Secret Societies: Inside the World's Most Notorious Organizations (20 page)

Soon after Rabbi Brandwein's passing, Gruberger transformed himself into a direct descendant of Moses named Philip Berg, the world's leading authority on Kabbalah, and converted the rabbi's long-established seminary into The Kabbalah Center, moving its headquarters to Los Angeles, California. Gone was any reference to Feivel Gruberger, the philandering insurance salesman, or his family in Brooklyn. Gone too was the insurance office secretary who had accompanied Gruberger to Israel. The divorced mother of two who previously had demonstrated neither interest nor aptitude in religion and spirituality was now Karen Berg, author of several distinguished books on Kabbalah.

The appearance of a California-based mystical religious assembly, promising everything from spiritual comfort to better sex, attracted converts from the beginning, not an unusual event. Such groups in California are almost as prolific as the state's orange groves, and the shelf life of both products is often similar. But the Kabbalah Center proved different in many ways.

First, its structure and appeal were unique. No other sect could boast 2000 years of acquired wisdom, plus a road map to spiritual knowledge in the form of the Sephiroth. Also, access was as easy as a McDonald's drive-through window. Instead of parsing philosophical dogma written in an ancient style, peppered with vague references and thickened with allegories,
neophytes need only follow a visual ten-step process with various pathways to explore at their own pace. For an extra measure of fun, they could attempt to decipher various clues appearing as letters of the Hebrew alphabet, but this was optional and unnecessary, according to Kabbalah Center leaders.

It was a strange adaptation of an ancient faith structure. Medieval scholars once believed the Sephiroth represented a corridor towards enlightenment. Now many Californians eager to sample the Creed of the Month considered it a fashionable diversion, a claim to inner peace and understanding that others had yet to embrace.

Berg and his staff, which included Karen's sons Yehuda and Michael, proved to be brilliant marketers. After serving for two millennia as a mystical solution to the deepest questions of spiritual life, Kabbalah was transformed into a supermarket of pious accoutrements, a Wal-Mart of fashion-of-the-day spiritual trinkets and treatises. By 2005, more than twenty books and CDs, all authored by Karen Berg and her sons, had been cranked out. With titles like
God Wears Lipstick
, and a twenty-two-volume version of the Zohar, the collection represented at best a successful marketing exploitation of gullible dilettantes and at worst a mockery of an ancient tradition. As though to test the credulity of their followers, the Bergs added products ranging from scented candles and Kabbalah baby clothing to blessed mineral water and boxes of seventy-two stones, each invisibly imprinted with a different name for God. It is, of course, a test of faith to believe that anything is on the stones. But perhaps that's the point.

The height (or depth) of its marketing scheme was reached with its most successful and profitable gimmick: a short piece of red string cut, it is claimed, from a strand once wrapped around the tomb of the Hebrew matriarch Rachel. Kabbalah believers are assured when the string is tied around the left wrist in the prescribed manner

we can receive a vital connection to the protective energies surrounding the tomb of Rachel. It also allows us to take Rachel's powerful protective energy with us and draw from it anytime. By seeking the Light of holy persons, such as Rachel, we can use their powerful influence to assist us. According to Kabbalah, Rachel represents the physical world in which we live.

Shipped complete with Operating Manual, the two-foot length of string sells for $26.

Tying the string may be the most difficult action Kabbalah members need perform to achieve wisdom. While it is important for followers to purchase books from the Kabbalah Center, it is not necessary to read their contents. Berg and his instructors assure everyone that simply passing your fingertips over the text, in a process called “speed meditation,” enables you to absorb their wisdom. This technique will undoubtedly prove popular among college students cramming for exams.

Devout Jews were appalled and cynics were amused over the concept of a blessed piece of string and other Kabbalah items being priced so outrageously, and being taken so seriously. Their reactions changed to dismay when many show business stars began praising the Kabbalah Centers, paying homage to ex-insurance salesman Berg and wearing the blessed red string on their wrists. Among the most vocal and influential celebrity members were Madonna, Britney Spears, Demi Moore, Paris Hilton, Barbra Streisand, Elizabeth Taylor, Diane Keaton, and David and Victoria Beckham. As a result of the public embrace of Berg and his Kabbalah Centers by these and other notable characters, weavers around the world began dying string red to be sold for $1 per inch.

Mick Jagger, David Beckham, Madonna and Paris Hilton are among the celebrities who turn to Kabbalah for strength and solace.

The Kabbalah red string comes with its own operating manual.

An empire was born. Soon more than two dozen Kabbalah Centers were in operation around the world, in locations from Russia and Poland to Brazil and Canada, each with ballooning membership lists. The appeal was obvious. How else could an ordinary person belong to the same club as Madonna and Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York? Or wear a bracelet identical to the one clinging to Liz Taylor's left wrist?

Psychologists were not surprised at the enthusiasm of high-profile celebrities to embrace Berg's materialistic-based pseudo-religion. The appeal, they suggest, is not one of seeking the wisdom of the ages but of finding a way to deal with acquired guilt. Many celebrities are enormously insecure over their success, knowing that thousands of others with equal talent but less luck remain unknown and unheralded. Why do the stars bask in glory and wealth while others struggle through anonymity and near-poverty? They crave an explanation to assuage their guilt, and flock around any system of belief that preaches their success was preordained or stage-managed in some manner. With baffling irony, those who were rejected mimic the actions of their celebrity heroes.

Membership in the Kabbalah Centers, along with sales of Kabbalah-branded items and a 10 percent tithe from its followers, unleashed a flood of money into the pockets of the Bergs. Karen and her sons reside in side-by-side Beverly Hills mansions, while Philip Berg, a.k.a. Feivel Gruberger, occupies an apartment in New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. The Kabbalah Center, of course, is registered as a religious nonprofit organization.

Kabbalah's covert nature over thousands of years resulted from racism and religious bigotry rather than from conscious efforts by its members to lurk in the shadows, and the “secret
society” identity it acquired is at the heart of its recent commercial success. Its near-indecipherable doctrine may have been a barrier to many who sought its reputed wisdom, but it proved an incentive to the Bergs, who persuaded potential followers that they alone held the key to that particular code. The rest was salesmanship.

But what is the future of a creed that claims a pathway to God, a system of belief forged over twenty centuries by some of the finest spiritual minds of their age, when its name appears in flashing lights on Sunset Strip billboards, its leaders promise absorption of deep wisdom through the fingertips, and its most visible symbol is a length of colored string?

SIX

ROSICRUCIANS

THE PURSUIT OF ESOTERIC WISDOM

ROSICRUCIANS OWE THE ORIGIN OF THEIR SOCIETY TO TWO
men, only one of whom actually lived. He was a trickster whose youthful fraud developed into a global organization claiming to do good works yet functioning in curious secrecy.

The order began, or so the legend persists, with a young man born into a noble Germanic family in 1378. Possessed of a spiritual bent, Christian Rosenkreuz entered a monastery, determined to dedicate his life to deep reflection and service to God. When the monastic life failed to satisfy his spiritual needs, Rosenkreuz set off for the Holy Land, visiting Damascus and Jerusalem. At some point in his journeys he encountered Arab mystics, who taught him principles of alchemy and suggested a non-papal form of Christianity a hundred years before Martin Luther.

Returning home, Rosenkreuz and a number of followers launched a secret organization dedicated to exploring the powers of the occult, operating beyond the bounds of the papal church, and providing aid and comfort to the sick and needy. The members would travel widely in performance of their duties, achieving anonymity by dressing in the manner and style of the country whose citizens they were serving. Vowing to maintain the secrecy of their order for one hundred years, they would identify each other via symbols incorporating the rose and the cross, and meet annually at the order's secret headquarters, the
Sancti Spiritus
, Edifice of the Holy Spirit. To ensure the order's continuity, every member was instructed to name his successor, whose identity would become known only upon the death of the brother who nominated him.

The choice of the rose and cross as symbols launched the first of many debates about the movement. Were they a play on the founder's name, or were they chosen with a deeper purpose in mind? The rose symbolized a need for silence and secrecy; carved in the ceilings of rooms where clandestine meetings were held, its presence dictated that all conversation within that space must remain confidential—thus the term
subrosa
, meaning in secrecy or confidence. The cross, drawn with arms of equal length, was used by medieval alchemists to symbolize the material world. In combination, both symbols suggested that the order was engaged in trading secrets of alchemy and other magical activities, and their nomadic claim of helping the sick was actually a means of exchanging information in a furtive manner. A suspicious few connected the symbols with those used by early Gnostics, and later others pointed out that both the rose and cross appeared in the family coat of arms of Martin Luther. Still others saw the rose and cross as an adaptation of the red cross of the banished Templars, suggesting that Rosenkreuz and his followers were resurrecting that movement while introducing elements of the ancient Kabbalah into its teachings.

None of these discussions took place during the remarkably long life Rosenkreuz led, surviving to 106 years of age. Nothing else about Christian Rosenkreuz was notable to his contemporaries. There is no record of his existence, or of the brothers who followed him and shared his Christian mysticism. Until 130 years after his death, no record existed either of the man or the organization he founded. Had the movement he launched proved so successful at concealing its existence and true purpose?

The world first learned of Rosenkreuz and his organization in 1614, when a manuscript titled
Fama Fraternitatis, des Loblichen Ordens des Rosenkreutzes
(The Declaration of the Worthy Order of the Rosy Cross) began circulating in Germany. The following year, a second pamphlet appeared, expanding on the contents of the first publication and describing the discovery of Rosenkreuz's tomb in 1604. After 120 years, the manuscript noted, the body of the order's founder remained “whole and unconsumed,” surrounded by several books and ornaments interred with him.