CHAPTER
X
CHRISTIANITY
To
define Christianity, one could hardly do better
than use
the words of Frederic W. Farrar, Canon of
Westminster
and Chaplain to Queen Victoria, who in
1874
wrote a Life of Christ. In his preface are the fol-
lowing
lines :
"
We study the sacred books of all the great reli-
gions of
the world ; we see the effect exercised by those
religions
on the mind of their votaries ; and in spite
of all
the truths which even the worst of them enshrined,
we watch
the failure of them all to produce the ines-
timable
blessings which we have ourselves enjoyed
from
infancy, which we treasure as dearly as our life,
and
which we regard as solely due to the spread and
establishment
of the Christian faith. We read the sys-
tems and
treatises of ancient philosophy, and in spite
of all
the great and noble elements in which they abound,
we see
their total incapacity to console, or support, or
deliver,
or regenerate the world. Then we see the light
of
Christianity dawning like a tender spring day amid
the
universal and intolerable darkness. From the first,
that new
religion allies itself with the world's utter
feeblenesses,
and those feeblenesses it shares; yet
without
wealth, without learning, without genius,
without
arms, without anything to dazzle and attract the
religion
'of outcasts and exiles, of fugitives and priso-
ners —
numbering among its earliest converts not
many
wise, not many noble, not many mighty, but
such as
the gaoler of Philippi, and the runaway slave
of
Colossae — with no blessing apparently upon it
save
such as cometh from above — with no light what-
ever
about it save the light that comes from heaven —
it puts
to flight kings and their armies ; it breathes a
new
life, and a new hope, and a new and unknown holi-
ness
into a guilty and decrepit world. This we see ;
and we
see the work grow, and increase, and become
more and
more irresistible, and spread ' with the gent-
leness
of a sea that caresses the shore it covers. ' "
Words
fail when attempting to speak of Jesus
Christ,
the Founder of Christianity. His birth, life and
death
are known to all. His teaching was public and
accessible
to the humblest. Long years of learning,
awful
initiation ceremonies striking terror in the
adept's
soul were not required from the followers of
Christ.
Himself, the bearer of that Light which He
taught
was not to be found in man's earthly nature
but was
to be sought from without, He invoked God
with
humble prayer and faith, and performed all mira-
cles.
Therein,
is Christ's teaching diametrically opposed
to that
of the high adepts whose secret doctrine was
that man
had divinity in himself and could bring it
out by
exercise of will, by concentration of thought
and
scientific psychic development. Fear, the pre-
dominant
feature attendant upon the gaining of know-
ledge in
all other religious systems, was foreign to the
adherents
of Christ who were repeatedly told : ' Fear
not'...
" Be not afraid '. No bonds, no fetters were
imposed
by Him in the shape of ritualism. Love of
God and
love of neighbour were the only precepts,
Faith
and Charity the only means through which the
divine
Spirit gave man transcendental power over moral
evil and
physical ills.
No purer
and simpler doctrine, no greater know-
ledge of
the communion possible between God and man
had ever
been given. Yet, within a very short time
after
the death of Christ, Christian ritualism began to
appear.
A theological system of dogmas and beliefs
was
devised, modes of worship elaborated and a hie-
rarchy
arose with all its attendant evils. However,
the
Christian faith, under the lash of persecution, had
shown
the world the power of Faith and Charity.
And
against this power the forces of evil have
ever
been unfurled. Blow after blow was dealt to the
rising
church. Both its beliefs and practices were
attacked
by those who professed other views and
worshipped
other gods and who designed all schemes to
subvert
and pervert Christianity. Henceforth, as it has
ever
been with all religions, the history of Christianity
and of
Gnosticism will develop side by side, the per-
version
and destruction of the former being the aims
of the
latter.
The Tree
of Christianity gave forth three main
branches,
the Catholicism of Rome, Greek Catholi-
cism,
and in the XVI Century, Lutherism. The two
former
bodies remained homogeneous but Lutherism
gave
birth to innumerable sects all dissenting from the
parent
church.
CHAPTER
XI
MANICHEISM
Manicheism
is the religion of the followers of Manes,
a slave
who was sold to a widow who freed and adopted
him,
thus making him the " son of the widow " a name
which
after him passed to all his followers and is still
used in
Masonic Lodges.
Of
Manicheism, C. W. Olliver, considered an autho-
rity on
all masonic matters, writes :
"
Manicheism was one of the most important attempts
to found
a universal religion and to reconcile the Chris-
tian,
Buddhist, and Mazdean with the Greek philo-
sophy.
It presented the same syncretic ideas found
later
among Moslem Druzes and among Sikhs. It
failed
in the first place because Islam presented a
much
simpler system in the East, and because in the
West
Christianity was already developing, in the time
of
Manes, a religion which aimed at reconciling the
Paganism
of Italy and Gaul with the ethics of Christ,
this
presenting a simpler and more familiar faith. But
the one
achievement of Manes was the creation of the
Devil
which led to an afterwards unremovable taint
throughout
religion. Manes was a notable philosopher
and
religious teacher born about the year A. D. 216,
and he
was crucified and flayed alive by the Persian
Magi
under Bahram I in the year A. D. 277. His Persian name was Shuraik, rendered
Cubricus
in Latin. " '
He was
the slave of the wife of a certain Terebinth
who was
a disciple of Scythianus of the race of the
Sarrasins.
Olliver
tells us further that : " His Acta Archdei
became
the Manichean Bible with sundry added epistles.
He
taught the Mazdean dualism of the powers of light
and
darkness, as representing good and evil beings,
and an
asceticism which aimed at the control of all
passions.
Manes repudiated Judaism, and like the
Gnostics,
regarded Jehovah as an evil God. The Mani-
cheans
were more hated and feared by Catholic Chris-
tians than
any other sect. They were still in existence
in spite
of constant persecution as late as our tenth
century,
and their influence was felt from China to
Spain
and Gaul. It still lingers in Asia, and among
the '
Christians of St. Thomas ' in Madras it survived
till the
fifteenth century. St. Augustine had listened
for nine
years to Manes, but the Roman Empire felt
the
force of this system chiefly in A. D. 280. The Romans
knew it
themselves in A. D. 330, and Faustus became
its
missionary among them. Many clung to Manicheism
till A.
D. 440, when Leo the Great found that he must
stamp it
out if the Roman creed was not to be extin-
guished.
It was the basis of the Paulican heresy, and of
that of
the Albigenses in the South of France which
was only
quenched by blood in the thirteenth century.
"
The doctrine of Manes can be summed up as fol-
lows. He
believed in two gods, or, more exactly, prin-
ciples,
the principle of good and that of evil. Before
the
creation of the world the ' people of darkness '
revolted
against the God, and God, incapable of with-
1. C. W.
Olliver, An Analysis of Magic and Witchcraft, p. 102.
standing
the attack, gave to them a portion of His
essence.
The people of darkness having within them the
principle
of evil by their very nature, and the principle
of good
which they had just acquired, were able to
constitute
the world, where both these principles are
combined,
but where the principle of evil predominates as the natural characteristic of
its originators.
Man is a
mixture of two natures, the spiritual being
the work
of God, the body, and especially sex, the work
of the
Devil. " 2
Summers,
another authority, further explains that
"
it must be clearly borne in mind that these heretical
bodies
with their endless ramifications were not merely
exponents
of erroneous religious and intellectual beliefs
by which
they morally corrupted all who came under
their
influence, but they were the avowed enemies of
law and
order, red-hot anarchists who would stop at
nothing
to gain their ends. Terrorism and secret murder were their most frequent
weapons....
The Manichean
system
was in truth a simultaneous attack upon the
Church
and the State, a desperate but well-planned
organization
to destroy the whole fabric of society,
to
reduce civilization to chaos. "
Manicheism
possessed its- dogmas, liturgies, devo-
tees,
and churches.
But
again to quote Olliver : " First and foremost
amongst
the manifestations of what had become Devil
worship
we find the Black Mass or Devil Masses of the
Middle
Ages, from which the ceremonial and ritual
of Black
Magic are derived. The principle which forms
the very
essence of the Devil, the idea of opposition,
also
underlies the whole ceremonial and ritual of
2. C. W.
Olliver, op. cit., p. 103.
3. M.
Summers, History of Witchcraft and Demonology, p. 17.
Black
Magic and Black Masses. Such ideas as repeating
prayers
backwards, reversing the cross, consecrating
obscene
or filthy objects, are typical of this sense of
opposition
or desecration, which is also a recognised
form of
mental disease. The key-word to the whole
of the
practices of Black Magic is desecration. " 4
Yet
another authority not to be overlooked, namely
Abbe
Baruel, author of Memoires pour servir a I'his-
toire du
Jacobinisms shows the remarkable analogy
between
the dogmas and rituals of Freemasonry, Templarism and those of Manicheism.
Grades
concur in number and signs are identical. The mourning for
'Jacques
Molay is a ceremony analogous to that prac-
tised by
the Manicheans in remembrance of Manes and
known as
Bema. The term MacBenac still used in
Masonic
lodges was the reminder of the execution of
Manes
which all Manichean adepts sought to avenge.
The
practice of so called Fraternity or Brotherhood
was in
Manicheism extended only to adepts of the
sect,
just as it is similarly practised by Freemasons
towards
one another only.
The
question which naturally comes up to one's
mind
when one follows closely the links of the Mani-
chean
chain is this : — Is not Freemasonry, such as
we see
it to-day, the full development of the idea of
Cubricus
or Manes the slave, the apotheosis of Mani-
cheism
as achieved by Albert Pike, Sovereign Pontiff
of
Universal Freemasonry ?
4. C. W.
Olliver, op. cit., p. 106.
CHAPTER
XII
WITCHCRAFT
Margaret
Alice Murray, writing in The Witch-cult
in
Western Europe establishes both the phallic and
religious
character of the " craft ", in her remarkable
book
from which we extract part of the following
valuable
information :
The
deity worshipped by the witches was in some
cases
Lucifer, as the Good God in opposition to Adonay,
the
Christian God in His character of the benefactor
of
humanity, and in other instances Satan, the same
spirit,
as the Principle of Evil.
This is
evident from the various references to their
deity
adduced in the trials of persons accused of this
heresy.
In both cases however, the devotees, whether
of
Lucifer or Satan, were obliged formally to renounce
Christ,
the Holy Ghost and the Christian God, before
embracing
the Devil faith which was the logical out-
growth
of the Mazdean-Manichean Dualist doctrine
of the
double divinity. ;
1.
" Epiphanius gives an account of a sect of Heretics
called
Satanians. ' Satan, say they, is a very great and potent
Person,
and author of much Mischief. Why, therefore, should
we not
chiefly fly to him, and adore him, honour, and praise
trim,
that for our flattering worship he may do us no harm, but
The God
of the witches seems to have been generally
represented
either as the double faced God Janus or
the
goat-headed Baphomet, the latter variously modi-
fied but
usually bearing between the horns on its head
the
phallic emblem of a lighted candle.
Esoterically,
this candle symbolized the sex-force
or
Kundalini risen to the pineal gland.
Cotton
Mather stated that the witches " form themselves after the manner of
Congregational Churches, "
and M.
A. Murray gives the following description of
their
leader :
"
The Chief or supreme Head of each district was
known to
the recorders as the ' Devil '. Below him in
each
district, one or more officers — according to the
size of
the district — were appointed by the chief.
The
officers might be either men or women; their
duties
were to arrange for meetings, to send out notices,
to keep
the record of work done, to transact the busi-
ness of
the community, and to present new members.
Evidently
these persons also noted any likely convert,
and
either themselves entered into negotiations or
reported
to the Chief, who then took action as oppor-
tunity
served. At the Esbats the officer appears to
have
taken command in the absence of the Grand
Master ;
at the Sabbaths the officers were merely
heads of
their own Covens, and were known as Devils
or
Spirits, though recognized as greatly inferior to
the
Chief. The principal officer acted as clerk at the
Sabbath
and entered the witches' report in his book ;
if he
were a priest or ordained minister, he often
performed
part of the religious service ; but the Devil
himself
always celebrated the mass or sacrament. "
Pardon
us as being his own servants ? ' Hence they call them-
selves
Satanians. " Bishop Lavington, The Moravians Corn-
Pared
and Detected, p. 170.
From
Lemoine in La Tradition, published 1892,
we learn
that the garter is the distinctive mark of the
witch
leader, for a woman shared this honour with
the
Grand Master as the Grand Mistress and in some
cases
occupied the office of deacon.
Animal
masks seem to have been a popular form of
disguise
adopted by the witches and wizards attend-
ing
meetings, and this custom is probably respon-
sible
for many of the stories of witch lycanthropy.
Among
other obscene and phallic witch-rites was
the
Black Mass, celebrated by a renegade priest upon
the
naked body of the adept for whose benefit it was
performed.
It symbolized the perversion of all the
rites of
the Catholic church. Black candles instead
of
white, inverted crosses, chalices containing the blood
of
new-born infants sacrificed for ritual purposes,
urine
for holy water, all these were part of the para-
phernalia
needed, according to historians, to propi-
tiate
the Prince of Darkness and his retinue of minor
Devils.
Besides evocations, casting of spells and sex-
orgies,
devil worship entailed such inanities as dese-
cration
of the hosts stolen from catholic churches and
the
kissing of the Grand Master (devil) on the tail
or
membrum virile.
Only
hosts consecrated in Roman Catholic churches
could
serve for Black Mass purposes as it was essen-
tial, in
order to achieve desecration, that the miracle
of
transubstantiation should have taken place. The
host had
actually to be, not merely to represent, the
body and
blood of Christ.
As
regards the Black Mass, M. Emile Caillet makes
2.
Margaret Alice Murray, The Witch-cult in Western Europe,
p. 186.
the
following astute observation in La Prohibition
de
L'Occulte, page 113.
"
One may wonder if it was not in order to canalize
such an
overflow of sacrilege that the church, in the
Middle
Ages, tolerated the ' Feast of Fools ', a last
vestige
of the saturnalia of Ancient Greece. Before
the
altar, upon the communion table, writes C. Lenient, 3
were
spread pell mell, grilled hogs puddings, sausages,
playing
cards and dice. For perfumes, old shoe-leather
burned
in the incense burners. Even the text of the
divine
service... becomes the butt of an interminable
parody...,
a confused jumble of jests and nonsense,
of
grotesque alleluias and latin buffooneries.... an
indescribable
charivari of cat calls, cries and whistles,
etc. A
few days afterwards the church, purged of all
these impurities,
washed and cleaned, resumed its
usual
appearance ; God again became master of His
Altar ;
the flood of human folly had passed ! "
In 1484,
Pope Innocent VIII issued a bull against the
craft
couched in the following terms :
"
It has come to our ears that numbers of both sexes
do not
avoid to have intercourse with demons, Incubi
and
Succubi; and that by their sorceries, and by their
incantations,
charms and conjurations, they suffocate,
extinguish,
and cause to perish the births of women,
the
increase of animals, the corn of the ground, the
grapes
of the vineyard and the fruit of the trees, as
well as
men, women, flocks, herds, and other various
kinds of
animals, vines and apple trees, grass, corn and
other
fruits of the earth ; making and procuring that
men and
women, flocks and herds and other animals
shall
suffer and be tormented both from within and
without,
so that men beget not, nor women conceive ;
and they
impede the conjugal action of men and wo-
men.
"
La
Satire en France au Moyen-Age, p. 422.
Eliphas
Levi, in Histoire de la Magie, (p. 116) gives
the
following explanation of the supposed origin of
"
elementals " known by spiritists as " dwellers on
the
threshold. "
He
states that; " according to the best authorities,
these
spirits (larves) possess an ethereal body formed
of the
vapour of blood. That is why they seek blood
and why
they were supposed, formerly, to feed on the
smoke of
sacrifices.
"
They are the Incubi and Succubi, the monstrous
children
of impure dreams.
"
When sufficiently condensed to be visible, they
are only
a vapour coloured by the reflection of a picture
and,
having no independent life, they imitate the life
of him
who evokes them as the shadow does the body.
"
They generally manifest around the persons of
idiots
and beings devoid of morality whose isolation
has led
them to develop irregular habits.
"
Owing to the feeble cohesion of the parts of their
fantastic
bodies, they fear the open air, fire, and above
all, the
point of swords, and as they live only by the
life of
those who have created or evoked them, they
become
the vaporous appendices of the real body of
their
parents. So it can happen that an injury inflicted
on them
might actually react upon the parent body,
as the
unborn child is really wounded or disfigured
by an
impression made upon its mother.
"
These elementals draw the vital heat from persons
in good
health and quickly exhaust those who are
weak.
"
They are the source of the stories of vampires,
stories
only too true and periodically recurrent, as
everyone
knows.
"
That is why one feels a chill of the atmosphere
when
approaching mediums who are persons obsessed
by these
spirits that never manifest in the presence of
anyone
able to unveil the mystery of their monstrous
birth.
They are children of an exalted imagination or
unbalanced
mentality... "
In
politics, throughout the ages, witchcraft, as prac-
tised by
subversive sects, has played a prominent part.
Illustrations
of this are to be found in the case of
the
North Berwick Witches who were tried for treason
in 1592
when their Devil or Grand Master, Francis
Stewart,
Earl of Bothwell, attempted to supplant
James VI
as King of Scotland. The Black Masses held
by the
infamous Abbe Guibourg for Madame de Mon-
tespan,
with the object of regaining for her the favour
of Louis
XIV, are famous in history.
Eliphas
Levi, the great initiate, has thus defined
the aims
of magic and witchcraft :
"
To deceive the peoples for the purpose of exploit-
ing
them, to enslave them and delay their progress,
or
prevent it even if possible, such is the crime of black magic.
Proof of
the foregoing devil worship and contact
with
spirits or devils is found in history, even as late
as 1819
when we read that; " The Devil met Margaret
Nin-Gilbert
etc... " Studying the history of the Mopses
in 1761
we find its Grand Masters, Grand Mistresses
and
Deacons, adorned with the distinctive " Garter "
of the
witch, performing the ceremonial of kissing the
Devil's
tail as part of the ritual of 18th Century Ma-
sonry.
The "Coven" of the Middle Ages is the Masonic
' Lodge
" of today, but the " Craft " remains the
"
Craft ".
'
Eliphas Levi, La Clef des Grands Mysteres, p. 308.
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