FORWARD

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.

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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

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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."

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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.

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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."

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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

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THE

HISTORICAL JESUS

AND

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

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(All necessary references to the original authorities may be found in the Author's "Natural Genesis."

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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

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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,

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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 60 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 61 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 62 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 63 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 66 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 67 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, 68 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 69 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 70 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 71 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. 72 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 75 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 76 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 77 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" 78 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 79 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 80 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 81 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 82 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. 83 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 84 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 85 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 86 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 87 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 88 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. 89 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 90 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 91 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 92 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 93 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- 94 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 95 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 96 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, 97 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 98 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 99 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 100 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! 101 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 102 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- 103 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. 104 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- 105 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 107 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, 108 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 109 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 110 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 111 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 112 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 113 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 114 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 115 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 116 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 117 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 118 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- 119 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 120 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 121 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 122 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 123 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 124 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 125 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 126 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 127 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 128 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 129 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 10 130 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 131 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 132 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 133 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 134 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 135 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.