chapter iii.

Now, we ask, in the name of common sense, how could the faithful of Peter's Church increase at such a rate, when Nero trapped and killed them like so many mice during his reign ? History shows the few Christians fleeing from Rome, wherever they could, to avoid the persecution of the emperor, and the *'Chronique des Arts'* makes them increase and multiply ! ** Christ," the article goes on to say, ** willed that this visible sign of the doctrinal authority of his vicar should also have its portion of immortality ; one can follow it from age to age in the documents of the Roman Church." Tertullian formally attests its existence in his book '*De Praescriptionibus." Eager to learn everything concerning so interesting a subject, we would like to be shown when
fflSTORY OF THE CHAIR OF PETER. 2$
this conflict culminated at the nick of time, we might have seen repro- duced on a miniature scale the disgraceful scenes of the episodes of Salem witchcraft and the Nuns of lA)udun. As it was, the clergy were muzzled.
But if science has unintentionally helped the progress of the occult phenomena, the latter have reciprocally aided science herself. Until the days when newly-reincarnated philosophy boldly claimed its place in the world, there had been but few scholars who had undertaken the difficult task of studying comparative theology. This science occupies a domain heretofore penetrated by few explorers. The necessity which it involved of being well acquainted with the dead languages, necessarily limited the number of students. Besides, there was less popular need for it so long as people could not replace the Christian orthodoxy by something more tangible. It is one of the most undeniable facts of psychology, that the average man can as little exist out of a religious element of some kind, as a fish out of the water. The voice of truth, ** a voice stronger than the voice of the mightiest thunder," speaks to the inner man in the nine- teenth century of the Christian era, as it spoke in the corresponding century B.C. It is a useless and unprofitable task to offer to humanity the choice between a future life and annihilation. The only chance that remains for those friends of human progress who seek to establish for the good of mankind a faith, henceforth stripped entirely of superstition
did Christ WILL anything of the kind ? However : ' * Ornaments of ivory have been fitted to the front and back of the chair, but only on those parts repaired with acacia- wood. Those which cover the panel in front are divided into three superimposed rows, each containing six plaques of ivory, on which are engraved various subjects, among others the ' Labors of Hercules.' Several of the plaques were vnrongly placed, and seemed to have been affixed to the chair at a time when the remains of antiquity were eipployed as orna- ments, without much regard to fitness." This is the point. The article was written amply as a devor answer to several facts published during the present century. Bower, in his **History of the Popes" (voL ii., p. 7), narrates that in the year 1662, while cleaning one of the chairs, "the 'Twelve Labors of Hercules' unluckily appeared engraved upon it," after which the chair was removed and another substituted. But in 1795, when Bona- parte's troops occupied Rome, the chair was again examined. This time there was found the Mahometan confession of faith, in Arabic letters : *^ There is no Deity bat Allah, and Mahomet is his Apostle.'* (See appendix to **Ancient Symbol- Worship," by H. M. Westropp and C. Staniland Wake.) In the appendix Prof. Alexander Wilder very justly remarks as follows : ** We presume that the Apostle of the Circum- dsofiy as Paul, his great rival, styles him, was never at the Imperial City, nor had a iDcceasor there, not even in the ghetto. The * Chair of Peter,* therefore, is sacred rather than apostolical. Its sanctity proceeded, however, from the esoteric religion of the former times of Rome. The hierophant of the Mysteries probably occupied it on the day of initiations, when exhibiting to the candidates the Petroma (stone tablet ooQtaining the last revelation made by the hierophant to the neophyte for initiation).**
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and dogmatic fetters is to address them in the words of Joshua : " Choose ye this day whom you will serve ; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell.'' •
" The science of religion," wrote Max Miiller in i860, " is only just beginning. . . . During the last fifty years the authentic documents of tlie most important religions in the world Jiave been recovered in a most unexpected and almost miraculous manner, \ We have now before us the Canonical books of Buddhism ; the Zend-Avesta of Zoroaster is no longer a sealed book ; and the hymns of the Jiig- Veda have revealed a state of religions anterior to the first beginnings of that mythology which in Homer and Hesiod stands before us as a mouldering ruin." |
In their insatiable desire to extend the dominion of blind faith, the early architects of Christian theology had been forced to conceal, as much as it was possible, the true sources of the same. To this end they are said to have burned or otherwise destroyed all the original man- uscripts on the Kabala, magic, and occult sciences upon which they could lay their hands. They ignorantly supposed that the most danger- ous writings of this class had perished with the last Gnostic ; but some day they may discover their mistake. Other authentic and as important documents will perhaps reappear in a '* most unexpected and almost miraculous manner."
* Joshua xxiv. 15.
f One of the most surprising facts that have come under our observation, is that students of profound research should not couple the frequent recurrence of these ** un* expected and almost miraculous** discoveries of important documents, at the most op- portune moments, with a premeditated design. Is it so strange that the custodians of '* Pagan *' lore, seeing that the proper moment had arrived, should cause the needed document, book, or relic to fall as if by accident in the right man's way? Geological surveyors and explorers even as competent as Humboldt and Tschuddi, have not dis- covered the hidden mines from which the Peruvian Incas dug their treasure, although the latter confesses that the present degenerate Indians have the secret. In 1839, Per- ring, the archaeologist, proposed to the sheik of an Arab village two purses of gold, if he helped him to discover the entrance to the hidden passage leading to the sepulchral chambers in the North Pyramid of Doshoor. But though his men were o..t of employ- ment and half- starved, the sheik proudly refused to *' sell the secret of the dead,** promising to show it gratis^ when the time would come for it. Is it, then, impossiUe that in some other regions of the earth are guarded the remains of that glorious litera- ture of the past, which was the fruit of its majestic civilization ? What is there so sur- prising in the idea ? Who knows but that as the Christian Church has unconsciously begotten free thought by reaction against her own cruelty, rapacity, and dogmatism, the public mind may be glad to follow the lead of the Orientalists, away from Jerusalem and towards EUora ; and that then much more will be discovered that is now hidden ?
X ** Chips from a German Workshop,** vol. i., p. 373 ; Semitic Monotheism.
WHAT WAS SAVED FROM THE BRUCKION. 27
There are strange traditions current in various parts of the East — on Mount Athos and in the Desert of Nitria, for instance — auiong certain monks, and with learned Rabbis in Palestine, who pass their lives in commenting upon the Talmud, They say that not all the rolls and manuscripts, reported in history to have been burned by Caesar, by the Christian mob, in 389, and by the Arab General Amni, perished as it is commonly believed ; and the story they tell is the following : At the time of the contest for the throne, in 51 B.C., between Cleopatra and her brother Dionysius Ptolemy, the Bruckion, which contained over seven hundred thousand rolls, all bound in wood and fire-proof parch- ment, was undergoing repairs, and a great portion of the original man- uscripts, considered among the most precious, and which were not duplicated, were stored away in the house of one of the librarians. As the fire which consumed the rest was but the result of accident, no pre- cautions had been taken at the time. But they add, that several hours passed between the burning of the fleet, set on fire by Caesar's order, and the moment when the first buildings situated near the harbor caught fire in their turn ; and that all the librarians, aided by several hundred slaves attached to the museum, succeeded in saving the most precious of the rolls. So perfect and solid was the fabric of the parchment, that while in some rolls the inner pages and the wood-binding were reduced to ashes, of others the parchment binding remained unscorched. These particu- lars were all written out in Greek, Latin, and the Chaldeo-Syriac dia- lect, by a learned youth named Theodas, one of the scribes employed in the museum. One of these manuscripts is alleged to be preserved till now in a Greek convent ; and the person who narrated the tradi- tion to us had seen it himself. He said that many more will see it and learn where to look for important documents, when a certain prophecy will be fulfilled ; adding, that most of these works could be found in Tartary and India.* The monk showed us a copy of the original, which, of course, we could read but poorly, as we claim but little erudition in the matter of dead languages. But we were so particularly struck by
^ An after-thought has made us fancy that we can understand what is meant by the foUowing sentences of Moses of Choreni: "The ancient Asiatics," says he, "five oentaries berore our era — and especially the Hindus, the Persians, and the Chaldeans, in their possession a quantity of historical and scientific books. These works partially borrowed, partially translated in the Greek language, mostly since the Ptoloiues had established the Alexandrian library and encouraged the writers by their liberalities, so that the Greek language became the deposit of all the sciences" the 700,000 volumes of the Alexandrian Library was due to India, and her next oeighborsL
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the vivid and picturesque translation of the holy father, that we perfectly remember some curious paragraphs, which run, as far as we can recall them, as follows : — " When the Queen of the Sun (Cleopatra) was brought back to the half-ruined city, after the fire had devoured the Glory of the World ; and when she saw the mountains of books — or rolls — covering the half-consumed steps of the estrada ; and when she perceived that the inside was gone and the indestructible covers alone remained, she wept in rage and fury, and cursed the meanness of her fathers who had grudged the cost of the real Pergamos for the inside as well as the outside of the precious rolls." Further, our author, Theodas, indulges in a joke at the expense of the queen for believing that nearly all the library was burned ; when, in fact, hundreds and thousands of the choicest books were safely stored in his own house and those of other scribes, librarians, students, and philosophers.
No more do sundry very learned Copts scattered all over the East in Asia Minor, Egypt, and Palestine believe in the total destruction of the subsequent libraries. For instance, they say that out of the library of Attains III. of Pergamus, presented by Antony to Cleopatra, not a volume was destroyed. At that time, according to their assertions, from the moment that the Christians began to gain power in Alexandria — about the end of the fourth century — and Anatolius, Bishop of Laodicea, began to insult the national gods, the Pagan philosophers and learned theurgists adopted effective measures to preserve the repositories of their sacred learning. Theophilus, a bishop, who left behind him the reputation of a most rascally and mercenary villain, was accused by one named Antoninus, a famous theurgist and eminent scholar of occult science of Alexandria, with bribing the slaves of the Serapion to steal books which he sold to foreigners at great prices. History tells us how Theophilus had the best of the philosophers, in a.d. 389 ; and how his successor and nephew, the no less infamous Cyril, butchered Hypatia. Suidas gives us some details about Antoninus, whom he calls Anto- nius, and his eloquent friend Olympus, the defender of the Serapion. But history is far from being complete in the miserable remnants of books, which, crossing so many ages, have reached our own learned cen- tury ; it fails to give the facts relating to the first five centuries of Chris- tianity which are preserved in the numerous traditions current in the East. Unauthenticated as these may appear, there is unquestionably in the heap of chaff much good grain. That these traditions are not oftener communicated to Europeans is not strange, when we consider how apt our travellers are to render themselves antagonistic to the natives by their skeptical bearing and, occasionally, dogmatic intoler- ance. When exceptional men like some archaeologists, who knew how
THE HIDDEN LIBRARY AT ISHMONIA. 29
to win the confidence and even friendship of certain Arabs, are favored with precious documents, it is declared simply a " coinci- dence." And yet there are widespread traditions of the existence of certain subterranean, and immense galleries, in the neighborhood of Ishmonia — the "petrified City," in which are stored numberless manu- scripts and rolls. For no amount of money would the Arabs go near it. At night, they say, from the crevices of the desolate ruins, sunk deep in the un watered sands of the desert, stream the rays from lights carried to and fro in the galleries by no human hands. The Afrites study the literature of the antediluvian ages, according to their belief, and the Djin learns fi-om the magic rolls the lesson of the following day.
The Encyclopedia Britannica^ in its article on Alexandria, says : " WTien the temple of Serapis was demolished . . . the valuable library wzs pillaged or destroyed ; and twenty years afterwards * the empty shelves excited the regret . . . etc." But it does not state the subsequent fate of the pillaged books.
In rivalry of the fierce Mary-worshippers of the fourth century, the modem clerical persecutors of liberalism and " heresy " would willingly shut up all the heretics and their books in some modern Serapion and bum them alive.f The cause of this hatred is natural. Modem re- search has more than ever unveiled the secret. " Is not the worship of saints and angels now," said Bishop Newton, years ago, " in all respects the same that the worship of demons was in former times ? The name only is different, the thing is identically the same . . . the very same temples, the very same images, which were once consecrated to Jupiter and the other demons, are now consecrated to the Virgin Mary and other saints . . . the whole of Paganism is converted and applied to Poperyr
Why not be impartial and add that " a good portion of it was adopted by Protestant religions also ? "
The very apostolic designation Peter is from the Mysteries. The hierophant or supreme pontiff bore the Chaldean title nno, peter ^ or in- terpreter. The names Phtah, PethV, the residence of Balaam, Patara, and Patras, the names of oracle-cities, pateres or pateras and, perhaps,
• Bonauny sajrs in ** Le Bibliotheque d'Alexandrie," quoting, we suppose, the Pres- bjrtcr Orosius, who was an eye-witness, ** thirty years later.*'
f Since the above was written, the sfiirit here described has been beautifully exem- plified at Barcelona, Spain, where the Bishop Fray Joachim invited the local spiritual- ists to witness a formal buminj^ of spiritual books. We find the account in a paper called ** The Revelation," published at Alicante, wHich sensibly adds that the perform- was '* a caricature of the memorable epoch of the Inquisition.*'
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Buddha,* all come from the same root. Jesus says : " Upon this petra I will build my Church, and the gates, or rulers of Hades, shall not prevail against it ; " meaning by petra the rock -temple, and by metaphor, the Christian Mysteries ; the adversaries to which were the old mystery-gods of the underworld, who were worshipped in the rites of Isis, Adonis, Atys, Sabazius, Dionysus, and the Eleusinia. No apostle Peter was ever at Rome ; but the Pope, seizing the sceptre of the Pont if ex Afaximus^ the keys of Janus and Kubel6, and adorning his Christian head with the cap of the Magna Mater^ copied from that of the tiara of Brahmatma, the Supreme Pontiff of the Initiates of old India, became the successor of the Pagan high priest, the real Peter-Roma, or Petroma,\
The Roman Catholic Church has two far mightier enemies than the " heretics " and the " infidels ; " and these are — Comparative Mythology and Philology. When such eminent divines as the Rev. James Free- man Clarke go so much out of their way to prove to their readers that ** Critical Theology from the time of Origen and Jerome . . . and the Controversial Theology during fifteen centuries, has not consisted in accepting on authority the opinions of other people," but has shown, on the contrary, much "acute and comprehensive reasoning," we can but regret that so much scholarship should have been wasted in attempting to prove that which a fair survey of the history of theology upsets at every step. In these ** controversies " and critical treatment of the doc- trines of the Church one can certainly find any amount of " acute rea- soning," but far more of a still acuter sophistry.
Recently the mass of cumulative evidence has been re-inforced to an extent which leaves little, if any, room for further controversy. A con- clusive opinion is furnished by too many scholars to doubt the fact that India was the Alma-Mater, not only of the civihzation, arts, and sciences, but also of all the great religions of antiquity ; Judaism, and hence Christianity, included. Herder places the cradle of humanity in India, and shows Moses as a clever and relatively modern compiler of the ancient Brahmanical traditions : " The river which encircles the country (India) is the sacred Ganges, which all Asia considers as the paradisaical river. There, also, is the biblical Gihon, which is none else but the Indus. The Arabs call it so unto this day, and the names of the countries watered by it are yet existing among the Hindus." Jacolliot claims to have translated every ancient palm-leaf manuscript which he had the fortune of being allowed by the Brahmans of the pagodas to see. In one of his
* £. Pococke gives the variations of the name Buddha as : Bud*ha, Buddha, Booddha, Butta, Pout, Pote, Pto, Pte, Phte, Phtha, Phut, etc, etc. See "India in Greece,*' Note, Appendix, 397.
f The tiara of the Pope is also a perfect copy of that of the Dalai'- Lama of Thibet.
ORIGIN OF THE PAPAL TIARA AND KEYS. 31
translations, we found passages which reveal to us the undoubted origin of the keys of St. Peter, and account for the subsequent adoption of the symbol by. their Holinesses, the Popes of Rome.
He shows us, on the testimony of the Agrouchada Parikshai^ which he freely translates as " the Book oj Spirits " (Pitris), that centuries before our era the initiates of the temple chose a Superior Council, pre- sided over by the Brahm-&tma or supreme chief of all these Initiates, That this pontificate, which could be exercised only by a Brahman who had reached the age of eighty years ; * that the Brahm dtma was sole guardian of the mystic formula, resumi of every science, contained in the three mysterious letters,
A
u M
which signify creation, conservation, and transformation. He alone could expound its meaning in the presence of the initiates of the third and supreme degree. Whomsoever among these initiates revealed to a profane a single one of the truths, even the smallest of the secrets en- trusted to his care, was put to death. He who received the confidence had to share his fate.
" Finally, to crown this able system," says Jacolliot, " there existed a word still more superior to the mysterious monosyllable — A U M, and which rendered him who came into the possession of its key nearly the equal of Brahma himself. The Brahm-^tma alone possessed this key, and transmitted it in a sealed casket to his successor.
" This unknown word, of which no human power could, even to-day, when the Brahmanical authority has been crushed under the Mongolian and European invasions, to-day, when each pagoda has its Brahm-Atma, f force the disclosure, was engraved in a golden triangle and preserved in a sanctuary of the temple of Asgartha, whose Brahm-atma alone held the keys. He also bore upon his tiara two crossed keys supported by two kneeling Brahmans, symbol of the precious deposit of which he had the keeping. . . . This word and this triangle were engraved upon the tablet of the ring that this religious chief wore as one of the signs of his dig- nity ; it was also framed in a golden sun on the altar, where every morn- ing the Supreme Pontiff offered the sacrifice of the sarvameda, or sacri- fice to all the forces of nature.'* J
♦ It b the traditional policy of the College of Cardinals to elect, whenever practi- cable, the new Pope among the oldest valetudinarians. The hierophant of the Eleusi- nia was likewise always an old man, and unmarried.
f This is not correct. { ** Le Spiritisme dans le Monde,** p. 28.
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Is this clear enough ? And will the Catholics still maintain that it was the Brahmans of 4,000 years ago who copied the ritual, symbols, and dress of the Roman Pontiffs ? We would not feel in the least surprised.
Without going very far back into antiquity for comparisons, if we only stop at the fourth and fifth centuries of our era, and contrast the so-called "heathenism" of the third Neo-platonic Eclectic School with the grow- ing Christianity, the result may not be favorable to the latter. Even at that early period, when the new religion had hardly outlined its contra- dictory dogmas ; when the champions of the bloodthirsty Cyril knew not themselves whether Mary was to become " the Mother of God," or rank as a ** demon " in company with Isis ; when the memory of the meek and lowly Jesus still lingered lovingly in every Christian* heart, and his words of mercy and charity vibrated still in the air, even then the Christians were outdoing the Pagans in every kind of ferocity and religious intoler- ance.
And if we look still farther back, and seek for examples of true Chrisiismy in ages when Buddliism had hardly superseded Brahmanism in India, and the name of Jesus was only to be pronounced three centuries later, what do we find ? Which of the holy pillars of the Church has ever elevated himself to the level of religious tolerance and noble simplicity of character of some heathen ? Compare, for instance, the Hindu Asoka, who lived 300 B.C., and the Carthaginian St. Augustine, who flour- ished three centuries after Christ. According to- Max Muller, this is what is found engraved on the rocks of Girnar, Dhauli, and Kapurdigiri :
** Piyadasi, the king beloved of the gods, desires that the ascetics of all creeds might reside in all places. All these ascetics profess alike the command which people should exercise over themselves, and the purity of the soul. But people have different opinions and different inclina- tions ^
And here is what Augustine wrote after his baptism : " Wondrous depth of thy words ! whose surface, behold ! is before us, inviting to little ones ; yet are they a wondrous depth, O my God, a wondrous depth ! It is awful to look therein ; yes ... an awfulness of honor, and a trembling of love. Thy enemies [read Pagans] thereof I hate vehemently ; Oh, that thou wouldst slay them with thy two-edged sword, that they might no longer be enemies to it ; for so do I love to have them slai'iy*
Wonderful spirit of Christianity ; and that from a Manichean con- verted to the religion of one who even on his cross prayed for his ene- mies !
♦Translated by Prof. Draper for "Conflict between Religion and Science;"