Excerpt from The Stellar Man
Hermetic Philosophy, Book Two
By John Baines
Why is Christ designated as the symbol of spirituality? Because Jesus was the most distingushed member of the "Magician's Fraternity" (the Magi), prepared specifically for his mission to make Christ incarnate in himself. Jesus and Christ were two different persons; one was human, the other divine.
Christ is a superior being who is on an advanced step on the scale of evolution, which a human being could reach in perhaps millions of years of evolution. Let us conceive of Him as an extraterrestrial spiritual power, which we could call an "Archangel". This "Archangel", due to his very lengthy evolution, possessed perfect and powerful spirituality. Jesus was long prepared for this role, to be able to resist an extremely high vibration in his physical body. This vibration could only manifest itself for brief moments, as its intensity could destroy the nervous and cellular systems of Jesus' body. Christ was the One who performed miracles through Jesus who provided the matter for his manifestation.
The "Magician's Fraternity" remains hidden, as it has a right to its own privacy, but some of its members have intermingled with ordinary people, motivated by the wish to show homo sapiens the road to a higher life.
Magicians know, however, that knowledge of "Hermetic Art" as an instrument to reach spiritual heights, is only for the "elite" and not to be divulged. Nevertheless, the fraternity of initiates provides the opportunity for any person with sufficient merit to join the Hermetic elite of "magicians" or stellar men, if the scope and intelligence of his efforts allows him to do so.
The science of the magicians is called "Hermetic Art" in honor of Hermes Trismegistus. According to tradition, he arrived on earth from outer space, approximately thirty thousand years ago, anointed as Great Master Supreme of the Initiative Fraternity.
Inspired by his light, Egypt became great and wise, and the great sacred science of the priests was called "hermeticism". In those days, only by means of great sacrifices and trials was it possible to belong to a Hermetic initiation school. The great majority who succeeded in entering such a school faltered along the way, lacking the moral and spiritual courage to overcome the multiple obstacles, temptations and trials with which ISIS, mistress of the mysteries of nature, evaluated the true worth of those who aspired to the supreme knowledge of absolute truth.
It was in one of those schools that Jesus made himself a Hermeticist, and reached the highest degrees of initiation.
Because the time is right, we will divulge the mystery of Jesus the Christ and the causes of the moral suffering of humanity, according to the teachings of the "Magician's Fraternity". This moral mystery stems from the "adoration of the golden calf"; in other words, from the submission of the human being to the god of money. In honor of this god, he must give up or sacrifice his spiritual possibilities to be able to subsist. Those who possess adequate means of subsistence generally pervert their potential spiritual values in the process of gaining social position at the expense of the consumer market. The spiritual or moral quality of the individual is worth very little, as the need for money leads him to lower and prostitute himself for the golden metal which buys honor, respect, love, fame and power. The money god is sitting above the world, and whoever wishes to enjoy his gifts must adore him. The real power of money is not only material, but it is principally a hidden force, as the coin is not worth anything in itself; it is only a symbol of human effort or work. By a strange paradox, although work is intrinsically noble, money, the result of this effort, is under the control or influences of a satanic or diabolic power.
We invite the reader to meditate on what he could do to corrupt human beings, if he was Satan; what means or tools would he use to instigate crime, greed, war, fratricide and decay of moral values. It would be difficult to imagine something more adequate than gold, neutral in its own condition, but diabolical when handled crookedly.
Does Satan really exist, or is he only a myth created by the masses to explain certain things? If a person believes in the existence of God, then he must believe there is a "devil" or Satan, as a counterpart of the supreme creator. Because absolute unity does not exist in life, the mere existence of something leads us to the affirmation that its oposite is also real. There is no light without darkness, no good without evil, no truth without falseness. Death follows life, and life follows death.
God then would be the supreme creative intelligence, and the "devil" the destructive intelligence. In the ancient Qabalah, the "devil" has been symbolized as the shadow of God. Therefore, just as the Great Creator has his angelic throng, the demon also has his infernal legion. William Blatty, in his book The Exorcist, refers to this legion when he presents the phenomena of "diabolic possession". After the following explaination we can continue our story.
The tradition transmitted by the great Hermetic masters affirms that at a crucial moment in the history of humanity, a powerful "diabolic Archangel", if we are allowed to so call him, succeeded in penetrating the occult defenses and entered into the atmosphere of the planet, provoking a great disturbance. To be able to imagine such a being, we suggest reading the book The Lurker by H.P. Lovecraft. The direct, although involuntary, cause of this catastrophe which affects us to this day, was Moses, according to Hermetic Records.
Everybody knows that Moses appeared floating in a basket down the river and he was subsequently adopted, deceiving the Egyptian priests of that time who took him for an Egyptian and initiated him into the mysteries of ritual magic, which is a method for making the key notes of nature vibrate, and thus produce certain phenomena which the operatior wishes to achieve. The study of atomic physics shows us in theory that it is possible to produce changes or transmutations in matter; therefore, there is nothing miraculous about these mutations being achieved by means of secret procedures. In spite of his esoteric identification with Egyptian magic, Moses was always loyal to his ancestral blood. Thus his most powerful wish was to make himself the leader who would free his people from enslavement, leading them to the Promised Land. Guided by this desire, and conscious of the powerful forces he had learned to handle, Moses had a daring idea: to make a pact or a magic alliance with an angel, a divine creature who would give him the power and help from heaven to save his people.
After lengthy preparations done in deep solitude, he effected the ritual ceremony with magic words and corresponding invocations. In the midst of amazing atmospheric and telluric phenomena, an impressive being appeared, making Moses tremble with fear and panic, due to the tremendous force he projected. It will never be possible to know or even imagine the conditions under which the pact was made between man and heaven. The angel agreed to everything Moses requested and promised his help, demanding the strictest obedience in return. He revealed his name as Y., and requested that as a sign of union, all his followers should undergo a small ritual type of surgical operation with a slight discharge of blood. Every man who underwent this would grow to be a son of Y. The blood that was shed sealed the pact.
From that day forward Moses was invested with superhuman powers, and started doing all kinds of magical feats, converting the Ark of the Covenant into the center of his power. Plagues and calamities fell over Egypt, and unbelievers and rebels were struck by the wrath of Y. In this manner, Moses' people started the Exodus that would last forty years.
Later Y., the occult power behind the leader, suddenly started to change his procedures by formulating strange demands, all of which had as a common denominator the shedding of blood.
Moses was seized with fear and started to become aware of the error committed, as he then understood the "divine angel" was in truth an "angel of darkness", the complete opposite of the luminous power he had intended to evoke.
This "infernal angel" was a member of the host of shadows, a vampire that needed to feed on human blood, an essence charged with the vitality conferred by the divine spark. This is why all through the Exodus so many blood shedding incidents occurred, provoked by the occult dictator.
In reality, who was Y.? One can say he was a very ancient being, according to his evolution whose origin is unknown. Through long periods of cosmic time, this being kept his individuality, but unfortunately his evolution was directed toward negative, black and destructive concepts; much like a human being who grows bitter with the passing of time and adopts a negative concept of life.
Many beings similar to Y. exist in the Universe. Fortunately, the magnetic defenses of the planet constitute an impenetrable barrier for those beings. However, Moses' magic ritual opened a door and cleared a way through which Y., could penetrate to the Earth.
It is possible to see this as the most transcendent, but unfortunately, harmful event in the occult history of humanity. To justify this statement it is necessary to put forth some observations on what the planet Earth really is.
One can affirm, without fearing any sarcastic reply to the contrary, that the planet Earth is a human being - not something equivalent to a human being, but a man in all extensions of the word.
The Hermetic philosophy upholds the truth of reincarnation, but affirms that this takes place only with some people who possess or have developed within themselves some qualities or characteristics apart from the physical body capable of resisting death. The term "people" refers to human beings, although these beings may present physical characteristics different from terrestrial man. With reincarnation, Hermeticism teaches that when a Hermetic initiate of a high degree reaches the power to reincarnate consciously - to change the physical body while maintaining his individuality and a certain degree of memory - the initiate, in the course of successive lives, gradually grows in spiritual power. His essence of divine spark grows more powerful each time.
In this way, the moment will come when the body of man, in the dimensions and shape we know, is not capable of containing or supporting such a vast and powerful essence. For this reason, such a spirit or super-developed essence must seek an adequate physical body for his tremendous energetic force.
Thus he "reincarnates" in the body of a new or young planet, and continues his development there, in ways and conditions difficult for us to conceive. This is how an extraordinarily evolved human being took the body of the planet Earth and made it his own, under the most perfect shape in the Universe: the sphere.
This sphere is formed by the same basic materials as the human body, which are, in brief, the materials of the Universe. This sphere breathes, moves, thinks and feels. It has a circulatory, digestive, procreative and respiratory system. Its blood is petroleum, and its food is vegetable, animal and mineral matter. Sexually, it is hermaphroditic, with a masculine and a feminine hemisphere. It breathes through vegetable life, and receives its etheric or magnetic nourishment through the emitting and receiving antenna which is the homo sapiens.
Once this clarification has been made, and in order to weigh the magnitude of the catastrophe brought about accidentally by Moses with the arrival of Y., we can reveal that this ancient, vengeful and malicious being expelled the young spirit from the earth, incarnating in his place. With this action an obscure and bloody era commenced for humanity. A period of suffering, torment and pain started for the Jewish people as they were converted into the innocent victims of the negative forces of Y. This is the explanation for the great afflictions which the Jews have had to suffer.
Imagine Moses' despair when he realized the calamity which had occurred and the suffering created for those he had wanted to help. As days went by, Moses understood that nothing had power over Y., as he possessed incalculable malignity. Convinced of this, Moses brought together the wise men of his people and instructed them in the great mystery of the Messiah. These men, using magical rituals, could create a God and fulfill the mystery of theury, in the hope that this God could liberate them and save the world from the destructive influence of Y.
Once his instruction was given, Moses climbed Mount Nebo and was never seen alive again.
The wise men who inherited the patriarch's instructions followed them faithfully, carrying out the Messianic ritual according to the instituted rules. As a result, hundreds of years later Jesus appeared. He was the "Son of Man" - notice this expression - and the Saviour expected by the wise men initiated by Moses.
This is how Jesus was born, under the circumstances familiar to all. Hermetic teaching maintains he was the son of a Jewish woman and a Roman father, his progenitor being a Roman soldier and merely an instrument of higher occult forces.
Why is it said that Mary remained a virgin? This mystery really does not refer to physiological virginity, but to the fact that actually there was no physical contact between Jesus' real father and Mary. In effect, his spiritual father was a great Hermetic initiate in the etheric realm who used the physical body of the Roman soldier to procreate a son. The spiritual seed was transmitted by the occult master; the physical sperm by the Roman. In this manner, Mary conceived "without losing her virginity". In those times the term "virginity" was not used to designate maidenhood; it was used to distinguish the women initiated in the secret of the "virgule" as Mary was. The magic rod used by Moses was called a "virgule".
Those who have "eyes to see and ears to hear" will understand this. For others, comprehension of the mysteries will be more difficult.
Jesus, created by man and incarnate in the body of man, was consecrated by the great initiate John the Baptist, known as the "Antechrist" (announcer of Christ). Jesus' baptism in the river was the means that permitted the first manifestation of Christ in Jesus, the man-god, whose mission was destined since his birth.
From the time of Moses, the Fraternity of Magicians had been attentively observing these events without being able to alter them. The Magicians were connoisseurs of the Messianic mystery and had the knowledge that some wise men were working on this. They decided to help the wise men try to correct the serious anomalies stirred up. They were awaiting Jesus' birth, and were his occult godfathers who protected and educated him so he could fulfill his double mission.
His mission was first to liberate the "chosen people" from their occult assassin and then save the world in general from the invisible vampire who called himself Y. In this way, a new era under the Christian motto "love one another" would begin, replacing the dictum of "an eye for an eye and a tooth of a tooth".
In correlation with this mission, Jesus was an active member of the Fraternity of Magicians, receiving from all of them support and inspiration. However, the great masters maintain Jesus failed in his mission, or that he only achieved partial success as he did not reach his goal. This refers only to Jesus, not to Christ.
In order to really understand Jesus, it is necessary to consider his triple personality: Jesus the man, Jesus the God (created by man), and Christ who manifested Himself through Jesus.
Christ was an angel, a solar spirit who "descended from heaven" to manifest Himself as the supreme power of the "Father" on earth.
Jesus and his twelve disciples are the symbol of a solar and cosmic mystery. Hermetic science teaches that our solar system is composed of twelve planets plus the sun, an analogy for the twelve apostles and Christ, and that unknown planets will be discovered in time.
The crucifixion was an expected drama in which Jesus' blood had to be shed so that in turn Christ could incarnate in the planet Earth and displace Y., definitely casting him out from our atmosphere. However, as we have already mentioned, this mission had only a relative success. Christ incarnated in the Earth, but Y. could not be expelled. Since then, both govern the planet.
Christ's force acts in the world through the representatives of the Fraternity of Magicians. These men direct Hermetic schools in which the student can develop his spiritual force to the point of disintegration of his animal soul and liberation from the influence of Y., who can only act through primitive and animal instincts such as hate, envy, lust, greed, pride, and vanity.
In this way, the Spiritual Beacon is kept alight to illuminate the select spirits who are potentially capable of converting themselves into fully developed human beings, and leaving behind their homo sapiens condition.
Every person who reaches this condition is converted into a center of Christic irradiation and is therefore another obstacle for Y.'s influence. The naive say that Christ will return to the Earth. But Christ is in the Earth! He needs only to be removed from the cross by the same humanity who nailed him to it.
Until that time, wars will continue. Great numbers of people will die and their vitality will be absorbed by Y., the great occult force behind these conflicts, which will not end until this being is conquered.
The real Antichrist is Y., and he has spread his negative influence throughout his followers, those of bestial instincts, who in turn have incorporated this vibration into the multitude. The multitude is composed of amorphous and blind entities, receptors of any force of sufficient power. In this way, Y.'s principles incorporated in the collective unconscious of humanity motivate the philosophy of "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth". Caught by this malignant force, people live diabolically: hating, destroying, stealing, killing their brothers, returning evil with more evil, trading honesty and honor, enslaving the weak, exploiting the unprotected, and denigrating the just. Luckily there are many who act contrary to all this. If this were not so, life would be unbearable. These are the ones who somehow received a true Christian influence (but not necessarily religious) and have higher values than usual.
Religions have a positive family and social influence, but unfortunately on solely spiritual grounds they do not have much to offer, and generally then try to check this deficiency with the indiscriminate use of the banner of Christ.
The Fraternity of Magicians does not derive its power from Christ, nor speak in His name. The Fraternity only exalts His values and shows or narrates events which the world should know, so that the "chosen" (the true humans) can reaffirm their conviction and loyalty to a superior spiritual life. The power of the wise men comes from their harmony with, respect for and obedience to cosmic laws, and the profound and serene spiritual condition they have reached. Their spirituality places them in magical relation with God, the Great Universal Father, who is recognized by the Hermeticists as the first cause of all origin and the great force of order and creation.
To speak about Christ is to explain the esoteric side of the psycho-social phenomenology of the world today. In its innocence, homo sapiens believes that everything in life is as it appears on the surface, and that surely things must be as the vast majority say they are. When some people hear of the esoteric side of events or the occult causes of different phenomena, they smile unbelievingly, arguing with infantile logic that "if that were true, it would be made known by the press"; or "it would have been taught at school or in the university"; or "well documented books would exists on the subject". That way of thinking nullifies all progress, because if everyone's belief was the same, nobody would bother to study or investigate little-known phenomena.
Despite obstacles already mentioned, homo sapiens in his individual manifestation - not as a species - can have latent superior qualities and characteristics which lead him to understand in part the Hermetic truths. Motivated by this knowledge, homo sapiens can awaken to a superior reality. The sapiens individual can save himself from the fate of human lethargy and eventually reach the world of the Hermeticists: "Magicians" or "awakened men".
Moses, a man of strength and wisdom, was driven by his yearning for freedom to commit an error of cosmic magnitude. According to the great Hermetic wise men, this error nearly destroyed the solar system. To clarify this statement, the solar system can be compared to the composition of an atom, borrowing on the Hermetic theme of "As it is above, so it is below". In this case, Y.'s rise to power could be seen as an arbitrary substitution of an electron which changed the spiritual nucleus of the earth.
This is one of the many lessons which impel the Fraternity of Magicians to guard Hermetic secrets. The Fraternity will only instruct those who have been tested and have proven their knowledge and worth.