Alexander the Great

The only time in which Greece rose to the status nearing that of an empire, was the short lived period of approximately a decade, lasting from the beginning of the conquests of Alexander the Great to his death. Alexander, King of Macedonia, first established control over the Greek mainland before setting out against Persia. In 334 BC, he stormed into Asia Minor with an army of 35,000 men, marched along the Mediterranean coast, then turned north and captured the wife and mother of the Persian emperor Darius III. He marched south to Phoenicia, destroying the city of Tyre in Phoenicia, he then moved into Egypt and built the city of Alexandria in its stead. Alexander turned once again against the Persians, and following a decisive battle, Darius III fled and was later killed by one of his generals, leaving Alexander as king of Asia, when he inherited the title of “the Great,” first used by Cyrus.

The conquests of Alexander spread this Greco-Jewish culture to much of the known world, where it was particularly influential in the Egyptian city of Alexandria. Because Hellenistic mysticism was a melee of various traditions, apparently Zoroastrian, Egyptian, Greek and Jewish, scholars have struggled to identify its origins, pointing at times to one or a combination of these traditions as the original source. Failing to recognize the Jewish, or “Magussean” influence in the Hellenistic world has prevented scholars from recognizing that they all had their source in the so-called Chaldean Magi.

Though Greek rule had effectively collapsed, Alexander’s conquests resulted in the general spread of Greek, or Hellenic culture, an era referred to as the Hellenistic Age. The epoch essentially marked the end of ancient times. No longer would civilization be pursued in isolated pockets. The adoption of Greek as a common language throughout the conquered territories was a unifying element, fostering a cosmopolitanism that contributed in a new epoch of cultural exchange. This confluence of numerous cultures led to a heightened degree of scientific and intellectual interest through the sharing of ideas, and the beginning of an age imbued with a dynamism that continues to characterize the way we interact and communicate today. This cross-pollination of beliefs and philosophies resulted in an age of what scholars call syncretism, producing the Ancient Mysteries, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism and Hermeticism, all rooted in the influence of the Magi.

Because of Aristotle, his tutor, Alexander was positively disposed toward the Jews.[1] According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, “As the Greek who most impressed his influence upon the development of the Jewish mind, Aristotle is one of the few Gentiles with whom Jewish legend concerns itself.”[2] Aristobulus asserted that Jewish revelation and Aristotelian philosophy were identical. Josephus went as far as to suggest that Aristotle derived his doctrine directly from Judaism: “I do not now explain how these notions of God are the sentiments of the wisest among the Grecians, and how they were reared upon the principles that he [Moses] afforded them.”[3] Josephus preserved the following passage from Clearchus:

In his first book on Sleep he relates of Aristotle, his master, that he had a discourse with a Jew; and his own account was that what this Jew said merited admiration and showed philosophical erudition. To speak of the race first, the man was a Jew by birth and came from Cœlesyria [Palestine]. These Jews are derived from the philosophers of India. In India the philosophers call themselves Kalani, and in Syria Jews, taking their name from the country they inhabit, which is Judea; the name of their capital is rather difficult to pronounce: they call it Jerusalem. Now this man, who had been the guest of many people, had come down from the highland to the seashore [Pergamus]. He was a Greek not only in language, but in soul; so much so that, when we happened to be in Asia in about the same places whither he came, he conversed with us and with other persons of learning in order to test our wisdom. And as he had had intercourse with a large number of sages, he imparted to us more knowledge of his own.[4]

According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, “By introducing Hellenic culture into Syria and Egypt, he had probably more influence on the development of Judaism than any one individual not a Jew by race.”[5] Alexander marched through Palestine unopposed, except in the case of Gaza, which was razed to the ground. He is mentioned by name only in the Apocryphal I Macc. (i. 1-8, vi. 2). It is supposed that the Book of Daniel alludes to him when it refers to a mighty king that “shall stand up, that shall rule with great dominion,” whose kingdom is to be destroyed after his death.[6]

Josephus also records Alexander the Great purported visit to the Jews in Jerusalem, after having taken Gaza. When Alexander saw Jaddua, the high priest of the Jews, he reverenced God. When Parmenio, the general, expressed surprise at Alexander’s act, Alexander replied: “I did not adore him, but the God who hath honored him with this high-priesthood; for I saw this very person in a dream, in this very habit, when I was at Dios in Macedonia, who, when I was considering with myself how I might obtain dominion of Asia, exhorted me to make no delay, but boldly to pass over the sea, promising that he would conduct my army, and would give me the dominion over the Persians.” And when the Book of Daniel was shown to him, which declared that one of the Greeks should destroy the empire of the Persians, he supposed that he was the person intended.[7]

At the high priest’s request, Alexander granted the Jews the right to live according to the laws of their forefathers, and exempted them from the payment of tribute in the seventh year of release. To the Jews of Babylonia and Media also he granted similar privileges. Out of gratitude, the Jews agreed to name every child born the next year “Alexander.” That is why the name Alexander, or Sender for short, became a common Jewish name even to this day.[8]

There are numerous legendary accounts found in the Talmud and Midrash about Alexander, including a visit to the Regions of the Amazons.[9] The Talmud also recounts that, when the Samaritans had obtained permission from Alexander to destroy the Temple in Jerusalem, the high priest Simon the Just, went out to meet him. At sight of Simon, Alexander fell prostrate at his feet, and explained to his astonished companions that the image of the Jewish high priest was always with him in battle, fighting for him and leading him to victory. Simon took the opportunity to justify the attitude of his fellow Jews, declaring that they were not rebels, but offered prayers in the Temple for Alexander’s welfare and that of his dominions.[10]

Alexandria

In 264 BC, the Romans removed the Carthaginians from Sicily, prompting retaliation from Hannibal, who marched his troops across the Alps. Roman armies eventually destroyed Carthage, forming the new province of Roman North Africa. Further Campaigns brought Macedonia, Greece and Asia Minor under their control. In 63BC, the year Caesar was elected, the Romans marched into Palestine and seized Jerusalem. After visiting Egypt, where he had an affair with Cleopatra, Caesar campaigned in Asia Minor and North Africa. On his return to Rome in 44 BC, he was murdered, with Octavian and Antony defeating the conspirators. Antony, though, deserted his wife Octavia to join Cleopatra, and Octavian declared war on Egypt and was victorious, following which Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide.

Though Rome dominated politically, it was Alexandria in Egypt, with its great public buildings, a distinguished university, and a library of more than 700,000 scrolls, that was the greatest city of the Hellenistic Age. The famous Library of Alexandria was part of the Mouseion, or Museum, founded in the third century BC by Ptolemy I, as a community of learned men organized as a religious cult and headed by a priest of the Muses. The Greek geographer and historian, Strabo, mentioned that it was a large complex of buildings and gardens with richly decorated lecture and banquet halls linked by porticos, or colonnaded walks. The magnificent library not only contained the works of the Greeks and Egyptians, but included Jewish, Babylonian, Zoroastrian, and many other writings, as well as manuscripts from as far away as India. Buddhist monks were part of a special envoy sent by the emperor Ashoka to Alexandria, and Hermippus was active in Alexandria about 200 BC, and it is assumed that the two million lines of Zoroaster, on which he commented, were held there.

The greatest of the sciences studied at Alexandria was astronomy, then synonymous with astrology. While begun in Babylon, in coming centuries, it was at Alexandria that the pseudoscience of astrology was furthered. The pervasiveness of study of astrology at Alexandria was such that it came to be regarded mistakenly as having originated there, leading to fantastic claims as to the antiquity of the Ancient Wisdom of the Egyptians. As early as Aristotle, there is a reference to Egyptian astronomy as equal to that of Babylon, or rather, according to Diodorus of Sicily, it was from the Egyptians that the Babylonians had acquired this knowledge.[11]

Alexandrian mysticism was essentially theurgic. An initiate sought divine union by either ascending to the realm of the transcendent god, or in calling the god down, that he might appear to him in an epiphany. Ultimately, the mystic is confronted with a vision of the true god, who reveals to him the secrets by which he may manipulate the world, in other words, magic. Of particular importance in understanding these practices, are the famous magical papyri, in which we see the use of the terms magic, magical, and the practitioners calling themselves, magicians. The papyri were first discovered in Egypt, and brought to Europe by Johann d’Anastasy, the Swedish vice-consul in Cairo from 1828 to 1859. This collection contained recipes and formulas for all types of magic, including love magic, exorcism and curses. Although their date is relatively late, dating from the third and fourth centuries AD, they reflect much earlier ideas.

Arthur Darby Nock thought that, though they may have picked up Persian features, the magical papyri were Greco-Egyptian in character.[12] Erwin Goodenough though saw the magical papyri as connected to heretical Judaism, combined with a number of other influences typical of late Hellenistic syncretism, pointing out that one God alone is worshipped, while the other gods are reduced to the level of angels or demons.[13] Franz Cumont noted:

A great number of Jewish colonies were scattered everywhere on the Mediterranean, and these were long animated with such an ardent spirit of proselytism that they were bound to impose some of their conceptions on the pagans that surrounded them. The magical texts which are almost the only original literary documents of paganism we possess, clearly reveal this mixture of Israelitic theology with that of other peoples. In them we frequently find names like Iao (Yahweh), Sabaoth, or the names of angels side by side with those of Egyptian or Greek divinities.[14]

In the magical papyri, the gods of the Underworld are employed as the most important means of fulfilling various magical operations, towards the acquisition of love, wealth, health, fame, knowledge of the future, and control over others. Hecate, identical with Persephone, Selene, Artemis, and the ancient Babylonian goddess Ereshkigal, is one of the gods most often invoked in the papyri. Through the influence of Osiris and Isis, gods like Hermes, Aphrodite, and even the Jewish god Iao, or Jehovah, become gods of the Underworld. The Greek god most often invoked is the sun-god Apollo Helios. Mithras is mentioned a few times, in each case with Helios or with Zeus-Helios-Sarapis. Other astral deities such as Selene, the Moon, the constellation of the Bear, are featured, as well as abstract deities who personify Nature, Time, Destiny, and the All, or Aeon. Though, the god most often invoked is Iao.[15] Also invoked are the Jewish patriarchs, as well as such figures as Psammetichus, Democritus and Osthanes.

Lucian, the Roman satirist of the second century AD, offers an account that helps to shed some light on the nature of the eclecticism of the magical papyri. He recounts the story of Menippus who accomplishes a descent to the Underworld through the aid of a Magi from Babylon, who, after following a strict vegetarian diet for several days, and offering an animal sacrifice, “shouted as loudly as he could, invoking the spirits, one and all, at the top of his lungs; also the Tormentors, the Furies, Hecate, queen of the night, and eerie Persephoneia. With these names he intermingled a number of foreign-sounding, meaningless words of many syllables.”[16]

Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman historian of the fourth century AD, described the circulation of occult ideas at Alexandria: “Here, first, far earlier than in any other country, men arrived at the various cradles (if I may say so) of different religions. Here they still carefully preserve the elements of sacred rites as handed down in their secret volumes.” He adds, “…yet even now there is much learning in the same city; for teachers of various sects flourish, and many kinds of secret knowledge are explained by geometrical science. Nor is music dead among them, nor harmony. And by a few, observations of the motion of the world and of the stars are still cultivated; while of learned arithmeticians the number is considerable; and besides them there are many skilled in divination.”[17] Finally, though the great library survived a fire set in Alexandria in 47 BC by the Roman emperor Caesar, whose army supported Cleopatra in a civil war against her brother, it was destroyed in 272 AD in a civil war under the Roman emperor Aurelian.

The oldest of the surviving Sibylline oracles composed partly by Jews in Alexandria.[18] The sibyls were women who lived in cases or shrines, and who uttered prophecies in a state of frenzy, or demonic possession. Like Heraclitus, Plato speaks of only one sibyl, but in course of time the number increased to nine. The most famous sibyls were the Delphic Sibyl who lived on the side of Mount Parnassus, the Cumaean Sibyl in lived near Vesuvius, and the Erythraean Sibyl of Ionia. The Persian Sibyl or Babylonian Sibyl, who was said to be prophetic of the Apollonian Oracle, was believed to have foretold the exploits of Alexander the Great.[19] In the second century AD, Pausanias enumerate four sibyls and mentioned the “Hebrew Sibyl” who was: “brought up in Palestine named Sabbe, whose father was Berosus and her mother Erymanthe. Some say she was a Babylonian, while others call her an Egyptian Sibyl.”[20] The medieval Byzantine encyclopedia, the Suda, credits the Hebrew Sibyl as author of the Sibylline oracles. In Christian iconography the Erythraean Sibyl is credited with prophesying the coming of the Redeemer, which prophesy was in the form of an acrostic from a Greek verse which Saint Augustine reported to have been shown purportedly from the Erythraean Sibyl, spelling “Jesus Christ, son of God, savior.”[21]

Hypsistarians

Another important Alexandrian community were the Therapeutae. The primary source concerning them is The Contemplative Life by the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 BCE – 50 CE). Conybeare, who compares the guild of Therapeutae to the modern Freemasons, argues that the term Therapeutae referred to a “religious guild,” and that Greek readers of Philo of Alexandria would have viewed the fraternity as “a guild or collegia in the Alexandrian-Roman sense.”[22] The Therapeutae devoted themselves to contemplation of the magical names of God and to mystical allegories of scripture, in which they utilized Gematria and Pythagorean numerology.[23]

Philo maintained that the Therapeutae, above all, desired to “see,” or to have a vision of, the true Being. In their night rituals, “like the bacchic and korybantic ecstatics,” notes Philo, “they continue in their possession until they see the object of their desire.” Philo describes their ceremonies:

Thus they continue till dawn, drunk with this drunkenness in which there is no shame, then not with heavy heads or drowsy eyes but more alert and wakeful than when they came to the banquet, they stand with their whole faces and bodies turned to the east and when they see the Sun rising they stretch their hands up to heaven and pray for bright days and knowledge of the truth and the power of keen-sighted thinking. And after the prayers they depart each to his private sanctuary once more to ply the trade and till the field of their wonted philosophy.[24]

According to the Greek mythology, the Korybantes were the armed and male dancers carrying shields who worshipped the Phrygian goddess Cybele with drumming and dancing. The Korybantes were the offspring of Apollo and Muse Thalia or Rhytia (Rhetia). In some accounts, they were described as the children of Athena and Helios. Some call the Corybantes sons of Cronus, but others say that they were sons of Zeus and Muse Calliope.[25] The Korybantes’ counterparts are the Kouretes, nine dancers who venerate Rhea, the Cretan counterpart of Cybele. In the telling of Zeus's birth in Hesiod’s Theogony, when Great Gaia came to Crete and hid the child Zeus in a “steep cave,” beneath the secret places of the earth, on Mount Aigaion with its thick forests. There the Cretan Kouretes’ ritual clashing spears and shields were interpreted by the Greeks as intended to drown out the infant god’s cries, and prevent his discovery by his father Kronos. Korybantes also presided over the infancy of Dionysus, another god who was born as a babe, and of Zagreus, a Cretan child of Zeus, or child-doublet of Zeus.

The cult of Cybele was taken over from the Persian worship of Anahita in Cappadocia, now east-central Turkey. Known as the Magna Mater, the Great Mother, Cybele, identified with Venus and worshipped as the goddess of fertility, but also as the mistress of the wild beasts, was taken over from the Persian Anahita. Ultimately, she was Ishtar, who like Cybele, was often accompanied by a lion. The consort of Cybele was Attis, known as Tammuz, or Adonis, named after the Phrygian name for goat.[26] By 200 BC, the cult of Magna Mater and Attis were introduced into the Roman pantheon and were considered as Roman gods. Their cult seems to have been encouraged especially under Emperor Claudius about 50 AD. On the Day of Blood, some celebrants flogged themselves until they bled and sprinkled their blood upon the image and the altars in the sanctuary, while others are said to have imitated Attis by castrating themselves. The cult of the Magna Mater also involved a ritual called the taurobolium, where a bull was sacrificed above a pit into which a devotee descended, and was drenched in its blood, as a form of baptism.

Strabo noted that Pindar, like Euripides, regarded the rites of Dionysus as substantially the same as those performed by the Phrygians in Central Anatolia, in honor of Cybele. The festival known as the Bacchanalia took place in Attica and Rome in honor of the god of Dionysus, known to the Romans as Bacchus. Originally restricted to women, the festival involved drinking, dancing, masks, and a procession in which the phallic image of the god was carried on a ship on wheels. The festival was prohibited in Rome in 186 BC, perceived as a threat to public order. Livy, the Roman historian who lived at the turn of the first millennium, described the Dionysian rites as they had come to light in the controversy:

When wine had inflamed their feelings, and night and the mingling of the sexes and of different ages had extinguished all power of moral judgment, all sorts of corruption began to be practiced, since each person had ready to hand the chance of gratifying the particular desire to which he was naturally inclined. The corruption was not confined to one kind of evil, the promiscuous violation of free men and women; the cult was also a source of supply of false witnesses, forged documents and wills, and perjured evidence, dealing also in poisons and in wholesale murders among devotees, and sometimes ensuring that not even the bodies were found for burial. Many such outrages were committed by craft, and even more by violence; and the violence was concealed because no cries for help could be heard against the shriekings, the banging of drums and the clashing of cymbals in the scene of debauchery and bloodshed.[27]

In Phrygia, where numerous Jewish colonies were established, Attis was assimilated to Dionysus-Sabazius, which an etymology that dates back to the Hellenistic period equates with Yahweh Zebaoth, the Biblical Lord of Hosts.[28] Cumont maintained: “undoubtedly he belonged to a Jewish-pagan sect that admitted neophytes of every race to its mystic ceremonies.”[29] According to Lydus, a Byzantine astrologer of the sixth century AD, “the Chaldeans call the god Dionysus (or Bacchus), Iao in the Phoenician tongue (instead of the Intelligible Light), and he is also called Sabaoth, signifying that he is above the seven poles, that is the Demiurgos.”[30] In the first century AD, Cornelius Labeo, equated Iao with Dionysus, from the following Oracle of Apollo of Claros: “Those who have learned the mysteries should hide the unsearchable secrets, but, if their understanding is small and the mind weak, then ponder this: that Iao is the supreme god of all gods; in winter, Hades; at spring’s beginning, Zeus; the Sun in summer; and in autumn, the splendid Iao.”[31]

Plutarch maintained that the Jews worshipped Dionysus, and that the day of Sabbath was a festival of Sabazius.[32] The Sabbath, or Shabbat in Hebrew, is the seventh day of the week, which is related to Shabbatai, the Hebrew name for Saturn, the seventh planet. The Romans named Saturday Saturni dies (“Saturn’s Day”) no later than the second century for the planet Saturn. A similarity between the Jewish Passover and the rites of Dionysus was perceived by a number of ancient authors. According to Tacitus, the priests of the Jews, “used to perform their chants to the flute and drums, crowned with ivy, and a golden vine was discovered in the Temple; and this has led some to imagine that the god thus worshipped was Prince Liber (Dionysus).”[33] In a dialogue, Plutarch presents several speakers enjoying a symposium and discussing the identity of the Jewish god. One of the speakers, Moeragenes, proposes that there is reason to equate the Jewish god with Dionysus:

Most of the relevant proofs can lawfully be pronounced or divulged only to those of us who have been initiated into the Perfect Mysteries celebrated every other year, but what I am going to speak of is not forbidden in conversation with friends… First, the time and character of the greatest, most sacred holiday of the Jews clearly befits Dionysus. When they celebrate their so-called Fast, at the height of the vintage, they set out tables of all sorts of fruit under tents and huts plaited for the most part of vines and ivy. They call the first of the days of the feast Tabernacles. A few days later they celebrate another festival, this time identified with Bacchus not through obscure hints but plainly called by his name, a festival that is a sort of “Procession of Branches” or “Thyrsus Procession,” in which they enter the temple each carrying a thyrsus. What they do after entering we do not know, but it is probable that the rite is a Bacchic revelry, for in fact they use little trumpets to invoke their god as do the Argives at their Dionysia.[34]

As Goodenough pointed out, “that the religion of early Israel was filled with solar and astral elements is now commonplace, however much experts may disagree about the details.”[35]  While orthodox Judaism never condoned the practice, there are numerous references to astrology in the Talmud, and indisputable evidence of Jewish astrology has now been provided with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.[36] According to Epiphanius, a Christian bishop of the fourth century AD, “both Fate and astrology are practiced zealously among them.”[37]

Essenes

Philo regarded the Therapeutae as a contemplative branch of the Essaioi or Essenes, who pursued an active life. Conybeare argues that the Essenes were a religious guild, much like the Therapeutae.[38] The Essenes are believed to have been the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The longest text of the Dead Sea Scrolls is known as the Temple Scroll, written in the form of a revelation from God to Moses, which describes a Jewish temple which has never been built, along with extensive detailed regulations about sacrifices and temple practices. Among the post-Second Temple Essenes, who no longer had access to the physical Temple, the aim of each member was to become a Temple of the Holy Spirit, by passing through three grades of initiation.[39] At the first grade, the initiate received an apron as a symbol of purity. At the final grade, he took an oath of secrecy to guard the magical mysteries.[40]

Prophecy and the telling of fortunes was practiced by the Essenes. According to Josephus, “For this purpose they are trained in the use of holy writings, in various rites of purification, and in prophetic (apocalyptic?) utterances; and they seldom make mistakes in their predictions.”[41] Josephus relates that Judas the Essene once sat in the Temple surrounded by his disciples, whom he initiated into the apocalyptic art of foretelling the future.[42]

The Essenes also believed in astrology, ascribing one’s place in battle based upon the day of one’s birth. The Qumran Horoscopes, alternatively called “Astrological Physiognomies,” are manuscripts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, which use the physiognomic features of a person to predict their future. An Aramaic calendrical and astrological scroll from Qumran, 4Q318, Zodiology and Brontology, consists of a 360-day zodiac calendar followed by a zodiacal thunder omen text.

According to Josephus, apocalyptic texts were in the possession of the Essenes, who were considered by numerous scholars as the originators of the Kabbalah.[43] According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, it was in the apocalyptic literature of the second and first centuries BC that contained the core elements of the Kabbalah.[44] The word “apocalypse” derives from the Greek word apokalypsis, meaning “unveiling,” or “uncovering.” Early apocalyptic works were usually pseudonymous, that is, written by anonymous authors who attributed their work to ancient personages. Apocalypses claimed to unveil secrets previously unknown, often about the destiny of this world and the things to come. They differed from biblical prophecy, where prophets are usually spoken to by God directly. With an apocalyptist, it most usually occurred through an intermediary, an angel. Commonly, an apocalyptist would receive a revelation in visual form, as a dream or ecstatic vision, and sometimes he felt himself transported to some distant region of the Earth or to Heaven.

Anakim

The first apocalyptic writings were produced in Palestine in the third and second centuries BC. Of the apocalypses found among the Essenes were the Book of Jubilees, attributed to Moses, and the Book of Enoch, which was an important early source of the Kabbalah.[45] The Book of Jubilees elaborates on the story of Genesis and Exodus, and is presented as a secret revelation originally imparted by the angels to Moses on Mount Sinai. The Book of Enoch, through its angelology, demonology, and cosmology, also provided important early elements in the development of the Kabbalah.[46]

The Book of Enoch is part of a number of works known as the Apocrypha, usually of unknown authorship or of doubtful origin. The Apocrypha, from the Greek word apokryptein, meaning “to hide away,” refers to a body of Biblical literature that was excluded from the orthodox canon of the Old and New Testament. The Septuagint contained a number of books that later Jewish religious leaders rejected from the Old Testament, but that the early Christian Church preserved as Apocrypha, inserting them between the Old and New Testament. There is no complete list of these works, and some are more important than others.

Among those usually classified in Old Testament Apocryphal literature are the Psalms of Solomon, the Jewish portions of the Sibylline Books, the Book of Enoch, the Assumption of Moses, the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch, the Greek Apocalypse of Baruch, the Book of Jubilees, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Martyrdom of Isaiah, the Testament of Job, several writings on the subject of Adam and Eve, the History of Johannes Hyrcanus, and various other legendary and apocalyptic works. Still other works survived. The majority of these, in an attempt to give them legitimacy, were attributed to various biblical personalities from the distant past, rather than their actual authors. Because of this falsely ascribed authorship, these works became known as Pseudepigrapha. Their literary form makes dating most of them difficult, but the majority reflect doctrines introduced since the Babylonian Exile. Most of them date from between 200 BC and 100 AD, and were derived from later copies either in the original language, Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek, or in translated versions found in archaeological excavations.

The Book of Enoch was a pseudepigraphical work, named after Enoch, who, according to the Bible, was the seventh Patriarch after Adam and lived prior to the Flood. Enoch did not die, but instead, at age 365, “walked with God,” meaning that he was taken up into heaven directly. After beginning with an account of the Fallen Angels, known as the Watchers or Nephilim, the Book of Enoch offers a description of the miraculous journey of Enoch, in the company of the angel Uriel, from whom he learns the secrets of creation, the Sun, the Moon, and the signs of the zodiac. The book teaches of the existence of the Son of Man, the Elect One, the Messiah, who “from the beginning existed in secret,”[47] and whose “name was invoked in the presence of the Lord of Spirits, before the sun and the signs were created.”[48] According to Moshe Idel, the Enochian text advocated the use of specific structures, together with incantations, which could “bring about the descent of celestial entities and their magical use.”[49]

While many readers of the Bible over the centuries have struggled with the identity of the “Sons of God” (Nephilim) of the Bible, according to the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha they were identified as Fallen Angels, referred to as “Watchers.” In the Book of Daniel there are three references to the class of “watcher, holy one.” The term is introduced by Nebuchadnezzar who says he saw “a watcher, a holy one come down (singular verb) from heaven.”[50] The story of the Anakim is often thought to be possibly connected to the Sumerian myth of the Annunaki, seven judges of the Underworld, the children of the god Anu, who had once lived in heaven but were banished for their misdeeds.

Although not mentioned in the Bible, numerous later interpretations claimed that the Nephilim intermarried with the female descendants of Cain, producing the race of Anakim. References to the offspring of Seth rebelling against God and mingling with the daughters of Cain are found from the second century AD onwards, in both Christian and Jewish sources. Examples include Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, Saint Augustine, Sextus Julius Africanus, and the Letters attributed to St. Clement. It is also the view expressed in the modern canonical Amharic Ethiopian Orthodox Bible: Henok 2:1–3: “and the Offspring of Seth, who were upon the Holy Mount, saw them and loved them. And they told one another, ‘Come, let us choose for us daughters from Cain's children; let us bear children for us.’”

A similar account is provided in The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan, a sixth-century Christian extracanonical work found in Ge'ez, translated from an Arabic original. In Book 2, the “sons of God” are identified as the children of Seth, and the “daughters of men” as women descended from Cain, who successfully tempt most of the Sethites to come down from their mountain and join the Cainites in the valley below, under the instigation of Genun, son of Lamech. This Genun, who is described as the inventor of musical instruments, seems to correspond to the Biblical Jubal, is also the inventor of weapons of war. The Cainites, descended from Cain the first murderer, are described as extremely wicked, being prone to commit murder and incest. After seducing the Sethites, their offspring become the Nephilim, who are all destroyed in the Flood, as also detailed in Enoch and Jubilees.

Similarly, as recounted in the Dead Sea Scrolls, two hundred angels known as the Watchers, or Guardians, once descended from heaven to sample the pleasures of earth, and were, according to the Book of Jubilees, led by Mastema, or Satan. It is they who taught men knowledge brought with them in their descent from Heaven: magic and astrology. According to the Book of Enoch, the Sons of God, “took wives, each choosing for himself; whom they began to approach, and with whom they cohabited; teaching them sorcery, incantations, and the dividing of roots and trees.”[51] The text explains:

…Azazyel, taught men to make swords, knives, shields, breastplates, the fabrication of mirrors, and the workmanship of bracelets and ornaments, the use of paint, the beautifying of the eyebrows, the use of stones of every valuable and select kind, and of all sorts of dyes, so that the world became altered. Impiety increased; fornication multiplied; and they transgressed and corrupted all their ways. Amazarak taught all the sorcerers, and dividers of roots; Armers taught the solution of sorcery; Barkayal taught the observers of the stars; Akibeel taught signs; Tamiel taught astronomy; and Asaradel taught the motion of the moon.[52]

To satisfy their enormous appetites, the Anakim roamed the earth, slaughtering every species of bird, beast, reptile and fish. Finally, the ravenous creatures turned on one another, stripping each other’s flesh from their bones and quenching their thirst in rivers of blood. As this wave of destruction washed over the earth, the anguished cries of mankind reached four powerful archangels, Uriel, Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael, who upon orders from God brought about a swift retribution. First Uriel descended to earth to warn Noah of a coming Flood, advising him to prepare an ark to carry his family and a load of creatures to safety. Raphael then fell upon a leader of the Watchers, bound him hand and foot, and thrust him into eternal darkness. Next, Gabriel, charged with slaying the corrupt race, encouraged them to fight each other. Finally, Michael rounded up the remaining Watchers, forced them to witness the deaths of their progeny, and condemned them to eternal torment. Only then did the heavens open up and the waters of the Great Flood washed away the last traces of the destruction that the Fallen Angels had wrought.

However, the Anakim were not entirely annihilated by the Flood. The Book of Jubilees recounted how a remnant of the Anakim were spared. Some time after the Flood, Noah learned that evil spirits, born of the Fallen Angels, were misleading his grandchildren and killing some of them. God then orders the archangels to imprison the demons inside the earth. But Mestama (the devil) pleads with God: “Lord, Creator, let some of them remain before me, and let them hearken to my voice, and do all that I shall say unto them; for if some of them are not left to me, I shall not be able to execute the power of my will upon the sons of men.” And Yahweh replies: “Let the tenth part of them remain before him, and let nine parts descend into the place of condemnation.” And so, the angels bind nine of ten of the evil spirits in the darkness but the tenth part remain so that “they might be subject before Satan on the earth.”[53] The sparing of a number of Fallen Angels allowed for the legend of the Kabbalah according to which the race of the Anakim was continued through the descendants of one of Noah’s grandsons, Canaan.

Merkabah Mysticism

According to Gershom Scholem, a leading scholar of Kabbalah, it is in the apocalyptic literature of the Essenes that can be found the earliest evidence of Merkabah mysticism, or what he termed “Jewish Gnosticism.”[54] The main interests of Merkabah literature are accounts of mystical ascents into heaven, divine visions, and the summoning and control of angels, usually for the purpose of gaining insight into Torah. The locus classicus for these practices are the biblical accounts of the Chariot vision of Ezekiel and the Temple vision of Isaiah. Merkabah involved a complex tradition of visionary architecture, which meditated on the vision of the Book of Ezekiel. The aim of Merkabah mysticism was to achieve visions of otherwise invisible mathematical-linguistic concepts, in the form of chariots, thrones, palaces and ultimately, the Temple itself.

The Book of Ezekiel opens with a vision of God on his chariot supported by four cherubim, a variation of the sun chariots of Marduk, Shamash, Apollo or Phaethon drawn by four horses. The cherubim are described as each having two sets of wings, the body of a man, but the legs and cloven feet of a goat. Each had four heads. While not referred to explicitly in the Bible, these heads can be identified with the four seasons of the zodiac and their related signs, demonstrating to what degree astrological influences had already corrupted the Bible by that time. Each creature has the head of a man representing Aquarius, an eagle for Scorpio, a bull for Taurus, and a lion for Leo. Each creature also stands on a “wheel inside a wheel,” representing the intersection of the ecliptic, resulting from the orbit of the Earth around the Sun, and the celestial equator, resulting from the rotation of the Earth on its own axis.

Merkabah texts involved elaborate anthropomorphic descriptions of God, known as Shiur Komah, which were based on the Song of Solomon, the most important of all Kabbalistic texts. The Song of Solomon, or Song of Songs, is a collection of love poems spoken alternately by a man and a woman, symbolizing the mystical erotic relationship between the god and goddess. In the Song, the “beloved,” or the Shekinah, is described as bride, daughter and sister. Originally, she was the planet Venus, the goddess of love and war of Antiquity. She also represents the darker aspect of the god, as did Moloch or Saturn in ancient times. She says of herself, “I am black, but I am beautiful.”[55] According to the Song of Solomon, 6:10:

Who is this arising like the dawn
fair as the Moon,
resplendent as the Sun,
terrible as an army with banners?

It had been argued that while Gnosticism derived from Jewish mysticism, unlike its Christian counterpart, Jewish Gnosticism did not worship an evil god in the place of God. However, as Alan Segal has shown in Two Powers in Heaven, it was Metatron who was worshipped as the replacement. After he ascended to Heaven, Enoch was known in Jewish Apocrypha as the archangel Metatron. In Hermeticism, Enoch was also identified with Hermes. He later came to be regarded as the “Archetypal Man,” or the “Primordial Adam,” who was equated with the Biblical figure of Melchizedek, or the angel Metatron, becoming the source of the Kabbalah’s anthropomorphic doctrine, by being interpreted as the image of God.

The idea of Metatron was developed in the Babylonian Talmud to explain Exodus 24:1, where God refers to himself as “Lord” in the third person rather than in the first person as “me.” The rabbis of the Talmud explain that this “Lord” is Metatron, whose name is like his master’s name, because his name is in him. Though, the rabbis also warn not to confuse Metatron with God. However, the myth takes on further features in the later strata of the Zohar, where Metatron and the demon king Samael are combined into one figure, and is therefore seen as embodying both good and evil.[56] Archetypal Man, or Adam Kadmon, was also identified with the Tree of Life, which through the influence of the Decad of Plato and Neoplatonism was later equated with what were called the ten Sephiroth, or divine emanations.[57]

Like the ancient Asherah pillars, this god was also depicted as a phallus, representing the pillar or axis of the world, entwined by a serpent known as Teli, representing the constellation Draco, which circles around the celestial pole. Teli is described in the Sefer Yetzirah, or “Book of Creation,” written by an unknown author, probably in Palestine between 200 and 600 AD, which mingled Jewish, Pythagorean and Hellenistic ideas.[58] The dragon Teli is the sacred serpent, who, according to the Zohar, corresponding to the evil serpent, watches over humanity and restrains the power of the impure serpent.[59] Teli is the Leviathan of the Bible, the constellation Draco, which governs the world and personifies the axis, or phallic pillar, or Asherah poles, symbolized by the Tree of Knowledge in the Yetzirah, around which it coils.

Through the influence of Merkabah, the system held in common by all the Hellenistic mystery schools came to be the notion of the passage of an initiate through the stages of the seven known planets, to remove the stains acquired on his soul during its descent into a human body. In order to ascend through the celestial spheres, the initiate had to master techniques of meditation, which included concentrating on the Hebrew scriptures, Gematria, as well as breath-control, chanted hymns, and certain body movements. In order to bypass the hostile gatekeepers of each sphere, the initiate had to display his “seal” or amulets, composed of complex geometric designs that contained magical powers.

In the opinion of Scholem, such a mode of ascent, through which the soul ascends to its original home, either after death or in a state of ecstasy, is certainly very old. However, there is no evidence of the notion of an ascent through seven heavens prior to end of the first century AD, when it was probably invented, perhaps by Rabbi Akiva, the principle figure of early Merkabah mysticism. On Rabbi Akiva, the Talmud noted that among four men who engaged in such mystical subjects, one died, one went mad, one apostatized, and only Rabbi Akiva had a true visionary experience. Of the oldest literary sources of Merkabah are two Hekhaloth texts, the Lesser attributed to Rabbi Akiva, and the Greater, to his colleague, Rabbi Ishmael ben Elisha. As Scholem remarked, similar dangers in the ascent of the mystic are described in the Liturgy of Mithras, of the magical papyrus of Paris, where the description of the ascent shows many parallels with the account given in the Greater Hekhaloth.[60]

Gnosticism

Gnosticism is the name used by scholars to refer as a group to the various heretical Christian sects that emerged at Alexandria. An entire library of Gnostic documents and Coptic translations from Greek originals was discovered near Nag Hammadi in Egypt, our knowledge of the Gnostics stemmed mainly from their opponents, early Church fathers like Irenaeus (c. 185), Hippolytus (c. 230), and Epiphanius (c. 375). The word “Gnosticism” is derived from the Greek gnostikos, meaning “one who knows.” What he knows is gnosis, the wisdom attained through revelation. In common with all Hellenistic mystical systems, the Gnostics believed that there is a divine spark in man that has descended from the divine realm above, which has fallen into the world of Fate, birth, and death, and that it can be awakened by its divine counterpart because of a revelation, or epiphany, and then be reintegrated into the spiritual world. The Gnostics applied a radical dualistic interpretation to Christianity, interpreting the Bible in reverse, by pitting the Creator of the universe, referred to as the Demiurge, against the true god who lies outside of creation. Demiurge was a term first used by Plato in the Timaeus as the agent other than God who takes the preexisting materials of chaos, arranges them according to the models of eternal forms, and produces the physical world.

As such, the Gnostics typically believed that all morals imposed by God were intended only to oppress man. To free themselves from the cycles of reincarnation, the Gnostics believed, they needed to experience everything “falsely” considered evil by the “ignorant” masses, including murder, adultery, incest, cannibalism, pedophilia, and the ingestion of various bodily fluids and excrement. Thus was the philosophical basis for the practice of black magic. This was despite the fact that there were clear condemnations of this art found in the Bible, as in Jeremiah 50:35-36: “A sword is on the Chaldeans and the people of Babylonia, and on her rulers and on her wise men! A sword is on the soothsayers, and they will become foolish!” Therefore, as explains Attilio Mastrocinque, in From Jewish magic to Gnosticism, “In Gnostic thinking, therefore, the science of the Chaldeans was bound to be valued as a form of knowledge, precisely because it had been forbidden by the creator.”[61]

The Gnostics believed there was The Good from which a variety of Aeons, or emanations, were given off. The universe, according to the Gnostics, was viewed as consisting of concentric spheres, of which the earth was the center. These spheres were marked by the circular orbits of the planets, each governed by an Archon, a deity hostile to spiritual men. Beyond them was the sphere of the fixed stars known as the Pleroma, or totality. It was made of thirty Aeons, each corresponding to the thirty days of the month. Within these were the signs of the Zodiac whose earthly equivalents were the twelve apostles. The soul of man is pure spirit placed by The Good in a body of corrupt matter created by the Demiurge. To be reunited with The Good, the mystic must gain secret Gnosis, which will allow him to bypass the Aeons, as well as the most inferior, the Demiurge, creator of the material world. As reported by Clement of Alexandria in Exhortation to the Heathen 78.1, the primary function of Gnostic revelation was to free spiritual men from astral determinism, for according to the Gnostics, “until baptism... Fate is real, but after it the astrologers are no longer right.”

A central doctrine of Gnosticism was that of the passage of the soul through the planetary spheres, the route through which was opened by the Savior, knower of the sacred names by which to appease the gate-keepers, or Archons, that impede the soul’s ascent. Therefore, the mystical system of Gnosticism held obvious parallels to other schools of Hellenistic mysticism, namely the Mysteries of Mithras, Hermeticism, and Neoplatonism, but also with the early Jewish mysticism of the Merkabah, or which Gershom Scholem identified as Jewish Gnosticism. Scholem indicated:

The fact remains that precisely these ideas were affirmed in the heart of an esoteric discipline within Jewish tradition, and not only among Jewish heretics, even though the role of the pagan planet-angels is here assumed by other archons. These archons threaten the ecstatic visionary at the gates of the seven celestial palaces, and – entirely in keeping with the doctrines of various gnostic writings of the same period – can only be overcome and compelled to permit him to pass by the display of a magic “seal,” through the recitation of hymns, prayers, etc. One can still discern plainly the relation to late Jewish apocalyptic writings, whose ideas evidently form a plausible transition to both Jewish monotheistic Gnosticism and the heretical Gnosticism that tended toward dualism.[62]

It is now largely accepted by scholars that Christian Gnosticism had its origin in Merkabah Mysticism.[63] Scholem explained, “in the second century Jewish converts to Christianity apparently conveyed different aspects of Merkabah mysticism to Christian Gnostics. In the Gnostic literature there were many corruptions of such elements, yet the Jewish character of this material is still evident, especially among the Ophites, in the school of Valentinus, and in several of the Gnostic and Coptic texts discovered within the last fifty years”[64] These opinions were confirmed by several ancient sources. For example, in fragments quoted from Eusebius, we know that Hegesippus argued that the Gnostics were inheritors of various Jewish or baptist sects, such as the Essenes. Filastrius, the fourth century AD bishop of Brescia, numbers the Gnostic sects of the Ophites among the sects that flourished in Judaism before the advent of Christianity.[65]

According to Moshe Idel, “far more than did scholars in the first half of the twentieth century, contemporary scholars of Gnosticism refer to Jewish influence on the emerging Gnostic literature; the studies of Gilles Quispel, George MacRae, B. Pearson, Guy Gedalyah Stroumsa, and Jarl Fossum have altered the earlier Iranian-Egyptian-Greek explanations of Gnosticism.”[66] As Hans Jonas, the renowned scholar of Gnosticism, pointed out, “some connection of Gnosticism with the beginnings of Kabbalah, has in any case to be assumed, whatever the order of cause and effect.”[67] The way middot, or qualities of God, such as wisdom, understanding, knowledge, truth, faithfulness, righteousness, etc., for the Gnostics became the “Aeons”, the powers and the emanations of God which fill the Pleroma, the divine “fullness”, is paralleled in the tradition of Maaseh Bereshit.[68] As in Gnostic literature, there is a magical and theurgic aspect to the technique of ascent in Merkabah, and there are very strong connections between Merkabah literature and Hebrew and Aramaic theurgic literature of the period. It is very similar to a number of important texts preserved among the Greek magical papyri and to Gnostic literature of the Pistis Sophia, which originated in the second or third century AD.[69]

Therefore, to the Ophites, also known as Sethians, a Jewish baptismal sect in the tradition of the Essenes, that flourished around the first century BC to the first century AD, the God of the Bible is really the evil god. According to the Ophites, Ialdabaoth, or Yahweh, the god of the Old Testament, was proud, ignorant and vengeful. Though there were powers above him, he was covetous of the supreme power and claimed himself to be the only god. Dissatisfied with his creation, he wanted to destroy his work through a woman, Eve. But Sophia liberated man by sending a serpent that led him to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, forbidden to them by Ialdabaoth, to keep man ignorant. Through Sophia, Adam and Eve acquired knowledge of all things and began to turn away from their creator.

Ialdabaoth cast Adam and Eve out of Paradise, and after Cain and Abel, they gave birth to Seth, who was of a superior race, and whose sons were the Sons of God. The Sons of God intermarried with the daughters of Cain and caused such corruption that Ialdabaoth unleashed the Flood, but Sophia saved Noah. When the world was repopulated, Ialdabaoth chose Abraham, establishing a covenant with him that if his descendants served him he would grant them the earth. These were later led out of Egypt by Moses who gave them the Law. While the prophets were servants of Ialdabaoth, Sophia allowed certain words to infiltrate their prophecies. Such words referred to the Primordial Man, the Aeon and to the Christ, for Sophia intended, without Ialdabaoth’s knowledge, to bring about the births of Jesus and John the Baptist.

“Abraxas” is a word of mystic meaning in the system of the Gnostic Basilides, applied to the “Great Archon,” and which was also found in the Greek Magical Papyri. Basilides was an early Christian Gnostic religious teacher in Alexandria, who taught from 117 to 138 AD. In the system described by Irenaeus in his Adversus Haereses, “the ruler” of the 365 heavens “is Abraxas, and for this reason he contains within himself 365 numbers.” The seven letters spelling its name may represent each of the seven planets, and may be related to Abracadabra. A vast number of engraved stones are in existence, to which the name “Abraxas-stones” were given. The Abraxas-imago proper is usually found with a shield, a sphere or wreath and whip, a sword or scepter, a cock’s head, the body clad with armor, and a serpent's tail. A combination of Abraxas with Jewish symbols is predominant, in the form of inscriptions, such as: Iao, Eloai, Adonai, Sabaoth, Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, Raphael, and many others. Abraxas is also sometimes combined with Persian deities. Chiefly, most commonly with Mithras. Abraxas is represented sometimes with Egyptian motifs, as a figure with the sun-god Phre leading his chariot, or standing upon a lion borne by a crocodile. With Grecian deities, Abraxas is sometimes in connection with the planets, especially Venus, Hecate, and Zeus.

Neoplatonism

Essentially, the Gnostics combined the terminology of the Neoplatonists and the mythology of the mysteries with Christianity. Neoplatonism and the emergence of the Mysteries of Mithras were closely connected to the Royal Family of Emesa, today Homs in Syria, a dynasty of Priest-Kings who formed a powerful and influential aristocracy. Emesa was renowned for the Temple of the Sun, known as Elagabalium, a derivation of Baal, was adored in a shape of a black stone. Around 64 BC, Pompey the Great had reorganized Syria and the surrounding countries into Roman Provinces, and had installed client kings, who would be allies to Rome. One of those client kings, would be Sampsiceramus, the founding member of the Priest-King dynasty of Emesa, who lived in the first century BC.

Genealogy of the Priest-Kings of Emesa

• Mithridates III of Commagene + Princess Iotapa of Media Atropatene

  • Aka II of Commagene + Thrasyllus of Mendes (astrologer and a personal friend of the Roman emperor Tiberius)

    • unnamed daughter + Eques Lucius Ennius.

      • Ennia Thrasylla + Naevius Sutorius Macro

    • Tiberius Claudius Balbilus (court astrologer to the Roman emperors Claudius, Nero and Vespasian) + unknown

      • Claudia Capitolina + Gaius Julius Archelaus Antiochus Epiphanes (see below)

  • Antiochus III of Commagene + Iotapa (his sister)

    • ANTIOCHUS IV OF COMMAGENE + Princess Iotapa of Commagene (full-blooded sister)

      • Gaius Julius Archelaus Antiochus Epiphanes + Claudia Capitolina (from a distinguished family. Only child of astrologer TIBERIUS CLAUDIUS BALBILUS)

        • Philopappos (friends with the Emperor Trajan and Trajan’s heir and second paternal cousin Hadrian)

        • Julia Balbilla (poet and personal friend to Emperor Hadrian and the Empress Vibia Sabina) + Gaius Julius Archelaus Antiochus Epiphanes

      • Julia Iotapa + Gaius Julius Alexander

        • Gaius Julius Agrippa + Fabia

          • Lucius Julius Gainius Fabius Agrippa

        • Gaius Julius Alexander Berenicianus + Cassia Lepida

          • Julia Cassia Alexandra + Gaius Avidius Heliodorus

            • Avidius Cassius + Volusia Vettia Maeciana

        • Julia Iotapa (Cilician princess)

  • Iotapa + Sampsiceramus II of Emesa (son of Sampsiceramus I, founding Priest-King of Emesa)

    • Iotapa + Aristobulus the Younger (grandson of HEROD THE GREAT)

    • Julia Mamaea + Polemon II of Pontus

      • Polemon

      • Rheometalces

    • Gaius Julius Azizus

    • Sohaemus of Emesa + Drusilla of Mauretania the Younger (daughter of Cleopatra and Antony)

      • Gaius Julius Alexion + Claudia Piso

        • Gaius Julius Sampsigeramus (III) Silas + Claudia Capitolina Balbilla

          • Gaius Julius Longinus Soaemus + daughter of Abgar VII

            • Julius (Noble) of Emesa

              • Tiberius Julius (Noble) of Emesa

                • Iamblichus (Noble) of Emesa

                  • Gaius Julius Sulpicius, Priest-King of Emesa

                    • Uranius Antoninus (rival-Emperor of Rome

                      • Julius Aurelius (rival-Emperor of ROME

                        • IAMBLICHUS (Neoplatonist philosopher)

            • Julius of Emesa + unknown

              • Gaius Julius Bassianus

                • JULIA DOMNA + Emperor Septimius Severus

                  • Emperor Caracalla + Fulvia Plautilla

                  • Emperor Geta (Caracalla tried unsuccessfully to murder him during the Saturnalia)

                  • Bassina + Claudius Gothicus

                    • Claudius Gothicus + Aurelia Pompeiana

                      • Claudia Crispina + Eutropius

                        • Constantius Chlorus + SAINT HELENA (daughter of "Old King Cole" according to both Geoffrey of Monmouth and Henry of Huntingdon)

                          • CONSTANTINE THE GREAT

                • JULIA MAESA + Gaius Julius Avitus Alexianus

                  • Julia Soaemias Bassiana + Sextus Varius Marcellus

                    • EMPEROR ELAGABALUS (head priest of the sun god Elagabal)

                      • Severus Alexander (adoptive)

                  • Julia Avita Mamaea + Malchus II, Governor of Palmyra (see below)

                  • Julia Avita Mamaea + Marcus Julius Gessius Marcianus

                    • Emperor Severus Alexander (Julia Mamaea asked for Origen to tutor Alexander in Christianity)

                    • Marcus Julius Gessius Bassianus

        • Mamaea of Emesa + Malech, Governor of Palmyra

          • Zenobius, Governor of PALMYRA

            • Claudius JULIUS Nassus Basum, Governor of Palmyra

              • Malchus I, Governor of Palmyra

                • Malchus II, Governor of Palmyra + Julia Avita Mamaea (see above)

                  • Julius Aurelius Zenobius + Zabbai (of Arabia)

                    • ZENOBIA, Queen of the Palmyrene Empire in Syria (patron of PAUL OF SAMOSOTA founder of PAULICIANISM)

The influence of Greek thought in the Hellenistic Age derived primarily from a school of philosophy developed at Alexandria and thought to issue from Plato, known as Platonism. It appears that Plato, in his later years, became increasingly devoted to the teachings of Pythagoras, and that he finally came to view his idea of Forms as numbers. Plato arrived at a system of opposed first principles, and a triple division of levels of being, which granted a central position to the role of Soul, both World-Soul and the individual soul. Developing the doctrine of the Pythagoreans, as first principles Plato established the One and the Indefinite Dyad. The One, or Monad, is an active principle, imposing “limit” on the formlessness of the opposite principle, the Dyad. The Dyad is a duality, that on which the One acts, but it is also the irrational aspect of the Soul, and the underlying substance of the universe, the Receptacle of the Timaeus. Essentially, as explained Xenocrates, Plato’s successors to head of the Academy, the Monad and the Dyad are the philosophical rendering of the pagan trinity. The Monad represents the Father, while the Dyad represents the dual-natured goddess, taken from the ancient trinity.[70]

By acting on the Dyad, the One generates the Form-Numbers. First the Dyad produces the number Two, by doubling the One, and then produces the other numbers by either adding to Two and to each successive number the One or itself. However, Plato took only those numbers up to ten as constituting Forms. A special importance was placed by Plato, as it was by the Pythagoreans, on the “primal numbers,” one, two, three, and four, the Tetraktys, and their sum-total, ten or the Decad. These four also have a geometrical aspect: One is the point, Two the line, Three the triangle or a plane, and Four the solid, in the shape of a pyramid. The four basic numbers assume their geometric aspect in World-Soul, from which the four dimensions are projected upon Matter, through combinations of basic triangles, to form the Four Elements.

The next phase of Platonism, or Middle Platonism, emerged as the result of a new influence, that of Neo-Pythagoreanism, if in fact the two movements were not the same. A curious series of texts had emerged in the third and second centuries BC, claiming to be the works of the original Pythagoreans. It was in this period that the myth of Pythagoras as the student of Oriental wisdom took shape, reflected later in the biographies by Diogenes Laertius, Porphyry and Iamblichus.[71] However, according to John Dillon, noted scholar of Middle Platonism, only certain works attributed to the original Pythagoreans, namely Philolaus and Archytas, are possibly genuine, though as far as the other works are concerned, much about them remains obscure and little is known as to who wrote them and why.

One of the most important exponents of Middle Platonism was the Greek-speaking Jewish philosopher of the first century AD, Philo of Alexandria, also called Philo Judaeus, the greatest representative of Hellenistic Judaism. Although a devout Jew, Philo attempted to rationalize Judaism with his version of Platonic philosophy. The Bible, to Philo, was compatible with Platonic philosophy, for according to him, perhaps in reference to the legends reported by Iamblichus or Artapanus, Plato was a follower of Pythagoras, and Pythagoras had been a follower of Moses.

The most important innovation of Middle Platonism, according to John Dillon, was Philo’s placing of a transcendent God, equated with the God of the Old Testament, above the Monad and the Dyad. These notions, though, hold striking similarities with those regarded as the early developments of the Kabbalah, the Monad representing the Primordial Man, the Dyad the Shekhinah. In fact, Philo praised the Essenes, and in The Contemplative Life, he describes the rites and habits of the Therapeutae, and in support of his ideas, he often used the phrase “it is said,” presumably referring to Jewish traditions. For example, “it is said” that Moses was enchanted by the music of the spheres when he was receiving the revelation on Mt. Sinai.[72] Ultimately, in the opinion of Moshe Idel, a leading modern scholar of the Kabbalah, “there seems to be extant evidence for the existence of Hebrew traditions that may mediate between Philo’s views, or other ancient Jewish traditions parallel to Philo, and the emergent Kabbalah.”[73]

Below the supreme God, the Monad becomes the Stoic Logos, the active principle of God’s creative thought. To Philo, “… he who drives the Chariot of the Powers is the Logos, and He who is borne in the Chariot is He who speaks the Logos, giving commandment to the Driver for the right driving of the universe.”[74] The Logos is the mediator between God and creation, which at one point he identifies as a second God. The Logos is the primordial or archetypal man, the image of God. Therefore, the Logos is the Macrocosm, a reflection of the earthly man, who is the Microcosm. The Logos proceeded from God and Sophia, and is described as the Son of God and Sophia, “through whom the universe came into existence.” Sophia, or Wisdom, is the Dyad. Like the Shekhinah, she is the female life-principle assisting the supreme God in his work of creation and administration, but also somehow fulfilling the role of mother to all creation.[75]

The man largely responsible for the development of the Neo-Pythagorean movement, and the fusion of Platonism and Stoicism, was Posidonius (c. 135 BC – c. 51 BC), a native of Apamea in Syria, near Emesa. Little is known of Posidonius’ thought, but some of his teachings have been preserved by his pupil Cicero. Being learned in Magian astrology and demonology, Posidonius was concerned with magic. Cumont, explaining the nature and source of Neo-Pythagoreanism, stated, “Although by its ideal of religious life it professed to connect itself with the old Pythagorean mysticism, its doctrine owes more to the theories developed by Posidonius, especially in his commentary on the Timaeus, and it borrowed much, either through the medium of the great Syrian or even directly, from Oriental religions.”[76]

About the middle of the first century AD, a distinct Neo-Pythagorean trend appeared with the mystic Apollonius of Tyana, a Pythagorean philosopher whose miracles in raising the dead and healing the sick have been compared to those of Christ. During his travels he associated with the Brahmins of India, the Gymnosophists of Egypt, and the Babylonian Magi, who initiated him in the “Chaldean mysteries.” In Rome Apollonius was arrested and tried before Emperor Domitian for sorcery, for having predicted a plague at Ephesus. He claimed it was merely his moderate diet that kept his senses clear and enabled him to see the present and the future. Nevertheless, according to his biographer, Apollonius managed to inexplicably vanish from the courtroom.

The Neo-Pythagorean philosopher chiefly responsible for the transition of Platonism to a Neoplatonic synthesis of Hellenistic, Persian, and Jewish systems, was Numenius of Apamea, who flourished in the late second century AD. Numenius showed extensive knowledge of Judaism, and may have been acquainted with Christianity. Numenius intended to seek the origin of Platonic ideas in the teachings of the ancient East, the spirit transmigration of Hinduism, the monotheistic deity and the trinity in Judaism, and the esoteric dualism of Gnostic and Hermetic cults. To explore the nature of God, Numenius insisted, one had to look back beyond the wisdom of Plato, or even of Pythagoras, to “everything that the Brahmins, the Jews, the Magi and the Egyptians have established.”[77] According to the Church Father Origen, Numenius offered allegorical interpretations of the writings of Moses and the Prophets.[78] He had remarked, “what is Plato, but Moses speaking in Attic Greek.”[79]

Another important philosopher of Middle Platonism was Plutarch of Chaeronea (c. AD 46 – AD 120), a priest of the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Plutarch’s teacher, Ammonius Saccas (fl. 3rd century AD), who had been in charge of the Platonic Academy at Athens, was an Egyptian, and probably responsible for the introduction of the Pythagoreanizing and astrological Alexandrian influences to the Academy.[80] In his essay On the E at Delphi, Plutarch explained that, according to Ammonius, the sublunary realm was ruled over by a “god, or rather daemon, whose office is concerned with Nature in dissolution and generation,” who is known as Hades or Pluto, in contrast to the god who rules over the heavenly realm, who is Apollo. According to Plutarch, the supreme god responsible for creating the world, and commonly worshipped by the ignorant masses, is actually the evil god, while the true god is that one mistakenly accused of evil. This god, or demon, should be called Hades or Pluto, god of the Underworld, or the sublunary realm.[81] As mediator, the Logos is the messenger of the gods, which Plutarch equated with Mithras, the “mediator god” of the Zoroastrians.[82] Plutarch talked of the One and the Dyad, without the idea of the supreme principle above them, however, he maintained, God must relate to the world through intermediaries, first of which is the Logos. For Plutarch, the Logos is the equivalent of the Sun-god of ancient paganism.

Numenius’ thought is alleged to have influenced the first Neoplatonist, Plotinus (c. 204/5 – 270). Born in Egypt, Plotinus, like Plutarch, had also been the pupil at Alexandria of Ammonius Saccas, who may have been the intermediary for Numenius’ ideas. Moshe Idel, a leading scholar of the Jewish Kabbalah, has indicated that the quest for mystical union in the thought of Plotinus may have been derived from Jewish sources, possibly from Philo of Alexandria and Rabbi Akiva[83] Supposedly, Ammonius had been brought up as a Christian but abandoned his religion for the study of Plato, developing his own variation of Platonic philosophy. In the Life of Plotinus, Porphyry reported that through Ammonius, Plotinus “became eager to investigate the Persian methods and the system adopted among the Indians.”[84]

Plotinus was the teacher of Porphyry (c. 234 – c. 305 AD), who was born in Tyre in Phoenicia. In 301, he produced his most important work, the Enneads. Fragments survive of his Against the Christians, which was condemned to be burned in 448. Porphyry wrote a history on the life of Pythagoras, and On Abstinence, a plea for vegetarianism, and in On the Cave of the Nymphs, he describes the symbolism of a grotto mentioned in Homer, in relation to the cave rituals of Mithraism. Porphyry was also a tutor to the Syrian philosopher Iamblichus (c. 245–c. 325 AD), another famous descendent of the priest-kings of Emesa.[85] Iamblichus sought to revive paganism by a return to its roots among the Babylonians and Egyptians, the leading proponents of classical thought, like Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and finally, in the mysteries. He has generally been credited with the transformation of the merely spiritual Neoplatonism of Plotinus in favor of theurgy, the magical conjuration of the gods, a subject which he treats in his work, On the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans and Assyrians.

Chaldean Oracles

Through highly metaphysical interpretations of Plato, particularly the Timaeus and Parmenides, later Neoplatonists believed it possible to arrive at a complete understanding of divine truth, held to be cryptically revealed by the gods themselves through the so-called “theologians”, the inspired authors of the Orphic poems and the Chaldean Oracles. The Chaldean Oracles, a work attributed to Zoroaster, and said to have been revealed to Julian the Theurgist, also known as the Chaldean. The Chaldean Oracles, of which only fragments are preserved, is a theosophical text in verse composed in the second century AD, that combined Platonic elements with Persian or Babylonian creeds. Though its influence is underplayed by modern scholars, it was regarded by the later Neoplatonists as a sacred text, sometimes, even above Plato himself. Proclus would have withdrawn all books from circulation except the Timaeus and the Chaldean Oracles, to prevent them from harming the uneducated. Referring to the Chaldean Oracles, the emperor Julian mentions the following, in what is generally regarded as one of his few allusions to the doctrine of the Mithraic Mysteries, “And if I should also touch on the secret teachings of the Mysteries in which the Chaldean, divinely frenzied, celebrated the God of the Seven Rays, that god through whom he lifts up the souls of men, I should be saying what is unintelligible, yea wholly unintelligible to the common herd, but familiar to the happy theurgists.”[86]

The doctrine of the Chaldean Oracles spoke of emanations from the Father, equated with fire, and of triadic entities. The highest entities mentioned in the Oracles are an absolutely transcendent First Paternal Intellect. A Second Demiurgic Intellect, proceeds from the Father and knows the cosmos as well as himself. Within the First Intellect, a female Power, Hecate, produces or is the mediating World-Soul. At the bottom end of the All lies Matter, made by the Demiurge. The world is a foul tomb and a form which the higher human soul must escape, shedding the lower soul’s vehicle or garment, acquired during its descent through the stars and planets. Ascetic conduct and correct ritual will free the soul from the astrological confines of Fate, and defend it against the demonic powers who fill the realm between gods and mortals.

The theurgy of the Chaldean Oracles provided knowledge of the magical formulas to aid the soul on its ascent to union with the god. Some scholars claim that the theory of the passage of the soul through the seven heavens was known to Numenius, who transmitted it to Porphyry. Though, as Culianu as pointed out, in Psychanodia I: A Survey of the Evidence Concerning the Ascension of the Soul and Its Relevance, evidence is lacking, and while Porphyry certainly knew the doctrine, the principle testimonies come from Macrobius and Proclus.[87] According to Proclus:

The vehicle of every particular soul descends by the addition of vestures increasingly material; and ascends in company with the soul through divestment of all that is material and recovery of its proper form, after the analogy of the soul which makes use of it: for the soul descends by the acquisition of irrational principles of life; and ascends by putting off all those faculties tending to temporal process with which it was invested in its descent, and becoming clean and bare of all such faculties as serve the uses of the process.[88]

Though not considered magic, the theurgy of the Neoplatonists was essentially those procedures of Hellenistic magic. Its aim was that outlined in the Hermetic treatise, the Asclepius, that is, the incarnation of a divine power or spirit, either into a material object, such as a statue, or a human being, to bring the subject under a state of prophetic ecstasy. The practice was justified by the idea, first, that each part of the universe reflects every other part, and secondly, that the whole material world is the reflection of the invisible divine powers. Such that, resulting from the network of forces or sympathies linking image to archetype, manipulation of the appropriate material object that corresponds to a divine power, brings the theurgist into contact with it. The principle also justified the production of long lists of stones, plants, animals, expressing the power of the seven planets, and substantiated the belief that the sympathy linking all parts of the universe allowed the magician to attract the power of the divine spheres.[89]

Hermetica

In the Phaedrus, through the mouth of Socrates, Plato declared, referring to the Thoth, the Egyptian equivalent of Hermes, that “the story is that in the region of Naucratis in Egypt there dwelt one of the old gods of the country, the god to whom the bird Ibis is sacred, his own name begins Thoth. He it was who invented numbers and arithmetic and geometry, and astronomy, not to mention draughts and dice, and most important of all, writing.”[90]

Iamblichus maintained that Plato and Pythagoras derived their philosophy from the “wisdom” of the Egyptians found on the pillars of Hermes. Manetho was also thought to have derived his knowledge of the history and religion of the ancient Egyptians from secret hieroglyphics that had been inscribed on two pillars, called the Pillars of Hermes, that preserved this knowledge from before the Flood.[91] This story reflects a similar legend reported by Josephus about Seth, the third son of Adam, also often identified with Hermes. Josephus recounts that Adam had forewarned his descendants through Seth that sinful humanity would be destroyed by a Flood. According to Josephus, the descendants of Seth, identified by some with the Sons of God of the Bible, “also were the inventors of that peculiar sort of wisdom which is concerned with the heavenly bodies, and their order.”[92] In order to preserve their astrological science and philosophy, they raised two pillars, one of brick and the other of stone, on which were inscribed the keys to their knowledge, which, Josephus claimed, remain in Egypt to his day.

However, that knowledge which was falsely attributed to the Egyptians should be more properly assigned to the Magi. As is rarely acknowledged, Egypt came under Persian rule with the conquest of Cambyses in 525 BC, and remained as such, except for an interruption of sixty years, until the conquest of Alexander at the end of the fourth century BC. In Alien Wisdom: the Limits of Hellenization, Arnaldo Momigliano remarked, “I could not indicate a dividing line between what was thought to be Egyptian and what was thought to be Chaldean, even in the muddled form in which Chaldean and Zoroastrian became synonymous.”[93] As Cumont indicated:

The first Greco-Egyptian astrologers did not invent the discipline they claimed to teach the Hellenic world. They used Egyptian sources going up to the Persian period which were themselves at least partially derived from ancient Chaldean documents. Traces of this primitive substratum still survive in our much later texts, erratic blocks transported on to more recent soil. When we find mentions there of “the king of kings” or “satraps” we are no longer in Egypt but in the ancient Orient… We limit ourselves to noting that in all appearances, the priests who were the authors of Egyptian astrology stayed relatively faithful to the ancient Oriental tradition.[94]

Quite a number of collections of Hermetic writings must once have existed, the earliest of which was the text addressed to a King Nechepso by the priest Petosiris. Some texts were gathered together at an unknown date in what is called the Corpus Hermeticum, which still exists. Another collection was made by John Stobaeus in the fifth century AD, and most of it has been preserved. We know little of three others: one used by the Christian writer Lactantius, another quoted by Iamblichus in the early fourth century, and one of fifteen books cited by the Christian theologian Cyril of Alexandria in the early fifth century AD. Two others, longer texts stand alone. The first is the Asclepius, preserved in a Latin translation, possibly of the third century AD. It is known and cited by St. Augustine. The second is a dialogue between Isis and Horus, entitled Kore Kosmu, which may mean daughter of the world. Stobaeus contains extracts from it.

Although presented in an Egyptian framework, scholars have recognized that the Hermetic works contain very few genuine Egyptian elements. Frances Yates noted that:

In any case, they were certainly not written in remotest antiquity by an all-wise Egyptian priest, as the Renaissance believed, but by various unknown authors, all probably Greeks, and they contain popular Greek philosophy of the period, a mixture of Platonism and Stoicism, combined with some Jewish and probably some Persian influences.[95]

The most famous text is the first text of the Corpus Hermeticum, the Poimandres, in which the author tells us that he has been carried away in the spirit and met a superhuman being, Poimandres. The work begins with an outline of the creation of light and separation of darkness, the separation of the waters above from waters below, the separation of land and water, the creation of heavenly bodies, then birds, fish and land animals. C.H. Dodd, in The Bible and the Greeks, his extensive study of Jewish influence on the Hermetica, has determined that, “while the cosmogony of Poimandres is substantially a combination of Platonic and Stoic doctrines of a type familiar in the Hermetica, it is presented through the medium of a myth obviously similar to the creation-myth of Genesis.”[96] In a sequence similar to the Poimandres, according to Genesis 1:1-2: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.”

These similarities were also recognized by Michael Psellus, a Byzantine scholar of the eleventh century AD, who remarked of the author, “this wizard seems to have had more than a passing acquaintance with holy writ. Making an eager go of it, he tries his hand at the creation of the world, not scrupling to record the cherished Mosaic expressions themselves.” Cyril of Alexandria, a Christian theologian of the fifth century AD, noted:

…this Hermes of Egypt, although he was a theurgist, ever sitting in the temple precincts near the idols, had the good sense to acquire the writings of Moses, even if he did not use them at all blamelessly or correctly, having but a part of them… The one in Athens who collected the fifteen books called “Hermetic” made himself a record of this in his own writings.[97]

To excuse the obvious Neoplatonic influence in the Hermetic works, Iamblichus argued that: “for the books which are circulated under the name of Hermes contain Hermetic opinions, though they frequently employ the language of the philosophers: for they were translated from the Egyptian tongue by men who were not unskilled in philosophy.”[98] However, the Hermetic works must be primarily seen as expressing philosophical ideas. According to the Poimandres, Light or Fire is Spirit, Nous or Mind. The Logos is the Son of God, at one with the Father, Mind. Next, Mind gives birth to a second spirit, the Demiurge, who creates the seven Administrators or the planets, embracing in their orbit the visible universe. Their administration is called Fate. The original spirit also gives birth to the original man, or archetypal man, to whom is assigned the world of the stars. To the Hermetic philosopher, Zosimus of Panopolis, the Primordial Man is the Son of God, or the First Man, whose name is Thoth:

The Chaldeans and Parthians and Medes and Hebrews call Him Adam, which is by interpretation virgin Earth, and blood-red Earth, and fiery Earth, and fleshy Earth. And these indications were found in the book collections of the Ptolemies, which they stored away in every temple, and especially in the Serapeum, when they invited Asenas, the chief priest of Jerusalem, to send a “Hermes”, who translated the whole of the Hebrew into Greek and Egyptian.[99]

Though clearly derived from the mythology of the mysteries, C.H. Dodd maintained that “…it should be clearly understood that we have no reason whatever for supposing that the writers of the Corpus at any rate were devotees of any of these religions in the same sense of practicing the ritual which was their essential nature.”[100] However, the Poimandres prescribes a mode of spiritual ascent through the seven planets, and into the eighth sphere, where the soul of the initiate is united with God. According to the Poimandres, man must first undergo a spiritual death and resurrection, followed by an ascent through the spheres of the seven planets, leaving behind him in each of them part of his being, the part which the original man had received from the stars. Finally he will be reduced to just himself, where he can enter the eighth sphere, to join the powers assembled there. With them, he comes before the Father and enters God.

The extremely influential Asclepius is a discussion between Hermes, Asclepius, Tat and Ammon. Following a cosmological exposition of the universe and man’s purpose in it, the Asclepius then turns to the subject of theurgy, or of man’s ability to create gods, a subject that was regarded by the Neoplatonists as comprising the wisdom of the “Egyptians”. “Our ancestors,” declares the Asclepius, “discovered the art of creating gods.” They made statues, “and because they could not create souls, they conjured the souls of demons or messengers and introduced them by holy and godly mysteries into the images of the gods, so that they received the power to cause good and evil.”[101] The first Asclepius and the first Hermes were among the gods created in this way, and they are the ancestors of the speakers in the dialogue. Isis was also made in this way. These gods are approached through sacrifices, hymns and praises.

Among the subjects within the large literature under the name of Hermes were alchemical works that represented a system of magic, based on an assumed astrological affinity between the stars and certain minerals or plants. In Hellenistic times, the founder of the alchemical art was thought to have been Osthanes, to whom several works on the nature of plants and minerals were ascribed. One of the first alchemical works, written by a certain Bolus of Mendes in the second century BC, was attributed to Democritus, the reputed student of Osthanes.

The doctrine of the alchemists was based on Jewish legend. According to Democritus, “it was the law of the Egyptians that nobody must divulge these things in writing… The Jews alone have attained a knowledge of its practice, and also have described and exposed these things in a secret language.”[102] In an early alchemical manuscript, a priestess who calls herself Isis, and who addresses her writings to her son Horus, declares that she owed her knowledge to the first of the angels and prophets, Amnael, and explains that she acquired her wisdom as a reward for intercourse with him. There was also Mary the Jewess. Her teachings were reserved for Jews, for speaking of the “holiness” of her book, she said: “Do not touch the Stone of the Sages, for you are not of the seed of Abraham.”[103]

Other important alchemists were Theosebia, and a woman who called herself Cleopatra. The most notable fragment left behind by Cleopatra was a single page of symbolic diagrams. One of its images showed the famous symbol of the Ouroboros, a serpent swallowing its tail, with the phrase “The One is the All” inscribed within the circle.[104] The brother of Theosebia, Zosimos of Panopolis, of the end of the third and beginning of the fourth century AD, was probably the most important of the Alexandrian alchemists. Zosimos elaborated on the subject and gives the name of a very early master of the art, the mysterious Chemes. It was thought that Chemes had written a book which he called Chema, with which the Sons of God had given lessons to the daughters of men. From “Chemes” and “Chema” was derived Chemia, a name which was given to the art itself. The Greek work Chemia was the designation for alchemy until the Arabs added to it the article al.[105]

[1] “Alexander the Great.” JewishHistory.org. Retrieved from https://www.jewishhistory.org/alexander-the-great/

[2] Kaufmann Kohler & Louis Ginzberg. “Aristotle in Jewish Legend.” Jewish Encyclopedia.

[3] Contra Apionem, ii. 17.

[4] Ibid., i. 22.

[5] Kohler & Ginzberg. “Aristotle in Jewish Legend.”

[6] Daniel. xi. 3

[7] Kohler & Ginzberg. “Aristotle in Jewish Legend.”.

[8] Alexander the Great. JewishHistory.org. Retrieved from https://www.jewishhistory.org/alexander-the-great/

[9] Kohler & Ginzberg. “Aristotle in Jewish Legend.”

[10] Ibid.

[11] Book I: 6.

[12] Arthur Darby Nock. Conversion: The Old and New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1969).

[13] Erwin R. Goodenough. Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period. ed. & abrgd. Neusser, Jacob (Princeton: University of Princeton Press, 1992).

[14] Franz Cumont. Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism (Montana: Kessinger Publishing Company, 1911), p. 63

[15] Hans Dieter Betz. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation: Including the Demotic Spells (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1996), p. xlvi-xlvii.

[16] Menippus (or, The Descent Into Hades), 6-9.

[17] The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus: During the Reigns of the Emperors Constantius, Julian, Jovianus, Valentinian, and Valens. Book XXII, Ch. XVI: 20.

[18] Isidore Singer, et al., eds. “Sibyl.” The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1901–1906).

[19] Fragments of the Sibylline Oracles. sacred-texts.com. Retrieved from http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/sib/sib15.htm

[20] Pausanias, x.12.

[21] Barry J. Blake. Secret Language (Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 20.

[22] Frederick Conybeare. Philo: About the Contemplative Life (Oxford: Clarendon, 1895), pp. 292-97.

[23] See Gershom Scholem. On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism (New York: Schocken Books, 1965), p. 45.

[24] On the Contemplative Life, XI: 89.

[25] Strabo. Geographica 10.3.19.

[26] Arnobius. The Case Against the Pagans, Book 5.6.

[27] Livy. History of Rome, 39.8.

[28] Cumont. Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, p. 64.

[29] Ibid., p. 65.

[30] De Mensibus, 83 T.

[31] Saturnalia, Book I, 18, 20.

[32] Plutarch. Symposiacs, iv, 6.

[33] The Histories, 5.5

[34] Quaestiones Convivales, Book 4, Question 6.1-2, quoted from The Ancient Mysteries Sourcebook, p. 228.

[35] p. 147

[36] Scholem. Kabbalah (New York: Meridian, 1978).

[37] Panarion, 1.1.16

[38] F. Conybeare. Philo, pp. 292-93.

[39] Christian Ginzburg. The Essenes and the Kabbalah (London: Routlege and Kegan Paul, 1955), pp. 2-17.

[40] Marsha Keith Schuchard. Restoring the Temple of Vision: Cabalistic Freemasonry and Stuart Culture (Leiden: Brill, 2002), p. 18.

[41] Kaufmann Kohler. “Essenes,” Jewish Encyclopedia.

[42] Josephus. Antiquities of the Jews. xv. 10, § 4.

[43] Ibid.

[44] Kaufmann Kohler & Louis Ginzberg. “Cabala.” Jewish Encyclopedia (1906).

[45] Ibid.

[46] Ibid.

[47] Chap. LXI 10.

[48] Chap. XLVIII.

[49] Moshe Idel. Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale UP, 1988), p. 167.

[50] Book of Daniel, 4:13, 17, 23.

[51] Book of Enoch, VII:10.

[52] Ibid., VIII:1-8.

[53] Jeffrey Burton Russell. The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity (Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987), p. 193.

[54] Gershom Scholem. Kabbalah (New York: Meridian, 1978), p. 10.

[55] Song of Solomon 1:5.

[56] Deborah Pardo-Kaplan. “Tracing The Antinomian Trajectory Within Sabbatean Messianism.” Kesher A Journal of Messianic Judaism (Issue 18 - Winter 2005).

[57] Livingstone. The Dying God: The Hidden History of Western Civilization.

[58] Scholem. Origins of the Kabbalah, p. 25

[59] Pt. I, fol. 243b.

[60] Scholem. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, p. 53.

[61]  Attilio Mastrocinque. From Jewish magic to Gnosticism, (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), p. 47.

[62] Scholem. Origins of the Kabbalah, p. 23.

[63] Scholem. Kabbalah, (New York: Meridian, 1978), p. 31.

[64] Ibid., p. 376.

[65] Pearson, Judaism and Egyptian Christianity, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990) p. 14.

[66] Moshe Idel. Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), p. 31.

[67] Hans Jonas. The Gnostic Religion: The message of the alien god and the beginnings of Christianity (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963), p. 33.

[68] Scholem. Kabbalah, p. 21.

[69] Ibid., p. 15.

[70] Cited in John Dillon. The Middle Platonists (Ithica, New York: Cornell University Press, 1996), p. 25.

[71] Dillon. The Middle Platonists, p. 118.

[72] Somniis, 1.35-36.

[73] Moshe Idel. Kabbalah: New Perspectives, p. 133.

[74] De Prof., quoted from Mead, Thrice Greatest Hermes, p. 165.

[75] John Dillon. The Middle Platonists (Ithica, New York: Cornell University Press, 1996), p. 164.

[76] Cumont. Astrology and Religion, p. 88

[77] Boyce and Grenet. “Zoroastrian Pseudepigrapha,” A History of Zoroastrianism, Vol. 3., p. 504.

[78] Contra Celsus. iv 51 = Fr. 1c, quoted from Dillon, The Middle Platonists, p. 365.

[79] Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel, IX: VI, p. 411a.

[80] Dillon. The Middle Platonists, p. 185.

[81] Ibid., p. 191.

[82] Isis and Osiris, chapter 46.

[83] Kabbalah: New Perspectives, p. 39.

[84] Ch. 3, quoted from Dillon. The Middle Platonists, p. 381

[85] Damascius. Life of Isodore; cited in Emma C. Clarke, John M. Dillon, Jackson P. Hershbell, Iamblichus: De Mysteriis, (Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), p. xx.

[86] Hymn to the Magna Mater, 172D.

[87] Ioan P. Culianu. Pshychanodia I: A Survey of the Evidence Concerning the Ascension of the Soul and its Relevance (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1983), p. 12

[88] Elements of Theology, Proposition 209, cited in Culianu, Psychanodia, p. 12.

[89] R.T. Wallis. Neoplatonism (Duckworth, 1972), p. 107.

[90] Phaedrus, 274D.

[91] Syncellus. Book of Sothis, T1b.

[92] Josephus. Antiquities of the Jews, 1.68-70.

[93] Alien Wisdom, p. 144.

[94] Franz Cumont. L’Egypt des Astrologues (Puiseaux: Pardes, 1937), p. 22-3.

[95] Frances Yates. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (Routledge, 2014), p. 3.

[96] C. H. Dodd. The Bible and The Greeks (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1954). p. 100.

[97] cited in Brian P. Copenhaver. Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)., p. xli-xlii.

[98] On the Mysteries. Chap: IV.

[99] Hippolytus. Refutation of All Heresies, V: II; Mead. Thrice-Great Hermes, V. 1, p. 179.

[100] Dodd. The Bible and the Greeks, p. 245.

[101] Richard Cavendish, ed. Man, Myth & Magic: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Mythology, Religion and the Unknown (New York: Marshall Cavendish, 1995). p. 1199.

[102] quoted from Patai. The Jewish Alchemists, p. 51.

[103] Seligman. A History of Magic and the Occult (New York: Gramercy Books, 1997), p. 80.

[104] Ibid., p. 66.

[105] Ibid., p. 79.

Volume One

Introduction

1. Babylon

2. Ancient Greece

3. The Hellenistic Age

4. The Book of Revelation

5. Gog and Magog

6. Eastern Mystics

7. Septimania

8. Princes' Crusade

9. The Reconquista

10. Ashkenazi Hasidim

11. The Holy Grail

12. Camelot

13. Perceval

14. The Champagne Fairs

15. Baphomet

16. The Order of Santiago

17. War of the Roses

18. Renaissance & Reformation

19. The Age of Discovery

20. Kings of Jerusalem

21. The Mason Word

22. The Order of the Dragon