Pagan Christs Studies In Comparative Hierology

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1911 Edition.

Pagan Christs: Studies in Comparative Hierology by Rationalist Press Association John Mackinnon Robertson, first published in 1903, is a rare manuscript, the original residing in one of the great libraries of the world. This book is a reproduction of that original, which has been scanned and cleaned by state-of-the-art publishing tools for better readability and enhanced appreciation. Restoration Editors' mission is to bring long out of print manuscripts back to life. Some smudges, annotations or unclear text may still exist, due to permanent damage to the original work. We believe the literary significance of the text justifies offering this reproduction, allowing a new generation to appreciate it.

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My purpose in grouping the four ensuing studies is to complement and complete the undertaking of a previous volume, entitled Christianity and Mythology. That was substantially a mythological analysis of the Christian system, introduced by a discussion of mythological principles in that particular connection and in general. The bulk of the present volume is substantially a synthesis of Christian origins, introduced by a discussion of the principles of hierology. Such discussion is still forced on sociology by the special pleaders of the prevailing religion. But the central matter of the book is its attempt to trace and synthesise the real lines of growth of the Christian cultus; and it challenges criticism above all by its theses-(1) that the gospel story of the Last Supper, Passion, Betrayal, Trial, Crucifixion, and Resurrection, is visibly a transcript of a Mystery Drama, and not originally a narrative; and (2) that that drama is demonstrably (as historic demonstration goes) a symbolic modification of an original rite of human sacrifice, of which it preserves certain verifiable details.

Infidel. Atheist. Rationalist. Agnostic. Occultist Aleister Crowley, soldier J. F. C. Fuller, and poet Victor Neuburg embraced these labels as active contributors and participants in the British secularist movement at the dawn of the twentieth century. Rebelling against Victorian religious and social strictures, they dreamed of a world guided by scientific evidence instead of superstition. Friendship in Doubt examines how the Agnostic movement-from Saladin's Agnostic Journal and G. W. Foote's Freethinker, to the Rationalist Press Association and its Literary Guide--inspired and introduced Crowley, Fuller, and Neuburg to each other as foundational figures in the new religious movement of Thelema. Agnosticism would inform not only Thelema, but also Crowley's publishing company S.P.R.T.; Aâ, Aâ, , a successor to the fragmented Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn; the Equinox journal; and the concept of "magick" as Scientific Illuminism. This volume also collects for the first time the contributions of all three to the Agnostic literature. This scarce and largely unknown material provides insight into the thinking of Crowley, Fuller and Neuburg at the start of their careers, and an understanding of their subsequent trajectories after they parted ways. As such, it provides unique insights into the role of Agnosticism in the formative years of an emerging occult movement which would go on to exert an immense influence on Western esotericism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.