This book is dedicated to the Serpents of Wisdom with thanks

Chapter Two

Who Are These People?

For five or six weeks I had been on quite a ride. I had learned that my family is Jewish, the lost tribe of Judah to be specific. I call them lost because my identity as one of them was certainly lost to me. I learned that my ancestors were merchant adventurers who were investors in the Virginia Company and had helped to establish the colony of Jamestown. My grandmother’s half brothers and sisters had a mother with the last name of Ragsdale. She descended from the lone survivor of his family, an infant boy, who survived an infamous early massacre of the Jamestown inhabitants by the Native Americans.

My ancestors played a large part in establishing the American colonies and even helped finance the Revolutionary War. George Washington’s family lived near mine in Northampton England in the 1600’s. His family had been members of the Loyd’s exchange along with other of my family lines. My ancestors were the Anjou’s, the Plantagenet’s, the French Valois Dynasty, the Merovingian’s, the Welsh Pendragon’s, the Tudors, Stuarts and other royal lines. My family was, and still is, rife with politicians. They were leaders and civilizers and adventurers, but who exactly were they? They definitely belonged to some sort of group, but what was it that bound them together?

They continued to inter-marry with other mixed-blood families in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds, which in those times was a highly stigmatized thing to do. I thought perhaps it was because the Indians were a Semitic people, descendants of Noah’s son Shem. The Asians are included in this group, and American Indians were said to have come over the Bering Straits from Asia when that land bridge became passable. Somewhere I read that the Puritans coveted the Crown of the New Millennium which they believed their Messiah would award to the Christian sect that united all people, including the Jews and Indians.

My Quaker ancestors met once a month and called it the monthly meeting, and that was pretty much what it was. They would sit in silence. Anyone who felt called would speak. They were very democratic and practiced equal rights between men and women. They only married other Quakers and Native Americans. They would have business meetings and discuss who needed help, or vote on marriages or other community business. This was a very strange religious model to me. How could these people be so pious but not religious?

Mid July 2008, I went to a family reunion. There were about sixty members of my extended maternal-side family there. They are for the most part, quite religious. There were four preachers in the group. I stood before them and told them about their history and the fact that they were Jews. Of course this was hard for them to believe. I knew it would be. I had to keep convincing myself it was true. I looked at my uncles and cousin to see what their reactions would be. One uncle looked like someone had hit him in the stomach. He looked physically sick. Another uncle looked extremely alarmed. My cousin had this look like, what all does she know? My excitement at learning my family history soon passed though, and was replaced by confusion and bewilderment. I began reading some very troubling things. I started putting sticky notes on the front of a book indicating if it was o.k. for my dad to read or not. About six months into my research, I stopped communicating with my e-mail group. I needed to understand who our family was before saying another word about them. It quickly became apparent that my ancestors were the Freemasons, Illuminati, New World Order people, and the fallen angels spoken of in the Bible!

At the same time, I read that the people behind the Virginia Company were descended from the twenty-four families of the high priests of Israel, known as the Ma’madot. It was thrilling to learn that I am related to the people I learned about week after week in church. But still, my ancestors were the Freemasons, Illuminati, New World Order people and fallen angels! These however, turned out to be just part of the problem. There was also the matter of myth, allegory and metaphor. Unfortunately, I kept finding my family history enveloped in myths and legends. For example, King Arthur is in my family, as is Perceval of the Grail Knights, Lancelot and all the others. Then there were the Swan Knights, the Troubadours and let’s not forget Melusine my fairy ancestor. According to the author Laurence Gardner my ancestors were also nymphs, wood sprites, gnomes, and other woodland spirits, which he believed were castes within their society, but which I believe are actual spirits. According to more than one source, I descend from a sea beast called Bistea Neptunis.
Even the words I was reading were alarming. Take ‘occult’ for instance. In my mind it was synonymous with evil. It really means ‘hidden’. People were calling my ancestors sorcerers and witches. I kept running into the word Gnosis, which, in a simple explanation, means ‘spiritual knowledge’. Suddenly everything was esoteric (inner) and exoteric (outer) and everything was ONE BIG SECRET.

Shortly thereafter, I finished putting a number of generations of my family history in the databank on Ancestry.com. Their database connects your information with information input by other members. They also had a feature I don’t find on the site now, called the Millennium Trees. On those trees, I found that I could go backward in time for what seemed like ludicrously long time periods. If I came to a dead end, I backed up a page or two and tried another line. I found eight lines rather quickly that led back to Joseph of Arimathea and Jesus and Mary Magdalene! Yes, it was right there on the computer screen! For those of you not familiar with the Bible, Joseph of Arimathea was the rich man who gave his tomb for Jesus burial.

Have you ever wondered why the Mormons, who own the genealogy websites, care so much about everyone’s ancestry? It’s because they are a part of our very large family. They evidently wanted to be able to know who their relatives are. Believe me, there are multi-millions of us. You, the reader, could be one of us. You could have a very interesting family history to learn about. Two of the titles of our family are Rex Deus, which means Kings of God, and another is Desposyni, said to be relatives of Jesus through his mother. We are the Grail Family of the European Grail legends.

So now I’m a Jew who is a descendent of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. What could be bad about that? I figured I would adopt some Jewish practices, maybe change the Sabbath to Saturday and observe some holy days. I was shocked to learn that Jesus and his family didn’t practice the Orthodox Judaism of today. In fact, they didn’t practice the Orthodox Judaism of their own day either. There were three main Jewish sects at that time - the Essenes, Pharisees and Sadducees. Jesus was a Nazorean of the sect of the Essenes. The Nazoreans were a more ascetic branch of the Essenes. This is widely acknowledged by scholars, so I don’t plan to try to convince you of this. In fact, I don’t plan on trying to convince anyone of anything in this book. I am just the messenger, I am not the convincer. The definition of the word Nazorean is “he who reveals what is hidden,” which just about sums up our family’s pre-occupation through-out long eras of evolution on Earth. In fact, that’s what I am doing in this book. I am revealing what has been hidden.

The Essenes practiced the Jewish Old Religion. The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah refers to it here; “Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.” – Jeremiah 6:16
Since the discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts, Dead Sea Scrolls and other ancient texts, preserved and found through the providence¹ of God, the truth is being made known at this time. The Nag Hammadi texts were written in the first centuries of our era (C.E.) and buried in earthenware jars about 400 C.E. They were written in Coptic, the Egyptian language written in the Greek alphabet. The manuscripts were transcribed from Greek into Coptic by Egyptian Christians. The Coptic Christian church was started by the biblical apostle Mark. These Coptic Christians were known as Sethian Gnostics. The name Seth will come up a lot in this story. Seth, as you may recall, was the third son of Adam and Eve.
The Egyptian Gnostic Christians, under the early Roman church, were threatened with banishment and/or death should they be found in possession of their own literature. To preserve their books from destruction, the Sethians buried them in clay jars. The codices were found buried at the foot of the cliff-tombs of Gebel el-Tarif in Egypt in 1945, a place once called Shenesit-Chenoboskion, which means ‘the acacias of Seth’. The texts bring forward from ancient times, the religious beliefs of the Egyptians, Greeks, Hebrews, Chaldeans, Persians, Babylonians, Indians and Sumerians. All of these are our family group and co-religionists. You will see them repeatedly in this story. Please understand that it was our family and co-religionists who were threatened with punishment, including death, by the early Christian church, because the Roman church didn’t practice the same religion as our family did, as you will learn as you read this book.
The religion of the Essenes is considered a Gnostic religion. In fact, even Baptists and Quakers are considered Gnostics. Knowing what I know now about Gnostic religions, I can tell you that Baptists are far removed from their original religion. One description of Gnosis is that it is a direct experience or ‘knowing’ from God. No matter what point in history I traced our ancestry, there was one constant - that constant was Gnosis.
The holy line of Seth was preserved by Shem, one of three sons of Noah, who kept the knowledge of the true God and passed it on to his descendants. Shem’s descendants are the Semites. Shem’s line descended to Abraham, Isaac and Jesus. Abraham’s sons were Isaac and Ishmael. Isaac’s descendants are the Jews, Hebrews and Israelites. Ishmael’s descendants are the Arabs. One of Isaac’s sons was Jacob, later called Israel, who was the patriarch of the Israelites. Esau, the brother of Isaac, was the patriarch of the Edomites also known as Idumeans. The Jews are so designated because they descend, or at least should, from Judah one of the twelve sons of Jacob-Israel. Today, Jews include anyone who is of the faith of the Jews, regardless of bloodline. Another definition of the Jewish race today, is that one whose mother is Jewish, is considered Jewish.
There are many who believe that the majority of people thought of as Jews today are not really Jews at all! If this seems preposterous to you, then what about the Bible verse in Revelations 2:8 that says; “I know the slander of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan.” I don’t plan on going into detail about this, but I will say that to anyone interested, look up the stories of the Khazars and Edomites conversion to Judaism. Also, you need to know that Ashkenaz, the forefather of the Khazars whom the Ashkenazi Jews descend from, was not a descendant of Shem, the father of the Semites. Ashkenaz was descended from Shem’s brother Japheth.
The first time the name Judah was used in the Bible is in 2 Kings 16:6. It refers to the House of Judah only and does not include the ten northern tribes of Israel. The line from Jacob-Israel’s son Judah is the one that descends to King David and Jesus. The designation Hebrew possibly came from the patriarch Eber who was six generations previous to Abraham. Eber had other descendants who did not include the line to Jacob-Israel, so the title Hebrew is more inclusive than the title Israelite. The title Israelite applies strictly to the descendants of Jacob-Israel. The Israelites were the part of the family who lived in Egypt for four hundred years beginning at the time of the famine that brought the family there during the time of Joseph of the coat of many colors story in the Bible.
When Jacob-Israel divided up the land of Canaan between his sons, the area that includes Bethlehem and Jerusalem was given to Judah and Benjamin. These clans inter-married so much that they are indistinguishable from each other. From the Bible, we know that the Samaritans were the enemies of the Jews. The Bible doesn’t tell the reader that these were all from the same family group, but they were. The Samaritans were the ten northern tribes of Israelites, which were composed of the descendants of the other ten sons of Jacob-Israel.

One of the main reasons I have written this book is to reveal to my family who they are. Since there are multi-millions of us, I will address you, the reader, as part of my family and talk about our family. In reality, this is the story of all humanity, as we are all related and share 99.9% of the same dna. Some of us though, are part of a multi-line, closely inter-related lineage that goes back thousands of years. We are a sub-group within humanity. Our lines are not only physical, but we are first of all, a soul group. Souls are birthed in waves, of what size I am unsure. Do you remember a little earlier in the story when Margaret Starbird made reference to there being two churches, one of them spiritual and one of the flesh? Our soul family is that original spiritual church, called the Ecclesia. We are also that fleshly church. The same soul family group has incarnated into the same physical family groups for literally thousands of years. This is the reason I can trace the maternal and paternal sides of my family living near each other for four hundred and fifty years. To keep their secrets, our families have inter-married and chosen one child to pass their secrets to in each generation. The knowledge of whether or not you are a part of this more closely related group can, I believe, be easily determined through standard genealogy research. I would suggest Ancestry.com as they have the largest database. Once you start coming upon any kind of European royalty, you are a part of this family group. If you find lots of politicians among your ancestors, you are a part of this family. If you find Welsh royalty, you are a part of my closer line. I started with my grandparent’s generation circa 1900 and found many lines in their database that led back to circa 1 C.E.

To my dismay, this is the most unbelievable story ever told. No doubt the reader will find much in it that is disturbing, depressing, and just plain ludicrous. It involves conspiracy theories, myths and an unknown history of the human race that has been going on for thousands of years. Some of the crazier material is at the beginning of the book - so hang in there!
The author of the book The Lost Secrets of the Sacred Ark - Amazing Revelations of the Incredible Power of Gold wrote;
P 119 A widely acknowledged truism is that ‘knowledge is power’. Significantly, secret knowledge or teachings held by a limited elite constitute the potential for even greater power. It is apparently for this reason that the world history of the last several thousand years has had embedded in its scope the underlying theme of the struggle for control and power based on esoteric knowledge, understandings and wisdom. From the mystery schools of ancient Egypt and Greece, to the Jerusalem treasures uncovered by the Knights Templars to the modern day guarded secrets of the Trilateral Commission and various other secretive organizations, the greatest heritage of the human race has been carefully and studiously withheld from the mainstream of society.

The heritage he refers to are teachings and techniques with the potential for enormous enlightenment and evolution of the individual. They have been denied to humanity, and, as just quoted, held for the exclusive use of those in power. There might be something to those conspiracy stories after all. I recommend the book Rule by Secrecy by Tex Marrs for those interested.

Chapter Three

Pistis Sophia and Yaldabaoth

After spending three and a half years researching and writing this book, I told my mom, sister and niece that I was writing a book about our family. My mom shocked me by replying; “You might become rich and famous.” I’m sure my sister and niece wondered what made her say that, because our family is as boring as can be - and as can plainly be seen, I’m no noteworthy writer. My mom asked me how far back I was going in the story. I told her I was starting in the mid 1500’s in England and coming forward to the present - then I was going ‘way back’. I didn’t bother telling her I was going back to a time before the Earth was formed, because that would be ridiculous! Can you believe it? That’s where this story begins!

The different gnostic groups had similar, but slightly divergent creation myths. It’s all but impossible to feel like one knows the exact story, so I will give the briefest description of the main gnostic myth. Christians have a Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. To the Gnostics, these were the Infinite Spirit as Father, the Holy Spirit as Mother and a Child, called the Word or Logos. The Child, who is androgynous, is the soul who overshadowed, i.e. incarnated into, Jesus at the time of his baptism in the Jordan River. It is my understanding that the two active agents of Creation are the Mother and Child. Together they form the God we know as Yahweh. The Mother is known by different names in different cultures. The Greeks know her as Sophia, the Egyptians as Isis, and the Hebrews as Asherah.
In one of the earliest creations, God, through the Mother and Child, created twenty-four Aeons who were male and female couples, called syzygies. In the gnostic myth, one of the Aeons is Pistis Sophia. She is a lower Sophia, a daughter of Sophia the Holy Spirit and I will always use the term Pistis - which means faith, when referring to Sophia the daughter. The other half of Pistis Sophia’s syzygy is the one we know as Christ. The story goes that Pistis Sophia wanted to create, but she did so without the consent of the Infinite Spirit or the knowledge of her consort or other half, Christ. Her creation, a son she named Yaldabaoth, turned out deficient. She recoiled in horror at her creation and because she is a being who can create by thought projection, her horrified reaction only compounded the situation by creating a dark mass of matter. That dark mass of matter became the world we live in.
The Sophia & Yaldabaoth story is the story of the beginning of duality. It’s the story of Spirit made manifest, or descending into materiality, i.e. the fall of the angels. From day one, I have looked for the good and bad side of our family. I think it’s very human to do so. I quickly learned that our family is comprised of both sides. In time I learned not to judge things as good or bad, or at least I’m trying not to. Eventually one comes to understand that the world we live in was intentionally created as both a good and bad realm, a dualistic realm. In fact, this creation we live in was, and is, an experiment.

From the Kybalion we learn about duality;

Light and Darkness are poles of the same thing, with many degrees between them. The musical scale is the same-starting with "C" you move upward until you reach another "C" and so on, the differences between the two ends of the board being the same, with many degrees between the two extremes. The scale of color is the same-higher and lower vibrations being the only difference between high violet and low red. Large and small are relative. So are noise and quiet; hard and soft follow the rule. Likewise sharp and dull. Positive and negative are two poles of the same thing, with countless degrees between them. Good and bad are not absolute. We call one end of the scale good and the other bad, or one end good and the other evil, according to the use of the terms. A thing is less good than the thing higher in the scale; but that less good thing, in turn, is more good than the thing next below it-and so on, the more or less being regulated by the position on the scale.

And so it is on the Mental Plane. Love and hate are generally regarded as being things diametrically opposed to each other; entirely different; irreconcilable. But we apply the Principle of Polarity; we find that there is no such thing as absolute love or absolute hate, as distinguished from each other. The two are merely terms applied to the two poles of the same thing. Beginning at any point of the scale we find more love, or less hate, as we ascend the scale; and more hate or less love as we descend this being true no matter from what point, high or low, we may start. There are degrees of love and hate, and there is a middle point where like and dislike become so faint that it is difficult to distinguish between them. Courage and fear come under the same rule. The pairs of opposites exist everywhere. Where you find one thing you find its opposite-the two poles. And it is this fact that enables the Hermetist to transmute one mental state into another, along the lines of Polarization.

Transforming a person’s consciousness has been of utmost importance to our ancestors as you will see as this book progresses. In the gnostic creation story, Pistis Sophia and her twin aeon Christ, bring order to the chaos and set Yaldabaoth as ruler over it. Pistis Sophia created a veil between the upper realms known as the Pleroma and the lower, our universe. Because she made the lower realms separate from the upper, Yaldabaoth understandably thought he was all there was - because that was all he knew.

The story goes that Yaldabaoth created six sons or alternately, they are called his brothers, and set about adding to the creation already begun by his mother and Christ. Yaldabaoth, just like the God in the Bible’s Old Testament, boasted that he was the only God and a jealous God, after which Sophia made him aware of all that came before him. The reason I make a comparison between Yaldabaoth and Jehovah of the Bible, is because they are the same being. He is called the demiurge or half creator. He is called that because he created with the stuff of creation, that which was created by God. In fact, God emanates and God’s emanations create. So in reality, all of God’s emanations are demiurges. As a soul progresses up the spiritual ladder, it is given more freedom and a higher degree of access to co-creative power. God created all His/Her emanations to be co-creators with Him/Her.

It quickly became apparent that the fallen angels and assembly of gods mentioned in the Old Testament were an important part of our family story. Most Christians are unaware - as I was - that the Old Testament speaks of more than one deity. There is an assembly of gods mentioned in Psalms the 82nd chapter. They are the ones who say; “Let us make man in our image.” It turns out they played a large part in the creation of our universe and we humans as well. According to the Encyclopedia of Theosophy;
In spite of the ideas embodied in the word itself, the later development of Judaism caused 'Elohim’ to be almost entirely translated in paraphrase as the "one true God". But in earlier times 'Elohim’ (or rather benei 'Elohim or benei 'elim - sons of gods, members of the classes of divine beings) meant spiritual beings or cosmic spirits of differing hierarchical grades. A collective class of cosmic spirits among who is found the familiar Jewish Yahweh or Jehovah. Thus, strictly speaking and as viewed in the original Qabbalah² the 'Elohim’ meant the angelic hierarchies of many varying grades of spirituality or ethereality; and in cosmogonic or astrological matters, the Elohim were often mentally aggregated under the generalized term tseba'oth feminine plural from the verbal root tsaba' a host, an army as in the expression "host of heaven".

This last quote tells us that the word Elohim is also indicative of gods both male and female in nature. Acknowledging that there are gods and goddesses and lords and other spiritual beings does not change the fact that God, or the Infinite Spirit, is the one and only God. The Bible acknowledges that there are gods. You can still be a monotheist and recognize that there is an infinitely expanding spiritual hierarchy. The Elohim, like other creator gods, create using the materials provided by God and do so in service to God so that God can experience life through His/Her creations. One of the hardest parts of this story to understand - that is vitally important to understand - is that the term Elohim is literally all inclusive. Just think of the word as representing the reality of everything is God, for that’s the truth of it. God, the Creator, is all there is. Think of Yaldabaoth, Sophia, Jesus, King David, Abraham and everyone else as God, because that’s who they are. Think of Judas who betrayed Jesus, and Cain who killed Abel, and Satan - who is Satan, as being God, because that’s who they are, as hard as that might be to digest.

In 2 Isaiah 45:7 Yahweh says; “I form the light and create darkness. I make weal and woe – I the Lord do all these things.” Coming to accept this is part of the process that leads to enlightenment. And by ‘this’ I mean accepting that God is the good and the ‘bad’. Tau Malachi wrote; “Even evil is not ultimately separate from God, but rather is a gross manifestation of cosmic ignorance, the true nature and essence of which is divine - only its divinity is obscured and hidden.” In speaking of Satan, Tau Malachi said; “These (Sophian Christian) teachings propose that Satan is the shadow of Adam Kadmon (the Logos) a collective shadow self-produced by cosmic ignorance. This can prove an illuminating contemplation (my emphasis) and it is good to bear in mind as we continue to explore the dominion of the demiurgos and archons.”
The archons are members of Yaldabaoths family. The Pistis Sophia and Yaldabaoth story goes on to relate that Yaldabaoth and his sons created a man who was deficient and lay inanimate on the ground. Pistis Sophia had unwittingly put an element of spiritual light into Yaldabaoth. Because he had turned out defective, she wanted to remove it from him. She tricked Yaldabaoth into blowing his breath into the man in order to animate him. In doing this, Yaldabaoth unknowingly transferred his spiritual light into the man. Immediately, it was clear to Yaldabaoth and the other archons that the man they had created was now superior to them, because he had the Infinite Spirit within him. This indwelling of the Infinite Spirit into humanity is found in the Genesis allegory as the eating of the apple and gaining knowledge. This all important knowledge or Gnosis is a conscious awareness or oneness with God. When Gnosis is attained, the individual retains his or her separate identity, but is also connected with the mind of God and hence all creation.
One of the hardest parts of my research has been to learn that the Bible has been misinterpreted because at the crucial beginning of Christianity, the people who gained control of the religion didn’t have the keys to understanding the texts they were teaching. Both the Old and New Testaments are written in code. In the New Testament Jesus signals this by saying; “for those with ears to hear” or “with eyes to see”. What he meant when he said that was that for those who knew the code, what he was saying would make sense.
The allegory of Adam, Eve and the Serpent is misunderstood by Christians. In the first chapter of Genesis, the story is taking place on the divine plane before humans had material bodies. The second chapter of Genesis takes place in the Eden on Earth. Women were not cursed to have painful child birth. That was just a natural occurrence once spirit became embedded in matter. God creating coats of skin for Adam and Eve means that he created their bodies of flesh. We should be embarrassed to admit that we believe an actual reptilian snake spoke to Eve! Paramahansa Yogananda was a master yogi who wrote the book Autobiography of a Yogi. He explains the meaning of the Eden allegory in Genesis;
The Biblical authors never intended the Serpent on the Tree in Genesis to be taken literally. Instead, it was meant to be a motif representing the serpentine Kundalini power that ascends the “Tree of Life”, a term used by yogis when referring to the human spine.

Once souls came to the material plane they eventually lost their natural connection with God. For thousands of years, our family’s mission has been all about restoring humankind’s connection with God. The Kundalini power just referred to is the Indian word, for what Christians call the Holy Spirit power. At some point, human bodies were upgraded from those originally created by Yaldabaoth and his sons. They were given seven built-in power centers, called chakras that were meant to be a person’s spiritual connectors with God. Edgar Cayce called the chakras “life centers, points of contact between the physical body and soul” and described them as “whirling vortices of energy.” In all the gnostic religions, the snake is characterized as the Holy Spirit power sitting coiled at the base of the spine. The object of the gnostic religions is to facilitate the activation of this spiritual energy up the spine and through the power centers until enlightenment occurs.

All the Gnostics had a tree symbolism. The seven branches of the tree signified these spiritual power centers. Christians know it as the Tree of Life, but that’s about all they know about it. The roots of the Tree represent aspects of material reality. According to Paramahansa Yogananda, since the serpent in the Eden allegory is in the upper branches of the tree, this shows that the Eden being spoken of was the one in the spiritual realm before humans ‘fell’ into matter. The fall was simply the soul’s manifestation in matter - it doesn’t signify anything sinful at all. Humans were just doing what God intended them to do. Paramahansa Yogananda says that when enlightenment occurs, there is a dramatic awakening of the three quarters of the brain which aren’t normally active, as well as the inner antenna that receive psychic information. He wrote that the heart chakra is the last to open, and when that happens, it aligns a person with “his or her true self and their identity as the Infinite Spirit.”
Some might consider that last sentence and my assertions that everything and everyone is God, to be blasphemous. However, my research over the last six years has convinced me that he and I are accurate. Paramahansa Yogananda wrote that when the chakras are all activated, they work to endow a person with gnostic awareness regarding the secrets of the universe and their true identity. The gnostic yogis of India say that this is how the serpent teaches its students Gnosis. It doesn’t transmit Gnosis by facts or information, but rather by activating the gnostic centers within a person so that he or she can know the wisdom directly and intuitively.
The keys to the Serpent, Tree of Life and knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden are explained in the Jewish Kaballah, otherwise known as the Jewish Old Religion - the religion practiced by Jesus and his family. Their explanation of the Eden allegory is the same as that just mentioned by Paramahansa Yogananda. I learned that the pagan Mystery religions as well as what are the major world religions today, contained veneration of the serpent, which, considering the serpent’s status in Christianity, was very confusing. I also learned that the Eden allegory is not as simplistic as we might think. In Isis Unveiled, H. P. Blavatsky makes this statement concerning the serpent;
PP 263/4 Before our globe had become egg-shaped or round it was a long trail of cosmic dust or fire-mist, moving and writhing like a serpent. This, say the explanations, was the Spirit of God moving on the chaos until its breath had incubated cosmic matter and made it assume the annular shape of a serpent with its tail in its mouth - emblem of eternity in its spiritual and of our world in its physical sense. The seven-headed snake represents the Supreme Deity manifesting through His Elohim, or Seven Spirits, by whose aid He established His universe. The coils of the snake have been used by the pagans to symbolize the motion and also the orbits of the celestial bodies, and it is probable that the symbol of the serpent twisted around the egg – which was common to many of the ancient Mystery schools – represented both the apparent motion of the sun around the Earth, and the bands of astral light, or the great magical agent³ which move about the planet incessantly.

Electricity was commonly symbolized by the serpent because of its motion. Electricity passing between the poles of a spark gap is serpentine in its motion. Force projected through atmosphere was called The Great Snake. Being symbolic of universal force, the serpent was emblematic of both good and evil. Force can tear down as rapidly as it can build up. The serpent with its tail in its mouth is the symbol of eternity, for in this position the body of the reptile has neither beginning nor end. The head and tail represent the positive and negative poles of the cosmic life circuit. The initiates of the Mysteries were often referred to as serpents, and their wisdom was considered analogous to the divinely inspired power of the snake. There is no doubt that the title ‘Winged Serpents’⁴ was given to one of the invisible hierarchies that labored with the Earth during its early formation. There is a legend that in the beginning of the world winged serpents reigned upon the Earth. These were probably the demigods which antedate the historical civilization of every nation.

From The Gnostics and Their Remains;
P 366 The Serpent became the type and symbol of evil, and of the Devil, only during the Middle Ages. The early Christians - besides the Ophite Gnostics - had their dual Logos: the Good and the Bad Serpent, the Agathodaemon and the Kakodaemon. This is demonstrated by the writings of Marcus, Valentinus, and many others, and especially in Pistis Sophia - certainly a document of the earliest centuries of Christianity. As for the figure of the serpent, supposing these talismans to emanate not from the Isiac but the newer Ophite creed, it may well stand for that “True and perfect Serpent,” who leads forth the souls of all that put their trust in him out of the Egypt of the body, and through the Red Sea of death into the Land of Promise, saving them on their way from the serpents of the wilderness, that is, from the rulers of the stars.
So for the Gnostics, the serpent was the Logos and had both higher and lower aspects. This is one of the most controversial topics that will come up, because as Christians know, the Logos is the Son of God, one part of the Trinity. In all the Mystery religions, one archetype is the good son-bad son. These are nothing more or less than this dual representation of the Logos. To put this more clearly, in the Serpents higher nature, he is the Logos, in his lower nature, he is Satan. In the book Edgar Cayce on the Old Testament from Joshua to Solomon p 181 the author wrote that according to the readings; “The two twin sons represent the two principles of worldliness and self-gratification as opposed to selflessness through service and the seeking of the Truth.” I will talk more on this sensitive subject as the story progresses, but I will say that the true ‘devil’ is human self-centeredness. As recorded by St. Epiphanius in his work Adversus Haereses, the Ophites - a Gnostic Christian sect - stated in their writings;
We venerate the serpent because God has made it the cause of Gnosis for mankind. Ialdabaoth did not want men to have any recollection of the Mother or of the Father on high. It was the serpent, who by tempting them, brought them Gnosis; who taught the man and the woman the complete knowledge of the mysteries from on high.
In the ancient apocryphal text The Secret Book of John, Jesus tells the apostle John that it was he, Jesus, who made Adam and Eve eat the apple, i.e., gain knowledge or Gnosis. He said that he did that as an eagle in the top of the tree. It took probably a year before I understood what he was saying. The eagle at the top of the tree is the pineal gland or the crown chakra in the head. Jesus opened this in Adam and Eve, giving them Christ Consciousness or Enlightenment. Jesus goes on to tell John that the serpent taught them “lust and begetting.” What he refers to here, is that as a serpent, the spiritual power in a human rests at the bottom of the spine and in the lower chakras, which have to do with generation/sexuality and basic survival. I don’t believe he was referring to a person or spirit as the serpent, but to the serpent power trapped in the lower nature. Jesus, as related by the author of The Revelation: Our Crisis Is a Birth says this in regard to Adam, Eve and the Serpent;
P 96 Generations ago the first man and woman broke out of the creature-human condition. They ate of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and felt separate from the Creator. They gained their own capacities for co-creation through the development of individuality and intellect. They were prevented from access to the Tree of Life, to the knowledge of how the invisible technologies operate, for they were still in a state of separate, self-centered consciousness, too childish to inherit the Kingdom.
So from Jesus’ own words, we learn that humans weren’t denied the Tree of Life, they just weren’t evolved enough to partake of the ‘Tree’. They felt separate from the Creator, because this was the point when they entered the realm of duality, when they first separated from the All. They entered duality in order to gain experience as God’s separated consciousness. As the channeled Jesus states, it was necessary for human souls to separate from God in order to; “Gain their own capacities for co-creation through the development of individuality and intellect.” It’s just now, that some of humankind is ready to inherit the invisible technologies found on the Tree of Life.
The keys to understanding the Old Testament lay in the Kabbalic text called the Zohar. Richard Smoley, author of Forbidden Faith, traced the origin of the Zohar to the Languedoc region of France in the days of the Cathars, a gnostic Christian group that traced their origin to Jesus, Mary Magdalene and John the Apostle. The author points out though, that the Kabbalah’s origins go back to the Garden of Eden when the archangel Raziel gave the teaching to Adam and Eve. Adam passed it to Seth, who passed it to Noah, who taught it to Shem. Abraham learned from Melchizedek, the priest-king of the Bible who many say was Noah’s son Shem. Abraham taught it to Isaac, who taught Jacob, who passed it to Levi. The teachings continued in the line of Levi until Moses passed it to Joshua. One account has the teaching going to Egypt with Abraham, and then Moses receiving the teaching from the Egyptians.

This picture is a closer rendition of the reality of the Garden of Eden, rather than the one of a talking reptile slithering around a tree, more familiar to us. The serpent was an angelic Serpent of Wisdom.

When I’m talking about our family’s beliefs, keep this in mind; no matter how strange the stories sound, when it comes down to it, the message is always the same. That is, the Adamic humans, most likely homo sapiens, were created to be the epitome of material creation. They were given spiritual power centers so that they could remain in constant communion with God. They/we were created to be co-creators with God. The religion of our ancestors always had one goal in mind - to facilitate humankind’s evolution towards God and reconnect humans with their ability to have constant consciousness with God and all of God’s creation.
The true understanding of the snake in the Eden allegory is that it is representative of a spiritual power that is transmitted by the Holy Spirit. It permeates all of creation. It’s the very essence of life itself. In humans, it sits at the base of the spine. Our ancestors’ religion was all about raising this power up through the Tree of Life, i.e. the spinal column and spiritual energy centers called by the Hindus, chakras - to the crown chakra at the top of the head. This power is said to be in the shape of a cyclonic force or in a spiral shape, hence the coiled serpent figure of the allegory. Once this force rises to the top of the head, one is illuminated or at one with God. To the Hebrews this spiritual power was called Manna or the Water of Life. To the Egyptians it was Ka. To the Chinese it is Chi. Some people today call it Astral Light. To the American Indians it was known as Orenda by the Iroquois, Wakan to the Sioux, and Manitou by the Algonquin’s.
Our ancestor’s allegories usually had more than one meaning. The author Mark Pinkham gives another explanation of the serpent allegory;
The Garden of Eden and the Serpent on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil as its center is a representation of the expansion of the universe from a central point of creation. The apples on the tree represent the material forms which condense out of the serpentine life force. The Tree of Good and Evil within the Garden of Eden is a representation of an early phase in the creation of the cosmos when the Serpent life force crystallized into the material forms of the physical universe, represented as the trees apples. This condensation phase was necessary so that Yod He Vau He, the Spirit of the Hebrews, could experience his own creation through his two polar halves, Adam and Eve, the archetypal male and female genders.

Other evolutionary phases of creation are also revealed by the famous Eden myth. For example, after Adam and Eve were placed in the paradisiacal garden and tasted of the fruits of the Tree of Good and Evil, they soon noticed differences between themselves and everything around them. Their sudden lack of unity consciousness (with God) represents a stage of creation when the genders were placed in the crystallizing universe, began ‘tasting’ or enjoying the solidified ‘fruits’, and subsequently developed an intellect in order to classify the material forms according to designations of health giving or not health giving or ‘good and evil’. The dawn of the discriminating intellect led to the couple’s loss of connection to the transcendental Spirit which is beyond the intellect, and their eventual expulsion from the holy garden an additional consequence of enjoying the crystallize fruits of the physical universe is the development of a physical body which lives and dies.

...And, finally, in order for there to be ample fruits to nourish the mortal, physical bodies of the divine couple and their descendants, the life force needed to completely crystallize. This is why the wily Serpent was cursed by God to crawl upon its belly and be bruised by the heel of the seed of woman while it in turn bruised their heels. In other words, the Serpent (the etheric life force) was commanded by Spirit to descend from the cosmic tree (the higher dimensions) and solidify into dense vegetation and hard ground so that Adam, Eve and their descendants could enjoy and walk upon it and potentially get their heels bruised by it-while simultaneously bruising it. ....From another perspective, the yogis of India have claimed that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and evil with its trunk and divergent branches represents the human spine and the nerves which branch from it. This inner tree bestows intellectual wisdom by allowing humans to interact with and learn from the phenomenal world.

The serpent at the tree’s base is the body’s root life force which, at some point during the evolution of the dense, physical body, descended to the Root or Earth Chakra at the base of the spine and perpetually fuels the body from that distal location. Eventually, however, the serpent life force will once again ascend the spine. This event, claims the yogis, is depicted in the Eden allegory as the Tree of Life. The flaming sword wielding cherub which guards the base of the tree, they say, is the fiery Kundalini Serpent which resides at the base of the human spine. When a person can move this transformative serpent up the Tree of Life or spine and merge it in the top of the head, he or she will achieve eternal life and potentially live forever.

When the Primal Serpent finally reached the full extent of its expansion within the universe, it divided itself in twelve parts. These twelve parts became the twelve signs of the Zodiac, the ‘Circle of Animals’. As the initial vehicle of Infinite Spirit, the Dragon was the synthesis of all possible forms including the twelve animals of the zodiac.
Another form assumed by God was the seven Elohim or planetary spirits. It is they, collectively, who say in the Bible; “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” According to the gnostic version of Eden; “after Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit they saw their makers (the Elohim) and loathed them since they were beastly (reptilian) forms.” We will see these beastly forms in a later chapter.

The Holy Spirit’s power is often referred to as the sons of the Holy Spirit and given names such as Murrugan, Enki, St. George, the Green Man and others. In the gnostic religions of our ancestors, the Mother is the Creator, Preserver and Destroyer. The Gnostics believe the Holy Spirit sends her power to the Earth as her two opposing sons, one of them preserves - the other destroys. These two opposing powers are seen in the ancient myths as the good and bad sons, i.e. Cain and Abel, Seth and Horus, Romulus and Remus, etc. To the Hebrews, they were represented by the two cherubs on top of the Ark of the Covenant. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, the Hebrew cherubs originally possessed dragon-like appearances, something you might remember for later! After a while, the sons were no longer thought of as twins but as opposing forces. According to Mark Pinkham; “Eventually it was determined that the Heavenly Twin was the only Son of God and the twin brothers were not siblings but the embodiments of eternally separate principles.”

The Sophia-Yaldabaoth story relates repeated entreaties from Pistis Sophia to God for forgiveness and restoration of her Light and her position in the Pleroma - her first estate. In the gnostic myths, Pistis Sophia represents the soul fallen into materialization where she gets ‘dirty’ and becomes promiscuous and worldly. This is represented in some myths as saying that Pistis Sophia was a prostitute or adulterer, but in reality it is only an allegory for a soul lost in an unfamiliar world with no remembrance of whence it came, or of its true value as an individual aspect of God.
Even though Yaldabaoth and his sons thought they were making humans and other creations, they were being directed in their actions by Pistis Sophia and Christ who were creating through them. The Holy Spirit and Logos were and are the manifestor of every creation and worked through Pistis Sophia, Christ, and Yaldabaoth. The mind of God the Father is the originator of every creation. So if Yaldabaoth is called the creator of our universe and of we ourselves - it’s nothing to get upset about.
The story goes that there was first an archetypal man in the spiritual planes named Adamas. In the Kaballah, he is known as Adam Kadmon. The heavenly Adamas had a heavenly son named Seth. These two were the models for the earthly Adam and his son Seth. The heavenly models are known as Man and Son of Man and as shown in the Bible, Son of Man was the title Jesus used most for himself. If I understand correctly, Man is God and Son of Man is the Logos, or son of God. I know this is confusing, but just remember, Christians believe that the son of God came to the Earth and incarnated into Jesus, and Jesus always referred to himself as the Son of Man.
In the gnostic myths, Pistis Sophia sends her daughter Zoe (Life) also known as Eve, to be an instructor to Adam. So in this case, Eve is the agent of knowledge herself. After this, Yaldabaoth and his sons were jealous of Adam who was superior to themselves, so out of jealousy, they threw them out of the Garden and cursed them and the Earth. The story gets even darker as it relates that they raped Eve, and Cain and Abel were fathered by Yaldabaoth and/or his sons.
It is important to remark here that Pistis Sophia is seen as a lower form of Sophia the Holy Spirit, just as Yaldabaoth/Jehovah is seen as a lower form of Yahweh. To put this into perspective, just think of God or Yahweh creating human spirits in Heaven, and a lower aspect of God, Yaldabaoth/Jehovah creating physical humans on Earth. Yahweh is the Holy Spirit and Logos combined. Yaldabaoth is an emanation of Yahweh and is the Jehovah of the Old Testament of the Bible. According to the Freemasons, Jehovah is a lower expression of Yahweh, or God. Please remember, everything is an emanation of God! No matter how many gods or Gods, they are all God! Our ancestors believed in creation by emanation. As each emanation was further removed from God or Source, it became darker or ‘lesser’.
You may ask yourself, “Couldn’t God have been nicer than he was in the Old Testament?” The key to understanding this is to remember that God gave all his creations, including Yaldabaoth/Jehovah free will. What point would there have been for God to control all of ‘his’ creations? He made this material world so that he could have experiences through his creations. Free will enables both tragic and wonderful things. God evidently wants to experience both. Also, and this is very important, Jesus says that the mean and angry God of the Old Testament is a “construction of human minds.” We will talk about those constructors a little later in the story.

At some point, Pistis Sophia told Yaldabaoth about the upper Pleroma, which is the highest spiritual realm, and informed him of the spiritual hierarchy that exists above him. When Pistis Sophia revealed this to Yaldabaoth, his son Sabaoth was immediately repentant and praised the higher spiritual beings. Because of this, Sabaoth was made ruler over the heavenly host and installed in the seventh heaven.

It is necessary at this point to give a better understanding of the Old Testament of the Bible. There are many voices contained within it. First of all, there is the creator god Yaldabaoth/Jehovah and his sons, the archons or authorities also known as the Anunnaki or Elohim. There is also Yaldabaoth’s son Sabaoth. In the Bible, he is called by the name Adonai (Lord) Sabaoth. There are the voices of the Hebrew leaders such as Moses and Abraham, and there are the voices of the prophets. Some of the prophets spoke for Yaldabaoth/Jehovah, some for Pistis Sophia and Christ, and some for Yahweh. Now having said that ,I will stress that ultimately, these voices all come from God. From what I understand, Yaldabaoth/Jehovah ruled the Hebrews/Israelites/Jews from Adam to Moses, and then Sabaoth, Yaldabaoth’s repentant son, ruled from the time the Israelites were in Egypt. We know the Israelites changed God’s at that time from the Bible; “I have been the Lord your God ever since the land of Egypt.” Hosea 12:9. Sabaoth is the God of the Jews, Hebrews and Israelites. Israel is a creation of Lord Sabaoth and Israel are his ‘chosen people’.
We learn from the ancient gnostic text On the Origin of the World;

Now when Sabaoth, the son of Yaldabaoth, heard the voice of Pistis, he sang praises to her, and he condemned the father [...] at the word of Pistis; and he praised her because she had instructed them about the immortal man⁵ and his light. Then Pistis Sophia stretched out her finger and poured upon him some light from her light, to be a condemnation of his father. Then when Sabaoth was illumined, he received great authority against all the forces of chaos. Since that day he has been called "Lord of the Forces".

He hated his father, the darkness, and his mother, the abyss, and loathed his sister, the thought of the prime parent, which moved to and fro upon the waters. And because of his light, all the authorities of chaos were jealous of him. And when they had become disturbed, they made a great war in the seven heavens. Then when Pistis Sophia had seen the war, she dispatched seven archangels to Sabaoth from her light. They snatched him up to the seventh heaven. They stood before him as attendants. Furthermore, she sent him three more archangels, and established the kingdom for him over everyone, so that he might dwell above the twelve gods of chaos.

Now when Sabaoth had taken up the place of repose in return for his repentance, Pistis also gave him her daughter Zoe (Life)⁶, together with great authority, so that she might instruct him about all things that exist in the eighth heaven. And as he had authority, he made himself first of all a mansion. It is huge, magnificent, seven times as great as all those that exist in the seven heavens.

And before his mansion he created a throne, which was huge and was upon a four-faced chariot called ‘Cherubim’. Now the Cherubim has eight shapes per each of the four corners, lion forms and calf forms and human forms and eagle forms, so that all the forms amount to sixty-four forms - and seven archangels that stand before it; he is the eighth, and has authority. All the forms amount to seventy-two. Furthermore, from this chariot the seventy-two gods took shape; they took shape so that they might rule over the seventy-two languages of the peoples. And by that throne he created other, serpent-like angels, called ‘Seraphim’, which praise him at all times.

Thereafter he created a congregation of angels, thousands and myriads, numberless, which resembled the congregation in the eighth heaven; and a firstborn called Israel - which is, "the man that sees God"; and another being, called Jesus Christ, who resembles the savior above in the eighth heaven, and who sits at his right upon a revered throne. And at his left, there sits the virgin of the Holy Spirit, upon a throne and glorifying him. And the seven virgins stand before her, [...] possessing thirty harps, and psalteries and trumpets, glorifying him. And all the armies of the angels glorify him, and they bless him. Now where he sits is upon a throne of light

Now Pistis Sophia set him apart from the darkness and summoned him to her right, and the prime parent she put at her left. Since that day, right has been called justice, and left called wickedness. Now because of this, they all received a realm in the congregation of justice and wickedness.

The prime parent is Yaldabaoth. Nowhere have I seen that Yaldabaoth has ever repented. He is described as a dark lord and a demon. Several texts say he will be destroyed at the end of time. Some people think that he was repentant, but I believe they are mistaking him for his son Sabaoth because of the confusion of identities in the Old Testament. Some people, including many Gnostic Christians, say that Yaldabaoth is Satan. If Yaldabaoth is Satan, then that would make the mean God of the Old Testament, Satan. However, my understanding is that Satan is one of the Seraphim angels, the angels that Lord Sabaoth created. Satan is said in the Bible to be a son of God and is a brother to the archangels Michael, Raphael, Gabriel and others.

All I can say is, I don’t know the truth on this subject. I’m just passing on information as best as I can understand it. I will say, however, that today Jesus, or Jeshua, as his real name was, tells us not to believe in a God who gives us rules and laws. He says that all humans are manifestations of God and are only answerable to the God within. Let there be no doubt about it, Jeshua came to do away with the Law of Moses, the Law of the Old Testament. He replaced it with the Law of Love. However, those who are not following Jeshua’s Law of Love are still under Moses Law - something we will discuss a little later.
We learned something very important from this last text. We learned that the God of the Hebrews, Jews and Israelites is Sabaoth. He created Israel, the angel soul of the earthly Jacob-Israel, and he created Jesus. This means that when Jesus speaks of his Father in Heaven, he is speaking of Sabaoth. We learn here that he is not the highest God. That is why the Old Testament is still important to our family. It tells the story of the Israelite people and the God who not only chose them, but created them, and as we will learn, literally procreated them. If you protest this, in saying that Jesus father was the highest God, I will remind you that Jesus was not a son of the Highest until the Logos descended upon him at his baptism. In the Gospel of the Ebionite’s as well as in Luke 3:22 it states; “Though art my son; today I have begotten thee.” This is said by God after Jesus’ baptism. Also, in our family’s initiatory teachings, the title Son of God was considered the supreme initiatory status. It’s the title one receives when one is Christed, or reunited with their higher self, i.e. enlightened. Sabaoth is not the ‘highest’ God, but he is God of the psychic class of humans. There are three types of humans; the hylic, the psychic and the pneumatic. The terms stand for a person’s spiritual state, or lack thereof. The highest is spiritual and it signifies that the soul has become purified enough that God dwells within him or her. The psychic is in the middle and it means that the person is endowed with a soul, but does not yet have the spirit of God within them. The hylic is a material person and does not have the spirit of God within them.
We saw in the verses from On the Origin of the World, the seventy-two gods that were sent to govern over the seventy-two languages or peoples of the Earth. These are the very same gods mentioned several places in the Old Testament. We just learned that Sabaoth was given governorship over the seventh heaven and everything below it, including the Earth. It is his sons who are the gods of the nations. The Bible refers to these seventy-two as both sons of Noah and sons of Israel, which has always confused biblical scholars as Jacob-Israel wasn’t even born at the time. The explanation to this is that the angelic Israel was first embodied in Noah, and later in Jacob-Israel. The prophet writers of the Old Testament were well aware of this fact.
What I have learned is that God is unfathomable. In recognition of that, the worship of a God with whatever name or image one wants to imagine, is acceptable. What is important is that one learns to see everything and every person as God, or as a manifestation or emanation of God.
The following New Testament Bible verse confirms something very important; “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.” John 1:18 We learn from this verse that Jesus brought news of a different God - not the God of the Old Testament. The God of the Old Testament walked with Adam in the Garden and talked to Moses and Abraham, yet we see here that John says that no man has seen the God who Jesus came to announce.
We also learned from the previous verses the reason for the war in heaven. It is a battle between Sabaoth and the rest of his family. The battle is not only fought in Heaven, it is also fought here on Earth. It is both a spiritual and physical battle, one that we are deeply involved with. It’s a family feud. The ‘good’ side of the family has been battling the ‘bad’ side of the family for thousands of years. That continues to this day. We are the Anunnaki or Nephilim or fallen angels of the Bible who are also Seraphim angels. We just learned that Sabaoth created the Seraphim and Cherubim. These include Michael, Gabriel, Ariel, Raphael, Sariel, Lucifer and many others. These are our family, some of them are fallen, and some are not. Or, as I should say, we have all been fallen at some point. Some though, are still in that role.