Beyond all the apparent confusion and division, what unites the overwhelming majority of professing Christians is a shared acceptance of doctrinal statements drawn up back in the fourth century. The story of Jesus as the unique Son of God, born of a virgin, who died and rose again on the third day, only became Christian dogma thanks to the Council of Nicea which convened in 325 CE in an attempt to unify the diverse Christian communities under Emperor Constantine. Bart Ehrman, professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, describes the process that brought this about:

One form of Christianity… emerged as victorious from the conflicts of the second and third centuries. This one form of Christianity decided what was the “correct” Christian perspective; it decided who could exercise authority over Christian belief and practice; and it determined what forms of Christianity would be marginalised, set aside, destroyed. It also decided which books to canonise into Scripture and which books to set aside as “heretical”, teaching false ideas… Only twenty-seven of the early Christian books were finally included in the canon, copied by scribes through the ages, eventually translated into English, and now on bookshelves in virtually every home in America. Other books came to be rejected, scorned, maligned, attacked, burned, all but forgotten – lost.

Back in the early centuries after Christ there were also many Christians who did not accept the Christian ‘orthodoxy’ that was fast becoming dominant thanks to the patronage of the Roman Empire. These Christians had their own sacred writings and distinct traditions received from the apostles. One significant group of these early Christian ‘dissenters’ are identified as the ‘Gnostics’.

Gnostic Christians distrusted the surface manifestations of the orthodox Christians: the deity piously on display, officially worshipped and within everybody’s easy reach. The Gnostics spoke of a hidden God, the true and nameless One, who goes unperceived by the materially minded mob. Only through the experience of the Gnosis – that is through the gift of profound spiritual insight – can human spirits approach the Secret of Secrets.

The Gospels record Christ’s sayings which point to this path, rather than tell the story of a god-man sacrificed for the sins of the world, as the orthodox Christians believed. Christ was the cosmic teacher who took on the form of the man Jesus to impart His gnosis to the apostles, but only gradually and not to all of them in equal measure. Mary Magdalene and St. John the Evangelist were held in particularly high regard by Gnostic Christians. It was to these disciples, rather than the apostle Peter, that Christ had imparted His profoundest ‘secret teachings’.

With the triumph of the Roman Catholic Church in the fourth and fifth centuries, Gnostic Christians suffered persecution and were forced underground. The Gnostic tradition could not be exterminated and it survived to resurface throughout history in various movements. This is the story of Christianity’s other tradition, the hidden one.

Hidden Church of John

You know without doubt, dear Unknown Friend, that many …promulgate the doctrine of the so-called ‘two churches’: the church of Peter and the church of John, or of two ‘epochs’ – the epoch of Peter and the epoch of John. You know also that this doctrine teaches the end – more or less at hand – of the church of Peter, or above all of the Papacy which is its visible symbol, and that of the spirit of John, the disciple loved by the master, he who leaned on his breast and heard the beating of his heart, will replace it. In this way it teaches that the ‘exoteric’ church of Peter will make way for the ‘esoteric’ church of John, which will be that of perfect freedom.
– Valentin Tomberg1

In the Gospels it is the apostle Peter who openly denied Christ Jesus, while it the ‘beloved disciple’ John to whom the dying Jesus commended His mother Mary (symbol of wisdom). The Gospel of John speaks more about the Holy Spirit than the other Gospels. Gnostic Christians invoked the mystical and apocalyptic St. John as the source of their authority. The twentieth century mystic Omraan Mikhael Aivanhov explains in his book Aquarius:

All the Initiates in the past, the purest, most learned men were all disciples of St. John; they were also all persecuted by the official church because of their superiority. But the church of St. John, obliged as it always has been to exist and work in secret, continues to produce sons and daughters of God, and the time is coming when it will manifest itself in the world and show how far above the other churches it is. When it does, the church of St. Peter will have to reform and make many changes, whether it likes to or not.

Unlike the church of Peter – the church of empire, the exoteric, involved with law and power – the church of John is an underground church of the esoteric, concerned with transcendence. It is the ‘Secret Church’ whose only law is love. The Johannite church of Love (Amor) is decentralised, shamanistic, free and eternal; the church of Rome (Roma) is centralised, hierarchical, complex, and worldly. The battle between the two churches is the Old Testament battle of the prophets with the priests. Mystic vision versus organised religion. The church of John is the affirmation of spiritual brotherhood and rejection of the alienation of a worldly material civilisation. We find signs of this universal church of John in the different Gnostic communities appearing through the ages.

The Gnosis in the West

France plays a prominent role in the spread of the Gnostic tradition in the West. Mary Magdalene, it is said, fled for safety to the South of France with Lazarus and his sister, Martha. Early French literature tells of her arrival on the shores of Provence. Her Feast Day, July 22, was a major celebration in France during the Middle Ages and is still observed to this day.

Lyon, today France’s second largest city, is also the place from where in the second century the virulently anti-Gnostic bishop Irenaeus penned his writings which helped forever define ‘orthodox’ Christianity. Ironically, until the discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts in 1945, much of what we knew about the early Gnostics came from Irenaeus, one of their fiercest critics.

Southern France is also the area where the ‘Good Christians’ or Cathars (the name derived from the Greek word katharos, meaning ‘The Pure’) emerged in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Cathars received their Gnostic teachings from the Bogomils (meaning ‘beloved of God’), a Gnostic community active in the Balkans since the tenth century.

At the heart of Cathar doctrine is the notion that true Christianity (which the Cathars claimed to receive in a secret line of apostolic succession from St John) is a life lived, not simply a doctrine believed. For them the life of Jesus was a model the ‘Good Christian’ must strive to emulate, not a vicarious sacrifice to be blindly accepted on trust. The existence of the Cathars challenged the legitimacy of the Roman Church as Zoe Oldenbourg explains in Massacre at Montsegur:

The Cathars declared themselves the heirs of a tradition that was older than that held by the Church of Rome – and, by implication, both less contaminated and near in spirit to the Apostolic tradition. They claimed to be the only persons who had kept and cherished the Holy Spirit which Christ had bestowed upon His Church; and it looks as though this claim was at least partially justified….

After the manner of the Bogomils and the followers of the Eastern Gnostic Prophet Mani, the Cathars believed in a cosmic battle between the principles of Light and Darkness on whose meetings and encounters everything in the universe is based. Darkness was for them dark matter, the unperfected, the transient. They identified all clerical and secular rulers, principally the Roman Church, as the personification of the Darkness.

“Today we are better informed than they were concerning the practices of the Early Church,” writes Zoe Oldenbourg, “and have to admit that the Cathars merely followed a tradition somewhat more ancient than that of the [Roman] Church herself. It was with some appearance of reason that they claimed Rome as the party guilty of ‘heresy’ through her falling-out from the original purity which had characterised the Church of the Apostles.”2

As with the ancient Gnostics, Rome saw the Cathars as a threat. “Catharism was spreading with extraordinary speed in Southern France,” points out the French writer Maurice Magre. “It was the radiant cult of the pure spirit which took possession of men’s souls, and it seriously endangered the materialistic Church of the pope.”3 We know from their sacred books, primarily the Book of the Two Principles and The Questions of John, which relates a discussion between Jesus and the apostle John, that the Cathars believed they were true Christians faithful to a secret tradition stretching back to St. John. Rejecting most of the Old Testament, whose deity they identified with Satan, the Cathars held the Gospel of John in highest esteem and made use of it in their rituals.

Early in the thirteenth century Pope Innocent declared a Crusade against the ‘Good Christians’ of Southern France, announcing:

Attack the followers of heresy more fearlessly even than the Saracens – since they are more evil – with a strong hand and an outstretched arm. Forward then soldiers of Christ! Forward brave recruits to the Christian army! Let pious zeal inspire you to avenge this monstrous crime against your God.

On the annual Feast Day of Mary Magdalene, July 22, 1209, the pope’s army prepared to attack the city of Beziers, many of whose sixty thousand inhabitants were devout Catholics, in order to wipe-out the Cathar ‘heretics’. “It was here, in the name of the Christian religion and through the fanaticism of one of the most venerated popes,” says Maurice Magre, “that there took place one of the most ferocious massacres in all history.” When asked how they were to distinguish pious Catholics from the Cathar ‘heretics’, the pope’s envoy the Abbot of Citeaux, replied, “Kill them all, the Lord will know His own.” The fall of the fortress-town of Montsegur in the Pyrenees in 1244 marked the end of the Cathars as a ‘public’ movement.

The Cathars were the legitimate heirs of the early Gnostic Christians and through them of the first apostles. The central tenets of the Cathars, particularly the prominence they ascribed to Mary Magdalene and St. John, confirms they were a manifestation of an underground stream of secret teachings called by the prophet Mani, the universal ‘Religion of Light.’ The persecution and massacres unleashed by the Roman Church again forced the Gnostics underground to reemerge at a later time in fulfilment of the Great Plan.

The Gnostic Revival

Six hundred years after the pope launched the murderous Crusade against the ‘Good Christians’, three French mystics were each inspired to play unique roles in the revival of the Gnostic Johannite tradition in the modern world.

Dr. Bernard-Raymond Fabré-Palaprat (1773-1838) was deeply immersed in the esoteric traditions of France, particularly those relating to the medieval Knights Templar who were said to have imbibed Gnostic ideas while in the Holy Land. Only a few years after the bloody massacres of the Cathars, the Templars met a similar tragic fate at the hands of the pope and king of France. In 1812 Fabré-Palaprat claimed to have discovered a manuscript written in Greek called the Levitikon, containing a version of the Gospel of John. Most historians today believe the work actually dates from around the seventeenth or eighteenth century, but some researchers say it may originate as early as the eleventh century. To Fabré-Palaprat it was an ancient text revealing the truth about the Church of John and the secret history of true Christianity. According to Peter Partner, the author of a scholarly book on the Knights Templar, in the Levitikon “the orthodox presentation of Christ had been excised in favour of a version which eliminated the miracles and the Resurrection, and presented Christ as an initiate of the higher mysteries, trained in Egypt.

God is understood as existence, action, and mind, and morality as rational and benevolent conduct. The cosmos, in the ancient Gnostic tradition, is viewed as a hierarchy of intelligences. The part played by privileged initiation in the transmission of divine knowledge is central. Christ conferred the essential knowledge of this Gospel on John as the best-loved apostle, and it was transmitted thence through the Patriarchs of Jerusalem until the arrival of the Templars in 1118, after which the secret teaching was kept by the Templar Grand Masters. The esoteric doctrine was passed down through the official medieval Order until its fall in 1312, and then through their successors who extend the chain down to the present.4

Inspired by what he found in the mysterious Levitikon, Fabré-Palaprat set about establishing a ‘Johannite Church’, with himself as the Sovereign Pontif or outer head of ‘John’s Church’. Around 1828 he reorganised the fledgling Johannite community under the name of the “Holy Church of Christ,” or the “Church of Primitive Christians.” Six years later Fabré-Palaprat, on the authority he claimed to have as successor of St. John, publicly celebrated a ‘Johannite Mass’. Facing considerable opposition from the Catholic clergy, the Johannites discontinued their open activities. Fabré-Palaprat retired to Southern France, where in a region alive with the memory of the Cathars and Mary Magdalene, he died in 1839.

On August 6, 1839 Eugene Vintras had finished work in the French village of Tillay when an extraordinary event irrevocably changed his life. An old man knocked at his door and addressing Vintras by his baptismal name ‘Pierre-Michel’, told him the time had come for him to carry out a special mission. The end of the age (that is, the age of the Second Reign, that of Christ) was at hand, and Vintras was to announce the coming of the Holy Spirit and the commencement of the ‘Reign of Love’. The old man ‘whose face shone so brightly you could not look at him,’ again appeared to Vintras while he was on a visit to Paris. Subsequent visionary experiences confirmed the ‘old man’ was the Archangel Michael and Vintras a reincarnation of the prophet Elijah. In addition to Archangel Michael, Vintras told of being visited by the Virgin Mary, St. Joseph, as well as other angelic beings, who disclosed to him the secret teachings of the original Christians. Followers flocked to Vintras, who now known by his spiritual name “Elie-Strathaniel,” celebrated Mass wearing a vestment adorned with an upside down cross. “I want this cross to be known as the cross of grace, because this is an age of crime and corruption, having drawn down on all the earth the terrible effects of my Father’s justice,” Christ had told Vintras in a vision.

Vintras, the pious, mild-mannered Catholic, had been transformed by his experiences and as ‘Elijah returned’ radiated a powerful presence. People from all over France rushed to join his “Church of Carmel” or “Work of Mercy,” with its new priesthood which was to replace the ‘corrupt’ priesthood of the Catholic Church. Lacking any formal religious training and with only a basic education, Eugene Vintras, the Prophet Elie-Strathaniel, preached complex rites and doctrines which remarkably resembled those of the ancient Gnostics. As the historian Richard Griffiths explains:

These rites were sacrificial in nature, and they enabled those who performed them to receive the merits of ‘redemption’, and to participate in the preparation for the coming of the Paraclete. The belief in the efficacy of a specific rite in freeing man from the fetters of matter and bringing him nearer to the spiritual redemption which would announce the Third Reign is very near to that of most gnostic sects, for whom the method of redemption consisted not so much in the profession of certain opinions or virtues as in the practice of certain rites.

The ancient Gnostics included both men and women in the priesthood, a tradition revived by Vintras in the Church of Carmel.

Women were permitted into the priesthood of the rite, in fact they held a very important place, for it was through Woman that salvation was to come. And in the attitude towards the Virgin Mary we find a conception of her as ‘created Wisdom’, the invariable reflection of ‘uncreated Wisdom’. This can be seen to be very close to one form of Valentinianism, a gnostic belief in which Sophia, or Wisdom (a divine principle which had fallen from the realm of light into the realm of matter) was conceived as being a double figure. The higher Sophia remained in the sphere of light, the lower Sophia had sunk into darkness. Through this duality Sophia became the fallen divinity through whom the mingling of light and dark, of spirit and matter, in the world, had been achieved; she was also seen as the intermediary between the lower and higher worlds and an instrument of redemption.5

In 1842, under pressure from the Catholic Church, Vintras was arrested by the French authorities and imprisoned for five years on the trumped-up charge of soliciting donations from people to whom he claimed to reveal the name of their guardian angel. While he was in prison, the Abbe Marechal, known as Ruthmael, took over the community. He apparently began publicly teaching certain rituals that had a sexual content. According to some reports, he confided to his congregation, “Those who feel love for one another should share it often. Every time they do, they are sure to create a spirit in heaven.”

In 1848 the Church of Carmel was formally condemned by the Vatican, and during the years 1852 to 1862 Vintras lived in London, where he published The Eternal Gospel. On his return to France he founded new congregations and a ‘college of prophets’ in Lyon, a city with a strong connection to the Gnostic tradition. For some years the Church of Carmel continued with congregations in Spain, in Belgium, in Italy, and in England. The Church survived Vintras’ death on December 7, 1875, but by then the rites were only celebrated in the utmost secrecy. A Vintrasian church functioned in London up until at least the beginning of the Second World War. From England, Vintras’ followers resettled in other countries, free of the acrimonious scrutiny of the Catholic Church. Others went on to join the new spiritual groups that emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Dr. Bernard-Raymond Fabré-Palaprat and Eugene Vintras made unique contributions to the rediscovery of the Johannite Gnostic tradition. The religious movements started by these French visionaries helped prepare the way for the establishment of the modern Gnostic Church in 1890 by Jules-Benoit Doinel (1842-1902). Doinel had for some years frequented esoteric and mystical circles, where he encountered the teachings of Fabré-Palaprat and Vintras. One of these circles, formed around the Countess of Caithness, took a particular interest in ancient Gnosticism. Lady Caithness was well acquainted with France’s occult and mystical groups, including the Church of Carmel. Jules Doinel also entered Freemasonry, being initiated Master in 1885 with the “congratulations and encouragement” of Albert Pike. Dr. Stephan A. Hoeller informs us:

It was into this milieu that the ancient Gnostic tradition was reborn in France in the late nineteenth century. Jules-Benoit Doinel du Val Michel, a scholarly esotericist who had been a devoted researcher of the documents of the Cathar faith, had a mystical experience in 1890, in which he received spiritual empowerment to reconstitute the Gnostic church of old. His experience occurred in the splendid chapel at the residence of the Duchess de Pomar, Countess of Caithness, in Paris. This remarkable noblewoman was a friend of Madame Blavatsky and an early Theosophist and patroness of esoteric movements….

Jules Doinel gathered a following and established the Eglise Gnostique, which was organised along sacramental lines. The teachings of the new church were strictly Gnostic, and in homage to Valentinus, Doinel assumed the ecclesiastical title of Patriarch Tau Valentin II. In a most progressive step he ordained women to priestly and episcopal offices; he also established once again the sacrament of the Consolamentum reminiscent of the Cathars.6

Given Jules Doinel’s connections to France’s leading mystics and occultists the Gnostic Church soon became known as “the church of the initiates.” Doinel consecrated the remarkable esoteric writer Papus (Dr. Gerard Encausse) as a Gnostic bishop, and also joined Papus’s Martinist Order. Among Doinel’s acquaintances was Abbe Berenger Sauniere, the parish priest of Rennes-le-Chateau.

At this time a number of gifted esotericists joined the French Gnostic Church, among them Fabré des Essarts, Albert de Pouvourville, Paul Sedir, Lucien Mauchel, Victor Blanchard and René Guénon.

In 1908, Joanny Bricaud (1881-1934), held at Lyon the Holy Synod of Gnostic Bishops, which elevated him as patriarch of the Gnostic Church under the name Tau Jean II. Bricaud had studied the Johannite teachings and greatly admired Eugene Vintras and the Church of Carmel. He was committed to fully restoring the ancient Gnostic wisdom, faithful to the sacred tradition of Saint John. On becoming patriarch he declared:

The religious evolution of which we are a part shows us that a new religion is necessary. Gnosticism offers itself as the desired religion. Gnosis is the complete and definitive synthesis of all beliefs and all ideas of which humanity has need to realise its origin, its past, its end, its nature, the contradictions of existence and the problems of life….

Gnosis is the very essence of Christianity. Here, my beloved, is the just definition of Gnosticism. But, by Christianity, we do not only mean the doctrine taught since the arrival of the divine Savior, but also the one taught before Jesus’ arrival, in the old temples, the doctrine of Eternal Truth. Our Church is the antinomy of that of Rome. The name of that one is Force; the name of ours is Love.

Our Sovereign Patriarch is not Peter, the impulsive, who denied three times his master and took up the sword, but John, the Savior’s friend, the apostle who relied on his heart and in it knew best the immortal sentiment, the oracle of light, the author of the Eternal Gospel, who took up only Speech and Love.7

In The Esoteric Christian Doctrine, published in 1907, a year before he became patriarch of the Gnostic Church, Bricard wrote:

The main aim of the Universal Gnostic Church is to restore the original religious unity, that is to establish and spread a Christian Religion true to the universal religious tradition. It is not hostile towards any Church. It respects the customs and laws of all peoples. It is essentially large and tolerant, which permits it to admit all men without distinction of nationality, language or race.

Sadly, the ecumenical brotherhood and openness of spirit cultivated by Bricaud could not prevent persecution and strife befalling the Gnostic Church in France. Bricaud’s successor, the saintly Monsignor Constant Chevillon, Tau Harmonious (1880-1944), was cruelly executed by Nazi collaborators after the Vichy government suppressed the Gnostic Church. Nevertheless it was from France that the Gnostic Church spread to Portugal, Italy, Belgium, and South America. “The Gnostic tradition, which originally had its home in France,” Dr. Stephan Hoeller tells us, “came to be established in England and later in the United States, initially as a result of the efforts of a bishop of French descent who was raised in Australia.”

The Gnosis Restored

With fascism and communism on the rise across Europe, far away in Australia a young spiritual seeker began questioning the historical foundations of Christianity. In his quest for truth, Richard, Duc de Palatine (born Ronald Powell in 1916), joined “the biggest occult library in the Southern Hemisphere at the Theosophical Lodge in Melbourne,” where he studied “the extant writings concerning the Gnostics, Essenes and Secret Mysteries.” By 1944 he became convinced “that one day he would cause to be formed a Brotherhood which would partially restore the Sacred Lore and encourage people to prepare themselves for the Illumination and Interior Communion with the God within.”

In the 1940s Richard, Duc de Palatine, a learned and charismatic figure, attracted much attention. His insight was uncanny, but for all this, he was perceived as being a very humble person who seemed to exude love and peace wherever he went.8 In 1948 he told his friends his mission was not in Australia and he travelled to London, where in 1953 he was consecrated as Bishop Richard John Chretien Duc de Palatine by the Patriarch Hugh George de Willmott Newman. The name of Duc de Palatine is a personal and spiritual title.

In October, 1953 the Most Rev. Richard, Duc de Palatine established in London the “Pre-Nicene Gnosto-Catholic Church,” with the stated object of “restoring the Gnosis – Divine Wisdom to the Christian Church, and to teach the Path of Holiness which leads to God and the Inner Illumination and Interior Communion with the Soul through the mortal body of man.”

From his base in London’s Kensington, Richard, Duc de Palatine travelled on several occasions to France where he made contact with bishops of the French Gnostic Church. They encouraged him to fulfil his mission of transmitting the Gnostic tradition to the English-speaking world. He was also received by representatives of France’s leading mystical orders, including the surviving Grand Master of the Johannite Templar Order. In a profile of Richard, Duc de Palatine’s life we read that he held high office in many esoteric bodies:

Through these Orders and his many contacts, particularly in France which he frequently visited, Richard was able to bring forth in a semi-public forum the hidden teachings, the Gnosis of the Soul, which exposed the false vestiges of truth that had been foisted onto the people.

Through his London based Pre-Nicene Publishing House, Richard, Duc de Palatine issued a series of booklets on Christian Gnosticism, with titles like “The Inner Meaning of the Mystery Schools,” “The Christian Mysteries,” and “Christ or Jesus?” He also published “The Lucis Magazine” as the official organ of ‘The Sovereign Imperium of the Mysteries.’ Reviewing Richard, Duc de Palatine’s early writings it is obvious how far-sighted and spiritually gifted he was. Articles in his magazine ranged from discussions of “The Fallen Angels” and the “Dead Sea Scrolls” to the “Christian Fathers on Reincarnation” and “Spiritual Illumination”. In the book The Key to Cosmic Consciousness, he is described as an “outstanding mystic and illumined teacher and writer” whose “knowledge and experience stems from his own illumination in 1956, after applying the teachings of the early Gnostic Fathers…”

Writing close to fifty years ago, Richard, Duc de Palatine contrasted the Gnostic spirit of tolerance with the dogmatism of the mainstream Churches:

The true Gnostic or Christian makes no claim that he alone is right or that his teaching is the only one required or necessary for salvation. He demands that no one accept the statements of himself or anyone else on faith, but insists that every one should prove these things for himself.9

Richard, Duc de Palatine’s magazines and booklets were disseminated around the world and his ‘Brotherhood and Order of the Pleroma’ had branches in South Africa, Nigeria, the USA, and Australia. In 1971 he moved to the United States where he continued his work up to the time of his death in 1977. “He left behind a rich heritage, and because of his pioneering work a breach was made in the consciousness of the people…. but the keys to find the Door are still guarded and can only be found within the Wisdom Schools which through its Rite of Succession pass on the Keys to the Door.”

Since Richard, Duc de Palatine’s passing, the work of the Gnosis, of necessity, has taken on many guises and has appeared in different forms. In the United States the Gnostic tradition restored by Richard, Duc de Palatine is carried on chiefly by Dr. Stephan A. Hoeller, Regionary Bishop of Ecclesia Gnostica, who was consecrated in 1967 by Bishop de Palatine. In Great Britain and Australia the Gnostic work has taken on a private approach in order to implement links with the more esoteric side of the Gnostic tradition. The Universal Gnostic Alliance, a consortium of Gnostic organisations in the Asia and Pacific region, was established in Australia at Easter, 2005. Formally chartered “to perpetuate the work of encouraging the study and propagation of the Ancient and True Universal Philosophy of the Inner Gnosis,” the Universal Gnostic Alliance is faithful to the vision of Bishop Richard, Duc de Palatine, and the Great Teachers of the Gnosis who went before.

Experience of the Heart

The first followers of Jesus the Christ did not see His teachings as merely intellectual fodder meant for endless debate, nor as a mere set of humanitarian principles and moral pronouncements. The teachings of Jesus were meant to be lived so that the individual person may awake to “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” For as the mystic Angelus Silesius wrote: “Even if Christ were born a thousand times in Bethlehem, But not in you, you would still be lost for all eternity.”

The ‘Secret Church’ still exists in the world in the twenty-first century. Gnostic Christians are a worldwide community united not by a rigid set of beliefs, but by a mysterious bond of brotherhood derived from a shared vision and experience of the living Christ. Gnostic Christianity is experiential. It is about transformation, about a higher consciousness, not about dry words or external forms. Theologies and commandments are the formulations of men. No matter how sublime or noble, rational or logical, they are all man-made. Gnosis is the experience of the divine. Words along with all theological and philosophical discourses are insufficient to explain it. You must taste it, as the Psalmist declares: “O taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8).

The goal of the Gnostic Christian is nothing short of Awakening, of Christ Consciousness. Following the Way of the Christ, as revealed in the Gospels, we are called to “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.”

Almost the entire history of Christendom is a protest against the words of Jesus the Christ. Hatred and persecution, hypocrisy and ignorance, intolerance of one’s neighbours: all in the name of Him who gave the command to love your enemies. In the name of Him who said: “My kingdom is not of this world”! Institutional Christianity, with its religious dogmatism and obsession with commandments, is a contemporary example of the same force that confronted and sought to kill Jesus in his own time. But behind worldly Christianity is the interior Church of John, the universal Gnostic Church where the Living Christ continues to impart spiritual knowledge.

This is the other tradition of Christianity, the hidden one, but it is always accessible to seeking souls.

Footnotes

1. Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot (Tarcher, 2002).

2.  Zoé Oldenbourg, Massacre at Montségur: A History of the Albigensian Crusade (Pantheon Books, 1962).

3.  Maurice Magre, Return of the Magi (Philip Allan, 1931).

4.  Peter Partner, The Murdered Magicians: The Templars and Their Myths (Oxford Univ Press, 1982).

5.  Richard Griffiths, The Reactionary Revolution (Constable & Co Ltd, 1966).

6.  Dr. Stephan A. Hoeller, Gnosticism: New Light On The Ancient Tradition Of Inner Knowing (Quest Books, 2002).

7.  Extracted from the Patriarchal Homily of Tau Jean II, Bishop Primate in France, Patriarch of the Universal Gnostic Church, Lyon, 25 February 1908.

8.  Reminiscences, Lucis Magazine, Vol. 8 No. 2, 1966.

9.  Bishop Richard Duc de Palatine, The Christian Mysteries  (Pre-Nicene Publishing House, 1958)

© Copyright 2006 by New Dawn Magazine. This article first appeared in New Dawn Special Issue No. 2. For further information visit http://www.newdawnmagazine.com

While I have explored some of these reasons in my article “Secrets of The Da Vinci Code” in New Dawn Special Issue No. 1, Autumn-Winter 2004,one aspect of the question could be explored further. Like many other popular works of recent years, The Da Vinci Code suggests there is something lost in Christianity, some secret Jesus may have passed on to his disciples but which has not managed to come down to us.

Or did it? Another part of the novel’s appeal lies in the idea this tradition was hidden but never lost. And this raises a key issue – whether the idea of a secret, initiatic teaching in Christianity has somehow been preserved.

Authorities differ on this point. The Theosophist Annie Besant, writing in her book Esoteric Christianity, lays out a long list of Christian mystics, but seems to assume this initiatic tradition was lost:

Yet, as we reverently salute these Children of the Light, scattered over the centuries, we are forced to recognise in them the absence of that union of acute intellect and high devotion which were welded together by the training of the Mysteries, and while we marvel that they soared so high, we cannot but wish that their rare gifts had been developed under that magnificent disciplina arcani.

The disciplina arcani, or “hidden teaching,” is, we are led to believe, a curriculum of systematic esoteric training that would culminate in a genuine knowledge of inner realities and the ability to navigate them.

René Guénon (1886–1951), the French esoteric philosopher, makes a similar assumption. His works speak of an “initiatic tradition,” but he believes that it was all but lost in the West. The Masons, according to Guénon, retain some fragment of it, but otherwise it has vanished. Guénon does, however, sometimes intimate that some initiatic traditions may have survived on a small scale in various pockets of Christianity.

Both Besant and Guénon had access to a tremendous amount of esoteric knowledge, so we can’t dismiss their verdict offhand, but to me it is more likely the initiatic tradition has survived in Christianity – only not in forms that either Besant or Guénon would have recognised. From a more popular point of view, this initiatic tradition bears no resemblance to the imaginary “Priory of Sion,” as described in The Da Vinci Code.

To understand what’s going on, we’ll have to go back to the earliest days of Christianity and to some cryptic utterances in the New Testament. Paul writes:

But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world unto our glory…. And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able. (1 Cor. 2:7; 3:1–2)

What is this “hidden wisdom” that Paul could not share with the “babes,” who were “carnal”? Conventional scholars assume these were the familiar doctrines of Christianity – the salvific work of Christ and the meaning of his passion, death, and Resurrection. There is only one problem with this view: these teachings were never hidden, in Paul’s time or later. Therefore they cannot be the “hidden wisdom” of which he speaks.

Origen, a third-century Church Father, makes this point in his workContra Celsum (“Against Celsus”), a refutation of a pagan critic of Christianity: “Then since he [Celsus] often calls our doctrine secret, in this point also we must refute him. For almost the entire world has come to know the preachings of Christians better than the opinions of philosophers. Who has not heard of Jesus’ birth from a virgin, and of his crucifixion, and of his Resurrection, in which many have believed?… Moreover, the mystery of the Resurrection, because it has not been understood, is a by-word and a laughing-stock among the unbelievers.”

But, Origen goes on to say, “the existence of certain doctrines, which are beyond those which are exoteric and do not reach the multitude, is not a peculiarity of Christian doctrine only, but is shared by the philosophers. For they had some doctrines that were exoteric and some esoteric…. Therefore Celsus has no reason to attack the secrecy of Christianity and has no understanding of it.”

The “hidden wisdom,” then, the “doctrines not made known to the multitude,” cannot be the familiar teachings of Christianity, since even in Origen’s time they were widely circulated. These familiar doctrines are the “milk” of which Paul speaks, fed to “babes,” not the “meat” that is food for spiritual adults.

Who are the “babes” and who are the “adults”? Paul provides a clue when he distinguishes the “carnal” from the “spiritual,” for here he is talking about different stages of development and different levels of awakening.

“Carnal,” of course, means “fleshly.” Carnal people are those who view life from the exterior. The outer world of things and events and persons is their primary reality. They don’t have a great deal of experience with the spiritual world. A large number don’t want it or don’t believe it’s possible.

It may sound elitist – and in a sense it is – to say that the vast majority of human beings fit into this category. But this sorting process has nothing to do with race, education, or social class: “carnal” people are found in every segment of society. For them, exoteric religion has been created. Exoteric religion views religion in an outer sense.

What does this mean? In exoteric Christianity, the truths are always somehow outside oneself. The story of Christ is about a man (or, if you prefer, a God-man) who lived 2,000 years ago, who suffered and died for our sins, and who rose again on the third day. As the passage from Origen above suggests, this has always been the part of the Christian faith that was made public.

But how are these truths (if that is what they are) outside oneself? Isn’t conventional Christianity always insisting that we have a personal relationship with Jesus? Yes, but from the conventional point of view, the story embodied in the Gospels is ultimately about Jesus. It is not about us. Mainstream Christianity has always insisted on a radical and unbridgeable gulf between God and man.

Esoteric, or inner, Christianity says exactly the opposite. It does not focus on the historicity of Jesus’s life 2,000 years ago. Some esoteric Christians believe these events happened as the Gospels describe them; others do not. Rather, in esoteric Christianity, the story of Jesus recapitulates the fate of each of us in the past and in the future. This is the key to the meaning of the death and Resurrection of Christ, and this is why the story continues to exercise such an extraordinary appeal. As one English esotericist put it, “all that is said and declared, and recorded in the gospel, is only a plain record of that which is said and done, and doing in yourself.”

The Son of God comes to Earth. Despite his high stature, he is born in humble, even wretched circumstances. He grows up and takes his place on the stage of history, winning friends and disciples and making enemies as well. Eventually he suffers a brutal and humiliating death. But it does not matter. He is resurrected on the third day, in a new and more resplendent form.

This is Christ’s story, but it is our story as well. We, too, are sons of God, or, for that matter, gods. We have made our descent into the realm of matter, where we are crucified on a cross known as time and space. But for us, too, it does not matter: what is deepest and most true about us is immortal and indestructible.

The problem is that we have forgotten this fact. An allegorical Gnostic tale called “The Hymn of the Pearl” makes this point. It tells of a young man whose royal parents send him to Egypt (which symbolically represents material existence) to retrieve a pearl that has been lost at the bottom of the sea. The young man makes the journey, but while he is in Egypt, he recounts, the Egyptians “marked that I was not their countryman, and they ingratiated themselves with me, and mixed me [drink] with their cunning, and gave me to taste of their meat; and I forgot that I was a king’s son and served their king.”

Like the young man in this tale, we have made the “descent into Egypt” – into physical manifestation – and we have forgotten where we came from. In the story, the young man’s parents send him a messenger, an eagle, to remind him. He wakes up and goes on to accomplish his mission. In inner Christianity, the eagle symbolises the teachings that can liberate us from our bondage to the world of illusion and remind us of our true nature.

Although this tale comes from an apocryphal text, we can easily see how it resonates with much of the New Testament. In the parable of the prodigal son, for example, the younger son asks his father for his share of his father’s inheritance and squanders it in a foreign country. When the money has run out, he repents of his actions and returns to his father. As in “The Hymn of the Pearl,” the foreign country represents the material plane and the father’s house the heavenly dimension.

How, then, is this liberation achieved? It is not merely a matter of repentance and salvation for sin. This is nothing but a preliminary. In the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, alcoholics admit “to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs; Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character; humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings; made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all” and “made direct amends to such people wherever possible.” This is a capsule summary of sin and redemption. Like the alcoholic, every human being has moral flaws and failings; he must acknowledge them, repent of them, and make amends. But this is not the end of the spiritual path. It is only the beginning. Something far deeper must happen. Consciousness itself must be liberated.

This has always been known in inner Christianity, for example, in the hesychastic tradition of Eastern Orthodoxy. The word hesychasm comes from the Greek hesychia, or “inner peace.” The texts of the hesychastic tradition – gathered in a collection known as the Philokalia – speak of gaining this inner peace through the liberation of something called thenous.

Nous is a Greek word that has been translated many ways, often misleadingly. Essentially it means “consciousness.” It is that in us which says “I.” Remember that God, speaking to Moses from the burning bush, revealed his name as “I am that I am.” This is our innermost nature, as it is God’s. It is also the point within us where we connect with God.

But what in us says “I” and how it says “I” are crucial. This “I” is not the little self of the ego, even though we usually think it is. Most of the time we are identified with our thoughts, emotions, reactions, bodily sensations – what the esoteric Christian tradition calls “passions.” Living at this level is what Paul means when he speaks of being “carnal.” We limit our knowledge of reality to physical reality – the nous or consciousness has become stuck to what it desires. The process of detaching the consciousness from these passions is one of the central tasks of inner Christianity.

This consciousness, the true “I,” exists in all of us; it cannot be killed or destroyed; indeed it is the only part of us that is truly immortal. But most of the time it is submerged in the loud roarings of the body and the ego. And for this reason, this true “I” at first is very small and very weak. One of the most common metaphors for it in the Gospels is a “seed,” because initially it exists as a potentiality. It is up to us to cultivate it, to become aware of it, and ultimately recognise its unity with the larger Self that is the common life of all humans and indeed of all creatures. And esoterically speaking, this is the Christ. If we reach this level, we attain the state of which Paul speaks when he says, “I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me” (Gal. 2:20).

Knowledge of these truths has always been preserved in inner Christianity. I have mentioned the hesychastic tradition (which still survives in Eastern Orthodoxy), but there have been many others: the Gnostics of antiquity; the Cathars of the twelfth and thirteenth century; and other medieval groups of seekers such as the Friends of God and the Brethren of the Common Life. In more recent times, it has been preserved in small groups that have studied the Kabbalah and the teachings of the Rosicrucians. And in the last century, many of these impulses bore fruit and reached a wide audience in various teachings of the New Age.

Although above I have only given the shortest and sketchiest description of this liberation and illumination of the true “I,” it should be clear even from what I’ve said that this secret is far more profound and far more central to our lives than are such questions as whether Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene or whether there was a Priory of Sion that kept their bloodline alive. Esoterically speaking, these latter issues are “blinds” – distractions to waylay the credulous. If you become preoccupied with them, you can, like the characters in The Da Vinci Code, spend endless amounts of time stumbling into dead ends and never find anything of the slightest value. And as long as you continue to believe that the essential truths of esotericism are about someone else – about Jesus, about Mary Magdalene, about any number of other figures, however alluring and mysterious – you will miss the essential point.

Although it is by no means bad news to be reminded we are divine beings, it can be a hard and sobering truth to face. It is so because in a curious way we both overvalue and undervalue ourselves. We overvalue ourselves with ordinary egotism, in which we are constantly preoccupied with “my” standing in the world, trying to set ourselves apart from and above everyone else. And yet at the same time and by this very action we deprecate ourselves, because we have forgotten that our true reality is not about such things; it is not dependent on them, and we do not need to be slaves to them. We are like the young man in “The Hymn of the Pearl”; we have forgotten who were are and why we came.

As a saying attributed to the second-century Gnostic teacher Valentinus puts it, “What makes us free is the knowledge who we were, what we have become; where we were, where we have been thrown; whereto we speed, wherefrom we are redeemed; what is birth and what rebirth.” This knowledge has always been kept alive in Christianity, as it has in all the other great traditions, and although it may take many forms and wrap itself in the guise of many systems and philosophies, if we look for it, it will always be there to comfort and to free us.

© Copyright 2006 by New Dawn Magazine. This article first appeared in New Dawn Special Issue No. 2. For further information visit http://www.newdawnmagazine.com

Throughout the centuries, the art and literature of Christianity have treated Judas as harshly as Satan does in the Inferno. Judas is the betrayer of Christ, the archetype of all traitors, and often an anti-Semitic stereotype. Thus the Western world felt a sizable shock when a once-lost text known as the Gospel of Judas was published in April 2006, portraying the Twelfth Apostle in a radically different light.

Scholars had long known there was a Gospel of Judas, because the ancient heresy-hunter Irenaeus of Lyon mentions it in a work dating to around 180 CE. But practically nothing was known of the gospel’s contents.

The story of this text’s discovery reads like a thriller. The Gospel of Judasappears in an ancient codex (that is, a book bound like a modern book, as opposed to scrolls, the other common form of ancient manuscript.) Written in Coptic, a language descended from ancient Egyptian, the manuscript dates to the third or fourth centuries CE.

It was buried in a grave not long after it was written, and was unearthed probably around 1978 by scavengers looking for lost artifacts. It then made a circuitous route among antiquities dealers, vanishing and reappearing periodically, in the process undergoing mistreatment that probably did more damage than it had suffered in the previous 1,600 years. (One dealer even froze the document in a harebrained attempt at preserving it, but all this did was to hasten the deterioration.)

Finally, in April 2000, the codex was acquired by Frieda Nussberger-Tchacos, an antiquities dealer in Zurich, at an undisclosed price probably around US$300,000. Since then, the codex has been restored, published, and translated by a team organised by the Maecenas Foundation in Switzerland and the National Geographic Society in the US.

The Codex Tchacos, as it is now called, actually contains four different scriptures. Two versions of apocryphal texts known as the Letter of Peter to Philip and the First Revelation of James, had already been known from the Nag Hammadi scriptures, a famous collection of Coptic texts discovered in 1945. The third book in the Codex Tchacos has provisionally been entitled the Book of Allogenes (“Allogenes,” roughly translated, means “stranger”). But by far the most interesting is theGospel of Judas.

Not much is known about the background of the Gospel of Judas. It was obviously written before 180 CE (since Irenaeus mentions it at that time). Originally, it was almost certainly composed in Greek; the Coptic is only a translation. Irenaeus, who is one of the most important sources for our knowledge of ancient heresies, connects this gospel to sectarians who say that “Cain was from the superior realm of absolute power,” along with Esau, Korah, the Sodomites, and other notable villains of the Old Testament. (For this reason, this sect came to be known as the Cainites.) Irenaeus adds, “Judas the betrayer was thoroughly acquainted with such things, they say; and he alone was acquainted with the truth as no others were, and so accomplished the mystery of the betrayal.”

Scholars are not sure whether Irenaeus had actually read the Gospel of Judas or simply knew it by hearsay, but his description strongly resembles the text we have. And it is this “mystery of the betrayal” that constitutes the most compelling part of this enigmatic work.

The Gospel of Judas is brief, occupying 26 small pages in the published edition. It is concerned with a very narrow segment of the traditional Passion story. The opening verse says that this is “the secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke in conversation with Judas Iscariot during a week three days before he celebrated Passover.” The opening scene shows Jesus laughing at his disciples for offering a prayer of thanksgiving. He tells them, “You are not doing this because of your own will but because it is through this that your god [will be] praised.” (Here and elsewhere in this article, bracketed insertions are by the translators.)

The disciples grow angry, and Jesus challenges them to “bring out the perfect human and stand before my face.” But only Judas is able to do so. He tells Jesus, “I know who you are and where you have come from. You are from the immortal realm of Barbelo. And I am not worthy to utter the name of the one who sent you.”

As the gospel continues, Jesus sets out an intricate esoteric system, at whose pinnacle is “a great and boundless realm, whose extent no generation of angels has seen, [in which] there is [a] great invisible [Spirit].” Most astonishingly, Jesus tells Judas that he will surpass the other disciples, “for you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.”

Even from this brief description, it’s clear that we are dealing with a strange inversion of orthodox Christian belief. The disciples worship their god ignorantly; Judas is the only pupil of Jesus who understands his purpose; and the great betrayal seems to be part of this purpose.

These characteristics have led scholars who have studied the Gospel of Judas to describe it as a Gnostic text. One of the chief points of contention between the Gnostics and their proto-orthodox1 counterparts in the early centuries of Christianity had to do with the nature of the creator of this world. Proto-orthodox Christians believed that it was God who created the heavens and the earth. For the Gnostics, it was not so simple. The true, good God, the “great invisible Spirit,” dwells far above the realm of materiality. As we’ve seen, Jesus makes a subtle distinction between an inferior god, whom the disciples ignorantly worship, and the “great invisible Spirit” who is the true God. Jesus also speaks of “Barbelo,” a name the Gnostics gave to the feminine aspect of this “great invisible Spirit.”

Who, then, was the inferior God? For the Gnostics, it was the god of the Old Testament. They believed this was not the true God, but a second-rate deity who had forgotten his own source and arrogated first place to himself. Another Gnostic text, the Apocryphon of John, says of this figure, “He is impious in his madness which is in him. For he said, ‘I am God and there is no other God beside me,’ for he is ignorant of his strength, the place from which he had come.” The Gnostics had many names for this second-rate god. The Apocryphon of John calls him Ialdabaoth (probably derived from Hebrew roots meaning “child of chaos”). He was also known as the Demiurge, from the Greekdemiourgos, or “craftsman.” The Demiurge was the “craftsman” who made this world of pain and suffering, and, incidentally, was also the one who gave the Law to the Israelites on Sinai.

This idea casts a great deal of light on the strange inversion that we see in much of Gnosticism. The evil figures in the Bible are not really evil at all; they are simply opposed to the Demiurge, while the “good” figures are dupes of this malignant deity. Similarly, for some Gnostics the serpent in the Garden of Eden was not a devil, but an emissary of the true, good God, who sought to liberate the divine spirit in Adam and Eve through knowledge. In the Gospel of Judas too, Jesus regards it as a favour that Judas will, by his betrayal, “free him from the man” – that is, the body – that envelops him.

These ideas cut so strongly against conventional theology that one may wonder how they arose. They seem to come from several sources. The first is the Greek philosopher Plato, who lived in the fourth century BCE. In his dialogue the Timaeus (also notable for introducing the myth of Atlantis), Plato gives a description of the universe and of its creator, whom he also calls the “Demiurge.” But Plato’s Demiurge is not evil. He is supremely good – so good, in fact, that he cannot create anything with even an admixture of imperfection. For this purpose, he creates the gods, who in turn have fashioned humanity, with its mixture of good and evil, mortal and immortal. Even so, the benevolent Demiurge does not leave this creation entirely to the gods. He inserts an immortal divine spark into humans. This, in essence, is the spirit or true Self in each of us.

As we’ve seen, Plato did not see the Demiurge as evil, and his followers sharply criticised the Gnostics for what they considered to be a radical mistake in their theology. Where, then, did this idea of an evil creator come from?

The answer to this question is murky. One of the most intriguing answers comes from the Old Testament scholar Margaret Barker, who in a number of highly erudite and well-researched works makes an intricate and ingenious argument. According to Barker, archaeological evidence suggests the ancient Hebrews in the time of the First Temple in Jerusalem (c.940–586 BCE) worshipped a trinity: the Most High God, known as El; Yahweh, the national god of Israel; and Asherah, Yahweh’s female consort. But during the time of Josiah, king of Judah (who reigned from 640 to 609 BCE), a group of priests enacted sweeping changes in the Temple cult. (These changes, which biblical scholars call the “Josianic reforms,” are described in 2 Kings 22:3–23:25.) Asherah was discarded, and Yahweh was decreed to be the same as El. That is, there was now no difference between the national god of Israel and the Most High, the ruler of the universe. It was this reformed faith of the Jerusalem priests that would create the Bible and would form the core of Judaism and Christianity as we know them today.

According to Barker, then, from the point of view of the old Hebrew faith Yahweh was a usurper. Originally merely a national god of Israel (every nation was believed to be ruled by a specific god), he had claimed to himself the place of the Most High, much as Ialdabaoth does in theApocryphon of John. Barker goes on to argue the memory of this usurpation was preserved in mystical strains of Judaism that did not accept the Josianic reforms and kept to the old faith. These ideas were handed down in turn to the Gnostics.

But it was not just from remnants of ancient Jewish tradition that the Gnostics took their views. They pointed to a remark of Paul’s that the law “was ordained by angels in the hands of a mediator” (Gal. 3:19). For the Gnostics, this meant that the Law on Sinai had not been delivered by the true, good God, but by the Demiurge. This, they said, was why Paul said the Law was a “curse” (Gal. 3:13). And in fact many of the Gnostics claimed the authority of Paul. The greatest of them, a second-century teacher named Valentinus, even said he had received his doctrines from one Theudas, a pupil of Paul’s.

With all this as background, we can step back and see a bit more about what is going on in the Gospel of Judas. Take this passage, for example:

The disciples said to [Jesus], “Master, why are you laughing at [our] prayer of thanksgiving? We have done what is right.”

He answered and said to them, “I am not laughing at him. <You> are not doing this because of your own will but because it is through this that your god [will be] praised.”

They said, “Master, you are […] the son of our god.”

Jesus said to them, “How do you know me? Truly [I] say to you, no generation of the people that are among you will know me.”

Unless one understands the Gnostic theology of two gods, this passage will be baffling. But actually it is fairly clear. Jesus is laughing at the disciples for worshipping the Demiurge, the god of Israel, whom he contemptuously calls “your god.” When they tell Jesus that he is the son of their god, he says they do not know who he is. Only Judas recognises the truth.

Many other Gnostic echoes appear in the Gospel of Judas. It goes on at great length about a convoluted hierarchy of “rulers” and “angels” that stand between humanity and the true, good God. While it would be too complicated to explain this hierarchy here, it is interesting to find another echo of Plato, who also has a hierarchy of gods that fashion the physical body of the human race. These gods were often equated with the seven planets known to antiquity; the path of gnosis, or enlightenment, was portrayed as an ascent through these seven levels of impediment. By this means the true Self, the divine spark that is a reflection of the true, good God, is set free. The Gospel of Judas likens this spark to a star. “Each of you has his own star,” Jesus says. Elsewhere in the text he adds, “Lift up your eyes and look at the cloud and the light within it and the stars surrounding it. The star that leads the way is your star.” The planets, by contrast, are only obstructions.

For one who has a sense of Gnostic teachings, the contours of the Gospel of Judas are remarkably clear. But there is one thing the text as we have it does not explain – simply because the portion of the text that discusses it is missing. We do not know exactly how Jesus’s betrayal and death fit into the cosmic scheme of salvation. The commentators to the published edition say that “the death of Jesus, with the assistance of Judas, is taken to be the liberation of the spiritual person within.” But the text also makes it clear this act of redemption is not just for Jesus alone; it has cosmic effects. Nevertheless, it is hard to determine from the text as we have it exactly what these effects are, or how it was supposed to work.

As we’ve seen, the Gospel of Judas was unknown for perhaps 1,600 years before it was unearthed and published this year. Even so, there are echoes of its teachings in the Western esoteric tradition. In his magnum opus Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, the twentieth century spiritual master G.I. Gurdjieff describes Judas as “the chief, the most reasonable and most devoted of all the beings, directly initiated by this Sacred Individual [Jesus], or as they would say, one of his Apostles.” In Gurdjieff’s book, it is Judas who makes it possible for Jesus to accomplish his mission, though Gurdjieff is rather vague about how.

H.P. Blavatsky, the nineteenth century esotericist, also echoes some of the ideas in the Gospel of Judas. Calling conventional Christianity “the usurper and assassin of the great master’s [i.e., Jesus’s] doctrine,” she notes, “If the Gnostics were destroyed, the Gnosis, based on the secret science of sciences, still lives…. The ancient Kabbala, the Gnosis or traditional secret knowledge, was never without its representatives in any age or country.”

For Blavatsky as for the Gnostics, the God of the Israelites was a low-grade usurper:

It requires a lower order of creative angels to “create” inhabited globes – especially ours – or to deal with matter on this earthly plane. The philosophical Gnostics were the first to think so, in the historical period, and to invent various systems upon this theory. Therefore in their schemes of Creation, one always finds their Creatorsoccupying a place at the very foot of the ladder of spiritual Being. With them, those who created our earth and its mortals were placed on the very limit of mayavi [illusory] matter, and their followers were taught to think – to the great disgust of the Church Fathers – that for the creation of those wretched races, in a spiritual and moral sense, no high divinity could be made responsible, but only angels of a low hierarchy, to which class they relegated the Jewish God, Jehovah.

Blavatsky argues that the Gnostics held this figure of Jehovah in contempt because “he was a proud, ambitious, and impure spirit, who had abused his power by usurping the place of the highest God, though he was no better, and in some respects far worse than his brethren Elohim.” (Emphasis Blavatsky’s. By the term Elohim, which means “gods” in Hebrew, she means the “angels of a low hierarchy.”)

It is hard to tell where Gurdjieff and Blavatsky got their ideas. Both were cryptic about their sources, but their claims they represented ancient systems of knowledge that have been preserved for thousands of years are reinforced by the new light thrown on ancient religion by the discovery of these ancient texts.

What, then, are we to make of all this? Stepping aside as much as possible from sectarian theology, we can see the Gnostics were preoccupied with the human condition, with why we seem to be trapped in a world we did not make. Moreover, this world is so problematic and defective it is tempting to conclude its creator is as well.

The answer is not an easy one to reach. The Gnostic view has often been dismissed as gloomy and pessimistic, and it often is. On the other hand, the conventional Christian insistence that God is both all-powerful and all-good is not only unconvincing but flatly contradictory. In the end, we are left with a mystery – which is not a mystery about ancient texts or the disciples of Jesus but about the nature of reality itself.

Footnote

1. “Proto-orthodox” is a term applied to the part of the early Christian movement that would later evolve into the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic churches. At the time we are speaking of, this segment formed only one of many groups who followed Christ’s teaching.

© Copyright 2006 by New Dawn Magazine. This article first appeared in New Dawn Special Issue No. 2. For further information visit http://www.newdawnmagazine.com

Soon after leaving, he became interested in exploring these ideas for television. “I’d got it into my head that there had never been any religious television – only programmes about religion,” he later recalled. “I had written a paper on the subject which recommended a new kind of television for this most neglected area, something on the lines of television, a kind of programme which would enter into the very nature of the religious experience and not simply observe it.”

Churton got his opportunity in the mid-1980s, when he produced a series on the Gnostics for British television. To accompany his series, he wrote his first book, The Gnostics, a history of this elusive esoteric movement from early Christianity to modern manifestations in such figures as Giordano Bruno and William Blake, and even in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

In the years since then, Churton has pursued and deepened his appreciation for the Western esoteric traditions. He was the Founder Editor of Freemasonry Today magazine, and during the last year has published two new books. The Golden Builders: Alchemists, Rosicrucians, and the First Freemasons explores the background of Masonry from its antecedents in the alchemical and Hermetic traditions of antiquity through its modern manifestations. His book, Gnostic Philosophy: From Ancient Persia to Modern Times, casts an even wider net, tracing the Gnostic heritage from its roots in Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, and the Essenes to the 20th century magus Aleister Crowley and manifestations of gnosis in pop culture. Churton currently makes his home in Britain.

– Richard Smoley

How exactly would you describe gnosis? What does it mean to you?

How would I describe gnosis? I should like to describe gnosis as the experience of knowing or having intimacy with what we call God. God, the Bible tells us, wishes to be known. The word ‘Gnostic’ – one who has experienced gnosis – was first used as a nickname by those who opposed the whole idea or thought it was all too much for human beings to claim.

In a way, it really is the most enormous act of cheek to say that one has had experience of God! John’s Gospel for example says that “no man hath seen God at any time.” Hospitals for the mentally sick are full of people who claim the most extraordinary intimacy with powers beyond themselves. In the Gnostic tradition broadly, sanity or peace of mind is a fruit of gnosis. And ‘sanity’ means becoming clean, or ‘whole’ so there is a moral as well as a physical and psychological dimension to be considered. It might be argued that one has got to share in Christ to know God. But clearly there has been gnosis outside of the Christian tradition. So God obviously wants to be known by everyone!

Gnosis to me personally means receiving a gift – a gift that carries with it certain responsibilities. It’s quite a heavy thing to be lightened – or enlightened! There’s a lot we carry that prevents us from rising and growing in divine knowledge. For me, gnosis means a love of truth, a sensitivity to the magical aspects of life, and above all, a permanent struggle with material consciousness. People would rather see a person burnt than their own money burnt. That, we would say, is only natural. Politicians are adept at appealing to us on this level. Being gnostic does involve an unusual attitude to the natural order. The merely human in us does come under scrutiny – the light shows up the shadows and darkness in us, if you like. Obviously, no one likes being ‘shown up’, so we persecute the light-bringers and hide ourselves behind images of who we think we are. Gnosis is light and, if I may say so, “my burden is light.”

Is it possible to experience gnosis for oneself?

I obviously believe it is possible to experience gnosis for oneself. One could hardly experience it for other people! But the experience changes and one might not always be aware that one is experiencing gnosis. It is not a single state. It is not the same as ‘instant satori’. The universe itself is a projection of gnosis, if limited. I should say that if one has no experience of gnosis, one can hardly say one has been truly alive.

Could you explain a little about the Gnostic schools of antiquity, and what happened to them?

There were many Gnostic schools in late antiquity, as far as we can tell, surrounding some particular teacher, or the self-proclaimed followers of such a teacher. They had visions, dreams, statements, stances and orders of followers. Some were probably charlatans and some ‘the real thing’, as one would expect.

The orthodox Christian teachers who made it their business to denigrate and destroy the Gnostic movement in the Church always tended to isolate the teacher. Naming names was a big part of the anti-Gnostic propaganda. Thanks to their efforts, we have some dim records of men like Basilides, Carpocrates, Marcus, Marcion, Valentinus, Simon Magus, Dositheos. The orthodox apologists Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Epiphanius and Tertullian, for example, made it their business to present these Gnostic teachers as demented quacks leading their followers into what Irenaeus called – in about 180 CE – “an abyss of madness and blasphemy.” I don’t know how seriously one can take their presentations of the evidence. It’s a bit like asking George Bush whether he prefers Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band to Revolver!

The Gnostics represented a kind of counter-culture and therefore exposed themselves to persecution and ridicule. You can’t imagine Gnostics wandering around in suits and ties with briefcases talking about real estate values! Some seem to have met in catacombs and private places. There were Gnostics in the first ever monasteries of Saint Pachom in the Thebaid of Egypt. Indeed, it is arguable that the first monastic movement was chiefly inspired by the desire for a place to get away from the world and experience God, i.e.: a Gnostic inspiration. Clearly the monasteries have always had a special role in promoting authentic spiritual life, if usually in secret. The walls had ears.

Sadly, the British and German Reformations, in attacking the monasteries in the name of the Protestant tendency, tended to throw the baby out with the bath-water, so the position of today’s Gnostic has some kinship with that of the early Christian Gnostics. Where do we go?, they might ask. San Francisco obviously didn’t work for everyone!

However, as we know from the story of the Nag Hammadi Library, even in the desert monasteries the Gnostics were not safe. Official visitations weeded out the offending literature and condemned it to the flames. Soon the offending Gnostics would meet the same fate. The Church hooked up with the State in the 4th century CE and the true Gnosis was exiled. Just one good reason to keep religion out of politics!

How did this Gnostic legacy survive after the end of the old Gnostic schools? What sort of heritage did they bestow on our civilisation?

Thanks be to God, the Gnostic experience and challenge did just survive the end of the Roman eagle’s flight. As one might expect, it survived on the fringes of the old Empire – in Syria, Iraq, Bulgaria, Turkestan and Bosnia – possibly Ireland. Even, for a while, in Mongolia and China. The flame was kept alive through untold numbers of military campaigns, massacres and violent conflicts of kings, sultans, demigods, semi-gods, dictators and emperors. It was carried into the bosom of the Islamic Empire after the 7th century in the form of Hermetic philosophy as an inspiration to science and philosophy – examining God in His works and wonders. The Sabians of Harran – who were not Muslims but Sabians and permitted by the Koran – their role is extraordinarily important in keeping the flame alive.

The appearance of Islamic mysticism – or rather, gnosis – among the so-called Sufis in the ninth and tenth centuries was highly significant. Magic, philosophy, science, mysticism – in short, human progress, were fostered by the enlightened circles of the Islamic world – always playing, it should be noted, a kind of shadow-boxing game with the hard-line authorities who cared as little for personal experience of the divine kingdom as did the Roman Church in the west.

The annihilation of the so-called ‘Cathars’ in southern France and northern Italy in the 13th century showed just how far the authorities were prepared to go in attempting to destroy spiritual existence that was not controlled by the status quo – the ever-present authorities we find in every age: the manifest powers of invisible spiritual opposition, as the Gnostic sees it. The Gnostics have been the light of the world and the leaven in the bread. A world without gnosis would be a very dark place indeed. The Gnostic greets the Sun, the ‘visible god’. He or she is first to see the dawn – first, you might say, in the garden of resurrection.

Some scholars suggest that the term “Gnostic” is too problematic to be valuable, and should be replaced by something else. Do you agree? 

Some scholars, you say, suggest the term ‘Gnostic’ is too problematic and should be replaced. Well, I’m sorry for them. Gnosis itself will always be problematic in this world. The day it fits cosily into some scholar’s dictionary will be the day it has ceased to have power. No, ‘Gnostic’ – like ‘Christian’ – began as a nickname and like all such names should be borne with pride in a blind world. Yes, there are problems of definition. In 1966 there was a Colloquium of scholars at Messina intended to define the term ‘Gnosticism’, but it could not hold the term down. So I, without even the benefit of the Italian sun, cannot do it for you in this interview. The subject could fill a book. There is, however, another tack we can follow. That is, Why should it be defined? Definition – like a census – leads to control. Much better that the Gnostic tradition bears the unique quality of resisting definition! There is no doubt that the issue has been muddied by the activities of the Christian churches that dominate thinking in the West to a greater degree than we perhaps realise.

When I was a student at Oxford University for example, it took me a long time to realise the full implications of the fact that the Theology courses were run by church leaders chiefly for their benefit. Admittedly, it would have been odd if they had been run by industrial chemists! But the point was that ‘Gnosticism’ for example dealt with a universal experience in terms only of its presence or exile from the orthodox Christian Church. Theologising it denied its root in authentic experience. If we cannot trust our deepest most personal and absolutely authentic experience, what can we trust? Anyhow, it would have been better, I think, in retrospect, to study the entire field of Gnostic philosophy, religion and so on as a stream of its own that interpenetrates – necessarily – with all of the so-called ‘great religions’ of the world.

One of the interesting things about the orthodox Church – if we may for just a second see the plethora of conflicting bodies as a broad unity – is that it finds it can eventually accommodate everything – everything, that is, except gnosis! By this I mean that Darwin was more or less accepted by the Church of England by the time of World War One. Church leaders – by no means all, I know – made accommodations with Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini and – let’s face it, the Church has pretty well made its peace with the world. Gnostic types do not find themselves in such a comfortable position with regard to the world as it is.

There are many people who are on the road to gnosis who perhaps do not realise it, who out of love of God and fear of God – and fear of themselves and others – find themselves wasting years in very unsatisfactory Church gatherings which – in the name of God – demand their sacrifice and allegiance. I’ve always found that it was the most selfish groups that preached self-abnegation.

But to get back to the point, what other tame word could replace the tattered glory and battered bread of the words Gnostic, Gnosis – even that scholars’ word ‘Gnosticism’? Mysticism is too misty. Magick has been bowdlerised and Disneyfied. Spirituality – well! It used to have meaning, now it means anything and probably nothing. It’s only a matter of time before car manufacturers come up with a car that meets your spiritual needs! I really don’t know what people mean when they talk about ‘spirituality’. It’s so vague as to be useful to every pseudo-religious charlatan and greedy politician in the world! When you say ‘Gnostic’, you always have to explain it. And when you do, people are always fascinated, whether they admit it or not! So that’s what we’ve got and we have to make the best of it. Gnosis means knowledge. Get it?

What do you make of current attempts to revive Gnosticism? What value do they have?

You ask about recent attempts to revive Gnosticism. This is a difficult question for people like myself who prefer authentic experiences with some real history attached. This is the scholar and antiquarian in me speaking. My path is not your path.

I don’t believe ‘Gnosticism’ – that word really refers to the Gnostic groups that came into conflict with Christian orthodox authorities in the first five centuries of the known life of the Christian Church – can or needs to be ‘revived’. The patient is not dead – though the world might well be. “The dead are not alive,” as the Gnostic gospel has it, “and the living will not die.” This is my personal favourite among the many great Gnostic logia. The dead are not alive and the living will not die. How true.

Besides, there are several great authentic Gnostic streams still going strong – though at least one of them is severely persecuted. The Yezidis of northern Iraq, western Iran, Georgian Armenia – that is to say Transcaucasian Kurdestan – have the most unbelievably inspiring tradition. There’s nothing to compare with it in the whole world. It is in a class of its own. The Yezidis have been persecuted cruelly by those in power about them because they are not regarded as “people of a book” as defined – there’s that word again! – in the Koran. They have long been accused of ‘Devil worship’, but that kind of cruelty has been common among oppressors since Jesus was accused of being a devil’s mouthpiece all those years ago. It’s the oldest trick in the book and works because people fear every type of evil – except their own.

Yezidis are today being attacked and killed in and around Mosul and denied police protection in Georgian Armenia. This is fact.

The second tradition I was thinking of was that of the Mandaeans of lower Iraq, who claim John the Baptist as a special prophet and have referred, interestingly, to ‘Christ the Roman’. As far as ‘Gnostics’ go, these people are undoubtedly the ‘real thing’.

When I made the TV series Gnostics in 1985-87, we wrote to the Iraqi Embassy in London, and they denied any knowledge of the Mandaeans. I was worried that they had been wiped out under the last miserable Iraqi regime, but to my delight, I now observe that they have survived – though still having to justify themselves, surrounded as they are by the various Islamic traditions. I think they qualify as Sabians in the Koran and are therefore protected. The wonderful Yezidis, on the other hand, have been persecuted for 1300 years and have no such protection.

An independent Kurdistan would probably offer these unique and admirable people a future that may otherwise be in jeopardy. This would be a very good thing to come out of the current mess in Iraq. The great powers have been screwing up the Middle East since the fall of the Roman Empire, so one may legitimately question whether the mad, bad game of sharing out the property of the vulnerable will end in our lifetimes. We must hope, have faith and love. Spare some love for the Yezidis – even though most people have probably never heard of them.

This, to answer your question, would be a good way to care for the Gnostic tradition – the tradition, I should say, of the authentic spirit of man, enslaved in, and by, the world. The love of money is the root of all evil. The way to revive Gnosis, is to be revived by Gnosis.

Why are people so interested in Gnosticism these days?

I think people are interested in Gnosticism these days because there is clearly a spiritual vacuum at the heart of our culture. Science and mass production have done much for the outside of the cup, but the inside is empty and cannot be sated by drugs, sex and rock ‘n’ roll. The promised liberation is a brief delight followed by a swift fall. Grace looks away and the victim, must, if he or she be lucky, look within.

Even in countries which have not been so saturated by big business as we have – where washing machines, central heating and personal stereos and computers might be very welcome – there is a now well-articulated complaint that with all the money and the “promise of freedom and liberty for all” comes a great threat.

The threat is to the life of the heart and the delicate, invisible life – the thousand links with God – which have kept people alive for centuries in the face of countless dangers and privations. I don’t wish to romanticise here, but one must ask, ‘Who needs the most help?’ The East or the West? Clearly both suffer from poverty – material poverty and spiritual poverty – and, of course there is plenty of material poverty in the West and doubtless spiritual poverty in the East. But can’t we help each other? And thereby help ourselves? But how do we do this?

Well, Jesus offers a clue: “First clean the inside of the cup.” Clean it? we may cry – most of us don’t even know it’s there! Where is this ‘inside of the cup’? Where is this kingdom of heaven (a kingdom, note, not a democracy!) that is supposed to be “nigh and within” us? Well, the example and uncompromising commitment to spiritual reality is such a strong and powerful river surging through the Gnostic tradition, that it would be extraordinary if our bone-dry world did not desire to take a dip in its life-giving waters!

Until we sort ourselves out, we can only export our own confusion.

Could you say a little bit about the Western esoteric traditions as a whole? What is their situation today? What do they have to contribute to our civilisation?

You have asked me to say a little bit about the Western esoteric traditions as a whole and what they may contribute to our civilisation. The second part of that question is simple. What they have to contribute is civilisation. What is civilisation? It is clearly not power and might or the ability to force change. Otherwise we must rank Attila the Hun and Chingiz Khan as leaders of civilisation! Civilisation really boils down to the ability of a range of people to live in a city, organise themselves and get on with each other without falling into chaos. That which promotes the life of the busy hive may be described as a civilising influence. Civilisation is not then an arbiter of truth but of what works well. However, wise men and women have tended – against the odds – to the ancient conviction that nothing works quite as well as the truth, and that a rotten branch – rotten with corruption – will not even support itself for very long – never mind the burden of civilisation. Truth is good.

When I think of Western civilisation with all its inequalities of ability and social status, its wide variety of racial and religious types, its sheer density of pulsating human existence, its vulnerability to natural forces, disease, despair, hysteria, false expectation, boredom and so on, I can’t help thinking that organisations like Freemasonry and discreet societies of personal development are important. While corrupting forces always aim to work within the carcass, the healing agents must also work within the fabric of the human hive – not in fearful secrecy but with a modesty and love that is suspicious of fame, vainglory and social attention. The cool breeze works well unseen. This is perennial wisdom. I think the best of the masonic tradition has contributed hugely to understanding of tolerance and barrier-breaking social idealism. Occasionally, we even find a spiritual insight occurring in some of the most stubborn mental material!

Whatever good men and women try to achieve with this floppy idiot called man, the sincere busy bee is always up against our biological and moral heritage. This inheritance is surely dark enough to make strong men and women weep and give ample reason to despair or take refuge in a cynical stoicism of the type that Gore Vidal, for example, exemplifies with such taste and class.

There is much to be said for contemporary Rosicrucian societies for introducing people to the world of imaginative spiritual development. Many find insight in the worlds of Theosophy, Thelema and Anthroposophy, for example. This is all well and good, as far as it goes, but human society can be corrosive – even destructive.

Human beings really aren’t very nice – unless they’re in some kind of love with one another – and even then… well! The divorce rates with all their sad tales of acrimony and greed testify to the fragility of oaths built on enthusiasm and a lottery win. The Psalmist was being simply realistic when he uttered the words: “None is righteous. No, not one.” Involving oneself in groups may stifle the creative and divine spirit. But aloneness can be hard, and loneliness is, as Jimi Hendrix sang, “a drag.” Perhaps we need to revive in some adapted way the concept of the monastery – not, may I stress, that sad alternative, the ‘commune’. The hippies were hip to everything but their own depravity. Peter Coyote and the Diggers would doubtless tell me I just never saw the real hippies. He would be right. Maybe I was one of them – and how often do we see ourselves?

I suppose in the life of a person, one will, as one puts one’s hand into the hand of God – as much as we may know of Him – for guidance, one will find oneself encountering all kinds of groups and people. No one way works for all people or all occasions. That is how it must be. Those who require absolute certainties will be prepared to believe anything. The One is always present, if unseen.

Experience shows that there are many hidden veins to the cosmic life of humanity and I – for one – am glad – and have reason to be glad – that they exist. Gnosis is, as I said earlier, a gift. One has to be in the right place to receive it. No organisation can do that for anyone. The Spirit bloweth where it listeth. Heed the Spirit above all – and keep the powder dry!

Could you talk a little bit about your own background, how you came to be interested in this area, and what meaning it has for you personally?

You ask about my background. I am an Englishman born in Birmingham – the English Midlands – in 1960, who grew up to believe that something was seriously ‘out of kilter’ in my own dear country and in the world at large. This was something I found in myself as I grew older and travelled about the busy world. I had no special financial or educational advantages, but my father – a railwayman by choice in his later years – said “Seek and ye shall find.” I loved the past and had great respect for the ancients. I was always suspicious of words like ‘modern’ and ‘new’. No one knows the future and if, as someone once said, “the future is a poor place to store our dreams,” then I should say that a dream stored is a dream over. King Arthur will sleep so long as we do.

I cannot remember when I first became interested in the authentic tradition of spiritual life. It seems to have always been with me. I suppose studying the Gnostics at Oxford in the late 70s made me realise that I was not alone, but there were always shadows and intimations of gnosis in books, films – especially old films (the new stuff is generally too cocksure, superficial and loud to have anything to say worth hearing) – and in music.

I have often tried to ‘get away’ from Gnosis, rather like Jonah sailing to sea to avoid Nineveh, but I keep coming back to port, whether I like it or not. Often, I don’t like it at all. I’ve spent a fair amount of time in the cold belly of the whale. The world, however, needs this insight, even if for me it now seems an old story. Somehow, it comes alive afresh again with each telling. And I discover so many new aspects to it, each time I willingly return to its study. It makes us wise and makes fools of us. Gnosis means creation because we do what we know. Creation is the fiery dragon whose scolding breath burns away the void and leaves the golden tree. We pick its fruit and create nothing.

I was lucky (by modern standards) to have both parents and that both parents believed in the individual and believed in the mystery and magick of life, and that they were plain speaking, virtuous and down to earth as well as being receptive to higher influence. That was a gift too. Come to think of it – it’s all been a gift. I’ve done little to deserve such a theatre of sorrow and joy! There’s so much more to do and life is really both too long and too short. We’re here and we’d better make the best of it. Long may She reign over us.

Could you tell us about your recent books, The Golden Builders and Gnostic Philosophy? What are they about?

My books The Golden Builders and Gnostic Philosophy took me ten years to write and were continuations of a work begun in 1986 when I wrote my first book, The Gnostics, at the age of 25. You could say that the new books are the considered works of research and experience – an attempt to bring readers of the first book into deeper acquaintance with the extraordinary Gnostic tradition. I was very aware that some terrible books have appeared in the last 20 years which have exploited the whole subject area and confused people with a lot of journalistic twaddle and conspiracy tales. Some have inspired a recent best-selling novel that suggested Leonardo Da Vinci worked with a code that could be understood by an idiot demented by marijuana.

I wanted to put the record straight. The truth is stranger than fiction and a good deal more interesting. The trouble with fiction is that you can’t live on it; you always want more. Perhaps if you wanted to define the Truth, you might – with tongue in cheek – call it NON FICTION. There is NON FICTION in magick, Gnosis, mysticism and spiritual understanding – but then, I suppose, your readers know this already, or they would not be suffering this interview with a distant star.

© Copyright 2005 by New Dawn Magazine. This article first appeared in New Dawn No. 91 (July-August 2005). For further information visit www.newdawnmagazine.com

All that most Western Christians know about her is presented in the New Testament Gospels, and even that information is disputed. But there is some general agreement: She was a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ whom he had delivered from “evil spirits and infirmities.” Along with several other women, she ministered to Christ and witnessed his death on the Cross. She was there when his body was placed in the tomb, when the stone was rolled away to reveal an empty chamber, when an angel announced that Christ had risen from the dead – and when he made His first post-Resurrection appearance to the living. She brought the news of his Resurrection to the other disciples.

For 1,500 years, Mary Magdalene was portrayed, in art and theology, as a prostitute whose life was transformed by Jesus’ forgiveness. This notion, based on Luke 7:38, was the result of an erroneous sermon preached in 591 by Pope Gregory the Great. Jean-Yves Leloup, in his commentary onThe Gospel of Mary, states:

Mary’s identity as a prostitute stems from Homily 33 of Pope Gregory I, delivered in the year 591… Only in 1969 did the Catholic Church officially repeal Gregory’s labeling of Mary Magdalene as a whore, thereby admitting their error – though the image of Magdalene as the penitent whore has remained in the public teachings of all Christian denominations. Like a small erratum buried in the back pages of a newspaper, the Church’s correction goes unnoticed, while the initial and incorrect article continues to influence readers.1

The stain of immorality attached to the figure of Mary Magdalene averted attention away from the significant role she plays in the unfolding of Christ’s teachings. The importance of Mary is especially apparent in Gnostic texts – some among the earliest accounts of Jesus’ ministry – which have been largely suppressed and ignored by Church authorities.

The Gnostic picture of Mary departs – in some ways, dramatically – from the historical and biblical image of perhaps the most significant female follower of Jesus.

The second-century Gospel of Mary was found in the late 19th century by archaeologists but remained largely ignored and untranslated for 50 years. It is the only account named for a woman and offers a different view of Christianity – one that describes an “interior spirituality,” says Karen L. King, author of The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle.

In the Mary Magdalene account, “salvation is not something that comes from an external saviour,” says King. “One has to seek salvation within.” Thus, the Magdalene gospel depicts Jesus as a teacher rather than as a saviour who dies to atone for humanity’s sins.

In her introduction in The Complete Gospels, Karen King says:

…the Gospel of Mary communicates a vision that the world is passing away, not toward a new creation or a new world order, but toward the dissolution of an illusory chaos of suffering, death, and illegitimate domination. The Saviour has come so that each soul might discover its own true spiritual nature, its ‘root’ in the Good, and return to the place of eternal rest beyond the constraints of time, matter, and false morality.

Another Gnostic text – The Gospel of Thomas – reveals that women were disciples of Christ. However the New Testament only includes gospels written by men and distinguishes between the women of Christ’s life, and the ‘disciples’ – who are all male.

You find in the [Gnostic] Gospel of Thomas that six disciples are named: Matthew and Thomas, James and Peter, Mary Magdalene and Salome,” says Prof. Elaine Pagels, professor of religion at Princeton University, and author ofThe Gnostic Gospels and Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas.

Here, explicitly, Mary Magdalene is Jesus’ disciple. In the Gospel of Thomas and also the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, she is seen as an evangelist and a teacher, somebody who is gifted with revelations and teachings from Jesus which are very powerful and which enable her to be a spiritual inspiration to others.

The Gnostics honoured equally the feminine and masculine aspects of nature, and Prof. Pagels argues Christian Gnostic women enjoyed a far greater degree of social and ecclesiastical equality than their orthodox sisters.

For Jean Yves-Leloup, the founder of the Institute of Other Civilisation Studies and the International College of Therapists, Mary Magdalene is the intimate friend of Jesus and the initiate who transmits his most subtle teachings.

His translation of The Gospel of Mary is presented in his book The Gospel of Mary Magdalene along with a commentary on the text which was discovered in 1896, nearly 50 years before the Gnostic Gospels at Nag Hammadi were found.

In his book, Leloup states: “It is Miriam of Magdala who serves the disciples as a midwife, not of body or soul, but of the eternal Son whose Presence seeks to reveal itself in the very heart of that which trembles most within them.”

The Gospel of Mary

Peace be with you. Receive my peace to yourselves. Beware that no one lead you astray, saying, ‘Lo here!’ or ‘Lo there!’ for the Son of Man is within you. Follow after Him! Those who seek Him will find Him. Go then and preach the gospel of the kingdom. Do not lay down any rules beyond what I appointed for you, and do not give a law like the lawgiver lest you be constrained by it.

– Jesus as quoted in The Gospel of Mary

The Gospel of Mary comprises the first part of the so-called Berlin Papyrus. This manuscript was acquired in Cairo by C. Reinhardt, and has been preserved since 1896 in the Egyptology section of the national museum of Berlin.

This copy of The Gospel of Mary, reports Jean Yves-Leloup, “was made in the early fifth century… The scribe wrote down twenty-one, twenty-two, or twenty-three lines per page, with each line containing an average of twenty-two or twenty-three letters. Several leaves are missing from the document: pages 1 to 6, and 11 to 14. This renders its interpretation particularly difficult.

As to the dating of the original text upon which the copy was based, it is interesting to note that there exists a Greek fragment – the Rylands papyrus 463 – whose identity as the precursor of the Coptic text has been confirmed by Professor Carl Schmidt. This fragment comes from Oxyrhynchus and dates from the beginning of the third century. The first edition of the Gospel of Mary, however, would likely be older than this, that is, from sometime during the second century. W. C. Till places it around the year 150. Therefore it would seem, like the canonical gospels, to be one of the founding or primitive texts of Christianity.

The Gospel of Mary can easily be divided into two parts. The first section (7,1-9,24) describes the dialogue between the risen Christ and the disciples. He answers their questions concerning matter and sin.

“Christ teaches that sin is not a problem of moral ignorance so much as a manifestation of imbalance of the soul,” says James Robinson, Professor Emeritus of Religion at Claremont Graduate University.2 “Christ then encourages the disciples to spread his teachings and warns them against those who teach of spirituality as an external concept rather than as an internal, Gnostic experience,” says Robinson.

After he departs, however, the disciples are grieved and in considerable doubt and consternation. Mary Magdalene comforts them and turns their hearts toward the Good and a consideration of Christ’s words.

The second section of the text (10,1-23; 15,1-19,2) contains a description by Mary of special revelation given to her by Christ. At Peter’s request, she tells the disciples about things that were hidden from them. The basis for her knowledge is a vision of the Lord and a private dialogue with Him. Unfortunately four pages of the text are missing here so only the beginning and end of Mary’s revelation are available.

Commenting on the text, Karen King writes: “The first question Mary asks Christ is how one sees a vision. The Christ replies that the soul sees through the mind which is between the soul and the spirit. At this point the text breaks off. When the text resumes at 15,1, Mary is in the midst of describing the Christ’s revelation concerning the rise of the soul past the four powers. The four powers are most probably to be identified as essential expressions of the four material elements. The enlightened soul, now free of their bonds, rises past the four powers, overpowering them with her gnosis, and attains eternal, silent rest.”

This fragment of the gospel describes Mary’s vision of the soul’s ascent beyond the “powers” including the powers of fear. For the Gnostics, these “powers” are the Archons which act as cosmic prison wardens, attempting to prevent souls ascending to the True God. “It (the soul) has to overcome the powers of fear and the powers that threaten it as it proceeds into a life beyond death,” Prof. Elaine Pagels explains.

After Mary finishes recounting her vision to the disciples, Andrew and then Peter challenge her on two grounds. First of all, Andrew says, these teachings are strange. Secondly, Peter questions, would Christ really have told such things to a woman and kept them from the male disciples. Levi admonishes Peter for contending with the woman as against their adversaries and acknowledges that Christ loved her more than the other disciples. He entreats them to be ashamed, to put on the “perfect man”, and to go forth and preach as Christ had instructed them to do. They immediately go forth to preach and the text ends.

This confrontation between Mary and Peter is well documented in a number of Gnostic scriptures. Mary exposes the small mindedness and superficiality of Peter and Andrew who find it difficult to comprehend, let alone accept, the deeper spiritual understanding Mary acquired through her personal experience and closer relationship with Christ.

James Robinson observes: “Indeed Peter and Andrew seem to prefer the very thing against which Christ warned them – a religion based on arbitrary ideas (in this case represented by Peter’s male chauvinism and Andrew’s ignorance). And yet many of their ideas have shaped modern Christianity while, paradoxically, Mary Magdelene’s spirituality, which here seems more consistent with the teachings of Christ, is unheard of today.”

Other Gnostic Texts

Mary Magdalene plays a prominent role in Gnostic traditions presented in other Gnostic works such as Pistis Sophia, The Dialogue of the Saviourand The Gospel of Philip, where she is extolled as a chief disciple of Christ, a visionary and mediator of Gnostic revelations.

In these texts she is praised as “the woman who knew the All” (The Dialogue of the Saviour), and “the inheritor of light” (Pistis Sophia), associated with the divine Wisdom.

The Gospel of Philip recognises her as the koinonos (companion or consort) of Christ whom he loved more than all the other disciples, and the spiritual union between Christ and Mary Magdalene is described in slightly erotic terms. According to Yuri Stoyanov in his book The Other God, “as a terrestrial companion of the Saviour in The Gospel of Philip, she could indeed have been seen as a ‘counterpart of the celestial Sophia’.”

Mary Magdelene as the “consort” of Christ has led some writers to deduce a very different sort of relationship between Mary Magdalene and Jesus, even one in which the two were married and had children.

The Gnostic view of their relationship indicates one in which Mary becomes spiritually pregnant and perfect from her sacred partnership with Christ. When it is reported in The Gospel of Philip Jesus “used to kiss her [Mary Magdalene] often on her mouth”, the Gnostics say a kiss on the mouth was a symbol for passing “knowledge” (gnosis), so the jealousy of the disciples was not to do with the fact Jesus “loved” Mary Magdalene, but the fact he is giving her far more knowledge than them.

One of the most intriguing of discoveries of the late nineteenth century was the Pistis Sophia (“Faith Wisdom” or “Faith of Wisdom”), an allegorical account of the Gnostic world-system. This text claims to report the interactions of Jesus Christ and the disciples after His Resurrection, but it differs radically from the canonical texts in its account of the spiritual powers ruling the universe, its belief in reincarnation, and its extensive use of magical formulae and invocations.

The text describes Jesus as a mystic teacher, whose main interactions are with powerful female disciples like Mary Magdalene. Much of it concerns the stages by which Jesus liberates the supernatural (and female) figure of Sophia, heavenly Wisdom, from her bondage in error and the material world, and she is progressively restored to her previous divine status in the heavens.

To the ancients, the feminine principle Sophia was the veiled holy spirit of wisdom, pregnant with knowledge and inviting us to drink deeply from Her Cup. In Gnostic cosmology, Sophia is trapped in the material world and is liberated after mystical union with Christ. It’s also interesting to note the functions of the Holy Spirit are associated in biblical texts with women: consolation, inspiration, emotional warmth, and birth of the spirit.

Characteristic of these Gnostic gospels, the events described occur symbolically and psychologically, in sharp contrast to the literal interpretation of gospel accounts of historical Christianity.

Gnosticism and the Role of Women

By all apostolic accounts, Yeshua of Nazareth himself was certainly not a founder of any “ism,” nor of any institution. He was the Annunciator, the Witness, and some would go so far as to say the Incarnation of the possible reign of the Spirit in the heart of this space-time, the manifestation of the Infinite in the very heart of our finitude, the voice of the Other within the speech of human-ness.

– Jean-Yves LeLoup3

In Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing, a modern day Gnostic bishop Stephan Hoeller states that Gnostic Christians hold a “conviction that direct, personal and absolute knowledge of the authentic truths of existence is accessible to human beings, and, moreover, that the attainment of such knowledge must always constitute the supreme achievement of human life.”

As Elaine Pagels says in her book The Gnostic Gospels, this emphasis on spiritual experience did not bode well for the Gnostics. If salvation is directly available to the individual, why does one need an organised church to act as a dogmatic mediator between the individual and God? In Gnostic rituals, the participants would take turns officiating, and in their acceptance of the equality of women they seem remarkably modern.

The confrontation between Peter and Mary Magdalene in The Gospel of Mary is representative of a conflict within Christianity that persists to this day. The story symbolises the confrontation between the traditional Apostolic-Pauline branch of Christianity and the Gnostics. It is also the conflict between the esoteric (the inner or mystical teachings) and the exoteric (the open or exterior teachings) dimensions of religion.

In the early days of Christianity the hierarchical organised church saw the Gnostic mystics, with their subversive openness of spirit and anti-authority stance, as a dangerous threat to its growing power. Unlike the Roman church, in Gnostic groups women were openly functioning as priests and teachers and enjoyed acceptance.

In the 2nd century CE, the Church Father Tertullian particularly objected to “those women amongst the heretics” who held positions of authority. He angrily attacked “that viper” – a woman who was the spiritual teacher of a Gnostic group in northern Africa.

He was outraged, writing: “These heretical women – how audacious they are! They have no modesty. They are bold enough to teach, and engage in discussion; they exorcise; they cure the sick, and it may be they even baptise!… They also share the kiss of peace with all who come.”

Although his views were in line with Jewish tradition from which Jesus had come, it is worth remembering Jesus himself had violated these conventions by openly communicating with women and including them amongst his most intimate followers.

By the 4th century CE the established Christian church was persecuting all Gnostics they could find, and killing them in the thousands. However, the Gnostic stream was not eliminated and remains underground to this very day.

The supreme Gnostic heresy was to see Yahweh, the tribal deity of the Old Testament, as a false god – a vicious and foolish creator of an imperfect world. Thus the god of the Roman Church was not the True God, but a devilish Demiurge who sought only to entrap human souls in lies, illusion, and evil.

Being trapped in the prison of this material world, the divine sparks or souls seek to transcend beyond the world ruled by the Demiurge, back home to the realm of the True God of divine wisdom whose characteristics cannot be defined or rationally understood.

For the Gnostics, one can only know the transcendent God through knowledge (gnosis) of Christ. Christ as the Son of the True God comes into the world to reveal the transcendent truth. When this concept is completely understood, one’s life assumes a new spiritual dimension, and the real virtues then begin to flow from a divine source. Christ’s message is presented equally for all comers, male and female, for as He explains in The Gospel of Thomas:

When you make the two, one, and if you make the inside like the outside, and the outside like the inside, and the upper like the lower, and so you will make the male and woman one alone, so that the female becomes male and the male becomes female, and when you make a vision in the place of an eye, and a hand in the place of a hand, and a foot in the place of a foot, and an image in the place of an image, then you will enter the kingdom.

In the end this may be the greatest secret hidden in the saga of Mary Magdalene, the woman Jesus loved.

Footnotes

1. Jean-Yves Leloup, The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, Inner Traditions International, 2002.

2. James M. Robinson, Nag Hammadi Library in English, Harper SanFrancisco, 1990.

3. Jean-Yves Leloup, Ibid.

© Copyright 2005 by New Dawn Magazine. This article first appeared in New Dawn Special Issue No. 1. For further information visit www.newdawnmagazine.com

We are making Bishop Richard, Duc de Palatine’s essay available because it reveals both his firm commitment to ancient Gnosticism and his deep spiritual insights.

First published in The Lucis Magazine, Volume 1 No.3, in 1959, we trust you will find this document an important part of the history of the modern Gnostic revival. 

– Gnostic.info

The Pre-Nicene Gnosto-Catholic Church was established on the 25th October, 1953 in London, England with the object of restoring the GNOSIS – DIVINE WISDOM to the Christian Church, and to teach the PATH OF HOLINESS which leads to God and the Inner Illumination and Interior Communion with the Soul through the mortal body of man.

The title of this old but new Church was decided on because by being PRE-NICENE we hold to the Wisdom Religion as taught by the Gnostic Doctors Valentinius, Basilides, Marcion, Cerentius and Paul; being GNOSTO-CATHOLIC we hold to the doctrine of a Universal Creed that all religions are but expressions of the ONE RELIGION and that no religion has the monopoly on this Universal Truth. We claim that RELIGION manifests as many religions, and UNIVERSAL because we welcome to our Fellowship ALL men and women, irrespective of race, colour or creed. We place no barriers between the Sons of God and our Altars and Church because we believe that a Church should be the Temple of God, an earthly mirror of the Spiritual Church of Divine Souls. The Church should be a magnetic centre for the free passage of power, life and consciousness from the material to the spiritual and from the spiritual to the material regions. Within this magnetic centre a forcing house is established to assist the faithful to spiritualise themselves and receive the blessed Gift of the Holy Spirit.

We do not claim that a belief in man-made dogmas is essential for the redemption of mankind, but by the re-union with the Christ-Soul within man who is the MEDIATOR between God and Man. By the investigation into the doctrines which were taught by the Gnostic Doctors of the Church Universal before 325 A.D., it has ­now been established that the Gnostics held to the tenets of the Wisdom Religion, as to be found in THE HYMN OF THE ROBE OF GLORY; THE ACTS OF THOMAS;ACTS OF JOHN; ACTS OF ANDREW; THE TRAVELS OF PETER; PISTIS SOPHIA; THE BOOKS OF THE SAVIOUR; THE BOOK OF THE GREAT LOGOS; CODEX BRUCIANUS; THE AKHIM CODEX and the MEMOIRS, ACTS and GOSPELS which contained SAYINGS-OF-THE-LORD or Logoi. It has been amply shown by the above extant manuscripts that it was after the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D., that the present doctrines were formulated by the ignorant monks in their attempt to explain man’s “redemption” from what they have been pleased to call sin, hell, etc.

The Gnostics understood the Scriptures not as historical narratives, but as being the presentation of the Spiritual Drama of the Fall of the Divine Man into matter and his eventual return to his original Spiritual Home. But the ‘orthodox’ Fathers only knew them as so-called historical facts and events as shown by the unreliable writings of Eusebius, as CHRONICON, Rome 1833; DEMONSTRATION EVANGELICA; ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY,  Irenaeus in AGAINST HERESIES; Epiphanus in PANARIA, Berlin 1859-61 and Tertullian in APOLOGY; ADV MARCIONEM and in Hippolytus Romanus’ work REFUTATION OF ALL HERESIES given in their Commentaries on the ten extant Gnostic documents of the times.

The Orthodox Church has claimed without any real authority that all other interpretations of the Mysteries of Jesus other than their own are ‘heretical’ and we find that this same intole­rant and ignorant attitude still exists in the Church today, in spite of the findings of reputable scholars that there is nothing in the present Christian Doctrines which was not taught by the older and pagan Mystery Religions many thousands of years before Christ, such as the cross, monastic systems, tonsure, confessions, the sacrifice of the bread and wine etc., excepting the doctrines of hell, satan and eternal damnation. The present Divines of all the Christian Sects still hold to the literal interpretations of the Scriptures, whereas as Our Lord the Christos definitely stated in MARK, c.4. v.11:”Unto you (Illuminated) it is given to know the Mysteries of the Kingdom (man’s inherent spiritual nature), but unto them that are without (uninitiated), these things are done in parables.” We claim that the Mysteries are the true religion which is the instinctive recognition by man that he possesses a spiritual nature, and the effort which he makes to realise that nature; this was the teaching of the Gnostics.

We hold with the Gnostics that the Scriptures have two meanings, as Origen in his DE PRINCIPIIS  states: “The Scriptures have a meaning, not only such as is apparent at first sight, BUT ALSO ANOTHER, WHICH ESCAPES THE NOTICE OF MOST MEN. For such is written in forms of certain Mysteries, the image of Divine Things, respecting which there is ONE OPINION ‘THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE CHURCH, that the Law is indeed spiritual; but that the spiritual meaning which the Law conveys is NOT KNOWN TO ALL, but to those on whom the grace of the Holy Spirit is bestowed (Illumination) in the words of wisdom and understanding.” This has been verified in Ad. Franck’s KABBALE OU LA PHILOSOPHIC RELIGIEUSE DES HEBREUZ, Paris, in chapter 3, page 152: “The narratives of the doctrine are its cloak. The simple look only on the garment, that is upon the narrative of’ the doctrine; more they know not. The instructed (Illuminated), however, see not merely the cloak, but what the cloak covers.” Jacob Boehme says in his EPISTLES, c.9. v.3: “For the book (Bible) in which all mysteries lie is man himself; he is the likeness of God; the great Arcanum lieth in him.” Meister Eckhart says of this ‘Mystery’ – “This is hidden from the soul.”

We in this Church claim with excellent authority that this Wisdom or Mystery concerns the GNOSIS OF GOD AND THE SOUL, that deeper Wisdom underlying all religions and philosophies, not usually expressed in writing, but is passed on from generation to generation verbally, and this Wisdom has been expressed by Clement in his STOMATA, iv.23: “The Logos of God became man that from man you might learn how man may become God.” Therefore the Scriptures and Philosophies contain the outer teaching suited to the needs of the masses, but the inner soul of’ the teaching resides in the minds of a few of the wisest in every generation.

This Wisdom or Gnosis was the immediate knowledge of God’s mysteries received by interior communion with the Soul through the process of Illumination, by the transformation of’ the whole of man’s nature into a spiritual being, by means of (a) initiation into a Holy Community, which will be through the sections of THE SOVEREIGN IMPERIUM OF THE MYSTERIES; (b) by a duly qualified Teacher, one of the Illumined Sons of God, through the BROTHERHOOD OF THE ILLUMINATED; and (c) under the veils of symbols and sacra­ments, that being the work of THE PRE-NICENE GNOSTO-CATHOLIC CHURCH.

There are three stages of spiritual progression in this Church which will awaken all the personality of man until he becomes Illuminated by the Christ-Soul within his own Divine Nature, and this process is the eternal drama ever taking place within the individual with its goal being Union with the Divine. This process of’ Illumination and Interior Communion with the Divine is accomp­lished by these three definite stages: (a) PURIFICATION, each of the Faithful will be encouraged to build into himself the quali­fications which are ever demanded of him before he can allow the Presence of the Mystic Christ to become known to the to the personality; he is then ready for the rite of BAPTISM. (b) ILLUMINATION, when they have purified the personality, the Christ-Soul will re-enter into His own human temple, he is then ready for CONFIRMATION, and finally that of PERFECTION; they are then ready for the last and most sacred Mystery of all that of Union with the Christ-Soul which makes them one of the Elders.

“The Christ of the human heart is, for the most part, Jesus seen as the mystic human Christ, struggling, suffering, dying, and finally triumphant, the MAN in whom humanity is seen crucified and risen, whose victory is the promise of victory for everyone. This is the summary of the highest Science known to man and is the final goal of all spiritual knowledge and labour, the final object is to make men gods.”

The GNOSIS as held by this Church means ‘knowledge’, – THE THINGS THAT ARE – which was the technical term used by the Gnostics to denote the object of their quest. They taught that Illumination could be obtained by mystical union with the Christ within the Soul. This feat was accomplished in their secret rites or their “Mysteries” in which the death and resurrection of Christ was enacted and the worshipper could achieve ‘union’ with the Christ within his own Soul, he was able to share in the spiritual power and refreshment in this symbolical act, but it was more than just a symbolical act, the worshipper learned to live the drama in time and space in his or her daily life.

We in this Church seek to attain that spiritual union through the Holy Mass which is the central act of Christian worship and mysteries and is the representation of the inner mystery-drama, re-enacting in time and space the primal cosmic sacrifice of God; the incarnation or descent into matter of God the Son of the Supernal Trinity and by this sacrifice we as Sparks of the Divine Life descend into matter so that we can become as perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect. This Mass helps us to realise that our bodies are expressions of our Divine Souls, of the Indwelling Spirit; so that Bread and Wine which nourish our bodies become here the special expression or manifestation of the Christ, the channel of His blessing for the nourishing of our Souls. The inner or esoteric meaning of the EUCHARISTA means the fermentation of the seed of life by the Wisdom into the Divine.

We hold to the plan which was adopted by our Lord the Christ, which provides a special reservoir of spiritual power for the Church’s use and which provides that our Priests are empowered to draw upon this reservoir of spiritual power for the spiritual upliftment of our people. This method is called the Sacrament of Ordination. We hold to the Doctrine of the APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION coming through the Apostles from the Mysteries; we in this Church have blended all the known lines together in the person of our Presiding Bishop.

According to the extant documents of the first three centuries it is now known that Jeshu-Jesus was initiated into many of the known Mystery Schools of the time. Thus by this means Jesus was able to blend them all together for His work for the new Christian Church. He formed his own Mysteries which were called the “Mysteries of Jesus” after His death in 70 B.C., on the wall of the City of Lud or Lyddia, this line of ancient spiritual succession was passed to the Apostles and from them on to the present day. But it has been overlooked that a number of the Gnostic Doctors were both Bishops of the Church and Initiates of the Gnostic Schools who in turn received their authority from the Mystery Schools, such as St. Paul, who was an Initiate of the Greek and Hebrew Mysteries and passed this line into the Church.

Origen was initiated by Clemens Alexandrinus who in turn was initiated by Ammonius Saccas, who was an initiate of the Platonic and Pythagorian Schools who derived their authority from the Greek and Egyptian Mysteries and according to the statement made to Solon by the High Priest of Sais in Egypt, the Egyptians received their Wisdom and Mysteries from the Atlanteans. The Greeks and Egyptians also received their authorities from the Chaldeans and the Magi who in turn received their authority from the Trans-Himalayan Lodge beyond the Himalayas in the Tarim Basin near the Gobi Sea. It will be seen that Jesus stood in direct line of succession from the famous Atlantean Schools and from the Lodge of the Communion of Saints in Thibet.

After the suppression of the Gnostics and the last of the Sacred Schools at Arles, Gaul, the Gnosis was forced underground to continue its tradition,  it left the underground passage into the Light of’ day through the “Brothers of’ Light” in 1498 and this line has continued today in the present Prince-Primate of’ the Rite.

In 1118 Hugh de Payens vvas initiated by the Grand-Pontiff’ of the Order of the Temple of the Nazarene Gnostics by Theocletes and continued until 1307 as the Templar Order, “when aided by Phillippe Le Bel, King of France, Pope Clement has the Order suppressed at the Council of Vienne in 1311 and in 1313 the Grand Master Jacques du Molay perished in the flames. During his last imprisonment Molay secretly conferred the Grand Mastership of the Order upon Johannes Marcus Larmenius and by the CHARTA TRANS­MISSIONIS, appointed Theobaldus Alexandrinus as his successor and the line was secretly perpetuated until 1804, when Bernard Raymond Fabre-Palaprat became Grand Master. It then passed through Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord, Prince de Benevento (1808­1831) – Georges-Eugene, Baron Haussman (1831-1868) – Gideon Jasper Richard Ouseley (1868-1905) – Charles Henry Alfred Nunez Arnold (1905-1938) – Hubert George Knowles (1938-1946) – Hugo, Marquis de Villarosa (1946-1958) when the Grand Mastership was held jointly by Hugo and Richard, the present Prince-Prinate of this Church.

Christian Rosenkruz founded the Brotherhood of’ the Rosy Cross in Germany (circa 1300) and this line was carried through Count Victor Cherep-Spivodich to the Prince-Primate of this Church. Cagliostro brought to France the Masonic Rite of Egypt which was blended with the Gnostic tradition, forming the basis for the Masonic Rite of Memphis and Mizraim and through St. Martin to form the Martiniste Order through Pasqualis, these two lines are now blended in the person of’ the Prince-Primate of this Church.

It will be seen that this Church embodies the tradition of the Ancient Mystery Schools and Colleges of the Philosophers, the Gnostic Tradition and those lines of tradition which have sprung from the roots of Gnosticism. Perhaps never in the history of’ the Christian Church have all the lines possible in the Wisdom Traditions been brought together into one Church. Most of the so-called non Christian lines of authority were originally within the Church proper and were never intended to be anything else but the mystic aspect of the Church, but we have the sorry sight of seeing many so called authentic lines of tradition refusing to work within the Church and claiming to be non-religious.

The direct lines of succession called “Catholic” are now known as THE OECUMENICAL APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION and blended with the non-Catholic successions, they became what could be termed THE WISDOM RELIGION-GNOSTIC MYSTIC TRADITION. The Catholic successions arc derived through (1) Syrian-Antiochene. (2) Syrian­Malabar; (3) Syrian-Gallican; (4) Armenian-Uniatc; (5) Syro­Chaldean; (6) Chaldean-Uniate; (7) Coptic-Orthodox;(8) Old Catholic (American); (9) Order of Corporate Reunion; (10) Roman Catholic; (11) Anglican, for what it is worth. They are derived through His Sacred Beatitude Mar Georgius, Lord Patriarch of Glastonbury. His Beatitude’s Orders were declared valid in the Parish Hall of Notre Dame de la Chambre, Brussels, Belgium on 26th March 1953 during a Conference of Roman Catholic Theologians presided over by Canon Pierre Gillet, who was for 18 years Professor of Canon Law in the Seminary of Malines, and Canonist in Title to the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Malines. The first ten lines can also be verified as being valid in the CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPAEDIA DICTIONARY. As Tertullian, of the 3rd century, demands: “Have you an Apostolic Succession? Unfold your line of Bishops.”

The fact that this Rita does not hold to the present accepted theological beliefs but to the Gnostic-Wisdom Religion teachings, may cause the present Catholic Church to denounce our Orders as being heretical, but before they make such a pronouncement they are advised to think carefully as the scholastic world have verified the contrary, that the Orthodox Church is in the position of being the ‘true heretics’, deviating from the True Teachings of the Christ. The old order of things and beliefs always dies very hard before the Light of the new age becomes fully established.

Such scholars as G.R.S Mead, Godfrey Higgins, King, C..W. Leadbeater, Bishop Colonso, Dean Inge, Bishop Barnes, H.P.Blavatsky, Joseph McCabe, C.C.J. Baron Bunson, J.P. Lundy, and hosts of others, have all shown with unshakable facts that the present Christianity is NOT, and we repeat NOT the true religion of the Christ, and since our present Bible is a translation of a translation of a recension of the Greek and Aramaic copies which have been lost there is,  therefore, no factual evidence to rely upon, excepting the writings of the Gnostics which such ‘Fathers’ as Eusebius, Ireneaus and Hyppolitus either distorted or destroyed in their attempts to obliterate the true sources of Christianity.

© Copyright 2006 by Universal Gnostic Alliance.

Madame H.P. Blavatsky, the co-founder of the worldwide Theosophical Society and author of the society’s primary texts, had a profound interest in Gnosticism. Gnostic Bishop Stephan A. Hoeller says Madame Blavatsky “commented on the tradition voluminously (a compilation of her writing concerning runs to more than 270 pages). The contemporary student of Gnosticism, who has access to the Nag Hammadi Gnostic scriptures, would be greatly impressed if not outright awestruck by Blavatsky’s uncanny insight into Gnosticism.”1

Running through all Blavatsky’s writings is the idea there is an ‘ancient wisdom’ that has never ceased to exist: “The Gnosis lingers still on earth, and its votaries are many, albeit unknown.” While Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society was not concerned with resurrecting ancient Gnosticism, it did contribute immensely to the general awareness of the Gnostic Tradition. Through articles, books and public lectures, a positive interest in Gnosticism was encouraged. This was aided by the arrival in Australia in 1914 of the Theosophical Society leader, the Reverend Charles Webster Leadbeater.

A prolific writer on esotericism, Leadbeater has been described as “a remarkable character, hailed as the world’s greatest clairvoyant and occultist by his disciples, and denounced as a charlatan and an immoral corruptor of youth by his enemies.”2 Rev. Leadbeater established his home in Sydney where with James I. Wedgwood he helped found the Liberal Catholic Church. Soon churches were established in Australia’s major cities and Bishop Leadbeater presided over elaborate services at St Alban’s Cathedral, the Church’s impressive Sydney centre.

As co-founder of the Liberal Catholic Church, Bishop Leadbeater authored a number of articles and books outlining esoteric Christianity and giving the Church’s theological outlook, foremost among these Science of the Sacraments, The Hidden Side of Christian Festivals and The Christian Gnosis (published posthumously).

Richard, Duc de Palatine

With fascism and communism on the rise across Europe in the 1930s, in far away Australia a young spiritual seeker emerged who would later be known internationally as Richard, Duc de Palatine. From the age of 13 years, Ronald Powell (born in Melbourne in 1916) questioned the historical foundation of Christianity and was considered a heretic by the mainstream clergy. He writes of joining “the biggest occult library in the Southern Hemisphere at the Theosophical Lodge in Melbourne,” where he was mysteriously drawn to study “the extant writings concerning the Gnostics, Essenes and Secret Mysteries.” By 1944 he became convinced “that one day he would cause to be formed a Brotherhood which would partially restore the Sacred Lore and encourage people to prepare themselves for the Illumination and Interior Communion with the God within.”

In the early 1950s, like so many Australians of his generation, Powell journeyed to London where in 1953 he was consecrated as Bishop Richard John Chretien Duc de Palatine by the Patriarch Hugh George de Willmott Newman of the United Orthodox Catholic Rite. The name of Duc de Palatine is a personal and spiritual title.

On the 25th of October, 1953 the Most Rev. Richard, Duc de Palatine established in London the Pre-Nicene Gnosto-Catholic Church, with the stated object of “restoring the Gnosis – Divine Wisdom to the Christian Church, and to teach the Path of Holiness which leads to God and the Inner Illumination and Interior Communion with the Soul through the mortal body of man.” In 1958 the Most Rev. George William Boyer (1921-2008) was consecrated Auxiliary Bishop of the Pre-Nicene Gnostic Catholic Church and the designated successor to Bishop Duc de Palatine.

From his base in London’s Kensington, Richard, Duc de Palatine travelled on several occasions to France where he made contact with bishops of the French Gnostic Church. They encouraged him to fulfil his mission of transmitting the Gnostic tradition to the English-speaking world. He was also received by representatives of France’s leading mystical orders, including the surviving Grand Master of the Templar Order. In a profile of Richard, Duc de Palatine’s life we read that he held high office in many esoteric bodies: “Through these Orders and his many contacts, particularly in France which he frequently visited, Richard was able to bring forth in a semi-public forum the hidden teachings, the Gnosis of the Soul, which exposed the false vestiges of truth that had been foisted onto the people.”

Through his London based Pre-Nicene Publishing House, Richard, Duc de Palatine issued a series of booklets on Christian Gnosticism, with titles like “The Inner Meaning of the Mystery Schools,” “The Christian Mysteries,” and “Christ or Jesus?” He also published “The Lucis Magazine” as the official organ of ‘The Sovereign Imperium of the Mysteries.’ Reviewing Richard, Duc de Palatine’s early writings it is obvious how far-sighted and spiritually gifted he was. Articles in his magazine ranged from discussions of “The Fallen Angels” and the “Dead Sea Scrolls” to the “Christian Fathers on Reincarnation” and “Spiritual Illumination”.

Richard, Duc de Palatine’s magazines and booklets reached Australia through the Pre-Nicene Gnostic Catholic Church’s Australian secretary. He also formed several associated esoteric orders including the ‘The Brotherhood and Order of the Pleroma’ and the ‘Order of St Raphael’. As Lord Abbot, Richard, Duc de Palatine presented the visionary English poet Ralph Nicholas Chubb with an illuminated scroll from the Order of St Raphael in appreciation of his services to mankind.

The 1960s witnessed a growing interest in Gnosticism in the USA. Richard, Duc de Palatine travelled to the United States, eventually settling in California where he formed ‘The Sanctuary of The Gnosis’ in Hollywood, before his passing in the late 70s. On 7 April 1967 Bishop Duc de Palatine consecrated Stephan A. Hoeller (Tau Stephanus) and in 1974 he consecrated Michael Itkin 1936-1989 (Mar Mikhael). The Californian journalist Nat Freedland interviewed Richard, Duc de Palatine for the 1972 book The Occult Explosion. Freedland described him as an “Australian-born metaphysician” who is a “professional-looking divorced businessman who enjoys jokes, cigars, and brandy when he’s not on the speaker’s platform – he feels that he is in a state of inspiration when he lectures and always speaks ad lib without any notes.” In his 1971 book The Key to Cosmic Consciousness, Bishop Duc de Palatine is described as an “outstanding mystic and illumined teacher and writer” whose “knowledge and experience stems from his own illumination in 1956, after applying the teachings of the early Gnostic Fathers…”

Seekers of Truth

The early 1980s saw the mass publication of the Nag Hammadi Gnostic texts along with a number of highly-acclaimed academic studies of ancient Gnosticism, foremost among these The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels. In Australia, an informal network of Gnostic students came together – largely in private – seeking to synthesise the latest scholarly research on Gnosticism with the insights of Richard, Duc de Palatine and other gifted teachers of the Gnosis. Encouraged by a resurgence of interest in Gnosticism in the United States – confirmed by the launch in 1985 of the high-quality GNOSIS journal and by the tireless efforts of Bishop Stephan A. Hoeller in California – some Australian Gnostics began their own public activities. By the 1990s the Gnostic Apostolic Church, Institute of Gnostic Studies, New Gnosis, and the Life Science Fellowship were presenting Gnostic teachings throughout Australia.

Since Richard, Duc de Palatine’s passing, the work of the Gnosis, of necessity, has taken on many guises and has appeared in different forms. In the United States the Gnostic tradition restored by Richard, Duc de Palatine is carried on chiefly by Dr. Stephan A. Hoeller, Presiding Bishop of Ecclesia Gnostica. In Great Britain and Australia the Gnostic work has taken on a private approach in order to implement links with the more esoteric side of the Gnostic tradition. The Universal Gnostic Alliance, a consortium of Gnostic organisations in the Asia and Pacific region, was established in Australia at Easter, 2005. Formally chartered “to perpetuate the work of encouraging the study and propagation of the Ancient and True Universal Philosophy of the Inner Gnosis,” the Universal Gnostic Alliance honours the vision of the late Bishop Richard, Duc de Palatine and continues the pioneering work of the Noble Travellers and Gnostic Adepts who went before.

Readers interested in learning more about the Gnostic tradition in Australia can fill out the Contact Form on this website.

Footnotes

1. Gnosticism: New Light On The Ancient Tradition, by Stephan A. Hoeller
2. Other Temples Other Gods: The Occult in Australia by Nevill Drury and Gregory Tillett

Wars between nations or faiths are commonplace. Sometimes, the leaders of nations turn against a minority resident within their own borders. But the Albigensian Crusade is unique in history, as the Pope on March 10, 1208 proclaimed a crusade against a ‘heresy’ that was present inside Catholic Europe itself. “These heretics are worse than the Saracens!” he proclaimed.

In retrospect, the crusade was one of the bloodiest episodes in European history. Indeed, the decades-long persecution of simple folk has often been seen as the event that prepared the way for the birth of Protestantism, as it awakened ordinary Europeans to the realisation that something was not ‘quite’ right within the papal corridors.

Today, the ‘heretics’ are most commonly known as Cathars, but historically they went under a number of guises for, in fact, they were not a uniform organisation at all.

The main focus, however, has always been on the Cathars (from the Greek word meaning ‘pure’), a name that is normally reserved for the dissident Christians who lived in Southern France and Northern Spain.

Catharism arrived in southern France and northern Italy in the 11th century. It was present in Orléans as early as 1022, when thirteen Parfaits – the name for the ascetic Cathar elders – were condemned to the stake. At the time, the south of France (the Languedoc) was not yet under the political control of Northern France. In the Languedoc, Catharism, endorsed by the local nobility, became a popular alternative to the Catholic Church. The likes of the Count of Toulouse – one of the most important rulers of Southern France – supported Catharism.

Cathar Beginnings

The first Cathar Synod was held between 1167 and 1176 at St. Felix-de-Caraman, near Toulouse. The event, attended by many local notables, was presided over by the Bogomil papa Nicetas of the Balkan dualist church (see ‘The Bogomils: Europe’s Forgotten Gnostics’ by Paul Tice, New Dawn No. 106, January-February 2008), assisted by the Cathar bishop of (Northern) France and a leader of the Cathars of Lombardy.

The Synod marked the start of the real struggle between the Catholic Church and Catharism, as the Church now had an organised body to fight. Of course, it meant ‘the enemy’ now had a name, and could thus be more easily fought.

As early as 1178, Louis VII of France asked for a forceful intervention to stamp out the New Church. In 1208, Pope Innocent III repeatedly tried to use diplomacy to stop the spread of Catharism, but in that year his papal legate Pierre de Castelnau was murdered (allegedly by an agent serving the Count of Toulouse). The event pushed him from diplomacy into military action. Some now consider the death of de Castelnau a false flag operation, engineered so that the crusade would be declared.

Whichever scenario is true, the end remains the same: an estimated 200,000 to one million people died during the twenty year campaign, which began in earnest in Béziers in July 1209. Papal troops marched to Béziers where they ordered that 222 people, suspected of being Cathars, be handed over to them by the town’s citizens. When this was refused, the papal troops decided to attack. One of the crusaders asked their leader, the Papal Legate Arnaud-Amaury, how to distinguish between the 222 heretics and the thousands of faithful Catholics that lived in the city. “Kill them all,” was the abbot’s alleged reply. “God will recognise his own!” The number of dead that day was between 7,000 and 20,000, the latter figure being the one quoted when Arnaud-Amaury reported back to the Pope.

With such carnage, the other towns (e.g. Narbonne and Carcassonne) offered no resistance and soon the Southern counts had lost their territories and powers to the King of France and his allies. For these Northern lords, attaining the lands of the Languedoc had always been paramount; their mission had been accomplished.

Though the crusade was over, only the powerbrokers who supported the spread of Catharism had been removed from power, their lands confiscated. What about the people? It is a known fact that the more one hunts down a group, the more convinced it becomes in its ways. Hence, at the end of the Albigensian Crusade, Catharism wasn’t by any means eradicated.

For this purpose, the Inquisition was established in Toulouse in 1229 to guarantee that any future resurgence of this ‘heresy’ was nipped in the bud – literally – but also that a new phase of the campaign could commence: individual manhunts to track down Parfaits (the Cathars elders) who were still hiding and preaching within the general population.

From 1233 onwards, hunting down Catharism was no longer done via wide-sweeping crusades, but on an individual basis. This meant any Cathars caught were ferociously interrogated about the secret network they were part of, their hideouts, their clandestine financiers and supporters, etc.

Faced with the incredible pains subjected to their bodies, and the Cathar oath not to lie, the Inquisition learned important secrets about the underground network. Despite this, René Weis, author of The Yellow Cross, states: “The Cathar movement in the late-thirteenth-century Sabartès was an underground organisation, and the Inquisition of Geoffroy d’Ablis never penetrated to its core in spite of the fact that it executed most of their leaders.”

Many Cathar elders realised the lethal dangers they faced and began to take refuge in the fortresses at Fenouillèdes and Montségur, while others were able to incite uprisings, which forced the Inquisition out of Albi, Narbonne and Toulouse. Count Raymond-Roger de Trencavel even led a military campaign in 1240, but was defeated at Carcassonne, surrendered and was exiled to Aragon.

The Church felt victory was near and only those Cathars hiding in the castles remained to be eradicated. A siege began of the castle of Montségur, where 300 soldiers and 200 Parfaits stood off an army of 10,000. Among the Cathars inside Montségur were the Cathar bishop of Toulouse and the Cathar bishop of the Razès, Raymond Aguilher, leading members of the ‘heresy’.

After a ten month siege, in March 1244, the castle surrendered. Though their life would be spared if they recanted, the Cathars preferred to be burnt, rather than reject their faith – a true sign of their conviction, which is one of the key reasons why Catharism today has such a wide appeal with the local people of Southern France.

The fall of a small, isolated but very idyllic fort, that of Quéribus, in August 1255, is often seen as the final demise of Catharism, but that is not true. In fact, in the following decades, there was something of a Cathar revival. The much hunted Cathar Parfait Pierre Authié even consoled the Count of Foix, Roger-Bernard III, in March 1302 in the hall of Tarascon castle, even though he was later buried by the Bishop of Carcassonne. It shows how many local lords still remained loyal to the Cathar cause.

The underground survival of Catharism has become symbolised by the events that occurred in and to the small village of Montaillou, near Montségur, as it was the subject of Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s pioneering book of the same name. From 1294 to 1324, the daily routines of Montaillou’s 250 inhabitants are known, as they survived in the records of Jacques Fournier, later to be Pope Benedict XII. It was Fournier, then the local Catholic bishop, who unleashed the Inquisition at Pamiers against the villagers, even resulting in the arrest of the entire village in 1308. One should, perhaps, be happy they weren’t all killed…

Fournier also captured the last Cathar Parfait to be burnt at the stake: Guillaume Bélibaste, in 1321. Bélibaste’s bailiwick was the area between Rennes-le-Château – known for the mysterious 19th century priest Bérenger Saunière, who is at the core of the mystery of the so-called Priory of Sion and Dan Brown’s bestselling The Da Vinci Code – and the coastal city of Perpignan.

Bélibaste was the son of a rich farmer from Cubières. He became a shepherd and a Parfait, the pupil of the Parfaits Pierre and Jacques Authié, whom had stayed with Bélibaste’s family in Cubières. As the Inquisition’s stranglehold tightened, Bélibaste settled across the border, in Catalonia, where the political regime did not persecute Cathars, and he was able to make baskets and carding combs, as well as become the mentor to a local Cathar community. He nevertheless decided to return to his homeland, but was caught, tried, and burnt at Villerouge-Termenès.

Bélibaste’s death signalled the end of the official Occitan Cathar Church, which blossomed in the 11th century, organised in 1167, and perished in 1321. But though officially defeated in France, elsewhere, e.g. in Bosnia, Catharism continued to exist into the 15th century, when its adherents converted to Islam. Some, however, argue that Catharism in France may have disappeared as an organised Church in 1321, but that as a religion… it remains alive until today.

Though it was the Inquisition – the accusers – that wrote down the life of Authié and Bélibaste, there is general consensus the insights the accounts provide into their lives and beliefs are credible. Indeed, what precisely the Cathars believed, remains somewhat of an enigma. Some have even used it as a blank canvas, to paint their own thoughts or convictions on. Hence, a lot of myths and falsehoods now exist about Catharism.

The Cathar Revival

At the core of the Cathar faith was the rejection of the material world, which was seen as a trap imprisoning the soul. All things material were seen as evil and to be opposed and rejected. Hence, they built no churches, were largely vegetarian and shared both common possessions and ate common meals. Though it is true that their doctrine had room for Jesus and the Bible, especially the Gospel of John, and that they proclaimed Christ had no real body (if he was the Son of God, how could he have a body of flesh, which was evil?) and hence also died no real death, all of these accommodations should be seen as educational tools so that they could explain to those that had been raised as Christians where both teachings differed.

But in the end, their doctrine was appealing not so much for its core beliefs, but because the Catholic clergy were corrupt and as materialistic as one could be.

Today, Catharism is largely seen as a dualist religion, like most Gnostic and oriental teachings. The man largely responsible for identifying Catharism as such was Déodat Roche (1877-1978), often referred to both as ‘the Cathar Bishop’, if not ‘the Cathar Pope’. However, outside of France, his name is relatively unknown, as is that of his friend and Professor of Sociology René Nelli of the University of Toulouse (and often referred to as ‘the vicar of Catharism’), who lectured on the subject all over France.

Their fame has largely been eclipsed by the likes of Otto Rahn and Antonin Gadal, who saw the caves of the valley south of Foix as secret initiation centres for the Cathars – a theory that is now often widely accepted, but which has very little academic support.

Gadal continued the work started by the local historian Adolphe Garrigou. From the 1930s onwards, circles were formed around Gadal and the already mentioned Roche and Nelli. Together, they formed “La Société du souvenir de Montségur et du Graal,” to promote the forgotten history of Catharism – but specifically tying it to the Holy Grail – and the promotion of Montségur, and the region as a whole. It is here that what is now known as ‘neo-Catharism’ was born, and it has little to do with the original belief.

A second circle of Cathar enthusiasts had the countess Pujol-Murat as a key figure; she was one of Otto Rahn’s patrons. Rahn was a young German academic, whose books greatly advanced interest in Montségur and Catharism, both in the 1930s and now (see my article ‘The Strange Life of Otto Rahn: Author, Poet, Grail Seeker, SS Officer’, in New Dawn No. 109, July-August 2008). The countess claimed to be a descendent of Esclarmonde de Foix, who was seen (though historically inaccurately so) as one of the most esteemed Cathar Parfaits of the early 13th century and in some accounts held to be responsible for the rise of Montségur as the ‘Vatican’ of Catharism. It should be pointed out that these hilltop castles (like Montségur) were never ‘Cathar cathedrals’, as some would have it, but merely refuges for the Parfaits escaping the Inquisition.

The Countess hoped to discover the lost treasure of the Cathars – and the Templars – which she believed was the Grail itself, supposedly hidden at Montségur by Esclarmonde, just before she threw herself off the mountain to escape from the papal troops. Some therefore believed the Grail was hidden there, whereas others felt the Grail had been secreted out of Montségur, days before its fall. It is said four Cathars descended down the steep slopes, carrying with them a ‘treasure’. Though the story of this escape is true, whether they carried anything is a matter of debate. Furthermore, as the descent was steep and arduous, whatever they carried must have been small.

Amidst the wild speculation as to what they might have secured, some believe it was a holy book, containing the wisdom of the Cathar religion. It is indeed unlikely the Cathars secured a physical treasure, if only because it would have been too heavy, and in their eyes, unimportant: Catharism saw everything on this plane of existence as evil and despicable; money and wealth were chief amongst Earth’s – and Satan’s – vices.

Authors such as Walter Birks and R.A. Gilbert, as well as Elizabeth van Buren, have suggested the Cathars guarded a manuscript, knowledge – a spiritual treasure. This manuscript is often said to be the ‘Book of Love’ and is linked with the Gospel of John, and is claimed to contain “sublime teachings, marvellous revelations, the most secret words confided by our Lord Jesus Christ to the beloved disciple [John the Evangelist]. Their power would be such that all hatred, all anger, all jealousy would vanish from the hearts of men. The Divine Love, like a new flood, would submerge all souls and never again would blood be shed on this earth.”

It is known that books were very important to the Cathars, and some, such as “Stella,” by the Cathars of Desenzano, talk about the wars between God and Lucifer – underlining their dualist doctrine. But as Saint Dominic, founder of the Inquisition, is often depicted committing these books to the fire, it should come as little surprise that few have survived his ‘intervention’.

However beautiful Montségur is, the ‘real’ Cathar heartland are somewhat gentler slopes where now desolate villages once thrived. One such village, Arques, near Rennes-le-Château, is where the hunted Parfait Pierre Authié preached and found refuge, and the modern Cathar researcher Déodat Roche was born and lived. Today there is a museum dedicated to him.

Deodat Roche

Though Roche was part of the modern Cathar Revival, he never focused too much on the promotion of Montségur or the ‘initiation caves’, which for him were distractions – tourist attractions. Roche focused on the true Cathar belief.  But the question needs to be asked whether he discovered this, or whether he knew so all along.

For those who have studied and known Roche, there are hints that somehow Roche’s interest in Catharism was very fundamental – that he may have been one himself. He is known to have made solitary early morning walks to a hill just outside of Arques, where he was taken as a young child by his father. The site holds a statue of the Virgin Mary, and though this might appear typically Christian, the Cathars of the 14th century are known to have made similar pilgrimages to the nearby basilica of Notre-Dame-de-Marceille, which held a Black Madonna. As in Notre-Dame-de-Marceille, did the Virgin Mary in Arques have a secondary – dualist – meaning for Cathars – and Roche?

As mentioned, his home town of Arques also had a strong connection with Authié. Roche once unearthed an image of Pierre Authié and both he and others who saw this noted how remarkably similar the two men looked. Roche was not only mayor of Arques; he had also held important positions within the French judicial system. He was also a very private individual. He never spoke about whether or not he felt that he was indeed the possible reincarnation of Authié. Roche must have understood that what he was doing was uncovering what had been buried with Authié. If he did feel that he was the incarnation of Authié, then it was clear that upon this Parfait’s death, he had after all not entered Heaven.

So, what was Catharism? A dualist religion is primarily seen as a religion that believes in two competing forces, good versus evil, but it is much more than that. An insight into the Cathar cosmography comes from Authié himself. He preached that the Devil had sneaked into Paradise, after waiting 1,000 years at it doors. Once inside, he seduced the spirits, who all fell from a hole in Paradise for nine days and nine nights. After this Fall, they ended up on Earth. When Heaven had largely become depleted, God immediately plugged the hole. But the souls on Earth soon were saddened by their loss and the Devil offered them as comfort such overcoats that would make them forget the bliss of Heaven: the human body, which began a series of incarnations. It thus became Mankind’s mission to ascend back to Heaven, i.e. break the cycle of incarnations. By accepting this cosmography and performing the Consolamentum, one’s next death would end the soul’s odyssey and return it to Heaven.

The two most important Cathar rituals were the Consolamentum and the Endura.

In conclusion, neo-Catharism had little to do with Catharism as such. The notion of Jesus as a man of flesh and blood was rejected by the Cathars, yet neo-Cathars underline how the Cathars believed that Mary Magdalene was the wife of Christ. Yuri Stoyanov has indeed confirmed that the Cathars claimed as such and that this belief had no counterpart in Bogomil doctrines, meaning that the Cathars were unique amongst the dualists to have this belief. Their religion was not at all based on the knowledge that Jesus and Mary Magdalene created a dynasty but that, instead, Cathars in Southern France, where Mary Magdalene was a popular saint, used her in their cosmography, to illustrate the feminine aspect of the divine duality.

Cathars underlined the 1,000 years the Devil had to wait at the gates of Paradise before he entered it. Cathars saw it as their mission to have the soul repent for the sin of being seduced by the Devil, and once accomplished, it would return to Heaven. The Church, however, saw it differently, using especially Revelation 20:7, where it is said that after 1,000 years, Satan would be released from his prison. Seeing Catharism rose approximately one millennium after the death of Christ, chronicler Ralph the Bard and St Hildegard of Bingen – the latter who stated she had a vision in which she saw Satan released from his chains – said Catharism was in fact the return of Satan, there to destroy the Church. It was the very reason why it had to be destroyed; for many Christians, conquering Catharism meant slaying Satan. Thus, not only Catharism, but the Cathar Crusade itself, had an innate dualism to it too.

© Copyright 2008 by New Dawn Magazine & the respective author. This article first appeared in New Dawn 110. For further information visit http://www.newdawnmagazine.com