Book Description

Part 1. Abbe Roca’s ecclesiastical views upon the Esotericism of Christian Dogma. Part 2. Madame Blavatsky refutes the “Word made flesh” of the Catholic Church. Christian texts are allegories to the archaic mysteries of the Cycle of Initiation, and keys to the once universal mystery-language. When esoterically interpreted, they reveal their fundamental identify with the same Universal Truths. By imposing the dogma of the “Word made flesh,” the Latin Church is diametrically opposed to the tenets of Eastern Occultism, thus maintaining an abyss between East and West as long as neither yields an inch. Today’s Christians are the usurpers of a name they no longer understand. By denying the Divine Logos to any other man, except Jesus of Nazareth, the Churches carnalised the Christos of the Gnostics, and that alone prevents them having any point in common with the disciples of the Archaic Wisdom. The Church of Rome was Gnostic, just as much as the Marcionites were, until the middle of the second century. Further evidence that Rome has wandered farthest from the real religion of the mystical Christ is that it adopted the solar tonsure proper to the Egyptian priests of the public temples, and to the lamas and bonzes of the popular Buddhist cult. No “sacrificial victim” can be united with Christ triumphant before passing through the stage of the suffering Chrēst, who was put to death on the cross of his passions. It is the light of the glorious Christ-Spirit that directs the modern Theosophical movement. The Astronomical Christ can have only one anniversary of birth and resurrection in years because his parents are the Sun and the Moon, the heavenly bodies that accompany “the Man crucified in Space.” Paul had been converted not to the Jesus of Nazareth but to the Christos of the Gnostics. In his Epistles he has been made to fulminate against the heretics — Peter, James, and the other Apostles! The sacred fire which Prometheus “stole” from the gods is the flame of self-consciousness, the spark that quickened the human mind. The supposed “theft” of the sexual flame is the outcome of evolution, of which the Darwinian theory is but the rough exterior husk on the material plane. Since men had discovered the secret of physical creation, and were procreating in their turn, what was the use of god-creators? The true Christ is the glorious Ego, triumphant over the flesh. We solemnly reject the dogma of Ascension, which degrades the great mystery of Universal Unity. Mysteries were invented by those who are bend on exercising power in order to manipulate the ignorant by arrogating the prerogative of gods. Did you know that the “mysteries” of the Catholic Church are those of the Brahmanas, though under other names? Part 3. Abbe Roca counter-responds to Madame Blavatsky’s observations. Part 4. Madame Blavatsky debunks Abbe Roca’s mistaken notions concerning her observations. The Abbé has consigned the theological Christ to the background, and has not breathed a word about the esoteric Christos. Moreover, he bears me a grudge for having displayed what he pleases to call “such erudition.” He deceives himself in fancying he understands Buddhism but he does not know it even exoterically, any more than Hinduism, even in its popular form. Theosophy is neither Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism, Hinduism, nor any other –ism: it is the esoteric synthesis of the world’s religions, philosophies, and sciences. Abbé Roca has fabricated for himself a Christianity of his own. Our Masters are far too great to bedizen themselves with the peacock’s feathers of infallibility. The puff of wind which knocks down a house of cards may easily pass for a heavy squall in the eyes of the architect who built it; but if the Abbé lays the blame on the puff, rather than on the weakness of his edifice, this is certainly not my fault. The homage he renders to the wisdom of our Masters, instead of intoxicating me by its heady fumes as he alleges, it made me feel an even deeper mistrust of his motives. A divine Christ has never existed under a human form outside the imagination of blasphemers, who have carnalised a universal and wholly impersonal principle. The Man-God of the Christians was never historical person. He is a deified personification of the glorified type of the great Hierophants of the Temples, and his story as told in the New Testament is a mere allegory, assuredly containing profound esoteric truths, but still an allegory. Matthew’s “strait is the gate and narrow is the way” applies neither to the Abbé nor to his faith. In his Church, the way and the gate to heaven become wider in proportion to the sums paid by the faithful. The Churches, which style themselves “Christian,” are nothing but whited sepulchres filled with the dead bones of esoteric paganism and moral putrefaction. It is infinetly more difficult, more meritorious, and more godlike, to live for the love of, whether man or an ideal, than to die for it. We have thus shown to the Abbé what we, Occultists, know as opposed to what some Fathers of the Church believed they knew. Not only he deceives himself, he is hopelessly optimistic. Though I amply elaborated upon the real Christ, i.e., the impersonal pre-Christian Logos, Abbé Roca keeps reverting back to the ecclesiastical and dogmatic Christ of his Church. Part 5. Abbe Roca’s final response, annotated by Madame Blavatsky. Part 6. Fearless Roca was finally defrocked for coquetting too openly with Theosophy. Alas! His glorious dream of a reconciliation between Pantheistic Theosophy and a Socialistic Latin Church, under a Caesaro-Papal head, came to an abrupt end.