My thanks go to Juan Schoch who by his work brought me into contact with the Vitvan
material (School of the natural order - SNO site), Gerald Massey's research on Egypt, 
the pagan origin of Christanity, and Alvin Boyd Kuhn, the pupil of Massey who has written
extensively on the meaning of symbols in myth. 

Martin Euser
Webmaster

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Originally published in a private edition c. 1900





FOREWORD

Gerald Massey, a man of many talents, distinguished himself as a social
reformer, a poet and an Egyptologist. His fame rested mainly on the six
monumental volumes in which he dealt at length on the mythology and
religion of Ancient Egypt, and on his poetry. Although he was a capable
lecturer, the lectures were not widely circulated, and were privately
printed in an obscure volume. It is timely that this valuable collection
is once again presented to Massey's increasing public.

Relatively little is known of Massey's career. His humble birth at
Gamble Wharf, Hertfordshire, England in 1829 held scant promise for the
future. His parents were illiterate--his father was a poorly paid canal
boatman. His own early education was meager. Only occasionally was the
young Massey able to attend the neighboring school, for which he paid
one penny a week. From the age of eight he labored twelve hours a day.
At first he found employment in a silk mill. When it was destroyed by
fire, he worked as a straw-plaiter. Doubtless there were many such jobs
until at fifteen he went to London as an errand boy. Later he was
fortunate enough to become a haberdasher's clerk.

It is evident that Massey improved his life at every opportunity. Not
only did his positions become more responsible, but in his spare time he
read literature, and was inspired to write poetry. He even composed a
popular song, which was so well-received that it was exhibited in a
London shop window. In passing the Editor of "The Athenaeum", London's
most distinguished periodical, noticed and bought a copy. The song, "The
People's Advent," caught the Editor's fancy to the extent that the
composer's name--Gerald Massey--remained in his memory.

A year later, his book of poetry readied for publication, Massey brought
it with hope and humility to the Editor of "The Athenaeum." The Editor,
recognizing the author's name as the composer of "The People's Advent,"
was predisposed to like the poems before reading them. He wrote a
brilliant, laudatory review of the poetry. The book-sellers of London,
impressed by the review ordered the book with no hesitation. In one day
the first edition was sold out.

i

Gerald Massey became increasingly interested in Egyptology. He studied
the extensive Egyptian records housed in the British Museum. He
eventually taught himself to decipher the hieroglyphics. Finally after
many years of study he wrote a series of scholarly works on the Religion
and Mythology of Ancient Egypt. In 1881 he published in two volumes "A
Book of the Beginnings," in 1883 "The Natural Genesis" followed, and
finally in 1907 he published in two volumes "Ancient Egypt: The Light of
the World,".

Through those long years of devoted study at the British Museum, Massey
enjoyed the friendship and wise counsel of Dr. Samuel Birch, an
outstanding Egyptologist. He attracted a following of dedicated
students, who later were privileged to assist in his research. Two of
his most prominent co-workers were George St. Clair who authored
"Creation Records Discovered in Egypt," and Dr. Albert Churchward, who
wrote "The Origin and Evolution of the Human Race."

When Massey lectured in America and Canada, he found himself surrounded
with able students. Miss E. Valentia Straiton, author of "The Celestial
Ship of the North," and Dr. Alvin Boyd Kuhn, who wrote extensively on
comparative religion. Dr. Kuhn acknowledged that in Gerald Massey had
been a great inspiration to him. In fact in his posthumous work, "A
Rebirth for Christianity," Dr. Kuhn called attention to the great worth
of Massey's research on Christian origins, as follows:

"With brilliant scholarship and insight he pierced Egypt's enigmatic
scriptology, and documented the provenance of both Old and New Testament
literature from remote Egyptian sources. He forced us to ask how the
four Gospels of the Christian canon could be the biography of any
Messianic personality living in the first Christian century, when he
traced their texts back to Egyptian documents that must have been
venerable even in 3500 B.C.

"We are faced with the inescapable realization that if Jesus actually
lived in the flesh in the first century A.D., and if he had been able to
read the documents of old Egypt, he would have been amazed to find his
own biography already substantially written some four or five thousand
years previously. Tertullian, Justin Martyr and

ii

other writers have noted that the leaders of the Christian movement
confessed that many of their doctrines, rites, creeds and symbols were
identical with Egyptian antetypes. The late outstanding American
Egyptologist, James H. Breasted, found evidence of such similarities
between the Old Testament book, Proverbs, and addresses to the Pharaoh
of Egypt dating as far back as 3500 B.C. All this confirms Massey's
conclusions." (pp. 39-40)

Gerald Massey so impressed the novelist, George Eliot, that she made him
the hero of one of her famous romances. Thus Massey became immortalized
in literature as "Felix Holt the Radical."

Among Massey's American friends and admirers was a prominent New York
Journalist and publisher, D. M. Bernett. In the second edition of his
"The World's Sages, Thinkers and Reformers" on page 967, Bernett says,

"Gerald Massey is a warm-hearted, genial man, and as a companion and
friend he has few superiors. His interests and incentives are decidedly
in the direction of Science and Rationalism. He has many years been
freed from the binding and blinding theological creeds and obligations.
He regards priestcraft as one of the great evils which mankind for
thousands of years have been compelled to endure and support; and
regards it as one of the most important works that men of the present
time can engage in to demolish the idols of the past dark ages; to
liberate the mind from the dwarfing and blighting effect of pagan and
Christian mythology and to dispense with the officious and expensive
services of a designing, useless, aristocratic and wily priesthood. He
most desires to see the human race advance in knowledge and truth and
mental freedom, which science and philosophy imparts to the diligent
investigator. He believes ignorance to be the Devil, Science the Savior
of the world."

For those who finish the reading of these lectures and desire a further
acquaintance with the works of Gerald Massey, there are his greater
works beginning with "Ancient Egypt, the Light of the World."

iii












iv

INTRODUCTION

Gerald Massey, though a poet, Shakespearian scholar, and renowned
Egyptologist, is best remembered by his unswerving convictions. His
research led him to the conclusion that in Africa alone could be found
the origins of myths, mysteries, symbols, languages and religions. Egypt
was the mouthpiece.

He did not hesitate to undertake to prove that all Christendom were the
dupes of delusions. His zeal caused him to challenge the scientists, the
theologians, the philologists, the anthropologists and sociologists.
However, he did not rest his case there. He was too much the honest
scholar for that. Therefore, he presented to his peers the abundant
evidence resulting from his immense amount of research, which had been
sifted through the most reliable authorities.

In these present lectures Gerald Massey renewed his contention that the
gnosis of Christianity was primarily derived from Egypt on various lines
of descent--Hebrew, Persian, Greek, Alexandrian, Essenian and Nazarene.
These converged in Rome where the history was manufactured from
identifiable matter recorded in the ancient Book of Wisdom.

It was during this period that he delivered the lecture on GNOSTIC AND
HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY. He clearly depicts the origin of Christianity and
makes it unequivocal that it was not derived from Buddhism. Jesus spoke
repeatedly about the Father. Massey said, "The Buddha is the veiled God
unveiled, the unmanifested made manifest, but not by the line of descent
from Father to Son. Buddha was begotten by his own becoming before the
time of divine paternity."

Long before man uttered a verbal prayer, he expressed himself by actions
or gesture-language. Massey discussed this at length in MAN IN SEARCH OF
HIS SOUL DURING FIFTY THOUSAND YEARS AND HOW HE FOUND IT. Present-day
psychologists recognize gesture-language as an indication of man's true
unexpressed attitudes, for unconsciously he assumes gestures revealing
his thinking. The old cliché, "Actions speak louder than words," has
come full circle and vindicated Massey.

v

Massey had but one desire. He wanted to gain all the knowledge the past
could afford him, and then to supplement it with all that is known in
the present. He maintained it was impossible to understand the present
without a profound knowledge of the past. Unless man comprehended the
laws of evolution and past development, and of present survival, it was
impossible to form an opinion that would be of value to anyone. With
patience and determination he carried this out in all his writings.

He had little patience with those who talked of the great occult
secrets. He was convinced the so-called ancient mysteries were
manufactured by pseudo-Esoterists and Occultists. The only interest
Massey took in such matters was to determine how they had originated, to
verify their supposed phenomena, and to ferret out their meaning. He
insisted the need for mystery vanished with the coming of the printing
press and public experimental research. It became a passion with him to
publish the facts as he saw them, and then to distribute the knowledge
widely. In THE SEVEN SOULS OF MAN, he said, "The modern manufacture of
ancient mysteries is a great imposition, and sure to be found out. The
mysteries called Christian . . . I look upon them as the greatest
imposition of all."

His own meditation on facts of both abnormal or extraordinary nature
which continued and were verified over the years, proved to him that
Mind existed and operated invisibly. He did not trouble about "the other
world" at all, for it was in this world that people needed assistance.
Life to him was not worth living if something were not done to further
its work. "It is only in helping others that we can truly help
ourselves," said Mr. Massey in the lecture, THE DEVIL OF DARKNESS IN THE
LIGHT OF EVOLUTION.

To Gerald Massey it was an unforgiveable pretense for the clergy to
continue to preach that man was a fallen creature. He continually
pointed out that man could not be saved through prayful intercession.
Every advance made by science for humanity had been carried out through
research and perseverance--not by praying to a jealous God. Massey
proclaimed, "It is a sad farce for you to pray for God to work a miracle
. . . when you are doing all you can to prevent it."

vi

Speaking of creation, he saw it as beginning with the first means of
measuring and recording a cycle of time. In Genesis, the first day was
measured by the morning and the evening. To the present day time
continues to be measured by this identical method.

Through years of observation Massey recorded the outcome of such
statements as, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."
He concluded that the meek did not inherit the earth and were not about
to. Teachers had been woefully mistaken and unobserving. The death of
Jesus could not save man from himself. Massey was adamant in pointing
out that man was what he was as the result of what he had done. There
was no dodging the law of cause and effect.

One of Massey's greatest contributions is his lecture on THE COMING
RELIGION. It is poignant with his sincerity. He put his own belief into
every word. To him each person must do his own thinking and have
absolute freedom of expression. He stressed that the new religion must
have "sincerity of life, in place of pretended belief; a religion of
science, in place of superstition." This religion will proclaim man's
Ascent rather than his Fall. It will be a religion of fact in the
present, not of mere faith for the future. The temple will be what it
was intended to be--the human form rather than an edifice of brick and
stone. It will be a religion of accomplishment, rather than of worship;
and in place of the many creeds, it will be a religion of life. Above
all it will be a joyous religion. To realize such a religion a man must
be honest and courageous as was Gerald Massey himself.

His final plea in THE COMING RELIGION was to urge man to bear in mind
that the origin of evil in the moral domain was derived from ignorance.
It was Hermes who said, "The wickedness of a soul is its ignorance." To
this Gerald Massey fittingly added that after gaining the consciousness
to recognize the right, then it is man's permissiveness that allows evil
actions to take place.

Sibyl Ferguson

vii












viii

THE

HISTORICAL JESUS

AND

M Y T H I C A L C H R I S T.

================

/(All necessary references to the original authorities may be found in
the Author's/

/"Natural Genesis."/

================

In presenting my readers with some of the data which show that much of
the Christian History was pre-extant as Egyptian Mythology. I have to
ask you to bear in mind that the facts, like other foundations, have
been buried out of sight for thousands of years in a hieroglyphical
language, that was never really read by Greek or Roman, and could not be
read until the lost clue was discovered by Champollion, almost the other
day! In this way the original sources of our Mytholatry and Christology
remained as hidden as those of the Nile, until the century in which we
live. The mystical matter enshrouded in this language was sacredly
entrusted to the keeping of the buried dead, who have faithfully
preserved it as their Book of Life, which was placed beneath their
pillows, or clasped to their bosoms, in their coffins and their tombs.

Secondly, although I am able to read the hieroglyphics, nothing offered
to you is based on my translation. I work too warily for that! The
transcription and literal rendering of the hieroglyphic texts herein
employed are by scholars of indisputable authority. There is no loophole
of escape that way. I lectured upon the subject of Jesus many years ago.
At that time I did not know how we had been misled, or that the
"Christian scheme" (as it is aptly called) in the New Testament is a
fraud, founded on a fable in the Old!

I then accepted the Canonical Gospels as containing a veritable human
history, and assumed, as others do, that the history proved itself.
Finding that Jesus, or Jehoshua Ben-Pandira, /was /an historical
character, known to the Talmud, I made the common mistake of

1

supposing that this proved the personal existence of the Jesus found
portrayed in the Canonical Gospels. But after you have heard my story,
and weighed the evidence now for the first time collected and presented
to the public, you will not wonder that I should have changed my views,
or that I should be impelled to tell the truth to others, as it now
appears to myself; although I am only able to summarize here, in the
briefest manner possible, a few of the facts that I have dealt with
exhaustively elsewhere.

The personal existence of Jesus as Jehoshua Ben-Pandira can be
established beyond a doubt. One account affirms that, according to a
genuine Jewish tradition "that man (who is not to be named) was a
disciple of Jehoshua Ben-Perachia." It also says, "He was born in the
fourth year of the reign of the Jewish King Alexander Jannæus,
notwithstanding the assertions of his followers that he was born in the
reign of Herod." That would be more than a century earlier than the date
of birth assigned to the Jesus of the Gospels! But it can be further
shown that Jehoshua Ben-Pandira may have been born considerably earlier
even than the year 102 B.C., although the point is not of much
consequence here. Jehoshua, son of Perachia, was a president of the
Sanhedrin--the fifth, reckoning from Ezra as the first: one of those who
in the line of descent received and transmitted the oral law, as it was
said, direct from Sinai. There could not be two of that name. This
Ben-Perachia had begun to teach as a Rabbi in the year 154 B.C. We may
therefore reckon that he was /not born /later than 180-170 B.C., and
that it could hardly be later than 100 B.C. when he went down into Egypt
with his pupil. For it is related that he fled there in consequence of a
persecution of the Rabbis, feasibly conjectured to refer to the civil
war in which the Pharisees revolted against King Alexander Jannæus, and
consequently about 105 B.C. If we put the age of his pupil, Jehoshua
Ben-Pandira, at fifteen years, that will give us an approximate date,
extracted without pressure, which shows that Jehoshua Ben-Pandira may
have been born about the year 120 B.C. But twenty years are a matter of
little moment here.

According to the Babylonian Gemara to the Mishna of Tract "Shabbath,"
this Jehoshua, the son of Pandira and Stada, was stoned to death as a
wizard, in the city of Lud, or Lydda, and afterwards crucified by being
hanged on a tree, on the eve of the Passover. This is the manner of
death assigned to Jesus in the Book of Acts. The Gemara says there
exists a tradition that on the rest-day before the Sabbath they
crucified Jehoshua, on the rest-day of the Passah (the day before the
Passover). The year of his death, however, is not given in that account;
but there are reasons for thinking it could not have been much earlier
nor later than B.C. 70, because this Jewish King Jannæus reigned from
the year 106 to 79 B.C. He was succeeded in the government by his widow
Salomè, whom the Greeks called Alexandra, and who reigned for some nine
years. Now the traditions, especially of the first "Toledoth Jehoshua,"
relate that the Queen of Jannæus, and the mother of Hyrcanus, who must
therefore be Salomè,

2

in spite of her being called by another name, showed favour to Jehoshua
and his teaching; that she was a witness of his wonderful works and
powers of healing, and tried to save him from the hands of his
sacerdotal enemies, because he was related to her; but that during her
reign, which ended in the year 71 B.C., he was put to death. The Jewish
writers and Rabbis with whom I have talked always deny the identity of
the Talmudic Jehoshua and the Jesus of the Gospels. "This," observes
Rabbi Jechiels, "which has been related to Jehoshua Ben-Perachia and his
pupil, contains no reference whatever to him whom the Christians honour
as God!" Another Rabbi, Salman Zevi, produced ten reasons for concluding
that the Jehoshua of the Talmud was /not /he who was afterwards called
Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus of Nazareth (and of the Canonical Gospels) was
unknown to Justus, to the Jew of Celsus, and to Josephus, the supposed
reference to him by the latter being an undoubted forgery.

The "blasphemous writings of the Jews about Jesus," as Justin Martyr
calls them, always refer to Jehoshua Ben-Pandira, and not to the Jesus
of the Gospels. It is Ben-Pandira they mean when they say they have
another and a truer account of the birth and life, the wonder-working
and death of Jehoshua or Jesus. This repudiation is perfectly honest and
soundly based. The only Jesus known to the Jews was Jehoshua
Ben-Pandira, who had learnt the arts of magic in Egypt, and who was put
to death by them as a sorcerer. This was likewise the only Jesus known
to Celsus, the writer of the "True Logos," a work which the Christians
managed to get rid of bodily, with so many other of the anti-Christian
evidences.

Celsus observes that he was not a pure Word, not a true Logos, but a man
who had learned the arts of sorcery in Egypt. So, in the Clementines, it
is in the character of Ben-Pandira that Jesus is said to rise again as
the magician. But here is the conclusive fact: The Jews know nothing of
Jesus, the Christ of the Gospels, as an historical character; and when
the Christians of the fourth century trace his pedigree, by the hand of
Epiphanius, they are forced to derive their Jesus from Pandira!
Epiphanius gives the genealogy of the Canonical Jesus in this wise:--

Jacob, called Pandira, Mary=Joseph--Cleopas, Jesus.

This proves that in the fourth century the pedigree of Jesus was traced
to Pandira, the father of that Jehoshua who was the pupil of
Ben-Perachia, and who becomes one of the magicians in Egypt, and who was
crucified as a magician on the eve of the Passover by the Jews, in the
time of Queen Alexandra, who had ceased to reign in the year 70
B.C.--the Jesus, therefore, who lived and died more than a century too soon.

Thus, the Jews do not identify Jehoshua Ben-Pandira with the Gospel
Jesus, of whom they, his supposed contemporaries, know nothing, but
protest against the assumption as an impossibility; whereas the
Christians /do/ identify their Jesus as the descendant of Pandira. It
was he or nobody; yet he was neither the son of Joseph

3

nor the Virgin Mary, nor was he crucified at Jerusalem. It is not the
Jews, then, but the Christians, who fuse two supposed historic
characters into one! There being but one history acknowledged or known
on either side, it follows that the Jesus of the Gospels is the Jehoshua
of the Talmud, or is not at all, as a Person. This shifts the historic
basis altogether; it antedates the human history by more than a hundred
years, and it at once destroys the historic character of the Gospels,
together with that of any other personal Jesus than Ben-Pandira. In
short, the Jewish history of the matter will be found to corroborate the
mythical. As Epiphanius knew of no other historical Jesus than the
descendant of Pandira, it is possible that this is the Jesus whose
tradition is reported by Irenæus.

Irenæus was born in the early part of the second century, between 120
and 140 A.D. He was Bishop of Lyons, France, and a personal acquaintance
of Polycarp; and he repeats a tradition testified to by the elders,
which he alleges was directly derived from John, the "disciple of the
Lord," to the effect that Jesus was not crucified at 33 years of age,
but that he passed through every age, and lived on to be an oldish man.
Now, in accordance with the dates given, Jehoshua Ben-Pandira may have
been between 50 and 60 years of age when put to death, and his tradition
alone furnishes a clue to the Nihilistic statement of Irenæus.

When the true tradition of Ben-Pandira is recovered, it shows that he
was the sole historical Jesus who was hung on a tree by the Jews, not
crucified in the Roman fashion, and authenticates the claim now to be
made on behalf of the astronomical allegory to the dispensational Jesus,
the Kronian Christ, the mythical Messiah of the Canonical Gospels, and
the Jesus of Paul, who was not the carnalised Christ. For I hold that
the Jesus of the "other Gospel," according to the Apostles Cephas and
James, who was utterly repudiated by Paul, was none other than
Ben-Pandira, the Nazarene, of whom James was a follower, according to a
comment on him found in the Book Abodazura. Anyway, there are two
Jesuses, or Jesus and the Christ, one of whom is repudiated by Paul.

But Jehoshua, the son of Pandira, can never be converted into Jesus
Christ, the son of a virgin mother, as an historic character. Nor can
the dates given ever be reconciled with contemporary history. The
historical Herod, who sought to slay the young child Jesus, is known to
have died four years before the date of the Christian era, assigned for
the birth of Jesus.

So much for the historic Jesus. And now for the mythical Christ. Here we
can tread on firmer ground.

The mythical Messiah was always born of a Virgin Mother--a factor
unknown in natural phenomena, and one that cannot be historical, one
that can only be explained by means of the Mythos, and those conditions
of primitive sociology which are mirrored in mythology and preserved in
theology. The virgin mother has been represented in Egypt by the maiden
Queen, Mut-em-ua, the future mother of Amenhept III.

4

some 16 centuries B.C., who impersonated the eternal virgin that
produced the eternal child.

Four consecutive scenes reproduced in my book are found pourtrayed upon
the innermost walls of the /Holy of Holies/ in the Temple of Luxor,
which was built by Amenhept III., a Pharaoh of the 17th dynasty. The
first scene on the left hand shows the God Taht, the Lunar Mercury, the
Annunciator of the Gods, in the act of hailing the Virgin Queen, and
announcing to her that she is to give birth to the coming Son. In the
next scene the God Kneph (in conjunction with Hathor) gives the new
life. This is the Holy Ghost or Spirit that causes the Immaculate
Conception, Kneph being the spirit by name in Egyptian. The natural
effects are made apparent in the virgin's swelling form.

Next the mother is seated on the mid-wife's stool, and the newborn child
is supported in the hands of one of the nurses. The fourth scene is that
of the Adoration. Here the child is enthroned, receiving homage from the
Gods and gifts from men. Behind the deity Kneph, on the right, three
spirits--the Three Magi, or Kings of the Legend, are kneeling and
offering presents with their right hand, and life with their left. The
child thus announced, incarnated, born, and worshipped, was the
Pharaonic representative of the Aten Sun in Egypt, the God Adon of
Syria, and Hebrew Adonai; the child-Christ of the Aten Cult; the
miraculous conception of the ever-virgin mother, personated by
Mut-em-ua, as mother of the "only one," and representative of the divine
mother of the youthful Sun-God.

These scenes, which were mythical in Egypt, have been copied or
reproduced as historical in the Canonical Gospels, where they stand like
four corner-stones to the Historic Structure, and prove that the
foundations are mythical.

Jesus was not only born of the mythical motherhood; his descent on the
maternal side is traced in accordance with this origin of the mythical
Christ. The virgin was also called the harlot, because she represented
the pre-monogamic stage of intercourse; and Jesus descends from four
forms of the harlot--Thamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba--each of whom is
a form of the "stranger in Israel," and is not a Hebrew woman. Such
history, however, does not show that illicit intercourse was the natural
mode of the divine descent; nor does it imply unparalleled human
profligacy. It only proves the Mythos.

In human sociology the son of the mother preceded the father, as son of
the woman who was a mother, but not a wife. This character is likewise
claimed for Jesus, who is made to declare that he was earlier than
Abraham, who was the typical Great Father of the Jews; whether
considered to be mythical or historical. Jesus states emphatically that
he existed before Abraham was. This is only possible to the mythical
Christ, who preceded the father as son of the virgin mother; and we
shall find it so throughout. All that is non-natural and impossible as
human history, is possible, natural and explicable as Mythos.

5

It can be explained by the Mythos, because it originated in that which
alone accounts for it. For it comes to this at last: the more hidden the
meaning in the Gospel history, the more satisfactorily is it explained
by the Mythos; and the more mystical the Christian doctrine, the more
easily can it be proved to be mythical.

The birth of Christ is astronomical. The birthday is determined by the
full moon of Easter. This can only occur once every 19 years, as we have
it illustrated by the Epact or Golden Number of the Prayer Book.
Understand me! Jesus, the Christ, can only have a birthday, or
resurrection, once in 19 years, in accordance with the Metonic Cycle,
because his parents are the sun and moon; and those appear in the
earliest known representation of the Man upon the Cross! This proves the
astronomical and non-human nature of the birth itself, which is
identical with that of the full moon of Easter in Egypt.

Casini, the French Astronomer, has demonstrated the fact that the date
assigned for the birth of the Christ is an Astronomical epoch in which
the middle conjunction of the moon with the sun happened on the 24th
March, at half-past one o'clock in the morning, at the meridian of
Jerusalem, the very day of the middle equinox. The following day (the
25th) was the day of the Incarnation, according to Augustine, but the
date of the Birth, according to Clement Alexander. For two birth days
are assigned to Jesus by the Christian Fathers, one at the Winter
Solstice, the other at the Vernal Equinox. These, which cannot both be
historical, are based on the two birthdays of the double Horus in Egypt.
Plutarch tells us that Isis was delivered of Horus, the child, about the
time of the winter Solstice, and that the festival of the second or
adult Horus followed the Vernal Equinox. Hence, the Solstice and spring
Equinox were both assigned to the one birth of Jesus by the
Christolators; and again, that which is impossible as human history is
the natural fact in relation to the two Horuses, the dual form of the
Solar God in Egypt.

And here, in passing, we may point out the astronomical nature of the
Crucifixion. The Gospel according to John brings on a tradition so
different from that of the Synoptics as to invalidate the human history
of both. The Synoptics say that Jesus was crucified on the 15th of the
month Nisan. John affirms that it was on the 14th of the month. This
serious rift runs through the very foundation! As human history it
cannot be explained. But there is an explanation possible, which, if
accepted, proves the Mythos. The Crucifixion (or Crossing) was, and
still is, determined by the full moon of Easter. This, in the lunar
reckoning, would be on the 14th in the month of 28 days; in the solar
month of 30 days it was reckoned to occur on the 15th of the month. Both
unite, and the rift closes in proving the Crucifixion to have been
Astronomical, just as it was in Egypt, where the two dates can be
identified.

Plutarch also tells us how the Mithraic Cult had been particularly
established in Rome about the year 70 B.C. And Mithras was fabled

6

as having been born in a cave. Wherever Mithras was worshipped the cave
was consecrated as his birthplace. The cave can be identified, and the
birth of the Messiah in that cave, no matter under what name he was
born, can be definitely dated. The "Cave of Mithras" was the birthplace
of the Sun in the Winter Solstice, when this occurred on the 25th of
December in the sign of the Sea-Goat, with the Vernal Equinox in the
sign of the Ram. Now the Akkadian name of the tenth month, that of the
Sea-Goat, which answers roughly to our December, the tenth by name, is
/Abba Uddu, /that is, the "Cave of Light;" the cave of re-birth for the
Sun in the lowest depth at the Solstice, figured as the Cave of Light.
This cave was continued as the birthplace of the Christ. You will find
it in all the Gospels of the Infancy, and Justin Martyr says, "Christ
was born in the Stable, and afterwards took refuge in the Cave." He
likewise vouches for the fact that Christ was born on the same day that
the Sun was re-born in /Stabulo Augiæ, /or, in the Stable of Augias. Now
the cleansing of this Stable was the sixth labour of Herakles, his first
being in the sign of the Lion; and Justin was right; the Stable and Cave
are both figured in the same Celestial Sign. But mark this! The Cave was
the birthplace of the Solar Messiah from the year 2410 to the year 255
B.C.; at which latter date the Solstice passed out of the Sea-Goat into
the sign of the Archer; and no Messiah, whether called Mithras, Adon,
Tammuz, Horus or Christ, could have been born in the Cave of /Abba Uddu
/or the Stable of Augias on the 25th of December after the year 255
B.C., therefore, Justin had nothing but the Mithraic tradition of the
by-gone birthday to prove the birth of the Historical Christ 255 years
later!

In their mysteries the Sarraceni celebrated the Birth of the babe in the
Cave or Subterranean Sanctuary, from which the Priest issued, and
cried:--"The Virgin has brought forth: The Light is about to begin to
grow again!"--on the Mother-night of the year. And the Sarraceni were
/not /supporters of Historic Christianity.

The birthplace of the Egyptian Messiah at the Vernal Equinox was figured
in Apt, or Apta, the corner; but Apta is also the name of the Crib and
the Manger; hence the Child born in Apta, was said to be born in a
manger; and this Apta as Crib or Manger is the hieroglyphic sign of the
Solar birthplace. Hence the Egyptians exhibited the Babe in the Crib or
Manger in the streets of Alexandria. The birthplace was indicated by the
colure of the Equinox, as it passed from sign to sign. It was also
pointed out by the Star in the East. When the birthplace was in the sign
of the Bull, Orion was the Star that rose in the East to tell where the
young Sun-God was re-born. Hence it is called the "Star of Horus." That
was then the Star of the "Three Kings" who greeted the Babe; for the
"Three Kings" is still a name of the three stars in Orion's Belt. Here
we learn that the legend of the "Three Kings" is at least 6,000 years old.

In the course of Precession, about 255 B.C., the vernal birthplace
passed into the sign of the Fishes, and the Messiah who had been
represented for 2155 years by the Ram or Lamb, and previously for other

7

2155 years by the Apis Bull, was now imaged as the Fish, or the
"Fish-man," called Ichthys in Greek. The original Fish-man--the An of
Egypt, and the Oan of Chaldea--probably dates from the previous cycle of
precession, or 26,000 years earlier; and about 255 B.C., the Messiah, as
the Fish-man, was to come up once more as the Manifestor from the
celestial waters. The coming Messiah is called Dag, the Fish, in the
Talmud; and the Jews at one time connected his coming with some
conjunction, or occurrence, in the sign of the Fishes! This shows the
Jews were not only in possession of the astronomical allegory, but also
of the tradition by which it could be interpreted. It was the Mythical
and Kronian Messiah alone who was, or could be, the subject of prophecy
that might be fulfilled--prophecy that was fulfilled as it is in the
Book of Revelation--when the Equinox entered, the cross was re-erected,
and the foundations of a new heaven were laid in the sign of the Ram,
2410 B.C.; and, again, when the Equinox entered the sign of the Fishes,
255 B.C. Prophecy that will be /again /fulfilled when the Equinox enters
the sign of the Waterman about the end of this century, to which the
Samaritans are still looking forward for the coming of their Messiah,
who has not yet arrived for them. The Christians alone ate the oyster;
the Jews and Samaritans only got an equal share of the empty shells! The
uninstructed Jews, the /idiotai, /at one time thought the prophecy which
was astronomical, and solely related to the cycles of time, was to have
its fulfilment in human history. But they found out their error, and
bequeathed it unexplained to the still more ignorant Christians. The
same tradition of the Coming One is extant amongst the Millenarians and
Adventists, as amongst the Moslems. It is the tradition of El-Mahdi, the
prophet who is to come in the last days of the world to conquer all the
world, and who was lately descending the Soudan with the old
announcement the "Day of the Lord is at hand," which shows that the
astronomical allegory has left some relics of the true tradition among
the Arabs, who were at one time learned in astronomical lore.

The Messiah, as the Fish-man, is foreseen by Esdras ascending out of the
sea as the "same whom God the highest hath kept a great season, which by
his own self shall deliver the creature." The ancient Fish-man only came
up out of the sea to converse with men and teach them in the daytime.
"When the sun set," says Berosus, "it was the custom of this Being to
plunge again into the sea, and abide all night in the deep." So the man
foreseen by Esdras is only visible by day.

As it is said, "E'en so can no man upon earth see my son, or those that
be with him, but in the daytime." This is parodied or fulfilled in the
account of Ichthys, the Fish, the Christ who instructs men by day, but
retires to the lake of Galilee, where he demonstrates his solar nature
by walking the waters at night, or at the dawn of day.

We are told that his disciples being on board a ship, "when even was
come, in the fourth watch of the night, Jesus went unto them walking
upon the sea." Now the fourth watch began at three o'clock, and ended at
six o'clock. Therefore, this was about the proper time

8

for a solar God to appear walking upon the waters, or coming up out of
them as the Oannes. Oannes is said to have taken no food whilst he was
with men: "In the daytime he used to converse with men, but took no food
at that season." So Jesus, when his disciples prayed him, saying
"Master, eat," said unto them, "I have meat to eat that you know not of.
My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me."

This is the perfect likeness of the character of Oannes, who took no
food, but whose time was wholly spent in teaching men. Moreover, the
mythical Fish-man is made to identify himself. When the Pharisees sought
a "sign from heaven," Jesus said, "There shall no sign be given but the
sign of Jonas. For as Jonas became a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall
also the son of man be to this generation."

The sign of Jonas is that of the Oan, or Fish-man of Nineveh, whether we
take it direct from the monuments, or from the Hebrew history of Jonah,
or from the Zodiac.

The voice of the secret wisdom here says truly that those who are
looking for signs, can have no other than that of the returning
Fish-man, Ichthys, Oannes, or Jonah: and assuredly, there was no other
sign or date--than those of Ichthys, the Fish who was re-born of the
fish-goddess, Atergatis, in the sign of the Fishes, 255 B.C. After whom
the primitive Christians were called little fishes, or Pisciculi.

This date of 255 B.C. was the true day of birth, or rather of re-birth
for the celestial Christ, and there was no valid reason for changing the
time of the world.

The Gospels contain a confused and confusing record of early Christian
belief: things most truly believed (Luke) concerning certain mythical
matters, which were ignorantly mistaken for human and historical. The
Jesus of our Gospels is but little of a human reality, in spite of all
attempts to naturalize the Mythical Christ, and make the story look
rational.

The Christian religion was not founded on a man, but on a divinity; that
is, a mythical character. So far from being derived from the model man,
the typical Christ was made up from the features of various Gods, after
a fashion somewhat like those "pictorial averages" pourtrayed by Mr.
Galton, in which the traits of several persons are photographed and
fused in a portrait of a dozen different persons, merged into one that
is not anybody. And as fast as the composite Christ falls to pieces,
each feature is claimed, each character is gathered up by the original
owner, as with the grasp of gravitation.

It is not I that deny the divinity of Jesus the Christ; I assert it! He
never was, and never could be, any other than a divinity; that is, a
character non-human, and entirely mythical, who had been the pagan
divinity of various pagan myths, that had been pagan during thousands of
years before our Era.

Nothing is more certain, according to honest evidence, than that the
Christian scheme of redemption is founded on a fable misinterpreted;
that the prophecy of fulfillment was solely astronomical, and the Coming
One as the Christ who came in the end of an age, or of the world, was

9

but a metaphorical figure, a type of time, from the first, which never
could take form in historic personality, any more than Time in Person
could come out of a clock-case when the hour strikes; that no Jesus
could become a Nazarene by being born at, or taken to, Nazareth; and
that the history in our Gospels is from beginning to end the
identifiable story of the Sun-God, and the Gnostic Christ who never
could be made flesh. When we did not know the one it was possible to
believe the other; but when once we truly know, then the false belief is
no longer possible.

The mythical Messiah was Horus in the Osirian Mythos; Har-Khuti in the
Sut-Typhonian; Khunsu in that of Amen-Ra; Iu in the cult of Atum-Ra; and
the Christ of the Gospels is an amalgam of all these characters.

The Christ is the Good Shepherd!

So was Horus.

Christ is the Lamb of God!

So was Horus.

Christ is the Bread of Life!

So was Horus.

Christ is the Truth and the Life!

So was Horus.

Christ is the Fan-bearer!

So was Horus.

Christ is the Lord!

So was Horus.

Christ is the Way and the Door of Life!

Horus was the path by which they travelled out of the Sepulchre. He is
the God whose name is written with the hieroglyphic sign of the Road or Way.

Jesus is he that should come; and Iu, the root of the name in Egyptian,
means "to come." Iu-em-hept, as the Su, the Son of Atum, or of Ptah, was
the "Ever-Coming One," who is always pourtrayed as the marching
youngster, in the act and attitude of coming. Horus included both sexes.
The Child (or the soul) is of either sex, and potentially, of both.
Hence the hermaphrodital Deity; and Jesus, in Revelation, is the Young
Man who has the female paps.

Iu-em-hept signifies he who comes with peace. This is the character in
which Jesus is announced by the Angels! And when Jesus comes to his
disciples after the resurrection it is as the bringer of peace. "Learn
of me and ye shall find rest," says the Christ. Khunsu-Nefer-Hept is the
Good Rest, Peace in Person! The Egyptian Jesus, Iu-em-Hept, was the
second Atum; Paul's Jesus is the second Adam. In one rendition of John's
Gospel, instead of the "only-begotten Son of God," a variant reading
gives the "only-begotten God," which has been declared an impossible
rendering. But the "only-begotten God" was an especial type in Egyptian
Mythology, and the phrase re-identifies the divinity whose emblem is the
beetle. Hor-Apollo says, "To denote the only-begotten or a father, the
Egyptians delineate a scarabæus!

10

By this they symbolize an only-begotten, because the creature is
self-produced, being unconceived by a female." Now the youthful
manifestor of the Beetle-God was this Iu-em-hept, the Egyptian Jesus.
The very phraseology of John is common to the Inscriptions, which tell
of him who was the Beginner of Becoming from the first, and who made all
things, but who himself was not made. I quote verbatim. And not only was
the Beetle-God continued in the "only-begotten God"; the beetle-type was
also brought on as a symbol of the Christ. Ambrose and Augustine,
amongst the Christian Fathers, identified Jesus with, and as, the "good
Scarabæus," which further identifies the Jesus of John's Gospel with the
Jesus of Egypt, who was the Ever-Coming One, and the Bringer of Peace,
whom I have elsewhere shown to be the Jesus to whom the Book of
Ecclesiasticus is inscribed, and ascribed in the Apocrypha.

In accordance with this continuation of the Kamite symbols, it was also
maintained by some sectaries that Jesus was a potter, and not a
carpenter; and the fact is that this only-begotten Beetle-God, who is
pourtrayed sitting at the potter's wheel forming the Egg, or shaping the
vase-symbol of creation, was the Potter personified, as well as the
only-begotten God in Egypt.

The character and teachings of the Canonical Christ are composed of
contradictions which cannot be harmonised as those of a human being,
whereas they are always true to the Mythos.

He is the Prince of Peace, and yet he asserts that he came not to bring
peace: "I came not to send peace, but a sword," and not only is
Iu-em-hept the Bringer of Peace by name in one character; he is the
Sword personified in the other. In this he says, "I am the living image
of Atum, proceeding from him as a sword." Both characters belong to the
mythical Messiah in the Ritual, who also calls himself the "Great
Disturber," and the "Great Tranquilizer"--the "God Contention," and the
"God Peace." The Christ of the Canonical Gospels has several prototypes,
and sometimes the copy is derived or the trait is caught from one
original, and sometimes from the other. The Christ of Luke's Gospel has
a character entirely distinct from that of John's Gospel. Here he is the
Great Exorciser, and caster-out of demons. John's Gospel contains no
case of possession or obsession: no certain man who "had devils this
long time"; no child possessed with a devil; no blind and dumb man
possessed with a devil.

Other miracles are performed by the Christ of John, but not these;
because John's is a different type of the Christ. And the original of
the Great Healer in Luke's Gospel may be found in the God Khunsu, who
was the Divine Healer, the supreme one amongst all the other healers and
saviours, especially as the caster-out of demons, and the expeller of
possessing spirits. He is called in the texts the "Great God, the driver
away of possession."

In the Stele of the "Possessed Princess," this God in his effigy is sent
for by the chief of Bakhten, that he may come and cast out a possessing
spirit from the king's daughter, who has an evil movement

11

in her limbs. The demon recognises the divinity just as the devil
recognises Jesus, the expeller of evil spirits. Also the God Khunsu is
Lord over the pig--a type of Sut. He is pourtrayed in the disk of the
full moon of Easter, in the act of offering the pig as a sacrifice.
Moreover, in the judgment scenes, when the wicked spirits are condemned
and sent back into the abyss, their mode of return to the lake of
primordial matter is by entering the bodies of swine. Says Horus to the
Gods, speaking of the condemned one: "When I sent him to his place he
went, and he has been transformed into a black pig." So when the
Exorcist in Luke's Gospel casts out Legion, the devils ask permission of
the Lord of the pig to be allowed to enter the swine, and he gives them
leave. This, and much more that might be adduced, tends to differentiate
the Christ of Luke, and to identify him with Khunsu, rather than with
Iu-em-hept, the Egyptian Jesus, who is reproduced in the Gospel
according to John. In this way it can be proved that the history of
Christ in the Gospels is one long and complete catalogue of likenesses
to the Mythical Messiah, the Solar or Luni-Solar God.

The "Litany of Ra," for example, is addressed to the Sun-God in a
variety of characters, many of which are assigned to the Christ of the
Gospels. Ra is the Supreme Power, the Beetle that rests in the Empyrean,
who is born as his own son. This, as already said, is the God in John's
Gospel, who says:--"I and the Father are one," and who /is /the father
born as his own son; for he says, in knowing and seeing the son, "from
henceforth ye know him and have seen him"; /i.e., /the Father.

Ra is designated the "Soul that speaks." Christ is the Word. Ra is the
destroyer of venom. Jesus says:--"In my name they shall take up
serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them." In
one character Ra is the outcast. So Jesus had not where to lay his head.

Ra is the "timid one who sheds tears in the form of the Afflicted." He
is called Remi, the Weeper. This weeping God passes through "Rem-Rem,"
the place of weeping, and there conquers on behalf of his followers. In
the Ritual the God says:--"I have desolated the place of Rem-Rem." This
character is sustained by Jesus in the mourning over Jerusalem that was
to be desolated. The words of John, "Jesus wept," are like a carven
statue of the "Afflicted One," as Remi, the Weeper. Ra is also the God
who "makes the mummy come forth." Jesus makes the mummy come forth in
the shape of Lazarus; and in the Roman Catacombs the risen Lazarus is
not only represented as a mummy, but is an Egyptian mummy which has been
eviscerated and swathed for the eternal abode. Ra says to the mummy:
"Come forth!" and Jesus cries: "Lazarus, come forth!" Ra manifests as
"the burning one, he who sends destruction," or "sends his fire into the
place of destruction." "He sends fire upon the rebels," his form is that
of the "God of the furnace." Christ also comes in the person of this
"burning one"; the sender of destruction by fire. He is proclaimed

12

by Matthew to be the Baptiser with fire. He says, "I am come to send
fire on the earth."

He is pourtrayed as "God of the furnace," which shall "burn up the chaff
with unquenchable fire." He is to cast the rebellious into a "furnace of
fire," and send the condemned ones into everlasting fire. All this was
natural when applied to the Solar-God, and it is supposed to become
supernatural when misapplied to a supposed human being to whom it never
could apply. The Solar fire was the primary African fount of theological
hell-fire and hell.

The "Litany" of Ra collects the manifold characters that make up the
total God (termed Teb-temt), and the Gospels have gathered up the
mythical remains; thus the result is in each case identical, or entirely
similar. From beginning to end the Canonical Gospels contain the Drama
of the Mysteries of the Luni-Solar God, narrated as a human history. The
scene on the Mount of Transfiguration is obviously derived from the
ascent of Osiris into the Mount of Transfiguration in the Moon. The
sixth day was celebrated as that of the change and transformation of the
Solar God in the lunar orb, which he re-entered on that day as the
regenerator of its light. With this we may compare the statement made by
Matthew, that "after six days Jesus went up into a high mountain apart,
and he was transfigured, and his face did shine as the sun (of course!),
and his garments became white as the light."

In Egypt the year began soon after the Summer Solstice, when the sun
descended from its midsummer height, lost its force, and lessened in its
size. This represented Osiris, who was born of the Virgin Mother as the
child Horus, the diminished infantile sun of Autumn; the suffering,
wounded, bleeding Messiah, as he was represented. He descended into
hell, or hades, where he was transformed into the virile Horus, and rose
again as the sun of the resurrection at Easter. In these two characters
of Horus on the two horizons, Osiris furnished the dual type for the
Canonical Christ, which shows very satisfactorily HOW the mythical
prescribes the boundaries beyond which the historical does not, dare
not, go. The first was the child Horus, who always remained a child. In
Egypt the boy or girl wore the Horus-lock of childhood until 12 years of
age. Thus childhood ended about the twelfth year. But although adultship
was then entered upon by the youth, and the transformation of the boy
into manhood began, the full adultship was not attained until 30 years
of age. The man of 30 years was the typical adult. The age of adultship
was 30 years, as it was in Rome under /Lex Pappia. /The /homme fait /is
the man whose years are triaded by tens, and who is /Khemt. /As with the
man, so it is with the God; and the second Horus, the same God in his
second character, is the /Khemt /or /Khem-Horus, /the typical adult of
30 years. The God up to twelve years was Horus, the child of Isis, the
mother's child, the weakling. The virile Horus (the sun in its vernal
strength), the adult of 30 years, was representative of the Fatherhood,
and this Horus is the anointed son of Osiris. These two characters of Horus

13

the child, and Horus the adult of 30 years, are reproduced in the only
two phases of the life of Jesus in the Gospels. John furnishes no
historic data for the time when the /Word /was incarnated and became
flesh; nor for the childhood of Jesus; nor for the transformation into
the Messiah. But Luke tells us that /the child of twelve years/ was the
wonderful youth, and that he increased in wisdom and stature. This is
the length of years assigned to Horus the child; and this phase of the
child-Christ's life is followed by the baptism and anointing, the
descent of the pubescent spirit with the consecration of the Messiah in
Jordan, when Jesus /"began to be about 30 years of age."/

The earliest anointing was the consecration of puberty; and here at the
full age of the typical adult, the Christ, who was previously a child,
the child of the Virgin Mother, is suddenly made into the Messiah, as
the Lord's anointed. And just as the second Horus was regenerated, and
this time begotten of the father, so in the transformation scene of the
baptism in Jordan, the father authenticates the change into full
adultship, with the voice from heaven saying:--"This is my beloved son,
in whom I am well pleased;" the spirit of pubescence, or the /Ruach,
/being represented by the descending dove, called the spirit of God.
Thus from the time when the child-Christ was about twelve years of age,
until that of the typical /homme fait /of Egypt, which was the age
assigned to Horus when he became the adult God, there is no history.
This is in exact accordance with the Kamite allegory of the
double-Horus. And the Mythos alone will account for the chasm which is
wide and deep enough to engulf a supposed history of 18 years. Childhood
cannot be carried beyond the 12th year, and the child-Horus always
remained a child; just as the child-Christ does in Italy, and in German
folk-tales. The mythical record founded on nature went no further, and
there the history consequently halts within the prescribed limits, to
rebegin with the anointed and regenerated Christ at the age of
Khem-Horus, the adult of 30 years.

And these two characters of Horus necessitated a double form of the
mother, who divides into the two divine sisters, Isis and Nephthys.
Jesus also was bi-mater, or dual-mothered; and the two sisters reappear
in the Gospels as the two Marys, both of whom are the mothers of Jesus.
This again, which is impossible as human history, is perfect according
to the Mythos that explains it.

As the child-Horus, Osiris comes down to earth; he enters matter, and
becomes mortal. He is born like the Logos, or "as a Word." His father is
Seb, the earth, whose consort is Nu, the heaven, one of whose names is
MERI, the Lady of Heaven; and these two are the prototypes of Joseph and
Mary. He is said to cross the earth a substitute, and to suffer
vicariously as the Saviour, Redeemer, and Justifier of men. In these two
characters there was constant conflict between Osiris and Typhon, the
Evil Power, or Horus and Sut, the Egyptian Satan. At the Autumn Equinox,
the devil of darkness began to dominate; this was the Egyptian Judas,
who betrayed Osiris to his death at the last supper. On the day of the
Great Battle

14

at the Vernal Equinox, Osiris conquered as the ascending God, the Lord
of the growing light. Both these struggles are pourtrayed in the
Gospels. In the one Jesus is betrayed to his death by Judas; in the
other he rises superior to Satan. The latter conflict followed
immediately after the baptism. In this way:--When the sun was half-way
round, from the Lion sign, it crossed the River of the Waterman, the
Egyptian Iarutana, Hebrew Jordan, Greek Eridanus. In this water the
baptism occurred, and the transformation of the child-Horus into the
virile adult, the conqueror of the evil power, took place. Horus becomes
hawk-headed, just where the dove ascended and abode on Jesus. Both birds
represented the virile soul that constituted the anointed one at
puberty. By this added power Horus vanquished Sut, and Jesus overcame
Satan. Both the baptism and the contest are referred to in the Ritual.
"I am washed with the same water in which the Good Opener (Un-Nefer)
washes when he disputes with Satan, that justification should be made to
Un-Nefer, the Word made Truth," or the Word that is Law.

The scene between the Christ and the Woman at the Well may likewise be
found in the Ritual. Here the woman is the lady with the long hair, that
is Nu, the consort of Seb--and the five husbands can be paralleled by
her five star-gods born of Seb. Osiris drinks out of the well "to take
away his thirst." He also says: "I am creating the water. I make way in
the valley, in the Pool of the Great One. Make-road (or road-maker)
expresses what I am." "I am the Path by which they traverse out of the
sepulchre of Osiris."

So the Messiah reveals himself as the source of living water, "that
springeth up unto Everlasting Life." Later on he says, "I am the way,
the truth, the life." "I am creating the water, discriminating the
seat," says Horus. Jesus says, "The hour cometh when ye shall neither in
this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father." Jesus claims
that this well of life was given to him by the Father. In the Ritual it
says, "He is thine, O Osiris! A well, or flow, comes out of thy mouth to
him!" Also, the paternal source is acknowledged in another text. "I am
the Father, inundating when there is thirst, guarding the water. Behold
me at it." Moreover, in another chapter the well of living water becomes
the Pool of Peace. The speaker says, "The well has come through me. I
wash in the Pool of Peace."

In Hebrew, the Pool of Peace is the Pool of Salem, or Siloam. And here,
not only is the pool described at which the Osirified are made pure and
healed; not only does the Angel or God descend to the waters--the
"certain times" are actually dated. "The Gods of the pure waters are
there on the fourth hour of the night, and the eighth hour of the day,
saying, 'Pass away hence,' to him who has been cured."

An epitome of a considerable portion of John's Gospel may be

15

found in another chapter of the Ritual--"Ye Gods come to be my servants,
I am the son of your Lord. Ye are mine through my Father, who gave you
to me. I have been among the servants of Hathor or Meri. I have been
washed by thee, O attendant!" Compare the washing of Jesus' feet by Marry.

The Osiris exclaims, "I have welcomed the chief spirits in the service
of the Lord of things! I am the Lord of the fields when they are white,"
/i.e.,/ for the reapers and the harvest. So the Christ now says to the
disciples, "Behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes and look on the
fields, that are white already unto the harvest."

"Then said he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but
the labourers are few. Pray ye, therefore, the Lord of the harvest that
he send forth labourers into his harvest. And he called unto him his
twelve disciples." Now, if we turn to the Egyptian "Book of Hades," the
harvest, the Lord of the harvest, and the reapers of the harvest are all
portrayed: the twelve are also there. In one scene they are preceded by
a God leaning on a staff, who is designated the Master of Joy--a surname
of the Messiah Horus when assimilated to the Soli-Lunar Khunsu; the
twelve are "they who labour at the harvest in the plains of Neter-Kar."
A bearer of a sickle shows the inscription: "These are the Reapers." The
twelve are divided into two groups of five and seven--the original seven
of the Aahenru; these seven are the reapers. The other five are bending
towards an enormous ear of corn, the image of the harvest, ripe and
ready for the sickles of the seven. The total twelve are called the
"Happy Ones," the bearers of food. Another title of the twelve is that
of the "Just Ones." The God says to the reapers, "Take your sickles!
Reap your grain! Honour to you, reapers." Offerings are made to them on
earth, as bearers of sickles in the fields of Hades. On the other hand,
the tares or the wicked are to be cast out and destroyed for ever. These
twelve are the apostles in their Egyptian phase.

In the chapters on "Celestial Diet" in the Ritual, Osiris eats under the
sycamore tree of Hathor. He says, "Let him come from the earth. Thou
hast brought these seven loaves for me to live by, bringing the bread
that Horus (the Christ) makes. Thou hast placed, thou hast eaten
rations. Let him call to the Gods for them, or the Gods come with them
to him."

This is reproduced as miracle in the Gospels, performed when the
multitude were fed upon seven loaves. The seven loaves are found here,
together with the calling upon the Gods, or working the miracle of
multiplying the bread.

In the next chapter there is a scene of eating and drinking. The
speaker, who impersonates the Lord, says:--"I am the Lord of Bread in
Annu. My bread at the heaven was that of Ra; my bread on earth was that
of Seb." The seven loaves represent the bread of Ra. Elsewhere the
number prescribed to be set on one table, as an offering, is five
loaves. these are also carried on the heads of five different persons in
the scenes of the under-world. Five loaves are the bread

16

of Seb. Thus five loaves represent the bread of earth, and seven the
bread of heaven. Both five and seven are sacred regulation numbers in
the Egyptian Ritual. And in the Gospel of Matthew the miracles are
wrought with five loaves in the one case, and seven in the other, when
the multitudes are fed on celestial diet. This will explain the two
different numbers in one and the same Gospel miracle. In the Canonical
narrative there is a lad with five barley loaves and two fishes. In the
next chapter of the Ritual we possibly meet with the lad himself, as the
miracle-worker says:--"I have given breath to the said youth."

The Gnostics asserted truly that celestial persons and celestial scenes
had been transferred to earth in our Gospels; and it is only within the
Pleroma (the heaven) or in the Zodiac that we can at times identify the
originals of both. And it is there we must look for the "two fishes."

As the latest form of the Manifestor was in the heaven of the twelve
signs, that probably determined the number of twelve basketsful of food
remaining when the multitude had all been fed. "They that ate the loaves
were five thousand men;" and five thousand was the exact number of the
Celestials or Gods in the Assyrian Paradise, before the revolt and fall
from heaven. The scene of the miracle of the loaves and fishes is
followed by an attempt to take Jesus by force, but he withdraws himself;
and this is succeeded by the miracle of his walking on the waters, and
conquering the wind and waves. So is it in the Ritual. Chap. 57 is that
of the breath prevailing over the water in Hades. The speaker, having to
cross over, says: "O Hapi! let the Osiris prevail over the waters, like
as the Osiris prevailed against the taking by stealth, the night of the
great struggle." The Solar God was betrayed to his death by the Egyptian
Judas, on the "night of the taking by stealth," which was the night of
the last supper. The God is "waylaid by the conspirators, who have
watched very much." They are said to smell him out "by the eating of his
bread." So the Christ is waylaid by Judas, who "knew the place, for
Jesus often resorted thither," and by the Jews who had long watched to
take him.

The smelling of Osiris by the eating of his bread is remarkably rendered
by John at the eating of the last supper. The Ritual has it:--"They
smell Osiris by the eating of his bread, transporting the evil of Osiris."

"And when he had dipped the sop he gave it to Judas Iscariot, and after
the sop Satan entered into him." Then said Jesus to him into whom the
evil or devil had been transported, "That thou doest, do quickly."
Osiris was the same, beseeching burial. Here it is demonstrable that the
non-historical Herod is a form of the Apophis Serpent, called the enemy
of the Sun. In Syriac, Herod is a red dragon. Herod, in Hebrew,
signifies a terror. Heru (Eg.) is to terrify, and Herrut (Eg.) is the
Snake, the typical reptile. The blood of the divine victim that is
poured forth by the Apophis Serpent at the sixth

17

hour, on "the night of smiting the profane," is literally shed by Herod,
as the Herrut or Typhonian Serpent.

The speaker, in the Ritual asks: "Who art thou then, Lord of the Silent
Body? I have come to see him who is in the serpent, eye to eye, and face
to face." "Lord of the Silent Body" is a title of the Osiris. "Who art
thou then, Lord of the Silent Body?" is asked and left unanswered. This
character is also assigned to the Christ. The High Priest said unto him,
"Answerest thou nothing?" "But Jesus held his peace." Herod questioned
him in many words, but he answered him nothing. He acts the prescribed
character of "Lord of the Silent Body."

The transaction in the sixth hour of the night of the Crucifixion is
expressly inexplicable. In the Gospel we read:--"Now from the sixth hour
there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour." The sixth
hour being midnight, that shows the solar nature of the mystery, which
has been transferred to the sixth hour of the day in the Gospel.

It is in the seventh hour the mortal struggle takes place between the
Osiris and the deadly Apophis, or the great serpent, Haber, 450 cubits
long, that fills the whole heaven with its vast enveloping folds. The
name of this seventh hour is "that which wounds the serpent Haber." In
this conflict with the evil power thus portrayed the Sun-God is
designated the "Conqueror of the Grave," and is said to make his advance
through the influence of Isis, who aids him in repelling the serpent or
devil of darkness. In the Gospel, Christ is likewise set forth in the
supreme struggle as "Conqueror of the Grave," for "the graves were
opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose;" and Mary
represents Isis, the mother, at the cross. It is said of the great
serpent, "There are those on earth who do not drink of the waters of
this serpent, Haber," which may be paralleled with the refusal of the
Christ to drink of the vinegar mingled with gall.

When the God has overcome the Apophis Serpent, his old nightly, annual,
and eternal enemy, he exclaims, "I come! I have made my way! I have come
like the sun, through the gate of the one who likes to deceive and
destroy, otherwise called the 'viper.' I have made my way! I have
bruised the serpent, I have passed."

But the more express representation in the mysteries was that of the
annual sun as the Elder Horus, or Atum. As Julius Firmicus says: "In the
solemn celebration of the mysteries, all things in order had to be done
which the youth either did or suffered in his death."

Diodorus Siculus rightly identified the "whole fable of the underworld,"
that was dramatised in Greece, as having been copied "from the
ceremonies of the Egyptian funerals," and so brought on from Egypt into
Greece and Rome. One part of this mystery was the portrayal of the
suffering Sun-God in a feminine phase. When the suffering sun was ailing
and ill, he became female, such being a primitive mode of expression.
Luke describes the Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane as being in a great
agony, "and his sweat was, as it were, great drops of blood falling to
the ground." This experience the

18

Gnostics identified with the suffering of their own hemorrhoidal Sophia,
whose passion is the original of that which is celebrated during Passion
week, the "week of weeping in Abtu," and which constitutes the
fundamental mystery of the Rosy Cross, and the Rose of Silence.

In this agony and bloody sweat the Christ simply fulfils the character
of Osiris Tesh-Tesh, the red sun, the Sun-God that suffers his agony and
bloody sweat in Smen, whence Gethsmen, or Gethsemane. Tesh means the
bleeding, red, gory, separate, cut, and wounded; tesh-tesh is the inert
form of the God whose suffering, like that of Adonis, was represented as
feminine, which alone reaches a natural origin for the type. He was also
called Ans-Ra, or the sun bound up in linen.

So natural were the primitive mysteries!

My attention has just been called to a passage in Lycophron, who lived
under Ptolemy Philadelphus between 310 and 246 B.C. In this Heracles is
referred to as

"That three-nighted lion, whom of old

Triton's fierce dog with furious jaw devoured,

Within whose bowels, tearing of his liver,

He rolled, burning with heat, though without fire,

His head with drops of sweat bedewed all o'er."

This describes the God suffering his agony and sweat, which is called
the "bloody flux" of Osiris. Here the nights are three in number. So the
Son of Man was to be three nights as well as three days in the "heart of
the earth." In the Gospels this prophecy is /not /fulfilled; but if we
include the night of the bloody sweat, we have the necessary three
nights, and the Mythos becomes perfect. In this phase the suffering Sun
was the Red Sun, whence the typical Red Lion.

As Atum, the red sun is described as setting from the Land of Life in
all the colours of crimson, or Pant, the red pool. This clothing of
colours is represented as a "gorgeous robe" by Luke; a purple robe by
Mark; and a robe of scarlet by Matthew. As he goes down at the Autumn
Equinox, he is the crucified. His mother, Nu, or Meri, the heaven,
seeing her son, the Lord of Terror, greatest of the terrible, setting
from the Land of Life, with his hands drooping, she becomes obscure, and
there is great darkness over all the land, as at the crucifixion
described by Matthew, in which the passing of the Lord of Terror is
rendered by the terrible or "loud cry" of the Synoptic version. The
Sun-God causes the dead, or those in the earth, to live as he passes
down into the under-world, because, as he entered the earth, the tombs
were opened, /i.e.,/ figuratively. But it is reproduced literally by
Matthew.

The death of Osiris, in the Ritual, is followed by the "Night of the
Mystery of the Great Shapes," and it is explained that the night of the
Great Shapes is when there has been made the embalming of the body of
Osiris, "the Good Being, justified for ever." In the chapter on "the
night of the laying-out" of the dead body of Osiris, it is said that
"Isis rises on the night of the laying-out of the dead body, to lament
over her brother Osiris." And again: "The

19

night of the laying-out" (of the dead Osiris) is mentioned, and again it
is described as that on which Isis had risen "to make a wail for her
brother."

But this is also the night on which he conquers his enemies, and
"receives the birthplace of the Gods." "He tramples on the bandages they
make for their burial. He raises his soul, and conceals his body." So
the Christ is found to have unwound the linen bandages of burial, and
they saw the linen in one place, and the napkin in another. He too
conceals his body!

This is closely reproduced, or paralleled, in John's Gospel, where it is
Mary Magdalene who rises in the night and comes to the sepulchre, "while
it was yet dark," to find the Christ arisen, as the conqueror of death
and the grave. In John's version, after the body is embalmed in a
hundred pounds weight of spice, consisting of myrrh and aloes, we have
the "night of the mystery of the shapes": "For while it was yet dark,
Mary Magdalene coming to the sepulchre, and peering in, sees the two
angels in white sitting, the one at the head and the other at the feet,
where the body had lately lain." And in the chapter of "How a living
being is not destroyed in hell, or the hour of life ends not in Hades,"
there are two youthful Gods--"two youths of light, who prevail as those
who see the light," and the vignette shows the deceased walking off. He
has risen!

Matthew has only one angel or splendid presence, whose appearance was as
lightning, which agrees with Shepi, the Splendid One, who "lights the
sarcophagus," as a representative of the divinity, Ra. The risen Christ,
who is first seen and recognised by Mary, says to her, "Touch me not,
for I am not yet ascended to my Father." The same scene is described by
the Gnostics: when Sophia rushes forward to embrace the Christ, who
restrains her by exclaiming that he must not be touched.

In the last chapter of the "Preservation of the Body in Hades," there is
much mystical matter that looks plainer when written out in John's
Gospel. It is said of the regerminated or risen God--/"May the Osirian
speak to thee?"/ The Osirian does not know. He (Osiris) knows him. /"Let
him not grasp him." /The Osirified "comes out sound, Immortal is his
name." "He has passed along the upper roads" (that is, as a risen spirit).

/"He it is who grasps with his hand," /and gives the palpable proof of
continued personality, as does the Christ, who says, "See my hands and
my feet, that it is I myself."

The Sun-God re-arises on the horizon, where he issues forth, "saying to
those who belong to his race, Give me your arm." Says the Osirified
deceased, "I am made as ye are." "Let him explain it!" At his
reappearance the Christ demonstrates that he is made as they are; "See
my hands and feet, that it is I myself; handle me and see. And when he
had said this he showed them his hands and feet. Then he said to Thomas,
Reach hither thy finger, and see my hands, and reach hither thy hand and
put it into my side." These descriptions

20

correspond to that of the cut, wounded, and bleeding Sun-God, who says
to his companions, "Give me your arm; I am made as ye are."

In the Gospel of the Hebrews he is made to exclaim, "For I am not a
bodiless ghost." But in the original, when the risen one says to his
companions, "Give me your arm, I am made as ye are," he speaks as a
spirit to spirits. Whereas in the Gospels, the Christ has to demonstrate
that he is /not /a spirit, because the scene has been transferred into
the earth-life.

The Gnostics truly declared that all the supernatural transactions
asserted in the Christian Gospel "were counterparts (or representations)
of what took place above." That is, they affirmed the history to be
mythical; the celestial allegory made mundane; and they were in the
right, as the Egyptian Gospel proves. There are Healers, and Jehoshua
Ben-Pandira may have been one. But, because that is possible, we must
not allow it to vouch for the impossible! Thus, in the Gospels, the
mythical is, and has to be, continually reproduced as miracle. That
which naturally pertains to the character of the Sun-God becomes
supernatural in appearance when brought down to earth. The Solar God
descended into the nether world as the restorer of the bound to liberty,
the dead to life. In this region the miracles were wrought, and the
transformations took place. The evil spirits and destroying powers were
exorcised from the mummies; the halt and the maimed were enabled to get
up and go; the dead were raised, a mouth was given to the dumb, and the
blind were made to see.

This "reconstitution of the deceased" is transferred to the earth-life,
whereupon "the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers
are cleansed, the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up" at the coming
of the Christ, who performed the miracles. The drama, which the Idiotai
mistook for human history, was performed by the Sun-God in another world.

I could keep on all day, and all night, or give a dozen lectures,
without exhausting my evidence that the Canonical Gospels are only a
later literalised réchauffé of the Egyptian writings; the
representations in the Mysteries, and the oral teachings of the Gnostics
which passed out of Egypt into Greece and Rome--for there is plenty more
proof where this comes from. I can but offer a specimen brick of that
which is elsewhere a building set four-square, and sound against every
blast that blows.

The Christian dispensation is believed to have been ushered in by the
birth of a child, and the portrait of that child in the Roman Catacombs
as the child of Mary is the youthful Sun-God in the Mummy Image of the
child-king, the Egyptian Karast, or Christ. The alleged facts of our
Lord's life as Jesus the Christ, were equally the alleged facts of our
Lord's life as the Horus of Egypt, whose very name signifies the Lord.

The Christian legends were first related of Horus the Messiah, the Solar
Hero, the greatest hero that ever lived in the mind of man--not

21

in the flesh--the only hero to whom the miracles were natural, because
he was not human.

From beginning to end the history is not human but divine, and the
divine is the mythical. From the descent of the Holy Ghost to overshadow
Mary, to the ascension of the risen Christ at the end of forty days,
according to the drama of the pre-Christian Mysteries, the
subject-matter, the characters, occurrences, events, acts, and sayings
bear the impress of the mythical mould instead of the stamp of human
history. Right through, the ideas which shape the history were
pre-extant, and are identifiably pre-Christian; and so we see the
strange sight to-day in Europe of 100,000,000 of Pagans masquerading as
Christians.

Whether you believe it or not does not matter, the fatal fact remains
that every trait and feature which go to make up the Christ as Divinity,
and every event or circumstance taken to establish the human personality
were pre-extant, and pre-applied to the Egyptian and Gnostic Christ, who
never could become flesh. The Jesus Christ with female paps, who is the
Alpha and Omega of Revelation, was the IU of Egypt, and the Iao of the
Chaldeans. Jesus as the Lamb of God, and Ichthys the Fish, was Egyptian.
Jesus as the Coming One; Jesus born of the Virgin Mother, who was
overshadowed by the Holy Ghost; Jesus born of two mothers, both of whose
names are Mary; Jesus born in the manger--at Christmas, and again at
Easter; Jesus saluted by the three kings, or Magi; Jesus of the
transfiguration on the Mount; Jesus whose symbol in the Catacombs is the
eight-rayed Star--the Star of the East; Jesus as the eternal Child;
Jesus as God the Father, re-born as his own Son; Jesus as the Child of
twelve years; Jesus as the Anointed One of thirty years; Jesus in his
Baptism; Jesus walking on the Waters, or working his Miracles; Jesus as
the Caster-out of demons; Jesus as a Substitute, who suffered in a
vicarious atonement for sinful men; Jesus whose followers are the two
brethren, the four fishers, the seven fishers, the twelve apostles, the
seventy (or seventy-two in some texts) whose names were written in
Heaven; Jesus who was administered to by seven women; Jesus in his
bloody sweat; Jesus betrayed by Judas; Jesus as conqueror of the grave;
Jesus the Resurrection and the Life; Jesus before Herod; in the Hades,
and in his re-appearance to the women, and to the seven fishers; Jesus
who was crucified both on the 14th and 15th of the month Nisan; Jesus
who was also crucified in Egypt (as it is written in Revelation); Jesus
as judge of the dead, with the sheep on the right hand, and the goats on
the left, is Egyptian from first to last, in every phase, from the
beginning to the end--

MAKE WHATSOEVER YOU CAN OF JEHOSHUA BEN-PANDIRA.

In some of the ancient Egyptian Temples the Christian iconoclasts, when
tired of hacking and hewing at the symbolic figures incised in the
chambers of imagery, and defacing the most prominent features

22

of the monuments, found they could not dig out the hieroglyphics and
took to covering them over with plaster or tempera; and this plaster,
intended to hide the meaning and stop the mouth of the stone Word, has
served to preserve the ancient writings, as fresh in hue and sharp in
outline as when they were first cut and coloured.

In a similar manner the Temple of the ancient religion was invaded, and
possession gradually gained by connivance of Roman power; and that
enduring fortress, not built, but quarried out of the solid rock, was
stuccoed all over the front, and made white awhile with its look of
brand-newness, and re-opened under the sign of another name--that of the
carnalised Christ. And all the time each nook and corner were darkly
alive with the presence and the proofs of the earlier gods, and the
pre-Christian origines, even though the hieroglyphics remained unread
until the time of Champollion! But stucco is not for lasting wear, it
cracks and crumbles; sloughs off and slinks away into its natal
insignificance; the rock is the sole true foundation; the rock is the
only record in which we can reach reality at last!

Wilkinson, the Egyptologist, has actually said of Osiris on
earth:--"Some may be disposed to think that the Egyptians, being aware
of the promises of the /real saviour, /had anticipated that event,
regarding it as though it had already happened, and introduced that
mystery into their religious system!" This is what obstetrists term a
/false presentation; /a birth feet-foremost. We are also told by writers
on the Catacombs, and the Christian Iconography, that this figure is
Osiris, as a type of Christ. This is Pan, Apollo, Aristeus, as a type of
Christ. This is Harpocrates, as a type of Christ. This is Mercury, but
as a type of Christ; this is the devil (for Sut-Mercury was the devil),
as a type of Christ; until long hearing of the facts reversed, perverted
and falsified, makes one feel as if under a nightmare which has lasted
for eighteen centuries, knowing the Truth to have been buried alive and
made dumb all that time; and believing that it has only to get voice and
make itself heard to end the lying once for all, and bring down the
curtain of oblivion at last upon the most pitiful drama of delusion ever
witnessed on the human stage.

And here the worst foes of the truth have ever been, and still are, the
rationalisers of the Mythos, such as the Unitarians. They have assumed
the human history as the starting point, and accepted the existence of a
personal founder of Christianity as the one initial and fundamental
fact. They have done their best to humanise the divinity of the Mythos,
by discharging the supernatural and miraculous element, in order that
the narrative might be accepted as history. Thus they have lost the
battle from the beginning, by fighting it on the wrong ground.

The Christ is a popular lay-figure that never lived, and a lay-figure of
Pagan origin; a lay-figure that was once the Ram, and afterwards the
Fish; a lay-figure that in human form was the portrait and image of a
dozen different gods. The imagery of the Catacombs shows that the types
there represented are not the ideal figures of the human

23

reality! They are the sole reality for six or seven centuries after
A.D., because they had been so in the centuries long before. There is no
man upon the cross in the Catacombs of Rome for seven hundred years! The
symbolism, the allegories, the figures, and types, brought on by the
Gnostics, remained there just what they had been to the Romans, Greeks,
Persians, and Egyptians. Yet, the dummy ideal of Paganism is supposed to
have become doubly real as the God who was made flesh, to save mankind
from the impossible "fall!" Remember that the primary foundation-stone
for a history in the New Testament is dependent upon the Fall of Man
being a fact in the Old; whereas it was only a fable, which had its own
mythical and unhistorical meaning.

When we try over again that first step once taken in the dark, we find
no foothold for us, because there was no stair. The Fall is absolutely
non-historical, and, consequently, the first bit of standing-ground for
an actual Christ, the redeemer, is missing in the very beginning. Any
one who set up, or was set up, for an historical Saviour from a
non-historical Fall, could only be an historical impostor. But the
Christ of the Gospels is not even that! He is in /no /sense an
historical personage. It is impossible to establish the existence of an
historical character, even as an impostor. For such an one the two
witnesses--Astronomical Mythology and Gnosticism--completely prove an
alibi for ever! From the first supposed catastrophe to the final one,
the figures of the celestial allegory were ignorantly mistaken for
matters of fact, and thus the orthodox Christolator is left at last to
climb to heaven with one foot resting on the ground of a redemption that
must be fallacious. It is a fraud founded on a fable!

Every time the Christian turns to the East to bow his obeisance to the
Christ, it is a confession that the cult is Solar, the admission being
all the more fatal because it is unconscious. Every picture of the
Christ, with the halo of glory, and the accompanying Cross of the
Equinox, proffers proof.

The Christian doctrine of a resurrection furnishes evidence, absolutely
conclusive, of the Astronomical and Kronian nature of the origines! This
is to occur, as it always did, at the end of a cycle; or at the end of
the world! Christian Revelation knows nothing of immortality, except in
the form of periodic renewal, dependent on the "Coming One;" and the
resurrection of the dead still depends on the day of judgment and the
last day, at the end of the world! They have no other world. Their only
other world is at the end of this.

Now there are no fools living who would be fools big enough to cross the
Atlantic Ocean in a barque so rotten and unseaworthy as this in which
they hope to cross the dark River of Death, and, on a pier of cloud, be
landed safe in Heaven. The Christian Theology was responsible for
substituting faith instead of knowledge; and the European mind is only
just beginning to recover from the mental paralysis induced by that
doctrine which came to its natural culmination in the Dark Ages.

24

The Christian religion is responsible for enthroning the cross of death
in heaven, with a deity on it, doing public penance for a private
failure in the commencement of creation. It has taught men to believe
that the vilest spirit may be washed white, in the atoning blood of the
purest, offered up as a bribe to an avenging God. It has divinized a
figure of helpless human suffering, and a face of pitiful pain; as if
there were naught but a great heartache at the core of all things; or
the vast Infinite were but a veiled and sad-eyed sorrow that brings
visibly to birth in the miseries of human life. But "in the old Pagan
world men deified the beautiful, the glad;" as they will again, upon a
loftier pedestal, when the fable of this fictitious fall of man, and
false redemption by the cloud-begotten God, has passed away like a
phantasm of the night, and men awake to learn that they are here to wage
ceaseless war upon sordid suffering, remediable wrong, and preventable
pain; here to put an end to them, not to apotheosize an effigy of Sorrow
to be adored as a type of the Eternal. For the most beneficent is the
most beautiful; the happiest are the healthiest; the most God-like is
most glad. The Christian Cult has fanatically fought for its false
theory, and waged incessant warfare against Nature and
Evolution--Nature's intention made somewhat visible--and against some of
the noblest instincts, during eighteen centuries. Seas of human blood
have been spilt to keep the barque of Peter afloat. Earth has been
honeycombed with the graves of the martyrs of Freethought. Heaven has
been filled with a horror of great darkness in the name of God.

Eighteen centuries are a long while in the life-time of a lie, but a
brief span in the eternity of Truth. The Fiction is sure to be found
out, and the Lie will fall at last! At last! At last!!!

No matter though it towers to the sky,

And darkens earth, you cannot make the lie

Immortal; though stupendously enshrined

By art in every perfect mould of mind:

Angelo, Rafael, Milton, Handel, all

Its pillars, cannot stay it from the fall.

The Pyramid of Imposture reared by Rome,

All of cement, for an eternal home,

Must crumble back to earth, and every gust

Shall revel in the desert of its dust;

And when the prison of the Immortal, Mind,

Hath fallen to set free the bound and blind,

No more shall life be one long dread of death;

Humanity shall breathe with ampler breath,

Expand in spirit, and in stature rise,

To match its birthplace of the earth and skies.

25












26

PAUL THE GNOSTIC OPPONENT OF PETER,

NOT AN

APOSTLE OF HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY

==================

/(Fuller Egyptian and Gnostic Data, with references to the authorities,
may be/

/found in the Author's "Natural Genesis."/

==================

It has been shown in previous lectures that the matter of our Canonical
Gospels is, to a large extent, mythical, and that the Gnosis of Ancient
Egypt was carried into other lands by the underground passage of the
Mysteries, to emerge at last as the literalised legend of Historic
Christianity.

The mythical Christ was as surely continued from Egypt as were the
mythical types of the Christ on the Gnostic Stones and in the Catacombs
of Rome! Once this ground is felt to be firm underfoot it emboldens and
warrants us in cutting the Gordian knot that has been so deftly
complicated for us in the Epistles of Paul. To-day we have to face a
problem that is one of the most difficult; it is my object to prove that
Paul was the opponent and not the apostle of Historic Christianity. It
is well known to all serious students of the subject that there was an
original rent or rift of difference between the preacher Paul and the
other founders of Christianity, whom he first met in Jerusalem--namely,
Cephas (or Peter), James, and John. He did not think much of them
personally, but scoffs a little at their pretensions to being Pillars of
the Church. Those men had nothing in common with him from the first, and
never forgave him for his independence and opposition to the last. But
the depth of that visible rift has not yet been fathomed in consequence
of false assumptions; and my own researches and determination to look
and think for myself have led me to the inevitable conclusion that there
is but one way in which it can be bottomed for the first time.

It is likewise more or less apprehended that two voices are heard
contending in Paul's Epistles, to the confounding of the writer's sense

27

and the confusion of the reader's. They utter different doctrines, so
fundamentally opposed as to be for ever irreconcilable; and this
duplicity of doctrine makes Paul, who is the one distinct and
single-minded personality of the "New Testament," look like the most
double-faced of men; double-tongued as the serpent. The two doctrines
are those of the Gnostic, or Spiritual Christ, and the historic Jesus.
Both cannot be true to Paul; and my contention is that both voices did
not proceed from him personally.

We know that Paul and the other Apostles did not preach the same gospel;
and it is my present purpose to show that they did not set forth or
celebrate the same Christ. My thesis is, that Paul was not a supporter
of the system known as Historical Christianity, which was founded on a
belief in the Christ carnalised; an assumption that the Christ had been
made flesh; but that he was its unceasing and deadly opponent during his
lifetime; and that after his death his writings were tampered with,
interpolated, and re-indoctrinated by his old enemies, the forgers and
falsifiers, who first began to weave the web of the Papacy in Rome. In
this way there was added a fourth pillar or corner-stone to the original
three in Jerusalem, which was turned into the chief support of the whole
structure; the firmest foundation of the fallacious faith.

The supreme feat, performed in secret by the managers of the Mysteries
in Rome, was this conversion of the Epistles of Paul into the main
support of Historic Christianity! It was the very pivot on which the
total imposture turned! In his lifetime he had fought tooth and nail,
with tongue and pen, against the men who founded the faith of the Christ
made flesh, and damned eternally all disbelievers; and after his death
they reared the Church of the /Sarkolatræ /above his tomb, and for
eighteen centuries have, with a forged warrant, claimed him as being the
first and foremost among the founders. They cleverly dammed the course
of the natural river that flowed forth from its own independent source
in the Epistles of Paul, and turned its waters into their own artificial
canal, so that Paul's living force should be made to float the bark of
Peter. Nevertheless, those who care to look closely will see that the
two waters, like those of the river Rhone, will not mingle in one
colour! And it appears to me that, whether Paul was mad or not in this
life, such nefarious treatment of his writings was bad enough to drive
him frantic in the next, and make him insane there until the wrong is
righted.

It is the universal assumption that Paul, the persecutor of the early
Christians, was converted by a vision of the risen Jesus, who proved his
historic nature and identity by appearing to Paul in person. So it is
recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. The account, however, is entirely
opposed to that which is given by Paul himself in his Epistle to the
Galatians. He tells how the change occurred, which has been called his
conversion. It was by revelation of the Christ within, but not by an
objective vision of a personal Jesus, who demonstrated in spirit world
the reality and identity of an historic Jesus of Nazareth, who

28

had lately lived on earth. Such a version as that is rigorously
impossible, according to Paul's own words. His account of the matter is
totally antipodal. He received his commission to preach the Christ, as
he declares, /"when it was the good pleasure of God to reveal his Son in
me,"/ and therefore not by an apparition of Jesus of Nazareth outside of
him! His Christ within was not the /Corpus /of Christian belief, but the
Christ of the Gnosis. He heard no voice external to himself, which could
be converted into the audible voice of an historic Jesus; and nothing
can be more instructive to begin with, than a comparative study of these
two versions, for showing how the matter has been manipulated, and the
facts perverted, for the purpose of establishing or supporting an
orthodox history. What he did hear when caught up in the spirit he tells
us was unspeakable; words which it is not lawful for a man to utter! He
makes no mention of a Jesus of Nazareth. Indeed, Jesus of Nazareth is
unknown to Paul! His name never once appears in the Epistles; and the
significance of the fact in favour of the present view can hardly be
exaggerated. So, Jesus of Nazareth does not appear in the Gospel of
Marcion; or, as it was represented by some of the Christian Fathers,
Marcion had removed the name of Jesus of Nazareth from his particular
Gospel--being so virulent a heretic! Here we find Paul in agreement with
Marcion, the Gnostic rejecter of Jesus of Nazareth, and of historic
Christianity. Moreover, Paul was the only apostle of the true Christ who
was recognised by Marcion. Now, as Marcion had rejected the human nature
of the Christ, and left the sect which ultimately became the church of
historic Christianity, it is impossible that he could have adopted or
upheld the Gospel of Paul as it has come down to us in our version of
the Epistles. Hence, Irenæus complains that Marcion dismembered the
Epistles of Paul, and removed those passages from the prophetical
writings which had been quoted to teach us that they announced
beforehand the coming of the Lord! That is, Marcion, the man who knew,
recognised his fellow-Gnostic in Paul, but rejected the literalisations
and the spurious doctrines which had been surreptitiously interpolated
by the founders, who were the forgers, of Historic Christianity.
Further, with regard to the Marcionites, Irenæus says they allege that
Paul alone, of all the Christian teachers, knew the truth; and that to
him the Mystery was manifested by revelation. They spoke as Gnostics of
a Gnostic. At the same time, as Irenæus tells us, the Gnostics, of whom
Marcion was one, charged the other Apostles with hypocrisy, because they
/"framed their doctrine according to the capacity of their hearers,
fabling blind things for the blind according to their blindness; for the
dull, according to their dulness; for those in error, according to their
errors." /

Clement Alexander asserts that Paul, before going to Rome, stated that
he would bring to the Brethren (not the true Gospel history, but) the
Gnosis, or Gnostic communication, the tradition of the hidden mysteries,
as the fulness of the blessings of Christ, which Clement says were
revealed by the Son of God, the /"teacher who trains the Gnostic/

29

/by mysteries," /i.e., by revelations made in the state of trance. He
was going there as a Gnostic, and therefore as the natural opponent of
Historic Christianity.

The conversion of Paul, according to the Acts, is supposed to have
occurred sometime after the year 30 A.D. at the earliest; and yet if we
accept the data furnished by the book of Acts and Paul's Epistle to the
Galatians, he must have been converted as early as the year 27 A.D. Paul
states that after his conversion he did not go up to Jerusalem for three
years. Then after 14 more years he went up again to Jerusalem with
Barnabas. This second visit can be dated by means of the famine, which
is historic, and known to have occurred in the year 44, at which time
relief was conveyed to the brethren in Judea by Barnabas and Paul. If we
take 17 years from 44, the different statements go to show that Paul had
been converted as early as the year 27. Thus, according to the dates and
the data derived from the Acts, from Paul's epistle, and the historic
fact of the famine, Paul was converted to Christianity in the year 27 of
our era! This could not have been by a spiritual manifestation of the
supposed personal Jesus, who was not then dead, and had not at that time
been re-begotten as the Christ of the canonical history. This is usually
looked upon (by Renan, for example,) as such an absurdity that no
credence can be allowed to the account in the Acts. On the contrary, and
notwithstanding all that has been said by those whose work it is to put
a false bottom into the Unknown, I am free to maintain that nothing
stands in the way of its being a possibility and a fact, except the
assumption that it is an impossibility. You cannot date one event by
another which never occurred, or, if it did occur, is not recorded by
Paul, especially when his own account offers negative evidence of its
non-occurrence. It is only using plain words justifiably to say that the
concocters of the Acts falsify whenever it is convenient, and tell the
truth when they cannot help it! In Paul's own account of his conversion
he continues: /"Immediately, I conferred not with the flesh and blood;
neither went I up to //Jerusalem// to them who were Apostles before me;
but I went away into //Arabia//." /He did not seek to know anything
about the personal Jesus of Nazareth, his life, his miracles, his
crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension; had no anxiety to hear
anything whatever from living witnesses or relatives about the human
nature of this Divine Being, who is supposed to have appeared to Paul in
person; completely changed the current of his life, and transformed his
character; no wish even to verify the historic or possible ground-work
for the reality of his alleged vision of Jesus! When he did go up to
Jerusalem, three years afterwards, and again in fourteen years, he
positively learned nothing whatever from those who ought to have been
able to teach him and tell him all things on matters of vital importance
(for /historic/ Christianity), about which he should have been most
desirous to know, but had no manifest desire of knowing. He saw James,
Peter, and John, who were the pillars of the church and persons of
repute, but whatever they were it made no matter to

30

him; they imparted nothing to him. He says these respectable persons,
these pillars, who seemed to be somewhat, communicated nothing to him;
contrariwise, it was he who had a gospel of his own, which he had
received from no man, to communicate to them! He had come to bring them
the Gnosis. They privately gave him the hand of fellowship, and offered
to acknowledge him if he would keep out of their way with his other
gospel--go to the Gentiles (or go to the Devil), and leave them alone.
There was a compromise, and therefore something to compromise, though
not on Paul's account; but the only point of genuine agreement between
them was that they agreed to differ! On comparing notes, he found that
they were preaching quite /another /gospel, and /another /Jesus. We know
what their gospel was, because it has come down to us in the doctrines
and dogmas of historic Christianity. It was the gospel of the
literalisers of mythology; the gospel of the Christ made flesh to save
mankind from an impossible fall; the gospel of salvation by the atoning
blood of Christ; the gospel that would make a hell of this life, on
purpose to win heaven hereafter; the gospel of flesh and physics,
including the corporeal resurrection, and the immediate ending of the
world; the gospel that has no other world except at the end of this.
Theirs was that /other /gospel with its doctrines of delusion, against
which Paul waged continual warfare. For, /another Jesus, another Spirit,
/and /another gospel /were being preached by these pre-eminent apostles
who were the opponents of Paul. He warns the Corinthians against those
"pre-eminent apostles," whom he calls false prophets, deceitful workers,
and ministers of Satan, who came among them to preach /"another Jesus"
/whom he did not preach, and a different gospel from that which they had
received from him. To the Galatians he says: /"If any man preacheth unto
you any gospel other than that which ye received, let him be damned;"
/or let him be Anathema. He chides them: /"O, foolish, Galatians, who
did bewitch you? Are ye so foolish: having begun in the Spirit, are ye
perfected in the flesh?" /That is, in the gospel of the Christ made
flesh, the gospel to those who were at enmity with him, who followed on
his track like Satan sowing tares by night to choke the seed of the
spiritual gospel which Paul had so painfully sown, and who, as he
intimates to the Thessalonians, were quite capable of forging epistles
in his name to deceive his followers. It has never yet been shown /how
/fundamental was this feud between Paul and the forgers of the fleshly
faith, because the real facts had not been grappled with or grasped
concerning the totally different bases of belief, and the forever
irreconcilable gospels of the Gnostic or spiritual Christ, and of the
Christ made flesh, to be set forth as the Saviour of mankind, according
to Historic Christianity. It was impossible that Paul and Peter should
draw or pull together; the different grounds of their faith were in the
beginning from pole to pole apart. He says: /"I made known to you,
brethren, as touching the gospel which was preached by me, that it is
not after man. For neither did I receive it /

31

/from man (or from a man), nor was I taught it, save through revelation
of the Christ revealed within."/

He did not derive his facts from history, nor his gospel from the
Apostles; he was neither taught by man nor book. He derived his gospel
from direct personal revelation of the Christ within. In short, his
Christ was not that Jesus of Nazareth whom he never mentions, and whom
the others preached, and who may have been, and in all likelihood was,
Joshua Ben Pandira, the Nazarene.

From the present standpoint there is no doctrinal difficulty, even about
Paul being the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews. I do not need to
call in another author here anymore than elsewhere. The double-dealing
of the interpolaters and forgers would be cause enough to account for
all the difference and the difficulty. They who would have, or who had
forged epistles in his own name, would not scruple to indoctrinate his
writings when they got the chance; and if this epistle be not Paul's,
then his name as author has been forged. Now, in this epistle, the
Christ is non-historical, he is the Kronian Christ, the Æonian
manifestor of the mythical, that is astronomical prophecy; he is after
the order of Melchizedek, who was /"without father, without mother,
without genealogy, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life."
/This was the ever-coming one who could not become a human personage;
and for that reason, I take it, Paul repudiates the genealogies of
Christ. In advising Titus to give no heed to /"Jewish Fables," /he tells
him to /"shun foolish questionings and genealogies."/ He counsels
Timothy to warn his followers against giving heed to /"fables and
endless genealogies," /such, for instance, as we now find in the
canonical gospels of Matthew and Luke." These could have no application
to the Christ of the Gnosis, hence their absence from the gospel
according to John. Human genealogy could not indicate the Gnostic mode
of the Divine Descent; could not authenticate the /"Word" /of John, or
Philo; nor the Christ of Marcus, or of Paul; consequently we learn that
Marcus, the Gnostic, eliminated the genealogies from the gospel of Luke,
and all that was written respecting the generation of the Lord. The
Docetæ who rejected the humanity of Christ had, as Epiphanius phrases
it, /"Cut away the genealogies in the gospel after Matthew." /Tatian,
the pupil of Justin, who is called an /"Apostle from the Church," /also
struck out the genealogies that were intended to prove the human descent
of the Christ; he who had once accepted the gospel of the Christ made
flesh, but rejected it when he had learned to know better. This they did
because their Christ was spiritual, not an historic Jesus; and the same
reason holds good as an explanation for Paul. He repudiated the vain
genealogies employed in vain by those who sought to establish a human
line of descent for the Christ, because he rejected the flesh-and-blood
Jesus who was preached by the advocates of Historic Christianity. This
being so, it follows that the opening passage of the Epistle to the
Romans, which now looks like Paul's first utterance to all the world,
begins the tale of the interpolations, and thus appears in the right
place, for

32

it stands nearly alone in the writings of Paul, with its frank or forced
acknowledgment of the humanity of Jesus, by admitting the Word made
flesh to be of the seed of David. But the Christ of Paul could not, at
one and the same time, have been /"without genealogy" /and yet be of the
seed of Abraham or David. That would be a complete reversal of his
teaching, who, in rejecting the genealogies, had already repudiated the
descent from David. Moreover, Barnabas, the most intimate friend of Paul
and fellow-teacher with him, who, as a Gnostic, denied the human nature
of the Christ, and, like Paul, spoke disrespectfully of the other
Apostles--Barnabas assures us it was according to the error of the
wicked that Christ was called the Son of David. Paul also tells us that
no "man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor.
xii. 3), and therefore not through the facts of an external history, or
human pedigree.

The Christ of the Gnosis was not connected with /place/ any more than
personality, or line of human descent. His only birthplace was in the
mind of man. Consequently, in his gospel, Marcion, who was a Gnostic
Christian, does not connect his Christ with Nazareth. His Christ is not
Jesus of Nazareth. And this note of the Gnosis is apparent in the
writings of Paul. His Christ is nowhere called Jesus of Nazareth, nor is
he born at Bethlehem, either of the Virgin Mary, or of Mary the wife of
Cleopas, who was not the Virgin. Of course, either an historic Jesus
could become the Christ, as Saviour of the world, or he could not; and,
as the world never was lost in any such sense as the ignorant have
derived from a fable misinterpreted, why he could not, and as he could
not, then he did not, and Paul who was an Adept in the mysteries, a
Master of the Hidden Wisdom, could never have mistaken the fable for a
fact on which to build his system of Christology; nor could he accept it
from others. When once we have got the Gnostic clue to the Hidden
Wisdom, we find an universal argument amongst the Gnostics concerning
their tenets. Wherever we meet with them they give us the Masonic grip;
and by the same sign we know that Paul was a Gnostic. This is further
corroborated by his own claim to have been an Adept, a wise
master-builder, one who spoke wisdom amongst the Perfected. He was a
Gnostic in the supreme degree, and all Gnostics agree that the Christ of
the Gnosis could not be made flesh, and therefore all are, and must be
opposed to Historic Christianity, Paul included. It was as a Gnostic, a
wise master-builder, that Paul laid the foundations which others built
upon; and the superstructure they reared became the Church of Historic
Christianity. The Gnostics were Christians in an esoteric sense, but not
because they explained a human history esoterically. There was no
history to explain until the myth had been made exoteric by those who
were ignorant, or who cunningly converted the Gnosis into history. It
was the work of Peter to make the mysteries exoteric in a human history.
It was the work of Paul to prevent this being effected by explaining the
Gnosis. Hints of this appear in the Epistles when he speaks of /his
gospel, /and the revelation

33

of his mystery concerning the Christ, and warns his disciples against
the preaching of that /"other gospel" /and /"other Jesus," /which are
opposed to his own truer teaching. As when he tells Timothy to
/"remember Jesus Christ according to my gospel," /and says to the
Romans, /"establish you according to my gospel;"/ that was the gospel of
the /Gnosis /which he had brought to them.

We are also able to watch the interpolators of his writings at their
work. The tampering with the text of Paul's Epistles is still made
apparent by a comparison of the various recensions, as the marginal
notes in the Revised version yet suffice to show; and if this remains so
palpable in the latest transcript, what must it have been in the earlier
and nearest to the author's original? In some instances, instead of a
perfect join, there is a gaping gulf of doctrinal difference, too deep
for the interpolators themselves. There is a ludicrous mixture of the
historical Jesus and spiritual Christ in the First Epistle of Paul to
Timothy, where Christ Jesus is spoken of as he /"who, before Pontius
Pilate, witnessed the good confession;" /and half a dozen lines later on
Paul's Jesus is the /"lord of lords dwelling in light unapproachable,
whom no man hath seen, nor can see." That /is the Christ of the Gnosis
who could not be made flesh to stand in the presence of Pontius Pilate.
Again, Paul speaks as a spiritualist of our transformation in death and
the continuity of consciousness, when he says: /"Behold, I tell you a
mystery, we shall not entirely sleep, but shall all be changed in a
moment, in the twinkling of an eye." /This was the mystery of the Gnosis
and the transformation revealed by spiritual phenomena. Then follows the
interpolated doctrine of the resurrection at the last day: /"For the
trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised."/ Physically, which
was impossible to Paul. These are as opposite as yes and no, or day and
night. Once more, we know how emphatically Paul insists on the
/originality /of his gospel. It was his very own, personally received by
revelation. He derived nothing from the supposed apostles of an historic
Jesus; they imparted nothing to him, and he received nothing from any
man. Yet in face of this fatal evidence the writer of the Epistle to the
Hebrews, which is assigned to Paul, is made to say, that the /"salvation
first spoken through the Lord was confirmed unto us by them that heard!"
/And in his Epistle to the Corinthians he is made to declare that he
first of all delivered to them /that which he had received (not /by
subjective revelation, but according to the history externalised), /"How
that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures; and that he
was buried; and that he hath appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve,
then he appeared to above five hundred of the brethren at once /[this is
piling it up!] /then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and
last of all, as unto one born out of due time, he appeared to me also,
for I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an
apostle." /But James and Cephas were those whom he saw in Jerusalem, and
who, as he expressly tells us, had imparted nothing to him! The passage
belies what Paul has

34

elsewhere said, and is at war with all he was! So far from lowering
himself in that way, he asserts in the very same epistle: /"In nothing
was I behind these pre-eminent apostles"/-therefore he was not behind in
time! "Let me speak proudly!" that was his attitude when he compared
himself with Cephas, James, and John. And if Paul ever did call himself
an abortion (the true rendering of the sense), we may be sure that he
did not apply such a figure of that which is /premature/ to the
/lateness/ of his birth as an apostle. It cannot be made to apply. The
Gnostics tell us what he did mean. They alone could understand the
allusion, which carries the Christ of the Gnosis with it. The Christ
appears to Paul, as to an abortion, just as did Horus the Christ to
Sophia (or Achamoth), when she forlornly lay outside of the pleroma as
an amorphous abortion, and the Christ came and extended himself
cross-wise and gave her flowing substance form! Here the Gnostic
doctrine involves the Christ of the Gnosis, and not of the human
history. Paul applies the figure to himself. If these statements had
been true, Paul must have been taught by men. This /was /to receive his
information from Scriptures (whatsoever they may have been!), and was
not to receive his revelation solely from the Christ, who came within,
as he declares. In this way it becomes apparent how Paul's writings were
made orthodox by the men who preached another gospel than his; with whom
he was at war during his lifetime, and who took a bitter-sweet revenge
on his writings by suppression and addition, after he was dead and gone.

The Christ proclaimed by Paul is frequently designated the
/"first-born." /He is the /"first-born of all creation" /(Col. i. 16),
/"the first-born from the dead" /(Col. i. 18), the /"first-born among
many brethren." "Now hath Christ been raised from the dead, the
first-fruits of them that slept!" /But in what sense? It is impossible
to apply such descriptions to any historical character. No Historical
Jesus /could /be the First-born from the dead.

If continuity be a natural fact, as was held by the Gnostics (and Paul
was a Gnostic!), and is maintained by all Spiritualists (and Paul was a
Spiritualist!), we shall live on by a law of nature, not by some
jugglery with natural law, called a miracle, performed once upon a time!
The first-born from the dead could not have waited for the resurrection
until /Anno Domini; /nor could our spiritual continuity have been
demonstrated at that or any previous period by a physical resurrection,
such as forms the foundation of the Christian faith! The doctrine
enunciated by Paul was Egyptian, Chaldean, Kabbalist, and Gnostic, and,
as such, it can be explained.

In the Ritual the soul that rises again from the dead exults and
exclaims, /"I am the only one that comes forth from the body!" /that is,
as the supreme soul of all the seven; the one representative of the
pleroma of powers, or as Paul has it, /"the first-born of many
brethren;" /the first-born from the dead, because the only one that
attained immortality, as the spiritual man, or the Christ, called the
Second Adam by Paul; that celestial man referred to by Philo when he
says: /"There /

35

/is the man whose name is East. A strange appellation if it had been
intended to speak of a man composed of soul and body. But if it be the
Incorporeal man, who comprehends in himself the divine Idea, it must be
admitted that East is the name that suits him best;" i.e., /the
re-orient man of the resurrection, or re-arising. It is the same Gnostic
typology employed by Paul when he speaks of /"building up the body of
Christ; till we all attain unto the unity of faith, and of the knowledge
/(or Gnosis) /of the Son of God; unto a full-grown man; unto the measure
of the stature of the fulness of Christ." /The fulness of the Christ
being the Egyptian, Buddhist, and Gnostic pleroma of all the seven
preceding powers that culminated in the Christhood.

One title of the Gnostic Christ is /"All things." /He is called Totum,
or /"All things." /Nothing short of the Gnosis can tell us why. The
Christian world is without the Gnosis, and therefore without the means
of understanding Paul! Concerning the formation or creation of the
Gnostic Christ in the character of /"All things," /or Totum, we are told
that /"The whole pleroma of the Æons, with one design and desire,
brought together whatever each one had in himself of the greatest beauty
and preciousness, and uniting all these contributions, so as to
skilfully blend the whole, they produced a being of most perfect beauty,
the very Saviour Christ." /This /"All things," /who was the consummate
flower of the fulness or pleroma of the previous seven powers, is the
Christ of Paul, who, himself, is /"All things," /because in /"him are
all things," /and in /"all things" he has the pre-eminence. "All things
are summed up in Christ" /(Eph. i. 10). /"Of him, through him, and unto
him, are all things" /(Rom. xi. 36). /"In him dwelleth all the fulness
of the Godhead bodily" /(Col. ii. 9). That is as the Gnostic Totum!--the
All--The Christ--the eternal Soul or Spirit, in /"whom all the treasures
of wisdom and knowledge" /are hidden! He warns his followers against a
certain false teacher, whom he knows personally, and might name, and
whose teaching is after the /"tradition of men, after the rudiments of
the world, and not after the Christ" /of the pleroma. The Gnostic Christ
was also called /Eudocetos, /because the whole pleroma of the Godhead
was well pleased with him as glorifier of the Father. This is Paul's
Christ, in whom the whole fulness (pleroma) was pleased to dwell. The
text in Paul's Epistle to the Colossians should be /"for the whole
fulness was pleased to dwell in him." /There is neither /"God" /nor
/"Father" /in the case. It is the whole Gnostic pleroma of powers which
made up the immortal soul, or came to the consummate flower of soul in
man, and the Godhead in the Christ, as sum total of the powers. The
Ancient Gnosis comes first. Paul repeats it; and then we have an
adaptation of it to the later gospel history, in which we hear the voice
of the Father in heaven saying: /"This is my beloved Son in whom I am
well pleased." /The Gnostics did not derive their knowledge from the
history, any more than Paul did, and therefore it follows that the
history was derived from an adaptation of the Gnosis.

The founders of Historic Christianity taught and enforced the

36

doctrine that their Jesus the Christ had risen from the dead, body,
bones, and all, and that he demonstrated the fact to his followers when
he declared that he was /not /a spirit! The resurrection, therefore, was
physical from the first! In a confession found in the Apostolic Creed,
in the year 600, the convert has to say, /"I believe in the resurrection
of the flesh"; /and only the other day Canon Gregory declared in St.
Paul's Cathedral, that if you took away the physical resurrection of
Jesus, the one foundation of their spiritual life was gone! If the
Christ did not rise corporeally from his tomb, then that tomb would be
the grave of Christianity. But Paul's doctrine of the resurrection is
totally opposed to this cardinal doctrine of the Christian creed, the
resurrection of the body. He does not expect to rise corporeally because
of any physical resurrection of the Christ. His doctrine is that of the
Gnostics, and consequently identifiable by the comparative process. It
is also entirely opposed to that which was proclaimed by his
contemporaries, Hymenœus and Philetus, who taught that the resurrection
was past already, and who had overthrown the faith of some in the
doctrine preached by Paul. He says /"they are in error," /and /"their
word will eat as doth a gangrene." /Now, the sole way in which the
resurrection could be set forth as /already past/ was the same then as
it is to-day--namely, as the resurrection once for all of a personal and
historical Saviour, who there and then arose from the dead for the first
time and instituted the resurrection. Paul's own resurrection from the
dead was not assured by any such miraculous, non-natural, or impossible
means! On the contrary, in a passage which shows a cleavage in the
context, he breathes an aspiration thus: /"If by any means I may attain
unto the resurrection from the dead"/--therefore, not the means set
forth by Historical Christianity--and he continues: /"Not that I have
already attained, or am already made perfect, but I press on." /Again,
this is pure Gnostic doctrine. The Perfect were those who had reached
the octave, or height of attainment, in a sense which can only be
understood by the Gnosis. It was his endeavour to reach the Christhood
of the Gnosis on which the continuity in death depended--a glimpse of
which had been obtained by him in abnormal vision. This kind of working
out of one's own salvation, and earning one's own eternal living in this
life, is absolutely opposed to the Christian doctrine of the Atonement!
The old Jewish doctrine of Atonement by blood, continued into historic
Christianity, is provably impossible to a Gnostic and a spiritualist
like Paul. But this /was /the doctrine promulgated by those who preached
that /"other gospel" /which he repudiated. Therefore I infer that texts
like these are a part of the matter interpolated: /"Without shedding of
blood is no remission of sin"/ (Heb. ix. 22). /"Having made peace
through the blood of his cross" /(Col. i. 20). /"In whom we have our
redemption through his blood" /(Eph. i. 7). Such doctrine being
impossible to the Gnostic, I hold these texts to have been falsely
fathered upon Paul. The two doctrines cannot co-exist in one mind, or
system of thought; and we have to ascertain which of the two is the
genuine Pauline doctrine before we can deter-

37

mine the nature of his Christology. Again he says, /"wherefore let us
cease to speak of the first principles of Christ, and press on unto
perfection, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works,
and of faith towards God, of the teaching of baptisms, and of laying on
of hands, and of resurrection from the dead, and of eternal judgment,
and this will we do!" /Here we find a complete repudiation by Paul of
certain cardinal doctrines of Historic Christianity elsewhere ascribed
to him! These are called first principles, or those belonging to an
exoteric or exterior interpretation of the Gnosis, which is looked upon
as a pernicious and deadly heresy. They were a part of those "beggarly
rudiments" which kept men in bondage to the Petrine gospel of the flesh.
Paul positively repudiates, and most distinctly denies, salvation by
means of these Christian Sacraments! Those who have taken up with this
teaching are treated as backsliders from the true faith, which is that
of Paul's own gospel, and of the esoteric interpretation. /"For as
touching those who were once enlightened, and tasted of the heavenly
gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and tasted the good
word of God, and the powers of the age to come, and then fell away, it
is impossible to renew them again." /Every special phrase reveals the
Gnostic and the Gnosis. Those who fell away have lapsed from the
interior teaching of Paul, and gone over to those who now preach the
externalised history, the /"other gospel" /of the /"other Jesus," /with
its corporeal resurrection. Having been fed on solid food they have
become such as have need of milk. This repudiation of dogmas culminates
in his banishing the resurrection of the dead, and the Eternal Judgment
or punishment at the Last Day. Here the resurrection of the dead must
include that of the historic Jesus, if there had been one, and therefore
this also is denied. He rejects any foundation laid on that, and says,
"let us cease to speak of it." Paul, like all Gnostics, taught the
resurrection /from /the dead in /this /life; not the resurrection OF the
Dead in the life hereafter. Now, it is quite certain that these Gnostic
doctrines could not have been interpolated in Paul's writings by the
founders of the Fleshly Faith. Therefore, it is the physical dogmas that
have been foisted into the Epistles of Paul.

I have never yet seen a sign in the works of Christian writers that they
knew anything whatever of the real nature of these doctrinal mysteries.
All alike are ignorant of the Tradition or Gnosis on which a true
explanation depended. They assume the human history as the initial point
of a new beginning, and ignore, or are ignorant of, that which lies
beyond. When called upon to face the facts in broad daylight they
themselves will be all in the dark, and will have to fight against them
blindfold. But it is impossible to enter within range of understanding
Paul's teaching until we do know something of the doctrines that were
unfolded in the mysteries. It is impossible to comprehend the mystery of
Paul's Christ without a fundamental knowledge of the Messianic mystery
that had been from the Beginning. This was his mystery, which he would
not make so much of if

38

he had started with what are held to be plain historical gospel truths.
He spoke the /"Wisdom of God in a mystery that hath been hidden; which
God foreordained before the worlds unto our glory." /The /"mystery of
Christ which in other generations was not made known." /The /"mystery
which is Christ in you." /His was the /"revelation of the mystery which
hath been kept in silence through times eternal." /The fact is that Paul
was a publisher of the ancient mysteries; that was why his enemies
strove to kill him! He openly promulgated the Gnosis which had always
been kept secret. But to comprehend him we must have some knowledge of
the Messianic mystery, which had an origin in phenomena that are both
natural and explicable. When one has worked at the subject for years, it
can be explained in a few hours. The root of the Messiah's name is /Mesi
/in Egyptian. One meaning, like that of the Christ in Greek and Messiach
in Hebrew, is to anoint. But the fundamental signification is /re-birth.
/The month, /Mes-ore, /was so named from the re-birth of the Inundation.
The mam-/mesi/ was the re-birth-place of the man or mummy. The evening
meal on the first day of the New Year was the /Mesiu, /or festival of
its birth. /Cf. /Sanskrit /masa, /for a moon or month, and /masala/ for
a year.

This /re-birth /could be very various in phenomena, and so was the
typical Messiah or re-born one. The serpent called /Mesi, /the Sacred
Word, was the Messiah by name, because the reptile sloughed its skin,
and renewed itself. Hence the Serpent was a symbol of the Gnostic
Christ. /Re-birth/ was the manifestation and the personified Manifestor
was the Messiah, under whichever type or in whatever phase of the
phenomena. /Re-birth /of the Nile, of the light in the moon, of the
time-cycle, or of the Dead, could have its Messiah! Hence the Messiah
had a monthly re-birth in the lunar orb, and a solar one every
year--with re-birth from the virgin mother in the Zodiac. But there was
a more mysterious manifestation when the girl or boy attained
pubescence, or re-birth, into womanhood and manhood. Here the Messiah is
both male and female--Charis as well as Christ; Wisdom as well as the
Word! According to the natural facts, at that period of re-birth was
born the procreative power for further ensuring the future re-birth of
the race. Men and women could reproduce themselves in this life. Hence
the re-birth of the Anointed One, the Messiah of Adultship. But beyond
these natural re-births, it was demonstrated in the spiritual mysteries
of abnormal mediumship, that there was a spirit in man, or, at least, in
some men, that could reproduce itself, or, by alliance with the power
above, could be reproduced, or re-born, for the next life. This was the
Christ of the Gnosis, the Messianic Manifestor in a psychical or
spiritual phase; the Revealer, according to the mystery of Paul. That
which he had received from no man, was communicated to him by this
revelation of the Christ. But mark; in no one of these phases,
elemental, Kronian, or human, could the Messiah, the Christ of the
manifestation, become any /one /historic personage. Also, in the human
phase, there is but one sense in which the Christ could be born of a
virgin mother, and that can only

39

be understood by taking the Christ as the Immortal in man, and
supplementing it with the knowledge that the mother was the first
recognised inspirer of the soul. When typified and made doctrinal, this
mother, as quickener of the soul, this mother of the Horus, or Christ,
may be said to be virgin in a region beyond that of physical contact in
the fleshly human phase. In a final form, the Messiah was the immortal
spirit in man, or the Christ within, according to the language of Paul.
Those who understood these things could not take to, or be taken in by,
historic Christianity; could only think of it as did Celsus when he says
of the Christians: /"Certain most impious errors are committed by them,
which are due to their extreme ignorance, in which they have wandered
away from the meaning of the divine enigmas"; /and as did Porphyry, who
denounced the Christian religion as a /"blasphemy, barbarously bold."
/The Christian doctrine of being /born again/ was derived without
knowledge from this Gnostic /re-birth, /which was the conversion of the
total man, and his seven lower souls, into a likeness of his supreme or
divine self, with the eighth one, the Christ-spirit, as the reproducer
for eternal life. Paul sometimes claims that he possesses this
Christ-nature, this Revealer within, because, according to the Gnostics,
humanity could attain to the divine altitude, and demonstrate upon the
Mount of Transfiguration the immortal element in the nature of man. The
Christian world let go, and lost this basis that Paul found in natural,
though supra-normal fact, when it ignorantly substituted the /modus
operandi /of miracle applied to a physical resurrection.

But, as we have seen, this manifestor of the of the re-birth might be
feminine as well as masculine. In fact, the female announcer was first,
and there are mystical reasons for this in nature. In Hebrew, the Holy
Spirit, or /ruach, /is of a feminine gender. The soul is female. Some of
the Gnostic sects assigned the soul to the female nature, and made their
Charis not only anterior, but superior, to the Christ. In the Book of
Wisdom it is Sophia herself who is the pre-Christian /Saviour /of
mankind. It was Wisdom that men are taught, and she is the Saviour
through knowledge and good works. Whereas the Christ was turned into a
Saviour through faith. The same Tree of Knowledge that supplied the
fruit which damned the primal pair in the Genesis, is the Tree of Wisdom
in the Apocrypha, where Wisdom, personified as the Tree, exclaims, /"I
am the mother of fair love, and fear, and knowledge, and holy hope. Come
unto me all ye that be desirous of me, and fill yourselves with my
fruits. For my memorial is sweeter than honey, and mine inheritance than
the honey-comb. He that obeyeth me shall never be confounded." /This
complete reversal of the Christian belief is to be found in the Hidden
Wisdom! Such was the interpretation, by the men who knew, of that Fable
on which the Fall of Man was based by those who have imposed on us with
their ignorance, and made us blind with their belief. Wisdom is the
renewer and renovator of all things, and it is she who confers

40

immortality on man; she who is the Christ as bringer to re-birth. The
Gnostic Marcus maintained that Charis was superior to "all things" or
Totum; and Charis, the female Christ, was the illuminating spirit of his
teaching, as when he is made to say to his mediums:--/"Behold, Charis
has descended upon thee; open thy mouth and prophesy; open thy mouth and
thou shalt prophecy." /Apply this to the Spirit as male, instead of
female, and you have the Christ, or illuminating spirit of Paul. It was
a question of priority in the type, and belonged to a mystical
interpretation of natural phenomena. The blood of Charis preceded the
blood of Christ, and but for the purification by the blood of Charis,
there would have been no doctrine of the purification of souls by the
blood of Christ. The Eucharist was a celebration of Charis before it was
assigned to the Christ.

Again, Paul's Christ is identified with the angel Metatron, as the
Messiah who followed the Israelites in the wilderness. Thus he makes the
angel masculine. But in the Targumists' traditions the Well of Miriam
takes the place of this sustaining Christ, who was the spiritual rock
according to Paul. In the gospel of the Egyptians, quoted by Clement
Alexander, the Lord says: /"I am come to destroy the works of the
Woman." /The two manifestors, male and female, are continued by the
/"Shepherd of Hermas," /which some of the Fathers regarded as a divinely
inspired scripture. Here the spirit, or Logos, who is an old
woman--/i.e., /the ancient Wisdom--in one vision, becomes the son of God
in another! Of her it is said: /"She is an old woman, because she was
the first of all creation, and the world was made by her." /Wisdom, the
woman, was first; she was the mother of God. Christ, the son, was
second; then he superseded the female in one representation; in another
he was blended with her, and consequently portrayed in the image of both
sexes, as a spiritual type. The Wisdom or Sophia of the Gnostics was
first at the head of the seven pre-planetary powers, and was called
/"Ogdoas," /as mother of the first and inferior Hebdomad; next the
Christ was made the head as manifestor of the seven later planetary
powers, called by them the superior Hebdomad, he being the outcome of a
later creation, and representative of the Fatherhood in heaven, which
followed the fatherhood established on earth; and that same Gnostic
manifestor of the seven powers or Gods had been /Iu/ in Egypt, /Iao /in
Phœnicia, /Assur /in Assyria, and the /Buddha/ or /Agni /in India, ages
on ages earlier.

Now Paul was opposed to those Gnostics who exalted the feminine type of
the soul--the female as bringer to re-birth hereafter. He repudiated it,
and proclaimed his Christ. His Word, Logos or Messiah, is strictly
masculine. In India this type would be /Lingaic /versus the /Yonian./ He
maintains that the /"Word by Wisdom knew not God." /This is exactly the
same as saying that at one time men only recognised the motherhood in
heaven, and did not know who were their own fathers on earth. The Lord
is the spirit, the Christ is the spirit, he declares; not Sophia, not
the wisdom of a feminine nature. Christ, he affirms, is both the /"power
and the wisdom of God." /He proclaims

41

all the treasures of Sophia and of the Gnosis to be contained in the
Christ, and says the Christ has been /"made unto us Wisdom." /The Christ
has taken her place. Again, his glorifying is not in /fleshly Wisdom,
/not in the female /Charis, /but in the /grace /of God (2 Cor. i. 12).
For the female Wisdom /had been /according to the flesh, the woman or
mother being of the flesh fleshly; and Paul, as Gnostic or Kabbalist,
had been acquainted with the fleshly Wisdom, one of whose mysteries
appertained to feminine periodicity, which he now repudiates when he
says: /"Even though we have known Christ/ (or the manifestor) /after the
flesh, yet now we know so no more." /Here it cannot be pretended that
Paul ever knew the personal Christ in the flesh, and therefore some
other fact has to be encountered. However interpreted, he is speaking
doctrinally, and not of /two historic characters. /Paul's is the Gnostic
Christ as the Second Adam; the man from heaven, whose type superseded
the man of earth. Paul knew well enough that Adam was not a man in the
literal sense; he was the typical man of the flesh; the son of the
woman; and as was the type, such was the antitype, when he calls his
Christ the second Adam, the later spiritual type of man, and of the
Father above. Neither were, or could be, historic personages. To use his
own words, /"These things are an allegory." /In her most occult phase
the feminine messenger was a Word that could be made flesh; for she was
the flesh-maker, the mother of Matter. But this was on physiological
grounds alone. Hence she was superseded by the masculine messenger; the
spirit that could never be made flesh. None but the initiated in these
matters could possibly know what was meant by this transfer of type, and
substitution of the Lord for the Lady, the Christ for Wisdom, the second
Adam for the first. But there it is truth-like at the bottom of the
well; the source of so much difficulty found in the depths of Paul's
writings. And /this contention of Paul on behalf of one Gnostic dogma
against another has been made to look as if he were fervently fighting
for an Historic Jesus./

This transfer of type is not limited to Paul! For instance, the Vine was
a feminine symbol. Wisdom says, /"As the Vine brought I forth" /(Ecc.
xxiv. 17); and in the Book of Proverbs Sophia cries, /"Come eat of my
bread, and drink of the wine I have mingled." /The Fig-Tree in Egypt was
the figure of the Lady of Heaven, who is pourtrayed /as/ the Tree of
Life and Knowledge, in the act of feeding souls. She literally gives her
body as the Bread and her blood as the Wine of Life! In the later
Ptolemeian times this Tree was assigned to Sophia or Wisdom! which shows
the link between Egypt and Greece. The superseding of Sophia is also
illustrated in the cursing of the fruitless Fig-tree by the Canonical
Christ, where the Parable of Mythology is represented as a human
history. In John's Gospel the type has been transferred, just as the
sayings were, to the masculine nature, and the Christ becomes the bread
and wine of life. In the Apocrypha it is Sophia who is /"The brightness
of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God, and
the image of his goodness!"/ (Wisdom vii. 26.) In the Epistle to the

42

Hebrews the Christ takes the place of Sophia. He is called the
/"effulgence of the glory" of God, /the /"very image of his substance."
/Nevertheless, the male Christ /could no more be made flesh in a man
than Sophia or Charis could have previously been incarnated in an
historical woman. /You cannot understand one half without the other.
Both must be taken together. The doctrine is doubly and wholly opposed
to any and all historical personality.

But, we have not yet completely mastered the entire Mystery of Paul for
modern use; and it is not possible for any one but the phenomenal
Spiritualist, who knows that the conditions of trance and clairvoyance
are facts in nature; only those who have evidence that the other world
can open and lighten with revelations, and prove its palpable presence,
visibly and audibly; only those who except the teaching that the human
consciousness continues in death, and emerges in a personality that
persists beyond the grave; only such, I say, are qualified to comprehend
the mystery, or receive the message, once truly delivered to men by the
Spiritualist Paul, but which was thoroughly perverted by the
/Sarkolators, /the founders of the fleshly faith. In the first place he
was an Initiate in the Gnostic Mysteries, called Kabbalist in Hebrew. He
tells us how exceedingly jealous for the traditions he had been, which
must have included the traditional interpretation of the mysteries and
of the Gnosis or hidden Wisdom. He was a perfected Adept. He knew the
nature of the Kronian Christ, and of the Spiritual Christ, according to
the Gnosis. Beyond that, Paul, on his own testimony, was an abnormal
Seer, subject to the conditions of trance. He could not remember if
certain experiences occurred to him in the body or out of it! This
trance condition was the origin and source of his revelations, the heart
of his mystery, his infirmity in which he gloried--in short, his /"thorn
in the flesh." /He shows the Corinthians that his abnormal condition,
ecstasy, illness, madness (or what not), was a phase of spiritual
intercourse in which he was divinely insane--insane on behalf of
God--but that he was rational enough in his relationship to them. He
says: /"I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord. I knew a man
in Christ fourteen years ago (whether in the body I know not; or whether
out of the body I know not; God knoweth), such an one caught up even in
the third heaven"/--on behalf of that man he will glory. /"And by reason
of the exceeding greatness of the revelations, wherefore that I should
not be exalted over much, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, a
messenger of Satan to buffet me, that I should not be exalted over
much." /Paul's Thorn in the Flesh has been attributed to lechery, and to
sore eyes; but no Christian commentator known to me has ever connected
it with abnormal phenomena, except as miracle. The Marcionites said the
Mystery was manifested to Paul by revelation. Paul says the same. By
this abnormal mode the Mystery was revealed to him in person. His eyes
were opened, so that he could see for himself the truth that was taught
in the Mysteries. If a Spirit appeared in vision to Paul, that would
positively prove the /re-birth /for a future life, and constitute the reve-

43

lation of his Messianic mystery. Paul's Christ, the Lord, is /the
/spirit; his gospel is that of spiritual revelation, the chief mode of
manifestation being abnormal, as it was, and had been, in the Gnostic
mysteries.

The Gnostic Christ was the Immortal Spirit in man, which first
demonstrated its existence by means of abnormal or spiritualistic
phenomena. It did not and could not depend on any single manifestation
in one historic personality. And when Paul says, /"I knew a man in
Christ," /we see that to be in Christ is to be in the condition of
trance, /in the spirit, /as they phrased it, in the state that is common
to what is now termed mediumship.

Being in the trance condition, or in Christ, as he calls it, he was
caught up to the third heaven, and could not determine whether he was in
the body or out of the body. Here he identifies his Christ with a
condition of being, and that condition with the abnormal phenomena known
to some of us who have studied Modern Spiritualism. This is the Gnostic
Christ, not the Christ of any special historic personality, who is
supposed to have manifested only once upon a time, and once for all. The
Christ of the Gnosis, of Philo and of Paul preceded Christianity, and is
sure to supersede it, because it is based upon facts known in nature and
verifiable to-day. It was those who were entirely ignorant of those
subtle and obscure facts, unfolded in the Mysteries, who became
Christians in the modern sense, and believed, because they were blind.
Paul was both a Seer and a Knower. He became one of the public
demonstrators of the facts, just like any itinerant medium of our time.
He says to the Galatians: /"Ye know that because of an infirmity of the
flesh, I preached the gospel unto you the first time, and that which was
a temptation to you in my flesh, ye despised not nor rejected /(or spat
out); /but ye received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus!" /This
infirmity of the flesh was his tendency to fall into trance. When it
first occurred, at a given date, he received his revelation and began to
preach his own gospel. He talked and taught as do the mediums in trance
to-day. He received his revelations--visions and revelations of the
Lord--and gave proofs of the Christ, or spirit, speaking within him,
speaking through him, when he was in trance. And on this ground they
received him as an angel of God--they received him /as the Christ. /This
Christ, personated by Paul as the revealer in trance, was of necessity
the Gnostic Christ, the Spirit of God, as he often calls it, the Christ
that spoke through him, founded on what is now termed spirit control,
but not based on the spirit of any Jesus of Nazareth. His Christ is the
spirit which revealed itself abnormally in, and through him, so that he
"spoke the wisdom and the words which the spirit teacheth; he spoke
mysteries in the spirit." His Christ was the same spirit that /"hath a
diversity of workings" /in various spirit manifestations. /"To one it
gives the word of wisdom; to another, the word of knowledge; to another,
faith; to another, gifts of healing; to another, miraculous powers; to
another, prophesy; to another, seeing of spirits; to another, the gift
of tongues, and to another, their interpretation." /And as this was /the
/Christ, that

44

always had been so manifested, nothing depended upon any historical
character. All that was real, that is, spiritual, would be the same
afterwards as it had been before. Nothing /did /depend on it, and
historical Christianity itself is but a vast interpolation, the greatest
of all obstacles to mental development and the unity of the human race.

One more illustration that Paul was outside the ring of conspirators who
were the founders, as forgers, of Historic Christianity in Rome, and I
shall have done.

The Christ proclaimed by Peter and James was the mythical Messiah of the
Time-cycles, the /ever-coming one, /converted into an historical
character; hence he who was supposed to have just come still remained
the Coming One. He himself is made to say that he is coming before the
then present generation shall have passed away.

Apart from the mythos and its meaning, there was no other coming, or end
of the Times, of the age, Æon, or world! The Kronian allegory can only
apply to the Kronian Christ, as the metaphorical manifestor of the
Eternal in the sphere of time, who could neither be made flesh nor
assume historic personality. This was known to Paul as an Adept. Such
things/ were/ an Allegory; but it was not known to those who preached
that /"other gospel." /James asserts that /"the coming of the Lord is at
hand."/ John declares that it is the Last Hour. In the Second Epistle of
Peter we find the writer mentions Paul by name, and replies to his
Epistles. He is covertly trying to counteract the influence of Paul's
teaching on a matter of such importance as the second coming of Christ,
and the immediate ending of the world. In the first chapter he proclaims
that the /end of all things is at hand. /Here he says that mockers are
asking, /"Where is the promise of his coming?" /They forget the
cataclysms and deluges by which the previous heavens and earth have
perished. This time the end will come with a universal conflagration,
and, according to promise, /"We look for new heavens and a new earth." .
. . "Our beloved brother, Paul, has been speaking of these things. . . .
According to the wisdom given to him he wrote unto you; as also in his
Epistles, speaking in them in these things; wherein are some things hard
to understand, which the ignorant and unsteadfast wrest (as also the
other scriptures) unto their own destruction." /The subject-matter here
is the nature of the time-cycles, and the mythical destruction by flood
and fire, which Paul as an Adept knew to be typical and allegorical.
Peter mistakes them for literal realities. Being an outsider, he did not
understand the Wisdom or Gnosis of Paul, but says it is misleading,
inasmuch as the ignorant wrest it unto their own destruction. Peter had
also said the day of the Lord will come as a thief. To this we have
direct replies from Paul. /"Concerning the times and the seasons,
brethren, ye have no need that aught be written unto you. For yourselves
know perfectly well that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the
night. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should
overtake you as a thief; for ye are all sons of light and sons of the
day; we are not of the night nor of/

45

/the darkness"/--as were those foolish Physicalists, the Petrine
A-Gnostics. And again he says to the Thessalonians--/"Now we beseech
you, brethren, touching the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our
gathering together unto him, that ye be not quickly shaken from your
mind, nor yet be troubled either by spirit, or by word, or by epistle as
from us! as that day of the Lord is present at hand. Let no man beguile
you in any wise;" /give no heed to that ignoramus' /gobemoucherie!/ Then
follows a break in the sense. But a falling away is to come first, and
the /Man of Sin /must be revealed or exposed; the /son of perdition, "he
that opposeth and exalteth himself against all that is called God, or
that is worshipped; so that he sitteth in the Temple of God setting
himself forth as God." /That, I say, is St. Paul's opposer, Peter, who
was set up in the Church of Rome. /"Remember ye not that when I was with
you I told you these things. And now ye know that which restraineth to
the end that he may be revealed in his own season. For the mystery of
lawlessness doth already work only until he that restraineth now shall
be taken out of the way. And then shall be revealed the Lawless one whom
the Lord Jesus shall slay with the breath of his mouth, and bring to
nought by the manifestation of his coming, /(him) /whose 'coming' is
according to the working of Satan, with all power and signs and lying
wonders, and with all deceit of unrighteousness for them that are
perishing, because they received not the love of truth that they might
be saved; and for this cause God sendeth them a working of error that
they should believe a lie." /In both quotations the subject-matter
identifies Peter as palpably as if Paul had named him. He is replying to
the teaching of one particular man who is proclaiming the "Coming" of
the Christ and the day of the Lord, or end of the world, as being close
at hand. He says in effect--Do not be troubled or beguiled by any such
ignorant trash. The Lord will not come in his sense, and cannot come in
mine, except that man of sin be revealed. No one has ever dared to dream
that this "Man of Sin" is Peter himself! But the person aimed at is
considered capable of forging epistles in the name of Paul; thus
attributing this kind of teaching to him, and making him father it
whilst Paul was yet living. This "man of sin" and "son of perdition" has
set himself up in the temple of God, /setting himself forth as God.
/This is no emperor Nero, but a portrait of Peter, the life-long enemy
of Paul; he whose preaching is concerning signs and lying wonders, such
as the stories about the end of the world, the passing away of the
heavens with a great noise, the dissolution of the elements with fervent
heat, and the burning up of the earth with all the works therein, and
other teachings of this cataclysmalist, which Paul denounces as
delusive, and knows to be a lie! This misleader of men is restrained for
the time being by Paul himself, but when he departs Peter will reveal
himself or be revealed in his true colours, and the Thessalonians will
then see what Paul has known all along, and against which he had warned
them once before, /i.e., /against that /working of error and belief in a
lie, which we now know by name as Historic Christianity./

46

It is here, then, that we can peer right down into the deep, dark gulf
that divided Peter from Paul, of which we get such a lightning glimpse
in the Clementine Homilies. These writings were inspired by the faction
of Peter. By them Paul is designated the /"Hostile Man"; /his own
epithet, /Anomas, /the Lawless, is there flung back at him by Peter, who
denounces the puerile preaching of the man that is his enemy, and who
says: /"Thou hast opposed thyself as an Adversary against me, the firm
rock, the foundation of the Church." /Paul's conversion, by means of
abnormal vision, is attributed to the false Christ, the Gnostic and
Spiritualist opposed to an Historic Christ. In Homily 17, Peter is
obviously hitting at Paul and his visions when he asks: /"Can anyone be
instituted to the office of a teacher through visions?"/ Paul is treated
as the arch-enemy of the Christ crucified--he is the very Anti-Christ.
He will be the author of some great heresy which is expected to break
out in the future. Peter is said to have declared that Christ instructed
the disciples not to publish the only true and genuine gospel for the
present, because the false teacher must arise, who would publicly
proclaim the false gospel of the Anti-Christ that was the Christ of the
Gnostics. /"As the true Prophet has told us, the false gospel must come
from a certain misleader;" /and so they were to go on secretly
promulgating the true gospel, until this false preacher had passed away.
This true gospel was confessedly /"held in reserve, to be secretly
transmitted for the rectification of future heresies." /They knew well
enough what had to come out, if Paul's preaching, proclaimed in his
original Epistles, got vent more and more. It was Paul whom they had
reason to fear. Hence those who were the followers of Peter and James
anathematized him as the great apostate, and rejected his Epistles.
Justin Martyr never once mentions this founder of Christianity, never
once refers to the writings of Paul. Strangest thing of all is it that
the book of the Acts, which is mainly the history of Paul, should
contain no account of his martyrdom or death in Rome! The gulf, however,
cannot be completely fathomed, except on the grounds that there was no
personal Christ, and that Paul was the natural opponent of the men who
were setting up the Christ made flesh for the salvation of the world
that never was lost. My conclusion is, that fabricated evidence is the
sole support of Historic Christianity which can be derived from the
Epistles of Paul; that the manipulation for an ulterior purpose, which
is so obvious in the book of Acts, was far more subtly and fundamentally
applied to his Epistles and doctrines; that they have been worked over
as thieves manipulate stolen linen when they pick out the marks of
ownership to escape from detection; that false doctrines have been
foisted into the original text, which seems to have been withheld for a
century after the writer's death, until the leaven of falsehood had done
its fatal work. The problem of the plotters and forgers in Rome was how
to convert the mythical Christology into historic Christianity, and when
Paul's Epistles were permitted to emerge from obscurity in a collection,
what had occurred

47

was the /restoration /of the carnalised Christ, that /"other Jesus" /who
was repudiated by Paul in his own lifetime. Paul felt or feared, and
foretold that this would be the case when once he was removed out of the
way. He saw the mystery of lawlessness already at work--the falsifiers
sending forth letters as if from himself--and we have seen what Paul
foresaw! the problem of the plotters who forged the foundations of the
Church in Rome was how to successfully blend the Christ Jesus of the
Gnostics, of the pre-Christian Apocrypha, of Philo, and of Paul, with
that /Corporeal Christ /and impossible personality, in whom they
ignorantly believed, through a blind literalisation of mythology, so as
to make the historic look like the true starting-point, and the Gnostic
interpretation becomes a later heresy. This was finally effected when
the declaration of John--that /"the Word was made flesh and dwelt among
us"/--had been accepted as the genuine Gospel, and that which had been
an impossibility for the Gnostics was an accomplished fact for those who
knew no better than to believe. The Gospel, according to John, was
concocted and calculated to serve as a harmonising amalgam of doctrines
that were fundamentally opposed. In this Amalgam they tried to mix the
"gall and honey," so that, if "well shaken before taken," it might be
swallowed by the followers on both sides. But there was a great gulf
forever fixed between the Gnostic Christology and Historic Christianity.
It was a gulf that never could be soundly bridged, and never has been
plumbed, or bottomed, or filled in. The bodies of two million martyrs of
free-thought, put to death as heretics, in Europe alone, and all the
blood that has ever been shed in Christian wars, have failed to fill
that gulf, which waits as ever wide-jawed for its prey. Across that gulf
the Christian Church was erected upon supports on either side. On one
side stood those pillars of the Church which were seen by Paul in
Jerusalem. On the other was Paul himself, the pillar that stood alone. A
difference the most radical and profound divided him from the other
apostles, Cephas, John, and James. From the first they were on two sides
of the chasm that could not be closed; and the /Prædicatio Petri
/declares that Peter and Paul remained unreconciled till death. The
great work of the first centuries was how to bridge the chasm over, or
at least how to conceal it from the eyes of the world in later times.
This could only be done by resting on Paul as a prop and buttress on the
one side and Peter on the other, which had to be done by converting or
perverting the Epistles of the Gnostic Paul into a support for Historic
Christianity. In that way the Church was founded. It was built as a
bridge across the gulf, and the Pope of Rome appointed and aptly
designated /Pontifex Maximus. /It was reared above the chasm lying
darkly lurking like an open grave below, and to-day, as ever, the
Christian world is horribly haunted with the fear that a breath or two
of larger intellectual life, a too audible utterance of free-er thought,
a dose of mental dynamite may bring the edifice of error down in wreck
and ruin to fill that gulf at last, over which it was so perilously
founded from the first.

48

THE

"LOGIA OF THE LORD;"

OR,

PRE-HISTORIC SAYINGS

ASCRIBED TO

JESUS THE CHRIST.

============

/(References to Authorities may be found in the Author's /"NATURAL
GENESIS."/)/

============

It would take almost a life-time of original research to fathom or
approximately gauge the depths of ignorance in which the beginnings of
Historic Christianity lie sunken out of sight.

The current ignorance of those pre-Christian evidences that have been
preserved by the petrifying past must be well-nigh invincible, when a
man like Professor Jowett could say, as if with the voice of
superstition in its dotage, /"To us the preaching of the Gospel is a New
Beginning, from which we date all things; beyond which we neither
desire, nor are able, to inquire." /

It is the commonly accepted orthodox belief that Christianity originated
with the life, miracles, sayings, and teachings; the birth, death,
resurrection, and ascension of an historic Jesus the Christ at the
commencement of our era, called Christian; whereas, the origins were
manifold, but mostly concealed. It is impossible to determine anything
fundamental by an appeal to the documents which, alone out of a hundred
Gospels, were made Canonical. And when Eusebius recorded his memorable
boast that he had virtually made "all square" for the Christians, it was
an ominous announcement of what had been done to keep out of sight the
mythical and mystical rootage of historic Christianity. The Gnostics had
been muzzled, and their extant evidences, as far as possible, masked. He
and his co-conspirators did their worst in destroying documents and
effacing the tell-tale records of the past, to prevent the future from
learning what the bygone ages could have said directly for themselves.
They made dumb all Pagan voices that would have cried aloud their
testimony against the unparalleled imposture then being perfected in
Rome. They had almost reduced the first four centuries to silence on all
matters of the most vital importance for any proper understanding of the
true origins of the Christian Superstition. The mythos having been at
last published as a human history everything else was suppressed or
forced to support the fraud. Christolatry is founded on the Christ, who
is mythical

49

in one phase and mystical in the other; Egyptian (and Gnostic) in both,
but historical in neither. The Christ was a type and a title that could
not become a person. As such, the Christ of the Gnostics was the Horus
continued from Egypt and Chaldea; and that which was original as mythos
ages earlier cannot be also original as a later personal history. We who
commence with our canonical Gospels are three or four centuries too late
to learn anything fundamental concerning the real beginnings of
Christianity. You have only to turn to the second Book of Esdras to
learn that Jesus the Christ of our canonical history was both
pre-historic and, pre-Christian. This is one of the books of the hidden
wisdom which have been rejected and set apart as the
Apocrypha--considered to be spurious, because they are opposed to the
received history; whereas, they contain the secret Gnosis by which alone
we can identify the genuine Scripture. In this book it is said, /"My son
Jesus shall be revealed with those that are with him . . . . and they
that remain shall rejoice within four hundred years; and after these
years shall my son Christ die, and all men shall have life." /And this
was to be even as it had been in the former judgments at the end of the
particular cycles of time, and the renewal of the world, which was to
occur according to date! Now, if an historic Jesus Christ of prophecy is
to be found anywhere it is here,--foretold even as the prediction is
supposed to have been fulfiled. Yet these books are not included among
the canonical Scriptures, because they prove too much; because they are
historical in the wrong sense,--/i.e., /they are not and could not be
made humanly historical; their Jesus Christ is entirely mythical,--is
the Kronian Christ; and his future coming therein announced was only the
subject of astronomical prophecy. The true Christ, whether mythical or
mystical, astronomical or spiritual, never could become an historical
personage, and never did originate in any human history. The types of
themselves suffice to prove that the Christ was, and could only be,
typical, and never could have taken form in historic personality. For
one thing, the mystical Christ of the Gnosis and of the pre-Christian
types was a being of both sexes, as was the Egyptian Horus and other of
the Messiahs; because the mystical Christ typified the spirit or soul
which belongs to the female as well as to the male, and represents that
which could only be a human reality in the spiritual domain or the
Pleroma of the Gnostics. This is the Christ who appears as both male and
female in the Book of Revelation. And the same biune type was continued
in the Christian portraits of the Christ. In Didron's Iconography you
will see that Jesus Christ is portrayed as a female with the beard of a
male, and is called Jesus Christ as Saint Sophia,--/i.e.,/ the Wisdom,
or the Spirit of both sexes. The early Christians were ignorant of this
typology; but the types still remain to be interpreted by the Gnosis and
to bear witness against the History. Both the type and doctrine combine
to show there could be no one

50

personal Christ in this world or any other. Howsoever the written word
may lie, the truth is visibly engraved upon the stones, and still
survives in the Icons, symbols, and doctrines of the Gnostics, which
remain to prove that they preserved the truer tradition of the
/origines. /And so this particular pre-Christian type was continued as a
portrait of the historic Christ. It can be proved that the earliest
Christians known were Gnostics--the men who knew, and who never did or
could accept Historic Christianity. The Essenes were Christians in the
Gnostic sense, and according to Pliny the elder, they were a Hermetic
Society that had existed for ages on ages of time. Their name is best
explained as Egyptian. They were known as the Eshai, the healers or
Therapeutæ, the physicians in Egypt; and Esha or Usha means to doctor or
heal, in Egyptian. The Sutites, the Mandaites, the Nazarites, as well as
the Docetae and Elkesites, were all Gnostic Christians; they all
preceded, and were all opposed to, the cult of the carnalised Christ.
The followers of Simon, the Samaritan, were Gnostic Christians, and they
were of the Church at Antioch, where it is said the name of Christian
was primarily applied. Cerinthus was a Gnostic Christian, who, according
to Epiphanius, denied that Christ had come in the flesh. The same writer
informs us that, at the end of the fourth century, there were Ebionite
Christians, whose Christ was the mythical fulfiler of the time-cycles,
not an historic Jesus. Even Clement Alexander confesses that his Christ
was of a nature that did not require the nourishment of corporeal food.

Now, from the time of Irenæus to that of Mansell, it has been
confidently asserted that Gnosticism was a heresy of the second century,
a backsliding and apostacy from the true faith of historic Christianity.
This is simply a delusion of the ignorant, founded on the original lie
of the falsifiers! Later teachers of Gnosticism, such as Basilides and
Saturninus, did arise during the second century; but these were not the
founders of any fresh doctrines, nor did they make any new departure.
They were Revivalists! The Christian Fathers only knew of the Gnostics
of their time; they never troubled to trace the roots of Gnosticism in
the remoter past.

The Christian report respecting the Gnostics, Docetae, and others,
always assumes the human reality of the supposed history, and then
explains the non-human interpretation of the Gnostics themselves as an
heretic denial, or perversion of the alleged facts. Hence the Gnostics
are charged by Irenæus with falsifying the oracles of God, and trying to
discredit the word of revelation with their own wicked inventions.

We learn from Origen that, during the third century, there were various
different versions of Matthew's gospel in circulation, and this he
attributes partly to the forgers of gospels. Jerome, at the end of the
fourth century, asserts the same thing; and of the Latin versions he
says, there were as many different texts as manuscripts. The Gnostics,
who had brought on the original and

51

pre-Christian matter of the mysteries that were taught orally, no sooner
placed it on record than they were said to be forging the Scriptures of
Anti-Christ, whereas it was the Gnosis of the Ante-Christ of whom they,
the Christians, were ignorant.

Theirs is altogether a false mode of describing the position of those
who always and utterly denied that the Christ could be made flesh, to
suffer and die upon a veritable cross. Here is a specimen of the way in
which the Gnostic doctrines had been turned to historic account:--The
true light which lighteth every man coming into the world was Gnostic,
and had been Gnostic ages before the prologue of John was written; and
as Gnostic doctrine it has to be read. This Light of the world, born, as
the Gnostics held, with every one coming into the world, is the immortal
principle in man! Hyppolytus, referring to the teaching of Basilides, a
Gnostic teacher of the second century, shows us how the doctrine of the
Gnostics was falsified. /"And this," /says he, /"it is which is said in
the Gospels, 'The true light which lighteth every man was coming into
the world!'" /"Was coming" is an interpolation of the believers in the
fact of historic fulfilment applied to that eternal light which lighted
every man coming into the world; the light that dawned within, and could
not come without in any form of flesh or historic personality. The
Emperor Julian also remarks on the monstrous doings and fraudulent
machinations of the fabricators of Historic Christianity. We may look
upon the Gnostics as Inside Christians; the others as Christians Without.

Never were mortals more perplexed, bewildered, and taken back, than the
Christians of the second, third, and fourth centuries, who had started
from their own new beginning, warranted to be solely historic, when they
found that an apparition of their faith was following them one way and
confronting them in another--a faith not founded on their alleged facts,
claiming to be the original religion, and ages on ages earlier in the
world--a shadow that threatened to steal away their substance, mocking
them with its aerial unreality--the hollow ghost of that body of truth
which they had embraced as a solid and eternal possession! It was
horrible. It was devilish. It was the devil, they said; and so they
sought to account for Gnosticism, and fight down their fears of the
phantom terrifying them in front and rear: the Gnostic ante-Christ who
had now become their anti-Christ. The only primitive Christians then
apart from, or preceding, the Christianised pagan church of Rome, were
the various sects of Gnostics, not one of which was founded on an
historical Christ. One and all they based upon the mystical Christ of
the Gnosis, and the mythical Messiah,--Him who should come because he
was the Ever-Coming One, as a type of the Eternal, manifesting
figuratively in time. Historic Christianity can furnish no sufficient
reason why the biography of its personal founder should have been held
back; why the facts of its origin should have

52

been kept dark; and why there should have been no authorised record made
known earlier. The conversion of the mythos, and of the Docetic
doctrines of the Gnosis into human history, alone will account for the
fatal fact. The truth is, the earliest gospels are the furthest removed
from the supposed human history. That came last; and only when the
spiritual Christ of the Gnosis had been rendered concrete in the density
of Christian ignorance! Christianity began as Gnosticism continued, by
means of a conversion and perversion, that were opposed in vain by Paul.
The mysteries of the Gnostics were continued, with a difference, as
Christian. The newly-christened re-beginnings were not only shrouded in
mystery, they were the same mysteries at root as those that were
pre-extant. The first Christians founded on secret doctrines that were
only explained to initiates during a long course of years. These
mysteries were never to be divulged or promulgated until the belief in
historic Christianity had taken permanent root. We are told how it was
held by some that the Apocrypha ought only to be read by those who were
perfected, and that these writings were reserved exclusively for the
Christian adepts. It must be obvious that the doctrine or knowledge that
was forced to be kept so sacredly secret as that, could have had no
relation to the human history, personality, or teachings of an inspired
founder of that primitive Christianity supposed to have had so simple an
origin. True history is not established in that way, although the false
may be--as it has been. Nobody was allowed by Peter to interpret
anything except in accordance with /"our tradition!" /Nobody, says
Justin Martyr, is permitted to partake of the Eucharist /"unless he
accepts as true that which is taught by us"/--and unless he received the
bread and wine as the very flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made
flesh. In this we see the forgers fighting against the Gnostic Christ.
There were many sects of so-called Christians, and various versions of
the Christ; whether Kronian, mythical, or mystical. But the Church of
Rome was the Christian church with foundations in Egypt; hence the
deities of Egypt which have been discovered at the foundations of Rome;
and when historic Christianity hasn't a bit of ground left to stand
upon, the Church of Rome will be able and prepared to say, /"We never
did really stand on that ground, and now we alone can stand without it.
We are the one true church with foundations in an illimitable past."/

According to the unquestioned tradition of the Christian Fathers, which
has always been accepted by the Church, the primary nucleus of our
canonical gospels was not a life of Jesus at all, but a collection of
the Logia, oracles, or sayings, the Logia Kuriaka, which were written
down in Hebrew or Aramaic, by one Matthew, as the scribe of the Lord.
Clement Alexander, Origen, and Irenæus agree in stating that Matthew's
was the primary gospel. This tradition rests upon the testimony of
Papias, Bishop of Hieropolis, and friend of Polycarp, who is said to
have suffered martyrdom for his faith

53

during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, about 165-167 A.D. Papias is named
with Pantœus, Clement, and Ammonius as one of the ancient interpreters
who agreed to understand the Hexæmeron as referring to an historic
Christ and the Church. He was a believer in the millennium, and the
second coming of the Lord, and therefore a literaliser of mythology. But
there is no reason to suspect the trustworthiness of his testimony, as
he no doubt believed these /"sayings" /to have been the spoken words of
an historic Jesus, written down in Hebrew by a personal follower named
Matthew. He wrote a work on the subject, entitled /Logion Kuriakon
Exegesis,/ a commentary on the sayings of the Lord. A surviving fragment
of this last work, quoted by Eusebius, tells us that Matthew wrote the
sayings in the Hebrew dialect, and each one of the believers interpreted
them as he was best able. Thus, the beginning of the earliest gospel was
not biographical. It was no record of the life and doings of Jesus; it
contained no actual historic element, nothing more than the Sayings of
the Lord.

It is not pretended that our gospel, according to Matthew, is the
identical work of the scribe who first wrote down the logia, but the
statement of Papias is so far corroborated inasmuch as the sayings
ascribed to Jesus are the basis of the Book. We read /"When Jesus had
finished these sayings," /or parables, several times over. Now, there is
plenty of evidence to show that these sayings, which are the admitted
foundations of the canonical gospels, were not first uttered by a
personal Founder of Christianity, nor invented afterwards by any of his
followers. Many of them were pre-extant, pre-historic, and
pre-christian. And if it can be proved that these oracles of God and
Logia of the Lord are not original, if they can be identified as a
collection, an /olla podrida/ of Egyptian, Hebrew, and Gnostic sayings,
they can afford no evidence that the Jesus of the Gospels ever lived as
an historic teacher. To begin with, two of the sayings assigned to
Matthew to Jesus as the personal teacher of men are these:--/"Lay not up
for yourselves treasure upon earth," /etc., and, /"If ye forgive men
their trespasses your heavenly Father will also forgive you"/! But these
sayings had already been uttered by the feminine Logos called Wisdom, in
the Apocrypha. We find them in the Book of Ecclesiasticus; /"Lay up thy
treasure according to the Commandments of the Most High, and it shall
bring thee more profit than gold," /and /"Forgive thy neighbour the hurt
that he hath done thee, so shall thy sins also be forgiven when thou
prayest"! /Wisdom was the Sayer personified long anterior to the Christ.
But it has never been pretended or admitted by mankind that wisdom was
ever incarnated on this earth as a woman! Yet Wisdom, or Charis, had the
primary right to incarnation, for she preceded the Christ. Luke also
quotes a saying of Wisdom--/"Therefore also said the Wisdom of God, 'I
will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them they shall slay
and persecute';" "that the blood of all the prophets which was shed from
the foundation of the world /

54

/may be required of this generation." /This also is quoted or adapted
from the words of Wisdom recorded in a Book of Wisdom (Esdras 2nd),
where we read /"I sent unto you my servants, the prophets, whom ye have
taken and slain, and torn their bodies in pieces, whose blood I will
require of your hands, said the Lord. Thus saith the Almighty Lord, your
house is desolate"/! In the verses immediately preceding, the speaker in
the Book of Esdras had said. /"Thus saith the Almighty Lord, Have I not
prayed you as a Father his sons, as a mother her daughters, and a nurse
her young babes, that ye would be my people, and I should be your God;
that ye would be my children, and I should be your Father? I gathered
you together as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings; but now
what shall I do unto you? I will cast you out."/ This is in one of the
Books of Wisdom hidden away in our Apocrypha. Now, if we turn to the
gospels of Luke and Matthew we shall find that they have quoted these
words of Wisdom: but we now see that Wisdom is not credited with her own
sayings concerning the Father God! On the contrary, they are given to an
historic Christ, as a personal teacher and a prophet. That which was
said of the house of Israel by Wisdom in Esdras is now applied to the
city of Jerusalem by the Christ; and if you re-date a saying like that
by a few hundred years there is little wonder if it dislocates the
history. Paul likewise quotes the saying from the Book of Esdras when he
says, /"I will receive you and will be to you a Father, and ye shall be
to me Sons and Daughters saith the Lord Almighty." /But he does not
refer or re-apply it to Jesus as is done in the Gospels! Here we see the
current coinage of Wisdom has been defaced by the Gospel compilers--not
by Paul--and then re-issued under the sign and superscription of another
name, that of Jesus the Christ; and historic evidence of a nature like
that is as futile as the negro's non-effective charge of gunpowder which
he shrewdly suspected of having been fired off before. Paul likewise
quotes or refers to one of the sayings found in Matthew. /"Faithful is
the saying," /he writes to Timothy. But although he is speaking of the
Christ, he does not say /his /saying, nor refer it to an historic teacher.

It was one of /the /sayings, or true words, called the "Logia," which
had been the dark sayings and parables of the pre-christian mysteries
from of old, and which in Egypt were the sayings of Truth herself. The
Hebrew Psalmist says, /"I will utter dark sayings of old."/ The Proverbs
of Solomon are the sayings. The Jewish Haggadah were the sayings. The
Commandments were sayings, as is shown by Paul, Rom. xiii. 9. Peter, in
the Clementine Recognitions, does not pretend to /"pronounce the sayings
of the Lord as spoken by himself" /(or profess that they were spoken by
himself in person, as I read the passage), he admits that it is not in
their commission to say this. But they are to teach and to show from the
sayings how every one of them is based upon truth. This is in reply to

55

Simon Magus, who has pointed out the contradictory nature of the
sayings. I hold it only to be a matter of time and research to prove
that the sayings in general assigned to Jesus, which are taken to
demonstrate his historic existence as a personal teacher, were
pre-extant, pre-historic, and pre-christian. One of the sayings in the
Mysteries reported by Plato was, /"Many are the Thyrsus-bearers but few
are the Mystics," /which is echoed twice over by Matthew in the saying,
/"Many are called but few are chosen." "It is more blessed to give than
to receive," /is one of the Logia of the Lord quoted in the book of
Acts, but not found in the Gospels. Two of the sayings are identified as
Essenic by Josephus, who says the Essenes swear not at all, but
whatsoever they say is firmer than an oath; and when Jesus says, /"A new
commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another," /there was
certainly nothing new in that which had been a command and a practice of
the Essenes ages before. Men knew who were the Essenes by their love for
one another. Some of the parables appear in the Talmud, amongst them are
those of the Wise and Unwise Builders and that of the Marriage Feast.
Various sayings are collected from the Talmud, such as the golden rule,
/"Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you." "Love thy
neighbour as thyself." "With the measure we mete we shall be measured
again." "Let thy yea be just and thy nay be likewise just." "Whoso
looketh upon the wife of another with a lustful eye is considered as if
he had committed adultery." "Be of them that are persecuted, not of them
that persecute." /But as Deutsch has said, to assume that the Talmud
borrowed these from the New Testament would be like assuming that
Sanskrit sprang from Latin.

The nature of the "Sayings" is acknowledged by Irenæus when he says,
/"According to no one Saying of the heretics is the word of God made
flesh." /That is the Sayings which were current among the Gnostics as
Knowers. Marcion knew and quoted the Gnostic saying which was afterwards
amplified and quoted in John's Gospel--/"No one knew the father save the
son, nor the son save the father, and he to whom he will reveal him."
/This is a Gnostic saying, and it involves the Gnostic doctrine which
cannot be understood independently of the Gnosis. It is quoted as one of
the sayings before it was reproduced in the Gospel according to John.

Such sayings were the Oral teachings in all the mysteries ages before
they were written down. Some of them are so ancient as to be the common
property of several nations. Prescott gives a few Mexican sayings; one
of these, also found in the Talmud and the New Testament, is called the
/"the old proverb." "As the old proverb says--'Whoso regards a woman
with curiosity commits adultery with his eyes.'"/ And the third
commandment according to Buddha is--/"Commit no adultery, the law is
broken by even looking at the wife of another man with lust in the
mind." /Amongst other sayings assigned to Buddha we find the one
respecting the wheat and the tares.

56

Another is the parable of the sower. Buddha likewise told of the hidden
treasure which may be laid up by a man and kept securely where a thief
cannot break in and steal; the treasure that a man may carry away with
him when he goes. The story of the rich young man who was commanded to
sell all he had and give to the poor is told of Buddha. It is reported
that he also said--/"You may remove from their base the snowy mountains,
you may exhaust the waters of the ocean, the firmament may fall to
earth, but my words in the end will be accomplished."/

Some of Buddha's sayings are uttered in the same character as that of
the canonical Christ. For example, when speaking of his departure
Buddha, like the Christ, promises to send the Paraclete, even the spirit
of truth, who shall bear witness of him and lead his followers to the
truth. The Gnostic Horus says the same things in the same character, and
these sayings, by whomsoever uttered, carry the mythical character with
them. The sayings of Krishna as well as those of the Buddha are
frequently identical with those of the Christ. I am the letter A, cries
the one. I am the Alpha and Omega (or the A.O.), exclaims the other. I
am the beginning, the middle, and the end, says Krishna--/"I am the
Light, I am the Life, I am the Sacrifice." /Speaking of his disciples,
he affirms that they dwell in him and he dwells in them.

The attitude of the Sayer as the personal revealer, the veritable and
visible image of the hidden God in the Gospels, is that of the mythical
Horus, the representative of Osiris--of Iu as manifestor of Atum, and of
Khunsu as the son of Amen-Ra, who was the hidden God by name. The status
had been attained, and the stand was occupied by the mythical divinity,
and no room was left for a human Claimant many centuries later. If we
take the transfiguration on the Mount, Buddha ascended the mountain in
Ceylon called Pandava or Yellow-White. There the heaven opened, and a
great light was in full flood around him, and the glory of his person
shone forth with /"double power." /He /"shone as the brightness of Sun
and Moon." /This was the transfiguration of Buddha, identical with that
of the Christ, and both are the same as that of Osiris in his ascent of
the Mount of the Moon. The same scene of the temptation on the Mount was
previously pourtrayed in the Persian account of the Devil tempting
Zarathustra, and inviting him to curse the Good Belief. But these
several forms of the one character do not meet, and did not originate in
any human history--lived either in Egypt, India, Persia, or Judea. They
only meet in the Mythos, which may be traced to a common origin in
Egypt, where we can delve down to the real root of the matter.
Astronomical mythology claims, and Egypt can account for, at least
30,000 years of time; and that alone will explain these relationships
and likenesses found on the surface by an original identity at root. The
myths of Christianity and Buddhism had a common origin, and branched
from the same root in the soil of Egypt, whence emanated several dogmas,

57

like that of the Immaculate virgin motherhood, and the divine child who
is the ancestral soul self-reproduced. And in company with the doctrines
we naturally find a few of the sayings of the Buddha, which have often
been paralleled with some of those assigned to the Christ.

The Logia or sayings are the /mythoi/ in Greek. They were mythical
sayings assigned to Sayers, who were also mythical in that mythology
which preceded and accounts for our Theology and Christology. The
sayings were the oral wisdom, and, as the name implies, that wisdom was
uttered by word of mouth alone. They existed before writing, and were
not allowed to be written afterwards. The mode of communicating them in
the Mysteries, as in Masonry, was from mouth to ear; and, in passing, it
may be remarked that the war of the Papacy against Masonry is because it
is a survival of the pre-Christian Mysteries, and a living, however
imperfect, witness against Historic Christianity! Mythos or myth denotes
anything delivered by word of mouth, myth and mouth being identical at
root. Now, as the mouth of utterance preceded the word that was uttered,
it follows that the first form of the sayer or Logos was female, and
that the feminine wisdom was first, although she has not yet been made
flesh. The mother was primordial, and the earliest soul or spirit was
attributed to her; she was the mouth, utterer, or sayer, long before the
sayings were assigned to the male Logos or Christ. Thus in the
Apocrypha, as in other Gnostic books, the sayings of Wisdom are found
which have been made counterfeit in the mouth of the Christ made
historic. She was the primal type of Wisdom, who built her house with
the Seven Pillars, and who was set in the heavens as Kefa, later Sefekh,
and latest Sophia. She is called the Living Word or Logos at Ombos,
because as her constellation, the Great Bear, turned round annually, it
told the time of the year. She is pourtrayed in the planisphere with her
tongue hanging out to show that she is the mouthpiece of time who utters
the Word. Wisdom was also the earliest teller of human time. In her
mystical phase she told the time for the sexes to come together. Thus,
on the ground of natural phenomena, the Logia were first uttered by the
Lady, and not by the Lord. This is the woman who has been so badly
abused by those who desired to dethrone her; the primitive protestants
who set up the male image in her place and on her pedestal. In Egypt the
Sayings were assigned to various divinities, that is mythical
characters. One of these was the Solar God Iu-em-hept, the Egyptian
Jesus, who was the son of Atum, and who is called /"the Eternal Word"
/in the /"Book of the Dead." /After these sayings had been recorded it
is said of them in a text at least 5000 years old, /"I have heard the
words of Iu-em-hept and Har-ta-tef as it is said in their sayings!"/ The
Osirian form of the /"the Lord" /who utters the Logia in the Egyptian
Ritual is Horus, he whose name signifies the Lord.

I cannot prove that sets of the sayings of the Lord, as Horus,

58

were continued intact up to the time of Papias. Nor is that necessary.
For, according to the nature of the hidden wisdom they remained oral and
were not intended to be written down. They were not collected to be
published as historic until the mysteries had come to an end or, on one
line of their descent, were merged in Christianity. But a few most
significant ones may be found in the Book of the Dead. In one particular
passage the speaker says he has given food to the hungry, drink to the
thirsty, clothes to the naked, and a boat to the shipwrecked; and, as
the Osirified has done these things, the Judges say to him, /"Come, come
in peace," /and he is welcomed to the festival which is called /"Come
thou to me." /Those who have done these things on earth are held to have
done them to Horus, the Lord; and they are invited to come to him as the
blessed ones of his father Osiris. In this passage we have not only the
sayings reproduced by Matthew, but also the drama and the scenes of the
Last Judgment represented in the Great Hall of Justice, where a person
is separated from his sins, and those who have sided with Sut against
Horus are transformed into goats. Here it is noticeable that Matthew
only of the four Evangelists represents this drama of the Egyptian
Ritual! Among the sayings of Jesus, or Logia of the Lord, is the saying
that /"the very hairs of your head are numbered;" /and in the Ritual
every hair is weighed; also the night of the judgment-day is designated
that of /"weighing a hair." /Various chapters of the Ritual are the
/"sayings." /They are preceded by the formula, /"said by the deceased,"
/or /"said to the deceased." /Horus, the Lord, is the divine Sayer.
/"Says Horus" /is a common statement; and the souls repeat his sayings.
He is the Lord by name, and therefore his are the original sayings, or
Logia of the Lord. These sayings, or Logia of the Lord, were written by
Hermes or Taht, the Scribe of the Gods, and they constituted the
original Hermean or inspired Scriptures, which the Book of the Dead
declares were written in Hieroglyphics by the finger of Hermes himself.
This Recorder of the sayings is said to have power to grant the Makheru
to the Solar God--that is, the gift of speaking the Truth by means of
the Word, because he is the Registrar of the /"sayings"/--the scribe of
the wisdom uttered orally, the means, therefore, by which the Word was
made Truth to men; not flesh in human form. This is the part assigned to
Matthew, the called one, the Evangelist and Scribe, who first wrote down
the Logia, or sayings of the Lord. Now, the special name or title of
Hermes in the particular character of the Recorder and Registrar in the
Hall of the Double Truth, or Justice, is Matthew in Egyptian--that is,
Matiu. And my claim is not only that the primary Logia of the Lord were
the sayings of Horus, whose name means /"the lord," /but also that /the
/Matthew who, according to the testimony of Papias, first wrote down the
Logia of the Lord, was none other than Matiu, or Hermes, the recorder of
the sayings in the Egyptian Ritual, who has been made an historic
personage in

59

the Canonical Gospel in exact accordance with the humanising of the
Mythical Christ.

One mode of manipulating the sayings, and making out a history is
apparent, and can be followed. This was by looking it out in the alleged
Hebrew prophecies, and inserting it piecemeal between the groups of
sayings. There is proof that, with the sayings as primary data, the
history of the Canonical Gospel, according to Matthew, was written on
the principle of fulfiling the supposed prophecies found in the Old
Testament, or elsewhere. The compiler was too uninstructed to know that
the prophecies themselves belonged entirely to the Astronomical
Allegory, and never did or could relate to forthcoming events that were
to be fulfiled in human history; and never were supposed to do so,
except by the ignorant, who knew no better, and who, in fact, thought
the zodiacal Virgin had brought forth her child on earth; which could
only be born, and that figuratively, in heaven. Those who did know
better, whether Jews, Samaritans, Essenes, or Gnostics, entirely
repudiated the historic interpretation, and did not become Christians.
They could no more join the ignorant, fanatical Salvation Army in the
first century than we can in the nineteenth. The so-called prophecies
not only supply a /raison d'être/ for the history in the gospels, the
events and circumstances themselves are manufactured one after another
from the prophecies and sayings--that is, from the mythos which was
pre-extant, in the course of the literalisation into a human life, and
the localisation in Judea, under the pretext, or in the blind belief,
that the impossible had come to pass. Justin Martyr's great appeal for
historical proofs is made to the Old Testament prophecies; and so is
Matthew's. According to him, Jesus was born at Bethlehem in order that
it might be fulfiled which was said by Micah that a Governor and
Shepherd for Israel should come out of Bethlehem in Judea. That was in
the Celestial Bethlehem or House of Bread-Corn, the zodiacal sign of the
Fishes, where the mythical Messiah was to be reborn about the year 255 B.C.

Again, the young child was only taken to Nazareth that it might be
fulfiled which was spoken by the prophets, that he should be called a
Nazarene. And yet he would no more become a Nazarene in that way than a
man could become a horse by being born in a stable. Jesus came to dwell
in Capernaum, on the borders of Zebulun and Naphtali, that a saying of
Isaiah's might be fulfiled!

He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all that were sick, that
it might be fulfiled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet. For the
same impotent reason he charged his followers not to make him known to
men /as /the Christ! He taught the multitude in parables only that it
might be fulfiled which had been spoken by the prophet. Although Jesus
wrought his miracles, and did so many wonderful works, /yet /the people
believed not on him, because Isaiah had previously said: /"Lord! who
hath believed our/

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/report? and to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed?" /For this
cause (or on this account) they could not believe! And where, then, was
the sense in expecting them to believe? Jesus only sent the two
disciples to steal the ass and colt, that it might be fulfiled which was
spoken by the prophet Zechariah. The choosing of Judas as one of the
disciples, and his consequent treachery, do but occur in the Gospels,
because it had been written by the Psalmist: /"Yea, mine own familiar
friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his
heel against me!"/ which refers to an identifiably Egyptian Mythos. In
another Psalm assigned to David, the speaker cries: /"My God! my God!
why hast thou forsaken me! They part my garments among them, and cast
lots upon my vesture." /And in another he exclaims: /"They gave me also
gall for meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink." /And
these sayings, which were pre-extant and pre-applied, constitute the
Christian record of the historic crucifixion! It cannot be pretended
that they are prophecies. The transactions and sayings in the Psalms are
personal to the speaker there and then, whether Mythical or Historical,
and /not /to any future sufferer; and the tremendous transactions
pourtrayed in the Gospels are actually based upon a repetition of that
which had already occurred! When Jesus is represented by John as being
in his death-agony, he only said, /"I thirst," /in order that the
Scripture might be fulfiled--and not because he was thirsty!--the
Scripture being these Sayings previously attributed to the psalmist
David. The earlier sayings are repeated as the later doings, and the
non-historical is finally the sole evidence for the Historical. When the
Roman soldiers had crucified Jesus they took the vesture that was
without a seam, and said: /"Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it,"
/that the Scripture might be fulfiled which saith: /"They parted my
garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots." /Such was
the familiarity of the Roman soldiers with the Jewish Scriptures, and
such their respect for them, that they could do nothing that was not
laid down in the Hebrew Writings to be interpreted as prophecy! And in
such a desperate way the prophecies had to be fulfiled in order that the
History might be written. In the first place the sayings are not
original, not personal to any historical Jesus, and yet they are the
acknowledged foundations of the four gospels. Therefore in them we have
the foundations laid independently of any supposed Founder of
Christianity. Next, we have more or less seen /how /a part of the
history superimposed on the sayings first collected by Matthew was
extracted piecemeal from the parables, oracles, alleged prophecies, and
un-alleged Mythos of the Old Testament; and thus we get upon the track
of the compilers, and can trace their method of working from the matter
of the Mythos. Now, when we find, and can identify, the skeleton of some
particular person, we have got the foundation of the man, no matter
where the rest of him may be--recoverable or not. So is it with

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the Christ of our Canonical Gospels. The mythical Christ is the
skeleton, and that is identifiably Egyptian. This mythical Christ, as
Horus, was continued in the more mystical phase as the Horus of the
Gnostics. The Gnostic Rituals repeat the matter, names, symbols, and
doctrines found in some later chapters of the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
The Gnostics supply the missing links between the oral sayings and the
written Word; between the Egyptian and the Canonical Gospels; between
the Matthew who wrote down the sayings of the Lord in Hebrew or Aramaic,
and the Matiu who is said to have written the Ritual in hieroglyphics
with the very finger of Hermes himself. The Gnostics were the knowers by
name; their artists perpetuated the Egyptian types; and the original
myths, symbols, and doctrines now recovered from the buried land of
Egypt vouch for their knowledge of the mysteries which lurk in the
sayings, parables, events, and characters that have been gathered up in
our Gospels, to be naturalised and re-issued in an historic narrative as
the fulfilment of prophecy. They inherited the Gnosis of Egypt, which
remained unwritten, and therefore was unknown to the Christians in
general; the mysteries that were performed in secret, and the science
kept concealed. The Gnostics complained, and truly maintained, that
their mysteries had been made mundane in the Christian Gospels; that
celestial persons and celestial scenes, which could only belong to the
pleroma--could only be explained by the secret wisdom or gnosis--had
been transferred to earth and translated into a human history; that
their Christ, who could not be made flesh, had been converted into an
historical character; that their Anthropos was turned into the Son of
Man--according to Matthew--Monogenes into the Only-begotten, according
to John, their Hemorrhoidal Sophia into the woman who suffered from the
issue of blood, the mother of the seven inferior powers into Mary
Magdalene possessed by her seven devils, and the twelve Æons into the
twelve Apostles. Thus, the Gnostics enable us to double the proof which
can be derived directly and independently from Egypt. They claim that
the miracle of the man who was born blind, and whose sight was restored
by Jesus, was their mystery of the Æon, who was produced by the
Only-begotten as the sightless creature of a soulless Creator. Irenæus,
in reporting this, makes great fun of the Word that was born blind! He
did not know that this Gnostic mystery was a survival of the Egyptian
myth of the two Horuses, one of whom was the blind Horus, who exclaims
in his blindness--/"I come to search for mine eyes,"/ and has his sight
restored at the coming of the Second Horus--the light of the world. Nor
did he dream that the two-fold Horus would explain why the blind man in
our Gospels should be single in one version and two-fold in another
account of the same miracle. The Gnostic Horus came to seek and to save
the poor lost mother, Sophia, who had wandered out of the pleroma, and
the Gnostics identified this myth with the statement assigned to Jesus
when he

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said he had only come after that lost sheep which was gone astray. For,
as Irenæus says, they explain the wandering sheep to mean their mother.
This shows how the character of the Christ was limited to the mould of
the Mythos and the likeness of Horus. But the lost sheep of the House of
Israel has not yet found Jesus.

The very same transactions and teachings ascribed to Jesus in the
Gospels are assigned to the Gnostic Christ, who, like the Egyptian
Horus, is the Sayer in heaven, or within the pleroma, and not upon our
earth. And, in the Gospel according to John, we have Jesus identifying
himself as the Son of Man which is in heaven, whilst at the same time he
is represented as talking and teaching the Gnosis of the mysteries on
earth. He tells Nicodemus, who came to him by night, that /"No man hath
ascended into heaven but he that descended out of heaven, even the Son
of Man which is in heaven," /as was Anthropos when he taught the twelve
according to the Gnostic account of the transactions within the pleroma.
Also, the twelve Æons are addressed in the language of the Gnosis when
Jesus says to the twelve--/"Ye also shall bear witness, because ye have
been with me from the beginning." /They tell us, says Irenæus, that the
knowledge communicated by the Christ to the Æons within the pleroma has
not been openly divulged, because all are not capable of receiving it;
but it was mystically made known, by means of parables, to those who
were qualified for receiving it. The Gnostic Christ reveals the
mysteries of the kingdom of heaven to the twelve Æons in parables. And
in the Gospel the Christ speaks to the twelve in parables only, and to
them alone is it given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.
In this process of converting the mythical into the historical we are
told that Jesus, the very Son of God, was sent into the world to teach
and enlighten and save mankind, and yet he spoke his teaching in
parables which the people could not, and were not intended to,
understand. /"All these things spake Jesus in parables to the multitude;
and without a parable spake he nothing unto them," /in order that it
might be fulfiled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, /"I will open
my mouth in parables; I will utter things hidden from the foundation of
the world!" /He spoke to the multitudes in this wise, so that they might
not understand. Yet in the chapter following it is said--/"He called to
him the multitude /(not the disciples) /and said unto them, Hear and
understand," /and immediately uttered a dark saying. We are also told
that the common people heard him gladly! In another instance, as crucial
as it is interesting--illustrative of the way in which the mythical, the
Kronian Christ, was made human as the instructor of man--it is said as
Jesus sat on the Mount of Olives the disciples came to him privately,
and asked him to tell them about his coming in the clouds at the end of
the world. And amongst other things they are to do, he says,--Let them
that are in Judea flee unto the mountains. Let him that is on the
house-tops not go down. But

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what sense is there in advising any such mode of escape from the great
tribulation and catastrophe which involved the end of the world? There
would not be much advantage on the house-top or even the hill-top if the
stars were falling from heaven, with the firmament raining all round
with flames, and the end of all things had indeed come. We might just as
well seek refuge at the top of a fire-escape. And they are to pray that
their flight may not be in winter, or on the Sabbath, as if it could
possibly matter to any mortal in what season of the year, or day of the
week, such a catastrophe should occur. The final explanation of all such
foolishness is that the matter is mythical, and, of course, it refuses
to be realised in any such literal way. The parable never meant the end
of this world; the literalisers of the mythos thought it did. That was
only a false inference of ignorant belief. But such are the foundations
of the faith. Such desperate dilemmas as these are the inevitable result
of representing the Mythical Sayer in heaven as an historical teacher on
earth.

The two chief abiding places to which the peripatetic Christ retires are
called /"the Mountain" /and /"the Desert." /These localities in the
Egyptian mythos are the upper and lower heavens, otherwise the mount of
the equinox and the wilderness of the underworld; and where John cries
in the wilderness, Aan or Anup howled in the desert. Now, according to
Egyptian thought and mode of expression the dead are those who are on
the mountain; the living are those who are in the valley or on the
earth. Horus on earth, or in the valley, is mortal, the child of the
immaculate mother Isis alone. Horus on the mountain is spiritualised as
the son of the Father Osiris, in whose power he overcomes the devil. Sut
or Satan has the best of it down in the wilderness, and Horus conquers
up on the mount, in the day of their Great Battle. Jesus undergoes the
same change as Horus does in his baptism. He likewise becomes the son of
the Father, and in the strength of his adultship he ascends the mountain
and becomes the vanquisher of Satan. This typical mountain is a pivot on
which a good deal may be said to turn. The contest between Jesus and
Satan, called the temptation on the Mount, is pourtrayed upon the
monuments in a scene where Horus and Sut contend for supremacy, and at
last agree to divide the whole world between them. Horus takes the
south, and Sut the north, called the hinder part, where Jesus
says,--/"Get thee behind me, Satan!"/ The devil's long tail is an extant
sign of this hinder part, which was typified in Egypt by the tail. If
the Christ had been historical in this transaction, the devil must be
historical too. Both stand on the same footing of fact or fable.
According to the record, Satan must have been as real as the Christ, or
Christ as mythical as the devil. Was Satan also incarnated for life in
the flesh? If so, when did he die? where was the place of /his /burial?
and did /he /also rise again? Nobody seems to care what became of the
poor devil after he was told to get behind, or take a back seat,

64

that of the hinder part. The scene in the Mount of Transfiguration is
obviously derived from the ascent of Osiris (or Horus), and his
transfiguration in the Mount of the Moon. The sixth day was celebrated
as that of the change and transfiguration of the solar god in the lunar
orb, which he re-entered as the regenerator of its light. With this we
may compare the statement made by Matthew that /"After six days Jesus"
/went /"up into a high mountain apart, and he was transfigured." "And
his face did shine as the sun" /(of course!), /"and his garments became
white as the light."/

The natural phenomena on which these Egyptian legends or myths were
founded are the contentions of light and darkness at the time of the
equinox, or in the waxing and waning of the light in the lunar orb. /"He
must increase, but I must decrease," /says John, who plays the part of
Sut-Aan to Jesus as the Light of the World. This was the battle between
Horus and Satan. In one legend it is said that Sut was seven days
fleeing on the back of an ass from his battle with Horus. That means the
seven days of the second quarter of the moon, during which Horus
triumphs as Lord of the growing light. And here we can point to a
curious survival! The Unicorn was a type of Sut, and the Lion of Horus;
and their conflict is described in our legend--

"The Lion and the Unicorn

Were fighting for a farthing,

The Lion beat the Unicorn

Up and down the garden!

The Lion and the Unicorn

Were fighting for a crown,

The Lion beat the Unicorn

Up and down the town!"

The farthing is a fourth; and they fought for a fourthing, or a quarter
of the moon; equal to the seven days during which darkness was put to
flight; and the crown is the full, round disk of the moon. Thus, as the
Egyptian imagery proves, the arms of England illustrate the same
subject-matter as the contest of Horus and Sut, of Angro-Mainyus and
Zarathustra, and of the Christ and Satan. And now, if you will have the
patience, I will show a scene in which the Christ of the Gospels is
restored to his proper place and station in the heavens, as the Teacher
on the Mount, and as such can be identified. Jesus goes up into the
mythical mountain when he appoints the twelve disciples, that they might
be with him, and have authority to cast out devils (Mark iii. 14).

In Matthew's compilation Jesus calls the twelve, and gives them
authority to cast out devils. It is here that he says /"the harvest is
plenteous, but the labourers are few." /Luke describes the same scene in
the same words, and the same commission is granted, the same powers are
given to the disciples! But now the seventy have taken the place of the
twelve. /"And the Seventy returned with joy, saying, Lord, even the
devils are subject unto us in thy name!" /The /"Seventy in the Mount"
/are an ancient pre-Christian institu-

65

tion. They were once the /"Seventy Elders"/ who received their
instructions from Moses in the Mount. But in many ancient authorities
these Seventy with Christ are Seventy-two. The two different numbers are
identifiably astronomical, and they go to double my proof. Previous to
the heaven of twelve divisions, and seventy-two sub-divisions, or
duo-decans of the zodiac, there was a heaven of ten divisions and
seventy sub-divisions; and we find the same mixture of the seventy with
the seventy-two, and of the ten with the twelve, in the Astronomical
Book of Enoch. Here, in the Canonical Version, we have the twelve, and
the complementary seventy-two, but no ten to account for the seventy!
This missing factor we shall find in the Divine Pymander, or fragments
of Hermes. There we meet with the ten in the mount, and the ten are the
expellers of devils or torments, just as the twelve and the seventy are
in the gospels. All these parts belong to one system of mythological
representation, and wherever they are separately found can be
identified, as certainly as the scattered pieces of a puzzle by those
who know the subject-matter of the total picture. As before said, the
scene on the mount of transfiguration reproduces the ascent of Buddha
into Mount Pandava or Yellow-White, and of Osiris into the Moon! Now,
this Mount of the Moon was a seat of the eight great gods of Egypt. And
in the Divine Pymander it is called the Octonary of Tat, who is Lord in
Smen, the region of the eight, at the north celestial pole. Lower down
it was the mount of the four quarters, or of the Moon, and of the four
with Horus in the Mount; and, still lower down, it becomes the heaven of
the twelve signs, the zodiacal circle; and here the fragments of Hermes,
or the Divine Pymander, have brought on matter of very special
importance. One of the chapters is entitled /"The Secret Sermon on the
Mount of Regeneration." /Regeneration is the mystical form of the
transfiguration of Osiris in the Mount of the Moon. This Mount, also
called the Tabernacle, is said to consist of the Zodiacal circle, the
signs of which are the twelve belonging to the Mount--the Zodiac being
the lowest of three heavens, or stories to the Mount, Stellar, Lunar,
and Solar. Now, let us see how the Mount, together with the Sayer and
the Sermon on the Mount, have been reproduced in the Gospels. In the
account furnished by Matthew we find but four companions with Christ in
the Mount. These are the two pairs of the brethren, who answer to the
four brothers of Osiris, who are the gods of the four quarters. But in
Luke's Gospel the Mount of the four has become the Mount of the twelve.
Accordingly the sermon is here delivered lower down, at the bottom of
the Mount! In fact, Jesus, instead of being seated with the four on the
Mount, is said to stand with the twelve in the plain below! This shows
the Mount to be astronomical as well as mythical. Further, in the same
scene, where the disciples are twelve in number, as lords of the
harvest--according to Matthew's Gospel--they are seventy or seventy-two
according to Luke, the number of duo-decans into

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which the twelve signs of the Zodiac were finally sub-divided. In the
Divine Pymander the title of the /"Mount of Regeneration" /serves to
show the nature of the sermon. It is the /"Secret Sermon." "Oh, son,"
/says Hermes, /"this wisdom is to be understood in silence;" /that is,
the knowledge or experience of the Regeneration taught by the Secret
Sermon on the Mount. Hermes had said that /No man can be saved before
regeneration; /and Tat desires to understand the nature of this
regeneration. He says to Hermes, /"I do humbly entreat thee, at the
going up to the mountain!"/--just as the Twelve besought Jesus privately
in the Mount. And Hermes shows him how the mortal man while in the flesh
can transform into the immortal mind. In the mysteries this was figured
as the rising from the dead, and it was so taught by the Gnostics. The
process was illustrated by transformation, or entering into the state of
trance, whereby (as was held) the mortal was changed into the immortal
in this life; and it is evident that in the scene of the transfiguration
described by Matthew, the vision of the three witnesses belongs to the
trance condition, for they had a vision which they were to tell to no
man! In the Canonical Gospels the mythical Mount has been made mundane;
the divine speakers have been made human; the mystical teaching has been
literalised by the endeavour to make the total transaction historical.
After the /"Secret Sermon /(or spiritual representation) /in the Mount
of Regeneration, and the profession of silence," /Hermes tells Tat to
keep silence--these things are neither to be taught nor told: they are
to be hid in silence! In the gospels Jesus charges the disciples that
they shall tell no man what things they have witnessed, save when the
Son of Man shall have risen again from the dead. And the disciples, who
are said to have just seen a resurrection from the dead performed before
them, are described as questioning among themselves what the rising
again from the dead should mean! (Mark ix. 9.) In the Osirian myth the
rising from the dead was the re-birth of the Lord of light in the orb of
the New Moon. That was the transfiguration of Osiris in the Mount of the
Moon, on the sixth day of the month. In the mystical phase the rising
from the dead in the Mount of Regeneration, as pourtrayed by Hermes, was
a transformation into the spiritual or abnormal state, which
demonstrated immortality. Thus we have the rising from the dead in two
phases--astronomical and spiritual; both Egyptian, both able to explain
their own meaning, and both pre-Christian! In the gospels we have the
same Mount, the same Mythos, the same matter, the same Numbers, the same
characters, rendered historically. You can't help seeing the bones of
the Mythos staring through its skin! You are positively present at the
transformation of the mythical into the historical. The soli-lunar god
and the Gnostic Christ have both contributed obviously to the make-up of
the humanised Christ on the /"Mount of Regeneration and the profession
of silence!"/ No wonder the disciples could not understand

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what the rising from the dead should mean! In this manner the Mythos can
be followed, as it goes on eating its way through the history, like the
larvæ of the /Anobium pertinax, /of which it is recorded by Peiquot that
one specimen perforated twenty-seven folio volumes in a line so straight
that a cord could be passed through the hole, and the twenty-seven
volumes slung up altogether.

It is claimed by Christian teachers that the Christ was incarnated as
the especial revealer of the father who is in heaven, and that the
revelation culminated on the Mount when he taught the fatherhood of God
in the Lord's prayer. But the Lord's prayer is no more original than is
the Lord to whom it was last assigned. In the Jewish "Kadish" we have
the following pre-Christian form of it, which is almost word for word
the same:--/"Our father which art in heaven! Be gracious to us, O Lord
our God! Hallowed be thy name! And let the remembrance of thee be
glorified in heaven above and upon earth below! Let thy kingdom reign
over us now and for ever! Thy holy men of old said, 'Remit and forgive
unto all men whatsoever they have done against me!' And lead us not into
temptation! But deliver us from the evil thing! For thine is the
kingdom, and thou shalt reign in glory for ever and for ever."/

If such a revelation had ever been historical, if the divine son had
once been incarnated to reveal the fatherhood, it could not have
remained until the Christian era for this to be done. It did not need
any Deity to descend from heaven to reveal that which had been common
doctrine in Egypt at least 4,000 years earlier. And this prayer was
prayed by the one particular people who rejected the Son of God when he
had come down. But the matter is mythical and mystical,--it can only be
understood doctrinally by means of the Gnosis. The initial point of the
teaching is this,--there could be no fatherhood in heaven until the
human fatherhood was individualized on earth. Previously there was only
the divine mother and the fathers in general. Hence the first Messiah
was called the Son of the Woman, as he is in the book of Enoch; the
later is the Son of Man--the Gnostic Anthropos, and the only-begotten of
the Father, the Gnostic Monogenes. This is he who was the last of the
Æons, and who came at the end of the world. He instructed the Æons who
had preceded him, and /"taught them that those who had a comprehension
of the unbegotten were sufficient for themselves, or needed no higher
knowledge than that proclaimed by him." /He first announced among them
what related to the knowledge of the father, but that was within the
Pleroma, not on the earth. This was the great and abstruse mystery of
the Gnostics, says Irenæus, that the Proarche, the Power which is above
all others and contains all, is termed Anthropos; hence the manifester
is styled the /"Son of //Man.//" /This title of the Christ occurs nearly
eighty times over in the Gospel according to Matthew, where he is
identical with the Gnostic Anthropos--Son of Anthropos. That is,

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the Son of the God who was now imaged in the likeness of the
individualized Father, which was the latest institution in heaven,
because it had been last on earth. Here, it may be observed in passing,
is a fact that is forever fatal to the theory that the Christology of
the Gospels was derived from Buddhism. There is no divine fatherhood
proclaimed by the Son in Buddhism. But the teaching was Egyptian.

The most important sayings assigned to Jesus by the writer of John's
Gospel are not recorded or referred to by the Synoptics--Matthew, Mark,
and Luke. These contain the secret wisdom of the Gnostics; they are the
Logia of the Gnostic Christ, who was Horus, the Lord, in Egypt. They are
spoken by the Son of Man, who is in heaven (John iii. 13), and who
taught the twelve Æons there with the same doctrinal sayings that are
here assigned to the Teacher of the twelve on earth, or on the Mount.
Moreover, in John's gospel we meet with the Seven Fishers on board the
boat. These correspond to the seven who are followers of Horus in the
Egyptian Ritual, and who are said to fish for Horus. They go a-fishing
with Horus in his boat; and they are also called the /"Seven planks in
the boat of souls." /The miraculous draught of fishes occurs in both.
Now, it is noticeable that this miraculous take of fishes is described
by Luke as occurring during the life-time of Jesus, but according to the
Johanine gospel, the transaction takes place in a region beyond the
tomb, or at least, after the death and resurrection of Jesus,--and
therefore in the very region where the Gnostics declared these things
had occurred. Which, think ye, was first,--the assuredly mythical, or
the alleged historical?

The gospel according to John is the link of connection between the true
Gnosis and the false history of the other gospels. It shows the very
ground on which the mythos alighted to be made mundane, and that is why
it was kept secret, and withheld until the middle of the second century
or so, by which time the doctrine of the Christ made flesh was
considered safe, and sure to supersede the teachings of the Gnostics
with the gospel of historic Christianity.

An identifiable personal founder and historical teacher of Christianity
is the least of all the various factors! The Church of Rome did not
derive its secret dogmas and doctrines from the canonical gospels in
which his teachings are believed to be enshrined. Various Egyptian
doctrines, not to be found in our canonical gospels, survived in the
Church of Rome; these were taught esoterically according to an unwritten
tradition, and only allowed to become exoteric as time and opportunity
permitted. Take for example the worship of the /"Sacred Heart." /That is
no recent invention of Rome or the Ritualists. The doctrine is Egyptian,
and of the remotest antiquity. The heart, on account of its relation to
the blood, was held to be the house of life, and also the mother of
life. The heart was the shrine of the soul. Its Egyptian name of Hat,
and Hor, the soul, or divine child, compose the name of Hathor, the

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mother of Horus, the Christ. And as the heart or habitation is the
mother of life, it was adopted as a type of the birth-place. And so in
the Ritual the soul, speaking as Horus, says, /"My heart is (or was) my
mother," /in a chapter (30) which contains the doctrine of the /"Sacred
Heart." /For this reason the heart-shaped fruit of the Persea tree of
life was an emblem of Hathor and her child. The stone of it was shown
through a cleft in the fruit to denote the seed of the woman.

Now, as previously said, one name of Hathor is Meri. Horus was the
Child-Christ of the Sacred Heart of Meri, who was the goddess of love in
Egypt, as well as the abode or dwelling of life, before she became the
Madonna Mary in Rome. This is not only the source of the Sacred Heart as
a Christian doctrine, it is also the origin of Cupid, the child-god of
love, and the typical heart still sacred to lovers on Valentine's day.

Possibly the nearest we can get to Jesus ben Pandira as a teacher, if he
makes any appearance whatever in the Gospels, is in the gloomy ascetic,
the anti-naturalist, who mistook the non-natural for the divine; who
would have had men to save their protoplasmal souls by becoming eunuchs
for the Kingdom of heaven's sake! and whose model for heaven itself was
a monastery, as when he says, /"In my father's house are many monai,"
/or monasterion,--with no women there to cause a second fall from
heaven! He might possibly have been the self-tormenting teacher of a
creed of monkery, only that institution was already established, and no
place was left for him to be the founder even there. It is just possible
that Joshua ben Pandira may have brought out of Egypt a version of the
Sayings of the original Matiu or Matthew, together with a form of the
Horus-myth. If so, these would be manipulated by his followers, one of
whom, James, is said, in the book Abadazurah, to have been a follower of
Jehoshua the Nazarene, and so by degrees the historic Joshua would be
confused with, and finally converted into, Jesus the Christ of Nazareth,
and the mystical Sayer into the Word made flesh: the Jesus of that
"other Gospel" which was opposed by Paul. The sayings themselves,
selected in a last assortment, have not even the consistency of a
kaleidoscope. They will not fall into any set form of themselves, or
reflect any mental unity anywhere. And so each sect or system of
interpretation has to take them and construct its own kaleidoscope, and
determine its own views, doing all it can to impose them upon others.
Texts may be quoted on all sides for purposes the most antagonistic.
Diversity radiates outwardly from them because there was no unity of
origin, no individual life at the heart of them all.

When our missionaries first made the sayings known to the Arawaks of
Guiana, they remarked, /"The word is good but we knew most of it
before." /Most of the true sayings were known before! As we have them
they are so various--good, bad, and

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indifferent--as to constitute that hybrid mixture which is certain to
entail sterility. Some of the sayings are no more appropriate to our
human wants than was the old lady's tract on the sin of dancing, which
she offered to a poor fellow who had to hobble about on two wooden legs
and crutches! /"If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out/!" Of what
value is such advice as that? Also, it is impossible for us to love our
enemies, if it were right to do so; and, as has been said, it would be
wrong to do it if it were possible. /"Blessed are they who have not seen
yet have believed." /Why, tyranny could devise no doctrine that could be
turned to more fatal account! /"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for
their's is the kingdom of heaven." /Do you call the teaching of that
saying divine? I think it would be false and fraudulent if uttered by a
voice from the Infinite with all heaven for its mouthpiece! The poor in
spirit are the accursed, the outcasts, and pariahs of the earth; those
who sink into the squalor and crawl in the filthy dens of poverty, to
become the natural victims of all its parasites of prey. The poor in
spirit are the prematurely old men, weary, worn-out women, and wizened
children, all bleaching into a ghastly white in the chilling shadow of
daily want! The poor in spirit are those who crouch and offer their
backs to the whip, who remain bowed just as they were bent, and allow
their hands to be fettered and held fast in the attitude of prayer, when
they ought to be up and striking. They who are content to crawl like
caterpillars, and be trodden as caterpillars underfoot. Poverty of
spirit is the very devil; the source of half the evil extant; most of
the meannesses in human nature may be traced to poverty of spirit! It
dwarfs the mental stature of men, makes them bow the neck, and creep and
grovel for a little gain, or go down on all fours in the dirt, as beasts
in human form, from lack of spirit enough to stand erect! The poor in
spirit dare not think for themselves, or utter what they think! They
only wonder what other folk will think! They who are only mere
preliminary people that go monkeying round under the pretence of being
women and men! In this world of struggle, this scene of survival for the
fittest, the poor in spirit stand no chance, and find no place; there is
no victory for those who fight no battle. And as to heaven--do you
really think heaven is a harbour of refuge for the poor in spirit and
the area-sneaks of earth? The poor and needy, the hungry and suffering,
are not the blessed, and no assumption of divine authority on the part
of the sayer will ever make them so. These beatitudes are not divine
revelations, they are only the false promises of the priests, who were
the crafty founders of the faith, made comfortable to Roman rule.

One very striking note of the want of human personality and historic
verity in the Christ of the canonical Gospels is the absence of all
recognition of Rome. There is no shadow of Rome to be seen on the face
of the Christ; no word of rebuke for her inhuman and non-natural crimes;
no sign of anything contemporary: except the

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counselling of submission to Cæsar. The slave would look in vain to the
sayings of Jesus for any denunciation of slavery. There is not one word
of condemnation for the oppressors, nor of comfort for the oppressed. No
vision of the better day on earth for them. Nothing but the mythical Day
of the Lord.

Yet the existence of slavery was endorsed by the Roman law, was
practised with all its evils, and enforced by all her legions. Jesus,
however, makes no attack on the institution; and the fact was quoted and
emphatically emphasised by the ministers of the Gospel of Christ against
the persecuted Abolitionists of America. Nor is there a single word
uttered on behalf of subjugated, downtrodden womankind. Not a saying
that will aid in lifting woman to an equality with man--not a rebuke to
the bigoted Jew who thanked his God each morning that he was /not /a
woman. Nor is he credited with uttering one word against cruelty to
animals; he gives no voice to the dumb creation. No quickening of
conscience in these matters can be attributed to him. Neither the
mother, the wife, nor the sister, owes any gratitude to his alleged
teaching, who exclaimed, /"Woman, what have I to do with thee?" /Neither
the slaves, nor the women, nor the children, nor the animals, owe their
deliverance from inhuman thraldom to him. He had nothing to say about
these pitifully-human interests. And it is a foolish farce to go on
attributing the emancipation of humanity to the teachings of Jesus the
Great Reformer. As a human history nothing can be made of it. It does
not even begin to be--however much you believe. The contradictions are
such as make history impossible. Amidst the dissolution of dogmas and
the universal wreck of creeds, vain is the endeavour to prop the falling
structure with the personality of the Canonical Christ, which evades us
and vanishes in proportion as we seek for it in the Gospels. The common
assumption is that the historic element was the kernel of the whole, and
that the fable accreted around it. But, if you will try it over again
this other way, you will find the mythos which was fundamental will
explain all. The mythos being pre-extant, shows that the core of the
matter was mythical, and it follows that the alleged history is
incremental. And when at last we do get to the bottom of the abyss we
learn that the historic grounds have been formed from the sunken /débris
/or dregs of the ancient mythology.

That pyramid of imposture reared by Rome,

All of cement, for an eternal home,

Must crumble back to earth; and every gust

Shall revel in the desert of its dust;

And when the prison of the Immortal, Mind,

Hath fallen to set free the bound and blind,

No more shall life be one long dread of death,

Humanity shall breathe with fuller breath;

Expand in spirit and in stature rise,

To match its birth-place of the earth and skies.

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GNOSTIC AND HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY

___________________

My purpose in the present lectures is to enforce with further evidence,
and sustain with ampler detail, the interpretation of facts, which has
been already outlined in the "Natural Genesis." My contention is, that
the original mythos and /gnosis /of Christianity were primarily derived
from Egypt on various lines of descent, Hebrew, Persian, and Greek,
Alexandrian, Essenian, and Nazarene, and that these converged in Rome,
where the History was manufactured mainly from the identifiable matter
of the Mythos recorded in the ancient Books of Wisdom, illustrated by
Gnostic Art, and orally preserved amongst the secrets of the Mysteries.

My stand-point had not previously been taken. It was not until this, the
Era of Excavation, that we were able to dig down far enough to recover
the fundamental facts that were most essential for the Student of
Survivals and development to know anything certain concerning the
remoter origins and evolution of the Christian System; the most ancient
evidences having been neglected until now.

Instead of the Roman Church being a crucible for purging the truth from
the dross of error, to give it forth pure gold, we shall have to look
upon it rather as the melting-pot, in which the beautiful and noble
mental coinage of Greece and Egypt was fused down and made featureless,
to be run into another mould, stamped with a newer name, and re-issued
under a later date.

In the course of establishing Apostolic Christianity upon historical
foundations, there was such a reversal of cause and outcome that the
substance and the shadow had to change places, and the husk and kernel
lost their natural relationship and value. All that was first in time
and in originality has been put latest, in order that the prophecy might
be fulfilled, and the last become first. All that preceded Christianity
in the religion of knowledge, of the Gnostics, has come to be looked
back upon as if it were like that representation in the German play
where Adam is seen crossing the stage in the act of going to be created!

Historic Christianity has gathered in the crops that were not of its
kind, but were garnered from the seed already in the soil. Whosoever
tilled and sowed, it has assumed the credit, and been permitted to reap
the harvest, as undisputed master of the field. It claimed, and was
gradually allowed, to be the source of almost every true word and
perfect work that was previously extant; and these were assigned to a
personal Christ as the veritable Author and Finisher of the Faith. Every
good thing was re-dated, re-warranted, declared, and guaranteed to be the

73

blessed result of Historic Christianity, as established by Jesus and his
personal disciples. It can be demonstrated that Christianity pre-existed
without the Personal Christ, that it was continued by Christians who
entirely rejected the historical character in the second century, and
that the supposed historic portraiture in the Canonical Gospels was
extant as mythical and mystical before the Gospels themselves existed.
In short, the mythical theory can be proved by recovering the Mythos and
the Gnosis.

The picture of the New Beginning commonly presented is Rembrandt-like in
tone. The whole world around Judea lay in the shadow of outer darkness,
when suddenly there was a great light seen at the centre of all, and the
face of the startled universe was illuminated by an apparition of the
child-Christ lying in the lap of Mary. Such was the dawn of
Christianity, in which the Light of the World had come to it at last!
That explanation is beautifully simple for the simple-minded; but the
picture is purely ideal--or, in sterner words, it is entirely false.

When the fountain-heads of the Nile were reached at last, it was
perceived that the great river did not rise from any single source in
one particular place, but from a vast concourse of many tributary
springs. So when we come to examine for ourselves the vast complex that
passes under the vague name of Christianity, we learn that it can be
traced to no one single source or locality. So far from its being an
original system as product of the life, character, work, and teachings
of a personal founder, we have to acknowledge sooner or later that it is
more like a unique specimen of what school-boys profanely call a
"Resurrection pie."

Another popular delusion most ignorantly cherished is, that there was a
golden age of /primitive Christianity/, which /followed /the preaching
of the Founder and the practice of his apostles; and that there was a
falling away from this paradisiacal state of primordial perfection when
the Catholic Church in Rome lapsed into idolatry, Paganised and
perverted the original religion, and poisoned the springs of the faith
at the very fountain-head of their flowing purity. Such is the pious
opinion of those orthodox Protestants who are always clamouring to /get
back beyond /the Roman Church to that ideal of primitive perfection
supposed to be found in the simple teachings of Jesus, and the lives of
his personal followers, as recorded in the four canonical gospels and in
the Acts of the Apostles. But when we do penetrate far enough into the
past to see somewhat clearly through and beyond the cloud of dust that
was the cause of a great obscuration in the first two centuries of our
era, we find that there was no such new beginning, that the earliest
days of the purest Christianity were pre-historic, and that the real
golden age of knowledge and simple morality preceded, and did not
follow, the Apostolic Roman Church, or the Deification of its Founder,
or the humanising of the "Lamb of God," whom Lucian calls the "Impaled
One of Palestine."

In an interesting book just published, entitled "Buddhism in

74

Christendom," Mr. Lillie thinks he has found Jesus, the author of
Christianity, as one of the Essenes, and a Buddhist! But there is no
need of craning one's neck out of joint in looking to India, or
straining in that direction at all, for the origin of that which was
Egyptian born and Gnostic bred! Essenism was no new birth of Hindu
Buddhism, brought to Alexandria about two centuries before our era; and
Christianity, whether considered to be mystical or historical, was not
derived from Buddhism at any time. They have some things in common,
because there is a Beyond to both. The crucial test, however, is to be
found on the threshold, at the first step we take, in the doctrine of
the divine Fatherhood. The supreme /rôle /assigned to the Christ of the
Gospels, as of the Gnostics, is that of Manifestor and Revealer of the
Father in heaven. His sign-manual is the seal of the Father. A dozen
times, according to Matthew, he calls God, "My Father." In John's
Gospel, he says, "I and my Father are one." "I am come in my Father's
name." "My Father hath sent me." "My Father hath taught me." "I am in my
Father." "The word ye hear is my Father's." Buddha makes no revelation
of the mythology. The Buddha is the veiled God unveiled, the
un-manifested made manifest, Buddha, like Putha (or Khepr-Ptah), was
begotten by his own becoming, before the time of the divine paternity.
There being no real Father-God in Buddhism, the Buddha has none to make
known on earth. The doctrine was Egyptian, as when it is proclaimed in
the Texts that Horus is "the son who proceeds from his father," and
Osiris is the "father who proceeds from his son."

Again, in the Hindu myth of the ascent and transfiguration on the Mount,
the Six Glories of the Buddha's head are represented as shining out with
a brilliance that was blinding to mortal sight. These Six Glories are
equivalent to the six manifestations of the Moon-God in the six Upper
Signs, or, as it was set forth, in the Lunar Mount. During six months,
the Horus, or Buddha, as Lord of Light in the Moon, did battle with the
Powers of Darkness by night, whilst the Sun itself was fighting his way
through the Six Lower Signs. Now, in the Gospel according to John, there
is no contest with Satan, and no Transfiguration on the Mount! Instead,
we have the "Light of the world," which is in heaven, warring with the
Darkness, and manifesting His glory in six miracles--no more, no
less--answering the Six Glories of the Buddha's head on the Mount, or
the six manifestations in the luminous hemisphere of the superior signs.
The "beginning of his signs," by which Jesus "manifested his glory," was
the turning of water into wine. The sixth, and last, of these, was the
raising of Lazarus, which corresponds exactly with the rising of the
Mummy-constellation (Sahu) of Orion, which ascended as the star of the
Resurrection, when the solar god returned from the dark hemisphere of
the under-world, or the sun re-entered the sign of the Bull at the
vernal equinox. The source of all is the identifiable astronomical
allegory in the Soli-Lunar

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phase, but the fable followed in the Gospel is Egyptian, not Buddhist.
The Christ is one with Horus as Lord of the Lunar light, who manifested
the glory (or the Six Glories) of his father, in the six upper signs, as
his only-begotten Son. The claim now made is that the common Mythos
determined the number of the six Glories, or six Miracles, and the
history was moulded accordingly.

I also think that Jesus--or Joshua-ben-Pandira--/was /an Essene. That
is, he was a Nazarite, and the Nazarites were one with the Essenes. And
these, for example, are amongst the "sayings" in the Book of the
Nazarenes. "Blessed are the peacemakers, the just, and 'faithful.'"
"Feed the hungry; give drink to the thirsty; clothe the naked." "When
thou makest a gift, seek no witness whereof, to mar thy bounty. Let thy
right hand be ignorant of the gifts of thy left." Such were common to
all the Gnostic Scriptures, going back to the Egyptian. This is a
Nazarene saying from the Book of Adam:--"No poor sculpture of earth has
fashioned his throne. The palace of the King was not built up by earthly
masons." And this is from an Egyptian hymn:--"He is not graven in
marble, nor adored in sanctuaries. There is no building that can contain
him." In the ancient Egyptian "Maxims of Ani" we read:--"The sanctuary
of God abhors noisy demonstrations. Pray humbly with a loving heart, all
the words of which are uttered in secret. He will listen to thy words;
He will accept thy offerings. Exaggerate not the liturgical
prescriptions; it is forbidden to offer more than is prescribed. Thou
shalt make adorations in his name." These contain the essence of the
early verses in the 6th chapter of Matthew, where the injunctions given
are:--"Sound not a trumpet before thee, etc. Pray in secret to thy
Father, which is in secret, and he shall recompense thee. And in praying
use not vain repetitions." Ani denotes one of the names of Taht who, as
Mati = Matthew, wrote down the Sayings of the Lord, some of which are
amongst these Maxims. But, unfortunately, you cannot prove anything, or,
still more unfortunately, you /can /prove anything from the Gospels! You
must first catch your Jesus, before you pretend to tell us what he was
personally, and what were his own individual teachings. These "sayings
of mine," cannot be judged as /his /if they were pre-extant, and can be
proved to be anyone's sayings, or may be identified as ancient sayings,
whether Buddhist, Nazarene, Apocryphal, or Egyptian. Also, there are
different versions of the same sayings in the Gospels! In Matthew, we
read: "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness." In
Luke it is:--"Blessed are ye that hunger now." In Matthew:--"Blessed are
the poor in spirit." In Luke:--"Blessed be ye poor. Woe unto you that
are rich!" Which, then, is the version that is personal to Jesus, the
Nazarene? or where is the sense of claiming that the personal Jesus was
an Essene or Nazarite--one of those who never touched wine, or strong
drink--when one of the inspired writers testifies that he was described
as a glutton, and a wine-bibber; and, according to another, his very
first miracle was the turning of water

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into wine for a marriage feast? Suppose we admit that you have laid hold
of Joshua, the Essene, the Nazarite, the reputed Great Healer, the
Comforter, what can you make of a character so unhuman as this?

A poor Canaanitish woman comes to him from a long distance and beseeches
him to cure her daughter who is grievously obsessed. "Have mercy on me,
O Lord," she pleads. But he answered her not a word. The disciples,
brutes as they were, if the scene were real, besought him to send her
away because she cried after them. Jesus answered, and said:--"I was
only sent to the lost sheep of the House of Israel." She worships him,
and he calls her one of the dogs. And it is only her extreme deference
that wins a kindly word from him at last. The Essenes and Gnostics
absolutely denied the physical resurrection, because they were
Spiritualists; therefore, it was impossible for an Essene to have taught
the resurrection of the dead at the Last Day as Jesus is made to do.
(John vi. 39, 40, and xi. 24.)

Again, if the pupil of Ben Perachia was an Essene, or, as reputed, an
initiate in Egyptian mysteries, he never could have endorsed the
mistakes attributed to Moses; never would have died for the reality of a
parable, which he must have known to be astronomical. As one of the Magi
or an Essene, he would understand the "Doctrine of Angels," /i.e./, of
the cycles of time, the character of the Kronian Messiah and the Coming
in 400 years, according to the prophecy of Esdras. He would know the
celestial nature of the Seventy-two whose names were written in Heaven
as servants of the Lord of Light, and who had been with him "from the
beginning" as the opponents of the Seventy-two /Sami /who served
Sut-Typhon, the devil of darkness. He would know that the myths were not
to be fulfilled in human history, and could not have personally set up
the crazy claim that he was the messenger of Hebrew prophecy in person.
No. The claims are made in his name by those who naturalized the Mythos
on its Hebrew-Aramaic line of descent in Matthew, Egyptian in Luke, and
Greek in John. What we do hear is not the voice of the founder teaching
one thing at one time and the direct opposite at another; we hear the
voices of the different sections, each proclaiming its own particular
doctrines and dogmas, each assigning them to the Christ as their typical
teacher, in the course of making out a personal history from the Mythos,
and of giving vent to their own particular prejudices. The sayings of
the Lord were pre-historic, as the sayings of David (who was an earlier
Christ), the sayings of Horus the Lord, of Elijah the Lord, of Mana the
Lord, of Christ the Lord, as the divine directions conveyed by the
ancient teachings. As the "Sayings of the Lord" they were collected in
Aramaic to become the /nuclei /of the earliest Christian gospel
according to Matthew. So says Papias. At a later date they were put
forth as the original revelation of a personal teacher, and were made
the foundation of the historical fiction concocted in the four gospels
that were canonized at last. In proving that Joshua or Jesus was an
Essene there would be no more rest here than anywhere else for the sole
of your foot upon the ground of historic fact. You

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could not make him to be the Founder of the Essene, Nazarite or Gnostic
Brotherhoods, and communities of the genuine primitive Christians that
were extant in various countries a very long while before the Era called
Christian.

Nor is there any need to go to India for the original healers, called
Essenes or Therapeutæ. The dawn of civilisation arose in Egypt, with
healing on its wings. Egypt was the land of physicians through all her
monumental history. Amongst the nations of antiquity she stands a head
and shoulders above the rest; first in time and pre-eminent in
attainment. Egypt was the great physician of the human race, and she
sent out her medical missionaries from the earliest times. The Essenes
were the same as the Therapeutæ or Healers, and they are the healers by
name in Egyptian. Philo farther identifies their name with Essa in
Hebrew, for healing. But Egypt had given birth to the Essenic name, and,
therefore, to the persons named, before the letter E existed; that was
previous to the middle empire (which ended over 4,000 years ago). In old
Egyptian, the word Usha means to doctor. Whence the Ushai, later, Eshai,
or Essenes, are the healers and physicians Josephus has compared the
Pythagoreans with the Egyptian Therapeutæ or Alexandrian Essenes; and
attempts have been made to show the derivation of Buddhist doctrines
from India through Pythagoras whose name has been derived from Put =
Buddha and Guru, a teacher with intent to prove that he was a teacher of
the religion of Buddha. But the Egyptian Putha (the original of Buddha
as I suggest) is indefinitely older than any known Buddha in India;
therefore, as Pythagoras was learned in the wisdom of Egypt and was a
teacher of it, I should derive his name from Putha (Ptah) and Khuru
(Eg.), the Voice or Word of; as a teacher of the Cult of Putha or Ptah,
the Opener and "Lord of Life."

Also, when he entered the first stage of the Essenic mysteries as a
student of divinity, the Initiate was presented with an axe; that is the
Egyptian hieroglyphic of divinity, called the Nuter; the sign with which
the name of the priest, prophet, or Holy Father, was written. Philo
informs us that the Jewish lawgiver (Moses) had trained into fellowship
a large number of those who bore the name of Essenes. There were both
Egyptian and Jewish communities of the healers preceding those that were
known by the Christian or Gnostic names. Jerome calls the Essenes or
Therapeuts "The monks of the old law," and Evagrius Ponticus speaks of
"A monk of great renown who belonged to a sect of the Gnostics" that
dwelt near Alexandria, and were known by name as the "Christian
Gnostics." Clement of Alexandria also claimed to be a Gnostic Christian.
As M. Renan points out, the life of the so-called Christian hermits was
first commenced in Egypt. Ages earlier there had been Egyptian
communities of recluses, both male and female, near the Serapæum of
Memphis, which were supported by the State. In Philo's letter to
Hephæstion, he says the cells of the Egyptian healers are scattered
about the region on the farther shore of Lake Mareotis, in Egypt. Pliny
speaks of the "Ages on ages"

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during which the Essenes had existed, and Epiphanius, about the year
400, says,--"The Essenes continue in their first position, and have not
changed at all." Such permanency, of course, demands a long period of
induration. But it is enough for the present argument to know they were
extant for at least 150 years before the Christian era. Epiphanius also
admits that the Christians were at first called Therapeutæ and Jesseans,
an equivalent name, as he explains, for the Essenes. They were all
healers and doctors. As the Ushai or Jesseans they were already extant
as the healers by name, independently of any personal Jesus or Joshua
the Healer. Also, in Greek the verb for healing comes from the same root
as the name of Jesus. The Essenes were healers, not because they were
the workers of mythical miracles like Jesus, but because they were
profound students of Nature's secret powers; because they were masters
of the science of mental medicine, consciously able to draw on the
spirit-world for healing influences!

They had discovered that health was infectious as well as disease, and
that the capacity for receiving and giving, as a medium of the higher
life, depended on conditions that could be cultivated in this life.
Hence the stress they laid on personal purity and its eight stages of
attainment. They were healers by virtue of the Christ within. Again, we
learn from pseudo-Dionysius, the Areopagite, that the name of healer,
/i.e./, the "Essene" or Therapeut, whom Eusebius calls the Curate, was
employed in the early Church to denote the perfected Adept, who had
attained the highest standing, just as it was with the earlier Essenes.
The current expression,--"A Cure of Souls," or a "Curacy," still shows
the Christian line of descent from the pre-Christian healers.

We sometimes hear of early Christian Communities in which there was no
private property, but all things were held in common, as we read in the
Book of Acts; although in that case the Twelve would but constitute a
/late /community. The members of these brotherhoods are said to have
dwelt together in perfect equality; in fact, to have lived according to
those principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity which were
formulated as an aim of the French Revolution! But such societies /did
not first originate /as the result of establishing "/Historic
Christianity./" They did not come from the Twelve Apostles, nor from the
church at Jerusalem, nor from Rome. They were founded by the prehistoric
Christians, who were primitive enough to practise their creed instead of
merely preaching it as a faith. But such primitive Christians were
quietly at work in various parts of the world, giving health to the
sick, peace to the troubled, freedom to the slave, and knowledge to the
ignorant, long before the existence of Papal or Apostolic Christianity.

Philo-Judæus, who was one of the Essenes--but does not seem to have met
with the Gospel Jesus amongst them, or heard of him--Philo says of
them,--"Three things regulate all they learn and do--viz., love to God,
love of virtue, love for man. A proof of the first is the matchless
sanctity of their entire life, their fear of oaths and lies, and

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the conviction that God is only the originator of good, never of evil.
They show their love of virtue by their indifference to gain, glory, and
pleasure; by their temperance, perseverance, simplicity, absence of
wants, humility, faithfulness, and straightforwardness. They exemplify
their love for their fellow-creatures by kindness, absence of
pretensions, and lastly by the community of goods." There you have what
is termed an Ideal Christian Community! but this was a Reality, and it
was not founded by any personal Jesus; nor was it a result of his
personal teachings being reduced to practice. It preceded, and was not a
birth of, Historic Christianity.

Philo tells us that those who retired from the turmoil of public life to
dwell apart in solitary places (these being the precursors of the monks
and nuns in the Roman Church) handed over their private property to
others, and left their parents, brothers and sisters, wife and child,
and gave up all to the mysteries of a dedicated life. This, which was a
common reality with the Essenes, is set forth as an Ideal when the
Canonical Teacher says--"If any man cometh unto me, and hateth not his
own father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters,
yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." Here the ideal is
perhaps a trifle overdone. The Essenes did not express or inculcate any
such spirit of hatred to all one's relations. They were no such rabid
anti-naturalists as that! The peaceful Essenic spirit is not present,
but rather the spirit of Christian persecution that lighted the fires of
martyrdom.

Of those Essenes who moved about in the world Josephus tells us (he also
was an Essene in early life who did not find Jesus), "They have no one
certain city, but many of them dwell in every city; and if any of them
come from other places, what they have lies open for the strangers, just
as if it were their own--for which reason they carry nothing at all with
them on their travels; nor do they buy or sell anything one to another,
but every one of those who have gives to him that requires it."

The Essenes were phenomenal Spiritualists, in the current sense, who
walked with open sight, and could never become the blind followers of
the shut-eyed faith of the Historicisers, who banned the "malignant
spirit of free inquiry." As Spiritualists they could not, and did not,
believe in the resurrection of the body, consequently a corporeal
resurrection of the Christ was a fundamental fallacy upon which no
Essene or Gnostic could found at any time. So Anti-Christian were they
in the Catholic sense, and so opposed to the Messiah of pubescence, the
Christ according to the flesh, that they repudiated anointing with oil,
and considered it to be a filthy defilement. Therefore their Christ did
not depend upon any external anointing in baptism at the age of thirty
years, and they never could become Christians as the anointed ones. They
were the opponents of all blood-sacrifice, animal or human. The only
sacrifice upheld by them was that of the self. Therefore they did not
accept the bloody sacrifice of the incarnate Son of God when it was
proclaimed. The Essenes as Gnostics held that every man must

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be his own Christ. Their Christ came within--the Christ that could not
become historical without. In the minds of those who knew, Historic
Christianity was repudiated beforehand; and it was as impossible after
the facts were forged, the falsehood established, and the dogma was
founded, as it was before; consequently those Gnostics who had been
Ante-Christians beforehand were of necessity Anti-Christians afterwards.

The Essenes discarded the Pentateuch and repudiated most of the later
prophets--that is, they rejected the ground-work of the future
redemption of mankind, together with the Fall that never was a fact, and
the fulfilment of prophecy which never could be human. The Essenes and
other Gnostics are constantly charged by the ignorant Christians with
turning very plain matters of fact into fantastical parables. M. Renan
talks of Simon's and Philo's allegorising exegesis as if the ancient
fables had been historic facts which the Gnostics perverted into myths.
They were nothing of the kind. They were fables and allegories from the
first--the mysteries that were taught in parables--and all Gnostics
rejected the historic explanation from beginning to end, because they
preserved the true interpretation of the supposed history. Philo tells
us--"They regard the letter of each utterance as the symbol of that
which was concealed from sight, but was revealed in the hidden
meaning"--not by its being rationalised into history. Mythology is, in
its way, as real as mathematics, but its way is not that of the
literalisers, who have made the symbolism false on the face of it to the
underlying natural facts.

The fall of man, the temptation of the serpent and the coming of a
Messiah were not historic realities, which the Gnostics converted into
their allegories. It is altogether misleading to speak of the
allegorizing Essenic and Docetic methods of exegesis, as if the Gnosis
consisted in whittling away and attenuating the solid facts of history!
That is merely echoing the language of those who were at war with the
Gnostic interpretation, on behalf of the supposed history by which we
have been misled. The allegories were first; and they are final; the
history had no deeper foundations. The Essenes knew the hidden nature of
these representations and taught it "through symbols, with time-honoured
zeal," being in possession of the books of wisdom and other scriptures
than ours. They were the jealous preservers of the hidden Gnosis, and
qualified expounders of the ancient mysteries by means of the secret
tradition. The initiate was sworn to keep secret the scriptures of the
hidden wisdom and not to communicate the Gnosis to others, not even to a
new member except in the same way in which it had been communicated to
him. But it was especially prescribed that the "Doctrine of the Angels,"
/i.e./ of the time cycles, was not to be revealed to any non-Essene.
Unfortunately that secresy in the mode of communication became the fatal
curse of all the ancient knowledge by allowing the false to come first
in being publicly proclaimed.

De Quincy, in his essay on the Essenes, has remarked on the monstrosity
of the omission when the Christians are not even

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mentioned by the Jewish historian, Josephus. There is the same
portentous omission when the Essenes are never mentioned in the
Christian Gospels. They are there in fact, though not by name; nor as
any new-born brotherhood. They are only there in disguise, because
historic Christianity has drawn the mask over the features of primitive
Christianity. The existence of primitive and pre-historic Christians is
acknowledged in the Gospel according to Mark when John says,--"Master,
we saw one casting out devils in thy name, and he followeth not us."
That, as the context shows, was done in the name of the Christ, and,
consequently, such were Christians. According to the account in Matthew,
before ever a disciple had gone forth or could have begun to preach
historic Christianity, there was a widespread secret organization ready
to receive and bound to succour those who were sent out in every city of
Israel. Who, then, are these? They are called "The Worthy." That is, as
with the Essenes, those who have stood the tests, proved faithful, and
been found worthy. According to the canonical account these were the
pre-historic Christians, whether called Essenes or Nazarenes; the
worthy, the faithful, or the Brethren of the Lord. "Peace be with you!"
was the greeting or pass-word of the Essenes, and also of the Nazarenes,
to judge from its appearing in the book of Adam. And in the instructions
given to the Seventy (Luke x. 5) it is said:--"Into whatsoever house ye
enter first say, 'Peace be to this house.'"

After the resurrection the mystic pass-word is employed three times over
by the risen Christ. And "He who comes with peace" is the name of the
Egyptian God, Iu-em-hept, the son of Atum, who, as the coming son, is
Iu-su = Jesus. We also learn from the Clementine Homilies (3, 19) that
the "Mystery of the Scriptures" which was taught by (or ascribed to)
Christ was identical with that which /from the first /had been
communicated to /those who were the Worthy. /We may learn from the
Gospel according to Luke that the "Worthy" were those who had been
initiated into the Mysteries of the Gnosis, and who were "accounted
Worthy" to attain that "resurrection from the dead" in this life, which
Paul was not altogether sure about--"those who knew that they could die
no more, being equal to the angels as sons of God and sons of the
Resurrection." Such were then extant as pre-Historic Christians (ch. xx.
35-6).

These communities of the primitive Christians had long been accustomed
to send forth their bare-footed apostles into all the known world, to
inculcate the common brotherhood of man, founded on the common
fatherhood of God, and to labour for the family of the human race. That
had been the practice in the past which was afterwards made a matter of
precept in the present, and a prospect for the future! For this ancient
practice of the Essenes is reduced to the precept of the teacher made
personal, who says, "Go your way; carry neither purse, nor scrip, nor
shoes;" and gives instructions to do the very things the Essenes had
always done! The supposed personal teacher and historic founder of
primitive Christianity is made to say

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to his followers, "A new commandment I give unto you that ye love one
another." But the statement is entirely untrue. There was nothing new in
it! This was a primary commandment of the Essenic communities who had
practised the principles they professed, and had lived for ages
according to the golden rule which is afterwards laid down as a divine
command, a direct revelation from God, in the Gospels. No matter who the
plagiarist may be, the teaching now held to be divine was drawn from
older human sources, and palmed off under false pretensions. Josephus
declares in his account of the Essenes, that "Whatever they say is
firmer than an oath; but swearing is entirely avoided by them. They
consider it worse than perjury." And such is the original revelation in
the Gospel. But I was sorry to find, in the Clementine Homilies, that
the same speaker breaks the Essenic pledge, for it is there
written,--"And Christ said (with an oath), Verily I say unto you, unless
ye be born again of the water of life, ye cannot enter in the kingdom of
heaven." Thus we have an Essene who swears as well as tipples and plays
the part of Bacchus. Again, Jesus is presented as the original revealer
of the mysteries and author of the Gnosis. He says to his
disciples,--"It is given you to know the mysteries of heaven;" but the
Essenic Communities always had been composed of those who were in
possession of the Gnosis, and had already obtained and sacredly
preserved the knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, which
they had taught only in parables.

The divine morality inculcated in the Sayings ascribed to Jesus had been
completely forestalled by the Essenes in their lives and works, their
individual characters, common practices, and societary conditions. His
words are but a later echo of their very human deeds. We are told that
Jesus taught mankind to pray,--"Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on
earth as it is in heaven." But this was exactly what the pre-historic
Christians had been working out in life. They strove to found the
kingdom there and then, and realise the world to come in this.
Everything noble and ennobling, unselfish and spiritual, in the ethics
of Jesus, or rather in the sayings assigned to him as a teacher of men,
had been anticipated by the Egyptians, the Essenes, and the primitive
Christians of the Gnostic religion. Nothing new remained to be
inculcated by the Gospel of the new teacher, who is merely made to
repeat the old sayings with a pretentious air of supernatural authority;
the result being that the true sayings of old are, of necessity,
conveyed to later times in a delusive manner. The commandments are not
new. Life and immortality were not brought to light by any personal
Jesus, but by the Christ of the Gnosis. The most important proclamation
assigned to Jesus turned out to be false. The kingdom of God was not at
hand; the world was not nearing its end; the catastrophe foretold never
occurred; the second coming was no more actual than the first; the lost
sheep of Israel are not yet saved. And the supposed Divine Truth in very
person remains exposed as the genuine false prophet to this day, or
rather as the mere mouthpiece of the most ignorant beliefs of that day.

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It may be said more justly of Historic Christianity, than of anything
else within the compass of my knowledge, that what is true in it was not
new, and that which was new in it is not true! It is not new, because it
represents the ancient Mythos under an intended disguise. It is not
true, because it is not a genuine history. The supposed human original,
set forth in the Gospels, is but the mundane shadow of the Gnostic Christ.

Christianity began as Gnosticism, refaced with falsehoods concerning a
series of facts alleged to have been historical, but which are
demonstrably mythical. By which I do not mean mythical as exaggerations
or perversions of historic truth, but belonging to the pre-extant
Mythos. Of course, the setting-up of this vast falsehood made all truth
a blasphemy. "The Gnostics," says Irenæus, "have no gospel which is not
full of blasphemy." Their crime was that they denied the Christ
carnalised, and they were denounced as being Anti-Christian, because
they were /Ante/-Christian!

We are told in the Book of Acts that the name of the /Christiani /was
first given at Antioch; but so late as the year 200 A.D. no canonical
New Testament was known at Antioch, the alleged birth-place of the
Christian name. There was no special reason why "the disciples" should
first have been named as Christians at Antioch, except that this was a
great centre of the Gnostic Christians, who were previously identified
with the teachings of the mage Simon of Samaria. Simon had taught the
people of Antioch for a "long time" before, and had been accepted by
them "from the least to the greatest" (Acts). Simon was the great
Anti-Christ in the eyes of the founders of the belief in Historic
Christianity, for whom the Ante-Christ was always, and everywhere, the
Anti-Christ; and it was necessary to account for there being Christians,
other, and earlier, than the believers in a carnalized Christ. This was
clumsily attempted in the "Acts," by making Simon become a baptised
convert to the new superstition, and then back-sliding--a common mode of
accounting for Gnostic heretics, but false on the face of it. Irenæus
shall furnish us with a crucial instance of the orthodox lying on this
subject. He tells us that the Gnostics, such as those who followed
Valentinus and Marcion, in the second century, had no existence before
these later teachers (B. III. ch. 4, 3); whereas he had already stated
in his first book, that Simon of Samaria was the first and foremost of
all the founders of Gnosticism, and the father of all its heresies; and
he was a century earlier. Simon had brought in the Gnosis from
Alexandria. He taught his doctrines, and wrought his wonders long
anterior to the apostles of the later creed. Epiphanius acknowledges
that all the heretical forms of Christianity were derived from the Pagan
Mythology--that is, they were survivals of the original pre-historic
Gnostic religion.

It is obvious that the Roman Church remained Gnostic at the beginning of
the second century, and for some time afterwards. Marcion, the great
Gnostic, did not separate from it until about the

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year 136 A.D. Tatian did not break with it until long after that. In
each case the cause of quarrel was the same. They left the Church that
was setting up the fraud of Historic Christianity. They left it as
Gnostic Christians, who were anathematised as heretics, because they
rejected the Christ made flesh and the new foundations of religion in a
spurious Jewish history.

The Church in Jerusalem, at the head of which was James, called the
"brother of the Lord," was one of the Essenic or Therapeutic communities
that were founded by the Gnostic Nazarenes. James was reputed to have
been a follower of Joshua, the Nazarene--/i.e./, Ben Pandira--who was
converted more or less into the later Jesus of Nazareth. The Jewish
legends show that he was of the Nazarene sect. But no /Nazarene
/brotherhood could have been founded on any supposed Jesus of Nazareth.
They also show that James was a Nazarene of the ancient ascetic
type--one of those who were set apart and consecrated from the mother's
womb--one who never shaved or cut his hair, who drank neither wine nor
strong drink, nor ate of any animal food; he would not anoint himself
with oil, nor wear woollen garments. Bishop Lightfoot admits that the
members of the early Church at Jerusalem were Gnostics, like the other
Essenes: only, for him, they were heretics. He cannot make out the
hiatus, which was not then filled in with the Gospel history.

Now, whether it be called Christian or pre-Christian, the Gospel of
James is good, as far as it goes. It was undoubtedly the same Gospel of
the Essenes that opened the poor man's door to heaven. It teaches their
doctrines in their own language, and without the Historic apparatus. It
puts certain things which have been disestablished on their original
foothold. In the Lord's Prayer we are taught to ask the Divine Father
not to lead us, his children, into temptation. But James declares
emphatically that "no man should say he is tempted of God, for God
cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempteth no man." The
Epistle of James is of supreme importance.

Eusebius, the suspected forger and falsifier, when he made his fatal
admission, must have known that the Scriptures of the Essenes had been
utilised as /ground-work /for the Epistles and the later Canonical
history. He claims the Essenes themselves as Christians when he tells us
that Philo "describes with the closest accuracy the lives of our
ascetics"--that is, of the Therapeutæ. He confesses "it is highly
probable that the ancient commentaries, which Philo says they have, are
the very gospels and writings of the apostles, and probably some
expositions of the ancient prophets, such as are contained in the
Epistle to the Hebrews and many other of Paul's epistles." He might have
said, including the Ebionite Epistle of James, only that was to be
denounced as spurious. But it is impossible to claim the Essenic
Scriptures as being identical with the Canonical records, without, at
the same time, admitting their pre-historic existence, their
non-historical nature, and their anti-historical testimony. They could
only be the same in the time of Eusebius by the non-historical having
been falsely converted into the

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historical. This was what had been done, and that alone will explain why
the earliest scriptures, which ought to have contained the historical
record, have not been preserved, but were got rid of altogether when the
Council of Nice "suppressed all the devices of the heretics."

I have previously shown that the real root of the whole matter can be
delved down to and identified in the mythology and mysteries of Egypt.
When we see the Child-Horus emerging from the lily-lotus, or holding the
forefinger to his mouth, as portrayed upon the Gnostic stones and in the
Catacombs of Rome, absolutely the same as on the Egyptian monuments, we
know that it is the identical divinity, no matter how it came to
represent the Christian Christ. But identification is more difficult
when the mythical type has passed into the more mystical phase. That is,
the portraits of deities are more recognisable than the hidden doctrines
and veiled features of the Gnosis. Yet, the Egyptian doctrines were as
surely continued by the Gnostics and the Christians as the personal
likenesses of Egyptian deities were reproduced by Gnostic Art in Rome.
And by aid of the Gnosis, we can recover much that has been dislimned
and made indefinite in the doctrinal stage, to be left as an
unfathomable mystery! For example, the Child-Horus, with finger to
mouth, wherever found, indicates the divine Word or Logos in a
particular way. He was the child of the Virgin mother alone, and always
remained the child. He, therefore, was not the /True Voice/, or /Voice
of Truth/, only the Imperfect Word, the Inarticulate Discourse, as
Plutarch calls the first Horus. But, just as the voice of the boy
changes and becomes manly at puberty, so in his second or virile
character Horus, as representative of the Father, becomes a True Voice,
and is the "Word of Truth" personified! In this character he was
designated Har-Makheru, /i.e./, Horus, the "Word of Truth," from Ma,
Truth; Kheru, the Word. In the Egyptian texts the Word of Horus /is
/Truth; the function confided to him by the Father! He vanquishes his
enemies with the Word of Truth. It is said of the Osirified deceased, He
goes forth with the Word of Truth. To make the Truth by means of the
Word is synonymous with the giving of life here or hereafter. In a
prayer to the Pharaoh it is said, "Grant us breath by the gift which is
in thee of the 'Word of Truth.'" Moreover, men conquer their sins by
means of this "Word of Truth" within, the Makheru conferred on them by
the Deity!

This title of Makheru, the Word of Truth, was translated the /Justified
/by Dr. Birch, which M. Pierret says is "unfortunate." But there is a
Christian sense in which that is a correct rendering. With the
Egyptians, the Christians (/o…/ /crhsto…/), the faithful Departed, were
actually /called /by this title of Makheru or the Justified. They were
those who always had been saved by the "Word-of-Truth!" in Egypt long
Ages before the /Christian /Era!

Now, let us return for a moment to the Epistle of James canonised in the
New Testament, and called by Luther "an Epistle of Straw," because it
had not a grain of Historic Christianity in it. James was the head of
the Church in Jerusalem. He was titled a

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brother of the Lord--no doubt in relation to the Nazarite Brotherhood;
the Lord being a typical character like Horus, Mana, or Elias, who was
ignorantly assumed by the literalizers of legends to have been a Judean
peasant named Jesus or Joshua. Hence the imposition of certain family
details in the Canonical Gospels, which will be traced hereafter. James
is believed to have died about A.D. 60. But in the whole seven chapters
of this Epistle of James, excepting an opening salutation, there is not
one single sign of Historic Christianity! It recognises no Jesus of
Nazareth, and it announces no salvation through the atoning blood, the
death, resurrection and ascension of a personal Christ.

Nothing whatever begins with or is based on the history which was
afterwards made canonical, nor on the Christ that was localized at a
later stage of development. Everything is absent that was and still is
essential to the physical faith. Instead, we find the exact opposite of
all that was made historic in the Gospels. The doctrine of salvation is
Gnostic, Essenic and Egyptian. Salvation, according to James, cometh of
the "Word of Truth." Speaking of the "Father of Lights" (Lord of Lights
being a title of Horus) he says:--"Of his own will begat he us with the
'Word of Truth' that we should be a kind of first fruits of his
creatures." "Wherefore receive ye with meekness the implanted Word which
is able to save your souls." The transaction is direct between the
divine father and the human soul. The Christ within is the only saviour!
The total teaching of the Epistle of James is based on this ancient
Egyptian Word of Truth; the implanted Word which confers the Makheru on
man, which never could be represented by an historical Christ. The "Word
of Truth" as rendered by James is the best possible translation of the
Egyptian "Ma-Kheru." Moreover, the context shows that the Word of Truth
is the Egyptian Makheru by the exhortation, "Be ye doers of the Word,"
which renders good Egyptian doctrine in perfect accordance with exact
Egyptian phraseology.

Just as Horus Makheru was the Word of Truth; or that which was said was
fulfilled indeed, so men are re-begotten in the divine likeness by the
Word of Truth; and as livers or doers of that Word they are to be
saved--as it was taught in Egypt thousands of years previously without
the Word of Truth becoming incarnate in Horus as a human person. This
Word of Truth, the Christ of James and Paul, which alone was able to
save, is identical with that made known aforetime, which needed not to
be brought down from heaven for any personal incarnation; needed not to
be brought up from the dead by any physical resurrection; needed not to
be sent from over the sea, because, as was said by the Mosaic mouthpiece
of Egypt's Wisdom, "that Word is in thy heart that thou mayest do it!"
And this is the position re-occupied; this is the teaching re-echoed by
Paul, in whose mouth the Word of Truth becomes doubly anti-historic
(/cf. /Deut. xxx. 12-14, with Romans x. 6, 7).

There is also a reference to the "Word of Truth" in Paul's Epistle

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to Timothy, which still further identifies the Makheru. The word Ma, for
that which is true, originally means to hold out straight before one.
And Paul exhorts Timothy, as a workman, to hold a straight course
according to the Ma-kheru, or "Word of Truth." This True Voice or Word
of Truth is, I take it, that living and abiding voice which is appealed
to by Papias as evidence for his Christ, who was the Lord of the Logia;
and, if so, his testimony thus far does not make for, but tends to
invalidate, the history. Of course, he is supposed to mean the voice of
contemporaries when he decries what would be the more certain voice of
written records; but that is not what he means. He prefers, in reality,
the traditions of the oral wisdom, and may be claimed as another witness
for the non-Historical Christ. Also, the epistle to Diognetus, supposed
to have been written by Marcion, contains the same doctrine as the
epistle of James. Speaking of the Gnostic Christians, he says:--"They
are put to death and they come to life again," and the reason of this is
that "God the Invisible hath himself from Heaven planted the truth and
the holy incomprehensible Word and established him in their hearts."
This epistle of James is indefinitely older than the Canonical history.
James is believed to have died about the year 60 of our era, and in
this, one of the earliest utterances of the Church, instead of the
History, we find the divine Makheru of the Egyptian mythos in a mystical
and doctrinal phase.

Instead of an original gospel based on the life, character, and
teachings of his own human brother, James presents us with the
translated Word-of-truth--the Horus of Egypt, and the Christ of the
Gnostics, who could not become historical. This beginning, then, is
doctrinal, and the doctrine, like the portrait, is Egyptian. The same
mythos was visibly continued in the Gnostic phase. In the Gospels, which
were being compiled at least one hundred years later, we find this same
Word of Truth, which was personated by Horus-Makheru and by Iu-em-hept
in Egypt some 3,000 years earlier, is now represented in a personal
character as Jesus the Christ.

This Word of Truth, which is doctrinal and non-historical, according to
James, is the Word of Truth made flesh according to John. Also, the
Christ is the Horus continued in his two characters. Hence the Word, or
Spirit of Truth, which proceedeth from the Father, is to come as the
mystic Paraclete who shall testify to the reality of an historic Jesus.

These two characters, as the Sayer and Doer, constitute the double
foundation of the Christ in the other Gospels. The Christ of Matthew is
chiefly the Sayer. The Christ of Luke is mainly the Doer. He is mighty
in deed and word! He is the Healer or Doer with the Word. "What a Word
is this"! exclaim the multitude, who are amazed at the miracles. Both
characters had been blended in one as Horus-Makheru, the Word of Truth,
who was mythical in Egypt, and who is mythical in the teaching of James
before the Word was described as being made flesh, to become an
historical personage in the later Gospel according to John. This is the
fatal kind of fact that turns the

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canonical history into fiction, and brands the falsifiers full in the
face. There is no room left here for any historic fulfilment, and no
need of any personal Savior or vicarious victim. The Word of Truth is
the Spirit of God, the Begetter of Souls, the Christ within, the Bringer
of Immortality to Man, as it is in the teaching of Hermes, of
Zarathustra, of Philo, and of Paul, as well as James; as it was in
Egypt, in Chaldea, in India, in all the Mysteries, no matter where the
Gnosis or Kabalah may be found. In presence of the Gnosis, here as
elsewhere, there is no place, no significance, in the alleged facts of a
human history, lived for us by a carnalised Christ. And yet such a
history was made out, and we are now able to get a glimpse of the
forgers engaged in the process of making it out!

Our Canonical Gospels are a Palimpsest, with one writing so elaborated
over another that the first is almost crossed out, and the rest are
thoroughly confused. Yet, the whole of them have to be seen through
before the matter can be really read. By holding this Palimpsest up to
the light, and looking at it long and closely, we can trace the large
outline, the water-mark, of the Egyptian mythos, with its virgin-mother,
who was Hathor-Meri--the Madonna--its child-Christ of 12 years, and the
virile adult of 30 years, who was Horus, the anointed son of that Father
in heaven whom he came to reveal. This is the earliest and most
fundamental of the /nuclei/. Next we find a collection of Sayings as the
nucleus of the Gospel of Matthew. These sayings were attributed to the
Lord, and that Lord is supposed to have been a Judean peasant, as the
original author! It is noticeable, though, that the title of the Lord is
not once applied to Jesus by Matthew in the earth-life, but after the
resurrection he is called the "Lord." Now, it is well known to scholars
that the Gospel according to Luke is based upon, or concocted, with
suitable alterations, from an earlier "Gospel of the Lord." That is, the
latest gospel according to the Gnostics, preceded the earliest of those
that were made canonical. This was called the "Gospel of the Lord"--the
/kurios/--and it is commonly referred to as the gospel of Marcion, the
great Gnostic. But the Lord, as known to the Gnostics, was not a
character that could become historical. As Irenæus declares, according
to no one gospel of the heretics could the Christ become flesh;
consequently the gospel of Marcion, who was the arch-heretic and very
Anti-Christ of the second century, in the sight of the incipient
Catholic Church, could not have been a gospel of the Christ made
historical; and we have now the means of proving that it was not. When
once we know that the origins were mythical, that the Christ was
mystical, and the teachings in the mysteries were typical, we shall be
able to utilise the gospel of Marcion as a connecting link between the
Egyptian Mythos, the epistle of the Word of Truth, and the canonical
history according to Luke.

"The Lord" had been Horus by name in Egypt, and the Greek kuriou, or
kurios, agrees with the Egyptian kheru, for the Word, Voice, or Logos,
as in Ma-kheru (earlier, Ma-khuru). This was the Lord continued as the
Gnostic manifestor, their Horus, or Christ.

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Marcion assigned his gospel to the Christ, in the same way that the
Egyptian Ritual is ascribed to Hermes. Later on, the sayings of the Lord
were also called the writings, as we see by pseudo-Dionysius, who
charges the Gnostics with having falsified the Writings of the Lord.

Marcion claimed that his was the one true Gospel--the one--and he
pointed to the multiplicity of the Catholic Gospels, full as they were
of discrepancies, in proof that they could not be genuine. In the fourth
century even, there were as many different gospels as texts. As
transmitted to us by the Christian copyists, who were nothing if not
historicisers, Marcion's gospel opens with the statement, that "In the
fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Cæsar, Pontius Pilate ruling in
Judea, Jesus came down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee," or "into
Judea," as reported by Irenæus.

Tertullian says,--"According to the gospel of Marcion, in the fifteenth
year of Tiberius, Christ Jesus /deigned to emanate from heaven, a
salutary spirit./" But, he also says, according to this "Great
Anti-Christian," the Christ was a phantom, who appeared suddenly at the
synagogue of Capernaum in the likeness of a full-grown man for the
purpose of protesting against the law and the prophets! It would be
difficult to date the descent of a phantom Christ, and impossible to
date the descent of the Gnostic Christ at all, except as Lord of the æon
in relation to an astronomical period! But it is certain that the Lord
or Christ of Marcion is entirely non-historical. He has no genealogy or
Jewish line of descent; no earthly mother, no father, no mundane
birthplace or human birth. The Gnostic nature of this Christ is further
and fully corroborated by both Irenæus and Tertullian. Clearly then
nothing can be made of the statement on behalf of the Canonical history.
This statement in Marcion's gospel takes the place of the baptism and
descent of the holy spirit in Luke's; and this same date is quoted by
Luke for the time when the Word of God came to John in the wilderness,
which is followed by the baptism of Jesus and the transformation into
the Christ or Horus of 30 years, whose unpronounceable name contained 30
letters, according to the Gnosis. Such a beginning is entirely
unhistorical, and applicable solely to the mythical Christ, who became
the virile adult, the anointed son of the father at 30 years of age. Of
course Christian apologists like Irenæus and Tertullian maintained that
Marcion had mutilated their version of Luke; and they managed to get rid
of the "Gospel of the Lord," and to suppress the writings of Marcion in
proof to save us the trouble of judging for ourselves. But that was only
another Christian lie, as we have now the means of knowing. The Gnostics
were not the falsifiers of the historic scriptures; it was not they who
had anything to falsify! Hitherto the forgers and falsifiers have been
believed, and now the accusers and accused are about to change places in
the witness-box and the dock. Everywhere the Gnosis was first; the
history was last. You are only asked to take this view tentatively, and
then let us watch the process and see how the compilers and forgers of
our Luke put in the touches by which the mythos was rationalized

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and the human history was added to the Gnostic "Gospel of the Lord." The
"Sayings of the Lord" were first, and they were not personal. The
"Gospel of the Lord" was first, and the Lord was not historical.

The Jesus of Marcion like the Jesus of Esdras, of Paul, and other
Gnostics, is no Jesus of Nazareth. This title has been added by Luke.
Marcion's Jesus being mythical and not historical, he has no Jewish
father and mother; consequently we find the test question:--"Is not this
Joseph's son?" does not appear in the "Gospel of the Lord." It has been
added by Luke. Again, the statement, "there came to him his mother and
brethren; and they could not get at him for the crowd" (Luke viii. 9),
is not to be found in Marcion's gospel; it has been added by Luke. And
for what? but to manufacture and make out that human history which was
at last believed in, but which had no place in any gospel according to
the Gnostics or true primitive Christians! It can be proved how passage
after passage has been added to the earlier gospel, in the course of
manufacturing the later history. For example, the mourning over
Jerusalem (Luke xiii. 29-35) is taken verbatim from the 2nd Esdras (i.
28-33) without acknowledgment, and the words previously uttered by the
"Almighty Lord" are here assigned to Jesus as the original speaker. The
account of Pilate's shedding the blood of the Galileans and mingling it
with their sacrifices (Luke xiii. 1) has been added by some one so
ignorant of Hebrew history, that he has ascribed to Pilate an act which
was committed when Quirinus was governor, twenty-four years earlier than
the alleged appearance of Jesus. Again, the anti-Nazarene, anti-Gnostic
passage about the publicans being baptised with water, and the Son of
Man coming eating and drinking as a glutton and a wine-bibber, has been
added.

In the scene on the Mount of Transfiguration, which is purely mythical,
and therefore common to Osiris, Buddha, and Zarathustra, we are witness
to the forging of another historical nexus in the statement that "Moses
and Elijah appeared in glory and spake of his decease which he was about
to accomplish at Jerusalem" (Luke ix. 31). This passage does not appear
in the "Gospel of the Lord." Nor does the statement (Luke xviii. 31-34),
"And he took unto him the Twelve, and said unto them, 'Behold, we go up
to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets shall be
accomplished by the Son of Man.'" This mode of making out the history in
the New Testament by fulfilment of prophecy found in the Old was /not
/adopted by the compilers of Marcion's "Gospel of the Lord." The story
of the colt and the riding into Jerusalem in triumph, to turn all the
Jews out of their sacred Stock Exchange, are additions to the earlier
Gospel! In the scene of the Last Supper almost the whole of the text is
missing from Marcion's Gospel. Twelve verses of Luke 22 have been added!

In Marcion's Gospel there is no distribution of the Paschal Cup amongst
the disciples; no promise is given that the Apostles shall eat and drink
and judge the twelve tribes of Israel in the kingdom of

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Christ; nor is there any appointment made with the dying thief on the
Cross to meet him that day in Paradise! /These have been added. /Now,
this is no mere matter of a difference in doctrine! We are witnessing
the very forgery of the human foundations and the insertion of the
manufactured facts upon which the history was established.

The Primitive Christiani, the so-called /heretics/, who preceded the
historic Christians, were all of them spiritualists in the modern sense.

In the sight of Bishop Lightfoot the Gnostic Spiritualism was "a shadowy
mysticism which loses itself in the contemplation of an unseen world."
/This /he looks upon as the /false /teaching and the /heresy /of the
Gnostics! He knows nothing of any /underlying /natural verities, or
/phenomenal /facts; only sees a refining, a mysticising and a whittling
away of the Gospel histories.

But as practical Spiritualists, the Essenes had eight stages in the
evolution of perfect personal purity and the attainment of the highest
spiritual powers:--

1. Purity of baptism.

2. Purity from animal desire.

3. Spiritual purity.

4. The purity of a meek and gentle spirit.

5. The purity of holiness.

6. The purity by which the body became a temple of the Holy Ghost.

7. The purity which gave the power of healing the sick and of raising

the dead; /i.e./, the spirits of the dead!

8. They attained the mystic state of Elias, who was the Essenic Christ!

And in the middle of the Nineteenth Century, Bishop Lightfoot rises to

explain that the Essenes were Fortune-tellers!

Orthodox Christianity knows nothing of Spiritualism to-day, and
consequently can know nothing of Spiritualism in the past, because it is
fact alone that can prove the fact. They reject it because it was
repudiated by the founders of the historic faith; because it offers no
facts to prove, whereas it does offer facts that furnish us with
disproof of a physical resurrection. But it is absolutely necessary to
be a phenomenal Spiritualist, or at least to know that phenomenal
Spiritualism is founded upon facts of possible human experience, before
we can take the first step toward really understanding this matter of
the beginnings, or gauge the impassable gulf of difference that lies
between the Gnostic Religion and Historic Christianity. With the
Gnostics knowledge was the foundation of their faith; but the Historic
Christians made faith the basis of knowledge, and the first demand of
the new faith was for the convert to believe that all the mythical
typology of the past had been made literally true in the present. By
faith the fable was crystallised into the dogma of historic fact.

The Gnostic doctrines of the pre-Historic religion were formulated as
being those of knowledge, faith, and immortality. Knowledge was

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fundamental. On this their faith was founded by means of a first-hand
acquaintanceship with those facts which gave them their faith for the
present, and sustained it with something more than the hope or promise
of continuity for the future. Knowledge, Faith, and Immortality!
Historic Christianity was based upon faith without that knowledge, and
those who knew the least were actually considered and designated the
better believers, just as it is in the Salvation Army of to-day. Lord
Bacon, in a most unworthy utterance, affirmed that "the more irrational
and incredible any divine mystery is the greater the honour we do God in
believing it, and so much the more noble is the victory of faith." Such,
however, was the teaching of the Church whose divine mysteries were
manufactured from misinterpreted mythology. Nor was it very difficult to
literalise the mystical representation when a man like Origen could
maintain that the planets were animated bodies and rational beings.

All the secrets of the great knowledge of the interior and mystical
life, which M. Renan calls the "Most glorious creation of Christendom,"
were in possession of the Gnostics of various lands long ages earlier,
whilst their /modus operandi /of ascertaining the truth was now to be
rejected and denounced as damnable by the corporeal Christians, or
carnalisers of the Christ. They not only let go, they anathematised the
knowledge that was already won from nature, and prohibited the means of
continuing it or of recovering it again.

The Gnostics, as Irenæus shows, pointed out the very serious error that
was committed by those who imagined that the Christ had arisen in a
mundane body, not knowing that "flesh and blood do not attain to the
Kingdom of God!"

The Christ of the Gnostics was a mystical type continued from mythology
to portray a spiritual reality of the interior life. Hence the Christ in
this human phase could be female as well as male; Sophia as well as
Jesus; the spirit of both sexes. It was impossible for such to become
historical, or be made so, except by ignorantly mistaking a mythical
Impersonation for a Hermaphrodite in Person!

What, for example, is the actual base of the "Great Renunciation"
ascribed to the Buddha or the Christ in the doctrinal, mythical, or
spiritual phase? It is this:--When the soul of man came to be considered
as a divine principle of celestial origin, it was figured as being
entirely opposed to the evil nature of matter; therefore, birth or
manifestation in matter was a descent of the soul from the heaven of
pristine condition into a lower state of impurity and impermanence; of
disease, decay, and death, where it was bound to bear or struggle to get
out of it again as soon as possible.

This soul, personified as the Divine Man in Buddha or the Christ is
afterwards represented as being consciously able to renounce the
pleasures of Paradise, and of its own free will and choice come down to
earth as the Saviour of the World, by giving lessons in divinity and
living a life so lowly that this life should be conquered by rejecting
it on behalf of the other thus revealed to men! The mode of glorifying

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such a being is simply that of the infantile mind. The proof of his
supernatural character is shown through his power of suspending the
known laws of nature by miraculous means, such as are humanly
impossible. As the Lord of Life he raises the dead! The tree bends down
and bows its acknowledgment to him in the womb of his mother; or the
wild beasts grow tame in presence of the radiant child that lights the
darkness of the cave when born. As a mere babe he becomes a teacher to
the teachers. In youth he surpasses all competitors, conquers in every
trial. All nature is turned into an elastic vesture that will fit this
figure of the impossible--the /false /Ideal that makes our common
everyday world a scene of phantasmal unrealities. In certain respects
the Buddhist portrait of this divine Ideal, believed to have been
realised in Gautama, transcends the Christian--in the depths of its
tenderness, the range of its sympathies, and the embrace of its
compassion. All true lovers of animals are naturally Buddhistic rather
than Christian. For, it is upon the down-trodden beasts which perish
that the Christian sets his foot for the first step upward as the
possessor of an immortal soul. His brutalising belief, and baseless
assumption, that animals have no souls, are guilty before God and
responsible for most of the cruelties suffered by them throughout all
Christendom to-day!

In his large love for the dumb things this Hindu Ideal Redeemer is
greater, and stoops lower than the would-be Saviour of human beings
alone, and only the Jewish part of them, who is portrayed as the
Canonical Christ. But /cui bono?/ when it is only an Ideal and that
Ideal takes the place of possible reality. These false Ideals are
forever fatal to human verity. What has the worship of Mary ever done
for woman in the character of wife? You cannot live by a Lay figure.
When once we know it to be unreal, whether as the Christ, or Buddha, or
Madonna, it becomes a type that we cannot print from any longer, because
it fails to impress deeply enough.

Whether considered as the God made human, or as man made divine, this
character never existed as a person. That pre-historic Ideal Christ of
the Gnosis had always personated the divine in human form, the Immortal
incarnated, the Majesty within superior to all the physical conditions
without, with power to bear and serve, to serenely suffer the ills of
flesh, become a sacrifice and glory in the Cross of its earthly suffering.

Spiritual mediums were considered to be a kind of intermediate beings,
because they first demonstrated the existence of a living link betwixt
the divine mind and matter in the human form. But the original
intermediate being was the spiritual nature itself, called the Son of
God, the Christ within, which constituted that living link in whomsoever
it existed. No human medium could become the Christ of the Gnosis, who
represented a principle which could only become a person in a future
state of being--never in this world. So was it before the history
alleged to have been lived, and so the fact remains to-day, and for
ever. The historical was an impossible mode of realis-

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ing that which could only be a spiritual possibility; and thus the truth
according to the Gnosis has been refracted in the falsehood according to
the History.

The Gnostic Christ was the real founder of Christianity! This was the
Christ of the first Christians, and this was their model man, the Ideal
meek and lowly one, which the writers of the Gospels have sought to
realise in the form of historic personality. This lunar, solar,
mystical, or spiritual type could not be made historical in the creed of
those who knew, /i.e./, the Gnostics. But it was humanized; it was
turned into a one person, who became the one Christ in this world, and
the one spirit of all others, for those who did not know. For the
earliest appeal of the new faith was made to men who were so ignorant,
according to the record, that when they had just witnessed a rising from
the dead of certain historic characters, they did not comprehend what
this rising again from the dead should mean!

Historic Christianity had retained possession of a dead Christ, the mere
husk of the grub, together with a vague belief in the butterfly; and if
you, likewise, believe in its one dead grub, you may cultivate the hope
of some day, also, becoming a butterfly. But, for the Gnostics, the
transformation from the chrysalis condition of matter to the spiritual
was a natural fact of which they had an ever-present vitalising
consciousness. They were transforming and seeking attainment all their
life through; and their Christ was the representative type of that
transformation of the mortal into an immortal.

Historic Christianity abolished the Gnostic spiritualism for all who
accepted the false belief! Henceforth there was but one spirit, that of
the historic Bringer of Immortality to Light; and, if any apparition
appeared to the abnormal or normal vision, it would be the historic
Christ for ever after! It was so with the vision of Paul, which was
reported and perverted in the Book of Acts. When his inner eyes were
opened he saw spirits--as Swedenborg and many others are reported to
have done--whereupon they avowed he had seen the risen Jesus, their only
witness for a spirit-world! So has it been with the non-Spiritualists
ever since, for whom an apparition must be the Christ. In an island near
Rotterdam, says Renan, the peasants believe that Christ comes to the bed
of death to assure the elect of their justification. In point of fact
many see him! On the other hand, the Buddhist "Lotus" declares that
thousands of Buddhas show their faces to the virtuous man at the moment
of his decease, which proves the Buddhas to be spirits. So has it been
with the ecstatics and mediums in all the religious sects. Whenever they
saw a spirit they saw Jesus the Christ their Saviour, because they knew
of no other spirit or name--the history being established for the other
world as well as in this--and so one delusion was bound to support the
other; the true vision was made untrue; and all the facts of
spiritualism have been falsified and turned into lying witnesses, to
substantiate the truth of the Gospel history. All such manifestations as
had previously occurred and had been attributed to the spirits of the

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departed, were now ascribed to the power of Christ, in whose name the
prophesying was performed, the healing effected, and the mental medicine
dispensed. Henceforth there was to be no other name under heaven but
this. In this name only were the Gentiles to have hope. Redemption was
made dependent on this name; cripples were cured, the blind made to see,
devils were cast out, the dead raised, sins remitted, souls saved, and
eternal life ensured by belief on this name supposed to be New. At the
mention of this name the dead arose up out of their graves, and,
according to the testimony of Irenæus, they survived amongst the living
many years! So much more potent was faith than fact. The earlier
spiritualism was founded upon facts in nature, which did not need the
desperate expedient of a miracle to explain. But in the later cult the
more the miracle the larger loomed the supernatural, and the broader
were the foundations for the belief that was based on faith instead of
facts, and on Materialism plus Miracle.

They accounted for the spiritual phenomena of the Gnostics by declaring,
as Justin Martyr did, that when the devil and the demons knew that
Christ was believed on, and that he was expected "in every race," they
put forth Simon, Menander, and the other Gnostics to deceive the
multitude with magic. Because Spiritualism was naturally and for ever at
war with the historical misinterpretation, Justin asserts that after the
ascension of Christ into Heaven, the demons put forward certain men like
Simon to declare that they were the Gods. Whereas, historic Christianity
proclaimed them to be devils; and devils they have remained ever since,
according to the false belief.

The founders of the Catholic Church were the de-Spiritualizers of
primitive Christianity, and the destroyers of the Gnostic religion as
such, by placing their ban upon all Spiritualistic phenomena! The
foundations of the ancient cult were to be built upon no longer.

In the recently discovered Didaché or the "Teaching of the Apostles,"
the facts of Spiritualism are admitted, and the practices of the
prophets are recognized. They are spoken of as "ordering a table in the
spirit," and of "assembling together for a Cosmic mystery." But those
are the true mediums alone who have the "manners of the Lord;" and the
law as laid down in these Didaché is:--"Thou shalt not play the mage!
Thou shalt not practise witchcraft"--or spirit-intercourse. No prophet
that speaks as one of the possessed is to be tried or tolerated. "Every
sin shall be forgiven, but this sin shall not be forgiven." It was now
and henceforth to be Spiritualism without spirits, abstract and ideal,
not tangible or real, an article of faith versus fact. We see from the
Epistle of John how mortally afraid of Gnostic Spiritualism were the
founders of the historical fraud. "Many deceivers are gone forth into
the world that confess not that Jesus Christ cometh in the flesh." These
words of John state the Gnostic position. Their Christ had not so come,
and could not be carnalized. These Gnostics were in the world long
before they heard of such a doctrine; but when they did they denied and
opposed it. This, says

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John, is the anti-Christ. But, "every spirit which confesseth that Jesus
Christ is come in the flesh is of God; and every spirit which annulleth
Jesus is not of God. And this is the spirit of the anti-Christ whereof
ye have heard that it cometh, and now it is in the world already."

A story is told of two early English saints, one of whom was supposed to
have died. They were about to bury him, when, as he was being lowered
into the grave, face upward and uncovered, he opened wide his ghostly
staring eyes and told them he had only fallen into a trance. He had been
into the other world, and found that what they were preaching about it
in this was not true. There was no "Fall of Man," he said. "There is no
hell," he cried; "no personal Christ--no Redeemer." But here his
fellow-saint outside the grave interposed--"For God's sake fill in the
earth and stop the blasphemer's mouth!" They did so, and the rest of his
revelation remained unknown. That was how the Catholic Christians dealt
with the Gnostic Spiritualists when they had the power. They would shut
up the living mouth of the Spirit-world, because the reports from the
other side were fatal to the Historic fiction. They broke down the
bridge between the two worlds, and proclaimed a great gulf fixed
forever, which could only be crossed by faith in the Historic Jesus.
Here the movement of Historic Christianity was a direct and deliberate
shunting of the human mind from off the main line, the highway of its
natural development, and running it head first into all sorts of
bye-ways and blind alleys, from which we have had to turn back and grope
out again as best we could for any progress to be made.

Historic Christianity originated with turning the Gnostic and Esoteric
teachings inside out and externalising the mythical allegory in a
personal human history. All that was interior with the knowers was made
objective; all that was spiritual in significance was embodied to be
made palpable for the ignorant. A corporeal Christ was substituted for
the trans-corporeal man--a Christ whose advent was without, instead of
the one that must be evolved within--a personal Saviour who died for
all, instead of the Christ that was the living Spirit working within
all. It was remarked by Augustine (de Civ. Dei, 7, 24) that the Gnostics
"promised eternal life to anybody"--that is, with them the soul of man
was an eternal principle, and the resurrection was not cunningly
reserved for the elect who accepted the Historic belief. The Gnostic
claimed to be illuminated by the presence of the Christ within; the
Christian, according to Justin, by the name of the Christ without. And a
very curious mental link of connection between the genuine Gnostic and
the counterfeit Historic Christ is apparent in the Ignatian Epistle to
the Smyrneans. The writer says--"I know that even after his resurrection
he was in the flesh, and I believe that he is so still." Now this
combines both, after a fashion.

The writer is seeking to establish the history against those who denied
that the Christ could be made a man. In doing this, he has recourse to
the Gnostic Christ, who always was in the flesh, or matter,

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as the salt of soul, and the only spiritual Saviour from death and
dissolution. Speaking from his Gnostic standpoint, Paul declared to the
historic Christians who followed John and Peter, that God had sent them
a working of error, that they should believe a lie, because they
rejected the truth as it was according to his spiritual Gospel! The lie
was established by externalising the Christ that can only dwell
within--by successfully falsifying for a time that truth which is true
for ever. In this way, you see, that the coming of the Holy Spirit,
which always had been within, was henceforth to be without. Thus, the
descent of the Holy Ghost upon Jesus, in Jordan, is an external
transaction. The Holy Spirit that comes from heaven in the form of a
dove--a Gnostic type of the Spirit; that is, of both sexes--or, later
on, as a whirlwind, in which the Gust and Ghost are one. In the course
of this conversion of the inner to the outer, we are told that the Holy
Ghost, which always had been extant with the Gnostics, was not yet
given, because the Historical Jesus was not yet glorified; but after he
had risen from the grave, and returned bodily to the disciples, he
breathed upon them, and said, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost." And again:
the Holy Ghost, as an external effusion, could not be given until after
forty days; whereas, in the Essenic Mysteries, the body of the disciple
became the temple of the Holy Ghost when he had reached the sixth stage
of interior progress. This shows the literalisers of the legend, the
rationalisers of the mythos, the anti-mystics, the Exoterists,
externalising the Gnosis, and converting the matter of it into human
history. There was to be neither Spirit within nor Spirit-world without
for the ignorant Christians, until the resurrection and ascension of
Jesus had historically established both.

Two distinct charges are brought against the Carnalizers by Tatian in
the second century. He cries out shame upon the Catholic Church, and
exclaims, "You have given the Nazarite wine to drink, and commanded the
prophets, saying, 'Prophesy not.'" They were debauching the Christian
community and destroying the primitive Nazarite purity which Tertullian
claimed for the Christians when he said, "We are they of whom it is
written, 'Their Nazarites are whiter than snow.'" Next, they have
determined to put an end to practical spiritualism on behalf of the new
faith; and this is treated by Tatian as part of a subtle scheme for
destroying the purity and spirituality of that Christianity which was
primitive and non-historic, too!

The transformations of the Pagan cult into the Christian, and of the
Gnostic into the historical representation, were effected behind the
veil identifiable as the "Discipline of the Secret," the strictness of
which was only relaxed after the fourth century, when the Truth had been
hidden in a fog of falsehood; the inner mysteries turned to an outer
mist, that made confusion cunningly complete.

The Gnostic Spiritualism was declared illegal and impious. The objective
realities of the phenomenal Spiritualists, which had heretofore
furnished the one bit of foothold in natural fact for a belief in the
future life, were now discarded on behalf of the more subjective

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idealities derived from a faith that was founded by means of a
fraudulent history mis-translated from a mystical fable.

The Roman Church adopted the Angels and Archangels of the Celestial
Allegory as its Saints, including Saint Bacchus and Saint Satan in place
of Guardian Spirits that were once human beings.

A dogma of the Real Presence of the Historic Christ was now substituted
for the Real Presence of Spirit Friends in the earlier communion.

The mysteries in which the early Christian Neophytes had been initiated
into a lawful communion with the dead were gradually suppressed; and in
the sixth century we find the doctrine of a communion with the saints
was substituted for the practical intercourse with spirits. It happens
that the time when the doctrine was inserted in the Creed coincides
almost exactly with the suppression of the mysteries which were
connected with the so-called Agapæ of the early Christians! The Agapæ
were only a continuation of the ancient Pagan funeral feasts and
Eucharistic rites in honour of the departed. Hence they were held in the
cemeteries and catacombs in presence of the dead, where the mummy-type
or the Karest was the Christ, as the image of rising again; the image
that was carried round and pointed to as a cause for festive rejoicing
at the Egyptian feast! In this way we can watch the false faith taking
the place of the facts. And as the Gnostic sects and brotherhoods gave
up the ghost, Historic Christianity assumed their glory. In this strange
scene of transformation and dramatic illusion by some Satanic sleight of
hand and turn of head, the afterglow of the ancient religions was
changed into the dawn of the superseding faith, which was then
proclaimed to be the fountain-head of all future enlightenment! or
rather the waning light of ancient knowledge has been mistaken for the
dawning of the New Belief; a dawn that was followed by the grey twilight
that deepened into the thousand-years-long intellectual night of the
Dark Ages.

It matters not what may be the relative share of responsibility
attributable to knavery on the one hand and ignorance on the other, the
fact remains that a huge and hideous mistake has been made, an
irretrievable error committed in the name of Historic Christianity. For
ages past the false faith did feed the flames of martyrdom with the
fires of hell on pretext of giving light to them that it had covered
with its smoke of torment and pall of darkness. And now the sun of a
better day has arisen to put out the fires infernal, to disperse the
clouds of human sighs, that have obscured the heavens so long, and to
aid in drying the tears from our afflicted earth at last. Revelation, by
means of Evolution, has now made known for ever that the fall of man was
not historic fact. Humanity has not to bear the penalty eternally for a
divine failure in the beginning of time. This world is not a
prison-house of fallen beings. Consequently, the promised redemption and
proffered mode of salvation are a vain delusion, and all in vain has the
spirit of the living Christ within been compelled to drag the dead body
of the corporeal Christ from the grave

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for the purpose of proving the history for the ignorant, until its
corruption is a sickening stench in the nostrils of the nations, and
there is a clamour for the burial that shall get rid of both together.
The history of Christ as our impersonated Saviour on earth, equally with
the story of Adam's fall from Eden, is mythology misbelieved. The Old
Testament was read backwards to be re-written as the New. The only
original elements in this interpolation between the ancient Gnosis and
modern science are those that prove false to the governing laws of the
universe, and those facts of nature which make the sole true revelation.
Theory avails nothing in the presence of the fact that Historic
Christianity was founded on the "Resurrection of the Flesh," and that it
has left the world where it was itself, after putting out the Gnostic
Light, all in the dark concerning our spiritual continuity in death!
Canon Gregory said only the other day if Jesus did not rise corporeally
from the tomb, then that tomb must be the grave of Christianity. And the
"Spectator" for August 13, 1887, speaking of the Greeks who died before
the Resurrection was thus historically established, says:--"In the
nature of things the Greeks could have had no sure hope of a glorious
resurrection." Such was and is, when honestly confessed, the genuine
Christian creed. It does seem to me as if those arch-forgers in Rome had
subtly succeeded in converting that which was true in the old religion
into a secret support for all that was false in the new. Gnostic
Christianity was absolutely, fundamentally, and for ever opposed to the
historic rendering, and yet the Gnostic doctrines of the fourth Gospel,
and of Paul's and James' Epistles, have been allowed to remain under
cover and control as spiritual forces artfully tethered to draw for the
physical and anti-Gnostic Faith. I am sometimes compelled to say to
myself it has been most devilishly done!--and so have we!

We have Spiritualists to-day who lay hold of the Scriptures, or can be
laid hold of, by means of the Gnosis that remains there as a lure, and
turn it to the account intended, that is, as a decoy towards accepting
the history. And so when the risen Christ reappears in the actual body
that is missing from the grave, they are prepared to explain away the
physical fact by means of the spiritual Gnosis. In that way nothing is
bottomed, and nothing can be really understood; but,--the purpose of the
promoters, who were the founders of the falsehood, and who founded it
well-nigh unfathomably,--their purpose continues to be fulfilled.

In writing to a Christian spiritualist the other day, I said, "I know no
better way of waging the battle for Truth than arraying the facts face
to face on either side and letting them fight it out." His reply was, "I
do not believe in your facts because I do not know." Now, that is good
firm ground to stand upon, however late in life we take the position.
But, to be of any real service, we must apply the same reason all round!
As an adherent of Historic Christianity, that writer has all along been
a Believer in what he did not know to be facts; and a believer just
because he did not know; and now he finds

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it too late, perhaps, to correct his early belief by means of later
knowledge! All I ask is that people shall no longer believe because they
do not know. No matter what they may call themselves--they are traitors
to the Truth who will not face the facts or examine for themselves, but
will go on repeating ignorantly, or in pious pigheadedness, the orthodox
assumptions, and applying the hypotheses of accommodation to the
Christian documents. You might as well expect to reach the next world by
going round and round this, as to think of making ends meet by unifying
the Gnostic religion with Historic Christianity. Phenomenal
Spiritualists who go on philandering with the fallacies of the Christian
faith, and want to make out that it is identical with Modern
Spiritualism, have at last to face the great, indubitable fact that
Historic Christianity was established as a non-Spiritualist and an
anti-Spiritualistic religion! Its primary fact, its initial point of
departure, its first bit of foothold for a new departure, was the
acknowledgment of the physical resurrection of the dead Historic Christ.
It is useless to try to wriggle out of that. The reappearance of the
Corpus Christi is the fundamental fact of the Faith! The strings are
pulled so that the Marionette Messiah may be forced to exclaim that he
is not a bodiless ghost; not a boneless phantom; not a spirit anyway;
and he offers the proof palpable that he is none of your Spiritualistic
or Gnostic Christs, or the spirit of anybody! Moreover, this is the
veritable dead body that is missing from the tomb! And still further,
the passage in Luke has been altered from Marcion's "Gospel of the Lord"
on purpose to substitute the Corporeal Christ of Historic Christianity
for the Spiritual representation of the Gnostics. In Marcion's version
the word /phantasma /is used, and this has not only been omitted by
Luke; the phantom is made to protest very emphatically that he is not in
anywise phantasmal, but is a being of flesh and blood even as they are;
and after demonstrating the fact, clinches it by asking if they have got
anything there for him to eat! The entire fabric of the new faith rested
upon the reality of a physical resurrection; and it is too late now to
shift the basis of the edifice by trying to lift it bodily, like the
city of Chicago, on to the higher and surer ground of Spiritualism, so
as to find a firmer basis for it and all its weight of errors! We can
trace the very bifurcation and fresh starting-point of the new faith in
the account given of the resurrection in the Canonical Gospels. They
proclaimed the resurrection of the dead in Jesus and through him only!
The historic Jesus who alone had power to open the gateways of the
grave, and who had personally left with Peter the keys that lock up
heaven and open hell. There was nothing to constitute a new faith in a
spiritual resurrection. That was already the common property of the
Gnostics, whether called Pagans or Christians. That was according to the
natural fact, and here only was the miracle, in the dead body rising
again to prove the presence and the power of the divinity. Such is the
religious foundation, for which the Christians are responsible Trustees!

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As a Spiritualist, then, I assert that the new Christian dispensation
was founded upon the death and burial of the ancient spiritualism; or
upon the gagging of it and getting it underground dead or alive! And the
tomb out of which a corporeal Christ was believed to have emerged as the
Saviour of the World, and brought immortality to light by a physical
resurrection from the dead, has been the burial-place of genuine
Spiritualism for 1800 years. For this reason the defenders of the faith
were bound to make war upon the facts of phenomenal spiritualism, and
persecute and put the psychical demonstrators to death, which they did
with a consuming fury so long as they were allowed.

The terrible craze that was caused by this perversion of the ancient
wisdom has sown the germs of insanity broadcast, and half-filled the
world with pious lunatics for whom it offers no cure, and who are still
told to look forward for an asylum in the world to come. But such
pernicious teaching will make people as insane for another life as for
this! Here, or hereafter, falsehood must be fraudulent, though it may be
found out too late! What of the myriads of suffering souls who have been
forced to wear the blinkers of ignorance all through this life for fear
they should learn to see for themselves--who were drugged and deceived
from birth till death with the nostrums of a false deluding faith. What
of them when they awake from their stupor in death to find out that they
have been foully, cruelly hocussed with a creed that was an illusion for
this life and a delusion for the next.

Delusion that is perfectly complete

For those who die to find out the deceit!

If the teachers of the fleshly cult could but see /how /their fallacies
dissolve in death--how the false ideal set up in this life dislimns and
fades as the terrible light of reality whitens in the next; if they
could but see that mournful multitude of the helplessly deceived who
staked their all upon the truth of what they had been taught and find
they have lost because the teaching was false! If you could see them
wander up and down on the other side of the dark river and wring their
hands over their blighted hopes and broken hearts; hear the pitiful
wailings for the Christ that is no more objective there than he was
here--for the visionary glory that they may not grasp, the distant
rainbows, never reached, that weep themselves away in tears--for the
lifeboat gone to wreck on the wrong shore because of the false
beacon-lights. If you could only dream how these poor souls desire to
have the deception made known on this side of life--how they want to
send some word of warning to their friends--how they will almost hiss at
me through the mouths of mediums whenever they have the chance, as if
their fierce feelings had turned into tongues of flame, praying for us
to work on faster and cry louder against the established lie, for time
is getting short and the helpers are few, and the atmosphere around each
live soul is so deathly dense with indifference! This

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would be unbearable but for those calm other voices of the Gnostics who
in this life walked our world lords of themselves with "inward glory
crowned," and who lived on after the Gnosis was suppressed and the
ancient oracles made dumb--who live on yet, and are working with us
still--who fill and inflate us at times with their influence, as if each
single soul of us were a hundred thousand (/"cent mille," /as his men
used to call Napoleon). It is they who are joining hands with us to-day
to bridge over that dark gulf betwixt two worlds which the historic and
fleshly faith first excavated, and has been deepening and widening now
for eighteen centuries.

This is the Resurrection Day of the pre-Christian Gnosticism, as shown
by the recent revival of Spiritualism, by the restoration of the Tree of
Knowledge, by the elevation of Womankind, instead of the Fall of man;
and we are living witnesses of the fact that

"Truth, crushed to earth, /shall /rise again,

The eternal years of God are hers;

But Error, wounded, writhes with pain,

And dies among his worshippers!"

===================

NOTE.

=====

I have been asked whether I am able to explain by means of the Egyptian
Mythos, the two diverse statements in the Gospel according to Luke and
the Book of Acts concerning the ascension of Jesus into Heaven. In Luke
the risen Christ is "carried up into Heaven" on the third day following
the crucifixion. In the Acts he is not "taken up" into Heaven until the
fortieth day, or after forty days! Such serious discrepancies as these
are forever irreconcilable as history, but they are found to contain the
very facts that reconstitute the Mythos.

The resurrection of Osiris at the Autumn equinox was lunar; at the
vernal equinox it was solar. After he was betrayed to his death, when
the sun was in the sign of Scorpio, he rose again on the third day as
Lord of Light in the moon, or as Horus, the child of the mother-moon.
The solar resurrection was at the vernal equinox when the sun entered
the first of the upper signs and Orion rose. This time it was in the
character of the second Horus, the adult of 30 years; and this second
resurrection followed the forty days of mourning for the suffering God
which were celebrated in the Mysteries, and survive in a Christianized
form as our Lent. And just as the myth of the double Horus in the two
characters of the child of 12 years, and the adult Horus of 30 years,
has been continued in the Gospels to furnish the two phases in the life
of Jesus, so have the two different resurrections with their correct
dates been applied to the Christ made historical.

Thus interpreted by means of the Mythos these two versions of one
alleged fact tend to corroborate my explanation already made that the
two different dates for the crucifixion given in the otherwise
irreconcilable accounts belong to the luni-solar reckoning in the same
luni-solar myth. In Egyptian the signs of a half-

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moon and fourteen days are identical; and in the dark half of the moon
Osiris was torn into fourteen parts. Therefore the 14th of the lunar
month was the day of full moon. Whereas in the soli-lunar month of
thirty days the 15th was the middle of the month. Now the crucifixion or
the crossing at Easter was and still is determined by the day of full
moon. This will be on the 14th of the month of twenty-eight days in the
reckoning by the moon only, but on the 15th of the month according to
the soli-lunar reckoning. The 14th of the month would be the lunar
reckoning of Anup = John, and the 15th that of Taht-Mati = Mathew in the
two forms of the Egyptian Mythos. Both reckonings were extant in two
different cults and both were separately continued by the Eastern and
Western Churches for the one day of the crucifixion. Both cannot be
historically correct, but they are both astronomically true. Both could
be made to meet at a given point in the total combination which was
determined by the conjunction of the sun and moon at the equinox as /the
/day of full moon. But the two different dates for the mid-month
remained, and these are represented by the traditions of two different
dates for the crucifixion. Both the lunar and the solar dates could be
utilised by the Mythos, in which there were two crucifixions and two
resurrections, though these will bear witness for the single fact of the
historical crucifixion. As we have seen, the two ascensions of Osiris on
the third day and at the end of forty days, have been preserved, and are
repeated as historical transactions. Two different Crosses were also
contained in the Christian Iconography as the cross of Autumn and of
Easter; and although we may not be able to show two crucifixions in the
Canonical Gospels, nevertheless the total matter of the Mythos is there.
When Jesus was led up into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil,
and to suffer during forty days, we have the parallel to the struggle
between Osiris and Sut, which was celebrated during the forty days of
mourning in the mysteries. Moreover, there were two days of death or
crucifixion kept in Rome until the present century, when the dead Christ
used to be laid out and exhibited on the Thursday before Good Friday;
and two days of resurrection were also celebrated in the two Sabbaths on
Saturday and Sunday. As the Apostolic Constitutions show, both of these
days were continued for the two weekly holidays of the Christians,
Saturday being the day of rising again on the 7th day of the week in the
lunar cult; Sunday, the Sabbath of the 8th day, according to the solar
resurrection. Such are the fundamental facts; and, to my thinking, they
are of sufficient force to cleave the Canonical history right in two,
each half being then claimed by the Mythos. Here, as elsewhere, the
Mythos does explain the fact, but only by abolishing the history. From
beginning to end the ascertainable facts are astronomical, and
interpretable solely by means of the Gnostic explanation of the Egyptian
Mythos, which always denied, because it disproved, the alleged human
history.

The same correspondent desires to know whether I would exclude the Bible
from our children's schools. Most certainly. I would have the
Bible-basis superseded for all future teaching as unscientific, immoral,
and false to the facts in nature. The mass of people who are
Bible-taught never get free from the erroneous impressions stamped on
their minds in their infancy, so that their manhood or womanhood can
have no intellectual fulfilment, and millions of them only attain
mentally to a sort of second childhood.

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THE

HEBREW AND OTHER CREATIONS

/FUNDAMENTALLY EXPLAINED/

====================

/"If you would correct my false view of facts,"/ says Emerson, /"hold up
to me the same facts in the true order of thought."/

That is the process attempted in these lectures of mine; and the true
order and sequence of the facts can only be ascertained by delving down
to the foundations in the physical genesis; can only be stated by means
of the evolutionary method; can only be proved by the Wisdom of Egypt. I
claim that on each line of research my interpretation is derived from
the facts themselves, and is /not/ arbitrarily imposed upon them, or
read into them by my own theoretic speculation. I do but flesh the
skeleton of facts.

It is /not/ the ancient legends that tell us lies! The men who created
them did not deal falsely with us by nature. All the falsity lies in
their having been falsified through ignorantly mistaking mythology for
divine revelation and allegory for historic truth. Geology was not
taught among the mysteries of ancient knowledge, floating fragments of
which have drifted down to us in the Book of Genesis. The Christian
world assumed that it was--or, at least, some sort of globe-making--and
therefore it was found to be entirely opposed to scientific geology.

Mythology never did inculcate the historic fall of man. Theologists have
ignorantly supposed that it did, and as a result they were bitterly
opposed to the ascent of man, made known by means of evolution!

Such doctrines as the Fall of Man, the failure of God, and all that
bankrupt business in the commencement of creation, the consequent
genesis of evil and original sin, the depravity of matter, the filthy
nature of the flesh have no other basis or beginning than in the
perversion of ancient typology, and the literalisation of mythology.

According to the Hebrew Genesis the first man was born without a mother
or a female of any kind. If that be fact according to revelation, it
cannot be according to nature! But there is nothing gained by calling it
"/Revelation/." By doing so "Reve-

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lation" has come to be a name applied to anything which we may not, for
the time being, understand. "Revelation" has come to mean a series of
confounding lies, warranted by God to be true! By making this a
revelation direct from deity you destroy the character of the divine
intelligence, which did not know the facts, processes, or order, of its
own works; or if it did it must have palmed off a lying version on the
medium of communication to the world as a divine revelation made to man.

But Adam never denoted a first man who was produced without a mother,
nor Eve a first woman formed from an actual rib of Adam. That is but the
literalisation of a symbolical mode of representation, the key to which
has been /long mislaid/.

Speaking of the matter found in the Pentateuch, Philo, the learned Jew,
told his countrymen the truth when he said/: "The literal statement is a
fabulous one, and it is in the mythical we shall find the true."/ On the
other hand, he asserts of the myths found in the Hebrew form: "These
things are not mere fabulous inventions, in which the race of poets and
sophists delight, but are types shadowing forth an allegorical truth
according to some mystical explanation;" not a history. The literal
version /is/ the false; and it /is/ in the mythical that we shall find
the true, but only when it is truly interpreted. Mythology is not to be
understood by literalisation, /even though the Christian creed has been
founded on that fatal method!/ It is not to be made /real/ by modern
rationalizing, though that is the basis of Unitarianism; nor is it to be
utilized by each one furnishing their own system of Hermeneutical
interpretation. Mythology is an ancient system of knowledge, with its
own mode of expression, which enshrined the science of the past in what
looks to us at times like foolish and unmeaning fables. It is entirely
useless to speculate on such a subject, or try to read one's own
interpretation into the myths, with no clue whatever to their primordial
meaning. Anybody can make an allegory go on all-fours, and read some
sort of history into a myth. And, of course, he that hides can find; if
you put your own meaning into what you read, you can discover it there.
You may /say/ it /is/ so; any one can /say/, and possibly get a few
others to hearken and believe, but no amount of mere assertion will
establish the truth by means of a false interpretation of the fable.
Some persons will tell us that if the "Fall of Man" be not a fact once
and for all, better still, it is true for ever, because men and women
are always falling; therefore the allegory is over true, and, in point
of fact, a divine revelation. I have heard preachers resolve the
nocturnal wrestling-match between Jacob and the angel into an exquisite
allegory, made to run on all-fours for very simple people to ride on, an
allegory full of light and leading, and lovely in its moral and
spiritual significance, for sorely tempted men. The night of the
struggle is made internal. The angel is transformed into the devil, and
we have the wrestle of the soul with the tempter, and a man on

106

his knees all night in prayer. It is the conflict of Christian and
Apollyon humanized, and fought out in a bedroom, in place of the dark
valley of the shadow of death. It is in this wise that such stories are
to be saved from absurdity, orthodoxy is to regain its lost supremacy,
and science and religion are to be reconciled for ever. But /there is no
truth in it all/. The history was /not/ human at first, and this
subjective mode of treatment does but reface it with another sort of
falsehood. If we would ascertain what these old stories originally meant
we must go to mythology. In this case the Hottentots can enlighten us.
They have a myth or fable of Tsuni-Goam and Gaunab, the twins, who
personate the presence of light and darkness, the powers of good and
evil. These two contend in mortal conflict night after night, the good
one getting the better of the bad one by degrees, and growing stronger
with every battle fought. At last Tsuni-Goam grew mighty enough to give
his enemy a blow at the back of his ear, which put an end to Gaunab. But
just as he was expiring and falling back into his own abyss of darkness,
Gaunab gave his opponent a blow in the hollow of his leg, that made him
go limping for life. In consequence he was called "Tsuni-Goam," the
meaning of which name is "wounded knee." The struggle was that of light
and darkness in the orb of the moon, or the sun of night fighting his
way through the valley of the shadow of death in the underworld, during
the winter, when his movement was slower; and he was represented as
being lame in one knee, or maimed in his lower member. A wounded knee
with a knife thrust through it is the Egyptian hieroglyphic sign for
being overcome. Hence, although he conquers the powers of darkness,
Tsuni-Goam is said to have been wounded in one knee. The myth is found
in many lands, and is identical with that of Jacob wrestling all night
with the power called an angel, who maimed him in the hollow of his
thigh, and made him a form of the "wounded knee."

Also, it is worse than useless, because misleading, to begin by applying
a modern mystical system of subjective interpretation to the fragments
of ancient wisdom found in the Hebrew Book of Genesis, after the manner
of Swedenborg. According to him the account of the Creation in Genesis
is not a real history, but a narrative written in the style of the
Ancient Churches, signifying spiritual and divine things.

The general subject of the first chapter is not the generation, but the
new creation; the genesis becomes the re-genesis; the perverted mythos
is an intentional spiritual allegory; the six days are six states in the
re-creation of man; the seventh day represents the celestial man, and he
is the garden of Eden, and also the most ancient Church! Adam's
nakedness denotes the purity of the internal man, or the state of
innocence of the celestial Church! Eve also signifies the Church. Cain
is the name of those who falsified the doctrine of the most ancient
Church. The serpent

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going on its belly denotes the groveling of the sensual principle
seeking after corporeal things. The flood or deluge was a total
immersion of mankind in evil and falsehood! Everything in the Word
relates to the heavenly and spiritual, and is falsified if transferred
to a lower level. /But/ spiritual significations are not /primary!/ The
natural or physical must come first, because they were first; the
eschatological is last. Man was no more /re/-made than he was made on
the sixth day. Swedenborg knows or acknowledges nothing of the origin in
natural phenomena; nothing of the true mythical mode of representation;
nothing of an astronomical basis for the Garden of Eden, the tree of
knowledge, the serpent, or the primal pair, whose figures are pourtrayed
and whose story can still be read as it was first written in the stars
of heaven! The imagery and types of mythology can, of course, be used as
a mode of expression for later ideas, and for moral or spiritual
significations--just as we continue to say the moon rises, or the sun
sets, after we know better; but, from the mundane standpoint, the
natural, the physical, the external alone were primal. Hence primitive
Mythology is no more moral or immoral than it is obscene, senseless, or
insane, simply because /the phenomena were not human/. Before the
Egyptian hieroglyphics were understood Swedenborg undertook to vouch for
the fact that they represented spiritual ideas by means of natural
objects, according to his own doctrine of correspondences; which is no
more true than his interpretation of the Hebrew Genesis. This can be
proved. The hieroglyphics began as direct object-pictures, which became
symbolical in a later phase. The three Water-Signs of the Zodiac do not
represent a spiritual experience in this "Vale of Tears," but the three
months' Inundation which is annual in the Valley of the Nile. The fact
is that we cannot translate the thought of primitive or pre-historic man
without first learning the language in which is was expressed. The
wisdom, or gnosis, so carefully hidden and jealously guarded in the
past, is /not/ to be recovered with any certitude by clairvoyant insight
or intuitional memory, whosoever sets up the claim! You may have the
vision to see the hidden treasures lying buried at the bottom of the
ocean, but you will not be able to bring it back to men by merely
dredging for it in your dreams. There were Illuminati in the mysteries
of old, but they did not trust to the intuitional faculty for that
information, which took them seven or ten years to acquire. They were no
mere self-/illuminati/! They knew that intuition could not take the
place of research, and were careful to communicate all the exact
knowledge they possessed to those whom they instructed. /"Add to your
faith knowledge,"/ is the counsel of Paul. In vain we read our own
thought into the primitive types of expression, and then say the
ancients meant /that! /Subtilised interpretation will not read the
riddle to the root. Nor did such things originate in riddles or
intentional enigmas. You may believe me when I affirm, and you can prove
it for yourselves,

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that mythology was a primitive method of teaching natural facts, and not
an esoteric mode of misinterpreting them!

What we need to know is the primary meaning of the myth-makers; and this
can only be recovered by collecting and comparing all the extant
versions of the original mythos.

There is no beginning with the mystical or metaphysical in the past
before we have mastered the mythical; that can only lead to a maze, or
to being lost in a mist of mystification, as soon as we are out of the
wood of literalisation!

Cardinal Baronius has said that the intention of Holy Scripture is to
teach us how to go to heaven, and not how the heavens go! But the
earliest Scripture /did/ teach /how/ the heavens go, and it became
sacred because it was celestial.

The first creation of heaven and earth was but the division into upper
and lower, by whatsoever means expressed, answering to the discreting of
light from darkness. This was also rendered by the dividing of an Egg or
Calabash, and by the cutting of the heaven, the Cow of Heaven, or the
Heifer of the Morning and Evening Star, in two. It was neither
earth-making nor heaven-making in any cosmical sense--nothing more than
distinguishing the light from the darkness; the vault above from the
void below. This is illustrated by the creation-legend found on the
Assyrian tablets, which commences--"At that time the Heaven above had
not announced, nor the Earth beneath recorded, a name." The /word/ first
uttered in heaven related to times and seasons, and the earliest /word/
was uttered by the appointed time-keepers! The account of creation given
in the second chapter of Genesis is that "these are the generations of
the heaven and the earth when they were created." And the generations of
the heaven /were/ astronomical.

We learn from the cuneiform legends of creation how in the beginning God
created the heavens:--"Bel prepared the Seven Mansions of the Gods. He
fixed the Stars, even the Twin Stars, to correspond to them; he ordained
the year, appointing the Signs of the Zodiac over it. He illuminated the
Moon-God that he might watch over the night" (Sayce). (This version,
however, is comparatively late, because the fatherhood had then been
founded!)

Then, as Hermes says in the Divine Pymander, the heaven was seen in
seven circles, and the gods were visible in the stars with all their
signs, and the stars were numbered with the gods in them, the gods being
seven in number; when the old Genetrix is excluded.

/From the first, our theology, based on the Old Testament records, has
never been anything else than a dead branch of the ancient mythology;/
and just when all men, free to think, were finding out this fact, Mr.
Gladstone came forward and made another effort to rehabilitate the old
book so generally discredited, and chivalrously led one more forlorn
hope for a cause that is hopelessly lost. Surely no Christian martyr of
an earlier time could have made a more pathetic or pitiable appeal to
human sympathies than this man of

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intellect--who is so much larger than his creed--holding on to his pious
opinion in the face of facts the most fatal to his faith. For, with the
literal interpretation of the book of Genesis, the Fall of Man remains a
historic transaction, and the ascent made known by evolution is a
stupendous delusion. It is a sad sight to see a man like Mr. Gladstone,
who by his position and powers can attract a world's attention to his
words, cheerfully content to become a leader in misleading; still fondly
believing that the creations in the book of Genesis contain a veritable
history that could not have been written unless it had been divinely
inspired; still trying to make out that it is in accordance with
geology, and the scientific interpretation of nature. In his case the
child is not only father to the man, but a terrible tyrant over him as well.

Mr. Gladstone still maintains the opinion that the man who wrote the
account of the creations in Genesis was "gifted with faculties passing
all human experience, or else his knowledge was divine." The order of
development presented, he says, is first the water population; second,
the air population; third, the land population of animals; and fourth,
the land population consummated in man. And Mr. Gladstone says this same
four-fold order is understood to have been so affirmed in our time by
natural science, that it may be taken as a demonstrated conclusion and
established fact. The reply of science is a point-blank denial. It
admits nothing of this kind. It knows better. This is /not/ the order in
which the various populations made their first appearance on the globe;
and it was only by classing these populations according to the notion of
distinct creations, which were produced at the rate of one a day or so,
that any such definition or distinction could ever have been made.
Whatsoever the order of succession, that succession was gradual, with a
good deal of parallelism and lapping over on various lines of
development. In short, the account is not geological, is not true, when
judged by the earth's record itself! Besides, when the ancients placed
water before earth, in their series of elements, they had no particular
thought whether water or earth was first in existence. They were only
concerned with water being /their/ first recognized necessary and
essential element of life. And if we were teaching our children without
any pretense of revelation or assumption of divine knowledge; if we
limited ourselves to the natural facts, we should have to point out that
the water population as a whole did /not/ exist before there was any
land population. There was no such thing as a completion of creation No.
1, before the beginning of creation No. 2. No such thing as creation in
that sense at all; neither as the act of one day, nor of a million
years. We know that many forms of life on land preceded various forms
which are found in the waters, and that life was proceeding on its
special lines of variation in several elements at once. Moreover, though
man is the crowning out-come of the animal world, it is not necessary to
assume any sudden or complete ending to the animal creation

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before /he/ could appear,--as if /all/ lines of descent had to converge
and culminate in him! It is very likely that man was earlier than the
horse, and almost certain that he was before the dog, as we know that
animal. Man had probably put in an appearance as head of his line before
various other species had reached the last term of their series. It is
certain there never were four or three definite and successive periods
of time (and no other) in which three or four distinct populations could
have originated. That which is wrong as scientific matter-of-fact cannot
be made right as trustworthy matter of faith; not even by the specious
dialectic of Mr. Gladstone or any other non-evolutionist. Nor is there
any loop-hole of escape in supposing that the day and night of each
creation were not intended by the compiler of Genesis to mean a day and
night of 24 hours! We are not allowed to wriggle out of that conclusion.
The six days might have meant vastly indefinite periods (after we had
heard of the geological series and sequence), but for that fatal Seventh
Day which completes the week of seven days. The reason why we keep the
Sabbath every seventh day is because this was the day of rest for the
Lord after his six days' hard labour. "And God blessed the seventh day
and hallowed it, because that in it he rested." This was the accepted
origin of keeping holy the seventh day every week, and not at the end of
aeons of time, or six ages. The plain meaning of the compiler is not to
be evaded or got away from. The writer of the Hebrew Genesis says
positively that all things were made and finished in one week, and for
that reason we celebrate the Sabbath day. Seven days in one week are
also shown by the dedication of each day to one of the seven planetary
gods. And seven days in one week cannot be geological periods any more
than they can apply to the subjective experience of the soul!

Mr. Gladstone says the question is "whether natural science in the
patient exercise of its high calling to examine facts finds that the
works of God cry out against what we have fondly believed to be his
work, and tell another tale." The answer is, they /do cry/ out, and give
the lie to that authority so foolishly supposed to be divine. The Word
of God says that the act of Adam brought death into the world. The older
record shows, leaf after leaf or stratum beneath stratum, that death had
been at work tens of millions of years before man appeared on the earth.

In all these orthodox attempts to rationalize mythology, writers and
preachers are dealing with matters which they have not yet understood,
and which never can be understood on their plane of thought, or within
their narrow limits. In Æsop's fable the wolf overhears the nurse
threaten to throw the child to him, and he believes her; but, after long
waiting for the fulfillment of prophecy to bring him his supper, he
finds that she did not mean what she said. So is it with the myths; they
never meant what they said when literally interpreted. And the
literalisation of mythology is the fountain-head of all our false
belief, mystification being the

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secondary source. From my point of view, this is merely slaying the
slain over again. And yet this literalisation of mythology is continued
to be taught as God's truth to the men and women of the future in their
ignorant and confiding childhood. And some eight or ten millions of
pounds are annually filched from our national revenues for the benefit
of a Church and clergy established and legally empowered to make the
people believe that these falsified fables are a true divine revelation,
received direct from God; and if they doubt and deny it they will be
doomed to suffer atrocious tortures through all eternity. Mr. Gladstone
says he is persuaded that the belief of Christians and Jews concerning
the inspiration of the Book is impregnable. He believes the Genesis to
be a revelation for the Christians, made by God to the Jews, such as
presents to the rejecter of that belief a problem which demands solution
at his hands, and which he has not been able to solve. For himself, Mr.
Gladstone is so simple and profound a believer in revelation, if
biblical, and in the inspiration of the Mosaic writer in particular,
that he is lost in astonishment at the phenomenon it presents to him. He
asks, How can these things be, and not overcome us with wonder? How came
they to be, "not among Akkadians, or Assyrians, or Egyptians, who
monopolized the stores of human knowledge when this wonderful tradition
was born, but among the obscure records of a people who, dwelling in
Palestine for twelve hundred years from their sojourn in the Valley of
the Nile, hardly had force to stamp even so much as a name on the
history of the world at large, and only then began to be admitted to the
general communion of mankind when their scriptures assumed the dress
which a Gentile tongue was needed to supply? It is more rational, I
contend, to say that these astonishing anticipations were a God-given
supply than to think that this race should have entirely transcended in
kind, even more than in degree, all known exercise of human faculties."
The answer is, that it does not do to begin with wonder in matters which
demand inquiry and research--the answer is, that this matter of the
Creations did not originate with the Jewish race at all. Mr. Gladstone's
assumption is the sheerest fallacy. The wonderful tradition was /not/
born among them! It was wholly and far more perfectly pre-extant amongst
the Persians, the Akkadians, and Egyptians. The Book of Genesis is
assigned to a man who was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. I
cannot answer for the man, but I can for some of the matter. To begin
with, the legend of Eden is one of those primeval traditions that must
have been the common property of the undivided human race, carried out
into all lands as they dispersed in various directions from one centre,
which I hold to have been African. As Sharpe, an early English
Egyptologist, and a translator of the Hebrew Scriptures, asserts
correctly-"The whole history of the fall of man is of Egyptian origin.
The temptation of the woman by the serpent, and of man by the woman, the
sacred tree of knowledge, the cherubs guarding with

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flaming swords the door of the garden, the warfare declared between the
woman and the serpent, may all be seen upon the Egyptian sculptured
monuments."

The French Egyptologist, M. Lefébure, who has lately identified Adam
with the Egyptian Atum, as I had done seven years earlier in my Book of
Beginnings, refers to a scene on the coffin of Penpii in the Louvre,
which is similar to the history of Adam in the terrestrial paradise,
where a naked and ithyphallique personage called "the Lord of food"
(Neb-tefa), is standing before a serpent with two legs and two arms, and
the reptile is offering him a red fruit, or at least a little round
object painted red. The same scene is again found on the tomb of Rameses
VI. And on a statue relatively recent in the Museum of Turin it is to
Atum = Adam that the serpent, as Tempter, is offering the round object,
or fruit of the tree.

The same writer says--"The Tree of life and knowledge was well known in
Egypt."

And "whether the scene of Neb-tefa can be identified with the history of
Adam or not, we can see that the greater number of the peculiar features
of this history existed in Egypt--the tree of life and knowledge, the
serpent of Paradise, Eve thinking of appropriating divinity to herself,
and in short Adam himself, are all there." (Trans. S. Bib. Arch. v.9,
pt.1., p. 180.)

These and other matters pertaining to the astronomical allegory and the
natural genesis of mythology were pre-extant in Egypt, and had been
carried out over the world untold ages before a Palestinian Jew had ever
trod the earth. And yet, incredible as it may sound, Mr. Gladstone has
the reckless confidence to declare that the Hebrew account of creation
has no Egyptian marks upon it! That would indeed be strange if it had
been written by a man who was a master of the wisdom of Egypt.

Mr. Gladstone may have been misled by the Hibbert lecturer, Mr. Renouf,
who has said (p.243), "It may be confidently asserted that neither the
Hebrews nor Greeks learned any of their ideas from Egypt." A statement
which reveals a congenital deficiency of the comparative faculty. The
same may be said of Professor Sayce, when he asserts the "the Theology
and the Astronomy of Egypt and Babylonia show no vestiges of a common
source."

The Creation of the Woman from the Man in the second chapter of Genesis
is likewise found in the Magical Texts, where it is said of the Seven
Spirits--"They bring forth the Woman from the Loins of the Man" (Sayce,
Hib. Lect. 395).

This also has an Egyptian mark upon it. Such a creation is alluded to in
the Book of the Dead, where the speaker says, "I know the mystery of the
Woman who was made from the Man." Professor Sayce also asserts that
there is "no trace in the Book of Genesis" of the great struggle between
the God of Light and the Dragon of Darkness, who in one form are
Merodach and Tiamat. The conflict is there, however, but from the
original Egyptian

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source. It is represented as the enmity between the Woman and the
Serpent, and also between her Seed and the Serpent. The Roman Church
renders the passage (Gen. iii. 15) addressed to the Serpent--"She shall
bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise her heel." Both versions are
Egyptian. Horus is the Son and Seed of Isis. Sometimes he is pourtrayed
as bruiser of the Apap Serpent's head; at others it is she who conquers.
Both are combined in the Imagery which the Egyptians set in the
Planisphere, where Isis in the shape of Virgo bears the Seed in her
hands, and bruises the Serpent's head beneath her feet. This Seed in one
form was sown in Egypt immediately after the Inundation, and in this way
(as I have shown) the Zodiacal representation reflects the Seasons of
Egypt all round the year.

The Serpent itself in the Hebrew Genesis is neither an original nor a
true type. Two opposite characters have been fused and confused in it
for the sake of a false moral. Serpent and Dragon were primarily
identical as emblems of evil in physical phenomena; each was the
representative of Darkness, and as such the Deluder of Men. Afterwards
the Serpent was made a type of Time, of Renewal, and, therefore, of
Life; the Dragon-Crocodile a zoötype of intelligence. Both Crocodile and
Serpent were combined in Sevekh-Ra. Both were combined in the Polar
Dragon; and in the Book of Revelation the Dragon remains that old
Serpent, considered to be the Deluder of Mankind. Both were combined in
the Chnubis Serpent-Dragon of the Gnostics, which was a survival of
Kneph as the Agatho-Demon or Good Serpent of Egypt. The Akkadian type as
Ea, is the Good Serpent, the Serpent of Life, the God of Wisdom. Now it
was the Serpent of Wisdom that first offered the fruit of the Tree of
Knowledge for the Enlightenment of Mankind; whether this be Egyptian,
Akkadian, or Gnostic, it is the Good Serpent. And as Guardian of the
Tree set in Heaven it was the Good Serpent, or intelligent Dragon, as
keeper of the treasures of Astral knowledge. It was the later Theology,
Persian and Hebrew, that gave the character of the Evil One to the
Serpent of Wisdom, and perverted the original meaning, both of the
temptation and the Tempter who protected the Tree; which has been
supplemented by the theology of the Vitriol-throwers who have scarified
and blasted the face of nature on earth, and defiled and degraded the
starry Intelligencers in heaven.

Professor Sayce's statements are no more correct than Mr. Renouf's, and
Mr. Renouf's is no more true than Mr. Gladstone's. Further evidence may
be found in my "Natural Genesis." But no non-Evolutionist can understand
or interpret the Past. He is too ready to accept the re-beginning, where
there can be at most a new point of departure.

Mr. Gladstone has been too much wrapt up in the One Book! He does not
know that the story of Genesis is to be found written in the Bible
above, and that the Happy Garden, the primal pair, the

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war of the serpent, and the first mother, together with the Tree of
Knowledge, are all constellated in the stars of heaven, according to
Egyptian mythology, and are all verifiable on the monuments. When he
does learn that such /is/ the fact, he cannot claim that the history
inscribed upon the starry walls was written by the Jews, or copied from
the Hebrew record! But let us see whether we cannot discover a few more
Egyptian marks on the Genesis!

A Paradise or Garden that is watered without rain by a mist that went up
from the earth to fall upon it in refreshing dew is certainly suggestive
of an Egyptian origin, as that was the one way in which Egypt was
watered from above. This was not so in the Eden at the head of the
Persian Gulf. Besides which the Eight Primary Powers or Gods of Egypt
were the dwellers in Eden or "Am-Smen," the /Paradise of the Eight/, who
comprised the Genetrix and her Seven Children. The original Genesis and
all the chief Types are identifiably Egyptian to begin with. But the
Hebrew version was more directly derived from the Persian, as the Evil
Serpent proves.

Water was the first element of life recognized by the primitive
perception. Water was considered to be the mother, or Maternal Source,
personified. In Egypt the Mother of Life pours out the Water of Life
from the Tree of Life! She is the first form of the Celestial Waterer.
In the mystical sense, Blood is the Water of Life, and therefore the
Mother of Life. This beginning on earth with and from the water was
Egyptian, Babylonian, Mexican, Indian, Chinese, Greek, British, Universal.

It is said upon an Assyrian tablet that "the heaven was made from the
waters." So in the Egyptian beginning the sky was looked upon as the
celestial water. This water was also entified in the river Nile, which
was called the /"Way of the Gods,"/ when the Nature-Powers had been
divinised. In that sense, as it were, heaven descended, to be continued
on earth. From this water of heaven the land in Egypt was visibly
deposited, and the earth was "compacted out of water and by means of
water." When these were discreted there was the dry land. Here if
anywhere is the primary hint of a cosmical beginning with a fact in
nature, but not with a theory of nature nor a system of geology.

The second element of life was Breath, anima or air. In Egyptian, breath
or spirit is Nef; and this was personated by Kneph, a form of the first
god, who is said to be the breath of souls, or those who are in the
firmament. Nef, for breath and spirit, explains the Hebrew Nephesh for
soul, as the breath of life. Kneph, the breathing life in the firmament,
is also the Sailor on the water! In the Hebrew version, Kneph becomes
the Spirit moving on the face of the waters. In the Egyptian
representation he sails the waters in his ark,--just as Ea does in the
Akkadian version of the myth. The god Kneph is also the spirit that
presides over the /Bau/, which had become the Pit-hole, or the Tomb from
the Womb of the Beginning. The Egyptian Bau is the Hebrew Bohu, or the
Void. In both it is

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a place left unpersonified. In the later phase of personification this
Bau of Birth becomes the Phœnician Baev, called the Consort of Kolpia,
the Wind or Spirit. The Bau was also personified in the Babylonian
goddess Bohu. The Phœnician Baev points back to the Egyptian Bab (or
Beb) for the hole, cave, well, source, or outrance--the original of all
the Babs in later language, including Babylon.

Now, that which is performed by the Elohim /en gros/ in Genesis is done
by the Ali, or Seven Companions, in Egypt, most of whom can be
recognized individually in relation to the Seven Elements. As the Hebrew
Elohim, they may be dislimned and lose their likeness, but they are the
same seven powers of eternal nature (as explained by the Gnostics or
Kabalists). In one of the Egyptian creation-legends--shown by a monument
which was restored in the time of Shabaka--it is said of the Creator, "A
blessing was pronounced upon all things in the day when he bid them
exist, and before he had yet caused gods to be made for Ptah." This, it
appears to me, has left another Egyptian mark on the first chapter of
Genesis in the refrain, "And the Elohim saw that it was good," which is
uttered seven times over, in accordance with the sevenfold nature of the
Elohim; and the blessing is pronounced--"And God blessed them!" "And God
blessed the seventh day!" It would be going to far afield to show all
the Egyptian marks in one lecture; but I must offer another example. The
Hebrew word employed for creating, when the Elohim form the heaven and
the earth, is "Bara." The essential meaning of the word is to give a
manifestation in form to material previously without shape. Nothing
could so perfectly realize it as the potter at work on his clay. And the
Egyptian image of a Creator, as the Former, is Khepr, who, as the
Beetle, formed his little globe with his hands, and who, as Khepr-Ptah,
is the Potter sitting at his wheel, and shaping the egg of the sun and
moon, or the vase of matter to contain life--he who was the Former or
Creator "in his name of Let-the-Earth-be." The Potter, in Hebrew and
Phœnician, is the Jatzer; and this word is also applied to the Hebrew
God as Creator, Jatzariah being Jah the Potter. Thus the Kabalist Book
of Creation, named the Sepher-Jatzirah, is the Book of Creation as the
workmanship of the Former or Potter. Anyone who knows anything of the
monuments will here recognize another Egyptian mark; I may say the
Egyptian potter's mark on the Hebrew creations. The Creator or Former,
as Khepr-Ptah the Potter, is the head of the Seven Knemmu, who are his
assistants in the work of creation. He is the chief of the Ali or
Elohim, as the fashioner and builder of the heavens. He is also the
father of the Egyptian Adam, or Atum, the Red One; just as the Hebrew or
Phœnician Elohim are the creators of Adam the Red. Jehovah-Elohim, the
Lord God of the second chapter of Genesis, can be further identified
with Ptah, the founder of the earth and former of men. Ptah is the
father of Atum = Adam, the father of human beings. He is designated the
father of the fathers, an equivalent to

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the title of Ialdabaoth, chief of the seven Gnostic Elohim. The name of
Ptah signifies the Opener from Put to open; and the Hebrew name of xyxtp
shows that Jah is Puthach = Putha, or Ptah, as the Opener (cf. Fuerst,
p. 1166). These we may claim for other Egyptian marks.

But I have now learned that the account of the creations in Genesis is
not so directly derived from the Egyptian as I had once thought; that
is, it was re-written after the time of the captivity in Babylon, and
the consequent acquaintance with the creation-legends in their latest
Persian form. This can be shown by a comparison with the Parsee
Bundahish or Aboriginal Creation--more literally, the Creation of the
Beginning. Indeed, we may suspect that the first words of the Hebrew
Genesis have to do with the title of the Bundahish. They are, "B'Rashith
Elohim Bara;" and "B'Rashith," when literally translated, reads, "in the
beginning of," leaving an elipsis, without stating in the beginning of
what! Now the meaning of the word Bundahish is, the Creation of the
Beginning. This far more perfect statement seems to have been bungled in
adapting it for the Hebrew version.

The first two facts distinguishable in external phenomena by man were
those of Darkness and Light. The panorama of mythological representation
is drawn out from these as its opening scene, and the long procession of
the Powers of Nature, which became divinities at a later stage, starts
upon its march through heaven above to cast its shadows on the earth below.

By observing the alternation of Light and Darkness, a primary measure of
time was first established as the creation of a night and day, marked by
the Twin-Star. And "there was evening, and there was morning, one day,"
as the result of this earliest creation of the Beginning. In the Persian
Bundahish, the deity Ahura-Mazda is the chief of the Seven Amchaspands
just as the creator Ptah is of the Seven Khnemmu; and the Gnostic
Ialdabaoth of the Seven Elohim. Here we learn that the God created the
world in six periods, although /not/ in six days. The first of
Ahura-Mazda's creatures of the world was the sky, and his good thought
by good procedure produced the light of the world. This is identical
with the Elohim seeing the light that it was good; and with the blessing
pronounced on his creations by the Egyptian deity. The light now
separated and distinguished from darkness in the creation of time is
quite distinct from the divine, the abstract, or the illimitable and
eternal light already existing with Ahura-Mazda; it is the evening and
morning, one day.

Darkness and light are personified and represented as being at ceaseless
enmity with each other in the confusion of Chaos, but they come to an
understanding as co-creators, and make a covenant, in appointing this
primeval period of time.

And such was the first creation in the Persian series of six. "And of
Ahura's creatures of the world," it is said, "the first was

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the sky, the second, water; the third earth; the fourth, plants; the
fifth, animals; the sixth, mankind." The creation of light in the Hebrew
Genesis is the creation of the sky in the Persian; and the creation of
water in the Persian Genesis, becomes the dividing of the waters in the
Hebrew version. The time of this creation is called the second day.

The third Persian creation is that of earth, which is the dry land of
the Hebrew--"and the Elohim called the dry land Earth."

The fourth Persian creation, or rather creature, is that of plants. This
is not a separate creation in the Hebrew version; it is thrown into the
third creation, that of earth. Nevertheless, the third must have
included the plants because it includes every herb yielding seed and
every tree that bears edible fruit. And yet in chapter 2, verse 5, when
the creations are all completed, and the Elohim had finished the work
which they had made, we are told that "no plant of the field was yet in
the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up." Which proves how
mixed and muddled, as well as un-original, is the Mosaic version. In the
fourth Hebrew creation the heavenly bodies become the time-keepers for
signs and seasons. This is not one of the six Persian creations, which
six are followed by the "formation of the luminaries." Of these it is
said "Ahura-Mazda produced illumination between the sky and the earth,
the constellation-stars and those not of the constellations, then the
moon; and afterwards the sun." The fifth Persian creation is that of the
animals. This creation is limited to the winged fowl, sea animals, and
fishes, in the Hebrew account, which is considerably mixed.

Mr. Gladstone asks: "Is there the smallest inconsistency in a statement
which places the emergence of our land, and its separation from the sea,
and the commencement of vegetable life, before the final and full
concentration of light upon the sun, and its reflection on the moon and
planets? and as there would be light diffused before there was light
concentrated, why may not that diffused light have been sufficient for
the purposes of vegetation?" Certainly, as there was light enough to
make day before there was any sun or moon, there ought to, and should,
have been. In my reply I am not concerned to reconcile the literal
rendering of the Hebrew Genesis with scientific fact, but I shall have
to point out on behalf of the mythical original that according to the
present interpretation the heaven and earth could and did exist before
the stars, or the moon and the sun! There was no time kept on earth or
in heaven until night and day were divided and marked by the alternation
of light and darkness, or by the Twin Star of Evening and Dawn,
therefore the heavenly bodies were not made use of, ergo they did not
exist in any requisite sense of the Mythos.

Lastly, man is the product of the sixth creation in both renderings. If
taken literally, man of the sixth Persian creation appears on the scene
before the stars or moon or sun, which follow the six

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creations, not as mere light-givers to the earth, but as time-keepers
for man. And that alone will explain why the stars are said to be in
existence before the moon; and the moon before the sun! In the Persian
writings the invariable order is that of stars, moon, and sun! In
describing the mythical mount Alborz, the mount Meru of the Persian
system of the Heavens, it is said that it grew for 200 years up to the
star-station; for 200 more years up to the moon-station; for 200 more
years up to the sun-station; for 200 more years up to the endless light!
That is a mode of building up the heavens in accordance with the order
of the Celestial timekeepers, and of the Kronian creations. Time was
first told by the stars, morning and evening, and by the seven which
turned round once in the circle of a year; next by means of the moon and
its monthly renewal; next by means of the sun; solar time being last
because the most difficult to make out.

In a papyrus at Turin it is said of Taht, the god of lunar time, in
Egypt, "He hath made all that the world contains, and hath given it
light when all was darkness, and there was as yet no sun!" This was
figurative, and applies solely to the moon, by which time was kept
earlier than it could be defined by the sun. It is well known that the
lunar year and the lunar zodiac, or pathway of the moon, were earlier
than the solar zodiac of 12 signs, which is too late for the mythical
/Beginnings/.

In the Babylonian account of creation the moon is produced before the
sun. As George Smith points out, this is in reverse order to that of the
Hebrew Genesis. Evidently, he says, the Babylonians considered the moon
the principal body, while the book of Genesis makes the sun the greater
light. "Here is becomes evident," says this Bibliolator, "that Genesis
is truer to nature than the Chaldean text." The uninspired Babylonians,
you see, did not know that the moon was the lesser, and the sun the
larger light!

Professor Sayce likewise tells us that "the idea which underlay the
religious belief of Akkad" was, that "the moon existed before the sun"
(Hib. Lect. 165). Neither of these Assyriologists appears to have had
any notion why this was so represented!

The Arkadians, the Argives, the Quichés, and other races of men claimed
to be Pro-Selenes, or those who lived before the time of the moon, not
/before the existence/ of that luminary! Truer to nature can have no
meaning for an account of the creation of light prior to the existence
of the heavenly bodies--that is, if literally taken. But neither the
Egyptians, Babylonians, nor Persians were talking about the cosmical
creation in the modern sense, as has been ignorantly assumed, and
foolishly contended for, but about the mythical beginnings of the
Time-keepers. In these the mapping out of the lunar month came before
the solar year. Hence the sun-god was called the child of the moon-god
Sin, in Assyria, and the lunar god, Taht, or Tehuti, is called the
father of Osiris, the sun-

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god, in Egypt; the priority being dependent on the earlier observations
for the keeping of time. So the Mexicans held the planet Venus to have
been created before the sun! It was earlier than the moon, they said,
and properly the first light that appeared in the world. That would be
as a star of morning and evening which made the first day. Hence we are
told that the first man, Oannes, came up out of the Red Sea, and landed
in Babylonia on the "First Day."

The Great Mother, to whom the planet Venus was dedicated, was
represented by the Heifer, the pure Heifer, the sacred Heifer, the
Golden Calf, as it was called. This being of either sex, it supplied a
twin type for Venus, as Hathor or Ishtar, the double Star, that was male
at rising and female at sunset, and therefore the Twin-Stars of the
"First Day."

Any other earlier sense these creations have besides that of
time-keeping was merely elemental, and relating to the order in which
man recognized and represented the natural elements. Darkness, with its
voice of thunder, was the first! Out of the darkness issued the light.
These two were the Twins of eternal alternation in external phenomena,
found in so many forms of the mythos as the two Brothers, who fought
each other for the Birthright. The next two were moisture and air, or
the water of life and the breath of life. These four creations, or, as
the Bundahish has it, four creatures of Ahura-Mazda, were the four
elements of darkness and light, water and air.

In Egypt they were typified by the Jackal of darkness, the Hawk of
light, the Ape of breath, and the Hippopotamus or Dragon of the waters,
which were made those Keepers of the four corners who are universal in
mythology. They indicate four elements, or four seasons, four quarters
of the year, or the four-fold heaven by which the circle of the whole
was divided; and squared as it was in the circle of Yima.

I have followed out the various creations, or heavens, from beginning to
end in the "Natural Genesis." At present we must turn once more to the
Persian Bundahish where it says in Revelation--such being the formula
frequently employed on matters of religion, or on the periods for the
observance of religious duties--"the creatures of the world were created
by me complete in three hundred and sixty-five days; that is the six
periods of the festivals which are completed in a year." Here, then, we
part company with the six days and one week of creation in the Hebrew
book of Genesis! We can see that is but a condensed summary of an
earlier account, which may lead us a little nearer to nature, and to
those phenomenal facts on which mythology was founded--the Rock on which
our Biblical Theology will be wrecked. In this version of the
creation-legend the six creations are completed in one year of 365 days,
or rather the year of 365 days has been finally completed in six stages,
or seasons, or periods of time-keeping! In accordance

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with this sixth creation we learn from the Targum of Palestine that
Adam, as the Adamic man, was created in the image of the Lord, his
maker, with 365 nerves. Here the divine model of humanity was the solar
god of time, or of the creations perfected at last in a year of 365
days! which figures are reflected in the 365 nerves. /Now/ we can see
/how/ the Persian sixth day of celebration of /each/ of the six
creations became the six days of creation in the Hebrew Genesis, in the
process of condensing mythology into cosmical and human history; and
/one/ year into /one/ week to make it more tangible at a later time! The
creations include the elements identified, together with the various
systems of keeping time, which culminated at last in a year of 365 and a
quarter days. These systems may be roughly sketched as (1) the one day
of a light and dark; (2) one turn round to a year; (3) the half-years of
the solstices; (4) a lunar month of the four quarters; (5) planetary
time; (6) solar time, or a year of 365 days.

When it says in the Persian Revelation--"The Creatures of the world were
created by me in 365 days," it does not mean during that period, any
more than it means the six days of the Hebrew mis-rendering of the
matter. It means that the concluding creation of the six different
creations culminated in a year of solar time, or 365 days to the year,
in the image of which Adamic man was formed with 365 nerves.

The origin of the Sabbath in Genesis is curiously paralleled, or
suggested, in the Bundahish. We read "on matters of religion," it says
in Revelation thus--"The creatures (or six creations) were created by me
complete in 365 days. That is the six Gahanbars, which are completed in
a year." And /here/ the matters of religion are explained as being the
periods for observance of religious duties. That is, the six festivals
or Sabbaths were instituted to commemorate the six creations which were
created complete, or culminated, in a year of 365 days. The Persians
represented their God as resting during five days after each of the six
seasons of creation; and they also celebrated a great six days' festival
annually, beginning on the 1st of March and ending on the sixth day, as
the greatest holiday, because in this, the sixth season (in place of the
sixth day in the Hebrew Genesis) Ahura-Mazda had created the most
superior things. Thus the six creations in the Hebrew version have been
visibly condensed into six periods of time, and there is but one period
for religious observance on the seventh day! And whereas the Persians,
or Parsees, hold their six festivals and periods of rest in one whole
year, we have fifty-two Sabbaths, which shows the latest rendering, as
well as the development of the same mythos. The Hebrew Elohim rested on
the seventh day, whereas the Persian Ahura-Mazda rested for five days at
a time after each of the six creations.

Further, the six seasons or periods of creation had been reduced from
the earlier Babylonian version, in which the seventh day was

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not a Sabbath, but the period in which the Animals and Man were created.

We are also told in the Bundahish--"It says in Revelation that before
the coming of the Destroyer vegetation had no thorns upon it or bark
about it; and afterwards, when the Destroyer came, it was created with
bark, and things grew thorny!" And in the Avesta, an older scripture,
this destroyer, the evil opponent, is a serpent--as it is in the book of
Genesis.

It is too late now to advance the claim, or assume that the Persians,
the Babylonians, and the Egyptians borrowed their versions from that
given by the inspired writer of the Hebrew Pentateuch. And these facts,
I submit, furnish sufficient evidence that the Book of Genesis does not
contain an original revelation made by God to the Jews; in short, it
does not contain any revelation at all. We are compelled to seek
elsewhere before we can really understand what it does contain! The Six
Creations, Creative Acts, or Periods are Persian; but the Legends in
Genesis have been derived from more than one source.

Of late years a mighty fuss has been made about the fact that two
different systems, known as the Elohistic and Jahvistic, have been
imperfectly blended and utilized in the Hebrew version of the Genesis,
but with no application of the comparative process to the various
systems of creations, according to mythology, and with no clue whatever
to the natural phenomena in which the mythology was founded, or to the
gnosis by which the myths were anciently interpreted.

According to the Persian reckoning, the human creature was formed as the
sixth creation, or, as the Hebrew version has it, on the sixth day;
whereas in the version of the Seventy man was created on the eighth day.
Now, if we look closely at the first chapter of Genesis, we shall find
both these reckonings combined, but not blended. Although there are no
more than six days of creation mentioned in the Hebrew Genesis, there
are eight distinct acts of creation or utterances of the Word. These are
enumerated as follows:--

(1) The Elohim said--"Let there be light."

(2) The Elohim said--"Let there be a firmament."

(3) The Elohim said--"Let the waters be gathered together,"

* * * and--"let the dry land appear."

(4) The Elohim said--"Let the earth put forth grass."

(5) The Elohim said--"Let there be light in the firmament."

(6) The Elohim said--"Let the waters bring forth."

(7) The Elohim said--"Let the earth bring forth."

(8) The Elohim said--"Let us make man in our image."

The Bundahish has six creations only. The eight are Egypto-Gnostic, in
keeping with the Ogdoad of primary powers. According to the Gnostics,
who had preserved the only true knowledge of these mythical matters,
man, as the eighth creation, belongs to the

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mystery of the Ogdoad. Irenæus tells us how the Gnostics maintained that
man was formed on the eighth day of creation: "Sometimes they say he was
made on the sixth, and at others on the eighth day." (B. 1, C. 18, 2)

These two creations of man on the sixth day and on the eighth were those
of the Adamic or fleshly man and of the spiritual man, who were known to
Paul and the Gnostics as the first and second Adam, the man of earth and
the man from heaven. Irenæus also says they insisted that Moses began
with the Ogdoad of the Seven Powers and their Mother, who is called
Sophia (the old Kefa of Egypt, who is the "Living Word" at Ombos). Thus
we find the two systems are run into each other, and left without the
means of distinguishing the one from the other, or of knowing how they
had either of them originated. So that, instead of a revelation of the
beginning in the Hebrew Genesis, we have to go far beyond it to find any
beginning whatever.

So it is with the Fall. Here, as before, the Genesis does not begin at
the beginning. There was an earlier Fall than that of the Primal Pair.
In this, the number of those who failed and fell was seven. We meet with
these Seven in Egypt--(Eight with the Mother)--where they are called the
"Children of Inertness," who were cast out from "Am-Smen," the Paradise
of the Eight; also, in a Babylonian legend of creation, as the Seven
Brethren, who were Seven Kings; like the Seven Kings in the Book of
Revelation; and the Seven Non-Sentient Powers, who became the Seven
Rebel Angels that made war in Heaven. The Seven Kronidæ, described as
the Seven Watchers, who, in the beginning, were formed in the interior
of heaven. The heaven, like a vault, they extended or hollowed out; that
which was not visible they raised, and that which had no /exit/ they
opened; their work of creation being exactly identical with that of the
Elohim in the Book of Genesis. These are the Seven elemental powers of
space, who were continued as Seven timekeepers. It is said of them, "In
watching was their office, but among the stars of heaven their watch
they kept not," and their failure was the Fall. In the Book of Enoch the
same Seven watchers in heaven are stars which transgressed the
commandment of God before their time arrived, for they came not in their
proper season, therefore was he offended with them, and bound them until
the period of the consummation of their crimes, at the end of the
/secret/, or great year of the world--i.e., the Period of Precession,
when there was to be the restoration and re-beginning. The Seven deposed
constellations are seen by Enoch, looking like Seven great blazing
mountains overthrown--the Seven mountains in Revelation, on which the
Scarlet Lady sits.

The Book of Genesis tells us nothing about the nature of the Elohim,
erroneously rendered God, who are the creators of the Hebrew beginning,
and who are themselves pre-extant and seated when the theatre opens and
the curtain ascends. It says that in the beginning

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the Elohim created the heaven and the earth. In thousands of books the
Elohim have been discussed, but with no application of the comparative
process to this and the earlier mythologies, and therefore with no
conclusive result. Our bibliolators were too conceited in their insular
ignorance to think there was any thing worth knowing outside of their
own Books. Foolishly fancying they had gotten a revelation all to
themselves, a supernatural version of the cosmical Genesis, they did not
care to seek for, did not dream of, a natural or scientific Genesis, and
could not make out the mythical; consequently they have never known
/what/ it was they were called upon to worship in the name of God. In
his paper on the Evolution of Theology, Professor Huxley assumes that
the Elohim of Genesis originated as the ghosts of ancestors, in doing
which he no more plumbs to the bottom than does Mr. Gladstone. The
Elohim are Seven in number, whether as nature powers, gods of
constellations, or planetary gods. Whereas the human ghosts are not, and
never were, a septenary, although they may be, and have been, confused
with the typical seven as the Pitris and Patriarchs, Manus and Fathers
of earlier times. The Gnostics, however, and the Jewish Kabalah preserve
an account of the Elohim of Genesis by which we are able to identify
them with other forms of the seven primordial powers. They are the
children of the ancient Mother called Sophia. Their names are
Ialdabaoth, Jehovah (or Iao), Sabaoth, Adonai, Eloeus, Oreus and
Astanphæus. Ialdabaoth signifies the Lord God of the fathers; that is
the fathers who preceded the Father; and thus the Seven are identical
with the Seven Pitris or Fathers in India. (Irenæus B.1, 30, 5.)
Moreover, the Hebrew Elohim were pre-extant by name and nature as
Phœnician divinities or powers. Sanchoniathon mentions them by name, and
describes them as the Auxiliaries of Kronus or Time. In this phase,
then, the Elohim are timekeepers in heaven! In the Phœnician Mythology
the Elohim are the Seven sons of Sydik, identical with the Seven Kabiri,
who in Egypt are the Seven sons of Ptah, and the Seven spirits of Ra in
the Book of the Dead; in Britain, with the Seven Companions of Arthur in
the Ark; in Polynesia, with the Seven dwarf sons of Pinga; in America,
with the Seven Hohgates; in India, with the Seven Rishis; in Persia,
with the Seven Amchaspands; in Assyria, with the Seven Lumazi.

They had one common genesis in phenomena, as I have traced them by
number, by nature, and by name; and also one common Kamite origin. They
are always seven in number as a companionship or brotherhood, who /Kab/,
that is turn round together, whence the 'Kab-ari.' The Egyptian Ali or
Ari, gives us the root meaning; the Ari /are/ the companions, guardians
and watchers, who turn round together. Hence the Aluheim or Elohim. They
are also the Ili or gods, in Assyrian, who were seven in number! Eight
with the Mother in the beginning, or the Manifestor in the end. In their
primordial phase they were seven elementary powers, warring in chaos,
lawless and timeless. They were first born of the Mother

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in space; and then the Seven Companions passed into the sphere of time,
as auxiliaries of Kronus, or Sons of the Male Parent. As Damascius says,
in his "Primitive Principles," the Magi consider that space and time
were the source of all; and from being powers of the air, the gods were
promoted to become timekeepers for man. Seven constellations were
assigned to them, and so they could be called the auxiliaries of Kronus,
when /time/ was established. As the seven turned round in the ark of the
sphere they were designated the Seven Sailors, Companions, Rishis, or
Elohim. The first "Seven Stars" are not planetary. They are the leading
stars of seven constellations, which turned round with the Great Bear in
describing the circle of a year. These the Assyrians called the seven
Lumazi, or leaders of the flocks of stars, designated sheep. On the
Hebrew line of descent or development, these Elohim are identified for
us by the Kabalists and Gnostics, who retained the hidden wisdom or
gnosis, the clue of which is absolutely essential to any proper
understanding of mythology or theology. The creation of the Elohim as
auxiliaries of Kronus was not world-making at all in our sense. The
myth-makers were not geologists, and did not pretend to be. The chaos
which preceded Creation was simply that of timelessness, and of the
unintellectual and non-sentient Nature-Powers. Creation proper began
with the first means of measuring and recording a cycle of time. Thus
the primary creation in the Genesis, as in the Bundahish, /is/ the
creation of time, in which the morning and evening measured one day.

But the Seven Cronies, as we may now call them, were found to be telling
time somewhat vaguely by the year, in accordance with the annual
revolution of the starry sphere; and, being found inexact and unfaithful
to their trust, they were dispossessed and superseded--or, as it was
fabled, they fell from heaven. The Seven were then succeeded by a Polar
Pair and a Lunar Trinity of Time-keepers. For example, it has been
observed that there was a fixed centre, which was a pivot to the Starry
Vast all turning round. Here there were two constellations with seven
stars in each. /We/ call them the Two Bears. But the seven stars of the
Lesser Bear were once considered to be the seven heads of the Polar
Dragon, which we meet with--as the beast with seven heads--in the
Akkadian Hymns and in the Book of Revelation. The mythical dragon
originated in the crocodile, which /is/ the Dragon of Egypt. Plutarch
tells us the Egyptians said the crocodile was the sole animal living in
water which has his eyesight covered over with a film, so thin that he
can see without himself being seen by others--"in which he agrees with
the first god." Now, in one particular cult, the Sut-Typhonian, the
first god was Sevekh, who wears the crocodile's head, as well as the
serpent, and who /is/ the Dragon, or whose constellation was the Dragon.

The name of Sevekh signifies the sevenfold; hence the seven heads of the
Dragon, the Dragon who is of the seven and "is himself also an eighth,"
as we are told in Revelation. In him the Seven Powers

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were unified, as they were in Ea, Iao-Chnubis, and various other of the
chief gods who summed up the earlier powers in the supreme /one/, when
unity was attained at last. For it is certain that no one god was ever
made known to man by primitive revelation. The only starting-point was
in external phenomena, which assuredly manifested no oneness in
personality. The group of Totemic brotherhood preceded the fatherhood,
and finally the fatherhood superseded the Totemic group in heaven, as it
was on earth. One form of this god was Sut-Nub, and Nub means the
golden. Thus the reign of Sut was that age of gold afterwards assigned
to Saturn by the Greeks. In Egypt the Great Bear was the constellation
of Typhon, or /Kepha/, the old genetrix, called the Mother of the
Revolutions; and the Dragon with seven heads was assigned to her son
Sevekh-Kronus, or Saturn, called the Dragon of Life. That is, the
typical dragon or serpent with seven heads was female at first, and then
the type was continued as male in her son Sevekh, the Sevenfold Serpent,
in Ea the Sevenfold, in Num-Ra, in the Seven-headed Serpent,
Iao-Chnubis, and others. We find these two in the book of Revelation.
One is the Scarlet Lady, the mother of mystery, the great harlot, who
sat on a scarlet-coloured beast with seven heads, which is the Red
Dragon of the Pole. She held in her hand the unclean things of her
fornication. That means the emblems of the male and female, imaged by
the Egyptians at the Polar centre, the very uterus of creation as was
indicated by the Thigh constellation, called the Khepsh of Typhon, the
old dragon, in the northern birthplace of Time in heaven. The two
revolved about the /pole of heaven/, or the Tree, as it was called,
which was figured at the centre of the starry motion. In the book of
Enoch these two constellations are identified as Leviathan and Behemoth
= Bekhmut, or the Dragon and Hippopotamus = Great Bear, and they are the
primal pair that was first created in the garden of Eden. So that the
Egyptian first mother, Kefa, whose name signifies mystery, was the
original of the Hebrew Chavah, our /Eve/; and therefore Adam is one with
Sevekh, the sevenfold one, the solar dragon, in whom the powers of light
and darkness were combined, and the sevenfold nature was shown in seven
rays worn by the Gnostic Iao-Chnubis, god of the number seven, who is
Sevekh by name and a form of the first father as head of the seven.
Another bit of evidence here may be adduced from the Rabbinical legends
relating to Adam's first wife. Her name was /Lilith/, and Lilith =
Rerit, is that Egyptian goddess whose constellation was the Great Bear.
Thus Adam and Eve are identified at last with the Greater and Lesser
Bears, and the mythical Tree of Knowledge with the celestial Northern
Pole. The Hebrew Adam can be likewise shown to have been a form of the
chief one of the earlier seven who fell from heaven. Not only is he the
head of the first group of Patriarchs turned into historical characters
in the Genesis, who are seven in number, preceding the ten, but also
learn that, /in the mysteries of Samothrace/, the name of Adam

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was given to the first and chief one of the Seven Kabiri, who were a
form of the earliest Seven time-keepers, that failed and fell from
heaven! Moreover, the Gnostics identify these primary seven by nature
and by name as the Seven Mundane Dæmons who always oppose and resist the
human race, because it was on their account that the father among the
seven was cast down to a lower world!--not to the earth. One name of
this father is Ialdabaoth. Adam is another name of the same mythical
personage, and Adam at Samothrace was chief of the Seven. Adam, as the
father among the Seven, is identical with the Egyptian Atum, who was the
father-god in his first sovereignty, and whose other name of Adon is
identical with the Hebrew Adonai. In this way the second creation in
Genesis reflects and continues the later creation in the mythos, which
explains it. The Fall of Adam to the lower world led to his being
humanized on earth, by which process the celestial was turned into the
mortal, and this, which belongs to the astronomical allegory, got
literalised as the fall of Man, or descent of the soul into matter, and
the conversion of the angelic into an earthly being. The Roman Church
has always held that mankind were created in consequence of the fall of
the rebel angels who raised a revolt in heaven, which was simply a
survival of the Mythos, as it is found in the texts when Ea, the first
father, is said to "grant forgiveness to the conspiring gods," for whose
"redemption did he create mankind" (Sayce, Hib. Lect. 140). The subject
matter is celestial solely, and solely celestial because it was
astronomical. The Fall was not to the earth, nor on the earth, but to a
lower heaven, called the Adamah in Genesis; nor did Adam and Eve become
human realities below because they were outcast gods of constellations
that were superseded above. The matter is mythical, and I am trying to
show, as the result of wide research, what is the meaning of that which
we call "mythical," by tracing the physical origin of the ancient gods,
the Hebrew included, to natural phenomena, in accordance with data and
determinatives still extant.

As nothing was known concerning the Genesis and nature of the Elohim, it
has always been a moot question as to whom the speakers addressed the
speech, "Let us make man in our image!" It has commonly been assumed
that the "us" denoted a plural of dignity like the "we" of Royalty and
Editorship. But it is not so. The Elohim are the Egyptian, Akkadian,
Hebrew, and Phœnician form of the universal Seven Powers, who are Seven
in Egypt, Seven in Akkad, Babylon, Persia, India, Britain, and Seven
amongst the Gnostics and Kabalists. They were the Seven fathers who
preceded the father in heaven, because they were earlier than the
individualized fatherhood on earth. Mythology reflects the primitive
sociology, as in a mirror, and we could not comprehend the reflection in
the divine dynasties above until we knew something fundamental about the
human relationships on the earth beneath.

The field of Babylonian Mythology is one vast battle-ground

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between the early Motherhood and the later Fatherhood--that is, the
Mother in space, in the stellar and lunar characters opposed to the
later and solar Fatherhood, which became more especially Semite; indeed,
where the Akkadians wrote the "female and the male," the Semite
translators prepensely reverse it, and render it by the "male and the
female." This setting up of the supreme God as solely Male, to the
exclusion of the female, has often been erroneously attributed to a
supposed "Monotheistic Instinct" originating with the Semites! In Egypt
the solar Fatherhood had been attained in the sovereignty of Atum-Ra,
when the records begin; but this same battle went on all through her
monumental history, more fiercely when the Heretics, the Motherites, the
Blackheads, were now and again reinforced by allies from without.

When the Elohim said, "Let us make man in our image, after our
likeness," there were seven of them who represented the seven elements,
powers, or souls that went to the making of the human being who came
into existence before the Creator was represented anthropomorphically,
or could have conferred the human likeness on the Adamic man. It was in
the seven-fold image of the Elohim that man was first created, with his
seven elements, principles, or souls, and therefore could not have been
formed in the image of the one God. The seven Gnostic Elohim tried to
make a man in their own image, but could not, from lack of virile power.
Thus, their creation in earth and heaven was a failure. The Gnostics
identify these seven as the Hebrew Elohim who exhorted each other,
saying, "Let us make man after our image and likeness." They did so; but
the man whom they made was a failure, because they themselves were
lacking in the soul of the fatherhood! When the Gnostic Ialdabaoth,
chief of the Seven cried, "I am the father and God," his mother Sophia
replied, "Do not tell lies, Ialdabaoth, for the first man (Anthropos Son
of Anthropos) is above thee!" That is, man who had now been created in
the image of the fatherhood, was superior to the gods who were derived
from the mother parent alone! For, as it had been at first on earth, so
was it afterwards in heaven; and thus the primary gods were held to be
soulless, like the earliest races of men because they had not attained
the soul of the individualized fatherhood. The Gnostics taught that the
spirits of wickedness, the inferior Seven, derived their origin from the
great mother alone, who produced without fatherhood! It was in the
image, then, of the sevenfold Elohim that the seven races were formed
which we sometimes hear of as the pre-Adamite races of men, because they
were earlier than the fatherhood which was individualized only in the
second Hebrew creation. These were the primitive people of the
past,--the old, despised, dark races of the world,--who were held to
have been created /without souls, because they were born before the
fatherhood was individualized on earth or in heaven;/ for, there could
be no God the Father recognized until the human father had been

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identified--nothing more than the general ancestral soul of the fathers,
or the soul of the seven elemental forces. These early races were first
represented by Totemic zoötypes, and were afterwards abominated as the
dog-men, monkey-men, men with tails, mere preliminary people, created in
the likeness of animals, reptiles, fish, or birds. Warriors with the
body of a bird of the valley (?), and men with the faces of ravens, were
suckled by the old dragon Tiamat; and their type may be seen in the
image of the twin Sut-Horus, who has the head of a bird of light in
front, and the Neh, or black vulture of darkness, behind. Ptah and his
Seven Khnemmu are the Pygmies.

42

As the black race was first on earth, so is it in the mirror of
mythology. These are the "people of the black heads," who are referred
to on the tablets, and classed with reptiles, during a lunar eclipse.
These typical black heads were the primeval powers of darkness, to which
the old black aborigines in various lands were likened or assimilated by
their despisers. In the Babylonian prayers we find the many-named
mother-goddess is invoked as "the mother who has begotten the black
heads." These at times were intentionally confused and confounded with
their elemental prototypes. Seven such races are described in the
Bundahish, or aboriginal creation, as the earth-men, the men of the
water, the breast-eared, the breast-eyed, the one-legged, the bat-men,
and the men with tails. These were the soulless people. They are also
referred to by Esdras as the other people who are nothing, "but be like
unto spittle"--that is, when compared with those who descended from the
father, as Adam, or Atum, on earth, and who worshipped a father, as
Atum, or Jehovah, in heaven. There were seven creations altogether;
seven heavens, which were planetary in their final phase, seven
creators, and seven races of men. And when the one God had been evolved
he was placed at the head of the Seven. Hence Ptah in Egypt was called
the Father of the fathers, who in India are known as the Seven Pitris.
So Ahura-Mazda, Ialdabaoth, or Jehovah, was placed first in the later
creation.

The chief of the Seven Ali = Elohim as supreme one of the group became
the Semitic Al or El, designated the highest god, who was the seventh as
Saturn; so that El and Jehovah - Elohim are identical in their
phenomenal origin, whilst El-Shadai is the same son of the old suckler
who was Typhon in Egypt and Tiamat in Assyria.

When in the second creation, and in the second chapter of Genesis,
Jehovah-Elohim forms man from the dust of the ground, and woman from the
bone of man, Jehovah is that one God who sums up in himself the seven
previous powers, precisely as they were totalled in Atum-Ra, Sevekh-Ra,
Agni, or Ahuramazda. He has been identified for us by name as one of the
seven Gnostic Elohim, their Iao, or Jehovah. This God appears by name in
the second chapter of the Book of Genesis, and yet in verse 26 of chapter

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iv, it is stated that "then began men to call upon the name of Jehovah."
And again the same God, apparently, is announced by name in Exodus vi.
3, where he affirms that he has not been known previously by the name of
Jah or Jehovah. But the difference between Jehovah-Elohim and Jah or Iao
is a fact which can only be determined by a knowledge of the phenomena.
The Jewish Kabalah and Gnosticism have never yet been grappled with or
discussed in relation to mythology and the rootage in nature. The
subject has only been nibbled at in a little grazing, with a
go-as-you-please, modern interpretation of the doctrines concerning
spirit and matter. The seven-fold one God is the same in origin, whether
known by name as Jehovah, Iao-Sabaoth, Sevekh the seven-fold, Ea the
fish with seven fins, Ra with seven souls, Agni with seven arms, the
Gnostic Chnubis or Heptaktis with seven rays, El of the Seventh Planet,
or the Dragon with seven heads.

But there is another Jah or Iao, who is the lunar divinity, and who was
that Duad of the mother and child which becomes a Triad as the child
grows into the consort for the same mother. It is more ancient than the
divine Fatherhood, and preceded the luni-solar trinity of father, mother
and son. This was the Moon-God who rode on the heavens by the name of
Jah! and in this phase the zoö-types were superseded by the human
likeness, and the God was imaged as one in the three-fold human
character, when time was reckoned by the mother-moon, the child-moon and
the virile new moon. The human family exalted to heaven as the divine
father, mother and child followed the recognition of the personal
fatherhood in sociology, and the knowledge that the lunar light was
derived from the sun. Just as this institution superseded the mother and
the brotherhood of the Totemic stage on earth, so was it in heaven. In
each phase the human sociology is reflected in the mirror of mythology.
One Jewish sign of this trinity, given by Bochart, is a circle
containing three yod letters, the numerical value of which is 30--or ten
days to each of three phases of the Moon. Another of the lunar types is
the Ass--the three-legged ass of the Bundahish. In the Egyptian
hieroglyphics the head of the ass is a sign for No. 30 on the same
ground; and on account of such typology the Jews were charged with being
worshippers of an ass. Thus the Elohim were the Seven Powers--elemental,
pre-planetary or planetary; Jehovah-Elohim was the sevenfold one as
supreme amongst the planetary Gods, and Jah is the three-fold lunar
Deity, the trinity in unity--in the likeness of the human family; these
were again combined in a totality that is ten-fold in the divine
fatherhood. Hence the Hebrew letter Yod, the sign of /ten,/ is a symbol
of the ineffable name of Iao, Jah, or Jehovah; thus the name of the Iao
can be expressed in Roman numerals by the 1 and 0, which figure the
number 10: and this figure of the ten-fold totality so made up is both
the heavenly man, called Adam Kadmon by the Kabalists, composed of what
they term the 10

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Sephiroth, and the Supreme Being worshipped by the whole of Christendom
today as the one God, supposed to have been made known by Divine
revelation to a Monotheistic race of men.

The Egyptian Aten will show us how and why the Jews could use the name
of Adon as an equivalent for that of Jah or the Yod, which has the
numerical value of 10. Aten as a title of /Highness/ is determined by
the numerical sign of 10, and therefore is an equivalent for I O, or Iao
of the ten-fold nature, unified at last in Aten or Adon as the Lord, who
was God of the 10 Tribes.

Such, to put briefly what I have elaborated elsewhere, was the origin in
natural phenomena, and such was the unity at last attained in a tenfold
totality by the Supreme One, the All, the unity not being initial but
final: /E pluribus unum/.

Mr. Gladstone's last and most pathetic plea--pitiful as a flag of
distress fluttering at the mast-head of a doomed vessel visibly going
down--is that the tale in Genesis is beautiful if not true! He says--"If
we view it as a popular narrative it is singularly vivid, forcible, and
effective; if we take it as a poem it is indeed sublime!" But the
question is--Is it false or true? Have we been deluded, misled, and
cheated? The essence of poetry even must be truth, and not falsehood,
however attractive; must not mislead us on the pretext of being a
revelation. The older I grow the faster I am losing my faith in all
lovely unrealities. Consider the effects of such false teaching! Only
the other day a child who had been taught that God made man out of the
dust of the earth was watching an eddying cloud of dust being whirled
into shape by the wind, when she cried, "Oh, mother, come here! Look! I
think God is creating another baby!" Our mental standpoint has been made
quite as childish with regard to other Beginnings. And from every pulpit
of the past we have been implored to remain as little children at the
mother's knee. We have been taught and compelled to surrender our
reason, doff our manhood and grovel like worms in the earth as the
successful mode of wriggling our way through this world into heaven. We
have been robbed by a thief in the night. Children have been cheated out
of their natural senses, and the mental emasculation of men has taken
the place of the physical once inculcated by the Christ (Math. xix. 12).
Men who are sane on most other subjects will give up all common sense on
this, and talk like intellectual lunatics. See how the teachers of the
people, who ought to have learned better for themselves, continue all
their life through to wear the cast-off vestments of ancient mythology.

Take Mr. Ruskin as another typical example. He is in many ways a most
diligent searcher after truth, and a worshipper of all things noble and
beautiful. But he was so profoundly infected by the falsehood made
religious to him in childhood as to be marked by it and mentally maimed
for life. In his "Modern Painters," he tells us that "man perished in
seeking knowledge," and "there is

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not any part of our nature, nor can there be through eternity,
uninfluenced or unaffected by the fall." 'Tis most painful to see such a
man, so human at heart, such a seer and lover of all loveliness
believing so damnable a lie, and endorsing it not only for his own
lifetime, but for so long as his writings may last, because it was told
to him in his own confiding childhood. It is good to waken the eyes of
men to the beautiful, but still better to lead them to the enduring
truth! So soon as my own eyes were opened wide enough to take in the
immense imposture that has been based upon mythology, I gave up my
chance of a seat upon the Mount of the Muses, and turned aside from the
proffered crown of poetry as a seeker after verifiable certitude. And
after all how can the picture of a divinised fool at the head of affairs
with so certain a break down in the beginning be beautiful when such a
representation reduces the drama of the whole universe into a most
pitiful one-act farce? Any God who demands the worship of fear would be
unworthy the service of love. Our modern Atheism is mainly the result of
this false Theism being torn up by the root to expose its godlessness.
Falsehood is always fraudulent; no matter how it may be poetized or
painted; no matter how religiously we have believed it true; or how long
we may have been imposed on by its fairness; and woe to the revelation
that is proved to be false! woe to the sphinx when her secret is at last
found out! It will then be her turn to be torn.

The Hebrew Pentateuch has not only retarded the growth of science in
Europe for eighteen centuries, but the ignorant believers in it as a
book of revelation have tried to strangle every science at its birth.
There could be and was but little or no progress in astronomy, geology,
biology, or sociology until its teachings were rejected by the more
enlightened among men--the free thinkers and demonstrators of the facts.
The progress has been in proportion to the repudiation; and, for myself,
the nearer I draw towards death the more earnestly--nay, vengefully--do
I resent the false teachings that have embittered my life--not for
myself only, but more for others, and most of all for the children.
Remember, the education of English children to-day is chiefly in the
hands of the orthodox teachers, who still give the Bible all the
preference over nature and science, and who will go on deluding the
innocent little ones as long as ever they are paid or permitted to do
so. But what a dastardly shame it is for us to allow the children to be
taught that which we know to be false, or do not ourselves believe to be
true! The present calls upon you with an appealing voice to protect the
unborn future against this terrible tyranny of the past. Do not any
longer let the winding-sheet of death be the swaddling-bands put on the
helpless little ones for life at their intellectual birth. It is
appalling to think of the populations that have already passed on
victimized, the lives that have been wrecked, the brains that have been
bruised, and the hearts broken of

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those who have dashed themselves against these barriers to human
progress and the freedom of thought, which were ignorantly erected and
then made sacred in the name of God, by means of this Hebrew Book of the
Beginnings; in short, by a literalisation of mythology.

/That/ should inspire one effort more,

Mightier than any made before.

The barrier-wall at last /shall/ fall;

The future /must/ be free for all!

_____________________

IN REPLY TO PROFESSOR A. H. SAYCE.

____

As an opponent of what may be termed the Aryan school of interpretation
it has been my special work to show that mythology is not a farrago of
foolish fables, nor the mere raving of words that have lost their
senses. I have amply demonstrated the fact that the myths were no mere
products of ancient ignorance, but are the deposited results of a
primitive knowledge; that they were founded upon natural phenomena and
remain the register of the earliest scientific observation. Those,
however, who have not yet learned that mythology contains the gnosis of
the earliest science, and is the great pre-historic record, are unable
to teach us anything fundamental concerning it. They cannot read the
record itself or verify it by continual reference to those natural
phenomena on which it is based, and by which the truth of the
interpretation has to be verified and tested. Without this foothold of
fact being firmly established mythology resolves itself into a bog
without a bottom.

It appears to me that Professor Sayce in his lectures on the Babylonian
Religions, is frequently dealing with matters which can only be fathomed
by the comparative process, and that it is misleading to compare the
ancient mythologies with the Egyptian omitted, whereas he rigorously
rejects any light from that source. No Mythological Religion can be
explained by itself alone. The comparative method is as the bringing
together of flint and steel to strike the first spark for the necessary
light. Without question or inquiry; without collecting and comparing the
data; without presenting his evidence for the assertion, he makes the
following authoritative declaration. "Apart from the general analogies
which we find in all early civilizations, the Script, the Theology and
the Astronomy of Egypt and Babylonia show no vestiges of a common
source." (Hib. Lect. p. 136.)

There may be a pitfall intended in these delusive words as the mythology
and so-called cosmology are entirely omitted. But you cannot have the
Astronomy apart from the Mythology by which it was represented! The
Prof. says further there is one conclusive and fatal objection to the
derivation from Egypt "inasmuch as there is no traceable connection
between the hieroglyphics of Egypt and the primitive pictures out of
which the cuneiform characters were developed." Professor Sayce is an
expert and an authority passably orthodox, whose word will be taken for
gospel by those who are not qualified to question it. I am not an
acknowledged authority. I can only plead that my facts may have a
hearing. Without knowing the facts we cannot attain the truth, and short
of the fullest truth there is no final authority. The Egyptian
hieroglyphics were developed out of the same primitive pictures and
natural objects as the Akkadian. Both were direct transcripts from
nature at first, and there is but one origin in nature for the earliest
figures. Again he says: "If Lepsius were right (in maintaining the
opposite view) the primitive hieroglyphics out of

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which the cuneiform characters were evolved would offer resemblances to
the hieroglyphics. But this is not the case. Even the idea of divinity
is represented differently in them. In Chaldea it is expressed by an
eight-rayed star; in Egypt, by a stone-headed axe" (p. 435).

That is true; and yet in the sole illustration adduced by him the
Professor is wrong! The evidence of the first witness called is against
the truth of his vaguely vast generalization. The star with the eight
rays is likewise an Egyptian ideograph of divinity; it is a numerical
figure for the Nunu or Associate Gods. (Burton E.H. 34.) This is the
sign of the pleroma of the godhead, the divine ogdoad. It was continued
as a symbol of Horus-Orion, the manifestor of the Eight, the
mummy-constellation of the only one who rose again! The eight-rayed sign
was also a symbol of Hathor and of Taht because, like the eight-rayed or
eight-looped star, it was the numerical figure of the eight gods, hence
it was the sign of the Abode as Hathor, and the manifestor as Taht-Smen;
as it is of Ishtar and of Assur. The Egyptians not only used this octave
of divinity, they also give us the reason for using it. This numerical
sign of the primary group of eight gods was not continued as the symbol
of abstract divinity, and it is rare, but still it exists to refute the
Professor, who has to plumb far more profoundly before he touches
bottom. The five-rayed star, Seb, is likewise the hieroglyphic symbol
for a god or divinity, so that the Professor's suggested inference is
false twice over. It will never do to presume too much on the common
ignorance concerning the buried past of Egypt, the rootage out of range,
and the long development of the original ideographs. For example, the
Egyptian pictograph of a soul is a human-headed bird, and that type is
continued when the Babylonian dead are described as being clad like
birds in a garment of feathers. Notwithstanding Mr. Sayce's offhand
dicta it will be seen in the future that Egypt was as truly the parent
of hieroglyphics as she is of alphabets! But to show the Professor's
determination to avoid Egypt: after pointing to the fact that the
statues from Telloh bear a great likeness to the Egyptian in the time of
the pyramid builders; and after admitting that the Egyptian art of
sculpture was infinitely superior to the Babylonian at that time,--he
quietly suppresses Egypt altogether on behalf of an entirely unknown
"school of sculpture in the Sinaitic peninsula!" (P. 138.) Anything
rather than look Egypt honestly in the face!

The Professor is so anxious to hustle unacceptable facts out of sight
and get rid of their testimony, he asserts that the existence of a
"Cushite race" in Chaldea solely depends on a misinterpretation and a
probable corruption of the text in the Book of Genesis. But Cush is the
black. The Cushites were the Black race; and the aborigines of Babylonia
were the Black men of the monuments, the "black-heads" of the Akkadian
Texts. Hence the god Kus, their deity of eclipse and darkness. The
Professor is all hind-before with regard (or disregard) to the origins
in the black land, the primeval birthplace. He is not yet out of the Ark
of the Semitic or the shadow of the Aryan beginnings, which have so
darkened and deluded us; and has to advance backwards a good deal
further beyond the Altaic boundaries.

As I have already shown in the "Natural Genesis," the beginnings of
mythology in Egypt and Akkad are definitely identical. The Old Dragon of
Chaos and the Abyss is the same whether called Tiamat, Tavthe, or
Typhon. By Typhon I mean the beast that imaged the first Great Mother,
hippopotamus in front and crocodile behind, who therefore is the Dragon
of Egypt. Her name of Tep, Teb, or Tept is the original of Typhon.
Tiamat=Tavthe represents that abyss of the beginning which is the
Egyptian Tepht. This Tepht is the abyss, the source, the void, the hole
of the snake, the habitat of the dragon, the outrance or uterus of birth
as place which preceded personification. Another name for the abyss is
Abzu, the earlier form of which is the Egyptian Khepsh in the
north--that is, the Pool of Khep, the hippopotamus or Typhon=Dragon.
Tept and Tavthe are one, the water-horse and dragon-horse are one. In
both forms they give birth to the well-known seven primal powers,
elemental energies, or demons of physical force, first recognised as
warring in

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chaos, who were afterwards cast out and superseded, or moralised as the
seven wicked spirits. When the primary powers become the seven evil
spirits, it is said of them, "They are not known among the sentient
gods." So in Egypt the same seven were denounced as the non-sentient
"Children of inertness." And just as the Akkadian seven were continued
and made the messengers and ministers of wrath to the supreme God, Anu,
so did the Egyptian seven survive as the seven great spirits in the
service of Ra; their station being in the region of the Great Bear, the
constellation of their mother. (Rit., ch. 17.)

This mother-goddess first brought forth in space and next in time. If we
take the star of evening and morning as the type of the earliest time,
then the mother Tiamat passes into Ishtar, goddess of the evening and
the morning star. The dragon Tiamat was called the Bis-Bis, identified
by George Smith with the crocodile as the symbol of Egypt; and
Ishtar=Venus, the "Lady of Dawn," was called Bis-bisi, which shows the
survival of the same genetrix in her change of character out of space
into time. Another proof of this continuity by transformation is
furnished when Ishtar as Queen of Heaven (so rendered by Mr. Sayce)
called herself the "Unique Monster" (p. 267.) Precisely in the same way
do we see the Typhonian genetrix Ta-Urt in Egypt pass into Hes-ta-Urt
(whence Hestaroth or Ashtaroth) and Hathor, when the domesticated cow
succeeded the water-cow as the Zoötype of Hes, As (Isis), or of Hathor,
the Lunar form of the Goddess of Love, in whose person the beast was
transfigured into the beauty.

According to ancient tradition, the culture of Chaldea was brought to
that country by a Fish-Man, who rose up in "the first year," from that
part of the Red or "Erythræan Sea which borders upon Babylonia." The
original of this type can be identified in Ea the fish-god, deity of the
house of the deep and divinity of wisdom. Whence came Ea, then, by the
Red Sea? Lepsius says from Egypt--so says Egypt herself.

Professor Sayce had previously denied our right to compare the myths of
two different nations before their relationships have been established
by language, and that by grammar (which is late), in preference to the
vocabulary. Thus mythology is put out of court, and words are to be
accounted of no weight. Still, it is well to remember that the Professor
has before now taken his stand on a false bottom that was found to be
crumbling under foot day by day! It is at least suggestive to find that
the name and nature of Ea, the oldest Akkadian form of the One God, may
be so fully explained by the Egyptian Uâ (later /Ea/) for the one, the
one alone, isolated as the only one; also the Thinker and the Captain of
the Boat. It should be premised that the Egyptian U preceded the letter
or sound of E, hence Ua=Ea. The Egyptian Ua, which passed into Ea, also
appears in the Akkadian Ua for the Supreme One, the sole Lord or Chief.
In one form Ea is the fish-god, and the hieroglyphic sign for Ua=Ea is
fishing-tackle! Ea was the deity of the deep, and Ua=Ea is Boat and
Captain both. Of course the fish was the earlier image, but the
Egyptians had gone far ahead in substituting the work of their own hands
for the primitive natural types. Ea is the wise god, the thinker and
instructor; and /Uaua /(Eg.) means to think, consider, meditate. Ea's
prototype in the indefinitely earlier mythology of Egypt is Num=Kneph,
whose twofold nature is indicated by the two ways of spelling one name.
As Num he is Lord of the inundation; as Kneph he is the Breath of those
who are in the firmament. Nef signifies breath, and is also the name of
the sailor. Ea is god of the watercourse and the atmosphere. Ea was the
Antelope of the deep; Num was the bearded He-goat; the Sea-goat of the
Zodiac. One type of Num is the serpent; as it is of Ea. Ea is said to
represent the House, which is â in Egyptian. In a case of this kind
Professor Sayce can only perceive or will only admit a "general analogy."

Egyptian also offers the likeliest original for the name of Oan or
Oannes, the Greek form of Ea, the fish, seeing that Ua=Oa, and that An
is the fish in Egyptian; whilst An, to appear, to show, is determined by
the fish in the water-precinct, where the fish is the revealer who
emerged from the waters as Ea-an, or Oannes. (Denkmäler 3, 46 C.) If the
original Fish-Man came

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from Egypt, it would probably be as the Crocodile=Dragon, the Typhonian
type of both the ancient mother and her son Sevekh. The crocodile /is
/the fish that passes the day on dry land and the night in the waters.
Its name of Sevekh is identical with that of the number seven; and Ea is
connected with a typical fish of seven fins (?). The crocodile, as
Plutarch tells us, was a supreme type of the one God, or, as the name
shows, of the seven-fold powers in one image. Sevekh was the same good
demon of one Cult in Egypt that Num-Ra was in the other, but
indefinitely earlier.

To my apprehension, the Babylonian "House of the Seven bonds of heaven
and earth," is identical with the "House of the Seven Halls and Seven
stairways," assigned to Osiris; and the God Nebo as stellar, lunar, and
planetary Deity; as prophet and proclaimer, is identical with Sut-Anup
(later Nub and Anubis) in a dozen different aspects; whilst Nebo-Nusku =
the double Anubis. Further, the same Great Mother who was Venus as
Hathor became the mother-moon. Professor Sayce seems to think that where
the moon is male it cannot also be female. If I am right, Ishtar must
also have had a lunar character as the Mother-Goddess. But Professor
Sayce makes the point-blank assertion that Ishtar was not a goddess of
the moon. (P. 256.) "The moon was conceived of as a God, not as a
Goddess." He assures us that Ishtar was the spirit of earth and the
Goddess of Love, the dual divinity of the planet Venus. But there is no
male moon without the female Goddess. It is not a question of
"Conception," but of begettal. The observers were concerned with the
lunar phases as natural facts, the mother or reproducing phase being
first. The mother Goddess brought forth the Child of light, whether as
Taht, Khunsu, Duzu, Tammuz, or Horus, and there is no lunar myth
possible without the motherhood, which preceded the fatherhood. The
child of the moon in one phase is her consort in the other. Thus when
Ishtar makes up to Izdubar, the solar god who represents the later
fatherhood, he twits her on the subject of her child-consort, the
bridegroom of her youth, whom she had so long pursued, like Venus wooing
Adonis. In the legend of Tammuz and Ishtar the Goddess, in descending to
the underworld in search of her bridegroom, passes through seven gates.
In each of these she is stripped of a part of her glory, represented as
her ornaments. On her return she ascends through seven other gates, when
her ornaments are restored to her, both being done according to ancient
rules. These gates are the 14 lower lunar mansions in which the lunar
Osiris was torn into 14 parts by Typhon, the Power of darkness, when
Isis descended in search of her beloved. They likewise coincide with the
14 houses of judgment and the 14 trials in the Egyptian Book of the
Dead, which will explain the tests and punishments of the Goddess as the
pre-solar type of the suffering and triumphing souls who had to win
their crown of justification in these 14 trials. Besides which one of
Ishtar's titles is that of Goddess Fifteen, because that is the day of
mid-moon in a soli-lunar month of 30 days. Professor Sayce leaves this
title unnoticed, and then denies that Ishtar was a goddess of the moon!
Moreover, there is another test to be applied in natural phenomena. The
Goddess in her Course is credited with various infidelities. Not only is
she charged with having clung year after year to her child-consort
Tammuz, as the Bridegroom, amongst her victims are the Eagle (Alala) the
Lion, the Horse, Tabulu the shepherd, and Isullanu, the gardener. These,
as I read the Mythos, refer to certain constellations, corner-keepers or
others, to be found in the lunar course, which cannot apply to the
planet Venus or to the Spirit of the earth. A sign of the lunar
reckoning may be read in the statement that Ishtar rode the horse with
whip and spur for seven leagues galloping, or during one quarter of the
moon. Another lunar sign may be seen in the statement that Ishtar had
also torn out the teeth of the Lion seven by seven, or for seven nights
together, in her passage through the Lion-quarter of the moon; Eagle,
Horse (Pegasus?), and Lion must probably stand for three of the four
quarters of a lunar zodiac. Also the Errand of Ishtar corresponds to the
descent of Isis into the underworld in search of Osiris, who was torn
into 14 parts, and Isis was the lunar Goddess. Moreover, Ishtar robbed
her lover, Isullanu, of his eye, and

136

in his blindness mocked him; just as Horus and Samson were each robbed
of an eye. Lastly, the Bow was lunar and Ishtar was Goddess of the Bow.
Here, as elsewhere, we are left utterly adrift if we cannot secure a
firm anchorage in the various natural phenomena themselves, by which the
types of divinity must be determined. Professor Sayce acknowledges his
inability to account for the name of Ishtar. "Its true etymology was
buried in the night of antiquity." "It is therefore quite useless to
speculate on the subject." (P. 257.) And so, of course, there is an end
of it, the last word being said. It is just possible, however, that
Egypt, from which the Professor looks religiously away, has something
final yet to say on these matters. Not perhaps by such interpretation as
Mr. Renouf's. Professor Sayce admits that Ishtar appears as Esther in
the Book of Esther. Here it is Hadassah who figures in the mythical
character of Ishtar as the virgin dedicated or betrothed during twelve
months. Whether the typical character is thus continued or not, it is
the fact that the word "Shtar"* is the Egyptian name of the Betrothed
female, and Shta denotes that which is most mystical, secret, and holy,
the very mother of mystery. Ishtar was the betrothed of Tammuz; she was
called the "Bridal Goddess," the goddess who was mystically betrothed to
the child that grew up to become her own Consort. She remained the
Mother of Mystery. Thus Ishtar=Venus, the goddess of love, was the Shtar
or Betrothed, as the pre-monogamic consort or bride, /i.e.,/ the "bridal
goddess," who is denounced in Revelation as the Great Harlot.

Again, it appears to me that much of what I have already said of Horus,
of Taht, of Khunsu, Apollo, and other forms of the soli-lunar hero is
applicable not only to Mithras but to Merodach, and to an Assyrian god
called Adar (provisionally). I may claim to have discovered the origin
of this particular mythical character through seeking the foundations in
natural phenomena. Adar is a solar hero who is especially related to
night and darkness, and yet is a deity of light. He is a warrior and
champion of the gods. He is the voice or supreme oracle of the
divinities. He is the son, the messenger, the revealer of the Solar god
hidden in the deep of the underworld. In other features he is like Taht
and Khunsu, each of whom is the visible representative, the revealer, of
the sun-god by night. Adar was designated "Lord of the date," just as
Taht was called "Lord of the date-palm." Adar was likewise "Lord of the
Pig," just as Khunsu is the personified lord over the pig of Typhon in
the disk of the moon at full (Zodiac of Denderah). This is the god who,
as Adonis, was slain by the pig or boar at one season of the year, but
who was victor over it in the first of the six upper signs, which is the
sign of Pisces in the Zodiac of Denderah.† This same character is
continued in Tammuz, the deity who was first brought forth by the mother
alone, to become her consort, the only one of a twofold nature; and who
was made the later revealer of a Father in heaven as the child of the
solar god when reborn as such of the mother-moon. The month of Tammuz in
the Aramaic calendar is (roughly) our month of June. This is the month
of Duzu in the Assyrian calendar. In the Egyptian it was the month
Mesore, as June in the sacred year, the month of the re-birth of the
river and of the child Horus, who was re-born (Mes) of the river at the
re-birth of the Inundation. In the pre-Osirian Mythos the child was the
representative of Tum and to be the re-born (Mes) Tum or the child of
Tum, as was Iu-em-hept, the Eternal Word, would be renderable as Tum-mus
or Messu, just as Ra-messu means the child of the solar god, although I
am not aware that Tum does appear under that form of name, and I am
supposing that Tammuz was a development from the Egyptian Tum. For this
reason! We are told in the texts‡ that Tum is the duplicate of
Aten=Adon=Adonai; and Adon = Tammuz. Aten was the child-God; Tum was the
father. This child of the sun-god was always born in the moon as the
solar light of the world by night, the son of the Spirit of the deep who
was the hidden sun in the under-world. He is pourtrayed in the disk of
the full-moon both as Horus (or Tum-mes) and

___________________________________________________________________________________________


* Champollion. Gram : 1292. † Macrobius, Saturn. 121. ‡ Records 4.95.

137

Khunsu (Planisphere and Zodiacs of Denderah). Now, when the actual
deluge began with the sun in the sign of the Beetle (later Crab), and in
the month of Tammuz or Mesore, the moon rose at full in the sign of the
sea-goat, and the child was therefore reborn of the full moon in that
sign, and so on through the three water signs, which are consequently
solar on one side of the Zodiac and lunar on the other! Rightly read
this absolutely proves the Egyptian origin of the signs set in heaven in
relation to the Inundation, the lunar zodiac being first, and identifies
the child of Tum as the original of the Akkadian Dumu-zi-Apzu, and of
the Semite "Timmuz (or Dimmuz) of the Flood;"* not Noah's unfortunate
deluge, but the inundation of the Nile, the deluge that began in the
month Mes-Horus or Tum-Mes=Tammuz, and culminated at the autumn equinox
as it always has done, and did this year. The Akkadian name of the month
Tammuz is Su-Kul-na, "seizer of seed," and to explain that we must go
back to the sign of the Beetle set above by the Egyptians, because the
beetle Khepr began to roll up his seed at that time to preserve it from
the coming flood. The Beetle is the sign of Cancer in the oblong Zodiac
of Denderah.

Professor Sayce's account of Tammuz and Ishtar shows neither gauge nor
grip of the real subject matter. He tells us that Adonis=Tammuz was
"slain by the Boar's Tusk of Winter," and his "funeral-festival" was
held in June because the "bright Sun of the springtide was then slain
and withered by the hot blasts of summer" (pp. 227-9). But here is the
true rendering as restored according to the Egyptian myth, which was
extant in the pre-monumental times of the Shus-en-Har, who are claimed
to have been the Rulers for 13,000 years before the time of Menes. The
Solar God as Source of Life was re-born in natural phenomena, as his own
child the Horus of Light in the Moon; the Child of the Lotus in the
Water; the Seed as the Bread of Life in the Corn. In each phase he was
opposed by Sut-Typhon in the form of Darkness, Drought, or Death.
Previous to the Inundation he was pierced by Sut in the parching
Drought. Then it was the errand of Isis as of Ishtar to fetch the Water
of Life. This she did as the Lunar Mistress of the Water. At the birth
of the River in Mesore-Tammuz, the Moon rose at full in the first Lunar
Water-sign, whither she had gone for the Water of Life in the
under-world--or, astronomically, entered the lowest signs. Here is one
proof. Papsukal is the Regent of Capricorn, the first water-sign, and he
is the messenger that hurries off to the Sun-God (who is certainly not
the dead Tammuz!) with the news of Ishtar's arrival in search of the
Fountain of Life.

Isis in her search was accompanied by Anup, her golden dog; and in the
Hermean Zodiac Anup is stationed in the sign of the Sea-Goat, where he
is shaking the Systrum of Isis to frighten away the Typhonian
influences.--(Plutarch.) Here is additional evidence. When the Moon rose
at full in these three signs they represented the Waters of Life to
Egypt, in accordance with the then flowing Inundation of the Nile; but
when the Sun itself entered the sign of Capricorn, in winter, the
passage became the /"Crossing of the Waters of Death," /for the Solar
God, or the Souls in the Eschatological phase. Hence the typical "Two
Waters" of the Egyptian Mythos, called the Pools of the North and South.
My contention is, that the imagery thus set in heaven to reflect the
seasons on earth was Egyptian from the first, and that it can only be
rightly read in the original version according to time and season in Egypt.

Professor Sayce makes the perplexing assertion that "the month of Tammuz
was called in the Akkadian Calendar 'the month of the Errand of
Ishtar.'" But the month /Ki-Innanna /(formerly read Ki-Gingir-na), the
message of Nanna or Ishtar, is /Ululu, /two months later than Tammuz;
and the message of Ishtar, as Virgo, in August, is not to be converted
into the legend of her descent into Hades in June, when the Sun was in
Cancer and the full Moon was in Capricorn.

Merodach represents the Sun in Scorpio, as the deity of that sign, but this

___________________________________________________________________________________________


* Sayce, p. 233.

138

does not mean that he is the Sun itself! In the Egyptian mythos it was
as the Sun in Scorpio that Osiris was betrayed to his death by Typhon.
Then his son, Horus=Merodach, was reborn of the Moon in the Bull, the
first of the six upper signs, to become the avenger of his victimised
father! Thus as heir-apparent of the Solar God, the Hero comes to the
aid of the Moon during an eclipse, and overcomes the Dragon of Darkness.

This revealer of the father-god in natural phenomena, under whatsoever
name, is supremely important as the mythical character that supplied the
type to current Christology. When the scientific fact was first
discovered the doctrine of a divine trinity, consisting of father,
mother, and child, was then established. The child was the light of the
sun, his father being the hidden source in the underworld, his mother
the moon, as reproducer of that light. This reflex image of the father's
glory, his light of the world by night, the representative of his power
in the six upper signs, whilst the sun was in the six lower signs, is
the child as Horus, as the re-born Tum=Tum-mes, Tammuz, Apollo,
Merodach, the hero, the warrior against the dragon, and the powers of
darkness at night or during the lunar eclipse, the Masu, the anointed,
the only begotten, furnished by the past as a factor in the theology of
the present, which meets with no recognition whatsoever from Professor
Sayce, or from any other writers on mythology who are known to me.

Except in the technique of his scholarship, one sees but little sign
that the professor has thought out his far-reaching subject
fundamentally. For example, Berossos repeats a Babylonian description of
nature, which he distinctly affirms to have been allegorical. The
professor admits (p. 392) that these "composite creatures were really
the offspring of Totemism"; that is, they were symbolical Zoötypes. And
yet he can say of them, "we may see (in these) a sort of anticipation of
the Darwinian hypothesis"! But men with wings, two heads, and horses'
feet, centaurs, mermaids, and sphinxes, belong to a mythical mode of
representing ideas, not to "imperfect, first attempts of nature," in
accordance with the doctrine of development. Such confusion of thought
is likely to make the truth of the matter doubly indistinguishable.
Again, he tells us that "the god was a beast before he became a man,"
whereas he means that the primary forces recognised in nature first were
represented by Zoötypes before the superhuman powers were imaged in the
human likeness. He does not define what he means by "worship" or
"religion" when he imports these terms into the remoter past, and thus
sets up a false standard of judgment. Worship of the heavenly bodies was
nothing more than the looking up to them as the tellers of time, even
though they may be called oracles! The Kronian gods were only types of
time in a world without clocks and watches. He speaks of theological
conceptions becoming mythical, whereas the mythical representation
preceded the theological phase. He can "find no trace of
ancestor-worship in the early literature of Chaldea" (p. 358). But I
doubt whether a man who resolves the Dæmon of Socrates into an
Intuition, can know how or where to look for the proof. He tells us the
earliest Babylonian religion was purely Shamanistic, only the spirits it
recognised were not spirits in "our sense of the word," whichever sense
that may be! Now Shamanism is the most primitive kind of Spiritualism,
but it includes human spirits as well as the elementals; and as human
spirits include the spirits of ancestors, and as Mul-lil is the Lord of
ghost-world, and Nergal is the god of apparitions, called the Khadhi
(which agrees with the Egyptian Khati for the dead), then the Shamanism
of Babylonia must have included a worship of ancestors! The
non-evolutionist cannot truly interpret the past for us, even when
reinforced by the non-spiritualist.

It matters little to me that Professor Sayce should ignore my work, but
it does matter greatly to him that he should have to ignore all the
facts which are fatal to his assumptions. He cannot get rid of the facts
by thus ignoring them. He cannot establish a negation by closing his
eyes to all that is positively

139

opposed to his conclusions. In trying to do so he has blindly shut out
all that Egypt had to say and show and suggest. That simple policy was
practised long ago by the ostrich, and the ruse is generally
acknowledged to have proved a preposterous failure. As the
superstructure of Assyriology is now reared and settling down securely
upon fixed foundations, I am willing to discuss the matters here mooted
in the press or debate with Professor Sayce upon the platform, where I
will undertake to demonstrate the common origin of the mythological
astronomy, and prove that the Egyptian is the primeval parent of the
Babylonian. Meanwhile the foregoing pages and the following comparative
list (not to say anything of the "Natural Genesis") contain a sufficient
answer to his declaration that the two have nothing in common but
general analogies:--

EGYPTIAN.

	

BABYLONIAN.

/Tepht, /the abyss

	

= /Tavthe, /the abyss.

/Khepsh, /pool of hippopotamus.

	

= /Abzu, /the deep.

/Bau, /the hole or void.

	

= /Bahu, /the void personified.

/Tep, /Typhon, the dragon.

	

= /Tavthe /= /Tiamat, /the dragon.

/Matut, /Storm-God.

	

= /Matu, /Storm-God.

/Isis as the Scorpion./

	

= /Ishtar as the Scorpion./

/Triad of Isis, Nephtys, and Horus./

	

= /Triad of Ishtar, Tillil, and Tammuz./

/Ra, /God of the Double House.

	

= /Ea, /God of the House.

/Five Celestials/ born of Seb.

	

= /Five Anúnas, /or spirits of heaven.

/Seven evil spirits./

	

= /Seven evil spirits./

/Seven servants of Ra./

	

= /Seven servants of Anu./

/The Nunu, /8 gods or spirits.

	

= /The Anúnus, /or 8 spirits of earth.

/The Put Circle of 9 Spirits, /or gods of

	

= /The Igigi, /9 spirits of heaven.

heaven.

	

 

/Num, /god of the deep and inundation,

	

= /Ea, /god of the deep and the "good

and the "good wind."

	

wind."

/Ua = Ea, /the captain.

	

= /Ea, /god of the boat.

/Hathor, /the white heifer.

	

= /Ishtar, /the white heifer.

/Shetar, /the betrothed.

	

= /Ishtar, /the "bridal goddess."

/Anup, /the announcer.

	

= /Nebo, /the announcer.

/Double Anubis./

	

= /Nebo and Nusku./

/Taht-Khunsu./

	

= /Adar./

/Horus/ (luni-solar hero).

	

= /Merodach./

/Tum as Aten or the Messu./

	

= /Tammuz./

/Kek, /god of darkness.

	

= /Kus, /god of darkness.

 

	

 

/Â, /moon, lunar divinity.

	

= /Â, /lunar divinity.

/Khekh, /a spirit.

	

= /Igigi, /spirits.

/Rupa, /the prince.

	

= /Rubu, /the prince.

/Nerau, /the chief, the victor.

	

= /Nerra, /the victor.

/Ser, /chief, head.

	

= /Sar, /king.

/Tabu, /great bear or hippopotamus.

	

= /Dabu, /the great bear or hippopotamus.

GERALD MASSEY.

P.S.--By the by, is Professor Sayce equally certain that he is correct
in his dates of precession? He gives the entrance of the vernal equinox
into the signs of the Bull and Ram as being about the years, 4,700 and
2,500 B.C. I found that Cassini and other astronomers gave the figures
4,565 and 2,410 B.C. And from data kindly supplied to me by the present
Astronomer Royal from independent calculations made at Greenwich, these
were the dates, corroborated and confirmed.

140

THE DEVIL OF DARKNESS

IN THE

LIGHT OF EVOLUTION.

===============

/(Fuller Egyptian and Gnostic Data, with references to authorities, may/

/be found in the Author's "Natural Genesis."/

===============

There are two things which I have come to look upon as constituting the
/unpardonable /sin of the father and mother against the helpless
innocence of infancy. The one is in allowing their little children to
run the risk of blood-poisoning--such as was once suffered by a child of
mine--from the /filthy fraud of vaccination. /The other is in permitting
the mind and soul of their children to be inoculated with the still more
fatal virus of the old, false, orthodox dogmas and delusions, by
allowing them to believe that the fables of ancient mythology are the
sacred and solely true "Word of God," if they are found in the Hebrew
Scriptures--the one book of the religiously ignorant. Generation after
generation we learn, unlearn, and relearn the same lying, legendary
lore, and it takes the latter half of all one's lifetime to throw off
the mass of corrupting error instilled into us during the earlier half,
even when we do break out and slough it off in a mental eruption, and
/have /to find ourselves in utter rebellion against things as they are.
Unfortunately, the mass of people never do get rid of this infection,
nor of the desire to give their disease to others.

The fact of the matter is, the Christian dogmas and doctrines began as
such with being unintelligible and inexplicable; they were to remain as
mysteries; and any true explanation of them is death to their false
pretentions. It is my method to explode by explaining them. Take the
doctrine of the Trinity for example. Can any theologian throughout all
Christendom to-day give us any intelligible account of its origin and
primary meaning? Not one. For that we must go to mythology, which was
earlier than our theology, and which alone enables us to explain its
primitive

141

mysteries. The natural genesis of the Trinity was found, and is to be
refound, in lunar phenomena. The moon, in mythology and chronology, was
a time-measurer of a three-fold nature. At fifteen days of age, or
full-moon, it was the mother-moon. Hence Ishtar, in Akkad, is designated
Goddess 15. The lessening, waning moon was her little one, the child of
the moon, who became the virile one, the adult, as the horned new moon,
the reproducer who was fabled to rebeget himself on the mother moon, and
thus become his own father, as a natural mode of describing natural
phenomena.

These three /are /eternally /one/ in external nature--a Trinity always
manifesting monthly, and the triple aspect was humanly, or naturally,
expressed by means of the mother, child, and reproducing male, which
three are also one in the total human being. In the Christian
Iconography, you will sometimes see the Virgin Mary enthroned in the new
moon, with the child in her arms, and these two, with the horned or
phallic moon, constitute the Christian Trinity in Unity. Such was the
primitive mode of thinking in things, afterwards continued in a mystical
or doctrinal phase. /Such, /I affirm to be the /origin/ of the Trinity
in mythology, which preceded religion; and when this is applied
abstractly, to the nature of deity, or to mind in nature, by means of
metaphysic, the result is an imposition, and he or she who practices
imposition, consciously or not, is an impostor. No such thing can be
known as a triune or triangular God; but we are able to show how such
types originated. When our words are examined, we shall frequently find
that our metaphysic has been abstracted, or falsely filched from
primitive physics, as was the Trinity by Plato, which was continued by
the Christian Fathers, who tell us that but for Plato they would never
have understood the doctrine of the Trinity. As with the Trinity, so it
is with the origin of the theological Devil. The crucial question of the
savage man, Friday, was too fundamental for the theology of Robinson
Crusoe. Friday asks, "But, if God much strong, much mighty as the devil,
why God no kill the devil, and so make him no more wicked?" Crusoe,
imitating other theologists, not knowing what to say, "pretended not to
hear him." (I am told this passage has been omitted from certain recent
editions.) To give an answer to that question we shall have to go round
to work. It would never do to begin a lecture on this subject like the
well-known chapter headed "Snakes in Iceland," which consisted of the
statement, "there are no snakes in Iceland!" If I did, my lecture might
be summed up in the words, "there is no devil." But every belief,
superstition, and mental type, had its natural genesis once, the devil
included.

The result of 14 years' research in the Records of the Past is a
personal conviction that the human mind has long suffered an eclipse,
and been darkened and dwarfed in the shadow of ideas, the real meaning
of which has been lost to the moderns! Myths and allegories, whose
significance was once unfolded to the initiates in

142

the ancient mysteries, have been adopted in ignorance, and re-issued as
real truths divinely vouchsafed to mankind for the first and only time
when found in the Hebrew writings! The earlier religions had their myths
interpreted by means of the oral and unwritten Wisdom. We have ours
/misinterpreted; /and a great deal of what has been imposed upon us as
God's direct, true, and sole revelation to man, is a mass of /inverted
myths, /under the shadow of which men have been cowering as timorously
as birds in the stubble, when a kite in the shape of a hawk is held
hovering overhead to keep them down; as I have seen it practised in
England!

The parables and types of the primeval thinkers have been elevated to
the "Sphere," as the "hawk," or "serpent," the "bull," or the "crab,"
that give names to certain groups of stars, and we are precisely in the
same relationship to these religious parables and allegories as we
should be to astronomical facts, if we thought the serpent and bull,
lion, sea-goat, and ram were real animals up in heaven, instead of
constellations with symbolical names. The Jews picked up various
traditions of other races. Moses, they tell us, was an initiate in all
the learning of the Egyptians. And these myths have been so handled as
to efface their primitive features altogether. They have been so
"sweated" down, by later theologies, to make capital--get gold-dust, as
it were, out of them--that they can only be recognised by comparison
with the earlier copies yet extant among other nations, from which the
Jews derived their versions.

Fossil remains, found in the lowermost strata of human thought, have
been preserved as divine patterns for the ignorant and superstitious of
later ages. The simple realities of the earliest times were expressed by
signs and symbols, and these have been taken and applied to later
thought, and converted into theological problems and metaphysical
mysteries, for which our theologians have no basis whatever, and can
only wrangle over /en l'air; /they cannot touch solid earth with one
foot when they want to kick opponents with the other; and when they try
to bite you very viciously they find that they have only been furnished
with a set of teeth that are false. The only possible way of exposing
the false pretensions of theological dogmas is by explaining them from
the root, and showing what they meant as mythos. The orthodox teaching
which is founded on the "Fall of Man," is shattered, even as a pane of
glass is fractured at a blow, when once we can apply the Doctrine of
Development.

The Hebrew devil, or Satan, means the opponent or adversary, and the
first great natural adversary recognised by primitive man was
Darkness--simply darkness, the constant and eternal enemy of the
light--that is, the power of darkness was literal before it became
metaphorical, moral, or spiritual.

Hence darkness itself was the earliest devil or adversary, the
obstructor and deluder of man, the eternal enemy of the sun. We

143

speak of the "jaws of darkness;" and darkness was the vast, huge,
swallower of the light, night after night. We know this was identified
as the primary power, because the primitive or early man reckoned time
by nights, and the years by Eclipses. This mode of reckoning was first
and universal. So many darks preceded so many days. The dark power is
primarily in all the oldest traditions and cults of the human race.
Hence sacrifice was first offered to the powers of darkness. The
fore-words of universal mythology are "there was darkness." All was dark
at first within the mind; and the /all was/ the /darkness/ that created
dread without. The influence of night, the eclipse, and the black
thunder-cloud being first felt, the primitive man visibly emerges from
the shadow of darkness as deeply impressed and indelibly dyed in mind as
was his body with its natural blackness. The black man without was
negroid within, as his reflection remains in the mirror of mythology.
The darkness then, in natural phenomena, was the original devil that put
out the light by swallowing it incessantly, as the subtle enemy, the
obstructor, deluder, and general adversary of man. The first form of the
Devil was female, called the Dragon of Darkness, who was Tiamat in
Akkad, and Typhon in Egypt. Typhon gave birth to Sut, who became the
Egyptian devil--our Satan--and who was represented by the Black jackal,
the voice of Darkness; and Sut, the black one, gives us the name of
Soot, the black thing. Angro-Mainyus, the Persian devil, was the black
one of the two powers of Light and Darkness.

Primitive man, however, did not imagine or personify a devil behind
visible phenomena, that caused the darkness. Darkness itself was the
devil, and even as late as the Parsee Bundahish (which means the
aboriginal creation) external darkness is the devil.

The seven devils or seven heads of the old Dragon, in the Akkadian myths
of creation, are born in the mountains of sunset, which shows the same
natural genesis in physical phenomena. They had their /birth-place/
where the sun went down. At the same place, in the West, the Egyptians
stationed the Great Crocodile that swallowed down the lights, sun, moon,
and stars, as they set each night, in its wide-open jaws of darkness.
Hence the crocodile was an ideograph of the swallowing darkness--and of
earth, or the waters below, called the Abyss; and the tail of the
crocodile remained in the Egyptian hieroglyphics as the sign of
Kam--that is, of blackness or darkness. The crocodile was the typical
Dragon of the waters below, the old Typhon, as the serpent was of the
waters, or overwhelming darkness, above. Hor-Apollo tells us the
Egyptians represent the mouth by a serpent, because the serpent is all
mouth. This was another figure of the swallower, as the Akhekh and the
Apap serpent. Akhekh signifies darkness, and Apap means that which rises
up vast and gigantic--in short, the monster--the typical Apap being
based on the great African rock-snake. Here, then, is the reason why the
mythical dragon and the

144

old serpent are identical or interchangeable in mythology, each being a
representative of the devil of darkness and of Satan, that old serpent,
who imaged the evil which was first perceived in physical phenomena. Out
of the darkness leapt the lightning-bolt, and in the deep waters lurked
another subtle foe of life, and thus the jaws, the fang, and the sting
of death were assigned to the devil of darkness, who gradually assumed
the character of man's mortal enemy that brought death into the world.
The course of this development can be traced from the beginning, in
physical darkness, to the culmination, in a psycho-theistic phase, for
everything yields to an application of the evolutionary method--and you
may depend upon it that evolution has come into the world to stay; and
evolution and the Hebrew genesis cannot co-exist in the same mental world.

The earliest mode of representing the eternal alternation of external
phenomena called night and day, or darkness and light, the good and bad,
is to be found in the universal myth of the Two Brothers, who are born
twins,--very imperfect versions of which may be found in the legends of
Cain and Abel, and of Esau and Jacob. In this myth, the Dark and Day are
born twins of the Great Mother, and these brothers are pourtrayed as
always being at enmity with each other, and in conflict before their
birth, as are the darkness and the light when struggling at dawn! They
fight one another in the effort of each to get born first. This becomes
the well-known struggle of the birthright, which is universal in
mythology. Far more perfect versions of the same mythos are extant among
the blacks of Australia, the Red Indians of America, the Bushmen and
Hottentots of Africa, more perfect, because simpler, nearer to nature,
and less moralized. It is the myth of Sut-Horus in Egypt. Sut-Horus is
the dual manifestor of dark and light, who is depicted with the double
head of the black vulture of night and the golden hawk of light, upon
one body. The dark one was born first, because darkness was first
cognised; but they both continued to struggle for supremacy after birth,
as they had done before it, because they dramatised the ceaseless and
endless alternation of night and day, of dark and light, seen in the
heavens at eve and dawn, in the orb of the moon, and the lengthening of
darkness, or of light, in autumn and in spring! Here again the dark
power is the devil, the bad dev, and the light is the good power, the
bright dev.

The same conflict, based upon the alternation of light and darkness, is
pourtrayed as the struggle of St. George, our solar hero, who conquers
the dragon just as Horus overthrows the Apap dragon upon the monuments
of Egypt. And when the devil's knell is rung annually at Horbury, in
Yorkshire, England, /that /is in celebration of the death of the Dragon
of Darkness; and the same custom is also continued in ringing out the
old year, on the last night in December. When in New South Wales I
picked up a tradition of the blacks. The Devil, called Mullion, lived in
a very tall tree, at

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Girra, on the Barwon river, and used to eat black fellows! They tried to
burn down this vast tree, in which the Devil of darkness dwelt, but the
fires were always put out by invisible spirits. Then they got a red
mouse, put a lighted straw in his mouth, and started him up the tree.
The loose bark caught fire, the tree blazed for weeks, the devil was
burned out, and never came back again. This red mouse is also a type of
Horus in Egypt. Naturally, then, the devil of darkness was the first
divinity, because the dark power is primal! When it came to worshipping,
or, rather, to propitiating, by offering the fruits of fear, it was the
dark power that predominated, because this struck terror and elicited
fear. /"Primos in orbe deos fecit timor!" /Sometimes these twins of
darkness and light are called the ugly and beautiful brothers. And here
the persistence of the mythical types may be noticed, for these two are
not only continued as the Sut-Horus, or double Horus of Egypt, but they
are likewise extant in that museum of mythical types, the Catacombs of
Rome, as the Twin-Christs, one of which is pourtrayed as the beautiful
youth; the other is the little, old, and ugly Christ. Just as it was in
the pre-Christian times, from which these figures were a Gnostic survival.

Next, Mind becomes an element in the manifestation of phenomena; and in
the American myths, the born twins are called the bad mind and the good
mind. In this phase the twin-brothers are not only mental, they are also
moralized on their way to becoming the dual divinity, or modern God and
Devil. In the Avesta, and other Persian Scriptures, for example, the
twin-brothers can be traced from the Natural Genesis in phenomena, as
light and darkness, to their becoming personified as divinity and devil,
in Ahura-Mazda, the God of mental light, and Angro-Mainyus, the devil of
mental darkness. Here the older bogey of the night has been found out!
Men had dipped into the dark, and suffered from the shadow of eclipse so
long, and passed through them so often and so safely, that their
essential unreality was discovered at last. Thus Angro-Mainyus, the
black mind, is only accredited with the creation of all that is untrue,
unreal, and utterly delusive in nature. The light had now become the
enduring reality, and darkness was only its deluding shadow. They now
recognised that the dark one in the physical, mental, or moral domain,
was only negative and negational; the bright one, the god of light, the
good mind, was the Supreme Being, the reality, therefore the author of
all that was finally real and eternally true! These are the two causes
of the universe--it is said;--they were united from the Beginning, and,
therefore, are called the /Twins,/ and the Persian "Revelation" contains
the Gnosis and explanation of the doctrine concerning these twin spirits.

Such was the natural origin of that doctrine of duality, which is
discussed now-a-days as a metaphysical mystery, and as if it /were /a
reality from the root of it, made known to the world by direct

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revelation! The origin of Good and Evil in the nature of man considered
as a being of flesh and spirit, as the personal embodiment of two
opposite principles, assumed to have a spontaneous or automatic tendency
towards good on the part of the one which is supposed to originate in
the spirit, and the other to originate in the flesh, as a natural
antagonist, is traceable to this most primitive interpretation of the
duality called good and evil in external phenomena, which was continued
in the mental and moral, and lastly in the psycho-theistic phase of
thought. In its latest stage the doctrine is destructive of individual
responsibility in man and of personal unity in deity, or the operating
Intelligence. There was no revelation, no new point of departure in
phenomena, nothing added to nature or human knowledge in these later
views of mythology into metaphysic, philosophy, or theology, in which
the supposed revelation of newer truth was largely founded on a
falsification of the old.

We are not only contemporaries of savage men in many of our current
customs and benighting beliefs, we are also the victims of his
leavings--various of our superstitions being the primitive fetishism
that still survives in the last stage of perversion.

But now for a development of the Devil!

In Egypt the old Devil of darkness, as Sut-Typhon or Sevekh, the
Crocodile-headed divinity, acquired a soul in the stars and a place in
heaven, as Plutarch says. To him was given the Crocodile or Dragon
Constellation in the planisphere, whose casting out of heaven is
described in the Book of Revelation, and in the Persian Bahman Yasht,
where Sut, or Sevekh the Dragon, that old serpent, is identified as
Satan, the eternal adversary of souls, just as it is in the Egyptian
Ritual of the Dead. Thus, the devil that first rose up in revolt, as the
natural darkness, called the Dragon of the deep, the rebel against the
light-god, was gradually transformed into a supposed starry or spiritual
being, the vice-dieu of the dark, who, in the Christian scheme, is still
considered to be the supreme power of the two, or if their dominions be
equally divided, he is supreme below and the light-god above--just as it
had been from the beginning. And, finally, our theology has made the
primal shadow of physical phenomena substantial in the mental sphere,
and from the external darkness of that beginning extracted and
internalised the modern devil in the end!

I have now given you a sample of what I meant by our being in the shadow
of ideas whose original signification we have not understood.

There is no devil such as Milton saw! And as you must know, much current
theology has been derived from "Paradise Lost." The hawk that has been
flying or flown to keep timid souls cowering down to the ground, is not
the real bird of prey after all. You may trace every motion of it to the
end of the string held in the

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puller's hand! When you go close up to it, the devil of theology is not
alive. It is a bogus bug-bear, hideous, but harmless as that scarecrow
in the field, the imposture of which had been found out and despised by
a small bird who had built its nest, and laid and hatched its eggs in
one of the grim monster's waistcoat pockets.

We have an old saying that the devil is an ass! But, in Egypt, the devil
as Sut or Satan was the ass--the ass that carried the Christ as Horus,
the saviour. This was the ass that was figuratively kicked out in the
Christian sport of "beating the ass," when that pastime used to be
practised up and down the aisles of Christian churches, and the priest
used to bray three times, and the people responded like asses!

The German devil was at one time the red-bearded thunder, the Voice of
Darkness! which takes us back to Sut-Typhon, who, as Plutarch informs
us, was of a reddish complexion. It is common for our giants to be
endowed with a red streaming comet's tail of a beard! Our forefathers,
the Norsemen, had little respect and no reverence for the devil; and as
to hell, why, if you did not get to heaven, then hell was the next best
place in the other world, if there were but two!

To be sure, they were badly off for firewood in the Norse hell; and
spirits sat shivering in the presence of the cold, uncomfortable goddess
Hela, who was blue with cold, and it was trying to think how they were
keeping it up overhead--they who had climbed to the top of the tree,
Ygdrasil, or secured a seat in Valhalla where the wine-cups flowed and
the fagots flared, and the merry dancing flames might be reflected on
the windows of a heaven that was closed against them. For the North-Men
knew nothing of a hell of everlasting fire. If they had, it might have
proved the more attractive place of the two; as one of our missionaries
once discovered. He had gone out to Greenland to carry the Gospel of
Good Tidings, and illustrate it with the aid of an eternal fire! But he
found himself in the wrong latitude as regards the effect of fire. He
pictured it in the warmest colours, and was surprised at the result!
Instead of seeing awe and terror whitening their faces, or the tears
trickling down them, as he had expected, they were blubbering in quite
another fashion, for the whale's fat began to run and glisten on their
relaxed faces, which he saw rounding and brightening into full moons of
happiness and jollity; and instead of wringing their hands at the
prospect he had pictured, they sat as if spiritually warming them at
this "everlasting bonfire," that was so earnestly warranted never to go out!

If this were the gospel of good tidings, why had they not heard the
glorious truth before? Such a welcome and delightful change from the
life they had lived in their inclement, wintry climate! They had never
dreamed of conditions so delightful! So far from shunning such a place
for ever, as he desired them to do, they were

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quite ready and willing, all of them to go to it at once, and stay there
forever.

The mythical devil was pretty much dying out, until it was revived and
sublimated by the theology of Luther, Calvin, and Milton. The Romish
Church did not deify the devil as the Protestants have done. She was
better acquainted with the tradition of his creation and the earthly
nature of his character. It was her cue to keep dark. And the devil of
the Middle Ages is a poor devil enough without grandeur or terror! A
very fallen intelligence, indeed, whom Romish saints can tweak by the
nose with red-hot tongs, or the simplest countrymen have cunning enough
to outwit. Instead of the arch-enemy of God and man, majestic in his
dark divinity, infernally inspired, as Milton pictures him, he has
become a grotesque image; the story-teller's most popular figure of fun,
on a par with the giants of our nursery lore, whom the clever,
redoubtable, little Jack, always gets the better of! Indeed, both devil
and giant as well as the serpent and dragon, had one origin, and the
orthodox Satan is, after all, the popular monster of mythology. Luther
and Calvin doubled the devil, and placed one at each end of their scheme
of things, the upper or bright God being rather the worse devil of the two!

They put the doctrine of dualism as perplexingly as did the negro
preacher who told his congregation there were but two roads open to
them--one of these led directly to destruction, and the other went
straight to perdition. "Stop a bit, brudder," cried one of the
congregation; "hold hard, whilst I get out ob dis!" And there are many
people who desire to become followers of that negro, and "get out ob dis."

The Satan of sacerdotal belief, then, is not a being for God or man to
kill, but an effigy in shoddy that only wants to be ripped up to show
you that it is stuffed with sawdust!

Some people may cry out in an agony of earnestness, as Charles Lamb
stammered in his fun, "But this is doing away with the devil;
d-d-d-don't deprive me of my devil!" "We hope for better things. How
shall we be able to force people into thinking as we do, and frighten
them into /our /fold of faith, for the glory of God, if we have no devil
for our ferocious shepherd-dog?" And there is no doubt but that, in
giving up the orthodox Hell and ancient Devil, we are losing one of the
most potent motive powers. Our difficulty is how to find a substitute
for the appeal to selfish fear. The fact remains that the devil is a
fundamental part of the Christian scheme! No devil, no Redeemer! And
those who will yell at me, and call me a blasphemer, know that well
enough. I sympathise with them. They begin to see dimly, what we see
clearly, that orthodox Christianity is answerable with its life for the
literal truth of these stories of the Devil, the Fall of man, and the
doctrine of a dying deity's atonement. Its life is /staked /upon

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the stories being /true; /and its life must pay the forfeit of their
being found to be false! And false they are, however their defenders may
squirm and wriggle, until the backbone of all manhood is changed into
caoutchouc.

I can imagine that people who are not sure of their own souls, whether
they are lost or are not yet found, unless their Hebrew Genesis be true,
will feel the world is a rather hollow affair without their accustomed
devil. It will be like depriving them of half their heaven on earth, and
the whole of it hereafter, to take away the devil. What on earth, or in
another place, will they do? those who are so virulent by nature for the
Calvinistic sulphur, if, after all, there is no brimstone there; and
they have passed out of this life with their itch for hell red-hot upon
them, and there is no Old Scratch to console them after all? One would
like to believe in just a very little hell for their dear sake! They
have so devoutly believed in a big one for ours.

There /is /devil enough, however--only of another kind than the one we
have played with. We have talked of the devil long enough; but to a
Spiritualist, for instance, the devil exists for the first time in some
of the facts made known by modern Spiritualism--facts which are as much
matters of personal experience and constant verification to myself and
myriads of others as are those of your ordinary life! Think for a moment
tentatively of there being a personal motive on the other side--a vested
interest in our wrong doing--degraded spirits present with us in the
enjoyment of our most secret sins--the ghosts of old dead drunkards
haunting the drinker's live warm atmosphere, because in that there may
pass off into spirit-world some ghostly gust of the old delirious
delight, and you may get at a real, present, self-interested, manifold,
tempting devil that altogether surpasses the mythological monster of
theology!

The devil and hell of my creed consist in that natural Nemesis which
follows on broken laws, and dogs the law breaker, in spite of any belief
of his, that his sins, and their inevitable results can be so cheaply
sponged out, as he has been misled to think, through the shedding of
innocent blood. Nature knows nothing of the forgiveness for sin. She has
no rewards or punishments--nothing but causes and consequences. For
example, if you should contract a certain disease and pass it on to your
children, and their children, all the alleged forgiveness of God will be
of no avail if you cannot forgive yourself. Ours is the devil of
heredity, working in two worlds at once. Ours is a far more terrible way
of realising the hereafter, when it is brought home to us in concrete
fact, whether in this life or the life to come, than any abstract idea
of hell or devil can afford. We have to face the facts beforehand. No
use to whine over them impotently afterwards, when it is too late. For
example--

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In the olden days when Immortals

To earth came visible down,

There went a youth with an Angel

Through the gate of an Eastern town:

They passed a dog by the road-side,

Where dead and rotting it lay,

And the youth, at the ghastly odour,

Sickened and turned away.

He gathered his robes about him;

And hastily hurried thence:

But nought annoyed the Angel's

Clear, pure, immortal sense.

By came a lady, lip-luscious,

On delicate, mincing feet:

All the place grew glad with her presence,

All the air about her sweet;

For she came in fragrance floating,

And her voice most silvery rang;

And the youth, to embrace her beauty,

With all his being sprang.

A sweet, delightsome lady:

And yet, the Legend saith,

The Angel, while he passed her,

Shuddered and held his breath!

Only think of a fine lady who, in this life, has been wooed and
flattered, sumptuously clad, and delicately fed; for whom the pure,
sweet, air of heaven had to be perfumed as incense! and the red rose of
health had to fade from many young human faces to blossom in the robes
she wore, and every sense had been most daintily feasted, and her whole
life summed up in one long thought of self--think of her finding herself
in the next life a spiritual leper, a walking pestilence, a personified
disease--a sloughing sore of this life which the spirit has to get rid
of--an excrement of this life's selfishness at which all good spirits
stop their noses and shudder when she comes near! Don't you think if she
realised that as a fact in time, it would work more effectually than
much preaching? The hell of the drunkard, the libidinous, the
blood-thirsty, or gold-greedy soul, they tell us, is the burning of the
old devouring passion which was /not /quenched by the chills of death.
The crossing of the cold, dark river even was only as the untasted water
to the consuming thirst of Tantalus! In support of this, evolution shows
the continuity of ourselves, our desires, passions, and characters. As
the Egyptians said, Whoso is intelligent here will be intelligent there!
And if we haven't mastered and disciplined our lower passions here, they
will be masters of us for the time-being hereafter.

There is no such possibility as death-bed salvation! No such thing as
being /"jerked to Jesus" /if you are converted on the scaffold!

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These old passions of ours burn and burn, and will and must burn on till
they burn out. That, they tell us, is as absolutely necessary a process
in the spiritual world as in the case of a fever in the physical body,
which may be fed frightfully by the impurities of the previous life.
Moreover, the fever will rage so long as it is supplied with fresh fuel.
So long as the infatuated spirit does not try to put out the fire, and
give the spiritual nature its one chance of throwing off the infernal
disease, but lusts in imagination after that which fed the flame at
first, and stirs the fire that kindles with every sigh for the old
flesh-pots of evil passion still; and will come back to earth to prowl
in filthy places, and snuff the ill odours of the lowest animal life;
seeking in vain for some gust of satisfaction in shadowy apparition, as
a spirit earth-bound, and self-bound to earth. Such is the teaching
inculcated by our facts, accept or reject them whosoever may!

For, where the treasure is there will the heart be also. Think of that,
you treasure-seekers in the earth, who have found and laid your
treasures on the earth; whose treasures represent the life you have
spent on the earth! You have put the better part of your life into them.
They /are /your better part. But you cannot take them away with you! The
only treasure we can carry away with us must be laid up within. Now,
Spiritualism reveals the possibility of the spirit's being doomed to
haunt this treasure-house of earth until every particle of that hoarded
wealth has been redistributed and restored to the channels for which it
was intended by the Maker, and the first stage on its way back may be
that the riches so carefully gathered and miserly garnered shall be the
means of sinking your spendthrift son down to the lowest range of
spiritual penury. For the Creator whom we postulate will not be baulked
in carrying out his purposes by any temporary obstructions like these,
and if you have hindered here you will have to help hereafter, when you
do at last get into line with Natural /Law. /

You have been amused with a dolly devil long enough, whilst inside of
you, and outside of you, and all round about you, the real devil is
living, working with a most infernal activity, and playing the very
devil with this world of ours. Not an ideal devil, but a legal devil,
with a purpose and a plan; /the /devil in reality!

We have been following a phantom of faith, and the actual veritable
devil has been dogging us indeed! This is not a Satan of God's making.
Not an archangel ruined, who, in falling, found a foothold on this earth
for the purpose of dragging men down with him to that lower deep for
which he is bound, but a devil to be recognised by his likeness to
ourselves! the devil that /is /our worser self! the devil of our own
ignorance, and the deification of self--a devil bequeathed to us by the
accumulated gains of centuries of ignorant selfishness, and selfish
ignorance--a devil to be grappled with and wrestled with and throttled,
overthrown, and overcome, and put out of existence--not only in the
struggle against all that

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is evil in the isolated, individual life; our devil has grown too big
and is too potent for that; but by the energies of all collected and
clubbed, and made co-operant to destroy the causes of evil whensoever
and wheresoever these can be identified, whether as Religious, or
Political, Moral, or Social. We stand in Heaven's own light and cast the
evil shadow of Self, and say it is the devil. And then our theologists
have the blasphemous impudence to make God the author of this dark
shadow of ourselves, which we shed on his creation; and assume it to be
an eclipse from another world of Being.

No doubt it may be shown that the Operative Power we postulate is
responsible for certain natural conditions which inevitably result in
what we recognise to be evil. Nor will he shirk his responsibility in
that matter. It was a necessary part and process in the human education,
in strict accordance with the laws of evolution. But we see more and
more every day that such evil was good in the making. We may trace many
of the healing springs of heavenly purity filtering through this dark
stratum of earth. Also, we are apt to look on things at first sight as
evil which we finally find to be blessings in disguise. A piercing
vision will perceive the deeply underlying intention of good working
upward through many a superficial appearance of evil. Seen in the light
of Evolution, the existence of evil is no longer a mythological mystery
to be made the most of by pious ignoramuses for preaching purposes, but
a necessary concomitant of development; one of the conditions by means
of which we grow into conscious human beings to attain the higher life.

Indeed, whether there be a God or not, it was impossible to discuss the
matter intelligently until the doctrine of Creation, by the slow
processes of evolution, had been taken into account.

This shows us that the evil for which Nature is responsible, is a means
of evolving in us the very consciousness of good. The moment we
recognise evil, and have acquired the consciousness of its existence,
the responsibility for its existence becomes ours. Here is a problem set
for us to solve by way of education. Here is a foe to fight to the
death, whether as a misguided passion in the individual, or a disease in
the life of a nation. Here is something to be turned into good--a devil
to be converted. The moment man sees so far, /he /must accept the
responsibility for the continued existence of the evil, and war against
it as he would if clearing any other jungle from poisonous reptiles.
Ours is not a doll to dandle, and claim divine parentage for, but a
misbegotten devil of ignorance, and a miscarriage of humanity in the past.

We see that life comes into visible being according to conditions. Where
these are unprepared and not humanised, the life takes the lowest forms,
those of reptiles and weeds, poisonous plants, thorns, thistles, and
briars, forms inimical to man, and therefore considered to be evil. Then
man comes to cultivate and modify, and turn the evil into good. The
whole world of natural evil has to acknowledge its master. Let me give
you an illustra-

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tion. Pain, for example, is a consequence of imperfect conditions. It is
the signal of the sentinel that warns us of the enemy. And how those
faithful sentinels stand in the outworks of the body, to guard the more
vital parts from approaching danger. It is necessary to warn us, or we
should do most foolish things, as a child might, but for this warning of
pain, thrust his hand in the fire and have it consumed! The soul's
health is continually protected by this warning sentinel of pain, mental
and corporeal. Pain is necessary, then, to the development of
consciousness, and the perfecting of conditions. It is the reminder that
there is something wrong; therefore something to be remedied. It is a
part of the process in our education. Also, the loftiest pleasures of
our spiritual life continually flower from a rootage in the deepest
pain. I am not here to preach a gospel of the blessedness of suffering
for the poor and needy--the victims of this world's laws. But suffering,
as I read the Book of Life, is an incentive to effort; and the greatest
pressure from without will sometimes evolve the strongest character from
within, by evoking the greater force of effort. As Shakespeare points
out, the flowers of March are not so fine as the flowers of June, but
the finest flower of March is finer than the finest flower of June! It
has overcome more opposition, and turned it to account. Perhaps in
consequence of the pressure, it has established a nearer relationship at
root to the source of life. Pain is but a passing necessity, for, as it
is the result of imperfect conditions, it follows that pain itself must
pass away as those conditions are perfected--and /we /are here to
improve and perfect them. God does not destroy the devil of pain right
off, by working a miracle at a moment's notice! For God is not that
Automaton of the sects--that weather-cock atop of creation which they
suppose will veer round at every breath of selfish prayer. You are
called upon to ascertain what is the law of the case, who is the
law-breaker, and how is the law to be kept. You must look out for
natural consequences, and effects that follow causes, not for rewards
and punishments!

You know that a little bile in the blood may cause great mental
distress! But it is perfectly absurd to ask God to save you from these
blacks in your eyes and blue devils in your brain. You must look to your
liver, and obey the laws of health. Eschew tobacco and take less whisky,
or coffee, as the case may be. God works no immediate miracle in
response to your offer of a tempting opportunity! He intends man to get
rid of evil as he grows enlightened enough to deal more wisely with our
human conditions in the process of--what? Of becoming manlier and womanlier.

Our Science grasps with its transforming hand;

Makes real half the tales of fairy land;

It turns the deathliest fetor to perfume;

It gives decay new life and rosy bloom;

It changes filthy rags to virgin white,

Makes pure in spirit what was foul to sight.

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We burn the darkness and the density out of earthly matter, and
transfigure it into glass, which we can see through. We are here to
apply a similar process of annealing to our dense, unexcavated, earthy
humanity, so that the light from heaven may shine through it purely! We
are here to try and clear away these visible causes of obstruction which
have been bequeathed to us by ages on ages of horrible ignorance, and
not look forward helplessly to their being burned out of human souls by
an eternity of hell-fire, or, backwards, for a salvation supposed to
have taken place some eighteen centuries ago, but which is no nearer now
than it ever was, on the terms set forth by orthodox teachings.

It was impossible to see anything clearly, or get any glimpse of justice
above or below, in heaven, or earth, or hell, under the old creed, which
proclaims that pain and suffering constitute the curse wherewith God has
unjustly afflicted /all/ for the sin of one, instead of the beneficent,
though stern, angel of his presence and bearer of his blessing: that it
was an eternal decree, to be executed through all eternity, instead of
an awakener in time, that calls to action now and at once, for the
changing of the present conditions in which Humanity crawls, as it were,
upon all fours, or hobbles on crutches, as if we were born mental cripples.

We all know there is an awful deal of suffering in the world that cannot
be considered as a mere individual question!--sufferings that we do not
individually cause, and are not personally responsible for--sufferings
bequeathed to us as individuals and as members of the State; for we have
to bear the accumulated burdens of centuries on centuries of ignorance,
or, worse still, of wilful crime, and, worst of all, of wrong made
sacred by religious sanction, and supported by Law and the Press. And
the burden of the many crushes the individual to the earth; and the God
of Justice appears to be blind to the case--makes no rush to the rescue,
even when we suffer for the sins of others. Be sure even these can be
turned to eternal account. But, he has this lesson to convey to the world--

/Humanity is one. /And the power that /is /has instituted certain
laws--laws that operate for the species rather than the individual, an
important distinction to be made in any interpretation of nature; laws
that deal with the species /as one/ in spite of our manifold diversities
and our deified doctrine of every-one-on-his-own-hook-ism. He does not
put forth his hand to take /you /off your hook when it happens to run
into you particularly sharp, flesh or soul, and makes you supplicate /or
/swear. Establish what private relationship you can with your Maker, and
derive what spiritual succour you may whilst bearing the burden, or
writhing on the iron that enters you, the laws that do deal with
humanity in the aggregate, and operate for the good of the species,
/will /go grinding on with their larger revolutions that subserve
eternal interests whilst crushing terribly many smaller claims of
individual life

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For, mark this, the Eternal intends to show us that humanity is one, and
the family are more than the individual member, the nation is more than
the family, and the human race is more than the nation. And if we do not
accept the revelation lovingly, do not take to the fact kindly, why then
'tis flashed upon us terribly, by lightning of hell, if we will not have
it by light of heaven, and the poor neglected scum and /canaille /of the
nations rise up mighty in the strength of disease, and prove the oneness
of humanity by killing you with the same infection.

It has recently been shown how the poor of London do not live, but
fester in the pestilential hovels called their homes. To get into these
you have to visit courts which the sun never penetrates, which are never
visited by a breath of fresh air, and which never know the virtues of a
drop of cleansing water. Immorality is but the natural outcome of such a
devil's spawning-ground. The poverty of many who strive to live honestly
is appalling.

And this disclosure is made with the customary moan that such people
attend neither church nor chapel, as if that were the panacea.

I should not wonder if these revelations result in the building of more
churches and chapels, and the consecration of at least one or two more
bishops.

The Bishop of Bedford said the other day--"It was highly necessary that
in these times when the poor have so little earthly enjoyment, the joys
of heaven should be made known to them." It is not possible to
caricature an utterance so grotesque as that.

How appallingly unjust it seems that the victims of this world's laws
should be handed over as ready-made victims of Nature's laws--that the
most helpless poor should be the favourite thriving ground for
tape-worms--just because they are in such a poverty. This is hard, but
so it is, and so it will and must be till the lesson is learned and
applied--that the human family is one, and all are bound up together by
certain laws willy-nilly; that we are our brother's keeper for all our
Cain-like questionings of the fact. We cannot shirk our responsibility;
and you are not allowed to get out of the grip of the violated law of
the whole, on any pretence of individuality or limited liability. It is
we who create the fevers to feed on the poor, when we allow others to
get rich by permitting the filth and the poisoned air and water that are
sent into the world sparkling with purity; when we allow the rights of
property to over-ride the interests of humanity. It is we who breed the
diseases and literally invent the hungry, hundred-mouthed tape-worms
that get their living out of poverty-stricken blood and hungry stomachs,
churning the slime of gnawing emptiness, because we created, or
continue, the laws that doom the many to poverty and its parasites of prey.

Providence--that is a very comprehensive name--providence

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does not create poverty. The cupola of heaven overhead is like the
inverted horn of everlasting plenty, pouring down its blessings of
abundance in sunshine and shower, in air and dew, in ripening fire and
purifying frost, and the harvests never fail the world over. All round,
all ways, there is plenty for all--if not in one country, there is in
another. There is no failure on the part of Providence, the Creator of
plenty.

This neglected garden of our world, which has in it every element of a
paradise, if rightly planted and properly tended, has been left to run
to weeds of sin and ignorance and crime, in the most wasteful way.
Heavens of spirit-worlds around us are for ever sowing the divine
seed-germs broad-cast over our earth, and they have to scatter a harvest
in order that we may grow a single grain, because the human conditions
are so un-receptive, the fields are so neglected, the soil so unprepared
to receive their bounty! The heavens around us are ever ready to pour
out blessings in a larger measure than we are to make a lap for
receiving them. All they ask are the conditions under which we may
receive most abundantly.

We are the manufacturers of misery! We have sedulously cultivated or
permitted all manner of foul conditions, and then in the midst of some
calamity, for which we are criminally responsible, that comes home to
all, the praying machine of the State is set rotating with a furious
forty-thousand-parson-power, and God is implored to stay his hand or
work a miracle forthwith on behalf of us poor human worms, who ask the
Creator to take particular notice of these our penitential writhings at
his feet! The Bishop of Truro said recently that we are approaching a
period of pain and peril, and the situation calls for strong words and
strong prayers. You must cry aloud or the Lord won't hear you!

Standing face to face with certain facts, the result of things as they
are, and have been, the atheists exclaim,--"There is no God! If there
were an omnipotent God such things would not be tolerated by him!" But
by an "omnipotent God," is meant a god with power to change, at a
moment's notice, all that is fixed for ever. Let me assure our
free-thought friends, that Evolution necessitates a new idea altogether
of the operative power! It abolishes the incompetent personal Creator of
the Hebrew Genesis! But, in presence of evolution, it is useless to
demand that, if there be a God, it shall prove itself to be the deity of
the orthodox, which, as I said before, is a sort of eternal weather-cock
on the summit of creation, that may be made to veer round as it is blown
about by every breath of selfish human prayer, if people collect
together in sufficient numbers to blow it round! A vain idea of divinity
whosoever entertains it. The deity who is belaboured so unmercifully,
and, as I think, so cheaply, by Robert Ingersol, is the god of the
non-evolutionary theory of creation, the impossible monster of the past.

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"Did God govern America when it had four millions of slaves?" asks
Ingersol. Well, why not? in accordance with the Laws of Evolution,
seeing that slavery has come to an end! If he had put an end to it, /ab
extra, /Americans could not have had the credit of doing the work, and
might never have evolved the consciousness that slavery was criminal.

God did not put an end to slavery as an outside Governor of Men; but who
shall say that the power, the will, the perception, the affection, or
whatsoever we can express by analogy with the human--that is called
God--was not operant, and, therefore, governing, within the souls of the
men who rose up foremost in revolt against the accursed wrong, and
called upon their fellows to cast it out? Possibly the existence of God,
then, does not depend upon the particular visible way of working that
may be so easily indicated! Slavery only existed /pro tem,/ to come to
an end, and, therefore, was consistent, like other educational forms of
evil, with the divine government, according to the laws of evolution.

The argument of the non-theist is continually directed and limited to
the false premises and inadequate conclusions of the orthodox, which it
is as easy and cheap to pulverise as it is to pummel a sack of straw! We
can know nothing of an omnipotent God who plays fast and loose with the
conditions of law! Were it so, all human foothold and trust in the
stability of the universe would be gone. Education would be impossible.
We are first taught by means of the fixed facts, in order that we may
found on solid earth, not on the ever-shifting sands--with prayers for
God to catch them now and again, and keep them quiet, /for God's sake!
/I rather think it would be more just to reply, there is not sufficient
manhood and intelligence in you to put an end to the evils you deplore!
/"I, God! gave the earth for all;" /and you permit the initial iniquity
of absolute private property in land, whereby one man may clutch a
county all to himself, and a few may claim a country. You allow the
rights of property to over-rule and over-ride the interests of humanity!

If your national property is doubling every thirty years, so is the
national pauperism! You allow the "one" to possess the soil, and the
thousands to be driven off and exported as refuse, in order that game
may multiply, and the human parasites of earth may pursue their savage
sport! I gave the land for all; to be the property and grazing ground of
each living generation brought to birth; and you allow it to be locked
up by the dead hand of the past, for the benefit of the few! These few
framed the laws that inevitably doom the many, sooner or later, to
poverty, to man-made sufferings, to diseases and miseries innumerable,
all of which get mixed up with a supposed inscrutable origin of evil and
other grotesque and fallacious views, endorsed and inculcated by the
current theology for the benefit of parsons and patrons, which are only
fit to be made a mock of, and to be laughed into oblivion!

158

And here, let me say, that whilst recognising the inexorableness of the
natural law in certain spheres of operation, where it works like the
bound Samson of blind force for the good of the species, I find that
Spiritualism introduces a consciousness akin, and, at least, equal, to
the human, into the working of law in a realm beyond the immediately
visible. It shows the existence of subtler forces and modes of law for
dealing with man the individual, and the culminating consciousness of
creation. When the mind of man had been evolved on this earth, remember,
a new factor was introduced amongst the natural forces--one that was
destined to greatly modify and counteract them; fetter the fire, and
ride the ocean waves; guide the lightning, and train it to carry
messages; bridge the planetary spaces, and outstrip Time itself. In like
manner, the knowledge of an existence beyond the visible present--no
matter by what means--and of intelligence operating in hidden and
extraordinary ways, introduces a new factor among the forces now to be
reckoned with as mental modifiers in certain domains of law. The unseen
world can no longer be the same when we learn that Intelligence is
there; no more than this world could remain the same after the advent of
man! And when we can identify the consciousness /there/ as being akin to
the human /here, /we know all that is necessary for putting a conscience
into the previously inexorable law, and an /eye /into the image of blind
force. Here we get a margin that would take a long while to fill in with
possible annotations. Man is no longer alone in the universe! There are
other intelligences, affections, powers of will and work, beside his;
and in relation to him this just makes all the difference in the
manifestation and interpretation of the law that /is /blind and
inexorable in its lower range. We begin to distinguish! Here are the
means for a possible response to invocation, and to the need of mental help!

The now demonstrated fact of Thought-Transference, which was familiar
enough before, in common with other kindred phenomena, to many of us,
opens up a vista of immortal possibility in the mode of mental
manifestation, and in the modification of supposed hard-and-fast, or
immutable, law, in relation to life in its higher phases!

It seems to me that this fact alone turns the ground of mere materialism
into a kind of Goodwin Sands! We extend this thought-transference
upwards or round us by means of living telegraphic mental lines! The
operators on which at one end can work, and only work according to the
conditions at the other end. At present I do not perceive, and cannot
pretend to know, when and where we can touch Conscious Source itself
along these lines. Who does know anything of God, in the domain of
things? or who has any right to pretend to know, or to be paid a salary
for pretending to know, anything of God personally, or a personal God?
To me the question as to the personality of God is altogether premature.
I can wait for a few future lifetimes to find out God.

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In a sense it may be "there is no God yet, but there's one coming!" and
you will find the saying a profound one if you think it over for a
month. We ourselves, of the race of man, are only in the condition of
becoming (let us cultivate a becoming modesty!); and such is the human
apprehension of the cause of becoming. The eye, as Goëthe has said, can
only see what it brings with it the power of seeing; and so, in a sense,
a God is not yet, but one is coming. The deity hitherto set up for
worship is more or less an effigy of the God of primitive or savage man.
If that be a true likeness, why, then, men ought not to become Atheists
merely--they ought not to marry and propagate, but commit suicide
forthwith! It is such an outrage on all human feeling, this primitive
portraiture of Eternal power, that the moral revolt is certain, and the
mental result is atheism. I assert that non-theism is sometimes, and in
some natures, the necessary revolt of the most inner consciousness
against the abortion called God! They shut their eyes altogether to get
rid of a representation so unsightly and unworthy; and better is such
blindness than much false seeing. I say it is the real Presence
operating within that is at war with this hideous sham set up for
worship without. I seldom use the name of God myself in speech or
writing now, it has been so long taken in vain--so profaned by the
orthodox blasphemers. It has been so degraded as a brand and hall-mark,
made use of to warrant the counterfeit wares that are passed off upon
the ignorant and unsuspecting, who think them genuine so long as they
are stamped with that name, as to have become quite discredited.

For myself, I have come to apprehend a Conscious Source of all, working
outwardly from the core of things, by means of what we term matter, and
understand as the Laws of Evolution. A Conscious Source of all! I cannot
state that consciousness in words, but it appears to me that this is the
work of phenomena which do actually state it in the process of appealing
to, or becoming, the Consciousness in us. But I am utterly unable to
personify this Power! Also, I find the essence of the whole matter is
sacred to privacy. The more intuition, the less blabbing--the more
reverence, the more reticence. The facts of an abnormal or extraordinary
nature that came under my own cognisance during many years of my life,
which were continually occurring and verified, proved to me that Mind
exists and operates out of sight!

By degrees these facts peopled the unknown void with life and
intelligent beings; that finally gave one bit of foothold on the very
first step of a ladder which will stand up for the first time when one
tries to prop it against the sky! That one step bridges the dark void of
death for me. I don't trouble myself, for myself, about the other world
at all--that's all right, if we are! It is for this world people need to
be helped. Life is not worth living if we are not doing something
towards helping on the work of this world. It is only in helping others
that we can truly help ourselves. And we

160

have reason to think that myriads of those who have already left this
life with false hopes of salvation are only too glad to help themselves
by coming back and helping us to carry on the work of this world.

It is only when we pass out of the domain of self, that the unseen
helpers can steal in upon us, and help us as Agents for those who are
Agents for others, and so on and on, until the whole vast universe is
filled and quick with modes and motions, and forms of being all athrob
with subtly-related life; all radiating from central source to uttermost
limit; all unified in one eternal consciousness, in which the soul of
man, full statured and full-summed, may possibly become conscious that
it touches God at last, as a presence, a power, a principle, and may
then be made aware that it did so unconsciously from the first.

Our orthodox teachers in the present are responsible for playing into
the hands or claws of the devil that was created for them in the past.
They are the consecrators of all the ignorance, robbery, and wrong! In
England the sinister army of forty thousand men in masks, as it has been
truly termed, is paid from the national revenue to act the part of a
secret Sunday police! Their chief representatives are the obstructives
of sane and humane legislation to-day as ever. A man can't marry his
wife's sister because of them.

At the debate on the Pigeon Bill in the House of Lords, some time since,
not a single bishop was found to lift up his voice on behalf of the poor
dumb and miserably-murdered doves. Not a man was to be found behind any
one of the aprons! Every bishop present in the House voted against
opening the Museums and Picture Galleries on Sunday! They say, in
effect, If you won't come to church, d--n you! you shan't go anywhere
else, if we can help it! They want to stand just where they have always
stood, at the end of the long dark passage through which mankind slowly
emerges out of darkness into day--in the very entrance of the light, to
shut out the face of heaven itself from those who are groping their way
through the gloom, and bid them in God's name to go back and religiously
keep to the obscurity of the cave, if they would be saved!

Each Sunday they trail the red herring across the scent of their
followers, so that their attention may be drawn off from this world and
all the wrongs we are sent here to remedy. They promise that those who
remain sufficiently poor and wormlike in spirit during this life, shall
rise erect from the grublike condition in death, full-fledged, to soar
as winged angels in the next life. They have exalted the lot of Lazarus
as a Scriptural Ideal for the most needy and miserable to live up to, as
if the cowering outcast and diseased starveling of earth were the proper
model man for the heavens. They keep us the lying farce of insisting
that man is a fallen creature, and persist in preaching their doctrine
of his degradation

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and damnation in order that people may go to them to be saved--and pay
well for it.

The Secularist asserts that the orthodox cult and theology are a
hopeless failure for this world, and as a Spiritualist I affirm that
they are also a fraud for the other.

False beliefs are, and forever must be, opposed to all real and true
doing. And these false beliefs have from the beginning been bitterly
opposed to every truth revealed by science; and every advance made for
humanity has had to be made in spite of them. Moreover, this doctrine
they teach, of saving yourselves and "devil take the hindmost," is most
miserably degrading to any true sense of real manhood or womanhood. He
wouldn't be much of a hero who in the midst of the battle took it into
his head that the first duty of man is to get himself saved!

They get up a horrible hullabaloo in the rear, as if all hell were let
loose after you, on purpose to frighten the blind and foolish, and make
them rush through the one door open in front of those who are fleeing
from the wrath to come, at which they take tax and toll. But there is no
hell, there is no devil, close after the hindmost of those who are
furiously fleeing from the avengers of the "fall of man." Moreover, it's
of no use rushing. However fast you go you carry your own heaven or hell
inside of you, whether for this life or any other. All this is a bogus
business, with the mythical devil for bogey. The world is not yet on
fire with the final conflagration, nor can they set it on fire with the
painted flames of a pictorial hell. A little girl was once asked what
she must first do to be saved; and the innocent replied, "Get lost."
Moreover, before we join in the stampede of self-salvation at the call
of those who cry "fire" when the theatre is crammed, let us be sure that
we have grown a soul that is worth saving. If we had, I doubt whether we
should manifest such a consuming anxiety of utter selfishness, or be in
such an infernal hurry to get it saved anyhow. Those who are truly
desirous of saving or helping others, seldom trouble much about their
own souls. Theirs is the burden of a nobler care. Theirs is a loftier
inquietude than any sense of self can ever give. They lose all such
unworthy fears for themselves in the thought of others. They are like
that grand captain of the "Northfleet," of whom I proudly wrote some
years ago--

"Others he saved. He saved the name

Unsullied, that he gave his wife,

And, dying with so pure an aim,

He had no need to save his life."

I also hold their other cowardly doctrine, that of vicarious sacrifice,
to be the real, if indirect, cause of Vivisection. It would have been
impossible for a nation of animal lovers like the English to tolerate
the vivisection of the dog, for example, man's first friend in the
wilderness of the early world, his ally in the work of civilisation,
unless the /motor nerve /and conscience of the race had been

162

paralysed by the /curare /of vicarious suffering. The beastly cruelties
of its practitioners, which are flaunted in our faces with intent to
terrorise the conscience of others, could not have been permitted by men
who had not been indoctrinated by the worship of /a vivisecting deity,
/whose /victim/ was his own son! And these myriads of slowly murdered
dogs and rabbits, cats and frogs, cannot have the consolation of knowing
that vivisection is salvation, and they are saviours of the human race
from the consequences of its own crimes against nature, and sins against
self! It is impossible to establish the throne of Eternal Justice by the
violation of all that is human, as is fruitlessly attempted on this
ground of the orthodox Creed. It is impossible for you to save or serve
humanity by sacrificing all that constitutes the essence of humanity, as
is done in this pourtrayal of a vivisecting deity, who is the
responsible operator, with his own son for suffering victim. And this
victim of vicarious punishment is held forth as a lure to draw humanity
toward a father in heaven of such a nature as that! We may depend upon
it that this preaching of what is called Christianity, to get a Sunday
sensation, or solace out of it--this plunging of the theological poker
red-hot into your seventh-day dose of spiritual flip to give it a
zest--this using of hell-fire as a persuader, after the manner of the
furnace heated beneath the turkeys, which persuaded the poor things to
dance to music played in quick time--this weekly whipping of the devil
round the stump is, as the Americans say, pretty well played out; there
is nothing new to be said. Suppose we go to work and try to /do
/something, instead of making ourselves miserable on Sunday, doing
nothing but putting ourselves through all the postures and impostures of
the orthodox Sabbatical fashion? In future, mankind will not herd
together, like terror-stricken cattle in a thunder-storm, to deprecate
the wrath of their God, and offer him praise and presents by way of
propitiation, and as a bribe for him not to lose his temper! Good God!
What an idea of a God! It is precisely the elemental god of Browning's
Caliban, and of the primitive savage! In future, I say, men will not
look upon it as a sacred duty to herd together, on purpose to praise and
glorify their God one day in seven with their psalm of conceit:

"Let all Creation hold its tongue,

While I uplift my Sunday song;"

lest, being a jealous God, he should blight their harvest, or
peradventure burst the boiler of the Excursion Train. Nor will men form
leagues, religious or otherwise, on purpose to think alike and make all
other people think the same. They cannot think alike if they are ever to
grow. The lower the type the greater the likeness! The loftier the
development the larger the diversity! /That /is the Natural law. We may
co-operate to work, but /not /to /think/ alike. /That /could never be
free-thinking. Nor will mankind henceforth allow their arms to be
paralysed for action

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by being fixed or "bailed up" in the posture of prayer. We say,--It is a
farce, a pitiful one, not a laughable one, for you to pray for God to
work a miracle for the kingdom of heaven to come, when you are doing all
you can, all your lives, to prevent its coming, or doing nothing to
hasten its coming. It is the sheerest mockery of God and man! You were
sent here to create the kingdom, to work it out by living that law of
love proclaimed as laying down the life in love for others, and the very
reason why the kingdom does not come, and cannot come, is because you
stand in the way of its coming. And you, and all who think and act as
you do, praying for the better day to come, must be swept out of the way
in order that it may come.

Get up from your knees and work for it! Take your weapon in hand and
fight for it! Turn fiercely on the devil that dogs our own footsteps,
and rescue those that fall by the way and succumb to the powers that
make for evil. Turn on the devil--not theoretically, but practically,
having ascertained the work that needs to be done. Turn on the devil,
not singly, but associated together for doing, instead of believing and
talking and praying for God to do! What the Eternal Worker asks of us,
as I apprehend the whole matter, is that we shall become conscious
co-workers with him in carrying out the divine purposes in proportion as
we can make them out! He does not want us to be fear-bound and
devil-driven slaves! Not beasts in blinkers, not laggers behind, forever
probed by the goad of sheer and sharp necessity; not blind obeyers of
his sternest laws that go grinding on willy-nilly, hauling and hurling
us along with them in their incessant, vast revolution! but seers of his
work, intelligent interpreters of his will, and sharers in his life and
love.

In conclusion. There is no origin of evil in the moral domain that is
not derivable from ignorance. "The wickedness of a soul," said Hermes,
"is its ignorance;" and there is no devil in the moral domain except in
the devilish determination to /do /the wrong or /permit/ the wrong to be
done, after we have evolved the consciousness that recognises the right!

The reason then why God does not kill the devil is because man has
unconsciously created or permitted all that is the devil finally; and
here or hereafter he has to consciously destroy his own work, and fight
himself free from the errors of his own ignorance. Not man the
individual merely, but man as part of the whole family of universal
humanity. Not man as mortal simply, but as an immortal, standing up
shoulder to shoulder, and marching onward step by step and side by side
with those who are our elders in immortality, and who still unite with
us, and lend a hand to effect in time the /not /altogether inscrutable,
but slowly-unfolding, purposes of the Eternal.

164

LUNIOLATRY,

*ANCIENT AND MODERN*

*__________*

For thirty years past Professor Max Müller has been teaching in his
books and lectures, in the /Times, Saturday Review, /and various
magazines, from the platform of the Royal Institution, the pulpit of
Westminster Abbey, and his chair at Oxford, that Mythology is a disease
of language, and that the ancient symbolism was a result of something
like a primitive mental aberration.

"We know," says Renouf, echoing Max Müller, in his Hibbert lectures, "We
know that mythology /is /the disease which springs up at a peculiar
stage of human culture." Such is the shallow explanation of the
non-evolutionists, and such explanations are still accepted by the
British public, that gets its thinking done for it by proxy. Professor
Max Müller, Cox, Gubernatis and other propounders of the Solar Mythos
have pourtrayed the primitive myth-maker for us as a sort of
Germanised-Hindu metaphysician, projecting his own shadow on a mental
mist, and talking ingeniously concerning smoke, or, at least, /cloud;
/the sky overhead becoming like the dome of dreamland, scribbled over
with the imagery of aboriginal nightmares! They conceive the early man
in their own likeness, and look upon him as perversely prone to
self-mystification, or, as Fontenelle has it, "subject to beholding
things that are not there!" They have misrepresented primitive or
archaic man as having been idiotically misled from the first by an
active but untutored imagination into believing all sorts of fallacies,
which were directly and constantly contradicted by his own daily
experience; a fool of fancy in the midst of those grim realities that
were grinding his experience into him, like the grinding icebergs making
their imprints upon the rocks submerged beneath the sea. It remains to
be said, and will one day be acknowledged, that these accepted teachers
have been no nearer to the beginnings of mythology and language than
Burn's poet Willie had been near to Pegasus. My reply is, 'Tis but a
dream of the metaphysical theorist that mythology was a disease of
language, or anything else except his own brain. The origin and meaning
of mythology have been missed altogether by these solarites and
weather-mongers! Mythology was a primitive mode of /thinging/ the early
thought. It was founded on natural facts,

165

and is still verifiable in phenomena. There is nothing insane, nothing
irrational in it, when considered in the light of evolution, and when
its mode of expression by sign-language is thoroughly understood. The
insanity lies in mistaking it for human history or Divine Revelation.
Mythology is the repository of man's most ancient science, and what
concerns us chiefly is this--when truly interpreted once more it is
destined to be the death of those false theologies to which it has
unwittingly given birth!

In modern phraseology a statement is sometimes said to be mythical in
proportion to its being untrue; but the ancient mythology was not a
system or mode of falsifying in that sense. Its fables were the means of
conveying facts; they were neither forgeries nor fictions. Nor did
mythology originate in any intentional double-dealing whatever, although
it did assume an aspect of duality when direct expression in words had
succeeded the primitive mode of representation by means of things as
signs and symbols. For example, when the Egyptians pourtrayed the moon
as a /Cat, /they were not ignorant enough to suppose that the moon was a
cat; nor did their wandering fancies see any likeness in the moon to a
cat; nor was a cat-myth any /mere expansion of verbal metaphor; /nor had
they any intention of making puzzles or riddles to mislead others by
means of such enigmatical sign-language, at a time when they could not
help themselves, having n