The New World Order — A. Ralph Epperson: Symbols, Secret Societies, and a Political-Financial Model of the New World Order

Epperson’s Basic Thesis and the Great Seal

Epperson structures the book around two ways of understanding history. The first is the ordinary model in which visible political, economic, social, and military causes interact, organizations have limited lifespans, and different actors pursue different interests. The second is the “conspiratorial view of history” developed throughout the book: apparently separate events are said to form part of a long-term plan; symbols and secret societies carry ideas across generations; financial, political, and religious elites cooperate in the construction of a new world order; and public events are treated as the visible surface of a deeper structure.

Epperson builds the model as a sequence of connected questions and historical links, moving from organizations and ideas to personal networks, symbols, and claims of long-term continuity.

The Great Seal of the United States

Charles Thomson, the Eye above the Pyramid, and Symbolic Language. Thomson wrote that the pyramid signified strength and duration; the eye and Annuit Coeptis referred to the “signal interpositions of Providence” in favor of the American cause; MDCCLXXVI marked the year of the Declaration of Independence; and Novus Ordo Seclorum marked the beginning of the new American era. The seal was adopted on June 20, 1782. This primary record establishes the official explanation available at the time. Any claim of an additional concealed meaning requires a further evidentiary layer concerning the intention of the designers.

Is the eye over the pyramid a Masonic sign?

For Epperson, the Great Seal is more than a state emblem. He reads the unfinished pyramid, the eye, and the Latin mottos as a symbolic summary of a political program extending beyond the American republic itself. The book therefore begins with a symbol before moving to organizations, people, and ideologies: the symbol is meant to show from the start that the history he tells is both political and esoteric.[10][11][10]

1776 and the Bavarian Illuminati

The Ban, Continuity, and Washington’s Letters. The Bavarian Illuminati were exposed and prohibited during the 1780s. LMU describes their decline, Weishaupt’s loss of his professorship in 1785, and the ban on the Illuminati and Freemasons. The same institutional history also notes that some former members were later rehabilitated and returned to important positions. That leaves several distinct continuity questions: formal organizational continuity, personal networks among former members, continuity of ideas and movement of people or ideas into other organizations.

The administrative suppression of a formal organization does not, by itself, establish either total disappearance or uninterrupted centralized command. Those are separate historical propositions.[2]

George Washington and the Illuminati: both letters matter

Freemasonry and Albert Pike

In the book, Freemasonry is not merely a symbolic category but an organizational world of lodges, Grand Lodges, rites, degrees, ritual systems, constitutions, and archives. Epperson focuses particularly on the 33rd Degree, Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma, Hiram Abif, oaths, and hierarchy, then connects these elements with his wider political model.

Albert Pike and Morals and Dogma

Pike, Lucifer, Benjamin Creme, and Maitreya. In the section associated with Grand Pontiff, Pike does write the famous words “Lucifer, the Light-bearer!” Immediately around that sentence, however, the text also speaks of a “Sublime Faith” that “despises all the pomps and works of Lucifer” and calls Lucifer the “Spirit of Darkness,” while reflecting on the paradox of the name “Light-bearer.” Elsewhere Pike discusses Satan, Lucifer, and related motifs through Kabbalistic, mythological, and symbolic frameworks.

The documentary point is therefore twofold: Pike genuinely uses Luciferian language, but the broader passage is more complex than a standalone slogan stating that Freemasons worship Lucifer. Epperson’s interpretation is presented alongside the primary text from which it is drawn.

Benjamin Creme and Maitreya

Epperson extends the Maitreya and Share International material into the same wider framework that already contains Freemasonry, the Illuminati, and a coordinated program of cultural change.[14][15][8][16]

Marx, Joanna Southcott, and Religious Motifs

Epperson reads this dramatic language alongside his wider treatment of ritual, symbolism, and esoteric tradition.

Marx’s later critique of religion

Marx plays a role similar to other historical figures in the book: Epperson treats him not only as an economic theorist but as a link in a broader story about the erosion of traditional religion, property, and social order. Early poetry, family background, and later political writings are placed on one developmental axis intended to show the spiritual and political transformation of modernity.

Hitler and the Thule Society

Eric Kurlander discusses organizational and ideological links between German occult or völkisch groups and the early Nazi movement; Epperson uses that milieu as a historical bridge between the Thule Society and early Nazism. He then moves from the organizational environment to the question of Hitler’s personal connection with the Thule Society.[9]

Humanist Manifestos I and II

Humanist Manifesto I was published in 1933 and is available through the American Humanist Association as a historical text. It uses the term religious humanism, describes the universe as self-existing rather than created, treats human beings as part of a natural process, rejects traditional mind-body dualism, calls for transformation of inherited religious forms, and speaks in its economic section of a socialized and cooperative economic order oriented toward the common good. Epperson connects these ideas to a wider program of transforming religion, economics, property, and society. The ideas themselves are present in the manifesto; the claim that they belong to the same operational structure as the Illuminati, communism, New Age movements, and Freemasonry is a further organizational proposition.

The manifestos appear in the book as political-philosophical texts that Epperson connects with wider cultural change.

The chapters on religion, family, education, property, and nationalism gather secularization, education reform, family-law change, social policy, international institutions, and socialist criticism of private property into one story about coordinated cultural transformation.[6][7][1]

Reagan, Bush, and “Thousand Points of Light”

In the final chapters, Epperson gives particular attention to Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and the phrase “a thousand points of light.” He treats the phrase not only as civic language but as a symbolic sign within his broader narrative of a coming new world order.

The planned Giza event and the Millennium Society become part of Epperson’s symbolic chronology of the turn of the millennium.

Bush’s “New World Order”. Chronology is important here. Bibliographic records date Epperson’s book to January 1990. George H. W. Bush’s best-known presidential address explicitly using the phrase “a new world order” came later, on September 11, 1990, during the Kuwait crisis. In that speech, Bush described a new era of international cooperation in which law would replace the law of the jungle, nations would cooperate, the United Nations would respond collectively to aggression, and stronger states would respect the rights of weaker ones. The 1991 National Security Strategy then stated: “A new world order is not a fact; it is an aspiration — and an opportunity.” It linked the concept to the post-Cold War international system, the United Nations, collective security, democratic and market values, and peaceful resolution of disputes.

The phrase “new world order” later became part of presidential and national-security language, giving Epperson’s earlier use of the phrase an additional layer of reception history.

The same phrase can carry different definitions

A long-running and partly hidden structure linking secret societies, finance, religion, politics, and cultural transformation.

A post-Cold War model of international order, collective security, international law, the United Nations, and cooperation.[1][25][26][26]

Institutions and Structures Connected by the Book

This documentary core remains visible independently of how the reader interprets the larger synthesis.

Continuity and Coordination in Epperson’s Model. Epperson’s broader model requires additional bridges, including: Great Seal ↔ Bavarian Illuminati, Illuminati ↔ uninterrupted modern Masonic command, Pike’s symbolic language ↔ institutional Luciferian worship, Share International ↔ an operational Illuminati/Masonic structure, Marx ↔ a Satanist organization, Hitler personally ↔ formal Thule membership, Humanist Manifestos ↔ the same operational structure as the Illuminati, social reforms ↔ one central plan and Bush’s public “new world order” ↔ the same program described by Epperson.

Conclusion: a Map of Symbols and Connections. Epperson combines organizations, quotations, historical relationships, political phrases, and symbols into a single long continuity. The book’s distinctive feature is precisely this cumulative architecture: