HPB-IU v.2 ch.10: Difference between revisions

<center>{{Style S-Italic|Protevangelium.}}</center>

{{Style P-Quote|“I believe in the Devil, the Father Almighty of Evil, the Destroyer of all things, Perturbator of Heaven and Earth;  

And the Death and Hell everlasting. {{Style S-Italic|Amen}}.” }}

{{Footnote return|fn1819}} So firmly established seems to have been the reputation of the Brahmans and Buddhists for the highest morality, and that since time immemorial, that we find Colonel Henry Yule, in his admirable edition of “Marco Polo,” giving the following testimony: “The high virtues ascribed to the Brahman and Indian merchants were, perhaps, in part, matter of tradition . . . but the eulogy is so constant among mediæval travellers {{Style S-Italic|that it must have had a solid foundation.}} In fact, it would not be difficult to trace a chain of similar testimony from ancient times down to our own. Arrian says no Indian was ever accused of falsehood. Hwen T’sang ascribes to the people of India eminent uprightness, honesty, and disinterestedness. Friar Jordanus (''circa'' 1330) says the people of Lesser India (Sindh and Western India) were true in speech and eminent in justice; and we may also refer to the high character given to the Hindus by Abul Fazl. But {{Style S-Italic|after}} 150 {{Style S-Italic|years of European trade, indeed, we find a sad deterioration}}. . . . Yet Pallas, in the last century, noticing the Bamyan colony at Astrakhan, says its members were notable for an upright dealing that made them greatly preferable to Armenians. And that wise and admirable public servant, the late Sir William Sleeman, in our own time, has said that he knew no class of men in the world more strictly honorable than the mercantile classes of India.”¹

{{Style S-Italic|475 THE DEVIL IN ALL HIS ASPECTS.}}

But we challenge any honest man in the wide world to say whether he thinks the Brahman was far from the truth in saying of the missionary Stoddard, “this man beats us all” in lying. What else would he say, if the latter preached to them the doctrine of {{Style S-Italic|eternal damnation,}} because, indeed, they had passed their lives without reading a Jewish book of which they never heard, or asked salvation of a Christ whose existence they never suspected! But Baptist clergymen who need a few thousand dollars must devise terrifying sensations to fire the congregational heart.

{{Style P-Align right|“Wm. L. D.O ’Grady.}}  

“New York, June 12, 1877.” }}

{{Style P-Quote|&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;“The great conclusion here;

Job hearkens to the words of wisdom, and then the “Lord” answers Job “out of the whirlwind” of nature, God’s first visible manifestation: “Stand still, O Job, stand still! and consider the wondrous works of God; for {{Style S-Italic|by them alone}} thou canst know God. ‘Behold, God is great, and {{Style S-Italic|we know him not,’}} Him who ‘maketh small the drops of water; {{Style S-Italic|but they}} pour down rain {{Style S-Italic|according to the vapor thereof;’”{{Page|*|fn1876}}}} not according to the divine whim, but to the once established and immutable laws. Which law “removeth the mountains and they know not; which shaketh the earth; which commandeth the sun, {{Style S-Italic|and it riseth not;}} and sealeth up the stars; . . . which doeth great things {{Style S-Italic|past finding out;}} yea, and {{Style S-Italic|wonders without number}}. . . . Lo, {{Style S-Italic|He goeth by me,}} and I see {{Style S-Italic|him not;}} he passeth on also, but {{Style S-Italic|I perceive him not!”{{Footnote mark|†|fn1877}}}}

{{Style P-Quote|“I know that thou canst do everything,

Virgin, receive God in thy pure bosom—

And the Word flew into her womb:

{{Footnote return|*|fn1918}}} Saturn is Bel-Moloch and even Hercules and Siva. Both of the latter are {{Style S-Italic|Harakala}}, or gods of the war, of the battle, or the “Lords of Hosts.” Jehovah is called “a man of war” in Exodus xv. 3. “The Lord of Hosts is his name” (Isaiah li. 15), and David blesses him for teaching his “hands to war and his fingers to fight” (Psalms cxliv. 1). Saturn is also the Sun, and Movers says that “Kronos Saturn was called by the Phœnicians {{Style S-Italic|Israel”}} (130). Philo says the same (in Euseb., p. 44).

{{Footnote mark|517|SATAN’S WATERLOO!}}  

523 ROBERT TAYLOR’S CREDO.

The Israelites have been proved to have worshipped Baal, the Syrian Bacchus, offered incense to the Sabazian or Æsculapian serpent, and performed the Dionysian Mysteries. And how could it be otherwise if Typhon was called Typhon Set,^{[#fn1943 1943]} and Seth, the son of Adam, is identical with Satan or Sat-an; and Seth was worshipped by the Hittites? Less than two centuries b.c., we find the Jews either reverencing or simply worshipping the “golden head of an ass” in their temple; according to Apion, Antiochus Epiphanes carried it off with him. And Zacharias is struck dumb by the apparition of the deity under the shape of an ass in the temple!^{[#fn1944 1944]}

[#fn1943anc 1943].&nbsp;Seth or Sutech, “Rawlinson’s History of Herodotus,” book ii., appendix. viii., 23.

[#fn1944anc 1944].&nbsp;The fact is vouchsafed for by Epiphanius. See Hone: “Apocryphal New Testament;” “The Gospel of the Birth of Mary.”

In his able article “Bacchus, the Prophet-God,” Professor A. Wilder remarks that “Tacitus was misled into thinking that the Jews worshipped an ass, the symbol of Typhon or Seth, the Hyk-sos God. The Egyptian name of the ass was {{Style S-Italic|co}}, the phonetic of Iao;” and hence, probably, he adds, “a symbol from that mere circumstance.” We can hardly agree with this learned archæologist, for the idea that the Jews reverenced, for some mysterious reason, Typhon under his symbolical representation rests on more proof than one. And for one we find a passage in the “Gospel of Mary,” is cited from Epiphanius, which corroborates the fact. It relates to the death of “Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, murdered by Herod,” says the Protevangelion. Epiphanius writes that the cause of the death of Zacharias was that upon seeing a vision in the temple he, through surprise, was willing to disclose it, but his mouth was stopped. That which he saw was at the time of his offering incense, and it was a man standing in the form of an ass. When he was gone out, and had a mind to speak thus to the people, {{Style S-Italic|Woe unto you, whom do ye worship?}} he who had appeared unto him in the temple took away the use of his speech. Afterward when he recovered it, and was able to speak, he declared this to the Jews, and they slew him. They (the Gnostics) add in this book, that on this very account the high priest was commanded by the law-giver (Moses) to carry little bells, that whensoever he went into the temple to sacrifice, he {{Style S-Italic|whom they worshipped,}} hearing the noise of the bells, might have time enough to hide himself, and not be caught in that ugly shape and figure” (Epiph.).

524 ISIS UNVEILED.

El, the Sun-God of the Syrians, the Egyptians, and the Semites, is declared by Pleytè to be no other than Set or Seth, and El is the primeval Saturn—Israel.^{[#fn1945 1945]} Siva is an Æthiopian God, the same as the Chaldean Baal—Bel; thus he is also Saturn. Saturn, El, Seth and Kiyun, or the biblical Chiun of Amos, are all one and the same deity, and may be all regarded in their worst aspect as Typhon the Destroyer. When the religious Pantheon assumed a more definite expression, Typhon was separated from his androgyne—the {{Style S-Italic|good}} deity, and fell into degradation as a brutal {{Style S-Italic|unintellectual}} power.

Such reactions in the religious feelings of a nation were not unfrequent. The Jews had worshipped Baal or Moloch, the Sun-God Hercules,^{[#fn1946 1946]} in their early days—if they had any days at all earlier than the Persians or Maccabees—and then made their prophets denounce them. On the other hand, the characteristics of the Mosaic Jehovah exhibit more of the moral disposition of Siva than of a benevolent, “long-suffering” God. Besides, to be identified with Siva is no small compliment, for the latter is God of wisdom. Wilkinson depicts him as the most intellectual of the Hindu gods. He is {{Style S-Italic|three-eyed,}} and, like Jehovah, terrible in his resistless revenge and wrath. And, although the Destroyer, “yet he is the re-creator of all things in perfect wisdom.”^{[#fn1947 1947]} He is the type of St. Augustine’s God who “prepares {{Style S-Italic|hell}} for pryers into his mysteries,” and insists on trying human reason as well as common sense by forcing mankind to view with equal reverence his good and evil acts.

Notwithstanding the numerous proofs that the Israelites worshipped a variety of gods, and even offered human sacrifices until a far later period than their Pagan neighbors, they have contrived to blind posterity in regard to truth. They sacrificed human life as late as 169 b.c.,^{[#fn1948 1948]} and the {{Style S-Italic|Bible}} contains a number of such records. At a time when the Pagans had long abandoned the abominable practice, and had replaced the sacrificial man by the animal,^{[#fn1949 1949]} Jephthah is represented sacrificing his own daughter to the “Lord” for a burnt-offering.

[#fn1945anc 1945].&nbsp;“Phallism in Ancient Religions,” by Staniland Wake and Westropp, p. 74.

[#fn1946anc 1946].&nbsp;Hercules is also a god-fighter as well as Jacob-Israel.

[#fn1947anc 1947].&nbsp;“Phallism in Ancient Religions,” p. 75.

[#fn1948anc 1948].&nbsp;Antiochus Epiphanius found in 169 b.c. in the Jewish temple, a man kept there to be sacrificed. Apion: “Joseph. contra Apion,” ii., 8.

[#fn1949anc 1949].&nbsp;The ox of Dionysus was sacrificed at the Bacchic Mysteries. See “Anthon,” p. 365.

525 HUMAN SACRIFICES AMONG THE JEWS.

Bacchus, and of the sixteen matrons of Elis.^{[#fn1950 1950]} The {{Style S-Italic|Bible}} says that “Deborah, a prophetess . . . judged Israel at that time;”^{[#fn1951 1951]} and speaks of Huldah, another prophetess, who “dwelt in Jerusalem, {{Style S-Italic|in the college;”^{[#fn1952 1952]}}} and 2 {{Style S-Italic|Samuel}} mentions “{{Style S-Italic|wise}} women” several times,^{[#fn1953 1953]} notwithstanding the injunction of Moses not to use either divination or augury. As to the final and conclusive identification of the “Lord God” of Israel with Moloch, we find a very suspicious evidence of the case in the last chapter of {{Style S-Italic|Leviticus,}} concerning {{Style S-Italic|things devoted not to be redeemed}}. . . . A man shall devote unto the Lord of all that he hath, {{Style S-Italic|both of man}} and beast. . . . None devoted, which shall be devoted of men, shall be redeemed, {{Style S-Italic|but shall surely be put to death}} . . . for it is {{Style S-Italic|most holy unto the Lord.”^{[#fn1954 1954]}}}

[#fn1950anc 1950].&nbsp;“Paus.,” 5, 16.

[#fn1951anc 1951].&nbsp;Judges iv. 4.

[#fn1952anc 1952].&nbsp;2 Kings, xxii. 14.

[#fn1953anc 1953].&nbsp;xiv. 2; xx. 16, 17.

[#fn1954anc 1954].&nbsp;xxvii. 28, 29.

526 ISIS UNVEILED.

latter, in their view, was an antagonistic system, and from a lower origin. “Ye received the law,” said Stephen, “from the ministration of angels,” or æons, and not from the Most High Himself. The Gnostics, as we have seen, taught that Jehovah, the Deity of the Jews, was Ilda-Baoth, the son of the ancient {{Style S-Italic|Bohu,}} or Chaos, the adversary of Divine Wisdom.

527 REAL MEANING OF THE LETTERS I. H. S.

made to be accepted to this day as {{Style S-Italic|Iesus Nazarenus rex Iudæorum.}} The mocking satire of Pilate is accepted literally, and the Jews made to unwittingly confess thereby the royalty of Christ; whereas, if the inscription is not a forgery of the Constantinian period, it yet is the action of Pilate, against which the Jews were first to violently protest. I. H. S. is interpreted {{Style S-Italic|Iesus Hominum Salvator,}} and {{Style S-Italic|In hoc signo,}} whereas ΙΗΣ is one of the most ancient names of Bacchus. And more than ever do we begin to find out, by the bright light of comparative theology, that the great object of Jesus, the initiate of the inner sanctuary, was to open the eyes of the fanatical multitude to the difference between the highest Divinity—the mysterious and never-mentioned IAO of the ancient Chaldean and later Neo-platonic initiates—and the Hebrew Yahuh, or Yaho (Jehovah). The modern Rosicrucians, so violently denounced by the Catholics, now find brought against them, as the most important charge, the fact that they accuse Christ of having destroyed the worship of Jehovah. Would to Heaven he could have been allowed the time to do so, for the world would not have found itself still bewildered, after nineteen centuries of mutual massacres, among 300 quarrelling sects, and with a personal Devil reigning over a terrorized Christendom!

528 ISIS UNVEILED.

the world of death to the supernal air, to be revered and worshipped. At once lord of all worlds, he was in them all alike the Saviour.

“Such was Bacchus, the prophet-god. A change of cultus, decreed by the Murderer-Imperial, the Emperor Theodosius, at the instance of Ghostly-Father Ambrosius, of Milan, has changed his title to Father of Lies. His worship, before universal, was denominated Pagan or {{Style S-Italic|local,}} and his rites stigmatized as witchcraft. His orgies received the name of {{Style S-Italic|Witches’ Sabbath,}} and his favorite symbolical form with the bovine foot became the modern representative of the Devil with the cloven hoof. The master of the house having been called Beelzebub, they of his household were alike denounced as having commerce with the powers of darkness. Crusades were undertaken; whole peoples massacred. Knowledge and the higher learning were denounced as magic and sorcery. Ignorance became the mother of devotion—such as was then cherished. Galileo languished long years in prison for teaching that the sun was in the centre of the solar universe. Bruno was burned alive at Rome in 1600 for reviving the ancient philosophy; yet, queerly enough, the Liberalia have become a festival of the Church,^{[#fn1955 1955]} Bacchus is a saint in the calendar four times repeated, and at many a shrine he may be seen reposing in the arms of his deified mother. The names are changed; the ideas remain as before.”^{[#fn1956 1956]}

[#fn1955anc 1955].&nbsp;The festival denominated Liberalia occurred on the seventeenth of March, now St. Patrick’s Day. Thus Bacchus was also the patron saint of the Irish.

[#fn1956anc 1956].&nbsp;Prof. A. Wilder: “Bacchus, the Prophet-God,” in the June number (1877) of the “Evolution, a Review of Polities, Religion, Science, Literature, and Art.”