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The Esoteric Character of the Gospels (continued in December, 1887, and February, 1888)
by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writtings, vol. 8, page(s) 172-217

Publications: Lucifer, Vol. I, No. 3, November, 1887, pp. 173-180

Also at: KH, TT, B

In other languages: Russian

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172


THE ESOTERIC CHARACTER OF THE GOSPELS

[The superior numbers appearing at various places through out this Essay refer to Compiler’s Notes immediately following it, on pages 217-239.]
—I—

“. . . . . Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy presence, and of the consummation of the age?” [1] asked the Disciples of the MASTER, on the Mount of Olives.

The reply given by the “Man of Sorrow,” the Chrêstos, on his trial, but also on his way to triumph, as Christos, or Christ,[2] is prophetic, and very suggestive. It is a warning indeed. The answer must be quoted in full. Jesus . . . said unto them:—

Take heed that no man lead you astray. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am the Christ; and shall lead many astray. And ye shall hear of wars . . . . but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and there shall be famines and earthquakes in divers places. But all these things are the beginning of travail . . . . . And many false prophets shall arise, and shall lead many astray . . . then shall the end come . . . . when therefore ye see the abomination of desolation which was spoken through Daniel . . . Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is the Christ, or there; believe him not . . . . If therefore they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the wilderness, go not forth: Behold, he is in the 173inner chambers; believe them not. For as the lightning cometh forth from the east, and is seen even unto the west: so shall be the presence of the Son of man, etc., etc.

Two things become evident to all in the above passages, now that their false rendering is corrected in the revision text: (a) “the coming of Christ,” means the presence of CHRISTOS in a regenerated world, and not at all the actual coming in body of “Christ” Jesus; (b) this Christ is to be sought neither in the wilderness nor “in the inner chambers,” nor in the sanctuary of any temple or church built by man; for Christ—the true esoteric SAVIOUR—is no man, but the DIVINE PRINCIPLE in every human being. He who strives to resurrect the Spirit crucifed in him by his own terrestrial passions, and buried deep in the “sepulchre” of his sinful flesh; he who has the strength to roll back the stone of matter from the door of his own inner sanctuary, he has the risen Christ in him.[3] The “Son of Man” is no child of the bond-woman—flesh, but verily of the free-woman—Spirit,[4] the child of man’s own deeds, and the fruit of his own spiritual labour.

On the other hand, at no time since the Christian era, have the precursor signs described in Matthew applied so graphically and forcibly to any epoch as they do to our own times. When has nation arisen against nation more than at this time? When have “famines”—another name for destitute pauperism, and the famished multitudes of the proletariat—been more cruel, earthquakes more frequent, or covered such an area simultaneously, as for the last few years? Millenarians and Adventists of 174robust faith, may go on saying that “the coming of (the carnalised) Christ” is near at hand, and prepare themselves for “the end of the world.” Theosophists—at any rate, some of them—who understand the hidden meaning of the universally-expected Avatars, Messiahs, Sosioshes and Christs—know that it is no “end of the world,” but “the consummation of the age,” i.e., the close of a cycle, which is now fast approaching.[5] If our readers have forgotten the concluding passages of the article, The Signs of the Times,” in Lucifer for October last, let them read them over, and they will plainly see the meaning of this particular cycle.1

Many and many a time the warning about the “false Christs” and prophets who shall lead people astray has been interpreted by charitable Christians, the worshippers of the dead-letter of their scripture, as applying to mystics generally, and Theosophists most especially. The recent work by Mr. Pember, Earth’s Earliest Ages, is a proof of it. Nevertheless, it seems very evident that the words in Matthew’s Gospel and others can hardly apply to Theosophists. For these were never found saying that Christ is “Here” or “There,” in wilderness or city, and least of all in the “inner chamber” behind the altar of any modern church. Whether Heathen or Christian by birth, they refuse to materialise and thus degrade that which is the purest and grandest ideal—the symbol of symbols—namely, the immortal Divine Spirit in man, whether it be called Horus, Krishna, Buddha, or Christ. None of them has ever yet said: “I am the Christ”; 175for those born in the West feel themselves, so far, only Chrêstians,[6] however much they may strive to become Christians in Spirit. It is to those, who in their great conceit and pride refuse to win the right of such appellation by first leading the life of Chrêstos; [7] to those who haughtily proclaim themselves Christians (the glorified, the anointed) by sole virtue of baptism when but a few days old—that the above-quoted words of Jesus apply most forcibly. Can the prophetic insight of him who uttered this remarkable warning be doubted by any one who sees the numerous “false prophets” and pseudo-apostles (of Christ), now roaming over the world? These have split the one divine Truth into fragments, and broken, in the camp of the Protestants alone, the rock of the Eternal Verity into three hundred and fifty odd pieces, which now represent the bulk of their Dissenting sects. Accepting the number in round figures as 350, and admitting, for argument’s sake, that, at least, one of these may have the approximate truth, still 349 must be necessarily false.[8] Each of these claims to have Christ exclusively in its “inner chamber,” and denies him to all others, while, in truth, the great majority of their respective followers daily put Christ to death on the cruciform tree of matter—the “tree of infamy” of the old Romans—indeed!

176 The worship of the dead-letter in the Bible is but one more form of idolatry, nothing better. A fundamental dogma of faith cannot exist under a double-faced Janus form. “Justification” by Christ cannot be achieved at one’s choice and fancy, either by “faith” or by “works” and James (ii, 25), therefore, contradicting Paul (Heb., xi, 31), and vice versa,[9] one of them must be wrong. Hence, the Bible is not the “Word of God,” but contains at best the words of fallible men and imperfect teachers. Yet read esoterically, it does contain, if not the whole truth, still, “nothing but the truth,” under whatever allegorical garb. Only: Quot homines tot sententiae.

The “Christ principle,” the awakened and glorified Spirit of Truth, being universal and eternal, the true Christos cannot be monopolized by any one person, even though that person has chosen to arrogate to himself the title of the “Vicar of Christ,” or of the “Head” of that or another State-religion. The spirits of “Chrêst” and “Christ” cannot be confined to any creed or sect, only because that sect chooses to exalt itself above the heads of all other religions or sects. The name has been used in a manner so intolerant and dogmatic, especially in our day, that Christianity is now the religion of arrogance par excellence, a stepping-stone for ambition, a sinecure for wealth, sham and power; a convenient screen for hypocrisy. The noble epithet of old, the one that made Justin Martyr say that “from the mere name, which is imputed to us as a crime, we are the most excellent,” [10] is 177now degraded. The missionary prides himself with the so-called conversion of a heathen, who makes of Christianity ever a profession, but rarely a religion, a source of income from the missionary fund, and a pretext, since the blood of Jesus has washed them all by anticipation, for every petty crime, from drunkenness and lying up to theft. That same missionary, however, would not hesitate to publicly condemn the greatest saint to eternal perdition and hell fires if that holy man has only neglected to pass through the fruitless and meaningless form of baptism by water with accompaniment of lip prayers and vain ritualism.

We say “lip prayer” and “vain ritualism” knowingly. Few Christians among the laymen are aware even of the true meaning of the word Christ; and those of the clergy who happen to know it (for they are brought up in the idea that to study such subjects is sinful) keep the information secret from their parishioners. They demand blind, implicit faith, and forbid inquiry as the one unpardonable sin, though nothing of that which leads to the knowledge of the truth can be aught else than holy. For what is “Divine Wisdom,” or Gnosis, but the essential reality behind the evanescent appearances of objects in nature—the very soul of the manifested LOGOS? Why should men who strive to accomplish union with the one eternal and absolute Deity shudder at the idea of prying into its mysteries—however awful? Why, above all, should they use names and words the very meaning of which is a sealed mystery to them—a mere sound? Is it because an unscrupulous, power-seeking Establishment called a Church has cried “wolf” at every such attempt, and, denouncing it as “blasphemous,” has ever tried to kill the spirit of inquiry? But Theosophy, the “Divine Wisdom,’’ has never heeded that cry, and has the courage of its opinions. The world of sceptics and fanatics may call it, one—an empty “ism”—the other “Satanism”: they can never crush it. Theosophists have been called Atheists, haters of Christianity, the enemies of God and the gods. They are none of these. Therefore, they have agreed this day to publish a clear statement of their 178ideas, and a profession of their faith—with regard to monotheism and Christianity, at any rate—and to place it before the impartial reader to judge them and their detractors on the merits of their respective faiths. No truth-loving mind would object to such honest and sincere dealing, nor will it be dazzled by any amount of new light thrown upon the subject, howsoever much startled otherwise. On the contrary, such minds will thank Lucifer, perhaps, while those of whom it was said “qui vult decipi decipiatur”—let them be deceived by all means!

The editors of this magazine propose to give a series of essays upon the hidden meaning or esotericism of the “New Testament.”4 No more than any other scripture of the great world-religions can the Bible be excluded from that class of allegorical and symbolical writings which have been, from the prehistoric ages, the receptacle of the secret teachings of the Mysteries of Initiation, under a more or less veiled form. The primitive writers of the Logia (now the Gospels) knew certainly the truth, and the whole truth; but their successors had, as certainly, only dogma and form, which lead to hierarchical power at heart, rather than the spirit of the so-called Christ’s teachings. Hence the gradual perversion. As Higgins truly said, in the Christologia of St. Paul and Justin Martyr, we have the esoteric religion of the Vatican, a refined Gnosticism for the cardinals, a more gross one for the people. It is the latter, only still more materialized and disfigured, which has reached us in our age.

The idea of writing this series was suggested to us by a certain letter published in our October issue, under the heading of “Are the Teachings Ascribed to Jesus Contradictory?”5 Nevertheless, this is no attempt to contradict or weaken, in any one instance, that which is said by Mr. Gerald Massey in his criticism. The contradictions pointed out by the learned lecturer and author are too patent to be explained away by any “Preacher” or Bible champion; for what he has said—only in more terse and vigorous language—is what was said of the 179descendant of Joseph Pandira (or Panthera) in Isis Unveiled (Vol. II, p. 201), from the Talmudic Sepher Toldoth Jeshu. His belief with regard to the spurious character of Bible and New Testament, as now edited, is therefore, also the belief of the present writer. In view of the recent revision of the Bible, and its many thousands of mistakes, mistranslations, and interpolations (some confessed to, and others withheld), it would ill become an opponent to take any one to task for refusing to believe in the authorised texts.

But the editors would object to one short sentence in the criticism under notice. Mr. Gerald Massey writes:

What is the use of taking your “Bible oath” that this thing is true, if the Book you are sworn upon is a magazine of falsehoods already exploded, or just going off?

Surely it is not a symbologist of Mr. G. Massey’s powers and learning who would call the Book of the Dead, or the Vedas, or any other ancient Scripture, “a magazine of falsehoods.” [11] Why not regard in the same light as all the others, the Old, and, in a still greater measure, the New Testament?

All of these are “magazines of falsehoods,” if accepted in the exoteric dead-letter interpretations of their ancient, 180and especially their modern, theological glossarists. Each of these records has served in its turn as a means for securing power and of supporting the ambitious policy of an unscrupulous priesthood. All have promoted superstition, all made of their gods blood-thirsty and ever-damning Molochs and fiends, as all have made nations to serve the latter more than the God of Truth. But while cunningly-devised dogmas and intentional misinterpretations by scholiasts are beyond any doubt, “falsehoods already exploded,” the texts themselves are mines of universal truths. But for the world of the profane and sinners, at any rate—they were and still are like the mysterious characters traced by “the fingers of a man’s hand” on the wall of the Palace of Belshazzar: they need Daniel to read and understand them.

Nevertheless, TRUTH has not allowed herself to remain without witnesses. There are, besides great Initiates into scriptural symbology, a number of quiet students of the mysteries of archaic esotericism, of scholars proficient in Hebrew and other dead tongues, who have devoted their lives to unriddle the speeches of the Sphinx of the world-religions. And these students, though none of them has yet mastered all the “seven keys” that open the great problem, have discovered enough to be able to say: There was a universal mystery-language, in which all the World Scriptures were written, from Vedas to Revelation, from the Book of the Dead to the Acts. One of the keys, at any rate, the numerical and geometrical key [12] to the Mystery Speech is now rescued; an ancient language, truly, which up to this time remained hidden, but the evidences of which abundantly exist, as may be proven by undeniable mathematical demonstrations. If, indeed, the Bible is forced on the acceptance of the world in its 181dead-letter meaning, in the face of the modern discoveries by Orientalists and the efforts of independent students and kabalists, it is easy to prophesy that even the present new generations of Europe and America will repudiate it, as all the materialists and logicians have done. For, the more one studies ancient religious texts, the more one finds that the ground-work of the New Testament is the same as the ground-work of the Vedas, of the Egyptian theogony, and the Mazdean allegories. The atonements by blood—blood-covenants and blood-transferences from gods to men, and by men, as sacrifices to the gods—are the first key-note struck in every cosmogony and theogony; soul, life and blood were synonymous words in every language, pre-eminently with the Jews; and that blood-giving was life-giving. Many a legend among (geographically) alien nations ascribes soul and consciousness in newly-created mankind to the blood of the god-creators Berosus records a Chaldean legend ascribing the creation of a new race of mankind to the admixture of dust with the blood that flowed from the severed head of the god Belus. “On this account it is that men are rational, and partake of divine knowledge,” explains Berosus.[13] And Lenormant has shown (The Beginnings of History, etc., p. 52, footnote) that “the Orphics . . . said that the immaterial part of man, his soul [his life], sprang from the blood of Dionysos Zagreus, whom these Titans had torn to pieces. . . .”8 Blood “revivifies the dead”—i.e., interpreted metaphysically, it gives conscious life and a soul to the man of matter or clay—such as the modern materialist is now. The mystic meaning of the injunction, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves” [John, vi, 53], can never be understood or appreciated at its true occult value, except by those who 182hold some of the seven keys, and yet care little for St. Peter. [14] These words, whether said by Jesus of Nazareth, or Jeshua Ben-Panthera, are the words of an INITIATE. They have to be interpreted with the help of three keys—one opening the psychic door, the second that of physiology, and the third that which unlocks the mystery of terrestrial being, by unveiling the inseparable blending of theogony with anthropology. It is for revealing a few of these truths, with the sole view of saving intellectual mankind from the insanities of materialism and pessimism, that mystics have often been denounced as the servants of Antichrist, even by those Christians who are most worthy, sincerely pious and respectable men.

The first key that one has to use to unravel the dark secrets involved in the mystic name of Christ, is the key which unlocked the door to the ancient mysteries of the primitive Aryans, Sabeans and Egyptians. The Gnosis supplanted by the Christian scheme was universal. It was the echo of the primordial wisdom-religion which had once been the heirloom of the whole of mankind; and, therefore, one may truly say that, in its purely 183metaphysical aspect, the Spirit of Christ (the divine logos) was present in humanity from the beginning of it. The author of the Clementine Homilies 10 is right; the mystery of Christos—now supposed to have been taught by Jesus of Nazareth—“was identical” with that which from the first had been communicated “to those who were worthy,” as quoted in another lecture.[15] 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 . . . . “those who knew that they could die no more, being equal to the angels as sons of God and sons of the Resurrection.” In other words, they were the great adepts of whatever religion; and the words apply to all those who, without being Initiates, strive and succeed, through personal efforts to live the life and to attain the naturally ensuing spiritual illumination in blending their personality—the “Son”—with the “Father,” their individual divine Spirit, the God within them. This “resurrection” can never be monopolized by the Christians, but is the spiritual birth-right of every human being endowed with soul and spirit, whatever his religion may be. Such individual is a Christ-man. On the other hand, those who choose to ignore the Christ (principle) within themselves, must die unregenerate heathens—baptism, sacraments, lip-prayers, and belief in dogmas notwithstanding.

In order to follow this explanation, the reader must bear in mind the real archaic meaning of the paronomasia involved in the two terms Chrêstos and Christos. The former means certainly more than merely “a good,” an “excellent man,” while the latter was never applied to any one living man, but to every Initiate at the moment of his second birth and resurrection.[16] He who finds Christos 184within himself and recognises the latter as his only “way,” becomes a follower and an Apostle of Christ, though he may have never been baptised, nor even have met a “Christian,” still less call himself one.

H. P. B.

–––––––
––II––
[Lucifer, Vol. I, No. 4, December, 1887, pp. 299-310]

The word Chrêstos existed ages before Christianity was heard of. It is found used, from the fifth century B.C., by Herodotus, by Aeschylus and other classical Greek writers, the meaning of it being applied to both things and persons.

Thus in Aeschylus (Choëphoroe, 901) we read of μαντεύματα: (pythochresta), the “oracles delivered by a Pythian God” (Greek-Engl. Lex.) through a pythoness; 12 and Pythochrêstos is the nominative singular of an adjective derived from chraô, χράω (Euripides, Ion, 1218).13 The later meanings coined freely from this primitive application, are numerous and varied. Pagan classics expressed more than one idea by the verb χράομαι, “consulting an oracle”; for it also means “fated,” doomed by an oracle, in the sense of a sacrificial victim to its decree, or—“to the WORD”; as chrêstêrion is not only “the seat of an oracle” but also “an offering to, or for, the oracle.” [17] Chrêstês, χρήστης, is one who expounds or explains oracles, “a prophet, a soothsayer”;[18] and chrêstêrios, χρηστήριος is one 185who belongs to, or is in the service of, an oracle, a god, or a “Master”; [19] this Canon Farrar’s efforts notwithstanding [20]

All this is evidence that the terms Christ and Christians, spelt originally Chrêst and Chrêstians, χρηστιανοί,[21] were 186directly borrowed from the Temple terminology of the Pagans, and meant the same thing. The God of the Jews was now substituted for the Oracle and the other gods; the generic designation “Chrêstos” became a noun applied to one special personage, and new terms such as Chrêstianoi and Chrêstodoulos, “a follower or server of Chrêstos”—were coined out of the old material. This is shown by Philo Judaeus, a monotheist, assuredly, using already the same term for monotheistic purposes. For he speaks of θεόχρηστος (theochrêstos), “God-declared,” or one who is declared by god, and of λόγια θεόχρηστα (logia theochrêsta), “sayings delivered by God”—which proves that he wrote at a time (between the first century B.C., and the first A.D.) when neither Christians nor Chrêstians were yet known under these names, but still called themselves the Nazarenes. The notable difference between the two words, χράω, “consulting or obtaining response from a god or oracle” (χρεώ being the Ionic earlier form of it), and χρίω (chrio), “to rub, to anoint” (from which the name Christos), have not prevented the ecclesiastical adoption and coinage from Philo’s expression θεόχρηστος of that other term θεόχριστος, “anointed by God.” Thus the quiet substitution of the letter 4 for 0 for dogmatic purposes, was achieved in the easiest way, as we now see.

The secular meaning of Chrêstos runs throughout the classical Greek literature pari passu with that given to it in the mysteries. Demosthenes saying ὦ χρηστέ (De corona, 318 [330]), means by it simply “you nice fellow”; Plato (in Phaedrus, 264 C) has χρηστὸς ἐι, ὅτι με ἡγεῖ— “you are an excellent fellow to think. . . . . ” 16 But in the esoteric phraseology of the temples “chrêstos,” [22] a 187Word which, like the participle Chrêstheis, is formed under the same rule, and conveys the same sense—from the verb χράομαι (“to consult a god”)—answers to what we would call an adept, also a high chela, a disciple. It is in this sense that it is used by Euripides (Ion, 1320) 18 and by Aeschylus (I C).19 This qualification was applied to those whom the god, oracle, or any superior had proclaimed this, that, or anything else. An instance may be given in this case.

The words χρῆσεν οἰκιστῆρα used by Pindar (Odes: Pythia, IV, 6) 20 mean “the oracle proclaimed him the coloniser.” In this case the genius of the Greek language permits that the man so proclaimed should be called χρηστός (Chrêstos). Hence this term was applied to every Disciple recognized by a Master, as also to every good man. Now, the Greek language affords strange etymologies. Christian theology has chosen and decreed that the name Christos should be taken as derived from χρίω χρισω (Chrisô), “anointed with scented unguents or oil.” But this word has several significances. It is used by Homer, certainly, as applied to the rubbing with oil of the body after bathing (Iliad, XXIII, 186; also in Odyssey, IV, 252) 21 as other ancient writers do. Yet the word χριστης (Christês) means rather a white-washer, while the word Chrêstês (χρήστης) means priest and prophet, a term far more applicable to Jesus, than that of the “Anointed,” since, as Nork shows on the authority of the Gospels, he never was anointed, either as king or priest. In short, there is a deep mystery underlying all this scheme, which, as I maintain, only a thorough knowledge of the Pagan 188mysteries is capable of unveiling.[23] It is not w-hat the early Fathers, who had an object to achieve, may affirm or deny, that is the important point, but rather what is now the evidence for the real significance given to the two terms Chrêstos and Christos by the ancients in the pre-Christian ages. For the latter had no object to achieve, therefore nothing to conceal or disfigure, and their evidence is naturally the more reliable of the two. This evidence can be obtained by first studying the meaning given to these words by the classics, and then their correct significance searched for in mystic symbology.

Now Chrêstos, as already said, is a term applied in various senses. It qualifies both Deity and Man. It is used in the former sense in the Gospels, as in Luke (vi, 35), where it means “kind;” and “merciful,” χρηστός ἐστιν, [and] in I Peter (ii, 3), where it is said, “Kind is the Lord,” χρηστος ο Κύριος. On the other hand, it is explained by Clemens Alexandrinus as simply meaning a good man: “All who believe in Chrêst (a good man) both are, and are called Chrêstians, that is good men” (Strom., lib. II, ch. iv).23 The reticence of Clemens, whose Christianity, as King truly remarks in his The Gnostics and Their Remains, was no more than a graft upon the congenial stock of his original Platonism, is quite natural. He was an Initiate, a new Platonist, before he became a Christian, which fact, however much he may 189have fallen off from his earlier views, could not exonerate him from his pledge of secrecy. And as a Theosophist and a Gnostic, one who knew, Clemens must have known that Christos was “the WAY,” while Chrêstos was the lonely traveller journeying on to reach the ultimate goal through that “Path,” which goal was Christos, the glorified Spirit of “TRUTH,” the reunion with which makes the soul (the Son) ONE with the (Father) Spirit. That Paul knew it, is certain, for his own expressions prove it. For what do the words οὓς παλιν ὠδίνω ἄχρις οὗ μορφωθή χριστὸς ἐν ὑμῖν, or, as given in the authorised translations, “of whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you,” mean, but what we give in its esoteric rendering, i.e., “until you find the Christos within yourselves as your only ‘way’.” (vide Galatians, iv, 19.)

Thus Jesus, whether of Nazareth or Lüd, [24] was a Chrêstos, as undeniably as that he never was entitled to the appellation of Christos, during his life-time and before his last trial. It may have been as Higgins thinks, who surmises that “the first name of Jesus may have been χρειζος, the second χρηζος, and the third χριζος. The word χρειζος was used before the H [cap. eta] was in use in the language.” 25 But Rev. R. Taylor (in his answer to Pye Smith, p. 113) is quoted saying “The complimentary epithet CHRÊST . . . . . signified nothing more than a good man.” 26

190 Here again a number of ancient writers may be brought forward to testify that Christos (or Chreistos, rather) was, along with χρηζος== Hrêstos, an adjective applied to Gentiles before the Christian era. In Philopatris, 17, it is said: πάντα, εἰ τύχῃ γε χρηστὸς καὶ ἐν ἔθνεσι, i.e.,“If chrêstos chance to be even among the Gentiles,” etc.27

Tertullian denounces in the 3rd chapter of his Apologeticus the word “Christianus” as derived by “crafty interpretation”; [25] Dr. John Jones, on the other hand, letting out the information, corroborated by good sources, that Hrêstos (χρηζος) “was the usual name given [to Christ] by the Gnostics, and even by unbelievers,” assures us that the real name ought to be χριζος or Christos—thus repeating and supporting the original “pious fraud” of the early Fathers, a fraud which led to the carnalizing of the whole Christian system.[26] But I propose to show as much of the real meaning of all these terms as lies within my humble powers and knowledge. Christos, or the “Christ-condition,” was ever the synonym of the “Mahatmic-condition,” i.e., the union of the man with the divine principle in him. As Paul says (Ephes., iii, 17): 191“κατοικήσαι τὸν χριστὸν διὰ τῆς πίστεως ἐν ταῖς καρδίαις ὑμῶν” “That you may find Christos in your inner man through knowledge,” not faith, as translated; for Pistis is “knowledge,” as will be shown further on.30

There is still another and far more weighty proof that the name Christos is pre-Christian. The evidence for it is found in the prophecy of the Erythraean Sibyl. We read in it ΙΗΣΟΥΣ ΧΡΕΙΣΤΟΣ ΘΕΟΥ ΥΙΟΣ ΣΩΤΗΡ.31 Read esoterically, this string of meaningless detached nouns, which has no sense to the profane, contains a real prophecy—only not referring to Jesus—and a verse from the mystic catechism of the Initiate. The prophecy relates to the coming down upon the Earth of the Spirit of Truth (Christos), after which advent—that has once more nought to do with Jesus—will begin the Golden Age; the verse refers to the necessity before reaching that blessed condition of inner (or subjective) theophany and theopneusty, to pass through the crucifixion of flesh or matter. Read exoterically, the words “Iêsous Chreistos theou huios sôtêr stauros,” meaning literally “Iesus, Christos, Son of God, Saviour, Cross,” are most excellent handles to hang a Christian prophecy on, but they are pagan, not Christian.

If called upon to explain the names IÊSOUS CHREISTOS, the answer is: study mythology, the so-called “fictions” of the ancients, and they will give you the key. Ponder over Apollo, the solar god, and the “Healer,” and the allegory about his son Janus (or Ion), his priest at Delphi, through whom alone could prayers reach the immortal gods, and his other son Asclepios, called the Sotêr, or Saviour. Here is a leaflet from esoteric history written in symbolical phraseology by the old Grecian poets.

The city of Chrisa [27] (now spelt Crisa), was built in memory of Kreousa (or Creüsa), daughter of King 192Erechtheus and mother of Janus (or Ion) by Apollo, in memory of the danger which Janus escaped.Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content We learn that Janus, abandoned by his mother in a grotto “to hide the shame of the virgin who bore a son,” was found by Hermes, who brought the infant to Delphi, nurtured him by his father’s sanctuary and oracle, where, under the name of Chrêsis (χρῆσις) Janus became first a Chrêstês (a priest, sooth-sayer, or Initiate), and then very nearly a Chrêstêrion, “a sacrificial victim,” Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content ready to be poisoned by his own mother, who knew him not, and who, in her jealousy, mistook him, on the hazy intimation of the oracle, for a son of her husband. He pursued her to the very altar with the intention of killing her—when she was saved through the pythoness, who divulged to both the secret of their relationship. In memory of this narrow escape, Creüsa, the mother, built the city of Chrisa, or Krisa. Such is the allegory, and it symbolizes simply the trials of Initiation.Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; refs with no name must have content

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Footnotes

  1. ↑ St. Matthew, xxiv, 3, et seq. The sentences italicised are those which stand corrected in the New Testament after the recent revision in 1881 of the version of 1611; which version is full of errors, voluntary and involuntary. The word “presence,” for “coming,” and “the consummation of the age,” now standing for “the end of the world,” have altered, of late, the whole meaning, even for the most sincere Christians, if we exempt the Adventists.
  2. ↑ He who will not ponder over and master the great difference between the meaning of the two Greek words—-χρηστός and χριστός must remain blind for ever to the true esoteric meaning of the Gospels; that is to say, to the living Spirit entombed in the sterile dead-letter of the texts, the very Dead Sea fruit of lip-Christianity.
  3. ↑ “For ye are the temple [“sanctuary” in the revised N.T.] of the living God.” (II Cor., vi, 16.)
  4. ↑ Spirit, or the Holy Ghost, was feminine with the Jews, as with most ancient peoples, and it was so with the early Christians. Sophia of the Gnostics, and the third Sephiroth Binah (the female Jehovah of the Kabalists), are feminine principles—“Divine Spirit,” or Ruach. “Achat Ruach Elohim Chayyim.” “One is She, the Spirit of the Elohim of Life,” is said in Sepher Yetzirah. [chap. i, sect. 9.]
  5. ↑ There are several remarkable cycles that come to a close at the end of this century. First, the 5,000 years of the Kaliyuga cycle; again the Messianic cycle of the Samaritan (also Kabalistic) Jews of the man connected with Pisces (Ichthys or “Fish-man” Dag). It is a cycle, historic and not very long, but very occult, lasting about 2,155 solar years, but having a true significance only when computed by lunar months. It occurred 2410 and 255 B.C., or when the equinox entered into the sign of the Ram, and again into that of Pisces. When it enters, in a few years, the sign of Aquarius, psychologists will have some extra work to do, and the psychic idiosyncrasies of humanity will enter on a great change.
  6. ↑ The earliest Christian author, Justin Martyr, calls, in his First Apology, his co-religionists Chrêstians, χρηστιανοί—not Christians.
  7. ↑ “Clemens Alexandrinus, in the second century, founds a serious argument on this paronomasia that (lib. III, cap. xvii, p. 53, et circa—Psal. 55, D), all who believed in Chrêst (i.e., in a good man) both are, and are called, Chrêstians, that is, good men” (Stromata, lib. II, ch. iv, quoted in Higgins’ Anacalypsis, I, 568).2 And Lactantius (Divine Institutes, lib. IV, cap. vii) says that it is only through ignorance that people call themselves Christians, instead of Chrêstians: “Sed exponenda huius nominis ratio est propter ignorantium errorem qui eum immutata littera Chrestum solent dicere.”
  8. ↑ In England alone, there are over 239 various sects. (See Whitaker’s Almanac.) In 1883, there were 186 denominations only, and now they steadily increase with every year, an additional 53 sects having sprung up in only four years!
  9. ↑ It is but fair to St. Paul to remark that this contradiction is surely due to later tampering with his Epistles. Paul was a Gnostic himself, i.e., a “Son of Wisdom,” and an Initiate into the true mysteries of Christos, though he may have thundered (or was made to appear to do so) against some Gnostic sects, of which, in his day, there were many. But his Christos was not Jesus of Nazareth, nor any living man, as shown so ably in Mr. Gerald Massey’s lecture, “Paul, the Gnostic Opponent of Peter.” He was an Initiate, a true “Master-Builder” or adept, as described in Isis Unveiled, Vol. II, pp. 90-91.
  10. ↑ "...ὅσον γε ἐκ τοῦ κατηγορουμένου ἡμῶν ὀνοματος..." (First Apology, iv).3
  11. ↑ The extraordinary amount of information collated by that able Egyptologist shows that he has thoroughly mastered the secret of the production of the New Testament. Mr. Massey knows the difference between the spiritual, divine and purely metaphysical Christos, and the made-up “lay figure” of the carnalized Jesus. He knows also that the Christian canon, especially the Gospels, Acts and Epistles, are made up of fragments of Gnostic wisdom, the groundwork of which is pre-Christian and built on the MYSTERIES of Initiation. It is the mode of theological presentation and the interpolated passages—such as in Mark, xvi, from verse 9 to the end—which make of the Gospels a “magazine of (wicked) falsehoods,” and throw a slur on CHRISTOS. But the Occultist who discerns between the two currents (the true gnostic and the pseudo-Christian) knows that the passages free from theological tampering belong to archaic wisdom, and so does Mr. Gerald Massey, though his views differ from ours.
  12. ↑ “The key to the recovery of the language so far as the writer’s efforts have been concerned was found in the use, strange to say, of the discovered integral ratio in numbers of diameter to circumference of a circle,” by a geometrician. “This ratio is 6561 for diameter and 20612 for circumference.” (Cabalistic MSS.) 6 In one of the future numbers of Lucifer more details will be given, with the permission of the discoverer.—Ed.7
  13. ↑ Cory’s Ancient Fragments, p. 59. So do Sanchoniathon and Hesiod, who both ascribe the vivifying of mankind to the spilt blood of the Gods. But blood and soul are one (nephesh), and the blood of the gods means here the informing soul.
  14. ↑ The existence of these seven keys is virtually admitted, owing to deep research in the Egyptological lore, by Mr. G. Massey again. While opposing the teachings of Esoteric Buddhism—unfortunately misunderstood by him in almost every respect—in his Lecture on “The Seven Souls of Man and their Culmination in Christ,” he writes (p. 21):—

    “. . . this system of thought, this mode of representation, this septenary of powers, in various aspects, had been established in Egypt at least seven thousand years ago, as we learn from certain allusions to Atum [the god ‘in whom the fatherhood was individualised as the begetter of an eternal soul,’ the seventh principle of the Theosophists] found in the inscriptions lately discovered at Sakkarah. I say in various aspects because the Gnosis of the Mysteries was at least sevenfold in its nature—it was Elemental, Biological, Elementary (human), Stellar, Lunar, Solar, and Spiritual—and nothing short of a grasp of the whole system can possibly enable us to discriminate the various parts, distinguish one from the other, and determine the which and the what, as we try to follow the symbolical Seven through their several phases of character.” 9

  15. ↑ “Gnostic and Historic Christianity.” 11
  16. ↑ “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” (John, iii, 5). Here the birth from above, the spiritual birth, is meant, achieved at the supreme and last initiation.
  17. ↑ The word χρεών is explained by Herodotus (7. 11. 7) 14 as that which an oracle declares, and τὸ χρεών is given by Plutarch (Lives: Nicias, xiv, b) as “fate,” “necessity.” Vide Herod., VII, 215; V, 109; and Sophocles, Philoctetes, 437.15
  18. ↑ See Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon.
  19. ↑ Hence of a Guru, “a teacher,” and chela, a “disciple,” in their mutual relations.
  20. ↑ In his recent work, The Early Days of Christianity, Canon Farrar remarks:—“Ps. xxxiv, 8, χρηστός, ‘sweet’ (Aug. dulcis, Vulg. suavis). Cf. Luke, v, 39; vi, 35. Some have supposed a pleasant play of words, founded on itacism, between chrêstos (sweet) and Christos (Christ) . . .” (Vol. I, p. 158, fnote). But there is nothing to suppose, since it began by a “play of words,” indeed. The name Christus was not “distorted into Chrêstos,” as the learned author would make his readers believe (I, p. 19), but it was the adjective and noun Chrêstos which became distorted into Christus, and applied to Jesus. In a footnote on the word “Chrêstian,” occurring in the First Epistle of Peter (iv, 16), in which in the revised later MSS. the word was changed into Christian, Canon Farrar remarks again, “. . . perhaps we should read the ignorant heathen distortion, Chrêstian . . .” (I, p. 171, fnote). Most decidedly we should; for the eloquent writer should remember his Master’s command to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. His dislike notwithstanding; Mr. Farrar is obliged to admit that the name Christian was first INVENTED, by the sneering, mocking Antiochians, as early as A.D. 44, but had not come into general use before the persecution by Nero. “Tacitus (Ann., xv, 44),” he says, “uses the word ‘Christianos’ with something of an apology. It is well known that in the N. T. it only occurs three times, and always involves a hostile sense (Acts, xi, 26; xxvi, 28), as it does in iv, 16” (Vol. I, p. 147, fnote). It was not Claudius alone who looked with alarm and suspicion on the Christians, so nicknamed in derision for their carnalizing a subjective principle or attribute, but all the pagan nations. For Tacitus, speaking of those whom the masses called “Christians,” describes them as a set of men detested for their enormities and crimes. No wonder, for history repeats itself. There are, no doubt, thousands of noble, sincere, and virtuous Christian-born men and women now. But we have only to look at the viciousness of Christian “heathen” converts; at the morality of those proselytes in India, whom the missionaries themselves decline to take into their service, to draw a parallel between the converts of 1,800 years ago, and the modern heathens “touched by grace.”
  21. ↑ Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Lactantius, Clemens Alexandrinus, and others spelt it in this way.
  22. ↑ Vide Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon. Chrêstos is really one who is continually warned, advised, guided, whether by oracle or prophet. Mr. G. Massey is not correct in saying that “. . . . . The Gnostic form of the name Chrêst, or Chrêstos, denotes the Good God, not a human original,” for it denotes the latter, i.e., a good, holy man; but he is quite right when he adds that Chrêstianus signifies “sweetness, goodness, or benignity; an early version of Matthew Arnold’s ‘Sweetness and Light’.” “The Chrêstoi, as the Good people, were pre-extant. Numerous Greek inscriptions show that the departed, the hero, the saintly one—that is, the ‘Good’—was styled Chrêstos, or the Christ, and from this meaning of the ‘ Good ‘ does Justin, the primal apologist, derive the Christian name. This identifies it with the Gnostic source, and with the ‘ Good God ‘ who revealed himself according to Marcion—that is, the Un-Nefer or Good-opener of the Egyptian theology.”—(Agnostic Annual.) 17
  23. ↑ Again I must bring forward what Mr. G. Massey says (whom I quote repeatedly because he has studied this subject so thoroughly and so conscientiously).
    “My contention, or rather explanation,” he says, “is that the author of the Christian name is the Mummy-Christ of Egypt, called the Karest, which was a type of the immortal spirit in man, the Christ within (as Paul has it), the divine offspring incarnated, the Logos, the Word of Truth, the Makheru of Egypt. It did not originate as a mere type! The preserved mummy was the dead body of any one that was Karest, or mummified, to be kept by the living; and, through constant repetition, this became a type of the resurrection from (not of!) the dead.” 22 See the explanation of this further on.
  24. ↑ Or Lydda. Reference is made here to the Rabbinical tradition in the Babylonian Gemara, called Sepher Toldoth Jeshu, about Jesus being the son of one named Pandira, and having lived a century earlier than the era called Christian, namely, during the reign of the Jewish king Alexander Jannaeus and his wife Salome, who reigned from the year 106 to 79 B.C. Accused by the Jews of having learned the magic art in Egypt, and of having stolen from the Holy of Holies the Incommunicable Name, Jehoshua (Jesus) was put to death by the Sanhedrin at Lüd. He was stoned and then crucified on a tree, on the eve of Passover. The narrative is ascribed to the Talmudistic authors of Sotah and Sanhedrin, p. 19, Book of Jechiel. See Isis Unveiled, II, 201; Arnobius [Adv. Gentes, I, 43]; 24 Éliphas Lévi’s La Science des Esprits [pp. 23-40], and “The Historical Jesus and Mythical Christ,” a lecture by G. Massey.
  25. ↑ “Christianus vero, quantum interpretatio est, de unctione deducitur. Sed et cum perperam Chrestianus pronunciatur a vobis (nam nec nominis certa est noticia penes vos), de suavitate vel benignitate compositum est.” 28 Canon Farrar makes a great effort to show such lapsus calami by various Fathers as the results of disgust and fear. “. . . . . There can be little doubt,” he says (in The Early Days of Christianity, Vol. I, p. 60), “. . . that the name ‘Christian’ . . . . . . was a nickname due to the wit of the Antiochenes . . . . . It is clear that the sacred writers avoided the name [Christians], because it was employed by their enemies . . . . . . . (Tac. Ann., xv, 44). It only became familiar when the virtues of Christians had shed lustre upon it . . . .” This is a very lame excuse, and a poor explanation to give for so eminent a thinker as Canon Farrar. As to the “virtues of Christians” ever shedding lustre upon the name, let us hope that the writer had in his mind’s eye neither Bishop Cyril of Alexandria, nor Eusebius, nor the Emperor Constantine, of murderous fame, nor yet the Popes Borgia and the Holy Inquisition.
  26. ↑ Quoted by G. Higgins (See Vol. I, p. 570). 29
  27. ↑ In the days of Homer, we find this city, once celebrated for its mysteries, the chief seat of Initiation, and the name of Chrêstos used as a title during the mysteries. It is mentioned in the Iliad, II, 520, as “Krisa” (Κρίσα). Dr. Clarke suspected its ruins under the present site of` Krestona, a small town, or village rather, in Phocis, near the Crissaean Bay. (See E. D. Clarke, Travels in various Countries of Europe, Asia and Africa. 4th ed. Vol. VII, chap. vi, “Lebadéa to Delphi,” p. 239.)
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