Robertson is outspoken in both his faith and his politics and controversies surrounding him have often made headlines: Pat Robertson - Claim that some denominations contain the spirit of the Antichrist. On January 14, 1991, on "The 700 Club", Pat Robertson attacked a number of Protestant denominations when he declared: "You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense. I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist." Pat Robertson ...

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Pat Robertson, Pat Robertson - Life and career, Pat Robertson - Family, Pat Robertson - Education and military service, Pat Robertson - Religious career, Pat Robertson - 1988 presidential bid, Pat Robertson - Libel lawsuit, Pat Robertson - Personal wealth, Pat Robertson - Political activism, Pat Robertson - Controversies, Pat Robertson - Claim that some denominations contain the spirit of the Antichrist, Pat Robertson - Claims about the power of his prayers, Pat Robertson - Opposition to feminism homosexuality and liberalism, Pat Robertson - Support for Charles Taylor, Pat Robertson - Political statements, Pat Robertson - Chinese abortions, Pat Robertson - Judicial activism vs. 9/11 terrorists, Pat Robertson - Education background, Pat Robertson - Call for assassination of Hugo Chávez, Pat Robertson - Message to Dover Pennsylvania, Pat Robertson - Robertson says impeding or criticism of the Iraq war is treason, Pat Robertson - Robertson on aliens, Pat Robertson - Robertson on Ariel Sharon, Pat Robertson - Books, Pat Robertson - Honors

Read more here: » Pat Robertson: Encyclopedia II - Pat Robertson - Controversies

Paul A man by legend said to be of pure Jewish birth, of the tribe of Benjamin, at first a persecutor of Christians but who underwent a mystic enlightenment of which he speaks. His various letters prove that he was an initiate.

He recognizes Christ -- the Christos -- as being principally the higher self in man, and strives to convey this truth to the minds of many congregation, adapting it to their power of comprehension. He evidently does his best to promote as high an interpretation of Christianity as might be possible among the varied and unpromising, and often indeed refractory, elements which he found at hand.

His failure to mention the familiar gospel stories is due to the fact that the Gospels are of much later date. The brand of Christianity which has prevailed during the centuries would have been very different if Paul's philosophic teachings had been taken more seriously, for they are in the main clear enough even without any esoteric key.

Often they have been disfigured in interpretation, as in the doctrine of justification by faith and not by works, attributed to him. On reading Romans 3 with an unprejudiced eye, we find him insisting that man is not made virtuous by following the letter of the law and doing pious deeds alone, but also by pistis -- a full realization of the truth and determination to follow it. This has become perverted into the dogma that man cannot be saved by any amount of good deeds alone, but must believe that Jesus died in propitiation for his sins.

A contrast has been made between the teachings of Paul and of Peter -- respectively often referred to as the Pauline and Petrine theology -- as representing pagan and Jewish Christianity respectively; and these two have been the occasion of controversies and attempted reconcilements.

(See also: Paul, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Atheism, Atheists In modern times, those who do not accept the monotheistic Christian God or any god. It formerly signified those who did not believe in the accepted divinity or divinities of the State or populace.

The Roman Empire was entirely tolerant of religious beliefs, but took strong measures with the early Christians because they were, from the legal viewpoint of the conservative Roman magistrate, religious and quasi-political radicals of a dangerous type. They were atheists in that they did not accept the State gods. Later, to the Christians, the pagans in their turn became atheists because though they believed in gods, they did not believe in the orthodox Christian God.

Theosophists, Buddhists, Confucianists, etc., have been at various times called atheists because they do not accept monotheism. To strip a deity of personal human attributes is, in the eyes of monotheists, to deny the existence of that deity altogether.

(See also: Atheism, Atheists, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Jesus (Latin of Greek Iesous from Hebrew Yeshua` contraction of Yehoshua` a proper name meaning savior or helper, or that which is spacious or widespread)

Indubitably a historical character, whose life as narrated in the Gospels is pure allegory, a story of the initiation chamber. There is a story current from medieval times among the Jews, mentioned in the Sepher Toledoth Yeshua` (Book of the Generations of Jesus), to the effect that the Jesus of the Gospels was a Jehoshua ben Panthera, a Jewish adept living about 100 BC. Jesus illustrates the typical sequence in occult history: 1) the coming of a leader or teacher to a people needing to be led and taught; 2) his passing, followed by the adoration, even worship, of his followers; 3) the gradual transformation of historic facts into more or less embroidered legends or mythological tales, which in time cluster so thickly about his memory that his identity as a person, and even his name, are lost; 4) the myth, allegory, or legend; and 5) the efforts of other, later teachers to explain, interpret, and reinstate this earlier teacher, now a purely mythic figure or else materialized and misunderstood.

The Christian Gospels appear to have originated in mystery-dramas, beautiful and often sublime in their inner significances, in which were depicted the experiences of the neophyte and adept in his union with the Logos, and hence such unified individual was called a Logos incarnate as a man, the Logos itself being variously named as Christos or Dionysos, and to have been by stages adapted and given a semi-historical guise, as has happened in other instances besides the Christian mythos. Christ therefore, or the Christos, is not a particular man or an especial incarnation of divinity, but a generic term for the divine as incarnated in all human beings, although Jesus was undoubtedly the name of this great Jewish initiate-avatara as an individual. Hence this universal allegory in its Christian version has a true historical peg to hang from; for there did appear, sometime before the Christian era, a special cyclic messenger who was due to come on the change of the ecliptic point from one sign of the celestial zodiac to another, from the sign of Aries to Pisces. In theosophical literature, Jesus is considered to be an avatara, the messenger for the European Messianic or Piscean cycle. As such, Jesus represented a ray sent from the Wondrous Being or spiritual hierarch of the earth into the soul of a pure human being, while the racial buddha, Gautama Buddha, supplied the intermediate or psychological nature in this act of white magic.

"But it is probable that the theosophic effort which Jesus attempted to initiate did not endure for fifty years after his death. Almost immediately after his passing, his disciples, all half-instructed, and in some cases almost illiterate, men . . . foisted upon the world of their time the forms and beliefs of early Christianity; and had there been nothing but these, that religious system had not lived another fifty years. But what happened? During the oncoming of the dark cycle after Jesus (which began as before said about the time of Pythagoras), the last few rays from the setting sun of the ancient light shone feebly in the minds of certain of these Christian Fathers, Clement of Alexandria for one, and Origen of Alexandria for another, and in one or two more like these, who had been initiated at least in the lowest of some of the then degenerate pagan Mysteries; and these men entered into the Christian Church and introduced some poor modicum of that light, . . . which they still cherished; and these rays they derived mainly from the Neo-pythagorean and the Neoplatonic system" (Fund 486-7).

The Hebrew name Jah or Jehovah became identified in the mind of Christians with the name of Jesus, although Jesus never was in any wise identical with the Jewish Jehovah, but was identified in initiation through his own inner god or Father in Heaven, and the Jewish Jehovah mystically was the regent of the planet Saturn.

The first three letters in Greek make I.H.S. placed at the head of representations of the crucified Jesus, often said to stand for Iesus Hominum Salvator (Jesus the savior of men) or In hoc signo (in this sign), with reference to the alleged vision of a cross of the Emperor Constantine. Jesus is a form of a worldwide mystery-name, whose importance was its meaning, usually given as a three-letter monogram, analogous to the Sanskrit Aum. We find it in the Greek Gnostic Iao and variants are common in ancient Greece, such as Iasios, Iasion, Iason, Iasos; and initiates were known as Iasides or sons of Iaso.

See also AVATARA

(See also: Jesus, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Bread and Wine "The outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace," bread and wine stand at once for the actual elements used in initiation ceremonies and for the attainments of which they are symbolic.

Taking the Bacchic Mysteries as an example, wine was given as the blood of the grape and of Bacchus, blood signifying life, and Bacchus representing the mystic Logos which "was made flesh." So the whole rite means the imparting to the candidate of the divine life by conscious union of his lower self with the god within -- a union brought about by the self-devised efforts of the lower self. In the same way, bread or grain symbolized the intellectual aspect of the attainment, intellect being the "body" of the spiritual influx.

The Christian sacrament was adopted from the pagan rite. The Protestant Churches administer the sacrament in both bread and wine as the symbol of a divine grace received by the devout participant.

The Catholic Church teaches that the sacred elements are actually transubstantiated by miraculous means into the blood and body of Christ, denying the cup or the wine to the laity, and regarding the rite as propitiatory for the sins of the participants and of mankind in general.

The old pagan rite contained the idea that partaking of the wine meant allying oneself with the vital energy of the spiritual divinity within the neophyte, and the partaking of the bread was symbolic of a similar union of the neophyte's mentality with the cosmic mind for which the bread stood.

See also SOMA; WINE

(See also: Bread and Wine, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Sibylline Oracles Early Christian ecclesiastical literature written in imitation of the archaic Sibylline Books, containing apparently no small amount of material derived from pagan sources.

They mostly belong, as far as is now known, to the 2nd and 3rd centuries and are strongly colored by Jewish and Christian ideas; what is called Book IV of these is a virtual attack on the integrity of the archaic heathen sibyls, the records of which the writers of the Christian Sibylline Oracles nevertheless so closely imitated in many respects.

(See also: Sibylline Oracles, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

"GOD HATES FAGS" -- though elliptical -- is a profound theological statement, which the world needs to hear more than it needs oxygen, water and bread.[5] The church is located in the basement of Fred Phelps Sr.'s home, which sits in a large fenced compound occupied by nine of his thirteen children and their spouses (the other four children are estranged from the group). The vast majority of Westboro mem ...

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Westboro Baptist Church, Westboro Baptist Church - Overview, Westboro Baptist Church - The Westboro compound, Westboro Baptist Church - Composition of the Westboro membership, Westboro Baptist Church - Purpose, Westboro Baptist Church - Theology, Westboro Baptist Church - Sky Television report, Westboro Baptist Church - Quotes from Phelps' Sermons, Westboro Baptist Church - Similarities to the Christian Identity movement, Westboro Baptist Church - Activities and statements, Westboro Baptist Church - Criminal record, Westboro Baptist Church - Violence against Westboro, Westboro Baptist Church - Claiming divine vengeance, Westboro Baptist Church - September 11 attacks and the space shuttle Columbia, Westboro Baptist Church - London terrorist attacks, Westboro Baptist Church - God Hates Canada and God Hates Sweden, Westboro Baptist Church - Indian Ocean earthquake, Westboro Baptist Church - Stance on adoption by same-sex couples, Westboro Baptist Church - Hurricane Katrina, Westboro Baptist Church - Picketing of Rehnquist's funeral, Westboro Baptist Church - Picketing of Fred Rogers' memorial, Westboro Baptist Church - Soldiers in Iraq, Westboro Baptist Church - Other prejudices, Westboro Baptist Church - Responses, Westboro Baptist Church - Criticism, Westboro Baptist Church - Opposition to Westboro's theology, Westboro Baptist Church - Parodies, Westboro Baptist Church - WBC Websites

Read more here: » Westboro Baptist Church: Encyclopedia II - Westboro Baptist Church - Overview

Sacrifice The performance of sacred rites, but with the more restricted sense of ceremonies of invocation, communion, or propitiation between man and gods. Scholars, in studying these universal rites, are at a loss to find an essential significance by which to gather them all into one class, and as to which to include and which to exclude from such a class.

Sacrifices may take the form of a meal offered to the gods or shared with them, an oblation of first fruits of the harvest or flocks, or a propitiation or act of atonement. The Romans dedicated a portion of food or a libation to the lares or other deities; the Hebrews offered the first fruits of the harvest or the yearlings of the flock. The word also has the meaning of an act of self-dedication for a noble cause.

Christianity, in addition to a great many so-called pagan ideas, also inherited and adapted Jewish sacrificial ideas, but the word became limited to the sacrifice of Christ for the sins of the world, and the sacrifice by man of his personal desires to the behests of his divinity. The true origin of the Christian atonement is in the Mysteries, when the hierophant offered his pure and sinless life as a sacrifice for his race to the gods whom he hoped to rejoin (IU 2:42). The general sense in theosophy is that of sacrificing one's temporal interests to a lofty ideal.

(See also: Sacrifice, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Personal God The personal anthropomorphic extra-cosmic God of theology is a purely human creation -- for personality is a limitation utterly inconsistent with the nature of the boundless and eternal. This theological God is merely a reflection of man. The infinite source of all cannot be defined, since every possible attribute which we might assign to it is a human mental creation. We are forced to speak of God as impersonal, but must beware lest in doing so we reduce the conception to an empty abstraction.

God may denote a divine being, a being who was once in our present human stage but has evolved beyond it, having transcended the limit of personality but without losing individuality. Or God may be applied to a being who has emanated from the divine source but is on the downward arc of evolution, not having yet become man; or again it may be a projection of the human mind, like the personal God of theology, but in this case it is a human mental creation -- therefore containing human limitations because the human mind is finite -- and therefore inadmissible.

The early Christians believed that the pagan gods were impersonated by evil demons or were actually merely daemonia. It is hard to believe that Jehovah, Jupiter, the Christian God, Brahma, and the like are nothing more than merely abstract ideas, for they actually are human ways of expressing some of the active and distinctly concrete powers or potencies in the solar system.

The notion of a personal God implies arbitrary will, caprice, anger, susceptibility to propitiation, and many other human weaknesses; and the attempt to reconcile these wholly human projections of thought with the idea of abstract infinitude results in contradiction and absurdity.

It is clear enough that the universe is filled full with powers and potencies, of which all animate beings known to man, and man himself, are but minor examples; and hence polytheism when properly understood as the necessary and inevitable deduction of spiritual pantheism is seen to be true. The mistake of most polytheists in the past has been to endow these gods, divinities, or spiritual potencies with attributes all too human, instead of considering them as they ought to be considered as the formative forces of the universe, possessing consciousness and will.

See also GOD; GOD(S)

(See also: Personal God, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Baptism (from Greek baptizein to sprinkle)

Ceremonial of purification with water; one of the sacraments in the Christian churches, by which persons are initiated into the visible Church of Christ. It consists in either immersion in water or sprinkling with water, according to the practice of different churches.

In the Protestant Churches it is "the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace," accepted as a necessary preliminary to the other sacraments, and even as essential to salvation. In the Roman Catholic Church it carries remission of sin both original and actual. It existed in pre-Christian times among Jews and pagans, practiced in Chaldea, Egypt, India, Greece, Africa, Polynesia, North America, and ancient Europe, among others.

Mystically speaking, there are two baptisms: that of water and that of fire; the former pertaining to the plane of matter, the latter to that of spirit. In the New Testament, John the Baptist says: "I baptize you with water, but a greater than I shall come, who will baptize you with fire." Jesus instructs Nicodemus as to the two births: the birth of water and the birth of the spirit. Baptism was therefore a ceremonial pertaining to an inferior degree of initiation.

(See also: Baptism, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Eagle One of the four sacred animals of the Christian Qabbalists, the other three being the bull, the lion, and the man-angel. The eagle is a very ancient symbol, generally regarded as solar.

"With the Greeks and Persians it was sacred to the Sun; with the Egyptians, under the name of Ah, to Horus, and the Kopts worshipped the eagle under the name of Ahom. It was regarded as the sacred emblem of Zeus by the Greeks, and as that of the highest god by the Druids. The symbol has passed down to our day, when following the example of the pagan Marius, who, in the second century B.C. used the double-headed eagle as the ensign of Rome, the Christian crowned heads of Europe made the double-headed sovereign of the air sacred to themselves . . ." (TG 108).

(See also: Eagle, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Demon(s) (from Greek daimones, Latin daemons)

In many of the later religions, such as Christianity, either the gods of rival religions, nature spirits of paganism, or the exuviae or shells of the dead.

Actually demons are a relatively modern misapprehension of a large class of nature sprites which in ancient thought comprised a vast range of spiritual, semi-spiritual, and astral beings, existing in different degrees of evolutionary unfoldment, and therefore classified into groups from the fully self-conscious down to the only partly conscious elementals of the astral realms.

The teaching regarding daimones was extremely recondite; the later medieval Christian Demonologies, however, dealt almost exclusively with beings of low grade and of an astral character lacking moral sense and self-consciousness, which for ages have been called in European countries by names such as fairies, sprites, goblins, hobgoblins, pixies, nixies, and brownies.

See also DAEMON

(See also: Demon, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

The Westboro facility is organized as a fortified compound, made up of ten homes organized in a block at 3701 SW 12th Street in Topeka. The house in the center of the compound belongs to Phelps Sr., the basement of which serves as the church "meeting hall" (as he refers to it). The other nine houses were once occupied by non-congregants, who moved away either on their own initiative or as a result of not wanting to live near Westboro, and are now occupied by the families of Phelps Sr.'s nine children still associated with Westboro. The prope ...

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Westboro Baptist Church, Westboro Baptist Church - Overview, Westboro Baptist Church - The Westboro compound, Westboro Baptist Church - Composition of the Westboro membership, Westboro Baptist Church - Purpose, Westboro Baptist Church - Theology, Westboro Baptist Church - Sky Television report, Westboro Baptist Church - Quotes from Phelps' Sermons, Westboro Baptist Church - Similarities to the Christian Identity movement, Westboro Baptist Church - Activities and statements, Westboro Baptist Church - Criminal record, Westboro Baptist Church - Violence against Westboro, Westboro Baptist Church - Claiming divine vengeance, Westboro Baptist Church - September 11 attacks and the space shuttle Columbia, Westboro Baptist Church - London terrorist attacks, Westboro Baptist Church - God Hates Canada and God Hates Sweden, Westboro Baptist Church - Indian Ocean earthquake, Westboro Baptist Church - Stance on adoption by same-sex couples, Westboro Baptist Church - Hurricane Katrina, Westboro Baptist Church - Picketing of Rehnquist's funeral, Westboro Baptist Church - Picketing of Fred Rogers' memorial, Westboro Baptist Church - Soldiers in Iraq, Westboro Baptist Church - Other prejudices, Westboro Baptist Church - Responses, Westboro Baptist Church - Criticism, Westboro Baptist Church - Opposition to Westboro's theology, Westboro Baptist Church - Parodies, Westboro Baptist Church - WBC Websites

Read more here: » Westboro Baptist Church: Encyclopedia II - Westboro Baptist Church - The Westboro compound

Virgin In ancient mystic philosophy the feminine potency of nature as well as cosmic space which is often referred to as the immaculate celestial virgin (cosmogonically undifferentiated cosmic matter, alaya, mahabuddhi, etc.), or the astral light which is sometimes called the celestial virgin. Again, it refers to the numerous Queens of Heaven, such as Isis, Moon, Ashtoreth, Nuah (the Chaldean feminine Noah considered as one with the cosmic arc), Belita, Diana, Artemis, Ark, etc. -- most of these names having reference to the moon.

However, a sharp distinction should be made between the idea of the virgin connected with the lower planes of matter, including celestial bodies such as the moon, and the immaculate or undifferentiated cosmic virgin which is the immaculate spatial mother of the cosmic deep. On lower planes the Mother-Virgin is the various wombs of hierarchies, a feminine Manu or Prajapati, through whom pour the seeds of life from higher cosmic planes. The cosmic virgin is immaculate, and the zodiacal sign Virgo is her emblem; in human affairs she represents the nature of humanity before the division into sexes, in commemoration of which the sign Virgo became divided into Virgo and Scorpio. The name may also be used of a virgin male such as a kumara.

The ideas of the Virgin Mary in orthodox Christianity have been taken over from the pagans, as for example from the mother in the triad which heads all cosmogonies of the countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea (Isis, Juno, etc.). The word Mary from the Hebrew would seem etymologically cognate with the Latin mare (sea); the Hebrew word meaning bitter, and the sea likewise being bitter it is also cognate with other words meaning water, as in the Jewish expression, the waters of space, or the feminine productive principle.

See also IMMACULATE CONCEPTION; VIRGIN BIRTH

(See also: Virgin, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Stoics [from stoa corridor in Athens in which Zeno held his school and taught]

Stoicism is most familiar as a great ethical system; its aim was to make wisdom practical. It set virtue above outer, physical, or social happiness as an ideal to be aimed at, and both its watchword and its consequent objective was duty. Though in the form familiar to us it arose in Greece, its qualities were better adapted to Hellenistic then to purely Greek appreciations, and especially to the Romans of the Empire with their graver temperament and individual subjection to the imperium. So far as Greece is concerned, its practical character can be traced to the influence of Socrates and of the Cynics; but it received Asiatic influence from its founder (Zeno, 4th century BC), of Asiatic origin.

It recognized a supreme and all-harmonious divinity of hierarchical character and various subordinate deities, and the unity of man with nature and of nature with this divinity. This divinity, however, was not personal God, but the cosmic spiritual originant, recognized as but one of innumerable others in the boundless fields of illimitable space. Stoicism recognized in man the existence of wisdom and will, whereby he might transcend the distractions of lower forces and realize the ideal of harmony with nature and resulting equanimity.

This great system is worthy of being enumerated among the outpourings of the ancient wisdom and may be said to have been the religion of the Roman world under the early empire. Even Christian sectarianism admits that paganism reached one of its great heights of ethical idealism under the Stoics; and it has reverberated in wave after wave through succeeding ages down to the transcendentalism and "new thought" of our times.

(See also: Stoics, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Taliesin (Welsh) He of the radiant brow; a transformation of Gwion, eaten as a barley-grain by Ceridwen as an old black hen. She bore him nine months in her womb, and when he was born, set him afloat in a basket of rushes on the Teifi River where Elphin found him and named him Taliesin.

Seventy-seven poems attributed to Taliesin come down, supposedly from the 6th century, though critics maintain that they are forgeries of the 12th or 13th. But the poetry of the later centuries is exceedingly different from the poetry of the Cynfeirdd -- Talesin, Myrddin Gwyllt, Llywarch Hen, and Aneurin -- said to have lived in the 6th century. Of these four, the first two are mystical and Druidical. The verse forms are simple, the rhythm is lofty: the thought, when it is apparent -- for the language is exceedingly archaic and difficult -- is in the grand manner. Twelfth and 13th century poetry on the other hand is ultra-tortuous in form -- the extreme old age of a literature, when thought and inspiration are gone, and only delight in curious form remains -- while the subject matter is practically always the Bard's praise of his chieftain. Purely literary criticism would most certainly place the Cynfeirdd many centuries earlier than the 12th century poets.

The note of the real Taliesin is pagan, that after-centuries were so desperate to make a Christian:

I have been in many a shape

Before I attained a congenial form

I have been a word in a book

I have been a drop in the air.

I have born a banner

Before Alexander

I was in Canaan

Before Absolom was slain

I was on the high cross

Of the merciful Son of God.

My original country

Is the region of the summer stars:

I am a marvel

Whose origin is not known

Nine months was I then

In the womb of Ceridwen

I was Gwion the Little;

Now I am Taliesin.

Not of father and mother

My creator created me,

But of nine-formed faculties

Of the fruit of fruits

Of the god of the Beginning

Of primroses and hill blooms

Of the blossoms of nettles

Of the ninth wave's water.

I was enchanted by Math

Before I became immortal:

(Then) I was enchanted by Gwydion

The Initiator of the Britons,

Of Eurwys, of Euron,

Of Euron, of Modron,

Of five battalions of Adepts

Teachers, the Children of Math.

Math fab Mathonwy was a famous enchanter; in the madinogi he is the teacher of Gwydion. Men are "enchanted by Math before" they "become immortal," then by Gwydion the Initiator.

A great deal of what is too obscure to be intelligible, breaking now and again into bursts of great poetry, wherein deep esoteric meanings are apparent: such are the 77 poems of Taliesin.

(See also: Taliesin, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Popes The Roman Catholic Church appropriated many of the institutions of paganism, among them the idea of a sacred hierarchy, which was originally the succession of initiates presiding over the Mysteries -- what is called in India the guruparampara chain. Hence the popes claimed both temporal and spiritual sovereignty.

One group of the early Christians claimed Peter as having been appointed head of the Church by Jesus, and he is accordingly placed at the beginning of the line of popes. Historical researches leave ample scope for freedom of opinion as to the justification for this claim and for the alleged line of succession.

The doctrine of papal infallibility, often misrepresented, was decreed by Pius IX in 1870, and declares that the pope's authority, when speaking ex cathedra (i.e., under certain prescribed forms), is to be considered decisive as to doctrine and moral rules. {add more}

(See also: Popes, pope, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Good Friday Anniversary celebration of the alleged physical crucifixion of Jesus Christ, which has a shifting date, varying between the 20th of March and the 23rd of April, the epoch of the Jewish Passover and the spring equinox.

Good Friday and Easter Sunday are a borrowing from the ancient Mysteries -- the mystic death and resurrection of the unconquered sun, exemplified by the mystic death and resurrection of the successful neophyte. This celebration is likewise connected with the winter solstice; the wish of the church authorities to accommodate themselves both to Roman and Jewish customs has caused the festival to be split, so that the birth now is celebrated in winter and the death and the resurrection in spring, whereas birth and resurrection are two words for the same mystic truth.

Even in the dogmatic and somewhat mechanical Christian celebration of these originally pagan mysteries, Friday is the day of Venus, a prototype of the organ of the gnostic individuality; Saturday is the day of Saturn, a prototype of the guardian in ancient mystical occultism of the initiatory Ring-pass-not; and Sunday, the day of the rising or resurrection, is the day of the sun, giver of life and light.

(See also: Good Friday, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Hesperos (Greek) Venus as the evening star, brother of Eosphoros or Phosphoros (equivalent to the Roman Lucifer), the morning star, children of dawn and twilight. In Hesiod they are children of Astraios and Eos (starry heaven and dawn). Hesperos was glorified in early Christian and pagan bridal songs, and Blavatsky calls Hesperos the father of the Hesperides. (SD 1:386; BCW 8:16-8)

(See also: Hesperos, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Communion In Christian Churches, the sacrament of the Eucharist, an ancient pagan rite early adopted by Christendom. It originally signified communion of the human self with its inner god, a state attained more or less perfectly during initiation, or by those who have attained the power thus to communicate, and symbolized in the Mysteries by ceremonial rites similar to those which the Church has borrowed.

See also BREAD AND WINE

(See also: Communion, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Hesperos (Greek) Venus as the evening star, brother of Eosphoros or Phosphoros (equivalent to the Roman Lucifer), the morning star, children of dawn and twilight. In Hesiod they are children of Astraios and Eos (starry heaven and dawn). Hesperos was glorified in early Christian and pagan bridal songs, and Blavatsky calls Hesperos the father of the Hesperides. (SD 1:386; BCW 8:16-8)

(See also: Hesperides, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Encapsulation Medieval theory, a misunderstood rendering of the pagan Mystery teaching of the One becoming the many, which later was rejected by scientists.

"The idea was that Mother Eve in the Garden of Eden held encapsulated in her womb all the seeds of the human race, which she passed on to her children, the families of which in their turn held encapsulated the seeds of future generations, passing them on to their children; and so forth. When properly interpreted, this is what H. P. B. meant when she spoke in The Secret Doctrine (I, 223-4) of the unmodified germ plasm -- Weismann's theory.

"Here again the Christians anthropomorphized the esoteric doctrine, thus distorting it. As a matter of fact, not only the animal kingdom, but the vegetable, mineral, and even the three elemental kingdoms, came forth from the primal human, the 'Adam Qadmon. They were all encapsulated within him, and he brought them forth" (FSO 354n). (Dialogues 3:421-3)

(See also: Encapsulation, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)