The restored New Testament, the Hellenic fragments, freed from the pseudo-Jewish interpolations, harmonized, and done into English verse and prose with introductory analyses, and commentaries, giving interpretation according to ancient philosophy and psychology and new literal translation of the Synoptic Gospels, with introduction and commentaries

Front matter

^^Wb^U^mJ^- c^L^fec, a^ut(/V

Central Figure aftet a Pompeian Wall-Painting of Dionysos

The Enthroned Sun-God and His Twelve Powers

Table Of Contents

PAGE

Preface vii

Part First. The Genuine Portions of the New Testament, with Introductory Analyses, and Commentaries.

Preface

In the work here presented the portions of the New Testament which the author holds to be genuine are construed in verse, and are interpreted along the lines of ancient philosophy and psychology. The work is, therefore, not concerned with theological views or any of the creeds, dogmas and doctrines of the many Christian sects. For the author, while cherishing the greatest respect for all that is pure and noble in the Christian religion and all other religions, is not, and never has been, a Christian. In interpreting the New Testament from a non-sectarian, and therefore possibly non-Christian, point of view, he has tried to avoid offending needlessly those who cling to one or another form of Christian faith ; but this inter-

I pretation differs radically from that offered by the so-called orthodox commentators, and in the attempt to restore the admittedly corrupt text of the New Testament, more especially that of the Gospels, the

• author has found it necessary to undermine the foundation upon which the structure of dogmatic theology has been reared. Not in a controversial spirit, and with no iconoclastic zeal, but simply with the purpose of purifying the text of the Gospels and restoring it approximately to its primitive form, in order to bring out more clearly the beauty and sublimity of the allegory which vitalizes it, he had to undertake the uncongenial task of showing, by dissecting the text of the Gospels, that the founders of the Christian Church, whoever they were, deliberately falsified thj^textjthrqugjiout, and thereby committed thejiarkest crime known in the history of literature. Freed from the forgeries foisted in the text by these priestly criminals, the allegory of the Crucified is Hellenic in form, and viii PREFACE

embodies in its simple majesty the profoundest truths of archaic religion; and it is solely for the elucidation of its spiritual meaning that the present commentary was written.

The phrase "New Testament" is retained in the title because it is the commonly accepted name of the collection of writings so designated; but the claim that the writings set forth a new testament, covenant or dispensation, as distinguished from the so-called Mosaic dispensation, is rejected by the author as a theological fiction. The theory upon which this attempted restoration of the allegory is based is that all those portions of the New Testament which may be regarded as genuine are, with the exception of a few fragments of the Epistles, prose plagiaries from ancient Greek sacred poems, the allegorical dramas forming part of the ritual in the Mysteries, and that all the passages by which the Iesous-mythos is connected with the Old Testament, staged in Judaea, and given a semblance of historicity, are the work of forgers, who employed stolen notes of the Greek Mystery-ritual in fabricating a "sacred" scripture upon which to found a new religion. Therefore the author rejects as spurious many passages of the Gospels, all of the Acts, and nearly everything in the Epistles. There is very little that is of any value in the Epistles except a few doctrines stolen from the writings of Philon Judaios, the great Jewish philosopher; and the Acts is merely a fantastic work of fiction. The Apocalypse is treated as a prose version of a Greek Mystery-poem; but the version seems to have been made with honest motives by a writer conversant with the esoteric meaning of the original, and who presumably gave it a superficially Jewish coloring to preserve it from being destroyed by the fanatics of the new faith, who were endeavoring to suppress everything in ancient literature which betrayed, or tended to prove, the fact that the new religion they had invented and instituted was founded on a fabricated "history," and was merely a travesty of

PREFACE ix

the older religions. In this Restored New Testament the Apocalypse and the story of Iesous as found in the Synoptic Gospels are translated into English verse, the metrical form being more suitable than prose for this attempted restoration of the lost original dramatic poems. A prose version of each is given, however, as a basis for the commentary. The prose translation of the Apocalypse is strictly literal; that of the composite Gospel formed from the Synoptics, although a free rendering, follows the Greek text faithfully except in some passages which by their pitiable poverty of expression called for expansion, and in others which have been so falsified by the ecclesiastical forgers that the meaning of the original is now but a matter for conjecture. In the second part of the work a literal translation is given of the full text of the Synoptics, with comments on the spurious passages only. In restoring the allegory, a careful literary analysis of the text of the Synoptic Gospels has been made, tracing the peculiar devices and methods of the forgers and interpolators, with the purpose of undoing their work as far as possible; and the mythico-astronomical system of the ancient solar cult, and the mystical sense of the allegory, have been followed in replacing the incidents of the mythos in their correct sequence.

As this work aims to present its subject-matter in popular style, unburdened by any material not strictly needed in the interpretation of the Iesous-allegory as found in the Gospels and the Apocalypse, no attempt is made to sustain the author's conclusions b}^ evidence and arguments drawn from comparative religions, from the incautious admissions made by early Christian writers, or from the scholarly works of modern Biblical critics who have demonstrated that the Gospels are a literary patchwork, discordant, and not to be regarded by any disciplined mind as authentic history. Important and interesting as these subjects are, they could not be dealt with adequately in the present work without expanding it to too great x PREFACE

bulk, and thereby distracting attention from the central theme which it seeks to elucidate, the Iesous-mythos as an allegory of initiation — the mystical story of a Man who by his own efforts became a God.

James Morgan Pryse.

New York City, October i, 1914.

TO THE ETERNAL SELF

A Paraphrase of the "Lord's Prayer"

Thou Self Divine, whose heavenly throne Outshines the sun in visioned splendor,

O hear me reverently intone

Thy Name with accent low and tender ;

And let that Name, thus breathed, set free

The Power that wafts my soul to thee.

Let gleaming solar forces weave

My royal robe of light supernal; Triumphant, may I then receive

The promised crown of life eternal, And thus within thy realm regain My right with thee fore'er to reign.

While yet my soul must meekly wear

Its mortal vesture, dark and lowly, Unwearied may I strive with care

To do on earth thy Will most holy, That here below thy boundless love Undimmed may shine from heaven above.

O give me now the power sublime

To read fair Wisdom's wondrous pages :

Unhindered then by space and time

My soul would haste, through fleeting ages,

With thee among the Gods to dine

On Wisdom's hallowed bread and wine.

Part First The Genuine Portions Of The New Testament

WITH INTRODUCTORY ANALYSES,

AND COMMENTARIES

As but few readers may be expected to have even a superficial acquaintance with ancient philosophy and various other associated subjects which must be understood, to some extent, before the allegorical portions of the Nezv Testament can be studied intelligently and to advantage, a brief sketch will here be given of the topics that are pertinent to this interpretation.

Every thoughtful student of the literature of the ancient religions, including that of early Christianity, can not but be impressed by the fact that in each and all of them may be found very clear intimations of a secret traditional lore, an arcane science, handed down from times immemorial. This secret body of knowledge will in this work be termed the Gnosis ; the word is here used, however, in a general sense, to denote the higher knowledge, and without any special reference to, or endorsement of, the Christian Gnosticism of the early centuries. Each of the great nations of antiquity had an esoteric as well as an exoteric religion : the Gnosis was reserved for temple-initiates ; while the popular religion was made up of moral precepts, myths, allegories and ceremonial observances, which reflected, more or less faithfully, the mystic tenets. "All the eastern nations," says Origenes, "the people of India, the Persians, the Syrians, conceal sacred mysteries under their religious myths; the sages and philosophers of all religions penetrate the true meaning, while the ignorant see only the exterior symbol — the bark that covers it." But this was equally true of all the cultured nations of antiquity; and the noblest of the philosophers and sages, with but few exceptions, gained their profounder knowledge through regular initiation at the schools of the Mysteries, which in ancient times were the true centres of learning. In Greece the Mysteries were established in various forms, and were under the direction of the state.

The most notable were the Eleusinia, which were of great antiquity, and continued until the invasion of Alaric the Goth, in the year 396 of the Christian era. During the first century the Mysteries were the recognized religion of Greece, and were celebrated in every city of that country and in the Greek colonies in Asia Minor. The principal centre of the Greater Eleusinia was the superb temple at Eleusis, near Athens ; while the Lesser Eleusinia, at which candidates participated in the purificatory rites and were given elementary instruction, preparatory to initiation into the Greater Mysteries, had their seat at Agra, on the river Ilissos. The Lesser Mysteries were celebrated in February, and the Greater in September, annually. The celebration of the Greater Eleusinia, which lasted nine days, began in public as a pageant and festival in honor of Demeter and Persephone ; but the telestic rites were celebrated in the solemn secrecy of the temple, to which none but initiates were admitted. Under Peisistratos the Festival of Demeter and Persephone was modified by additions from the Dionysiac and Asklepiadic Mysteries. The public ceremonies, however, were evidently designed merely for the benefit of the unconsecrated multitude, and presumably had no real connection with the proceedings which took place within the temple. Every initiate was bound by an oath of inviolable secrecy; hence nothing, of any importance is known concerning the initiatory ceremonies. There is good reason for believing, however, that in the Eleusinian ritual the zodiacal symbolism was employed, and that some of the instruction was given in the form of dramatic representations. In fact, the drama seems to have originated in the Mysteries. The symbolism of the zodiac was really a cryptic language in which certain facts concerning the inner nature of man were expressed; and it was common to the initiates of all ancient religions. There was no concealment of the fact that the telestic rites were designed for moral purification, the development of the spiritual faculties, and the attainment of conscious immortality ; nor was there any secrecy about the general principles of the perfective philosophy, which were openly inculcated. Thus Plato, arguing always for the immortality of the soul and human perfectibility, expatiates upon moral subjects with the greatest clearness; but whenever he has for his subject the inner constitution of man he is purposely vague, and in treating of the subjective worlds and the after-death states of the soul, he invariably employs the medium of allegory. Many passages in his writings, as in the Timaios, are quite unintelligible to any one who does not possess the key to the zodiacal language; and this is also true of most of the sacred writings of antiquity.

The point where the arcane system sharply diverges from all the conventional schools of thought is in the means of acquiring knowledge. To make this clear, Plato's analysis of the four faculties of the soul, with their four corresponding degrees of knowledge, may be taken. (Rep. vi. 511.) Tabulated, it is as follows :

THE VISIBLE, SENSUOUS WORLD

1. Et/c curia, perception of images,] Sofa, opinion,

2. litems, faith, psychic groping, J illusory knowledge.

THE INTELLIGIBLE, SUPRASENSUOUS WORLD

3. AiaVota, philosophic reason, j yvaxris, imonjfir), wisdom,

4. Nolens, direct cognition, true knowledge.

The first of these degrees covers the whole field of the inductive physical sciences, which are concerned with investigating the phenomena of external nature ; the second degree embraces exoteric religion and all phases of blind belief; and these two degrees, pertaining to the phrenic or lower mind, comprise all the knowledge available to those whose consciousness does not transcend the illusions of the material world. The third degree relates to speculative philosophy, which seeks to arrive at first principles by the effort of pure reason; the fourth degree is the direct apprehension of truth by the lucid mind independently of any reasoning process ; and these two degrees, pertaining to the noetic or higher mind, represent the field of knowledge open to those whose consciousness rises to the world of spiritual reality. Elsewhere Plato speaks of the mantic state, which he describes as a kind of madness produced "by a divine release from the ordinary ways of men."

The exoteric scientist and religionist rely on the physical senses, the psychic emotions, and the intellectual faculties as these are in the present stage of human evolution; and while the scientist somewhat enlarges the scope of the senses by employing the telescope, the microscope, and other mechanical devices, the religionist puts his trust in the mutilated records of suppositional revelations received from the remote past. But the esotericist, refusing to be confined within the narrow limits of the senses and the mental faculties, and recognizing that the gnostic powers of the soul are hopelessly hampered and obscured by its imperfect instrument, the physical body, devotes himself to what may be termed intensive selfe volution, the conquest and utilization of all the forces and faculties that lie latent in that fontal essence- within himself which is the primary source of all the elements and powers of his being, of all that he is, has been, and will be. By gaining conscious control of the hidden potencies which are the proximate causes of his individual evolution, he seeks to traverse in a comparatively brief period of time the path leading to spiritual illumination and liberation from terrestrial bondage, rushing forward, as it were, toward that goal which the human race as a whole, advancing at an almost imperceptible rate of progress, will reach only after aeons of time. His effort is not so much to knozv as to become; and herein lies the tremendous import of the Delphic inscription, "Know Thyself," which is the key-note of esotericism. For the esotericist understands that true self-knowledge can be attained only through selfdevelopment in the highest possible sense of the term, a development which begins with introspection and the awakening of creative and regenerative forces which now slumber in man's inner protoplasmic nature, like the vivifk potency in the ovum, and which when roused into activity transform him ultimately into a divine being bodied in a deathless ethereal form of ineffable beauty. This process of transcendental self -conquest, the giving birth to oneself as a spiritual being, evolving from the concealed essence of one's own embryonic nature a self-luminous immortal body, is the sole subject-matter of the Apocalypse, as it is also the great theme of the Iesous-mythos.

In the esoteric philosophy — the infelicitous word "esoteric" being used in this work merely because the English language appears to afford no happier one — the absolute Deity is considered to be beyond the spheres of existence and ulterior to Being itself. The world of true Being is that of the Logos, or Nous, the realm of divine ideas, or archetypes, which are the eternal patterns, so to say, of all things in the manifested universe. By a paradox which defies the reasoning faculty, but which is readily resolved intuitively, the

x God is said to be apart from, and independent of, the universe, and yet to permeate every atom of it. The God is the abstract Unit, which is the origin of all number, but which never loses its unitvalue, and can not be divided into fractions ; wmile the Logos is the manifested or collective Unit, a deific Individuality, the collectivity of a countless host of Logoi, who are differentiated into seven hierarchies, constituting in the aggregate the Second Logos, the

^ uttered Thought, or Word.

The mediate principle by which the Logos manifests in and from the God is termed in the prologue to the Fourth Gospel the Archeus (dovv) '■> it * s the first element or substratum of substantive objectivity, that which becomes by differentiation first the subtile and then the gross material elements of the manifested worlds. If this primary substance is related back to the God, and considered as being prior to the Logos, the result is the refined dualism that mars some of the old systems of philosophy. But in the prologue the Logos is really coeval with the Archeus: the Logos is (subsists) in the Archeus, and the latter becomes, in the Logos, the principle of Life, which irradiates as Light. This Light of the Logos is identical with the Pneuma, the Breath or Holy Spirit, and esoterically it is the pristine force which underlies matter in every stage, and is the producer of all the phenomena of existence. It is the one force from which differentiate all the forces in the cosmos. As specialized in the human organism, it is termed, in the A r <?ic Testament, the

1 paraklctos, the "Advocate," and is the regenerative force above referred to.

From the Archetypal w r orld, that of the Logos, emanate successively the Psychic and the_ Material w r orlds ; and to these three may be added a fourth, which is usually included, by ancient writers, in the Psychic, though in reality it is distinct from it. This fourth w 7 orld, which will here be called the Phantasmal — since the word

"hell" connotes misleading and lurid notions — is the region of phantoms, evil spirits, and psychic garbage generally.

All that the universe contains is contained also in man. The origin of man is in the Deity, and his true self or individuality is a Logos, a manifested God. Analogous with the universe or macrocosm, man, the microcosm, has three bodies, which are called in the New Testament the spiritual body (pneumatikon soma), the psychic body (psychikon soma), and thejphysical body (soma, or sarx, "flesh"). In the Upanishads they are termed "causal body" (karana sharira), "subtile body" (sukshma sharira), and "gross body" (sthula sharira). In mystical writings these three, together with the fourth, or perfected vesture of the immortal Self, are given as corresponding to the four occult elements, and also to the earth, moon, sidereal system, and sun, and hence are spoken of as the earthly or carnal body (the "muddy vesture of decay," as Shakespeare terms it), the lunar or water-body, the sidereal or air-body, and the solar or fire-body.

The spiritual (pneumatic) body is, strictly speaking, not a body at all, but only an ideal, archetypal form, ensphered, as it were, by the pneuma or primordial principle which in the duality of manifestation generates all forces and elements : it is therefore called the "causal body," because from its sphere all the other bodies are engendered; and all these lower forms are enveloped by the same circumambient aura (called in the New Testament "the radiance" or "glory," he doxa), which is visible to the seer as an oviform faint film of bluish haze. Semi-latent within this pneumatic ovum is the paraklete, the light of the Logos, which in energizing v becomes what may be described as living, conscious electricity, of incredible voltage and hardly comparable to the form of electricity known to the physicist. This is the "good serpent" of ancient symbology; and, taken with the pneumatic ovum, it was also represented in the familiar symbol of the egg and the serpent. It is called in the Sanskrit writings kundalint, the annular or ring- form force, and in the Greek speirema, the serpent-coil. It is this force which, in the telestic work, or cycle of initiation, weaves from the primal substance of the auric ovum, upon the ideal form or archetype it contains, and conforming thereto, the immortal Augoeides, or solar body (heliakon soma), so called because in its visible appearance it is self-luminous like the sun, and has a golden radiance. Its aureola displays a filmy opalescence. This solar body is of atomic, nonmolecular substance.

The psychic, or lunar, body, through which the Nous acts in the psychic world, is molecular in structure, but of far finer substance than the elements composing the gross physical form, to whose organism it closely corresponds, having organs of sight, hearing, and the rest. In appearance it has a silvery lustre, tinged with delicate violet; and its aura is of palest blue, with an interchanging play of all the prismatic colors, rendering it iridescent.

The physical body, in its physiological relation to psychology, will necessarily have to be considered somewhat in detail in elucidating the text; but before entering on this subject, it may be explained that another body is sometimes alluded to in mystical writings. It is called in Sanskrit kdma rupa, the form engendered by lust, and it comes into existence only after the death of the physical body, save in the exceptional case of the extremely evil sorcerer who, though alive physically, has become morally dead. It' is a phantasm shaped 1 from the dregs and effluvia of matter by the image-creating power of the gross animal mind. Of such nature are the daimones and "unclean spirits" of the New Testament, where also the "abominable stench" (bdelugma) seems to be a covert allusion to this malodorous shade. This phantasm has the shadowy semblance of the physical body from which it was derived, and is surrounded by a cloudy aura of brick-red hue. / . It should be observed that in the esoteric cosmogony the theory •of "dead" matter has no place. The universe is a manifestation of life, of consciousness, from the Logos down to the very atoms of the material elements. But in this philosophy a sharp distinction is made between Being and existence: the Logos, the Archetypal world, is that of True Being, changeless and eternal ; while existence is a going outward into the worlds of becoming, of ceaseless change and transformation. The Nous, the immortal man, or mind (for v^ the mind should be regarded as the real man), when incarnated comes under the sway of this law of mutation, entering upon a long cycle of incarnations, passing from one mortal body to another. The metaphysical aspect of this subject need not be discussed here; but it may be said that the fact of reincarnation, so far from being mysterious and difficult of proof, is really very prosaic and simple, so that it has always been treated as exoteric in all archaic religions and philosophies. Positive knowledge of its truth, on a basis of personal experience, is one of the first results obtained by any one who enters upon the initial stages of self -conquest. It is then a fact as apparent to him as are the cognate facts of birth and death. The telestic work has for its object to achieve deliverance from reincarnation, and this deliverance is complete and final only when the deathless solar body is formed, and the perfected man is thereby freed from the necessity of reincarnating in the mortal physical and psychic forms.

The physical body may itself be considered to be an objective microcosm, an epitome of the material world, to every department of which its organs and functions correspond and are in direct relation. Moreover, as the organism through which the soul contacts external nature, its organs correspond to, and are the respective instruments of, the powers and faculties of the soul. Thus the body has four principal life-centres which are, roughly speaking, analogues of the four worlds, and of the four manifested generic powers of the soul; these four somatic divisions are as follows;

i. The head, or brain, is the organ of the Nous, or higher mind.

2. The region of the heart, including all the organs above the diaphragm, is the seat of the lower mind (phren, or thumos), including the psychic nature.

3. The region of the navel is the centre of the passional nature (epithumia) , comprising the emotions, desires and passions.

4. The procreative centre is the seat of the vivifying forces on the lowest plane of existence. This centre is often ignored by ancient writers, as, for instance, Plato, who assigns four faculties to the soul, but classifies only three of the somatic divisions, assigning the Nous, or Logos, to the head, thumos to the cardiac region, and epithumia to the region below the midriff. Others, however, give

GENERAL INTRODUCTION n

the fourfold system, as does Philolaos the Pythagorean, who placed the seat and germ (arc he) of reason in the head, that of the psychic principle in the heart, that of growth and germination in the navel, and that of seed and generation in the sexual parts.

It is unnecessary, in this brief sketch, to go into further details concerning these correspondences, save only in regard to the nervous system and the forces operating through it. There are two nervous structures : the cerebro-spinal, consisting of the brain and the spinal cord; and the sympathetic or ganglionic system. These two structures are virtually distinct yet intimately associated in their ramifications. The sympathetic system consists of a series of distinct nerve-centres, or ganglia — small masses of vascular neurine — extending on each side of the spinal column from the head to the coccyx. Some knowledge of these ganglia and the forces associated with them is indispensable in an examination into the esoteric meaning of the New Testament; and as their occult nature is more fully elucidated in the Upanishads than in any other available ancient works, the teaching therein contained will here be referred to, and their Sanskrit terms employed. The ganglia are called chakras, "disks," and forty-nine of them are counted, of which the seven principal ones are the following: (i) sacral ganglion, muladhara; (2) prostatic, adhishthana; (3) epigastric, manipuraka; (4) cardiac, anahata; (5) pharyngeal, vishuddhi; (6) cavernous, ajtia; and (7) the conarium, sahasrara. Of these only the seventh, the conarium or pineal body, need be considered here with particularity. It is a small conical, dark-gray body situated in the brain immediately behind the extremity of the third ventricle, in a groove between the nates, and above a cavity filled with sabulous matter composed of phosphate and of carbonate of lime. It is supposed by modern anatomists to be the vestige of an atrophied eye, and hence is termed by them "the unpaired eye." Though atrophied physically, it is still the organ of spiritual vision when its higher function is restored by the vivifying force of the speircma, or paraklete, and it is therefore called esoterically "the third eye," the eye of the seer.

When, through the action of man's spiritual will, whether by his conscious effort or unconsciously so far as his phrenic mind is con-

Conarium ...

Sacral

Cavernous

Pharyngeal

Cardiac

Midriff

Epigastric

Prostatic

The Seven Principal Ganglia

■cerned, the latent kmidalini (speircma) , which in the Upanishads is poetically said to lie coiled up like a slumbering serpent, is aroused to activity, it displaces the slow-moving nervous force or neuricity and becomes the agent of the telestic or perfecting w T ork. As it passes from one ganglion to another its voltage is raised, the ganglia being like so many electric cells coupled for intensity ; and moreover in each ganglion, or chakra, it liberates and partakes of the quality peculiar to that centre, and it is then said to "conquer" the chakra. In Sanskrit mystical literature very great stress is laid upon this "conquering of the chakras." The currents of the kundalini, as also the channels they pursue, are called nadis, "pipes" or "channels," and the three principal ones are : ( 1 ) sushumna, which passes from the terminus of the spinal cord to the top of the cranium, at a point termed the brahmarandra, or "door of Brahma"; (2) pingala, which corresponds to the right sympathetic; and (3) Ida, which corresponds to the left sympathetic. The force, as specialized in the ganglionic system, becomes the seven tattvas, which in the Apocalypse are called the seven pneumata, "breaths," since they are differentiations of the Great Breath, the "World-Mother," symbolized by the moon. Concurrent with these seven lunar forces are five solar forces pertaining to the cerebro-spinal system, called the five prana s, "vital airs," or "life-winds," which in the Apocalypse are termed "winds" (anemoi). The tattvas, or subtile elements, with the ganglia (chakras) to which they respectively correspond, are as follows: prithivi, "earth," sacral; apas, "water," prostatic; tejas, "fire," epigastric; vayu, "air," cardiac; akasha, "aether," pharyngeal; avyakta, "undifferentiated," cavernous; and Brahma, "the Evolver" (Logos), conarium. The pranas are the following: vyana, the "distributing life- wind," connected with prithivi; apana, the "down-going life-wind," with apas; samana, the "uniting life-wind," with tejas; prana, the "out-going life-wind," with vayu; and udana, the "up-going life-wind," with akasha. Some writers give apana as corresponding with prithivi, and vyana with apas; but this is erroneous. The Apocalypse represents these twelve forces, the seven "breaths" and the five "winds," as corresponding to the twelve signs of the zodiac. This arrangement is shown in lo«o"he St , -o

° n °/ the Eaf tVv

Diagram of the Zodiac and Correspondences

the accompanying diagram, with each tattva placed in the sign to which its special chakra pertains. The Hellenic Gods of Olympos, who were designated as the Guardian-divinities of the signs, are also inserted in the diagram for the purpose of comparison.