CHAPTER III.

“KING.--Let us from point to point this story know.”

--_All’s Well That Ends Well._--Act v., Scene 3.

“He is the One, self-proceeding; and from Him all things proceed.

And in them He Himself exerts His activity; no mortal

BEHOLDS HIM, but HE beholds all!”--_Orphic Hymn._

“And Athens, O Athena, is thy own!

Great Goddess hear! and on my darkened mind

Pour thy pure light in measure unconfined;

That sacred light, O all-proceeding Queen,

Which beams eternal from thy face serene.

My soul, while wand’ring on the earth, inspire

With thy own blessed and impulsive fire!”

--PROCLUS; TAYLOR: _To Minerva_.

“Now _faith_ is the substance of things.... By faith the harlot

Rahab perished not with them that believed not, when she had

_received the spies in peace_.”--_Hebrews_ xi. 1, 31.

“What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man hath faith, and have

not works? _Can_ FAITH _save him_?... Likewise also was not Rahab

the harlot _justified by works_, when she had received the

messengers, and had sent them out another way?”--_James_ ii. 14, 25.

Clement describes Basilides, the Gnostic, as “a philosopher devoted

to the contemplation of divine things.” This very appropriate

expression may be applied to many of the founders of the more

important sects which later were all engulfed in one--that stupendous

compound of unintelligible dogmas enforced by Irenæus, Tertullian,

and others, which is now termed Christianity. _If these must be

called heresies, then early Christianity itself must be included

in the number._ Basilides and Valentinus preceded Irenæus and

Tertullian; and the two latter Fathers had less facts than the

two former Gnostics to show that their _heresy_ was plausible.

Neither divine right nor truth brought about the triumph of their

Christianity; fate alone was propitious. We can assert, with entire

plausibility, that there is not one of all these sects--Kabalism,

Judaism, and our present Christianity included--but sprung from

the two main branches of that one mother-trunk, the once universal

religion, which antedated the Vedaic ages--we speak of that

prehistoric Buddhism which merged later into Brahmanism.

The religion which the primitive teaching of the early few apostles

most resembled--a religion preached by Jesus himself--is the elder of

these two, Buddhism. The latter as taught in its primitive purity,

and carried to perfection by the last of the Buddhas, Gautama, based

its moral ethics on three fundamental principles. It alleged that

1, every thing existing, exists from natural causes; 2, that virtue

brings its own reward, and vice and sin their own punishment; and,

3, that the state of man in this world is probationary. We might

add that on these three principles rested the universal foundation

of every religious creed; God, and individual immortality for

every man--if he could but win it. However puzzling the subsequent

theological tenets; however seemingly incomprehensible the

metaphysical abstractions which have convulsed the theology of every

one of the great religions of mankind as soon as it was placed on a

sure footing, the above is found to be the essence of every religious

philosophy, with the exception of later Christianity. It was that

of Zoroaster, of Pythagoras, of Plato, of Jesus, and even of Moses,

albeit the teachings of the Jewish law-giver have been so piously

tampered with.

We will devote the present chapter mainly to a brief survey of the

numerous sects which have recognized themselves as Christians; that

is to say, that have believed in a _Christos_, or an ANOINTED ONE.

We will also endeavor to explain the latter appellation from the

kabalistic standpoint, and show it reappearing in every religious

system. It might be profitable, at the same time, to see how much the

earliest apostles--Paul and Peter, agreed in their preaching of the

new Dispensation. We will begin with Peter.

We must once more return to that greatest of all the Patristic

frauds; the one which has undeniably helped the Roman Catholic Church

to its unmerited supremacy, viz.: the barefaced assertion, in the

teeth of historical evidence, that Peter suffered martyrdom at Rome.

It is but too natural that the Latin clergy should cling to it, for,

with the exposure of the fraudulent nature of this pretext, the dogma

of apostolic succession must fall to the ground.

There have been many able works of late, in refutation of this

preposterous claim. Among others we note Mr. G. Reber’s, _The Christ

of Paul_, which overthrows it quite ingeniously. The author proves,

1, that there was no church established at Rome, until the reign

of Antoninus Pius; 2, that as Eusebius and Irenæus both agree that

Linus was the second Bishop of Rome, into whose hands “the blessed

apostles” Peter and Paul committed the church after building it,

it could not have been at any other time than between A.D. 64 and

68; 3, that this interval of years happens during the reign of

Nero, for Eusebius states that Linus held this office twelve years

(_Ecclesiastical History_, book iii., c. 13), entering upon it A.D.

69, one year after the death of Nero, and dying himself in 81. After

that the author maintains, on very solid grounds, that Peter could

not be in Rome A.D. 64, for he was then in Babylon; wherefrom he

wrote his first Epistle, the date of which is fixed by Dr. Lardner

and other critics at precisely this year. But we believe that his

best argument is in proving that it was not in the character of the

cowardly Peter to risk himself in such close neighborhood with Nero,

who “was feeding the wild beasts of the Amphitheatre with the flesh

and bones of Christians”[179] at that time.

Perhaps the Church of Rome was but consistent in choosing as her

titular founder the apostle who thrice denied his master at the

moment of danger; and the only one, moreover, except Judas, who

provoked Christ in such a way as to be addressed as the “Enemy.”

“Get thee behind me, SATAN!” exclaims Jesus, rebuking the taunting

apostle.[180]

There is a tradition in the Greek Church which has never found favor

at the Vatican. The former traces its origin to one of the Gnostic

leaders--Basilides, perhaps, who lived under Trajan and Adrian, at

the end of the first and the beginning of the second century. With

regard to this particular tradition, if the Gnostic is Basilides,

then he must be accepted as a sufficient authority, having claimed

to have been a disciple of the Apostle Matthew, and to have had for

master Glaucias, a disciple of St. Peter himself. Were the narrative

attributed to him authenticated, the London Committee for the

Revision of the Bible would have to add a new verse to _Matthew_,

_Mark_, and _John_, who tell the story of Peter’s denial of Christ.

This tradition, then, of which we have been speaking, affirms that,

when frightened at the accusation of the servant of the high priest,

the apostle had thrice denied his master, and the cock had crowed,

Jesus, who was then passing through the hall in custody of the

soldiers, turned, and, looking at Peter, said: “Verily, I say unto

thee, Peter, thou shalt deny me throughout the coming ages, and never

stop until thou shalt be old, and shalt stretch forth thy hands, and

another shall gird thee and carry thee whither thou wouldst not.” The

latter part of this sentence, say the Greeks, relates to the Church

of Rome, and prophesies her constant apostasy from Christ, under the

mask of false religion. Later, it was inserted in the twenty-first

chapter of _John_, but the whole of this chapter had been pronounced

a forgery, even before it was found that this _Gospel_ was never

written by John the Apostle at all.

The anonymous author of _Supernatural Religion_, a work which in

two years passed through several editions, and which is alleged to

have been written by an eminent theologian, proves conclusively

the spuriousness of the four gospels, or at least their complete

transformation in the hands of the too-zealous Irenæus and his

champions. The fourth gospel is completely upset by this able author;

the extraordinary forgeries of the Fathers of the early centuries

are plainly demonstrated, and the relative value of the synoptics

is discussed with an unprecedented power of logic. The work carries

conviction in its every line. From it we quote the following: “We

gain infinitely more than we lose in abandoning belief in the

reality of Divine Revelation. Whilst we retain, pure and unimpaired,

the treasure of Christian morality, we relinquish nothing but the

debasing elements added to it by human superstition. We are no

longer bound to believe a theology which outrages reason and moral

sense. We are freed from base anthropomorphic views of God and His

government of the Universe, and from Jewish Mythology we rise to

higher conceptions of an infinitely wise and beneficent Being, hidden

from our finite minds, it is true, in the impenetrable glory of

Divinity, but whose laws of wondrous comprehensiveness and perfection

we ever perceive in operation around us.... The argument so often

employed by theologians, that Divine revelation is necessary for man,

and that certain views contained in that revelation are required for

our moral consciousness, is purely imaginary, and derived from the

revelation which it seeks to maintain. The only thing absolutely

necessary for man is TRUTH, and to that, and that alone, must our

moral consciousness adapt itself.”[181]

We will consider farther in what light was regarded the Divine

revelation of the Jewish _Bible_ by the Gnostics, who yet believed

in Christ in their own way, a far better and less blasphemous one

than the Roman Catholic. The Fathers have forced on the believers

in Christ a _Bible_, the laws prescribed in which he was the first

to break; the teachings of which he utterly rejected; and for which

crimes he was finally crucified. Of whatever else the Christian world

can boast, it can hardly claim logic and consistency as its chief

virtues.

The fact alone that Peter remained to the last an “apostle of the

circumcision,” speaks for itself. _Whosoever else might have built

the Church of Rome it was not Peter._ If such were the case, the

successors of this apostle would have to submit themselves to

circumcision, if it were but for the sake of consistency, and to

show that the claims of the popes are not utterly groundless, Dr.

Inman asserts that report says that “in our Christian times popes

have to be privately perfect,”[182] but we do not know whether it is

carried to the extent of the Levitical Jewish law. The first fifteen

Christian bishops of Jerusalem, commencing with James and including

Judas, were all circumcised Jews.[183]

In the _Sepher Toldos Jeshu_,[184] a Hebrew manuscript of great

antiquity, the version about Peter is different. Simon Peter, it

says, was one of their own brethren, though he had somewhat departed

from the laws, and the Jewish hatred and persecution of the apostle

seems to have existed but in the fecund imagination of the fathers.

The author speaks of him with great respect and fairness, calling

him “a faithful servant of the living God,” who passed his life in

austerity and meditation, “living in Babylon at the summit of a

tower,” composing hymns, and preaching charity. He adds that Peter

always recommended to the Christians not to molest the Jews, but

as soon as he was dead, behold another preacher went to Rome and

pretended that Simon Peter had altered the teachings of his master.

He invented a burning hell and threatened every one with it; promised

miracles, but worked none.

How much there is in the above of fiction and how much of truth, it

is for others to decide; but it certainly bears more the evidence

of sincerity and fact on its face, than the fables concocted by the

fathers to answer their end.

We may the more readily credit this friendship between Peter and

his late co-religionists as we find in _Theodoret_ the following

assertion: “The Nazarenes are Jews, honoring the ANOINTED (Jesus) as

a _just man_ and using the _Evangel_ according to Peter.”[185] Peter

was a Nazarene, according to the _Talmud_. He belonged to the sect of

the later Nazarenes, which dissented from the followers of John the

Baptist, and became a rival sect; and which--as tradition goes--was

instituted by Jesus himself.

History finds the first Christian sects to have been either Nazarenes

like John the Baptist; or Ebionites, among whom were many of the

relatives of Jesus; or Essenes (Iessaens) the Therapeutæ, healers,

of which the Nazaria were a branch. All these sects, which only in

the days of Irenæus began to be considered heretical, were more or

less kabalistic. They believed in the expulsion of demons by magical

incantations, and practiced this method; Jervis terms the Nabatheans

and other such sects “wandering Jewish exorcists,”[186] the Arabic

word _Nabæ_, meaning to wander, and the Hebrew נבא naba, to

prophesy. The _Talmud_ indiscriminately calls all the Christians

_Nozari_.[187] All the Gnostic sects equally believed in magic.

Irenæus, in describing the followers of Basilides, says, “They use

images, invocations, incantations, and all other things pertaining

unto magic.” Dunlap, on the authority of Lightfoot, shows that Jesus

was called _Nazaraios_, in reference to his humble and mean external

condition; “for Nazaraios means separation, alienation from other

men.”[188]

The real meaning of the word nazar נזר signifies to vow or consecrate

one’s self to the service of God. As a noun it is a _diadem_ or emblem

of such consecration, a head so consecrated.[189] Joseph was styled a

_nazar_.[190] “The head of Joseph, the vertex of the nazar among his

brethren.” Samson and Samuel (שמו־אל שצשון Semes-on and Semva-el) are

described alike as _nazars_. Porphyry, treating of Pythagoras, says

that he was purified and initiated at Babylon by Zar-adas, the head of

the sacred college. May it not be surmised, therefore, that the

Zoro-Aster was the _nazar_ of Ishtar, Zar-adas or Na-Zar-Ad,[191]

being the same with change of idiom? Ezra, or עזרא, was a priest and

scribe, a hierophant; and the first Hebrew colonizer of Judea

was זרובבל Zeru-Babel or the Zoro or nazar of Babylon.

The Jewish Scriptures indicate two distinct worships and religions

among the Israelites; that of Bacchus-worship under the mask of

Jehovah, and that of the Chaldean initiates to whom belonged some

of the _nazars_, the theurgists, and a few of the prophets. The

headquarters of these were always at Babylon and Chaldea, where two

rival schools of Magians can be distinctly shown. Those who would

doubt the statement will have in such a case to account for the

discrepancy between history and Plato, who of all men of his day

was certainly one of the best informed. Speaking of the Magians, he

shows them as instructing the Persian kings of Zoroaster, as the

son or priest of Oromasdes; and yet Darius, in the inscription at

Bihistun, boasts of having restored the cultus of Ormazd and put down

the Magian rites! Evidently there were two distinct and antagonistic

Magian schools. The oldest and the most esoteric of the two being

that which, satisfied with its unassailable knowledge and secret

power, was content to apparently relinquish her exoteric popularity,

and concede her supremacy into the hands of the reforming Darius.

The later Gnostics showed the same prudent policy by accommodating

themselves in every country to the prevailing religious forms, still

secretly adhering to their own essential doctrines.

There is another hypothesis possible, which is that Zero-Ishtar

was the high priest of the Chaldean worship, or Magian hierophant.

When the Aryans of Persia, under Darius Hystaspes, overthrew the

Magian Gomates, and _restored_ the Masdean worship, there ensued an

amalgamation by which the Magian Zoro-astar became the Zara-tushra

of the _Vendidad_. This was not acceptable to the other Aryans, who

adopted the Vedic religion as distinguished from that of _Avesta_.

But this is but an hypothesis.

And whatever Moses is now believed to have been, we will demonstrate

that he was an initiate. The Mosaic religion was at best a

sun-and-serpent worship, diluted, perhaps, with some slight

monotheistic notions before the latter were forcibly crammed into the

so-called “inspired Scriptures” by Ezra, at the time he was alleged to

have _re_written the Mosaic books. At all events the _Book of Numbers_

was a later book; and there the sun-and-serpent worship is as plainly

traceable as in any Pagan story. The tale of the fiery serpents is an

allegory in more than one sense. The “serpents” were the _Levites_ or

_Ophites_, who were Moses’ bodyguard (see _Exodus_ xxxii. 26); and the

command of the “Lord” to Moses to hang the heads of the people “before

the Lord against the sun,” which is the emblem of this Lord, is

unequivocal.

The nazars or prophets, as well as the Nazarenes, were an

anti-Bacchus caste, in so far that, in common with all the initiated

prophets, they held to the spirit of the symbolical religions and

offered a strong opposition to the idolatrous and exoteric practices

of the dead letter. Hence, the frequent stoning of the prophets by

the populace and under the leadership of those priests who made a

profitable living out of the popular superstitions. Otfried Müller

shows how much the Orphic Mysteries differed from the _popular_

rites of Bacchus,[192] although the _Orphikoi_ are known to have

followed the worship of Bacchus. The system of the purest morality

and of a severe asceticism promulgated in the teachings of Orpheus,

and so strictly adhered to by his votaries, are incompatible with

the lasciviousness and gross immorality of the popular rites. The

fable of Aristæus pursuing Eurydiké into the woods where a serpent

occasions her death, is a very plain allegory, which was in part

explained at the earliest times. Aristæus is _brutal power_, pursuing

Eurydiké, the esoteric doctrine, into the woods where the serpent

(emblem of every sun-god, and worshipped under its grosser aspect

even by the Jews) kills her; _i.e._, forces truth to become still

more esoteric, and seek shelter in the Underworld, which is not

the hell of our theologians. Moreover, the fate of Orpheus, torn

to pieces by the Bacchantes, is another allegory to show that the

gross and popular rites are always more welcome than divine but

simple truth, and proves the great difference that must have existed

between the esoteric and the popular worship. As the poems of both

Orpheus and Musæus were said to have been lost since the earliest

ages, so that neither Plato nor Aristotle recognized anything

authentic in the poems extant in their time, it is difficult to say

with precision what constituted their peculiar rites. Still we have

the oral tradition, and every inference to draw therefrom; and this

tradition points to Orpheus as having brought his doctrines from

India. As one whose religion was that of the oldest Magians--hence,

that to which belonged the initiates of all countries, beginning with

Moses, the “sons of the Prophets,” and the ascetic _nazars_ (who

must not be confounded with those against whom thundered Hosea and

other prophets) to the Essenes. This latter sect were Pythagoreans

before they rather degenerated, than became perfected in their

system by the Buddhist missionaries, whom Pliny tells us established

themselves on the shores of the Dead Sea, ages before his time, “_per

sæculorum millia_.” But if, on the one hand, these Buddhist monks

were the first to establish monastic communities and inculcate the

strict observance of dogmatic conventual rule, on the other they

were also the first to enforce and popularize those stern virtues so

exemplified by Sakya-muni, and which were previously exercised only

in isolated cases of well-known philosophers and their followers;

virtues preached two or three centuries later by Jesus, practiced by

a few Christian ascetics, and gradually abandoned, and even entirely

forgotten by the Christian Church.

The _initiated_ nazars had ever held to this rule, which had to be

followed before them by the adepts of every age; and the disciples

of John were but a dissenting branch of the Essenes. Therefore,

we cannot well confound them with all the nazars spoken of in the

_Old Testament_, and who are accused by Hosea with having separated

or consecrated themselves to _Bosheth_ בשת (see Hebrew text); which

implied the greatest possible abomination. To infer, as some critics

and theologians do, that it means to separate one’s self to _chastity_

or continence, is either to advisedly pervert the true meaning, or to

be totally ignorant of the Hebrew language. The eleventh verse of the

first chapter of Micah half explains the word in its veiled

translation: “Pass ye away, thou inhabitant of Saphir, etc.,” and in

the original text the word is _Bosheth_. Certainly neither Baal, nor

Iahoh Kadosh, with his _Kadeshim_, was a god of ascetic virtue, albeit

the _Septuaginta_ terms them, as well as the _galli_--the perfected

priests--τετελεσμένους, the _initiated_ and the _consecrated_.[193]

The great _Sod_ of the _Kadeshim_, translated in _Psalm_ lxxxix. 7, by

“assembly of the saints,” was anything but a mystery of the

“_sanctified_” in the sense given to the latter word by Webster.

The Nazireate sect existed long before the laws of Moses, and

originated among people most inimical to the “chosen” ones of

Israel, viz., the people of Galilee, the ancient _olla-podrida_ of

idolatrous nations, where was built Nazara, the present Nazareth.

It is in Nazara that the ancient Nazorïa or Nazireates held their

“Mysteries of Life” or “assemblies,” as the word now stands in

the translation,[194] which were but the secret mysteries of

initiation,[195] utterly distinct in their practical form from the

popular Mysteries which were held at Byblus in honor of Adonis. While

the true _initiates_ of the ostracised Galilee were worshipping the

true God and enjoying transcendent visions, what were the “chosen”

ones about? Ezekiel tells it to us (chap. viii) when, in describing

what he saw, he says that the _form_ of a hand took him by a lock of

his head and transported him from Chaldea unto Jerusalem. “And there

stood seventy men of the senators of the house of Israel.... ‘Son of

man, hast thou seen what the ancients ... do in the dark?’” inquires

the “Lord.” “At the door of the house of the Lord ... behold there

sat women weeping for Tammuz” (Adonis). We really cannot suppose

that the Pagans have ever surpassed the “chosen” people in certain

shameful _abominations_ of which their own prophets accuse them so

profusely. To admit this truth, one hardly needs even to be a Hebrew

scholar; let him read the _Bible_ in English and meditate over the

language of the “holy” prophets.

This accounts for the hatred of the later Nazarenes for the orthodox

Jews--followers of the _exoteric_ Mosaic Law--who are ever taunted

by this sect with being the worshippers of Iurbo-Adunai, or Lord

Bacchus. Passing under the disguise of _Adoni-Iachoh_ (original

text, _Isaiah_ lxi. 1), Iahoh and Lord Sabaoth, the Baal-Adonis, or

Bacchus, worshipped in the groves and _public sods_ or Mysteries,

under the polishing hand of Ezra becomes finally the later-vowelled

Adonai of the Massorah--the One and Supreme God of the Christians!

“Thou shalt not worship the Sun who is named Adunai, says the _Codex_

of the Nazarenes; whose name is also _Kadush_[196] and El-El. This

Adunai will elect to himself a nation and congregate _in crowds_ (his

worship will be exoteric) ... Jerusalem will become the refuge and

city of the _Abortive_, who shall perfect themselves (circumcise)

with a sword ... and shall adore Adunai.”[197]

The oldest Nazarenes, who were the descendants of the Scripture

_nazars_, and whose last prominent leader was John the Baptist,

although never very orthodox in the sight of the scribes and

Pharisees of Jerusalem were, nevertheless, respected and left

unmolested. Even Herod “feared the multitude” because they regarded

John as a prophet (_Matthew_ xiv. 5). But the followers of Jesus

evidently adhered to a sect which became a still more exasperating

thorn in their side. It appeared as a heresy _within_ another

heresy; for while the nazars of the olden times, the “Sons of the

Prophets,” were Chaldean kabalists, the adepts of the new dissenting

sect showed themselves reformers and innovators from the first.

The great similitude traced by some critics between the rites and

observances of the earliest Christians and those of the Essenes may

be accounted for without the slightest difficulty. The Essenes, as we

remarked just now, were the converts of Buddhist missionaries who had

overrun Egypt, Greece, and even Judea at one time, since the reign

of Asoka the zealous propagandist; and while it is evidently to the

Essenes that belongs the honor of having had the Nazarene reformer,

Jesus, as a pupil, still the latter is found disagreeing with his

early teachers on several questions of formal observance. He cannot

strictly be called an Essene, for reasons which we will indicate

further on, neither was he a nazar, or Nazaria of the older sect.

What Jesus _was_, may be found in the _Codex Nazaræus_, in the unjust

accusations of the Bardesanian Gnostics.

“Jesu is _Nebu_, the false Messiah, the destroyer of the old orthodox

religion,” says the _Codex_.[198] He is the founder of the sect of

the new nazars, and, as the words clearly imply, a follower of the

Buddhist doctrine. In Hebrew the word _naba_ נבא means to speak of

inspiration; and נבו is _nebo_, a god of wisdom. But Nebo is also

_Mercury_, and _Mercury is Buddha_ in the Hindu monogram of planets.

Moreover, we find the Talmudists holding that Jesus was inspired by

the genius of Mercury.[199]

The Nazarene reformer had undoubtedly belonged to one of these

sects; though, perhaps, it would be next to impossible to decide

absolutely which. But what is self-evident is that he preached the

philosophy of Buddha-Sakyamûni. Denounced by the later prophets,

cursed by the Sanhedrim, the nazars--they were confounded with others

of that name “who separated themselves unto that shame,”[200] they

were secretly, if not openly persecuted by the orthodox synagogue.

It becomes clear why Jesus was treated with such contempt from

the first, and deprecatingly called “the Galilean.” Nathaniel

inquires--“Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?” (_John_

i. 46) at the very beginning of his career; and merely because he

knows him to be a _nazar_. Does not this clearly hint, that even the

older nazars were not really Hebrew religionists, but rather a class

of Chaldean theurgists? Besides, as the _New Testament_ is noted

for its mistranslations and transparent falsifications of texts,

we may justly suspect that the word Nazareth was substituted for

that of _nasaria_, or nozari. That it originally read “Can any good

thing come from a nozari, or Nazarene;” a follower of St. John the

Baptist, with whom we see him associating from his first appearance

on the stage of action, after having been lost sight of for a period

of nearly twenty years. The blunders of the _Old Testament_ are as

nothing to those of the _gospels_. Nothing shows better than these

self-evident contradictions the system of pious fraud upon which

the superstructure of the Messiahship rests. “This _is Elias_ which

was for to come,” says Matthew of John the Baptist, thus forcing an

ancient kabalistic tradition into the frame of evidence (xi. 14). But

when addressing the Baptist himself, they ask him (_John_ i. 16),

“Art thou Elias?” “And he saith _I am not_!” Which knew best--John or

his biographer? And which is divine revelation?

The motive of Jesus was evidently like that of Gautama-Buddha, to

benefit humanity at large by producing a religious reform which

should give it a religion of pure ethics; the true knowledge of God

and nature having remained until then solely in the hands of the

esoteric sects, and their adepts. As Jesus used _oil_ and the Essenes

never used aught but pure water,[201] he cannot be called a strict

Essene. On the other hand, the Essenes were also “set apart;” they

were healers (_assaya_) and dwelt in the desert as all ascetics did.

But although he did not abstain from wine he could have remained a

Nazarene all the same. For in chapter vi. of _Numbers_, we see that

after the priest has waved a part of the hair of a Nazorite for a

wave-offering before the Lord, “after that a Nazarene may drink

wine” (v. 20). The bitter denunciation by the reformer of the people

who would be satisfied with nothing is worded in the following

exclamation: “John came neither eating nor drinking and they say: ‘He

hath a devil.’... The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they

say: ‘Behold a man gluttonous and a wine-bibber.’” And yet he was

an Essene and Nazarene, for we not only find him sending a message

to Herod, to say that he was one of those who cast out demons, and

who performed cures, but actually calling himself a prophet and

declaring himself equal to the other prophets.[202]

The author of _Sod_ shows Matthew trying to connect the appellation

of Nazarene with a prophecy,[203] and inquires “Why then does

Matthew state that the prophet said he should be called _Nazaria_?”

Simply “because he belonged to that sect, and a prophecy would

confirm his claims to the Messiahship.... Now it does not appear

that the prophets anywhere state that the Messiah will be called a

_Nazarene_.”[204] The fact alone that Matthew tries in the last verse

of chapter ii. to strengthen his claim that Jesus dwelt in Nazareth

_merely to fulfil a prophecy_, does more than weaken the argument, it

upsets it entirely; for the first two chapters have sufficiently been

proved later forgeries.

Baptism is one of the oldest rites and was practiced by all the

nations in their Mysteries, as sacred ablutions. Dunlap seems to

derive the name of the _nazars_ from nazah, sprinkling; Bahak-Zivo

is the genius who called the world into existence[205] out of

the “dark water,” say the Nazarenes; and Richardson’s _Persian,

Arabic, and English Lexicon_ asserts that the word _Bahak_ means

“raining.” But the Bahak-Zivo of the Nazarenes cannot be traced

so easily to Bacchus, who “was the rain-god,” for the nazars were

the greatest opponents of Bacchus-worship. “Bacchus is brought up

by the Hyades, the rain-nymphs,” says Preller;[206] who shows,

furthermore, that[207] at the conclusion of the religious Mysteries,

the priests baptized (washed) their monuments and anointed them

with oil. All this is but a very indirect proof. The Jordan baptism

need not be shown a substitution for the _exoteric_ Bacchic rites

and the libations in honor of Adonis or Adoni--whom the Nazarenes

abhorred--in order to prove it to have been a sect sprung from the

“Mysteries” of the “Secret Doctrine;” and their rites can by no means

be confounded with those of the Pagan populace, who had simply fallen

into the idolatrous and unreasoning faith of all plebeian multitudes.

John was the prophet of these Nazarenes, and in Galilee he was termed

“the Saviour,” but he was not the founder of that sect which derived

its tradition from the remotest Chaldeo-Akkadian theurgy.

“The early plebeian Israelites were Canaanites and Phœnicians,

with the same worship of the Phallic gods--Bacchus, Baal or Adon,

Iacchos--Iao or Jehovah;” but even among them there had always

been a class of _initiated_ adepts. Later, the character of this

plebe was modified by Assyrian conquests; and, finally, the Persian

colonizations superimposed the Pharisean and Eastern ideas and

usages, from which the _Old Testament_ and the Mosaic institutes

were derived. The Asmonean priest-kings promulgated the canon of the

_Old Testament_ in contradistinction to the _Apocrypha_ or Secret

Books of the Alexandrian Jews--kabalists.[208] Till John Hyrcanus

they were Asideans (Chasidim) and Pharisees (Parsees), but then

they became Sadducees or Zadokites--asserters of sacerdotal rule as

contradistinguished from rabbinical. The Pharisees were lenient and

intellectual, the Sadducees, bigoted and cruel.

Says the _Codex_: “John, son of the Aba-Saba-Zacharia, conceived

by his mother _Anasabet_ in her hundredth year, had baptized for

_forty-two years_[209] when Jesu Messias came to the Jordan to

be baptized with John’s baptism.... But he will _pervert John’s

doctrine_, changing the baptism of the Jordan, and perverting the

sayings of justice.”[210]

The baptism was changed from _water_ to that of the Holy Ghost,

undoubtedly in consequence of the ever-dominant idea of the Fathers

to institute a reform, and make the Christians distinct from St.

John’s Nazarenes, the Nabatheans and Ebionites, in order to make

room for new dogmas. Not only do the Synoptics tell us that Jesus

was baptizing the same as John, but John’s own disciples complained

of it, though surely Jesus cannot be accused of following a purely

Bacchic rite. The parenthesis in verse 2d of John iv., “... though

Jesus himself baptized not,” is so clumsy as to show upon its face

that it is an interpolation. Matthew makes John say that he that

should come after him would not baptize them with water “but with

_the Holy Ghost_ and fire.” Mark, Luke, and John corroborate these

words. Water, fire, and spirit, or Holy Ghost, have all their origin

in India, as we will show.

Now there is one very strange peculiarity about this sentence. It

is flatly denied in _Acts_ xix. 2-5. Apollos, a Jew of Alexandria,

belonged to the sect of St. John’s disciples; he had been baptized,

and instructed others in the doctrines of the Baptist. And yet when

Paul, cleverly profiting by his absence at Corinth, finds certain

disciples of Apollos’ at Ephesus, and asks them whether they received

_the Holy Ghost_, he is naïvely answered, “We have not so much as

heard whether there be any Holy Ghost!” “Unto what then were you

baptized?” he inquires. “_Unto John’s baptism_,” they say. Then Paul

is made to repeat the words attributed to John by the Synoptics; and

these men “were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus,” exhibiting,

moreover, at the same instant, the usual polyglot gift which

accompanies the descent of the Holy Ghost.

How then? St. John the Baptist, who is called the “precursor,” that

“the prophecy might be fulfilled,” the great prophet and martyr,

whose words ought to have had such an importance in the eyes of his

disciples, announces the “Holy Ghost” to his listeners; causes crowds

to assemble on the shores of the Jordan, where, at the great ceremony

of Christ’s baptism, the promised “Holy Ghost” appears within the

opened heavens, and the multitude hears the voice, and yet there are

disciples of St. John who have “never so much as _heard_ whether

there be any Holy Ghost!”

Verily the disciples who wrote the _Codex Nazaræus_ were right.

Only it is not Jesus himself, but those who came after him, and who

concocted the _Bible_ to suit themselves, that “_perverted_ John’s

doctrine, _changed_ the baptism of the Jordan, and perverted the

sayings of justice.”

It is useless to object that the present _Codex_ was written

centuries after the direct apostles of John preached. So were our

_Gospels_. When this astounding interview of Paul with the “Baptists”

took place, Bardesanes had not yet appeared among them, and the sect

was not considered a “heresy.” Moreover, we are enabled to judge how

little St. John’s promise of the “Holy Ghost,” and the appearance of

the “Ghost” himself, had affected his disciples, by the displeasure

shown by them toward the disciples of Jesus, and the kind of rivalry

manifested from the first. Nay, so little is John himself sure of the

identity of Jesus with the expected Messiah, that after the famous

scene of the baptism at the Jordan, and the oral assurance by the

_Holy Ghost_ Himself that “_This is my beloved Son_” (_Matthew_ iii.

17), we find “the Precursor,” in _Matthew_ xi., sending two of his

disciples from his prison to inquire of Jesus: “Art thou _he_ that

should come, or do we look _for another_!!”

This flagrant contradiction alone ought to have long ago satisfied

reasonable minds as to the putative divine inspiration of the _New

Testament_. But we may offer another question: If baptism is the

sign of regeneration, and an ordinance instituted by Jesus, why do

not Christians now baptize as Jesus is here represented as doing,

“with the Holy Ghost and with fire,” instead of following the custom

of the Nazarenes? In making these palpable interpolations, what

possible motive could Irenæus have had except to cause people to

believe that the appellation of Nazarene, which Jesus bore, came only

from his father’s residence at Nazareth, and not from his affiliation

with the sect of _Nazaria_, the healers?

This expedient of Irenæus was a most unfortunate one, for from time

immemorial the prophets of old had been thundering against the

baptism of fire as practiced by their neighbors, which imparted the

“spirit of prophecy,” or the Holy Ghost. But the case was desperate;

the Christians were universally called Nazoræns and Iessaens

(according to Epiphanius), and Christ simply ranked as a Jewish

prophet and healer--so self-styled, so accepted by his own disciples,

and so regarded by their followers. In such a state of things there

was no room for either a new hierarchy or a new God-head; and since

Irenæus had undertaken the business of manufacturing both, he had to

put together such materials as were available, and fill the gaps with

his own fertile inventions.

To assure ourselves that Jesus was a true Nazarene--albeit with ideas

of a new reform--we must not search for the proof in the translated

_Gospels_, but in such original versions as are accessible.

Tischendorf, in his translation from the Greek of _Luke_ iv. 34,

has it “Iesou Nazarene;” and in the Syriac it reads “Iasoua, thou

_Nazaria_.” Thus, if we take in account all that is puzzling and

incomprehensible in the four _Gospels_, revised and corrected as they

now stand, we shall easily see for ourselves that the true, original

Christianity, such as was preached by Jesus, is to be found only in

the so-called Syrian heresies. Only from them can we extract any

clear notions about what was primitive Christianity. Such was the

faith of Paul, when Tertullus the orator accused the apostle before

the governor Felix. What he complained of was that they had found

“that man a mover of sedition ... a ringleader of _the sect of the

Nazarenes_;”[211] and, while Paul denies every other accusation, he

confesses that “after the way which they call heresy, _so worship I

the God of my fathers_.”[212] This confession is a whole revelation.

It shows: 1, that Paul admitted belonging to the sect of the

Nazarenes; 2, that he worshipped the _God of his fathers_, not the

trinitarian Christian God, of whom he knows nothing, and who was not

invented until after his death; and, 3, that this unlucky confession

satisfactorily explains why the treatise, _Acts of the Apostles_,

together with John’s _Revelation_, which at one period was utterly

rejected, were kept out of the canon of the _New Testament_ for such

a length of time.

At Byblos, the neophytes as well as the hierophants were, after

participating in the Mysteries, obliged to fast and remain in

solitude for some time. There was strict fasting and preparation

before as well as after the Bacchic, Adonian, and Eleusinian orgies;

and Herodotus hints, with fear and veneration about the LAKE of

Bacchus, in which “they (the priests) made at night exhibitions of

his life and sufferings.”[213] In the Mithraic sacrifices, during

the initiation, a preliminary scene of death was simulated by the

neophyte, and it preceded the scene showing him himself “being born

again by the rite _of baptism_.” A portion of this ceremony is still

enacted in the present day by the Masons, when the neophyte, as the

Grand Master Hiram Abiff, lies dead, and is raised by the strong grip

of the lion’s paw.

The priests were circumcised. The neophyte could not be initiated

without having been present at the solemn Mysteries of the LAKE. The

Nazarenes were baptized in the Jordan; and could not be baptized

elsewhere; they were also circumcised, and had to fast before as well

as after the purification by baptism. Jesus is said to have fasted

in the wilderness for forty days, immediately after his baptism. To

the present day, there is outside every temple in India, a lake,

stream, or a reservoir full of holy water, in which the Brahmans and

the Hindu devotees bathe daily. Such places of consecrated water are

necessary to every temple. The bathing festivals, or _baptismal_

rites, occur twice every year; in October and April. Each lasts ten

days; and, as in ancient Egypt and Greece, the statues of their

gods, goddesses, and idols are immersed in water by the priests; the

object of the ceremony being to wash away from them the sins of their

worshippers which they have taken upon themselves, and which pollute

them, until washed off by holy water. During the Arâtty, the bathing

ceremony, the principal god of every temple is carried in solemn

procession to be baptized in the sea. The Brahman priests, carrying

the sacred images, are followed generally by the Maharajah--barefoot,

and nearly naked. _Three times_ the priests enter the sea; the third

time they carry with them the whole of the images. Holding them up

with prayers repeated by the whole congregation, the Chief Priest

plunges the statues of the gods _thrice_ in the name of the _mystic

trinity_, into the water; after which they are purified.[214] The

Orphic hymn calls _water_ the greatest purifier of men and gods.

Our Nazarene sect is known to have existed some 150 years B.C., and

to have lived on the banks of the Jordan, and on the eastern shore

of the Dead Sea, according to Pliny and Josephus.[215] But in King’s

_Gnostics_, we find quoted another statement by Josephus from verse

13, which says that the Essenes had been established on the shores of

the Dead Sea “for thousands of ages” before Pliny’s time.[216]

According to Munk the term “Galilean” is nearly synonymous with that

of “Nazarene;” furthermore, he shows the relations of the former with

the Gentiles as very intimate. The populace had probably gradually

adopted, in their constant intercourse, certain rites and modes

of worship of the Pagans; and the scorn with which the Galileans

were regarded by the orthodox Jews is attributed by him to the same

cause. Their friendly relations had certainly led them, at a later

period, to adopt the “Adonia,” or the sacred rites over the body

of the lamented Adonis, as we find Jerome fairly lamenting this

circumstance. “Over Bethlehem,” he says, “the grove of Thammuz,

that is of Adonis, was casting its shadow! And in the GROTTO where

formerly the infant Jesus cried, the lover of Venus was being

mourned.”[217]

It was after the rebellion of Bar Cochba, that the Roman Emperor

established the Mysteries of Adonis at the Sacred Cave in Bethlehem;

and who knows but this was the _petra_ or rock-temple on which the

church was built? The Boar of Adonis was placed above the gate of

Jerusalem which looked toward Bethlehem.

Munk says that the “Nazireate was an institution established before

the laws of Musah.”[218] This is evident; as we find this sect not

only mentioned but minutely described in _Numbers_ (chap. vi.). In

the commandment given in this chapter to Moses by the “Lord,” it is

easy to recognize the rites and laws of the Priests of Adonis.[219]

The abstinence and purity strictly prescribed in both sects are

identical. Both allowed their hair _to grow long_[220] as the Hindu

cœnobites and fakirs do to this day, while other castes shave their

hair and abstain on certain days from wine. The prophet Elijah, a

Nazarene, is described in _2 Kings_, and by Josephus as “a hairy man

girt with a girdle of leather.”[221] And John the Baptist and Jesus

are both represented as wearing very long hair.[222] John is “clothed

with camel’s hair” and wearing a girdle of hide, and Jesus in a long

garment “without any seams” ... “and very white, like snow,” says

Mark; the very dress worn by the Nazarene Priests and the Pythagorean

and Buddhist Essenes, as described by Josephus.

If we carefully trace the terms _nazar_, and _nazaret_, throughout

the best known works of ancient writers, we will meet them in

connection with “Pagan” as well as Jewish adepts. Thus, Alexander

Polyhistor says of Pythagoras that he was a disciple of the Assyrian

_Nazaret_, whom some suppose to be Ezekiel. Diogenes Laërtius states

most positively that Pythagoras, after being initiated into all

the Mysteries of the Greeks and barbarians, “went into Egypt and

afterward visited the Chaldeans and Magi;” and Apuleius maintains

that it was Zoroaster who instructed Pythagoras.

Were we to suggest that the Hebrew _nazars_, the railing prophets of

the “Lord,” had been initiated into the so-called Pagan mysteries,

and belonged (or at least a majority of them) to the same Lodge

or circle of adepts as those who were considered idolaters; that

their “circle of prophets” was but a collateral branch of a secret

association, which we may well term “international,” what a

visitation of Christian wrath would we not incur! And still, the case

looks strangely suspicious.

Let us first recall to our mind that which Ammianus Marcellinus, and

other historians relate of Darius Hystaspes. The latter, penetrating

into Upper India (Bactriana), learned pure rites, and stellar and

cosmical sciences from Brachmans, and communicated them to the

Magi. Now Hystaspes is shown in history to have crushed the Magi;

and introduced--or rather forced upon them--the pure religion of

Zoroaster, that of Ormazd. How is it, then, that an inscription

is found on the tomb of Darius, stating that he was “teacher and

hierophant of magic, or magianism?” Evidently there must be some

historical mistake, and history confesses it. In this imbroglio of

names, Zoroaster, the teacher and instructor of Pythagoras, can be

neither the Zoroaster nor Zarathustra who instituted sun-worship

among the Parsees; nor he who appeared at the court of Gushtasp

(Hystaspes) the alleged father of Darius; nor, again, the Zoroaster

who placed his magi above the kings themselves. The oldest

Zoroastrian scripture--the _Avesta_--does not betray the slightest

traces of the reformer having ever been acquainted with any of the

nations that subsequently adopted his mode of worship. He seems

utterly ignorant of the neighbors of Western Iran, the Medes, the

Assyrians, the Persians, and others. If we had no other evidences of

the great antiquity of the Zoroastrian religion than the discovery

of the blunder committed by some scholars in our own century, who

regarded King Vistaspa (Gushtasp) as identical with the father of

Darius, whereas the Persian tradition points directly to Vistaspa as

to the last of the line of Kaianian princes who ruled in Bactriana,

it ought to be enough, for the Assyrian conquest of Bactriana took

place 1,200 years B.C.[223]

Therefore, it is but natural that we should see in the appellation

of Zoroaster not a name but a generic term, whose significance must

be left to philologists to agree upon. _Guru_, in Sanscrit, is a

spiritual teacher; and as Zuruastara means in the same language he

who worships the sun, why is it impossible, that by some natural

change of language, due to the great number of different nations

which were converted to the sun worship, the word _guru-astara_, the

spiritual teacher of sun-worship, so closely resembling the name of

the founder of this religion, became gradually transformed in its

primal form of Zuryastara or Zoroaster? The opinion of the kabalists

is that there was but one Zarathustra and many _guruastars_ or

spiritual teachers, and that one such _guru_, or rather _huru_aster,

as he is called in the old manuscripts, was the instructor of

Pythagoras. To philology and our readers we leave the explanation

for what it is worth. Personally we believe in it, as we credit on

this subject kabalistic tradition far more than the explanation of

scientists, no two of whom have been able to agree up to the present

year.

Aristotle states that Zoroaster lived 6,000 years before Christ;

Hermippus of Alexandria, who is said to have read the genuine books

of the Zoroastrians, although Alexander the Great is accused of

having destroyed them, shows Zoroaster as the pupil of Azonak

(Azon-ach, or the Azon-God) and as having lived 5,000 years before

the fall of Troy. Er or Eros, whose vision is related by Plato in the

_Republic_, is declared by Clement to have been Zordusth. While the

Magus who dethroned Cambyses was a Mede, and Darius proclaims that he

put down the Magian rites to establish those of Ormazd, Xanthus of

Lydia declares Zoroaster to have been the chief of the Magi!

Which of them is wrong? or are they all right, and only the modern

interpreters fail to explain the difference between the Reformer

and his apostles and followers? This blundering of our commentators

reminds us of that of Suetonius, who mistook the Christians for one

Christos, or _Crestos_, as he spells it, and assured his readers that

Claudius banished him for the disturbance he made among the Jews.

Finally, and to return again to the _nazars_, Zaratus is mentioned

by Pliny in the following words: “He was Zoroaster and _Nazaret_.”

As Zoroaster is called _princeps_ of the Magi, and _nazar_ signifies

separated or consecrated, is it not a Hebrew rendering of _mag_?

Volney believes so. The Persian word _Na-zaruan_ means millions of

years, and refers to the Chaldean “Ancient of Days.” Hence the name

of the Nazars or Nazarenes, who were consecrated to the service of

the Supreme one God, the kabalistic En-Soph, or the Ancient of Days,

the “Aged of the aged.”

But the word _nazar_ may also be found in India. In Hindustani

_nazar_ is sight, internal or _supernatural_ vision; _nazar band-ī_

means fascination, a mesmeric or magical spell; and _nazarān_ is the

word for sightseeing or vision.

Professor Wilder thinks that as the word _Zeruana_ is nowhere to

be found in the _Avesta_, but only in the later Parsi books, it

came from the Magians, who composed the Persian sacred caste in

the Sassan period, but were originally Assyrians. “Turan, of the

poets,” he says, “I consider to be Aturia, or Assyria; and that Zohak

(Az-dahaka, Dei-okes, or Astyages), the Serpent-king, was Assyrian,

Median, and Babylonian--when those countries were united.”

This opinion does not, however, in the least implicate our statement

that the secret doctrines of the Magi, of the pre-Vedic Buddhists, of

the hierophants of the Egyptian Thoth or Hermes, and of the adepts

of whatever age and nationality, including the Chaldean kabalists

and the Jewish _nazars_, were _identical_ from the beginning. When

we use the term _Buddhists_, we do not mean to imply by it either

the exoteric Buddhism instituted by the followers of Gautama-Buddha,

nor the modern Buddhistic religion, but the secret philosophy of

Sakyamuni, which in its essence is certainly identical with the

ancient wisdom-religion of the sanctuary, the pre-Vedic Brahmanism.

The “schism” of Zoroaster, as it is called, is a direct proof

of it. For it was no _schism_, strictly speaking, but merely a

partially-public exposition of strictly monotheistic religious

truths, hitherto taught only in the sanctuaries, and that he had

learned from the Brahmans. Zoroaster, the primeval institutor of

sun-worship, cannot be called the founder of the dualistic system;

neither was he the first to teach the unity of God, for he taught but

what he had learned himself with the Brahmans. And that Zarathustra

and his followers, the Zoroastrians, “had been settled in India

before they immigrated into Persia,” is also proved by Max Müller.

“That the Zoroastrians and their ancestors started from India,” he

says, “during the Vaidik period, can be proved as distinctly as that

the inhabitants of Massilia started from Greece.... Many of the gods

of the Zoroastrians come out ... as mere reflections and deflections

of the primitive and authentic gods of the _Veda_.”[224]

If, now, we can prove--and we can do so on the evidence of the

_Kabala_ and the oldest traditions of the wisdom-religion, the

philosophy of the old sanctuaries--that all these gods, whether of

the Zoroastrians or of the _Veda_, are but so many personated _occult

powers_ of nature, the faithful servants of the adepts of secret

wisdom--Magic--we are on secure ground.

Thus, whether we say that Kabalism and Gnosticism proceeded from

Masdeanism or Zoroastrianism, it is all the same, unless we meant

the _exoteric_ worship--which we do not. Likewise, and in this

sense, we may echo King, the author of the _Gnostics_, and several

other archæologists, and maintain that both the former proceeded

from _Buddhism_, at once the simplest and most satisfying of

philosophies, and which resulted in one of the purest religions of

the world. It is only a matter of chronology to decide which of these

religions, differing but in external form, is the oldest, therefore

the least adulterated. But even this bears but very indirectly, if

at all, on the subject we treat of. Already some time before our

era, the adepts, except in India, had ceased to congregate in large

communities; but whether among the Essenes, or the Neo-platonists,

or, again, among the innumerable struggling sects born but to die,

the same doctrines, identical in substance and spirit, if not always

in form, are encountered. By _Buddhism_, therefore, we mean that

religion signifying literally the doctrine of wisdom, and which

by many ages antedates the metaphysical philosophy of Siddhârtha

Sakyamuni.

After nineteen centuries of enforced eliminations from the canonical

books of every sentence which might put the investigator on the true

path, it has become very difficult to show, to the satisfaction

of exact science, that the “Pagan” worshippers of Adonis, their

neighbors, the Nazarenes, and the Pythagorean Essenes, the healing

Therapeutes,[225] the Ebionites, and other sects, were all, with very

slight differences, followers of the ancient theurgic Mysteries. And

yet by analogy and a close study of the _hidden_ sense of their rites

and customs, we can trace their kinship.

It was given to a contemporary of Jesus to become the means of

pointing out to posterity, by his interpretation of the oldest

literature of Israel, how deeply the kabalistic philosophy agreed

in its esoterism with that of the profoundest Greek thinkers. This

contemporary, an ardent disciple of Plato and Aristotle, was Philo

Judæus. While explaining the Mosaic books according to a purely

kabalistic method, he is the famous Hebrew writer whom Kingsley calls

the Father of New Platonism.

It is evident that Philo’s Therapeutes are a branch of the Essenes.

Their name indicates it--Ἐσσαῖοι, _Asaya_, physician. Hence, the

contradictions, forgeries, and other desperate expedients to reconcile

the prophecies of the Jewish canon with the Galilean nativity and

godship.

Luke, who was a physician, is designated in the Syriac texts as

_Asaia_, the Essaian or Essene. Josephus and Philo Judæus have

sufficiently described this sect to leave no doubt in our mind that

the Nazarene Reformer, after having received his education in their

dwellings in the desert, and been duly initiated in the Mysteries,

preferred the free and independent life of a wandering _Nazaria_, and

so separated or _inazarenized_ himself from them, thus becoming a

travelling Therapeute, a Nazaria, a healer. Every Therapeute, before

quitting his community, had to do the same. Both Jesus and St. John

the Baptist preached the end of the Age;[226] which proves their

knowledge of the secret computation of the priests and kabalists, who

with the chiefs of the Essene communities alone had the secret of the

duration of the cycles. The latter were kabalists and theurgists;

“they had their _mystic_ books, and predicted future events,” says

Munk.[227]

Dunlap, whose personal researches seem to have been quite successful

in that direction, traces the Essenes, Nazarenes, Dositheans, and

some other sects as having all existed before Christ: “They rejected

pleasures, _despised riches_, _loved one another_, and more than

other sects, neglected wedlock, deeming the conquest of the passions

to be virtuous,”[228] he says.

These are all virtues preached by Jesus; and if we are to take the

gospels as a standard of truth, Christ was a metempsychosist “or

_re-incarnationist_--again like these same Essenes, whom we see were

Pythagoreans in all their doctrines and habits. Iamblichus asserts

that the Samian philosopher spent a certain time at Carmel with

them.[229] In his discourses and sermons, Jesus always spoke in

parables and used metaphors with his audience. This habit was again

that of the Essenians and the Nazarenes; the Galileans who dwelt

in cities and villages were never known to use such allegorical

language. Indeed, some of his disciples being Galileans as well as

himself, felt even surprised to find him using with the people such a

form of expression. “Why speakest thou unto them in parables?”[230]

they often inquired. “Because, it is given unto you to know the

Mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given,”

was the reply, which was that of an initiate. “Therefore, I speak

unto them in parables; because, they seeing, see not, and hearing,

they hear not, neither do they understand.” Moreover, we find Jesus

expressing his thoughts still clearer--and in sentences which are

purely Pythagorean--when, during the _Sermon on the Mount_, he says:

“Give ye not that which is sacred to the dogs,

Neither cast ye your pearls before swine;

For the swine will tread them under their feet

And the dogs will turn and rend you.”

Professor A. Wilder, the editor of Taylor’s _Eleusinian Mysteries_,

observes “a like disposition on the part of Jesus and Paul to

classify their doctrines as esoteric and exoteric, the Mysteries

of the Kingdom of God ‘for the apostles,’ and ‘parables’ for the

multitude. ‘We speak wisdom,’ says Paul, ‘among them that _are

perfect_’ (or initiated).”[231]

In the Eleusinian and other Mysteries the participants were always

divided into two classes, the _neophytes_ and the _perfect_. The

former were sometimes admitted to the preliminary initiation: the

dramatic performance of Ceres, or the soul, descending to Hades.[232]

But it was given only to the “_perfect_” to enjoy and learn the

Mysteries of the divine _Elysium_, the celestial abode of the

blessed; this Elysium being unquestionably the same as the “Kingdom

of Heaven.” To contradict or reject the above, would be merely to

shut one’s eyes to the truth.

The narrative of the Apostle Paul, in his second _Epistle to

the Corinthians_ (xii. 3, 4), has struck several scholars, well

versed in the descriptions of the mystical rites of the initiation

given by some classics, as alluding most undoubtedly to the final

_Epopteia_.[233] “I knew a certain man--_whether in body or outside

of body_, I know not: God knoweth--who was rapt into Paradise, and

heard things ineffable αρρητα ρηματα, _which it is not lawful for a

man to repeat_.” These words have rarely, so far as we know, been

regarded by commentators as an allusion to the beatific visions of an

“_initiated_” seer. But the phraseology is unequivocal. These things

“_which it is not lawful to repeat_,” are hinted at in the same words,

and the reason for it assigned, is the same as that which we find

repeatedly expressed by Plato, Proclus, Iamblichus, Herodotus, and

other classics. “We speak WISDOM only among them who are PERFECT,”

says Paul; the plain and undeniable translation of the sentence being:

“We speak of the profounder (or final) esoteric doctrines of the

Mysteries (which were denominated _wisdom_) only among them who are

_initiated_.”[234] So in relation to the “man who was rapt into

Paradise”--and who was evidently Paul himself[235]--the Christian word

Paradise having replaced that of Elysium. To complete the proof, we

might recall the words of Plato, given elsewhere, which show that

before an initiate could see the gods in their purest light, he had to

become _liberated_ from his body; _i.e._, to separate his astral soul

from it.[236] Apuleius also describes his initiation into the

Mysteries in the same way: “I approached the confines of death; and,

having trodden on the threshold of Proserpina, returned, having been

carried through all the elements. In the depths of midnight I saw the

sun glittering with a splendid light, together with _the infernal and

supernal gods_, and to these divinities approaching, I paid the

tribute of devout adoration.”[237]

Thus, in common with Pythagoras and other hierophant reformers,

Jesus divided his teachings into exoteric and esoteric. Following

faithfully the Pythagoreo-Essenean ways, he never sat at a meal

without saying “grace.” “The priest prays before his meal,” says

Josephus, describing the Essenes. Jesus also divided his followers

into “neophytes,” “brethren,” and the “perfect,” if we may judge by

the difference he made between them. But his career at least as a

public Rabbi, was of a too short duration to allow him to establish

a regular school of his own; and with the exception, perhaps, of

John, it does not seem that he had initiated any other apostle.

The Gnostic amulets and talismans are mostly the emblems of the

apocalyptic allegories. The “seven vowels” are closely related to

the “seven seals;” and the mystic title Abraxas, partakes as much of

the compositian of _Shem Hamphirosh_, “the holy word” or ineffable

name, as the name called: The word of God, that “_no man knew but he

himself_,”[238] as John expresses it.

It would be difficult to escape from the well-adduced proofs that the

_Apocalypse_ is the production of an initiated kabalist, when this

_Revelation_ presents whole passages taken from the _Books of Enoch_

and _Daniel_, which latter is in itself an abridged imitation of the

former; and when, furthermore, we ascertain that the Ophite Gnostics

who rejected the _Old Testament_ entirely, as “emanating from an

inferior being (Jehovah),” accepted the most ancient prophets, such

as Enoch, and deduced the strongest support from this book for

their religious tenets, the demonstration becomes evident. We will

show further how closely related are all these doctrines. Besides,

there is the history of Domitian’s persecutions of magicians and

philosophers, which affords as good a proof as any that John was

generally considered a kabalist. As the apostle was included among

the number, and, moreover, conspicuous, the imperial edict banished

him not only from Rome, but even from the continent. It was not the

Christians whom--confounding them with the Jews, as some historians

will have it--the emperor persecuted, but the astrologers and

kabalists.[239]

The accusations against Jesus of practicing the magic of Egypt were

numerous, and at one time universal, in the towns where he was known.

The Pharisees, as claimed in the _Bible_, had been the first to

fling it in his face, although Rabbi Wise considers Jesus himself a

Pharisee. The _Talmud_ certainly points to James the Just as one of

that sect.[240] But these partisans are known to have always stoned

every prophet who denounced their evil ways, and it is not on this

fact that we base our assertion. These accused him of sorcery, and of

driving out devils by Beelzebub, their prince, with as much justice

as later the Catholic clergy had to accuse of the same more than one

innocent martyr. But Justin Martyr states on better authority that

the men of his time _who were not Jews_ asserted that the miracles

of Jesus were performed by magical art--μαγικὴ φαντασία--the very

expression used by the skeptics of those days to designate the feats

of thaumaturgy accomplished in the Pagan temples. “They even ventured

to call him a magician and a deceiver of the people,” complains the

martyr.[241] In the _Gospel of Nicodemus_ (the _Acta Pilate_), the

Jews bring the same accusation before Pilate. “Did we not tell thee he

was a magician?”[242] Celsus speaks of the same charge, and as a

Neo-platonist believes in it.[243] The Talmudic literature is full of

the most minute particulars, and their greatest accusation is that

“Jesus could fly as easily in the air as others could walk.”[244] St.

Austin asserted that it was generally believed that he had been

initiated in Egypt, and that he wrote books concerning magic, which he

delivered to John.[245] There was a work called _Magia Jesu Christi_,

which was attributed to Jesus[246] himself. In the _Clementine

Recognitions_ the charge is brought against Jesus that he did not

perform his miracles as a Jewish prophet, but as a magician, _i.e._,

an initiate of the “heathen” temples.[247]

It was usual then, as it is now, among the intolerant clergy of

opposing religions, as well as among the lower classes of society,

and even among those patricians who, for various reasons had been

excluded from any participation of the Mysteries, to accuse,

sometimes, the highest hierophants and adepts of sorcery and black

magic. So Apuleius, who had been initiated, was likewise accused of

witchcraft, and of carrying about him the figure of a skeleton--a

potent agent, as it is asserted, in the operations of the black art.

But one of the best and most unquestionable proofs of our assertion

may be found in the so-called _Museo Gregoriano_. On the sarcophagus,

which is panelled with bas-reliefs representing the miracles of

Christ,[248] may be seen the full figure of Jesus, who, in the

resurrection of Lazarus, appears beardless “and equipped with a wand

in the received guise of a _necromancer_ (_?_) whilst the corpse of

Lazarus is swathed in bandages exactly as an Egyptian mummy.”

Had posterity been enabled to have several such representations

executed during the first century when the figure, dress, and

every-day habits of the Reformer were still fresh in the memory

of his contemporaries, perhaps the Christian world would be more

Christ-like; the dozens of contradictory, groundless, and utterly

meaningless speculations about the “Son of Man” would have been

impossible; and humanity would now have but one religion and one

God. It is this absence of all proof, the lack of the least positive

clew about him whom Christianity has deified, that has caused the

present state of perplexity. No pictures of Christ were possible

until after the days of Constantine, when the Jewish element was

nearly eliminated among the followers of the new religion. The Jews,

apostles, and disciples, whom the Zoroastrians and the Parsees had

inoculated with a holy horror of any form of images, would have

considered it a sacrilegious blasphemy to represent in any way or

shape their master. The only authorized image of Jesus, even in the

days of Tertullian, was an allegorical representation of the “Good

Shepherd,”[249] which was no portrait, but the figure of a man with a

jackal-head, like Anubis.[250] On this gem, as seen in the collection

of Gnostic amulets, the Good Shepherd bears upon his shoulders the

lost lamb. He seems to have a human head upon his neck; but, as King

correctly observes, “it only _seems so_ to the uninitiated eye.” On

closer inspection, he becomes the double-headed Anubis, having one

head human, the other a jackal’s, whilst his girdle assumes the form

of a serpent rearing aloft its crested head. “This figure,” adds the

author of the _Gnostics_, etc., “had two meanings--one obvious for

the vulgar; the other mystical, and recognizable by the _initiated

alone_. It was perhaps the signet of some chief teacher or

apostle.”[251] This affords a fresh proof that the Gnostics and early

_orthodox_ (?) Christians were not so wide apart in their _secret

doctrine_. King deduces from a quotation from _Epiphanius_, that even

as late as 400 A.D. it was considered an atrocious sin to attempt to

represent the bodily appearance of Christ. Epiphanius[252] brings it

as an idolatrous charge against the Carpocratians that “they kept

painted portraits, and _even gold and silver images_, and _in other

materials_, which they pretended to be portraits of Jesus, and made

by Pilate after the likeness of Christ.... These they keep in secret,

along with Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, and setting them all

up together, they worship and offer sacrifices unto them _after the

Gentiles’ fashion_.”

What would the pious Epiphanius say were he to resuscitate and

step into St. Peter’s Cathedral at Rome! Ambrosius seems also very

desperate at the idea--that some persons fully credited the statement

of Lampridius that Alexander Severus had in his private chapel an

image of Christ among other great philosophers. “That the Pagans

should have preserved the likeness of Christ,” he exclaims, “but the

disciples have neglected to do so, is a notion the mind shudders to

entertain, much less to believe.”

All this points undeniably to the fact, that except a handful

of self-styled Christians who subsequently won the day, all the

civilized portion of the Pagans who knew of Jesus honored him as

a philosopher, an _adept_ whom they placed on the same level with

Pythagoras and Apollonius. Whence such a veneration on their part

for a man, were he simply, as represented by the Synoptics, a poor,

unknown Jewish carpenter from Nazareth? As an incarnated God there

is no single record of him on this earth capable of withstanding the

critical examination of science; as one of the greatest reformers,

an inveterate enemy of every theological dogmatism, a persecutor

of bigotry, a teacher of one of the most sublime codes of ethics,

Jesus is one of the grandest and most clearly-defined figures on the

panorama of human history. His age may, with every day, be receding

farther and farther back into the gloomy and hazy mists of the past;

and his theology--based on human fancy and supported by untenable

dogmas may, nay, must with every day lose more of its unmerited

prestige; alone the grand figure of the philosopher and moral

reformer instead of growing paler will become with every century

more pronounced and more clearly defined. It will reign supreme and

universal only on that day when the whole of humanity recognizes but

one father--the UNKNOWN ONE above--and one brother--the whole of

mankind below.

In a pretended letter of Lentulus, a senator and a distinguished

historian, to the Roman senate, there is a description of the

personal appearance of Jesus. The letter itself, written in horrid

Latin, is pronounced a bare-faced forgery; but we find therein an

expression which suggests many thoughts. Albeit a forgery it is

evident that whosoever invented it has nevertheless tried to follow

tradition as closely as possible. The hair of Jesus is represented

in it as “wavy and curling ... flowing down upon his shoulders,” and

as “_having a parting in the middle of the head after the fashion of

the Nazarenes_.” This last sentence shows: 1. That there was such a

tradition, based on the biblical description of John the Baptist,

the _Nazaria_, and the custom of this sect. 2. Had Lentulus been

the author of this letter, it is difficult to believe that Paul

should never have heard of it; and had he known its contents, he

would never have pronounced it a _shame_ for men to wear their hair

long,[253] thus shaming his Lord and Christ-God. 3. If Jesus did

wear his hair long and parted in the middle of the forehead, after

the fashion of the Nazarenes (as well as John, the only one of his

apostles who followed it), then we have one good reason more to say

that Jesus must have belonged to the sect of the Nazarenes, and been

called NASARIA for this reason and not because he was an inhabitant

of Nazareth; for they never wore their hair long. The Nazarite, who

_separated_ himself unto the Lord, allowed “no razor to come upon his

head.” “He shall be holy, and shall let the locks of the hair of his

head grow,” says _Numbers_ (vi. 5). Samson was a Nazarite, _i.e._,

vowed to the service of God, and in his hair was his strength.

“No razor shall come upon his head; the child shall be a Nazarite

unto God from the womb” (_Judges_ xiii. 5). But the final and most

reasonable conclusion to be inferred from this is that Jesus, who was

so opposed to all the orthodox Jewish practices, would _not_ have

allowed his hair to grow had he not belonged to this sect, which

in the days of John the Baptist had already become a heresy in the

eyes of the Sanhedrim. The _Talmud_, speaking of the Nazaria, or the

Nazarenes (who had abandoned the world like Hindu yogis or hermits)

calls them a sect of physicians, of wandering exorcists; as also does

Jervis. “They went about the country, living on alms and performing

cures.”[254] Epiphanius says that the Nazarenes come next in heresy

to the Corinthians whether having existed “before them or after them,

nevertheless _synchronous_,” and then adds that “all Christians at

that time were equally called _Nazarenes_!”[255]

In the very first remark made by Jesus about John the Baptist, we

find him stating that he is “Elias, which was for to come.” This

assertion, if it is not a later interpolation for the sake of having

a prophecy fulfilled, means again that Jesus was a kabalist; unless

indeed we have to adopt the doctrine of the French spiritists and

suspect him of believing in reïncarnation. Except the kabalistic

sects of the Essenes, the Nazarenes, the disciples of Simeon Ben

Iochaï, and Hillel, neither the orthodox Jews, nor the Galileans,

believed or knew anything about the doctrine of _permutation_. And

the Sadducees rejected even that of the resurrection.

“But the author of this _restitutionis_ was Mosah, our master, upon

whom be peace! Who was the _revolutio_ (transmigration) of Seth and

Hebel, that he might cover the nudity of his Father Adam--_Primus_,”

says the _Kabala_.[256] Thus, Jesus hinting that John was the

_revolutio_, or transmigration of Elias, seems to prove beyond any

doubt the school to which he belonged.

Until the present day uninitiated Kabalists and Masons believe

permutation to be synonymous with transmigration and metempsychosis.

But they are as much mistaken in regard to the doctrine of the true

Kabalists as to that of the Buddhists. True, the _Sohar_ says in one

place, “All souls are subject to transmigration ... men do not know

the ways of the Holy One, blessed be He; they do not know that they

are brought before the tribunal, both before they enter this world

and after they quit it,” and the Pharisees also held this doctrine,

as Josephus shows (_Antiquities_, xviii. 13). Also the doctrine of

Gilgul, held to the strange theory of the “Whirling of the Soul,”

which taught that the bodies of Jews buried far away from the Holy

Land, still preserve a particle of soul which can neither rest nor

quit them, until it reaches the soil of the “Promised Land.” And this

“whirling” process was thought to be accomplished by the soul being

conveyed back through an actual evolution of species; transmigrating

from the minutest insect up to the largest animal. But this was an

_exoteric_ doctrine. We refer the reader to the _Kabbala Denudata_

of Henry Khunrath; his language, however obscure, may yet throw some

light upon the subject.

But this doctrine of permutation, or _revolutio_, must not be

understood as a belief in reïncarnation. That Moses was considered

the transmigration of Abel and Seth, does not imply that the

kabalists--those who were _initiated_ at least--believed that

the identical spirit of either of Adam’s sons reappeared under

the corporeal form of Moses. It only shows what was the mode of

expression they used when hinting at one of the profoundest mysteries

of the Oriental Gnosis, one of the most majestic articles of faith

of the Secret Wisdom. It was purposely veiled so as to half conceal

and half reveal the truth. It implied that Moses, like certain

other god-like men, was believed to have reached the highest of all

states on earth:--the rarest of all psychological phenomena, the

perfect union of the immortal spirit with the terrestrial _duad_ had

occurred. The trinity was complete. A _god_ was incarnate. But how

rare such incarnations!

That expression, “Ye are gods,” which, to our biblical students,

is a mere abstraction, has for the kabalists a vital significance.

Each immortal spirit that sheds its radiance upon a human being is

a god--the Microcosmos of the Macrocosmos, part and parcel of the

Unknown God, the First Cause of which it is a direct emanation. It

is possessed of all the attributes of its parent source. Among these

attributes are omniscience and omnipotence. Endowed with these,

but yet unable to fully manifest them while in the body, during

which time they are obscured, veiled, limited by the capabilities

of physical nature, the thus divinely-inhabited man may tower far

above his kind, evince a god-like wisdom, and display deific powers;

for while the rest of mortals around him are but _overshadowed_ by

their divine SELF, with every chance given to them to become immortal

hereafter, but no other security than their personal efforts to

win the kingdom of heaven, the so chosen man has already become an

immortal while yet on earth. His prize is secured. Henceforth he will

live forever in eternal life. Not only he may have “dominion”[257]

over all the works of creation by employing the “excellence” of the

NAME (the ineffable one) but be higher in this life, not, as Paul is

made to say, “a little lower than the angels.”[258]

The ancients never entertained the sacrilegious thought that such

perfected entities were incarnations of the One Supreme and for ever

invisible God. No such profanation of the awful Majesty entered into

their conceptions. Moses and his antitypes and types were to them

but complete men, gods on earth, for their _gods_ (divine spirits)

had entered unto their hallowed tabernacles, the purified physical

bodies. The disembodied spirits of the heroes and sages were termed

gods by the ancients. Hence, the accusation of polytheism and

idolatry on the part of those who were the first to anthropomorphize

the holiest and purest abstractions of their forefathers.

The real and hidden sense of this doctrine was known to all the

initiates. The Tanaïm imparted it to their elect ones, the Isarim, in

the solemn solitudes of crypts and deserted places. It was one of the

most esoteric and jealously guarded, for human nature was the same

then as it is now, and the sacerdotal caste as confident as now in

the supremacy of its knowledge, and ambitious of ascendency over the

weaker masses; with the difference perhaps that its hierophants could

prove the legitimacy of their claims and the plausibility of their

doctrines, whereas now, _believers_ must be content with blind faith.

While the kabalists called this mysterious and rare occurrence of the

union of spirit with the mortal charge entrusted to its care, the

“descent of the Angel Gabriel” (the latter being a kind of generic

name for it), the _Messenger of Life_, and the angel Metatron; and

while the Nazarenes termed the same Abel-Zivo,[259] the _Delegatus_

sent by the Lord of Celsitude, it was universally known as the

“Anointed Spirit.”

Thus it is the acceptation of this doctrine which caused the Gnostics

to maintain that Jesus was a man overshadowed by the Christos or

Messenger of Life, and that his despairing cry from the cross “Eloi,

Eloi, Lama Sabachthani,” was wrung from him at the instant when he

felt that this inspiring Presence had finally abandoned him, for--as

some affirmed--his faith _had_ also abandoned him when on the cross.

The early Nazarenes, who must be numbered among the Gnostic sects,

believing that Jesus was a prophet, held, nevertheless, in relation

to him the same doctrine of the divine “overshadowing,” of certain

“men of God,” sent for the salvation of nations, and to recall them

to the path of righteousness. “The Divine mind is eternal,” says the

_Codex_,[260] “And it is pure light, and poured out through splendid

_and immense space_ (pleroma). It is Genetrix of the Æons. But one

of them went to matter (chaos) stirring up confused (turbulentos)

movements; and by a certain portion of _heavenly_ light fashioned

it, properly constituted for use and appearance, but the beginning

of every evil. The Demiurg (of matter) claimed divine honor.[261]

Therefore Christus (“the anointed”), the prince of the Æons (powers),

was sent (expeditus), who _taking on the person_ of a most devout

Jew, Iesu, _was to conquer him_; but who having _laid it_ (the body)

_aside_, departed on high.” We will explain further on the full

significance of the name Christos and its mystic meaning.

And now, in order to make such passages as the above more

intelligible, we will endeavor to define, as briefly as possible,

the dogmas in which, with very trifling differences, nearly all the

Gnostic sects believed. It is in Ephesus that flourished in those

days the greatest college, wherein the abstruse Oriental speculations

and the Platonic philosophy were taught in conjunction. It was a

focus of the universal “secret” doctrines; the weird laboratory

whence, fashioned in elegant Grecian phraseology, sprang the

quintessence of Buddhistic, Zoroastrian, and Chaldean philosophy.

Artemis, the gigantic concrete symbol of theosophico-pantheistic

abstractions, the great mother Multimamma, androgyne and patroness

of the “Ephesian writings,” was conquered by Paul; but although the

zealous converts of the apostles pretended to burn all their books on

“curious arts,” τα περιεργα, enough of these remained for them to

study when their first zeal had cooled off. It is from Ephesus that

spread nearly all the _Gnosis_ which antagonized so fiercely with the

Irenæan dogmas; and still it was Ephesus, with her numerous collateral

branches of the great college of the Essenes, which proved to be the

hot-bed of all the kabalistic speculations brought by the Tanaïm from

the captivity. “In Ephesus,” says Matter, “the notions of the

Jewish-Egyptian school, and the semi-Persian speculations of the

kabalists had then recently come to swell the vast conflux of Grecian

and Asiatic doctrines, so there is no wonder that teachers should have

sprung up there who strove to combine the religion newly preached by

the apostle with the ideas there so long established.”

Had not the Christians burdened themselves with the _Revelations_

of a little nation, and accepted the Jehovah of Moses, the Gnostic

ideas would never have been termed _heresies_; once relieved of their

dogmatic exaggerations the world would have had a religious system

based on pure Platonic philosophy, and surely something would then

have been gained.

Now let us see what are the greatest _heresies_ of the Gnostics. We

will select Basilides as the standard for our comparisons, for all

the founders of other Gnostic sects group round him, like a cluster

of stars borrowing light from their sun.

Basilides maintained that he had had all his doctrines from the

Apostle Matthew, and from Peter through Glaucus, the disciple of the

latter.[262] According to Eusebius,[263] he published twenty-four

volumes of _Interpretations upon the Gospels_,[264] all of which

were burned, a fact which makes us suppose that they contained

more truthful matter than the school of Irenæus was prepared to

deny. He asserted that the unknown, eternal, and uncreated Father

having first brought forth _Nous_, or Mind, the latter emanated

from itself--the _Logos_. The Logos (the Word of John) emanated

in its turn _Phronesis_, or the Intelligences (Divine-human

spirits). From Phronesis sprung _Sophia_, or feminine wisdom, and

_Dynamis_--strength. These were the personified attributes of the

Mysterious godhead, the Gnostic quinternion, typifying the five

spiritual, but intelligible substances, personal virtues or beings

external to the unknown godhead. This is preëminently a kabalistic

idea. It is still more Buddhistic. The earliest system of the

Buddhistic philosophy--which preceded by far Gautama-Buddha--is based

upon the uncreated substance of the “Unknown,” the A’di Buddha.[265]

This eternal, infinite Monad possesses, as proper to his own essence,

five acts of wisdom. From these it, by five separate acts of Dhyân,

emitted five Dhyani Buddhas; these, like A’di Buddha, are quiescent

in their system (passive). Neither A’di, nor either of the five

Dhyani Buddhas, were ever incarnated, but seven of their emanations

became Avatars, _i.e._, were incarnated on this earth.

Describing the Basilidean system, Irenæus, quoting the Gnostics,

declares as follows:

“When the uncreated, _unnamed_ Father saw the corruption of mankind,

he sent his first-born _Nous_, into the world, in the form of Christ,

for the redemption of all who believe in him, out of the power of

those who fabricated the world (the Demiurgus, and his six sons, the

planetary genii). He appeared amongst men as the man, Jesus, and

wrought miracles. This Christ did _not die_ in person, but Simon

the Cyrenian suffered in his stead, _to whom he lent his bodily

form_; for the Divine Power, the Nous of the Eternal Father, _is not

corporeal_, and _cannot die_. Whoso, therefore, maintains that Christ

has died, is still the bondsman of ignorance; whoso denies the same,

he is free, and hath understood the purpose of the Father.”[266]

So far, and taken in its abstract sense, we do not see anything

blasphemous in this system. It may be a _heresy_ against the theology

of Irenæus and Tertullian,[267] but there is certainly nothing

sacrilegious against the religious idea itself, and it will seem to

every impartial thinker far more consistent with divine reverence

than the anthropomorphism of actual Christianity. The Gnostics were

called by the orthodox Christians, _Docetæ_, or Illusionists, for

believing that Christ did not, nor could, suffer death actually--in

physical body. The later Brahmanical books contain, likewise,

much that is repugnant to the reverential feeling and idea of the

Divinity; and as well as the Gnostics, the Brahmans explain such

legends as may shock the divine dignity of the Spiritual beings

called gods by attributing them to _Maya_ or illusion.

A people brought up and nurtured for countless ages among all the

psychological phenomena of which the civilized (!) nations read,

but reject as incredible and worthless, cannot well expect to have

its religious system even understood--let alone appreciated. The

profoundest and most transcendental speculations of the ancient

metaphysicians of India and other countries, are all based on that

great Buddhistic and Brahmanical principle underlying the whole of

their religious metaphysics--_illusion_ of the senses. Everything

that is finite is illusion, all that which is eternal and infinite is

reality. Form, color, that which we hear and feel, or see with our

mortal eyes, exists only so far as it can be conveyed to each of us

through our senses. The universe for a man born blind does not exist

in either form or color, but it exists in its _privation_ (in the

Aristotelean sense), and is a reality for the spiritual senses of

the blind man. We all live under the powerful dominion of phantasy.

Alone the highest and invisible _originals_ emanated from the thought

of the Unknown are real and permanent beings, forms, and ideas; on

earth, we see but their reflections; more or less correct, and ever

dependent on the physical and mental organization of the person who

beholds them.

Ages untold before our era, the Hindu Mystic Kapila, who is

considered by many scientists as a skeptic, because they judge him

with their habitual superficiality, magnificently expressed this idea

in the following terms:

“Man (physical man) counts for so little, that hardly anything can

demonstrate to him his proper existence and that of nature. Perhaps,

that which we regard as the universe, and the divers beings which

seem to compose it, have nothing real, and are but the product of

continued illusion--_maya_--of our senses.”

And the modern Schopenhauer, repeating this philosophical idea,

10,000 years old now, says: “Nature is non-existent, _per se_....

Nature is the infinite illusion of our senses.” Kant, Schelling, and

other metaphysicians have said the same, and their school maintains

the idea. The objects of sense being ever delusive and fluctuating,

cannot be a reality. Spirit alone is unchangeable, hence--alone

is no illusion. This is pure Buddhist doctrine. The religion of

the _Gnosis_ (knowledge), the most evident offshoot of Buddhism,

was utterly based on this metaphysical tenet. Christos suffered

_spiritually_ for us, and far more acutely than did the illusionary

Jesus while his body was being tortured on the Cross.

In the ideas of the Christians, Christ is but another name for Jesus.

The philosophy of the Gnostics, the initiates, and hierophants

understood it otherwise. The word Christos, Χριστος, like all Greek

words, must be sought in its philological origin--the Sanscrit. In

this latter language _Kris_ means sacred,[268] and the Hindu deity was

named Chris-na (the pure or the sacred) from that. On the other hand,

the Greek _Christos_ bears several meanings, as anointed (pure oil,

_chrism_) and others. In all languages, though the synonym of the word

means pure or sacred essence, it is the first emanation of the

invisible Godhead, manifesting itself tangibly in spirit. The Greek

Logos, the Hebrew Messiah, the Latin Verbum, and the Hindu Viradj (the

son) are identically the same; they represent an idea of collective

entities--of flames detached from the one eternal centre of light.

“The man who accomplishes pious but interested acts (with the sole

object of his salvation) may reach the ranks of the _devas_

(saints);[269] but he who accomplishes, disinterestedly, the same

pious acts, finds himself ridden forever of the five elements” (of

matter). “Perceiving the Supreme Soul in all beings and all beings in

the Supreme Soul, in offering his own soul in sacrifice, he identifies

himself with the Being who shines in his own splendor” (_Manu_, book

xii., slokas 90, 91).

Thus, Christos, as a unity, is but an abstraction: a general idea

representing the collective aggregation of the numberless

spirit-entities, which are the direct emanations of the infinite,

invisible, incomprehensible FIRST CAUSE--the individual spirits of

men, erroneously called the souls. They are the divine sons of God, of

which some only overshadow mortal men--but this the majority--some

remain forever planetary spirits, and some--the smaller and rare

minority--unite themselves during life with some men. Such God-like

beings as Gautama-Buddha, Jesus, Tissoo, Christna, and a few others

had united themselves with their spirits permanently--hence, they

became gods on earth. Others, such as Moses, Pythagoras, Apollonius,

Plotinus, Confucius, Plato, Iamblichus, and some Christian saints,

having at intervals been so united, have taken rank in history as

demi-gods and leaders of mankind. When unburthened of their

terrestrial tabernacles, their freed souls, henceforth united forever

with their spirits, rejoin the whole shining host, which is bound

together in one spiritual solidarity of thought and deed, and called

“the anointed.” Hence, the meaning of the Gnostics, who, by saying

that “Christos” suffered spiritually for humanity, implied that his

Divine Spirit suffered mostly.

Such, and far more elevating were the ideas of Marcion, the great

“Heresiarch” of the second century, as he is termed by his opponents.

He came to Rome toward the latter part of the half-century, from A.D.

139-142, according to Tertullian, Irenæus, Clemens, and most of his

modern commentators, such as Bunsen, Tischendorf, Westcott, and many

others. Credner and Schleiermacher[270] agree as to his high and

irreproachable personal character, his pure religious aspirations and

elevated views. His influence must have been powerful, as we find

Epiphanius writing more than two centuries later that in his time the

followers of Marcion were to be found throughout the whole world.[271]

The danger must have been pressing and great indeed, if we are to

judge it to have been proportioned with the opprobrious epithets

and vituperation heaped upon Marcion by the “Great African,” that

Patristic Cerberus, whom we find ever barking at the door of the

Irenæan dogmas.[272] We have but to open his celebrated refutation of

Marcion’s _Antitheses_, to acquaint ourselves with the _fine-fleur_

of monkish abuse of the Christian school; an abuse so faithfully

carried through the middle ages, to be renewed again in our present

day--at the Vatican. “Now, then, ye hounds, yelping at the God of

Truth, whom the apostles cast out, to all your questions. These are

the bones of contention which ye gnaw,” etc.[273] “The poverty of

the Great African’s arguments keeps pace with his abuse,” remarks

the author of _Supernatural Religion_.[274] “Their (the Father’s)

religious controversy bristles with misstatements, and is turbid with

pious abuse. Tertullian was a master of his style, and the vehement

vituperation with which he opens and often interlards his work

against ‘the impious and sacrilegious Marcion,’ offers anything but a

guarantee of fair and legitimate criticism.”

How firm these two Fathers--Tertullian and Epiphanius--were on their

theological ground, may be inferred from the curious fact that they

intemperately both vehemently reproach “the beast” (Marcion) “with

erasing passages from the _Gospel of Luke_ which never were in _Luke_

at all.”[275] “The lightness and inaccuracy,” adds the critic, “with

which Tertullian proceeds, are all the better illustrated by the

fact that not only does he accuse Marcion falsely, but _he actually

defines the motives_ for which he expunged a passage _which never

existed_; in the same chapter he also similarly accuses Marcion of

erasing (from _Luke_) the saying that Christ had not come to destroy

the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them, and he actually

repeats the charge on two other occasions.[276] Epiphanius also

commits the mistake of reproaching Marcion with omitting from _Luke_

what is only found in _Matthew_.”[277]

Having so far shown the amount of reliance to be placed in the

Patristic literature, and it being unanimously conceded by the

great majority of biblical critics that what the Fathers fought

for was not _truth_, but their own interpretations and unwarranted

assertions,[278] we will now proceed to state what were the views

of Marcion, whom Tertullian desired to annihilate as the most

dangerous _heretic_ of his day. If we are to believe Hilgenfeld, one

of the greatest German biblical critics, then “From the critical

standing-point one must ... consider the statements of the Fathers

of the Church only as expressions of their _subjective view_, which

itself requires proof.”[279]

We can do no better nor make a more correct statement of facts

concerning Marcion than by quoting what our space permits from

_Supernatural Religion_, the author of which bases his assertions

on the evidence of the greatest critics, as well as on his own

researches. He shows in the days of Marcion “two broad parties in the

primitive Church”--one considering Christianity “a mere continuation

of the law, and dwarfing it into an Israelitish institution, a narrow

sect of Judaism;” the other representing the glad tidings “as the

introduction of a new system, applicable to all, and supplanting the

Mosaic dispensation of the law by a universal dispensation of grace.”

These two parties, he adds, “were popularly represented in the early

Church, by the two apostles Peter and Paul, and their antagonism is

faintly revealed in the _Epistle to the Galatians_.”[280]

Marcion, who recognized no other _Gospels_ than a few _Epistles

of Paul_, who rejected totally the anthropomorphism of the _Old

Testament_, and drew a distinct line of demarcation between the old

Judaism and Christianity, viewed Jesus neither as a King, Messiah

of the Jews, nor the son of David, who was in any way connected

with the law or prophets, “but a divine being sent to reveal to man

a spiritual religion, wholly new, and a God of goodness and grace

hitherto unknown.” The “Lord God” of the Jews in his eyes, the

Creator (Demiurgos), was totally different and distinct from the

Deity who sent Jesus to reveal the divine truth and preach the glad

tidings, to bring reconciliation and salvation to all. The mission of

Jesus--according to Marcion--was to abrogate the Jewish “Lord,” who

“was opposed to the God and Father of Jesus Christ as _matter is to

spirit, impurity to purity_.”

Was Marcion so far wrong? Was it blasphemy, or was it intuition,

divine inspiration in him to express that which every honest heart

yearning for truth, more or less feels and acknowledges? If in his

sincere desire to establish a purely spiritual religion, a universal

faith based on unadulterated truth, he found it necessary to make

of Christianity an entirely new and separate system from that of

Judaism, did not Marcion have the very words of Christ for his

authority? “No man putteth a piece of new cloth into an old garment

... for the rent is made worse.... Neither do men put new wine into

old bottles, else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and

the bottles perish; but _they put new wine into new bottles_, and

both are preserved.” In what particular does the jealous, wrathful,

revengeful God of Israel resemble the unknown deity, the God of mercy

preached by Jesus;--_his_ Father who is in Heaven, and the Father

of all humanity? This Father alone is the God of spirit and purity,

and, to compare Him with the subordinate and capricious Sinaitic

Deity is an error. Did Jesus ever pronounce the name of Jehovah? Did

he ever place _his_ Father in contrast with this severe and cruel

Judge; his God of mercy, love, and justice, with the Jewish genius

of retaliation? Never! From that memorable day when he preached his

Sermon on the Mount, an immeasurable void opened between his God

and that other deity who fulminated his commands from that other

mount--Sinai. The language of Jesus is unequivocal; it implies not

only rebellion but defiance of the Mosaic “Lord God.” “Ye have

heard,” he tells us, “that it hath been said, an eye for an eye, and

a tooth for a tooth: but _I say_ unto you, That ye resist not evil:

but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the

other also. Ye have heard that it hath been said [by the same “Lord

God” on Sinai]: Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.

But _I say_ unto you; Love your enemies, bless them that curse you,

do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully

use you, and persecute you” (_Matthew_ v.).

And now, open _Manu_ and read:

“Resignation, _the action of rendering good for evil_, temperance,

probity, purity, repression of the senses, the knowledge of the

_Sastras_ (the holy books), that of the supreme soul, truthfulness

and abstinence from anger, such are the ten virtues in which consists

duty.... Those who study these ten precepts of duty, and after

having studied them conform their lives thereto, will reach to the

supreme condition” (_Manu_, book vi., sloka 92).

If _Manu_ did not trace these words many thousands of years before

the era of Christianity, at least no voice in the whole world will

dare deny them a less antiquity than several centuries B.C. The same

in the case of the precepts of Buddhism.

If we turn to the _Prâtimoksha Sûtra_ and other religious tracts of

the Buddhists, we read the ten following commandments:

1. Thou shalt not kill any living creature.

2. Thou shalt not steal.

3. Thou shalt not break thy vow of chastity.

4. Thou shalt not lie.

5. Thou shalt not betray the secrets of others.

6. Thou shalt not wish for the death of thy enemies.

7. Thou shalt not desire the wealth of others.

8. Thou shalt not pronounce injurious and foul words.

9. Thou shalt not indulge in luxury (sleep on soft beds or be lazy).

10. Thou shalt not accept gold or silver.[281]

“Good master, what shall I do that I may have eternal life?” asks a

man of Jesus. “Keep the commandments.” “Which?” “Thou shalt do no

murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou

shalt not bear false witness,”[282] is the answer.

“What shall I do to obtain possession of Bhodi? (knowledge of eternal

truth)” asks a disciple of his Buddhist master. “What way is there to

become an Upasaka?” “Keep the commandments.” “What are they?” “Thou

shalt abstain all thy life from murder, theft, adultery, and lying,”

answers the master.[283]

Identical injunctions are they not? Divine injunctions, the living up

to which would purify and exalt humanity. But are they more divine

when uttered through one mouth than another? If it is god-like to

return good for evil, does the enunciation of the precept by a

Nazarene give it any greater force than its enunciation by an Indian,

or Thibetan philosopher? We see that the Golden Rule was not original

with Jesus; that its birth-place was India. Do what we may, we cannot

deny Sakya-Muni Buddha a less remote antiquity than several centuries

before the birth of Jesus. In seeking a model for his system of

ethics why should Jesus have gone to the foot of the Himalayas rather

than to the foot of Sinai, but that the doctrines of Manu and

Gautama harmonized exactly with his own philosophy, while those of

Jehovah were to him abhorrent and terrifying? The Hindus taught to

return _good for evil_, but the Jehovistic command was: “An eye for

an eye” and “a tooth for a tooth.”

Would Christians still maintain the identity of the “Father” of

Jesus and Jehovah, if evidence sufficiently clear could be adduced

that the “Lord God” was no other than the Pagan Bacchus, Dionysos?

Well, this identity of the Jehovah at Mount Sinai with the god

Bacchus is hardly disputable. The name יהוה is Yava or Iao,

according to Theodoret, which is the _secret_ name of the Phœnician

Mystery-god;[284] and it was actually adopted from the Chaldeans with

whom it also was the secret name of the creator. Wherever Bacchus

was worshipped there was a tradition of Nysa and a cave where he was

reared. Beth-San or Scythopolis in Palestine had that designation;

so had a spot on Mount Parnassus. But Diodorus declares that Nysa

was between Phœnicia and Egypt; Euripides states that Dionysos came

to Greece from India; and Diodorus adds his testimony: “Osiris was

brought up in Nysa, in Arabia the Happy; he was the son of Zeus, and

was named from his father (nominative Zeus, genitive _Dios_) and the

place Dio-Nysos”--the Zeus or Jove of Nysa. This identity of name

or title is very significant. In Greece Dionysos was second only to

Zeus, and Pindar says:

“So Father Zeus governs all things, and Bacchus he governs also.”

But outside of Greece Bacchus was the all-powerful “Zagreus, the

highest of gods.” Moses seems to have worshipped him personally

and together with the populace at Mount Sinai; unless we admit

that he was an _initiated_ priest, an adept, who knew how to lift

the veil which hangs behind all such exoteric worship, but kept

the secret. “_And Moses built an altar, and called the name of it

Jehovah_-NISSI!” or _Iao-Nisi_. What better evidence is required to

show that the Sinaitic god was indifferently Bacchus, Osiris, and

Jehovah? Mr. Sharpe appends also his testimony that the place where

Osiris was born “was Mount Sinai, called by the Egyptians Mount

Nissa.” The Brazen Serpent was a _nis_, נחש, and the month of

the Jewish Passover _nisan_.

If the Mosaic “Lord God” was the only living God, and Jesus His only

Son, how account for the rebellious language of the latter? Without

hesitation or qualification he sweeps away the Jewish _lex talionis_

and substitutes for it the law of charity and self-denial. If the

_Old Testament_ is a divine revelation, how can the _New Testament_

be? Are we required to believe and worship a Deity who contradicts

himself every few hundred years? Was Moses inspired, or was Jesus

_not_ the son of God? This is a dilemma from which the theologians

are bound to rescue us. It is from this very dilemma that the

Gnostics endeavored to snatch the budding Christianity.

Justice has been waiting nineteen centuries for intelligent

commentators to appreciate this difference between the orthodox

Tertullian and the Gnostic Marcion. The brutal violence, unfairness,

and bigotry of the “great African” repulse all who accept his

Christianity. “How can a god,” inquired Marcion, “break his own

commandments? How could he consistently prohibit idolatry and

image-worship, and still cause Moses to set up the brazen serpent?

How command: Thou shalt not steal, and then order the Israelites to

_spoil_ the Egyptians of their gold and silver?” Anticipating the

results of modern criticism, Marcion denies the applicability to

Jesus of the so-called Messianic prophecies. Writes the author of

_Supernatural Religion_:[285] “The Emmanuel of Isaiah is not Christ;

the ‘Virgin,’ his mother, is simply a ‘young woman,’ an alma of the

temple; and the sufferings of the servant of God (_Isaiah_ lii.

13-liii. 3) are not predictions of the death of Jesus.”[286]