Theos-Talk Archives (December 2008 Message tt00350)

ST. PAUL, THE REAL FOUNDER OF PRESENT CHRISTIANITY

We may repeat with the author of Phallicism:

We are all for construction??even for Christian, although of course 
philosophical construction. We have nothing to do with reality, in 
man's limited, mechanical, scientific sense, or with realism. We have 
undertaken to show that mysticism is the very life and soul of 
religion,* . . . that the

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* But we can never agree with the author "that rites and ritual and 
formal worship and prayers are of the absolute necessity of things," 
for the external can develop and grow and receive worship only at the 
expense of, and to the detriment of, the internal, the only real and 
true.
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Bible is only misread and misrepresented when rejected as advancing 
supposed fabulous and contradictory things; that Moses did not make 
mistakes, but spoke to the "children of men" in the only way in which 
children in their nonage can be addressed; that the world is, indeed, 
a very different place from that which it is assumed to be; that what 
is derided as superstition is the only true and the only scientific 
knowledge, and moreover that modern knowledge and modern science are 
to a great extent not only superstition, but superstition of a very 
destructive and deadly kind.*

All this is perfectly true and correct. But it is also true that the 
New Testament, the Acts and the Epistles??however much the historical 
figure of Jesus may be true??all are symbolical and allegorical 
sayings, and that "it was not Jesus but Paul who was the real founder 
of Christianity";? but it was not the official Church Christianity, 
at any rate. "The disciples were called Christians first in Antioch," 
the Acts of the Apostles tell us,? and they were not so called 
before, nor for a long time after, but simply Nazarenes.
This view is found in more than one writer of the present and the 
past centuries. But, hitherto, it has always been laid aside as an 
unproven hypothesis, a blasphemous assumption; though, as the author 
of "Paul, the Founder of Christianity"§ truly says:

Such men as Irenaeus, Epiphanius, and Eusebius have transmitted to 
posterity a reputation for untruth and dishonest practices; and the 
heart sickens at the story of the crimes of that period.

The more so, since the whole Christian scheme rests upon their 
sayings. But we find now another corroboration, and this time on the 
perfect reading of biblical glyphs. In The Source of Measures we find 
the following:

It must be borne in mind that our present Christianity is Pauline, 
not Jesus. Jesus, in his life, was a Jew, conforming to the law; even 
more, He

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* Hargrave Jennings, Phallicism, Celestial and Terrestrial, etc., pp. 
37, 38. London, George Redway, 1884.
? See Isis Unveiled, Vol. II, p. 574.
? Acts xi, 26.
§ Article by Dr. A. Wilder, in The Evolution (a New York Journal), 
Sept., 1877.
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says: "The scribes and pharisees sit in Moses' seat; whatsoever 
therefore they command you to do, that observe and do." And again: "I 
did not come to destroy, but to fulfil the law." Therefore, He was 
under the law to the day of his death, and could not, while in life, 
abrogate one jot or tittle of it. He was circumcised and commanded 
circumcision. But Paul said of circumcision that it availed nothing, 
and he (Paul) abrogated the law. Saul and Paul??that is, Saul, under 
the law, and Paul, freed from the obligations of the law??were in one 
man, but parallelisms in the flesh, of Jesus the man under the law as 
observing it, who thus died in Chrestos and arose, freed from its 
obligations, in the spirit world as Christos, or the triumphant 
Christ. It was the Christ who was freed, but Christ was in the 
spirit. Saul in the flesh was the function of, and parallel of, 
Chrestos. Paul in the flesh was the function of and parallel of Jesus 
become Christ in the spirit, as an earthly reality to answer to and 
act for the apotheosis; and so, armed with all authority in the flesh 
to abrogate the human law.*

The real reason why Paul is shown as "abrogating the law" can be 
found only in India, where to this day the most ancient customs and 
privileges are preserved in all their purity, notwithstanding the 
abuse levelled at the same. There is only one class of persons who 
can disregard the law of Brâhmanical institutions, caste included, 
with impunity, and that is the perfect "Svâmis," the Yogis??who have 
reached, or are supposed to have reached, the first step towards the 
Jîvanmukta state??or the full Initiates. And Paul was undeniably an 
Initiate. We will quote a passage or two from Isis Unveiled, for we 
can say now nothing better than what was said then:

Take Paul, read the little of original that is left of him in the 
writings attributed to this brave, honest, sincere man, and see 
whether anyone can find a word therein to show that Paul meant by the 
word Christ anything more than the abstract ideal of the personal 
divinity indwelling in man. For Paul, Christ is not a person, but an 
embodied idea. "If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation,"? he 
is reborn, as after initiation, for the Lord is spirit??the spirit of 
man. Paul was the only one of the apostles who had understood the 
secret ideas underlying the teachings of Jesus, although he had never 
met him. ?

But Paul himself was not infallible or perfect.

. . . bent upon inaugurating a new and broad reform, one embracing

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* The Source of Measures, p. 262.
? [2 Corinth, v, 17.]
? Isis Unveiled, Vol. II, p. 574.
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the whole of humanity, he sincerely set his own doctrines far above 
the wisdom of the ages, above the ancient Mysteries and final 
revelation to the Epoptae.*
Another proof that Paul belonged to the circle of the "Initiates" 
lies in the following fact. The apostle had his head shorn at 
Cenchreae (where Lucius Apuleius was initiated) because "he had a 
vow." The Nazars??or set apart??as we see in the Jewish Scriptures, 
had to cut their hair which they wore long, and which "no razor 
touched" at any other time, and sacrifice it on the altar of 
initiation. And the Nazars were a class of Chaldaean Theurgists [or 
Initiates].?

It is shown in Isis Unveiled that Jesus belonged to this class.

Paul declares that: "According to the grace of God which is given 
unto me, as a wise master-builder, I have laid the foundation." (I 
Corinth. iii, 10.)
The expression, master-builder, used only once in the whole Bible, 
and by Paul, may be considered as a whole revelation. In the 
Mysteries, the third part of the sacred rites was called epopteia, or 
revelation, reception into the secrets. In substance it means [the 
highest stage of clairvoyance??the divine] . . . but the real 
significance of the word is "overseeing," from ?? "I see myself." [In 
Sanskrit the root ap had the same meaning originally, though now it 
is understood as meaning "to obtain."]?
The word epopteia is a compound one, from ?? "upon," and ??"to look" 
or be an overseer, an inspector??also used for a master-builder. The 
title of master-mason, in Freemasonry, is derived from this, in the 
sense used in the Mysteries. Therefore, when Paul entitles himself a 
"master-builder," he is using a word pre-eminently kabalistic, 
theurgic, and masonic, and one which no other apostle uses. He thus 
declares himself an adept, having the right to initiate others.
If we search in this direction, with those sure guides, the Grecian 
Mysteries and the Kabalah, before us, it will be easy to find the 
secret reason why Paul was so persecuted and hated by Peter, John, 
and James. The author of the Revelation was a Jewish Kabalist pur 
sang, with all the hatred inherited by him from his forefathers 
toward the [Pagan]

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* Ibid.
? Op. cit., Vol. II, p. 90.
? In its most extensive meaning, the Sanskrit word has the same 
literal sense as the Greek term; both imply "revelation," by no human 
agent, but through the "receiving of the sacred drink." In India the 
initiated received the "Soma," sacred drink, which helped to liberate 
his soul from the body; and in the Eleusinian Mysteries it was the 
sacred drink offered at the Epopteia. The Grecian Mysteries are 
wholly derived from the Brahmanical Vedic rites, and the latter from 
the Ante-Vaidic religious Mysteries?? primitive Buddhist Philosophy.
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Mysteries.* His jealousy during the life of Jesus extended even to 
Peter; and it is but after the death of their common master that we 
see the two apostles??the former of whom wore the Mitre and the 
Petalon of the Jewish Rabbis??preach so zealously the rite of 
circumcision. In the eyes of Peter, Paul, who had humiliated him, and 
whom he felt so much his superior in "Greek learning" and philosophy, 
must have naturally appeared as a magician, a man polluted with the 
"Gnôsis," with the "wisdom" of the Greek Mysteries??hence, perhaps, 
"Simon the Magician" [as a comparison, not a nickname].?

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* It is needless to state that the Gospel according to John was not 
written by John but by a Platonist or a Gnostic belonging to the Neo-
Platonic school.
? Op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 90-91. The fact that Peter persecuted the 
"Apostle to the Gentiles," under that name, does not necessarily 
imply that there was no Simon Magus individually distinct from Paul. 
It may have become a generic name of abuse. Theodoret and Chrysostom, 
the earliest and most prolific commentators on the Gnosticism of 
those days, seem actually to make of Simon a rival of Paul, and to 
state that between them passed frequent messages. The former, as a 
diligent propagandist of what Paul terms the "antithesis of the 
Gnosis" (I Tim. vi, 20), must have been a sore thorn in the side of 
the apostle. There are sufficient proofs of the actual existence of 
Simon Magus.
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