Peter and Paul are archetypes of two Opposing Powers in Christianity The Secret Doctrine preached by Jesus has been disfigured by the Fathers beyond recognition. What the Fathers fought for was not Truth, but their own interpretations and unwarranted assertions. From the early days of Marcion of Sinope, the primitive Church has been split into two opposing parties: one viewing Christianity as a Hebrew institution and law, a narrow faction and extension of Judaism; the other, striving to replace Mosaic law with universal compassion and true brotherhood. Peter was the representative of the former; Paul, of the latter. The mission of Jesus, according to Marcion, was to abrogate the Jewish “Lord,” who “was opposed to the God and Father of Jesus Christ as Matter is to Spirit, impurity to purity.” The Apostle of Circumcision made his mission to persecute the Apostle of the Gentiles. After denying the very existence of Simon Magus, the Roman Church merged his individuality entirely in that of Paul, whose Epistles were secretly as well as openly calumniated and opposed by Peter, and charged with containing “dysnoëtic learning.” Saul in the flesh was the function and parallel of Chr?stos. Paul freed from earthly obligations, the function and parallel of Jesus Chrestos becoming Christos in spirit. Unlike Jesus Chrestos, Paul revoked openly the Jewish law of circumcision. For Paul, Christ was not a person but an embodied ideal. Paul was a Nazar, a Chaldean Theurgist. He was a Master-Builder, an Adept in a Kabbalistic, Theurgic, and Masonic sense. That is why he was so persecuted and hated by Peter, John, and James. Whoever else might have built the Church of Rome it was not the Apostle of the Circumcision. The assertion that hen-hearted Peter suffered martyrdom at Rome is the greatest of all Patristic frauds. Scared at the accusation of the servant of the high priest, the apostle had thrice denied his master. The extraordinary forgeries of the Fathers have been plainly demonstrated by diligent research and the power of informed logic. Did you know that the first fifteen Christian bishops of Jerusalem, commencing with James and including Judas, were all circumcised Jews? Who was the Peter who invented a burning hell and threatened every one with it? Who promised miracles, but worked none? The controversy sparked by the death of Jesus, between the Petrine and the Pauline sects, was deplorable. What one did, the other vowed to undo. His “chair” was not apostolical either: it had been plagiarised from old initiatory rites. There were two chairs of the titular apostle at Rome. But the chair holder was conspicuous by his absence. Why? Because the real “Chair of Peter,” was sacred rather than apostolical: the “Fathers” had plagiarised a chair occupied by the Hierophant during initiations, when showing to the candidate the last revelation set in two tablets of stone. That was how Popes appointed themselves successors to the title of Peter. The Roman Church has attempted to connect the leader of the Apostles with the initiatory stone tablets or Petroma, and appointing him vicar of Christ on earth and first Pope. Thus, Popes have gained the right to call themselves successors to the title of Peter, but hardly successors to the doctrines of Jesus. While the old Aramaic Patar or Peter would connect master and disciple with the Secret Doctrine, any connection of the “Seat of Peter” with Petroma at the Supreme Initiation is far-fetched. Paul is the real founder of Christianity. Peter never had anything to do with the foundation of the Latin Church. Peter the Apostle and Petroma are miles apart. The former, represents matter and spiritual darkness; the latter, the Spirit of Christos within the heart of everyman. Peter never lost an occasion to contradict Paul without naming him, but indicating him so clearly that it was next to impossible to doubt whom he meant. Peter and Paul epitomise the two Opposing Forces of the Universe. It is doubtful whether either of these men were historical figures. This awful and ugly state of Christianity has been cunningly preserved from too close scrutiny by an array of formidable Church penances and anathemas, which kept the curious back under the false pretence of sacrilege and profanation of “divine mysteries”; millions have been butchered in the name of the God of Mercy. Paul had been converted, not to the Jesus of Nazareth, but to the Christos of the Gnostics. In his Epistles, he has been made to fulminate against the heretics but these heretics were actually Peter, James, and the other Apostles. The Christos of Paul is the same Christos who directs our occult movement. One who believes in Paul cannot believe in James, Peter, and John. For, what Paul preached, was preached by every other mystic philosopher. The author of the fourth evangel was not John, the friend and companion of Peter, whom he contradicts point-blank in chapter i, verse 18. Even the Romish monastery and nunnery are servile copies of similar religious houses in Thibet and Mongolia. One legacy of the Roman Church and seed of its own demise was the fabrication of an anthropomorphic god. Another, was the passports to heaven bearing an image of Peter holding the keys to paradise!

Whenever there is a decline of virtue, an uprising of vice and injustice in the world, a Great Soul incarnates on earth for the establishment of righteousness, the destruction of the wicked, and the preservation of the just. The Hindu Redeemer preceded the Christian by some thousands of years; between the two, Gautama Buddha, reflected Krishna (who appears in every yuga) and projected into the night of the future his own luminous shadow, out of whose collected rays were shaped the outlines of the mythical Jesus, and from whose teachings were drawn those of the historical Christos. Krishna, Gautama, and Jesus appeared like true gods, each in his epoch, and bequeathed to humanity three great religions built on the imperishable rock of ages. If their religions are cleansed from the dross of priestly dogmas, they will be found to be identical for the primitive truths of all three rest on one foundation, the Archaic Wisdom Religion. Kapila, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato, Basilides, Marcian, Ammonius and Plotinus, founded schools and sowed the germs of many a noble thought and, disappearing, left behind them the refulgence of demi-gods. As Mussulmans will not admit that their Koran is built on the substratum of the Jewish Bible, so the Christians will not confess that they owe next to everything to the Hindu religions. The most praiseworthy Christians are modified Buddhists, though probably not one of them ever heard of Prince Siddhartha. Cruelty and mercy are finite feelings. But the Supreme Deity is infinite, hence it can only be Just, and Justice must be blind. The doctrine of Vicarious Atonement is one of the most demoralizing of doctrines. Even the faintest glimmering sense of Justice revolts against such a pernicious dogma of atonement by proxy and salvation by prayer. The effects of a cause are never limited to the boundaries of the cause, nor can the results of crime be confined to the offender and his victim. The action may be instantaneous, the effects are eternal.

Paracelsus was the most wondrous intellect of his age and original thinker. Bold creator of chemical medicines, founder of courageous parties, ever victorious in controversy. He belonged to those great minds who have created a new mode of thinking on the natural existence of things. More than one pathologist, chemist, homœopathist, and magnetist has quenched his thirst for knowledge in his books. Alkahest, a Paracelsian term for which there is no end to the assumed explanations, is Chaos, i.e., primordial undifferentiated substance, containing within itself the essence of all that goes to make up man, including the “breath of life” itself in a latent state, ready to be awakened. Chaos is another name for Æther, the celestial virgin and spiritual mother of every form and being in the manifested world. Alkahest was used by Paracelsus to denote the menstruum or universal solvent that is capable of reducing all things. But the real alkahest is the all-pervading Divine Spirit of the higher Initiate, not the all-geist of the inferior Alchemist. Paracelsus was the greatest chemist of his age and peer of modern scientists. But he exhausted his ingenuity in endless transpositions of letters and abbreviations of words and sentences. For example, when he wrote sutratur he meant tartar; and by mutrin, nitrum! By mercurius vitæ, he meant the living spirit or aura of silver, not the quicksilver. Paracelsus declared that the affinity between stars and man is due to their identical composition. Embodied existence is the outcome of reciprocal sympathies and antipathies between the starry sky and man. Our body comes from terrestrial elements; the thinking principle, from the stars. It is not the spirits of heaven and hell that are the masters of nature but the Spirit of Man which is concealed in him, as the fire is concealed in the flint. Every living being possesses his own celestial power and is closely allied with heaven. The fact that everyone affects another and all, mutually and reciprocally, is evidence of the universal sympathy and antipathy that exists between everyone and everything. Éliphas Lévi quotes approvingly the doctrine of Paracelsus that every man, animal, and plant bears external and internal evidence of the influences dominant at the moment of germinal development. Pure magic stems from the imperial will of man. Will is neither spirit nor substance but everlasting ideation. Determined will is the beginning of all magical operations. Paracelsus is the father of modern magic and proponent of the occult physics of the Kabbalah and Magnetism. True Magic is occult wisdom; reason, the folly of man. No armour can protect against Black Magic, for it injures the inward spirit of life. But there is a divine power in every man, which is to rule his life, and which no one can influence for evil, not even the greatest magician. Let men bring their lives under its guidance, and they have nothing to fear from man or devil. The great Adept removed disease by applying a healthy organism to the afflicted part. Watch out! A would-be healer, who is physically or morally ill, not only fails to heal but often imparts his illness to his patient, thus robbing him of what strength he may have. The divine spirit is a great thing, so great that no one can fully express its greatness. It requires no conjuration or ceremonies. Circle-making and incense burning are all tomfoolery and temptation by which only evil spirits are attracted, says Paracelsus. If we only knew the power of the heart, nothing would be impossible for us. The whole world is one living organism and outcome of a single creative effort. There is no death and nothing “dead” throughout nature. Neither the form of man, nor that of any animal, plant or stone has ever been “created,” and it is only on this plane of ours that it commenced becoming, by expanding from within without, from the most sublimated and supersensuous essence into its grossest appearance in the abyss of matter. According to the Hermetico-Kabbalistic philosophy of Paracelsus, it is Yliaster that evolved out of its “chaotic” self a new Kosmos. Yliaster is the universal matrix of Kosmos, the Father-Mother within. It is beyond space, time, and intellectual comprehension. Yliaster is Anima Mundi, the noumenon of Astral Light, and a cosmic veil between earth and the waters of Space that sprang out of Chaos. The Swiss-German Adept rediscovered some of the lost secrets of the Phrygian priests and the Asclepieia. He was a learned Theosophist and a far-famed physician-Occultist. He taught that Fire, i.e., the Spirit of the Flame, is the highest God. The Hermetic Fire is a ray of the One eternal and infinite Flame that starts from, and is immediately reabsorbed into, the parent essence. The Spirit of the Flame is invisible to all except to the eyes of another immortal Spirit. The occult properties of medicinal plants and minerals, and of the curative powers of certain things in nature, are far more important and useful than metaphysical and psychological Occultism or Theophany.

The compound term Theophania (from theos, “God,” and phainesthai, “to appear”) does not simply mean the appearance of God in man but the actual presence of a God in man, a divine incarnation.