Since the beginning of time, people have had questions. Who am I? Why am I here? What actually happens when I die? How does energy really move through the world, and through me? Every culture, every era, has produced its own seekers asking some version of the same handful of questions.

For most of history, the deeper answers weren't written in books anyone could pick up. They were guarded inside mystery schools — small circles where the sciences of energy, consciousness, ritual and healing were passed from teacher to student, in person, and nowhere else. Pythagoras studied in one. So did Plato. The knowledge survived precisely because it was protected, handed only to those ready to carry it responsibly.

The lineage of King Salomon

The tradition I carry traces back through one such line: the lineage of King Salomon, handed teacher to student, unbroken, for 3,000 years. For almost all of that history, it stayed closed to the public entirely — one of the deepest currents of the mystery school tradition, known only to those personally initiated into it.

When the doors opened

That changed in 1997. Gudni Gudnason opened the doors of this lineage to the public for the first time in its 3,000-year history, and built what would become the Modern Mystery School — one of the only mystery schools ever to do this. He carried its keys alone for two decades: teaching, traveling, training the first generation of practitioners, before doing something the lineage had never done before.

A lineage isn't a story about the past. It's a live wire — still carrying current, still reaching a hand toward the next person ready to take it.

Those who hold it today

Since 2017, the lineage rests on three shoulders instead of one — the Third Order, so the light never depends on a single person again. Gudni Gudnason remains its Founder and Hierophant, teacher and storyteller, the bridge between the ancient and the modern. Sovereign Ipsissimus Dave Lanyon, in the lineage since 2004, has driven the school's growth into more than 50 countries, leading the path of the spiritual warrior from the school's Western headquarters in Toronto. Sovereign Ipsissimus Hideto Nakagome, in the lineage since 2000, is rooted in Japan's esoteric traditions and heads the Ensofic Ray Institute — carrying the school's deep healing current with a lightness that belies how much power sits behind it.

Alongside the Third Order sits a Council of Twelve — high initiates from East and West who confirm and help carry the direction of the school. You can read more about all of them, and see their full stories, on the leadership page of this site.

Why it still matters

Opening the doors didn't mean lowering the standard. Every practitioner in this lineage — myself included — trains in person, gets certified, and re-certifies annually, answering to the same lineage that has carried this knowledge for three thousand years. What was once reserved for kings and priests is now something you can actually walk into, here in Prague, without needing to be born into it.

The questions people have carried since the beginning of time haven't gone anywhere. What's changed is that, for the first time in 3,000 years, the door to real answers is actually open.

Explore the Modern Mystery School