Reply to a friend:
’That which is called the Christian religion existed among the ancients and never did not exist from the beginning of the human race.’
"This sense of the Christian Religion being understood it may be said today that Christianity is a system of mere beliefs; and the church does not teach the Christian religion and it is not in any sense the religion of Christ understood as you would want it practiced."
Its worse than that, its just an ideology. It is the anathema of faith, it is based on fear and on fatalism. And I am completely opposed to it.
What you are saying to me sounds a lot like Richard Rohr.
amazon.com
I agree with Rohr. I see the Christ of Believers as the Anti-Christ. Universality is the answer to the I AM A CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT.
Rohr also delayed publication of his book to allow for Crossan.
Extremely interesting, and largely a picture book
amazon.com
Though I like what Rohr and Crossan are doing, I still stop short of going totally along with them in their public advocacy of Christianity. I take much exception to each of them.
People need completely different kinds of education, in my view.
Reading A. E. Waite on Saint-Martin
It is a difficult book, long, having to read large sections multiple times.
It was also written so long ago, 1901, that it cannot comment on much which has transpired since.
So there is talk about Jules Doinel
en.wikipedia.org
Doinel being a contemporary of Waite and Papus.
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
This is pretty much one and the same with the OTO today. But sounds like originally it was a break away from Doinel's church.
oto-usa.org
OTC/EGC
hermetic.com
Now this is something else, I think the guy in Los Angeles, Stephan A. Hoeller
en.wikipedia.org
Now here we have OMS
martinism.net
We also have this:
gclvx.org
Then we have this Gnostic Church
ecclesiagnosticauniversalis.org
That this maybe is the same as the one which connects with the OTO?
ecclesiagnosticauniversalis.org
Its art work to me seems suggestive of the Gnostic Mass. Above group seems to be breaking with OTO and Thelema and to have some ideas of its own.
I guess this is where much of my confusion about Waite rests. He talks like Martinism flows directly into a Gnostic Church. And these Austin OMS people seem to be saying the same things.
OMS Martinist / Gnostic Video, quite interesting.
youtube.com
So much of what Waite is saying about Saint-Martin is that it is just about the origins of evil. And it is how you get from number 1 to number 2.
Long ago, someone well schooled in Jean Gebser, quoted someone else and told me that everything just comes down to how you get from one to two.
So Waite makes it like Martinism just flows into a Gnostic Church.
And he talks about Jules Doinel
Okay, but Doinel eventually abandoned his Gnostic Church and went back to Catholicism and repented.
And Waite was writing in 1901. It is later that Gnostic groups really got going.
And much of it does seem related to Crowley's Gnostic Mass. He wrote that in 1913, while in Moscow.
To me it seems that with the opening and closing of the curtains in front of the altar that he had to have been influenced by the Eastern Orthodox Mass.
And then to me, Crowley with his naked woman on the altar, it never seemed that that was intended to result in real sex. It was more just to provoke the imagination. Though I suppose it could lead to whatever one wanted it to lead to.
Same for Anton LaVey.
Here, OTO in Los Angeles, late 30's, attic of a house:
66.media.tumblr.com
And then later this would be moved to Pasadena as Jack Whiteside Parson's took it over. With Marjorie Cameron they would be making a Moon Child, so they said. And with the scrying assistance of the notorious L. Ron Hubbard. I am totally opposed to Hubbard.
And then it would be some from this 1940's group in Pasadena who would emerge again in the 1970's as the widow of one Karl Germer passed away and there was conflict over who had rights to the library, and as to who runs the OTO world wide.
And then Waite has written about "Devil Worship in France" which he seems to be saying is somehow related to Martinism.
Anton LaVey's practice of a naked woman on an altar seems to have come from Joris-Karl Huysmans's "Das Bas". But with LaVey it still seems like the whole thing is just intended to scandalize people to make them curious.
Maybe with Kenneth Grant, a tantra scholar, rituals with a naked woman on the altar, were intended to lead to real sex. But there is a serious paucity of available books from which to learn about him.
But this and this author are really interesting:
amazon.com
And then with the Chaos Magick people, there really are no rules, so it could go how ever people want.
So these OMS people in Austin TX seem to see Martinism as going to a Gnostic Church.
And then I guess I want to see Martinism and Gnosticism and Kabbalah as related to the ideas of Jean Gebser.
Crowley's Gnostic Mass, naked woman sitting on the altar, and such suggested by the above Gnostic Church, to me what it seems to be is indeed about the number 2, as in the Priestess sitting on her throne for the second Major Arcanum of the Tarot.
i.ytimg.com
Some of this gets into the question of just how many different ritual types are their in Western Religion and Esotericism.
Looking at some Martinist stuff, theirs seem like table top ritual. But they are coming from a Masonic background. And how much does Masonic ritual have to do with what went on in Egyptian, Hebrew, and Jewish temples, and even with animal sacrifice.
And then there is the Christian Eucharist, and is that really a separate thread? Seemingly tied to Melchizedek, and to Egypt, and presented as being the alternate form to liturgical sex, and then this also suggested by what we know of Gnosticism of the Apostolic Era.
And then Robert Ellwood of the Theosophical Society tying Eucharist to Masonic rituals and to the mystery schools of the Roman Empire too.
I am really just treading water in all this. I have to ask myself, do I have enough time left on this present incarnation to be able to read the hundred or so more books it seems like I am going to need to really understand this stuff.
SJG