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XVI.

Guilt of Crucifixion of Christ Not Upon the Jews,

But Upon Ecclesiasticism

            A TYPICAL example of the methods of Ecclesiasticism has already been adduced in respect of its treatment of the Edenic “Woman.” Another, no less instructive, is afforded by its treatment of the Jews. The Jews were not the crucifiers of Christ. For though they who crucified him were Jews, it was not as Jews, but as priests, that they did it. The Jews, on the contrary,

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produced him and furnished him with his apostles and disciples: and they “heard him gladly, and would have taken him by force to make him their king,” so greatly were they captivated with his pure and simple Gospel of love. Their instincts were healthy enough. But Ecclesiasticism slew him, as it had slain the prophets his brethren before him; and then, having for its own ends, adopted him as its chief idol, because the world revered him, it cast all the odium of his death upon the Jews, making of them its scape-goat and a bye-word and an offence to Christendom. Meanwhile it took to itself the credit for having saved the world by offering him in sacrifice, blasphemously pretending that God was a lover of innocent blood, to be propitiated by the murder of His own Son, and gratified by a presentation of Himself and of Truth systematically stultifying everything that is implied by the term Logos.

            And now, finding itself, through the revolt of the intellect which it had so grievously outraged, supplanted by the rival Ecclesiasticism of Science, to the utter repudiation of her, the intuition, of whose fall it was itself the cause, it can but bethink itself of the device with which it had dared to reproach Jesus himself, that of seeking by means of devils to cast out devils, in the hope of regaining its lost sway. And, accordingly, in the shape of an enhanced ritual, it heaps on yet more and more materiality, redoubling the appeal to sense, conscious of its utter inability to furnish the interpretation which alone can save religion, and, for lack of which, not religion only, but Humanity itself is perishing. Yet never for a moment does it dream of restoring Her, the “Woman” Intuition, of whose seduction by itself the whole mischief has come; notwithstanding the explicit declarations of its own sacred books that only by her restoration can the mischief be repaired. Not that Ecclesiasticism would be saved by such restoration, as, possibly, it shrewdly surmises. For

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that which would be saved is the Church and the truth, while Ecclesiasticism would perish utterly; seeing that it alone cannot survive interpretation; and “She is the Interpreter.”

            And if a further instance be desired of the totality of the eclipse which Ecclesiasticism has undergone in respect of the meaning of the Church’s dogmas, it is to be found in its treatment of the very doctrine which implies, and for this present period, the restoration in question. For by the doctrine of the “Assumption of the Blessed Virgin,” now awaiting the promotion from a “pious belief” to an “article of faith,” promised for the present pontificate in the insignia selected as its symbols, is signified precisely that identical event. (1) For it signifies the promotion once more to her proper place in the “heaven” of man’s intellectual system, of her, the “Woman” Intuition, who after her corruption by Ecclesiasticism as the agent of the Serpent in Eden, recovered indeed her “virgin” state to be the “Mother” of the Christ, but was forthwith again driven of her foes into the wilderness, where she has languished ever since, abiding the time appointed for her final rehabilitation, when by the mouth of God’s “Two Witnesses,” she would vindicate herself and her “Son” by the delivery of the New Gospel of Interpretation, which alone can save the world.

            Nor is this the full measure of the blindness of Ecclesiasticism even in this single regard. Representing, as does the Intuition, Substance as the feminine principle in God and the Universe, and the soul – which is Substance individuated – as the feminine principle in man, the doctrine of the Assumption implies the divinity of these, and thereby, the Pantheistic nature of the real doctrines of the Church, the Bible, and Christ. And they are precisely these doctrines, Pantheism and the divinity of Substance, which Ecclesiasticism

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has the most fiercely anathematised as heresy. Meanwhile it has deprived both the doctrine of the Assumption and its fellow-doctrine of the Immaculate Conception – both of them, in their true and intended sense, purely spiritual and denoting indefeasible verities – of all significance spiritual or rational, by applying them to her whom it has taken for the physical mother of the physical vehicle of the Christ, the man Jesus.

            For “as the Immaculate Conception is the foundation of the mysteries, so is the Assumption their crown. For the entire object and end of kosmic evolution is precisely this triumph and apotheosis of the soul. In the mystery presented by this dogma, we behold the consummation of the whole scheme of creation – the perpetuation and glorification of the individual human ego. The grave – the material and astral consciousness – cannot retain the immaculate Mother of God. She rises into the heavens; she assumes divinity. In her own proper person she is taken up into the King’s chamber. From end to end the mystery of the soul’s evolution – the history, that is, of humanity and of the kosmic drama – is contained and enacted in the cultus of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The acts and the glories of Mary are the one supreme subject of the holy mysteries.” (1)

            As this exposition proves, it has been providentially so ordered that the Church has not had to trust to official hands, either for the promulgation or for the explication of this its crowning doctrine. And in such fact is to be seen the handwriting on the wall, announcing to Ecclesiasticism that its reign is finished and its kingdom given to another: even to Her whom, at the bidding of its masters, the demons of the pit, it has so persistently persecuted, and suppressed, the destined destroyer of it and them, the

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“Woman” Intuition. And so at length shall be realised the long-promised and ardently wished-for dispensation, called in token of her the “Woman’s Age.” Already of the approach of such age there are signs the reading of which needs no mystic faculty, so patent are they to all. But it comprises that which far transcends the visible. And it is in anticipation of its loftier achievements that the New Interpretation thus utters itself: –

            “The days of the Gospel of Manifestation are passing away: the Gospel of Interpretation cometh.

            “So that man the manifestor shall resign his office; and woman the interpreter shall give light to the world. (...)

            “And her kingdom cometh; the day of the exaltation of woman. (…)

            “All things are thine, O Mother of God: all things are thine, O Thou who risest from the Sea; and Thou shalt have dominion over all the worlds.” (1)

            For the Apocalyptic sea is that “sea of troubles” for the soul, the sea of the Astral, only by transcending which she reaches the haven of the Celestial, where there is for the faithful “no more sea.” For the “serpent’s head has been crushed;” and, made “virgin” as to matter, man enters upon the enjoyment of the “two-fold state,” being constituted in all essential respects of pure spirit and pure soul.

NOTES

(60:1) See The Perfect Way, vi, 39.

(61:1) Clothed with the Sun, I, xlviii.

(62:1) Clothed with the Sun, I, ii, Part II.