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Refer to American Cyclopaedia for account of Tacitus. For
account of Nazareth refer to McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopaedia
of Ecclesiastical Literature and for the term Nazarites
refer to Chambers’ Cyclopaedia.
This spirit gives a very different version of the performance
of the Jewish medium, Eleazer, or rather of the spirits who
attended him, before Vespasian in his camp, from that which
Josephus gives, (Antiquities of the Jews, Book viii, chap. 2,
Section 5.) It appears there was a rivalry between this Eleazer
and Apollonius, as to which should be the oracle of Vespasian,
and that there was a trial of mediumistic results through
them, respectively, to determine that point.
[...]
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MANETHO.
An Egyptian Priest.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 175
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“Let us believe in that light which lighteth every man that
cometh into the world. Centuries have come and gone since I
became a spirit. My spirit knowledge may be summed up in a
few brief sentences, among which the principal are, that Wisdom
is the guide of Experience, and, by analogy, Experience
is the father of truth. During my mortal life I was a priest of
Heliopolis. That temple was built in the service of Osiris — the
God of the Sun. Our religion was represented by the Zodiac,
and was altogether of an astrological origin. This was known
only to the initiated — the outsiders receiving the emblems as
the real facts — to impress upon their minds the obligations of
our religion. All the people were idolaters, because they knew
no better. It has often been asked, both by the learned and the
unlearned, “If a man die, shall he live again?” I wish to say
this: there is a desire that is universal in the breast of every
living creature, and that is the desire for life. The desire must
and will be satisfied. Out of every living creature there grows
a life that is spiritualized — that never dies. What you moderns
term materialization, was understood by us ancients to mean
nothing more than this: that the medium contained within
himself, or herself, that element which admitted of the veil,
that conceals the spirit body from your sight, to be drawn aside.
You all have a spirit body, as the development of the material
body, which, under favorable circumstances, become visible to
mortals. The Osiris of the Egyptians acted in the same capacity
of intercessor between mortals and God, that the Jesus Christ
of to-day does. God — the I AM of the Egyptians — was not
accessible to mortal prayers or cries — as in Christian teachings;
therefore a physical spirit — one that lived on this plane, acted
as a pleader for them. . All this was the preparation — the
schooling— that enabled after generations to establish Christianity.
And here I wish to remark, that during my long sojourn in
spirit life, I have never met an enlightened spirit
that claimed any pre-eminence over his or her fellows; for the
common result in spirit life is, that the more learned, the more
comprehensive your views, the more you become clothed with
the mantle of humility. There are none great in the kingdom
of heaven — all desiring to learn that they may teach.
In my Greek history, the greater part of which is now extant, I laid
bare the foolishness of priests, and the avarice of kings. It was
a struggle between these, as to which should be the most
admired by the ignorant. Life, although progressive, retains
the same principle in almost every age and generation. There
is no God, and no Saviour, other than your highest conception
of wisdom; and with this remark I will close, by thanking
you for this hearing. My name was Manetho, — before the socalled
Christian era, two hundred and sixty-one years.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 177 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to Nouvelle Biographie Generale for account of Manetho.
The spirit of this learned Egyptian priest, comes and
confirms the testimony of so many other ancient spirits, that
the common object of worship by the votaries of Osiris, and
other ancient deities, was the sun, the great central orb of our
planetary system, and the great governing power of all that
appertains to the welfare of the human race on our globe.
This sun personified with human attributes, has been the revered
Saviour of men in all ages and among all nations. He
tells us that the spiritual nature and destiny of mankind was
as well understood by the learned men of his time as it is today.
The crime of these learned men was that they had not
the honesty to impart that knowledge to the people. The
same criminal policy is adhered to by the Roman Catholic
priesthood, who stop at nothing to still conceal this most important
of all knowledge, in order to prolong their unholy
domination over their fellow beings. Manetho, returning as a
spirit, tells us that the mythical falsehoods and flummeries of
the Egyptian priesthood prepared the way for the subsequent
establishment of the mythical falsehoods and flummeries that
constitute the essential features of the Christian religion.
Better, far better, would it have been for countless numbers of
human souls, if no such preparation had ever been made by
Egyptian or other priesthoods. Manetho does well, even at
this late day, to return and make known the falseness of his
earthly teachings. How far he attempted to lay bare the
foolishness of priests, as he claims to have done, we are not
permitted to know; but trust, for the peace of his spirit, that
he did all that was then possible. In the face of the undoubted
spirit testimony of so many learned and influential
departed ones, how can the religious errors, deceptions and
frauds of to-day endure? They cannot. The resistless rays of
spirit light are forcing their way into the darkest and most
despairing recesses of the human breast, there to kindle the
latent embers of divine truth, that have been so long smothered
beneath the ashes of the dead past; and they will ere long
burst into a flame that will consume those who, in their blind
folly, may persist in their work of smothering the blazing light
from the spirit world.
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VARRO.
A Roman Writer.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 177
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“I greet you, sir! — In my day there was no man living
who had access to all kinds of information as I had myself,
and none who wrote more than I did; and yet, there is so
little of it extant to-day. I say this in no spirit of egotism,
but state it as a fact. My works were on all subjects — most of
them historical — and they have been destroyed because of that
great curse of mortals — too much religion. It is impossible, it
seems to me, to be religious without being bigoted.
My book,
“The Key to Ancient Religions,” showed that religion has
been the governing power in all civilized nations, and the basis
of all religions has been Sun worship. So well was this understood
by a man, whose spirit was forced here to communicate
that he destroyed my works to conceal that fact. That spirit
was Constantine the Great. All of the most celebrated literature
of the ancients has been destroyed by the Christian Hierarchy,
and this was done from the third to the fourteenth
century. They could not afford to allow this adverse evidence
to exist. It would have been fatal, as soon as the art
of printing came in use. I travelled in almost every civilized
country, and found, everywhere established, the religion of the
Sun. All the gods that were worshipped were nothing more
to the initiated than typical personations of the Sun, and all
were the creation of men.
In order to hold the masses of the
people, they were compelled to have something tangible to
worship. They, therefore, embodied their ideas in all shapes
— gods with all kinds of heads, animals, etc. But to the
initiated, everything was understood as referring to the Sun
and Stars. Any thorough investigator of Christianity will find
the Sun idea therein. During my mortal life I wrote at least
four hundred and fifty scrolls, or books, of which only two are
now extant. You can judge of the extent of the vandalism of
Christians, by this wholesale destruction of my books. My
name was Varro. I lived B. C. 28.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 178 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to Chambers’ Cyclopaedia for account of Varro.
[....]
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IGNATIUS.
Patriarch of the Essenes.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 179
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“Let us work in the interest of truth:— I lived about
A. D. 75. I am set down in history as the Patriarch or Bishop
of Antioch, but I held no such position. I was what would be
termed in modern times patriarch or leader of the Order of
Essenes, who were what you moderns designate Communists.
Our ideas were given to us through a medium whose name was
Bela, about one hundred years before the time I have named.
Almost all the ideas that are embodied in the book called the
Christian Testament were taught at Antioch, but not in their
present form. The highest and purest man amongst us, who
was endowed with spiritual gifts, was looked upon as a god —
that is, as if the divine emanations were collected in a human
form. Among us Essenes such a man was all powerful. I
know of no instance now on earth exactly like such a person;
but there is one who approximates nearly to it, and he is the
Grand Lama of Tibet. So pure was this man regarded to be,
that none were allowed to come into his presence, except his
ownchosen followers. Now, although I was a patriarch of this
society, I did not come near to what they called this perfect
man. We had four names for him, but I can only give two,
which were simple and equivalent to Alpha the beginning, and
Omega the end. The others were names that I cannot force
through this organism.
Our sacred books were made up of
events from the time of Bela to the time of the sixth perfect
man who was then ruling. They contained extracts from the
best moral precepts that we could find in the sacred books of all
nations. I have no doubt, since I have seen and conversed
with Apollonius, who came to Antioch to learn our system,
that he blended the contents of a copy of our sacred writings,
which our people gave him as a mark of the highest honor,
with the sacred books that came into his possession in India.
My name when here was Ignatius of Antioch.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 179 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to the Nouvelle Biographie Generale for account of
Ignatius.
In the communication of Ignatius we have the fullest confirmation
of the truth of the communication which we have
heretofore published from the spirit of Pliny the Younger, in
relation to his letter to the emperor Trajan regarding the Communists
or Essenes of Bythinia. Our readers will remember
that in his communication, the spirit of Pliny said, that in the
year A. D. 100 there was no religious sect known in Bythinia
as Christians. It is equally certain that there were no such
religionists at Antioch at that time, who were called or known
as Christians or worshippers of Jesus Christ. This is settled
beyond all question by the fact that the Syriac version of the
epistles attributed to Ignatius of Antioch, contained nothing
that would strengthen the clerical or episcopal power of the
Christian hierarchy, or that would maintain the divinity of
Jesus Christ. That such passages were interpolated to effect
those purposes, three hundred years after the death of Ignatius,
shows the utter groundlessness of the Christian pretence that
there was any such religion as Christianity or any such church
as a Christian church prior to the second century. It is, however,
an undoubted fact that the Essenes, a communistic sect of
religionists, were thoroughly established in the Asiatic provinces
of the Roman Empire at that time, the patriarchal seat of
which was located at Antioch. Ignatius was therefore an
Essenian, and not a Christian prelate. It would seem that
Ignatius was himself at the head of the Essenes at the very
time when Apollonius made his third and last visit to Antioch.
[...]
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TITUS LIVIUS.
A Roman Historian.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 181
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“Let us unite in the hastening of the downfall of Superstition.
Id oubt if any person ever had a better opportunity than
myself, for ascertaining whether there was any truth in Christianity,
being contemporary with the alleged Jesus Christ, and
intimately acquainted with Pontius Pilate. I have never been
able to discover, either as a spirit or mortal, any positive, or, I
may say, any negative evidence of the existence of Jesus of
Nazareth. I am certainly one of those spirits that Christians
may call a devil, because I violate the precepts of their sacred
books (manufactured by priests), and deny that Jesus Christ
was ever in the flesh. My reason for this denial must be given.
First, no learned Jew — and I have conversed with many such,
that I have met, knew aught of his existence. I have also seen
and conversed with many of the governors of Syria, and with
those of them who then ruled Syria, none of whom knew
aught of this person, nor of any other person that seemed to
approximate to the descriptions of him. But after my decease,
there was a man who fulfilled all that has been claimed for
Jesus, and that man was Apollonius.
All Rome and Judaea were in excitement, at that time, over the conquests of Augustus Caesar in Egypt: and many Egyptians were brought to
Rome, and taught their doctrines there; and these were of an
astrological character. They taught that different stars represented
the birth, life, death, and resurrection of a person of the
remote past, known by many different names. This legend was
first promulgated or taught to his students by a Hindoo philosopher
called Ma-Ming; and the Christian legend took its rise
some where in the vicinity of the Nepaul mountains, and was
afterward transferred to Singapore, whence it was carried to
Antioch by Apollonius, where he was met by a sect calling
themselves Nazarites, known after my death as the Essenian
Brotherhood. Any one reading the life of Jesus Christ, can at
once see that he was a communist. This sect was scattered all
over the different parts of Syria, extending into Phoenicia and
the Isle of Cyprus. In their teachings there was this resemblance
to Jesus. There was a perfect man among them, to whom
all confessed, who was never seen, and by these confessions this
man became a great reader of human character, as are the
Catholic priests of to-day. These, by taking advantage of the
different emotions that animate the human breast, paved the
way amongst other generations for that curse of humanity - a
pope. The books I wrote, when here in mortal form, have
been tampered with; first by Eusebius, afterward by Innocent
III.; and almost utterly destroyed after the Council of Basle.
Otherwise there would have been no mistake by moderns in
regard to the origin of Christianity. I was known, when here,
as Titus Livius, A. D. 17.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 182 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to American Cyclopaedia for account of- Livius.
The wholesale destruction of the historical writings of Livius
shows very clearly that the Christian church could not afford
to have it known that Livius had made no mention of those
historical fictions, that nearly two hundred years after his
death, were woven into the religious legend concocted by
Christian ecclesiastics. And furthermore they could not afford
to have it known that Livius had recorded the fact that the
Egyptian captives brought to Rome by Augustus Caesar, thirty
years before the alleged birth of the Christian Jesus, had
taught in that city that the different constellations of the starry
heavens represented the birth, life, death and resurrection of a
person in the far past, known by many names. It was to conceal
the fact that Jesus Christ was but a new materialization,
or incarnation of this “person of the remote past” whose birth,
life, death and resurrection, was only to be read correctly, by
the passage of the Sun, in its annual course through the constellations
of the Zodiac; h aving his birth in the sign of the
Goat, the Augean stable of the Greeks; his baptism in Aquarius,
the John the Baptist in the heavens; his triumph when
he becomes the Lamb of God in Aries; his greatest exaltation
on St. John’s, the beloved disciple’s day, on the 21st of June,
in the Sign of the Twins, the emblem of double power; his
tribulation in the garden of Gethsemane, in the sign of the
rural Virgo; his betrayal in the sign of Scorpio, the malignant
emblem of his approaching death in the stormy and adverse
sign, Sagittarius, and his resurrection or renewed birth on the
twenty-fifth of December in the same sign of the celestial
Goat; the ever existing and universal god, Pan, the poetical
expression of the Cosmos, or whole of Nature, as known to
mortals. Livius tells that what remained of his works was
destroyed after the Council of Basle, which took place about
1442. Shortly afterwards it was, that Leo X, made such
strenuous efforts to find the missing books of Livius. As all the
books then of any consequence or value, were in the hands of
the Christian priesthood, it is hardly likely that he should
have failed to find them; and that he did not do what he
meant to do, destroy them utterly. Those that were allowed to
remain were not calculated to expose the fraudulent nature of
Christianity, and hence were allowed to escape destruction. It
is such spirit testimony as that of Livius, that must, in the end,
bring retributive justice upon those who have committed such
wrongs against humanity, as the destruction of the ancient
literature of the world, to conceal their vile deceptions. We
tell you, priests, prelates and pontiffs the end draweth near.
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Q. VERANIUS.
Governor of Britain.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 183
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“I greet you: — I acted as governor of Britain, under Nero,
in A. D. 60. I found in Britain the same principle that
governed almost all nations of antiquity — that is, they had a
God who acted as a Saviour. The antagonists of this system
were what are termed Druids. There seemed to be a continual
warfare between that order of priests and the Britons. These
Britons had a god, who was much older than he is set down in
history, called Odin. This Odin, it is claimed by moderns,
was brought to Britain, two or three centuries later than he
was, by the Norwegians. But that is simply a trick of priests,
to throw inquirers off the scent. It came about in this way;
Odin, in his teachings, characteristics, and forms of worship,
-was identical with the God of the first Christians; and this is
admitted by all really learned commentators; but as they have
been principally Christians, this fact has been concealed.
Friga, a woman, in the teachings of Britain, instead of being
the wife of Odin, was a virgin mother; showing that the idea
was established among barbarous peoples, of being saved by a
man born of a virgin. All this I studied, and compared their
teachings with those of the Roman priests of the temple of
Apollo, and I found that those barbarians had established a
religious system identical with that known amongst the Greeks
and Romans. Although a military man, I am not here to-day
to say anything about the conquests of that time, but tell you
what I know of Christianity. I was governor of Britain from
55 to 60. They (the Britons) claimed that their god lived 600
years before that time. My name was Veranius.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 184 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography
for account of Veranius.
I regard that communication not only as perfectly authentic,
but as stating the truth in relation to the fact that the fundamental
religious doctrines of Christianity were thoroughly
established among the Britons for hundreds of years before
they were promulgated as divine truth by the Christian priesthood.
That the Druid priests were hostile to the open and
unconcealed doctrines of the priesthood of the ancient Britons,
was owing to the fact that it was a fundamental principle with
them to conceal everything that was taught as religion; and
like their Christian successors, to render everything of a religious
nature as mysterious as possible. Nothing was more
natural than that Veranius who had been invested with priestly
dignities by the Roman Pontifex Maximus, should have
studied and observed the analogies between his own religion
and that of the people, over whom he was appointed to govern.
We question whether it is generally known that there was a
more ancient system of religion than that of the Druids established
in Britain, and which the priests of the latter religion
were doing all they could to suppress, when the Romans invaded
and conquered Britain.
[....]
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PORPHYRY
A So-called Heathen Philosopher.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 185
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“Good Day:— Many persons may question the conduct or
language of spirits who are trying to uproot Christianity. These
persons may say: “These spirits deprive me of my Lord — what
have 1 left?” Oh! foolish mortals; to rely so implicitly on that
which never existed. We spirits are constantly bringing forward
more and more proof that Christianity has no basis in
truth. It is nothing more than the mistletoe on the oak of
ancient religions. The first question to be answered is; did
Jesus Christ, so-called, ever have a personal existence? To this
I answer he had not. I come to set forth such facts as I know
to be absolutely correct, that will conclusively justify that
answer. None of the early Christian Fathers were Christians.
Any person who will attentively read their works will see that
they did not know whether Jesus ever lived or not, and this
was the case immediately after his alleged death. Those early
Christian fathers never thought of establishing such a gigantic
system of fraud as is practiced by the Christian priesthood today.
In all the earliest books and manuscripts of the so-called
Christian era, there was no mention of this Jesus, except as a
kind of sun-god. Out of astronomy or astrology, the gods of all
religions have arisen, one after another. These Christian fathers
wherever they could alter those manuscripts, during the first
one hundred and fifty years of their era, did so; and they then
began to shape their religion as you now find it. To do this
they made use of all classes of writers, by them called heathen
and pagan, to plant their religious fraud upon the earth. All
this will be brought to light by thoroughly informed spirits.
We are now forming a band in spirit life that will bring forth
such proofs as will convince the world, or point out the sources
from which those proofs may be obtained.
There is not a priest
in Rome or elsewhere that is fully initiated in the secrets of his
church, who does not know that Christianity is a fraud; for in
the Library of the Vatican, at Rome, is the evidence that
makes that point certain. The ecclesiastical custodians of that
evidence, will have to produce the documents that contain that
evidence.
At Rome are most of the writings of the first three
centuries of the Christian era, embracing the works of all of
us, so-called, pagan writers. These have been mutilated but
not destroyed. Why have they not been destroyed? Simply
because there is a power in the spirit world, that popes and
cardinals fear. They know that spirit communion is all there
is to religion, and they heed the warnings of materialized spirits
who come to them. The priesthood know that the people have
become too intelligent to be any longer blinded, by rites and
ceremonies, to the simple fact of spirit communion. There are
writings of Seutonius — there are writings of the emperor Trajan
— in the possession of the Papal church, that would settle
forever the question as to the personal existence of Jesus. It
has also the possession of letters of mine, in which they have
altered the word Gnosticism into Catholicism, and on the
strength of that have claimed me as a Christian. At the time
I lived there was nothing but contention and strife; but there
was not one-half as much contention about Jesus, as there was
about who should attain ecclesiastical precedence in the new
religion. All this was the outcome of each individual philosophizing
and theorizing for himself, and giving these thoughts
different forms. In fact it was at a later day than that in which
I lived on earth, that Christianity fully settled down in its
present shape. This voice of mine is a spirit voice that priests
do mightily fear. I am not done with them yet. But there is
a shape in which I desire to get my communication that will
compel these men to hear me. They will be made to hear me.
When a man’s citizenship is challenged, then it behooves him to
prove his citizenship. So I challenge these priests. I have spoken
longer than I intended. I was known when here as Porphyry.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 186 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to McClintock & Strong’s Biblical, Theological and
Ecclesiastical Cyclopaedia.
We deeply regret that space will not allow of giving the particulars
of his philosophical doctrines, as these show most
clearly and conclusively that Porphyry, one of the ablest and
most learned men that ever lived, was a spiritual medium, and
taught the grand truths now being brought to the knowledge
of mankind, through humble and uncultivated mediums, sixteen
hundred years after those truths were rejected and trampled
under foot by the Christian priesthood.
We have never received or known of a spirit communication
which seemed to us to be more important than this communication
from the spirit of the great Eclectic and Neo-Platonic
philosopher, Porphyry. We can well understand the difficulties
under which this learned and truly advanced spirit, after sixteen
hundred years in spirit life, labored in imparting the
important information therein contained.
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MARCANTONIO DE DOMINIS.
A Heresiarch and Apostate.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 187
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“Good day:— None can throw as much light on Christianity
as the Catholics. Christianity is a Catholic institution, and
not a Protestant one; and yet, all the paraphernalia of both
are the same, except that Protestants have somewhat modified
them. During my mortal life I was a Catholic prelate,
and held the title of archbishop. I was a man of science, and
never allowed my religion to interfere with my reason.
I knew the identity between Christianity and Paganism, and that the
former was only a copy of the latter. In fact, in the Library of
the Vatican at Rome were all the documents necessary to prove
that the old Roman gods, rechiselled by the sculptors, are the
apostles of the Christian religion; that the Christians robbed
the Pagan temples of all these old myths, in the shape of
sculptured forms and basso-relievos; and that all the rites and
ceremonies and vestments are copied from the observances of
the priests of Apollo. The mitre had, originally, twelve points,
representing the twelve signs of the Zodiac; but as Catholicism
increased, it was necessary to conceal this fact in such a
way that the astrological significance of it would not be too
apparent to the public eye.
If there is a “Prince of Lies.”
spiritually speaking, his home is in the Catholic Church.
Some persons may think I am hard upon them, but I do not
feel so. It cost me one hundred and fifty years of misery, as a
spirit, to get rid of a lingering desire, developed in me in
mortal life, that held me to that myth of centuries — Jesus of
Nazareth; and I speak plainly here to-day, because I wish my
mortal brethren to steer clear of any faith or hope in any
redemption but their own strength of character, their own
love of truth, and to discard alf worship of any book, except
the book of nature. Be natural in everything, and you will
obtain not only happiness and bliss, but you will be enabled to
help others to that point where we shall all be united in the
fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. I was located,
in 1620, at Savoy in the Strand, London. My Italian name
was Antonio de Dominis, Archbishop of Spalatro. In England
I was called Marcantonio de Dominis.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 188 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to Nouvelle Biographie Generale for account of Marcantonio
de Dominis.
The foregoing communication is beyond any reasonable
question, both genuine and authentic. This man was fully competent
to know just what he testifies to as a spirit.
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SEJANUS.
The Favorite of Tiberius.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 189
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“I greet you, sir: — I have a word to say to all who seek
for that which will give them physical enjoyment. I gained
my success in mortal life, and also my death, through flattery
of those in power. My main object in coming here to-day, is
to throw what light I can upon the disputed point of the reality
of a man, or so-called god, named Jesus. I am set down in
historical accounts as departing this mortal life in A. D. 31, but
it was in A. D. 36, one year before the death of one whom I
acknowledged my master, Tiberius Caesar. I travelled a great
deal with him, and was very intimately acquainted with the
Jew who taught philosophy — Grecian philosophy, not Jewish
philosophy, (the elder Hillel); and I conversed with him upon
that subject which now agitates modern thought — spirit communion—
and in no case was he able to identify any of the
alleged leaders of Christianity. He knew nothing of their lives,
and as he lived at Jerusalem, engaged in teaching philosophy,
(and Grecian philosophy, for Hillel was a follower of Plato)
from A. D. 10 to A. D. 45, he must have known of them had
they lived. Here is a Jew, who lived contemporary with the
great facts that are claimed by Christians, and yet he knew
nothing of them.
The only thing that he knew of, that came
any where near what the Christians claim, was that a Jew,
Jesus Malatheel, was crucified for highway robbery, whose
brother (not father) was one Joseph, who begged his body of
one Simon, but this was not Joseph of Arimathsea. The last
named character was a pupil of Hillel, and told him of this
transaction privately. As the Jesus who was crucified was an
Essene, they were afraid his body would be desecrated, and as
this was repugnant to their ideas, they stole it in the night
time. If an extract from the Alexandrian Codex, which has
been obliterated by means of chemicals, and which if now
rubbed with certain compounds known among modern chemists;
or could the latter be placed over this obliterated portion
of that Codex, you would recover the proof of the truth of
what I here state. In my great desire to atone for a life of
sensuality, I come here to-day, and I have made all plain that
the concentration of power allows me to utilize. My name was
Sejanus.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 190 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to Nouvelle Biographie Generale for account of Sejanus.
It was the spirit of this man who, in his desire, to atone for
his vile and corrupt life, comes back and testifies as above. [...]
The spirit of Sejanus tells us that he was
intimately acquainted with Hillel the Elder, who taught philosophy
at Jerusalem from A. D. 10 to A. D. 45, and that he
had conversed with him on the subject of communion of
spirits with mortals.
While the gospel story of the crucifixion bears the marks of
fiction from beginning to end; not so the statement of the
spirit of Sejanus. The latter is perfectly consistent with probability.
But there is one special point in it that seems to show
that not only was Jesus Malatheel, an Essenian culprit, who
suffered for his crime, but that he furnished the ground-work
for the gospel legend. It will be seen that it was one Simon,
the Cyrenian, who was the person assigned as the executioner
of Jesus; and whom the Jews compelled to bear the cross on
which he was to be executed. According to the statement of
Sejanus, after the death of Jesus, his brother Joseph, begged
the body, not of Pilate, but of Simon, who no doubt had the
custody of the body. That Simon should be mentioned in the
gospel story as the person compelled to act as executioner, or at
least to provide the cross, and that the spirit should have stated
that it was to Simon the application for the body of Jesus was
made, is one of those coincidences that gives certainty to that
which it relates. There is also a singular significance in the
fact that without any previous mention why it was done, or
how they came to be at Golgotha, the gospel story says:
“There were two thieves crucified with him; one on the right
hand, and the other on the left;” and then says: “The thieves
also which were crucified with him, cast the same in his teeth.”
That crucifixion, whatever it was, was certainly a crucifixion
for a criminal, and not for a religious or political offence.
I have dwelt more at length upon the suggestions of the
spirit communication of Sejanus than I otherwise would have
done, because it offers the only rational clue to the true explanation
of the real nature of the gospel narrative regarding the
crucifixion of Jesus. I trust the readers will not think the time
and space occupied in doing this wholly thrown away. Sejanus,
you have nobly atoned for your misspent earthly life by your
contribution toward the enfranchisement of the minds of those,
who have discernment enough left to them, to profit by the
far reaching suggestions that you have thrown out.
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ALOYSIUS LILIUS.
An Italian Savant.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 191
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“I salute you, sir:
for a criminal, and not for a religious or political offence.
I lived in mortal form about 1550, and
was employed on the calendars by the popes and bishops of
my time. They had been so much tampered with that I did
not know whether I lived in 1550 or 1350. There appeared to
ba about two hundred years so mixed up that it was almost
impossible to rectify it or set it right. The different eras had
become so mixed, one with another, that great confusion in
regard to time prevailed. I was set at the task of trying to
make things straight. On entrusting me with the books which
were necessary for that purpose, the first thing that struck me
was the fact, that the adventures attributed to Jesus Christ
were nothing more or less than a legend in regard to certain
stars. In fact, that the whole Christian story was derived from
astrology, and tlie gods who were supposed to have lived before
Jesus was said to have lived, such as Brahm, Buddha, Jupiter,
Jehovah, etc.; and that the doctrine of the Christian trinity
is based on the pagan trinity, which was nothing more than
fire, water and earth, according to those old books and manuscripts
that were given to me at that time. No pope, bishop,
or man of learning, knew when Jesus did live; and when
they were alone to themselves, they freely admitted that the
whole story was mythical and intended to gain power for
themselves.
A great many of those books and manuscripts are
still at Rome, but they are kept hidden from the world; but the
time will soon come when they must become known; and I,
for one, am doing all that I can, as a spirit to bring about the
destruction of Christianity and the triumph of reason over
bigotry. My name was Aloysius Lilius.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 192 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to Thomas’s Dictionary of Biography for account of
Aloysius Lilius.
We regard this communication as in every respect most
important. That it is authentic there can be no reasonable
doubt. The task at which Lilius was set by the papal authority
must, as he says, have necessitated the putting of books and
manuscripts in his hands that are not accessible to any but
the highest and most trusted orders of the Catholic priesthood.
That those books and manuscripts should have disclosed the
astrological origin and mythical nature of the adventures attributed
to Jesus Christ is so highly probable as to render it certain
that such was the fact.
[...]
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POMPAEIUS SATURNINUS.
A Roman Writer.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 194
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“I salute you, sir: — Centuries in spirit life seem to pass
with as much rapidity as one year in mortal life, because you
are not subject to that fatigue of body that you experience on
earth. I was, when on earth, more of a miscellaneous writer
than a writer on any one subject. I was a generalist — not a
specialist. During my time here I became neither an advocate
of religions of my day, the politics of it, nor of the social condition
of affairs; for I saw much in each of these three departments
of human interests to excite my contempt rather than
my love. To see men of noble talents appealing to mythical
gods seemed to be a waste of the real purposes of life. In politics
the greatest flatterers were the grandest courtiers; and in
the administration of affairs, although administered by the
emperor, yet justice was ever biased and even controlled by a
plausible tongue. In social matters, in my day, one of two
things occurred — man was either woman’s master or slave.
Between these two extremes there was no intermediate. In
such a state were human affairs at the time of my abode on
earth. There was only one consolation that I enjoyed, and that
was the secret counsels of the Sons of the Sun or the Initiated.
There, with our mediums, we enjoyed for a few hours that
higher spirituality that our spirits called for. But our meetings
had to be secret— covered from the eyes of the priests and
priestly spies. No one suspected of belonging to the order cculd
escape from the ruin sooner or later.
Those Pagan Roman
priests were just as powerful bigots as are the Roman Catholic
Christians, and hesitated at nothing to increase their temporal
power. As late as A. D. 150, at Rome, at Alexandria, at Antioch,
and at Jerusalem, these Sons of the Sun received the
teachings of the Gymnosophists, who were combined with the
Therapeutse, and their main doctrine was spiritism. We met
at Rome and compared notes every six months; but the embassadors
to these meetings were all disguised as traders
engaged in mercantile pursuits; and in this way we were able
to learn the progress of the cause. No Jew by the name of
Jesus Christ was known at Rome in my day; nor did I ever hear
from any of the embassadors of the order the name of Christians
mentioned. I knew nothing of Paul, but I knew as a
mortal and know as a spirit, that Pol was one of the names
conferred upon Apollonius of Tyana. I have every reason to
believe that the Paul of the Christian Scriptures is Apollonius
of Tyana. I have had this view of the matter from one whom
I knew in the mortal form, as the result of his investigation.
I mean Pliny the Younger, with whom I was intimately
acquainted. My name was Pompseius Saturninus.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 194 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to Smith’s Dictionary of Biography for account of
Saturninus.
“Pompaeius Saturninus, a contemporary of the Younger
Pliny, is praised by the latter as a distinguished orator, historian
and poet. Several of Pliny’s letters are addressed to him.”
Refer to Thomas’s Biographical Dictionary for account of
Saturninus.
“Saturninus, or Saturnilus, one of the earliest of the Syrian
Gnostics, flourished about 125 A. D.”
[...]
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CARRA.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 195
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“Good Afternoon:— I lived, and was well acquainted with
Jean Jacques Barthelemy, and he succeeded me in the National
Library at Paris. We had many consultations together about
his alphabet of Palmyra, and the inscriptions upon different
ancient ruins; and he goes with me in spirit. He is with me
to-day, to say that in a town called Said, there is an inscription
which defines what is meant by the term Essene. “Es" means
“fire.” and “sene" means “worshipper.” or passer through,
and in modern language would be termed worshippers passing
through purification by fire. The inscription was on a flat stone
covering a vault, about two miles from Port Said, and in the
Samaritan tongue. And from other writings, as well as being
so assured by one Ignatius of Antioch, in spirit, who was an
Essene, both Barthelemy and myself have come to the conclusion
that all converts had to pass through fire — termed fire
baptism — in order to be initiated into Essenism. He has also
to say that the inscriptions on the Adulian marble, after the
first clause, ended by two arrows, one pointing toward the north
and the other south, relate to the life and miracles of Apollonius
of Tyana. [I here asked whether the obliterated portion of the
inscription had reference to that subject. He replied:] It seems
to have been chipped off so as to conceal its purport. Apollonius
is n earer to earth, at this time, as a spirit, than he has
ever been, and will probably, in materialized form, be enabled,
before long, in person to claim to be the true Messiah, and in
this way make a final end of Christianity. Not that he claims
any Messiahship, but he was a superior medium. — Carra.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 196 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to Nouvelle Biographie Generale for account of Carra.
[...]
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CLEMENT ALEXANDRINUS.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 197
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“I greet you: — I always taught when seated. Too much
religion has been a curse to me as a spirit.
I knew of the writings of one Marcion — not that he was the author of them — but he substituted a myth for a reality. That reality was
Apollonius of Tyana. I received copies from him, and I followed
his text as far as it suited me. But there was one great
desire that animated me as a mortal. That was to establish a
fraternity of monks; and in this I succeeded, but I did not
dare to let them know the light that I had received; so I used
the name of Apollonius, which after my time was erased and
the name of Jesus Christ substituted by Eusebius of Csesarea.
All his translations of my writings are, in the main forgeries.
He took my communistic doctrines and used them to found a
church. That is, the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church
were to be Communists, but their followers were not allowed to
become such.
At Alexandria, the most renowned priests of the
East and West, over the then civilized world, assembled to
compare notes; and as has been before stated by a spirit who
communicated through this medium, they formed that idea,
which was afterwards put in operation by Constantinus Pogonatus,
of the body of the god (Prometheus) to which was attached
the head of Apollonius of Tyana, but which the ancient Christians
would not accept, but continued to worship the first sign
of the Zodiac, Aries, the Lamb or Ram. The former idea did
not find its proper place until the sixth century. But the
whole account of the decision of the Gnostics, the Gymnosophists,
and other sects, who met in Council at Alexandria in A.
D. 161, was written by me; and I hope that my writings, of which
true copies, as they originally read, are now in the possession
of the Maronite monks, of Mt. Lebanon, Syria, may yet be
forthcoming. These once in the possession of moderns, and the
whole fabric of Christianity will be stamped as a forgery. I am
quoted as a father of the Christian Church. I deny it. I was
a father of a socialistic community, of which celibacy was the
principal tenet. My name was Clement Alexandrinus.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 197 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to McClintock & Strong’s Cyclopaedia of Ecclesiastical
Literature; also to Dr. Lardner’s works, for account of Clement.
What has become of Clement’s “Institutions.” which Dr.
Lardner refers to, but which he says has been lost, and why
are we allowed to know so little of its contents? Let the spirits
of Eusebius and his abettors in his pious frauds, appear and
answer, for upon them rests the heavy responsibility of the
concealment or destruction of that important ancient book. It
will be observed that there is no historical mention that Clement
of Alexandria ever founded or attempted to found a fraternity
of monks; but who can read the synopsis, given in
McClintock & Strong’s Cyclopaedia of his writings, and not see
that his labors were all in the direction of monachism, and an
ascetic and self-denying life; and that so far from being what
is now regarded as an orthodox Christian, he was what orthodox
Christians now designate a heretical Gnostic. For a
Christian writer to speak of “the true Gnostic" as synonymous
with “the perfect Christian.” as does the Christian writer I
have quoted, is to resolve Christianity into Gnosticism. What
then is Gnosticism? Says a writer in the American Cyclopaedia:
“Gnostics; (Greek ’Gnosis,’ knowledge,) a name given
to various heretical sects, in the early Christian church.” [A
pretty Christian church was that, when heretical Gnostics
were its exponents and dominant rulers.] “We know them.”
says this writer, “mainly through their opponents, almost
nothing remaining of Gnostic writings, except the fragmentary
quotations found in orthodox authors. Gnosticism was a natural
result of the contact of Christianity with Oriental and Greek
philosophy, and was the earliest attempt to construct a philosophical
system of faith. It undertook to answer the most
difficult questions, such as that of the origin of evil, and soon
became extravagant, and met the opposition of the leading
Christian writers.”
Not the least significant declaration of the spirit of Clement
is, that in A. D. 161, the most renowned priests of the East and
West, throughout the then civilized world, assembled in council
at Alexandria, embracing Gnostic, Gymnosophists and other
sects, at which the idea was formed to adopt, as the symbol of
a common worship, the body of the Grecian god, Prometheus,
suffering for mankind on the Scythian Crag to which should
be attached the head of Apollonius of Tyana. Whether Clement
was himself a member of that Council of Gnostic, Gymnosophists
and other priests, he does not tell us, but he does most
plainly tell us that he wrote a full account of the decision they
came to in regard to the common religious symbol they determined
to adopt. Nothing was more natural than that these
Greek Gnostics and Gymnosophists should have adopted that
especial emblem; and nothing more unnatural than that
Christian prelates assembled in A. D. 680, at Constantinople,
by Constantinus Pogonatus, should have adopted that identical
symbol as the emblem of the Christian religion. Who has ever
seen a crucifix, or statue, or picture, representing Jesus of
Nazareth, the alleged Jew, that had not every lineament and
physical attribute of the highest Greek ideal of human perfection.
To combine the ideal beauty of Prometheus, the Greek
saviour, with the real beauty of the sage, the seer, the benefactor,
the teacher — the renowned Apollonius — was indeed, to
unite, in one emblem, all that was divinely and humanly perfect
and adorable. That Christian prelates should have deliberately
adopted this compound effigy of a heathen god and a
heathen philosopher, as the emblem of their religion, was to
confess the heathen origin and heathen nature of all that is
connected with it.
[...]
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HERMOGENES.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 200
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“My salutation shall be, Let us shed the light. I lived in
mortal form in what is termed A. D. 122 — that is, I was in full
exercise of my mortal powers at that date. I am mentioned in
the New Testament, Second Timothy, chap, i., 15, as Hermogenes,
and am there set down as a heretic. In order to set
myself squarely right before moderns, I am here to-day to tell
the whole truth. The original Paul, and the man whom I
followed as a mortal, was Apollonius; and Timotheus was a
bishop, or an apostle, of the Nazarite, Essenian, or Therapeutic
sect, for these were one and the same. He was acting as an
apostle; and an apostle, in those days, meant a promulgator of
some religion.
Until that sect began to abuse the communistic
idea — that of having all things in common — I was a member
of it. But the bishops and leading men began to monopolize
the enjoyment of the good things of this life, Apollonius himself
had the same weakness that tinges the actions of modern
mediums. He became desirous of controlling the moneys and
the tongues of his followers; and upon this point he and myself
parted. Human nature has been the same in every age
and generation. You may find thousands of persons who contemn
the good things of this life; but put them in a position
where they can monopolize them, and they cannot resist the
temptation of their surrounding circumstances. Apollonius is
the real hero of the Christian legend. He is also the Paul of
the Christian Scriptures; and what was revealed to him, by a
voluntary spirit control, on the Isle of Patmos, makes him the
John of Revelations. That book of Revelation, as understood
by the ancients, is to be explained entirely by astronomy, or
the movement of the starry hosts upon the dome of heaven.
The key to Essenianism — the key to the language of the Therapeutae —
and the key to all that the so-called Apostle wrote, is
to be found in the character and life of Apollonius of Tyana;
not as these were exemplified by his mortal career, but according
to the ancient accounts of that career, after his death, as
his pathway was traced among the stars. I contributed largely
of my material means to propagate the ideas set forth by Apollonius
and as long as he was spiritually minded, I was one of
his most faithful followers. But, when he became carnal
minded, and grasped after the good things of this life, without
regard to either principal or justice, I refused to be one of his
adherents. By spirits who will come after me, at this sitting
to-day, testimony will be given, in the face of which no mortal
now living, or yet to be born in the course of coming generations,
will dare to deny the astrological and astronomical
origin of all religions. It was so understood by us — the initiated.
And I would say this, on all my hopes of future happiness,
that, if ever mortals wish to comprehend the symbolism
of Christianity, they must become readers of the stars.
The Essenes, Nazarites, or Therapeutae, and all sects in the first
and second centuries, owe their religious ideas to that Hindoo
trance medium, Deva Bodhisatoua. If this causes any one or
more persons to think upon these points, I will be amply repaid
for the obstructions that have been thrown in my way by
opposing spirits, to prevent me from communicating what I
knew, to mortals. You have my name. Good bye; and may
God bless you for your efforts to promulgate the truth.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 201 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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I regard that communication as containing, within itself, all
that is necessary to prove the fact that the spirits of men and
women who lived in the far historic past, can return and communicate
with mortals, and that many of them have so
returned, and through their medium, have disclosed facts and
truths of the greatest importance to the welfare of humanity.
The only positive reference to this Hermogenes that is anywhere
recorded, is in the 14th and 15th verses of the first
chapter of the Second Epistle to Timothy, which are in these
words:
“That good thing which was committed unto thee, keep by
the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us.”
“This thou kno west, that all they wmich are in Asia be
turned away from me; of whom are Phygellus and Hermogenes.”
Remember, that all other mention of this Hermogenes has
either been lost or destroyed. Not a word is said as to why
“all they which (were) in Asia (were) turned away from
(Paul);” nor are we told who Paul was, or who Timothy was,
that their religious or doctrinal views were different from the
views of Phygellus and Hermogenes, “and all they which
were in Asia.” and formerly of the same religious sect with
Paul and Timothy; nor are we told what the sect was called,
that Phygellus and Hemogenes turned away from. All this is
fully stated by the returning spirit of Hermogenes, and in a
manner, and by means, that bear the strongest possible appearance
of truth.
The only possible historical reference to this heretical Hermogenes
may be found in Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and
Roman Biography. [...]
[Pg 202]
Christianity had its source in the religious sect known as the Essenian
Brotherhood or Fraternity. That organization was purely communistic,
and perfectly democratic in its fundamental principles.
It so continued, as it now appears, until Apollonius of
Tyana, who became a member, and prominent Apostle of its
religious doctrines, undertook to subvert the governing principles
of that then well established sect; and to substitute for
them the anti-communistic and anti-fraternal principles of
sacerdotal and hierarchal gradation. Then began a struggle
for unity, fraternity and equality, against priestly dogmatism
and aggrandizement, [....]
[Pg 202]
Hermogenes, the great democratic leader of the Essenes, confronted,
and, for a time, drove back the friends of priestcraft, led by
Apollonius, or Paul, the Essenian Apostate, but in vain; and
the latter became the successful founder of a bastard Essenianism,
which after his death, one Marcion, of Pontus, put forth
under the alias of Christianity. Apollonius left his Essenian
bantling at Antioch, the great centre of Essenianism, where
Marcion found it in the shape of a Gospel and eleven Epistles,
which he called the Christian Scriptures according to Marcion;
and this spurious bantling of the apostate Essenian, Apollonius,
became the adopted waif of the Christian priesthood.
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JEAN SYLVAIN BAILLY.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 203
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“Good day:— This mortal life is one of uncertainties; and
little did I think that I, who had devoted myself to the interests
and advancement of all, should end my life on the guillotine.
There is a fate that seems to hang over you, and you
know not the hour when its fulfilment will occur. In my
mortal life I was an astronomer. No astronomer that now
lives, or that ever did live, but knows the identity of all
religions with that science. But there are Materialist astronomers;
Infidel and Christian astronomers; Arabic, Jewish,
Egyptian and Chinese astronomers, both ancient and modern.
As another spirit has said, individual actions on this mortal
plane were afterwards transferred to the stars above, and it is
there, and there only, that the key to all religions is to be
found. Excavations are now being made, amid the ruins of
ancient Babylon, which will prove, by the planispheres upon
burnt bricks, the whole story of all the gods that were then
known, and who are all to be found nursed in the lap of the
constellation Virgo. But it is not even in Babylon that the
finality of the zodiacal problems is to be found.
The most
ancient of all historical evidence that will prove that Christianity
is nothing but a fable borrowed from the stars, is to be found
at ancient Tyre; as the Phoenicians, 2700 years before the
Christian era, had the most correct ideas upon the solar system
— analogous to what is known by modern astronomers. It is in
that sunken city by the sea, whose secrets are to be brought to
light by your modern divers, that the final and conclusive
evidence is to be found which will give the death-blow to
Christianity. For further particulars, and for points that I
think will throw some light upon the subject, I would like our
brother [myself] here, to obtain a French work written by me
when living in the mortal form, the title of which is, “Christian
Fables Astronomically Considered.” I departed this life in
the French Revolution, in 1793. My name was Jean Sylvain
Bailly.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 203 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to American Cyclopaedia for account for Bailly. [...]
[Pg 204]
I do not know to what
the spirit alludes, in regard to excavations going on amid the
ruins of ancient Babylon, and the astronomical discoveries that
are being made, or that will be made there; but this I well
know, that all theological gods of every people, not excepting
the Christian world, were the allegorical legends of the Sun’s
career in his annual route through the heavens. There is not a
doubt whatever that the Phoenicians had a very advanced
science of astronomy long — very long — anterior to the Christian
era. Bailly makes this most plain by the proofs he adduces in
his great “History of Astronomy, Ancient and Modern.”
Should the discoveries foretold by the spirit be yet found
beneath the sea, at the site of ancient Tyre, they would not
only give the death blow to Christianity, but the death blow
to the insensate opposition that Spiritualism now contends
against.
[We have no evidence that Mr. Roberts obtained a copy of
the work to which the spirit alluded. — Compiler.]
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CARDINAL CAESAR BARONIUS.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 205
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“I salute you, sir:— I was known as Cardinal Caesar
Baronius. or Baronio, as sometimes called. I was the author
of an Ecclesiastical Annals, and librarian of the Vatican
Library.
In my search for information amongst the books and
papers of that library, I was sworn that I would disclose or
publish nothing that did not agree with the Roman Catholic
creed. In my investigation of the old manuscripts there deposited,
I found that Christianity did not have a beginning
until the first half of the third century. These manuscripts all
show that one Papius, who was a priest in Syria about that
time, was the originator of that religion. Christian writers
have made it appear that he lived much earlier than he really
did.
The Christian story, as borne out by the facts, was derived
from a Grecian tragedy the hero of which was a dying god, and
the first man who taught such a doctrine was Apollonius of
Tyana: and he, according to his own manuscripts, got the idea
in India from the narrative regarding the Hindoo god Chrishna,
which is in reality the Christ of the Christians. In fact you
have, through the spirits that are coming to you, the key to all
that relates to the Christian religion, in the fact that Apollonius
was the Apostle Paul.
These “documents to which I allude,
although opposed to their religion, the Catholics have not
destroyed. Whatever originals they possess are in the hands
of the Order of Jesus, and no priest is allowed to read them
unless he takes the oath of eternal secrecy. There is not a
learned Catholic to-day that is in the priesthood, or that has
ever been at Rome, but that knows that Christianity is nothing
more than an old pagan idea revived, but as it gives them
power their lips are sealed. I might speak for an hour but I
could not tell you more than I have done because I have condensed
what I had to say. I was librarian of the Vatican prior
to A. D. 1607, when I died.”
In reply to our question whether he knew that the supposed
date of the four canonical gospels was from A. D. 160 to A. D.
185? He answered, “Yes, but they were none of them earlier
than A. D. 220.” When asked how he could feel absolved from
his oath of secrecy, he answered. “No oath, however solemn, is
binding upon the human soul when it operates to the injury of
the human race.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 205 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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We refer to the Nouvelle Biographie Generale
for account of Baronius. [...]
[Pg 207]
Cardinal Baronius was made to take
a solemn oath that he would make known or publish nothing
that did not agree with the Christian creed that existed in the
Catholic Church. And why? Because that creed was false and
would be spurned by all people of sense if he made known the
truth concerning it. He tells us that Christianity did not begin
until the time of Papius, who lived in the third and not in the
second century, as Christian writers, including himself, had
made it appear.
We refer to McClintock & Strong’s Ecclesiastical
Encyclopaedia for account of Papius.
[...]
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RUFUS QUINTIUS CURTIUS.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 207
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“I salute you, sir, in the name of Truth triumphing over
Error. I was intimately acquainted with Vespasian; I knew
Apollonius; and I saw Flavius Josephus at Rome about the
middle of the reign of Trajan. I come here to-day to say, that
Titus, the son of Vespasian, brought to Rome some of the
Hebrew scrolls that were recovered by Judas Maccabeus, after
the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem by Antiochus
Epiphanes; and that the most, if not all, of the Jewish legends
are borrowed allegorical recitals taken from the Persian and
Egyptian mythologies. Their identity with the latter was
understood by the learned or initiated. [...]
[Pg 207]
All
religions known in my day, whether of India, Persia, Greece,
Rome, Judea, or Egypt, were understood astronomically; but
this was disguised from the masses, because all who had any
learning whatever knew they had but one common basis to rest
upon, and that was communion with spirits, whether brought
about by invocation, or trance, or this odic or this psychic force
physically manifested. But such manifestations were always
called up by virtue of the mystic signs of the zodiac. These
signs accompanied every circle. The breast-plate which Flavius
Josephus wore, and in which he was discovered in the cave,
when his life was saved by Vespasian, was none other than a
representation of the Chaldean signs of the zodiac. That breastplate
has not been destroyed, but now exists, and is to be found
in Paris, where a priest presented it to Charlemagne. It was
among the spoils obtained at Rome by Alaric, king of the Huns.
It has a mission in this world, and until that is accomplished,
it cannot be destroyed.
That mission is, to prove that the
Hebrew teachings and writings are nothing but a copy of
Chaldean, Persian and Egyptian writings that preceded them.
How much better would it have been for priests, in the past,
to have been honest with their followers, than deluding them
with gods and fancy gods into the way of error? For the paths
of Truth are pleasant, and all its ways are peace. My name
was Rufus Quintius Curtius.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 208 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography
for account of Rufus Quintius Curtius.
It was the spirit of the Roman historian, rhetorician, and
poet, — the intimate acquaintance of Vespasian and Titus, who
knew Apollonius, and who had seen Flavius Josephus at Rome
as late as the middle of the reign of Trajan, about A. D. 107,—
who returns and communicates. That he speaks from personal
knowledge of the truth of what he says, is manifest in a remarkable
degree in every part of his spirit testimony. There
cannot be a doubt, from the historical and critical notices in
relation to his earth life, considered in the light of the communication,
that Curtius lived from about A. D. 24 until A. D. 107.
If we may regard the communication as reliable and truthful,
it would seem that Titus brought from Jerusalem to Rome,
about A. D. 59, some of the scrolls that Judas Maccabeus recovered
after the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem by
Antiochus Epiphanes, in B. C. 170. It was doubtless from those
Hebrew scrolls that Josephus obtained his account of the Maccabees.
But the most significant fact is, that those scrolls
showed that most, if not all the Jewish legends were borrowed
allegorical recitals, taken from the Persian and Egyptian mythologies;
and that this fact was well understood by the
learned and those initiated into an understanding of their
astrological and astronomical meaning; while on the other
hand, this was concealed from the ignorant masses, in order
the more readily to lead and control them.
[Pg 209]
Whether the breast-plate worn by Josephus, at the time of
his capture at Jerusalem, in the cave in which he had concealed
himself, at the time of the capture of that city by Titus, is in
existence, or not, is of less importance than to know that it was
a representation of the Chaldean zodiac. If this was the fact,
it is of itself sufficient to show that the Jewish religion was but
a formulated astro-theology, and would leave no other question
to be decided than to determine whether it had any feature
essentially original about it, or whether it was a literal or substantial
copy of some antecedent astro-theological system.
For account of the breast-plate of the Jewish high priest, of
which office Josephus was the incumbent, we refer to McClintock
and Strong’s Cyclopaedia of Ecclesiastical Literature.
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M. ATILIUS REGULUS.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 210
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“I salute you, friends:— I was consul for the Roman
Empire in the first Punic war. I am here to-day for a mission.
That mission is to unveil what priests have attempted to palm
upon humanity as religion.
All religions, in my day, were
copied from the Egyptian Osiris, with this great light that
shines above your head — the sun — as the central pivot; which
Sun has been corrupted into Son, and this because priests, finding
that the masses would not worship nor adore anything that
was not covered by a veil of secrecy, resorted to gods born of
virgins, as the fundamental principle in nearly all the religions
now existing on this mortal plane. In my time there was a
constant struggle between the learned politicians and wily
priests for supremacy; and sorry am I to say that the priests
almost always triumphed. There never would have been that
decline in the Roman Empire, and its final absorption by the
Catholic church to-day, if the Roman people had listened to
the voice of its politicians and orators. The famous Grecian
God, Prometheus, dying on the Scythian crags, was acknowledged
as the saviour of man, when I lived on the mortal plane.
A pure invention, the god which I have mentioned — a myth
in that day, as much as Jesus Christ is a myth in this. I feel
as a spirit an earnest desire to lift this religious bondage that is
now binding the human race. No spirit, however exalted, has
any saving power whatever, except as it can impress spirits and
mortals to do right. Nothing will pass as a voucher for happiness
in the spirit life except a clear conscience. If we trace
things from cause to effect, it is well there was such a god as
Apollo — whether myth or not — otherwise there would be no
necessity for my coming here to-day, as an effect of that kind
of teaching.
As a spirit I have never found, with one exception,
that any of these so-called gods had a real existence.
This one exception is Gautama Buddha. I have seen him as a
spirit; but he is surrounded, in spirit life, by a sphere which I
have no desire to enter — it is too monotonous for an old soldier.
The kind of sphere that surrounds Buddha is one of rest. He
taught that here, and, therefore, reaps that result in spirit. I
like progression. I do not believe, so far as I have seen during
twenty-one hundred years of spirit life, there is any doctrine
or teaching that would impress rne, or lead me to give up my
individuality, for all the happiness of an eternal quiet. My
name when here was M. Atilius Regulus, 251 years B. C.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 211 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography
for account of Regulus.
[...]
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ROBERT II.
Of France.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 212
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“I am here to-day to help to spread the light. There was one
fault in my earthly career that follows me as a spirit. I was
too pious. Piety carried to an extreme length begets bigotry,
and you become so absorbed in it, as a leading idea, that any
one who does not agree with you, you regard as an. enemy of
truth. At the time I lived in mortal form, Catholic Christianity
was in its darkest period. Nearly all light had become
extinguished. Altars, priests, wafers and tapers created a kind
of dim religious awe, which curses all spirits, that become enwrapped
in that kind of religious folly. No religion that
excludes the light of free inquiry will fail to produce, in your
mkids, a dim un certainty which gradually brings you to that
point that you throw over all the things of the mortal life to
live in that religious world of your own imagining. As a mortal
I believed too much. As a spirit I wish to undo that.
I have
found through inquiry and work in spirit life, that the Great
Infinite has marked out no set of religious rules for men to be
governed by; but there are rules that we may learn by experience—
that which becomes a truth, morally certain to us. But
priests have perverted the truth by means of dying rams, lambs,
crosses, virgins, and Latin jargon. I know now as a spirit what
I never knew as a mortal, and that is, that Christianity is an
astrological legend, and every true Christian who has his eyes
open to the truth, acknowledges it to be so, in spirit life. No
one who ever lived was more earnest in propagating Catholicism
than myself, and the priests conferred on me a title which
has been a curse to me spiritually, that of “Pious.” That title,
as bestowed by priests, has cursed every spirit that it was ever
conferred upon. There is blood attached to it, and untold
suffering; and many men whom the priests excommunicated,
are occupying to-day, in spirit life, higher positions, and enjoying
greater happiness, than the so-called pious ones of history.
I know positively, from conversations had with that great
spirit, Apollonius, that every head or bust or picture now held
sacred as the head of Jesus Christ, by Catholics and Protestants
alike, is the head of Apollonius of Tyana. I also know, from
what I have learned from the conclave of emancipated spirits,
and their accounts of their earthly experiences, which they
have discussed openly in the spirit world, that the Jesus of the
Scriptures, the Paul and John, are all derived from the life of
Apollonius of Tyana. The days of truth are upon you, and that
which is crooked shall be made straight. The age of reason,
now dawning, needs but one redeemer, and that is the effort
of each person to be his own saviour. This is a guide-board that
will never lead you astray. All are gods, provided their conditions
and environments are god-like. I feel much relieved
in coming here to-day. It is a duty I owe to the misguided. I
lived in A. D. 997. That was when I was in the height of my
power. I was known as Kobert the Pious of France. Goodbye,
sir.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 213 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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We refer to Biographie Generale for account of Robert the
Pious.
[...]
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PYTHAGORAS.
The Samian Sage.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 214
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“I greet you all: It is just exactly six months that I
have been fighting my way through adverse conditions to
reach you here. To be a sage and philosopher in ancient times
was not a very difficult affair, because it was always a spiritual
affair. All sages, in ancient times, were more or less mediums.
But in your day they are more learned, materially, because of
the different opportunities that you have to acquire knowledge. [...]
[Pg 215] All morality, as taught by me in my “Golden Verses,” was
simply the result of observation and experience, and I received
many of my precepts from the poets before my time, Homer,
Hesiod and others; and all of the sages in those days taught
their own doctrines to certain schools of men, who retired into
their caves or gardens, and there all such minds were moved in
trance, in the same manner that I move this man to-day.
Sometimes they were conscious, and sometimes when the
deepest thoughts were given, in a deeply unconscious state.
All gods and goddesses have grown out of names, to signify
certain qualities that exist within the human body, such as
patience, perseverance and all other virtues; and even the
passions are represented in Grecian mythology, and were so
understood by the learned of my day. And, as the cross is the
symbol of the Christian religion; so these gods and goddesses
were the symbols of certain appetites, passions and virtues. [....]
[Pg 215] At my time it was just as difficult
to make a man understand truth, as it is to-day — that is
we labored under the difficulties of superstition. Priestcraft
always stands in the way of progression. The more ignorant
the hearers of a priest the less work he has to do; and the more
enlightened they become the more difficulty he has to maintain
his position. Therefore you will always find these teachers
of superstition, enemies to progression. The ancient nations
of the world, at my time, had more intercourse with each
other than you would suppose; and, living as I did, almost
at the same time, as Confucius the Chinese philosopher,
I met with some of his disciples and compared with them our
respective teachings; and you will find that the “Golden
Verses” of Pythagoras, and the “Wisdom Precepts” of Confucius
have a sameness in their teachings. You will also find
that the first great teachers living more natural lives — nearer to
nature — did not express themselves with the elegance of some
of the younger poets and philosophers; but in the very beauty
of simplicity. Instead of using learned words to express your
thoughts, it is best to put your ideas in the simplest form
possible. You will hereby avoid misconception; you will, also,
be better understood. It has grieved the spirits of my day to
look from their schools of philosophy in spirit life, and see the
progress of those superstitions that kill the soul, all over this
great planet. It is almost impossible to uproot them, unless
you commence with the child in the mortal form.
There is
another great difficulty with all spirits, Christian, Mohammedan
and Pagan, they are so imbued with superstitions, that
even if they reason themselves out of them at maturity, when
they come to what is termed death — the earliest impressions
being the most vivid, and marked the deepest upon their
spirits, holds them in the meshes of superstition for long years
after in spirit life. So there is nothing I know of that will
redeem mankind so effectually as educating the child properly
— spiritually especially. And I also see that this impress of
superstition is marked upon the seed that makes the infant in
the mother’s womb. It grows with the first root in that womb;
and I tell you that it is here that this radical reformation must,
take place. But a false modesty chains people’s intellects at the
present time in the mortal life. It is at the very commencement
of life that the purification must begin; and out of this
will grow such an intelligence that superstition will no longer
find a resting place in any mind. Six hundred years before
the Christian era — in my time — these points were well understood,
but they have been lost in the confusion and Babel that
followed after. The principal power in the fostering of superstition
has been ambition — men’s ambition to rule by any
means whatever. They cared nothing for truth and it was a
set: “What I promulgate or die.” War is one of the grandest
destroyers of progression. That is, it inflames men’s passions
— and passionate reasoning is always wrong. Cool and calm
deliberation is the best saviour I know of, and one that I
would recommend to all spirits and mortals. There is one who
will follow me here to-day, approaching nearer to your time,
who can discuss the ethics of the Christian and Pagan religions,
better than any man or spirit that I know of, his name is Ammonius
Saccas. He can throw more light upon the Christian
superstition, because he is one of the founders of it. And,
therefore, with my blessing to you all, you can sign me Pythagoras.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 217 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to Thomas’s Dictionary of Biography for account of
Pythagoras.
What is found in the work above referred to is substantially
all that is historically known of the Samian sage, one of the
most remarkable men that ever trod the earth; [...]
[Pg 217] Important indeed is the assurance that in ancient times all
sages were mediums, and drew their inspiration and profound
knowledge from the exhaustless fountain of Spiritual wisdom,
now so freely pouring forth its limpid waters of truth to cleanse
and purify a priest defiled and grovelling world. [...]
[Pg 217] What the spirit says of the almost ineradicable effects of the
erroneous religious training of children upon the enslavement
of spirit in the after life, is what has been confirmed by thousands
of returning spirits who have come back and testified
thereto. Spirits whose infant minds were poisoned with every
kind of superstitious training have, with one accord, borne
testimony to the ruinous effects of their early training, of a
religious nature. If there is such a thing as an unpardonable
sin, that sin is the one which every priest, minister, clergyman,
and their mistaken followers, commit, when they inculcate
in the minds of children of tender years, the theological falsehoods
invented for the enslavement of the minds and consciences
of mankind. To such an extent has this crime been
perpetrated, that in the earliest embryotic stages of individual
human development, the seed of superstition is implanted in
the being to grow, develop, and curse it, not only through its
existence in its mortal body, but to follow it beyond the grave
far into its spirit life. It is such important truths as these that
the spirits of the ancient sages and benefactors of the world,
are laboring to bring before the present and future generations
of earth’s inhabitants.
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AMMONIUS SACCAS.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 218
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“May the rays of the Sun of Truth never be obscured by
Ignorance.
At the time when i lived at Alexandria, in Egypt,
there was a general inquiry into the religions of all nations, and
the presentation of their different creeds and beliefs; and the
object of this was to accumulate the utmost wisdom possible in
the smallest space. Therefore Brahmans, Buddhists, and followers
of A pollonius of Tyana and Potamon, and all the Roman
schools, met to compare their ideas of God. The Gymnosophists,
Gnostics, Eclectics and other schools were concerned in
that comparison of religions; of all of which schools I became
a teacher. Our principal guide-book, or symbol, as you would
call it now, was a book compiled by one Marcion, and this man
had taken its contents from a follower or disciple of Apollonius
of Tyana, one Damis. Apollonius of Tyana had a book of
figurative revelations written by his hand while controlled by
spirits in the Isle of Patmos; and this has become what is
called the Book of Revelations. But if you could find another
book of Apollonius, “The Key to the Initiated,” that key
would show you that the book of “Revelation” is not a prophecy
of coming events, but was simply a combination of the
teachings of the Brahman and Buddhist orders of priests, to
express a kind of Masonry well known among themselves;
and was destroyed by St. Cyril at Alexandria. (That is, the
copy that fell into his hands, one of the only two copies that
were extant in my time.) And I taught concerning these
mysticisms, calling myself and followers Mystics. Potamon
was my teacher; and he taught directly from the books of
Apollonius of Tyana. These teachings were a combination of
all the religions then known, out of which all the Christian
gospels have been compiled.
Christianity was not first taught
at Antioch, nor was it taught in the first or second century, but
about 225 A. D.; and was taught at first under the name of
Gnosticism. I do not know whether I will have power enough
to finish to-day. [Will you come again and finish what you
wish to impart?] I will try to, but to sum up all these deceptions,
and errors through a man who is entirely ignorant of
them, is rather difficult. Gnosticism was taught by a Gnostic
named Basilides, nearly similarly to what is contained in the
Christian Gospels. He lived in my time, and his books came
into the hands of those named, as the first Christian bishops,
by Eusebius. But you need give no credit to Eusebius, or very
little, except as to what relates to his time and fifty years
previous. Apollonius of Tyana called his revelations by different
names, in order to be understood in the different tongues
of the nations he taught amongst. But his writings were
altogether written in the Syriac-Cappadocian tongue and not
in the Greek, as the translators of the Christian Scriptures pretend
they were. It is difficult to sum all these things up on
account of not being able to give you corroborative evidence of
the truth of what I say. There are numerous books extant that
cannot be reached, and we do not know how you can get at
them, because the priests, both Catholic and Protestant, have
them hidden in their libraries. At Alexandria, in my time, there
was a great deal of contention — some saying I am a follower of
Potamon — others, I am a follower of Ammonius, and so on;
and the contentions of these schools resulted in the destruction
of a great amount of valuable manuscripts amongst themselves
and their descendants. But I have stated enough here to-day
to make plain the origin of Christianity. [You were a Greek,
Avere you not?] I was a mixture of Greek and Cappadocian.
That is, I was born of a Greek father and a Cappadocian
mother at Alexandria; and in my early life I was nothing
more than a common porter. [Were you yourself a medium,
and did you wrrite and teach as a medium?] I taught under
spirit influences at times. [Were you conscious then?] At
times I was, and at other times I was not. A great deal was
written by my hand that was not dictated by my brains.
[Were your written teachings not destroyed, for they say you
left nothing written?] I left a half dozen scrolls containing a
description of these teachings, of different bodies of men, such
as the Brahmans, Buddhists, Gymnosophists and the Eclectics
under Potamon; and commented upon them, writing my
opinion as to how far they were correct, and how far they were
erroneous. These writings were not all destroyed; some of
them are extant, but they are kept by learned scholars for their
own benefit. [How is it that you ancient spirits are cognizant
of what has been done since your time, and what is in existence
of those ancient books? How do you keep track of that?] We
see the motives of those who come after us, and we watch them.
There is an affinity between us and our writings, and the consequence
is,w e want to see their effect for good or evil, because
we feel that these effects are a justification of our opinions while
living on earth. Adieu.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 220 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopaedia of Ecclesiastical
Literature and Dr. Lardner’s work for account of Ammonius
Saccas.
It is truly amusing, but pitiful, to read such theological
flounderings as that of the learned Dr. Lardner, to argue away
the facts that Ammonius Saccas, the Alexandrian philosopher,
and the founder of the Neo-Platonic school of theology, was
the author of the “Evangelical Canons,” which Eusebius of
Caesarea afterwards followed; and that Neo-Platonism or the
Eclectic system of theology and philosophy, not only antedated
Christianity, but was the ground work upon which the
Christian system of superstition was erected.
If Eusebius, who is the almost sole authority for the earliest
facts concerning Christian ecclesiasticism, was so stupid as not
to know what Ammonius it was whose ”Evangelical Canons,”
he followed in establishing the Canonical books of the so-called
Christian Scriptures of to-day, then is the Christian Bible
without any authentic basis whatever; for if Eusebius, the
Christian Church historian, could make such a blunder as to
attribute the “Evangelical Canons” he followed, to a heathen
philosopher, then the whole foundation of Christianity must
necessarily rest on heathen mythology.
Eusebius was undoubtedly right in insisting that “Ammonius
Saccas continued a Christian to the end of his life,” and
equally so was Porphyry who insisted that he was not a Christian
at all, but simply an Eclectic philosopher. The contradiction
between these claims is only apparent. The Eclectic or
Neo-Platonic, or Alexandrian School of philosophy, flourished
more than a century before, the Christian designation was
attached to, or substituted for, the philosophical canons and
tenets established and taught by Ammonius Saccas, and followed
by Eusebius of Caesarea. The protracted struggle for
supremacy between the Neo-Platonists and the Christians, was
to all intents and purposes, between those who honestly sought
to show the mythological and philosophical origin of the socalled
Christian Scriptures, and those who sought to conceal
that essential fact by falsely pretending that those scriptures
were a divine and new revelation of God’s will to the human
race. As, what is called Christianity, is nothing more nor less
than the teachings of the “Heathen” philosopher, Ammonius
Saccas, it was entirely proper for Eusebius, whose labor was
directed especially to conceal the pagan source of Christianity,
to call him a Christian. It was equally proper for Porphyry
to insist that Ammonius was a “heathen” philosopher, who
was willing the truth should be known as to the source of his
system of philosophy, as contradistinguished from the Christians,
who in his time were seeking by every means possible, to
conceal the heathen origin of their religion. What Ammonius
wrote in the way of “Evangelical Canons” we can only infer,
for they have been concealed, lost or destroyed; but as they
were followed by Eusebius, and as Eusebius was most prominent
in the Council of Nice, (325 A. D.) that established the
Canonical Scriptures of to-day, we may infer that the Evangelical
Canons of Ammonius and the Canonical Christian
Scriptures are the same. Thence, it becomes of the greatest
interest to know what the “Evangelical Canons” of Ammonius
were. This we claim, the above communication from his
spirit through an uneducated medium, fully and satisfactorily
settles.
[...]
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CAIUS VALERIUS MAXIMIANUS GALERIUS.
A Roman Emperor.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 222
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“I salute you all: — However new this may be to moderns,
(I mean the demonstration of the fact of a departed spirit
manifesting itself through the physical or natural form of another)
it w as old when I lived. I fought the Persians and
fought them fearlessly, but of all the people that I ever met
whilst in the material form, there are none whom I invoke the
gods to curse more fiercely, than those things called Christians.
Why should I hate them so fiercely? You shall have my testimony.
Oh! ye gods, what a patchwork this Christianity is. It
is made up of the theories that they stole from all Pagan mythology
and Pagan precepts, and combined them to construct
that damnable refuge of theirs, to throw their sins upon an innocent
person — that is they erected a myth, and then cheated
their fellowmen with their god-man. In spirit life, where can
you find in all the spheres of all religions that existed, such a
nest of hypocrites, as the so-called Christians. It was myself
who, through my powers as a general in the Roman army,
made Diocletian issue his famous edict against the Christians.
Because, not open to controversy, like the pagan priests, they
shielded themselves behind that damnable mandate: ‘Thus
saith the Lord,’ and wanted to combine church and state. I
fought for my laurels. I gained them by overcoming the
enemies of my country, and I wanted no meddling priests
between me and legitimate power, won by my own good right
arm. The destruction of Rome was achieved through Christianity,
and I, a Roman Emperor, feel it my duty to say that
these scoundrels, the Christians, were begging favors for their
religion in every court where they could get an entrance. For
all men of intelligence knew the story of Jesus Christ was
nothing but the old story of Christos or Chrishna of India revived.
And when called upon to show what they believed
they could show nothing but the writings of Marcion and
Lucian, Romans who stole the writings of Apollonius of
Tyana. The Gospel of Marcion, in my day, was stamped with
the name of Marcion’s heirs in a direct line. For at that time,
be it known to you, when a man died and there was no name
attached to the writings he left behind him, they were designated
by h is name. In fighting a Persian general and capturing
his camp, I captured the writings of Zoroaster, and Diocletian
submitted them to a comparison with the writings of
the Christians. The Christian writings were declared to be
fraudulent, and therefore his bloody decree against them.
There is now an infusion of Spiritualized matter in the air you
breathe upon this planet that foretokens the destruction of
Christianity. I gave my name through the controlling guide
of the medium in order to utilize all the powers possible in
this control — Caius Valerius Maximianus Galerius.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 223 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to Thomas’s Dictionary of Biography for account of
Galerius.
Such is briefly the account of the man whose spirit returned
after more than fifteen centuries, to explain what has been so
carefully concealed by the Roman Catholic and Protestant
priesthoods, the true reason of Diocletian’s persecution of the
Christians through his edict of 303 A. D. In order that the
reader may understand the wonderful significance of that
communication, we refer to McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopaedia
for account of Diocletian.
The communication of the spirit of Galerius, throws a flood
of light upon the real cause of the issuing of those exterminating
edicts of Diocletian against the Christians. It seems it
was not until after the defeat of Narses, king of Persia, by
Galerius, that the edicts in question were issued. It is admitted
that Galerius was instrumental in bringing about the issuing
of them. It is admitted that Diocletian submitted some
propositions of Galerius, concerning the Christians, to a council
of military and judicial officers, and not to the pagan
priesthood as he naturally would have done had the question
been one of religion. And finally, it is admitted that the
result of the deliberations of that council, was a judgment
that the schemes of the Christian priesthood, included the
destruction of the Roman institutions, political as well as
religious.
[...]
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GEORGE DEYVERDUN.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 223
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“I address you, monsieur: — I first made the acquaintance
of one Edward Gibbon at Lusanne, and we associated in a book
which was a failure, called “Memoires de la Britagne,” and
afterwards I speak of him, in my Research into the Rise and
Progress of Christianity, and it called forth a work from
Gibbon and myself called AEneas, The Lawgiver, in the Eleusinian
Mysteries; and I was just as well convinced as a mortal,
as I have since become as a spirit, that the Eleusinian Mysteries,
helped to make up Christianity as at present set forth;
and those Eleusinian Mysteries were composed of books commemorative
of t he Grecian harvest home, and at the harvest
time they ate or drank the blood of Bacchus in the juice of the
grape in conjunction with eating the bread or body of Ceres,
the Goddess of Corn; and here you have the real foundation
of the supper of Jesus. An investigation into the ancient Greek
will satisfy any person of the truth of what I here assert. In
the mouth of this AEneas are put the words that signify; “I
am the bread and the life.” He acts as the hero in the tragedy
or affairs of life. This book is one that the Christians have
done all they could to suppress. Ques. What was the title
of the book? Ans. “AEneas: the Lawgiver of the Eleusinian
Mysteries.” Ques. Is it extant? Ans. Yes; but it is very rare.
It is one of Gibbon’s works, but difficult to find it. The clergy,
after the death of Gibbon bought up all copies but what were
in the hands of a few individuals, to prevent it from becoming
public. Christianity as I find it in spirit-life, is a combination
of Indian, Persian, Egyptian and Grecian mythologies
and all that they set forth as being accomplished by their
god-man Jesus, can be found in those ancient mythologies.
Such Messieurs, has been the result of both my mortal and
spirit investigations. I thank you, because I wish the truth to
be known. [You are a thousand times welcome. It is for us
to thank you spirits who come back here, to give this information
about things that have been so covered up or destroyed.]
It is just as necessary for us to give you the information, as it
is for you to receive it; because it is a law of recompense for
the mistakes of those who have lived before you. M. Deyverdun
is my name.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 226 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to Biographic Universelle for account of Deyverdun.
Perhaps the time has come when those “Critical Observations”
of Gibbon, will be of greater general interest than they
were when the Christian clergy bought up that work, overthrowing
Warburton’s hypothesis as to the divine authority of
Moses as a lawgiver. It may yet be our privilege to obtain that
work, and give it to the world, in a new edition, with such
notes and comments as the work undoubtedly meiits. But the
striking feature of the communication of Deyverdun is, that
our attention should be directed to this subject at this time and
in this connection.
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HEINRICH E. G. PAULUS.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 226
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“I salute you, mynheer:— Has it ever crossed your mind
that in all these communications that have been given to you
in regard to Christianity, that there is one gospel about which
very little has been said — namely, that of St. Matthew. You
have had communications in relation to the Gospels of St.
Luke or St. Lucian, of St. Mark or St. Marcion, and of St.
John or Apollonius, but you have had none about the Gospel
of St. Matthew. As a student of the so-called Scriptures,
when in earth life I was struck by the fact that I could not find
an original Gospel of St. Matthew. The other three gospels I
found accounted for in the way they have been explained to
you.
The reason of this was that the Gospel of St. Matthew
was a very different gospel from the other three, and originally
was written in the Hebraic-Samaritan tongue. It is of Phoenician
origin and embodies the Phoenician idea of a god-saviour,
and in that tongue was known by the title of Mathieuo. The
“ma” meant spirit or life as it exists in the human form; the
“thieu” is analogous to the Greek “theus;” and “o” is the
everlasting circle; and the whole word Mathieuo meant the
spirit of God working in an eternal circle. And it was so
understood in the days of Basilides the Gnostic, about 200 A.
D., whose writings were extant in the days of Faust or Faustus,
and were published by him. Indeed this was one of the
reasons why the priests incarcerated him and levied upon his
property, and sought to suppress the publication. A few copies,
however, are still extant, one of which copies came to my
notice. The whole of that work was ascribed to the action of
the Buddhist council — of Zaiska I think it was called — held
under the authority of the Hindoo ruler or king, Ardilua
Babekra, a Buddhistic priest and king. It was the digest of
the sixteen gospels of Deva Bodhisatoua, all teaching of gods
or god-men who were regarded as saviours of mankind. This
Mathieuo claimed to be the principal disciple of Deva Bodhisatoua,
or supporter of the doctrine of Christos, in connection
with one Arjoun; and that while the first was the St.
Peter, the second was the St. John of the Phoenician gospel of
Mathieuo.
This Phoenician version of the life adventures
and career of Christos was accepted as sacred, and applied in
their worship of their sun-god or god of fire, by the Phoenicians.
There is a passage that you will find in the Christian
Scriptures, of letting your seed pass through the fire to Molech.
This Phoenician St. Mathieuo account of Christos fell into the
hands of the Armenians, and became their sacred gospel as
far back as the days of Abraham, and continued so until A. D.
350, when it was adopted by the priests and rulers of Catholicism,
who in order to get the Armenians to agree with or
follow their doctrines, inserted in it the sacred scriptures, and
this is the origin of the gospel of St. Mathieuo as I read it in
the Armenian tongue. In my life I was what might be termed
a Unitarian, or one-god man, and it was the knowledge of
the facts I have stated that made me an opponent of the New
Testament. The Armenian gospel which came into my hands
I obtained from a Greek, Constantius by name. He had obtained
it at a town in Armenia near the foot of Mt. Ararat,
and he showed me that it was of Armenian origin. I tried to
get it translated, which I found most difficult, because it was
written before the time of Attila, the Hun, and was in a very
ancient text. After a great deal of trouble I found an Armenian
at the Hague, in Holland, who understood the ancient
Armenian alphabets as they had been handed down from his
ancestors, who explained their meaning to me. Faust had the
same Armenian gospel of Mathieuo translated by one Joannes,
but this Armenian copy was nearly the same as the
Gospel of St. Matthew now. But I undertook to find the
whole matter out for myself and- through the assistance of the
Armenian named, translated it into German. But it was never
published, on account of the opposition of my children. I
think the original and the translation could still be found by
applying to one of my relatives, who has them in possession
at this time. I died at Heidelberg in 1851.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 227 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopaedia of Ecclesiastical
Literature for account of Paulus.
In view of the unanimous ancient testimony that the Gospel
of Matthew was not originally written in Greek, and was
written in a Syro-Chaldaic tongue, it is marvellous that modern
Christian priests should have committed the fatal blunder of
claiming that there was also an original Greek version of that
Gospel. That the Greek version of the first Gospel should
only be a translation of a Syro-Chaldean original, is a fact that
settles the question for the other three gospels as well. Being
all of the same nature, as they appear in the Greek, they are
equally copies of translations of older originals in some other
tongue. Being in Greek, they are the work of Marcion, Lucian
and Apollonius, who were all educated Greeks, and who
doubtless used the same original or originals in giving their
respective versions* thereof. The claim that Matthew ever
wrote a Greek Gospel is preposterous, for being a Jew, as is
claimed, he could not have written in Greek, being uneducated
ever in the learned Hebrew tongue. It must not be forgotten
that it is not claimed that the original of Matthew was in the
Hebrew of the learned priesthood, but in the common tongue
of Syria, Cappadocia, Messopotamia and Palestine. It is known
that Apollonius wrote in that conglomerate or mixed Syro-
Chaldaic tongue.
[....]
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SIGEBERT HAVERCAMP.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 230
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“Good morning, sir:— Let us not darken counsel with
many words. It is this sentence that has caused the present
chaos of beliefs. All truth is simple, and possesses the beauty
of symmetry, whilst lying words need good memories to substantiate
them. No man that ever lived, or perhaps who will
live after me, devoted more of his time to the close analysis of
the Greek and Latin classics than myself. But after all the
study of the manners and customs of the East, I find that there
is nothing in Christianity but what existed before that word
was even introduced; and my authorities can be found in any
library without proceeding to the trouble of looking for more
proof upon the real identity of such a mad creation of mortal
man* as Jesus Christ. I knew it when here. I was false to my
trust. Why? On one hand stood honor and preferment; on
the other hand stood disgrace and despair. The further I went
into the investigation of the claims of Christianity, the more I
became convinced that it was a damnable imposition. First
from the writings, as translated, of a follower of Apollonius of
Tyana, called Damis, and which was extended at the Court of
Tiberius Csesar, and was there written by one who has no historical
name, called Allosius. This man had it direct from
Damis himself; and this was in the possession of the Societe
Biographique, and it was submitted to me at Leyden by the
French Embassador. I examined it and returned it to them
marked in German with this sentence that “No stronger proof
could be had that Jesus Christ was Apollonius of Tyana, and
also St. Paul and St. John, than is set forth in this manuscript,”
and I never saw it afterwards nor any one else; but it was
submitted to me simply because I was the only one at that
time, that held the key to the writings there expressed or set
forth. [Was that writing the manuscript of Apollonius?] It
was the writing of his disciple Damis.
Now, I have no doubt
but that this manuscript exists, for I think that the one that
was entrusted with it was of such an ambitious character that
he held it and left it to his heirs. [Do you remember who that
was?] I do not know whether you will find his name extant
or not, but he was known as Pierre Durand, he kept it to extort
money from the Christians or Catholic clergy. [What position
did he hold at that time?] At that time he was Secretary in
the diplomatic corps; and he was a messenger. He was a good
scholar himself, and understood the points that I had made
there, and it was necessary to buy his silence. All those annotations
of mine upon the characters in the Hebrew Bible, (the
Old Testament) were munificently paid for by parties interested
in the propagation of Christianity. That is they bought me,
to make them clear as possible, in order that they might be a
standing reference to future generations. All these notes and
comments have been a burden on my shoulders as a spirit;
and I wish to add that I have something further to say, but I
cannot get the proof, and I want to furnish you with the absolute
proof. On some future occasion I think I can give you
direct information that will tend to make all priests, both
Catholic and Protestant think, to use an old-fashioned term,
that “A hornet’s nest has broken loose.” But you see, in the
first place, I have to feel my ground through this medium.
That is, to be able to force my ideas in such a clear and lucid
manner, that they can never be disputed hereafter. This is
only an experiment for me, for what I shall do hereafter at a
fitting opportunity. You may sign me Sigebert Havercamp,
Professor of Rhetoric in Ley den University. Died in 1742.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 231 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to Biographie Generale, for account of Havercamp. [...]
[Pg 231]
But the
great disclosure made by this spirit, is the fact that as late as
the eighteenth century, a translation (we presume in Latin,) of
the writings of Damis, the beloved disciple of Apollonius of
Tyana, made by one Allosius, at the Court of Tiberius Csesar,
was still in existence. The spirit tells us that Allosius, the
translator, had the original manuscript directly from the hands
of Damis himself. This translated work, it seems came into
the Societe Biographique, of France, and was submitted to
Havercamp for examination, as the person best calculated to
determine its character and value. The spirit tells us that after
examining it, he returned it to the French embassy with this
sentence written upon it: “No stronger proof could be had
that Jesus Christ was Apollonius of Tyana, and also St. Paul
and St. John, than is set forth in this manuscript.”
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CHARLES DE BROSSES.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 232
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Good day sir:— I was the first president of the parliament
of Burgundy, about from 1760 to 1770; but it is not of
that I wish to speak. It is in relation to my literary labors,
rather, that I would speak. I wrote a work called The Worship
of the Fetich Gods the principal object of which was to
show the belief of the African tribes in spirits. Instead of individualizing them, they generalized them, such as the spirits
of the air, of fire, of water, of lightning, storms, earthquakes,
etc., all of which they believe are evil spirits trying to ruin
them through their destructive agencies; the power of which
they so well knew. But it is not of this book particularly that
I desire especially to hold forth at this time. No man, excepting
myself, ever undertook to collect the writings of Sallust.
I collected almost seven hundred detached fragments written
by him, and tried to put them in place, in order to supply the
missing parts. In pursuing this work and examining the history
of his times, the first thing that struck my attention was the
manifest sameness of all religions. That is,
I discovered that
Christianity was a mixture of the preceding religions, and that
it ushered into the world nothing that was new, or nothing
but what pagan martyrs had died scores of times for maintaining,
before there was ever a Christian martyr. And a most
singular feature of those writings was the simple changes that
had been made in names. First there was a Brahm, then the
Judean Abraham, then the Egyptian Ibraham; all of these
seemed to be the hero of the same tale. Then, in referring to
the writings of the prehistoric Sanchoniathon, I found that
this same Brahm flourished as a god among the Phoenicians.
Then we find, with a little alteration of idiom, the Grecian
Bacchus, who was undoubtedly the same. And the striking
analogy to the same original, of several other deities, can be
traced by any patient student. If he proceeds further, those
writings of Sallust will show him that the Christian religion
was first put into its present shape by the librarian of Ptolemy
Philadelphus; I fail to recall his name.
[The spirit cloubtless
referred to Demetrius of Phalerus, the learned friend and
librarian of the two first Ptolemies, who died after 283 B. C]
And that work was utilized by Apollonius of Tyana first, and
Ammonius Saccas afterward. Ptolemy Philadelphus being a
great scholar for his time, offered rich rewards for all kinds of
manuscripts, or papyrus rolls; and learned men from all
nations, impelled by their desire for the reward, came to Alexandria;
and these, comparing their various religious books,
found that but one religion ran through them all; a leading
point of similarity being some doctrine regarding a trinity.
This struck Ptolemy as strange, and he inscribed over the
doorway of a temple this sentence: “Experience is the god of
all morality.” If he had used the word guide instead of god,
it would have been better still. But I never finished my work
on Sallust, on account of disease; and after my death, in 1777,
the Catholics were very careful to appropriate all my writings;
and to keep them from the public, resorted to the mean subterfuge
of pretending that they were destroyed in the French
Revolution. Charles de Brosses.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 233 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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In the Biographic Universelle will be found the only account
we can find of historical facts bearing upon this communication,
there being no English reference to Charles de Brosses
which contains any of the particulars referred to in the spirit’s
statement. But one reasonable conclusion can be reached;
and that is, that the spirit of Charles de Brosses, and no other
spirit intelligence influenced that communication. In relation
to the spirit’s statement as to the nature of his treatise on
fetich worship, how fully it is borne out by the historical
account of it. The reader may see the nature of his researches
and their extent, and can form some judgment of his qualification
to know whereof he speaks as a spirit.
The fact that the
writings of Sallust were so mutilated and scattered, shows that
those who were engaged in that vandalism had some special
reason for that destruction. The wonder is, that the destruction
had not been total instead of so partial and general. [...]
It will be seen, therefore, that if that history, by Sallust, in
five books, contained the record of facts, made before the
alleged birth of Jesus Christ, that showed that the religion now
taught in his name was substantially compiled and arranged
nearly three hundred years before that time; that its destruction
as a history was a necessity to the Christian clergy who
were teaching the Christian religion as original and new, as
well as divine.
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CHRISTIAN THOMASIUS.
Jurist and Pietistic Philosopher.— Lecturer at
Liepsic and Halle.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 235
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Good day, mynheer:— I have had my name announced, in
order to save time, which is precious to us spirits while controlling.
We want to say all that we possibly can, bearing upon
the subject we intend to communicate about, without exhausting
our forces in giving names. After a thorough study of the
Latin and Greek classics, I determined that the German people
should have the benefit of reading these in their own language,
and I was the first that really brought this about. But I was
struck with a copy of Luther’s revision, or a copy from the
Latin which I read. Now, Martin Luther was a great priest
and philosopher and none knew better than he, in spite of his
exhortations to the contrary, that Jesus Christ was a myth, and
that Apollonius of Tyana, was the saviour of the Christian New
Testament; but as the century was dark in which he lived, he
shaped a reform as best he could, under the circumstances. For
if he had acknowledged the truth, he would have been instantly
sacrificed to popular fanaticism; and at his death, he
left papers certifying to what he really did know, in regard to
the Christian Scriptures; and it was these papers that made
the various schisms after his death. But from the days of
Eusebius this Christian myth Jesus had such a hold upon the
popular mind that it was impossible, for fear of death, to offer
any fact in relation to that myth; or in rebuttal of the life,
adventures, and character of Jesus. These reformers, seeing
very little difference between Apollonius of Tyana and Jesus
the myth, said it made no difference whether the myth was
accepted or the other — it would all be rectified in the future
spirit life; and this has been a fatal mistake for centuries, and
one which will require all the gigantic efforts of materialists
of the present day to free themselves from, because they have
been cheated, defrauded and deluded by those who ought to
have been the true friends of mankind — namely the priests.
But I, in my day, could not state to those who came under my
instruction, what I really knew in regard to the astrological
formation of all religions; and therefore spoke, at several times,
with the hope that it would be understood in an allegorical
sense; but there were few who had the patience to follow out
what I suggested to them. As a spirit, I would say, that the
German materialistic orders of to-day, would never have met
with the progress they have, if Jesus of Nazareth, the myth,
had been set before the people in the real life and adventures
of Apollonius of Tyana. They would then have had a substantial
historical basis to point to, whilst to-day, they, (the Christians)
have none; and therefore they throw themselves open to
the opposition of materialists and the destruction of true Spiritualism.
This much for myself, with the hope that it will
do good.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 236 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to the Biographie Generale for account of Thomasius.
[...]
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SATURNINUS.
The Essenian Philosopher.— The Pupil of Ignatius
of Antioch.— The Master of Basilides, the Founder of Gnosticism.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 237
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“Peace and happiness be with you all. I lived and taught
at Antioch from about A. D. 50 to A. D. 125.
I am set down by moderns as a Gnostic; and this mistake has been made purposely, in order to hide and destroy my real teachings. In
reality I was an Essene, indoctrinated and taught by Ignatius
of Antioch. At the time I lived and taught, the Essenes were
the Christians, and the only Christians that existed at Antioch.
I met and conversed and exchanged philosophies with Apollonius
of Tyana and Damis his disciple. We were Communists,
and all that you find set down as the teachings of Jesus of
Nazareth were taught by me. They were obtained from
Apollonius, who gave them to me in exchange for what I
knew of the Gymnosophists, about A. D. 65. It was the revised
statutes or mixture of Brahmism and Buddhism, as established
at the great council of Asoka in India (the Brahmanistic and
Buddhistic council of Nice); and it took place before my time
about two hundred and fifty years. All of my writings were
not original, but simply a review of the doctrines of my friend,
in spirit, Stilpo, and of, what might be termed, Platonism
mixed with Brahmism and Buddhism, which were in reality
the foundations of Gnosticism; and the man who built up
Gnosticism the year after my death, in A. D. 125 or 126, was
Basilides the Egyptian. He was of my school, and he fell heir
to all my writings; and he completed or laid the foundation of
Gnosticism out of these writings. But Gnosticism was unknown
to me. I was an Essene, and once upon a time I visited Gallata
and also Corinth; and at both places I found Apollonius teaching
under the name of Paulus or Paul. [Do you mean that he
was there teaching at the time you were there teaching?] I
did not teach, myself, but I merely went there on a visit.
Apollonius was teaching there then, and always accompanied
his discourses with spiritual phenomena that you often see
amongst your modern mediums, such as magnetizing a handkerchief
for the cure of the sick; and curing cases of paralysis
by laying on of the hands; and at the time when he was in
what they called the glorified state, forms used to appear like
misty faces looking over his shoulders at the audience, similar
to what the spirits are now trying to perform under the name
of etherialization.
This Apollonius was met at the Temple of
Diana in Ephesus by the priests of that temple, who asked him
to hold forth there, and he did so; and he taught there with
such power that the priests grew angry for fear of losing their
power, and he had to quit Ephesus in the night-time for fear
of being murdered, or losing his life in some way. Becoming
dissatisfied with the slow progress of my teachings, and all
Syria being in an uproar over the approaching War of the Jews,
and many of my people being Jews, some of them left my
society. Some returned to it honored. I found through them
that the Jewish Rabbi Gamaliel had introduced the philosophies,
both of myself and of Apollonius at Jerusalem; and that
he had attributed them to the Jewish prophet Haggai, and he
called it by a name similar to his, Hagiographa, which meant
the sayings and doings of this Jewish prophet; as if he had
said, that they were given through him as a medium by the
spirit of Apollonius. He did this in order to give the credit of
this philosophy to the Jews;
but the real truth in relation to
all these writings, and all the story of Jesus of Nazareth, as
now handed down to moderns, is the mixed systems of the
Brahmanic, the Buddhistic, the Jewish, the Essenian, and the
Gnostic teachings.
And these various systems all taught that
every four hundred years a philosopher arises who combines the
highest agglomeration of intelligence of his day and generation
— that is, his brain becomes more susceptible to spiritual things,
and therefore he becomes a keener analyzer of them. [Then
Buddha following Hermes, Zoroaster following Buddha, Plato
following Zoroaster, and Apollonius following Plato, were such
instances as you refer to, which were recognized as starting
new eras of religious thought and speculation?] Certainly, that
is putting it plainer than I could do; and it is strange to say,
that of all the people living at that time, and down to the time
of Eusebius and the final overthrow of these ancient religions
by Christianity, that all the most valuable manuscripts bearing
upon the ancient gods, heroes and philosophers, have to be
looked for amongst those of the Greek Church and not the
Roman. That is, that in Armenia and Russia you will be more
likely to find the remains of those manuscripts than you will
among the Catholics. The Catholics have a few, but very few
of them. Pope after Pope destroyed them in their religious
fanaticism; and what the Catholics do hold of them, are held
by obscure individuals, and are very hard to find. I left a
document translated from the Syriac-Cappadocian tongue that
I translated verbally as it was given to me by Apoilonius, at
the time of my meeting with him at Antioch. [Translated into
what language?] A mixture of Hebrew and Armenian was
the language used at Antioch in those days.
[You say you
translated it from the Syriac-Cappadocian language?] I took
it down as it fell from his lips, in that tongue. He, Apollonius,
through his superior spiritual insight, held direct communication
in my presence with the spirit of Gautama Buddha. [Do
1 understand you rightly? You were present when Apollonius
was controlled by the spirit of Gautama Buddha?] Yes. [Please
state what the nature of the communication was?] This
Gautama went on to say, through his instrument, that all that
he received was given through the spirit or the overshadowing
of the spirit of Krishna; that this Krishna said he received it
from Zoroaster the elder; and Zoroaster the elder said that he
received his notions of Ormuzd, the light, and Ahriman, the
devil or evil, from a spirit who had lived, and was a king in
Messopotamia, two thousand years before his time, but that all
their followers had corrupted their sayings, and claimed that
they received them from God himself. And, so there was a
connection in the control of this Gautama Buddha with ancient
spirits occupying 16,500 years. [Running back through all that
period?] Yes. [Buddha said this?] Yes. Through Apollonius;
and these systems or spirit teachings were all cases of
originating religions in isolated civilizations — that is at the time
of their being taught, they had reached their height of grandeur,
and then came on their decay, and their writings were
stolen by barbarians. And thus the one history of affairs run
through all the ancient nations. And now I must bear witness
to the principal point of my coming here. I knew of no Jesus
who lived at that time and was killed, with the exception of
one who was run through with Roman javelins for being a
bandit: and I am certain that he knew nothing of philosophy.
There were other men named Jesus, but they were not killed.
[You lived during the time when it was said Jesus of Nazareth
taught, which was about from 32 A. D. to 36 or 37?] I lived
shortly after that. I commenced teaching at the age of twentyone.
I lived until A. D. 125. I met but once only, and that
was at Alexandria, the great Jewish historian Josephus. He
mentioned to me in the course of our conversation, which was
altogether about spiritual things, he having been initiated with
the Essenes, nothing about Jesus of Nazareth. He said he had
learned that Gamaliel had appropriated my philosophy and
teachings, but that he was too proud a Jew to attribute them to
a philosopher then living, and so he plagiarized my philosophy
in the name of Haggai. He said he did not think that it was
doing me justice. I said I cared little how the truth survived,
so it only did survive the then turbulent times. The apostles
of this Jesus I never met. If they had existed at all, I certainly
should have met them. But this Damis, the disciple of Apollonius,
had seventy fellow disciples then scattered through
Greece, Syria, Armenia and the Roman provinces, teaching
the life, sayings and doings of Gautama Buddha, as explained
by Apollonius of Tyana;
and the analogy between the teachings
of Jesus and Buddha can be found to be very plain by
reading even the modern Buddhist book called the “Path of
Virtue,” but which has been so tampered with by Christians,
that they have destroyed a great deal of its real purport, as it
comes to you to-day. But if you were in India, and would
obtain from a Buddhist, the real “Path of Virtue,” and have it
translated by men who are not afraid to translate it, you would
find that the morality of Jesus is the morality of Buddha. And
I have one word more to say. It is a reflection upon a man
now living, in whom the greatest trust is placed as to what he
says; and whose translations you can challenge with perfect
impunity, and that man is Max Muller. He is too much identified
with the Christianity of to-day, to give the ancient
religions a fair chance of being understood. Yours for the
truth, Saturninus. [Let me say to you, before you leave, that
by that communication, you have placed this world under an
obligation greater than any returning spirit ever placed it
under, in the past.] I hope you will- succeed in ridding the
world of my earthly teachings, and the erroneous teachings of
others. Still out of the rough conditions of the present, will
come the smooth conditions of the future.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 240 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to the Biographie Universelle, also to McClintock and
Strong’s Ecclesiastical Cyclopaedia for account of Saturninus.
[...]
[Pg 241] For want of time and space, we cannot dwell upon what the spirit
of Saturninus says about the Christian destruction, mutilation
and concealment of ancient manuscripts bearing upon all these
important points. Nor is it necessary we should; for every
one who has sought for the truth as it was in ancient times,
must have been made painfully aware of that Christian vandalism.
We must hasten on. But how can we over-estimate
the value of the spirit’s statement, when he says: “I left a
document translated from the Syriac-Cappadocian tongue, that
I translated verbally as it was given me by Apollonius, at the
time of my meeting with him at Antioch.” What would not
that translation of the writings of Apollonius be worth to the
cause of truth, could it be had to-day? To have the assurance
of the spirit that it once existed and has been destroyed or
concealed, is enough to show that it was too important to the
perpetuation of falsehood to be allowed to be preserved.
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ROBERT BELLARMINE.
Roman Catholic Cardinal Archbishop.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 242
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“My salutation to you, my friend, to-night shall be: Death
is the great avenue to truth. During my mortal life no one did
more to maintain the power of the popes in temporal affairs
than myself; and I was a most ardent Catholic. [...]
I intended,
when I came here, simply to say, that through reading a Latin
work, written by a monk, (who will speak here, if he has a
chance), I knew that Christianity, in the first, second and third
centuries, rested solely upon the doctrines of Apollonius of
Tyana and Basilides the Gnostic, intermingled with Platonism.
But, as well might the solid rock, standing upon the shore of
the ocean, attempt to keep the mighty waves from beating
against its breast, as for a mortal to have attempted to tell the
truth about Christianity in the sixteenth century. This I say
here to-night, and I say it under compulsion. [Here the spirit
made the medium rise from his chair and in seeming agony of
conscious wrong-doing asked.] Under the compulsion of whom?
Under that of no single spirit, but by the disappointed hopes
of millions, who believed and trusted in Christianity. It is by
them I am compelled to come here to-night.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 243 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopaedia for account of
Bellarmine.
It was the spirit of this learned and influential Roman Catholic
Jesuit priest, both bishop and cardinal, that returns and
testifies that he, as recently as the latter part of the sixteenth
and beginning of the seventeenth centuries, knew that Christianity
in the first, second, and third centuries, consisted of the
doctrines of Apollonius of Tyana, the doctrines of Basilides the
Gnostic, and the doctrines of Plato; but that he did not dare,
cardinal as he was, to make known what he knew about those
matters, when in the mortal form. The Latin work to which
he referred was a work written by a monk, John of Damascus,
or John Damascenus, as he was called. In relation to the
spirit’s defence of the papal rights against the encroachments
of the temporal power, we cite Chambers’s Encyclopaedia:
“In his work, ‘De Potestate Pontificis in Temporalibus,’ (On
the Pope’s Power in Secular Matters), he introduced the doctrine
that the pope must be held as supreme over all kings. On
this account the book was held as treasonable in Paris, Venice
and Mentz.”
It is to this condemnation of his teachings that he refers,
when he speaks of having become, as it were, an exile. It
would seem that the main purpose of the coming of this spirit
was to prepare the way for the coerced communication of Pope
Hormisdas, who will follow. Surely the battle for truth has
been won, when such learned spirits as Robert Bellarmine are
compelled to return, to thus bear testimony for truth, and
against error.
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HORMISDAS.
A Roman Catholic Pontiff.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 244
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“I knew that Eusebius was a forger upon the writings of Apollonius of Tyana. I know that Eusebius was a scoundrel. I know I was a scoundrel
myself. Oh, spirit psychology! how great is thy power! I was
one who helped to destroy Marcion’s Epistles, known in my
day as the Pauline Epistles, which were nothing more than
copies of the writings of Apollonius of Tyana, under that
name. They were entitled, to the Galatians, Thessalonians,
Corinthians and also Revelations. The Epistle to the Romans
was considered spurious by me. In my day Jesus Christ was
worshipped in the form of a Lamb; and shortly after my time
this symbol was altered by Constantius Pogonatus to the Cross,
to conceal his astro-theological origin.
Romanism is Paganism
changed into Christianity. I knew this, and I helped to destroy
many copies of the writings of Apollonius, and of his disciple
Damis, and also of the writings of Basilides the Gnostic.
And I destroyed them for the worst of all reasons, namely, to
secure power! I have told all I know. [Here the spirit made
a great effort to break from the control, but he was forced to
proceed.] I knew at Rome, in my day, one Quintus Curtius,
whose ancestors had known and conversed with Apollonius of
Tyana when the latter was living, and therefore had positive
evidence that Apollonius not only lived, but that he wrote the
Christian Gospels; just as you have positive evidence that your
George Washington lived. [...]
“I came cursing you, and
cursing truth. I leave, blessing you for your patience and fraternal
assurances.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 245 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to Biographie Universelle for account of Hormisdas.
The spirit of this ambitious and politic pope was most reluctantly
forced by the psychological power of liberal and
advanced spirits, to come back and testify to his mortal knowledge
of the spuriousness of the Christian Scriptures; and his
obstinate reluctance, after 1300 years in spirit-life, to confess
that fact. So completely had his love of power possessed him,
that notwithstanding that long probation in spirit-life he was
as ready to conceal his soul-corroding secret, as when in mortal
form he wielded the power of the Church of Rome. The spirit
speaks wisely when he says, the division of the Christian
Churches of the East and West, after he had united them,
had hastened the downfall of the Catholic power in spiritlife
; and reduced it to such a state of abject helplessness, that
the spirit of one of its proudest and shrewdest pontiffs was
brought a helpless captive to the confessional, there reluctantly
to be forced to confess his ecclesiastical offences. Had the
union of the Greek and Roman Churches been preserved,
there is no knowing how long the advent of Modern Spiritualism
would have been delayed, and the reign of Christian
superstition and bigotry have been maintained.
Hormisdas tells us that he knew Eusebius was a forger and a
scoundrel, and admits that he himself was as dishonest as was
Eusebius. He states the fact that the Epistles of Marcion were
in existence when he lived A. D. 525, and that he knew them
to be copies of the writings of Apollonius of Tyana, Basilides
and Plato, and that he helped to destroy those writings. He
tells us that Jesus Christ was worshipped in his day, as a
Lamb, and to conceal the astro-theological significance of that
Zodiacal symbol, the crucifix, or crucified man was submitted
in the reign of Constantius Pogonatus — all of which is certainly,
historically true.
No crucified man was thought of by Christian
priests and prelates until the latter part of the seventh
century, when the Sixth Council of Constantinople substituted
the crucified or crossified equinoctial Lamb, by a crucified
man to symbolize the Christian worship. This substitution took
place A. D. 680, fifty-seven years after the death of Pope
Another undoubtedly true confession of Hormisdas is, that
he helped to destroy many copies of the writings of Apollonius,
of Damis the disciple of Apollonius, and of Basilides the
great Alexandrian Gnostic. It therefore seems highly probable
that as late as A. D. 525, there were still many copies of the
writings of those true and real Fathers of Christianity; those
pagans, as the Christian Clergy of later times have been
pleased to call them.
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APPIAN.
A Roman Historian.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 246
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“To search for the truth persistently will always, in the end,
bring success. That will be the prologue to my communication
here to-day. In my mortal life I acted as a collector and
manager of internal revenues, under Trajan Hadrian and Antoninus
Pius, at Alexandria. During that time I conversed with
all classes of people from all the Roman provinces and all the
countries that the Romans had conquered and held;
and I found that the religion that was the most in antagonism with
the religion of the Roman priesthood, went under the name of
Essenianism. This religion was formulated by Ignatius of
Antioch, Apollonius of Tyana and Basilides, the Alexandrian
Gnostic. This religion interfered only with the interests of the
priests. As far as the emperors, Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus
Pius were concerned, they cared little or nothing for either
religion. They leaned toward the philosophy of Plato. In
fact they were followers of Platonism, and cared very little for
the priests who adhered to the pagan gods, Jupiter, Mars, etc.
But in my time I never heard the name Christian mentioned.
It is true there were followers of the Hindoo Christos at Alexandria
at t hat time. [Why was the Hindoo god called Christos
and not Krishna?] The religion I mention was a mingling of
the doctrines of the Hindoo Gymnosophists, with the teachings
and doctrines of one Apollonius (not Apollonius of Tyana).
He was of Alexandria and the Greek modification of the name
Krishna, made it Christos. During my life I wrote twentyfour
books upon Roman history, about half of which are now
extant, covering the time from the earliest history of Rome to
the days of Augustus; and I added thereto by way of suffixes
the annals of events in each country, from Augustus to the
close of Antoninus Pius’s reign. And because these latter
writings embraced the time during which it is claimed Jesus
Christ lived, and the Christian church was founded, and
because I found no occasion whatever to make mention of
either of them, these writings were destroyed by Christians in
the days of Constantine the Great. All those destroyed writings
can again be produced, provided I can find a medium whose
hand I can control to write. Through such a medium I could
reproduce these writings, and I intend to do it. I am seeking
for such an opportunity. I also want to say, that in those
days there were many persecutions of the followers of different
sects and isms, and those who suffered the most were the
Essenes. They had brought the modified doctrines of the
Hindoo Gymnosophists to Alexandria and Rome, and they
were persecuted for the reason that their teachings disturbed
the even tenor of the pagan priesthood by their conversions.
When they abstained from the propagation of their doctrines
they were not persecuted under the reigns of the three emperors
under whom I officiated. I met with a man whose name
I cannot now recall, who wrote a biography of Apollonius of
Tyana, but who was not Damis his disciple; he showed me
some of his manuscript, and we conversed upon this subject.
[The spirit most probably referred to Moeragenes who wrote a
Biography of Apollonius.] He said, at that time, that at
Rome he would show me that what he said was the truth; and
this he did through a Dacian slave, who became controlled in
my presence, when I saw this Apollonius of Tyana, and conversed
with him as a spirit. I never disputed any of these
things, but I was more of a stoic philosopher, than anything
else. [How late did you live on the earth?] I lived until about
161 A. D., and during my life managed the affairs mentioned
for the three emperors I have spoken of. There were four sects
of the Essenians. One of them sprung from Ignatius of Antioch,
who at times called themselves Ignatians. These differed
from the other sect chiefly in relation to the communistic
life, where all things were possessed in common; but Apollonius
was the man who created the greatest ferment in matters
of religion in those days. [You have mentioned four sects of
the Essenians. Who were the others?] They were the Jewish
Essenes and the Gymnosophists proper, who became the Gnostics
of later times. It is hard to express all you have to say in
so short a time. Essenianism took the shape of Gnosticism
about A. D. 200, forty years after my time, and was fully established
byA mmonius Saccas. He was the real father of what
you now call Christianity — that is, he placed it in the shape,
or very nearly so, that it now occupies. I might finish this
communication by saying that these books of mine — I mean
my historical books — were written without any prejudice in
regard to any religion then existing. I simply noted down
impartially such events as were authentically attested, or observed
by me; and for that reason what I wrote has not been
allowed to come down to you, and to bring to you the real light
and truth in regard to Christianity. I thank you for this hearing.
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 248 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography
for account of Appian. [...]
[Pg 248]
Now, it is certain that Essenianism was the Greco-Syrian
outgrowth of the Gymnosophism of India; it is certain that
it was modified by Ignatius of Antioch, Apollonius of Tyana,
Saturninus and Basilides, until it took the form of Gnosticism
at Alexandria; it is certain that Gnosticism was modified by
Potamon, Ammonius the Peripatetic, and Ammonius Saccas,
until it became merged in the purely spiritual teachings of
Neo-Platonism; and as such, for more than three centuries,
it is certain that it maintained a desperate struggle through
Plotlnus, Porphyry and their disciples, against the mercenary
and selfish materialistic Christians, so-called. The latter, by
the help of one of the most cruel and criminal rulers that ever
wielded the Roman sceptre, Constantine, at last gained the
ascendency, and the spiritual religion of the Neo-Platonists,
was swallowed up by the Christian anaconda, which from, that
time, jpretended to be identical with its swallowed victim.
Such was the inception of that mighty ecclesiastical reptile,
the Christian Church, that has so long and cruelly coiled
around the suffering souls and bodies of earth’s children,
through so many generations.
[....]
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JOHN FIDENZA.
Saint Bonaventura.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 250
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“I GREET YOU ALL:— No Franciscan monk in the 13th century
was more anxious than myself, to arrive at truth, but
truth in some ages and some generations is a most dangerous
thing to handle; and, therefore, I was authorized by certain
ecclesiastical powers, at that time, to search into the contents of
ancient manuscripts.
The first manuscript that I examined,
went to prove that Jesus was simply a character based upon
the then Paganistic and Gnostic ideas, each struggling for
ascendency, and each trying to show something original, that the
others had not. [What was that manuscript?] It went on to
state that, “I, Apollonius, Paulus, Paul, being in rapport with
higher powers, (that is they controlling me) wish to state to the
church at Thessalonica, to the Church at Rome, (or to the
churches of other cities of the Roman Empire) that I demand
of you to believe in Christos; and fulfil his commands in the
name of God, Amen.” That was the way those manuscripts
commenced. [Was that merely the beginning of the Epistle
to the Thessalonians?] It was not only the beginning of that
Epistle, but of that of the Epistles to all the other churches.
Certain persons such as Marcion and Lucian, obtaining possession
of these Epistles, turned them in another channel. The
favorite of Hadrian, who has communicated with you before,
was the original of all the pictures of Jesus Christ in my day;
that was so in the 13th century. And I, discovering all these
things, and knowing (to use the language of my time,) that “a
silent tongue insured a sound throat,” had nothing to say in
regard to these facts. At that time I accepted what was the
general belief, and interpreted it in that way. [In what language
were the manuscripts that were put in your hands?]
They were in four different tongues. The doctrines of Apollonius,
proper, were in the Syro-Cappadocian or Armenian
tongue — that is they continued longer in the Armenian shape,
and they are now in that shape for modern scholars to interpret.
One of the principal depositories of those writings is to be found
to the right of the entrance door of the Maronite Convent on
Mount Lebanon, in Syria, and in front of the 6th apartment,
and four feet from the bottom of the left of the niche in the
shape of the cross. Those Maronite priests, will never allow
those manuscripts to become known, unless they are compelled
to. I was known in my mortal life as John Fidenza, a Franciscan
monk. I was also called John Bonaventura. In leaving
I would make the sign of the circle over your head instead of
the cross. The circle divided from top to bottom and from side
to side, constitutes the cross, the true meaning of the cross.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 251 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to the Biographie Universelle; also the Nouvelle Biographie
Generale.
In these biographical references are found ample matter to
show who St. Bonaventura was, and what was the nature of
his literary labors. It must be manifest to those who attentively
read those biographical references to him, that this learned
Catholic prelate had a very clear understanding of the Oriental
origin of the writings known as the New Testament, and the
mystical and allegorical, if not the mythological and astrotheological
nature of the Holy Scriptures, as they were called.
If the communication which purports to come from the spirit
of this sainted Christian is authentic, and the statements it
contains are true, then it is certain that Apollonius of Tyana,
the pagan philosopher, was the Saint Paul of the Christian
Scriptures, and the religion he taught was that of the Hindoo
Krishna, by the Armenians, Cappadocians and Syrians called
Christos. That St. Bonaventura had such writings placed in
his hands for examination, is certainly not in the least improbable,
for it is a well known fact, that many ancient works
remained extant down to the time when the discovery of the
art of printing threatened to disclose to mankind, the truth as
to the pagan origin and nature of the Christian religion. From
that time both Catholic and Protestant priests, exerted themselves
to destroy or conceal everything that would betray the
secret on which their hold on power over the human mind
depended. From the writings of Bonaventura, it is evident he
understood the true nature of the Christian religion, and it is
admitted that he sought to ameliorate the intellectual and
moral condition of the people of his time, a most unusual phase
of priestly desire. View the matter as we may, and the authenticity
and truthfulness of the communication becomes
more and more plain. It is hardly possible to overestimate its
significance.
[....]
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ANNIUS OF VITERBO.
A Learned Dominican Friar.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 252
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“I know not whether to salute you in a dozen different
tongues or not. But to use a blending of Italian and English:
Bellissimo the Truth! the beautiful Truth. I was known in a
priestly way as Annius of Viterbo, a Dominican Friar, in the
latter part of A. D. 1400 or the beginning of 1500; and by vote
was selected to an office which I fulfilled honestly and conscientiously,
and which proved my death warrant.
All the manuscripts contained in the Colbertine Library were submitted
to me, to see what I could obtain from them for the support of
the Catholic religion. Although my history is not given as
fully as I shall now explain it. I come to do good in accordance
with spirit directions and with what it is my desire to
fulfil. But enough will be found to substantiate what I say to
you to-day. What were those manuscripts in the Colbertine
Library that were submitted to me for translation? is the question;
and it shall be answered by me as a spirit, definitely, as
I hope for future happiness. They were the remains of the
Alexandrian Library, as first appropriated by Constantine the
Great, and afterward in the sixth century, or somewhere after
that time, by Caliph Omar. Those manuscripts were all
founded on the doctrines of another spirit, who, however much
he may be disputed in the annals of history, or however much
he may be looked upon as a myth, laid the foundation of the
great facts which I shall state here to day. He lived before Mizraim,
and he started out with this pungent assertion; that no
life can exist without heat. Heat is the governing principle
of existence, and it comes from that glorious light — the sun,
that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. And again
these manuscripts say: “As I find a decline of virtue in this
world, I shall raise up an individual to reinstate it. [What was
the name of that ancient writer?] As set down by Zoroaster it
was Sunni or Ormuzd. But Sunni was the god of at least three
dynasties before the time of the elder Zoroaster, of whom I am
now speaking; and the spirit who will follow me to-day,
Mizraim, who is set down in history as the founder of the
Egyptian government, will tell how false it is. It is necessary
that our communications shall interlock, in order to be understood.
After a careful analysis of all these gods, and godsystems,
I found that the principal point upon which they all
centered was about 280 B. C. at the council Asoka in India — a
Buddhistic council; and that out of the proceedings of that
council, Ptolemy Philadelphus, some thirty-three years later
than that council, had them translated by his distinguished
librarian, Demetrius of Phalerus, who was the real collector of
the Alexandrian Library; and that at the court of an Indo-
Assyrian king, [Phraotes no doubt.]
Apollonius of Tyana,
blended the full and clear doctrines of the Brahmans and
Buddhists with the books of the Platonic doctrines, both of the
East and the West; and in this combination of doctrines, he
taught an ideal character, almost similar to that of the modern
description of the Jesus of Nazareth. His (Apollonius’s) teachings,
however, were a combination of the systems of all religions
known to him, from the days of Mizraim, down to the
time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, when it first took shape. Plato
received the impressions, and taught those doctrines through
his mediumship. [Was Mizraim his spirit control?] I will
explain it.
You must know, that there are thousands of millions
of spirits on the other side who had been taught the
doctrines of Brahma and Buddha, and who existed in the
past. These spirits in mass overshadowed Plato, and produced
in Greece a kind of reform on the Indian philosophies. Now
all these things that I here mention I published in seventeen
books of antiquities; and the consequence was, I was poisoned
by Caesar Borgia for doing so. He destroyed my life and confiscated
my works because I proved too much for the place in
which I was situated. I first took an oath that I would fulfil
all the requirements asked of me, and as I was considered one
of the best linguists of my time, I performed the work faithfully.
The result was that my life paid the forfeit. [Now let
me understand clearly, for it is very important I should do so.
You say the manuscripts of which you speak are in the Colbertine
Library, and that they demonstrate and prove the facts
to which you have referred?] Yes. [What language were
they written in?] At the time I translated them they were in
the Egyptian, Syrian, Samaritan, and other ancient tongues;
and there were some also in the Armenian and Cappadocian
languages, copies of the older original writings of Mizraim.
That is they purported to be so, how truly I do not know, but
they were dated in the first Egyptian dynasty. These Egyptian
manuscripts I translated by the aid of the key that I saw at
the entrance of the ancient temple of Apollo at Rome. That
inscription key was covered at one time with a thin coating of
plaster, but had become bare in my time. The signs there
given as relating to Osiris and Isis of the Egyptians, I found
used in those manuscripts. And it looked as if the Egyptians
had really built that temple for the Romans, instead of the
Romans building it for themselves. I died through violence
in the way I have stated in 1502 A. D.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 254 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to the Nouvelle Biographie Generale, and for works of
Annius of Viterbo to the Biographie Universelle.
We have given these references to Annius and his works, so
that the reader may judge for himself the inconceivable importance
of s pirit return, in establishing the truth in relation
to the history of the human race prior to the time when the
Christian priesthood obtained possession of the literary treasures
of the more ancient world, and began their work of
destruction, concealment, alteration and perversion of that
ancient literature. Who can read that communication by the
light of all the collateral facts, and question the authenticity
of that communication? When it was given, we had not the
faintest conception of its vast import, and queried as to its
probable value. Judge then of our amazement when its great
and inappreciable importance became manifest as the result of
our subsequent investigation of the collateral corroborating
facts! This spirit tells us that the manuscripts he translated
into the Latin tongue are now in the Colbertine Library, which,
if a fact, must settle the truthfulness not only of Annius as a
spirit, but as a mortal as well. In order that the reader may
know what the Library of Colbert is, we will refer them to the
article “Libraries,” for history of Colbert’s work, to the Encyclopedia
Britannica.
We have gone to considerable trouble to look up the historical
references given above, bearing upon this important testimony,
so t hat our readers will be able to readily turn to them
and examine for themselves what is extant in history that they
may get an adequate idea of the nature of the undoubtedly
ANNIUS OF VITERBO. 255
genuine works of ancient authors which Annius has preserved
in his inestimable work; and which the Christian Church and
Christian writers have vainly sought to discredit and render
useless. It is too late for these Christian slanderers of the
learned, honored and trusted Annius to make him appear a
credulous fool, and one who was so little fitted for the discharge
of the great trust imposed upon him by the most distinguished
and learned men of his time, as to be little less than idiot, if
what they say of him is even partially true. How men of any
discernment could have been hoodwinked into depreciating
the learned labors of Annius, as Christian writers have done,
can only be accounted for on the score of mental and moral
imbecility, resulting from their desire to escape the logic of
facts which militate against their preconceived views.
The spirit of Annius tells us that after a careful analysis of all
those ancient writings he found that they all centered upon
the labors of the Council of Asoka held in India, about 280 B.
C., a nd that it was the proceedings of that council translated
into Greek by Demetrius of Phalerus, the great Librarian of
Ptolemy Philadelphus, which were afterward blended by
Apollonius of Tyana with the doctrines of Platonism, out of
which the ideal character of a saviour, similar to that of Jesus
of Nazareth was first formulated. It appears that Plato was a
medium, and was influenced by the spirits of more ancient
sages and philosophers, to promulgate the teachings he did. If
it should prove that there is among the Colbertine manuscripts
a manuscript of Manetho in the Egyptian, and not in the Greek
language, it will be useless for any one to question or deny the
authenticity or truthfulness of this communication of Annius.
That there is such a manuscript there, as well as a Chaldaic
version of Berosus, we feel confident. It seems certain that if
in 1220 to 1230 there is positive mention of the manuscripts of
Berosus and Megasthenes, it shows that the probabilities are
that they came into the hands of Annius and were translated
and published by him. We cannot dwell longer on this most
interesting and important subject at present. It must suffice
to say that we have not a doubt that the histories of Berosus,
Megasthenes and Manetho are correctly published in the
Antiquities of Annius of Viterbo. Thus another proof is given
that through the potency of spirit power, all error is being
burnt up in the light of eternal truth.
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MIZRAIM.
The Chaldaic King of Egypt.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 256
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“Out of all I have searched for in the languages of earth to
express what I feel in coming here to-day, I will say Vox Dei,
vox populi. I was born two thousand and a little more than
two hundred years before your myth Jesus, in a town called
Chion, in Chaldea. I was brought up to understand the
Chaldean astrolabe. I, with the same earnestness that you ask
the people of to-day to believe in Jesus, asked the people then
to believe in Baal. At the time I lived, the chief seat of the
civilization of the world was about the junction of two rivers.
These two rivers ran together, and the intermediate country
was known as Edna, Eden, or Edina. I knew nothing of
Abraham; but I did know of Ibraham, “Ib” meaning the
whole and “Brahm” the world in which we live. At that
time, the following circumstance gave rise to what is called the
confusion of tongues and the tower of Babel.
There was a
numerous colony that had gone out from Chaldea toward the
opposite shore, or toward Europe, as I might call it, where
they acquired a different language from what we had, and we
could not understand each other correctly; and they came
back with the Ugh story about how they had been confounded
by a god, Typhon, who they described as the ruler of winds
and waves, storms, the elements, etc. He was represented on
the altars erected to him, as a huge snake, and was worshipped
under that shape. I becoming dissatisfied with the state of
things in Chaldea, moved southward from where I was, and
reached what was called Egypt. At that time I found that
there had been four dynasties in Egypt, covering a period of
nearly sixty-five hundred years;
and I have no doubt, but
that the Moses of the Israelites, and their exodus from Egypt,
came from the story of myself, Mizraim, travelling into Egypt.
I think that the two are parallel, from my examination of
history after my time. Upon reaching the Egyptian civilization,
at t hat time, I found that there was a great invasion of
that country by a king from the East; and to show you the
confusion of modern chronology, I will say his name was
Mahalaleel. In modern chronology you will find him set down
as the oldest man next to Methuselah, but he was simply a
king in his day and an invader of Eygpt. Although a stranger
in the country, I, having so large a concourse of people with
me (somewhere about thirty thousand warriors, and a proportionate
number of them unable to bear arms), and they being
very important to the Egyptians at that time, they offered me
a position, in which I beat this Mahalaleel; and therefore I
was set down as the first ruler of Egypt, historians losing
sight of the four preceding dynasties through the dissensions
of men after my death. You will find that all Egyptian history,
following my time shows that what I have told you is
the truth; and upon this ground, that in place of the god
Baal of the Chaldeans, which was represented by a human
head with the horns of a bull, the Egyptians afterwards substituted
the god Apis. You can see the reason for confounding
the two religions, at a subsequent time. [How was the god
Baal represented originally?] As a snake with the head of a
man; but I left the snake part off, and replaced the human
head by that of the Egyptian ox; and after that time Baal
was worshipped in that shape. And then, again, during the
time of my ruling there, there were large numbers of Arabs,
from the various Arabian tribes, coming into the country and
living there, similar to the exodus of the Israelites out of
Egypt.
In my opinion it is this portion of Egyptian history
that makes up the whole of the so-called Israelitish history;
because there were no such people as the Jews, in my day.
You will find this Baal-Apis in the article relating to the
priests of Cybele, in the ceremony where they stand under a
grating in white robes, while Apis, or the sacred ox, has his
throat cut, and the blood descends upon the priests, baptizing
them in the blood of the redeeming god. I think you will
find this ceremony described in some of Havercamp’s works;
it is certainly in the works of some of those writers who comment
upon the Scriptures. After the performance of that
ceremony the blood-baptized priest was held to be sacred, and
any persons who touched the hem of his garment would be
cured of any disease they had. [When these priests had been
baptized in the blood of the sacred ox, Apis, they became
healers of the sick?] Yes. The priest, after he came out from
those conditions, was kept apart from the people, and no one
was allowed to enter his apartment, except for some very important
reason. He spoke for the oracles of Anubis and Iddo.
Iddo was an Egyptian priest of one of the dynasties before my
time, and set forth the idea of a great central power in the sun,
out of which all life originated; and this Iddo taught the
same doctrines as those attributed to Confucius, Jesus, and all
the rest, so far as morality was concerned. I found his teachings
so deeply engrafted in the minds of the Egyptians and
their religious system, at the time I became identified with it,
that I allowed this to stand, as one of the things it would not do
to trifle with. And then, again, those blood-baptized priests
were acting as Iddo did, who was supposed to have been overshadowed
by t he divine spirit, and that all that he said was
the truth; and he was said to vanish, as you see in the Psalms,
when he said Selah. I used the word Polio, which afterwards
became Apollo. It was the same as saying Amen or Ammon.
This Apollo grew out of that system, and he became a god
afterwards in the reign of Psammetticus.
But the Chaldean,
Egyptian, and all other priests in my day had, particularly,
the signs of the Zodiac as a part of their worship; and those
signs were nine in number — not twelve as you have now. Each
of these signs covered a period of what you call a month, extended
so as to divide the year into nine parts instead of
twelve. All these signs were indicated by the conjunction of
certain stars, which enabled the priests to understand God’s
commands as given to us on the earth. By this I mean that
one group of stars was made to designate each sign of the Zodiac,
and these were used to explain certain things. These
changes in the position of the stars relative to the Sun were
afterwards interpreted by persons called Augurs among the
Romans, but in our day were called Celestiaie. These priests
wanted to publish a great many facts and circumstances, in my
day, which I, as a rational man, thought was deceiving the
people, and I forbade.
All the religions taught before my time,
had for their beginning, the idea of man being placed in a garden
of beauty, and surrounded with all the necessaries of life,
and that there was one thing in that garden that he should not
touch. But in the religious systems taught in my day, there
was this one remarkable distinction. They did not pretend
that the woman was the betrayer, but man was represented to
be so; and that he tempted the woman, and the woman yielding
to his entreaties, brought forth all the trouble that flesh
has been heir to, since that time. That was taught as a fundamental
principle; but there were very few, I learned, who
held to that doctrine. A majority were those who worshipped
Apis, and followed those of bis disciples, . or prophets you
might term them, who had been baptized in his blood. Any
one who underwent that ceremony was ever afterwards considered
sacred; and even in my day (I lived 2200 years before
the Christian time,) this was so. At the time I went to spirit
life there was, as I said, four or six dynasties preceding me,
all of which were understood to have ruled Egypt.
Every person was well acquainted with Christos of India, in those
days. [Before your time?] Yes, and they, instead of taking
the Lamb or first sign of the zodiac for their sacrificial Saviour
as the Christians did, they cut the throat of a bull and baptized
the holy prophets in his blood. The sacrificial idea, as
set forth in the first Egyptian dynasties before my time was
cannibalistic, and men were sacrificed instead of the bull, Apis,
and later Anubis the sacred dog.
At the time in which I
lived, it was understood that sixty-four hundred years before,
under a certain king, the Great God had driven the first man
as a transgressor, from a condition of pleasure, and that he,
for bringing all the trouble he did upon his posterity was crucified
by them, by running an arrow under the jaw through the
neck, which was supported by posts coming up from the
ground, thus suspending him, with his hands tied behind his
back, and that gave rise to what was afterwards known as the
cross. It puzzled astronomers who lived after that time, to
know what that meant, and they took it to designate the sign
of the Archer; and therein commenced the confusion in religious
beliefs. [Can you tell me which were the nine signs they
had in your time?] They had only one fish; they left the
other out. They left out Leo or the Lion, and also the Goat.
These signs were not known in my day as they are known now;
or if they were known, I was not conversant with them. But
the other nine signs were used. [Have you any idea at what
time the twelve signs were adopted?] I think about 565 B.
C, in the days of Anaximander. I think he was the one who
first divided the zodiac into twelve signs. [Some think that
Aries or the Ram was one of the original signs?] It was always
represented by some cleft-footed animal. Sagittarius, half man
and half horse, was represented differently in my day. That
sign was represented by a combination of half man and half
fish. I listened to those astronomical priests with the greatest
devotion, and found them teaching the same thing that is
cited in the Hebrew Scriptures about Elijah. These visions
used to come through my organism, and I seemed to hear still
small voices describing certain things to me, and I followed
their directions. [Were you a priest of the Chaldeans.] I was
what you would call an Assyrian, but was really from Chaldea.
I was both a priest and a lawgiver — that is, I either preached
or fought,- according to the circumstances in which I was
placed. The Zoroaster known in my day was the original or
older Zoroaster, who lived sixty-five hundred years before my
time. This Zoroaster, through the letter O, which is the
initial letter of Ormuzd, represented the Great God I AM.
The Egyptians afterwards adopted it as the emblem of eternity,
and as including all that took place in nature. I have
said more than I expected to be able to say; but I found the
control easy, and I like to talk.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 260 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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If that communication is genuine and substantially correct,
then it is very certain that the time is fast coming when a true
history of the ancient world will have to be written. Mizraim
is unknown to extant history as a personage, and his spirit
disclosures are all we have to guide us in critically following
the wide range of information embraced in his communication.
Inclining strongly as we do, to the belief that the
communication is authentic, we will give our reasons therefor.
Under the title u Mizraim,” Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible
says:
“Mizraim, the usual name of Egypt in the Old Testament.
* * Mizraim first occurs in the account of the Hamites in
Gen. x., where we read, ‘And the sons of Ham; Cush, and
Mizraim, and Phut, and Canaan,’ * * If the names be in
order of seniority, whether as indicating children of Ham, or
older and younger branches, we can form no theory as to their
settlements from their places; but if the arrangement be geographical,
which is probable from the occurrence of the form
Mizraim, which in no case can be a man’s name, and the order
of some of the Mizraites, the placing may afford a clew to the
positions of the Hamite lands. Cush would stand first as the
most widely spread of these peoples, extending from Babylon
to the upper Nile, the territory of Mizraim would be the next
to the north, embracing Egypt and its colonies on the northwest
and northeast. Phut as dependent on Egypt might follow
Mizraim, and Canaan as the northernmost would end the list.
Egypt, the ‘land of Ham,’ may have been the primitive seat
of these from stocks. In the enumeration of the Mizraites,
though we have tribes extending far beyond Egypt, we may
suppose they all had their first seat in Mizraim, and spread
thence, as is distinctly said of the Philistines. Here the order
seems to be geographical, though the same is not so clear to the
Canaanites.”
It will thus be seen that the critical learning of post- Jewish
times has been exhausted in vain to find why Egypt is generally
called, in the Old Testament, Mizraim. The mistake made
by all investigating critics, has been that they started out with
the theory that Mizraim could not be the name of a man; and
hence the endless maze of confusion into which they were
drawn. The same writer says:
“Mizraim therefore like Cush, and perhaps Ham, geographically
represents a centre whence colonies went forth in the
remotest period of postdiluvian history. The Philistines were
originally settled in the land of Mizrairn, and there is reason
to suppose the same of the Lehabim, if they be those Libyans,
who revelled according to Manetho, form the Egyptians in a
very early age. The list, however, probably arranges them according
to t he settlements they held at a later time, if we may
judge from the notice of the Philistine migration; but the
mention of the spread of the Canaanites, must be considered
on the other side. We regard the distribution of the Mizraites
as showing that their colonies were but part of the great migration
that gave the Cushites the command of the Indian Ocean,
and which explains the affinity the Egyptian monuments
show us between the pre-Hellenic Cretans and Carians, and
the Philistines.”
All this goes to show that Egypt was at an early day dominated
by a Saracenic race, and they had become quite populous
when the Philistine migration took place toward Palestine, the
land of the Israelites. The Philistines were undoubtedly of
Asiatic lineage, and not of African origin, and this fact is
amply sufficient to show there was an early Assyrian domination
in Egypt. When or how, or by whom that domination
was brought about, history, neither (so-called) profane or
sacred, throws any light upon. The statement of the spirit is
very clear and consistent with every conceivable probability.
He says he was born a little more than 2200 years, before the
Christian era, at Chion or Chiun in Chaldea. The mention of
this name incidentally leads to a singular correction of a sad
misinterpretation of the word Chiun, (as it is used in Amos v,
26.) by Christian critics. The Jewish Jehovah is there made
to say:
“25. Have you offered unto me sacrifices and offerings in
the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel?”
“26. But ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and
Chiun your images, the star of your God which ye made to
yourselves.”
“27. Therefore will I cause you to go into captivity beyond
Damascus,” etc.
Now, all this is perfectly intelligible, if it is addressed to the
Assyrian Star worshippers, who, leaving Chion, in Chaldea,
bore the tabernacle of Moloch and the star of their god (perhaps
Aldebaran, the bright and royal star of the zodiacal constellation
Taurus, the symbol of Baal the Great God of the
Chaldeans) towards the west and beyond Damascus. It is
certainly preposterous to suppose that this threat had anything
to do with the then inhabitants of Judea. And yet this is the
stupid blunder into which so-called Biblical critics have fallen.
Finding the word Chiun coupled with that of Moloch, which
was undoubtedly the Sun-god or Fire-god of the Chaldeans,
they supposed also that Chiun must be a Jewish god, than
which no mistake could be more stupid. The book of Amos is
undoubtedly a plagiarism of some Chaldean writings. Chiun,
must be a Jewish change of the name Chion (as it was most
probably spelled in the Chaldean) was undoubtedly the name
of a city or place, and not that of an idol, either worshipped
by the Israelites or by any other people. The translation from
Chaldean into Hebrew, and from Hebrew into English, has
not sufficed to obscure the real meaning of the passage of
Amos, above quoted. We thus discover that even by the Jewish
Scriptures so-called, the correctness of the spirit communication
is singularly borne out. That there was such an
Assyrian or Chaldean city as Chion or Chiun we have no
doubt, even if no other mention of it than is made in that
passage of Amos, can be found. Just as the Chaldaic Moloch
was changed into the Moloch of the Old Testament, so the
name Chion was changed into Chiun.
[Pg 263]
Mizraim tells us that they had the same story of Eden, and
Adam and Eve, in his day, but that instead of saddling the
responsibility upon the woman for the sufferings of humanity,
they were laid at the door of her male seducer. Little weight,
Mizraim tells us, was given to the story, although it was the
starting point of the religions then prevailing. It seems it was
only the later times of the Jewish and Christian periods when
the cosmogonical fiction was considered a matter of so much
theological importance.
The religion of the Christos of India, the spirit tells us was
well known in Chaldea and Egypt in his day. The sacrifice
of human victims to the Chaldaic Moloch was anterior to the
time of Mizraim, (2200 B. C.) [...]
[Pg 264] That Mizraim was a historical personage,
and not the name of a country or people, is very certain. It is
a Chaldean and not an Egyptian name, and therefore we may
know almost with certainty, in as much as the Jews designated
Egypt by his name, that he figured so prominently in that
country, as to warrant that designation of Egypt, by the Jews.
As in the case of Odin the Younger, we have here an instance
in which we are warranted in believing that there has been an
extension, through spirit channels, of authentic history, to
nearly one thousand years before the oldest authentic historical
period heretofore known. If it should be found that Mizraim
is mentioned by either Berosus, Manetho, or Megasthenes, in
their, or either of their histories, the value of that spirit communication cannot be overestimated.
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EUXENUS.
A Pythagorean Philosopher.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 264
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“I salute you, sir: — In the first century before, what is
called, the Christian era, Platonism and what was afterwards
termed Gnosticism were almost identically the same. They
were both scientific religions, founded on doctrines that were
not historical. The doctrines taught by Apollonius of Tyana
were of such a character that the Christians could not afford
to let them be known, and they perished in the first crusade
against the contents of the Alexandrian Library. After the
time that I became the teacher of Apollonius, I was authorized
by license to teach by the emperor Augustus Csesar; but
because I demonstrated that my philosophy was true, I was
opposed by the priesthood. I challenged those priests to
answer me, but this they did not attempt. My arguments were
like these communications — no priest dared to question their
correctness. I commenced to teach twenty-five years before
what is termed the Christian Era, and lived until A. D. 56. I
never regretted that I had taught the seven Pythagorean principles—
which meant the seven years of purification adopted
in my day by all Pythagoreans. This I will explain to you.
The first year was analogous to the period of innocence and
childhood, during which the philosophical aspirant tried to
forget all previous ideas, impressions and conditions, by which
his previous life had been attended; and to lose his individuality
so as to commence a new life, like that of a newly born
infant. The second year was devoted to a total silence, or
voluntary abstinence from all acquisition of knowledge, except
what the candidate could think out for himself. In other
words, it was devoted to silent meditation. In the third year
he was enabled to begin the contemplation of the facts of his
pre-existence and the after existence, in their relations to his
then existence, and to understand the true object of existence
as a whole. In the fourth year the aspirant to philosophical
wisdom purified himself from every contamination of the use
of food that the Sage (Pythagoras) had set down as unfit to be
eaten. In the fifth year, having purged the mortal body, he
began to sit, lie down, or stand as directed by his spirit attendants
in order to develop his mediumship for the occurrence
of spiritual phenomena through it. In the sixth year the
phenomena that occurred were divided, as you divide them,
into two classes, to wit: mental and physical. The purpose of
this was to determine whether the most striking phenomena
that occurred through each candidate were mental or physical.
In the seventh year, test experiments were made to ascertain
whether the aspirant was best qualified for the occurrence of
the mental or physical class of phenomena; or whether competent
for the occurrence of both classes combined. Apollonius
of Tyana was found to be remarkably qualified for the occurrence
of both mental and physical phenomena through his
mediumship, and thus being fully developed for both classes of
phenomena in an equal degree, he was authorized to act in
both capacities, those of mental and physical mediumship.
Thus duly initiated into the Pythagorean Order of Philosophy,
he began to teach; but like most sensitives, he desired to teach
his doctrines in seclusion. The teachings which first made
Apollonius of Tyana known will be recounted to you by the
spirit of King Phraoetes of Taxila. He will tell you when
and where it occurred, for these communications are given
under the control of spirits who can and will explain everything
so exactly that no learning can overthrow what is herein
given. Now, Apollonius of Tyana was, as I know from personal
observation and knowledge, the Jesus of Nazareth of the
Christians, and this was fully established by the subsequent
writings of Saturninus of Antioch, Basilides of Alexandria,
and Valentinus of the same city, all Gnostics, and those who
followed them in the second and third centuries. Those writings,
if in existence, will prove that Apollonius was the Jesus
of the Christians in after times. I have no intention to prove
to you that truth is greater than falsehood, for the time has
come when truth must and will assert itself. What I have
told you is true, and this will be established beyond all doubt
by the evidence yet to be given, if not already so established.
Oh! how I have longed for and desired the time to come when
I could obtain the chance to testify that Apollonius of Tyana,
whose memory and renown were killed through Eusebius at
the Council of Nice, was the real Jesus of modern Christianity.
I was Euxenus of Heracleia in Pontus.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 266 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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We can find little historical mention of Euxenus; for, although the Pythagorean preceptor of Apollonius of Tyana, undoubtedly the greatest
spiritual medium the world has ever known, his memory and
services have been buried in the same obscurity that has prevented
the true merit of his great pupil from being known to
after ages.
Refer to Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography
for account of Euxenus.
This mention of Euxenus is taken from the Life of Apollonius,
by Philostratus; and but for that mention of him no one
would know that such a man as Euxenus of Heracleia ever
lived.
Refer to Biographie Universelle for account of Apollonius.
Such was the philosophical system of Euxenus the teacher,
and Apollonius the pupil, of the school of Pythagoras, in the
early part of the first century of the so-called Christian era.
The spirit of Euxenus of Heracleia tells us that in the first
century before the supposed birth of Jesus, that Platonism,
and what was afterwards called Gnosticism, were almost identical
in their teachings. This was undoubtedly the case, as
any impartial inquirer into the doctrines of the Oriental and
Grecian philosophies will be forced to admit. They were, as
the spirit tells us, scientific religions as contra-distinguished
from theological speculative religions; and not the metaphysical
abstractions that modern interpreters of their literal
meaning, would lead their followers to believe.
The writings
of Apollonius of Tyana were undoubtedly well known as late
as the early part of the third century, and were regarded with
religious veneration by many of the brightest minds of that
early period of the so-called Christian era. When the scheme
was formed to established the Christian church, as a representative
of an entirely new and original religion, it became
necessary to destroy his writings and suppress his teachings, and
this the priesthood sought to do, and did, by every means that
was in their power. The spirit is therefore correct, in all probability,
when he says: “The doctrines of Apollonius, as they
appeared in his genuine work, perished in the first crusade
against the contents of the Alexandrian Library.” On this
point, a writer in the Encyclopaedia Britannica says:
“In 389 or 391 an edict of Theodosius ordered the destruction
of the Serapeum,” (the remaining Library at Alexandria,)
“and its books were pillaged by the Christians. When we
take into account the disordered condition of the times, and the
neglect into which literature and science had fallen, there can
be little difficulty in believing that there were but few books
left to be destroyed by the soldiers of ‘Amr.”
[...]
[Pg 268]
Euxenus who resided at AEgae during the time when it is
said Jesus was on earth, tells us, that he knows from personal
knowledge, that Apollonius, his contemporary and pupil, was
the same who afterwards was considered the Jesus of Nazareth
of the Christians, and that this fact was fully established by
the subsequent writings of Saturninus, Basilides and Valentinus,
the Gnostic followers of Apollonius. We have already so
fully treated of, not only the analogy of the teachings of Apollonius
with the teachings of the Christian scriptures, so-called,
but of their substantial identity one with another, that we need
not repeat our criticisms upon that point. We can well understand
how Euxenus should have so long and strongly desired
to come back to earth to vindicate the name and fame of his
great mediumistic pupil.
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JEAN BAPTISTE COLBERT.
Prime Minister of France.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 274
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“Good evening, sir:— Speaking without arrogating anything
to myself, I do not think that any person of modern
times was more deeply absorbed in antiquarian lore than myself.
You will find in August Wilhelm Von Schlegel’s tragedy
of “Arion,” all the mythological allusions made by iEschuylus
in his “Prometheus Bound.” He was one of the greatest Sanscrit
scholars that ever lived, and was thoroughly versed in the
analogies between the Sanscrit and Greek languages. He demonstrated
clearly that the ancient Egyptian virgin, Isis, with
the infant god Horus on her breast, and the symbols of the
Isiac religion were identical with the Christian Virgin Mary
and the infant Jesus. Much of this I have learned in spirit life.
This I give you now. What I learned in the mortal life will follow
afterwards. In the library called after me, the Colbertine,
about one hundred and forty miscellaneous manuscripts bearing
upon the first knowledge concerning the Gymnosophists of
India, in the times of Alexander the Great and Ptolemy Philadelphus.
These go to show that the Gymnosophists were fire
worshippers. Among them are manuscripts relating to what
will be communicated to you by a spirit who has not yet controlled
the medium, whose body was burned at Athens in the
reign of Augustus Csesar. After the teachings of the Gymnosophists,
the Essenes and Gnostics composed the originals of
the Christian Gospels and Epistles, which were afterwards
parodied as composing the New Testament. This was demonstrated
to you by the spirit of Euthalius, [see Euthalius, page
61.] He lived at Alexandria in 485 A. D. The next point I
shall mention, as demonstrated by those manuscripts, dates
about 560 to 580 A. D., and is contained in the writings of
Moses Chorensis, who first became popular in Armenia, and
who fully proves that, in his day, the Armenians were Parsees
or fire worshippers, and that they adhered to the doctrines of
the Gymnosophists combined with the Platonic and Pythagorean
philosophies- of Apollonius of Tyana. And he shows
that about A. D. 280, and perhaps before that date, these Armenians
inscribed upon the marble throne (not chair) at
Adulis, their doctrines and belief, in contradistinction to those
of the people known as Abyssinians, the latter being the doctrines attributed to Ishmael, the supposed son of Abraham.
They made that inscription at that point in order to convert the
Abyssinians to the teachings of Apollonius, which proved
fruitless. There is a paragraph still extant, of the writings of
Moses Chorensis, that shows that all the learned have made a
mistake about the nature of that inscription, but its suppression
was ordered by the Council of Nice. It is still in the Vatican
Library at Rome. This paragraph shows that the throne or
judgment seat at Adulis had no relation to Ptolemy Euergetes,
but was erected to commemorate the exploits of an Asiatic
king named Hannes or Jannes. You will not find him mentioned
in any English biography, and if at all, it will be in
some other tongue. Following this we will have to skip from
the sixth to the twelfth century, to the days of Cyrillus Lucaris,
patriarch of Constantinople, and there we find the commencement
of the Targums in the Codex Alexandrinus, now
in the Royal Library in London. The manuscript to which I
alluded, shows that Eusebius of Csesarea fully understood
these various tongues, and the combination of the Targums of
Jonathan Ben Uziel, Aquila and others, with the writings of
Apollonius of Tyana, called the Pauline Epistles, about A. D.
265, to conceal their origin. These matters were fully dwelt
upon by Eusebius, which shows that the Armenians constructed,
out of all these, what is now called the Codex Alexandrinus.
The proof of this fact is still to be found in some of
the towns of Samaria and Mesopotamia, in the Vatican
Library at Rome,
in my collection of manuscripts in Paris, and
in the paintings of Murillo, who painted a Jesus according to
the Abyssinian idea of that God, and represented him as an
African. By a thorough investigation of the facts related by
Belzoni, concerning the statues of Apollonius that he saw in
Upper Egypt, you can reach a demonstration that Apollonius
was the Jesus Christ of to-day. I examined all these things
thoroughly; and according to a modern writer, Lamartine,
you will find the most positive proof that the Christian religion
is a fraud. You will also find proof of this among the Maronite
Brethren in Syria, and also in the Indian Archaeological
researches of Sir William Jones. But I rest my statements
mainly upon what I have learned from a man with whom I
have become acquainted in spirit life. I mean Von Schlegel.
He will complete what I have left unsaid. I am Jean Baptiste
Colbert.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 270 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to Chambers’ Encyclopaedia for account of Colbert.
That Colbert was a very learned man as well as a great one,
his valuable collection of ancient manuscripts, now in the
Royal Library of Paris, sufficiently indicates. The reference
of this spirit to the literary labors of Von Schlegel is especially
pointed, in relation to the analogies between the Egyptian
virgin Isis and her child Horus and the Virgin Mary and her
child Jesus of the Christian Church; as also the analogies
between the emblems of those two religions. As to which was
the imitation and which the model, the great antiquity of the
Isiac religion leaves no doubt. As we have never read the
works of Von Schlegel, we do not know how fully he treats of
the questions to which the spirit refers. But when we come to
what he says about the one hundred and forty manuscripts in
the Colbert collection which relate to the doctrines and philosophy
of the Gymnosophists of India, from 400 to 250 B. C,
we come to a matter that admits of positive historical proof.
The Gymnosophists were undoubtedly worshippers of fire, as
the emblem of the Sun, which was the central foundation of
all religions.
As we have fully shown, in our previous criticisms of other
spirit communications, the Gymnosophists gave rise to what
was known in Syria as Essenianism; Essenianism was merged
in Gnosticism; Gnosticism was merged in Neo-Platonism; and
Neo-Platonism was finally merged in Christianity, thus we
may readily see that Christianity, so far from having any
originality about it, was but the latest modification of Oriental
nature-worship, and no more divine than the source
from which it flowed through so many modifying channels.
But, so confident are we that the spirit of Colbert states
what is the fact in regard to the import of the manuscripts
to which he alludes, as treating of Gymnosophism and Gnosticism,
that we do not liesitate to challenge the refutation
thereof. When he refers to Euthalius as a spirit who will confirm
what he says about those manuscripts, and the fact that
the Christian Gospels and Epistles are nothing but parodies
upon the more ancient Gnostic Gospels and Epistles, he leaves
no room to doubt that what he says of those manuscripts is
true. At this writing Euthalius has communicated and testifies
positively to that fact.
Even more significant is the reference of the spirit to the
manuscript writings of Moses Chorensis, as establishing the fact
that as late as 560 to 580 A. D. the people of Armenia were
Parsees or Sun worshippers— their religion being a combination
of Gymnosophism and Grecian philosophy. But most
significant of all, is the spirit’s statement that the writings of
Moses Chorensis, show that the inscription that has been
obliterated on the marble throne at Adulis, placed there about
280 A. D., or earlier, was inscribed thereon by Armenian
priests, to record the doctrines and teachings of Apollonius of
Tyana, to which they adhered. It is little less significant that
on the authority of the manuscripts of Moses Chorensis, that
the spirit of Colbert should state the fact that the historical
portion of the inscription of the Adulian marble does not relate
to Ptolemy Euergetes as has been almost universally supposed;
nor to an Abyssinian king as some suppose; nor partly to
Ptolemy Euergetes and partly to an Abyssinian king; but that
it relates wholly to an Asiatic king named Hannes or Jannes,
as the spirit gave it. We have examined this part of the spirit’s
statement with the greatest care, and feel justified in maintaining
its substantial correctness against the most searching
criticisms of the learned world.
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GODFREY ARNOLD.
A German Mystic.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 272
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“I thank you, sir, for this opportunity of communicating
with you. What I come to say to you to-night is connected
with, and is a condensation of, what Euthalius of Alexandria,
who lived about A. D. 435, has said to you. Our communications
must necessarily overlap and support each other. [See
Euthalius, page 61.] The Christian Scriptures from Acts to
Revelation are but plagiarisms of the doctrines to that great
saint of antiquity, Apollonius of Tyana. I knew positively,
from what is said in Belzoni’s miscellaneous article, No. 1, now
in the British Museum and in the Florentine Library, that on
ancient authority Paul of Tarsus was absolutely Apollonius of
Tyana. As for myself, after a careful review of all the grounds
that have been traversed by Dr. Nathaniel Lardner and other
learned commentators, who were engaged and paid by the
Church to find some proof of the truth of Christianity. I
found, from the Targums of Jonathan Ben Uziel and Aquila,
that Christianity was a fraudulent imitation of the ancient
doctrines of the Trinity, of which ancient trinities the generative
organs were the most prominent representative symbol.
All this was perfectly apparent to me; but as I was an ecclesiastical
adoptionist, I merged all that I knew in the Christian
religion. What was contrary to it I ignored; for which dishonesty
Ia, s a spirit, am obliged and compelled to here tell you
what I knew about these things. Godfrey Arnold.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 273 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to Biographie Universelle for account of Godfrey Arnold.
[...]
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AUGUST WILHELM VON SCHLEGEL.
A German Philologist and Orientalist.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 274
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“He who exposes errors must expect to be opposed by an
array of fools. I know this was true in my day, and I know
it must be true in yours. Born into the mortal life with a certain
sense of the mystical — knowing naught of the far past —
I was fortunate to strike that line of intelligence which was of
great advantage to me; namely, antique; and I wrote my
description of Ion on the same principle that iEschylus wrote
his Prometheus Bound. My principal business here to-night is,
to prove to you that the Tamil language of India is more
ancient than the Sanscrit; and that while you now find it in
Madras, Ceylon and Southern India, its outlines and structure
prove it to be more ancient, in India, than the Sanscrit. The
principal belief of the Tamils was the divine nature of the
male and female human organs of generation, the symbol of
which was the phallus. They had their Trinity in the father,
mother and child, which constituted their trinity in unity.
These religious ideas can be traced in the Tamil language,
traces of which are. still found at the foot of the Himalayas in
northern India, where the Tamil people dwelt before the
Brahmans crossed into India from Thibet with their god
I-brahm. Indeed this I-brahm was merely an eastern offshoot
of the Baal or Bel of the Chaldeans. The Chaldean
civilization is the oldest that we spirits can start with. That
spirit who came to you sometime since— Deva Bodhisatoua— I
have met in spirit life, for there like attracts like— is about to
effect a conjunction of forces between Eastern spirits and Western
spirits in spirit life, and by that means he will open
the way between the two worlds, so that all the past may be
revealed to mortals, when grand will be the result. You need
not fear that should you fall, that this will not be accomplished,
for others will rise up behind you greater than yourself, and
these things must go on. There seems to be a great desire on
the part of all the European powers to monopolize the lands of
the East and destroy its people; but these will yet take an
awful revenge on their European oppressors. The spirit work
of action and reaction between the two worlds goes on unceasingly.
If ind my control getting weak. I am August Wilhelm
Von Sehlegel.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 275 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to Chambers’ Encyclopaedia for account of Von Schlegel.
[...]
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BODHISHORMAH.
A Buddhist Priest.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 276
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“I greet you, sir:— As the Buddhistic religion, its writings,
precepts and morals, have been given to modern readers,
they have not been allowed to show the influence they exerted
in forming what is called the Christian religion. Everything
that would show this has been suppressed, first by the
Christian fathers Jerome, Chrysostom and Eusebius of Caesarea,
and afterwards by the Christian writers who followed
them. All these learned Christian commentators have done all
they could do to veil the connection between Buddhism and
Christianity. I am here to-day to say that the Pentateuch,
Psalms and Proverbs of the Old Testament, and the New Testament
from the Gospel of John to Revelations, were originally
in the hands of the Buddhists, and were taught to the followers
of that religion, in my day, about A. D. 340. But
Christian authorities have set me down as about A. D. 495, in
order to cover what I had of Buddhistic writings then extant,
and to make them appear to be copies instead of authentic
originals. I want to show that the religion of Buddha was not
an offshoot of Brahmanism. It was derived from the teachings
of Zoroaster in the first place, and the teachings of Osiris of the
Egyptians in the second place. [Am I to understand that
Buddhism was not of Indian origin?] Yes; and now for the
proofs of this. At the little village of Bang in Bombay, on the
road from Guzerat to Malioa, are the five subterranean chambers
which represent the five mountains of Buddha, and they are
called the Panch Pandou. It was there that I taught in my
time, although these chambers gave the date of Buddha as nine
hundred years before that time. The great trouble with Christian
commentators is, that they want to bring all religions
within the Mosaic period; and that biases their judgment and
leads them astray. I want to say, here, that the Panch Pandou
and the temple of Boro Bado, as it was called by us, were
the sources from which the civilizations of Mexico, Central
America and Peru originated; for the same kind of crosses
that are found in the Panch Pandou, and in the temple of
Boro Bado, are identical with those to be found in the Aztec
temples of Mexico, the temples of Central America, and the
temples of Peru.
The three gospels of Matthew, Mark and
Luke were derived from, and were part and parcel of the
Ancient Gymnosophic religion which Apollonius received
from Phraoetes, king of Taxila. Apollonius was a medium
for spirit control. I was also a medium among the
Chinese. I taught amongst them at the foot of the celebrated
Mount Sung. [Was that region celebrated as a place of
learning?] Yes; and also for learned hermits to congregate
and die. I am satisfied that if you will follow the clews that
I have given you, in this communication, that you will find
that Sun-worship was identical with Buddhism, the latter
only being a reformation of the former. These things have
been ignored by modern archaeological scholars, because they
would conflict with the teachings of Christianity. [Have the
gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John been modified
from the original writings, other than in the change of names
and the scenes of the events related?]
The idea of Jesus is
rather Egyptian than Indian. The most virtuous, holiest and
purest man of his generation, became the object of the veneration
of the people, and was held up as an example for after
generations to follow. They deified them and certain stars
were dedicated to them. These celestial personifications were
taught mystically by the priests to heighten the effect upon
the minds of their ignorant followers. If you have any other
questions, I will answer them if I can. [We know that the
Gospel of St. John varies from the three synoptical gospels in
essential particulars; and we have much reason to believe that
while the Gospel of John, the Pauline Epistles, the Catholic
Epistles, and Revelations, are of Buddhistic origin, that the
gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, and the Acts of the
Apostles, are of Brahmanical origin, and relate to the Hindoo
Chrishna Is that conjecture correct?] The books, from the
Gospel of John to Revelations, in the New Testament, were
borrowed from the Buddhistic visions of Deva Bodhisatoua.
[In what respect did the Buddhists and Gymnosophists
differ?] The Buddhists, in my time, were what you term
Spiritualists.
The Nirvana or heaven of rest, as it was originally
taught, meant simply a place where the spirit regained its
power after leaving the mortal form, and after a longer or
shorter time, having recuperated in strength, it passed on
through those spheres of spirit existence that you Spiritualists
talk of. On the other hand, the Gymnosophists were more of
the perfectionist belief, and taught that the released spirit of the
righteous went straight to God. That was the essential difference
between the two teachings. My name was Bodhishormah.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 277 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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We can find no mention whatever of Bodhishormah, and
can therefore only judge of the authenticity of the communication
by the collateral facts that bear upon the matters testified
to by the spirit. [...]
[Pg 278]
It will be seen that this Buddhist spirit claims the Buddhistic
origin of six of the chief books of the Old Testament, as
well as the more important parts of the New Testament. This
claim has never before been presented, so far as we know; a nd yet
it is consistent with much that is positively known. Not one
of the books of the Old Testament is of Hebrew origin, as it
has been claimed they were. They are, beyond all question,
of Eastern origin, having only been parodied by the Jewish
priesthood, and put before their followers as Jewish originals,
as the various Targums plainly show. The Psalms and
Proverbs of the Old Testament are in their nature, construction,
and use, so similar to the Buddhistic books now extant,
as to show that they are either varied versions of one original,
or varied versions, the one of the other. In either case it is
impossible that Judea should have been the country of their
origination. There is just as much historical certainty that
neither of the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and
John, of the New Testament, originated in Judea; and it is in
the highest degree probable, that the country of their origination
was India. The spirit says he knows that this was the
fact so far as the Gospel according to John, the Pauline Epistles,
the Catholic Epistles and the book of Revelations are concerned.
That he does not include the synoptical Gospels and
the Acts of the Apostles, grows out of the fact that they were
of Brahmanical rather than of Buddhistic origin.
The spirit says that Christian authorities have set him down,
chronologically, as having flourished about A. D. 495, instead
of A. D. 340, to conceal the nature of the Buddhistic writings
in his possession. Of this we have no means of judging, not
having been able to find any historical reference to Bodhishormah.
The truth of the matter may be yet established.
But now, we come to a portion of the communication that is
as important as it is new to us. The prevailing impression has
been that Buddhism was but a schismatic offshoot of Brahmanism,
and merely amounted to an attempted reformation of
that Aryan religion. The testimony of Bodhishormah is the
first denial of that supposition. He says that Buddhism had
nothing to do with Brahmanism, but was derived from the Zoroastrian
and Egyptian systems of Sabaism or Star worship. As
proof of this fact the spirit tells us that at the village of Bang
in Bombay, India, on the road from Guzerat to Malioa are five
subterranean chambers, which represent the five mountains of
Buddha, and that they are called the Panch Pandou, that it
was there he taught Buddhism; and that the inscriptions in
those chambers showed that Buddha had flourished 900 years
before his time, (340 A. D.)
It is with stinging satire that the spirit says: u The great
trouble with Christian commentators is, that they want to
bring all religions within the Mosaic period, and that biases
their judgment and leads them astray.” The spirit is more
than charitable to suppose that the learned, among those commentators,
do n ot know that in taking that course, they are
not seeking to find, but seeking to avoid the truth.
This spirit confirms what was testified to by Deva Bodhisatoua.
The latter claimed to have been a medium, and
while in a state of trance wrote the books which were obtained
by A pollonius at Singapoor. This spirit refers to the
visions of Deva Bodhisatoua as the source of the parodied
Christian writings, from the Gospel of John to Revelation,
inclusive.
The spirit no doubt makes a correct statement as to the difference
between Gymnosophism and Buddhism. The Buddhists
were certainly Spiritualists, while the Gymnosophists were
perfectionists, and held that there was no necessity of progressive
advancement in spirit life. The importance of the
light this communication throws upon many points of historical
doubt, cannot be too highly estimated.
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SERVIUS SULPICIUS GALBA.
A Roman Emperor.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 280
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“I greet you:— There is but one way open to all spirits to
progress, and that is, to study to tell the truth, as far as they
knew what it was, when they lived in mortal forms. That is
the only recompense they can make to mortals for the wrongs
they have done. I was born B. C. 20 at Borne. I died or
passed away in A. D. 69; and you can see by these dates that I
cover the most important period of the establishment of the
so-called Christian religion. I was consul at Rome in A. D.
33, governor of Africa in A. D. 45, and finally emperor of
Rome for a very short time, when I was assassinated in the
forum by soldiers under the command of Otho. In A. D. 33,
while consul at Rome, a letter was addressed to me by one
Philus of Antioch, stating that there was a great insurrection
there, on account of the entrance into that city of a doer of
many wonderful things; and he was apprehended there and
sent to Rome, where he was brought before me. His name was
Apollonius of Tyana, or Tyanseus, as we called him in those
days. He was charged with having defrauded the people. I
said to him: “If you can produce before me those manifestations
of power which you are charged wTith having produced
by fraudulent means, I will free you and remain your friend
for the rest of my days.” There was a man present whose name
was Martianus. He was bent like this. [Here the medium’s person
was used by the spirit to imitate a man bent nearly to the
ground.] He had never stood erect since he was born. Apollonius
turned to him and said: “I command you to stand
straight,” and instantly he was straightened before us. I
quitted Apollonius, and he was allowed to return to Antioch,
or to go where he pleased. The next time I met him was in
Carthage, in Africa, in A. D. 45. He was again arrested — this
time by one Publius AElius, who was his accuser and his judge
— because he did not restore his daughter to health. It was
proven that Apollonius had received from him something like
twenty talents of silver, but he had given it to the poor. He,
however, had restored the sight of the son of this Publius,
although he could not cure the daughter. He was going blind,
and Apollonius removed the cataract from his eyes, thus restoring
his sight. [Did he do that by a surgical operation?]
No; he did it by magnetic power. Under its influence the film
grew thinner and thinner, and finally disappeared from his
eyes. I did not see Apollonius again until A. D. 50, when I
was again at Rome. This man, at that time, had grown into
great favor. He was looked upon as the incarnated representative
on earth, of Jupiter, or Apollo, or both. From the time
when I began to understand things, about B. C. 5, until the
time of my death in A. D. 69, 1 never heard of but four different
kinds of religious doctrines that then prevailed, and I will
name them. First, the Pythagorean or Platonic; second, the
Gymnosophic; third, the Essenian; and fourth, the Apollonian.
Those at least were the four principal religions, outside
the worship of the Greek and Roman myths of my day. As
far as I was myself concerned, my individual belief, would be
more likely to correspond with Mahomet’s. That is, I was a
fatalist, and believed that whatever happens must be, and I
submitted to that necessity. I do not claim to have been an
ambitious man — I do not claim to have been a virtuous one;
but as a spirit, sir, I do claim to be an honest one. [Have you
any knowledge as to whether Apollonius of Tyana, did or did
not go to Jerusalem about the year A. D. 33?] Two years
later than that, in A. D. 35, I heard of it. [What did you hear
in relation to it?] I heard from Pontius Pilate that a man,
whom he told me was Apollonius, rode through Jerusalem on
an ass; and because he had cured lepers outside the gates of
that city, the people gave him a great ovation. [Did the Jewish
priests have him punished?] He left the city very suddenly,
because of the uproar he created among the Jews, which ever
took place when anything threatened to interfere with their
religion. Servius Sulpicius Galba, once emperor of Rome.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 281 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to Encyclopaedia Britannica for account of Galba.
This spirit tells us he was born in B. C. 20 instead of in B.
C. 3, as the date of his birth has been supposed to have been.
There are some things that would go to show that the date
given by the spirit as the time of his birth, is more nearly correct
than that which is assigned by historians. If he was born
in B. C. 3, he would have been only thirty-six years old at the
time he was consul in A. D. 33, or in 31, as is the date fixed as
the time of his appointment to the consulship by Tiberius. It
is hardly possible that one so young should have attained that
rank. Besides, it is mentioned by Suetonius, that Augustus,
who died in A. D. 14, predicted the future rise of Galba. K
that be so, then Galba must have been then only 17 or younger.
For that reason this statement of Suetonius has been questioned.
But if Galba was then old enough to have shown his
fitness for official promotion, he must have been born about the
time he stated (B. C. 20.) He had no doubt been called to
official position before the death of Augustus, and thus displayed
his qualifications for public service. Still further than
this, ft is admitted that very little is known of the early life of
Galba. This is because it has been found convenient to place
the date of his birth several years later than the time of its
occurrence. The spirit certainly understood what he was saying,
for he not only names the year B. C. 20 as the time of his
birth, but he says that in B. C. 5, he was old enough to understand
and remember the current events of that period. We
regard this variation from the supposed date of his birth as
one of the strongest proofs possible that this communication is
as authentic as it is true. Galba is spoken of as an aged man
when appointed, by Nero, governor of the province of Spain,
and his administration as that of a man worn out by age or
governed by fear. If Galba was only in his seventy-second
year, at that time, it is hardly likely that he would have been
greatly disqualified from manifesting his usual ability as a general and governor of provinces. We therefore incline to believe
that Galba was a much older man at that time.
This communication, if it may be credited, throws much
light upon the suppressed portions of the Life of Apollonius
by Philostratus, and in the most surprising manner confirms
the communication given by the spirit of Apollonius. See
communication, Apollonius page 17.
If the statement of the spirit of Apollonius is correct, he
must have been thirty-one or thirty-two years of age when he
went from AEgae to Antioch, and if he was taken to Borne to
be tried by Galba the consul, at that time, he was in his thirty
second year. It is true that Apollonius did not say anything of
the commotion he had created at Antioch, but he did expressly
state that he went to Antioch, and from there to Jerusalem.
This would indicate that Apollonius returned from Rome, after
his release by Galba, and no doubt finding the disaffection
towards him still existing, was all the more willing to go to
Jerusalem, where his renown as a medium of spirit power had
preceded him. At all events, it is just this part of the history
of Apollonius that is missing. It is hardly likely that Damis
his disciple, who wrote annals of his life, and Philostratus who
wrote his biography, should have said nothing of these most
striking and important events in his life. It is certain that
none of the writings of Damis have been permitted to come
down to us, and the oldest copy of Philostratus’, Life of Apollonius
does not date earlier than the tenth century. The wonder is that any part of the latter work was allowed to come down to us.
It is a historical fact that Galba was consul in A. D. 33, and
if Apollonius was apprehended at Antioch, as the spirit states,
it was before him that Apollonius would have been brought
for judgment. It was about that time Apollonius must have
gone to Antioch, and his advent there, after the wonderful
things related as having occurred through him at AEgae, while
with the priests in the temple of AEsculapius at the latter city,
no doubt would have caused the greatest consternation among
the Grseco-Roman priesthood. We infer that Philus of Antioch
was a Roman priest. The details of the result of the hearing
of Apollonius at Rome, are entirely consistent with the wonderful
manifestations of spirit power that are known to have
occurred through Apollonius, not only before, but for more
than sixty years after that period.
It is also a historical fact that Galba was by Nero appointed
governor of the province of Africa in A. D. 45, and that he
was then at Carthage. It is also a historical fact that having
been driven from Rome by Nero, that Apollonius went from
Rome to Gaul and Spain, and from the latter country went to
Africa, and was at Carthage, at the time the spirit of Galba
states he was there. We may therefore infer that the incident
referred to by the spirit, the arrest and discharge of Apollonius
in Carthage actually took place. From Carthage he crossed to
Italy, and from Italy set sail for Greece, and from that country
went to Egypt where he was when Vespasian was declared
emperor, on the death of Nero.
[Pg 284]
But what the spirit says in regard to Apollonius’s visit to
Jerusalem is of the greatest interest, if true; as it shows who
the Jesus of Nazareth was, who created such a confusion
among the Jews of Jerusalem in A. D. 34-35. The spirit tells
us that two years after Apollonius was at Jerusalem, that Pontius
Pilate told him of the entrance of Apollonius into Jerusalem
riding on an ass, and that the Jews gave him a grand
ovation on account of his healing lepers outside the gates of
the city. Now it is historically true that Galba and Pontius
Pilate were at Rome at that time, Pilate having been summoned
to Rome to answer for some acts of misadministration as procurator
of Judea. Nothing could be more probable than that
Galba and Pilate met at that time, and it is hardly less
probable that such a conversation was had, or that such a
narrative on the part of Pilate was given to Galba.
We do not hesitate to say that we credit this communication,
it being so consistent with historical probabilities, and so
entirely consistent with the communications that have been
before given relating to the same circumstances. Thus the
testimony of spirit after spirit is piled up, all tending in the
most surprising manner to show that Apollonius of Tyana and
his labors, are the sole basis of the so-called Christian religion;
and thus the fraudulent nature of that religion is being demonstrated
beyond all reasonable doubt.
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JUNIANUS JUSTINUS.
A Latin Historian.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 285
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[...]
“I was in my mortal life a historian, and I epitomized
or copied (about half of which has been permitted to come
down to you) from the history of my friend Pompeius Trogus.
The whole of his history of universal affairs down to B. C. 28,
was in my possession. I use your Christian names and dates,
because they will be better understood by your readers. Trogus
said that in his day that the two great governing powers,
amongst the ignorant, were Jupiter at Thebes and Apollo at
Rome.
But mark you, he said that amongst the enlightened,
the Pythagorean religion of the Greeks was blended with the
Christos religion of India. [That was prior to the Christian
era?] Yes, sir. I copied that portion of Trogus’ history which
related to Christos, who was later than the elder Zoroaster.
That portion of my history that related to Apollonius, later
on, was allowed to stand, but the name of Apollonius was
changed or dropped, and the Christos of whom Trogus wrote,
was altered into Christ.
In my day the name was Hesu
Christos. In the days of Eusebius it was made Jesus Christ.
At that time the only religions that prevailed, beside the worship
of the Greek and Roman gods, were the Pythagorean, the
Hesus Christos, the Gymnosophic and Gnostic systems; and
what was called the Eclectic system, a combination of all the
religious systems then prevailing in the East or in the Roman
Empire.
I wrote these facts down faithfully, but the Christians
have never allowed anything that I wrote to stand as it
was, except what sustained their own scheme of deception.
Basilides and Valentius taught the doctrine of three gods in
one, or the Trinity of the Gnostics. The male and the female
principles in nature, and their product, the universe or the
child, represented the trinity in all created life. This was the
trinity that all the Gnostics, in my day, taught.
The false
trinity was started by Eusebius, and was made to assume its
present Christian form some two or three centuries later. The
especial reason why the founders of Christianity destroyed so
many manuscripts written prior to A. D. 260 was because they
threw too much light upon all these matters, and showed that
the Pythagorean first, the Platonic and Essenian next, the
Gymnosophic and Gnostic next, and finally the Eclectic system,
which combined the principles of all the others; together
formed the actual basis for Christianity as it now is. This is
as well as I can state these matters as a spirit under the circumstances;
but I am afraid I have performed my office poorly. I
have, however, done the best I could. I hope you can get at
the facts from what I have stated.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 286 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to Smith’s Greek and Roman Biography for account
of Pompeius Trogus and Justinus.
In the work above referred to will be found under the title of
Justinus the accepted account of the literary labors of Pompeius
Trogus, and Junianus Justinus. The reader may readily perceive
the magnitude of the priestly crime, that deprived the world of
the literary treasure contained in the great Universal History
of Trogus. It was fortunate indeed that Justinus should have
duly appreciated the inestimable importance of that now destroyed
history. Indeed we regard it as providential that he
should have been prompted to write an epitome of its most
important contents, for only in that way has any portion of
them been permitted to come down to us. But these priestly
enemies of truth, it seems, have not even permitted the excerpts
of Justinus, taken from that treasury of historical
information to come down to us intact. But a portion of them
have escaped the destruction of those enemies of humanity,
the founders of the so-called Christian church; and Justinus
has been censured by modern critics for “the slovenly"
manner in which he executed what they are pleased to consider
as an abridgement of Trogus [...]
[Pg 287]
It has been seen that the time when Justinus lived and
wrote has been a matter of historical and critical doubt. This
doubt need no longer exist, for the guide of the medium, in announcing
the presence of Justinus, said that he was a Latin
historian in the reign of Titus Pius Antoninus (A. D. 161.) It
would therefore seem certain that the words of “Imperator
Antonine” in the preface of Justinus’s history, were rightfully
there, and were not “an interpolation foisted in by some of the
earlier editors, &c.” Pius Antoninus reigned from A. D. 138 to
161, and it was undoubtedly within that period that Justinus
wrote his history. Now, the spirit of Justinus says he had the
whole work of Trogus in his possession when he wrote his own.
It would, therefore, appear that it must have been after that
date (A. D. 161) that the work of Trogus was destroyed, as it
was then extant and in the possession of Justinus. It was to
conceal the fact that Trogus’ history was in existence at so late
a day, that any question was raised as to the period in which
Justinus nourished. But that concealment will no longer
avail. By that strange fatality that seems to attend the perpetration
of crime against humanity, the words “Imperator
Antonine” have been preserved against all priestly efforts to
avoid them, in the extant copies of the preface to Justinus’s
history. Those words seem to have been providentially preserved
to authenticate the spirit testimony of Junianus Justinus; as has also the prenomen Junianus, about which there
has been the same doubt. The corrections and explanations of
historical facts, such as these, in so many instances, throughout
this unprecedented series of communications, are most convincing
proofs, not only of their authenticity and truthfulness,
but of their inappreciable value. [...]
[Pg 289]
This spirit certainly speaks the truth when he says that the
reason why the founders of Christianity destroyed so many of
the works that were written prior to A. D. 260, was that they
threw too much light upon the real sources from which they
borrowed their religion. It is a recognized fact that the doctrines
of Pythagoras, Plato, the Gymnosophists, the Gnostics,
and the Eclectics, as well as nearly all or most of the Brahmanical
and Buddhistic doctrines of India, and the Magian
doctrines of Persia, are blended and conglomerated with
groundless personal fictions, in the Christian Bible. No one
can read and compare the Christian doctrines with the doctrines
of a ll those ancient religions and not see, at every step,
that the former is not a spurious version of the latter.
As we have been able to confirm the truth of so much that
the spirit testified to, by the most unexpectedly preserved collateral
facts, we cannot see hew those portions of it, the direct
or collateral proof of which cannot be reached, can be reasonably
questioned.
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PLOTINA POMPEIA.
Wife of the Roman Emperor Trajan.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 290
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“I salute you, sir, in the interest of truth. I lived, that is,
in a prominent way, a very short time after the death of Apollonius
of Tyana. I saw him when I was a young girl, but never
had any acquaintance with him, he dying before I reached
womanhood. Of the Jews of my time, that is, in the reign of
the emperor Trajan, the Pharisees and Essenes were the two
principal sects. The Saducees did not believe in the resurrection.
They were very few in number and exerted but little influence.
It was believed throughout the Roman Empire, at that time,
that Apollonius of Tyana was the human representative of the
god of Apollo, on the earth; in fact was regarded as his son.
There was no Jesus Christ known of in my day. There was a
Christos Hesus, which was a combination of Indian and Scandinavian
gods. This combination of gods was brought about by the slaves that
had been brought from Asia and Northern Europe into Italy. There was a worship of this combined god under the designation of the Christos Hesunian religion. I myself received divine honors after my death, and I was considered as being taken from the husband of my mortal life to be
the companion of the god Apollo in the spirit life. I took a
great interest in all classes and grades of Roman citizens; and
did my best, in all kindness, for them. I had no prejudice
against any religion. The religion of India was made to assume
a different shape from that which ancient manuscripts set it
forth to be. Among all the letters addressed to my husband,
the emperor Trajan, up to the time of my death (A. D. 128),
relating to religious matters, I never saw any that did not relate
to the religions of Christos Hesus or Apollonius. [Did you ever
see the letter of Pliny the Younger to the emperor Trajan?]
Yes; I saw a letter relating to the Essenes of Antioch, sent at
the instance of Apollonius of Tyana and Ignatius of Antioch to
the emperor. It was forwarded to Trajan from Pliny by the
hands of one Paulus of Thessalonica. Paulus travelled into
Bythinia and had an interview with him there. Pliny was the
prefect of Bythinia at that time. Paulus, who was a Greek
Jew, was merely the messenger or bearer of the letter to Rome.
But Pliny saw nothing wrong with the Essenes, and reported
that they were quiet and inoffensive citizens. There was no
antagonism at that time between the Platonic and Eclectic
philosophies. The Eclectic philosophy was an offshoot from
the doctrines of the Gymnosophists, but they had gained but
little headway in my day. The principal religion of that time
was the worship of the ancient Grecian and Roman myths.
Essenianism was, in almost all its practical features, communism;
every thing was held and enjoyed in common.
I want to dwell particularly on the Christos of India, as he was
understood in my day. He was regarded as an incarnation of deity,
and was worshipped as such. His religion had been brought
through the intermediate countries to the Mediterranean sea,
and had become modified from the form it had, at Singapoor,
where Apollonius terminated his eastward journeying. As
Apollonius moved westward from India, he came to be regarded
as the ancient Christos. There were no miracles performed by
him. What he did in the way of healing was through his
mediumship. But the greatest part of the change in the religion
of Christos was made by Apollonius himself. The Revelation
written by the hand of Apollonius on the isle of Patmos, was
considered in my time as one of the greatest and most mystical
manifestations of mediumship, and was read as such by the
learned. [Was there any reference to Jesus in that mystical
communication?] There was no reference to Jesus whatever.
I belonged to the mystics or secret inquirers into what you would call spiritual phenomena. We had our meetings or circles for that purpose. [Was the emperor Trajan also a member of the mystics?] He understood that such phenomena occurred, but he was more of a Materialist in his views.
I leaned more to the spiritual and he more to the materialistic
view of things; but as long as he lived I was never interfered
with in my researches by him. In the year A.D. 85, Apollonius
taught at Rome under the name of Paulus or Paul. [Do you
know that to be the fact personally?] It was a well known fact
in my day. He received divine honors after his death, as the
son of Apollo. In his biography he is represented to have been
the incarnation of the God Proteus. That was simply the work
of Philostratus who wanted to claim Apollonius as a Greek. In
my time, when any man made his mark in the wTorld, all Greek
writers wanted to claim him as a Greek. Although I had no
personal acquaintance with Apollonius, I conversed with those
who were acquainted with him, and who received all knowledge
of him from Damis, his disciple. I also knew many Jews
who were followers of Apollonius. They became so from what
occurred through Apollonius when he was at Jerusalem. The
account that they gave of his journey to that city, was precisely
the same as the modern account of the same events, attributed
to Jesus of Nazareth. The Nazarites of my day were the same
as your modern monks. They shaved their heads as the crowning
act of their initiation. I never visited their settlements,
but those of them who were sent to us, always had their heads
shaven. [Did they get their name from a place or settlement?]
They came from Gaza. The Nazarites of my time were the
same in belief as the Unitarians of your day — that is they were
the worshippers of one God, and did not acknowledge an intercessor.
But they changed their views, subsequently, and
united with the Gnostics, with whom they became identified.
I think this will be made plain by sculptured inscriptions on the
ruins of ancient Hierapolis. I think if the ruins of that ancient
city could be properly explored, the truth of my communication
can be established. I felt that I could give my communication,
to-day, and I have therefore accompanied the medium
here for that purpose. [The medium told us that the spirit that
wanted to control him, had been with him for several hours
previously.] I think if you will carefully examine the most
ancient copies of the letter of Pliny to Trajan, you will find in
what respects it has been changed and interpolated. I am informed
that the two most ancient copies of it are in the Vatican
Library at Rome, and the Royal Library of Berlin.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 292 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to Smith’s Greek and Roman Biography and the Biographie
Universelle for account of Plotina Pompeia. [...]
[Pg 293]
We have every reason to feel that the testimony of this spirit
is in all essential particulars correct, and being so, it is most
important as collateral confirmation of the testimony of many
other spirits who have preceded her. But no points of her
testimony are more important than those which relate to
Apollonius’s visit to Jerusalem, and to the fact that he preached
in Rome in A.D. 85, during the reign of the emperor Domitian,
under the name of Paulus or Paul, thus identifying Apollonius
with the Jesus and Paul of the Christian Bible.
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FACILIDUS.
Negus or King of Abyssinia.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 294
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“I greet you, sir:— I reached the height of my time in
1642. I had to deal with the Jesuits of my time. They attempted
to force their religion upon my people. I was Negus
of Abyssinia in 1642. I want you to notice particularly that the
Adulian inscription was found within the borders of Abyssinia.
We were not worshippers of the Jehovah of the Jews, nor of
the Osiris of the Egyptians, but were a characteristic and distinct
people. We used the same religious forms that are used
by the Brahmins of India, but did not partake of their religion.
The pyramids were built in the way they are, to mark the
point in the heavens of the sun’s greatest elevation in his annual
route, after reaching which it began to descend. I want
you, if you can, to get some of the time-serving archaeologists
of your time to examine the ruins of Chendi, in Sennaar, and
compare the ruins that remain there, and the symbols thereon
inscribed, with the pyramids of Egypt, Boro Bodo, Mexico,
Central America and South America.
If they will make that
examination they will find that most all of the past and present
religions were derived from that portion of Sennaar that is in
the neighborhood of Chendi. I challenge them, one and all,
to successfully question what I have stated. People do not
want to have the truth known. They want something else
that accords with their ideas, as you have yourself said. [What
was the nature of the Adulian inscription?] The language of
it, as it was understood by me, meant that a great king of our
country proclaimed a trinity which was immaculately great,
that all people must be subordinate to. [Who was that king?]
His name commenced with an A. [Was it Aeizanes?] That
was his name. All names had great significance, and the
names of the most powerful generally began with the letter A,
that symbol representing the first one. It also denoted the
great developing forces in nature, to the artless people of ancient
times. [...]
[Pg 294]
[What was
the rank you held?] I was negus or king, and as such drove
the Christians out of the country, when I reigned in peace. A
particular friend of mine in spirit life will follow me, Father
Amiot, a French Jesuit. My name was Facilidas.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 295 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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The only reference we can find to Facilidas, is in the article
“Abyssinia” in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
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FATHER AMIOT.
A French Jesuit.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 295
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“A Jesuit, sir, has very little right to come into your sanctum.
[Certainly he has. You are very welcome.] I must of necessity
come here to-day. [We are very happy to have you come.] At
the time I left Europe for China, I was led to think the devil
had put his servants in the livery of heaven. No man can
to-day visit Canton, Hong Kong, Pekin, and other parts of
China, and not discover that the further he can get away from
the contaminating influences of Christianity, the more he will
find that the Buddhistic doctrines and sacred observances are
identical with those of Christianity, even to the eucharist.
This much I discovered, and I said: The servants of God have
given the devil power to duplicate their service on earth. But,
as a spirit, it is my duty to come here and say, that Christianity
owes its origin to Buddhism. It is useless for pseudo-philosophers
to try to make it appear that Buddhism did not exist
until six hundred years after the Christian era. There is a
time coming, and mark my words well, when this thing called
Christianity will not stand before unbiased thought and reason.
There are no Jehovahs — no creators — on the other side of life.
The development of matter is one thing and the force of spirit
or life is another. They are distinct. The expression of life in
matter is an effect of spirit on matter. They are governed by.
some undiscovered law, by which their amalgamation must
produce expression in organization. Buddhism, as far as I
have learned of it as a spirit, or as a mortal, started out with
the idea of one central power, giving life. All religions, so far
as I know as a spirit, are incorrect in one thing. They are all
deistic‡. I have met spirits whose life on earth dates back all
the way from the present time to eighty or ninety millions
years ago, who knew nothing but the central force of life as the
cause of all things. These naturally diverged in their beliefs.
Sofhe finding that by asking particular benefits of one god, they
have gained more from that god than any other, they adopted
him; and this praying to these different gods has caused the
division among men that you see. He who confuses or conceals
all truth, and seeks to tear up its very foundations, is
considered the grandest result of human progress; yet he is a
miserable failure. I mean the Pope. I would not say this today,
could I longer withhold it. [You have spoken of pseudophilosophers,
how do you know what they are doing?] I see
the actions of the spirits about those whom they are associated
in their work. It is by the influence of spirits hostile to the
truth that they write the nonsense they do. [Are those spirits
Jesuits?] They embrace all classes of spirits who want to prevent
the truth from becoming known; and they concentrate
their power around such persons as they can use.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 296 J.M. Roberts Commentary
‡ Deist: Someone who believes in a God who created the world, but does not act to influence events.
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Refer to the Biographie Universelle for account of Amiot.
The spirit of this learned and laborious Christian priest returns
to testify positively to the fact that the Buddhistic doctrines
and observances of China, were in the last century
identical with the religious doctrines and observances of the
Roman Catholic Christian Church. No one was more competent
than himself, he having resided in China for forty-three
years, to judge of the identity of the Buddhistic religion with
Christianity.
[...]
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CHARLES FRANCIS ALTER.
A German Jesuit.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 297
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“I salute you, sir: — The man or woman who originates or
introduces anything new in this universe, is one of the Saviours
of mankind. In my mortal life I was a Greek scholar, and
wrote some two hundred and fifty to two hundred and eighty
dissertations in the Greek, in the French, and in the German
tongue. Throughout my researches, I found that the Greek
tongue and the Sanscrit idioms are very much alike. I was
well informed in regard to all the Greek ideas of Eclecticism,
and in the Gospel of Apollonius of Tyana, as presented by his
disciples Potamon and Ammonius Saccas. You had a communication
given you that is mixed in its character. The spirit
had not the power to tell you just what he wanted to say.
[The communication referred to was that of Facilidas, the
Abyssinian negus.] I claim to know what he intended to say,
from my knowledge of the Greek, and especially from some
Pythagorean manuscripts, written either by Pythagoras, or his
followers, corroborated by Diodorus Sicculus, which manuscripts
were extant in Vienna, and had been obtained from the
same source as the Manuscript Greek copy of the Testament of
Cyrillus Lncaris, (The Alexandrian Codex). They were part
and parcel of MSS, that I preserved when at Constantinople.
Diodorus, by his comments upon it, and by the comments of
other historians before his time, shows that the primitive letters
or signs of the Sanscrit language, are to be found in the Gheez
language of Ethiopia. Facilidas wanted to testify to that fact,
but he failed to do what he intended. It is easy for spirits to
take control of the medium, but it is not so easy to say just
what they want to state. [Is it on account of that resemblance
between the letters of the Sanscrit and the Ethiopian languages,
that there is so strong a resemblance between the letters
of the Greek and Coptic alphabet?] Yes, and according to all I
ever learned, either through the Latin or Greek in relation to the
Ethiopian and Sanscrit tongues,
I concluded that if there was
any one place where man first attained to civilization, that
place was at or near Sannaar in Abyssinia, now called Nubia,
but at the beginning of this century, it was all embraced under
the designation of Abyssinia. In the school of Ammonius
Saccas, the two principal mystic symbols or signs were the
phallic cross and Aries or the Ram. And those symbols can
be seen upon the ruins still existing about five miles from
where Cosmos lndicopluestes discovered the Adulian inscription.
[What was the name of that place?] I have the name
at the end of my tongue, but I cannot speak it. You will find
it mentioned in the Cyclopaedia of Ancient Ruins, under the
title of Ancient Architecture. It was very foolish in me that
I did not write about these facts; but I did so as much as I
could, in exactly the same way that the spirit of Cornelius
Agrippa told you he did in his time — that is, I symbolized or
parableized them. There is no class of men so deep and subtle
as your modern priests and religious teachers of all kinds. The
truth with them, must ever yield to the demands of the stomach.
I only come to prepare the way for the next spirit,
Herennius, the contemporary of Plotinus, who will now proceed
to enlarge upon what I have stated, as the facts were
known to him in his day. I thank you for this hearing. [Had
you the writings of Herennius before you?] Yes. [Were they
among the papers you found at Constantinople?] Yes, and
from reading his writings I naturally formed an attachment
for Herennius. Indeed, I have been informed by him, in
spirit life, that he was my controlling guide. [Then you were
a medium?] Yes, and a member of the Jesuit order. Charles
Francis Alter. I died at Vienna in 1804.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 298 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to the Biographic Universelle for account of Charles
Francis Alter.
Charles Francis Alter was just the man to make the philological
discoveries of which he as a spirit speaks. There is no
historical mention made of his researches in relation to the
Eclectic philosophy of Potamon and Ammonius Saccas, but
we venture to say that among those two hundred and fifty
dissertations there will be found much to confirm this statement
of the spirit.
The explanation given of the failure of Facilidas to completely
say what was intended, is consistent with the experience
of many spirits. From the communication it wrould
appear that Alter was sent to Constantinople, but whether
upon a literary, a religious or a diplomatic mission, does not
appear in the current mention of him and his labors. If it
should prove true that the oldest known written language had
its origin in Ethiopia and not in India, and that the Sanscrit
alphabet is almost identical with that primitive Ethiopic
alphabet, then will the whole of the theories in relation to
ancient history, and especially in relation to what is called
sacred history, have to be abandoned. We are not yet prepared
to put forth a theory to substitute them; but, if what is promised
by s pirits in the way of information is ever fulfilled, it
will be no longer necessary to theorize at all. It is unfortunate
for us, and most fortunate for those who would conceal the
truth about these matters if they could, that so little is known
about the history and antiquities of Ethiopia.
[...]
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HERENNIUS.
A Contemporary of Plotinus.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 300
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[...] It was well known in my time at Alexandria,
and to Ammonius Saccas himself, and to others, that
the original or first writings or tablets of man’s history, were
found in Ethiopia and not in India or Tibet. Such was the
teaching of my time, and as far as I could find they were well
supported by the descending line of Neguses in Abyssinia.
The people of that country were taught by Jewish Rabbis in
the third century, and their religion then became mixed with
Judaism. These Jewish Rabbis went there about A. D. 290,
and wanted the Ethiopians to accept their rites of circumcision,
etc. But before that time these people had a clear and
positive record that will yet come to light, extending back
14,000 years. This will show that the civilizations of India
had its origin there, [...]
[Pg 301]
“Just as Christianity began to take its present shape, there was a
grand assembling of all the learned men of the world, who
came from India under the name of Gymnosophists; who
came from Singapoor under the name of Buddhists; who came
from Abyssinia as Geezaleze; and from about Syria and Judea
as Essenes, who mutually compared their religious systems to
see which was the best. And these learned men set about formulating
what would have been one of the highest and noblest
religions that was ever conceived by the minds of men. But
it was overthrown by that consummate scoundrel Constantine;
and ever since then you have been made to carry a weight
that almost crushes you to the earth. There is no sense in the
religion founded by Constantine. It contains all ceremonies
of the ancient pagans combined with a god that never existed;
and therefore I hope that the time will come when through
your efforts, and the man I am controlling, and through others
who think and act, that we can overturn this gigantic Christian
fraud. I thank you for this hearing.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 301 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to McClintock and Strong’s Encyclopaedia of Theological
Literature, under the title “Neo-Platonism,” part 7.
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AMELIUS.
A Disciple of Plotinus.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 303
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“I greet you, sir:— That the sun of eternal truth may
shine through the clouds of ignorance that now obscure the
reason of the majority of mankind, is my prayer. I was a
disciple and follower of the school of Apollonius, Potamon,
Ammonius Saccas, and Plotinus; and was the friend of Porphyry.
Il ooked upon Plotinus, my master, as the God of my
time. It is true that at times he was gloomy, and what you
might term ascetic; but for all that, the manifestations of
spirits through him, and the grand developing power he possessed
on those who were mediumistic, were of such a character
that for a hundred years after my time his disciples were
murdered because they would do no sacrifice at the dictation
of either the followers of Jupiter or Jesus.
Why, Eclecticism
was checked in its infancy, no one perhaps understands more
clearly than myself. The pagan priests preferred to see their
ceremonials kept up through the Catholic Church than to
allow them to die out before the consuming effects of the light
of eternal truth. But the absurdity of those ceremonials is now
very plain. The encroachments of the Christian priesthood
upon the domains of the ancient religions, such as Brahmanism,
Buddhism, Parseeism, Judaism and all the other ancient
religions, gave them such power as to supersede all of them;
[Pg 303]
I know, and positively assert, as I hope
for happiness in the spirit life, that the statutes of my master
and of Apollonius were privately worshipped by Alexander
Severus. These statues stood by each other in his temple, and
they were so much alike that you could hardly distinguish the
difference. In fact it was really taught in my day by some of
the disciples of Plotinus, and especially by Porphyry, that he
(Plotinus) was a reincarnation of Apollonius of Tyana. He,
Plotinus, did not so believe, but thought he was controlled by
the spirit of Apollonius. [...]
[Pg 303]
It is certain that he
was the only perfect follower of Ammonius Saccas. By that
I mean that his teachings were not blended with the philosophical
doctrines of Plato and Pythagoras, as were the teachings
of Apollonius of Tyana and his followers.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 303 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Refer to Biographie Universelle for account of Amelius.
Dr. Laulnaye the Cyclopaedist in the Biographie Universelle
to which we direct the reader’s attention for account of Amelius,
states that Amelius composed nearly a hundred treatises
of which none have come down to us. Here we ask, why have
none of those hundred treatises that Amelius wrote and published,
been permitted to come down to us? We answer, because
the founders of the religious or theological fraud called
Christianity could not afford to let it be known what the
Eclectic philosophy was, as they were seeking to found a false
religion by engrafting it upon that philosophy. The whole
literature of the Eclectic authors and philosophers has been
destroyed or concealed, except such perverted portions of their
writings as their Christian enemies have seen fit to preserve,
in order to mislead ttieir followers as to the true teachings of
Eclecticism, and the manifest Christian corruption of those
teachings. The simple fact that every trace of Eclecticism,
or Neo-Platonism, as Christian writers have called it, as to the
the theological nature of that philosophy, has been obliterated
or concealed, show that the originators and developers
of the Christian scheme of human enslavement by priestcraft,
saw that this was a necessity if they were to succeed;
and thus the fact of their conscious guilt is made manifest
beyond all question. Some of our readers may remember,
that the spirit of Pope Gregory VII., or the Great Gregory,
came, and confessed, through the medium that, about A. D.
1078, he ordered the Library of the Palatine Apollo, at Rome,
to be burned, in order to destroy the vast collection of writings
by authors of the Alexandrian school which were there deposited;
and which if they became known to the world at
large would have made an end of the Roman Catholic power.
In the commission of that awful crime against the rights and
interests of humanity, the writings of Amelius no doubt perished
with those of his predecessors, contemporaries, and
successors, in the promulgation of the Eclectic religion, or
philosophy.
By this communication from the spirit of Amelius, it would
appear that Potamon was not the originator of the Eclectic
philosophy, even if he was the first to establish it as a distinct
school — designated the Alexandrian school. The originator
of it was Apollonius of Tyana, who sought to found a religious
system that would become universal, which included more or
less of the dogmas, doctrines and tenets of Brahmanism,
Buddhism, Gymnosophism, Magianism, Judaism, Pythagoreanism,
Platonism, Stoicism and the other phases of Greek
and Roman philosophy. Amelius seems to have shared with
the learned Porphyry, the religious veneration with which the
latter regarded Plotinus, his great master. [...]
[Pg 305] It is not the least significant feature of this communication
that the spirit declares that the statues of Apollonius and
Plotinus stood side by side in the imperial temple of Alexander
Severus, and that they bore a striking resemblance to each
other. That they were held in the highest veneration by
Severus is very certain. Plotinus was a contemporary of Alexander
Severus, they being about of the same age; but Plotinus survived him thirty-five years. As a disciple of Ammonius
Saccas, Plotinus must have gained great distinction at an
early age, If what the spirit says is true, for Alexander died in
A. D. 235. The veneration of Alexander for Plotinus must
have arisen from the fact that the latter was the incarnation,
of, or was controlled and inspired by, the spirit of Apollonius
of Tyana, who was especially venerated by Alexander. Amelius
tells us that Porphyry regarded him as the re-incarnation
of the spirit of Apollonius, while Plotinus believed himself to
be only the medium for that venerated spirit.
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STRABO.
Historian and Geographer.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 306
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“I will salute you by saying: The truth must be unveiled.
We cannot longer afford to have any ‘Holy of Holies.’ I will
commence by saying: If the records of the past had been allowed
to stand, there would have been no Christianity to-day.
It was known and fully understood in my time, and it was
taught, that the doctrines of Pythagoras, Plato, and the Gymnosophists,
together with the doctrines regarding the gods and
goddesses of Greece and Rome, were to be found in the most
ancient inscriptions and writings, whether on stone or papyrus,
in Nubia, where there were evidences of a civilization so remote
that we ancients, as you would term us, had lost all knowledge
of it in the obscurity of time. I wrote upon this subject and
put my work in shape; but I know not whether I can give you
the title of it correctly through this medium. It meant ‘Ancient
Relics.” I wrote a book with that title, and it is now in the
possession of the Greek Church, and, I think, in the hands of
a Greek patriarch, at Moscow, Russia. It was saved by the
Caliph Omar, because of the singularity of its cover, which
had upon it a representation of the ancient serpent worship.
This cover was that of a book then extant, and I used it as the
cover of my book. After my death it was sent to Alexandria,
where it was captured. It was on sheepskin dyed red. About
the beginning of what is called the Christian era there was a
great revival among a class of people similar to your modern
Shakers, who went by the name of Essenes; but they did
not become a distinct people until about from A. D. 60 to 75.
Ignatius of Antioch was the first to bring them into prominence;
but their teachings were nothing new, and were almost
the same as you will find in the Pauline Epistles to the Galatians.
But let me return to the point I want to make.
Both in Sennaar and Abyssinia, and among the ruins scattered
throughout Nubia, you will find inscriptions which are similar
to those to be seen in the temple of Chrishna at Mathura, on
the Jumna, in India. If you will compare the oldest inscriptions
of the Temple at Mathura with those in Africa, to which
I have referred, you will find that nearly all the letters of the
ancient Sanscrit can be found in a pre-historic form amid the
ruins of Sennaar and other ruins of Nubia.
During the last years of my life there was an extraordinary young
neophyte who was preparing himself, by close communion with the
spirit world, to become the god of his time; but I died too
soon to see him commence his ministry and the performance of
his miracles. He then went by the name of “The Son of
Apollo,” or Apollonius. The nearest likeness of this man that
you can obtain, is the one which was painted in 1874, by the
artist medium N. B. Starr, who was inspired by Raphael. The
next spirit who will communicate is Phraotes, who was king
of Taxila. I passed away in A. D. 24.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 307 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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We take the following account of Strabo from the Encyclopaedia
Britannica:
“Strabo, an illustrious geographer, was born at Amasia, a
city of Cappadocia. The time of his birth cannot be ascertained
but he is known to have flourished during the age of Augustus
and Tiberius. Some writers have fixed his birth about B. C.
60, and Clinton makes it occur not later than B. C. 54. He
studied grammar and rhetoric under Aristodemus, at Nysa, in
Caria; philosophy under Xenarchus, a peripatetic; and he
took lessons with Tyrrannis of Amisus. Influenced by the
authority, probably, of Boethus of Sidon, who had been his
preceptor, he adopted the tenets of the Stoics. He obtained
the friendship of Cornelius Gallus, governor of Egypt. Strabo
composed a history in forty- three books which unfortunately
is now lost. In order to collect materials for his great work,
he travelled in many different regions, and after much toil and
research, completed his geography, which is justly regarded as
a very precious relic of antiquity. It consists of seventeen
books, all of which are not, however, entire.”
Strabo was one of the most remarkable of ancient writers. In
this brief account of him and his vast labors, we can see the
tracks of those Christian devils who destroyed so much of the
literature produced between B. C. 500 and A. D. 325, and
especially everything during that period, of a historical character,
which showed the falsity of Hebrew and Christian
theology? The great work on which Strabo expended all the
resources of his nature and most active years, has been destroyed,
while his geography, which was entirely fragmentary
and unconnected, has been allowed to come down to us in a
more or less mutilated condition. Why was the one destroyed
and the other mutilated? Have we not a right to infer, that
it was because it was not possible to have mutilated the connected
historical narrative without the design and object of the
mutilation being clearly manifest; while such mutilation of
the fragmentary work was possible without the true object of
the mutilation being discovered. This course has been pursued
in so many instances, that it will be found to have been a
canonized rule of Christian dealing with ancient literature.
Well does this spirit say: “If the records of the past had
been allowed to stand, there would be no Christianity to-day.”
The one fact, that those records are not in existence, is sufficient
to show that the authors of the religious fabrication
called Christianity, were compelled to destroy them to conceal
the monstrous crime against their fellow-men in which they
were engaged; and the pertinacity with which this work of
suppression and concealment is kept up by their successors,
down to the present time, makes the guilt of the Christian
clergy, in endeavoring to perpetuate that imposition, as great
as was the guilt of those who originated it and imposed it
upon humanity. These people give Strabo the title of geographer,
but for no better reason than that their guilty consciences
prompted them to conceal the fact that he was a historian
of the most profound erudition and of the highest authority.
In view of the numerous probabilities that this communication
is authentically from the spirit of Strabo, the information it
gives becomes of the highest interest.
It has been the generally received opinion that the Sanscrit
language is the oldest written language of the world. In the
light of the spirit disclosures that are being made in these
unprecedented spirit messages, this claim will have to be given
up; and, indeed, the whole history of the ancient world will
have to be rewritten. The spirit of Strabo tells us: “It was
known, and fully understood in my time, and it was taught,
that the doctrines of Pythagoras, Plato, and the Gymnosophists,
together with the doctrines regarding the gods and goddesses
of Greece and Rome, were to be found in the most
ancient inscriptions and writings, whether on stone or papyrus,
in Nubia, where there were evidences of a civilization so remote
that we ancients, as you would term us, had lost all
knowledge of it in the obscurity of time.” If this statement of
the spirit can be made good by still existing evidence, as we
are strongly inclined to believe will be done then Moses, the
Jews, and Christianity, must all be eliminated from the world’s
history, or be classed among the myths of the past, for they
must stand or fall together. [...]
[Pg 310] What the spirit says respecting the founding of Essenianism
is true, beyond reasonable doubt. The Christian writers have
claimed Ignatius of Antioch as a disciple of St. Peter, who
about A. D. 69, ordained him as a Christian bishop. It is
hardly necessary to say that this little piece of Christian history
is the purest fiction, since St. Peter was nothing more nor less
than a stone or rock, which was suppossed to support the
Roman Catholic Christian Church. Ignatius of Antioch was
not a Christian at all, but an Essene, who organized that sect
of religionists, and became their first patriarch about A. D. 67.
The spirit tells us that their religious doctrines were not new,
and were similar to those contained in the Epistle to the Galatians.
This is not only true, but the other Pauline Epistles
contam much doctrinal matter that was derived from the
Essenes by Apollonius, the St. Paul of the Christian Scriptures,
and was incorporated by him in the writings taken by Marcion,
the Gnostic, to Rome, about A. D. 140, from Antioch, where
he obtained them. At that date the Essenian sect had merged
into that of the Gnostics.
But the special interest of the communication centres in the
point made concerning the identity of the Sanscrit alphabet
with a much more ancient alphabet to be found sculptured on
the ruins existing in Abyssinia, Nubia and the neighboring
countries of Africa.
The reference of Strabo to Apollonius of Tyana, is very important,
in a s much as it shows, that as early as A. D. 25, the
renown of the latter had become general, although he had not
then begun his great mediumistic mission. His mediumship
and personal and mental characteristics must have been very
remarkable, to have received the title of Apollonius or “The
Son of Apollo,” the Grecian personification of the source of all
light and life — the “Glorious King of Day” — the Sun.
The reference of the spirit to the remarkable spirit painting
of Apollonius, is not the least important feature of this communication.
The picture is an oil painting likeness of a man
of thirty-three or thirty-four years of age, the expression of
whose features and attitude indicates the greatest purity of
life, benevolence of heart, and strength of mind and character.
It is a picture that fixes the attention at once, and grows in
interest the more it is examined. It was painted by the hand
of the venerable artist medium, N. B. Starr, and it is inscribed
“The Nazarene, painted by Raphael through N. B. Starr.”
At a materializing seance given at the residence of Col. ,
in Philadelphia, a spirit purporting to be Raphael, appeared
in materialized form. We asked permission to speak with him,
which was granted. On going forward to the cabinet, we saw
before us the materialized form of a man who bore a strong
resemblance to a picture purporting to be a likeness of himself,
which stood on an easel beside the cabinet, to which he
directed our attention by pointing to it. We then inquired of
him if he knew of the picture painted through the hand of
Father Starr. He answered, “Yes.” We then asked him
whose portrait it was. He answered: “Apollonius was the
Nazarene.” From these spirit statements, and the fact that
spirits through several other mediums have made similar statements,
we infer that we have a speaking likeness of Apollonius
at least as he appears spiritually to spirit eyes.
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PHRAOTES.
King of Taxila.
EXCERPT Notes | Pg 311
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“May the Sun of Truth ever shine upon your head! I
have been more than six months fighting my way here. The
corroborating evidence that I shall give you to-day of the
mediumship and exalted character of Apollonius of Tyana, is
such, that millions of Catholic spirits would rather cease to
exist than I should give it. I am Phraotes of Taxila. [Is the
name not Phraortes.] No. It is Phraotes. I belonged to what
was termed the Diamond Circle, by interpretation the Mountain
Circle, and was sworn to help to propagate the truth to
the best of my knowledge. I recognized but one master on
earth, whom I was expected to listen to, and he was enigmatically
called “The Sun of Truth.” He was the chief of the
Gymnosophsestse, and his name was Iarchus. The laws of the
Gymnosophsestae, required all princes, in those days, to take
a journey to a sacred shrine upon a mountain in Northern India,
and there they were instructed in all the virtues they
were expected to practice. On leaving Babylon and Nineveh,
for Taxila, the coming of Apollonius was announced by couriers,
who had preceded him, who represented him to be a good
and wise son of the Diamond Circle; not because he had been
accepted and initiated, but because he performed all the signs
required of a member. In other words he showed that the
spirits were with him in great power. When he arrived, I
introduced him to the learned of my court, and sent him
forward to Iarchus. The place where he (Iarchus) resided was
called in our time the Mountain of the Wise. There he was
initiated; and received many theurgical rites; and afterwards
returned to whence he had set out. I think he was at that
time about forty-seven years of age. He received and carried
back with him the sacred Testament of the Mountain of Light
Circle.
He received all the evangelical books save one, and
that one he failed to get, simply because it could not be had at
that time at the Mountain of the Wise. It had been taken
South by way of Ceylon to Singapoor. It was known in those
days as the Hamadan. It was afterwards called the Book of
Matthew, because it was written by a follower of Buddha,
whose Hindoo name was something like that. This book was
obtained by Armenian traders from Singapoor, two hundred
years before the time I speak of; and they would never return
it. It is therefore in Armenia that you must seek for the true
version of Matthew.”
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EXCERPT Notes | Pg 312 J.M. Roberts Commentary
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Such was the communication of the spirit of Phraotes, the
fellow Gymnosophist of Apollonius of Tyana. It is impossible
to question the genuineness and authenticity of that communication,
as our readers may readily see, if they will read
the Life of Apollonius by Philostratus. It is strange, but
true, that the only historic mention of Phraotes is found in
connection with the account given by Damis, the disciple of
Apollonius, of their mutual journey into India by the way of
Nineveh, Babylon and Taxila. There is in that biography
quite a detailed account of what occurred at the court of
Phraotes during a three days visit of Apollonius. This account
we are indebted for to Philostratus, the biographer of
Apollonius. [...]
[Pg 313] But the most important and significant part of this spirit’s
testimony, is his statement that Apollonius carried with him
from India the sacred Testament of the Mountain of Light
Circle; and that he received all the evangelical books save one,
which one he failed to get because it was not to be had at that
time at the Mountain of the Wise. Phraotes tells us, it had then
been taken by way of Ceylon to Singapoor. Whether or not
there was a Buddhistic gospel called the Hamadan we do not
know, neither do we know of any follower of Buddha whose
name resembled Matthew. These are matters we must let pass
for what they are worth. * But that Armenian traders brought
a Buddhistic gospel from Singapoor, into Armenia, and that
that gospel related to the Hindoo Saviour Christau is certain.
This accounts for the fact that one of the oldest copies of that
gospel was found in India by Pantsenus in the second century.
On that point, McClintock & Strong’s Cyclopaedia of Theological
Literature says:
“Pantsenus, a Christian philosopher [in other words an
Eclectic philosopher,] of the Stoic sect, flourished in the
second century. He is supposed to have been a native of
Alexandria, and to have taught philosophy and religion there,
about A. D. 180. He went on a mission to Ethiopia, [the
Greeks called the country of India, Ethiopia,] from whence he
is said to have brought the Gospel of St. Matthew, written in
Hebrew. (Eusebius Hist. Eccles. v. 10.).”
From the cumulative testimony pouring in upon this subject
it is quite evident that the Hebrew writing part of the story is
the work of Eusebius, who did not dare to let it be known
that Pantsenus had found the Gospel of Matthew written in
the Sanscrit or Pali tongue. It is therefore highly probable
that what Phraotes says about the Singapoor Buddhistic
Hamadan, and its being identical with the Christian Gospel
of St. Matthew is substantially, if not literally true. It is
this vast accumulation of spirit testimony, all tending to establish
the fact that the so-called Christian Scriptures are
borrowed or stolen from the Buddhistic scriptures of India,
corroborated as it is at almost every point by undeniable historical
facts, that leaves no room for reasonable doubt of its general
and essential truth. Well did the spirit of Phraotes say that
there were millions of Catholic spirits who would rather cease
to exist than this truth should become known to mankind.
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