We do not go to the Christian Gospels to learn the true nature of the Christ, or the incarnation according to the Gnostic religion (I use this term in preference to yours of the “Wisdom-Religion,” as being more definite and explanatory; not as a religion, supposed by the Idiotai to have followed in the wake of Historic Christianity!). These were known in Egypt, more than six thousand years ago. When the monuments began the Cult of the Supreme God Atum was extant. We know not how many æons earlier, but six thousand years will do. Atum = Adam was the divine father of an eternal soul which was personated as his son, named Iu-em-hept (the Greek Imothos or Æsculapius), an image of whom used to be seen (on shelf 3,578, b. 1874), in the British Museum. He was the second Atum = Adam, and is called the “Eternal Word” in the Ritual. In external phenomena this type represented the Solar God, re-born monthly or annually in the lunar orb; in human phenomena the Christ or Son of God as the essential and eternal soul in man. But he was neither a man nor an Initiate. He was just what the Logos, the Word of Truth or Ma-Kheru, the Buddha or Christ is in other Cults.[[138]]
I cordially agree with “M,” a correspondent whom you quote, and wish that all our orthodox friends would as frankly face the facts. If any historic Jesus ever did claim to be the Gnostic Christ made flesh[[139]] once for all, he would be the supremest impostor in history.
Let us define to ourselves very strictly what it is we do mean, or we shall introduce the direst confusion into the conflict, and we shall be unable to distinguish the face of friend from foe in the cloud of battle-dust which we may raise. What I find is, that Historic Christianity was based either upon the suppression or the perversion of all that was esoteric in Gnostic Christianity. And to bring any aid from the one to the support of the other is to try and re-establish with the left hand all that you are knocking down with the right.
I am also taken to task on page 307 for alluding to the Bible as a “Magazine of falsehoods already exploded, or just going off,” by the writer who adds force to my words later on in characterizing these same writings as a “Magazine of (wicked) falsehoods”[[140]] (p. 178), which was going farther than I went, who do set down as much to ignorance as to knavery. What I meant was, that the “Fall of Man” in the Old Testament, is a falsification of fable, now exploded, and that the redemption from that fall, which is promised in the New, whether by an “Initiate” or “Son of God” is a fraud based on the fable, and a falsehood that is going to be exploded. There is no call to mix up the Book of the Dead, the Vedas, or any other sacred writings, in this matter. Each tub must stand on its own bottom, and the one that won’t, can’t hold water.[[141]]
Gerald Massey.
P.S. By the by, I see the Adventists, and other misleading Delusionists are all agog just now about the wonderful fulfilment of prophecy, and corroboration of historic fact, that we are now witnessing. The “Star of Bethlehem” has reappeared, so they say, to prove the truth of the Christian story. But, sad to say, it is not the star of Christ that is now visible in the south-east before sunrise every morning. It is Venus in her heliacal rising. It is Venus as the Maleess, or Lucifer as “Sun of the Morning.” This particular Star of Bethlehem—there are various others less brilliant and less noticeable—generally does return once every nineteen months or so, when the planet Venus is the Morning Star. Only the gaping camel-swallowers, who know all about the “Star of Bethlehem,” and the fulfilment of prophecy, are not up in Astronomy, and they will no doubt squirm and strain at this small gnat of real fact offered to them by way of an explanation.
G. M.
[We give room to this remarkable letter with the object of comparison. The Secularists are loud in proclaiming the modes of expression of the Theosophists as “stultic profundity,” and the Esoteric Doctrine as “a hopeless chaos,” a “rudely methodised madness.” At the same time the Hylo-Idealists are PERSONÆ GRATISSIMÆ in the “Secular Review,” and no such remarks are passed about their theories and style. Readers please to compare. “Fiat Justitia, ruat Saladinus!”—Ed.]