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THE 
 
 MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 ACCORDING TO 
 
 lOANNES 
 
 (T4 KarA, 'ludvvTiv 'Ei/oyyAuii') 
 
 COMMONLY CALLED 
 
 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO [ST.] JOHN 
 
 A VERBATIM TRANSLATION FROM THE GREEK DONE IN MODERN 
 ENGLISH WITH INTRODUCTORY ESSAYS AND NOTES 
 
 JAMES M. PRYSE 
 
 Nbw York 
 
 THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 OF NEW YORK 
 
 344 Lenox Avbnus 
 
 1909 
 
^5 
 
 
 
 CfOJ 
 
 Oopyriglit, 1909, 
 
 by 
 
 The Theoaophical FnbUshing Company of Xeir Tork 
 
 Entered at Stationers* Hall, 
 
 London 
 
 Y5l4J!l.iJ 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAOB 
 
 Preface 1 
 
 The Seen and the Unseen 7 
 
 The Four Evangels 31 
 
 The Drama of the Soul 41 
 
 Explanatory Note 59 
 
 The Magical Message According to I6ANNi!s 71 
 
 Appendix I., The Prodigal Son 219 
 
 Appendix II., The Birth from Above . . .223 
 Index op Notes 229 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 This work is a literal translation of tlie fourth 
 Evcmgel, preserving its philosophical and mys- 
 tical terminology, and, as far as possible, the 
 peculiarities of its literary form. The modern 
 English style is followed in this translation, not 
 only for the sake of clearness, but also because 
 it fairly represents the simple, homely, and 
 halting G-reek of the Evangel. The lack of 
 English equivalents for many of the G-reek 
 words and phrases makes it impossible to ren- 
 der these satisfactorily in some passages, but 
 in all such eases explanatory foot-notes are 
 added, giving definitions and more adequate 
 renderings than could be observed in the close 
 and literal translation. These notes, being in- 
 dexed, form a glossary of aU the important 
 words in the Evcmgel, thus enabling the reader, 
 even if unacquainted with the Greek language, 
 to follow the terminology as closely in the trans- 
 lation as could be done in the G-reek text itself, 
 and afEording him almost every advantage to 
 be had from a study of the original. 
 
 The introductory essays and other explana- 
 
2 PEEFACE. 
 
 tory matter deal with the philosophical basis 
 and mystical sense of the Evcmgel, without en- 
 tering needlessly into controversial subjects. 
 That the teaching of Ksous was largely alle- 
 gorical is clearly apparent from the subject- 
 matter of the four Evcmgels, as well as from such 
 express statements as that in Matthew xiii. 34 : 
 " AH these things ISsous spoke to the people in 
 parables, and without a parable he did not 
 speak [anything] to them." That the teaching 
 had an inner and concealed meaning, divulged 
 only to the few who were worthy to receive it, 
 is evident from many passages in the New Tes- 
 tament; and it was so held by all the early 
 Christian sects, and plainly admitted by the 
 patristic writers. But, in addition to this alle- 
 gorical teaching, certaia rules of right-conduct 
 are given, which constitute, not a mere arbi- 
 trary code of ethics, but one based upon the 
 laws of man's inner nature, his relation to Deity, 
 to Nature, and to his fellow-beings. It is only 
 by living according to these rules of right-con- 
 duct that the will of the man comes into har- 
 mony with the will of The God ; and in ISannSs 
 (vii. 17) the final test is laid down : " If any one 
 wills to do his will, he shall have knowledge 
 about the teaching, whether it is from The 
 God." Obviously, then, the one thing essential 
 is to lead such a life as will unify the individual 
 consciousness with that which is universal and 
 
PREFACE. 3 
 
 divine ; for there is no other path to spiritual 
 knowledge. True Being can be attained only 
 through right-living, and never through spec- 
 ulation, argumentation, or wrangling over 
 theories. In man, if he will but use them, are 
 spiritual and psychical faculties by means of 
 which he can gain as certain knowledge of the 
 realms of the Soul as he can acquire of the outer 
 world through his physical senses. But the 
 use of these inner faculties is possible only 
 when the whole life of the man is made pure, 
 his heart cleansed from aU evil passions, his mind 
 freed from all bigotry and intolerance. The 
 impure heart, the narrow mind, are not fit re- 
 ceptacles for divine wisdom. Mere intellectual 
 assent to an historical record does not make 
 the grave a door to heaven, or constitute Death 
 the unveiler of Life eternal. True knowledge, 
 the direct perception of things spiritual, comes 
 only when right-conduct is followed, and the 
 outer nature of man attuned to the inner and 
 divine nature. The physical body cannot be- 
 come immortal, nor does the mere disintegration 
 of the body of flesh open the way to immortal- 
 ity. It is the Truth alone that makes man free ; 
 and the Truth is not to be known through blind 
 credulity or through contention about beliefs. 
 
 It was not tiU long after the time of I§sous 
 that the dogmas of Theology were formulated ; 
 and so far from these dogmas being based on 
 
4 PEEFAOE. 
 
 the teacliings contained in the New Testament^ 
 it is only too apparent that in the translation 
 and interpretation of the New Testament every 
 effort has been made to torture it into a con- 
 fession of such doctrines as eternal damnation, 
 imputed righteousness, and vicarious atone- 
 ment. This could only be done by maintaining 
 the theory that many of the Grreek words in the 
 New Testament were used in a new and peculiar 
 sense by its writers. Now, there is no evidence 
 whatever that any such new sense was intended 
 by them; on the contrary, their use of philosophi- 
 cal and other technical terms is very exact, and 
 in strict accord with the meanings found in 
 Q-reek literature generally. In the present 
 translation, the fictitious theological termi- 
 nology has been wholly ignored, and each word 
 is translated agreeably with its primary mean- 
 ing, its natural and obvious relation to the con- 
 text, and its ordinary signification as used by 
 G-reek mystical writers. Accuracy and clear- 
 ness have been aimed at, rather than mere 
 beauty of language; and the wording of the 
 Q-reek has been followed as closely as possible 
 in the English, while making full allowance 
 for idiomatic differences. 
 
 James M. Prtse. 
 New Yoek, January, 1900. 
 
THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN 
 
THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN. 
 
 Concerning Deity and Nature, and the rela- 
 tion of man to both, the teachings of the New 
 Testament do not differ from those of any other 
 ancient religious cult or philosophical system. 
 However dissimilar these various systems may 
 be in their external forms of expression, their 
 nomenclatures, symbologies, and formulations, 
 they are yet at one on every fundamental prop- 
 osition. This essential unity of all the old re- 
 ligions and philosophies is clearly apparent to 
 every one who studies and compares them with 
 a mind open to receive truth from any source 
 and a heart in sympathy with the nobler aspi- 
 rations of humanity which seek expression in 
 every age. As an introduction to the profoundly 
 mystical and philosophical Evangel of I6ann§s, 
 a brief summary is here given of the basic con- 
 cepts common to aU the old philosophies, and of 
 the mystical tenets as to the nature of man and 
 his place in the imi verse, material and divine. 
 
 The finite mind can not cognize the infinite 
 Deity, who is beyond all human thought or con- 
 
 7 
 
8 THE EVANGEL ACCORDING TO lOANN^S. 
 
 sciousness, and to be known only through his 
 manifestation in the Universe, of which he is 
 the source and origin. According to loannes 
 he is "The God," "the Only One," and the 
 Universe — or " all things," manif oldness spring- 
 ing from the Divine Unity — comes into being 
 through his objectivized Thought, or Logos. 
 Yet even The God is not the unthinkable Ab- 
 solute, to which ancient philosophy gave neither 
 name nor attributes. 
 
 The crude notion that The God is a person 
 who created the Universe, which thus had a 
 " beginning," needs but a moment's serious con- 
 aderation to be rejected. If The God is a 
 person, then he is limited, for that which is 
 unlimited can not be personal. But it is im- 
 possible to conceive of ultimate limits to Space, 
 for the instant the attempt is made the mind 
 seeks to fathom what would lie beyond those 
 limits ; therefore, if The God were personal, he 
 could not pervade all Space, and there would be 
 regions void of Deity. If The God created the 
 Universe, out of what material did he fabricate 
 it ? The answer that he created it out of nothing 
 is too puerile to be considered; for it means, 
 if it has any meaning, that he did not create it 
 out of anything, which is equivalent to saying 
 that he did not create it at all. If he created it 
 out of substance already existing, then obvi- 
 ously that substance had existed always, and is 
 
THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN. 9 
 
 eternal ; and if it be regarded as " dead " mat- 
 ter, and apart from Deity, then there are two 
 Eternals, and The God is not all-present, for he 
 is not within the " dead " matter, and is but a 
 limited, conditioned Being. The Universe could 
 have had no "beginning" in manifested Time, 
 for Time is but the consciousness of change and 
 transition in the Universe itself.^ The " past " 
 is that which no longer exists ; the " future " is 
 that which has not yet come into existence; 
 while the " present " is but the dividing-line be- 
 tween these two. How long is the "present"? 
 The " present day " lies partly in the past, partly 
 in the future ; and so of the hour, the minute, 
 the second. The " present " is therefore infini- 
 tesimal, an imaginary dividing-line between the 
 beginningless " past " and the endless " future." 
 
 The Grod is boundless Duration, limitless 
 Space, unconditioned Essence of Being." 
 
 The Logos is manifested Time, objectivized 
 Space, differentiated Essence of Being.' 
 
 1 The Messenger (angelos) . . . swore by him who lives 
 throughout the On-goiugs of the On-goings, ..." Time 
 shall be no more." Bev. x. 5, 6. 
 
 2 There are many Gods and many Masters ; but for us 
 [there is] one Father-God, out of whom [are] all [things], 
 and we [are] in him ; and one Master, Anointed ISsous, 
 through whom [are] all [things], and we through him. 
 I. Cor. viii. 5, 6. 
 
 3 All [things] came into being through him, and apart 
 from him not one single [thing] oame into being. Jno. i. 3. 
 
10 THE EVANGEL ACCOEDING TO i6ANN£8. 
 
 The Universe is the lUusion of separateness 
 from The God/ 
 
 The God, unmaniEested, is One ; ^ in manifes- 
 tation, threefold.' Duration, manifested, is 
 threefold Time; Space, manifested, is three- 
 dimensional; Essence of Being, manifested, 
 emanates three Worlds.* Therefore the sym- 
 bol of Super-Nature, the One and its primary- 
 manifestation, is the sacred Four. 
 
 Nothing is created : manifestation is a com- 
 ing out of the Eternal into time,^ out of the 
 Limitless into embodiment, out of the Change- 
 less into transition. The "Within for ever is ; ^ 
 the Without is for ever becoming. The Universe 
 is as boundless as Deity; it is beginningless 
 
 1 He was in the world, and through him the world came 
 into being, and the world did not discern him. Jno. i. 10, 
 
 2 You believe that The God is One. Jos. ii. 19. That 
 Eadiance which comes from the Only One. Jno. v. 44. 
 God is One. Gal. iii. 20. 
 
 s There are Three who bear witness, the Breath, and 
 the Water, and the Blood; and the Three [are] in the 
 One. I. Jno. v. 7, 8. 
 
 * May your entire [being] — the Breath, and the Psy- 
 chic-nature, and the [physical] Body — be kept blameless. 
 I. Thess. Y. 23. 
 
 5 The arcane wisdom which The God pre-appointed be- 
 fore the On-goings. I. Cor, ii. 7. The On-goings have been 
 adjusted by God's command, in order that the [things] that 
 are seen might be generated from the [things] that do not 
 manifest. Heb. xi. 3. 
 
 6 Before Abraham came into being I am. Jno. viii. 58. 
 
THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN. 11 
 
 and endless ; its matter and force are limitless 
 as to quantity. 
 
 Time manifests in cycles, for ever returning 
 upon itself, in days, months, and years, with 
 their fourfold divisions, up to the Four Ages, 
 the future ever becoming the present, yet re- 
 peating the past. 
 
 In Space the heavenly bodies move along their 
 cyclic paths, measuring time and the seasons. 
 
 The Eternal Essence, in the out-going, be- 
 comes matter; in the in-going, it re-becomes 
 Divine Substance, in never-ending cycles. 
 
 These cycles in Time, Space, and Substance, 
 are the On-goings,^ or outbreathings and in- 
 breathings of the Divine Life. The First of 
 the On-goings is the Fulness ^ of The God, the 
 totality of aU manifestation in Super-Nature. 
 Each of the On-goings is a collective Being, 
 constituted of a host of lesser beings, and the 
 Logos is the synthesis of all these in subjective 
 Nature.' In the outermost point of the cycle 
 
 1 The God . . . has spoken to us in the last of these 
 days by a Son, . . . through whom also he made the On- 
 goings. Jffefe. i. 1, 2. Not only in this On-going but also 
 in the coming one. Eph. i. 21. An unveiling of a Mystery 
 which has been kept in sUence in On-going Times. Bom. 
 xvi. 25. 
 
 ^ It was determined that in him all the Fulness should 
 dwell. Col. i. 19. In him dwells all the Fulness of the 
 God-state bodily. Col. ii. 9. 
 
 * He is an image of the invisible God, the firstborn of 
 
12 THE EVANGEL AOCOBDING TO lOANN^iS. 
 
 of manifestation, these On-goings become the 
 worlds, suns, planets, races of beings, in periods 
 of involution and evolution; and the visible 
 Universe is the sum-total of these in objective 
 Nature. 
 
 Thus there is an endless succession of spheres 
 of being, worlds outbreathed into Space, and 
 again inbreathed when their life-cycle is run. 
 Of these, the ones visible to man constitute but 
 an infinitesimal part ; for the One Substance is 
 of every degree of tenuity, and but few of its 
 manifold Elements are perceptible to the physi- 
 cal senses of man, there being states of sub- 
 stance both grosser and more ethereal than 
 what he recognizes as matter ; and these various 
 states of substance interpenetrate one another, 
 forming worlds within and without, no point 
 in Space being void of sentient life. 
 
 The Eternal Essence, in its out-going and in- 
 going, manifests as Spirit ; at the point where 
 the out-going impulse ceases, it manifests as 
 Matter. There is no "dead matter" in the 
 Universe ; every molecule of matter must re- 
 
 everything embodied; for in him all [things] were em- 
 bodied, those in the Skies and those on the Earth, those 
 visible and those invisible, whether Thrones or Master- 
 ships, whether First-principles or Authorities ; all [things] 
 have been embodied through him and in him ; and he is 
 before all [things], and in him all [things] hold together. 
 Col i. 15-17. 
 
THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN. 13 
 
 become pure spirit. Now, when an On-going — 
 whether a World, the Earth, or a Race — hav- 
 ing fulfilled its life-period, is indrawn and dis- 
 appears from objective Nature, only that por- 
 tion of it which has been spiritualized returns 
 to the true Essence of Being ; that which is im- 
 perfect remaining in the spheres of subjective 
 Nature; so that when it is again outbreathed, 
 this residuum, being lowest, is first in manifes- 
 tation. The new World-period, therefore, opens 
 with Chaos, the G-reat Deep, the formless ele- 
 ments in Space, holding in latency all that was 
 imperfect in the preceding period. The Light ' 
 of the Logos, the formative force of the Divine 
 Thought, shining into the Darkness of the tur- 
 bulent elements, reduces them to order and 
 brings the Kosmos into existence; but this 
 force, energizing all things, awakens the latent 
 imperfect and blind forces of Chaos, which in 
 their synthesis become the Dragon of Darkness, 
 who is the Adversary of the Logos.^ The Good, 
 the True, the Beautiful, come from the Logos ; * 
 the evil, the false, the ugly, come from the Chaos. 
 
 1 For everything manifested is Light. Eph. v. 13. 
 
 2 The Great Dragon, the primeval Snake, called " Ac- 
 cuser " and " Adversary,'' who leads astray the whole in- 
 habited world. Sev. xii. 9. 
 
 3 The fniit of the Light is in every goodness and truth. 
 Uph. V. 9. Every good bequest and every perfect gift is 
 from above, coming down from the Father of the Lights. 
 Jas. i. 17. 
 
14 THE EVANGEL ACCORDING TO i6ANNI:S. 
 
 The G-od, in his Fulness, is a Divine Unity, 
 unmanifested, yet pervading all things in the 
 three manifested Worlds/ 
 
 The first of these Worlds, the Spiritual, is that 
 of the Logos, or Divine Ideation, containing 
 the Archetypes of all things that are to exist. 
 It is the model of the Universe as conceived in 
 the Mind of The God. 
 
 The second World, the Psychic, is that of 
 conflicting Forces, and is the field of the War 
 in the Heavens, the Hosts of the Logos battling 
 with the awakened Energies of the chaotic 
 darkness. It is the Circle of Inehoation in the 
 Great Deep, the transition-sphere in which aU 
 things " come into being " through the forma- 
 tive force of the Logos. 
 
 The third World, the Physical, is that of the 
 gross elements, the dregs of Being, the extreme 
 of differentiation or separateness. Though it 
 came into being through the Logos, the divine 
 Light shines into it but dimly, and it is under 
 the sway of the blind, turbulent forces inherent 
 in the gross elements. The Adversary, who is 
 the Leader of the Forces of Darkness, is there- 
 fore said, mystically, to be the Ruler of the ma- 
 terial world ; ^ while the Logos is personified as 
 
 1 One God and Father of all, who [is] over all, and 
 through all, and in aU. Eph. iv. 6. 
 
 2 The Kuler of the world is coming, and he has nothing 
 in me. Jno. xiv. 30. 
 
THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN. 15 
 
 the Saviour of the world,* the only Son of The 
 God offered up as a voluntary sacrifice. Below 
 the elements now manifested are denser states 
 of matter — " depths of the Adversary." 
 
 Each of these three Worlds reflects the en- 
 tire process of manifestation, and is therefore 
 septenary in its nature, having realms that 
 correspond to the fourfold inner Deity and to 
 the three stages of externalization. And as 
 three stages on the returning arc correspond to 
 these three out-going ones, there are thus six 
 days of labor, with a seventh of rest. And this 
 sequence holds good of every On-going, whether 
 a planetary system, the Earth, or a Race. What- 
 ever is true of the great cycle is true of every 
 smaller cycle. As The God is The One, so the 
 Universe is The One, or Unity manifesting in 
 Diversity; and the separateness is only in 
 seeming, every part reflecting The One, and a 
 single Law reigning throughout the whole. 
 
 The God and all the realms of Nature are 
 mirrored in Man, whose Soul, or True Self, is of 
 fourfold Being, with an appropriate form or 
 vehicle for acting in each of the three Worlds. 
 These four In-beings and three Out-beings are, 
 in the nomenclature of the New Testament 
 writers, as follows : 
 
 1 To you is born to-day a Saviour, who is an Anointed 
 Master. Lk. ii. 11. 
 
16 THE EVANGEL ACCOKDING TO idANNiS. 
 
 The FouBFOiiD Innee Man. 
 
 1. Tiie God (ho theos), the Father/ 
 
 2. The Primordial Essence, or Origin {he arche)^ 
 
 the Mother. 
 
 3. The Formative Thought (ho logos), the Son. 
 
 4. The Breath {to pneuma), the Life-principle.* 
 
 The Theeefold Manifested Man. 
 
 5. The Spiritual Body {soma pneumatikon). 
 
 6. The Psychic Body {soma psuchikon)? 
 
 7. The Physical Body {soma), or " Flesh " {sarx). 
 
 Incarnated man is thus a septenary being, 
 and a universe in small. In his highest Essence 
 he is one with The God; and in the Divine 
 Eealms he is one of the Gods who collectively 
 are the Logos, and who incarnate in the mate- 
 rial Universe, or Kosmos, to redeem it. He 
 has share in all the On-goings, and repeats in 
 his own life-periods the whole process of the 
 manifestation of the great Universe, of which 
 
 1 " I said, Ye are Gods." Jno. x. 34. 
 
 2 If the Breath of him who raised up I^sous from the 
 dead dwells in you, he who raised up the Anointed from 
 the dead shall make alive also your mortal bodies, through 
 the indwelling of his Breath in you. Bom. viii. 11. 
 
 8 There is a psychic body (s6ma psuchikon), and there ia 
 a spiritual body (s6ma pneumatikon). I. Cor, xv. 44. 
 
THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN. 17 
 
 all the Intelligence, Forces, and Elements are 
 focussed in him. In the highest Realm, the 
 Fulness (pleroma), he is the synthesis of all ab- 
 stract qualities and attributes; as a Master- 
 builder in Spatial Life, he is an ideal Form 
 containing all potentialities of forms; in his 
 psychic body are force-centres into which con- 
 verge all the forces of the World-Soul; even 
 his physical body is an epitome of the material 
 "World, its various organs and senses bringing 
 it into relation with every department of Na- 
 ture. Hence man, in proportion as he comes to 
 a knowledge of himself, becomes a knower of 
 the Universe. Man represents that stage in 
 the progress of Becoming when that which is 
 of a part, the individual, attains to a realiza- 
 tion of True Being, the One ; and as every part 
 must pass through this stage before the mani- 
 fested All can become conscious of the Divine 
 Unity, it follows that every being in the Uni- 
 verse is either an incipient, an imperfect, or a 
 perfected Man. 
 
 The Soul itself subsists in the One, and abides 
 in the triune Fulness ; yet it exists in the three 
 Worlds, energizing man's evolutionary periods 
 in each. Thus incarnated man lives in three 
 distinct domains of manifested Nature. In the 
 Spiritual World he is one of the Planetary 
 Beings, or Solar Gods ; in the Psychic World, 
 one of the Lunar Gods, who shape after their 
 
18 THE EVANGEL ACCOEDING TO lOANNES. 
 
 own image the material man, out of the gross 
 elements of the Chaos or transition-sphere. 
 Now, the turbulent and evil energies inherent 
 in these gross elements have to be subdued, 
 purified, spiritualized ; and so the Soul is mys- 
 tically represented as the Son of The God in- 
 carnating in the Kosmos — the physical world, 
 as also the material body of man — to save it 
 by taking away its sins. When the outer man 
 is purified, he becomes one with his inner and 
 real Self, and attains to At-one-ment with The 
 God. But this purification can not be accom- 
 plished in a single Earth-life. It becomes pos- 
 sible of attainment only after a long cycle of 
 incarnations, in each of which some portion of 
 the lower nature may be redeemed. It is not 
 the Soul that is to be saved, but the psycho- 
 physical man. The Soul is itself the Savioiu" 
 and the sacrificial victim ; its suffering for the 
 sins of the elemental self is purely vicarious. 
 
 Each incarnation is also a cycle repeating 
 the whole process of manifestation, detail for 
 detail, as passed through in the wider cycles of 
 existence. On the death of the physical body, 
 the elements of which return to the sub-human 
 kingdoms, man passes on into the Psychic 
 World ; yet he can not abide there, as it is only 
 a transitional stage between the material and 
 the spiritual. Here he tarries until he is tempo- 
 rarily purged of the grosser impurities of matter ; 
 
THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN. 19 
 
 and then, leaving in this Lunar Sphere his psy- 
 chic body as a mere phantom or shade that in 
 time dissolves into the ethereal elements, he goes 
 to the Spiritual "World, there resting in bliss 
 ineffable for a period commensurate with the 
 merits of his preceding incarnation. This time 
 of rest ended, he comes again into the transition- 
 sphere, where the same turbulent and impure 
 elements which were for the time discarded are 
 again resumed, a new psychic body concreted, 
 and he is born again into the Physical World, 
 repeating minutely all that takes place in the 
 kosmic and racial cycles. 
 
 In the incarnated state, the three phases of 
 consciousness recognized as waking, dreaming, 
 and dreamless sleep correspond to the three 
 Worlds. Even as his consciousness, during 
 the waking state, is centred in the physical 
 body, and through the physical senses is cogni- 
 zant of material things, so in the dreaming 
 state it is centred in the psychic body, and in 
 the dreamless state in the spiritual body. In 
 sleep man leaves the material form, going to 
 the same realms that he sojourns in after 
 death. In the Psychic World he meets not 
 only the Shades of the recently dead, the ghosts 
 and the phantoms, but also the psychic forms 
 of those who, like himself, are sleeping. There, 
 as in the Physical World, he meets friends, 
 strangers, enemies, among the number of those 
 
20 THE EVANGEL ACCOEDING TO i6aNNES. 
 
 he knows also on the earth, and others whom 
 he may never meet in the outer life. The same 
 holds true of the next higher World, where he 
 acts in the spiritual body, communing with the 
 Grods and the pure Souls in the resting spheres,* 
 And beyond these three states of consciousness 
 is the fourth and highest, that of the True Self. 
 Now, though man is conscious while acting 
 in the superior Worlds, he is unable, in his 
 present partially developed condition, to carry 
 that consciousness over from one state to the 
 other, and to retain it in his waking memory, 
 owing to the imperfect correlation of the three 
 bodies. The memory of events in the psychic 
 life is impressed upon the psychic brain, but is 
 not transferred to the physical brain, because 
 of the higher rate of vibration of the former. 
 On waking, therefore, he recalls as dreams 
 merely the automatic imaginings of the semi- 
 waking brain, and the confused and distorted 
 reflections from the psychic; yet sometimes 
 impressions are received from the psychic, giv- 
 ing premonition of coming events, and dreams 
 that come true on the outer plane of existence, 
 though usually these impressions are so dim 
 and indistinct that when he comes to places 
 
 1 When at home in the physical body we are away from 
 home from the Master. II. Cor. v. 6. I know this very 
 man — whether in the body or out of his body, I do not 
 know. II. Cor. xii. 3. 
 
THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN. 21 
 
 and meets people in the Physical World already 
 known by him in the Psychic, he only has 
 -a puzzling sense of familiarity with them, a 
 vague recollection of having come across them 
 "before, for which he can not account. 
 
 Even more complete is this loss of memory 
 in the wider cycle of reincarnation. The outer 
 man's mind is usually a blank as regards his 
 past lives, and though his relatives and asso- 
 ciates are those whom he has known for ages, 
 in many lives in the racial periods of the past, 
 he does not recognize them as such, but looks 
 upon the one short life as complete in itself. 
 The inner man, however, does remember, and 
 tries to revive the friendships, loves, and hates 
 of former earth-lives, to repay past favors and 
 to clear off old scores. Thus man is the slave 
 ■of his own past, all the incidents of his life, all 
 his relations with his fellow-beings, all the in- 
 fluences brought to bear upon him, being due to 
 Clauses generated in bygone incarnations; and 
 he is assailed by the evil passions and tenden- 
 •cies of his psychic nature,* which is compounded 
 
 1 This knowledge is not [the knowledge] which comes 
 ■down from above, but [it is] earthy, psychic, mediumistic. 
 Jas. iii. 15. We also, when we were children, were enslaved 
 xinder the elemental-spirits of the world. . . . At that time 
 , . . you were enslaved by those who by nature are not Grods. 
 . . . How is it you are turning back again to the weak and 
 beggarly elemental-spirits 1 . . . Are you observing days, 
 and moons, and seasons, and years "? Gal. iv. 3-10. 
 
22 THE EVANGEL ACCOBDING TO i6aNNE8. 
 
 of the turbulent subtile elements of the transi- 
 tion-sphere, and he is harassed by the brute 
 instincts inherent in the gross elements of hi& 
 animal body.^ But beyond all these things 
 which pertain to the spheres of Becoming is the 
 serene Grod of the man, his Eternal Self in the 
 Realm of True Being, watching over and guid- 
 ing him, wisely ordering aU things for purposes 
 of the purificatory discipline, until at the Per- 
 fecting-period the outer becomes as the inner,, 
 the below as the above. Then the man has 
 conquered the lower Worlds, and holds the keya 
 of Hades, the Under-world, and of Death, the 
 Outer- world ; ^ in the Over- world he beholds The 
 Father in the mystic Unveiling, the Apokalypsis,. 
 and attains to At-one-ment with The God. 
 
 Before man can correlate the three Worlds, 
 his whole nature must be made pure. Mere 
 intellectual belief and emotional worship will 
 not effect this. It is a matter of right aspira- 
 
 1 1 rejoice at the law of The Grod according to the inner 
 man ; but I perceive a dififerent law in my members, mak- 
 ing war against the law of my Spirit (wows), and taking me 
 captive to the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched 
 man that I am ! Who will rescue me from this Death-body ? 
 Bom. vii. 22-24. 
 
 2 1 have conquered the World. Jno. xvi. 33. I am the 
 First and the Last, and the Living Self ; and I became a 
 dead man, and behold, I am a living one throughout the 
 On-goiags of the On-goings, and I have the keys of Death, 
 and of the Under- world. Bev. i. 17, 18. 
 
THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN. 23 
 
 tion, right philosophy, right conduct, and of 
 dedication of one's self to The G-od.^ Yet if one 
 considers The God as a Being apart from him- 
 self, his worship is a negation of the Divine 
 Unity, tending to separate him alike from The 
 God and from his feUow-beings ; it is not right 
 aspiration, but glamour arising from the dark 
 and ignorant elements of the Chaos, the Adver- 
 sary of The God. From this cause come the 
 many religious sects, the divisions, setting man 
 against man, making contention and strife in- 
 stead of brotherhood and peace. From lack of 
 right philosophy, religious fervor degenerates 
 into blind fanaticism and the prompting to per- 
 secute. Right-conduct relates not only to one's 
 duty toward his fellows, but includes mental 
 and physical purity. The functional purifica- 
 tion of the physical body results in molecular 
 changes, permitting the psychic forces to act 
 through it, energizing the nervous centres (plexi) 
 and thus correlating the two bodies. This 
 psycho-physiological process is represented 
 mystically by the Lustration of Water, the 
 Water being symbolical of the psychic or 
 magnetic force. The inner senses are awak- 
 ened, and the man then is capable of conscious 
 action in the Psychic World, retaining memory 
 of it in the physical brain. Following this is the 
 
 1 Freed from sin and made subject to The God, you have 
 your fruit in Consecration and Initiation. Bom. vi. 22. 
 
24 THE EVANGEL ACCOBDrNG TO i6aNN6s. 
 
 Lustration of Fire/ the vital electric force, the 
 action of which upon the centres of the brain 
 gives spiritual Seership, the consciousness then 
 being in the spiritual body. Thus the man is 
 "born from above,"'' becoming "a Son of The 
 God." 
 
 But in the evolution of the present human 
 race there was a deviation from the true order, 
 resulting in the degradation of the material 
 form and the perversion of its forces. The 
 first human beings, while yet but lunar entities 
 energizing the subtile elements of the Chaos, 
 were sexless, and moulded forms by the power 
 of Thought and "Will alone. But, tempted by 
 the Adversary, the blind instinct of concupis- 
 cence inherent in the impure elements, and 
 before the manifestation of the Solar Grods, or 
 spiritual entities, they descended to the gross 
 function of reproduction, which properly per- 
 tains only to the lower animal kingdom. Though 
 this function became the normal one, through 
 the natural tendency toward readjustment, its 
 only lawful purpose is the production of bodies 
 in the material World. The original sin was 
 the fall into generation ; the unpardonable sin ' 
 
 1 1 indeed lustrate you with Water ; but lie who is 
 mightier than I is coming ; ... he will lustrate you in pure 
 Breath and Fire. Lk. iii. 16. Matt. iii. 11. Jno. i. 31-33. 
 
 8 You must be born from above. Jno. iii. 7. 
 
 ' All sins shall be forgiven the sons of men, and as many 
 
THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN. 25 
 
 is the misuse of the generative function. The 
 result of that fall was the atrophy of the higher 
 brain-centres; and so intimate is the psycho- 
 physiological relation between these and the 
 generative centres, and so delicate the interac- 
 tion between them, that only the celibate can 
 pass through the purificatory processes.* But 
 whUe asceticism and celibacy are possible only 
 for the few, morality is practicable for all. In 
 New Testament nomenclature those in the sex- 
 ual and impure state are termed " the dead ones ^ 
 (hoi nekroi), because of the atrophy of the spiri- 
 tual centres of the brain ; and the Resurrection 
 (anastasis) " from among the dead ones " is the 
 revivification of these atrophied centres which 
 follows upon the perfect purification of the 
 psycho-physiological nature. 
 
 The human Race, as a whole, constitutes, as- 
 it were, a collective Man; and its successive 
 sub-races are analogous to the series of incar- 
 nations. At the close of each racial cycle, the 
 
 blasphemies as they may blaspheme; but whoever shall 
 blaspheme against the piire Breath does not have forgive- 
 ness throughout the On-goiag, but is Uable to separation. 
 for the On-goiag. Mle. iii. 28, 29. Matt. xii. 31, 32. Zk. xii. 
 10. I. Jno. V. 16. 
 
 1 Unless you turn back and become like httle children, 
 you shall by no means enter the Eealm of the Skies. Matt. 
 rviii. 3. There are eunuchs who were bom that way from 
 [their] mother's womb, and there are eunuchs who were^ 
 
26 THE EVANGEL ACCOKDING TO idANNiiS. 
 
 Earth undergoes a geological transformation, 
 making it practically a new globe, and its psy- 
 chic sphere is likewise renovated. Six great 
 Races succeed each other on the Earth, in six 
 "Days of labor," followed by a seventh and 
 perfected Eace in a seventh "Day of rest." 
 Each of these, again, has its sub-divisions ; and 
 the men of whom the Race is composed are of 
 different grades, the highest corresponding to 
 the state pertaining to the perfect Eace, and 
 these constitute the Initiates, the guardians of 
 humanity's spiritual heritage in knowledge, the 
 Mysteries. As the latter can be imparted only 
 to those men who prove themselves worthy 
 through their efforts toward self-purification, 
 the cycle of instruction in the Mysteries has 
 distinct degrees, the various lustrations in the 
 telestic or perfecting rites. Each racial period, 
 whether great or small, is in itself such a cycle 
 of instruction, and at its beginning a Teacher, 
 one of the number of the Perfect or the Initi- 
 ates, is sent to preside over it. He is the 
 
 made eunuclis by men, and there are eunuchs who made 
 themselves eunuchs for the sake of the Eeahn of the 
 Skies. Matt. xix. 12. The sons of this On-going marry, 
 and are given in marriage; but they who are deemed 
 worthy to attain to that On-going, and to the resurrection 
 from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage, 
 for neither can they die any more, for they are like angels, 
 and are sons of The God, being sons of the Resurrection. 
 Lk. XX. 34r-36. Matt. xxii. 30. Mk. xii. 25. 
 
THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN. 27 
 
 ^' Sun" of that particular Day; and as lie repre- 
 sents all tlie spiritual knowledge wMch that 
 Eace is capable of bringing into manifestation, 
 he is mystically " the Son of the Man." With 
 the beginning of the cycle he founds its So- 
 ciety, entrusts it with the teachings in the 
 various degrees ; and when the cycle closes he 
 returns to gather together his chosen ones, or 
 those who, during their incarnations in that 
 Eacial period, have held faithfully to the inner 
 spirit of his teachings, and by the saintly 
 purity and unselfishness of their lives have 
 proven themselves worthy to be received into 
 the Assembly of the Perfect. 
 
THE FOUR EVANGELS 
 
THE FOUE EVANOELS. 
 
 There is no certainty as to when and by 
 whom the writings now known as the New 
 Testament were brought together in their pres- 
 ent form and credited to various authors. The 
 arrangement is not very systematic; and un- 
 doubtedly some of the works were not written 
 by the individuals to whom they are ascribed, 
 while the real authorship of others is a matter 
 of conjecture. They were selected from a large 
 number of works belonging to the same body 
 of literature, most of which have disappeared. 
 Besides the four Evcmgels contained in the New 
 Testament., over fifty others are known to have 
 existed, and some of these were evidently of 
 the greatest value, as shown by the few frag- 
 ments preserved from the Evangel according to 
 PMUppos and the Evangel according to the 
 Egyptians. Now, Irenseus, in accounting for 
 the selection of only four Evangels, states that 
 it was because " there are four Quarters of the 
 World, and four Universal Breaths {katholika 
 pnewmata),^ and because the Cherubim are 
 four-faced. These Cherubim are the " Living 
 
 31 
 
32 THE EVANGEL ACCOBDING TO lOANN^S. 
 
 Beings" described in Esekiel (i. 10) as having 
 the face of a Man, the face of a Lion, the 
 face of a Bull, and the face of an Eagle. 
 These four accordingly represented Matthias, 
 Markos, Loukas, and Idannes, and were for- 
 merly depicted at the head of their respective 
 Evangels. The reasons assigned by Irenseus 
 may seem fanciful and absurd to those un- 
 versed in symbology, yet a profound meaning 
 underlies his words. The four symbols given 
 stand for the four fixed signs of the Zodiac: 
 Aquarius, the Water-carrier; Leo, the Lion; 
 Taurus, the Bull ; and Scorpio, the " Scorpion 
 monster of darkness," who is said to sting to 
 death, yet to preserve and reproduce, the even- 
 ing Sun. Scorpio is a symbol not only of 
 generation, but also of regeneration and of 
 Seership, the latter being typified by the Eagle, 
 a bird of the Sun. These four are the four 
 " Living Beings " encircling the throne of The 
 God in the Apokalypse (iv. 6, 7), in which work 
 the other zodiacal signs, the seven planets, etc., 
 are given, the symbolism being astronomical 
 throughout, and taken largely from the mag- 
 nificent Mithraic imagery. All external Nature 
 being a manifestation of the inner Deity, the 
 Ancients regarded every natural science as a 
 sacred science, tracing the correspondences 
 between all things in the various' departments 
 of the material Universe and the relations of 
 
THE FOUR EVANGELS. 33 
 
 these to the Divine Realms from whicli they 
 have their source. The system of the Zodiac 
 is a Mystery-language for expressing the rela- 
 tions and correspondences between the great 
 "World {makrokosmos), or Divine Man, and the 
 little World {mihrokosmos), or incarnated man. 
 A nation being considered also as collectively 
 forming a Man, the territory it occupied was 
 taken to be its body and mapped out accord- 
 ingly. Thus every ancient country, as Chal- 
 dea, Egypt, Peru, Mexico, Druidic Ireland, etc., 
 had its "four quarters," its "sacred city," its 
 " navel of the Earth," etc. ; and the body pol- 
 itic, the religious festivals, and the social af- 
 fairs of the people generally were all instituted 
 on symbolical lines. 
 
 The four Evangels correspond to the four 
 quarters, and the topography of the Holy Land 
 — " Holy " because devoted to The God through 
 its use as a symbol — is made subservient to 
 the purposes of the aUegory. Each Evangel is 
 written from a different standpoint, and that of 
 IdannSs is distinct from the three Synoptics. 
 To illustrate the assignment of the four Evan- 
 gels to the three manifested Worlds and the 
 one unmanifested Divine Realm, the symboliz- 
 ing of these in the embodied Nation, and their 
 correspondences in incarnated man, and at the 
 same time to show the universality of this sys- 
 tem in antiquity, a map of the Holy Land is 
 
34 THE EVANGEL ACCOEDING TO lOANN^S. 
 
 here placed beside one of the carved monoliths 
 found in the prehistoric sacred city near Copan, 
 in Central America. 
 
 But three divisions are given in the Holy 
 Land, corresponding to the three outer Worlds ; 
 and the fourth, or Divine Realm, is referred to 
 as "beyond the lordanos." The same dis- 
 tinction is made in the monolith, which has 
 three " heads " representing the three centres in 
 the body, and a fourth above it. Similarly the 
 Evangel of loann^s is considered as being apart 
 from the other three. The correspondences 
 stand as foUows: 
 
 . . f Beyond the t The 
 
 MannfiB Eagle The P16r6ma ] lorf^nos Trae Self {..Radiance* 
 
 Matthias Mau Spiritual World GalUaia Spiritual Body Head 
 
 Markos Lion Psychic World Samareia Psychic Body Heart 
 
 Loukas Bull Material World loudaia Physical Body Navel 
 
 In the psycho-physiological rendering of the 
 allegory, the Sea of Tiberias is the ether in the 
 brain; the lordanos is the vital force in the 
 spmal cord; and the Dead Sea pertains to 
 generation. The three great vital regions in 
 man correspond literally to the three bodies, 
 the physical body coming into being from the 
 lowest centres, the psychic body from the 
 heart-centres, and the sidereal body from the 
 brain-centres. At the one pole is generation; 
 at the other, regeneration, or the mystic birth 
 " from above." 
 
 Every event in the four Evangels may be 
 
THE FOUE EVANGELS. 
 
 35 
 
 
 Map of the Holy Land. Copan Monolith. 
 
36 THE EVANGEL ACCOEDINa TO i6aNN£s. 
 
 read in tlie language of the zodiacal signs and 
 the seven planets, yielding an astronomical 
 meaning ; but this is but one out of seven 
 renderings, from the purely spiritual down to 
 merely physiological, a series of correspon- 
 dences running through them all. Nor does 
 this conflict with the historical basis of the 
 narrative. None of the events of a man's life 
 are meaningless, all being the external effects 
 of interior causes ; and in the case of a Divine 
 Messenger, the Teacher of humanity for a par- 
 ticular cycle, his whole life is an expression of 
 the inner Eealities, a Drama of the Soul. Thus 
 in the Evangels ISsous is often spoken of as if 
 he were merely acting a part, doing things " in 
 order that the Writings might be fulfilled"; 
 yet not because the Old Testament Writings 
 were prophetical in the sense of being mere 
 predictions of future events in the material 
 World, but because they affirmed those inner 
 principles which the Soul is seeking to embody 
 in the outer life. A mere record of the events 
 taking place on the material plane of existence 
 would be of little value as compared with an 
 allegorical representation of the psychic and 
 spiritual processes, of the things done in higher 
 Worlds. The exact date when ISsous appeared 
 is unknown. It is not known in what language 
 he taught. The New Testament contains the 
 only record of his life ; and even the fact of his 
 
THE FOUK EVANGELS. 37 
 
 having lived can not be proved from history. 
 Prom a mystical standpoint, this is as it should 
 be. The personality of the Messenger is wrapped 
 in obscurity, and the True Self shines forth to 
 the world as an impersonal Light. 
 
THE DEAMA OF THE SOUL 
 
THE DEAMA OF THE SOUL. 
 
 The Evangel of IdannSs opens with a brief 
 recital of the order in which the emanations 
 come into manifestation when a new world- 
 period begins, these emanations being the suc- 
 cessive degrees of externalization through which 
 the Universe passes in emerging from its latent 
 state. The manifold Universe, or " all things," 
 comes into existence through the unfolding, or 
 going outward, of the Divine Thought, the 
 Logos. In the Archeus, or universal matrix, is 
 the Logos; in the Logos is the Life; and this Life 
 is the Light of the evolutionary cycles, shining 
 in the Darkness of Chaos. These cycles, or racial 
 periods of objective humanity, are measured as- 
 tronomically by the divisions of the Zodiac ; in 
 the Evangel they are termed " Men," for, as each 
 race, like each iadividual, has its definite life- 
 period, a race may be regarded as a collective 
 being or entity. Further, a Messias or Christos 
 (one " anointed " by the G-reat Breath or World- 
 soul) appears at the beginning of each such cycle, 
 over which he presides spiritually.* 
 
 1 The woman says to him : " I know that the Messias is 
 coming, who is called Anointed; when he shall have 
 
 41 
 
42 THE EVANGEL ACCOBDING TO i6aNN:&8. 
 
 The cycles referred to in the Evangel are the 
 twelve divisions or "months" of the sidereal 
 year, or period during which the sun apparently 
 recedes through the twelve signs of the Zodiac, 
 this greater "year" lasting over 25,860 years, 
 and each of its " months " about 2,155 years. 
 The greater year is divided, like the lesser, into 
 four seasons. These lunar cycles are quite 
 plainly indicated in the Biblical allegories: 
 Enoch representing the sun in Tawrus, M6s6s 
 the sun in Aries, and I^sous the sun in Pisces. 
 Thus, the dancing of the children of Israel 
 about the golden Calf was simply one of the 
 Mystery-dances, like the Tcosmos dance in the 
 rites of lacchos, representing the motions of 
 the heavenly bodies; and the destruction of 
 the Calf by M6s§s ^ symbolized the passing-over 
 of the sun from Tawrus, the Bull, into Aries, 
 the Ram. During the cycle of M6s6s, therefore, 
 the ram and ram's horns became prominent as 
 symbols,'' and M6s§s himself is depicted as hav- 
 ing ram's horns on his head, as in one of Mi- 
 chelangelo's paintings. M6s6s, in turn, is su- 
 perseded by ISsous, whose cycle is that of 
 the sun in Pisces, the Fishes, and who accord- 
 come, he will bring back messages to us." ISsous says to 
 her : "I who am speaking to you am he." Jno. iv. 25, 26. 
 
 1 Ex. xxxii. 19, 20. 
 
 2 Ex. xxix. 1. Nvm. vi. 16, 17. I. Sam. n. 1. Jcib xvi. 
 15. Ps. Ixxv. 10 ; czxsdi. 17 j cxlviii. 14. 
 
THE DBAMA OP THE SOUL. 43 
 
 ingly chooses fishermen for his pupils, performs 
 thaumaturgical feats with fishes/ and gives as 
 his Sign that of I6nas, who was swallowed by 
 a great Fish.'* The original zodiacal sign was 
 the Fish {piscis), but because of the occasional 
 intercalary month it was changed to the Fishes 
 {jpisces). To symbolize the next cycle, Idsous 
 and the Twelve celebrate the Passing-over in 
 the upper room, the guest-chamber, of the 
 "man bearing a pitcher of water," ^ who is 
 simply the sign Aquarius, the Water-carrier. 
 
 It has been said that the scheme of the Zodiac 
 is due to man's tendency to project an image of 
 himself into space, on the same principle that 
 the heavens, or skies, are regarded as the abode 
 of souls. But this innate tendency arises from 
 the relation of man, the mikrokosm, to the uni- 
 verse, the makrokosm: the soul of man, his 
 higher consciousness, is in reality universal; 
 the soul is not subject to time and space, nor 
 
 1 Matt. iv. 18-22; vii. 10; xii. 39, 40; xiii. 47, 48; xiv. 
 17-21; XV. 34^37; xvi. 4; xvii. 27. MJc. i. 16-20; vi. 38- 
 44; viii. 7-9. Lk. v. 4-11; ix. 13-17; xi. 11. Jno. vi. 9- 
 14;xxi. 3-14. 
 
 2 A knavish and adulterous generation is clamoring for 
 a. sign ; but no sign shall be given it except the " Sign " of 
 Idnas the Seer. For as Idnas was three days and three 
 nights in the belly of the great Fish, so shall the Son of 
 the Man be three days and three nights in the Heart of the 
 Earth. Jifatt. xii. 39, 40 ; xvi. 4. £ft. xi. 29, 30. 
 
 2 Mk. xiv. 12-15. Lk. xxii. 8-13. 
 
44 THE EVANGEL ACCOKDING TO i6aNNI;S. 
 
 does it exist in them, for time and space are 
 concepts of the soul, not objective realities. 
 The perfect man becomes one with the makro- 
 kosm, his individual consciousness is merged 
 in the all-consciousness. 
 
 The Evangel treats, historically and allegori- 
 caUy, of one of these Messianic cycles, and of 
 the Master or Teacher sent to preside over it. 
 This Master {kurios) is the Epiphany, or mani- 
 festation of the Christos (the Logos or World- 
 soul), for the lunar cycle measured by the sun's 
 recession through Pisces. I^sous, the one 
 " anointed" by the Great Breath, is the Saviour 
 during that particular cycle ; ^ in other words, 
 the whole spiritual life of the race, aU that is 
 possible for it to attain during its racial period, 
 is centred in one individual,^ who becomes the 
 
 1 This is truly the Saviour of the World — the Anointed. 
 Jno. iv. 42. " The Master confirmed by an oath, and will 
 not change his purpose : ' Thou art a priest throughout the 
 On-going.'" . . . And indeed the greater number [the 
 " silent majority " — the souls of the dead] have become 
 "priests" [intercessors for the living, or "guardian 
 angels"], because of their stay being cut short by death; 
 but he, because of his abiding throughout the On-going, 
 has the priestly office that does not pass over [to a suc- 
 cessor] , and hence he is able to save throughout the whole 
 [world] those drawing near to The God through him, [as- 
 he is] at aU times and seasons ahve to interpose on their 
 behalf. fle6. vii. 21-25. 
 
 2 As many of you as were lustrated into the Anointed 
 
THE DKAMA OF THE SOUL. 45 
 
 exemplar of its spiritual progress, and is there- 
 fore in a very real sense " the Path, the Truth, 
 and the Life." * He is the spiritual seed of the 
 coming race, the prototype of its evolution.* 
 This purely spiritual process has its material 
 analogy in the physical process of incarnation : 
 a single germ-cell transmitted by the father 
 forms the nucleus of a body for the incarnating 
 Ego, and in its embryonic stages it recapitu- 
 lates the whole cycle of evolution, assuming 
 successively the semblance of a stone, a plant, 
 an animal, and finally the human form, when 
 it is born into the human kingdom. Yet 
 man is but a seed-being, as it were, the germ 
 of a spiritual being.' It is for him to be 
 regenerated, to be re-born into the spiritual 
 kingdom. He must undergo a transforma- 
 tion as actual as that accompanying physical 
 
 were clothed witli the Anointed : in [him] there is neither 
 Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor freeman, there is 
 neither male nor female — for you aU are One in Anointed 
 ISsous. Gal. iii. 27, 28. 
 
 1 1 am the Path, and the Truth, and the Life. Jno. xiv. 6. 
 ISsous, a Forerunner on our behalf. Heb. vi. 20. 
 
 2 The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. 
 He does not say, "And to the seeds," as concerning manyj 
 but as concerning one, "And to your seed" — who is the 
 Anointed. Gal. iii. 16. 
 
 3 Unless the grain of the wheat falls to the earth and dies, 
 it abides by itself, alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 
 Jno. 2di. 24. 
 
46 THE EVANaEL ACCOBDING TO l6ANNi!S. 
 
 birth,' must be "born from above" into the 
 realm of spirit. The Messias is the archetype 
 of this spiritual re-birth.^ 
 
 The Evangel of Joannes, as an allegory, deals 
 with the process of regeneration. And this re- 
 generation is brought about by purifying the 
 whole nature, physical, mental, and moral. It 
 is not the soul, but the body, that has to be 
 " raised from the dead," to be saved or healed,' 
 The body is the instrument through which the 
 soul comes into manifestation in the lower 
 worlds ; and the so-called law of evolution is no 
 more or less than the conscious striving of the 
 soul to perfect that instrument. The Divine 
 Self of man, the God, moulds the man of clay, 
 not by the sudden fiat of omnipotence, but by 
 ceaseless toil through many ages ; and not until 
 the Perfeeting-period is reached and it emerges 
 self-born in the glorified spiritual body, death- 
 
 1 The dead ones shall be raised indestructible, and we 
 shall be transformed. I. Cor. xv. 52. 
 
 2 The Anointed has been raised up from among the dead 
 ones, a firstling of the sleeping ones. For since Death 
 [came] through a Man, also through a Man [comes] the 
 Awakening of the dead ones. For as in Adam all die, so 
 in the Anointed all are brought to life ; but each one in his 
 own band (hierarchy) : the Anointed a firstling, afterwards 
 those who [are] the Anointed's in his presence. I. Cor. xv. 
 20-23. 
 
 3 The Greek verb sdgesfhai, in New Testament usage, means 
 equally " to be saved " and " to be healed." 
 
THE DRAMA OP THE SOUL. 47 
 
 less and free, can it cry, " It is finished," and 
 give up the Creative Breath, as a workman lays 
 down his tools, his task accomplished. The 
 soul itself, as a Divine Idea, is perfect from the 
 first ; * yet it is but the prototype of that which 
 must come into existence : " it must reproduce 
 a perfect image of itself in the worlds of matter, 
 and become one with that image.^ The physi- 
 cal body, and to a less degree the psychic body, 
 is a congeries of atrophied organs and latent 
 vital centres, functional at one time or another 
 during the vast period of evolution through 
 which the human race has passed, but useless 
 at the present stage ; they are, however, capable 
 of being restored to their normal functions, 
 having been preserved or stored up, as it were, 
 to remain dormant untU that time, mystically 
 
 1 And now, Father, glorify me with thyself, in the glory 
 which I had before this when the world {kosmos) was with 
 thee. Jno. xvii. 5. 
 
 2 Having willed, he gave birth to us by a Logos of Truth, 
 for us to be a kind of firstlings of his embodied beings. 
 Jas. i. 18. The first man, Adam, came into being in a 
 psychic form, the last Adam in a life-producing Brdath. 
 I. Cor. XV. 45. 
 
 3 The Anointed, who is an image of The God. II. Cor. 
 iv. 4. As my well-beloved children I admonish [you] ; for 
 though yoa should have countless tutors in the Anointed, 
 yet [you have] not many fathers ; for in the Anointed, 
 through the Teaching (evangelion), I hegot you. I. Cor, iv. 
 14, 15. 
 
48 THE EVANGEL ACCOBDING TO idANNtS. 
 
 called the Perfecting-period, wlien man can 
 take conscious control of the forces of evolu- 
 tion, synthesize all his powers, cleanse and 
 purify his whole nature, quicken and bring into 
 activity all the latent centres of his being, and 
 regain the divine attributes that have been ob- 
 scured and seemingly lost during the cycles of 
 ages the soul has spent in material existence.^ 
 Then, and then only, is man " raised from the 
 dead." 
 
 That religious truths are thus connected with 
 physiology may appear strange, and even ab- 
 surd, to a mind trained in modern ways of 
 thinking on religious and scientific questions. 
 If so, it is only because religion has become 
 unscientific, and science irreligious — that is 
 to say, materialistic. Modern science derives 
 psychology from physiology, persevering in the 
 exploded notion that thought is due to the 
 action of the brain; and theology holds to 
 the doctrine of "special creation," asserting 
 that for each body that is born into the world 
 a new soul is created — in other words, that 
 the body precedes the soul. In this, the reli- 
 gious belief is as materialistic as the scientific 
 theory. But in the ancient system the very 
 
 1 For you died, and your Life has teen hidden with the 
 Anointed in The God. When the Anointed — our Life — 
 shines forth, then you also shall shine forth -with him in. 
 Radiance. Col. iii. 3, 4. 
 
THE DEAMA OF THE SOUL. 49 
 
 reverse is maintained, and physiology is based 
 on psychology: the uncreated, eternally self- 
 existent soul has evolved the physical body as 
 an instrument through which it can manifest 
 itself in the material world; hence, according 
 to this system, function precedes organism in 
 every instance. Every organ represents some 
 quality, power, or faculty of the soul. When- 
 ever any organ has been evolved for a tempo- 
 rary purpose, it becomes atrophied as soon as 
 the energy of the soul is directed into a differ- 
 ent channel: it is either laid aside for future 
 use, or is rejected, about as the scaffolding is 
 torn down from a completed structure. The 
 soul is the Logos, or divine Thought, seeking 
 to express itself in terms of matter. But the 
 human brain, in its present imperfect develop- 
 ment, can only dimly adumbrate that Thought, 
 the perfect expression of which would make 
 man Grodlike in knowledge and power. Hence, 
 in psycho-physiology lies the key to spiritual 
 progress. The gross physical organism, with 
 the animahstic, sensual tendencies retained 
 from a lower cycle of evolution, could not sus- 
 tain the play of electric and magnetic forces 
 which accompany the noetic action of the brain, 
 but would be disorganized by the strain. For 
 this reason, great genius verges on insanity. 
 Only when the whole nature of man has become 
 purified from the least taint of his animal pro- 
 
50 THE EVANGEL AOCOKDING TO i6aNN:^S. 
 
 pensities can lie become the interpreter of the 
 divine Thought, the spokesman of the unseen 
 God. 
 
 In the form of a narrative of the events in the 
 life of lesous, the incarnate Light, the Evangel 
 traces the successive degrees in the purificatory 
 discipline through which the individual Soul 
 must pass to reach the Perfecting-period and 
 attain final emancipation from its prison of 
 flesh. In this purely allegorical rendering, 
 I6annes and lesous are in reality one, being a 
 type of the lunar-solar or psycho-spiritual man ; 
 and all the characters in the story are the per- 
 sonified forces of the one man, who conquers 
 all worlds in conquering himself. This was 
 ever the great Drama of the Mysteries, the Sun 
 Q-od crucified, yet rising triumphant from the 
 tomb, self -shining, immortal, conqueror of the 
 Under-world and the World of Death. 
 
 The principal events of the narrative, with 
 their psycho-physiological bearing, are given 
 below in the order in which they are found in 
 ii^Q Evangel ; and the subject is further eluci- 
 dated in the notes accompanying the transla- 
 tion. The astronomical, astrological, and other 
 renderings have been omitted from these notes, 
 which are concerned chiefly with the psycho- 
 physiological meaning of the allegory ; for it is 
 only through self-knowledge that real know- 
 
THE DBAMA OP THE SOUL. 51 
 
 ledge of external Nature can be gained. It is 
 easy to show that the New Testament story, like 
 all the ancient myths, rests on an astronomical 
 basis ; but to take this as a final solution of the 
 mysteries of the solar cult is to reach a conclu- 
 sion that is radically erroneous. For, in turn, 
 the astronomical rendering is itself but an alle- 
 gory of man's inner life, showing the relations 
 or correspondences existing between the mikro- 
 kosm and the makrokosm. These correspon- 
 dences are actual, not merely fanciful ; and the 
 moral meanings conveyed by the myths are 
 only the superficial aspect of the psychic and 
 spiritual realities underlying them. 
 
 I6annSs crying aloud in the Desert, "Make 
 straight the Path of the Master," is the psy- 
 chic self of the man awakening, the precursor 
 of the Spiritual Self that is to come. This 
 forerunner lustrates in water, the magnetic 
 force, which purifies the channels through 
 which the Breath, the electric force, must work 
 when the stage of regeneration is reached. 
 Without the action of this electric force, the 
 living Fire, there can be no real spiritual or 
 noetic perception ; and if this fiery force should 
 be aroused before the channels were sufficiently 
 purified the result would be iajury to the brain 
 and nervous system, and even death. It is vital 
 electricity ; and, while it is the agent of regen- 
 

 52 THE EVANGEL ACCOKDING TO lOANN^S. 
 
 eration and a creative force, yet when prema- 
 turely awakened and misdirected it becomes 
 destructive, and can kill as instantaneously as 
 a bolt of lightning. In the psychic stages of a 
 man's development the magnetic fluid gradu- 
 ally produces certain changes in the physical 
 body, polarizing the cells and eliminating the 
 grosser elements, and thus prepares the way 
 for noetic action. 
 
 In rapt vision the mystic beholds the " Lamb 
 of God," the Sun-like Self, that spiritual proto- 
 type which was himself before his descent into 
 the material world, and which he must re- 
 become when transformed at the Perfecting- 
 period. Having seen that vision, he has placed 
 his feet upon the Path that leads from the hu- 
 man to the Divine. 
 
 The Marriage in Kana of Galilaia symbolizes 
 one of the brief flashes of Seership which conie 
 to the partly purified mystic long before the 
 complete illumination is attained. The six 
 stone water- jars represent the six lower brain- 
 centres, and the " water " with which they are 
 filled is the magnetic force; the wine, into 
 which the water is converted, typifies the man- 
 tic or inspired state of the Seer consequent 
 upon the energizing of the seventh centre, the 
 mystic "third eye." The forces called into 
 action then begin a purifying process in the 
 nervous system, and this is symbolized by the 
 
THE DRAMA OF THE SOUL. 53 
 
 scourge used by I^sous in clearing the temple- 
 courts. 
 
 There is then a change in the magnetic po- 
 larity of the body, making it possible to under- 
 stand what is meant by the " birth from above," 
 and this teaching is put forth in the incident 
 where NikodSmos comes to lesous by night. 
 
 At this stage the psychic is able to perceive 
 visually the magnetic colors which emanate 
 from the heart-centres ; and this is allegorized 
 in the incident where ISsous encounters the 
 woman of Samareia at the well which Iak6b 
 gave to his son I6s§ph, who had the coat of 
 many colors. Mystically, Samareia is made to 
 correspond to the region of the heart, and 
 Oalilaia to the head; and the story of the 
 woman at the well refers to the same process 
 taking place in the heart-region that was repre- 
 sented in the brain by the Marriage in Kana. 
 As only five of these magnetic colors (or rather 
 the forces of which they are manifestations) 
 are as yet developed, the other two being latent 
 and potential, the woman is said to have had 
 five husbands. The separation between the 
 psychic and the procreative centres is noted in 
 the expression "the loudaians do not have 
 friendly dealings with the Samareitans," but 
 their close correlation with the noetic or brain 
 centres is shown by the return of ISsous to 
 Kana of Galilaia and the healing of the " little 
 
54 THE EVANGEL AOOOBDING TO idANSlS. 
 
 lad" at Kapharnaum — tlie small but important 
 plexus in the throat. This separation between 
 the centres of physical life and the centres of 
 psychic life is indicated in the Copan monolith^ 
 a plain, unsculptured space having been left 
 below the psychic region ; while a smaU " head"" 
 represents the synthesizing plexus. 
 
 The third stage of purification pertains to the 
 centres corresponding to the material world;, 
 hence the scene is shifted from Samareia to 
 loudaia. The purifying of these centres is 
 symbolized by the healing of the sick man at 
 Hierousal^m, which arouses the enmity of the 
 loudaians, who represent the dark forces of the 
 elemental self. 
 
 The power the ascetic then gains of utilizing 
 the life-forces of Nature is allegorized in the 
 story of the loaves and fishes. 
 
 The stage of perfect physical purity being 
 reached, the inner Self forgives the misdeeds 
 of its outer personality in the past, the latter 
 being typified by the woman taken in adultery^ 
 who is told to " go, and sin no more." 
 
 The illusions of material life having been 
 overcome, this is mystically represented by 
 giving sight to the man born blind. 
 
 Then follows conscious action in the psychic 
 body, which is symbolized by Lazaros, -who i& 
 raised from the tomb. 
 
 The Perfecting-period having been attained^ 
 
THE DKAMA OF THE SOUL. 55 
 
 the noetic action in the brain is described alle- 
 gorically in the story of the crucifixion and the 
 subsequent rising-up "from among the dead 
 ones." The glorified Initiate then lives in the 
 spiritual body, exempt from change and death. 
 
 The various journeyings and tarryings of 
 I^sous and the Twelve in the three districts, 
 and the festivals, seasons, days, hours, etc., all 
 have esoteric meanings; and every detail of 
 the allegory is carefully worked out. The dis- 
 courses and dialogues are in every case ex- 
 planatory of the incidents in the narrative. 
 
 It has been frequently pointed out that the 
 chronology, geography, and the references to 
 loudaian customs and religious observances, in 
 the Evcmgel, are not always correct. These ap- 
 parent inaccuracies are, however, due to the 
 exigencies of the allegory ; for the " days " and 
 "hours" of I6ann^s refer to psycho-physio- 
 logical cycles, and he introduces the loudaian 
 festivals and customs into his narrative only in 
 their esoteric meaning. Even if he does place 
 a town "on the other side of the lordanos" 
 when in fact it was on the hither side, the 
 mystical meaning loses nothing by the geo- 
 graphical error. 
 
EXPLANATORY NOTE 
 
EXPLANATORY NOTE. 
 
 The "word evangelion, which is used as part of 
 the title to each of the first four books of the 
 New Testament, means primarily the reward 
 given to a messenger who brings good tidings, 
 and secondarily the message that he brings. 
 But the ordinary Greek word angelos (" messen- 
 ger") was converted by the New Testament 
 writers into a technical term to replace the 
 word daimdn, the latter word having become 
 degraded. The Angels of the New Testament 
 are the daimones of the older Greek religion. 
 The word daimdn meant the Divine Essence, 
 the Oversoul or Ruling Power of the Universe ; 
 and the daimones were the conscious creative 
 and energizing Powers, of every degree, from 
 the demigods or tutelary deities down to the 
 nature-spirits or genii ; and all these, whatever 
 theology may say to the contrary, are souls in 
 various stages of development, whether the 
 souls of the mighty dead of past ages, "the 
 spirits of just men made perfect," or " minister- 
 ing Angels," the overshadowing souls of men 
 
 59 
 
60 THE EVANGEL ACCORDING TO idANN^lS. 
 
 still in the flesh, or the lower orders of spiritual 
 beings that have not yet " been born in human 
 shape." As the word had come to mean merely 
 the shades or ghosts of the dead, it is so used 
 in the New Testament, where it is almost invari- 
 ably applied to larvae, the unclean spirits or 
 psychic phantoms of the dead, which obsess 
 impure and mediumistic persons. The primary 
 meaning of daimon having been transferred to 
 the word angelos, the derivative evangelion ac- 
 quired likewise a new meaning : it is a Message 
 from, or concerning, the "World of Souls, the 
 realm of the Logos, or Divine Ideation; in 
 other words, it is a Magical Message or teach- 
 ing. The four Evangels are, in fact, treatises 
 on practical Magic, not, however, Thaumaturgy, 
 or Wonder-working, but Theurgy, the Divine 
 Work of self-purification, to be accomplished 
 through the mystic Lustrations in the telestic 
 or perfecting rites. The exaltation of the thau- 
 maturgic element by the ecclesiastics (who had 
 lost the " key of the Grnosis," if they ever pos- 
 sessed it), with the later theological develop- 
 ment of the belief that "miracles" were hap- 
 penings outside of and beyond the realm of 
 Law, followed naturally upon the formulation 
 of a dualistic theology which places Deity apart 
 from Nature and from man, and which, under 
 the guise of Monotheism, advocates in reality a 
 most unphilosophical Polytheism, making Grood 
 
EXPLANATOBY NOTE. 61 
 
 and Evil absolute principles, and deifying both. 
 According to this polytheistic system, a good 
 God and his Angels, or lesser Grods, reign eter- 
 nally over the abodes of bliss, while a bad God, 
 the Devil, and his Demons, or evil Deities, pre- 
 side over the regions of everlasting woe. This 
 error of considering The God to be separate 
 from Nature, instead of his being, as Paulos 
 asserts, consistently with the belief of all an- 
 tiquity, " the one God energizing all things in 
 all," has led to the perversion of religion, the 
 limitation of science, and the obscuration of 
 philosophy. The baseless assumption that the 
 Christian Mysteries differed from the so-called 
 Pagan Mysteries — whereas, on the contrary, 
 the real Mysteries are ever the same — resulted 
 in the deliberate concealment of the fact that 
 the New Testament writings abound in mystical 
 terms and imagery taken from the Pagan Greek, 
 Mithraic, and other arcana; yet without a 
 knowledge of the esoteric meanings of these 
 terms and images the writings themselves are 
 almost wholly incomprehensible. 
 
 In the translation of loannes here presented, 
 all the principal words that have an arcane 
 sense are carefully defined in the foot-notes; 
 words which are emphatic in the Greek are 
 italicised in their English rendering, a matter 
 of importance in this Evangel, in which the 
 meaning often depends upon peculiarly em- 
 
62 THE EVANGEL ACCORDING TO lOANN^S. 
 
 phatic phrasing ; and words necessary to com- 
 plete the sense in the English idiom are 
 bracketed. Place-names and names of persons 
 are given in their Greek form, to avoid the 
 inconsistencies of the authorized version, which 
 gives them in forms Anglicized from the Latin, 
 with sporadic attempts to refer them to the 
 Hebrew. The text is taken mainly from the 
 oldest manuscripts, the principal variations in 
 their readings being given in the foot-notes. 
 
 Although there are about a thousand Greek 
 manuscripts of the New Testament extant, only 
 thirty of them contain the whole of it, and only 
 five — including the Greco-Latin Beza, which 
 
 HceNCHMeiON'X' 
 
 ro H OYTOCeCTIN 
 
 AAHecjL>conpo<j>H ^ 
 
 vTH C O e I CTON K° '»' 
 
 epxoMeNOc 
 /"c'oYN TNI oycoTi 
 M eAxoyciNjefxe 
 
 CeWKAlApnA.^««M 
 
 AYTOH i<X i Xh^^'"*",'"'* 
 
 OPOCMONOC>YP«* 
 
 Codex Sinaiticus. John vi. 14, 15. 
 
 has only the four Evangels and the Acts — can 
 with certainty be assigned to a date earlier than 
 the tenth century ; and while these five are sup- 
 posed to belong to the fourth and fifth centu- 
 
EXPLANATOEY NOTE. 63 
 
 ries, they may have been made at a much later 
 date. These manuscripts are : 
 
 The Sinaitic, now at St. Petersburg. It was 
 discovered, in 1844 and 1859, by Professor 
 Tischendorf, at St. Catherine's Convent (at the 
 
 ^ ON*.TXHHN5\.oroCK^^fOXorocHi 
 
 <y TTpbCTONeFl-Ki.ieCHNOA.OroC 
 
 / OYTOCHNeN^pXHTTPOCTONeM 
 
 Tr^NTAA.IA.YTOYereN6TOI<:AIX^ 
 
 peicAYTOYereNeTOOY^eeN- 
 oreroNeNeNwrTc»:?cuHHN* 
 
 K^IHZwHH MTo4>(»CTCUN^Ko>M 
 l<A.IT04>.a)ceNTHCKOTrA4>AI 
 N(ei'K.S.IHCI<OT«^A:Y-TOOYK^Te 
 ^ /SA^B6H* 6reN6TOA:FJ5iC^.Tre 
 
 S V/TAA.MeN0CTr*.p*.(5Y0N0MWY 
 
 rTa3ilc»3J^NNHC-OYTOCHX.eeN 
 eiCMXpTVpiXNIN-J^MA-PTYPH 
 CHTT6piTOY4>«'TOC'iNA.TrAN ■ 
 TeCTnCT6YCU5CINAW<jrT0Y' 
 
 Codex Alexandrinus. John i. 1-7. 
 
 foot of Mount Sinai), part of it being in a basket 
 of litter given him to light his fire. It contains, 
 in addition to the commonly received writings, 
 the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of 
 Hermas, and is an exceedingly careless and in- 
 accurate copy, made by a scribe whose know- 
 ledge of Grreek was evidently very limited. It 
 contains corrections in a different handwriting, 
 probably added in the sixth century. 
 
 The Alexandreian, now in the British Muse- 
 um. It is incomplete, and shows many traces 
 of the knife and sponge used in making changes 
 and corrections. It omits John vi. 50-viii. 52. 
 
64 THE EVANGEL ACCOBDING TO idANN^S. 
 
 i»|IJMmil!M!ljM Mrtli!<Mi.ia.)|l{ljlt»MlfflH»fe aW«IIM»IMfiKSIM*^ 
 
 
 
 £j -^ S <|> Coc tH TiT irluo-n a. «{> cu'f. (J- K.fliBff*J> 
 ill -COETJ-0J_H^ oc -crrjLpa o # orO-**-<VBvr<»i «* * 
 
 •^^JXfTo /> Ho-H • uj C'Ci, tSv C}> ooTbc ' i(i oTrtt/j 
 
 V*V t'' Wcii-i Uo'oTXO o-ew-cij' ^<'I4' «3^ 
 Codex Ebnerianus. Jolin i. 1-10. 
 
 The Vatican, No. 1209 in the Vatican Library 
 at Eome. It is very corrupt, has evidently 
 been tampered with, and is remarkable for 
 omissions, lacking the Apocalypse, Hebrews ix. 
 4 to the end, I. and II. Timothy, Titus, and 
 
EXPLANATOBY NOTE. 65 
 
 Philemon. It divides John into eighty chapters, 
 and omits vii. 53-viii. 11. 
 
 The Ephrem, now in Paris. It is a palimp- 
 sest, and very incomplete, wanting nearly haK 
 of the Evangels and about a third of the rest 
 of the New Testament. It divides John into 
 eighteen chapters. 
 
 The Beza, now in the University Library at 
 Cambridge. It is a Grreek and Latin copy of the 
 four Evangels and the Acts, and is very corrupt, 
 containing extensive interpolations — more of 
 them, in fact, than any other known manu- 
 script. 
 
 Of these five manuscripts, the Beza is sup- 
 posed to have been made in Lyons, France, and 
 the four others in Alexandreia, Egypt. All the 
 older manuscripts are written entirely in capi- 
 tals (uncials), with no divisions between the 
 words except at new paragraphs, and with few, 
 if any, marks of punctuation. The later manu- 
 scripts are mostly cursives, that is, written in 
 running hand. The present division into chap- 
 ters and verses was made probably not earlier 
 than the thirteenth century. 
 
 The English authorized version (King James's 
 Bible), first published in 1611, is little more than 
 a revision of, and by no means an improvement 
 upon,, the translation made from the Latin 
 Vulgate by William Tyndale, and published in 
 1526. For, while that version was based, by 
 
66 THE EVANGEL ACCORDING TO lOANNifeS. 
 
 order of the king, upon the " Bishops' Bible," 
 and the " former translations " were " diligently- 
 compared," all these translations, with the ex- 
 ception of the Eoman Catholic version (which 
 was confessedly Englished from the Vulgate), 
 had been cribbed from Tyndale's admirable 
 work. And while Tyndale's version is com- 
 monly said to have been from the original, he 
 himself never made that claim. That it was 
 done from the Vulgate is shown conclusively by 
 numerous errors in translating, of a sort that 
 would easily be made from the Latin, but that 
 would be unaccountable if the translator were 
 following the Greek text. The credit for the 
 literary beauty of the English version is due 
 almost wholly to Tyndale. But over twenty 
 thousand errors have been pointed out in the 
 King James Bible; and the revised version, 
 while correcting many of the more glaring of 
 these inaccuracies, has perpetrated others 
 equally bad, besides destroying the rhythm in 
 many passages, and changing the diction to an 
 Incongruous mixture of Elizabethan and modern 
 English. In this respect, however, it resembles 
 the text of the original, especially that of the 
 Apokalypse, which represents the Greek of two 
 distinct periods, separated by centuries. On 
 the whole, the English New Testament is inferior 
 to the Spanish version of Cipriano de Valera, 
 first published in 1602. Accurate and merito- 
 
EXPLANATORY NOTE. 67 
 
 rious translating, like original composition, is 
 necessarily tlie work of tlie individual, who can 
 become absorbed in bis subject and not be in- 
 terrupted or hindered while seeking to give it 
 adequate expression. Any translation made 
 by a committee, even by an " assembly of 
 divines," is sure to be a colorless rendering, 
 produced from lexicons by a process of mere 
 word-change, and consequently but a poor and 
 lifeless literary performance. 
 
THE MAGICAL MESSAGE ACCORD- 
 ING TO IOANNES 
 
THE MAGICAL MESSAGE ACCOED- 
 ING TO IOANNES. 
 
 In a First-principle^ was the [uttered] 
 Thought,'' and the Thought was in relation to 
 
 ^ Gr. archS, first cause, inherent principle of evolution as 
 opposed to the primary elements (stoicheia), which are the 
 first differentiations of the root-substance. It is the divine 
 spirit of Life pulsating through Chaos, or Space. Considered 
 as the kosmio matrix, or womb of the world, it was symbol- 
 ized by the crescent moon (typical of female generative 
 power), and by the ark, or ship of life, floating on the " G-reat 
 Deep," or watery abyss of Space, and preserving the germs 
 of all living things during the intervals between the periods 
 of kosmic objectivity. Colloquially, en arcM means " at 
 first," or " in the beginning " ; but here the word has the 
 same philosophical meaning it has in Heb. vi. 1 : " Leaving 
 the discussion {logos) of the First-principle (arcM) of the 
 Christos, let us refer to perfection [initiation] ." 
 
 2 Gr. logos, the external expression of the interior thought, 
 and the thought itself ; a saying, oracle, divine revelation ; 
 a " word " as the embodiment of an idea, but never in the 
 grammatical sense as the mere name of a thing. The Vul- 
 gate mistranslates it Verhum, "Word"; but the Beza ha& 
 Sermo, " Speech " ; and Tertullian {Apol. c. xxi.) gives Serma 
 atque Batio, " Speech and Eeason." The Logos is the Divine 
 
 71 
 
72 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 The God/ and the Thought was a God.^ This 
 [God] it was who in a First-principle was in 
 relation to The God. All [things] ' came into 
 
 Thought, which, impressed upon the primal substance 
 (arche), is alike the pattern and the formative force of the 
 universe. It is, therefore, the Archetypal World, contain- 
 ing the Ideas or Souls of aU things. The Logos and the 
 Absolute Principle (archS) are the two aspects of the One. 
 
 1 Gr. ho theos, probably from the older form Zeus — the 
 Father of the Gods and of men; but still not Absolute 
 Deity, the Unmanifested, the incognizable " Only One." 
 " The God " is a collective term for all in the purely spir- 
 itual worlds. 
 
 ^ Gr. theos, without the definite article, in contrast with ho 
 theos, The God. The distinction is clearly indicated also in 
 the preceding phrase (which is emphatically repeated), " in 
 relation to The God," pros ton theon, where the preposition 
 pros — though commonly translated "with," out of defer- 
 ence to theological notions and in defiance of Greek — has 
 somewhat of an adversative force ; in fact, it would be good 
 Greek for "in spite of The God," while the rendering 
 " with God " is untenable. In Bom. xv. 17 and Heb. ii. 17 
 the phrase is used, ta pros ton theon, " the [things] relating 
 to The God." The conception in the text is unmis- 
 takably identical with that of Philo Judseus, who speaks of 
 the Logos as " the Second God " {De Somn. i. 655) and 
 makes him the synthesis of aU the spiritual powers acting 
 upon the kosmos. HermSs Trismegistos also (quoted ap- 
 provingly by Lactantius, Divin. Instit. iv. 6) calls the 
 Logos " the Second God " ; he moreover makes the same dis- 
 tinction between theos and ho theos, calling the Logos " a 
 God " to distinguish him from The God. Justin Martyr 
 held the same view, using the term " Second God " {deuteros 
 theos), and so did Origen. 
 
 3 Gr.^awto, all ; here used absolutely, the whole kosmos. 
 
ACCORDING TO IOANNIiS. 73 
 
 being * tlirough. Mm, and apart from him not 
 one single [thing] came into being. That 
 which has come into being was Life ^ in him, 
 and the Life was the Light of the Men ' ; and 
 
 ^ Gr. ginestJiai, to become, to come into objective existence, 
 to come out of the Eternal into Time, as contrasted with 
 einai, to le ; to be bom. The God is boundless Duration, 
 which neither is nor is not ; the Logos is Time in the abstract, 
 which eternally is ; the kosmos, in manifested Time, is ever 
 becoming. Nothing is " created " or " made," but all things 
 emanate from the Eternal Essence {ousia), and pass through 
 the Sphere of Transition (genesis) into the Differentiated 
 World {kosmos). See Appendix I., " The Prodigal Son." 
 
 2 Gr. zdS, Ufe, as opposed to death, LiEe is also the 
 Breath {pneuma). In kosmic manifestation it is the Solar 
 Energy, which visually is Light. The punctuation of the 
 text as above is incontestably the correct one, having the 
 support of a majority of the orthodox church fathers as well 
 as of all the so-called " heretics." The punctuation which 
 severs the words " that which became " {ho gegonen) from 
 the sentence to which they belong, and joins them in a 
 meaningless way to the preceding sentence, is a futile at- 
 tempt to conceal the fact that Life (the Breath) is one of the 
 Emanations that come into being in the Logos. All the 
 ancient authorities prove that the stop should be placed 
 before Jio gegonen, and the whole sense of the passage clearly 
 shows this to be the true punctuation. 
 
 3 The Men are the twelve zodiacal signs — in the astronom- 
 ical rendering — the twelve " Patriarchs " of the Old Testa- 
 ment ; the twelve months of the year, whether a year of 
 mortals, or the sidereal year of about 25,000 years, or a year 
 of the Gods, the whole lifetime of the kosmos. The zodi- 
 acal signs are alternately diurnal and nocturnal, making six 
 periods of activity as day and night. 
 
74 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 the Light illuminates in the Darkness/ and the 
 Darkness did not overtake it. 
 
 There came into being a Man sent forth from 
 [the Light-giving] Grod ; his name [was] I6ann§s. 
 This [forerunner] came for witness,^ that he 
 might bear witness about the Light, that all 
 might have faith' through him. He was not 
 
 ^ The principle of duality, good and evil. Darkness is 
 the chaotic element, that bUnd, turbulent energy in matter 
 which is the source of all " evU." The imagery in this pas- 
 sage is solar, referring to the ancient mythos of the dragon 
 of darkness pursuing the sun to devour it, but never able 
 to overtake it. The verb used, katalamhanem, means to 
 catch, to come upon, to overtake ; in the middle voice it is 
 used in the Epistles in the sense of comprehending mentally, 
 but in the active voice, as here, it can not have that meaning. 
 The word is used also in the passage, " Walk while you 
 have the Light, so that Darkness may not overtake you " 
 (xii. 35). 
 
 2 One who can retain in his physical consciousness the 
 memory of things in the psychic and spiritual worlds is 
 said to " bear witness " when he declares them to men who 
 can not so remember, to help revive their dormant psychic 
 faculties. 
 
 3 Gr. pisteueim, to trust in, to rely on, to have conviction ; 
 from pistis, assurance, good-faith, credit (in business affairs), 
 a pledge, an argument, a proof ; the power of the soul- to 
 appropriate knowledge ; the intense fervor springiag from 
 a conviction of the reality of the spiritual life ; in a philo- 
 sophic sense, certain knowledge based upon intuitive percep- 
 tion gained by correlating the physical body with the 
 psychic. Those who had the faculty of pistis were called 
 the psychics (psuchikoi), as distinguished from the spiritu- 
 ally regenerated men (pneumatikoi) on the one hand, and 
 
ACCORDING TO lOANNES. 75 
 
 the Light, but [he was sent] that he might bear 
 witness about the Light. [The Thought] was 
 that True* Light which, when it comes into the 
 world,^ lights every Man.' He was in the world, 
 
 the carnal or earthy men (sarkikoi, chmkoi) on the other. 
 While pistis is psychic knowledge rather than spiritual, it 
 is by no means blind faith or unreasoning opinion. For 
 lack of an EngUsh verb to convey its exact force, pisteuein 
 is here translated, in a few passages, "to have faith." 
 The word pistis, however, does not occur in IdannSs ; and, 
 curiously, pisteuein is not used in the Apokalypse. 
 
 1 Gr. alethinos, the real, as opposed to the apparent. At 
 the beginning of each of the Life-Cycles there is an out- 
 shining of the Light, and a Messias (one anointed by the 
 Breath) appears as the spiritual Teacher of mankind for 
 that particular cycle. The cycle of I6ann6s-I6sous (for 
 the two are really one, the psycho-spiritual man) was that 
 of the Sun in the sign Pisces, the Fishes. Mikrokosmi- 
 caUy, I6aniies is the psychic or magnetic light which pre- 
 cedes, and prepares the way for, the True Light, the noetic 
 ■or spiritual illumination. 
 
 2 Gr. kosmos. The primary meaning of the word is 
 " good order," and it is applied to anything having definite 
 form or arrangement, from an ornament, or a fashion in 
 dress, to the whole manifested universe. Chaos, or rather 
 the primary matter it contaias (hulS, unwrought material), 
 becomes, through the formative power of the Logos, the 
 kosmos or objective universe, each department of which is 
 also a kosmos or world in itself ; hence the word applies 
 to the suns and planets in space, to this earth, to humanity 
 in general, and to individual man. 
 
 2 The construction of this sentence, in the Greek, is very 
 confused, and leaves it uncertain whether " coming" refers 
 to the " Light " or to " every Man." Hence it may also be 
 
76 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 and tlirotigh. him the world came into being, 
 and [yet] the world did not know him. He 
 came into the [things] that were his own, and 
 they who were his own ' did not take ^ him [to 
 themselves]. But as many as did receive' him, 
 to them he gave authority to become children 
 of [the manifested] God (to those having faith 
 in his Name ■*), who were born,° not of human 
 parents ° (neither of the will' of [a woman's] 
 
 constmed either, " That was the True Light which lights 
 every Man coming [or, "when he comes"] into the 
 world " ; or, " That True Light, which hghts every Man, 
 was coming into the world." If the latter is intended, the 
 allusion would be to the manifestation {epiphaneia) of the 
 Logos at the beginning of each cycle, the advent of a Messias. 
 
 1 Gr. ta idia, one's own possessions, one's home ; and hoi 
 idioi, one's own relatives, friends, or people. 
 
 2 Q-r. paralambanein, to take from (the sender) ; to take 
 to one's self. Man came into existence through the Logos, 
 but remains in ignorance of his own true nature, does not 
 become one with his inner God. 
 
 3 Gr. lamhanein, to take hold of, make one's own ; to en- 
 tertain, receive hospitably. 
 
 *The "name" is the Am^, which has no meaning as a 
 word, its whole potency being in the sownd. See note 3, p. 88. 
 
 5 Literally, " begotten " ; but in later Greek, as here, the 
 verb used means rather " to be born." 
 
 6 The Siaaitic and the Beza read, "blood-relations" (lit- 
 erally, " bloods "). The authorized version gives " blood,"^ 
 which is misleading. 
 
 7 That is, will as desire, the creative impulse ; thus Jas. i. 
 18 : " Having milled, he gave birth to us by a Logos o£ 
 Truth." 
 
ACCOKDING TO lOANNES. 77 
 
 flesh nor of the will of a man^), but of [the man- 
 ifested] God. And the Thought became flesh, 
 and encamped among us; and we beheld his 
 Eadiance,^ a Eadiance as of a [son] born of one 
 [parent] only' (from a father), full of Grace ^ 
 
 1 Gr. cmSr, man (as distinguislied from woman). The 
 parenthetical clause merely emphasizes the preceding state- 
 ment that the Logos-bom are not of human parentage. 
 
 2 Gr. doxa, opinion, subjective knowledge (as opposed to 
 objective) ; self -opinion ; honor, glory ; a fancy, dream, 
 vision; generally used by the New Testament writers in 
 the sense of splendor, brilliant shining, to denote the lumi- 
 nous cloud or aura enveloping the purified man or Initiate, 
 and which is visible only to the inner sight. It is the 
 "flesh" of the Logos, the substance of the spiritual body 
 or Augoeides (the "Light-like" form). The expression 
 " encamped among us" (literally, "pitched tent") refers to 
 this luminous envelope. 
 
 * Gr. monogenSs, born of one only ; hence the explana- 
 tory phrase, " from a father." (A variant reading has, " a 
 God born," etc.) The spiritually regenerated man is self- 
 bom, that is, born from himself as his own father, in the 
 deathless spiritual body. The term was applied to Zeus 
 and other Sun-Gods ; for the sun is a type of perfect man, 
 and the earth a type of unregenerate man, the planets, 
 being regarded as embryonic suns, and the sun as a per- 
 fected planet. The word is consistent with the solar 
 imagery used in this Evangel, and is not applied in the 
 Synoptics to the Christos. MonogenSs also means " beget- 
 ting but one " and " only begotten " or " only." In the 
 latter sense it is used in Luke vii. 12, " an only son of his 
 mother, and she was a widow." 
 
 * Gr. eharis, that which gives joy : (subjectively) kind- 
 ness, gratitude ; (objectively) beauty, loveliness. 
 
78 THE MAGICAIi MESSAGE 
 
 and Truth.' (I6anii6s bears witness about Mm, 
 and cried aloud, saying, " This [Light] it was of 
 whom I said, He who is coming behind me 
 has come to be in front of me, for he was my 
 First." ^) For from his Fulness we all received, 
 and Grrace for Grace. For the Law ^ was given 
 
 1 G-r. alitheia, the Eeal (as opposed to the apparent, the 
 false) ; the changeless spiritual basis upon which come and 
 go the Ulusionary forms of the transitory world. 
 
 2 Or, "prototype." The lunar Gods evolve the physical 
 forms of men, in which the solar Gods incarnate later on ; 
 yet the latter are the prototypes preexisting in the arche- 
 typal world. Here, loann^s represents the lunar man 
 (psucM), and ISsous the solar man, or spiritual Self. The 
 sentence here placed in parentheses interferes somewhat 
 with the meaning, and is inserted in some manuscripts 
 after verse 18 (at the end of the paragraph above). The 
 Eadiance is the root-substance of the archetypal world ; it 
 is " full of Grace and Truth," and this Fulness (pUrdma) is 
 the totality of aU. the abstract qualities of the World-soul. 
 The words " Grace for Grace " express the interaction be- 
 tween the higher and the lower worlds, and the relation of 
 the mikrokosm to the makrokosm. As ideal Space, of three 
 degrees corresponding to the three dimensions in mani- 
 fested Space, the Pleroma is the "house of the Father," 
 and the abode of divine beings and pure souls. 
 
 3 Gr. nomas, that which is assigned, or apportioned ; 
 custom, conventionalism; law, ordinance. The Mosaic 
 Law consists of ritualistic observances based upon the 
 action of the forces ruling the material world. It is the 
 law of cause and effect inherent in the elements (or, rather, 
 the spirits of the elements) that keeps the soul in bondage 
 in the world of matter, and holds it within the cycle of re- 
 incarnations, the mind being attached to the objects of the 
 
ACCOBDING TO idANNtS. 79 
 
 througli M6sgs ; the Grace and the Truth came 
 into being through Anointed * I^sous. No one 
 has ever yet seen God^; the Self -born' Son, 
 ■who is in the bosom of the Father, Tie it is that 
 explained* [him]. 
 
 senses and to the results of actions. From this bondage 
 the soul can become free only by purification and the ac- 
 ceptance of the " free gift " of the Logos, when it is re-born 
 in the divine Essence and becomes " the Son of a God." 
 Thus Paulos says {Gal. iv. 3-8) : " We also, when we were 
 youngsters, were enslaved under the elemental-spirits 
 (stoicheia) of the Kosmos. But when the Fulness of the 
 Time came The God sent forth his Son, born from a woman, 
 bom under Law, that he might ransom those under Law, 
 so that we might regain the Sonship. And because you 
 are Sons he sent forth the Breath of his Son into our 
 hea/rts, loudly calling, ^Abba, Father!' So that you are 
 no longer a Slave, but a Son, and if a Son, also an heir 
 of a God; but at that time, indeed, not perceiving a 
 God, you were enslaved by those who by origin are not 
 Gods." 
 
 ^Gr. christos, washed, anointed with oU (after bathing). 
 Mystically, one is said to be " anointed" when he has been 
 purified by the Breath. In the Mysteries there was an 
 actual anointing with oil (usually palm-oil) to which magi- 
 cal virtues had been imparted ; and preparatory to the 
 purification by Fire an oil extracted from asbestos was 
 used. 
 
 2 That is, the Logos, or " second God," as the Unmani- 
 fested Thought (logos endiathetos). 
 
 3 Gr. monogenes. See note 3, p. 77. 
 
 * Gr. exegeisthai, to expound, to teach, to act as interpreter 
 for a God ; especially, to interpret omens, oracles, and ritu- 
 alistic ceremonies. 
 
80 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 And this is the witness of IdannSs, when the 
 loudaians sent to him from Hierousaldm ^ priests 
 and Levites to ask him : 
 
 "Whoare«/o^t^^'' 
 
 And he admitted, and did not deny, and ad- 
 mitted : 
 
 "7 am not the Anointed." 
 
 And they asked him : 
 
 " What, then, [are you] ? Are you HSlias ' ? " 
 
 1 Also spelled "Hierosoluma." Originally, an Euphratean 
 place-name meaning " City of the God of Peace." OannSs 
 (Ea-hhan, "Man-Fish") was called Sallimmanu, "the God 
 of Peace," whence the Biblical "Solom6n" {Sheloumouh). 
 
 2 To distinguish the siagixlar pronoun from the plural, it 
 is spaced thus, you. 
 
 ^ There is a play here upon the words H61ias and helios. 
 I6ann6s evades the question, " Are you EUjah {Helias) 1 " 
 by taking it to be, " Are you the Sua (Mlios) 1 " and there- 
 fore answers, " I am not." In Matt. xvii. 11-13 it is posi- 
 tively stated that he was the reincarnation of H61ias 
 (Elijah): ''Now, ISsous answered and said to them: 'Ho- 
 llas indeed comes first, and shall restore aU [things] . Now, 
 I say to you, HShas has come already.' . . . Then the 
 pupils understood that he said [this] to them about I6ann§s 
 the Lustrator." Helias is described in II. Kings i. 8 as " a 
 hairy man, and girded about the loias with a girdle of 
 skin " ; and he is said to have killed two bands of soldiers 
 by calling down fire from the sky — a bit of black magic. 
 Keincarnated as I6ann6s, he is thus described in Matt. m. 4 : 
 " Idannes wore a garment of camel's hair, and a girdle of 
 skin about his loins " ; and for the evU deed of that former 
 incarnation Nemesis pursues him, in the person of the 
 wanton HSrddias, and he is beheaded. Most of the char- 
 
ACCOKDING TO i6aNN£s. 81 
 
 And he said : 
 
 " I am not." 
 
 "Are you the SeerM" 
 
 And he answered : 
 
 "No." 
 
 Therefore they said to him : 
 
 "Who are you? — that we may give a reply 
 to those who sent us. What do y o u say about 
 yourself?" 
 
 Said he : 
 
 "J [am] ' The Voice of one shouting in the 
 desert, " Make straight the path of the Master,"' 
 as said HSsaias the Seer." ^ 
 
 acters in the New Testament story may be traced through a 
 number of incarnations in the stories in the Old Testament. 
 
 1 Gr. prophitis, one who speaks for (another) , especially for 
 a God ; the interpreter of a God, a seer. Here the Seer H§- 
 saias (Isaiah) may be intended, as suggested by the context 
 following ; but more probably Hieremias( Jeremiah) is meant, 
 siuce he is named in Matt. xvi. 14 as one of the seers whom 
 the people were expecting to reincarnate among them at 
 that time. But in the parallel passages in the other Synop- 
 tics {Mark viii. 28; Lulce ix. 19) Hieremias is not mentioned. 
 The expectation of the coming of Helias was based upon 
 Mai. iv. 5 : " Behold, I send you HSlias, the divinely fren- 
 zied one, before the great and manifested day of the Mas- 
 ter comes." And as in this prophecy the Messias is called 
 " the Sun of Righteousness," the play on the words helios 
 and Helias is natural enough. 
 
 2 Isa. xl. 3. The subjective consciousness, realized only 
 through interior contemplation, is the " path " which ex- 
 tends between man's personal self and his inner God. 
 
82 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 And they who were sent were from among 
 the Pharisaians ^ ; and they questioned him, and 
 said to him : 
 
 " Then why do y o u lustrate,^ if y o u are not 
 the Anointed, neither HMias nor a Seer ? " 
 
 loannes answered them and said : 
 
 "J lustrate in Water*; but in your midst 
 
 ^ The principal sect of the loudaians, who had inherited 
 much of the secret teachings of the ChaldsBans, without 
 having preserved the inner meanings. I6sous is therefore 
 represented as reproaching them in Luke xi. 52, saying: 
 " You have taken away the key of the Gn6sis [the arcane 
 wisdom] ; you yourselves have not entered, and those 
 about to enter you have prevented." 
 
 2Gr. iaptizein, to dip repeatedly, to wash, to cleanse. 
 There are four lustrations: in water, the purification of 
 the material body through psychic (magnetic) action ; in 
 air, the purification of the psychic body by the action of 
 the vital electricity {pneuma ); in^re,the purification of the 
 Air-body (sdma pneumatikon) ; and in blood, the purification 
 of the Fire-body in the life-force of the planet ; the spheres 
 of purification being placed, symbolically, in the Moon and 
 the Sun. Thus the followers of Mani represented the 
 Moon and the Sun as two ships by which the soul journeyed 
 to the world of Light. In the lunar boat it was lustrated 
 in " the good water of the Moon," which removed all gross 
 impurities, when it was transferred to the solar boat, where 
 "the good fire of the Sun " consumed all inner impxirities, 
 leaving it bright and luminous. (Augustine, JDe Hares. 
 c. 46 ; also Epiphanius and others.) 
 
 3 I6annSs, representing the limar (psychic) man, can only 
 purify through the magnetic force. This subtile ether 
 permeating the body gradually eliminates the grosser ele- 
 ments and clears the channels for the action of the vital 
 
ACCORDING TO i6aNNES. 83 
 
 stands one whom you do not know, who is 
 coming behind me, of whom I am not deserv- 
 ing to untie the thong of 'his sandal." 
 
 These [events] took place in B^thania,^ on 
 the other side of the lordanos, where I6ann§s 
 was lustrating. 
 
 On the morrow he sees I§sous coming toward 
 him, and says : 
 
 " See ; [here is] the Lamb of The God, who 
 takes away the sin * of the world. This 
 
 electric fire, which, then takes the place of the water, or 
 magnetic nerve-fltiid. 
 
 1 B^thania was a village near Hierousal^m. Origen and 
 others admit that there was no Bethania on the east bank 
 of the lordanos. Many later manuscripts read •*' Beth- 
 abara."' There are a number of such inaccuracies in this 
 Evangel, with others relating to chronology and loudaian 
 customs, from which it is clear that the author was not a 
 loudaian. Apparently he was not even acquainted with 
 the Hebrew language. The peculiarly crabbed style of 
 his Greek, which is curiously out of keeping with the 
 classic beauty of the narrative, with its vivid picturing, 
 purity, and dramatic strength, shows that he was writing 
 in an acquired language ; while the literary form, especially 
 in the dialogues, is distinctly Syrian. Evidently the author 
 was himself from " the other side of the lordanos," and a 
 native of Syria. 
 
 2 Gr. hamarUa, missing the mark, error, failure, sin. The 
 kosmos, or material world, is but an imperfect manifesta- 
 tion of the archetypal world. Physical man is a failure 
 through the "faU into generation" — the separation into 
 the sexes. 
 
84 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 [Anointed] is he of whom I said, ' Behind me 
 comes a man who has come to be in front of 
 me, for he was my First.'* And I did not know 
 him, but that he might shine forth to Israel, 
 for this [reason] I came, lustrating in Water." 
 And I6ann6s bore witness, saying : 
 "J have seen the Breath ^ coming down like 
 a dove out of the Sky,' and it abode upon him. 
 And I did not know him ; but he who sent me 
 to lustrate in Water, he said to me, ' Upon 
 
 'Or "prototype." Colloquially, the phrase would mean 
 " first of me *' — that is, " first in regard to me." 
 
 2 Gr. pneuma, the air we breathe, breath ; the magnetic 
 breath or " breath of life " ; spirit. Psycho-physiologically, 
 the vital principle in each of the three bodies. Kosmically, 
 it is the Ether of Space, the " Heavenly Mother." 
 
 ^Gr. ouranos, visible Space, the vault of the sky; the 
 abode of the Gods, beyond the sky- vault. While " heaven " 
 is not situated in the Sky, it nevertheless corresponds, as 
 subjective Space, to the outer, visible, or objective Space, 
 since the " things seen " are manifestations of the " things 
 unseen,'' and ancient philosophy never lost sight of the 
 analogy and the relation of the inferior to the superior 
 worlds. Thus Paxdos {Phil. ii. 10) speaks of " beings in the 
 Sky (epourawm), and beings on the Earth, and subterranean 
 beings." And the term hoi epomcmioi is synonymous with 
 hoi theoi, " the Gods " — the souls of men. Psycho-physio- 
 logicaUy, ouranos is the brain, the seven centres of which 
 correspond to the seven sidereal worlds or "heavens." 
 The " Breath coming down like a dove out of the Sky" is 
 descriptive of the magnetic irradiation from the brain, 
 which forms a luminous appearance about the spiritually 
 purified man. 
 
ACCORDING TO i6aNNES. 85 
 
 -whom you may have seen the Breath coming 
 down, and abiding upon him, this [Anointed] 
 is he who lustrates in the pure ' Breath,' And 
 /have seen, and have borne witness that this 
 {Anointed] is the Son of The God." 
 
 On the morrow again stood loannSs, and two 
 of his pupils ; and having gazed at I§sous walk- 
 ing, he says : 
 
 " See; [here is] the Lamb of The God." 
 
 And the two pupils heard him speaking,'' and 
 ihey went along after I^sous ; and lesous, hav- 
 ing turned about, and seeing them coming 
 along after him, says to them: 
 
 "What do you seek?" 
 
 And they said to him : 
 
 " Babbi^ (which means, being interpreted, 
 ■Teacher), "where do you abide?" 
 
 He says to them : 
 
 " Come and see." 
 
 They came, therefore, and saw where he 
 abides, and they abode with him that day; it 
 "was about the tenth hour. Andreas, the 
 
 1 Gr. hagios, pure ; consecrated to the Gods, sacred. In 
 JTiess. iv. 3-7, purification {hagiasmos) is contrasted with. 
 «exual impurity and the sensual desir'^s. 
 
 2 Gr. lalein, to make a prattling, babbling sound (usually 
 of animals) ; to babble, to talk ; in New Testament usage, 
 "to declare secrets, to reveal what has been learned psychi- 
 -cally or spiritually, to speak under inspiration or from a 
 controlling influence. 
 
86 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 brother of Simon Petros, was one of those two 
 who heard from I6ann6s, and went along after 
 him. This [pupil] first finds his own brother 
 Sim6n, and says to him : 
 
 " "We have found the Messias " (which is, be- 
 ing interpreted, Anointed). 
 
 He led him to I§sous. I^sous, having gazed 
 at him, said : 
 
 "You are Simdn, the son of Idnas; you 
 shall be named Kephas " (which is interpreted 
 Petros) ' 
 
 On the morrow he wished to go out into- 
 GalUaia; and he finds PhUippos, and says to 
 him: 
 
 " Come with me " 
 
 1 Gr. petros, a rock, a boulder ; Chaldaic, kephas, a rock.. 
 Here, a word-play upon the Semitic peter, meaning an 
 'interpreter, illuminator, tlie hierophant in tlie Mysteries 
 being so called. The arcane rites were celebrated in caves, 
 and rock-temples ; the stone receptacle in which the sacred 
 symbols were kept was called the petroma, the same name 
 being given to the double stone tablet from which the 
 hierophant expounded (hence the fable, which rests on a 
 mere pun, about Petros being in Borne). Many words 
 referring to the oracles are derived from petra (rock) ; thus 
 Pataros, the son of the Oracle-God Apoll&n, was said to- 
 have founded the Oracle-city of Patara. Philo Judeeus 
 calls the Logos a Rock ; and Panlos (I. Cor. x. 1-4) gives a. 
 purely mystical interpretation of the myth of the " Rock 
 in the desert": "Our Fathers were aU under the Cloud, 
 and all passed through the Sea, and all were lustrated into 
 
ACCORDING TO lOANNES. 87 
 
 Now, Philippos was from Bethsaida, out of 
 the city of Andreas and Petros. Philippos 
 finds Nathanael, and says to him: 
 
 "[The one] whom Mos^s described in the 
 Law, and [whom] the Seers [foretold], we have 
 found — I^sous of Nazareth, the son of IdsSph." 
 
 And Nathanael said to him : 
 
 "Out of Nazareth can there be anything 
 good?" 
 
 Philippos says to him : 
 
 "Come and see." 
 
 ISsous saw Nathanael coming to him, and he 
 says about him : 
 
 " See ; [this is] an IsraMite truly, in whom 
 there is no deceit." 
 
 Nathanael says to him : 
 
 " From what source do y o u have knowledge 
 of me?" 
 
 M6s6s in the Cloud and in the Sea ; and all ate the same 
 pneumatic food and drank the same pneumatic drink, for 
 they drank from a pneumatic Eoek accompanying them, 
 and that Rock was the Anointed." Psycho-physiologically, 
 ■ the rock is the " philosopher's stone," the " third eye " of 
 the Seer, as clearly shown in Matt. xvi. 18, 19 : " Fo m are a 
 Rock (Petros), and on this rock (pebra) I will build my 
 Society, and the gates of HadSs shall not prevail against 
 it. And I shall give you the keys of the Ruling of the 
 Skies." The " gates of HadSs" are the generative powers, 
 as opposed to the " gate (or door) of ISsous " (see note 2, p. 
 150) ; and the " Ruhng of the Skies " {hasiMa tdn ourandn) 
 is the controlling of the seven brain -centres by the Breath 
 ipneuma), and thus attaining seership on the sidereal planes. 
 
88 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 I§sous answered and said to him : 
 "Before Philippos called you, when you 
 were [yet] under the fig-tree/ I saw y o u." 
 Nathana§l answered and says to him : 
 '^Bahbi, you are the Son of The God; you 
 are the Euler^ of Israel." 
 ISsous answered and said to him : 
 " Because I said to y o u that I saw you 
 hidden beneath the fig-tree, do you believe 
 [it]! You shall see greater [things] than 
 these ! " And he says to him : " AmSn, AmSn,' 
 I say to you, From now on you shall see the 
 Sky opened, and the Messengers * of The Grod 
 
 1 That is, " before you were bom." The fig is a symbol 
 of the matrix; and its three-lobed leaf represents the 
 creative triad. 
 
 2 Gr. basileus, one having authority ; a king by right of 
 spiritual knowledge, as opposed to turcmnos, one who 
 usurps authority by physical force ; a lord, master, house- 
 holder. The second of the nine Athenian Arohons was 
 called Basileus, and had charge of the religious rites. 
 
 s See note 4, p. 76. The AmSn is used before important 
 declarations to awaken the mind of the listener, the magi- 
 cal vibrations of sound acting upon the brain and making 
 it more receptive. It is also employed in arousing to 
 action the vital electric force, thereby inducing the trance 
 state. It is the mystical " name " of the Christos (II. Cor, i. 
 20; Bev. iii. 14). The repetition, " AmSn, AmSn," occurs 
 only m this Evangel. 
 
 *Gr. angelos, a courier, envoy, messenger; a spiritual 
 being or intelligent force. The seven Archangels are the 
 spirits of the seven sacred planets, the hierarchies of for- 
 mative forces acting upon the kosmos. Here, Petros is the 
 
AcooEDiNG TO i6annI:8. 89 
 
 going up and coming down upon the Son of 
 the Man." 
 
 And on the third day a marriage ' took place 
 in Kana of Gralilaia, and the mother of I^sous was 
 there ; and ISsous was invited,^ and his pupUs 
 also, to the marriage. And the wine having 
 fallen short, the mother of lesous says to him : 
 
 " They have no wine." 
 
 I§sous says to her : 
 
 " What [is that] to me and to y o u, [good] 
 woman ' ? My hour has not yet come." 
 
 " third eye " (the " philosopher's stone "), and the Messen- 
 gers are the seven prismatic colors incessantly playing- 
 about it when awakened, each color corresponding to one 
 of the seven Breaths. In a wider sense, these Messengers 
 are the souls of men, and their "going up and coming 
 down " relates to the cycle of incarnations. 
 
 1 Gr. gamos, a wedding ; union of the sexes ; one of the 
 arcane rites ; the union of positive and negative forces, the 
 blending of superior and lower natures. Here, the mar- 
 riage stands for the action of the dual magnetic force in 
 wakening the " third eye," in the attainment of seership ; 
 but at this stage of the allegory it refers only to one of 
 those rare visions that come long before the permanent 
 state of illumination is reached. 
 
 2 Literally, " was called." 
 
 3 The Greek word is used as a term of respect, as in 
 Xenophon {Cyr.v. 1) : "The elder said to the queen, 'Be 
 of good cheer, woman.'" It corresponds to the French 
 Madame when thus used in the vocative, though it is rarely- 
 placed at the beginning of a sentence when so employed. 
 
90 THE MAGIOAIi MESSAGE 
 
 His motlier says to the waiters ^ : 
 
 " Whatever he may say to you, that do." 
 
 Now, there were six stone water- jars there, 
 placed according to the loudaians' custom of 
 cleansing, holding two or three measures^ 
 apiece. I^sous says to them: 
 
 " FiU the water-jars with water." 
 
 And they filled them to the brim. And he 
 says to them : 
 
 " Draw now, and bring [it] to the banquet- 
 master." ' 
 
 And they brought [it]. Now, when the 
 banquet-master had tasted the water which 
 had become wine — and he did not know from 
 what source it was, but the waiters knew, who 
 had drawn. the water — he, the banquet-master, 
 addresses the bridegroom, and says to him : 
 
 " Usually a man* sets on the good wine first, 
 and when [the guests] have become tipsy ,^ then 
 
 1 Grr. didkonos, one who waits on or serves another, but 
 not necessarily a menial, or " servant." 
 
 2 Gr. metritis, a liquid measure, the Eoman amphora, of 
 nine gallons ; but it is uncertain whether the word is used 
 here for precisely that measure. Nor is it of any conse- 
 quence in the allegory ; for the six water-jars stand for the 
 six brain-centres, the water being the psychic forces, and 
 the '' wine " beiag the electric fire in the highest centre. 
 
 3 Grr. architriklmos, president of the tricUfdum, or dining- 
 room having three couches. 
 
 *In the English idiom, " men generally." 
 
 5 Gr. methmkesthai, to get drunk, to become intoxicated. 
 
ACCOKBING TO i6ANNES. 91 
 
 that wliicli is weaker ; you have kept the good 
 ■wine till now." 
 
 This first of the signs* I^sous did in Kana of 
 Oalilaia ; and he made his Radiance shine forth, 
 and his pupils believed in him. 
 
 After this [event], he went down to Kaphar- 
 naum, himself and his mother, and his brothers 
 and his pupils; and there they abode for not 
 many days. And the "Passing-over"^ of the 
 loudaians was near; and ISsous went up to 
 Hierousalem, and he found in the temple- 
 
 ^Gr. sSmeion, distinctive mark, token, password; sym- 
 bol ; sign from the Gods, omen, portent ; constellation ; a 
 "transmutation of one element into another, a magical feat 
 performed through knowledge of the correlations of the 
 elements. The signs are the geometrical principles of 
 Form in the sidereal world, whence the grouping of the 
 atoms to constitute the various elements, the rates of vibra- 
 tion which manifest in the world of the senses as color, 
 sound, etc. They are the types, models, or ideals after 
 which the forces {dtmameis) fashion all things in the ob- 
 jective world; in the sidereal body (sdma pneumatikon) , 
 which is atomic but non-molecular, they are the force- 
 centres; in ceremonial magic they are symbols and 
 thaumaturgical feats. 
 
 2 GT.pascha (from Heb. pesach), one of the three principal 
 loudaian festivals ; it was held on the fourteenth day of the 
 month Nisan, and followed on the fifteenth by the seven- 
 days festival of the fuU-moon, that being the first full- 
 moon of spring. A lamb was sacrificed, as the festival re- 
 lated to the passing-over of the Sun into the sign Aries, 
 the Ram having been replacedas a symbol bythe Lamb. 
 
92 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 courts ' those who were selling oxen and sheep 
 and doves, and the money-changers" sitting [at 
 their tables] And having made a scourge of 
 ropes, he drove all [the cattle] out of the 
 temple-courts, alike the sheep and the oxen^; 
 and he poured out the small coin of the money- 
 brokers,^ and overturned their tables; and to 
 those who were selling the doves he said : 
 
 "Take these [things] hence. Make not my 
 Father's house a house of merchandise." 
 
 Then his pupils called to mind that it is writ- 
 ten, " The zeal of your house wiU eat me up." ^ 
 
 The loudaians, therefore, answered and said 
 to him : 
 
 " What sign do y o u show us, in that y o u do 
 these [things] ? " 
 
 ISsous answered and said to them : 
 
 " Demolish this temple,® and in three days I 
 win raise it [again]." 
 
 1 Gr. hieros, the temple-enclosure, as distinguislied from 
 naos, the temple proper. 
 
 2 Gr. kermatistes, one who changes small pieces of money 
 (from Jcerma, a small coin). 
 
 3 The Sinaitic reads, "and having found ... he made," 
 etc., and " he cast out of the temple-courts the sheep and the 
 oxen." 
 
 * Gr. kolluhistes (from kollubos, a small gold coia j a 
 small gold weight ; rate of foreign exchange). 
 
 5 Ps. Ixix. 9. 
 
 * Gr. naos, a house, especially the dwelling of a God, a 
 temple ; the inmost recess of a temple. 
 
ACCORDING TO i6aNNES. 93 
 
 The loudaians, therefore, said : 
 
 "Forty-six years has this temple been in 
 building, and will you raise it in three days ? " 
 
 But he was speaking about the temple of his 
 hody. When, therefore, he was raised from 
 among the dead ones,' his pupils called to mind 
 that he had uttered this [prediction], and they 
 had faith in the writing^ and in the saying' 
 which Igsous had spoken. 
 
 Now, while he was in Hierousal^m at the 
 "Passing-over," the festival, many [persons] 
 trusted in his Name, beholding the signs* 
 which he made. But I^sous himself was not 
 for entrusting himself to them, through his own 
 knowledge of them all, and because he had no 
 need that any one should bear witness about 
 the Man ; for he himself knew what was in the 
 Man.^ 
 
 1 Gr. nekros, a dead human body, a dead man ; in the 
 plnral {hoi nekroi), souls in the Under-world (hadSs). The 
 term is also applied to men who live solely in the world of 
 the senses, and are dead to spiritual things. 
 
 2 Gr. graphs, anything drawn, painted, or written. Here, 
 the sacred scrolls of the loudaians. 
 
 3 Gr. logos, a statement, an oracular sajnng with a hidden 
 meaning. See note 2, p. 71. 
 
 * Or, " his signs," in the Greek idiom. 
 
 5 That is, many saw psychically the luminous appear- 
 ances in the magnetic Eadianee enveloping him, and 
 thereby knew him to be the Spiritual Teacher for the 
 coming cycle (the " Man ") ; but he did not openly declare 
 Mmself to them. By a play on the meanings of the verb 
 
94 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 Now, there was a man of tlie Pharisaians — 
 Nikod§mos [was] his name — a leader' of the 
 loudaians. This [man] came to him by night 
 and said : 
 
 "i2a6H, we know that you have come from a 
 God as a Teacher ; for no one can do these signs 
 which yon do unless The Grod is with him." 
 
 Ksous answered and said to him : 
 
 "Amen, Amdn, I say to you, If any one be 
 not born from above ^ he can not see the 
 Eealm' of The God." 
 
 pisteudn, "to trust" and "to entrust," impossible to be 
 rendered literally in English, it is implied that their in- 
 tuitive certainty came spontaneously to them, and was not 
 initiated or inspired by ISsous from his higher knowledge. 
 
 ^ Gr. archon, chief, captain ; king ; magistrate. 
 
 2 Qr. andthen, from above; from the first, over again 
 (but very rarely used in this sense). The sidereal body is 
 said to be " bom from above,'' that is, from the brain- 
 centres ; the physical body being " born from below." 
 The Immortals are hoi and, " those above," as distinguished 
 from the mortals, who are hoi kato, " those below," and hoi 
 nekroi, " the dead ones," meaning those incarnated in the 
 dead forms (physical bodies), and also those in the nether- 
 world or region of " ghosts " — men in the psychic body, 
 whether the physical body is dead or only in the sleeping 
 state. NikodSmos, however, takes the word andthen in the 
 sense " over again," thus betraying his ignorance. Such 
 word-plays are common in this Evangel; and ISsous is usu- 
 ally represented as speaking in a mystical way, while his 
 listeners are made to appear very materiahstic, under- 
 standing his words only in a crudely literal sense. 
 
 ^ Gr. basileia, royal power, dominion, rule ; a kingdom. 
 
ACCOEMNG TO lOANNES. 95 
 
 Nikodemos says to him : 
 
 " How can a man be born when he is old ? 
 Into the womb of his mother can he enter a 
 second time and be born ? " 
 
 ISsoiis answered : 
 
 "Am^n, Am^n, I say to you, If any one be 
 not born of Water and of Breath, he can not 
 enter into the Realm of The God. That which 
 has been born from the flesh is flesh, and that 
 whicb has been born from the Breath is Breath. 
 Do not wonder because I said to you. You have 
 to be born from above. The Breath breathes 
 where it wills, and you hear its voice ' ; but you 
 do not know whence it comes and where it goes. 
 So is every one who has been born from the 
 Breath.''^ 
 
 Nikodemos answered and said to him : 
 
 " How can these [things] be brought about ? " 
 
 lesous answered and said to him : 
 
 ^ Gr. phdnS, a tone, articulate sound ; a vowel sound (as 
 opposed to that of consonants) ; voice, speech. The 
 Breath has seven sounds (the "seven vowels" of the 
 Gnostics), corresponding mystically to the seven planes of 
 the sidereal world. These sounds are heard in succession 
 by the mystic as the Breath awakens the seven brain- 
 centres. They are also called "trumpet-calls" {salpinges) 
 in the New Testament, the seventh heralding the new-birth 
 or " awakening of the dead ones " (I. Cor. xv. 52 ; Bev. xi. 
 15-xii. 1, 2). 
 
 2 Alluding to the mysterious coming and going of the 
 Initiate in his Fire-body, or sdma pneumatikon. 
 
96 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 " Are you the Teacher of Israel and do not 
 know these [things] ? Am^n, Am§n, I say to 
 you, That which we know, we speak, and that 
 which we have seen, we bear witness to ; and our 
 witness you do not receive. If I told you the 
 PMysteries] of the Earth,* and you did not be- 
 lieve [me], how, if I tell you the [Mysteries] of 
 the Sky, will you believe [me] ? And no one has 
 gone up into the Sky, unless he who came down 
 out of the Sky — the Son of the Man, he who 
 is'^ in the Sky. And as Moses raised on high 
 the Snake in the desert, so shall the Son of the 
 Man have to be raised on high ^ that every one 
 who believes in him may not die, but have On- 
 going * Life. For The Grod so loved the world 
 
 1 Earth {gaia) is the lowest of the four subtile elements, 
 and is the material aspect of the World-Soul ; Sky (ouranos, 
 the expanse of air) being the spiritual aspect. Gaia is there- 
 fore represented as the bride of Ouranos, the two standing 
 for the psychic and spiritual worlds respectiTely. The 
 "things of the Earth" (ta epigaia) are psychic; the 
 "things of the Sky" {ta epourania), sidereal. 
 
 2 That is, whose real berag is always in the higher realm, 
 even when manifesting Lq the lower worlds. Even when 
 incarnate, the " Son of The God" — the true Self of man — 
 stiU exists independently, as before, in the infinitudes of 
 Space. 
 
 3 The snake on the cross symbolizes the spiral action of 
 the Breath coiling about the cross in the brain. 
 
 * Gr. aidn, a period of time ; a manifestation of life in 
 time, period of evolution ; lifetime (from the Sanskrit root 
 t, "to go," the concept of time being inseparable from that 
 
ACCOEDING TO i6aNN^S. 97 
 
 that lie gave his Son, the Self -born, that every 
 one who believes in him may not die, but have 
 On-going Life. For The God did not send his 
 Son into the world that he might separate ' the 
 world, but that through him the world might 
 be saved.^ He who believes in him is not sepa- 
 rated; but he who does not believe has been 
 separated already, in that he has not believed 
 in the Name of the Self -born Son of The God. 
 And this separating is because the Light has 
 come into the world, and the Men loved rather 
 the Darkness than the Light, for their works * 
 
 of motion, and time being measured by the motion of the 
 heavenly bodies in space). The God alone is Eternal or 
 Boundless Duration ; everything manifested has limits in 
 time and space. The highest aidn is the lifetime of the 
 manifested Universe, considered as a conscious divine 
 being; and each evolutionary cycle — as the lifetime of 
 the planetary system, of the earth, of a human race — is 
 also an aidn and collectively a being. The sidereal body 
 (sdma pneumatikon) of man endures throughout the life-cycle 
 of the kosmos, and so after the mystic birth "from 
 above " his consciousness is continuous throughout aU the 
 lesser cycles of reincarnations, racial periods, etc., which 
 constitute the great On-going or Day of the Gods. 
 
 1 Gr. hrinein, to separate, put asunder ; to pick out, 
 choose, distinguish ; to decide, determine, judge. 
 
 2 Gr. sdzesthai, to be kept aUve, preserved, saved ; to es- 
 cape, get well ; frequently used ta the New Testament in the 
 sense of " making whole," " healing." 
 
 ^ Gr. ergon, deed, work, action ; employment ; mental 
 effort. In New Testament terminology, works {erga) are the 
 labors of purification, by which the soul regains its freedom. 
 
98 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 •were useless.* For every one who practises 
 worthless^ [things] hates the Light, and does 
 not come to the Light, that his works may not 
 be brought to proof. But he who does the 
 Truth comes to the Light, that Ms works may 
 shine forth, for they have been accomplished in 
 aG-od."' 
 
 After these [things] lesous and his pupils 
 came into the loudaian country, and there he 
 made a stay with them, and was lustrating. 
 
 1 Gr. poneros, unlucky, sorry, good-for-nothing ; bad, 
 knavish. 
 
 2 Gr. phaulos, paltry, mean, trifling; shabby, ugly; easy. 
 The useless and worthless works are those that are per- 
 formed from ignoble motives or for selfish ends, and do 
 not make for spiritual progress. The many {hoi polled) 
 who lead thoughtless lives, absorbed in the objects of the 
 senses, and having no definite purpose, no knowledge of 
 the realities of the inner life, are called " the useless ones" 
 (hoiponiroi), " the worthless ones " (hoi phauloi), and even 
 "the dead ones" {hoi nekroi), as contrasted with "the 
 wise " {hoi sophm) and " the perfect " {hd teleioi), the puri- 
 fied men and the Initiates, who take conscious control of 
 the forces of evolution and become co-workers with the 
 divine principle in Nature. The " useless ones " are 
 simply the immature souls, of few incarnations and little 
 experience ; and the sense of positive " evil " does not 
 attach to the term, nor is it one of reproach. 
 
 * That is, they are in harmony with the energies of the 
 World-Soul, or God of this planet. " A God " {theos with- 
 out the article), in the New Testament, is usually applied to 
 the Logos, as distinguished from The God. 
 
AOCOEDING TO lOANNiS. 99 
 
 And there was loannSs also, lustrating in Ai- 
 non, near Salem, for there were many waters 
 there, and [people] were coming and being 
 lustrated. For Idannes had not yet been cast 
 into the prison. There arose then a question- 
 ing on the part of the pupils of I6anngs with a 
 loudaian, about cleansing * ; and they came to 
 I6ann§s and said to him : 
 
 " Babhi, he who was with y o u on the other 
 side of the lordanos, as to whom you have 
 borne witness — see, he is lustrating, and all 
 are coming to him." 
 
 loannes answered and said : 
 
 "A man can not receive anything unless it 
 be given him from the Sky. You yourselves 
 bear me witness that I said, '/ am not the 
 Anointed,' but that I have been sent in advance 
 of him. He who has the bride is the bride- 
 groom ; but the friend of the bridegroom, who 
 stands and hears him, rejoices with joy because 
 
 1 Gr. Jcatharismos, washing, purging; expiatory sacrifice. 
 This washing was the lowest step in the telestic rites, as in 
 the ceremonies at Eleusis, where on the second day the 
 Initiates of the lowest degree (mustai) purified themselves 
 by bathing in the sea. In the Eleusinia the superficial 
 nature of such purification was symboUzed by washing a 
 hog, which on being released would straightway return to 
 wallowing in the mire. There is a reference to this, ap- 
 parently, in II. Pet. ii. 22 : " It has befallen them accord- 
 ing to the true proverb, 'The dog returns to his own 
 vomit, and the washed hog to wallowing in the mire.' " 
 
100 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 of the bridegroom's voice. Therefore this joy 
 of mine has been made full. It is for him to go 
 on increasing, and for me to be ever getting 
 less.^ He who comes from above ^ is up above 
 all ; he who is from the Earth is of the Earth, 
 and of the Earth he speaks.^ He who comes 
 from the Sky is up above all, and what he has 
 seen and heard, to this [revelation] he bears 
 witness, and no one * receives his witness. He 
 who does receive his witness has sealed [it] up, 
 because The God is true.^ For he whom The 
 Grod has sent speaks the words * of The Grod ; 
 for not by measure does The God give the 
 Breath. The Father loves the Son, and has 
 given all [things] into his hand. He who 
 believes in the Son has On-going Life; 
 but he who refuses obedience to^ the Son 
 
 1 The psychic (lunar) natiire must be superseded by the 
 spiritual (solar) nature. 
 
 2 Gr. andthen. See note 2, p. 94. 
 
 3 Eeferring to psychic trance-speaking. In the English 
 idiom, "As he is of the Earth, so he speaks of the Earth." 
 See note 2, p. 85. 
 
 * That is, no one of the profane, the " useless ones.'' 
 
 5 Gr. alethes, real, as opposed to the apparent. The 
 arcane truths are not revealed in the psychic world (gaia). 
 See note 1, p. 78. 
 
 6 Gr. rhema, that which is uttered or spoken ; a vocal 
 sound, word ; a sentence ; speech. Here, the Oracles re- 
 ceived under the influence of the Breath. 
 
 ' Or, " mistrusts," " disbeUeves." The Sinaitio reads, 
 " does not have Life." 
 
ACCORDING TO i6aNNES. 101 
 
 shall not see Life, but the Wrath' of The God 
 remains on him." 
 
 "When, therefore, the Master knew that the 
 Pharisaians had heard that ISsous was making 
 and lustrating more pupils than loannes — al- 
 though Igsous himself did not lustrate, but his 
 pupils [did] — he gave up loudaia and went 
 away again into Galilaia, and he had to pass 
 through Samareia. He comes, therefore, to a 
 city of Samareia called Sychar, near the plot 
 of ground which lakob gave to Joseph, his 
 son.^ And it was there that lakdb's spring^ 
 w^as. I^sous, therefore, having become tired 
 from the journey, sat down, just as he was, by 
 the spring; it was about the sixth hour. There 
 comes a woman from Samareia to draw water. 
 I^sous says to her : 
 
 1 Gr. orge, violent passion, frenzy, anger. In the termi- 
 nology of the New Testament it stands for the psychic fife, 
 the destructive force inherent in the material aspect of the 
 "World- Soul (gaia). Its nature is clearly set forth by 
 Paulos (Eph. V. 5, 6) : " No fornicator, or impure man, or 
 lascivious man who is a worshipper of Phantoms, has any 
 inheritance in the Realm of the Anointed, . . . for through 
 these things the Wrath of The God comes on the sons of 
 disobedience." 
 
 2 Gen. xlviii. 21, 22. The allegory of I6s6ph, the dreamer 
 and interpreter of dreams, whose father Iak6b gave him a 
 "coat of many colors'' — the psychic colors of the seven 
 magnetic Breaths — refers to the seven heart-centres. 
 
 ^ Gr. pegi, a spring, fountain ; source of a river; well. 
 
102 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 " Give me to drink." 
 
 For his pupils had gone away to the city 
 to buy provisions. The Samareitan woman^ 
 therefore, says to him : 
 
 " How is it that you, who are a loudaian, ask 
 of me to drink, who am a Samareitan woman ? ^ 
 
 (For the loudaians do not have friendly deal- 
 ings with the Samareitans.)* lesous answered 
 and said to her : 
 
 "If you had known the free gift of The 
 God, and who he is that says to you, 'Give 
 me to drink,' you would have asked of him, 
 and he would have given you living water." 
 
 The woman says to him : 
 
 "Master, you have nothing to draw with, 
 and the welP is deep. Whence, then, do y ou 
 have this ' living water ' ? ' Surely you are 
 not a greater [benefactor] than our Father 
 Iak6b, who gave us the well, and himself drank 
 from it, and his sons, and his cattle." * 
 
 1 This parentlietical sentence is notinthe SinaiticandBeza. 
 
 2 Gr. phrear, a well, cistern, reservoir. 
 
 ^ As usual in the dialogues in this Evangel, ISsous speaks 
 mystically, and his interlocutor takes his words in an ab- 
 surdly literal sense. This method of contrasting the 
 spiritual meaning with the materialistic interpretation is 
 constantly used throughout the Evangel, and is one of its 
 peculiar features. 
 
 * Gr. fhrema, that which is fed or reared, a nursling r 
 usually applied to animals, but sometimes to men. Here, 
 it may mean "household." 
 
ACCORDING TO i6aNN^S. 103 
 
 Ksoiis answered and said to her : 
 
 "Every one who drinks of this water will 
 thirst again; but whosoever may drink of the 
 water which I will give him shall not thirst 
 throughout the On-going, but the water which 
 I will give him shall become a spring of water 
 up-gushing throughout On-going Life." 
 
 The woman says to him : 
 
 "Master, give me this water, that I may not 
 thirst, nor come here to draw." 
 
 ISsous says to her : 
 
 " Go, call your husband, and come here." 
 
 The woman answered and said : 
 
 " I have no husband." 
 
 Ksous says to her : 
 
 " Rightly you have said, ' I have no hus- 
 band.' For you have had five husbands, and 
 he whom you have now is not your husband ' ; 
 this you have said truly ^ I " 
 
 The woman says to him : 
 
 " Master, I perceive that you are a Seer. Our 
 fathers worshipped in this hill, and you say that 
 in HierousaMm is the place where one should 
 worship." 
 
 I^sous says to her : 
 
 1 In the present stage of humanity only five of the mag- 
 netic colors have been developed; the sixth begins to 
 manifest in the purified psychic. 
 
 2 The word "truly" {aUtlws) here has an ironical force 
 in the Greek. 
 
104 THE MAGICAIi MESSAGE 
 
 " [Good] woman, believe me, for an hour is 
 coming when neither in this hill nor in Hierou- 
 sal§m will you worship the Father. You wor- 
 ship that which you do not know ; we worship 
 that which we know, for the Salvation ^ is from 
 the loudaians. But an hour is coming, and 
 now is, when the true worshippers wiU worship 
 the Father in Breath and Truth ; for the Father 
 also seeks such as his worshippers. The Grod is 
 Breath, and those who worship him should wor- 
 ship in Breath and Truth." 
 
 The woman says to him : 
 
 " I know that the Messias is coming, who is 
 called Anointed; when he shall have come, he 
 will bring back messages ^ about all [things] to 
 us." 
 
 ISsous says to her : 
 
 "J who am speaking to y o u am he." 
 
 And at this [point] his pupils came, and they 
 wondered that he was talking with a woman. 
 Nevertheless no one said, "What do you seek ? " 
 or, " Why do y o u talk with her ? " The woman, 
 therefore, left her water-jar, and went off into 
 the city, and says to the men : 
 
 1 Gr. sdteria, a keeping alive, saving ; deliverance ; safety. 
 See note 2, p, 97. 
 
 2 Gr. cmangellein, to bring back tidings or messages ; to 
 report. The sonl, when immersed in matter, is like one in 
 a far country ; and the divinely sent Teachers bring to the 
 incarnated souls tidings of their primeval home. 
 
ACCOBDING TO i6aNNES. 105 
 
 " Come [and] see a man -who told me all 
 [things] whicli I have done. Can it be that 
 this [Seer] is the Anointed ? " 
 
 They came forth from the city, and began to 
 come to him. And in the meantime his pupils 
 kept entreating him, saying : 
 
 "Babbi, eat!" 
 
 But he said to them : 
 
 " I have food to eat which you do not know." 
 
 Then the pupils said to one another : 
 
 " Can any one have brought him [something] 
 to eat ? " ^ 
 
 ISsous says to them : 
 
 " My food is that I should do the will of him 
 who sent me, and make perfect ^ Ms work. Do 
 not you say that it is yet four months, and the 
 reaping comes ? Behold ! I say to you, lift up 
 your eyes and view the regions,^ that they are 
 white for reaping already. He who reaps re- 
 ceives pay, and gathers fruit into On-going 
 
 1 See note 3, p. 102. 
 
 2 Gr. tel^n, to bring to fruition, make perfect ; to conse- 
 crate ; to initiate (into the Mysteries). Here, the work is 
 that of self-piirifieation — the telestic labor. The "per- 
 f ecting-period " (telos) was a term for Initiation, the 
 " making-perfect" (teleti) being the ceremony of Initiation 
 into the Mysteries, and the "perfect-ones" {teleioi) being 
 the Initiates. 
 
 ^ Gr. ch&ra, a place, space, land, coimtry, tract. Here, 
 the inner planes of life, ripe with the accumulated experi- 
 ence of past incarnations. 
 
106 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 Life, so that both he who sows and he who 
 reaps may rejoice together. For in this [fact] 
 is that true saying/ ' One there is who sows, 
 and another one who reaps.' / sent yon to reap 
 that which you have not toiled at ; other ones 
 have toiled, and you have entered into their 
 toil." 
 
 Now, out of that city many of the Samarei- 
 tans believed in him, through the saying of the 
 woman who bore witness : " He told me all 
 [things] which I have done." The Samarei- 
 tans, therefore, came to him and urged him to 
 abide with them ; and he abode there two days. 
 And many more [people] believed through his 
 saying, and they said to the woman : 
 
 " We do not now believe through your wit- 
 ness,^ for we ourselves have heard [him], and 
 we know that this is truly the Saviour ^ of the 
 world — the Anointed." ^ 
 
 1 Or, " arcane maxim." The lower seE (the psychic 
 nature) is the sower toiling in the material worlds, and 
 the higher self (the spiritual nature) is the reaper ; yet at 
 the " perf ecting-period " the two become one. 
 
 2 Some manuscripts have " because of y o u r talk.'' 
 
 ^ Gr. s6Ur, a saviour, preserver, deliverer ; a tutelary 
 God. The title sdter was commonly applied to Zeus, 
 ApoUon, or any Solar God. 
 
 * The ingratitude of men in general, their dulness at 
 comprehending spiritual teachings, and their tendency to 
 materialize every metaphysical concept, are mercilessly 
 satirized in this Evangel; and the lash is applied un- 
 
ACCOBDING TO lOANNES. 107 
 
 Now, after the two days he went out thence 
 and went away into G-alilaia. For lesous him- 
 self bore witness that a Seer has no honor in 
 his own country. When, therefore, he came 
 into Gralilaia the Galilaians welcomed him, 
 having seen all that he did in Hierousal§m at 
 the festival ; for they also came to the festival. 
 He came again, therefore, to Kana of Galilaia, 
 where he [had] made the water wine. And 
 there was a certain Ofi&cial,* whose son was ill in 
 Kapharnaum. This [man], having heard that 
 lesous had come out of loudaia into Gralilaia, 
 went off to him, and urged him to come down 
 and cure his son, for he was at the point of 
 dying. lesous, therefore, said in reply to him : 
 
 "Unless you have seen signs and portents^ 
 you will not believe ! " 
 
 sparingly upon the priestly hierarchy for their ignorance 
 of the sacred Mysteries, their intolerance, fanaticism, and 
 despotism. Sublime as the Evangel is, with its mystical 
 fervor and tender pathos, it is sadly pensive, and a vein, of 
 satire, almost of cynicism, runs through it all. 
 
 1 Gr. hasilihos, a courtier, prince, lord. Here, probably 
 some officer under the Tetrarch of Galilaia. 
 
 2 Gr. teras, any unusual thing due to hidden causes, fore- 
 boding the future, or revealing the will of the Gods, as the 
 Tainbow, a meteor, or any sign in the skies. The word is 
 used in the New Testament only in the plural {terata) and 
 always joined with sSmeia (signs) and often with dunameis 
 ■(forces) ; for the portents are visible manifestations of the 
 forces (dunameis) emanating from the signs. See note 1, 
 p. 91. 
 
108 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 The Official says in reply to him : 
 
 " Master, come down before my little lad dies."' 
 
 I^sous says to him : 
 
 " Gro y o u r way ; y o u r son lives." 
 
 The man believed in the saying that Ksous 
 said to him, and went his way. And now, while 
 he was going down, his slaves met him and 
 brought a message, saying: 
 
 "Your boy lives." 
 
 He inquired of them, therefore, the hour in 
 which he began to get better. And they said 
 to him : 
 
 " Yesterday, at the seventh hour, the fever 
 left him." 
 
 The father, therefore, knew that [it was] at 
 that hour in which ISsous said to him, "Your 
 son lives." And he himself believed, and his 
 whole household. 
 
 This, again, a second sign,* I§sous did when 
 he had come out of loudaia into Galilaia. 
 
 After these [things] there was a festival of 
 the loudaians, and ISsous went up to Hierou- 
 salSm. Now, there is in Hierousal§m, by the 
 Bheep-[gate], a swimming-bath^ which is called 
 in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porticos.' In 
 
 1 The Vatican reads, " Now, ttiis is again the second sign." 
 
 2 The Sinaitic reads, " There is at HierousalSm a bath, 
 for sheep." 
 
 ^ Gr. stoa, a pillared walk, colonnade, cloister, piazza. 
 
ACCOEDING TO i6aNNES. 109 
 
 these [porticos] were lying a crowd of those 
 who were infirm — blind, lame, shrivelled — 
 waiting for the moving of the water; for a 
 Messenger, according to a season,' went down 
 into the swimming-bath and stirred np the wa- 
 ter; the first, therefore, to step in after the 
 stirring-np of the water became healed of what- 
 ever disease by which he was weighed down. 
 
 Now, there was a certain man there who for 
 thirty-eight years had been in his infirmity. 
 I§sous seeing this [man] lying prostrate, and 
 knowing that he had now been [thus] for a 
 long time, says to him: 
 
 " Do y o u wish to become well ? " 
 
 The infirm man answered him : 
 
 " Master, I have no man, that, when the water 
 is stirred up, he may put me into the swimming- 
 bath ; but while Jam coming, some one else goes 
 down before me." 
 
 1 Gr. hairos, a fixed time ; a season, as winter, etc. THs 
 passage concerning the Messenger stirring up the water is 
 rejected as an interpolation by most modem critics, in their 
 anxiety to repudiate everything magical. But not only is 
 the evidence of the ancient manuscripts overwhelmingly in 
 favor of its genuineness, but also the fact that it is insepa- 
 rable from the context proves absolutely that it cannot be 
 an interpolation, for without it the rest of the narrative is 
 meaningless. That the sick were there to be healed, and 
 that the healing took place only when the water was stirred 
 up by the Messenger, is clearly indicated by the abrupt 
 question put by ISsous to the bliad man, and by the latter's 
 reply. 
 
110 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 I§sous says to Mm : 
 
 "Rise, take up your pallet, and walk." 
 
 And at once the man became sound, and got 
 up, and took up his pallet, and walked. Now, 
 it was a Sabbath ^ on that day. The loudaians, 
 therefore, said to him who had been healed : 
 
 "It is a Sabbath — it is not permissible for 
 y u to take up [and carry] your pallet." 
 
 He answered them : 
 
 " He who made me well, he said to me, * Take 
 up y u r pallet, and walk.' " 
 
 They asked him, therefore: 
 
 " Which is the man who said to y o u, ' Take 
 up y o u r pallet, and walk ' ? " 
 
 But he who had been cured did not know 
 who it was; for lesous had slipped out, there 
 being a crowd in the place. 
 
 After these [things] lesous finds him in the 
 temple-courts, and says to him : 
 
 " See ; y ou have become sound. Sin no more, 
 lest something worse should befall y o u." 
 
 The man went away, and reported to the 
 
 1 The seventh day, or day of rest. The loudaians had 
 no names for the days of the week, nor did they compute 
 time by weeks. They observed each seventh period of 
 time, including the seventh year, as sacred to their tribal 
 God (Saturn), and their sacred day (Saturday) fell on that 
 ascribed to Saturn when the present Christian week was 
 arranged. The observance of Sunday (the day of the 
 Sun) belongs to the Solar cult, and apparently was intro- 
 duced into Christianity from the Mithraie religion. 
 
ACCOEDING TO idANN^S. Ill 
 
 loudaians that ISsous was lie who had made 
 him sound/ And for this [reason] the lou- 
 daians hounded lesous, because he did these 
 [works] on a Sabbath, But I^sous answered 
 them: 
 
 " My Father is working until now, and I am 
 working." ^ 
 
 For this [reason], therefore, the loudaians 
 sought the more to kill him, because he was 
 not only desecrating the Sabbath, but he was 
 also saying The Grod [was] his own Father — 
 making himself equal to The God. ISsous 
 answered, therefore, and said to them : 
 
 " Amen, Am^n, I say to you. The Son can do 
 nothing of himself, unless he sees the Father 
 doing something ; for whatever [works] he may 
 do, these [works] the Son also does equally. 
 For the Father dearly loves' the Son, and 
 shows him all [works] which he himself does; 
 and greater works than these will he show him, 
 that you may wonder. For as the Father raises 
 the dead ones * and makes [them] alive, so also 
 the Son makes alive those whom he wills. For 
 not even the Father separates any one ; but all 
 
 1 Apparently being offended because of the rebuke re- 
 ceived, and turning ingrate. 
 
 2 Or, " As my Father has been working until now, so / 
 also am working." 
 
 3 Gr. pMlem, to love as a friend. See note 1, p. 212. 
 * See note 1, p. 93. 
 
112 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 the separating he has given to the Son, that all 
 may honor the Son even as they honor the 
 Father. He who does not honor the Son does 
 not honor the Father who sent him. Am^n, 
 AmSn, I say to you, He who hears my saying, 
 and has faith in him who sent me, has On-going 
 Life, and does not come into a separating, but 
 has passed out of the Death' into the Life. 
 Amen, Amen, I say to you. An hour is coming, 
 and now is, when the dead ones shall hear the 
 voice of the Son of The Grod, and those who hear 
 [it] shall live. For as the Father has Life in him- 
 self, so to the Son also he gave to have Life in 
 himself ; and he gave him authority to make a 
 separating, because he is [the] Son of a Man. 
 Do not wonder at this [saying], because an 
 hour is coming in which all those who are in 
 the tombs shall hear his Voice, and come 
 forth — those who have done the good [works] 
 into an Awakening^ of Life, and those who 
 
 1 Mystically, the physical world is called Death. Thus 
 in the ApoMlypse (i. 17, 18) the Initiate says : " I am the 
 First, and the Last, and the Living one, and I became a 
 dead one [incarnated] , yet behold ! I am aUve throughout 
 the On-goings of the On-goings, and I have the keys of 
 Death [the physical world] and of HadSs [the psychic 
 world]." AU things and beings in the material world, the 
 world of separateness, are under the sway of death ; only 
 in the divine unity of the spiritual world is there true life. 
 
 2 Gr. anastasis, a making to stand up (from a suppliant 
 attitude) ; awakening, restoration (from the dead). The 
 
ACCOEDING TO i6aNNES. 113 
 
 have practised the worthless [works] into an. 
 Awakening of separation. I can not do any- 
 thing of myself: as I hear, I separate; and 
 this separating of mine is well-ordered, because 
 1 do not seek my will, but the will of him who 
 sent me. If I bear witness about myself, my 
 witness is not true ; there is another who bears 
 witness about me, and I know * that the witness 
 which he bears about me is true. You have 
 sent to I6ann§s ; and he has borne witness to 
 the Truth, But I do not take the witness from 
 
 man who has perfected the work of self-puriflcation re- 
 gains the spiritual state; but the "useless ones" (hm 
 ponSroi) continue to reincarnate in the physical world of 
 separateness, this " separateness " signifying not only the 
 duality of good and evil, but also the duality of the sexes. 
 For sex is an animal condition, and does not obtain in the 
 spiritual world, where there is neither death nor birth. 
 This is clearly set forth by ISsous in reply to the question 
 about the childless woman who had been married succes- 
 sively to seven brothers {Lk. xx. 347-36): "The sons of 
 this On-going marry and are given in marriage j but those 
 accounted worthy to attaining to that On-going and that 
 Awakening from among dead ones neither marry nor are 
 given in marriage ; for they can not die any more, because 
 they are like the Messengers, and are sons of The God, 
 being sons of the Awakening." Psycho-physiologically, 
 the term apphes to the restoration of the psychic and 
 spiritual senses, the organs of which became atrophied (or 
 " dead ") when the human being fell into generation, the 
 allegorical fall of Adam and Eve (the separation into 
 sexes), for which they were driven out of Paradise. 
 1 The Sinaitic and Beza have, "you know." 
 
114 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 a man — yet I say these [things] that you may 
 be saved. Me was that burning and shining 
 lamp, and you were willing for an hour to be- 
 come ecstatic * in his Light ; yet I have witness 
 greater than loannes', for the works which the 
 Father gave me to make perfect — the very 
 works which I am doing — bear witness about 
 me, that it is the Father who has sent me. And 
 the Father who sent me has himself borne wit- 
 ness about me. As yet you have neither at any 
 time heard his Voice nor seen his Form. And 
 his Thought ^ you have not abiding in you, be- 
 cause whom he sent, in this [witness] you have 
 no faith. You pore over the writings because 
 you think you have in them On-going Life; 
 and it is they that bear witness about me — yet 
 you are not willing to come to me that you may 
 have Life. I do not take Radiance from men ; 
 but well I know that you have not in yourselves 
 the Love ' of The God. I have come in my 
 
 1 Gr. agalliathinai, to be frenzied with exultation, to be 
 mad with delight. Here it refers to psychic exaltation, the 
 frenzy by which the psychic senses are awakened, as in the 
 Bacchic initiations {orgia). The Light of Idann^s is the 
 psychic (Itmar) Light. 
 
 2 Gr. logos. See note 2, p. 71. 
 
 3 Gr. agwpS, love. The word is found only in post- 
 classical writers, who use it instead of eros, the latter word 
 having become degraded. In the older writers, as Hesiod, 
 Eros is the first of the Gods, divine Love — the Logos, in 
 fact — in the sense that agapi is used here. 
 
ACCOBDING TO i6aNNES, 115 
 
 Father's name, and you do not accept me; if 
 another should come in his own name, him you 
 will accept. How can you have faith, when you 
 take Radiance one from another, and do not 
 seek that Radiance* which comes from the 
 Only One ^ ? Do not think that I shall accuse 
 you to the Father; he who accuses you to the 
 Father is M6ses, in whom you have placed your 
 hope. For if you had faith in M6s§s you would 
 have faith in me, for it was of me that he wrote. 
 Now, if you do not believe his writings, how 
 will you believe my words ? " * 
 
 1 The word doxa is used in this passage with a double 
 meaning : as " glory," and as the aura, or magnetic sub- 
 stance ; and, in the latter sense, the pure atira, or " flesh," 
 of the Logos is contrasted with the auric (or magnetic) 
 emanations of men — the latter being considered by as- 
 cetics to be deflhng and pestilential. Yet the Mosaic Law 
 aboimded in regulations concerning psychic hygiene {Lev. x. 
 10; xi. ; xii. ; xv. ; xvii. 10, 11), and that the ancient He- 
 brews well knew the nature of vital magnetism is shown 
 by the attempt of King David to prolong his life by vampir- 
 izing the " fair damsel " Abishag (I. Kings i. 1, 2). 
 
 2 The reading in some manuscripts is, "the only God" ; 
 but the Vatican has, " Only One," which is clearly more in 
 harmony with the general style of this Evangel. 
 
 3 Not having gained wisdom during the cycle of M6s6s, 
 they could not understand the arcane teachings of ISsous, 
 the Teacher for the new cycle. Each of the sidereal 
 months (periods of about 2,155 years) has its spiritual 
 Euler or Teacher, and constitutes a cycle of instruction ; 
 and those who faithfully follow, in each iacamation during 
 that period, the spirit of the teachings of that Saviour are 
 
116 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 After these [events] ISsous went away to the 
 other side of that Sea of G-alilaia, the Tiberias. 
 And a great crowd were following him, because 
 they beheld the signs which he made upon those 
 who were sick. And I^sous went up into the 
 hUl, and sat there with his pupils. And the 
 Passing-over, the festival of the loudaians, was 
 near. lesous, therefore, lifting up his eyes and 
 seeing that a great crowd were coming to him, 
 says to Philippos : 
 
 "Where may we buy loaves, that these 
 [people] may eat?" 
 
 (Now, he said this to test him, for he knew 
 what he intended to do.) PhUippos answered 
 him: 
 
 "Loaves costing two hundred denarii^ are 
 not enough for them, that each may take a 
 nttle." 
 
 One of the pupils ■^ Andreas, the brother of 
 Sim6n Petros — says to him : 
 
 "There is a small boy here, who has five 
 barley loaves and two little fishes^; but what 
 are these [provisions] to so many ? " 
 
 freed from the bondage of matter — they are "saved." 
 But the Pharisaians followed only the dead-letter of the 
 Mosaic writings. See note 1, p. 82. 
 
 1 About thirty dollars. 
 
 2 The numbers five and two appear also in the two hun- 
 dred denarii and five thousand people fed. Astronomi- 
 cally, they refer to the seven sacred planets, of which two 
 (the Sun and the Moon) are not real planets, but substi- 
 
AccoEDiNG TO i6annI;s. 117 
 
 And lesous said : 
 
 " Make the men recline." 
 
 Now, there was much greensward^ in the 
 place. The men, therefore, reclined — in num- 
 ber about five thousand. Then lesous took 
 the loaves, and having returned thanks, dis- 
 tributed [them] to his pupils, and the pupils to 
 those who were reclining, likewise also of the 
 fishes, as much as they wished. And when 
 they were filled, he says to his pupils: 
 
 " Collect the fragments that are left over, so 
 that nothing may be lost." 
 
 They collected [them] therefore, and filled 
 twelve baskets with fragments from the five 
 barley loaves, which were left over to those 
 "who had eaten. The men, therefore, seeing a 
 sign which ISsous made, said : 
 
 "This [magician] is truly the Seer, who 
 comes into the world." 
 
 I^sous, therefore, knowing that perhaps they 
 might come and carry him off, so that they 
 might make him a ruler, withdrew again into 
 the hill, alone by himself. Now, when it came 
 to be evening, his pupils went down to the sea, 
 
 tutes for two secret Mystery-planets; and the twelve 
 "baskets are the zodiacal signs. Psycho-physiologioally, 
 the five manifested and two nnmanifested Breaths or 
 principles are meant, as in the story of the woman at the 
 -well, but here only as they relate to physical generation. 
 1 Gr. chortos, grass ; a feeding-ground, pasture. 
 
118 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 and got into a boat, and were going to the 
 other side of the sea to Kapharnaum. And 
 dusk by this time had come on, and I^sous had 
 not yet come to them ; and the sea, as a great 
 wind was blowing, began to be stirred. Having, 
 therefore, rowed about twenty-five or thirty 
 furlongs, they see lesous walking on the sea, 
 and appearing near the boat; and they were 
 frightened. But he says to them : 
 " It is I; do not be frightened." 
 They were willing, therefore, to take him 
 into the boat — and immediately the boat was 
 at the land for which they were making. 
 
 On the morrow the crowd that was standing 
 on the other side of the sea saw that there was 
 no other small-boat there save that one in 
 which the pupils of ISsous had embarked, and 
 that ISsous had not entered with his pupils 
 into the boat, but his pupils had gone away 
 alone. But other small-boats came from Ti- 
 berias, near the place where they ate the bread 
 after the Master had given thanks [over it]. 
 When, therefore, the crowd saw that lesous 
 was not there, nor his pupils, they got into the 
 boats themselves and came to Kapharnaum, 
 seeking lesous. And having found him on the 
 other side of the sea, they said to him : 
 " Babbi, when did you get here ? " 
 I§sous answered and said to them : 
 "Amen, Am§n, I say to you. You seek me, not 
 
ACCOKDING TO lOAmttS. 119 
 
 because you saw signs, but because you ate of 
 tlie loaves and were fed full ! Work — not for 
 the food which perishes, but for that food which 
 abides throughout On-going Life, which the 
 Son of the Man offers you ' ; for this [Son] the 
 Father — The God — has sealed up."^ 
 
 They said to him, therefore : 
 
 " What should we do, that we may work the 
 works of The God?" 
 
 lesous answered and said to them : 
 
 " This is the work of The God, that you may 
 believe in him whom he sent." 
 
 They said to him, therefore : 
 
 "Then what sign do you make, so that we 
 may see [it] and believe y o u I What do you 
 work at? Our fathers ate the mcmna in the 
 
 1 The Vatican reads, " shall give you." 
 
 2 The loaves and fishes, emblematic of physical genera- 
 tion and the multiplication of bodies in the world of death, 
 are here contrasted with the divine Essence • — the Radi- 
 ance of the Only One — which is the " bread of the Life'' 
 in that spiritual world where all beings are sexless, hence 
 " sealed up." This is clearly brought out in I. Jno. iii. 8, 
 9 : " He who does this sin is from the Accuser ; because 
 the Accuser sins from a First-principle. To this [end] the 
 Son of The God was manifested, that he might undo the 
 works of the Accuser. Any one who has been bom from 
 The God does no sin, because his seed {sperma) abides in 
 him, and he can not sin, because he has been bom from 
 The God." So also v. 18 : " Any one who is born from The 
 God does not sin ; but he who has been bom from The 
 God Tceeps himself, and the useless [function] has no hold on 
 
120 THE magioaIj message 
 
 desert, as it is •written, ' Bread out of the Sky he 
 gave them to eat.' " ^ 
 
 lesous, therefore, said to them : 
 
 " Am^n, Amen, I say to you, M6s§s has not 
 given you'^ the bread out of the Sky; but my 
 Father does give you that true bread out of the 
 Sky. For the bread of The God is that which 
 comes down out of the Sky and gives Life to 
 the world." 
 
 They said to him, therefore : 
 
 " Master, give us this bread every time ' ! " 
 
 I^sous said to them : 
 
 "J am the bread of the Life; he who comes 
 to me shall be hungry no more, and he who 
 has faith in me shall be thirsty nevermore. 
 But I said to you that though you have even 
 seen me, still you do not have faith. Every- 
 
 Hm." This useless function — the "evU one" or "Devil" 
 of theology — is simply sex ; and the misuse of the function 
 is the " siu" against the First-principle, the sacred Breath 
 and creative Fire. In the text, while I^sous is speaking of 
 the telestic work and the celestial substance of the pneu- 
 matic body, his hearers — poverty-stricken and ignorant — 
 think only of obtaining employment and supplying their 
 physical needs. 
 
 1 Ps. Ixxviii. 24. Here, as is almost invariably the case 
 in the New Testament, the quotation is from the Septua- 
 gint, or Greek version, and not from the Hebrew. 
 
 2 See note 3, p. 115. 
 
 ' Gr. pantote, at all times. The word is a homely one 
 (the better writers using hekastote or diapcmtos), but it is 
 frequently found in the New Testament. 
 
ACCORDING TO i6aNNI!S. 121 
 
 thing whicli tlie Father gives me shall come to 
 me ; and him who comes to me I will not throw 
 outside.* For I have come down out of the 
 Sky, not that I may do my will, but the will of 
 him who sent me. And this is the will of him 
 who sent me, that of everything' which he has 
 given me I may not lose any, but should raise 
 it up ^ on the last day. ^ For this is the will of 
 my Father, that every one who sees the Son, 
 and has faith in him, may have On-going Life ;, 
 and I shall raise him up at the last day." 
 
 Then the loudaians murmured about him,, 
 because he said: "/ am the bread that has 
 come down out of the Sky." And they said: 
 "Is not this [man] ISsous the son of loseph,^ 
 whose father and mother we know? How, 
 then, does this [man] say, ' I have come down 
 out of the Sky'?" 
 I^sous answered and said to them : 
 " Do not murmur one with another. No one 
 can come to me unless the Father who sent me 
 shall draw him; and I shall raise him up on 
 the last day. It is written in the Seers, ' And 
 
 1 Gr. exd, on the outside, out of doors ; exoteric, as op- 
 posed to esoteric {esd). 
 
 2 Or, " restore it." 
 
 ^ The last incarnation, in which the soul gains its free- 
 dom, synthesizes all preceding ones ; and the full Initiate 
 regains memory of aU his past lives. Nothing is wasted ; 
 even the fragments being preserved, as in the preceding- 
 allegory. 
 
122 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 they shall all be [learners] taught by a G-od.'* 
 Every one who has heard ^ from the Father, 
 and has learned, comes to me. Not that any 
 one has seen the Father, save he who is from 
 The God; this [Son] has seen the Father.' 
 Amen, AmSn, I say to you. He who has faith 
 in me has On-going Life. I am the bread of 
 the Life. Your fathers ate the manna in the 
 desert, and they died. This [Son] is the bread 
 which comes down out of the Sky, that any 
 one may eat of it and not die. I am that liv- 
 ing bread that came down out of the Sky. If 
 any one eats of this bread, he shall live through- 
 out the On-going. Aye, and the bread which I 
 shall give him is my flesh, which I shall give 
 for the Life of the world." ^ 
 
 The loudaians, therefore, wrangled one with 
 another, saying, " How can this [man] give us 
 his flesh to eat ? " 
 
 I^sous, therefore, said to them : 
 
 " Amen, Amen, I say to you, Unless you eat 
 the flesh of the Son of the Man, and drink his 
 
 1 Isa. liv. 13. 
 
 2 Or, " has listened to [the teaching]." 
 
 ' The Father is the Universal Sold, and the Son the 
 individual soul. The Divine Principle in Nature can be 
 cognized only through the same principle as manifested in 
 man. 
 
 * The divine Self of man is not fully incarnated in him 
 until he has assimilated its aura — the "flesh'' of the 
 Logos. 
 
ACCOKDING TO i6aNN£s. 123 
 
 blood, yoTi have not On-going Life* in your- 
 selves. He who eats my flesh, and drinks my 
 blood, has On-going Life, and I shall raise him 
 up at the last day. For my flesh is truly food, 
 and my blood is truly drink. He who devours 
 my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, as 
 J do in him.'' Even as the living Father sent 
 me, and I live through the Father, so also he 
 who eats me — he also shall live through me. 
 This is the bread which came down out of the 
 Sky. Not as your fathers ate and died — he 
 who eats this bread shall live throughout the 
 On-going." ' 
 
 These [things] he said at a gathering,* as he 
 
 1 The Vatican has, " you have not Life " ; the Siaaitio, 
 "the Life." 
 
 2 The Beza has in. addition : " Even as the Father in me, 
 and I in the Father — AmSn, AmSn, I say to you, Unless 
 you receive the body of the Son of the Man, as the bread 
 of the Life, you have not Life in him." There are many 
 variations in the text throughout this discourse, apparently 
 due to careless copyists; but none of them materially 
 affects the meaning. 
 
 * That the hearers of ISsous should take literally his oft- 
 repeated statement about eating his " flesh " and drinking 
 his " blood" may seem rather a far-fetched satire upon 
 their stupidity. But, unf ortimately, it is almost impossible 
 to exaggerate the materialistic Kteralness with which spir- 
 itual truths are often regarded; and perhaps no better 
 instance could be pointed out than the behef of many — 
 even at the present day — that the bread and wine of the 
 Eucharist are the actual flesh and blood of Christ. 
 
 * Orr. sunagdgi, an assembling of people, a meeting. 
 
124 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 taught at Kapharnaum. Many of his pupils, 
 therefore, hearing him, said: 
 
 "Hard is this saying. Who can listen to 
 it?" 
 
 But ISsous, knowing in himself that his 
 pupils were murmuring about this [saying], 
 said to them: 
 
 "Does this [saying] trip you up? [What], 
 then, if you should see the Son of the Man 
 going up where he was before ? The Breath it 
 is which makes alive ; the flesh is of no use in 
 anything. The words which I speak to you 
 are Breath and are Life; but there are of you 
 some who do not have faith." 
 
 For lesous knew from a First-principle who 
 they were that did not have faith, and who he 
 was that was about to deliver him up. And he 
 said: 
 
 "For this [reason] I have said to you, that 
 no one can come to me, unless it has been 
 given him from my Father." 
 
 From this [time], many of his pupils went 
 back to the [things that lay] behind,^ and no 
 longer walked with him. I^sous, therefore, 
 said to the Twelve: 
 
 1 That is, they went back to the exoteric religion, being- 
 unable to understand the esoteric teachings. The meta- 
 phor is taken, apparently, from the race-course {dromos), 
 and the expression is equivalent to " they fell out of the- 
 race." See PM. iii. 13, 14. 
 
ACCOEDING TO i6aNN£s. 125 
 
 " Do you also wisli to go away ? " 
 
 Sim6n Petros answered him : 
 
 " Master, to what [things] shall we go back ? 
 You have the words of On-going Life, and we 
 have believed [them], and have known that 
 you are the holy [Anointed] of The God." 
 
 lesous answered them : 
 
 " Did not I choose yon, the Twelve, and of 
 you one is an accuser ' ? " 
 
 Now, he was speaking of loudas, [the son] of 
 Sim6n Iskariotes,^ for this [pupil] was about to 
 deliver him up, being one of the Twelve, 
 
 After these [things] lesous walked in Q-ali- 
 laia ; for he was unwilling to walk in loudaia, 
 because the loudaians were seeking to kill 
 him. Now, the loudaians' festival, "Tent- 
 making,"' was near. His brothers, therefore, 
 said to him : 
 
 " Quit this place, and go into loudaia, so that 
 your pupils also may see these works of yours 
 
 1 Gr. diaholos, a slanderer, traducer (from diahallein, liter- 
 ally, "to shoot across," traduce ; to accuse secretly). lou- 
 das secretly preferred false charges against lesous, and 
 misrepresented his teachings to the priests. 
 
 2 In the Greek idiom, " loudas Iskari6t6s, [the son] of 
 Sim6n." 
 
 3 Gr. skinopSgia, fixing the tents. This festival, which 
 lasted seven days, was celebrated at about the Autumnal 
 Equinox, and was the greatest of the festivals. See Deut. 
 xvi. 13-17. 
 
126 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 wMcli you are doing. For no one does any- 
 thing in secret, and seeks that lie should be 
 talked about openly. Since you are doing 
 these [works], show yourself plainly to the 
 world." 
 
 For not even his own brothers believed in 
 him. I§sous, therefore, says to them : 
 
 ^^ My season has not yet come; but your 
 season is ready at all times. The world can 
 not hate you ; but me it does hate, because I 
 bear witness about it that its works are useless. 
 Go up to the festival yourselves ; I am not ^ 
 going to this festival, because my season has 
 not yet been fulfilled." 
 
 Having said these [things] to them, he re- 
 mained in Galilaia. But when his brothers 
 had gone up to the festival, then he also went 
 up, not openly, but as if in secret.* The lou- 
 daians, therefore, sought for him at the festi- 
 val, and said : 
 
 "Where is that [man]?" 
 
 1 Porphyrios having twitted the Fathers about this pas- 
 sage, the literal interpretation of which makes I^sous 
 appear to have changed his mind, the text was subse- 
 quently altered to read " not yet" (oup6) instead of " not " 
 (ouk). The latter is unquestionably the true reading. 
 ISsous was speaking mystically, referring to the season of 
 his crucifixion ; and in this sense his words are not contra- 
 dicted by his afterwards going up to the exoteric festival. 
 
 2 Presumably using the occult power (dimamis) of mak- 
 ing himself invisible. See note 3, p. 129. 
 
ACCOEDING TO i6aNN£s. 127 
 
 And there was mucli murmuring about Mm 
 among tlie crowds.' Some said, " He is a good 
 [man]," but others said, "Not so, for he is 
 leading the multitude astray." No one, how- 
 ever, spoke about him openly, through fear of 
 the loudaians. 
 
 But when the festival was already half over, 
 ISsous went up into the temple-courts, and 
 taught. And the loudaians wondered, saying : 
 
 " How does this [man] know letters, when he 
 has not learned [them] ? " 
 
 I§sous answered and said to them : 
 
 " My teaching is not mine, but his who sent 
 me. If any one wills to do Ms will, he shall 
 have knowledge about the teaching, whether it 
 is from The God, or whether I am speaking 
 from myself. He who speaks from himself 
 seeks his own Radiance ; but he who seeks the 
 Radiance of him who sent him, that [man] is 
 true, and there is no dishonesty^ in him. Did 
 not M6ses give you the Law ? — and not one of 
 you does the Law! Why are you seeking to 
 kill me?" 
 
 The crowd answered : 
 
 1 The knots of talkers, the populace. The Beza here 
 reads, " common people." 
 
 2 Gr. adikia, falsehood, error ; as opposed to truth {ale- 
 theia). Incarnated man is " sent " into the world by his 
 own soul, and only by doing the will of that soul can he 
 fulfil the law of being (dike), non-fulfilment of which is 
 adiikia, " unrighteousness.'' 
 
128 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 "You have a spook ' ! Who is seeking to 
 kill you?" 
 ISsous answered and said to them : 
 "One work I did, and you are all wonder- 
 ing. M6s6s has given you the circumcision^ — 
 not that it is from M6s6s, but from the Fathers * 
 — and on a Sabbath you circumcise a man. If 
 a man receives circumcision on a Sabbath, so 
 that the Law of M6ses may not be done away 
 with, are you enraged at me because I restored 
 an entire man to health^ on a Sabbath? Do 
 
 1 Gr. daimonion (from daimdn, a word that does not occur 
 in loannes), a being participating in the Divine Essence or 
 Universal Soul ; an entity intermediate between Gods and 
 men ; a nature-spirit ; a ghost or earth-bound soul. Origi- 
 nally the word daimones was applied to the souls of the men 
 of the Golden Age, and to deified heroes ; later it came to 
 signify the souls of the dead in general, and in the New 
 Testament it is usually employed in a bad sense, to denote 
 ghosts that haunt places and obsess people, the larvce or 
 " unclean spirits " (pneumata akatharta). The word daimdn, 
 in its good sense, is replaced in the New Testament by trans- 
 ferring the meaning to a/ngehs (" messenger "), 
 
 ^ Lev. xii. 1-3. 
 
 ^ Gen, xvii. 9-14. 
 
 * This is unmistakably the meaning of the Greek, with 
 which the Latin of the Beza agrees, " Quod totum hominem 
 sanum fed in sabbato." So also the Vulgate. If lawful to 
 heal part of a man, it would be lawful to heal the whole 
 man. The rite of circumcision typified, pars pro toto, 
 emancipation from the physical body, as said in Col. ii. 11 : 
 " You were circumcised with a circumcision not done with 
 hands, in the putting off of the body of the flesh, in the 
 
ACOOKDING TO l6ANKtS. 129 
 
 not judge' according to appearance, but judge 
 [according to] a just judgment." 
 
 Some [persons], therefore, of Hierousalem 
 said : 
 
 " Is not this [man] he whom they are seeking 
 to kill ? And see — he is speaking openly, and 
 they say nothing to him. Can it be that the 
 leaders have truly determined that this [man] 
 is the Anointed? Yet this [man] we know, 
 whence he is; but when the Anointed comes, 
 no one knows whence he is." 
 
 lesous, therefore, cried out loudly, teaching 
 in the temple-courts, and saying : 
 
 " You not only know me, but you also know 
 whence I am; and I have not come of myself, 
 but he is true who sent me, whom you do not 
 know. I do know him, because I am from 
 him, and Tie sent me." 
 
 They sought, therefore, to take^ him; and 
 no man laid his hand on him, because his hour 
 had not yet come.' But of the multitude 
 many believed in him, and they said: 
 
 " When the Anointed comes, will he do more 
 signs than these which this [man] has done ? " 
 
 circumcision of the Anointed." Here tlie metaphor is that 
 of stripping o££ the physical body as if it were a garment. 
 
 ^ Gr. krinein. See note 1, p. 97. 
 
 ^ Gr. piazein, to press hard, catch, apprehend. 
 
 ' The easy way in which Ilsous always escaped from his 
 pursuers implies the use of magic. See note 3, p. 143. 
 
130 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 The Pharisaians heard the people murmur- 
 ing these [things] about him, and the arch- 
 priests and the Pharisaians sent retainers,' so 
 that they might take him. I§sous, therefore, 
 said: 
 
 " Yet a little while I am with you, and I go 
 to him who sent me. You will seek me, and 
 you will not find me ; and where / am, you can 
 not come." 
 
 The loudaians, therefore, said to themselves : 
 
 "Where is this [man] about to go, that we 
 shall not find him ? Is he about to go to the 
 dispersion ^ of the Hellenes, and to teach the 
 Hellenes ? What is this saying which he spoke, 
 ' You wiU seek me, and you will not find me ; 
 and where I am, you can not come ' ? " 
 
 Now, on the last day, the great [day] of the 
 festival, I^sous stood and cried out loudly, 
 saying : 
 
 "If any one is thirsty, let him come to me, 
 and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the 
 writing has said, ' Out of his belly shall flow 
 rivers of liAdng Water.' " * 
 
 But this [quotation] he said about the Breath, 
 which those who believed in him were about to 
 
 1 Gr. hup^etSs, a helper, servant, inferior officer. 
 
 2 Gr. diaspora, a scattering, dispersion ; collectively, the 
 persons dispersed. Here the loudaians scattered among 
 the Hellenes (Greeks) are meant. 
 
 ' These words are not found in the Old Testament. 
 
ACCOEDING TO lOANNES. 131 
 
 receive ; for not as yet was there a holy Breath,' 
 because Ksous was not yet made Eadiant. Many, 
 therefore, of the people, having heard the saying, 
 said, "This [man] is truly the Seer." Others 
 said, " This [man] is the Anointed." But others 
 said, " Why, surely the Anointed does not come 
 out of GalUaia ? Has not the writing said that 
 the Anointed comes of the seed of David,^ and 
 from Bethlehem, the village where David was 1 " ' 
 A division, therefore, arose among the people 
 concerning him. And some of them desired to 
 take him ; but no one laid his hands on him. 
 The retainers, therefore, came to the archpriests 
 and Pharisaians ; and they said to them : 
 " Why did you not bring him ? " 
 The retainers answered : 
 " Never did a man speak as this man [does]." 
 The Pharisaians, therefore, answered them : 
 " Surely you also have not been led astray ? 
 Did any one of the leaders believe in him, or of 
 the Pharisaians ? But this crowd, who do not 
 know the Law, they are put under an evil 
 spell." * 
 
 1 The text here is corrupt. A preferable but less authori- 
 tative reading is, " for the holy Breath was not yet given 
 [to them]." See p. 208. 
 
 2 Jer. xidii. 5, 6. 
 
 3 Mie. V. 2. 
 
 * The priests, learned in the dead-letter of their sacred 
 books, yet destitute of the higher wisdom, consider the 
 people bewitched because they follow the true Teacher. 
 
132 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 Nikod^mos — that one of them who had come 
 to him at night — says to them : 
 
 " Surely our Law does not judge the [accused] 
 man unless it first hears from him, and knows 
 what he does." ' 
 
 They answered and said to him : 
 
 ' ' Possibly you also are from Galilaia ! Search, 
 and see, that a Seer has not arisen out of GraU- 
 laiaM" 
 
 And they went each to his own house ; but 
 ISsous went to the Olive-tree Hill. 
 
 Now, at daybreak he came again to the 
 temple-courts, and all the common people * 
 came to him ; and having sat down, he taught 
 them. But the Recorders ■* and the Pharisaians 
 bring to him a woman caught in adultery, and 
 placing her before aU,* they say to him : 
 
 1 Deut. i. 16, 17. 
 
 2 This is simply an indirect assertion that TSsous, ia their 
 opinion, was not a Seer ; or the rendering may be, " that 
 out of Galilaia no Seer is to arise," though the latter read- 
 ing is not that of the older manuscripts. If construed, 
 "no Seer has arisen," the statement would be untrue, as 
 Idnas and other great Seers were of GralUaia. But the 
 priests are sarcastically represented as judging from ap- 
 pearances, being ignorant of the fact that Ksous was bom 
 at Bethlehem. 
 
 ' Gr. laos, the rank and file, the common men. 
 * Gr. grammateus, a scribe, secretary ; one learned in the 
 Law. 
 5 In the Greek idiom, " in the midst." 
 
ACCOBDING TO lOANN^iS. 133 
 
 "Teacher, this woman was caught in the 
 -very act, committing adultery. Now, in the Law 
 Mos^s has commanded us that such should be 
 stoned.' What, therefore, do you say ? " 
 
 Now, they said this to test him, so that they 
 might be able to bring a charge against him. 
 But ISsous, stooping down, wrote on the ground 
 with his finger^; but when they kept asking him, 
 he lifted himself up and said to them : 
 
 " He of you who is blameless, let him be the 
 first to hurl the stone ' at her," 
 
 And again he stooped down and wrote on the 
 ground. Now, having heard, and being re- 
 proached by conscience, they went out one by 
 one, beginning from those of higher rank,* even 
 to the lowest; and I^sous alone was left, and 
 the woman standing before all. Now, I^sous, 
 having lifted himself up, and seeing nobody but 
 the woman, said to her : 
 
 " [Grood] woman, where are they, your prose- 
 
 1 Lev. XX. 10 ; Deut. xxii. 22-24. 
 
 ^ Symbolizing that evil is inherent in matter, and is there- 
 fore impermanent. The sonl itself is pure, but the evU im- 
 pulses of the material body, the animal-self, contaminate it. 
 See note 1, p. 22. 
 
 ' The custom was for one of the accusers or witnesses to 
 cast a stone as a signal for the bystanders to begin the 
 execution. 
 
 * Gr. presbuteros, an elder ; a member of the council. So 
 strong was their pride of position that even in their dis- 
 comfiture they went out iu the order of their rank. 
 
134 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 cutors? Has no one passed sentence upon 
 you?" 
 
 And she said : 
 
 " No one, Master." 
 
 And lesous said to her : 
 
 " Neither do I pass sentence upon you. Go 
 your way, and sin no more." * 
 
 Again, therefore, I^sous spoke to them, say- 
 ing: 
 
 " I am the Light of the world ; he who goes 
 with me shall not at all walk in the Darkness, 
 but shall have the Light of the Life." 
 
 The Pharisaians, therefore, said to him : 
 
 " Yo u are bearing witness about yourself ; 
 your witness is not true." 
 
 1 Althougli the story of the woman taken in adultery has 
 been rejected as spurious by a majority of the critics, a 
 more careful weighing of the evidence wUl conclusively 
 estabUsh its authenticity; for everything goes to show 
 that its exclusion from some of the manuscripts was due 
 solely to the fanaticism of churchmen of the stamp of the 
 " elders " upon whom it is such a stinging satire. Its morality 
 was too broad for their narrow code. A majority of about 
 300 manuscripts, including some of the more ancient ones, 
 are in favor of the passage ; and the fact that many of the 
 others leave a space for it, or show erasures or torn pages, 
 shows that the text was unscrupulously mutilated by bigoted 
 moral critics. It has been urged against its authenticity 
 that it interrupts the course of the narrative ; that it is in 
 a different style from the rest of the Evangel, containing 
 words and phrases not elsewhere found, and making a dif- 
 ferent use of particles ; and that it has an unparalleled 
 
ACCORDING TO idANN^S. 135 
 
 I^sous answered and said to them : 
 
 "Even if I do bear witness about myself, 
 my witness is true, because I know whence 
 I came and where I am going ; but you do not 
 know whence I come, or where I am going. 
 You judge according to the flesh ; I judge no 
 one. And even if I do judge, this judgment of 
 mine is true, because I am not alone, but I and 
 the Father who sent me [judge] ; and it has 
 also been written in your own Law that two 
 men's witness is true.* I am one who bears 
 witness about myself, and the Father who sent 
 me bears witness about me." 
 
 They said to him, therefore : 
 
 " Where is y o u r Father ? » 
 
 variety of readings. On the contrary, it is an integral part 
 of the narrative, for the expurgated portion begins with 
 the words, " And they went each to his own house," and the 
 sentences immediately preceding and following the omitted 
 passage do not form a sequence, while the sentences di- 
 rectly following apply to it with wonderful clearness and 
 beauty : " I am the Light," says ISsous (that Light of con- 
 science which had reproached the hearts of the accusers) ; 
 and again, " You judge according to the flesh ; I judge no 
 one." Also the style is identical with that of the whole 
 Evangel, and the particles are numerically the same — a 
 strong point in its favor, as the writer is peculiarly spar- 
 ing in the use of particles ; nor is there a greater variety 
 of readings than in some other passages. Indeed, it is 
 curious that any fair-minded critic should ever have 
 seriously questioned the genuineness of the passage. 
 1 Beut. xix. 15. 
 
136 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 I^sous answered : 
 
 "You neither know me nor my Father; if 
 you knew me, you would know my Father 
 also." 
 
 These words he spoke in the treasury, ' as he 
 taught in the temple-courts, and no one took 
 him, because his hour had not yet come. Again, 
 therefore, he said to them : 
 
 " I am going away ; and you will seek me, 
 and you will die in your sin. Where I am 
 going, you can not come." 
 
 The loudaians, therefore, said : 
 
 " Surely he will not kiU himself, that he says, 
 * Where / am going, you can not come ' ! " 
 
 And he said to them : 
 
 " You are of those below, / am of those 
 above ^; you are of this world, I am not of 
 this world. Therefore I said to you that you 
 will die in your sins ; for unless you shall be- 
 lieve that I Am,^ you will die in your sins." 
 
 They said to him, therefore : 
 
 " Who are Y o u ? " 
 
 And lesous said to them : 
 
 "And wherefore do I speak to you of that 
 
 ^ Gr. gaaophulakion, treasure-house. 
 
 2 That is, " You are of the Mortals, I am of the Immor- 
 tals." See note 2, p. 94. 
 
 3 Immortality is gained only through the identification 
 of one's self with the changeless inner consciousness, which 
 is beyond the illusions of Time and the perishable objects 
 of the senses. 
 
ACCOKDING TO idANN^S. 137 
 
 First-principle ' f Many [tMngs] I can speak 
 about you, and judge; but he wlio sent me is 
 true, and these [words], wbicli I have heard 
 from him, I say to the world." 
 
 They did not perceive that he was speaking 
 to them of the Father. Therefore, Ksous said 
 to them : 
 
 " When you have raised on high the Son of 
 the Man, then you will know that I Am, and 
 [that] I do nothing of myself, but I speak these 
 [things] even as my Father taught me. And 
 he who sent me is with me; the Father has 
 not left me alone by myseK, because I do every 
 time the [works] that are acceptable to him." 
 
 While he was speaking these [words], many 
 [hearers] believed in him. ISsous, therefore, 
 said to the loudaians who had believed in 
 him: 
 
 " If you abide in this saying of mine, you are 
 truly my pupils ; and you shall know the Truth, 
 and the Truth shall set you free." ^ 
 
 1 The logos and the arehe are one. See notes 1 and 
 2, p. 71. 
 
 2 That is, free from the " wheel of birth," or cycle of 
 reincarnations. This freedom comes only through the 
 merging of the individual consciousness in the eternal 
 consciousness of the Son or Logos, the " I Am." I^sous, 
 as the Logos, is the Saviour and the Deliverer — titles 
 which were also given to Zeus and the other Solar Gods. 
 Sin is the cause of bondage, and in the Epistle of James 
 (iii. 6) evil speech is said to be that which "inflames the 
 
138 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 They answered him : 
 
 " We are Abraham's seed, and never yet have 
 been slaves ^ to any one. How is it you say, 
 * You shall become freemen ' ? " 
 
 I§sous answered them: 
 
 " AmSn, AmSn, I say to you, Every one who 
 commits a sin is a slave to sin. ^ Now, the 
 slave does not abide in the house throughout 
 the On-going; the Son does abide throughout 
 the On-going. If, therefore, the Son shall set 
 you free, you shall be 'freemen' indeed.' I 
 
 wheel of birth " — apparently alluding to the myth of 
 Ixion, who was bound to a flaming wheel as a punishment 
 for his sins. Ixion, cast out of heaven, is the soul fallen 
 into generation, and bound to the fiery wheel of the animal 
 passions. 
 
 ^ Presumably the speakers, taking the mystical words of 
 ISsous literally, of course, were thinking of chattel slavery, 
 and not of national subjugation; otherwise their boast 
 could not be reconciled with the facts of history, as the 
 loudaians were at that time in subjection to the Romans, 
 having previously been in slavery under the Egyptians, 
 Assyrians, and Babylonians. 
 
 ^ Or, " a slave to that sin." The wording leaves it uncer- 
 tain whether sin in the abstract or some particular sin is 
 meant. Yet the former is doubtless intended, since it is 
 contrasted with the Truth. Illusion, the mistaking of the 
 False for the True, is the source of sin, and pertains to the 
 material world, while Truth is of the spiritual world. 
 
 ' The metaphor is drawn from the Roman system of 
 enfranchising slaves and making them legally freemen 
 yliberti). In a mystical sense, the "slave" is the psychic 
 self of man, and the " Son " is his spiritual Self or Logos ; 
 
ACCOBDING TO idANN^lS. 139 
 
 know that you are Abraham's seed; but you 
 are seeking to kill me, because this saying of 
 mine does not make progress in you, ^ I speak 
 ■what I have seen with my Father; therefore, 
 
 -the latter abides in "the Father's house," while the former 
 has to pass through the cycle of incarnations until it is 
 freed by becoming one with its Logos. Paulos uses the 
 same metaphor in Gal. iv. 1-7, and adds to it an explana- 
 tion of the esoteric meaning of the story of Isaac and Ish- 
 mael (Gen. xvi. ; 3txi.),to show that the man of flesh, the 
 carnal nature, has no share in the Son's inheritance : " It 
 is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave- 
 girl, and one by the free woman. But the [son] by the 
 slave-girl was born according to the flesh, and the [son] 
 by the free woman [was bom] through the promise. 
 "Which [tales of old time] are told with a hidden mean- 
 ing. For these [women] are two compacts, one [ratified] 
 from Mount Sinai, which is Hagar giving birth to [her 
 -children] in slavery. For this 'Hagar ' is Mount Sinai in 
 Arabia, and corresponds to HierousalSm [as she is] now, 
 for she, with her children, is enslaved. Now, Hierousal^m 
 [as she is] above, who is our mother, is the free woman. 
 . . . Now, Brothers, we, [who were born] according to 
 Isaac, are children of the promise. . . . But what says 
 -the writing? 'Banish the slave-girl and her son; for 
 the son of the slave-girl shall not inherit with the son of 
 the free woman.' And so, Brothers, we are not children 
 of the slave-girl, but of the free woman. In this free- 
 dom the Anointed set us free. Stand firm, therefore, 
 and do not be caught again in a yoke of slavery " (iv. 
 22-v. 1). 
 
 1 They had gained a little of the higher knowledge, but 
 had ceased to advance in it through clinging to their an- 
 cestral creed. 
 
140 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 do you what you have heard ^ from your Fa- 
 ther ! » 
 
 They answered and said to him : 
 
 " Our Father is Abraham." 
 
 lesous says to them : 
 
 " If you were children of Abraham, you would 
 do the works of Abraham; but now you are seek- 
 ing to kill me, a man who has spoken to you the- 
 Truth, which I heard from The God. Abraham 
 did not do this [sin]. You are doing the works 
 of yowr Father." 
 
 They said to him, therefore : 
 
 "-We have not been born of fornication ^ ; we 
 have one Father, The God." 
 
 ISsous said to them : 
 
 "If The God were your Father, you would 
 love we, for I came forth from The God, and 
 am here ; for not of myself have I come, but fee 
 sent me. Why do you not see into this speech 
 of mine ? Because you can not listen to my 
 saying. You are from the Accuser's Father,* 
 
 1 The Sinaitic reads, " seen " ; the Beza, " seen with your 
 Father." 
 
 2 Marriage was used as a symlbol of union with the 
 higher nature; and fornication or adultery was used for 
 following false Gods — the Nature-spirits and ghosts of 
 the dead. 
 
 ' Or, " your Father, the Accuser " ; or, rather, " the Ac- 
 cuser-Father." The Accuser is a personifloation of the 
 blind concupiscence ot matter, which is the foe of the for- 
 mative power of the Logos. In man it is the procreative 
 
ACCOEDING TO i6aNNES. 141 
 
 and the longings^ of your Father you will to 
 go on doing. He was a man-slayer from a 
 First-principle, and did not keep his place ^ in 
 the Truth, because there is no Truth in him. 
 When he speaks the False, ' he speaks from his 
 own; because he is a falsifier, and [so is] his* 
 Father. And because / say the Truth, you do 
 not believe me. Which of you reproaches me 
 about sin ? If I say a Truth, why do you not 
 believe me ? He who is of The God hears the 
 words of The God ; for this [reason] you do not 
 hear [them], because you are not of The God." 
 
 instinct, by which he is " bom from below " and held in 
 the cycle of reincarnations, whereas through the Logos 
 he is " born from above " and gains freedom. The psy- 
 chic substance (gaia) is saturated with sexuality, and until 
 a man is purified he can not rise beyond the psychic world 
 and reach the spiritual planes of being. 
 
 ^ Gr. epithumia, desire, yearning, lust ; the vital impulse, 
 or longing for sensation. Being unpurified men {choikoi), 
 they foUow the longings of the flesh, and are slaves to 
 the illusions of matter. 
 
 ^ He is the dual-principle or tempting snake in the alle- 
 gory of the fall into generation ; falling from heaven (the 
 world of Truth), he caused the fall of man. Among the 
 Gnostics he was represented as the bad serpent (JcaJcodai- 
 mdn, evil genius), as opposed to the good serpent (agatho- 
 daimon, good genius). The one is the Logos ; the other, 
 his Shadow, the kosmic principle of Illusion, which is the 
 Father of the Accuser. The latter is the sex-principl© 
 after the fall into generation. 
 
 ' Gr. pseudos, untruth, falsehood. 
 
 * That is, the Accuser's — autou (his) referring to diaholou. 
 
142 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 The loudaians answered and said to hini : 
 
 " Say we not well that yon are a Samareitan, 
 and have a spook ? " ^ 
 
 I^sous answered : 
 
 " I have no ' spook ' ; but I honor my Father, 
 and you dishonor me. But I do not seek my 
 Eadiance; there is one who seeks and judges. 
 Amen, Amen, I say to you. If any one gives 
 heed to this saying of mine, he surely shall not 
 see death throughout the On-going." 
 
 The loudaians said to him, therefore : 
 
 " Now we know that you have a spook. 
 Abraham died, and the Seers "^ ; and you say, 
 ' If any one gives heed to my saying, he surely 
 shall not see ' death throughout the On-going.' 
 Surely y ou are not a greater [patriarch] than 
 our Father Abraham, who died! The Seers, 
 too, died ! Whom do y o u make yourself? " 
 
 lesous answered : 
 
 " If J make myself Eadiant, my Radiance is 
 
 1 ISsous having explained that all true spiritual iuspira- 
 tion comes from The God, whereas psychic inspiration is 
 illusionary and comes from the Accuser, or animal world- 
 soul (anima bruta), his ignorant hearers, upon whom his 
 words are utterly wasted, assert that he is speaking under 
 the inspiration of an obsessing ghost, or larva. It will be 
 noticed that such humorous contrasts are frequently intro- 
 duced in this Evangel, in which literalism and unspirituality 
 are unsparingly satirized. 
 
 2 Zech. i. 5. 
 
 ^ The Sinaitic and the Beza read, " taste." 
 
AccoBDiNG TO i6ann:es. 143 
 
 notMng ; it is my Father who makes me Eadi- 
 ant, of whom you say that he is your God — and 
 you have not known him. But I know him, 
 and if I should say that I do not know him, I 
 shall be the same as you, a falsifier ; but I do 
 know him, and I pay heed to his saying, 
 Abraham, your Father, became ecstatic,* so 
 that he might see my day, and he saw [it] and 
 was glad." 
 
 The loudaians therefore said to him : 
 
 "You are not yet fiJty years old, and have 
 you seen Abraham ? " 
 
 lesous said to them : 
 
 " Amen, AmSn, I say to you, Before Abraham 
 came into being I AmP ^ 
 
 Then they picked up stones to hurl at him ; 
 but ISsous made himself invisible, ^ and went 
 out of the temple-courts, passing through the 
 midst of them, and thus going unnoticed. 
 
 And passing on, he saw a man blind from 
 birth. And his pupils asked him, saying : 
 
 1 See note 1, p. 114. 
 
 2 That is, " Before Abraham came into the sphere of 
 transition (genesis) I amm. the ever-being." 
 
 ^ Literally, " was withdrawn from sight." That this was 
 done magically was admitted by the older commentators ; 
 but more recent expositors have tortured the Greek in 
 every conceivable way to get rid of the " difficulty," and 
 have rejected the final words of the sentence on wholly in- 
 sufficient evidence. 
 
144 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 ^^ Bahhi, who sinned, this [man] or his pa- 
 rents, that he should be born blind ? " 
 
 I^sous answered : 
 
 "Neither did this [man] 'sin,' nor his pa- 
 rents ; but [he is thus afflicted in order] that 
 the works of The God might become manifest 
 in him. ^ I must be working the works of him 
 who sent me,^ while it is day ; night is coming, 
 when no one can work. While I am in the 
 world, I am the Light of the world." 
 
 Having said these [words], he spit on the 
 ground, and made mud out of the spittle, and 
 smeared the mud upon the blind [man's] eyes, 
 and said to him : 
 
 1 While it is true that every evil that befalls a man is due 
 to his own acts in the same or some preceding life, the pur- 
 pose of the Law is not punishment, but enlightenment. For 
 through suffering and sorrow the soul learns to recognize 
 the Light of the Logos. 
 
 2 The Vatican reads, " We must be working ... of him 
 who sent me," while the Sinaitic has, " who sent us." This 
 curious variation would indicate that there was an older 
 reading which has been purposely changed so as to conceal 
 the fact that ISsous spoke in the plural, whether as the 
 collective Logos, the host of souls, or, in a personal way, as 
 one of an order of Initiates, doubtless that of the thera^eutai, 
 or " healers." That the text has been tampered with is evi- 
 dent from a number of passages where the peculiar con- 
 struction of the Greek shows plainly, in some instances, 
 that two or more variant readings have been unskilfully 
 combined, and, in others, that words have been deleted. 
 In the above passage the work of altering the text was not 
 thoroughly carried out. The " we" occurs also in iii. 11. 
 
ACCOEDING TO lOANNES. 145 
 
 " Go and wash * [your eyes] in the swim- 
 ming-bath of Sil6am" (which is interpreted 
 "Sent"). 
 
 He went away, therefore, and washed [his 
 eyes], and came back having sight. The neigh- 
 bors, therefore, and those who were used to 
 seeing him before, because he was a beggar, 
 said: 
 
 " Is not this [man] he who sat and begged ? " 
 
 Some said, " This is he " ; others, " No ; but 
 he is like him." 
 
 He said : 
 
 " I am he." 
 
 They said to him, therefore: 
 
 "How were your eyes opened?" 
 
 He answered : 
 
 "A man, who is called lesous, made [some] 
 mud, and smeared my eyes, and said to me, 
 * Go to Siloam and wash [them].' And then, 
 having gone away and washed [themj, I re- 
 ceived sight." 
 
 Therefore they said to him: 
 
 «' Where is that [man] ? " 
 
 He said: 
 
 "I do not know." 
 
 They bring to the Pharisaians him who was 
 once blind. Now, it was a Sabbath when 
 
 1 Gr. niptein, to wash (as the face or hands) ; the word is 
 not used for " to bathe." A magical virtue was attributed 
 to saliva, and a Instral or expiatory virtue to water. 
 
146 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 I^sous made the mud, and opened his eyes. 
 The Pharisaians, also, therefore asked him, 
 again, how he received sight. And he said to 
 them: 
 
 "He put mud on my eyes, and I washed 
 [them], and I have sight." 
 
 Some of the Pharisaians, therefore, said, 
 " This man is not from The God, because he 
 does not keep the Sabbath." Others said, 
 " How can a man who is a wrong-doer do such 
 signs?" And there was a division among 
 them. They say, therefore, to him who was 
 once blind : 
 
 " What, again, do you say about him, in that 
 he opened your eyes ? " 
 
 And he said: 
 
 "He is a Seer." 
 
 The loudaians, therefore, did not believe 
 concerning him, that he had been blind and 
 had received his sight, till they had called the 
 parents of [the man] himself who had received 
 sight, and asked them, saying : 
 
 "Is this [man] your son, of whom you say 
 that he was born blind ? How is it, then, that 
 now he has sight?" 
 
 Then his parents answered and said to them: 
 
 "We know that this [man] is our son, and 
 that he was born blind ; but how it is that he 
 now has sight we do not know, or who opened 
 his eyes we do not know. Ask himseK — he 
 
ACCOBDING TO lOANNfiS. 147 
 
 "has reached maturity; he will speak about him- 
 self." 
 
 His parents said these [things] because they 
 were afraid of the loudaians ; for already the 
 loudaians had come to an agreement that if 
 any one should confess him [to be] an Anointed, 
 he should become an outcast from the assem- 
 bly. For this [reason], his parents said, " He 
 has reached maturity, ask himself." For a 
 second time, therefore, they called the man 
 who had been blind, and said to him : 
 
 " Grive glory' to The God ; we know that this 
 man is a sinner." 
 
 He, therefore, answered and said: 
 
 " Whether he is a sinner, I know not. One 
 thing I do know, that having been blind, I now 
 have sight." 
 
 They said to him, therefore : 
 
 " What did he do to y o u ? How did he open 
 your eyes?" 
 
 He answered them: 
 
 " I have told you already, and you did not 
 listen. Why do you want to hear [it] again ? 
 Perhaps you also want to become his pupils ! " 
 
 They heaped abuse upon him, and said : 
 
 " You are a pupil of that [man], but we are 
 pupils of Mos^s. We know that The God has 
 spoken to Mos^s ; but as for this [man], we do 
 not know whence he is." 
 
 1 See note 2, p. 77. 
 
148 THE MAGICAIi MESSAGE 
 
 The man answered and said to them: 
 
 "Why, in this [admission] is [something] 
 ■wonderful — that you do not know whence he 
 is I And he opened my eyes, and we do know 
 that The Q-od does not hear sinners ; but if any 
 one be God-fearing, and does his will, this 
 [man] he hears. Since this On-going it has 
 not been heard that any one opened the eyes 
 of a [man] born blind. If this [man] was not 
 [sent] from a God, he could do nothing." 
 
 They answered and said to him : 
 
 " In sins you were begotten entirely, and do 
 you teach us f " 
 
 And they hurled him outside. lesous heard 
 that they [had] hurled him outside, and hav- 
 ing found him, he said to him: 
 
 "Do y ou believe in the Son of the Man ' ? " 
 
 And he answered and said: 
 
 " Who is he. Master, that I may believe in 
 him?" 
 
 ISsous said to him: 
 
 "You have even seen him, and he who is 
 speaking with you is heP 
 
 And he said : 
 
 "I believe [it]. Master"; and he made obei- 
 sance'' to him. 
 
 ^ Although some manuscripts read, " Son of The God," 
 the weight of authority lies with the reading, " Son of the 
 Man." 
 
 ^ That is, prostrated himself, making the saldm. 
 
ACCORDING TO i6aNNIiS. 149 
 
 And Ksous said: 
 
 " For a distinction ^ I came into this world, 
 that those who do not see may have sight, and 
 those who see may become blind," ^ 
 
 Those of the Pharisaians who were with him 
 Jieard these [words], and said to him : 
 
 " Surely we are not blind ? " 
 
 ISsous said to them : 
 
 " If you were blind, you would not have sin ; 
 but now you say, ' We have sight,' your sin, 
 therefore, abides. ' Amen, Am^n, I say to you. 
 He who does not go in through the door into 
 the sheep-fold, but climbs up from another 
 •quarter, he is a thief and a bandit^; but he 
 who does go in through the door is a shepherd 
 of the sheep. To this [shepherd] the door- 
 keeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and 
 he calls his own sheep according to name, and 
 leads them out. And when he has driven out 
 
 1 Gr. krima, a decision, decree ; a matter for considera- 
 "tion. The word is not found elsewhere in this Evangel. 
 
 ' The common people were gaining spiritual insight, 
 while their priestly rulers were becoming spiritually blind. 
 
 ^ The many, the useless portion of mankind, are irrespon- 
 sible because of their blindness and ignorance ; they can 
 hardly be said to have risen above the animal kingdom, or 
 to be accountable for their actions. But once a man has 
 «een the spiritual Light he becomes responsible for all his 
 words and deeds. " When one knows [what is] right, and 
 does not do [it], to him it is sin " (Jas. iv. 17). 
 
 * Gr. ISstes, a plunderer, pirate, brigand. 
 
150 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 all his own sheep, he goes in front of them, and 
 the sheep go with him, because they know his 
 voice ; but with a strange [man] they will not 
 go, but will run away from him, because they 
 do not know the voice of those who are stran- 
 gers." 
 
 This commonplace ^ I^sous said to them ; but 
 they did not know what the [things] were which 
 he spoke to them. Again, therefore, lesous said 
 to them : 
 
 "Am^n, Am^n, I say to you, I am the door of 
 the sheep. All who came before me are thieves 
 and bandits ; but the sheep did not hear them.^ 
 I am the door ; through me if any one enters- 
 in, he shall be kept safe, and shall go in, and 
 go out and find pasture. The thief does not 
 come except that he may steal, and kill, and 
 
 ^ Gr. paroiniia, a wayside saying, saw, proverb ; an ancient 
 maxim having an esoteric meaning. 
 
 2 That is, would not recognize them when called. The 
 mystic " door of ISsous " is the opening of the " third eye," 
 or eye of the Seer ; and the psychic visions and other vag^e, 
 distorted glimpses of truth which precede the f uU spiritual 
 illiimination are the " thieves and bandits." The Gnostics- 
 and ManichsBans, who knew perfectly well the inner mean- 
 ing, taunted the orthodox by pointing out that this passage 
 repudiated the loudaian Seers who came before Ksous.^ 
 The words " before me " were accordingly expunged from 
 many manuscripts, and a puerile explanation was given by 
 Augustine and others that only false Seers came, true Seers 
 being sent. In the Book of Enoch the allegory of the Good. 
 Shepherd is given in a more complete form. 
 
ACCOBDING TO i6aNNES. 151 
 
 destroy. I came that they may have Life, and 
 may have [it] above measure. I am that Good 
 Shepherd.^ That Good Shepherd gives up his 
 ghost '^ for the sheep. But he who is a hire- 
 ling, and is not a shepherd, whose own the 
 sheep are not, sees the wolf coming, and leaves 
 the sheep and runs away, and the wolf snatches 
 them out, and scatters the sheep. Now, he 
 who is a hireling runs away, because he is a 
 hireling, and does not care about the sheep. I 
 am that Good Shepherd ; and I know mine, and 
 am known of mine, even as the Father knows 
 me, and I know the Father ; and I give up my 
 ghost for the sheep. Other sheep also I have, 
 which are not of this fold ; those also must I 
 bring, and they will hear my voice ; and there 
 
 1 Hermis, the pastoral God, who shepherded the starry 
 flocks, and was the Interpreter of the Gods, was mystically 
 what Ilsous here represents himself to be. He was called 
 the " Saviom-" (sdter) and the " Oracle" (%ws). 
 
 2 Gr. psuehe, the psychic or vital body. It is neither the 
 " life " nor the " soul," but is an ethereal counterpart of 
 the physical body and the vehicle of the life-principle. It 
 may leave the physical body during the sleep of the latter, 
 and appear at a distance as a wraith or phantom. After 
 death it becomes the " ghost," or " shade," in the psychic 
 world Qiadis). The expression "give up his shade'''' was 
 equivalent to the modern " give up his life." The word 
 " ghost " is an unsatisfactory rendering, but in English 
 there is no word of identical meaning with the Greek term ; 
 yet in the older Greek psucM is strictly the wraith of a de- 
 parted person. 
 
152 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 shall become one flock, one shepherd. For this 
 [reason] the Father loves me, because Jgive up 
 my ghost that I may take it back. ' No one 
 takes it away from me, but Jgive it up of my- 
 self. I have authority to give it up, and I have 
 authority to take it back. This command I re- 
 ceived from my Father." 
 
 A division again arose among the loudaians 
 because of these sayings; and many of them 
 said: 
 
 "He has a spook, and is raving; why are 
 you listening to him ? " Others said : " These 
 words are not those of one spook-possessed. 
 Can a spook open the eyes of the blind ? " 
 
 Now, there took place [the festival] " Initia- 
 tion"^ at HierousalSm. It was winter. And 
 I^sous was walking in the temple-courts, in 
 Solomon's portico. The loudaians, therefore, 
 surrounded him, and said to him : 
 
 1 Here there is a play on the word psuchS. While " giv- 
 ing up the ghost " has the colloquial allusion to death, it 
 here means abandoning the psychic body for the spiritual 
 body {sdma pnewmaUlcon). See Appendix II., " The Birth 
 from Above." 
 
 2 Gr. enkainia, renewal, renovation, consecration. This 
 festival of eight days was said to be in commemoration of 
 the purification of the temple at HierousalSm after it had 
 been profaned. It was also called " Lights " (ph$ta) (Jos., 
 Ant, xii. 7). 
 
ACOOEDING TO l6ANNtS. 153 
 
 " How long will you hold us in suspense ^ ? 
 11 you are the Anointed, tell us openly." 
 
 I§sous answered them : 
 
 "I have told you, and you do not believe 
 [me]. The works which I do in the Name of 
 my Father, these works bear witness about me. 
 But you do not have faith, for you are not of 
 my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I 
 know them, and they go with me, and I give 
 them On-going Life, and they shall not at all 
 die throughout the On-going, and no one shall 
 snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who 
 has given [them] to me, is a greater [God] than 
 all,'' and no one can snatch [anything] out of 
 the Father's hand. I and the Father are one." 
 
 Again, therefore, the loudaians were holding 
 in their hands stones, that they might stone 
 him. I^sous answered them : 
 
 " Many good works did I show you from my 
 Father ; for which work of them do you stone 
 me?" 
 
 The loudaians answered him, saying : 
 
 " We do not stone y o u on account of a good 
 work, but on account of railing, and because 
 you, who are a man, make yourself a Grod." 
 
 I^sous answered them : 
 
 1 Literally, " exalt our ghost," psuehe being the seat of 
 the sensations — doubt, fear, and the like. 
 
 2 The Vatican reads, " What my Father has given me is 
 a greater [gift] than all." 
 
154 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 " Is it not written in your Law, ' I said, You 
 are Q-ods ' ^ ? If he called them Grods to whom 
 the Thought of The God came — and the writ- 
 ing can not be done away with — do you say of 
 him whom the Father purified and sent into the 
 world, 'You rail,' because I said, ' I am a Son of 
 The God'? If I do not do the works of my 
 Father, do not believe me ; but if I do, even if 
 you do not believe me, believe the works, so 
 that you may see into, and know, ^ that the 
 Father [is] in me, and I [am] in the Father." ^ 
 
 Again, therefore, they sought to take him, 
 and again he got away out of their hand.* 
 And he went back again to the other side of 
 the lordanos, to the place where I6annSs was 
 at first lustrating; and there he abode. And 
 many came to him, and they said : 
 
 " I6ann§s, indeed, did no sign; but all [things] 
 that loannSs said about this [man] were true." 
 
 And many believed in him there. 
 
 Now, there was a certain one lying sick, 
 Lazaros, of Bethania, from the village of Mari- 
 am and Martha, her sister. And it was the 
 [same] Mariam who anointed the Master with 
 
 1 Ps. Ixzxii. 6. 
 
 ^ The Sinaitic reads, " that you may know and believe." 
 3 Or, " that as the Father [is] in me, so I [am] in the 
 Father." 
 * See note 3, p. 129. 
 
ACCORDING TO lOANNES. 155 
 
 scented oil, * and wiped his feet with her hair, 
 whose brother Lazaros was sick. The sisters, 
 therefore, sent to him, saying : 
 
 "Mastei*, see, he whom you dearly love is 
 sick." 
 
 But when I^sous heard [it], he said : 
 
 "This sickness is not to death, but for the 
 Eadiance of The God, that the Son of The 
 0-od may be made Radiant through it." 
 
 Now, I^sous loved ^ Martha, and her sister, 
 and Lazaros. When, therefore, he heard that 
 he was sick, at the time indeed he abode two 
 days in the place where he was ; then after this 
 [stay] he says to the pupils : 
 
 "Let us go into loudaia again." 
 
 The pupils say to him: 
 
 " Babbi, just now the loudaians were seeking 
 to stone you; and are you going back there ? " 
 
 ISsous answered : 
 
 " Are there not twelve hours in the day ? If 
 one walks in the day, he does not stumble, be- 
 cause he sees the light of this world ; but if one 
 walks in the night, he stumbles, because the 
 Light is not in him." 
 
 These [words] he said; and after this [speech] 
 he says to them : 
 
 "Lazaros, our friend, has fallen asleep; but I 
 
 1 Gr. muron, any oil, as olive-oil, scented with per- 
 fumes. 
 
 2 The Beza has, " dearly loved " {phildn). 
 
156 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 am going that I may wake him out of his 
 sleep." 
 
 The pupils, therefore, said to him : 
 
 "Master, if he has fallen asleep, he will be 
 saved." * 
 
 Now, I§sous had said [it] about his death; 
 but they thought that he said [it] of the repose 
 of sleep. Then, therefore, I^sous said to them 
 openly : 
 
 " Lazaros is dead. ^ And for your sake I am 
 glad that I was not there, so that you may 
 have faith. But let us go to him." 
 
 Thomas, therefore — he who is called "Twin"* 
 — said to his fellow-pupils : 
 
 " Let us go also, that we may die with him."'' 
 
 Idsous, therefore, having come, found that 
 by this time he had been four days in the tomb. 
 Now, B^thania was near Hierousalem, about 
 fifteen furlongs distant. And many of the 
 loudaians had come to the [women] who were 
 about Martha and Mariam that they might 
 console them about their brother. Martha, 
 therefore, when she heard that ISsous was com- 
 ing, went to meet him ; but Mariam still sat in 
 the house. Martha, therefore, said to lesous : 
 
 1 6r. sdzesthai, to be saved, healed ; to get well. See 
 note 3, p. 106. 
 
 2 Literally, "Lazaros died." 
 
 ' Gr. dichimos, twofold, double; a twin (brother). 
 
 * That is, with lesous, who was threatened with stoning. 
 
ACCORDING TO i6aNNES. 157 
 
 " Master, if y o u had been here, my brother 
 ■would not be dead. And now, even, I know 
 that whatever [things] you will ask of The 
 God, The God will give y o u." 
 
 I^sous says to her: 
 
 "Your brother shall awaken."' 
 
 Martha says to him : 
 
 " I know that he will awaken — at the ' Awak- 
 ening ' on the last day ! " 
 
 Idsous said to her : 
 
 " I am the Awakening and the Life. He who 
 believes in me, even if he die, "^ shall live ; and 
 every one who is alive and believes in me shall 
 not die throughout the On-going.' Do you 
 believe this [teaching] 1 " 
 
 1 6r. avMstinai, to stand up ; rise from sleep, wake up. 
 This word is nearly synonymous with egerfhinai; but 
 properly the latter means " to rise (from sleep)," while 
 anastSnai signifies " to rise (for action)," and this distinc- 
 tion is generally observed in the Synoptics. But the 
 writer of the fourth Evangel seems to have transposed the 
 two words, giving to anastinai the shade of meaning "to 
 awake," probably in order to use anasiasis poetically as 
 " awakening " instead of " rising-up," or " resurrection-," in 
 which latter sense it is employed by the Synoptic writers. 
 
 2 Or, " if he be dead." 
 
 ^ One who attains to the purely spiritual consciousness is 
 not under the sway of death even while incarnated in the 
 mortal body ; and when " born from above " in the sidereal 
 body {sdma pneumatikon) his life is continuous, without loss 
 of memory between incarnations, throughout the world- 
 cycle. 
 
158 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 She says to him : 
 
 " Yes, Master ; I have believed that you are 
 the Anointed, the Son of The God, who is com- 
 ing into the world." 
 
 And having said these [words], she went 
 away and called Mariam, her sister, secretly 
 saying : 
 
 " The Teacher is arrived, and calls y o u." 
 
 She, when she heard [it], rises up quickly 
 and comes to him. Now, ISsous had not yet 
 come into the village, but was [still] in the 
 place where Martha met him. The loudaians, 
 therefore, who were with her in the house, and 
 were consoling her, when they saw Mariam rise 
 quickly and go out, followed her, saying : 
 
 " She is going to the tomb, to wail ^ there." 
 
 Mariam, therefore, when she came where 
 I§sous was, on seeing him fell at his feet, say- 
 ing: 
 
 " Master, if y o u had been here, my brother 
 would not have died." 
 
 I^sous, therefore, when he saw her wailing, 
 and the loudaians wailing who came out with 
 her, became imperious^ in the Breath and 
 stirred himself up, and said : 
 
 1 To pay the tribute of loud lamentation for the dead. 
 
 ^ Gr. embrimasthai, to be furious ; to roar ; to issue orders 
 under a threat. Here it denotes the arousing of the Breath 
 by the imperious magnetic will, thus stirring up the forces 
 preparatory to a feat of magic — the raising of Lazaros. 
 
ACCOBDING TO lOANNfiS. 159 
 
 " Where have you laid him ? " 
 
 They say to him : 
 
 "Master, come and see." 
 
 Ksous shed tears. The loudaians, therefore, 
 said, " See, how dearly he loved him ! " But 
 some of them said, "Could not this [healer], 
 who opened the eyes of one who was blind, 
 have caused that this [friend] should not die ? " 
 I^sous, therefore, again becoming imperious* 
 in himself, comes to the tomb. Now, it was a 
 cave, and a stone lay upon it. lesous says : 
 
 " Take away the stone." 
 
 Martha, the sister of the dead [man], says to 
 him: 
 
 " Master, by this time he smells, for it is the 
 fourth day." "^ 
 
 I^sous says to her : 
 
 " Have I not told you that if y o u will have 
 faith, you shall see the Radiance of The Grod ? " 
 
 They took away the stone, therefore; and 
 I^sous hfted up his eyes above,' and said: 
 
 1 The thaumaturgio frenzy previously aroused having 
 subsided through his sorrow for the dead. 
 
 2 This is given merely as a surmise of Martha. It was 
 the popular belief that until the expiration of the third 
 day after death the psuchS of the deceased was still united 
 to the physical body, into which it could be recalled by the 
 will-power of the magician. Hence the Greeks resorted to 
 special rites (protrita) during that period. To sever the 
 ghost from the dead body, cremation was resorted to. 
 
 3 That is, using the inner or spiritual senses. 
 
160 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 "Father, I return thanks to you because 
 you heard me. (Now, I knew that every time 
 you hear me; but for the people's sake who 
 are standing around I said [it], that they may 
 believe that you sent me.) " 
 
 And having said these [words], he cried with 
 a mighty voice : 
 
 " Lazaros ! Hither, outside ! " ^ 
 
 Forth came the dead [man], bound feet and 
 hands with bandages, and his face was bound 
 round with a handkerchief. ISsous says to 
 them: 
 
 " Untie him, and permit [him] to withdraw." 
 
 Many of the loudaians, therefore — those who 
 had come to Mariam and had seen the things he 
 had done — believed in him. But some of 
 them went away to the Pharisaians, and told 
 them the things I§sous had done. Therefore 
 the archpriests and the Pharisaians assembled 
 a council, and they said : 
 
 "What are we to do? For this man does 
 many signs. If we let him alone in this way, 
 all [the people] will believe in him; and the 
 Romans will come, and take away both our 
 place and our [priestly] class.'"* 
 
 1 Addressing the ghost, who is outside the physical 
 body, and ordering it to return by the call, " Hither," 
 " Come here " (dewro). 
 
 2 Gr. ethnos, a number of people living together ; a band 
 of men, tribe, family, race ; a particular class or caste. It 
 
AOCOKDING TO l6ANNf!S. 161 
 
 But a certain one of them, Kaiaphas, being 
 Archpriest of that year, said to them: 
 
 " You know nothing. Nor do you take into 
 account that it is to our own interest that one 
 man should die because of the common people, 
 and not the whole class perish." 
 
 Now, he said this [prediction] not from him- 
 self, but being Archpriest of that year, he de- 
 clared as a Seer^ that lesous was about to die 
 for the class, and not for the class alone, but 
 that he might also gather together into one the 
 children of The Grod who were scattered abroad. 
 From that day, therefore, they consulted to- 
 gether that they might kill him. lesous, there- 
 fore, no longer walked openly among the lou- 
 daians, but went away from that place into 
 the region near the desert, to a city called 
 
 was because the growing influence of ISsous among tlie 
 common people was lessening the authority of the sacer- 
 dotal caste that the latter conspired to have him put to 
 death. His efforts were whoUy to restore the esoteric 
 system, doing away with exoteric ritualistic observances 
 and freeing the people from the tjrranny of their degen- 
 erate priestly rulers. That the loudaian nation was in no 
 danger of extinction as such is shown by the fact that 
 PUatos voluntarily offered to make ISsous their ruler — 
 which would have resulted in the downfall of the sacerdotal 
 class. But the crucifixion of ISsous is a purely mystical 
 allegory of the birth " from above," and has no historical 
 basis. 
 
 1 Gr. propMteuem, to declare in the name of a God, to 
 state as a Seer. 
 
162 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 Ephraim, and there he passed the time with 
 his pupils. 
 
 Now, the "Passing-over" of the loudaians 
 was near ; and many went up to Hierousal^m out 
 of that region, before the " Passing-over," that 
 they might purify themselves. They sought, 
 therefore, for ISsous, and said to one another, as 
 they stood in the temple-courts : "What do you 
 think? That he will not come to the festival ? * 
 
 Now, the archpriests and the Pharisaians 
 had given a command that, if any one knew 
 where he was, he should lay information, so 
 that they might take him. 
 
 Igsous, therefore, six days before the " Pass- 
 ing-over," came to B§thania, where Lazaros 
 was, whom I§sous raised from among the dead 
 ones. They made him, therefore, a dinner 
 there, and Martha waited on [him] ; but Laza- 
 ros was one of those reclining [at table] with 
 him. Mariam, therefore, taking a pound of 
 scented oU, of real nard, very costly, anointed 
 the feet of I^sous, and wiped his feet with her 
 hair ; and the house was filled with the odor of 
 the scented oil. One of his pupils, therefore, 
 loudas, [the son] of Simon IskariotSs — he 
 who was about to deliver him up — says : 
 
 " Why was not this scented oil sold for three 
 hundred denarii, ' and given to the beggars ? " 
 1 About fifty dollars. 
 
ACCORDING TO lOANNES, 163 
 
 Now, he said this [complaint], not because he 
 cared about the beggars, but because he was a 
 thief, and he held the money-box, ' and had the 
 carrying of the things thrown [into it]. 
 
 I§sous, therefore, said : 
 
 "Let her alone. She has kept it untU the 
 day of my preparation for the tomb. ^ For you 
 have the beggars with yourselves all the time, 
 but me you do not have all the time." 
 
 A great crowd, therefore, of the loudaians 
 knew that he was there ; and they came, not on 
 account of l^sous only, but that they might see 
 Lazaros also, whom he raised from among the 
 dead ones. Now, the archpriests consulted 
 together, that they might kill Lazaros also, be- 
 cause on account of him many of the loudaians 
 were going away and believing in I^sous. 
 
 On the morrow the crowd ^ who had come to 
 the festival, having heard that Idsous was com- 
 ing to HierousalSm, took the leaf-stems of the 
 palm-trees, and went out for the purpose of 
 meeting him, and cried out : 
 
 1 Gr. gidssokomon, a box for holding valuables. Origi- 
 nally the word was applied to the box in which pipers 
 carried their wind-instruments (gldssidas). 
 
 2 Grr. entwphiasmos, embalming or otherwise preparing 
 the corpse for the tomb. The statement of ISsous is a 
 prediction of his "crucifixion" in the near future. The 
 Vatican reads, " Suffer her to keep it," etc. 
 
 ' Here, as in the preceding paragraph, some manuscripts 
 read, " a great crowd." 
 
164 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 '^Hoscmna^/ Praised [is] he who comes in 
 the Name of the Master! The Euler of Is- 
 rael !"^ 
 
 And ISsous, having found a little ass,' seated 
 himself upon it, as it is written : 
 
 "Fear not. Daughter of Sion! Behold, your 
 Euler comes, seated upon an ass's colt ! "^ 
 
 Now, his pupils did not see into these [things] 
 at first; but when ISsous was made Eadiant, 
 then they called to mind that these [things] 
 had been written about him and they had done 
 these [things] to him. 
 
 The people who were with him, therefore, 
 bore witness that he called Lazaros out of the 
 tomb, and raised him from among the dead 
 ones. For this [reason], also, the people went 
 out to meet him, because they heard that he 
 had done this sign. The Pharisaians, there- 
 fore, said to themselves : 
 
 " You see that you are of no use at all ! See, 
 the world is going away after him ! " 
 
 Now, there were certain Hellenes among 
 those who were going up to worship at the 
 
 1 Meaning " Save now ! " 
 
 2 Ps. cxviii. 25, 26 ; Zeph. iii. 15. 
 
 3 The black cross on the shoulders of the ass probably 
 gave the animal its place in symbolism. The account of 
 the triumphal entry into HierousalSm is given in all four 
 of the Evangels, but Matthew speaks of a she-ass and her 
 colt. 
 
 * Zech. is. 9. 
 
ACCOKDING TO idANN^S. 165 
 
 festival. These [men], therefore, came to Phi- 
 lippos — who was from Bethsaida of G-alilaia — 
 and asked him, saying : 
 
 " Master, we wish to see I^sous." 
 
 PhUippos goes and tells Andreas. And, again, 
 Andreas and Philippos come, and they tell lo- 
 gons. And I§sous answers them, saying : 
 
 " The hour has come, that the Son of the 
 Man should be made Eadiant. Am^n, AmSn, I 
 say to you. Unless the grain ^ of the wheat falls 
 to the earth and dies, it abides by itself, alone ; 
 but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who 
 loves his ghost causes it to perish,^ and he 
 who hates his ghost in this world shall keep it 
 throughout On-going Life.^ If any one serve 
 -me, let him follow me, and where I am, there 
 also shall be this server of mine; if any one 
 serve me, the Father will honor him. Now my 
 ghost is stirred up, ^ and what shall I say ? 
 ' Father, save me from this hour ' ? But it was 
 for this [end] that I came into this hour ! 
 ' Father, make your Name Eadiant ' ? " 
 
 1 Gr. TcoTckos, a kernel. 
 
 2 The Beza has, " wiU lose it." 
 
 ' The perfect man, or Initiate, preserves the same psy- 
 chic body from incarnation to incarnation; whereas the 
 unpurified man loses the psychic body, which dies in the 
 psychic world after the dissolution of the physical body. 
 
 * Referring to the psychic exaltation that precedes the 
 pneumatic birth " from above," which birth is allegorized 
 in the crucifixion. 
 
166 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 There came, therefore, a Voice out of the 
 Sky: 
 
 "I have both made [it] Radiant, and I will 
 make [it] Radiant again." 
 
 The people, therefore, who stood and heard 
 [it] said that there had been thunder. Others 
 said, "A Messenger has spoken to him." ISsous 
 answered and said : 
 
 " Not on account of me has this Voice come, 
 but on account of you. Now there is a sepa- 
 rating of this world. Now is the Leader of 
 this world ^ about to be cast outside. And I, 
 if I be lifted up on high from the Earth, will 
 draw all [men] ^ to myself." 
 
 Now, he said this [similitude], showing by a 
 sign what kind of death he was about to die. 
 The people, therefore, answered him : 
 
 " We heard out of the Law that the Anointed 
 abides throughout the On-going ; and how is it 
 that you say that the Son of the Man must be 
 lifted up on high ? Who is this ' Son of the 
 Man'?" 
 
 1 That is, all material taint is to be removed by the 
 purifying action of the Breath in the mystic crucifixion. 
 The " Leader {archdn) of this world " is the Accuser (diabo- 
 los). See note 1, p. 125. 
 
 2 The Sinaitic and Beza read, "all [things]." Every 
 man who becomes self -purified raises the level of the en- 
 tire liuman race, through the psychical and spiritual ties 
 which unite all men; and ia this sense every Initiate is a 
 Saviour. 
 
ACCOBDING TO IOANN^S. 167 
 
 ISsoiis, therefore, said to thein : 
 
 "For a little time yet the Light is in you. 
 Walk while you have the Light, so that Dark- 
 ness may not overtake* you; and he who 
 walks in the Darkness does not know where he 
 is going. While you have the Light, believe in 
 the Light, so that you may become Sons of 
 Light." 
 
 These [things] ISsous spoke, and going away 
 he became concealed from them. But though 
 he had done so many signs in front of them, 
 they did not believe in him, so that the saying 
 of H^saias the Seer might be fulfilled, which he 
 said: 
 
 "Master, who has believed that which we 
 heard. 
 And to whom was the arm of the Master 
 uncovered ? " * 
 
 For this [reason] they were not able to be- 
 lieve, because again H^saias said : 
 
 " He has blinded their eyes. 
 And petrified ' their heart, 
 
 1 See note 1, p. 74. 
 
 2 Isa. liii. 1. 
 
 3 Gr. pdrovM, to turn into stone, petrify. The allusion is 
 to the " philosopher's stone," the petrified " third eye," 
 which is the " heart " of the brain, and the organ of noetic 
 action. " A stone which the Builders [mankind before th© 
 
168 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 So that they miglit not see with their eyes, 
 And discern ^ with their heart, 
 And turn themselves about, ^ and I should 
 heal them."* 
 
 H^saias said these [words] because he saw 
 his Radiance, and spoke about him. StUl, 
 however, even of the leaders many believed 
 in him; but on account of the Pharisaians 
 they did not admit [it], that they might not 
 become outcasts from the assembly. For they 
 loved the Radiance of the Men rather than the 
 Radiance of The Grod. ■* But I§sous cried out 
 and said : 
 
 fall into generation] rejected, the same is become the apex 
 of the angle [with the two eyes it forms a triangle] ; this 
 came into being from the Master, and it is wondrous in our 
 eyes " (Matt. xxi. 42 ; also Mh. xii. 10, 11, and Lie. xx. 17). 
 
 1 Q-r. noein, to perceive by the mind, know intuitively, 
 cognize. 
 
 2 That is, looking mthim, instead of without; all true 
 knowledge beiag interior and noetic, and the empirical 
 knowledge gained through the outer senses being iUu- 
 sionary. 
 
 ' Isa. vi. 10. 
 
 * They recognized Ilsous as the Teacher of the new 
 cycle, but had not the moral courage to endure ostracism 
 throughout his cycle for the sake of the Eternal. For 
 during the cycle of ISsous (2,155 years of the Sun in 
 Pisces) the Mysteries have been unknown in the outer 
 world, and the followers of the esoteric Truth have been 
 persecuted by the exoteric church, by whom in the early 
 centuries they were excommunicated as " heretics." 
 
ACCOEDING TO lOANN^S. 169 
 
 " He "who believes in me believes, not in me, 
 but in him who sent me ; and lie who sees me 
 sees him who sent me. J, a Light, * have come 
 into the world, that every one who believes in 
 me may not abide in the Darkness. And if any 
 one hears my words, and does not believe 
 [them], ^ / do not separate him ; for I did not 
 come that I might separate the world, but that 
 I might save the world. He who sets me aside, 
 and does not accept my words, has that which 
 separates him — the saying which I spoke, that 
 will separate him in the last day. Because I 
 did not speak from myself; but the Father who 
 sent me, he gave me a command, what I should 
 say, and what I should speak; and I know that 
 his command is On-going Life. The [words], 
 therefore, which I speak, as the Father has 
 said [them] to me, so do I speak." 
 
 Now, before the festival of the "Passing- 
 over," I^sous, knowing that his hour had come, 
 so that he should pass on out of this world to 
 
 ^ Compare Jas. i. 17 : " Every good bequest and every 
 perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father 
 of the Lights, with whom there can be no alternation, or 
 shadow of turning " — referring to the alternating seasons, 
 and the shadow on the sun-dial, and thus contrasting the 
 Eternal Father of Lights with manifested Time as mea- 
 sured by the heavenly bodies in Space. 
 
 2 The received text, following the Vatican, reads, " does 
 not keep [them]." 
 
170 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 the Father, having loved his own who were in 
 the world, loved them throughout the perfect- 
 ing-period.' And as dinner was going on — 
 the Accuser having by this time put [it] into 
 the heart of loudas, [the son] of Simon Iskari- 
 6t6s, that he should deliver him up — ISsous, 
 knowing that the Father had given all [things] 
 into his hands, and that he came forth from a 
 God, and was going to The God, rises from the 
 dinner, and lays aside his outer garments, and 
 taking a towel, girded himself. Then he puts 
 water into the wash-bowl, and began to wash 
 the feet of the pupils and to wipe [them] with 
 the towel with which he was girded. He comes, 
 therefore, to Sim6n Petros; and he s&js to 
 him: 
 
 "Master, do you wash my feet?" 
 
 lesous answered and said to him: 
 
 "What Jam doing you do not understand 
 now; but after these [things] you will know." 
 
 Petros says to him : 
 
 "Never throughout the On-going shall you 
 wash my feet ! " 
 
 ISsous answered him: 
 
 "If I do not [thus] wash^ you, you have 
 no part with me." 
 
 Simon Petros says to him: 
 
 1 Grr. telos, an end aceomplislied ; being complete or per- 
 fect ; the period of initiation into the Mysteries. 
 
 2 See note 1, p. 145. 
 
ACCORDING TO l6ANNfis. 171 
 
 " Master, not my feet only, but also my hands 
 and my head!" 
 
 ISsons says to him : 
 
 " He who is fresh-bathed * has no need save 
 to wash his feet, but is clean all over. You, 
 also, are clean, but not all." 
 
 For he knew the one who was to deliver him 
 Tip; for this [reason] he said, "Not all of you 
 are clean." 
 
 When, therefore, he had washed their feet, 
 and taken up his outer garments, and reclined 
 [at table] again, he said to them: 
 
 " Do you discern what I have done to you ? 
 You call me 'The Teacher' and 'The Master,' 
 and you say well ; for [so] I am. If, therefore, 
 J, the Master and the Teacher, washed your feet, 
 you also are under a debt to wash each other's 
 feet ; for I gave you an example, that as / did 
 to you, you should do also. Am§n, Am§n, I 
 say to you, A slave is not greater than his mas- 
 ter, nor an emissary greater than he who sent 
 him. If you know these [things], immortaP 
 are you if you do them, I do not say [it] about 
 
 ^ Gr. louein, to bathe, to wash (the whole body) ; as op- 
 ■posed to niptein, to wash (the face, hands, etc.). 
 
 2 Gr, makarios, for ever blessed. In older Greek the 
 •epithet is applied to the Gods as descriptive of their 
 eternal bliss, and has the force of " immortal " rather than 
 simply "blessed" or "happy." Man's yearning for hap- 
 piness, desire for knowledge, and longing for hfe reflect 
 the eternal Bliss, Conscionsness, and Being of his real Self. 
 
172 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 all of you ; I know whom I chose ; but [it had 
 to be] so that the writing may be fulfilled : 
 
 " * He who eats the bread with me 
 Has lifted up his heel against me.' ^ 
 
 I tell you even now, before it has come to pass, 
 so that, when it does come to pass, you may 
 believe that I Am. Am§n, Am^n, I say to you, 
 He who receives any one whom I shall send 
 receives me, and he who receives me receives- 
 him who sent me." 
 
 Having said these [words], ISsous was stirred 
 up in the Breath,^ and bore witness, and said : 
 
 " Am§n, Am§n, I say to you. One of you is- 
 about to deliver me up." 
 
 The pupils, therefore, looked one at another,^ 
 being in doubt about whom he said [it]. Now, 
 one of his pupils was reclining in the bosom of 
 ISsous — the one whom ISsous loved. To this 
 [pupil], therefore, Simon Petros nods, and says. 
 to him : 
 
 " Say who it is about whom he said [it]."' 
 
 And he, leaning back on the breast of lesous,, 
 says to him : 
 
 1 Ps. xli. 9. Apparently the metaphor is borrowed 
 from -wrestling, denoting treachery by tripping up witk 
 the heel. 
 
 2 That is, went into the mantic state, the prophetic 
 frenzy, 
 
 3 The Sinaitie and Beza read, "nods to him that he should 
 inquire who it was of whom he said it" 
 
ACCOEDING TO lOANNES. 173 
 
 " Master, who is it ? " 
 
 lesous, therefore, answers : 
 
 "It is he for whom I shall dip a small 
 mouthful ^ and give it to him." 
 
 Then, having dipped the small mouthful, he 
 took and gave it to loudas, [the son] of Simon 
 Iskariotes. And after the smaU mouthful, then 
 the Adversary^ entered into him. lesous, 
 therefore, says to him : 
 
 "That which you do, do quickly." 
 
 Now, none of those reclining knew why he 
 said this [command] to him ; for some thought 
 —seeing that loudas held the money-box— that 
 lesous says to him, " Buy what we have need 
 of for the festival"; or, that he should give 
 something to the beggars. He, therefore, hav- 
 ing received the small mouthful, went out 
 directly. Now, it was night. When, therefore, 
 he went out, lesous says : 
 
 " Now the Son of the Man is made Eadiant, 
 and The God is made Eadiant in him. If The 
 God is made Radiant in him. The God also will 
 make him Radiant in himself, and wUl directly 
 make him Radiant. Little children, yet a little 
 while I am with you. You will seek me, and 
 as I said to the loudaians, ' Where I am going, 
 you can not come,' I now say to you also. A 
 
 1 Gr. psdmion, a morsel, scrap, sippet. 
 
 2 Gr. satcmas, adversary; a word derived from the 
 Hebrew. 
 
174 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 new command ' I give yon, that you love one 
 another— that, as I have loved you, so should 
 you also love one another. By this [token] 
 shall all [men] know that you are my pupils, 
 if you have love one for the other." 
 
 Sim6n Petros says to him : 
 
 "Master, where are you going?" 
 
 lesous answered him : 
 
 " Where I am going, you can not now follow 
 me ; but you shall follow me afterwards." 
 
 Petros says to him : 
 
 " Master, why can I not follow you now f I 
 wiU give up my ghost for y o u." 
 
 lesous answers : 
 
 "Will you give up your ghost for me? 
 Amen, Amen, I say to y o u, A cock shall not 
 crow at all, until you have utterly denied me 
 thrice. Let not your heart be stirred up. 
 Believe in The God, and believe in me? In 
 the house of my Father there are many abid- 
 ings'; but if not so, I would have told you 
 
 1 It is not clear why this should be called a new command, 
 for the same injunction is given in the Mosaic books, as ia 
 Lev. xix. 17, 18. In Matt. v. 43, 44, however, the pupils 
 are commanded to love their enemies, which precept is not 
 in the Mosaic Law. 
 
 2 Or, "You beheve in The God; believe also in wie." Or, 
 again, according to the Greek idiom. " As you believe in The 
 God, so believe in »?i«." 
 
 2 Gr. moni, a staying, tarrying, abiding. Between ia- 
 camations the soul rests for a while ia the spiritual world, 
 
ACCOBDING TO i6aNN^S. 175 
 
 that I am going to make ready a place for you ; 
 and if I do go and make ready a place for you, 
 I am coming back, and I will take you to my- 
 self, so that where / am, you also may be. And 
 where I am going, you know ; and the Path ^ 
 you know." 
 
 Thomas says to him : 
 
 "Master, we do not know where you are 
 going ; and how can we know the ' path ' ? " 
 
 lesous says to him : 
 
 " I am the Path, and the Truth, and the Life ; 
 no one comes to the Father except through me. 
 If you had known me, you would have known 
 my Father also ; and from now on you do know 
 him, and have seen him." 
 
 Philippos says to him : 
 
 " Master, point out the Father to us, and we 
 are satisfied."^ 
 
 lesous says to him : 
 
 " Have I been so long a time with you, and 
 
 the mystic "house of the Father," the PlSr6ma; and when 
 it has overcome the flesh, having accomplished its purifica- 
 tion and won its freedom, it remains permanently in that 
 spiritual world, and does not incarnate again unless 
 voluntarily. Hence it is said in the Apokalypse (iii. 12): 
 " The conqueror, I will make him a pillar in the temple of 
 my Grod, and he shall not at all go outward any more." 
 
 1 The "path" is the intuitive intellect, which connects 
 man with his inner God. Its first manifestations are Faith 
 and Conscience. See note 2, p. 81. 
 
 2 Literally, "it is enough for us." 
 
176 THE MAaiOAL MESSAGE 
 
 [yet] y u do not know me, Philippos ? He who 
 has seen me has seen the Father. How is it that 
 you say, 'Point out the Father to us'? Do 
 you not believe that I [am] in the Father, and 
 the Father is in me f The words which / speak 
 to you I do not speak from myself ; the Father, 
 who abides in we, [speaks them:] he himself 
 does the works. Believe me [when I say to 
 you] that I [am] in the Father, and the Father 
 in me; but if not so, for the very works' sake 
 believe me. AmSn, Amen, I say to you. He who 
 believes in me, the works which I do, he also 
 shall do. Aye, he shall do greater [works] than 
 these, because I am going to my Father, and 
 whatever you may ask in my Name, that I will 
 do, so that the Father may be made Radiant in 
 the Son. If you shall ask anything in my 
 Name, this [work] I will do. If you love me, 
 you will give heed to my commands ; and I will 
 ask the Father, and he wiU give you another 
 Advocate,' that there may abide with you 
 
 1 Gr. paraklitos, a legal assistant, advocate ; a helper. The 
 Advocate is the Breath manifesting in man as a positive 
 force or creative principle. It is the pure Fire, the vital 
 electricity which awakens the "third eye " of the Seer. The 
 Accuser (diabohs) is the reverse aspect of the same principle; 
 the two are the forces respectively of generation and 
 regeneration, of birth "frOm below" and birth "from 
 above." The Paraklitos can manifest only in the purified 
 ascetic, in whom it becomes the Initiator, the Advocate with 
 the Father. 
 
ACCOEDING TO lOANNts. 177 
 
 throughout the On-going that Breath of the 
 Truth which the world can not receive because 
 it sees it not nor knows it. You know it 
 because it abides with you and is in you. I 
 will not leave you as orphans ; I am coming to 
 you. Yet a little while, and the world sees me 
 no longer ; but you see me, because I am living 
 and you are about to be living. In that day 
 you shall know that I [am] in the Father, and 
 you in me, and I in you. He who has my com- 
 mands, and pays heed to them, he it is who 
 loves me ; and he who loves me will be loved 
 by my Father, and I shall love him, and shall 
 manifest myself to him." 
 
 loudas— not [the one called] Iskari6t^s — 
 says to him : 
 
 " Master, what has come about, that you are 
 about to manifest yourself to us, and not to the 
 world?" 
 
 lesous answered and said to him : 
 
 " If any one loves me, he will pay heed to my 
 saying ; and my Father will love him, and we 
 shall come to him, and make an abiding with 
 him. He who does not love me does not pay 
 heed to my sayings ; and the saying which you 
 
 1 As loudas Iskari6tSs corresponds to the Accuser (see 
 note 1, p. 125), the allegory requires this other loudas as 
 corresponding to the Advocate. Hence he is shown here as 
 the one who questions ISsous on this subject, and elicits the 
 teaching concerning the Advocate. 
 
178 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 hear is not mine, but the Father's who sent me. 
 These [words] I have spoken to you while 
 abiding with you ; but the Advocate, that pure 
 Breath which the Father will send in my Name, 
 he will teach you all [Mysteries], and will put 
 you in mind of all [things] which I said to you. 
 Peace I forsake ^ for you ; my peace I give to 
 you; not as the world gives do /give to you. 
 Let not your heart be stirred up, neither let it 
 be cowardly.^ You heard that / said to you, 
 ' I am going away, and am coming back to you.' 
 If you loved me, you would have rejoiced that 
 I am going to the Father, because the Father is 
 greater than I. And I have told you now be- 
 fore it happens, so that when it does happen 
 you may believe [me]. I shall not any more 
 speak many [things] with you ; for the Leader 
 of the world is coming. And he has nothing 
 in me'; but— so that the world may know that 
 
 1 6r. aphienai, to cast away, give up, let go. The transla- 
 tion " Peace I leave with you " is from the Vulgate, which 
 reads relinquo, while the Beza has, pacem dismitto vobis. 
 
 2 Though lesous has given up his peace, and is about to pass 
 through the flery ordeal of the crucifixion, his pupils, who 
 are stiQ in the psychic stage, could not safely arouse the 
 higher forces. 
 
 5 The Greek of the Beza gives, "and he has nothing to 
 find in me," and the Latin, et in me fum hahet nihil invenire. 
 The Vulgate has, et in me turn hahet quicquam. Going to his 
 final trial— the crucifixion— ISsous declares himself prepared 
 for it, being free from all earthly taint. 
 
ACCOBDING TO idANNlilS. 179 
 
 I love the Father, and as the Father commanded 
 me, so I do— arise, let us go hence.' 
 
 " I am the true Vine, and my Father is the 
 tiller of the soil.'* Every branch in me that 
 does not bear fruit, he takes it away ; and every 
 one that does bear fruit, he cleanses,' so that it 
 may bear more fruit. Already you are clean 
 through the saying which I have spoken to you. 
 Abide in me, and I in you.'' Even as the branch 
 can not bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in 
 the vine, so neither [can] you^ unless you abide 
 in me. I am the vine, you [are] the branches. 
 He who abides in me, and I in him, this 
 [branch] bears much fruit ; because apart from 
 me you can do nothing. If any one does not 
 abide in me, he is cast outside, as the branch, 
 and becomes dried-up; and they gather them 
 together,^ and throw [them] into the fire, and 
 they are burned up. If you abide in me, and 
 my words abide in you, ask whatsoever you 
 
 1 To show that his is a voluntary sacrifice, Ilsous goes 
 forth to meet the Accuser — loudas— continuiag his discourse 
 as they go out into the night, the sinule of the vine being 
 probably suggested by a vine on a trelUs at the outer door. 
 
 2 Gr. gedrgos (" earth- worker "), a tiller of the soil, laborer, 
 husbandman. 
 
 ^ That is, "clears,'' or "prunes." 
 
 * Or, more accurately in the English idiom, "Abide in me 
 as I [abide] in you." 
 
 5 That is, the withered vine-cUppings. The Sinaitic and 
 the Beza read, "they gather it up." 
 
180 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 will, and it shall come to pass^ for you. In 
 this [time] is my Father made Radiant, that 
 you may bear much fruit, and become my 
 pupils.^ As the Father loved me, I also loved 
 you. Abide in this love of mine. If you shall 
 have paid heed to my commands, you will abide 
 in my love, as I have paid heed to my Father's 
 commands, and abide in his love. These 
 [things] I have spoken to you that my joy may 
 abide in you, and your joy may be made full. 
 This is my command, that you love one another 
 as I loved you. Greater love than this not any 
 one has— that one -should give up his ghost in 
 behaK of his friends. You aee my friends, if 
 you keep doing what [things] I command you. 
 I no longer call you slaves, because the slave 
 does not know what his Master is doing; but 
 you 1 have called friends, because all [Mysteries] 
 which I heard from my Father I made known 
 
 1 Literally, " come into being." In the archaic conception, 
 nothing is created or happens through chance, but all things 
 preexist in a higher world j and whoever can act consciously 
 in the world of causes can at will produce phenomenal 
 results in the material world. 
 
 2 Without the shining of the Sun there could be no 
 fruitage, and this shining is attributed to the divine love. 
 The Sun was conceived to be the abode of perfected souls, 
 its light being due to their love for mortals; and as these 
 Gods nourish men, so men shoidd nourish the Gods by 
 worship and hbations. 
 
AOOOEDINa TO lOAKStS. 181 
 
 to you. You did not choose me, but / chose 
 you ; and I gave you up/ that you may go away 
 and bear fruit, and that your fruit may abide, 
 so that whatsoever you may ask of the Father 
 in my Name, he may give [it] to you. These 
 things I command you, so that you may love 
 one another. 
 
 " If the world hates you, you know that it has 
 hated me, your First.^ If you were of the 
 "world, the world would dearly love its own; 
 but because you are not of the world, but I 
 chose you out of the world, for this [reason] 
 the world hates you. Bear in mind the saying 
 which I told you, ' A slave is not greater than 
 his Master.' If they hounded me, they will 
 hound you also ; if they have paid heed to my 
 saying, they will also pay heed to yours. But 
 all these [things] they will do to you on account 
 of my Name, because they do not know him 
 who sent me. If I had not come and spoken 
 to them, they would not have had sin ; but now 
 they have no excuse concerning their sin.^ He 
 who hates me hates my Father also. If I had 
 not done among them the works which no 
 
 1 Gr. theinai, to put, set, establisli; lay aside, give up — 
 usually employed in the latter sense in this Evangel, as in 
 "give up the ghost," "lays aside his outer garments," etc. 
 
 2 See note 1, p. 84. 
 
 ^ Before a man's soul— his Logos — manifests in him, he is 
 «n the same plane of irresponsibility as the lower animals. 
 
182 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 other one tas done, they would not have had 
 sin ; but now they have seen [them], and have 
 hated both me and my Father. But [it had to 
 be], so that the saying may be fulfilled which 
 was written in their Law : 
 
 " ' They hated me as a free gift.' ' 
 
 Now, when the Advocate comes whom I shaU 
 send to you from the Father, that Breath of the 
 Truth which goes forth from the Father, he 
 will bear witness about me. Do you, also, bear 
 witness, that you are^ with me from a First- 
 principle. These [words] I have spoken to 
 you, so that you may not be made to trip. They 
 will make you outcasts from the assembly ; but 
 an hour is coming, that every one who kills you 
 will imagine that he is offering up a sacrifice to 
 The G-od.' And they wiU do these [things} 
 because they have no knowledge of the Father,. 
 
 1 Gr. d&rea, an honorary gift The quotation is from the- 
 Greek of the Septuagint, Ps. xxxv. 19. Possibly the word 
 may be used in an adverbial sense for " gratuitously," but 
 more probably is here intended to express the ingratitude 
 of men generally, as ISsous calls himself the "free gift" in 
 the incident of the Samareitan woman at the well. 
 
 2 That is, "have existence." 
 
 ' This sad prediction was only too literally fulfilled when 
 in later days the murder of a "heretic" was "an act of 
 faith " (auto da fS), and ignorant fanatics persecuted every 
 one who dissented from their anthropomorphism and sar- 
 colatry— their humanized God and carnalized Christ. 
 
ACOOEDING TO IOANNIiS. 183 
 
 nor of me. But these [words] I have spoken 
 to you, so that when the hour * comes you may 
 call them to mind, that / said [them] to you. 
 But I did not say these [words] to you out of a 
 First-principle, because I was with you; but 
 now I am going to him who sent me. And not 
 one of you asks me, 'Where are you going?' 
 But because I have spoken these [words] to 
 you, pain has filled your heart. But I tell you 
 the Truth : it is to your interest that I should 
 go away, for if I do not go away the Advocate 
 will not come to you ; but if I do go, I shall send 
 him to you; and, when he comes, he will 
 reproach the world about sin, and about right- 
 conduct, and about separation: about sin, 
 because they do not believe in me; and about 
 right-conduct, because I go to the Father, and 
 you no longer see me; and about separation, 
 because the Leader of this world has been 
 separated. I have yet many [things] to say to 
 you, but you can not prove ^ them now. But 
 when he has come — the Breath of the Truth — 
 he will show you the path ' into the Whole Truth. 
 
 1 The Vatican has, " the hour of them " ; that is, " the time 
 for them." 
 
 2 Gr. bastaeem, to lift up, support; weigh in mind, con- 
 sider, prove. The higher knowledge cannot be demonstrated 
 through the senses or by mere intellection, but only through 
 spiritual Seership, which is bestowed by the ParaklStos. 
 
 3 Gr. hodigem, to show the way or path; to guide. 
 
184 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 For he will not speak from himself, but what- 
 ever [words] he hears he will speak, and he 
 will bring messages to yon of the [things] com- 
 ing/ He is about to make me Radiant,^ because 
 he will take of what is mine, and wiU bring [it] 
 as a message to you. All [things] which the 
 Father has are mine ; for this [reason] I said 
 that he takes of what is mine, and will bring it 
 as a message to you.' A little while,, and you 
 do not see me ; and again a little while, and you 
 will see me— because I am going to the 
 Father." 
 
 [Some] of his pupils, therefore, said one to 
 another : 
 
 "What is this [enigma] that he says to us, 
 
 1 Mere psychic prevision of coming events is not here in- 
 tended, but the unveiling of the spiritual future of man, the 
 ParaMStos being the mediator between man and his inner ' 
 God. 
 
 2 That is, at the crucifixion. The action of the ParaMetos 
 produces a sun-like radiance about the head of the Initiate, 
 represented in art as the aureole. See note 1, p. 131. 
 
 3 The Sinaitic omits this sentence, apparently through mere 
 carelessness in copying, the copyist mistaking the last words 
 of the sentence for the same words in the sentence preced- 
 ing it. A number of omissions from this cause are 
 noticeable in the manuscripts, indicating that they were 
 rarely proof read, as they would have been by those who 
 attached importance to the purity of the text, but were 
 probably made by those who placed small value on their 
 contents. 
 
AOCOKDING TO lOANNlfeS. 185 
 
 'A little wtile, and you do not see me; and 
 again a little while, and you will see me ' ; and, 
 * Because I am going to the Father ' f " 
 
 They kept on saying, therefore : 
 
 "What is this [enigma] that he says, that 
 'little while'? We do not know what he is 
 speaking." 
 
 ISsous knew that they desired to ask him, 
 and said to them : 
 
 "Are you questioning one with another 
 about this [saying], because I said, *A little 
 while, and you do not see me ; and again a little 
 while, and you will see me'? Amen, AmSn, 
 I say to you, You wiU wail and lament, but 
 the world will rejoice. You will be pained, but 
 your pain will be turned into joy. The woman, 
 when she is bringing forth, has pain, because 
 her hour has come ; but when she has borne the 
 child, she no longer thinks of the distress, be- 
 cause of the joy that a man ' is born into the 
 
 1 A new-bom babe can hardly be called a "man," except 
 in the generic sense as a " human being " ; but here the birth, 
 "from above" is meant, the "man" being the sidereal, 
 body, and the "woman" the "virgin mother" or ether in 
 the brain. The Apohalypse has the same allegory (xii. 1, 2) : 
 "And a great symbol (simeion) was seen in the Sky— a 
 woman veiled with the Sun, and the Moon under her feet, 
 and upon her head a crown of twelve stars; and being- 
 pregnant she cries out, ia the pangs of child-birth, racked 
 with pain to bring forth." 
 
186 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 world. And you now indeed have pain ; but 
 again I shall see you, and your heart will 
 rejoice, and your joy no one takes away from 
 you. And in that day you shall ask me no- 
 thing. Amen, Amen, I say to you, Whatsoever 
 you may ask of the Father in my Name, he 
 will give you. Till now you have asked no- 
 thing in my Name ; ask, and you shall receive, 
 so that your joy may be made full. These 
 [things] I have spoken to you in common- 
 places ; an hour is coming when I shall speak 
 to you no longer in commonplaces, but shall 
 openly bring you messages about the Father. 
 In that day you will ask in my Name ; and I do 
 not say to you that I shall ask the Father 
 about you, for the Father himself dearly loves 
 you, because you have dearly loved me, and have 
 believed that I came forth from The God.* I 
 came forth from the Father, and have come 
 into the world ; again I give up the world, and 
 am going to the Father." 
 
 His pupils say to him : 
 
 "See, now you are speaking openly, and 
 saying no commonplace at all ! Now we know 
 that you know all [thoughts], and have no 
 need that any one should ash you; by this 
 [sign] we believe that you came forth from a 
 God." 
 
 1 The Vatican has, "from the Father." 
 
ACCOJIDING TO i6aNN£s. 187 
 
 lesous answered them : 
 
 " Do you believe [it] now ? Behold, an hour 
 is coming, and is now come, that you wUl be 
 scattered, every one to his own [things], and 
 will leave me alone ; and [yet] I am not alone, 
 because the Father is with me. These [words] 
 I have spoken to you, so that in me you may 
 hiave peace. In the world you have distress * ; 
 but take courage! I have conquered the 
 world." ^ 
 
 These [words] lesous spoke; and he lifted 
 Tip his eyes to the Sky, and said : 
 
 " Father, the hour is come. Make your Son 
 Hadiant, so that the Son also may make you 
 Radiant ; even as y o u gave him authority over 
 all flesh, so that all that you have given to him, 
 he may give to them On-going Life. And this 
 is the On-going Life, that they know you, the 
 only true God, and him whom you sent. 
 Anointed lesous.* / made you Radiant in the 
 Earth, I made perfect the work which you have 
 
 1 As the woman in child-birth has distress. All pain and 
 sorrow in the material world are for the final emancipation 
 of the soul, and therefore correspond to the pangs of birth. 
 
 2 Every purified man or Initiate " conquers the world " by 
 conquering the material elements of his own nature, the in- 
 stincts, passions, etc. 
 
 ^ Only through the realization of the divine principle iu 
 one's self can union with Deity be attained, and the soul be 
 freed from the succession of birth and death. 
 
188 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 given me to do; and now, O Father, do you 
 make me Radiant with yourself, in the Radiance 
 which I had before this, when the world was 
 with you.^ I made your Name shine forth 
 to the men whom you have given me out of 
 the world. They were yours, and you have 
 given them to me, and they have paid heed to 
 your saying. Now they know that all [things] 
 which you gave to me are from you, because 
 the words which you gave to me I have given 
 to them, and they themselves received them, 
 and knew truly that I came forth from you, 
 and believed that you sent me. I entreat 
 about them; I do not entreat about the 
 world, but about those whom y o u have given 
 me, because they are yours, and all [things] 
 which are mine are yours, and yours mine, 
 and I have been made Radiant in them. And 
 I am no longer in the world, and these [pu- 
 pils] are in the world, and /am coming to you. 
 Holy Father, preserve them in your Name 
 by which you have given [them] to me,^ that 
 they may be One, as we are. When I was with 
 them, /preserved them in y o u r Name by which 
 you have given [them] to me, and I guarded 
 them, and not one out of them was lost except the 
 
 1 That is, before the kosmos became separated or 
 differentiated from the One, the divine unity. 
 
 2 Here, and in the sentence following, the construction 
 may possibly be, " y o u r Name which you have given me.' 
 
ACOOEDING TO i6aNNI!S. 189 
 
 Son of tlie Loss, that the writing may be ful- 
 filled.'' But now I am coming to y o u, and these 
 [words] I speak in the world, that they may 
 have this joy of mine made full in them. I 
 have given them your Thought, and the world 
 has hated them, because they are not of the 
 world, even as I am not of the world. I do not 
 entreat that you should take them out of the 
 world, but that you should preserve them from 
 the useless [function].' They are not of the 
 world, even as / am not of the world. Purify 
 them in the Truth ^ ; your Thought is Truth. 
 Even as y o u sent me into the world, so / also 
 sent them into the world, and on their account 
 /purify myself, so that they also may be purified 
 in Truth. And not about these only do I 
 
 1 That is, loudas, the personification of sex. 
 
 2 This does not refer to any particular passage in the Old 
 Testament^ but only in a general way to the fall into genera- 
 tion, loudas, in the series of the Twelve, corresponds to the 
 zodiacal sign Scorpio, as does also Dan among the twelve 
 tribes. "Dan shall become a Serpent upon the Path, a 
 viper upon the highway" {Gen. xlix. 17). Scorpio is the 
 sign of the organs of reproduction; it is the house of Mars, 
 the garden-god. With the Akkadai, or race who preceded 
 the Chaldseans, it was represented as the Scorpion-monster 
 of darkness, which stings to death, yet guards and reproduces 
 the evening sun. 
 
 3 That is, sex, the Serpent (theologically the Devil, or 
 " evil one ") that wrought the " fall " of mankind. 
 
 * A reading of equal authority is, "your Truth." 
 
190 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 entreat, but also about those who through 
 their saying believe in me, so that all [men] 
 may be one ; even as y ou, Father, [are] in me, 
 and J in you, that they also may be one in us, 
 so that the world may believe that you sent 
 me. And the Eadiance which you have given 
 to me, I have given to them, that they may be 
 one, even as we are one : / in them, and you in 
 me, that they may be made perfect in one; so 
 that the world may know that you sent me, 
 and loved them even as y o u loved me. Father, 
 those whom you have given to me, I will that 
 where I am, they also may be with me, so that 
 they may see this Radiance of mine which you 
 gave me because you loved me before [the] 
 casting-down ' of [the] world. Just Father, the 
 world, indeed, did not know you, but I knew 
 you, and these [pupils] knew that you sent 
 me; and I made known to them your Name, 
 and I shall make [it] known, so that the love 
 with which you loved me may be in them, and 
 I in them." 
 
 Having said these [things], lesous went out 
 with his pupils to the other side of the torrent 
 
 1 Gr. kataiolS, a throwing down; laying down (a founda- 
 tion). OrigenSs says that in the New Testament usage of this 
 word it relates to the descent of the souls from the higher to 
 the lower spheres. According to his teaching, the souls sinned 
 before the material world existed, and they are condemned 
 to migrate from body to body (reincarnate) until purified. 
 
ACCORDING TO IOANNIiS. 191 
 
 of the Cedars, where there was a garden/ into 
 which he himself entered, and his pupils. 
 Now, loudas also, who was delivering him up, 
 knew the place, because Ksous had often 
 resorted, there with his pupils. loudas, there- 
 fore, having received the company of soldiers,^ 
 and retainers from the archpriests and 
 Pharisaians, comes there with lights and torches 
 and weapons.' lesous, therefore, knowing all 
 the [things] that were coming upon him, went 
 out and said to them : 
 
 " Whom do you seek ? " 
 
 They answered him : 
 
 " lesous the Nazoraian." 
 
 lesous said to them : 
 
 "/am [he]." 
 
 Now, loudas also, who was delivering him 
 up, was standing with them. When, therefore, 
 he said to them, "/ am [he]," they retired 
 backward, and fell to the ground. Again, 
 therefore, he put the question to them : 
 
 "Whom do you seek?" 
 
 1 The " gardens " in the narrative are symbolical, like the 
 "garden in Eden," and represent the force-centres through 
 which the ParaklStos acts. 
 
 2 Gr. speira, a hody of men-at-arms. But the primary 
 meaning of the word is "a spiral," "a coil," and here it is a 
 word-play referring to the spiral Fire of the ParaM^tos— 
 called in Sanskrit the kundalini, or " coiled-up " force. 
 
 3 Or, "an armed force," "men-at-arms." 
 
192 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 And they said : 
 
 " I§sous the Nazoraian." 
 
 ISsous answered : 
 
 "I told you that I am [he]. If, therefore, 
 you seek me, let these [pupils] go their way." 
 
 [This was said] so that the saying might be 
 fulfilled which he said, "Whom you have 
 given to me, not one of them did I lose." 
 
 Then Simdn Petros, having a knife,* drew it, 
 and struck the Archpriest's slave, and cut off 
 his right ear-tip.^ Now, the slave's name was 
 Malchos. lesous, therefore, said to Petros : 
 
 "Put that knife into the sheath. The cup 
 which the Father has given me, shall I not 
 drink it?" 
 
 The company of soldiers, therefore, and the 
 commander,' and the retainers of the loudaians, 
 arrested lesous and bound him, and led him 
 to Annas first, for he was father-in-law of 
 Kaiaphas, who was Archpriest of that year. 
 Now, it was Kaiaphas who had advised the 
 loudaians that it was to their interest that one 
 
 1 Gr. machaira, a large knife, dagger, short sword ; prop- 
 erly a hunting-knife, and not a soldier's weapon. 
 
 2 Gr. dtion, a little ear. The ear-tip is probably meant. 
 The constant use of diminutive forms in this Evangel is 
 peculiar. 
 
 3 Gr. ehiliarchos, commander of a thousand men; here, the 
 commander of a Eoman cohort, or body of five or six 
 hundred soldiers. 
 
ACOOBDING TO i6aNN£s. 193 
 
 man should die because of the common people. 
 Now, there went along with lesous Simon 
 Petros and another pupil ; and that pupil was 
 known to the Archpriest, and went in with 
 lesous into the court of the Archpriest, but 
 Petros stood at the door, outside. This other 
 pupU, therefore, who was known to the 
 Archpriest, went out and spoke to the woman 
 who kept the door, and brought in Petros. 
 This slave-girl, therefore, who kept the door, 
 says to Petros : 
 
 " Are you also [one] of this man's pupils ? " 
 
 He says : 
 
 " I am not." 
 
 Now, the slaves and the retainers were stand- 
 ing there, having made a charcoal fire, because 
 it was cold, and they were warming themselves ; 
 and Petros also was with them, standing and 
 warming himself. The Archpriest, therefore, 
 asked lesous about his pupils and about his 
 teaching. lesous answered him : 
 
 " /have spoken openly to the world ; /taught 
 every time in an assembly, and in the temple- 
 courts where aU the loudaians meet; and in 
 secret I spoke nothing. Why do you ask 
 me f Ask those who have heard what I spoke 
 to them ; see, these [men] know what I said." 
 
 Now, when he had said these [words], one of 
 the retainers, who was standing by, gave ISsous 
 a slap, saying : 
 
194 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 "Do you answer the Arclipriest in that 
 way ? " 
 
 ISsoTis answered him : 
 
 " If I spoke badly,' bear witness about what 
 was bad; but if rightly, why do you beat 
 me'?'' 
 
 Annas sent him bound to Kaiaphas, the 
 Archpriest. 
 
 Now, Sim6n Petros was standing and warm- 
 ing himself. They said, therefore, to him : 
 
 " Are you also [one] of his pupils ! " 
 
 He denied [it], and said : 
 
 " I am not." 
 
 Says one of- the slaves of the Archpriest, 
 being a relative of him whose ear-tip Petros 
 had cut off : 
 
 "Did not I see you in the garden with 
 him?" 
 
 Again, therefore, Petros denied [it], and 
 immediately a cock crew. 
 
 They conduct ISsous, therefore, from Kaia- 
 phas to the court-house. And it was early in 
 the morning, and they themselves did not go 
 into the court-house, that they might not be 
 polluted, but might eat the " Passing-over." * 
 
 1 Gr. hMs, wrongly, improperly; rudely, insolently. 
 
 2 Literally, "give me a hiding." (Gr. derem^ to sMn, flay, 
 remove the hide; colloquially, to thrash, cudgel.) 
 
 2 Yet Igsous and his pupils had already eaten it, accord- 
 ing to the Synoptists, who thus fix the date of the crucifixion 
 
ACCOBDING TO idANN^S. 195 
 
 Pilatos, therefore, went out to them, and 
 said: 
 
 "What charge do you bring against this 
 man ? " 
 
 They answered and said to him : 
 
 "If this [man] were not a wrong-doer, we 
 would not have delivered him up to y o u." 
 
 Pilatos, therefore, said to them : 
 
 " Take him yourselves, and judge him accord- 
 ing to your Law." 
 
 The loudaians said to him : 
 
 " We are not allowed to kill any one." 
 
 [This was said] so that the saying of lesous 
 might be fulfilled which he said, showing by a 
 sign by what kind of death he was about to die. 
 
 Pilatos, therefore, went back into the court- 
 house, and called lesous, and said to him : 
 
 " Are you the ' Ruler of the loudaians ' ? " 
 
 lesous answered : 
 
 on the 15tli day of the month Nisan; whereas the account 
 in this Evangel places the " last supper " on the evening be- 
 fore, making the crucifixion take place on the 14th Nisan. 
 Harmonists and commentators have exhausted their in- 
 genuity in vainly attempting to reconcile the two accounts. 
 Mystically, however, there is no discrepancy; for in this 
 Evangel Ksous is himself the paschal Lamb, and the cruci- 
 fixion is the "Passing-over," to which the "last supper" is 
 merely preparatory. The allegory in the Synoptics relates 
 to the lower planes— material, psychic, and sidereal— 
 whereas that of loanngs is purely spiritual, being that of 
 the Seer, the fourth degree of Initiation {epopteia). 
 
196 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 "Bo you say tMs [charge] from yourself, or 
 did others tell yon about me ? " 
 
 Pilatos answered : 
 
 " Am I a londaian V Tour own class and 
 the archpriests have delivered y o u up to me. 
 What was it y o u did ? " 
 
 lesons answered : 
 
 " This ' Euling' ^ of mine is not of this world. 
 If my Euling were of this world, my retainers 
 would strive that I should not be given up to 
 the loudaians ; but now this Euling of mine is 
 not from this place." " 
 
 PUatos, therefore, said to him : 
 
 " Are you not therefore a Euler ? " 
 
 lesous answered : 
 
 "It is you who say that J am a Euler.^ To 
 this [end] I have been born,* and to this [end] 
 I have come into the world, that I may bear 
 witness to the Truth. Every one who is of the 
 Truth hears my voice." 
 
 Pilatos says to him : 
 
 1 Or, " Surely I am not a loudaian." 
 
 2 See note 3, p. 94. 
 
 ^ That is, not until after the apotheosis of the eruciflxioiu 
 * Or, "It i& you who say, ' I am a Ruler.' " 
 ^ ISsous speaks here as the Logos, which "became flesh"; 
 this birth, or " coming into being," is the descending from 
 the noumenal world, the Truth, iato the phenomenal world 
 or sphere of transition; and from the latter he came into 
 the kosmos or outer world. 
 
ACCOKDING TO idANN^S. 197 
 
 "What is 'truth '^f 
 
 And having said this, he went out again to 
 the loudaians, and says to them : 
 
 " I do not find any guUt in him. But there 
 is a custom of yours that I should release to 
 you one [prisoner] at the 'Passing-over,' Is 
 it your will, therefore, that I should release to 
 you this ' Ruler of the loudaians ' ? " 
 
 Then they all cried back, saying : 
 
 " Not this [man], but Barabbas ! " 
 
 Now, this Barabbas was a bandit, Pilatos, 
 therefore, took ISsous and flogged him. And 
 the soldiers, having twined a crown of thorns, 
 put [it] on his head, and threw round him a 
 purple mantle. And they kept coming up to 
 Mm and saying, "Hail, 'Ruler of the lou- 
 daians ' ! " and giving him slaps. And Pilatos 
 went outside again, and says to them : 
 
 " See, I am bringing him outside to you, so 
 that you may know that I find no guilt in 
 him," 
 
 lesous, therefore, came outside, wearing the 
 thorny crown and the purple mantle. And 
 [Pilatos] says to them : 
 
 "See, [this is] the Man," ^ 
 
 1 Pilatos uses the word tritely; throughout the dialog^ue 
 he is shown to be unconscious of any inner meaning in the 
 -words of Igsous. 
 
 2 The Vatican reads "a man." Pilatos was apparently 
 trying to awaken a sense of pity La the mob by thus ex- 
 
198 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 When, therefore, the archpriests and the 
 retainers saw him, they cried out, saying : 
 
 " Crucify [him], crucify him ! " 
 
 Pilatos says to them : 
 
 " Take him and crucify [him] yourselves, for 
 I do not find any guilt in him." 
 
 The loudaians answered him : 
 
 " We have a Law, and according to our Law 
 he is bound to die, because he made himself a 
 Sonof aGod."^ 
 
 When, therefore, Pilatos heard this saying, 
 he was more dismayed, and he went back into 
 the court-house, and says to lesous : 
 
 " From what place are youf" 
 
 But lesous gave him no answer. Pilatos, 
 therefore, says to him : 
 
 "Do you not speak to me? Do you not 
 know that I have authority to release you, and 
 have authority to crucify you ? " 
 
 lesous answered him : 
 
 "You would have no authority against me 
 if it had not been given you from above ^ ; for 
 
 hibiting Ifesous to them; and the cruel fanaticism of the 
 priest-caste is forcibly contrasted with the justice and 
 mercy displayed by the rough Roman military commander. 
 
 1 Lev. xxiv. 16. 
 
 2 The words have an inner meaning; for Pilatos was not 
 only free from personal responsibility by virtue of his office, 
 but also, against his own wUl, was an instrument in the hands 
 of Destiny. 
 
ACCORDING TO lOANN^S. 199 
 
 this [reason] lie wlio delivered me up to y o u 
 has a greater sin." 
 
 From this [time] Pilatos sought to release 
 him ; but the loudaians cried out, saying : 
 
 " If y o u release this [man] you are no friend 
 of Kaisar's.* Every one who makes himself a 
 Euler declares himself against Kaisar." 
 
 Pilatos, therefore, having heard this sayings 
 brought lesous outside, and took his seat on 
 the raised platform in a place called " Stone- 
 laid," ^ but in Hebrew Gahbatha. Now, it was 
 " Preparation " ^ for the " Passing-over," and it 
 was about the sixth hour. And he says to the 
 loudaians : 
 
 " See, [this is] your Euler." 
 
 But they cried out : 
 
 " Away, away [with him] ! Crucify him ! " 
 
 Pilatos says to them : 
 
 " Shall I crucify your Buler f " 
 
 The archpriests answered : 
 
 1 The Greek form of the Latin " Caesar." 
 
 2 Gr. Kthostrdtos, inlaid with stones. Psycho-physiologically, 
 the spinal column is here meant, the "raised platform" 
 being the atlas, whence the Fire of the ParaklStos passes 
 through the foramen into the cranium, manifestiag the 
 seventh of the magnetic colors, which correspond respectively 
 to the seven centres of the spinal cord. Therefore, ia the 
 sentence following, it is said to be "about the sixth hour,"' 
 and the " preparation for the passiag-over." 
 
 * Gr. paraskeue, a getting ready. 
 
200 THE MAGICAIi MESSAGE 
 
 " We have no Euler except Kaisar." 
 Then, therefore, he delivered him up to them 
 to be crucified. And they took lesous and led 
 him off. And he, carrying the cross for him- 
 self, went out to the place called " Skull," which 
 in Hebrew is called Golgotha,^ where they 
 crucified him, and with him two others, on the 
 one side and on the other side, and lesous in 
 
 1 Gr. kranion, Heb. golgotha, Lat. calvaria, Eng. "skull." 
 Tlie "crucifixion" takes place in the brain. The Fire, or 
 electric force, rises to the vertex of the skuU, where is the 
 opening caUed mystically the "door of ISsous" {thwa tou 
 lesou) ; at the highest centre in the braiu, called the " third 
 eye " (the conarium of the anatomists), it is intersected by 
 the Water, or magnetic force, forming a cross in the brain. 
 The strain of the two forces at the point of intersection 
 throws out a spiral, which coUs about the head. The 
 physical body is then in a deep trance, seemingly dead, and 
 the consciousness is in the sidereal body. The man is thus 
 "born from above," "born of Water and of Breath"; but 
 this is possible only for the purified ascetic who has reached 
 the androgjraous state and is thus " Self -bom " (monogenis). 
 This noetic action in the brain of the Seer is expressed by 
 the symbol ® ; that of the ordinary man being © , and of 
 the woman ©. In this sacred trance the light about the 
 head has the appearance of a sun; hence the aureole and 
 cross shown about the head of ISsous. The "thorny 
 crown," of a golden color, represents the radiation of the 
 Fire; and the "purple mantle," the hue which the Radiance 
 (doxa) takes from the magnetic force or Water. See 
 Appendix II., " The Birth from Above." The " crucifixion " 
 is an allegory of spiritual regeneration, not an historical 
 record of a physical death. 
 
AccoBDiNG TO i6annI:s. 201 
 
 the middle.^ And Pilatos wrote also a title ^ 
 aud put [it] on the cross ; and -what was written 
 was, " Igsous the Nazoraian, the Euler of the 
 loudaians." This title, therefore, many of the 
 loudaians read, because the place of the city 
 where lesous was crucified was close by, and it 
 was written in Hebrew, in Grreek, [and] in 
 Latin. The archpriests of the loudaians, 
 therefore, said to Pilatos : 
 
 " Do not write ' The Ruler of the loudaians,' 
 but * He said, " I am Euler of the loudaians," ' " 
 
 Pilatos answered : 
 
 " What I have written, I have written." 
 
 The soldiers, therefore, when they had 
 crucified ISsous, took his outer garments, and 
 made four shares, for each soldier a share ; also 
 [they took] the inner garment.' Now, the 
 inner garment was without seam, being woven 
 from those above* through the whole. They 
 said, therefore, to each other : 
 
 1 The "two others" symboUze the positive and negative 
 forces which go with the Fire, as the latter passes through 
 the central tube of the spiaal cord. 
 
 2 Gr. titlos (answering to the Latin Utlus), a technical 
 Roman term for an inscription giving the cause . of a 
 malefactor's condemnation. 
 
 3 Gr. chitdn, a woollen frock worn next the body. 
 
 * The expression is peculiar, a play upon -words. As 
 applied to the woollen frock it would mean that it had been 
 made on a hand-loom from the top through its whole length j 
 
202 THE MAGICAIi MESSAGE 
 
 " Let US not divide it, but draw lots for it, 
 whose it shall be." 
 
 [This was said] so that the writing might be 
 fulfilled, which says : 
 
 " They shared my outer garments among them- 
 selves, 
 And upon my raiment they tossed up a die." * 
 
 The soldiers, therefore, did these [things]. 
 
 Now, there were standing by the cross of 
 lesous his mother and his mother's sister, 
 Mariam, the [mother] of Klopas,^ and Mariam 
 the Magdalian.' lesous, therefore, seeing his 
 
 but allegorically it refers to the impartible ether ia the 
 brain, which is non-molecular. The aureole, or "outer 
 garments," is divided by the cross into four parts, and is fre- 
 quently so depicted in mediseval art. 
 
 ^ Ps. xxii. 18. The lot, or die (kl^os), was a potsherd or 
 pebble used in sortilege. 
 
 2 The Greek leaves the relationship uncertain; Mariam 
 may have been the wife of K16pas, but more probably the 
 name Klopas is an equivalent for Iak6bos (James), the 
 words being similar in meaning (lakdb, supplanter; K16pas, 
 one who is stealthy), and in the Synoptics Mariam is called 
 the mother of Iak6bos (Matt, xxvii. 56 ; lHh. xv. 40). 
 
 ' Gr. magdaline, a [woman] of Magdala; one of the 
 temple-women (sacred prostitutes). There was a temple at 
 Magdala, on the western coast of the Lake of Tiberias ; but 
 the place had its name from the temple or "tower of God," 
 so that whether magdaleni be taken to mean "temple- 
 woman " or " of Magdala," the significance is the same. 
 
ACCOKDING TO lOANNES. 203 
 
 motlier, and that pupil standing by whom he 
 loved, says to his mother : 
 
 " [Good] woman, see, [this is] y o u r son." 
 
 Then he says to the pupil : 
 
 " See, [this is] your mother." 
 
 And from that hour the pupil took her to his 
 own [home].' After this [bequest], lesous, 
 knowing that all [things] had now been made 
 perfect, so that the writing might be made 
 perfect, says: 
 
 "I thirst."^ 
 
 Now, there was set a vessel full of sour wine. 
 Having, therefore, put a sponge full of the 
 sour wine on a hyssop-stalk, they brought [it] 
 to his mouth. When, therefore, lesous had 
 received the sour wine, he said : 
 
 " It is made perfect." 
 
 And inclining his head, he gave up the 
 Breath. 
 
 The loudaians, therefore, since it was 
 •''Preparation," so that the bodies should not 
 remain on the cross in the Sabbath — for the 
 day was a great [one] of that Sabbath — asked 
 PUatos that their legs might be broken, and 
 
 ^ ISannSs is here made the successor of ISsous, just as 
 I6anii^s the Lustrator is his predecessor. Mystically, the 
 three are one, a hteral "trinity in unity." 
 
 2 Ps. xxiL 15; Ixix. 21. The Psalms were originally 
 hymns of Initiation. Quotations such as the above seem 
 to refer to Initiation-formulas rather than to prophecies. 
 
204 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 they miglit be taken away. The soldiers, there- 
 fore, came; and they did, indeed, break the 
 legs of the first, and of that other* who was 
 crucified with him. But on coming to lesous, 
 when they saw him already dead, they did not 
 break his legs ; but one of the soldiers pierced 
 his side with a spear, and immediately there 
 came out blood and water. And he who saw 
 [it] has borne witness, and his witness is true ; 
 and he knows that he is saying a true [thing]^ 
 so that you also may believe. For these 
 [things] came about so that the writing might 
 be fulfilled: 
 
 " Not a bone of his shall be broken." ^ 
 
 And again another writing says : 
 
 " They shall look on him whom they pierced." * 
 
 Now, after these [events], los^ph of Arima- 
 thaia, being a pupil of ISsous— but in secret, 
 through his fear of the loudaians— asked 
 Pilatos that he might take away the body of 
 Idsous ; and Pilatos permitted [him]. He came,. 
 
 1 Namely, that one who went with him to Paradise {Lk. 
 xxiii. 43). The positive (solar) force ascends with the Fire 
 of the ParaklStos into the brain, while the negative (Innar) 
 force stops at its base. Similarly in the Apokalypse the 
 "woman veiled with the SWi" has the Moon "under her 
 feet " (see note 1, p. 185). 
 
 2 Ps. xssav. 20. 
 
 3 Zech. xii. 10. 
 
ACCOEDING TO lOANNis. 205 
 
 therefore, and took away tlie body of lesous. 
 And there came also Mkod^mos— he who had 
 come to him by night at the first— bringing a 
 mixture of myrrh and aloes, aboixt a hundred 
 pounds. Then they took the body of lesous 
 and swathed it with linen bandages with the 
 aromatics, as the custom is with the loudaians 
 to prepare for entombing. Now, in the place 
 where he was crucified there was a garden, and 
 in the garden a new tomb, in which no one as 
 yet was laid. There, then, because of the 
 loudaians' "Preparation," as the tomb was near 
 at hand, they laid lesous. 
 
 Now, on the first [day] of the Sabbath,' 
 Mariam the Magdalian comes early, while it is 
 yet dark, to the tomb, and sees that the stone is 
 taken away from the tomb. She runs, there- 
 fore, and comes to Simon Petros and to that 
 other pupil whom lesous dearly loved, and says 
 to them : 
 
 " They have taken away the Master out of the 
 tomb, and we do not know where they have laid 
 him." 
 
 Petros, therefore, went out, and the other 
 pupil, and they were coming to the tomb. 
 Now, the two ran together, and the other pupil 
 outran Petros and came first to the tomb, and 
 
 1 See note 1, p. 110. 
 
206 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 stooping to peer in, he sees tlie linen bandages 
 lying; however, he did not go in. Simon 
 Petros, therefore, comes also, following him 
 closely, and went into the tomb ; and he observes 
 the linen bandages lying, and the handkerchief 
 that had been on his head not lying with the 
 linen bandages, but by itself, rolled up, in one 
 place. Then, therefore, the other pupil also— 
 he who came first to the tomb— went in; and 
 he saw, and believed [Mariam's report]. For 
 as yet they did not know the writing, that he 
 must rise up from among the dead ones. The 
 pupils, therefore, went away again by them- 
 selves. 
 
 But Mariam kept standing outside at the 
 tomb, weeping. While, therefore, she was 
 weeping, she stooped to peer into the tomb, and 
 sees two Messengers in white sitting, one at the 
 head, and one at the feet, where the body of 
 lesous had been lying. And they say to her: 
 
 " [Good] woman, why are you weeping ? " 
 
 She says to them : 
 
 " Because they have taken away my Master, 
 and I do not know where they have laid him." 
 
 Having said these [words], she turned to the 
 [things] that lay behind, and sees lesous stand- 
 ing, and she did not know that it was lesous. 
 lesous said to her : 
 
 "[Good] woman, why are you weeping? 
 Whom do y o u seek ! " 
 
ACCOEDING TO lOANNfiS. 207 
 
 She, thinking that it is the gardener, says to 
 him: 
 
 " Master, Hyou carried him off, tell me where 
 you laid him, and I will take him away." 
 
 lesous says to her : 
 
 " Mariam ! " 
 
 She, having turned, says to him in Hebrew : 
 
 " Babbowni ! " (that is to say, " Teacher.") 
 
 lesous says to her : 
 
 " Do not try to touch me, for I have not yet 
 gone up to my Father ; but go to my brothers 
 and say to them, ' I am going up to my Father 
 and your Father, and my G-od and your Grod.' " 
 
 Mariam the Magdalian comes and brings a 
 message to the pupils that she had seen the 
 Master, and he had said these [words] to her. 
 
 When, therefore, it was evening of that first 
 day of the Sabbath, and the doors having been 
 shut where the pupils were assembled, through 
 fear of the loudaians, ISsous came and stood 
 before all,' and says to them : 
 
 " Peace to you ! " ^ 
 
 And having said this [greeting], he showed 
 them his hands and his side. The pupils, 
 therefore, rejoiced when they saw the Master, 
 lesous, therefore, said to them again : 
 
 1 The Greek idiom is, "in the midst." 
 
 2 The common Eastern salutation, the saldm. 
 
208 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 " Peace to you ! As the Father has sent me, 
 I also send you," 
 
 And having said this, he blew on [them]/ 
 and said to them : 
 
 " Receive [the] holy Breath, If you take 
 away any one's sins, they are taken away ; if 
 you retain any one's, they are retained." ^ 
 
 But Thomas, one of the Twelve, he who was 
 called " Twin," was not with them when lesous 
 came. The other pupils, therefore, said to 
 him: 
 
 " "We have seen the Master." 
 
 But he said to them : 
 
 1 Gr. emphusan, to inflate (as a bladder), to puff up. The 
 Beza has, insuflavit in eos. The expression appears absurd 
 if understood as relating to the lung-breath; but here it 
 refers to the Paraklltos, " the Breath of the Truth." 
 
 2 The text here is corrupt and uncertain, the manuscripts 
 having various readings. The general meaning, however, 
 is sufficiently clear, and accords with the teaching of 
 Paulos (I. Cor. v. 12- vi. 3): "For what [is it] to me to 
 judge the exotericists? Do not you judge the esotericists? 
 But The God judges the exotericists. Remove the useless 
 [man] from among yourselves. Does any one of you who 
 has trouble in relation to another dare bring it to trial be- 
 fore unjust [men] and not before holy [men] ? Do you not 
 know that the holy [men] will judge the world; and if the 
 world is to be brought to trial by you, are you not worthy 
 of the very httle matters of judgment? Do you not know 
 that we are to judge Messengers— why not, then, the affairs 
 of this life? " 
 
ACCOEDING TO lOANNES. 209 
 
 " Unless I see on his hands the print of the 
 nails, and put my finger into the print of the 
 nails, and put my hand into his side, I shall 
 not believe [it] at all." 
 
 And after eight days his pupils were again 
 within, and Th6mas with them. ISsous comes, 
 the doors having been shut, and stood before 
 all, and said : 
 
 " Peace to you ! " 
 
 Afterwards he says to Thomas : 
 
 " Eeach your finger here, and see my hands ; 
 and reach your hand [here], and put [it] into 
 my side ; and be no longer an unbeliever, but a 
 believer." 
 
 Th6mas answered and said to him : 
 
 " My Master and my Grod ! " 
 
 I^sous says to him : 
 
 "Because you have seen me, you have be- 
 lieved. Immortal [are] they who have not seen 
 [me] and [yet] have believed ! " ' 
 
 Many other ^ signs then indeed lesous did in 
 the presence of his pupils, which are not written 
 in this book'; but these [things] have been 
 written, that you may believe that I§sous is the 
 
 * According to mystical philosophy, all sense-impressions 
 are illusionary, and knowledge of the realities of life, the non- 
 mena, can be derived only from the spiritual consciousness. 
 
 2 In the Greek idiom, "Many and other." 
 
 ' Gr. hiblion (dimiautive from Ublos), a book, tablet, 
 scroll. 
 
210 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 Anointed, tlie Son of The God, and that, believ- 
 ing, you may have Life in his Name/ 
 
 After these [events] lesous made himself 
 shine forth again to his pupils on the Sea of 
 Tiberias, and he shone forth in this manner. 
 There were together Simon Petros, and Th6mas 
 who is called "Twin," and Nathanael from 
 Kana of G-alilaia, and the [sons] of Zebedaios, 
 and two others of his pupUs. Simon Petros 
 says to them : 
 
 " I am going off to fish." 
 
 They say to him : 
 
 " We also are coming with you." 
 
 They went out and got into the boat 
 immediately, and during that night they took 
 nothing. But when it was already becoming 
 early morning, lesous stood on the beach. 
 
 1 As this is apparently a formal ending to the Evangel, a 
 majority of the critics regard the portion following it as a 
 later addition either by the same or another hand; but the 
 evidence in favor of this theory is anything but conclusive. 
 The closing passage, giving an account of the third ap- 
 pearance of ISsous to his pupils after his crucifixion, is 
 found in all the ancient manuscripts, and there are no 
 sound reasons for questioning its genuineness. In fact, the 
 supposed formal ending merely marks the close of the 
 psycho-physiological reading of the allegory; and all that 
 follows it is historically prophetic, foretelling the fate of the 
 Christian Church, its conversion into a political tool, and its 
 loss of the esoteric doctrine. 
 
AOCOKDING TO i6aNn£s. 211 
 
 The pupils, however, did not know that it was 
 lesous. lesous, therefore, says to tliem : 
 
 " Boys, have you anything to eat 1 " ' 
 
 They answered him : 
 
 "No." 
 
 And he said to them : 
 
 " Cast the net into the parts to the right of 
 the boat, and you will find [fish]." 
 
 They cast, therefore, and no longer were able 
 to draw it from^ the multitude of the fishes. 
 That pupil, therefore, whom lesous loved, says 
 to Petros : 
 
 "It is the Master." 
 
 Simon Petros, therefore, when he heard that 
 it was the Master, girded on his blouse— for he 
 was lightly clad— and threw himself into the 
 sea.^ But the other pupils came in the small- 
 boat— for they were not far from the land, but 
 about two hundred arm-lengths * off — dragging 
 the net [full] of the fishes. When, therefore, 
 
 1 Gr. prosphagion, a relish, somethiag eaten with other food ; 
 here it is applied to fish. The sentence is ia coUoquial 
 Greek, employiag the expression commonly used in askuig 
 fishers or hunters if they had any game. 
 
 2 Literally, "away from." 
 
 ^ That is, being in haste to reach the Master. He was in 
 his under-garment only, the word gumnos, "stripped," 
 being applied in common language to one having on only 
 the chitdn, or wooUen frock. 
 
 i Gr. pechus, elbow ; the length of the arm from the point 
 of the elbow to the tip of the little finger; a cubit. 
 
212 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 they got out on the land, they see a charcoal 
 fire set, and a small fish laid on it, and a loaf of 
 bread. lesous says to them: 
 
 "Bring [some] from the small fishes which 
 you just now took." 
 
 Sim6n Petros, therefore, went on board and 
 drew the net to the land, full of big fishes, a 
 hundred and fifty-three ; and though there were 
 so many, the net was not torn. lesous says to 
 them: 
 
 " Come, breakfast." 
 
 And not one of the pupils dared to inquire 
 of him, "Who are youf'' knowing that it was 
 the Master. ISsous comes and takes the loaf 
 of bread, and gives [it] to them, and the fish 
 likewise. This was now the third [time] Ksous 
 shone forth to his pupils after he had risen up 
 from among the dead ones. "When, therefore, 
 they had breakfasted, Idsous says to Sim6n 
 Petros : 
 
 "Simon, [son] of I6nas, do you love* me 
 more than these [fellow-pupils] ? " 
 
 ^ Gr. agapan (primary meaning, "to hug"), to receive 
 willingly; to hold in esteem. It denotes love that arises 
 from regard or veneration ; whereas philem (here rendered 
 "to love dearly") refers to love of the emotional sort, 
 fondness, affection. The use of the two words in the above 
 dialogue is inimitable, and cannot be preserved in a literal 
 translation. Paraphrased, it would run about as follows: 
 " Sim6n, do y o u esteem me more highly than you do your 
 
ACCORDING TO IOANNIiS. 213 
 
 He says to Mm : 
 
 " Yes, Master. Yo u know that I dearly love 
 y o u." 
 
 He says to him : 
 
 "Feed my lambs." 1 
 
 He says to him again a second time : 
 
 "Simon, [son] of I6nas, do you love 
 me?" 
 
 He says to him : 
 
 " Yes, Master. You know that I dearly love 
 y o u." 
 
 He says to him : 
 
 " Shepherd my sheep." 
 
 He says to him the third time : 
 
 " Simdn, [son] of lonas, do y o u * dearly love ' 
 me?" 
 
 Petros was grieved because he said to him 
 the third time, "Do you 'dearly love' me!" 
 and he says to him : 
 
 "Master, you know all [things]; you well 
 know that I dearly love y o u." 
 
 lesous says to him : 
 
 "Feed my sheep. Amen, AmSn, I say to 
 you, When you were younger you used to gird 
 yourself, and walk where you willed ; but when 
 you have grown aged you will stretch out your 
 
 fellow-pupils?" "Yes, Master; you know that I am very 
 fond of y o u." 
 
 1 The Vatican has "lambkins," and the Beza "sheep." 
 
214 THE MAGICAL MESSAGE 
 
 hands, and another will gird you and carry 
 you "where y o u do not will [to go]," 
 
 Now, he said this [similitude], showing by a 
 sign by what kind of death he should make 
 Radiant The God. And when he had said this, 
 he says to him : 
 
 " Follow me." 
 
 Petros, turning around, sees the pupil whom 
 lesous loved following — the one who leaned 
 back on his breast at the dinner, and said, 
 " Master, who is it that is about to deliver you 
 up?" Petros, therefore, when he saw this 
 [pupil], says to lesous : 
 
 " Master, and what of this [one] ? " 
 
 lesous says to him : 
 
 "If I will that he abide until I come, what 
 [is that] to you 9^ Come you with me." 
 
 This saying, therefore, went forth to the 
 brothers, " That pupil is not to die " ; but lesous 
 did not say to him, " He is not to die," but, " If 
 I will that he abide until I come, what [is that} 
 to youf'' This is the pupil who both bears 
 witness about these [things], and has written 
 
 1 Petros, who three times denied Ms Master, yet three 
 times asserted his love for h\m^ typifies the Church, which, 
 esoteric ia its, earlier days, was later made an instrument of 
 the civil government and suffered death, that is, became ex- 
 oteric ; while IdannSs, the beloved pupil, who abides till the 
 coming of the Master, is a type of the esoteric knowledge 
 that endures even though rehgions perish. 
 
ACCOKDING TO lOANNfiS. 215 
 
 these [things] ; and we know that his witness 
 is true. But there are ever so many other 
 [things] which I^sous did, which if they are 
 written one by one, I suppose that the world 
 itself will not contain the books that are being 
 written [about them]. ^ 
 
 1 So literally in the Greek ; but the Authorized Version and 
 Revised Version modify the exaggeration by construing, " the 
 books that should be written." 
 
APPENDICES 
 
APPENDIX I. 
 
 THE PRODiaAL SON. 
 
 Luke XT. 11-32. 
 
 A CEETAIN man had two sons. And the 
 younger of them said to the Father : 
 
 " Father, give me the share of the Substance ^ 
 that falls to me." 
 
 And he divided the Living" between them. 
 And not many days after, the younger son, 
 when he had gathered all together, took a 
 journey to a far-distant country,^ and there he 
 scattered abroad^ his Substance, living unsav- 
 
 1 Gr. ouda, being', essence, the divine substance in- 
 termediate between the Absolute Deity and the objective 
 Universe, the efficient cause of all phenomenal manifestation ; 
 substance, property. In the literal sense, the Son receives 
 his share of the property; but allegoricaUy he is the Soul 
 going outward into the manifested worlds. 
 
 2 Gr. iios, life; means of Uving 
 
 5 Gr. cMra, a space, place; tract, region, land, country. 
 See note 3, p. 105. 
 
 * The forces of the soul are diffused as it manifests in 
 Time and Space. 
 
 219 
 
220 APPENDIX I. 
 
 ingly.* Now, when he had spent his all, there 
 came about a mighty famine throughout that 
 country, and he himself began to be in want.^ 
 And he passed over ' and joined himself to one 
 of the citizens of that country ; and he sent him 
 into his fields to feed pigs. And he longed * to 
 fill his beUy' with the carob-pods° which the 
 pigs were eating; and no one gave to him. 
 Now, when he came to himself,' he said : 
 
 " How many wage- workers of my Father have 
 bread more than enough, but /here am perishing 
 with hunger ! I shall rise up * and cross over 
 
 1 6r. asdfds, without saving, prodigally, profligately. 
 
 2 LiteraUy, "to fall short." 
 
 * In the primary sense, "was ferried across." He crossed 
 the "river of generation " and incarnated in a physical body, 
 becoming subject to its longiags and desires, the "pigs." 
 
 * Grr. epithumein, to set one's desire upon; to covet, lust. 
 The principle of desire, the vital impulse (thumos), has its 
 seat in the midriff, according to the ancients. 
 
 5 Gr. koilia, the stomach; the lower belly; the seat of the 
 vital impulse (epithumia), the longing for sensation or thirst 
 for physical existence. 
 
 * The fruit of the carob-tree. The pods, from their 
 resemblance to the "locust," were popularly called "St. 
 John's bread," with the notion that they constituted his 
 food in the wUdemess. 
 
 7 At the outermost limit of its cycle, in the mire of 
 physical existence, the Soul comes to self -consciousness, and 
 then begins its homeward journey, its return to the "house 
 of the Father." 
 
 8 The technical expression for rising from the dead. 
 
THE PBODIGAIi SON. 221 
 
 to my Father, and shall say to him, 'Father, 
 I have erred against the Sky^ and in your 
 presence ; no longer am I worthy to be called 
 your Son; make me as one of your wage- 
 workers.' " 
 
 And he rose up and went to his Father. 
 Now, while he was yet far away, his Father saw 
 him, and his heart was stirred, and he ran and 
 feU on his neck, and tenderly kissed him. 
 But the Son said to him : 
 
 "Father, I have erred against the Sky and 
 in your presence, and no longer am I worthy 
 to be called your Son; make me as one of 
 your wage- workers." ^ 
 
 But the Father said to his slaves : 
 
 " Bring forth quickly the first garment ^ and 
 put [it] on him, and give a seal-ring into his 
 hand,* and sandals to his feet ; and bring forth 
 the fatted calf ^ and sacrifice [it] ; and let us eat 
 and rejoice, because this my son was one dead 
 and is alive, was one lost and is found." 
 
 1 Gr. (mranos,, tlie vault of the sky considered as a super- 
 terrestrial globe upon whicli the Gods lived ; also the ethereal 
 substance composiag it. 
 
 2 The last clause of this sentence is omitted ia some man- 
 uscripts. 
 
 ^ The sidereal body (stma pneumatikon) is here meant. 
 * Or, ia the EngUsh idiom, " bestow upon him a seal-ring." 
 5 Or, " young buU," such as was sacrificed to the Egyptian 
 God Apis. 
 
222 APPENDIX I. 
 
 And they began to rejoice. Now, his older 
 Son was in the field, and as he was coming and 
 drew near the house he heard a sound of music 
 and a chorus of singers; and calling to him 
 one of the slave-boys, he demanded what these 
 [things] meant. And he said to him : 
 
 " Your brother is come, and your Father has 
 sacrificed the fatted calf, because he has recov- 
 ered him safe and hale." 
 
 And he was wrathful,* and was unwilling 
 to go in. Then his Father went out and spoke 
 to him ; but he, answering, said to his Father : 
 
 "Behold, so many years have I slaved for 
 you, and I never passed over a command of 
 yours ; and you never gave me a kid, so that I 
 might rejoice with my friends. But when this 
 your Son came, who has consumed your Living 
 with prostitutes, you have sacrificed for him 
 the fatted calf ! " 
 
 And he said to him : 
 
 "Child, you are with me at all times, and 
 all [things] that are mine are yours. Now, you 
 ought to have rejoiced and been glad because 
 this your brother was one dead and is alive, and 
 was one lost and is found." 
 
 1 Those Gods (imfallen Souls) who have not passed 
 through the human stage of existence are usually represented 
 as being jealous of the mortals; for the purified human 
 Soul is superior to all the celestial beings who have never 
 been incarnated. See note 2, p. 208. 
 
APPENDIX n. 
 THE BIETH FEOM ABOVE. 
 
 I. Cor. XV. 35-56. 
 
 But some one will say, " How are the dead 
 ones raised up, and with what sort of body do 
 they come ? " * Thoughtless one,^ that which you 
 sow is not made living unless it dies, and that 
 which you sow, you do not sow the body which 
 will come into being, but a naked grain, it may 
 chance of wheat or of some other [kinds] ; but 
 The God gives it a body just as he has deter- 
 mined, and to each of the things sown its own 
 proper body. All flesh is not the same flesh : 
 but there is one [flesh] of men, another of 
 
 ^ The question is put literally, referring to those who are 
 " dead " in the ordraary sense; but by a play upon the word 
 the answer applies it to those who are prisoned in the 
 physical body or "dead form." 
 
 2 Gr. aph/rdn, uninteUigent, without sense (phrSn). Psycho- 
 physiologieaUy, the lower intelligence {pJiren) has its seat ia 
 the heart-region. 
 
 223 
 
224 APPENDK n. 
 
 animals, another of fishes, and another of birds. 
 And [there are] bodies of Sky-substance ' and 
 bodies of Earth-substance''; but [there is] a 
 certain Radiance of those of Sky-substance, and 
 a different [Radiance] of those of Earth- 
 substance; one Radiance of the Sun, and an- 
 other Radiance of the Moon, and another 
 Radiance of the Stars '—for Star differs from 
 Star in Radiance. Thus, also, is the Raising- 
 up * of the dead ones. It is sown in a destroy- 
 ing, raised in indestructibility; sown in a 
 disesteeming, raised in Radiance; sown in a 
 weakening, raised in force; sown as a psychic 
 body, raised as a Breath-body.^ There is* a 
 psychic body, and there is a Breath-body ; hence 
 it is written : " The first man, Adam, came into 
 being in a psychic form " ^ ; the last Adam, in a 
 
 1 The pneumatic bodies (solar). 
 
 2 The psychic bodies (lunar), 
 
 3 The various hierarchies of ethereal beings. 
 
 4 Gr. anastasis. See note 2, p. 112. 
 
 5 The man whose only conscious life is in his physical body 
 is said to be "dead"; but when the animal nature is 
 subdued, the passions and desires destroyed, he becomes 
 conscious of the psychic world, and the psychic senses 
 awaken; renouncing the psychic powers, holding them to 
 be of no enduring benefit (see note 3, p. 165), he is raised 
 by the force (dimamis) of the Paraklltos to the purely 
 spiritual plane of being. 
 
 * The Vatican reads, "If there is." 
 
 ' Gr. pswM, the ethereal body or ghost {Gen. ii 7). 
 
THE BIETH FEOM ABOVE. 225 
 
 life-producing Breatli. Yet the Breath [body] 
 "was not first, but the psychic ; afterwards, the 
 Breath [body] . The first man is from the Earth, 
 of dust ' ; the second man, the Master, is from 
 the Sky. As that which is of dust, so also are 
 they who are of dust ; and as that which is of 
 Sky-substance, so also are they who are of Sky- 
 substance. And even as we have worn the 
 likeness ^ of that which is of dust, we shall also 
 wear the likeness of that which is of Sky- 
 substance.' Now, I say this, brothers, Flesh 
 and blood can not inherit the Eealm of a Grod, 
 nor does the destructible inherit the indestruc- 
 
 1 6r. chcnlcos, of loose earth or dust heaped up, of spore- 
 dust, dust containing the seminal principle; here used 
 metaphorically of the cosmic dust, or psychic substance. 
 Unpurified men were termed "earthy ones" {chcfikoi), as 
 disting^shed from the psychics {psitehikoi), who had received 
 the lustration of Water, and the spiritually re-bom 
 (pneumatikoi), who had received the lustration of the holy 
 Breath. The term hoi pistikoi ("those having faith") was 
 also applied to the psychics; but later on' the chnhn rejoiced 
 under that appellation, when pisUs had become degraded to 
 mean "faith" in the sense. of blind credulity. 
 
 2 Gr. dMn, an image, figure, statue; resemblance; 
 phantom, spectre, wraith. 
 
 ^ The physical body of the unpurified man is patterned 
 after the lunar form, that of the Initiate after the solar form. 
 As the lunar body usually perishes after the death of the 
 physical, the choik man changes in appearance from in- 
 carnation to incarnation, whereas the Initiate preserves 
 much the same semblance whenever incarnated. 
 
226 APPENDIX II. 
 
 tible. Behold, I tell you a Mystery ' : we shall 
 not all sleep, but we shall all be transformed, 
 in the Atom,^ in an out-flashing of an Eye,^ in 
 the last trumpet-call.^ For a trumpet shall 
 sound, and the dead ones shall be raised inde- 
 structible, and we shall be transformed. For this 
 
 1 Gr. mustirion, an arcane teaching, a secret. By the word 
 " Behold " Paulos directs attention to the inner meaning of 
 his words. In the Greater Mysteries {ta megala) the Initiate 
 became a Seer or beholder (epoptes) of the realities of Nature 
 and Super-Nature; but in the Lesser Mysteries (ta mikra) the 
 teaching was imparted oraUy and by means of dramatic 
 representations, allegoricaUy setting forth the descent of the 
 Soul from the world of real Being into the transition- 
 sphere and world of matter, its remedial discipline and 
 purification, and its final return to the divine state. These 
 representations degenerated into public entertainments, with 
 Tragedies and Comedies. In the Christian system dramas 
 were instituted, in which the life and crucifixion of lesous 
 were enacted; and from these the modem theatre had its 
 origin. 
 
 2 In allusion to the atomic (non-molecular) nature of the 
 pneumatic body. The rendering "moment," "atom [of 
 time]," has no warrant in the Greek language. 
 
 ^ Eeferring to the "third eye," the seventh brain-centre, 
 from which the pneumatic body is projected. See note 1, 
 p. 200. 
 
 * The last of the seven trumpet-calls, or mystic sounds 
 heard as the Breath impinges successively upon the seven 
 brain-centres. In the Apokdlypse the "woman veiled with 
 the Sun " appears after the seventh Messenger has sounded 
 his trumpet, and she gives birth to the man-child, the 
 Christos. 
 
THE BIRTH FROM ABOVE. 227 
 
 destroyed must be clothed with indestructibility, 
 and this mortal must be clothed with immor- 
 tality. Now, when this destroyed shall have 
 been clothed with indestructibility, and this 
 mortal shall have been clothed with immortality, 
 then shall come to pass that saying which is 
 written : " Death is swallowed up in victory. 
 "Where, O Death,* is your goad? Where, 
 Under- world,^ is your victory ? " ^ The goad of 
 Death is sin, and the force of sin is the Law.* 
 
 1 The physical world, or world of death. 
 
 * Gr. feodes, the nether-world, the realm into which the 
 soul passes after the death of the physical body, and where 
 it is purged of its grosser impurities before ascending to the 
 spiritual world. But when the soul returns to reincarnate, 
 it passes again through this sphere and has to resume the 
 impure elements from which it was temporarily freed. Also 
 during the sleep of the physical body the soul goes into 
 HadSs, as well as at death. When the soul has become freed 
 from the cycle of reincarnations through the "birth from 
 above," it is said to " have the keys of HadSs and of Death." 
 HadSs is not a place of punishment, but of purification, and 
 in its higher planes it corresponds to, or rather merges into, 
 Paradise {paradeisos, pleasure-garden). 
 
 3 Isa. XXV. 8; Hos. xiii. 14. 
 
 * The soul is kept in the bondage of birth by its mistaking 
 the seeming for the real, and this glamour is the force 
 (dunamis) of the Law. See note 3, p. 78. 
 
INDEX OF NOTES. 
 
 Abiding, 3, 174. 
 Above, 2, fl4. 
 Accuser, 1, 125. 
 Adversary, 2, 173. 
 Advocate, 1, 176. 
 Air, 2, 82. 
 Amgn, 3, 88. 
 Anointed, 1, 79. 
 Awakening, 2, 112 ; 1, 157. 
 
 Believe, 3, 74. 
 Blood, 2, 82. 
 Breath, 2, 84. 
 
 Circumcision, 4, 128. 
 
 Class, 2, 160. 
 
 Cleansing, 1, 99. 
 
 Come into being, 1, 73 ; 1, 180. 
 
 Commonplace, 1, 150. 
 
 Darkness, 1, 74. 
 Dead, 1, 93; 2, 94. 
 Death, 1, 112. 
 Dust, 1, 225. 
 
 Earth, 1, 96. 
 Ecstatic, 1, 114. 
 
 Faith, 8, 74. 
 Fire, 2,82; 3, 82. 
 First, 2, 78 ; 1, 84. 
 First-principle, 1, 71. 
 Fulness, 2, 78. 
 
 Ghost, 2, 151. 
 God, 1, 72 ; 2, 72. 
 Grace, 4, 77. 
 
 H^lias, 3, 80. 
 HermSs, 1, 151. 
 Hierousallm, 1, 80. 
 
 Immortal, 2, 171. 
 Ixion, 2, 137. 
 
 Judge, 1, 97. 
 
 Law, 3, 78. 
 
 Leader, 1, 94. 
 
 Life, 2, 73. 
 
 Light, 1, 74. 
 
 Love, 3, HI; 3, 114; 1, 212. 
 
 Lustrate, 2, 82. 
 
 Man, 3, 73. 
 Messages, 2, 104. 
 Messenger, 4, 88. 
 Messias, 1, 75; 3, 115. 
 Mystery, 1, 226. 
 
 Name, 4, 76 ; 3, 88. 
 
 On-going, 4, 96. 
 
 Passing-over, 2, 91 ; 3, 194. 
 Path, 2, 81 ; 1, 175. 
 Perfect, 2, 105. 
 Perfecting-period, 1, 170. 
 Petros, 1, 86. 
 Portents, 2, 107. 
 
 Radiance, 2, 77; 1, 115. 
 Realm, 3, 94. 
 Recorders, 4, 132. 
 Ruler, 2, 88. 
 
230 
 
 INDEX OF NOTES. 
 
 Sabbath, 1, 110. 
 
 Save, 2, 97; 3,115; 1, 156. 
 
 Saviour, 3, 106. 
 
 Saying, 3, 93. 
 
 Season, 1, 109. 
 
 Seer, 1,81; 1, 161. 
 
 Self-bom, 3, 77. 
 
 Separate, 1, 97. 
 
 Sign, 1, 91. 
 
 Sin, 2, 83. 
 
 Sky, 3, 84 ; 1, 221. 
 
 Spook, 1, 128 ; 1, 142. 
 
 Substance, 1, 219. 
 
 Tent-making, 3, 125. 
 Thought, 2, 71. 
 
 True, 1, 75 : 5, 100. 
 Truth, 1, 78. 
 
 Under-world, 2, 227. 
 Useless, 1, 2, 98. 
 
 Voice, 1, 95. 
 
 Water, 2, 82 ; 3, 82. 
 Wheel of Birth, 2, 137. 
 Witness, 2, 74. 
 Words, 6, 100. 
 Works, 3, 97. 
 World, 2, 75. 
 Wrath, 1, 101. 
 Writing, 2, 93, 
 
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