and carry his head out, you know. I mean, nobody questioned nobody questioned at

that point that the man had been dead the whole time, but he could make the dead talk. The assassins were a legendary group of highly trained killers that operated across the Middle East in the 12th century. Their mysterious leader was Hassan Saba who ran a mystical sect which was based in the lands which are now modern-day Syria and Iran. They were a highly trained group of expert assassins whose reputation spread across most of the world and down through the centuries influencing many of the Islamic extremists today. Although the assassins had essentially died out by the

end of the 13th century, experts can see lots of similarities between them and modern-day terrorist groups. Brian Michael Jenkins is an expert on terrorism and has briefed both the Pentagon and the White House on the subject. There are a number of parallels between the assassins and contemporary terrorism. Uh for for one thing, those who commonly resort to terrorist tactics lack power in the conventional sense and and and therefore they have to adopt tactics and and and strategies that do not try to match the military superiority of their foes, but instead take advantage of their own

capabilities. Instead of full frontal assaults, open battle, they're going to operate by means of treachery. I think it comes down to that key word of terror. The acts may be very, very different. We're talking about targeted political assassination on one point. We're talking about indiscriminate bombing in many cases on the other side. But the end is terror. The Ismaelis managed to produce that terror by the skill of their operations, but also the fact that there was a psychological component by the paranoia that this sowed amongst the royal courts. Uh the feeling that there could be

any an Israeli assassin, amongst one's bodyguard, amongst one's family, amongst one's close confidants. Modern-day terror, I suggest, does that by the mass effect. It does that by the sea of sheer size of its body count um and the fact that we feel vulnerable as a society rather than as the individuals at the top of the society. The Ismael worked at the top of the pyramid of power and that's where they swed the seeds of paranoia. That's where they sewed the seeds of doubt and that's how they brought states to negotiating table and that's how they

managed to survive. The the terrorists of today or the assassins of their time manipulated perceptions. They created fear and alarm which caused people to exaggerate their their strength. The way an assassin approached his target was un was very much different to a modern terrorist. But unfortunately, a lot of people don't see that. And and I'm not saying only Westerners have been taken in by this myth. Um it is entirely possible that an ISIS lone wolf assassin might be inspired by the by the assassins. That that doesn't make it any more true. The assassins covered the

same territory, that same axis of land from the north of Iran to the north of Syria with the same fate. They didn't operate like a modern terrorist. The assassins were brilliant. A modern terrorist doesn't seem to care who they kill. And we're not just talking about 9/11. Talking about the Sunnis attacking the Shia on on their holiest day of Ashura with with car bombs. They don't care. women and children, innocent people. They don't care how many they kill. They don't care. Whereas the assassins operated with surgical precision to go after the one enemy with the

realization and the understanding that the men who followed him were only followers. But if you can terrify or kill or take out that one man, that is the greatest weapon you can put in the hands of a force that is overwhelmed numerically and overwhelmed in weapons and in money. It's a very clever tactic and almost a humane one in some ways. One vital differentiation I believe between the Israeli assassins and the modern-day terrorism that we see throughout the Middle East and beyond in in our own age is that despite the fact that this was a

period where there were many children on thrones, there is not a single instance of the Israeli assassins killing a woman or a child. These are discreet killings. These are not killings that affect even the general public. There's no collateral damage with these killings whatsoever. They are highly skilled and they are highly targeted. And in a very strange way, I actually feel that's quite commendable. Assassination is part of the tactical repertoire of today's terrorists. They blew up the prime minister of Spain. They killed Lord Batton in England. They attempted to kill the prime minister. There were

plots against the royal family in the United Kingdom. If you look at the history of the United States, admittedly a country with a a a violent history, 12 of our 13 most recent presidents over the last 80 years, one was killed by an assassin. Several were shot at by assassins. And all but one, 12 of the 13, have been the targets of assassination plots. One could say that today's assassins are equally as effective as the order of assassins. They're taking out more people, but because of the media, they're having the same impact. They're distilling fear

in a nation instantly and they're not doing it by word of mouth. They're doing it by media and and that's the difference. But they're having the same effect. Psychological fear is the worst kind of warfare. You see a small number of spectacular murders being exaggerated and uh creating this again atmosphere of fear and alarm. We have many people today in the United States and and and in Europe for whom fear of terrorism is a a a real component of their lives. Many people fear this the so-called fifth columns or sleepers. Uh that is terrorists who

have already infiltrated the country and are waiting some signal to carry out attacks. Uh that was true in the time of of of the assassins. Uh you have no way of counting those you don't know about. If in response to terrorism, we become terrified as a as these medieval princes were terrified of of of assassins. Then we're going to create a neo- medieval society. and live in fear behind perimeters, physical and electronic ones. That's the danger. The Order of the Assassins were a deadly force in the 11th and 12th centuries across the entire Middle East.

Their operatives were highly trained and entirely ruthless in carrying out their top secret missions. In fact, there are many similarities between the ancient order of the assassins and modern-day terrorist groups like al Qaeda and ISIS. The assassin's unique blend of deadly skills, extreme stealth, and huge impact can be seen in many modern terrorist attacks today. But as all powerful as their legend and reputation was, the Order of the Assassins made a fatal miscalculation in the 13th century. They sent a large contingent of men to assassinate Manka Khan, the leader of the Mongols and grandson of

the infamous Genghaskhan, who was threatening to invade the Middle East. It was a grand plan which went spectacularly wrong. In the end, in revenge, the Mongols hunted down and wiped out the Order of the Assassins, killing its leader and destroying its castles. The Ismile assassins came within a head's breadth of destroying the superpower of the medieval age. 400 assassins were sent to assassinate the great Khn of the Mongol Empire. If they had succeeded, the history of the world today would look significantly different. The demise of the Israeli assassins in Persia and in Syria are related

to a number of things. The Mongol war machine had fought its way right down through China. Uh it had fought itself right across the Islamic Empire. It had fought itself right into Russia. There this was the superpower of the medieval age and it was beyond the reach of any other power that had been known before. The assassins, the entire order led by the Grandmaster were always very politically astute and they knew that times of political unrest is the time when they would be most successful. But now they were facing enemies who had a hierarchy. If

you kill the top guy, the new guy moves in. So there's no delay, there's no disruption, there's no falling down from the top anymore. They realize the Mongols are going to be the formidable enemy that would probably end their existence. And they realize they have one shot to go in and take out the top members of the Mongol army. There is a story of the Israeli assassin, the penultimate grandmaster, sending 40 or some sources even say 400 assassins all the way to Carakorum to the Mongol capital to attempt to kill the Grand K. They fail.

And the Mongols are so enraged and so indignant that the assassination was even attempted, they say, "Okay, now you're in trouble. Now we're coming after you." The Mongols were prepared to step themselves into a level of horror, terror, and blood that no other power before had even contemplated. And it was an annihilation. It turned into a genocide and it very quickly marked the end of the Order of Assassins. [Music] They led a reign of terror and fear across much of the Middle East for well over two centuries. But their plan to kill the Mongol leader

would turn out to be their last significant act. In the end, the order was all but wiped out by Manga Khan in the mid13th century. The Israeli assassins are without doubt the most formidable secret society that's ever existed. With one political killing, they tore down an entire empire. The whole approach of the assassins, I mean, it was replicated grandmaster by grandmaster for a few hundred years. They had tremendous success. In fact, their reputation and and successes just continued to grow. These Israeli assassins were a formidable force for nearly two centuries. They were feared by the

crusaders. They destroyed a Persian empire. And it required the superpower of the medieval age, the Mongols, to finally extinguish their threat. What the assassins succeeded in doing was branding political murder. They gave their name to a tactic which has survived the organization itself. When we talk about assassination today, what we're talking about is a strategy devised by an old man in a remote fortress in Persia a thousand years ago. The Order of the Assassins was a group of highly trained, highly stealthy, expert killers that carried out a series of high-profile killings across the Middle East

in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries. Their legend spread fast and they were feared across the entire region. Their training, tactics, and absolute dedication to their deadly missions was legendary. And although they were eventually wiped out by the Mongols, their legacy and contribution to history is an important one with many of their skills still being used by Islamic terrorists today. The Ku Klux Clan is the most notorious white supremacist group in the world. But how did it grow to such large numbers over the last 150 years? How has the clan continued to be a malicious

force in American society? And what has been its impact? Nowhere else in American history is such terror so widespread without organization. It was war between North and South. The clan is the oldest terrorist group in the United States and in a sense really the original one. The initial clan was set up very privately. The most secret of secret organizations. The Klux Clan is a peculiarly American phenomenon, but hate and white nationalism is an international one. How big is the KKK today? And is it still recruiting members? The Klux Clan was born here and thrives here.

I didn't say thrived. I said thrives here. The advantage of having a secret society is that nobody knows what your numbers are. Nobody knows where you are. I think the Klux Clan will be with us as long as we have people with hate in their hearts. And I think the real threat from the white supremist movement probably takes a different form today. And is America heading for a new race war? You cut off its head, you think it's dead, and eventually it grows another head? These are folks who have kept away from the cities, who

want their countryside preserved. They endlessly see an invader, and they endlessly see that any change, whether it is with a flag or a law or a custom, will endanger them. We have always had political extremism of one stripe or another, but never in such a kind of criminal form as we see it in the clan. Civil War has never ended. It's still the fight that America fights for its own identity. Southerners are still southerners. They've been hundreds of years. Northerners are still northerners. What saves us are all the new people who come and keep between

us. We go inside the KKK today to reveal the truth about the most infamous white power group in the world. In the aftermath of the American Civil War, many ex-confederate soldiers paraded the streets in white sheets and hoods in an attempt to attract young men to join their new social group, the Ku Klux Clan. They saw the abolishment of slavery as a threat to their country and God-given rights. As a result, clan membership quickly grew to millions across the whole southern United States. The secrecy was tantamount as their crimes escalated, often committed by senior society

figures. Well, the clan initially arose in pretty much a direct response to what happened at the end of the Civil War. the freeing of the slaves and ultimately the making of citizens of the slaves. It began in a small town in Palaski, Tennessee near the Alabama border. And really what it was initially was a kind of prankster society. There were six ex-confederate officers who got together who were bored in this small town and decided to form a little club. They use the Greek name for circle Kuclus and that is where the name Kuclux Clan comes

from. They dressed up in all kinds of wild outfits. This pretty quickly turned into more or less harassing black residents in the area, making fun of them. They would do certain kinds of things like dress up in such a way that was supposed to suggest that they were the ghosts of Confederate officers from the Civil War. The story that six young men met to form a kind of social club with a kind of mystical circle in it is probably has a kernel of truth. But I have always believed that the clan started in places like

Pilaski, Tennessee because it was in the edge of what was a cotton growing area. Almost everywhere you find the clan in 1866 and 1867. It is young men trying to resurrect their lives in places where cotton had once been king and they wanted to restore that. The initial clan was set up very privately, the most secret of secret organizations. No one really knew for certain who was in the clan, but the only name connected with it was the ex-confederate general Nathan Bedford Forest. Uh, it developed into a movement essentially of small like-minded groups that popped

up in various places around the South. Wasn't until about two years later, 1867, where a meeting was held in Nashville, where Nathan Bedford Forest, a former Confederate general and slavemaster, was made the Grand Wizard, which was the title for the leader of the Klux Clan for the very first time. Forest really led the clan through its very most violent period and in effect terrorized in particular the Republican party into staying away from the polls into backing away from any kind of political work and so on. The first civil rights act with any teeth was passed

in 1871 along with something called the enforcement acts and they were passed because of the violence being perpetrated by the clan. They were passed by President Grant who had had enough. And he also declared the clan a terrorist organization which meant that if you were discovered to be a clansman, you could be hanged. And so the membership was very secret. And we really don't know how many. We historians play games make estimates maybe 15% of the white males, but we don't know. In fact, at the beginning of the 20th century, it's estimated that the first

incarnation of the Ku Klux Clan membership had grown to an incredible 5 million people, some 25% of the South. We know very little about the ritual of the clan. Again, these men, they lived underground like moles. We do know about the dress. They were always masked. Very often they would wear cloaks. Generally it was putting a potato sack or something over your head, putting something around you to hide who you were getting on your horse and riding out. Even in the early days of the clan, its members wore masks to hide their identity, but at

the same time giving the group a distinctly menacing appearance. These gentlemen of the south definitely did not want anyone to know their identity. And that was the chief point in being masked. The mask is the only thing that would remain with the clan through all of its days is that they had to cover their faces because they were too cowardly to come out and say who they were. They didn't want anyone to know who they were. I've seen pictures of clan writers. You do see the occasional conicle looking cap, but the conicle cap as we

know it, it's been connected to a dozen things, including, ironically enough, the uden hood, the Jewish hat that the Germans often made the Jews wear in earlier centuries. But it's believed that the later clan connected it with the Spanish Inquisition. Today, the mask and conicle hoods have become the most powerful symbols of white supremacy and the clan that exists. To me, the clan has always been a very logical manifestation of rule life, that you band together for survival, that you go through certain rituals that give you power in a place that often makes you feel

powerless. By banding together, that power can manifest itself far more effectively than through individual protest or shall we say individual acting out. The clan has an ethic of the group dynamic that I think reappears each time the clan reappears. A clansman or clanswoman, they come from all walks of life. So they have different perspectives, but one thing they all hold as the top of their priority list is preservation of the white race. Behold the fiery draw, still brilliant. It shall burn bright as morning for all decades. I mean, look, despite the fact that the clan

today is incredibly weak, the reality is is that individual clansmen still pose a very real and significant danger, at least to people immediately around them. Let me say that the cross is an inspiration, a sign of the Christian religion, a symbol of faith, hope, and love. Amen. Amen. The Ku Klux Clan is the most notorious white supremacist group in America. But how did this group grow to such large numbers over the last century? What impact has it had on politics? And what influence does it still have today? In 2015, there are estimated to be about

5,000 Klux Clan members in the US, nearly all in the southern states. They regularly get together for rallies, barbecues, and even crossberings. Members include teachers, accountants, hospital staff, and even local politicians. A lot of clan members are also in the military and carry concealed weapons. They allowed our cameras to film a gathering in Roxboro, North Carolina. This is a social gathering that we're having. It's uh part of the clan, the Kulux and the little white knights of the Klux Clan. And our uh goal here today is to uh have a meeting to uh gather our

white race together and wake up uh white America and let them know what's going on in the world. Our race, our history, our culture, our heritage comes from thousands of years of history and we don't want to lose it. And it's being destroyed by Zog. Zog is a Zionist occupied government. The Jews own everything. And through all the retail stores and the advertising flyers that you receive in the mail, all they show is this racial mixing and we're tired of it. Well, being a this is the national rally and brothers from all over the states

are coming in and uh it's a good place where we're all together and can do this. We're part of this organization to help save our history because we are losing our history. I want my son to grow up knowing what's right. I mean, you know, black and white dating just ain't I don't agree with it. My son needs to learn and know how I feel, you know? I mean, we try to That's what we're here for, fighting for every day. That's what I join for and that's what I want my son to say. I mean,

it it's all about the white kids. That's that's what we're here for, for the future generations to teach them. If nobody teaches them, they won't know the truth. The clan has always brought the family along because if what they're trying to perpetuate is family and what they perceive to be the pure family values, it's very much like farm life always was. The kids learned the chores from early on. They increased their ability to do the chores as they matured and when the adults aged out, they took their place. The clan today is really a shadow

of its former self. The clan is the oldest American terrorist group and probably will be the longest lived, but many people in the white supremist movement today uh would rather identify with something that maybe had a more modern heir to it. Uh you know, a different kind of white nationalist group like the National Socialist Movement. Um, so although the clan is, you know, kind of falling on hard times, they're probably 70 uh chapters, 23 or so different organizations all fighting amongst themselves, maybe four or 5,000 clansmen. The white supremist movement is actually quite large. Um,

for example, there are at least 300,000 registered users on something called Stormfront, which is the leading neo-Nazi portal. And most of those people are, of course, people in this country. And so, you know, the number of people involved in the white supremist movement is large. They don't typically identify with the clan. And in many ways there's a kind of a floating away from organized groups because you know the the internet is so powerful. I don't have to go to a clan rally. I don't have to go to cross burning to get my fill of hate.

I don't need to go into a meeting to get my racist views validated any longer. I can get them validated, you know, just sitting in my pajamas at my house. Do you know Dylan Roof was someone like that? the Charleston shooter. He's kind of radicalized online. No evidence there if ever he went to a meeting of any sort, but he clearly uh had, you know, drunk the Kool-Aid of white supremacy. Two members of the Kuku clan were arrested today in connection with the death of a young black man who was beaten and hinded from a

tree in Mobile, Alabama. The FBI says Michael Donald was killed in a random act of clan revenge for the murder of a white policeman. On March 21st, 1981, a 19-year-old African-Amean man, Michael Donald, was stopped by clansmen in Mobile, Alabama. He was then viciously beaten, hung from a tree, and then dragged down the road behind a vehicle on a rope. It remains one of the most brutal racist attacks in American history. The local police chief today is Lawrence Batist. We are headed to an area of town where Michael Donald was hanged by a number of

individuals in his community uh which claimed association or ties with the clan. The death of Michael Donald uh created a feeling of uh fear and apprehension. didn't really know uh where you could and you could not go as a result of Michael Donald's death. We first became involved in the Michael Donald case by really reading about in the newspaper. You know, there was this talk that it was a drug deal gone bad. We were suspicious of that always. The FBI and the Justice Department broke the case. You know, we saw the two people who were

convicted. One person had plead guilty, another person was convicted at a trial, and the rest of us thought, you know, it wasn't just these two fellas. There must have been something more behind it. The clan had a long, long history of violence, and we be began to investigate the case uh quite extensively. We're currently on Michael Donald Avenue. This sign here is a landmark from Michael Donald. It says on March 21st, 1981, 19-year-old Michael Donald was abducted, beaten, killed, and hung from a tree by members of the Ku Klux Clan. To have a black man

hanging from a tree sent a message that racism still exists. It may exist in secrecy, but it still exists. and that there are people in this community that have a stake in saying we don't want you guys here. And so it it did send a loud message. Sent the message that you need to be careful about where you go, when you go, and who you go with. Stop the clan now. Stop the clan now. In the end, the accused clan member Henry Hayes was tried and sentenced to death for the lynching and murder of Michael

Donald. A dramatic decision today in a courtroom in Mobile, Alabama. A judge has sentenced a member of the Ku Klux Clan to death for the murder of a young black man. What happened to Michael Donald was a terrible thing. These men who lynched him, one of them has been sentenced to death. One of them is in jail for the rest of his life. And that's where they should be. But you can't hold the organization responsible. That's why we proved that the clan had a policy or a custom and practice of carrying out its goals through

violence. We had a very graphic thing from the clan's newspaper. The clans newspaper was called the fiery cross, right? The idea is we're purifying Christianity and you know this is what black people deserve. You turn the page and there's a black man lynched. And you know that was a message, you know, that violence was okay, that black people deserve to be lynched. The lynching and death of Michael Donald at the hands of the Klux Clan shows all too dramatically just how brutal they were in the 20th century. And this tragic incident proves what many still

fear. That the clan still has an extreme element who are willing to torture, maim, and kill to get their dangerous ideology across. [Music] The Ku Klux Clan are a white supremacist organization with its roots in the deep south of America. At its peak towards the end of the 19th century, it could boast millions of members. But today, those numbers have shrunk to a few thousand hardcore followers who are all the more radical and dangerous. The US government and the FBI are well aware of the KKK's brutality. They spent a great deal of time and money

trying to infiltrate the clan to get firsthand and eyewitness accounts of exactly what's been going on. Michael Friusen's father was an undercover FBI agent working for Jay Edgar Hoover inside the clan in the 1960s. My dad got out of Army Airore in World War II and went directly into the FBI and was an FBI agent from say 1948 till about 70. He came to Greensboro because Greensboro was one of the centers of the racial unrest in the '60s. He was assigned to work on the clan and develop informants in the clan through a program that

Hoover called co-intelp prohate which was basically investigation of all the white hate groups in the United States. He was fortunate to get a lot of people at the top of the North Carolina clan, the United Clans of America in North Carolina. His primary informant was George Dorset. George Dorset was a house painter and a preacher. He had a very powerful fire and brimstone speaking style, the devil and the roaring line. And that meshed well in the clan because he was one of the primary speakers at the rallies. So he became sort of the fiery voice

of the clan in North Carolina. the peanut brain god denying atheist agnostic infidels. My dad, you know, he told me many times that he approached Dorset four or five times before he was willing to actually cooperate with him, give him information. I think there was a reluctance initially to work with the FBI, but I think the money was good. Friusen was one of the FBI's best agents, gaining valuable information about the KKK from informants for many years, including details of members, rallies, and potential targets. His work was recognized by Jed Gahoover, the bureau's chief. Over

the years, uh, Mr. Hoover sent my dad many letters of commendation. Many of them were for work he had done in the racial field. He was one of the top FBI agents recruiting clan informants in in North Carolina. He says, "I'm pleased to commend you and advise you that I've approved an incentive award for recognition of outstanding services in a matter of considerable interest to the bureau in the racial field. Your skillful and effective efforts in developing and handling confidential sources resulted in a great deal of success in this area of our operations. This is

counter intelligence, right? Goes beyond information gathering. They're basically trying to break the clan up. You know, sew dissent and cause splinter groups to be formed and that kind of thing. With expanded jurisdiction in the fields of organized crime and civil rights, the FBI scored decisive blows against Ku Klux Clan violence. When details of George Dorset spying for the FBI emerged in 1965, it caused a huge upset within the clan. He was forced into police protection for his own safety and banned from attending clan meetings. As is well known now, George Nett was also the informer.

He was in a sense the snitch. Even at the time he was rallying the troops. Frankly, I don't think anyone's ever come to grips with that. Even he before his guilt or whatever it was he ended up with, he essentially was doing something I think that he truly believed in and at the same time selling it out. So you could argue that George Dorset was the true realist. He knew that the days of the clan were measured. They were numbered. they would end, but he wanted to get the truth in as long as he [Music]

could. There's little doubt that the FBI did have some success with their infiltration of the clan, but in turn, it also led to a deeper radicalization of splinter groups who have gone further underground. [Music] Despite the jokes making their way around the South that half the people in any clan meeting were FBI informants, that wasn't true. The clan was being reborn. It was being reborn quickly. There were lynchings by the score. There were beatings. There were people being threatened. It It was very much a replay of something that I think most northerners and intellectuals thought

was long dead. It was it was a replay of the old clan. Secrecy has always been an important element in the clan. Susan Sutton from the Indiana Historical Society has found a small figurine which used to be placed outside meetings to indicate whether it was a fully clan event or whether nonclan members were present. What we have here is a statueette that would have been in use by the individual clavers. The statueette would stand at the point of entry four members. And the story is that if both arms were in place, including this one, which

is removable, then the people present were all members and it was safe to speak about anything. If the arm was not in place like this, then there were people present who were not members and so any kind of secret business was not to be discussed. He says on the bottom, K I G Y, which means clansmen, I greet you. And of course, he's only greeting them if his arm is in place. The advantage of having a secret society is that nobody knows what your numbers are. Nobody knows where you are. And as far as the

way the clan viewed itself in terms of their secrecy. They had no shame about being secret. They knew that being so secret inflated their numbers in people's mind. The so-called mystery and sexiness of the clan is such that we actually have uh tiny little clan groups popping up in places like Australia and Germany and so on. There's a kind of weird romance associated with [Music] it. Although their numbers are rapidly diminishing, the clan still has a passionate following in the south. A recent gathering in Roxboro, North Carolina, allowed our cameras in as they prepared a

large cross for the evening's burning. Some members claimed that a new war is coming where the white majority will, as they put it, take America back. The lighting of this cross represents Jesus Christ is the light of the light of the world. He is our existence. He is the reason that we we are on this earth. And so we light this cross in honor of of what he has given to us. We're not the first to do this. You know, this has been done for for hundreds and hundreds of years. This is our Confederate battle

flag. What it represents is uh our Confederate soldiers in the south. And in 1958, the Confederacy or the Confederate uh veterans soldiers were were uh brought in as US veterans and their their gravestones are being desecrated. The flags are being torn off and nobody's doing anything about it. They're destroying us. They're trying to kill us. They're wiping us off the face of this planet. And we want to wake up America and put a stop to it. And now then they're trying to take the clan uh out of our history, out of our history, out of

our southern heritage. And y'all got that looking good. Then once they get rid of our southern heritage, they will not be satisfied until they destroy the heritage of this United States. The cross lighting represents the light of Jesus and how he shines down over all of us. It is important because the our biggest thing is our Christian base. Our kids definitely need to know about their heritage and where they came from. They need to be proud in their race and know that it's okay to be white. Now, despite the clan's high media profile today, the

initiation ceremony and sacred oaths undertaken by those joining the clan remain a closely guarded secret. When you are inducted or initiated into the Klux Clan, you go through a secret ritual, a secret initiation ceremony in which you give an oath and you give a pledge to preserve the white race, to preserve white womanhood. You give your life. You also make a promise never to reveal any clan business to aliens. An alien is anyone who is a non-clan member and to always uphold the values and policies of the Knights of the Klux Clan. young white people,

they see the movement for Black Lives Matter and they say, "Gosh, we're losing the country. What about us?" You know, and so they try to try to figure out a way to kind of express what in their mind is ethnic pride and kind of a warped way. We've seen plenty of cases of young people in the north with Confederate flags. Well, what can that mean? That's not the historic Confederacy. It's just an expression of whiteness in their minds because they feel embattled. There are no real boundaries in this. It's just part of a social movement

that takes your money, organizes your energies, and engages your families. You get everything in one package. You get the costumes, you get the ideology, you get the family concerns, it has elements of the church, it builds community, and most of all, it keeps out the alien. It promises you that your children will have a future that you control, not them. That the Ku Klux Clan are the most famous white supremacist organization in the United States. Its origins start back at the end of the 19th century when it attracted a huge following in the southern states

and is still active today, though with just a fraction of the membership. After what was known as the first wave of the Ku Klux Clan back in the end of the 19th century, a second wave flourished in the early 20th century. On the most part, it attracted all sorts of regular law-abiding citizens who helped with good social causes. But of course, there was also the constant undercurrent of racially motivated hatred. The Klux Clan returns to the south, complete with traditional white hoods. One of its leaders was a politician called DC Stevenson who was appointed state

leader or grand dragon of the clan in Indiana. In 1925, he was tried and convicted in a notorious abduction, rape, and murder of a young white woman, M. Oberholtzer, a state education official. His trial, conviction, and imprisonment ended America's belief of clan leaders as law-abiding citizens. It was a huge scandal at the time. This is Irvington and this is where DC Stevenson decided to build his mansion over here. As you can see, it definitely has a southern flavor for a northern state. When DC Stevenson built this house after the 1922 and the 1925 elections when

virtually all these politicians were in his pocket, his favorite expression was, "I am the law in Indiana." And oddly enough, at parties in this house, his second favorite expression about politics was that you're safe in politics. Only one thing can ruin you, to be found in bed with a live man or a dead woman. Well, in Stevenson's case, it was a dead woman. He imprisoned Ober Holtzer in a small room above his garage where it said he repeatedly tortured and raped her. He finally realized that she wasn't going to die. He did something that is

so expressive of the nutty megalomania of the man. It's unbelievable. He had one of his bodyguards carry her back to her house. Walked her up the stairs, dumped her on the bed, walked out. Get in there. not aware it is. When the border said, "Who are you?" He kept his face down. He said, "My name is Taylor. She's been in an auto accident, but it was a mild one. She'll be fine." And walked out the door. Then when the border, who was in the kitchen at the time, the rest of the family was gone again,

looking for Match, she climbed the stairs and found Match on the bed. The entire front of the dress she had worn to dinner three days before was open. Her breast covered black and blue and oozing blood. She could barely speak. All she could say was to ask for her mother. The woman asked, "What happened to you?" And she said, "Dc Stevenson did this to me. He raped me. He beat me. He bit me." Stevenson. Most historians truly believe that the murder committed in Indiana was the turning point for the clan. Clansmen at the grassroots quickly

began to learn that this was not what they thought they had joined and very quickly we'll call them more respectable members in each community began to distance themselves. I mean the the case of DC Stevenson was a remarkable one because of course the clan had spent most of its history railing on and on about protecting the virtue of white women and chastity and all those good things. So here is essentially the most important clan leader in the country who is found guilty of the incredibly savage rape leading to death of a white woman. The rape

was so savage he bit her all over her body. She was torn to pieces that the woman died several days later, but not before giving a deathbed statement. Ultimately helped to lead to the destruction of the clan around the country. What happened in that garage back there was the death of the clan all over the United States. You have to remember that Stevenson chose the venue for the trial. It was in Noblesville, a heavily clan area at that time. And 12 white men on that jury listened to her deathbed statement and they wanted to hang

him. The best they could do was seconddegree murder and they gave him seconddegree murder and they recommended life. When the mask was stripped away and you saw what these people really were, how ugly they were behind that mask. That's I think what makes this spot and this moment in history so important. Despite the outrage over Stevenson's actions, the clan continued strongly in the southern states, its iconic white gowns and hoods and its crosslightings and ceremonies attracting an ever loyal [Music] following. Daryl Davis is an author who's written about the Ku Klux Clan. He also has

a collection of KKK robes. This is the robe of an imperial wizard. This is called a mayio, a blood drop emblem. The red circle, the white cross and the red blood drop here. And if you look at these black lines here, they form K's. There are four of them and they stand for Knights of the Klux Clan. The white cross of course represents Christianity and the blood drop means that they will shed their blood to preserve the purity of the white race. I think you know the clan has the best you know um you know

uh uniforms out of all of the fraternal organizations out there. You know uh I've looked into masonry and all like that over the years and I found it quite boring and you know with the clan it never gets old. This of course is what we call the hood. The hood and the mask. Some people call it a helmet in clan terminology. Where the clan traditionally has been a secret society. And while they remain in secrecy with people not knowing who they are, that can invoke fear in other people. And fear is is the most powerful

tool to control your enemy. Some people have jobs and it should it be known to their employer that they are a member of a subversive organization, they could lose their job. So, it's best that people not know who they are. Thus, they wear the mask. Daryl Davis also has the uniform of a Baltimore police officer who was in the clan. He was not an undercover police officer in the clan. He was a bonafide clan leader on the police force. This is in recent times, just back to the 1970s. The clan is still thriving and it's

thriving more and more every day with the advent of a black president being in office. With the advent of more and more people coming into this country, immigrants who do not have white skin color, the clan sees that as a threat. So that's why we're seeing the rise in recruitment efforts. We're seeing the rise in lonewolf attacks because their thinking is, hey, if the clan can't do it and the neo-Nazis can't do it, you know, if you want to get it done right, do it yourself. 10,000 white women were raped by a black man. Guess

how many black women were raped by a white man? Because the clan of the 60s was so much a terrorist organization, membership was extremely secret. There was certainly infiltration at certain points by law enforcement, but by and large in the south, the clan had very good connections to police departments. So there were police departments like Birmingham, Alabama that were essentially allies of the clan. And that was true all around the south. You know, you found very often that police officers would be secretly members of the clan. It was very much a secret society because of

course it was engaged uh in terrorism of the most extreme [Music] kind. The focal point of every clan gathering for over 100 years has been the lighting of a huge cross. It's a symbol of their strong Christian faith, but it's said to also have a darker meaning. The cross burnings were usually part of clan rallies. The cross burnings announced an event. They they weren't part of the ritual. The ritual was very much patterned after the ritual of all other organizations at that time who all were patterned after the Freemasons and they all followed suit. You

rose through levels. You became a goblin. Officers were called things like Cleals. Their book of ritual was called the claran. Raising money was called a clvocation and the money was called [Music] cltoken. The burning of a huge cross is still very much part of KKK ceremonies today. And despite the differences and rivalries between different clan groups, it's one element they can all agree on. [Music] You accept a lot of Christ. Yes, sir. Clan groups sometimes get together during the year for different occasions. These are rival groups, but they might have a barbecue, a pig roast,

some kind of gathering and they will have a cross lighting ceremony. [Applause] for a It's called a cross lighting when it's done ceremoniously. When it's done as a threat or intimidation, it's called a cross burning. It's kind of a a unity and brotherhood, but it's all fake. Behold the fiery draw still brilliant. All the troubled history build to quench his hollow flame. There's no foundation for it. It's all quicksand because as soon as they leave, they're still rivals with one another. They don't join forces. It shall burn bright as morning for all decades. And then

every now and then they'll form a federation of clan groups, but it's like having three chefs in the kitchen. You can't have three Imperial wizards in the same clan group. You know, it's just too much ego, too much power, and they quickly disband. God give us men. Amen. Amen. The Klux Clan are the most notorious white supremacist movement in the United States. Once able to boast a membership in the millions, today it has about 5,000 diehard members across the southern states. They meet regularly to dawn their infamous white robes and hoods and to set fire

to enormous crosses. But what does the future hold for the KKK? The clan really has been a generational phenomena. If you think about it in the broadest context, the people who first met in Palaski had children and grandchildren who would then join the clan about a generation later. And those people had sons and grandsons who joined the clan about a generation later. There have been three waves and three broadly speaking generations that have attempted to keep the South in its traditional mode. that may be going away today, but there are remnants of it still around.

The Klux Clan finds itself today at a crossroads. Its aims and its racist beliefs appear more out of touch than ever before. In July 2015, the Confederate flag was lowered for the last time outside the state capital building in Columbia, South Carolina. They pull the Confederate flag down, but then you got the new Black Panther Party with their monument that they have and they can openly openly preach that they want all white people dead. The Ku Klux Clan is not hate. We love our race. We love and believe in the perpetuation and a preservation of

the white race. That's what we want. I'm not sure the clan will ever die. And that's a sad thing to say at this point. The membership of the clan is pretty sad. 5 to 8,000 probable. That doesn't count all the organizations that have been spawned by the clan. The Oklahoma City bombing was carried off by what, three guys and essentially one guy caused that kind of grief and death and destruction. So, it doesn't take a lot of people to cause social chaos. We have to face up to the ugly fact that the American South has

taken a very long time to recognize the humanity of all black people and that when the clan manifests itself in any wave, the reservoir that is underneath white southerners is often that brutalization of African-Americans. The enduring impact of the Ku Klux Clan is that it delayed the true promise of being America. That it kept the American South from truly joining the rest of the nation in a manner and a fashion that would have given it true equality. And in that way, it harmed not just the region, but it harmed the rest of the nation as

well. I think there was just too much history wrapped around the clan. The Invisible Empire Night Riders are sexy and appealing to certain kinds of people. So, I think that probably for the foreseeable future, we will have little clan groups around the United States and elsewhere. Stop the clan now. Stop the clan. Now, I've traveled over the world. I've never been to a country that didn't have a race problem. I don't think the clan will ever die. I just think at this point it's a joke. All these groups are morphing and diminishing. Are they necessarily

going to disappear totally? No. I always believe in the 95%. But what we don't have anymore is the South the clan really wanted to defend. It's going away. The KKK has a colorful and violent history, but its actual membership is a small fraction of what it was a century or more ago. The current members rail against what they see as a marginalization of their way of life and against the huge influx of migrants and a lack of resources for who they see as true white Americans. They threaten that a war is coming where white Americans

will take their country back. But increasingly in this fastmoving technologydriven and multicultural world, their old-fashioned and racist views seem woefully outdated and out of touch. And yet the FBI and other law enforcement do recognize the threat that one lone wolf member could still cause. Fueled by hateful ideology and radicalized on the internet, an individual could still perpetrate an act of extreme terror that would grab the entire world's attention and put the KKK back in the headlines. The Priaryy of Scion is said to be a powerful shadowy secret society which is believed to protect a profoundly

ancient sacred treasure. A treasure which they claim would bring the Vatican and all Christianity to its knees if it was revealed. The society came to the attention of the world in Dan Brown's bestseller, The Da Vinci Code, and many believe it does exist. Prior of sign are definitely real and they definitely still exist. I'm aware of at least nine current members of the order. Believe there are many more. It's possibly a handful of people but it is a front for other organizations. They are a society with secrets, some secret ritual, some with an esoteric base

that goes back 15th 16th century some of it. But who are its members? And if it's real, what's its purpose? Its purpose really is to has always been to oversee the evolution of man. It's it's been about nothing else. The priaryy claim that they can trace their history back over a thousand years. It's an ancient organization that goes back to the time of the crusades led by thought leaders called grandmasters. People like Da Vinci, Isaac Newton. They also say they protect a great sacred treasure. The treasure is either the body of Jesus, possibly the body

of Mary, or that it's documents that it's evidence, that it's gospels that give evidence that the actual historic events were different to what we've got in the Bible. And we meet a man who claims to be a member of the society today. The priority of is a group of people with no strict structure. They all work towards a specific objective studying spiritual and occult events. [Music] The Priaryy of Scion first came to the attention of the public in the late '7s through the publication of a best-selling novel, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which created a huge

controversy around the world by claiming that Jesus did not die on the cross. but survived to marry and raise a family with Mary Magdalene. The authors went on to claim that their descendants formed a holy bloodline which exists today and which the church in Rome still wants to stamp out. And if that wasn't enough, they also claimed that a secret society, the Priary of Scion, is sworn to protect the bloodline and its secrets. But what's the truth behind these incredible ideas? Is it all just a clever hoax? And if so, who's behind it and why?

In 1982, Michael Bean, Richard Lee, and Henry Lincoln wrote a book called Holy Blood, Holy Grail. and they based their research on an earlier French book that had been published that talked about an organization called the Priaryy of Zion. And in the book, it talks about how Mary Magdalene had fled the Holy Land and had a child by Jesus and from that child descended the Maravvenian line of French kings. One of the purposes of the Priary of Scion, one of the reasons it exists is to protect secrets, there's information, religious, spiritual information that can only

be let out at certain times in history because society has to be ready for it. So, it would be deemed um heretical or explosive or shocking. According to the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail, one of the secrets that the Priaryy of Scion keep is hard and definitive evidence of the marriage of Jesus to Mary Magdalene. Evidence that would threaten accepted religious dogma and undermine over a thousand years of Christian belief. It's possible there's truth to the story that Mary Magdalene was pregnant with Christ's child. There's some question about Christ being married and it was not

mentioned in the Bible because it was unusual for a Jewish man in his 30s in those days to not be married. Mary Magdalene was present at the foot of the cross. She was there with the apostles. She was the first one that Christ revealed himself to when he rose from the dead. So there are many reasons why it's a popular theory popularized by Dan Brown that Mary Magdalene was married to Christ. I read Holy Blood Holy Grail years before Dan Brown came out. And it was for many people an earthshattering assertion that the marriage at

Kaa had been rewritten that it was Jesus's marriage that it was Jesus's marriage to the Magdalene. These were all older ideas than most people thought. A generation had passed since anyone had seen them. Be agent Lee and Lincoln's book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, hit the book bookstands, and it built on the idea of the Priary of Science as an age-old secret society, protectors of a bloodline. But this time they added to the meravenian bloodline the idea that the Meravenians were descendants of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. So it was a sacred bloodline. Um

and this of course just really took off. Um it excited everybody to the utmost. And then Dan Brown's um Da Vinci Code didn't really add very much apart from stress the idea of um the the Priary of San as a secret society devoted to protecting the sacred bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene and it caused a huge scandal. It was heavily featured in the press because they'd arrived at the conclusion that Jesus was married and that he had fathered children. And this came as a great shock to many people who had been living under the

belief that what their church had been telling them was true. And also it was very challenging for the Catholic Church because it went against 2,000 years of dogma. Because if there are descendants of Jesus, it puts the pope into conflict as to whether he really is the single source as the most important religious person on earth. Suddenly there are challenges. If you've got a descendant of Jesus, should we be listening to somebody who's elected as a pope or should we try and find these people? After the holy blood and the holy grail became a bestseller,

the Brier of Zion became this sort of sinister organization and people thought that what had been shared so far was just the tip of the iceberg. What else has been concealed down through the ages? Who else is a member? What do they really control? Are they controlling our governments today? [Music] In the early 1970s, a Frenchman claimed to be the then Grandmaster of the Priary of Scion. His name was Pierre Plantard, and he agreed to be interviewed for the BBC in Paris. Can you tell us whether the Priary of Zion still exists today? M over

the centuries you have uh how shall I put it? You have supported the priaryy of Zion. We Who are we? Plantard claimed to be descended from the Maravvenian line of kings in France, but he had absolutely no background with those line of kings. So, Pierre Plantard really was nobody. He was an editor of a magazine, small circulation, not on any sort of world stage. But guess what? That was his aspiration to be on the world stage and to associate himself with a lineage, an ancient lineage that would give him the political prowess to potentially be

the king of France, if not Europe. [Music] Historian and author Andrew Goff has spent much of his adult life investigating the Priary of Scion and recently tracked down the location where the plantard interview was filmed. [Music] Bonjour, so nice to meet you. Oh, thank you for allowing us. This is uh this is fantastic. So this is it. This is where the interview took [Music] place. So Plantard only ever gave one interview and it was here. So you back in the 70s Henry Lincoln uh co-author of the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail interviewed him here

in what was his flat. The thing is, Plantard totally looked the part. He was a little nervous. He was distinguished. He was a a gentleman of a certain age. He was wearing, you know, a fine suit and he looked like the kind of guy you'd expect the Grandmaster of the Priary would look like. One of the most interesting aspects of Plantard's interview was his mention of an obscure village in southwestern France called Ren Lhatau. He said that it held a great secret, a treasure, but not necessarily a material one. Miss, is there still a secret

at Reno Shadow? found. Fascinating interview. I'll never forget the look on Plantard's face. Totally incredulous. like either I can't believe you've figured it out or I can't believe you've come to this conclusion. I never really meant for any of this to be taken very seriously. For the life of me, I don't know which I believe. When pushed by the BBC interviewer to reveal what the secret was that the priaryy guarded, Plantard was less than forthcoming. Watching the interview today, it's it's it's really amazing to look at Plantard and how he behaved. He was nervous and

he's talking about things like the Barrier of Zion and he seems relatively comfortable with that. But when Lincoln asks him directly about the mystery of Renless Chateau and tells him what he thinks it is, Plantard's reaction is really peculiar. First of all, he says the mystery is not in Renle Chateau, it's around [Music] it. The small southern French village of Ren Lhateau has been at the heart of the Priary of Scion mystery for over 40 years. It's said that in the 1890s, the village priest became fabulously rich overnight after digging up a vast treasure. But

what did he discover? Was it gold and coins or something much more important? Renles Chateau is a small town in the French mountains that has some unique characteristics. A father named Sunni was in charge of a church there. Suddenly in the 1800s he started making lots of improvements to the church. Everybody wondered where his money came from. The rumor started that he had discovered buried treasure inside of the church. The mysteries of Granhat are three. Where did he get the money? What did he actually find? and why did he do with it what he did

which was the way that he's decorated his church is very unorthodox. So those are the underlying mysteries of Ren and there they exist today. You can go and research them. The possibilities of what Behringer Sonier found are almost endless. Did he find information about the whereabouts of the bodies of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene? Did he find something as simple as treasure from the French Revolution? Did he find heretical information that the church would have been nervous about getting out into the public such as Jesus Christ not being crucified? The possibilities are really quite daunting.

Prior to Zion are clear that there is or there were very important items around the shadow. They certainly allude to there being a body. And the question is whose body? Because is it the body of Mary Magdalene? Um is it the body of Jesus? The Priaryy of Scion is said to be a shadowy and powerful clandestine society which guards earthshattering secrets about the origins of Christianity, including it said proof that Jesus did not die on the cross and that he married Mary Magdalene and had a family. The village of Ren Lhateau in southwest France has

long been a place of mystery connected to these incredible claims. According to the legend, the village priest at the end of the 19th century, Baron Sonierre was involved in a huge conspiracy. It's claimed that he found a great treasure here and became fabulously wealthy. Some say he found the tombs of Mary Magdalene and even Jesus Christ, while others say he discovered the hidden treasures of Jerusalem. There are even those who claim that he was handsomely paid off by the Vatican to cover up and maybe hand over whatever he discovered. Renle Chateau is an interesting little

town in the south of France in the mountains that has some interesting characteristics. A local priest named Behringer Sonier was in charge of the local parish and suddenly in the 1800s he started making massive changes to the church. The church was dedicated to Mary Magdalene which was not that uncommon in the south of France. There was a a cult known as the Black Madonna cult that basically venerated Mary Magdalene. So Sunni started making improvements to the church and built a big house and built a big tower and had suddenly come into a lot of money

and the question was where that money came from. Historian Andrew Goff has spent years investigating the priary of Scion and the Renless Chateau mystery. He believes that the village priest Baron Sonierre deliberately left clues to what he discovered in the decoration of the church. So this is the church of St. Mary Magdalene. We walk in and this is what we're greeted with. Amazing. I mean a devil. What's a devil doing greeting you in a Catholic church or any kind of church? Actually, it's not a devil. It's Asodius who is the keeper of Solomon's temple and

treasure. As Modus is known in mythology as the guardian of the great treasure of the temple of Solomon and it's very unusual to find the statue at the entrance of a church. Did Sonier place it here to signify that this church was a place that concealed a great treasure? Also, some people believe that he left an enormous clue in one of the stations of the cross on the wall of the church. This is really interesting. The stations of the cross are generally standard, but there's some that are really peculiar, and this is one of them.

So, this is Christ being moved into or out of the tomb. What makes it peculiar is the fact that it appears to be a nighttime scene and it appears to be a nighttime scene because there's a moon in the upper leftand corner and by Jewish law you can't have a burial at night. So it seems to be researchers believe calling attention to the fact that something is not quite right with the story about the burial and arguably the whole crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The implication here is that if Christ is being moved at night, he's

still alive. There's also a curious depiction of Mary Magdalene on the front of the altar inside the church. In the mural on the altar uh depicts Mary Magdalene in a cave that is clearly in the landscape of Venetto. You can see one of the local mountains from the cave and there is a grave next to her. She is beside a grave with her fingers crossed which is the classic depiction of Mary Magdalene in art. So that identifies her and there is a a grave with a cross made of wood with two live shoots growing from

the cross. And this was thought to indicate that the tomb of Jesus was perhaps in the vicinity of Ranhatau and that there were two descendants from their marriage that there were two children. So this was one of the origins of the bloodline the idea of the bloodline of Jesus. This is the altar piece that Sonia commissioned or otherwise went and got himself. It's Mary Magdalene in a grotto and it has all the symbolism you'd expect. But look at her fingers. Her fingers are crossed in a peculiar way. A symbolism of esoteric knowledge. On the left

hand side as you're looking back from the grotto you can see what I think is [Music] Renau. Curiously Sonierre built a tower in his garden dedicated to Mary Magdalene. On its staircase inside is a small observation window which looks out across the valley to a burial site in some local cliffs to what many believe locally was the burial place of Mary Magdalene after she came to France. The theory went that Mary Magdalene had left the Holy Land while she was pregnant with Joseph of Arythea and settled in southern France. As a result, this cult grew

up in the south of France with this fascination with the Mary Magdalene story. The fantastic thing about the mystery of Renley Chateau is there are so many theories. Did Sonier find gold from the Visigos who had sacked Rome after they sacked Jerusalem? And all the temple of Solomon treasure is purportedly in this area and was looked after by the Cathars who were also resident all around Renhateau or had he found or been told where he could find the body of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene did he find proof that Jesus Christ was not crucified that

he was swapped with religious zealots? There's a number of possible treasures at Renahatau or that were put there for a time and then moved. The treasure is either the body of Jesus, possibly the body of Mary or their children, so some kind of family tomb relating to Jesus, or that it's documents that it's evidence that it's gospels that give evidence that the actual historic events were different to what we've got in the Bible. And to me that's more interesting and more important. I'd be more bodies are bodies, but actual documentation from the time is a

far more interesting idea. The Priary of Scion has become one of the most infamous secret societies in the world. Thanks in no small part to their critical role in Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code. They claim to protect solid evidence that can prove that Jesus did not die on the cross and in fact went on to marry Mary Magdalene, have children, and maybe even escape to southern France. But how real is this proof and the society itself? Gino Sandry is a French artist and academic who also claims to be a member of the Priary of Scion.

For many years, he worked as the right-hand man to Pierre Plantard, the former grandmaster of the order. Today, he lives in Paris where he agreed to be interviewed. As a member of the priary of I was working with Pier Plantar, I was a general secretary. Therefore, I was in charge of public relations and external communications. I was there at the interview with Lincoln and Pier. I helped Pier prepare the interview to say the correct things to Henry. They talked about the treasure at Rehat. People knew that there were treasures at Ren. There were a lot

of treasure hunters looking for material treasures. Researchers had found tombs. They have opened them and found certain things. But Pier Plar wanted to make very clear that Ren is a place where there are many layers of treasure. By shining a spotlight on Rehat, you attract the public's attention. Everyone starts looking at Rehat. There are lots of things that are coded and secret because the whole thing about the meravenian kings and its lineage is all just a legend. We wanted to make this public knowledge because hidden behind these legends are certain truth, certain secrets that we

want to be known. One of the great mysteries of the Priary of Scion are the so-called secret dossier that appeared at the National Library in Paris in 1964. They purport to show not only the history of the organization but most importantly a list of its grand masters. One of the big pieces of evidence for the priaryy of Zion was a series of documents that were found in the Bibliotech National in France, which is the National Archives there. And there was a list of grand masters dating back from the time of the Knights Templar that included

uh all sorts of famous people like Leonardo da Vinci and Isaac Newton, Gene Lakto. It's a who's who list of history. It's got Da Vinci on it. It's got all these important figures, artisans, painters right the way through history back to the old families. The early heads of the priary scan were listed as members of the Knights Templar, the old nobility, like what would have been considered the bloodlines. There's something quite intriguing about it because although they couldn't possibly have been grandmasters of the Priary of Zion for various reasons, including the fact the Priary of

didn't exist until 1956, they're not random names. Yes, they're famous names, but they all had something in common. They're all interested in esoteric subjects. And it wasn't usually well known by the general public or or even historians that Isaac Newton was an alchemist or for that matter that Leonardo da Vinci was into esoteric stuff. I mean, that's fairly recent information. Whoever compiled the list had inside information about esoteric matters and who had been interested in it over the centuries. If we believe the dossiers and what it tells us is that the brier of Zion is

an ancient organization that goes back to the time of the crusades led by thought leaders called grand masters and what they're doing is they're preserving an ancient order that is looking after a sacred bloodline going back to Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene and even before to the time of David. Although there's no record of who deposited the so-called secret dossier into the National Library in 1964, it's thought that Pierre Plantard was behind it in an attempt to legitimize the history of the society. Um what it was in reality was a set of documents planted by

Plantard in the bibliotechnel and then later on he discovered them and said that there was a royal bloodline the meravenian bloodline that he could prove that that bloodline went back to Jesus Christ. If you were to prove that Jesus didn't die on the cross, for example, that would have a detrimental impact if it was released at the wrong time to the wrong people. So the way scion works is at various periods of time, what they call circuits, they release information. So they almost go dormant over long periods of time, sometimes hundreds of years, passing this

information on through family bloodlines, aristocracy, and through secret societies, and sometimes through ritual. They will encode this information and pass it on to a time when societyy's prepared to understand it and to absorb it and to take it on. One of those who claims to be passing this information on is an Englishman Nicholas Haywood who says that he is a spokesman for the Priary of Scion today, albeit in an unofficial capacity. He says they are a real organization which is still very active today. [Music] represent the under the underground stream of uh vital knowledge, vital

to man, man's evolution, man's past, for there have been many civilizations of man, far more than people think. I mean, and and its purpose really is to has always been to oversee the evolution of man. It's it's been about nothing else. Although of course it is esoteric. Yes. In its nature, it is also mystical. It has to be because man's origins are [Music] mystical. Normally members are not permitted to divulge their membership. In fact, it's normal for them to deny it even to the point of being uh even though it may cause them uh legal

problems. It may cause some political problems. It may cause some bankruptcy. It may cause them all kinds of unpleasant risk. But that that is part and parcel of the deal. Unless of course you agree to act as a spokesman. Um, obviously I I only know of two spokesmen for the primary sound. Who are they? I'd rather not say you. I mean, I I I'm acting as one. But in terms of numbers, what would you say? I can't I'm not permitted to tell you what the numbers are. That was one thing that was made plain to

me. They are a society with secrets. some secret ritual, some with an esoteric base that goes back 15th, 16th century, some of it. The point is often made that this goes back a long time. This is a question of honor. And if a man can't be trusted to keep the secret of a handshake or the secret of a ritual or an entrance password, how can he be trusted with anything else? That's not exactly a secret society. That's a society that has some secrets. Haywood confirmed that while they do protect a great secret at Renless Chateau,

it is not the body of Jesus Christ. No, Jesus's body was not brought back to Renhateau at all. Um, that's that I I will tell you now. Jesus's body was not brought back to her in the shadow or its own baron. The priaryy of Sion is one of the great enigmas of modern history. They claimed to be an ancient secret society that protects evidence that Jesus did not die on the cross, but instead married Mary Magdalene and fathered a bloodline of descendants that still exists today. It's an incredible story, but is it true? The priaryy

of Zion or Zion is a complete fabrication. The idea that this was some interior group protecting the blood of Christ. An absolute and complete fabrication. I believe that there have been secret societies and still are that preserve information that against current dogma of religion and politics is kept quiet. Maybe they preserve artifacts. Fine. Yeah, that's to be expected. I don't believe the Paria Zion is one of those. I believe it was founded in 1956 by Pierre Plantard and his mates. When the book Holy Blood Holy Grail was released, it claimed that the priest of the

village of Ren Chateau, Baron Sonier, discovered some coated parchments at the end of the 19th century during renovations of his church, which alluded to there being a great and sacred treasure buried there. Artist and author Jeanluke Shem claims that a French aristocrat, Philip Deseray, wrote and compiled these parchments alongside Pierre Plantard and that the whole priary of scan affair was just an elaborate hoax. What's more, he claims to still have the original papers to prove it. This is the dictionary or Bible that use Sher to do the parchments of Renhat. He claims that the Sheray

and Plantard lifted some text from an old reference book to create the coated parchments that were revealed to the world in holy blood holy grail. They then added certain keywords to the text including scion to make it say what they wanted. It is the beginning of the story. If there are no parants, there are no story. It's clear. According to Shé, Pierre Plantar had warned him not to go public with what he had seen and therefore not reveal the huge hoax that they were hoping to pull off. He gives me this and he said to

me say to me don't publish that just 20 years after my death. Plantard was claiming to be descended from the Maravvenian line of kings and that he was in fact in line to be the next king of France. This is something that he desperately wanted and he was using the dossas that were discovered in the biblotech national to back up his claim. Plantar and his colleagues built the Renmahat mystery into their idea of creating the story of the Meravenian kings of France and their sacred bloodline. It was brilliantly done, you know, imposing one story on

the other. The whole idea that you could fake a lineage and become a king as a result of it, you know, that's something I think would have worked maybe 500 years ago in medieval days, it's not going to work in the 20th century. There's no way. It's amazing to me that they weren't laughed out of Paris, laughed out of France when they tried in the first place. On closer inspection, the three main figures behind the modern priary of Scion had a checkered past. So how much can we really believe them? Philip Deeray was a disgraced

and penniless aristocrat. Gerard Deed was a struggling author and Pierre Plantard was a convicted fraudster. There's a white elephant in this story. It's the fact that Plantard Deresy and De said you know their ambition to create this hoax should be applauded. It is amazing. It is a long con and I don't think they ever dreamed they would be as successful as they were. What were they trying to do? They were trying to write history to rewrite it to create a expectancy about who should be the king of France. Plantard was a con man whose reputation

went back for decades. He had a history of starting these organizations and claiming hundreds or thousands of members that never had more than one or two people. And in fact, the Priaryy of Zion was started in the 1950s as an organization to lobby for better public housing and had nothing to do with the line of Maravvenian kings or the body of Christ or anything else. When you make a claim like you are the rightful heir to the throne of your country or even if you insinuate that guess what you know that's not going to be

welcomed very cordially. So the courts got involved and said, "Excuse me, you know, we have a system here. Elections, what are you trying to say? You should be king." Didn't go down well. And and they took him to court. And as you might expect, he had to admit and did admit they made it all up. It was a fraud. [Music] If it was a huge hoax, there are still elements of the puzzle that don't quite add up. In 1963, French artist and former Grandmaster of the Priary of Scion, Jean Cockto, painted a mysterious mural in

a church in London's West End. In it seems to be real clues which support the priaryy's claims that Jesus didn't die on the cross. Author and historian Lynn Pinknet agrees. This is not the straightforward biblical story quite clearly. For a start, you assume that it's Jesus who is being crucified, but actually there's no proof because all you see is the man who is being crucified from the from basically from the knees down. Allegedly, the priary of Zion believed that Jesus did not die on the cross and that there was a surrogate um killed in his

place. In Cockto's work, we find many motifs of death and resurrection. He painted a mural in the French church in London which shows a scene of the crucifixion whilst also displaying one character that appears to be Jesus not being crucified at the foot of the cross. You can only see the feet. Um, it also originally had a mule at the front with an M made up of Mary Magdalene and Mary and linking them, but that's been hidden. That's been covered over now. The hiding of codes and symbols in in art has happened throughout history. I

think a lot of painters were given information through history. They were seen as a means to revealing information. The good thing about painters is they work symbolically and their works tend to be protected. Art is never destroyed. So it's a way of encoding things of carving things into stone for future generations. You can put your symbolism into paintings. So it's common for art to be used to hide information and to keep and to protect information. And over here you see this extraordinary person looking very remorseful and upset but with a beard and a fish eye.

Now there are other people in this painting with fish eyes but this is the most marked one and fish was the symbol early symbol of Christianity. Now, could we be actually seeing here Jesus himself watching somebody else being crucified in his place? If there is one message to this, it's that Jesus did not die on the cross and therefore he's not humanity's redeemer and therefore there's nothing special about him. I mean, I don't believe the crucifixion was the fix is in and we're going to pretend he's dead, make him fulfill the prophecies, and bring him

back. I I think that idea is upsetting and insulting to too many people. The Priaryy of Zion is not such an upsetting, insulting idea. It's just kooky. The Priary of Scion is one of history's great enigmas. But how real is it? Are they an ancient group as they claim who are sworn to protect a great secret, their survival of Jesus Christ after the crucifixion and his marriage to Mary Magdalene? Or is it a clever modern hoax created by Pierre Plantard and his friends back in the 1960s? The Da Vinci Code novel and subsequent movie brought

the awareness of the Priary of Scion and the so-called bloodline theory to the attention of tens of millions of people around the [Music] world. There are even those who claim that the priary was somehow behind the movie using the opportunity to attack the false doctrine as they see it of the Vatican. Most historians say that there is simply no credible evidence for the existence of the priaryy or their claims and it lives on in the minds of conspiracy theorists. But there is a growing acceptance that the truth about Jesus and his life could well have

been distorted and changed down through the centuries and that we are moving towards a time when an altogether different and possibly more human figure might emerge as the leader of Christianity for a new millennium. The aim of the priary of scion is to further mankind. It is always to further mankind for its betterment. And that may mean breaking a lot of religious dogma, a lot of societal mindsets, a lot of nationalism, a lot of things like that that restrict people and hold them back. So there'll be various opportunities in history where if the right information

is released, enough people will recognize it and we'll feel internally that it's closer to the truth than what they're being told. The thing about the priary is it's a bit like a magpie in the sense that it picks bits of myths and legends and puts them all together to make this mystifying but extraordinarily enticing and romantic story that just draws people in. I don't think there's very much that you could find that would change the essential beliefs of Christianity. I really don't. I don't think the discovery that Jesus might have been married upset people as

much as you might have expected. I don't think it would have changed too many people's faith. Christianity is too deeply ingrained in what we [Music] believe. I don't believe the priory of Zion is real. There may be people who claim to be members today, but I don't think there's an organization around anymore. There's too much evidence that Plantard was planting all this stuff and making up these wild stories that I just don't believe that there's anything to them. We don't know for sure if there's a Briar Zion or not. They come out in public a

little bit. They lift the veil for a week or two, give us a quote, and they run away and hide. So, I'd like a little bit of coming forth. I'd like a little bit of validation that that they exist. Everything to do with the priaryy is like a kaleidoscope. You know, you you shift it and you shift it and you see little bits that might seem to go together and then you shift it again and oh, you think, oh, it's all come together and then it starts moving again, you know, into fragments. Um because no

no one explanation ever works on any part of the priary of Syan mystery. Prior sign have existed for a long time but they've used different names and that's why they're so hard to trace and easy for people to say they don't exist and it's a way of protecting information through history. You create an underground stream of information that you pass through different groups and then at various points in history it's brought back together and it's released piece at a time. It's possible that what's claimed to be the core secret of the priary of is in

fact true that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and then fled with her to France to avoid further trouble with the authorities in Jerusalem. It's also possible that they remain buried there, maybe in Renle Chateau, and that the evidence to prove these facts has been kept and concealed down through the centuries. And that was probably the priary's greatest trick, to fuse history and conspiracy theory so seamlessly that they would be kernels of truth in their story, allowing people to make a leap of faith towards believing their version of events. Add in the incredible success of Holy Blood,

Holy Grail and the Da Vinci Code, and the Priary of Scion story was catapulted into millions of homes across the planet. And a modern urban legend was born. Born from the atomic ashes of World War II, the Japanese Yakuza are one of the most ruthless and feared criminal organizations in the world. They claim to be able to trace their roots back to the time of the samurai, but today are involved in drugs, extortion, gambling, and prostitution. The Yakuza exists because the public tolerates to them some level. The Japanese have this word bodokuan, which means violence

group. Violence is crucial part of our presence. Make no mistake, the Yakuza will kill people. The Yakuza are known to be a very violent organization with a history of brutal attacks, beatings, and killings. Their images of these noble outlaws that uphold a code of ethics that don't bother the ordinary Japanese person, but if you're in their way or you're not paying the protection money, then you do get killed. A large number of the murders in Japan every year are created by the Yakuza because they're violent groups. Although the Yakuza are strictly men only criminal fraternity,

women still play a significant role. I don't understand why I exist in this world. People tell me you're filthy, disgusting, you should die. People are going to want drugs. They're going to want access to brothel. all the things that underworld gangs provide that you know so-called street society can't there are still incidents now of of traditional yakuza grabbing someone from the street kidnapping them taking them somewhere beating the crap out of them that things happen all the time places over the victim's head oxygen deprivation he passes out he's revived and then the fun starts again

until the yakuza get what they want you're never going to stop crying it's just a fantasy yakuza will always be [Applause] [Music] [Music] The Yakuza are a Japanese crime organization. It's mysterious, secretive, and utterly ruthless with a fearsome reputation around the world. It's said to be heavily involved in drugs, prostitution, and illegal gambling. Like the mafia, the yakuzu insist on a ruthless code of silence. Any transgressions, and the sentence is immediate death. Its numbers are secret, but it's believed to have around 50,000 members today with 21 different bosses. or Wyabon. The Yakuza are criminals. They

engage in extortion, blackmail, fraud, prostitution, gambling. But almost every Yakuza group has a set of rules, a code of ethics that prohibit robbing, burglary, sexual assault. And that means that they don't contribute to street crime. And because they don't contribute to street crime, that means if you're walking around this area, you don't feel unsafe. You don't feel like you're going to get mugged by the actors. The stereotype is these people who are godly dressed with sunglasses and running around and looking like people you see in movies or TV shows. That's generally not the case. A

lot of these guys are dressed just as regular businessmen. Decent suit, a white shirt. They will use violence against you unless you comply with their demands. The Alas, they just had this look. They had this edge about them. Maybe there'd be a little scar over the eyebrow or this kind of swagger or glare. You knew who they were. It's generally believed that modern-day Yakuza gangs were formed in Japan at the end of the Second World War after Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been destroyed by atomic bombs. After the war, when Japan lost, I mean, Tokyo was,

for example, was devastated. Half the city was just leveled. You had all these people coming back from the war and there was no work for them. People were starving to death and the only thing that kept them in business was the black market. So, people naturally gravitated towards crime. What used to be common was a protection racket where the Yakuza will come in, they'll say, "Hey, nice place you have here. We'd hate to see somebody mess it up. So why don't you pay the the Yakuza a certain amount? They get their money. You get some

kind of tangible reward and you get the added benefits of having a sort of on call security service. In the old days, that wasn't a bad deal. But who actually runs the Yakuza today? Its 50,000 members are said to be run by a small star chamber of ruling bosses known as the Wabun. And there are 21 different Yakuza organizations and each one has a sort of different structure, but basically they're all pyramid and they're structured as a kind of allmale family. There are no females in the Yakuza. Not many females with any power. So you

have at the top of each part of the pyramid the oyaboon. That is the father figure. Under him are the oldest brother and all the other children. Depending upon where you are in the Yakuza group, you pledge allegiance to the Oabun or you pledge allegiance to the older brother. There are also brother brother ties within the organization. It's very fraternal. It's very patriarchal and it is meant to be a family kind of structure. Everybody starts on the bottom. They work their way up. They can start as early as teenagers. First are their loose associates and

they earn their positions and they give them positions of more responsibility as they perform better. And now as far as performance that means money. See a Yakuza must pay dues to his organization to belong. Those who cannot produce a profit are usually shown the door. Authority is absolute from the top down. You're never supposed to speak back to your elders or dispute your boss. There's this famous Yakuza saying which is if the Oyaboon says the passing crow is white, it's white. The Yakuza will often say we're not like the mafia. We we have a certain

code of honor. We have loyalty to the bosses. We don't bother the average person in the street. We provide services for society. You know, we keep the crazies and psychos off the street. There's a certain truth to this, but at the same time, these guys are also criminals, you know, and there's some really nasty people and they do some horrible things. There are images of these noble outlaws that uphold a code of ethics that don't bother the ordinary Japanese person, but if you're in their way or you're not paying the protection money, then you do

get killed. A large number of the murders in Japan every year are created by the Yakuza because they're violent groups. But how powerful is the Yakuza in Japanese society today? American journalist Jake Adelstein is one of the world's leading authorities on their activities and history. He has spent years investigating the Yakuza and has received several death threats. His book on his exploits, Tokyo Vice, has become a bestseller. From 1999 to 2000, this was my area. I was on the police beat. This area was wonderfully sleazy when I first started. In the 90s, you would have

touts on the street, scandlyclad women, incredibly brazen advertisements for the various sexual services out here. It was insane. This will take us past what used to be the meeting place for all the local thugs. The fooding ka is famous. There was a time like in the '90s when you would go into the Fury Kai and see an incredible assemblage of thugs and people with tattoos and missing fingers and things. Are yakuza very visible here or I wouldn't I wouldn't use the word the the Y word here because it makes people nervous. Some Yakuza are very

smart and charming, very sophisticated. I mean there are all sorts of levels. I mean, there are guys you'll see who wear, you know, bron suits, speak English, but on the other end, there are guys that can't get a good job anywhere, just troublemakers, but they have muscle, and so they join gangs. And the gangs use that muscle when necessary, like collecting loans. This on your right coming up is the Shinjuku police box. This is the most busy police box in any place in Japan. You can see the police car over there. The police have a

a strange relationship with the Yakuza in many cases. Many times, uh, these guys grew up together as kids. Some end up as police officers, some end up as Yakuza, but they know each other. They're in constant contact with the Yakuza. They're often exchanging information as well to better society as they they they both believe. For example, if there's a a case where there's there's a murder, it happened on Yakuza turf, the police want to know about it. The Yakuza generally cooperate with something like that because they don't want that kind of petty crime or or

bad stuff in their turf either. At the same time, unfortunately, every every police force out there has some dirty cops. In the past, uh some police officers have been arrested for passing information that they should not have to Yakuza friends. And sometimes uh the police are in debt to Yakuza due to their patronage of illegal Yakuza gambling establishments, for example, and then they're extorted to provide information about the rival gang members or on police operations. When someone gets killed in Japan and it's a homicide, it's a big deal and it's national news. The police have

to set up a special investigative division to take care of a murder cuz it's a serious crime. to catch a killer before he kills again. A huge operation to track down the person responsible for at least one death and perhaps more. It's sort of a mutual agreement that there are certain areas that the the cops will enforce and there are certain areas that they'd rather have the Yakuza enforce. They will defend their own turf. They will not tolerate petty crimes in their area that gives their businesses or the businesses that are under the protection any

kind of negative effects. See these guys all over here on your right? That's the aura of mob. I mean, you're seeing a lot of black cars and black Mercedes here and guys sort of hovering around. There's definitely something going on. You can probably safely assume that they are local yucks. This is a nerve-wracking place. This isn't a place you go to relax. The competition is fierce here. Every gang has its own little thieftdom here, and you don't want to step on somebody's shoes. They have this really ugly violent side. People who wind up in Yakuza

organizations are people who can't function. They have violent tempers and they can't control them. So they have to join an organization where the boss is so powerful that he can, you know, control them. We're going to stop here, but we're kind of in an area that's still really controlled by numerous factions of the of the Yakuza, and they really don't like being photographed. Also, the police are very concerned about projecting the right image of this area. So, we may get stopped and we may be asked not to film and people may be angry with us,

but we'll go ahead and take that chance. The Japanese Yakuza is one of the most infamous and feared criminal organizations in the world. It's said to be secretive and utterly ruthless with a fearsome reputation. It's said to be heavily involved in drugs, prostitution, and illegal gambling. But how powerful is the Yakuza in Japanese society today? American journalist Jake Adelstein is one of the world's leading authorities on them. He spent years investigating the Yakuza and has received several death [Music] threats. This is Kabuki Cho, the heart of Shinjjuku, like Japan's oldest red light district. You could

get anything you want here. Booze, weird fetish outfits. You can also get ripped off and have your life savings stripped from you if you go to the wrong bar. If a tourist is just there in Shinjuku to enjoy the sites, drink in a few bars, eat at some restaurants, generally they will not encounter the Yakuza. Well, the Yakuza will come out when it's time to defend their turf or sometimes they'll be out as a show of force, patrol the area. I've had threats from one individual and his men. I've had angry words exchanged with two

or three yakas over the years. Um, but I mean that's kind of how they are, right? They they make threats. They yell at you. They say they're going to kill you. It's kind of like you how you and I would say good morning to each other. If they really want to kill you, they're not going to threaten you. They'll just do it. Like the mafia, the Yakuza insist on a ruthless code of silence. Hioki Allen is a security consultant who has worked with many of the world's leading governments, advising them on combating the Yakuza. In

Japan, laws forbid private citizens from owning most weapons. No firearms, no blades. You cannot carry these. The know their victims are unarmed. So, they can just use brute force, mass numbers. If they grab somebody off the street and they're torturing him, they can use anything from advanced techniques, very simple stuff such as like placing pen or a pencil between the victim's fingers and squeezing his hand very hard, cause intense pain, doesn't leave any marks that they can take back to the police and say that they're actually physically assaulted. They will most likely be complying with

the Yakuza's wishes after some time with them. Allan agreed to recreate some actual Yakuza torture techniques on camera. The actor wants money from a victim like this. We don't want to to leave scars that he can report as being assaulted to the police because that could bring the heat on us. So, we want to cause terror. We want to cause pain and also to get him to pay up. Here's a very common comb. This snapping action into the eyeball causes intense pain but leaves no external scar. We can continue this for as long as we

want until we get this guy to agree to sign the document we want. Over here under all this, we have a plastic bag. You've all heard of water boarding, but there's no need to use any water if you have one of these. You come over here, the ox will place this over the victim's head or hold over his face. Oxygen deprivation. He passes out. He's revived. And then the fun starts again until the yaka get what they want. He's already angered the Yakuza enough to have them uh actually take him away and confine him like

this. He knows he has one chance to get out of here alive. If he doesn't do what the Yakuza want this time, well, he'll find himself buried in a hillside or thrown into the ocean and he'll never be seen [Music] again. Frankly, the victim has no idea when these tortures will stop, how much more they'll escalate. Just the mere sight of these tools here will strike serious fear into his heart and get him to comply. That's the aim. Traditionally, extortion was the bread and butter of the acquis. And it works like this. You open a

bar or you open a restaurant, the gang members will come to your office or come to your bar and tell you, "You're operating in our territory. It would be advisable for you to pay an honorarium so that you can do business here. We will protect you from other Yakuza organizations harassing your business. You might be leasing flowers from the Aquaza. You pay them an exorbitant amount of fees. There are sometimes when paying off the Akuza is a good business investment. Not only do you keep them out of your business, but when you have an unruly

customer that you can't get rid of, they will come much faster than the police. Like the mafia, the Yakuza is made up of hundreds of small and midsize gangs who are constantly fighting over money, drugs, prostitutes, and of course, turf. The battles are bloody and brutal. Every so often, two gangs will move into the same territory. There'll be an argument and there'll be a shootout. There'll be a fight. You know, guns are illegal in Japan. If you're caught with a gun, you know, you can go to prison for several years. They're very serious. The Yakuza

know not to carry firearms around because if they are accosted by police, they're going straight to prison. They're carrying blades. Yes, that's the same thing. So many times they'll carry innocuous looking items that may not qualify as weapons. For example, a drink in a glass bottle. They don't walk around with weapons. The number of shooting incidences involving the Yakuza is extremely rare. Last year, the number of shooting deaths in Japan was six people. That's in a nation of 127 million people. And I think that's like, you know, 1 hour in the United States. [Music] Firearms.

The mere sight of these will cause panic. The Yakuza don't have unlimited supply of ammunition. So there are reports that many times they are taught to use these as contact range weapons. They can grab the victim, pull them in, put the muzzle against them and shoot. This not only ensures a hit, also the expanding gas is coming out of the barrel go into the body causing a much more lethal effect. Impact weapons collapsal baton. These uh actually the police use these as well. So, the Yaks are quite familiar with these. Now, granted, you're not supposed

to be carrying these around. They're supposed to be for martial arts practice uses, but many Yaksa do use these. This will break bones on contact. A very effective short-range impact weapon. Make no mistake, the Yakuza will kill people, but they're very judicious about it, and it's a business decision. It's not something that's done in a hot rage. I mean, an assassination when they take out an a civilian, the calculation is that the greater benefit of the group is worth the bad publicity and the heat from the police you'll get from killing someone and sometimes they

kill someone and stage it as a suicide. Everyone knows that it they were probably whacked, but they don't want the police to crack down on them. They don't want any of their people to go to jail. And the message still gets across. The opposite really had become involved in all aspects of society from narcotics business uh prostitution, gambling, protection on up to scale through, you know, real estate, the stock market and and construction and legitimate businesses. The Japanese Yakuza and the police had quite an intimate relationship in the early days of of the late 40s

and early 50s. They had no power and so they needed the support of the Yakuza to fight off the this communist movement in Japan. But Yakuza and police basically speaking even today come from the same culture. You either grew up to be a a Yakuza or a policeman. the the police would set up a judo hall and they'd try to recruit the youths and teach them judo and make them sympathetic to the police cause and then you'd have the also bosses who would, you know, take him to baseball games and try to recruit them into

the gangs. You had your choice of going one way or the other, but a lot of these people are boyhood friends, you know, and still even today you see them. and they'll get together behind the scenes and they'll they need to keep the channels of communication open in order to control crime. One of the sure signs of someone being a member of the Yakuza is a missing little finger. Many members cut off portions of or the entire finger as a mark of yubitsumi or apology. Shintaro Hayashi's company makes prosthetic fingers among other body parts and

is in demand from former Yakuza members who are looking to replace their missing [Music] digits. Yakuza come here for various reasons. Often when they want to get out of the Yakuza for regular community, there are possibly feeling that because of their lack of fingers, people feel scared. So they quite often hold the hands like this. So it's hidden and people don't notice it. I've been in this business this place for 13 years. And uh I've made fingers for about 50 yakuzas, but I've never counted properly, but possibly 500 to 600 fingers for yakuza I made.

Scares the crap out of people to see someone missing a finger. It's like if this guy's going to cut off his own finger. And it's it's not like you see in some bad movies where someone holds the guy down and cuts off the finger against the will. You know, that's sort of I think a popular conception. If you screw up the yakuza that you get held down, they chop off your finger. No, you do it yourself. If you walk into a golf course and say, "I want to play 18 holes," and you have a missing

fingertip, they won't let you. So that's why some doctors have set up a business making prosthetic fingertips. looks quite real. You can't really tell. Now, there's two reasons that Yakuza used to chop off their fingers. One is that you chop off your finger because someone under you has screwed up and you are atoning for their mistake and asking for the boss's forgiveness. When you chop off your finger for someone else, which is an altruistic act, that's considered a living finger. EQB. When you chop off your finger because you've screwed up, then that's called a dead

finger, right? You might get forgiven of your debt. You might be allowed to stay in the organization, but it's nowhere nearly as cool as doing it for someone else. The opposite world, that's the the ultimate way to apologize. I couldn't imagine cutting my finger off. Takes an enormous amount of courage. There's a certain way that they do it. They take a knife and they'll stick it in the table and then in one sharp movement they'll get right at the joint. And if you're really good at it, it's done really fast. Either way, it's not an

easy thing to do, but it intimidates people. And you know, you you're someone sees the taps, they see the missing finger, they know that you're probably not afraid of pain. and and if they're afraid of physical violence, they're liable to back away. The Yakuza are a mysterious, secretive, and utterly ruthless Japanese crime organization with a fearsome reputation around the world. It's said to be heavily involved in drugs, prostitution, and illegal gambling, and like the mafia, insist on a ruthless code of silence. any transgressions and the sentence is immediate death. Tattoos are a way of life

for all Yakuza, denoting both their life stories and their positions within the complicated hierarchy. Mr. Horu has been inking Yakuza members for many years. We have a long history of tattoos and a very special peculiar kind of design with a color and also patterns. It has very unique position in our [Music] culture. Traditionally, when you get tattooed, you were saying goodbye to the civilian life because Japanese really discriminate against tattooed people. So, you're sort of saying the hell with being a normal person. I am dedicated to this organization. So that's one meaning. And often young

Yakuza would have the name of their organization tattooed on their body. Sometimes even the name of their oyaboon, their Yakuza father. That's corporate branding taken to the extreme because once you have your organization tattooed on your body, it's very hard to change jobs or organizations. The tattoos are a sign that you belong to a certain gang. You have a certain design, a dragon on your back. It's a very painful process. It takes quite a while. It's another kind of right of passage. Traditionally, the tattooing was done with blunt needles and literally gouging into the flesh

so deeply that it destroys the epidermis. It's painful. There's a lot of blood. And by getting a tattoo, especially an ornate tattoo, you are showing the world that you are a tough guy. This is how much pain I can endure. and other Yakuza seeing the depth of that your tattoos and how finely colored it might be are going to assess, wow, this is someone who can take a lot of pain. There are a lot of establishments that won't let Yakuza in. Public baths, golf courses, some restaurants, nightclubs will have signs out there that say no

Bodioang allowed, which is kind of ironic since in many of those cases they're owned by Bioan. [Music] Shoko Tendo is the daughter of a highranking Yakuza boss. She has seen the organization from the inside out and she doesn't like it. We had a people coming into our house with tattoos or without a little finger. My father himself had tattoos too. When I saw that guest called my father Oabun, basically boss, I realized that at quite an early age, he was a member. If you are a Yakuza wife, your man call you Mrs. They appear to

kind of be nice to you, but that tradition works out only when your boss is with you. Leak's loyalty is to his organization above all else. If it means offering up his daughter or a family member to pay back a debt, he doesn't think about it twice. He looks at his organization ties as being more important. Yakuza view women as commodities, something to be traded, something that has value. They don't look at them generally as human beings. When Shoko was 16, her father owed money to another Yakuza boss. A proposition was then put to her.

[Music] If you want to pay off your father's debts, then you know what will be required. It was unspoken, but of course, he was implying that I would have to be his mistress. I knew that my father's debts were quite a lot and that's not something that he could really fully pay back. So, I really didn't want to become his mistress, but I had no choice. He was treating me as if I was his possession and he also got me on drugs and he was just trying to control me. But he also knew that he

couldn't have my feelings and he was frustrated. That's why he was so abusive with me. [Music] [Applause] I would never recommend becoming a mistress to the Yakuza. It's a terrible life. Now, you might have some Yakuza boyfriends that are decent human beings, but generally speaking, Yakuza use the women in their lives to make money. their means to an end. Like many people connected to the Yakuza, Shoko felt the desire to have extensive tattoo work. I always wanted to have tattoos when I was little because the people around me who treated me very viciously like my

father or his men and they all had tattoos and maybe my time is that over there, you know, the best time that we had. As a child, I was thinking for when I grow up that I'm going to have tattoos. I also thought when I have tattoos, then I will be complete for the first time as a human being. [Music] In many ways, good and bad, the Yakuza society is a reflection of traditional Japanese values. First of all, it's incredibly misogynist and sexist. There are no female Yakuza. Japan is this word danson joi, respect the

male and disrespect the female. And you certainly see that in Yakuza society where women are only seen as commodities are at best somebody that helps support the big boss. The Yakuza are the infamous and all powerful Japanese crime organization with a fearsome reputation around the world. It's said to be heavily involved in drugs, prostitution, and illegal gambling and maintains a ruthless code of silence. any transgressions and the sentence is immediate death. It's believed to have around 50,000 members today and about 21 different bosses or wobbly. Yakuzu members are notoriously media shy. They rarely give interviews

and hate being filmed or photographed. However, we got one member to agree to talk to us, provided we don't reveal his identity in any way. [Music] We are regarded as a necessarily unit of society. I'm in the middle rank. I have been in this business for nearly 20 years. We have our own belief, whole faith. If the seniors give us order, we do as much as possible. and follow this order. Always the danger or a threat is being around day by day and I sometimes just seek for the danger by myself to step into it

to get it. But I do it. It's very hard to identify Yakazar on the street these days because they're pressure from the police. So they're being forced underground. The Yakuza have generally made a lot of money from extortion, prostitution, gambling, and they're also taking protection money from a lot of the businesses in the area. I I think the current estimate of Yakuza numbers is close to 40,000. That's probably downplaying the number that are still in business, but the police have done a good job driving lower ranking members out of the business or are into jail.

It's now over a week since the head of an 11-year-old boy was found outside the gates of a junior high school in Coob. The number of official Yakasa keeps going down, but crime keeps going up. Somebody's committing the crimes and just take a wild guess and I would say that these are former members of Yakuza groups that are working as freelancer working in a different capacity. It isn't easy to be a proper member. There are several years of being apprentice with a traininee kind of status. Then to be recognized and to be received as a

full member and go up the hierarchy. It's about doing a good job and business or to commit something to go to the prison. Violence is a crucial part of our existence. We have to commit something and be imprisoned for that. [Music] Despite being secretive and camera shy, the Yakuza feature heavily in their own comic books which are on sale to the public. They depict their history as well as news of recent events, arrests, and even deaths. So, this is a Yakuza fans. It'll tell you what's happening in the industry, who's moving up, who's moving down.

This is a picture of the Inagawa Kai. Um, notice they're all in their traditional Japanese [Music] dress. Everyone knows the head of the Amaguchi. It's not like these people are unknown. So, if you look at the table of contents here, there's interviews with members of the Inagawa Kai. There are letters from people in prison. There's a quick roundup of who's been arrested. So, you can see if your buddy's in jail or not, or when he's might be getting out. [Music] It must appear as kind of insane, right? This magazine itself has 221 pages. Imagine going

to the bookstore in the United States and buying, you know, Crips monthly, which would give you, you know, 200 pages of what's happening with the Crips. People who are reading this stuff are are the same people that read historical novels in Japan. I mean, it's your middle class white collar salary men or maybe blue collar guys as well. They're reading it and they're thinking about a time when if you had guts and brains and daring, you could be a successful gang boss and that people would admire [Music] you. Manibu Miyazaki is a writer who's long

been a figure connected with the Yakuza. He has always denied being a member, but the rumors persist and he's become what he calls a freelance Yakuza in Japan. He explains the importance of the sake ceremony within Yakuza circles. [Music] Because the yakuza is a kind of imaginary family. Ceremony is a very important for the yakuza because doing this ceremony establishes the relationships of the person to not ever be betrayed. So in a way it cannot get away from the yakuza community. For that reason, they spend a lot of money to conduct the ceremonies and half

the saki confirms their relations and make a strong [Music] pledge. Miyazaki explains that when you're in or associated with the Yakuza, it's a dark, dangerous business where you always have to be watching over your shoulder. To illustrate the point, Miyazaki himself was shot in a gangland attack in 1986. I went to the restaurant, dinner with all my friends, just having a meal and some negotiations. Then the hitman came in and shot me. One of the bullets hit my body. When I was shot, I just felt hot. Not much pain actually. Then it gradually came. These

last 30 years have always been tense. I cannot be relaxed at any moment. You have to stay alert to stay alive. So when gang war escalates, it can really escalate into a bloody mess. But the Yakuza exists because the public tolerates to them some level. So when you start having shootouts in the streets and innocent people get killed, that results in stronger laws, police crackdowns, lots of arrest. So it's bad business to have a gang war. And as the yakas have become more financially savvy and laws in Japan have changed to make it so that

the top dogs can be sued for any crime committed by the lower level Yakuza things, they're less prone to use violence because it's costly. Many times the yakuzo use an indirect approach to get their message across. So instead of attacking the actual principal, they'll attack a close family member, someone who means a lot to them to send a message. Now to get to this level, it's they've most likely warned verbally or maybe in a written way. If they don't follow the arguments, then they put the yakuza into a position where they must defend their turf.

And this is where the violent acts may occur. You know, they'll start out with a midnight knock on the door. you know, we've come to collect our money. They'll just scare the be Jesus out of you. They'll start calling you in the middle of the night. They could beat you up. They could kill you. They could, you know, make your daughter come work for one of their nightclubs or the houses of one of their brothel. In an extreme case, in the past, the Yakuzo have uh found people who will not comply with their wishes. So

in order to make an example out of them, they will send guys out to grab them, put them in a car, take them to a remote location, and torture and kill them. The Yakuza are the biggest and most powerful Japanese crime organization. They are extremely secretive and utterly ruthless with a fearsome reputation around the world. They are said to be heavily involved in drugs, prostitution, and illegal gambling. And like the mafia, the Yakuza insist on a ruthless code of silence. Any transgressions and you die. It's believed to have around 50,000 members today and about 21

different bosses are wabon. The Yakuza has dominated the Japanese media for most of the 20th century. But what does the future hold for this mysterious organization? and is it, as some say, slowly losing its edge and control of events. Japan is one law away from wiping out the Yakuza, and that would be a criminal conspiracy act. A criminal conspiracy act would allow the Japanese police to seize the property of the Yakuza bosses, take down their offices, take down their businesses, take away all their assets, and put everyone in jail. But the police and the Yakuza

sometimes become friends in a in a sense. They share personal knowledge of each other. They might go drinking. There might be camaraderie. If the Yakuza boss steps over the line and there's some friendship involved, maybe the police are less likely to let it slide or convince the person making the complaint to let the charges go. There's this idea that it's better the enemy you know than the enemy you don't know. Cuz everyone would like to to to deal with someone that is reasonable, that they know better, rather than someone they don't know at all. The

Japanese police have instituted a number of anti-gang laws in the past 20 years and most recently they a pretty intensive crackdown in which you can't do business with any individual is associated with organized [Music] crime. Any member of a gang cannot hold a bank account any longer. That's pretty serious stuff. I think that's part of that I think is the influence of the United States because they see the US government cracking down on on the gangs that the police feel they need to do something more or something at the same time. Japan only needs to

do three things to get rid of the Yakuza. They need a criminal conspiracy law. They need to allow plea bargaining. They need to allow undercover investigations. They won't do it for a few reasons. One is this administration has so many Yakuza ties that trying to get rid of the Yakuza can only be bad news for them. Also, they need the Yakuza to run the nuclear power plants. No one wants to do those jobs and the only people that are managed to find labor that will do the jobs is the Yakuza. The shame of Yakuza we

have nowadays is lost. Of course, there will be always different forms and they will go underground and those groups always remain in any age, but what we call Yakuza now are antisocial groups, I don't think they are going to last because the government has implemented more severe laws. If a normal person does something, they say fine. If you're a Yakuza, then they start taking the person more seriously than the other person and they treat the Yakuza not really like humans. So they cannot survive. The police crackdown on the Yakuza has been widespread and extensive over

the last few years with a number of bosses and foot soldiers arrested and sent to [Music] jail. After years of holding the country in the grip of its power, it does seem as if the Yakuza's iron fist is loosening a little. In many ways, Japanese society is now embarrassed by the images of the old crime bosses and their obedient thugs with tattoos and missing fingers, just as the influence of the mafia has sharply declined in the United [Music] States. It's just not that cool to be in the Yakuza anymore. The mystique and dark appeal has

faded in recent years. And yet to many, these ruthless underground gangs remain a potent force in Japanese society. Suppliers of drugs, loans, and prostitutes. And the success of the Yakuza comic books proves that to those in that world and to those who want to be part of it, their mix of violence, sex, gambling, and drugs is as alluring as ever. Japan doesn't want to have this sort of spectacle of semi-public organized crime groups that no other country has. You know what other country has Yakuza fanzines? You can't go to England or Australia and buy mafia

monthly. So when you have organized crime members existing in public and with impunity, it makes Japan look bad. The Aquasa will always be there whether they're as members of formally organized groups or in in some other form. I mean, there'll always be criminals in every society. To catch a killer before he kills again, a huge operation to track down the person responsible for at least one death. They provide a service. They answer needs of society that other institutions can't provide. People are always going to need somebody, say, to collect a loan that nobody wants to

pay. People are going to want drugs. They're going to want access to brothel. All the things that underworld gangs provide that, you know, so-called street society in a camp. The Yakuza would like to survive because they don't know any better. I mean, you take a guy who's in his 30s or 40s, who's tattooed, he's missing a finger. What the hell is he going to do in Japan? The number of Yakuza that are successfully integrated into society after leaving the Yakuza are less than 10%. The number of successful cases that the police can claim of reforming

Yakuza is abysmally low. And that's going to be a real problem for Japan. Technically, they've reduced the numbers by half of what they were four or 5 years ago. But where are these Yakuza going? What will they do when they get out of prison? What jobs will they find? and with no discipline and no organization to go to, they'll probably turn to violent crime because that's all they know. You're never going to stop crime. It's just a fantasy. Always be there. The Yakuza will always be there. Despite constant media speculation about their future, the Yakuza

remain a dominant force in Japan today. According to police estimates, the number of members is said to be half of what it was. But make no mistake, it still has a very real presence in cities like Tokyo and Kyoto. And it still has its fingers in all types of crime, extortion, gambling, and prostitution. But as the Japanese government cracks down on them, many former Yakuza members released from jail find it hard to live a straight life, often returning to crime. The Yakuza have a long, dark, and violent history. And like the mafia in the United

States, are ingrained in the very fabric of society. Their numbers and popularity might be declining, but they're not done yet. The Brotherhood of the Blood are a dark and mysterious group who parade through the streets of Europe wearing robes and full face masks. Their roots can be traced back to the time of the Feared Inquisition, and their history is intimately connected to the major events and religious upheaval over the last 500 years or more. They are said to possess a great heretical secret, perhaps connected to the real story at the heart of the Da Vinci

Code. But what is it? I think the Brotherhood have a very strong belief in the Jesus story which goes back to the origins of Christianity, but it's very different from accepted church dogma today. I think the greatest secret of the brotherhood is that they claim to have hard evidence and proof that Jesus didn't actually die on the cross and that he went on to live. And they even claim that they possibly have his body as well. If Christ was not crucified, not only would the Bible have to be rewritten, but there'd be such an uproar,

the church would be brought to his knees. If the brotherhood actually produced a mummified body of Jesus, the impact would be huge. To say that Jesus Christ didn't ascend to heaven, that he's actually a human man and we have an actual body. The impact would just be monumental. Probably the biggest event in history. I believe it's entirely probable that Las believes they know where the tomb of Christ is. I think they're just protecting it. I was there. right in front of the tomb of the man who was called Jesus. This is a major revelation that

would shatter many things if it's made public. The Brotherhood of the Blood, also known as the Sange, was founded back in the 15th century as a Catholic secret society. Its members and activities have always been shrouded in absolute secrecy. And for many centuries, it was condemned by the church as heretical because its belief that Jesus Christ did not die on the cross. It became known for its distinctive dress of robes and large hoods which fully covered the face and head. Every Easter, the Brotherhood would march through the streets of southern France and Spain with a

mix of members, condemned prisoners, and [Music] executioners. Today, there are dozens of brotherhoods across the region. And that same tradition still exists with their membership a carefully guarded secret and with accusations of violence and intimidation leveled at them. They are even rumored to possess a great holy relic, possibly the embomb body of Jesus Christ, but this has been strongly denied by the order. The darkest of the dark of these cults of the dead, these brotherhoods of the blood are based in the south of France in the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries. Lange meaning the blood

was founded in 1416 in the south of France by Vincent Frier who had a great sickness and almost died and then Christ appeared to him in an apparition and he founded Lange as a result of that. One of the core requirements of being a member of the brotherhood of the blood is a belief in self flagagillation. basically whipping their bodies with ropes or chains till they cut their flesh open and they bleed just as Jesus was whipped viciously on his way to the cross. Today there are various brotherhoods of the blood basically flag orders sometimes

unofficial arms of the Catholic Church. They all really began in the middle ages with a mass a sort of craze for flagagillation which in itself started as a reaction to terrible events over which they had no control such as famine and the black death plague. They thought that God was punishing them for their sins. They thought if they showed enough penitence to God they could prevent worse happening or more happening. And the idea was we must do something and show that we are suffering. We are taking the guilt upon ourselves and anybody who doesn't do

this is of the devil. These brotherhoods of blood, if you will, they originate in the Catholic Church. These are people who were originally perhaps monks. They worship the cross, but at some point in time, well, obviously after the crucifixion, they're worshiping the cross that Christ was crucified on. And the blood that emanated from the cross as he died becomes a very very sacred and symbolic element of their order. And that is what really dominates their ritual. and they adopt the name the blood lassange. The brotherhood are often seen in parades whipping themselves. This is said

to be in tribute to Jesus who was whipped and beaten on his way to the cross. Controversially, it's said that they believe that Jesus did not die on the cross but somehow survived, perhaps replaced with another. This belief has been seen as extreme heresy by the church for centuries. If Jesus didn't die on the cross, but was substituted at the last moment and however was whipped or made to partake in self flagagillation, then this memory is what's being preserved by Lange and other similar orders. It's their secret insight into what really happened and this is

their way of paying homage to [Music] it. One of the most important brotherhood parades every year takes place in Holy Week in La Rioa in Spain where penitants in the role of Jesus whip themselves as they walk through the town. No one in the brotherhood will go and say I am a fledant because it's forbidden. This is a necessary and obligatory tradition. We cannot talk about the penitence or about the people who perform it. This is the rule. No penitence is allowed to tell you who they are. It has to be a secret. They have

to remain anonymous. This is why the face is covered. At 10:00 a.m. on Good Friday, the parade begins as it has done for centuries with a masked man being led in shackles from the church. You would think with a repeated whipping over your shoulder that you'd be in pain. But no, it's a perverted sort of pleasure due to the fact that you are totally believing that this is absolving you from all of your sins. So, you're thrilled cuz this means you're not going to hell. This means your soul will be saved. They saw the flagagillation

as being partly at least a reflection of Jesus's passion, his suffering. been flogged and then crucified and they could in some way participate in that or at least begin to understand it. Self-mortification, hurting yourself in the name of religion is quite common. It goes from fasting so much that essentially you are starving yourself. So that's the nonviolent one, but nevertheless, you know, it can end in death. Then there's the violent version which certainly a lot of Catholics do this wear under their clothes. used to wear the modern equivalent of a hair shirt. Mother Teresa used

to wear a strap with inward pointing spikes so she could participate in the suffering of Jesus and remind her of or or enable her to understand the suffering of others. Pope John Paul II apparently used to beat himself during the night, but he kept it quiet even from his own aids and apparently used to ruffle his bed clothes so that it was thought in the morning he slept. But in fact, he spent all night beating himself. Specifically in medieval Christianity, we have a lot of pain. We have a lot of blood and guts, should we

say. There is a a a neurological reason. A lot of these people in the medieval times would create a huge amount of pain within themselves to release endorphins and dopamine, the natural painkillers within a body. And these would create a feeling of ecstasy. Now they could interpret that as the spirit of God entering them. They could interpret it as what they were doing obviously was proving their belief correct because suddenly they felt ecstatic even though they were under huge amounts of pain and and that was some form of God uh forgiving them for their sin.

The whole self flagagillation really stems from that sort of era. It's a lot of people wanting to suffer and share the suffering that Jesus went through in his last days. One of the origins of hoods is protected the identity of the person who has chosen to be whipped because that is the fastest way to absolve their sins to suffer like their savior did on the cross. They could be your banker. They could be your estate agent. And there's no reason for everyone to know who that is. It's a very very personal form of suffering. There's

several different types of flagagillation and they're all pretty disgusting to be honest. You have these whips. The whips are either made of leather or rope with knots. They'll be whipping themselves over their shoulder and they'll have a little bit of their shirt, their regalia cut open in the back. As that spot continues to get really sore, the person behind them will go up with this this wax ball that's full of pieces of like broken glass. At some point, they'll actually put this on the person's back to release the pressure so the blood is released. Then

they [Applause] continue. The whipping and bloodletting is very interesting because really it's all about a very human Jesus who was whipped, bled, suffered from pain. And it's not really about this divine son of man. If Jesus were to come back, the last thing he'd want to be reminded of is himself on the cross. You know what's with all these crosses and me suffering? Why can't there be nice pictures of me preaching to people and them liking it? I mean, yes, there are some of those, but mostly it's this gory, horrendous torture scene wherever you look.

Like the Freemasons, their brotherhood are full of secret ceremonies. After the parade, the whipped and bleeding men are brought to the room of healing within the church where their wounds are seen to and they are rubbed with rosemary water. The flagulant gets into this position, straightens his back. They squeeze the cats to remove as much blood from the wounds as possible. They do this with all the 12 little cats. Sadly, this whole notion of whipping yourself comes from the concept of original sin. That you were born a sinner and you're going to stay a sinner

and you're going to die and go to hell unless you improve yourself by sacrificing by inflicting pain just like your savior Jesus Christ did on the cross cuz he died for your sins. And now you're going to help wash away your own sins by inflicting as much pain as possible on yourself. The Brotherhood of the Blood, also known as the Sange, is a secret society whose members and activities have always been shrouded in absolute secrecy. They parade through the streets of Spain and France on important holy days, wearing long robes and hoods. They are said

to possess proof that Jesus Christ did not die on the cross and are rumored to know the whereabouts of a holy relic of unimaginable importance. possibly the embombed body of Jesus Christ, but this has always been strongly denied by the [Music] order. Andre Duzay is a French author and historian who has spent most of his life investigating the history of the brotherhood and believes that it's possible that they do have a tomb of very great importance in a remote part of southern France. This research is now finished. It's wrapped up. And I have the certitude,

the guarantee that these discoveries that we have made are incredible. I was there. I stood right in front of the tomb of the man who was called [Music] Jesus. I am absolutely certain because of all the difficulties I encountered in my research that my results These discoveries will completely shake up and have already upset certain establishments like the governments, religions, archaeology, and in more discreet environments like secret societies. This is a major revelation that will shatter many things if it is made public. Duz claims that as a result of his investigations, he has been threatened

by the Brotherhood, who he refers to as the Sange, on many occasions, and believes that his life is in danger as a result. People have warned me several times and told me to be careful and not to go too far with these people who came to see me in the name of the S. We do not know really who they are, what they want or what they expect. They also told me that they can under certain circumstances be violent to protect their mission. So, if they have a profound mission, a divine mission, what is the

life of a man in this case? It's nothing. Doo claims that his research has led him to the site of a large rock tomb out in an area called Perilos near the town of Propanyong in southern France. He believes that after escaping from Jerusalem and coming to France, Jesus Christ was buried there along with his uncle Joseph of Arythea. He claims that this is the great secret of the brotherhood of the blood. Imagine how heretical it would be if you had proof of the body of Christ. That blows the whole church dogma out of the

water about resurrection and crucifixion. All that was rubbish. Imagine the offers you would receive to give that information up. The millions of dollars Lange would have been offered for the location of these tombs. They're not giving it up. This is an organization that's ancient. It's at least 700 years old. And its charter, part of its charter, is to protect the identity and location of this tomb. Lots of people have claimed to have found the remains of a tomb or the body of Jesus. Most recently, even James Cameron, the Hollywood director. However, quite frankly, I don't

think it's there. Once out at the site in Perilos, he launched a drone to get a better look at the landscape. If the tomb of Jesus was out here, then you'd need to know exactly where to look if you had a chance to find it. It's right there, not far from the rocks, behind the rocks. 40 years of research and 25 years in the field to discover this place. It's there. We're right next to it. It's a great accomplishment of my entire life. We found the tomb. It's right there, just 500 m away. We can

go to it. This is a result of 50 years of research. It's extraordinary. It's a great moment. It's right there. the repercussions of this information coming out. The fact that Christ is buried in France, there's his body, there's his tomb, that blows everything to do with Catholicism. The foundation of it is blown out of the water. Christ did not die on the cross. He wasn't resurrected. All of that was a lie. It would crush the Catholic Church. So imagine the lengths they would go to make sure that this never comes out. So whatever it is

Lange knows, there's no doubt the Vatican knows as well. So even though the Vatican has distanced themselves from Lange, you can bet there's probably a vested interest in making sure that they continue to do the job they've been doing for many hundreds of years now. D believes that he's found the tomb of Jesus Christ, but it's a crack in a rock face. So, prove it to us. Show us. Excavate, dig it up, show us a body, but otherwise there's no real proof. Det says that he found the location of the tomb after he acquired a

model of the paralos landscape. He says that this model on which the words tomb of Christ can clearly be seen had been an important and presumably secret artifact within the Brotherhood of the Blood for many decades. It appears that the names of a number of specific locations in and around Jerusalem were then transposed to this area in southern France. [Music] This is a unique type of design, a unique type of model, the only one specifically made. And on this model is an inscription describing the hill of Golgtha, the garden of Gethsemane. And even more interesting,

there are two tombs, the tomb of Joseph of Arythea and the tomb of Jesus Christ. This model is the only model that tells us exactly where the tomb of Jesus Christ is. Truth is, it's entirely probable that if Christ did not die on the cross that he would end up in this exact area. It's a port town near Norban, the largest Jewish community outside of Jerusalem at the time. So, it makes perfect sense that Jesus Christ would in fact be here if he wasn't crucified. This model doesn't prove anything. Who made it? We don't know.

We don't know. know its origins. We have no proof about where it came from. So really his whole theory about this model is unrealistic. Despite not revealing where exactly the tomb is or its contents, Duz stands by his research and conclusions. He says that Jesus Christ is buried out there in the wild landscape of Perilos near no bone and that the Brotherhood of the Blood know exactly where it is. His critics accuse him of wishful thinking, even fabricating the whole story and a total lack of evidence. Deter counters that the time to reveal what he's

found is very nearly upon us and that the world will be astonished at his discovery. For me, the final results of my research are something that is going to completely upset our consciousness and religious people may become disillusioned. We have made a major discovery. It's unique and it's been verified by several persons. We have succeeded. We are here. We could now reveal it, but I lack the finances to go any further. The Brotherhood of the Blood is a secret society that dates back to medieval times and which some believe hides a great heretical secret. That

Jesus Christ was not divine and that he did not die on the cross and ascended to heaven, but was smuggled out of Jerusalem and taken to France where he lived out the rest of his life. If this could be proved, then it would undermine centuries of Christian belief and the very foundations of the church. It's said that the Brotherhood have evidence to support this, which some believe could be the actual preserved body of Jesus himself, but this has never been proved, and the order strenuously denies it. I think it's possible that a man from 2,000

years ago could definitely have been involved. Look at the examples that we have today of Egyptian mummies in museums, of pharaohs and important figures. However, we have to question, was Jesus an important enough figure at the time to have been involved. If the brotherhood actually produced a mummified body of Jesus, the impact would be huge. To say that Jesus Christ didn't ascend to heaven, that he's actually a human man and we have an actual body, the impact would just be monumental. Probably the biggest event in history. [Music] Every year the brotherhood meet in Zamora in

Spain to celebrate Holy Week at [Music] Easter. Unlike most religious parades that take place during the day during Holy Week, the Brotherhood always continue into the night using flaming torches. Some people claim this represents the removal of Jesus Christ from the cross once darkness fell and then his escape from the scene. What you've got with the procession is the the order leaving the church they have affinity with. Dressed in their regalia with somber music with droning drum beats. It's typically nighttime so it's pitch dark. Let me tell you, this is no Easter parade. This is

very, very dark indeed. The Brotherhood are presenting images and symbolism that can only be seen if you know what you're looking [Music] for. Every part of the processions that you see, it's quite literally a cover up. The people there, they've literally covered their face, they've covered their body, they've covered their hands. any part of their body that could give them away has been covered. So the person themselves they are a secret and they are representing a secret by displaying this um procession uh the sculptures the um the statues that they're carrying along. Those things are

transmitting a secret to people who if you knew what you were looking for you would see that secret. If you don't know what you're looking for, all you're going to see is the accepted religious tale that you've been told since you were a young child. Now, they had a very gnostic form of religion. They believed in a lot of the books that were kept out of the Bible. So, you're talking hundreds and hundreds of writings and they would take their belief system from that. Now, if they were to go out and broadcast that to the

world and and take those secrets from those books and say, "Look, this is what we believe has happened," then all of them would be just executed as heretics. So, everything had to be kept secret. And that included their identity. It included their secrets. It included who they were and what they believed. It's unclear if these brotherhoods are just benign men's clubs today or there's something more to it. These hooded men processing with somber, monotonous drum beats with really graphic statues that depict the bloody death of Christ through the city. It's it's not a pleasant or

uplifting affair. It's very dark, spooky, and mysterious with the cloaks and the masks. And if we think back to the early origins of the church, just look at the Inquisition. It was a very dark, brutal time. And this is what we're seeing. The Inquisition is key to the history of the Brotherhood. When it was raging through Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, its members were condemned as heretics for their belief in Jesus surviving the crucifixion. Essentially, the Inquisition believed the Brotherhood were heretics for a whole bunch of reasons, but none greater than the Brotherhood's

insistence that Jesus Christ did not die on the cross. So, consequently, the Inquisition really had no choice but to resort to extreme torture to get a confession, to get any bit of insight into what these heretics supposedly really believed. Historian Richard Felix is an expert on the torture techniques used by the Inquisition against suspected heretics like members of the Brotherhood. This room here is a place full of torture, death, pain, and anguish. This is actually a wine press. People were pressed to death. The sentence was that you be taken to the deepest dungeon, a room

where no light can enter, where you will be laid naked on the floor with a cloth around your loins and weights of iron as heavy as you can bear be placed upon your body until you either confess or you die. what the Inquisition did to the so-called heretics of the Brotherhood that would make Quinton Tarantino turn away in horror, dismay, and disgust. And here we have the pesta resistance of the inquisitor's torture [Applause] weapons. Pincers for pulling out the fingernails and the toenails. This here for actually attaching it to the skin and pulling until they

rip the flesh away. This dreadful piece of equipment was for ripping off the breasts of women. And goodness only knows what these were for. But if you were shown these, would you not confess? Cuz I certainly would. The truly shocking thing is that the Inquisition actually believed that their torture techniques purified sinners irrespective of whether they lived or died. The types of devices that were used in torture were nothing if not creative. We're talking pincers, weights, spiked chairs. I mean, their fascination inflicting pain knew no bounds. the chair. You are actually strapped into this and

sat on this chair with these dreadful huge rusty nails sticking up. Of all the despicable forms of torture that the Inquisition used on the Brotherhood, none was as painful. None was as nasty as the rock. You were spread eagled on boards like this. Your hands tightly bound and strapped here. And the same thing applied to your legs. And the executioner or torturer started to wind the ropes until it started to stretch your body until you can imagine the senue starting to stretch, the bones starting to snap as they were shouting to you. Do you recount?

Do you confess to your heresy? The first thing that happens, their joints make a huge noise as the arms and legs are popped out of their sockets. Next, the executioner, who's ruthless, doesn't stop. Soon, the arms and legs are ripped from the torso. The victim dies rapidly, but not before undoubtedly confessing whatever it is that they had concealed. Another brutal trick up the sleeves of the Inquisition was a process where you were literally burnt alive. The Inquisition called it Otto Defay or an act of faith. The largest took place in the center of Madrid in

1680 where hundreds of men and women were sent to the flames and the smoke was said to have covered the city. An actual eyewitness account has survived. At 8:00 in the morning, the procession began. Those who had given some token of repentance were to be strangled before they were burnt, while the rest who had persisted obstinately in their errors were to be burnt alive. The Brotherhood of the Blood is a secret society that some say was formed to protect the greatest religious secret of all time, that Jesus did not die on the cross and did

not ascend into heaven. It's claimed that they have hard evidence to prove this, maybe even the embombed corpse of Jesus himself, though this has never been proven. But in Bruge, a vial of Christ's blood is paraded on holy days. Is this proof that he was a flesh and blood man? After all, you look at Brouge today where you have a basilica of the holy blood. Joseph Arythea, the uncle of Jesus Christ, collected the blood as it dripped on the cross allegedly. And then in the second crusade, this was brought to Bruge. The head of the

brotherhood group in Bruge agreed to explain more about the relic that they protect. [Music] My task in the Brotherhood of the Holy Blood is treasurer. We have 31 members and within these 31 members there is an elected bureau of four people. So we are the owners of this precious relic with drops of the blood of Christ which according to tradition comes from when the body of Christ was washed with water and a little bit of that blood came here over time. So a relic from that time from that place is really powerful. It is a

talisman of sorts and you can go there almost any day of the week and pay homage. You can go into Paris today and any number of cathedrals are going to have the body and bones of very very famous saints that were sites of pilgrimages in the past. It gives people faith that all these stories are real. Look at the bones. Look at the cross. Look at the blood. It really happened. Is this the blood of Jesus Christ? I don't think so. Scientifically, we know that 2,000-y old blood would have dried long ago. So scientifically it's

proven that this is not the blood of Jesus. However, they believe that it is. Some argue that it doesn't matter whether the relics are real or not. They're kind of a focus for piety. Focus for faith. After all, faith you don't need uh proof for faith. That's the whole point. If it helps you become a better person and moves you on, weird though it might seem to an outsider, why not? But it does seem to be all of a piece with this attitude that torture, blood, death, martyrdom, it's relics. It's all part of something rather

dark. The Brotherhood of the Blood rarely talk on camera, but the leader of one of the groups in Purple in France agreed to a short interview. A lot of people think that the S and other brotherhoods are very morbid with a fixation on torture or blood. For Christians, it is not a problem at all. The blood is a blood of Jesus. Jesus made a pack of humanity to save us. And this was in the resurrection. In order to die, you need to suffer and you need pain. This is part of our religion. And we accept

this. At the start of lass, one of the main tasks in the middle ages was to help people who were going to be executed. Back then, when they were going to be executed, they were just abandoned. So, the brotherhood tried to protect them from the crowds during the execution, give them dignity, give them some type of religious belief before they died. But at some point, this morphed into a cult that would look after the well-being of the individual's soul by performing rituals on their body when they're dead. And in the fifth century, 4:22, St. Augustine

is quoted as saying, "In the pagan tradition, paying a fee for the individual's safe passage of their soul into the underworld is a standard and just and right discipline to do." The processions of the were organized into a very strict hierarchy. They were divided into five different sections depending on professions. There was a religious section here. There were no carrying Jesus on the cross. There were the corporation, the trade workers, lawyers and judges. There were the gardeners. This were the hierarchy that Lange was organized around. when they put on their outfits with the pointy hats

and the and the long flowing robes, they are very intimidating. You know, they look dark and and you know, sinister is is really the only word. But it's totally at odds with the idea of penitence and self-mortification because to mortify yourself or or or to flagagillate yourself, the idea is surely that you are humbling yourself. Whereas when you put on all this stuff, you are for a start, you're about 9 foot tall, you know, so that's not exactly unnoticeable. I think it is easy to see why people think that the Brotherhood are the guardians of

some deep dark secret. I mean, we live in the era of the Da Vinci Code and conspiracy theories. So, of course, they look quite intimidating with the robes and the drumming and processing. It's all quite dark and spooky. However, I think this is something that historically just dates back a few hundred years and it's nothing more than that. Most of the modern brotherhood pretty much don't know what it is that they're representing to the extent they gladly go out and say, "Oh yeah, I'm in this brotherhood. I'm in that brotherhood." You've got different groups with

different colored hats and different colored robes. Whereas the old brotherhood very much wanted to keep their secret to themselves. you could be initiated into their gnostic knowledge, but they didn't want that being broadcast to the world. So today's marchers and processioners, they'll walk along and you'll know who they are quite probably you'll say, "Oh, that's my dad at the front or something like that." But back then, everybody wanted to keep it a secret. The Brotherhood of the Blood is a secret European society that parades on holy days in southern France and Spain. Wearing long robes

and pointed hats, their faces fully covered. Its origins can be traced back to the time of the feared Inquisition in the 15th century, but much of its history has been shrouded in secrecy. They're said to be the guardians of a great secret, perhaps a holy relic of incredible importance, or as some have claimed, the remains of Jesus Christ himself. Though it has never been proved, and the order strongly deny this, their extreme dress, solemn parades, and refusal to reveal their identities in public have drawn a lot of interest, discussion, and debate over the years. As

with any secret society, there's there's myths and legends about what they get up to. And in Lange, one of those legends is a mask. This mask is made out of human skin. But whose skin and what it's supposed to represent, we're not entirely sure, but it gives you an idea of a flavor of the sorts of well kind of dark and sinister sounding things that they they look after. This Catholic obsession with relics was an absolute industry and people paid churches to queue up and see these things. But it was also part of an obsession

with, you know, when you think about it, bits of saints bodies or sometimes whole saints bodies, the so-called incorruptible dead. And you can still go into some churches and see these semi-mbbalmed bodies of monks and nuns and people lying there. And it's so unhealthy. I mean, you know, it just seems to be just so weird. But perhaps the Brotherhood of the Blood are best known for allegedly protecting what could be the greatest holy relic of all time, the embaled body of Jesus Christ. But this has never been proven. Why would L keep looking for the

holy relic when it could put an end to their religion? It won't put an end to their religion. It would just show their religion in a different light. It might be a different way of looking at religion. Look at how the Vatican over a period of centuries outlaw the sange always used their political and financial power to reinstate itself. So why would the Vatican want to stop the on Holy Week dressing up in robes and basically professing their faith publicly? They knew that this society under the hood was hiding something very deep and very profound.

They knew there was something that would be threatening to them. If it is true that Jesus did not die on the cross and if that information were to come out, it'd be the end of days for the Catholic Church. That's it. Game over. I think the Brotherhood, if they had a body, it probably doesn't exist anymore. It's an embarrassment. Nobody wants it. Now, if the body still does exist and they came forth and said, "Here it is, everybody, on national television to prove, there it is. Let's do a DNA test on it." Now, there's enough

doubt built into the official story that even if you had DNA evidence of a 2,000-year-old corpse that the church could turn around and say, "Well, we can't be sure about anything. We can't be sure that your 2,000-y old man is even who you claim he is or he came from this area of the world." Anyway, the Brotherhood of the Blood are supposed to have some kind of great relic, perhaps even the embomb body of Jesus. What we do know about them is they process in these dark clothes. They look very mysterious, somewhat freaky, but I

don't think that they actually have some kind of great secret. And if they do have the body of Jesus, why don't they reveal it? Why don't they show it to us? Today's brotherhood doesn't truly represent what I think the original brotherhood believed in. And today it's more of an affirmation of a Catholic faith particularly in the Spanish areas and southern France that it's very much reaffirming what they already believe. Now there could well be a smaller group within that brotherhood who are happy for people to believe that because it keeps the brotherhood myth going and

in reality allows them to exist and to carry on broadcasting to the world what they believe. But no one is going to see it unless they have the eyes to see and the ears to hear. You can't stop people from writing or thinking whatever they want to think about us. We have nothing to hide. Almost any abbey in in England claimed to have either a piece of the true cross or a vial of the blood of Christ. It's relics like that from the time of Christ that define these these orders. It's their reason for living

to carry the tradition of preserving it and protecting it for future generations. So, do the Brotherhood of the Blood as they are known really possess a holy relic of unimaginable importance? Possibly the embombed body of Jesus Christ or are they, as they say, just a historic religious society that dates back several centuries? As ever, the historians and the conspiracy theorists have vastly different opinions on the subject. However, the covering of their faces, their history of being heretics, and a growing public interest in how the real Jesus Christ might have been very different from the one

in the Bible, all increase the attention on just what the brotherhood might be hiding.