Contempt

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  In the Zodiacal Day it will be changed and sublimated into wisdom, and as the twilight comes again, handed down to a wisdom lacking humanity that will again misinterpret it. Today, we think of this wisdom-knowledge in terms of religion—”revealed,” or mystically intuited rather than rationally discerned. It is not so; the ancient knowledge of Reality was as rationalistic as our own science, and far more extensive, cosmically. It was the result of preceding millennia of scientific study philosophically examined. To paraphrase a recent comment, it was scientific experience contemplated in tranquillity—the Zodiacal Day. Thus there was nothing mystic or mysterious about it. It was the period in between that mystified it, the age of religion. And as this gave us no knowledge whatever, we think, like Panodorus, that it was “revealed” to “holy men” by “divine beings.” This false idea has filled the world with nonsense—Gods and Devils, Angels and Archangels, Lipikas and Builders, Lords of Wisdom and Sons of Light. Even Madame Blavatsky, who should have known better, writes in this fashion. “The question will surely be asked: Do the occultists believe in all these ‘Builders,’ ‘Lipikas,’ and ‘Sons of Light,’ as Entities, or are they merely imaginary? To this the answer is given as plainly: After due allowance for the imagery of personified Powers, we must admit the existence of these Entities, if we would not reject the existence of spiritual Humanity within physical mankind. For the hosts of these Sons of Light, the mind born sons of the manifested Ray of the Unknown All, are the very root of spiritual man.” 1 Thus belief in these beings depends on a delusion, namely, that this “Ray of the Unknown All” constitutes the spiritual part of evolved humanity. It does not; this “Ray” is only the Life Principle, the morally unqualified genetic; the spirituality of evolved humanity is epigenetic and of man’s own creating. There is simply no end to the delusions this false doctrine has wrought. It molds the mind of the theologian, it bedevils the philosopher, the statesman, and even the nation. In the Germans and Japanese we see the consequence of this. The latter took literally their myth about divine beings descending upon their islands and establishing their race and culture—then fought like devils to force them upon the world. And only after bitter defeat did they humanize their “divine” Emperor. The statement that their founder was fifth in line from the Sun Goddess has no racial meaning whatever. It means only that they, mankind, are fifth in line cyclically from the sun period— sun, earth, plant, animal, man. A similar idea underlies the Germans’ politicomysticism, ending in militarism—and two defeats. It too derives from mythology, its unscrupulous gods and violent means—Thor, the thunderer, Wotan, the pact-breaker, Loki, the cunning schemer, and so on. The result is Der Tag, Blitzkrieg, Deutsche Donner and dāmmerung , all due to ignorance of the ruthless nature of Causation and man’s corrective purpose.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  This they called “the heresy of Antioch,” see Acts, and after the Gentiles took over and the Jews withdrew it became a heresy to Rome—no hierarchy, no empire could be built upon it. That is why the Petrine doctrine prevailed and the Pauline was made to conform to it. Thus the Chrestos Logia , “which certain impostors in the Church of Rome propagated concerning Christ,” became the Christine doctrine.2 This Gnostic and pagan doctrine was the source of Pauline Christianity. In it lies the true esoteric basis, a universal principle available to all, and such also is that of the two Johns. This the Jewish priests rejected for the narrow, literalized and personalized Christ of the synoptic gospels. This was strictly for them, and their attitude towards others is well expressed where Cornelius, a Gentile, sought to join them. Peter speaking, Acts 10:28: “Ye know how that it is an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to keep company, or come in unto one of another nation.” And Peter having done this, they accused him “saying, Thou wentest in to men uncircumcised, and didst eat with them.” How horrible! It took a miraculous dream to convince them they were wrong. Without this they might have killed Paul had he not fled. This is not likely history but it illustrates the conflict between the two systems. At any rate Christianity began not in Rome nor yet in Jerusalem, but in Antioch in Syria—and it was operative before the time of Christ. It took three hundred years to blend its two components, and now we live by a synthetic faith whose name and purpose derive from the Greeks and whose theology and psychology derive from the Hebrews. Its morality derives from neither exclusively but from humanity in general, and this is the one good apple in the whole rotten barrel. Paul preached neither Jesus nor Christ but Christhood, that deified consciousness developed within the individual rather than from a Christ without. This was the method of the schools of the Mysteries, their long, arduous and dedicated work of initiation resulted in a spirituality that can never be achieved vicariously. Rightly understood, this is the heart of all religions but the literalists destroyed it. Elsewhere we said that the Church during two thousand years had failed to spiritualize the race. Here we see the reason. We said also that the purpose of Creation was the development of qualities, and Christianity sidetracked it. It has been said that Paul was the real founder of Christianity, but not the Christianity that came down to us. His was Gnostic Christianity, the other but a priestly perversion of this. Paul, however, was a combination of both: priestly zeal, and knowledge he could not absorb because of his racial heritage. He too was a victim of Jewry, and therefore burdened with its false theology and conviction of sin. Thus he was a man torn between two philosophies.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  Later we will read about God killing Onan for not doing with it what his conscience forbade him to do. Such things are not in the Bible as historical facts, but that we may see the genetic and nonmoral nature of Causation. The story of Lot is but another Creation myth, part of which got interwoven with the Abram myth. In this one Lot is the Creator, and so it is his seed that must be preserved. At any rate the parallel is obvious. Like Adam and Cain, he “journied east” to the city of Sodom, which is Enoch, the city of Cain, and the Garden of Adam. Like Noah, he got drunk, and like Noah, Adam, and Abram, he fell asleep, and while he slept his daughters, like Noah’s sons, took advantage of him. Since both Lot and Abram are involutionary symbols, we see where and what these wicked cities Sodom and Gomorrah were. Their royal wars, “four kings with five,” are but the wars of the Titans, and the slime pits into which they fell are the same slime pits as those of Babel. Their sins and destruction are the same as those in Noah’s day. That they were destroyed is but a mythologist’s way of saying, as we said, that the higher planes in Involution are wiped out when the lower ones are formed. And so are their gods: Abram dies and gives way to Isaac; Isaac dies and gives way to Jacob. These are the Trinity of this myth, and all three disappear that Joseph, the fourth, may carry on. This is the creative process; the sad lot of Lot’s wife is a hint of what happens to those who refuse to cooperate. Once started, life cannot turn back; it must go on or perish. Lot’s wife looking back at her city is but the Hebrew parallel of the Greek myth of Orpheus looking back at Eurydice. And let us not forget the Roman god, Ridiculus, “he who turns or causes to turn back”; that’s ridiculous. So were the angels who refused to go on and create, and so got punished. And Jesus declared, “No man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62). These lessons in Evolution have been wholly lost on us, particularly our reactionaries, fundamentalists, etc. These are the children of Lot’s wife and there are lots and lots of them. They too look to the past and so become pillars of unproductiveness. They cry out against war and blame the progressives for it, but they are the real cause of war—inertia, inaction, inadequacy.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  Then the king made Daniel a great man, and gave him many great gifts, and made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon, and chief of the governors over all the wise men of Babylon (Chap. 2). (“And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, See, I have set thee over all the land of Egypt,” Gen. 41:41.) Thus these two are one and both are cosmological symbols. This is a scriptural formula, still in use: the Jew is always the cleverest, the wisest—Joseph, Moses, Daniel, Mordecai, etc. Indeed, Daniel was “ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers that were in all his realm” (1:20). Thus did they pervert cosmology to glorify themselves and deceive the Gentiles. This realized, it’s rather difficult to believe the rest of Daniel: Nebuchadnezzar eating grass, the golden image he commanded all to worship, his putting Daniel in a lion’s den, three others in a fiery furnace, the handwriting on the wall, etc. The libelous degradation of Nebuchadnezzar was but the mighty spirit of the sun brought low in matter. The golden image that the brave Daniel refused to worship is but the “golden calf” of Exodus and the first “beast” of Revelation. It too represents matter, and the Life Principle, now free, must not return to it. This is the brave Daniel’s courage, likewise that of his race. Daniel in the lion’s den is this Principle in Leo, the sun; it is also “the fiery furnace” or crucible in space referred to earlier. The three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, are the three prephysical elements of which the sun is made; the fourth whom Nebuchadnezzar saw walking in their midst is element number four and one with the stone that slowly appeared in the image, namely, physical matter. Chapter 3, verse 25, should therefore read thus: “Lo, I see four men (elements) loose (not yet condensed) walking in the midst of the (solar) fire, and they have no hurt (are not destroyed), and the form of the fourth is like the Son (Sun) of God.” This God saved three men in a fiery furnace but not three million in the gas chamber. And such is God’s special care of the Jews. Nebuchadnezzar, the sun, or first “beast” (little wonder he ate grass), was, according to the scriptures, succeeded by Belshazzar. This is not according to history; Belshazzar was never king but only regent. He was not the son of Nebuchadnezzar (5:2); it was not Nebuchadnezzar who became ill but Nabonidas, the last of the Neo-Babylonian dynasty. To regain his health he lived for eight years at Tiema, in northern Arabia. It was during this period that Belshazzar served as regent only. The Hebrew mythologist applied the facts about Nabonidas to the character he was using for his occult cosmology. In this, Belshazzar is the second “beast,” namely, the earth, and the handwriting he saw on the wall was that of the planetary law.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  The story is told of a Christian bishop who said to a Parsee: “So you are one of those peculiar fellows who worship the sun.” “Yes,” said the Parsee, “and so would you if you had ever seen it.” No, the bishop had never seen the sun mentally and so he worshiped a mythical Creator instead of the real one. And I’m sure he thought his form of worship vastly superior to the peculiar fellow’s. And now if this first chapter is false, what of the rest of the book? It is of like nature, a priestly hoax intended to deceive us. And nowhere has it succeeded more than in the first four chapters of Genesis. Eden, the Garden of Eden, Paradise, etc .Now to understand these chapters we must know where and what their Eden was, how it differs from the Garden of Eden, what Paradise was and what took place therein. We generally think of Eden and the Garden of Eden as one, but the Bible says the Garden was planted “eastward in Eden.” Eden then is something bigger than the Garden: it is, in fact, the planetary entity in its prephysical state, i.e., prior to matter, the mythic source of evil. Eastward, that is, forward in this, was planted a Garden. Now in cosmogony what other Garden is there save a life-bearing planet, in this case, the earth? The Garden of Eden is the earth itself, planted eastward, that is, forward in the creative process. The Hebrew word Eden comes from an old Babylonian name for Mesopotamia, Gan-Eden , the garden of the Middle East. The word Mesopotamia also means middle land , so also the Norse Midgard, home of the gods. Throughout mythology, which includes scripture, the “middle land” is that middle ground between Involution and Evolution, namely, the earth. How absurd then to think the Garden of Eden was somewhere in our Mesopotamia. How absurd also to call a primeval world a garden. This is some more priestly concealment of the truth. Now, billions of years later, it is something of a garden but Adam is still “raising Cain” in it, and not because he ate an apple, but because of the nature of Being. [image "image" file=Image00004.jpg] EARTH The “East” in Involution becomes the “West” in Evolution; thus “the happy lands” are always in the “West.” Fair Eden is one with all the happy lands always in the west— the Hesperides, Elysian Fields, Fortunate Isles, Isles of the Blest, and brave Valhalla, whose passing is Gotterdammerung , the twilight of the gods. Prior to this all was well with them; there was no matter, the source of evil, and their food was nectar and ambrosia, symbols of the etheric, astral and mental elements. This was the Paradise mythological man lost. We need not mourn for it, however, for it was not only well lost but meant to be lost, the process must go on. So eastward in this was planted a garden.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  This story of Sheba, by the way, was taken from the Mahabharata , a book of Hindu poetry dating from about 500 B.C. If proof is needed that this part of the Bible is neither ancient, historical nor original, it is here. It proves that 1 and 2 Kings were not written during the alleged time of Solomon, nor were his proverbs. One wife, however, was not enough for this wise man. He had hundreds. Now what does this mean? Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had but one or two, but as we said, from the third plane down primordial matter became infinitely discrete or divided— the “monadic host,” as others called it. So here again a son of God saw the daughters of men and took them to wife. 1. But King Solomon loved many strange women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites; 3. And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines: and his wives turned away his heart (Chap. 11). Thus did the Jews libel all women—not that it has no biologic basis, but why make them the entire cause? It takes two to make a concubine. It’s all right in mythologized cosmology, however; the holy Krishna of India had more than twice that number. Women in creation myths always represent matter or the material elements; Solomon’s many women then were but the many material elements the genetic principle united with to form a physical world, the seven hundred being symbolic of the seven planes. This it was that turned away Solomon’s heart, from the spiritual to the material—Demon est Deus inversus again. The implication is that from here on Solomon became evil, and so we learn now that, like all Old Testament personifications of God, Solomon was a murderer, killing even his own brother, Adonijah. Thus Solomon is the Cain of this story. Nevertheless, “the Lord loved him,” and commissioned him to build His “holy temple.” For this, Solomon sent his ships to the ends of the then-known world for materials, but elsewhere we were told that David assembled these. This is not a contradiction, just an overlap of two sun myths. This “holy temple” has gone down in history as one of the greatest of all buildings, yet according to specifications it was small indeed, only about 40 by 125 feet, and the chancels built around it were so puny as to be meaningless. Compared to other ancient temples, this one was insignificant. Consider Nagkon-Wat in Cambodia, for instance. It is 769 by 588 by 250 feet, elaborately carved and columned. In the stonework there are approximately 100,000 figures, one picture occupying 240 feet. Solomon’s temple, like Solomon himself, never existed on this earth, for the simple reason, it is the earth—that “temple not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,” that same temple the Great Pyramid symbolizes. Thus Solomon is one with Philithion, its alleged builder, not actual but mythical.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  5:2).” This is a modern literalist wrestling with ancient occultism, and no more knowledgeable than those at Ezimgeber and Ararat. Solomon’s temple is the sun; the city of David is the earth. Pharaoh’s daughter is its matter, which later went up from the earth to form the evolutionary part of the temple. Thus these three buildings—the temple, the king’s palace, and the queen’s house—are occultly identical with the Sphinx—Leo, Libra, and Virgo. It is also one with the Phoenix but alas, there’s been no Oedipus to solve its riddle. The scriptures also make much of ancient Israel’s military power, but this we suspect was as mythical as its naval power. Wherever the military accounts of other nations speak of the Jews at all, it is to record a complete triumph over them. Their scriptural triumphs, therefore, were but literary compensation for their lack of military and political power. As Spengler aptly put it: “For the Chaldeans and Persians there was no need to trouble here about proof—they had by their God conquered the world. But the Jews had only their literature to cling to, and this accordingly turned to theoretical proof in the absence of positive. In the last analysis, this unique national treasure owes its origin to the constant need of reacting against self-depreciation.” To this end they perverted other races’ history to glorify themselves. As recorded by them, Hezekiah, with the help of their God, completely and miraculously destroyed Sennacherib’s army at the gates of Jerusalem, whereas in fact, this calamity did not happen at Jerusalem at all. It happened at Pelusium near the border of Egypt, and it wasn’t miraculous. Thus the Jews and their God had nothing to do with it. They merely used another’s misfortune to fake a glorious history. When no such factual event served this purpose, they invented one—the cruelty of a Pharaoh, the weakness of the Syrians, etc. Chapter 20 of 1 Kings, for instance, tells about 7,000 Jews killing 100,000 Syrians in one day, but the symbolic language and literal absurdities should make us suspect its mythological nature. 29. And they pitched one over against the other seven days. And so it was, that in the seventh day the battle was joined: and the children of Israel slew of the Syrians an hundred thousand footmen in one day. 30. But the rest fled to Aphek, into the city; and there a wall fell upon twenty and seven thousand of the men that were left. . . . That must have been a big wall, so big indeed it killed the fact as well as the footmen. Had we read it in some ancient pagan book we would dismiss it as mythology. Well, it is Hebrew mythology, and this is why so many events in Jewish history take place on the seventh day or year and require forty days or years to complete them: “And the seventh year Jehoiada sent and fetched the rulers over hundreds” 2 Kings 11:4.

• From The Erotic Engine (2011)

  It happens that consumers of pornography are an excellent test market for a product that could have ramifications for hundreds of millions of people around the world. Antoine Metivier refers to his company’s client base as “the digitally nervous, and the digitally excluded.” Metivier, a transplanted Frenchman now living in London, is the head of European sales for a company called uKash. His is one of two companies pioneering the use of cash transactions on the Internet. For suppliers, cash transactions have the benefit of zero risk for chargebacks. In turn, customers can be sure that their payments are untraceable and that there is no danger of unauthorized debits from their credit cards or bank accounts. As with so many other technologies, cash-based Internet transactions did not begin in the adult world, but the adult world is the proving ground where the system is prepared for mainstream use. The gambling industry was the first to implement the system—online gamblers liked how nobody knew how much they were spending, and nobody knew how much they were winning. Spouses, tax collectors, creditors and anybody else who might lay claim to the spoils of a lucky wager had no way to follow the money. Gambling and pornography are often lumped together as “vice industries” by people who are involved with neither. Within these two sectors, though, not all vices are equal. The gambling industry does not care to have its reputation sullied by an association with porn, and many in the porn world view gambling in the same light. “I used to work for a company that was specializing in the gambling industry,” Metivier told me, “and the first thing I told them was, ‘Why don’t we do adult?’” But the company was reluctant to tarnish itself by allying with purveyors of pornography. (Those in the porn business see their own industry as the morally superior of the two. “If you’re addicted to gambling, you can lose your house,” one adult webmaster told me. “Even if you’re addicted to pornography, that’s not going to happen.”) Metivier’s company’s gambling clientele was largely based in the Middle East and South Asia, where gambling was better tolerated than pornography. It took an economic downturn and some changes in leadership before the company was willing to explore the pornographic markets for online cash. Once it made the move, it found that anti-pornographic sentiment actually worked to its advantage. Many countries limit the scope of the pornography industry through financial regulations that affect the use of credit cards and bank accounts. Cash is much more difficult for a government to control, and is therefore much more appealing to customers. Metivier sees client comfort level as the most important value point of his company’s system.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  These tablets speak of the Habiri, and our apologists assume these were Hebrews. There is no proof of this nor would they be construed as such but for the priestly necessity. The Tell-el-Amarna tablets contain a political correspondence between Ikhnaton (Amenhotep IV) of Egypt and Barrburyash II, king of Assyria 1375 B.C., and at that time the Hebrews as a distinct sect did not exist, the Bible to the contrary. Only as the sequel to the allegorical Genesis does this scriptural Exodus become intelligible. As such it tells the same shocking story—the nonmoral and murderous nature of Causation; that is, the Jhwhist part does; the others try to conceal it. The first chapter, and the second down to the tenth verse, is from the Elohist and Priestly accounts, and here as elsewhere they extol the virtues of God and his “chosen people,” then the Jhwhist steps in and tells us the truth—Moses is a murderer. 11. And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren. 12. And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand (Chap. 2). Thus does life begin. Why have we overlooked this beginning in every Bible myth? Because it was subsequently covered over with sanctity, divinity and poetry, the harlotry of scriptural mythology. In this account we have a good example of that whitewashing referred to in our Preface. Neither the Priestly nor Elohist account mentions this murder, yet if their God was opposed to murder why did he pick this murderer, Moses? Because a murderer was just the man he needed. Life itself is murderous and the Jhwhist knew it. Being nearest to the Zodiacal Day, he was, like the Greek mythologists, an Initiate in the Mysteries and knew the cosmic facts. Then came the darkness and the priests, knowing nothing. These destroyed the mythic legacy. Midway between the two was the Elohist, and there you have the three, not four, sources of the Bible. That both priest and prophet used the same formula “And God said” implies one source, and one concern—sin, not truth. If those parts of the Bible attributed to prophets were not written by professional priests, then they were written by priestly minded nonprofessionals. After this crime, Moses fled to Midia, and the “sons of the snake.” There he meets Zipporah, watering her father’s flock, as did Rebekah and Rachel. And Moses marries her, as did Isaac and Jacob. But according to Josephus, he had a wife already, Tharbis, daughter of the king of Ethiopia, that same Aethiopia of Genesis. This is no scandal in Moses’ life, however, for in mythology Egypt and Ethiopia are one, and also one with Midia, the middle point in Creation, namely, earth.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  Pope Leo the V was deposed by another Christopher, who was in turn deposed and succeeded by the aforesaid criminal Sergius III, who murdered his predecessors. At this time it was not the Holy Ghost that selected the popes but what Cardinal Baronius called scortas , whores. This was the “rule of the courtesans,” sometimes called the Pornocracy, or reign of the whores. Among them was one Baronius called the “shameless whore,” Theodora, and her equally shameless daughter Marozia. Both had sons by Sergius III, and both put their illegitimates on the papal throne—John XI and John XII. The first was imprisoned, the second “turned the Lateran Palace into a brothel.” There was no crime he didn’t commit—murder, perjury, adultery, incest with his two sisters, bleeding and castrating his enemies, etc. He died, we are told, at the hands of an outraged husband. According to the record, Cardinal Francone had Benedict VI strangled, after which he became Boniface VII, “a horrid monster surpassing all other mortals in wickedness,” according to Gerbert. He was no worse however than Boniface VIII—”a strong and courageous Pope.” Yes indeed! To gain his tiara he had the halfwit Celestine V disposed of. He did not long enjoy his victory for soon he was driven out by the Romans. Under a successor, Clement V, he was tried posthumously and found guilty of every crime including pederasty and murder. And when Clement died, his successor, John XXII, revealed that Clement had been so very clement he had given his nephew the equivalent of five million dollars of papal money. It was at this time the papal court was moved to Avignon, and now St. Peter had two successors, one at Avignon and one at Rome. But even this was not enough; there were at one time three—Gregory XII, Alexander V, and John XXIII.9 So corrupt was the latter, Sigmund of Hungary called a council to investigate him. The result was fifty-four articles describing him as “wicked, irreverent, unchaste, a liar, disobedient and infected with many vices.” As a cardinal he had been “inhuman, unjust and cruel.” As Pope he was “an oppressor of the poor, persecutor of justice, pillar of the wicked, statue of the simoniacs, addicted to magic, the dregs of vice . . . wholly given to sleep and carnal desires, a mirror of infamy, a profound inventor of wickedness.” He secured the Papacy by “violence and fraud and sold indulgences, benefices, sacraments and bulls.” He practiced “sacrilege, adultery, murder, rape and theft.” And now we can understand Petrarch’s remark—”a sink of iniquity.” Some of these popes so outraged decency they were exiled. At least two of them had their eyes and tongues cut out, then were dragged through the streets tied to the tail of an ass. Still others were so despised their corpses were exhumed and thrown into the Tiber.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  S. Mead, in Did Jesus Live 100 B.C.? The answer to his query is, Yes, mythologically. This was the Jesus of the pre-Christian Nazarites. More recently Tillich concluded: “Historical research has made it obvious that there is no way to get at the historical events which have produced the Biblical picture of Jesus who is called the Christ with more than a degree of probability.” And Dr. Schweitzer came to the same conclusion. In trying to explain away this silent century, the excuse is made that Judea was isolated and that there was no “news service” in those days; therefore these men did not know about Christ. No, but they did know about the new religion: Jerome refers to Seneca as “our own Seneca,” therefore Seneca knew; Theodoret, writing of Plutarch, said, “he had heard of our holy Gospel and inserted many of our sacred mysteries in his works.” Yes, he had heard of the “sacred mysteries” (and who hadn’t in those days?) but not of Christ, and the reason is that the Christ of religion did not then exist. “We find nothing like divinity ascribed to Christ before Justin Martyr (141 A.D.) who from being a philosopher became a Christian.” Dr. Priestly. Not much of a philosopher, we suspect, for he became convinced of a historical Christ by reading the Old Testament prophecies of a Messiah—and they are not prophecies. We should not, in passing, miss the significance of this: if the philosophers of the time could not distinguish myth from history, what of the ignorant masses? This too will be dealt with later. Those who accepted Christianity were unquestionably ignorant, but our modern apologists cannot charge the aforesaid pagans with it; they were all men of exceptional intelligence. Some of them held high office and therefore knew their world. Pliny the Elder was procurator in Spain; Pliny the Younger was governor of Bithynia; Josephus was governor of Galilee; Seneca was the brother of Gallio, proconsul of Achaia at precisely the time Paul is said to have preached there. While he wrote of many lesser things, no mention is made of Paul or the wonder-working Christ. Yet surely the latter’s miracles, virgin birth, and so on, would have interested him. They would have made excellent material for his Questionum Naturalium . Just here we could explain another mystery: Why did none of these world Saviors write a book? The reason should now be obvious—world Saviors do not make books; books make them. They are the creations of mythologists, not historians, of occultists, not literalists. Coming down to the aforesaid Justin Martyr, we have, perhaps, the strongest refutation of all. This particular phantast sought to convert the rejecting Jews to Christianity, and in his writings he tells us of his encounter with one named Trypho.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  As Moses was told to go to Sinai to receive power and do great works, so Paul was told to go to Damascus for like reasons. Moses built a tabernacle, Paul a church. Moses preached biologic Tightness, Paul, moral righteousness. Moses fought against Pharaoh for the release of the Life Principle, and Paul fought against Peter, the rock, for the same purpose. As the Israelites were imprisoned, so were the apostles, and both were released by miraculous powers. The cue to this parallel is given in Acts, which gives Paul’s history. Chapter 7 recounts the whole story of Moses that we may see the connection. The account of Moses is very convincing, and so is that of Paul, but the conviction lies not in historical fact but in the art of literature. The Jewish literati instead of divinifying man, so divinified falsehood that it looks like truth. As the founding of a new priesthood was their purpose, they falsified even the Pauline doctrine. The crux of this lies in a fact wholly unknown to the Christian masses, namely, the distinction between the words Christ and Chrest By the time the Christians got done with it, second and third century, the title given to Jesus was everywhere spelled Christ, but prior to this it was Chrest, possibly from the Greek word chre , which meant kind, gracious, etc., or the Egyptian karast , meaning fleshed—the word made flesh. In his Apology , Justin Martyr calls his coreligionists Chrestians. And so it was for three centuries. To quote from Massey: “In Bockh’s1 Christian Inscriptions, numbering 1,287, there is not a single instance of an earlier date than the third century wherein the name is not written Chrest or Chreist.” This was changed by those “who added or removed what seemed good to them in the work of correction,” as Origen said. It was this pre-Christian Gnostic symbol of spiritual being that Paul preached, and so came into conflict with the priests and their prerequisite. This conflict, presented as between Paul and Peter, is not understood today, even by the most learned theologians. They assume it was some internal dispute about the teachings of the gospel Christ. It was, on the contrary, the conflict between the supporters of this gospel Christ and the pregospel Greek Chrestos, the universal Logos, as of John. The adherents of this more esoteric doctrine called themselves Chrestianoi. Their headquarters was in Antioch, in Asia Minor, and it was there, not Jerusalem, that the sect first became known as Chrestians, as set forth in Acts but now written Christians. The Judean sect was not even known as Christians, though later this was applied to them derisively; they called themselves Nazarenes, Galileans, and Brethren. These were priestly minded and bent on founding a religion on a personal Christ; naturally then they were shocked and annoyed to learn of an antecedent and rival sect appropriating the name Chrestians without reference to their Christ.

• From Simply Jesus (2011)

  The Temple had, as it were, been a great signpost pointing forward to another reality that had lain unnoticed for generations, like the vital clue in a detective story that is only recognized as such in the final chapter. Remember the promise to David—that God would build him a “house,” a family, founded on the son of David who would be the son of God? David had wanted to build a house for God, and God had replied that he would build David a “house.” David’s coming son is the ultimate reality; the Temple in Jerusalem is the advance signpost to that reality. Now that the reality is here, the signpost isn’t needed anymore. But it isn’t just that the signpost had become redundant with the arrival of the reality. The Temple, as many other first-century Jews recognized, was in the wrong hands and had come to symbolize the wrong things. It was, for a start, a place that for many Jews stank of commercial oppression. This is an additional rather obvious overtone of Jesus’s action in driving out the money changers and the traders. But it gets worse. The Temple was the center of the banking system. It was where the records of debts were kept; the first thing the rebels did when they took over the Temple in the great revolt was to burn those records. That tells you quite a lot about how people saw the Temple. I had a letter today from the tax man, politely asking me for my annual contribution to government finances. If I don’t answer it, the next one won’t be so polite. Now imagine letters and records building up, detailing all the debts of ordinary people in Jerusalem, while the chief priests, who ran the system, lived in their fine mansions in the nice part of town and went about in their smart clothes. If you were an ordinary, hardworking resident of Jerusalem or the surrounding area, what would you think of the building that was supposed to be God’s house, but that stored the records of your debts, while the rich rulers who performed the religious rituals marched by with their noses in the air on their way to put on their splendid vestments and chant their elaborate prayers? Yes, that’s exactly how many people saw the Temple. It gets worse again. The Temple had come to symbolize the nationalist movement that had led many Jews to revolt against pagan oppression in the past and would lead them to do so once more.

• From Boys & Sex (2020)

  Friendship is sweet. Brotherhood is sustaining. But pay attention to the tenor of those all-male groups: under certain circumstances, they can feed aggression, antipathy toward women, and assault. When looking at colleges, inquire about options, aside from Greek life, for nighttime and weekend socializing. Boys who are thinking of joining fraternities should do their due diligence on various houses’ reputations, talking not only to current members, but to unaffiliated students on campus, including girls who’ve attended their parties. Have student publications or local news outlets revealed incidents of sexual misconduct, racial slurs, hazing, hazardous drinking? Is sexual conquest prioritized over female dignity (a freshman at a Southern California college told me he dropped out of his frat after his pledge class was paired with a “lower-tier” sorority, so that, unbeknownst to the girls, the guys could practice their hookup technique before meeting more desirable prospects)? What programming has been put in place to educate about consent, irresponsible drinking, gender inequity, positive sexuality? How are parties made safe and comfortable for everyone, including students of color, LGBTQ+ students, and women (of any ethnicity or orientation)? These are not trivial concerns: as I previously said, fraternity members are more likely than other boys to commit assault—as much as three times more likely, according to some research. It’s unclear whether a given fraternity’s disregard for women and greater tolerance for sexual misconduct is itself enough to transform otherwise nonviolent young men. What does seem to be true, though, is that high school boys who are interested in going Greek already score higher than others on proclivities for sexual aggression as well as belief in certain rape myths, such as that assault only involves physical violence or that inebriation is a reasonable excuse for male misconduct. Fraternity life validates those tendencies, makes them acceptable. That’s an argument not only for ongoing, mandatory educational interventions in frat houses, but for programming geared toward boys long before college.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  And when he had taken the five loaves and the two fishes, he looked up to heaven, and blessed, and brake the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before them; and the two fishes divided he among them all. 42. And they did all eat, and were filled. 43. And they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments, and of the fishes. 44. And they that did eat of the loaves were about five thousand men (not a woman among them; Mark, Chap. 6). And Christians believe that! It seems the author here was trying to shock credulity into doubting, but he did not reckon with the spiritual obtuseness of Piscean man. This fellow can see nothing but the literal word, not because he lacks intelligence but because he is so materialistic the spiritual and cosmic are quite beyond him. Were he made aware of this fact he would not be so sure of his convictions or hard on those who differ with him. As suggested elsewhere, he should read other races’ literature. The Judean place where this miracle took place was called Bethany, and in an Egyptian similitude it is Bethanu. And they called it “the place of multiplying bread.” If this miracle by Jesus was a one-and-only-time event, how did it get into the Egyptian scriptures thousands of years earlier? The raising of Lazarus also occurred here, and that too is copied from Egyptian mythology, see page 338. So near-contemporary a writer as Origen (second century) said he could find no trace of “Bethany beyond Jordan.” What then of the miracle that happened there? The feeding of five thousand with enough for five was never done by God or man. This is but the law of increase in nature, and applies to Involution as well as Evolution. In our outline we said that on this fourth plane primordial substance greatly increased and became partite, that is, infinitely divided into the monadic host. The nature of this miracle then is the division of planetary substance. This is the bread of that “house of bread,” Bethlehem, the source; it is also the “bread that cometh down from heaven; not as your fathers did eat manna and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever” (John 6:58). Apparently John did not fully understand his subject either, for this bread and this manna are the same; the only difference is that the one is involutionary, the other evolutionary. It was of this John spoke thus: “Whosoever eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life and I will raise him up at the last day”—of Creation. And on such impersonal promises is our hope of immortality based. You see, the Bible is not speaking of us at all, but of the Life Principle. This, we repeat again, is “the worm that never dies,” not the human soul or spirit.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  As far as I could see, certainty made people heartless, cruel, and inhuman. It closed their minds to new possibilities; it made them complacent and pleased with themselves. It also did not work. The new regime in Iran seemed just as oppressive as that of the shah, the murder of Sadat did not lead to a new era in Egypt, and Thatcherism too would prove to be an expensive mistake. This type of certainty was unrealistic, and out of step with the way things really worked. Religious people seemed particularly prone to this dogmatism, and even though there was nothing remotely religious or Christian about Mrs. Thatcher’s regime, the experience of living in “Maggie’s Britain” made me even more leery of faith, dogmatism, and orthodoxy, which so often—even in a good cause—made people ride roughshod over other people’s sensitivities. That kind of certainty had damaged me in the past, and I wanted no more of it. Sally was one of the first people I had met in my own generation who had been totally untouched by religion. Unlike the Harts or Susan, my former housemate, she did not recoil from religion in principled disgust, but regarded it as a strange, incomprehensible eccentricity, like swimming in the Serpentine on Christmas Day. Why would anybody want to do anything so bizarre! The basic doctrines of Christianity had passed her by. When she was having difficulty in her classes on Milton’s Paradise Lost, I tried to explain the concept of original sin. Sally was appalled. “You’re not serious!” she exclaimed. “All that fuss over eating a piece of fruit. What a system!” I could see her point. What kind of God would damn the whole human race because of one momentary lapse? Only one that I wanted nothing to do with. In fact, the more I thought about God these days, the more I realized how much I had probably always, subconsciously, disliked him. These days it seemed that he had lurked in my life like Big Brother in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-four, spying on everything I did, thought, and felt, endlessly dissatisfied, and doling out favors and punishments indiscriminately. Sally was quite right. What a system!

• From Another Country (1962)

  Ida had said that she did not want Vivaldo “bugged” by any of the musicians; but she had not come to meet any musicians. She had come to meet Ellis. And she had brought Cass along as a kind of smoke screen—and she and Ellis could not have met often in public before. In private then? And she wondered about this as she watched them. Their dance, which was slow and should have been fluid, was awkward and dry and full of hesitations. She was holding him at bay, he could not lead her; yet, she was holding him fast. “I wonder if his wife knows where he is.” Mrs. Nash again, sotto voce , to her husband, with a small, smug smile. Cass thought of Vivaldo, then thought of Richard, and immediately hated Mrs. Nash. You evil-minded whore , she thought, and broke the table’s uneasy silence by saying, “Mrs. Ellis and Miss Scott have known each other for quite a long time, long before Mrs. Ellis’s marriage.” Why did I say that? she wondered. She can easily find out if I’m lying . She looked steadily at Mrs. Nash, making no attempt to hide her dislike. She won’t, though. She hasn’t got the wit or the guts . Mrs. Nash looked at Cass with that absolutely infuriating superciliousness achieved only by chambermaids who have lately become great ladies. “How strange that is,” she murmured. “Not at all,” Cass said, recklessly, “they both worked in the same factory.” Mrs. Nash watched her, the faintest tremor occurring somewhere around her upper lip. Cass smiled and looked briefly at Mr. Nash. “Did you and your wife meet in Belfast?” “No,” said Mr. Nash, smiling—and Cass felt, with a surge of amusement and horror, how much his wife despised him at that moment—“we met in Dublin, while I was there on a business trip.” He took his wife’s limp hand. Her pale eyes did not move, her pale face did not change. “The most important trip I ever made.” Ah, yes , thought Cass, I don’t doubt it, for both of you . But suddenly she felt weary and inexplicably sad. What in the world was she doing here, and why was she needling this absurd little woman? The music changed, becoming louder and swifter and more raucous; and all their attention returned, with relief, to the dance floor. Ida and Ellis had begun a new dance; or, rather, Ida had begun a new cruelty. Ida was suddenly dancing as she had probably not danced since her adolescence, and Ellis was attempting to match her—he could certainly not be said to be leading her now, either. He tried, of course, his square figure swooping and breaking, and his little boy’s face trying hard to seem abandoned.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  Only such mental impoverishment could accept such things as immaculate conception, virgin birth, transfiguration, and resurrection as applicable to man. These are mythical terms applicable only to the Creative Principle. Yet what time and effort we have wasted on these unnatural and unprovable things! Books by the thousands, sermons by the millions, and all for want of knowledge of Reality. Until this is attained, the intelligent thing to do with an unprovable is question the necessity of its existence. Once this attitude is taken we may be led to knowledge that does not require it at all; accept it as a hypothesis and you are compelled to accept its preposterous corollaries. If, for instance, you accept religion’s God-hypothesis, you must accept its miracles, divine source, condemnation and revelation; if you accept its Christ-hypothesis, you must accept its salvation, damnation, resurrection and Second Coming. Throw them both out and you don’t have to accept any of these; you are free to roam the whole realm of Being and perhaps arrive at truth—truth they cannot supply and knowledge that doesn’t need them. This is the way of logic, reason and sense, and we shall apply it to the Gospels. 1 A Greek name for the planetary creativity, without personality. 2 Seepage 352. 20The Gospel StoryBelieve not because some old manuscripts are produced, believe not because it is your national belief, believe not because you have been made to believe from your childhood, but reason truth out, and after you have analyzed it, then if you find it will do good to one and all, believe it, live up to it and help others to live up to it. BUDDHA W e said the New Testament was of the same nature, age and race as the Old. We should therefore expect to find in it the same theology, methodology and formula. And such is the Gospel of St. Luke, a physician, we are told. This begins with the parentage of John, and here again we find a barren woman lamenting her fate, an angel promising her husband a son who “shall drink neither wine nor strong drink” (1:15). And so it was said of Samson, Samuel, and others. Is this the normal process in reproduction? No, it is either rank superstition and ignorance of nature or mythic symbolism. As we can’t believe a physician could be that naive about babies, we’ll assume he was using symbolic language. If so, then it is not history, and if it is not history with John, it is not history with Jesus. The angel was Gabriel, and having corrected barrenness, virginity was easy, “For with God nothing shall be impossible” (1:37). 26. And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, 27. To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David: and the virgin’s name was Mary. 30.

• From Another Country (1962)

  He pushed her drink toward her, but she did not touch it. “I knew there wasn’t any hope uptown. A lot of those men, they got their little deals going and all that, but they don’t really have anything, Mr. Charlie’s not going to let them get but so far. Those that really do have something would never have any use for me; I’m too dark for them, they see girls like me on Seventh Avenue every day. I knew what they would do to me.” And now he knew that he did not want to hear the rest of her story. He thought of himself on Seventh Avenue; perhaps he had never left. He thought of the day behind him, of Eric and Cass and Richard, and felt himself now being sucked into the rapids of a mysterious defeat. “There was only one thing for me to do, as Rufus used to say, and that was to hit the A train. So I hit it. Nothing was clear in my mind at first. I used to see the way white men watched me, like dogs. And I thought about what I could do to them. How I hated them, the way they looked, and the things they’d say, all dressed up in their damn white skin, and their clothes just so, and their little weak, white pricks jumping in their drawers. You could do any damn thing with them if you just led them along, because they wanted to do something dirty and they knew that you knew how. All black people knew that. Only, the polite ones didn’t say dirty. They said real. I used to wonder what in the world they did in bed, white people I mean, between themselves, to get them so sick. Because they are sick, and I’m telling you something that I know. I had a couple of girl friends and we used to go out every once in a while with some of these shitheads. But they were smart, too, they knew that they were white, and they could always go back home, and there wasn’t a damn thing you could do about it. I thought to myself, Shit, this scene is not for me. Because I didn’t want their little change, I didn’t want to be at their mercy. I wanted them to be at mine.” She sipped her drink. “Well, you were calling me all the time about that time, but I didn’t really think about you very much, not seriously anyway. I liked you, but I certainly hadn’t planned to get hung up on a white boy who didn’t have any money—in fact, I hadn’t planned to get hung up on anybody. But I liked you, and the few times I saw you it was a kind of— relief —from all those other, horrible people. You were really nice to me.

• From Simply Jesus (2011)

  Mortal, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel: prophesy, and say to them—to the shepherds: Thus says the Lord YHWH: Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep. You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd; and scattered, they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep were scattered, they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill; my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with no one to search or seek for them. . . . For thus says the Lord YHWH: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. . . . I will feed them with good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord YHWH. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice. (Ezek. 34:2–6, 11–12, 14–16) This could hardly be clearer. The human “shepherds” have been a dismal failure; only YHWH himself will now do. He and he alone will give the “sheep”—the people of Israel—what they need and what the other shepherds have so obviously not given them. There is a radical break between the way Israel’s rulers have been telling and living the national story and the way God wants to tell it. But then comes the shock, sending us all the way back to 2 Samuel to revisit the strange long-term relationship between the kingship of God and the kingship of David: I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, YHWH, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them; I, YHWH, have spoken. (Ezek. 34:23–24) The result is that Israel will be YHWH’s sheep indeed: