Arkon Daraul
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Arkon Daraul is the name of an author on occult subjects. He wrote "Secret Societies: Yesterday and Today" (1961, reissued in 1969 as "A History of Secret Societies"), a popular occult/conspiracy work dealing with, among other topics, the Assassins, the Knights Templar, Rosicrucians, Chinese Triads and the Carbonari. In 1966 he published "Witches and Sorcerers" through Citadel Press.
"Daraul" is almost certainly a pseudonym, as no individual with that name has been identified. According to Gurdjieff's biographer James Moore, Daraul is probably Idries Shah, who stated that he sometimes used pseudonyms. [Moore, James "Neo-Sufism: The Case of Idries Shah" , in "Telos" Volume 6, Number 4, Autumn.] However common and justified this assumption may be, no "real" evidence exists to support it. If Idries Shah is in fact Daraul, the pseudonym might have been used because the fifth chapter deals with Sufism, a movement with which Shah identified and on which he wrote extensively under his own name. This chapter does in fact appear to betray personal, familiar acquaintance with Sufi meetings. However, in other chapters "Daraul" claims to have been present at the meetings of other societies as well, including those of the colorfully-named "Order of the Peacock Angel".
Robert Anton Wilson's "The Illuminatus! Trilogy" refers to Daraul's book often, drawing many links between the Bavarian Illuminati and the Assassins of Hasan-i Sabbah.
"A History of Secret Societies" lists very few sources. Many ideas in the book are not found anywhere else. One example is the idea that the top rank of the thugs didn't actually believe in Kali. It claims they used their religion to make themselves gods.
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