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Blavatsky H.P. - The Esoteric Character of the Gospels (continued in December, 1887, and February, 1888) (view source)

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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.

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The city of Chrisa <ref>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.)</ref> (now spelt Crisa), was built in memory of Kreousa (or Creüsa), daughter of King {{Page aside|192}}Erechtheus and mother of Janus (or Ion) by Apollo, in memory of the danger which Janus escaped.<ref></ref> 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,” <ref></ref> 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.<ref></ref>

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The city of Chrisa <ref>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.)</ref> (now spelt Crisa), was built in memory of Kreousa (or Creüsa), daughter of King {{Page aside|192}}Erechtheus and mother of Janus (or Ion) by Apollo, in memory of the danger which Janus escaped.<ref>The root of ''χρητός'' (Chretos) and ''χρηστός'' (Chrêstos) is one and the same: ''χράω'' which means “consulting the oracle,” in one sense, but in another one “consecrated,” set apart, belonging to some temple, or oracle, or devoted to oracular services. On the other hand, the word ''χρε (χρεώ)'' means “obligation,” a “bond, duty,” or one who is under the obligation of pledges, or vows taken.</ref> 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,” <ref>The adjective ''χρηστός'' was also used as an adjective before proper names as a compliment, as in Plato’s Theaetetus, 166 A,''"οὗτος δη ὁ Σωκράτης ὁ χρηστός"'' 32 (here Socrates is the Chrêstos); and also as a surname, as shown by Plutarch (Vitae: Phocion, ch. x, sec. 2), who wonders how such a rough and dull fellow as Phocion could be surnamed Chrêstos..33</ref> 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.<ref>There are strange features, quite suggestive, for an Occultist, in the myth (if one) of Janus. Some make of him the personification of Kosmos, others, of Coelus (heaven), hence he is “two-faced” because of his two characters of spirit and matter; and he is not only “Janus Bifrons” (two-faced), but also Quadrifrons—the perfect square, the emblem of the Kabbalistic Deity. His temples were built with four equal sides, with a door and three windows on each side. Mythologists explain it as an emblem of the four seasons of the year, and three months in each season, and in all of the twelve months of the year. During the mysteries of Initiation, however, he became the Day-Sun and the Night-Sun. Hence he is often represented with the number 300 in one hand, and in the other 65, or the number of days of the Solar year. Now Chanoch (Kanoch and Enoch in the Bible) is, as may be shown on Kabalistic authority, whether son of Cain, son of Seth, or the son of Methuselah, one and the same personage. As Chanoch (according to Fuerst), “he is the Initiator, Instructor—of the astronomical circle and solar year,” as son of Methuselah, who is said to have lived 365 years and been taken to heaven alive, as the representative of the Sun (or god). (See Book of Enoch.) This patriarch has many features in common with Janus who, exoterically, is Ion but Iao kabalistically, or Jehovah, the “Lord God of Generation,” the mysterious Yodh, or ONE (a phallic number). For Janus or Ion is also Consivium, a conserendo,34 because he presided over generation. He is shown giving hospitality to Saturn (Chronos, time), and is the Initiator of the year, or time divided into 365.</ref>

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Finding then that Janus, the solar God, and son of Apollo, the Sun, means the “Initiator” and the “Opener of the Gate of Light,” or secret wisdom of the mysteries; that he is born from Krisa (esoterically Chris), and that he was a Chrêstos through whom spoke the God; that he was finally Ion, the father of the Ionians, and, some say, an aspect of Asclepios, another son of Apollo, it is easy to get hold of the thread of Ariadne in this labyrinth of allegories. It is not the place here to prove side issues in mythology, however. It suffices to show the connection between the mythical characters of hoary antiquity and the later fables that marked the beginning of our era of civilization. Asclepios (Esculapius) was the divine physician, the “Healer,” the “Saviour,” ''Σωτήρ'', as he was called, a title also given to Janus of Delphi; and IASO, the daughter of Asclepios, was the goddess of healing, under whose patronage were all the candidates for initiation in her father’s temple, the novices or chrêstoi, called “the sons of Iaso.” (Vide for name, Plutus, 701, by Aristophanes.)

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Now, if we remember, firstly, that the names of IESUS in their different forms, such as Iasius, Iasion, Jason and Iasus, were very common in ancient Greece, especially among the descendants of Jasius (the Jasides), as also the number of the “sons of Iaso,” the Mystoï and future Epoptai (Initiates), why should not the enigmatical words in the Sibylline Book be read in their legitimate light, one that had nought to do with a Christian prophecy? The secret doctrine teaches that the first two words ΙΗΣΟΥΣ ΧΡΕΙΣΤΟΣ mean simply “son of Iaso, a Chrêstos,” or servant of the oracular God. Indeed IASÔ (''Ἰἁσώ'') is in the Ionic dialect IÊSÔ (''Ἰησώ''), and the expression ''Ἰησοῦς'' (Iêsous)—in its archaic form, ἸΗΣΟΥΣ—simply means “the son of Iaso or Iêsô,” the “healer,” i.e., ''ὁ Ἰησοῦς (υἱός)''. No objection, assuredly, can be taken to such rendering, or to the name being written Iêsô instead of Iaso, since the first form is Attic, therefore incorrect, for the name is Ionic. “Iêsô” from which “ho Iêsous” (son of Iêsô)—i.e., a genitive, not a nominative—is Ionic and cannot be anything else, if the age of the Sibylline book is taken into consideration. Nor could the Sibyl of Erythrae have spelt it originally otherwise, as Erythrae, her very residence, was a town in Ionia (from Ion or Janus) opposite Chios; and that the Ionic preceded the Attic form.

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Leaving aside in this case the mystical signification of the now famous Sibylline sentence, and giving its literal interpretation only, on the authority of all that has been said, the hitherto mysterious words would stand: “Son of IASÔ, CHRÊSTOS (the priest or servant) (of the) SON of (the) GOD (Apollo) the SAVIOUR from the CROSS”—(of flesh or matter).<ref>Stauros became the cross, the instrument of crucifixion, far later, when it began to be represented as a Christian symbol and with the Greek letter T, the Tau (Lucian, Judicium Vocalium).35 Its primitive meaning was phallic, a symbol for the male and female elements; the great serpent of temptation, the body which had to be killed or subdued by the dragon of wisdom, the seven-vowelled solar Chnouphis or Spirit of Christos of the Gnostics, or, again, Apollo killing Python.</ref> Truly, Christianity can never hope

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[[File:Hpb_cw_08_194_1.jpg|center|x400px]]

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<center>RUINS OF THE TEMPLE OF THE SIBYL</center>

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<center>Tivoli (anc. Tibur), Italy.</center>

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{{Style P-No indent|to be understood until every trace of dogmatism is swept away from it, and the dead letter sacrificed to the eternal Spirit of Truth, which is Horus, which is Crishna, which is Buddha, as much as it is the Gnostic Christos and the true Christ of Paul.}}

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In the Travels of Dr. E. D. Clarke, the author describes a heathen monument found by him.

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{{Style P-Quote|. . . . . within the sanctuary, behind the altar, we saw the fragments of a marble Béma, or Cathedra; upon the back of which we found the following inscription, exactly as it is here written, no part of it having been injured or obliterated; affording, perhaps, the only instance known of a sepulchral inscription upon a monument of this remarkable form:}}

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This inscription ran thus ΧΡΗΣΤΟΣ ΠΡΩΤΟΥ ΘΕΣΣΑΛΟΣ ΛΑΡΕΙΣΑΙΟΣ ΠΕΛΑΣΓΙΩΤΗΣ ΕΤΩΝ ΙΗ ΗΡΩΣ; or, “Chrêstos, the first, a Thessalonian from Larissa, Pelasgiot, 18 years old Hêro,” Chrêstos the first (protou), why?36 Read literally the inscription has little sense; interpreted esoterically, it is pregnant with meaning. As Dr. Clarke shows, the word Chrêstos is found on the epitaphs of almost all the ancient Larissians; but it is preceded always by a proper name. Had the adjective Chrêstos stood after a name, it would only mean “a good man,” a posthumous compliment paid to the defunct, the same being often found on our own modern tumular epitaphs. But the word Chrêstos, standing alone and the other word, “protou,” following it, gives it quite another meaning, especially when the deceased is specified as a “hêro.” To the mind of an Occultist, the defunct was a neophyte, who had died in his 18th year of neophytism, <ref>Even to this day in India, the candidate loses his name and, as also in Masonry, his age (monks and nuns also changing their Christian names at their taking the order or veil), and begins counting his years from the day he is accepted a chela and enters upon the cycle of initiations. Thus Saul was “a child of one year,” when he began to reign, though a grown-up adult. See I Samuel, xiii, 1, and Hebrew scrolls, about his initiation by Samuel.</ref> and stood in the first or highest class of discipleship, having passed his preliminary {{Page aside|196}}trials as a “hêro”; but had died before the last mystery, which would have made of him a “Christos,” an anointed, one with the spirit of Christos or Truth in him. He had not reached the end of the “Way,” though he had heroically conquered the horrors of the preliminary theurgic trials.

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We are quite warranted in reading it in this manner, after learning the place where Dr. Clarke discovered the tablet, which was, as Godfrey Higgins remarks, there, “where I should expect to find it; at Delphi, in the temple of the God called IE,” who, with the Christians became Jah, or Jehovah, one with Christ Jesus. It was at the foot of Parnassus, in a gymnasium, “adjoining to the Castalian fountain which flowed by the ruins of CRISSA, probably the town called Crestona, into the Crissaean Bay.”37 And again: “In the first part of its course from the [Castalian] fountain, it [the river] separates the remains of the GYMNASIUM, where the Monastery of Panaja now stands, from the village of Castri, as it probably did from the old city of Delphi. . . .”38—the seat of the great oracle of Apollo, of the town of Krisa (or Kreousa) the great centre of initiations and of the Chrêstoi of the decrees of the oracles, where the candidates for the last labour were anointed with sacred oils <ref>Demosthenes, De Corona, 259[313], declares that the candidates for initiation into the Greek mysteries were anointed with oil. So they are now in India, even in the initiation into the Yogi mysteries—various ointments or unguents being used.</ref> before being plunged into their last trance of forty-nine hours’ duration (as to this day, in the East), from which they arose as glorified adepts or Christoi.

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{{Style P-Quote|. . . . . in the Clementine Recognitions it is announced that the father anointed his son with “oil that was taken from the wood of the Tree of Life, and from this anointing he is called the Christ”; whence the Christian name. This again is Egyptian. Horus was the anointed son of the father. The mode of anointing him from the Tree of Life, portrayed on the monuments, is very primitive indeed; and the Horus of Egypt was continued in the Gnostic Christ, who is reproduced upon the Gnostic stones as the intermediate link betwixt the {{Page aside|197}}Karest and the Christ, also as the Horus of both sexes. (“The Name and Nature of the Christ.”—GERALD MASSEY.) 39}}

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Mr. G. Massey connects the Greek Christos or Christ with the Egyptian Karest, the “mummy type of immortality,” and proves it very thoroughly. He begins by saying that in Egyptian the “Word of Truth” is Ma-Kheru, and that it is the title of Horus. Thus, as he shows, Horus preceded Christ as the Messenger of the Word of Truth, the Logos or the manifestor of the divine nature in humanity. In the same paper he writes as follows:

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{{Style P-Quote|The Gnosis had three phases—astronomical, spiritual, and doctrinal, and all three can be identified with the Christ of Egypt. In the astronomical phase the constellation Orion is called the Sahu, or mummy. The soul of Horus was represented as rising from the dead and ascending to heaven in the stars of Orion. The mummy-image was the preserved one, the saved, therefore a portrait of the Saviour, as a type of immortality. This was the figure of a dead man, which, as Plutarch and Herodotus tell us, was carried round at an Egyptian banquet when the guests were invited to look on it and eat and drink and be happy, because, when they died, they would become what the image symbolised—that is, they also would be immortal! This type of immortality was called the Karest, or Karust, and it was the Egyptian Christ. To Kares means to embalm, anoint, to make the Mummy as a type of the eternal; and, when made, it was called the Karest; so that this is not merely a matter of name for name, the Karest for the Christ.}}

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{{Style P-Quote|We are able to get beyond a Greek word signifying the anointed, or greased; we can here identify a determinative in the domain of things.}}

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{{Style P-Quote|This image of the Karest was bound up in a woof without a seam, the proper vesture of the Christ! No matter what the length of the bandage might be, and some of the mummy-swathes have been unwound that were 1,000 yards in length, the woof was from beginning to end without a seam. . . . . . . Now, this seamless robe of the Egyptian Karest is a very tell-tale type of the mystical Christ, who becomes historic in the Gospels as the wearer of a coat or chiton, made without a seam, which neither the Greek nor the Hebrew fully explains, but which is explained by the Egyptian Ketu for the woof, and by the seamless robe or swathing without seam that was made for eternal wear and worn by the Mummy-Christ, the image of immortality in the tombs of Egypt. . . . . .}}

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{{Style P-Quote|. . . . Further, Jesus is put to death in accordance with the instructions given for making the Karest. Not a bone must be broken. The true Karest must be perfect in every member. “This is he who comes out sound; whom men know not is his name.”}}

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{{Style P-Quote|In the Gospels Jesus rises again with every member sound, like the perfectly-preserved Karest, to demonstrate the physical resurrection of the mummy. But, in the Egyptian original, the mummy transforms. The deceased says: “I am spiritualised. I am become a soul. I rise as a God.” This transformation into the spiritual image, the Ka, has been omitted in the Gospel, and, as a result, the Christian Christ is neither physical nor spiritual; the Gnostic types having been continued without the Gnosis. [pp. 9-10.]}}

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{{Style P-Quote|. . . . This spelling of the name as Chrest or Chrést in Latin is supremely important, because it enables me to prove the identity with the Egyptian Karest or Karust, the name of the Christ as the embalmed mummy, which was the image of the resurrection in Egyptian tombs, the type of immortality, the likeness of the Horus, who rose again and made the pathway out of the sepulchre for those who were his disciples or followers. Moreover, this type of the Karest or Mummy-Christ is reproduced in the Catacombs of Rome. No representation of the supposed historic resurrection of Jesus has been found on any of the early Christian monuments. But, instead of the missing fact, we find the scene of Lazarus being raised from the dead. This is depicted over and over again as the typical resurrection where there is no real one! The scene is not exactly in accordance with the rising from the grave in the Gospel. It is purely Egyptian, and Lazarus is an Egyptian mummy! Thus Lazarus, in each representation, is the mummy-type of the resurrection; Lazarus is the Karest, who was the Egyptian Christ, and who is reproduced by Gnostic art in the Catacombs of Rome as a form of the Gnostic Christ, who was not and could not become an historical character.}}

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{{Style P-Quote|Further, as the thing is Egyptian, it is probable that the name is derived from Egyptian. If so, Laz (equal to Ras) means to be raised up, while aru is the mummy by name. With the Greek terminal s this becomes Lazarus. In the course of humanizing the mythos the typical representation of the resurrection found in the tombs of Rome and Egypt would become the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead. This Karest type of the Christ in the Catacombs is not limited to Lazarus. [pp. 12-13.]}}

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{{Style P-Quote|By means of the Karest type the Christ and the Christians can both be traced in the ancient tombs of Egypt. The mummy was made in this likeness of the Christ. It was the Christ by name, identical with the Chrestoi of the Greek Inscriptions. Thus the honoured dead, who rose again as the followers of Horus-Makheru, the Word of Truth, are found to be the Christians ''οἱ χρηστοί'', on {{Page aside|199}}the Egyptian monuments. Ma-Kheru is the term that is always applied to the faithful ones who win the crown of life and wear it at the festival which is designated “Come thou to me”—an invitation by Horus the Justifier to those who are the “Blessed ones of his father, Osiris”—they who, having made the Word of Truth the law of their lives, were the Justified ''οἱ χρηστοί'', the Christians, on earth. [p. 12.]}}

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{{Style P-Quote|In a fifth century representation of the Madonna and child from the cemetery of St. Valentinus, the new-born babe lying in a box or crib is also the Karest, or mummy-type, further identified as the divine babe of the solar mythos by the disk of the sun and the cross of the equinox at the back of the infant’s head. Thus the child-Christ of the historic faith is born, and visibly begins in the Karest image of the dead Christ, which was the mummy-type of the resurrection in Egypt for thousands of years before the Christian era. This doubles the proof that the Christ of the Christian Catacombs was a survival of the Karest of Egypt.}}

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{{Style P-Quote|Moreover, as Didron shows, there was a portrait of the Christ who had his body painted red!<ref>Because he is cabalistically the new Adam, the “celestial man,” and Adam was made of red earth. [Footnote by H. P. B.]</ref> It was a popular tradition that the Christ was of a red complexion. This, too, may be explained as a survival of the Mummy-Christ. It was an aboriginal mode of rendering things tapu by colouring them red. The dead corpse was coated with red ochre—a very primitive mode of making the mummy, or the anointed one. Thus the God Ptah tells Rameses II that he has “re-fashioned his flesh in vermilion.” Besides which, the Initiated in the Greek mysteries were daubed or anointed with clay (Demosthenes, De corona, 313). This anointing with red ochre is called Kura by the Maori, who likewise made the Karest or Christ.}}

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{{Style P-Quote|We see the mummy-image continued on another line of descent when we learn that, among other pernicious heresies and deadly sins with which the Knights Templars were charged, was the impious custom of adoring a Mummy that had red eyes. Their Idol, called Baphomet, is also thought to have been a mummy. . . . . . . . . The Mummy was the earliest human image of the Christ.}}

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{{Style P-Quote|I do not doubt that the ancient Roman festivals called the Charistia were connected in their origin with the Karest and the Eucharist as a celebration in honour of the manes of their departed kith and kin, for whose sakes they became reconciled at the friendly gathering once a year.}}

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{{Style P-Quote|It is here, then, we have to seek the essential connection between the Egyptian Christ, the Christians, and the Roman Catacombs.}}

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{{Style P-Quote|These Christian Mysteries, ignorantly explained to be inexplicable, can be explained by Gnosticism and Mythology, but in no other way. It is not that they are insoluble by human reason, as their incompetent, howsoever highly paid, expounders now-a-days pretend. That is but the puerile apology of the unqualified for their own helpless ignorance—they who have never been in possession of the gnosis or science of the Mysteries by which alone these things can be explained in accordance with their natural genesis. In Egypt only can we read the matter to the root, or identify the origin of the Christ by nature and by name, to find at last that the Christ was the Mummy-type, and that our Christology is mummified mythology. [pp. 13-14.] (Agnostic Annual.) 40}}

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The above is an explanation on purely scientific evidence, but, perhaps, a little too materialistic, just because of that science, notwithstanding that the author is a well-known Spiritualist. Occultism pure and simple finds the same mystic elements in the Christian as in other faiths, though it rejects as emphatically its dogmatic and historic character. It is a fact that in the terms (See Acts, v, 42; ix, 34; I Cor., iii, 11, etc.), the article Ò designating “Christos,” proves it simply a surname, like that of Phocion, who is referred to as (Plutarch, Vitae).41 Still, the personage (Jesus) so addressed—whenever he lived—was a great Initiate and a “Son of God.”

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For, we say it again, the surname Christos is based on, and the story of the Crucifixion derived from, events that preceded it. Everywhere, in India as in Egypt, in Chaldea as in Greece, all these legends were built upon one and the same primitive type; the voluntary sacrifice of the logoi—the rays of the one LOGOS, the direct manifested emanation from the One ever-concealed Infinite and Unknown—whose rays incarnated in mankind. They consented to fall into matter, and are, therefore, called the “Fallen Ones.” This is one of those great mysteries which can hardly be touched upon in a magazine article, but shall be noticed in a separate work of mine, The Secret Doctrine, very fully.

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Having said so much, a few more facts may be added to the etymology of the two terms. being the verbal adjective in Greek of , “to be rubbed on,” {{Page aside|201}}

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