Hermetic

Bringing Down the Heavens

The following excerpts are taken from G.R.S. Mead’s classic 1900 Fragments of a Forgotten Faith. In the book, G.R.S. Mead takes the reader on a guided tour through the history of heresy, by discussing key fertile crescent backgrounds and baptismal waters that gave birth to Gnosticism and Christianity in all their shades of glory. The following is taken from the section, “Gnosis According to Its Friends.” The Book of the Great Logos According to the Mystery, is a Gnostic text in fragmented form, from the Bruce Codex found by James Bruce, a travelling Scottish man who happened on it in upper Egypt, in 1769.

The Bruce Codex also features other Gnostic mystery texts like The Pistis Sophia and the Books of Jeu (IAO). The text itself presents Jesus Christ as an Illuminator and a universal Gnostic Savior, which isn’t all that different than the version of Jesus present in the Gospel of John. In fact, this version of Jesus has more to do with the Jesus presented in the Apocryphon of John (hence the emphasis on being attributed to John the Baptist), than other versions of Jesus as more of a Jewish Messiah, like we see in say the Gospel of Matthew.

Regarding the edited text: I reorganized the text to make it easier to read, so that is has a more logical and structured flow of ideas and quotes in accordance with the assigned title. The following version will feature underlines of the text that I want to highlight as well as some of the commentary that Mead offers on Jesus and his secret, mystery teachings that he passes on to his disciples. More underlines will be provided in the rest of the post. In many parts of this mystery text, there are also strong parallels with Hermetic literature as well, in particular with the Emerald Tablet of Hermes and the Corpus Hermeticum. After this, we will go into other connections as per the Knights Templar and Mete (Baphomet) and other related observations. 

Those with ears let them hear!

And Jesus saith: “I have loved you and longed to give you Life.”

“This is the Book of the Gnoses (pl.) of the Invisible God”; it is the Book of the Gnosis of Jesus the Living One, by means of which all the hidden mysteries are revealed to the elect. Jesus is the Saviour of Souls, the Logos of Life, sent by the Father from the Light-world to mankind, who taught His disciples the one and only doctrine, saying: “This is the doctrine in which all Gnosis dwelleth.”

Jesus saith: “Blessed is the man who crucifieth the world and doth not let the world crucify him.”

Jesus saith: “Blessed is the man who knoweth this [Word] and hath brought down the Heaven, and borne the earth and raised it heavenwards; and it [the Earth] becometh the midst, for it is a nothing.’”

The Heaven is explained as being the invisible Word of the Father. They who know this–(who become children of the true Mind)–bring down Heaven to Earth. The raising of Earth to Heaven is the ceasing from being an earthly intelligence, by receiving the Word of these Gnoses (pl.) and becoming a Dweller in Heaven. Thus will they be saved from the Ruler of this World, and he will become the midst (that is to say, perhaps, that they will be above the Ruler and no longer subject to him as heretofore; he will be a “nothing” to them, that is to say, have no effect on them). Nay, the evil powers will envy them because they know Him, that He is not of this world and that no evil cometh from Him. But as for those who are born in the flesh of unrighteousness (and are not children of the Righteous Race, those of the second birth), they have no part in the Kingdom of the Father.

Thereupon the disciples are in despair, for they have been born “according to the flesh” and have known Him only “according to the flesh.” But the Master explains that not the flesh of their bodies is meant, but the flesh of unrighteousness and ignorance.”

The apostles answered and said, “Lord, Jesus, Thou Living One, teach us the Fullness and it sufficeth us.”

Now, let us compare this with the Emerald Tablet of Hermes:

“Thou shalt separate the Earth from the Fire, the subtle from the coarse, gently and with much ingenuity. It ascends from Earth to heaven and descends again to Earth, and receives the power of the superiors and the inferiors. Thus thou hast the glory of the whole world; therefore let all obscurity flee before thee. This is the strong fortitude of all fortitude, overcoming every subtle and penetrating every solid thing. Thus the world was created. Hence are all wonderful adaptations, of which this is the manner.”

I give the following commentary on all of this (minus the first excerpt) in my essay “The Gods of Imagination: Alchemy, Magic, and the Quintessence” which can be found in The Gnostic 6: A Journey of Gnosticism, Western Esotericism and Spirituality by Andrew Philip Smith. Here is one pertinent excerpt from my paper (if you want to read the entire paper, I suggest purchasing the book):

The famous axiom of “What is Below is like that which is Above” sounds very close to what is described in the Gospel of Philip (Codex II), which records Jesus Christ performing initiation rites that sound much like that one of the Hermetic mystery schools of Alexandria, Egypt: “The Lord did everything in a mystery, a baptism and a chrism and a eucharist and a redemption and a bridal chamber. […] he said, “I came to make the things below like the things above, and the things outside like those inside. I came to unite them in the place.” The correspondence between the microcosm and the macrocosm, the inside and the outside of the totality of creation, is made explicit. This is reflective yet somehow different than Platonic thought: that the manifest world is merely a shadow of a greater truth, an ideal that can never be found in our daily reality.

Everything in creation, accordingly has its root in the transcendent, or the “One Thing.” The Emerald Tablet itself teaches in veiled language how to produce the alchemical Elixir of Life or “Quintessence,” the “Fifth Element,” that which is born from the “One Thing.” The father of this final product is the sun and the mother being the moon, which “defeats all subtle things and permeates all solids.” The sun symbolizes the fire; the moon, water; wind, air; and the earth, obviously, the Earth. The first three elements also correspond to sulphur, salt and mercury.

The Sun gives its life-giving rays throughout the solar system in a cyclical manner while providing its solar seeds into the Earth so that they may be “perfected.” All of these come from the One as adaptations, splitting off into specialized roles. The first three principal aspects of the One gather together to form the Earth. The three principal elements are separated out from the fourth element and purified and then recombined to form a new type of Earth, being the Fifth Element or the “Cosmic Quintessence.” That is the key to understanding all alchemy. The “Hermetic art” of alchemy itself as a mirror for psychological or spiritual transformation has a long tradition, going back at least to the time of Zosimos and way before that.

“Separate the Earth from the Fire, the Subtle from the Gross, repeatedly with great skillfulness.” This corresponds to the alchemical axiom of the Latin “Solve et Coagula,” meaning dissolve and coagulate or reconstitute. Any alchemical operation will involve these two fundamental steps. This process involves purging the influence of the lower and solidifying the influence of the higher and crystallizing it as a permanent substance on Earth. This process dissolves all of the impurities of matter and darkness until all that is left is the “true image” or the true expression of the “One Thing.” In this instance, we can see how Plato was using ancient, Hermetic-like ideas when he wrote in Timaeus 28a6, about how the divine Craftsman (the “Demiurge”), imitated the unchanging, eternal model above and imposes a mathematical order on the pre-existent primal chaos to generate the cosmos we know. The Demiurge, in this instance, can be seen as a cosmic alchemist or initiator who dissolves and perfects the chaotic realm into multiple structures and shapes based on the Eternal Forms above.

The alchemist raises the subtle into Heaven, from the below to the above, and allows it to descend again by dissolving one’s “wish” then coagulating it again after it has been above. The alchemist allows that creative imagination to descend into the Earth and bring with it the perfected substance. By the power of the “One Thing,” it becomes so. In the Corpus Hermeticum, Poimandres the Man-Shepard (1), we find this idea of ascending into the higher spheres, where the material body is dissolved into light and ascends.

“…To this Poimandres said: “First, in releasing the material body you give the body itself over to alteration, and the form that you used to have vanishes. To the demon you give over your temperament, now inactive. The body’s senses rise up and flow back to their particular sources, becoming separate parts and mingling again with the energies. And feeling and longing go on toward irrational nature. Thence the human being rushes up through the cosmic framework…”

To repeat what the Emerald Tablets of Hermes tells us, “The unique is of all the strengths the strongest strength. It defeats all subtle things and permeates all solids. In this way, the cosmic was created.” An alchemist might argue that this “strength” or force is that of the Philosopher’s Stone, the Pearl of the Great Price, the Divine Hermaphrodite, the Astral Fire, the Elixir of Life, being the “perfected” (Greek: teleios). These objects and symbols represent something that has completed the work of the alchemical process, called the Great Work (Magnum Opus). The final product can be called materialized spirit and spiritualized matter or what Carl Jung called the “coniunctio oppositorum.” It is the solid, unchanging realization of the above, which stands firm and “unshakable.” The spiritual is ironically represented as a physical object; the alchemical offspring or manifestation of the divine itself. The Philosopher’s Stone has completed the journey, which encases both worlds of “perfected” matter and spirit in its alloy.

One can emulate this process and apply it by becoming “co-creators” of manifestation through the imagination since man is created in the “image of God” and is able to define reality as Adam named the animals in the Garden of Eden. 

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The idea of “bringing down the heavens” also reminds us of Mete (an incarnation or aspect of Baphomet and Dionysus). Mete is supposedly a wisdom/mother-goddess figure with connections with Sophia-Achamoth, which appears on Templar artifacts. However, Mete appears to be much more demonic and chthonic than holy–which in some ways, reminds us of Hekate because she too was depicted with three faces as was Baphomet was rumored to be depicted as a Templar idol and touch-point for divination with spirits. This is where things turn dark. In our book, Baphomet: The Temple Mystery Unveiled, in the chapter “Baptism of Wisdom,” we examine Joseph Von Hammer Purgstall’s work, especially in his comparison of the Knights Templar with the Gnostic Ophites and their orgy magic and veneration of the serpent from Eden, the later of which is almost universally condemned by both the church fathers, Jewish philosophers like Philo, and pagan critics alike.

The way Hammer‐Purgstall thought that the Templars saw it, these impious deeds of debauchery would not have counted against them in the afterlife. Rather they would earn them brownie points. He believed that this was illustrated by one of the images he found:

“On the left side is exhibited the end of a Templar’s life, already dead and lying on the ground, with the Archangel Michael holding a judgment scale and weighing his deeds. The scale, on which were placed apples, desserts and other blandishments of the senses, and by which the Ophitic Templar’s life is represented, descending to the earth, shows that the judgment of Michael favors him, because in order to hinder Jaldabaoth, he tries to depress the other, ascending, part of the scale. . . . The . . .serpent, called by the gnostics, Michael, carries out the details of judgment in this way: thinking, in the day of judgment, about the life of the Templar, or Gnostic, he accepts all of his disgraceful deeds as good works. In this way [goes] the cycle of a Gnostic’s life.”

The goal of all these impieties may have been, as we have suggested, nothing less than the toppling of the heavenly order. This may explain, then, several of the images presented by Hammer‐Purgstall which involve a bearded and breasted figure (Mete, or Baphomet, according to him) holding a set of chains—one in each hand, seemingly attached to and hanging down from the sky. Hammer‐Purgstall had said these represent “a chain of aeons . . . of the Gnostics,” “the hermetic chain of the Neoplatonists, and “the gods’ chain in Homer.”

This Gnostic, Hermetic, and Neoplatonic “chain” appears to be the chain of causality, and of the interconnected hierarchies of creation. Since in Gnostcism, each aeon corresponds to an archonic entity, and each Archon corresponds to one of the seven “classical planets” (the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn), and each planet was, in antiquity, believed to rule over one of the seven heavens (viewed as being spherical and concentrically stacked inside each other like a Russian doll, with the Earth in the middle), one can imagine this as a chain running from the center of the Earth, through the sky, then up through each of the seven heavens and all the way up to the Pleroma on the outside, where the real “Father” resides.

As bat-shit crazy as it sounds, all of the infamous raunchy rumors and accusations of infanticide against the various Gnostic groups issued from the church fathers, had a specific end goal: to bring about the apocalypse or the annihilation of the cosmos, and end the natural order of things. This was because the world or cosmos was seen as entirely hostile and evil to the Gnostic (just as the Christian is said to be), as it was, naturally, the other way around.

Another way of look at this issue is that the so-called “Gnostic apocalypse” was that the Kingdom of God would eventually manifest in the world (while bringing an end to the current world system), even though it remains invisible to earth-born people, as it states in the Gospel of Thomas. Most of these groups were actually ascetics and were pious (but for different reasons than the Orthodox church). Some existed in between the two extremes (asceticism and libertinism). The cult of Carpocrates were more than likely libertine. And yet, even their libertinism certainly wasn’t abnormal for greater pagan civilization. For Christianity, yes, but there were plenty of pagan philosophers who advocated that sort of lifestyle. Zeno of Citium, the father of Stoicism, supposedly thought likewise (that man should run around like dogs and randomly have sex in the streets as they pleased).

Morton Smith in his controversial and much disputed discovery of the Secret Gospel of Mark, the early church leader, Clement, attempts to discredit claims by the Carpocratians that Christ and Lazarus, a young man whom he had just revived from the dead, had been seen naked together at night with Lazarus being initiated into the mysteries of the Kingdom of God. This is what some scholars might refer to as the “Gay Magical Jesus Hypothesis.” Please see Craig A. Evan’s Morton Smith and the Secret Gospel of Mark: Exploring the Grounds for Doubt, for the low down. (Long story short: he too, like many other Christian apologist scholars, think its a hoax perpetrated by Morton Smith.)

Morton Smith is also responsible for writing Jesus the Magician: Charlatan or Son of God?, in which I plan to write an in-depth review at a future time. But for now, let’s enjoy some made up juicy gossip about the Jewish source for Jesus’s divine magical powers, taken from the Toldot Yeshu. The resemblance between this text and the anti-Jesus legends of the Talmud, the Cabala, and the Mandaean Book of John (Sidra d’Yahya) and Book of Adam (Codex Nasarous), are all at once apparent.

After King Jannaeus, his wife Helene ruled over all Israel. In the Temple was to be found the Foundation Stone on which were engraved the letters of God’s Ineffable Name. Whoever learned the secret of the Name and its use would be able to do whatever he wished. Therefore, the Sages took measures so that no one should gain this knowledge. Lions of brass were bound to two iron pillars at the gate of the place of burnt offerings. Should anyone enter and learn the Name, when he left the lions would roar at him and immediately the valuable secret would be forgotten.

Yeshu came and learned the letters of the Name; he wrote them upon the parchment which he placed in an open cut on his thigh and then drew the flesh over the parchment. As he left, the lions roared and he forgot the secret. But when he came to his house he reopened the cut in his flesh with a knife an lifted out the writing. Then he remembered and obtained the use of the letters.

Epiphanius in the Panarion tells us wild tales of the Carpocratian swinging, bisexual orgies and escapades in efforts to escape the realm of astral fate and reincarnation.

4:3 By recklessly giving their minds to frenzy they have surrendered themselves to the sensations of countless pleasures. For they say that such things as men consider evil are not evil but good by nature17—nothing is evil by nature—but are regarded as evil by men.

4:4 And if one does all these things in this one incarnation the soul will not be embodied again to be cast down once more. By performing every action in one round it will escape, freed and with no more debt of activity in the world.

4:5 Again, I am afraid to say what sort of actions, or I might uncover a trench like a hidden sewer, and some might think that I am causing the blast of foul odour. Still, since I am constrained by the truth to disclose what goes on among the deluded, I am going to make myself speak—with some delicacy and yet without overstepping the bounds of the truth.

4:6 The plain fact is that these people perform every unspeakable, unlawful thing, which is not right even to say, and every kind of homosexual union and carnal intercourse with women, with every member of the body18—

4:7 and that they perform magic, sorcery and idolatry and say that this is the discharge of their obligations in the body, so that they will not be charged any more or required to do anything else, and for this reason the soul will not be turned back after its departure and go on to another incarnation and transmigration.

But, it isn’t entirely implausible that there were libertine Gnostics who did those sorts of things. There are Christians who do similar things today, so why not back then? In the book, we also discuss one specific part of The Pistis Sophia, which contains a condemnation of ingesting semen, and since that’s a Gnostic text, it would appear that even the ascetic Gnostics themselves were aware of this practice.

Thomas said: “We have heard that there are some on the earth who take the male seed and the female monthly blood, and make it into a lentil porridge and eat it, saying: ‘We have faith in Esau and Jacob.’ Is this then seemly or not?”

Jesus was wroth with the world in that hour and said unto Thomas: “Amen, I say: This sin is more heinous than all sins and iniquities. Such men will straightway be taken into the outer darkness and not be cast back anew into the sphere, but they shall perish, be destroyed in the outer darkness in a region where there is neither pity nor light, but howling and grinding of teeth. And all the souls which shall be brought into the outer darkness, will not be cast back anew, but will be destroyed and dissolved.”

pp. 322-323 (G.R.S. Mead Translation 1921)

The accusations of secret rituals/black mass has its origins (ironically) in Roman attempts to discredit early Christians/Gnostics and Dionysian cults (especially in Celsus in the True Doctrine). The trope evolved and absorbed by the Orthodox and used it against the heretics later on that continued to evolve from Irenaeus to Epiphanius to Constantine and finally by the papacy between the 10th and 12th centuries in the infamously bat-shit crazy papal bull Vox in Rama of Pope Gregory IX, which was directed against German heretical Bogomils who were accused of a “Luciferian” devil-worshiping heresy while made edicts to torture and kill all black cats because of their association with Satanic Bogomil rituals and even as an incarnation of Satan himself. (This may also be connected with the leontocephalus [lion-headed] gods, like Mithras and Ialdabaoth, in the ancient world.)

Yes, slander against the Gnostics and later Cathars and Bogomils were on the same level of accusations of devil worship, unnatural vices and heresy, against the Templars. In most cases, however, they are more than likely evidence-free fabrications, which were only “proven” by confessions extracted under torture (which were later recanted). There is little evidence of them doing so, however, despite much later accusations from 18th and 19th century scholars, from the French Revolution onward. So, like their earlier Gnostic brethren, the Templars, too, were deemed a threat to the Catholic Church, scapegoated, sacrificed as the “other” (Azazel) and were wiped out, through stake-fire and blood. In other words, while the Templars, perhaps held to secret doctrines and rites–perhaps they too, fell as victims of the Orthodox rumor mill that led to the Grand Inquisition of torture and sacrifice of all heretics.

While the connection between the Ophites and the Templars remains tenuous at best (as per Joseph Von Hammer-Purgstall’s writings), there is evidence the Templars did practice some sort of composite secret Johannite (John the Baptist as the “true Christ”) heresy that may go back all the way to the Mandaeans, the cult of Abrasax and Basilides, as we discuss in the book at length. Jules Loiseleur in his 1872 book, La doctrine secrète des Templiers, rejected Hammer-Purgstall’s pet theory that they were secretly Ophites and instead replaces it with his own construct of them being secretly Luciferian Bogomils…

Nesta Webster goes into all this more in depth in chapter 3 of Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, where she also writes about the frenetic connections between the Bogomils, John the Baptist, the Templars, Freemasonry, and Jewish Babylonian witchcraft (I placed ellipses in between the various excerpts taken from the third chapter of the book). However, I cannot, in the right mind, agree with her overall assessment of Gnosticism as a whole, among other subjects. I would cover more about the Bogomils but her lurid summary of their supposed blasphemies really takes the cake–more than I care to expose here. (You can read it for yourself in the book).

If the Templar heresy was that of the Johannites, the head in question might possibly represent that of John the Baptist, which would accord with the theory that the word Baphomet was derived from Greek words signifying baptism of wisdom. This would, moreover, not be incompatible with Loiseleur’s theory of an affinity between the Templars and the Bogomils, for the Bogomils also possessed their own version of the Gospel of St. John, which they placed on the heads of their neophytes during the ceremony of initiation, giving as the reason for the peculiar veneration they professed for its author that they regarded St. John as the servant of the Jewish God Satanael.(75) Eliphas Lévi even goes so far as to accuse the Templars of following the occult practices of the Luciferians, who carried the doctrines of the Bogomils to the point of paying homage to the powers of darkness:

“Let us declare for the edification of the vulgar . . . and for the greater glory of the Church which has persecuted the Templars, burned the magicians and excommunicated the Free-Masons, etc., let us say boldly and loudly, that all the initiates of the occult sciences . . . have adored, do and will always adore that which is signified by this frightful symbol [the Sabbatic goat]. Yes, in our profound conviction, the Grand Masters of the Order of the Templars adored Baphomet and caused him to be adored by their initiates.”

…

The Sabbatic goat is clearly of Jewish origin. Thus the Zohar relates that ” Tradition teaches us that when the Israelites evoked evil spirits, these appeared to them under the form of he-goats and made known to them all that they wished to learn.“–Section Ahre Moth, folio 70a (de Pauly, V. 191).

…

What is the explanation of this choice of St. John for the propagation of anti-Christian doctrines which we shall find continuing up to the present day ? What else than the method of perversion which in its extreme form becomes Satanism, and consists in always selecting the most sacred things for the purpose of desecration? Precisely then because the Gospel of St. John is the one of all the four which most insists on the divinity of Christ, the occult anti-Christian sects have habitually made it the basis of their rites.

So Mote It Be

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And finally, there are also more compelling parallels between Jesus of the Gospel of John and Hermes himself, that I have not seen anyone else bring up. The Corpus Hermeticum XI (22), presents Hermes as an initiator and revealer of the divine mysteries to his student/son Tat.

[22] “And do you say, ‘God is unseen’? Hold your tongue! Who is more visible than God? This is why he made all things: so that through them all you might look on him. This is the goodness of God, this is his excellence: that he is visible through all things. For nothing is unseen, not even among the incorporeals. Mind is seen in the act of understanding, God in the act of making.”

“Up to this point, O Trismegistus, these matters have been revealed to you. Consider all the rest in the same way – on your own – and you will not be deceived.”

In the Gospel of John, we read Jesus Christ’s words:

“He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.” John 14:21 KJV

The Amplified Bible, Classic Edition (AMPC) reads:

20 At that time [when that day comes] you will know [for yourselves] that I am in My Father, and you [are] in Me, and I [am] in you.

21 The person who has My commands and keeps them is the one who [really] loves Me; and whoever [really] loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I [too] will love him and will show (reveal, manifest) Myself to him. [I will let Myself be clearly seen by him and make Myself real to him.]

The Names of God Edition (NOG) gives us the third translation:

20 On that day you will know that I am in my Father and that you are in me and that I am in you. 21 Whoever knows and obeys my commandments is the person who loves me. Those who love me will have my Father’s love, and I, too, will love them and show myself to them.”

One can go to many translations and you will find the word “manifest” as meaning to reveal, to disclose, show, take off the cover, pierce the veil, to show plainly, etc. This is just one verse of many that the Christian must have a full revelation of Jesus Christ. In essence, Christ is the divine spirit that manifests in the believer and reveals the gnosis. Jesus Christ himself is this Gnostic knowledge. It this knowledge that makes the unregenerate, regenerate, that heals the spiritually sick sinner, opens the eyes of the blind, and drives out the strongman and his legion (Matthew 12:29). This is the rebirth process that both Jesus Christ in the Gospel of John and Hermes in the Corpus Hermeticum discuss at great length as well.

Phanes, the Orphic mystical god of creation and regeneration, also comes from the Greek phainein to shine, (in passive) appear or reveal. Phanes is also equated with Eros and sometimes Mithras, who either emerges from Aion’s silver egg or the dark abyss to “bring forth” and “to bring light” to the universe, just like we see in Genesis and 2 Enoch creation accounts as well as the prologue from the Gospel of John. The Derveni Papyrus refers to Phanes as:

Πρωτογόνου βασιλέως αἰδοίου∙ τῶι δ’ ἄρα πάντες ἀθάνατοι προσέφυν μάκαρες θεοὶ ἠδ̣ὲ θέαιναι καὶ ποταμοὶ καὶ κρῆναι ἐπήρατιο ἄλλα τε πάντα , ἅ̣σσα τότ’ ἦγγεγαῶτ ’ , αὐτὸς δ’ ἄρα μοῦνος ἔγεντο.

“Of the First-born king, the reverend one; and upon him all the immortals grew, blessed gods and goddesses and rivers and lovely springs and everything else that had then been born; and he himself became the sole one”

In the Corpus Hermeticum XIII, we read:

A secret dialogue of Hermes Trismegistus on the mountain to his son Tat: On being born again, and on the promise to be silent [1]

“My father, you spoke indistinctly and in riddles when talking about divinity in the General Discourses; claiming that no one can be saved before being born again, you offered no revelation. But after you talked with me coming down from the mountain, I became your suppliant and asked to learn the discourse on being born again since, of all the discourses, this one alone I do not know. And you said you would deliver it to me when ‘you were about to become a stranger to the cosmos.’ I have prepared myself, and I have steeled my purpose against the deceit of the cosmos. Grant me what I need and give me – whether aloud or in secret – the being born again that you said you would deliver. I do not know what sort of womb mankind was born from, O Trismegistus, nor from what kind of seed.” [2]

“My child, is the wisdom of understanding in silence, and the seed is the true good.”

“Who sows the seed, father? I am entirely at a loss.”

“The will of God, my child.”

“And whence comes the begotten, father? He does not share in my essence [ ].”

“The begotten will be of a different kind, a God and a child of God, the all in all, composed entirely of the powers.“

Tat in the rest of the discourse becomes increasingly frustrated with his dad Hermes because of his mystical “riddles” and gobbledygook, in effort to know how to be reborn. Finally, Hermes yields a solid answer to Tat, telling him to renounce his flesh, the world and the “tormentors” inside it (i.e. evil spirits that induce ignorance, various lusts of the flesh and oblivion). This is very similar to how Jesus in many instances in the Gospels conducts exorcisms and cast out demons while in the Pauline literature, Christians are rebuked and required to “crucify” their flesh and “deceitful lusts”.

“Leave the senses of the body idle, and the birth of divinity will begin. Cleanse yourself of the irrational torments of matter.”

“Do I have tormenters in me, father?”

“More than a few, my child; they are many and frightful.”

“I am ignorant of them, father.”

1 John 3:1 tells us something similar to Hermes’ words:

Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.

To “behold” means to look upon, to see what is revealed. The beholder is granted the Divine Vision and the inner man is transformed from the inside out through divine love. The “beholders” are also referred to as initiates of theurgy in Neoplatonism via Iamblihcus, as well. And yet, as we’ve already seen in Porphyry, he actually revered the figure of Jesus Christ, as much as he argued against the Christians of his time. However, much of his work has been destroyed thanks to Emperor Constantine’s edicts and only survives in fragments preserved as quotations by the Church historian and forger, Eusebius.

The great Romanian historian and religious scholar, Mircea Eliade, in The Quest for the “Origins” of Religion, tells us some fascinating lore regarding the connection between ancient Christianity and Hermetic religion.

In 1463, a year before Cosimo’s death, these translations were complete. Thus Corpus hermeticum was the first Greek text to be translated and published by Marsilio Ficino. Only afterward did he start working on Plato. This detail is important. It sheds light on an aspect of the Italian Renaissance ignored or at least neglected by the historians of a generation ago.

Both Cosimo and Ficino were thrilled by the discovery of a primordial revelation, that is, the one disclosed in the Hermetical writings. And, of course, they had no reason to doubt that the Corpus hermeticum represented the very words of Hermes the Egyptian, that is, the oldest revelation accessible-one which preceded that of Moses and which inspired Pythagoras and Plato as well as the Persian Magi. Though he exalted the holiness and the veracity of the hermetic texts, Ficino did not-and could not-suspect himself of not being a good Christian. Already in the second century the Christian apologist Lactantius considered Hermes Trismegistos a divinely inspired sage, and interpreted some Hermetic prophecies as fulfilled in the birth of Jesus Christ.

Marsilio Ficino reasserted this harmony between Hermetism and Hermetic magic on the one hand and Christianity on the other. No less sincere was Pico della Mirandola, who considered that Magia and Cabbala confirmed the divinity of Christ. Pope Alexander VI had a fresco teeming with Egyptian-that is, Hermetic-images and symbols painted in the Vatican! This was done not for aesthetic or ornamental reasons; rather, Alexander VI wanted to mark his protection of the exalted and occult Egyptian tradition. Such an extravagant interest in Hermetism is highly significant. It discloses the Renaissance man’s longing for a “primordial revelation” which could include not only Moses and Cabbala but also Plato and, first and foremost, the mysterious religions of Egypt and Persia. It reveals also a profound dissatisfaction with the medieval theology and medieval conceptions of man and the universe; a reaction against what we may call “provincial,” that is, purely Western Christianity; a longing for a universalistic, transhistorical, “mythical” religion.

For almost two centuries Egypt and Hermetism, that is, the Egyptian magic, obsessed innumerable theologians and philosophers-believers as well as unbelievers or crypto-atheists. If Giordano Bruno acclaimed Copernicus’ discoveries enthusiastically, it was because he thought that the heliocentrism had a profound religious and magical meaning. While he was in England, Giordano Bruno prophesied the imminent return of the magical religion of the ancient Egyptians as it was described in Asclepius. Bruno felt superior to Copernicus, for whereas Copernicus understood his own theory only as a mathematician, Bruno could interpret the Copernican diagram as a hieroglyph of divine mysteries.

 

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More as it develops…

 

Hidden Knowledge in the Grail Temple

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The Holy Grail story is familiar to many in the western world; to some it is an icon of literature and to others a source of comical amusement thanks to Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It is absolutely true that the Holy Grail represents the divine knowledge gained at the end of an inward spiritual journey—knowledge that is gradually lost through the cyclical ages that Hesiod, Vedic and even Hermetic traditions speak of.

Traditionally, it is a legend commencing in late 12th century, created by French and German poets like Wolfram von Eschenbach in Parzival. The Holy Grail takes various forms: a plate or bowl containing the bread of Holy Communion for the Fisher King. It is also portrayed as a stone cast down from heaven on which the abstaining angels stood for sanctuary when Lucifer rebelled against God as mentioned in texts like Isaiah and Ezekiel. The gem was given to Adam when he lived in the Garden of Eden after the rebellion of the angels. When he and Eve were cast out, the Grail was lost to him as well. Seth, Adam’s progeny, was said to have gained re-entry into Eden and to have recovered the sacred vessel. Significantly, Seth remained in paradise for 40 years. The number 40 is itself a mystical motif; Moses wandered for 40 years in the desert, with Noah on the ark 40 days and nights, for Jesus was tempted for 40 days.

It is also a cup in which Joseph of Arimathea collected Christ’s blood on the cross. More modern interpretations include Mary Magdalene as the receptacle of Jesus’ seed as the foundation for the “Merovingian bloodline,” as the authors of Holy Blood Holy Grail have theorized. The chalice is most popular today, doubling as the same cup used by Jesus in the Last Supper. Joseph of Arimathea is said to have brought the Grail to England, which then became an important part of the Arthurian myths.

The Holy Grail myth also links to ideas of gnosis in its relationship to humanity and the world, especially the world of nature and its elements. In the book Baphomet: The Mystery of the Temple Unveiled by Tracy Twyman and Alex Rivera, we go into a great explanation that the Holy Grail cup wasn’t just the vessel for the holy blood of Christ but was actually connected to the Krater of Hermes and the Ophite/Orphic Bowl of the coiled dragon-like serpent (please see our book for more details on this). It is also connected to the idol head that the Templars supposedly worshiped Author authors like Julius Evola, have argued for a non-Christian and even Hyperborean origin for the Grail legend, in his book The Mystery of the Grail, a possibility in which we will explore later in the second part of this post at a future point in time.

Julius Evola writes in the same book that there are certainly repeating patterns and archetypes that any student of Carl Jung would identify with clarity. It also ties into the mono-myth cycles of Joseph Campbell as we will see later:

When we isolate the texts that make up the Grail cycle, we find that they repeat a few essential themes, which are expressed through the symbolism of knightly figures and deeds. What we are dealing with, then, are essentially the themes of a mysterious center; of a quest and a spiritual test; of a regal succession or restoration, which sometimes assumes the character of a healing or avenging action. Percival, Gawain, Galahad, Ogier, Lancelot, and Peredur are essentially various names portraying the same human type; likewise, King Arthur, Joseph of Arimathea, Prester John, and the Fisher King are equivalent figures and variations on another theme. Also equivalent are images of various mysterious castles, islands, kingdoms, and inaccessible and adventurous lands, which in the narratives are described in a series that, on the one hand, creates a strange, surrealistic atmosphere but, on the other, often ends up becoming monotonous.

As the authors of Holy Blood Holy Grail have identified, the “divine blood” is an important concept and is one that repeats in the Bible, in both the Old and the New Testament as we will see. Evola further writes about all the objects associated with the Grail, especially of the blood:

In the various texts, the Grail is essentially portrayed under three forms:

“1. As an immaterial, self-moving object, of an indefinite and enigmatic nature (“it was not made of wood, nor of some metal, nor of stone, horn, or bone”).

  1. As a stone-a “heavenly stone” and a “stone of light.”
  2. As a cup, bowl or tray, often of gold and sometimes adorned with precious stones.

Both in this form and in the previous one, we almost always find women carrying the Grail (another element totally extraneous to any Christian ritual, since no priests appear in it). A mixed form is that of a cup carved out of a stone (sometimes of an emerald). The Grail is sometimes qualified as “holy;’ sometimes as “rich”; “this is the richest thing that any man hath living.”l This text, like many others of the same period, uses the expression “Sangreal;’ which is susceptible to three interpretations: Holy Grail, Royal Blood, and Regal Blood.”

Jack Curtis writes in The Quest for the Holy Grail, is essentially:

“… a system of self transformation that can be reconciled with other similar systems in the Western esoteric tradition. It is a cosmological scheme that is comparable with Tarot, Kabala and Astrology. There are also hints of a connection with Alchemy. All of these systems or schemes follow a unifying principle that points to one underlying reality. The Holy Grail in its 5 Transformations, is one approach to that reality. To achieve the Grail, is to understand reality. To understand reality, is to be transformed and to be saved.”

How does any of this tie into the blood of Jesus Christ? For that answer, we must look beyond the natural and the flesh. The blood is obviously symbolic in its spiritual meaning. It is the spiritual power behind the blood of Jesus in which the believer partakes in, and is eternally saved to be allowed to enter a place that is so radically different than the manifest world—being the “Kingdom of God.”

The Holy Blood

In Jesus’ death on the cross, we read that in John 19:32-38, especially verse 34:

32 So the soldiers came, and broke the legs of the first man and of the other who was crucified with Him; 33 but coming to Jesus, when they saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs. 34 But one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out. 35 And he who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you also may believe. 36 For these things came to pass to fulfill the Scripture, “Not a bone of Him shall be [a]broken.” “They shall look on Him whom they pierced.” 38 After these things Joseph of Arimathea, being a disciple of Jesus, but a secret one for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus; and Pilate granted permission. So he came and took away His body.

Note the extraordinary hiatus John introduces into the narrative at this point. Clearly he wants us to note something of supreme importance: the legend is that Joseph caught some of this blood and water in the chalice used for the last supper.

Eric Wargo in The Passion of Einstein: Light, Spacetime, and the Holy Grail, rightly points out:

I think we can really see the Grail as both objects simultaneously, and that its atemporal “absurdity” is essential to the salvific nature of Christ’s blood: How could the blood shed on the Cross have gotten into the cup of the Last Supper other than by having traveled back in time? Christ’s blood is either made of tachyons (hypothetical faster-than-light particles that most physicists currently reject) or is, in effect,outside of linear Time altogether. Only if Christ’s blood is outside of Time and Cause does it make sense that the cup that once ever held it must have always held it and will keep holding it eternally—and there is just one thing known to physics that has those properties: The blood of Christ is, in effect, light.

Blood symbolism is extremely important in the Grail mythos: In the Old Testament, it is the substance of life. Jewish temple worship revolved around the outpouring of blood, and sprinkling of blood via animal sacrifice. It is taken into the Holy of Holies and sprinkled on the mercy seat on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16). Blood atones for sin and makes everything holy again. It is the seat of the spirit within the body, but it is also the animated life-force, of the body. It is that which contains, as it were, the soul of the body.

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Jesus, as the Heavenly Priest of Melchizedek, also wearing the breastplate of Aaron. Also known as the “Urim and Thummim.” It is clear that Jesus is the “initiator” for the “Mysteries” of God in the Heavenly Temple.

Over at Temple Secrets, Tony Badillo explains that the animal sacrifice and its sacrificial blood represented a separation between the sins and a person’s spirit/soul:

On Ezekiel 44:6, 7 the Lord rebukes “rebellious” Israel for profaning his temple by offering him food in an unacceptable manner. What is his food? According to v. 7, “the fat and the blood;” similarly in  v. 15 where only the Zadok priests may ”offer me the fat and the blood, says the Lord God”. There you have it! His “food” is blood and fat! Should we accept this literally? Yes, in the sense that blood and fat were literally offered to him. But No because he did not consume either. Why does he say this, then? Because the blood, actually poured outside into a Temple drain, symbolizes the spirit’s separation/expiation from sin; while the fat, when turned into smoke, symbolizes the spirit’s ascension to him for acceptance. God’s “food,” then, is simply the language of symbol, and it means that separation/expiation from sin (by the blood) and ascension of purified souls (the rising smoke) are the things he desires from people.

In John 6:53-56, Jesus says to his disciples:

Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.

Jesus implores his followers to consume his divine flesh and blood made up of spiritual light to regenerate their own fallen meat sacks degenerated as a result of Adam and Eve’s exile from Eden and from the consumption of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Hence, the Holy Grail cup is said to contain the Christ’s saving blood of the Lamb—the remnant or leftover spiritual substance dripping from a primal trauma of a divine being, who is crucified by the rulers and authorities of the lower heavens, dies and resurrects so that his followers can follow his example, so that they might be salvaged from the sinfulness of the lower world/cosmos of the devil, which is destined to be overthrown, cast out and destroyed at the end of the apocalypse. The saved and elect are transferred into a new kingdom or reality of God while the rest who rejected the Gospel are destroyed. 

Many of the Cathars believed what the mythicist scholar Earl Doherty theorizes was the earliest form of docetic Christology: that Christ was never incarnate on earth. Most of the radical dualist Cathars believed that the whole Jesus narrative, from the beginning of his ministry to his crucifixion, occurred in the heavenly world of the good god and in the astral realm of the demonic rulers.

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In the Parzival romance, the impotency of the Fisher King being his maimed, never-healing state (all thanks to Klingsor’s Spear) reflects the sterility of his land. It also reflects the nature of matter itself. In the studies of pagan practices by such scholars as Sir James G. Frazer in The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, the recurring themes of the killing of the previous high priest or king to be replaced by a new avatar (much like John the Baptist and Jesus) and the marriage of fruitfulness of this new avatar with a female deity/queen is essential to the vegetative and natural fertility and prosperity of the land. The mirroring effect between the human enactment of natural prosperity and vice versa is apparent enough in the Priest-king of the Grail, Anfortas or the Fisher King’s “Waste Land” is to appropriate this mythic pagan belief into a solid representation that the barrenness of the soul/mind and body reflects upon the surroundings/ environment and nature. This, one might say is the objective co-relative function where the emotions, experiences of the subject becomes objective reality, hence the idea that the imaginal/spirit/ideal realm controls the realm of matter and the manifest world.

It is said that the blood of Christ at Holy Communion in Catholic ritual gives new life and deifies. But that blood is wine transfigured by the descending Holy Spirit in the form of a dove. However, this ritual does seem to have strong vampiric, witchcraft cannibalistic undertones, if placed in a literal context as the Catholic Church has done for hundreds, if not thousands of years. The Cathars were infamous for being hard, uncompromising opponents of the Catholic Sacrament as well as its icons and its worship of the Virgin Mary as devilish trickery to commit idolatry. Various Gnostic groups like the Phibionites, Barbelites, Bororites, Simonians, etc. as well as the Jews (and their rituals as magic in the form of “blood libel”) were accused of human and infant sacrifice in the form of ritually consuming fetuses, in the case that women became pregnant in their infamous orgies. In these ritual orgies, semen and menses were said to be also ritually consumed as a Eucharistic sacrament to Christ as Epiphanius claims in the Panarion. All of this seems to originate in Pliney the Elder in Natural History 30.11, when he writes as a matter-of-fact, that certain magical rites of the Magi (and Emperor Nero) involve ritually killing and eating men (e.g. cannibalism):

The Magi have certain means of evasion; for example that the gods neither obey those with freckles nor are seen by them. Was this perhaps their objection to Nero? But his body was without blemish; he was free to choose the fixed days, could easily obtain perfectly black sheep, and as for human sacrifice, he took the greatest delight in it. 

So, in other words, could the Catholic Eucharist be just a Christianized magical ritual? We certainly see Romans who viewed the Christians as simply a diabolical secret society addicted to sorcery and the conjuring of daimons, as seen in Celsus in the True Doctrine and Suetonius in Nero 16.2. All of this seems to be a precursor for the Medieval and modern gossip and rumors of witch covens and Satanic elite secret societies, like the “Illuminati” who engage in human sacrifice and Faustian pacts with demons. The drinking of wine in Dionysian rituals involved ritually imbibing the spirit of Dionysus, which is like drinking the Elixir of Life, or “being baptized in wisdom.” The wine is the blood of the earth, “fruit of the vine and work of human hands.” This wine is used as a commemoration of ritually consuming the blood of Jesus. The Gospel of John chapter 2, where Jesus transmutes water into wine certainly plays on this distinctly Dionysian idea. So the outpouring of Christ’s blood on the cross is the outpouring of his very life—the spirit of the Son of God.

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The Book of Hebrews (9:22-24) tells us that the blood of Jesus (and all the Old Testament sacrifices) were necessary in order to cleanse things in the heavens–the same place in which the angelic rebellion was said to have occurred as recorded in Revelation.

“And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission. It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be cleansed with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.”

Colossians 1:20 says something very similar:

“And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.“

Notice how in Hebrews, it says that the tabernacle, and all its services, were “patterns of things in the heavens.” The physical objects associated with the earthly sanctuary were “figures of the true” — the “shadow of heavenly things” (Hebrews 8:5). As it follows, each physical item had its spiritual counterpart in heaven. So, as long as there was a tabernacle or temple on earth, there was a material reflection of God’s heavenly palace for mankind to see and take part in. This all sounds strangely reminiscent of certain Hermetic writings pertaining to “as above, so below.”

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Also, in a way, when Jesus Christ was nailed to the Cross, he was essentially nailed to a circular “Leviathan” which is the same as the Ouroboros of the Gnostic alchemists like Mary the Jewess, Zosimos and the Ophites. The atheistic German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche uses this symbolism to build his own theory of “eternal recurrence.” This is what the Gnostics called the “fall of spirit into matter.” Hence, we have various alchemical images of the crucified serpent, and perhaps even the same tempting serpent from Eden. According to the Apocryphon of John, there are a few archons that seem to have strong serpentine and dragon-like features, including Iao and Ialdabaoth, the chief archon and Gnostic parody of Jehovah. All of this seems to have a Pauline basis, in Colossians 2:13-15

…When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him.…

In the Gospel of Matthew (20:20-23), we read that a mother of Zebedee was asking Jesus to have her sons sit at his right and the other at his left hand in the Kingdom of God. Jesus asks her sons if they can drink what he is going to drink and they answer in the affirmative. Here is what Jesus says as a reply:

20 Then the mother of Zebedee’s sons came to Jesus with her sons and, kneeling down, asked a favor of him. 21 “What is it you want?” he asked. She said, “Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your kingdom.” 22 “You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said to them. “Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?” “We can,” they answered. 23 Jesus said to them, “You will indeed drink from my cup, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared by my Father.”

The Baptism of Blood and Water

In Genesis 1, the Spirit hovers over the face of the deep at the onset of creation. Water signifies the chaotic, untamed and unformed material of creation. It is the proto-element out of which all creation, the whole cosmos, including humanity, is ultimately made (Gen 1:2, 6; Ps 29:3) So crossing the waters of the great Flood, the waters of the Red Sea, the waters of the Jordan, and the waters of baptism are the recreating and renewing waters of creation. This water baptism acts like a conduit that transports the believer from one world (the old man of sin)  to another (the newness in Christ). Likewise, priests must bathe in water before entering the Holy of Holies of the Temple of Solomon on the day of Atonement. 

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Similarly the Sea of Glass in Revelation 15:2, beside which those who have defeated the beast are standing, singing the song of Moses. This is a reflection of the “Molten Sea” which was a large basin in the Temple in Jerusalem made by Solomon for the ablution of the priests. It is described in 1 Kings 7 and 2 Chronicles 4. It stood in the southeastern corner of the inner court.

Water in essence is a unifying yet all-dissolving element of the earth and the cosmos. Blood and water together, therefore, signify the fullness of saved humanity: material body and animating soul and spirit as well as the sacrificed body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. In the Gospel of John 3:5, we have Jesus saying to Nicodemus “you must be born of water and the Spirit.” In 1 John 5:6, it says, “This is he who came by water and blood – Jesus Christ…there are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood.”

We need to pause for a moment to reflect on this: the incarnated Son of God took on the likeness of humanity upon himself, meaning that this was not his original nature: this humanity, united to the Second Person of the Trinity, is literally poured out from his side upon the cross. This body and blood is NOT the same as the body and blood of communion, although they are clearly related. The bread and wine of Holy Communion are the substance and blood of the earth, transfigured by the Spirit of God to become our spiritual food and drink as the Eucharist.

The chalice in itself is not the real Holy Grail—that is simply romantic myth. The real Holy Grail is the very ground onto which this blood and water is sprinkled upon. The earth itself received the body and soul of Christ in his death. This is the blood and water of his sacrifice, rather than the blood and body of communion, although again, clearly the two are related. The bread and wine of communion—Christ’s body and blood—rather than being consumed by us to become part of our body, performs a spiritual function, transforming us into the body of Christ. “Though we are many, we are one body because we all share in the one bread.” Thus consuming Christ’s body and blood transforms us into itself. Likewise, with Christ’s blood and body out poured on the cross—it transforms the whole of creation into Christ’s body. Christ’s physical presence, although hidden, still abides throughout the very fabric of the universe. His humanity, which is our humanity, abides in creation, even today, transforming it and making it holy. In a sense, this relates to the infamous Baptism of Wisdom ritual of the Knights Templar in which we discuss in the book, at length. 

Christ’s crucifixion and the Harrowing of Hell, in effect, unseated and usurped the power and possession of the authorities, archons and their demonic possession of the world and perhaps even the “Wasteland” of the Fisher King, a reflection of the inner state of the sinner. The quest for the holy grail to heal the wounded king and to restore the land to its original, pristine, Edenic state. Many see this as related to Matthew 4:19 in which Christ said, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” This reference would later become crucial to the Christian version of the Fisher King of the Arthurian Grail romances. 

As one can see, the Parzival/Arthurian Grail stories, like the story of the Temple of Solomon is simply a retelling of Genesis (as well as a intricate visual depiction of the “Divine Man” or “Son of Man”), which in itself is a reflection of the war in heaven, and the fall of the angels. The Titanomachy of the Greeks as well as Hesiod’s Works (126) also speaks of similar tales of Olympian gods struggling against the titans and their terrible giant children, which no doubt mirror the infamous Nephilim of Genesis 6 and Enochian literature. Hesiod in the same text describes these Nephilim as being Heroes of the “Silver Race,” as a gigantic, brutal and ferocious giants:

Then, a second race, far inferior Was created, of Silver, by the gods…

Being reared by their mothers.

And when they reached adolescence,

They died a painful death,

On account of their stupidity,

For they could not contain their foolish pride and refused to worship the gods above and to sacrifice to them upon the altars.

Hesiod calls them “big children” (mega nepios) and tells how, disgusted with their impiety and arrogance, Zeus decided to wipe them off with a cataclysm, burying them in Tartarus, much like how Jehovah sends a flood to wipe the giant children of the Watchers and condemns the fallen angels in the abyss-like underworld in chains. Essentially all mythologies speak of similar wars between Blacks and Whites or between Angels and Devils, Devas and Asuras, Daevas, and Ahuras, the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness, Gods and Titans, etc., etc. This all seems to influence the story of Klingsor who injures the Fisher King with a spear. Klingsor also happens to be directly related with Faustus.

Once again, we cannot ignore Tony Badillo’s thoughtful explanation of Eden with those who are baptized in the Holy Spirit being the Spirit of God, which have strong Gnostic undertones:

…in Isaiah 58:11 and Jeremiah 31:12 the people themselves are a “well watered garden,”  implying that Paradise on earth consists of an ideal relationship between God and humans. This is a key reason why the Divine spirit is not given solely or primarily for uttering profound prophecies, performing marvelous miracles, or making doomsday declarations, but for subduing the Sinful Inclination and renewing God’s “image and likeness” within each of us, and in so doing we become like a well watered garden, Genesis 2:10,  bearing good fruit for the one who did the planting. This is the true Paradise, the true Garden of Eden while we are here on earth. And that which waters one’s personal garden is the Divine spirit.

The sprinkling of his blood on the earth, prefigured in the Old Testament by the sprinkling of the blood of the sacrificial bull and goat in the Holy of Holies, has made the world the Holy of Holies, the dwelling place of God, signified by the rending of the veil in the Temple. Yet it remains hidden, invisible, and unknown, until the day that the new heaven and new earth are revealed when Christ returns again in glory as discussed in Matthew and Revelation. Just like the hiddenness of the glory of God, momentarily revealed in the burning bush, or on the Mount of Transfiguration. On that day we will see that “in him we live and move and have our being.” The sacrificial bull concept, however, is an ancient Rome and eventually later from Mithraic sacrificial rites. The Gospel of John tells us that after the death and resurrection of Jesus, the Baptism of the Holy Spirit is made manifest to the believer, and the Body of Christ.

According to the Excerpts of Theodotus, the Valentinian teacher Theodotus said that the baptism releases the believer from the clutches of passions, Fate, destiny, and demonic powers that infest the lower world in which mankind finds himself exiled in.

76 As, therefore, the birth of the Saviour released us from “becoming” and from Fate, so also his baptism rescued us from fire, and his Passion rescued us from passion in order that we might in all things follow him. For he who was baptised unto God advanced toward God and has received “power to walk upon scorpions and snakes,” the evil powers. And he commands the disciples “When ye go about, preach and them that believe baptise in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” in whom we are born again, becoming higher than all the other powers.

77 Therefore baptism is called death and an end of the old life when we take leave of the evil principalities, but it is also called life according to Christ, of which he is sole Lord. But the power of the transformation of him who is baptised does not concern the body but the soul, for he who comes up [out of the water] is unchanged. From the moment when he comes up from baptism he is called a servant of God even by the unclean spirits and they now “tremble” at him whom shortly before they obsessed.

78 Until baptism, they say, Fate is real, but after it the astrologists are no longer right. But it is not only the washing that is liberating, but the knowledge of/who we were, and what we have become, where we were or where we were placed, whither we hasten, from what we are redeemed, what birth is and what rebirth.

The Foundation Stone of Fallen Angels

The holy grail also has a strong Hermetic ring to it as Tracy and I have explored in depth in our book. We point out that the word “grail” itself has been derived from crater, the Greco-Latin term for a vessel, meaning a shallow vessel or plate where sacrifices were offered to the gods in ancient Greece. We also explore in depth how the Holy Grail concept is directly tied with the Corpus Hermeticum, as well as Wolfram’s Parzival, which is in itself almost a paraphrase of the Hermetica- a collection of ancient Egyptian texts that also reflect the Gnosticizing tendencies of Alexandria, Egypt. Wolfram rewrote it to match it with thirteenth-century German sensibility. The Holy Grail themes seem to greatly match with the Krater of the Hermetica which directly mirror Parzival’s spiritual journey. In fact, as the above link quotes a book called The Krater and the Grail: Hermetic Sources of the Parzival by Henry and Renee Kahane as towards the end of Parzival, they compare the precision of knights in the Grail Castle to the universe and the Holy Grail itself to the Monad as I.M. Oderberg writes:

A procession comprising the knights and the twenty-four maidens attending the Grail entered the hall, only Repanse de Schoie being permitted by the sacred object to be its bearer. These attendants were grouped in numbers, first four, then eight, then twelve divided into two sixes. Each group carried corresponding numbers of lights. Last came the “princess” of the Grail carrying one. This sequence has baffled many commentators, but Kahane and Kahane point out the marked similarity with the Hermetica, where the groups in the same order “represent the twenty-four stations of the journey of the soul: 4 elements + 8 spheres + 12 signs of the zodiac + 1, the Monad. . . . The Grail procession, in other words, is a representation of the mystic journey of the soul towards the Monad, itself symbolized by the Grail” (op. cit., pp. 105-6).

The end of the Grail quest is the return to the source of life and rebirth into it as divinely self-conscious entities purified by involvement in earthly experiences and having also contributed to the ongoing process of cosmic evolution by refining the substance they have used. The great lesson for Parzival — for all of us because he is our prototype — was the interconnected relationship of all earth entities. The bonds of a universal brotherhood make us all kin. The suffering of one hurts all, and compassion in our heart obliges us to ask forever: What ails our brother?

What could be the most interesting aspect of this story, involves looking at the second clue of what the Holy Grail represents, provided by Wolfram in the form of “a precious stone, lapsit exillis (i.e. lapis or lapsi ex caelis) of special purity, possessing miraculous powers conferred upon it and sustained by a consecrated Host”, which is indeed the blood of Christ, with holy powers to act as the Elixir of Life. This precious stone fallen from heaven is both the emerald fallen from Lucifer’s crown.

Wolfram von Eschenbach identified the Holy Grail as a Stone of Heaven, he knew he was alluding to a Holy Grail tradition that had extended far back into the mists of time. Many traditions tell that primitive man, experienced a physical and or emotional change just by being in proximity to certain stones. Even the term “magic,” associated with the title of “Magus” or “magician” has its etymological roots in the force of magnets or magnetism, which plays into the idea of “greatness,” or “magnifying” one’s spirit or essential self under the light of God. Perhaps this is why Simon was called “Megas” Greek for “Great” which sounds virtually the same as “Magus.” The Persians thought of their priests as “magos” as well.

Alchemists told of transforming a base metal into gold and a human into a god or goddess. Many texts were cataloged of the Muslim Empire by the Sufis, who added their own alchemical data before transmitting it to their students, the Knights Templar, who took the wisdom into Europe and supposedly carried in tradition through Freemasonry. Those indoctrinated were of the Holy grail Mysteries and eventually given the wisdom of the Alchemical or Philosophers Stone. Some tell of it being a platter or bowl full of precious stones. The Stone of Heaven is a Latin translation of the term Lapsit Exillus, closely related to Lapis Elixir, an appellation used by the Sufis that denoted, “Philosopher’s Stone.” Lapsit derived from “stone” and related to the Latin lapsus, meaning fallen, thus denoting “fallen stone.” Since the term Exillus is related to exillis stellis, meaning : “from the stars,” the entire moniker Lapsit Exillus literally translates as “The Stone of the Heavens” or “The Stone which came down from the Stars.”

The name Stone of Heaven can also be derived from the word Grail. The term Grail is derived from the French gres or Persian gohr, both denoting a stone. The Grail of Greal could also be related to the French grele, meaning hailstone, which is a “stone” from heaven. According to Arthur Edward Waite, the term Lapsit Exillus is “Exiles Stone.” This surprisingly affiliates the Stone of heaven with Heaven’s most notorious exile, Lucifer. A poem of a German heritage called, Wartburgkrieg, the “Wartburg War,” summarizes the heavenly battle between Lucifer and St. Michael, and identifies the Stone of Heaven as a large emerald that became dislodged from Lucifer’s crown and descended to Earth:

“Shall I then bring the crown

That was made by 60,000 angels?ill

Who wished to force GOD out of the Kingdom of Heaven.

See! Lucifer, there he is!

If there are master-priests,

Then you know well that I am singing the truth.

Saint Michael saw GOD’s anger, plagued by His insolence.

He took (Lucifer’s) crown from his head,

In such a way that a stone jumped out of it.

Which on Earth became Parsifal’s stone.

The stone which sprang out of it,

He found it, he who struggled for honor at such a high cost.”

Lucifer’s fall that is incorporated into this poem first popularized by the Prophet Isaiah during his harangue against the King of Babylon. When describing the decline and all of the King of Babylon, Isaiah used the metaphor of the Morning star’s “fall” or descent below the horizon at sunrise, an image subsequently became linked to Lucifer when translated into Latin was Luz-I-fer or Lucifer, the Light Bringer. Morning Star then became known as Shahar or Helel, which were the names of Venus’ dawn appearance. Thus, Lucifer is associated with both Venus and Helel, a name that evolved into Hell, Lucifer’s underworld home.

In the Book of Ezekiel, he expanded upon the meaning of Lucifer’s infamous fall. While comparing the King of Tyre with Lucifer, Ezekiel identifies Lucifer as the anointed cherub and forever-young boy who once walked in the Garden of Eden while covered in precious stones, including the emerald, and was perfect in his ways and from that day he was created until iniquity was found in him. Thus Ezekiel perpetuated the tradition of Isaiah by making  Lucifer’s fall the product of pride.

Ezekiel 28:13 tells us:

You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone adorned you: carnelian, chrysolite and emerald, topaz, onyx and jasper, lapis lazuli, turquoise and beryl. Your settings and mountings were made of gold; on the day you were created they were prepared.

Lucifer then resolves to rule in Heaven and this culminated in his expulsion from Paradise. When St. Michael and his angels fought with Lucifer/Samael over his right to rule, states John the Revelator, “that old serpent, called the devil, and Satan which deceiveth the whole world…was cast out (of heaven) into the earth, and his angels were cast with him.”

The remainder of Lucifer’s legend in the poem states that during the battle with Michael, an emerald became dislodged from Lucifer’s crown and fell to Earth. This is based on Ezekiel’s description of the gems-especially the emerald-that adorned Lucifer’s regalia in the Garden of Eden. It is also influenced by the Knights Templar. But of course this predates the Templar’s by many thousand of years. Before their time the emerald had been recognized as the esteemed Stone of Venus, the “fallen star” of Lucifer.

Strangely enough, however, Lucifer does seem to embody the twin archetype we see over and over in world mythologies. In a way, Michael the archangel could also very well be his angelic twin, just as Metatron is said to have an angelic twin soul in the form of Sandalphon. Both of these angels’ lower selves exist in the forms of both Enoch and Elijah, both of which are intimately connected with Hermes Trismegistus. In Roman myths, we have Romulus and Remus, in Genesis, Cain and Abel, Ariman and Angra Manyu in Persia, the Ashvin Twins, or Mitra and Varuna in India; Zeus and Poseidon, Castor and Pollux, Apollo and Dionysus and Hercules and Atlas in Greece; Set-Typhon and Horus in Egypt, etc. In a way, Lucifer is simply a reflection of the Supreme Heavenly Father, who is the spiritual sun of Heaven.

As the story goes, a number of angels remained neutral and inactive during the battle of Lucifer and the rebel angels against God and the faithful heavenly hosts, after Lucifer’s fall they were condemned by God to support this stone, which had dropped from Lucifer’s crown, hovering between Heaven and Earth until the hour of the redemption of sinful mankind and the “Day of Judgement” at the end of the apocalypse. Then they brought it to Earth, and, formed into a holy vessel, it served for the dish out of which the Jews ate the Paschal lamb in Exodus 12 on Passover, and in which Joseph of Arimathea received the Saviour’s blood, and perhaps even the receptacle for the severed head of John the Baptist.

By uniting the two objects, being the kraters and with meteoritic stones fallen from heaven, it becomes obvious. We see ancient worship of meteorites in the Kaaba Stone of Mecca in Saudia Arabia, which is associated with the worship of Venus/Lucifer and Saturn/Chronos, the pyramids of Mexico, the vajra thunderbolt of Hinduism, etc. So the Grail is indeed the meteorite crater opened up by a falling object from the heavens. It may also refer to volcanic activity and magma, associated with the conflagration spoken by the ancients that is said to have destroyed Atlantis-Eden.

dodecahedron01

Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian philosopher and esotericist famously reimagined the grail, foundation stone as a, “dodecahedron fashioned in copper in 1913 to consecrate the building called the first Goetheanum, with twelve, pentagonal (five-sided) facets and called the “dodecahedron of man.” (Bill Trusiewicz, The Foundation Stone as The Golden Triangle, The Mystic Hammer, and The Lost Word)

Bill Trusiewiscz further asks:

Firstly, we should ask: What is a foundation stone? Also called a “cornerstone,” a foundation stone is a stone ceremoniously set in place at the start of the construction of a building. This is done to initiate certain defining principles or ideas in connection with the proposed building with the intention of consecrating it for a specific purpose. It is, if you will, a “mental” building to use modern terminology, to correspond to a physical building proposed. Students of spiritual science would likely be comfortable with the idea that the “soul and spirit” foundations of the building were being laid alongside of the sense perceptible building itself.

Indeed, the Foundation Stone concept can be found all throughout the Old Testament and in the Jewish apocrypha, especially in 2 Enoch (see my paper “The Gods of Imagination: Alchemy, Magic, and the Quintessence” found in The Gnostic 6 by Andrew Phillip Smith). It is the starting point or even the “heart” in which the world and even the whole breadth of the cosmos is founded upon. It is also the Holy of Holies, in which it becomes the “cornerstone” of the Temple of Solomon, which is just another form of the Grail Temple of Parzival. Perhaps this is where the Theosophists would claim that Shamballah of Tibet would be the “heart of the earth” and the “King of the Earth” being “Sanat Kumara,” the so-called “Lord of the Flame” came from Venus! This is undoubtedly connected to Lucifer, the equivalent of Rex Mundi of the Cathars, Melek Taus of the Yezidis, Satan “the god of this world/cosmos” to St. Paul and Ialdabaoth and his legions of archons to the Gnostics. As it follows, the foundation stone is currently owned by Lucifer on his crown, since he is essentially the “prince of the world,” as the Fourth Gospel puts it, when he fell into the depths of the sub-lunar realm after the War in Heaven.

Sacred-Topography-of-Eden-and-the-Temple

In The Creation and the Garden of Eden as Models for Temple Architecture by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, he quotes from a not-so-easily identifiable source but it is worth quoting nonetheless:

The brightness of the Holy of Holies was the light of Day One, before the visible world had been created… Those who entered the Holy of Holies entered this place of light, beyond time and matter, which was the presence of “the King of kings and Lord of lords who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light.” This was the place of glory to which Jesus knew he would return after the crucifixion, “the glory which I had with thee before the world was made.” In the Gospel of Thomas, Christians are described as the new high priesthood who enter the light, and Jesus instructed his disciples to say to the guardians (the cherub guardians of Eden?) “We came from the light, the place where the light came into being on its own accord and established [itself]…

Bradshaw rightly points out that the tabernacle of Moses is an earthly attempt to recapture the Edenic state that that man once held before the fall:

Carrying this idea forward to a later epoch, Exodus 40:33 describes how Moses completed the tabernacle. The Hebrew text exactly parallels the account of how God finished creation. Genesis Rabbah comments: “It is as if, on that day [i.e., the day the tabernacle was raised in the wilderness], I actually created the world.” With this idea in mind, Hugh Nibley has famously called the temple “a scale-model of the universe.” As a complement to the view of the Creation as a model for the temple, BYU Professor Donald W. Parry has argued that the Garden of Eden can be seen as a natural “temple,” where Adam and Eve lived in God’s presence for a time, and mirroring the configuration of the heavenly temple intended as their ultimate destination.

Bradshaw concludes that the temple symbolism of Revelation also carries on this Edenic/Solomonic tradition:

Fittingly, just as the first book of the Bible, Genesis, recounts the story of Adam and Eve being cast out from the Garden, its last book, Revelation, prophesies a permanent return to Eden for the sanctified.36 In that day, the veil that separates man and the rest of fallen creation from God will be swept away, and all shall be “done in earth, as it is in heaven.”37 In the original Garden of Eden, “there was no need for a temple—because Adam and Eve enjoyed the continual presence of God”—likewise, in John’s vision “there was no temple in the Holy City, ‘for its temple is the Lord God.’”38 To reenter the Garden at that happy day is to return to the original spiritual state of immortality and innocence through forgiveness of sin, and to know the oneness that existed at the dawn of Creation, before the creative processes of division and separation began. The premortal glory of the righteous shall then be “added upon” 39 as they receive a fullness of the blessings of sanctification, “coupled with eternal glory, which glory we do not now enjoy.”

The Even ha’Shettiya, also known as the “Stone of Foundation,” which currently resides within the eight-sided Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, the Holy City and center and heart of the earth as European mapmakers charted.

This is the same rock that supposedly was the same rocky site upon which Abraham was coerced into sacrificing his own son Isaac in the sight of Jehovah, to test his faith, as well as the place where Mohammed was lifted into Heaven by the archangel Gabriel. This is also the same site where the Knights Templar resided nearby when they founded modern-day Jerusalem. So the Stone of Foundation for the Jews, Muslims, and the Catholic Crusaders was in fact, the Stone of Lucifer as part of the Axis Mundi or column that unites Heaven and Earth, and even the Underworld. King David, who purchased the rock of the Even ha’Shetityya from the Jebusites as the location of the Ark of the Covenant, was not overlooked by him. This sacred object primarily served as a vehicle for communication with Jehovah/Yahweh.

king-solomon-cc

King Solomon holding the Grail Temple and Royal Scepter.

David’s son, King Solomon, a famous alchemist, similarly thought that the stone’s alchemical properties as a mediator between Heaven and Earth, used the rock as a cornerstone or foundation for his famous Temple, which would draw upon the power and spirit of YHWH. We see the Testament of Solomon depicting Sabaoth as the god of Solomon, who gives him a magical ring through the archangel Michael to build the temple through the forced help of 72 goetic demon helpers. This is Sabaoth is probably the same deity as Abraxas. (This connection is fully explored further in depth in the book.)

Perhaps the pyramids of Egypt and Mexico were constructed by similar means through the use of demonic, supernatural power. Furthermore, perhaps this is what the Knights Templar were so drawn towards—the supernatural power behind the Temple of Solomon—the same power that would one day make them so rich that they would become a threat to French and Catholic nobility. It is this power that manifest itself in the form of a head of a man or even of a cat, and eventually from the Dionysian and Azazel-like goat head.

What is most fascinating as that the Freemasonic pontiff Albert Pike in Morals & Dogma seems to spur and condemn the idea that the Templars also worshiped Baphomet when he writes:

“[It is absurd to suppose that men of intellect adored a monstrous idol called Baphomet, or recognized Mahomet as an inspired prophet. Their symbolism, invented ages before, to conceal what it was dangerous to avow, was of course misunderstood by those who were not adepts, and to their enemies seemed to be pantheistic. The calf of gold, made by Aaron for the Israelites, was but one of the oxen under the laver of bronze, and the Karobim on the Propitiatory, misunderstood. The symbols of the wise always become the idols of the ignorant multitude. What the Chiefs of the Order really believed and taught, is indicated to the Adepts by the hints contained in the high Degrees of Free-Masonry, and by the symbols which only the Adepts understand.“

Pike is claiming that the symbolism associated with the Templars and Freemasonry is veiled and misunderstood by the masses also reflects the idea that the alchemical Philosopher’s Stone was simply a ruse created by alchemists to confuse the masses and mask their true and secret methods and sciences to create gold or something else completely. However, this doesn’t answer the general claim that a certain Templar possessed a severed idol head and turned to it to form their own Faustian pact with the spirit of Baphomet. We can gain more clarity on this subject from Sean Martin in The Knights Templar (p. 139):

Misunderstanding is almost certainly at the root of the allegation that the Templars worshipped an idol called Baphomet. Descriptions of it varied, but it was usually described as being a life-sized head, which was said to make the land fertile (as is said of the Grail). That the Templars did possess heads is without doubt. They possessed the head of St Euphemia of Chalcedon at their preceptory in Nicosia on Cyprus, and, more curiously, a silver head shaped reliquary was found after the arrests at the Paris Temple. This bore the inscription CAPUT LVIII, and inside it were parts of a woman’s skull (who was believed to have been one of the 11,000 virgins martyred at Cologne with St Ursula). The heads may have indeed been worshiped, in the way that the Celts revered the head.

The Assassins, during their initiation ceremonies, buried the initiate up to his neck in sand, leaving only the head visible, before disinterring him. Given their simulation of Saracen torture, the Templars may also have carried out this practice. A further possibility is that Baphomet, long thought to be a mistranslation of ‘Mahomet’ (the Prophet Muhammad), could well be a corruption of the Arabic word abufihamat, which means ‘Father of Understanding’, a reference to a spiritual seeker after realization or enlightenment has taken place: ‘The Baphomet is none other than the symbol of the completed man.’44 It is therefore possible that the supposed head the Templars worshipped was actually a metaphorical head. That Hugues de Payen’s shield carried three black heads suggests that certain elements within the Order – the upper echelons perhaps – were involved with esoteric disciplines learned from the Sufis from the very beginning of the Temple’s existence.

Could these “alchemical heads” be code words for a secret knowledge held by the minds of the initiated as well as literal severed heads who supposedly “prophesied”? The Templars were also said to have in their possession, ritual skulls made out of precious metals and human bone covered in gold and silver. These skulls may have been their own deceased brethren. There are testimonies taken from the Catholic inquisitions that purport of the Templars alluding to possessing metallic skulls used in Templar ceremonies, especially in the legend of The Necromantic Skull Of Sidon.

Skulls tend to be used in ancestor worship and also happen to be the premiere emblem of Mexican commemoration of the Dia de los Muertos (“Day of the Dead” being a pre-Colombian tradition of ancestor worship and colonial Catholicism) and demonic deity of the drug cartels, Santa Muerte, a mixture of the Virgin Mary (who, herself is the Catholic version of Astarte and Ishtar/Lilith) and the Aztec god of death Mictlantecuhtli. The Yale Masonic secret society of the “Skull & Bones,” a Satanic club of which a string of U.S. Presidents belong to (John Kerry, the Bush family, etc.) via secret oaths and initiation rites into diabolism similar to the ones found in Templar Baphometic rites. These “Bonesmen” have their origins in the so-called “Bavarian Illuminati” who themselves come from the Jesuits, whose saints are often depicted next to skulls or holding skulls. There are paintings depicting Mary Magdalene holding a skull as well.

Georges_de_La_Tour_-_Magdalen_of_Night_Light_-_WGA12337

The famous skull and crossbones motif normally associated with pirates is often said to have originated with this skull from Sidon, but it was probably much older. This haunting motif, which we today associate with poison, was most likely a symbol related to the earlier alchemical rites of the Templar Knights. During these early rites, skulls were used representing “Caput Mortumm” or “Dead Head,” which refers to a stage in alchemy preceding creation of the “Philosophers Stone,” which is the Great Work of the alchemists, equated with spiritualized gold. This is the stage of “Nigredo” or the “blackening” in Hades/Hell. The Gnostic-Hermetist Zosimos depicts this stage in the most extreme and gruesome imagery in his alchemical work Visions.

The most important skull or head used in the rites of the Knights Templar was known within the Order as Baphomet. This most sacred of heads, which many of the Knights alluded to during their depositions preceding their French trial, may have been that of John the Baptist, whose head was acquired by the Templar’s as part of treasure they looted from Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade in the 11th century. Even stranger is the fact that this Baphomet skull could also be related to the head of Simon Magus–one of the bad guys featured in the Book of Acts. 

However, the idea that the Templars revered Baphomet in its Gnosticized form, seems to be a later additional detail that emerges during the French Revolution and was later emphasized by the likes of Purgstall, Eliphas Levi, Aleister Crowley, etc. Whatever the case may be, it seems as though the Templar treasure is somehow tied with the symbolism of the head, the mind, as well as the Holy Grail cup which is associated with drinking the wisdom of various Hermetic and Gnostic deities and alchemists like Zosimos, as we explain in the book. Indeed, even the Holy Grail/Fisher King legends themselves have strong associations with Gnosticism, and it is this heresy that Roman Catholicism greatly desired to have stamped out of existence and absorbed into their own “universal” collective religion.

Marcion and Empedocles: The Gnosis of Love and Discord

The Church Father and anti-Pope Hippolytus in Refutations of All Heresies (1.3) writes about the pre-Socratic and Orphic philosopher Empedocles:

But Empedocles, born after these, advanced likewise many statements respecting the nature of demons, to the effect that, being very numerous, they pass their time in managing earthly concerns. This person affirmed the originating principle of the universe to be discord and friendship, and that the intelligible fire of the monad is the Deity, and that all things consist of fire, and will be resolved into fire; with which opinion the Stoics likewise almost agree, expecting a conflagration. But most of all does he concur with the tenet of transition of souls from body to body, expressing himself thus:–“For surely both youth and maid I was, And shrub, and bird, and fish, from ocean stray’d.”

This (philosopher) maintained the transmutation of all souls into any description of animal. For Pythagoras, the instructor of these (sages), asserted that himself had been Euphorbus, who sewed in the expedition against Ilium, alleging that he recognised his shield. The foregoing are the tenets of Empedocles.

Hippolytus makes it clear that it is his mission to expose many Gnostic heresies is fueled by also explaining the doctrines and ideas of the philosophers and the pagan mysteries, including Empedocles and his master Pythagoras, which he connects to Marcion. In a nutshell, Hippolytus was trying very hard to say that all the Gnostic mystery schools were nothing more than clever rip-offs of the pagan myths, legends and philosophy. According to some mythicists, the same can be said for Christianity in general. Hippolytus also makes it clear that his main argument in Refutation (V11. 29-31) is that Marcion is a parasite of Empedocles’s mysteries, who is also treated as a follower of Pythagoras. While much has written about Marcion and his heresy and doctrines, there isn’t much written in regards to how and why Hippolytus compares him to the presocratic philosopher.

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Bust of Empedocles

Hippolytus writes about Marcion’s heresy and apparent plagiarism from Empedocles:

This (heretic) having thought that the multitude would forget that he did not happen to be a disciple of Christ, but of Empedocles, who was far anterior to himself, framed and formed the same opinions, — namely, that there are two causes of the universe, discord and friendship. For what does Empedocles say respecting the plan of the world? Even though we have previously spoken (on this subject), yet even now also, for the purpose, at all events, of comparing the heresy of this plagiarist (with its source), we shall not be silent.

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, it states how Empedocles went astray from sticking to his Pythagorean roots when he was suddenly exiled from a “blessed life” since he spilled animal blood and ate animal flesh as part of a ritual sacrifice:

In the opening lines, the narrator of the poem, who is presumably Empedocles, describes himself as a god, received as such by the cities to which he travels. To them he dispenses advice, prophecies, and cures (B 112). This god is actually a spirit—a daimôn—who has been exiled from the blessed life of the other spirits by breaking an oath and shedding blood (by killing and eating animals: see below). He wanders throughout the natural world, rejected by the very elements, because he put his trust in raving Strife (B 115). Exiled daemons are reincarnated into all sorts of living forms, finally coming to be as prophets, poets, physicians, and leaders among men.

So the ultimate aim of a daimonic philosopher is to journey back to a state of purity by siding with Love instead of Strife. This applies to the shedding of blood and to live a conscious life. Marcion was also known to tell his fellowship to abstain from meat and wine as well and forbade his followers from sexual intercourse and marriage. Love or Friendship leads the punished souls inside the realm of Strife and Discord (compared with the Demiurge) out from the world and into a realm of unity as Hippolytus says.

The souls, then, thus detested, and tormented, and punished in this world, are, according to Empedocles, collected by Friendship as being a certain good (power), and (one) that pities the groaning of these, and the disorderly and wicked device of furious Discord. And (likewise Friendship is) eager, and toils to lead forth little by little the souls from the world, and to domesticate them with unity, in order that all things, being conducted by herself, may attain unto unification. Therefore on account of such an arrangement on the part of destructive Discord of this divided world, Empedocles admonishes his disciples to abstain from all sorts of animal food. For he asserts that the bodies of animals are such as feed on the habitations of punished souls.

Not only is there similarities between Marcion and Empedocles, but also the later and the Prophet Manes. For Manes or Mani, the Two Roots or universal principles (Do Bun in Persian) are Light and Dark. The Tree of Life and the Tree of Death. It is said that the teachings of the Greek scholars, Empedocles and Pythagoras were passed down to Mani by the teacher Scythianus, whom it is said, lived at the time of the Apostles (although there is no evidence that Scythianus even existed). Empedocles is a source for the doctrine of the four elements (fire, water, air, earth), even as it manifests itself in Hippocrates and Galen’s teaching of the four humours. This is a very practical doctrine which is used widely even today. Empedocles also taught that the universe is composed of the forces of Neikos: Strife/Discord and Philia: Love/Friendship. Here is another source for the Manichean Two Roots in the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus who is quoting probably from the Kephalaia:

The difference between these two Principles is like that between a King and a pig: Light dwells in a royal abode in places suitable to its nature, while Dark like a pig wallows in mud and is nourished by filth and delights in it.

To be sure, preoccupation with the problem of evil did not originate with Manichaean dualism or its predecessor in Gnosticism. The Greek philosophers had long devoted considerable attention to the nature and source, of evil. In the Platonic Academy, in particular, the close links between evil and matter were emphasized as the Hellenistic world emphasized the transient and hostile nature of the natural world despite what some consider to be simply “marginal” beliefs of the world’s first “chaos magicians” (being the Gnostics) who hate and reject matter (as if any person can reject matter in the first place!). This simplistic view, however, when one researches the subject in depth can easily be dispelled since many Gnostic groups were actually involved in the great medical schools of the first and second century and had much more nuanced views on matter when one reads Gnostic texts from the Nag Hammadi Library.

Returning back to Marcion, he was a well known Gnostic in whom the Church Fathers dedicated the most vehement hatred and disgust, out of all the heretics of the ancient world. The Apostle Paul was the figurehead for his church, who during the second century was a fierce Hellenistic competitor with the Apostolic Orthodox church. Marcion once had a principle text called Antitheses.  

In Adolf Harnack’s sympathetic study on Marcion in Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God (more than Bart Ehrman’s Lost Christianities), he writes that Antitheses, was intended to be a bedrock for the Marcionite faith, indeed as a “creedal book.” A reconstruction of Antitheses is not possible, Harnack informs us, in part because “not even the arrangement of the work is clear,” but a number of things can nonetheless be determined or gleaned based upon quotes from it found in the works of the church fathers. The purpose for this book was to “demonstrate the irreconcilability of the Old Testament with the gospel,” along with the latter’s origin from a different God (p. 17).

We also know its opening lines: “O wonder upon wonder! Rapture, power, amazement! We can say nothing about the gospel message, not even compare it with anything else.” Here, Christ was saying that Christ came from another realm altogether with a wondrous message of deliverance in ecstatic terms. Moreover there seems to have been a special emphasis on one word in particular—“new.” We can find references to “new God,” “new deity,” “the new kingdom,” “new and unheard of kingdom,” “new master and proprietor of the elements,” “novel doctrines of the new Christ,” “new works of Christ,” “new miracle,” etc, etc, as opposed to the old wine skin of the Old Testament.

It looks like Marcion was struck with astonishment, bowed down in awe before a revelation so utterly prodigious of the Gospel. Clement of Alexandria felt equally exalted:

Christ shines. He shines more brightly than the sun. Night flees before him, fire is afraid, death departs. He presents the believing soul to the Father to keep in heaven for all eternity. O true sacred mystery! O clear, pure light!”

Marcion referred to this “new,” supreme God as “the Stranger.” The Marcionites also could call themselves “strangers,” much like other Gnostics did as not a pejorative term but an endearing one, as they proclaimed a strange or foreign gnosis or knowledge, a term that reveals some of their philosophy of existence.

The Latin Church Father Tertullian accused Marcion of deism (then called Epicureanism, since Epicurus the philosopher was technically a deist) in Against Marcion 1.24.

If (Marcion) chose to take any one of the school of Epicurus, and entitle him God in the name of Christ, on the ground that what is happy and incorruptible can bring no trouble either on itself or anything else (for Marcion, while poring over this opinion of the divine indifference, has removed from him all the severity and energy of the judicial character), it was his duty to have developed his conceptions into some imperturbable and listless god…

But (once for all) let Marcion know that the principle term of his creed comes from the school of Epicurus, implying that the Lord is stupid and indifferent; wherefore he refuses to say that He is an object to be feared.

Tertullian also makes fun of the idea of there being a “new God,” exposing his hopeless rhetoric and red-hot Catholic love for the Old Testament (1.8).

In the first place, how arrogantly do the Marcionites build up their stupid system, bringing forward a new god, as if we were ashamed of the old one! So schoolboys are proud of their new shoes, but their old master beats their strutting vanity out of them.

Tertullian was comparing Marcion’s conception of god to Epicurus. Tertullian says Marcion’s metaphysical beliefs are closer to Stoicism and Platonism. The reason he accuses him of Epicureanism is that Epicurus was a deist who denied that the gods had any involvement or concern with the affairs of man. Marcion’s supreme god was similar in that he had no involvement with creation and was entirely complacent, although he did eventually intervene as Jesus Christ. Irenaeus writes in Against Heresies (V.26):

Let those persons, therefore, who blaspheme the Creator, either by openly expressed words, such as the disciples of Marcion, or by a perversion of the sense [of Scripture], as those of Valentinus and all the Gnostics falsely so called, be recognised as agents of Satan by all those who worship God; through whose agency Satan now, and not before, has been seen to speak against God, even Him who has prepared eternal fire for every kind of apostasy.

Tertullian also says something very interesting in Against Marcion (3.12):

You will find that among the Hebrews there are Christians, even Marcionites, who use the name Emmanuel when they wish to say God-with-us…

Tertullian is saying that there were Jewish Marcionites. Isn’t that kind of important, since Marcion is constantly being accused of anti-Semitism? So, let us sort this mess out. Marcion, as far as we know, had nothing against Jews. His Romans retained most of the verses sympathetic to Jews. He even felt pity for the ancient Israelites, always going so far as to blame their god, and not them, for the atrocities of the Old Testament. And he even inspired Jews themselves to convert to his religion. Yet he is accused of being an anti-Semite.

Irenaeus also posed this question to Marcion (Against Heresies 4.33.2):

…how can he be good who draws away men that do not belong to him from him who made them, and calls them into his own kingdom?

Plotinus likewise objected to the Gnostic propensity to find fault with the universe and its cause (the creator). Porphyry’s title for Plotinus’ tractate against the Gnostics is: Against those who say that the demiurge of the universe and the universe are evil. Simon Magus in the Clementine literature accuses the God of the Old Testament of creating evils, being unmerciful, not being good, and being subject to harsh passions.

The Gnostics and other similar groups believed and based their cosmological systems on the idea that various powers identified with numerous figures from Greco-Roman, Egyptian and Biblical traditions do feature in some astrological content—especially with the notion of astrological fate which early Christians and Gnostics regarded as demonic. They taught that the antithesis of belief in astrological fate was freedom of the will. Therefore, since astrological fate as a demonic power, non-Gnostic humanity was seen as being completely subservient to fate, having lost their freedom under the bondage of the law, flesh and the counterfeit spirit all orchestrated by the wicked goddess Heimarmane.

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These beings were often tied with the “the authorities of the universe and the spirits of wickedness” of St. Paul’s Ephesians 6:12, which directly corresponded with the Archons of Gnosticism. These beings were also said to be the astral lords of fate and were assigned many other terms in both the Nag Hammadi Corpus and the New Testament, such as the “governors”, “guardians”, “gatekeepers”, “robbers” , “toll collectors”, “judges”, “pitiless ones”, “adulterers”, “man-eaters”, etc.

These beings will that every “star” or soul would “go astray on the way” as the Gospel of Philip puts it. Each Archon could have also been associated with a planet (no Gnostic text makes this association explicit). And each Archon, according to the Apocryphon of John, has an adjunct or ‘power’ with the head of a beast or predatory animal. Thus, the seven rulers also corresponded to the planetary spheres, the same powers that helped the Demiurge create the world and humanity. As mentioned earlier, zealous church fathers like Hippolytus confirm these accounts in the discussion of Empedocles, in which Hippolytus claimed that the much reviled arch-heretic Marcion had derived his system of dualism from in Book VII, Chapter 17 of Refutation of All Heresies. Hippolytus quotes Empedocles of saying:

Of these I also am from God a wandering exile.

Hippolytus also wrote that Empedocles taught that the first principle, being God or the ineffable Monad existed in a sublime unity before the eventual and furious “Discord” that is a chief characteristic of the Demiurge, the creator of the world and it is this “Discord” that “forcibly severs from unity, and (which it) fashions and operates upon”. Plotinus (or really Porphyry, since he is more likely the author the Enneads), the father of Neo-Platonism grumbled that the Gnostics took a pessimistic view on the world, with continual complaints against Providence and the design of the world (Enneads 2.9.8). They cite how there is a constant inequality in wealth and that passions dominate humanity rather than reason (2.9.9). Above all, the material world and all its faults are considered a consequence of the World-Soul’s fall (2.9.4).

Much like the Cynics and the Epicureans, the Gnostics disparaged the glorious celestial lights of the Planets and taught they produced “tragic dramas” and tyranny over the lives of humanity because of the cosmic spheres’ influence. This is much like the “tormentors” of the Zodiac in the Corpus Hermeticum. Their radical critique of the cosmos conflicts with the Stoic idea of the “all-pervading Logos” pan-present throughout the cosmos, the optimism of Plato’s Timaeus with the Demiurge doing his best to emulate the ideal forms, and expression of God’s glory within creation on the account in Genesis. According to Eugnostos the Blessed, the world is conceived as a cavern of chaos and oblivion because of the general lack of knowledge:

Let us, then, consider (it) this way: Everything that came from the perishable will perish, since it came from the perishable. Whatever came from imperishableness will not perish but will become imperishable, since it came from imperishableness. So, many men went astray because they had not known this difference; that is, they died.

The Gnostic perspective on the gods was very similar to Epicurus who refused to accept that the gods had anything to do with the universe, even its creation, because since the world is so evil, anything that produced it would have to be evil, too, according to him. He devised a famous argument on theodicy which goes like this: If god is wants to prevent evil, but can’t, then god is impotent. If god can prevent evil, but doesn’t, then he, too, is evil. If god doesn’t want to prevent evil and can’t prevent evil, then he is evil and impotent. But if god can prevent evil and wants to prevent evil, why does evil exist?

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Plotinus, while accepted the three-fold nature (nous, psyche, matter) like any good Platonist would have; he went to great lengths to refute the Gnostic idea that the soul’s fall into matter was seen as a punishment for its audacity and sin, expiated by metempsychosis and demonic chastisement. Plotinus instead believed, much like Irenaeus, that it was good for the soul to descend into matter, to experience good and evil while the unfolding and goodness of the hierarchy of being included the physical realm. Despite Plotinus’ complaints directed against the Gnostics for their infiltration in their lecture-room, he also shared their denial for the corruptible flesh (that it could be saved) which can be traced back to Plato’s body-soul dualism: the body entombs the soul, and upon death our souls rise to the higher spirit realm of truth and perfection which also mirrors the spirit-matter dichotomy of the physical universe, by contrast, as an inferior realm that poorly copies the Forms. The Pistis Sophia explicitly compares the cosmic rulers with the planets, where the Demiurge:

…set five other great Rulers in every Aeon as lords over the 360 (Rulers), and over all the bound Rulers who are called in the whole world of mankind these names: Saturn, Mars, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter.

From these examples list above, it is easy to see that Gnosticism was a critical response to planet worship and the Fates that the planets charge. Now, what about the claim that the Gnostics beheld Jesus to be the sun? In a way, Jesus could very well be seen as the incarnation of the Sun God. However, the Apostle Paul, to which the Gnostics revered, also condemned planet worship in Galatians 4:

So also, when we were underage, we were in slavery under the elemental spiritual forces of the world. … Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. But now that you know God—or rather are known by God —how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable forces? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again? You are observing special days and months and seasons and years! I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you.

Colossians 2:16-17 also says:

Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you.

Paul repeatedly condemns other religions, specifically Judaism and pagan religions, for worshiping lesser beings and planets. Christianity, like Gnosticism, was a critical reaction to planetary worship, rather than a continuation thereof. By examining his letters, Marcion’s Paul was a mystic who has visions of a disincarnate, spiritual being, who he identified with Jesus Christ. Paul was actually awaiting a docetic savior to transform his mortal body into a spiritual body and whisk him away to an immaterial heaven as indicated in 1 Corinthians 15. Paul’s Christ was a being he encountered in visions.

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While there are certain varieties of doceticism and have many meanings and ideas attached to them, it is essentially the view that Jesus was in nature supremely divine, eliminating his humanity and substituting it for a seemingly one. The term Docetism (Greek, dokein = “to seem” or “to appear” and sometimes “to think” or “imagine”) indicated the distinctive thesis of it that Christ’s incarnation, hence his sufferings, were unreal, phantasmal, appearing only to be human. The Gnostics offered a vision of a non-material Christ who did not suffer and die on the cross. In fact, he was laughing at the trick he had played on all of those who thought he was dying as the Apocalypse of Peter suggests:

I saw him seemingly being seized by them. And I said “What do I see, O Lord? That it is you yourself whom they take, and that you are grasping me? Or who is this one, glad and laughing on the tree? And is it another one whose feet and hands they are striking?”

In other words: Jesus was different from what he seemed to be. Doceticism claimed that Christ only appeared or seemed to be a man. This view clearly shows the Hellenistic assumption the divine impassibility and the inherent corruptible nature of matter, although there are other variations of this doctrine. The first to mention expressly “Docetists” or “Illusionists” is Serapion of Antioch (c. 200 A.D.) in his letter to the Church at Rhossos. It was not a simple heresy on its own, but was an attitude that many of its proponents held in their own nuanced and varied ways, including Marcion, Simon Magus, Saturninus, Basilides, Cerinthus, Valentinus, Bardesanes, the authors of many Sethian texts such as the Second Treatise of the Great Seth, the Gospel of Judas, etc. This was firmly countered and opposed by the church fathers, including Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Ignatius, Clement, Origen and especially Tertullian.

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This heresy is combated by the pastorals in the New Testament, such as some parts in 2 John, some parts of the Gospel of John (which some suspect as Orthodox interpolations since its fundamental theology resembles something that is much more Hellenistic and even Gnostic), and 2 Timothy. Anti-Gnostic authorities and heresiologists such as Irenaeus would write against this docetic heresy:

“Vain indeed are those who allege that He appeared in mere seeming. For these things were not done in appearance only, but in actual reality. But if He did appear as a man, when He was not a man,” there was no “degree of truth in Him, for He was not that which He seemed to be” (AH 5.1.2; 1:527)

According to Irenaeus’ logic, when he charged the Gnostics with teaching this heresy, he claimed it was a damnable error because it left man with no hope of union with God through Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross, or so as the Orthodox narrative goes. Irenaeus is as vigorously anti-docetic as he is anti-Gnostic. Mankind’s true salvation in the flesh was at stake through the doctrine that resurrected carnal fleshly bodies would literally fly into the sky in the clouds. Polycarp, Irenaeus’ alleged teacher and sworn enemy of Marcion, made the strongest possible charge against the Docetists by saying that “everyone who does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is an anti-Christ,” echoing 1 John 4:2-3. However, this apparently “demonic” docetic heresy can actually be traced to the Apostle Paul, as he writes in Romans 8:3:

Christ came in the likeness [i.e. appearance] of sinful flesh and condemned sin in the flesh so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us.

The logic in that passage follows a consistent theme: Flesh forces man to sin. Man cannot save himself because he has flesh. Therefore, Christ comes in the LIKENESS (Gk: homoioma, literally “appearance”) of flesh and condemns sin so that man might be relieved from the guilt of the law that he was unable to fulfill himself. If the author of that passage (Paul) had said that Christ came in actual flesh, it would destroy the entire context of the passage. Homoioma literally means “likeness” or “appearance” as a statue of a man would resemble an actual man. In other words, something that appears similar to, but not actually is, the thing that it appears to be.

Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Philippians 2:5-8.

Further on, in the hymn of Philippians 2:6-11, Christ descends, “bearing human likeness and the fashion of a man.” Why this oblique phraseology? The author of that passage clearly did not believe that Christ had an actual body. “Being found IN APPEARANCE AS a man.” If Paul believed that Christ was indeed a man, wouldn’t he just say so? Why would he say that Christ APPEARED to be a man? The passage presents Christ which is the Savior and Logos as being flesh. He took on flesh, he put flesh on. He wore flesh. He never BECAME or transformed into flesh. We also wear flesh. You cannot possibly be your flesh in Gnostic thought. Furthermore, in Colossians 2:9, Paul posited that Christ Jesus was the Godhead bodily who appeared in the “body” (Somatikos). A body does not automatically imply human flesh. The docetic heresy unanimously condemned by the church fathers is right in the New Testament as Paul preached the docetic Jesus, who never came to earth, and the Jewish apostles preached the human Jesus depicted in the gospels, who was a different Jesus altogether, since Paul’s Jesus is so radically different from the Jesus of the gospels. Paul himself acknowledges different Jesuses in 2 Corinthians:

For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him.

In the Dialogues of Adamantius, Chapter XXVII, the Megethius (the Marcionite voice against the Catholic Adamantius i.e. Origen) hints at the “alien” or spiritual nature of Christ, sent by the Stranger God to rescue humanity from the clutches of the creator god or Demiurge, the author of the Law and the Flesh:

To such a degree was Christ an alien, to those whom he appeared, and again, Christ to the creator god, that Paul said (Gal .3:13): “Christ purchased us”. It is obvious that he was an alien, for nobody at any time purchases what is their own. But it says that those who were purchased by the alien, he desired to have as his own.

Of course, Empedocle’s doctrine of Strife and Discord can also be found in Genesis, in the fruit of knowledge of good and evil, where the primal parents Adam and Eve partook of a certain dualistic knowledge from their previous pristine, higher existence when they communed with God. From this, the fall occurred which severed the link between man and God. We can also see this dualism in Genesis, where God formed man from earth and then breathed into him the spirit of life. In other variations of this story, the Ophites claimed that Sophia was the one that really blew the spirit of life into Adam, through YHWH/Elohim. So, man is a combination of profane matter and Divine Spirit. Moreover man is the arena of an internal strife between the evil instinct (in Hebrew: Yetzer-hara) and the good instinct (Yetzer-hatov) which reflects this knowledge of good and evil. It also reflects the Platonic idea that the body is the tomb for the soul was adopted by many groups, and not just the Gnostics. In the Kabbalah, the Tikkunei Hazohar states: “A king’s [God’s] spirit is imprisoned in the tresses of the mind.”

Paul in Romans also claimed a kind of patent dualism that the later Gnostic figure-heads and schools would subscribe too and build upon in that the spirit of Truth was the prisoner of history, space and time belonging to the reality of the rulers:

I find that a law, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man;  But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin, which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from this body of death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.

This dualism is reflected in both man and the cosmos like the radical stripe of Marcion, Manes and Empedocles. Man is mortal in his body, but immortal in his divine spirit. Man is the battleground in which angels and demons duke it out. Man is the microcosm reflecting the macro-cosmos of creation. In Gnosticism, dualism was only used to emphasize the transcendental nature of God rather than the traditional Zoroastrian view that there two equal, separate forces in a constant state of struggle and warfare. And so, the Gnostics attempted to explain that evil was a consequence of this spiritual descent into matter and the mundane.

As Ray Embry writes in Marcion: Possible Progenitor of Three Famous Christian Communities: Baptists, Catholics, Gnostics, this Gnostic conception of the spiritual fall from the One still reflects a sort of Mosaic monotheism as opposed to the simple dualism of Marcion, in which he thought that there was an Unknown God superior to the inferior creator god.

All Gnostic theologies seemingly spring forth as ideological children born from the ancient Mosaic idea about an inviolable monotheism. This form of theism sees everything (no matter what) as ultimately deriving from a single Creator. Working within this rigid model of monism, the Judaistic or Mosaic theoreticians could only think in a linear or vertical fashion, where our world lies on one end, while an independent Father of Light stands on the other.

Much like how the Old Testament records this primeval struggle between the upper-light and the lower-darkness, theological tenants were also hotly debated and meted out between many Christian sects—both being of an Orthodox persuasion and a heretical one. Further evidence indicates that the original Christians were Gnostics, not literalists or fundamentalists. The Gnostics preached the Good News of Gnosis which advocated the liberation of every soul. The Orthodox Church Fathers, however, taught that the scriptures were historical and literal. “True knowledge” for Irenaeus (an attack on the Gnostic idea of salvation through knowledge) comes in the Apostolic Tradition, which comes through the succession of Bishops, which is Catholic and not sectarian:

True knowledge is [that which consists in] the doctrine of the apostles, and the ancient constitution of the Church throughout all the world, and the distinctive manifestation of the body of Christ according to the successions of the bishops, by which they have handed down that Church which exists in every place, and has come even unto us, being guarded and preserved without any forging of Scriptures, by a very complete system of doctrine...(4.33.1-9)

To Irenaeus, salvation was a more or less an ecclesiastical matter rather than an individual’s sovereign right to achieve the Great Work outside of demiurgical iron manacles of organized religion. To theologians like Irenaeus, the Gnostics were simply false prophets and schismatics. The Church Fathers along with the newly created Roman Church eventually took religious intolerance to undreamed of levels, eventually destroying all forms of religion (other than their very narrow version) that they could get there hands on as recorded in Eusebius’ Life of Constantine, 3:64, 65.

The Gnostics rivaled the emerging Catholic groups among other groups like the Jewish Christians and the Marcionites and were just as determined as their Catholic opponents to legitimize their views in any way possible. It became of utmost importance for Catholic apologists to demonstrate that Gnosticism was an erroneous doctrine of Christian heresy, and is founded or inspired by those who opposed the apostles themselves. Irenaeus taught that Simon Magus was the father of all Gnostic heresy and the Simonians of his own day claimed him as founder, just as St. Paul was the “apostle of the heretics”, as per Tertullian.

The aim of Gnosis is simple: the extraction or resurrection of the spiritual man–the spark of the “alien” Divinity imprisoned in the jail cell of spiritual death and ignorance. Any means to reach liberation and freedom from the temporal fetters of matter, from the vicissitudes of history, the turpitude of daily routines, the pain and suffering that is experienced by the less fortunate (which has always been the vast majority of the human race) to the pure transcendental good father was acceptable. Asceticism or libertinism and every variation in between was practiced. For a savior figure like Simon Magus to redeem his consort Helen, fallen into whoredom, he must roll with her in the mires of depravity. He, like Jesus, had to put on the appearance of a man, although humanity wasn’t his original nature. The Savior or Gnostic must also practice sacred deceit: He must disguise himself as an adherent to the Demiurge and the powers that rule the world, to be admitted to his domain, in order to save the souls, the sparks of Divinity, exiled and stranded as ship-wrecked sailors of ascension.

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The 33° Freemasonic author Albert Pike has many fascinating things to say in his massive tome, On Morals and Dogma, especially in the following excerpt from Morals and Dogma, XXX. Knight Kodash. Pike basically admits that the Masonic lozenges or “checkerboard” symbolism so prominent in Masonic temples actually symbolizes the radical dualism proposed by Zoroaster and Mani (or Manes).

For the Johannism of the Adepts was the Kabalah of the earlier Gnostics, degenerating afterward into those heretical forms which Gnosticism developed, so that even Manes had his followers among them. Many adopted his doctrines of the two Principles, the recollection of which is perpetuated by the handle of the dagger and the tesserated pavement or floor of the Lodge, stupidly called “the Indented Tessel,” and represented by great hanging tassels, when it really means a tesserated floor (from the Latin tessera) of white and black lozenges, with a necessarily denticulated or indented border or edging. And wherever, in the higher Degrees, the two colors white and black, are in juxtaposition, the two Principles of Zoroaster and Manes are alluded to. With others the doctrine became a mystic Pantheism, descended from that of the Brahmins, and even pushed to an idolatry of Nature and hatred of every revealed dogma.

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Now I am going to speaking on a personal level from here on out. I was inspired by a conversation with a friend of mine and this is what I think. Basically, what the old Hermetic alchemists were saying is that God is the only thing that’s truly real, and He’s present everywhere, or at least fragments or evidence of his existence. Under the rock and in the wood, like the Gospel of Thomas says. What we see with our senses is basically a shadow. It’s not real, in an ontological sense. This is what Benjamin Walker is getting at when he writes in Gnosticism: It’s Influence and History (p. 37):

The exercise of free will requires an area for its operation, and this resulted in certain catastrophic consequences. Where the will of the Father was withdrawn, the will of the opposing archons prevailed. Where the writ of his goodness did not run, evil emerged. Where his spirit was removed, matter came forth. Where his light was withdrawn, darkness supervened. Instead of love and providence, there was now law and fatality. And where there had been life, there was now death.

Yet it must be remembered that nothing can have existence without God, and even when God is apparently absent, his erstwhile presence has left its permanent impress. The Gospel of Truth speaks of this residual presence of God even after his withdrawal, as the footprint-trace ([ichnos) of the Father’s will. Basilides too emphasized the essential presence of God in all circumstances and situations, when he said that the empty place resulting from God’s withdrawal did not ever cease to show traces of the divine brightness. The vacated place retained the ‘flavour’ of the Father, just as a bowl containing sweet smelling unguent retains the fragrance even after the bowl has been completely emptied.

Giordarno Bruno once said that the since God is infinite, the universe must also be infinite, as God’s manifest form. I also read a recent article that some scientists now question the big bang, and think that the universe may have always been here, which if the case, Bruno was right all along. But from a theurgical perspective, which is more holistic in the view that everything is compromised of some sort of spiritual nature, and that everything in existence exists for some grand purpose. Even evil has some sort of necessary function or reason for being. I guess I’ve been influenced by Hermetic monism.

I’m choosing to look at it this way because radical dualism has become highly disturbing to me as of late. The thought that evil exists as some counter deity and functions independently with no intended purpose from the good is a very grim prospect. I have to believe there is a reason for everything now. The science fiction author Philip K. Dick had the same issue. At times, he would be a radical dualist, but then it would become so disturbing to him that he would adopt a more monistic worldview. The Hypostasis of the Archons sort of reflects this more monistic (in its own contradictory pluralistic sense) way of looking at things.

The rulers laid plans and said, “Come, let us create a man that will be soil from the earth.” They modeled their creature as one wholly of the earth. Now the rulers […] body […] they have […] female […] is […] with the face of a beast. They had taken some soil from the earth and modeled their man after their body and after the image of God that had appeared to them in the waters. They said, “Come, let us lay hold of it by means of the form that we have modeled, so that it may see its male counterpart […], and we may seize it with the form that we have modeled” – not understanding the force of God, because of their powerlessness. And he breathed into his face; and the man came to have a soul (and remained) upon the ground many days. But they could not make him arise because of their powerlessness. Like storm winds they persisted (in blowing), that they might try to capture that image, which had appeared to them in the waters. And they did not know the identity of its power. Now all these things came to pass by the will of the father of the entirety.

And again it says:

Now when Yaldabaoth saw him (Sabaoth) in this great splendor and at this height, he envied him; and the envy became an androgynous product, and this was the origin of envy. And envy engendered death; and death engendered his offspring and gave each of them charge of its heaven; and all the heavens of chaos became full of their multitudes. But it was by the will of the father of the entirety that they all came into being – after the pattern of all the things above – so that the sum of chaos might be attained.

So from the Sethian perspective, even the demiurge and the archons were created for a reason which accounts for a more nuanced Hermetic view that isn’t as dualistic as many consider Gnosticism to be. Both radical dualism and radical monism can be taken to extreme conclusions. The more moderate approach of the Sethians and the Hermetists is the most rational, out of these perspectives. And yet, radical and moderate dualism are just two different ways of looking at the same thing. Both are true and compatible with one another. It just depends on whether you’re going to focus on the light or the dark. New Agers represent the radical monism worldview. They’re so hyper-focused on the positive that they totally reject the influence of evil in the world and are thus totally exposed to demonic influence and deception. It’s like these New Agers who channel random spirits and believe all the wacky BS that comes along with their messages about our beloved space brothers, aliens, ascension into the fourth dimension and such.

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There is a good part in the novel, A Scanner Darkly where Philip K Dick muses on radical and moderate dualism. He writes as Bob Arctor about how he suspects that radical dualism may be true, but he hopes that it isn’t.

“What does a scanner see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does it see into me? Into us? Clearly or darkly? I hope it sees clearly because I can’t any longer see into myself. I see only murk. I hope for everyone’s sake the scanners do better, because if the scanner sees only darkly the way I do, then I’m cursed and cursed again.”

I see the devil as a sort of tool of God. He’s evil and in rebellion, but God secretly uses him to do his will. Kind of how the Valentinians saw the demiurge as well as the Ophites with Sophia and Ialdabaoth. Holism is inherent to natural and sympathetic magic. Tantra also encompasses holism as well. Everything in nature exists for some specific purpose and is imbued with a spiritual nature that can be tapped into through occult knowledge. The Gospel of Philip tells us this exactly:

“The saints are served by evil powers, for they are blinded by the Holy Spirit into thinking that they are serving an (ordinary) man whenever they do so for the saints. Because of this, a disciple asked the Lord one day for something of this world. He said to him, ‘Ask your mother, and she will give you of the things which are another’s.'”

So what we call the Devil and his legions of demons from hell would be the anarchists of the cosmic hierarchy. They’re chaotic and in rebellion to God’s will, but God’s providential scheme already accounted for the faults of free will before it was even enacted. Or maybe Empedocles and Marcion were right along to say that there were two opposing principles from the beginning of creation or that this dualism is somehow an aberration or deviation from an original unity of existence. At this point, I am open to any of these possibilities. 

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Addendum – As it turns out, Hippolytus in Refutation (Book VI. 6), also claims that Simon Magus is heavily inspired by Empedocles. Marcion is simply continuing in Simon’s tradition through the guise of Paul:

Simon denominates in the Great Announcement a perfect intelligible (entity), after such a mode, that each of those things which, existing indefinitely, may be infinitely comprehended, both speaks, and understands, and acts in such a manner as Empedocles speaks of:—

For earth, indeed, by earth we see, and water by water,
And air divine by air, and fire fierce by fire,
And love by love, and also strife by gloomy strife.