This book is dedicated to the Serpents of Wisdom with thanks

Chapter Twelve

Gnostic Christians

In Gnosticism, gnosis is no formal philosophy of the Platonic kind, but a means of escaping existence; no knowledge of the world, but an attempt to anticipate the undoing of the world’s creation. However strongly Gnosticism may make the impression of being a philosophy, in essence it is not so, but an attempt to render all philosophy superfluous. It is first and foremost a secret revelation. H.W. Drijvers

Gnosis is the revelation and salvific knowledge of who we were, of what we have become, of where we were, of wherein we have been thrown, of whereto we are hastening, of what we are being freed, of what birth really is, and of what rebirth really is. www.gnosis.org

A person comes to Divine Gnosis by Divine Grace, combined with sincere and informed human aspiration. www.gnosis.org

Gnosis - The Greek word meaning knowledge, also intended to mean spiritual elevation. The Gnostic position is the root of all occult philosophy. Gnosis, with Wisdom (Sophia) are the highest virtues and the path to immortality. Gnosis is the revelation of the higher world, not so much a knowing as a remembering of one's original nature, superior to matter, a remembering of one's identity and position, original purpose and origin. Through gnosis, a person knows that spiritual origin and destination are the same. The result of gnosis is a restoration to the everlasting part of one's self beyond the powers of fate and time. The Saviors, divine messengers who bring this revelation, remain strangers in this world of time. Gnostics venerated the serpent because a divine messenger disguised as a serpent, brought gnosis to Adam and Eve and taught them complete knowledge of the mysteries from on high. Dictionary of Common Era Gnosticism

Gnosticism was an integral part of the ancient mysteries since both involved the belief that only personal inner enlightenment could bring understanding. According to the Masonic philosopher Manley Hall, “This knowledge of how man’s manifold constitution could be most quickly and most completely regenerated to the point of spiritual illumination constituted the secret or esoteric doctrine of antiquity.” Hall said such enlightenment and awareness had to be jealously guarded from profane persons who might abuse or misuse such knowledge. So lengthy periods of initiation were instituted and the most sensitive ancient knowledge was shrouded in symbols and allegory. ‘Christianity itself may be cited as an example,’ he wrote. ‘The entire New Testament is in fact an ingeniously concealed exposition of the secret processes of human regeneration.’ Rule by Secrecy p 349

What the Gnostic Christian finally comes to ‘know’ is that the gospel of Christ can be perceived on a level deeper than the one shared by all Christians. One who takes the path of gnosis discovers that the gospel is more than a message about repentance and forgiveness of sins; it becomes a path of spiritual awakening, through which one discovers the divine within. The secret of gnosis is that when one comes to know oneself at the deepest level, one comes to know God as the source of one’s being. ...Whoever is reborn of the Heavenly Father and Mother receives back a part of him/herself that had been lost in the beginning of time; the Spirit - the partner of one’s soul. This person then becomes a Christ. The Origin of Satan - Elaine Pagels

Professor Pagels just explained the Sacred Marriage. It’s when your Spirit and soul reunite. You are then a Christ. Jeshua says that the Light worker family are going to be the Christ’s of this era. He says that all souls at some point will be Light workers, and Christ’s.

The early Church father Irenaeus wrote that the Gnostics believed that every initiate received, or was capable of receiving, direct inspiration from the Holy Spirit. Because of this, they treated each member of their group equally. When they met, they would draw lots to decide who would officiate in the different roles of their services. One would read scripture, one would preach, one would be the prophet, another would officiate over the sacrament. The Quakers were still conducting their business and worship by these same methods almost two thousand years later. Southern Baptists are also a very democratic institution, but not all of them treat women as equals. It’s one of their main flaws, and is caused by a misunderstanding of the gnostic meaning of the New Testament.
One teaching of the Gnostics that Irenaeus found particularly distressing was the teaching that there was a second baptism to strive for, that the baptism Christians receive was just the first step in an initiation. In fact, the second baptism was of fire or Spirit, not water. The first baptism is the baptism of John the Baptist and cleanses one from sins. The second baptism is from the Holy Spirit, and Jesus received this baptism while still in the water after having been baptized by John the Baptist when the Spirit of God came upon him as a dove. According to Elaine Pagels in her book Beyond Belief, p 138 “In their first baptism, believers have pledged to serve as Lord the God whom they revere as creator and fear as Divine lawgiver and judge; but now, Ptolemy and his disciple explained, having progressed beyond that level of understanding, they are to come to see God as Father, as Mother, Source of all being - in other words, as One who transcends all such images. Thus Ptolemy invites those who previously saw themselves as God’s servants - or, more bluntly, his slaves - to come to understand themselves as God’s children. To signal their release from slavery to become, in Paul’s words, God’s own children and heirs, Ptolemy calls the second baptism apolutrosis, which means ‘redemption’ or ‘release,’ alluding to the judicial process through which a slave became legally free.”
According to Mark Pinkham, author of The Return of the Serpents of Wisdom pp 239/9 the Gnostics claimed that the wisdom of their school was as old as the Garden of Eden and had been transmitted to Adam as part of the Kabbalic teachings. Gnostics claimed that the original preceptor of Gnosticism was the serpent on the tree; “which had been a type of Jesus Christ.” Mark relates that the Primal Serpent, or Enki or Yahweh, transmitted the teachings to Adam, then Adam passed them to Seth. Seth in turn passed them to his descendants. Mark wrote that the Gnostic historian Iamblichus identified the Sons of Seth as the descendants of the first Thoth-Hermes, who many believe was the builder of the Great Pyramid at Giza, and who I mentioned earlier was also Ningishzidda, a son of Enki. From the Sons of Seth the wisdom of Gnosticism eventually spread throughout the Earth. The Serpents of Wisdom and all their varied names are just other versions of the title ‘Sons of Seth’.
Mark wrote that after many ages, the lineage of Gnostic Masters culminated with the birth of the historical Jesus Christ, “the greatest Gnostic adept of them all.” He calls Christ a later incarnation of “the original Serpent on the Tree,” whose “mission was to teach all people how to escape via gnosis the oppressive dictates of Yaldaboath, the evil ruler of the world.”
Tau Malachi, in his book Living Gnosis; a Practical Guide to Gnostic Christianity brings additional insight into Christian Gnosticism. He wrote; p 22 “Christian Gnostics rely upon a direct and personal experience of the Living Yeshua as the foundation of their belief and practice. The very nature of the living Yeshua is not an experience isolated to the past. It is an ongoing experience in the present, which means anyone who is open, sensitive, and desirous of experiencing the living Yeshua can have a direct and personal experience.” p 24 He goes on to say that Gnosticism is experiential not a fixed set of dogmas and creeds to be learned. He states that most authentic gnostic traditions place emphasis “on an actual contact with a living image of the Light transmission and the receiving of a spiritual education.” p 25 He describes the acquisition of Gnosis as coming from, “a progressive self-discipline, practice and the integration of one’s spirituality to daily living.” He asserts that, “anyone who is willing to engage in actual spiritual practice and spiritual living can enter into the experience of the living Yeshua and consciously evolve him or herself towards Christ consciousness.” He says that this is the most basic message of Gnostic Christianity. p 87 He adds that from the Sophian (Gnostic) perspective, on every level of our being and consciousness, “we truly live, move and have all of our experience in God, and it is the realization of this which is enlightenment and liberation.” He says that the entire message of the Gospel, which I believe refers to the New Testament, is that the kingdom of God is within and all around us, we merely need to have the eyes to see it, and thus to live in it. Jesus made the statement that the Kingdom of God is all around us, but people just don’t see it.
From the Dictionary of Early Common Era Gnosticism; “Because the Gnostics believed in a direct, personal experience of the spiritual realms, and because many of their books were channeled, their literature is passionately subjective and richly diverse. They professed knowledge (gnosis), rather than faith, to be the key to life's mysteries, and that such knowledge comes from spiritual insight gained through the inner mystical experience. Gnostics are the ‘sons of interior knowledge’. Gnosis takes religion out of the realm of faith and places it in the realm of personal experience.” Lest any of my Christian brothers and sisters be alarmed by this, I want to remind you that faith is the first step towards Christ Consciousness. There comes a time though, when a soul needs to advance to a more spiritual experience.
Edgar Cayce was shocked to learn that in his trance state he spoke of a Christianity that was considerably different than what is practiced today. He hadn’t even heard of Gnosticism, and he certainly had never believed in reincarnation. Cayce foresaw that in the future, “China would be the cradle of Christianity, as applied in the lives of men.” This is hard to fathom now, but it is certainly a much better vision than the specter of a massive Communist Chinese military body, which is more the picture today. Jesus used and taught yogic practices that were designed to assist in the activation of the chakras. He brought an improved method for doing this. So to believe that the Chinese would re-adopt these practices is not hard to accept.
Elaine Pagels was a scholar involved in the translation of the gnostic Nag Hammadi texts. In the introduction to her book, The Gnostic Gospels, she writes that what was discovered at Nag Hammadi was a collection of writings which were “mostly gnostic.” She states that many of them refer to scriptures in the Old Testament and others refer to letters of Paul and the New Testament gospels. She notes that many of them include the same people as the New Testament but that the “differences are striking.” She notes that orthodox Jews and Christians insist that there is a chasm separating humans and God. “God is wholly other.” But, she states; “some of the Gnostics who wrote these gospels contradict this: self-knowledge is knowledge of God; the self and the divine are identical.”
In another example, she notes that the “living Jesus” of the Nag Hammadi texts speaks of illusion and enlightenment, not of sin and repentance. In the Nag Hammadi texts instead of coming to save us from sin, Jesus comes as a guide who “opens access to spiritual understanding.” Pagels notes that when the disciple achieves enlightenment, “Jesus no longer serves as his spiritual master: the two have become equal - even identical.”
The third difference she notes is that orthodox Christians believe that Jesus is Lord and son of God in a unique way, that he is distinct from the rest of humanity “who he came to save.” But the Gospel of Thomas relates that Jesus said to Thomas that they have both received their being from the same source. Jesus said, “I am not your master. Because you have drunk, you have become drunk from the bubbling stream which I have measured out …He who will drink from my mouth will become as I am: I myself shall become he, and the things that are hidden will be revealed to him.” Pagels writes; “Like Baptists, Quakers, and many others, the Gnostic is convinced that whoever receives the Spirit communicates directly with the divine.”
P 37 The early Church Father Valentinus was a student of Theudas who was a student of Saul/Paul of the Bible. Through Valentinus initiation, the initiate was taught to “reject the creator’s⁶⁵ authority and all his demands as foolishness.” Pagels states that Gnostics know that the creator makes false claims to power, “I am God, and there is no other.” To achieve Gnosis one needs to recognize the true source of divine power - namely, ‘the Depth’ of all being. According to Pagels; “Whoever has come to know that source simultaneously comes to know himself and discovers his spiritual origin: he has come to know his true Father and Mother.” One of the rites in the Gnostic initiation involves addressing the demiurge, Yaldabaoth and telling him they reject him and the other archons, and that he and they, have no authority over them.
Pagels explains that whoever comes to this Gnosis which she calls this insight is ready to receive the sacrament called the redemption which literally means ‘release’. She says that before gaining Gnosis, the candidate “worshiped the demiurge, mistaking him for the true God.” Through the sacrament of redemption, the initiate shows that he has been released from the demiurges power. In this ritual, he addresses the demiurge, declaring his independence, serving notice that he no longer belongs to the demiurges sphere of authority and judgment, but to what transcends it. The initiate states; “I am a son from the Father - the Father who is pre-existent …I derive being from Him who is pre-existent, and I come again to my own place whence I came forth.” From this, the candidate receives an entirely new relation to spiritual authority. “Now he knows that the clerical hierarchy derives its authority from the demiurge - not from the Father.”

This last statement will give you some idea of why the Gnostics were, and still are, so unpopular with patriarchal religious authorities!

The Ebionites
The word Ebionite translates as ‘the poor’. They acquired that name because they lived communally, gave away their possessions, and shared anything they received with their community, as did the Essenes. This group was the first Christian Church established by Jesus. From the Apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, who was an original Apostle, comes this;
The disciples said to Jesus, ‘We know that you will depart from us. Who is to be our leader?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Wherever you are, you are to go to James the righteous, for whose sake Heaven and Earth came into being.’
James was Jesus brother - whom the church fathers called James the less to minimize his importance. James was assisted in the leadership of the Church in Jerusalem by the apostles Simon-Peter and John. This triumvirate of elders was based on the model practiced by the Essenes. For more than one hundred and fifty years, the church was directly under the leadership of Jesus’ family members. It appears that James steered the church towards a more hardline approach to the Law than Jesus would have wanted, and so many members of the group left and formed other churches.
According to the early Church theologian, Irenaeus, the Ebionite’s insisted that Jesus was man, not God, and was not born of a virgin. They claim that he became the Messiah only at the time of his baptism. Irenaeus said that the Ebionite’s used an alternate version of the Acts of the Apostles, the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of the Hebrews, which I believe to be the same as the Gospel of the Holy Twelve, and like Jesus and the Essenes, they used the prophetic books of the Old Testament. They adhered scrupulously to Judaic law, not the same one in today’s biblical Old Testament, but the original one given to them by Moses. Irenaeus wrote that they rejected the Pauline letters and the apostle Paul, calling him an apostate from the Law. Irenaeus also said that the Ebionite’s used alternative versions of the Acts of the Apostles. The Church Father Hippolytus, writing about 225 C.E. wrote;
And the Ebionite’s allege that they themselves, also, when in like manner they fulfill the law, are able to become Christ’s; for they assert that our Lord himself was a man in like sense with all humanity.
From the esotericist Manley P. Hall in Fragments of a Faith Forgotten;
P 128 Nevertheless it was Ebionism which preserved the tradition of the earliest converts of the public teaching, (of Jesus) and the Ebionite community’s doubtless possessed a collection of the public sayings and based their lives upon them. How then did the original Ebionite’s view the person and teaching of Jesus? They regarded their leader as a wise man, a prophet, a Jonas, nay even a Solomon. Moreover, he was a manifestation of the Messiah, the Anointed, who was to come, but he had not yet appeared as the Messiah; that would only be at his second coming. In his birth as Jesus, he was a prophet simply. The New Dispensation was but the continuation of the Old Law all was essentially Jewish. They therefore expected the coming of the Messiah as literally prophesied by their men of old. He was to come as king, and then all the nations would be subjected to the power of the Chosen People, and for a thousand years there would be peace and prosperity and plenty on Earth.

P 129 Jesus was a man, born as all men, the human son of Joseph and Mary. It was only at his baptism, at thirty years of age, that the Spirit descended upon him and he became a prophet. They, therefore, guarded his sayings as a precious deposit, handing them down by word of mouth. The Ebionite’s knew nothing of the pre-existence or divinity of their revered prophet. It is true that Jesus was ‘Christ’, but so also would all be who fulfilled the Law. Thus they naturally repudiated Paul and his new doctrine entirely; for them Paul was a deceiver and an apostate from the Law, they even denied that he was a Jew. It was only later that they used The Gospel according to the Hebrews, which Jerome says was the same as The Gospel of the Twelve Apostles⁶⁶ and The Gospel of the Nazarenes, that is to say, of the Nazoræans.

P 130 Christianity, as understood by the Ebionite’s, being an essentially national doctrine, Paulinism was a necessity if any public attempt at universality was to be made; therefore it was that the true historical side of popular Christianity became more and more obscured, until finally it had so completely disappeared from the area of such tradition, that a new ‘history’ could with safety be developed to suit the dogmatic evolution inaugurated by Paul.
In Mysteries of the Bridechamber pp 93/4 Victoria LePage wrote that the Essenes, like the Nazoreans, were believed to be descended from the prophetic orders once so influential in the region. She says that Jesus the Nazorean “was widely recognized as heir to the prophetic tradition” and that the early Christians identified him with the prophet Enoch. According to the testimony of Clement, the Ebionite’s taught that Jesus was a human being like any other, but one on whom the Christ Spirit, “an archangelic being of the highest hierarchy of angels,” descended at the time of his baptism. Victoria informs us that the Ebionite’s believed in reincarnation and revered Jesus as “the True Prophet, an incarnation of the ancient Iranian prophet Zarathustra.” They believed that it was in Zarathustra’s final embodiment as Jesus, that Zarathustra “received the full revelation of the Divine.” “Since the creation of the world, the True Prophet hastens through the centuries, changing his name and form of appearance. He incarnates himself again and again. Jesus is the true incarnation of this Prophet.”
Victoria asks some important questions; “But if Jesus was so commonly designated a prophet, why do the gospels not accord him the dignity of his rank? Indeed, we might ask further why Hebrew prophecy itself suddenly vanished from the annals of religious history, seemingly ceasing to exist long before Jesus was born. At this point the suspicion arises that both the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian scriptures may be very political documents.”

The Elchesaites

One direct offshoot of the Ebionite’s were the Elchesaite’s who were later known as Sampsaeans, which means ‘Sun People’, due to the Johannite practice of worshipping the morning and evening stars. The Elchesaites reportedly didn’t use the Old or New Testaments of the Bible. Speaking about the Elchesaites, Epiphanius (320-403) who was bishop of Salamis at the end of the 4th century, made the statement that the Essenes, “Had now renounced Judaism, and no longer lived in the manner of the Jews.”
In the book The God Kings of Europe p 34 the author describes the Elchesaites as “an early Judaic-Christian sect who were also called Mughtasilab - which means shortcut, because they had a shortcut to God.” I believe that shortcut was Jesus method of opening the heart or hrit chakra. The third century theologian Hippolytus, tells how a book by an individual he calls Elchasai, was brought to Rome and he describes the followers of this Elchasai as having an incarnationist doctrine of many Christ’s, Jesus “continually being infused into many bodies, manifested at many times.”
When I first read that there were Messiahs before and even after Jesus, I must admit it bothered me. Christians are taught that they are the only ones who are ‘saved’ and ‘going to heaven’. Honestly, this doctrine was perpetuated by those who wanted to be in control of human lives and evidently their after-life too. There is truth in most religions, but I do believe that Jesus’ Way is the best. If a person thinks rationally about other Messiahs, I believe they will come to understand as I did, that God loved people three thousand years ago as much as he has for the last two thousand years since Jesus. Why shouldn’t they have been sent a Messiah too? Really, it’s the utmost self-centeredness to think that God plays favorites and does not love all humankind equally, regardless of what religion they do or do not practice.

The Johannites

The Johannites started at least as far back in time as Jnana Pandita in India, or Sri Lanka, who was a manifestation of Yahweh. This line went through Enki/Ea/Yah and eventually came to John the Baptist. From John, it went to Jesus then to Jesus’ brother James and then to John the apostle. According to the author of World Gnosis p 126 the early ‘John’s’ had been Jesus disciples. He cites Zebedee, Simon and Titus as succeeding Johns. It was clear that among the Gnostics, Mary Magdalene and John were the disciples of Jeshua who understood his teaching best. The Johannites held them both in high esteem. The Johannites can be traced later in history to the Knights Templars. The leader of the Templars always held the title of John. In an unaltered version of the Gospel of John, called the Evangelicon, it was said that John had received more of the esoteric wisdom and Holy Spirit power than the other Apostles. To the Gnostics, John was Jesus’ true successor. Peter was Jesus’ successor to the non-Gnostics.
According to Mark Pinkham, author of Guardians of the Holy Grail, pp 176/7 “The Jnana Pandita that had once entered John the Baptist later entered the Cupbearer John the Apostle.” This Cupbearer symbolism refers to the same cup as in the Grail Stories. John the Apostle chose as his symbol, a golden chalice with a spiraling snake emerging from it. The cup represents immortality or the Holy Grail, “and its indwelling serpentine Kundalini or Water of Life.” According to Mark, John’s cup also represented his inheritance from his Master Jesus that Jesus had promised when he said to him; “Of my cup you shall indeed drink.” Mark comments that the snake or serpent symbol of John, “when combined with the eagle, another of the Apostle’s symbolic animals, comprises the symbol of the Zodiacal sign of Scorpio, which not surprisingly is the sign associated with the transformative Holy Spirit or Kundalini.” I don’t have a very good understanding of the Zodiacal system, but I will affirm that it seems to have a prominent part in the history of our family. Mark tells us that the brothers John and James had been disciples of John the Baptist before becoming disciples of Jesus, and he says that this set them apart from the other disciples. He says that Jesus acknowledged the abundance of Holy Spirit power in the brothers when he nicknamed them ‘Boanerges’, which meant ‘Sons of Thunder’.

There was an unbroken lineage in the Johannite line through the Templars until the first Crusade when Hugues de Payens was invested with the “Apostolic Patriarchal Power.” That lineage could very well be unbroken to this day, most likely through the Freemasons. The Knights Templar have been accused of paying more homage to John the Baptist than they did to Jesus. I believe there were a few reasons for this. One was that John revived the ancient teachings and had been the teacher of Jesus and so was revered by Jesus as well. Also, the Templars were said to have been in possession of the mummified head of John the Baptist, which they revered because it was still strongly imbued with Holy Spirit power. Just being in proximity to it could empower a person, just as the woman who had bled for years, was healed just by touching Jesus’ garment.

In a document called the Levitikon, written in the fifth century by a Greek monk, it states that John the Beloved was Jesus chosen successor. The Levitikon corroborates the fact that Jesus studied in Egypt and acquired Gnostic Wisdom and Power within the Priesthood of Osiris, as mind boggling as that sounds. I know that will be hard for many of you to believe. Just think of Osiris, Anu, Zeus, and Ra, and all the other Father gods, as other names for God, which is what they are. To the Egyptians of his day, Jesus was the long awaited Horus, the Egyptian Sun God, and the Messiah. In Egyptian mythology, Horus is the son of Osiris, or God, just as Jesus, after the Christ had united with him, was the son of God. They were both, Messiahs or Avatars. One author said that he believed Paul was so enthusiastic about furthering Christianity because he believed that Jesus had been a reincarnation of Mithras, which he might well have been.
The Naassenes
The Naassenes, whose name is derived from the Hebrew Nahash, or serpent, were said to have been started by Jesus brother James and Mary Magdalene. They claim the distinction of being called by Hippolytus in his Refutation of Heresies “the most ancient form of Christian heresy” keeping in mind that he is calling the religion of Jesus and his family a Christian heresy! That would almost be funny, if it weren’t so tragic.
The historian Hippolytus noted that the Gnostics claimed that Christianity, or rather the “Good News of the Christ” was the consummation of the inner doctrine of the Mystery institutions of all nations and that; “The end of them all was the revelation of the Mystery of Man.” I believe the mystery referred to, is the fact that all humans are incarnations of the Infinite Spirit, i.e. gods. Even though we are told we are gods in both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, people still don’t take it literally. The doctrine of Jesus Godhood, has, I believe, caused something very important to be lost. What was lost was that what Jeshua achieved, his godhood, was something he did as a very human man. He was not overshadowed by the Christ until his baptism. He is the perfect model for humanity to follow if they want to achieve their godhood. People need to know that every ‘miracle’ Jesus performed, is achievable by every human, should they choose to evolve in a Godly direction.
One of the Naassenes secret documents found its way into Hippolytus’ hands. That document records that their teachings were derived from James, the brother of the Lord, who had delivered it to Mariamne, who I believe is Mary Magdalene. According to Hippolytus, the Naassenes doctrines were taken from the Mysteries, culminating in the assertion that the Naassenes, were “nothing else than sectaries of the Mysteries of the Mother of the Gods” in proof of which he quotes at length from a secret document of their school. I don’t doubt that he was absolutely correct in his assertion. Believe me - he doesn’t need to prove it to me!
In the book Gnostic Secrets of the Naassenes, p 51 the author writes; “The Naassene scribes command of the Old Testament distinguishes him from other Gnostics of the day, many of whom rejected the Old Testament along with the God of Judaism. In fact, that rejection was almost standard from the time of the second century C.E.” It is important to point out that at that time there were two Gods of Judaism. The followers of the Levites were worshipping Yaldabaoth/Enlil/Jehovah. The prophet class was worshipping Yahweh, or the Trinity including El. The author states that according to the theologian Marcion, the Naassenes retained the best features of Gnosticism and remained free from the worst. They were free of the taint of questionable sexual practices found in some of the other Mystery groups. In fact, the Naassene Sermon emphasizes the need for sexual continence.
The same author speaks of the inclusion in the Naassene Sermon of the Assyrian fish god who was Oannes, known to the Mesopotamian’s as Enki and to the Babylonians as Ea, also Dagon, Poseidon, Sabaoth, etc. The Naassene scribe includes Oannes in his list of ‘First Men’⁶⁷ from antiquity. The author wrote; “This can only mean that Gnostic Christians understood the parallels between Oannes and the ‘Son of Man’ in the early period of Christianity. ...By favoring a name that clearly predated Judaism by thousands of years, Jesus was very consciously placing himself in a context of human history so sweeping in scope that it recedes from us into the mists of the dawn of civilization. And the Naassene scribe’s insistence on preserving these links with antiquity surely reflects the Naassenes awareness of this.” The author claims that the Naassene Sermon “is most helpful in this regard, because it documents in amazing detail just how widespread this concept of the Anthropos or Heavenly Adam was in the ancient world.” This archetype is central to the title Jesus gave to himself, the ‘Son of Man’.
The author of World Gnosis connects the Naassenes with the Nazarenes. He cites; p 57 “One historical incident that irrefutably links the Nazoreans with the Naassenes has James the Just (Jesus’ brother) sending some very secretive serpent teachings to the Naassenes via his chosen envoy, Mariam. This Nazorean Mariam is believed to be none other than Mary Magdalene, who was apparently in association with the Apostles and their Nazorean sect long after the departure of Jesus.”
Elaine Pagels, in The Origin of Satan, cites the work of “an accomplished professor of Celtic literature” named Jessie Weston, who, in her book, From Ritual to Romance, proposed “an elucidation of the Grail Problem” in which she traced the Grail stories origins to the Naassene Sermon. Weston believed she had found parallels in the Naassenes Sermon indicating that the Grail might have come from a pagan vegetation ritual which was later reworked with the Christian elements added. Weston states; “We can show that between these Mystery cults and Christianity there existed at one time a close and intimate union, such a union as of itself involved the practical assimilation of the central rite, in each case a Eucharistic feast in which the worshipers partook of the Food of Life from the sacred vessels.” This, in Weston’s view, was the origin of the sacred vessel or chalice which is the Grail referred to in the Grail stories.
Pagels wrote; p 137 “Weston believed that Christianity had merely reconstituted these older pagan gods in the person of Jesus, fashioning a new myth from old fabric. She did not however, see this as a problem for Christianity because she did not regard pagan religion as primitive. On the contrary, Weston declared that “the more closely one studies pre-Christian theology the more strongly one is impressed with the deeply, and daringly, spiritual character of its speculations.” In her view, the nature cults of the pagan world were a vehicle for “the most-lofty teaching as to the cosmic relations existing between God and man.”
I have to agree with that last assessment. The author of Gnostic Secrets of the Naassenes, p 147 also believes that the Grail stories originated with the Naassenes. He wrote that at their heart, the myths were meant to convey the idea of immanence, the meaning of which is that God is all in all. He/She is in everything and He/She is everything, this being my simplistic explanation of the term. Carl Jung made the statement; “The Grail signifies the realization of divinity reaching right down into matter.” The Grail stories more familiar to us originated circa 1182 C.E. in English, German, Welsh, Spanish and Scandinavian versions.
The following is from Fragments of a Faith Forgotten;
PP 198/9, 203/4 Indeed the Naassenes document, when analyzed into its sources, is found to be the Christian overworking of the Jewish overworking of a Pagan commentary on a Hymn of the Mysteries. The date of the Christian over writer may be placed about the middle of the second century, and the document is especially valuable as pointing out the identity of the inner teachings of Gnostic Christianity with the tenets of the Mysteries - Phrygian, Eleusinian, Dionysian, Samothracian, Egyptian, Assyrian, etc. The Christian writer claimed that his tradition was handed down from James to a certain Mariamne. This Miriam, or Mary, is somewhat of a puzzle to scholarship; it seems, however, probable that the treatise belonged to the same cycle of tradition as ‘The Greater and Lesser Questions of Mary’, ‘The Gospel of Mary’, etc., in the frame of which the ‘Pistis Sophia’ treatise is also set.

The main features of the system are that the cosmos is symbolized as the (Heavenly) Man, male-female, of three natures, spiritual (or intelligible), psychic and material; that these three natures found themselves in perfection in Jesus, who was therefore truly the Son of Man. Mankind is divided into three classes, assemblies, or churches: the elect, the called, and the bound (or in other words, the spiritual or angelic, the psychic, and the choïc or material), according as one or other of these natures predominates.

...The school of the Naasseni, it is said, were all initiated into the Mysteries of the Great Mother, because they found that the whole mystery of rebirth was taught in these rites; they were also rigid ascetics. The name Naasseni was given them because they represented the ‘Moist Essence’⁶⁸ of the universe - without which nothing that exists, whether immortal or mortal, whether animate or inanimate, could hold together - by the symbol of a serpent. This is the cosmic Akāsha of the Upanishads, and the Kundalini, or serpentine force in man, which when following animal impulse is the force of generation, but when applied to spiritual things makes of a man a god.

The author of The Return of the Serpents of Wisdom pp 240/1 wrote; “According to Hippolytus, a Church Father and historian who composed a Christian history of heretical sects, many of the very first Gnostics who traveled to Egypt were known as the Naasseni, or the Serpents. The Naasseni were descendants of the School of the Prophets (the Mt. Carmel Essenes) and continued the ancient worship of their predecessors by worshipping Nahustan, the golden or brazen Primal Serpent, which they adoringly placed upon wooden crosses.”

For an interesting story, go to www. miriamhakedosha.blogspot.com/
Look up the story of Calalus, which was a Jewish settlement near what is now Tucson Arizona, in 775 C.E. There’s a search engine box in the upper left corner of that site. Just type in ‘Calalus’ to be taken to the article. It’s the story of a lead mining operation by our family. The reason I included this information is because you will see in that article that our family was still using the term Nahustan circa 775 C.E., right here in (pre) America. You might note too, that Europeans reached North America long before Columbus! Look up the story of our Welsh prince ancestor Madoc/Madog for another tale of our family in pre-America. Madoc’s descendants now go by the name Maddox and its variants. To continue with the words of G.R.S. Mead;

Many of the Gnostic schools which arose espoused yogic disciplines as a means to spiritual freedom. During the era of the Egyptian Gnostic cults, for example, it was common for a Gnostic seeker to procure a regimen of yoga from an authorized Gnostic Master before retiring to a quiet monastic cell or venturing out into the lonely desert in search of a cave sanctuary to practice these disciplines. Then, while seeking to unite with his Angelic Guide or Higher Self, as their Essene predecessors had once done, the Gnostic seeker would observe celibacy, consume a sparse diet, occasionally fast, study the traditional Gnostic texts, and spend countless hours lost in contemplation and meditation. After a prescribed period of rigorous yogic disciplines, the dormant p 242 intuitive faculties would begin to awaken within a Gnostic aspirant and the illusion of the material world would gradually diminish. Under the purifying effects of the activated serpent fire, which was venerated as Sophia as well as Chnouphis, the androgynous lion-headed serpent, the subtle and spiritual bodies would slowly become awakened and the bonds of physical existence broken.

....Within his or her awakened Dragon Body, a Gnostic seeker would learn the secrets of astral traveling out of Jaldabaoths kingdom and into the higher heavenly realms. To assist in these inter-dimensional excursions, the aspirant would use as a guide the Book of Enoch and the Neo-Platonist Iamblichus’s schematic of Aeons or stratifications of the universe. Such texts would inform the aspirant concerning what to expect upon any given plane while also instructing him or her in the appropriate mantras to use in order to bypass the dimensional gate keepers. The seeker was, of course, also assisted and protected during these astral flights by his or her Angelic Presence
The Valentinians
Valentinus was born in Phrebonis in Upper Egypt about 100 C.E. He claimed to have seen a vision of the risen Christ. He became a disciple of the Christian theologian Theudas who had been a disciple of Paul. He began his ministry in Alexandria around 120 AD. In 136 A.D. he went to Rome, where he was so well regarded by the Roman church he became a candidate for the office of bishop. The movement he founded spread throughout Europe, Northern Africa and the Middle East, and endured for over six hundred years.
At the time, Valentinus movement was seen as mystic Roman Catholic Christianity. This was a period before the Roman hierarchy started persecuting the mystical side of the Church. By 326 A.D., when Christianity had become the state religion of the Roman Empire, the Church strove to expel the Valentinians and other ‘heretics’ from their congregations. Ironically, the Catholic church at some point re-inaugurated their mystic side, something Protestant Christianity has yet to do.
The Valentinians classified their disciples in three categories, depending upon their spiritual maturity and taught them accordingly. They believed that there were three allegorical ways to read the Bible, and that these three ways pertained to the three types of disciples or students. This refers to the spiritual or angelic human, the psychic or choic human and the material or hylic human. According to Gnosis.org, the Valentinians treated the Bible as an allegory, “that disclosed an inner process of redemption in metaphors.” The teacher was expected to discern the person's level of spiritual development and teach accordingly. The author of that site states that in doing this, the Valentinians believed they were following the example of Jesus, as Jesus stated; “I must adapt myself to your hearing and according to each person's capacity I will impart to you those things of which you can be hearers.” Acts of John 87 Also, according to the Gospel of Philip 67:9-12, “Truth did not come into the world naked; rather it came in prototypes and images: the world will not accept it in any other form.” “The myth was seen as an aid to understanding. The spiritual person was expected to recognize the truth hidden metaphorically within the myth.” The Philip just quoted was one of the original twelve apostles whose book did not make it into the Bible, for ‘patriarchal’ reasons.
The author at Gnosis.org writes; “All Valentinians agree that God incorporates both masculine and feminine characteristics.” He notes that this is in opposition to traditional Jewish and orthodox Christian descriptions of God. According to most Gnostic sources, the Father (or Parent) can be understood as a male-female dyad. He states that the aspect through which the Father provides the universe with substance is understood to be feminine. “In this aspect he is called Silence, Grace and Thought.” He tells us that Silence is God's “primordial state of tranquility and self-awareness.” (Valentinian Exposition 22:24) (Excerpts of Theodotus 7:1) “She is the active creative Thought that makes all subsequent states of being (or Aeons) substantial.” I will add that She gives Life to our Father’s thoughts.
In her book The Gnostic Gospels, p 32 Elaine Pagels writes; “For while the Valentinians publicly confessed faith in one God, in their own private meetings they insisted on discriminating between the popular image of God – as master, king, lord, creator, and judge – and what that image represented – God understood as the ultimate source of all being. ....What this secret tradition reveals is that the one whom most Christians naively worship as creator, God and Father is, in reality, only the image of the true God.”
We have learned that Sabaoth was installed in the seventh heaven and given ruler ship over the lower six heavens, which is the part of creation to which the Earth belongs. That makes Sabaoth God over everything below Him. Sabaoth is the God of the Jews and Hebrews. He is a God of justice and righteousness. He, just as we ourselves, is an emanation from God. I do not believe him to be the cruel and vindictive God of the Old Testament. I believe that god is Sabaoths father, Yaldabaoth. Jesus believed that Satan had overtaken the house of God. That is why the Essenes kept themselves apart from the rest of the Jews/Hebrews/Israelites. The god who was telling them to sacrifice, was not anyone worthy of worship. The Valentinians, like many others, believed there was only one God of the Old Testament. Therefore, I believe they have confused Sabaoth and Yaldabaoth. The Valentinians believed that orthodox Christians were followers of Satan! Of course, the orthodox Christians thought the same thing about the Gnostic Christians!
Modern day Christians use both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. Without doubt, I believe the God of the New Testament to be different from the God/gods of the Old Testament. The New Testament tells us that. The Gods of the Old Testament are ‘lesser’ gods. In fact, they were, and still are, incarnated angels. God did not want humans to be at the mercy of our fallen, fighting angel family. Christ volunteered to enter our realm, a great sacrifice for such a great spiritual being. He submitted to the imperfection of the human body in order to bring a message of love to humanity. He suffered to bring Light to the Earth. His death taught us that it is right to sacrifice the flesh. His resurrection taught us that there is life after death of the human body.
According to Gnosis.org, Valentinians used the Old Testament. They believed that some parts were from the demiurge/Yaldabaoth and other parts were from Sophia and Christ. The Valentinians taught that this world was created to allow the perfecting of the seeds of the Spirit that have come from the eternal world. Through trial and tribulation, we learn to separate from the material and look towards the spiritual.
The following, from The Masters of Wisdom by J.G. Bennett, gives insight into the transformation of the teachings of Jesus during the first centuries C.E.;
PP 75/6 The early fathers Papius, Irenaeus, and Jerome all agreed that there was an early Syriac gospel which was the treasure of the Judean Christians, who were called Ebionite’s, to mark their belief in holy poverty. They were not concerned with asking whether Jesus was God or man but with the hope of being transformed by the love which still emanated from those who had been initiated by him. This Divine love came to be known as the Holy Spirit, and it was understood by all Christians to be the center of their initiation.

He goes on to write that “profound changes came after AD 70.” He describes churches that were composed of men and women, few of which had seen or heard an Apostle. He says that there had been a “false expectation that the horrors of the Jewish war would usher in the millennium and that Christ would come in glory to rule on the Earth.” In the Jeshua channelings, Jeshua said that his own disciples believed that. Jeshua added that it didn’t come in their time, but would be coming in our time. Mark goes on to write; “The Christians who did not understand that the Kingdom had already come to them in the form of divine love were led, chiefly by the Pauline theory of redemption, to believe that the significance of Jesus was that he was the Dying God of the Promise.” The author notes that for this, Jesus had to be God, which led to two centuries of “anxious inquiry” and “bitter controversy” which “destroyed the unity of Christendom and prepared the way for still worse things to come.” I will state that it looks like many of our family considered the statement that Jesus was equal with God to be blasphemous. The answer to all this could be that first of all, Jeshua was just a human man with an angelic soul. The Christ did not enter him until he was baptized. In this respect, Jesus was not equal to God. However, since I believe that everyone and everything is a manifestation or emanation of God, Jesus was equal to God, as we all are! We need to learn to see God in everyone and everything. It’s what will set us free!

Bennett makes the statement that the saddest feature of these disputes was that they distracted men’s attention from the “sublime event which had occurred.” He writes that “In the eyes of nearly all the disputants, ‘God’ meant the creator of the world - the autocratic power that commands obedience - the same creator before whom the Jews had trembled in the days of Moses.” He says that Valentinus saw this clearly for himself. He remarks that Valentinus may have known that Jesus was sent to the Earth “from an infinitely higher level than that of the creative power.”
Bennett wrote that the Gnostics “were ardent lovers of Jesus and had no doubt of his divine mission. ...It is not easy to see why they should have been so relentlessly combated and finally suppressed by the orthodox church unless they possessed secrets that might have undermined the doctrines about the nature of Christ and the Deity that were the pretext for power seeking adventures of the Bishops who surrounded the Roman emperors from Constantine to Justinian. ...One thing is certain, from AD 321 onward Christianity ceased to be the religion of divine love and became a cult of power and persecution.” He gives the reason for Jesus coming two thousand years ago; p 78 “The transmission of divine love was the high purpose; the forgiveness of sin and communion with the Sacred Image of Christ were not the aim but the means of attaining the aim of bringing love into the world. The third and most essential means, that of abasement and humiliation, was recognized only by very few.”

In her excellent work The Gnostic Paul - Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters, Elaine Pagels writes that Valentinus and his disciples Ptolemy, Heracleon, and Theodotus, as well as the early Church fathers Irenaeus, Tertullian and Clement, all revered Paul and referred to him simply as ‘the Apostle’. This in itself speaks volumes, because traditionally an Apostle is one of Jesus original followers, the ones who knew him personally. Pagels relates that the Valentinians unwritten sources were, “nothing less than Paul’s own secret wisdom tradition.”

She goes on to cite 1 Corinthians 15:42-45. She says that in these verses; “Paul reveals the great mystery.” That mystery is that; “Even though the psychic is sown in a corruptible body, after physical death it shall be raised as a pneumatic body.” Paul’s disciple Theodotus explains that, “elements of the pneumatic seed were sown even into the psychics.” Pagels states; “The Valentinians explain from 15:45 that the first Adam, the demiurge’s creation, was made a living soul. Yet secretly Sophia put forth the pneumatic seed into p 85 Adam, concealing it within the psychic creation as living marrow is concealed within the structure of bone. Therefore the last Adam - the transformed psychic - shall be a life giving Spirit.” In these verses in 1^st Corinthians, Paul goes on to explain that the pneumatic human was not the first, but the psychic human was created first by the demiurgic creators.
Something I have struggled with is the knowledge that the Old Testament of the Bible is in part, the text of the demiurge. Pagels explains that in Hebrews 1:1-6, Paul is explaining that God spoke through the prophets. She cites the Greco Roman writer named Ptolemy who lived in Alexandria circa AD 90 – AD 168. Ptolemy divides the works of the Old Testament prophets into three parts. In the first part, the prophecies originated in the Pleroma, which is the highest realm, and were transmitted through the Elect seed living among the psychic Jews. The second part of prophecies, were from the intermediate region through Pistis Sophia, and a third and large part, were derived from the cosmos through the demiurge. I have read that Christ and Pistis Sophia were at all times active in directing the acts of Yaldabaoth. Just as he believed he created everything he saw, he also believed all the Old Testament prophets spoke for him. One author wrote that Pistis Sophia instilled the tenets of Patriarchal religion into Yaldabaoth, unknowingly to him.

Manichaeism

The prophet Mani lived 216 – 276 C.E. and started the immensely popular religion called Manichaeism. Mani had been raised an Elchasaite, who were direct descendants of the Ebionite’s. Mani declared himself to be an apostle of Jesus and I believe he embraced the reforms made by Jesus. Considering the date of his ministry and his upbringing as an Elchasaite, I think we can safely assume that his teachings were close to that of Jesus’ own teachings.
In his book James the Brother of Jesus, p 329 Eisenmann informs us that the highest echelon of initiates under Mani were known as the Siddiks or Zaddiks, which means ‘the Righteous Ones’. These terms go back at least to the time when our ancestors went into the Damascene wilderness under the prophet Elijah. Mani taught his followers to abhor riches, suppress sexual desire, to fast, give alms and eat a vegetarian diet. As Jesus sent his disciples out with just a walking stick and no money or change of clothes - so too did Mani. Mani’s religion spread all over Europe and Asia.
Trevor Ravenscroft and Tim Wallace-Murphy, both highly respected esotericist’s and authors, wrote in their book, The Mark of the Beast, that; “Mani taught publicly in a truly imaginative way of the battle in the universe between light and darkness, good and evil. Above all he gave a truly moral conception of the overcoming of evil not by conflict but by love and passive resistance. The core of his teaching was the conception that mankind was created in order to transform the evil in the universe to the power of love.”
The author of Guardians of the Holy Grail p 184 calls Mani an inspired Messiah and reformer; “Who transformed the ancient path of Gnosticism into a religion that was more appealing and relevant to the era he was born into.” Mani, by the way was a Mandean, of the Nasurai/Nazarean priesthood. Like Jesus, Mani also sought to reform the Mandean religion, thus the Mandeans feel about him the same way they feel about Jeshua, that is, not very highly. Mani’s gnostic empire spread from Spain to China. He was thrown into prison by the Persian gnostic Magi for tampering with their ancient wisdom and making it public. He eventually died and was flayed and his body displayed for all to see, which was common treatment at the time for heretics. At least I hope he was dead before he was flayed. According to the author of From the Ashes of Angels p 116;

To me it was a remarkable discovery and one that made it all the more likely that the daevo data, the law according to the daevas, as taught by the Magi priests, did indeed involve knowledge of the carnal trafficking between supernatural beings and mortal kind. It also strengthened my view that the Magi’s dualistic doctrine included the belief that the world around us was the creation not of Ahura Mazda⁶⁹ but of Angra Mainyu,⁷⁰ the wicked spirit - the very tenet of faith preached by Mani and the various Gnostic cults many hundreds of years after the daeva-worshipping Magi disappeared from the pages of history.

The fact that the Gnostics claimed that the world around us was made by an evil principal, who could only be Yaldabaoth, is not something I have dwelt on. This subject is probably one of the main causes of the fighting between Orthodox and Gnostic Christians. To accept that our world and we our selves were made by an evil principal is hard to take. Regardless of any argument for or against this subject, my belief is that Yaldabaoth believed he made the universe and all in it, but in reality he and all his creations were made by Christ and Pistis Sophia who were both emanations of Yahweh. In the end, it’s all God, so it does not matter!
The Cathars

The author of The Knights of the Holy Grail p 117 gives a good understanding of the political, social and historical background of the Cathars. He wrote that during the 12th and 13th centuries, the southwestern corner of France prospered under the benevolent rule of the local Rex Deus aristocracy. According to the author, theirs was a “truly dazzling civilization; one illuminated by the principles of emerging democracy, love and, above all, religious toleration.” He states that the local nobility encouraged trade, provided economic stability and “a level of creative freedom that was truly exceptional in Europe at that time.” In those days, the influence of the Catholic church had almost totally vanished in some areas of France and, “was in marked decline in the rest of the southwest.” The local nobility were tolerant of the large Jewish community in their midst, no doubt because they themselves were Jews.

Thriving in the area was a religious group known as the Cathars, a people who claimed to follow the true teachings of Jesus. In the words of the author, “The Cathars lived according to the ideals laid down by their Essene precursors.” The story goes, that at the end of the 11th century, the local nobility had become more confident because of declining Catholic church power and were becoming openly anti-clerical. According to the Catholic historian Giraud, “The nobility of the Languedoc, the prosperous and populous area between Carcassonne and Toulouse, were almost completely Cathar.”

P 119 The author goes on to describe Catharism as a dualist form of Gnosticism, “whose roots can be traced back to early Zoroastrian religion, the school of Pythagoras and the cult of Mithras; with this strange mélange of beliefs transformed by contact with early Christianity.” P-120 The author calls the ‘Cathar heresy’; “A pure form of initiatory Christianity whose only scripture, the ‘Gospel of Love’, otherwise known as the ‘Secret Gospel of John’, taught the simple message that Jesus came to reveal and not to redeem.” The author states; “The first identifiable parent of the Cathar faith can be found within the First Church in Jerusalem led by James the Just, the brother of Jesus.”

The Cathars claimed to have received their doctrine in a secret line of apostolic succession from St. John the Apostle. The author describes the heart of Cathar doctrine as the notion that true Christianity is a life lived, not simply a doctrine believed. To the Cathar’s, Jesus was a model the good Christian “must strive to emulate, not a vicarious sacrifice to be blindly accepted on trust.” I will remind the reader that for psychic Christians, faith and trust are the necessary first steps. The Cathars were Gnostic Christians.

As Zoe Oldenbourg explains in her book Massacre at Montsegur; “The Cathars declared themselves the heirs of a tradition that was older than that held by the Church of Rome – and, by implication, both less contaminated and near in spirit to the apostolic tradition. They claimed to be the only persons who had kept and cherished the Holy Spirit which Christ had bestowed upon His Church; and it looks as though this claim was at least partially justified.”

The author of Guardians of the Holy Grail p 176 wrote that the Cathars advocated “direct personal experience of the Divine, as well as the veneration of the Gnostic Cupbearer John the Apostle, just as its parent sects had.” He says that John had become the patron saint of almost all the Gnostic orders of the time. His two gospels the Gospel of John and the Revelation of St. John the Divine, were compulsory reading for Gnostics everywhere, and “He was rightly venerated as the Father of European Gnosticism.”

The Scandinavian line of our family, known as the Odinic line, were also known as the Ulvungar dynasty. They were descendants of the Lling Lleat dynasty of Asia. The word Lling? It means the same thing as Farr, the Persian form of the ‘shining’ epithet attributed to our ancestors. The author of God Kings of Outremer pp 117/8 believes that “Many Ulvungar’s blamed their defeat on the Catholic Church and decided that they would do all in their power to bring it down.” He wrote that the Ulvungar’s were known to support the Cathars, “without doubt”. He calls the Cathars, “The direct descendants of the Elchesaites, from whom the Ulvungar’s themselves sprang - indeed, the word Cathar comes from the word katharioi, used to describe the Elchesaites.” The author says that the Cathars and Elchesaites both claimed to have written proof that Jesus was married twice and that one wife was Mary Magdalene. The author claims that this knowledge was one of the major reasons for the crusade against the Cathars which began in 1209 and lasted until 1229. The Templars refused to take part in the crusade because, “The Ulvungar Counts of Toulouse were the protectors of the Cathars and, being senior members of the Templars themselves came under attack.”

Margaret Starbird, author of Mary Magdalene Bride in Exile p 107 wrote that the ‘Holy Inquisition’ was formed specifically in resistance to the Cathars. She states; “The southern provinces of France were engulfed in a brutal genocide called the Albigensian Crusade, during which mercenary armies of the pope and French king collaborated to wipe out whole cities. The annals of the Inquisition do not make clear what the Cathars believed that the Roman Church found so unacceptable, but strong evidence asserts that one of their tenets of faith was the marriage union of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.”
One example of the Catholics’ inhumanity was the massacre of the walled town of Beziers, where twenty thousand people were killed. The story goes that the townspeople would not give up the Cathar’s among them, and, to a person, all chose to die before switching their beliefs to Catholicism. Many of the townspeople sought sanctuary in a church and died en masse when it was burned.
Margaret notes that “The slaughter of the men, women, and children at Beziers had been accomplished by order of Pope Innocent III on July 22, the feast day of Mary Magdalene the zealous monk declared that it was a “supreme justice of Providence” because the heretics claimed that Saint Mary Magdalene was the concubine of Jesus Christ.” In her 13th century text, An Exposure of the Albigensian Heresies, Ermengaud of Beziers supports the claim that the “Cathars taught in their secret meetings that Mary Magdalene was the wife of Jesus Christ.” Margaret says that despite the persecution, the ‘great heresy’ “surfaced in art and artifact - in watermarks, paintings, tapestries and in fairy tale and folklore. Tenets of the alternative church are illustrated in the trumps of the earliest tarot decks, which provide a flashcard catechism for the Grail heresy.”
The authors of Rex Deus the True Mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau and the Dynasty of Jesus p 151, give additional insight into the beliefs and background of the Cathars. They wrote that the Languedoc nobility’s tolerance for the Cathars derives from the fact that the Aristocracy of the area was for the most part families of the Rex Deus tradition. They note that Celtic Christianity was also an initiatory religion “that is often described as having Gnostic and strong dualist tendencies.” They describe the lifestyle of the Cathars, and say that they were men and women, “easily identified by their distinctive robes, who lived in working communities irrespective of their previous social status.”
The Cathars traveled the countryside in pairs teaching, ministering and healing. They had a strong work ethic and would stay where they were offered accommodation, but rarely longer than a day or two. They joined the people of the household in tending their fields or houses, always believing that they shouldn’t be a burden to their hosts. Whether they were the Essenes or early Christians, or Cathars, they were renowned for their healing skills. The authors of Rex Deus say that their healing was based upon spiritual insight moderated by their expertise as herbalists.
The Nag Hammadi text, called The Gospel of Thomas was written by an original apostle. In fact, many say that Thomas was Thomas ‘Didymus’ which means ‘the twin’. He is the same slandered doubting Thomas of the Bible. Many say he was Jesus’ twin brother. One source said he was a friend of Mary Magdalene. Of course, it is possible he was both. In Thomas’ gospel, it is recorded that Jesus told his disciples that they too would become capable of doing all that he did. The Cathars knew this to be true and, like Jesus, they lived a simple life. According to the authors, “They believed that sacred knowledge came from God through the true teaching of Jesus and that spiritual union with God would be the ultimate result of their Gnosis.”
The Gnostics all believed that everyone needed a second baptism. The first one was to be of water, the second by Spirit. By this spiritual baptism, Cathars attained the rank of a perfectus. The Cathars believed in reincarnation and the transmigration of human souls from animals. Because of this, they were vegetarians. Actually, just like the Essenes, the rules were less strict for the newer members, but as initiates advanced, more ascetic lives were required. The Gnostics believed that souls progressed from mineral to plant, to animal and then to human. They also believed that a human soul could regress and become an animal again. They also took vows of celibacy, because they believed that with each birth, a new soul was created who then became a slave in Yaldabaoths corrupted kingdom. The less advanced members lived regular lives and had families.
P 155 The authors of Rex Deus wrote that the Cathars knew that the true teaching of Jesus “was the sole route to spiritual union with almighty God and that they were the guardians of a form of Gnosis which had been handed down from its roots in the Egyptian temple mysteries, through the Therapeutae, the Essenes, the revelations of John the Baptist and on to its peak of perfection in Jesus’ initiatory teaching.” They say that “The true spiritual parent of the Cathar religion can be found in the first Church in Jerusalem led by James the Just, the brother of Jesus.” These authors note too that the Cathars believed Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and had fathered a family. The authors wrote that the Cathars believed that Jesus died on the cross, “While the hidden families knew that their teacher had survived that ordeal. ...More importantly they were completely in accord with Rex Deus tradition in the central tenet of their religion and they made explicit reference to the fact that Jesus came to reveal the pathway to sacred knowledge and not to redeem.”
Laurence Gardner claims that the vinegar and gall given to Jesus on the sponge while he was on the cross, was snake toxin that made him appear to be dead. He also claims that death from crucifixion comes from the accumulation of fluids in the chest so that the person effectively drowns in their own fluids. He claims that the lance in the side of Jesus released this buildup of fluids and saved his life. According to the words of Jeshua, there is a three day period when the soul is still with the body after death. The body is not truly dead until the soul departs. In the Jeshua channelings, Jeshua states that he did die on the cross, but that it was “not a biologically programmed death.” I think it’s best to listen to Jeshua’s words earlier and not judge another person because they have beliefs that are different from our own. My belief is that he did die on the cross in one form or another, and that he did come back to life. I am discussing this subject because it is one a person will come across if they do their own research into our family story. I have not had access to any Rex Deus documents to know what they do or don’t say.
Mark Pinkham wrote that the Cathars believed that the souls of all humans began as angels, lured down to Earth, who became trapped in material bodies by the dark lord Rex Mundi, king of the world. He says that each person’s angelic soul drifts between Heaven and Earth waiting for its owner to become purified, so that it could reunite with them. The Cathars taught that the goal of all humans was to purify and assimilate their angelic nature and that through this reunion a Cathar could “potentially acquire both gnosis and special angelic abilities to heal and awaken others.”
The author of The Hidden Wisdom - Secrets of the Western Esoteric Tradition p 147 describes the Albigensian Crusade, which is what the crusade of the Catholics against the Cathars was called. He wrote; “God’s supposed representative on Earth, Pope innocent III declared a crusade against the Cathars in 1209.” He goes on to say that the rewards for the “butchers” who took part were very tempting. They were granted pardon from their past sins and any they would commit during their “holy duties,” as long as they served for at least forty days. They also had the usual rights to the “lands, property and goods of any declared ‘heretic’, regardless of whether they were a nobleman or peasant.” The author writes; “Every freebooter, rogue, adventurer or landless member of the minor nobility not otherwise gainfully occupied, engaged in an un-holy race to take part. Truly this was a God given and divinely blessed opportunity to murder, rape and pillage without remorse or punishment.”
Thousands soon flocked to take part in the crusade p 148 “sustained by their zealous faith and spurred on by their new right to dispossess the heretics of all their possessions, these holy warriors set to with a will. The crusaders gained castles, land and loot as their reward for discharging their onerous duties of murder, rape and genocide.” He wrote that they were closely followed by the Dominican clergy “who tried to extinguish any trace of perceived heresy with torture and the cleansing flames of the stake.”

Over half a million “Good Christians” as the Cathars were called, were murdered in the Albigensian Crusade. The final tragic scene took place in a castle called Montsegur where the last remnant of the Cathars took refuge in a standoff between the Catholics and themselves. It ended when the Cathars chose death by being burned alive rather than switching their beliefs to those of the Catholics. They all voluntarily ran into the flames prepared for them by the ‘Holy’ Roman church.

Tim Wallace wrote about some Gnostic Christian groups we have not discussed. _{P 139} He says that both Mandaeism and Gnostic Christianity once taught in their closed circles that the Sacred Wedding of the king and the high priestess in the Mysteries was a symbol for spiritual rebirth. Most authors looking at the myths of the different people that describe this ceremony, which is called the Hieros Gamos, do not see the spiritual significance in it. They see it as a meaningless sex act. The Gnostics knew that the sacred wedding showed that the way to enlightenment, “to the Light world of the Kingdom of Heaven” was via the act of love.
Within Gnostic thought is the concept of polarities, which is appropriate since the world we live in is all about polarity. To transcend this world, one has to ‘marry’ their polarities, “reconciling, wherever they occur, good and evil, reason and heart, heaven and hell, spirit and matter…as well as man and woman.” Mr. Wallace writes; “There is no other way to God, Jesus taught, than by the way of transcendence, the way of love transmuted by the fire of mind: the way of the reconciliation of opposites.” Jeshua talks about this in a book titled The Revelation - Our Crisis is a Birth. The way to this transcendence and reconciliation is through love and acceptance. One example of this could be the acceptance of people with non-heterosexual gender identities. If you want to transcend this world of duality, you will have to accept that some people are different than you, and it is not your right to judge Gods creations.

P 217 The Gnostic group, the Orphics, said that the way to permanent union with the Son of God was through the adoption of a spiritual lifestyle punctuated with the regular observance of yogic practices. They contended that the only way to permanently unite with the transcendental aspect of Dionysus, which is another name for Christ, was through “renouncing the selfish and animalistic urges which occupy the material flesh.” They taught that “through a vegetarian diet, occasional fasts, study of the scriptures, service to others and lengthy periods of meditation, a seeker could permanently become a Bacchus.” Again - another name for Christ.

Wallace believed that the greatest of the Orphic and Dactyloi initiates was the philosopher Pythagoras. The word philosopher translates as ‘Lover of Sophia’. The name Pythagoras translates as ‘I am the Python’ or ‘I am the Serpent’. Pythagoras was an incarnation of the Primal Serpent. Just as Jesus had come to renew the Mystery traditions, so too had Pythagoras. Pythagoras had been born into a Pelasgian home, so according to the author, “He was surrounded by the wisdom of the first colonists of the Aegean, some of whom had arrived directly from Atlantis.” You may recall that I said that some of the sea-going Atlanteans became known as the Pelasgians or Sea People. Another name for them was the Phoenicians. The tribe of Dan was a later identity, and even later they were known as the Vikings. Their later descendants were those same maritime loving people involved in the Loyd’s exchange in London.
The author of Mysteries of the Bridechamber p 27 speaks of the time period circa 375 C.E. when the Catholic church strove to become a unified religious model, and outlawed internal debate and dissent. At that time, “The creed was standardized, the laity disempowered, and the bishops elevated to a hierarchical and authoritarian autocracy.”
In 386 C.E., Priscilian, the Bishop of Avila in Spain was executed for teaching Gnostic doctrines as authentic ingredients of the Christian faith. Priscilian’s death effectively marked the end of the outward practice of mystic Christianity. Helena Blavatsky remarked that during the Protestant Reformation the ‘letter’ of Christianity was restored, but the ‘Spirit’ was not. I completely agree with her on this, not all, points.
The Theosophist William Kingsland made the statement; “The study of Christian origins is a very large and controversial question but it is quite evident that the literalization of these (biblical) narratives was due to the fact that those who ultimately obtained the ascendancy of the Church Councils, and were the framers of the Creeds which have been current for so many centuries, were not those who were instructed in the Gnosis. They were in fact miserably ignorant, not merely of that Gnosis which lies at the heart of all the allegories, myths and fables in the Christian as in other ancient and pre-Christian scriptures, but also of geographical, astronomical, and anthropological facts well known to other peoples for thousands of years.”
Judaism was (Christianity’s) father, Egypt was its mother, Mesopotamia stood as godparent, Hellenism served as midwife. ...Our old Egyptian mother died in the centuries during which her vigorous offspring emerged and began prospering in the Mediterranean world. ...Throughout her life of almost two millennia, this Christian daughter born of Mother Egypt has remained relatively well informed about her ancient Hebrew paternal tradition (but) to this day has not been told about the identity of her deceased mother religion.” - Karl Luckert

“Like Christ and like Adonis and Attis, Osiris and Dionysus also suffer and rise again. To become one with them is the mystical passion of their worshippers. They are alike in that their mysteries give immortality. From Mithraism Christ took the symbolic keys of heaven and assumes the function of the virgin-born Saoshyant, the destroyer of the Evil One. ...In fundamentals, therefore, Christianity is but paganism reshaped. We have no reason to suppose that after their altercation with Jeremiah, the expatriate Hebrews of Egypt did not continue to preserve and honor the very similar Mystery traditions of ancient Israel as they remembered them. Would they not have commemorated the time when women’s prophetic orders in the old country were as powerful as Egypt’s female Isiac priesthood? And would they not have proudly declared that legendary Hebrew leaders of valor like Miriam and Deborah, and seers like Huldah the prophetess - all servants of the Great Goddess, all officiants in the ancient royal courts of Schechem and Jerusalem – were just as dedicated to the secret rites of the bride chamber and the worship of the Divine Couple as the priestesses and prophetesses of Isis.” -J.M. Robertson.

A new world religion invariably comes with the blueprint of a new civilization, a new social charter that will support its teachings in practice. And so it was with Christianity. The New Covenant first instigated by the Therapeutae (of Egypt) incorporated principles of liberty, fraternity, and equality that were essentially an extension of the Hermetic ideals at its core: “as in heaven so on earth”. The essence of the program was the formulation of a new social morality central to all the Nazorean and Mandean communities, to early Christianity, and to the Palestinian Essenes – in fact in some degree to every one of the Hasidic branches. However, soon rejected by the Christian mainstream, it achieved the fame it deserved only many centuries later, when it was adopted by the Freemasons under the banner of liberty, fraternity, and equality and became the slogan of the French Revolution.

The rapid abandonment of these principles is perhaps Christianity’s greatest betrayal of Jesus’ teaching, leading to centuries of serfdom and oppression for the common people. The new social principles being practiced during Jesus’ lifetime and espoused by him must have been an explosive, bitterly argued political issue in Jerusalem, a challenge to the entrenched hubris of the Roman ruling machine as well as its powerful Herodian lackeys, for it was a critique of the greed of the wealthy class and a call for the rights and freedoms of an enslaved peasantry. Furthermore, at least one contemporary writer has seen in this revolutionary movement a threat to the xenophobic elements in Orthodox Judaism. Faced by such a frontal assault on the basis of their political power, it is not surprising that the Jerusalem authorities evinced fear and antagonism toward all things Egyptian, or that the subversive ideas circulating among Jesus’ disciples were downplayed by the gospel writers as politically dangerous material too seditious to publish.

....Even the Romans sensed in Egyptian Judaism a threat to all established power structures especially their own, and in 115-117 C.E. they were quick to lay waste the Alexandrian Jewish community. Nonetheless, in the repudiation of an old order or things, in rejecting social structures and norms central to the pagan culture of the day but now outworn or malign, the early Christian movement would find a powerful formula for world success. By moving into the current of social evolution and pressing forward to meet the more egalitarian civilization so utterly hostile to it nor hope to overcome the antipathy of a Church increasingly wedded to inordinate power and wealth. But the embryo would lie underground and survive for centuries in the hidden occult schools of Christianized Europe, germinate in the Italian Renaissance and the French Revolution, grow mightily in the struggles of the Industrial Age, and come into its own in Freemasonry and the birth of American democracy, flowering finally in a trend toward global democratization.

...The Merkavah science and the Light technology it implied - the second of Jesus’ great evolutionary contributions – were rejected by the church fathers, but their transmission could have been authorized only by their official Hebrew guardians, the Zadokite high priests in Leontopolis. The part these Judaic prophets must therefore have played in the birth of the Christ Mystery has never been recognized, but in the last few decades a groundswell of religious research has begun that it is hoped will shed greater light on the issue. Consider how the full Buddhist canon was given out to the world in three consecutive stages hundreds of years apart, each one of which was a flowering and deepening of the one before but at the same time a radically new revelation. The same principles of unfoldment in three revelatory stages may equally apply to Christianity. If we think of the three phases as roughly equivalent to the principles of body, soul, and spirit that animate every human being, then the first primitive stage of Christianity was an exoteric one, sacramental and cultic, while the second and more esoteric stage that emerged a thousand years later may be seen as a flowering of the mystical principle of soul inherent in the Grail legends, in Catharism and the Rosicrucian enlightenment of the late Renaissance.

What then of the third age, the age of spirit? Today, at the opening of the third millennium, some scholars are spearheading the proposition that a spiritual yoga lies at the heart of Christianity, an invisible dynamic only now emerging as the original essence of the religion. ...It is suggested here that in a radically revised form, the Merkavah science is the Gnostic seed that Jesus planted two thousand years ago and which may yet germinate as the third stage in Christianity’s evolution. If the apocryphal scriptures have anything at all to tell us, it is that in parallel with his work among the poor and disenfranchised, Jesus was disseminating doctrines of an esoteric nature to his inner circle and that these teachings were drawn from the ancient science of spiritual Power taught only in Mystery Temples like the Judaic one on the Nile tributary. - Victoria LePage ‘Mysteries of the Bridechamber’

She goes on to say that the Christian movement was the only one that sought to overturn the embargo of millennia by opening the reserved knowledge and practices of the temples up to the common people, but by means of a reformed method appropriate to the new age. She calls his new method the Way of the Spiritual Heart, and it was to be potentially available to every man and woman who aspired to it.