JESUS CHRIST

There is a new generation in paganism and occultism nowadays that does not remember the stranglehold that Christianity had upon the minds of children until the mid 1960s. As a result, it is easy to dismiss the works of older occultists who have been unable to let go of something of the figure of Jesus Christ. Dion Fortune and those who followed were never able to do this, no matter how pagan they have been in appearance, and large sections of the Druid movement still cling to him. It is therefore useful to understand Jesus and Christ as he is understood by those of us who retain a fascination with the apparent success of this figure.

First, only conventional Christianity makes Jesus and Christ the same person. In the light of modern scholarship it is clear that they are quite separate concepts.

Jesus (Yeshua Bar Yussef) appears to have been a relatively minor figure in Jewish history who was one of many claimants to the title of Messiah (Mashiah), which had gained a new meaning since Judea fell under foreign control, with Kings such as Herod who were not regarded as being truly Jewish by their subjects. The term Mashiah was originally applied to each King and High Priest of Israel, both of which were hereditary posts. Each were anointed when the succeeded to their roles, this being the literal meaning of the word Mashiah. The Greek equivalent of this word is Christos.

In the period during which Bar Yussef lived, various revolutionary sects had started to expect that a single person would appear to save the Jews from foreign domination, and much literature remains showing that the main argument was about which House he would arrive from. The Nasorean sect at Qumran in the Dead Sea, mistakenly called Essenes, appear to be the group he either led, or broke away from. After an abortive coup attempt he was crucified, though his followers claimed he survived. Modern discoveries make it clear that The Sermon On The Mount was propaganda, "The Meek", "The Poor", and "The Hungerers" being names used by the Qumran sect.

After the crucifixion, a Roman named Paul claimed to be a Jew named Saul who had been called upon by God to continue the mission of Bar Yussef. However, this eventually took the form of an attempt to take over both the Yeshua sect and the Gnostic sect formed by John the Baptist. This sect was one of the three main types of Jewish religion, the others being Farsi (Pharisee), who added Persian elements into the religion after the Persians freed them from Babylonian slavery, Sadducee (Zadokite), the traditional religion retained by the Jews who remained in Palestine during the exile period, and John the Baptist's esoteric Judaism, formed by Jews who fled to Egypt to avoid the exile. Each contained various factions, including revolutionaries such as Bar Yussef.

John's religion transformed the Messiah into a mystical power rather than a human, and various texts appeared ascribed to him. But eventually the New Testament was created from earlier texts to make out that Jesus was both Mashiah of the House of David (the genealogies in Matthew and Luke), Aaron (Luke) as well as the chosen of John, in spite of the fact that history makes it clear John handed his church to others. Thus Paul created a new religion, and in a form acceptable to, and eventually master of, the Roman Empire.

John's own religion still exists in Iraq, and now amongst Iraqi exiles in Australia and New Zealand, as the Mandean religion. However, most modern "Christian" mystics (such as the esteemed Gareth Knight) recognise that they are essentially Gnostics. In such cases The Christ is a very different figure from the historical Jesus, who may eventually have escaped to India in the guise of Thomas while his wife and kids ended up in France, or Britain, but quite frankly who cares? In a Chaos Magic possession I underwent about 10 years ago Jesus apologised profusely for all the confusion and insisted that it had nothing to do with him!

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