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Christian Mysticism & Gnosticism
Christ and the Taurobolium by Duncan K. Malloch
£50.00
Second Hand / Antiquarian
Christ and the Taurobolium - Lord Mithras in the Genesis of Christianity
by Dunan K. Malloch
Published: Lochan, Scotland 2006
Condition: Fine, dust jacket unclipped, pages clean and unmarked
This book, 'Christ and the Taurobolium. Lord Mithras in the
Genesis of Christianity', is a 10,000 year history of the deity Mithras,
who is better known today as Christ.
Twenty thousand years BC the Magdalenian peoples herded reindeer on the
frozen tundra of Southern France. About ten thousand years BC, some of
these peoples migrated eastwards to the Russian Steppe. The Ice Age ended
c. 8000 BC and the tundra turned into vast grasslands and it was in this
era that Mitra/Mithra/Mithras was born. These plains Magdalenians are now
termed proto-Indo-Aryans. A faction of these people migrated to India
taking Mitra with them. Another faction took Mithra over the Caucasus
Mountains into Iran, and both flourished. Some Indo-Aryans invaded
Mesopotamia c. 2000 BC and took Mithra to their capital Babylon. From there
Mithra migrated to Tarsus in Anatolia and he reached Rome in the second
century BC.
In the Middle East, the Hebrews and the Hellenists had struggled for
cultural supremacy since the second century BC and from the second half of
the first century BC both strove for cultural dominion in the Roman
Republic and later the Empire. In the middle of the first century AD, the
clash came to a head and the documents of the New Testament were part of
the literal inter-cultural `battle'. In these documents, both parties
supported a figure who was called the `Saving King' i.e. Jesus Xristos. The
Hebrews' conception of this personage was that he was an actual Messiah of
the Jews who had been executed for insurrection and who would reappear to
lead the Hebrews to world dominion. The Hellenistic conception of this
Saviour was of an Apollonian Saviour identical to Mithras. (The exegesis of
the New Testament reveals the true killer of Jesus Christ).
Mithras in his various guises was the main Roman mediator between man and
God Almighty. Under Constantine this mediator, with the personal genius
(Holy Spirit), became co-equal to God. Constantine promoted this Mithraic
Church. Some time after Constantine's death parts of the religion of
Goddess (mainly the religion of Isis and Cybele) amalgamated with the
Mithraic Church, and Theodosius the Great rebranded this feminised
Mithraism as Christianity. He then outlawed and anathematised all other
religions and, indirectly, he destroyed all the culture of the past
including literature and history. Only God Almighty, Mithrao-Christ, the
Holy Spirit, and the rebranded Goddess, the Virgin Mary, survived.
The hegemony of the `Church' ushered in the `Dark Ages'.
If you like this, you might also like:
The Search for Truth by John Temple
£40.00
The Search for Truth is a unique investigation in twelve chapters of the occult secrets in the Bible, its Mystery Language, and their origin in the Wisdom Teachings of ancient Egypt. Throughout the book, occult writer and theologian John Temple discusses some of the mystery keys without which it is impossible to unlock the hidden meaning concealed within the many biblical stories, symbols and sacred teachings, some of which pre-date Christianity by many millenia.
Comes with a letterpress broadside with an original illustration by the artist Kateryna Zubakhina.
Hardback edition limited to 500 copies.
IAO: Ophite Iconography by José Gabriel Alegría Sabogal
£49.99
2024 paperback edition
IAO is an iconographic proposal, an attempt to illustrate the Gnostic worldview and its myths as understood by the Ophites, a sect of which little is known. It is, perhaps, an exercise of imagination, of what Christian iconography could have resembled if the Ophites had survived. Visually, it follows the sequences of the Speculum Humanae Salvationis and the Biblia Pauperum, reordering their contents according to this heterodox initiative.
“Gnosticism lacks images in a remarkable way, the abstraction of its texts is only equated by the visual silence of its few and discrete remains. And yet the texts are filled with images!
“These images are, in fact, visions, allegories, and myths of a yet unexplored richness. And the ambitious proposal here is to consolidate an iconographic programme…”
Central to this initiative is the reconstruction of the Ophite diagram described by Origen of Alexandria in Contra Celsum – a complex system in which their whole cosmic vision was integrated.
“The three axis, which the images will revolve around, are three distinctive topics of the gnostic worldview: The demiurge (and his relation to the manifested world), the myth of Sophia (and the female aspects of the divine), and the ophite Christology, or the saviour as a serpent.”
IAO rejects the commonly held notion of Gnosticism as a mere form of dualism within Christianity, and explores its relationship with other religions – if only by conceptual coincidence, following Edward Conze’s comparison between Buddhism and Gnosis.
Moreover, the Ophites, by declaring Christ to be an incarnation of the Serpent of Genesis, stood outside the moral spectrum of what is now understood as Christianity. Instead, notions of non-duality can be found in the doctrines of Basilides and the idea of the Pleroma, which are explored within, both conceptually and visually.
Semesilam: The Eternal Sun by José Gabriel Alegría Sabogal
£69.99
In the new prologue to Semesilam, Sabogal offers personal insight into the diverse circumstances that played a role in producing this corpus, including the motifs, symbols, and ideas behind them, and further interpretations of various images and themes – Gnostic Symbolism, Angelic Iconography, and Symbols of the Unconscious among others – which have been crucial to his artistic process.
Within this myriad of symbology and meaning, the Sun is at the forefront, a recurring symbol and inspiration for the book’s title, Semesilam – here identified as an inscription often found on the so-called Abrasax Gnostic gemstones, pointing to the everlasting nature of the solar orb.
The material from Handbook of Sacred Anatomy constitutes a Mutus Liber that explores mystical interpretations of human remains, while A Second Nature was significantly inspired by Jungian analyses, delving also into the mysterious Akephalos, the headless figure – symbolically suggestive of both the dragon and contemplation of death – used by surrealist author Georges Bataille, who, in an uncompromising non-rational way, sought to create its own visual associative language.
A new preface by Frater Acher (author of the Holy Daimon trilogy [Scarlet Imprint, 2018; 2020; 2022], Clavis Goêtica [Hadean Press, 2021], and Ingenium [Tadehent Books, 2022]), and an epilogue by Gabriel McCaughry (founder and owner of Anathema Publishing Ltd., and author of (h)Aurorae, [Anathema Publishing, 2018] also illustrated by José), both give testimony to Sabogal’s long-standing personal, literary, and artistic relationships – the fruits of which have taken the form of several publications and have inspired the artwork compiled here.
Semesilam features a new and carefully designed layout by artist and typographer Joseph Uccello, which enhances the presentation of this collection, thereby making it available as a fine edition, showcasing material that has been otherwise out of print for a considerable while. Certainly, a worthy addition for those who are interested in José Gabriel’s body of work.
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