There is still another and far more weighty proof that the name Christos is pre-Christian. The evidence for it is found in the prophecy of the Erythrean Sybil. We read in it ἹΗΣΟΥΣ ΧΡΕΙΣΤΟΣΘΕΟΝ ὙΙΟΣ ΣΩΤΗΡ ΣΤΑΥΡΟΣ. Read esoterically, this string of meaningless detached nouns, which has no sense to the profane, contains a real prophecy—only not referring to Jesus—and a verse from the mystic catechism of the Initiate. The prophecy relates to the coming down upon the Earth of the Spirit of Truth (Christos), after which advent—that has once more nought to do with Jesus—will begin the Golden Age; the verse refers to the necessity before reaching that blessed condition of inner (or subjective) theophany and theopneusty, to pass through the crucifixion of flesh or matter. Read exoterically, the words “Iesous Chreistos theou yios soter stauros,” meaning literally “Iesus, Christos, God, Son, Saviour, Cross,” are most excellent handles to hang a Christian prophecy on, but they are pagan, not Christian.
If called upon to explain the names Iesous Chreistos, the answer is: study mythology, the so-called “fictions” of the ancients, and they will give you the key. Ponder over Apollo, the solar god, and the “Healer,” and the allegory about his son Janus (or Ion), his priest at Delphos, through whom alone could prayers reach the immortal gods, and his other son Asclepios, called the Soter, or Saviour. Here is a leaflet from esoteric history written in symbolical phraseology by the old Grecian poets.
The city of Chrisa[[93]] (now spelt Crisa), was built in memory of Kreusa (or Creusa), daughter of King Erechtheus and mother of Janus (or Ion) by Apollo, in memory of the danger which Janus escaped.[[94]] We learn that Janus, abandoned by his mother in a grotto “to hide the shame of the virgin who bore a son,” was found by Hermes, who brought the infant to Delphi, nurtured him by his father’s sanctuary and oracle, where, under the name of Chresis (χρησις) Janus became first a Chrestis (a priest, soothsayer, or Initiate), and then very nearly a Chresterion, “a sacrificial victim,”[[95]] ready to be poisoned by his own mother, who knew him not, and who, in her jealousy, mistook him, on the hazy intimation of the oracle, for a son of her husband. He pursued her to the very altar with the intention of killing her—when she was saved through the pythoness, who divulged to both the secret of their relationship. In memory of this narrow escape, Creusa, the mother, built the city of Chrisa, or Krisa. Such is the allegory, and it symbolizes simply the trials of Initiation.[[96]]
Finding then that Janus, the solar God, and son of Apollo, the Sun, means the “Initiator” and the “Opener of the Gate of Light,” or secret wisdom of the mysteries; that he is born from Krisa (esoterically Chris), and that he was a Chrestos through whom spoke the God; that he was finally Ion, the father of the Ionians, and, some say, an aspect of Asclepios, another son of Apollo, it is easy to get hold of the thread of Ariadne in this labyrinth of allegories. It is not the place here to prove side issues in mythology, however. It suffices to show the connection between the mythical characters of hoary antiquity and the later fables that marked the beginning of our era of civilization. Asclepios (Esculapius) was the divine physician, the “Healer,” the “Saviour,” Σωτηρ as he was called, a title also given to Janus of Delphi; and IASO, the daughter of Asclepios was the goddess of healing, under whose patronage were all the candidates for initiation in her father’s temple, the novices or chrestoi, called “the sons of Iaso.” (Vide for name, “Plutus,” by Aristoph. 701).
Now, if we remember, firstly, that the names of Iesus in their different forms, such as Iasius, Iasion, Jason and Iasus, were very common in ancient Greece, especially among the descendants of Jasius (the Jasides), as also the number of the “sons of Iaso,” the Mystoï and future Epoptai (Initiates), why should not the enigmatical words in the Sibylline Book be read in their legitimate light, one that had nought to do with a Christian prophecy? The secret doctrine teaches that the first two words ΙΗΣΟΥΣ ΧΡΕΙΣΤΟΣ mean simply “son of Iaso, a Chrestos,” or servant of the oracular God. Indeed IASO (Ιασω) is in the Ionic dialect IESO (Ἱησὼ), and the expression Ιησους (Iesous)—in its archaic form, ΙΗΣΟΥΣ—simply means “the son of Iaso or Ieso, the healer[healer],” i.e. ο Ιησοῦς (υῖος). No objection, assuredly, can be taken to such rendering, or to the name being written Ieso instead of Iaso, since the first form is attic, therefore incorrect, for the name is Ionic. “Ieso” from which “O’ Iesous” (son of Ieso)—i.e. a genitive, not a nominative—is Ionic and cannot be anything else, if the age of the Sibylline book is taken into consideration. Nor could the Sibyl of Erythrea have spelt it originally otherwise, as Erythrea, her very residence, was a town in Ionia (from Ion or Janus) opposite Chios; and that the Ionic preceded the attic form.
Leaving aside in this case the mystical signification of the now famous Sibylline sentence, and giving its literal interpretation only, on the authority of all that has been said, the hitherto mysterious words would stand; “Son of Iaso, Chrestos (the priest or servant) (of the) Son of (the) God (Apollo) the Saviour from the Cross”—(of flesh or matter).[[97]] Truly, Christianity can never hope to be understood until every trace of dogmatism is swept away from it, and the dead letter sacrificed to the eternal Spirit of Truth, which is Horus, which is Crishna, which is Buddha, as much as it is the Gnostic Christos and the true Christ of Paul.
In the Travels of Dr. Clarke, the author describes a heathen monument found by him.
“Within the sanctuary, behind the altar, we saw the fragments of a marble cathedra, upon the back of which we found the following inscription, exactly as it is here written, no part of it having been injured or obliterated, affording perhaps the only instance known of a sepulchral inscription upon a monument of this remarkable[remarkable] form.”
The inscription ran thus: ΧΡΗΣΤΟΣ ΠΡΩΤΟΥ ΘΕΣΣΑΛΟΣ ΛΑΡΙΣΣΑΙΟΣ ΠΕΛΑΣΓΙΟΤΗΣ ΕΤΩΝ ΙΗ or, “Chrestos, the first, a Thessalonian from Larissa, Pelasgiot 18 years old Hero,” Chrestos the first (protoo), why? Read literally the inscription has little sense; interpreted esoterically, it is pregnant with meaning. As Dr. Clarke shows, the word Chrestos is found on the epitaphs of almost all the ancient Larissians; but it is preceded always by a proper name. Had the adjective Chrestos stood after a name, it would only mean “a good man,” a posthumous compliment paid to the defunct, the same being often found on our own modern tumular epitaphs. But the word Chrestos, standing alone and the other word, “protoo,” following it, gives it quite another meaning, especially when the deceased is specified as a “hero.” To the mind of an Occultist, the defunct was a neophyte, who had died in his 18th year of neophytism,[[98]] and stood in the first or highest class of discipleship, having passed his preliminary trials as a “hero;” but had died before the last mystery, which would have made of him a “Christos,” an anointed, one with the spirit of Christos or Truth in him. He had not reached the end of the “Way,” though he had heroically conquered the horrors of the preliminary theurgic trials.
We are quite warranted in reading it in this manner, after learning the place where Dr. Clarke discovered the tablet, which was, as Godfrey Higgins remarks, there, where “I should expect to find it, at Delphi, in the temple of the God IE.,” who, with the Christians became Jah, or Jehovah, one with Christ Jesus. It was at the foot of Parnassus, in a gymnasium, “adjoining the Castalian fountain, which flowed by the ruins of Crisa, probably the town called Crestona,” etc. And again. “In the first part of its course from the (Castalian) fountain, it (the river) separates the remains of the gymnasium ... from the valley of Castro,” as it probably did from the old city of Delphi—the seat of the great oracle of Apollo, of the town of Krisa (or Kreusa) the great centre of initiations and of the Chrestoi of the decrees of the oracles, where the candidates for the last labour were anointed with sacred oils[[99]] before being plunged into their last trance of forty-nine hours’ duration (as to this day, in the East), from which they arose as glorified adepts or Christoi.”