The Mysteries of the Great Cross of Hendaye

by Jay Weidner

  Matthew 24:43–44 suggests that those who follow the Son of Man will indeed be able to calculate the time, and so will be waiting in preparation. When he returns (25:31), he will separate the sheep from the goats, the subtle from the gross, on the basis of their compassion for their fellow men.

  In Matthew, we also find the account of Mary Magdalene’s witness to the Resurrection, complete with its own light metaphor. “His appearance was like lightning,” we are told, and Mary does not at first recognize him.16 Matthew’s account of the Resurrection ends with Christ’s ascension in Galilee and his pronouncement of the Great Commission, the last line of which goes to the heart of the mystery: “And surely I am with you always, even to the end of the world.”17

  At the core of Christianity, then, we find a transformation that is alchemical in nature as well as mention of the end of time. The Gnostics embraced a view of Christianity that centered on knowledge of the path of return and ultimate triumph over the evil Demiurge and his prison of matter. The hope they perceived as being offered remains the promise at the heart of Jesus’ teachings. As the Gnostics thought, the Messiah opened the way.

  And just as quickly, the Demiurge closed it again.

  REVELATION, THE ANTICHRIST, AND CHILIASM

  Not long after the Gospels were written, an author who identified himself as John, perhaps the same as the apostle John, son of Zebedee, recorded a vision he had had while imprisoned on the island of Patmos, in the Aegean Sea. Eventually, John’s apocalyptic vision became the official and orthodox version of the end of the world, mainly because of his identification with the beloved apostle of the Gospel of John. His revelation would become “the Revelation” as the apostolic church closed ranks against the Gnostics and the pagan Romans.

  The early Church had many different versions of the apocalypse, just as there were many different Gospels. An entire literature of prophetic apocalypses had developed since the time of Ezekiel and Daniel. Many of these texts, a number of which were among the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are now thought to be the remnants of the Temple’s library, have surfaced only in the twentieth century. From these sources, we can see why the early Church, struggling toward some sort of unity, chose John’s vision as the authentic image of the end of the world.

  Jewish Christianity did not survive the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem in 70 C.E. The Gospels, all written after this apocalyptic event, reflect a Christianity that had lost its local messianic roots and become instead a universal mystery religion. The three so-called synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, were all composed in response to the central question of who had authority within the movement.18 The answer of the Gospels is clear: Only the apostles and their spiritual descendants could claim legitimate authority in the Church.

  Early in the second century we can detect the beginnings of orthodoxy. As the apostolic Gospels spread, an organization developed to look after the people. The priests who performed the ceremonies answered to bishops who were invested with the authority of the apostles. The chain of command was very clear. God had sent Christ, who had called the apostles. To them, He gave the responsibility for His church, and they in turn ordained the leaders of the individual Christian communities.

  The mystical aspects of Christianity, however, had spread throughout the Empire, blending with various other currents, such as the essentially pagan beliefs of Gnosticism. This created a vast Christian movement that was far from content with the simple apostolic interpretation of spiritual authority.19 The Gnostics in particular insisted on a direct experience of Christ that was unmediated by any priest or bishop. This unmediated brand of Christianity was, of course, much more exclusive than the apostolic guarantee of instant salvation conferred by belief and obedience.

  Orthodox, apostolic Christianity became a mass movement in the late second century, while Gnostic groups dwindled into closed societies of adepts. Other salvationist religions, such as the Christian look-alike known as Mithraism, competed for adherents and imperial support. By 180, when Irenaeus compiled his authoritative list of books in the New Testament canon, with John’s Revelation as its official apocalypse, orthodox Christianity had solidified into a powerful social and political force.20 For over a century, in the face of periodic persecutions from various emperors, the Church had gained in strength and influence. The extreme persecutions of the early fourth century were a last-ditch attempt to halt the erosion of imperial and pagan authority caused by the growth of Christianity, with its appeal to God’s authority as administered by the apostolic bishops.21

  The Book of Revelation had the authority of the apostle John behind it, as well as a distinctive Gnostic flavor. John was the beloved disciple who sat next to Christ at the Last Supper. In the text, Christ speaks, through John, directly to the seven churches of Asia, lecturing and scolding the Christians while warning them of a coming period of persecution. And then, in a sudden shift of tone, Christ invites John: “Come up here and I will show you what must take place after this.”22 John ascends to the throne of Heaven and sees the seraphim mentioned by Ezekiel. He also sees a lamb, who breaks open the seven seals and reveals the future.

  This long, complex, and bizarre vision seems intended to encourage the faithful in their resistance to the pressures of emperor worship. Some of the churches that Christ addresses through John were advocating a policy of compromise with the Roman authorities. The emperor Nero was the “beast” in Revelation.23 He was a vision of the Demiurge on earth. He was Satan, emperor, and false god all rolled into one. Many of these Christians were willing to compromise with the mad Caesar. This had to be stopped, according to John, because the final showdown between God and Satan was imminent. Satan, in the form of the Roman state, will increase its persecution of believers, but they must stand fast, even in the face of death. They are sealed from any spiritual harm, though their bodies may suffer. They will, in any case, be vindicated when Christ returns to destroy the wicked.

  All of Rome is seen in Revelation as the Great Beast; the whore of Babylon and its emperor are the Antichrist. When Christ returns as King of Kings, he will lead the heavenly host in battle against the Beast and the kings of the earth. In John’s vision Christ wins and then rules for a millennium. This is the only place in the New Testament where a thousand-year reign of Christ is mentioned. After this, Satan reemerges from his pit and challenges Christ. God sends fire from the sky and Satan, the Beast, and the false prophet all end up roasting in the lake of fire.

  This ushers in the final Day of Judgment. After punishing the wicked and resurrecting the saints, God decides to dwell among men and therefore creates a new heaven and a new earth, along with a New Jerusalem. There is no visible Temple in this New Jerusalem and no need of the sun or the moon. The presence of God and Christ provides so much light that it is never dark. From the middle of the new city flow the waters of the river of life. On its bank stands the Tree of Life, which produces fruit continually. The elect will see the face of God and therefore be immortal, reigning “forever and forever.”

  Clenthius, a Gnostic poet of the early second century, knew of John’s Revelation and wove it into his own work, now lost except for disapproving quotes from Origen on chiliasm. Clenthius gained a large following by teaching that the millennium, foretold in John’s Revelation, would be a physical earthly paradise where the senses “would be subject to delights and pleasures. . . . There would be a space of 1000 years for celebrating nuptial festivals.”24

  Origen, a second-century Christian apologist, was the first important Christian to discredit the common notion of a physical paradise as the Kingdom of Heaven. He substituted a spiritual and personal kingdom for the literal and collective apocalypse described by John’s Revelation. Origen explained that the heavenly feasting prophesied in Revelation, and that so delighted the chiliasts, should be understood as spiritual nourishment from Christ.

  But the idea of a physical New Jerusalem of gold and precious stones proved hard to displace. Chiliasm would continue
to crop up around the edges of orthodoxy for more than a thousand years. As we shall see, the idea of a physical transformation that accompanies the end of the world would become the inner secret of Western occultism. In alchemy, the process of transformation would be studied in isolation, at least exoterically, from its Gnostic and chiliast origins. Alone among all the alchemical authorities—with the possible exception of Dr. John Dee—Fulcanelli directs us to the connection between alchemy and eschatology.a

  The anonymous magician of Thebes, buried with his copy of the Emerald Tablet, was an early-second-century contemporary of the pseudo-Cleopatra and Clenthius. His wisdom papyrus would provide a much needed practical counterpoint to the late-classical alchemical theorists such as Olympiodorus and Stephanus of Alexandria. The seventh-century Stephanus, who dedicated his “Nine Lessons in Chemia” to the Eastern emperor Heraclius, represents the dividing line between the classical period, that of alchemy’s emergence, and the new world of Christian orthodoxy. While Christianized Greek hermeticism continued in the East as a spiritual indulgence for mystical and scholarly monks, the tradition in the West was ruthlessly persecuted.25 The Church saw it as irrevocably tainted with pagan ideals.

  Western Christianity, and even some of the alchemists, believed that investigation into the hidden works of nature was sacrilegious.26 It smacked of the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden, and was, after all, part of the illicit arts given to humanity by the fallen angels. Acquiring knowledge, like eating the fruit, allowed man to become more like God. If we are to believe the Emerald Tablet, then alchemy contained the very secret of independent creation.

  From this possibility, the later alchemists, from Olympiodorus in the fifth century on down, focused on the symbols of the Tree of Knowledge and the serpent, its guardian and initiator, as clues to the secret of creation. Part of this focus comes from the influence of Gnostic sects such as the Ophites, who worshipped the snake in the garden as the author of wisdom, given to man in order to free him from the domination of the Demiurge Ialdabaoth. Over time, symbols such as the Ouroboros serpent, with its motto of “the sum of all philosophy,” would become the most cherished of all in the alchemical tradition.

  These symbols, however, certainly did not help the Gnostic sects survive the onslaught of orthodoxy in the fourth and fifth centuries. In fact, they attracted the wrath of the reformers. In the late fourth century, the emperor Theodosius ordered the pagan temples destroyed. The Serapeum in Alexandria and its library of ancient texts were burned. Hypatia, the last great woman alchemical philosopher,27 was able to save some of the library, and for a while esoteric studies continued. Hypatia’s murder in 415 put an end to all pagan learning in Egypt. The remaining scholars fled to Athens, where Justinian in 529 finally destroyed them.28

  As the darkness fell over Europe and the West, a brief hermetic Renaissance occurred in Constantinople. Some of the texts compiled there from the pagan Greeks would eventually make their way to France, purchased by that enigmatic late medieval king, Francis I.29 Centuries later, a young student of the art, Fulcanelli, would find these manuscripts extremely valuable. From them, we can speculate, he found some of the same symbolic keys—the serpent of wisdom and the idea of a triple transformation—that we have just elucidated.

  The fragmentation of the ancient knowledge led to many dead ends and vain quests. The timing of the transformation became more important than the transformation of time.

  CONSTANTINE AND THE ORTHODOX APOCALYPSE

  Even the chiliasts and other Gnostic Christians agreed with Hippolytus, bishop of Porto, who calculated the history of the world and found that Rome could only be the empire of the Antichrist. He thought that his calculations proved that a century or so was left before the apocalypse. This was heralded as good news. The Christians had so far not been doing too well in their mission of converting the world. They felt they could use a bit more time before the end.30

  For the first two and a half centuries of Christianity’s existence, imperial Rome had been the great enemy, the government of the evil king of the world, the Antichrist. And then, in the second decade of the fourth century, something very strange happened. A would-be king of the world won a battle outside the gates of Rome and attributed his victory to the power of Christ. The battle of Mulvian Bridge made Constantine an emperor, and with him, Christianity became the imperial religion.

  This sudden reversal seemed truly miraculous to the Christians themselves.31 The early years of the fourth century saw the worst Christian persecutions of the Roman era. Even bishops of the Church were forced to renounce their faith.32 Christianity had begun to disappear in large portions of the eastern empire. In the West, the persecutions had actually served to increase the number of Christians. Constantine used this fact as a political tool. At Mulvian Bridge, his convenient espousal of Christianity was worth a dozen legions, he later remarked to Eusebius, his biographer.33

  Flavius Valerius Constantinus, or Constantine, was an imperial freebooter in the grand tradition of Julius Caesar and Octavius Augustus. Born the son of one of the four imperial “Caesars” appointed by the last great pagan emperor, Diocletian, Constantine plowed his way through the political intrigue that resulted from Diocletian’s abdication in 305. On the afternoon of October 27, 312, Constantine trapped his last opponent, the Christian-hating Maxentius, against the Tiber at Saxa Rubra (Red Rocks) with only one avenue of escape, over Mulvian Bridge.

  In effect, this battle decided the fate of both the Empire and Christianity, which had become inextricably entwined. While positioning his legions on the afternoon before the battle, Constantine saw a vision of a great flaming cross in the sky with the Greek words en toutoi nika, “in this sign, victory.” That night, he dreamt that Christ appeared and commanded him to make the flaming cross his battle standard. Constantine awoke and called for his metalsmiths. He told them his dream and ordered them to prepare a new standard, one composed of the first two Greek letters in the name Christ, chi, Χ, superimposed on a rho, Ρ, as seen in figures 3.3a and 3.3b.

  Under this new standard, Constantine’s army drove Maxentius’s legions into the Tiber, where most of them died. Constantine entered Rome and was proclaimed emperor of the West. Gog, of Gog and Magog, the evil rulers of the world according to Hebrew eschatology, was now at least nominally a Christian.

  Soon after his victory, in early 313, Constantine met with the Eastern emperor, Lucinius, and issued an edict confirming the religious toleration proclaimed by one of the earlier “Caesars,” or tetrachs, of Diocletian and expanded it to include all religions, even Christianity. This was the end of the great persecutions and the beginning of the meteoric rise in the fortunes of orthodox Christianity. By 323, Constantine had finally united, by conquest, both halves of the empire. He soon moved the capital to Byzantium, later to become known as Constantinople. Orthodox Christianity had become the official religion of the state.

  Figure 3.3. A, The chi-rho symbol Constantine saw in the sky and adopted as his battle standard; B, note the similarity to this Coptic altar font from second-century Luxor. (Coptic Museum, Cairo)

  Constantine, guided by his vision, chose the winning side. It was the Church’s insistence on obedience and conformity that appealed to Constantine. He needed a new form of universal religion with which to unify his vast empire, and Christianity filled the bill nicely.

  But almost as soon as Constantine embraced orthodoxy, it was threatened by the most challenging heresy in the history of the Church.34 A pious and ascetic Egyptian priest by the name of Arius startled his bishop with his unorthodox opinions about the nature of Christ. Arius argued that Christ could not be one with the Creator, but was rather the Logos, the first and best of all created beings.35 Since Christ had lived in time—that is, been born, lived, and died—he could not be coeternal with God. A creation had occurred somewhere, and therefore Christ was not the same substance as his Father. The Holy Spirit, Arius insisted, was even less God than Christ, since it wa
s a creation of Christ’s, and therefore twice removed from the substance of God.36

  Bishop Alexander called a council and excommunicated Arius and his followers. This created such widespread religious turmoil that Constantine himself had to step in and settle it. In a letter to both sides, Constantine declared that the dispute was “trifling and unworthy of such fierce contests.”37 But the Church did not see it that way. To the Church, the matter of consubstantiality versus similarity, a matter of an iota in the Greek words homoousia and homoiousia, was vital both politically and theologically. If Christ was not seen as God, the whole structure of the orthodox chain of command would crumble. And if anything happened to the unity of the Church, its usefulness to the imperial state would vanish. Settling this issue became a matter of life and death for the new imperial orthodoxy.

  Constantine resolved to end the dispute by calling the first ecumenical, or universal, Church Council at Nicaea in 325. Constantine presided in person over the debates and according to Eusebius “moderated the violence of the contending parties.”38 Arius presented his view, but Athanasius, the hired theological gunslinger brought in by Bishop Alexander, made it absolutely clear that if Christ and the Holy Spirit were not considered the same substance as God, then polytheism would triumph. With that, the bishops folded and agreed on a new universal creed that declared the Trinity to be of one essence—that is, of the same substance.

  Unity was enforced by banishment and anathema. The imperial church thus embarked on its own pattern of persecution. All books by or about Arius were burned. By imperial decree, concealment of such a book was punishable by death. The Dark Ages had begun.

  Constantine, the most nominal of Christians and a good candidate for the Antichrist, became instead the new Christ-model of the imperial church, the Christos Pantocrator, Christ the Ruler of the Universe. The Demiurge had become the Messiah and a thousand and more years of spiritual oppression and persecution lay ahead. The end of the world had become an institution of the Church, both as a doctrine and as an inquisitional practice.