10.06
Indian scientists are occasionally rumored to be members of the Nine Unknown Men, and from time to time, if a Westerner should visit India and then do something astounding, he is considered to have had their help (as was the case with Pope Sylvester II, and also Alexandre Emile John Yersin, who knew Louis Pasteur and Pierre Paul Emile Roux, who respectively created vaccines for rabies and diphtheria).
Pope Sylvester II
There is an extraordinary case of one of the most mysterious figures in Western history: the Pope Sylvester II, known also by the name of Gerbert d’Aurillac. Born in the Auvergne in 920 (d. 1003) Gerbert was a Benedictine monk, professor at the University of Rheims, Archbishop of Ravenna and Pope by the grace of Ortho III. He is supposed to have spent some time in Spain, after which a mysterious voyage brought him to India where he is reputed to have acquired various kinds of skills which stupified his entourage. For example, he possessed in his palace a bronze head which answered yes or no to questions put to it on politics or the general position of Christianity. According to Sylvester II this was a perfectly simple operation corresponding to a two-figure calculation, and was performed by an automaton similar to our modern binary machines. This “magic” head was destroyed when Sylvester died, and all the information it imparted carefully concealed.
In the cybernetics journal, “Computers and Automation” of October 1954, the following comment appeared: “We must suppose that he (Sylvester) was possessed of extraordinary knowledge and the most remarkable mechanical skill and inventiveness. This speaking head must have been fashioned ‘under a certain conjunction of stars occurring at the exact moment when all the planets were starting on their courses.’ Neither the past, nor the present nor the future entered into it, since this invention apparently far exceeded in its scope its rival, the perverse “mirror on the wall” of the Queen, the precursor of our modern electronic brain. Naturally it was widely asserted that Gerbert was only able to produce such a machine head because he was in league with the Devil and had sworn eternal allegiance to him.”
Louis Jacolliot
It was not until the nineteenth century that this mystery was referred to again in the works of the French writer Jacolliot. Jacolliot was French Consul at Calcutta under the Second Empire. He wrote some quite important prophetic works, comparable, if not superior to those of Jules Verne. He also left several books dealing with the great secrets of the human race. A great many occult writers, prophets and miracle-workers have borrowed from his writings which, completely neglected in France, are well known in Russia. Jacolliot states categorically that the Society of Nine did actually exist. And, to make it all the more intriguing, he refers in the this connection to certain techniques, unimaginable in 1860, such as, for example, the liberation of energy, sterilization by radiation and psychological warfare.
Alexandre Emile John Yersin
Yersin, one of Pasteur and de Roux’s closest collaborators, was entrusted, it seems, with certain biological secrets when he visited Madras in 1890, and following the instructions he received was able to prepare a serum against cholera and the plague. The Nine came to the rescue of the civilization from these deadly diseases which they knew if not kiboshed would bring the human race to extinction.