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Where the Rainbow Ends and Begins
In Revelation (3:10-12) (NRSV), we see Jesus telling the reader to endure in the faith and that the city of New Jerusalem will descend from heaven, at the end.
10 Because you have kept my word of patient endurance, I will keep you from the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth. 11 I am coming soon; hold fast to what you have, so that no one may seize your crown. 12 If you conquer, I will make you a pillar in the temple of my God; you will never go out of it. I will write on you the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem that comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name.
Later, we see in Revelation (21:2) and (9-14), fulfill Jesus' promises, when it descends to earth after the apocalypse is over.
2 And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
9 Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, "Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb." 10 And in the spirit he carried me away to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. 11 It has the glory of God and a radiance like a very rare jewel, like jasper, clear as crystal. 12 It has a great, high wall with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and on the gates are inscribed the names of the twelve tribes of the Israelites; 13 on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. 14 And the wall of the city has twelve foundations, and on them are the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.
In Tracy Twyman's Clock Shavings (p. 282-283), she writes how the Cube of the New Jerusalem, at the end of the apocalypse of Revelation, will somehow merge with the black cube of Saturn, below, in hell. Saturn, as many of my readers will know, is also synonymous with the demiurge, Ialdabaoth.
Cain wants to get out. All of those in who are in Hell want out. But the fallen angels down there know something that the human spirits also trapped there probably don't know: that at the End of Times, the Abyss will open up and let them out of Hell, temporarily. Heaven will also open up, and literally merge with Earth as the white cube of the New Jerusalem descends. In my mind, it is most likely that the black cubic city will ascend from the depths as well. Heaven, Hell and Earth will all co‐mingle in a timeless moment. Perhaps the black and white cubes will merge. This may be the ultimate explanation for the checker pattern on the Ageio board. This, I think, will be their opportunity to switch places with humankind, and be back in the bosom of the Lord. Then again, perhaps they think that they will be able to take control of the celestial Ark, the cube, and be in the driver's seat, the God position, when things start anew. I think the belief is that, if they can get inside the white cube, in the position of God, they can be God, and they can win the Apocalypse game. Meanwhile, they believe, Baphomet will get his expressed wish: to see "MAN LOST IN HELL." We will be outside the cube, trapped in the chaotic Abyss where they were once tortured.
There isn't just one cosmic cube, but two. In addition to the black cube, which she says is the city, Enoch, there's a white cube, in heaven per Revelation. When the cubes meet the world we know will be destroyed except for those inside the white cube of the New Jerusalem, the shining city that lands on earth after all of the turmoil and suffering after the events of the apocalypse have passed. The cube shape is also associated with Saturn.
So, what do the rainbow and the triangle-shaped prism represent? I'd wager somehow the black prism somehow (alchemically) changes the nature of light, it circles around Saturn and comes back to the moon to do another loop. This is what I believe the black monolith of 2001: A Space Odyssey, represents and perhaps can be connected to the stones of acquittal per Revelation and Zechariah. The monolith could also be a black inversion of the holy stones and instead, a cursed object in which Kronos or Saturn or whatever demiurgical power guides creation on the course of evolution to eventually merge with it.
Perhaps, as I've theorized earlier in my article "Ouranos: Lord of the Dome," of the possibility that the earth may have dome-like Firmament over it as is described in the Bible and other ancient myths like the Greeks and Babylonians, especially in how Ouranos' relationship to Gaia or the Earth. The rainbow could very be evidence of a glass-like dome over our world as many flat-earthers maintain. A light that shines through a prism can create the colors of a rainbow, and a thick enough piece of glass can act as a prism. Moreover, could this represent what the new age conspiracy author David Icke postulates as the Saturn-Moon Matrix? An answer to this question may be found in the European Space Agency website titled Saturn's Rainbow Rings:
As we saw earlier in part 3, the seven rays are intimately connected with Gnosticism and can also be connected with the idea of the rainbow, which is a pride symbol for the gay LGBTQ movement. The rainbow rings of Saturn also look particularly like a chain as well, symbolizing imprisonment and enslavement. Interestingly, in the film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, we also see seven diamonds in the haunting and famous "Stargate" montage sequence, which could possibly connect to the seven pillars or the seven parts of the Holy Spirit and the seven churches that John the Revelator addresses in Revelation 1.
In Genesis, Yahweh provides the sign of the rainbow at the end of the flood to signal that he would never again flood the world. In a way, this mirrors what is described in Greek mythology, as the titan Atlas, holds heavens on his shoulders. Without this "column" or "pillars" between the earth and the heaven, the sky falls and causes the Great Flood and the fall of Atlantis. The rainbow could also symbolize this separation between heaven and earth, where the pillars of Wisdom are held up.
Ezekiel described Yahweh as being bronze from the waist up and made of fire from the waist down with a rainbow surrounding him (Ezekiel 1:27-28). Daniel describes a similar figure made of bronze and fire (Daniel 10:5-6). And as we saw earlier, the theme of the "seven rays" also fits quite well with rainbow symbolism. Even in (2 Enoch Chapter 12, XII), we see rainbows in Eden like realms:
And I looked and saw other flying elements of the sun, whose names (are) Phoenixes and Chalkydri, marvellous and wonderful, with feet and tails in the form of a lion, and a crocodile's head, their appearance (is) empurpled, like the rainbow; their size (is) nine hundred measures, their wings (are like) those of angels, each (has) twelve, and they attend and accompany the sun, bearing heat and dew, as it is ordered them from God.
Thus (the sun) revolves and goes, and rises under the heaven, and its course goes under the earth with the light of its rays incessantly.
In Stanley Kubrick film, Eyes Wide Shut, we do see a few references to rainbows. There has been countless "esoteric" or "Illuminati" analysis articles and videos per Eyes Wide Shut, and the triangular prism and rainbow symbols are especially interesting and present with this film.
The first instance we see of a rainbow reference is when Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise's characters are invited to a Christmas Ball. In one scene Tom Cruise/Dr. Bill Harford is confronted by two prostitutes, or perhaps covert agents of the pagan orgy cult, who ask him if he would like to go "where the rainbow ends?" To which Bill Harford replies, "that all depends on where that is."
(Tom Cruise with two prostitutes or members of the orgy cult with Christmas lights behind symbolizing, perhaps, the "lights in the firmament" per Genesis 1:14.)
Later in the film, the good doctor finds himself at a costume rental shop so he can attend the masked orgy we see later on in the film.
According to one YouTube video, the rainbow is also connected to not only various occult ideas but also MK-Ultra "Illuminati" mind-control, child-rape/pedophilia and other forms of sexual deviancy. The video describes the rainbow as a "hypnotic device." This is no doubt connected to gay rainbow flag and perhaps even Pizzagate and Project Paperclip. As the video points out, rainbows are also associated with the 1950's classic Wizard of Oz film. The term "Oz" can be connected with a book that Aleister Crowley authored being "Liber Oz" or "Book 77," as well as Liber 777, which obviously ties with 777 (a number of completion, perfection, and judgment) and 70 generations and angels in the Old and New Testament. 70 generations equal to approximately 4,900 to 7,000 years, if generation can represent 70 years to 100 years in a human life span. Jay Dyer, in his book Esoteric Hollywood: Sex, Cults and Symbols in Film, writes about the film and points out how all of Bill's experiences and events are sort of a journey of initiation into the dark mysteries sort of like Jonah's journey or descent into the belly of the whale or Christ's descent into Hades. But the symbolism is closer to a Masonic initiation ceremony, where the initiate is blindfolded and lead by the "hangman's noose."
Still oblivious to these synchronicities, Bill remains blindfolded like Nick, yet not with a literal blindfold. Bill's blindness is to his own naivety and ignorance concerning himself and the world around him. All the clues are before him, that he is being led like a lamb to the slaughter, should he choose to see it. The event's are Bill's initiation as he tested regarding his "fidelio," faithfulness either to his wife, his ambiguous sense of middle-class morals, or, ultimately, to the cult – hence the password. It should be noted as well the cult retains these sexual elements, where the profane seeker is in darkness (eyes wide shut or blindfolded), in which only only the hierophant or cult leader can enlighten, remembering that light is a prism or rainbow. The rainbow is also a symbol of the disregard of sexual inhibitions in relation to the rainbow flag of the homosexual movement.
Then, there's also the Christmas decorated, eighth-rayed star, which interestingly, is associated with the Priesthood of Melchizedek, symbolizing baptism, rebirth, the female uterus/womb and eternity. It also connects to the 888 Logos numerology and being reborn in the spiritual sun or the "eye of light" of the light Adam.
In the book Baphomet: The Temple Mystery Unveiled, we (Tracy Twyman and I) discussed how the hermaphroditic figure of "Mete" which is the Greek equivalent to Baphomet. For the Orientalist, Von Hammer-Purgstall, he considers "Mete" to be simply the Greek word "wisdom," a personification in what we may perhaps call the Gnostic mythology answering to the Sophia of the Ophianites. He considers that the name Baphomet is derived from the Greek words "the baptism of Metis," and that in its application it is equivalent with the name Mete itself. He has further shown that Baphomet is connected with the Gnostic sects of the East, as we theorized, starts with John the Baptist, continuing on with Simon Magus and his Gnostic successors. Like the image above of the horned naked woman with spider legs, Baphomet was also conceived as a chimeric creature, containing both angelic and bestial, divine and infernal components. In a way, the Old Testament scripture, Deuteronomy 4:15-19 (NKJV) anticipates Baphomet worship of the Knights Templars:
Take careful heed to yourselves, for you saw no form when the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, lest you act corruptly and make for yourselves a carved image in the form of any figure: the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that is on the earth or the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground or the likeness of any fish that is in the water beneath the earth. And take heed, lest you lift your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun, the moon, and the stars, all the host of heaven, you feel driven to worship them and serve them, which the Lord your God has given to all the peoples under the whole heaven as a heritage.
As quoted in our book, according to Thomas Wright in The Worship of The Generative Powers, Mete can be equated with the number 8, because Mete is "one and seven" or "1 plus 7," which can also correspond to the seven colors of the rainbow and the seven planetary archons and the Demiurge.
This still is, it must be confessed, rather mysterious, and, in fact, most of these copies of the formula of faith are more or less defective, but, from a comparison of them, the general form and meaning of the whole is made perfectly clear. This may be translated, "Let Mete be exalted, who causes things to bud and blossom! he is our root; it (the root) is one and seven; abjure (the faith), and abandon thyself to all pleasures." The number seven is said to refer to the seven archons of the Gnostic creed.
The 19th-century mythicist, Gerald Massey in The Natural Genesis, Volume 2, he explicitly connects Mete and Baphomet with what is associated with the Holy Spirit, being the pneumatic breath of God:
Mete was the Baphomet or the mother of breath. An invocation addressed to this form of the bearded mother is shown by Du Puy to have been "Yalla" a supposed Saracenic word. This like so many other titles of the genetrix, such as nana and Maya, is an Inner African name for the great or Grand Mother…The oldest form of the great mother, the mother of the gods, known to the Greeks as Rhea, Kubele, Kubebe, Abbas and Ma, is identified by her other names with this the most recent genitrix.
In Joseph von Hammer‐Purgstall's 1818 treatise Mysterium Baphometis Revelatum, it depicts many androgynous demons and naked men and women that were copied from actual "Templar artifacts." In one illustration, we see a naked woman kneeling on the ground between two images of a figure identified on several of the artifacts as Mete/Baphomet and even Sophia-Achamoth. The woman is pouring water out of a vase onto the candles of a candelabrum called a "seven‐branch" or the Jewish menorah, which represents the seven pillars of Wisdom per Proverbs and the seven golden lampstands being the seven churches, ruled over by the seven stars (or angels) that the Son of Man addresses (to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea) in Revelation 1:1-20. In other words, the hermaphroditic harlot, Mete, is out to pour torrents of water over the spiritual church or assembly (the Body of Christ), much like the great dragon per Revelation 12!
The church historian Eusebius in his Church History wrote about a fringe Christian cult leader named Montanus. Montanus operated in Phrygia in the second century, the homeland of the infamous Cybele cult, which demanded its followers to castrate themselves and slash their bodies while being spattered by the blood of a sacrificed bull as part of their initiation into the priesthood of Cybele. The Thracians thought that the chief divinity of the Samothracian and Lemnian mysteries as Rhea-Hecate, a chthonic deity associated with Cybele.
The hymn of Proclus with the title "Hekate and Ianos," shows that connection. Proclus is one of the most important philosophers of the ancient Hellenic philosophy, a representative of Neoplatonism, a follower of Hekate and a great theurgist. There is also a great number of archaeological evidence showing the connection of these two goddesses and it seems that Cybele and Hekate are great friends. Here, Hekate is called the mother of gods and according to the mythology, Cybele is the mother of gods. Part of the hymn:
(Ancient text):
Χαίρε, θεών μήτερ, πολυώνυμε, καλλιγένεθλε
χαίρ' Εκάτη προθυραία, μεγάσθενες αλλά και αυτός
χαίρ' Ιανέ προπάτορ, Ζευ άφθιτε, χαίρε ύπατε Ζευ.
(Translation):
Chaire, mother of the gods, polyonyme, kalligenethle,
chaire Hekate prothyraia, megasthenes, chaire
chaire Iane father of our fathers, Zeus imperishable, chaire you ruler Zeus.
(Translation of the epithets):
kalligenethle = with good and beautiful children
prothyraia=the one who stands before the door
megasthenes=with great power
Montanus, also considered himself to be the "Holy Paraclete," along with two women priestesses, Priscilla and Maximilla, who remarried themselves to God full-time, leaving their families to pursue a more spiritual life through celibacy, fleshly mortification and rigid focus for holiness. Eusebius tells us:
For some persons, like venomous reptiles, crawled over Asia and Phrygia, boasting that Montanus was the Paraclete, and that the women that followed him, Priscilla and Maximilla, were prophetesses of Montanus. (Church History, V. 14).
There is said to be a certain village called Ardabau in that part of Mysia, which borders upon Phrygia. There first, they say, when Gratus was proconsul of Asia, a recent convert, Montanus by name, through his unquenchable desire for leadership, gave the adversary opportunity against him. And he became beside himself, and being suddenly in a sort of frenzy and ecstasy, he raved, and began to babble and utter strange things, prophesying in a manner contrary to the constant custom of the Church handed down by tradition from the beginning (Church History, V. 16, 4).
Eventually, these Montanists would be excommunicated out of the early church and would even reject any Christian who was baptized as a Montanist. The church fathers unanimously rejected this group, all except for Tertullian, who ironically, considering his staunch stance against any and all Gnostic heresy, became a Montanist convert himself! In fact, Tertullian describes a specific Montanist church meeting:
We have now amongst us a sister whose lot it has been to be favoured with sundry gifts of revelation, which she experiences in the Spirit by ecstatic vision amidst the sacred rites of the Lord's day in the church: she converses with angels, and sometimes even with the Lord; she both sees and hears mysterious communications; some men's hearts she understands, and to them who are in need she distributes remedies. Whether it be in the reading of Scriptures, or in the chanting of psalms, or in the preaching of sermons, or in the offering up of prayers, in all these religious services matter and opportunity are afforded to her of seeing visions. It may possibly have happened to us, whilst this sister of ours was rapt in the Spirit, that we had discoursed in some ineffable way about the soul.
Although the Montanists were orthodox in all matters of doctrines, their methodologies for worship and self-discipline were considered to be heretical in the sense that they were "legalistic" in keeping hold to their torturous methods of self-mortification. In a sense, they can be considered "proto-pentecostal." Responses to this movement were mixed within the church, since, after all, prophecy was a genuine gift of God or the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. Interestingly, the church father Jerome would deride Montanus as a "cut-off, half-man," a not-so-subtle allusion that Montanus was a castrated priest of the Phrygian Mother goddess Cybele. He is also called a "priest of Apollo" or a "priest of an idol" (hence the sin of idolatry) before his conversion to Christianity, according to the text, The dialogue of a Montanist with an Orthodox.
It is said that when he read the Gospel of John's Jesus's promises that the spirit of truth will be with his disciples. They also held on to a modalistic view of the Trinity, by stating that three different epochs within history were divided up according to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and their "age of grace," was ruled over by the Holy Spirit. Montanus' prophetic, ecstatic utterances could also very well be mistaken to those cults dedicated to Apollo and Dionysus. At worse, according to some Orthodox bishops, Montanus and his followers were under a demonic deception and a tool of the devil since Montanus himself was a pagan priest. As it follows, perhaps, Montanus was also a priest dedicated to an earlier incarnation of Mete/Baphomet.
In the next post, we will see how the symbols and numerology used in Eyes Wide Shut and 2001: A Space Odyssey, all converge in their representation to initiated eyes to see. Is the dream offered by the Womb of Darkness closing and folding up as time flows between our fingers? What exactly is the Womb of Darkness? It connects to what Genesis refers to as the firmament or the vault, as we will see next time. The recent 2017 eclipse does seem to provide us with a major celestial sign that ties with repenting with "sackcloth and ashes," that Jesus advises in Luke 10 and the Sign of John that Jesus invokes in Matthew 12:40. It also happens to have occurred 40 days from September 23, 2017, in which the great, astrological wonder sign of Revelation 12 is supposed to manifest in the heavens, much like how the inhabitants of Nineveh had 40 days to repent. Also, Big Ben is being shut down until 2021 for repairs. Odd synchronicities with everything that's going on right now.
Even, in the film, Dark City, features an eclipse embedding in one of their logos! We also saw the deaths of certain celebrities like David Bowie (2016) who invoked the "Dark Star," and Chris Cornell (2017) from the band Soundgarden, which performed the song, "Black Hole Sun." Here are part of the lyrics:
"In my eyes, indisposed
In disguises no one knows
Hides the face, lies the snake
The sun in my disgrace
Boiling heat, summer stench
'Neath the black the sky looks dead
Call my name through the cream
And I'll hear you scream again
Won't you come
And wash away the rain
Won't you come (won't you come)…"
We see in Revelation 12:5, that the male child is "caught up" in a divine cesarian operation. The Greek word used for "caught up" or "snatched up" is harpazo, and it is the word used for the rapture of the Church in 1 Thessalonians 4:17. Every single mention of Jesus' ascension is described using the words epairo or anabaino, both of which indicate a gradual rising (like climbing a mountain), not a quick and violent snatching away (harpazo). Does the date 9/23/2017 have anything to do with this "snatching away" as some believe? Perhaps, but it would contradict another verse of scripture in Matthew (24:32-33):
"Now learn a parable of the fig tree (Israel); When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: So likewise ye, when ye SHALL SEE ALL THESE THINGS, know that it is near, even at the doors."
In other words, perhaps such an event could happen in the early summer, if we are to take the "rapture" idea literally. The 2017 eclipse happened on the 21st. Hurricane Harvey came in on the 25th and flooding the 26th. And very soon, Hurricane Irma is about to unleash a torrent of floods and violent winds, against the southern parts of the United States, stronger than any natural disaster known in recent memory. Now look what Luke 21:25-26 (NKJV) says:
And there will be signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars; and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring; men's hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near.
Oh, Black Hole Sun, won't you come indeed.
Posted in Biblical Exegesis, Conspiracy, Gnosis and tagged 2001 A Space Odyssey, Baphomet, Chris Cornell, Conspiracy Theory, Cybelle, Dionysus, Eyes Wide Shut, Gospel of Luke, Holy Spirit, Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Irma, Montanus, Pizzagate, Purgstall, Rainbows, Simon Magus, Sophia, Stanley Kubrick, Tertullian on September 7, 2017 by Alex. Leave a comment
High Priests of the Heavenly Temple: Jesus, Melchizedek and Metatron of 3 Enoch
In the book, The Great Angel: A Study of Israel's Second Son by Dr. Margaret Barker, she discusses in depth on how the angels Metatron of 3 Enoch, the god of Jews, Yahweh, the High Priest of El Elyon, Melchizedek, and Jesus Christ as presented in the Gospels and Hebrews, may actually describe one and the same being. Margaret Barker, in the same book, showed how the first Christians recognized Jesus as YHWH, the LORD, the Son of God Most High. And yet, YHWH is denied as the true god by other Christians, including the Sethian Gnostics and it is also vigorously denied that Jesus was also the god of the Old Testament by other Gnostics like Valentinus, and early Christians like Marcion. Why is there such a differentiation of opinion on this matter? The answer to this mystery will be answered in due course.
Be warned: This will be an admittedly lengthy article, and not for the faint of heart.
Margaret Barker argues in this book that the more traditional understanding of rabbinic Judaism that emerged after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.C. is not as monolithic as understood today. In fact, Barker argues that the Gnostic understanding of the Old Testament is largely derived from a much earlier tradition of pre-Deuteronomic Israelite polytheism rather than a dualistic mutation of early Christianity into multiple "heresies".
While her work is popular with the Mormon church, I have no reason to think she herself is a Mormon. In the Great Angel, Barker claims that the term "Son of God" in the Old Testament, meant that they were some sort of divine power, like an angel:
It is customary to list the occurrences of "son of God" in the Old Testament, and to conclude from that list that the term could be used to mean either a heavenly being of some sort, or the King of Israel, or the people of Israel in their special relationship with God. (p. 4).
But Barker remarks that these studies have ignored the distinction between two different words for God in the Old Testament:
All the texts in the Hebrew Bible distinguish clearly between the divine sons of Elohim/Elyon and those human beings who are called sons of Yahweh. (p.10)
For example, numerous theologies are preserved in the Bible that does not simply reflect one monotheist god. In Deuteronomy 4:35, it says that "the Lord is God: there is none else besides him." However, Psalms 82 says that "God stands in the company of the gods" and judges among them; and that "God" shall inherit all nations (v. 8). Deuteronomy 32:8-9, as preserved in both the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint (LXX), it tells us:
When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds according to the number of the angels of God. For the Lord's portion is his people. Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. (LXX)
Here, there is an obvious distinction made between Yahweh and the Most High, where Yahweh is simply the "son" or "great angel" of the "Lord" being El Elyon. Clearly this passage says that the "Most High" grants the inheritance and that YHWH has received "Jacob" (read: Israel) as his "lot." The later Masoretic text in which the traditional KJV and Catholic translations rely on says the following:
"When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds according to the number of the sons of Israel. For YHWH's portion is his people. Jacob is the lot of his inheritance." (MT)
The words "sons of Israel" mask the reference to the "sons" or "angels of God" that appears in older manuscripts and covers the true theological implications of the passage. Clearly these translations contradict each other in that the "sons of Israel" meant human beings and the "sons" or "angels of God" meant divine beings or messengers. According to Stephen Peter at Bridal Chamber, in his article, "The Rule of the Shepherd Angels," the Shepherds mentioned in Jeremiah (25:34-36), are in fact, angelic rulers rather than human gentile kings. This also extends to the Babylonian King, e.g. Lucifer, the rebel angel and fallen star, seen in Isaiah 14:12-15. These are the same beings as the rebel angelic, "Watchers" described in the Book of Enoch. Stephen Peter goes on to write:
The appointment of the seventy was itself the result of man's disobedience. Man had turned away from Yahweh to worship idols of wood and stone. So in his anger Yahweh turned man over to the authority of the fallen angels or demons that had corrupted him. Yet at the same time he made a compact with man. The rule of the demons was not to last forever. Yahweh would redeem mankind by sending the Messiah, the Christ to end the rule of the demons. At this time the demons themselves and all who had been corrupted by them would be cast into the abyss. Most of the early followers of the Jesus movement, including Paul, thought that they lived during the reign of the seventieth angel and that this final reckoning would happen in their lifetime.
The fallen stars and the Shepherds may have been originally the same group – in the book of dream visions both are judged at the same time and in the same manner and both meet with identical punishments. The scriptural authority for the story of the fallen angels is a few lines in Genesis –
the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually (Genesis 6:2-5).
As a result of the failings of man Yahweh decides to send the flood. There is nothing here about the punishment of the 'sons of God'. But there is a great deal in Jeremiah about the punishment of the Shepherds. Did some of the proto-gnostics equate the sons of God in Genesis with the Shepherds in Jeremiah? There is a certainly a deep connection between the events of the flood and the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians. Both are disasters which are inflicted by Yahweh in response to the wickedness of men and both result in a new covenant between man and Yahweh.
But the most important piece of evidence linking the Shepherds to the fallen stars is the extraordinary taunt against the Babylonian king in Isaiah 14. This seems to compare the king to Satan –
How you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you weakener of nations! And you said in your heart, 'I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, and I will sit on the mount of assembly in the sides of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most high.' Only into Sheol you are brought down, to the sides of the pit (Isaiah 14:12-15).
It is easy to see that the proto-gnostics would have made the connection that the King of Babylon was another name for the chief of the fallen stars. We see in this passage that the fate of the king of Babylon is to be brought into the pit of Sheol. This agrees with the punishment of the stars and the Shepherds in Enoch.
The significance of the morning star is that it reigns in the sky in the pre-dawn hours. Although it is splendid and rules the sky in the hours of darkness the coming of dawn shows that it is feeble and easily extinguished by the light of the true sun. In the same way the King of Babylon shall rule the earth only to be extinguished with the coming of the messiah.
In other words, these seventy Shepherd angels are also the "sons of the Most High," in which they are judged. The Ancient Hellenistic Jews like Paul, Philo and many other Gnostic teachers like Simon, Marcion, Carpocrates, Basilides, Saturninus, etc., would have read the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint) would have read that the nations were divided among the "angels of God" and that Jacob and Israel were the "Lord's inheritance," meaning the nation belonged to YHWH.
Both translations agree that the Kurios or the "Lord" has dominion over Jacob, but the "sons of God" were modified later to mean the "sons of Israel" instead. Luke 1:32 calls Jesus the "Son of the Most High" while Mark 5:7 narrates a demon calling Jesus "Son of the Most High God." Elsewhere, we read Deuteronomy 6:5 "You shall love Yahweh your God…" Luke 10:27, tells Jesus's disciples to, "You shall love the Lord [Kyrios] your God…" And Jesus is not ever called the "son of Yahweh" or the "son of the Lord" but called the Lord himself. These angels or Shepherds of God, are the same as the "archons" of Gnosticism.
It is clear that Babylon stands for the rulership and dominion of the angels, archons and demons over the world–especially Israel and Jerusalem–the apple of Yahweh's eye. These Shepherds and their dominion over the world would one day be destroyed, which is prophesied in many Gnostic texts (On the Origin of the World, the Concept of Our Great Power, 1 Enoch) as well as the Book of Revelation. Jesus also calls himself the "good shepherd" of the sheep in Gospel of John, which indicates, he came to "replace" the seventy angelic rulers as the chief ruler and head high priest of the chosen elect as well as all of the heavens and all of creation itself–even holding the keys to Hades!
Margaret Barker further remarks:
This suggests that the Gospel writers, in using the terms 'Lord' and 'Son of God Most High', saw Jesus as an angel figure, and gave him their version of the sacred name Yahweh. (p.5)
Paul himself believed that the Lawgiver god was merely a chief angel or a lesser god/lower manifestation of the Supreme being, as I stated in earlier articles. In fact, Paul makes a distinction between the law of his mind or heart that corresponds to the Most High and the law of the flesh connected to YHWH, as stated in Romans 2:15:
15 They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.)
And so Paul claimed that the Law of Moses had no role in the divine plan for salvation and that there was more than one divine power at play here. This claim of divinity came from Jesus himself, who had attained the ultimate mystical experience of the high priesthood, seen the divine throne and been transformed by that experience. The messianic titles "Son of Man" and "Son of God," and the role of the mysterious Servant, resulted from that experience, as did the realization that the coming of the LORD to his people meant the great Day of Atonement when he took upon himself the sins and sicknesses of the Creation as stated in Matthew 8:17:
17 This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: "He took up our infirmities and bore our diseases."
This is much like how Azazel bares the sins of Israel in Leviticus 16, as the "serim" scapegoat–imagery associated with the goat-demon, Baphomet. The Lord Jesus Christ takes on the sins of the elect or "the world", and becomes a "scapegoat" like Azazel, as well. Thus it was that Peter could say in Acts 3:14-16:
You handed him over to be killed, and you disowned him before Pilate,though he had decided to let him go. 14 You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. 15 You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. 16 By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong. It is Jesus' name and the faith that comes through him that has completely healed him, as you can all see.
Once Jesus is placed within the temple tradition, there is a whole new landscape for the study of Christian origins. The pre-existent, docetic and later adoptionist Christologies are contingent on temple symbolism that originates to the temples of Moses and the first temple of Solomon, which are themselves, replications of the Garden of Eden of Genesis. The Temple symbolism and theology of the Old Testament is also replicated in the New Testament, particularly in the Gospel of John, Paul's epistles and Revelation of St. John, the Divine.
The "knowledge" characteristic of the non-canonical gospels would have originated in esoteric teaching such as was characteristic of priestly groups, and perhaps even underlying Isaiah 53.11.
11 After he has suffered,
he will see the light of life and be satisfied;
by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,
and he will bear their iniquities.
The central themes of sacrifice, redemption and atonement can be seen in their original setting, and Jesus' disregard for the purity laws can be seen as the practical enactment of priestly atonement in his own sacrifice on the cross by bringing the excluded sinner unto redemption.
Before Jesus' experience of becoming the Great Angel, the LORD, he taught as a wise man and a healer, like many others of his time, warning of the judgment to come. For many, this is what he remained. We see references to Jesus as the the Great Angel, the Son of Man, and even as a High Priest in texts such as 2 and 3 Enoch, Hebrews and the canonical Gospels. Once Jesus had achieved his transforming vision, he spoke as the "Son of Man," or the "Divine Man" who had passed beyond the gates of Hades and rose back again, becoming an emissary from the other world as a heavenly revealer (the Gospel of John, Gospel of Thomas) and the future judge of the world that separates the sheep from the goats (Matthew, Revelation of St. John, the Books of Enoch, Luke, etc). The Gospel of John (14:9) tells us that whoever had seen Jesus had the transforming vision:
Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'?
In the Epistle of the Hebrews, the letter is addressed from a Hellenistic/Pauline wing to the Hebrew Christians, who place emphasis on Moses and the Law over and above Grace. The writer of Hebrews claims that the Law of Moses is the "word spoken by angels" and he makes a distinction between the Law and the plan for salvation which was revealed by the Lord with God bearing witness "with signs and wonders" (Hebrews. 2:2-4). Interestingly, the author draws a distinction between the priesthood established through Moses, and another priesthood, established through "Melchizedek", who was known as the "priest of the Most High God" or "El Elyon."
In Hebrews, we see Jesus depicted as the High Priest after the order of Melchizedek, and not after the order of Aaron, which was established by Moses–according to the Law. Jesus and Melchizedek follow after the Most High, while Aaron and Moses represent the Lawgiver, Yahweh. Melchizedek, the high priest of the Most high God, is actually a part of ancient Semitic history that predates the nation of Israel. In Genesis 14, Melchizedek is portrayed as a priest-king of Jerusalem, which was controlled by the Canaanites, and the city was originally called "Salem."
18 Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High, 19 and he blessed Abram, saying,
"Blessed be Abram by God Most High,
Creator of heaven and earth.
20 And praise be to God Most High,
who delivered your enemies into your hand."
Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.
Here, Melchizedek, the King of Salem, is presented as the chief archetype of the High Priest that distributes the Holy Eucharist to the Church. Melchizedek is in actuality, the priest of the Most High God, being El Elyion/Ouranos, and is really a part of the ancient Semitic history that predates Israel, where the Canaanite/Jebusite tribe lived in the city of Salem. According to Joshua 15:63, the tribes of Judah and Benjamin are said to have conquered Jerusalem but could not defeat the Jebusites as they merged with the Israelites. Thanks to the Jebusites, Melchizedek is intimately part of the Hebrew and Christian traditions. In Psalms 110:1-4, it reads:
The Lord says to my lord:
"Sit at my right hand
until I make your enemies
a footstool for your feet."
2 The Lord will extend your mighty scepter from Zion, saying,
"Rule in the midst of your enemies!"
3 Your troops will be willing
on your day of battle.
Arrayed in holy splendor,
your young men will come to you
like dew from the morning's womb.
4 The Lord has sworn
and will not change his mind:
"You are a priest forever,
in the order of Melchizedek."
Here, King David writes that Jehovah places Jesus's enemies under his feet, and that Jesus will be made a priest after the "order of Melchizedek." The Jebusites are the source of the high priest, Melchizedek. This name derives from the Canaanite pantheon, being the god "Zedek." Zedek is actually, the Phoenician name for the Roman god, Jupiter! According to Varchive, the name Zedek means "righteousness."
The meaning of the name Melchizedek is "Zedek is [My] King." Zedek, as said, is the name of the planet Jupiter, remaining so in the astronomy of the Jews in later ages. In the Talmud Zedek refers to Jupiter. Zedek also has the meaning of "righteousness" or "justice." It is beyond the scope of this work to find which of the meanings—the name of the planet or a word in common usage—preceded and which followed. It is conceivable that this planet was worshipped in that remote time and that, in the days of the patriarch Abraham, the cult of Jupiter was prominent in the Salem of the high priest Melchizedek. Melchizedek, "priest of the most high," was, it follows, a worshipper of Jupiter.
Even from biblical evidence, ancient Israelite history and culture was polytheistic. The prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, are rabid devotees of YHWH, while guys like King Solomon are accused and blamed for worshiping and bringing in foreign gods to worship, as we see in 1 Kings 11:4-9. In Psalms 82, we see clear references to a pantheon of gods, or the Elohim, being the sons of the Most High God, who judges them. Clearly, the Old Testament is making references to an older pagan tradition, being the Canaanites, the Egyptians, etc. For the Gnostic, Melchizedek represents a higher spiritual order, above YHWH, as he is after the priesthood order of Jesus Christ, who is the face or angelic representative of the Supreme God, El Elyon.
In the Pauline Hellenist, Epistle to the Hebrews (1:2), the writer makes some curious statements as he addresses the Hebrews, being the followers of the Law:
"Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds;"
"Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;" (1:3).
"For unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee? And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son?" And again, when he bringeth in the first begotten into the world, he saith, And let all the angels of God worship him. And of the angels he saith, Who maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire. (1:5-7)
In other words, Jesus is actually the High Priest and Leader of the aeons and the various archangels, who "ministers a flame of fire" that worship Jesus Christ! The Greek word for "worlds" as the KJV writer used is actually "aeon" or "aion" which are references to Saturn, as well as the primeval aeons of the Pleromic world of light that existed prior to the creation of the physical universe, and it is the "Son" who is involved in the creation of these aeons, being the Logos, or Christ.
Hebrews 2:5, makes it clear, however, that Jesus is not simply one of the angels:
For unto the angels has he not put in subjection the world to come, of which we speak.
In fact, it is Jesus who rescues those subject under the dominion of the Law of Moses, given by the angels as well as the power of the devil (diabolon):
"For truly he did not give aid to angels but he took on the seed of Abraham…that through death he might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil. And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." Hebrews 2:14–16.
Paul says similar things in Galatians 5:4, in that the Law was ordained by angels and throughout 2 Corinthians 3, the Law of Moses is derided as the "ministry of death" and that Moses himself is a deceiver and a liar that hid the Glory of God from the children of Israel! Margaret Barker in the article, "Who was Melchizedek and Who Was God?" explains how the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo connects Melchizedek with that of the Logos, that prefigures Jesus. In the Clementine Homilies (3.II), Simon Magus and the Apostle Peter have a lengthy debate about Scripture and the multiplicity of the gods, as Peter says:
I wish you to know that those who, according to our arrangement, associate with Simon that they may learn his intentions, and submit them to us, so that we may be able to cope with his variety of wickedness, these men have sent to me, and informed me that Simon today is, as he arranged, prepared to come before all, and show from the Scriptures that He who made the heaven and the earth, and all things in them, is not the Supreme God, but that there is another, unknown and supreme, as being in an unspeakable manner God of gods; and that He sent two gods, one of whom is he who made the world, and the other he who gave the law. And these things he contrives to say, that he may dissipate the right faith of those who would worship the one and only God who made heaven and earth.
Elsewhere, in another chapter, (16.VI) Simon Magus explains the polytheistic nature of Scripture:
Peter then said: "I am ready to do as the umpire of our discussion has said; and straight-way without any delay I shall set forth my opinion in regard to God. I then assert that there is one God who made the heavens and the earth, and all things that are in them. And it is not right to say or to think that there is any other." And Simon said: "But I maintain that the Scriptures believed in amongst the Jews say that there are many gods, and that God is not angry at this, because He has Himself spoken of many gods in His Scriptures.
For instance, in the very first words of the law, He evidently speaks of them as being like even unto Himself. For thus it is written, that, when the first man received a commandment from God to eat of every tree that was in the garden, but not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the serpent having persuaded them by means of the woman, through the promise that they would become gods, made them look up; and then, when they had thus looked up, God said, 'Behold, Adam has become as one of us.'
When, then, the serpent said, 'You shall be as gods,' he plainly speaks in the belief that gods exist; all the more as God also added His testimony, saying, 'Behold, Adam has become as one of us.' The serpent, then, who said that there are many gods, did not speak falsely.
Again, the scripture, 'You shall not revile the gods, nor curse the rulers of your people,' points out many gods whom it does not wish even to be cursed. But it is also somewhere else written, 'Did another god dare to enter and take him a nation from the midst of another nation, as did I the Lord God?'
When He says, 'Did another God dare?' He speaks on the supposition that other gods exist.
And elsewhere: 'Let the gods that have not made the heavens and the earth perish;' as if those who had made them were not to perish. And in another place, when it says, 'Take heed to yourself lest you go and serve other gods whom your fathers knew not,' it speaks as if other gods existed whom they were not to follow. And again: 'The names of other gods shall not ascend upon your lips.'
Here it mentions many gods whose names it does not wish to be uttered. And again it is written, 'Your God is the Lord, He is God of gods.' And again: 'Who is like unto You, O Lord, among the Gods?'
And again: 'God is Lord of gods.' And again: 'God stood in the assembly of gods: He judges among the gods.' Wherefore I wonder how, when there are so many passages in writing which testify that there are many gods, you have asserted that we ought neither to say nor to think that there are many. Finally, if you have anything to say against what has been spoken so distinctly, say it in the presence of all.
Peter then goes on to explain how he is grieved that Simon believes such things (3:III-IV):
When I heard this, how was I not disheartened! Wherefore I wished you also, my brethren, who associate with me, to know that I am beyond measure grieved in my soul, seeing the wicked one awake for the temptation of men, and men wholly indifferent about their own salvation. For to those from amongst the Gentiles who were about being persuaded respecting the earthly images that they are no gods, he has contrived to bring in opinions of many other gods, in order that, if they cease from the polytheo-mania, they may be deceived to speak otherwise, and even worse than they now do, against the sole government of God, so that they may not yet value the truths connected with that monarchy, and may never be able to obtain mercy. And for the sake of this attempt Simon comes to do battle with us, armed with the false chapters of the Scriptures. And what is more dreadful, he is not afraid to dogmatize thus against the true God from the prophets whom he does not in fact believe.
And with us, indeed, who have had handed down from our forefathers the worship of the God who made all things, and also the mystery of the books which are able to deceive, he will not prevail; but with those from amongst the Gentiles who have the polytheistic fancy bred in them, and who know not the falsehoods of the Scriptures, he will prevail much. And not only he; but if any other shall recount to those from among the Gentiles any vain, dreamlike, richly set out story against God, he will be believed, because from their childhood their minds are accustomed to take in things spoken against God. And few there shall be of them, as a few out of a multitude, who through ingenuousness shall not be willing so much as to hear an evil word against the God who made all things. And to these alone from amongst the Gentiles it shall be vouchsafed to be saved. Let not any one of you, therefore, altogether complain of Simon, or of any one else; for nothing happens unjustly, since even the falsehoods of Scripture are with good reason presented for a test.
After this Peter drops a bomb that should shock many Christians, Peter explains to Clement that:
Worthy, therefore, of rejection is every one who is willing so much as to hear anything against the monarchy of God; but if any one dares to hear anything against God, as trusting in the Scriptures, let him first of all consider with me that if any one, as he pleases, form a dogma agreeable to himself, and then carefully search the Scriptures, he will be able to produce many testimonies from them in favour of the dogma that he has formed. How, then, can confidence be placed in them against God, when what every man wishes is found in them?
Therefore Simon, who is going to discuss in public with us tomorrow, is bold against the monarchy of God, wishing to produce many statements from these Scriptures, to the effect that there are many gods, and a certain one who is not He who made this world, but who is superior to Him; and, at the same time, he is going to offer many scriptural proofs. But we also can easily show many passages from them that He who made the world alone is God, and that there is none other besides Him. But if any one shall wish to speak otherwise, he also shall be able to produce proofs from them at his pleasure. For the Scriptures say all manner of things, that no one of those who inquire ungratefully may find the truth, but simply what he wishes to find, the truth being reserved for the grateful now gratitude is to preserve our love to Him who is the cause of our being.
In other words, Peter is saying that the scriptures have "books which are able to deceive" and that the only people Simon Magus will be able to convince are polytheist Gentiles, "who know not the falsehoods of the Scriptures"!!! Peter also says that these falsehoods of scripture are presented for a test. So, why would Peter say such a thing? Does he not believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God? Peter actually derides the Scriptures as simply an incoherent mishmash of contradictory doctrines. And this is coming from the "mouth" of the supposed founder of the Roman Catholic Church!!!
Peter also says that the scriptures were written in such a manner that each person who reads the texts would find whatever they are predisposed to believing in, as in projecting their theological bias. That Peter's warning is correct, is overwhelmingly proven by the modern church and even biblical criticism and scholarship, in that many intelligent minds and astute biblical students have studied the scriptures and continue to hold conflicting opinions that oppose what the next person sees very clearly represented in the Bible!
We have many cults and factions within Christianity that have contradictory doctrines, as we see with the Jehovah's Witness who do not believe that Jesus is God and instead is the archangel Michael while denying the Trinity. Meanwhile, the Baptists, Pentecostals, Methodists believe that Jesus is God and have many scriptural proofs to back up their claims. The Mormons believe in the pre-existence of the soul and that the faithful Mormons will one day inherit their own worlds to rule over as gods with their extended families. The Seventh Day Adventists believe that the Sabbath should be strictly observed whereas Paul clearly says Sabbath-keeping is simply works and of the Law. The Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, also have contradictory views on scripture and ritual. So, how can we trust such a book that has so many contradictions interwoven throughout, as Peter says, "what every man wishes is found in them"?
The answer to this conundrum perhaps may be found in Hebrews (6:1-3) itself:
6 Therefore let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God,2 instruction about cleansing rites, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. 3 And God permitting,we will do so.
Even the Jewish Zohar says similar things about Scripture:
"The narratives of the Doctrine are its cloak. The simple look only at the garment — that is, upon the narrative of the Doctrine; more they know not. The instructed, however, see not merely the cloak, but what the cloak covers." (The Zohar, iii., 152; Franck, 119.)
Could you imagine a Christian minister preaching this on his own from the pulpit to his congregation? I don't think so. The author is saying that these teachings are actually elementary principles for beginners or "babes in Christ." But the end of the Christian walk is initiation, where one achieves the spiritual realization or gnosis, where the deeper, esoteric doctrines are taught and embraced. The initiates in the order of Melchizedek possesses a knowledge of God which transcends faith and belief, and as the wisdom to distinguish the Good god from the binding evils of the angelic powers that rule over the world. The high mysteries of the Gospel are realized by the Gnostics, who have uncovered the polytheistic roots of the Old Testament, the false god of this world exposed, the triumph over the power of the devil, and the Good father made known, through the face of the Son of Man.
So why exactly did Jesus choose the title, the "Son of Man" for himself? Jesus chose the title of "Son of Man" to launch his public ministry from the Book of Enoch, because (1) it recognized his pre-existence before the world was created as it is stated in the Prologue of John's Gospel, and (2) it also foretold that Jesus will be the light of nations.
The title is not from the Book of Daniel. In Daniel, the Son of Man's role is that of the sovereign of all people. The only relevant reference is from Daniel 7:13. Not much insight or inspiration can be gleaned from this meager description.
I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. 14 And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed. – Daniel 7: 13
It was from the Book of Enoch, which was widely used by the early Christians, and the second Similitude (written c. 2nd Century BC) was available during Jesus' time. For instance, Jude mentions Enoch. It was also about these that Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied, saying:
"See, the Lord is coming with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all, and to convict everyone of all the deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him." – Jude 1:14-15
The Book of Enoch was highly regarded until the 4th century AD. For example, Epistle of Barnabas regards it as Scripture. Early church fathers like Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian regarded it highly. Since the 4th century, the manuscripts and any mention thereof disappeared, probably to stamp out heresies. Ethiopic manuscripts of the Book of Enoch was discovered by Bruce in 1773.
There are three "similitudes" (parables) attributed to Enoch. First Similitude (38 – 44) deals with final judgment. The Second Similitude (45 – 57), the Son of Man is one who was given that name before Time itself. He would become a light to the Gentiles, and will be worshiped throughout the earth. Son of Man is also known as Messiah or Elect One.
In Chapter 48, the Son of Man's name was invoked in heavenly court, in the presence of the Lord of Spirits and the Ancient of Days. This event occurred during the time before time, i.e., before the sun and the stars were formed and before the world was created.
In that place I beheld a fountain of righteousness, which never failed, encircled by many springs of wisdom. Of these all the thirsty drank, and were filled with wisdom, having their habitation with the righteous, the elect, and the holy.
In that hour was this Son of man invoked before the Lord of spirits, and his name in the presence of the Ancient of days. Before the sun and the signs were created, before the stars of heaven were formed, his name was invoked in the presence of the Lord of spirits. A support shall he be for the righteous and the holy to lean upon, without falling; and he shall be the light of nations. He shall be the hope of those whose hearts are troubled. All, who dwell on earth, shall fall down and worship before him; shall bless and glorify him, and sing praises to the name of the Lord of spirits. Therefore the Elect and the Concealed One existed in his presence, before the world was created, and for ever.
This is consistent with John's description of Jesus' existence before the world was created.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life,a and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. – John 1:1
The Lord of Spirits chose the Son of Man to come to the earth to reveal the concealed treasures (e.g., eternal life), and he will overthrow the kings and their dominions, as stated in Enoch 46. The main result of the advent of the Son of Man is that he will be the light of the nations.
There I beheld the Ancient of days, whose head was like white wool, and with him another, whose countenance resembled that of man. His countenance was full of grace, like that of one of the holy angels. Then I inquired of one of the angels, who went with me, and who showed me every secret thing, concerning this Son of man; who he was; whence he was and why he accompanied the Ancient of days.
He answered and said to me, This is the Son of man, to whom righteousness belongs; with whom righteousness has dwelt; and who will reveal all the treasures of that which is concealed: for the Lord of spirits has chosen him; and his portion has surpassed all before the Lord of spirits in everlasting uprightness.
This Son of man, whom you behold, shall raise up kings and the mighty from their dwelling places, and the powerful from their thrones; shall loosen the bridles of the powerful, and break in pieces the teeth of sinners.
He shall hurl kings from their thrones and their dominions; because they will not exalt and praise him, nor humble themselves before him, by whom their kingdoms were granted to them. The countenance likewise of the mighty shall He cast down, filling them with confusion. Darkness shall be their habitation, and worms shall be their bed; nor from that their bed shall they hope to be again raised, because they exalted not the name of the Lord of spirits.
The title "Son of Man" is combined with glory as 1 Enoch 69,29 says: "For that Son of Man has appeared and has seated himself upon the throne of his glory." Jesus talks about "the Son of Man coming in his glory," in Matthew 24,30. "To him was given dominion and glory…" Daniel 7:13. The Son of Man is this human appearance of God, the likeness and visible image of the invisible God and therefore identified with the "first-formed man" created "in the image of God" (Genesis. 1:27).
According to the late, great Gnostic scholar, Gilles Quispel, the notion of a heavenly "man" as the icon of God's glory is heavily emphasized in literature mentioned earlier like Enoch, Daniel, Jude, Ezekiel, as well as Paul's "Heavenly Man" or "Second Man" contra the earthly Adam humiliating himself in original sin in Eden, discussed in 1 Corinthians, the Corpus Hermeticum's heavenly Anthropos breaking through the spheres of the archon administrators, the "Primal Man" of the Persian Manichaeans and the Adam Kadmon of the Kabbalah. The Apocryphon of John of the baptizing Johannite Gnostics, states similar things:
"And a voice came forth from the exalted aeon-heaven: 'The Man exists and the son of Man.' And the chief archon, Yaltabaoth, heard (it) and thought that the voice had come from his mother. And he did not know from where it came. And he taught them, the holy and perfect Mother-Father, the complete foreknowledge, the image of the invisible one who is the Father of the all (and) through whom everything came into being, the first Man. For he revealed his likeness in a human form.
"And the whole aeon of the chief archon trembled, and the foundations of the abyss shook. And of the waters which are above matter, the underside was illuminated by the appearance of his image which had been revealed. And when all the authorities and the chief archon looked, they saw the whole region of the underside which was illuminated. And through the light they saw the form of the image in the water.
So it would follow that the "Son" of "Man" is the same as Jesus, who is the exalted "Son" of God, who is also called "Man" or the Divine Father. The "glorious Son of Man" is closely connected to the visions quoted earlier. In Revelation 1,12 the Son of Man is seen with the characteristic features of the Ancient of Days, Daniel 7,9: "hair like wool", "white as snow." His appearance is like the blazing light of the sun and he is seen together with the mystical symbol of the sevenfold light per Revelation 1,16, known from the visions of Zechariah where the divine light is seen as a seven times sevenfold flame. We also see that the Son of Man in 1 Enoch 62:7 is only revealed to the chosen few. How? In visions I presume! Otherwise, he is hidden until the day of judgment, with the "powerful kings" of the earth who abused the Lord's chosen are punished and sent into the pit of Sheol, the same hellish pit that the Shepherd angels are condemned in chains in eternal ruin:
For formerly the Son of Man was hidden, and the Most High preserved him before his power, and has revealed him to the chosen. And the congregation of the holy and the chosen will be sown, and all the chosen will stand before him on that day. And the congregation of the holy and the chosen will be sown, and all the chosen will stand before him on that day. And all the powerful kings and the exalted and they who rule the earth will fall before him upon their faces, and will worship and will hope in this Son of Man, and will petition him and ask him for mercy. And that Lord of the spirits will only press them, that they hasten to leave his presence and their countenances will be filled with shame, and darkness will be heaped upon their countenances. And the angels of punishment will receive them to take vengeance on them, because they have abused his children and his chosen. And they will be a spectacle for the just and for his chosen; they will rejoice over them, because the wrath of the Lord of the spirits rests upon them, and the sword of the Lord of the spirits is drunk with them.
Seal Cube of Metatron. Taken from here. Please note the black cube of Yahweh is also a symbol of Saturn.
Enoch is also sort of a proto-Messianic figure and even has many similarities with Hermes and Thoth as well, noted in our book. In 2. and 3. Enoch the culmination of Enoch's fate is his transformation to a high-ranking angelic being, in 3.Enoch, to Metatron, the "lesser YHVH", God's viceroy, sitting on a throne next to God. In 2 Enoch, he is made to stand by God's left hand and receiving secrets hidden even to the angels. In 1.Enoch 71, Metatron is put on God's throne of glory to reign in eternity on God's behalf.
Enoch is also sort of a proto-Messianic figure. In 2. and 3. Enoch the culmination of Enoch's fate is his transformation into a high-ranking angelic being, in 3.Enoch, to Metatron, the "lesser YHVH," God's viceroy, sitting on a throne next to God. In 2 Enoch, he is made to stand by God's left hand and receiving secrets hidden even to the angels.
The Valentinian Prayer of the Apostle Paul tells us:
Grant what no angel eye has seen and no archon ear (has) heard, and what has not entered into the human heart which came to be angelic and (modelled) after the image of the psychic God when it was formed in the beginning, since I have faith and hope. And place upon me your beloved, elect, and blessed greatness, the First-born, the First-begotten, and the wonderful mystery of your house; for yours is the power and the glory and the praise and the greatness for ever and ever. Amen.
In 1.Enoch 71, Metatron is put on God's throne of glory to reign in eternity on God's behalf. In the article, Third Enoch and the Mystery of "Metatron" by William F. Dankenbring, he writes that Metatron is in actuality, simply another guise of none other than, the Son of Man!
The name "Metatron" itself has prompted much speculation as to its meaning. The Latin metator was used of "anyone who prepares the way." The Greek word metaturannos means "one next to the ruler." The Greek meta thronon means "next to the divine throne," "the second throne."
Says P. Alexander, "The powerful 'angel of the Lord' in the Old Testament (who is sometimes hard to distinguish from God himself) may be the prototype of 3 Enoch's Metatron" (p.246). In a Dead Sea scroll (11Qmelch) the personage known as Melchizedek "appears as being exalted over all the angels," and it is stated that He will "preside over a heavenly assize and exact punishment, with the help of the other angels" (p.249). The Qumran community apparently regarded Melchizedek as the high priest of the heavenly Temple – the same role in which Metatron is pictured in 3 Enoch.
Thus Metatron is the same personage as Melchizedek – and the apostle Paul identifies Melchizedek as none other than the One who became Jesus Christ! Paul writes that Melchizedek, to whom Abraham paid a tithe of all (Gen.14:18-20), was "without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but MADE LIKE the Son of God, REMAINS a priest continually" (Heb.7:1-3).
Notice! This person had no parents, humanly speaking. He was KING of Salem, or Jerusalem, meaning, "king of peace" (verse 2). His name, itself, means "King of righteousness." He pre-existed the Universe, having no "beginning of days." He is an ETERNAL being, having "no end of life." Thus His beginning had to be BEFORE CREATION, as "days" are defined as a product of the earth turning on its axis causing night and day.
So, it is Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Son of Man and Son of God, who is also the supra-angelic Metatron that is also, interestingly, has seventy names that corresponds to the seventy angelic sons of God, chosen by the Most High to rule over the nations. William F. Dankenbring further writes:
Now let's notice what 3 Enoch reveals about this mysterious figure known as "Metatron" in Jewish apocalyptic, mystical literature of the early centuries of the present era! Let us examine how this being's pre-existence compares with the stated pre-existence of the Christ, the Nazarene – Jesus, the "Son of God" and the "Son of man."
In 3 Enoch, Rabbi R. Ishmael begins with a vision wherein he ascended to behold God's chariot in heaven. He prayed for God to protect him, as he felt very insecure in this awesome place. He relates, "At once the Holy One, blessed be he, summoned to my aid his servant Metatron, Prince of the Divine Presence" (3 Enoch 1:4). In 3 Enoch, the overwhelming majority of chapters begin with a reference to "Metatron, Prince of the Divine Presence."
In chapter 3, the Rabbi asks Metatron, "What is your name?" He replies, "I have seventy names, corresponding to the seventy nations of the world, and all of them are based on the name of the King of the kings of kings; however, my King calls me 'Youth.'" (3:1-2). Compare this with Proverbs 8, where Solomon speaks of Wisdom as being "brought forth" in the beginning. Solomon quotes Wisdom as saying, "When He appointed the foundations of the earth, then I was by Him, as one brought up with Him: and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him" (Prov.8:22-25, 29-30).
Metatron was called "Youth," by God the Father, the Ancient of days. This implies that as compared to the Father, the super-archangel Metatron has a beginning, a time when He was "youthful." Yet He became the Prince over all God's Creation, and Co-ruler of the Universe!
What we are seeing here is a complex multiplicity of gods, aeons, and angels that is most prominent in the Old Testament scriptures, many of which are considered "apocrypha" today but back in the time of the ancients and after the time of Jesus, was considered canonical and openly accepted until the reign of Roman Orthodoxy came into fold around the fourth century, CE, and later with the Protestant Reformation of Catholicism with the (Masonic) King James Version of the Catholic Latin Vulgate.
As it follows, Metatron of 3 Enoch, Melchizedek, the High Priest of El Elyon and Jesus Christ as a "High Priest" in Hebrews, are all the same being. Metatron is depicted as the lesser "YHWH". Perhaps Jesus was the replacement "Great Angel" for Yahweh, just like how Seth (being of "another seed") is the replacement for Cain and Abel in Genesis and Sabaoth (Jupiter) is the replacement for Yaldabaoth (Saturn) in texts like the Hypostasis of the Archons. And El Elyion is the "Lord" in the Old Testament, while Yahweh is simply one of many "sons of the Most High" or the Elohim angels. Yahweh is probably just a Hebrew reiteration of Dyaus Pitar/Jove and the Canaanite Ba'al and El.
According to Irenaeus in Against Heresies (1,30:10-11), the Ophites saw multiple powers embedded in the Old Testament as well, and the prophecies associated with Jesus are attributed to Sophia, who is also called "the Lord," the "Mother" and the "Heavenly Jerusalem" while Ialdabaoth (YHWH/Satan) turned Abraham's seed from Egypt into Jews!
Ialdabaoth himself chose a certain man named Abraham from among these, and made a covenant with him, to the effect that, if his seed continued to serve him, he would give to them the earth for an inheritance. Afterwards, by means of Moses, he brought forth Abraham's descendants from Egypt, and gave them the law, and made them the Jews. Among that people he chose seven days, which they also call the holy Hebdomad. Each of these receives his own herald for the purpose of glorifying and proclaiming God; so that, when the rest hear these praises, they too may serve those who are announced as gods by the prophets.
Moreover, they distribute the prophets in the following manner: Moses, and Joshua the son of Nun, and Amos, and Habakkuk, belonged to Ialdabaoth; Samuel, and Nathan, and Jonah, and Micah, to Iao; Elijah, Joel, and Zechariah to Sabaoth; Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and Daniel, to Adonai; Tobias and Haggai to Eloi; Michaiah and Nahum to Oreus; Esdras and Zephaniah to Astanphæus. Each one of these, then, glorifies his own father and God, and they maintain that Sophia, herself has also spoken many things through them regarding the first Anthropos (man), and concerning that Christ who is above, thus admonishing and reminding men of the incorruptible light, the first Anthropos, and of the descent of Christ.
And as we already saw, Simon Magus in the Clementines argues with Peter that polytheism/henotheism is the real undercurrent of the Old Testament, which underscores a pagan origin or perhaps even an anticipation of the revelation of the coming of the Son of Man into enemy territory of the ruler rebel angels to extract and save his elect, chosen before the foundation of the world. The more one investigates into the scriptures, even the "false ones" per Peter in the Clementines, monotheism isn't exactly the ruling theology of the Old Testament writers had in mind.
Posted in Biblical Exegesis, Gnosis and tagged Angels, Canaanite, Enoch, Hebrews, Israel, Jerusalem, Jesus Christ, Melchizedek, Metatron, Moses, Most High, Peter, Shepherd, Simon Magus on November 20, 2016 by Alex. 5 Comments
The Secrets of Saturn
In recent memory, several conspiracy theories focused on the occult have noticed that the bad guys of the Satanic New World Order conspiracy worship Saturn. There's of course, the vague assertion between Saturn and Satan. Many have talked about this–including the likes of David Icke, Jordan Maxwell, Tracy Twyman, among others. This makes sense, and yet there is so much more to be said.
Saturn was usually pictured as an aged man holding a sickle, from which we undoubtedly get our representation of Death–the old man with a sickle. The Planet Saturn revolves around the sun in approximately 29 years, therefore the human lifespan would be two or three revolutions of this planet. This could be the reason Saturn is connected with Death and the Grim Reaper, which is the skeleton dressed in a black hood holding sickle that reaps human beings at their death. This same Roman deity is used to denote the end of the year, and a newborn baby symbolizes the New Year, i.e. it denotes time. Another name for Saturn is Kronos, which also means time. Indeed, this is what Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8 might be getting at:
3 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
In Talismanic Magic: Saturn: The Occult Signification of His Square, Seal, and Sigils by Samuel Liddell MacGrethor Mathers, he sums up what Saturn rules over:
Saturn rules over the color Black; over Saturday in the week; over the period from the middle of December to the middle of February in the year over Capricorn and Aquarius in the Zodiac, which are called his houses, and has power in Libra, wherein he receives his Exaltation; over the dragon, the ass, the lapwing, the cuttlefish, the mole over the metal lead, the precious stone onyx, ; he is the under the power of the number three in arithmetic, and the geometrical figure of the equilateral triangle.
The actions of Saturn are associated with binding, chastening, crystallizing, hardening, hindering, limiting, magnetism, obstruction, retarding and suppression. If the forces of Saturn seek to constrain, break down and later harden, then it would follow that this process relates to descent and crystallization of spirit into matter or consciousness into the organic material of the body. This is perhaps the Holy Grail secret of Saturn, in which we will explore later on. Saturn, so active in the cosmic changes, was regarded by all mankind as the supreme god. Seneca says that Epigenes, who studied astronomy among the Chaldeans:
"…estimates that the planet Saturn exerts the greatest influence upon all the movements of celestial bodies." – Naturales Quaestiones VII. 4. 2.
An astrological treatise ascribed to Manetho (Manethonis Apotelesmaticorum libri sex) states that:
"In the beginning Kronos the Titan ruled the entire ether; his star the far-seeing gods called 'the shining one.'"
The ancient Greek poets and historians like Ovid and Tacitus remembered the early tragedies enacted in the sky by the heavenly bodies asserted that Jupiter drove Saturn away from its place in the sky. Before Jupiter (Zeus) became the chief god, Saturn (Kronos) occupied the celestial throne. In all ancient religions, the dominion passes from Saturn to Jupiter. In Greek mythology, Kronos is presented as the father and Zeus as his son who dethrones him. Kronos devours some of his children. After this act, Zeus overpowers his father, puts him in chains in Tartarus, and drives him from his royal station in the sky.
In Saturn's association with the Old Testament, we see in Numbers 22:21-39, we see Satan first appears as an angel that stops a guy named Balaam from going forward. Satan is an angel, which his donkey can see, but Balaam cannot. The donkey refuses to move. He beats the donkey in punishment until after the third time the donkey speaks to him. We read in Deuteronomy 23:4 that Balaam the son of Beor of Pathor of Mesopotamia was hired to curse Israel. We read in Numbers 22:4, 5 and 7, that Balak the son of Zippor, king of the Moabites, sent messengers to Balaam the son of Beor to Pethor and "the elders of Moab … departed with the rewards of divination in their hand."
Both Islam and Judaism have strong Saturnian elements in them. In Islam, its revealed book of the Quran has all sorts of rules and limitations for its adherents, especially for women. Women must dress up in black, Saturnine robes, cannot show their faces, cannot drive, are subject to "honor killings", rapes, etc. Men aren't allowed to drink alcohol, they have to pray to Mecca five times a day, etc. In Judaism, we have the Old Covenant in which Jehovah made with various patriarchs which gave us the Law and strict Kosher laws on what they can and cannot eat. They cannot work on the Shabbat (Saturn's day) and must get circumcised. Both religions are very restrictive and binding. They are not inherently evil or sinister but excessively obstructive and controlling. Perhaps this is why the Apostle Paul describes the Jewish Law in terms of being a "curse" in his letters. The Hexagram or the six pointed star is the Seal of Solomon, or nowadays known as the Star of David. It's also known as the talisman of Saturn in Kabbalistic sources. In modern strands of Satanism, including Thelema, black robes are often worn in magical rituals and initiation ceremonies. Indeed, there are various Satanic/Luciferian spells and rituals with strong Saturnian elements in them.
In the Testament of Solomon, King Solomon used the seal or ring of Sabaoth (given by Michael the Archangel) to command demons or djinn to do his bidding and even torture them. If the seal is imbued with Saturnian powers it makes sense it can be used to bind spirits in some manner. In many sources, the chief symbol of Saturn is the cube. This relates to the Kaaba stone of Islam as well as the Foundation Stone in Jewish creation myths, which in turn relates to the myths associated with the Holy Grail and the Philosopher's Stone. The Nazi Otto Rahn supposedly claimed he had found the Holy Grail that once belonged to the Cathars. According to Tarotica, the cube's edges also forms the Hexagon, associated with the Hexagram, being a stable symbol in Solomonic ritual magic as well as Israel's Star of David. It reminds us all to well of Hellraiser's puzzle-box, where the person who solves it, effectively summons Cenobites from Hell and drags the unfortunate soul down with them to be tortured with chains.
The cube is the "base" of the platonic solids, and when turned and viewed from the right angle, it's edges form a Hexagon. This is where the idea of someone being "hexed" comes from. We can take hex to basically mean "bind" or "bound." When one puts a "hex" on someone else, all they are really doing is putting them in a box. You may positively "hex" someone by wishing them health and abundance, but negative hexing is done through things like gossip where one defines another persons space as having only certain negative and obstructive qualities. One essentially builds this box of "reality" around the targeted individual, and celebrities are all too aware of this form of binding magick as certain trivialities of their personal lives become endlessly repeated and turned back in on themselves in cacophonous "chamber of secrets" style reporting that is spread as far and wide as possible. This meaningless white noise has served to obstruct and drown out the utter Holiness of the Saturn's Cube, itself being the chamber of prayer and sacred immanence.
Mesopotamia was the very home of Babylonian mysteries and the birthplace of astrology. The name Balaam in Semitic language means "Conqueror of the People" and definitely links us with "Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord (Genesis 10:9)." We read in verse 8 that this Nimrod, the son of Cush, began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was the great-grandson of Noah and "the beginning of his kingdom was Babel." He built other cities like Ashur and Nineveh, which later became the capital of the Assyrian Empire. Nimrod is styled "the mighty hunter before the Lord," or as Strong renders it, "against the Lord." He shows that the Hebrew word paniym is more correctly translated "against" rather than "before". Like many in Babylon, Nimrod had a tendency of changing:
"…the glory of the incorruptible God into an image liken to corruptible man, and to birds and fourfooted beasts and creeping things." (Romans 1:23).
Nimrod was certainly "against" the Lord in all he planned and did. "The mighty hunter against the Lord" led multitudes away from the creator god and laid plans for a world-wide conspiracy against Yahweh, as the story goes. That was the reason behind the Babylonian Mystery cults. Many of the cults were dedicated to the worship of Saturn, as the House of Judah (i.e. the Jews) were dedicated to also worshipping in the Tabernacle of Saturn. Saturday is named after the star god Saturn. As it follows, Saturday is not only the seventh day of creation. It is the day set aside for the glory and honor of Saturn/Nimrod. It was Nimrod who proclaimed himself to have resurrected and ascended to the planet "Saturn" in the Babylonian Mysteries. According to the ancients, planets were called wandering stars. And yet, there are many parallels with Yahweh and Saturn as well.
Matthew Henry's Commentary states they were worshipping the planet Saturn and the Sacred Hebdomad.
You have had the images of your Moloch-your king (probably representing the sun, that sits king among the heavenly bodies), "and Chiun, or Remphan" (as Stephen calls it, Acts vii.43, after the LXX), which, it is supposed, represented Saturn, the highest of the seven planets. The worship of the sun, moon, and stars, was the most ancient, most general, and most plausible idolatry. They made to themselves the star of their God, some particular star which they took to be their god, or the name of which they gave to their god. This idolatry (Deut. iv. 19); and those that retain an affection for false gods cannot expect the favour of the true God.
The prophet Ezekiel in the Babylonian exile had a vision—the likeness of a man, but made of fire and amber who brought him to some darkened chamber where the ancients of the house of Israel with censers in their hands were worshipping idols portrayed upon the wall round about. Then the angel of the vision told him: "Thou shalt see greater abominations that they do"—and he brought the prophet to the door of the gate of the Lord's house—"and, behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz." Next, he showed him also Jews in the inner court of the Lord's house "with their back toward the temple of the Lord and their faces toward the east; and they worshiped the sun toward the east." It is in this instance we find that despite Yahweh's deep connections with other heathen gods, he is always seeking to usurp their local authority in favor of his own.
The traditional Orthodox explanation of the Genesis creation account in which God or "the gods" (the Elohim) creates man in "our image" implies the trinity–the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I've never bought that explanation, though. I think the earliest strands of Judaism were polytheistic, and the religion became more and more monotheistic as time progressed. The scholastic evidence suggests that the Pentateuch developed out of two separate Israelite groups: Yahwist and Elohist. They base that theory on the vocabulary used in the Pentateuch: certain portions refer to the Israelite deity as Yahweh, others Elohim. The two were eventually merged into one god, but there is evidence to suggest that Elohim represented an entire pantheon of Canaanite deities, and Yahweh was one of those gods. In that case, Judaism developed as a cult that began to worship Yahweh exclusively and gradually usurped competing regional cults. This is much like how Jupiter betrays his father Saturn/Chronos as well as fellow Olympians.
For example, El, a Semitic word used by Jews for Yahweh, was also used by Canaanites as another name for Baal. It's a clear case for the Israelite adoption of names found in preexisting religions. Baal was merely one of these Elohim, which also represented Saturn. The bull was also symbolic of El and his son Baal Hadad and both wore bull horns on their headdress. In other words, the horned god archetype is deeply connected to Saturn and the cosmocrators. El is also the Demiurge and the Freemasonic "Great Architect of the Universe" that is obviously a reference to Ialdabaoth (the "child of chaos") of the Ophites and the Apocryphon of John. In a way, Ialdabaoth is a mixture of Baal, Kronos, and Yahweh. El is simply another name for Saturn.
This is made evident in Eusebius of Caesarea's Praeparatio Evangelica (Preparation for the Gospel) (X), as he quotes Sanchuniathon's History of the Jews:
And soon after he says:
'It was a custom of the ancients in great crises of danger for the rulers of a city or nation, in order to avert the common ruin, to give up the most beloved of their children for sacrifice as a ransom to the avenging daemons; and those who were thus given up were sacrificed with mystic rites. Kronos then, whom the Phoenicians call Elus, who was king of the country and subsequently, after his decease, was deified as the star Saturn…
Incidentally, the ach-heretic Christian, Marcion's primary goal was to distance Christianity from other religions (especially Judaism), that is, to distinguish the Christian god from all other gods before it, so that Christianity was something entirely new and unique. That was the way Christianity could be entirely independent from competing religions while also coexisting with them, i.e., pluralism. It's a shame that none of his writings have survived, so we can only glean whatever information is retained by anti-Marcionite apologists like Tertullian.
I have found the use of the term "Elohim" deliberately obscured as Judaism moved from henotheism to monotheism. Despite Michael S. Heiser's contentions, the Elohim was a council of gods (Elohin in Ugarit). These were the sky gods as opposed to the Shaddim/n, who were the earth gods. In other words, they are demons. The Shaddim is related to El Shaddai. Judaic (indeed all ancient near eastern) beliefs are a jumble of different ideas with some of them being discarded as time goes on and others mutating and merging with other ideas.
If El was a sky god, then how could he be thought of as an earth god? My suspicion is that this is tied into the concept of the "throne of God". There has always been an uneasy tension between the idea of the celestial gods (stars) living in the sky and guiding human existence and the idea of the gods living on a solid surface (such as a mountain, the Axis Mundi). The central idea of a Mountain of God (also found in the Book of Enoch where the Garden of Eden is found on the same mountain) was mostly discarded in favor for an alternate universe called Heaven. To the Ancient Jews, however, this dichotomy of a celestial heaven and mountain of God constantly played back and forth (we see this very strongly in the Ezekiel Throne / Chariot description). Thus, El was the sky god that ruled the heavens but he also ruled from the world mountain. This made him both a sky god and an earth god.
I favor the notion (as do some other scholars) that the Moloch that the later prophets railed against so vociferously, was, originally, Melech ("King") which was the nice way of speaking of El when he was in a bad mood. He was the older, deeper god whom one appeased in the background to appeasing the reigning sky god, YHWH (also known to the Greeks and Romans as i.e. Zeus / Jupiter). In the case of El Shaddai, I suspect that the title referred to El on the Throne of God without any particular chthonic implications but that the constant associations with the Shaddim kept the title from being more popular in later days. Christians, today, have no problem with "God, the Rock" as the translation has removed any relationship between Shaddai ("rock") and shaddim (eventually mutated to "Satans").
Some equate the Garden of Eden with the Golden Age of Saturn. Some even postulate that Eden was actually some sort of "Sacred Mountain" or the World Axis, like the climbing of Dante's Mountain of Purgatory that represents the pilgrim's progress, through the sphere. Eden was blocked off from Adam and Eve because of their transgression of Divine Law. This sacred mountain, upon whose summit stood the temple of the gods, gave rise to the stories of Olympus, Meru, and Asgard. The City of the Golden gates—the capital of Atlantis—is the one now preserved among the numerous religions as the City of the Gods, the Holy City, and even the New Jerusalem of Revelation, with its streets paved with gold and its twelve gates shining with precious stones.
Atlantis was said to have been a naval power that took over parts of Western Europe and Africa in 9400 B.C. before an explosion sank the island beneath the ocean. Like Eden, it was said to have been centered at the source of four rivers—which also comes from Sumerian myth of Ziusudra and the Zoroastrian legend of pairideaza, from which we get the word "paradise". The Garden of Eden is called gannah in Hebrew, which means a hidden place. It's an Avestan term from Old Persia, which was also used as a term to refer to enclosed parks, matching with Plato's description of Atlantis being a highly advanced society, walled off from the rest of the barbaric world, in his writings. The author of Mystery Babylon writes about the "hidden" nature of Saturn:
Saturn was, and is, probably one of the most important figures behind the development of Mystery Babylon. Interestingly enough, Saturn was also known to be a "god of hidden counsels," a "concealer of secrets," and a "god of 'mysteries.' In fact, one of the major subtitles of this god was, "the Hidden One" or the "Hidden God." Now, what was so mysterious about this god; that he had to be hidden?
According to some ancient thought, Saturn might have originally been equated to Noah – at least at first; and the reason he was known as "The Hidden One" was simple: Noah was "hidden" in the ark for an extended period of time! Because of this, Noah could have been considered "the first of the Hidden Ones" – but, not the last!
Saturn is also a staple in ritual magic and alchemy. In Zosimos' Visions, the author indicates that the main purpose of the transformation process featured in his dream vision is the spiritualization of the sacrificing priest to become spirit or pneuma. We are told that he would "change the bodies into blood, make the eyes to see and the dead to rise again." Later in the visions, he appears in the glorified form, shining like the midday sun, much like the risen Christ. Throughout the text, it is clear that the sacrificer and sacrificed are one and the same. It goes back to the old alchemical idea of what redeems and that which is to be redeemed are also one and the same. Let us revisit Zosimos's Visions, quickly.
The composition of the waters, and the movement, and the growth, and the removal and restitution of bodily nature, and the splitting off of the spirit from the body, and the fixation of the spirit on the body are not operations with natures alien one from the other, but, like the hard bodies of metals and the moist fluids of plants, are One Thing, of One Nature, acting upon itself. And in this system, of one kind but many colours, is preserved a research of all things, multiple and various, subject to lunar influence and measure of time, which regulates the cessation and growth by which the One Nature transforms itself.
And saying these things, I slept, and I saw a certain sacrificing priest standing before me and over and altar which had the form of a bowl. And that altar had fifteen steps going up to it.
Then the priest stood up and I heard from above a voice say to me, "I have completed the descent of the fifteen steps and the ascent of the steps of light. And it is the sacrificing priest who renews me, casting off the body's coarseness, and, consecrated by necessity, I have become a spirit."
And when I had heard the voice of him who stood in the altar formed like a bowl, I questioned him, desiring to understand who he was.
He answered me in a weak voice saying, "I am Ion, Priest of the Adytum, and I have borne an intolerable force. For someone came at me headlong in the morning and dismembered me with a sword and tore me apart, according to the rigor of harmony. And, having cut my head off with the sword, he mashed my flesh with my bones and burned them in the fire of the treatment, until, my body transformed, I should learn to become a spirit. And I sustained the same intolerable force."
And even as he said these things to me and I forced him to speak, it was as if his eyes turned to blood and he vomited up all his flesh. And I saw him as a mutilated image of a little man and he was tearing at his flesh and falling away.
A little later in this vision account, Zosimos, speaks to what appears to be a spirit of metal or a planetary demon:
As he was saying these things to me and the boiling increased and the people wailed, I saw a copper man holding a lead tablet in his hand. He spoke aloud, looking at the tablet, "I counsel all those in mortification to become calm and that each take in his hand a lead tablet and write with his own hand and that each bear his eyes upward and open his mouth until his grapes be grown."
Saturn is also associated with the alchemical element of lead and in gnosis is a planetary demon. The parallel between the Hebrew god and Saturn is of considerable importance as in regards to the alchemical idea of the transformation of the God of the Old Testament into the God of the New. The alchemists of old were naturally attracted to the great significance of Saturn, for besides being the outermost planet, the supreme archon and demiurge Ialdabaoth, he was also the spiritus niger who lies captive in the darkness of matter, the deity or that part of the deity that is swallowed up in his own creation. It is this dark god who steals a portion of his mother Sophia's divine power in which Sophia seeks to recover through Ialdabaoth's/Jehovah's creations of Adam and Eve as we see in Irenaeus' account of the Ophite myth in Against Heresies (1.30.6):
But as he could merely writhe along the ground, they carried him to their father; Sophia so labouring in this matter, that she might empty him (Ialdabaoth) of the light with which he had been sprinkled, so that he might no longer, though still powerful, be able to lift up himself against the powers above. They declare, then, that by breathing into man the spirit of life, he was secretly emptied of his power; that hence man became a possessor of nous (intelligence) and enthymesis (thought); and they affirm that these are the faculties which partake in salvation. He [they further assert] at once gave thanks to the first Anthropos (man), forsaking those who had created him.
In Hippolytus' Refutation of All Heresies (V, 11), he mentions a Gnostic group called Peratics, they specifically name Cronus as the demiurge and lord of mortal generation.
For Cronus is a cause to every generation, in regard of succumbing under destruction, and there could not exist (an instance of) generation in which Cronus does not interfere.
They also say that this god is identified with the midheaven cardinal point, or the summer tropic, which is the very force that turns the wheel of fate over the world (V, 10).
Since, then, astrologers are acquainted with the horoscope, and meridian, and setting, and the point opposite the meridian; and since these stars occupy at different times different positions in space, on account of the perpetual revolution of the universe, there are (necessarily) at different periods different declinations towards a centre, and (different) ascensions to centres. (Now the Peratic here-ties), affixing an allegorical import to this arrangement of the astrologers, delineate the centre, as it were, a god and monad and lord over universal generation, whereas the declination (is regarded by them as a power) on the left, and ascension on the right. When any one, therefore, falling in with the treatises of these (heretics), finds mention among them of right or left power, let him recur to the centre, and the declination, and the ascension (of the Chaldean sages, and) he will clearly observe that the entire system of these (Peratae) consists of the astrological doctrine.
It is this god that the initiate seeking to return to the source in the Pleroma must overcome by "giving up" different aspects of himself to each astral gatekeeper. This is explained very well in the Hermetica. The Freemason Albert Pike in Morals & Dogma summarizes the Celsus' description of the Mithraic Mysteries of ascension.
We learn this from Celsus, in Origen; who says that the symbolical image of this passage among the stars, used in the Mithriac Mysteries, was a ladder, reaching from earth to Heaven, divided into seven steps or stages, to each of which was a gate, and at the summit an eighth, that of the fixed stars. The first gate, says Celsus, was that of Saturn, and of lead, by the heavy nature whereof his dull slow progress was symbolized. The second, of tin, was that of Venus, symbolizing her soft splendor and easy flexibility. The third, of brass, was that of Jupiter, emblem of his solidity and dry nature. The fourth, of iron, was that of Mercury, expressing his indefatigable activity and sagacity. The ,fifth, of copper, was that of Mars, expressive of his inequalities and variable nature. The sixth, of silver, was that of the Moon: and the seventh, of gold, that of the Sun. This order is not the real order ,of these Planet's but a mysterious one, like that of the days of the Week consecrated to them, commencing with Saturday, and retrograding to Sunday. It was dictated, Celsus says, by certain harmonic relations, those of the fourth.
Perhaps in the myth of St. George slaying the dragon lies an old alchemical idea of the crucified serpent or the tail-eating dragon, Ouroboros, where the poisonous element of matter or Saturnian dross is destroyed on the alchemical cross to reveal and create the elixir of Mercury (symbolizing spirit). We already saw that the Sethians and Manichaeans viewed the serpent as representing the Logos or Jesus, which relates to Jesus himself identifying with the bronze serpent of Moses (John 3:14). This identification troubles many fundamentalist Christians but is real, nonetheless. If this line of study is pursued, it leads to a great many "troubling" ideas and correspondences. If pursued, it will lead to many (unpopular) enlightening principles. Just as the alchemical serpent is crucified, Jesus became sin on the Cross for mankind, taking our punishment upon Him and shedding His blood on the cross in our place, as a ransom for many and steals souls from Hell when he descends there. This is similar to the idea of Prometheus stealing fire from Mount Olympus or Hari Krishna stealing souls from Yama or Indra, the god of death and the underworld. And like Jesus, Mercurius (the spirit behind the planet Mercury) or Hermes was a god of revelation, who discloses the secret of the art to the adepts.
The last part of Zosimos' Visions (quoted above) recalls the saying of St. John Chrysostom's saying that in the Eucharist, Christ drinks his own blood and perhaps eats his own flesh. It also reminds us of the orgiastic meals of the cult of Dionysus, where animals were sacrificed, torn into pieces and eaten. They represent Dionysus Zagreus who was also torn into pieces by the Titans (including their leader Chronos/Saturn). The composition of the waters in which the spirit splits off from the body is a clear reference to the heavenly baptism of John the Baptist, where the sins of the repentant are washed away in the spiritual waters of grace and truth (the Holy Spirit/comforter) flowing from Christ's sacrifice on the cross.
Speaking of John the Baptist, on January 6, the date is famous for the instance when Jesus was baptized by John celebrated on Epiphany. This date falls under Capricorn, the goatfish or Aegipan. According to Zlatko Pletze in Fate, Providence and Astrology in Gnosticism (1): The Apocryphon of John, he connects Capricorn with Saturn and Adoni as well as Sabaoth. He's referencing the archons and authorities from the Apocryphon of John and the Zodiac (obviously).
In regards to the demiurge, ancient depictions of Zurvan/Mithra look exactly like Yaldabaoth as depicted in the Apocryphon of John. He also holds the keys and the rod-like Janus in the Roman pantheon. And he has the rooster with him. You can clearly see how Zurvan's imagery was assimilated into the Catholic depiction of St. Peter (keys and rooster). Also, Mithras is often depicted as being born out of a rock. St. Peter is the rock of the church. Coincidence? I think not. Weird how these deities bear a closer resemblance to Peter than Jesus. I wonder why that came about.
According to John 19:34, the stabbing or piercing of holy lance or "spear of destiny" into Jesus' side by the Roman Centurion named in extra-Biblical tradition (the Gospel of Nicodemus) as Caius Cassius Longinus, resulted in the pouring of blood and water. This reminds us of Jesus' saying in Matthew 10:34:
"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword."
Killing with the sword is a recurring theme in alchemy. The "philosophical egg" is divided with the sword, and with it, the "King is transfixed" and the dragon or "corpus" is mutilated. The alchemical sword, like the cross, brings about the separation of the elements (flesh and spirit), so that a new more perfect body can be processed. It is this sword that "kills and vivifies," and dipped and anointed with the waters of life. Mercurius is the giver of life as well as the destroyer of the old form. It is the sword that comes of the mouth of the Son of Man in Revelation of St. John, and according to Hebrews 4:12, the Logos, the Word of God, and hence Christ himself is that sword.
For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
Christ is the mediator and savior, the solver and separator, who is a sword, for he is the "penetrating spirit" "more piercing than a two-edged sword". And so, the spirit of Christ pierces the veil that covers over the blinded soul, in which the believer is said to cross over from the Saturnian/Satanic hyper-cube of time, space and flesh (symbolized as the old man in Pauline literature) and into the realm of spirit, being the Kingdom of God (the new man in which the fleshy deeds of the old man are mortified). The divisive and separate function of the sword in alchemy is prefigured in the flaming sword of the angel or cherub that separated Adam and Eve from paradise. Separation by a sword is a theme that can be found in the Ophite diagram: the earthly cosmos is surrounded by a ring of fire which at the same time encloses paradise. But paradise and the ring of fire are separated by the "flaming sword." An important interpretation of the cherub's flaming sword is given by Simon Magus as reported by Hippolytus in Refutation of All Heresies (VI.12):
This, he says, is the flaming sword, which turned to guard the way of the tree of life. For the blood is converted into seed and milk, and this power becomes mother and father— father of those things that are in process of generation, and the augmentation of those things that are being nourished; (and this power is) without further want, (and) self-sufficient. And, he says, the tree of life is guarded, as we have stated, by the brandished flaming sword.
For Simon, the sword represents the fiery force of generation which turns and spurns the spirit from escaping out of the realm of matter and into the Simonian fiery tree of life, which represents the aeons and the Godhead. This teaching prefigures the Kabbalah by several hundred years, at least. And yet the flaming sword represents the very fiery force that "turns" something small and into something great. It is the means of transformation of the vital spirit in man into the Divine or the true arcane substance of alchemy symbolized as seed and milk in Simon Magus's doctrine.
If, however, these be converted into seed and milk, the principle that resides in these potentially, and is in possession of a proper position, in which is evolved a principle of souls, (such a principle,) beginning, as it were, from a very small spark, will be altogether magnified, and will increase and become a power indefinite (and) unalterable, (equal and similar) to an unalterable age, which no longer passes into the indefinite age.
How does any of this relate to Saturn? In the quest for the Holy Grail, the answer is revealed. Tracy Twyman in Regnum in Potentia, Part 1: Saturn's Kingdom Transformed Into the Golden Age, writes about a particular Holy Grail romance:
In Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, the knight Gawain is sent on a mission by a hermit who looks young, although he is 75 years old. The mission is to find the sword that John the Baptist was beheaded with, which he will need to enter the lands of the Fisher King. The sword belongs to a pagan king named Gurguran, who promises Gawain that he can have it if he will rescue the king's son from a giant who has kidnapped him. Gawain kills the giant, but the boy is strangled to death in the process. Then, in a strange rite, Gurguran chops his sons body into pieces and distributes them to his subjects to eat. Gawain then receives the sword and is led to the Grail banquet at the Fisher King's court, where 12 knights who are hundreds of years old (reminiscent of the 12 Olympian gods) sit around a banquet hall, all looking youthful except for their grey hair.
Indeed, we see Wolfram revel in providing us with a number of deep mystical truths in his poem. At one point of the story, in Parzival, Wolfram tells us that the cycles of Saturn govern the intensity of Grail King Amfortas's perpetual wound.
Then answered the host, * Far sorer than before was the monarch's pain, In this wise did he learn the tidings that Saturn drew near again, And the star with a sharp frost cometh, and it helpeth no whit to lay. The spear on the sore as aforetime, tn the wound must it lunge alway. When that star standeth high in heaven the wound shall its coming know Afore, tho' the earth shall heed not, nor token of frost shall show. But the cold it came, and the snow-flakes fell thick in the following night…
To be "saturnine" means to be slow, gloomy, and depressed. The Gospel of Truth calls the universe of matter in terms of being a nightmare filled with violence:
Since it was terror and disturbance and instability and doubt and division, there were many illusions at work by means of these, and (many) empty fictions, as if they were sunk in sleep, and found themselves in disturbing dreams. Either (there is) a place to which they are fleeing, or without strength they come (from) having chased after others, or they are involved in striking blows, or they are receiving blows themselves, or they have fallen from high places, or they take off into the air, though they do not even have wings. Again, sometimes (it is as) if people were murdering them, though there is no one even pursuing them, or they themselves are killing their neighbors, for they have been stained with their blood.
This is not so dissimilar to how Plutarch describes the perpetual dreams of Saturn. Parzival at one point in his story sits next to his host, the Grail King Anfortas (possibly symbolizing the crucified Christ), amidst the Grail, the holiest of holies, surrounded by the celestial hierarchies. He has witnessed the bleeding spear and the suffering it has caused the King and is court. He has seen the mysterious destroying power of Saturn and the sickness, old age and death in its wake. Yet he has not connected them with the glorious regenerative power of the Grail that overcame the Saturnine decay. Later, Parzival is forced to demonstrate his fitness for Grail membership. A squire steps forward and hands Anfortas a sword made of ruby. The King presents Parzival with the sword saying:
"This sword often came to my aid in the greatest need, that is before God's will I receive so sore a wound. Now I give it to you. May it bring to you what you can never acquire by simple gazing at what is taking place here."
The sword is unique, yet Parzival could not recognize this fact. If he had but known, he would have seen the full harmony of wisdom, love and strength from this weapon (representing the Logos). Parzival should have seen how the pitiful suffering of the king and realize that the power the King once had in his sword now belongs to him. As Parzival reveals, the path of initiation is long and weary, full of doubt, sorrow, pain that pierces the veil into the Holy of Holies of the spirit where regeneration occurs with the Logos. It is the "narrow gate" that Jesus in Matthew and Luke once advocated and commanded his followers to walk through, out of Saturn's/Satan's Kingdom, to be saved. It is the second journey towards the Grail Castle that will teach him the necessary wisdom that he must not only ask but also provide the answer himself. He will be armed with the wisdom that he will translate thus:
" I myself am guilty for the suffering of humanity; only if I reach the highest goal, and then not for myself, but in service of the word, can I bring forth healing."
It is the Grail King who understands how the great cosmic forces operating in the macrocosm rule in the microcosm of the human body. This is the secret of the Hermetical axiom: "As above, so below." As we've seen, Saturn's power primarily works in obstructing and inhibiting, just as how the control system mankind is currently in bondage to, behaves. The controllers (in their various guises) prevent their slaves from seeing certain truths, from forcing us to live their way of reality. Perhaps this is why the term "royalty" is tied with the word "reality." The excess Saturnian energy may be why so many people are unwilling to change their minds even when confronted by evidence.
The conspiracy author David Icke has often said that consciousness is like a ball under water. It rises to the surface by itself unless there is someone pushing it down. Perhaps this is why Saturn is so important to the controllers and "secret societies". However, they too, like everyone else, are prisoners in this continuum of Saturn and with various machinations are seeking to break out from. Here are a few more videos worthy of your consideration.
Posted in Gnosis, Holy Grail, Philosophy and tagged Baal, Black Cube, David Icke, Elohim, Ezekiel, Hexagram, Jordan Maxwell, Jupiter, Kronos, Matrix, Molech, New World Order, Nimrod, Plutarch, Saturn, Simon Magus, Tower of Babel, Yahweh on July 21, 2016 by Alex. 8 Comments
The Simon Sancus Conondrum
The controversy surrounding the trinity of Simon-Paul, Simon-Peter (Dositheos) and Simon-Jesus, is not a new one and has been addressed by other scholars, although not exactly in the same angle, I've been looking at for a while now. However, scant attention, outside of a few scholars, are given to another controversy associated with Simon Magus and that is the Semo Sancus statue that Simon was confused for by the Church theologian and semi-heretic Justin Martyr. Furthermore, the magical act of animating statues was a popular feat among ancient magicians and theurgists. One question does come up in my mind: Does this have anything to do with the Semo Sancus statue associated with Simon Magus?
After this, the next series of articles will explore the Hermetic side of things, delving further into the "divine twin" phenomena that is surprisingly common in ancient literature. There will also be some startling details concerning the Apollos and Apollo, Thoth, Hermes' connections and the Emerald Tablets. This will all be full explored in False Gods, Divine Charlatans and Hermetic Hustlers.
In Justin Martyr's 1 Apology 26, he claims that the Roman ruler, Claudius Caesar built a statue in honor of Simon Magus because he was so impressed by his magical feats:
And, thirdly, because after Christ's ascension into heaven the devils put forward certain men who said that they themselves were gods; and they were not only not persecuted by you, but even deemed worthy of honours. There was a Samaritan, Simon, a native of the village called Gitto, who in the reign of Claudius Cæsar, and in your royal city of Rome, did mighty acts of magic, by virtue of the art of the devils operating in him. He was considered a god, and as a god was honoured by you with a statue, which statue was erected on the river Tiber, between the two bridges, and bore this inscription, in the language of Rome:— Simoni Deo Sancto, To Simon the holy God. And almost all the Samaritans, and a few even of other nations, worship him, and acknowledge him as the first god; and a woman, Helena, who went about with him at that time, and had formerly been a prostitute, they say is the first idea generated by him.
However, it is said that in this instance, Simon was simply "confused" with another Roman god, Semo Sancus by Justin Martyr. Here is what I wrote in my commentary on the Great Declaration about this issue:
However, some scholars debate this point, claiming that Justin confused a statue dedicated to the Sabine divinity Semo Sancus with that of the historical Simon the Magician. Semo Sancus is an ancient Sabine deity for oaths, contracts, law, matrimony, and legal fidelity. In 1574, an altar dedicated to Semo Sancus was discovered on the island of the Tiber River with the following inscription Semoni Sanco Deo, which translates as "to Semon the Holy God." This discovery led to the belief that Justin had made an observational mistake concerning what he thought was the idol of "Simon the Holy God" on the Tiber River.
There is a problem with this theory in that it assumes that the deity's name is Semo. In Latin, semo or the plural semones derives from semi-homines or semi-humans. These are the dii medioxumi who were lower-level deities. The semones are the demigods of the Roman pagan pantheon. According to Marcus Porcius Cato, a Sanco is a spirit (daimon) and not a god (theos).
From the point of view of Roman paganism, it does not make sense to use a generic noun of semo for a demigod and then also the noun deos for a god. It would be like saying, "to the demigod holy god." What is far more likely is that the Simon Magus, as a magician and adapter of local paganism, co-opted the Roman tradition of a semi-human god of law and covenant and identified himself as the semi-human god. This would conform to the description of Simon Magus in Acts 8:10 as being "this man who is the power of God." So then, it was probably not Justin Martyr who was confused, but rather Simon Magus (and his followers) who confused his identity with the semi-human god of Rome.
The statue mentioned by Justin was finally discovered in 1574, and found to bear the inscription to Semo Sancus, the Sabine (and possibly, originally Persian) god of contracts. The full name of this god was Semo Sancus Dius Fidius. Another deity who was considered to be a god of contracts was Mithra, the mediator god of ancient Persia and figure-head of the Mithriac mysteries.
Mithra was the preserver of law and order and a god of war described as riding his four-horsed golden chariot against the demons and their worshipers. This image and description brings to mind of that of Apollo, the chariot riding sun god who rescues the fragments of Dionysus after he was torn to shreds by the jealous Titans. Mithra was also considered synonymous with Helios, a solar deity. The Orphic Hymn to Helios, otherwise known as the Mithras Liturgy tells us:
Be gracious to me, 0 Providence and Psyche, as I write these mysteries handed down for gain but for instruction; and for an only child I request immortality, O initiates of this our power (furthermore, it is necessary for you, O daughter, to take (480) the juices of herbs and spices, which will to you at the end of my holy treatise), which the great god Helios Mithras ordered to be revealed to me by his archangel, so that I alone may ascend into heaven as an inquirer (485) and behold the universe.
The Helios-Mithra imagery also happens to match closely with that of Cyril of Jerusalem's description of Simon Magus riding a chariot, pulled by demonic powers, from his Catechetical Lectures:
Simon promised to rise aloft to heaven, and came riding in a demons' chariot on the air.
Of course, Magus, is the singular version of "Magi", which were the Persian Zoroastrians who ruled over the fire temples of ancient Iran. They too, like Simon, revered the divine fire and thought of it as the primitive origin of all things. Franz Cumont reports on the inner workings of the Mithriac mystery cults in the Mysteries of Mithra, which sounds curiously close with Catholicism:
The priest was the intermediary between God and man. His functions evidently included the administration of the sacraments and the celebration of the services. The inscriptions tell us that in addition he presided at the formal dedications, or at least represented the faithful one on such an occasion along with the Fathers; but this was the least portion only of the duties he had to perform; the religious service which fell to his lot appears to have been very exacting. He doubtless was compelled to see that a perpetual fire burned upon the altars. Three times a day, at dawn, at noon, and at dusk, he addressed a prayer to the Sun, turning in the morning toward the East, at noon toward the South, at evening toward the West.
Interestingly enough, Justin Martyr makes some peculiar statements regarding Mithra in Dialogue With Trypho (Chapter 70):
And when those who record the mysteries of Mithras say that he was begotten of a rock, and call the place where those who believe in him are initiated a cave…they have attempted likewise to imitate the whole of Isaiah's words?…'he shall dwell in the lofty cave of the strong rock. Bread shall be given to him, and his water [shall be] sure…'
But when the Child was born in Bethlehem, since Joseph could not find a lodging in that village, he took up his quarters in a certain cave near the village; and while they were there Mary brought forth the Christ and placed Him in a manger, and here the Magi who came from Arabia found Him. I have repeated to you what Isaiah foretold about the sign which foreshadowed the cave…those who presided over the mysteries of Mithras were stirred up by the devil to say that in a place, called among them a cave, they were initiated by him (Trypho, Chapter 78).
It's uncertain if Justin is merely confused or is deliberately lying. He claims the devil read Isaiah, and thus had the followers of Mithra claim that Mithra came from a cave. Justin's reference to Isaiah 33:16 does not in any way point to the birth of Jesus in a cave (the passage in Isaiah never mentions a birth and has end time applications). Justin was apparently trying to claim that the followers of Mithra claimed a cave because of Isaiah but the scriptures prove otherwise. Despite Justin Martyr's supposed opposition to the Mithriac mysteries, he seems to whole sale borrow their terminology and practices!
For, in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, they then receive the washing with water…And this washing is called illumination, because they who learn these things are illuminated in their understandings… And this food is called among us Εύχαριστία [the Eucharist], of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined.
For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished…Which the wicked devils have imitated in the mysteries of Mithras, commanding the same thing to be done. For, that bread and a cup of water are placed with certain incantations in the mystic rites of one who is being initiated, you either know or can learn…
Such terminology such as "illumination" was a common stable in the Mithriac mysteries. From the same book, Franz Cumont tells us about this practice:
Mithraism {provided}…the promise of complete illumination, long withheld, fed the ardor of faith with the fascinating allurements of mystery…The gods were everywhere, and…the light that illuminated their paths, were the objects of their adoration.
It seems to me that Justin's wholesale embrace of Mithriac terminology and praxis foreshadows the Catholic embrace of Mithra through Emperor Constanine (who's mother also happened to be named Helena), but we will save that for another story.
Getting back to the main subject, it is usually said that Justin is to be blamed for the error of transforming the cult statue as devoted to "Simon the Holy God". He does not, however, suggest that he has seen the statue himself, as he certainly would have said so if he had seen it. Indeed, he speaks of Rome throughout the First Apology as a distant, though respected, place, as of a city he had never yet visited. His later stay in Rome, where indeed he died; has made it easy for us to assume that the First Apology represents his knowledge at that stage of life. Of course this same text was addressed to Emperor Antoninus Pius and his sons in Rome, in the days when he was still an itinerant teacher in the Levant. This linking of Simon's name with a statue also recurs in the evidence of lrenaeus, itself also perhaps from Justin. It is suggested that such an enthusiast might be a Samaritan, not arbitrarily, but in the light of what Justin goes on to say (I Apol. xxvi):
"Almost all the Samaritans, and even a few people of other races, confess this man as the First God, and go so far as to worship him."
The statement that the Samaritans in question "worshiped" Simon is emphatic, though it may mean only that he was invoked in the course of theurgic operations, or that his statue was venerated with garlands or incense. Or in other words, the statue of Simon was used in animating statue rituals. This practice involves the consecration of a statue of a God. Often one would hollow it out and fill the whole with "sunthemata" i.e. herbs and ingredients related to the deity, and then perform a rite to consecrate it. The Chaldean Oracles lays out an animating statue ritual for a statue of Hekate:
But execute my statute, purifying it as I shall instruct you. Make a form from wild rue and decorate it with small animals, such as lizards which live about the house. Rub a mixture of myrrh, gum, and frankincense with these animals, and out in the clear air under the waxing moon, complete this (statue) yourself offering the following prayer.
The Greek Magical Papryi also has some similar rituals for animating statues. The practice of ritualized animation, also known as the "telestic art", was a process the telestai (the one who is aimed) or initiate would externalize the quickening of the spirit process in a statue of a god. This does not mean that a statue literally moved and walked around. Of course, the Greek word telestike, quite literally means a process of "completion", maturation or perfection which essentially was bringing purification to the soul into its most perfect or finished state in which it could rise into the celestial heights, and the cosmos, where the angels, gods, and other divine beings dwelt. The concept of "perfection" of course, is replete in Paul's epistles, the Gospels, as well as the Nag Hammadi Codices. In the Clementine Recognitions II, 9, Simon Magus himself brags about his magical prowess, and specifically names animating statues as one of his abilities:
For I am able to render myself invisible to those who wish to lay hold of me, and again to be visible when I am willing to be seen. If I wish to flee, I can dig through the mountains, and pass through rocks as if they were clay. If I should throw myself headlong from a lofty mountain, I should be born unhurt to the earth, as if I were held up; when bound, I can loose myself, and bind those who had bound me; being shut up in prison, I can make the barriers open of their own accord; I can render statues animated so that those who see suppose that they are men.
Justin's confusion and that of other Church Fathers could be related to the fact that the Simonians themselves were responsible for this identification, since some of them worshiped Simon Magus as a diving being, often in the form of Zeus, as Kurt Rudolph pointed out in his book, Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism, pg. 295.
A statue of Hekate or Hecate.
Zeus, naturally.
Semo Sancus was also conflated with Hercules. Hercules was also said to be the son of Jupiter/Zeus. Here is what I also said about Hercules in the first part of my commentary of the Great Declaration:
Stephen Haar in his work, Simon Magus: The First Gnostic? notes that the Phoenician (notice the that connection again as associated with the city of Tyre where Simon found Helen in a brothel) sun-god Herakles (Hercules), like Simon was also conferred with the title of the "Standing One". Even the name Simon could be traced to the oriental stem of Sem-Herakles, a deity also worshiped in Samaria.
Jesus was considered synonymous with Aesculapius, the son of Apollo, in the Gospel of John and the The Gospel of Nicodemus, and even specifically named as such by Pilate in the later. A divinity described as overseeing oaths, contracts and loyalties sounds eerily similar to that of the Lawgiver Jehovah throughout the Old Testament. This Jewish deity makes a contract with Moses in Exodus by giving him the Ten Commandments written on his tablets, only moments later for Moses to literally break in half! To make things even more thornier, according to Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Hippolytus, statues of Simon and Helena were created in the likeness of Zeus/Jupiter and Athena/Minerva. Hippolytus tells us about the Simonians in Refutation of All Heresies (6,15):
And they have an image of Simon (fashioned) into the figure of Jupiter, and (an image) of Helen in the form of Minerva; and they pay adoration to these." But they call the one Lord and the other Lady. And if any one amongst them, on seeing the images of either Simon or Helen, would call them by name, he is cast off, as being ignorant of the mysteries.
Compare this to what the Church Historian Eusebius would much later write in Church History 2: 13:
But they nevertheless have embraced again the superstitions of idols, which they seemed to have renounced; and they fall down before pictures and images of Simon himself and of the above-mentioned Helena who was with him; and they venture to worship them with incense and sacrifices and libations.
What could this all mean? As we already know, Simon had a "beloved" disciple and consort, a Phoenician sorceress called Helena, as they were both worshiped in the form of Zeus and Athena, which certainly appealed to the Greeks of their time as well. Helena's connection with Sophia, the holy harlot, also goes without saying. The manner of Athena's birth also shares great similarities with the Gnostic Barbelo, who is described as the co-eternal forethought of Godhead (Father) which begets the Nous (Son); it is the out-flowing of Noetic Power which fills/nurtures the Nous' contemplation of the Father. Athena was also a Virgin and Mother, which all hearkens back to the Egyptian Isis. This is the Sethianized (Dosithean) version of the Simonian myth as seen with Helena being the "First Thought" or "Forethought" of Simon, the Nous or the "Universal Mind" i.e. the incarnation of the Father. This same being describes herself in the Trimorphic Protennoia:
I am the life of my Epinoia that dwells within every Power and every eternal movement, and (in) invisible Lights and within the Archons and Angels and Demons, and every soul dwelling in Tartaros, and (in) every material soul. I dwell in those who came to be. I move in everyone and I delve into them all. I walk uprightly, and those who sleep, I awaken. And I am the sight of those who dwell in sleep.
Notice how Protennoia describes as herself as being "within" the world-creating Archons, Angels, and Demons! This fits into the account as described by Simon Magus in the Great Declaration:
And to this manner did the fire assume both male and female forms, the one from above and the other from below, as each did mature unto perfect conformity with the Heavenly Power whose likeness and image they were. And when they appeared in the midst of the rushing water of the realm of becoming, the female Thought was set upon and defiled by the angels and lower powers who made this world of matter. And they used the fiery power within her to give life to their creations.
Simon Magus, despite his bizarre activities and magical practices, does not come across exactly like a charlatan. Rather, he operated like a Shaman. True, he did practice some necromancy and even said he had created a human being from thin air and a wandering soul in the Clementine literature. But these improbable tales were probably just plain advertising and increased business. And many people benefited from his healing. As I already mentioned, Semo was a Latin term for "semi-human" or "demi-god", while Sancus meant "spirit" or daimon. A daimon, of course, was also considered to be synonymous with Platonic messenger gods like Eros and Phanes (which are both titles ascribed to basically the same being). Even Socrates equated himself as a daimonic philosopher. My paper, Eros, Orpheus and On the Origin of the World, goes into all of this in-depth. The Greek historian Plutarch in On Isis and Osiris claims that daimons or daemons had an inconsistent and contradictory nature, much like humans, which is why philosophers were considered to have daemonic qualities.
XXV. "Do they, therefore, better, who believe the legends told about Typhon, Osiris, and Isis, not to refer to either gods or men, but to certain great Powers (dæmons), whom Plato, Pythagoras, Xenocrates, and Chrysippus (following the ancient theologians) assert to have been created far stronger than men, and greatly surpassing our nature in power, but yet having the divine part not entirely unmixed nor unalloyed, but combined with the nature of the soul and the senses of the body, susceptible of pleasure and pain, and all other emotions the result of these, that by their vicissitudes disturb, some in a greater, others in a less degree; for, in that case, as amongst men, so amongst dæmons, exist degrees of virtue and of vice. '
For the deeds of the Giants and Titans, sung of by the Greeks, certain atrocious actions of Saturn, the pitched battle between Python and Apollo, the flight of Bacchus, the wanderings of Ceres do not fall short in absurdity of the legends about Osiris and Typhon, and the others that one may hear told by mythologists to any amount—all the things that are shrouded in mystic ceremonies, and are presented by rites, being kept secret and out of sight from the vulgar, and have a shape similar to those mentioned of the Egyptians."
The cult of Simon as First God is an enigma. It has been associated with Samaritan-Jewish concepts of God, especially in the Samaritan connection with Moses and YHWH but the title is hardly consistent with any sort of monotheism. Pagan parallels, such as with Samaritan-pagan syncretic cults are more promising. In the book, The Samaritans, by Alan David Crown, he writes:
Abu'l Fath's account of Hadrian's activities in Palestine certainly contains a number of legendary elements, but behind his story of Hadrian's temple, there undoubtedly lies the fact that Hadrian erected on Mount Gerizim – not on the mountain next to it – a temple of Zeus (Jupiter). The remains of this temple erected on Mount Gerizim were excavated at Tell er-Ras by the Drew-McCormic expedition in the 1960's, and it is presumable the temple to which reference is made in a passage which has been preserved in the Bibliotheca of Photius, a Patriarch of Constantinople in the ninth century A.D.
Of course, Mount Gerizim is the same mountain which was considered sacred by the Samaritans. John 4:19-20 has the Samaritan woman at the well telling Jesus this:
The woman said to him, "Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship."
Jesus responds swiftly to the Samaritan woman (who is likely Helena in disguise):
21 Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.
A syncretic mixture between gentile heathenism and Samaritan religion seemed to have been becoming more and more of a common feat in the ancient world as demonstrated above. There are also many hints of this in the Old Testament where Levite priests were even hired to perform rituals and rites based on the heathen gods, outside of Judaism and the worship of YHWH when times were tough. King Solomon was also said to have converted to heathen gods in 1 Kings. One last point on Justin Martyr is that at the end of the Second Apology, Justin admits his motives to destroy the Gnostics and Simonians by government sanction. He begs the Emperor Antoninus Pius to admit his apology into law against the Simonians. They wanted to tear down statues of gods merely because they believed the gods were images of Simon. His only purpose for composing the treatise (not actually an apology) was to convince the Emperor to kill Gnostics by law. He failed.
But the evil spirits were not satisfied with saying, before Christ's appearance, that those who were said to be sons of Jupiter were born of him; but after He had appeared, and been born among men, and when they learned how He had been foretold by the prophets, and knew that He should be believed on and looked for by every nation, they again, as was said above, put forward other men, the Samaritans Simon and Menander, who did many mighty works by magic, and deceived many, and still keep them deceived.
For even among yourselves, as we said before, Simon was in the royal city Rome in the reign of Claudius Caesar, and so greatly astonished the sacred senate and people of the Romans, that he was considered a god, and honoured, like the others whom you honour as gods, with a statue. Wherefore we pray that the sacred senate and your people may, along with yourselves, be arbiters of this our memorial, in order that if any one be entangled by that man's doctrines, he may learn the truth, and so be able to escape error; and as for the statue, if you please, destroy it. And I despised the wicked and deceitful doctrine of Simon of my own nation. And if you give this book your authority, we will expose him before all, that, if possible, they may be converted. For this end alone did we compose this treatise.
And our doctrines are not shameful, according to a sober judgment, but are indeed more lofty than all human philosophy; and if not so, they are at least unlike the doctrines of the Sotadists and Philaenidians, and Dancers, and Epicureans and such other teachings of the poets, which all are allowed to acquaint themselves with, both as acted and as written. And henceforth we shall be silent, having done as much as we could, and having added the prayer that all men everywhere may be counted worthy of the truth. And would that you also, in a manner becoming piety and philosophy, would for your own sakes judge justly!
Dangerous and Deceitful Docetic Doctrines
Even more interesting is that in Dialogue with Trypho (CXX.6), Justin Martyr claims that the Samaritans thought of Simon as a docetic, daimonic being, similar to how Paul viewed Jesus Christ as a spiritual being taking on the likeness of a man, in terms of Christus Victor atonement, i.e., that Christ defeated the powers by duping them into crucifying him:
For I gave no thought to any of my people, that is, the Samaritans, when I had a communication in writing with Caesar, but stated that they were wrong in trusting to the magician Simon of their own nation, who, they say, is God above all power, and authority, and power.
This description of Simon matches up perfectly with St. Paul's "Christ Jesus" or spiritual savior who possessed him, like sort of a "walk-in". Paul's Christ was also above these powers, authorities and all might. Paul calls us to be, "strong in the Lord and in his mighty power" (Ephesians 6:10). Paul says that the law of sin and death (the Torah) is in the body. Or rather, the flesh IS the law. This is how Simon Magus interpreted the Torah as well in the Great Declaration with each book representing different parts of the body as well as each sensation. Simon even equated the Garden of Eden with the womb and the fetus inside a pregnant woman. The Gnostics themselves believed that the spiritual seed was imprisoned into material bodies by the rulers. So if the flesh is the law, as Paul says, then it must logically follow that by Christ's body being crucified, the law was crucified, too. This could further lead one to interpret, as Paul does, that the crucifixion wasn't really a defeat at all, but a victory over the powers. In other words, Christ tricked the powers into crucifying the flesh, which nullified the law by getting them to destroy their own creation.
That's why the Second Treatise of Seth said that they crucified "their man," not Christ. Christ tricked them into destroying their own creation, the prison of the material body. To use Paul's logic again, no human being could overcome the law because they were constricted by material flesh. Therefore, as he writes in Romans 8, someone had to come in the semblance of flesh (phantasmal flesh) to condemn sin, which no human could do since they were bound to sin by the flesh. And by going to the cross, he crucified the law and sin through the form of the flesh. That's the logic of Paul's phantasmal docetism. The flesh is the law, and the flesh impedes righteous because it is predisposed to sin. So anything that has flesh cannot save itself because it is enslaved to sin and the law. So in Paul's mind, a savior had to come who wasn't constricted by flesh so that he could save those who were. Yes, doceticism is found expressly in Paul. And this is how Marcion, the Gnostics, and Simonians came up with their ideas on a docetic Christology – straight from Paul!
"But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead. For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. … For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit."
Paul's entire soteriology makes no sense without a docetic Christology. Flesh is what causes sin, and the law is what empowers sin. Since the flesh produces sin, it prevents the fulfillment of the law. Therefore, something without flesh had to come and condemn sin, which annihilated the just requirement of the law. So all who believe in Christ are, in Paul's mind, redeemed (literally purchased) out from the law by spiritually partaking in his crucifixion and destroying their own flesh. If Earl Doherty's theory holds, the original Pauline Christ was never incarnate on earth. His crucifixion occurred exclusively in a spiritual dimension. So by that interpretation, the rulers would have crucified him themselves. Obviously, the later Paulinists and Gnostics believed that Christ actually did appear on earth and had a historical ministry, so in that case, the Roman authorities would have crucified him, at the behest of the Jews. But the spiritual rulers would have been operating behind them.
The Concept of Our Great Power says something very similar, which is no surprise since the text itself is considered to be a late Simonian text:
Who is this? What is this? His word was abolished the law of the aeon. He is from the Logos of' the power of life. And he was victorious over the command of the archons, and they were not able by their work to rule over him.
The crucifixion, for the author of Power, wasn't the destruction of Jesus, but of the archons. It's basically a continuation of the interpretation of the cross in Colossians (Jesus crucifying the law, rather than Jesus himself being crucified, i.e., Jesus is secretly the one in complete control behind the crucifixion). The crucifixion is the defeat of the powers and represents each individual's triumph over their own fleshly impulses. The Basildean Second Treatise of the Great Seth also repeats these same themes of the descent of the Savior through the heavens, during which he assumes different forms in order not to be recognized by the angels.
And I subjected all their powers. For as I came downward, no one saw me. For I was altering my shapes, changing from form to form. And therefore, when I was at their gates, I assumed their likeness. For I passed them by quietly, and I was viewing the places, and I was not afraid nor ashamed, for I was undefiled. And I was speaking with them, mingling with them through those who are mine, and trampling on those who are harsh to them with zeal, and quenching the flame. And I was doing all these things because of my desire to accomplish what I desired by the will of the Father above.
Later in the same text, Christ mocks and laughs with great zeal at the Orthodox and Judaic (the Pharisee Caiaphas's idea really) doctrine of vicarious redemption through suffering and blood sacrifice, for the sins of Israel and the world:
"For my death, which they think happened, (happened) to them in their error and blindness, since they nailed their man unto their death. … But in doing these things, they condemn themselves. … And I subjected all their powers. …
They nailed him to the tree, and they fixed him with four nails of brass. The veil of his temple he tore with his hands … for the souls which were in the sleep below were released. And they arose. They went about boldly, having shed zealous service of ignorance and unlearnedness beside the dead tombs, having put on the new man…" …They struck me with the reed; it was another, Simon, who bore the cross on his shoulder. I was another upon Whom they placed the crown of thorns. But I was rejoicing in the height over all the wealth of the archons and the offspring of their error, of their empty glory. And I was laughing at their ignorance.
This other "Simon" is mentioned by Tertullian in Against All Heresies, and also claims was indeed crucified or sacrificed in Jesus' stead. This is mirrored in the much later Koran, the Gospel of Barnabas and in Islamic beliefs of Jesus not dying on the cross.
Christ, moreover, he affirms to have been sent, not by this maker of the world, but by the above-named Abraxas; and to have come in a phantasm, and been destitute of the substance of flesh: that it was not He who suffered among the Jews, but that Simon was crucified in His stead: whence, again, there must be no believing on him who was crucified, lest one confess to having believed on Simon.
Clearly, as Simon of Cyrene, Simon Magus appears in the Nag Hammadi documents. Simon of Cyrene never actually existed, however. He, like most of the other Simons, was based upon hearsay about Simon Magus. I suspect that the author of Mark was aware of rumors that a certain Simon had been crucified with Christ, but in actuality, this was a misinterpretation of Paul's (who, unbeknownst to Mark, was actually Simon Magus himself) crucifixion mysticism. Later Gnostics like Basilides, also being unaware of the origin of this Simonian legend, concocted myths about Simon of Cyrene being crucified in Jesus's stead. However, the Concept of Our Great Power doesn't think Simon was crucified instead of Jesus. Rather, the author is a monophysite docetist, like Paul, who believed that Jesus Christ was one person with a phantasmal body who actually underwent the crucifixion. Let's compare the Second Treatise of the Great Seth with Ephesians 2:14:
For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; having abolished the enmity in the flesh, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; and that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby.
While the Second Treatise of Seth has many Pauline elements strewn throughout, it does warn against the idea of "dying with Christ": "It is enslavement that we should die with Christ, with flawless and imperishable mind (at our bidding). This is a wonder not understood." Indeed, it is not understood. The Gospel of Philip also tells us the shape-shifting nature of the docetic Jesus Christ:
Jesus took them all by stealth, for he did not appear as he was, but in the manner in which they would be able to see him. He appeared to them all. He appeared to the great as great. He appeared to the small as small. He appeared to the angels as an angel, and to men as a man. Because of this, his word hid itself from everyone. Some indeed saw him, thinking that they were seeing themselves, but when he appeared to his disciples in glory on the mount, he was not small. He became great, but he made the disciples great, that they might be able to see him in his greatness.
Next, The Ascension of Isaiah also shares numerous similarities with the scenarios described above, which according to Simone Petrement in A Separate God (page 319) was authored by a Simonian school, around Menander's time (a disciple or son of Simon Magus). The Ascension of Isaiah (10: 8-13) tells us:
"Go out and descend through all the heavens. You shall descend through the firmament and through that world as far as the angel who (is) in Sheol, but you shall not go as far as Perdition. And you shall make your likeness like that of all who (are) in the five heavens, and you shall take care to make your form like that of the angels of the firmament and also (like that) of the angels who (are) in Sheol. And none of the angels of that world shall know that you (are) Lord with me of the seven heavens and of their angels.
And they shall not know that you (are) with me when with the voice of the heavens I summon you, and their angels and their lights, and when I lift up (my voice) to the sixth heaven, that you may judge and destroy the princes and the angels and the gods of that world, and the world which is ruled by them, for they have denied me and said, 'We alone are, and there is no one besides us.'
Notice how the angelic rulers sentiments of being "alone, and there is no one besides us", match almost verbatim from various statements made by Jehovah about himself being the "only God" in Isaiah of the Old Testament. His boasting, egoistical comments about himself become transferred to the world-ruling, world-creating angels. The "LORD God" becomes separated and decentralized into multiple powers in Ascension, in this case.
"Is there any God besides Me, Or is there any other Rock? I know of none." Isaiah 44:8
All of this is echoed in Hippolytus who writes in Refutation of All Heresies (Book VI, Chapter XIV) on Simon's doctrine:
But the angels and the powers below—who, he says, created the world—caused the transference from one body to another of (Helen's soul); and subsequently she stood on the roof of a house in Tyre, a city of Phœnicia, and on going down thither (Simon professed to have) found her. For he stated that, principally for the purpose of searching after this (woman), he had arrived (in Tyre), in order that he might rescue her from bondage. And after having thus redeemed her, he was in the habit of conducting her about with himself, alleging that this (girl) was the lost sheep, and affirming himself to be the Power above all things.
The same may be said of the disguise adopted by Simon as he descends to save Helena: he passes down through the powers and authorities and angels "transformed and made like" one of them, to appear among men in the guise of a man as proclaimed in the Great Declaration. This has an obvious kinship with later second-century Christological developments with the Gnostics. The resurrection account according St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:50-58 tells us that the dead in Christ, receive spiritual, docetic bodies, which is transformed or transmuted from the bodies of material flesh.
50This I declare, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does corruption inherit incorruption. 51Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all fall asleep, but we will all be changed, 52 in an instant, in the blink of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 53 For that which is corruptible must clothe itself with incorruptibility, and that which is mortal must clothe itself with immortality. 54 And when this which is corruptible clothes itself with incorruptibility and this which is mortal clothes itself with immortality, then the word that is written shall come about:
"Death is swallowed up in victory. 55 Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"
56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
58 Therefore, my beloved brothers, be firm, steadfast, always fully devoted to the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
"Death is swallowed up in victory" is an amazingly deep phrase. On the Qabalistic Tree of Life, Victory or "Netzach" is the primary title of the sphere which rules over "strength" and "fortitude". According to Paul, victory is also one of the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5-22-23:
22 In contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.
Death, according to On the Origin of the World, is actually one of demonic Archons, created by Yaldabaoth because of his jealousy at Sabaoth (the archon or "Lord of Hosts" that repents to Sophia), which in turn creates his own demonic offspring! This is the Angel of Death, or the Destroying Angel of Exodus.
And having become wrathful, he engendered Death out of his death: and he (viz., Death) was established over the sixth heaven, <for> Sabaoth had been snatched up from there. And thus the number of the six authorities of chaos was achieved. Then Death, being androgynous, mingled with his (own) nature and begot seven androgynous offspring.
Simon, too, is depicted as a victorious supernatural being, who by stealth, slipped past the Archons, to find and rescue his consort, Helena, who is entrapped into the brothel of prostitution, which is symbolic of the world of flesh.
After these things, when her body was exchanged by the angels and powers, she was exposed in the streets of Tyre in Phoenicia as an infant, taken up by a brothel master, and raised in a brother, where she knew no other life save that of degradation. But as the poet recounts the stratagem of the Achaians whereby they infiltrated the fastness of Troy inside a great toy horse, so did her yoke-mate Mind, the male, gain entry to the realm of her captors by appearing in the likeness of their creatures as a man. The angels who governed the world were corrupt by reason of their lust for power, and so I appeared to set things right, transforming myself and making myself like unto the dominions, principalities, and angels, so that I manifested myself as a man, though I was not really a man. And I seemed to suffer in Judea, although I did not really undergo it.
Later in the same text, Simon promises his followers this, which sounds like something Jesus Christ would say in the Gospels:
Thus I wrought the ransoming of the human race, recalling to myself the sparks of the latent fire which the angels used to order their creation, and this must issue in the dissolution of the world, but equally in the redemption of all who believe in me.
That Simon had a conspicuous female disciple from a converted prostitute might also be possible. However, the same charge is made against Mary Magdalene in the Gospels, as she too is accused of being a "prostitute" and is associated greatly in her lore. In Luke 7:38, Mary Magdalene washes Jesus' feet in a very erotic manner, mirroring what Jesus would do for his own disciples in John:
As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.
However, Mary Magdalene in Gnostic texts is depicted as being equal if not superior over the Apostles and was favored by the Savior through the act of initiation of the Divine Vision of the mysteries, as illustrated in the Gospel of Mary. Mary Magdalene was seen as sort of a female revealer, or initiator of the pagan mysteries. Perhaps this explicit language of Helena being a prostitute is merely symbolic of the state of the spirit that languishes in the human body.
Mary Magdalene looking all uppity with a skull.
It was pertinent for the Orthodox to eschew charges of misogyny by deleting Mary Magdalene's role altogether. It was also interesting to see how the Gnostics were often accused of the same attitude when it came to women and their views on the "destruction of the womb" (i.e. the deficiency of matter itself); however, looking at their gospels and texts, the constant harping on Divine Wisdom in feminine terms (even in her fallen state), the role of female revealers like Mary Magdalene, Norea, Helena, Marcelina, etc. are emphatically emphasized in the positive.
The Gnostics brought additional Gospels to the fore with Mary Magdalene among others. Her true importance is said to have been excluded from the Bible by Peter (and the Roman Catholic Church) who denied Christ three times and detested women, especially educated ones, seeing them as the gateway to the Devil, even denying they had souls. There is also no charge of immorality here in Justin Martyr and Ireneaeus's accounts, still less of sexual rites.
The Simonians, however, are charged with "free love" and living "profligate" lives. It is only later in the Church Father, Epiphanius do we find accusations of sexual immorality and bizarre tales of drinking semen and menses as Eucharistic substances. Or worse–the eating of a fetus. Eusebius, also mentions something about how the Simonians were engaged in "shameful acts" and "unspeakable conduct", apparently only relying on the slander of the previous Church Fathers. Is this the Simonian attempt to compete with Mary Magdalene or are both women, actually one and the same figure? Helen's role as Simon's first thought also matches up with Greek myth as mentioned earlier.
It also could reflect some kind of male-female syzygy-doctrine associated with Simon's magical systems as reflected in the Great Declaration and mirrored through the later convoluted and intricately constructed Sethian and Valentinian aeonic systems. These models would eventually come to influence later medieval Kabbalistic diagrams of the Tree of Life. It is these magical systems in which Simon supposedly pursued in the aftermath with the defeat from Peter in Acts, where he mistakenly regarded (and with good reason) Christian healings as magical and the gift of the Spirit as the mark of a higher grade of magic- if one can even make such a distinction.
The pursuit of these magical rites and techniques resulted in Claudius honoring him with a statue. Simon and his first Thought exist on a purely spiritual level, free from the trammels of the flesh until Helen is captured by rebellious angels who imprison her in a physical body in the material world which they have made. The metempsychosis of Helen and the references to Greek literature are among those and are consistent with the syncretistic nature of the Samaritan cultural milieu and the Simonian schools at Antioch and Alexandria that would later rise from it. In essence, Simon was appealing to all peoples, of all nations, especially the gentile ones, in all three forms of his glory. Eusebius makes a very arresting statement in how Simon was worshiped.
Of whom there is one Simon, a Samaritan, whom we read of in the Acts of the Apostles, who said he was some Great Power. And among the rest of the things written in his volumes, he proclaimed as follows: "I am the Word of God; I am the glorious one, I the Paraclete, the Almighty, I the whole of God." ix. Hieronymus (In Matthaeum, IV. xxiv. 5). Text: S. Eusebii Hieronymi Comment.; Migne Patrol. Grec., VII. col. 176.
Not only does this mirror Simon's statements of himself being the Trinity in the Great Declaration, but it also mirrors greatly what Jesus commands of his disciples in Matthew 28:19-20:
Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.
Stay tuned for the second part in False Gods, Divine Charlatans, and Hermetic Hustlers, as Hermes will give his two cents on all of this.
Posted in Biblical Exegesis, Gnosis and tagged Apollo, Gnostic, Helios, Mithra, Semo Sancus, Simon Magus, Zeus on October 21, 2014 by Alex. 3 Comments