From: 1948 – De Laurence’s Catalog of Books on Occultism – Magic – Mysticism – Religion – The Cabala – Yoga – Astrology and all related subjects – Occult Students’ Equipment – Talismanic and Symbolic Jewelry
Mystic and Master Occultist, de Laurence is world-famous as an Adept of the Highest Rank. His lifelong study of religious thought and emotion have brought him recognition and renown while his humanistic and sympathetic insight have endeared his name to thousands. His works are everywhere and his name stands high on the roster of independent and intrepid thinkers of all time.
Part One
“Give ye not that which is sacred to the dogs,
Neither cast ye your pearls before swine;
For the swine will tread them under their feet
And the dogs will turn and rend you.”
(Extract from The Sermon on the Mount.)
AFTER nineteen centuries of enforced eliminations from the canonical* books, of the Bible, of every sentence which might put the investigator on the true path, it has become very difficult to show, to the satisfaction of exact science, that the “Pagan” worshippers of Adonis, their neighbors, the Nazarenes and the Pythagorean Essenes, the healing Therapeutes, the Ebionites, and other sects were all, with very slight differences, followers of the ancient Theurgic Mysteries. And yet by analogy and a close study of the hidden sense of their rites and customs, we can trace their kinship.
It was given to a contemporary of Jesus to become the means of pointing out to posterity, by his interpretation of the oldest literature of Israel, how deeply the kabalistic philosophy agreed in its esoterism with that of the profoundest Greek thinkers. This contemporary, and ardent disciple of Plato and Aristotle, was Philo Judaeus. While explaining the Mosaic books according to a purely kabalistic method, he is the famous Hebrew writer whom Kingsley calls the Father of New Platonism.
It is evident that Philo Judaeus’ Therpeutes are a branch of the Essenes.** Their name indicates it – Asaya, Physician. Hence, the contradictions, forgeries, and other desperate expedience to reconcile the prophecies of the Jewish canon with the Galilean nativity and godship.
Luke, who was a physician, is designated in the Syriac texts as Asaia, the Essaian or Essene. Josephus and Philo Judaeus have sufficiently described this sect to leave no doubt in my mind that Jesus, the Nazarene Reformer, after having received his education in their dwellings in the desert, and been duly initiated in the Mysteries, preferred the free and independent life of a wandering Nazaria, and so separated or inazarenized himself from them, thus becoming a traveling Therapeute, a Nazaria, a healer. Every Therapeute, before quitting his community, had to do the same. Both Jesus and St. John the Baptist preached the end of the age;*** which proves their knowledge of the secret computation of the priests and kabalists, who with the chiefs of the Essene communities alone had the secret of the duration of the cycles. The latter were kabalists and theurgists; “they had their mystic books, and predicted future events.”
Dunlap, whose personal researches seem to have been quite successful in that direction traces the Essenes, Nazarenes, Dositheans, and some other sects as having all existed before Christ: “They rejected pleasures, despised riches, loved one another, and more than other sects, neglected wedlock, deeming the conquest of the passions to be virtuous.”
These are all virtues preached by Jesus; and if we are to take the gospels as a standard of truth, Christ was a metempsychosist, “or re-incarnationist” -again like these same asserts that the Samian philosopher spent a certain time at Carmel with them.****
In his discourses and sermons, Jesus always spoke in parables and used metaphors with his audience. This habit was again that of the Essenians and the Nazarenes; the Galileans who dwelt in cities and villages were never known to use such allegorical language. Indeed, some of his disciples being Galileans as well as himself, felt even surprised to find him using with the people such a form of expression. “Why speakest thou unto them in parables?“***** they often inquired.
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*Canonical books or Scriptures, those writings or books of the Bible accepted by the Church as genuine and inspired. The Roman Catholic Church receives as canonical some of the books styled Apocryphal by other Churches.
**Es-sene. One of an ascetic party or sect of the Jews, formed about the 2nd Century before the Christian era, and existing till the fall of Jerusalem. They practiced voluntary poverty, had community of goods, sought higher degrees of holiness, and were mostly celibates. Josephus(“Antiquities” xiii) speaks of the Essenes as a sect which had existed in the time of the Maccabees. K.Kohler in Jew. Encyc., Vol. V, p. 228 (F. W. Co. 1903).
***The real meaning of the division into ages is esoteric and Buddhistic. So little did the uninitiated Christians understand it that they accepted the words of Jesus literally and firmly believed that he meant the end of the world. There had been many prophecies about the forthcoming age. Virgil, in the fourth Eclogue, mentions the Metatron – a new offspring, with whom the iron age shall end and a golden one arise.
****”Vit. Pythag.” Munk derives the name of the Iessaens or Essenes from the Syriac Asaya – the healers, or physicians, thus showing their identity with the Egyptian Therapeutae. “Palestine,” p. 515.
*****Matthew xiii, 10.
END OF PART ONE
