Paths leading toward Christianity

It's hard to continue to hold strong to Christianity when one begins to delve deeper down the rabbit hole of truth. I have begun reading "The Quest for Hermes Trismegistus," and have found alot of interesting correlations between the teachings of the Thrice Great Hermes and the teachings of the Gospels. This being the case, it came to me that the "Golden Rule" of do unto others, is bot very different from the Hermetic concept of correspondence. See, Hermes would say "As within, so without," and Jesus via Matthew said "Whatsoever would that man should do to you, do even so unto them." The parallels stem here because the concept is one of reciprocity.

So, Hermes said it. But so did Buddha, "Just as I am so are they, just as they are so am I." What does this mean? It means that the Christian teaching of "Do unto others," the Christian teaching of reciprocity, is not a Christian teaching at all. So, what else is not Christian?

Starting with fundamental bedrocks of Christianity, Jesus is the Son of God. Well Horus was the Son of God and God himself as he was the reincarnation of Osiris's soul. And like Jesus, Osiris was resurrected from the dead. Just as was the Caananite Baal, Son of El, the Son of God but also God himself, who died and was resurrected. So, Sons of God there are plenty, and many of these are also attached to the concept of resurrection.

Next, the Word. John 1 says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made." Christianity teaches that the Word is Jesus (which by most traditions is also God). Hermes Trismegistus, in the Corpus Hermeticum, expressed his experience with Nous, in which he witnessed the separation of primordial forces of the universe, which one can only assume was the same as the creation, for Genesis says that there was only a void, which apparently contained waters and other materials, and was in darkness until God spoke the word and so the materials in the void recieved light, and took form and shape, just as Hermes witnessed in his vision. And in his vision, when things begin to separate, he hears a sound, the universe sighing, and Poimandres tells Hermes this is the Son of God and yet also God, for this is the Word.

This is not the only concept of the creation myth that breeds the same ideas as Christianity, and surely the Hebrews were around before Hermes, so this concept had been around, but John's "Word" was "new." However, the Thrice Great Hermes knew of the Word. However, in the beginning, the void was without language, so the "Word" is also a thought, as speech, words and the mind were at that time all the same. Therefore, when God said "let there be light," to Hermes, this would mean that he gave the mental command for all things to come together. So, God is willpower.

Next, God the Father. In the old testiment, the God of the Jews, according to Moses, commands that the Jews put no other Gods before him. He commands that they do not bow to them, nor do they make any craven image of him or them. But never does God say that he is THE ONLY God. He simply states that he is a jealous God and will bring wrath down upon the families of those who hate him. So, this jealous God of the Jews smites all whom put other Gods before him. This doesn't even cover the idea that God was only the God of the Jews and not the universal God for all mankind at that time. This idea doesn't come about until later in the New Testament.

This is an interesting concept because it moves away from the "monotheist" culture of the Jews and the Christians we are taught today and moves toward a "monolatristic" view of the Jews, for their God does not deny the existence of other gods, he simply commands them not to worship them. So, this one God of many gods is jealous and territorial, not very loving and forgiving like the New Testament would have you believe. So, how did Christians come to follow a different version of God?

The answer is usually something like, "Now that Jesus was born, God could look to the Mercy of the atonement." While that could make sense, it also suggests that God is a changing God, which goes against the idea that God is ever powerful and never changing. What is interesting to note is that the Canaanites had a supreme God, a loving fatherly god known as "El," with whom all the Semitic Canaanite branches-Phoenicians, Amorites, etc.-and El happened to be the God worshiped by Hiram, King of Tyre, who helped Solomon build the "Temple of the Lord" and also the God of Melchizedek, Priest King of Salem, who blessed Abraham and gave him the authority of the High Priesthood, which he received by being a son of Shem, the son of Noah. Throughout the New Testament book of Hebrews, Christ is listed as "a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek," suggesting that he is a priest after the order of the priesthood of the El Elyon worshiping people of Salem.

Here's the question that then arises: Is the God of Christ and the God of Moses different gods? Is Yahweh and El Elyon different? Here's something from Deuteronomy: "⁸When the Most High (Elyon in Hebrew) apportioned the nations, when he divided humankind, he fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the gods; ⁹ the Lord’s own portion was his people, Jacob his allotted share." This scripture suggests that there are more than one god, thus getting back to that monolatristic nature of the Jews, and here we see that there was a god for the Jews. So, the people of Salem had there god as well. El, the father of humankind and all creatures, and there is a different being Yahweh. For El is married to Asherah, and Yahweh has no female counterpart, El is compassionate and Yahweh is jealous, El's son to die and return is Baal while Yahweh's son to die and return is Jehovah. Final scripture reference to conclude this thought, Exodus 6:3 says, "I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name the Lord (El-Shabbai) I did not make myself fully known to them."

Finally, the Masoretic Texts of the Jews as they pertain to Christianity, or even Judaism for that matter, and indeed the entirety of the "Old Testament" is in question when one investigates the formation of the Hebrew Bible and discovers that canonization did not occur until sometime between between 200 BCE and 200 CE. This was the period during the Maccabee restoration of the Kingdom of Judah from the Seleucid Empire, or the Hellenic empire founded by Seleucius I Nicator. This means that Jewish texts most frequently quoted by Christians were compiled following the Jewish people leaving Egypt, where the people of Yahweh had been living as slaves to the people of Osiris for 300 years, after the split of the Jewish peoples following the death of Solomon and Jeroboam allowed the continuation of the Canaanite Baal worshiping to exist within the people, after the Jews were conquered by the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, and the Greeks (subject in all cases to following the traditional practices of the conquering nations) and finally compiled together. After nearly 1000 years since Moses, after having so many influences on them, the Jewish Canon is finally compiled, in a time when patriotism and unity of the Jews was at the forefront of the political discussion, the Jews finally had a single source of Canon.

This new canon, not necessarily fully together, is finally accepted by about the time of Christ, about the same time as Hermes Trismegistus, thus establishing a background knowledge for the Christian faith. And now it is that Jesus is taught in these texts and expounds on them, teaching with the authority of Melchizedek, and creating a series of religious practices based on God the Father, the universal God of Love and charity.

And so it is that Christianity would say that all the previous paths, Canaanite, Jewish, Egyptian, even Hermeticism, were all foretellings of Jesus and the atonement. This is a sort of confirmation bias, where we must first assume that Christianity is true, and thus we then search the holy texts to prove it. The other option is that Christianity was the evolution of theories and teachings much older that were united under the canopy of "Christ." Did Jesus of Nazareth walk the earth, teach the people after the order of Melchizedek, and conduct miracles much the same way that alternative healers do now? There's a strong chance. It's also possible that many of the miracles were differing ideas, like the fact that Phoenicians considered tapeworms and other parasites as "demons," which gives a whole new meaning to the ideas of Christ exorcising demons. So, maybe Jesus of Nazareth became a convenient focal point in dark ages, a time when even Hermes Trismegistus was a near-Saint of the Church of Christ (the precursor to the Catholic Church). Or maybe it's just the progression of beliefs by some people, just as Islam is the progression of beliefs by a similarly existing group, like Buddhism is Hinduism.

At the end, like at the beginning, I state that all this evidence makes it hard to hold strongly to Christianity, unless one continues to believe that these were all foretellings supporting Jesus. It does make something to think about.

Introduction

I was on the max home today and I was reading from John Michael Greer's book Inside a Magical Lodge, and it made me think about the groups that I'm part of, the lodges that I belong to, the fraternal organizations, the church groups, etc., and about how those are all slowly dying. Somehow these organizations that attracted me in my search for wisdom and happiness, to develop myself and my character alongside like minded people, are not finding a strong foothold in the general population. I can't imagine why, it seems to me like the 21st Century is in search for all the things that can be gained from these older societies.

In today's world, the government has grown and gotten to the point where the general population is convinced that the role of the government is to solve the aches and pains of society. But there are some aches and pains that were once solved by societies, clubs, and fraternities, a concept well understood by any student of Victorian England. The question is then, whether or not these societies and groups provided a service to the general population. The increase of democracy and human capital in the late 1800s abd early 1900s would indicate that there's something there. But was it the social connections or something else?

I was baptized into the Mormon Church in 1995, at the age of 11 years old, having chosen to join at a young age. Years later, I would understand the deeper parts of the church doctrine and be converted deeper into the depths of Christianity and the mysteries of heaven therein. After serving a mission faithfully and fulfilling my priesthood several times, witnessing things that cannot be explained in any terms I know, I began searching for more understanding to the universe. How does God use will to make things happen? How does he utilize his perfection for the force of good?

On 6/11/2011, I was initiated into the mysteries of Phi Delta Theta, a collegiate fraternity that introduced me to serval individuals of differing backgrounds, and I began to realize what true brotherhood and companionship is all about. And I was introduced to the basic rites and rituals that exist in fraternal lodges. This led me down paths I had not known, making crooked ways seem more straight.

On 1/15/2013, after debating and contemplating the subject for years, I was initiated into Freemasonry as an Entered Apprentice, where I know still stand, working forward on my next degree. Freemasonry contains symbols and allegories that teach a system of morality, but hidden down inside the depths of practices is power and something else. Having been exposed to this, I began delving and found several books on the subject..

My intent with this blog is start documenting my paths of searching for the depths of the esoteric and the answer to the question, what are the bandages to human existence? How does God work in mysterious ways and what are those ways? How can a man become the greatest version of himself and not cross into a realm that he should not go? Hopefully, my blog can exist as a documentation of my thoughts and actions and be a guide for any other person seeking the truth.

I will grant the skeptics or the critics, I am a devoted Christian man, a Mason, a fraternity man, and a good man at that. But, I am wise enough to realize I know little and know even less than I think I do. Hopefully bias will not obstruct the discoveries I make.