Have homophobia and misogyny been defeated?

[pi3141]

And no, just because I called the story of Christ a myth does NOT mean I subscribe to the official 'Christ Myth Theory'

 

 

Largely explained on my thread.

[Macnamara]

11 minutes ago, pi3141 said:

 

No, I recomended quaker, I believe they have a better understanding of Christs teachings than most other churches and of course they are Christian. 

 

I also attend Unitarian and Spiritualist churches, again both Christian.

 

of course one set of christians will call another sect 'heretics'....

[Macnamara]

7 minutes ago, pi3141 said:

Christians are sun worshiping pagans who don't know it. Their faith is being abused.

 

sure....the suns light enters the rose window facing east to the rising sun to impregnate the womb of the church so that the congregation can be born again out of the vesica pisces doors...

 

but these issues are not black and white and i know this because i WAS the petulant critical theory pushing leftist when i was younger. I was the one tearing everything down.

 

but then i learned that there were good things too. For example the UK Column have done a series looking at the role christianity played in advancing literacy in europe which then made us the power house of the world.

 

Christianity too has also given many people community and morality and its no coincidence that a slip in faith in europe has seen a slip in society towards degeneracy

 

I'm not saying these things to advocate some sort of hardcore religious position, i'm simply trying to take an objective view that looks at both the pros and cons of things

[pi3141]

38 minutes ago, Macnamara said:

sure....the suns light enters the rose window facing east to the rising sun to impregnate the womb of the church so that the congregation can be born again out of the vesica pisces doors...

 

Very good.

 

An example of Sun and Fertility symbology in the church.

 

Then they worship on the day of the Sun, in a Temple/Church, where they call the priest 'Father' and light candles, where they sing and chant and kneel to pray, which they terminate with 'Amen' supposed to mean 'so mote it be' all of which is Pagan.

 

The resurrection, and birthday of their savior, his name, the iconic cross - all pagan. Drawn from Solar, Nature and Fertility worship of the Pagan mystery religions that preceded the Roman Christians.

 

The Crucifix was not a cross (T) or Tau, the archaeological record shows, that image is false. But the Tau was worshiped by the Druids and it was worn by the Egyptians. Where it comes from is a funny story. They can't even agree where he was crucified or when or what his last words were. 

 

The Trinity is Pagan, you have God, Mother Earth or Nature and their offspring, then there is an evil influence quite often a relative of the God to explain evil in the world and storms and famines etc. The story is found everywhere in the Pagan world. Pagan superstitious understanding of God and Spiritual reality, warped and twisted the teachings of Christ to control and manipulate society through the ages while gaining massive wealth.

 

Part of the trick - to divide the family unit - and they did that by designating women as inferior and untrustworthy due to their scriptural interpretation of stories in their supposedly infallible, divinely inspired Bible. Some of which was taken from earlier Pagan sources.

Edited June 9, 2022 by pi3141

[pi3141]

1 hour ago, Macnamara said:

but then i learned that there were good things too. 

 

Christianity too has also given many people community and morality and its no coincidence that a slip in faith in europe has seen a slip in society towards degeneracy

 

I'm not saying these things to advocate some sort of hardcore religious position, i'm simply trying to take an objective view that looks at both the pros and cons of things

 

I accept your view.

 

For the most part there are good people involved in Christianity, for the most part Christianity seems good. However it churns out brainwashed individuals who believe in a fantasy and their spiritual intentions are being misdirected. All the while the leaders of the churches, all churches, the Church of England too, I'm sure you've heard of the 'Plow Tax' and other such nonsense, the leaders have used religion to control the congregation for political power and financial gain. I've attended many churches and there's barely any spirituality in those places, just formulaic, ritualistic, pagan nonsense. Nothing whatsoever to do with what - the one we call Jesus taught.

 

He did not preach in a church. He did not advocate singing and chanting and speaking in tongues and building churches and amassing wealth. He would not have 'blessed' an army going into battle. The Roman Church have taken his followers and perverted his teachings and created a legend, fiction or myth to spawn what we know as Christianity.

 

They don't follow the religion 'OF' Christ, that is to say, the religion Christ followed, they've made a false religion about Christ and used it for their own gains. 

 

But the teachings ARE there, there IS Light in the Bible, even in the heavily edited and altered Christian ones, the message is still present. 

Edited June 9, 2022 by pi3141

[Gnostic Christian]

On 6/4/2022 at 12:11 PM, Mr H said:

I also suspect hate for hatings sake is also another reason for violence.

That is what I see when I see a homophobe or misogynous person discriminating against women and gays withoiut a just cause.

 

You are right that in some of the West, gays are safe.

 

If only I could say that where they are still being murdered with religious sanction.

 

Regards

DL

[Gnostic Christian]

On 6/4/2022 at 4:04 PM, Mr H said:

So I had to have a quick look up about why there is a hatred of women ( i never really knew it was much of a thing these days). Apparently in the west at least it comes from the bible and the Adam and Eve story - females not to be trusted are the weaker sex etc......... found that quite interesting............

Interesting. yes.

 

Is it moral?

 

Regards

DL 

[Gnostic Christian]

On 6/4/2022 at 11:46 AM, Edgewood said:

and God is all forgiving.

Yet so many are not and end in hell.

 

Try telling the truth my friend.

 

Regards

DL

[Gnostic Christian]

21 hours ago, pi3141 said:

But the teachings ARE there, there IS Light in the Bible,

Indeed, but one has to read it the way Gnostic Christians read it to get the right morals.

 

If a reader cannot or does not see Yahweh as vile and immoral, they are missing the moral of the story.

 

Can a Christian be moral while following an immoral theology?

 

No.

 

Regards

DL

 

[Bombadil]

On 6/7/2022 at 12:43 AM, mazuzu said:

(the removed genetic lines from the book of revelation.....................the controversies are resolved when covid 19 formerly developes into rabies.....................then around that time....................but let me say first...................when HIV first came out it was at that time the jewish people were removed from worship in the temple mound in jerusalem.................they will be kicked out of jerusalem)

 

(true that satan's position is suicide pleasure only, people add more detail to include the solicitation by jews and minorities, that is self evident......................but when satan is cut spiritually like with ukraine/russia..................then it kills what it considers "dead flesh" again for its pleasure..................the primary issue is the human dirth charge and the unified field effect, the natural design, and the generations of decay....................)

 

(RABIES will kill in mass jews and minorities in certain geographic area, due to earth field activities, and in relation to the people how they are arranged, race wise, there will be considerable suffering so that, many nations will perform a holocaust, this is typical history)

You need to quote a source for this or Inneed to remove it

[pi3141]

On 6/10/2022 at 7:11 PM, Gnostic Christian said:

Indeed, but one has to read it the way Gnostic Christians read it to get the right morals.

 

If a reader cannot or does not see Yahweh as vile and immoral, they are missing the moral of the story.

 

Can a Christian be moral while following an immoral theology?

 

No.

 

Regards

DL

 

 

 

Jesus was a Gnostic, or at least schooled in Gnosticism - Jesus The Nasorean, not Jesus of Nazareth, the latter is the stupid Christians reading the Bible wrong, taking it literally, or at least trying to make it literal, which leads to all sorts of errors.

 

The Bible should be read as a manual, the stories are just literary devices to convey the message.

 

And of course it contains codes, symbology and allegory and they are all interwoven with a fictitious character called Jesus, who is an amalgamation of many other teachers of those times,  Including the one who led the revolt for which they crucified, the Jesus character of the Bible is just a literary device to hang the stories from. 

 

The fictional Jesus was originally 'Hesus Kristos' an amalgamation of the Druid 'Hesus' and the Hindu Kristos. I don't know when or why or how they changed the 'H' for an 'I' to give us 'Iesus' or 'Iesous' but the English then changed it to 'Jesus' and the Greeks changed 'Kristos' to 'Christos' from which we get 'Christ' in the English.

 

Now known as Jesus Christ the world over even though its accepted that was not his real name, the real name having been lost to history according to the Christians, but of course, we know they never knew it in the first place because their savior of the Bible, is largely a fiction.

 

The Bible should open with the phrase 'Warning - Dramatization - Based On Real Events'

 

Some info, in case others don't know - 

 

 

Nasoraean Mandaeans

 

Those few who are initiated into the secrets of the Mandaean religion are called Naṣuraiia or Nasoraeans/Nasaraeans meaning guardians or possessors of secret rites and knowledge.[29] According to the Haran Gawaita, Nasoraean Mandaeans fled Jerusalem before its fall in 70 CE due to persecution by a faction of Jews.[30] The word Naṣuraiia may come from the root n-ṣ-r meaning "to keep", since although they reject the Mosaic Law, they consider themselves to be keepers of Gnosis.

 

Link - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazarene_(sect)

 

 

Jesus was a Nasorean, in fact they say Jesus was THE Nasorean, meaning he was the greatest of the Nasorean sect, the greatest Gnostic.

 

Jesus was schooled in Gnosticism, it says so in the Bible, if you know how to read it.

 

 

[Tinfoil Hat]

On 5/23/2022 at 6:17 PM, pi3141 said:

 

I should say - I am wondering if its the chemicals in plastics, known to be Gender Bender drugs, might be part of the cause of the increase. In which case, treatment in the form of withdrawing these chemicals makes perfect sense.

They've known about it for decades. I clearly remember watching a scary documentary on the very subject when I was about 14 of  15. I'm 59 now. So that's why I'm not for accepting it's a God or nature created situation. I feel sure it's neither of those things.

[pi3141]

1 hour ago, Tinfoil Hat said:

They've known about it for decades. I clearly remember watching a scary documentary on the very subject when I was about 14 of  15. I'm 59 now. So that's why I'm not for accepting it's a God or nature created situation. I feel sure it's neither of those things.

 

Gay people existed long before Plastics.

 

Same sex sexual behavior can be seen in the Animal Kingdom.

 

Given that it exists in the Natural World and the Human Sphere since time immemorial, how can it not be part of nature?

Edited June 11, 2022 by pi3141

[Itsa]

8 hours ago, pi3141 said:

 

Gay people existed long before Plastics.

 

Same sex sexual behavior can be seen in the Animal Kingdom.

 

Given that it exists in the Natural World and the Human Sphere since time immemorial, how can it not be part of nature?

I think you are right Pi that same sex behaviour can be seen amongst animals.

However it's also worth pointing out that to the majority of these animals the behaviour is not acceptable and that also if you went looking for it it would be a very long time before you witnessed it.

 

The other animals will attack them and chase them away or ostracise them as it will be seen as abnormal and a danger to their survival.

It is also built into humans to feel this way and many heterosexuals will feel disgust at witnessing it.

It's only natural.

I think we have been witnessing a campaign to make people feel guilty for experiencing their natural human emotions and feelings just like we are seeing the same thing about people being made to feel guilty about eating their natural diet such as the globalist vegan movement,

 

A lot of the people who promote it have also been involved in continually trying to lower the age of consent.

Go back a little further and you can see it is the same people who also campaigned for the rights of paedophiles

The average gay person should open their eyes to this and be as concerned as anyone else.

 

So I'm certainly not advocating homosexuals should be treated any differently as I believe everyone should have the same human rights regardless of their sexuality but the promotion of it in schools as something to be encouraged as natural I will never support as I believe it to be a deception for purposes other than what they claim it to be.

 

[pi3141]

1 hour ago, Itsa said:

The other animals will attack them and chase them away or ostracise them as it will be seen as abnormal and a danger to their survival.

It is also built into humans to feel this way and many heterosexuals will feel disgust at witnessing it.

It's only natural.

 

Well I haven't seen animals chase other animals because of it.

 

Anyway, I get the eeby jeeby's when I see two men kissing, it is a natural reaction for most men. Women are different though and I've seen two women kissing at a party even though they were straight to show it isn't the same for women as men. I could never kiss a man for a joke or a dare or to show it doesn't bother me - it does.

 

Most men feel disgusted by homosexuality because their sex is dirty. Again I agree, however not all Gay Men engage in that activity and certainly Gay Females do not mostly engage in the same sexual act so is it dirty for women be gay too?

 

I don't feel the ssme aversion for Lesbianism as I do for Gay males - am I discrimatory?

 

If Homosexuality amongst males is disgusting because its dirty, whats the charge against Females? They do not generally perform the same sexual act as men.

 

Also, hetrosexual couples sometimes engage in the same sexual act as Gays, so I guess they are dirty and degenerate too.

 

 I do mostly agree with your post.

 

We see minority views picked up, paraded, and pushed down our throats as well as instilled into our children.

 

Well thats wrong.

 

I see it as choice like Smoking. I choose to smoke, Dr Khan govt adviser says they should push the age of smoking up a year, every year, until its illegal for everyone to smoke. Obviously because its healthy, but largely becsuse there are a bunch of Anti Smokers who see smoking as disgusting, degenerate and unhealthy which of course means they are absolutely correct to enforce their views on everybody else.

 

Thats right isn't it? If I disagree with your life choices I should be able to impose my will over yours, especially if I can find a health, psychological or social norm as an excuse to do it?

 

Similary, if I'm a minority my choices should trump yours right?

 

You don't need to answer, I know you know the answer 

[Tinfoil Hat]

12 hours ago, pi3141 said:

 

Gay people existed long before Plastics.

 

Same sex sexual behavior can be seen in the Animal Kingdom.

 

Given that it exists in the Natural World and the Human Sphere since time immemorial, how can it not be part of nature?

 You're right, so I'll correct myself. Some homosexuality is natural. My attitude has always been that if it's between consenting adults then each to their own. The problem is that with the effects of contamination from man-made products (plastics & the like) brain-washing & propaganda directed at children to create confusion and the 'celebrating' now of being any one of supposedly 47 different genders, the natural state of things has, in my opinion, been massively corrupted. 

[Edgewood]

15 hours ago, pi3141 said:

 

 

Jesus was a Gnostic, or at least schooled in Gnosticism - Jesus The Nasorean, not Jesus of Nazareth, the latter is the stupid Christians reading the Bible wrong, taking it literally, or at least trying to make it literal, which leads to all sorts of errors.

 

The Bible should be read as a manual, the stories are just literary devices to convey the message.

 

And of course it contains codes, symbology and allegory and they are all interwoven with a fictitious character called Jesus, who is an amalgamation of many other teachers of those times,  Including the one who led the revolt for which they crucified, the Jesus character of the Bible is just a literary device to hang the stories from. 

 

The fictional Jesus was originally 'Hesus Kristos' an amalgamation of the Druid 'Hesus' and the Hindu Kristos. I don't know when or why or how they changed the 'H' for an 'I' to give us 'Iesus' or 'Iesous' but the English then changed it to 'Jesus' and the Greeks changed 'Kristos' to 'Christos' from which we get 'Christ' in the English.

 

Now known as Jesus Christ the world over even though its accepted that was not his real name, the real name having been lost to history according to the Christians, but of course, we know they never knew it in the first place because their savior of the Bible, is largely a fiction.

 

The Bible should open with the phrase 'Warning - Dramatization - Based On Real Events'

 

Some info, in case others don't know - 

 

 

Nasoraean Mandaeans

 

Those few who are initiated into the secrets of the Mandaean religion are called Naṣuraiia or Nasoraeans/Nasaraeans meaning guardians or possessors of secret rites and knowledge.[29] According to the Haran Gawaita, Nasoraean Mandaeans fled Jerusalem before its fall in 70 CE due to persecution by a faction of Jews.[30] The word Naṣuraiia may come from the root n-ṣ-r meaning "to keep", since although they reject the Mosaic Law, they consider themselves to be keepers of Gnosis.

 

Link - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazarene_(sect)

 

 

Jesus was a Nasorean, in fact they say Jesus was THE Nasorean, meaning he was the greatest of the Nasorean sect, the greatest Gnostic.

 

Jesus was schooled in Gnosticism, it says so in the Bible, if you know how to read it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good post.....but according to Mandaean texts, the story is slightly different and they hold Jesus is low regard, considering him some king of false prophet while John the Baptist seems to be the true prophet of their order.

 

Shekinah also appears in the gnostic texts of the Mandaeans and Manichaeans; ‘Manda’ is the Aramaic word for ‘knowledge’ and hence ‘gnosis’ but those among them who have attained the true secrets of their religion they call Nasoraeans, and this word has been used to describe 1^st Century Jewish Christians including Jesus himself and to this day the Arabic word ‘Nasrani’ is a word used to denote a Christian.

 

Despite this the Mandaeans consider Jesus to be an ‘apostate Mandaean’ and refer to him as the ‘False Messiah’ and believe him to be doomed to ‘Matarata’ or purgatory. According to their text Haran Gawaita, the advent of Jesus was something which should not have happened and disrupted the order of the House of Israel:

 

“… something was placed in the womb of Mary, a daughter of Moses, and for nine months this ‘thing’ bewitched her.”

 

“..And he took to himself a people and was called by the name of the False Messiah. And he perverted them all and made them like himself who perverted words of life and changed them into darkness and even perverted those accounted Mine. And he overturned all the rites. And he and his brother dwell on Mount Sinai, and he joineth all races to him, and perverteth and joineth to himself a people, and they are called Christians.”

 

They called Mohammed the ‘Son-of-Slaughter’ and believe the evil Archon Mars worked through him and say that “he prophesises as a prophet and performed circumcision like Jews, but he changed sayings and he is the most degraded of false prophets’. According to the Haran Gawaita, once the Arab rule of 4,000 years comes to an end, Jesus will return:

 

“..the false messiah, son of Miriam, will succeed him, and that he will come and will show forth signs (wonders) in the world until the birds and the fish from sea and rivers open their mouths and bless him and give testimony, until (even) the clay and mudbrick in a building bear witness to him, and until four-legged creatures open their mouths and testify to him "

 

Though the Mandaeans are still warned:

 

“Nasoraeans, and righteous elect men, testify not to him, for he is a fake Messiah that walketh by fraud and sorcery. He is Mercury, who attracteth attention and doth whatsoever he wisheth and his mind is filled with sorcery and frauds.”

 

But confusingly it then says:

 

“When the Messiah hath returned, ascending to the sky - and his reign will last six thousand years - he will ascend and assume his first body. From that epoch until world's end, wickedness will depart from the world; that which issued from the earth will enter the earth and that which descended from the sky will return and enter the sky. And there will be righteous people in the world, and no man will covet his neighbour's goods. And people's senses will return to them and they will not perform circumcision; they will be converted and Nasoraeans will increase in the world. The eye of envy will be lifted from them and the sword will depart from the world.”

 

It is not clear if this is referring to Jesus, but it could possibly be John the Baptist who would be the closest thing they have to a messianic figure.

 

In any case the Mandaeans fled to Babylon in the 1^st century AD either after being persecuted by the Jewish authorities or because of Jesus’ prophetic warnings of the events of 70AD.

 

The Mandaeans claim to be from a monotheistic tradition which predates Islam, Christianity and Judaism. The Mandaeans believe the world is created by a synergy of the holy spirit ‘Ruha’ which is similar to the concept of Shekinah, which the Mandaeans view as a negative force as the lower distinctly feminine, emotional nature of the human mind. They believe that Adam was created by an evil demiurge Ptahil, which used a spirit from the underworld: Ruha, to animate Adam but that his soul is from the light world. The light world soul apparently then reveals Nasiruta (the Nasoraean religion) to him and his wife Hawwa (Eve) and the Mandaean gnosis which involved him freeing his soul and spirit to return to the light world. Ruha as a spirit, uses the planetary spirits to infect Adam’s mind to prevent him hearing the voice of his soul.

 

The Mandaeans have a ritual handshake: the Kushta, or handshake of truth, and it resembles a Masonic handshake in that the thumb is pressed to the knuckle of the other person’s hand. The thing which makes me consider whether somehow, part of the Mandaean cult cross-pollinated with the Kabbalah to become what we know of as the Freemasons is the fact that the Knights of Saint John, who along with the Knights Templar, brought the Eastern esoteric tradition to the West, are named after John the Baptist, whom the Mandaeans hold in special reverence and it is even said that both orders placed Saint John higher even than Jesus.

 

The Templars were even said to have been in possession of the head of John the Baptist to which they offered prayers. Furthermore, the feast day of John the Baptist is the 24^th June, a day which is also celebrated by the Freemasons and Freemasonry actively acknowledges John the Baptist as one of its patron saints. It is also possible that the Freemasons have adopted elements of Sabaeanism; if we look at the clue of the Masonic tracing board which shows seven ‘stars’ which are the seven planets which were worshipped by the Sabaeans, and the sun and moon have prominent place on the Masonic tracing board and it was these two principal bodies which the Sabaeans worshipped in particular. Much of the ritual behaviour of the Sabaeans became later subsumed into Islam but their worship of heavenly bodies ended under the monotheism of Islam. The Mandaeans still exist to this day as the longest surviving gnostic sect in the world, however since they are based mostly in Iraq they have suffered from persecution at the hands of Islamic extremists.

 

The Nag Hamadi texts discovered in Egypt in 1945 revealed to the world the Gnostic ‘Christian’ tradition. Those texts discovered at Nag Hamadi had presumably been the few to have avoided the fires of the church. The Sethian Gnostic tradition along with the Valentinianism and Basilideanism comprise the three currents of 2^nd and 3^rd century Gnosticism.  Basilides was a second century teacher of gnostic mysteries in Alexandria Egypt and he was said to have been taught by the Samaritan Gnostic, Menander who became the leader of the School of Simonians after the death of Simon Magus.

 

According to the entry on Simon Magus in the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica:

 

“…Epiphanius …. tells us also that he gave barbaric names to the ‘principalities and powers,’ and that he was the beginning of the Gnostics. The Law, according to him, was not of God, but of ‘the sinister power.’ The same was the case with the prophets, and it was death to believe in the Old Testament.”

 

The Greek 2^nd century Christian bishop and dogged opponent of heresies, Irenaeus says of him:

“Samaritan Simon, from whom all the heresies took their origin.”

 

It would seem that Simon Magus is not only the origin of Gnosticism but potentially of the Kabbalah as well, or at least, the earliest known emergence of its ‘secret doctrine’. Hippolytus reports that Simon Magus taught a doctrine of ‘free love’ and gave interpretation of the Old Testament (much in the manner of the Rabbinical tradition one suspects). In his scholarly book length essay on Simon Magus G.R.S. Mead writes how Simon was adept at ‘reinterpreting’ the texts of the ancients and by doing so dramatically altering their meaning, much in the style of what would later become the main currency of the Jewish Oral Tradition and the Kabbalah:

 

“So then Simon by such inventions got what interpretation he pleased, not only out of the writings of Moses, but also out of those of the (pagan) poets, by falsifying them. For he gives an allegorical interpretation of the wooden horse, and Helen with the torch, and a number of other things, which he metamorphoses and weaves into fictions concerning himself and his Thought.”

 

Interestingly, Menander also believed, like the Mandaeans in the importance of a ritual water baptism. He taught that the God of the Jews was a demiurge and had 365 Archons above him with Abrasax ruling over the Archons then above him, Dynamis (power) and Sophia, Phronesis, Logos, Nous (mind), and finally the Unbegotten Father as supreme God. The seven letters of Abraxas’ name represent the 7 archon heavenly bodies and in Greek isopsephy the Greek letters of the name add up to 365. Here we see a clear influence for Jewish gematria and since the Greek alphabet has a similar source in Semitic Phoenician which is an offshoot of the Hebrew alphabet both systems could have this already encoded in them from the earliest days of the development of writing. Many heads of gnostic schools were identified as Jewish Christians by Church Fathers, and Hebrew words and names of God were applied in some gnostic systems.

Edited June 12, 2022 by Edgewood

[pi3141]

2 hours ago, Tinfoil Hat said:

 You're right, so I'll correct myself. Some homosexuality is natural. My attitude has always been that if it's between consenting adults then each to their own. The problem is that with the effects of contamination from man-made products (plastics & the like) brain-washing & propaganda directed at children to create confusion and the 'celebrating' now of being any one of supposedly 47 different genders, the natural state of things has, in my opinion, been massively corrupted. 

 

Yes - you are right also. The thing has been blown up, over exaggerated, and used as a tool to divide society. It has been massively corrupted. 

[pi3141]

When marriage between gays was by rite
A KIEV art museum contains a curious icon from St Catherine's monastery on Mount Sinai. It shows two robed Christian saints

 

A KIEV art museum contains a curious icon from St Catherine's monastery on Mount Sinai. It shows two robed Christian saints. Between them is a traditional Roman pronubus (best man) overseeing what in a standard Roman icon would be the wedding of a husband and wife. In the icon, Christ is the pronubus. Only one thing is unusual. The "husband and wife" are in fact two men.

 

Is the icon suggesting that a homosexual "marriage" is one sanctified by Christ? The very idea initially seems shocking. The full answer comes from other sources about the two men featured, St Serge and St Bacchus, two Roman soldiers who became Christian martyrs.

 

While the pairing of saints, particularly in the early Church, was not unusual, the association of these two men was regarded as particularly close. Severus of Antioch in the sixth century explained that "we should not separate in speech [Serge and Bacchus] who were joined in life". More bluntly, in the definitive 10th century Greek account of their lives, St Serge is openly described as the "sweet companion and lover" of St Bacchus.

 

In other words, it confirms what the earlier icon implies, that they were a homosexual couple. Unusually their orientation and relationship was openly accepted by early Christian writers. Furthermore, in an image that to some modern Christian eyes might border on blasphemy, the icon has Christ himself as their pronubus, their best man overseeing their "marriage".

 

The very idea of a Christian homosexual marriage seems incredible. Yet after a 12-year search of Catholic and Orthodox church archives Yale history professor John Boswell has discovered that a type of Christian homosexual "marriage" did exist as late as the 18th century.

Contrary to myth, Christianity's concept of marriage has not been set in stone since the days of Christ, but has evolved both as a concept and as a ritual. Prof Boswell discovered that in addition to heterosexual marriage ceremonies in ancient church liturgical documents (and clearly separate from other types of non-marital blessings such as blessings of adopted children or land) were ceremonies called, among other titles, the "Office of Same Sex Union" (10th and 11th century Greek) or the "Order for Uniting Two Men" (11th and 12th century).

 

These ceremonies had all the contemporary symbols of a marriage: a community gathered in church, a blessing of the couple before the altar, their right hands joined as at heterosexual marriages, the participation of a priest, the taking of the Eucharist, a wedding banquet afterwards. All of which are shown in contemporary drawings of the same sex union of Byzantine Emperor Basil I (867-886) and his companion John. Such homosexual unions also took place in Ireland in the late 12th/early 13th century, as the chronicler Gerald of Wales (Geraldus Cambrensis) has recorded.

 

Boswell's book, The Marriage of Likeness: Same Sex Unions in Pre- Modern Europe, lists in detail some same sex union ceremonies found in ancient church liturgical documents. One Greek 13th century "Order for Solemnisation of Same Sex Union" having invoked St Serge and St Bacchus, called on God to "vouchsafe unto these thy servants [N and N] grace to love one another and to abide unhated and not a cause of scandal all the days of their lives, with the help of the Holy Mother of God and all thy saints." The ceremony concludes: "And they shall kiss the Holy Gospel and each other, and it shall be concluded."

Another 14th century Serbian Slavonic "Office of Same Sex Union", uniting two men or two women, had the couple having their right hands laid on the Gospel while having a cross placed in their left hands. Having kissed the Gospel, the couple were then required to kiss each other, after which the priest, having raised up the Eucharist, would give them both communion.

 

Boswell found records of same-sex unions in such diverse archives as those in the Vatican, in St Petersburg, in Paris, Istanbul, and in Sinai, covering a period from the 8th to the 18th centuries. Nor is he the first to make such a discovery. The Dominican Jacques Goar (1601-1653) includes such ceremonies in a printed collection of Greek prayer books.

 

While homosexuality was technically illegal from late Roman times, it was only from about the 14th century that anti-homosexual feelings swept western Europe. Yet same sex union ceremonies continued to take place.

At St John Lateran in Rome (traditionally the Pope's parish Church) in 1578 as many as 13 couples were "married" at Mass with the apparent co-operation of the local clergy, "taking Communion together, using the same nuptial Scripture, after which they slept and ate together", according to a contemporary report.

 

Another woman-to-woman union is recorded in Dalmatia in the 18th century. Many questionable historical claims about the church have been made by some recent writers in this newspaper.

 

Boswell's academic study however is so well researched and sourced as to pose fundamental questions for both modern church leaders and heterosexual Christians about their attitude towards homosexuality.

 

For the Church to ignore the evidence in its own archives would be a cowardly cop-out. That evidence shows convincingly that what the modern church claims has been its constant unchanging attitude towards homosexuality is in fact nothing of the sort.

 

It proves that for much of the last two millennia, in parish churches and cathedrals throughout Christendom from Ireland to Istanbul and in the heart of Rome itself, homosexual relationships were accepted as valid expressions of a God-given ability to love and commit to another person, a love that could be celebrated, honoured and blessed both in the name of, and through the Eucharist in the presence of Jesus Christ.

 

Jim Duffy is a writer and historian. The Marriage of Likeness: Same Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe by John Boswell is published by Harper Collins.

 

Link - https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/when-marriage-between-gays-was-by-rite-1.181956

 

[pi3141]

2 hours ago, Edgewood said:

 

 

 

 

Good post.....but according to Mandaean texts, the story is slightly different and they hold Jesus is low regard, considering him some king of false prophet while John the Baptist seems to be the true prophet of their order.

 

Shekinah also appears in the gnostic texts of the Mandaeans and Manichaeans; ‘Manda’ is the Aramaic word for ‘knowledge’ and hence ‘gnosis’ but those among them who have attained the true secrets of their religion they call Nasoraeans, and this word has been used to describe 1^st Century Jewish Christians including Jesus himself and to this day the Arabic word ‘Nasrani’ is a word used to denote a Christian.

 

Despite this the Mandaeans consider Jesus to be an ‘apostate Mandaean’ and refer to him as the ‘False Messiah’ and believe him to be doomed to ‘Matarata’ or purgatory. According to their text Haran Gawaita, the advent of Jesus was something which should not have happened and disrupted the order of the House of Israel:

 

“… something was placed in the womb of Mary, a daughter of Moses, and for nine months this ‘thing’ bewitched her.”

 

“..And he took to himself a people and was called by the name of the False Messiah. And he perverted them all and made them like himself who perverted words of life and changed them into darkness and even perverted those accounted Mine. And he overturned all the rites. And he and his brother dwell on Mount Sinai, and he joineth all races to him, and perverteth and joineth to himself a people, and they are called Christians.”

 

They called Mohammed the ‘Son-of-Slaughter’ and believe the evil Archon Mars worked through him and say that “he prophesises as a prophet and performed circumcision like Jews, but he changed sayings and he is the most degraded of false prophets’. According to the Haran Gawaita, once the Arab rule of 4,000 years comes to an end, Jesus will return:

 

“..the false messiah, son of Miriam, will succeed him, and that he will come and will show forth signs (wonders) in the world until the birds and the fish from sea and rivers open their mouths and bless him and give testimony, until (even) the clay and mudbrick in a building bear witness to him, and until four-legged creatures open their mouths and testify to him "

 

Though the Mandaeans are still warned:

 

“Nasoraeans, and righteous elect men, testify not to him, for he is a fake Messiah that walketh by fraud and sorcery. He is Mercury, who attracteth attention and doth whatsoever he wisheth and his mind is filled with sorcery and frauds.”

 

But confusingly it then says:

 

“When the Messiah hath returned, ascending to the sky - and his reign will last six thousand years - he will ascend and assume his first body. From that epoch until world's end, wickedness will depart from the world; that which issued from the earth will enter the earth and that which descended from the sky will return and enter the sky. And there will be righteous people in the world, and no man will covet his neighbour's goods. And people's senses will return to them and they will not perform circumcision; they will be converted and Nasoraeans will increase in the world. The eye of envy will be lifted from them and the sword will depart from the world.”

 

It is not clear if this is referring to Jesus, but it could possibly be John the Baptist who would be the closest thing they have to a messianic figure.

 

In any case the Mandaeans fled to Babylon in the 1^st century AD either after being persecuted by the Jewish authorities or because of Jesus’ prophetic warnings of the events of 70AD.

 

The Mandaeans claim to be from a monotheistic tradition which predates Islam, Christianity and Judaism. The Mandaeans believe the world is created by a synergy of the holy spirit ‘Ruha’ which is similar to the concept of Shekinah, which the Mandaeans view as a negative force as the lower distinctly feminine, emotional nature of the human mind. They believe that Adam was created by an evil demiurge Ptahil, which used a spirit from the underworld: Ruha, to animate Adam but that his soul is from the light world. The light world soul apparently then reveals Nasiruta (the Nasoraean religion) to him and his wife Hawwa (Eve) and the Mandaean gnosis which involved him freeing his soul and spirit to return to the light world. Ruha as a spirit, uses the planetary spirits to infect Adam’s mind to prevent him hearing the voice of his soul.

 

The Mandaeans have a ritual handshake: the Kushta, or handshake of truth, and it resembles a Masonic handshake in that the thumb is pressed to the knuckle of the other person’s hand. The thing which makes me consider whether somehow, part of the Mandaean cult cross-pollinated with the Kabbalah to become what we know of as the Freemasons is the fact that the Knights of Saint John, who along with the Knights Templar, brought the Eastern esoteric tradition to the West, are named after John the Baptist, whom the Mandaeans hold in special reverence and it is even said that both orders placed Saint John higher even than Jesus.

 

The Templars were even said to have been in possession of the head of John the Baptist to which they offered prayers. Furthermore, the feast day of John the Baptist is the 24^th June, a day which is also celebrated by the Freemasons and Freemasonry actively acknowledges John the Baptist as one of its patron saints. It is also possible that the Freemasons have adopted elements of Sabaeanism; if we look at the clue of the Masonic tracing board which shows seven ‘stars’ which are the seven planets which were worshipped by the Sabaeans, and the sun and moon have prominent place on the Masonic tracing board and it was these two principal bodies which the Sabaeans worshipped in particular. Much of the ritual behaviour of the Sabaeans became later subsumed into Islam but their worship of heavenly bodies ended under the monotheism of Islam. The Mandaeans still exist to this day as the longest surviving gnostic sect in the world, however since they are based mostly in Iraq they have suffered from persecution at the hands of Islamic extremists.

 

The Nag Hamadi texts discovered in Egypt in 1945 revealed to the world the Gnostic ‘Christian’ tradition. Those texts discovered at Nag Hamadi had presumably been the few to have avoided the fires of the church. The Sethian Gnostic tradition along with the Valentinianism and Basilideanism comprise the three currents of 2^nd and 3^rd century Gnosticism.  Basilides was a second century teacher of gnostic mysteries in Alexandria Egypt and he was said to have been taught by the Samaritan Gnostic, Menander who became the leader of the School of Simonians after the death of Simon Magus.

 

According to the entry on Simon Magus in the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica:

 

“…Epiphanius …. tells us also that he gave barbaric names to the ‘principalities and powers,’ and that he was the beginning of the Gnostics. The Law, according to him, was not of God, but of ‘the sinister power.’ The same was the case with the prophets, and it was death to believe in the Old Testament.”

 

The Greek 2^nd century Christian bishop and dogged opponent of heresies, Irenaeus says of him:

“Samaritan Simon, from whom all the heresies took their origin.”

 

It would seem that Simon Magus is not only the origin of Gnosticism but potentially of the Kabbalah as well, or at least, the earliest known emergence of its ‘secret doctrine’. Hippolytus reports that Simon Magus taught a doctrine of ‘free love’ and gave interpretation of the Old Testament (much in the manner of the Rabbinical tradition one suspects). In his scholarly book length essay on Simon Magus G.R.S. Mead writes how Simon was adept at ‘reinterpreting’ the texts of the ancients and by doing so dramatically altering their meaning, much in the style of what would later become the main currency of the Jewish Oral Tradition and the Kabbalah:

 

“So then Simon by such inventions got what interpretation he pleased, not only out of the writings of Moses, but also out of those of the (pagan) poets, by falsifying them. For he gives an allegorical interpretation of the wooden horse, and Helen with the torch, and a number of other things, which he metamorphoses and weaves into fictions concerning himself and his Thought.”

 

Interestingly, Menander also believed, like the Mandaeans in the importance of a ritual water baptism. He taught that the God of the Jews was a demiurge and had 365 Archons above him with Abrasax ruling over the Archons then above him, Dynamis (power) and Sophia, Phronesis, Logos, Nous (mind), and finally the Unbegotten Father as supreme God. The seven letters of Abraxas’ name represent the 7 archon heavenly bodies and in Greek isopsephy the Greek letters of the name add up to 365. Here we see a clear influence for Jewish gematria and since the Greek alphabet has a similar source in Semitic Phoenician which is an offshoot of the Hebrew alphabet both systems could have this already encoded in them from the earliest days of the development of writing. Many heads of gnostic schools were identified as Jewish Christians by Church Fathers, and Hebrew words and names of God were applied in some gnostic systems.

 

 

Thank you, I really enjoyed this - I hope you don't mind but I'll probably copy and paste this into my Keys to Religion thread.

 

I can confirm St John is part of Freemasonry having been reading their degrees recently (I have all the rituals, Passes, Grips and Words for the first 13 degrees)

 

And I have read before that the Templars had the head of St John the Baptist. But there is much in your post I didn't know, so thank you.

 

 

[KingKitty]

"Homophobia", the word it's self is ridiculous. It suggest one who has a fear of homosexuality. I've never known a straight person who was afraid of someone's homosexuality. Uncomfortable with it yes, but not afraid. Those types of stereotypes were reinforced through television and movies, like everything else. 

 

[KingKitty]

4 hours ago, Tinfoil Hat said:

 You're right, so I'll correct myself. Some homosexuality is natural. My attitude has always been that if it's between consenting adults then each to their own. The problem is that with the effects of contamination from man-made products (plastics & the like) brain-washing & propaganda directed at children to create confusion and the 'celebrating' now of being any one of supposedly 47 different genders, the natural state of things has, in my opinion, been massively corrupted. 

There is and always has been "natural" homosexuality in humans and other animals, but you are correct in suggesting that it is and has been "amplified" artificially here in the modern world through use of chemicals in food, water, sundries and other things. Not to mention the current, obvious and blatant push of the homosexual culture on the Western world.

 

 

[Campion]

@Edgewood @pi3141  This is a very important part of the historical jigsaw of western religions. I'm currently reading The Templar Revelation by Clive Prince & Lynn Picknett. Apparently Jesus started off as a disciple of John the Baptist before splitting off into his own sect and creating an exoteric religion of Jewish messiah, and esoteric mystery religion of Osiris-Isis death/rebirth initiation. 

[Edgewood]

It's possible.....I've always been hugely impressed by the books of Prince and Picknett.... that last I read was about the Priory of Sion deception but I will try to get hold of Templar Revelation for some summer reading.

 

[Edgewood]

 

Maybe you will find the following useful or interesting. It is the remainder of the previous chapter I posted:

 

The other major Gnostic school was that developed by Valentinus. Like Augustine of Hippo who abandoned Manichaesm and became a Christian because he found better career opportunities within the church, Valentinus abandoned the church after being overlooked for a bishop’s position to invent his own heresy, at least according to Tertullian. Valentinus was born in Alexandria and was connected to a group Alexandrian Jews. In common with other Gnostic movements, he also associated the God of the Old Testament with the demiurge. In the Gospel of Philip, a Valentinian gnostic, we find the same strange sexual innuendoes we previously saw in the Zohar and the references to a bridal-chamber which are also commonly found in Rosicrucian materials:

 

“There were three buildings specifically for sacrifice in Jerusalem. The one facing the west was called ‘The Holy’. Another, facing south, was called ‘The Holy of the Holy’. The third, facing east, was called ‘The Holy of the Holies’, the place where only the high priest enters. Baptism is ‘the Holy’ building. Redemption is the ‘Holy of the Holy’. ‘The Holy of the Holies’ is the bridal chamber. Baptism includes the resurrection and the redemption; the redemption (takes place) in the bridal chamber.”

 

Irenaeus writes:

 

"A few of them prepare a bridal chamber and in it go through a form of consecration, employing certain fixed formulae, which are repeated over the person to be initiated, and stating that a spiritual marriage is to be performed after the pattern of the higher Syzygia."

 

The Gnostics used the word Syzygy (as in Ziggy Stardust) to describe a concept which is the same as the Kabbalistic concept zivug, or ‘coupling’ which means ‘male-female pair’ and Sophia is apparently the counterpart of Jesus Christ and considered ‘the Bride’.

 

A passage from a gnostic ritual detailing this strange and pointedly euphemistically sexual union unfolds in this manner:

 

“I will confer my favor upon thee, for the father of all sees thine angel ever before his face ... we must now become as one; receive now this grace from me and through me; deck thyself as a bride who awaits her bridegroom, that thou mayest become as I am, and I as thou art. Let the seed of light descend into thy bridal chamber; receive the bridegroom and give place to him, and open thine arms to embrace him. Behold, grace has descended upon thee.”

 

I think we can very safely establish a strong commonality here between gnostic so-called Christianity and the strongly sexualised metaphors of the Kabbalah. Church father Irenaeus in his Adversus Haereses of 185 AD considered these Gnostic texts in general to be part of:

 

"..an indescribable number of secret and illegitimate writings, which they themselves have forged, to bewilder the minds of foolish people, who are ignorant of the true scriptures."

 

Further similarities with the Kabbalah are found in Sethian Gnosticism and the Apocryphon of John. Sethian Gnosticism is said to have Jewish roots and one of the reasons for the apparent similarity between Gnosticism and the Kabbalah is because the Jewish progenitors of Christian Gnosticism are precisely imbuing their understanding of Christianity with the Jewish Oral Tradition.

 

The Monad of the Gnostics is the same principle as the Ain Soph and is described in the same terms. It is infinite, ineffable, and it is not quantifiable, nor can its qualities be expressed, just as the Ain Soph has no positive attributes since to give it positive attributes would be to create a duality. The Monad, just like the Ain Soph, must exist beyond opposites. From the Monad comes a feminine divine entity called Barbello. This is similar indeed to the Shekinah principle. It is ‘the first thought’ and ‘image’ of the Monad. She is also described as the ‘first man’, again a principle present in the Zohar the ‘Adam Kadmon’ or primordial man, the first spiritual ‘world’ after the contraction of God’s infinite light. 

 

She is the first of a class of beings referred to as the Aeons and an exchange between herself and the Monad brings the other Aeons into being. Additionally, the properties of Light and Mind are born from the Monad's reflection on Barbelo. The Barbelo is the first of the Aeons but the Aeon Sophia apparently disrupts the harmony and creates demonic archon called Yaltabaoth who has the head of a lion and the tail of a serpent and represents the planet Saturn. The other heavenly bodies are present and possessed of their Archon including the Sun whose Archon is named the familiar Biblical Adonaios. Mercury represents Elohim and Jupiter is Jahweh.

 

In the Apocryphal Gospel of John, the God of the Old Testament is called Yaltabaoth, also called Samael. The Archons imprison Adam in the Garden of Eden, a false paradise. The concealment of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil represents the Archons denying knowledge and freedom to Adam. And the tree actually represents Sophia trying to access Yaltabaoth's realm. Yaltabaoth also sent a flood over the Earth to destroy his creation.

 

The text also rather presumptuously states that Moses got it wrong and that Noah didn’t hide in an Ark but in a cloud of light. Additionally, Christ tells John that it was his presence that caused Adam to eat the fruit from the forbidden Tree and Eve and he was sent to help to free the trapped light soul in Adam.

 

The 18th Century book Geheime Figuren or Secret Symbols published in Germany has an illustration entitled …“The heavenly and Earthly Eve, the mother of all creatures in heaven and Earth… the star of the East.” This is clearly a reference to some kind of mother Goddess, and Eve is not referred to in any such terms in the Bible, in fact Eve is seen as instrumental in the tragedy of the fall of mankind, so it would appear that the Rosicrucians worship something else, something clearly non-Biblical, and they merely call it Eve, perhaps to escape any charges of pagan occult goddess worship. The figure is a stylised female form with a sun in place of the head and has the title Virgin Sophia.

 

There are seven Archons which we are told in the Apocryphon of Saint John correspond to the seven planets of the ancient world and thus to the seven days of the week. The Gnostics believed that the pagan Gods worshipped by the ancients were in reality the Archons and that they were able to control the thoughts and feelings of human beings.

 

Many of the texts of the Old Testament take on a new reading with the Gnostic analysis, for instance the plurality of the Gods:

 

“Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness.” Or Ephesians 6:12 “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this world’s darkness, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

 

They believe that the seven planets (in antiquity this referred to the Sun, Mercury, Venus, The Moon, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) were ruled by seven Archons and each heavenly body gives its name to a day of the week. In Arabic and Hebrew, the days of the week do not have their own names and are called, day one, day two, day three, with the exception of Shabbat, or Saturday in English: Saturn’s Day.

 

There is a curious and undeniable etymological and linguistic equivalency between the Hebrew word Shabbat and the Latin word Saturn. According to a derivation by Cicero in De Nature Deorum:

 

“The Latin designation ‘Saturnus’ on the other hand is due to the fact that he is ‘saturated’ or ‘satiated with years’ (anni); the fable is that he was in the habit of devouring his sons - meaning that Time devours the ages and gorges himself insatiably with the years that are past.”

While the Hebrew שָׂבֵעַ: śâba‛ and śâbêa‛ mean to be sated, fulfilled, in the same sense as the Latin ‘satur’. The English word ‘seven’ has its origins in the word Sabbat, although this is more apparent if we look at the French word ‘sept’ which is clearly a form of the word sabbat. In Arabic the number seven is called ‘Saba’. If we consider that Saturday was considered the seventh day of the week before Constantine made ‘Sunday’ the Sabbath day, arguably because Constantine was an unreformed sun worshipper, but this effectively ended millennia of continuity and made the 7^th day the 6^th day and the 1^st day the 7^th day. Such a description has been said to fulfil the prophetic Daniel and the fourth beast commonly considered by some Christians to be a foretelling of the Antichrist:

 

“And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.” Daniel 7:25.

 

If such an analysis is correct it would appear that the Constantine’s Church of Rome was the Antichrist, or at least, one of the beasts which comprise this force which has always sought to destroy the Christian message.

Tacitus writes: “We are told that the seventh day was set aside for rest because this marked the end of their toils…Others say that this is a mark of respect to Saturn.” 

 

However, for all of this interesting historical exploration there in no reason to believe anything about the existence of these Archons is real. Especially as they are presented to us in such ridiculous terms and the fact that their names and attributes vary depending on the Gnostic tradition. Athoth the Archon, apparently has a sheep’s face, the second, Eloaios has a donkey’s face while the seventh Archon representing the planet Saturn they call Sabbataios, has a face of flame and fire. It’s all a little silly and is probably best not taken particularly seriously and indeed my thoughts of Gnosticism are that although it might be of some comfort to believe that the world is created by evil Gods with animal faces, it isn’t necessarily true and it really doesn’t do much for one’s quality of life. It’s all just a fancy and abstraction. No different from the Kabbalah. The question is why do people invent these fancies and who are they? The origin of these Archon fantasies and much of Gnosticism seems to centre on one place in particular: Alexandria in Egypt. This place became the centre of Gnosticism and is home to all of the major currents of Gnosticism.  

Edited June 15, 2022 by Edgewood