HPB-IU v.2 ch.2: Difference between revisions

How fantastical, therefore, is the assertion of Father Ventura, that, while Augustine was a Manichean, a philosopher, ignorant of and refusing to humble himself before the sublimity of the “grand Christian revelation,” he knew nothing, understood naught of God, man, or universe; “. . . he remained poor, small, obscure, sterile, and wrote nothing, did nothing really grand or useful.” But, hardly had he become a Christian “. . . when his reasoning powers and intellect, enlightened at the {{Style S-Italic|luminary of faith,}} elevated him to the most sublime heights of philosophy and theology.” And his other proposition that Augustine’s genius, as a consequence, “developed itself in all its grandeur and prodigious fecundity . . . his intellect radiated with that immense splendor which, reflecting itself in his immortal writings, has never ceased for one moment during fourteen centuries to illuminate the Church and the world”!^{[#fn1044 1044]}

Whatever Augustine was as a Manichean, we leave Father Ventura to discover; but that his accession to Christianity established an everlasting enmity between theology and science is beyond doubt. While forced to confess that “the Gentiles had possibly something {{Style S-Italic|divine}} and true in their doctrines,” he, nevertheless, declared that for their superstition, idolatry, and pride, they had “to be detested, and, unless they improved, to be punished by divine judgment.” This furnishes the clew to the subsequent policy of the Christian Church, even to our day. If the Gentiles did not choose to come into the Church, all that was divine in their philosophy should go for naught, and the divine wrath of God should be visited upon their heads. What effect this produced is succinctly stated by Draper: “No one did more than this Father to bring science and religion into antagonism; it was mainly he who diverted the {{Style S-Italic|Bible}} from its true office—a guide to purity of life—and placed it in the perilous position of being the arbiter of human knowledge, an audacious tyranny over the mind of man. The example once set, there was no want of followers; the works of the Greek philosophers were stigmatized as profane; the transcendently glorious achievements of the Museum of Alexandria were hidden from sight by a cloud of ignorance, mysticism, and unintelligible jargon, out of which there too often flashed the destroying lightnings of ecclesiastical vengeance.”^{[#fn1045 1045]}

Augustine and Cyprian^{[#fn1046 1046]} admit that Hermes and Hostanes believed in one true god; the first two maintaining, as well as the two Pagans, that he is invisible and incomprehensible, except spiritually. Moreover we invite any man of intelligence—provided he be not a religious fanatic—after reading fragments chosen at random from the works of Hermes

[#fn1044anc 1044]. “Conferences,” by Le Pere Ventura, vol. ii., part i., p. lvi., Preface.

[#fn1045anc 1045]. “Conflict between Religion and Science,” p. 62.

[#fn1046anc 1046]. “De Baptismo Contra Donatistas,” lib. vi., ch. xliv.

89 WAS “SIMON MAGUS” ST. PAUL?

and Augustine on the Deity, to decide which of the two gives a more philosophical definition of the “unseen Father.” We have at least one writer of fame who is of our opinion. Draper calls the Augustinian productions a “rhapsodical conversation” with God; an “incoherent dream.”^{[#fn1047 1047]}

Father Ventura depicts the saint as attitudinizing before an astonished world upon “the most sublime heights of philosophy.” But here steps in again the same unprejudiced critic, who passes the following remarks on this colossus of Patristic philosophy. “Was it for this preposterous scheme,” he asks, “this product of ignorance and audacity, that the works of the Greek philosophers were to be given up? It was none too soon that the great critics who appeared at the Reformation, by comparing the works of these writers with one another, brought them to their proper level, and taught us to look upon them all with contempt.”^{[#fn1048 1048]}

[#fn1047anc 1047]. “Conflict, etc.,” p. 37.

[#fn1048anc 1048]. Ibid.

90 ISIS UNVEILED.

odicals, entitled {{Style S-Italic|Paul and Plato,^{[#fn1049 1049]}}} in which the author puts forward one remarkable and, for us, very precious observation. In his {{Style S-Italic|Epistles to the Corinthians}} he shows Paul abounding with “expressions suggested by the initiations of Sabazius and Eleusis, and the lectures of the (Greek) philosophers. He (Paul) designates himself an {{Style S-Italic|idiotes—}}a person unskilful in the Word, but not in the {{Style S-Italic|gnosis}} or philosophical learning. ‘We speak wisdom among the perfect or initiated,’ he writes; ‘not the wisdom of this world, nor of the archons of this world, but divine wisdom in a mystery, secret—which {{Style S-Italic|none of the Archons of this world knew.’”^{[#fn1050 1050]}}}

What else can the apostle mean by these unequivocal words, but that he himself, as belonging to the {{Style S-Italic|mystæ}} (initiated), spoke of things shown and explained only in the Mysteries? The “divine wisdom in a mystery which none of the {{Style S-Italic|archons of this world knew,”}} has evidently some direct reference to the {{Style S-Italic|basileus}} of the Eleusinian initiation who {{Style S-Italic|did know.}} The {{Style S-Italic|basileus}} belonged to the staff of the great hierophant, and was an {{Style S-Italic|archon}} of Athens; and as such was one of the chief {{Style S-Italic|mystæ}}, belonging to the {{Style S-Italic|interior}} Mysteries, to which a very select and small number obtained an entrance.^{[#fn1051 1051]} The magistrates supervising the Eleusinians were called archons.

Paul declares that: “According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise {{Style S-Italic|master-builder,}} I have laid the foundation.”^{[#fn1052 1052]}

[#fn1049anc 1049]. “Paul and Plato,” by A. Wilder, editor of “The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries,” of Thomas Taylor.

[#fn1050anc 1050]. “Paul and Plato.”

[#fn1051anc 1051]. See Taylor’s “Eleus. and Bacchic Myst.”

[#fn1052anc 1052]. I Corin., iii. 10.

91 PETER’S HATRED OF PAUL.

as well as {{Style S-Italic|to obtain.^{[#fn1053 1053]}}} The word {{Style S-Italic|epopteia}} is a compound one, from Επὶ—upon, and ὸπτομαι—to look, or an overseer, an inspector—also used for a master-builder. The title of master-mason, in Freemasonry, is derived from this, in the sense used in the Mysteries. Therefore, when Paul entitles himself a “master-builder,” he is using a word pre-eminently kabalistic, theurgic, and masonic, and one which no other apostle uses. He thus declares himself an {{Style S-Italic|adept,}} having the right to {{Style S-Italic|initiate}} others.

If we search in this direction, with those sure guides, the Grecian Mysteries and the {{Style S-Italic|Kabala,}} before us, it will be easy to find the secret reason why Paul was so persecuted and hated by Peter, John, and James. The author of the {{Style S-Italic|Revelation}} was a Jewish kabalist {{Style S-Italic|pur sang,}} with all the hatred inherited by him from his forefathers toward the Mysteries.^{[#fn1054 1054]} His jealousy during the life of Jesus extended even to Peter; and it is but after the death of their common master that we see the two apostles—the former of whom wore the Mitre and the Petaloon of the Jewish Rabbis—preach so zealously the rite of circumcision. In the eyes of Peter, Paul, who had humiliated him, and whom he felt so much his superior in “Greek learning” and philosophy, must have naturally appeared as a magician, a man polluted with the “{{Style S-Italic|Gnosis,”}} with the “wisdom” of the Greek Mysteries—hence, perhaps, “Simon^{[#fn1055 1055]} the Magician.”

[#fn1053anc 1053]. In its most extensive meaning, the Sanscrit word has the same literal sense as the Greek term; both imply “revelation,” by no human agent, but through the “receiving of the sacred drink.” In India the initiated received the “Soma,” sacred drink, which helped to liberate his soul from the body; and in the Eleusinian Mysteries it was the sacred drink offered at the Epopteia. The Grecian Mysteries are wholly derived from the Brahmanical Vedic rites, and the latter from the ante-vedic religious Mysteries—primitive Buddhist philosophy.

[#fn1054anc 1054]. It is needless to state that {{Style S-Italic|the Gospel according to John}} was not written by John but by a Platonist or a Gnostic belonging to the Neo-platonic school.

[#fn1055anc 1055]. The fact that Peter persecuted the “Apostle to the Gentiles,” under that name, does not necessarily imply that there was no Simon Magus individually distinct from Paul. It may have become a generic name of abuse. Theodoret and Chrysostom, the earliest and most prolific commentators on the Gnosticism of those days, seem actually to make of Simon a rival of Paul, and to state that between them passed frequent messages. The former, as a diligent propagandist of what Paul terms the “antitheses of the Gnosis” (1st Epistle to Timothy), must have been a sore thorn in the side of the apostle. There are sufficient proofs of the actual existence of Simon Magus.

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by the hierophant at the initiations, during the final Mystery. In this, perhaps, lies concealed the whole secret of the claims of the Vatican. As Professor Wilder happily suggests: “In the Oriental countries the designation פתר, Peter (in Phœnician and Chaldaic, an interpreter) appears to have been the title of this personage (the hierophant). . . . There is in these facts some reminder of the peculiar circumstances of the Mosaic Law . . . and also of the claim of the Pope to be the successor of Peter, the hierophant or interpreter of the Christian religion.”^{[#fn1056 1056]}

An inscription found on the coffin of Queen Mentuhept, of the eleventh dynasty (2250 b.c.), now proved to have been transcribed from the seventeenth chapter of the {{Style S-Italic|Book of the Dead}} (dating not later than 4500 b.c.), is more than suggestive. This monumental text contains a group of hieroglyphics, which, when interpreted, read thus:

'''PTR.    RF.    SU.'''

Peter-     ref-       su. 

Baron Bunsen shows this sacred formulary mixed up with a whole series of glosses and various interpretations on a monument forty centuries old. “This is identical with saying that the record (the true interpretation) was at that time no longer intelligible. . . . We beg our readers to understand,” he adds, “that a sacred text, a hymn, containing the words of a departed spirit, existed in such a state about 4,000 years ago . . . as to be all but unintelligible to royal scribes.”^{[#fn1057 1057]}

[#fn1056anc 1056]. “Introd. to Eleus. and Bacchic Mysteries,” p. x. Had we not trustworthy kabalistic tradition to rely upon, we might be, perhaps, forced to question whether the authorship of the Revelation is to be ascribed to the apostle of that name. He seems to be termed John the Theologist.

[#fn1057anc 1057]. Bunsen: “Egypt’s Place in Universal History,” vol. v., p. 90.

93 THE TRUE INTERPRETATION OF “PETRUM.”

stele, the sign used for it being an opened eye.^{[#fn1058 1058]} Bunsen mentions as another explanation of PTR—“to show.” “It appears to me,” he remarks, “that our PTR is literally the old Aramaic and Hebrew ‘Patar,’ which occurs in the history of Joseph as the specific word for {{Style S-Italic|interpreting;}} whence also {{Style S-Italic|Pitrum}} is the term for interpretation of a text, a dream.”^{[#fn1059 1059]} In a manuscript of the first century, a combination of the Demotic and Greek texts,^{[#fn1060 1060]} and most probably one of the few which miraculously escaped the Christian vandalism of the second and third centuries, when all such precious manuscripts were burned as magical, we find occurring in several places a phrase, which, perhaps, may throw some light upon this question. One of the principal heroes of the manuscript, who is constantly referred to as “the Judean Illuminator” or Initiate, Τελειωτὴὴς, is made to communicate but with his {{Style S-Italic|Patar;}} the latter being written in Chaldaic characters. Once the latter word is coupled with the name {{Style S-Italic|Shimeon.}} Several times, the “Illuminator,” who rarely breaks his contemplative solitude, is shown inhabiting a Κρύπτη (cave), and teaching the multitudes of eager scholars standing outside, not orally, but through this {{Style S-Italic|Patar.}} The latter receives the words of wisdom by applying his ear to a circular hole in a partition which conceals the teacher from the listeners, and then conveys them, with explanations and glossaries, to the crowd. This, with a slight change, was the method used by Pythagoras, who, as we know, never allowed his neophytes to see him during the years of probation, but instructed them from behind a curtain in his cave.

[#fn1058anc 1058]. See de Rougé: “Stele,” p. 44; Ptar (videus) is interpreted on it “to appear,” with a sign of interrogation after it—the usual mark of scientific perplexity. In Bunsen’s fifth volume of “Egypte,” the interpretation following is “Illuminator,” which is more correct.

[#fn1059anc 1059]. Bunsen’s “Egypt,” vol. v., p. 90.

[#fn1060anc 1060]. It is the property of a mystic whom we met in Syria.

94 ISIS UNVEILED.

If Jesus knew the secret meaning of the title bestowed by him on Simon, then he must have been initiated; otherwise he could not have learned it; and if he was an initiate of either the Pythagorean Essenes, the Chaldean Magi, or the Egyptian Priests, then the doctrine taught by him was but a portion of the “Secret Doctrine” taught by the Pagan hierophants to the few select adepts admitted within the sacred adyta.

Would we push our inquiries farther, and seek to ascertain as much in relation to the nimbus and the tonsure of the Catholic priest and monk?^{[#fn1061 1061]} We shall find undeniable proofs that they are solar emblems. Knight, in his {{Style S-Italic|Old England Pictorially Illustrated,}} gives a drawing by St. Augustine, representing an ancient Christian bishop, in a dress probably identical with that worn by the great “saint” himself. The {{Style S-Italic|pallium,}} or the ancient stole of the bishop, is the feminine sign when worn by a priest in worship. On St. Augustine’s picture it is bedecked with Buddhistic crosses, and in its whole appearance it is a representation of the Egyptian  (tau), assuming slightly the figure of the letter Y. “Its lower end is the mark of the masculine triad,” says Inman; “the right hand (of the figure) has the forefinger extended, like the Assyrian priests while doing homage {{Style S-Italic|to the grove}}. . . . When a male dons the pallium in worship, he becomes the representative of the trinity in the unity, the {{Style S-Italic|arba,}} or mystic four.”^{[#fn1062 1062]}

[#fn1061anc 1061]. The Priests of Isis were tonsured.

[#fn1062anc 1062]. See “Ancient Faiths,” vol. ii., pp. 915-918.

95 CATHOLIC BELLS FROM THE BUDDHIST PAGODAS.

of Serapis and Isis, described by King, in {{Style S-Italic|The Gnostics and their Remains,}} Ή ΚΥΡΙΑ ΙϹΙϹ ΑΓΝΗ “. . . the very terms applied afterwards to that personage (the Virgin Mary) who succeeded to her form, titles, symbols, rites, and ceremonies. . . . Thus, her devotees carried into the new priesthood the former badges of their profession, the obligation to celibacy, the tonsure, and the surplice, omitting, unfortunately, the frequent ablutions prescribed by the ancient creed.” “The ‘Black Virgins,’ so highly reverenced in certain French cathedrals . . . proved, when at last critically examined, basalt figures of Isis”!^{[#fn1063 1063]}

We thus see that the bells used by Christians come to them directly from the Buddhist Thibetans and Chinese. The beads and rosaries have the same origin, and have been used by Buddhist monks for over 2,300 years. The {{Style S-Italic|Linghams}} in the Hindu temples are ornamented upon certain days with large berries, from a tree sacred to Mahadeva, which are strung into rosaries. The title of “nun” is an Egyptian word, and had with them the actual meaning; the Christians did not even take the trouble of translating the word {{Style S-Italic|Nonna.}} The aureole of the saints was used by the antediluvian artists of Babylonia, whenever they desired to honor or deify a mortal’s head. In a celebrated picture in Moore’s {{Style S-Italic|Hindoo Pantheon,}} entitled, “Christna nursed by Devaki, from a highly-finished picture,” the Hindu Virgin is represented as seated on a lounge and nursing Christna. The hair brushed back, the long veil, and the golden aureole around the Virgin’s head, as well as around that of the Hindu Saviour, are striking. No Catholic, well versed as he might be in the mysterious symbolism of iconology, would hesitate for a moment to worship at that shrine the Virgin Mary, the mother of his God!^{[#fn1064 1064]} In Indur Subba, the south entrance of the Caves of Ellora, may be seen to this day the figure of Indra’s wife, Indranee, sitting with her infant son-god, pointing the finger to heaven with the same gesture as the Italian Madonna and child. In {{Style S-Italic|Pagan and Christian Symbolism,}} the author gives a figure from a

[#fn1063anc 1063]. “The Gnostics and their Remains,” p. 71.

[#fn1064anc 1064]. See illustration in Inman’s “Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism,” p. 27.

96 ISIS UNVEILED.

mediæval woodcut—the like of which we have seen by dozens in old psalters—in which the Virgin Mary, with her infant, is represented as the Queen of Heaven, on the crescent moon, emblem of virginity. “Being before the sun, she almost eclipses its light. Than this, nothing could more completely identify the Christian mother and child with Isis and Horus, Ishtar, Venus, Juno, and a host of other Pagan goddesses, who have been called ‘Queen of Heaven,’ ‘Queen of the Universe,’ ‘Mother of God,’ ‘Spouse of God,’ ‘the Celestial Virgin,’ ‘the Heavenly Peace-Maker,’ etc.”^{[#fn1065 1065]}

And so above, below, outside, and inside, the Christian Church, in the priestly garments, and the religious rites, we recognize the stamp of exoteric heathenism. On no subject within the wide range of human knowledge, has the world been more blinded or deceived with such persistent misrepresentation as on that of antiquity. Its hoary past and its religious faiths have been misrepresented and trampled under the feet of its successors. Its hierophants and prophets, mystæ and epoptæ,^{[#fn1066 1066]} of the once sacred adyta of the temple shown as demoniacs and devil-worshippers. Donned in the despoiled garments of the victim, the Christian priest now anathematizes the latter with rites and ceremonies which he has learned from the theurgists themselves. The Mosaic {{Style S-Italic|Bible}} is used as a weapon against the people who furnished it. The heathen philosopher is cursed under the very roof which has witnessed his initiation; and the “monkey of God” ({{Style S-Italic|i.e}} ., the devil of Tertullian), “the originator and founder of magical theurgy, the science of illusions and lies, whose father and author is the demon,” is exorcised with holy water by the hand which holds the identical {{Style S-Italic|lituus^{[#fn1067 1067]}}} with which the ancient augur, after a solemn prayer, used to determine the regions of heaven, and evoke, in the name of the highest, the minor god (now termed the Devil), who unveiled to his eyes futurity, and enabled him to prophesy! On the part of the Christians and the clergy it is nothing but shameful ignorance, prejudice, and that contemptible pride so boldly denounced by one of their own reverend ministers, T. Gross,^{[#fn1068 1068]} which rails against all investigation “as a useless or a criminal labor, when it must be feared that they will result in the overthrow of preëstablished systems of faith.” On the part of the scholars it is the same apprehension of the possible necessity of having to

[#fn1065anc 1065]. Ibid., p. 76.

[#fn1066anc 1066]. Initiates and seers.

[#fn1067anc 1067]. The augur’s, and now bishop’s, pastoral crook.

[#fn1068anc 1068]. “The Heathen Religion.”

97 JUSTIN MARTYR’S CONFESSION ABOUT THEURGIC AMULETS.