This was a piece that I re-wrote. Much of it is my own, but some of
it is by Brad Hicks, a noted Pagan author and founder of the
Magicknet Fidonet echo. The piece is not in its original form, but
excerpted.

       *THE MYSTERY-RELIGION ROOTS OF ORGANIZED RELIGION*



I. MYSTERY RELIGIONS...COMMON THREADS.

A  Mystery Religion,  first and foremost, is a religion of symbolism.
Through  the  use  of  myth  and  allegory,  iconic  representations,
blazing lights  and  dense  darkness, liturgies and sacramental acts,
as  well  as  suggestion, the intuitions of the heart of the initiate
were quickened until s/he was provoked into a mystical experience.

This  experience led to a feeling of regeneration, a feeling that the
initiate  is  back  in  the good graces of their God. It professed to
remove  the  estrangement between man and God, to procure forgiveness
of  sins,  and  to  furnish mediation.  Means of purification and the
formulae  of  access  to  the God, and acclamations of confidence and
victory were part of the apparatus of every Mystery.  The Sacramental
Drama,  the core experience  of  a Mystery Religion, whether it is as
simple as  a Fundamentalist Christian Baptism service, as stylized as
the "Sacrifice" of the Catholic Mass, or as elaborate as the rites of
Eleusis,  appeal  primarily  to  the  emotions,  short-circuiting the
rational.  Thus  the   neophyte  is  convinced  that  s/he  has  been
purified, and has experienced the exaltation of a new life.

The   Mystery   Religions  are  also  earmarked  by  an  emphasis  on
eschatology,  on  final ends. The interests and issues of life, death
and  redemption  are  bound  up in a future Apocalypse, where the old
will  yield to a new, more perfect order. Most mystery religions were
and  are  Apocalyptic  in  nature.   For  the  multitudes, it was the
mysteries of their faith which illuminated the hereafter, and
provided answers to the tough questions of life.

A mystery religion was a personal religion, to which membership was
open, not by accident of birth into any particular class, but by a
religious rebirth. On the surface, especially in the case of the
great Mystery Religions of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and
Hinduism (especially Vaishnavite Hinduism, which is the "orthodoxy"
of Hindu thought, as opposed to the more esoteric, heterodox and
Tantra-infused Shavite Hinduism) the experience of conversion which
is at the core is a levelling, democratizing one, and one that makes
the believer feel that they matter in the sight of a personal, loving
Deity.

But  the Mystery Faiths present another side, which is the antithesis
of an individualistic religion such as Neo-paganism and the primitive
Shamanic  religions it attempts to reconstruct. The ancients lived in
a  world in  which the  primitive connection  of  human life with the
earth and plant and animal life was self-evident. The Universe itself
was a living being, the "mother" of humanity, and therefore worthy of
honor.

The  ancient  Shamanic  religions  entail an all-encompassing "way of
life"  with a down-to-earth, pragmatic world-view...all that one does
in life is "worship", every day is a day of thanksgiving. In the eyes
of the Shaman there is no separation between humanity and the Divine.
The  Native  Americans,  for  example,  viewed  everyday  life  as  a
ceremony, and saw Deity around them, in Nature, and in themselves.

Mystery Religions,  on  the  other hand, separate the sacred from the
profane,  and  separate  religious  activities from mundane concerns.
Where  the  Native  Americans  worshipped  in  natural  places and in
the  home, the  followers  of  Christianity  erected the Missions and
other,  smaller  churches in the name of their gods. Where the Shaman
or  Shamanka  lived  and ate with the rest of the tribe, the Catholic
Padres  distanced  themselves  from  their "flock". Shamanic Religion
sees  all  life  as  sacred,  and considers human nature as basically
good,  while  Mystery Religions like Christianity see human beings as
deficient, basically evil, "fallen" in their nature.

In order for the Mysteries to provide "redemption", a human being
must see him/herself as fallen, sinful, wretched...unworthy. One who
sees themselves as worthy, as competent, as whole and complete, will
not buy into a belief system that says otherwise. In order for a
Mystery Religion to gain converts, they must convince, or "convict"
the person that they are NOT worthy, competent, whole and complete
WITHOUT the intercession of their deity. Furthermore, they must
convince the unbeliever (often referred as "pagan" or "heathen") that
without the intercession of this deity, they would be on their way
to an eternity in a "hell" or a "limbo", and that naturally THEIR
path is the one true way to gain intercession of this deity.

Consider the predicament of the Catholic, and later Protestant
missionaries. The concept of "original sin" is usually quite foreign
to Indigenous peoples, and is one of the hardest things for a
Christian missionary to explain to them. Why would something alive,
something that is part of their Mother, the Earth, be evil from
the moment of its birth?

Another difference is that Shamanic Religions see the psychological
and physical need for sexual pleasure, joy, love, good food, good
times, and the need for mirth and laughter as natural, good, and to
be encouraged. They view Earth as a place of life and joy, and
believe that one should treat others well to enhance one's life and
physical well being. Life is to be enjoyed in the NOW. The hereafter,
if any, is either a "big sleep" or a simple "waystation" between
rebirths.

With the glaring exception of the Mysteries of Dionysios and those of
Orpheus in Ancient Greece,  Mystery Religions see basic human needs
as sinful and depraved, and that the only way to remain in a state of
grace after the initial "initiation" process is through self-denial
and often even self-mortification. Mystery Religions usually view
life on Earth as a "vale of tears" and believe that altruistic
actions, not self-enhancing actions, will eventually be rewarded in
an eternally joyous afterlife. If reincarnation is a tenet of such a
Mystery Religion, the reincarnation process is seen as misfortune,
and that "liberation" from this process is seen as desireable.

This plays itself out in the changes wrought by the teachings of
missionaries on folk religions. For example, the "Penitente"
ceremonies of self-mortification were unknown to the Pueblo Amerinds
before the coming of the Padres. And the native people of Bolivia
(Incas) and the Philippines now practice, among their rituals, the
actual flogging and crucifixion of a "chosen one" during the Easter
season.

Lastly, the concept of a Final End to life in an apocalypse is
ludicrous to Shamanic Religions, which view life as an eternal process,
with no real "beginning" or "end". To the initiate in a Shamanic
society, life is a series of repeating cycles. The "Ghost Dance"
movement of the Paiute prophet Wovoka is a direct syncrete of the old
ways of the Ute/Aztecan peoples with the "judgement day" fervor of
revivalist, proto-Fundamentalist Christianity that was popular in the
Old West.



II. A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE MAJOR ANCIENT MYSTERY RELIGIONS

A.) The mysteries of Isis

Egypt had many mysteries, none more important that those of Isis.
Her name is said to mean 'throne', 'wisdom', or 'savior', though she
possessed many other titles in many different languages which testify
to the universality of her cult in the ancient Mediterranean. The
deepest mysteries of Isis, and her consort-brother Osiris, the God of
the Sun, revolve around his death at the hands of his brother Set, who
cut Osiris' body into 14 parts and scattered them through the world.
(It is ironic that the name Isis is a Greek rendering of her original
Egyptian name AuSet, meaning "From Set".)

Isis undertook a terrible journey, suffering great hardship,
seeking out the broken body of her lord and reassembling the parts.
She found and reassembled all but one part, the phallus, which was
thrown into the Nile and consumed by a fish. Despite this, such was
the creative power of Isis that she was able to conceive by means of
an artificial phallus, and bore the child Horus who avenged his
father by killing Set. This is an archetypical mystery-telling,
introducing themes found later in the teachings of the Hellenistic
schools, in the death and resurrection myths of Mithras and Christ,
and in the work of modern esoteric orders.

B.) The Gospel of Mithras

In Mithraism, which descended from the Persian religion of Zoroaster,
Mithra stands as a mediator between light and dark, a position adopted
by his followers. In these mysteries you find the roots of the myths
grafted upon the life of Yehoshua ben David, known to us as Jesus, who
was perhaps the best claimant among several to emerge in the First
Century CE to the throne of Roman Palestine.

Mithraism was the Freemasonry of the Roman world. Like the other
cults of Oriental origin, it moved with the slave trade that was such
an infamous feature of the ancient world. The cult of Mithra is one
that traveled well, from Syria to Scotland. The Mithraic cult was
limited to men: women were allowed only in the lesser, parallel cult
of Cybele or the exclusively female one of Bona Dea.

The congregations were small; no surviving Mithraeum could house
more than a hundred, but of course bigger lodges may have formed, and
dissolved, at army camps, because Mithraism was extremely popular among
the Roman Legions. There were no social barriers, so that slaves and
privates could become high initiates. The ceremonies were solemnly
enacted and the initiations were quite awe-inspiring.

Mithra was born on the 25th of December, called the "Birthday
of the Unconquered Sun."  This Mithran holiday was appropriated by
Christianity for the celebration of the birth of their God-man,
Jesus in the 4th century CE.

Some said that Mithra sprang from the union of sun god and his own
mother, ala Isis giving birth to Ra by Horus. Some claimed his mother
to be a mortal virgin.

Others said Mithra had no mother, but was miraculously born of a
female Rock, the petra genetrix, fertilized by the Heavenly Father's
phallic lightning. The virgin birth myth, including the visitation of
three Magi (Persian priests of Zoroastrianism) was adapted whole-cloth
into Christianity.

If one is to further understand Mithraism, one must understand its
origins in Zoroastrianism.The Persian Magus Zoroaster, may actually have
lived around 1000 BCE., or even earlier, but he clearly did not
predate the foundation of the Egyptian mysteries from which he drew
heavily for his own system. It is from the Persian mysteries that we
derive the battle of good versus evil which has haunted esoteric and
exoteric philosophy and teaching ever since.

In the Zoroastrian pantheon these opposing forces are referred to
as Ormuzd and Ahriman, who derive ultimately from Ahura Mazda, the
divine principle. Known as the Holy Immortals, or Amesha Spentas, they
correspond to the levels of creation, clearly foreshadowing the
teaching of later mystery schools such as those of Orpheus and
Mithra. Against the Spentas are arrayed the Devas, the companions of
the Evil One, who are seen as ruling over the earth. "Deva" means
"shining one" or god in Sanskrit. There may be an interesting
connection here between Zoroastrianism and orthodox Hinduism, namely
that Zoroastrianism was created as a direct competitor against
Hinduism, which also has its origins among the Arya people of Persia.

In Zoroastrian teaching, a savior or saoshyant was to be born, who
would combat evil and bring the struggle to an end once and for all,
thus betokening the Frasokereti, the making perfect at the end of time.
In this we see an echo of Horus in the Egyptian mysteries, and a
prefiguring of all other eschatologies. It also prefigures the appear-
ance of a third figure in the great mythic struggle between Good and
Evil...the savior known to Judaism and Christianity as the Messiah, to
Buddhism as The Buddha Maitreya, to Islam as the Mahdi or Hidden Imam,
and to Hinduism as The Tenth Avatar of Vishnu, Kalki. To the
Zoroastrians, this savior-figure was known as Mithra.

Mithra's birth was witnessed by shepherd and Magi, who brought
gifts to his sacred birth-cave of the Rock. Mithra performed the usual
assortment of miracles -  raising the dead, healing the sick, making
the blind to see and the lame to walk, casting out devils.

As a 'Peter', son of petra, he carried the keys of the kingdom of
heaven. His triumph and ascension to heaven were celebrated at the
spring equinox, when the sun rises toward its apogee. Before returning
to heaven, Mithra celebrated a Last Supper with his 12 disciples, who
represented the signs of the zodiac.  In memory of this, his
worshippers partook of a sacramental bread marked with a cross. This
was one of the seven Mithraic sacraments. It was called mizd. In
Latin, mizd became missa, which later found its way into the English
language as the word mass, referring to the sacramental drama of the
Catholic Church.

Mithra's image was buried in a rock tomb, the same sacred cave that
represented his Mothers' womb. His image was later withdrawn from the
cave and was said to live again.

What began in water would end in fire, according to Mithraic
beliefs. The great battle between the forces of light and darkness
in the Last Days would destroy the earth with its upheavals and
burnings. Virtuous ones who followed the teachings of the Mithraic
priesthood would join the spirits of light and be saved. Sinful ones
who followed other teachings would be cast into hell with Ahriman and
the fallen angels.

Mithra's cave-temple on the Vatican Hill was seized by the Christians
in 376 CE. Christian Bishops of Rome pre-empted the Mithraic high
priest's title of Pater Patrum, which became Papa, or Pope when fused
with the old Roman Imperial title of Pontifex Maximus.

C.) The Mysteries of Apollo and Dionysios

While the Mithraic mysteries succeeded those of Zoroaster,
they followed those of Dionysios, through which the core of Hellenic
mystery teaching found its way into the Western Mystery Tradition.
Two streams of consciousness are discernable within the Classical
mysteries, which might be called Dionysian and Apollonian. The
Apollonian mysteries related to reason, to the heavens and to order;
this is in contradistinction to the chaotic, ecstatic mysteries of
Dionysios.

The priests of Apollo were more interested in wresting
the political power away from the earlier Goddess worshipping
peoples who held sway as the Oracle at Delphi, and so their
mysteries were not so widely spread because they were tied to a
specific location and shrine.

The Mysteries of Dionysios were those of the sacrificial
king: they pertain to the underworld side of things, the chthonic
and ecstatic cult of maenads and bacchantes. The mysteries of
Dionysios, as well as those of Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis, seem
to be the closest link between the Mystery Religions and the more
primal Shamanic lifeways of Ancient Europe.

The myth of Dionysios' origins tells that he was first born from the
union of Zeus with Persephone. Zeus designated this 'Zagreus' as his
heir, but the jealous Titans lured him away while he was yet a child,
killed, dismembered him and devoured all the pieces except for the
heart, which Athena rescued and preserved. Thus Dionysios is
identified with Osiris.

Zeus, in anger, reduced the Titans to ashes, from which the new
race of humanity was fashioned. Thus each person contains a fragment of
Dionysios within their 'Titanic' earthly body. From the heart of the
god was brewed a love potion, which was given to Semele, a mortal, who
then forced her lover -- Zeus again -- into revealing himself to her
in his primal form. This unveiling was so overwhelming as to annihilate
her, but the child she was carrying was saved by  Zeus enclosing it in
his loins until the time came for its birth as the second Dionysios.

The young god grew up in Thrace, suckled by goats and raised by
satyrs and sileni. When he reached maturity, he descended through the
Alcyonian Lake to rescue the shade of his mother Semele from Hades
and then raised her to Olympus. Afterward, accompanied by a motley
train of semi-human beings, maenads and panthers, he set off on
wanderings throughout the world, from Libya to Arabia to India and
thus back to his homeland.

On the Isle of Naxos he discovered the Cretan Princess
Ariadne, abandoned there by Theseus, and joined with her as her
husband. Together they ascended to the heavens, whence he offers a
similar blissful reward to his devotees, temporarily in this life and
permanently after death.

D.) The Eleusinian Mysteries: where the Shamanic Experience merges with
the Mystery Initiatory Experience

There had been an initiatory institution in Greece at Eleusis at
least since the 8th century BCE, celebrating both the Greater and
Lesser Mysteries of Demeter. The function of all lesser mysteries,
and equally of the lower grades of initiation was to impart
information on the nature of higher worlds. The Eleusinian symbolism
of corn, pomegranates and poppies refers to the unseen forces which
affect humanity via the vegetable kingdom, building the body and
informing the mind. The intuitive grasp of this relationship, in all
its wonder and complexity, was summarized in the famous climax of
the Mystery, so disappointing to non-initiates, the displaying of an
ear of wheat.

Certain information was also given at Eleusis by word of mouth,
including the 'password to the Paradise of Demeter' to be used after
death. In the Lesser Mysteries of Orpheus, it is suggested that the
fact of heliocentricity was revealed. So Lesser Mysteries give the
initiates theoretical knowledge which changes their whole view of
humanity and the cosmos, and stands them in better stead when they
have to leave this world for the unknown.

The Mysteries of Demeter were celebrated every five years
at Eleusis. The candidate of the Lesser Mysteries underwent a symbolic
journey in which the quest of Demeter for her lost daughter Persephone
in Hades was reenacted with the would-be candidate in the role of
Demeter. The journey within was that of the darkened soul: the candi-
date passed through a door into total darkness: if they survived the
experiences met within they passed through a second door into
brilliant light - symbolizing rebirth into the heavenly sphere. Here
they actually  meet the gods, experiencing Demeter's journey as their
own recovery of lost enlightenment.

The function of the Greater Mysteries of Eleusis was to bring
about direct contact with the beings who were believed to inhabit the
higher worlds. The higher grades of initiation were conducted
individually rather than collectively as in the Lesser Mysteries.
In the inner truth of the Eleusinian mysteries, the birth of the soul
into matter is seen as death; only through participation in the
mysteries can the initiate rise to a timeless reality where he is
utterly free and alive.

Again, you have the belief that humanity is insufficient without
the agency of the Priests of the Mysteries to achieve enlightenment.
The soul sleeps in the body for most of the time, awakening only when
it has been transformed by ritual and the use of an initiatory drink.
To die without this experience is to sleep forever or to wander
homeless in the caverns of Hades.

The primary objective in these initiations was to take the
candidate through the gates of death. In that, the initiations resemble
that which a candidate to become a Shaman goes through almost
universally in Shamanic lifeways. Just as in the ancient Shamanic
initiation, the candidate was placed in a Non-Ordinary State of
Consciousness disassociated from the body, and in this state to
experience higher states of being and journey in other (internal)
worlds. Through these ecstatic experiences the candidates would learn
that they could live freely without their physical bodies, and would
be convinced that the gods they worshipped were perfectly real.

Then they would return to the Ordinary State of Consciousness
fully convinced of their own immortality and prepared to meet death
fearlessly, knowing it is the gate to freedom and the soul's true
home.

E.) The Orphic Mysteries of Pythagoras

As a descendant of Dionysios, Orpheus is the intellectual image
of a demi-god, raised to deity by his sufferings in the underworld. His
is a perfect symbol for all who follow the paths of the mysteries:
imperfect, deficient Humanity raised to sufficiency and perfection by
self-sacrifice and the superior knowledge of the priestly caste.

Orpheus has the lyre and the gift of music from Apollo, yet ends up
like Dionysios, torn apart by Thracian bacchantes. The suffering of
Orpheus, who loses Euridice (through fear, the first pitfall of all
mystery knowledge -- rational fear has its roots in the instinct for
self-preservation and therefore runs counter to the self-sacrificial
leitmotif of all Mystery Religions) and is then dismembered by the
Maenads; a paradigm of the suffering and rebirth of the sleeping soul.

The Orphic mysteries are complex in the extreme. The most important
aspect of the Orphic Mysteries was that humanity and the gods are
related. At a most subtle and sensitive level a blurring of the
edges occurs, an overlapping of human consciousness and divine
awareness. "Everything that lives is Holy" becomes a reality in
the interaction of the divine and the mundane. It is interesting that
as the suffering "imperfect" human becomes "perfected" and "divine,"
the realization that is at the core of the old Shamanic lifeways comes
to the fore: There is no separation between human and divine, Nature is
not fallen, but the very body of the Great Mother, and that all life
matters.



III. CHRISTIANITY VIEWED AS A MYSTERY RELIGION

A.) The Foundation of Christianity
Christianity is not a single entity, but a hodgepodge of various
ideas brought together in a syncrete. There are numerous sects of
Christianity, from the elaborate, ritualized Roman Catholic, Eastern
Orthodox and Anglican traditions; to the less formal Protestant sects;
down to the ultra-liberal Unitarian-Universalists and mystic Anthro-
sophists, Gnostics, and Swedenborgians.

Then, there are also the stricter, more legalistic groups (usually
Protestant in origin) that are collectively known as Evangelicals and
include, most ominously, Fundamentalists, Christian Identity Churches
with their anti-Semitism and Racism fused completely within their
dogma, and the Reconstructionists (not to be confused with Reconstruc-
tionist Judaism and Reconstructionist Neo-paganism such as Wicca) who
believe that the Bible should replace the Constitution and the canon of
US Law as the guiding principle of America, to be administered by
clergy. Their uniting tenet is that the Bible is to be taken literally,
and is to be considered inerrant and directly inspired by the Christian
God.

There are also Neo-Christian groups, considered by most Christians
to be beyond the pale of Christianity, like the Christian Scientists,
Mormons, The Native American Church, and the Unification Church of
Reverend Sun Myung Moon. Even the Black Muslims quote extensively from
the Old and New Testaments along with the Qur'an.

These various sects of Christianity disagree far more than they
agree. Wars have been fought over even the smallest minutiae of
differences in dogma, and even now rival sects blast each other with as
much gusto as Sunni Moslems blast Shia Moslems in Beirut. The only
thing that truly unites them is a single document: the New Testament of
the Bible.

Even if one does not subscribe to the literal or historical
truth of the events depicted in the Gospels, acceptance of their
symbolic significance generally suffices for a person to be called
Christian. And for many Christians they are assumed to be both
coherent and inerrant. From childhood, a Christian is socialized to
believe that the story of Jesus, as it is preserved in the Four
Gospels, is if not God-inspired, at least definitive. The Four
Evangelists, supposed authors of the Gospels, are deemed to be
reliable witnesses who consistantly reinforce and confirm each other's
testimony. Most editions of the Christian Bible include a "Harmony of
the Gospels" in the appendix.  Of the people who today call
themselves Christians, relatively few are aware of the fact that the
four Gospels not only contradict each other in more than one way, but
at times they violently disagree.

B.) The Origin and Birth of Jesus

So far as popular tradition is concerned, the origin and birth
of Jesus are well enough known. In reality, the Gospels, on which that
tradition is based, are considerably more vague on the matter.

According to Matthew, Jesus was an aristocrat, descended from David via
Solomon, and a credible heir to the throne of Judea, one of
the two discrete districts of Roman Palestine. According to Luke,
Jesus' family, though of the Davidic line, was somehow not as destined
to the throne. And Mark goes even further and says that Jesus was born
to a working-class family of "Tectonae" or builders. It's not clear
from the Koine whether or not, as conventional wisdom has it, that
Joseph was a carpenter or not. The two geneologies, one in Matthew and
one in Luke, disagree wildly.

The discrepencies between the Gospels are not confined to the
question of Jesus' ancestry and genealogy. According to Luke, Jesus,
on his birth, was visited by shepherds. But according to Matthew, he
was visited by priest-kings, the Magi of Persia, which incidentally
was what the priests of Mithras were called.

According to Luke, Jesus' family lived in Nazareth, a town that did
not exist in its present form and under that name until the Second
Century CE. From here they are said to have journeyed, for a census
(that history suggests never in fact occurred) to Bethlehem, where
Jesus was born in the poverty of a manger. But according to Matthew,
his family had been fairly well to do residents of Bethlehem all along,
and Jesus himself was born in a house.

In Matthew's version Herod's persecution of the innocents prompts the
family to flee into Egypt, and only on their return do they make their
home in Nazareth. Again, this town did not exist at the time that the
events in the New Testament are said to happen, at roughly 4 BCE to
33 CE.

Such a glaring difference in stories cannot be just shrugged off.
If two witnesses gave such divergent stories in court, the Judge would
have to rule one or the other wrong. Yet both stories are held as truth
without question by Christianity. Therefore, the Gospels cannot be
regarded as inerrant. How can they be inerrant...without error...when
they are inconsistent with each other on the basic question on Jesus'
origins? And it gets even stranger.

None of the Gospels really agree about the events surrounding the
Crucifixion either, and some accounts cannot even be reconciled with
Judaic custom. There is no way that the Sanhedrin would allow the
Romans to crucify even the basest criminal during one of the most
sacred times of the year: the festival of Pesach. Yet that is what two
of the four Gospels say happened. And most strikingly, the
characterization of Jesus in each of the Gospels contradict the others.
In Luke, Jesus is the Suffering Just One prefigured in the 53rd chapter
of Isaiah. In Matthew, Jesus is the rightful temporal heir to the
thrones of Judea and Israel, a king that did not rule, and even hints
that he was a Guerilla leader that came "not to bring peace but the
sword." In Mark, Jesus is the model Jewish ethical teacher and
wonder-worker, a true Tzaddik. And in John, Jesus is the mystic God-man
of Neo-Gnostic thought, the mediator and initiator, the incarnation of
the Gnostic notion of the Logos.

There is further disagreement about Jesus' last words on the cross.
In Matthew and Mark the words are, "My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me?"...an allusion to one of David's more morose psalms. In
Luke, the words are-"Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." And
in John they are simply "It is finished." With these discrepancies, the
Canonical Gospels can only be accepted as highly questionable, and
certainly not as definitive. If the New Testament is truly the Word of
God, then God's Book has been very well "cooked" by human agency.

C.) Jesus and the Essenes

Judaism around 30 CE was still very much a tribal religion offering
little chance for individual salvation during a time
when people were looking for some assurance that they mattered
beyond which tribe, or city or province they came from. Mystery
religions were well established in the east and making inroads into
Rome herself. In addition to the Pharisees and Sadducees who were vying
for control of Jerusalem at the time of Jesus' life, there was a
sect of ascetics known as the Essenes.

It has been said that the Essenes were the founders of a Mystery
religion that married esoteric Judaism with various mystic
undercurrents picked up during the Babylonian exile (it is surmised
that some Jews lived in the Arcadian area of Greece, therefore coming
into contact with the Greek Mysteries) and also possibly from the
admixture of Zoroastrian thought that was mingling in the Roman world
from the influential Mithraic mysteries. Unlike mainstream Jewish
thought, Essenes believed they could work miracles by living apart
from the world and practicing extreme self denial. Like the Manicheans,
Gnostics and Cathari that came after them, the Essenes believed that
the world was not created by God, but by Satan, and since the world and
hence the pleasures of the flesh were satanic rather than godly, that
chastity, penance and monastic life was the only way to escape bondage
by sin.

From historians and chroniclers writing at the time, it is known
that the Essenes maintained communities throughout the Holy Land. A
large colony of Essenes occupied the Qumran community from 110 BCE to
the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE, with a significant period of vacancy
during the reign of Herod, 31 BCE - 4 CE. John the Baptist is
conjectured to have been trained in Essenic communities. Jesus'
parents, Joseph and Mary, are also said to have possibly been laity in
the Essenic movement and Jesus may have received his rabbinical
training in their schools.

There is abundant evidence that Jesus not only knew what the Essene
prophecies were concerning the Messiah, but went to great lengths to
plan for and carry out the prophecies. The Essene prophecies detailed
the life and work of a future "Teacher of Righteousness" who would one
day be sacrificed for the sins of the world. The entire book of Isaiah
has a definate stamp of Essene philosophy on it, especially the famed
chapter 53. I do not, however, go along with the belief that he
cynically faked his crucifixion and resurrection. In the garbled
accounts of the Gospels, one very definate impression comes to mind
about the real Jesus, the Rabbi Yehoshua ben David, the man who would
be King. When Pontius Pilate said "behold the man in whom is no guile,"
I really think he meant it.

D.) A Radical View (This owes a great deal to the book "Holy Blood,
Holy Grail" which raises some interesting questions about the life and
work and possible descendants of the Man of the Galil.)

The following is a scenario of what the historical Jesus might
have been all about based on looking at the Gospels without the
trappings added after Christianity was transported to Rome and
changed to bring it into alignment with competing religions.

Yehoshua ben David was a priest-king, an aristocrat and legitimate
claimant to the throne of Palestine, who embarked on an attempt to
regain his rightful heritage. He was believed to be a native of the
Galil region which was a traditional hotbed of opposition to the
Romans. He had numerous noble, rich and influential supporters
throughout Palestine, including the capital city of Jerusalem. One of
these supporters, Nicodemus, a powerful member of the Jewish council
known as the Synod or Sanhedrin, may also have been his kin.

As an unmarried rabbi (let alone an unmarried heir to the throne of
Judea) was unthinkable under Jewish law, Yehoshua finally, after a
period of indecision (inspired by his Essene period) marries the woman
that was betrothed to him in childhood, Miriam ha'Magdala, a woman of
the Israeli royal line of Benjamin. There is a possibility that she
might have been involved for awhile in an Asherah/Ishtar cult, hence
the biblical citation that she "had seven demons driven from her",
and/or that she was sold by her angered father briefly into
prostitution when Yehoshua broke the betrothal and his family withdrew
the bride-price, hence the description of Miriam as a "sinner" and a
"hetaira" or prostitute. (the hetaira distinction may also have been a
reference to a possible pagan initiation she went through) The wedding
at Cana mentioned in the Gospel of "John" was probably his own.

As an aside, the evidence that Yehoshua was indeed married and
married to none other than Miriam ha'Magdala illuminates the furor
surrounding the book, and later the movie "The Last Temptation of
Christ" in a much different light. Even in the context of the dream
sequence, the marriage of Yehoshua first to Miriam, then as was the
custom in ancient Israel to Miriam's sister Martha when Miriam died was
probably too close for comfort for certain elements of orthodox
Christianity.

In the Galil, Yehoshua established the center for his mystery cult,
an initiatory form of Judaism that drew extensively from both pagan
(Orphic, probably) sources and Essene mysteries. There is evidence that
this mystery cult was the direct origin for Catharism (the roots of
which will become obvious later) and Gnosticism. The "miracle" of his
brother-in-law Lazarus being "raised from the dead" was possibly a
description of one of the rites of his Judaic Mysteries.

He also probably had connections with the Zealots, the
proto-Zionist movement that wanted independence for the kingdoms of
Israel and Judea from the Roman Empire. As the heir to both the thrones
by his alliance by marriage to the line of Benjamin, and by his birth
as a scion of the line of David, Yehoshua was perhaps the last best
hope for independence. He was prepared to become the Messiah, the
promised liberator, the first priest-king of the Jews since Solomon.
And such an aspiring priest-king would have generated powerful
opposition in certain quarters...most definately the Roman occupation
government, and perhaps by the established Levites of the Temple, who
had been given a long leash by the Roman administration and prospered
even as common Jews chafed under Roman rule. This opposition succeeded
in eventually executing Yehoshua for sedition.

Apparently his sufferings were eased by a sponge containing a poisoned
wine, for after he took the "vinegar mixed with gall" he was said to
have expired. He was not given the final coup de grace of his legs being
broken to hasten the death, but a soldier apparently thrust a lance,
aimed between the ribs and into the heart, to allow blood and
pericardial fluid to flow out as proof of his death.

The body of Yehoshua was kept briefly in a tomb owned by a
prosperous uncle, the aforementioned Yossef ha'Aramatha; then Yossef,
Miriam ha'Migdal, Miriam the mother of Yehoshua, and Lazarus, in whose
care Miriam was placed by her son, set out on a boat apparently owned
by Yossef to go into exile to escape the retribution that was bound to
happen. Their goal was the Languedoc region of France, where a Jewish
community had existed since the Babylonian Exile. Also aboard the boat
was the body of Yehoshua, to be buried in exile.

But what about his children? There is conjecture that Miriam
ha'Migdal was pregnant when she went into exile. There is also
convincing evidence that one of his children, who was written into the
bible as the "lestai" (a Greek word used to describe the Zealots that
means "bandit" or "thief") Barabbas, stayed on to lead the Zealots
along with another, Eleazar, and that both met their doom at the
fortress of Masada. There is a tantalyzing letter, found during a dig
at Masada, from a Yeshu Bar Rabbi to another Zealot urging him to fight
on for independence. Eleazar may also have been a son of Yehoshua,
Eleazar being a variation on the name Lazarus.

So even though Yehoshua and at least one, maybe two of his sons had
perished one way or another, perhaps another survived, not even born
until the boat landed near Marseilles. This "son of the Widow Lady" may
have eventually married into a powerful pagan Gaulish family, which
eventually resulted in the Merovingian line. There is much similarity
between the Gnostic Christians that may have been initiated in the
Judaic mystery tradition founded by Yehoshua, the Essene tradition that
may have initiated Yehoshua, and the Cathari movement that sprang up in
the area centuries later.

E.) Christianity after Jesus

When the bid to put Jesus on the throne of Palestine failed,
the uneasy alliance between the factions of his Zealot movement
collapsed.

Little is said of the followers who backed Jesus in the
hopes of garnering power from having helped their friend to the
throne but it may well be imagined that they continued to fight
for independence from Rome and many may well have perished at
Masada.

This may be because of one man, a canny person who saw that Rome
was getting ready to crush the Resistance, and with it, the Temple, the
Sacrifices, and all the traditions of Judaism as it stood. He believed,
like his teacher Gamaliel, that Judaism was meant not only for the Jews,
but for the much-maligned Goyim (Gentiles) as well. With the message
preached by Yehoshua of the uplifting of the downtrodden, the final
triumph of good over evil, and the need to be "saved" from the inner
corruption that had existed since the "fall" of mankind, Saul-Paulos
began to preach his gospel. He might have even "gotten the word" from
the remnant of Yehoshua's movement that he was involved in suppressing.

Saul-Paulos' new religion was oriented primarily toward a Roman or
Romanized audience. Thus the role of Rome in Jesus' death was of
course whitewashed, and guilt was transferred to the Jews. But this
was not the only liberty taken with events to render them palatable
to the Roman world. The Roman state religion deified its rulers, and
Caesar had already been officially instated as a god. In order to
compete, Jesus, whom nobody had previously deemed divine, had to be
deified as well.

Before the message could be successfully disseminated from
Palestine to Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, Egypt, Rome and western
Europe, the new religion had to be made acceptable to the people
of those regions, and it had to be capable of holding its own against
already established creeds. The new god needed to be comparable in
power, majesty, and in his repertoire of miracles, to those he was
intending to displace. If Jesus were to gain a foothold in the
Romanized world of his time, he had to become a full-fledged god. Not
a Messiah in the old sense of the term, not a liberator, not a
priest-king, but God Incarnate, a god, like Orpheus, Tammuz and
especially Mithras, who passed through the underworld and the
harrowing of Hell, and emerged, rejuvenated, with the spring.

It was at this point that the idea of the Resurrection first
assumed such critical importance, and for a fairly obvious reason, to
place Jesus on a par with all the other dying and resurrected gods who
populated both the world and the consciousness of their time. Most
importantly, the story of Jesus would have to dovetail with the popular
cult of Mithras, the unconquered son of the sun. For precisely this
reason the doctrine of the virgin birth was promulgated, a virgin
birth like that of Mithras. And the Easter festival, the festival of
the death and resurrection of the God-man Jesus Christ, was planned
to coincide with the spring rites of the Mithraeum, and of other
contemporary cults and mystery schools.

Given the need to deify Yehoshua, the political struggles and court
intrigue involved in the attempt to install him on the throne would
have to be soft-pedaled, if not entirely exised from his life's story.
Important connections with the Essenes and the Zealots would have to be
stripped from the account as well. In the transition from the man
Yehoshua to the Deity-figure Jesus Christ, the whole dynastic struggle
would have to fall by the wayside. In its place came the familiar myth
of the God of the Jews leaving Heaven and incarnating in the womb of
the Virgin Mary, a God eventually sacrificed to himself like Odin on
the World-tree, but in this case the sacrifice was for the benefit of
sinful creation, not for some quasi-shamanic quest for knowledge. The
familiar Bible is almost exclusively an expression of the mythic
Christ, with hardly a trace left of the real Yehoshua.

Of special interest, however, is the Book of Revelation. This was
apparently a book written much later than either the Gospels or the
Epistles, and written for the express purpose of discrediting the
burgeoning Gnostic movement and any descendant of Yehoshua that
might come down the pike to try to claim the thrones of Judah and
Israel for himself.

For the anti-Gnostic messages, one need only look as far as the
letters to the Seven Churches. The churches in Pergamon and Thyatira
are both accused of "holding to the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which
thing I hate," and "suffer(ing) that woman Jezebel, which calleth
herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce my servants to commit
fornication."  Nicolai, or Nicholas, may have been a Gnostic or a
Manichean, and at the point at which the book may have been written the
fight between the Gnostics and those Christians that followed
Saul-Paulos' teachings might have begun in earnest. And since the
Gnostics had ties to the original Judaic mystery school of Yehoshua,
the added mission of discrediting any heir of the "son of the Widow
Lady" may have been part of the condemnation of Nicolai.

Moving further in, you hear tales of plagues and persecution of the
Pauline Christians. There seems to be resonances within of the
persecutions of Christians under Nero and other Roman emperors...in
fact, after rendering the name Nero Augustus Imperator into Hebrew and
using traditional Jewish numerology, Gematria, the name breaks down
into the infamous number 666, the Number of the Beast. Then the
references to an "anti-Christ" begin.

"And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out
of the sea..." begins the 13th chapter of Revelation. According to
legend, the first Merovee, the first king of the Merovingian line, was
fathered not merely by a human father, but also by a fabulous sea
monster. This may have something to do with the conjecture that Miriam
ha'Migdal was pregnant when she was spirited away from Roman Palestine.
It becomes obvious that this "beast" that the passage warns against is
really any descendant of Yehoshua that might attempt to retake the
throne. And the author of Revelation identifies him with a land over a
sea...perhaps Gaul?

Moving further, there are references to the Whore of Babylon.
Rightly or wrongly, Miriam ha'Migdal has been identified as either a
"sinner" or an actual prostitute, and this may be within as a slander
of not only Miriam, but any of her posterity. Both this hetaira, and
the "beast" himself, are to be thrown bodily into a great lake of fire
and brimstone, and their "father" Satan is to be bound up for a
millenium until his final defeat and the coming of a "New Jerusalem",
to be reigned over by a resurrected God-man Jesus.

It is obvious that the book was written to discredit any mortal
claimant to the throne of Judea and Israel, and also to discredit the
Gnostic "heresy" and other "heresies" that would follow later along the
same lines of Yehoshua and his Judaic Mysteries. But it didn't entirely
work. In the 12th Century, a descendent of the Merovingians, Godfroi de
Boullion, installed his brother Baudoin I as the first "Christian king"
of Palestine. If the storied connection between the Merovingians and
the line of Yehoshua is true, then it is obvious who had the last
laugh.

But in the long run, it was the Paulines who triumphed.
Christianity from its adoption by Emperor Constantine on down had a
decided Pauline cast, and continues to conform to Saul-Paulos'
blueprint to this day. There are tantalizing anecdotes that suggest
that the Albigenesian Crusade, which eventually killed off the Cathari
sect, was partially motivated by the desire to find and keep the bones
of Yehoshua in safety in the bowels of the Vatican. The final resting
place might well have been in a rude stone tomb near Arques, a tomb
that has figured in many paintings over the centuries that have been
commissioned by either descendants of the Merovingians or by
supporters of a restored Merovingian Dynasty. The tomb was opened in
the 1950s, and found empty...another mysterious "empty tomb."



IV: MYSTERY RELIGIONS AFTER THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF THE CATHOLIC
CHURCH IN ROME

1.) Byzantium and the rise of Islam

When Constantine accepted Christian Baptism on his deathbed, the
Catholic Church really and truly began to take shape. The Bishop of
Rome was given the Imperial title of "Pontifex Maximus", and his
authority eventually exceeded the increasingly feeble Roman Emperors.
With the advance of the barbarian tribes, who had largely accepted a
less orthodox form of Christianity, and with the specter of schism
threatening the Church, the nascent Roman Catholic Church was
incresingly isolated. But somehow, despite the abandonment of the
Western Empire by the Roman Imperial House in their flight to the East,
the Catholic Church survived.

The remnant of the old Roman Empire was ruled from what is now
Istanbul in Turkey. First known as Byzantium, then Constantinople, the
Byzantine Emperors abandoned Roman Catholicism for what is now known as
the Eastern Orthodox Church. The great Byzantine cathedral of Hagia
Sophia (holy wisdom in Greek) was the spiritual center of the Byzantine
empire until the advance of the next great Mystery Religion...the
religion of Islam.

The solar deity Allah was originally considered female to the
ancient Bedoin tribespeople, as were most of their other deities.
Before the uphevals that surrounded the acceptance of Islam, Meccan
women perhaps had the most rights of any in the known world outside of
the British Isles. The Ka'aba, the square shrine containing an
extremely large meteorite which was said to be a gift of the solar
goddess, was originally kept by female priestesses and was once a
shrine accessible to women only.

By trade with the exiled groups of Jews in the Near East, a young
trader named Muhammad came into contact with the teachings of Judaism
and Manichaean Christianity. Through this, he began to formulate his
doctrines in what became known as the Qu'ran and the Hadith. The Qu'ran
was Muhammad's answer to the Torah...a book of religious history and
religious precepts. The Hadith was more or less a book of commentary on
the Qu'ran and its application to human law. The Qu'ran was supposedly
revealed to Muhammad in the desert of Arabia by the angel Jabril, known
to Jewish mystics as Gabriel.

The message of the Qu'ran was originally ill received, especially
by the priestesses of Mecca. Muhammad and his followers were forced to
flee to the city of Medina, a trading port of rather poor reputation at
that point. The Medinans were more receptive to Muhammad as not just a
religious leader, but also as a political leader, and joined with him
in his eventual conquest of Mecca. The conquest meant that the rights
and privileges of Meccan women were abolished, although the white slave
trade that existed in Medina was also curtailed. Patriarchy was
installed, although with more curbs than that in the Jewish and
Christian world. A man could only have four wives, and would have to
prove in Islamic Court that he could support more than one wife. Still,
it was a long way to fall for the women of Mecca. Later, under
influence of the Byzantines, (who picked the idea up from India) women
were forced to wear a full-length veil called a chador.

But even before the chador, women lost their right to dismiss
their husbands for mistreatment, while divorce became very easy for
men. A woman could be beaten for disobedience, while slaves were set
free of the lash. A woman's testimony counted only as half as reliable
than that of a man in Islamic Court, and women were banned from the
pilgrimage to the Ka'aba, the shrine that was once the holiest site for
the Goddess-worshipping pre-Islamic faith of the Arabian people.

B.) Jihad and counter-Jihad...the founding of the Prieure d'Sion and
the Knights Templar

Whipped into a fervor by Muhammad, his followers embarked on a
Jihad to forcibly convert all the world to the faith of Islam. The
Mujahedeen, or holy warriors, were sent all over to conquer. In their
wake, the remaining pagan traditions of the Near East, as well as the
old mystery religions that survived the onslaught of Christianity, and
the great mystery religions of Essene Judaism and Zoroastrianism were
decimated. The sacred sites of Judaism and Christianity in Palestine
were taken over by Islam; and as a supreme affront to Jews in
particular an ornate mosque, the Dome of the Rock, aka the Mosque of
Omar, was built on Mount Moriah, the holiest site of Judaism, the site
of the Great Temple.

However, as it was mentioned earlier, the Crusades were less an
attempt to "save the Holy Sepulchre from the infidel" than they were an
attempt to place a Merovingian on the throne of Jerusalem. To
accomplish this, two major knightly orders were established. First
among these was (and remains) the Prieure d'Sion. The fighting wing of
the Prieure was the Order of the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple
of Solomon, which has come down to us as the Knights Templar.

The first Crusades were incredibly successful. Led by Godfroi de
Boullion, Comte de Razes, a descendant of the Plantard branch of the
Merovingian House, the Templars placed Godfroi's brother Baudoin I on
the throne. But less than a century later, Jerusalem was back in the
hands of the Caliphs. Back on the continent, the "Cutting of the Elm" on
the field of Gisors marked the split between the Prieure and the Knights
Templar.

Those attached to the Prieure retreated back to France to nurture the
dream of Merovingian ascendance over the entire world, and those
attached to the Knights Templar stayed in Acre, in the Western Galil,
the final outpost of European Christiandom in Israel. The Templars hung
on for 200 years more, before the Pope dissolved the order and sent
King Phillipe Le Bel of France to execute its leaders and capture its
fabled treasure for the Papal coffers.

During the final 200 years of the Templars, rumors began to fly
about Templar involvement with paganism, Islamic mysticism of the
Ismaili sect, homoeroticism, and even devil worship. It is doubtful
that the rumors, which come down to us from history in the forced
confessions of Jacques de Molay and other Templars, had much foundation
in reality. Why would one spit on and trample underfoot a cross if a
red Cross Patee was the symbol of your order?

But there IS evidence that connections with both Islamic and Jewish
mysticism were made by the Templars, dating back to well before the
"Cutting of the Elm." And there was a healthy strain of Gnostic and
especially Cathar thought in the more implicitly Christian elements of
Templar thought. It is quite possible and plausible that the building
blocks of the Western Hermetic traditions, from Alchemy to Freemasonry
to Theosophy to the Fin de Siecle Occult revival that birthed the Order
of the Golden Dawn, the Stellar Matutina, the Astrum .'. Argentum .'.
and the Ordo Templi Orientis (meaning Order of the Oriental Temple)
have their roots with or at least were influenced by the Templars.

And when one takes into consideration the connection between the
Templars and the Merovingian House, one can clearly see that the ritual
repudiations of traditional Christianity may have something to do with
the hypothesis that has been presented here, that is that the Cross
represented not a victory, but a defeat for the Davidic royal house of
Israel. Yehoshua and later Yehoshua bar Rabbi and Eleazar had died at
the hands of Rome. Only the exodus of Miriam ha'Migdal, who was either
with child or had a babe in arms with her, saved the most promising
branch of the Houses of both David and Benjamin from destruction. So it
makes sense in this light that despite the use of a red Cross Patee, a
"Rose Croix", as their symbol, the Templars would ritually defile a
cross as the symbol of a major defeat of the House of David.

Most of the Templars were massacred by the Seneschals of King
Phillipe Le Bel. But the Templars did not merely exist in the land
"over the sea"...they had holdings in Germany, where a Templar offshoot
called the Teutonic Knights had their own autonomous "Ordenstadt" in an
area that includes parts of modern-day Germany, Czechoslovakia and
Austria; they existed practically unmolested in Portugal, where only a
name-change to the Knights of Christ was required of them to remain;
and in the far reaches of Scotland, where Robert the Bruce gave them
sanctuary in exchange for their aid in defeating his enemies at the
Battle of Bannockburn.

C.) The origins of Freemasonry and the Rosicrucians

The local Masonic lodge today is pretty much a social club, with no
more interest in Magick and heterodox Mystery Religion than other
fraternal organizations like the Knights of Columbus, the Elks Lodge
and that perennial favorite, the Odd Fellows. But from the 18th Century
CE to the beginning of this century, Freemasonry was primarily a
Mystery Religion, an initiatory tradition that had links with the
ancient Apollonian, Orphic and Hermetic Mysteries of Ancient Greece.

It is probable that writings by Pythagoras and others were preserved by
the knowledge-loving Jews and Moslems of the Near East from the mindless
destruction that was part and parcel of the sweep of Christiandom across
parts of Asia and most of Europe. Perhaps the greatest collection of
scientific and esoteric knowledge, the Library of Alexandria, was burnt
to the ground by Papal command in the 4th or 5th Century CE. But in
Jewish and Moslem enclaves, scientific as well as esoteric research
continued. In the enclaves of the Jews, this expressed itself as the
esoteric system of the Qabala. In Islamic lands this expressed itself as
the foundation of modern Arithmetic and Mathematics, as well as the
metamorphosis of Alchemy to the rudiments of Chemistry.

Perhaps the remainder of the Templars, having kept themselves free
of the dogmatism of orthodox Christianity by their adherence to a more
heterodox form of Christianity, began to translate these documents and
integrate bits and pieces of them into their ritual worship. Templars
also came into contact with some of the artisan guilds of Europe, who
had encrusted their apprenticeship regime with elements of mysticism,
like a Bower Bird encrusts his nest with shiny objects. Most notable
for their mystical bent were the Masons Guilds.

The medieval Masons Guilds had identified themselves with the craftsmen
brought by King Hiram of Tyre to Jerusalem to build Solomon's Great
Temple on Mount Moriah. King Hiram was given the appelation "the
Son of the Widow Lady", linking him possibly with the child brought by
Miriam ha'Migdal to the South of France, albeit only in a symbolic
sense. According to the mythology created by the Masons Guild, Hiram
was assassinated, and the craftsmen swore that they would eventually
find their leader's murderer and avenge Hiram's death.

The Templars began to add elements of the legends spun by the Masons
Guilds to their rituals. Hiram was identified with the murdered
grand master of the Masons Jacques De Molay, and the Templars took the
oath of revenge for the murder of the legendary King of Tyre, the
friend of Solomon.

By the 17th Century, other elements began to come into play.
Remember the reference to the Rose Croix as badge of the Templars?
Three tracts were published by Johann Valentin Andrea, a celebrated
alchemist, concerning Christian Rosenkreutz and a Magickal order known
as the Rosicrucians. The early Rosicrucian order was the athanor from
which the Freemasons emerged. The most important element of the
Rosicrucian order was sheltering those wanted by the Inquisition from
its clutches. Finally in 1660, the restored British monarch Charles II
became head of the "Invisible College" of the order, the first
well-documented order to call itself Freemasonry.

The "Invisible College" became the foundation, if you will, of what
became known as the "York Rite" of Freemasonry. When the Stuart clan
was exiled to France after the revolt led by "Bonnie Prince Charlie",
the "Scottish Rite" of Freemasonry began to evolve. Also in France,
colorful figures such as the Comte de Saint-Germain, Comte Cagliostro
and Casanova began to formulate yet another flavor of Freemasonry, the
now-extinct "Memphis-Misraim Rite".

The Memphis-Misraim Freemasons were the first to break with the
largely Christianized milieu of Freemasonry and adopt elements of the
old Mystery Religion of Isis and Osiris, the texts of which had begun
to be translated with the aid of the Rosetta Stone. They were also
highly politicised, with sympathies that contrasted sharply from that
of the royalist York and Scottish Rites. The revolutionaries in the
American colonies were connected with Memphis-Misraim Freemasonry, and
the revolutionary Illuminati-Orden of Adam Wieshaupt also had its
origins within this rite. There was also a connection between a small
group of Freemasons that used the remnants of Keltic mythology as its
mythos, the Pendragon Order or Order of the Dragon and Grail, with the
Adams family of American Patriots. There is evidence that modern-day
Wicca owes much to this Order, of which tantalizingly little is known.

But the most powerful connection between Memphis-Misraim Freemasonry and
a political movement was in the French Revolution. The Jacobin leaders,
including Robespierre, were very committed Memphis-rite Freemasons. The
Terror caused a major split in French Freemasonry, and even endangered
the venerable Prieure d'Sion. With the advent of Napoleon, Memphis-
Misraim Freemasonry purged itself of political content, and eventually
slid down the hill into obscurity. Its most enduring document, outside
of the Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of the Rights of
Man, was the music and especially the opera "Die Zauberfloete" of
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

D.) The Fin De Siecle and the Magick revival

The near-extinct Memphis-Misraim order of Freemasonry provided fertile
seeds for the various Magickal orders and salons that sprung up
in the latter half of the 19th Century. The Order of the Golden Dawn,
perhaps the most influential of these orders, was based quite liberally
on the old Memphis-Misraim Masonic order, although the daunting 90+
grades of Memphis-Misraim Freemasonry were carved down to 10 degrees,
corresponding to the ten Sephiroth of the Qabalistic Tree of Life.

Seven of these degrees were accessible to mortals, with the three
highest grades reserved for the "Secret Chiefs" of the order, who were
presumed immortal beings that lived in seclusion in the Himalayas,
accessible only to the Golden Dawn's founder MacGregor Mathers.

One firebrand of a budding magickian named Edward Crowley joined the
order in the 1880s. He prefered his middle name of Alistair, which
he later transformed into the more familiar Aleister. He took the name
Frater Perdurabo, meaning "I Endure", and ascended meteorically through
the ranks of the organization. By the time he received his 6th Degree
initiation, he began to question the assertion that MacGregor Mathers
made that he was the only one to communicate with the "Secret Chiefs",
and even the existence of such a group of people. He demanded that he
be allowed to study for the 7th degree, the highest attainable within
the order. MacGregor refused, and a power struggle ensued.

The power struggle gutted the order, with several defecting to a
rival order that Crowley had created called the Astrum .'.
Argentum .'. . The AA's rituals were more chaotic, involved experiments
in Tantric Sex and Psychedelic drugs like Psilocybin, Hashish and
Datura stramonium, and had a far more Dionysian flavor than the
Apollonian GD. In the grand tradition of one-upmanship within
Freemasonry and Neo-freemasonry, the AA had not just 7 degrees
accessible to initiates, but 10.  The remainder of the Golden Dawn,
including Dion Fortune and the beleaguered MacGregor Mathers,
reorganized as the Stellar Matutina, which persisted until the 1930s
and had ties to Theosophy.

The AA later merged with a German order called the Ordo Templi
Orientis that held similar interests in sex magick and the use of
mind-expanding drugs. The OTO persisted even after the death of Crowley
in 1940, and is presently experiencing a renaissance of sorts, despite
an undeserved bad reputation of a similar sort to that which remains
around Crowley. The old use of mind-expanding drugs and sex is down-
played as optional, and the group now sees itself as an alternative
religion based on a single commandment...to find one's destiny, or True
Will, and follow it. This is the best rendering of the cryptic motto
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law; Love is the law, love
under Will."

The various offshoots of the Golden Dawn were not the only Magickal
orders to emerge in the Gilded Age. There were several orders that
identified themselves as "Rosicrucian", with the most durable being the
Ancient Mystic Order of the Rose Cross, which is based in San Jose,
California and is well-known for their ads in magazines for their
"Mastery of Life" brochure. They are also remarkable for one of the
finest collections of Egyptian relics outside of the British Museum and
museums in Egypt itself. They, however, are just as innocuous as the
local Masonic Lodge, with more of a mystic bent.  The Theosophical
Society of Yelena Petrovna Blavatskaya got its start in the 1880s,
along with other organizations that were to one extent or another
syncretes of Hinduism. Hinduism attracted many esoteric explorers
especially from Britain, since India was a part of the great Victorian
expanse of the British Empire, an empire that the sun never set on
until well into the 20th Century. Offshoots of Theosophy exist even to
this day, and Theosophy's concepts are very influential to much of the
"New Age".



V. THE REBIRTH OF SHAMANIC RELIGION FROM MYSTERY RELIGION ROOTS: THE
WICCANS AND NEOPAGANS.

A.) Gerald Gardner...the primary synthesiser of Wicca

Gerald Gardner is a singular figure in the 20th Century as far as
religion goes. He started off as a ceremonial magician, and early on
made the aquaintance of Aleister Crowley. There are stories of dubious
authenticity that place him in the inner circle at Crowley's Abbey of
Thelema on a small island off the coast of Italy, and that he hired
Crowley to write the Gardnerian "Book of Shadows". One thing is known:
Gardner held a charter in the OTO to form at least a camp, perhaps even
a separate lodge. And Gardner's stranger sexual proclivities dovetailed
nicely with the OTO as it existed in the early part of this century.
For one thing, Gardner was an avid nudist, and also was quite a fan of
S&M, especially applied in sex magick. But credit must be given to
Gardner for the fact that he was also well-versed in Eastern religion,
the mythology of ancient Greece including the Rites of Eleusis, and
that his knowledge of the practices of the ancient Kelts of Ireland,
Scotland and Wales was remarkable.

It is not, however, very probable that the story that Gardner told of
being initiated into Wicca by an old, grandmotherly woman named
Clutterbuck is at all true. The persecutions of the pagan Kelts in the
5th and 6th Centuries make it highly unlikely that a true "Fam Trad"
preserved without gratuitous Christian syncretism would have survived
into the 20th Century. But considering Gardner's extensive knowledge, it
is unlikely that he needed any help in synthesising his system of Wicca.

There had been attempts to revive the ancient Keltic/Druidic religion
previously. In the 1700s a Masonic Lodge calling itself the Pendragon
Order or the Order of the Dragon and Grail existed in Britain, possibly
even including among its members relatives of the Stuart and Tudor
houses. There are striking similarities between initiatory rituals of
this Masonic order and those of modern Wicca. And historic re-creations
of Druidic ceremonies began to be held late in the 19th Century by the
Society of Druids, Ovates and Bards, and also the Eisteddfod singing
competitions had been revived in Wales. But Gardner seemed to be the
one to pull it all together.

The Crowleyan element did manage to rub off, though. His maxim of "Do
what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" found itself repeated
in Gardner's system as the deceptively ancient sounding "An it harm
none, do what ye will". The "Elemental Weapons" of ceremonial magick
were translated into the tools of the Wiccan: the wand, the pentacle,
the cup and the sword, the latter becoming the familiar athame. The
drawing of magick circles, the use of rudimentary invocations to the
elements, all of these have their parallel in ceremonial magick dating
well into the Middle Ages. Other more mundane influences are also
discernable: the original insistance on an actual, not a symbolic Great
Rite between High Priestess and High Priest, the nakedness in worship
(although the poem by Leland, "Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches"
and paintings by Goya indicate naked witches) and the ritual use of
scourging are no doubt influenced by his personal sexual preferences.

When taken together, Wicca became Gardner's own creation. He had to
remain "in the broom closet" until the British Parliament finally got
around to repealing the "Witchcraft Act" in the '50s, but once that
happened, he was free to teach and spread his system around first
Britain, then Europe, then finally to America in the '60s.

B.) The transformation of Wicca from a Mystery Religion to a looser
experiential ecstatic movement.

In the beginning, Wicca had all the earmarks of Mystery Religion.
There was a system of initiatory grades, a clergy whose word was law
within the Coven (especially the word of the High Priestess, who was
considered the earthly representation of the Goddess) and ritual
fraught with intense symbolism.

But there was an important difference within the ideology of Wicca
and the ideology of most Mysteries. The Wiccan path, like that of the
old shamanic religions, was a path of empowerment, not of supplication.
Instead of either impressing on the new convert that "without the
intercession of the Deity you are nothing," the Wicce's individual
importance and sufficiency in the sight of the Goddess and God is
stressed from the very beginning. Rather than getting to the Orphic
realization that "everything that lives is holy" through the back door
of initiatory ordeal, that belief is there from the beginning.

Magick in Wicca is not, as was the case in some of the more
Christianized occult systems, a power bestowed by God after suppli-
cation, or a power to be seized from jealous entities by a Prometheus-
like magician, but tapping into an inner source. Power is not external,
but internal. Rather than drawing a magick circle to keep evil out, the
Wiccan draws the circle to concentrate power that flows from within.

When Wicca made it to America, the rebellious era of the '60s was well
under way. Those searching for a spiritual path without the patriarchal,
anti-Individualist baggage of the Eastern mysticism that had become so
popular in that time within the counter-culture found that Wicca was
more or less amenable as an alternative. However, the structures of the
Wicca taught by Gardner and those influenced by him were often too
confining for the "do your own thing" mindset. So a looser form of Wicca
began to emerge.

The most well-known group that epitomized this looser, anti-hierarchical
school of thought was the Church of All Worlds. Their name came from the
popular novel by Robert Heinlein, "Stranger In A Strange Land", and
their ritual structures borrowed not only from ancient myth and fin de
siecle occultism but from the modern-day mythology of Science Fiction
and Fantasy. Other groups followed, some even looser than others. A
sub-group of mostly female practitioners, the Dianics, that acknowledged
only a Goddess also emerged; their more visible proponents being
Zsusanna Budapest and the very influential author Starhawk. Some even
identified themselves as "Pagan" or "Neo-pagan" or "followers of The
Earth Religion" to distinguish themselves from Gardnerian and
neo-Gardnerian Wicca.

Wicca in America and even in Europe today owes less and less to
Gardner and more and more to the looser, more eclectic "Neo-pagan"
movement that originated in those heady days of the '60s. Even the most
structured groups have elements of the ecstatic and the free-form that
is directly an influence of the Neo-pagans.

Most importantly, the Wiccan and Neo-pagan movements are attempting
to reconstruct elements of the pre-Mystery Religion shamanic societies
and make them relevant to the modern day. Some are looking to the
Amerind tribes for inspiration, because for one thing their tradition
was formulated as a response to the energies of the Americas and not of
Europe, hence it's more relevant to Americans. Another reason the
Amerinds are so inspirational is that their lifeway has been preserved
the best of all those of Indigenous People. Even under the onslaught of
first the Spaniards, then the expanding United States, much of the old
ways have been recorded and preserved. In Europe a similar attempt is
being made at recovering old pre-Christian ways, but since the old
European shamanism is by and large long dead, they have far less to go
on.

As well as the lifeways of the Amerind tribes, also the ways of
ancient Afrika are also showing up in Neo-paganism through the
syncretes of Santeria and Voudoun. Both Santeria and Voudoun are based
on the rites of the Yoruba people of Nigeria, the tribe that was most
plundered by the slave trade to the Americas. Santeria is most
practiced by Hispanics, most notably those of Cuban descent, and
Voudoun, with its connection to the largely Black population of Haiti,
is the flavor that has sparked the imagination of not only Haitians,
but Afrikan-Americans looking for a connection to the Motherland and
its old ways and find Black Christianity and Islam to be unsatisfactory.



VI: A SUMMING UP.

World religion is still dominated very much by the Mystery Religion
mold. In a lot of areas where shamanic religions are still practiced,
they are largely mixed in with elements of Mystery Religions like
Buddhism, (in the case of Tibetan Shamanism or Bon Po and Korean
Shamanism) Hinduism (in the case of Tantra) Christianity (In the case
of the Native American Church, Santeria, Voudoun and Macumba) and Islam
(some tribal religions in Africa) and are more rightly called syncretes.

However, the rediscovery of traditional lifeways among young people
of aboriginal descent in the Americas, Africa and Australia, as well as
the growth of such synthetic religions as Wicca, Neo-paganism and
Thelema, and even the growth of Humanism as a non-religious spiritual
path shows the way to perhaps a new era that will see vital competition
with the Mystery Religion mold of religious thought. Many traditional
"out groups" pilloried by the major Mystery faiths like women, gays and
lesbians, intellectuals and those of minority races are finding
themselves drawn to these spiritual alternatives. Women especially are
finding a spiritual voice within Dianic Wicca, where the Goddess is
honored as "She who created us in Her image," in contrast to the
Judeo-Christio-Islamic view of a single Male God who creates man in his
image and creates woman as an afterthought.

I cannot see, however, a "post Christian world" where the dominant
Mystery Religion of the modern world, Christianity, is swept aside in
favor of post-Mystery Religion spiritual modalities. Even if this truly
is a "New Aeon" or a "New Age," it is obvious that Mystery Religions
will be with us for a long time to come. Hopefully Neo-paganism can
influence the more conventional religions towards less harsh treatment
of women and homosexuals, and towards AFFIRMING the individual worth of
humans for their own sake, rather than CONDEMNING those who are
"unbelievers" to perdition. But the pessimist in me sees that as being
a fairly lost cause.

1990 Michelle (Minerva Toypurina Cihacou White-Puma) Klein-Hass
based on work by Talespinner Brad Hicks