Enlightenment Corner
Antiquity Unveiled

Part 4

   EXCERPT Notes | Pg 461

   “I salute you, sir :— That (making the sign of the Greek Cross with his forefingers) and that (making the sign of the Latin Cross in the same manner) have condemned more souls to ignorance, and perpetual contention, and opposition to truth, than all other things combined. I was not a theologian, and yet I had to disguise my true sentiment, in order to gain favor with Catholics and obtain a living. It will now be in order to give you a short history of my life. My name was Leonardo Bruni. I was engaged principally in literary matters, and by favor of the Medici family was promoted to the Secretaryship of the Government of Florence. I copied and endorsed a half dozen of the most absolute forgeries, which are now among the secret archives of the Vatican Library at Rome. They were intended to make the edicts of Theodosius appear as part of the decrees of the Roman Catholic Church, when in reality this was not the case. It seems there were two versions of the Christosite gospel. One was that given to the Greeks and Romans by Apollonius of Tyana, and the other was that which was brought among them by an Armenian, but unfortunately his name was erased from it. It appeared to me that the version of the Armenian was purer, and less corrupted than that of Apollonius. But as the followers of Apollonius were the more numerous, and constituted the strongest party, Theodosius sided with them, and massacred the other party. The second manuscript of the six that I copied, bore upon the life of Apollonius, and purported to be by Philostratus, but it was evident that Eusebius had changed the whole of that work to suit the Christos and Hesus doctrines, leaving such parts as it would not benefit his purpose to alter, and omitting such parts as conflicted with his views. The third manuscript was an old Carthagenian document. This manuscript showed that the Council of Nice had appropriated the “Ies” of the Phoenicians and made it “Jes.” The fourth document was an attempt to prove that Peter was the first pope, when the word “pope” in that document clearly showed that it was not known until the time of Constantine, and that then it was only used as applied to bishops. The fifth manuscript showed that shortly before my time (1180 or 1190) Pope Celestine III. destroyed all the tdocuments he could find that gave direct information about Iarchus’s or Apollonius’s version of the Hindoo gospels; and that what he had not destroyed had been rewritten to suit the Christian ideas of his time. The sixth manuscript that I had in my hands was a copy of the Druidical religion. It was beautifully written and showed plainly and positively that the Druids were strictly sun- worshippers and had instituted certain rites of initiation peculiar to themselves. I passed to spirit life in 1444, in Florence. I was at heart, and secretly, a materialist.”

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 462 J.M. Roberts Commentary

   This is a most remarkable communication in any light in which it may be viewed; but, viewed as an authentic and truthful communication, its importance as a contribution to human knowledge cannot be over estimated.
    Refer to Biographic Universelle for account of Bruni. This communication of Bruni was given on March 14, 1884. It contains a most remarkable corroboration of the communication given by Chrestus, the rival of Apollonius of Tyana, at Rome, in middle of the first century. [...]

   [Pg 464] It is not a little strange that a layman should have been chosen to be the apostolic secretary of the pope; and that he should have continued to hold that confidential and important position through four consecutive pontificates. The reason for this was, without doubt, his vast learning and unusual lingual acquirements. At the time, during which Bruni held the office of apostolic secretary, as well as during the three preceding centuries, the Catholic Church, through its laity as well as its priesthood, was ransacking the world to find and destroy everything in the way of ancient literature that would throw any light on the history of the first five centuries of the so-called Christian era. This work of Roman Catholic vandalism was begun in earnest in the Pontificate of Hildebrand, who as pope, took the name of Gregory VII, and was known in church history as The Great Gregory. His first act in that direction was the burning of the Palatine Apollo at Rome. That library was founded by Augustus Caesar, and contained the literature of the preceding eleven hundred years. Much of that literature was in the Greek, Asiatic and African tongues, which were then but little known among the Latin speaking priesthood, and it was impossible for Gregory or his subordinate clergy to know what that invaluable despository of learning contained that would reveal the real origin and character of the religion of which he was the chosen head. Fully qualified by nature for any crime that would be calculated to promote or perpetuate the religious fraud in which he was heart and soul engaged, he ordered the Library of the Palatine Apollo to be burned, with all its precious store of information. By such means did the Roman Catholic Church hope to conceal the religious imposition they were seeking to fasten upon the minds of humanity for truth. But for the honesty of an English monk, John of Salisbury, who, in the twelfth century, recorded that pontifical act of vandalism, it would have been impossible to have fastened that crime upon that unscrupulous and wicked foe of truth, The Great Gregory. It would seem that in the fifteenth century, the Latin clergy were no better qualified than those who preceded them to know what was contained in the Greek and other manuscripts which came into the possession of the church in the time of Bruni; for, if they had been that church would not have found itself compelled to entrust the translation of these manuscripts to a person who had not taken upon himself the priestly vows. The office to which Bruni was called is designated “apostolic secretary.” What were the duties of that office? Just such duties as the spirit of Bruni says he was engaged in; that of translating such missives and manuscripts as the Latin popes were unacquainted with. Thus, it seems clear that the spirit’s statement that he was put in possession of documents such as he described, is most probable, if not certainly true. Finding his statements true and consistent in so many respects, it raises the presumption that they were equally true as to the rest of the testimony.

   [Pg 466] In that statement of the spirit of Bruni, we have given to us the key that unlocks the closet in which has so long been concealed the skeleton of truth, murdered by the Roman Catholic church. In order that the reader may the better comprehend its startling import, we will have to make an inconveniently lengthy quotation concerning the theological and ecclesiastical doings of Theodosius, to whom the spirit refers. To do this as it should be done would require the limits of an extensive essay. But this will not be expected of us at this time. Treating of Theodosius, Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography, says:

   “Theodosius was the son of a Christian father whose ancestors acknowledged the creed of Nicaea; and next to Constantine he became the great glory of the Christian church. The merits of Gratian secured him from the orthodox Christians a rank equivalent to that of saint; and after his death they found a worthy successor to his orthodoxy in the more vigorous emperor of the East. [...]

   We here copy what Gibbons says of that edict in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 5, chap. 27: “Before he” (Theodosius) “took the field against the Goths, he received the sacrament of baptism from Ascolius, the orthodox bishop of Thessalonica; and as the emperor ascended from the holy font, still glowing with the warm feelings of regeneration, he dictated a solemn edict, which proclaimed his own faith, and prescribed the religion of his subjects. It is our pleasure (such is the imperial style) that all the nations, which are governed by our clemency and moderation should steadfastly adhere to the religion that was taught by St. Peter to the Romans, which faithful tradition has preserved, and which is now professed by the Pontiff Damasus, and by Peter, bishop of Alexandria. According to the discipline of the apostles and the doctrine of the gospel, let us believe the sole deity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, under an equal Majesty and a pious Trinity, we authorize the followers of this doctrine to assume the title of Catholic Christians; and as we judge that all others are extravagant madmen, we brand them with the name of heretics, and declare that their conventicles shall no longer usurp the respectable appellation of churches; besides the condemnation of divine justice, they must expect to suffer the severe penalties which our authority, guided by heavenly wisdom, shall think proper to inflict on them.”

   If that is a true version of the edict of the emperor, Theodosius, it establishes several facts beyond reasonable controversy. 1st. That Theodosius was frightened, by a serious illness, into becoming a convert to the doctrines professed by Pope Damasus and Peter, the bishop of Alexandria. In this edict, Peter, the bishop of Alexandria, must have been as high theological and ecclesiastical authority, in the estimation of Theodosius, as was the Pontiff Damasus. It is, therefore, quite clear that a bishop, at the time of issuing that edict, was of equal rank and authority with that of the Roman Pontiff. 2d. In the time of Theodosius, A. D. 379, there was no authentic record of what St. Peter had taught to the Romans, and all that Theodosius ventured to claim, on that head, was, that those alleged teachings “had been preserved by faithful traditions.” If there had been in existence, any authentic teachings of St. Peter to the Romans, Theodosius must have known of it; and, as he did not, and based his action upon “traditional statements” only, it is very certain that the Christian Scriptures were not regarded as historical records of the events they narrated, by Theodosius, or that St. Peter did not teach the doctrines therein contained to the Romans. Remember that this was more than fifty years after the Council of Nice had canonized the Apollonian Gospel and Epistles concerning Christos-Prometheanism. What then were the faithfully preserved traditions concerning the teachings of St. Peter to the Romans, to which Theodosius in his edict alludes? We leave the reader to answer as his or her reason dictates. 3d. Until Theodosius commanded his subjects to believe in the doctrine of the Trinity, and enforced his commands upon them by the most inhuman methods, that doctrine was rejected and resisted by the Greek and Roman followers of the Christos of the Hindoo Gospels, the only Christos that was then known. That so senseless and unnatural a doctrine should have been forced upon any people, by any means, however tyrannical, is a mystery even more mysterious than the arithmetic that can make one three, and three one. 4th. Until Theodosius issued that edict, there were no persons at Rome or elsewhere who had been called “Catholic” Christians. If there had been, Theodosius would not have felt it necessary to say to his Roman subjects: “We authorize the followers of this doctrine” (the Trinity) “to assume the title of Catholic Christians.” Prior to that time they had not assumed that title, or if they had done so, they had done it without adequate authority under the laws of Rome. 5th. And finally the persecutions instituted by the Christian Theodosius, were visited upon the Arian followers of the same Christos, whose teachings Theodosius professed to follow, and not upon the followers of the so-called heathen gods of the Roman Pantheon. Indeed, it becomes more and more evident that in the reign of Theodosius, the worship of the other gods of the people of the Roman Empire had been abandoned for the Apollonian and Chrestusite versions or modifications of the Christosite teachings of the Brahmans and Buddhists of India.
   Now, in order to give the reader an idea of what the religious controversy was about, in which Theodosius took so conspicuous a part as a bigoted, cruel, and cowardly partisan, we feel warranted in referring them to Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” Vol. 5, chap. 27.
   It was in the manner set forth in Gibbon’s work above referred to, that Christianity was fastened upon the Roman world, in the latter part of the fourth century, prior to which time such a thing as a Christian church was unknown. Before that time the followers of Christ, as Gibbon and the church historians call them, were the followers of Apollonius of Tyana, and Chrestus, his opponent, who both taught the doctrines attributed to Christos in the Brahmanical and Buddhistic religions of India. This will become apparent when the communication of Chrestusas already given, see page 441, is re-read. It is the church that was founded by such measures as those resorted to by Theodosius, that to-day is seeking to subvert the religious liberty of the people of America, and whose impious minions aim to subordinate it to the gowned humbug of Rome. If any religion was ever conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity, it is the religion which Theodosius and his priestly minions, by violence and most iniquitous persecutions, fastened upon the Roman world. Remember that the victims of their cruelty were as much, or even more so, worshippers of God and Christ than themselves, and that their only offence was, that as followers of Christ they refused to have the ancient worship of Christos subverted by those whom Theodosius in his edicts called “Catholic Christians.” The Arians were the followers of Christos, as his doctrines were taught to Alexander the Great, and his Macedonian Generals, by Calanus, the Gymnosophic Christosite, while Theodosius and his party of Christosites adhered to the Christosite teachings of Apollonius of Tyana, with perhaps a few unimportant modifications. The two versions of the Christosite gospel, of which the spirit, Bruni, speaks, as constituting the first of the manuscripts which he says he copied, in order to show that Theodosius’ edicts were a part of the decrees of the Roman Catholic church, and related to Jesus Christ instead of to the Apollonian teachings concerning the Hindoo Christ or Christos, were no doubt in existence as late as the early part of the fifteenth century. Where are they now? The spirit thinks, or says, they are in the secret archives of the Roman Catholic church, at Rome. If that is correct, the world may yet know just what those two versions of the Hindoo Christosite gospel were.

   [....]

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 474

   “I greet you, sir:— I will begin my communication by stating that I persecuted the Albigenses, in my mortal life, in which I was afterwards helped by Simon de Montfort, and I founded the Order of Dominican Friars. There are tens of thousands of spirits who will curse me for what I am now about to say, and that is, that I am sorry I ever helped to found such a society of fanatics, for in spirit life I see the sad results of superstition and bigotry. The worst part of my punishment results from the fact that I knew I was helping to uphold a fraud, for I had read the works relating to both the Christos of the East and the Hesus of the West, and so did all the popes who lived from eight hundred until my time. The greater part of those works that I read were written in Italian, and I received them from Venice, and not from Rome. The Catholicism of spirit life differs considerably from that among mortals, in the following particulars: The most rabid Catholics we have in the spirit life are those who lived on earth between the eighth and fourteenth centuries. They are the persecuting class of spirits, and would, if they could, destroy everything that does not belong to the Mother church. My coming here to-day severs all connection with Catholicism for me forever. I made up my mind to do this some twenty years back, and this is my first effort to free myself altogether. I intend to search for a place of rest until I am recruited, and I expect to find that rest only amongst the Buddhists. And, in conclusion, I will say that I hope that popes, bishops and priests will cease to torment mankind with their gods, whether as mortals or spirits.”

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 474 J.M. Roberts Commentary

   Little did we think that this once bigoted and cruel Catholic leader would ever come back to declare his recantation of Catholicism. How sincere he may have been we do not pretend to know, nor do we care. It is enough to know that he found the opportunity and the occasion to declare his deliverance from a bondage, in which he had been held for fully seven hundred years. In order that the reader may know who Dominic de Guzman was, we refer to the Encyclopaedia Americana.
   In speaking of the aid of Simon de Montfort, that he received in his persecution of the Albigenses, the spirit has allusion to the war carried on by orders of the Roman Pontiff against Count Raymond of Toulouse, during which the most cruel butcheries of peaceful human beings any where recorded in history, took place. As we said before, we cannot know how truthfully the spirit spoke as being repentant, but if he spoke truthfully about the matter, the power of Catholicism is fast coming to pieces in spirit life. Whether it is or not, the coming of these spirits show that there is some powerful influences exerted against it that brings dismay to the hearts of the most obdurate of these leaders.

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 475

   “I greet you, Sir: — I was known when here as Louis the Meek, a king, in A. D. 824 and later. I was the propagator of the teachings of Dionysius the Areopagite. It was called the religion or teaching of the Mystics. This Dionysius has been supposed to have lived at four distinct periods, in the first, third, fourth, and fifth centuries, by different writers. The fact of the matter is, that he was a disciple of Apollonius of Tyana, and lived in the first century. The mysticism that he taught was a combination of the Eleusinian Mysteries with the Christosite teachings of Apollonius. The manner in which I received a knowledge of them was, through one Balbus, an advocate of those mystical teachings. They were in fact the doctrines of Jupiterean-Christosism; but for seven hundred years after my time they were so tampered with and altered by religious fanatics, who called themselves mystics, that they bear very little evidence now of their original character. The sum and substance of the whole of the doctrines of the Mystics was, that they rested on the divine (so-called) history of Christos. In the Eleusinian Mysteries it was represented that when Latona was with child by Jupiter, she gave birth to Adonai; but, in the modification of that doctrine, as it was taught by Dionysius the Arieopagite, she gave birth to Christos, and it was to this god to which the theology of the Mystics related. On my reaching the spirit life I made the most diligent search to find this god Christos, but although I have met the spirits of millions of his followers, none of them could say they had ever seen him. The Christians have tampered very much with the teachings of the mystics, and they are now using them, so modified, as their own.”

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 476 J.M. Roberts Commentary

   Refer to Nouvelle Biographie Generale for account of Louis the Pious. [...]

   [Pg 476] Louis the Meek sets out by telling us that he was the propagator of the teachings of Dionysius the Areopagite who was the founder of the Mystic school of theology and philosophy. Who was this Dionysius? We take the following concerning him from Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography:

   “Dionysius, surnamed Areopagite, an Athenian, who is called by Suidas a most eminent man, who rose to the height of Greek erudition. He is said to have first studied at Athens, and afterwards at Heliopolis in Egypt. [...] He is further said to have died the death of a martyr under most cruel tortures. Whether Dionysius Areopagite ever wrote anything, is highly uncertain; but there exists under his name a number of works of a Mystico Christian nature, which contain ample evidence that they are the productions of some Neo-Platonists, and could scarcely have been written before the fifth or sixth century of our era. Without entering upon any detail about those works, which would be out of place here, we need only remark that they exercised a very great influence upon the formation and development of Christianity in the middle ages. At the time of the Carlovingian emperors, those works were introduced into Western Europe in a Latin translation made by Scotus Erigena, and gave the first impulse to that mystic and scholastic theology which afterwards maintained itself for centuries.”

   [Pg 477] To show how anxious even so learned a Christian as Dr. Lardner was to get rid of Dionysius the Areopagite and his writings, we will quote vol. ii., page 687 (London, 1829), of his works. He says:

   “I need not stay to show that our Dionysius of Alexandria did not write any notes or commentaries upon the pretended Dionysius the Areopagite (as some have thought), it having been already done by others. And, as Tillemont says, there are now scarce any persons, of ever so little learning, who believe the works ascribed to St. Dionysius the Areopagite were composed so early as the third century.

   “It has been observed how tew of Dionysius’ works, either tracts or epistles, have come down to us entire. Du Pin says, the loss of his works is one of the most considerable of this kind which we could suffer. We have, however, divers fragments, which are very valuable, and some of considerable length.”

   From the testimony of Louis the Meek, the Carlovingian emperor and propagator of the Mystic Theology of Dionysius, given through a medium who could not have had any knowledge about the matter, that the loss of the works of Dionysius, which Du Pin deplores, and which Dr. Lardner rejoices at, is not so great as either of them imagine. Those works are in existence, beyond all reasonable question in the Latin translation of them by Scotus Erigena. [...]

   [Pg 478] But we now come to a more surprising statement of the spirit, when he says: “The fact of the matter is that he (Dionysius) was a disciple of Apollonius of Tyana, and lived in the first century.” We have, in the course of the past four or five years, published volumes of spirit testimony on the part of the spirits of ancient men and women of historical note, all concurring in showing that Apollonius of Tyana was the St. Paul of the New Testament, and the real founder of the Christian religion; but nothing that has heretofore been given has been more conclusive of that fact than this testimony of Louis the Meek. If it is true that Dionysius the Areopagite was a disciple of Apollonius of Tyana, and left a Mystic Theology, the written doctrines of which came into the hands of Louis the Meek, then there is no escape from the conclusion that Apollonius of Tyana was the Paul of Acts.
   We find it said, Acts xvii., 33, 34, that after Paul had spoken to the people of Athens in the midst of Mars Hill, “So Paul departed from among them. Howbeit, certain men clave unto him, and believed; among the which was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.” Here we have Dionysius the Areopagite identified as the adherent of Paul of The Acts of the Apostles. Now we have the positive testimony of the spirit of Louis the Meek that not only was he a propagator of the teachings of Dionysius the Areopagite, but that the latter was a disciple of the Christosite teachings of Apollonius of Tyana. If this was not the fact, why would the spirit have testified that it was so? As there are so many concurring circumstances to show that the general testimony of the spirit is correct, why should we doubt the correctness of that part of his testimony? We can see no good reason why we should doubt it, and therefore accept it as truthful and correct.

   [Pg 480] The date A. D. 824, given by the spirit as the time he received the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite and his conversion to his doctrines is quite consistent with probability, as Louis was in the middle of his reign at that time, which began in 814 and continued to 840. Indeed the communication affords a very remarkable explanation as to the manner in which the works of Dionysius the Areopagite were introduced in Western Europe in the time of the Carlovingian Emperors, and how it was that his mystic and scholastical theology took such a root there, that it maintained itself for centuries.
   At this point we had closed our review of the communication, having no thought of pursuing the subject, when we had another sitting with the medium, whose spirit guide said: “Mr. Roberts, the spirit of Louis the Meek could not tell you who the Balbus was from whom he obtained the knowledge of the teachings of Dionysius the Areopagite. He says he was strongly opposed by the spirits, who did all they could to prevent him from telling you anything about the matter. He wanted to tell you that the Balbus of whom he spoke was Michael Balbus the emperor of Constantinople. He says he succeeded Leo the Armenian.” Judge of my surprise on following the clew that was thus most unexpectedly given, to find conclusive proof that the information was correct in every essential respect. Not only was Michael Balbus the imperial contemporary of Louis le Debonnaire, but he has always been regarded as an enemy of the Roman Catholic Church. I take the following brief account of Michael Balbus from Rose’s Biographical Dictionary:

   "Michael II., emperor of the East surnamed the Stammerer, a native of Armoricum in Phrygia, was an officer of rank under Nicephorus, and was a principal instrument in raising Leo the Armenian to the throne. After the murder of Leo (Dec. 820), Michael was invested with the purple. Though he favored the Iconoclasts, he permitted the worship of images beyond the precincts of the capital. He is therefore reckoned among the enemies of the Catholic Church.”

   We may thus see that nothing is more probable than that there was a close bond of sympathy existing between the two emperors, Louis of France and Germany, and Michael Balbus of the Eastern Roman Empire, who were alike the enemies of the Catholic Church. It was quite natural that a Phrygian, as Michael Balbus was, whose native language was Greek and who had at his command the vast stores of ancient Greek literature that had been collected at Constantinople, should have met there with the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite, and have been so impressed by them as to desire to seek to propagate them. With that view, no doubt, he sent Greek copies of them to Louis the Meek who had them translated into Latin and not improbably by Scotus Erigena. Indeed it would seem that Scotus was the person who brought the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite from Michael Balbus to Louis le Debonnaire. As the absolute proof of the truth of this communication goes very far to settle the identity of St. Paul with Apollonius of Tyana, as well as of the New Testament itself with the writings of Apollonius, a brief account of Scotus Erigena may not be out of place here. The Encyclopaedia Americana says of him:

   “Erigena (John Scotus). The birth place of this eminent scholar and metaphysician has been disputed; notwithstanding the patronymic usually affixed to his name, signifying the Irishman, the weight of evidence seems to predominate in favor of Ayershire in Scotland. At an early age he visited Greece, and especially Athens, where he devoted himself to the study of Oriental as well as classical literature, and became no mean proficient in logic and philosophy. Charles the Bald, king of France, invited him to his court, and encouraged him in the production of some metaphysical disquisitions, which gave great offence to the church by the boldness with which he impugned the doctrines of transubstantiation and predestination. But his grand offence was the translating into Latin of a pretended work of Dionysius the Areopagite, the supposed first Christian preacher in France. Many passages in this treatise, although popular among the clergy of the East, were extremely obnoxious to the Romish hierarchy; and a peremptory order from Pope Nicholas to Charles, commanding the immediate transmission of the culprit to Rome, induced that monarch to connive at his escape into England, in preference to delivering him up to the vengeance of the papal see. Alfred the Great received Erigena gladly, and placed him at the head of the establishment lately founded by him at Oxford, then called the King’s Hall, and now more generally known as Brazennose College. Here he continued to lecture on mathematics, logic and astronomy, about the year 879; after a residence of a little more than three years, disputes arising, traditionally said to have proceeded from the severity of his discipline, he gave up his professorship, and retired to the abbey of Malmesbury, where he again superintended a number of pupils, whom the fame of his learning had drawn to him. The time of his decease or murder — for he is said to have been stabbed to death by his scholars, with iron styles or bodkins, then in use for writing — is variously stated as having occurred in the years 874, 884, 896; it is however more credibly asserted, that the jealousy of the monks rather than the insubordination of his pupils, was the real cause of his death, in as much as his heterodoxy had given great offence to their fraternity. [...]

   [Pg 483] Through the communication of the spirit of Louis the Meek, we have the fact established that the work which Scotus Erigena translated into Latin, was really the writing of Dionysius the Areopagite, and not a pretended work of that author of what has been acknowledged to be mystical theology. We have, therefore, in that Latin translation of Dionysius’s theological writings, an extant approximation to the theological teachings, not of St. Paul, whose convert it is alleged he was, but of the writings of Apollonius of Tyana, whose convert he really was. This most important theological fact is made positively certain by the damaging blunder of the writer of The Acts, in alluding to the fact that Dionysius the Areopagite was a convert to the preaching of Paul at Athens. We can very well understand why the work that Erigena translated was pronounced spurious by the Roman hierarchy, and why they should have sought to destroy the man who possessed such perfect knowledge of the real origin and character of the religion they were propagating as something that was genuine and original. [...]

   [Pg 484] Nothing is more certain than that we have a Latin version of the theological teachings of Dionysius the Areopagite in the translation of Scotus Erigena. It is because it is a true version of the writings of the former that its genuineness, or the genuineness of the original Greek, from which the translation was made, has been denied by Christian writers. The spirit says that Dionysius the Areopagite was a convert to the doctrines of Apollonius, and taught his Christosite doctrines combined with the Eleusinian mysteries and ceremonials. It is undoubtedly this evident fact, as disclosed in Scotus Erigena’s Latin translation, that made the Catholic Church so hostile to him; and to seek to discredit the work he, Scotus, attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite. In their hostility to that learned writer, the Catholic hierarchy betrayed the secret they sought to conceal, and which has been completely revealed by the spirit communication of Louis the Meek.

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 485

   “I salute you, sir: — I am here, to-day, as a friend, although I expected to come as a foe. I thought better of it. It was stated by a spirit that I interfered with manuscripts relating to the Life of Apollonius of Tyana. It was not with that work that I interfered; but it was with the writings of Potamon and Plotinus. When here I was known as Pope Celestine III., about A. D. 1190. The manuscripts that I suppressed were a combination of the Apollonian, Gnostic and Plotinist schools. Plotinus was nothing more nor less than what you call a medium. We called it inspiration. He was influenced by the spirits of Plato and Pythagoras. Those manuscripts, or what is left of them, can be found in the library of Florence. I suppose I will excite the rage of thousands of spirits who will curse me for what I have said, and charge me with having betrayed my trust. But I am weary of the monotony of Catholicism. I want something broader and more liberal; and when I return to my spirit state I will search for the heavens of philosophy and science. I feel deeply indebted to you for this opportunity to free myself.”

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 485 J.M. Roberts Commentary

   I translate the following concerning Celestine III., from the Biographie Universelle:

   “Celestine III. was elected pope on the 20th of March 1191. He was known under the name of Cardinal Hyacinth, Deacon, with the title of St. Mary. He was aged eighty-five years, and succeeded Clement III. Upon his elevation, Henry VI., designated emperor, went to Italy to have himself crowned, and to claim his rights over Sicily, as chief, under Constance, his wife; but as he appeared at the head of his troops in hostile attitude, the consecration of the pope was deferred, which equally retarded the coronation of the emperor. The Romans went before Henry, and promised him that he should be crowned if he would give up his castles of Tusculum, which disturbed the country. Henry agreed to this proposition. It is said that at his coronation the pope pushed the crown with his foot which the Cardinals raised and placed on the head of Henry. * * * Celestine zealously urged the crusade and sought to incite the princes to that enterprise. He approved of the creation of the Order of Teutonic Knights which was formed in Palestine. He excommunicated Leopold, Duke of Austria, for having held King Richard a prisoner, against the rights of the people. He complained against the divorce of Philip Augustus; but did not follow it up. The end of that affair belonged to later times. Pope Celestine died on 8th of January, 1198, after a pontificate of six years, nine months, and nine days. The Cardinals refused to allow him to name his successor in his last moments, under pretext that the election ought to be free, but in reality because some among them specially aspired to succeed him. Innocent III bore away the prize. There are extant seventeen letters of Celestine III.”

   We have no means of knowing what works Celestine III had a hand in destroying, but we may infer that as he was succeeded by Innocent III, who was very largely concerned in the destruction of the anti-Christian literature of that period, that the latter only sought to complete a work which his predecessor had begun before him. As we have no certain means of corroborating this communication it will have to pass for what it is worth on the mere statement of the spirit. There can be little doubt, however, that the writings of Potamon and Plotinus, whatever they were, were what the spirit describes them, as embracing the doctrines of Apollonius of Tyana, the Gnostic, and Plotinist schools, and it is equally certain that they have been carefully suppressed by the Roman Catholic authorities.

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 487

   “Good afternoon. — In this mortal life, I was known as John Asser, abbot of Sherburn, England. I was the companion, teacher and biographer of Alfred the Great. At the time I lived on earth, about A. D. 900, (I passed to spirit life in 910), it required the greatest effort on my part to make the people of the diocese relinquish the Hesusism of their ancestors. At that time a majority of the Irish saints, and early English saints, were more or less believers in this Hesusism. I think the best evidence of this now extant will be found in Oxford College, and also in the private library of the Duke of Cambridge. It is amongst Catholic peers and in their libraries that you must look for the most valuable information on this subject — they having taken more care of the ancient manuscripts which were left to them by their ancestors; and, as a Catholic, I know that the Catholics have the most perfect information in relation to all religions that were taught, from the time of Alexander the Great until the thirteenth century. At Sherburn, in my time, and among the manuscripts of Alfred the Great, there were about fourteen crucified gods treated of, whose history had come from the north of Europe, from Cappadocia, Syria, Thessalonica, Greece and Rome. Each of these and other countries contributed their god or gods, who had died for the sins of mankind. On examining into the lives of these various gods, I found there was a similarity between the histories of all of them. They were all performers of miracles — all born of virgins — and all were crucified or killed in some other way. As for myself I was content to teach Jesus-Hesusism. One Sunday it was Jesus that I preached, and the next Sunday it was Hesus, in order to keep peace between the two parties in my diocese, and I must say that I was a hypocrite in teaching either of them, for in reality, I was a Platonist philosopher, and spent almost all my time in studying the Electic writings of the reformed Platonist or Alexandrian school of philosophy. So, sir, was my life spent.”

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 487 J.M. Roberts Commentary

   I take the following account of John Asser from Chambers’ Encyclopaedia:

   “John Asser, the learned and congenial biographer of Alfred the Great, was a monk of St. Davids, from the Latin name of which, Menevia, he is termed Asserius Menevensis. About the year 880, his reputation for learning and piety procured him an invitation to the Court of Alfred, where he resided, at intervals, during the rest of the King’s life, assisting him in his studies, and enjoying an affectionate confidence, of which he seems to have been every way worthy. The king promoted him to various dignities, and finally made him bishop of Sherburn. The Saxon Chronicle fixes the date of his death in the year 910. Several works have, with more or less authority, been attributed to Asser. The only one undoubtedly his, by which we can now judge of him as a man and a writer, is his Annales Rerum Alfredi Magni. This simple and most interesting narrative was first published in 1754, by Archbishop Parker. Its trustworthiness has recently (1842) been questioned by Mr. Thomas Wright in the article Asser, of his Biographie Britannica Literaria. This gentlemen has assuredly made the most of the objection to its reliability that can be legitimately urged. Lingard and Dr. Pauli have replied to these, and, at present, the general impression of scholars of Anglo-Saxon literature is, that there is no good reason for doubting its general accuracy and fidelity. The last edition is that of Wise (Oxford, 8vo, 1722).”

   Until that communication was given we had never heard of John Asser, bishop of Sherburn, or knew aught of his history. We can, therefore, see no reason why we should question the authenticity of this spirit testimony. From what the spirit says, we have every reason to believe that his annals concerning the time of Alfred the Great is correct. We strongly suspect that the reason why the correctness of that work was questioned was because Asser had very frankly made known in it, the fact to which he testifies as a spirit, which was, that as late as A. D. 900, Christianity and Hesusism were taught from the same priestly lips, in England, and particularly in the Christian diocese of Sherburn. The spirit seems to think that the proof of this fact is still extant in ancient English manuscripts yet to be found in the libraries of the Roman Catholic peers of Great Britain.

   [....]

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 490

   The spirit who gave the following communication was evidently unwilling to testify what he knew concerning the true history of the time in which he lived; under protest, however, his statement was as follows:

   “I do not want to speak, but I am caught in the working of my own trap. There are two kinds of pyschology — one in which it is necessary that a mortal shall perform the operation — in the other, a spirit is the operator upon a spirit through a medium. Myself and other spirits have been using this latter phase of psychology to defeat all efforts exerted in the direction of what you call progression. To-day I am such a psychologized spirit, and I am held by four minds — one is the spirit of Aronomar, another Leibig, and acting with them are Franklin and Jefferson. I am closely watched in what I say, and must speak the truth; what I will say, therefore, will be positive, brief, and to the point. I suppose there never was a person in power, who, in the course of his mortal life, exercised his will more severely than myself — in fact, I was known as the enemy of princes and heretics. A Pope, preceding my time, had made all temporal power subordinate to the spiritual power, so-called, of the Church; but in my time, not long afterwards, there was a united effort of princes and prelates to free themselves from the absolute power of the Church of Rome. One of my most deadly enemies was Albert of Cologne, though he was a seeming friend. So artful was he, in protecting himself, however, that I could find no pretext by which I could convict him of treachery. This Albert of Cologne was the teacher of Thomas Aquinas, afterwards called Saint Thomas Aquinas. You will remember a communication from the spirit of Cyrillus Lucaris, patriarch of Constantinople, in regard to a celebrated copy of the Scripture, sent by him to the king of England. It is in what is called vellum, and beautifully bound. It lacks just twelve pages of being perfect. They were taken away and copied by Albert of Cologne. Those twelve pages and the marginal notes, established the fact that that book was a Plotinian or Eclectic manuscript, or scripture, combining the Apollonian and Christosite systems in contradistinction to our sacred books of that time, which were, in reality, but copies of the writings of Marcion and Lucian, in relation to the Greek god Prometheus. The latter were preferred because thay were less liable to be disputed, and there was no historical evidence to disprove them, except what was entirely in the hands of the Roman Catholics. The Apollonian system was so well supported by historical evidence in my time, that it could not be disputed. But the Marcion and Lucian system was in such a position that its enemies could bring nothing against it historically. It was this system of Marcion and Lucian that Hildebrand and myself sought to establish beyond any power to overthrow it. I am desired further to state that psychology is the main instrument used by spirits to lead those astray, who seek to give the truth of spirit intercourse, with mortals, to the world. By our psychological power exerted upon them we confuse their senses, and thus cause them to act in ways that will lessen or destroy their influence. The fact is that, as spirits, we are adepts in the use of this power; and we use it for the purpose of propagating our ideas wherever we think it will serve our purposes. We often carry this power to the extent of obsessing and possessing those whom we feel can obstruct the propagation of our views. I was known as Innocent III.”

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 491 J.M. Roberts Commentary

   Refer to the American Cyclopaedia for account of Innocent III.
   The reader can well judge, from the sketch of the life of Innocent III in the American Cyclopaedia, how far the communication which purports to come from his spirit is characteristic of him, We feel so sure of the identity of the spirit and the authenticity and correctness of the communication, that we feel little inclined to multiply words in that connection. [...]

   [Pg 494] But now we have the positive testimony of a most unwilling witness, none other than the haughty and imperious pontiff, Innocent the III., testifying to the fact that he knew that the religion which he taught, in the name of Jesus Christ, had no relation whatever to that God, Son of God, or alleged divinity. He tells us that he knew of the existence of the Alexandrian MS of the Scriptures which was sent by Cyrillus Lucaris to king Charles I. of England in 1628. The spirit of Innocent III. tells us that that manuscript contains the Eclectic version of the Apollonian and Christosite systems, which would indicate that Apollonius did not teach essentially a Christosite system but one sufficiently analogous to the latter to admit of their being combined in accordance with the fundamental principle of Eclecticism. But this is not all, the spirit further tells, that Marcion and Lucian, or, in other words, the evangelists, Mark and Luke, undertook to adapt the teachings of Apollonius to the doctrines concerning the Greek Saviour Prometheus; and that the versions of Marcion and Lucian were preferred by the Christian priesthood because they were less liable to be disputed as being authentic, and there was no historical evidence except what was in the hands of the Christian authorities, that could be used to discredit them. Nor is this all, for the spirit goes further, and tells us, that in his time, as late as 1216, the Apollonian system was so well supported by historical evidence that it could not be disputed. This is a truly startling disclosure of the wilful deception that was practised in the name of Jesus Christ, by the Roman Catholic Church of the thirteenth century, of which church Innocent was a most distinguished representative. But, as if to emphasize this self-condemnatory disclosure, the spirit says: “It was this system of Marcion and Lucian that Hildebrand and myself sought to establish beyond all power to overthrow it.” It is a fact that the spirit of Hildebrand or Gregory VII., also called the Great Gregory, long before returned, and through the same medium confessed that he ordered the Library of the Palatine Apollo, at Rome, to be burned (about 1080) in order to destroy the historical proof there collected and deposited, of the Apollonian origin and character of the Christian religion. That Innocent III. should connect himself with Gregory in seeking to complete the concealment which the latter begun, by that crime against learning and truth, of burning the most valuable depositories of knowledge which the world ever possessed, shows, in the most remarkable manner, that the spirit was not only telling the truth in what he said, but that he fully understood the crushing import of his testimony as against the deception, in which, as a Roman Pontiff, he had borne so prominent and important a part.
   But this is very far from being all that the reference of this spirit to the Alexandrian Version of the Scriptures demonstrates. That renowned manuscript seems to bear within itself the most unquestionable evidence of the truth of what Innocent III. said concerning it. He told us that, while it was in reality an Apollonian or Eclectic Scripture that it was such scripture, as modified by Marcion and Lucian, to adapt it to the Greek doctrines concerning Prometheus, the Greek Saviour. Now as the reader has seen, that celebrated version does not contain the twenty-four first chapters of Matthew’s Gospel; does not contain from John vi, 50 to vii, 52, and does not contain from 2. Cor. iv, 13, to xii, 6. Why those portions of what were established as canonical Christian Scriptures are absent in the Alexandrian MS. we are not told by those who have made a critical examination of that celebrated and very ancient version of the New Testament. That it is a mutilated production, or copy of some older manuscript or manuscripts, is very certain, but by whom mutilated, to what extent mutilated, or to what end, we can only conjecture with the present light before us. But there is one very significant fact which goes very far to corroborate the testimony of spirit Innocent III. and that is that while the Gospels of Mark and Luke are given in full and without mutilation in the Alexandrian Version, nearly the whole of the Gospel of Matthew is gone and a very important part of the Gospel of John, as well. Now, nothing is more certain than that the Gospels of Matthew and John contained substantially the teachings of Apollonius and the Essenes in the first century, while the Gospels of Marcion and Lucian were but modified versions of the two older and first named Gospels, and in no sense original gospels. It is true Innocent III. does not claim that he had anything to do with suppressing the portions of the Alexandrian MS. which seem to be missing; and we may therefore infer that the MS. did not contain the missing portions of Canonical scriptures in his time, but he states that Albert of Cologne did mutilate it, by removing twelve pages of it, which, in connection with marginal notes that established the fact, that that celebrated writing was but a modified version of the writings of Apollonius of Tyana, and the Eclectic school of which Plotinus was so distinguished an exponent, and which school made the teachings of Apollonius so prominent a feature of their system of theology and philosophy.

   [....]

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 498

   “My best greeting to you:— During my mortal life I was claimed as one who was deeply versed in the sciences of my day, but my biographers, after my death, thought I had shown a weakness in regard to one science, which is called Astrology. They have, however, made a mistake as to what I understood astrology to be. As a priest, I had no other way to reach the minds of my people than by disguising what I sought to teach them. I therefore taught certain planets affected the life of man. If I had taught openly what I thus sought to impart to them, I would have been burned as a heretic; so I used that science in an allegorical and metaphysical sense, to convey important truth to the minds of those whom I wished to reach. And I will here say, that the astrologers, from the tenth to the fifteenth century, were of the utmost importance to humanity, in keeping science alive. Through astrology, I was enabled to teach who the real Jesus was, and to show that the whole story was borrowed from the stars. To those who had my explanatory key, which I furnished to those whom I wished to understand me, the truth was known. By this means I helped to build up a system which was afterwards taken up by the philosophers and scientists of the seventeenth century, and which you, of the nineteenth century, are reaping the benefits of. Many commentators of the present age say that some of the greatest intellects of the middle ages ruined themselves by advocating astrology; but to them I would say, they do not know what the real motive of their action was. Had they known it, they would have hesitated before they condemned. I know of no misery that can equal that of the life of a man who lives in an age when he can hardly find one mind with which he can hold converse. Therefore I turned to the inner man for support — to the spirits; and long after every eye in the town was closed in sleep, I held communion with those spirits who had passed on before me; and through their teachings I gained such comfort as no mortal tongue can express. It is true that to the man of science there is no aid like that of the immortals. If the scientists of to-day would only place themselves in rapport with those spirit helpers, they would enter a domain from which materialistic science is ever debarred. I lived in 1280. My name was Albertus Magnus, Archbishop of Ratisbonne.”

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 499 J.M. Roberts Commentary

   Refer to Biographie Generale for account of Albertus Magnus.
   Such is the account given of this extraordinary man, who has been so greatly misrepresented and misunderstood by those who have written regarding him and his works. He was not the superstitious slave of delusion that they supposed him to have been; nor was he the ignorant votary of what is called astrology. He, as a returning spirit, plainly tells us that he was a Spiritualist and a medium, and communed with spirits as Spiritualists do at this time; and that he only professed a belief in the science of astrology to conceal that fact from the Catholic priesthood, who would have burned him as a heretic had they really known what he was doing. While he professed to have faith in astrology, he tells us it was merely to conceal the fact that he was a Spiritualist and held communion with spirits. He tells us that he used astrology in an allegorical and metaphysical sense, to teach that which he knew to be truth, but which he did not dare to teach openly. No doubt this spirit speaks a great truth when he says that the astrologers from the 10th to the 15th century kept science alive. We have not the opportunity to get into the real meaning of the teachings of Albertus Magnus, but we have no doubt he went as far as he dared to go, in stating what he knew in relation to the astrological character of the mythical Jesus. It would seem that as late as the latter part of the 13th century, Albertus Magnus attempted to organize a Spiritual movement, in which he was unsuccessful, only because of the bitter hostility of the Roman Catholic priesthood to any Spiritual movement whatever. How pathetic is the statement of this spirit, that nothing can equal the misery of the man who, knowing that which is true, does not dare to disclose it to a contemporary. Albertus Magnus, through the lips of an organism, the mind of which had no cognizance of his existence, thus vindicates his mortal labor against the misunderstanding which ignorance has sought to fasten upon his memory. Truly may it be said that the secrets of the past are being brought to the light, through the means of Modern Spiritualism.

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 500

   “I greet you, sir:— The Greeks — that is the Pagan Greeks, so-called, and the Mohammedan Turks, held the Christians in derision for their foolish aping of the communion ceremonies of the Eleusinian Mysteries of old, in which Ceres, the goddess of corn, and Bacchus, the god of wine, formed the principal figures. There was no gospel like the gospel of Christos of India, which was translated into the Greek tongue, and formed the worship of the Greeks, as it constituted almost the whole basis of the philosophic system put in shape by Pythagoras, the Samian Sage. In later years it was this gospel of Pythagoras that Apollonius of Tyana discussed with Iarchus. But the manuscript of the original gospel of Christos, that was in possession of Iarchus, was so superior to the version of it by Pythagoras, that Apollonius became a Gymnosophist. It was the custom in those days, when two of the most learned persons met to compare views, that they should have no witnesses; so no one knew what took place between Iarchus and Apollonius, except what either of them choose to tell. They made the mistake of supposing, that what they received from their spirit guides came from God or his messengers. That was the mistake of antiquity, and it is the mistake of to-day. One medium thinks he or she has better and superior guides to those of others. There are many places to-day, if mortals had the time and money to visit and explore them, where the positive proof of these communications could be obtained, commencing with Bodleian Library, then at Venice, and at Rome, but principally among the Armenian and Maronite convents. And if the Christian missionaries do not succeed in destroying the manuscripts of the Grand Lamas, as they descended from one to another, all the evidence that any scholar could want to show that from Persia the Zoroastrian wave went to India, and the countries beyond, would be had. Crishna served as the god who put Zoroastrianism in its proper shape; while Buddha does the same for the Gymnosophic Christos. But both these systems were more or less mixed with the teachings of Hermes Trismegistus. I know this communication contains too much truth to suit the time in which you live; but I hope that we, who are in the service of truth, may, by sledge hammer blows upon the surface of error, put to rout the army of religious fools who would prolong that condition of things.”

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 501 J.M. Roberts Commentary

   Refer to Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography for account of Socrates Scholasticus.
   It was the spirit of the learned and impartial historian of ecclesiasticism in the fourth century, who gave that instructive communication. No one, when in mortal life, had any better opportunity to know what the Christianity of Eusebius and Constantine was, than Socrates Scholasticus. He lived at the time that Christianity was being creedalized and doctrinized into its present orthodox shape. [...]

   But of especial import is the statement of the spirit of Socrates, that the Pythagorean philosophy of Greece was wholly based upon the gospel of Christos of India. The similarity, if not the identity, of the Pythagorean and Buddhist doctrines, was fully understood at the period when Socrates lived, and had been understood long before, by all the learned people of Greece. It was no doubt this knowledge, on the part of Apollonius of Tyana, a disciple of Pythagoras, that induced him to visit Iarchus in India, about A. D. 46, to ascertain how faithfully Pythagoras had interpreted the Indian gospel of Crishna. Socrates tells us that Apollonius found the manuscripts of that gospel in the hands of Iarchus so superior to the version of them by Pythagoras that he (Apollonius) became a Gymnosophist. This spirit statement fully explains how it came, that so strict a Pythagorean as Apollonius had proved himself to be, before going to India, became the renowned apostle of the Gymnosophic religion and philosophy, after his return from his visit to Iarchus, the patriarch or chief of that wonderfully well informed sect of philosophers.
Socrates tells us in his communication, that whatever may have passed or may not have passed between Apollonius and Inrchus, that they both made the mistake of supposing they were in close and intimate communion with God: and he remarks that this was the common mistake of antiquity us of modern times. In this he concurs with scores of other spirits, of various religions and sects who have communicated to the world.
   We note particularly what the spirit says as to what the repositories of confirmatory evidence that exist at various points of Europe and Asia, would show as to the truthfulness of these communications. It is to be hoped that not only Thibetan literature, but the Brahmanical, Buddhistic and Gymnosophic literature, as well, will escape the vandalism of Christian Missionaries; for all these alike, would contribute to show that each and all of those Oriental religious systems were more or less remotely derived from the Zoroastrianism of the ancient Armenians; and that they were nothing more or less than sun- worshippers connected with ethical and social laws, modified to suit the wants of each of the peoples adopting them. But still more significant is the mention by Socrates that the teachings of Brahmanism, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism were largely mixed with the teachings of Hermes Trismegistus, the most enigmatical character in ancient history.

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 503

   “I greet you, sir: — During my government of Judea I was constantly fighting the Jews of that time. There were two classes of them. They were not exactly divided into Sadducees and Pharisees, but their differences were mainly about what was called the Ezraite version, and another version of their sacred writings made by a man by the name of Onkelos. And at this point I will have to correct the history of your time. Onkelos lived about seventy-five years before the Christian era. He had departed this life about twenty years before I was governor of Judea. The most noted Ezraite advocates were Rabbi Aristobulus and his son Alexander. These two were finally subdued by me, after a cost of many lives and great expense to the Roman government. On assembling at Jerusalem two of the most learned Jews, two of the most learned Greeks, and two of the most learned Romans, in council, to consider these matters, I found that the history of the Jews, as recorded by Ezra, consisted of the mixed traditions of the Chaldeans and Armenians, which the Jews became acquainted with at the time of their captivity. If the Jewish books are critically examined, the evidence will be found in them that proves that they were borrowed from the two nations I have named. They state that the father of the Jews, Abraham or Abrahm, was a Chaldean and not a Jew. Moses, their great law-giver, appears to have been a Midianite when his alleged doings are carefully read. The council, of which I have spoken, satisfied me that the Jews were nothing other than runaway Egyptians. I will say, as has another spirit before me, if you have placed before you a Jew, a Copt, and an Armenian, and these should be dressed alike, you cannot distinguish between their ethnological characteristics. Their general attributes of form and feature proves them to be of a mixed race and not of a distinct race of men, and that neither of them have any claim to the antiquity they set up for themselves. Some of my testimony you can corroborate — other parts of it you cannot. I was governor of Judea about 57 B. C.”

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 503 J.M. Roberts Commentary

   Refer to Nouvelle Biographie Generale for account of Gabinius.
   With great directness the spirit of Gabinius, states the object of his spirit mission. In the first sentence he uttered, it is very plain that he came on a special mission which it was necessary to perform without any circumlocution whatever. He had come to testify to what he knew of Jewish affairs and the state of Jewish literature in the first century B. C. That this spirit should have had a very distinct knowledge of this was very natural, for he was certainly a man of marked mental ability as well as of considerable educational acquirements. Gabinius states that during his rule in Judea, he was almost constantly fighting with the Jews. This fact is sufficiently confirmed by the historical account of his government of Judea.

   [....]

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 505

   “I will salute you, sir:— By saying that truth often becomes apparently annihilated, but the wounds which it receives from error are only on the surface; so truth will ever triumph in the end. My master, Paracelsus, often frightened me by the violence of his emotions. He used to fight the devil with the broad-sword, to my great terror, until I came to understand him. Clairvoyantly, the devil was just as apparent to him as this medium is to you. I, myself, continued to dig, or explore into some of the foolishness of my master, but I found in all cases, there was this difference between my master and myself. When he received either spoken or written communications, they all purported to come from God or the devil. With myself, Zoroaster, Trajan, Berosus, and Marcellinus, a bishop, communicated with or through me. These spirits, properly speaking, were my guides, but I knew it not. All the communications that came to or through me, were in opposition to the popular theology of my day; and, although I became imbued with the ideas thus imparted, I strictly avoided speaking of them, unless compelled to do so. One of the most striking points of the teachings of these spirits was this; that I should believe in Unitarianism and not in Trinitarianism. I thought at first that I was possessed by a devil; but, on reading the classics, and finding that some of the most intelligent of the ancients were guided, or accompanied by demons or spirits, I undertook to advocate doctrines contrary to the age in which I lived, which ended in causing me physical suffering, but spiritual happiness. None of the spirits who communicated through me, in any sense, taught the idea of a God in the form of a man. They all taught that in spirit life they had never found anything to work the regeneration of men but the exercise of their own virtues. I wish my communication was more what I desired it to be, but it may not be without interest. I was known as Apianus. My spirit guide and friend, Marcellinus, will follow me.”

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 505 J.M. Roberts Commentary

   Refer to Nouvelle Biographie Generale for account of Apianus. [...]

   [Pg 506] That so little is said about the thaumaturgical labors of Apianus and his relations with the alchemists and astrologers amounts to nothing, for it was the policy of the Christian priesthood then, as it is now, to conceal the fact of spirits intercourse with mortals, and hence so little has come down to us in regard to Apianus’s theological and astrological views.

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 507

   “I salute you, sir: — There is nothing strange or concealed but which shall, in the course of time, be revealed. All the bishops of my time leaned toward Unitarianism, and it must be distinctly understood, that they were bishops of Christos and not of Christ. They taught Unitarianism. So much so, that you will find, on reference to Dr. Priestly, a learned Christian critic, that according to Athanasius, the preaching of the second portion of the Trinity was almost unknown until the time of Eusebius of Csesarea. I am drawn here to-day simply because I controlled the spirit who communicated before me, and I did so at the instance of Zoroaster, Cham or Ham, Rameses II and Demetrius Phalereus. We found the mind of Apianus, such as we could act upon in a benighted age, for Christianism is heathenism of the darkest kind — it is the heathenism of heathenism. Brahm, Ibraham, and the precepts of Hermes Trismegistus were used in my day to lay the foundation of what is now termed Christianity. But much that they used was stolen from the works of Pythagoras, Plato, and the Alexandrian school. The two former had relation to Gymnosophism, the others to Eclecticism. These two systems were the foundation of Christianity. I have said all I will be able to say to-day. I was a bishop of the Armenians. I attended a Council of Bishops at Rome, but it was a council of Unitarians — not Trinitarians.”

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 507 J.M. Roberts Commentary

   We take the following account of Marcellinus from Mc-Clintock and Strong’s Cyclopaedia of Theological Literature.

   “Marcellinus, a native of Rome, son of Projectus, is said to have been made bishop of Rome, May 3, A. D., 296. As he lived in a period of violent persecution, we have but little certain information concerning him; [...]

   [Pg 509] The spirit undoubtedly discloses a great truth when he says that the bishops of his time were nearly all Unitarians, and cites Dr. Priestly to show that prior to the time of Eusebius of Caesarea the preaching of the second person of the Christian Trinity was almost unknown. We take the following concerning Dr. Priestly’s religious views from Chambers’ Encyclopaedia, article Joseph Priestly:

   “Joseph Priestly, son of Jonas Priestly, a cloth- draper of Fieldhead, near Leeds, was born at Fieldhead on 13th of March, 1733, O. S. His mother having died when he was six years old, he was adopted by an aunt, by whom he was sent to a free school. There he learned Latin and Greek. During vacation he taught himself various languages, both ancient and modern. For some time he was obliged to abandon his studies, owing to weak health; he then betook himself to mercantile pursuits. With returning strength, his literary studies were resumed, and successfully prosecuted at a dissenting academy at Daventry, under Mr. (afterwards Dr.) Ash worth, successor to Dr. Doddridge. Though his father and aunt were strong Calvinists, their house was the resort of many men who held very different opinions; and the theological discussions which he was in the habit of hearing, seems to have had much effect upon young Priestly. Before he was nineteen he calls himself rather a believer in the doctrines of Arminius, but adds: ‘I had by no means rejected the doctrine of a Trinity or that of the atonement.’ Before leaving home, he wished to join a Calvinistic communion, but he was refused admission, the ground of refusal being, that he had stated doubts as to the liability of the whole human race to ‘the wrath of God and pains of hell forever.’ During his residence at the academy, he conceived himself called on to renounce nearly all the theological and metaphysical opinions of his youth. ‘I came’ he says ‘to embrace what is called the heterodox side of every question.’ In 1755 he became a minister to a small congregation at Needham Market, in Suffolk, with an average salary of thirty pounds per annum. While here he composed his work entitled ‘The Scripture Doctrine of Remission, which shows that the Death of Christ is no proper Sacrifice or Satisfaction for Sin.’ His leading theological doctrine seems to have been, that the Bible is indeed a divine revelation, made from God to man through Christ, himself a man and no more, nor claiming to be more. He seems to have rejected all theological dogmas which appeared to him to rest solely upon the interpretation put upon certain passages of the Bible by ecclesiastical authority. Even the fundamental doctrines of the Trinity and of the Atonement he did not consider as warranted by Scripture, when read by the light of his own heart and understanding. * * * * In 1773, he was appointed librarian and literary companion to Lord Shellburn, with a salary of two hundred and fifty pounds per annum, and a separate residence. He accompanied the Earl on a continental tour in the year 1774. Having been told by certain Parisian savants that he was the only man they had ever known, of any understanding, who believed in Christianity, he wrote in reply, the ‘Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever,’ and various other works, containing criticisms on the doctrines of Hume and others. His public position was rather a hard one; for while laughed at in Paris as a believer, at home, he was branded as an atheist. To escape the odium arising from the latter imputation, he published, in 1777, his ‘Disquisition Relating to Matter and Spirit.’ In this work, while he partly materializes spirit, he, at the same time, partly spiritualizes matter. He holds, however, that our hopes of resurrection must rest solely on the truth of the Christian revelation, and that on science they have no foundation whatever. * * * On leaving Lord Shellburn he became minister of a dissenting chapel at Birmingham. The publication, in 1786, of his ‘History of Early Opinions concerning Jesus Christ,’ occasioned the renewal of a controversy, which had begun in 1778, between him and Dr. Horsley, concerning the doctrines of Free Will, Materialism and Unitarianism.”

   We have given more than enough concerning Dr. Priestly to show that he had given his special attention to the subject to which Spirit Marcellinus alludes. Being conversant with the Greek-Latin and other ancient languages, he no doubt studied closely the views entertained by those who were called Christians in the first three hundred years of the so-called Christian era, concerning Christ. It is therefore in the highest degree probable that Dr. Priestly did declare, (whether on the authority of Athanasius, as the spirit says, we cannot say) that Jesus Christ as the second person of the Christian Trinity was not preached until the time of Eusebius. And we say he might just as truthfully have gone further and said, that Jesus Christ was never heard of or preached prior to that time, either as part of the Godhead, or as a nian; for until Constantine conceived the idea of uniting the Oriental worship of Christos with the Western worship of Hesus or Iesus, the worship of Iesus Christos was never heard of. It was a matter of state policy with Constantine, and not of religious impulse at all. This politic movement was opposed by Arius and his followers, and hence the fierce and terrible contest that had so long raged between these Christian factions.

   [Pg 512] “Demetrius Phalereus, a distinguished orator and philosopher, born at Phalerum, in Attica, about 345, B. C., was a pupil of Theophrastus, in philosophy. It is said he was condemned to death with Phocion, but saved himself by flight. About 316 B. C., Cassander appointed him governor of Athens, which, for ten years, enjoyed prosperity under his wise and popular administration. Three hundred and sixty statues were erected to him by the Athenians. When Athens was taken by Demetrius Poliorcetes, 306, he retired to the Court of Ptolemy, king of Egypt. He died in Egypt, about 284, B. C. He wrote historical and philosophical works which are all lost. Cicero and other ancient writers extol his merit as an orator and statesmen.”

   A writer in Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biog- raphy says of the literary labors of Demetrius :

   “His numerous writings, the greater part of which he composed during his residence in Egypt, embraced subjects of the most varied kinds, and the list of them given by Diogenes Laertius shows that he was a man of the most extensive acquirements. Those works, which were partly historical, partly poetical, have all perished. * ** It is also believed that it was owing to his influence with Ptolemy Lagi that hooks were collected at Alexandria, and that he thus laid the foundation of the library, which was formed under Ptolemy Philadelphus.” [..]

   [Pg 513] We may conjecture that the total destruction of the vast literary labors of Demetrius was not accidental. No man perhaps ever lived who was so fully acquainted with Indian, Assyrian, Persian, Armenian, Arabian, and Egyptian history, theology and philosophy as Demetrius; and he no doubt set forth what would have made it impossible for the Christian theology to have fastened itself on the world as it has done. These two communications show how the hidden things of even the distant past may be brought to life through Spiritualism when opportunity is afforded ancient spirits to make known the truth concerning the times in which they lived.

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 513

   “Sir: — I wish you well. My subject will be the identity between paganism and Christianity. The Christian writers have been the vilest interpolators of the pagan authors. They have stolen every good thing from them that they could find and have claimed it as their own. They have simply forged a new system in imitation of the old, and the old is not very highly honored by it. If the great infinite God ever wished to make a revelation to man it is strange that he would give a system that is identical with the then known systems in existence. I refused utterly to accept a high position which was tendered me if I would help to build up this religious system known as Christianity. Sir, it is one of the brightest jewels in my crown in spirit life that I so refused. All those men who lived between the second and third centuries identified themselves with Christianity, because its outlook was the most promising. In the first place its moral code is stolen from ancient systems and principally from the collection of manuscripts ef Ptolemy Philadelphus. In the second place it is a combination of Neo-Platonism, the Gnosticism taught at Rome, and the Pantheism of Egypt and Greece; and the strangest thing of all is found in the doctrine of the Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity is one of the first means to lead men astray and had its original formulation in India at least sixteen hundred years before the Christian era. There were documents extant in my day that were as positive as any historical manuscripts could be on the points herein set forth. As I said before, I refused to join that class of men who wished to lead future generations into error, by teaching the existence of a myth in the form of a Judean Saviour, that never had an existence, and that was but a continuation of the story of Buddha, Chrishna and Pythagoras. It was revived by a college of Savants who met from different parts of the world, at Alexandria, to compare notes about twelve years before the Christian era, and the positive proofs of this are still in existence at Rome and amongst the ruins of certain Christian churches at Ephesus. We, the ancient band who are coming through this medium, will at length through this or some other mediumistic channel, give the directions for excavations at Ephesus where these documents now are. They are, what you call, encased in the corner-stones of the temples and they are there intact. My name was Lactantius. I lived in the first half of the third century.”

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 514 J.M. Roberts Commentary

   Refer to McClintock and Strong’s Ecclesiastical Cyclopaedia for account of Lactantius.
   How completely the above communication of the spirit of Lactantius accords with and explains his position towards the Christian religion. The value of that communication as light to much that is obscure in relation to the source and origin of the Christian religion cannot be overestimated. We regret that space does not admit of our commenting upon it as it deserves.

  

PROMETHEUS BOUND.

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 515

   “Good afternoon:— In order to be successful as a priest you must be influenced by one of two things. Either you must have zeal and really believe what you preach, or else you must be a dissembler and a hypocrite. These last two qualities were the motive power of my mortal actions. I was one of the founders of Christianity. I knew that this Christian religion and its god-man was nothing but a new version of the old story of Prometheus dying on the Scythian Crags for the atonement of the sins of mortal man, and to appease an angry God. The founders of Christianity, and in saying this I impeach the honesty of every one of them, took that whole story from a tragedy, played upon the Grecian stage at Athens, five hundred years before the alleged Jesus. This god of mythology was the principal one from which the story of Jesus originated. Why was this? you may ask. I will tell you. Because the birth, life, miracles and suffering of this Greek god, was set forth in such plain terms, and was avouched for, in my time, by so many pagan authors, that we could only hope to win them to our cause or religion by duplicating the old story, and none helped to do this more effectually than myself. But in working for my own popularity I had no idea that this Christian religion would ever become as powerful as it is to-day. If I had seen, or had had the least conception of those long dark ages of blood which has been the result, I would have withdrawn in horror of such scenes, as were enacted upon this mortal plane after my death. I would say to mortals, Oh! study well what you teach by word or pen, for you know not the awful injury you may do to the unborn generations of the ages to come. I would ask all churchmen to pause and reflect, for the day will truly come when you will pray that the mountains may fall upon you, not to hide you from the face of God, but to hide you from the spirits of injured mortals, who look upon you as leading them astray, and whose spirit eyes accuse you of your damnable course of dissembling and hypocrisy in relation to the most sacred themes that concern humanity. The time when I lived was about A. D. 30 to 90, and my name was Hermas — sometimes called St. Hermas. I left what is called an analysis of the various religions of my time. I made my home in many places in Mesopotamia. In fact I travelled over very much the same ground as did the Cappadocian Saviour, Apollonius of Tyana, in Cesarsea and Phoenicia. I also made pilgrimages to Rome and Jerusalem. There was a sect then existing in those regions, similar to your Communists. They were called by a name that meant non-flesh-eaters. They lived on fruit. They were the principal founders of Christianity.”

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 516 J.M. Roberts Commentary

   Refer to Nouvelle Biographie Generale for account of Hennas.
   It was the Greek myth of Prometheus that Hermas says was the prototype of the Christian Jesus, and that such was the fact there can be little if any doubt. We do not think that Hermas and his contemporaries made much improvement on the original. Certainly, the Greek Prometheus, in god-like attributes, far overshadowed his vagrant successor. Think! Ye who still adhere to the deception instituted by the founders of the Christian religion, of the fearful atonement that Hermas, one of its principal founders, has had to undergo, and avoid the misfortunes that he points out as the certain result of your present course. The high moral teaching and practical construction of the “Shepherd of Hermas” is strongly confirmative of the fact that the author followed the style and method of AEschylus in his scheme to establish a new religion. It certainly comes entirely from a spirit source, and has none of the appearance of a spirit personation.

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 517

   “I was a follower of the doctrines of Ammonius Saccas. Those doctrines contained all the elements that are necessary for a true knowledge of, what modern scientists call, the law of cause and effect. Ammonius had found that the ethics contained in several different sacred books were founded on the universal experiences of mankind, but that they were erroneous in attributing their teachings to certain men who were imagined to have existed or really existed, called by the ancient gods; and whose deeds were magnified after death. Those sacred books of different versions were blended, and something like the Christian New Testament was the outgrowth of the labors of Ammonius Saccas and his school. This book was never intended by Ammonius to be read in the way in which it is now read, but the key to the interpretation of it was the Sun’s Annual Course through the signs of the Zodiac, or the twelve houses of the Sun as they have been called. This was the key, and it was given to those initiated in the secret meaning of the book. This exclusiveness was adopted to give greater weight to the learned, in the minds of the ignorant masses. If this fact were thoroughly understood by those calling themselves Christians, they never would dare again to preach Jesus Christ and him crucified. All the God or gods, after 1,500 years in spirit-life that I have been able to comprehend is universal life, as it is demonstrated in the spirit and mortal life. My name when here was Iamblichus. I lived A. D. 363.”

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 517 J.M. Roberts Commentary

   Refer to Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography for account of Iamblichus.
   Why, we again ask, are so many of the works of the writers of the first four centuries of the Christian era not extant today; and, especially, not a- single perfect and unmutilated work of any of the Pagan — so-called — authors of that most interesting era in the world’s history? Let the Roman Catholic priesthood answer that question.

   [...]

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 518

   “Good day, sir: — I was born a Catholic. During my life, which was an eventful one, I had constantly upon me a desire to travel, and finally succeeded in so doing. I visited the ruins of antiquity — the Pyramids — Thebes — Berenice. I was an Italian, but severed my connections with my native country and went to Britain; and from London, I travelled to the Pyramid of Ghiza, and I was the second party that ever gained an entrance to that pyramid. I also visited Thebes where I found a great many statues and other ancient relics. I sent some of these to the British museum, and some to Florence, Italy. I also obtained paintings and engravings of the tombs, among which was one of Psammonthis, supposed to date 400 years before the Christian era. I also flatter myself that I was the first traveller that- discovered the site of the ancient city of Berenice. Each one of these discoveries utterly destroyed, to my mind, the truth of the Christian religion. Why? Because upon these ancient ruins, I found everything that I had ever seen in the Catholic churches. The cross — a man on a cross — the table — communion cups — a priest swinging a censer, St. Andrew’s crosses — and it made me think when I saw these ruins from two to three thousand years old — when I saw all these things that I had been brought up to look upon as sacred — it destroyed my faith in the Catholic religion. As a spirit, I find that all these mysteries which the Catholics call sacred, were also held sacred, long before there was a Catholic church, by the Egyptian priests. That is the reason why a great many of the spirits of these ancient priests help Catholic spirits to oppose truth, they know it lets in light upon their mummeries. I find that spirits who live near the earth plane, like to see anything propagated that agrees with their own ancient folly; and especially is this the case with all matters relating to religion. The word religion means to bind, and that is just what these ancient spirits think the Catholic priests are trying to do. I wanted to give this communication in order to spread the light. When I think my mortal life over more thoroughly than I have had a chance to do to-day, and recall what I knew of the ruins of the temples and tombs of the ancients, I hope at some future day I can give you a communication that will make all scholars think and fools to grow wise. I died while attempting to explore Africa at Benin, between Houssa and Timbuctoo, in the latter part of 1823. — Giam Batiste Belzoni.”

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 519 J.M. Roberts Commentary

   Refer to Nouvelle Biographie Generale for account of Belzoni.
   That he should have been able to control the medium so perfectly, as he did, shows that he is as powerful in his purpose and will as a spirit, as he was powerful and persevering as a mortal. Dare any Christian priest, minister or layman deny the truth testified to in that communication that upon the walls of the temples and tombs of ancient Thebes in Egypt, were delineated every symbol and every ceremony now to be seen, in the Churches of Christendom, and this thousands of years prior to the Christian era? We opine not. It does not seem to be known that Belzoni had abandoned his religious views while on earth, but we feel sure that he has left the evidence of that fact in his great work.

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 520

   “I salute you, sir: — There is no religion that ever existed, as far as I have been able to learn, either as a mortal or a spirit, but what had some symbolical personage that was recognized as the head of that religion. In my day, sir, in Alexandria, all religions were represented by symbols, and most of these symbols were represented on plates or pottery, and some on copper, and these were used as are your blackboards in your schools of learning. The pupils, however, were not taught the true meaning of those symbols, but only received the construction put upon them by the master. Now each teacher in these different schools set himself up as the best expounder of the ancient religions, and each one of them leaned toward some favorite Greek, Latin, or Phoenician author. Their ideas of the teaching of those authors were so mixed, that their purity was lost. The masters thought of only one thing — self-exaltation. They combatted each other fiercely, and as the pupils followed their masters, so contests were frequent among them, somewhat like the contention between the students of modern universities. From the plates, of which I have spoken, I am convinced fully that the whole story or history of Jesus of Nazareth, is nothing more than the re-deification of some of the older gods, such as Chrishna, Prometheus and Apollonius of Tyana. In fact any person who thoroughly understands the art of sculpture, will find that the resemblance between the carved features of Jesus and those of Chrishna, are almost identical; and it is this resemblance that makes the Christian missionaries and priests so ardent in their desire, to destroy all idols, as they term these sculptures. There is another point I want to impress upon you people, and it ought to be anxiously watched by you, and that is that you should make sure that those persons who are making excavations for the unearthing of antique relics, should be free from all Christian prejudice, for the reason that those relics if preserved, will throw light on the superstition called Christianity. I will add that at the time I lived in mortal form toward the close of the first century, neither our teachers in Alexandria, nor in any part of the then civilized world, knew aught of the Christian Saviour. There is one thing further that I wish to say, and that is, that I think it is the uttermost foolishness for spiritual lecturers and mediums, now living in the mortal form, to say that Jesus was a great medium; when in fact his whole history was started by Potamon, myself, Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus, and others of that school. It is a combination of the Eclecticism that was put in shape about A. D. 250, and worked up as a new idea and a new collection of moral precepts, when in fact it is nothing but a combination of Indian, Phoenician and Grecian moral precepts. My name when here was Ammonius the Peripatetic.”

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 521 J.M. Roberts Commentary

   The only biographical references we can find to Ammonius the Peripatetic are the following brief ones. Smith’s Greek and Roman Biographical Dictionary says: “Ammonius the Peripatetic, who wrote only a few poems and declamations. He was a different person from Ammonius the teacher of Plotinus. (Longinus ap. Porphyr. in Plotin. vit.)” And Thomas’s Dictionary of Biography etc., says: “Ammonius a Peripatetic philosopher, who taught at Athens or Delphia, in the latter half of the first century. He was the preceptor of Plutarch, and endeavored to reconcile the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle. Plutarch wrote a life of him which is not extant.” And why, we ask, is not that life of Ammonius the Peripatetic extant. Let the Christian priesthood answer, especially those who are possessed of the secrets of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy. It will be observed that Longinus, a Neo-Platonist Eclectic, refers to Ammonius in connection with Porphyry and Plotinus, the great lights of Neo-Platonism, which shows very plainly that he preceded even Ammonius Saccas, in reviving the Eclectic philosophy of Potamon, the latter not having been similarly engaged until about the beginning of the second century. It will be observed that he speaks of himself as succeeding Potamon, and as preceding Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus and others, in continuing the Eclectic School of Philosophy. Such being the spirit who communicated, who can over-estimate the importance of that testimony to the utter falsity of the Christian religion? We regret that time and space will not admit of a more detailed criticism of this undoubtedly genuine communication.

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 522

   “Good day, sir:— In my mortal life I was a Catholic— a Roman abbot, and librarian in the Vatican between the eighth and ninth centuries; and I come here to endorse what the last spirit said, for I know that the various meetings or councils of bishops had for their object the suppression of all books that were in any way damaging to the Christian religion. Although they did everything they could do to destroy all accounts of deified men, called gods or saviours, yet enough is written, upon the temples of antiquity, to enlighten any inquiring mind as to the fact that the Christian religion was the outgrowth of the teachings of the schools of Alexandria from A. D. 50 to A. D, 200, and that this fact can neither be doubted nor questioned by any honest unprejudiced man. Two books similar to those attributed to Matthew and John were taken bodily from a Greek author, commenting on or writing about Prometheus and the teachings of the followers of that God after his supposed death; and this Greek book was well known and extensively read at Alexandria, and a few copies of it were yet extant in my day, but whether they are yet so, I cannot tell; for each pope who came after my time did what he could to interpolate or destroy such ancient works. There are priests around me here to-day who gnash their teeth and howl as spirits to see me certifying to the truth; but as an honest spirit, I cannot stand back and endorse that religion that I know to be utterly and entirely false. There is no evidence — there was none in my day — not a scrap of authentic writing, to show that such a man or god as Jesus Christ ever existed; but there was this kind of evidence, and plenty of it, to show that the real Jesus of Nazareth was Apollonius of Tyana, the Cappadocian Saviour; and those priests who worshipped openly Jesus of Nazareth, were constantly engaged in collecting the sacred relics of this Apollonius. All the portraits, pictures or statues of Jesus of Nazareth are but the copies of basso-relievos of Apollonius; and when you open your modern Bibles and see the pictures of your Jesus, you are looking upon the face of Apollonius of Tyana. No pope nor Catholic king, no noble nor scholar, that is well informed, can truthfully deny what I here assert. The time has come when the world is ripe for the truth. The time is approaching when popes, emperors and kings must go down before the universal rights of humanity. Each man and woman must become their own priest, with none to go between them and the only true religion — simple and truthful spirit communion. This communication will live, and will sound the bell of liberty, long after you and the medium have been transferred to spirit life. My name was Anastasius — surnamed Bibliothecarius — so-called on account of my biblical knowledge, which is not of much account now.”

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 523 J.M. Roberts Commentary

   The only account we can find of Anastasius is in McClintock and Strong’s Ecclesiastical Cyclopaedia. “Anastasius (Bibliothecarius), librarian of the Vatican, and abbot of St. Maria Trans-Tiberim at Rome, a celebrated and learned writer of the 9th century. The dates of his birth and death are unknown. He was on terms of intimacy with the learned men of his age, especially with Photius and Hineman. He was present in 869 at the eighth council of Constantinople, where Photius was condemned. He translated the Acts of the Council from Greek into Latin. He wrote a Historia Ecclesiastica; but the most important of his writing is a History of the Popes.” It was beyond all question the spirit of this learned Catholic author and librarian of the Vatican, that gave that communication. Taken in connection with the preceding communication from Ammonius the Peripatetic, there can be no possible doubt that all that has been said by both spirits is strictly true. How long can the Christian superstition endure the blazing light of such testimony!

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 524

   “I salute you, sir: — I am the Jew that wished to speak to, or communicate with you sometime back, as a contemporary of the so-called Jesus Christ. I was one of the writers of what is termed the Targums. There was only one older than myself, whose writings have come down to modern times. His name was Onkelos. As in the past, most of the communications have been of a character that bore more particularly on Jesus, my communication to-night is an arraignment of the Old Testament. The legends and traditions of the Jewish people extend no farther than Ezra the Scribe. The marginal notes upon all the ancient manuscripts went positively to show that the whole of what is called Jewish history was stolen bodily “from Chaldean history during the Babylonish captivity; and this is proven by the nativity of their great ancestor Abraham, whom their own traditions admit to have been of Uz in Chaldea. All the intervening characters between Abraham and Caiphas the high priest, in my day, are so intermingled with Chaldean tradition, that it is hard to discriminate between what is Jewish and what Chaldean. In astrology, Chaldea was one of the most learned nations in antiquity. How many of the Chaldean gods and heroes were borrowed from the stars I know not. That the Jewish Jehovah is but a modified (and a bad modification at that) of Jove, I will freely acknowledge, though I am a Jew. I think with all the learned men of my day, that the Jewish Moses was simply used in a typical sense to signify a hero whose antiquity was so remote that there was no means of ascertaining the truth as to his origin. In short, Moses was a creation of Jewish priests, in order to gain power through ceremonial religion. Coming down to my own time, I knew of no Jesus except the one that has been specified in some of the previous communications, and he was Jesus Malathiel, who was, not exactly a bandit, and who was executed by Roman javelins in the form of a cross, for what might be termed revolt. He was one of the disaffected toward the Roman government. I would say to the Jewish people as a spirit, that they who wait for any Redeemer or Messiah to either restore the Jewish polity, or to save themselves from the consequences of their sins, will wait in vain. The aphorism of the spirit life is, ‘Every man and woman their own redeemer.’ I hope this may do good in the promulgation of truth. My name was Jonathan Ben Uzziel.”

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 525 J.M. Roberts Commentary

   Refer to McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopaedia of Ecclesiastical Literature for account of Jonathan Ben Uzziel.
   If this communication is authentic, then it is very certain that the Jewish Scriptures are nothing more than paraphrases of Chaldean writings, instead of being, which they purport to be, Original Jewish writings. [...]

   [Pg 525] The spirit of this learned and accomplished paraphrasist of Chaldean history admits that the Jewish Jehovah was but a bad modification of the older Greek supreme god, Jove. He denies that Moses was a historical personage, but being used by the Jewish priesthood as a typical myth, about whom nothing certain could be known, he was made the basis of their ceremonial religion. This spirit who lived and flourished during the first half of the first century, tells us positively that he never knew any Jesus, except Jesus Malathiel, an insurgent Jew, who was executed by Roman javelins in the form of a cross. We have no doubt of the authenticity of that spirit communication, and for the following reasons: 1st. It is beyond all question a spirit communication 2; d. It comes from a spirit thoroughly conversant with the history and literature of the Jews; 3d. No one could have been better informed on those points than Jonathan Ben Uzziel; and 4th. We can conceive of no possible reason why any spirit sufficiently well informed to have given that communication should have personated another spirit. It being, then, authentic, we accept it, as being substantially if not literally true. In view of the light thrown by this and other returned spirits upon Jewish theology, what becomes of the foundation of the so-called Christian religion? Let the Christian priesthood answer if they can.

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 526

   “I salute you, sir:— I was a Jewish teacher and writer, or what is termed, by you moderns, a paraphraser on the Old Testament, at Babylon, in the 10th century, A. D. These Arabic versions were copied from Onkelos, in what is known as the mixed Hebrew and Samaritan tongues, their original purport or real object had become, by that time confused by the alterations and interpolations made in them, to suit the views of the Rabbis of the various Jewish sects, who had paraphrased them. So much so, that the modern King James’s version of the Old Testament is merely a patchwork of the Targums of Onkelos, Jonathan Ben -Uzziel, Aquila and myself. They have mixed these to such an extent, that if an ancient Targum writer could now make his appearance in mortal form, with what he really did write, you would be ashamed to find how much of the Old Testament is the stolen history of Chaldea and Egypt; instead of having any real bearing upon Jewish history. The Jews have no history — or what may be termed real history — as a people, anterior to about 450 B. C. Prior to that time, their so-called history is made up of accounts of Chaldean and Egyptian heroes and myths. In ancient times all religions were composed by men, or principles, deified and transferred afterwards to represent some new star that had just made its appearance, or so alleged by the priests, about the date when the moral principle became understood, and its usefulness proven by test of mortal experience. As a spirit I have long felt it my duty to return here, when I could obtain the conditions to do so, and after proper preparation, contribute my mite towards promoting truth.”

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 527 J.M. Roberts Commentary

   Refer to Biographie Universelle for account of Saadias-Gaon.
   We venture to predict that if ever the writings of Saadias-Gaon are read by the light which that spirit communication throws upon them, the present version of the Old Testament will be found to be, as this spirit says, not copied from orignal Jewish records, but a patchwork of the Targums of Onkelos, Jonathan Ben Uzziel, Aquila, and Saadias-Gaon, which, as the returning spirit of the latter tells us, were, in the main, Hebraic-Samaritan versions of Chaldean and Egyptian legends, having no relation to the history of the Jews, so altered by Jewish Rabbins as to disguise their origin and nature. And that concoction of Chaldean and Egyptian fictions is made the basis and ground-work of the Christian faith.

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 527

   “Good evening, sir: — Long and weary has been my journey since leaving the mortal form. The curse of my spirit life has been remorse for being a fanatic and a bigot. May this fair earth never be cursed again by such things in human form as myself. Catholic Christianity has damned me deeper than the hell of the Grecian Pluto. Torments of conscience have been to me what no tongue could express. My deeper curses alight upon those who made me what I was in mortal form, and my everlasting hate abide with those in mortal form who continue to teach the damnable doctrines that I taught. You probably wonder who this is that speaks to you. I was one of the hell-fire bigots who murdered the poor innocent Albigenses, and who, with an army of vindictive devils like myself, spared neither age nor sex at Beziers, in the thirteenth century; and I come back here to-night, to speak to all churchmen; first, to tell them that their doctrines are erroneous, and their Saviour a lie; and secondly, if they do not wish to suffer for hundreds of years in a hell of conscience, taunted by their victims, let them repent at once. To the good — the pure — the spirit life is beautiful; but to those who are immoral — and bigotry is always immoral, no matter in what form it is shown — it is horrible. If they would escape what I have tried to picture in language here to-night, let them throw aside their foolishness and wickedness, and accept reason instead of a myth for a Saviour. Whilst this confession is apparently only listened to by those you see here present, there are thousands of listeners who would damn me if they could; but there is a bright host on the other hand that I go to join. My name was Arnold, abbot of Citeaux.”

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 528 J.M. Roberts Commentary

   We find the following reference to Arnold, Abbot of Citeaux, under the head “Albigenses,” in McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopaedia of Ecclesiastical Literature:

   “At the beginning of the 13th century a crusade was formed for the extirpation of heresy in Southern Europe, and Innocent III. enjoined upon all princes to expel them from their dominions in 1209. The immediate pretence of the crusade was the murder of the papal legate and inquisitor, Peter of Castlenau, who had been commissioned to extirpate heresy in the dominions of Count Raymond VI. of Toulouse; but its real object was to deprive the Count of his lands, as he had become an object of hatred from his toleration of the heretics. It was in vain that he had submitted to the most humiliating penance and flagellation from the hands of the legate Milo, and had purchased the papal absolution by great sacrifices. The legates, Arnold, abbot of Citeaux, and Milo, who directed the expedition, took by storm Beziers, the capital of Raymond’s nephew, Roger, and massacred 20,000 — some say 40,000 — of the inhabitants, Catholics as well as heretics. ‘Kill them all,’ said Arnold, ‘God will know his own.’”

   The spirit of this bloody and murderous fanatic and bigot returns, after six hundred and seventy years, to confess his remorse and expiate his dreadful crimes, by bearing witness against the terrible guilt of the Roman Catholic Christian Church and its false and ruinous teachings. It is a fortunate thing for him, even after living in that long hell of remorse, that he found the mediumistic channel, in a poor humble heretic, such as he would once have gladly butchered, through whom to expiate his terrible acts of wrong, and get a relief that he could not otherwise have done. And with such testimony as this, coming constantly from the world of spirits, we have professed Spiritualists ready and willing to slander and misrepresent the medium through whom this testimony is coming; and ourself for sending it abroad through the world; and this, because they want to tack the infernal thing to Spiritualism, to smother the truth so long kept back from mankind.

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 529

   “Good evening, sir:— Like others who have communicated here to night, I feel it my duty to comment on my mortal career, and tell how much benefit I have received from it as a spirit. In this mortal life I was an astronomer; and a study that I took great pleasure in, was correcting the astronomical charts and maps of the ancients. In this work I not only killed the Saviour, so-called, I destroyed God, also, in my belief. In my time it was policy to conceal your belief; to have told the truth would have ruined one’s material interests. There was not an ancient astronomical chart or map, or anything appertaining to the zodiac, but what explained the whole story of the house of Bethlehem, or house of corn, and the sign of the Virgin, and in fact all the signs made it very plain that the history of Jesus Christ was all written amongst the stars, thousands of years before the alleged time of his birth. And I have not been disappointed, as a spirit, in finding that to be true which I discovered while here; for I find this same astronomical or astrological allegory running through all nations and tribes of spirits. The oldest of these say that the whole idea originated in one thing, and that was the custom of making sacrifices. They began with sacrificing inferior animals, and ended with sacrificing human beings. The different states of astronomy or astrology, corresponded with the character of the sacrifices made at various periods, and these were placed among the stars. If I had lived to finish my last work, I would no longer have concealed what I had learned, from fear of the clergy. I went to spirit life in 1634, and my name was John Bainbridge.”

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 530 J.M. Roberts Commentary

   The guide said, after the control was yielded, that the spirit was a native of Ashby de la Zouch, born some where about 1560.
   Refer to Biographie Universelle for account of Bainbridge.
   The Penny Cyclopaedia says, that Bainbridge “was a good Oriental scholar, having studied Arabic for the purpose of reading the astronomers of that language.” It is indeed very strange that so very little has been recorded of the labors of this undoubtedly learned and accomplished scholar and astronomer. We infer that his unpublished works disclosed too much for the safety of the Christian allegory. We feel strongly impressed to believe that the spirit of John Bainbridge returned at this time, not only to testify to what his learned investigations in ancient astronomy led him to discover, but to point out the significance and value of his suppressed works. What would we not give to be able to follow up and unearth the literary treasures that are being pointed out through these wonderful disclosures.

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 530

   “Good afternoon, sir: In this mortal life I was deeply interested in the Christian religion. My name was Charles Hardwick, and I came to my death on the 16th of August, 1859, while ascending the Pyrenees. The last title that I had, in the mortal life, was archdeacon of Ely, England. I am used here, as was the first spirit who controlled at the last seance, (Charles Francis Alter,) to prepare the way for a concentration of wisdom, necessary for the ancient spirit witnesses who will follow me here to-day. I wrote many works, although dying at the early age of thirty-eight. They were principally devoted to showing that Christ and Christianity were superior to all other religions. What will follow is the result of my experiences in spirit life. As a mortal I was too enthusiastically blind to consider the value of the testimony of ancient authors which I examined in my researches. I commenced by comparing the religions of India, China, Egypt, Medo-Persia, America and Oceanica, with each other; and after an examination of the whole of the religious systems of the globe, I showed, in my work, the foolishness of what I called paganism as compared with Christianity. But as a spirit I am compelled to say that I was altogether wrong in my geographical placements of religions. India is not the mother of civilization and the originator of all religions. Nubia, Kordofan and Ethiopia were the countries in which the most remote civilization arose; thence it spread into prehistoric Egypt. The most ancient monuments of Egypt go far beyond the age ascribed to Moses. Thence it passed to Chaldea and Assyria; and thence into India. I do not mean to say that those countries were not before inhabited, but their peoples were ignorant and barbarous. From India the tide of civilization flowed East and West. The first by way of the lands extending far in the Pacific Ocean to America, and the second by way of the Mediterranean and the Black Seas into Northern and Southern Europe. There was two emigrations from Asia to America before those continents were historically known; one by way of Behring’s Strait, and the other by way of Boro Bada, (which was the ancient name of Java) across the Pacific to Guatimala. As the more southern emigrants had a finer climate than those who went by way of the north, who landed in North America, they advanced more rapidly than did the latter. And to show you what we know to be the fact as spirits, to wit: that there was intercourse between the Western and Eastern continents firmly established before the Mosaic period, we will call your attention to the fact that the Mexican god Quetzalcoatl was worshipped in Southern India, the latter country receiving him from the former by way of the islands of the Middle Pacific. Indeed there was more than one interchange of Gods between Asia and America, as in the course of time the one became more advanced in civilization than the other. Quetzalcoatl, Ibrahm and Gautama occupied with these kindred peoples the same position, that of Saviour, as Jesus Christ does to the Christians; and as no man could see the father of the Universe, they one and all resorted to an intercessor in the way of a Sun, (not Son) which they represented in human form. This is as much as it is necessary for me to say at this time. I will close by saying that I have found as a spirit that no faith or belief not founded on fact and reason will avail any one. If you think to rest upon them you will find that an avenging spirit force will compel you to testify to what you must know to be true as a spirit. I thank you for the favor of being heard.”

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 531 J.M. Roberts Commentary

   Refer to the American Cyclopaedia for account of Hardwick.
   Such was the field of inquiry that engaged the attention of Mr. Hardwick, and upon which he set out to exalt the Christian religion at the expense of the more ancient and philosophical “heathen” religions from which it was bodily stolen.

   [....]

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 533

   “I am here to-day to throw light upon what Philostratus failed to explain, to wit: the Testament of Apollonius of Tyana. The Coptic or Egyptian version of the Scriptures, contained the Pentateuch, the Psalms, and the Proverbs of the Old Testament and the New Testament to Revelations. I was myself, what was called in those days, a targum writer, and published an Armenian version of the Scriptures; and my particular guide in doing this was the Coptic version before mentioned. It went in my day under the title of “The Holy Invocations; or The Actions of the Great Son of God, Apollonius of Tyana,” the purpose of which, Apollonius said, was to set forth the thoughts of the sages of the past, which he had obtained by the aid of books; but that the actions and miracles therein set forth were his own. He, Apollonius, travelled over all the countries therein mentioned, and was well known in certain portions of India, Armenia, Abyssinia, Egypt, Cappadocia, Judea, Greece, Home and Asia Minor; and he performed his miracles and preached his doctrines in all those countries. He was worshipped as a divine being as late as A. D. 275, under the abbreviated names of Apol, Pol and Lesbos. Pol was pronounced in the Armenian Paul. [Was Apollonius called Lesbos?] He was known by that name in the Eastern Countries. Lesbos signified nearly the same as is signified by the term grand Llama of Tibet, in your time. It meant the sainted Son of God, the Initiated one, who possessed the Father’s secrets. My Armenian version was published under its proper title “Apollonius, the Son of God’s Teachings and Morals”: but this title was altered by the man whose spirit will follow me, Paulinus, the first Archbishop of York, 622. He will follow me and make plain what I have left unsaid. I thank you for this hearing. We have sought to have these communications interlock, so that they cannot be disturbed.”

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 533 J.M. Roberts Commentary

   We take the following account of Mesrop or Mesrob, from McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature. “Mesrop, also called Mashtoz, the noted translator of the Armenian version of the Bible, was born in the latter half of the fourth century, in a small village of the province of Tarou. He was at first secretary of the Armenian patriarch Nerses the Great, and afterwards became his minister of ecclesiastical affairs. After filling this position seven years, he went into a convent, but, failing to find any satisfaction there, he went into a desert, where he gathered about him a number of young men as scholars. Under the government of the patriarch Isaak (Saak) the Great (A. D. 390-440), Mesrop was commissioned to preach as missionary, for which position he was especially fitted by his thorough knowledge of foreign languages. He now found need of an Armenian version of the Scriptures, the version of the clergy being in the Syriac, a language but little understood by the populace. After having spent several years in the arduous task, and that with but little show of success, he resolved to throw himself upon the mercy of his Lord and God, and seek at his hands the wisdom and knowledge required for the successful accomplishment of his undertaking. Nor did he wait long for an answer to his prayer. While sojourning at Samosata, we are told, he was led to see the different types engraved in a rock, and that he could remember every single letter so plainly, that he was able to describe them to the distinguished calligrapher Rufanus, who finally composed the desired alphabet. He immediately commenced the gigantic work of translating the Bible from the Greek into the Armenian, a version that was introduced afterwards into that part of Armenia, governed by his king Vramshapuh. By request of other sovereigns, he made also translations for the Georgian and Albanian countries. A change in the government obliged him to quit Persian territory, and he sought a new home in Grecian Armenia, where he continued his activity under the special protection of the emperor Theodosius of Constantinople, and the patriarch Atticus. In spite of the severe crusades against the members of the new religion, he continued to inspire his scholars and friends with confidence in their final success, and defeated several times the various attempts to introduce idolatry in the practice of a pure Catholic religion. One of his later great works was the translation of the liturgical books of the Greek, into the modern Armenian language. After the death of his old companion Isaak I., Mesrop was elected patriarch of Armenia, but he died the next year, February 19, A. D. 441. A critical edition of Mesrop’s translation of the Bible appeared in Venice, in 1805, in four volumes. As an energetic and scientific man, Mesrop ranks among the most important combatants of the Christian religion in the early centuries, when the communication of the new religion met especially with great obstacles in the East, for want of written languages. Mesrop furthered literature among his countrymen, not only by his own literary productions, but by founding ‘a whole school of remarkable thinkers and writers,’ that created what is called ‘the golden period’ for the enlightenment of Ancient Armenia. (Malan).”

   This seems to be all and more than was known concerning Mesrob and his theological labors. It will be seen, if the communication of the spirit is true, that the nature of the Armenian version of the Scriptures, as it is called, has been wholly misapprehended. [...]

   [Pg 540] [I]t is certain that the Coptic version of the Holy Scriptures was nothing more nor less than the Coptic version of “Apollonius the Son of God’s Teachings and Morals,” under which title the spirit of Mesrob says he published what is now called The Armenian Version of the Holy Scriptures. Such undoubtedly was the true character of the Coptic version of what is called the Bible. The spirit tells us that Apollonius did not claim to be the author of the theological and ethical teachings contained in his Testament, to which Philostratus referred as being extant when he wrote about A. D. 225 to 245; but that it contained the thoughts of the sages of the past which he had obtained from books. He also tells us that the actions and miracles therein set forth were the incidents of his own life. The spirit does not overstate the vast work in the way of travel and public teaching. performed by Apollonius in the extensive countries to which he refers. That Apollonius was worshipped as a divine being, until A. D. 275, is a historically known fact; but whether under the name of Lesbos, as the spirit states, we have no conclusive means of determining. Nor can we throw any light on the meaning of such a designation, if it was ever applied to Apollonius of Tyana. As to the abbreviated names Apol and Pol which were applied to him, we have much reason to know this to be the fact. In First Corinthians, chap, iii, 1 to 8, it is said:

   “1. And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.
   “2. I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able.
   “3. For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?
   “4. For while one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos; are ye not carnal?
   “5. Who then is Paul, and who then is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the lord gave to every man?
   “6. I have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.
   “7. So then, neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth: but God that giveth the increase.
   “Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one; and every man shall receive his own reward, according to his own labor.”

   Here we have the plain and unqualified admission that Paul and Apollos were one and the same person. No sophistry can explain so positive a statement away. Now who was Paul and who Apollos, if they were one? In the Cambridge Manuscript, the Codex Cantabrigiensis, or Codex Bezae, presented to Cambridge University in 1581 by Theodore Beza, who said he obtained it during the French wars in 1562, when it was found in the monastery of St. Irenaeus at Lyons, in this same Chapter 3 of 1st Cor., the name of Apollos does not appear, but instead the name of Apollonius. It is admitted that this manuscript is, with the greatest probability, of the 6th century, which conjecture if correct, connected Apollonius with the Paul of the Christian Scriptures as identically the same person, as late as the 6th century. A writer in McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopaedia says of this Codex.

   “Its Alexandrine forms would argue an Egyptian origin, but the fact of the Latin translation shows that it is a Western copy. It is assigned with great probability to the sixth century. It is chiefly remarkable for its bold and extensive interpolations, amounting to some six hundred in the Acts alone, on which account it has been cautiously employed by critics, notwithstanding its g reat antiquity.”

   Here is a precious disclosure, truly. It then seems in the highest degree probable that this Codex Bezae, next to the Coptic version, and its Armenian translation by Mesrob, is the most significant and important proof of the Apollonian origin of the so-called Holy Scriptures. That it should contain the name of Apollonius as its chief author, and be of Egyptian origin, are facts that go far to prove the truth of spirit Mesrob’s statement as to the Apollonian nature of the Armenian version. It is a well known fact that Apollonius went into Upper Egypt and Ethiopia, where he remained for a considerable time comparing teachings with the Gymnosophists of those countries of Africa, and Philostratus has recorded the profound impression he made among those learned ascetics, and the high veneration in which he was held by them. It is most probable that it was only during this late period of his life that he published the writings which have come down to us from him. Be this as it may, it certainly is from Egypt, and not from Judea or Greece or Rome, that the oldest versions of the Christian Scriptures as they are called, were obtained. The writer last referred to says: “The characters (of the Codex Bezae) betray a later age than the Codices Alexandrius, Vaticanus, and Ephrsemi (A, B and C), and capitals occur in Codex Sinaiticus.” Here we have again a most significant fact. Although this copy of a Latin and Greek version of the Scriptures, is later than the three above mentioned versions, it pays no regard to them whatever, but goes to some older and anterior original version, which differs so widely from the Alexandrius, Vaticanus and Ephrsemi versions, that in the single book of Acts, it contains some six hundred, of what are called, interpolations. According to every legitimate rule of criticism, it is natural to infer that what the writer referred to, calls interpolations, were parts and parcels of some original scriptures from which all the various versions have been intermediately or immediately obtained. It is conceded that Codices Alexandrius, Vaticanus and Ephrsemi are not earlier than the beginning Of the middle of the 5th century. It is therefore highly probable that there was some older version than either of them, that contained all the alleged interpolations of the Codex Bezae. If the three former versions did not contain the alleged interpolated matter of the Codex Bezse, presuming that the copiers or translators all used the same or a similar original, it is natural to infer that nothing materially different from the common original was added to any of them, and if any portion of that original was omitted, it was admitted for a purpose. For instance, if the original Scriptures were the published writings of Apollonius of Tyana, and the copiers of those writings wanted to deprive him of the credit of his labors, and to attribute them to some person unknown to history, they would, as a matter of course eliminate from those writings that which would show their real nature and authorship. This it is absolutely known was done by Eusebius, Euthalius and other Christian schemers, wherever they found it necessary, in their work of theological and ecclesiastical deception. No English or French translation of the Codex Bezae has ever been made, so far as we can discover, but we venture to say that if such a translation ever is made, it will be found that the alleged interpolations, especially the six hundred in the Acts of the Apostles, show that no Jesus Christ or his Apostles had anything to do with the Christian Scriptures, and that Apollonius, who is expressly mentioned therein, was the real author or compiler. We infer, with good reason, that the Codex Bezae was a copy of the writings of Apollonius of Tyana by some Neo-Platonist opponent of Christianity. But we can pursue this inquiry no further at present, but will close by noticing the last statement of the spirit. He says; “My Armenian version was published under its proper title “Apollonius the Son of God’s Teachings and Morals;” but this title was altered by the man whose spirit will follow me, Paulinus, the first Archbishop of York, in 622.” We need do no more than to invite the reader’s attention, in relation thereto, to the following communication and our comments thereon.

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 543

   “My salutation shall be: He or she who tampers with truth shall never rest until they have rectified it. I am here with only one excuse, and that is that zeal and enthusiasm carried me away. I think it was in A. D. 645 that I entered the spirit life, and from that day until A. D. 1700, I endeavored, with all the perseverance of an enthusiastic spirit, to find Jesus Christ. But all these centuries of searching ended in finding the man, whom I ignored in my earth life, Apollonius of Tyana. Not that Apollonius desires to be considered the Saviour of men, but he does desire that the truth shall be established. I tampered with the Armenian version of the Testament of Apollonius. [Do you mean Mesrob’s version?] Yes. The Armenian version of Mesrob; and also one from Upper Egypt. I also made some alterations in the Latin version, that is the Council of Nice version. Because I was one of the first translators of the Scriptures from the Gallic into the Saxon tongue. I translated from the Gallic, Latin, Armenian and Coptic tongues into the Saxon; and I did it simply because I thought this religion of Jesus was true, although the writings from which I translated showed that it was not true. But, how many of your modern commentators are doing the same thing? They are doing this, to-day, blinded by their zeal which takes the place of reason, and then follows bigotry and untruth. [Can you now say what alterations or substitutions you made in the Testament of Apollonius?] I substituted, as did Eusebius, Jesus Christ of Judea for Apollonius of Tyana. [You translated the versions you speak of, making those alterations?] Yes; I made them to correspond with Eusebius’s version. This is about all I can do to correct my earthly errors. [What became of your Saxon version of the Scriptures?] It was revised by Bede, and afterwards by Thomas a’ Becket; and it was afterwards put into its present shape by Archbishop Whately. [You have kept trace of these things as a spirit?] I have followed them. [Have you met Archbishop Whately in spirit life?] Yes; but since his time, theological altercations have taken so many directions that it has been almost impossible to follow them. I am Paulinus, first archbishop of York, in 622. [How came you to have a Latin name?] I was from Bretagno in Gaul, and it was very customary for Gallic priests to bear Latin names.”

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 544 J.M. Roberts Commentary

   We can find very little in relation to Paulinus’s life, but will give what we can. McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopaedia says:

   “St. Paulinus of York, an ecclesiastic of the 7th century, noted as the companion of St. Augustine in his mission to England, was sent from Rome by Pope Gregory in A. D. 601. He soon made himself the favorite of the English princes, and obtained positions of influence and trust at court. In A. D. 625 he was consecrated bishop by Archbishop Justus to attend AEthelberta, daughter of AEthelbert, king of Kent, to the North on her marriage with Edwin, king of the Northumbrians. In A. D. 626 and 627 his missionary labors resulted in marvelous successes; thousands were baptized by him, and his fame was in all the land. He was made bishop of York, where he founded the Cathedral, about 628, and 631 consecrated Honorious Archbishop of Canterbury at Lincoln. In 633, on the death of King Edwin, he was obliged to flee before the invading Northumbrians, and settled in Kent. He there became bishop of Rochester, and died about 643.”

   This is substantially all that has been permitted to come down to us in relation to Paulinus. The facts that he was sent by Gregory I. to Britain to aid St. Augustine in his great mission to that country; that he became so influential with English princes, that his missionary labors resulted in such marvelous successes; that he was made by Justus Archbishop of York; and that he was the founder of that great ecclesiastical province; it is very certain that Paulinus was a man of extraordinary character. It is said he was sent from Rome to England, but we are not told what country was the country of his nativity. That he was selected to assist St. Augustine would rather indicate him of Gallic birth, as his spirit claims was the fact. He was just such a man as would have sought to provide a Saxon version of the Scriptures, and just such a man as would have known what versions of the original Scriptures were the nearest the truth. It seems he did not use any Greek version whatever, but as he says, used the Armenian version of Mesrob, and also one from Upper Egypt, (no doubt a Coptic version, if not the one made use of by Mesrob himself.)

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 545

   “My Salutation, Messieurs, shall be: Let us love, instead of hate each other; and we can only achieve this by individualization of c haracter without regard to any prevailing beliefs. No one can save you but the saving power within yourselves. No spirit or mortal can make you what you are to be, but your own thoughts. Purity can only, be obtained by right actions. I ask that all spirits and all mortals will forgive me for teaching doctrines in relation to a person, so-called, but whom I never ‘have yet seen, namely, Jesus Christ. No more ardent follower had he than me, and yet honesty of belief in spirits is no criterion of honesty. Believe in anything you feel is right, but your actions will sit in judgment upon you, they will be your saviour; and one is with me here to-day, who was intimately related with me in this mortal life, in the propagation of Christianity, who desires me to say for her (a saint socalled), that one good action is worth any amount of belief, in the way of redemption. Her name when she was here, was St. Genevieve, one of the patron saints of the city of the highest civilization and deepest immorality, (Paris.) But what I now know of Jesus Christ, I might have known if I had not been a fanatic. I held at one time a copy of the original remaining writings of one Moses Chorensis, and the original of it is now in possession of the Maronite monks of Mount Lebanon; but no one sees it, and it is guarded as a sacred work by their Patriarch or chief. But those manuscripts once exposed to the world, will prove that the original Gospels were written in Cappadocia in the Syriac-Hebraic tongue, and not in the Greek, and were copied into the Armenian, by this Moses Chorenensis. [Was the Armenian a Greek idiom?] As far as I understood, it was a mixture of Indian and Greek, but I know that the Armenian, since my time, has come in contact with the Greek so much that the language has undergone considerable change. These Gospels of the Armenians set forth St. Paul as Apollonius of Tyana, with Jesus Christ as a modern typification of Krishna, of India; that is they placed Krishna as living at the time of Apollonius of Tyana, and Apollonius as the disciple instead of the real master. All this I knew at the time I lived in mortal form, but I could never see it clearly until I became a spirit, on account of my fanaticism. And as I am anxious and willing to rectify the errors of my mortal life, so I am here to-day, to testify what I know of the truth, thanking you for the opportunity. That will finish what I have to say to-day. St. Germain, Bishop of Auxerre.”

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 546 J.M. Roberts Commentary

   Refer to Nouvelle Biographie Generale for account of St. Germain.
   If the communication of St. Germain is correct, then there are works of Moses Chorenensis that have been suppressed by the Catholic Church. We hope that the time may come when the writings of this Armenian bishop will be again brought to the light; it is much, however, to have the assurance of this spirit that those writings showed that the original Gospels were written in Cappadocia, in the Syriac-Hebraic tongue, and were copied therefrom by Moses Chorenensis, bishop of Bagravand, into the Armenian tongue. This leaves hardly a doubt that Apollonius of Tyana, a native of Cappadocia, was the writer or compiler of the so-called original gospels, a fact testified to by the spirit of Apollonius himself.

   [....]

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 547

   “Good day, to you:— My name is Montacute, Earl of Salisbury. In the year 1343, I conquered the Isle of Man from the Scots. My business here, to-day, is not concerning my military exploits, but about the religion I found on that island when I conquered it. According to their priests and teachers, in the year 400, or thereabout, the god Hesus was introduced on that island, and as that name sounded so familiar to me, I interfered but very little with it. I told the priests of my religion to let them have their Hesus, and to try to make that name identical with Jesus, which they gradually did. The native priests said the Hesus religion had been introduced amongst their ancestors from Ireland by a saint or priest named Columbkille. They said that St. Patrick, St. Columbkille, St. Declan, and a score of other Irish saints, who were called Christians, were all teachers of Hesusism. The writings concerning Hesusism, when that worship was first introduced on the Island of Man, went to show that it was of Phoenician origin. If you seek Phoenician history, you will discover that it is almost impossible, to find the work of any Phoenician author of note extant at this time. The writings of Sanchoniathon on religious subjects, if they are ever to be found, must be looked for among the relics of the ancient Irish, Scots and Picts. I think that the round-towers and other ancient ruined edifices of Ireland and Scotland will yet throw a great deal of light upon that religious imposition called Christianity. As the Manx people, who inhabited the Isle of Man in my time, were very superstitious, you will find them so to-day. I think they have among them now the relics of the ancient religion which they carefully conceal from the ministers and priests of the Roman Catholic and English Churches. The evidence I came to give is about completed, and I will say no more.”

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 547 J.M. Roberts Commentary

   The only reference I have been able to find in relation to Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, is in the History of the Isle of Man, by Rev. Joseph George Cummings, London, 1848, Appendix B, pages 277-278. [...]

   [Pg 548] “In 1344, Sir William Montacute was solemnly crowned king of Man, but the family seem to have held the island by an uneasy tenure; and in the year 1393, the Earl of Salisbury sold it to Sir William Scroop, the king’s chamberlain, afterwards Earl of Wiltshire, on whose attainder and execution in 1399, Henry IV granted the Isle to Henry Perey, Earl of Northumberland, to be held by him on the service of carrying the sword of Lancaster on the day of the coronation of the kings of England.”

   It is thus seen that a part of this communication is fully confirmed by recorded historical facts. That the communication came from the spirit of Sir William Montacute, the conqueror and crowned king of the Isle of Man, it is hardly possible to doubt, and it is therefore entitled to credit as coming from a spirit who has very clearly proven his identity. If what he says about the religion he found prevailing on the Isle of Man, at the time of its conquest, is true, then we have the surprising information that as late as the middle of the fourteenth century the Druid worship of the Sun-god Hesus prevailed upon the Isle of Man. This being the case, we may naturally credit Montacute’s statement in relation to the account he received from the native priests, as to the time when, and the source whence they derived their worship of Hesus. But the probability of its correctness is much increased by the mention of St. Columbkille as the missionary from Ireland, who first taught Hesusism to the Manx people. St. Columbkille was the contemporary of St. Patrick in Ireland, and his chief assistant in the great School which he established at Armagh, in Ireland, where the Druid religion, of which the sun-god Hesus was the chief divinity, was taught. The concurrent testimony of several returning spirits all go to show this to have been the case. Montacute further testifies that he was told by the native priests that the writings brought to Man by Columbkille went to show that the Hesusism of the Druids was of Phoenician origin. There is little doubt but that such was the fact. The sun-god of the Phoenicians was called i-es pronounced yes, the etymology of that name being “i” meaning one, and “es” meaning fire, or the one fire or the sun. This Ies of the Phoenicians was pronounced Hes by the Druids of Western and Northern Europe, and no doubt received the terminal syllable “us” after the time of the Roman conquests of Gaul and Britain. There is good reason to hope that from the Druidical ruins in France, Great Britain, Ireland and the adjacent islands will yet come forth the facts which will show beyond all question what the Hesusism of the Druids was, and its relation to the Christian religion which supplanted it. As the worship of Hesus was comparatively so recent in the Isle of Man, relics may yet be found among the descendants of the Manx, the ancient inhabitants of the Isle of Man, that will contribute to that end.

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 550

   “Good afternoon, sir:— In the year of my mortal life, 1791, I preached a sermon in St. Mary’s Church in this city, on St. Patrick. I believed, at that time, that I was speaking the truth. As a spirit I am now aware that it was all untrue. To outside people this might seem strange; but to one who has gone so thoroughly over the ground presented by these communications as you have, it should not. St. Patrick was not a Christian, but a Druid priest. I have not learned this from books, but from an interview with the spirit of Patrick himself. The proof of the truth of this, in a mortal sense, must be sought for among the ruins of the round-towers of Ireland. That there is such evidences there, I, as a spirit, am perfectly aware. If I had a medium whom I could properly control, I could lead you to the exact spot where that evidence is to be found, in the county of Armagh. But even if you should fail to find it there, others probably will. It is not in the roundtowers but at their bases where this proof will be found. I will also say to you that I only act as interpreter for St. Patrick, St. Declan and other spirits who went to spirit life long before me. You must depend on them for the facts in your search for that evidence, and they will not fail you when the proper time comes. The hope of all revolting Catholic spirits is that you will throw out these facts to the world. There are immense numbers of people who will be desirous of profiting by them. In that way you will accomplish a work, the benefit of which no one can possibly estimate. I died of yellow fever, in this city, in 1793. My name was Francis Anthony Flemming, of St. Mary’s Church.”

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 550 J.M. Roberts Commentary

   We have not been able to find any biographical mention in reference to the Rev. Francis Anthony Flemming, and do not know whether he was in charge of St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Philadelphia, in 1793, but I cannot but believe that such was the case. For in a publication that I found in the Philadelphia Library, relating to the Yellow Fever and its work of destruction in 1793, in this city, I found among those who died of that disease in that year the name of Rev. Francis A. Flemming, a Catholic clergyman. Whether the A. in the name stood for Anthony, I have not been able to learn. Neither have I been able to learn whether he ever preached a sermon on St. Patrick, in 1791, as he states he did, I have no means of ascertaining; but the very natural inference, in view of all the facts, is, that he did preach just such a sermon before the congregation of St. Mary’s Church at the time he states. As a spirit he seems to have learned more concerning St. Patrick than he knew of him as a Catholic priest. As a spirit, he claims, and no doubt justly, that he is now as honest and truthful in what he testifies to as he was then while testifying as a mortal, in relation to St. Patrick and his theological position and labors, as the patron Saint of Ireland.
It is this, no doubt, sincere and truthful spirit, who, as the interpreter for St. Patrick, St. Declan and their priestly compeers of ancient Ireland, and on their authority, declares that they were not Christian divines as he once believed them to be; but were Druid priests. It would seem that the only excuse the Roman Catholic Church had for claiming them as Christian divines was the fact that they worshipped the Sun-God under the name of Jesus or Hesus, which name was a little before that time tacked to the name Christos of the Essenes and Neo-Platonists, by the Council of Nice, under the politic management of Constantine the Great, who sought by that means to heal the theological dissensions that prior to that time had been keeping the Roman Empire in turmoil and disorder.

   [....]

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 552

   “I am here to make my way straight. I was an architect and a designer and builder of Roman Catholic churches at Florence in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. I am chosen by the spirit world to fulfil a mission here, and that is, to testify to what I did, to convert the stones of pagan temples into Christian churches, and pagan statues into the apostles of Christianity. Those mute marbles of Florence will testify to what neither Catholic nor Protestants Christians can deny. Why is it that the ruins of Thebes, of Ephesus, of Athens, of Rome, have so few of the pagan gods standing in them to-day. The answer of the Catholic is this: they were destroyed in times of war. I will tell you a truth that was well known in the Middle Ages, that no soldier would wantonly have destroyed, nor at the command of his officers, anything, that to him, represented a god. Where, then, are those statues of the gods of antiquity? They are the finest representations of the twelve apostles; somewhat changed, it is true, by the sculptor. Nevertheless, these pagan gods now represent at Rome, Padua, Florence, Venice, and Geneva, the disciples of Jesus of the Christian religion. I, myself, helped, in 1240, to mount at Florence, at their great church there, the statue of Hesus of the Celtic Druids, which was brought there by the order of the ruling pontiff from northern France, or what is called Brittany. I am here to-day to testify to the identity of the materials of the statues of Jesus and his twelve apostles, which are all merely pagan divinities carved and modified to suit Christian wants and requirements. I have no fear but that what I have here stated can, on investigation, be proven to be true. We architects and sculptors, together with the priests, alone knew this. My name was Jacob, and I had a surname Capo. You may find that I am not named in biographical works, but I think you will find mention of me in connection with the history of architecture. This is a duty I have long desired to fulfill, and I feel my conscience much lightened by what I have said.”

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 553

   “Sir: — In my mortal life I charged the Christians, learned and unlearned, that their teachings, promulgated and propagated, were forgeries, lies, dissemblings, in regard to that which was true. Their attempts to answer me were just such as they usally make — that it was necessary for man to have a saviour, in order to reconcile him with an offended God. What this God has had to get offended at, I have failed, either as a spirit or mortal, to find out. If God made me so that my reason was more critical than my belief was strong, I claim that to be a right which neither God, man nor devils can take from me, namely, my own individuality. That Paganism and Christianity are one and the same thing, and the dying gods of virgins born is a mythical idea, at least fifteen thousand years old, I am willing to stake all my hopes of future happiness upon. Where is the evidence of 15,000 to 20,000 years ago to be found, to confirm what I here state? When European and American scholars turn their attention to the encyclopaedia of two nations, of whom little as yet is known, that is in regard to their ancient records, they will find this evidence. Those two nations are the Chinese and Japanese. They are the nations that have undergone the least changes, and it is amongst such unchangeable people that the most direct and positive evidence is to be found. Away back in those far-distant ages a God was looked for who was to bring about the golden age, when all things should be equal. This was as eagerly looked for by mortals, then living, as it is looked for to-day by moderns. All kinds of symbols and symbolical worship, taken from the attitudes of dying men and animals, have been copied and joined together. Two heroes fighting, as, did the Horatii and the Curatii, on whose efforts seemed to hang some great stake, falling across each other thus
_× or thus ₊ have suggested the symbols which were afterwards transferred to Christianity, is my firm and honest conviction as a spirit. If we can only understand it properly, we will find that all those mythological signs have had to do with the individual actions of mortal men, and were then transferred to the stars, after the death of those individuals. I lived in l725, and my name was J. S. Semler. I was a German.”

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 554 J.M. Roberts Commentary

   I translate the following account of Semler from the Nouvelle Biographie Generate.
“Jean-Salaman Semler, a German theologian, born the 18th of September, 1721, at Saalfeld, where his father was a clergyman; died March 14th, 1791, at Halle. Raised amid pious surroundings, he modified his religious tendencies at the University of Halle. During his studies, he became attached to S. J. Baumgarten, whom he aided in the publication of his ‘History Universelle.’ In 1749 he was called to Coburg, in the capacity of professor, and there conducted the Gazette. After having taught history and literature at Altdorf (1751), he finally in that year, obtained a chair of theology at Halle. In 1757 he succeeded Baumgarten in the control of the theological seminary. [...]

   [Pg 555] Semler was a profuse writer, and left many works, all of which were calculated to annoy, if not alarm, the orthodox Christian Church. It was the spirit of this bold and original Christian thinker who gave the above communication. How far his theory, in regard to the origin of the Greek and Roman crosses, is correct, I have no certain means of knowing. With the light I have, I am more inclined to believe their phallic and equinoctial origin. The idea thrown out by the spirit is, however, singularly suggestive of the struggle between light and darkness, warmth and cold, at the two equinoctial periods of the year, when, apparently equally exhausted, they seem to rest a brief space from their efforts to destroy each other. The communication is, in my opinion, authentic and true, and well worthy of the most profound attention and thought.

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 556

   “Let us use blessings instead of curses to those who disagree with us. It would have been well for me, if I had practiced that precept as a mortal. I was selected by a council of priests to prepare the Latin Vulgate in more readable form. I had five different copies to write from. The first was a copy of Marcion, copied by Chrysostom; the second a version by Ulphilas; the third a copy of the monks of Mount Athos; the fourth a copy similar to the Codex Alexandrinus; and the fifth was a Samaritan copy supposed to have been written by that great Essene, Ignatius of Antioch. All these copies can be traced back to the last named which was the original of them all. This Samaritan copy by Ignatius of Antioch, said, in a preface, that the writings that followed it were transferred by a disciple of Ma Ming, (whose name was not in the preface given), to Apollonius of Tyana, and by him were given to Ignatius of Antioch. This copy had two distinct sections to it; first an explanation in the Hebraic-Samaritan tongue, tracing the whole to a God, born of a Star, seen in a trance by Ma Ming. It was divided into four Divisions or God-spells, and they bore the names of the four different principles, truth, virtue, perseverance and equity: the whole to be understood, and understood only by the initiated, as an inquiry into star-worship, with the Sun as the central pivot of the whole. When the Sun began to make his appearance above the line, then commenced the reign of their God on earth, and when he began to decline then he was going down into the grave; and as those ancients claimed that for about three days he stood still, before he began to arise again, this is the secret of the three days and three nights in the grave. All this was well understood, but became disguised more and more, because the priests saw it would not do to let the masses know the truth for fear of losing their power. And this Marcion of Pontus, instead of receiving the original writings of Apollonius, received the copy of Ignatius, with notes made by him, and Marcion managed to make St. Mark a substitute for himself; Luke is Lucian; Matthew was a man in the third century named Matthias, an Essene of Cappadocia, one of the last of that sect before it became absorbed in what is termed Christianity; and the original St. John was as has been stated here, Apollonius of Tyana. It was said in the marginal notes of the Samaritan copy by Ignatius of Antioch, that Matthias had found a copy that had been lost. Apollonius gave it to his disciple Damis, and it became separated from the rest, and in that way came to be used by Matthias to propagate a religion. It was marked 297. This Matthias was a Cappadocian and connected with the Magi. All the other copies mentioned are nothing more than translations from the Hebraic-Samaritan copy. The other four were modified copies of that one, made to suit the views of the transcribers. The first interruption to the original copy written by myself was made by Tyndale when he printed the first Bible in the Sixteenth century. He dropped all the marginal notes with the exception of those manufactured by priests; and also destroyed all the preface. It was not so much his fault, for his life would have paid the forfeit. As long as these things were written, they were held by the selected few of the faithful, but when printed there was danger that the masses would become too enlightened. This is all I can now state. I lived in the 13th century and my name was Cardinal Sancta De Caro.”

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 557 J.M. Roberts Commentary

I asked him how he came to bring that communication to earth? He replied by saying that spirit messengers were being sent out from one department of spirit life to the others, to find out those who could in each special department best impart information to earth’s people, and he had been selected and sent to discharge the mission he had just performed. This reply opens up a train of thought that seems to be inexhaustible. I have searched in vain for any historical reference to any person, cardinal or otherwise, that can in any way appertain to the spirit who gives that communication; and yet I have no doubt of its genuineness and truthfulness. It would be strange indeed, that any personating spirit should have given it, and this must have been the case if it is not genuine. Had the spirit named the “council of priests” to whom he refers, we would have been better able to trace the matter up. He says he lived and labored as a cardinal in the thirteenth century. Now, it is a fact, that in 1274 A. D. there assembled in Lyons, France, a council which was attended by 500 bishops and about 1000 of the inferior clergy, the principal object of which was to bring about the reunion of the Greek and Latin churches. Nothing would be more natural than that at such an assembly, an attempt would be made to bring the Latin and Greek versions of the New Testament into the closest possible accord. It is therefore highly probable, at least, that there was some effort made at that time, to bring the Latin and Greek versions of the Bible into perfect agreement. Indeed a writer in McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopaedia of Theological Literature says:

   “In the Thirteenth century, Correctoria were drawn up, especially in France, in which varieties of readings were discussed, and Roger Bacon complains loudly of the confusion which was introduced into the common, that is the Parisian copy; and quotes a false reading from Mark viii, 38, where the correctors had substituted confessus for confusus. Little more was done for the text of the Vulgate till the invention of printing,” etc.

   This is enough to show that about the time the spirit speaks of, there was a movement made to correct the Vulgate Bible. [...]

   [Pg 562] The spirit tells us that his translation of the original versions remained uninterfered with until Tyndale printed the first Bible. De Caro gives us to understand that he retained the preface and notes of the original Syro-Hebraic, in his Vulgate version; and that Tyndale, in the 16th century, published it, dropping the marginal notes and destroying the whole preface of it, substituting other marginal notes prepared for, or by him. All of which is highly probable, if not absolutely true. I must here take leave of this communication, one of the most remarkable and important, I venture to say, that has ever been given by a spirit through a mortal medium, to be recorded by a mortal amanuensis.

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 562

   “Bellisimo mio signior: To me as a spirit life is full of pomp, religious shows and variety. Egotism is ever the attendant of prelatical position, because those who venerate and follow you, make you think yourself great, whether you are great or not. The possession of power always makes you arbitrary, because you know that however far you may go, you will be supported by the ignorant masses. My principal business here to-night, is to certify that the twelve apostles of St. Peters, in Rome, are each and every one copied from the twelve gods, which were transported from Olympus to Rome in the days of the Emperor Hadrian. And back of these twelve apostles are the twelve signs of the zodiac. And as near as it was possible, the figures of those apostles were made to correspond to the zodiacal signs. From those connections it is proven that they mean the same things; as was well known in my day, and as they were completely written out and described in all their details. But they were afterwards burned by Catharine de Medicis and Simon de Montfort, as was told you by Cardinal Sancto de Caro, who lived shortly after my time, and who wrote a full account of it. At the time I lived, Christianity was what you might term strictly within the control and power of Catholicism. There is a place now in Rome known only to the priesthood, and not to the common people, called the tomb of the Palatine Apollo, which contains the scroll writings from the time of Marcion in the second century to Eusebius in the fourth century, which contain the secrets of the Catholic church. I abjure that church. I go further, and if there is authority in a pontifical curse, I curse that church for the slavery I have gone through in spirit. And in conclusion I will say that I desire all Spiritualists to become freethinkers, as there can be no progression without full and unrestrained privilege, to reason upon any and all subjects. I have never communicated before, and it is very difficult for me to talk in the English tongue. I could not have done so at all but for the help I have received from an English speaking spirit. I was known as Hieronymus Abescalo, otherwise as Pope Nicholas IV. I lived towards the latter end of the thirteenth century, and was Pope in 1288.”

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 563 J.M. Roberts Commentary

   Refer to DeFeller’s Dictionaire Historique for account of Nicholas IV.
   We were assured by this spirit that there was a terrible conflict going on in spirit life between those spirits who were seeking to spread light and truth, not only among mortals, but among spirits as well, and those who were opposed to this. He spoke of the terrible bitterness that was manifested by spirits, with whom he had been fraternizing towards him for making the disclosures he was then making, and which he was only able to make by virtue of a power that was superior to the opposing forces. It does indeed seem that there is a disastrous inroad being made upon the spirit domain so long impregnably held by the spirits of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy in spirit life. When popes, cardinals, archbishops, bishops and priests abjure their allegiance to the Catholic Church, curse the bondage which that church inflicted upon them as spirits, and turn in and help to overthrow that fearful and iniquitous power, the end is not far away. It would seem, from the communication of this pontifical spirit, that the burning of the Library of the Palatine Apollo, by the Great Gregory, in the eleventh century, did not result in the entire destruction of the contents of that library, as has been generally supposed, and that some of the manuscripts it contained were secreted and preserved. They are today, most probably, among the secret archives of the Roman Catholic Church, in Rome. If they are still in existence, it is to be hoped that they will sooner or later be given to the world. This spirit speaks of the destruction of important evidence againt the claims and pretensions of the Catholic Church, by Catherine de Medicis and Simon de Montfort, and especially of the destruction of the writings of Cardinal Sancta de Caro whose communication will be found on page 556. It is not a strange thing regarding that communication that the spirit of Pope Nicholas IV, should refer to the literary labors of Cardinal De Caro, and state that they were destroyed by Catherine De Medicis, and that De Caro had fully set forth the destruction which Simon de Montfort had made of the evidences of the fraudulent and untruthful character of the Christian Bible.

   On April 25, 1878, the following communication was received from Aronamar, who was the presiding spirit of the band under whose ministrations the great work herein presented has been laid before the world. The communication was as follows:

   “Kingdoms and empires have passed away since I was on earth — revolutions, bloodshed, wars and pestilence — and yet still the human race advances one step nearer to the great I AM. It is vain for mortals to struggle to keep back the light that spirits are bringing to this world. Oh, where I am, I wish all were! I look not upon the selfishness of humanity, I only contemplate that which is grand and ennobling. Men and women when they reach the sphere that I have gained are well purged of all vices. To come back here is difficult but nevertheless it must be done. Spiritual food must be supplied, and who can supply it so well as those who have gained it by their own experience. To enjoy happiness, it is necessary to know its opposite. It is only by contrast that real happiness can exist. What do I know of the Infinite Mind? What do I know of that which is ever beyond the reach? On some trees the fairest fruit grows nearest the top. In spirit life it is always nearest the top, and the more we partake of it the more eager we become to enjoy it. New beauties unfold from day to day, and he or she who will drink at the fountain of Eternal Truth shall never thirst. Not to occupy more time I will say may the good spirits keep you and aid you in the right, and sustain you in the work in which you are engaged; and when your task is done, may you cross the stream to those beautiful realms beyond. I lived about two hundred years before the time of Alexander the Great, and until shortly after the death of Cyrus, well known in Persian history. I was a Persian and known in my time as an astrologer. Aronamar.”

   Little did I think when I received that communication, of what was to follow it, through the same medium. It was on March 26th, 1880, that I received the communication from the spirit of Potamon, the founder of the Alexandrian or Eclectic School of Philosophy, which opened this remarkable series of spirit communications from ancient and modern spirits. I was aware, from that time, that Aronamar was the chief of the spirit band that controlled at the sittings, I have had weekly with the medium. Since that time I have never had a communication through the medium that in any way related to myself personally, or the use I was to make of those communications in forwarding the intentions of the spirits in giving them. This was left, apparently, solely to my discretion; and as the communications were continued, until the spirits declared that they had accomplished their purpose and completed their work, I must conclude that they, at least, approved of my management of the mundane department of the work. On July 1, 1881, I learned from the guide of the medium that Aronamar had been waiting for an opportunity to control the medium for a long time, and that the circumstances had not before been such as would enable him to control the medium personally but that he had at last succeeded, and he was compelled to avail himself of that opportunity to do so, or he might be for centuries prevented from saying what he desired to say to me in person at that sitting. Here the guide yielded the control, and the spirit of him who had been known to me as Aronamar, took possession of the medium. The following communication was then given:

   “I salute you, sir: — You have heard from me from time to time, and once I think, I communicated directly with you. I am Zarathustra, Zerdusht or Zoroaster, the Daniel of the Jewish Scriptures. I lived in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Darius Hydaspes and Cyrus. It is very important that I communicate with you at this time; and I must ask this of you. In making up or closing your book, I ask that you give this communication as the last, as by arrangement of the spirits with whom I am acting, I am to close or complete these communications. The Jewish book of Daniel, was stolen bodily from the books written by myself, or through me, concerning Ormuzd and Mithra. And, sir, I ask you, from all you have known of me, during the time these communications have been given to you, whether I have not proven my honesty, and acted with the sole object of benefiting humanity? [I cordially and emphatically answered in the affirmative.] Oh! sir, how I have desired to come to you! hut conditions were necessary, that I could not control; and which could only be obtained by a power outside of, and beyond myself. That power has been exerted, and the conditions have been brought about, that enable me to come to you. I knew the importance of availing myself of this opportunity. I might not have been able to give this communication for five hundred years to come, did I not do so now. From this you will understand the importance of it. It will be difficult to find evidence of the truth of what I am about to communicate to you, in any books now extant, whether biographical dictionaries, encyclopedias, or other works; and I will tell you why this is so. Anything that was opposed to the Christian religion can no longer be found in ancient writings, because of the care with which all such evidence has been destroyed by Christian priestly zealots. Only such evidence as could be construed to favor Christianity, or which did not in the least oppose it, has been allowed to escape similar destruction. I want you to give this point particular attention, for by doing so you will reach the truth. The Hebrew book, called the ‘Book of Daniel,’ contains the account of the actual earthly experiences of Zoroaster at the court of Nebuchadnezzar, and the other kings whom I have already named. All that is mentioned as having transpired in the ‘Book of Daniel,’ occurred through myself as a medium, and has no relation whatever to a Jewish Daniel, but solely relates to Zarathustra of the Persians. I want to commence with that part of that book where mention is made of Nebuchadnezzar eating grass, and explain what was meant by it. It meant nothing more than that, after years of a life of sensuality, that king was struck with a sense of the enormity of his personal conduct, and he was brought to a realization of this through me,— not that I desire to exalt myself by mentioning this fact, for my sole object in doing so is the good of humanity. I was known as Aronamar at the court of Cyrus. I want you to understand that, at the court of that king, I was in the position of a philosopher, who, having reasoned upon the law of cause and effect, would stand at any court, or in any other condition of life. In the reign of Darius Hydaspes, I went through the ordeal of being cast into a lion’s den; but I was a medium, and was attended by a power that protected me from physical injury; but it was through what may be regarded as superior mesmeric and psychological power. I received this from spirits; and through that power I was enabled to calm the fury of lions. It was I, Zarathusra, who read the handwriting on the wall, in the days of Belshazzar, and I did this through the power of spirits. I assure you that I was the original Daniel, and the Jews appropriated my works. There was a religious teaching promulgated in the age in which I lived on earth, which was attribued to Hermes Trismegistus, that a child should be born of a virgin. This was a common belief at that time. I was only a chip floating on the stream of Time. Back of me and behind me lies what is known as the Phallic religion. That religion taught that the forces of nature express themselves in an individual unit. Back of, and beyond that was the philosophical religion taught by Hermes Trismegistus. This philosophical religion was derived from the planetary and stellar systems, and embodied the principle known to you moderns as the law of cause and effect. Back of and beyond that was a Hindoo-Chaldaic religion which took its rise at the base of the Himalaya mountains. There was also a very ancient Phoenician religion. The latter religions had, as their chief idea, the relations of heat and cold, and their effects in nature upon men and crops on which they depended for sustenance. And here I want you to observe what I say particularly. The great Western Continent — by you called America — was progressing, at one time, side by side with the Eastern Continent; and a man named Bochica taught all the laws of cause and effect, in Bolivia and Peru, long before Manco Capac and his wife appeared there. And I want you to say, at the close of your book, that all the sciences, and all the knowledge of antiquity are concentrated in two books. The nature of one of them [The Book of Revelation] has been explained to you by Apollonius of Tyana, and the other is the ‘Book of Daniel.’ Those two books open up to you the secrets of antiquity. By this I mean when properly understood and interpreted, but not when literally read. In the latter part of the book containing these communications, I want this train of information set forth; and the fact impressed npon the reader, that we spirits are not working for applause, but for the good of humanity. I want it further understood, that the spirits I have brought to you, have been compelled, by my power, to tell the truth. We also desire, that it shall be stated in the close of this book, that we are not seeking to gain believers in any doctrine. All we ask of them is, that they will examine in order to know the truth. The Book of Daniel is typical of the learning and knowledge of pre-Christian ages, and its meaning is similar to the book of Apollonius, known to you as the ‘Book of Revelation.’ We were both inspired media, and our works overlap each other.”

  

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 568 J.M. Roberts Commentary

   The spirit could control the medium no longer. Taking my hand — a most unusual manifestation by spirits, of their special interest in my work — he bade me an eloquent and fraternal adieu. He still remained, however, and through the guide continued to converse with me. This conversation I could not record, as the spirit seemed unable to remain, and requested me to detain him as briefly as possible. Among the things said, deserving of especial mention, was that the spirit forces with which Zarathustra was working, were four-fold— the leaders or chiefs, of which were, first, Hermes Trismegistus, the Egyptian philosopher and sage, who lived B. C. 1150; second, Gautama Sakyia Buddha, the Hindoo medium and sage, who lived about B. C. 950; third, himself, Zarathustra, the Median or Persian medium and sage, who lived B. C. 650; and fourth, Apollonius of Tyana, the Cappadocian medium and sage, who lived from the beginning to the end of the first century of the so-called Christian era. When this revelation was made to me, the mystery that had so much perplexed me was all cleared away. I had often wondered how the vast array of spirit testimony that had been given from week to week, through the organism of the medium, had been collected and presented; but this was no longer surprising, in view of the mighty forces that I was then informed, had been concentrated for that special purpose by four of the greatest leaders of human thought that had ever lived upon this planet. Behind Hermes Trismegistus were the thousand of millions of Egyptian spirits, who worshipped him as an incarnated god, and who were animated as one man by the spirit of their great leader. Behind Gautama Sakyia Buddha, were the vastly greater number of the spirits of his Mongolian followers, all moved and swayed by him as one man. Behind Zoroaster were the vast spirit hosts of the Semitic nations of Western Asia. And behind Apollonius of Tyana were the multitude of his spirit followers among the Greek and Latin speaking peoples, for the first four hundred years of the Christian era. It was those combined spirit forces, animated and moved by the spirits of those four great leaders of human thought, with the common purpose of giving the unadulterated truth to the world, that made it possible for these series of communications to be given. Sixteen hundred years ago the Christian Church was organized with the purpose of presenting the old heathen mythological, theological, allegorical and priestly deceptions of all the preceding religions, in a new disguise, which should forever hold the human soul in priestly thraldom, and the human mind in the leading strings of the impious hands of priests. So well did these priestly schemers profit by the experiences of their great and truly wise and benevolent predecessors, that they managed to organize a system of suppressing inquiry, and perpetuating human ignorance, such as the world had never before known, and such as it will never know again in all the coming ages. During the past sixteen hundred years, the Christian church has been sending to spirit life, thousands of millions of ignorant and bigoted spirits whose whole desire and aim has been to perpetuate the ignorance which governed and controlled them while on earth. These being the latest and most active in the promotion of sectarian bigotry, on entering spirit life, have remained near the earth plane, and have operated as an almost impassable barrier to the return of the older, less selfish, and more advanced ancient spirits, who sought to inform mortals of the truths of the after life. This barrier has at last been broken through by the combined power of the more ancient and advanced spirits, and this series of communications has been the result. Another especially important statement made in reply to a question I asked was, that he was not the mythical Zoroaster, the founder of: Magianism, or the religion of the Magian astrologers, who dated many centuries before himself, but that he was the author of the Zend-Avesta, and the founder of the theology in relation to Ormuzd and Mithra. The ultimatum of these spirit disclosures, will be the utter demolition of the bigoted sectarianism that has so long prevailed, both in the spirit world and on the earth, and in its place will arise an enlightened freedom of thought, that will carry mankind forward over every obstacle that may be thrown in the way of general progress. We give the facts, or supposed facts in relation to the great Persian prophet and law-giver Zarathustra with such comments as may serve to show the significance and importance of the communication coming from the spirit of that great leader of human thought. We take the following ably collated facts concerning him and his teachings from Chambers' Encyclopaedia

   “Zoroaster, or rather Zarathustra, (which, in Greek and Latin, was corrupted into Zarastrades and Zoroastres, while the Persians and Parsees altered it into Zerdusht), is the name of the founder of what is now known as the Parsee religion. The original meaning of the word is uncertain, and though there have been many conjectures formed about it, yet not one of them seems to be borne out by recent investigations. More probably it only indicates the notion of ‘Chief,’ ‘Senior,’ ‘High priest,’ and was a common designation of a spiritual guide and head of a district or province. Indeed, the founder of Zoroastrianism is hardly ever mentioned without his family name, viz., Spitama. He seems to have been born in Bactria. The terms he applied to himself are either Manthran, i. e., a reciter of Manthras; a messenger sent by Ahuramazda, a speaker, one who listens to the voice of oracles given by the Spirit of nature; one who receives sacred words from Ahuramazda through the flames. His life is completely shrouded in darkness. Both the Greek and Roman, and most of the Zend accounts about his life and works are legendary and utterly unhistorical. [...]

   [Pg 573] All of which would be very good reasoning, if the spirit of Zarathustra was not now living, and had not returned to state that his religion, in relation to Ormuzd and Mithra, was the impartation of spirits through him as an inspired medium. “It is, as we said in the article on the Zend-Avesta, chiefly from the Gathas that Zarathustra’s real theology, unmutilated by later ages, can be learned. His leading idea was monotheism. Whatever may have caused the establishment of the dualism of gods, the good and the evil, in the Persian religion — a dualism so clearly marked at the time of Isaiah, that he found it necessary to protest emphatically against it — it was not Zarathustra who proclaimed it. His dualism is of a totally different nature. It was merely the principle of his speculative philosophy — a supposition of two principal causes of the real and intellectual world. His moral philosophy, on the other hand, moved in a triad — thought, word, and deed. There is no complete system of Zoroastrian philosophy to be found in the Zend-Avesta, any more than there is a developed Platonic system laid down explicitly in the Platonic writings; but from what is to be gathered in the documents referred to, it cannot be doubted that Zarathustra was a deep and great thinker, far above his contemporaries, and even many of the most enlightened men of subsequent ages. If proof were needed for the high appreciation in which he was held in antiquity, it might be found in the circumstance, that even the Greeks and Romans, not particularly given to overrating foreign learning and wisdom, held him in the very highest estimation, as may be seen by their reiterated praises of the wisdom of him whose name they scarcely knew how to pronounce.

   “With, regard then to the first point, his monotheism, it suffices to mention, that while the fire-priests before him, the Soshyantos, worshipped a plurality of good spirits called Ahuras, as opposed to the Indian devas, he reduced this plurality to a unity. This one Supreme being he called Ahura Mazdao, (that Ahura that is Mazdao), or the Creator of the Universe — Auramazda of the cuneiform inscriptions of the Achemenidian kings, the Ahurmazd of Sassanian times, and the Hormazd or Ormazd of modern Parsees. This superior God is, by Zarathustra, conceived to be ‘the creator of the earthly and spiritual life, the lord of the whole universe, at whose hands are all the creatures.’ The following extract from the Gatha (Ustavaita) will leave no doubt on that much contested point: ‘Blessed is he, blessed are all men to whom the living wise God of his own command should grant those two everlasting (viz. immortality and wholesomeness). * * * I believe Thee, O God, to be the best thing of all, the source of light for the world. Everybody shall choose Thee as the source of light, Thee, Thee, holiest spirit Mazda! Thou Greatest all good things by means of the power of Thy good mind at any time, and promised us, who believe in Thee, a long life. I believe Thee to be powerful, holy god Mazda! for Thou givest with Thy hand, filled with helps, good to the pious man, as well as to the impious, by means of the warmth of the - fire strengthening of good things. From this, reason, the vigor of the good mind has fallen to my lot. * * Who was in the beginning the father and creator of truth? Who showed to the sun and the stars their way? Who caused the moon to increase and wane, if not Thou? * * Who is holding the earth and the skies above it? Who made the waters and trees of the field? Who is in the winds and in the storms that they so quickly run? Who is the creator of good minded beings? Thou wise? Who made the lights of good effect and the darkness? Who made the sleep of good effect and the activity? Who made the morning, noon, and night?’ Ahuramazda is thus to Zarathustra the light and the source of light. [In other words the Sun.] He is wisdom and intellect; he possesses all good things, temporal and spiritual, among them the good mind immortality, wholesomeness, the best truth, devotion, piety and abundance of all earthly good. All these gifts he grants to the pious man who is pure in thought, word and deed. He rewards the good, and punishes the wicked; and all that is created, good or evil fortune or misfortune, is his work alone.

   “We spoke of Zarathustra’s philosophical dualism, and of its having been confounded with theological dualism, which it is certainly very far from being. Nothing was further from Zarathustra’s mind than to assume anything but one supreme being, one and indivisible. But that everlasting problem of all thinking minds — viz. the origin of evil, and its incompatibility with God’s goodness, holiness, and justice — he attempted to solve by assuming two primeval causes, which though different, were united, and produced the world of material things as well as that of the spirit. The one who produced the reality (gaya) is called Vohu Mano, the good mind; the other, through whom the non-reality (ajyaiti) originated, is the Akem Mauo, the naught mind. To the first belong all good, true and perfect things; to the second, all that is delusive, bad, wicked. These two aboriginal moving, causes of the universe are called twins. They are spread every where, in God as in men. When united in Ahuramazda, they are called Cpento Mainyus, and Angro Mainyus — i. e., white or holy; and dark spirits. It is only in later writings that these two are supposed to be opposed to each other, not within Ahuramazda, but without— to stand in fact, in the relation of God and Devil to each other. The inscriptions of Darius know but one God, without any adversary whatever. But while the one side within him produced all that was bright and shining, all that is good and useful in nature, the other side produced all that is dark and apparently noxious. Both are as inseparable as day and night, and though opposed to each other, are indispensable for the preservation of creation. The bright spirit appears in the blazing flame, the presence of the dark is marked by the wood converted into charcoal. The one has created the light of the day, the other the darkness of night; the former awakens men to their duty, the other lulls them to sleep. Life is produced by the one, and extinguished by the other, who also, by releasing the soul from the fetters of the body, enables her to go up to immortality and everlasting life.

   “We have said already that the original monotheism of Zarathustra did not last long. False interpretations, misunderstandings, changes, and corruptions crept in, and dualism was established in theology. The two principles then for the first time became two powers, hostile to each other, each ruling over a realm of his own, and constantly endeavoring to overthrow the other. This doctrine, which appears first fully developed in the Vendidad, once accepted by some of the most influential leaders, it soon followed that, like terrestrial rulers, each of the two powers must have a council and court of his own. The number of councillors was six, each having to rule over some special province of creation; but Ahurmazda, who at first merely presided over this council, came gradually to be included in their number, and we then read of seven instead of the usual six Ameshaspentas or Immortal Saints. These six supreme councillors, who have also found their way into the Jewish tradition embodied in the Talmud, are both by etymology, and the sense of the passages in which they figure, distinctly seen to be but abstract nouns or ideas, representing the gifts which God grants to all those who worship with a pure heart, who speak the truth, and perform good actions. The first of these angels or principles (Vohu Mano) is the vital faculty in ail living beings of the good creation. He is the son of Ahuramazda, and penetrates the whole living good creation. By him are wrought all good deeds and words of men. The second (Ardibehesht, represents the blazing flame of fire, the light in luminaries, and brightness and splendor of any ande very kind. He represents as the light, the all-pervading, all-penetrating Ahuramazda’s omnipresence. He is the preserver of the vitality of all life and all that is good. He thus represents Providence. The third presides over metals, and is the giver of wealth. His name is Sharavar, which means possession, wealth. The fourth (Issaradarmat — Devotion) represents the earth. It is a symbol of the pious and obedient heart of the true Ahuramazda worshipper, who serves God with his body and soul. The two last (Khordad and Amerdat) preside over vegetation, and produce all kinds of fruit. But apart from the celestial council stands Sraosha (Serost) the archangel, vested with very high powers. He alone seems to have been considered a personality. * He stands between God and man, the great teacher of the prophet himself.” [Here dear reader, you have the great spirit control who was at the head of the band of spirits, who used and inspired the great and immortal Persian medium, as he Zarathustra has led and controlled the spirit forces that have used the organism of the contemned and persecuted medium.] “He shows the way to Heaven, and pronounces judgment upon human actions after death. He is, in the Yazna, styled the Sincere, the Beautiful, the Victorious, who protects our territories, the True, the Master of Truth. ‘For his splendor and beauty, for his power and victory,’ he is to be worshipped and invoked. ‘He first sang the five Gathas of Zarathustra Spitama,’ that is, he is the bearer and representative of the sacred tradition, including the sacrificial rites and prayers. He is the protector of all creation, for ‘he slays the demon of Destruction, who prevents the growth of nature, and murders its life. He never slumbers, but is always awake. He guards with his drawn sword, the whole world against the attacks of the demons, endowed with bodies after sunset. He has a palace of a thousand pillars, erected on the highest summit of the mountain Alborj. It has its own light from inside, and from outside it is decorated with stars. * * He walks teaching religion round about the world.’ In men who do not honor him by prayer, the bad mind becomes powerful, and impregnates them with sin and crime, and they shall become utterly distressed both in this life and in the life to come.

   “In the same manner as Ahuramazda, his counterpart, Angromainyus, was, in later times, endowed with a council, imitated from the one just mentioned, and consisting of six devas, or devils, headed by Angromainyus himself, who is then styled Devanam Devo=arch-devil. The first after him is called Ako-Mano, or Naught Mind, the original ‘non-reality,’ or evil principle of Zoroaster. He produces all bad thoughts, makes men utter bad words, and commit sin. The second place is taken by the Indian god Indra: the third, by Shiva or Shaurua! the fourth, by Naonhaitya — the collective name of the Indian Ashuras or Dioscuri; the fifth and sixth, by the two personifications of ‘Darkness’ and ‘Poison.’ There are many devas, or devils, besides, to be found in the Zend Avesta, mostly allegorical or symbolical names of evils of all kinds. While the heavenly council is always taking measures for promoting life, the infernal council is always endeavoring to destroy it. They endeavor to spread lies and falsehoods, and altogether coincide together with their great chief, with the devil and the infernal hierarchy of the New Testament.”

   Well they may, for there was where the Christian plagiarists found the original, from which they took their theology of Satan and his legions.

   “Thus Monotheism was in later times broken up and superseded by Dualism. But a small party, represented by the Magi, remained steadfast to the old doctrine, as opposed to that of the followers of the false interpretation, or Zend, the Zendiks. In order to prove their own interpretation of Zoroaster’s doctrines, they had recourse to a false and ungrammatical explanation of the term Zervana Akarana, which meaning merely time without bounds, was by them pressed into an identity with the Supreme Being; whilst the passages on which the present Desturs, or Parsee priests, still rest their faulty interpretation, simply indicated that God created in the boundless time; i. e., that He is from eternity, self existing, neither born nor created. Two intellects and two lives are further mentioned in the Zend Avesta. By the former are to be understood the heavenly spiritual wisdom, and the earthly wisdom, i. e., that which is learned by ordinary teaching and experience. The two lives are, in the same manner, distinguished as the bodily and the mental, i. e., body and soul. From these two lives, however, are to be distinguished the ‘first’ and ‘last’ lives, terms which refer to this life and the life to come. The belief in the latter, and in immortality, was one of the principal dogmas of Zarathustra, and it is held by many that it was not through Persian influence that it became a Jewish and Christian dogma. Heaven is called the ‘House of Hymns,’ a place where angels praise God incessantly in song. It is also called the ‘Best Life,’ or Paradise. ‘Hell’ is called the house of Destruction. It is the abode chiefly of priests of the bad (deva) religion. The modern Persians call the former Behesht; the latter, Duzak. Between heaven and hell, there is the bridge of the gatherer or Judges, over which the soul of the pious pass unharmed, while the wicked is precipitated from it into hell. The resurrection of the body is clearly and emphatically indicated in the Zend Avesta; and it belongs, in all probability, to Zoroaster’s original doctrine — not, as has been held by some, to later times, when it was imported into his religion by other religions. A detailed description of the resurrection and last judgment is contained in the Bundehesh. The same argument — the almightiness of the Creator — which is now employed to show the possibility of the elements, dissolved and scattered as they may be, being all brought back again, and made once more to form the body to which they once belonged, is made use of there to prove the Resurrection. There is still an important element to be noticed, viz., the Messiah or Sosiosh, from whom the Jewish and Christian notions of a Messiah are held, by many, to be derived. He is to awaken the dead bodies, to restore all life destroyed by death, and to hold the last judgment. Here, again, a later period introduced a plurality, notably a Trinity. Three great prophets are also to appear when the end of the world draws nigh, respectively bearing the names of Moon of Happy Rule, Aurora of Happy Rule, and Sosiosh, who is supposed to be the Son of Zarathustra, begotten in a supernatural way: and he will bring with him a new portion of Zend Avesta, hitherto hidden from man. Even a superficial glance at this sketch will show our readers what very close parallels between Jewish and Christian notions on the one hand, and Zoroastrianism on the other are to be drawn; but as we have noticed under Parsees (q. v.) an attentive reading of the Zend Avesta reveals new and striking points of contact almost on every page.

   “We have in the foregoing sketch mainly followed Haug, the facile princeps of Zend studies in these days; but we have also taken into account the views of Windischmann, Spiegel, and other prominent investigators, and principally by quoting the words of the sacred sources themselves, when feasible, put our readers in a position to judge on the main points for themselves. We cannot, however, do better than thus briefly summarize, in conclusion, the principal doctrines of Zarathustra, as drawn from a certain speech (contained in the Gathas), which, in all probability, emanates from Zarathnstra himself.

   “‘1. Everywhere in the world, a duality is to be perceived, such as the Good and the Evil, light and darkness; this life and that life; human wisdom and divine wisdom. 3. Only this life becomes a prey to death, but not that hereafter, over which the destructive spirit has no power. 2. In the universe, there are from the beginning two spirits at work, the one making life, the other destroying it. 4. Both these spirits are accompanied by intellectual powers, representing the ideas of the Platonic system on which the whole moral world rests. They cause the struggle between good and evil, and all the conflicts in the world, which end in the final victory of the good principle. 5. The principal duty of man in this life is to obey the word and commandments of God. 6. Disobedience is punished with the death of the sinner. 7. Ahurmazda created the idea of the good, but is not identical with it. This idea produced the good mind, the Divine Spirit working in man and nature, and devotion — the obedient heart 8. The Divine spirit cannot be resisted. 9. Those who obey the word of God will be free from all defects, and immortal. 10. God exercises his rule in the world through the works prompted by the Divine Spirit, who is working in man and nature. 11. Men should pray to God and worship him. He hears the prayers of the good. 12. All men live solely through the bounty of God. 13. The soul of the pure will hereafter enjoy everlasting life; that of the wicked will have to undergo everlasting punishment — i. e., as modern Parsee theologians explain to the day of the resurrection. 14. All creatures are Ahuramazda’s. 15. He is the reality of the good mind, word and deed.’”

   Who can read those particulars in the light of the communication coming from Zarathustra and not see the importance of the statements which that communication contains. It was the fact, that while I had heard from him from time to time, the spirit had only communicated with me once and that more than three years before, as Aronamar. When he announced himself as Zarathustra or Zoroaster, and not as Aronamar, as I had come to know him, I was especially on the alert, and when he announced himself as the Daniel of the Jewish Scriptures, I settled down into that conviction. When he stated he lived in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Darius Hydaspes and Cyrus, I felt very sure he had betrayed his purpose to deceive. Judge then of my surprise when on coming to test the truth of that spirit, I found the facts to be most surprisingly corroborative of the genuineness and truthfulness of the communication. Never having had an intimation that there was the least parallelism between the accounts of the Jewish Daniel and the Persian Zoroaster, when I discovered their identity the reader may well imagine my astonishment as well as my deep and absorbing interest, in the full import of this unexpected revelation from spirit life.

   It is true that in the scripture legend called “The Book of Daniel,” it is stated that that prophet and seer was at the courts of Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Darius the Mede, and Cyrus, king of Persia; but the spirit seems to have designedly mentioned a circumstance that shows that the time that he lived could be fixed with the greatest certainty, while the Book of Daniel is strangely at fault in fixing the time of the reign of the third mentioned king. The spirit of Zoroaster says that he not only lived at the courts of the two first named Babylonian kings, but that he subsequently lived at the court of Darius “Hydaspes,” as the spirt gave the surname. There is not a question that this designation of the king Darius, to whom he referred, was the Darius Hystaspes of the books of Ezra, Haggai and Zechariah. Whether Hystaspes or Hydaspes is the correct rendering, I have no means of determining. The difference is between the d and st. That Zarathustra lived and wrote in the reign of Darius Hystaspes is certain; and that Daniel did not live in the reign of Darius the Mede, seems equally certain. Now as Zoroaster the magian seer knew under what king’s reign he lived and wrote, and the Jewish prophet Daniel did not, we conclude that justice requires us to believe the spirit of Zoroaster, and to disbelieve the Book of Daniel, so far as that very essential point is concerned. Nothing has more puzzled theologians and historical critics, than to find a place in history for the king Darius of the Book of Daniel. On this point we will here cite the American Cyclopaedia, to show how this matter stands. It says:

   “Darius (Greek Dareios; Hebrew Daryavesh; Persian Dariyavus, in several inscriptions), the name of several kings of Media and Persia. Darius the Mede, is represented in the book of Daniel as the successor of Belshazzar. According to the theory of Markus von Niebuhr, the personal name of Astyages, the grandfather of Cyrus, was Darius, Astyages being a national and not a personal name, and that king the “Darius the Mede” of the book of Daniel. Another hypothesis is that he was identical with Cyaxares II., mentioned by Xenophon in the Cycropsedia as the son of Astyages and maternal uncle of Cyrus, who married his daughter. Being an indolent, luxurious man, Cyaxares, according to Xenophon, left the real exercise of power entirely in the hands of Cyrus, as the immediate successor of Astyages. Josephus seems to have adopted this view, since he says that Babylon was taken by Darius and Cyrus his kinsman, and that Darius was the son of Astyages, and was known among the Greeks by another name, which he does not mention. Still another theory is that Darius the Mede, was a member of the royal Median family, and was merely viceroy at Babylon for two years, until Cyrus came to reign there in person. This appears to be corroborated by the expression in Daniel, ‘Darius the son of Ayasuerus, of the seed of the Medes, who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans.’ In the words of Rawlinson, ‘Upon the whole it must be acknowledged that there are scarcely sufficient grounds for determining whether the Darius Medus of Daniel is identical with any monarch known to us in profane history, or is a person of whose existence there remains no other record.’”

   Rawlinson is certainly right when he says that biblical and profane history are at fault and irreconcilable in regard to the identity of the Darius of Daniel; and but for the communication of the spirit of Zarathustra, that identification might have remained undetermined. By one of those strange successions of events by which concealed truth is brought to light, I am enabled to demonstrate a point that no learned critic has ever been able to elucidate; and to make clear two facts, first that the Book of Daniel was a Jewish plagiarism of Chaldean legends, and, second, that it was written after the middle of the fifth century B. C. The writer from whom we have quoted above, continues:

   “Darius Hystaspis, son of Hystaspes, (Persian Vistaspa or Ustaaspi), of the royal race of the Achaemenidse, reigned 521- 486 B. C. According to Herodotus, he was marked out for the empire during the life of Cyrus, who saw him in a dream with wings overshadowing Asia and Europe.”

   That dream of Herodotus or Cyrus, has certainly played havoc with the historical and chronological correctness of the sacred book of Daniel; for it led the Hebrew plagiarist into a blunder, from which the Jewish and Christian priesthoods have never been able to extricate him. When the Book of Daniel was written, the only historical data concerning the reigns of Darius and Cyrus, were embraced in the following authors, to whom the American Cyclopsedia, under the head “Cyrus” alludes thus: “Most of the particulars of his (Cyrus’s) life, are differently related in the histories of Ctesias and Herodotus, and in the Cycropsedia of Xenophon. But as Ctesias is in general untrustworthy, and as Xenophon seems to have written his book, a kind of philosophical romance, without much regard for history, the story of Herodotus, in spite of its legendary character, has been generally adopted by modern historians down to Grote.” It would seem that the legendary character of Herodotus’s account of Cyrus and Darius did not militate against its historical correctness, in the esteem of the Jew who plagiarized the Chaldean legend, and thus the blunder of Herodotus has been handed down to us through Jewish holy writ, as not only historical truth, but as divine truth as well. In the light of all the facts which we are about “to submit, it will be seen that Darius Hystaspes succeeded Belshazzar and not Cyrus, and that the latter succeeded Darius instead of preceding him. It is true that this fact makes an end of Daniel, but that cannot be helped. If he must die, in order that the truth may live.

   I must here give a brief account of Zarathustra, as gathered from the Persian author, Zerdust, son of Behram. Three months before Zarathustra was born, his mother had a frightful dream, about which she consulted an astrologer, who assured her she - had no cause to fear any trouble for her child, and who predicted his future glory. He was born without pain to his mother; very much as Christian painters depict the Virgin Mary, immediately after having given birth to the new born Jesus. The astrologers were jealous of him from the moment of his birth; and sought in various ways to kill him; but he was protected by Ahuramazda. These efforts to destroy him continued until he had completed his seventh year. It was said of him, “His supernatural wisdom, piety and purity alone saved him from falling into the snares laid for him. His generosity and goodness were not less remarkable; h e was prodigal with his charity and consolation; helped those who sought his help; gave away his clothing and food, and thus acquired a great celebrity among the people.” At the age of thirty, just about the age when Jesus is said to have begun his mission, he was drawn to Iran, as the latter had been to Jerusalem; Iran, here, meaning the seat of Persian learning and power. He then quitted his home and country, and after wandering about for some time, he found himself in a country of delights, something after the description of Paradise. From that lovely country he went up into the mountains, as Moses is said to have done, where one Bahman, whose hand was covered with a veil, led him through throngs of angels, to the throne of Ahuramazda. There Zarathustra questioned Ahuramazda regarding morals, the celestial hierarchy, religious ceremonies, the end of man, the revolutions and influence of the stars, etc. He finally asked immortality of Ahuramazda, but, by a supernatural prevision, foreseeing all that was to take place, he withdrew his request. He then received from Ahuramazda, the Zend Avesta, (the sacred book of the Persians,) with the command to proclaim its teachings to king Gustasp, who would protect the new religion and adopt it as his own. He then returned from Ahuramazda with the Zend in one hand and the celestial fire in the other. The astrologers and magicians apprised of his return, collected a great army to prevent his passage to the king of Iran. They were, however, scattered in utter confusion by the power of Ahuramazda. Reaching the king’s palace and making known his mission, he was refused admission to the king, by the attendants. In a moment he descended through the ceiling of the hall in which the king sat surrounded by the learned and powerful of his kingdom. He was questioned by the king and the sages present concerning every department of knowledge, and answered them all with so much ease and manifest erudition, that the king was delighted to welcome him, and gave him magnificent apartments near the palace. For two days he discussed with the sages, every question which they raised to embarrass him, with entire success. Some days after he presented the Zend Avesta to the king, announced to him his mission, and pleaded with him to embrace the true laws of that God, who had made the seven heavens, the stars and the earth, who had given him his life and his crown, and who offered to all faithful worshippers of his power, an immortal glory after death. Neither the reading of the Zend Avesta, nor the eloquence of the prophet, sufficed to convince the king. Gustasp demanded time to consider and miracles to attest the truth of what Zarathustra told him. These were finally given to a wonderful extent, and the king became satisfied to accept the new religion; and did so using all his royal influence to induce his subjects to do the same. Not satisfied with this, Gustasp wrote to the governors of neighboring countries to accept the religion of Zarathustra. Some obeyed, others refused. Rapid as was the spread of the new law, yet it was too slow to satisfy the ardor of Gustasp. He went to war with the king of Touran, incited thereto by Zarathustra. Then follows a long account of the war between Iran and Touran, which, for our purpose, need not be here given.

   Now, who was this Gustasp, king of Iran? That question once definitely settled, and we can then determine almost to a certainty, the truth of the spirit communication that we are commenting on. [...]

   [Pg 586] I think every reader will say, that with the facts we have laid before them, every point of doubt in regard to all these confused and muddled Jewish and Christian questions is about to be solved, through the key which the spirit of Zarathustra has placed in my hands. Little, truly, did I apprehend the importance of that key in unlocking the treasured secrets of the priestly masters of humanity. But we have the key that unlocks the vault, the key that was supposed to be lost or destroyed forever, and the world shall enjoy that hidden wealth of knowledge. I have inserted the key; now I throw the rusty bolts; and there we find Gustasp, the princely patron and friend of Zarathustra, to be none other than Darius Hystaspes, or Darius I., the successor of Belshazzar on the Assyrian throne, and the great founder of the Persian Empire. This fact would never have been questioned, had not Herodotus blundered as to the proper place of Darius Hystaspes in Assyrian history; and had not the plagiarizing Jewish writer, who sought to conceal his literary theft, followed Herodotus, and thus convicted himself of the pious fraud he was perpetrating. Had Daniel been the author of that book, or the hero of it, it is hardly likely that he would have made so great a mistake, as to make Darius succeed Cyrus, when he was in fact his predecessor, and reigned over the empire he founded for more than half a century, during which time he conquered the Assyrian kingdom and brought it under Persian rule. Thus we see not only that the errors of history are corrected by this communication from the spirit of Zarathustra, but that the identity of the spirit is established beyond all question. The spirit tells us that he lived in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Darius Hydaspes, and Cyrus, and mentions nothing of any other Darius, and nothing whatever of any “Darius the Mede” as having preceded Cyrus. The book of Daniel does not pretend that he (Daniel) lived in the reign of Darius Hystaspes, and, therefore, he could not have lived in the reigns of Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, and Cyrus, for it is certain that the Darius of whom the book of Daniel speaks must have preceded Cyrus, and that Darius could have been none other than Darius Hystaspes, or Hydaspes, who, the other books of the Jewish scriptures allege succeeded Cyrus.

   Now, that Zarathustra lived in the reign of the four kings he has named, and at their courts, seems singularly corroborated by all the historical facts that we have collated and herewith submit. It is hardly probable that a Jewish captive would have been permitted to live out a long life at the capitals of Babylonia, Media, and Persia, as the favorite and counsellor of those mighty kings, whose national religion was that of Magian fire-worship, intermingled with astrology and starworship, which was so well suited to the tastes and inclinations of those sensual and materialistic tyrants of Babylon — Nebuchadnezzar, and Belshazzar. On the other hand, nothing was more natural than that Zoroaster, himself a devotee of Magianism, and a recognized seer, prophet, or medium of transcendent natural endowments, should have occupied that precise condition despite the jealously, enmity and opposition of the Magian priesthood, who sought in every way to counteract and break his influence over the minds of his royal patrons. The chronological dates of that period of Assyrian history, are at least very confused and uncertain, and the error of a century, or centuries, as to any one prominent event, may have thrown all those that preceded or followed it, out of order, as to time, but not so as to the order in which they succeeded each other. We will give such dates as we find attributed to the reigns of those four kings. Nebuchadnezzar, who was the greatest of the Babylonian kings, is supposed to have begun his reign B. C. 606, and ended about 562 B. C. Belshazzar’s reign is supposed to have closed with the conquest of Babylon by the king of the Medes and Persians about 538 B. C. That conquest was made, beyond all question, by Darius Hystaspes himself, and by no other Median king Darius, as is made manifest, not only by the remarkable spirit communication of Zarathustra, but also by an array of corroborative collateral facts, that I have been astonished to find, all bearing upon the same point. The reign of Darius Hystaspes must have ended, then, before that of Cyrus began, as Darius, and not Cyrus, was the founder of the Persian Empire, a fact which the Greek historians seem to have entirely overlooked. When the reign of Darius ended, and that of Cyrus began, it is now impossible to determine; but we know it must have been within the period of a single life dating from a period of not more than a few years before the beginning of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. We so infer from the fact that in the first chapter of Daniel, it is stated that Daniel was a child when Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem, which was very shortly before his reign began; and as it is stated in the second chapter of Daniel, that it was in the second year of his reign that Nebuchadnezzar dreamed the dream that none of “the magicians, and the astrologers, and the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans,” could show the king, it must have been when Daniel had hardly emerged from childhood; when it is said, in the Jewish books, he showed the king his dream and the meaning of it. From that time it is said Daniel survived until after the third year of Cyrus, which, supposing Daniel to have lived to the age of seventy years, would have been until B. C. from 545 to 555. It is not pretended, in the book of Daniel, that Nebuchadnezzar became a convert to the Jewish religion. So in the case of King Belshazzar; it is not pretended that he became a convert to the religion of the Jews. It is not until we come to Darius, the Mede, that we find either of Daniel’s kingly patrons disposed to accept and become the propagator of the religion of Daniel. Nowhere in all that pretended Jewish book is the religion of Daniel alluded to as the religion of Judea, or of the Jews, and nowhere is the God of Daniel referred to as the Jehovah, or Yahho, of that pre-Christian sect. This ought to be enough to show that the Book of Daniel is not a Jewish book, and that Daniel, the seer, prophet, and dream reader, was not a Jew, but a star-reading practicer of Magian arts. It is therefore only left to determine who was Darius, and who was Daniel, and what was the religion taught or believed in by the latter and adopted and propagated by the former. It would not be difficult to gather enough from the Book of Daniel to determine these points, but I can better do this by the outside facts, pointed out and construed by the light of the spirit communication of Zarathustra.

   I have at great length set forth the nature of the religious teachings of Zarathustra, which show, in an astonishing manner, the source from which many of the most highly cherished religious dogmas of the Christian hierarchy have been derived. How Zarathustra came to adopt those theological dogmas, so analogous to, if not identical with the Christian dogmas, the two principles, of Good called God, and Evil called Devil, but by the former called Ahuramazda and Ahrimanes, we can only conjecture from the some what too poetical history of Zarathustra. We are told by the last historian that from his birth the Magi and astrologers feared his future success. This was we are told because of the astrological prognostications attendant upon his birth. We infer, however, it was on account of the manifest fact that he was endowed with extraordinary mediumistic attributes and mental promise. These were developed in an equally remarkable degree, during the first thirty years of his life. He then went forth from his home and country and travelled on, with semi-miraculous adventures, until he reached a beautiful country compared to Paradise. It is most probable that this delightful country was none other than the beautiful valleys in what is called the Hill Country of India, in all probability the scene of the first perfect civilization of man, the great centre from which all subsequent civilization has radiated over the world. There, we are told, he went up into a mountain, and was led by the veiled hand of Bahman, through throngs of attendants to the throne of Ahuramazda, where he obtained the Zend Avesta or Sacred book, which has been attributed universally to him. The mountain he ascended was the Mountain of the Wise Men, where was located the great central seat of Brahmanical lore. From there he returned to Persia, his mind enriched with the treasures of knowledge acquired during his abode in that centre of spirit imparted wisdom. It was there no doubt, this glorious and immortal medium was impressed by great and good spirits to found a new religion, which would give a more spiritual interpretation to the import of material things that he found among the learned Brahmins of India, and at the same time, not wholly ignore the sun worship and star worship of his own people and country. The Zend Avesta was the result. When it was completed, he knew his only chance of success was to convince Darius Hystaspes, who it is admitted was his contemporary, of the wisdom of his great religious scheme, and secure for it his support. In this he was at least successful, notwithstanding the efforts of all the learned classes, and especially the Chaldean and Persian Magi, to perpetuate the more ancient fire-worshipping and astrological religion. It is true that the story of Zarathustra by Zerdusht, does not mention Darius as his kingly friend and patron, but the name Gustasp, which it is admitted is the same as Hystaspes, is mentioned. Not only was Gustasp and Hystaspes one and the same person, and that person the royal convert of Zarathustra, but we have it stated on high Christian authority, no less than Justin, Clement of Alexandria and Lactantius, that it was an apocalyptic work among the early Christians, thought to contain predictions concerning Christ; and that it was called Hystaspes from the fact that such was the name of a Persian savant, under whose reign it was circulated. As we have shown, these good pious Christian fathers suppressed the name of that “apocalyptic wrork” which wras certainly the Zend Avesta, and also the name of its great medium author, Zarathustra. In view of the facts collated above, does it not appear that the Sibylline, the Jewish and the Christian books have been largely borrowed from the Zend Avesta of Zarathustra; and could any fact be made plainer than that Justin, Clement and Lactantius all sought to conceal the fact that the early Christians were sun-worshippers and regarded the Zend Avesta as a sacred book? I attach the highest significance to the testimony of Ammianus Marcellinus the Roman historian, whose reputation for freedom from all sectarian or religious prejudice, and for accuracy, fidelity and impartiality, is universally conceded; who lived probably as late as the beginning of the fifth century. He says that one Hystaspes had studied astronomy with the Brahmans of India, and had even informed the Magi of his ability to know the future. He was undoubtedly misled on this point by Justin, Clement and Lactantius who substituted the surname of Darius for that of the real person who had studied astronomy with the Brahmans of India. He undoubtedly refers to Zarathustra. Still later the Byzantine historian, Agathius, who lived as late as A. D. 582, knew of a Hystaspes, who was a contemporary of Zoroaster. This shows that as late as the latter part of the sixth century it was known that Zoroaster was the contemporary of Darius I., and that Darius I., was Darius Hystaspes. We have the fact admitted by Christian theologians that the “Vaticinia Hystaspes,” which was used by the early Christians, was most probably, of heathen and not of Jewish or Christian production. It has been further admitted that its author was probably a Gnostic; all of which points to Zoroaster and his religion as to its identification. But it is further admitted by some writers, and with the best reason, (Thomas’s Dictionary of Biography, article Gustasp,) that Gustasp has been identified with Darius I, (surnamed Hystaspis.) Thus the communication of Zarathustra is not only confirmed as to the fact that Darius Hystaspes or Hydaspes, preceded Cyrus in the succession of Persian kings, but leaves no room to question the authenticity and truthfulness of his statements. With this correction of historical errors, all the other historical errors that have grown out of it are equally corrected and plainly intelligible. I claim, therefore, that it is a demonstrated fact that Daniel, the so-called Jewish prophet, never did perform the wonders related of him at the courts of Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Darius and Cyrus, but that if any one did so, it was Zoroaster or Zarathustra, the great Persian sage, prophet and seer — the friend and confidential adviser of the great and good king Darius — and founder of the astro-mythriac, and pre-eminently spiritual religion embodied and taught in the Zend Avesta. How closely the Jewish plagiarist in the book of Daniel, has followed the writings of Zarathustra, and the incidents of his life, we may never certainly know; but that there is nothing original about it, and that it is a plagiarism of some Chaldean or Persian narrative I have demonstrated.
   I will now return to the communication and hasten to a close. The spirit tells us that he was known as Aronamar, at the Court of Cyrus. This fact not only explains why Zarathustra gave me that name rather than his own, but it is strikingly convincing of his identity, as the Daniel of the book of Daniel. It will be seen Daniel vi, 27, that it is said, in the decree of Darius, by whose orders Daniel was cast into the lions’ den, “He delivereth and rescueth, and he worketh signs and wonders, in heaven and in earth, who hath delivered Daniel from the power of the lions.” On account of that alleged deliverance from the lions, he was no doubt especially distinguished at the court of Cyrus, where his influence was unbounded. The name Aronamar was no doubt given him as a mark of especial respect. The root of that name Ar is the Chaldaic root of Ara which probably meant lion, as did its Hebrew equivalent Ara, and ending as well as beginning the name Ar-on-om-ar the meaning of the name no doubt was “the one saved from lions,” or “the lion tamer.” Not wishing me to understand the full import of his labors until he was through, he withheld his identity under that unhistorical designation.
   When he says that while at the court of Cyrus, “I was in the position of a philosopher, who, having reasoned upon the law of cause and effect, would stand in any position in life,” he indicates in the most striking manner the great fundamental principle of all his philosophical and theological system. Before Socrates and Plato lived, and long before Descartes, Bacon and Newton lived, Zoroaster inaugurated the inductive philosophy; and now he returns as a spirit, after all those long centuries, to state that fact. He tells us he was a medium whose psychological power was so great, that it not only influenced men, but the most savage beasts. It was doubtless by the same mediumistic power, that the materialized spirit-hand wrote that warning on the walls of Belshazzar’s banqueting hall. The spirit tells us that when he lived, at least 550 B. C, there was a religious teaching promulgated, which was attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, the then ancient Egyptian sage and law-giver, which prophesied that a child should be born of a virgin, and that it was commonly believed at that time. This then, was no Jewish prophecy, as has been pretended, but a prophecy of a Gentile heathen. Zarathustra, in his communication, informs us that it was the Phallic worship that preceded his mythriac religion; that back of that was the astronomical and philosophical religion of Hermes Trismegistus, which, even five hundred years before the time of Zarathustra, embodied what we call the inductive philosophy, of which Bacon was the great modern exemplar; and that away far back before that advanced philosophy there was a Hindoo-Chaldaic civilization which took its rise at the base of the Himalayas. Besides that there was a very ancient Phoenician religion, and that the chief idea of the two latter religions, was the relations of heat and cold, and their effects upon men, and on the crops on which they depended for food. All this is indicated by all the historical or traditional evidence that has been permitted to come down to us. But here we have the additional spirit testimony, that the civilization of this, our Western Continent, was at one time in history, progressing side by side with that of the great Eastern Continent of Asia; and that the Buddhistic sage Bochica taught all the laws of cause and effect — or in other words the Baconian philosophy — in Bolivia and Peru long before Manco Capac and his wife appeared there. It would appear that Christianity had performed the same part, in utterly arresting an advanced native civilization on this Western Continent that it did in Asia, Europe and Africa, when it supplanted the civilizations of those continents. But for the art of printing, that religious curse would have continued to block the way to human freedom and progress. When the spirit said that all the science and all the knowledge of antiquity is concentrated in the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation, so-called, he meant, as he afterwards explains, that they furnish the key to the secret mysteries of all ancient knowledge. That both those works were from the same spirit source, is manifest to any person who will read them by the allegorical key placed here in their hands. That the Book of Daniel so far as it possesses any value is due to Zoroaster or Zarathustra, and the Book of Revelation to Apollonius of Tyana, I have not a doubt; that their meaning is the same; and that their authors were two of the greatest spiritual mediums that this world has ever seen, or that it will soon see again, I fully believe, if I have not a right to claim that I know it to be so.
   And now in closing the great task imposed upon me by those grand old sages of the most important epochs in the distant past of the world’s history, I have but one regret; and that is, that I have had to perform it under so many difficulties; so little to my own satisfaction; and I justly fear, so little to the satisfaction of the great spirit minds, who, for want of a more fitting and suitable instrument, were compelled to depend upon my humble efforts to get their invaluable impartations and inculcations before the world.
   While laboring incessantly for years to aid these spirit messengers to fulfill their great mission to mankind, I have had to do battle almost alone. But through it all, I have never looked back to see how far I had advanced, or wished for rest. Inspired by influences that came to establish the reign of truth on earth, I have been sustained in every emergency that has been presented.

EXCERPT Notes | Pg 595

   TO THOSE of our readers who have closely followed these communications and examined carefully the comments thereon, we address these closing remarks. If they ponder over the revelations and events in the light reflected from the spirit world, and avail themselves of such information as can be gleaned from history’s pages relative to this subject, it must be apparent to them, as it is to us, that Christianity has been formulated from the heathen theological doctrines and dogmas concerning the Hindoo god Christos; that the New Testament is nothing more than the plagiarism of the writings and teachings of Apollonius of Tyana and Chrestus, and that these teachings originated in ancient sun worship, fire worship and man-god worship. In confirmation of this we have the testimony of not only a large number of the world’s greatest scholars, but many of the most profound and philosophic religious teachers of the past.
   In summing. up, we briefly consider some points which are deemed of special importance in connection with the subject. The originators of the religious delusion named Christianity, claimed that it was founded upon the inspired word of God, who sent his only son, Jesus Christ, into the world to atone for the sins of mankind, by suffering an ignominious death upon the cross. The object of these spirit communications is to show to the world that the Christian religion was created by man, and that Jesus Christ was a mythical character, existing only in the minds of those who brought forward as his teachings the doctrines gathered from heathen mythology and its gods. These spirit witnesses also claim that all the ancient manuscripts were mutilated by the early Christian Fathers. This is not without foundation. Much corroborative evidence of it can be found in the works of Sir William Drummond and Godfrey Higgins. These eminent writers prove that not only have the Christians stolen their religious rites and ceremonies from the pagans, but have even changed the spelling of the name of their god Mithra, the Sun, and appropriated him to their own use.
   It is a well-known fact that scholars in the old languages found considerable difficulty in making copies of the manuscripts that were in existence at the time of Christ, so-called. These old manuscripts often being written without the vowels* made them liable to misinterpretation by the scribes, it beiug left to them to supply the required vowels. Those who were instrumental in formulating Christianity took advantage of this by employing translators who were entirely devoted to their interests. These scribes in making copies changed the vowels, words and sentences, inserting or omitting them as best suited their purposes. As an instance of this we refer to the word “Beth-el” found in Genesis xxviii, 19, which according to the Christians signifies “House of God.” Originally the god Mithra, the Sun, was represented by the term “ Al;” this combined with the word “Both,” which signified house, gave rise to the name “House of the Sun.” In Godfrey Higgins’ work, “Anacalypsis,” he says “the Druids worshiped in a temple called Bothal, from ‘Both,’ a house, and ‘Al,’ God. This god meant the God Mithra, the preserver and saviour.”
   As it is shown all through this work that the doctrines of the ancient sun worship are closely connected with the doctrines of Christianity, and that the Druids were worshiping the sun in their temples long before the inception of Christianity, is it not significant that this word Bothal, “the house of the Sun,” should re-appear in the Christian Scriptures as Beth-el, “the house of God?” the only difference being that the vowels are changed. We have already shown how easily and for what purpose this was done. Had this word Bothal been allowed to remain unchanged in the copies which were taken it would be self-evident that the Sun of the Druids was identical with the God of the Christians, and to the unprejudiced mind the resemblance between the Bothal of the Druids and the Bethel of the Christians would be at once apparent. To this one pious fraud, that of inserting “el” in place of “al” we can attribute the transposition from the god Mithra, the Sun, the light of