The Jesus Myth

The essay discusses the Jesus Myth, which presents Jesus Christ as the last of a cycle of dying pagan gods resurrected by pagan goddesses. The author argues that this myth is Christianity's only hope against exploitation and patriarchalism. They explain the origins of the myth and how it connects Jesus and Mary as sacred divinities. They also discuss the importance of the crucifixion in validating the myth and the Gnostic Christian attitude towards women. The author believes that embracing the Jesus Myth could reform Christianity and make it a more relatable and inclusive religion. They also criticize the repressions caused by the Abrahamic religions and the role of the Deuteronomists in rewriting Genesis. The essay concludes with a suggestion to remove Jehovah from the New Testament and include the crucifixion in the Jesus Myth. Well, it's January 23rd, 2025. This is the Hermetic Hour. I'm your host, Pilk Runyon. Tonight we present an essay, The Jesus Myth, Christianity's Only Hope, which will be a counter-argument to the evangelical Christian position that the so-called Jesus Myth, which is based on an Essayian document, a 1st or 2nd century Gnostic Christian scripture, presenting Jesus Christ as the last of a recurring cycle of dying pagan gods resurrected by pagan goddesses, such as Tammuz and Ishtar, Osiris and Isis, Baal and Astarte, Venus and Adonis, etc., culminating in Jesus and Mary Magdalene. The fundamentalists contend that this idea undermines the historical Jesus. They reinforce this by mixing in other Gnostic Christian views, such as that of Jesus did not die on the cross, which was really not part of the original Essayian proposition. Now, as Valentinian Gnostic Rosicrucians, we contend that the Jesus Myth, as set forth in an Essayian document, is not only valid as scripture, but that it represents Christianity's only hope of survival against its awful record of Orthodox and Protestant exploitation, prejudicial persecution, hypocrisy, and patriarchalism. So, tune in and help us defend our tradition. Now, the first thing we need to clarify in this discussion is where the Jesus Myth originates. It was not created by Charles-François Dupuy in 1872 in his book The Origin of All Religious Worship, as many of its detractors believe, although Dupuy added several fresh elements to the mix, pointing to more crucified gods than the original Gnostic Essayian document had suggested. The Essayians held that Jesus was the last of the pagan dying gods, in line with Isis and Osiris, Ishtar and Tammuz, Venus and Adonis, et al., a concept importantly including their resurrecting goddesses. The first important thing that the Jesus Myth does is connect Jesus and his consort Mary, not his mother, his consort, as the culmination of a long line of sacred divinities which our forefathers and our foremothers worshiped. But this is all a myth, say the evangelical critics, and myths are not history. No, but they should be. Myths are their own historical reality and better or at least more comfortable historical reality than real history. History tells us that Moses was the last leader of the Canaanite Hyksos invaders whom the Egyptians finally expelled from their country after years of being persecuted by them. The biblical myth tells us that these same Canaanites were slaves of the Egyptians whom Moses liberated, which is a much more comfortable version of the history for us. History tells us that Jesus was a teacher and a healer who was crucified for sedition in first century Jerusalem by the Romans. The Jesus Myth, being Gnostic, conceives Jesus as an entirely spiritual being and denies the crucifixion, at least in one version. However, the crucifixion is important to justify Charles Dupuy's contribution of the other crucified gods and to validate Mary Magdalene's efforts as a resurrecting goddess. These elements are included when the myth conforms to the Valentinian Gnostic variation of the sacred marriage as a true sacrament of Christianity, which establishes the equality of women's rights and frees them from persecution and exploitation. Now, the first big problem with the Jesus Myth is where does it come from and how do we access the sources? All that remains of the Gnostic Messianic document is one cryptic prayer. A summary of the text can be found in the Church Father Hippolytus's Against All Heresies, Book 4, which was published in 1867. Hippolytus's summary is so detailed that we were able to reconstruct Marcus's Soma Sophia celestial magic system from it, but more importantly it inspired George Meade to render a version of it in his Thrice Greatest Hermes, 1906, which influenced James Fraser's Golden Glow, 1906, and Jesse Weston's 1920 From Ritual to Romance. We might also mention that we discovered a version of it in the Hypnoerata Mantia Polophila by Francisco Colonna, published in 1499. To give you the gist of the Jesus Myth, let's sum it up this way. Jesus is not the son of Jehovah because Jehovah is not the Most High Father God. The distant father god of the Gnostics was Eleon, or the original El of the Canaanites. Jehovah, or Yahweh, was, according to the Gnostics, a usurper, a lesser god they called the Demiurge, who was in control of the physical world, the kingdom of Malkuth in Kabbalistic terminology. Their concept of the Holy Trinity matches the original Orthodox Christianity's Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, which the Roman Church forgot to exclude when they threw out metempsychosis, that's the transmigration of souls, at the Council of Nicaea. Both soul transmigration and the Trinity were Gnostic Christian concepts. The Jesus Myth brings back and reestablishes both, but more important than either was the Gnostic Christian attitude toward women. The Roman Church perpetuated Judaism's suppression of the female gender by Jesus' virgin birth and the deification of Mother Mary, whereas the Gnostics supported the pagan formula with Mary Magdalene as his resurrecting goddess and consort. The Valentinians believed that the human soul was not complete until reunited in marriage. Only then could the creation of another human being take place. The sacred marriage was more of a sacrament to them than the Orthodox Christian Eucharist, and they venerated women as the source of wisdom, whereas Orthodox Christians continued to view women as vessels of evil and objects of persecution. Serious consideration of the Jesus Myth's tenets and concepts might very well bring about a much-needed reform of universal Christian religion. It could be transformed from a hated, despised institution of torture, hypocrisy, and inquisition into a loving, charitable, and comforting creed modern people could better relate to, and most importantly, make Christianity a real family religion. As much as our patriarchal, macho colleagues in Masonry, Islam, Judaism, and both the Orthodox and Protestant divisions of Christianity might object, family values are not protected or preserved by excessive moral restriction. Carrying the ferocious moralities of the Victorian era into the modern age destroyed more families than it held together. No one can deny that the biblical implication that women were the primordial vessels of evil instigated wide-ranging repressions in the Abrahamic religions of the world, creating far more evil than any worthwhile service they accomplished. The primary cause of this scriptural atrocity was the rewrite of the book of Genesis and the dogmatic protocols of Deuteronomy by a zealous gang of Levites whom Bible scholars refer to as the Deuteronomists, and they were led by Ezra and Isaiah. And what did they do? They rewrote Genesis, replacing Elyon, the most high god of King Solomon, the Phoenicians, and the original Israelites, with their own tribal war god and storm dragon Yahweh or Jehovah. Then they compounded this protest by making Eve, the female half of the original human soul, into a soulless vessel of evil, forever subservient to man under Yahweh's mandate. Jesus was the son of the original most high god, Elyon, whom Valentinius called Bithos, the supreme god of both genders. Valentinius conceived the thirty aeons of the pleroma, the Elohim of the heavens. He held that the human soul was divided at birth into male and female beings, and only reunited and ensouled by marriage, which became the original Christian sacrament representing the reunification of the divided human soul, and thus bestowing the generative power to create a child. This was the miracle humans shared with God. Marriage, the reunification and creative empowerment of the human soul, was the original sacrament of Christianity. Valentinius was almost elected Pope of Rome in the first century, and we might add that God granted the reunited human soul the power to create physical entities, children, and also astral beings to fulfill their desires. This was the most potent aspect of magic, and the reason why the sacred marriage had to be controlled and suppressed. Now, Plato tells us that all human problems result from counter-rotating planets and constellations in our microcosm, replicating the larger problems of the universal macrocosm. True as this may be astrologically and hermetically, it is safe to say that all social, cultural, and political problems result from human discontent. The discontent of the poor, the discontent of suppressed minorities, and representing half of the entire human population on planet Earth, the discontent of women. The liberal philosophers and politicians who created modern democracy made a gigantic strategic mistake. They enfranchised women before they liberated them. Exploiting this mistake were the greatest exponents of discontent, the Marxists, who were themselves a Christian heresy. They developed radical feminism and its cultural war affinity movements as political weapons. This is reason enough to begin the reform of Christianity by removing Jehovah from the New Testament. The New Testament frankly tells us that Jesus was of the order of Melchizedek, who was the high priest king of Elyon, the Most High God, who was, according to Valentinius, Biphos, the male and female matrix out of which the universe is created. Our revised and modernized Valentinian Christianity now includes the crucifixion. Now, the reason why it must be included is that it is an essential element in the Jesus myth. Mary Magdalene is the resurrecting goddess consort and an essential divinity in the Nessaean document scenario. She is the resurrecting goddess like Isis and Osiris, Ishtar and Tammuz, etc. She is the wife consort and mother, most importantly the wife consort. Even the Romans had to retain some part of this formula, so they adopted Mother Mary and the virgin birth in common with Mithra, Sol Invectus, Krishna, Vulcan, and even Buddha. Linking the Nessaean document with Valentinian Christianity accomplishes three primary reforms. Number one, it destroys the biblical patriarchy, making women completely equal to men in all respects of human endeavors on a meritorious basis. If a woman can't do ten pull-ups, she can't be a paratrooper, but if she's sufficiently skilled, she could pilot the airplane that the paratroopers jump from. Two, it removes most of the justifications for moral repression, blue laws and gender restrictions. Three, it creates a religion that replicates the inclusive divinity of both men and women as represented by the family, the basic human unit. This can be done without doing violence to holy scripture. We can still venerate Jehovah in his proper sphere. Valentinius himself was a pragmatist when it came to Jehovah. When he was under consideration for bishop of Rome, he realized that many of the church fathers did not share his veneration of women and were for retaining the posture of male dominance established in Genesis. Now, I'm not suggesting that Valentinius knew that that posture was contrived, but when questioned as to the father of Jesus, Valentinius compromised by saying that Jesus had two fathers. The first was his physical father, Joseph, whose seed carried the spirit of Jehovah, the Demiurge, and his second father was Byphos, the hidden god of the Pleroma, whom we now equate with Elion, the original god of the Israelites, known as El the Compassionate, in contrast to Jehovah the Vengeful. Of course, this left Valentinius out of the virgin birth argument and made him a supporter of the Demiurge, a secondary god with unfavorable reviews among the church fathers. Needless to say, he was passed over for pope. But in his modern revival, we are more than willing to make a place for mean old Jehovah. He can be Byphos' Demiurge in the physical kingdom, Malkuth, and we, the New Valentinian Christians, will call upon Jesus and Mary Magdalene to help us bring down love and goodness from the astral dimensions of the Azura above Malkuth. Let us celebrate the Nessaean document by reading the fragment that survives, the prayer in which Jesus tells his father how he will bring the Gnosis down to humanity. The primal principle of all things was the firstborn mind. The second poured forth from the firstborn was chaos. The third which received is the soul, and it is like a tin of deer which is hunted upon the earth by death which is constantly cries his power upon it. It is today in the kingdom of light, tomorrow it is flung into misery, plunged deep into the wool and tears. On joy follows tears, on tears follows the judge, on the judge follows death. And wandering in the labyrinth, it seeks in vain for escape. Jesus said, look father, upon this tormented being, how far from thy breath it wanders, sorrowful upon the earth. It seeks to flee the bitter chaos, but knows not how to win through. For its sake send me, father. During the seals I will descend, whole aeons will I travel through, all mysteries will I open, and the forms of gods will I display, and the hidden things of the holy way, Gnosis I call it, I will bestow. That was translated by George Meade, and by the way there's another version of that also translated by Meade which does the female soul. This translation of the soul is masculine and the other one, the soul, is feminine. And now you scholars out there on radio land, get your pencils out, here comes the bibliography. Okay, number one, Charles Francois Dupuy, The Origin of All Religious Worship, 1872. Number two, The Writings of Hippolytus, The Refutation of All Heresies, translated by Reverend J.H. McMillian, 1867. And three, Christ's Greatest Hermes, G.R.S. Meade, 1906 and 1992. Now that's it for tonight, I'll see you all next week at podbean.com, and as we begin a new year of the Hermetic Hour, good night and good magic.