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 Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  The need or desire to understand our place in the universe most often led to reading – everything from Paramahansa Yogananda to Carlos Castaneda, Shirley MacLaine and Black Elk, to the teachings of Buddha and the channelled work of Emanuel, and back again. At times, in a Wednesday night meeting, someone would bring up an idea they’d been reading about and contemplating and ask Limori for Azeen’s explanation of the topic. The answer would invariably come back, usually laced with gentle humour, agreeing with some of what the referenced author said, but also, ever-so-subtly, undermining the author’s authority and the veracity of their message, and implying once again that it was only Limori herself who knew The Truth. Later, when we were more enthralled and more closely tied to her, she might say, “Azeen says that Yogananda’s message has been twisted somewhat and that what he really meant was . . .“ Or she would even tune into the teacher (Jesus, Buddha, etc.) himself and bring his message directly to us. The underlying implication was that if you want the real truth, you cannot trust even the books that a spiritual teacher has written; you must hear The Truth from the source itself, and Limori was the one person who could connect with these wise masters and give us the message they intended. With “us” you got The Truth; with “them” you could never be sure. Additionally, to create a stronger feeling in the group of “us versus them,” those among us who had partners or spouses who did not attend the group would very quickly find that person thrown into a light of suspicion. The messages would begin subtly and at once build up the group member’s perceived standing in God’s eyes, while at the same time implying (or stating) that the non-attending partner was deficient in some way. For example, a group member might share a dream with Limori that had seemed spiritually significant. Limori would respond by affirming what the member thought and then, with a wink and a smile, say something like, “But your husband wouldn’t understand such an advanced concept, would he?” Her tone would be kind and jovial, but the message would be crystal clear. The group member was advancing rapidly toward spiritual enlightenment, but unfortunately her spouse was not quite as special and not able to keep up. The group member would eventually be told they were “being held back spiritually” by their spouse. And when someone’s spouse came into question by Limori, and she began to really lean on the group member to consider leaving the marriage, she always had a trump card to play: “Do you choose God or do you choose your spouse?” What a conundrum for the serious spiritual student! It was the very choice Michael would be required to make several years down the road, both in his marriage and later in his relationship with me.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  But Montanism certainly went to the opposite extreme, and fell from evangelical freedom into Jewish legalism; while the Catholic church in rejecting the new laws and burdens defended the cause of freedom. Montanism turned with horror from all the enjoyments of life, and held even art to be incompatible with Christian soberness and humility. It forbade women all ornamental clothing, and required virgins to be veiled. It courted the blood-baptism of martyrdom, and condemned concealment or flight in persecution as a denial of Christ. It multiplied fasts and other ascetic exercises, and carried them to extreme severity, as the best preparation for the millennium. It prohibited second marriage as adultery, for laity as well as clergy, and inclined even to regard a single marriage as a mere concession on the part of God to the sensuous infirmity of man. It taught the impossibility of a second repentance, and refused to restore the lapsed to the fellowship of the church. Tertullian held all mortal sins (of which he numbers seven), committed after baptism, to be unpardonable,772 at least in this world, and a church, which showed such lenity towards gross offenders, as the Roman church at that time did, according to the corroborating testimony of Hippolytus, he called worse than a den of thieves," even a "spelunca maechorum et fornicatorum."773 The Catholic church, indeed, as we have already seen, opened the door likewise to excessive ascetic rigor, but only as an exception to her rule; while the Montanists pressed their rigoristic demands as binding upon all. Such universal asceticism was simply impracticable in a world like the present, and the sect itself necessarily dwindled away. But the religious earnestness which animated it, its prophecies and visions, its millennarianism, and the fanatical extremes into which it ran, have since reappeared, under various names and forms, and in new combinations, in Novatianism, Donatism, the spiritualism of the Franciscans, Anabaptism, the Camisard enthusiasm, Puritanism, Quakerism, Quietism, Pietism, Second Adventism, Irvingism, and so on, by way of protest and wholesome reaction against various evils in the church.774 CHAPTER XI.THE HERESIES OF THE ANTE-NICENE AGE.§ 112. Judaism and Heathenism within the Church. Having described in previous chapters the moral and intellectual victory of the church over avowed and consistent Judaism and heathenism, we must now look at her deep and mighty struggle with those enemies in a hidden and more dangerous form: with Judaism and heathenism concealed in the garb of Christianity and threatening to Judaize and paganize the church. The patristic theology and literature can never be thoroughly understood without a knowledge of the heresies of the patristic age, which play as important a part in the theological movements of the ancient Greek and Latin churches as Rationalism with its various types in the modern theology of the Protestant churches of Europe and America.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  As regards the differences among Protestants, Vergerio was inconsistent. He first held the Calvinistic theory of the Lord’s Supper, and expressed it in his own Catechism,243 in a letter to Bullinger of Jan. 16, 1554, and even later, in June, 1556, at Wittenberg, where he met Melanchthon and Eber. But in Würtemberg he had to subscribe the Augsburg Confession, and in a letter to the Duke of Würtemberg, Oct. 23, 1557, he confessed the ubiquitarian theory of Luther. He also translated the Catechism of Brenz and the Würtemberg Confession into Italian, and thereby offended the Swiss Zwinglians, but told them that he was merely the translator. He never attributed much importance to the difference, and kept aloof from the eucharistic controversy.244 He was not a profound theologian, but an ecclesiastical politician and diplomatist, after as well as before his conversion. Vergerio left the Roman Church rather too late, when the Counter-Reformation had already begun to crush Protestantism in Italy. He was a man of imposing personality, considerable learning and eloquence, wit and irony, polemic dexterity, and diplomatic experience, but restless, vain, and ambitious. He had an extravagant idea of his own importance. He could not forget his former episcopal authority and pretensions, nor his commanding position as the representative of the pope. He aspired to the dignity and influence of a sort of Protestant internuncio at all the courts of Europe, and of a mediator between the Lutheran and Reformed Churches. Pallavicino, the Jesuit historian of the Council of Trent, characterizes him as a lively and bold man who could not live without business, and imagined that business could not get along without him. Calvin found in him much that is laudable, but feared that he was a restless busybody. Gallicius wrote to Bullinger: "I wish that Vergerio would be more quiet, and persuade himself that the heavens will not fall even if he, as another Atlas, should withdraw his support." Nevertheless, Vergerio filled an important place in the history of his times. He retained the esteem of the Lutheran princes and theologians, and he is gratefully remembered for his missionary services in the two Italian valleys of the Grisons, which have remained faithful to the evangelical faith to this day. § 39. Protestantism in Chiavenna and the Valtellina, and its Suppression. The Valtellina Massacre. George Jenatsch. See literature in §§ 36 and 38, pp. 131 and 144 sq. We pass now to the Italian dependencies of the Grisons, where Protestantism has had only a transient existence.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Hieronymus (Hierosme) Hermes Bolsec, a native of Paris, was a Carmelite monk, but left the Roman Church, about 1545, and fled for protection to the Duchess of Ferrara, who admitted him to her house under the title of an almoner. There he married, and adopted the medical profession as a means of livelihood. Ever afterwards he called himself "Doctor of Medicine." He made himself odious by his turbulent character and conduct, and was expelled by the Duchess for some deception (as Beza reports). In 1550 he settled at Geneva with his wife and a servant, and practised his profession. But he meddled in theology, and began to question Calvin’s doctrine of predestination. He denounced Calvin’s God as a hypocrite and liar, as a patron of criminals, and as worse than Satan. He was admonished, March 8, 1551, by the Venerable Company, and privately instructed by Calvin in that mystery, but without success. On a second offence he was summoned before the Consistory, and openly reprehended in the presence of fifteen ministers and other competent persons. He acknowledged that a certain number were elected by God to salvation, but he denied predestination to destruction; and, on closer examination, he extended election to all mankind, maintaining that grace efficacious to salvation is equally offered to all, and that the cause, why some receive and others reject it, lies in the free-will, with which all men were endowed. At the same time he abhorred the name of merits. This, in the eyes of Calvin, was a logical contradiction and an absurdity; for, he says, "if some were elected, it surely follows that others are not elected and left to perish. Unless we confess that those who come to Christ are drawn by the Father through the peculiar operation of the Holy Spirit on the elect, it follows either that all must be promiscuously elected, or that the cause of election lies in each man’s merit." On the 16th of October, 1551, Bolsec attended the religious conference, which was held every Friday at St. Peter’s. John de St. André preached from John 8:47 on predestination, and inferred from the text that those who are not of God, oppose him to the last, because God grants the grace of obedience only to the elect. Bolsec suddenly interrupted the speaker, and argued that men are not saved because they are elected, but that they are elected because they have faith. He denounced, as false and godless, the notion that God decides the fate of man before his birth, consigning some to sin and punishment, others to virtue and eternal happiness. He loaded the clergy with abuse, and warned the congregation not to be led astray.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  Instead of “the word of God” someone dubbed them “Ten ways of keeping out of jail.” Those who go no further than the Bible for their knowledge of man’s moral development, see its origin and flowering in the Jews, surrounded by ignorant, Godless heathen, yet thousands of years before the Jews were ever heard of the Egyptians, whom they painted as morally inferior, had a well-developed sense of morality. The evidence for this lies in the Egyptian “Oath of Clearance,” which in toto contains six of the ten commandments. It reads in part as follows: I have not committed fraud and evil against men. I have not diverted justice in the judgment hall. I have not caused a man to do more than his day’s work. I have not caused a slave to be ill-treated. I have not taken milk from the mouths of children. I have not stolen cattle. I have not been weak. I have not been wretched. I have not been impious or impure . . .2 Any race that could even devise such a code is not without a high moral sense. What is more, it reveals a more enlightened kind of morality than that of the Mosaic law—“An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” “If an ox gore a person and he die, the ox shall be stoned, and his owner put to death.” Holding an ox guilty of homicide implies belief in the animal’s moral responsibility, and killing its owner, ignorance of moral justice. The Mosaic law recognizes a man’s right to sell his daughter into slavery and makes rules to govern it. There is nothing that low in the Egyptian and Babylonian codes. It is not only our opinion but that of able scholars that morality flowed to not from the Hebrews. Here we quote from one of them—James H. Breasted. “We are all aware that Egyptian-Babylonian culture set European civilization going; but few modern people have observed the fact, so important in the history of morals and religion, that Egypto-Babylonian culture also set Hebrew civilization going.” How presumptuous then for this semibarbarous tribe, still in the nomadic state, to sit in judgment upon a race whose culture even then was twelve thousand years old. According to Herodotus the Egyptian gods were “in existence twenty thousand years ago.” If we take literally the “piromis stones,” we must admit such antiquity, though they too may be somewhat mythological. There were 340 of these, representing the generations down to Sethon, 720 B.C., and after Sethon twenty more, making in all 360. Now an Egyptian generation was 36 years. Thus 360 times 36 equals 12,960 years. Our false concept of the ancient Egyptians is due in part to our own ignorance, but the evil we attribute to them is due entirely to the libelous nature of Hebrew mythology. I think we have proved the mythological nature of Moses, but what about Aaron?

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  And the great man David met his death by falling downstairs, all implying the fall of spirit into matter. These noncanonical tales are called Midrasbes , commentaries on the Old Testament. They are very useful because they throw light behind the literal word. Abel comes from hibbel and means “transient as the wind, or breath.” He was not, therefore, intended to survive. Abel is one with Hemera, the ephemeral, the prephysical elements in Involution. His death is in keeping with our statement that nothing remains of the prephysical when the physical is reached. There are parallels to this murder throughout all mythology, including both Old and New Testament. Romulus, the mythical founder of another city, Rome, slew his brother Remus. Set, the Egyptian, slew his brother Horus. Iphicles, brother of Hercules, was killed, not this time by his brother, but by a serpent, matter. Cain’s famous retort to the accuser—”Am I my brother’s keeper?”—has ever been held up as a reproach to the coldly indifferent, but in this story it has no human significance at all. For Cain it was the only answer. The process must go on else it will never reach the plane where this retort is morally applicable, the human plane. The murder of Abel was therefore in the interest of the Creator, and Cain’s act no more a crime than Adam’s. Furthermore, they were both “acts of God.” There is another absurdity here. The God of this chapter is shocked and horrified at the murder of one man, but later we find him urging Moses and Joshua to slaughter men by the thousands. The key to the paradox is that these murderous patriarchs and their God are Cain now rampant in Evolution. Recently we spoke of the murderous nature of first life, and in this murder by the first man, not second, the Jhwhist is telling us the same thing, not once but twice for Lamech was also a murderer (Gen. 4:23). Such a source of life would never do for religion, however, so here the priest steps in and changes the line of descent. The last two verses of this chapter did not exist in the Jhwhist’s account. This ends with verse 24, that is, the Editor ended it there, and substituted two verses from the next chapter which is priestly throughout. This should alert us to the fact that the Editor was, himself, a priest. This is the white-washer of the Jhwhist’s unvarnished truth everywhere, hence the interpolation which makes Seth our source and this source sinless. 25. And Adam knew his wife again; and she bare a son, and called his name Seth: For God, said she, hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew. This substitute Seth is but a priestly subterfuge to hide from us the true nature of the Creative Principle. Because of this it does not tell us where the author got the name and idea.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  Can we not see that the latter is but our myth and superstition? Undoubtedly these pagan divinities were as real and sacred to their devotees as ours are to us. The slain Tamuz was so very real, the women of Haran wept for him and would not be comforted. Yet he passed and so will ours. Gods and Saviors are as successional and chronological as popes and kings; they endure longer only because they are racial and national. Already our Trinity is passing, Catholic-wise; given a few more generations and it will no longer be Father, Son and Holy Ghost, but Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Among Catholics there are some who habitually vilify the Jews, then run to church to worship three of them. In this they see no paradox because in things religious they can see nothing. And the same may be said of Christians in general; incapable of creating a religion of their own, they had to borrow one from the Jews, who, in turn, borrowed theirs. Now from immaculate conception by a virgin, virgin birth is inevitable. That we may see how the cosmical becomes literalized, humanized and fixed in the racial mind, let us consider that first reference to a “virgin birth,” namely, that in Isaiah 7:14. “. . . Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” Why not Jesus, if it were He? And just to show how the New Testament employs the Old to substantiate its arguments, we quote from Matthew, Chapter 1. 22. Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, 23. Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son and they shall call his name Emmanuel (Greek spelling), which being interpreted is, God with us. More correctly, “all this was done,” to make it appear that Jesus was the fulfillment of a previous prophecy. Yet how could it apply to Jesus since Isaiah spoke of the child as of his day? “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given . . .” 9:6. As for the passage itself: it was translated from the Greek text, and there the word used was parthenos , which does mean a virgin, but the word used in the original Hebrew, from which the Greek was taken, did not mean a virgin. The word there is almah , which means simply a young woman. In the later Greek translation, the error was corrected, the proper Greek equivalent neanis being substituted. But it suited the purpose of the Church to leave it in its “virgin” Greek, and so it has come down to us.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  We should not look upon Genesis 5 as even chronological, to say nothing of genealogical; it is cosmological, therefore parallel. And so we come to another mystery—the amazing longevity of these ancients. It need not trouble us, however, for this is as mythological as all the rest. No man at any time lived eight or nine hundred years, but as mythology, this is modest indeed. From the cuneiform records of Babylon, 2170 B.C., we learn that postdiluvian man lived a mere twelve hundred years, but prior to this he lived for unbelievable ages. King Alulim, for instance, lived 18,900 years, and King Alalmar, 36,000. Beroseus, who lived about 260 B.C., thought this insufficient and so stretched it to 63,000. There’s numerology here, not genealogy. You may notice that these figures add up to nine, a significant number even in Revelation. It should be obvious that these kings were personifications of great epochs, and so are the men of Genesis. This truth was lost even in Josephus’s day. Believing the literal word, he had this to say of them: “. . . those ancients were beloved of God, and lately made by God himself; and because their food was then fitter for the prolongation of life, might well live so great a number of years: and besides God afforded them a longer time of life on account of their virtue, and the good use they made of it in astronomical and geometrical discoveries.” But unfortunately Josephus was born thirty centuries too late to know the truth, and so, like his successors, he but babbled words he did not understand. The same may be said of Polyhistor, who tells us that Abraham created astronomy. Calendars are based on astronomy and long before the alleged time of Abraham, the people of the Euphrates valley had a calendar of 223 lunations or 6,585‧ days, the error amounting to only one day in 1,800 years. The Egyptians had a calendar based on the Sothic (Sirus) cycle that began in 4241 if not 5701 B.C., the cycle being 1,460 years. The Chinese had a calendar older than the world of Dr. Lightfoot and Bishop Usher. The Zodiac and the Great Pyramid are also astronomical and they were hoary with age before the alleged time of Abraham. Later we will see what this astronomy ascribed to Abraham really means. Here we will say only that it is no more factual than that of the Priest. In spite of “the word of God” there was no first man called Adam, or woman called Eve; there was no idyllic Garden, no talking snake, no “fall” and no “sin”—save that of Creation. Therefore we should no longer think of “the beginning” in these terms. So misleading are they, it were better they had never been written. Because of their diversionary influence we have wasted two millennia saving our souls from an act of God some trillions of years ago. Billions of dollars have been spent on churches instead of schools.

• From Talk Dirty to Me: An Intimate Philosophy of Sex (1994)

  I don’t just mean to say that more explicit and arousing (and in some cases, better produced) sex is available in the nearby adult store, though it is. There is something at work here, because adult sex films in the United States rarely have violent overtones and what force is used is almost always within the dramaturgy of bondage or sadomasochism. Adult sex films are full of little more than explicit consensual adult sex. The sex found in Basic Instinct not only isn’t particularly arousing, it is one with mutilation and murder—the murder fuels the sex, the sex fuels the murder. This is true of virtually all action films, teenage slasher films, horror movies, war movies, martial arts movies. For all that people persist in assuming pornography is filled with violence, a quick trip to the adult store proves otherwise; images linking sex with violence are simply not readily available in adult stores. Somehow in our social thinking we’ve come to a point where people feel morally upright at the mall multiplex no matter what is playing, and immoral when they rent a soft-core romance for the privacy of their home. Blockbuster Video won’t stock NR-17 movies. Their aisles are filled with a lot of films I won’t rent for myself and won’t allow my teenagers to rent—cheap horror movies, ninja combat films, “super-action” movies filled with brutality, and bimbo-driven sex comedies like Happy Gigolo. Blockbuster also has a section of cheap and rough soft-core with titles like Stripped to Kill and Night of the Wilding, Gator Bait and Bad Girls Dormitory—films loaded with images of sexual violence and rape that would be laughed out of a XXX store. These movies are labeled with stickers that read “Youth restricted viewing—must be 17 or older.” Not far away, both Basic Instinct and Body of Evidence are sticker-free. I watched a boy not older than fourteen rent Basic Instinct without a hitch. Perhaps Basic Instinct reflects a time of promiscuous interest in sex, a pornographic culture. Many people, I’m sure, would use it to prove their belief that the corruption caused by the existence of pornography is infecting mainstream film. I say Basic Instinct reflects a prudish and censoring culture, much like the particularly intense pornography produced in Victorian England. The filmmakers and actors were willing to produce as explicit and titillating a film as possible. The censors with their oddball ideas of what is and isn’t okay for children to see think the often tender sex of Henry and June is more objectionable than mutilation. Basic Instinct is a film about how confused and scared people are about sex.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  The former idea came from the Latin Vulgate and reads as follows: “Cumque descenderet Moyses de monte Sinai, tenebat duas tabulas testimonii, et ignorabat quod cornuta esset facies sua ex consortio sermonis Domini “Translated this means: “And when Moses came down from Mount Sinai, he held two tables of the testimony, and he did not know that his face was horned from conversation with the Lord.” Modern scholars believe it should read rays rather than horns , but that is because they don’t know Moses. It is also why they can’t translate properly. Every attempt they make but robs the Bible of its true meaning. Horns are mythological accessories, and in no sense peculiar to the Hebrew Moses. Many mythical beings had them, among which was Bacchus, called by some “the horned child,” and by others, “Zagreus son of Zeus,” and Koré, or Persephone. Thus in the Dionysiacs we read: A Dragon-Bridegroom coiled in love-inspiring fold . . . Glided to dark Kore’s maiden couch . . . Thus by the alliance with the Dragon of Aether, The womb of Persephone became alive with fruit, Bearing Zagreus, the Horned Child. Moses is the earth, the horned beast of Revelation; he is Aries, the genetic Ram; he is Pan, the goatlike Aries on earth; he is Phallus Erectus, or the serpentine force thereof in Evolution. Thus the Vulgate is right and the rest are wrong. As one saved from water, Moses is what was saved after the Deluge. As such he is identical with the slimy dragon that Apollo discovered after the flood dried up. And this dragon is the devil of scripture, and its devil and its Moses are one. Both have horns and this is what the key word horns is trying to tell us. Like all the other Bible heroes, Moses is but a personification of the creative power, particularly its violent aspect. His milder brother, Aaron, like Abel, is the genetic consciousness; the word Aaron itself means “to conceive,” and it is he who does the prolific conceiving later on. It is this that eventually reveals the meaning and purpose of the earth, and so Aaron becomes a mouthpiece for its mindless partner, as did Joseph for Pharaoh, the one involutionary, the other evolutionary. Miriam, their sister, stricken with leprosy represents matter afflicted with disintegration. Were it otherwise, why did not these two miracle-workers cure her? The answer is, their miracles were the miracles of Creation, not man. Just here we wonder if the name Miriam derives from Meriram, chief of the Turbulents, see page 108. Moses’ serpentlike rod is the Hebrew Caduceus, symbol of the creative power, and wherever it strikes the earth a miracle is wrought. But so was it with Mises, and also Abaris, a high priest of Apollo. According to Pindar, Apollo gave this great one an arrow with which to work miracles. Why do we not believe these stories also?

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  As long as the Israelites remained in the flesh and followed the law of the body and the jungle, they pleased God immensely; as soon as they turned to pacific ways his wrath was kindled against them. Attributing punishment for their acts to God, however, is but more ignorance of Evolution and its constructs. It is only man’s own moral sense that condemns the evil doers, and only when this legally or psychologically catches up with them are they punished. This it is that sees in secret and rewards openly, but Paul, like his forebears, attributed it to God. 19. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God: For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness (1 Cor. 3). The wise here are not wise or they would not set in motion the punitive laws in nature. Its subtle law (cause and effect), operating on the psychic and mental planes, was just too deep for Paul. As the ignorant saints have always done, he interpreted it as detection and punishment by divine Omniscience. Paul understood Hebrew and Greek but apparently he did not understand Latin—Demon est deus inversus . If he had he would have known that a fallen God becomes a devil, and that it was this that was bedeviling him. 18. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh), dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present in me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. 19. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do (Rom. 7). And so said Ovid before him: “I see and approve the better things of life, the worse things I follow.” 23. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. The perplexed saint did not realize that this law in his members was the very God that he thought so good—the Creative Principle with its constructs—desire, lust, passion, greed—at war with his own human morality, the genetic versus the epigenetic. The trouble with Paul was that he had too much of the genetic in him and not enough of the epigenetic. He was not one of those “lukewarm” fellows of Laodicea; he belonged to Pergamos —or is it Pergonos?—the per standing for perversion, the “thorn” in his flesh. 20. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me (Rom. 7). Very well, if it was not he, why not learn who it really was and stop agonizing about it? Since it was not the epigenetic Paul, it was the genetic God. As Whitman said: It was not I that sinned the sin; The wretched body dragged me in. And so said the Hindu seers: “Desire does it. I do not do it.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven (Matt. 16). Thus the Catholic Church is founded on Peter whom, four verses later, Jesus openly calls Satan. 23. But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me . . . Thus if the Catholic Church is founded on Peter, it is founded on Satan—a fact we have long suspected. Satan means matter, and so does Peter the rock; therefore the two are one. Peter is but the New Testament Esau who founded, or rather was, the city called Petra, rock, and also édom, atom, earth. This it is that binds and looses according to its laws—St. Peter’s keys— and what it binds and looses is the Life Principle. The seven churches of Revelation are an outline of this. This binding and loosing Peter is also the New Testament Pharaoh; he too bound and loosed the life force. Moses’ warfare with him represents this, and Paul’s quarrel with Peter has the same meaning, cosmologically. As this binding and loosing is of nature, that of the Church is utterly false and pretentious. And this includes its blessings and its cursings; its excommunication, so dreaded by its people, has no moral or spiritual effect whatever; its results are political and social only and so but another means to power. And such also is Peter. Aside from its cosmological meaning, Peter’s story is the veriest nonsense—one mortal man endowed with the power over all humanity for all eternity; we thought that only God had this authority. In things religious, Catholics are indeed credulous but can they be so credulous as to believe that pre-Christian sages like Pythagoras, Plato, Socrates, and even Buddha require this ignorant Jewish fisherman to bind and loose their souls? And what of those pre-Christian Initiates from whom these ignorant religionists got their knowledge? Are they too bound and loosed by Peter? No, and neither are we. Such a man as Peter never existed; what then of the Catholic claim that he founded the Papacy of Rome? It is one with Romulus founding Rome itself; thus Peter is but an eponym. Yet the Catholic Encyclopedia says his founding of the Roman bishopric is “among the best ascertained facts of history,” and “no scholar now dares contradict it.” This is just a sample of Catholic scholarship. With its capacity for intellectual dishonesty, anything can be proved. And if no scholar dares contradict it, it is only because no scholar has sufficient knowledge to do so, thanks to two thousand years of Catholic scholarship.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead. 31. And he called for Moses and Aaron by night, and said, Rise up, and get ye forth from among my people, both ye and the children of Israel; and go, serve the Lord as ye have said. Thus stands the record, and upon that record religion must stand or fall, for if it be literally true and historical, this monster should be damned instead of worshiped; and if it be but mythology, the Bible’s religious authority is gone forever. The latter, we claim, is its true nature. That the race can read it, believe it, and still worship its monstrous God is an index of our intelligence, our knowledge of Causation, Reality, Truth. It is that of the child and the savage, yet this is the intelligence that is running our world; this is the intelligence that sustains our religion, nationalism, commercialism—and the giving away of countries on the words of a myth. These are not the fruits of wisdom and understanding but of incredible ignorance. Do you wonder then that we have war and oppression, crime and corruption? What would you expect of beings still in the God-worshiping stage? The destruction of the firstborn was the final touch; the broken Pharaoh was willing now to let the people go. Had this been history they would have been driven out or put in a ghetto. But what were these firstborn, and what the destruction? Literally, it should be the lastborn, final elements in the atomic table, but it all depends on what the mythologist was thinking about. Perhaps he knew that these last and heaviest elements were the first to be afflicted with disintegration and radiation. Our scientists are well aware of this process but they are not fully aware of its biologic significance, namely, that through disintegration and radiation creative intelligence becomes free from matter to create biologic forms, and atomic energy free to become biotic energy. As such it becomes vital enough to warrant a place in creation mythology; as history it does not. The ancients were well aware of the significance of this process but a mythologist could not say so in plain words, and so he made an allegory out of it. And the priestly scribe gave it a name; he called it “circumcision”—the removal through radiation of the genetic’s obstruction, namely, physical matter; and ridiculous as the terminology is, this is the place for it, Exodus, not Genesis. To quote the Kabbalah again: “The spirit clothes itself to come down and unclothes itself to go up.” And so all the elements going out must be circumcised (chapter 12). Later we will find them clothing themselves in flesh and again the priest has a strange and wonderful name for it.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  To quote him directly: “Under the Ostrogothic kingdom the manners in Italy might seem to revert to the dignified austerity of the old Roman Republic.” The Vandals were ignorant and hence destructive but the Church has put upon them far too much blame for the havoc she herself had wrought. As Draper said: “It was not the Goths, nor the Vandals, nor the Normans, nor the Saracen, but the popes and their nephews who produced the dilapidation of Rome.” This was Christian Rome. As for Christian Greece: Eternal summer gilds thee yet, But all, except thy sun, has set. Byron, Don Juan , Canto HI Nor was it pagan sin that destroyed the Roman Empire; since it was thoroughly Christianized by the fifth century, the claim that its fall was due to the enervating influence of Christianity would be more logical; in fact, it was the natural result of Augustine’s City of God—take no thought for this world, prepare for the next. Such was the Christian teaching. When Celsus reproved the Christians for not helping the pagans defend the Empire, Origen replied, “We defend it with our prayers.” And so it fell, and with it, a thousand years of darkness. The nadir of this Christian night was around the seventh, eighth and ninth centuries, practically a blank page in European history. Nothing was done of any consequence, yet this period was most prolific in the production of saints. From this we can see where the saints come from—out of the night of ignorance, fear and superstition, the three grey hags with the single eye, the eye of faith. With this all Christendom saw Reality inverted: truth was error, right was wrong, and science of the devil. During this “Reign of Thartac,” education was frowned upon. As Compayre said, “Once the pagan schools were closed Christianity did not open others, and after the fourth century a profound night enveloped humanity. The labor of the Greeks and Romans was as though it had never been.” The only effort to restore education was made by those barbarians the Church claims to have civilized. Theodoric the Goth brought to his court all the artists and scholars of his day, and his daughter Amalasuntha carried on the work after his death. Charlemagne tried to reestablish general education because, as he said, “the study of letters is well-nigh extinguished through the neglect of our ancestors.” But “the monks and bishops resisted the pressure of Charlemagne and closed nearly the whole of the schools as soon as he was dead.” Bishop Brown in The Bankruptcy of Christian Super-naturalism , p. 102. It is the proud boast of the Catholic Church that its “monks and bishops” kept alive the light of learning throughout this night. It did, but it also kept it to itself and for the very good reason that this light was also a means to power. For the same reason it kept it from the masses; these could neither read nor write.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  When they (the wise men)3 had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was (Matt., Chap. 2). This is the mysterious “Star of Bethlehem,” over which even our scientists argue and guess. Because it’s in the Bible, they must find an explanation. This well illustrates the plight of those who accept absurd hypotheses then wrestle with their absurd deductions. Why not recognize it for another of those unprovables and throw it out? Had such a phenomenon actually occurred two thousand years ago, it would have been recorded by someone, the great Ptolemy, for instance. It was before his time, but had it been real no doubt he would have mentioned it. The reason he did not was because there was no such phenomenon. It was a star all right but that one seen crystal clear in Maia’s womb, namely a nascent sun in the womb of space. Thus as we said, “out of the womb of time and space a sun is born.” Here it was a star in the true etymological sense, an astral entity. If our world in its solar stage, the time might be some trillion years B.C.— B(efore) (the) C(onfusion). Little wonder then it’s been a mystery. “Such stories as these echo from the dim horizon of all religions, invest the birth and infancy of the spiritually elect with wonder. Legend and symbol, memory and devotion combine to weave the fabric of them, and it is beyond our power to disentangle their strangely colored strands and find the fact.” Atkins.4 The fact is not at all difficult to find when the fact is known, namely, the creative process. This is the basis of all mythology, all metaphysics, and all religion, that is the philosophy thereof. Long before religion existed, man learned from nature the facts of Reality and put them into a form of narrative known as mythology. In this the impersonal forces were personified, they were given names, they became gods, and devils, heroes and saviors. As the natural facts underlying them were forgotten, the personifications became the realities, endowed with moral instead of creative qualities. And here mythology became theology. Thus belief in theology and religion is due to ignorance of fiction as well as fact. And yet we have such statements as this: “For theology is a science—the Queen of Sciences; it is the science of objective revelation, which has come to the rescue of reason.” Reverend M. O’Connor. Come to bedevil reason would be more correct. Would you call the Gospels science? Would you call the following rational? 13.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  Now Nimrod on hearing of this wonder child sent soldiers to kidnap him but God blinded them with a cloud of darkness. This so frightened Nimrod he fled to the land of Babel. (So Babel was a land, not just a tower, and that’s what we made it—earth.) When first we meet with the scriptural Abraham he is called Abram, and according to our “best authorities” the word means “lifted up,” “exalted.” The “up” and “exalted,” however, do not refer to his human position but to his planetary position—the highest planes in Involution. But where did the word itself come from? Is it Hebrew, or is it, like their history, borrowed mythology? In our Preface we said the Hebrews got many of their religious ideas from India, not God, and here we have some proof of this. Abram is but the Hindu Brama, with the a as prefix instead of suffix; and Brama was the original name of the Hindu Creator. Later the letter h was added, thus making it Brahma. So with Abram; it also acquired an h and became Abraham. To see the source of this more clearly, we have only to write down the Hindu name of Brahma’s source, namely, Vzrabrahm . In Persia the name was originally Abriman, which also acquired an h and became Ahriman—an “evil deity; the ruler over the kingdom of darkness.” the Babylonians also had their Abraham, only they spelt it Abarama. He was a farmer and mythologically contemporary with the Hebrew Abraham. Commenting on this, one of our “great Bible students” had this to say: “The Patriarch of Ur about whom we are studying probably was related to the farmer who lived near Babylon. At any rate they were not the same person, because they had different fathers, and the farmer was not a monotheist. But family names persisted in the ancient days among Semites, and we may suppose that a near descendant of this farmer became a monotheist, moved to Haran, and then went on to Canaan.” Thus do the credulous account for parallel myths. The Moslems also claim Abraham as their “spiritual father,” but to them he is Ibrahim. He it was who produced the Kaaba, the sacred stone at Mecca, a relic of a myth about that stone called Earth. And Abram’s father was Terah, so like the Latin terra , also earth. Now to form an earth every Creator, except the Jews’ and Christians’, must have a female consort, matter. In the Greek myth the Creator marries his sister, shocking indeed; in the Hebrew he marries his half-sister, which is quite all right. To our Bible students these little touches are called “Jewish refinements.” Here the consort was Sarai, and as with Abram and Brama, an h was added and she became Sarah. But it so happens that Brahma had another name, Ishvara, and his wife was Shri.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  When this alleged revelation was written, supposedly near the close of the first century, there may or may not have been seven churches in Asia Minor, but the number is not important; seven was chosen regardless of fact, because of its symbolic significance. Indeed we have some evidence on this point. The Alogi, who opposed the Montanists, contended there was no church in Thyatira at that time, and since then the only proof of this church’s existence is this revelation itself. Now that we understand its true nature, we see the Alogi may have been right. The seven letters to these churches, or planes, are but descriptions of and admonitions to the life thereof. As anything else they aren’t even good sense. So many practical things to be said and this mentor deals only in symbols so fantastic Western man has not been able to comprehend them in two thousand years. What he needs is cosmology, not theology. The seven spirits are the seven divisions of planetary life, and as such, stand figuratively before the throne of the planetary Logos. This latter, actually the genetic intelligence, warns, threatens and admonishes the lazy, lagging epigenetic, exactly as in Exodus, Joshua, Judges, and so on. The seven churches are identical with the seven zodiacal stages from Leo to Aquarius. And this is the mystery of Revelation 1-3. [image "image" file=Image00013.jpg] Ephesus1. Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write; These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks; 2. I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars: 3. And hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name’s sake hast laboured, and hast not fainted. 4. Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. 5. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent. 6. But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. 7. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God (Chap. 2). This is the language of Genesis and its meaning is identical. What has borne with patience is the earth itself, or rather the Life Principle within it. Here in matter it has labored long and suffered much, bondage in Egypt, so to speak. If it will not awaken and remember its source and purpose, it will remain there.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  This is how it reads: This then is what I conceive O my God when I hear thy Scriptures saying, In the beginning God made heaven and earth: and the earth was invisible and without form, and darkness was upon the deep, and not mentioning what day thou createst them; this is what I conceive, that because of the heavens—that intellectual heaven, whose intelligences know all at once, not in part, not darkly, not through a glass, but as a whole, in manifestation face to face; not this thing now, that thing anon; but (as I said) know all at once, without any succession of times; and because of the earth invisible and without form, without any succession of time, which succession presents ‘this thing now, that thing anon; because where there is no form, there is no distinction of things; it is then, on account of these two, a primitive formed and a primitive formless; this one, heaven, but the heaven of heavens; the other earth but the earth movable and without form; because of these two do I conceive did the Scriptures say without mention of days, In the beginning God created heaven and earth. For, forthwith it subjoined what earth it spoke of; and also in that the firmament is recorded to be created the second day, and called heaven, it conveys to us of which heaven he before spoke, without mention of days. And this goes on for pages, ending in rhapsodical raving. And for this the Christian world renounced Greek science and philosophy; for this all ancient learning was burned in the marketplace. If ever Disraeli’s words were applicable it is here: “It is worse than a crime; it is a mistake.” A crime may affect only a few, and for a brief period, whereas a mistake of this proportion affects the destiny of the race; it can even subvert Evolution —and did. Thus are the sins of the Christian Fathers visited upon their sons, and not just to the fourth generation, but to the present time. But for this crime the light of Greece might have burned on, from Aristarchus to Copernicus, from Aristotle to Bacon, and from Democritus to Darwin. Hero’s steam engine might have been perfected, America discovered in 492 . Why, we might now be civilized. But no, that guiding light went out and darkness was again upon the deep. Until this triumph of fanaticism, the ancient world was on its way to true enlightenment. Besides those already mentioned, it had produced such men as Pythagoras, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, and many others. Collectively, they laid the philosophic and even scientific bases for true civilization; the Christian Church destroyed them. “The Emperor Justinian closed the doors of the Academy at Athens, and the seven philosophers, who alone represented the Neoplatonic faith, took their books and sought the hospitality of the East.” Hodges. And not until their philosophy reappeared did the darkness disappear.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  All this realized, we know of nothing in all literature that needs debunking more than this so-called revelation. It is not to be taken seriously, that is religiously, because it is not what it is alleged to be—a vision of the awful majesty of God, his retribution upon wicked humanity, his promise of a new heaven and a new earth, the posthumous existence of Christ, and his preeminence in heaven. This is no part of Reality; it is but priestly “stage props.” So again, we know of nothing so deserving of the phrase, “Much ado about nothing,” spiritually. Stripped of its nonsense, it is but the creative process, the many visions, but different aspects of this, thrown together without logic or sequence, either by the author because he did not know the sequence, or by subsequent redactors who desired to hide its true meaning. The book opens with the 7 letters to the 7 churches, but as this is more apropos of subsequent “mysteries,” we will leave it with a promise of a surprise when later we return to it. Here we will begin with Chapter 4. As the book is much too long to deal with verse by verse, we will comment only on what is most relevant. 1. After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter. 2. And immediately I was in the spirit: and, behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne. 3. And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald. After learning about revelators from Ezekiel, we should know what this is—ecclesiastical deception. There are no revelators, no prophets, and no prophecies in the scriptures; there are only cunning priests religionizing cosmology. There was no door opened in heaven, and there was no voice as of a trumpet; there was only pagan imagery and symbolism. The throne is the earth itself, set up in that heaven called space; the rainbow round about it is its cosmogonical trajectory as represented by the zodiac. The precious stones are but lapidarian symbols thereof, as of the Jews. The jasper, emerald and sardine (sardonyx) stones are the gem symbols of Pisces, Gemini, and Cancer. See p. 375. 5. And out of the throne proceeded lightlings and thunderings and voices: and there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God. The “seven Spirits of God” are the seven plane forces in Involution, and their thunder and lightning represent their violence. 6.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  Their present sequence is the work of a later priesthood that either ignorantly or maliciously confused them. The key to it lies not in the textual sequence, but in the planetary sequence, and so it is this we will follow. But where, you ask, is the figurative earth this time? It is Jericho instead of Egypt. The parallel is cunningly hidden by presenting Joshua’s Red Sea incident first, that is, the crossing of the Jordan. We, however, will follow the Creative process. 1. Now Jericho was straitly shut up because of the children of Israel: none went out, and none came in (as in Egypt). 2. And the Lord said unto Joshua (as he did unto Moses), See, I have given into thine hand Jericho (Egypt), and the king thereof (Pharaoh), and the mighty men of valour (his charioteers). 3. And ye shall compass the city, all ye men of war, and go round about the city once. Thus shalt thou do six days. 4. And seven priests shall bear before the ark seven trumpets of rams’ horns: . . . and the priests shall blow with the trumpets (the seven plagues of the Moses myth, and both are chemical disintegration) (Chap. 6). And for twenty-five hundred years the Jews have been blowing a ram’s horn, the shofar; I hope that they will now see that this is as mythical as all the rest. 16. And it came to pass at the seventh time, when the priests blew with the trumpets, Joshua said unto the people, Shout; for the Lord hath given you the city. 20. So the people shouted when the priests blew with the trumpets: and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city. Here we have in cryptic form the long account of Egypt’s conquest, namely, the destruction of matter. We have also a fact not revealed in Exodus, that the destruction of matter is accomplished by vibration—we called it radiation, and the scientist, fission. As stated elsewhere, all the details of Creation cannot be presented in one myth, hence the many. Collectively they tell a fairly complete story, but only abysmal ignorance of the subject can look upon them as racial history. And this, we claim, the Jews have done since 400 B.C., hence their racial delusions, one of which is their right to take whatever they want. Another is that they bless all places, and now we find that they not only destroy Jericho but put a curse upon it. 17. And the city shall be accursed, even it, and all that are therein, to the Lord: only Rahab the harlot shall live, she and all that are with her in the house, because she hid the messengers that we sent (the Hebrews’ “wooden horse”).