It is worth revisiting the story of the miraculous birth of…
…Alexander III, king of Macedonia and one of the greatest conquerors of the ancient world…known to history as Alexander the Great. A great military man, but lousy administrator. Eventually, Alexander came to believe that he was the son of Zeus…always think big! And it isn’t hard to guess who encouraged this opinion. Tradition relates that before his mother consummated her marriage to…
…King Phillip II of Macedonia. It’s odd that he seems to have lost his nose, when a far more historically accurate image of Philip shows that…
…he actually lost his right eye. Not quite so glamorous. However, Alexander’s mother…
…Olympias would face a problem that affected her son later in life…who was his father? Apparently, it wasn’t Philip. This could have resulted in the belief that Alexander the Great was a bastard, which could obviously undermine the image he projected of himself, and consequently, that of Olympias. What’s a mother to do? Give her right eye? I suppose not. Initially, she floated the idea that her son was descended from Apollo. That’s a pretty good lineage, but Olympias realized that why be descended from Apollo, when you could be the son of Zeus? Yes…Apollo’s boss. And it is known that the historical Olympias was part of a Macodonian snake cult. What do you get if you add snakes to the greatest lineage on earth? One hell of a pedigree. Legend states that prior to consumating her marriage to Phillip, and Olympias being still a virgin, Zeus threw a thunderbolt that hit her womb. When Philip looked into Olympias’s room…
…he saw his wife in bed in with Zeus in the form of a strange looking snake. This isn’t the only time that Serpentine Zeus made use of this trickery. In keeping with the objectionable behavior of the Greek gods, I would note that Zeus decided he wanted to marry his mother. When she refused, he turned himself into a snake and raped her. And not even Claudius did that. This version of the myth states that Persephone was born from this sexual violence. Olympias would continue to be associated with snakes in her iconography…
…and a snake carved on her tomb. Is this snake cult weird? It must be ancient, right?
Creepy snake cults and Southern Pentecostals…what is most relevant to the Search for the Panther is the idea that Olympias dreamed up this story when it was believed that Alexander was not the son of Phillip, making him illegitimate, thereby undermining his right to rule. Olympias changed the narrative, bringing Zeus into the picture, and thereby not only freeing Alexander from the accusation that he was a bastard, but also making him the son of the most powerful god in the universe.
The stories about nuns, Plato, Alexander, and Tiberius are definitely interesting. But there is a better one…the story of the god Attis. He was connected to the great Anatolian mother goddess…
Have you ever seen such majesty? Right! Cybele, who bore the title…Magna Mater.
Ok, she doesn’t always take a good picture. But! A cephalophore! A goddess after my own heart! Alas! When I cleaned out Darla’s closet, I found Cybele’s head.
Cybele’s cult began in Anatolia, but eventually spread to Greece, Rome and beyond. Her origin story is fascinating. A large, black meteorite landed in Anatolia, which some believe was named Cybele. That meteorite was taken to Rome in 204 B.C, after the Sibyl told the Romans that they would defeat Carthage if Magna Mater was taken to Rome, and the famous Roman general…
…Scipio Africanus...led the mission to take the stone to Rome. Another black stone was kept in the Temple of Aphrodite. The black stone of Cybele, or possibly that of Aphrodite, later appeared in Arabia, and was worshipped as a goddess. It may be that the…
…Ka’abah of Mecca, an Islamic cult object, is one of these stones. But in Rome, Cybele became the Mother of All Gods. She appeared under different names in different regions…
…Agdistis, who may have once been an Anatolian mountain goddess. But one myth states that Agdistis was a hermaphrodite, having male and female genitalia. The god Dionysus drugged Agdistis, and tied a rope to his/her phallus. When she awoke, the rope pulled it off. Hold that thought. An almond tree grew where the blood landed. There is also…
…Atargatis (also called Derceto). Her cult was centered in Northern Syria. And another myth claims that she was also a mermaid, or became a mermaid.
The last manifestation of Magna Mater is the Greek goddess…
…Rhea, Cronus’s wife. Eventually, it was believed that Cybele, i.e. Magna Mater, was the Mother of the Gods, and this, in a certain way, does Rhea an injustice. Rhea was the mother of Zeus, Poseidon, Demeter, Hestia, Hera, and Persephone. Yes, some of the heavyweights, so it’s a bit confusing why Magna Mater became the Mother of the Gods, unless the Greeks and Romans realized that Cybele…Atargatis… Agdistis…and Rhea were all one and the same. That said, looking at Phrygian Cybele, her importance here is really that of her consort…
…Attis. Apparently, he had a thing for MILFs. As I said earlier...following the violent removal of the male organs from Agdistis, an almond tree grew up from the spot where the blood landed. Enter…
….Nana, a Bactrian goddess who, like the other goddesses noted above, was associated with lions. Nana was a virgin, who, one day, sat under the infamous almond tree. She picked an almond, put it in her bosom, and became pregnant. And thus she gave birth to Attis, who would become closely associated with Cybele, though at one point he had his own cult. Attis would go on to…
…castrate himself and die under a pine tree. A thing for trees seems to run in the family. The act of castration associated with Attis is the basis for the fact that the…
…the priests of Cybele/Attis, called the Galli who…
…castrated themselves. I cannot help myself…I must quote the Great Roman Smart-Alec…Lucian, who provides a ridiculous account of how the galli perform the sacred act…
During these days they are made Galli. As the Galli sing and celebrate their orgies, frenzy falls on many of them and many who had come as mere spectators afterwards are found to have committed the great act. I will narrate what they do. Any young man who has resolved on this action, strips off his clothes, and with a loud shout bursts into the midst of the crowd, and picks up a sword from a number of swords which I suppose have been kept ready for many years for this purpose. He takes it and castrates himself and then runs wild through the city, bearing in his hands what he has cut off. He casts it into any house at will, and from this house he receives women's raiment and ornaments. Thus they act during their ceremonies of castration.
Lucian, On the Syrian Goddess, 51. Remember! If you live in a town where prospective galli are nearby…keep your doors locked and the windows closed…or you might get a horrible surprise. And there are easier ways to obtain clothing and jewelry.
In antiquity, castration was common when it came to slaves. It was practiced in Rome, but the…
…emperors Domitian and Nerva attempted to curtail its practice. Historically, males who oversaw the women in a…
…harem, were often eunuchs… for obvious reasons. The practice was used in medieval Europe…
…as a means of torture and punishment. For Norman nobles, castrating their foes was often combined with blinding the victim…
…Thomas de Marle, Lord of Coucy, who is well-known for his brutality. A very famous case of castration as a means of vengeance involved…
…Peter Abelard. He was famous for his relationship with Heloise d’Argenteuil, a student of his. Peter was one of the great proponents of Scholasticism, Metaphysics, and Conceptualism. Heloise was Peter’s protégé. She lived with her uncle Fulbert, and became one of the best educated women in France. Peter fell in love with her, and moved into her uncle’s house to woo her. For his part, Fulbert demanded that the two marry, which they did in secret. Following Fulbert’s unveiling of the marriage, Heloise suffered abuse at the hands of her uncle. Peter arranged her escape, and Fulbert, being furious, took his revenge by having a group of men castrate Peter.
Somehow, the story of Abelard’s castration became the topic of satire…
Sorry for the size of the image, but it was too good to pass up. If we go back even further, we might, very strangely, find a present for the fictional self-castration of Origen…
Please! We’ll have nun of that! And the mythological act of Origen castrating himself remains untrue, being simply a means to denigrate him, with Jerome and Epiphanius leading the way.
But it wasn’t just human males who practiced self-castration…
…animal testicles were in such a high demand that people hunted animals to get them. So in the margins of medieval works, animals are depicted as castrating themselves to save them from the hunters. And believe it or not, castration can happen by accident…
…King Frederick II, also called Frederick the Great of Prussia. He contracted gonorrhea, and while an attempt to treat it, he was accidentally castrated…or so the legend goes. A certain someone idolized Frederick. So I decided to go back in time using the time-machine Darla made in the basement, and told this certain someone about Frederick’s genital mishap…
It’s nothing to pout about. And can you believe that he actually had nothing to say? Or scream about? Nien…Nien…Nein, don’t list to Tektonikus. Still, I hopped eastward a bit, and found someone who thought it was great…
Way to go…Fuhrer!
I couldn’t believe he had the balls to do that.
In Greek mythology…
…Cronus castrated his father Uranus, and then Zeus castrated Cronus…
What comes around goes around. The imagery is somewhat confusing, since some of the images combine the eating of children along with the appearance of Aphrodite. However, Aphrodite suddenly appeared from the sea after Ouranos’s castrated genitals were cast into it. Cronus, castrated by Zeus, was thrown into Tartarus, whereas Ouranos retained his role as…
…the sky-god, whereas the luckless Cronus retained his role as the Eater of Children. The imagery associated with Ouranos and Cronus remained popular…
Of course, if we go back to Italy in the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly if we like opera as much as Adrasta does, we would encounter the…
…males castrated before puberty so as produce a singer who had a far more extensive vocal range than a male who went through the normal changes that accompany puberty. Known also as a musico or evirato, were particularly in demand in Italy. One would think that anyone claiming to be a Christian would balk at mutilating little boys for their own listening pleasure. However, it wasn’t until 1903 that…
…Pope Pius X ban the practice of castration altogether.
There are different myths surrounding Attis. James Frazer, in the Golden Bough states that Attis’s…
…date and resurrection were annually mourned and rejoiced over at a festival in spring…
So it would seem that Attis was born of a virgin, died, and was then resurrected. Where have I heard that before? But he was also a shepherd, an image likewise associated with Christ. Some have seen a connection between Attis’s castration and the Book of Matthew…
For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.”
Matthew 19:12. This passage was interpreted literally by some early Christians. Justin Martyr noted the following…
But whether we marry, it is only that we may bring up children; or whether we decline marriage, we live continently. And that you may understand that promiscuous intercourse is not one of our mysteries, one of our number a short time ago presented to Felix the governor in Alexandria a petition, craving that permission might be given to a surgeon to make him a eunuch. For the surgeons there said that they were forbidden to do this without the permission of the governor. And when Felix absolutely refused to sign such a permission, the youth remained single, and was satisfied with his own approving conscience, and the approval of those who thought as he did.
Justin Martyr, First Apology, XXIX.
Bishop Melito of Sardis…
…was known as…The Eunuch. Origen was accused of self-castration, but his teaching that Matthew 19:12 is not to be taken literally, and the prevalence of anti-Origen propaganda such as that found with Eusebius and Epiphanius, leads to the conclusion that the accusation has no merit. However, self-castration was practiced by certain Christians and Christian sects, but was prohibited by all sources of authority in Christendom. One Christian, Elias the Egyptian monk, claimed that he had a vision whereby he was held down by two angels, and castrated by a third. Athanasius made the following accusation against a presbyter named Leontius…
But the inheritors of the opinions and impiety of Eusebius and his fellows, the eunuch Leontius , who ought not to remain in communion even as a layman, because he mutilated himself that he might henceforward be at liberty to sleep with one Eustolium, who is a wife as far as he is concerned, but is called a virgin.
Athanasius, History of the Arians, IV:28.
Leontius lost his position as presbyter as a result of this action. However, Constantine’s father ordered that the Christian church appoint Leontius as bishop of Antioch, and he served in this capacity during the years 344-358 A.D. But Leontius was Phrygian by birth, and thus self-castration, long practiced by the priests of the Cybele/Attis cult, may have led many to see his actions in a positive light.
Then there was the strange Christian sect called…the Valesians…a group started by the Arabian philosopher Valens. Epiphanius wrote briefly about them…
I have often heard of Valesians, but have no idea who Vales was, where he came from, or what his sayings, admonitions or utterances were.
And there you have the nut Epiphanius in a nut-shell. He has no clue about what he is about to say, but he’ll say it anyway.
The name, which is Arabic, leads me to suppose that he and his sect are still in existence, as I also suspect it to be, but for, as I said, I cannot say this for certain.
Wow! He basically knows nothing about the group, but that won’t stop him…
There are some at Bacatha, in the land of Philadelphia beyond the Jordan. The locals call them Gnostics, but they are not Gnostics; their ideas are different.
So he has no knowledge of the group’s founder, nor any of his sayings, admonitions, or utterances…not to mention any books the group may have. Yet he knows they’re not Gnostics!
And when they take a man as a disciple, as long as he is still uncastrated he does not eat meat; but when they convince him of this, or castrate him by force, he may eat anything, because he has retired from the contest and runs no more risk of being aroused to the pleasure of lust by the things he eats.
I venture to say that Epiphanius has no idea as to how human sexuality works. I’ve heard of Viagra, which the Valesians, I suppose, would shun. There are also Rueben’s mandrakes, which Leah intended to use to sexually arouse her husband Jacob, although it was Rachel who ended up with the mandrakes. I’ve heard that there are certain publications that work better than mandrakes, which I am now growing in my basement. But I’ve never heard…and we’re getting it straight from Dr. Epiphanius’s mouth…that sexual lust is fueled by eating meat. Hey! I’m putting hamburgers on the grill! With a mandrake-salad on the side. If you are castrated…then you can safely eat your dinner.
And not only do they impose this discipline on their own disciples; it is widely rumored that they have often made this disposition of strangers when they were passing through and accepted their hospitality. They seize them when they come inside, bind them on their backs to boards, and perform the castration by force.
Since Epiphanius began this nonsense with the confession that he knew nothing about the Not-Gnostic group, he obviously went by rumors. And the idea of the group dragging men into their house and forcibly castrating them is ludicrous. But it was an age-old tradition to attack your enemies by accusing them of terrible and perverted sexual acts…it not mattering one bit whether the rumors are true. In a previous essay, I discussed Epiphanius’s accusations made against the Borborites, in terrible, nauseating detail. However, the fact that the group looked to Mary Magdalene as its ultimate spiritual leader would most likely put them of the hit-lists of many leaders of the Orthodoxy.
But these people are really crazy.
Our meaty-sexologist is also a psychologist! And I love the statement! Clearly he has no intention of giving us an unbiased look at the group. After all, we’re talking about Epiphanius. Once you establish that your unknown-enemies are insane, then anything goes.
If they mean to obey the Gospel’s injunction, “If one of your members offends cut it off. It is better for you to enter into the kingdom of heaven halt or blind, crippled.”
Epiphanius is, of course, referring to Matthew 5: 29-30…
If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.
This is what is known as a hard teaching. For a guy who knows nothing about the teachings of the Valesians, he knows the biblical injunctions on which they base their group. And looking at the passage from Matthew, it’s funny that no one was gouging out their eyes, or cutting off their hands!
How can anyone be maimed in the kingdom? For if the kingdom of heaven makes all things perfect, it can have no imperfection in it. And since the resurrection is a resurrection of the body, all the members will be raised and not one of them left behind. And if any member is not raised, neither will the whole body be raised. And if just the one member that causes offense is left behind, none of the members will be raised at all, for they have all caused us to offend. Who is going to tear his heart out? And yet the heart is the cause of offenses at every turn, for scripture says, “from within proceed fornication, adultery, uncleanness, and such like.
Ok…what? What is Dr. Epiphanius talking about? When you’re resurrected, all your body parts will be as well. But if you’re missing a body part, then you can’t be resurrected at all? That is indeed bad news for…
…John the Baptist…he’s missing the most important member of all! And we all know that John must have been a Hydra given how many heads he had…
I really dig the skull shown in the lower left picture. If we could put a lightbulb in it, it would look a little bit like…
Yes, the skull of Fendahl-Fame. Still, I’m sure that John will be resurrected, even though he will have the Herculean task of visiting numerous shrines to find his real head.
But if, in accordance with some people’s stupidity and impiety, the body is not raised, how will this Valesian rule make any difference? If none of the members enter the kingdom of heaven, what further need is there to be short one member, when the others do not accomplish this? But if the body is raised—and it is—how can there still be bodily mutilation in the kingdom of heaven? How can a kingdom of heaven containing bodies which are damaged not be unfit for the glory of its inhabitants? And if the offending member must be cut off at all, then it has been cut off and not sinned! But if it has been cut off and not sinned, since it didn’t sin it ought to rise first of all.
Epiphanius has rambled on and on and given us a bunch of nonsense. He does make the point that lust comes from the heart…i.e. mind, then, if for some reason you wish to join the Valesians, or simply walk past their headquarters, you should eat your heart out…wait, that’s wrong…cut your heart out. The Valesians practiced castration…not suicide. And isn’t this noble bishop full of insults! The Valesians are stupid, crazy, sexual perverts, impious heretics, and seize any man they could and leave him short one member. But the insults don’t stop there…
But by their audacity in performing this rash act they have set themselves apart and made themselves different from everyone. Because of what has been removed they are no longer men; and they cannot be women because that is contrary to nature.
They are audacious, rash, and have no masculinity, and yet no femininity either. Bummer.
And this is what I know about them. And so, since I have spoken briefly of them and, as I said, believe that they are the ones, let us leave them behind and laugh at them, like a two-stinged scorpion which is the opposite of its ancestors because it has horns and claws, and which, with its sting, resists the norm of God’s holy church. Trampling them with a firmly placed sandal—that is, with the Gospel’s exact words—let us end our discussion of their foolishness here.
The Valesians are also fools, and akin to some bizarre type of scorpion that should be trampled underfoot. And has Epiphanius won the “contest” he referred to? No. He admits they aren’t Gnostics, but doesn’t know their teachings. All he can do is attack the sect’s practice of self-castration, and, I venture to say, anyone who castrates himself is not a heretic. However, and I will speculate here, there is yet another reason, perhaps more important than the reasons discussed thus far. Montanus. What does Epiphanius say about the Montantists, who he also calls…Phrygians? His reference to Phrygians is dead right…did I just say that? Epiphanius was right? Actually, he was right about a lot things, but don’t claim you heard that here. There was a persistent rumor, one that rings true, that Montanus was an ex-gallus from the cult of Cybele and Attis which originated in Phrygia.
These Phrygians too, as we call them, accept every scripture of the Old and the New Testaments and likewise affirm the resurrection of the dead. But they boast of having one Montanus as a prophet, and Priscilla and Maximilla as prophetesses, and by paying heed to them have lost their wits. They agree with the holy catholic church about the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, but have separated themselves by giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of and saying…we must receive the gifts of grace as well.
Wow! They sound pretty orthodox to me! But they, like the Valesians, are insane. That said, Rome initially looked favorably upon the New Prophecy movement…
…Pope Anicetus had an open mind on Montanus, and based on the sect’s beliefs and practices, one can see why. The group showed a strong emphasis on morality. Although it isn’t certain, but his successor…
…Pope Soter does not appear to have had any problems with the group. But! There was an about-face by the popes who followed Sotor, especially…
…Popes Eleutherius and Victor I. Later…
…Tertullian, who believed that adherence to a very strict moral code and rejection of the secularism he believed existed in Rome, joined the North African branch of the Montanist church…though he would later leave it.
The Montanus sect was based on the idea that prophetic revelation continues to go on, and didn’t stop when the bible stopped…
But if the prophets prophesied up until a certain point, and no more after that, then neither Priscilla nor Maximilla prophesied as they delivered their prophecies after the ones which were tried by the holy apostles, in the holy church.
Their stupidity will be refuted in two ways, then. Either they should show that there are prophets after Maximilla, so that their so-called…grace…will not be inoperative. Or Maximilla and her like will be proved false prophets, since they dared to receive inspiration after the end of the prophetic gifts—not from the Holy Spirit but from the devil, and thus deludes her audience.
So they’re crazy and stupid too. Nothing Epiphanius has said can be used against Maximilla…Epiphanius’s statements are nonsense.
And see how they can be refuted from the very things they say! Their so-called prophetess, Maximilla, says…After me there will be no other prophet, only the consummation.” See here, the Holy Spirit and the spirits of error are perfectly recognizable!
This is strange…Maximilla does not speak by the Holy Spirit because prophecy ends with her. What I think Epiphanius is saying is that since the bible has a series of prophets over time, the Montanus sect should have one as well. He is wrong, for two reasons. It was actually claimed that there was a succession of prophets, going back to, first of all, to a man named Quadratus. Many have connected him with…
Quadatus…Christian Apologist named Quadratus of Athens. who, during the reign of Emperor Hadrian, wrote a defense of Christianity. But Montanism also saw its prophetic succession in two other prophets…
…Ammia of Philadelphia and Agabus, who is mentioned in the New Testament…
During this time some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. One of them, named Agabus, stood up and through the Spirit predicted that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world. (This happened during the reign of Claudius.) The disciples, as each one was able, decided to provide help for the brothers and sisters living in Judea. This they did, sending their gift to the elders by Barnabas and Saul.
Acts 11: 27-30.
We continued our voyage from Tyre and landed at Ptolemais, where we greeted the brothers and sisters and stayed with them for a day. Leaving the next day, we reached Caesarea and stayed at the house of Philip the evangelist, one of the Seven. He had four unmarried daughters who prophesied after we had been there a number of days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. Coming over to us, he took Paul’s belt, tied his own hands and feet with it and said, “The Holy Spirit says, ‘In this way the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem will bind the owner of this belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles.’”
Acts 21: 7-11. So one might believe that Agabus was associated with the…
…the four daughters of Philip the Evangelist who were as accepted as true sources of the prophetic word of God, just as Agabus and Ammia were. So if the Phrygian sect is correct, then the Big Three had a series of prophets behind them, and all Epiphanius can do is claim that it wasn’t the true Spirit who spoke through them. Whatever. Now, as for Epiphanius’s claim that there were no subsequent prophets of Montanus is incorrect. A prophetess named Quintilla appeared from within the New Prophecy movement. Proclus emerged at the time of Montanus or shortly after, and he had a sect named after him (Procliani). But one should also note that Montanus somehow decided that the towns of…
…Pepouza and Tymion…would be the site of the New Jerusalem spoken of in the Book of Revelation. This may indicate that they, like other Christian groups, were expecting the New Jerusalem at any time. If so, a succession to the Big Three wouldn’t have seemed very important.
Different forces drove the enemies of Montanus, Maxillia, and Priscilla…or so I believe. One such force was misogynism. Maximillia and Priscilla had the nerve to be key leaders of the movement. Shutting women out of positions of authority became the rule in the developing Orthodoxy. Even in the Book of Luke, three of the key people who funded the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth…Mary Magdalene, Susannah, and Joanna would eventually be demeaned by being labeled as women who had been possessed by demons. That said, I think the charges against the Top Three Ladies was not part of the early form of Luke…those were added later. There was of course the case of the four daughters of Philip the Evangelist…all four being recognized as legitimate Christian prophetesses. However, if prophecy ended with the ending of the end of Holy Scripture, then no prophetess can be held to be prophesying by the power of the Spirit of God. Thus it must be evil spirits that are speaking. A second force was the independence of the movement from the hierarchy of the growing Orthodoxy…whose position was that everything spiritual was to come through and from that hierarchy. Montanism did not accept this. Thirdly, Christian New Prophecy was a very dynamic and ecstatic spiritual movement, which is not surprising given the fact that Montanus came from a previous, dynamic, and ecstatic cult…Cybele and Attis. Finally, I would note that in its early days, it was very popular among people where it had obtained a foothold. Orthodoxy does not like competition, possibly because they know very well that certain competitors might just overtake them. In fact, orthodoxy in all its forms throughout history, even in modern America, have held the belief that they shouldn’t have to compete. And that is no more true than it is as far as America’s youth is concerned…where traditional Christianity has been fighting a losing battle since the 1960s. You can give Christianity an appeal to the youth by making Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar, but then find that the fundamentalists and evangelicals come out the woodwork and cry out against such efforts because they are not orthodox. And that is why they can’t compete…mainly because they refuse to, knowing that only a theocratic form of political and cultural norms can force people to…believe? Do? Still, in the end, the lives of key leaders of Christian New Prophecy were slandered after their deaths. Montanus and Priscilla committed suicide by hanging themselves? Please! Are they alone?
With the payment he received for his wickedness, Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out.
Acts 1:18, and that’s Peter for you. Matthew says…
So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself.
So Peter doesn’t agree with Matthew…or Matthew doesn’t agree with Peter. No one falls down and bursts open, with their intestines spilling out everywhere. But what happened to Judas? I have my theory, which I will be writing about in an upcoming essay. I will say that Peter simply manufactured a story that would “prove” that Judas was dead, because it would shift the blame on Judas, whereas Peter was the denier and betrayer of Jesus. Peter is a true enigma…and I find it strange that Proto-Christian Orthodoxy in Rome claimed descent from Peter, when Peter was regarded as the apostle to the Jews, with the apostle to the Gentiles being…Paul of Tarsus. There are good reasons to question the belief that Peter had anything to do with the rise of Christianity…Rome was full of Gentiles. Simon Magus, a disciple of John the Baptist, had an important role in propelling Christianity forward. The claim remains the same…first, apply the image of hanging to Judas, then, to no surprise, the same claim is made about the deaths of Montanus and Priscilla. Maximillia was the last of the Big Three, dying in 179 A.D., who had a male supporter named Themison to protect her. When two orthodox bishops…Julian of Apamea and Zoticus of Cumana attempted to exorcise the demons they believed motivated Maximillia, Themison stopped them. And what end did Themison meet? In a state of ecstasy, he threw himself into the air, and died when he crashed to the ground. Orthodoxy does like to recycle. Who was it that was able to fly until God struck him down from the air, leaving him to crash to the ground and die? Yes…Simon Magus…the first great heretic. In reality, following the death of Maximillia, Themison became a sort-of Bishop of Pepouza, the New Jerusalem, and the cradle of Montanism. Themison even wrote a no-longer-extant epistle, which originally was used as divinely-inspired scripture in the Montanist churches. But there can be no doubt that he was the leader of the Montanist sect after the deaths of the Big Three. However, the leadership role exercised by women may owe something to a strong matriarchal view of society that existed in parts of Asia Minor. One tradition practiced in the churches was one whereby seven virgins, dressed in white and carrying torches, entered the church and prophesied. How cool is that!
Now I am not aware of any claims that Montanists practiced any kind of castration, and marriage was not looked down upon, as long as you were married only once. And you could end your marriage only if it was for spiritual reasons. That said, I am of the firm belief that Montanus was a former gallus in the Cybele/Attis cult, and had castrated himself. There were later statements that Montanus dyed his hair and wore eye make-up. But are such claims merely slander? I say…no. Following the act of self-castration, galli would wear women’s clothes, and use eye make-up. Because of this, Romans were prohibited from becoming galli…only foreigners were to serve in this capacity.
If on rare occasions Rome does introduce a foreign religious rite into the city, she nonetheless observes them according to her own customs, jettisoning the esoteric mythical nonsense. The worship of the Idaean Mother is a good example [of how the Romans deal with outlandish cults]. Every year the praetors perform sacrifices and hold games in her honor, in accordance with Roman customs, but both the priest and priestess of the goddess are Phrygians, and they are the ones who parade her image through the city, begging alms in the Mother's name as is their custom, wearing images around their chests, beating on drums and accompanied by the ritual flute music of their followers. By custom and a decree of the Senate, no native Roman begs alms for Cybele or parades to flute music in multi-colored robes or worships the goddess with ecstatic Phrygian rites.
Dionysius, Early Rome; 2.19.3-5.
Generally speaking, castrated men could not be Roman citizens. This changed when Claudius came to power. And that leads to another possibility…as the former galli were leaving the cult of Cybele and Attis, Christianity, with its more dynamic elements, would have a great appeal. They began moving not just into a new faith, but into the ranks of the clergy as well. This would give Orthodoxy a substantial reason to oppose castration…former pagan priests…or priestesses…depending on how you look at it, were not welcome in the clergy. The influx of galli in Early Christianity was addressed by the Apostle Paul…
Or know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind.
1 Corinthians 6:9. Other translations have connected the “effeminate” with homosexuals, which keeps well with Christianity’s homophobia. However, this may really be a reference to galli priests, who were clearly effeminate…died hair, eye make-up, women’s clothes, women’s jewelry…but they weren’t homosexuals. They did however aspire to a feminine ethos. Heterosexual culture would assume that the galli were homosexuals…but to quote Sexologist Epiphanius…self-castrated men were neither male nor female. This is, in one sense…wrong, but in another sense…all true Christians no longer have gender…
There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Galatians 3:28. Maybe the galli were a hybrid combination of the two…one that, in their minds, transcended both. Perhaps it is in this light that we must dismiss the accusations made against Origen, particularly the false claim that he had castrated himself. In other words, Origen, now deemed a heretic, though I dub him Saint Origen, turned himself into a gallus…a pagan religious functionary who had infiltered the church. The emperor Elagabalus had many male lovers, and aspired to have a vagina attached to his body…though he never found a surgeon who could actually do it…but he never castrated himself. In fact, the most famous statue of him, including an impressive reconstruction of his appearance…
…shows that he continued to wear facial hair, something no gallus would ever do. So Elagabalus did not aspire to recreating himself as a gallus…instead he sought to combine the two genders in accordance with his own view of Gender Transcendence…a new term I coined just now.
There was also a sect founded by Julius Cassianus, who wrote a book, which no longer exists, called…Concerning Abstinence or Eunuchry, which advocated abstinence. And although blades, swords, chains, and clamps are bad enough, they are much better than this way…
Don’t ask me what the fish is for. Even…
…Philip the Evangelist, not to be confused the Philip the Apostle, baptized an eager eneuch. It seems inescapable to see a clear parallel between the virgin birth, death, and the resurrection of Attis, and that of Jesus of Nazareth. Although I would say that early Christianity made far too big a deal about sex…in my opinion. This hang-up was not to be found in Jewish culture.
No discussion of the Virgin Birth would be complete without commenting on a clear parallel to both Adam, and Christ as well. It will be remembered that the genealogy of Christ found in Luke, which I believe is the genealogy of Mary’s first husband…the carpenter, who was the earthly father of Jesus and James, traces Christ’s lineage back to Adam, who he refers to, in a certain sense, as the son of God. Why? Because he had no earthly father or mother. Surely Adam is the only one who bore this lofty position. Well, that isn’t exactly true. Meet…
…Melchizedek, one of the Bible’s most enigmatic characters. And no…he isn’t holding a bong. Initially, there isn’t really anything particularly fascinating about him.
Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High, and he blessed Abram, saying,
“Blessed be Abram by God Most High,
Creator of heaven and earth.
And praise be to God Most High,
who delivered your enemies into your hand.”
Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.
Genesis 14: 18-20. The context is a recounting of various battles waged during the time of Abraham’s wandering around in Canaan. Several kings are named, and the rescue of Lot, Abraham’s nephew, by Abraham’s private militia, is also described. The brief reference to Melchizedek describes Abraham’s sudden visit by the King of Salem, with the latter widely believed to be an early reference to the city of Jerusalem. We get no background about this elusive figure…he appears and then disappears in a few verses. He is a local king, who formed an alliance of peace with the Great Patriarch.
The Lord says to my lord:
“Sit at my right hand
until I make your enemies
a footstool for your feet.”
The Lord will extend your mighty scepter from Zion, saying,
“Rule in the midst of your enemies!”
Your troops will be willing
on your day of battle.
Arrayed in holy splendor,
your young men will come to you
like dew from the morning’s womb.
The Lord has sworn
and will not change his mind:
“You are a priest forever,
in the order of Melchizedek.”
Psalm 110: 1-4. So Melchizedek has become far more than a local king who was friendly with Abraham. In what is clearly a messianic passage, Melchizedek has become a priest…but not a Hebrew priest, who were the descendants of Aaron. It is clear in this passage that the order of the Priest-King Melchizedek is far superior to that held by the regular Hebrew priests. This is the first indication of any ongoing priesthood of Melchizedek. Part of this may lie in the fact that Melchizedek was a King of Jerusalem, which would eventually, under David, become the paramount kingdom of the Jews. But there is nothing between the passages in Genesis and Psalm 110 to indicate how this order of Melchizedek came about, though it clearly presupposes a significant development. But this is not the last time Melchizedek is mentioned…
People swear by someone greater than themselves, and the oath confirms what is said and puts an end to all argument. Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath. God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be greatly encouraged. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where our forerunner, Jesus, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.
Hebrews 6: 16-20. So now Jesus figures in this. And strangely, Jesus becomes the eternal high priest, and a member of the Order of Melchizedek. Clearly, the writer of Hebrews applied Psalm 110 to Christ, and views the subject of the Psalm, which is clearly messianic, as the one who is inducted into a priestly order that surpasses the Aaronic Priesthood. But Melchizedek himself is not Christ, and Christ is not Melchizedek. And in this case, there is no Order of Jesus…he becomes a member of an already existing priestly order. In fact, the appearance of Moses and Aaron was centuries later.
This Melchizedek was king of Salem and priest of God Most High. He met Abraham returning from the defeat of the kings and blessed him, and Abraham gave him a tenth of everything. First, the name Melchizedek means “king of righteousness”; then also, “king of Salem” means “king of peace.” Without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life, resembling the Son of God, he remains a priest forever.
Amazing! Melchizedek is an eternal figure…he had no beginning and has no end. He had no earthly mother or father.
For it is clear that our Lord descended from Judah, and in regard to that tribe Moses said nothing about priests. And what we have said is even more clear if another priest like Melchizedek appears, one who has become a priest not on the basis of a regulation as to his ancestry but on the basis of the power of an indestructible life. For it is declared:
“You are a priest forever,
in the order of Melchizedek.”
Hebrews 7:17. So Christ is like Melchizedek, and Melchizedek is like the Son of God. How does Jesus transcend Melchizedek if he becomes a member of this Eternal Order? This is one of the great mysteries surrounding Christ. There is competition between Christ and Melchizedek, i.e. that found in the Talmud. Rashi claimed that Melchizedek was the same person as the patriarch Shem, one of the sons of Noah. Ramban notes that Joshua, during the conquest of Canaan, fought a coalition of kings that included Adoni-Zedek (Lord of Zedek), and king of Jerusalem. Ramban states that the realm of the Zedek-kings was opposite of where the Solomonic temple would be. Radak claimed that Melchizedek and Adoni-zedek were throne names given to the early kings of Jerusalem. The latter was also known as Jebus, and was inhabited by an ethnic tribe called the Jebusites. Another ancient ruler of Jerusalem was Abdi-Hebat, whose name means…the servant of Hebat. A series of letters between Abdi-Hebat and the Egyptian king Amenhotep IV are found in the Amarna letters. In these letters, it is claimed that he was a soldier from Beth-Salem, obviously Jerusalem, and a place name similar to Bethlehem. Hebat was an ancient Hurrian deity, wife of Adad, probably Hadad, or better known by the title Baal…Lordly One, but also associated with the Hurrian form of Baal, known as Teshub.
It is also worth noting that Shalem, also called Salem, was a Canaanite deity identified with the planet Venus. Some commentators maintain that Jerusalem was named after Salem, suggesting that he was the god of ancient Jerusalem. The apocryphal work known as Melchizedek speaks of him in the third person and first person as well…
But all the tribes and all the peoples will speak the truth who are receiving from you yourself, O Melchizedek, Holy One, High-Priest, the Perfect Hope and the Gift of Life.
When he came, he caused me to be raised up from ignorance, and from the fructification of death to life. For I have a name: I am Melchizedek, the Priest of God Most High; I know that it is I who am truly the image of the true High-Priest of God Most High.
They said to me, "Be strong, O Melchizedek, great High-priest of God Most High, for the archons, who are your enemies, made war; but you have prevailed over them, and they did not prevail over you, and you endured, and you destroyed your enemies
The Book of Melchizedek. But what is most important here is that although Jesus had an earthly mother, both Adam and Melchizedek had no earthly mother or father, and that Christ was ordained into the Order of Melchizedek.
And so, it would seem that, thankfully, I have run of out of time. Time enough at last, if you will. And clearly, the circumstances of someone’s birth burn brightly in the course of history. There is one thing that holds true…you cannot be who you are if there are nefarious rumors about your progenitor. Sexual behavior is one of the key human impulses, and if you try to repress it, don’t be surprised if, like a phantom in the darkest hours of night, it suddenly appears again. Vestals took their sacred vows, but once they retired, they were free to do as they wished. Nuns, who are clearly based on the Order of the Vestals, took vows that were intended to last their whole lives. It’s not surprising that this simply won’t work, and didn’t work, in any number of cases…far more than ever come to light. People are human after all. Perhaps in a strange way, the modern trend of connecting sex and other vices…and we all have our vices...with nuns is an unconscious impulse based on an unwritten rule that they are human too, and so the phantom appears in the night. And thus some nuns are unable to keep their vows, and the imagination takes over…a picture’s worth a thousand words…well, sometimes. Plato, Alexander, Attis, Jesus of Nazareth, among others, must have a divine origin visible in real time. So much more with the purely divine Melchizedek. A miraculous birth, and the crowning distinction of all…a virgin birth, has served as a stratagem for getting out of trouble when the phantom crept out of the night, twisting and distorting the vows we take. Yet it also provides a means of defense for great people whose standing in the course of history may be compromised by questions about their birth. At the same time, the idea of a virgin birth runs up against the principle of God’s omnipotence…and it’s not always easy to see the collision take place. Saint Origen, who I hold in the highest honor, can be wrong…
What kind of sign, then, would that have been--a young woman who was not a virgin giving birth to a child? And which of the two is the more appropriate as the mother of Immanuel (i.e., "God with us"),--whether a woman who has had intercourse with a man, and who has conceived after the manner of women, or one who is still a pure and holy virgin? Surely it is appropriate only to the latter to produce a being at whose birth it is said, "God with us."
There are no rules that God must follow…He is the Maker of Rules, and the actions that God takes do not have to conform to the rules He has set for us. If He has to do so, then He is not the Omnipotent One. A person’s background is irrelevant. Reading the Gospel of Mark will show that Peter knew only a few things about Jesus’s life before his baptism, and clearly not anything about a virgin birth. He, of course, would have had years to ask Christ about his life before God adopted him. Yet that doesn’t seem to have happened. Why? Because it simply didn’t matter. There was only one over-reaching goal…to establish the Way to Salvation. A very early Christian sect took that theme for their very name…
And asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to The Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem.
It would seem that some Christians knew that biography was irrelevant…the way to salvation was everything. Still, one must contemplate the fact that Jesus was inducted into the order of Melchizedek, rather than the other way around. Melchizedek and The Way remain mysteries, yet both lead to the Presence of the Omnipotent God. Perhaps we all belong to the Greatest Of Orders and walk The Way to final redemption.