In an earlier segment of this part of Book Two, namely, that dealing with the Quietists, we indicated that the Catholic Encyclopaedia regarded the Carpocratians to be the Antinomian Gnostics which stood at the earliest end of the timeline, in re the Quietist current that developed in Western Europe, and culminated in those heresies of the 17th Century, which included Madame Guyon and her friend the Barnabite Friar, as well as Fenelon, and undoubtedly the Chevalier Ramsay, too, also a Knight of the Order of St. Lazarus, and associated supposedly with the Priory of SION.
We may include an extra readings section (for staff and paid members only, hint hint) which contains the sections from various sources on the Carpocratians, which are not included in the body of the present segment.
We are sorry for you if you missed the crucial Readings segment
(The Thebaid Brethren: A Solid Clue) - it is only available to official
staff and paid members. A future version may be made available to the public,
when and if we decide to offer it.
People today take for granted many things which were considered important enough to be classed as Mysteries by the Ancients, our Ancestors. Why only a couple or three centuries ago, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Hawking, Sarfatti would have been brought before the Office of the Holy Inquisition. (We leave out the Sacred name of Einhorn, since he failed to sneak past the 20th Century Inquisition, and even got an episode of Law and Order dedicated to his story in the 2002-03 season… tisk tisk) People today care little for the Gods their ancestors worshipped. Maybe it's just as well, because that keeps the Initiates forever separated from them. Them = the dross. It does not seem a big deal today, that nearly 2500 years ago the Historical Buddha was Illuminated and preached his famous sermon at the Vulture Peak. Yet, in those days, it was a revolutionary idea, an idea that backfired when it was introduced to the Mediterranean. Hell, it backfired in India as well. Look at the way India has become. What a pathetic shell of what it once was.
The idea that "man" saves himself, that he learns how to KNOW HIMSELF, to LIBERATE HIMSELF from the fetters imposed upon him by Conditioning, Social and Tribal Customs, by the Caste System (and this is as applicable here as it is in India proper), by the worship of National "Gods". In addition, the undoing of the curse of four generations, or the absolution of Karma.
The Wisest among US know and live by this standard. Yet there have been many dangerous cowards who, upon seeing that the Nationalistic Big Daddy God Cults weren't necessary to "man's" well-being, decided that they must be made necessary to man's survival. This is how orthodox Christianity was formed, at the outset, by Peter, the apostate, who disregarded his Master's command to regard Jon as the Successor. But Peter (pun may or may not be intended) was one of these small, petty, cowardly little males who have been responsible for all the ugliness in the world.
GNOSTICISM IS the generic term that refers to this revolutionary shift from Nationalistic Big Daddy God Cults. Saint Alexander the Great paved the way for its entrance into Western Society. The Alexandrine Cult (god fucking forbid a Motta worshipper should read this) was a major step, for it demonstrated that ALL Nation-States worshipped essentially the same deities. The next step was for the worshipper to recognize that without the worshipper the deities would have no platform to rest on. In other words, the deities, once actual beings, like Ancestors, by the time of the Alexandrine period were projections of the individuals who worshipped them. In recognizing this, the logical conclusion was to develop that latent property that lies within each person, and make the Individual a FIT RECEPTACLE for the INDWELLING OF THE DEITY. This was, in its peculiar manner, introduced by the Buddhists. The result was to realize the Buddha Nature, and gradually live in such a manner that allowed it to be consciously perceived constantly.
This, too, is the "Day-Spring from on high" which some of the sects in the Mediterranean sought. This is Self-Knowledge. This is NOT worship of the God of one's race, family, culture, nation, state, or empire. If a nation-state of such self-realized individuals existed, it would have no need for National Gods, nor would it have any need for gods at all. It would be one living organism, the Deity manifest in all its diversity: female, male, all inclusive. There would be no need for all the prescriptions pronounced arbitrarily by lawgivers like "Moses" or "Paul" or "Peter" or any of the pronouncements of the popes who are nowhere as divine as they would con us into believing.
The above being stated, we must make a statement about this. Nazi Germany was one such nation-state, of "self-realized" beings, convinced that they were liberated, awakened, free. So, if the rest of the world is not so realized, then at least it better construct a big enough fence around the seething mass of the one-mind that would exist in such a body of people, as it can get out of hand.
People who harp about getting a one-world order going assume that they will be among the chosen ones, and that the rest of us who enjoy our individuality would be got by the weed whackers of the N.W.O. There will always be Kings and Slaves, no matter what we get. This is fairly self-evident. As humankind thinks it is getting liberated, there are terrorist threats or technological advancements that come and dash any such hopes.
True, in the Antinomian Spirit, some of us can and do exist, without much infringement upon our sovereignty by the Rulers. However, to expect that the entire world could go back to an Edenic state is a bit much, especially when its gardeners would be humans much like the rest of the livestock that grazes in the garden.
How many of these people are Teachers themselves? Probably not a single one of them, for the Teachers Know the Wrong of the Beginning, and know the folly of allowing the humans to do anything about making corrections that amount to a mass of totalitarianism, even when it appears to be candy-coated feel-good ideals.
The model of conduct for plenty of us can be typified by ancient Gnostic currents, like the Carpocratians. Like the various groups that derived from them, and like their 20th century successor, Thelema. Yet, this is not good enough, either, because it still implies belief in things that some of us see no reason to waste time with.
A person might ask, :"Well, if the Carpocratians or the Frankists are so great, then why aren't they the rule and not the exception?" Well, probably, because the herd rules, and the herd is unable to live this way without adjustments to their mother-boards, and perhaps better software installations.
When numerous people get involved with things like Satanism, Thelema, et cetera: all the apparent rebel-spirituality flavors - is it out of rebelling, or is it out of just plain starting at ground zero and assimilating one of these idea systems as their own rule of conduct? Who knows? We might not even want to be any such thing had we been born into it. Of course the Satanism that gets popularized is for the most part a stale joke, as we see in it nothing of the Angel-Cults that really can be categorized as such. Now, our predecessors the Ancient Magi, the early Teachers, the Watchers, the Anunnaki, were a bit of both: Godly and Satanic. Read the Old Testament sometime, and figure out what Satan really is, and then, the rebel-god stuff might wear off a bit.
It makes no sense to us that the Devil Traditions are characterized as evil, as "Ahrimanic" even, when the counter-currents that oppose them have been far more prolific in manifesting evil in the world and perpetuating it. The Devil that was invented by the Church was done to prop up the protection racket and give the Priapus cult a run for its money. Indeed it ran for the hills, but it never died out.
Anything that scares the livestock is to be regarded with fear, superstition, misunderstanding, weapons, punishment, whispering campaigns, ostracism, torture, penalization, death. Yet, it is evident to some of us that the very god of the Old Testament manifests this same personality in its more wrathful phases, and rather than being an opposite god, is a component of the all-inclusive entity, much like the Tibetan Buddhists have Peaceful and Wrathful deities, and our basic makeup as well is so ordered, if we but tap it and exploit it for our own benefit! Become a Psychopath! (Or realize that you already are one!)
The true master of the Psychopathic Profile is really a Promethean, as opposed to a Satanist. For this we recommend The Psychopath's Bible, new expanded edition 2003 c.e. Its author, Dr. Christopher Hyatt, has been branded as something akin to the devil itself, by people who love their stretch marks and wicca, by "chaos" "magickians" (query: What is a magickian? Oh, I see, a Magician…. Wise up, illiterate ignorami!) … by people who think they are Thelemites, but in reality are closet Christians.
Perhaps it is true that only a very rare segment of the population, particularly t he human population, can appreciate the real Secret Tradition, because it is not what people have seen in the advertisements. That being said, we shall leave it there, tyle the Lodge, and proceed with the present survey.
The present segment continues the previous segment, but begins the next three or four segments for Book Two part four. As in the previous segment the theme was the Secret Gospel of Mark, and the Letter of Clement of Alexandria, we are now approaching the foul heresy of the Carpocratians. It is probably already well-known by the intelligentsia, but how many people really care enough to explore these things and write about them, and place them before a wide public without demanding academic institution credentials and approved IP address?
To do this we shall present very briefly some (very concise) general background history concerning the Gnostics (generically-speaking), as this gives us some basics as to the ancestry of Gnosticism. Forget all the new material on the subject (save for Rudolph)… it just goes to show you, that All is truly Ever as it Was. From there we shall go more in-depth on the Carpocratians (there may be a short READINGS segment attached to the present survey), and then proceed in the next segment to the Borborites as defined and described by Epiphanius in his most scandalizing piece of writing.
Later, we shall cover the Perfecti tradition, that starts at least, with the Paulicians, and moves across Europe. It is not entirely correct to connect these groups to Manichaeanism proper, as there are indications that these traditions existed as early as Clement's Letter to Theodore, and, too, in the Essene hierarchy. The Letter of Tatian against the Greeks is a good pre-cursor to what showed up centuries later in the Languedoc, when the Albigensians started getting massacred. The Cathar Book of John has elements in it that are anticipated by Tatian.
These will all be analyzed as we wind down Book II - Part Four. Although we had not intended it this way there will be a Part Five, as the material coming in is plentiful enough to warrant it. It shall be the capstone of the work.
"'Gnostics,'" says Budge, "is the name usually given to a group of religious sects which flourished in WESTERN ASIA and EGYPT between 250 B. C. and A. D. 400. One and all claimed that they possessed gnw=sij, i.e., "knowledge,' but that 'knowledge' was of a highly spiritual nature, and was transcendental, supernal and celestial in character. According to some of the Gnostics, that knowledge was obtained by a series of revelations which were made by the One great God, Who was the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, to men who had fitted themselves to receive them by self-abnegation, fasting and prayer. The oldest history of the Gnôsis and the tenets of its followers will be found in the work of HIPPOLYTUS (died or martyred in the first half of the IIIrd century a.d.), Refutation of all Heresies. Another history written a couple of centuries later is the "Panarion" of EPIPHANIUS. The Coptic works, "Pistis Sophia," (i.e. Faith-Wisdom) and books of IEÛ provide us with a great deal of original first-hand information. The tenets of some of the Gnostic sects were derived primarily from INDIA, and they travelled westwards through PERSIA to SYRIA, PALESTINE, EGYPT and GREECE with the Buddhist envoys to the SELEUCIDAE and the PTOLEMIES who were sent thither by the kings of India in the IIIrd and Iind centuries b.c. Modern research has shown that the pictographic writings of the Indians and Sumerians were almost identical in character, and it may be that there is Sumerian influence in Gnosticism. The astrological element in Gnosticism, of which so many examples are found on Gnostic amulets, certainly came from Babylonia, the home of astrology. … And it is tolerably certain that many of the curious linear signs which represent the sun, moon, planets and other stars, are garbled copies of early Sumerian pictographs." - Amulets and Talismans, pp. 200-1.
While the Sumerian view of the relationship between God and Man is one of Master and Slave (fitting the idea of the Rulers and the humans), as have seen: some men were deemed worthy, of full age, and of good report, and became WISE MEN. They came to partake of the Knowledge of their Origins, the dual nature of the self, the whole package. The Historic Buddha learned the Knowledge in his country, India, which had been colonized in the North for a long, long time. Not all humans are able to come to the realization of the Four Noble Truths or the Noble Eight-fold Path, but those who do, rejoice.
Even the Thelemite view shows that the majority of humankind is doomed to slavery because it chooses to stay asleep and remain ignorant. Therefore, the Kings of the Earth shall be Kings forever, the Slaves shall serve.
Budge also tells us that "The Egyptian Gnostics rejected many of the pagan cults of the early dynastic Egyptians, but they regarded Ra, Horus and Harpokrates as forms of their 'One God of heaven,' and they connected Isis with the Virgin Mary, Osiris and Serapis with Christ, and Hathor with the naked woman who was the symbol of wisdom according to the latest form of Gnosticism in the IV th or V th century." - ibid., p. 203
In other words, HORUS was regarded as the Highest God while ISIS and OSIRIS were given subordinate roles, and HATHOR was regarded as SOPHIA, Divine Wisdom personified. And this is exactly what we find if we look deeply into Thelema. This Highest God, too, is Manifest in Man, this Divine Wisdom available to the Few and the Chosen who are able to seek and find IT.
So, now, we come to Carpocrates and his system…… But first. another rant on Antinomian Gnosis…..
The Orthodox Church and all its offspring regard Antinomian Gnosis with extreme dread, as well they should, since the pastors of those churches are its shepherds, and the sheep must be kept within the boundaries of the flock.
What is wrong with this picture? The Jesus of the Scripture is said to have spoken: "I have not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it." Now unless we are using two dictionaries, Fulfill and Maintain are not the same words nor do they convey the same meaning. For that matter, fulfilling the Law, would, in due time, abolish it as well, as it would no longer be necessary.
Of course, in this day and age, if one threat or obstacle is removed, another dozen or so have to be created in order to justify the need for unthinkable outlays of budgetary allocations. If they get rid of Saddam and Osama, they will make for damn sure we get another two dozen threats to national security in order to justify government spending gone mad.
The idea was to fulfill the law, to undo the Wrong of the Beginning. The Carpocratian mythos is quite interesting (see below, and the accompanying Readings segment). For, a soul, incarnating in its body, with the remembrance of its divine home, as it descended through the womb-door, is free from the fetters of the Archons, the Rulers.
So, if Jesus were incarnated, as they say, to undo the "Sin of Eve"…. and release the "Curse" - so-called… then why does it not seem to have taken? Why do we still need a hierarchical entity known as the Church - regardless of denomination? Why do we need missionaries, and protection racket confessionals, and all the rest? Simple answer is: WE DON'T! How many people can simply wake up and see that they are free, that they direct the movie that is their life? That they make their rules as they go? Well, evidently, precious few can actually do this correctly. There is a correct way of doing this sort of thing after all. But were you to ask what this is, what would we say? Would you believe us?
Not only that, but through the centuries this has been hinted at, through these various schools, from the Carpocratian period, through the Barbelo-Gnostics, and then hidden within Christian heresies that would spring up from time to time, including, to a certain extent, the Albigensian Heresy. Including, to a certain extent, the Waldensians. Including the Brethren (and Sisters too) of the Free Spirit. Including the Alumrados, the Quietists, and so forth. We can include the Shabbetean Movement, the Frankist movement. The Bavarian Illuminati was yet another movement, even if it may have had nefarious plans, it still was showing how stupid the Establishment really was. It has not changed, has it? Nope, I was right. The early Socialist and Communist movements originally pointed this direction but got mired in red tape and proved themselves to be the dismal failures that they have been all along. The Revolutions that came to France and the rest of Europe backfired because the masses were engaged against their inbred rulers (and some Euros accuse we Americans of sleeping with our cousins! Hah! They should know.) too late in the game for it to work correctly.
What happened to it all? Did it get swallowed up by the Modern Age? Yes. It really did.
We are at a crucial point in the history of the planet. Artificial Intelligence. A. I. Will you worship the machine? The boss comes and says, hey, you gotta love this! What would you do, what would YOU do? Get down on your knees, as I figured. Well once upon a time I was sitting right where you are sitting now the boss came in and said here's the steeley dan III from Yokohama and it replicates itself now…. why it'll get in there right into the tight places like a candiru… Wouldn't you? And I said I'm getting out of here, me! An he belches garlic like a mafia don an says you're white white WHITE! And so by not giving in to the Machine, by not worshiping the Genetic replication of Big Daddy, the first of the Satans, Lucifers, and so on was created. The Authorities / Rulers / Archons were pissed off, because there was a class of being that could defy it.
Then we are told, that this same class, aka Teachers, sought to educate this same class of peons before they were supposedly ready enough to accept the Teachings. Like we say, they never have been, nor are they likely to ever be ready to accept the Teachings. I think it was Gurdjieff who said all of nature is food for the Great Architect. (Not verbatim, by the way.)
So, if we can break free from the conditioning (and this applies to those of us who aren't conditioned religiously, but secularly as well)…….. then…… what? Wouldn't you? Isn;'t life better when you're enjoying living it? Fuck all that noise about asceticism and morality and binding oaths of poverty. That is more trappings that the authorities create in order to ensnare the peons.
So now that we've looked into the "deep things of Satan"
from our point of view, let us take a brief glance at Carpocrates and his "son"
Epiphanes.
SIMON MAGUS was a student/disciple of DOSITHEOS. SIMON's school was known as the SIMONIANS. From the School of the SIMONIANS emerged NICOLAUS, the deacon, of Antioch; CERINTHUS; and MENANDER. From NICOLAUS came the NICOLAITANS. One of the chief pupils in this school was CARPOCRATES, also of ANTIOCH, who transplanted himself to Alexandria. His school was also known as the CARPOCRATIANS. Carpocrates' son and chief disciple was EPIPHANES, not to be confused with EPIPHANIUS the heresiologist. EPIPHANES' school became known as the PHIBIONITES, from whence sprang all the sects that became classified as GNOSTICS, BORBORITES, STRATIOTICS, SECUNDIANS, CODDIANS, ZACCHAEUSES, et cetera. They were all Sethian-Ophites.
We are not going to present everything we have, in this survey, just key items and primarily our ideas connecting the past with the present, as we find in the Carpocratians perhaps the earliest idea of Thelema a long time prior to Rabelais even, and the primary source from which the Quietists derived their teachings.
The Carpocratians were an early example of DO WHAT THOU WILT SHALL BE THE WHOLE OF THE LAW. We shall inquire as to what these 'deep things of Satan' might be, which Clement considered so horrible that he thought it legitimate to lie under oath to deny the existence of the Secret Gospel of Mark. Irenaeus, as quoted and paraphrased in Willis Barnstone's The Other Bible, gives us clues. First, they regarded Jesus as a human progeny, one of the big no-nos. Also, says the Bishop of Lyons,
"They say that the soul of Jesus was brought up lawfully in Jewish customs but despised them and therefore received powers through which it annihilated the passions which are attached to men and punish them. The soul which, like the soul of Christ, is able to despise the world-creating Archons, will similarly receive power to do similar things. For this reason they have reached such a state of pride that they say they are like Jesus himself; but some say they are even more powerful, and others say that they surpass his disciples, such as Peter and Paul and the rest of the apostles; they fall short of Jesus in no respect. Their souls, having come from the Authority above, and therefore similarly despising the world-creators, were deemed worthy of the same power and worthy to attain the same end. If any one despises things below more than Jesus did, he can become greater than he was…"
This is not so unreasonable, after all, since the Buddhists have been after similar ends for a lot longer than Christians have. In the final summation, Buddha-hood and Christ-hood are the same thing. Yet slaves cannot become Buddhas or Christs, because they have to continue to worship something outside of themselves. Yes massa! Slaves like Irenaeus and Clement like their chains. Continuing -
"They practice magic arts and incantations, charms and spells, familiar spirits and dream-senders, and all other wicked activities, saying that they have power to rule over the rulers and makers of this world and also over all that they created. Like the Gentiles, they were driven by Satan to slander the divine name of the Church so that men who hear of their actions of one sort or another suppose that we are all of the same kind and turn their ears away from the proclamation of the truth. Seeing what they do as men blaspheme all of us, though we participate with them in nothing - doctrine, practice, daily life.
"They have reached such a pitch of madness that they say that it is in their power to do whatever is irreligious and impious, for they say that actions are good and bad only in accordance with human opinion. In the transmigrations into bodies, souls ought to experience every kind of life and action, if in a single life on earth any one of them has not first taken care to experience everything once for all and in equal completeness, actions such as it is not right for us to mention or to hear or even to have in mind, or to believe that any such thing is considered among men who live in the civilized world, so that, according to what their writings say, their souls, which have been involved in every experience, may not, when they depart, still suffer any lack. They must act in such a way that they will not be forced into another body if something is still lacking in their freedom.
…
"The souls which in a single life on earth manage to participate in all sins will no longer become reincarnate, but, having paid all their 'debts', will be freed so that they no longer come to be in a body.
"And if godless, unlawful, and unspeakable things are done by them, I should not believe them. But in their writings it is written, and they provide exegesis to prove, that Jesus SPOKE IN A MYSTERY PRIVATELY TO HIS DISCIPLES (MARK 4:10-11) and judged them worthy to transmit these things to those who were worthy and who believed them. For through faith and love (cf. Gal. 5:6) we are saved; all else is indifferent, after the opinion of men, and is sometimes considered good, sometimes bad. NOTHING IS EVIL BY NATURE.
"Some of them cauterize their disciples behind the lobe of the right ear. When Marcellina came to Rome under Anicetus, since she belonged to this school she led many astray. THEY CALL THEMSELVES GNOSTICS. They have images, some painted, some made of other materials, and they say that their picture of Christ was made by Pilate when Jesus was among men. They put crowns on these and place them with images of worldly philosophers, like Pythagoras and Plato and Aristotle and the others; and the rest of their veneration of the images is like that of the Gentiles."
Basically the principal charge against the Carpocratians, and all the other Gnostic sects, is their disregard for the authority of the Church hierarchy. Any person or group who found they didn't need the nonsense being forced upon the crowd by the bellowings and rantings of Irenaeus, Clement, or anyone else in the "official" "Church", in this category of hucksters, was condemned outright.
This has been done every time the Authorities find groups who discover that the Authorities are not necessary to their well being, survival, or salvation.
This was done in the days of the Gnostics, and other crucial periods throughout the ages. This was done in the case of the A & P Rite, as well; done in the 1960s, in the 1980s post-sexual revolution; it is done today in the days of Homeland Security and "Terrist Threats to Merica."
WE DO NOT NEED THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH OR ITS SECULAR ARMS IN THE POLICE STATE.
People who can think for themselves do not need any of this. This is why we have always been forced into hiding and seclusion, or barbequed or strangled.
Kurt Rudolph, in GNOSIS, writes of Carpocrates:
[bracketed notes from margin of original.]
"The historicity of Carpocrates and his son Epiphanes has been denied repeatedly. One saw behind his name rather a gnosticising cult association of the late Egyptian god Harpocrates, Horus the son of Isis, and gave credence to the report of Celsus who knew of "Harpocratians" [Origen, Contra Celsum, V-62.]. Although it is not possible to discuss this question more fully here, it seems to me that there is little reason for doubting the existence of the person of Carpocrates (the name, however, may contain a conscious allusion to Harpocrates). Carpocrates is said to have worked under the emperor Hadrian (117-138), especially in Asia Minor, but to come allegedly from Egypt. [Clem. Alex. Strom. III. 5,2.] His son, who died at the age of 17, already played an important role (Clement even describes him as the actual founder of the school); the book already cited, "On Righteousness:, was composed by him. [See above, p. 268f.] A female disciple of Carpocrates, Marcellina by name, spread his teaching (in modified form?) in about 160 in Rome (Celsus calls her followers actually 'Marcellians'). The sect flourished in about 130. Its system works up earlier gnostic tradition into a consistent antinomianism, or libertinism, which the soul must follow to its redemption, if necessary through several births. [see above, p. 256] Jesus is the example worth striving for on this road, an example that can even be surpassed. Only faith and love are necessary for salvation; the rest, especially laws and regulations, is neutral. We have already got to know the cultic consequences that follow from this [see above p. 250], as well as from the syncretistic cult of images of the Marcellian gnostics. [see above, p. 225 f.]
So, then, we have a system that conforms to the an early representation of the antinomian and Thelemic ideal, though not necessarily the same as the Qadosh tradition we are researching. Yet, at the bottom of the Qadosh tradition, is this Quietist / antinomian ideal, be it Carpocratians, the Free Spirit, the French Quietist groups, the Shabbeteans and Frankists… And as we can see, the ideas expressed here can be found more in Eastern Tantrik groups than in the West. Yet in the Syrian Gnosis, this also has existed, particularly in the generic sect of Sethian - Ophites / Barbelo-gnostics, which we shall survey in the next segment, "Honey and Peppers".
Now we shall look at Epiphanes.
Epiphanes is regarded as Carpocrates' son. In Epiphanius of Salamis' synopsis of the foul Gnostic heretics which we shall notice in the next segment, the Phibionites are regarded as the followers of this Epiphanes. This Epiphanes would have flourished at roughly the same time as Valentinus, or the middle of the second century c.e. So, then, it is likely that the Phibionites were the Carpocratians of the time of Clement. Epiphanes taught that everything is equal. There is equality in the Universe, in the solar system, among the animal kingdom, and among humankind. And then, the point of the discourse:
"As the laws could not punish men who were ignorant of them, they taught men to transgress [cf. Gal. 4:19]. For particularity of the laws cut up and destroyed the universal equality of the divine law….
"The ideas of Mine and Thine crept in [cf. Gal. 2:4] through the laws which cause the earth, money, and even marriage no longer to bring forth fruit for common use. For God made vines for all to use in common, since they do not refuse the sparrow or the thief; and similarly wheat and the other fruits. But outlawed sharing and the vestiges of equality generated the thief of domestic animals and fruits.
"For man God made all things to be common property. He brought the female to be with the male in common and in the same way united all the animals. He thus showed "righteousness" to be a universal sharing along with equality. But those who have been born in this way have denied the sharing which is the corollary of their origin and say, "Let him who has taken one woman keep her," whereas all can share her, just as the other animals show us.
"With a view to the permanence of the race, he has implanted in males a strong and ardent desire with neither law nor custom nor any other restraint is able to destroy. For it is God's decree…. Consequently one must understand the saying "Thou shalt not desire" as if the lawgiver was making a jest, to which he added the even more comic words "thy neighbor's goods" [Exod. 20:17]. For he himself who gave the desire to sustain the race orders that it is to be suppressed, though he removes it from no other animals. And by the words "thy neighbor's wife" he says something even more ludicrous, since he forces what should be common property to be treated as a private possession." [Clement, Strom. III. 6-9.]
For an exact parallel to this, written by an early 20th century Initiate into Tibetan Buddhism, who happened to be an American - Dr. W. Y. Evans-Wentz, we suggest the reader obtain a copy of The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, and study its contents thoroughly. Especially of value is the Introduction, particularly the 9th section: Good and Evil, pp. 35-57, especially the part dealing with Morality, pp. 45-52. It is, if anything, a vindication of Epiphanes and Carpocrates, and their predecessors and successors. In short, a vindication of all those who attempted to show Western Society the path to Self-Liberation from the Sleep of Ignorance. Instead, it was our sects who were urged to "go to sleep", as the Rite of Memphis was. Well, even now, even amongst the Esoteric Trade, insomnia occurs!
Also, Alexandra David-Neel, Initiation and Initiates in Tibet,
Chapter XIV: Different Kinds of Morality, expresses the very same thing. It
is precisely our Western Morality, so-called, or Lack There-of: or, rather,
that Morality imposed on us by Judaeo-Christian propagandists and their armies,
that has resulted in present-day society being more bankrupt, ethically, morally,
aesthetically - than any other factor. The invention of the "sin complex"
by Jews and Christians is truly the work of the "foul devil" which
they, and they alone, willingly serve, and with so many blood sacrifices as
to make Carthage look like an evening with a Hibachi on the balcony of the apartment
building… by comparison.
So these "Deep things of Satan" might seem rather tame by today's standards, but this was HERESY at the time it was being preached. Yet, today, in the political climate we find ourselves in, it is worth considering that these ideals are far more viable than the dead ends offered by Church, State, and Corporation. If there was such a group, and if said group was interested in a Secret Gospel of Mark, containing the teachings that were conferred upon the Initiates into Egyptian Christianity, then... this is what it's all about. Not the stuff we've been told to believe forever, but THIS!
Now we shall analyze the account of the Gnostics by Epiphanius of Salamis, referred to often by us, and we shall see where the comparisons can be drawn with various threads in the Authentic Tradition.
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