Skull & Bones was founded at Yale College in New Haven, Connecticut in 1832. It is the oldest and most prestigious of Yale's seven secret societies. Among the others are: Scroll & Key, Book & Snake, Wolf's Head, Eliahu, and Berzelius. These fraternities serve as a recruiting ground for young men destined for careers in government, law, finance and other influential sectors of American life. According to virtually all the available biographical data on its early members, the money required to sustain the secret order's campus affairs and its broader role in placing its members into key positions of influence upon their graduation from Yale, derived from the opium trade in the Far East. That trade was set up by the British East India Company and was flourishing by the time the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783 ending the American War for Independence. The Skull and Bones believes that on the night of initiation, the initiate "dies to the world and be born again into the Order..." (Esquire Magazine, September, 1977, p. 89). Remember Hitler's belief that he had been born anew after his ritualistic initiation and training? This term is a common one in occultism. During the 1988 Presidential Campaign, a TV reporter asked Vice-President Bush if he were a Christian. Bush initially stammered, but then said, "if you mean born again, then, yes, I am a Christian". One of the most sobering facets of this counterfeit born again initiation ritual is that the initiate swears to an allegiance to the Secret Order that transcends any allegiance later in life. Christian author Bill Cooper captures this disturbing fact most succinctly, "...Members of the Order (Skull and Bones) take an oath that absolves them from any allegiance to any nation or king or government or constitution, and that includes the negating of any subsequent oath which they may be required to take. They swear allegiance only to the Order and its goal of a New World Order...according to the oath Bush took when he was initiated into Skull and Bones, his oath of office as President of the United States means nothing." (Cooper, Behold A Pale Horse, p. 81-82). ..GO BACK TO SLEEP NOW.. http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=55335