WHEN WE READ of the Johannites, we get several theories. John the Evangelist, as in the account given above. The Christians of St. John are so-named after John the Baptist. Then there is John of the Apocalypse. Then, of course, there is St. John the Almoner, also regarded as one of the Johns which inspired the name Johannite. And, too, John Mark Larmenius, who is said to have received a charter of transmission from Jacobus Burgundus Molensis, just prior to his martyrdom. These are all different Johns.

If the sect mentioned in the Johannite legend above represented the true church of Christendom, wouldn't it make sense to name itself after Christ or something pertaining more specifically to him? Or, perhaps, when we think of Christianity we think of things which weren't even remotely similar to what was in the minds of its founders. As Henry Lincoln might say, 'one needs to keep an open mind.'

The Prieuré de Sion and the Rose-Croix of Gold in the account given by Baron de Gleichen named their Grand Masters after John: John I, John II, etc.SION, as we have come to learn, is not merely a Hebrew word. It is also a Welsh word.⁽¹⁾ It means John, Jonas, Jones, which would say, if we combined French and Welsh words, and this is not impossible, since all of these languages have roots in the same Celtic tongue ~~ The Order (or Priory) of John. And the gist of this being that if the mission of the Order of SION is to protect the Merovingian bloodline, and the Merovingian claim to blood royalty depending upon a descendancy from 'Christ,' then why the preoccupation with John? John is a name of prominence in many places. The Johanan/Yohanan in the story is John. Prester John was a source for incredible legends. The Mandaeans pay reverence to John, John the Baptist. Jonathan or Yahu-Natan is an equivalent. Jonathan was a Benjaminite. Some arcane Masonic legends place John in the position Hiram Abif usually takes in Orthodox Masonry. Aleister Crowley's Masonic Mystery play, The Ship, places John in a similar role.

Our contention is one that has been suggested by many, and condemned or dismissed by many. That is, we contend that "Jesus Christ" is a title of office in the original primitive Christianity, like To Mega Therion is for Thelemites. Yeshu the Anointed One, Christ, Jesus, and Messiah, all have similar connotations. In the first century of the common era, there were many claimants to the Messiahship.

This is in keeping with the discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The leader of the community was a Messiah. The Teacher of Righteousness was a Messiah, and all of these were names of office, not one time names, assigned to one person and one person alone. A similar title we can identify with in the West is that of Pope or President.

In Tibetan Buddhism, we can compare it, perhaps more equally, to the Reincarnating Dalai Lama, at least as far as Lamas I through XIV are concerned.

We digress on the concept of renewed avatars, because that is a principal that has been in operation for thousands of years. Church proclamations and the work of fanatical missionaries cannot erase such a belief, since it is more than a belief. It is reality. The Office of John is one such renewing avatar. The inspiration for the incarnation goes back in time, way past the Hebrews, to Sumerian times.

In fact, we find in a website, a reference to the Mesopotamian origins of the name John. This is Dr. Michael Magee's Mystery of Jesus Pages. ( http://www.askwhy.co.uk/awmob/mob.htm ) for the index. He tells us:

"In Greek, John's name is Ioannes, the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew name Johanan. Curiously Ioannes resembles the Greek for the pagan god Ea, the God of the House of Water -- sweet refreshing water, not briny sea water -- which is Oannes. More curiously, Oannes pronounced in Aramaic would come out close to Enosh!

"Now Oannes was a saviour god of the Babylonians -- the god who saved mankind from the flood by warning the Babylonian Noah about it, allowing him to build an ark. Either the early Christians have given the Baptist an appropriate name of the gods with whom educated Greeks were familiar, or the Jews had already made these associations.

"Johanan is always given as meaning the Grace of God but it is a name which appears only in scriptural books written after the return from Babylonian exile, notably Chronicles. It seems that the name Johanan actually was brought back from exile with the returning priests. Johanan therefore is Oannes in Hebrew and the meaning Grace of God was devised for it later. Thus John the Baptist was given the name Johanan precisely because his duty was that of the god, Oannes. He had to save mankind by warning of the coming judgement to allow the righteous to repent and survive into God's Kingdom."

The article goes on to describe the significance of John, Oannes, and their association with Capricorn, and Goat and Fish gods. This rings a bell elsewhere, I'm sure OTO Initiates might agree.

It also rings a bell, when we get to the lengthy extract taken from L. A. Waddell, on the Sumerian origins of John the Baptist.

Also, we know that the other name John, which is really Jon, short for Jonathan, is associated with the name Dositheos, which means the same thing. And Dositheos comes (we repeat this over and over, we know...) from al-Dustan, or Dostai, which is an Assyrian name, showing up during the time the Assyrians were colonizing Samaria. The Dostai were priests from Assyria (Cuthah?) who interpreted the laws, customs, and religious practices of the Assyrians to the Israelites in Samaria. And, interestingly enough, the historical Dositheos, who barely gets mentioned in the annals of history, is remembered for being the Samaritan Messiah, who made claims the Jews and everyone else considered heretical.

The name Jonathan figures prominently in the Dead Sea Scrolls, in 'Paean for King Jonathan.' Only, instead of Alexander Jannaeus, who the translators claim it to be, we suggest another Jonathan. In the Greek, God is THEOS (Qeon). "Has Given" is DoV or DoVi. DoViqeoV, Dositheos, is Jonathan, in Greek.⁽²⁾

According to J. M. Allegro and others, Dositheos was a Samaritan who was a member of the Essene Community. He was, in fact, the Essene Teacher of Righteousness. This Essene Teacher of Righteousness has almost always been associated with the coming Messiah, or with Jesus.

In short, then, the Johannites, rather than being Christian, as we all consider Christians to be, were Initiates. They were Gnostics, and this is the line of succession that must be traced, for there are sixty Johns in succession from the First, culminating in Theoclet, who conferred Initiation upon Hugues de Payen and Godefroi de Saint-Omer. At least, if we are to consider the story in the Legend of the 17° (Knight of the East and West) to be a veiled historical narrative. From Theoclet, we have the Johns in the Prieuré de Sion (Ordre de la Rose-Croix Veritas).

We shall return to this theme in a later chapter. This recalls the promise granted unto Benjamin by Moses in Deuteronomy 33:12:

"The beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety by him; and the Lord shall cover him all the day long, and he shall dwell between his shoulders."

Boaz-Benjamin-Yahu-Natan-Daud:

Yah has given the beloved.

Jachin - Jehudah - Ahiman - Rezon:

Brother of the Gift, the Prince.

Where Boaz is represented as the Fellowcraft (in the AASR Words), and Jachin is represented as the Entered Apprentice (in the AASR Words); reversed in the "Standard" Blue Lodge Rituals and in the Memphis Rituals.

Benjamin and Jehudah are of significance in the 15° AASR; Yahu-Natan (Jonathan/ Dositheos) has been described; Daud or David, "the Beloved" is also of significance in the 15° AASR. Jah can be found to be of significance in many places, particularly the art in the 33° presented in the Supplement to Jeremy Cross' Templars' Chart. Jah can also be interpreted as IA, or Ea, i.e., Enki. Ahiman = one of the Anakim, a Brother of the GIFT. Rezon, the Prince. These are not merely our own conjectures, they exist in the sources we quote.

Albert Pike produced a short knowledge lecture entitled The Point Within The Circle, and in it is a short passage which we shall find contains the Johannite Doctrine:

"But considerable doubt has been expressed by many Masonic writers as to the antiquity of the two parallel lines. Yet the Egyptians had an identical symbol, a circle with sacred initials in the center and two serpents supporting the sides. The same circle or disc with the parallel lines as supports was the Mark placed upon the forehead of the Hindu god Vishnu. To this day the art of Herlad preserves these two pillars or chief supports which appear in one guise or another at the sides of every coat of arms.

"The idea sought to be expressed is the dual support which the chief symbol derives from the active power it represents. The two St. Johns, unquestionably were Hebrew initiates of the Essene Order, the Hebrew rite of what we now call Masonry. They are particularly appropriate to Christian lodges and it was undoubtedly the Christian who substituted their names for the still older ones, whatever they may have been. St. John the Baptist, the beginning of the Christian dispensation or era and St. John the Evangelist the end of the Apostolic time.

"Yet it was with no desire to introduce into Masonry any sectarian principle or orthodox dogma as will be plain from the following, that the early Christians called themselves Sts. John Brothers and that operative Guilds of Freemasons traveled and worked over Europe under that name. For as oneof the early Christian Fathers said, 'That which we call Christianity has always existed.' In those days, Christianity was not yet split into hundreds of warring factions. It was but a continuation under another name of the old doctrines and wisdom we still call Masonry. It was the Gnosis or Knowledge; the Wisdom Religion; the Jnana of the Hindu." -- page 18. This is from the Holmes' reprint edition, 2001.

Now, we shall present material from other sources, sources which may seem controversial, by virtue of the material contained herein. However, there are important discoveries to be made by those who have the ability to read between the lines, in the context of our story.

The first is a lengthy passage from Laurence Austine Waddell. He was known for tying every ancient discovery, especially of "superior white people", to the Aryans, who were, to him and to others, none other than the Sumerians. Yet, in the light of more recent discoveries, we find that the Aryan superiority nonsense is just that. Nonsense. And, we find that the Aryans or Indo-Europeans as they are called today, were not the same thing as the Sumerians, or the Celts, or the Mediterraneans which once existed and had a high level of civilization. The Aryans were rather brutish by comparison. But, there are things in Waddell's narrative that are worth studying and comparing to what we have been presenting and what we have to present below.

Following Waddell's material, we have included a ton of material from Godfrey Higgins' Anacalypsis. This material all bears on the subject of John, of the Johannite Tradition, of renewed Avatars. It bears Higgins' unique stamp, of trying to find a source for everything in India, including not only the Hebrews, but Jesus and the New Testament scenario. This was written before Sumerians were a household word to antiquaries.

Go to the Readings.

FOOTNOTES

1. As in the case of Twm Sion Cati. See R. Turner, Elizabethan Magic, pp. 111-127.

2. Cf. The Three Tablets of Seth, in The Nag Hammadi Library.

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