How the Heavenly Snails clothed themselves in the Fabric of Darkness


Book Description

Cosmic Substance or Noumenon of Matter is the origin and root of intelligent operations in (and of) Nature. Cosmic Substance and Cosmic Ideation are inseparable and interdependent. Their Androgyne Power is the Infinite, Shoreless Ocean of Life, expanding and contracting regularly. It is Absolute Consciousness! Cosmic Ideation is expressed by innumerable centres of Intellectual Force (Mahat) which, on the objective plane of being, become Fohat — thus differentiating the One into Many under cyclic law. By merging Her Seven Pitris with their Solar counterparts, Abstract Nature creates the miracle of Man. Life, Energy, and Force, are Eternal and Unchangeable, yet interchangeable when manifested. They are the Noumenon of Matter and Womb of the World.







The Ineffable Name is the Great Mystery of Creation and Salvation


Book Description

Unknown and Unknowable is the Supreme Mystery-God. It is the Voice of the Ineffable Name and the Wisdom of the Initiates (Epopteia). It is the Holy of Holies, the Unity of Unities, more ineffable than all Silence, more occult than all Essence. It is Plato’s Unspeakable All, He whom no person has seen, except the Son. It is Pythagoras’ Ineffable God’s Name, and key to the mysteries of the Kabbalah. It is the Holy Word of God that “no man knew but He himself.” The Name is Ineffable because non-existent. It permeates the Moon and Stars, yet It is different from the Moon and Stars. It never differentiates but only emanates. There is no need travelling to distant places to find It. The Name is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart. It may rush into infinite worlds in sleepless whirling, yet It remains latent in the deepest recesses of thy heart. The Ineffable Name is Deity Itself, but not God. Nameless, unpronounceable, yet universally diffused Essence, the Ineffable is Kama-Eros-Phanes or noumenon of Fohat, i.e., Divine Will or Eternal Desire of manifesting Itself through visible creation. The Name lies hidden within the Pythagorean Tetrad or Tetractys. It is expressed by the Tau Cross, signet of the Living God. The double motion of the philosophical cross is the great arcanum of life and being. Deity is Nameless, Numberless, No-thing, Absolute Darkness. God is quaternary: Ineffable–Silence–Father–Truth. All powers and great symphonies of physical and spiritual nature lie inscribed within the Perfect Square. That is why the Ineffable Name was replaced by the Sacred Tetrad or Tetractys, the most binding and solemn oath with the ancient mystics. There are three Tetrads: the Unfathomable Father (First Logos), Its creative emanation or Heavenly Man (Second Logos), and the embodied reflection of the latter in humanity at large (Third Logos), or the Tetragrammaton of the Jews. Only the first is the real, Pythagorean Tetractys; the other two are counterfeit. The Ineffable Word is identical with the “Ineffable Name” of the Masons and the Kabbalists. The Word itself is only a substitute for the Masonic “Lost Word,” and a comparatively modern invention. The “Lost Word” is no word at all, as in the case of the “Ineffable Name.” It ought to stand as “lost words” and lost secrets, in general. Nor the “Name” is a name, but Sound or rather Motion. The “Name” is not “ineffable,” it is “unpronounceable” or rather not to be pronounced.




Narayana, First or Third Logos?


Book Description

Narayana is Self-born Spirit, ever stirring the “primordial Ocean of Space” or Akasha, which is Its progeny. Are the “Great Waters” the same as those on which the Darkness moved? Narayana is Androgyne Wisdom, the Sophia of the Gnostics, the Hindu female Nari, vivifying the “waters” of chaos or potential matter from afar, without touching the abyss of darkness; She is unable to do so for Wisdom being purely intellectual cannot act directly on matter. Says Vishnu: “I called the name of water Nara in ancient times, and am hence called Narayana, for that was always the abode I moved in.” (Ayana) The “moist principle” of Space becomes “wet” only after its separation by Narayana’s invisible Flame. · Narayana is Self-created, i.e., Unmanifested Logos (Īśvara is Logos Manifested). · He is the “mover on the Waters” of space. · He is one and the same as Shekhīnah and Daivīprakriti, the Light of Logos. · Not only Narayana makes us all sing and dance around Him in a circle, He is the choirmaster at the centre of our being. · Appearing with every Manvantara as Narayana, He remains ever “Concealed in Akasha and present in Ether.” · He is, and yet He is Not. In terms of the Sacred Word, Nara is A, the Germ, Divine Spirit or Holy Ghost, that fecundates Nari or U, Kosmos’ Virgin Matrix or Waters of Life, which is an emanation of Itself. Narayana is M, the Spirit of God, moving the two into existence. Narayana is The ONE or the Pythagorean Monas, dwelling in solitude and darkness. Says a Master of Wisdom: “Pythagoras had a reason for never using the finite, useless figure 2, and for altogether discarding it. The ONE can, when manifesting, become only Three. The unmanifested, when a simple duality, remains passive and concealed.” Narayana is the Eternal Breath of the Unconscious All, ever arousing the slumbering Waters of Life, which are the Noumenon of Matter also bearing Latent Spirit. He is the ONE and only Cause of Duality. Narayana is the seventh and highest principle of our solar system. He throbs in the heart of every spiritual man, and everywhere. He is Logos Itself. Genesis’ “Heaven and Earth” alludes to the separation of the Primordial Substance to Light in its upper (Spirit), and Darkness in its lower portions (Matter), i.e., to the separation of the invisible from the visible by the Firmament, which is the manifested Universe. Narayana may be plunged in the Waters of Wisdom but He is not the God of the Waters. Varuna is the Vedic God of the Waters of Space, Akasha or “Heaven,” and prototype of the Greek Ouranos. “He who breaks Varuna’s laws is punished by Indra.” For Indra is the Vedic God of the real Firmament, or Mahat-Nous, and prototype of the Illusion of Separateness.




The Holy Four of Pythagoras is Logos in its latent state


Book Description

The Pythagorean Square is the sum of the first numbers, +++, i.e., number , the Tetractys of the Decas. Number is a numerical expression of the mysteries of the whole Kosmos, its microcosmic image or man, and the sum total of all human knowledge. A trinity of Perfect Squares make up the Dodecahedron, a Perfect Number concealed in a Perfect Cube. Thomas Taylor on the eleven faces of the Pythagorean Tetractys: The first tetractys is 1. 2. 3. 4. The second, is the monad, a side, a square, and a cube. The third, is a point, line, a superficies, and a solid. The fourth, is fire, air, water, and earth. The fifth, the pyramid, the octahedron, the icosahedron, and the cube. The sixth, seed, length, breadth, and depth. The seventh, man, a house, a street, and a city. The eighth, intellect, science, opinion, and sense. The ninth, the rational, the irascible, the epithymetic parts, and the body. The tenth, spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Saturn is the dianoetic tetractys. The Pythagorean World is the Root of Illusion.




The Rope of the Angels


Book Description

Matter is Mother and vice versa. Undifferentiated matter is composed of indestructible atoms; differentiated matter is destructible in form. The Circle of Life becomes triangular by hypothecating Absoluteness; the right line represents a metaphysical synthesis; the left, a physical one. When Mother Nature shall have made of her body the horizontal line joining these two, then will be the moment of the awakening of cosmic activity. In the manifested world, “the highest sees through the eye of the lowest.” First Logos is the real Pythagorean Tetractys. It is the Esoteric Logos of the Invisible Monad. Tetragrammaton is Logos Demiourgos; it is the Tetractys of the profane. In occult symbolism, Macroprosopus is the Square in the Circle and a veil over the Hierarchy of Compassion; Microprosopus, the Triangle in the Square. Macroprosopus is the Spiritual Tetrad; Microprosopus, the Material. The “Long Face” is Absoluteness, the Perfect Square within the Magic Circle, an ever Unknowable and Unmanifested Deity. The “Short Face” is the “Heavenly Man” or manifested Logos, the Triangle in the Square or the Sevenfold Cube. The Abstract Cross ceases to exist and becomes the Circle or Boundary, for below rules the physical procreation of mortals, whereas above reigns the noetic creation of Gods. The great circle or Ring Pass-Not is the “Rope of the Angels” that hedges off the phenomenal from the noumenal Kosmos. 31415 (7 x 2 = 14) is the numerical hierarchy of the Dhyani-Chohans (the twice seven), number of the inner, circumscribed world, and the mystic Svastika. In other words, the astronomical pi veils the Benefactors of the World from prying minds. It is the Lipikas, Recorders of the Karmic Ledger, that circumscribe the world of matter within a Ring Pass-Not thus making an impassable barrier between the personal ego of man and his impersonal Self, the Noumenon and Parent-Source of the former. This impassable barrier is neither a locality nor can it be measured by distance, for it exists in Absoluteness or Infinity. While numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 are successive emanations from Infinite Space, 4, 3, 2 veil the Infinite from objective perception and speculation. Number 1 is lost in its inaccessible solitude. Another veil unveiled!




Chaos to sense, latent deity to reason


Book Description

Part 1. The shoreless Ocean of Space is the Light of the Central Sun and First Cause. Space exists whether there is a God, gods or none; whether there is a universe or no universe: during the Maha Yugas, the Pralayas, as well as during the periods of Manvantara. Part 2. Space is Chaos, Unseen and Unknowable Deity that thrills throughout every atom in Boundless Kosmos. Space is filled with darkness, which is primordial matter in a pre-cosmic state. This Abstract Deity is a Single Absolute Omniscience and Intelligence that thrills throughout every atom, and infinitesimal point in boundless Kosmos. The Infinitude of Chaos is the Nest of the Eternal Bird, the flutter of whose wings produces life. Part 3. Space is the Pythagorean Monas, Potential Space within Abstract Space. It is symbolised by the Central Point of the Circle. Space and Universe are synonymous. In Space there is not only Matter, Force, and Spirit, but all that and much more. Space is the Soul of the World, the One Element or Root of Life which, in its eternal, ceaseless motion, like the out- and in-breathing of One Boundless Ocean, evolves only to reabsorb all that lives and feels and thinks and has its being in it. Part 4. Space is the Aether of the Greek philosophers or pre-cosmic Mind. Chaos is pre-cosmic Matter. Part 5. Parentless Space is the incomprehensible Deity, whose invisible robes are the mystic root of all matter, whether seen or unseen. Interplanetary Space is full of imponderable substances, interpenetrating each other. They are the direct cause of natural phenomena manifesting through vibration at the lower end. Part 6. Space is a body of limitless extent, whose Septenary Principles manifest in our phenomenal world only the grossest fabric of their sub-divisions. The septenary constitution of Space will become visible when the so-called “fourth dimension of space,” i.e., the sixth characteristic of matter and harbinger of the Sixth Sense, is fully awakened. Part 7. To the profane, Space is Eternal Darkness; to the Initiate, the Celestial Fountain of the Waters of Life. The Dark Energy of Be-ness is reflected in Chaos. The Waters of Life is the Fifth Principle of Kosmos in the lower septenary, however, they differ from the Waters of Salvation. Only earth and water, when warmed by the Sun, can bring forth a living soul. Part 8. Space is Akasha, Soul of the World: potential energy, whose function it is to evolve all visible things out of itself. Akasha is Aether, the Light of Creative Thought and Causeless Cause of every manifesting intellection, plus the reservoir of all thought because Absolute Thought. Ether is the lowest and grossest from of thought. Part 9. Space is Be-ness: Absolute Subjectivity plus Great Breath or motion unmanifested. Space and Time are forms of the One incognisable Deity. They are forms of That, the Absolute All. Real Time is abstract motion in Space. Part 10. The voidness of the seeming full is the fullness of the seeming void. Chaos is Void to sense, latent Deity to reason. Nature abhors a vacuum because there is no Spiritual Fire in vacuity. Nihil or Non-being in the mind of Ancient Philosophers became No-thing-ness and Emptiness among modern materialists. Vacuum or Voidness is a perception of lower minds. Vacuum is Absolute Deity, eternal and unchangeable. Its vehicle is pure, luminous Aether, Infinite Space. The abyss of Nothingness of the profane is the Infinite Space of the Divine Plenum of the Occultist.




Cross is the time-honoured symbol of pre-Cosmic Divine Mind


Book Description

Cross is the time-honoured symbol of pre-Cosmic Divine Mind. The four points correspond to birth, life, death, and immortality. The Hidden Deity represented by the circumference of a Circle, and the Creative Power (Androgynous Word) by the diameter across it, is the cornerstone of Esoteric Cosmogony, Theogony, and Anthropogony. With the old Aryans, the Egyptians, and the Chaldeans, the diameter across the Circle embraced the idea of eternal and immovable Divine Thought in its Absoluteness, separated entirely from the incipient stage of the so-called creation. With the Hebrews, however, that which has been embodied in the Pentateuch and especially in Genesis, is simply the secondary stage of Cosmogenesis, i.e., the mechanical law of creation, or rather of construction; while Theogony is hardly, if at all, outlined. Jehovah was the tribal property of the Jews and no higher, inseparable from, and unfit to play a part in, any other but the Mosaic Law. Astronomically, the “Most High” is the Sun, and the “Lord” is one of his seven planets.. The meaning of Moses beseeching the Lord to show him “his glory” interpreted by two Kabbalists. Moses and Jehovah are in numerical harmony because the number of Moses is that of “I am, That I am,” i.e., 345. The number of Jehovah is 543, the reverse of 345. When the “back parts” of Moses and his “face” are added up we have 888, which is the Gnostic-Kabbalistic name of Jesus. The Sphinx has been devouring the brightest and the noblest intellects of Christendom but, at last, she is now conquered. It is not the Sphinx, however, who, burning with the shame of defeat had to bury herself into the sea, but the variegated symbol of Jehovah, whom Christians have accepted as their God. The Cross is one of the most ancient symbols, perhaps the most ancient. IAO is certainly a title of the Supreme Being, and belongs partially to the Ineffable Name; but it neither originated with, nor was it ever the sole property of, the Jews. IAO is an old mystic name of the Supreme deity of the Semites. In the old religion of the Chaldeans the highest divinity, enthroned above the seven heavens representing the spiritual light principle, was also called IAO who, like the Hebrew Yaho, was mysterious and unmentionable, and whose name was communicated only to the initiated. The ansated Cross represented Vishvakarman, the carpenter and artificer of the Gods crucifying the “Sun-Initiate” on the cruciform lathe, imparted the grand idea of man’s spiritual birth, not his physical regeneration. The candidate for initiation, being attached to the astronomical Cross, is a much grander and nobler idea than that of the origin of terrestrial life. On the other hand, the Semites had no other or higher purpose in life than that of procreating their species. Geometrically demonstrated, the Jewish Deity is merely an even number — the illusionary duad — never the One Absolute All; symbolically, a euhemerized Priapus. And all this can hardly satisfy those thirsting after real spiritual truths, not such a blasphemous and gross caricature of the Ever Unknowable. Even the most learned of modern Kabbalists can see in the Cross and Circle nothing but a symbol of the manifested creative and androgyne deity in this phenomenal world. But the Eastern Occultist declines to worship any anthropomorphic God. A Being, “having a mind like that of man, only infinitely more powerful,” is no God that has any room beyond the cycle of physical creation. That Being is, at best, one of the creative subordinate powers, the totality of which is called the Sephiroth, the Heavenly Man, and Adam Kadmon — the Second Logos of the Platonists. The initiated Hindus know how to “square the Circle” far better than any European. Western Mystics commence their speculation only at that stage when the universe “falls into matter,” as the Occultists say. From the first to the last chapter of the Pentateuch every scene, character, and event are connected with the origin of birth in its crudest and most brutal form. God is a Circle, the centre of which is everywhere and the circumference nowhere. Circle and Cross are inseparable. It is not in the Bible that we have to search for the origin of the Cross and Circle, but beyond the Flood. Deity is eternal perpetual motion, the Ever-Becoming, as well as the Ever-Universally-present, and the Ever-Existing. The Circle is its outward veil. The Crux Ansata unites the Circle and the four corners of the Cross. The Cross below the Circle stands for human procreation, and therefore oblivion of the divine origin of the Cross within the Circle and the divine pedigree of Man. The cruciform noose is a Cross in a Circle, a Crux Ansata truly; but it is a Cross on which all the human passions have to be crucified before the Yogin passes through the “strait gate,” the narrow Circle that widens into an infinite one, as soon as the inner man has passed the threshold. The Pleiades are the central group of the Milky Way, and the Central Point around which our Universe of fixed stars revolve in their respective orbits. It is this Circle and the starry Cross on its face that play the most prominent part. The Universe is periodically manifested by accelerated Motion, propelled by the Breath of Unknowable Power. The Spirit of Life, Infinite Wisdom, and Immortality are symbolised by the Circle and the Astronomical Cross within, the ouroboric Serpent or Dragon, and the Winged Globe which evolved as the Egyptian Scarabæus — suggesting the peregrinations of the Soul, each lower form unfolding a higher one. Self-moving numbers preceded mathematical numbers. The Planetary Spirits, or Creative Powers, were represented as Invisible Circles, the prototypic causes and builders of the heavenly orbs, which are Their visible bodies or coverings. Our visible Sun orbits ever closer around the Invisible Central Sun, which is the Spirit of Kosmos — abstract and formless because homogeneous and impartite — the Centre of Intelligence-Wisdom in every organised Universe, and Solar systems to be. Theos is neither the Spirit of Truth nor Spiritual Intelligence, but their Father. Far greater and more exacting deity than the “god” of this world, supposed to be “good,” is the Law of Karma. And this Universal Deity demonstrates that the lesser one, our personal god, has no power to arrest her mighty hand, for causes initiated by our thoughts and actions generate smaller causes, and call forth the unerring Law of Retribution that predestines nothing and no one. The Honoured One dwells in the Centre as in the Circumference, but it is only the reflection of the hidden Deity. The plane of the surface of the Circle is the World Soul. Those who, by unifying and individualizing the Universal Presence, have synthesized it into one symbol — the Central Point in the Crucifix — they have never seized the true Spirit of the teaching of Christ, and by their spurious interpretations they have degraded it in more than one way. They have forgotten the Spirit of that universal symbol and have selfishly monopolized it — as though the Boundless and the Infinite can ever be limited and conditioned in one man, or even in a nation! Alone, among the Apostles of the Western religion, Paul seems to have fathomed out the archaic mystery of the Cross. The four points of the Cross represent in succession birth, life, death, and immortality. To crucify before the sun is a phrase used of initiation. It comes from Egypt via from India. The initiated adept, who had successfully passed through all the trials, was simply tied on a couch (not nailed) in the form of a Tau or a Svastika, without the four prolongations, and then plunged in a deep sleep, the Sleep of Siloam. Vishvakarman, the all-seeing god, the great architect of the world and creative power, sacrifices himself to himself. The Spiritual Egos of every mortal are of His own essence, and one with Him. The symbol of Crucifixion is the origin of measures, shadowing forth creative law and design. Man was the primordial Word, the very first word possessed by the Hebrews, whoever they were, to carry the idea by the sound of a man. The numerical value of that word is 113, and carried with it the elements of the cosmical system displayed. The figure of Vithoba, even to the nail-marks on the feet, is that of Jesus crucified, in all its details, save the Cross. That man was meant, is proved by the fact of the Initiate being reborn after his crucifixion on the Tree of Life. That tree, through its use by the Romans as an instrument of torture, and by the ignorance of Christian schemers, has now become the tree of death! Thus one of the seven esoteric meanings, implied in the mystery of Crucifixion by the inventors of the system, is now revealed by the geometrical symbols containing the history of the evolution of man. The queer injunction in the Old Testament to crucify men before the Lord, the Sun, is no prophecy at all but has a direct phallic significance. The Cross is not a human invention, it is a time-honoured symbol of cosmic ideation and of the divine soul in man: eternal in its potentiality, periodical in its potency. Later, it expanded in that of the mortal who, by crucifying his flesh and passions on the Procrustean bed of torture, is reborn Immortal — leaving behind the animal-man tied on the Cross of Initiation. Like an empty chrysalis, the Spiritual Soul is now free as a butterfly. Much later, owing to the gradual loss of spirituality, the Cross was degraded to a phallic symbol. Eventually, the Cross was adopted and manipulated by Christianity, yet it was phallic from the very beginning. But the Cross does not belong exclusively to the Churches: its metaphysical meaning is too much for the champions of the religion of sensualism to grasp. The Cross is pre-eminently is Kabbalistic, representing the opposition and quaternary equilibrium of the elements.




What is Matter and what is Force?


Book Description

Life, whether in its latent or dynamic form, is Electricity, i.e., Force or “Spirit” moving Matter. Spirit is a bright flame within a transparent globule — its vehicle or soul. What we call light is an impression produced upon the retina by the wave-like motion of the particles of matter. Light, like heat of which the former is the crown, is simply the ghost, the shadow of matter in motion, the boundless, eternal, Infinite Space–Motion– Duration, the Trinitarian essence of that which the Deists call God, and we — the One Element. Spirit and Matter are two poles of One Eternal Element; they are interdependent and mutually convertible. Force and Matter, Spirit and Matter, or Deity and Nature, though they may be viewed as opposite poles in their respective manifestations, in essence and in truth are One. Life is present as much in a dead as in a living body, in inorganic as in organic matter.




Vast is the antiquity and universality of the Zodiac.


Book Description

The antiquity and universality of the Zodiac can be traced back to the earliest Theogonies. It was not the Greeks who invented the Zodiac, for the simple reason that they did not yet exist as a nation thirty-seven centuries B.C. The dodecahedron is a perfect number and one among many signs of the Zodiac that the Sun visits in twelve months. It was in honour of that sign that Moses divided his nation into twelve symbolical tribes. Berosus predicted future events by the Zodiac; and the time fixed by him for the conflagration of the world, and another for a deluge, comes at every renewal of the cycle of the sidereal year of 25,868 years. The Hindus date their Kali-Yuga from the great periodical conjunction of the planets at 3,100 before the birth of Christ. Diogenes Laërtius carried back the astronomical calculations of the Egyptians to 48,683 years before Alexander the Great. The cycle of Initiation was a reproduction in miniature of that great series of Cosmic changes to which astronomers have given the name of tropical or sidereal year. Just as, at the close of the cycle of the sidereal year (25,868 mortal years), the heavenly bodies return to the same relative positions as they occupied at its outset, so at the close of the cycle of Initiation the inner man may regain the pristine state of divine purity and knowledge, from which he set out on his cycle of terrestrial incarnations. The connection of the twelve Jewish patriarchs with the Zodiac is a tacit “divine” recognition of the “chosen people of God,” whose finger has purposely traced in heaven, from the beginning of creation, the numbers of these patriarchs. Even the banners of these tribes are claimed to have exhibited the same symbols as those of the zodiacal signs. In the universe of differentiated matter everything is mathematically co-ordinated and mutually related in its units. Replace God with of Karma, and he will become an Eastern axiom. Why see in the Pisces a direct reference to Jesus, one of several world-reformers, when that constellation shines as a symbol of all past, present, and future Spiritual Saviours who dispense light and dispel mental darkness? The Jews had evidently and undeniably borrowed their chronology from the Chaldeans, along with their gods. Of the 432,000 years of the Chaldean divine Dynasties they made 4,320 lunar years from the world’s creation to the Christian era; as to the Babylonian and Egyptian Gods, they transformed them as quietly and modestly into Patriarchs. The Zodiac existed hundreds of million of years before the Christian era. Each planetary conjunction is a climacteric year of humanity. All Sun-gods had been mystically connected with the constellation of Taurus, which was called “the great city of God and mother of revelations” and “the interpreter of the divine voice.” The ansated Egyptian cross or Tau, the Jaina cross or Svastika, and the Christian cross have all the same meaning. No peoples or nations, except the Christians, gave the significance to the Dragon that is given to it now. The Serpent was the symbol of Wisdom; and the Taurus, sacred in every Cosmogony, the symbol of physical or terrestrial generation. It was from the Hindu systems of astronomy that the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, and even the Jews derived their knowledge. It is the antiquity of the nations of the East which has erected their scientific fame. For patience accumulated knowledge; and prolonged experience produced wisdom. Time itself was their teacher; they knew the motions of the heavenly bodies during these intervals because they had seen them; and the duration of the Hindu people on earth is the cause of the fidelity of its records and the accuracy of its calculations. The descent and re-ascent of the human soul cannot be disconnected from the Zodiacal signs, and it feels more natural to believe in the mysterious sympathy between the metaphysical soul and the bright constellations, and in the influence of the latter on the former, than in the absurd notion that the creators of Heaven and Earth have placed in Heaven the types of twelve vicious Jews. In esoteric philosophy Patriarchs are the progenitors of the human race, the “Mind-born Sons” of Brahmā. They are the nursery and fountainhead of human beings. This is the occult meaning of the Biblical Patriarchs, of their genealogy, and of their descendants dividing among themselves the earth. First 7 are mentioned, then 10, 21, and so on. The Jewish Patriarchs were pastors, not priests.