Chapter 8: Paralemptors and Psychopomps
… for (... Melchizedek), who will return them to what is rightfully theirs. He will proclaim to them the Jubilee, thereby releasing them from the debt of all their sins. He shall proclaim this decree in the first week of the jubilee period that follows nine jubilee periods. Then the “Day of Atonement” shall follow after the tenth jubilee period, when he shall atone for all the Sons of Light, and the people who are predestined to Melchizedek. (The Coming of Melchizedek, 11Q13, Col.2)
Orthodox Christian writers like Hippolytus (The Refutation of All Heresies. V,2) carefully draws specific attention to Homeric myth in connection with Genesis, as he paraphrases a Naassene writer that makes Adam sound like Mithras, who is born from a rock or a cave, representing a previous universe and emerging to become the god of the new one. Jesus is also placed inside a cave-like tomb and emerges from it after his resurrection in the Gospels. Adam is portrayed as a “cornerstone” much like how in Ephesians 2:20, we see Jesus Christ himself as being called the “cornerstone” of the regenerated believers, “Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God. And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone…” (KJV). Jesus is also the rejected cornerstone of the Jews that Christians now embrace (Matthew 21:42)
The expression rock, he says, he uses of Adam. This, he affirms, is Adam: The chief corner-stone become the head of the corner. For that in the head the substance is the formative brain from which the entire family is fashioned. Ephesians 3:15 Whom, he says, I place as a rock at the foundations of Zion. Allegorizing, he says, he speaks of the creation of the man. The rock is interposed (within) the teeth, as Homer says, enclosure of teeth, that is, a wall and fortress, in which exists the inner man, who there has fallen from Adam, the primal man above. And he has been severed without hands to effect the division, and has been borne down into the image of oblivion, being earthly and clayish. And he asserts that the twittering spirits follow him, that is, the Logos:—
Thus these, twittering, came together: and then the souls.
That is, he guides them;
Gentle Hermes led through wide-extended paths.
That is, he says, into the eternal places separated from all wickedness. For where, he says, did they come from:—
O'er ocean's streams they came, and Leuca’s cliff,
And by the portals of the sun and land of dreams.
The illustration below depicts Orion slaying Taurus in the heavens above, just as Mithras slew the Bull. The pose of Mithras is the same as Orion-Hercules. Orion was the ringmaster of the cosmos, and in processional astrology, it was his duty to kill the previous sign of the zodiac, to usher in the new Great Month of the next constellation. Mithras is a pseudonym for Orion, and this dates the slaying scene to 1750 BC. This is the same story as Gilgamesh since he is an obvious pseudonym for Orion, who was slaying the Bull of Taurus in 1750 BC.
Aratus, the Greek poet, thus sings of him, the Bull-Slayer:—
“Eastward, beyond the region of the Bull,
Stands great Orion. And who, when night is clear,
Beholds him gleaming bright, shall cast his eyes in vain
To find a Sign more glorious in all heaven.”
In Manichaean religion, Mithras is depicted as the second envoy or emanation of the God of Light Zurvan, right after the Primal Man is birthed from the “mother of the living” being Sophia and is called the “Great Architect.” Mithras also happens to have similarities with not only Jesus Christ but also with Michael the Archangel. According to the Bible, Michael was a prince and one of the chief princes, and he helped Daniel against the territorial spirit, the Prince of Persia (Daniel 10: 13 21)—the same place that Mithras also originated from (or perhaps Mithras is the Prince of Persia?). The general Epistle of Jude (9) speaks of him as an Archangel. He is the deliverer of Israel from their troubles (Daniel 12, 1). In the New Testament, Michael is, of course, represented as fighting against the dragon in heaven to defend the Sun Lady against his wrath, like St. George against the dragon. The Mithraism practiced by the early Romans was different from the religion of the Zoroastrians. In the article “Mithras or Mica (Michael), a Persian then Roman Sun God”[1] by Dr. Mike Magee, he focuses in on the Zoroastrian Trinity and specifically connects Mithras to Michael.
Plutarch in On Isis and Osiris digresses to describe dualism in Zoroastrianism, noting that Mithras was “in the middle” (meson) between the good Horomazes and the evil Areimanius (Ahriman, originally Angra Mainyu), “and this is why the Persians call Mithras the Mediator”. It suggests the Magi saw a trinity of Mithras, Ahuramazda and Ahriman. Ahuramazda and Ahriman seemed to be mirror images of some complex power—perhaps Zurvan, Time—and Mithras was the link. Mithras only took the side of Ahuramazda at the earthly level, otherwise he was neutral between the two principles. But at the earthly, human level, Mithras, as mediator, mitigated the otherwise absolute evil of the Demiurge, Ahriman, who aimed to spoil the good creation of Ahuramazda in this level of the cosmos, and whose purpose therefore was to lead men against the good spirit, Ahuramazda.
Mithras became one of the seven aspects of Ahuramazda, apparently his visible face, the god Himself being invisible and too holy to be represented (aniconic), long before His derivatives, Yehouah and Allah. This was so as not to particularize the universal God, lest people got attached to their own depiction of Him, thereby reintroducing idolatry and then polytheism. Though the Jewish scriptures say no human can look upon God and live, God would appear in various forms to living people who did not die as a consequence, often, in Judaism, as the angel of the Lord, or the archangel Michael leading the hosts of heaven, and in Christianity, as Christ. People then wanted their gods capable of being seen, at least sometimes. That too is what seemed to happen in Zoroastrianism. Later, Mithras became more important than Ahuramazda, perhaps because of his role as mediator between men and those on the divine level, and so was the human face of God.
In the article “The Akkadian Origins of the Prince of Angels”[2] by Bodacious Banshee, she points out Michael’s Canaanite roots with the warrior-priest god Mikal. She also reminds us that Mithras’ relationship to Mars (the divine son of Jupiter and Juno) also underscores their connections with Romulus (also born of a virgin along with his twin brother Remus)[3], the founder of ancient Rome since Mars with his father. In other words, Mithras is Romulus’ father.[4]
Not surprisingly, there is a West Semitic god called Mikal or Mekal (also spelled M[y/i]-K-[a]L) who, like Danel, was worshiped in Ugarit. The name Mikal is sometimes thought to come from Amyclas of Sparta, but the name Mikal was known in many Near-East locations around the mid-Bronze Age, but Amyclas, who is dated “somewhere in the Bronze Age,” was likely not even a real human king, let alone a Greek, nor does his name have an etymology. It is far more likely that Amyclas came from Mikal. The name is distinctly Semitic and the deity follows distinctly Canaanite mythic tropes.
Mikal was also called Resheph (another very Semitic name) or Reshef which means “flame” or “lightning,” but also “burning” or “ravaging” as in a fever or pestilence. Mikal was a warrior god of thunder, portrayed in full battle gear much like Michael is today. Unlike Michael he had a consort; the warrior goddess of love and sex, Anat. Reshef-Mikal was the giver and taker of plague, and god of the underworld. He was the lord of the underworld and synonymous with the Babylonian god Nergal, who was the planet Mars, from whence Mikal got his name.
Mikal or Mithras transformed himself for the Jews into the archangel Michael, the mighty prince of the heavenly hosts, who is usually depicted in a Norse-God like appearance. Like Michael, who expelled and defeated the anti-god, dragon-beast called Satan, Mithras also defeated the beast, the Bull of Chaos. Some comparative mythologists interpret the Mithraic Bull as a mirror to Christ’s passion or the sacrifice of the Lamb for the world. Revelation 13:8 (KJV) tells explicitly us this:
And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
Like the Chaos Bull, the Lamb is also sacrificed for the creation of the manifest world. The Naassene Gnostics would have interpreted this line as the physical creation of the world. Porphyry in the book, On the Cave of Nymphs in the Thirteenth Book of the Odyssey, links Mithras and the Chaos Bull, with the Demiurge.
For Mithra as well as the Bull, is the Demiurgus and lord of generation. But he is placed near the equinoctial circle, having the northern parts on his right hand, and the southern on his left. They likewise arranged towards the south the southern hemisphere because it is hot; but the northern hemisphere towards the north, through the coldness of the north wind.
In the article “St. Michael = Mithra”[5], the author specifically connects the Roman Mithras with Michael as well.
In the Bible, the Archangel Michael is described as the commander of the army of the Lord (Joshua 5:13-15). In artistic representation, he is usually shown holding a sword and defeating Satan or a dragon in battle. In short he is the cutting edge of the “Forces of Light” in the battle with the “Forces of Darkness.” Like Mithras, he is also connected to those in uniform, being considered the patron of police officers and soldiers.
These affinities made Michael a suitable spearhead for Christianizing areas where Mithraic traditions still had some influence. A good example is the world heritage site of Mont-Saint-Michel in Brittany. Originally this was a site sacred to Mithraism. Its original name, Mont Tombe, means ‘tomb,’ probably a reference to the underground temples favored by the Mithraists.
The change of name is recorded in the Life of Saint Aubert, the bishop of Avranches. One night in the year 708, the archangel Saint Michael appeared to the bishop in a dream, ordering him to erect a sanctuary on Mont Tombe. At that time, the Mount was a remote site far from any road, and could only be accessed by passing through the vast forest of Scissy, which was inhabited by wolves and wild beasts.
For this reason, the bishop was reluctant to act, whereupon the Archangel Michael appeared again. Incensed at the bishop’s prevarication, he struck the cleric with a blazing finger, leaving a deep mark in his skull, but persuading him to finally build the sanctuary, which gave the site it Christian name. In later years, a hole in the relic of the bishop’s skull was explained as the mark of the Archangel’s finger.
For other scholars, like Gerald Massey, Michael, along with Satan, has their roots in Egyptian ritual and theology.[6]
“Horus appears in the various characters of Har-Tema, the revealer of justice; Har-Makheru, the word made truth; Har, the red god who orders the block of execution. These are phases of Har-Makhu, the god of both horizons, all of which are reproduced in Revelation. Michael, the warrior angel who overthrows “the dragon and his angels”, is the Hebrew form of Har-Makhu, who is Atum-Huhi in the person of his own son. This is Har-Tema, he who makes justice visible, in the cult of Osiris. He is the avenger of the wrongs inflicted on his father by the Apap-dragon and his dark host of the Sebau or fiends by the evil Sut, and also by the criminals who on account of their own deeds are self-condemned to die the second death upon “the highway of the damned” (Rit., ch. 18).
…
The battle of Har-Magedon was not a mortal conflict to be fought at some far-off indefinite future time. It had been fought already in the Ritual, and was periodically repeated in the mysteries as the final struggle betwixt light and darkness, or the solar god and apap-reptile. The great battle depicted in the Ritual is fought by Har-Makhu (Gr. Har-Machis) and the evil dragon. Har-Makhu was the solar god of the double horizon or equinox, and the nightly battle was ended on the horizon east. In the Ritual the dragon of darkness is shown at night and morn in relation to the double horizon on two [Page 713] sides of the mount. At the close of day, when the sun-god sinks into the water of the west as Ra or Horus, he is confronted by his natural enemy, the evil serpent Apap, the destroyer or devourer that rises up gigantic from the bottomless abyss.
In the Ophite Diagram, Michael is also syncretized with the lion-headed demonic creator Ialdabaoth. In Irenaeus’ account of the Ophite’s theology, Michael and Samael are mentioned as names of the serpent of Genesis.[7] Even stranger, Michael may also be related to Chronos himself as Tracy Twyman reveals in “Mete Meet: Twyman’s Introduction to Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall’s Mysterium Baphometis Revelatum.”[8]
Also, it is hard not to notice the similarity with the stories of the Babylonian story of Marduk and Tiamat, which itself is very similar to my reconstruction of the Greek stories of Ouranos, Gaia and Chronos (built through the implications found in the myths of all three figure). Ouranos and Gaia were originally one hermaphroditic being, locked in perpetual sexual union, and pregnant. Chronos is the one who, in order to release himself from the prison of the womb, which was called Tartarus, had to cut his way out of the beast. In the process he castrated his father, and severed it into its male and female halves. The female fell down and became Earth, while the castrated male stayed up and became the sky.
As they were all three Titans, that means they were dragons, and Chronos, though a dragon himself, is the one famous for defeating the dragon, with the present cosmology we live in resulting from it. That would make him the “son of Heaven,” and could thus be taken as the progenitor of a race called “sons of Heaven,” or “sons of God.” This term is used in the Bible to refer to a race of angels called, in the extra-biblical Book of Enoch, the “Watchers,” or the Grigori, who fathered a race of semi-human giants called Nephilim.
However, in the Pistis Sophia (2, 64), Michael and Gabriel are depicted as helpers and guardian angels for Pistis Sophia herself, who can be equated with the Holy Grail, much like the Sun Lady.
I called down Gabriēl and Michaēl out of the æons, at the command of my Father, the First Mystery which looketh within, and I gave unto them the light-stream and let them go down into the chaos to help Pistis Sophia and to take the light-powers, which the emanations of Self-willed had taken from her, from them and give them to Pistis Sophia.
“And straightway, when they had brought down the light-stream into the chaos, it shone most exceedingly in the whole of the chaos, and spread itself over all their regions. And when the emanations of Self-willed had seen the great light of that stream, they were terror-stricken one with the other. And that stream drew forth out of them all the light-powers which they had taken from Pistis Sophia, and the emanations of Self-willed could not dare to lay hold of that light-stream in the dark chaos; nor could they lay hold of it with the art of Self-willed, who ruleth over the emanations.
In the War Scroll (1QM), popularly known as “The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness,” is one of the seven original Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in Qumran in 1947. The text describes the final war at the End of Days as we see in Ezekiel 38-39, and Daniel 7-12. This scroll describes a Zoroastrian-like war between the “Sons of Light,” under the leadership of the “Prince of Light” (also called Michael, the Archangel) and the “Sons of Darkness,” aided by a nation called the Kittim, headed by Belial. Belial is also one of the names for the Antichrist, as we will see later. The confrontation would last 49 years, terminating in the victory of the “Sons of Light” and the restoration of the Temple service and sacrifices. The War Scroll (17:6-9) tells us about Michael’s place in this Revelation-styled Armageddon War.
Today is His appointed time to subdue and to humiliate the prince of the realm of wickedness. He will send eternal support to the company of His redeemed by the power of the majestic angel of the authority of Michael. By eternal light, He shall joyfully light up the covenant of Israel peace and blessing for the lot of God, to exalt the authority of Michael among the gods and the dominion of Israel among all flesh. Righteousness shall rejoice on high, and all sons of His truth shall rejoice in eternal knowledge. But as for you, O sons of His covenant, take courage in God’s crucible, until He shall wave His hand and complete His fiery trials; His mysteries concerning your existence.”
The ancient feast of precepts set for January 6 in the Gregorian calendar is 12 days from Dies Nativitatis, placed by the Church to replace the day dedicated to the celebration of the Sol Invictus or the birth of the Sun. The Greek word ἐπιφαίνω (“I show myself”) indicates the manifestation of the divine presence, and—in worship—is characterized by three signa: the Adoration of the Magi, water Baptism, and the first miracle (the transmutation of water into wine during the wedding of Cana (John 2, 1-11). The Mithraic cult—to which the Imperatores and their soldiers devoted themselves secretly—is now well known; the famous Banquet Mitriaco is depicted in this bas-relief in the Roman Forum.
Mithras is the Sol Invictus (the one on the right, top), next to Sol, who receives a cup containing Cautes’ blood from Taurus; on the right, Cautopates points the flaming Caduceus at the base of an altar on which the serpent is depicted. The Roman cult took place in underground temples, and at the end of the appropriate rite, the partakers took part in a banquet.
Moreover, we have a bas-relief preserved in the Louvre, where we see depicted Aglibol (Lord of the Moon), Baalshamin, and Malakbel (Lord of the Sun); Ba’al Šamem (generally translated as Lord of the Heavens) is depicted here in the center, accompanied by Sol and Luna (both deities with a male appearance).
The Palmyran Triad.
Icon of the Archangel Michael from a 10th century Coptic manuscript in the British Library (MS Or. 7021).
St. Michael casting down the Devil.
St. Sophia with a sword.
Saint Michael Battling the Dragon
As it so happens, St. Jerome in Commentary on Amos, book 5, ch. 9-10, tells us that Mithras gives us the same gematria number that the Gnostic god, Abraxas/Sabaoth gives us, being 365:
Basilides gives to the omnipotent god the uncouth name of Abraxas, and asserts that according to the Greek letters and the number of the cycle of the year this is comprehended in the sun’s orbit. The name Mithra, which the Gentiles use, gives the same sum with different letters.
Furthermore, there is the Mithras Liturgy, which portrays the seven archons which the Mithraic initiate must acknowledge, depicted as black bulls, who turn the wheels of the heavens, causing earthquakes, thunder, and lightning.
There also come forth another seven gods, who have the faces of black bulls, in linen (675) loin-cloths, and in possession of seven golden diadems. They are the so-called Pole-Lords of heaven, whom you must greet in the same manner, each of them with his own name: “Hail, O guardians of the pivot, O sacred and brave youths, who turn (680) at one command the revolving axis of the vault of heaven, who send out thunder and lightning and jolts of earthquakes and thunderbolts against the nations of impious people, but to me, who am pious and god-fearing, you send health and soundness of body (685), and acuteness of hearing and seeing, and calmness in the present good hours of this day, O my Lords and powerfully ruling Gods!
Perhaps the Celestial Bull of Chaos, which Mithras slays is an archon. There is also a Persian relief that depicts Angramainyu attacking the Celestial Bull. It remains unclear whether there is any clear connection or any theological implications to the Roman tauroctony of Mithras slaying the Celestial Bull. The Behemoth of Kabbalistic and Ophite Gnostic lore appears much like the Celestial Bull that Mithras and Gilgamesh slay.
The Babylonians were also the inventors of the zodiac. Their astronomers divided the heavens into sections to tell time and the seasons of the year. Some of the Babylonian constellations or “signs” bore the same names as they do today. Thus, the Babylonian “bull of Anu” is the constellation (or sign) Taurus; “the Great Twins” are the constellation Gemini; “the lion” Leo; “the Scorpion” is naturally Scorpio. Most, if not all, of the constellations of the Babylonian zodiac were mythological figures which we read about in the great Babylonian myths and epics.
For instance, the “bull of Anu” was sent by the goddess Ishtar to punish the hero Gilgamesh. The planets and the stars as well were considered divine beings: the god Shamash was the sun, the planet Venus (Babylonian Dilbat) was the “star” of the goddess Ishtar. By about 450 B.C., the planets, stars, and zodiac were all put together into one cosmic system of the gods that supposedly controlled or influenced an individual’s life here on earth. The Gnostics saw this astral system of Fate as a control mechanism crafted by the Demiurge and his archonic minions.
The Golden Calf of Exodus 23 and the subsequent revelry that ensued surrounding its worship connects to Bacchus worship and even the veneration of the Apis Bull, a symbol of the Egyptian Demiurges, Ptah (below Ra and the hidden deity, Amen) and Isis.
In the PGM III, 424-466, a spell for knowledge, on line 439 we find the following interesting remark, mentioning the historian Manetho who helped create the Serapis cult:
[For] the lord [god] speaks. A procedure greater than this one does not exist. It has been tested by Manetho, [who] received [it] as a gift from god Osiris the greatest. Perform it, perform it successfully and silently. pray to him. But . . I . but a swallow of this comes . . . this your formula repeat seven times . . . formula, which you say: “Hail, Helios, Mithras. . .”
Then there is the passage in PGM IV 475-829:
… for an only child I request immortality, O initiates of this our power (furthermore, it is necessary for you, O daughter, to take / the juices of herbs and spices, which will [be made known] to you at the end of my holy treatise), which the great god Helios Mithras ordered to be revealed to me by his archangel, so that I alone may ascend into heaven as an inquirer / and behold the universe.
As we saw earlier, Apollo is also connected with Michael and can be compared to Mithras as well. Karl Smith, in the article, “Unconquerable: How the Early Roman Catholic Church Usurped the Cult on Vatican Hill,”[9]points out that the very foundation of the Roman Church was built on a shrine to Apollo. He cites the Liber Pontificalis or the Book of Popes.
At the same time Constantine Augustus built by request of Silvester, the bishop, the basilica of blessed Peter, the apostle, in the shrine of Apollo, and laid there the coffin with the body of the holy Peter…(p. 53)
Even the imagery associated with the divine horse pulling Apollo’s chariot across the horizon can be pinpointed as a source for YHWH’s Merkavah Divine Chariot. Even in Plato’s Timaeus (41d-e) it states that the craftsman has put each soul on its own star in a chariot.
Thus He spake, and once more into the former bowl, wherein He had blended and mixed the Soul of the Universe, He poured the residue of the previous material, mixing it in somewhat the same manner, yet no longer with a uniform and invariable purity, but second and third in degree of purity. And when He had compounded the whole He divided it into souls equal in number to the stars, and each several soul He assigned to one star, and setting them each as it were in a chariot He showed them the nature of the Universe, and declared unto them the laws of destiny,—namely, how that the first birth should be one and the same ordained for all, in order that none might be slighted by Him; and how it was needful that they, when sown each into his own proper organ of time, should grow into the most god-fearing of living creatures...
In many places throughout the Old Testament and New Testament, they mention the presence of chariots being led by horses or angels in the forms of tetramorphs such as the Ophanim. Consider the following verses.
Thus it came to be as they walked and continued to talk, behold a chariot of fire appeared with horses of fire, and the fire separated them one from the other; and Elijah was taken up into heaven by a whirlwind. (4 Kingdoms 2:11)
You were taken up in a fiery whirlwind, In a chariot of flaming horses. (Wisdom of Sirach 48:9)
I saw a vision in the night, and behold, a man was mounted on a red horse, and he stood in the midst of the two shaded mountains, and behind him were red, dapple gray, piebald, and white horses. (Zechariah 1:8)
I turned and looked up; I looked and behold four chariots coming from between two mountains, and the mountains were mountains of bronze. With the first chariot were red horses, with the second chariot black horse, with the third chariot white horses, and with the fourth chariot piebald horses. (Zechariah 6:1-3)
Now I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals; and I heard one of the four living creatures saying with a voice like thunder, “Come and see.” And I looked, and behold, a white horse. He who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer. When He opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, “Come and see.” Another horse, fiery red, went out. And it was granted to the one who sat on it to take peace from the earth, and that people should kill one another; and there was given to him a great sword. When He opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come and see.”
So I looked, and behold, a black horse, and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not harm the oil and the wine. When He opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, “Come and see.” So I looked, and behold, a pale horse. And the name of him who sat on it was Death, and Hades followed with him. And power was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, with hunger, with death, and by the beasts of the earth. (Revelation 6:1-8).
Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except Himself. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God, And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses. (Revelation 19:11-14).
Angels are proteiform—that is, they may assume different forms and sizes, like the giant angel (some connect him with Michael), as seen by John the Revelator, with one foot on earth and another on the sea.
And I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head; his face was like the sun, and his legs like pillars of fire. He held a little scroll open in his hand. Setting his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land, he gave a great shout, like a lion roaring. And when he shouted, the seven thunders sounded. And when the seven thunders had sounded, I was about to write, but I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Seal up what the seven thunders have said, and do not write it down.” Then the angel whom I saw standing on the sea and the land raised his right hand to heaven and swore by him who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and what is in it, the earth and what is in it, and the sea and what is in it: “There will be no more delay, but in the days when the seventh angel is to blow his trumpet, the mystery of God will be fulfilled, as he announced to his servants the prophets.” (Revelation 10:1-7). NRSV.
That explains how a chief of the angelic hosts, Gabriel, appeared in human form oftentimes, and not in the frightening aspect of a many-eyed Seraphim, or how Raphael appeared to Tobias as a simple man, with no light nor wings, as their purpose then was not frightening the recipients of their message. This ability also explains how devils and archons appeared in the guise of ferocious animals like lions, serpents, bears or bulls, and even changing from one form to another before the eyes of the beholder, since even the fallen angels/archons retained their shape-shifting abilities.
These “divine horses” are also used to escort and pull God anywhere in the universe and the heavens. He can do this since He rides or is pulled by the Cherubim while His Throne is considered the “axis mundi” of the universe with the four guardian beasts or cherubim watching the activities of all life outside of eternity. Consider what St. John describes in Revelation 4:6, “…In the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind.” In Philo of Alexandria’s On the Cherubim (IX), he connects the fiery sword with “Reason” while claiming there are two natures of God.
I have also, on one occasion, heard a more ingenious train of reasoning from my own soul, which was accustomed frequently to be seized with a certain divine inspiration, even concerning matters which it could not explain even to itself; which now, if I am able to remember it accurately, I will relate. It told me that in the one living and true God there were two supreme and primary powers—goodness and authority; and that by his goodness he had created everything, and by his authority he governed all that he had created; (28) and that the third thing which was between the two, and had the effect of bringing them together was reason, for that it was owing to reason that God was both a ruler and good. Now, of this ruling authority and of this goodness, being two distinct powers, the cherubim were the symbols, but of reason the flaming sword was the symbol. For reason is a thing capable of rapid motion and impetuous, and especially the reason of the Creator of all things is so, inasmuch as it was before everything and passed by everything, and was conceived before everything, and appears in everything.
In many Gnostic texts, Jesus Christ is depicted as a shapeshifter as he descends through the cosmic spheres and takes on the appearance of the angels and gods that rule over the seven heavens to evade detection of his other-worldly origins and purpose. However, the archons eventually figure out that one of their own was their Judas since Jesus acts as the Pleroma’s secret double-agent and betrayer of the Demiurge and his archons. The Second Treatise of the Great Seth tells us:
I visited a bodily dwelling. I cast out the one who was in it first, and I went in. And the whole multitude of the archons became troubled. And all the matter of the archons, as well as all the begotten powers of the earth, were shaken when it saw the likeness of the Image, since it was mixed. And I am the one who was in it, not resembling him who was in it first. For he was an earthly man, but I, I am from above the heavens. I did not refuse them even to become a Christ, but I did not reveal myself to them in the love which was coming forth from me. I revealed that I am a stranger to the regions below.
There was a great disturbance in the whole earthly area, with confusion and flight, as well as (in) the plan of the archons. And some were persuaded, when they saw the wonders which were being accomplished by me. And all these, with the race, that came down, flee from him who had fled from the throne to the Sophia of hope, since she had earlier given the sign concerning us and all the ones with me - those of the race of Adonaios. Others also fled, as if from the Cosmocrator and those with them, since they have brought every (kind of) punishment upon me. And there was a flight of their mind about what they would counsel concerning me, thinking that she (Sophia) is the whole greatness, and speaking false witness, moreover, against the Man and the whole greatness of the assembly.
As we saw earlier, the Savior is the final “quintessence” of the Pleroma, crafted by the five aeons (like the five trees of Paradise in the Gospel of Thomas), being the Holy Spirit, the Son of Man, the Church, the Logos, and Life by Marcus the Magician. According to the Tripartite Tractate, the Logos or Christ manifested to the dark powers of the universe—the archons—as blinding, powerful lightning. The archons and authorities are startled by the Pleromic light and retreat to Hades, Chaos, the Abyss, or the Outer Darkness. The Logos sets up a new creation in the image of the Pleroma when the Archons are thrown down to hell like the Titans are in Greek myths of Hesiod. The Demiurge is also presented as the “voice” of the Logos, rather than the enemy of the Pleroma.
Jesus’s veiled divinity from the astral principalities can also be reflected in Mark 8:27-30, where Jesus Christ did not want people to know who he was. In fact, he was quite satisfied to allow confusion about him to persist. As Mark, the earliest gospel, records, he asked his disciples, “Who do people think I am?” They answered that a variety of opinions about his nature were in circulation. Jesus then asked, “Who do you think I am?” They replied, “The Messiah.” Then Jesus “sternly warned them not to tell anyone this.” The Gospel of Nicodemus (Chapter XVII) also tells us something similar when Jesus descended into hell, and Satan and his demons are also frightened by his light and splendor and rescue Adam and snatches him away into heaven. We will revisit this story in the last chapter.
1 Impious Death and her cruel officers hearing these things, were seized with fear in their several kingdoms, when they saw the clearness of the light, 2 And Christ himself on a sudden appearing in their habitations; they cried out therefore, and said, We are bound by thee; thou seemest to intend our confusion before the Lord. 3 Who art thou, who hast no sign of corruption, but that bright appearance which is a full proof of thy greatness, of which yet thou seemest to take no notice?
Philo also believed the two creation accounts of Genesis 1 and 2 were consistent with the teachings of Plato: Hence the Father of this universe first created the archetypal model of the cosmos before he created the material “corporeal” cosmos (Philo, On the Creation., 4:16). Philo also believed that there were two Gods in the Bible; and that these two gods were manifestations of a higher transcendent supreme Being. Philo describes this concept as a vision of a theological trinity:
“There are three different classes of human dispositions, each of which has received as its portion one of the aforesaid visions. The best of them has received that vision which is in the centre, the sight of the truly living God. The one which is next best has received that which is on the right hand, the sight of the beneficent power which has the name of God (Theos, Gn. 1:1f.). And the third has the sight of that which is on the left hand, the governing power, which is called lord” (Kurios, Gn. 2:4f.).
“…and the beings on each side are those most ancient powers which are always close to the living God, one of which is called his creative power, and the other his royal power. And the creative power is God [Theos], for it is by this that he made and arranged the universe; and the royal power is the Lord [Kurios], for it is fitting that the Creator should lord it over and govern the creature. Therefore, the middle person of the three, being attended by each of his powers as by body-guards, presents to the mind… a vision at one time of one being, and at another time of three…” (On Abraham, 121f., 124)
Philo’s unnamed “God” and “Lord” obviously correspond to the two God’s in Genesis 1 and 2. The unnamed God is the Creator, and the “Lord” is the governor and logos, or Demiurge. Philo teaches that there are two creations in Genesis, reflecting the Platonic idea of the invisible world of forms and archetypes and the material copy below. The Supreme God is manifest in two forms: the creative power of God and the governing power of the “Lord.” There were also two races of men, one incorporeal and the other, corporeal. Philo also believed in the three natures like Jesus, Paul, Plato, and the later Gnostics. The most virtuous of men will see the Supreme God, while the others will see the biblical Creator as good. The third class will see God as a heavy-handed ruler (On Dreams on Dreams, 1:230, 234–237).
Margaret Barker has this to say on Philo of Alexandria and his take on the Heavenly Temple in “Beyond the Veil of the Temple. The Highly Priestly Origin of the Apocalypses.”
Those who entered the holy of holies were entering heaven. When Solomon became king, the Chronicler recorded that ‘he sat on the throne of the LORD and all the assembly bowed their heads and worshipped the LORD and the king’ (1 Chron.29.20-23). Something similar was said of Moses in later texts when much of the old royal ideology was transferred to him: Ezekiel the tragedian described how a heavenly figure on the summit of Sinai stood up from his throne and gave it to Moses (Eusebius Preparation of the Gospel 9.29); Philo said that Moses ‘entered into the darkness where God was and was named god and king of the whole nation’ (Moses 1.158). For both Ezekiel and Philo, this transformation took place on Sinai, one of the many examples of Moses sharing the royal traditions associated with the holy of holies, but there can be no question of this being Hellenistic syncretism as is usually suggested. Acquiring the titles and status of God and King must be related in some way to the Chronicler’s description of Solomon’s coronation, and to the psalmist’s description of the procession into the sanctuary, when he saw his God and his King (Ps.68.24).
Other texts imply that a transformation took place in the holy of holies: those who entered heaven became divine. Philo said that when the high priest entered the holy of holies he was not a man. We read Leviticus 16.17 as: ‘there shall be no man in the holy of holies when he (Aaron) enters to make atonement...’ but Philo translated it: ‘When the high priest enters the Holy of Holies he shall not be a man’, showing, he said, that the high priest was more than human (On Dreams 2.189). In 2 Enoch there is an account of how Enoch was taken to stand before the heavenly throne. Michael was told to remove his earthly clothing, anoint him and give him the garments of glory; ‘I looked at myself, and I had become like one of his glorious ones’ (2 En.22.10).
This bears a strong resemblance Zechariah 3, where Joshua the high priest stands before the LORD, is vested with new garments and given the right to stand in the presence of the LORD. As late as the sixth century Cosmas Indicopleustes, an Egyptian Christian, wrote a great deal about the temple and its symbolism, and we shall have cause to consider his evidence at several points. Of Moses he said: the LORD hid him in a cloud on Sinai, took him out of all earthly things ‘and begot him anew like a child in the womb’ (Cosmas Christian Topography 3.13), clearly the same as Psalm 2; ‘I have set my king on Zion... You are my son. Today I have begotten you’ but using the imagery of reclothing with heavenly garments, rather than rebirth.
Enter Melchizedek
Before we move on, we must re-examine the role of Melchizedek considering the Gnostic Pistis Sophia, for he is related to Mithras, Michael, Jesus Christ, and Sabaoth. Our first clue comes from a research paper called Melchizedek, Michael, and War in Heaven by James R. Davila.[10] In it, Davila cross-compares from Qumran texts, the book of Revelation in the New Testament, the Melchizedek text from Nag Hammadi, and a liturgical poem by the Jewish poet Qalliri. It is interesting to see the author juxtaposes different traditions involving Melchizedek and Michael together, filling in the gaps of Michael’s role in Revelation 12.
First, Melchizedek is identified with Jesus Christ. Strange though this may seem, it is comprehensible within the early Christian thought world. It was natural, and probably inevitable, that Christians should have made Jesus the hero of the war in heaven myth (as in Revelation 19-20 and the Odes of Solomon 22:5). Since reflexes of the myth which involved Michael or Melchizedek were still being circulated, one possible reconciliation would be to identify Jesus with one or both of the angels, and this solution was adopted in the Melchizedek Tractate. The other development is that the archons become the evil opponents. Again, the transformation makes sense. Since the archons were the celestial forces of evil in the Gnostic mythos, it was natural that Gnostic Christians should have replaced the dragon or (more likely) a satanic figure with the more relevant archons.
Oddly, one of the latest accounts of the myth, the piyyu<.t> by Qalliri, contains one of the stratigraphically earliest versions. The hero is Michael, the great prince, and the opponent is the dragon Leviathan, who is not connected in any way to the serpent of Genesis 3, Satan, or the astral revolt. This poem is essentially an extended commentary and development of scriptural passages that mention Leviathan, and it may well transmit very conservatively something of the process of exegesis which created one stream of the war in heaven myth.
The other rabbinic texts, with one exception, tell essentially the same story as Qalliri, but replace the great prince with either Gabriel or the attending angels. Gabriel, like Michael one of the four archangels in Second Temple literature, is also mentioned alongside Michael in the War Scroll and implicitly in the book of Daniel. His name (“God is my might”) has a martial ring to it, and he acts both as a messenger (e.g., Dan 8:15-17; 9:21; Luke 1:19, 26) and a warrior (1 Enoch 10:9). It is easy to see how he would eventually begin to take on the role of Michael in the tradition, as well as how Michael’s role in the war in heaven might occasionally be applied generally to the attending angels.
Among the literature cited by the author, is the Odes of Solomon. In this text, Solomon prays to God for granting him the strength to resist the wiles of the devil—in the form of a dragon.
He who overthrew by my hands the dragon with seven heads, and set me at his roots that I might destroy his seed; You were there and helped me, and in every place Your name surrounded me.
In another article, called “Songs of Sabbath Sacrifice: Angelic Liturgy 1st century Synagogue songbook. Template for the Book of Revelation,”[11]the author connects Melchizedek and Michael’s roles.
Melchizedek was probably identified at Qumran with the archangel Michael (1QM xiii 10; xvi 6-8; xvii 7), the angelic leader of the forces of light, who is also called “the prince of light” (1QM xiii 10-11; cf. 1QS ii 20-22 and CD v 17-19) and “the angel of His truth” (1QS iii 24).10 If these equations are sound, then it would seem most plausible that Melchizedek is to be identified with the seventh and highest of the chief princes, as Michael is customarily identified with the highest of the archangels.” (Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, critical edition, Carol Newsom, p37, 1985 AD).
In 1 Enoch 71:1-17, we see Enoch’s spirit “translated” into heaven by his angelic psychopomp, Michael, and enters the “House of God” made up of crystallized spirit and brought to the Divine Throne, in the Holy of Holies.
1. And it came to pass after this that my spirit was translated And it ascended into the heavens: And I saw the holy sons of God. They were stepping on flames of fire: Their garments were white [and their raiment], And their faces shone like snow. 2. And I saw two streams of fire, And the light of that fire shone like hyacinth, And I fell on my face before the Lord of Spirits. 3. And the angel Michael [one of the archangels] seized me by my right hand, And lifted me up and led me forth into all the secrets, And he showed me all the secrets of righteousness. 4. And he showed me all the secrets of the ends of the heaven, And all the chambers of all the stars, and all the luminaries, Whence they proceed before the face of the holy ones. 5. And he translated my spirit into the heaven of heavens, And I saw there as it were a structure built of crystals, And between those crystals tongues of living fire. (Revelation 21:10-11), (Acts 2:3) 6. And my spirit saw the girdle which girt that house of fire, And on its four sides were streams full of living fire, And they girt that house. 7. And round about were Seraphin, Cherubic, and Ophannin: And these are they who sleep not And guard the throne of His glory. (2 Kings 19:15), (Psalm 80:1), (Psalm 99:1), (Isaiah 37:16)
8. And I saw angels who could not be counted, A thousand thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand, Encircling that house. And Michael, and Raphael, and Gabriel, and Phanuel, And the holy angels who are above the heavens, Go in and out of that house. (Revelation 5:11) 9. And they came forth from that house, And Michael and Gabriel, Raphael and Phanuel, And many holy angels without number. 10. And with them the Head of Days, His head white and pure as wool, And His raiment indescribable. (Isaiah 6:1-5), (Daniel 7:9, 13)
11. And I fell on my face, And my whole body became relaxed, And my spirit was transfigured; And I cried with a loud voice, . . . with the spirit of power, And blessed and glorified and extolled. 12. And these blessings which went forth out of my mouth were well pleasing before that Head of Days. 13. And that Head of Days came with Michael and Gabriel, Raphael and Phanuel, thousands and ten thousands of angels without number. 14. And he (i.e. the angel) came to me and greeted me with His voice, and said unto me ‘ This is the Son of Man who is born unto righteousness, And righteousness abides over him, And the righteousness of the Head of Days forsakes him not.’ (Daniel 7:13), (Jeremiah 33:15), (The Book of Enoch 62:1-2)
15. And he said unto me: ‘ He proclaims unto thee peace in the name of the world to come; For from hence has proceeded peace since the creation of the world, And so shall it be unto thee for ever and for ever and ever. 16. And all shall walk in his ways since righteousness never forsaketh him: With him will be their dwelling-places, and with him their heritage, And they shall not be separated from him for ever and ever and ever.
(Psalm 85:11-13) 17. And so there shall be length of days with that Son of Man, And the righteous shall have peace and an upright way In the name of the Lord of Spirits for ever and ever.’ (John 14:6), (Isaiah 35:8), (Hebrews 10:19-20), (Jeremiah 50:4-6), (Isaiah 26:3-4, 12), (Isaiah 57:2), (John 14:27), (John 16:33), (Philippians 4:7)
Compare what Philo wrote in Special Laws 1.66. The Holy of Holies is the highest heaven where angels serve as temple priests.
We ought to look upon the universal world as the highest and truest temple of God, having for its most holy place that most sacred part of the essence of all existing things, namely, the heaven; and for ornaments, the stars; and for priests, the subordinate ministers of his power, namely, the angels, incorporeal souls, not beings compounded of irrational and rational natures, such as our bodies are, but such as have the irrational parts wholly cut out, being absolutely and wholly intellectual, pure reasonings, resembling the unit.
In the Apocalypse of Zephaniah, it also depicts a similar vision.
And a spirit took me and brought me up into the fifth heaven. And I saw angels who are called “lords.” And the diadem was set upon them in the Holy Spirit, and the throne of each of them was sevenfold more (brilliant) than the light of the rising sun. (And they were dwelling in the temples of salvation and singing hymns to the ineffable God.)
In the Nag Hammadi Gnostic text, Melchizedek, we read that Melchizedek represents the High Priest race of the Pleroma being the Gnostics. Melchizedek is also revealed as a psychopomp for the believers in Christ, in the Gnostic Pistis Sophia, which we will examine momentarily.
But all the tribes and all the peoples will speak the truth who are receiving from you yourself, O Melchizedek, Holy One, High-Priest, the perfect hope and the gifts of life.
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O glorious one, Jesus Christ! O chief commanders of the luminaries, you powers Armozel, Oroiael, Daveithe, Eleleth, and you man-of-light, immortal aeon Pigera-Adamas, and you good god of the beneficent worlds, Mirocheirothetou, through Jesus Christ, the Son of God! This is the one whom I proclaim, inasmuch as there has visited the One who truly exists, among those who exist [...] do(es) not exist, Abel Baruch - that you (sg.) might be given the knowledge of the truth [...], that he is from the race of the High-priest, which is above thousands of thousands, and myriads of myriads, of the aeons. The adverse spirits are ignorant of him, and (of) their (own) destruction. Not only (that, but) I have come to reveal to you the truth, which is within the brethren. He included himself in the living offering, together with your offspring. He offered them up as an offering to the All.
...
They said to me, “Be strong, O Melchizedek, great High-priest of God Most High, for the archons, who are your enemies, made war; (but) you have prevailed over them, and they did not prevail over you, and you endured, and you destroyed your enemies.”
In another amazing paper, “Multiple Melchizedeks in the Books of Jeu and Pistis Sophia”[12] by Kasper Dalgaard, the author describes Melchizedek in a manner that sounds amazingly like Michael and Mithras. Dalgaard describes the role of Melchizedek in terms of a psychopomp—like Hermes and Charon of the Greeks, Anubis of the Egyptians, and Deana of the Zoroastrians. Dalgaard mentions 2 Enoch 71, which establishes Melchizedek as the chief model for the priesthood of Christ as the author of Hebrews (5; 7) maintains. In 2 Enoch, we discover that Lamech, the son of Methuselah (translated as Methusalem), had a boy named Nir (the second born, after Noah). Methuselah was told by the “Lord” to take Nir and clothe him in the robes of consecration, or priesthood. We also see the Lord place him by the altar and tell him what would come in his day, including the deluge, and that Noe (Noah)’s seed would be preserved. Nir is identified in this text as the father of Melchizedek.
33. And from my race shaIl rise up many people, and Melchizedek shall be the chief of the priests among the people, ruling alone, serving thee O Lord!)
34. Because I had not another child in this family, who might be a great priest, but this son of mine, and thy servant; and do thou great Lord, on this account honour him with thy servants, and great priests—with Seth, and Enos, and Rusii, and Almilam, and Prasidam, and Maleleil, and Seroch, and Arusan, and Aleem, and Enoch, and Methusalam, and me, thy servant Nir, and Melchizedek shall be the head over twelve priests who lived before, and at last shall be the head over aIl, (being) the great high priest, the Word of God, and the power to work great and glorious marvels above aIl that have been.
35. He, Melchizedek, shall be a priest and king in the place Akhuzan, that is to say, in the middle of the earth where Adam was created: there shall at last be his grave.
36. And concerning that chief priest it has been written that he also shall be buried there, where there is the middle of the earth, as Adam buried his son Abel there whom his brother Cain killed, wherefore he lay three years unburied, till he saw a bird called a jackdaw, burying its fledgling.
37. I know that a great confusion has come and this generation shall end in confusion, and all shall perish except that Noe my brother shaIl be preserved, and afterwards there shall be a planting from his family, and there shaIl be other people, and another Melchizedek shaIl be the head of the priests among the people, ruling, and serving the Lord.’
Melchizedek/Malachi/Malki means “my angel,” and Zodok/Sedeq means “justice” or “righteous.” The word “Zedek” also means Jupiter. Melchizedek can also be connected to Archangel Michael, Michael, meaning “who dares to be like El (God).” This is what the 11QMelch fragment is telling us—that Melchizedek is not only just a priest of El Elyon but also an angel of judgment as well, amongst the gods.[13] Jesus is not Melchizedek. Instead, Jesus was after or initiated after the order of Melchizedek, as it says in Hebrews (7:11-13).
11 Therefore, if perfection were through the Levitical priesthood (for under it the people received the law), what further need was there that another priest should rise according to the order of Melchizedek, and not be called according to the order of Aaron? 12 For the priesthood being changed, of necessity there is also a change of the law. 13 For He of whom these things are spoken belongs to another tribe, from which no man has officiated at the altar.
Judaic Midrash (exegesis) identifies Melchizedek with Shem, the son of Noah.[14] Both the Midrash and the Babylonian Talmud maintain that the priesthood held by Melchizedek predates the patriarch Levi by five generations and pre-dated Aaron by six generations (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Levi, Kehoth, Amram, Aaron). Jesus takes up the mantle of being “a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek” (Psalms 110:4, Hebrews 7:13-17) because, like Melchizedek, Jesus was not a descendant of Aaron, and thus would not qualify for the Jewish priesthood under the Law of Moses.
And verily they that are of the sons of Levi, who receive the office of the priesthood, have a commandment to take tithes of the people according to the law, that is, of their brethren, though they come out of the loins of Abraham: But he whose descent is not counted from them received tithes of Abraham, and blessed him that had the promises (Hebrews 7:5-6).
If therefore perfection were by the Levitical priesthood, (for under it the people received the law,) what further need was there that another priest should rise after the order of Melchisedec, and not be called after the order of Aaron? For the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law (Hebrews 7:11-12).
In a sense, Melchizedek was not only the foremost representative of God on the planet during his ministry, the symbolic “Lord of the Earth,” just as the Grail king is. Thus, he was, by his blessing, purportedly able to bestow ecclesiastical powers upon anyone of his choosing. Likewise, Jesus, as the son of God, could convey the abilities of blessing, healing, and exorcism upon his apostles. To his disciples, Jesus confidently declared: “Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” This meant that they could perform rites of sympathetic magic to command the actions of angels and demons. They could bind them, and restrict their activity, or lose them upon the world if so desired. Jesus also said that because of the power he had laid upon them, their prayers would reach God, for “if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 18:19).
Regarding Melchizedek, this is what Nigel Jackson and Michael Howard also argue in their book The Pillars of Tubal-Cain (p. 199-203), with a stronger occult twist.
...the reference to Melchizedek signifies a heretical view that the Church could never accept because they would regard it as the ultimate blasphemy.
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In The Secret Doctrine (1893) Blavatsky connects Melchizedek with our old friends the Titans and with the Cabari or Kareim, the Elder Gods of the sea and underworld who taught humans agriculture and smithcraft. It is claimed that these Mighty Ones, who appear frequently in our story, were sometimes known as the sons of [Melchi] Zadok. In fact Zadok was an old name associated with the Jewish priesthood who served in Solomon’s temple. Blavatsky goes on to compare Melchizedek with the Roman god of war Mars, who was known as the Lord of Death and ruled agriculture, building and architecture. According to Blavatsky, Mars was also associated in the ancient world with Vulcan and Cain. Blavatsky says the priest-king Melchizedek was known as the Just One and, according to her, was also the ruler of Terra Mater, the Rex Mundi or the King of the World.
They also go on to say that Melchizedek brought three gifts from the planet Venus, such as wheat, bee and honey, and asbestos. They also mention Melchizedek’s connection to the Grail mysteries by referencing the Chartres cathedral in France, built on a former pagan sanctuary dedicated to the Black Madonna—financed by the Knights Templar. Ultimately, they see Melchizedek as one of the many masks and avatars of the Lord of the World, Rex Mundi, who they view as entirely benevolent. To others, like the Cathars, this title is used for the cabbalistic “Other God” known as Lucifer/Satan, the Demiurge Samael, and to the Knights Templar, Baphomet. Margaret Barker, in another article, has a much different opinion and identifies Melchizedek as a manifestation of Yahweh.[15]
Immediately after meeting Melchizedek, according to Genesis, Abraham had a vision of the Lord Yahweh who commanded him to sacrifice a heifer, a she goat and a ram, a turtledove and a pigeon. He prepared the offerings, and then, at sunset, he fell into the deep sleep that was the prelude to visionary experience, tardemah (Gen.15.12). Yahweh then revealed to Abraham the future of his people and promised them the land (Gen.15.12-16). A longer version of this chapter appears in the Apocalypse of Abraham, thought to be a Palestinian Jewish text from the second century CE18. Passages in the Recognitions of Clement show that this Apocalypse was known to the early Church, but the heavenly figure who appears in the Clementine Recognitions is not called Yahweh. He is called the True Prophet and, significantly, the Righteous One.
In the Apocalypse of Abraham the figure is called Iaoel, that is Yahweh-El, which must be how ‘the Lord Yahweh’ of Genesis 15 was understood in the early years of the Christian era. We have, therefore, various names for the figure who appears to Abraham: Genesis 15 says he was the Lord Yahweh, the Apocalypse of Abraham says he was Yahweh-El, and the Clementine Recognitions call him the Righteous One and the True Prophet. Neither Genesis nor the Recognitions describes the figure, but the Apocalypse of Abraham describes a high priest: the appearance of his body was like sapphire and the aspect of his face was like chrysolite, and the hair of his head like snow. And a kidaris (turban) was on his head, its look that of a rainbow, and the clothing of his garments was purple and a golden sceptre was in his right hand’ (Ap. Abr 11.1-3)20. The Apocalypse describes Yahweh-El as the high priest, appearing to Abraham immediately after the meeting with Melchizedek.
I suspect that the writer of the Apocalypse knew that Yahweh-El was Melchizedek, just as the Recognitions call him the Righteous One. The Apocalypse also knew that Yahweh-El had the form of a man, that he was sent to strengthen and consecrate Abraham, (Ap. Abr 10.3-4), and that he was to be the guardian angel of Abraham’s descendants (Ap. Abr. 10.16). His role was to restrain the heavenly powers and keep them apart (Ap.Abr 10.9), exactly what Philo had said of the Logos (On Planting 10).
Melchizedek, the Righteous king, represented the older priesthood. The Pentateuch depicts the time of Abraham as the remote past, but the purges in the time of Josiah show that the religion of the patriarchs was flourishing in the seventh century BCE22, and most of what Josiah removed were the religious practices of the patriarchs. The Moses traditions came to prominence only after that time, and with them, the Aaronite priesthood. Melchizedek and the first temple that he represented were eclipsed for centuries, but the tradition was not lost. The Melchizedek text seems to describe the people of Melchizedek whose teachers had been hidden and kept secret (11QMelch II line 5)23, and, by implication, were about to reappear.
Chartres Cathedral: Melchizedek, Abraham, and Moses; figures from C. door of N. transept portals, ca. 1220’s.
There was an actual group of Heterodox Jews in Alexandria, Egypt, who named themselves after Melchizedek, as Birger Pearson tells us in his article, “Friedlander Revisited: Alexandrian Judaism and Gnostic Origins.”[16]
This group held Melchizedek to be a “great Power”, a being higher than the Messiah, a ‘Son of God’ who occupied a place among the heavenly angels. Such a belief cannot have originated in Christianity.
The figure of Melchizedek, of course, is derived from the Old Testament, and becomes for antinomian Alexandrian Jews a powerful symbol of Law-free religion. When the Melchizedekians came into contact with Christianity, Jesus was incorporated into their system, but his position was below that of Melchizedek. As Jesus is an advocate for humans, so also is Melchizedek an advocate for the angels.
The Alexandrian origin of Melchizedekianism is also demonstrated with reference to Philo himself, for whom Melchizedek is not only a heavenly being but identified with the Logos.
They are referred to as the “Melchizedekians” as discussed by Epiphanius in the Panarion 55.1.1-5 and 55.8.1-5. He says that these heretics used Hebrews 7:3: “without father, without mother, without genealogy” to underscore Melchizedek’s greatness.
In turn, others call themselves Melchizedekians; they may be an off-shoot of the group who are known as Theodotians. (2) They honor the Melchizedek who is mentioned in the scriptures and regard him as a sort of great power. 2 He is on high in places which cannot be named, and in< fact >is not just a power; indeed, they claim in their error that he is greater than Christ. 3 (3) Based, if you please, on the literal wording of, “Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek,” 4 they believe that Christ has merely come and been given the order of Melchizedek. Christ is thus younger than Melchizedek, they say. For if his place were not somehow second in line 5 he would have no need of Melchizedek’s rank.
…
This sect makes its offerings in Melchizedek’s name, and says that it is he who conducts us to God 26 and that we must offer to God through him because he is an archon of righteousness 27 ordained in heaven by God for this very purpose, a spiritual being and appointed to God’s priest-hood. (2) And we must make offerings to him, they say, so that they may be offered through him on our behalf, 28 and through him we may attain to life. (3) Christ too was chosen, they say, to summon us from many ways to this one knowledge. He was anointed by God and made his elect, for he turned us from idols and showed us the way. After that the apostle was sent and revealed Melchizedek’s greatness to us, and that he remains a priest forever. (4) And see how great he is, and that the lesser is blessed by the greater. (5) And thus, they say, Melchizedek also blessed the patriarch Abraham, since he was greater [than Abraham]. And we are his initiates, so that we too may be recipients of his blessing.
To refute the Melchizekians and perhaps even the Book of Hebrews, Epiphanius tells us that Melchizedek had two human parents with the name of pagan gods—being Heracles and Astaroth/Astoraine (55.2.1). Moreover, Tertullian tells us about the same thing in Against All Heresies (I.VII) that Theodotus taught that Melchizedek is also superior to Christ.
For that Melchizedek, he says, was a heavenly Virtue of pre-eminent grace; in that Christ acts for human beings, being made their Deprecator and Advocate: Melchizedek does so for heavenly angels and Virtues. For to such a degree, he says, is he better than Christ, that he is apatwr (fatherless), amhtwr (motherless), agenealoghtos (without genealogy), of whom neither the beginning nor the end has been comprehended, nor can be comprehended.
Tertullian also mentions that the heretics Praxeas and Victorinus taught that “Jesus Christ is God the Father Almighty” and that the Father was crucified, died, and resurrected rather than the Son. He is also “Himself sitting at His own right hand.” Returning to Enoch, it also interesting to see that 2 Enoch 71:35 tells us that Adam as formed inside the earth. In Genesis, we read that the Lord God formed Adam from the dust of the earth in Eden. In Greek myths found in Hesiod’s works, it is Chronos that is cast out and exiled into Tartarus by Zeus. Eden is routinely compared with the Golden Age in Greek stories, so could it be that Eden is actually “inside the earth” as well? Considering how the church fathers describe the Cainites’ lore regarding the vault or sky as the dark Womb and Gnostic and Cathar interpretations of Eden as an Archontic playground where humans are treated as exploited playthings for amusement, this is indeed a strange possibility. The Manichaeans’ radical dualism posited that the physical universe itself was a mixture of light but mostly darkness and that it was a prison of the soul in the “powers of darkness” with Adam and Eve being the creations of the demons, Saklas (the fool) and Nebroel to avoid the deprivation of light from the crucified Primal Man. Jesus the Splendor, along with many other prophets including Zoroaster, Enoch, the Buddha, and Mani (as the Messiah or Paraclete), are sent to awaken the elect.
In the Pistis Sophia, Melchizedek is presented as a heavenly being whose job is to gather the light scattered throughout the universe, purify and deposit them in the Treasury of Light. In Book 4, also, Melchizedek is also given the title “Zorokothora” which is a not-so-subtle reference to the prophet Zoroaster. Zorokothora Melchizedek also has conflicts with the archons, who destroy as many souls as they can, and with the help of the underworld goddess Hekate, who holds souls prisoner in her realm.
Kasper Dalgaard also informs us of the Second Book of Jeu, which is a Coptic Gnostic text written roughly in late antiquity (and not part of the Nag Hammadi corpus). In it, Jesus prays to the Father for “Zorokothora Melchizedek” to “bring the water of the baptism of fire of the Virgin of Light” (presumably heavenly waters of baptism) to the disciples, and Melchizedek grants this petition. He is a divine being with a priestly function, echoing Genesis 14, but with a focus on him as Exalted Patriarch and Celestial Priest. His title “Zorokothora” also connects with magical nomina barbara or the magical language of the Gnostics in their theurgical rituals. Many Gnostic texts specifically mention Zoroaster as one of their patron prophets, as well. This brings us to mind the Zoroastrian Savior, Saoshyant and Yima/Gayōmart, the Persian Adam, or “Anthropos.”
It is said that as the time of Long Dominion (12,000 years of history) approaches its end, the prophesied Persian reincarnation of Zoroaster—the savior Saoshyant—would repeat the deed of Mithras—to sacrifice the cosmic bull. From its fat, the sacred drink “haoma” would be made from it, granting immortality and saves his followers from Ahriman’s wicked counter-creation of chaos and misery. Let us examine the words of Kasper Dalgaard in his paper where he paraphrases and synthesizes many aspects of the psychopomp Melchizedek:
The first of these traditions occurs as Jesus informs his disciples how the souls of men are stolen by a multitude of demons who serve the archon Paraplex (4.139). Jesus explains that Jeu is the provider of all the archons and the gods and the powers which have come into existence in the matter of the light of the Treasury, and Zorokothora Melchizedek is the messenger of all the lights, which are purified in the archons, as he takes them into the Treasury of the Light, then these two alone are the great lights. This psychopompous journey, in which Melchizedek leads the lights or souls into safety allows the souls to be freed from oppression and affliction. This apparently happens in a cyclical pattern, whenever the time is right (at the time of the cipher).[11] At this time, Melchizedek guides the souls to the gate of those of the Midst, and takes them to the Treasury of the Light.
In the fifth tradition, Jesus informs his disciples that, with time, Jeu withdraws. The archons seize this moment to rebel, assisted by Melchizedek having become occupied with the well-being of the souls. The archons steal the souls and bring them to Paraplex, who proceeds to punish them for 133 years and 9 months, until the pattern repeats itself and the souls are liberated and guided to safety by Melchizedek. The sixth tradition occurs in ch. 140, where a similar cycle is described for the souls who have fallen under the second-ranking archon, called Ariuth, the Ethiopian Woman, and for those under the third-ranking archon, Hekate, the Three-faced. These are parallel traditions, but with variations in the pattern—for example, in Hekate’s palace, the souls are punished for 105 years and 6 months. A more important variation is that Zorokothora Melchizedek in ch. 140 assumes the functions that Jeu had in the preceding chapter. Melchizedek is now said to destroy Hekate’s places simply by looking forth from the height. Following his accomplishments against Paraplex and Hekate, Melchizedek is not mentioned again in book four, as the text turns to describing related traditions wherein the archon Typhon is defeated by Zarazaz, and Jachthanabas by Jao.
...Melchizedek again defeats several archons. This allows him to purify and transport the liberated souls to safety in the Treasury of the Light. This transpires when the time came of the number of Melchizedek, which marks the resurfacing of the cyclical pattern also found in 4.139, although described in different terms. At this time, the great Paralemptor of Light, as Melchizedek is now called, liberates the light from the archons and from the unidentified beings called those of the sphere. After purifying the souls, Melchizedek brings them to the Treasury of Light. During the purification process, matter is left behind, which is gathered and used by the archons to produce new souls of men. This creation is observed by the paralemptors of the sun and the moon. They remove the new souls, the lightpower of the archons, from the archons, and return this to Melchizedek. After this, the process is repeated as the archons creates yet new souls from the material dregs, and casts them out into the world of mankind—forcing Melchizedek to once again gather the souls.
This cyclical pattern is broken in tradition number eight: in 1.27, the archons, rather than releasing the souls, swallow them. This time, instead of Melchizedek saving the souls, the archons are defeated by Jesus and his Great Light. This weapon’s title is the same as the one given to Melchizedek in other traditions, and it would appear that in this tradition Melchizedek has been reduced to a weapon used by Jesus to defeat the archons. With the removal of Melchizedek as an active figure, Jesus has assumed the functions elsewhere attributed to Melchizedek, Indeed, the actions of Jesus in defeating the archons and liberating the souls, are essentially parallel to those of Melchizedek in the previous chapters (25–26). Tradition number eight thus presents an example wherein the figure of Melchizedek has been removed, or reduced to a weapon, discernible only by the name given to the force employed against the archons by Jesus.
In 2.86, and our ninth tradition, Melchizedek again re-appears as the active figure of Pistis Sophia’s ongoing battle between the forces of the Father and the archons. In this passage, which details the origin of Melchizedek, he is termed the great paralemptor of the Light. Jesus informs his disciples that Jeu came forth first from the pure light of the first tree, while the watcher of the veil of those of the right came from the second, the two leaders from the third and fourth trees, and Melchizedek from the fifth tree. These five beings (including Sabaoth, though he is also said to have emanated from Jeu directly) were, at the command of the First Mystery. They were, by the last helper, put in the place of those of the right for the organization of the gathering together of the light of the height, from the aeons of the archons and from the world and all the races in them.
According to various esoteric traditions, the physical sun, the central star of our solar system, is not a huge, ever-consuming ball of gas. Instead, it consists of a fiery globe that encloses a cool blue crystal lattice. Or perhaps even a prism or diamond of some sort. The Books of Jeu mention this benevolent archon’s title as paralemptor, generally translated as “receiver.” This archontic entity is intimately associated with the sun through Sabaoth in the idiom of the Sophia, as we saw earlier and might be regarded as a dissenting faction of the predatory archon horde. The role of the receiver is to gather the psychic remains of a deceased person’s soul and store these components in the lattice, perhaps to be recycled in further human incarnations.
The role of Melchizedek is to snatch away, gather and purify the souls of people away from the clutches of the archons and authorities (including the Great Dragon, Satan) that run the realm of Fate. This is done by offering the souls to the Virgin of the Light and her seven virgins who inspects and seals them. Next, they are passed to the Great Sabaoth, who also seals the soul. Finally, Melchizedek puts the final seal of approval on the soul (the eight-rayed star perhaps) so that it can enter the Treasury of Light before it can enter the Pleroma. This “light-realm” can be equated with the “solar world” or the “supramundane” region of light as the Chaldaean Oracles put it. In the same text (Chapter 25), Jesus proceeds to tell Maria, one of his disciples about the “Paralemptor” (which means “receiver”) or High Priest of the Pleroma.
Before I preached to all the archons of the aeons, and all the archons of the Heimarmene and the sphere, they were all bound with their bonds, in their spheres and their seals, according to the manner in which Jeu, the Overseer of the Light, had bound them from the beginning. And each one of them was continuing in his rank and each one was proceeding according to his course, according to the manner in which Jeu, the Overseer of the Light, had settled it. And when the time came of the number of Melchizedek, the great Paralemptor of Light, he came to the midst of the aeons, and to all the archons which were bound in the sphere and in the Heimarmene, and he took away what is purified of the light from all the archons of the aeons, and from all the archons of the Heimarmene, and from those of the sphere, for he took away that which agitated them.
And he moved the hastener that is over them and made their cycles turn quickly, and he (Melchizedek) took away their power which was in them, and the breath of their mouths, and the tears of their eyes, and the sweat of their bodies. And Melchizedek, the Paralemptor of the Light, purified those powers, he carried their light to the Treasury of the Light. And all their matter was gathered together by the ministers of all the archons. And the ministers of all the archons of the Heimarmene and the ministers of the sphere which are below the aeons took them (the matter) and made them into souls of men and cattle and reptiles and beasts and birds. And they sent them to this world of mankind.
In another portion of the Pistis Sophia, Chapter 45, Jesus explains his mission to his disciples, Andrew, and Maria.
Truly, truly, I say to you, I will fulfill you in all the mysteries of the light, and every gnosis, from the innermost of the inner to the outermost of the outer; from the Ineffable to the darkness of darknesses ; and from the Light of Lights to the (? matter) of matter ; from all the gods to the demons ; from all the lords to the decans; from all the powers (exousiai) to the ministers ; from the creation of men to (that off beasts and cattle and reptiles, in order that you be called perfect, fulfilled in every pleroma. Truly, truly, I say to you that, in the place in which I shall be in the Kingdom of my Father, you will also be there with me. And when the perfect number is completed so that the mixture is dissolved, I will command that all the tyrant gods who did not give (up) what is purified of their light be brought. I will command the fire of wisdom, which the perfect ones transmit, to consume those tyrants until they give (up) the last of what is purified of their light.”
It happened, when Jesus finished saying these words to his disciples, he said to them: “Do you understand in what manner I have spoken to you?”
Maria said: “Yes, O Lord, I have understood the discourse which thou hast spoken. Concerning the word now which thou didst say: ‘At the dissolving of the whole mixture thou wilt sit upon a light-power, and thy disciples, that is we, we will sit to the right of thee. And thou wilt judge the tyrant gods which did not give (up) what is purified of their light. And the fire of wisdom will consume them until they give (up) the last of the light which is in them.’ Now concerning this word, thy light-power once prophesied, through David, in the 81st Psalm, saying: ‘God will sit in the assembly of gods and will judge the gods.”
Jesus said to her: “Excellent, Maria.”
How does Mithras fit into this picture? We can find this connection within the goddess Anahita/Ishtar. In the Zoroastrian religion, Anahita was the goddess of the great cosmic ocean. According to Payam Nabarz in The Mysteries of Mithras: The Pagan Belief That Shaped the Christian World, Anahita drives a chariot pulled by four elements: wind, rain, clouds, and sleet, while her chief symbol is the eight-rayed star (p. 97). The eight-rayed star is also connected to Melchizedek, and even the queen of heaven, Ishtar/Inanna, through her offering cakes made of unleavened bread as mentioned in Jeremiah 44:19. The eight-pointed black star Ishtar also connects to the demon Astaroth’s “chaos sphere” of chaos magicians and of course, Solomonic magic.[17] Moreover, before a Zoroastrian magi-priest would call upon or pray to Mitra (the Persian version of Mithras), he would offer a prayer to Anahita.
I will praise the water Ardvi Sura Anahita, the efficacious against the Daevas, devoted to Ahura’s lore, and to be worshipped with sacrifice within the corporeal world, furthering all living things (?) and holy, helping on the increase and improvement of our herds and settlements, holy, and increasing our wealth, holy, and helping on the progress of the Province, holy (as she is)?
(Ardvi Sura Anahita) who purifies the seed of all male beings, who sanctifies the wombs of all women to the birth, who makes all women fortunate in labor, who brings all women a regular and timely flow of milk, (Ardvi Sura Anahita) with a volume sounding from afar, which is alone equal in its bulk to all the waters which flow forth upon earth, which flows down with mighty volume from high Hukairya to the sea Vouru-kasha. (Yasna 65 - To Ardvi Sura Anahita, and the Waters.)
Just as the eight-pointed star was the chief symbol for Anahita, the mother of Mitra, Melchizedek’s seal was also the same, as pointed out earlier in Chapter 3. We saw earlier that Melchizedek’s other title was “Zorokothora” (from the Pistis Sophia), the founder of the ancient Promethean Fire Mystery religion. Dualism with an intermediary was also its chief theology. Plutarch in Isis and Osiris (46), tells us that the Magi taught that in between the principle of light Oromazes, and the other principle of darkness and ignorance, being Areimanius, was the Mediator, Mithras. Dr. Mike Magee equates Enoch with Zoroaster, adding to the overall multifaceted nature of the Paralemptor.[18]
With his tradition of extensive writings, Enoch looks like Zoroaster himself. John Reeves of Winthrop University (Jewish Lore in Manichaean Cosmogony: Studies in the Book of Giants Traditions,) has argued that Zoroaster and Enoch were the same person, or were seen as the same person, and this is why the Enochian literature is so great. In Manichaeism, Enoch and Zoroaster are the same—both the heavenly entity, the “Apostle of Light” in human form. Interestingly, in 3 Enoch, a Rabbinic work of about the third century AD, Enoch reveals himself to the heavenly traveller, Rabbi Ishmael, as the Metatron, the greatest of angels and identifiable with Mithras (Mitra) and the archangel Michael (3 Enoch 10:3-6). Gods and mythical figures in antiquity with similar roles are often equated. Pseudo-Eupolemus equates Enoch with Atlas:
“The Greeks say that Atlas discovered astrology, but Atlas is the same as Enoch.”
Many Greeks thought Zoroaster had discovered astrology, but Jews attributed its discovery to Enoch. In the late Denkard tradition, Zoroaster toured the supernal and nether worlds, as did Enoch. The Coptic Zostrianos also recounts a heavenly tour undertaken by Zostrianos. M Scopello has noted parallels between the Apocalypse of Zostrianos from Nag Hammadi and the Book of the Secrets of Enoch. Zoroaster was supposedly escorted by immortals, as was Enoch (Gen 5:24). In Sefer Josippon, however, Abraham invented astrology and instructed Zoroaster in its mysteries!
Zoroaster was identified with several other notables by ancient writers: Nimrod (Pseudo-Clementine, Homilies 9.3-6; Cave of Treasures; perhaps Gen Rab 38:13), Balaam (Origen, Contra Celsum 1.60), Ezekiel (Alexander Polyhistor apud Clement of Alexandria, Strom 1.15), and Baruch (Book of the Bee). Theodore bar Konai reported a tradition that Zoroaster was originally a Samaritan priest named Azazel!
Zoroaster himself was consecrated in the name of the Persian Mithras as well, adding to the overall mystique of the prophet of light, according to Porphyry in On the Cave of Nymphs in the Thirteenth Book of the Odyssey:
For, as Eubulus says, Zoroaster was the first who consecrated in the neighbouring mountains of Persia, a spontaneously produced cave, florid, and having fountains, in honour of Mithra, the maker and father of all things; a cave, according to Zoroaster, bearing a resemblance of the world, which was fabricated by Mithra. But the things contained in the cavern being arranged according to commensurate intervals, were symbols of the mundane elements and climates.
Enoch himself also at one point holds the office of High Priest in Heaven (perhaps through the office of “The Metatron”) as Andrei Orlov points out in “Enoch as the Heavenly Priest.”[19]
Although the traditions about Enoch’s associations with the heavenly Temple in the Book of the Watchers and in the Animal Apocalypse do not refer openly to his performance of priestly duties, the account attested in the Book of Jubilees explicitly makes this reference. Jubilees 4:23 depicts Enoch as taken from human society and placed in Eden “for (his) greatness and honor.” Jubilees then defines the Garden as a sanctuary and Enoch as one who is offering an incense sacrifice on the mountain of incense: “He burned the evening incense of the sanctuary which is acceptable before the Lord on the mountain of incense.” James VanderKam suggests that here Enoch is depicted as one who “performs the rites of a priest in the temple.” He further observes that Enoch’s priestly duties represent a new element in “Enoch’s expanding portfolio.”
A little-known Apocalyptic text called the Sefer Zerubbabel, it makes it clear that St. Michael also holds the Metatron office at one point.[20] In one Mormon article[21] on the significance of the Melchizedek Priesthood, they quote Hugh Nibley, in his Temple and Cosmos: Beyond This Ignorant Present.
Another Ravenna mosaic, c. A.D. 520, shows the priest-king Melchizedek in a purple cloak, offering bread and wine at the altar (Genesis 14:18-20). The white altar cloth is decorated with two sets of gammadia, as well as the so-called “seal of Melchizedek,” two interlocked squares in gold. Abel offers his lamb as Abraham gently pushes Isaac forward. The hand of God reaches down to this sacred meeting through the red veils adorned with golden gammadia on either side. The theme is the great sacrifice of Christ, which brings together the righteous prophets from the past as well as the four corners of the present world, thereby uniting all time and space.
The Three Sacrifices of the Old Testament. Abel, Melchisedec, and Abraham (6th-7th century). Mosaic, Ravenna, Basilica of Sant’Apollinare in Classe.
The rest of the article tells us about the significance of the mosaic since it shows Melchizedek distributing the sacrament of bread and wine in remembrance of the Lord’s body and blood as an atoning sacrifice. It also shows Abel offering a lamb at the altar, an obvious reference to the “Lamb of God,” while Abraham offered Isaac at the altar, being a “shadow” of things to come with the sacrifice of Christ, the Only Begotten Son. The article also points out that Melchizedek was born of a virgin! His mother’s name is Sophanim, wife of the priest Nir (a brother of Noah), and he is conceived without any intercourse like Mary with Jesus. Clearly the name Sophanim is related to the goddess of Wisdom Sophia. Her newborn infant looks like a three-year-old child and begins to speak immediately. 2 Enoch 71 also tells us that Melchizedek was born with the seal of the Holy Priesthood on his chest.
Noah and Nir looked at him closely, saying, “This is from The Lord, my brother.” And behold the badge of priesthood was on his chest, and it was glorious in appearance. Noah said to Nir, “Behold, God is renewing the priesthood from blood related to us, just as He pleases..”
Noah and Nir hurried and washed the child, they dressed him in the garments of the priesthood, and they gave him bread to eat and he ate it. And they called him Melchizedek.
We see Nir and Noah dress the child in the garments of priesthood, and they fed him the holy bread. They decided to hide him, fearing that the people would have him put to death. Finally, the Lord commanded His archangel Gabriel to take the child and place him in “the paradise Eden” so that he might become the head high priest after the Flood. Final passages of chapter 72, describes the ascent of Melchizedek on the wings of Gabriel to the paradise Eden, even after the fall of Adam and Eve. All of this takes place before the Flood or Deluge. The Mormon site also shows Melchizedek and Abel offering a sacramental offering with the hand of God reaching down from heaven.
Abel and Melchizedek, Ravenna mosaic, Basilica of San Vitale
Please note in the above image of the Seal of Melchizedek, the two concentric circles are included within the interlocked squares with eight-points.
There is also an 8-pointed star or “wheel” bronze coin assigned to Alexander Jannaeus, one of the kings of Judea, B.C. The symbol also refers to the “morning star” Venus, the sun of the heavens, and refers to the divine royalty of a Priest-King. This coin reminds us of Melchizedek and Anahita, as well.
The picture above, found at Kuntillet Ajrud, shows one of the drawings with an inscription mentioning Yahweh and Asherah.
Judean Coin, 4th century BCE, silver, British Museum, London Coin that bears the inscription yhd (or yhw, which could refer to Yahweh sitting on a single wheel) is unique in that it depicts a deity that appears to be like Zeus.
Saturn from a series of The Seven Planets. Riding a chariot drawn by dragons to right; holding a scythe in his right hand and a child by its leg in his left hand; below a farmer ploughing a field at left; another slaughtering a pig at right; from a series of seven engravings of planetary gods riding chariots with signs of the Zodiac represented on the wheels. Engraving Print made by Virgil Solis School/style: German Date: 1530-1562 British Museum number: 1871,1209.517
Another pagan psychopomp demi-god and hero, Orpheus, like Mithras, wore a Phrygian cap. Orpheus was also equated with Phanes. Phanes is depicted as a man with eagle wings, bull, lion, and goat heads on mid-waist, coiled by a snake, surrounded by a procession of zodiac.
Mithras is also surrounded by the procession of the zodiac, bursting from the stone, like the Orphic egg. Phanes also contains the same animal characteristics of the Tetramorph Cherub (the living creature) from Ezekiel and Revelation, plus a goat and a snake.
The birth of Mithras from the Mithraeum at Housesteads, MOA 43731, ca. third century; Museum of Antiquities, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK; The Bridgeman Art Library.
Why exactly is Mithras bursting out from a cracked open stone or egg while surrounded by the Zodiac? The answer can be found in David Ulansey’s article “Mithras and the Hypercosmic Sun.”[22] Could this “Hypercosmic Sun” be the same as the transcosmic “eye of light” we saw earlier in Chapter 3?
As is well known, Porphyry, quoting Eubulus, explains in the Cave of the Nymphs that the Mithraic cave in which Mithras kills the bull and which the Mithraic temple imitates was meant to be an image of the cosmos (De Antro. 6). Of course, the hollow Mithraic cave would have to be an image of the cosmos as seen from the inside. But caves are precisely hollows within the rocky earth, which suggests the possibility that the rock out of which Mithras is born is meant to represent the cosmos as seen from the outside. Confirmation of this interpretation is provided by the fact that the rock out of which Mithras is born is often shown entwined by a snake, a detail which unmistakably evokes the famous Orphic motif of the snake-entwined cosmic egg out of which the cosmos was formed when the god Phanes emerged from it at the beginning of time. It thus seems reasonable to conclude that the rock in the Mithraic scenes of the “rock-birth” of Mithras is a symbol for the cosmos as seen from the outside, just as the cave (the hollow within the rock) is a symbol for the cosmos as seen from the inside.
I would argue, therefore, that the “rock-birth” of Mithras is a symbolic representation of his “hypercosmic” nature. Capable of moving the entire universe, Mithras is essentially greater than the cosmos, and cannot be contained within the cosmic sphere. He is therefore pictured as bursting out of the rock that symbolizes the cosmos (not unlike the prisoner emerging from the cosmic cave described by Plato in Rep. VII), breaking through the boundary of the universe represented by the rock’s surface and establishing his presence in the “hypercosmic place” indicated by the space into which he emerges outside of the rock.
Another article, over at the website Hellenic Faith[23], also emphasis on Mithras’ ascension as being synonymous with the conflagration and the rebirth of a new universe. The article points out how Ariomanus, the lion-headed demiurge:
Ariomanus keeps all souls bound to this world which He rules over, however it is Ariomanus who is seen to hold the keys to heaven. Ariomanus is not an evil entity- Ariomanus is a servant of divine will. It is through Ariomanus can humans escape the material and reach the spiritual realm and allows humans to reach their spiritual realm. Ariomanus, as imprisoner of the spiritual, is himself the means by which the soul of the initiate can find henosis.
…
The rock He springs from not only represent the cosmos, but the Earth itself; and He is born out of the boundaries of the cosmos. He is the God of light; bursting forth from the vault of the heavens behind the rocky mountains. This rock is the world cave, within the zodiac, and it is from fire; for He is escaping from the old universe into the new. Already at birth He is ruler of the world, kosmokrator.
Could Mithras’ ascension also connect to Jesus’s resurrection, as well? Likewise, Aion/Chronos is depicted as a winged leontocephaline, trapped by a snake, standing on stone or orb. The leontocephaline figure also has an angry countenance with the signs of the zodiac often inscribed along the snake’s body, and often carrying one or two keys in his hands. This figure, no doubt, resembles the later Gnostic demon Yaldabaoth. The carrying of the keys reminds us of the Roman Janus, the witchcraft god of crossroads, as well as the Zoroastrian primal god, Zurvan, who also holds the “keys of time.” There is also the Syriac element represented by the goddess Atargatis (portrayed with a snake wound about her), the Orphic and Egyptian influence of Serapis, along with the Mesopotamian god Nergal.
Aion is also the god of Unlimited Time (sometimes conflated as the Saeculum, Cronus, or Saturn) who emerged from the primordial Chaos, and who in turn, generated Heaven and Earth. He typically holds a scepter, keys, or a thunderbolt, as stated by Origen in Contra Celsus (6. XXII.). Origen also identifies the leontocephaline and his connections to the Mithraic seven gates, and their astral correlations. The eighth gate is guarded by the leontocephaline, who holds within his hand the key to the gate.[24]
Ariomanus.
Serapis.
Taken from Franz Cumont’s “The Mysteries of Mithras.” This bas-relief was discovered in a mithraeum discovered in the i6th century in Rome, between the Quirinal and the Viminal. “Naked to the waist; the limbs clothed in wide trousers; the arms extended; and in each hand a torch. From the back four wings issue, two pointing upwards and two down wards, and around each is a serpent. Before the god is a circular burning altar, and from his mouth a band representing his breath extends to the fire of the altar.” (p. 110)
Aion, the god of eternity, standing inside a celestial sphere or wheel, decorated with zodiac signs.
The keys as an emblem of Papal authority.
St. Peter.
St. Peter is also portrayed as a patron saint holding the “keys” of the kingdom. The Gnostic influenced psychologist, Carl Jung, also explicitly compares the Mithraic Aion with St. Peter, as quoted in by Jung in Contexts: A Reader by Paul Bishop (p. 71).
In the cult of Mithras there was a peculiar kind of god, the key god Aion, whose presence could not be explained; but I think it is quite understandable. He is represented with the winged body of a man and the head of a lion, and he is encoiled by a snake which rises up over his head...He is Infinite Time and Long Duration; he is the supreme god of the Mithraic hierarchy and creates and destroys all things...He is a sun-god. Leo is the zodiacal sign where the sun dwells in summer, while the snake symbolizes the winter or wet time. So Aion, the lion-headed god with the snake around his body, again represents the union of opposites, light and dark, male and female, creation and destruction.
The god is represented as having his arms crossed and holding a key in each hand. He’s the spiritual father of St. Peter, for he, too, holds the keys. The keys which Aion is holding are the keys to the past and the future.
Finally, we must also consider Peter Mark Adams’s theory that all these pagan deities are masks of the same hypercosmic demiurge. Adams explains this in the Game of Saturn (p. 112).
The demiurge, or kosmokrator, governs the cycles of time and is both the creator and the destroyer of worlds. Whether depicted as a lion headed, winged man (the Mithraic Leontocephalus known as Helios Mithras, Sol Invictus or Aeon), as a powerful younger man turning the wheel of the zodiac (the Orphic deity, Phanes) or as a ram-headed serpent (Serapis), the demiurge stands over and controls the gates of the sun, to which he holds the key. He bears an inclined staff representing control over the Earth’s polar axis and hence its daily rotation, seasonal variations and longer aeonic cycles associated with Plato’s Great Year arising from the aeonic precision of the equinoxes. We find all of the essential attributes of the hypercosmic demiurge represented in a 2nd to 3rd century C E representation of the Orphic god Phanes that formed part of the d-Este art collection.
The lion-headed Mithraic deity is suggestive of a continuous power of both creating and destroying life; a feature reflected in the myth of Amon-Saturn eating his own children and vomiting them out again.
Saturnian Symbols of the Titans
Let us examine the words of Walter O. Moeller in The Mithraic Origin and the Meanings of the Rotas-Sator Square (p. 7-8), who connects Jesus’ baptism with Aion’s birthday on January 6.
As a god of time, Saturnus-Aion was thought of as the beginning and the end. He had ruled in the age of gold and would come again to install the Saturnian regnum. The sacred season for Saturn, Sol and Aion was the end of the would year and the start of the new: the Saturnalia or Kronia began on Dec. 17th and probably lasted several days; the birthday of the Sun was Dec. 25th and in Egypt that date was the Kronia, the birthday of Kronus; similarly in Alexandria the birthday of Aion was Jan. 6th.
The gods like Aion, Saturn and the Sun are essentially manifestations of the same hypercosmic deity. The same author also connects the “SATOR god”[27] of the magical “Sator Square” and “Pater Noster” (Our Father) with Saturnus-Aion. He also connects Aion with the solar-cross, either as X or t and the A and Ω (Alpha and Omega)—a title that also belongs to Jesus Christ of Revelation. Aion is also explicitly mentioned in PGM IV.1115, and calls the primeval first power, “O great, greatest, round, incomprehensible figure of the cosmos...” as well as being glorified as the:
...God of gods, the one who brought order to the cosmos, ΑΡΕΩ ΠΙΕΥΑ the one who gathered together the abyss at the invisible foundation of its position, ΠΕΡΩ ΜΥΣΗΛ Ο ΠΕΝΤΩΝΑΞ the one who separated heaven and earth and covered the heaven with eternal, golden wings ΡΩΔΗΡΥ ΟΥΩΑ.
The Sator Square itself is a remarkable ancient inscription found throughout the Roman Empire (1st to 4th C.E.) containing five words read as a perfect palindrome or mirror-like inscription, not only readable in forward and reverse, but also up and down. The Emperor Constantine’s Chi-Rho or the Christogram is also a variation of the Sator or Rotar Square. The origins of these symbols point to a syncretic cross-pollination of Egyptian, Orphic, Gnostic and Mithraic influences. The Sator square predates Christianity, so that would be again more evidence that Mithraic sun worship was absorbed into Christianity. Satan also can be found in this Mithraic riddle in the form of Saturn. The Sator Square was found buried in the ruins of Pompeii.
In this square, you can read forwards, backwards, up, or down, and still get the same message. The Star Square is made up of five Latin words: Rotas, Opera, Tenet, Arepo and Sator. Rotas at the top is Sator backwards. And you can see Rotas down on the left side, as well while Sator down the right side. And here in the middle, Arepo, is Opera, “work,” backwards.
Chi-Rho’s origin, however, stems from the Hellenised ankh (otherwise known as the Key of Life or the Crux Ansata), a religious symbol of pharaonic Egypt and associated, through the Osiris myth, with resurrection. The Nile ceremony for this is, therefore, probably the source of riverine baptism; such a Roman example is the drowning of Antinous and his subsequent resurrection as a divine man by Hadrian, commemorated on the Obelisk of Antinous on the Pincio Hill in Rome. Phil Norfleet traces the Chi-Rho to the ancient Egyptian myth of Isis and Horus, as quoted earlier.
We commonly call the son of the widowed Isis, Horus, because that is the name the Greeks gave him. In the Egyptian language, his name is “Khoor” spelled with two hieroglyphics that correspond exactly to the two Greek letters Chi = X and Rho = P. Thus, a common symbol for Horus in Egypt and elsewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean, particularly among the Greek population, was “XP” (Chi + Rho). The use of the XP symbol for Horus was in use many centuries before the time of Jesus.
Accordingly. I must conclude that the early Christians took the Egyptian XP symbol to represent their own version of the Savior god, Jesus, known as the Christ (in Greek = Anointed One).
For other authors[28], the first two Greek letters of Chi Rho connect to the aeonic union between Christ and Sophia. The Gnostic mythicist Gerald Massey in Natural Genesis Vol. 1 (pp. 434-435), connects Emperor Constantine with the Pharaonic Egyptian religion.
The cross that was seen in heaven by Constantine was that of the four quarters. Hence he had himself represented in the solar character as the Slayer of the Dragon. After his victory over Licinus, he was portrayed at his palace in Nicomedia with the cross on his head and a transfixed dragon writhing at his feet. This is the same imagery as that of the cross established on the serpent found in the ruins of Palenque. One of the coins of Constantine also shows the Labarum standing upon the conquered serpent.
The meaning of this is simply the cycle founded for ever on the four quarters, and the cross is nothing more than a type of duration. So far from the typology showing that Constantine was a worshipper of the Christian Christ, it proves that he himself was the Christ intended, who was added to the cross and dragon of the pre-Christian imagery. On one of his coins the four-armed Greek cross appears beside a figure of the sun-god (not a pretended portrait of any historical Christ), and on the reverse Soli invicti comiti.
He was assimilated to the sun-god, whom he represented just as the Pharaohs impersonated Horus or Ra, and in that character he was the Bishop of the Christian Church. Wilkinson remarks upon the (to him) strange and startling fact that the first cross found in Egypt belonging to the Christians is not the cross which was substituted in after times, but the Crux Ansata, the Ankh-sign of life.
“The early Christians of Egypt,” he says, “adopted the Ankh in lieu of the Roman cross, which was afterwards substituted for it, and prefixed it to inscriptions in the same manner as the cross in later times. I can attest that the Ankh holds this position in the sepulchres of the Great Oasis, and that numerous inscriptions headed by the Ankh are preserved to this day on early Christian monuments.” That is, the supposed emblem and proof of a crucified Christ is purely Egyptian, and has no relation either direct or typical to the crucifixion, which has been all along ignorantly assumed to give its significance to the cross. This Ankh-sign proves the Christians to have belonged to the Osirian religion, the Christ of which was Horus, the Christ who was continued by the Gnostics.
The truth is that pagan sun worship symbolism connected to Satanism and the occult (as we saw earlier) can be found in Christianity. The twelve disciples of Jesus and himself can be compared to the sun and the twelve Zodiac signs. Coincidentally, one of the apostles is named Thomas, who is thought of as a “twin of Jesus,” which corresponds exactly to Gemini. Furthermore, Jesus was visited by Zoroastrian Magi at his birth in Matthew, and he was born of a virgin just like Mithras. Jesus’s death is celebrated very close to the vernal equinox, which marks the symbolic rising of the sun and the beginning of spring. His birth is celebrated on the date of Saturnalia and symbolizes the setting of the sun.
The early Christian apologists like the Church Fathers (such as St. Athanasius and Justin Martyr), had to deal with these sorts of accusations from Roman pagans because the sun worship correspondences are there for all to see. Ishtar/Astaroth/Astarte worship was also assimilated into Orthodoxy through the image of the Virgin Mary, who took on the title of Queen of Heaven, a designation for these goddesses going back to ancient Sumer. St. Peter took on the role of Janus, holding the keys to the kingdom and symbolized by the rooster, two symbols also used for Mithras and Zurvan. Christianity is very pagan in a lot of respects. A significant reason that Jews rejected Jesus was that they thought it was a paganized Semitic cult that worshiped a human demigod. The “man-child” of Revelation 12 also connects to the Madonna-Child cults of the ancients with Mary and Jesus’s pagan equivalents such as Ishtar and Tammuz, Isis and Horus, Cybele and Attis, Anahita and Mithra, Maia, and Hermes, among many other gods.
The early Christians, Paul and his disciples, the Gnostics, and their successors generally, regarded Christianity and Judaism as essentially distinct. The latter being essentially the pagan origins of Judaism was also seen, in their view, was an antagonistic system, and from a lower origin. “Ye received the law,” said Stephen, “from the ministration of angels,” (Acts 7:53) or aeons, and not from the Most High Himself. Under the monotheistic stucco of Judaism[29], we have unearthed the same familiar mythology of paganism. The Gnostics, as we have seen, taught that Jehovah, the Deity of the Jews, was Ialdabaoth, the son of the ancient Bohu, or Chaos, the adversary of Divine Wisdom. Gnosticism itself also shares many connections with pre-Christian pagan traditions, as well.
Even the arch-heretic magician, Marcus observed the pagan rites and signs, like the pentagram, in his theurgical rituals and Eucharistic host as a circular symbol for solar worship, according to Irenaeus (Against Heresies, Book 1, 17, 1), if we are to believe his testimony.
They maintain, then, that first of all the four elements, fire, water, earth, and air, were produced after the image of the primary Tetrad above, and that then, we add their operations, viz., heat, cold, dryness, and humidity, an exact likeness of the Ogdoad is presented. They next reckon up ten powers in the following manner:— There are seven globular bodies, which they also call heavens; then that globular body which contains these, which also they name the eighth heaven ; and, in addition to these, the sun and moon. These, being ten in number, they declare to be types of the invisible Decad, which proceeded from Logos and Zoe.
As to the Duodecad , it is indicated by the zodiacal circle, as it is called; for they affirm that the twelve signs do most manifestly shadow forth the Duodecad , the daughter of Anthropos and Ecclesia...The sun also, who runs through his orbit in twelve months, and then returns to the same point in the circle... Also the circumference of the zodiacal circle itself contains three hundred and sixty degrees (for each of its signs comprises thirty); and thus also they affirm, that by means of this circle an image is preserved of that connection which exists between the twelve and the thirty. Still further, asserting that the earth is divided into twelve zones, and that in each zone it receives power from the heavens, according to the perpendicular [position of the sun above it], bringing forth productions corresponding to that power which sends down its influence upon it, they maintain that this is a most evident type of the Duodecad and its offspring.
What the Sator square seems to be saying is that “Sower” may also be the Demiurge himself who used the fragments of the crucified Logos to create the world. The wheels refer to the Cherubim angels, the Demiurge rides upon when traveling throughout the cosmos. This is what the Manichaeans also believed.[30] Matthew points out that the Sower is a good person (since he is an allegory of the god of the Jews), while his enemy is the devil:
24 Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25 But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. (Matthew 13:24-25)
But in Mark, there is no trace of the presumed goodness of the Sower. Rather, Mark 4:27-28, insists on the ignorance and blindness of the Sower:
A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.
Moreover, we know who the ignorant god par excellence is—the Demiurge. In a way, the Logos was crucified when he descended in the world (like we see in texts like the Ascension of Isaiah, as we will see later). The simple contact with the world is already per se a crucifixion. The seeds in the Parable are sown by the Sower (Demiurge). The great originality of the scholar, Robert Price, is to see (as allegorized by the Parable of Sower) the myth of the celestial crucifixion of the Primal Man (“Christ”) by the same Demiurge (and his archons), to give spiritual life to a world otherwise “without form and void.” In other terms, the raised bronze serpent (a kind of Prometheus) was Christ. This also connects to the idea that Jesus names Himself the Foundation of the Earth in Revelation 13:8, as quoted earlier. This idea sets up a vast, gigantic war between the children of light and darkness since Satan/Lucifer was also considered a (temporal) guardian overlord of the world or cosmos, and a previous, interdimensional civilization ruled over by his angels.
Sator squares, however, are strictly related to talismans featuring the riddle. One can find these in Solomonic grimoires and magical texts like the Abramelin, which are used for the primary purpose of summoning angels and demons. They are magnets for spirits, essentially, and are a common device used in occult rituals. Perhaps the Sator squares are somehow related to the Urim and Thummim or the Tablets of Destiny since they too are divinatory devices. On a side note, Urim is mentioned without Thummim early in the book of Samuel, yet here it only says that “Yahweh did not answer with dreams, Urim, or prophets,” which means he did not care to communicate utilizing Urim and Thummim. Hence, the verse does not necessarily lend support to the Priestly use of it and perhaps even condemns it as witchcraft (1 Samuel 28:6, 28:15). The Priestly sect consulted with an occult device used for divination, which is tantamount to flirting with demons. The Priestly text describes the use of the device as follows:
29 So Aaron shall bear the names of the sons of Israel in the breastpiece of judgment on his heart when he goes into the holy place, for a continual remembrance before the Lord. 30 In the breastpiece of judgment you shall put the Urim and the Thummim, and they shall be on Aaron’s heart when he goes in before the Lord; thus Aaron shall bear the judgment of the Israelites on his heart before the Lord continually. Exodus 28:19-30 (NRSV)
The Hebrew word mishpat refers to the act of planning or answering a question about what to do. The Urim and Thummim were used to ask God a question, to which he answered yes or no. Also, “Urim” is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and “Thummim” is the last, which suggests that the Urim and Thummim contained an alphabet, in addition to its yes/no function. If this interpretation is correct, the Urim and Thummim must have been very much like a Ouija board, since Ouija boards communicate employing both an alphabet and a yes/no function. Since exorcists generally agree that Ouija boards are a fast track for demonic possession, and since the Urim and Thummim were so like Ouija boards, we should ponder if the Urim and Thummim were devices for divination which connected the priests to the demonic realm.
As mentioned earlier, Alpha (α or Α) and Omega (ω or Ω) are the first and the last letters of the Greek alphabet and are an appellation of Christ or God in the Book of Revelation, as well as Isaiah 44:6, “This is what the LORD says—Israel’s King and Redeemer, the LORD Almighty: I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God.”
The Apocalypse suggested this symbol, where many believe that Christ, as well as the Father, is: the First and the Last” (ii, 8); “the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (cf., xxii, 13; i, 8). These couple of letters are used as Christian symbols and are often combined with the Cross, Chi-rho, or other Christian symbols. Below is an image of the Chi-Rho with a wreath symbolizing the victory of the Resurrection, above Roman soldiers, circa 350.
The Chi-Rho can also be connected to Plato’s World Soul or the anima mundi, found in the Timaeus and celestial equator and the solar ecliptic path, alluding to the mystery of the pre-existent Christ or Logos. This also recalls Constantine’s legendary vision of the Cross in the heavens and in the Didache, which says “sign of extension in heaven” (sēmeion ekpetaseōsen ouranō).
This description also matches with Irenaeus’ account (Against Heresies 1.3.5) on how the Valentinian Christians viewed the hidden, metaphysical side of the Cross:
They show, further, that that Horos of theirs, whom they call by a variety of names, has two faculties,-the one of supporting, and the other of separating; and in so far as he supports and sustains, he is Stauros, while in so far as he divides and separates, he is Horos. They then represent the Saviour as having indicated this twofold faculty: first, the sustaining power, when He said, “Whosoever doth not bear his cross (Stauros), and follow after me, cannot be my disciple; ” and again, “Taking up the cross follow me; ” but the separating power when He said, “I came not to send peace, but a sword.” They also maintain that John indicated the same thing when he said, “The fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge the floor, and will gather the wheat into His garner; but the chaff He will burn with fire unquenchable.”
By this declaration He set forth the faculty of Horos. For that fan they explain to be the cross (Stauros), which consumes, no doubt, all material objects, as fire does chaff, but it purifies all them that are saved, as a fan does wheat. Moreover, they affirm that the Apostle Paul himself made mention of this cross in the following words: “The doctrine of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but to us who are saved it is the power of God.” And again: “God forbid that I should glory in anything save in the cross of Christ, by whom the world is crucified to me, and I unto the world.”
We must also remember that in Platonic thought, it was thought that the Monad or the One was a perfect being of perfect shape and form, and to Plato, the most perfect shape was the sphere, hence Aiōn’s description as a great “round” incomprehensible demiurge or Sol Invictus that gives shape and light to the primeval chaos.[31] Finally, Epiphanius (Panarion, 22,8) describes an Alexandrian mystery festival that took place January 5th-6th, coinciding with the Orthodox Christian Epiphany. This perhaps gives us more clues as to who the “male-child” is per Revelation 12.
First, at Alexandria, in the Koreum, as they call it; it is a very large temple, the shrine of Kore. They stay up all night singing hymns to the idol with a flute accompaniment. And when they have concluded their nightlong vigil, torchbearers descend into an underground shrine after cockcrow and bring up a wooden image which is seated naked on a litter. It has a sign of the cross inlaid with gold on its forehead, two other such signs, one on each hand and two other signs, one actually on each of its two knees—altogether five signs with a gold impress. And they carry the image itself seven times around the innermost shrine with flutes, tambourines and hymns, hold a feast, and take it back down to its place underground. And when you ask them what this mystery means, they reply that today, at this hour Kore—that is, the Virgin—gave birth to Aion.
In the initiatory orders dedicated to Mithras, Pater would be the highest degree—representing the Saturnian Aion as well.[32] At the same time, “Pater” could also reflect the “god of this world” being Satan, according to St. Paul in 2 Corinthians 3. Accordingly, there are many pagan and Christian historians that connect child sacrifice to Chronos/Saturn/Molech/Baal-Hammon/Dagon worship (since all these names function as masks for the same deity). Baal-Peor was also worshipped by obscene rites (much like Baphomet of the Knights Templar since Baal is also depicted as goat-headed) on Mount Peor. The Israelites also fell into the worship of this idol as later mentioned in Hosea 9:10 (NRSV):
Like grapes in the wilderness, I found Israel. Like the first fruit on the fig tree, in its first season, I saw your ancestors. But they came to Baal-peor, and consecrated themselves to a thing of shame, and became detestable like the thing they loved.
In Plutarch’s (ca. 110 AD) De Superstitione, chapter 13 (via Lacus Curtius)[33] informs us about Chronos child sacrifice devotion and worship, something of which Yahweh in the Old Testament expressly forbids:
Would it not then have been better for those Gauls and Scythians to have had absolutely no conception, no vision, no tradition, regarding the gods, than to believe in the existence of gods who take delight in the blood of human sacrifice and hold this to be the most perfect offering and holy rite?
Again, would it not have been far better for the Carthaginians to have taken Critias or Diagoras to draw up their law-code at the very beginning, and so not to believe in any divine power or god, rather than to offer such sacrifices as they used to offer to Cronos? These were not in the manner that Empedocles describes in his attack on those who sacrifice living creatures:
“Changed in form is the son beloved of his father so pious,
“Who on the altar lays him and slays him. What folly!”
No, but with full knowledge and understanding they themselves offered up their own children, and those who had no children would buy little ones from poor people and cut their throats as if they were so many lambs or young birds; meanwhile the mother stood by without a tear or moan; but should she utter a single moan or let fall a single tear, she had to forfeit the money, and her child was sacrificed nevertheless; and the whole area before the statue was filled with a loud noise of flutes and drums took the cries of wailing should not reach the ears of the people.
Or does He? Yahweh himself goes out of his way to punish the rebellious Israelites by forcing them to offer their first-born as a fiery sacrifice because they went off worshiping strange gods like Moloch.
Then I thought I would pour out my wrath upon them and spend my anger against them in the wilderness. 22 But I withheld my hand, and acted for the sake of my name, so that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations, in whose sight I had brought them out. 23 Moreover I swore to them in the wilderness that I would scatter them among the nations and disperse them through the countries, 24 because they had not executed my ordinances, but had rejected my statutes and profaned my sabbaths, and their eyes were set on their ancestors’ idols. 25 Moreover I gave them statutes that were not good and ordinances by which they could not live. 26 I defiled them through their very gifts, in their offering up all their firstborn, in order that I might horrify them, so that they might know that I am the Lord. (Ezekiel 20:22-26) (NRSV)
Jeremiah 32:35 (KJV), however, makes it clear that Yahweh despised the occult practices of the Canaanites, which include child sacrifice.
And they built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin.
Leviticus 20:1-8 (KJV) also makes a similar proclamation against Moloch sacrifice.
20 And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,
2 Again, thou shalt say to the children of Israel, Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth any of his seed unto Molech; he shall surely be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones.
3 And I will set my face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people; because he hath given of his seed unto Molech, to defile my sanctuary, and to profane my holy name.
4 And if the people of the land do any ways hide their eyes from the man, when he giveth of his seed unto Molech, and kill him not:
5 Then I will set my face against that man, and against his family, and will cut him off, and all that go a whoring after him, to commit whoredom with Molech, from among their people.
6 And the soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards, to go a whoring after them, I will even set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from among his people.
7 Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy: for I am the Lord your God.
8 And ye shall keep my statutes, and do them: I am the Lord which sanctify you.
However, in an interview with the scholar Thom Stark, he succinctly summarizes the trauma of human sacrifice and Judaism.[34]
Well the evidence is complex, and I lay much of it out in my book. But the short version is that human sacrifice was a rare but widespread practice in ancient Near Eastern religion, and there is evidence that until about the seventh and sixth centuries BCE, it was an acceptable part of Israelite and Judean religion as well. There’s the story of the near-sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham. It is popularly believed that because an angel prevented Abraham from killing his son at the last moment, the story constitutes a condemnation of child sacrifice. But that’s not the case. Isaac is spared not because human sacrifice is seen to be immoral, but because Isaac was the child of promise and needed to survive. In reality, the account depends upon the logic of human sacrifice, because Abraham is praised for his willingness to kill his own son to appease Yahweh.
There is evidence that ancient Israelites believed that human sacrifices could be offered to Yahweh in exchange for victory in battle against their enemies. The Israelite warrior Jephthah sacrificed his virgin daughter to Yahweh in fulfillment of a vow he made in order to secure Yahweh’s help in battle. The same ideology can be seen in some early accounts of the Canaanite conquest, in which Yahweh gives Israelites victory against Canaanite armies, and the Israelites in turn slaughter all of the women and children in payment to Yahweh for his aid.
There’s also evidence that Yahweh commanded human sacrifice in the law of Moses. Later, when the practice of human sacrifice fell into disrepute among elite circles, the prophet Ezekiel confirms that Yahweh commanded human sacrifice, but interprets that command as a form of punishment for Israel’s disobedience. Ezekiel needed a way to deal with that tradition found in Exodus 22, and did so by claiming that Yahweh ordered them to kill their firstborn sons as a way of getting back at them for their lack of faith in him. Obviously Ezekiel’s solution to the problem was problematic in itself, but at least we can thank him for helping to put an end to the institution of child sacrifice in Israelite religion.
Perhaps the Devil altered reality and inserted a bunch of human sacrifice verses into the Bible to make God look bad? Perhaps all this talk of child sacrifice explains the Gospel of Philip’s saying of “God is a man-eater. For this reason, men are sacrificed to him. Before men were sacrificed, animals were being sacrificed, since those to whom they were sacrificed were not gods.”
Child sacrifice was the standard religious practice for the time in which Jah was adopted by the Jews and was sacrificed to as such for most of the ancient Israelite history. That the Jewish god was the only Semitic deity to not demand child sacrifice is done for propaganda purposes by Jewish scribes, rabbis, and Christian apologists who wanted to differentiate their god as the one, true omnibenevolent god above all others.
A similar thing happened with Zeus. Originally, Zeus was the Greek equivalent of Jupiter, and son of Cronus/Saturn, but after Zeus supplanted Cronus and became the head of the Greek pantheon, he took on characteristics of numerous gods, including Cronus and Helios. It is easy to suppose it is just the natural evolution of a deity as its particular cult of worship expands to the exclusion of other gods. The one god becomes many, and the many, in turn, become one. Zeus became so elevated that eventually “Zeus” became a generic noun for God, just like El. However, El was originally a different deity than Yahweh, as was Zeus and Cronus. Perhaps particular deity cults like to see their god as the supreme god and so appropriate and reinterpret other deities as simply other hypostases as their own god. The same thing happened when Christianity conquered Rome and appropriated the Roman pagan deities and transformed them into saints.
Saturn can also be depicted as a child-devouring deity or demonic idol, much like the bull-faced Baal-Peor/Molech/Bacchus. Eusebius in Praeperatio Evangelica (X), who quotes Philo of Byblos, tells us about sacrifice among the gods, including Chronos and his son Iedud—paralleling or anticipating the sacrifice of Jesus, the only-begotten Son of God.
It was a custom of the ancients in great crises of danger for the rulers of a city or nation, in order to avert the common ruin, to give up the most beloved of their children for sacrifice as a ransom to the avenging daemons; and those who were thus given up were sacrificed with mystic rites. Chronos then, whom the Phoenicians call Elus, who was king of the country and subsequently, after his decease, was deified as the star Saturn, had by a nymph of the country named Anobret an only begotten son, whom they on this account called ledud, the only begotten being still so called among the Phoenicians; and when very great dangers from war had beset the country, he arrayed his son in royal apparel, and prepared an altar, and sacrificed him.
The hexagram that is said to represent Saturn and the Sun, which is also depicted as a six-pointed star and certainly has three sixes. It contains a six, within a six, within a six: 666. (Count the sides of each triangle facing the clockwise direction, the sides facing the counter-clockwise direction, and the third six—the sides of the inner hexagon).[35] In other words, Israel’s Star of David is the Mark of the Beast. The connection between the Beast and Saturn is emphasized in this numerological relationship. In an article called “Origin of Revelation and the 666”[36](although a pro-Satanic occult-oriented article), it also connects the Sun Lady to Isis, sex-magic, witchcraft, and the number of the Beast. The same article also connects the magic squares to the number of the Beast, 666, and the solar Titan like Helios. “Each line, column or diagonal adds up to 111. The sum of the six lines or six columns is 666. With the numbers arranged thus in magic squares, you can hope to invoke the full power of the sun, the king of the gods.”
The Celtic equivalent to Saturn/Baal-Peor/Baal-Hammon/Molech would be Crom Cruach. According to Irish legend, as Chris Pinard reports, Crom Cruach was an ancient Old One, that demanded child sacrifice for a plentiful harvest in return.[37]
In a 12th century Dinsenchas poem, Crom Cruach is given sacrifice of first-born children in order to ensure a plentiful harvest (grain and milk) “For him ingloriously they slew their hapless firstborn with much wailing and peril, to pour their blood round Cromm Cruaich.” To outsiders (Greeks) this ritualistic child sacrifice mentioned in The Annals might have appeared similar to Cronos eating his children. Further evidentiary support of connections between Cronos and Crom Cruach comes from the fertility associations of both figures. Cronos was a deity who ruled over a Golden age. There was no want during his rule. One of the emblems of Cronos was the scythe (a grain harvesting tool), which could also be seen as a tool of death. In Athens the festival of Kronia was celebrated, wherein Cronos was the central figure. This was a harvest festival. Similarly we find agricultural associations with Crom Cruach in the aforementioned poem.
We know relatively little of Crom Cruach. However, the little information that does survive fits closely with Cronos. In addition to the sacrifices to Crom Cruach previously mentioned, there is a reference to the fact that his statue was plated in gold and was at the center of 12 other statues of gods. “Tis there was the king-idol of Erin, namely the Crom Cróich, and around him twelve idols made of stones; but he was of gold. Until Patrick’s advent, he was the god of every folk that colonized Ireland. To him they used to offer the firstlings of every issue and the chief scions of every clan.” This passage is eerily similar to this quote from Plutarch regarding Cronos: “There is one island where Cronos is prisoner, being guarded in his sleep by Briareus, for sleep has been devised as fetters to bind him, and there are many deities about him as satellites and attendants.” The other passage then mentions: “Cronus himself sleeps within a deep cave resting on a rock which looks like gold.” Both quotes could have been written precisely about Crom Cruach’s shrine in Ireland.
In the article Who were the Nephilim? by Rita Louise,[38] the author points how the earth-born Giants in Greek and Orphic myths, were the progenitors of humanity, instead of the opposite that we see in Genesis and the Enoch literature as the hybrid offspring of angels and humans.
The notion of giants roaming the Earth can be found in cultures around the world. Greek mythology tells us that the Titan, Chronos, castrated his father, Uranus, in order to gain control of the Greek pantheon. It is from the blood of the castrated Uranus that fell upon the Earth that the giants, the ‘Earth-born’, were created. The Earth-born, when compared to us, were giants. The giants, under the rule of Chronos, lived during the golden age, in a time that was free from sorrow or care and everyone lived happy and joyous lives.
It was only after Chronos’ son, Zeus, fought for control of both the heavens and the Earth that everything changed. Zeus, in his new role (according to Greek myth), put the giants to work. It was just a matter of time before the giants starting ignoring the gods’ mandates. They were no longer prostrating themselves to the will of the gods. Their lack of complete servitude and their failure to comply with the gods’ demands incited the ‘children of god’ into a full-blown rebellion against the heavenly gods. Heavy losses were taken on both sides, but their revolution was finally suppressed by the gods. A truce was declared. As part of their reparations to the giants, it was decided to create a new race to handle the burdens that were cast upon the giants: Man.
Padraic Colum, in his book entitled Orpheus, Myths of the World, relates this tale about the creation of Man. Aztec legend recounts how the Earth-mother, Citlalicue, gave birth to a flint knife. When the knife was flung down onto the Earth it was transformed into sixteen hundred ‘Earth-gods’. (Is there a connection between the flint knife flung down by Citlalicue and the sickle used by Chronos to castrate his father?) These newly-formed Earth-gods lived as men and women and laboured in search of food. After some time the Earth-gods began to think that this work was below their station. They were, after all, the children of the Sky-father and Earth-mother. They asked their mother, Citlalicue, to make a race who would serve them and bear the burdens they faced. With the help of Citlalicue mankind was created.
Based upon these mythological traditions, it seems clear that the Earth-born giants, the Nephilim, existed long before man first inhabited the Earth. Thus, when you read the line, ‘the Nephilim were on the Earth in those days – and also afterward’, it seems clear, from this perspective, that the authors were not being vague. Instead, they were just making a statement of fact – that the Nephilim, the Earth-born, were on the Earth at that time.
So, who were the offspring of the sons of God and the daughters of men? The Hebrew Bible refers to them as gibborim. The inferred meaning of this word is men of great stature, heroes, men who are valiant or brave. The Greek Septuagint identifies them as the renominati or men of renown. In Greek mythology the gods have a long history of having relations with humans. The names of some of these ‘demi-gods’, or semi-human individuals, whose names have withstood the test of time include Hercules, Perseus and Achilles. In India they are called Hanuman and Garuda and, in Sumer, Gilgamesh and Adapa.
Two Keys, Two Kingdoms
The Bible speaks of two keys. In Matthew 16:19, it speaks of Jesus, giving the keys of the kingdom of heaven to St. Peter. Revelation 1:18 speaks of Jesus (or God) that He has the keys of hell and death. The keys of the kingdom of heaven, and the keys of hell and death (the Hebrew word for hell, “Sheol,” is equated with death). In Luke 17:21, Jesus says that the kingdom is “within you.” By “within you,” it can either mean within the heart, which is commonly symbolized as love, or it can be the mind, or the divine nous, which means intellect and knowledge. Or it could be some “primordial essence,” or primordial energy, which permeates both mind and heart. This is what the baptism of the initiate in the Hermetic mixing bowl or krater is supposed to represent, which we see in the Fourth Discourse of the Corpus Hermeticum. This also connects to the alabaster Ophite Bowl which is more pagan than Christian. Joseph Campbell in The Mysteries (p. 232), has this to say on the subject:
…the bowl discloses no Christian features. The inscription is Orphic, and in it the name of Zeus appears beside an etymology of the name of another pagan god, Dionysus. This cannot be overlooked, close as the relations of the Gnostic sects to the Orphic and Dionysian mysteries may have been, and ready as the Christian Gnostics were to find their Christ in pagan gods in Zeus, Dionysus, Helios, and particularly the Aeon. It is conceivable, however, that these Ophites, who were described by the early Christian Apologists as Christian heretics, were not real Christians at all, but pagans who invested their mystery god with the traits of the new Christ along with those of various Greek and oriental gods. This question can be settled only when we discover the meaning of the nude figures and their gestures.
Revelation is about, in a metaphysical sense, the trials that the soul (or existence) goes through to reach heavenly perfection. The keys also refer to the control of all reality. Zurvan, the chief god of ancient Persia, is represented as a serpent and represents time, also holds the keys. The symbolism of the serpent in the Hindu Tantric sense is the shakti (feminine energy) that brings enlightenment to people when awakened. So that would mean that awakening the Kundalini spirit can be equivalent to possibly unlocking the secrets of Zurvan. The keys themselves represent having the authority or privilege to see the hidden; it could also be the force or strong-will of the individual that is used to find this knowledge. Perhaps this could give new meaning to St. Paul in Ephesians 5:15-16, who says to walk in light and wisdom, “See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”
Jesus also says in Luke 11:52, “Woe to you lawyers! For you have taken away the key of knowledge. You did not enter in yourselves, and those who were entering in you hindered.” In other words, they had not allowed people to “enter in” or come to the “epignosis”, which is the intelligence, understanding, deeper knowledge, and moral wisdom combined all at once. Jesus commanded his disciples the opposite, that is, to “enter in” the narrow gate of the master’s house, in Luke 13:22-30. The Greek word for “enter” is “eisporeuomai.” It means to “journey in” “go into” or “intervene.” Entering also means “to rise” or to “come into existence.” The soul was draped in ignorance and unreality, before the knowledge of being reborn in “water and spirit” per Jesus in John 3:5. The Greek word for “born again” is “anagennaó.” It means to “beget again” or to “beget into a new life.”
The possession of knowledge is not the exclusive right of priests or bishops or any governing authority. It is the right of all believers. The Epistle to the Hebrews calls Jesus the supreme “high priest,” who offered himself as a perfect sacrifice (7:23–28). Through Christ, all believers have been given direct access to God, just like a priest, as it says in 1 Peter 4-6: “Coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”
In Matthew 16:19, Jesus tells Simon Peter, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Many scholars identified binding and releasing of angels and demons, or the “strong man” as the basis for this passage. While this is still correct, there is also another level of meaning that the Pistis Sophia elaborates. The Pistis Sophia elaborates on ascent practices given by Jesus to his disciples to imitate the Lord’s ascension and conquest of the archons.
Jesus’ disciples remembered his ascension around January 24th, which is the fifteenth day of the month, when the moon was full, and the sun was at its zenith. “And Jesus said to his disciples: ‘I am come forth out of that First Mystery, which is the last mystery, that is the four-and-twentieth mystery’” (Pistis Sophia 1:1). Their ceremonies ended on the next day at the ninth hour, when they believed Jesus’ ascension into the Kingdom of Light was completed. Initiation begins with a robing ceremony when the initiate, like Jesus, dons a luminous garment and makes an initial ascent to the gate in the firmament-dome above the earth (Pistis Sophia, 11). Could this connect to the same royal-light garments mentioned in Revelation 3 and even the apocryphal Cave of Treasures?
“It came to pass then, when I saw the mystery of all these words in the vesture which was sent me, that straightway I clothed myself therewith, and I shone most exceedingly and soared into the height.”
“I came before the [first] gate of the firmament, shining most exceedingly, and there was no measure for the light which was about me, and the gates of the firmament were shaken one over against another and all opened at once.”
“And all rulers and all authorities and all angels therein were thrown all together into agitation because of the great light which was on me. And they gazed at the radiant vesture of light with which I was clad, and they saw the mystery which contains their names, and they feared most exceedingly.”
Once having passed through this gate, the initiate enters the zodiacal houses of the archons, and they become fearful and agitated at the sight of the initiate’s luminous garment. With the magical seals of Jeu, the initiate overcomes and binds the rulers of the houses, like the demonic toll-collectors of the Eastern Orthodox toll-house theory or the dark lords that rule the Underworld where the Peratic Gnostic initiate was said to confront in his descent into the bowels of hell and out of the mouth of the constellation Draco as Hippolytus reports (Ref. 5:11.) With the twelve seals, the initiate binds the planetary rulers in their houses and now has safe passage through the Zodiac. This is the passage of the first mystery according to the Pistis Sophia. In the Gospel According to Mary (8:17-24), the soul in the afterlife faces the spirits of ignorance, darkness, desire, etc.
17) I was not recognized. But I have recognized that the All is being dissolved, both the earthly things and the heavenly. 18) When the soul had overcome the third power, it went upwards and saw the fourth power, which took seven forms. 19) The first form is darkness, the second desire, the third ignorance, the fourth is the excitement of death, the fifth is the kingdom of the flesh, the sixth is the foolish wisdom of flesh, the seventh is the wrathful wisdom. These are the seven powers of wrath.
20) They asked the soul, Whence do you come slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space? 21) The soul answered and said, What binds me has been slain, and what turns me about has been overcome, 22) and my desire has been ended, and ignorance has died. 23) In a aeon I was released from a world, and in a Type from a type, and from the fetter of oblivion which is transient. 24) From this time on will I attain to the rest of the time, of the season, of the aeon, in silence.
De proprietatibus rerum, c.1480
Celsus’ Ophites were also initiates that ascended into the archontic realms, “some became lions, some bulls, and other serpents or eagles or bears or dogs.” It appears that the Ophite ceremonies were also based on their astrology so that they could neutralize and conquer the ruler of each Zodiac sign and make safe passage in the heavens, on the path to the Pleroma, without resistance. Perhaps this could explain Jesus’ commandment of “binding and releasing.”
In the paper “Apostles as Archons”[39] by April DeConick, she places emphasis on Christ’s ministry through the apostles on the Zodiac as depicted in Revelation 21.
The teaching that the twelve apostles are archons is a concept deeply dependent on ancient astrology as it imploded within Gnostic environments. The baseline thought-form of astrology in antiquity is captured in the Hermetic maxim, “as above, so below,” as well as Jesus’ prayer, “as in heaven, so on earth.” It is properly characterized as the reality of heaven-and-earth correspondences, that vertical, analogous, symmetric vision of the world, where what happens in the heavens happens also on the earth. This relationship of correspondences is not always causal or mechanical as one might initially think. Instead, the corresponding relationship between the heavenly event and the earthly one was often viewed as simultaneous. The meaning of the dual events needed to be probed in order to grasp what was really going on.
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The Gnostic literature, although not unique in its astrological underpinnings, is obsessed with mapping the correspondences between the heavens and the earth. The reason for this is that the Gnostic Christian systems of salvation depend upon altering the cosmic structures, physically changing the universe from a cage that traps the spirit to a portal that frees it. The universe before the advent of the Savior Jesus, is not only the creation of a lesser god—who is described as arrogant, jealous, ignorant, and in some cases, evil—but it functions as a prison for the spirit. The prison guards are the celestial beings, the rulers or archons, who reside in the planetary spheres above the earth and in the sublunar realm where the abyss or Hades was believed to be.
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The way that the universe and the human being were designed by the archons means that the spirit is entrapped in the material world. This continues to be so even after death. Upon the death of the body, the soul is seized by a particular archon who is the overseer and judge of souls. Since the soul, from the time of its incarnation until its release at death, is under the influence of the demonic archons, it cannot live piously. It is unable to transform its negative psychic aspects. So it remains impossible for it to gain its freedom and ascend back up the cosmic pole or through the star gates. Nor can it know about the existence of the supreme God, or how to worship that God since it is satiated or asleep, sedated by matter. Since the negative psychic aspects cannot be sloughed off, this also means that, upon the death of the body, the overseer archon is justified to put the soul back into another human body. Over the centuries, the spirit within the soul sinks deeper and deeper into matter. It becomes unconscious, buried alive in a tomb it can never leave.
It is only a divine action external to this cosmic system that can alter this situation. So Gnostic systems rely on the descent of redeemer gods into the universe to save the spirit. The most powerful redeemer god in the Gnostic Christian systems is Jesus, whose advent and death result in a physical restructuring of the cosmos. The story of his birth star allowed for the theory to take root that a new star was born which replaced the old axis mundi, a bright day star around which the cosmos now revolved. The death of Jesus was interpreted through Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 2:6–8, Ephesians 6:12, and Colossians 2:14–15, as the vanquishing of the cosmic powers. Jesus’ crucifixion was their own. This meant, for Christians, that the cosmic archons and powers no longer controlled their fate, but Jesus did. After death, their souls would be able to ascend from Hades up through the cosmos along the axis mundi, unhindered by the archons. John 10:7, “I am the door,” became a literal reality. The saved would enter the Pleroma through a new door that had opened up out of the heavens—Jesus himself.
This teaching had implications for Jesus’ disciples, who numbered twelve and like the twelve tribes of Israel, were being mapped onto the twelve signs of the Zodiac. The ways in which these correspondences worked appear to have reflected some ways in which the ancient people thought that magic worked. For instance, in order to control demons and conquer them, to bid powers and harness them, magicians operated from the perspective that their actions on earth could and would affect the celestial gods, the stars and the planets. There seem to me to be at least two sorts of actions common to the magic arts. The first is foundational for the practice of exorcism. It is a concept based on a counterpoint. In this performance, the magician is able to subjugate the demon by invoking, through incantations or inscribing angel names, an angel opposite the demon. He might also use a sign of God or Christ to drive out the devil. In this case, the magician uses the principle of antipathy, an opposite power or counterpoint, to neutralize the demon.
An early Christian application of the counterpoint correspondence is known from the Pseudo-Clementine literature. What must have been a widely circulating tradition—that the twelve apostles stood in for the Zodiac—is preserved in the Homilies: “The Lord had twelve apostles, bearing the number of the twelve months of the sun.” This sort of speculation may be as early as the first century in Christianity, and occurred as well in Judaism. The book of Revelation may be our earliest Christian reference to this correspondence when it describes Jerusalem as it descends down through the heavens. Upon the twelve “foundations” of the outer wall encircling the city are inscribed the twelve names of the apostles. Although dated to the early fifth century, there is a Christian artifact housed in the Geneva Museum that visually depicts this counterpoint replacement of the apostles with the Zodiac. Stunningly, Jesus’ image is in the center of a lamp. He is the new axis mundi around with the Zodiac whirls on the rim of the lamp. But the standard Zodiac signs are not present. Rather they have been replaced with the busts of the twelve apostles. Behind each of these examples is an early teaching preserved by the fourth century bishop of Verona, Zeno, and, as we will see later, the second century teacher Theodotus the Valentinian—that converts when baptized are born again under a new set of Zodiac signs which destine them all to heaven. It fits this pattern of belief then that we should have examples of early Christian sarcophagi picturing the twelve apostles with stars, one above each of the apostles’ heads.
The second practice is based on the concept of the counterpart. This is the idea that “like affects like,” where the acts performed by a magician on a “double” were thought to be experienced in duplicate on the magician’s subject. It is imitative by nature, or as Frazer long ago described, “homeopathic,” a description that I still find apropos. The counterpart concept relies behind the making of talismans, effigies, and certain types of amulets. It is believed to be effective because the magician’s subject should experience the same fate as its double—a certain “sympathy” exists between the two.
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In the Gnostic story, Jesus replaced the old cosmic pole, providing a restructuring of the cosmos which allowed for the escape of the trapped spirit. From this it followed, that his disciples must stand in for the Zodiacal signs, which were the archons. Whether this was a positive or negative correspondence, depends on both the peculiar Gnostic tradition engaging the correspondence and the date of the text in which this discussion is occurring. In the end, understanding these correspondences can help us resolve what Gnosticism is. It can help us see how Gnosticism is the culmination of a religio-social process that began as a lodge movement supplementing the synagogue and the church and ended as a new religious movement competing with them and persecuted by them.
Finally, in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, they too specifically mention and worship Sabaoth. In an icon called “God Rested on the Seventh Day” it also depicts Jesus Christ as both a crucified Seraph and passing some sort of red light to Lord Sabaoth.[40] Please note the seven-pointed star of a halo behind Sabaoth’s head and the red wings, possibly signifying the alchemical blood-red Rubedo and the fact that Christ’s descent through the archontic spheres, since all the archons and principalities are often depicted with angel wings. The angel wings could also represent Jesus being crucified by demons in the lower heavens as The Ascension of Isaiah claims, which will be explored in the next chapter.[41]
The Christ Pantocrator of St. Catherine’s Monastery at Sinai.
Christ in Majesty
The icons above also relate to the title “Christ Pantocrator,” with the second title being “Almighty” or “All-powerful” or “Ruler of All.” These are also titles reserved for the enthroned Lord Sabaoth. Whether they be paralemptors, psychopomps, angels, or warrior-priest kings, many of their aspects can be confusing, just as Tau Malachi once said about the Pistis Sophia metaphysics. (Website is now taken down).
...because of the fluid and non-linear nature of the metaphysical dimensions, yet in the experience of the “solar world” it becomes perfectly clear. The virtue of receiving teachings on such things and contemplating them is that it prepares aspirants for the actual experience, serving to open the mind and heart to greater and divine possibilities, and seeding it with Light-power, as it were.”
Indeed, the connections between these gods, demigods, and angels support the psychic realm as not being “cut and dry” like the world of matter is. Melchizedek serves as the role of psychopomp and high priest, just as Mithras, Michael, Zoroaster, Odin, and Hermes. Perhaps Melchizedek functions through or absorbed other divine personalities into his own purposes to purify the souls spread throughout Hades.
Jesus Christ serves as the High-Priest in Hebrews and his divine Eucharist serves as the “poison” or the “anti-matter” to those trapped inside the belly of the Beast or the Demiurge Chronos, much like how Zeus and Metis concoct a plot to free the rest of Chronos’s children trapped inside his belly by tricking him into consuming a vomit-inducing emetic or by slicing his belly open. It allows those held hostages to escape the Underworld. In the Odes of Solomon, Christ is described as “vinegar and bitterness” to Sheol and death and eventually ejecting him and its inhabitants with him that immediately rushed to Jesus’ aid and begged for pity and mercy in the darkness of hell. “Binding and releasing” are simply methods to extract oneself to escape the thrall of Fate and Descent. In the Pistis Sophia (5:136), Jesus tells his disciples about Chronos, who is depicted as being appointed as the chief archon by Yew or Jeu, the Great Angel of the Savior and Melchizedek (also identified as Metatron, the vice-regent of Jah in the same text):
Jesus continued and said: “Hearken then, that I may tell you their mystery. It came to pass then, when Yew had thus bound them, that he drew forth a power out of the great Invisible and bound it to him who is called Chronos. And he drew another power out of Ipsantachounchaïnchoucheōch, who is one of the three triple-powered gods, and bound it to Arēs. And he drew a power out of Chaïnchōōōch, who also is one of the three triple powered gods, and bound it to Hermēs. Again he drew a power out of the Pistis the Sophia daughter of Barbēlō and bound it to Aphroditē.”
Jesus Christ is also seen as the “Stranger” or “Alien” to the cosmos in Gnostic literature. This is even hinted or alluded in the New Testament like in 1 John 2:15-17 (NKJV).
15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. 17 And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.
Likewise, 1 Peter is addressed to the “elect exiles of the dispersion” (1:1, ESV). The metaphor for the Christian as a “stranger” or “alien” in this world is a potent Gnostic symbol. 2 Peter, however, seems to be explicitly aimed against Gnostic heresy, as we saw earlier in the book. In the Gospel of John (6:26,27), Jesus tells his disciples to “not labor for food.” The impression that one must work for eternal life is quickly corrected when Jesus adds, “which the Son of Man will give you.” The Son provides life as a gift (4.10). The Divine Eucharist, through the Divine Liturgy, is represented when Jesus was feeding the multitudes bread (being the gifts), which is equated with the manna that fell from heaven caused by the Messiah, as Moses did (Exodus 16:4, 15).
The people probably also saw this “miracle worker” as the perpetual provider of physical needs rather than spiritual ones. The crowd misrepresented the truth, so Jesus corrected them. The manna had not come from Moses; it had been provided by God, through Christ, satisfying the spiritual hunger forever (4:12,14). This is how one author, Eric Wargo, sees the blood of Christ,[42] as supernatural light, like the idea of the mercurial “universal medicine” or “agent” for immortality.
I think we can really see the Grail as both objects simultaneously, and that its atemporal “absurdity” is essential to the salvific nature of Christ’s blood: How could the blood shed on the Cross have gotten into the cup of the Last Supper other than by having traveled back in time? Christ’s blood is either made of tachyons (hypothetical faster-than-light particles that most physicists currently reject) or is, in effect, outside of linear Time altogether. Only if Christ’s blood is outside of Time and Cause does it make sense that the cup that once ever held it must have always held it and will keep holding it eternally—and there is just one thing known to physics that has those properties: The blood of Christ is, in effect, light.
We see then that, from a Gnostic point of view, Christ’s passion isn’t about anybody called Christ. It is about light and matter and space and time—in other words, causality itself, the very “order of things.” From the fifth-dimensional viewpoint of Dick and Wagner, Christ’s Passion on the cross is kind of solidified, four-dimensional hieroglyph of nothing other than Einstein’s theory of Relativity. Light, like Christ’s saving blood or the Grail that holds it, is unattainable, always at the same distance from us (as long as we are in our fallen, darkened state), yet it is also the very medium of cosmic communion that can save us.
In the Pistis Sophia (142), the Eucharistic meal is described as containing five vessels of water or wine form a triangle around the offering, which includes fire, vine branches and bread.
And Jesus said unto them: ‘Bring me fire and vine branches.’ They brought them unto him. He laid out the offering, and set down two wine-vessels, one on the right and the other on the left of the offering. He disposed the offering before them, and set a cup of water before the wine-vessel on the right and a cup of wine before the wine-vessel on the left and laid loaves according to the number of disciples in the middle between the two cups and set a cup of water behind the loaves.
Before the meal, the Savior prays for the forgiveness of sins. The text breaks off before the meal begins. Probably, the vine branches were burned as incense, while the water and wine were mixed in various proportions.
After Jesus prepares the eucharistic meal, the initiates stand with seals before the offering, and he invokes Upper Aeonic beings with their secret names: “Jesus stood before the offering, set the disciples behind him, all clad with linen garments, and in their hands the cipher (seal) of the name of the Treasury of the Light, and he made the invocation thus, saying: ‘Hear me, O Father, father of all fatherhood, boundless light: iao iouo iao aoi oia psinother theropsin opsither mepththomaoth nephiomaoth’ (etc).” (5:136).
Melchizedek is essentially a savior figure who is both the offerer and the offering. As the offerer (the High Priest), he celebrates the last supper. As the offering (the crucified), he is the one who will be sacrificed. Thus, the savior’s offering is understood as a self-sacrifice. The eucharistic meal is a rite in which the participants recognize that their own death, like the savior’s death, will be a self-sacrifice. Through it, they participate in the sacred sacrifice and, like the savior, will be resurrected to return to the One. In this sense, the offerer offers himself (i.e.) sacrifices himself and all the Elect, as stated in the Gnostic text, Melchizedek.
“I (Melchizedek) have come to reveal to you the truth, which is within the brethren. He (the saviour) included himself in the living offering, together with your offspring. He offered them up as an offering to the All.”
“I (Melchiedek) have offered up myself to you as an offering, together with those that are mine, to you yourself, (O) Father of the All, and those whom you love, who have come forth from you who are holy (and) living.”
Through the eucharistic meal, Jesus shares the bread and wine with his followers, thus “spreading” his sacrifice to all the Elect, as stated in the Gospel of Philip: “The Eucharist is Jesus. For he is called in Syriac ‘Pharisatha’ which is ‘the one who is spread out’.” In other words, the light of the Anointed is dispersed throughout the world, or the lower aeon like manna to “save” or regenerate the elect still entrapped in matter. Early church fathers described Jesus as the holy guardian angel of the whole world and believed that nation states, individuals and even families had guardian angels sent by God the Trinity to preach the Holy Gospel.
Jesus was also associated with the Angel of the Lord in Zechariah 3:1-10, where Joshua functions as a Melchizedek. Joshua faces both the Angel of the Lord and Satan. “The Lord said to Satan, ‘The Lord rebuke you, Satan!’” Considering the participants mentioned in v. 1, we could read this verse in this fashion: “And the Lord, that is the angel of the Lord, said unto Satan, ‘The Lord rebuke you, Satan.’” Therefore, v. 2 identifies a distinction between the angel of the Lord and the Lord. This connects to El Elyon and His Anointed Son, Yahweh, or Jesus.
In Matthew 1:22-23, Jesus is referred to as “Immanuel,” which is an angelic name originally used in Isaiah 7:14. Isaiah 9:6 says that the Messiah’s name will mean “Angel of Great Counsel” a title similar to that of Metatron, which is also a title or divine office. Justin Martyr was one of the first church fathers to admit that although Christ is fully God, and has the same nature as God, he remains distinct from the Father. The Son of God was also the uncreated Angel of God. In other words, for Justin, there are at least two persons in the Godhead or a sort of proto-trinitarian doctrine.[43]
The later church fathers attempted to refute this widespread belief which Arius supported. Jesus officially lost his angelhood when the Roman Emperor Constantine I convened the Council of Nicaea in 325. There, bishops were charged with turning the still varied and sometimes conflicting conceptions of God, Christ, and Christianity into a single, unified theology, where Nicaea defined Christ as totally divine, as of the same substance as God.
Nicaea was established to refute Arius’s doctrines of Jesus as a lesser, created being and the Monarchian heresy. The Church Fathers, before Nicaea, like Irenaeus and Hippolytus, were obviously dead set against Gnosticism and Marcionite theology. Jehovah’s Witnesses also reject the Trinity and the Nicene Creed and likewise would be condemned as heretics. God, however, appoints Jesus as the greatest of the archangels, the “god of princes, who is Judge of all” (Clementine Recognitions 2.42). The Sun Lady or Wisdom could also be the mother of the angelic High Priest race, as Margaret Barker posits in The Woman Clothed with the Sun in the Book of Revelation.
The Sun Lady in the vision escapes to the wilderness and waits for the allotted time to pass. This was the era of the second temple. The red dragon then turns against her children. In the final form of the vision, these people are the Christians, who keep the commandments of God and have the witness of Jesus - what he saw. But there must have been children of Wisdom before they were called Christians. ‘Wisdom is justified by all her children’ said Luke’s Jesus, and we are not sure what people he had in mind (Luke 7.35). Further, said Jesus, Wisdom was warning those who had shed the blood of the prophets that their generation would be punished for what they had done (Luke 11.49-50). This was Malachi’s prophecy: that the winged sun of righteousness would arise on the day of the Lord.
It is possible that the Sun Lady’s other children were the descendants of those who fled when the first temple was destroyed, not by the Babylonians, but by King Josiah’s purges. These people would have remembered her. In Egypt, Philo knew far more about Wisdom than he could have drawn from the Greek Scriptures: for example, he said ‘The high priest is not a man but a divine Logos... his father being God and his mother Wisdom, through whom [fem.] the universe came into existence.’
Was Wisdom the mother of the high priest? This is what we find in the teaching of Silvanus, an early Christian text also found in Egypt at Nag Hammadi: ‘Wisdom summons you in her goodness, O foolish ones... I am giving you a high-priestly garment which is woven from every wisdom...’ Psalm 110 describes just such a birth and enthronement of the high priest Melchizedek as he prepares to bring the day of judgement. The key verse is now unreadable Hebrew, but it seems to describe a birth in the holy of holies ‘in the glories of the holy place’ or, as the King James Bible put it ‘in the beauties of holiness.’ This, I suggest, is what the vision in Revelation 12 depicts, and the Sun Lady was the Mother of Melchizedek, the name by which the Lord was known when he was in human form as the royal high priest.
For Paul and the author of Revelation, this lower aeon or cosmos is passing away. This is how the New Testament scholar David Bentley Hart sees this as well.[44] For these same authors, the great High-Priest of the Pleroma will return to extract them from an aeon plunging into chaos and destruction, only to be “saved” and placed inside the cube city of the New Jerusalem to also serve as eschatological priests. Therefore, Jesus is also a “gatekeeper” (John 10:7-10) in Christianity because the Lord holds the keys to both the Pleroma, the cubed Holy of Holies being the New Jerusalem, and Hades! In the First Book of Jeu (40), we see Jesus give a divine password to gain final entry into the Pleroma or the “treasury of the true God.” Commit it to memory if you can!
AAA ÔÔÔ ZEZÔRAZAZZZA-IEÔZAZA EEE III ZAIEÔZÔAKHÔE OOO UUU THÔÊZAOZAEZ ÊÊÊ
ZZÊÊZAOZA KHÔZATIKHEUEI TUXA-ALETHUKH.
Without the Divine mercy of the Logos, humanity is left to their own devices and under the authority of the enthroned demiurge, the Beast—the subject of which, will be the focus of the final chapter of the Sun Lady’s epic drama with the chthonic beasts, dwelling in the wilderness.
[1]Magee, Mike. “Mithras or Mica (Michael), a Persian Then Roman Sun God.” Ask Why, 20 Jan. 2011, www.askwhy.co.uk/christianity/0690Mithras.php
[2] Banshee, Bodacious. “The Akkadian Origins of the Prince of Angels.” The Bodacious Banshee, bodaciousbanshee.com/2017/03/11/the-akkadian-origins-of-the-prince-of-angels/
[3]“Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans.” Agathon Associates, www.bostonleadershipbuilders.com/plutarch/romulus.htm
[4]“Leno Marti: To Lenus Mars.” The Gods of Gaul - Deo Mercurio, www.deomercurio.be/en/marti.html
[5] “St. Michael = Mithras.” A Pagan Place, 6 Feb. 2010, pagan-place.blogspot.com/2010/02/st-michael-mithras.html
[6] Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World. http://hpb.narod.ru/Book11AncientEgypt.htm
[7] Rasimus, Tuomas. “The Archangel Michael in Ophite Creation Mythology.” Jewish and Christian Cosmogony in Late Antiquity, Edited by Lance Jenott and Sarit Kattan Gribetz, 107-125. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013.
[8]https://web.archive.org/web/20180219121250/https://tracytwyman.com/meet-mete-twymans-introduction-to-joseph-von-hammer-purgstalls-mysterium-baphometis-revelatum/
[9]Smith, Karl. “Unconquerable: How the Early Roman Catholic Church Usurped the Cult on Vatican Hill”, The Aeon Eye, theaeoneye.com/2014/07/10/unconquerable-how-the-early-roman-catholic-church-usurped-the-cult-of-apollo-on-vatican-hill/
[10]Davila, James R. “Melchizedek, Michael, and War in Heaven.” University of St Andrews, otp.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/divine-mediator-figures-course/melchizedek-michael-and-war-in-heaven/
[11]Rudd, Steve. “Songs of Sabbath Sacrifice: Template for Book of Revelation.” bible.ca/manuscripts/bible-manuscripts-Songs-of-Sabbath-Sacrifice-Angelic-Liturgy-dss-dead-sea-scrolls-Ezekiel-Revelation-70AD-destruction-Jerusalem-prototype-150bc
[12]Dalgaard, Kasper. “Multiple Melchizedeks in the Books of Jeu and Pistis Sophia.” 1 Aug. 2017, drdalgaard.blogspot.com/2017/08/multiple-melchizedeks-in-books-of-jeu.html
[13] Yang Kim, Jim. Melchizedek in 11Q13 (11QMelch). https://otstory.wordpress.com/2008/04/17/melchizedek-in-11q13-11qmelch/
[14]Hirsch, Emil G., et al. “Shem.” Jewish Encyclopedia, www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/13541-shem
[15]Barker, Margaret. “Who Was Melchizedek and Who Was His God?” Temple Studies Group, 2009, www.templestudiesgroup.com/Papers/Melchizedek_Barker.pdf
[16]Pearson, Birger. “Jewish Origins Gnosticism.” Brief History of Christianity in America, 1990, www.sullivan-county.com/id2/gnostic_files/jew_gnostic.htm
[17] Astaroth is the demonized Catholic form of the pagan goddess Asherah, who was synonymous with Ishtar and Inanna.
[18]Magee, Mike. Enoch. 20 Dec. 2010, www.askwhy.co.uk/judaism/0450Enoch.php#Zoroaster
[19]Orlov, Andrei A. “Enoch as the Heavenly Priest.” Marquette University, www.marquette.edu/maqom/enochpriest.html
[20] The Sefer Zerubbabel also has many parallels with the Book of Revelation, as well as its very own Beast/Antichrist figure called “Armilus.”
[21] Barker, Tim. “The Seal of Melchizedek.” LDS Studies, 3 Sept. 2010, lds-studies.blogspot.com/2010/08/seal-of-melchizedek.html
[22]Ulansey, David. “Mithras and the Hypercosmic Sun.” Mysterium, www.mysterium.com/hypercosmic.html
[23]“Mithras.” Hellenic Faith, hellenicfaith.com/mithras/
[24]Ulansey, David. “The Eighth Gate: The Mithraic Lion-Headed Figure and the Platonic World-Soul.” Mysterium, www.mysterium.com/eighthgate.html
[25] http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/mithras/display.php?page=cimrm543
[26] http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/mithras/display.php?page=cimrm326
[27]Kile, Jenny. “The Sator Square.” Mysterious Writings, 28 Jan. 2013, mysteriouswritings.com/the-sator-square/
[28]“What Is the Origin of Christ.” Oahspe Standard Edition, oahspestandardedition.com/OSAC/What_is_the_Origin_of_Christ.html
[29] “All but the first of these statements belong to prayers. Monotheism here belongs to the rhetoric of praise. Deuteronomy 4:35 is part of a speech by Moses to the Israelites. Accordingly, it is a “sermon” or the like, which belongs to the rhetoric of persuasion.” Smith, Mark. The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts. Oxford University Press. 2001.
[30] See: Borghesi, Massimo. “The Religion of ‘Light’: Salvation Through Gnosis.” 30 Days. No. 9, 2003. http://www.30giorni.it/articoli_id_1535_l3.htm
[31]Block, Sam. “Hermetic Prayers to the Aiōn.” The Digital Ambler, 1 Aug. 2014, digitalambler.com/2014/08/01/hermetic-prayers-to-the-aion/
[32] See Franz Cumont’s “The Mysteries of Mithra” for more details.
[33]Pearse, Roger. “Sacrifices of Children at Carthage – the Sources.” Roger Pearse, 31 May 2012, www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2012/05/31/sacrifices-of-children-at-carthage-the-sources/
[34] Tarico, Valerie. Polytheism and Human Sacrifice in Early Israelite Religion. Huffington Post. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/valerie-tarico/polytheism-and-human-sacr_b_777340.html
[35] Six Esoteric Ways the Hexagram Means 666. itssinstupid.tripod.com/ESOTERIC.HTM
[36]“Origin of Revelation and the ‘666’.” web.archive.org/web/20160310032245/http://www.satan4u.8m.com/history/666.html
[37] Crom Cruach: Ireland and the Fetters of Cronos. https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/Isle-of-the-Blessed-Ireland-and-the-Fetters-of-Cronos
[38] Louise, Rita. “Who Were the Nephilim?” The Heretic Magazine. http://thehereticmagazine.com/who-were-the-nephilim/
[39]https://static1.squarespace.com/static/511408f3e4b067782b667584/t/5359321ce4b0fb7d1bff7a12/1398354460740/Apostles+as+Archons.pdf
[40]David. “The Meaning of Melchizedek Icons (If You Have the Patience).” Icons and Their Interpretation, 19 July 2012, russianicons.wordpress.com/2012/07/19/the-meaning-of-melchizedek-in-icons-if-you-have-the-patience/
[41]Godfrey, Neil. “Jesus Crucified by Demons (Not on Earth): The Ascension of Isaiah in Brief.” Vridar, 30 June 2013, vridar.org/2011/02/02/jesus-crucified-by-demons-not-on-earth-the-ascension-of-isaiah-in-brief/
[42] Wargo, Eric. “The Passion of Einstein: Light, Spacetime, and the Holy Grail.” 8 Feb. 2015. http://thenightshirt.com/?p=2090
[43]Juncker, Günther. “Christ As Angel: The Reclamation Of A Primitive Title,” Trinity Journal 15:2 (Fall 1994): 221–250. earlychurch.org.uk/pdf/angel_juncker.pdf
[44] Hart, David Bentley. “Everything You Know about the Gospel of Paul Is Likely Wrong” Aeon, 8 Jan. 2018, aeon.co/ideas/the-gospels-of-paul-dont-say-what-you-think-they-say