THE
HISTORICAL JESUS
AND
MYTHICAL CHRIST.
____________
(All necessary references to the original
authorities may be found in the Author's
"NATURAL
GENESIS.")
[Note: This title was first published in 1886 by the Star
Publishing Company, Springfield, Mass., and comprised the whole of the
section 'Typology of Equinoctial Christology' from Massey's Natural
Genesis, Vol. II. It included also the Glossary, Index, and
References that he did not print in his later, abbreviated private issue
of this Lecture that is presented here.
See also THE
NAME AND NATURE
OF THE CHRIST.]
Ed.—readers of this paper might also be interested in the
contrasting view given by Thomas Cooper in
THE
BRIDGE OF HISTORY
OVER THE GULF OF
TIME.
|
|
Gerald Massey, from a carte-de-visite,
by John & Charles Watkins, ca. 1858. |
IN presenting my readers with
some of the data which show that much of the Christian History was pre-extant as
Egyptian Mythology, I have to ask you to bear in mind that the facts, like other
foundations, have been buried out of sight for thousands of years in a
hieroglyphical language, that was never really read by Greek or Roman, and could
not be read until the lost clue was discovered by Champollion, almost the other
day! In this way the original sources of our Mytholatry and Christology
remained as hidden as those of the Nile, until the century in which we live.
The mystical matter enshrouded in this language was sacredly entrusted to the
keeping of the buried dead, who have faithfully preserved it as their Book of
Life, which was placed beneath their pillows, or clasped to their bosoms, in
their coffins and their tombs.
2. Secondly, although I am able to read the hieroglyphics,
nothing offered to you is based on my translation. I work too warily for that!
The transcription and literal rendering of the hieroglyphic texts herein
employed are by scholars of indisputable authority. There is no loophole of
escape that way. I lectured upon the subject of Jesus many years ago.
At that time I did not know how we had been misled, or that the "Christian
scheme" (as it is aptly called) in the New Testament is a fraud, founded on a
fable in the Old!
3. I then accepted the Canonical Gospels as containing a
veritable human history, and assumed, as others do, that the history proved
itself. Finding that Jesus, or Jehoshua Ben-Pandira, was an historical
character, known to the Talmud, I made the common mistake of supposing that this
proved the personal existence of the Jesus found portrayed in the Canonical
Gospels. But after you have heard my story, and weighed the evidence now
for the first time collected and presented to the public, you will not wonder
that I should have changed my views, or that I should be impelled to tell the
truth to others, as it now appears to myself; although I am only able to
summarize here, in the briefest manner possible, a few of the facts that I have
dealt with exhaustively elsewhere.
4. The personal existence of Jesus as Jehoshua Ben-Pandira can
be established beyond a doubt. One account affirms that, according to a genuine
Jewish tradition "that man (who is not to be named) was a disciple of Jehoshua
Ben-Perachia." It also says, "He was born in the fourth year of the reign of the
Jewish King Alexander Jannæus, notwithstanding the assertions of his followers
that he was born in the reign of Herod." That would be more than a century
earlier than the date of birth assigned to the Jesus of the Gospels! But it can
be further shown that Jehoshua Ben-Pandira may have been born considerably
earlier even than the year 102 B.C., although the point is
not of much consequence here. Jehoshua, son of Perachia, was a president
of the Sanhedrin—the fifth, reckoning from Ezra as the first: one of those who
in the line of descent received and transmitted the oral law, as it was said,
direct from Sinai. There could not be two of that name. This
Ben-Perachia had begun to teach as a Rabbi in the year 154 B.C.
We may therefore reckon that he was not born later than 180-170
B.C., and that it could hardly be later than 100 B.C.
when he went down into Egypt with his pupil. For it is related that he
fled there in consequence of a persecution of the Rabbis, feasibly conjectured
to refer to the civil war in which the Pharisees revolted against King Alexander
Jannæus, and consequently about 105 B.C. If we put
the age of his pupil, Jehoshua Ben-Pandira, at fifteen years, that will give us
an approximate date, extracted without pressure, which shows that Jehoshua
Ben-Pandira may have been born about the year 120 B.C.
But twenty years are a matter of little moment here.
5. According to the Babylonian Gemara to the Mishna of Tract
"Shabbath," this Jehoshua, the son of Pandira and Stada, was stoned to death as
a wizard, in the city of Lud, or Lydda, and afterwards crucified by being hanged
on a tree, on the eve of the Passover. This is the manner of death
assigned to Jesus in the Book of Acts. The Gemara says there exists a tradition
that on the rest-day before the Sabbath they crucified Jehoshua, on the rest-day
of the Passah (the day before the Passover). The year of his death,
however, is not given in that account; but there are reasons for thinking it
could not have been much earlier nor later than B.C. 70,
because this Jewish King Jannæus reigned from the year 106 to 79
B.C.
He was succeeded in the government by his widow Salomè, whom the Greeks called
Alexandra, and who reigned for some nine years. Now the traditions,
especially of the first "Toledoth Jehoshua," relate that the Queen of Jannæus,
and the mother of Hyrcanus, who must therefore be Salomè, in spite of her being
called by another name, showed favour to Jehoshua and his teaching; that she was
a witness of his wonderful works and powers of healing, and tried to save him
from the hands of his sacerdotal enemies, because he was related to her; but
that during her reign, which ended in the year 71 B.C., he
was put to death. The Jewish writers and Rabbis with whom I have talked
always deny the identity of the Talmudic Jehoshua and the Jesus of the Gospels.
"This," observes Rabbi Jechiels, "which has been related to Jehoshua
Ben-Perachia and his pupil, contains no reference whatever to him whom the
Christians honour as God!" Another Rabbi, Salman Zevi, produced ten reasons for
concluding that the Jehoshua of the Talmud was not he who was afterwards
called Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus of Nazareth (and of the Canonical Gospels) was
unknown to Justus, to the Jew of Celsus, and to Josephus, the supposed reference
to him by the latter being an undoubted forgery.
6. The "blasphemous writings of the Jews about Jesus," as
Justin Martyr calls them, always refer to Jehoshua Ben-Pandira, and not to the
Jesus of the Gospels. It is Ben-Pandira they mean when they say they have
another and a truer account of the birth and life, the wonder-working and death
of Jehoshua or Jesus. This repudiation is perfectly honest and soundly
based. The only Jesus known to the Jews was Jehoshua Ben-Pandira, who had
learnt the arts of magic in Egypt, and who was put to death by them as a
sorcerer. This was likewise the only Jesus known to Celsus, the writer of
the "True Logos," a work which the Christians managed to get rid of bodily, with
so many other of the anti-Christian evidences.
7. Celsus observes that he was not a pure Word, not a true
Logos, but a man who had learned the arts of sorcery in Egypt. So, in the
Clementines, it is in the character of Ben-Pandira that Jesus is said to rise
again as the magician. But here is the conclusive fact: The Jews know
nothing of Jesus, the Christ of the Gospels, as an historical character; and
when the Christians of the fourth century trace his pedigree, by the hand of
Epiphanius, they are forced to derive their Jesus from Pandira! Epiphanius gives
the genealogy of the Canonical Jesus in this wise:—
Jacob, called Pandira, Mary=Joseph—Cleopas, Jesus. |
8. This proves that in the fourth century the pedigree of
Jesus was traced to Pandira, the father of that Jehoshua who was the pupil of
Ben-Perachia, and who becomes one of the magicians in Egypt, and who was
crucified as a magician on the eve of the Passover by the Jews, in the time of
Queen Alexandra, who had ceased to reign in the year 70 B.C.—the
Jesus, therefore, who lived and died more than a century too soon.
9. Thus, the Jews do not identify Jehoshua Ben-Pandira with
the Gospel Jesus, of whom they, his supposed contemporaries, know nothing, but
protest against the assumption as an impossibility; whereas the Christians do
identify their Jesus as the descendant of Pandira. It was he or nobody;
yet he was neither the son of Joseph nor the Virgin Mary, nor was he crucified
at Jerusalem. It is not the Jews, then, but the Christians, who fuse two
supposed historic characters into one! There being but one history
acknowledged or known on either side, it follows that the Jesus of the Gospels
is the Jehoshua of the Talmud, or is not at all, as a Person. This shifts
the historic basis altogether; it antedates the human history by more than a
hundred years, and it at once destroys the historic character of the Gospels,
together with that of any other personal Jesus than Ben-Pandira. In short,
the Jewish history of the matter will be found to corroborate the mythical.
As Epiphanius knew of no other historical Jesus than the descendant of Pandira,
it is possible that this is the Jesus whose tradition is reported by Irenæus.
10. Irenæus was born in the early part of the second century,
between 120 and 140 A.D. He was Bishop of Lyons, France,
and a personal acquaintance of Polycarp; and he repeats a tradition testified to
by the elders, which he alleges was directly derived from John, the "disciple of
the Lord," to the effect that Jesus was not crucified at 33 years of age, but
that he passed through every age, and lived on to be an oldish man. Now,
in accordance with the dates given, Jehoshua Ben-Pandira may have been between
50 and 60 years of age when put to death, and his tradition alone furnishes a
clue to the Nihilistic statement of Irenæus.
11. When the true tradition of Ben-Pandira is recovered, it
shows that he was the sole historical Jesus who was hung on a tree by the Jews,
not crucified in the Roman fashion, and authenticates the claim now to be made
on behalf of the astronomical allegory to the dispensational Jesus, the Kronian
Christ, the mythical Messiah of the Canonical Gospels, and the Jesus of Paul,
who was not the carnalized Christ. For I hold that the Jesus of the "other
Gospel," according to the Apostles Cephas and James, who was utterly repudiated
by Paul, was none other than Ben-Pandira, the Nazarene, of whom James was a
follower, according to a comment on him found in the Book Abodazura. Anyway,
there are two Jesuses, or Jesus and the Christ, one of whom is repudiated by
Paul.
12. But Jehoshua, the son of Pandira, can never be converted
into Jesus Christ, the son of a virgin mother, as an historic character.
Nor can the dates given ever be reconciled with contemporary history. The
historical Herod, who sought to slay the young child Jesus, is known to have
died four years before the date of the Christian era, assigned for the birth of
Jesus.
13. So much for the historic Jesus. And now for the
mythical Christ. Here we can tread on firmer ground.
14. The mythical Messiah was always born of a Virgin Mother—a
factor unknown in natural phenomena, and one that cannot be historical, one that
can only be explained by means of the Mythos, and those conditions of primitive
sociology which are mirrored in mythology and preserved in theology. The
virgin mother has been represented in Egypt by the maiden Queen, Mut-em-ua, the
future mother of Amenhept III some 16 centuries B.C., who
impersonated the eternal virgin that produced the eternal child.
15. Four consecutive scenes reproduced in my book are found
portrayed upon the innermost walls of the Holy of Holies in the Temple of
Luxor, which was built by Amenhept III., a Pharaoh of the 17th dynasty.
The first scene on the left hand shows the God Taht, the Lunar Mercury, the
Annunciator of the Gods, in the act of hailing the Virgin Queen, and announcing
to her that she is to give birth to the coming Son. In the next scene the
God Kneph (in conjunction with Hathor) gives the new life. This is the
Holy Ghost or Spirit that causes the Immaculate Conception, Kneph being the
spirit by name in Egyptian. The natural effects are made apparent in the
virgin's swelling form.
16. Next the mother is seated on the mid-wife's stool, and the
newborn child is supported in the hands of one of the nurses. The fourth scene
is that of the Adoration. Here the child is enthroned, receiving homage
from the Gods and gifts from men. Behind the deity Kneph, on the right, three
spirits—the Three Magi, or Kings of the Legend, are kneeling and offering
presents with their right hand, and life with their left. The child thus
announced, incarnated, born, and worshipped, was the Pharaonic representative of
the Aten Sun in Egypt, the God Adon of Syria, and Hebrew Adonai; the
child-Christ of the Aten Cult; the miraculous conception of the ever-virgin
mother, personated by Mut-em-ua, as mother of the "only one," and representative
of the divine mother of the youthful Sun-God.
17. These scenes, which were mythical in Egypt, have been
copied or reproduced as historical in the Canonical Gospels, where they stand
like four corner-stones to the Historic Structure, and prove that the
foundations are mythical.
18. Jesus was not only born of the mythical motherhood; his
descent on the maternal side is traced in accordance with this origin of the
mythical Christ. The virgin was also called the harlot, because she
represented the pre-monogamic stage of intercourse; and Jesus descends from four
forms of the harlot —Thamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba—each of whom is a
form of the "stranger in Israel," and is not a Hebrew woman. Such history,
however, does not show that illicit intercourse was the natural mode of the
divine descent; nor does it imply unparalleled human profligacy. It only proves
the Mythos.
19. In human sociology the son of the mother preceded the
father, as son of the woman who was a mother, but not a wife. This character is
likewise claimed for Jesus, who is made to declare that he was earlier than
Abraham, who was the typical Great Father of the Jews; whether considered to be
mythical or historical. Jesus states emphatically that he existed before
Abraham was. This is only possible to the mythical Christ, who preceded
the father as son of the virgin mother; and we shall find it so throughout.
All that is non-natural and impossible as human history, is possible, natural
and explicable as Mythos.
20. It can be explained by the Mythos, because it originated
in that which alone accounts for it. For it comes to this at last: the
more hidden the meaning in the Gospel history, the more satisfactorily is it
explained by the Mythos; and the more mystical the Christian doctrine, the more
easily can it be proved to be mythical.
21. The birth of Christ is astronomical. The birthday is
determined by the full moon of Easter. This can only occur once every 19 years,
as we have it illustrated by the Epact or Golden Number of the Prayer Book.
Understand me! Jesus, the Christ, can only have a birthday, or
resurrection, once in 19 years, in accordance with the Metonic Cycle, because
his parents are the sun and moon; and those appear in the earliest known
representation of the Man upon the Cross! This proves the astronomical and
non-human nature of the birth itself, which is identical with that of the full
moon of Easter in Egypt.
22. Casini, the French Astronomer, has demonstrated the fact
that the date assigned for the birth of the Christ is an Astronomical epoch in
which the middle conjunction of the moon with the sun happened on the 24th
March, at half-past one o'clock in the morning, at the meridian of Jerusalem,
the very day of the middle equinox. The following day (the 25th) was the
day of the Incarnation, according to Augustine, but the date of the Birth,
according to Clement Alexander. For two birth days are assigned to Jesus
by the Christian Fathers, one at the Winter Solstice, the other at the Vernal
Equinox. These, which cannot both be historical, are based on the two
birthdays of the double Horus in Egypt. Plutarch tells us that Isis was
delivered of Horus, the child, about the time of the winter Solstice, and that
the festival of the second or adult Horus followed the Vernal Equinox.
Hence, the Solstice and spring Equinox were both assigned to the one birth of
Jesus by the Christolators; and again, that which is impossible as human history
is the natural fact in relation to the two Horuses, the dual form of the Solar
God in Egypt.
23. And here, in passing, we may point out the astronomical
nature of the Crucifixion. The Gospel according to John brings on a
tradition so different from that of the Synoptics as to invalidate the human
histor y of both. The Synoptics say that Jesus was crucified on the 15th of the
month Nisan. John affirms that it was on the 14th of the month. This
serious rift runs through the very foundation! As human history it cannot be
explained. But there is an explanation possible, which, if accepted,
proves the Mythos. The Crucifixion (or Crossing) was, and still is, determined
by the full moon of Easter. This, in the lunar reckoning, would be on the
14th in the month of 28 days; in the solar month of 30 days it was reckoned to
occur on the 15th of the month. Both unite, and the rift closes in proving the
Crucifixion to have been Astronomical, just as it was in Egypt, where the two
dates can be identified.
24. Plutarch also tells us how the Mithraic Cult had been
particularly established in Rome about the year 70 B.C.
And Mithras was fabled as having been born in a cave. Wherever Mithras was
worshipped the cave was consecrated as his birthplace. The cave can be
identified, and the birth of the Messiah in that cave, no matter under what name
he was born, can be definitely dated. The "Cave of Mithras" was the
birthplace of the Sun in the Winter Solstice, when this occurred on the 25th of
December in the sign of the Sea-Goat, with the Vernal Equinox in the sign of the
Ram. Now the Akkadian name of the tenth month, that of the Sea-Goat, which
answers roughly to our December, the tenth by name, is Abba Uddu, that
is, the "Cave of Light;" the cave of re-birth for the Sun in the lowest depth at
the Solstice, figured as the Cave of Light. This cave was continued as the
birthplace of the Christ. You will find it in all the Gospels of the Infancy,
and Justin Martyr says, "Christ was born in the Stable, and afterwards took
refuge in the Cave." He likewise vouches for the fact that Christ was born
on the same day that the Sun was re-born in Stabulo Augiæ, or, in the
Stable of Augias. Now the cleansing of this Stable was the sixth labour of
Herakles, his first being in the sign of the Lion; and Justin was right; the
Stable and Cave are both figured in the same Celestial Sign. But mark this!
The Cave was the birthplace of the Solar Messiah from the year 2410 to the year
255 B.C.;
at which latter date the Solstice passed out of the Sea-Goat into the sign of
the Archer; and no Messiah, whether called Mithras, Adon, Tammuz, Horus or
Christ, could have been born in the Cave of Abba Uddu or the Stable of
Augias on the 25th of December after the year 255 B.C.,
therefore, Justin had nothing but the Mithraic tradition of the by-gone birthday
to prove the birth of the Historical Christ 255 years later!
25. In their mysteries the Sarraceni celebrated the Birth of
the babe in the Cave or Subterranean Sanctuary, from which the Priest issued,
and cried:—"The Virgin has brought forth: The Light is about to begin to grow
again!"—on the Mother-night of the year. And the Sarraceni were not
supporters of Historic Christianity.
26. The birthplace of the Egyptian Messiah at the Vernal
Equinox was figured in Apt, or Apta, the corner; but Apta is also the name of
the Crib and the Manger; hence the Child born in Apta, was said to be born in a
manger; and this Apta as Crib or Manger is the hieroglyphic sign of the Solar
birthplace. Hence the Egyptians exhibited the Babe in the Crib or Manger
in the streets of Alexandria. The birthplace was indicated by the colure
of the Equinox, as it passed from sign to sign. It was also pointed out by
the Star in the East. When the birthplace was in the sign of the Bull, Orion was
the Star that rose in the East to tell where the young Sun-God was re-born.
Hence it is called the "Star of Horus." That was then the Star of the
"Three Kings" who greeted the Babe; for the "Three Kings" is still a name of the
three stars in Orion's Belt. Here we learn that the legend of the "Three Kings"
is at least 6,000 years old.
27. In the course of Precession, about 255 B.C.,
the vernal birthplace passed into the sign of the Fishes, and the Messiah who
had been represented for 2155 years by the Ram or Lamb, and previously for other
2155 years by the Apis Bull, was now imaged as the Fish, or the "Fish-man,"
called Ichthys in Greek. The original Fish-man—the An of Egypt, and the
Oan of Chaldea—probably dates from the previous cycle of precession, or 26,000
years earlier; and about 255 B.C., the Messiah, as the
Fish-man, was to come up once more as the Manifestor from the celestial waters.
The coming Messiah is called Dag, the Fish, in the Talmud; and the Jews at one
time connected his coming with some conjunction, or occurrence, in the sign of
the Fishes! This shows the Jews were not only in possession of the
astronomical allegory, but also of the tradition by which it could be
interpreted. It was the Mythical and Kronian Messiah alone who was, or
could be, the subject of prophecy that might be fulfilled—prophecy that was
fulfilled as it is in the Book of Revelation—when the Equinox entered, the cross
was re-erected, and the foundations of a new heaven were laid in the sign of the
Ram, 2410 B.C.; and, again, when the Equinox entered the
sign of the Fishes, 255 B.C. Prophecy that will be
again fulfilled when the Equinox enters the sign of the Waterman about the
end of this century, to which the Samaritans are still looking forward for the
coming of their Messiah, who has not yet arrived for them. The Christians
alone ate the oyster; the Jews and Samaritans only got an equal share of the
empty shells! The uninstructed Jews, the idiotai, at one time
thought the prophecy which was astronomical, and solely related to the cycles of
time, was to have its fulfilment in human history. But they found out
their error, and bequeathed it unexplained to the still more ignorant
Christians. The same tradition of the Coming One is extant amongst the
Millenarians and Adventists, as amongst the Moslems. It is the tradition
of El-Mahdi, the prophet who is to come in the last days of the world to conquer
all the world, and who was lately descending the Soudan with the old
announcement the "Day of the Lord is at hand," which shows that the astronomical
allegory has left some relics of the true tradition among the Arabs, who were at
one time learned in astronomical lore.
28. The Messiah, as the Fish-man, is foreseen by Esdras
ascending out of the sea as the "same whom God the highest hath kept a great
season, which by his own self shall deliver the creature." The ancient
Fish-man only came up out of the sea to converse with men and teach them in the
daytime. "When the sun set," says Berosus, "it was the custom of this
Being to plunge again into the sea, and abide all night in the deep." So
the man foreseen by Esdras is only visible by day.
29. As it is said, "E'en so can no man upon earth see my son,
or those that be with him, but in the daytime." This is parodied or
fulfilled in the account of Ichthys, the Fish, the Christ who instructs men by
day, but retires to the lake of Galilee, where he demonstrates his solar nature
by walking the waters at night, or at the dawn of day.
30. We are told that his disciples being on board a ship,
"when even was come, in the fourth watch of the night, Jesus went unto them
walking upon the sea." Now the fourth watch began at three o'clock, and
ended at six o'clock. Therefore, this was about the proper time for a solar God
to appear walking upon the waters, or coming up out of them as the Oannes.
Oannes is said to have taken no food whilst he was with men: "In the daytime he
used to converse with men, but took no food at that season." So Jesus,
when his disciples prayed him, saying "Master, eat," said unto them, "I have
meat to eat that you know not of. My meat is to do the will of Him that
sent me."
31. This is the perfect likeness of the character of Oannes,
who took no food, but whose time was wholly spent in teaching men.
Moreover, the mythical Fish-man is made to identify himself. When the
Pharisees sought a "sign from heaven," Jesus said, "There shall no sign be given
but the sign of Jonas. For as Jonas became a sign unto the Ninevites, so
shall also the son of man be to this generation."
32. The sign of Jonas is that of the Oan, or Fish-man of
Nineveh, whether we take it direct from the monuments, or from the Hebrew
history of Jonah, or from the Zodiac.
33. The voice of the secret wisdom here says truly that those
who are looking for signs, can have no other than that of the returning
Fish-man, Ichthys, Oannes, or Jonah: and assuredly, there was no other sign or
date—than those of Ichthys, the Fish who was re-born of the fish-goddess,
Atergatis, in the sign of the Fishes, 255 B.C., after whom
the primitive Christians were called little fishes, or Pisciculi.
34. This date of 255
B.C. was the true day of birth, or rather of re-birth for
the celestial Christ, and there was no valid reason for changing the time of the
world.
35. The Gospels contain a confused and confusing record of
early Christian belief: things most truly believed (Luke) concerning certain
mythical matters, which were ignorantly mistaken for human and historical.
The Jesus of our Gospels is but little of a human reality, in spite of all
attempts to naturalize the Mythical Christ, and make the story look rational.
36. The Christian religion was not founded on a man, but on a
divinity; that is, a mythical character. So far from being derived from
the model man, the typical Christ was made up from the features of various Gods,
after a fashion somewhat like those "pictorial averages" portrayed by Mr.
Galton, in which the traits of several persons are photographed and fused in a
portrait of a dozen different persons, merged into one that is not anybody. And
as fast as the composite Christ falls to pieces, each feature is claimed, each
character is gathered up by the original owner, as with the grasp of
gravitation.
37. It is not I that deny the divinity of Jesus the Christ; I
assert it! He never was, and never could be, any other than a divinity; that is,
a character non-human, and entirely mythical, who had been the pagan divinity of
various pagan myths, that had been pagan during thousands of years before our
Era.
38. Nothing is more certain, according to honest evidence,
than that the Christian scheme of redemption is founded on a fable
misinterpreted; that the prophecy of fulfilment was solely astronomical, and the
Coming One as the Christ who came in the end of an age, or of the world, was but
a metaphorical figure, a type of time, from the first, which never could take
form in historic personality, any more than Time in Person could come out of a
clock-case when the hour strikes; that no Jesus could become a Nazarene by being
born at, or taken to, Nazareth; and that the history in our Gospels is from
beginning to end the identifiable story of the Sun-God, and the Gnostic Christ
who never could be made flesh. When we did not know the one it was
possible to believe the other; but when once we truly know, then the false
belief is no longer possible.
39. The mythical Messiah was Horus in the Osirian Mythos;
Har-Khuti in the Sut-Typhonian; Khunsu in that of Amen-Ra; Iu in the cult of
Atum-Ra; and the Christ of the Gospels is an amalgam of all these characters. |
The Christ is the Good Shepherd!
So was Horus.
Christ is the Lamb of God!
So was Horus.
Christ is the Bread of Life!
So was Horus.
Christ is the Truth and the Life!
So was Horus.
Christ is the Fan-bearer!
So was Horus.
Christ is the Lord!
So was Horus. |
40. Christ is the Way and the Door of Life!
41. Horus was the path by which they travelled out of
the Sepulchre. He is the God whose name is written with the
hieroglyphic sign of the Road or Way.
42. Jesus is he that should come; and Iu, the root of
the name in Egyptian, means "to come." Iu-em-hept, as the Su, the
Son of Atum, or of Ptah, was the "Ever-Coming One," who is always
portrayed as the marching youngster, in the act and attitude of coming.
Horus included both sexes. The Child (or the soul) is of either
sex, and potentially, of both. Hence the hermaphrodital Deity; and
Jesus, in Revelation, is the Young Man who has the female paps.
43. Iu-em-hept signifies he who comes with peace.
This is the character in which Jesus is announced by the Angels!
And when Jesus comes to his disciples after the resurrection it is as
the bringer of peace. "Learn of me and ye shall find rest," says
the Christ. Khunsu-Nefer-Hept is the Good Rest, Peace in Person!
The Egyptian Jesus, Iu-em-Hept, was the second Atum; Paul's Jesus is the
second Adam. In one rendition of John's Gospel, instead of the
"only-begotten Son of God," a variant reading gives the "only-begotten
God," which has been declared an impossible rendering. But the
"only-begotten God" was an especial type in Egyptian Mythology, and the
phrase re-identifies the divinity whose emblem is the beetle. Hor-Apollo
says, "To denote the only-begotten or a father, the Egyptians delineate
a scarabæus! By this they symbolize an only-begotten, because the
creature is self-produced, being unconceived by a female." Now the
youthful manifestor of the Beetle-God was this Iu-em-hept, the Egyptian
Jesus. The very phraseology of John is common to the Inscriptions,
which tell of him who was the Beginner of Becoming from the first, and
who made all things, but who himself was not made. I quote
verbatim. And not only was the Beetle-God continued in the
"only-begotten God"; the beetle-type was also brought on as a symbol of
the Christ. Ambrose and Augustine, amongst the Christian Fathers,
identified Jesus with, and as, the "good Scarabæus," which further
identifies the Jesus of John's Gospel with the Jesus of Egypt, who was
the Ever-Coming One, and the Bringer of Peace, whom I have elsewhere
shown to be the Jesus to whom the Book of Ecclesiasticus is inscribed,
and ascribed in the Apocrypha.
44. In accordance with this continuation of the Kamite
symbols, it was also maintained by some sectaries that Jesus was a
potter, and not a carpenter; and the fact is that this only-begotten
Beetle-God, who is portrayed sitting at the potter's wheel forming the
Egg, or shaping the vase-symbol of creation, was the Potter personified,
as well as the only-begotten God in Egypt.
45. The character and teachings of the Canonical
Christ are composed of contradictions which cannot be harmonised as
those of a human being, whereas they are always true to the Mythos.
46. He is the Prince of Peace, and yet he asserts that
he came not to bring peace: "I came not to send peace, but a sword," and
not only is Iu-em-hept the Bringer of Peace by name in one character; he
is the Sword personified in the other. In this he says, "I am the
living image of Atum, proceeding from him as a sword." Both
characters belong to the mythical Messiah in the Ritual, who also calls
himself the "Great Disturber," and the "Great Tranquilizer"—the "God
Contention," and the "God Peace." The Christ of the Canonical
Gospels has several prototypes, and sometimes the copy is derived or the
trait is caught from one original, and sometimes from the other.
The Christ of Luke's Gospel has a character entirely distinct from that
of John's Gospel. Here he is the Great Exorciser, and caster-out
of demons. John's Gospel contains no case of possession or
obsession: no certain man who "had devils this long time"; no child
possessed with a devil; no blind and dumb man possessed with a devil.
47. Other miracles are performed by the Christ of
John, but not these; because John's is a different type of the Christ.
And the original of the Great Healer in Luke's Gospel may be found in
the God Khunsu, who was the Divine Healer, the supreme one amongst all
the other healers and saviours, especially as the caster-out of demons,
and the expeller of possessing spirits. He is called in the texts
the "Great God, the driver away of possession."
48. In the Stele of the "Possessed Princess," this God
in his effigy is sent for by the chief of Bakhten, that he may come and
cast out a possessing spirit from the king's daughter, who has an evil
movement in her limbs. The demon recognises the divinity just as
the devil recognises Jesus, the expeller of evil spirits. Also the
God Khunsu is Lord over the pig—a type of Sut. He is portrayed in the
disk of the full moon of Easter, in the act of offering the pig as a
sacrifice. Moreover, in the judgment scenes, when the wicked
spirits are condemned and sent back into the abyss, their mode of return
to the lake of primordial matter is by entering the bodies of swine.
Says Horus to the Gods, speaking of the condemned one: "When I sent him
to his place he went, and he has been transformed into a black pig."
So when the Exorcist in Luke's Gospel casts out Legion, the devils ask
permission of the Lord of the pig to be allowed to enter the swine, and
he gives them leave. This, and much more that might be adduced,
tends to differentiate the Christ of Luke, and to identify him with
Khunsu, rather than with Iu-em-hept, the Egyptian Jesus, who is
reproduced in the Gospel according to John. In this way it can be
proved that the history of Christ in the Gospels is one long and
complete catalogue of likenesses to the Mythical Messiah, the Solar or
Luni-Solar God.
49. The "Litany of Ra," for example, is addressed to
the Sun-God in a variety of characters, many of which are assigned to
the Christ of the Gospels. Ra is the Supreme Power, the Beetle
that rests in the Empyrean, who is born as his own son. This, as
already said, is the God in John's Gospel, who says:—"I and the Father
are one," and who is the father born as his own son; for he says,
in knowing and seeing the son, "from henceforth ye know him and have
seen him"; i.e., the Father.
50. Ra is designated the "Soul that speaks."
Christ is the Word. Ra is the destroyer of venom. Jesus says:—"In my
name they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing it
shall not hurt them." In one character Ra is the outcast. So
Jesus had not where to lay his head.
51. Ra is the "timid one who sheds tears in the form
of the Afflicted." He is called Remi, the Weeper. This weeping God
passes through "Rem-Rem," the place of weeping, and there conquers on
behalf of his followers. In the Ritual the God says:—"I have
desolated the place of Rem-Rem." This character is sustained by
Jesus in the mourning over Jerusalem that was to be desolated. The
words of John, "Jesus wept," are like a carven statue of the "Afflicted
One," as Remi, the Weeper. Ra is also the God who "makes the mummy
come forth." Jesus makes the mummy come forth in the shape of
Lazarus; and in the Roman Catacombs the risen Lazarus is not only
represented as a mummy, but is an Egyptian mummy which has been
eviscerated and swathed for the eternal abode. Ra says to the
mummy: "Come forth!" and Jesus cries: "Lazarus, come forth!" Ra
manifests as "the burning one, he who sends destruction," or "sends his
fire into the place of destruction." "He sends fire upon the
rebels," his form is that of the "God of the furnace." Christ also
comes in the person of this "burning one"; the sender of destruction by
fire. He is proclaimed by Matthew to be the Baptiser with fire.
He says, "I am come to send fire on the earth."
52. He is portrayed as "God of the furnace," which
shall "burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." He is to cast
the rebellious into a "furnace of fire," and send the condemned ones
into everlasting fire. All this was natural when applied to the
Solar-God, and it is supposed to become supernatural when misapplied to
a supposed human being to whom it never could apply. The Solar
fire was the primary African fount of theological hell-fire and hell.
53. The "Litany" of Ra collects the manifold
characters that make up the total God (termed Teb-temt), and the Gospels
have gathered up the mythical remains; thus the result is in each case
identical, or entirely similar. From beginning to end the
Canonical Gospels contain the Drama of the Mysteries of the Luni-Solar
God, narrated as a human history. The scene on the Mount of
Transfiguration is obviously derived from the ascent of Osiris into the
Mount of Transfiguration in the Moon. The sixth day was celebrated
as that of the change and transformation of the Solar God in the lunar
orb, which he re-entered on that day as the regenerator of its light.
With this we may compare the statement made by Matthew, that "after six
days Jesus went up into a high mountain apart, and he was transfigured,
and his face did shine as the sun (of course!), and his garments became
white as the light."
54. In Egypt the year began soon after the Summer
Solstice, when the sun descended from its midsummer height, lost its
force, and lessened in its size. This represented Osiris, who was
born of the Virgin Mother as the child Horus, the diminished infantile
sun of Autumn; the suffering, wounded, bleeding Messiah, as he was
represented. He descended into hell, or hades, where he was transformed
into the virile Horus, and rose again as the sun of the resurrection at
Easter. In these two characters of Horus on the two horizons,
Osiris furnished the dual type for the Canonical Christ, which shows
very satisfactorily HOW the mythical prescribes
the boundaries beyond which the historical does not, dare not, go.
The first was the child Horus, who always remained a child. In Egypt the
boy or girl wore the Horus-lock of childhood until 12 years of age.
Thus childhood ended about the twelfth year. But although
adultship was then entered upon by the youth, and the transformation of
the boy into manhood began, the full adultship was not attained until 30
years of age. The man of 30 years was the typical adult. The
age of adultship was 30 years, as it was in Rome under Lex Pappia.
The homme fait is the man whose years are triaded by tens, and
who is Khemt. As with the man, so it is with the God; and the
second Horus, the same God in his second character, is the Khemt
or Khem-Horus,
the typical adult of 30 years. The God up to twelve years was Horus,
the child of Isis, the mother's child, the weakling. The virile
Horus (the sun in its vernal strength), the adult of 30 years, was
representative of the Fatherhood, and this Horus is the anointed son of
Osiris. These two characters of Horus the child, and Horus the
adult of 30 years, are reproduced in the only two phases of the life of
Jesus in the Gospels. John furnishes no historic data for the time
when the Word
was incarnated and became flesh; nor for the childhood of Jesus; nor for the
transformation into the Messiah. But Luke tells us that the
child of twelve years was the wonderful youth, and that he increased
in wisdom and stature. This is the length of years assigned to
Horus the child; and this phase of the child-Christ's life is followed
by the baptism and anointing, the descent of the pubescent spirit with
the consecration of the Messiah in Jordan, when Jesus "began to be
about 30 years of age."
55. The earliest anointing was the consecration of
puberty; and here at the full age of the typical adult, the Christ, who
was previously a child, the child of the Virgin Mother, is suddenly made
into the Messiah, as the Lord's anointed. And just as the second
Horus was regenerated, and this time begotten of the father, so in the
transformation scene of the baptism in Jordan, the father authenticates
the change into full adultship, with the voice from heaven saying:—"This
is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased;" the spirit of pubescence,
or the Ruach, being represented by the descending dove, called
the spirit of God. Thus from the time when the child-Christ was
about twelve years of age, until that of the typical homme fait
of Egypt, which was the age assigned to Horus when he became the adult
God, there is no history. This is in exact accordance with the
Kamite allegory of the double-Horus. And the Mythos alone will
account for the chasm which is wide and deep enough to engulf a supposed
history of 18 years. Childhood cannot be carried beyond the 12th
year, and the child-Horus always remained a child; just as the
child-Christ does in Italy, and in German folk-tales. The mythical
record founded on nature went no further, and there the history
consequently halts within the prescribed limits, to rebegin with the
anointed and regenerated Christ at the age of Khem-Horus, the adult of
30 years.
56. And these two characters of Horus necessitated a
double form of the mother, who divides into the two divine sisters, Isis
and Nephthys. Jesus also was bi-mater, or dual-mothered; and the
two sisters reappear in the Gospels as the two Marys, both of whom are
the mothers of Jesus. This again, which is impossible as human
history, is perfect according to the Mythos that explains it.
57. As the child-Horus, Osiris comes down to earth; he
enters matter, and becomes mortal. He is born like the Logos, or
"as a Word." His father is Seb, the earth, whose consort is Nu,
the heaven, one of whose names is MERI, the Lady
of Heaven; and these two are the prototypes of Joseph and Mary. He
is said to cross the earth a substitute, and to suffer vicariously as
the Saviour, Redeemer, and Justifier of men. In these two
characters there was constant conflict between Osiris and Typhon, the
Evil Power, or Horus and Sut, the Egyptian Satan. At the Autumn
Equinox, the devil of darkness began to dominate; this was the Egyptian
Judas, who betrayed Osiris to his death at the last supper. On the
day of the Great Battle at the Vernal Equinox, Osiris conquered as the
ascending God, the Lord of the growing light. Both these struggles
are portrayed in the Gospels. In the one Jesus is betrayed to his
death by Judas; in the other he rises superior to Satan. The
latter conflict followed immediately after the baptism. In this
way:—When the sun was half-way round, from the Lion sign, it crossed the
River of the Waterman, the Egyptian Iarutana, Hebrew Jordan, Greek
Eridanus. In this water the baptism occurred, and the transformation of
the child-Horus into the virile adult, the conqueror of the evil power,
took place. Horus becomes hawk-headed, just where the dove ascended and
abode on Jesus. Both birds represented the virile soul that constituted
the anointed one at puberty. By this added power Horus vanquished
Sut, and Jesus overcame Satan. Both the baptism and the contest
are referred to in the Ritual. "I am washed with the same water in which
the Good Opener (Un-Nefer) washes when he disputes with Satan, that
justification should be made to Un-Nefer, the Word made Truth," or the
Word that is Law.
58. The scene between the Christ and the Woman at the
Well may likewise be found in the Ritual. Here the woman is the lady
with the long hair, that is Nu, the consort of Seb—and the five husbands
can be paralleled by her five star-gods born of Seb. Osiris drinks out
of the well "to take away his thirst." He also says: "I am
creating the water. I make way in the valley, in the Pool of the
Great One. Make-road (or road-maker) expresses what I am." "I am
the Path by which they traverse out of the sepulchre of Osiris."
59. So the Messiah reveals himself as the source of
living water, "that springeth up unto Everlasting Life." Later on he
says, "I am the way, the truth, the life." "I am creating the
water, discriminating the seat," says Horus. Jesus says, "The hour
cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem
worship the Father." Jesus claims that this well of life was given
to him by the Father. In the Ritual it says, "He is thine, O
Osiris! A well, or flow, comes out of thy mouth to him!"
Also, the paternal source is acknowledged in another text. "I am
the Father, inundating when there is thirst, guarding the water. Behold
me at it." Moreover, in another chapter the well of living water becomes
the Pool of Peace. The speaker says, "The well has come through
me. I wash in the Pool of Peace."
60. In Hebrew, the Pool of Peace is the Pool of Salem,
or Siloam. And here, not only is the pool described at which the
Osirified are made pure and healed; not only does the Angel or God
descend to the waters—the "certain times" are actually dated. "The
Gods of the pure waters are there on the fourth hour of the night, and
the eighth hour of the day, saying, 'Pass away hence,' to him who has
been cured."
61. An epitome of a considerable portion of John's
Gospel may be found in another chapter of the Ritual—"Ye Gods come to be
my servants, I am the son of your Lord. Ye are mine through my
Father, who gave you to me. I have been among the servants of Hathor or
Meri. I have been washed by thee, O attendant!" Compare the
washing of Jesus' feet by Marry.
62. The Osiris exclaims, "I have welcomed the chief
spirits in the service of the Lord of things! I am the Lord of the
fields when they are white," i.e., for the reapers and the
harvest. So the Christ now says to the disciples, "Behold, I say
unto you, Lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that are white
already unto the harvest."
63. "Then said he unto his disciples, The harvest
truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few. Pray ye, therefore,
the Lord of the harvest that he send forth labourers into his harvest.
And he called unto him his twelve disciples." Now, if we turn to
the Egyptian "Book of Hades," the harvest, the Lord of the harvest, and
the reapers of the harvest are all portrayed: the twelve are also there.
In one scene they are preceded by a God leaning on a staff, who is
designated the Master of Joy—a surname of the Messiah Horus when
assimilated to the Soli-Lunar Khunsu; the twelve are "they who labour at
the harvest in the plains of Neter-Kar." A bearer of a sickle
shows the inscription: "These are the Reapers." The twelve are
divided into two groups of five and seven—the original seven of the
Aahenru; these seven are the reapers. The other five are bending
towards an enormous ear of corn, the image of the harvest, ripe and
ready for the sickles of the seven. The total twelve are called
the "Happy Ones," the bearers of food. Another title of the twelve is
that of the "Just Ones." The God says to the reapers, "Take your
sickles! Reap your grain! Honour to you, reapers." Offerings are
made to them on earth, as bearers of sickles in the fields of Hades.
On the other hand, the tares or the wicked are to be cast out and
destroyed for ever. These twelve are the apostles in their
Egyptian phase.
64. In the chapters on "Celestial Diet" in the Ritual,
Osiris eats under the sycamore tree of Hathor. He says, "Let him
come from the earth. Thou hast brought these seven loaves for me to live
by, bringing the bread that Horus (the Christ) makes. Thou hast
placed, thou hast eaten rations. Let him call to the Gods for
them, or the Gods come with them to him."
65. This is reproduced as miracle in the Gospels,
performed when the multitude were fed upon seven loaves. The seven
loaves are found here, together with the calling upon the Gods, or
working the miracle of multiplying the bread.
66. In the next chapter there is a scene of eating and
drinking. The speaker, who impersonates the Lord, says:—"I am the Lord
of Bread in Annu. My bread at the heaven was that of Ra; my bread
on earth was that of Seb." The seven loaves represent the bread of
Ra. Elsewhere the number prescribed to be set on one table, as an
offering, is five loaves. these are also carried on the heads of five
different persons in the scenes of the under-world. Five loaves are the
bread of Seb. Thus five loaves represent the bread of earth, and
seven the bread of heaven. Both five and seven are sacred
regulation numbers in the Egyptian Ritual. And in the Gospel of Matthew
the miracles are wrought with five loaves in the one case, and seven in
the other, when the multitudes are fed on celestial diet. This
will explain the two different numbers in one and the same Gospel
miracle. In the Canonical narrative there is a lad with five
barley loaves and two fishes. In the next chapter of the Ritual we
possibly meet with the lad himself, as the miracle-worker says:—"I have
given breath to the said youth."
67. The Gnostics asserted truly that celestial persons
and celestial scenes had been transferred to earth in our Gospels; and
it is only within the Pleroma (the heaven) or in the Zodiac that we can
at times identify the originals of both. And it is there we must look
for the "two fishes."
68. As the latest form of the Manifestor was in the
heaven of the twelve signs, that probably determined the number of
twelve basketsful of food remaining when the multitude had all been fed.
"They that ate the loaves were five thousand men;" and five thousand was
the exact number of the Celestials or Gods in the Assyrian Paradise,
before the revolt and fall from heaven. The scene of the miracle
of the loaves and fishes is followed by an attempt to take Jesus by
force, but he withdraws himself; and this is succeeded by the miracle of
his walking on the waters, and conquering the wind and waves. So
is it in the Ritual. Chap. 57 is that of the breath prevailing over the
water in Hades. The speaker, having to cross over, says: "O Hapi!
let the Osiris prevail over the waters, like as the Osiris prevailed
against the taking by stealth, the night of the great struggle."
The Solar God was betrayed to his death by the Egyptian Judas, on the
"night of the taking by stealth," which was the night of the last
supper. The God is "waylaid by the conspirators, who have watched very
much." They are said to smell him out "by the eating of his
bread." So the Christ is waylaid by Judas, who "knew the place,
for Jesus often resorted thither," and by the Jews who had long watched
to take him.
69. The smelling of Osiris by the eating of his bread
is remarkably rendered by John at the eating of the last supper.
The Ritual has it:—"They smell Osiris by the eating of his bread,
transporting the evil of Osiris."
70. "And when he had dipped the sop he gave it to
Judas Iscariot, and after the sop Satan entered into him." Then
said Jesus to him into whom the evil or devil had been transported,
"That thou doest, do quickly." Osiris was the same, beseeching
burial. Here it is demonstrable that the non-historical Herod is a
form of the Apophis Serpent, called the enemy of the Sun. In Syriac,
Herod is a red dragon. Herod, in Hebrew, signifies a terror.
Heru (Eg.) is to terrify, and Herrut (Eg.) is the Snake, the typical
reptile. The blood of the divine victim that is poured forth by the
Apophis Serpent at the sixth hour, on "the night of smiting the
profane," is literally shed by Herod, as the Herrut or Typhonian
Serpent.
71. The speaker, in the Ritual asks: "Who art thou
then, Lord of the Silent Body? I have come to see him who is
in the serpent, eye to eye, and face to face." "Lord of the Silent Body"
is a title of the Osiris. "Who art thou then, Lord of the Silent
Body?" is asked and left unanswered. This character is also
assigned to the Christ. The High Priest said unto him, "Answerest thou
nothing?" "But Jesus held his peace." Herod questioned him
in many words, but he answered him nothing. He acts the prescribed
character of "Lord of the Silent Body."
72. The transaction in the sixth hour of the night of
the Crucifixion is expressly inexplicable. In the Gospel we
read:—"Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto
the ninth hour." The sixth hour being midnight, that shows the
solar nature of the mystery, which has been transferred to the sixth
hour of the day in the Gospel.
73. It is in the seventh hour the mortal struggle
takes place between the Osiris and the deadly Apophis, or the great
serpent, Haber, 450 cubits long, that fills the whole heaven with its
vast enveloping folds. The name of this seventh hour is "that
which wounds the serpent Haber." In this conflict with the evil power
thus portrayed the Sun-God is designated the "Conqueror of the Grave,"
and is said to make his advance through the influence of Isis, who aids
him in repelling the serpent or devil of darkness. In the Gospel, Christ
is likewise set forth in the supreme struggle as "Conqueror of the
Grave," for "the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints which
slept arose;" and Mary represents Isis, the mother, at the cross.
It is said of the great serpent, "There are those on earth who do not
drink of the waters of this serpent, Haber," which may be paralleled
with the refusal of the Christ to drink of the vinegar mingled with
gall.
75. When the God has overcome the Apophis Serpent, his
old nightly, annual, and eternal enemy, he exclaims, "I come! I
have made my way! I have come like the sun, through the gate of
the one who likes to deceive and destroy, otherwise called the 'viper.'
I have made my way! I have bruised the serpent, I have passed."
76. But the more express representation in the
mysteries was that of the annual sun as the Elder Horus, or Atum. As
Julius Firmicus says: "In the solemn celebration of the mysteries, all
things in order had to be done which the youth either did or suffered in
his death."
77. Diodorus Siculus rightly identified the "whole
fable of the underworld," that was dramatised in Greece, as having been
copied "from the ceremonies of the Egyptian funerals," and so brought on
from Egypt into Greece and Rome. One part of this mystery was the
portrayal of the suffering Sun-God in a feminine phase. When the
suffering sun was ailing and ill, he became female, such being a
primitive mode of expression. Luke describes the Lord in the
Garden of Gethsemane as being in a great agony, "and his sweat was, as
it were, great drops of blood falling to the ground." This
experience the Gnostics identified with the suffering of their own
hemorrhoidal Sophia, whose passion is the original of that which is
celebrated during Passion week, the "week of weeping in Abtu," and which
constitutes the fundamental mystery of the Rosy Cross, and the Rose of
Silence.
78. In this agony and bloody sweat the Christ simply
fulfils the character of Osiris Tesh-Tesh, the red sun, the Sun-God that
suffers his agony and bloody sweat in Smen, whence Gethsmen, or
Gethsemane. Tesh means the bleeding, red, gory, separate, cut, and
wounded; tesh-tesh is the inert form of the God whose suffering, like
that of Adonis, was represented as feminine, which alone reaches a
natural origin for the type. He was also called Ans-Ra, or the sun
bound up in linen.
79. So natural were the primitive mysteries!
80. My attention has just been called to a passage in
Lycophron, who lived under Ptolemy Philadelphus between 310 and 246
B.C. In this Heracles is referred to as |
" That three-nighted lion, whom of old
Triton's fierce dog with furious jaw devoured,
Within whose bowels, tearing of his liver,
He rolled, burning with heat, though without fire,
His head with drops of sweat bedewed all o'er." |
This describes the God suffering his agony and sweat, which is called
the "bloody flux" of Osiris. Here the nights are three in number.
So the Son of Man was to be three nights as well as three days in the
"heart of the earth." In the Gospels this prophecy is not
fulfilled; but if we include the night of the bloody sweat, we have the
necessary three nights, and the Mythos becomes perfect. In this phase
the suffering Sun was the Red Sun, whence the typical Red Lion.
81. As Atum, the red sun is described as setting from
the Land of Life in all the colours of crimson, or Pant, the red pool.
This clothing of colours is represented as a "gorgeous robe" by Luke; a
purple robe by Mark; and a robe of scarlet by Matthew. As he goes
down at the Autumn Equinox, he is the crucified. His mother, Nu,
or Meri, the heaven, seeing her son, the Lord of Terror, greatest of the
terrible, setting from the Land of Life, with his hands drooping, she
becomes obscure, and there is great darkness over all the land, as at
the crucifixion described by Matthew, in which the passing of the Lord
of Terror is rendered by the terrible or "loud cry" of the Synoptic
version. The Sun-God causes the dead, or those in the earth, to
live as he passes down into the under-world, because, as he entered the
earth, the tombs were opened, i.e.,
figuratively. But it is reproduced literally by Matthew.
82. The death of Osiris, in the Ritual, is followed by
the "Night of the Mystery of the Great Shapes," and it is explained that
the night of the Great Shapes is when there has been made the embalming
of the body of Osiris, "the Good Being, justified for ever." In the
chapter on "the night of the laying-out" of the dead body of Osiris, it
is said that "Isis rises on the night of the laying-out of the dead
body, to lament over her brother Osiris." And again: "The night of the
laying-out" (of the dead Osiris) is mentioned, and again it is described
as that on which Isis had risen "to make a wail for her brother."
83. But this is also the night on which he conquers
his enemies, and "receives the birthplace of the Gods." "He
tramples on the bandages they make for their burial. He raises his
soul, and conceals his body." So the Christ is found to have unwound the
linen bandages of burial, and they saw the linen in one place, and the
napkin in another. He too conceals his body!
84. This is closely reproduced, or paralleled, in
John's Gospel, where it is Mary Magdalene who rises in the night and
comes to the sepulchre, "while it was yet dark," to find the Christ
arisen, as the conqueror of death and the grave. In John's
version, after the body is embalmed in a hundred pounds weight of spice,
consisting of myrrh and aloes, we have the "night of the mystery of the
shapes": "For while it was yet dark, Mary Magdalene coming to the
sepulchre, and peering in, sees the two angels in white sitting, the one
at the head and the other at the feet, where the body had lately lain."
And in the chapter of "How a living being is not destroyed in hell, or
the hour of life ends not in Hades," there are two youthful Gods—"two
youths of light, who prevail as those who see the light," and the
vignette shows the deceased walking off. He has risen!
85. Matthew has only one angel or splendid presence,
whose appearance was as lightning, which agrees with Shepi, the Splendid
One, who "lights the sarcophagus," as a representative of the divinity,
Ra. The risen Christ, who is first seen and recognised by Mary,
says to her, "Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father."
The same scene is described by the Gnostics: when Sophia rushes forward
to embrace the Christ, who restrains her by exclaiming that he must not
be touched.
86. In the last chapter of the "Preservation of the
Body in Hades," there is much mystical matter that looks plainer when
written out in John's Gospel. It is said of the regerminated or
risen God—"May the Osirian speak to thee?" The Osirian does
not know. He (Osiris) knows him. "Let him not grasp him."
The Osirified "comes out sound, Immortal is his name." "He has
passed along the upper roads" (that is, as a risen spirit).
87. "He it is who grasps with his hand," and
gives the palpable proof of continued personality, as does the Christ,
who says, "See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself."
88. The Sun-God re-arises on the horizon, where he
issues forth, "saying to those who belong to his race, Give me your
arm." Says the Osirified deceased, "I am made as ye are." "Let him
explain it!" At his reappearance the Christ demonstrates that he
is made as they are; "See my hands and feet, that it is I myself; handle
me and see. And when he had said this he showed them his hands and
feet. Then he said to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and see my
hands, and reach hither thy hand and put it into my side." These
descriptions correspond to that of the cut, wounded, and bleeding
Sun-God, who says to his companions, "Give me your arm; I am made as ye
are."
89. In the Gospel of the Hebrews he is made to
exclaim, "For I am not a bodiless ghost." But in the original,
when the risen one says to his companions, "Give me your arm, I am made
as ye are," he speaks as a spirit to spirits. Whereas in the
Gospels, the Christ has to demonstrate that he is not a spirit,
because the scene has been transferred into the earth-life.
90. The Gnostics truly declared that all the
supernatural transactions asserted in the Christian Gospel "were
counterparts (or representations) of what took place above." That
is, they affirmed the history to be mythical; the celestial allegory
made mundane; and they were in the right, as the Egyptian Gospel proves.
There are Healers, and Jehoshua Ben-Pandira may have been one. But,
because that is possible, we must not allow it to vouch for the
impossible! Thus, in the Gospels, the mythical is, and has to be,
continually reproduced as miracle. That which naturally pertains
to the character of the Sun-God becomes supernatural in appearance when
brought down to earth. The Solar God descended into the nether
world as the restorer of the bound to liberty, the dead to life.
In this region the miracles were wrought, and the transformations took
place. The evil spirits and destroying powers were exorcised from
the mummies; the halt and the maimed were enabled to get up
and go; the dead were raised, a mouth was given to the dumb, and the
blind were made to see.
91. This "reconstitution of the deceased" is
transferred to the earth-life, whereupon "the blind receive their sight,
and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, and the dead
are raised up" at the coming of the Christ, who performed the miracles.
The drama, which the Idiotai mistook for human history, was performed by
the Sun-God in another world.
92. I could keep on all day, and all night, or give a
dozen lectures, without exhausting my evidence that the Canonical
Gospels are only a later literalised réchauffé of the Egyptian writings;
the representations in the Mysteries, and the oral teachings of the
Gnostics which passed out of Egypt into Greece and Rome—for there is
plenty more proof where this comes from. I can but offer a specimen
brick of that which is elsewhere a building set four-square, and sound
against every blast that blows.
93. The Christian dispensation is believed to have
been ushered in by the birth of a child, and the portrait of that child
in the Roman Catacombs as the child of Mary is the youthful Sun-God in
the Mummy Image of the child-king, the Egyptian Karast, or Christ.
The alleged facts of our Lord's life as Jesus the Christ, were equally
the alleged facts of our Lord's life as the Horus of Egypt, whose very
name signifies the Lord.
94. The Christian legends were first related of Horus
the Messiah, the Solar Hero, the greatest hero that ever lived in the
mind of man—not in the flesh—the only hero to whom the miracles were
natural, because he was not human.
95. From beginning to end the history is not human but
divine, and the divine is the mythical. From the descent of the
Holy Ghost to overshadow Mary, to the ascension of the risen Christ at
the end of forty days, according to the drama of the pre-Christian
Mysteries, the subject-matter, the characters, occurrences, events,
acts, and sayings bear the impress of the mythical mould instead of the
stamp of human history. Right through, the ideas which shape the
history were pre-extant, and are identifiably pre-Christian; and so we
see the strange sight to-day in Europe of 100,000,000 of Pagans
masquerading as Christians.
96. Whether you believe it or not does not matter, the
fatal fact remains that every trait and feature which go to make up the
Christ as Divinity, and every event or circumstance taken to establish
the human personality were pre-extant, and pre-applied to the Egyptian
and Gnostic Christ, who never could become flesh. The Jesus Christ
with female paps, who is the Alpha and Omega of Revelation, was the IU
of Egypt, and the Iao of the Chaldeans. Jesus as the Lamb of God, and
Ichthys the Fish, was Egyptian. Jesus as the Coming One; Jesus born of
the Virgin Mother, who was overshadowed by the Holy Ghost; Jesus born of
two mothers, both of whose names are Mary; Jesus born in the manger—at
Christmas, and again at Easter; Jesus saluted by the three kings, or
Magi; Jesus of the transfiguration on the Mount; Jesus whose symbol in
the Catacombs is the eight-rayed Star—the Star of the East; Jesus as the
eternal Child; Jesus as God the Father, re-born as his own Son; Jesus as
the Child of twelve years; Jesus as the Anointed One of thirty years;
Jesus in his Baptism; Jesus walking on the Waters, or working his
Miracles; Jesus as the Caster-out of demons; Jesus as a Substitute, who
suffered in a vicarious atonement for sinful men; Jesus whose followers
are the two brethren, the four fishers, the seven fishers, the twelve
apostles, the seventy (or seventy-two in some texts) whose names were
written in Heaven; Jesus who was administered to by seven women; Jesus
in his bloody sweat; Jesus betrayed by Judas; Jesus as conqueror of the
grave; Jesus the Resurrection and the Life; Jesus before Herod; in the
Hades, and in his re-appearance to the women, and to the seven fishers;
Jesus who was crucified both on the 14th and 15th of the month Nisan;
Jesus who was also crucified in Egypt (as it is written in Revelation);
Jesus as judge of the dead, with the sheep on the right hand, and the
goats on the left, is Egyptian from first to last, in every phase, from
the beginning to the end— MAKE WHATSOEVER YOU CAN
OF JEHOSHUA BEN-PANDIRA.
97. In some of the ancient Egyptian Temples the
Christian iconoclasts, when tired of hacking and hewing at the symbolic
figures incised in the chambers of imagery, and defacing the most
prominent features of the monuments, found they could not dig out the
hieroglyphics and took to covering them over with plaster or tempera;
and this plaster, intended to hide the meaning and stop the mouth of the
stone Word, has served to preserve the ancient writings, as fresh in hue
and sharp in outline as when they were first cut and coloured.
98. In a similar manner the Temple of the ancient
religion was invaded, and possession gradually gained by connivance of
Roman power; and that enduring fortress, not built, but quarried out of
the solid rock, was stuccoed all over the front, and made white awhile
with its look of brand-newness, and re-opened under the sign of another
name—that of the carnalised Christ. And all the time each nook and
corner were darkly alive with the presence and the proofs of the earlier
gods, and the pre-Christian origines, even though the hieroglyphics
remained unread until the time of Champollion! But stucco is not
for lasting wear, it cracks and crumbles; sloughs off and slinks away
into its natal insignificance; the rock is the sole true foundation; the
rock is the only record in which we can reach reality at last!
99. Wilkinson, the Egyptologist, has actually said of
Osiris on earth:—"Some may be disposed to think that the Egyptians,
being aware of the promises of the real saviour, had anticipated
that event, regarding it as though it had already happened, and
introduced that mystery into their religious system!" This is what
obstetrists term a false presentation; a birth feet-foremost.
We are also told by writers on the Catacombs, and the Christian
Iconography, that this figure is Osiris, as a type of Christ. This
is Pan, Apollo, Aristeus, as a type of Christ. This is Harpocrates, as a
type of Christ. This is Mercury, but as a type of Christ; this is the
devil (for Sut-Mercury was the devil), as a type of Christ; until long
hearing of the facts reversed, perverted and falsified, makes one feel
as if under a nightmare which has lasted for eighteen centuries, knowing
the Truth to have been buried alive and made dumb all that time; and
believing that it has only to get voice and make itself heard to end the
lying once for all, and bring down the curtain of oblivion at last upon
the most pitiful drama of delusion ever witnessed on the human stage.
100. And here the worst foes of the truth have ever
been, and still are, the rationalisers of the Mythos, such as the
Unitarians. They have assumed the human history as the starting
point, and accepted the existence of a personal founder of Christianity
as the one initial and fundamental fact. They have done their best
to humanise the divinity of the Mythos, by discharging the supernatural
and miraculous element, in order that the narrative might be accepted as
history. Thus they have lost the battle from the beginning, by
fighting it on the wrong ground.
101. The Christ is a popular lay-figure that never
lived, and a lay-figure of Pagan origin; a lay-figure that was once the
Ram, and afterwards the Fish; a lay-figure that in human form was the
portrait and image of a dozen different gods. The imagery of the
Catacombs shows that the types there represented are not the ideal
figures of the human reality! They are the sole reality for six or
seven centuries after A.D., because they had been
so in the centuries long before. There is no man upon the cross in
the Catacombs of Rome for seven hundred years! The symbolism, the
allegories, the figures, and types, brought on by the Gnostics, remained
there just what they had been to the Romans, Greeks, Persians, and
Egyptians. Yet, the dummy ideal of Paganism is supposed to have
become doubly real as the God who was made flesh, to save mankind from
the impossible "fall!" Remember that the primary foundation-stone for a
history in the New Testament is dependent upon the Fall of Man being a
fact in the Old; whereas it was only a fable, which had its own mythical
and unhistorical meaning.
102. When we try over again that first step once taken
in the dark, we find no foothold for us, because there was no stair.
The Fall is absolutely non-historical, and, consequently, the first bit
of standing-ground for an actual Christ, the redeemer, is missing in the
very beginning. Any one who set up, or was set up, for an
historical Saviour from a non-historical Fall, could only be an
historical impostor. But the Christ of the Gospels is not even that! He
is in no
sense an historical personage. It is impossible to establish the existence
of an historical character, even as an impostor. For such an one
the two witnesses—Astronomical Mythology and Gnosticism—completely prove
an alibi for ever! From the first supposed catastrophe to the final one,
the figures of the celestial allegory were ignorantly mistaken for
matters of fact, and thus the orthodox Christolator is left at last to
climb to heaven with one foot resting on the ground of a redemption that
must be fallacious. It is a fraud founded on a fable!
103. Every time the Christian turns to the East to bow
his obeisance to the Christ, it is a confession that the cult is Solar,
the admission being all the more fatal because it is unconscious. Every
picture of the Christ, with the halo of glory, and the accompanying
Cross of the Equinox, proffers proof.
104. The Christian doctrine of a resurrection
furnishes evidence, absolutely conclusive, of the Astronomical and
Kronian nature of the origines! This is to occur, as it always
did, at the end of a cycle; or at the end of the world! Christian
Revelation knows nothing of immortality, except in the form of periodic
renewal, dependent on the "Coming One;" and the resurrection of the dead
still depends on the day of judgment and the last day, at the end of the
world! They have no other world. Their only other world is
at the end of this.
105. Now there are no fools living who would be fools
big enough to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a barque so rotten and
unseaworthy as this in which they hope to cross the dark River of Death,
and, on a pier of cloud, be landed safe in Heaven. The Christian
Theology was responsible for substituting faith instead of knowledge;
and the European mind is only just beginning to recover from the mental
paralysis induced by that doctrine which came to its natural culmination
in the Dark Ages. The Christian religion is responsible for
enthroning the cross of death in heaven, with a deity on it, doing
public penance for a private failure in the commencement of creation.
It has taught men to believe that the vilest spirit may be washed white,
in the atoning blood of the purest, offered up as a bribe to an avenging
God. It has divinized a figure of helpless human suffering, and a
face of pitiful pain; as if there were naught but a great heartache at
the core of all things; or the vast Infinite were but a veiled and
sad-eyed sorrow that brings visibly to birth in the miseries of human
life. But "in the old Pagan world men deified the beautiful, the
glad;" as they will again, upon a loftier pedestal, when the fable of
this fictitious fall of man, and false redemption by the cloud-begotten
God, has passed away like a phantasm of the night, and men awake to
learn that they are here to wage ceaseless war upon sordid suffering,
remediable wrong, and preventable pain; here to put an end to them, not
to apotheosize an effigy of Sorrow to be adored as a type of the
Eternal. For the most beneficent is the most beautiful; the
happiest are the healthiest; the most God-like is most glad. The
Christian Cult has fanatically fought for its false theory, and waged
incessant warfare against Nature and Evolution—Nature's intention made
somewhat visible—and against some of the noblest instincts, during
eighteen centuries. Seas of human blood have been spilt to keep the
barque of Peter afloat. Earth has been honeycombed with the graves
of the martyrs of Freethought. Heaven has been filled with a
horror of great darkness in the name of God.
106. Eighteen centuries are a long while in the
life-time of a lie, but a brief span in the eternity of Truth. The
Fiction is sure to be found out, and the Lie will fall at last! At
last! At last!!! |
No matter though it towers to the sky,
And darkens earth, you cannot make the lie
Immortal; though stupendously enshrined
By art in every perfect mould of mind:
Angelo, Rafael, Milton, Handel, all
Its pillars, cannot stay it from the fall.
The Pyramid of Imposture reared by Rome,
All of cement, for an eternal home,
Must crumble back to earth, and every gust
Shall revel in the desert of its dust;
And when the prison of the Immortal, Mind,
Hath fallen to set free the bound and blind,
No more shall life be one long dread of death;
Humanity shall breathe with ampler breath,
Expand in spirit, and in stature rise,
To match its birthplace of the earth and skies. |
――――♦――――
PAUL THE GNOSTIC OPPONENT
OF PETER
|