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(p. 42)

XII.

The Mystery of Redemption, and the

Christ as the Supreme Result Thereof

            THE new Gospel of Interpretation effectually dispels the ecclesiastical figment – no less unscriptural than monstrous – which, deifying Jesus and styling him God, removes him from the category of the human and identifies him with the Supreme Being, and impiously represents that Being as dying on the Cross to satisfy His own implacable wrath. None the less, however, does it retain and enforce the symbol claimed by Ecclesiasticism as affirmatory of such doctrine. For it discloses the Creed as an epitome of the spiritual history, not of anyone individual being, but of all those who, being “sons of Intuition,” become thereby “sons of God,”

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and it recounts the stages of that process of regeneration of which the Christ is the culmination, showing it to be founded in the very nature of being, and open, therefore, to all men alike.

            But even so it is not to Jesus the man that divine honours are due. He is the vehicle only of the Divine manifestation, and is but one of many such vehicles, the difference between whom is of degree only, the spiritual history and nature of them all being the same. For wherever God finds manifestation in and through man, there, in His degree, is Christ. “Recognising fully that which Jesus was and did, the new Gospel of Interpretation sets forth salvation as depending, not on what any man has said or done, but on what God perpetually reveals. For, according to it, Religion is not a thing of the past, or of any one age; but is an ever-present, ever-occurring actuality; for every man one and the same: a process complete in itself for each man; and for him subsisting irrespectively of any other man whatsoever. It thus recognises as the actors in the momentous drama of the soul two persons only, the individual himself and God.” (1) In the same manner in which all other men are saved, has he who becomes a Christ been saved. His function is to show them the way, having himself learned it by experience.

            Thus doing, the New Interpretation reconciles religion with reason, and faith with knowledge, restoring to that end the sacred originals from which the Bible itself was written, obtaining them direct from the primary source and everlasting depository of the divine gnosis to which they belong, the Hierarchy of the Church Celestial, now in the fullness of the time appointed, once more come into open conditions with earth. Such are the character and derivation claimed for the following exposition of the “Mystery of Redemption”: –

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            All things in heaven and in earth are of God, both the invisible and the visible.

            Such as is the invisible, is the visible also, for there is no boundary line betwixt spirit and matter.

            Matter is spirit made exteriorly cognisable by the force of the Divine Word.

            And the God shall resume all the things by love, the material shall be resolved into the spiritual, and there shall be a new heaven and a new earth.

            Not that matter shall be destroyed, for it came forth from God, and is of God indestructible and eternal.

            But it shall be indrawn and resolved into its true self.

            It shall put off corruption, and remain incorruptible.

            It shall put off mortality, and remain immortal.

            So that nothing be lost of the Divine substance.

            It was material entity: it shall be spiritual entity.

            For there is nothing which can go out from the presence of God.

            This is the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead: that is, the transfiguration of the body.

            For the body, which is matter, is but the manifestation of Spirit: and the Word of God shall transmute it into its inner being.

            The will of God is the alchemic crucible: and the dross which is cast therein is matter.

            And the dross shall become pure gold seven times refined; even perfect spirit.

            It shall leave behind it nothing: but shall be transformed into the Divine image.

            For it is not a new substance: but its alchemic polarity is changed, and it is converted.

            But except it were gold in its true nature it could not be resumed into the aspect of gold.

            And except matter were spirit, it could not revert to spirit.

            To make gold, the alchemist must have gold.

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            But he knows that to be gold which others take to be dross.

            Cast thyself into the will of God, and thou shall become as God.

            For thou art God, if thy will be the divine will.

            This is the great secret: it is the mystery of redemption. (1)

            But the process of redemption is complex and manifold as is man himself, and has many steps constituting it a ladder, the whole of which, stupendous though it be, is within man. The ladder this is at once of Evolution and of Regeneration, being involutional and spiritual, whereby man ascends “from the dust of the ground to the throne of the Most High,” and having for its summit Christ. The steps are thus set forth in the New Interpretation, the Hebrew presentation being followed.

            Now the members of the microcosm are twelve: of the senses three, of the mind three, of the heart three, and of the conscience three.

            For of the body there are four elements; and the sign of the four is sense, in the which are three gates;

            The gate of the eye, the gate of the ear, and the gate of the touch. (2)

            Renounce vanity, and be poor: renounce praise, and be humble: renounce luxury, and be chaste.

            Offer unto God a pure oblation: let the fire of the altar search thee, and prove thy fortitude.

            Cleanse thy sight, thine hands, and thy feet: carry the censer of thy worship into the courts of the Lord; and let thy vows be unto the Most High.

            And for the magnetic man (3) there are four elements: and the covering of the four is mind, in the which are three gates;

(p. 46)

            The gate of desire, the gate of labour, and the gate of illumination.

            Renounce the world, and aspire heavenward; labour not for the meat which perishes, but ask of God thy daily bread: beware of wandering doctrines, and let the Word of the Lord be thy light.

            Also of the soul there are four elements: and the seat of the four is the heart, whereof likewise there are three gates;

            The gate of obedience, the gate of prayer, and the gate of discernment.

            Renounce thine own will, and let the law of God only be within thee: renounce doubt: pray always and faint not: be pure of heart also, and thou shalt see God.

            And within the soul is the Spirit: and the Spirit is One, yet has it likewise three elements.

            And these are the gates of the oracle of God, which is the ark of the covenant;

            The rod, the host, and the law:

            The force which solves, and transmutes, and divines: the bread of heaven which is the substance of all things and the food of angels; the table of the law, which is the will of God, written with the finger of the Lord.

            If these three be within thy spirit, then shall the Spirit of God be within thee.

            And the glory shall be upon the propitiatory, in the holy place of thy prayer.

            These are the twelve gates of regeneration: through which if a man enter he shall have right to the tree of life. (1)

            The New Interpretation, however, does not restrict itself to the Hebrew presentation. It recognises the Oriental, the Egyptian, and the Greek, and in so doing at once demonstrates the truth of the definition which makes Christianity a synthesis of the sacred mysteries

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previously in the world, and rebukes the Christian Ecclesiasticism for its suppression of those mysteries, a suppression which it has carried to the length of denouncing them as “Satanic parodies intended to discredit Christianity in advance.” And this it has done, notwithstanding the recognition accorded to them by Jesus, as hereinafter explained, and by St. Paul in his description of Moses as esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt,” – an expression showing that the wisdom which Moses had learnt in Egypt comprised, and was, the doctrine of Christ, the gnosis suppressed of Ecclesiasticism.

            While describing the process itself of regeneration, in terms derived from the Hebrew mysteries, the New Interpretation celebrates the supreme results of that process in a ritual belonging to the Greek mysteries, one of several similarly restored by it. This is a hymn addressed to the “First of the Gods,” or creative Elohim, the Spirit of Wisdom, as represented by his “Angel,” the “Angel of the Sun,” and representative of “that light which Adonai created on the first day,” under his Greek appellative Phoibos Apollo. As will be seen, this hymn breathes both the spirit and the letter of the Bible, from Genesis to the Apocalypse, in such wise as to indicate unmistakably the identity in substance and source of the Hebrew and Christian with the other sacred mysteries and scriptures of antiquity. And, as also will be seen, its theme is the potential divinity of man as man, and not the exclusive divinity of any one man.

Hymn to Phoibos

            Strong art thou and adorable, Phoibos Apollo, who bearest life and healing on thy wings, who crownest the year with thy bounty, and givest the spirit of thy divinity to the fruits and precious things of all the worlds.

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            Where were the bread of the initiation of the sons of God, except thou bring the corn to ear; or the wine of their mystical chalice, except thou bless the vintage?

            Many are the angels who serve in the courts of the spheres of heaven: but thou, Master of Light and of Life, art followed by the Christs of God.

            And thy sign is the sign of the Son of Man in heaven, and of the Just made perfect;

            Whose path is as a shining light, shining more and more unto the innermost glory of the day of the Lord God.

            Thy banner is blood-red, and thy symbol is a milk-white lamb, and thy crown is of pure gold.

            They who reign with thee are the Hierophants of the celestial mysteries; for their will is the will of God, and they know as they are known.

            These are the sons of the innermost sphere; the Saviours of men, the Anointed of God.

            And their name is Christ Jesus, in the day of their initiation.

            And before them every knee shall bow, of things in heaven and of things on earth.

            They are come out of great tribulation, and are set down for ever at the right hand of God.

            And the Lamb, which is in the midst of the seven spheres, shall give them to drink of the river of living water.

            And they shall eat of the tree of life, which is in the centre of the garden of the kingdom of God.

            These are thine, O Mighty Master of Light; and this is the dominion which the Word of God appointed thee in the beginning:

            In the day when God created the light of all the worlds, and divided the light from the darkness.

            And God called the light Phoibos, and the darkness God called Python.

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            Now the darkness was before the light, as the night forerunneth the dawn.

            These are the evening and the morning of the first cycle of the Mysteries.

            And the glory of that cycle is as the glory of seven days; and they who dwell therein are seven times refined;

            Who have purged the garment of the flesh in the living waters;

            And have transmuted both body and soul into spirit, and are become pure virgins.

            For they were constrained by love to abandon the outer elements, and to seek the innermost which is undivided, even the Wisdom of God.

            And Wisdom and love are One.

NOTES

(43:1) The Perfect Way, I, 42.

(45:1) Clothed with the Sun, II, ix.

(45:2) Taste and smell being modes of touch.

(45:3) I.e., the magnetic or astral part of man, which is accounted a person or system in itself.

(46:1) Clothed with the Sun, II, v.

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