Utilizing the secrets of INTRALINEAR READING, and drawing upon the forbidden sciences of ERYCHOMENTOLOGY as we do, much is revealed to us. With knowledge comes a heavy burden. A burden which we now share with you, our unworthy students.

From whence came the knowledge? The forces behind the CIA's New Age Movement would have us believe that wisdom comes from a great collective unconscious, a series of universal archetypes, or a zeitgeist floating beneath the surface of everyman. A careful study of history, or a glance at the swinish oaf stuffing his face with Pringles in the cubicle behind you, should quickly dispel that notion.

Behind every great idea stands a great man, a man of vision and capacity, a man who will not allow the evils of unnatural vice or vegetarian foods to taint his body. Such a man was J. Hiram Bloom.

Born in 1845 beneath the soft limestone cliffs of Missouri, to a family of Seventh Day Adventists, Bloom quickly rejected the teachings of his parents. At 15, he left town under a cloud, only a step ahead of sheriff's deputies sent to hang him. We do not know why Bloom left his comfortable existence. Perhaps he killed a man. Perhaps Bloom's strange ideas upset the respectable folk of his village more than could be borne. We know only that he left.

The rest is history.

He said of the experience, "A man is a product of his nature, not his environment, but I knew even in my youth if I remained a farmer, I would never have developed myself to the levels I later achieved through the science of Merlinism."

Bloom never saw his family again, nor did he care to. "They are dead to me, as are all who reject the teachings."

Much of Bloom's subsequent career is well-known. In the turmoil produced by the War between the States, he found his identity in the Confederate army. Through successive campaigns with John Mosby's Rangers, Bloom rose from lowly private soldier to brevet colonel. By 1865, Bloom had been promoted to Major General, at 20 the youngest general officer in either army, commanding all rebel forces west of the Mississippi. (It is said that Bloom's meteoric rise might have taken him to greater commands, but for his insistence that the Confederate cause was lost so long as the South held slaves.)

Like many Confederate officers, Bloom was forced to flee his country to escape Union vengeance. Traveling incognito to San Francisco, Bloom purchased a ship with a cache of confederate gold. Over the next ten years, he amassed a fortune in the South China Sea, as a trader of trinkets (and it is rumored, a mercenary captain to various Chinese warlords).

It was during the Boxer Rebellion that Bloom met his destiny. Hiding from the Triads in the besieged British quarter of Shanghai, Bloom took charge of the compound's primitive hospital (his experience over 20 years of continuous warfare having provided the equivalent of a medical education).

It was in the Shanghai hospital that Bloom came upon a wounded German merchant, by name Markus Schittlebaum. In delirium, Schittlebaum claimed to be a renegade crusader of the Ancient Order of the Knights Templar, who had escaped the Turk at Acre by burrowing under the walls. Humoring the dying man, Bloom asked Schittlebaum to tell of his subsequent adventures.

Schittlebaum asserted that he had lived 700 years, preserving himself using a method known to the Ancients of his order. Due to factional conflict, he explained, he was now cut off from his supply of life-extending Lumus Lacramaeus. Schittlebaum sailed east hoping to obtain a supply from the Lamas of Tibet, but was attacked by the Boxers of Shanghai, acting on orders from the Templars' eastern allies, the monks of the Shao-Lin Temple.

In his last words, Schittlebaum revealed the secret Templar plan to immanentize the Eschaton. The psychic power of all lesser men would be stolen, enslaving mankind to the Templars and their secret masters. Bloom found the old German's raving most impenetrable, but recorded it faithfully for further study. To his surprise, after consulting the obscure Book of Enoch, Bloom found the old German had spoken the truth.

Bloom's writings are too dangerous to be publish, but their substance may be found in the Book of Enoch. Though long taken to be apocryphal, within the lines of this hoary tome may be found the Templar plan for the enslavement of humanity. This is but one of the secrets revealed by Schittlebaum. Further publication must await the breaking of the Templars and their modern outreach, the CIA.

After leaving Shanghai, Bloom worked in a series of menial jobs in order to hide himself from the Temple's wrath. He retired to a small farm outside of Bozeman, Montana, honing the techniques of Intralinear Reading and studying the word. His doctrine of Merlinism has since spread to all corners of the world. Bloom's followers have continued his endeavours, culminating in the splendor and majesty of merlin.org.

We must not succumb to hubris. The work of the Merlinist can never be finished, until man's innate psychic strength is restored, or he is destroyed in the attempt.