by Moe | Aug 26, 2011 | Isis Unveiled | Volume 2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
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PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii
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Volume Second
THE “INFALLIBILITY” OF MODERN RELIGION
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CHAPTER I
THE CHURCH: WHERE IS IT? Church statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
Catholic “miracles” and spiritualistic “phenomena” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4
Christian and Pagan beliefs compared . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
Magic and sorcery practised by Christian clergy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Comparative theology a new science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Eastern traditions as to Alexandrian Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27
Roman pontiffs imitators of the Hindu Brahm-atma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Christian dogmas derived from heathen philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Doctrine of the Trinity of Pagan origin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Disputes between Gnostics and Church Fathers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51
Bloody records of Christianity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53
CHAPTER II
CHRISTIAN CRIMES AND HEATHEN VIRTUES Sorceries of Catherine of Medicis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Occult arts practised by the clergy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .59
Witch-burnings and auto-da-fe of little children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62
by Moe | Aug 26, 2011 | Isis Unveiled | Volume 2, Science & Theology
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PART TWO. — RELIGION.
“Yea, the time cometh, that whomsoever killeth you, will think that he doeth God service.” — Gospel according to John, xvi. 2.
“Let him be ANATHEMA . . . who shall say that human Sciences ought to be pursued in such a spirit of freedom that one may be allowed to hold as true their assertions even when opposed to revealed doctrines.” — Ecumenical Council of 1870.
“GLOUC. — The Church! Where is it?” — King Henry VI., Act i., Sc. 1. IN the United States of America, sixty thousand (60,428) men are paid salaries to teach the Science of God and His relations to His creatures.
These men contract to impart to us the knowledge which treats of the existence, character, and attributes of our Creator; His laws and government; the doctrines we are to believe and the duties we are to practice. Five thousand (5,141) of them, with the prospect of 1273 theological students to help them in time, teach this science according to a formula prescribed by the Bishop of Rome, to five million people. Fifty-five thousand (55,287) local and travelling ministers, representing fifteen different denominations, each contradicting the other upon more or less vital theololical questions, instruct, in their respective doctrines, thirty-three million (33,500,000) other persons. Many of these teach according to the canons of the cis-Atlantic branch of an establishment which acknowledges a daughter of the late Duke of Kent as its spiritual
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head. There are many hundred thousand Jews; some thousands of Orientals of all kinds; and a very few who belong to the Greek Church. A man at Salt Lake City, with nineteen wives and more than one hundred children and grandchildren, is the supreme spiritual ruler over ninety thousand people, who believe that he is in frequent intercourse with the gods — for the Mormons are Polytheists as well as Polygamists, and their chief god is represented as living in a planet they call Colob.
The God of the Unitarians is a bachelor; the Deity of the Presbyterians, Methodists, Congregationalists, and the other orthodox Protestant sects a spouseless Father with one Son, who is identical with Himself. In the attempt to outvie each other in the erection of their sixty-two thousand and odd churches, prayer-houses, and meeting-halls, in which to teach these conflicting theological doctrines, $354,485,581 have been spent. The value of the Protestant parsonages alone, in which are sheltered the disputants and their families, is roughly calculated to approximate $54,115,297. Sixteen million (16,179,387) dollars, are, moreover, contributed every year for current expenses of the Protestant denominations only. One Presbyterian church in New York cost a round million; a Catholic altar alone, one-fourth as much!
We will not mention the multitude of smaller sects, communities, and extravagantly original little heresies in this country which spring up one year to die out the next, like so many spores of fungi after a rainy day. We will not even stop to consider the alleged millions of Spiritualists; for the majority lack the courage to break away from their respective religious denominations. These are the back-door Nicodemuses.
And now, with Pilate, let us inquire, What is truth? Where is it to be searched for amid this multitude of warring sects? Each claims to be based upon divine revelation, and each to have the keys of the celestial gates. Is either in possession of this rare truth? Or, must we exclaim with the Buddhist philosopher, “There is but one truth on earth, and it is unchangeable: and this is — that there is no truth on it!”
Though we have no disposition whatever to trench upon the ground that has been so exhaustively gleaned by those learned scholars who have shown that every Christian dogma has its origin in a heathen rite, still the facts which they have exhumed, since the enfranchisement of science, will lose nothing by repetition. Besides, we propose to examine these facts from a different and perhaps rather novel point of view: that of the old philosophies as esoterically understood. These we have barely glanced at in our first volume. We will use them as the standard by which to compare Christian dogmas and miracles with the doctrines and phenomena of ancient magic, and the modern “New Dispensation,” as Spiritualism is called by its votaries. Since the materialists deny the phenom-
by Moe | Aug 26, 2011 | Isis Unveiled | Volume 2, Mystical Christianity, Science & Theology
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“KING. — Let us from point to point this story know.” –– All’s Well That Ends Well. –
Act v., Scene 3.
“He is the One, self-proceeding; and from Him all things proceed.
And in them He Himself exerts His activity; no mortal
BEHOLDS HIM, but HE beholds all!” — Orphic Hymn.
“And Athens, O Athena, is thy own!
Great Goddess hear! and on my darkened mind
Pour thy pure light in measure unconfined;
That sacred light, O all-proceeding Queen,
Which beams eternal from thy face serene.
My soul, while wand’ring on the earth, inspire
With thy own blessed and impulsive fire!” — PROCLUS; TAYLOR: To Minerva.
“Now faith is the substance of things. . . . By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with
them that believed not, when she had received the spies in peace.” — Hebrews xi. 1, 31.
“What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man hath faith, and have not works? Can
FAITH save him? . . . Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when
she had received the messengers, and had sent them out another way?” — James ii. 14, 25. CLEMENT describes Basilides, the Gnostic, as “a philosopher devoted to the contemplation of divine things.” This very appropriate expression may be applied to many of the founders of the more important sects which later were all engulfed in one — that stupendous compound of unintelligible dogmas enforced by Irenaeus, Tertullian, and others, which is now termed Christianity. If these must be called heresies, then early Christianity itself must be included in the number. Basilides and Valentinus preceded Irenaeus and Tertullian; and the two latter Fathers had less facts than the two former Gnostics to show that their heresy was plausible. Neither divine right nor truth brought about the triumph of their Christianity; fate alone was propitious. We can assert, with entire plausibility, that there is not one of all these sects — Kabalism, Judaism, and our present Christianity included — but sprung from the two main branches of that one mother-trunk, the once universal religion, which antedated the Vedaic ages — we speak of that prehistoric Buddhism which merged later into Brahmanism.
The religion which the primitive teaching of the early few apostles most resembled — a religion preached by Jesus himself — is the elder of these two, Buddhism. The latter as taught in its primitive purity, and carried to perfection by the last of the Buddhas, Gautama, based its
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moral ethics on three fundamental principles. It alleged that 1, every thing existing, exists from natural causes; 2, that virtue brings its own reward, and vice and sin their own punishment; and, 3, that the state of man in this world is probationary. We might add that on these three principles rested the universal foundation of every religious creed; God, and individual immortality for every man — if he could but win it. However puzzling the subsequent theological tenets; however seemingly incomprehensible the metaphysical abstractions which have convulsed the theology of every one of the great religions of mankind as soon as it was placed on a sure footing, the above is found to be the essence of every religious philosophy, with the exception of later Christianity. It was that of Zoroaster, of Pythagoras, of Plato, of Jesus, and even of Moses, albeit the teachings of the Jewish law-giver have been so piously tampered with.
We will devote the present chapter mainly to a brief survey of the numerous sects which have recognized themselves as Christians; that is to say, that have believed in a Christos, or an ANOINTED ONE. We will also endeavor to explain the latter appellation from the kabalistic stand-point, and show it reappearing in every religious system. It might be profitable, at the same time, to see how much the earliest apostles — Paul and Peter, agreed in their preaching of the new Dispensation. We will begin with Peter.
We must once more return to that greatest of all the Patristic frauds; the one which has undeniably helped the Roman Catholic Church to its unmerited supremacy, viz.: the barefaced assertion, in the teeth of historical evidence, that Peter suffered martyrdom at Rome. It is but too natural that the Latin clergy should cling to it, for, with the exposure of the fraudulent nature of this pretext, the dogma of apostolic succession must fall to the ground.
by Moe | Aug 26, 2011 | Isis Unveiled | Volume 2
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“Nothing better than those MYSTERIES, by which, from a rough and fierce life, we
are polished to gentleness (humanity, kindness), and softened.” — CICERO: de Legibus,
ii., 14.
“Descend, O Soma, with that stream with which thou lightest up the Sun. . . .
Soma, a Life Ocean spread through All, thou fillest creative the Sun with beams.” — Rig-
Veda, ii., 143.
“. . . the beautiful Virgin ascends, with long hair, and she holds two ears in her hand, and
sits on a seat and feeds a BOY as yet little, and suckles him and gives him food.” –
AVENAR. IT is alleged that the Pentateuch was written by Moses, and yet it contains the account of his own death (Deuteronomy xxxiv. 6); and in Genesis (xiv. 14), the name Dan is given to a city, which Judges (xviii. 29), tells us was only called by that name at that late day, it having previously been known as Laish. Well might Josiah have rent his clothes when he had heard the words of the Book of the Law; for there was no more of Moses in it than there is of Jesus in the Gospel according to John.
We have one fair alternative to offer our theologians, leaving them to choose for themselves, and promising to abide by their decision. Only they will have to admit, either that Moses was an impostor, or that his books are forgeries, written at different times and by different persons; or, again, that they are full of fraudulent interpolations. In either case the work loses all claims to be considered divine Revelation. Here is the problem, which we quote from the Bible –– the word of the God of Truth:
“And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name of JEHOVAH was I not known to them” (Exodus vi. 3), spake God unto Moses.
A very startling bit of information that, when, before arriving at the book of Exodus, we are told in Genesis (xxii. 14) that “Abraham called the name of that place” — where the patriarch had been preparing to cut the throat of his only-begotten son — “JEHOVAH-jireh”! (Jehovah sees.) Which is the inspired text? — both cannot be — which the forgery?
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Now, if both Abraham and Moses had not belonged to the same holy group, we might, perhaps, help theologians by suggesting to them a convenient means of escape out of this dilemma. They ought to call the reverend Jesuit Fathers — especially those who have been missionaries in India — to their rescue. The latter would not be for a moment disconcerted. They would coolly tell us that beyond doubt Abraham had heard the name of Jehovah and borrowed it from Moses. Do they not maintain that it was they who invented the Sanscrit, edited Manu, and composed the greater portion of the Vedas?
Marcion maintained, with the other Gnostics, the fallaciousness of the idea of an incarnate God, and therefore denied the corporeal reality of the living body of Christ. His entity was a mere illusion; it was not made of human flesh and blood, neither was it born of a human mother, for his divine nature could not be polluted with any contact with sinful flesh. He accepted Paul as the only apostle preaching the pure gospel of truth, and accused the other disciples of “depraving the pure form of the gospel doctrines delivered to them by Jesus, mixing up matters of the Law with the words of the Saviour.”
Finally we may add that modern biblical criticism, which unfortunately became really active and serious only toward the end of the last century, now generally admits that Marcion’s text of the only gospel he knew anything about — that of Luke, is far superior and by far more correct than that of our present Synoptics. We find in Supernatural Religion the following (for every Christian) startling sentence: “We are, therefore, indebted to Marcion for the correct version even of ‘the Lord’s Prayer.‘ “
by Moe | Aug 26, 2011 | Isis Unveiled | Volume 2, Science & Theology
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“Learn to know all, but keep thyself unknown.” — GNOSTIC MAXIM.
“There is one God supreme over all gods, diviner than mortals,
Whose form is not like unto man’s, and as unlike his nature;
But vain mortals imagine that gods like themselves are begotten
With human sensations, and voice, and corporeal members.” — XENOPHANES: Clem.
Al. Strom., v. 14, § 110.
“TYCHIADES. — Can you tell me the reason, Philocles, why most men desire to lye,
and delight not only to speak fictions themselves, but give busie attention to others who do?
“PHILOCLES. — There be many reasons, Tychiades, which compell some to speak
lyes, because they see ’tis profitable.” — A Dialogue of Lucian.
“SPARTAN. — Is it to thee, or to God, that I must confess?
“PRIEST. — To God.
“SPARTAN. — Then, MAN, stand back!” — PLUTARCH: Remarkable Lacedemonian Sayings. WE will now give attention to some of the most important Mysteries of the Kabala, and trace their relations to the philosophical myths of various nations.
In the oldest Oriental Kabala, the Deity is represented as three circles in one, shrouded in a certain smoke or chaotic exhalation. In the preface to the Sohar, which transforms the three primordial circles into THREE HEADS, over these is described an exhalation or smoke, neither black nor white, but colorless, and circumscribed within a circle. This is the unknown Essence.The origin of the Jewish image may, perhaps, be traced to Hermes’ Pimander, the Egyptian Logos, who appears within a cloud of a humid nature, with a smoke escaping from it. In the Sohar the highest God is, as we have shown in the preceding chapter, and as in the case of the Hindu and Buddhist philosophies, a pure abstraction, whose objective existence is denied by the latter. It is Hakama, the “SUPREME WISDOM, that cannot be understood by reflection,” and that lies within and without the CRANIUM of LONG FACE (Sephira), the uppermost of the three “Heads.” It is the “boundless and the infinite En-Soph,” the No-Thing.
The “three Heads,” superposed above each other, are evidently taken from the three mystic triangles of the Hindus, which also superpose each other. The highest “head” contains the Trinity in Chaos, out of which springs the manifested trinity. En-Soph, the unrevealed forever, who is
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boundless and unconditioned, cannot create, and therefore it seems to us a great error to attribute to him a “creative thought,” as is commonly done by the interpreters. In every cosmogony this supreme Essence is passive; if boundless, infinite, and unconditioned, it can have no thought nor idea. It acts not as the result of volition, but in obedience to its own nature, and according to the fatality of the law of which it is itself the embodiment. Thus, with the Hebrew kabalists, En-Soph is non-existent , for it is incomprehensible to our finite intellects, and therefore cannot exist to our minds. Its first emanation was Sephira, the crown . When the time for an active period had come, then was produced a natural expansion of this Divine essence from within outwardly, obedient to eternal and immutable law; and from this eternal and infinite light (which to us is darkness) was emitted a spiritual substance. This was the First Sephiroth, containing in herself the other nine Sephiroth, or intelligences. In their totality and unity they represent the archetypal man, Adam Kadmon, the [[protogonos]], who in his individuality or unity is yet dual, or bisexual, the Greek Didumos, for he is the prototype of all humanity. Thus we obtain three trinities, each contained in a “head.” In the first head, or face (the three-faced Hindu Trimurti), we find Sephira, the first androgyne, at the apex of the upper triangle, emitting Hackama, or Wisdom, a masculine and active potency — also called Jah, — and Binah, , or Intelligence, a female and passive potency, also represented by the name Jehovah . These three form the first trinity or “face” of the Sephiroth. This triad emanated Hesed, , or Mercy, a masculine active potency, also called El, from which emanated Geburah , or Justice, also called Eloha, a feminine passive potency; from the union of these two was produced Tiphereth , Beauty, Clemency, the Spiritual Sun, known by the divine name Elohim; and the second triad, “face,” or “head,” was formed. These emanating, in their turn, the masculine potency Netzah, , Firmness, or Jehovah Sabaoth, who issued the feminine passive potency Hod, , Splendor, or Elohim Sabaoth; the two produced Jesod, , Foundation, who is the mighty living one El-Chai, thus yielding the third trinity or “head.” The tenth Sephiroth is rather a duad, and is represented on the diagrams as the lowest circle. It is Malchuth or Kingdom, , and Shekinah , also called Adonai, and Cherubim among the angelic hosts. The first “Head” is called the Intellectual world; the second “Head” is the Sensuous, or the world of Perception, and the third is the Material or Physical world.
