Between February 1993 and September 1996, shortwave broadcaster William (Bill) Cooper produced a long-form radio series called Mystery Babylon on his program The Hour of the Time. Across 42 numbered episodes and roughly 272,000 spoken words, Cooper argued that an ancient religious tradition, which he called the Mystery Religion of Babylon, had survived from antiquity inside a chain of secret societies. This page is the complete index to that series: every episode, every original air date, and a one-paragraph summary of each broadcast. It is a study companion, not an endorsement. We document what Cooper claimed and point you to the original audio and sources so you can evaluate the material yourself.

What Is the Mystery Babylon Series?

Mystery Babylon is a sequence of broadcasts within The Hour of the Time, the shortwave program Cooper hosted on station WWCR out of Nashville, Tennessee. Unlike his news commentary episodes, the Mystery Babylon broadcasts were structured as a course. Cooper read at length from older texts, many of them in the public domain, including works by Albert Pike, Manly P. Hall, and Arkon Daraul, and built an argument across episodes: that sun worship and the initiatory cults of the ancient world passed their doctrines down through the Gnostics, the Assassins, the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians, and Freemasonry, and that this lineage shapes modern institutions. He took the name for the series from the book of Revelation, where a figure labeled Mystery, Babylon the Great appears in chapters 17 and 18. We cover the biblical passage itself, and how Cooper’s use of the phrase differs from the traditional interpretations, on our page about Mystery Babylon in Revelation.

It is worth stating plainly: Cooper’s lineage thesis is a claim, not settled history. Mainstream historians generally treat the groups he discusses as distinct movements rather than one continuous organization. Where the series conflicts with the historical record, our individual episode guides note it. For background on the broadcaster himself, including his military service, his book Behold a Pale Horse, and his death in 2001, see our biography, Who Was William Cooper?

How to Listen to Mystery Babylon

The complete series is freely available on the Internet Archive. You can stream every episode at the William Cooper Mystery Babylon collection on archive.org. We embed the same archive.org players on our individual episode pages; we do not host or distribute the audio ourselves. Cooper’s estate maintains the official Hour of the Time site at hourofthetime.com, which is the place to go for official transcripts, CDs, and other materials. This site is an independent study companion and is not affiliated with the estate.

A note on listening order: the series is sequential by design. The early broadcasts establish the vocabulary (initiation, the profane, the Osirian cycle, astro-theology) that the rest of the series leans on. If you are starting fresh, begin with MB00: The Dawn of Man and proceed in order. If you only want the most-discussed standalone broadcasts, the episodes on Skull and Bones and the Templars and the Assassins are the usual entry points.

Where Does the Name Come From?

The phrase comes from Revelation 17:5 in the King James Version, where a woman seen in a vision carries the name "MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH." Christian interpreters have read that figure in several ways over two thousand years. Cooper used the phrase differently: in the series, Mystery Babylon is his label for the ancient mystery religion itself and the secret societies he claimed carried it forward. Our companion page on Mystery Babylon in Revelation 17 and 18 explains the biblical text, surveys the major interpretive traditions, and shows exactly where Cooper’s usage departs from them.

How to Use This Site

• This page is the master index. Every episode is listed below with its original air date and a summary.
• Episode guides go deeper on individual broadcasts: key claims, the primary sources Cooper read from (linked to public-domain scans), glossary terms, discussion questions, and the embedded archive.org audio. Guides are rolling out in series order; episodes without a link below are coming soon.
• Topic hubs collect episodes by subject, such as Freemasonry and secret societies, for readers researching one thread rather than the whole series.
• Tools include a timeline of every dated claim in the series, useful for checking Cooper’s chronology against the historical record.
• Sources: the series is built on quotations from older books. Our sources and bibliography hub traces each one to an original scan so you can read what Cooper was reading.

One caution before the index. Throughout this site we use framing like "Cooper claimed" and "the series argues" deliberately. The claims are his; the documentation work is ours; the judgment is yours.

The Complete Mystery Babylon Episode Index

All 42 episodes, in broadcast order. Air dates are the original WWCR broadcast dates. The numbering runs MB00 through MB42 with no episode 33; the gap is in the source numbering as the series circulates, not an omission on our part.

Part One: The Ancient Mystery Religion (February 1993)

MB00: The Dawn of Man (aired February 11, 1993). Cooper opens the series with an extended symbolic reading of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, which he claimed was a coded message to initiates of the mystery schools. The episode introduces the core ideas the whole series builds on: sun worship as the first religion, the gift of intellect attributed to Lucifer, and a priesthood that Cooper said has ruled from the shadows since prehistory.

MB01: Intro to Mysteries (The Sun of God) (aired February 12, 1993). An introduction to what Cooper called astro-theology. He argued that the worship of the sun, personified as a dying and rising deity, sits underneath the ancient religions of Egypt and the Near East, and that solar symbolism survives in modern religious imagery. The episode establishes the vocabulary of exoteric and esoteric meaning used throughout the series.

MB02: Antiquities (Egyptian Magic) (aired February 15, 1993). Cooper read from older scholarship on Egyptian magic and temple religion, presenting the Egyptian priesthood as the model for later secret orders: a class that guarded knowledge, staged initiations, and held power as advisors to rulers. The episode treats ancient Egypt as the institutional template for everything that follows in the series.

MB03: Osiris and Isis, Part I (aired February 16, 1993). The first of two episodes on the Osirian cycle, the Egyptian myth of Osiris, Isis, and Horus. Cooper recounted the myth and argued that its symbols, the sun, the moon, the obelisk, and the resurrected god, form the symbolic alphabet of the mystery schools and recur in the iconography of later societies.

MB04: Osiris and Isis, Part II (aired February 17, 1993). The conclusion of the Osiris material. Cooper continued through the myth’s later episodes and their claimed esoteric meanings, connecting the legend of the slain and dismembered god to initiation rituals in which the candidate symbolically dies and is raised. This death-and-rebirth pattern becomes one of the series’ recurring proofs of continuity between ancient and modern orders.

Part Two: From the Lodge to the New Age (February 1993)

MB05: The New World Order and Freemasonry (aired February 18, 1993). The first episode to bridge the ancient material to the modern era. Cooper argued that Freemasonry is the principal modern carrier of the mystery religion, reading from both Masonic and anti-Masonic writers to make the case. This broadcast anchors our Freemasonry topic hub, where the series’ other Masonic episodes are collected.

MB06: Maitreya (aired February 19, 1993). Cooper examined the public announcements surrounding Maitreya, the figure promoted by British author Benjamin Creme as a coming world teacher. The series treats the Maitreya campaign as evidence of an organized effort to prepare the public for a new world religion. Full study guide coming soon.

MB07: Ecumenism (aired February 22, 1993). An episode on the ecumenical and interfaith movements. Cooper claimed that efforts to unite denominations and religions were not grassroots developments but steps toward a single managed world religion, a theme the series returns to in its New Age episodes. Full study guide coming soon.

MB08: Initiation (aired February 24, 1993). A study of initiation itself: the staged ordeal, the oath, the graded revelation of secrets. Drawing on writers such as Manly P. Hall, Cooper described how mystery school initiation worked and argued that the same structure survives in the degree systems of modern fraternal orders. Full study guide coming soon.

MB09: Gnosticism (aired February 25, 1993). Cooper presented Gnosticism as a crucial link in his chain: a movement that, in his telling, carried the doctrines of the mysteries through the early Christian centuries under a Christian vocabulary. The episode covers Gnostic cosmology and its inversion of the orthodox reading of Eden. Full study guide coming soon.

Part Three: Assassins, Templars, and Secret Orders (March 1993)

MB10: The Assassins (aired March 1, 1993). The story of Hasan-i Sabbah and the Nizari Ismaili sect known to the Crusaders as the Assassins, drawn largely from Arkon Daraul’s 1961 book A History of Secret Societies. Cooper presented the order’s mountain fortress at Alamut and its graded initiation as a medieval relay station for the ancient mysteries. Full study guide coming soon.

MB11: The Templars and the Assassins (aired March 2, 1993). Cooper argued that the Knights Templar absorbed secret doctrines through contact with the Assassins during the Crusades, transforming a Catholic military order into an initiatory society. Historians dispute this transmission thesis, and our guide notes where; the claim itself is central to the lineage the series proposes. See also the Templars and Assassins topic hub.

MB12: The End of the Templars (aired March 3, 1993). The suppression of the Templars beginning in 1307 under King Philip IV of France, the trials, and the execution of Jacques de Molay. Cooper recounted the order’s fall and endorsed the tradition that surviving Templars went underground, carrying their doctrines into later societies. Full study guide coming soon.

MB13: The Skull and Bones (aired March 8, 1993). The series’ best-known standalone episode. Cooper examined the Order of Skull and Bones at Yale University, its founding in 1832, its incorporated arm the Russell Trust Association, and the prominence of its members in American government and finance, drawing on the research of Antony Sutton. The episode argues the order functions as an American chapter of the older secret society network.

MB14: The Roshaniya (aired March 9, 1993). An episode on the Roshaniya, the sixteenth-century Afghan movement founded by Bayezid Ansari and known as the Illuminated Ones, again drawn from Daraul. Cooper presented the group’s eight-degree initiation system as a precursor and parallel to the Bavarian Illuminati. Full study guide coming soon.

Part Four: Sources and Symbols (March 1993)

MB15: Quotes by Freemasons (aired March 10, 1993). An episode built almost entirely from quotation. Cooper read passages from Masonic authors, including Albert Pike’s Morals and Dogma, arguing that the fraternity’s own literature confirms an esoteric doctrine behind the public charity work. Our sources hub traces each quoted passage to its original edition. Full study guide coming soon.

MB16: Sun Worship (aired March 30, 1993). A return to the solar thesis of the early episodes, surveying sun worship across cultures and eras. Cooper catalogued solar symbols, the wreath, the halo, the cross of the zodiac, and claimed their persistence in modern religious and civic imagery proves the old religion never died. Full study guide coming soon.

MB17: Bibliography (aired March 31, 1993). An unusual broadcast in which Cooper walked through his reading list for the series, title by title, telling listeners to verify his claims for themselves. This episode is the seed of our entire sources and bibliography section, which links each book he named to a readable scan where one exists. Full study guide coming soon.

Part Five: Lucifer and the Rose Cross (May 1993)

MB19: Fundamental Laws (68th Convocation of the Rose Cross Order) (aired May 11, 1993). Cooper read from an early twentieth-century Rosicrucian convocation text, presenting its cosmology and laws as a candid statement of mystery school doctrine published by the initiates themselves. The reading style of this episode, long primary-source excerpts with commentary, becomes the series’ dominant format from here on. Full study guide coming soon.

MB18: Lucifer Worship (aired May 12, 1993). The episode in which Cooper stated his central religious claim most directly: that the doctrine at the apex of the mystery schools is the veneration of Lucifer as the bringer of intellect. He assembled quotations from occult and Masonic literature to support the charge. Our guide examines those quotations, including the disputed ones, against their original sources. Full study guide coming soon.

Part Six: The William Morgan Affair (May 1993)

MB20: William Morgan Interview, Part I (aired May 14, 1993). The first of three episodes on the 1826 Morgan affair, in which William Morgan of Batavia, New York disappeared after announcing he would publish Freemasonry’s ritual. The case ignited America’s Anti-Masonic movement. Cooper presented the material in an extended dramatized interview format. Full study guide coming soon.

MB21: William Morgan Interview, Part II (aired May 17, 1993). The Morgan narrative continues through the abduction, the trials that followed, and the public backlash that briefly made Anti-Masonry a national political party. Cooper treated the affair as documented proof that the fraternity enforced its oaths. Full study guide coming soon.

MB22: William Morgan Interview, Part III (aired May 18, 1993). The conclusion of the Morgan material, covering the aftermath of the affair and its suppression in later histories, as Cooper saw it. The three Morgan episodes are collected, with the historical record alongside, in our Freemasonry hub. Full study guide coming soon.

Part Seven: Interviews and Readings (June 1993 to January 1994)

MB23: Jordan Maxwell Interview (aired June 17, 1993). A long conversation with researcher Jordan Maxwell on religious symbolism, etymology, and the solar origins of religious imagery. The interview restates the series’ astro-theology material in dialogue form. Full study guide coming soon.

MB24: America’s Assignment, Part 1 (aired June 30, 1993). The first of three episodes drawing on Manly P. Hall’s writing about a secret destiny for America. Cooper read Hall’s account of an esoteric plan, predating the republic, to make the new world the seat of a philosophic empire, and presented it as an insider’s confession. Full study guide coming soon.

MB25: America’s Assignment, Part II (aired July 1, 1993). The Hall material continues through the colonial and revolutionary period, including the claimed influence of secret societies on the founding generation and the symbolism of the Great Seal. Full study guide coming soon.

MB26: America’s Assignment, Part III (aired August 11, 1993). The conclusion of the America’s Assignment readings, carrying the secret destiny thesis toward the modern era and tying it back to the series’ central lineage argument. Full study guide coming soon.

MB27: Letter About Masonry (In the Coils of the Coming Conflict) (aired August 17, 1993). Cooper read a lengthy nineteenth-century style anti-Masonic letter describing the fraternity’s claimed grip on courts, commerce, and politics from the standpoint of an opponent. The episode functions as a period document of Anti-Masonic argument. Full study guide coming soon.

MB28: Lucifer 2000 (Jordan Maxwell and Anthony Hilder) (aired August 18, 1993). The longest broadcast in the series. Cooper presented recorded material featuring Jordan Maxwell and Anthony Hilder arguing that Luciferian doctrine had moved into popular culture and public life under New Age branding. Full study guide coming soon.

MB29: The Godmakers and Bo Gritz (aired October 13, 1993). An episode examining the doctrines of the Latter-day Saint movement through material associated with the film The Godmakers, alongside discussion of decorated veteran and political figure Bo Gritz. Cooper’s interest, as throughout the series, was in claimed connections between religious institutions and secret orders. Full study guide coming soon.

MB30: United Nations Meditation Room (aired October 18, 1993). A close reading of the design and symbolism of the meditation room at UN headquarters in New York: the windowless wedge-shaped space, the iron ore block at its center, and the abstract mural. Cooper presented an extended analysis claiming the room functions as a temple of the new world religion. Full study guide coming soon.

MB31: Ice: The Ultimate Disaster (Tom Valentine) (aired December 3, 1993). Cooper presented radio material from Tom Valentine discussing the book 5/5/2000: Ice, the Ultimate Disaster and its pole shift catastrophe scenario. The episode sits apart from the main lineage argument and reflects the series’ interest in millennial expectation as a managed phenomenon. Full study guide coming soon.

MB32: Letter by a Humanist Police Chief (Aid and Abet Newsletter) (aired January 3, 1994). Working from material associated with officer Jack McLamb’s Aid and Abet newsletter, Cooper read a letter attributed to a police chief espousing humanist convictions, presenting it as evidence of a philosophical capture of public institutions. Full study guide coming soon.

Part Eight: Vatican II, Babylon, and the Rose Cross College (January to February 1994)

MB34: Secret Societies and Vatican II (aired January 12, 1994). Cooper examined claims that secret societies influenced the Second Vatican Council and the liturgical changes that followed it, reading from traditionalist Catholic and anti-Masonic sources. Our guide places those claims beside the documented history of the council. Full study guide coming soon. There is no episode MB33 in the series numbering.

MB35: Christianity to Babylon (From Babylon to Christianity) (aired February 8, 1994). An episode tracing, in Cooper’s telling, the migration of Babylonian religious forms into Christian practice, in the tradition of Alexander Hislop’s The Two Babylons. Modern scholarship is sharply critical of Hislop’s method, and our guide says so; the episode remains key to understanding why Cooper chose the series’ name. Full study guide coming soon.

MB36: Rose Cross College, Part I (aired February 22, 1994). The first of three episodes of readings from Rosicrucian lecture material. Cooper presented the order’s own teachings on cosmology, evolution of consciousness, and the coming age as primary evidence of the doctrine he had been describing secondhand. Full study guide coming soon.

MB37: Rose Cross College, Part II (aired February 22, 1994). The Rosicrucian readings continue, with Cooper’s commentary connecting the lecture material to the initiatory structures covered earlier in the series. Full study guide coming soon.

MB38: Rose Cross College, Part III (aired February 24, 1994). The conclusion of the Rose Cross College material. The three episodes together anchor our Rosicrucians topic hub. Full study guide coming soon.

Part Nine: The Occult and the Third Reich (February to March 1994)

MB39: The Occult and the Third Reich, Part 1 (The Enigma of the Swastika) (aired February 28, 1994). The first of three episodes presenting documentary material on occult currents around the rise of National Socialism, beginning with the history and appropriation of the swastika. This site treats these episodes strictly as history-of-the-occult documentation, with academic counter-sources cited in the guides. Full study guide coming soon.

MB40: The Occult and the Third Reich, Part 2 (The SS, Blood and Soil) (aired March 1, 1994). The documentary material continues with the SS, its rituals and racial mysticism, and the blood and soil ideology. Cooper’s stated purpose was to show what organized occultism looks like when it captures a state. Full study guide coming soon.

MB41: The Occult and the Third Reich, Part 3 (Himmler the Mystic) (aired March 2, 1994). The conclusion, centered on Heinrich Himmler’s mysticism and the cultic apparatus he built around the SS, including Wewelsburg castle. The three episodes are collected with scholarly context in our Occult History of the Third Reich hub. Full study guide coming soon.

Part Ten: The Final Broadcast (1996)

MB42: Darkness (aired September 20, 1996). After a gap of two and a half years, Cooper closed the series with a final reflective broadcast. Shorter and more somber than the rest, it returns to the series’ opening themes of light, darkness, and knowledge, and ends the project where it began: with Cooper telling listeners to do their own research. Full study guide coming soon.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many episodes are in Bill Cooper’s Mystery Babylon series?

There are 42 episodes as the series circulates, numbered MB00 through MB42 with no episode 33. They aired on shortwave station WWCR between February 11, 1993 and September 20, 1996, with the bulk broadcast in 1993 and early 1994.

Where can I listen to the Mystery Babylon series for free?

The full series is streamable at no cost on the Internet Archive in the William Cooper Mystery Babylon collection. We embed those same players on our episode pages. We do not host audio files and do not offer downloads.

Are there official transcripts of Mystery Babylon?

This site does not publish transcripts, in whole or in part. For official materials, including transcripts and recordings offered by Cooper’s estate, visit hourofthetime.com, the official Hour of the Time site. Our episode guides are original summaries and analysis written from study of the broadcasts.

What order should I listen to Mystery Babylon in?

Broadcast order. The series was structured as a course, and Cooper built later arguments on terms defined in the early episodes. Start with MB00: The Dawn of Man. If you want a single representative episode first, most listeners start with MB13: The Skull and Bones.

Is the Mystery Babylon series historically accurate?

The series mixes documented history, contested interpretation, and claims that mainstream historians reject. Cooper read from real books, many of which you can verify in our sources section, but his connecting thesis of one continuous secret religion is not accepted scholarship. Our guides flag where his account and the historical record diverge.

What does the name Mystery Babylon mean?

It is a phrase from Revelation 17:5 in the King James Bible. Cooper borrowed it as a label for the ancient mystery religion he believed survives in secret societies. The biblical figure and its traditional interpretations are covered on our page Mystery Babylon in Revelation.