The Satanic Cult Hardcover – January 1, 1980, 165 pages for the central text, looks good.
by Gerhard P Zacharias
Was actually first published in German in 1964. Now with this 1980 English translation the author wrote a forward page. It talks about the Counter Culture and the Anti-War movement, especially in Germany.
Talking about Epiphanius of Salamis and his Panarion, denouncing the Barellites, or PHibionite gnostics.
p29ff
"
According to the doctrine of the Phibionites, the sexual act must not lead to the begetting of children; instead, the sperm is collected to be used in the rite which follows. Here the contrast with Chrisitian teachings is an extreme one; in the opinion of the theologians the procreation of children is one of the most important aims -- according to some even the first aim -- of sexual union, so that Catholic moral theology strictly forbids any mechanical means to prevent this result. Many medieval theologians even went so far as to say that demons were conceived from seed that had no been put to its natural use.
In order to understand why the Phibionites were urged to avoid having children, we must realise that it is a basic part of the gnostic belief to view the seed as good in itself, charged with divine power; but the begetting of new human beings is to be prevented in order to keep the domain of the Archon who rules creation as small as possible. The Archon is thus to be tricked through the sexual act.
Now follows the offering of the sperm, described here by Epiphanius as 'filth'. The Phibionites raised to heaven their sperm-covered hands -- according to the last paragraph of out text they do this naked -- addressing these words to God the Father: 'We offer thee ths gift, the body of Christ.' It is an exact parallel with the Church's sacrificial offering, the 'Anaphora'. In order to clarify the meaning of this action, we must first look more closely at the symbolism of the sperm for the Gnostics.
Sperm has been regarded since very ancient times as endowed with mysterious power or mana, and so has a part to play in many magical rites and in the folklore of antiquity. On a higher level it is directly associated with the pneuma, the life-giving breath of the Spirit, a connection which emerges particularly clearly in Democrites, Aristotle, and the Stoics. In the Septuagint the Hebrew word ruah for the spirit of God that hovered over the face o fthe waters at the beginning of Creation is translated pneuma. This was the origin of the Gnostics' speculations. It was believed 'that this pneuma is nothing more or less than sperm, the life-giving stuff the created the world and mankind. The pneuma is thus the God head it self, possessed by man in his own seed...To be united with God means that one's seed is fused into one with the seed of the universe. To be redeemed means to release one's seed from its earthly destiny and return it to the divine source of all seed.'
In the Phibionites' feast, the sperm, corresponding to the bread in the liturgy of the Church, becomes the body of Christ; this rests upon two premises. It is a return the early Christian, pre-Nicene belief according to which Christ and the Holy Ghost, the Logos and the Pneuma, were almost the same thing, and at the same time Christ, as the 'Pneuma', is identified with the divine pneuma which the Gnostics believed to be present in sperm.
The essence of the Church's communion service is the Amaphora. It is in essence a hymn, with a succession of fixed structural elements (Eucharist, Anamnesis, Epiclesis). The Anaphora is based on two ideas, consecration and sacrifice. The Phibionite Anaphora is limited to the sacrificial aspect, and this is expressed in one single sentence (occurring in the old form of the liturgy usually at the end of the Anamnesis, the commemoration of Christ's work of healing). By offering the sperm to the Omni-present Father, whose wholeness, or Pleroma, embraces the Earth mother, the might of the Archon, who stole the divine powers from Heaven, is broken.
"
Tobias Churton also talks about this and shows how it is similar to Tantric practices, not American neo-Tantra, but Eastern Tantra.
amazon.com
And it is also similar to the tantra influenced practices of Kenneth Grant, in his London Nu-Isis temple of the OTO.
My first TUSCL thread!
SJG
very well composed dancer picture
tuscl.net