Topic: Jesus and the Goddess - The Secret Teachings Of the Original Christians

[Re@PeR]

Jesus and the Goddess - The Secret Teachings Of the Original Christians by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy

The book starts out explaining that Christianity was merely a philosophy based on Judaism and Paganism to get the mainstream people to live their life more spiritual (a noble cause). Those who wanted more were pulled into an inner circle where they were taught the inner mysteries of the daughter of the Goddess where the Goddess were referred to as Sophia. The Romans destroyed the female image of God and silenced everyone disagreeing with their rewritten version of Christianity which is Orthodox Christianity as we know it today, the one accepted today as the truth, not because it IS the truth, but because it won.

This book divides all religions into two groups, one group is the literalists (also the ones who turns into extremists), the people taking the religion myths as facts as well as the people who believes their version is the correct version of the word of God who constantly strives to silence everyone else who believes something different and who are also responsible for most of the religious wars we know of.

Gnostics on the other hand achieve a more spiritual outlook on things and and tend to be much more peaceful and agreeable amongst different religions. The goal of Gnostic spirituality is Gnosis, or Knowledge of Truth. The name 'Gnostics', meaning 'Knowers' is chosen because in different languages and religions, individuals who have realized 'Gnosis' or achieved 'Enlightenment' are often referred to as 'Knowers': Gnostikoi (Pagan / Christian), Arifs (Muslim), Gnanis (Hindu), Buddhas (Buddhist)

It then goes on explaining the history behind the original Christians, how they took Jewish myths (Genesis which is the transcoding of the incarnation of the soul into physical being and Exodus which is the transcoding of the path from the physical being back to God) being influenced by the Jewish master Moses and the Pagan philosopher Pythagoras as well as Greek Mythology and how the myth was refined over centuries.

The book is packed with historical information exposing all the myths and where they originated, not going to give an overview of the whole book as that will take forever. I have the 1999 print, the 2002 release is called Jesus and the lost Goddess.

The review at the back:

Why were the secret teachings of the original Christians brutally suppressed by the Roman Church?

Because they relate the myth of the Christian Goddess Sophia.
Because they portray Jesus and Mary Magdalene as mythic figures based on the Pagan dying and resurrecting Godman and the fallen and redeemed Goddess.
Because they show that the gospel story is a spiritual allegory encoding a profound philosophy that leads to Gnosis - mystical enlightenment.
Because they undermine all external authority by directly revealing the Christ within.
Because they have the power to turn the world inside-out and transform life into into an exploration of consciousness.
Drawing on the cutting edge of modern scholarship, this groundbreaking book from the authors of the international bestseller The Jesus Mysteries decoded the secret teaching of the original Christians for the first time in almost two millennia.

To those who say you can't be a Christian and a Pagan or you can't be Jewish and Wiccan or any combination of any religion are the literalists who strive towards orthodoxy, to those who achieve enlightenment or reach Gnosis believes that all religions are the same in essence and its purpose is to make mankind live a more spiritual life which means you can associate yourself with any combination of religions, even the more absurd ones as they only portray a philosophy, literalists will frown upon the occurance of somebody calling themselves a Christian Pagan or similar or even try to convert the person whereas the Gnostic way of living is understanding the purpose of both and embracing the philosophy behind it.

Other books in the series promising much more controversy is The Laughing Jesus:

Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, authors of The Jesus Mysteries and Jesus and the Lost Goddess, return with a powerful indictment of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic fundamentalism and a passionate reinterpretation of Gnostic spirituality. According to Freke and Gandy, religiously inspired acts of violence, such as the attacks on 9/11, are nothing new. They are the continuation of a long and bloody history of brutality caused by mistaking bizarre old books for the Word of God. The time has come to end religious intolerance and wake up to oneness by rediscovering the Gnostic way of transforming oneself and the world.

Freke and Gandy's Incendiary New Book Is a Wake-Up Call to the World

What if the Old Testament is a work of fiction, Jesus never existed, and Muhammad was a mobster?

What if the Bible and the Qur’an are works of political propaganda created by Taliban-like fundamentalists to justify the sort of religious violence we are witnessing in the world today?

What if there is a big idea that could free us from the us-versus-them world created by religion and make it possible for us to truly love our neighbors—and even our enemies?

What if it is possible to awaken to a profound state of oneness and love, which the Gnostic Christians symbolized by the enigmatic figure of the laughing Jesus?

Timothy Freke has an honors degree in philosophy and is the author of more than twenty books on world spirituality. He lectures and runs experiential seminars throughout the world exploring gnosis.

Peter Gandy has an M.A. in classical civilization and is an internationally respected authority on the ancient Pagan Mysteries and early Christianity.

Both Freke and Gandy live in England and are the authors of five previous books, including The Jesus Mysteries and Jesus and the Lost Goddess.

Interview with one of the authors:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/orPuzjxU9gE&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/orPuzjxU9gE&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1</a>

[SoaringSpirit]

This sounds really interesting Re@P

[Re@PeR]

Some more info about the Gnostic Christians, the original Gnostic Christians were Jewish Gnostics who created the Christian myth cycle from Pagan and Jewish myths just for the fun of it (at first, later it was used to give the average Joe a more spiritual outlook on life until the Romans came to destroy their beautiful work of spiritual art) They were radical anarchists not believing in any specific doctrine, eclectic, treated woman as equals, orgy's as we know it today was acceptable as it was something natural and their outlook on life was similar to Discordians in the sense that they actually made fun of religion and provoked literalists all the time just for the fun of it while still celebrating Pagan festivals.

The Literalist Timothy writes with disgust about the shameless naturalness of the Christian Gnostics:

They eat whenever they are hungry. 
They drink when they are thirsty, at 
any hour of the day, without regard 
for the proscribed fasts. They spend 
their time doing nothing and sleeping. 
In summertime, when night falls, they 
lie down to sleep in the open air, men 
and woman together, and they say 
this is of no consequence.

What an interesting bunch of people!

[Zephyr]

Sounds like FREEDOM to me.... I like it
I want to go to a naturist Holiday Camp, (NOT nudist camp), does that make me as shameless as them ?   

[Re@PeR]

Yes, that's basically what the original Christians taught, we are our own god and in realising the Christ within us we set our self free.

Here's a piece of text that really struck me, something which a Gnostic Christian told a fundamentalist Christian after the fundamentalist started with his crap:

Relax. You are not drowning. You can let go, because life is actually completely safe. Just experience Gnosis and all your ignorance will be dispelled. Just know who you really are and you will have absolutely no fear ever again. Discover the Christ within yourself and you will be always One with God.

[Oldsoul]

@Reaps, I will follow this thread with interest in the week that follows. I stated previously that Jesus and Mary were the first HP and HPS and the disciples were the rest of the coven. About saying you cannot be a Christian Witch or Pagan Christian. I have a suspicion that this will rile a few skew comments. Very thought provoking post, thanks. 

[Re@PeR]

Well, let's bring the Exodus mythology into context with the new testament mythology:

Initiation Process	Exodus	Jesus Story
Purification	Crossing the Red sea	Baptism by John
Death of the old Self	Death of Moses	Crucifixion
Realization of Gnosis	The Promised Land	Resurrection

After the crossing of the red sea, the Israelites wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, this was translated to Jesus being baptized and then wandering in the wilderness for 40 days.

The death of Moses is translated to the crucifixion.

The follower for Moses is Joshua which literally translates to Jesus in Greek.
In Hebrew the  name Joshua / Jesus is written with the letters Yod Heh Shin Vah Heh.
The letters Yod Heh Vah Heh is known as the Tetragrammaton, a name significant to the Jewish Gnostics and with added vowels becomes Jehovah or Yahweh with the middle letter Shin meaning Saviour of the Lord

Let's get to the 12 mythical apostals ... After Jesus of Exodus / Joshua crossed the river of Jordan, the Jesus of Exodus selects 12 men to represent the 12 tribes of Israel. After His baptism in the river, Jesus selects 12 men as his immediate followers, in both cases the 12 refers to the 12 astrological signs of the zodiac as the Jews adopted astrology from the Babylonians whilst in exile.

In the myth of Moses, at his birth, the Pharaoh fearful of a prophecy that would mean his end, instructed that all babies below a certain age should be killed in order to kill Moses. Sounds very familiar to King Herod who slaughtered the innocent in an attempt to kill Jesus.

Mary, the sister of Moses (this apparently is rewritten in the modern translations to suppress any parallels) becomes Mary, the mother of Jesus.

There are 100's of parallels between exodus and what we know today as the New Testament, but the Old Testament's story was stolen from other mythological stories by the Gnostic Jews and Gnostic Pagans:
Egypt: Isis and Osiris
Greece: Persephone and Dionysus
Syria: Aphrodite and Adonis
Asia: Minor as Cybele and Attis
Mesopotamia: Ishtar and Marduk
Persia: Magna Mater and Mithras
Judea: Asherah and Baal
.....
.....

All following the exact same story, born on 25th of December, following a similar life and dying due to unnatural cause while promising to come back in the near future.

@Oldsoul, the original Christian Goddess was called Sophia, it's only later that the Roman Catholics who suppressed the female figure, incorporated Mary as the female figure to loosen their strict views in order to pull in other sections of Christianity, especially the Gnostics who still "believed" in a male and female God / Goddess (after which they went on a rampage and burned Pagans, Gnostics or anyone who didn't believe in their literal version of the gospels, Gnostic Christians was burned too)
Gnostic Christians who went out to teach other people actually taught that Christianity, Judaism, Jewish and Paganism is exactly the same doctrine and that it shouldn't be taken literally, instead, the encoded messages should be use as a spiritual guide, so yes, according to their teachings, you can be Christian Witch or a Pagan Christian, they made a point of it in their lifestyle to embrace different cultures and believe systems.

Ever wondered where Islam originated from? There were 3 schools of Gnostic Christians (each one with a long history behind them, but all three knew that the Christianity they were practicing was based on a mythical figure): The Simonians were the left-wing revolutionaries who wanted to overthrow Jewish Literalism. The Ebionites saw Christianity as a movement of reform within Judaism. The Paulists, in the centre, considered Judaism to be superseded by Christianity and therefore obsolete. The Ebionites was eventually taken over by literalists who transformed it into what is known today as Islam. The other two branches were killed / burned out by the Roman empire after which they changed the meaning to literal meanings and rewrote some of the information for political reasons.

To sum up, basically Paganism, Jewish, Islam, Christianity and Judaism are exactly the same thing, in their original context of course until literalists with political motivation destroyed the harmony in exchange for power.

[Oldsoul]

@Re@PeR, you are preaching to the converted. 

[Re@PeR]

LOL @ Oldsoul
I'm just putting the story in context, knew the Jesus story was stolen from Pagan mythology, but never knew the Genesis and Exodus myths had anything to do with it. (Genesis and Exodus was written by Jewish Gnostics for exactly the same reason and was eventually interpreted literally)

[Oldsoul]

If you know your Bible and you know the mythologies, the parallells becoms frightening. 

[Re@PeR]

Guess I'm on the path of discovering all of them, the truth sets you free.

[FyreByrde]

Yay! Justification!

[Re@PeR]

This book deserves 6 out of 5, no wonder these two authors have several best selling books.

I would like to close of this "book review" by saying it's a really gripping book going into depths of what Gnostic Christians believed in, how it originated from mostly Gnostic Paganism, what exactly Gnostic Islam is and how it is exactly the same as Gnostic Christianity and the future of Gnosticism which is science, but not literalist science which kills the magic of life by declaring everything just particles, the science of questioning everything around us and coming to the conclusion that we can partly describe it with our limited set of senses, yet we can never describe everything (especially not God) in its infiniteness and will always return to watch everything from a distance and stand in awe and utter amazement.

The more we think we know, the less we know in reality, knowledge is an illusion and only by experiencing life can you truly understand that you can never truly understand life. This book finally gave me all the answers in an almost scientific philosophical way about "What is the point?" That question can not be answered as it would require a complete understanding of the universe, which is in essence, impossible. In order to understand the universe, you need to understand God, since God existed before consciousness existed, it's impossible to comprehend God as our senses were created merely so we can objectively experience life subjectively. With this gap in the understanding of the universe and the knowledge that the more we know, the less we know, there's no point in trying to figure out the meaning of life or the point of certain things, instead, we should experience life.

Christianity in short is a philosophy about what we are - the mystery of consciousness, note, that I refer to knowing as being a mystery, the mystery is what makes it magical. Gnosis in short is knowing that we know nothing and loving everything.

Christianity is a beautiful religion / path to follow as long as you don't fall victim to the literalists view. Literalist took the beautiful mythology with so many deeper levels of understanding and turned it into a close minded once of paranormal event of a man being born from virgin, being crucified and then resurrecting as a Zombie. Christianity teaches love, love is the only law as we are in Christ and Christ is within us. Evil does not exist but only exist relative to Good. Good can not exist without Evil and Evil can not Exist without Good as they are both relative concepts to one another.

Jesus was just a mythical example of such a person reaching Gnosis and was never meant to be worshiped.

The vision of 21st Gnostics are to awaken all human beings making them realise that associating oneself with the body is the evil of all time as associating with one's body is being driven by ego, ego is the only Evil, Satan, Devil or whatever you want to call it. Only by realising we are all one and an observer to life can we achieve Gnosis and reach a state of love. As stated, if you know your brother is you and you are your brother, would you hit him in the face with your fist? Hitting him is like hitting yourself.

The practical approach as taken from the improved New Testament (so that Literalist can understand it as well):

We could start by dumping an entire rogues' gallery of bad ideas concocted by Christian Literalists:

Original sin. That's a bad idea. Let's never again tell our children they've been born bad and reassure them instead that they are naturally good.
The Bible is the word of God. Ridiculous idea.
There is only one way to God. Obvious nonsense.
The Day of Judgement and the resurrection of the flesh. Spooky ideas.
The world is a bad place and we should hate it. In the face of all the wonders all around us, that's just ungrateful.
Eternal damnation Horrible, grotesque, really, really bad idea.
God likes some people more than others. Please! What sort of God is that?
Sex is evil. If you believe this, you must be doing it wrong.
God is male. What could that possibly mean? Does God have a   ?
Men are more spiritual than woman. This idea must have been thought up by a man who never had a mother.
God has opinions - and only some people know what they are. That's got to be one of the worst ideas ever, because it is regularly used to justify a whole edifice of bad ideas.

As I stated before, Christianity (as well as Islam) are both beautiful religions / paths to follow, both are Pagan in essence, only adapted to modernize the idea for their time. Literalist Christianity and Literalist Islam are not beautiful paths to follow, they are only an excuse for massive wars, bloodshed and tears. Fundamentalist Christians and Fundamentalist Islamics are literalist extremist, even worse than the ordinary literalist and downright dangerous.

And finally, if you can't laugh about your religion, you're doing it wrong!!!

[SoaringSpirit]

Hmmmm, this makes me think of the idiot (according to hubby, who was listening before me, he called himself and applogic catholic - or something like that anyway) I was listening to briefly on Kate Turkington's show on cape talk last night. Hubby and I had a bit of an argument about him cause I said he was an arrogant prick and hubby (being catholic) didn't agree...

[Oldsoul]

@Re@PeR, just a passing comment - All major religions have an internal and external path.  Judaism external, kabbalah internal. Islam external, Sufism internal, Christianity external, Gnostisism internal. Unfortunately, the church of the day tried its utmost best to destroy the internal path of gnostisism. All three of these major religions are basically so intertwined and stem from the same origin, but man /male is a selfcentered bigot. There is no such thing as religious wars  -  it is the people who uses religions as an excuse.