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SECTION XVI
Peter a Jewish Kabalist, Not an Initiate
As to Peter, biblical criticism has shown that in all probability he had no more to do with the foundation of the Latin Church at Rome than to furnish the pretext, so readily seized upon by the cunning Irenaeus, of endowing the Church with a new name for the Apostle – Petra or Kiffa – a name which, by an easy play upon words, could be readily connected to Petroma. The Petroma was a pair of stone tablets used by the Hierophants at the Initiations, during the final Mystery. In this lies concealed the secret of the Vatican claim to the seat of Peter. As already quoted in Isis Unveiled, ii.92:
In the Oriental countries the designation Peter (in Phoenician and Chaldaic an interpreter), appears to have been the title of this personage. *
So far, and as the “interpreters” of Neo-Christianism, the Popes have most undeniably the right to call themselves successors to the title of Peter, but hardly the successors to, least of all the interpreters of, the doctrines of Jesus, the Christ; for there is the Oriental Church, older and far purer than the Roman hierarchy, which, having ever faithfully held to the primitive teachings of the Apostles, is known historically to have refused to follow the Latin seceders from the original Apostolic Church, though, curiously enough, she is still referred to by her Roman sister as the “Schismatic” Church. It is useless to repeat the reasons for the statements above made, as they may all be found in Isis Unveiled, † where the words, Peter, Patar, and Pitar, are explained, and the origin of the “Seat of Pitah” is shown.
The reader will find upon referring to the above pages that an inscription was found on the coffin of Queen Mentuhept of the Eleventh Dynasty (2250 B.C. according to Bunsen), which in its turn was shown
* Taylor’s Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, Wilder’s ed., p. x.
† ii. 91-94.
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to have been transcribed from the Seventeenth Chapter of the Book of the Dead, dating certainly not later than 4500 B.C. or 496 years before the World’s Creation, in the Genesiacal chronology. Nevertheless, Baron Bunsen shows the group of the hieroglyphics given (Peter-ref-su, the “Mystery Word”) and the sacred formulary mixed up with a whole series of glosses and various interpretations on a monument 4,000 years 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 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. *
“Unintelligible” to the non-initiated – this is certain; and it is so proved by the confused and contradictory glosses. Yet there can be no doubt that it was – for it still is – a mystery word. The Baron further explains:
It appears to me that our PTR is literally the old Aramaic and Hebrew “Patar,” which occurs in the history of Joseph as the specific word for interpreting, whence also Pitrum is the term for interpretation of a text, a dream. †
This word, PTR, was partially interpreted owing to another word similarly written in another group of
hieroglyphics, on a stele, the glyph used for it being an opened eye, interpreted by De Rougé ‡ as “to appear,” and by Bunsen as “illuminator,” which is more correct. However, it may be, the word Patar, or Peter, would locate both master and disciple in the circle of initiation, and connect them with the Secret Doctrine; while in the “Seat of Peter” we can hardly help seeing a connection with Petroma, the double set of stone tablets used by the Hierophant at the Supreme Initiation during the final Mystery, as already stated, also with the Pitha-sthâna (seat, or the place of a seat), a term used in the Mysteries of the Tantriks in India, in which the limbs of the Satî are scattered and then united again, as those of Osiris by Isis. § Pitha is a Sanskrit word, and is also used to designate the seat of the initiating Lama.
Whether all the above terms are due simply to “coincidences” or otherwise is left to the decision of our learned Symbologists and Philologists. We state facts – and nothing more. Many other writers, far
* Bunsen, Egypt’s Place in History, v. 90.
† Ibid.
‡ Stele, p.44.
§ See Dowson’s Hindu Classical Dict., sub voc., “Pitha-sthânam.”
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more learned and entitled to be heard than the author has ever claimed to be, have sufficiently demonstrated that Peter never had anything to do with the foundation of the Latin Church; that his supposed name Petra, or Kiffa, also the whole story of his Apostleship at Rome, are simply a play on the term, which meant in every country, in one or another form, the Hierophant or interpreter of the Mysteries; and that finally, far from dying a martyr at Rome, where he had probably never been, he died at a good old age at Babylon. In Sepher Tolaoth Jeshu, a Hebrew manuscript of great antiquity – evidently an original and very precious document, if one may judge from the care the Jews took to hide it from the Christians – Simon (Peter) is referred to as “a faithful servant of God,” who passed his life in austerities and meditation, a Kabalist and a Nazarene who lived at Babylon “at the top of a tower, composed hymns, preached charity,” and died there.