From Eden to War

Is there a hidden hand manipulating world events, trying to set man against its own neighbour, promoting war whenever it can? William Bramley felt this was indeed the case and reported on his findings in his 1989 book “The Gods of Eden”, which amongst all the conspiracy books out there, sits within an often overlooked position.

Philip Coppens

William Bramley, a pseudonym, promised to only ever write one book – he broke this promise when he wrote “Jesus Goes to Hollywood: The Alternative Theories About Christ” in 2005. But “broken promises” could very well be the theme that Bramley tackled when he arrived on the scene with “The Gods of Eden” in 1989. The book was advertised as “the chilling truth about extraterrestrial infiltration – and the conspiracy to keep humankind in chains”. He reached this conclusion a few years before David Icke would draw the same conclusions… but with more public consternation. Bramley, of course, wasn’t arguing that the Queen was a disguised reptilian, always just one scratch away from revealing her true face. Bramley was arguing an unseen hand was making sure we were fighting ourselves all the time, rather than “spiritually set ourselves free”. Bramley does wanted to address the greatest paradox of all: why do religions preach forgiveness, kindness, peace, but are at the same time one of the principle contributors to war, division, persecution and oppression? Something was amiss in the state of Eden… And for Bramley, it were gods saying one thing, but doing the opposite.

The thesis thus comes in two parts: first, a conspiracy to keep mankind enslaved. How? By continuously having us fight each other and making sure we are constantly either living in fear and/or slave to something: mainly monetary debt in our time. “Divide and Conquer” was Caesar’s dictum; Bramley saw it as the operating principle across time and across the globe.
Second, who was behind this? Bramley went all out, and concluded it were alien beings. That may seem preposterous, but his book was after all published by the same publishers of Zecharia Sitchin, who wrote about alien beings settling in Sumer 360,000 years ago, as well as the work of UFO abductee Whitley Strieber; the work was largely in line with these theories, and partially relied on the former. Furthermore, “logically”, who else but an alien could manipulate Mankind across the globe, throughout all times? Someone who stood above it all… Let us once again note the eerie resemblance to Icke’s theories… though I am not saying Icke lifted them from Bramley, I am saying that some human minds arrive at these conclusions…

Bramley noted that “the notion of alien intervention in human affairs is generally tolerated when it is expressed as a work of science fiction, but it is often poorly received when suggested as fact.” He added that “there are few subjects today as full of false information, deceit, and madness as ‘flying saucers’. Many earnest people who attempt to study the subject are driven around in circles by a terrific amount of dishonesty from a small number of people who, for the sake of a fleeting moment of notoriety or with the deliberate intention to obfuscate, have clouded the field with false reports, untenable ‘explanations’, and fraudulent evidence. Suffice it to say that behind this smokescreen there is ample evidence of extraterrestrial visitations to Earth. This is too bad. An in-depth study of the UFO phenomenon reveals that it does not offer a happy little romp through the titillating unknown. The UFO appears more and more to be one of the grimmest realities ever confronted by the human race.”
As to the notion that if UFOs are extraterrestrial aircraft, there should be an undisputed photograph of one by now: “Anything can be disputed. The dispute simply means that someone has chosen to quarrel.” It is logical, and though we do not subscribe to it, we can understand…

What is intriguing is that Bramley sat before an era when a series of “revelations” of individuals who claim to have served in military, intelligence or government institutions began to “leak”. These people testified to the presence of extraterrestrial races that competed among themselves and with clandestine (human) organizations for influence over global humanity. The most prominent person in gathering their stories is Steven Greer, who published it in “Military and Government Witnesses Reveal the Greatest Secrets in Modern History”. Greer has gathered the testimonies of more than 100 of these witnesses in written and/or video format, making them available for the general public as well as for a congressional inquiry. He claims a further 300 are ready to come forward to give testimony, if given legal protection from prosecution for violating their secrecy oaths.
One of the most famous “whistleblowers” is no doubt Col. Philip Corso, who alluded that Eisenhower signed a treaty with such extra-terrestrial beings: “We had negotiated a kind of surrender with them as long as we couldn’t fight them. They dictated the terms because they knew what we most feared was disclosure.” (Phillip Corso, “The Day After Roswell”, p. 292) Still, there is a major difference between the stories of these “whistleblowers” and Bramley: most whistleblowers argue these treaties were done after the 1940s, following UFO crashes or “contact” being established; furthermore, that it was done quite “officially”, though “secretly”. Bramley states the aliens have always been present, and operate not via secret treaties, but via manipulation of governments, humans or situations. So at the point when these “whistleblowers” are unmasked as publicity-seeking people and/or plants to create controversy around a potential alien presence on Earth, Bramley should not become a victim of their demise.

Today, Bramley’s work is either held in cult status, or disregarded as too far out, specifically for its “alien manipulation” – or for those who do subscribe to this notion, there are other books, namely David Icke’s, that have superseded “The Gods of Eden”. Bramley’s profile was not aided by choosing a pseudonym, thus not being available to give lectures, be interviewed, etc. – items all at the core of Icke’s message. But the book’s greatest contribution – and perhaps the least controversial – is in its desire to understand war, in asking certain questions, questions which at the time few posed and which have since shaped several other works, including Jim Marrs’ “Rule by Secrecy” and others of its ilk.
Bramley had begun researching the history of human warfare in 1979 and was initially merely going to focus on that phenomenon in his book. It was during this research that he identified a major contradiction, highlighted above: we pretend to be religious human beings, who state that there is a “soul” inside us. “When we recognize individuals as spiritual beings, the bodies they animate become no more important than the cars they drive.” But despite proclaiming to be “spiritual”, body characteristics seems to divide us, specifically something silly as the colour of our skin, which really does not make us different “bodywise” – it’s still skin, just a different colour, like someone wears a blue or a black jeans – it’s jeans. Why is it that skin colour has been at the foundation of so much hate? For Bramley, the only “logical” conclusion was that someone very early on in human history had “told” Mankind “he” was superior to the other skin tones – and told this to each group: blacks that they were superior to whites, whites over blacks, Asians over this, and the other way around, etc. So whenever they would “meet”, they would all fight…
“Human history is a seemingly endless succession of bloody conflicts and devastating turmoil.” But just like skin seemed to divide us, even though we all labelled ourselves “spiritual” with a disregard for such details, he found another oddity: “inexplicably, in the light of astonishing intellectual and technological advancement, Man’s progress has been halted in one crucial area: he still indulges the primitive beast within and makes war upon his neighbours.” Bramley argued that “it is easy to understand the mental stimuli in two alley cats squabbling over a scrap of food, but it would be a mistake to attribute as simple a state of mind to a terrorist planting a bomb in an airport.” Bramley thus felt that we could not simply blame it on “Man will always fight.” To underline that we were not “animals” intent on war – most humans want “world peace” – he observed: “The Renaissance was a short period of history revealing that when repression is eased, when intolerance and war-inducing philosophies diminish in importance, and when people are able to think and act more freely, human beings as a whole will naturally and automatically move away from war.”
It seemed that throughout history, some hidden hand was constantly stirring nations, creating division, a cause for conflict, to fight with each other – for no apparent cause other than “to divide and conquer”. As this was a feature of most ages and most locations on Earth, it was “quite logical” to assume that throughout time and location, it wasn’t a group of people, like the “Illuminati” (the favourite culprits of some scenarios) that could be this hidden hand; this could “logically” only be an extraterrestrial civilisation, controlling Mankind – Big Brother, but an alien one.
Certain factions of Christians, of course, will note that “Mankind’s desire to do evil” is actually not directed by an evil alien, but by “the Devil”… and Star Wars followers might call it “The Dark Side of the Force”… or for every positive, there needs to be a negative (ying-yang), etc. Rather than seeing it as an innate danger in the experience that is life, Bramley sees it as a plan, executed by a group of alien beings.

He labelled this “hidden hand” “The Brotherhood”, a group of humans with enormous power, but who themselves were nevertheless controlled by our oppressive extra-terrestrial ringmaster. Bramley also felt that organised (a.k.a. institutional) religion itself was a direct cause for most of these wars. Its purpose was to restrict thinking and to act as a cause of war. Religion therefore, rather than a tool to expand the concept of God and a philosophy, was an instrument of control – it bound people, rather than set them free. Furthermore, the institutions behind religions could be used to seed war. He argued that after the Renaissance, “Puritan austerity and glorification of war meant that wars once again became bloodier.” It was religion that created the Bonfire of the Vanities in Florence, which was Savonarollo – a monk’s – response to the “think freely” movement that marked the town and made it into the centre of the Renaissance. Religious wars are about who is wrong and who is right… and each side believes they are right and the other is wrong… As there is no way of knowing, it is the perfect stakes in each war to be played. God never descends to tell both sides on which side he actually is on – the most likely option being on neither?

We needed to ask, Bramley preached, what particular purpose a bloody war served – and why religion, “which will set us free” and “make us spiritual” is actually such an instrument of evil – death, destruction, the most brutal and horrible acts, etc.
Echoing “Report from Iron Mountain”, Bramley argued that war is an effective tool for political and social control over a large population. For sure. But we had to go beyond. Bramley felt that very few realised or wanted to look at who started these wars and for what purpose, simply because they were not looking at the world from the proper perspective. “Most comprehensive history books contain brief references to this type of manipulative third party activity. It is no secret, for example, that prior to the American Revolution, France had sent intelligence agents to America to stir up colonial discontent against the British Crown. It is also no secret that the German military had aided Lenin and the Bolsheviks in the Russian revolution of 1917. Throughout all of history, people and nations have benefited from, and have contributed to, the existence of other people’s conflicts.” In short, a conflict between two tribes normally came about when a third party was stirring behind the scene. The worst rifts have been caused when an uninvited party decides to act as intermediary… whipping both sides into a frenzy, from which an “entente cordial” can never be attained.

Bramley noted that it was “The Brotherhood” who always, under whatever guise, tried to take control of the world – the stirrer behind the scene – which held Mankind slave to his own. How Mankind in recent centuries was made into a slave nation was illustrated by the role of the central banks, with Bramley focusing on the “first” central bank, the Bank of England. This was created when financiers put together a base of 72,000 pounds of actual gold and silver. The government then sanctioned the creation of paper money, many times in excess of the true value that the bank had in real silver or gold. By issuing notes valued at 16 2/3 times the base, the bank was able to make a loan to England of 1,200,000 pounds in paper money. The yearly interest rate was 8 1/3 %, which equalled 100,000 pounds. This amounted to a profit of 28,000 pounds, or 39% in just one year. A scam if ever there was one! Small wonder then that it still took 22 years after the Bank of England’s creation before an identical bank was set up in France in 1716!
But rather than a quick “get rich” scheme, Bramley sees the central bank’s purpose as putting the government into debt, and to be the government’s major creditor. In short, those in control of the central bank, could continuously hold the government hostage, and what else could the government do but in turn hold the people economically hostage? Or how a small elite can control the world economy, without anyone noticing – quite often printing nice drawings of famous people on the paper bills, as if they do belong to the Queen or King – or put the White House on one side, as if it’s the President is issuing the notes himself.
Of course, the technique of the central bank was not new; it had been used by the Knights Templar, whose demise came about when Philip Le Bel (“the Fair”) in France realised he owed them a tremendous debt; the mere abolishment of the order meant that all his debts had suddenly been cleared. The same principle, but always with different actors. For Bramley, this was less evidence that “money making schemes” were copied by other people trying to get rich, but rather that someone was making sure we always were the victim of such schemes.

In the final analysis, his book, despite its popularity, was never able to prove it. But it showed powerful examples of the central bank scams, it showed how contradictory humanity really is, and does indeed seem to be tricked into working in one direction, even though neither side really wants that outcome.
Unfortunately, Bramley went for an invisible culprit. Even if the aliens are the ones to blame, where are they? They remain “truly hidden”, in spite of UFOs. UFOs are lights in the sky; they are not evidence that aliens have a hand in our destiny. The biggest problem of the book is that it projected our – Mankind’s – own mistakes onto non-existing oppressors. From the very beginning, Mankind has subjected itself to repeated behaviour that it continues to display, whereas we should have outgrown it by now. Instead, we continue to fall for outward appearances such as skin and religion and see them as causes for division… We fail to search for common denominators and make Mankind an all-inclusive society… The lesson of Eden is not to query who the Serpent is… There will always be a serpent… the lesson to learn is that Adam and Eve got along great… until a third party came along and started meddling with it… and it all went wrong from there… The serpent was there; one day, it opened its mouth. And Adam and Eve fell for it… Literally…