By Ursula Seiler

America was long known to the world’s initiates. They determined when it might be ‘discovered’. They chose the discoverer. They knew the plan for the New World and its purpose: to become the leading nation in the promised Golden Age.

America was discovered by an Italian called Christopher Columbus in 1492. It was named after a later navigator called Amerigo Vespucci. That’s the story we learn at school. If we have critical teachers, they might add that the Vikings under Erik the Red were actually the first to reach America—and we believe that this story gives us a true understanding of the matter. And yet, this does not correspond to the truth.

“History is something that never happened, written by someone who was not present at the time”, noted Voltaire shrewdly. Sir Francis Bacon remarked that “… history is a lie agreed upon”. And the reason is to be sought in that “… historians do not tell us what really happened, but what they would like to believe” (Benjamin Franklin). Or again, what the prevailing political doctrine enjoins. Whoever believes that historical lies are an invention of the mass media in the 20th century is sorely mistaken. The world theater has always opened its curtains onto a stage where pretty marionettes presented the audience with a history designed to entertain and to conceal what really happened. At the time of Francis Bacon there was a well-known saying that a wise man was like a doublebottomed trunk: even if it appeared empty when opened, it actually had a secret compartment which contained the source of his wisdom.

In earlier ages too, history was made only to a limited extent by monarchs and churchmen. Behind them were the gray eminences, the truly powerful masters of knowledge, some of them initiates. They were familiar with the mysteries and with occult teachings which were not meant for the eyes of the profane, and met in secret societies and lodges.

In the early middle ages, the existence of America was already known to these guardians of the mysteries. How might we otherwise explain that a Venetian merchant map of the world shows and names the continents of North and South America? Naturally not completely correct geographically—
that was beyond contemporary skills for more familiar territories too—but this map had been drawn 78 years before the ‘discovery’ of America, namely in 1414.

How did early 15th century Venetians come to know about Florida and Ca-paru (Peru)? Gunnar Thompson conjectures in his book The Friar’s Map of Ancient America that it could have some connection with an English Franciscan friar known as Nicholas of Lynn. Inspired by the dream of the medieval monk and scientist Roger Bacon, who had suggested making a scientific map of the world, Lynn, between 1330 and 1360, undertook several voyages of discovery in the North Atlantic with the support of King Edward III of England. The Franciscans, who took great care to produce accurate maps, drew up that legendary and long lost ‘Friar’s map’. Even Christopher Columbus was said to have been fascinated by Franciscan cosmography at a later period.

It was also Roger Bacon who, around the year 1270, showed his friend Brunetto Latini a magnetic compass that he had made. Latini later wrote to a friend: “This discovery, which appears so eminently useful to the seafarer, must remain hidden until other times dawn, for no master mariner would dare use it today, as he would be accused of sorcery; neither would mariners dare put out to sea under the command of a man who used an instrument which appeared to have been invented under the guidance of a diabolic spirit. May the time come when such prejudices, which represent such a great impediment to the discovery of the true mysteries of nature, will have been overcome; then will humanity harvest the fruits of the work of such learned men as Brother Bacon, and do justice to the industry and intelligence behind efforts for which they today reap only mockery and shame.” For this and other ‘crimes’ of unorthodox thoughts, Bacon was imprisoned for 14 years—mild punishment compared with those usual in the medieval world. At the end of the thirteenth century, Bacon was dead—but the compass was in general use. So mariners could venture to leave their safe coastal waters and set out into the unknown—in search of new land. However, knowledge of the existence of the great continent to the west goes much further back in time.

Hellenic traces in Canada

The ancient Greeks were already using the Gulf Stream thirteen centuries before Columbus to sail safely to America, where they possessed several colonies. Plutarch describes their ancient voyages and gives the location of the Greek colonies as ‘directly opposite the Caspian Sea as the crow flies’. They called the land to the west ‘the colonies of Hercules’, and the Caribbean was the ‘Sea of Saturn’, where Homer’s Ogygia (Calypso’s isle) was also found.

As knowledge was sacred to the ancient Greeks and thus had to be protected from the eyes of the hoi polloi (the common people), they took care not to record it in writing for posterity. Oaths of secrecy prevented the initiates of the mysteries from letting an unguarded word pass their lips. And yet they were not the only ones who knew about America. The continent was also known to the ancient Egyptians and Chinese. These ancient peoples were also able to build huge ships to voyage across the oceans. One of the Egyptian Ptolemies built a ship large enough to accommodate an orchard with fruit trees on deck—in addition to swimming pools and fountains with live fish.

Francis Bacon reports in his partially utopian, partially real fable The New Atlantis that “… about 3,000 years ago, or somewhat more, the navigation of the world (especially for remote voyages) was greater than at this day. Do not think with yourselves, that I know not how much it is increased with you, within these threescore years; I know it well, and yet I say, greater then than now; whether it was, that the example of the ark, that saved the remnant of men from the universal deluge, gave men confidence to venture upon the waters, or what it was; but such is the truth. The Phoenicians, and especially the Tyrians, had great fleets; so had the Carthaginians their colony, which is yet farther west. Toward the east the shipping of Egypt, and of Palestine, was likewise great. China also, and the great Atlantis (that you call America), which have now but junks and canoes, abounded then in tall ships.”

A historian called Spyros Cateras wrote in the 1930s that the ancient Greeks had penetrated as far as the region of the Great Lakes via Canada’s St. Laurence River. Hercules, Odysseus, Colaeus, Pytheus and Eratosthenes had apparently been among those bold seafarers of antiquity. Cateras also showed that the language of the ancient Maya on the American continent contains many words of pure Homeric Greek, and notes: “Years ago, traces of Alexander the Great’s army were found in the South American Republic of Uruguay—namely swords and shields with the inscription ‘PTOLEMEOS ALEXANDROY’!”

Atlantis, mother of Europe and America

But Greece was already a major power at the time of the legendary (and yet real) island continent of Atlantis. Its last remains disappeared beneath the surging waters of the Atlantic Ocean some 11,500 years ago. The American continent had emerged from the waters at a time when Atlantis was still a flourishing civilization. Somewhat later than America, Europe arose from the seas—and gave rise to a historical epoch during which Atlantis (in the region of today’s North Atlantic) formed a kind of land bridge between the younger continents of America and Europe. It is also thanks to this land bridge, writes Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in her Secret Doctrine, that the animals and plants of both continents are so similar “...all, nearly all belong to the same genera, while many, even of the species, are common to both continents … indicating that they radiated from a common centre” (Atlantis). “The horse” continues Blavatsky, “according to Science, originated in America. At least, a large proportion of the once “missing links” connecting it with inferior forms have been exhumed from American strata. How did the horse penetrate into Europe and Asia, if no land communication bridged the oceanic interspaces? Or if it is asserted that the horse originated in the New World, how did such forms as the hipparion, etc., get into America in the first instance on the migration hypothesis?” The extremely mysterious language of the Basques, whose homeland lies in the Pyrenees, also indicates a link between Europe and America: it bears no relationship to any European language—but to all the native, i.e. Indian languages of America! And it should be noted that the aboriginal peoples of America are themselves of Atlantean origin – so it comes as no surprise that at the time of its discovery by the Europeans, America was called Atlanta by some native tribes.

As the primeval Hellenes carried on a vigorous trade both with Atlantis and the great continent to the west, it is hardly surprising that the great philosopher Plato in his treatise on Atlantis notes that after the destruction of that great continent all attempts at seafaring to the west became impossible for a long period. The waters of the Atlantic Ocean were so stormy and so permeated by the detritus and silt of the submerged continent that travel by sea in that region became unthinkable.

So the ancient peoples knew more than early Christendom in some respects, and for them there lay beyond the western sea the land over which the gods watched so that it might one day become the earthly paradise. When the times will have been fulfilled, human beings seeking the Golden Fleece would enter upon that land. And the first avaricious conquerors really did seek physical gold, and plundered the treasures of the Incas and Aztecs. But for the Greeks the Golden Fleece was a document on which the secret of human immortality was written. “We now have a Golden Fleece in America, kept in the Library of Congress”, writes the ‘initiated’ author Manly P. Hall, “namely the American Declaration of Independence, which was written on an animal hide and bears the magic formula of human hope. Those who understand it and make wise use of its ideas dispose of the secret of immortality of human society.”

A destiny guarded by initiates

Why, one might ask, did western conquerors not set off westwards much earlier, if the initiates of the secret lodges already knew about America?

Everything has its appointed time, one may reply, and, banal though this may sound, it is surely closer to the truth than many other explanations. For America is the country of the New Age now dawning, and the leading role which it plays in the world is consequently no accident, but dispensation, providence or destiny—whatever one may wish to call it. (The fact that it is currently abusing this leading role is a different story!)

Manly P. Hall, who was undoubtedly among the most enlightened spirits of the twentieth century, and to whose talents one may also add the ability to read the Akashic record (that cosmic memory in which all past events are recorded), notes on this point: “If the Christian nations had dared to act against the commands of the mystery schools, such sacrilege would have been revenged either by the power of Islam with its seat in Cairo, or by the edict of Lhasa with its Mongolian warriors in the background. The east had agreed to respect the borders of Europe as long as the European states jointly undertook not to exploit the western hemisphere. The fear of a terrible revenge from beyond the walls of Gog and Magog also held the popes back from breaking this agreement. And without the leadership of the Church, the great families of Europe dared not throw themselves privately into such an adventure. But when the agreed hour came, the secret societies sought among their ranks for suitable agents to begin their program of discovery.”

The esoteric orders of Europe, Asia and the Middle East had been allied with the priesthoods of the more advanced Amerindian nations for centuries. One has to be aware that truly high initiates need no physical vehicle to meet in secret places, shielded from the outer world, and to forge plans for future developments. “Plans for the development of the western hemisphere”, writes Manly Hall, “were laid in Alexandria, Mecca, Delhi and Lhasa—long before European statesmen had any inkling of this great utopian program.”

This leads us to the question as to whether Christopher Columbus wanted to find the western sea route to India out of his own volition—or whether, as Grace Fendler suggests in her book New Truths about Columbus, he worked “… as a chosen representative of secret societies in order to realize the old utopian ideals and to carry them across the sea?” This would also provide reason enough to explain “…his accusation as a ‘traitor’; the destruction of all his books and papers, of all portraits and sculptural representations of him, and the complete disappearance of some of his literary works, including the diary of his first voyage and the logbook of his second voyage. All this”, writes Fendler, “… would be mere inquisitional routine, including the new version of his biography—more or less due to political necessity and arising from a sacred mission.”

The secret of Columbus

Is it not in fact extremely strange that we know almost nothing about the greatest explorer of all times? No-one knows when he was born, and no fewer than twenty cities claim him as their son. Manly P. Hall has a particular surprise in store for us: he quotes the author Spyros Cateras who claims that Columbus was really Greek. Allegedly, his original name was Prince Nikolaos Ypsilantis and his home the Greek island of Chios. Hall writes: “This statement is confirmed by numerous early historians and official documents.” He put out to sea from the harbor of Mahon—which was then Greek—on the island of Minorca—and not as history tries to convince us, from an Italian or Spanish port. Like most Greeks of his time, he admired the writings of Plato and the other classical philosophers; and his mind was eminently well equipped to interpret the classical traditions. “Much points to the fact that Columbus was inspired to undertake his voyages by Plato’s story of the submerged Atlantis and the early sea voyages to the west”, writes Hall in his book The Secret Destiny of America.

The true circumstances of the life of the ‘discoverer’ of America are so enigmatic that “… it seems as if history had taken refuge in a conspiracy in order to conceal the truth”, supposes Hall, for the confusion
had apparently already begun before Columbus’ death. “His own son calls his father a Greek. It was assumed that Columbus changed his name in response to religious or political pressure, but that belongs to the realm of speculation.” The numerous biographies of Columbus are unanimous in telling us that Colon (the name which he himself used) was a deeply religious man with mystical tendencies. “He was said to have sometimes worn a habit and cord similar to that of the Franciscans”, notes Hall, although nothing is known of a direct connection with that order. “Some religious groups”, continues Hall, “including brotherhoods familiar with the esoteric tradition, favored this garb.”

It is beyond doubt that Columbus regarded himself as having been chosen for his ‘mission’ by heaven, and that he continuously gained strength from the certainty that he was guided and protected by divine providence. The author John Bartlet Brebner speaks of the “… colossal, mystical selfconfidence of Columbus.” It had been so much a part of the seafarer that “… he remarked on one occasion on a voyage that God had led him to the New Heaven and New Earth of Revelation, and in his darkest hour he was convinced that God spoke to him to encourage him.” On his third voyage, the seafarer believed that he heard the voice of God speaking to him with words of encouragement and comfort. On his fourth voyage, when great misfortune threatened to destroy the whole enterprise, the Admiral fell into a trance, and a voice spoke to him: “Oh fool and fainthearted servant of God, the God of all things! Did He ever do more for Moses, or for David, His Servant, than He did for thee?”

Cathars and knightly orders

In Manly Hall’s estimation, Columbus was beyond doubt the emissary of secret orders who possessed hidden knowledge. This is also indicated by his signature, which was always embellished with mysterious Kabbalistic symbols. These show a striking similarity to the secret characters of the ‘heretical’ sect of the Albigensians. The Albigensians were the southern French branch of the Cathars (named after the Provencal town of Albi). The name ‘Cathar’ means ‘the pure ones’, a fact also expressed by their understanding of life: as an ideal of love they countenanced only chivalrous love—the Troubadour movement of southern France is also closely linked to the Cathars—for “…chivalrous love is no sin, but a virtue which makes the bad good and the good better”, as the Troubadour Montangagol put it. For them, a pure chaste life meant to be poor in worldly goods, to shun no work, to kill no creature—including animals, which is why they were vegetarians—and to use all means to oppose the ‘God of darkness’, the Tempter. They saw the world as a constant battleground between spirit and matter, and the good was for them not simply a higher principle, but, as Walter Nigg describes in his Buch der Ketzer (Book of the Heretics), “…a power, personified in the good God of light, the originator of the invisible higher world order. The good God is pure spirit to whom nothing evil adheres and whose nature is love. The Cathars saw goodness in its whole radiant fullness”, he notes. “One cannot talk of the good God in more magnificent and transcendent terms than the Albigensians did.” And this was a time in which the official Church taught people to fear the ‘wrath of God’!

This Christian community, which was later persecuted in the most brutal way by the Church in the Albigensian wars—where the motto was to simply kill everyone, from babes to old men, in the belief that God would save his own—was supposed to have played a part in the secret preparations for the ‘discovery’ of America. The Cathars possessed immense personal charisma, and how greatly they represented a threat to the Vatican becomes evident from the fact that the German word for heretic, namely Ketzer, comes directly from the word Cathar. Even the great Italian poet Dante is believed to have been a member of the Albigensian church and to have worked as its pastor in various European cities for several years. The Montana Mason wrote in October 1921 that Dante was also “… a friend of Roger Bacon and an ally and adviser of the powerful leaders of the ancient order of the Templars, who at the time of his death, although apparently at the pinnacle of their power, were in reality approaching their disastrous end. Dante is said to have been initiated into the esoteric teachings of the Templars.”

In his work Christopher Columbus, a Greek Nobleman, Seraphim G. Canoutas of the University of Athens attempted to reconstruct the early life of the mysterious explorer. What he found is revealing. His investigations showed that the secret preparations for the colonization of the ‘Fortunate Isles’, which were also called the ‘Blessed Isles in the west’, were in the hands of the Albigensians, the Troubadours and the knightly orders. In the final phase of the project of discovery, the most famous member of the Florentine family of the Medici, Lorenzo the Magnificent, was the power behind the scenes. Lorenzo de Medici was a noted Platonist, a patron of secret societies, founder of an important school of philosophy, and a sophisticated opponent of the cunning, depraved Borgias. Another famous man acted as his agent and helped significantly in the preparations for the ‘discovery’ of the New World: the visionary artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci. Manly Hall says of him: “Although Lorenzo did not live to see the fulfillment of his magnificent plan, he spoke the magic word which opened the doors for Columbus to the most exclusive institutions of Europe and provided him with the necessary worldly means so that he could arouse the interest of liberal princes and scholars. It was the invisible hand of the Medici which balanced
the famous egg of Columbus …”

‘America’ does not come from Amerigo

The name America has absolute nothing at all to do with Amerigo Vespucci—especially as the latter was in reality called Alberico and not Amerigo (which does not exist as a forename).

Rather, the name America, at least according to America scholar James Pryse, who published a part of the Popol Vuh (the holy book of the Maya) with commentaries at the end of the nineteenth century, comes from the Peruvian word Amaruca—which means ‘The land of the plumed serpent’. We meet this figure in all pre-Columbian cultures of America. The serpent is a symbol of divine wisdom, and it grows feathers to denote that its wisdom has acquired wings, making it into spiritual wisdom—namely enlightenment. Pryse supposes that Amaru, who gave America its name, is none other than the divinity worshipped in Mexico as Quetzalcoatl. He is believed to have taught humanity compassion, meekness and the pursuit of peace—ideals so close to Christian ones that the Christian missionaries who subsequently came upon the scene were convinced that Quetzalcoatl must have been a disciple of Jesus Christ.

The priests of this god of peace once ruled from their headquarters in the cordilleras of both Amarucas—i.e. Americas. So it would seem to be America’s destiny to be a nation of enlightened people—as we would expect in the coming ‘Golden Age.’ Some see in the name AMERICA an anagram of the phrase I AM RACE, those people who have realized their own divinity and express it in their lives. A promise we would fain see fulfilled!

The far from virgin queen

The first state in the New World was called Virginia—in honor of the ‘virgin’ queen Elizabeth I. In truth, the queen was neither virginal nor unmarried, having secretly wed her lover Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester. She had a son by him—Francis Bacon, who was in reality called Francis Tudor and would have been the rightful Prince of Wales and heir to the throne of England. This Francis Bacon was to play a key role in the history of the United States of America. But his first days on earth were overshadowed by danger, for in fact the queen wanted to do away with the newborn child. Sir Nicholas Bacon, a loyal member of the Privy Council and confidant to the queen, was fortunately able to prevent her from doing so. He suggested that he would take the child as his son, as his wife had given birth to a stillborn child at about the same time. So the young Francis Bacon grew up without knowing who his real parents were.

Manly P. Hall had the privilege of seeing a photocopy in the British Museum in London of an engraving showing Queen Elizabeth I at her confinement. As it was at that time usual for the entire court to be present at a royal birth, a large number of people were privy to the secret delivery. They were all sworn to secrecy upon pain of death.

The Queen made no secret of her affection for the boy who was a daily presence at court. The relationship cooled down only when, in one of her notorious outbreaks of rage, she inadvertently revealed to the young Bacon who his true parents were—a realization which was to change his whole life. He was convinced that the Queen would recognize him before her death as her rightful successor. When Bacon ultimately discovered the conspiracy against himself and his natural father (who had been poisoned), he lost all respect for Elizabeth; and her high regard for him turned into bitter hate.

Only after Elizabeth’s death in 1603 was Francis Bacon’s star to come into its ascendant. King James ennobled him, firstly as Baronet of Verulam and then as Viscount of St. Albans. Ultimately, Bacon became Lord Chancellor of England and thus the most powerful man in the country.

Bacon was a universal genius of his time: a scholar with few equals in the sciences and in philosophy. Indeed, his contemporaries believed to see in him a reborn Plato. But he was also without peer in his contribution to the arts, as the true author of most of the works commonly alleged to Shakespeare—a fact entertained even by a serious branch of literary research. However, little is known of the part he played in the founding of the colonies on the American continent.

William Hepworth Dixon of the Inner Temple wrote in 1861 about the early settlement of the New World: “In no history of America, and in no biography of Bacon have I found a word which linked him to the colonies of this great Republic. And yet he was actively involved—like Raleigh and Delaware—in these activities, and played a major part in the sacrifices through which the foundations of both Virginia and the two Carolinas were laid. To his other fame therefore, that of the founder of a new state would have to be added …”

Judge Brown notes in his History of Newfoundland: “It was exclusively due to the influence of the Lord Chancellor that the King granted the loans and issued the foundation deed to Bacon and his partners in Guy’s Newfoundland Company.”

The first ‘true’ settlement in the New World was Jamestown in Virginia, founded on May 14, 1607. Sir Francis Bacon became a member of the Virginia Company in 1609. We find a further indication of Bacon’s
role in the new world in the foreword to a manuscript by William Strachey, dated 1618, on his Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britania: “Your Lordship, who has always been an extremely noble promoter of the Virginia colony, and who strove from the very beginning (together with other Lords and Earls of the Privy Council) to increase and guide it.”

And in a speech in Gray’s Inn Hall, American James Beck remarked that the two fundamental government laws which formed the nucleus of the United States Constitution had been written by Lord Bacon.

Bacon’s hidden guidance in the colonization of the New World is also revealed in another historical detail: in 1609—the same year in which Sir Francis Bacon officially became a member of the Virginia Company—Sir George Somers sailed from England to the New World, having been appointed by the King as the new governor of Virginia. But he ran into a hurricane and was shipwrecked off the Bermudas, then still known as the Hog Islands. However, this led to the actual discovery of the beautiful Bermudas, which henceforth became a British colony.

Interestingly, a unique currency came to be used on these Hog Islands: the reverse side of all the coins bore the private arms of Sir Francis Bacon. But the King prohibited the use of these coins outside the Bermudas, although contemporary sources indicate that this money had been minted “for America”.

Incidentally, some researchers see Shakespeare’s/Bacon’s play The Tempest, as an allegory of Sir George Somers’ voyage and shipwreck off the Bermudas, where Sir Francis Bacon hoped to see his ‘New Atlantis’ realized in literary form.

Bacon’s direct influence on the New World extended beyond his death: In the later decades of the 17th century, many members of his family and descendants emigrated to Virginia. The Bacons thus became one of the best-known and influential families of the colony. Nathaniel Bacon, a descendant of Sir Francis, even led what was known as the Bacon rebellion in 1676, in which he fought for greater justice on the part of the English crown toward its subjects. In other words, for ideals similar to those espoused by his famous ancestor.

A new Atlantis for a new age

Most of the original deeds of the Privy Council which might have thrown light on the role played by Bacon in the founding of the New World perished in the Whitehall fire of 1618. One of his greatly esteemed essays, Of Plantation, gives highly detailed instructions for the successful settlement of still ‘virgin’ land, and his treatise New Atlantis is a utopia which Bacon would have liked to have seen realized in the true new Atlantis, namely America. The inhabitants of that mysterious island known as Bensalem espoused pacifism, lived without money as a means of exchange and in their conduct of life followed a concept which blends Communist and Christian features. Thus the New Atlanteans respect strangers despite all due reserve. They possess immense knowledge, use a universal language and find out about the outside world by means of systematic explorations. Although the social organization of Bensalem recognizes class distinctions, these do not depend on wealth, but on wisdom, dignity and age. The first principle of this form of community is respect for life and quite particularly for the family. The women on New Atlantis are not ‘emancipated’, but they are particularly honored in their capacity as mothers. The most remarkable quality of the New Atlanteans is their chasteness and freedom from moral confusions. But the society of New Atlantis paid particular homage to science—the true natural science which is organized under the roof of a foundation known as ‘Solomon’s House’. “The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible”, Bacon has the wise men of Bensalem explain.

Is it not remarkable that the America of today has failed signally in all these domains? Its research massacres life and has become a threat to human dignity. It is characterized by a belligerent attitude to the outside world and toleration of extreme violence within the country, and the slavish pursuit of money, along with its use as an instrument of enslavement. Let us recall that since 1913 not even the dollar has been the property of the American people, but of a number of exclusive Wall-Street bankers who are independent of the political establishment. Moreover, American society shows a debasement of morals which has also brought about the dissolution of families, and the celebration of a capitalism which mocks every form of Christian neighborly love.

The ‘discovery’ of America was—as this article aimed to show—no accident, but was long and carefully planned by initiates. Neither is it an accident that the age of the Renaissance—the rebirth of the old classical knowledge—coincided with the discovery of the New World. The hour had struck, the sacred fire could be carried to the west. The secret orders had given their consent. The various attempts to describe an ideal world which arose at that time—Thomas More’s Utopia, Tommaso Campanella’s Civitas Solis (city of the sun), Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, the works of Shakespeare, the new translation of the Bible (the authorized or King James version)—all formed the spiritual edifice and provided the ethical code for the New World. Secret societies such as the Rosicrucians and the Freemasons, who already met together on American territory in 1606 for the first time, possessed the initiate knowledge which was to enable them to realize in the New World the ideas which the old world had developed—right up to the
‘Golden Fleece’ of the future, the American Declaration of Independence. This, let it be noted in passing, also has much to do with that mysterious figure of history who played a key role in the discovery and constitution of the United States: Roger Bacon alias Christopher Columbus alias Sir Francis Bacon alias the Comte de Saint Germain. He was the instrument of divine providence who led to the plans of the Hierarchy becoming realized on earth—so that the seed which had been sown in heaven would bear abundant fruit in the New World.