Legend
Christian Occultism or Esoteric Christianity
The central doctrine taught in this paper is that by His transfiguration on the Mount, Christ manifested Himself as the spiritual heavenly and angelic man, and that this manifestation was typical of that which is within the possibility of those elect few who, living truly the Divine life, can evoke in ecstatic prayer the hidden, Christ-like spiritual centre of the soul, and that this act has in many instances been demonstrated in the history of the Church.
We are told that man was created in the image of God. If so, then the Spirit of Man and the Spirit of God are of one essence, and the Spirit of Man is thus the Son of God, while Jesus of Nazareth, when he became the Christ, was emphatically the well-beloved, Son of God. Jesus, as the Sen, of Man, taught the so-called practical or exoteric doctrine of love to God and love to man as the sum and substance of all religion and all morality; and Jesus, as the Christ, or Son of God, taught the esoteric or spiritual interpretation of this love to God and man. The simple doctrine of love to God and love to man is sufficient for the ultimate salvation of all those who sincerely attempt to live the life; but the esoteric or spiritual doctrine teaches how man, while on this earth, may fully live the life, and thus at one and the same time be actually an inhabitant of earth and of heaven.
I desire it to be understood that I have no more doubt of the historic Jesus Christ than I have of the historic Plato, St. Paul, or St. Augustine; but, at the same time, I believe that the word Christ, as used by Bible and early Christian writers, and by the mystics, signifies that divine and miraculous spiritual man which we may all possibly become, and which Jesus of Nazareth permanently was.
The term occultism means the practice of that which is secret or hidden, and has been generally applied to the practice of the secret arts of magic; and by Christian occultism is meant the esoteric doctrines of the mystics.
It is believed by some that Jesus Christ revealed to His beloved disciples secrets regarding his nature and doctrine, which were not openly taught to the people; but, however that may be, we know that when Peter, in answer to the Master’s question, “Whom say ye that I am?” replied, “Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God.” Jesus exclaimed, “Blessed art thou Simon Bar-Jon a, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father who is in heaven;” and he charged His disciples that they should reveal unto no man that He was the Christ.
Again, when Jesus took Peter, and James, and John up into a high mountain, and was transfigured before them so that His face shone as the sun, and His garments became as light, so overwhelmingly splendid that Peter, James, and John fell on their faces to the earth, He again charged them that they should tell no man what they had seen till He had risen from the dead.
So also, in the first chapter of John’s Gospel, the Logos, or word or wisdom of God, is used to signify the esoteric Christ in a mystical manner; and Origen, who lived at the end of the second and the beginning of the third century, says in his preface to John’s Gospel: “To the literal-minded (or carnal) we teach the Gospel in the historic (or I literal) way, preaching Jesus Christ and Him crucified, but to the proficients, fired with the love of Divine wisdom, we j impart the Logos.”
Thus it is that the nature of man and the method of his salvation, body and soul, by the invocation of the Christ, or the hidden light and spiritual life, which St. John says are within every man, is the subject of this paper.
It is maintained that the theory propounded is in strict accordance with the exoteric and esoteric teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and St. John and St. Paul, as recorded in the gospels and epistles, and these records, notwithstanding many verbal variations, are accepted as genuine reflections of the life and doctrines of the founder of the Christian religion.
The miraculous narrative is also accepted, it being understood that a miracle is not a direct interference by the Creator with the order of nature, but is a substitution of the spiritual or god-like force in man for the secondary or lower forces in Nature.
That the spiritual man is in possession of this force is taken for granted as a fact known to whoever has truthfully and laboriously investigated the evidence ; hence a belief in the miracles of Christ is a natural consequence of this knowledge, and marvellous it is that many thoughtful “ministers of Christ” actually doubt or deny the necessity of this belief, as if it were possible there could be a Christ without miracles; for Christ being “ the Son of God with power,” must, as a necessity of his nature, be a worker of miracles.
The esoteric idea of the Christ of the gospels and epistles is that the term Christ signifies the spiritual head or inner secret light of every man, and thus the salvation of man, soul and body, is not a mere phrase, but a transformation realised by this inner secret and hidden Christ, or light, or spirit coming to his temple and living and ruling there.
The spiritual man being thus known and acknowledged now becomes the true master of himself, and, as the highest, is thus ruler over all lower forms of matter; and not only so, but man being thus truly a son of God, is thus in heaven while on earth, even as “the Son of Man who is in heaven.”
The spiritual man thus evoked is the image of God rediscovered, and constitutes man a son of God, the divine and miraculous man, the Christ-like man, the worker of miracles, the supreme lord over all forces and materials, the converter of water into wine, the giver of sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, food to the hungry, health to the diseased, raising the dead, casting out devils, and thus demonstrating that the spiritual man is supreme over the laws of Nature and “ solid matter itself,” capable of transforming this vile body into the glorified body, the transformed spiritual body with angelic and heavenly associates.
In short, as God created man in his own image, so the Christ-born man, as a son of God, is supreme over all forms and forces lower than himself, and is thus saved body, soul, and spirit.
It is not meant to deny that many who pass the ordeal, of what is popularly called “conversion” are not so far born again as to their outward lives and inward thoughts, and in so far are saved by the Christ; but it is maintained that this form of salvation is a mere shadow of the substance, and that it is not the true and absolute salvation of soul and body announced by Jesus Christ as “ the way and the truth and the life” here and hereafter, inasmuch as they are not entirely Christ-like and the possessors of miraculous powers. “If any man be in Christ [or in spirit], he is a new creature; all old things have passed away, and all things have become new.” Those thus saved are “one with Christ, as He is one with the Father;” and while on earth they are in heaven, even as “the Son of Man who is in heaven.”
Let us contemplate the life, teachings, works, transfiguration, crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the Christ of God, potentially and actually the Saviour of the world, morally, physically, and spiritually. This miraculous and Divine Being, born of a woman, but moulded in some mystical sense by the influence of the Holy Spirit of the Father while within the mystery of woman’s hidden nature, appeared on earth about two thousand years ago.
A few years during the prime of human life were spent in communion with God, “being about His Father’s business.” When about the age of thirty, having fasted forty days and <... continues on page 8-162 >
Editor's notes
- ↑ Christian Occultism or Esoteric Christianity by Wild, George, London Spiritualist, No. 341, March 7, 1879, pp. 109-13
Sources
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London Spiritualist, No. 341, March 7, 1879, pp. 109-13