Clement's sensational slip
However, by far the most significant aspect of the Carpocratian beliefs is that they claimed to possess a secret Gospel of Mark that preached sexual rites in the name of Jesus. Highly compromising references to this were what Professor Morton Smith found in the library at the Mar Saba monastery in 1958. Ironically in his denunciation of the Carpocratians, Clement had unwittingly preserved material that possessed the potential to undermine seriously the whole concept of Christianity - not to mention the image of an eternally chaste Christ.
Of course the first objection must concern the authenticity or otherwise of the copy of Clement's letter, which Smith found written on the end-papers of a book dating back to 1646 - a common practice at that time when volumes began to disintegrate with age.15 Understandably, in the case of such a potentially sensational discovery, there will always be suspicions that Smith was deceived, perhaps by the Mar Saba monks, or that a disaffected seventeenth-century copyist was merely enjoying a bit of grim heretical humour - or even that the professor himself perpetrated an outrageous hoax. However, paleographers have established from an analysis of the letter that it was indeed written by Clement, whose stylistic idiosyncracies are well known. And as Clive Prince and myself noted in our 1997 The Templar Revelation: Secret Guardians of the True Identity of Christ:
There are also peculiarities in the extracts from the `Secret Gospel' quoted in the letter that make it probable that they are genuine. (For example, it describes Jesus as becoming angry. Of the canonical Gospels only Mark attributes normal human emotions to Jesus - the others excised such elements from their accounts, and it is hardly something that the Church Fathers such have Clement would have invented.) 16
Indeed, it is extremely unlikely that any conventional Christian could even have imagined what Clement claimed, for he stated that the Carpocratians' `filthy' sex rites came via Saint Mark from Mary Magdalene - and ultimately from Jesus himself. Predictably Clement - who was later canonized - huffs and puffs with outrage that the cult `polluted the spotless and holy words of scripture to accord with their blasphemous and carnal doctrine, and by doing so wandered from the narrow road into the abyss of darkness'," yet he also acknowledges that the alternative Gospel of Mark was authentic ... Therefore he tacitly agreed that originally Christianity did practise sexual rites, although they seem to have been reserved for an inner circle of high initiates.
Of course, the implications of this are truly momentous and provide a double blow to Christianity: not only was, and is, the whole idea of sex rituals abhorrent, but also it has always been believed that the religion is primarily open to anyone, with no secrets and hidden mysteries, but here there is evidence that there was such a thing as a sexually-initiated elite of adepts.
Certainly, Professor Smith himself believed, largely on the basis of this long-lost document, that Jesus may have headed a `libertine circle'. What prompted him to make such a remarkable statement is another passage from Clement's letter, a different version of the story of the raising of Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary of Bethany (also known as Mary Magdalene)' which puts quite a different complexion on the original Jesus movement. Found in the Gospel of John in the New Testament, it famously tells how Jesus received a message that his beloved friend Lazarus was grievously sick at his home in Bethany, a village only two miles from Jerusalem. But Jesus deliberately waited four days, by which time Lazarus was not only dead but stinking in his rock tomb. As soon as Jesus arrived on the scene, Mary fell at his feet, sobbing: `Lord, had you been here, my brother would not have died"' - which perhaps contains more than a hint of bitter accusation. Jesus told Martha: `I am the resurrection and the life. He that believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.'20 Then he commands that the stone be removed from the mouth of the tomb and, raising his voice, orders Lazarus to step forth. It must have been a remarkable moment when the corpse immediately shuffled out, still in the `strips of linen' that comprised his grave bandages. It was this event that finally prompted the Jews to take action against Jesus, for they would have seen this as a clear example of necromancy, devilish dealings with the dead. (Anything connected with the grave was and is abhorrent to Orthodox Jews.) It was after this, too, that a woman bursts into a house in Bethany and anoints Jesus - in one of the strangest and most misunderstood rites in the New Testament, which will be discussed below.
However, the raising of Lazarus in the secret Gospel of Mark owned by the Carpocratians and quoted by Clement, has `a certain woman' approaching Jesus for help because her brother has died. But when Jesus arrives at the tomb he hears a loud cry from within, clearly indicating that the young man is not dead, at least not in a literal, physical sense. Jesus then rolls away the stone and raises the youth from the ground. `And the youth looked upon him and loved him and began to beseech him that he might be with him.''
Together they went into the house, where Jesus remained for six days, instructing the young man in the ways of the kingdom of heaven. On the last day the two men spent a sleepless night together, `naked [man] with naked [man]'.22 Perhaps this apparently compromising scenario was an invention of the unknown real author of the secret Gospel of Mark, who might well have been out to vilify Christianity with heavy hints about sexual practices. However, there does appear to be some circumstantial corroboration for that offending passage, ironically in the New Testament itself. This episode is in the otherwise mysterious verses in the authorized Gospel of Mark about `a young man wearing nothing but a linen garment"' who followed Jesus after his arrest - when all the others fled to save their skins. He then suffered a traumatic embarrassment: `When they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind' 24
But does spending the night unclad with a religious teacher automatically imply that some kind of homosexual activity took place? Of course not, but Professor Smith himself had no doubts about Jesus' `libertine circle', and the possibility that his followers were admitted, `singly and by night, to the mystery of the kingdom, by certain ceremonies derived from ancient erotic magic' 25 Based on his knowledge of this tradition, Smith conjectures that the young man's thin linen garment was removed and his naked body immersed in a baptismal pool or bath to a background of prayers `and some kind of rite of manipulation' - presumably masturbation, possibly prior to other sexual rituals - accompanied by a breath control technique that induced ecstasy, and possibly a hallucination of heavenly bliss. `The disciple was possessed by the spirit of Jesus and so united with him.'26 Professor Smith surmised that `Freedom from the [Jewish] law may have resulted in completion of the spiritual union by physical union.'27
Perhaps it is significant that, as Marilyn Yalom points out in her A History of the Wife (2001): `As for Christianity, Jesus said nothing on the subject of homosexuality - and this in contrast to numerous condemnations of adultery.'28 (While discussing the pressure on Sr Buttiglione to stand down from the European Commission in November 2004 because of his traditionalist values, Daily Mail columnist Andrew Alexander also noted: `For myself, I would delight in debating with our Italian friend why homosexuality is not singled out for condemnation in the gospels. Was it due to the gospels' authors failing to take proper notes, or divine incompetence or what?')29 Yalom points out that the criticism of same-gender sexuality originated in the Christian movement with Saint Paul, who `explicitly condemned both male and female homosexuality (Romans 1:26-27, I Corinthians 6:9, and 1 Timothy 1:10Y.11
Of course a zealous Christian will simply deny the authenticity of this secret gospel and carry on believing as if it had never been drawn to his or her attention. After all, there is a distinct architecture to the faith: significant constructs are made that surround the character and the traditions of Christ; dogma that then becomes immovable, and the whole carapace hardens with time and belief. But what if the implications of the secret gospel are sound? What if Jesus' movement was really based on initiation and mysteries - including rites of a strongly erotic
or even homosexual nature? Suddenly what was considered demonic, devilish, satanic, would be inexorably linked with Jesus Christ, hitherto the very epitome and literal embodiment of noble chastity. It is surely unthinkable.
In fact, there is considerably more evidence, albeit for obvious reasons circumstantial after all this time, that Jesus and his initiates were involved in the sort of cult behaviour that modern Christians would not only condemn as filthy and immoral, but actively seek to have banned from their community. This is where polarized notions of good and evil, the godly and the Luciferan, or outright Satanic, become merely the stuff of bias and therefore fair game for debate.
Lazarus, the youth involved in some kind of ritual rebirth or sexual initiation into the mysteries of the Kingdom, had two sisters - the house-proud Martha and the mysterious Mary, also known as the Magdalene, whose character and role have been discussed in detail in my previous book, Mary Magdalene: Christianity's Hidden Goddess (2003) 31 She is `mysterious' because she appears only rarely by name in the New Testament, her identity also being obscured as `Mary of Bethany', `a certain woman' or `a sinner of the town'.
Although any church goer will be quick to describe her as the reformed prostitute who foreswore her wicked ways to follow Jesus, in fact her alleged career as a street-walker was an invention of Pope Gregory I in 691 CE, based on the biblical description of her as `a sinner'. He simply put two and two together and made five: the original Greek word was harmartolos, a term taken from archery meaning `one who falls short of the mark' and was applied to those who, for whatever reason, failed to keep the Jewish Law. One major reason for not doing so, of course, was not being Jewish - a foreigner - or perhaps a follower of another type of Judaism. As discussed in my previous book, there is evidence to link Mary Magdalene primarily with Egypt, and possibly with the ancient goddess cults of Ethiopia.
Not only did the Church vilify her as a whore, but the writers of the canonical gospels clearly set out to marginalize her. In the canonical gospels she only really comes into her own at the crucifixion, when she heads a team of Jesus' female disciples who come to show their solidarity with and love for their stricken leader, when the famous men - apart from the young Saint John - have fled. She, too, takes a major role in the story of the resurrection, where she meets the risen Jesus in an almost exact re-enactment of the Egyptian mystery plays of Isis and Osiris. Yet her abrupt appearance as a significant player in the great drama seems odd until it is realized that she had been deliberately edited out of the story until it reached the point where she had to take centre-stage, perhaps simply because her part in the story was too well known to leave out. But why was her role demoted and degraded in this way? What did the writers of the gospels of Saints Matthew, Mark, Luke and John have against one apparently harmless and devout woman?
Many people would answer that the men of the early Church were too biased against an ex-prostitute to permit her to take the limelight, or that, being basically still patriarchal Jews, they were just too sexist. In fact, the answer is almost certainly rather different - and considerably more far-reaching. Mary Magdalene committed what to the early Christian men of Judaea must have been an act of blasphemous presumption, for anyone, let alone a woman who was probably foreign and possibly black (as noted previously,32 racism was not invented by the British Empire). She anointed Jesus. It happened in Bethany at the home of a man known to history simply as Simon the Leper - probably fictitious - as described in Mark's Gospel:
a woman came in with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure [spike]nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.
Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, `Why this waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a year's wages and the money given to the poor.' And they rebuked her harshly 33
In Luke's Gospel, the unnamed woman anoints his head and feet and also dries them with her hair.34 But if the men's objection was intended to provoke praise and gratitude from Jesus, it failed utterly. Instead of congratulating them on their wisdom and concern for the poor, their leader says vehemently:
Leave her alone ... Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for burial ...3s
The last sentence contains a clue to the real significance of her action. It was not, as has been suggested, merely a kind of ad hoc aromatherapy, a compassionate and pleasant thing for the townswoman to do to show her devotion to Jesus. This was a ritual anointing and as such is of enormous significance: for Jesus' title of Christos/Christ means `Anointed One' - and as the only anointing mentioned in the whole of the New Testament is performed by a woman, surely it should be celebrated as a major rite of Christianity. Indeed, Jesus says forcefully, `She poured perfume on my body to prepare for my burial', but that burial, Christians believe, was unlike any other interment, for Jesus triumphed over death and the tomb to fulfil his destiny as the incarnate deity, the risen sacrificial king. In anointing him she Christened him, and marked him out for his fateful death. The true meaning of the ritual was completely lost on the other disciples, but Jesus tries hard to impress Mary Magdalene's importance on them, saying sternly: `I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.'36
Put simply, then why isn't it? Jesus' prophecy failed dramatically: even the first disciples to hear it were to make sure it never came to pass. What Christ himself wanted clearly counted for nothing in their zeal to create a Church in their own image, or rather in the image of the Gospel that they chose to approve. This would not be the only example of even the first Christians reworking the message of Christ to accord with their own agenda, especially where the Magdalene was concerned.
So far from the anointing being celebrated - there is no Catholic feast day dedicated to this event - the Gospel writers were careful even to obscure the name of the performer of the rite. However, John's Gospel37 makes it clear that the anointing actually took place in the house of Martha, Lazarus and Mary at Bethany and it was the latter who performed the ritual. And while Luke 31 is careful to describe its initiatrix as `an unnamed sinner', he immediately goes on to introduce the Magdalene for the first time, as if the association of ideas was too strong to ignore.
Mary Magdalene may never have earned her living on the Judaean streets as is still so widely believed - despite the fact that the Pope officially recanted this `fact' in 1969, although in a whisper rather than a shout - but she was profoundly associated with quite another kind of `Whoredom'. Spikenard, the ruinously expensive perfume that she used to Christ-en Jesus, was used extensively in the sacred marriages and other sexual rites of the ancient Oriental systems of Taoism and Tantrism, being especially reserved to anoint the head and feet. As Peter Redgrove acknowledges in his The Black Goddess (1989), in his discussion about Taoism:
It is interesting to compare this with Middle-Eastern religious practices, and the image of them which we have inherited. MariIshtar, the Great Whore, anointed her consort Tammuz (with whom Jesus was identified) and thereby made him a Christ. This was in preparation for his descent into the underworld, from which he would return at her bidding. She, or her priestess, was called the Great Whore because this was a sexual rite of horasis, of whole-body orgasm that would take the consort into the visionary knowledgeable continuum. It was a rite of crossing, from which he would return transformed. In the same way Jesus said that Mary Magdalene anointed him for his burial. Only women could perform these rites in the goddess' name, and this is why no men attended his tomb, only Mary Magdalene and her women. A chief symbol of the Magdalene in Christian art was the cruse of holy oil - the external sign of the inner baptism experienced by the Taoist ..."
`Horasis', the sacred whole-body orgasm is mentioned only once in the New Testament, in the Acts of the A
postles, although Redgrove believes it is mistranslated as 'visions',' in a passage in which the writer quotes from the prophet Joel: `In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions . . ."I It would give a remarkably different flavour to Acts if rendered as: `Your young men shall enjoy the sacred sex rite of horasis ...'
In the traditional form of sacred marriage, the hieros gamos, the priestess/queen/goddess also anoints the priest/king/god with oil on the genitals as a preparation for ritual horasis. Behind the male disciples' concern for the wasted money and the plight of the poor, was there another reason for their distaste at this ritual? Clearly the anointing of Jesus' feet - the singling out of the sacrificial king - took place in front of them, but the climax of the ceremony might have been a matter for closed doors (and a great deal of muttered conjecture). The woman with the alabaster jar may have been making a sacred king, but she was also making herself some powerful enemies.
Apostle of the Apostles
In the most recent translations of the Bible, `Mary Magdalene' is rendered as `Mary called Magdalene', quite a different form of words for example, from `Simon from Cyrene' or `Saul of Tarsus', implying something over and above her place of origin. (Although even if `Magdalene' did refer to her home town, it is unlikely to be the `Magdala' on the shore of Lake Galilee that is usually cited, because according to Josephus it was called Tarichea in her day. However, intriguingly there was a Magdolum just across the border in Egypt, and a Magdala in Ethiopia.)42 `Magdalene' - as in `the Magdalene' - is almost certainly a title, meaning `great lady', possibly originating in the Queen of Sheba's title Magda, accorded to her for her devotion to the Moon goddess.
Even the New Testament writers tacitly (and reluctantly) acknowledge the Magdalene's status, almost always naming her first in any list of Jesus' female followers - although they are given short shrift by Luke, who sniffs dismissively `The Twelve were with [Jesus], and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases: Mary (called Magdalene) ...'43 Unlike most of the other women in the Bible - including the Virgin Mary - she is never defined by her relationship with a man. Whereas they tend to be the `mother of the Saviour' or `Joanna, wife of Chuzah',I she is simply `the Magdalene', as if too important, famous and independent to be otherwise. Indeed, there is a distinct sense that if they could have got away with it, the writers of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John's Gospels would have excluded her altogether, so keen are they to marginalize or obscure her when she does appear in the story, despite Jesus' absolute insistence that her role in his anointing be celebrated throughout history.
The Secret History of Lucifer: And the Meaning of the True Da Vinci Code Page 9
