Vai al contenuto

From Cosmos to Chaos

The History of Western Traditions

26. The first century of Christianity

    The first century of Christianity

    After the Spirit took possession of their hearts, the apostles and the disciples of the Christ began to wander villages and cities performing miraculous healings1. Often once again possessed, they spoke languages they did not know2. They were not the only ones. In Palestine, that period was marked by turmoil, violence and religious fanaticism and everywhere social agitators proclaimed new prophets or Messiah, preaching the collapse of the Roman Empire, the advent of the Kingdom of Israel over the whole earth and the coming of the end of the world. They performed wonders, miracles and magic. The Jews of all the currents participated in this frantic atmosphere and riots, rebellions and acts of terrorism often broke out. This folly also influenced the many communities of Jews in the Diaspora, residing in the great cities of the Empire. This was in contrast with the general atmosphere of all the other peoples who were part of the vast Roman Empire. The restoration of the monarchy in the Imperial form had guaranteed peace and prosperity everywhere. The subjects of Rome recognized in the Roman peace (Pax Romana) the favor of the Gods and considered the Emperor as a divine representative of heaven on earth. This idyllic setting was considered a return to the Age of Gold3. The only exception was Palestine where the madness of the Jews and Christians overshadowed the Imperial harmony. The Romans had conquered Palestine in 63 B.C. They, however, had left the kingdom of Palestine to the Jewish dynasty of the Herodians. It was therefore a protectorate with wide autonomy.​ Although Herod the Great gave orders to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem, the Jews hated him and his successors because they had an open mind towards Greco-Roman culture. Also the Sadducees, the kohanim of the Temple who constituted the Sanhedrin, government and parliament of the Jewish state, were under susppicion of collaborating with the Romans. Due to the continuing violence caused by Nazareans and Zealots4, the Romans twice took direct control of Palestine in an attempt to restore order. The situation was very hard: assassins, sicarians and zealots infested cities and villages; the country was devastated by bandits who took advantage from the general chaos assaulting caravans and farms. The coast was teeming with pirate boats disguised as fishing boats5. Nazareans and Pharisees attacked the priests of the Temple and their families, and fought each other. They also denounced their rivals to the Roman authority to get rid of them6. The Church of Jerusalem was structured in the image of the Sanhedrin; so it was inevitable that between the original Sanhedrin of the Temple and the new Nazarean Church a often ferocious rivalry broke out7.​ The apostles had tried to convince the Jews of the Middle East communities to recognize Jesus as Messiah. But the Jews continued to regard the Messiah as a triumphant King, so they did not accept as Messiah the defeated and executed Jesus. For this reason the apostles preferred to converge on Jerusalem which had become the seat of the first Bishopric. On the other hand St. Paul, more educated and with a deeper initiatic preparation, continued to collect consents and conversions in the circles of Jews and semi-converted (ger-toshab) of the Diaspora. They began to pay to the Church of Jerusalem, the tax which they previously had assigned to the Temple.​ With these numerous followers and with their financial weight, St. Paul participated to the first Christian Council in Jerusalem. During that meeting he maintained that the ancient Moses’ law was now to be repealed and replaced with the teaching of Jesus. Therefore, food restrictions, circumcision and the entire Jewish exterior law had to be abolished. Those who adhered to Christianity had to follow only the teachings of Jesus, the Verb of God, and let go and consider as superstitions all the previous customs and habits. Christians, the new people elected in spiritual sense, no longer had to identify with a single race or nation. His oratorical skills, his culture, the prestige of being a Roman citizen, the support of the Diaspora communities succeeded in overcoming the uncouth recalcitrant apostles. Certainly many of them did not accept to reject the Moses’ law and so a fracture grew between the Pauline Church and the Nazarean Church. The latter gradually was reabsorbed in Judaism until its disappearance.​
    When the newborn Christian Church split into the two Pauline and Nazarean factions, also the regular Judaism suffered the same destiny. Since the kohens of the Temple, the only true priests8 of the Jewish religion, were almost all Sadducees, the few priests of the Pharisees minority decided to separate themselves by leaning on the class of scribes. They were not from the tribe of Levi, so they did not belong to the priestly caste. They were secular doctors of the low, born in the tribes of Judah and Benjamin who had studied the sacred texts and gradually became indispensable to the administration of Moses’ Judaism9. The Pharisees, with their support, gave birth to the synagogues, meeting places that soon rivaled the Temple.​ In the Synagogues rites and sacrifices could not be performed, so everything was limited to public prayers, readings and sermons. The scribes, however, usurped the blessing of the High Priest, which they gave at the conclusion of the assemblies. With the passing of time even in the Synagogues the Pharisees of priestly birth disappeared absorbed by the scribes who since then assumed the title of rabbis. Meanwhile, serious riots broke out in many cities of the Empire. In 64 d.C., Rome itself was devastated by a fire that destroyed four fifths of that city with one and a half million inhabitants. The responsibility was immediately attributed to Jews and Christians who wanted to realize a Hebrew-Egyptian prophecy according to which Rome would perish in a fire. Emperor Nero ordered a meticulous investigation and at the end only the Christians who spontaneously declared themselves guilty were condemned to death. After that the Emperor strove to rebuild the “Capital of the world” (Lat.: Caput Mundi)10. The repression calmed the turbulent waters in the cities of the Diaspora. However in 66 d.C. a sudden revolt arose in Jerusalem from futile motives.​ After some initial successes, the rebels had to withdraw and barricade themselves up in Jerusalem. Two Emperors participated in the war: Vespasian and his son Titus. It was a dirty and cruel war, in which everyone fought against everyone. When the Romans entered Jerusalem, the Zealots barricaded themselves in the Temple. Here they put to the sword the priests accused of being collaborators of the Romans. Finally the Temple was destroyed being torn down stone by stone; and Titus killed the last surviving priests11.​ 
    In this way the ancient religion received a blow from which it would not have recovered: in the past, during the Babylonian captivity, the Jews had lost the pronunciation of the name of their God, the Ark of the Covenant12 and ten tribes of their people with the relative social functions.​ The Temple and the priestly caste were completely destroyed; this caused not only the loss of the priestly rites and sacrifices but also the loss of their own very religious center. The war ended in blood as it began: Titus arrested and executed all the direct descendants of King David, so as to prevent anyone proclaiming himself Messiah13. Ancient Judaism was dead and in its place it only the new rabbinical reformed religion remained. The scribes-rabbis did not refer directly to the Tōrāh like did the kohens, but mostly to the oral comments (Mishnah) and writings (Gemara) of the rabbinic tradition, the so-called Talmud, that they considered even more sacred then the Old Testament. With the disappearance of the Jewish priesthood, even the Essenian communities, whose members were predominantly of the tribe of Levi, suffered the same crisis and disappeared14. The Jewish esoterism continued in the form of Qabbalah in the shadow of the synagogues and with a rabbinic transmission.
    On the eve of the Jewish war, the government of the Christian Church, i.e. the Nazarean Sanhedrin, took refuge in the city of Pella, to avoid arrests and reprisals by the Romans, by the real Sanhedrin of the Temple and by the different rebel factions15. However, Christian zealots and sicarii actively participated in the insurrection, to such an extent that, at the end of the war, the Romans persecuted them everywhere in the East part of the Empire. The nazarean Sanhedrin had to hide and suffer losses of human lives and desertions from the faith. Rome easily stifled revolts led by someone who proclaimed himself Messiah. But for the Empire the fanaticism of the followers of a dead Messiah who was supposed to return miraculously to life, to win Rome and dominate the whole world, was more dangerous.
    In the West part of the Empire, the Jewish-Christian communities of the Diaspora did not participate in the rebellion16. There are two main reasons for this behavior. First of all, the Jews who had lived in foreign cities for centuries had their interests, assets and commercial networks there. Most of them had lost the use of Hebrew and Aramaic languages, in favor of Greek and Latin, and so had been profoundly influenced by Hellenistic-Roman culture. Secondly, they feared of the inflexible punishment of Imperial justice, which they had suffered during the fire of Rome. The Jewish-Christian community of Rome did not welcome the preaching of St. Paul. While St. Paul was under house arrest for a couple of years in Rome17, he received many semi-converted visitors, but none of them was Jews by birth. After the end of the Jewish war, Roman Jews followed the doctrines of St. Paul, which were not hostile to the Romans and did not describe Christ as a Jewish King, but as a divine manifestation. This was a much more acceptable to the Romans both in the religious and in the political sense.​
    The epistles of St. Paul were then the only written texts of the New Testament. The Christian community of Rome diffused them in all the cities of the Empire, and this explains why the Gospels, which were written at least thirty years later, never describe Jesus as the Messiah. In this way, after the disappearance of the Sanhedrin of the Temple and after the dispersion of the Nazarean Sanhedrin, the episcopate of Rome became hegemonic over all the episcopates of the other cities of the Empire. At the end of the first century AD Rome, capital of the vast Empire, established itself as the seat of the highest Christian authority, assuming the Roman priestly title of Pontifex Maximus, the Pope. Thus the ancient Moses’ religion split into two new religious forms: the Talmudist Judaism reformed by the rabbis and the Christian Church of Rome based on the pauline doctrine.

    Gian Giuseppe Filippi

    1. They behaved, therefore, as real Therapeuts.[↩]
    2. This phenomenon is still very widespread among the popular religions of Africa, South America and Australia and in the shamanic and tribal environments of Asia and North America. St. Paul reduced the importance attributed to these phenomena (I Letter to the Corinthians, 13).[↩]
    3. In India in the same period, something similar happened with the foundation of the Kuṣāṇa kingdom, followed by the Gupta Empire.[↩]
    4. Among the Nazareans, Christians were prevalent, while the Jewish current prevailed among the Zealots.[↩]
    5. As it happens still today in front of the coasts of Somalia, Gulf of Guinea, Kerala, Bangla Desh and Southeast Asia.[↩]
    6. This happened to St. Paul and St. Peter.[↩]
    7. For example, the first Christian martyr, St. Stephen, and the first head of the Church, St. James were executed by Jews by order of the Sanhedrin.[↩]
    8. In fact, only two of twelve tribes returned to Israel from the Babylonian captivity: the royal tribe of Judah and that of Benjamin, composed of savage fighters. With them some priests born in the tribe of Levi also returned. The other ten tribes disappeared forever from Jewish history. They probably mingled with other Mesopotamian populations, thus losing their distinctive Jewish characteristics.[↩]
    9. Only those who were born in the priestly tribe of Levi could become kohanim, Temple’s priests by right of birth. For this reason they dedicated themselves to rites and sacrifices, delegating to the scribes the study and administration of the Temple, considered secondary functions. Thus the scribes became servants-masters.[↩]
    10. The Roman historian Suetonius (70-126 AD), opponent of Imperial politics, launched the accusation that Nero was the promoter of the fire. Slander that through Christian literature has continued to be believed until today. Nerone. Duemila anni di calunnie, Milan, Mondadori, 1993. The other Roman historian, the senator Tacitus (55-117 AD), on the other hand, claims that these were just slanderous rumors.[↩]
    11. Vicente Risco, Historia de los Judios desde la destrucción del Templo, Barcelona, ed. Goria, 1944, pp.54-57.[↩]
    12. Coffer in cedarwood and gold plates that had contained the tables of the Law delivered by Yehovah directly to Moses. It was the holiest object of their religion, preserved in the sancta sanctorum of the Temple; it disappeared before the sixth century. B.C.[↩]
    13. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (37-100 AD) narrated the last heroic resistance of nine hundred zealots entrenched in the fortress of Massada. They should have resisted the Roman siege for three years, finally deciding to commit suicide en masse. Archeology has demolished this episode as a historical forgery. Obviously, UNESCO declared the heroic memorial “World Heritage Site”. Ben-Yehuda, Nachmann, The Masada Myth. Collective Memory and Mythmaking in Israel, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1995.[↩]
    14. Especially the second revolt of 133 AD was fatal for the Essenes, when the Pharisees-scribe-rabbis declared them heretics. They abandoned their hermitages at the Dead Sea and dispersed vanishing from the History. They fled the persecution after hiding their writing texts, the famous Dead Sea manuscripts only rediscovered in the 20th century. Hugh Schonfield, The Essene Odyssey, cit., pp. 124-125. The Nazareans-Essenes, on the other hand, continued to transmit their esoteric knowledge in the form of Christian monasticism, taking refuge in the deserts of the Middle East and Egypt. Ibid, pp. 19-20.[↩]
    15. Hugh Schonfield, Jesus: Mesias o Dios?, Barcelona, ed. Martinez Roca, 1987 (I ed. Those incredibile Christians, Longmead (UK), Element Books Ltd, 1968), pp. 95-96.[↩]
    16. The Jews tried to unleash the anti-Roman revolt twice more. In 115 AD. in Egypt and Mesopotamia, and in 132 AD in Palestine. The outcome was devastating. Palestine after the war became a desert and the few Jews who remained alive were forced to a second Diaspora. Until the recent establishment of the state of Israel, a few sparse groups of Jews remained to live in that disastrous area, in the minority compared to the other inhabitants of that unhappy territory.[↩]
    17. Condemned by the Jews, St. Paul appealed to the Emperor as a Roman citizen. Brought to Rome, after two years he was condemned to death by beheading.[↩]

    25. After the resurrection

      After the resurrection

      As we have already stated, Westerners are obsessed with temporal becoming. For this reason, they are unable to consider the facts for what they are. They must consider them only in the historical perspective, as if history were able to explain its meaning. The Hebrew part of the Bible, known as the Old Testament, is the history of the Jewish people and. The Christian part of the Bible, the New Testament, is the history of Jesus and his direct disciples.
      The events that followed the death Jesus and his burial are very enigmatic. The data that the epistles, the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles provide us are not sufficient to reconstruct those happenings. As we will see, these events can be interpreted symbolically. However, due to their ignorance of the symbolic meanings, Christian exoteric theologians have always endeavored to demonstrate only the historicity of the facts. And by doing so, they obviously had to falsify history.
      On Easter Sunday several disciples went to the tomb where Jesus had been buried. All of them, though separately, saw either two men, one young man, or two angels. A woman thought that the unknown gardener she had met could have been Jesus and wanted to touch him to verify his identity, but that man eluded any physical contact (Lat.: noli me tangere, Hin.: हाथ मत लगाओ !). These mysterious figures informed the disciples that Jesus had resurrected. The Gospels agree that all of them were dressed in snow-white clothes1. It is interesting to note that the only religious Jews who did not wear striped clothes were the Essenes, who always wore solely white clothes. Considering that the tomb had been lent by Joseph of Arimathea, a priest of the Temple and secret disciple of Jesus, one can easly guess that the direct witnesses of the brahmalina were in fact his own Essenian disciples2.
      The Gospels narrate that in the forty days after Easter, the resurrected Jesus appeared eleven times to the apostles, to his disciples and even to a crowd of about five hundred people. All these apparitions have one common feature: no one recognized him as Jesus. Only later he was recognized, not for his appearance, but for his words, for his actions and, in some cases, for the exhibition of his wounds suffered during the crucifixion. The Gospels emphasize that this was a man of flesh and blood and not a ghost; but in one episode Jesus entered the room through a closed door3. In another episode he disappeared before the eyes of his witnesses while they were talking to him4. In these accounts there are many contradictions, and it is evident that the exterior disciples did not understand what was happening. On the fortieth day after his resurrection, Jesus ascended into heaven before the eyes of all his disciples. While they watched him ascending, two white-clad figures approached them and explained that Jesus would again descend one day from heaven5. Of all these confusing news only the Essenes evidently were able to give some explanation.
      As we wrote in the 23rd chapter of this series, Jesus had paid close attention to behaving and speaking coherently with the Old Testament prophecies regarding the coming of the Messiah, in order to be recognized as the predestined one. However, neither the return of the Messiah from the realm of the dead nor of the resurrection of his corpse are mentioned in the Old Testament6. This explains the great embarrassment of his disciples about the resurrection of Jesus and his ascension to heaven. Therefore, we can understand the reason for the contradictions found in the New Testament. In fact, as previously mentioned, only the Acts of the Apostles and just one of the Gospels7 report this episode.
      However, it seems that the Gospels – which were written at least fifty years after these events – mistake two separate episodes of the life of Jesus. Before beginning his public life, Jesus spent forty days in the desert performing tapas. At the end of this period, he underwent the temptations of the Devil, just as Naciketas8 and the Buddha Śākyamuni were tempted by the King of the dead, Yama or Māra, as they were reaching the fruit of their meditations. In all these cases, the protagonists, after descending to the reign of the dead, find open the way to reach the supreme heaven9. This is nothing else but the account of the “initiatic death”. That is to say, to experience death while remaining alive.
      The second event corresponds to the bodily death (dahānta), with the definitive achievement of the supreme heaven (Brahmaloka10). In the case of Jesus – and of some other figures of different traditions – death is followed by the integration of the body into its subtle principles (taṅmātra), which manifests itself with its disappearance. Thus, the Gospel clearly mistakes the two events, which are very distinct for those who have some knowledge of the initiatic sādhanās. Therefore, this account inaccurately repeats the delay of forty days before the ascent of Jesus into the heaven11, inspired in reality from the previous episode of his seclusion in the desert. Evidently the compilers of the so called three synoptic Gospels12 were merely exterior followers with little understanding of the initiatic mysteries.
      Ten days later, that is to say fifty days13 after the disappearance of the body of Jesus, the apostles gathered in a certain house. “And suddenly there came a big noise from heaven as of a furious mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting; and there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with by the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other languages, as the Spirit gave them utterance.”14
      This collective possession is considered as the beginning of history the Christian Church. The Jewish Pentecost commemorates the covenant of God with the Jewish people. On the other hand, the Pentecost for Christians is the celebration of the new covenant between God and the new-born Church. The Church was organized using the Jewish Sanhedrin as model, which consisted of the council of the seventy priests of the Temple and, at the same time, a governing assembly for the Jews. The seventy disciples of Jesus were the priests of the new Sanhedrin and the members of the Parliament that ruled the kingdom of the Messiah in the expectation of his return to earth. Among them, the eleven apostles became the bishops. At the head of the Church, the Supreme Priest was St. James, brother of Jesus15, flanked by two councilors-archbishops: St. John, brother of Jesus16, and St. Peter. Therefore, St. Peter was definitely not the first head of the Church, and neither was the second, since to St. James was in fact succeeded by Simon of Jerusalem17.
      After Pentecost, many disciples and apostles travelled to the Jewish communities established in the Middle East to preach the advent of the Messiah. They performed many healing miracles. This makes us think that exoteric followers of Jesus were not directly Essenes, but that they were members of a more exterior confraternity, the Thaumaturges18, renowned for their powers (siddhis) with which they healed the ill. The exterior disciples of Jesus, just like the Thaumaturges, lived in society, did not wear white clothes, were not vegetarians, and drank spirits. Even Jesus, when he began his public life, adopted such conduct.

      Devadatta Kīrtideva Aśvamitra

      1. Generally, Christians consider these figures as angels. But there is no biblical passage that indicates that angels dress in white. Moreover, since the Gospels were written in Greek, in this language angel (ἄγγελος, read àngelos) simply means messenger, announcer. Therefore, it is likely that these were simple human beings.[↩]
      2. It is evident that the apostles and the exterior disciples did not mingle with the secret disciples of Jesus. In an evangelical episode, St. Peter did not understand why a certain person was following Jesus even though he was not one of the 70 disciples and apostles. Annoyed by that, he complained to Jesus. That person was St. John, kohen of the Temple, a secret disciple, future author of the most sapiential Gospel and of the Apocalypse. Jesus abruptly retorted that John was allowed to stay with him and that St. Peter was not to meddle. (Gospel of St. John, XXI.21-22.)[↩]
      3. Gospel of St. John, XXI.19.[↩]
      4. Gospel of St. Luke, XXIV.31.[↩]
      5. Acts of the Apostles, I.3-11. In Christian iconography they are depicted as angels.[↩]
      6. The Jewish religion, like Christianity and Islam as well, recognizes a resurrection of the flesh only after the end of time, which roughly corresponds to the transmigration of the souls in the Pythagorean tradition and to the rebirths (punarjanmas) in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. In the Old Testament any resurrection of the corpse immediately after death is quite unknown.[↩]
      7. Gospel of St. Luke, XXIV .50-53.[↩]
      8. The Kaṭha Upaniṣad narration has a more metaphysical content in comparison with those of Buddha and Christ. In fact, Death, after trying to distract Naciketas from his goal (mumukṣā), finally teaches Vedānta to the young brāhmaṇa. This does not mean that all three stories end with the passing of the tests.[↩]
      9. In the case of Naciketas, it is not only about the supreme heaven, but the very mokṣa, the Liberation from saṃsāra.[↩]
      10. Even in some Indian schools this state is confused with nirvāna or mokṣa.[↩]
      11. The most intellectual among the Gospels, that of John, affirms that Jesus, the day after his burial in the guise of a gardener, said “[…] I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers, and tell them: «I ascend to my and your Father, to my and your God.»“ (Gospel of St. John, XX.17). In other words, Jesus was walking the devayāna: there is no indication of forty days of waiting.[↩]
      12. The fourth Gospel, that of St. John, is considered as sapiential, containing several esoteric allusions.[↩]
      13. This festivity is called Pentecost, which in Greek means “the fiftieth day”.[↩]
      14. Acts of the Apostles, II.1-4. For the Jews, the Pentecost is the day when Moses received the Law from his God in the form of fire. It is worth remembering that Moses led his people out of Egypt following a fiery whirlwind of desert wind. The Christian sect of the Sethians identified this event as the manifestation of the God Yehovah-Seth.[↩]
      15. Christian commentators do not accept that Jesus could have brothers. They claim that the Hebraic language of that time used to call “brothers” the cousins. However, when the Gospels speak of “his mother and his brothers” (Gospel of St. Mark, III.31, Gospel of St. Matthew, XII.46, Gospel of  St. Luke, VIII.19) do they pretend to mean “his mother and his cousins”? The Jews of that time also called any old woman “mother”. Did the Gospels with “his mother and his brothers” mean “an old woman and his cousins”? A pathetic interpretation that shows only an obsessive moralistic interpretation of the virginity of Mary, mother of Christ. Instead of explaining her virginity in the spiritual sense, by considering the conception of Jesus as prodigious, Christians have given it a materialistic interpretation, transforming it into a sort of gynecological anomaly. Therefore, according to them,  the Virgin Mary had to keep her reproductive apparatus perpetually sealed, otherwise she would have lost her sanctity![↩]
      16. We must not confuse this John brother of the Messiah, with St. John the Evangelist, who was a secret disciple of Jesus and priest of the Temple.[↩]
      17. Hegesippus in Eusebius of Cæsarea, Historia Ecclesiastica, III.11.32.[↩]
      18. With this name were also known the members of a Jewish Gnostic brotherhood of Essenian origin, present at that time in Alexandria of Egypt, and  of another Greek initiatory organization whose most famous figure was Apollonius of Tyana.[↩]

      24. How Christianity became a religion independent from Judaism

        How Christianity became a religion independent from Judaism

        On Easter Sunday, some disciples went to visit the tomb of Jesus and found it empty. The body had disappeared, leaving only the bandages with which it had been wrapped. Consequently, the disciples proclaimed the resurrection of Christ from the afterworld. They proclaimed that this miracle, unique in the history of humanity, was the sign of a renewed bond between God and men: the “New Covenant”.
        On the contrary, the Jewish detractors accused the Christians of having stolen the body to artificially forge the miracle. Against the accusations of the detractors, “Peter said to the people: «Men of Israel, why are you amazed about this man? Why are you staring at us as though we have made him walk by our own power or godly life? he God of our ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has glorified his servant Jesus. You handed Jesus over to Pilate. You rejected him in Pilate’s presence, even though Pilate had decided to let him go free; but you have rejected the Holy One and the Just, and whished a murderer to be granted to you1»“.2
        Both the miracle explanation of followers of Jesus and the malevolent one of the other Jews are evidently erroneous in the view of anyone with a minimum of initiatic knowledge. In fact, far from being a case “unique in the history of humanity”, the reabsorption of one’s constitutive pañcabhūtas into the taṅmātras, with the relative disappearance of the gross body, is relatively frequent in initiatic environments; in particular among the alchemical, thaumaturgical and astrological schools3. In saṃskṛt this phenomenon is called brahmalina, which consists in the absorption of the sthūla into the liṅga śarīra. However, the brahmalinas and the ciraṅjīvis must return their pañcabhūtas to the universal gross manifestation (adhibhautika prapañca) in Virāṭ before the conclusion of their cosmic cycles of existence. Therefore, also Jesus will return to earth4 and, together with all those who had transmuted their gross bodies into subtle ones (Enoch, Elijah etc.), will render his to the five elements.
        The interpretation that Christians give to the “resurrection” of Jesus, as well as other wonderful episodes attributed to their founder, consists in the confusion between the initiatic explanation of such phenomena and the transformation of this explanation into exoteric fideistic dogmas, which must be accepted by the believers in uncritical form. The confusion between the esoteric and the exoteric levels is at the base of the various anomalies of Christianity. This absence of discrimination has entailed from the beginning a dramatic conflict between faith and reason, which in recent centuries has been transformed into the rivalry between religious faith and atheistic science. The cause of such situation is that a Jewish initiatic path (the Essene saṃpradāya of Jesus) was transformed into an exoteric religion for non-Jews, the Christianity. Let us now try to explain how this happened.
        The Jews of the Diaspora, dispersed in the numerous cities of the vast Roman Empire, they were not well seen due to the exclusiveness of their religion and their hostility against the tradition of their hosting populations. They were often subject to expulsions and repressions5. In order to save themselves from the reaction of the local populations, the Jews used two methods of propaganda in their favor: the first consisted of trying to convert the Kings and the ruling classes to their religion; an effort that had little success. The second consisted in an action of semi-conversion of the lower castes, in order to have a larger social base favorable to them. Thus, these semi-converts (Heb.: ger-toshab) became supporters of the Jewish community without, however, being fully integrated in it since the Jews had to remain the elite above all other peoples6. The ger-toshab were despised by true Jews, but tolerated by them because respectful of their superiority. It was especially among these semi-converts that the first preaching of the apostles of Jesus spread. Obviously, it was a preaching made by Jewish disciples of the Messiah to other Jews or Judaizers. And when in the texts of the Biblical New Testament we read of conversions of Alexandrians, Athenians, Thessalonians, Romans, etc., it is to be understood that the apostles, addressing the communities of Jews and ger-toshab residing in Alexandria in Egypt, in Athens, Thessalonica and Rome, were convincing them to recognize Jesus as the Messiah.
        Two personalities, who were active in the communities of the Diaspora, were very important for the birth of Christianity as an independent religion: St. Paul and St. John the Evangelist.
        St. Paul was a Pharisee priest who at the beginning had been strongly in opposition to Jesus’ preaching. He was a very learned and highly educated Jew and was part of that priestly category that controlled the Sanhedrin7 of the Temple. Strongly influenced by the Hellenistic Mysteries, he also enjoyed Roman citizenship, which gave him a very prestigious social status. He never personally met Jesus, but he came to know him during an ecstasy, which led him to embrace the teaching of the Messiah. Preaching the doctrine of Jesus to the ger-toshab of the Diaspora, he realized that these former pagans appeared more open minded than other Jews to accept the Good News (the Gospel). He taught that Jesus, thanks to his holy birth and his pure life, had finally joined God the Father in the heavens after death, where he sits at His right8. This was easily accepted by the ger-toshab, who already knew many examples of deification of heroes of the religions they professed before their conversion. Apotheosis (Latin: apotheosis, Greek: ἀποθέωσις) means deification, and often in Greek-Roman mythology heroes, after death, were assumed in the heavens as gods.
        In this way St. Paul began to spread the belief that the Jesus the Man was also God. Since the ger-toshab easily accepted this preaching, during the first council of Jerusalem (50 AD) St. Paul declared that in order to be Christians it was not necessary to be circumcised and to obey the Mosaic law. Moreover, he abolished all the dietary restrictions of Judaism. Some of the disciples of Jesus accepted the Pauline reform, others rejected it and returned to Orthodox Judaism. From this splitting of the original community a new religion was born, autonomous from Judaism: Christianity.
        The Jewish rituals that Jesus had followed in life were transformed into new Christian rites, with different intentions, forms and interpretations. Over time, Christianity replaced the exterior Mosaic law, very similar to the Islamic sari‘a, with the rules of Roman Law (lat.: jus romanum). The religion was organized socially as an assembly, the Church (lat.: ecclesia; gr. Ἐκκλησία, read ekklesìa = sskr. sammelana). The apostles and their successors were called “directors”, Bishops (gr.: επίσκοποι, read epìscopoi), and the disciples of Jesus were called “elders”, Priests (gr .: πρεσβύτεροι; read presbýteroi); the rest of the believers remained as laypeople. With the passage of time and the Romanization of the Church, the Bishop of Rome became the most important among the others and assumed the title of Pontiff (lat.: pontifex, builder of bridges -between this and the other world) and of Pope, or “father”. But all this belongs exclusively to the exoteric side of Christianity.
        St. John the Evangelist, author of one of the Gospels, the Apocalypse, of three epistles, and of several texts later declared apocryphal (occult), was not an apostle of Jesus, as claimed by Christian theologians.  St. John the Apostle was in fact a fisherman from Galilee, whereas the Evangelist was a priest of the Jerusalem Temple. It was the Evangelist who hosted the last supper in his house in Jerusalem and, after the death of Jesus, he looked after Mary, mother of the Christ, as if she were his own. Later he took her with him to his exile on the island of Ephesus. John the priest was one of the secret disciples of Jesus; he was, therefore, one of those who transmitted to posterity the initiatic paramparā of the Messiah. This initiatic organization, often inappropriately called the “Church of John”9, continued the ascetic life style of the Essenes under the monastic form10.
        St. John, who knew deeply both the Jewish esoterism and the Greek Mysteries, gave rise to the doctrine of the Triune God, the Trinity. The human mind can conceive the One God by attributing Him three characteristics: the first is that of the God-Father, which represents the very being (sat) of God. The second characteristic is the God-Word (Gr. λόγος; read lògos), conscious principle (cit) of the manifestation acting in a vibratory form. The third characteristic is the Holy Spirit, which is the principle of fullness and harmony (ānanda) in the totality of the One God11. The lògos (vāc) is also the principle of revelation that has been manifested among men by incarnating in the person of Jesus. This doctrine was accepted in dogmatic form also by the exoteric religion preached by St. Paul. On the other hand, the exoterism of the new religion does not explain how this conscious vibratory principle is used as a method (prakriyā) to exert it as a mantra to reach God. In one of the next articles dedicated to the practice of Hesychasm, we will examine the Christian initiatic method secretly transmitted by S. John.

        Gian Giuseppe Filippi

        1. St. Peter alludes here to the episode of Bar-Rabbas. See the previous chapter N° 23, Jesus the Christ.[↩]
        2. Acts of the Apostles, III.12-14. In the sacred texts of Christianity (Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, Epistles, Apocalypse, or the New Testament of the Bible) the responsibility for the condemnation of Jesus is always unquestionably attributed to the Jews. Contemporary Catholics and Protestants, in order to ingratiate the favor of the unchallenged international power of the present State of Israel, are trying to distort history and to blame this condemnation on the Romans. With this latest politically correct ideology, which considers the Jews “elder brothers”, the Catholics are denying the importance of Romanity for their own Church. See ahead.[↩]
        3. It is not by chance that Jesus is under the influence of the planet Mercury, Budha, and therefore corresponds to the knowledge of the above-mentioned cosmological sciences.[↩]
        4. I Epistle to the Thessalonians, IV.10.[↩]
        5. These anti-Jewish reactions were repeated over the millennia. The Zealots operated guerrilla warfare and terrorism among the host populations. Nowadays, Muslims behave in a similar way in the countries where they are guests. It is a subversive tendency common to all the Semitic religions, which refers to their rākṣasikā origins. See the chaps. 7 and 8 of this Series dedicated to Atlantis.[↩]
        6. The ger-toshab were exempted from following the Ten Commandments of Moses and from circumcision. The mutilation of the male genitalia is considered the “sign of the covenant with Jehovah”. These semi-converts actually represented a lower and servile social category, similar to the “followers of the book” (ahl al-kitāb) in Islamic countries.[↩]
        7. The ancient Jewish priestly college.[↩]
        8. Likewise, even in Yoga darśana and Tantrism, this unification (yoga or samādhi) of a human being with Īśvara is recognized as result of their practices.[↩]
        9. This saṃpradāya cannot be called “Church” because it does not have the external assembly structure, being formed exclusively by the teacher (guru) and his disciples (śiṣya).[↩]
        10. In the first centuries of Christianity, the term monk (Gr.: μοναχός, read monakòs, solitary: from Gr .: μόνος, read mònos, alone) meant initiated (dīkṣita).[↩]
        11. Our Indian readers will easily recognize the analogy between the Trinity and Saccidānanda concepts.[↩]

        23. Jesus the Christ

          Jesus the Christ

          In the popular use the binomial “Jesus Christ” has become a sort of name and surname. Nothing is more wrong: Christ in Greek means “anointed King” 1. It is therefore the exact translation of the Hebrew word Messiah (Heb. māšīāḥ), and it indicates the function of Jesus to the eyes of his disciples. The King who became such by inheritance or acclamation, had to be confirmed by the Temple priests (Heb. kohen, Sskr: pujārī) with the anointing ritual. A cruet of consecrated oil was kept in the Temple. It was used to “anoint” the head of every member of the priestly tribe of Levi who decided to devote his life to priesthood. Only the worthiest sovereigns of the regal tribe of Judah were chosen by the priests to be anointed Messiah, assuming in this way some priestly powers 2 as well. Jesus belonged to the tribe of Judah on his father’s side and to that of Levi on his mother’s. This is why during his short public life sometimes he behaved as a Messiah pretender to the throne of the Jews and sometimes as a priestly Messiah. The Christian legend has emphasized this twofold origin with the story of the Three Magi. In this way the child Jesus 3 was recognized as peer by the three King Priests proceeding from the East, the Magi 4.
          Up to the age of thirty, Jesus did not perform any public action. Probably, in that period he had carried out religious studies and obtained the title of rabbi (Master of Jewish Law), as he was often called in the Gospel. Presumably, he also became Nazorean 5 and frequented Zealots 6. The baptism of Jesus, the episode inaugurating his public life, was not just a Nazorean initiatic ritual, but also an event agreed upon with John the Baptist 7 in order to accomplish the Old Testament prophecies. Following the Essenic tradition 8, he withdrew for forty days in the desert to fast and pray, where he experienced the Devil’s temptations. After that period of spiritual preparation, Jesus returned to social life. From that moment he began to preach the coming of God’s Kingdom on earth, fulfilling the Jews expectation of the Messiah’s arrival and of the dominion of the “chosen people” over all the others. Even if he never patently proclaimed himself to be the Messiah, he never denied either, delegating his followers to declare it to the masses. Moreover, Jesus assumed a specific behaviour to fulfil “the biblical prophecies” 9 related to the Messiah. He gathered around him a group of twelve apostles and seventy or seventy-two disciples, chosen among the poor and humble classes in Galilee. Many of them were ignorant fishermen, one was a tax collector, and the rest were zealots who lived on the run. At first, he sent them to proselyte among the Jews of diaspora 10, forbidding to preach to Samaritans (heretic Jews) or to the “Gentiles” (foreigners). “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as cautious as doves.” 11 He failed this first attempt to be recognized as Messiah because his followers came back without converting anyone. For this reason Jesus cursed the cities that had rejected his message 12. Because of that he changed his plans and decided to be recognized as King in Jerusalem, the heart of Judea.
          While preparing his entrance in Jerusalem as King of the Jews and to be anointed Messiah by the Temple’s priests, Jesus said to his followers: “«But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. For I tell you that this Scripture must be fulfilled in me: “And He was numbered with the bandits.” For what is written about me is reaching its fulfilment..» And they replied, “«Master, here we have two swords.» Then he said: «That’s enough for me.»” 13 In fact all zealots had to be armed with a short sword called sica, easily concealed under their garments. Indeed Jesus had declared: “«Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword.»” 14 In fact during the arrest of Jesus, his disciples reacted and St. Peter raising his sword cut off an ear to a servant of the High Priest. But due to the overwhelming number of Roman soldiers and Temple guards, Jesus gave orders to stand down their weapons saying: “«Put the sword back into its place. All those who use the sword will die by the sword.»” 15 Clearly the Christ was certainly neither peaceful nor pacifist, as the modern Christian interpretation. Jesus chose the days before Easter to enter in Jerusalem. On that occasion crowds of pilgrims coming from the Judaea and from Galilee gathered in the Temple. He was then hailed King of the Jews and escorted joyfully to the Gate of Jerusalem. The pilgrims laid down their cloaks and palm leaves so that his donkey’s hooves wouldn’t touch the muddy road. Until today this is called “Palm Sunday”. Supposedly Roman soldiers did not intervene not to spoil the Jewish festive atmosphere and cause accidents with the Zealots blended into the crowd.
          Then, Jesus and his followers entered the Temple courtyard, where since immemorial time there were little shops selling animals and doves for the sacrifice and money changers for traditional ritual use. Armed with a whip, he drove out the merchants and threw away their stands, preventing them from gathering their merchandise from the ground. This was a clear attempt to occupy the Temple 16 by arms. The Gospel gives a moral explanation to the event, but doesn’t say anything about the reaction of the Temple guards and mostly of the Roman garrison stationed in the Antonia Tower, just next to the Temple. Undoubtedly, after this event Jesus and his followers fled the city to spend the night in the nearby countryside. The next day they returned to Jerusalem, but this time they entered in secret avoiding any popular celebration and demonstration. Evidently, the surprise attack of the previous day with the purpose of taking the control of the Temple had failed. From that moment Jesus and his disciples remained hidden in Jerusalem 17. In those days he intensified his discreet meetings with his secret disciples initiated by him to the Essenian dīkṣā: Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, and mostly with a mysterious kohen named John who was sheltering him. However, the turmoil of the Temple unleashed a very bloody revolt also provoked by some zealots who were not his direct followers. The Roman army intervened, suppressed the mutiny and arrested one of the Zealot leaders, Barabbas 18. The Jewish population of Jerusalem was disappointed by the inactivity of Jesus, and instead considered Barabbas as a hero. Jesus was downhearted after failing to seize the throne of the kingdom of Judea. In the following days he then decided to play the role of the priestly Messiah, giving up his ambitions of becoming Messiah-King. His choice of a more spiritual direction was interpreted by his Zealot followers as a betrayal 19. Thus, Judas Iscariot decided to punish Jesus by revealing to the priests of the Temple where he was hiding.
          During the night, the guards of the Temple together with six hundred Roman soldiers 20 broke into the garden of the kohen John, where Jesus was hiding with his apostles and disciples. After a brief resistance, Jesus was arrested and the others fled away. Led before the College of the kohens of the Temple (the Sanhedrin), he was accused of impiety and referred to trial before the court of Pilate, who was the Roman Governor. Pilate, awakened at dawn, did not find Jesus guilty of breaking any law of the Empire. He also wanted the Jews to resolve their religious quarrels among themselves, without involving Roman authorities. Therefore, being Jesus Galilean, he sent him to Herod Antipas, King of Galilee, who was in Jerusalem to celebrate Easter, so that he might judge him. On the contrary, Herod recognized him as King of Judea, made him cover a royal cloak, put on his head the royal crown of thorns, gave him the traditional cane sceptre, and sent him back to Pilate 21. The priests of the Temple, then, accused Jesus of wanting to be proclaimed as King of Judea and to wage a Jewish war of independence against Rome. Thus, the Roman Governor of Judea reluctantly condemned Jesus to be crucified. The crucifixion was reserved for the rebels of the Empire and, as was required by Roman law, his indictment was carved on a table nailed to the top of the cross: JNRI, i.e. Jesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum: Jesus Nazarene King of the Jews. After a few hours of torment, Jesus died on the cross and was buried in the family tomb of Joseph of Arimathea 22.
          The Gospels narrate that two days after these events, that is to say on Easter Sunday, the tomb was found wide open and the body of Jesus had disappeared. Since then, the exterior Christian believers have celebrated the resurrection of Jesus from death. According to St. Paul, Jesus “had descended into the infernal regions of the earth. The one who descended is the same who then also ascended to the heavens” 23. However, the descent into hell is another way to indicate initiatic death, that is, the experience of dying remaining alive. If we think only to the tale of the descent into the underworld of Naciketas in the Kaṭha Upaniṣad and his dialogue with Mṛtyu, we might understand that such experience has to be reached through the practice of a sādhana 24. Therefore, it cannot have any relation with ordinary death (dehānta). That means that the descent of Jesus into the underworld and his ascent to heaven must have happened during his retreat in the desert. In fact, even the temptations to which Jesus was submitted by the Devil appear similar to those that Mṛtyu did to Naciketas with the purpose of diverting him from his quest for Brahman. That is to say, the offering to become the King of all the worldly Realms had Jesus agreed to devote himself to the practice of his powers (siddhis) instead of seeking the Truth. Since the initiatic death can occur only in life, it is obvious that this event happend to Jesus while he was still alive, when he experienced his inner death while practicing his tapas in the desert. The resurrection of Jesus from the tomb is therefore an erroneous exoteric interpretation of a fundamental step in his path of spiritual realization. In fact, everything mentioned by the New Testament about the happenings after the “resurrection” is confused and contradictory. The fact that the resurrected Jesus reappeared to his most intimate apostles but no one among them recognized him testifies to the doubtfulness and uncertainty of the later account. As it will be demonstrated in the next chapters, the outward and superficial interpretation of initiatic spiritual events depicted from an exoteric point of view have created several serious confusions, failures and contradictions in the newborn Christian doctrine.

          Gian Giuseppe Filippi

          1. It must be remembered that the only original sources that explicitly speak of Jesus are the texts of the New Testament of the Bible that have come to us only in their Greek version. On the other hand, the original Aramaic and Hebrew texts disappeared. The New Testament texts were the numerous Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the Letters of the Apostles and some Apocalypses (Revelations). Over the centuries many of those texts have been set aside and no more recognized by ecclesiastical authorities; they are the so called “apocryphal” (occult) texts. [↩]
          2. See a certain analogy with the Vedic rite of vājapeya.[↩]
          3. For the Christians the miraculous conception and the virginal birth of Jesus is of great importance. Actually this miraculous event is not unique: in his Stromata (I.15), Saint Clement of Alexandria mentions other two prodigious conception of Plato and Buddha. At his time Alexandria was an important Neoplatonic centre and also had a Buddhist monastery. Miraculous conceptions were well known in ancient civilizations: Zoroaster among the Persians, Hou Chi, Lao Tzu and Confucius in China, Pythagoras and Orpheus in the Greece and last but not least, Śrī Kṛṣṇa in India.[↩]
          4. Magus was the title of the Zoroastrian priests.[↩]
          5. The Gospels try to hide the fact that Jesus was a Nazorean, saying that he was an inhabitant of Nazareth: “He went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called “a Nazarene” (St. Matthew 2. 22-23). However, the prophet doesn’t speak of a city called Nazareth: “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a branch (netser) will bear fruit” (Isaiah 11.1). [↩]
          6. At the time of Jesus, there were four currents of Judaism. The Essenes, who led a life of monastic asceticism avoiding society. The Pharisees had a social life strictly ruled by external law (Tōrāh), but privately they followed an initiatic sādhanā. Both these currents represented the Jewish esoterism and both could be defined as Nazoreans. The third current was the one of the Zealots, who proceeded from the Essenes as well as from the Pharisees. The Zealots had no contemplative attitude, on the contrary they preached and continuously practiced armed revolt against non-Jews. The Zealots were also called Sicarii (assassins) because they were armed with a short sword, called sica, or Iscariots, (killers). The Romans considered them as common bandits and terrorists. Among Jesus’ disciples we find members of all these three currents. The fourth one were the Sadducees, mostly widespread among the kohens of the Temple. They were influenced by the Hellenistic Mysteric doctrines and therefore they had a Gnostic initiatic view. The Sadducees, who were the fiercest enemies of Jesus, plotted his imprisonment and execution. Samuel G. F. Brandon, Gesù e gli Zeloti, Milan, Rizzoli Ed., 1983 (1st Ed. Jesus and the Zealots, University of Manchester, 1967), pp. 43-47. [↩]
          7. Since Jesus and St. John the Baptist were second cousins, the deal was not a difficult one to stipulate.[↩]
          8. However, unlike the Essenes, he did not spend his whole life in the desert, nor did he avoid drinking wine and eating meat.[↩]
          9. This quotation is repeatedly found in the Gospel; this confirms that Jesus deliberately followed a pre-established script to convince people that he was the Messiah. [↩]
          10. Diaspora refers to the dispersion of Jews throughout the world after the deportations by both Assyrians (721 BC) and Babylonians (586 BC). [↩]
          11. St. Matthew, X.1-19.[↩]
          12. St. Matthew, XI.20-24.[↩]
          13. St. Luke, XXII. 36-38.[↩]
          14. St. Matthew, X.34.[↩]
          15. St. Matthew, XXVI. 51-52.[↩]
          16. St. Mark, XI.7-19; St. Matthew, XXI.8-19; St. Luke, XIX.35-48; St. John, II.12-25. It is completely out of place the moralistic explanation that the Gospels give of this incident; namely, that the merchants had transformed the Temple into a place of lucrative interests only: “You have turned it into a den of thieves!”. Such interpretation has no reason to exist. In fact, the shops that Jesus devastated with violence were unquestionably necessary for the sacrificial activity of the Temple. Furthermore, since the Jewish religion was rigidly aniconic, the use of Roman coins with the image of the Emperor was forbidden in the temple. Therefore, even the money changers were needed to provide coins without images. Consequently, the Gospels clearly only want to justify the insurrectional attempt of Jesus.[↩]
          17. Hugh J. Shonfield, The Pentecost Revolution: The Story of the Jesus Party in Israel, AD 33-66, London, Element Books Ltd, 1974, pp. 267-338.[↩]
          18. The true meaning of Barabbas is “son of a priest of the Temple”, Bar-Rabbas and not “son of the father”, Bar-abbas, as usually translated (G. Bastia, E. Qimron, A. Israel, Y. Menachem Cochav, Note relative al nome Barabba, http://digilander.libero.it/Hard_Rain/Barabba.pdf, 29.04.2018, pp. 23-39). This explains why his arrest brought so much trepidation among the inhabitants of Jerusalem.[↩]
          19. Also St. Peter was among them: he was in fact known as Simon the Zealot. He did not become completely unfaithful to Jesus, as Judas did; but he repudiated his master three times on the night of his capture.[↩]
          20. A cohort. Evidently the group of followers of Jesus was certainly not considered just composed of pacifists.[↩]
          21. The Gospels give an interpretation of this episode as if it were a sacrilegious mockery. Instead, everything suggests that Antipas’s decision was a recognition of the authenticity of Jesus’ claim to the throne. In fact, the cane was the sceptre of the anointed Kings and “crown of thorns” was called the diadem of the ancient kings of Israel. Therefore, it was not at all the imposition of a sadistic torture consisting in surrounding his head with thorny branches.[↩]
          22. Hugh J. Schonfield, The Passover Plot: a New Interpretation of the Life and Death of Jesus, New York, Bernard Geis Associates, 1965, pp. 114-157.[↩]
          23. St. Paul, Letter to the Ephesians, 4.10.[↩]
          24. In our book Discesa agli Inferi: la morte iniziatica nella Tradizione Hindū, Aprilia, Novalogos, 2014, we compared the stories of the descent into the hell and the ascent to the heavens of the Hindū Tradition with many examples of similar initiatic tales: among these we mention Naciketas, Bhṛgu, Uttaṅka, Buddha and Māra and, more recently, Ramaṇa Maharṣi for India, Odysseus, Orpheus and Persephone for Greece, Aeneas for Rome, Jesus and Dante for the Christianity etc.[↩]

          22. The origins of Christianity

            The origins of Christianity

            As mentioned in the previous chapter, the Bible of the Jews identifies with the Law (Tōrāh), composed of first five Books (Greek Πεντάτευχος, Pentateuch) attributed to Moses, but certainly elaborated soon after returning to Palestine, i.e. after 520 BC. Only at a later time, a new part called the Prophets was added to the initial nucleus1: these chapters, written around the 3rd century BC, are dedicated to the predications and deeds of the prophets2 (Nevi‘ìm). As the reader will recall, the Greco-Roman tradition makes a clear distinction between the Mysteries and the oracular cults: the former constituted the actual esotericism, that is to say, the initiatory sector of Tradition, while the Oracles were part of the religious-exoteric aspect. The Oracles were pronounced by special priestly orders whose members were provoked a state of trance through different techniques. During the trance, they were possessed by a deity who gave responses on private matters (as the Pythia of Delphi), or on the general cosmic situation (as the Sibyls) upon request. These were predominantly prophecies concerning future events, and therefore were part of the rites of possession, clairvoyance and divination, which tradition carefully kept distant from the initiation rites of inner purification. In Hellenistic Judaism, on the other hand, the two domains were often overlapping and the prophets were possessed by the “Spirit of God” who spoke through their mouth3. Naturally, the subject always concerned the future glories of the “chosen people”, or the tribulations and injustices that the “chosen people” suffered because of other “nations”, interpreted as evidence sent by God himself. The prophets were therefore personalities belonging to Jewish initiatic ways, who held a function of guidance, admonition and prediction for the outer masses. Not all initiates, however, assumed the prophetic function: some of them limited themselves to make a life separate from society, living in asceticism and celibacy4. The latter, known as Nazarites, could come from any social group. What is certain is that by strictly following an austere life they were in fact considered equal in dignity to Jewish priests5. At this point it is reasonable to question where exactly this initiatory current came from. Now, if it is clear that the prophetic aspect was typical of Jewish monotheism, the real initiatic transmission came from an environment of Chaldean origin, that is, from the Midianite Mysteries6. With the passing of time, the prophets became increasingly rare, while the Nazarites continued to form numerous communities of hermits, also called Essenes. It is therefore clear that Jesus was called Nazarene because he had taken that ascetic vote and not because for a while he had lived in some unknown village called Nazareth. Thus John the Baptist, cousin of Jesus and one of the last prophets, has always been described wrapped in a wild fur garment.
            In the prophetic literature, in the Psalms and in the Book of the prophet Daniel, there is often mention of a figure who would come in the near future to defeat all the “nations” and subjugate them to the dominion of the “chosen people”. This mysterious person is credited with the title of “Messiah”, the Lord’s anointed one7. His coming would coincide with the end of the current historical cycle and would begin the long lasting Kingdom of God on earth. One must also refer to rabbinical interpretations to fully understand the function of this mysterious figure. First of all, the coming of the Messiah would have been announced by a prophet, presumably Elias, miraculously returned to the earth8. The title of Messiah, as we have already discussed, is attributed in the Tōrāh to a King of Israel or Judah who had been anointed with a priestly ritual. Therefore, this future Messiah was predominantly described as a warrior King, descending from the blood of King David and hence belonging to the tribe of Judah. However, in the period between the 2nd century BC and the 2nd century AD, the Jewish royal function was usurped by the priests. Therefore, many prophecies of that period alluded to the coming of a priestly Messiah, descending from the tribe of Levi. In some cases, the Hebraic literature of that period mentions two Messiahs, one priestly and one royal, who were supposed to sanction the victory of Judaism throughout the world. Naturally, the priestly Messiah would have played a sacred role superior to the purely military role of the other Messiah. Some writings even make the warrior and priestly Messiah one person. In addition to these uncertain and sometimes contradictory ideas, there is also the case of a possible Messiah who would come to be killed. After his death he would have migrated to heaven to found a Kingdom of Heaven9. All texts, however, agree in affirming that the Messiah would become aware of his mission only at the moment of his anointment. Therefore, during the first part of his life, his true identity would remain somewhat hidden to everyone.
            The centuries when these controversial prophetic texts were written saw a fervent expectation of the Messiah by the Jews. It seemed that the end of the world was near and that the Roman domination was the sign of the greatest abomination to which the world had been subjected. Figures prophesying the coming of the Messiah emerged everywhere. Some even proclaimed themselves Messiah, and the frenzy of the Jews led to an increasingly unstable political situation with real acts of rebellion, guerrilla warfare and terrorism against the foreign occupants, as well as, the Jewish ruling classes who collaborated with the imperial authorities. At the same time, in the different cities of the Roman Empire where Jewish communities had migrated, began a very aggressive missionary action. Considering the Jewish exclusivist mentality, this missionarism did not aim to convert the “polytheists” to Judaism, but rather to make them semi-converts (Hebr. ger-toshab) ready to accept their inferiority and submission to the “chosen people”10. They also undertook an activity of manipulation of the texts of Greek and Roman literature interpolating sentences, paragraphs or chapters of Jewish propaganda. All this provoked a vast anti-Semitic reaction throughout the Empire: the accusations against the Jews of being worshipers of the infernal donkey-God multiplied11. Such hostile reaction increasingly convinced the Jews of the imminent end of time and the proximity of the arrival of the Messiah.
            Without understanding the context of Palestine in the II-I century BC, it is not possible to get an idea of the origins of Christianity, given that Jesus was a Jew and that he carried out all his activity in the two Jewish kingdoms of Judea and Galilee12 under Roman administration. Jesus never publicly admitted to being the Messiah awaited by the Jews, but all his deeds indicate that he was firmly convinced of that. Such awareness matured when he was baptized by John. This was certainly a Nazarite or Essene initiation rite13 during which, according to the Gospels, the spirit of God descended upon him. Jesus then understood that he was the Messiah and that John the Baptist was the “prophet Elias” who had preannounced it to the Jewish people and who at that moment recognized him as such. Furthermore, his maternal descent from the tribe of Levi and his paternal one from the tribe of Judah made Jesus both a priestly and a royal Messiah. He was often called King of the Jews by the crowd of his followers, and he never rejected such title. However, his hesitance to make self-proclamation of such magnitude was certainly by prudence to avoid being noticed by Roman authorities or by the priests of the Temple who in fact collaborated with the Romans in the administration of Judea. Indubitably, he nurtured among the Jews the hopes of a forthcoming anti-Roman uprising and the beginning of a reign of the millenarian “chosen people” that would dominate all other peoples of the Earth. He, therefore, always behaved like a Messiah without ever affirming himself to be so. In fact, the title that the twelve apostles and seventy-two (sometimes seventy) disciples attributed to him was that of Rav, master (or Rabbi, my teacher). This title has two different meanings. The exterior one is attributed to the doctors of the Law, experts in Tōrāh, rituals, customs and traditions. The other sense of Rav is the initiatory one, which corresponds to the Sanskrit guru14. Since Jesus did not follow any specialized course at the Temple or any synagogue, it is logical to deduce that in his case Rav meant initiatory master (dīkṣā guru). It is well known that Jesus taught to his apostles, disciples and the crowds publicly, while at night he appeared with only few disciples like Nicodemus15, Joseph of Arimathea16 and the “disciple whom he loved”17, to teach them secret doctrines18.
            The title that Jesus apparently attributed most often to himself is “Son of Man”. The Christians poured rivers of ink in the attempt to give a unique spiritual meaning this denomination. However, it has been easily proved that “son of man” in the biblical language is not a title, but simply means” human being”; and Jesus uses it as a third person in place of “I”. For instance: “When the Son of man comes, will He find faith on the earth?” (Gospel of Luke 18:8), simply means: “when I will return”19. Another title that Jesus sometimes used for himself, but which is mostly attributed to him by others, is “Son of God”. In the same way he turned to God calling him Father. In the Bible there are three uses of this title. 1) “Son of God” is referred to any celestial or angelic being; 2) It is also commonly used to question any representative of the “chosen people”; 3) Finally, in the prophetic literature it becomes a title to respectfully allude to a King or a Messiah. It is certain that the second and third uses represent the prevailing meaning found in the Gospel. Jesus thus claimed himself to be a true member of the Israelite religious community and, at the same time, made clear to those able to understand, that he was the Messiah. Certainly, the interpretation of “the only-begotten Son, generated and not created” does not correspond to the use at the time of Jesus and must be considered late, and instrumental for Christian theologians to identify the historical Jesus with the divine Logos (Sskr. śabdabrahman); this topic, however, will be further discussed in a future article20. In fact, our next commitment will be to describe how the Christian current of Judaism became an independent religion.

            Gian Giuseppe Filippi

            1. Later, around the first century BC, a third part was added, which included the Psalms and the Book of the prophet Daniel. Among these, the longest text is that of Psalm 104, a remake of the hymn to Aton, which closely relates Judaism to the heresy of Pharaoh Akhenaton.[↩]
            2. From the Greek προφημί (read profemì), pre-say.[↩]
            3. The first confusion between the two domains, in the Greek sphere, occurred with Gnosticism.[↩]
            4. As did Jesus, the Nazareans wore long white dresses, whereas those who became prophets used sheep’s fur coats. All other Jews wore light coloured dresses adorned with long black stripes.[↩]
            5. Elia Benamozegh, Gli Esseni e la Cabbala, Milano, Armenia Ed., 1979, pp. 69-75. Jewish society was divided into twelve tribes. Among them of particular importance were the priestly tribe of Levi, whose members could only become (Cohen) priests of the Temple of Jerusalem, and the tribe of Judah, from which the kings and nobles descended.[↩]
            6. According to the very reliable judgment of Benamozegh, this initiation was transmitted within Judaism by Jethro, the “polytheist” father-in-law of Moses. Ibid. pp. 77-78.
              [7] See www.vedavyasamandala.com, Western Tradition, From Cosmos to Chaos, Ch. 21. The Semitic Religions.[↩]
            7. See www.vedavyasamandala.com, Western Tradition, From Cosmos to Chaos, Ch. 21. The Semitic Religions.[↩]
            8. According to the biblical account, Elias did not die, but ascended into heaven on a chariot of fire. He should, therefore, return to earth at the end of time to announce the coming of the Messiah and only then, eventually, die.[↩]
            9. Geza Vermes, Jesus el Judio, Barcelona, Muchnik Ed., 1977 (1st ed. Jesus the Jew, London, W. Collins Sons, 1973), pp. 140-154.[↩]
            10. Hugh J. Schonfield, Those Incredible Christians, London, Element Books Ltd., 1968, Ch. 3.[↩]
            11. In 160 BC, Antiochus Epiphanes, King of Syria, conquered Jerusalem and entered the sanctum of the Temple, where he found an idol in the shape of a donkey (Tacitus, Histories, V. 6). In 63 BC the Roman general Pompey the Great conquered all of western Asia; he too entered the sanctum of the Temple of Jerusalem where he found a donkey-headed idol (Publius Annius Florus, Epitome de Tito Livio, III, 5.).[↩]
            12. We recall that for several centuries the land of the Jews was divided into two rival states: Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, later called Galilee and Judea.[↩]
            13. The continuation of this initiatic tradition of Judaism during the Middle Ages has been known as Qabbalah (oral transmission).[↩]
            14. In Islam the first meaning corresponds to that of qaḍi, mullah and ālim. The second one is called pīr or shaykh of tariqa. However, it is also a sharaitic use to refer to a qaḍi, a mullah and an ālim with the title of shaykh. Similarly in India school teachers or university professors are often called gurus, always in an exterior sense. It is precisely in this outward sense that non-priestly Jews who have studied in religious schools are still called rabbins.[↩]
            15. Gospel of St. John, III.1-21.[↩]
            16. Gospel of St. John, XIX.38.[↩]
            17. Gospel of St. John, XX.21-23. Later he was arbitrarily identified with the same St. John.[↩]
            18. To these three secret disciples we can add the three siblings Lazarus, Martha and Mary, who play an important role alongside Jesus without ever appearing as apostles or disciples. Traces of these initiatory teachings are found in the apocryphal Gospels, which for this reason have been officially banned by the Church. Contrary to what is commonly believed “apocryphal” (Gr. ἀπόκρυφος) does not mean false, but “secret”.[↩]
            19. Geza Vermes, cit., pp. 167-202.[↩]
            20. Ibid. 203-234.[↩]

            21. The Semitic Religions

              The Semitic Religions

              The Sumerians arrived in the South Mesopotamia (current Iraq) around 4000 BC. According to their written sources, they arrived by sea from the East1. The populations that they found and subjugated in that area were the Semitic branch of the Sea Peoples, which we have already found as heirs of the degenerate Atlantean civilization. The Sumerian civilization was the first that in western Asia used a form of writing, first in a pictographic form, then in a stylized cuneiform alphabet2. Their language in many ways looks similar to the Austroasiatic idioms on one side and the Turkish ones on the other. The Sumerians never formed a statal unity, but were organized into different independent state-cities. For this reason, every city had its own protective Deity, and this is the reason why it is so difficult to have a unified idea of their religion. Certainly everyone recognized a principal triad of gods: An, God of the sky, Enlil, God of the atmosphere and Enki, Lord of the earth and of the groundwater3. But since the earliest times, the most powerful God of such triad was considered Enki (the Lord of the Earth), demonstrating that the Sumerian common religion was soon influenced by the Semitic social background. The priestly caste, recognized in all Sumerian cities as the highest social class, was constituted by the Chaldeans. They were the representatives on earth of the God of the sky, An, and of other heavenly powers as the goddess Namma, the superior waters, Inanna, the planet Venus who was also the goddess of love, Ningal, the goddess of the Moon and Utu, the Sun4.
              The Sumerians called themselves “the black heads”5, but the name by which they are known even today derives from the Akkadian word “Šumer”. The Akkadian population, established north of the Sumerian territory, was of Semitic origin, but its ruling class was certainly composed of Chaldean priests and kṣatriyas proceeding from India, as is shown by the name of one of their famous Kings, Naramsin. Therefore, it is not unlikely that they would identify the Sumerian territory with the center of the world represented by the golden Mount Meru (Su-Meru). On the other hand, it is well known that even further north, in the present area between Iraq, Syria and Turkey, there was a civilization of similar origin to the Sumerian and Akkadian: the Mitanni civilization. The latter has left some stone stelae with engraved invocations to the Vedic Gods Mitra, Varuṇa, Indra and to the twins Nasatya (Nāsatyau, i.e. Aśvinau). With the passing of the centuries, however, the low Semitic strata of the population of these ancient civilizations rebelled and overthrew the highest castes from power. Around 2000 BC the Sumerian confederation was overwhelmed by the Babylonian uprising, and so this Semitic population took power and founded the kingdom of Babylon in the south of Mesopotamia. And here we are witnessing one of the typical characteristics of all Semitic civilizations. The Gods of other traditions were considered to be equal to the worst demons and were replaced by Semitic ones6. Thus Namma, the Sumerian Goddess of the upper waters, and wife of the lower waters God, Apsu (Sskr. Āpas), called by the Babylonians Tiāmat (Sskr. Devīmāta), was transformed in a sea monster that must be killed. Marduk, the Babylonian God of the hurricanes or the sand tornadoes7, succeeded to the Sumerian God Ea usurping his throne and killing the Goddess Tiāmat. However, alongside the new Babylonian priesthood, the priestly tradition of the Chaldeans remained alive and also survived when even the memory of the Babylonians had disappeared. Much worse happened to the Sumerian-Akkadian tradition. Around the same time – the beginning of the second millennium BC, the Semitic substrate emerged in the north of Mesopotamia when the Assyrian8 kingdom was established by destroying the Akkadian civilization. As their very name states, the Assyrians (Asur) went down in history for their cruelty: they exterminated the members of the Chaldean priesthood, as well as, entire populations that they had subdued. The Assyrians also overthrew the hierarchies of the Sumerian Gods and established their God Assur as the supreme deity.
              In the 19th century BC a group of Semitic tribes, including the Hebrews, invaded from Mesopotamia the present-day Palestine and from there they swept into Egypt. The Egyptians called these invaders Hyksos, ie “Barbarian Kings”. The Hyksos founded the 15th dynasty that reigned over the whole northern Egypt, while the South remained under the control of the Pharaohs (Kings, in Egyptian language) of the weak 16th native dynasty. The Hyksos recognized as supreme deity the God of desert storms, which the Egyptians recognized as identical to the demon Set. The Hyksos’ rule over Egypt was harsh and intolerant and, approximately in the 16th century BC, as soon as the invaders gave the first signs of weakening, the Egyptians rebelled, throwing all the Hyksos tribes out of Egypt. The Semitic oppression had been so heavy that the Egyptians, usually tolerant and open to foreign civilizations, erased any traces of the foreign domination. This history of the domination and the expulsion of the Hyksos, as told by Flavius Josephus, are described in the Bible as the end of the slavery of the “Sons of Israel” and the “Exodus from Egypt”9. It is precisely from this expulsion from Egypt that the Jews, among the different tribes, began to be distinguished. The Jews, under the guidance of their master (in Hebraic language Rav10) Moses, followed their God through the desert, appearing like a huge column of fire11. Only after a couple of generations they settled in the land of Canaan. However, their religious influence remained in Egypt for a couple of centuries. Certainly, Akhenaton (1375-1334 BC), Pharaoh of the 18th dynasty, must have been educated to Semitic beliefs when he abrogated the cult of all the ancestral Gods, persecuted their priests and imposed the monotheistic religion of the God Aton, the physical sun. Also in this case the Egyptians rebelled and, at the death of Akhenaton’s successor, they restored the ancient cults, destroying all traces of that new anti-traditional religion.
              The origins of the Hebrew people and of their religion are enigmatic due to the many alterations that the Tōrāh12- the sacred book that is their only historical source – has undergone during the different and wretch events of their history. This text refers to Adam as the ancestor of all humanity. However, the fact that Adam in Hebraic language means “red man” connects him to Atlantis and therefore he cannot be considered indeed the first man in absolute terms, but as the first ancestor of the Atlantean civilization. Moreover, in the Tōrāh are mentioned some seven mysterious Kings of Edom13, considered in many Jewish sapiential sources as the representatives of pre-Adamic humanities.
              In the Tōrāh Adam was created by Elohīm, which means “the Gods”. Later, when the Jews passed to their monotheistic cult, Elohīm was considered a singular name of the unique God anomalously rendered in a plural form. In reality, up to a well-known epoch, that is to say before their return from the Babylonian captivity (520 BC), the Jews also had recognized a multiplicity of Gods. Among all the Gods of the Semitic religions the Jews chose Yehovah14 as the protector of their nation. With the passing of time, they considered the Gods of other nations as rivals of their God, to the point of considering them as real Devils. Following the characteristic exclusivism of the Semites15, they proclaimed Yehovah as the only true God and themselves as the “people chosen by that God” that would not have their precious blood mixed with that of other nations16. The Hebrews are said to be descendants of the third son of Adam and Eve, Seth, in whose name we recognize the Set of the Egyptians. A series of patriarchs follows, culminating with Noah, the one who saved mankind, animals and plants from the Universal Deluge. This story has been clearly copied from the Babylonian myth of Ziusudra which, in turn, was a reworking of the ancient Sumerian Flood myth of Utnapishtim. This last story is so similar to that of Manu and Matsyāvatāra that it is impossible they had no common source. However, the Tōrāh tale adds that then humanity restarted again through Noah’s three sons: Shem, progenitor of all the Semites, Ham, ancestor of the Hamites, the non-Semitic inhabitants of Western Asia, and Japheth, forefather of all the other peoples. Eber, one of the sons of Shem, is mentioned as the ancestor of the Hebrews. But in reality this character is completely irrelevant in the same biblical tale and seems to be a late interpolation. It is therefore more plausible that Eber derives from a root which means “West”17, and which indicates the Hebrews’ Atlantean origin.
              According to the Bible, after the Universal Deluge, which corresponds to the sinking of Atlantis, the descendants of Shem settled in Mesopotamia. To escape the new Babylonian rule, around 1900 BC Abraham emigrated from the city of Ur. For many centuries the people of Abraham engaged in nomadic life, wandering between Mesopotamia, Arabia, Egypt and Syria. They were constantly engaged in violent wars, often ending with the total extermination of their enemies18. After their expulsion from Egypt, finally, around 1000 BC, the Jews settled in a fixed area, choosing as capital the Syrian-Amorite city of Jerusalem, which they had conquered. There they established their first kingdom. The third King of Israel, Solomon, built the Temple, the only spiritual center of the Jewish religion19. However, wars with neighboring peoples and internal infighting continued. Shortly, after the death of Solomon the kingdom split in two: the kingdom of Judah and that of Israel. Independence did not last long: in 587 BC Nebuchadnezzar, King of the Babylonians, conquered the two Jewish kingdoms, destroyed the Temple of Jerusalem20 built by Solomon and deported all the Jews to Babylon. The captivity of the Jews lasted until 538 BC, when the King of the Persians, Cyrus the Great, invaded the Babylonian kingdom. Cyrus restored freedom to the Jews who then returned to the land they had been forced to abandon. Yet, half a century of deportation was fatal to the Jewish nation. During that time they lost the way to pronounce the name of their God21. The Bible was radically altered in a monotheistic manner, and the ancient Semitic mythology and the plurality of its Gods disappeared. This new version of the Tōrāh, backdated and attributed to the revelation that the God of the Jews made to Moses, was accompanied by the Babylonian Talmud, without which one could not have a correct reading of the Bible. As there had been many mixed marriages with the Babylonians, it was established that only people with a Jewish mother could be considered Jewish, a matriarchal rule that exists until now. Thus, the Israelite religion increasingly identified itself with the Jewish race. Returning to their land, the Jews built a second Temple on the ruins of that of Solomon22. But the independence of the Jewish nation would not last long: between the conquest by Alexander the Great in 331 BC and the definitive annexation to the Roman empire in 65 BC, the Jews knew only one century of relative independence. The deportations, the conquests and the nomadism not completely dormant in the Jewish soul, led to a diaspora (dispersion) towards the most distant lands. In the fourth century BC there was already a Jewish community in the city of Rome, and many Jewish groups took refuge in Greek, Phoenician and Carthaginian colonies of North Africa up to the faraway Spain.
              The Israelite religion has been heavily conditioned by the Jews’ belief that they were the “people chosen” by their God to dominate the whole world. It is the only religion on the earth which has no care for the posthumous destinies of its faithful ones. The Tōrāh dimly mentions an afterlife, the Gehenna or the Sheol, as a sad place where one goes after death; but it does not distinguish between saved and damned souls, it does not distinguish between the results of a virtuous and a sinful behavior. What is important is the historical affirmation of the power of Israel in this world. Thus the individual is considered virtuous if he actively contributes to this final worldly triumph of those who belong to the Jewish religion for blood and belief. For this reason the Bible is a book that tells mostly the story of the worldly successes of the “chosen people”, or complains victimistically the injuries suffered by “impure nations”. Then, religious commitments and prayers are addressed only to the conquest of power and wealth, to the greater glory of God and of His “chosen people”. This is about Israelite exoterism. The esoteric side of Jewish tradition, which derives largely from ancient Chaldean teachings, is what will later be called Qabbalah (i.e. tradition). Unlike exterior religion, Qabbalah teaches a path of inner perfection that the individual must follow, ascending through subtle centers (sefiroth = cakra) which are projections in the human body of the different superior worlds. The end of this ascent corresponds to the restoration of the state of perfection that Adam had in the Eden before the original sin. This purification of integral individuality thus allows man to contemplate the face of God and become His “friend”. We will return further on Judaism, as it has been of fundamental importance for the birth of Christianity. Moreover, Judaism resurfaced at the end of Middle Ages, influencing the development of certain aspects of the Renaissance and in modern times contributing heavily to the birth of the contemporary mentality.

              D. K. Aśvamitra

              1. This would suggest an Indian origin, because the Sumerians, in their writings, often speak of their main trading partners, the people of Meluḫḫa, a land to the East, beyond the sea. It is, therefore, probable that this was the ancient civilization of Sarasvatī.[↩]
              2. From the Sumerian times up to the establishment of the Persian Empire in Western Asia, cuneiform was  the writing system in use. The Phoenicians, who lived in today’s Lebanon and Palestine, developed an alphabet derived from the writing of the Sarasvatī civilization, from which the modern Semitic alphabets such as the Hebraic and Arabic developed.[↩]
              3. En-ki, son of An and of the Earth Goddess Ki.[↩]
              4. The pronunciation of all these names is conventional because it has been mainly reconstructed on the basis of linguistic comparisons with Akkadian (mixed of Sanskrit and Semitic languages), the Babylonian (a Semitic language) and the Elamite (of unknown linguistic stock).[↩]
              5. Many ancient populations or social groups were called “black heads”: the Egyptians, the Ethiopians and even the Chinese; we remember also the kālamukhas, a fabulous people mentioned in the Mahābhārata, and the tantric kālamukha yogins. Having a black head was evidently the sign of belonging to an élite, more spiritual than social.[↩]
              6. Even the Persians, although of Indian origin, suffered a strong Semitic influence when they conquered Persia and Mesopotamia. In addition to the assumption of cuneiform graphic system, they overturned the normal relationship between Gods and Demons. For the Persians, in fact the Gods are called ahura (Sskr. asura) and the Demons diva (Sskr. deva). Later, this Semitic influence facilitated the conversion of the Persian people to the Shi’ite Islamic religion.[↩]
              7. We have already described this terrible deity that the Egyptians called “Set”, the Greeks “Typhon” and the Maya of Mexico “Hurekan” (hurricane). It is the scariest form of the donkey-headed Atlantean demon. See chapter 8 in this Website. “Atlantis Other sources (II)”.[↩]
              8. “Asur” in Akkadian language.[↩]
              9. Another characteristic of all the Semitic religions is their overt victimhood. After the occupation of Egypt and their expulsion through a war of liberation by the hand of the subjugated Egyptians, the Jews have continued to narrate the History by reversing its meaning. In the Bible, in fact, they give an account of being in Egypt as slaves of the Egyptians and that eventually they would have been freed from slavery by fleeing![↩]
              10. Moses is also recognized as a prophet. In general, for the Jews, Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and others are called patriarchs (Hebr. Abot); David, Solomon and three other characters are Kings (Hebr. Melachim; the anointed King is called the messiah; Hebr. Mašīaḥ). Finally there is a certain number of prophets (Hebr. Nevi’ìm). All of them were inspired by God, but their functions are completely different from each other. The Christians accept these categories, with the only exception that the messiah is one only, i.e. Jesus Christ. For Muslims all these categories are unified into one, that of the prophets (Arab. Nabiyyīn). The prophet who establishes a law is called messenger (Arab. Rasul). Therefore the three monotheistic religions do not agree on the functions attributed to the same characters.[↩]
              11. It is easy to recognize in the column of fire the shape of the sand desert tornadoes. The tendency of Jews towards monotheism had not yet become completely exclusivist as it would eventually happen: in fact, at that time, they were still practicing the cult of other Gods such as the Golden Calf and the Bronze Serpent, which provoked the jealousy of Yehovah.[↩]
              12. The Tōrāh corresponds roughly to the Ancient Testament of the Christian Bible. However, the texts known as the Talmud and Midrash, written versions of oral rabbinical teachings, are considered even more authoritative.[↩]
              13. Adam and Edom have the same root ADM.[↩]
              14. As a result of their troubled history, the Jews missed the true pronunciation of the name of their God. From that moment on, that name was handed down by pronouncing or writing only its four composing consonants: Yod, Hé, Vau, Hé, YHVH, (Hebr.: יהוה).[↩]
              15. This Semitic intolerance was also inherited by the religions that split from Judaism. Therefore both Christianity and Islam proclaim themselves to be the only definitive religion for humanity. However, while Christianity and Islam advocate an increasingly extreme missionarism, Judaism tends to identify itself with the racial consanguinity of the “chosen people”, which will have to dominate over the rest of humanity. Obviously, if the intolerance assumed by a Semitic religion towards non-Semitic traditions often has serious consequences, the internal cohabitation between Semitic religions always results to be much more explosive. Today’s reciprocal and violent intolerance among Christians, Jews and Muslims is in fact self-evident. Nevertheless, these religions always create a joint front against non-Semitic traditions in the name of their common monotheism, or as the Muslims call it: the Abrahamic Religions.[↩]
              16. “… [Our] sons have married their daughters and the chosen people have been polluted by the peoples of those countries” (Bible, Ezra 9: 2). “How could we break Thy commandments and mix our blood with these abominable peoples?” (B. Ezra, 9. 14).[↩]
              17. This is an etymology common to the Hebraic ‘Ereb, sunset, west, to the Greek Erebos, darkness (name of a western Hell), to the Greek and Latin Hiber, west, and to the Latin Hiberia (Spain) and Hibernia (Ireland).[↩]
              18. “And the Lord hearkened to the voice of Israel, and delivered up the Canaanites; and they utterly destroyed them and their cities.” (Bible, Numbers, 21.3); “And the Lord our God delivered him before us; and we smote him, and his sons, and all his people. And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones, of every city, we left none to remain.” (B. Deuteronomy, 2, 33-34); “When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; and when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them.” (B. Deuteronomy, 7. 1-2); “But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: but thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee: that they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sin against the Lord your God.” (B. Deuteronomy, 20.16-18); “And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.” (B. Joshua, 6.21); “And they took the things which Micah had made, and the priest which he had, and came unto Laish, unto a people that were at quiet and secure: and they smote them with the edge of the sword, and burnt the city with fire.” (B. Judges, 18.27); “Their bows also shall dash the young men to pieces; and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eye shall not spare children.” (B. Isaiah, 13.18) (quotes taken from the King James Bible). And so on: in the Tōrāh more than thirty similar exterminations of entire populations or of all the inhabitants of enemy cities are enumerated, by order of God.[↩]
              19. In fact, synagogues are not temples, but, like the Islamic mosques, they are only places of prayer and assembly.[↩]
              20. Indeed there are many doubts that Jerusalem is the city we know today with the same name. No archaeological finds prove the presence of Jews in the area of the current city before the 2nd century BC. Not even a fragment of the Temple of Solomon was found in situ. It is therefore likely that Israel and Judah realms and Jerusalem city were located much further south, in the Arabian Negev desert, where the ruins attributable to a Jewish presence are plentiful. Keith W. Whitelam, The invention of ancient Israel, London & New York, Routledge , 1996; Kamal Salibi, The Bible came from Arabia, Beirut, Naufal 2007.[↩]
              21. This mysterious loss has certainly produced serious consequences to the use of Qabbalistic mantras.[↩]
              22. Neither of this second Temple is there any archaeological trace. In fact it was completely rebuilt by King Herod in the first century BC. Ruins, such as the Wailing Wall, belong to this late reconstruction. See Adolfo Roitmam, Envisioning the Temple, Jerusalem, The Israel Museum, 2003; Nadia Abu El-Haj, Facts on the Ground. Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society, Chicago & London, The University of Chicago Press, 2001.[↩]

              20. Celtic Tradition

                Celtic Tradition

                With the name of Celts, we identify a group of tribes that, around 1000 BC, descended from the North and expanded into Scotland, England and Ireland and, from there, over a good part of continental Europe. The name of these similar populations comes from the name of the priestly caste that characterized them with their doctrines. Celt, as Chaldean and Culdean was therefore the name of all the categories of priests. The Greeks derived this term from the root kel (κελ) signifying “mysterious”, “occult”. Diogenes Laertius1 maintains that the highest doctrines, prior to the birth of Greek philosophy, were cultivated among the Indians (Gymnosophists, i.e. the Yogis), the Persians (Magi), the Assyrians (Chaldeans) and the Celts (Druids2). The correct name of these peoples was certainly expressed by the root gal, “the powerful”. The Romans and the Greeks were therefore right to call them Gauls and Galatians (γαλάται, read galàtai), as is also evidenced by the name of their last contemporary Spanish descendants, the Gallegos, and the name of the Celtic-Gaelic languages still living in the British Isles, the Gael peoples of Scotland, Ireland and Wales (Gaels), which the English, unable to pronounce their name correctly, have called “welsh” (the “foreigner”!).
                What is most striking about Celtic peoples is that their social composition was divided into castes, clearly very similar to the traditional social structure of India.
                It is certain, however, that Celtic tradition was the result of the merging of two different traditional currents. The first, which was represented by the warrior, mercantile and servile castes, as well as, by the lower orders of the priestly caste, that were certainly of Atlantean origin. This is evident for the violent tendency of its warriors, the bloody sacrifices of both animals and men, and for the attraction towards magic phenomena. The second current was instead represented by the Druids, the highest category of priests. There is no doubt that the Druids represented the current coming from the North, which Posidonius3 declared of Hyperborean origin and that Clement of Alexandria4 considered to be the source of wisdom from which Pythagoras had drawn his doctrine, perhaps thanks to the mediation of Abaris the Hyperborean.
                According to Irish tradition, the Northern druidic current was called Tuatha Dé Danann, the “Tribe of the divine knowers of the arts”5. The most important of the traditional texts of Ireland, “The Battle of Maige Tuired” (Cath Maige Tuired)6, describes the tribe: “The Tuatha Dé Danann lived in the islands in the North of the world studying druidism, knowledge, art and magic. They surpassed everyone in these arts. “The Battle of Maige Tuired came after the landing of the Tuatha Dé Danann on the shores of Ireland. There, they were faced by the ranks of the inhabitants of the islands, the Fomoires, described by all the chronicles as warrior-demons. Their leader was a one-eyed giant who was killed when a stone was casted to his eye7. At this point we would like to remind the reader of our previous article The gold age – the Hyperboreans, published in this same site: in the neighboring lands near Hyperborea, lived the Arimaspis, barbarians dedicated to metallurgy, who had only one eye and were enemies of the Hyperboreans. Now, the Cyclopean aspect also puts Fomoires in evident relation with Atlantis. Thus, the Battle of Maige Tuired represents the victory of the Tuatha Dé Danann over previous Celtic populations of Atlantean origin and sanctions the priestly supremacy of the Hyperborean Druids over the entire Celtic society. The diversity of the Druidic caste from the rest of society is so significant that pushed Prof. Myles Dillon of the Trinity College of Dublin8 to support the idea, based on ritual studies, traditions attributed to the Druids and on the comparison between Gaelic and Sanskrit terms, that the Druids were in fact brāhmaṇas from India!
                From Ireland the Druids expanded into the rest of the British Isles and into Armorica, the current French peninsula of Normandy. The Druids did not arrive in the rest of Celtic Europe. However, the minor priestly orders of the Celts faithfully represented them everywhere they went. Such was the prestige of the Druids that they were considered Deities in human form. The name of this priestly caste comes from the composition of two words, curiously identical to two Sanskrit roots: dhru, which means stable, and vid, to know. Hence, Druid means he who is “stable in knowledge”. These two terms were symbolized by the oak, symbol of stability, and by the mistletoe9, symbol of knowledge; the latter grows on the branches of oaks, but it is not produced by them, as knowledge is not produced by stability. “The Druids considered nothing more sacred than the mistletoe and the oak on which it grows.”10
                The Druids were divided into two subclasses: the first whose members lived in the depths of the forests devoting themselves to metaphysical research, welcoming disciples who would live with them to provide service (Sskr. seva). Little is known about their teaching, as this exercise was carried out strictly from mouth to ear. All ancient authors who speak of the Druids attest to the secrecy of their teachings. We only know that their doctrine concerned the immortality of the soul, its transmigration in other worlds and in multiple births, the way to escape this fate through knowledge and the periodic destruction of the manifested world through water or fire. This was enough for the Romans to recognize a similarity with the Pythagorean doctrine. The disciple of a Druid “must memorize a great number of verses”11. The teachings in verses, strictly oral, were a condensation of the doctrinal knowledge that was transmitted. However, the disciple was able to understand them only after having listened to their explanatory comments and the exegesis of the teacher.
                The second Druid subclass was composed of priests who lived near the villages. They devoted themselves to solemn public rituals. However, they did not make animal sacrifices, they dressed in white and were strictly vegetarian. Some of them lived at the court of a King (Rix) and performed a function similar to that of purohita.
                Below the Druids there was another priestly subclass that dated back to the period preceding the arrival of the “Nordic” current. These were called Files, seers (Sskr. rṣi). They were composers of sapiential poems, astrologers and judges. Generally, they lived at the courts of princes or the most important noble Knights. They performed divinatory rituals and bloody sacrifices, taught cosmological sciences and imparted enchantments (mantras) to their disciples. They were highly skilled at the improvisation of hymns, a mastery that survived from father to son until the seventeenth century AD, when it disappeared together with its masters due to the persecution of Cromwell.
                The lower priestly level was represented by the Bards. They dedicated themselves to the composition of war poems that went to sing at the sound of their lyres from castel to castle and from village to village. Although they were not able to compose sapiential poems, they spread the works of the Files with their songs. They performed the function of genealogists of the important families of their region, learning by heart and transmitting the genealogical tree of the ancestors of the Knights. They had an important role in the preparation of the battles, both for the extreme attempt of reconciliation between the two contenders, and for casting curses against the opponent army. For this reason, the Bards were very familiar with the Knights. These were the main subdivisions of the Celtic priesthood, although many texts further subdivided Druids, Files, and Bards into numerous and complex sub-hierarchies by their function.
                The Knights constituted the second caste in importance. The most courageous and authoritative among them was recognized as King12. The others were Land-lords and formed the army, which also included their women. They continuously practiced the use of weapons and, following certain teachings of the Bards, they were able to enter into a state of furious alteration during battle, which the Romans called in Latin furor gallicus. Stripping their clothes off and brandishing their weapons, they faced the enemy in a terrible and crazed state of trance. At first the Romans were frightened by these acts of insane audacity and the high stature and physical prowess of the Celtic Knights. However, soon the Romans understood that these uncoordinated attacks that mimicked the aggressiveness of the bear were easily repelled by discipline and military art.
                As the bear represented the Knights, the boar was the animal that represented the caste of the Druids13. Two Hyperborean symbols are found in Celtic tradition: the boar alludes to the island Vārāhī, the Arctic land from which the Druids (Tuatha Dé Danann) were said to come, whereas the bear alludes to Ursa Major, the constellation of the northern pole.
                Finally, the Celtic society was composed of the cast of free men, artisans and traders, and of the caste of servants and peasants.

                Gaṇapati

                1. Greek historian (180-240 AD).[↩]
                2. ] As we can see, Diogenes Laertius already used the name of the priestly caste to define the entire Celtic people.[↩]
                3. Greek historian and geographer (135-51 BC).[↩]
                4. Saint Clement of Alexandria, Greek theologian and philosopher (150-215 AD).[↩]
                5. The common philological interpretation that pretends to translate “the tribe of the goddess Dana” is incorrect as there is no reference to any Deity the entire Celtic mythology known by this name.
                  [↩]
                6. F. Le Roux & C.J. Guyonvarc’h, I Druidi, Genova, Ecig, 1990, p.392.[↩]
                7. This episode is reminiscent of that of the blinding of cyclops Polyphemus by the hand of Odysseus, as narrated in the Odyssey. Furthermore, Polyphemus was the son of Poseidon, the most important god of Atlantis.[↩]
                8. M. Dillon, Early Irish Society, Dublin, The Three Candles, 1954.[↩]
                9. A parasitic plant that grows on trees. It produces little white fruits with the pulp consisting of a viscous liquid. The mistletoe is also mentioned by Virgil (Aeneid, VI, vv. 136-141 and 201-209). Before descending into Hades (the Afterlife world), Aeneas picked a branch of mistletoe from an oak tree, which bestows the power to enter the underworld and get out of it and “rise again” driving away the demons and conferring immortality. J. Brosse, Mitologia degli alberi, Milano, Rizzoli 1994 pag.88.[↩]
                10. Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia, XVI. 249-251; Pliny was a celebrated Roman naturalist and historian.[↩]
                11. Julius Cesar, De bello gallico, VI 14; between 58 and 51 AD, Cesar conquered and subjugated the whole of Gaul (today’s France).[↩]
                12. In Gaul, however, at the time of Caesar’s conquest, most of the Celtic kingdoms were governed by oligarchies of Knights.[↩]
                13. We will find this connection later when we talk about Celtic tradition during the Middle Ages in Europe. In the medieval saga, in fact, King Arthur (arktos, bear; Sskr. ṛkṣa) was a disciple of his purohita of the court, the Druid Merlin, known as “the Boar of Brocéliande”.[↩]

                19. Rome: from the Kingdom to the Empire

                  Rome: from the Kingdom to the Empire

                  In antiquity, Rome was ruled by seven Kings, characters participating in both mythical and historical reality. In fact, they are comparable in many ways to the seven Manus of the past, since each one of them brought a different legislation to the state. These rulers are reminiscent of the seven ṛṣi and the seven planets for the different sciences that were developed during their reigns. The last King, Tarquinius Superbus, has gone down in history for his cruelty and tyranny. For this reason, the Senate and the Roman people rebelled against him, banishing him from the city. The State was then radically transformed in a Republic. The title of Rex (King) remained just as the supreme priestly charge, but deprived of any temporal power. In place of the King, two Consuls were elected; one proceeding from the patrician caste and the second of plebeian origin, so that they could control each other, and avoid the danger of another tyranny. Moreover, the Consular mandate had a duration of one year only. This regime change received the approval from the very Oracle of Delphi. As it can be seen, the religion of the Romans, which was of Pythagorean origin, was very similar to that of the Greeks. The two religions had shrines in common and recognized each other; the Greeks didn’t regard the Romans to be barbarians nor the Romans considered the Greeks as barbarians.
                  Gradually the patriciate had to surrender more administrative powers to the plebeians, especially to the class of warriors (knights, Lat. equites, Sskr. kṣatriya), but they retained full control of the Senate and of the priestly functions. However, with the closure of the King’s temporal power, the depowering of the sacred offices represented a loss of power for the patriciate. This loss of power was, on the other hand, compensated with the strengthening of the patrician presence in the army, which became the backbone of the Roman Republic. In fact, the élite cavalry cohort was formed by young patricians, while the rest of the cavalry was the expression of the knights. The infantry, on the other hand, was composed by free men. The Roman army was well organized, well trained and disciplined; the art and science of strategy and tactics reached such high points that no army in Europe, Africa and Western Asia could match it.
                  In Rome, Religion was clearly divided into exoterism and esoterism. Exoterism corresponded to familiar or public rituals, often represented by sacrifices connected to cosmic events or celebrations for the Republic. Esotericism was not hidden by fear of persecution or restrictions by public cults, as happens in the religions of Semitic origin. Simply, the different sādhanās, just as in Greece, had the form of the Mysteries and therefore a certain reserve was maintained, so that the rituals were not deconsecrated by the presence of profane or curious people. Patricians who wished to receive the dīkṣā had at their disposal the Pythagorean Mysteries, of which we have already spoken on this Website1. The matrons, that is to say the patrician Ladies, received the initiation to the Mysteries of Bona Dea (Good Goddess), of very ancient Latin origin. Instead, for the plebeians there were initiations (also of Pythagorean origin) characterized by their activities and occupations. The knightly initiation had a military structure. The general (dux, En. duke), who also performed the sacred function of master (guru), had the title of Emperor (Imperator). Under him the upagurus were called princes (principes), the most advanced upāsakas had the title of Comrades of the Emperor (Comites Imperatoris Engl. Counts of the Emperor) and the neophyte initiates were known as “trainees” (tirones).
                  The infantry was religiously organized in fellowships (sodalicia). Each of them had its initiatic organization under the guidance of priests of minor ranks. Likewise, the merchants, the artists and the peasants were grouped into similar brotherhoods (sodalicia), within which a professional initiation could be obtained. Instead, the artisans were organized in colleges (collegia fabrorum), whose organization was very similar to the Indian śreṇis. At the head of a collegium there was a master of arts (magister atrium, Sskr. śilpācārya, sthapatī) or prince (princeps). The advanced disciples were called companions (sodales, Sskr. karmasārathi, takṣaka) and the apprentices tirones (Sskr. upaśikṣa, vardhakī). The religion of the Romans, however, was very open to the religions of other peoples, especially towards the Greek Mysteries. Many young Romans of the upper classes used to travel to Greece to receive the initiation of the Eleusinian, Orphic, Kabyrian or Dionysian Mysteries2. This increased when Rome, in its territorial expansion, conquered Greece in 230 BC. As Rome was conquering new territories, the religions of vanquished peoples were progressively integrated into the Roman Pantheon. Thus it happened that in Rome, capital of the Empire, were transferred the branches of the Isiac Mysteries proceeding from Egypt, the Mithraic Mysteries from Persia, the Chaldean Mysteries from the southern Mesopotamia, the Mysteries of Cybele (Lat. Magna Mater), from Phrygia, those of Baal from Syria etc. In the first century BC in Rome and in the main cities of the Empire there were even communities of Hindū Brāhmaṇas and Buddhist Śramaṇas. In Rome temples were built for all the religions that had come into contact with the Empire.
                  In Rome and in all the other cities of the Empire there were also Jewish communities. However, the typical exclusivism of the Semitic Religions3 claiming that their God is the only true one always obstructed the integration of their cult into the Roman Pantheon4. The Romans could not put up with the Jews who considered themselves to be the “God’s chosen people” and regarded their religion as the only true. Rome adopted a particularly strict policy to control the Judaic question. In 70 AD the Romans ravaged their vassal Judean Kingdom, destroyed the Jehovah’s Temple of Jerusalem and dispersed the Jews deporting them in all the provinces of their vast empire.
                  Similarly Celtic deities and Druidic initiation nor the religion of Carthage were accepted in Rome, reason being that Celtic populations (the Gauls, Galli, as the Romans called them) and the Carthaginians were the only enemies that posed a serious threat to the survival of Rome5. Carthage, which was located on the northern coast of Africa, after three bloody wars, was eventually defeated by the Romans and completely destroyed. Instead, Gaul and Britannia (at present France and England), conquered by Julius Caesar and Claudius6, quickly became Latinized. The Romans recognized that the Religion of the Celts and the secret teachings of their Druids were very similar to Pythagoreanism. Rome, therefore, respected the religion of the Celts, but were never too fond of it, considering the Gauls a barbaric and potentially hostile population.
                  Wherever the dominion of Rome extended, the Roman Peace (Pax Romana) was established. Roman citizenship was granted to many of the subjugated kingdoms, so the members of the knight class also increased strengthening the army. For many centuries within the Empire there were no more wars to fight and, therefore, the State prospered. In the first century AD, the city of Rome reached four million inhabitants. The capital, as well as other cities, were adorned with splendid temples and palaces. Paved roads connected all the provinces and everywhere aqueducts channeled the water from the mountains to the houses of private families. In that period of splendour, the austere spirit of the Romans began to be soften and corrupt, mostly due to the influence of Greek lifestyle. The struggle between social classes germinated under the influence of Athenian democracy. Thus, the highest initiates of the Pythagorean Mysteries joined their forces with those of the chivalric initiation. A circle was formed around the knight Mecenas, collecting the greatest Pythagorean poets such as Virgil7, Horace, Propertius and Tibullus. They induced the patrician Augustus, head of the Roman army (Imperator) and nephew of Julius Caesar, to superimpose his authority as master of the knights to that of the Chiefs of the State, the two Consuls. Thus the title of Emperor acquired its current meaning as supreme head of the Empire. This was not really a coup d’état, because the State, as a civil entity, agreed to voluntarily submit to an initiatic authority, that was recognized superior by nature8. The Emperor, in addition to being the head of all the Roman initiatory organizations and Commander-in-Chief of the Army, was also Rex Sacrorum and Pontifex Maximus. Therefore, in some way, this reform represented a sacralisation of the State and the restoration of the ancient Roman Kingdom. Only the Senate was allowed to maintain its power of control in order to prevent the Emperor from being tempted to become a tyrant. With Augustus (63 BC-14 AD) and his imperial Julia dynasty, Rome reached its maximum power and splendour.

                  D. K. Aśvamitra

                  1. See Ch. N° 12.[↩]
                  2. See Ch. N° 11.[↩]
                  3. The Jewish, Christian and Muslim monotheistic Religions are all of Semitic origin.[↩]
                  4. “All the Gods”. Name of a still existing temple in Rome, where the murtis of all the Gods worshiped in the Empire were gathered.[↩]
                  5. Brennus, a Celtic general, in 390 B.C., sacked the city of Rome, before being driving out and defeated in battle. The Carthaginian general Hannibal laid siege to Rome in 211 BC. These have been the two episodes of greatest danger for Rome.[↩]
                  6. Julius was the family name (gotra) of Caesar because he was direct descendant of Julus, son of the Trojan hero Æneas. The name of Cæsar became so prestigious that his name is used to define the “Emperor” in two languages: in German “Kaiser” and in Russian “Czar”. The Emperor Claudius conquered the present-day England in 43 AD.[↩]
                  7. Virgil has been the guru of that Pythagorean poet group. His poem, the Æneid, became the epic of Rome’s past. The poem, accompanied by doctrinal teachings and initiatic symbols, tells of the Trojan origins of the city of Rome. The masterly fame of Virgil was recognized for many centuries. For this reason Dante Alighieri chose Virgil as the guide for his journey in the three worlds.[↩]
                  8. The only historical comparable example was when the Dalai Lama, the highest initiatic authority of Vajrayāna Buddhism, was recognized superior to the King of Tibet, becoming the head of that state. The difference is that the Dalai Lama is a monk, instead the Roman Imperator was a general.[↩]

                  18. The Origins of Rome

                    The Origins of Rome

                    When the Greeks conquered and destroyed Troy with fire, Æneas had escaped it taking with him both the images of protective Deities of the city and the simulacra of the Ancestors. After crossing the sea among a thousand dangers, the Trojan prince landed on the shore of Latium, a region of central Italy.
                    There, the ancient God Saturn had once taken refuge after being overthrown by his son Jupiter, at the beginning of the Silver Age. Saturn, the King of the Gods of the Gold Age remained hidden and continued to rule in that part of Italy: in fact, Latium means “latent”, “concealed” and there, thanks to Saturn’s presence, the Gold Age continued for many more centuries without the neighbouring peoples which were already involved in the decadence of the Silver, Bronze and Iron cycles, being aware of it.
                    With the change of time, Saturn became a wise man, the King of the Latins, who maintained his kingdom in utmost prosperity and peace. At his death he was succeeded by a dynasty of sovereigns, and at the time when Æneas arrived in Latium the King of the Latins was Latinus. The Trojan hero was welcomed with great generosity by the local population and took the daughter of the King as his spouse. The arrival of ships loaded with Trojan warriors, however, attracted the hostility of the other Italian populations, who felt threatened. Therefore Æneas had to engage in a war, finally managing to pacify all of Latium. Trojans and Latins fraternized, founding a new nation. The son of Æneas, Julus1, decided to found a new city that would become the capital of his Latin-Trojan kingdom. He was miraculously lead on the site of the city’s foundation by a white female of wild boar, confirming the hyperborean origins of his tradition. The images of the Trojan Gods and ancestors were kept in a temple: thus the new city of Albalonga (the Great White one) ritually became the second Troy.
                    After some generations Amulius, the usurper of the throne of Albalonga, obliged his niece Rea Silvia to become a priestess of the Goddess Vesta. For he wanted her to remain a virgin. In fact a prophecy had predicted that Amulius would have been killed by the sons of Rea Silvia. But Rea Silvia was visited in the temple of Vesta by Mars, God of war, and gave birth to two twins, Romulus and Remus. The usurper King ordered the death of his niece and the twins to be abandoned to the course of the Tiber River. However the two infants were rescued and nursed by a she-wolf.
                    When they became adults, Romulus and Remus killed Amulius and decided to found a new city: Rome. Both brothers became contenders to the throne of the new city, but finally Romulus killed Remus and assumed power. Romulus divided his subjects into two categories: patricians and plebeians.
                    The patricians were the caste providing priests, warriors and all the public offices to the State. The plebeians were divided into three subcategories: the knights (equites), who made up the flanks of the army formed by the patricians; the free men (liberi), who were traders, farmers and artisans; and the class of slaves (servi), who served as servants to the other three upper classes. While the patricians were such by birth, some upward or downward shifts could take place among the other three classes. For example, if the deeds of certain slaves were noble, they could be freed by their masters to become part of free men. The insolvent debtors, on the other hand, could decay on the level of slaves and become commodity of a master. The patrician family (patricia familia) was formed by the father of the family (pater familias) and the matrona, his wife, by their children, by less important relatives, by artisans, peasants, clerks and servants of the family called clientes. The pater familias, even if he had no public priestly office, was the priest of his own family, and therefore performed the sacrifices to the Gods and the cult to the Ancestors. And he was also the King of his family, with the power of life and death over its members.
                    All the families (kula) descending from the same ancestor formed a gens (gotra). So a patrician (patricius) had his own name, the surname of his family and the name of the gens. Romulus had founded Rome welcoming people coming from three different Italic populations, the Latins, the Sabins and the Etruscans. Therefore, the whole Roman population was divided into three communities (Tribus, i.e. triple division): the Ramnes of Latin origin, the Tities, of Sabine origin, the Luceres, of Etruscan origin. Each tribe (tribus) was composed by the four castes described above. The representative of a tribe before the King (Rex) was the tribunus and his seat was the tribunal. Each tribe elected a hundred patrician elders, and these three hundred senators (senatores) elaborated the laws and presented them to the King for approval. The Rex was the supreme priest, the head of State and the chief of the Army.
                    The first King, Romulus, was mostly a Warlord who, since the foundation of the city, imparted the warrior nature to his nation, which would become its principal feature throughout Roman history. The Romans were a people of warriors, disciplined, loyal, stern, courageous and with a high sense of justice. They did not indulge so much in speculation and philosophy as the Greeks did.
                    Remus and Romulus represent the mythical pair of twins of which one is mortal and the other is immortal, like Nara and Nārāyaṇa in India and the Dioscures twins in Greece. In fact, Romulus, at the apogee of his glory, was assumed into heaven with his body and became the God Quirinus. For this reason the inhabitants of Rome were also known as Quirites. Romulus is the first of the seven Kings of the city. His successor was Numa, the legislator and the founder of Roman Religion2. Numa was a disciple of Pythagoras and reformed the ancient Trojan-Latin Religion on the basis of the Pythagorean doctrine. He was assisted in his venture by his wife, the Goddess Egeria.
                    First of all, Numa built the temple to the God Janus, the God of doors, of knowledge, of initiation, the remover of obstacle (similar to Ganeśa). The first month of the year was called Januarius in honour of this God, today’s January. Numa consecrated the Roman State to three principal deities: Jupiter, a priestly God, Mars, a warrior God, and Quirinus (Romulus), God-ancestor of the inhabitants of Rome.
                    He then entrusted the worship of such three Gods to three orders of sacerdotes (priests) called flamina (which has the same etymology of the sskr. brāhmaṇa), to whom he delegated his power as King of the sacred (Rex sacrorum). The worship of Vesta, the Goddess of the sacred ever lit fire in the temple dedicated to the Roman-Latin-Trojan Ancestors, remained central. He also established a luni-solar calendar of twelve months, specifying the favourable dates for animal sacrifices, vegetable oblations, and festivals in honour of the Gods.
                    For the popular cult he instituted the minor priestly order of the pontiffs headed by the Maximum Pontiff (Pontifex Maximus). Pontifex means “bridging” between men and Gods (the same concept of tīrthaṃkara). Until the end of the Empire, all Roman priests had to be of patrician descent. The Roman patricians (patricii) received the initiation from the Orphic-Pythagorean Mysteries, of which we have already spoken on this Website. Similarly the matrons (matronæ), received the initiation from the Mysteries of the Bona Dea (Good Goddess) reserved only to women. In the forty years of Numa’s reign the bellicose city of Rome always remained at peace.

                    D. K. Aśvamitra

                    1. From Julus the gens Julia (name of a clan, sskr. gotra) descended that later was represented by important figures like Julius Cesar and the first Roman Emperors.[↩]
                    2. It is interesting that Numa is an anagram of the name of Manu.[↩]

                    17. Gnosis and Gnosticism

                      Gnosis and Gnosticism

                      In ancient Greek, gnosis (γνῶσις, read gnòsis) meant the knowledge reached through the initiation path of the Mysteries. The word is related to the saṃskṛta term jñāna both in etymology and purport. Therefore, it was synonymous with sophia (σοφία, read sofìa), wisdom or sapience. However, gnosis also had the sense of the intellectual and discriminative method used to attain wisdom and, in this sense, it can be well rendered in saṃskṛta as Brahmavidyā. Therefore, the Gnostes (γνώστης, read gnòstes, sskr. jñāni) was a man who, having been prepared theoretically by philosophy and after having been initiated into the Mysteries, had attained real knowledge through intellectual inquiry (jñānaśakti vicara), rather than through sacrificial rituals or devotion.
                      The cognitive approach of the Gnostes proceeded by synthesis, that is to say, they transcended the analytical knowledge of the multiplicity, considered false knowledge. However, with the decadence of the ancient Greek religion and its initiation paths (sādhanā mārga) of Mysteries, and because of a new coexistence with non-Greek cultures and traditions, in the period of Hellenism, they confused the synthesis with syncretism. Syncretism means the identification of heterogeneous symbols and doctrines which are only apparently similar, creating a confusion that has only the appearance of intellectuality. This deviant tendency is known as Gnosticism. Therefore Gnosticism should not be confused with true gnosis1, although in the Hellenistic period, often the boundary between them was difficult to define. And some of the last neo-Platonists were polluted by the syncretistic influence of Gnosticism.
                      The Jewish communities scattered throughout the Roman Empire had lost the knowledge of their language and at last spoke only Greek. For this reason, in the third century BC they decided to translate the Bible into Greek. From that moment the influence of Greek thought on Jewish communities sprang up. Gnosticism arose from this cultural influence. The most ancient Gnosticism was born in Egypt on the edge of the Jewish religion, in the community of “Therapists”. These were a Jewish community certainly derived from the initiatic order of the Essenes2; we will discuss about them later while describing the Jewish religion and the birth of Christianity. It does not seem, however, that the Therapists were a saṃpradāya neither that they had gurus, paramparās nor any initiatic method (prakriyā). They lived in poverty in the desert, men and women together, devoting themselves to asceticism and night prayers until dawn. Strongly influenced by Egyptian religion, these Jews devoted themselves to cultivating a medical science, from which comes the name by which they are known. It seems that this medical science was very similar to the Neoplatonic Theurgy.
                      It is from this community that Philo Judæus (20 BC – 45 AD) drew his basic Gnostic notions. However, in his native Alexandria he had studied the Greek philosophy by which he has been profoundly influenced. His Gnostic syncretism consisted in mixing Greek philosophy (mostly the Platonic one) with the revealed biblical text. He has been the first to argue that “pagan” philosophers could be useful to explain the deeper meaning of the Hebrew Bible. In this way he mixed inextricably Greek thought (including the Mysteric one) to a Semitic Religion, so different and often incompatible with the Hellenic mentality. In fact, both the exterior philosophy and the initiatic doctrines of the Greeks were open to comparisons with any sapiential doctrine proceeding from other civilizations. On the contrary, through Philo, the Semitic exclusivism used Greek and Hellenistic wisdom to confirm the belief that Judaism was the only true Religion in the world and that its God had chosen only the Jews as “elected people” among all the nations of the earth 3. Some centuries later, Christian theologians followed the example of Philo using Greek wisdom to give depth and meaning to the Old Testament and to the Gospel.
                      Jewish Gnosticism was not a homogeneous movement: each community took different doctrinal positions, often in competition with each other. Early Christianity itself was certainly born under a Gnostic influence, as it can be read in the Gospel of St. John or in the Epistles of St. Paul. After the crucifixion of Jesus, many divisions of the newborn church were produced, with more or less profoundly gnostic tendencies. Thus, even before Christianity emerged from Judaism as a new separate religion, it has been involved in doctrinal disputes with its Gnostic members. Let us briefly see which are the common features of the Judeo-Christian Gnosticism, at least what we can know from the few documents arrived up to us. As already explained in the first articles of this series, Western Traditions, including Semitic Religions, had in common the bipartite structure in esotericism and esotericism. The esotericism is the domain of initiation (dīkṣā) and the exotericism is the exterior religion for the profane non initiated people (adīkṣita). It is necessary to remember this characteristic, unknown in Hinduism, if one wants to understand well the traditions of the West and the reasons for their corruption. Gnosticism arose from the confusion between these two domains. Teachings reserved to knowers (jñāni) were divulged among people lacking any intellectual qualifications (anadhikāri). Rites of meditation and repetition of mantras were distributed without any preliminary initiation. Social and moral issues were interpreted as metaphysical secrets. Among the latter ones, stands out the problem of “good and evil” that still troubles Western minds. From a merely behavioral problem concerning the action producing pāpa and puṇya, in the semitic monotheistic religions the problem of “good and evil” has been raised to the level of “pseudo-metaphysics”. This because, in fact, God and Satan are rival entities. It is true that God created Satan as an angel and that the latter rebelled against him. But, for these religions what is created is considered eternal. Eternal, but having a beginning. Therefore, the evil produced by Satan directly or indirectly is eternal. Even hell is eternal, and the created soul that does evil ends down in hell, will remain there eternally, suffering for ever.
                      As we can easily recognize, all monotheisms in reality, are dualist. The Gnosticism, as was produced in Judaism and Christianity by a misunderstood influence of Greek thought, made dogmatic the dualism, coming to affirm that God, called Abrasáx4, created spiritual things, while the Demiurge, often identified with Satan, created material things. Thus Satan cooperates with God in the creation of the world. God creates souls, Satan bodies. God is the shining Satan before the rebellion and Satan is the dark God of this manifested world. Many Gnostics considered the Biblical God to be the Demiurge i.e. Satan, and his human projection on the earth was Jesus. Thus, instead of transcending the problem of good and evil, it is solved by mixing good with evil, truth with error, light with darkness. So you can reach God with the help of the devil, you can get merit by making only demerits. “Pecca fortiter” (“sin hard”, in Latin) if you want to get the Gnosis! So, all the violence against the neighbour, all the sexual woes, all the most dangerous spells, all the sacrileges against religion, can become the most sublime prayers. The explanation of these aberrant behaviours is provided by means of secrets, mysterious revelations, muddled symbolism, self-contradictory doctrines. And behind all this, the presence of the ass-headed God of Atlantean origin sometimes reappears.
                      Therefore the Gnostic literature that has reached us is difficult to evaluate: sometimes it reproduces authentic Pythagorean, Platonic and Biblical teachings; sometimes it is a jumble of symbols difficult to interpret that makes you think that you don’t have the access key, even if often there is not access to anything; or, finally, it deals sometimes with evil magic and diabolic sorcery.
                      The different Gnostic currents were structured in Churches with their bishops, priests and patriarchs and lasted for few centuries until the other Christian Churches completely destroyed them as heretical.
                      Nowadays playing on the equivocal and in perfect bad faith the propagandists of the different Christian Churches accuse all the initiatory paths based on knowledge (jñāna mārgas) to be Gnostics. In this way they spread about the other religions with which they declare to “dialogue”. Instead, it is their hostility towards knowledge and intellectuality that should make reflect everybody on their underlying sincerity.

                      D. K. Aśvamitra

                      1. With “Gnostes” we indicate here those who aspired to the gnosis or who had reached it, while with “Gnostics” we mean the followers of Gnosticism.[↩]
                      2. One of the initiation paths of Judaism that later will be called Qabbalah.[↩]
                      3. Their exclusivism in this case was only one-sided, because neither the Greeks nor the Romans ever took seriously these Jewish claims of divine predilection. On the contrary, it has been typically within the Semitic peoples and religions that irreconcilable conflicts were triggered due to mutual exclusivity. This explains the many centuries aggressiveness and hatred between Jews, Christians and Muslims that lasts until today.[↩]
                      4. Abrasáx (ἀβρασάξ in Greek) is a meaningless term. The numerical value of its letters is 365, so perhaps its meaning is “year”.[↩]