Peter Myers: Has the Pope Turned Pagan?

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Australian New World Order researcher Peter Myers has just published “Pope Francis blesses Pachamama – a slide into paganism?” The article is reprinted below.

Pope Francis blesses Pachamama – a slide into paganism?

– by Peter Myers, Oct 27, 2019

Pope Francis has blessed Pachamama, an Inca goddess.

Orthodox Jews and Evangelical Christians would see it as a slide into paganism, but the Catholic Church has practised religious syncretism for two thousand years.

It has copied or borrowed themes from Ancient Egypt (the Madonna and Child), Babylon (the Queen of Heaven), and Persia (Dec 25 was the birthday of Mithra). The Monstrance features symbolism appropriated from the sun-god (the rays of the sun radiate out).

I have many books on that topic. Most are by atheists who see such borrowing as proof of fakery. I don’t, and will explain why, below.

Even the Jewish religion borrowed copiously. Before the exile, it was polytheistic, featuring a Council of Gods headed by a Great God, El. Later, Yahweh appropriated El; but like El, he had the goddess Asherah as his wife. The original Temple of Solomon was built during the polytheistic period.

Judaism as we know it was born in Babylon during the Exile, partly under the influence of the Babylonian religion – the Jewish Calendar even to this day is the Babylonian Calendar – but mainly under Zoroastrian influence.

Zoroastrianism was the religion of the Persian Empire, the first ‘multicultural’ empire. The Zoroastrian religion was the first ‘revealed’ religion based upon its scripture (the Avesta), commentary (Zend), and psalms (Gathas). Zoroaster preached the first Monotheism; he was the first to distinguish between a totally good God (named Mazda), and a totally evil Devil (named Ahriman, or The Lie). Friedrich Nietzsche assessed Zoroaster as the first Moralist – something Nietzsche disapproved of.

Zoroastrianism featured angels and devils, a cosmic battle between Good and Evil, a Messiah, judgment after death, resurrection of the body, and the final triumph of Good with the defeat of the Evil forces.

Judaism copied all these features, and the Essenes, who evolved to became the first Christians, took them very seriously. In effect, Christianity is a continuation of the Zoroastrian religion.

Sadducees preserved the original Judaism; Pharisees were the leaders of Zoroastrianised Judaism. The word ‘Pharisee’ is a rendition of the word ‘Parsee’, which means ‘Zoroastrian’. After the Fall of Jerusalem in 70AD, the Council of Javneh developed a new form of Judaism based on Phariseeism; The Sadducees were no more.

Leading Jewish author Norman Cohn acknowledged the Jewish debt to Zoroastrianism in his last book, Cosmos, Chaos and the WorId to Come.

The Zoroastrian religion, as outlined above, was somewhat intolerant, as all monotheistic religions are. But the Persian Emperors, ruling a huge empire with many different religions, could not afford to let fundamentalists take charge. They tolerated the local religions throughout the empire, except when they became the nuclei of rebellions. In that spirit, the Old Testament says, Cyrus let the Exiles return to Palestine. In fact, Cyrus had such a policy throughout the Empire. Even in the Persian religion itself, the goddess Anahita reappeared after a while.

In fact, most Exiles stayed in Babylon. There was no mass Return; archaeology has proved that.

But Ezra, in Babylon, formulated Judaism as we know it, including the story of Moses and the Exodus – this was a motivator for Jews to Return, a precedent – but in fact, there never had been an Exodus. Archaeology, once again, has shown so.

The only comparable event was the expulsion of the Hyksos shepherd-kings from northern Egypt (the Delta) about 1530 BC. They had ruled from their capital Avaris; the Biblical towns Pi-Ramesse and Raamses are associated with this period. Pharaoh Ramesses II was long alleged to be the Pharaoh of the Exodus, and to have drowned in the Red Sea when the waves, parted by Moses to let the Israelites cross, closed back in.

The Bible says that the returning sea swamped the Egyptian Army; but the mummy of Pharaoh Ramesses II is in the Egyptian Museum at Cairo; I saw it last year.

After the expulsion, the Hyksos returned to Syria/Palestine, chased by the Egyptians, who incorporated the whole region into their empire, up to the border of the Hittite Empire. There was no independent state of Israel as the Old Testament alleges. Those books were written by Ezra and other scribes centuries later in Babylon.

Ezra has God commanding the Returnees from Babylon to separate from the People of the Land and seize Palestine from them. Many genocidal passages from the Old Testament originate in his fanaticism, inspired by Zoroastrian fundamentalism.

These passages are based on the distinction between Israel and “the Nations” (Gentiles, Pagans, Goyim, Non-Jews). Israel is commanded to overcome and destroy them:

1. “Let peoples serve you, and nations bow down to you” (Genesis 27:29)

2. “I will send my terror in front of you, and throw into confusion all the people against whom you shall come … Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased and possess the land” (Exodus 23:27-9)

“For I will cast out nations before you, and enlarge your borders; no one shall covet your land when you go up to appear before the LORD your God three times in the year.” (Exodus 34:24)

3. “Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, for by all these practices the nations I am casting out before you have defiled themselves” (Leviticus 18:24)

4. “As for the male and female slaves whom you may have, it is from the nations around you that you may acquire male and female slaves. You may also acquire them from the aliens residing with you …” (Leviticus 25:44-5)

5. “When the LORD your God brings you into the land that you are about to enter and occupy, and he clears away many nations before you … and the LORD your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, then you must utterly destroy them” (Deuteronomy 7:1)

The Europeans who conquered the New World were Christians, but their religion also incorporated the Jewish Bible, and sometimes values like the above took hold.

The Spanish conquerors in America recited the “Requiremento” to the Indians:

“On the part of the King, (and)…Queen…we their humble servitors hereby…make known to you that the lord our God, living and eternal, created the Heavens and the Earth, and also one man and one woman, of whom you and we, and all mankind…are descendants…in the 5,000 year since the world was created…

“Of all these nations God gave the charge to one man – St Peter…that he should be the head of all the human race…This office of St. Peter was called Pontifex Maximus, or the Pope. One of these Pontiffs who succeeded St. Peter as lord of the world…made donation of these Isles…and all contained therein to the atorementioned King Ferdinand and Queen Juana as is shown in certain writings upon the subject, which writings you may examine if you wish…

“We ask and require you that you do consider what we have said to you and that you take the time that shall be necessary to…deliberate upon and that you do acknowledge the Church as the Mistress and superior of the whole World, and the high priest called the Pope, and in his name and stead the King Don Fernando and Queen Donna Juana, as superiors and lords and Kings of these Isles and terra firma…

“If you do so, you will do well…But if you do not do this…I certify to you that with the help of God we shall forcibly enter into your country and shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can ..and shall take you and your wives and children and shall make slaves of them …”

The Requiremento was normally read in Spanish to the trees. In one case it was actually translated to an Indian ruler, Atahualpa of Peru, in 1532:

“Pizarro’s Priest Vicente De Valverdo read the ‘requiremento’ to Atahualpa. After hearing it he said ‘Your Pope must surely be a most extraordinary man to give so liberally of what does not belong to him.’ He asked Vicente where he got his title to command of the Earth. ‘In this book’ replied the monk, presenting his breviary to the Emperor. Atahualpa took the book, examined it on all sides, fell a laughing and throwing it away added ‘Neither this nor any other writing conveys a title to the Earth.'”

– from The Lost Science of Money, by Stephen Zarlenga, p. 212.

Given the false pretenses under which the Spanish Conquest was enacted, it may be only fair that Pope Francis has blessed Pachamama.

If I were an atheist and materialist, as you are probably assuming, this would be a good place to stop.

But I’m not; and I will now proceed to tell the other side of the story. It begins in the Soviet Union, in the 1980s.

Tikkon Shevkunov, who grew up in the days of Scientific Atheism, relates that one of his teachers introduced the class to divination and seances.

They found, to their surprise, that spiritualism was not all fakery as they had expected. Seances led to revelations from ‘spirits’ of private facts that no-one else knew but the recipient.

Tikkon and his friends were so disturbed that they returned to the Orthodox Church. Tikkon became a monk, then the abbott of his monastery, and is now Metropolitan (Bishop) of Moscow, and the ‘Spiritual Father’ of Vladimir Putin. He wrote up the story in his best-selling book Everyday Saints and Other Stories.

I’m going to quote a bit of it:

{p. 7} Our teacher for foreign art history was Paola Dmitrivena Volkova. Her lectures were always interesting. And for some reason, perhaps because she was herself a person striving for answers to the big questions in life, she used to share her spiritual and mystical experiments with us. For example, she devoted a whole lecture or two to the ancient Chinese book of divination, the I Ching. Paola even brought sandalwood incense and yarrow stalks into the classroom and taught us how to use them to peer into the future.

One of her lectures concerned investigations conducted over many years (though unknown to all but the smallest group of specialists) by the famous Russian scientists Dmitri Mendeleyev and Vladimir Vernadsky. And although Paola gave us fair warning that dabbling in such things risked all kinds of unpredictable and unpleasant consequences, we, her students, with all our youthful enthusiasm, plunged ourselves into these tempting new mysterious worlds.

I will not get into the technical description of spiritualist techniques described in Mendeleyev’s scientific papers, which we further discovered from researchers at the Vernadsky Museum in Moscow. But having experimented ourselves with several of the techniques, we found that we could indeed establish some sort of connection with …  certain completely incomprehensible (for us) but nonetheless absolutely real entities. And these new mysterious acquaintances of ours with whom we began to conduct long nocturnal conversations during seances, introduced themselves by various names: sometimes Napoleon, sometimes Socrates, and sometimes the recently dead grandmother of one of our acquaintances.

These entities would sometimes relate incredibly interesting things to us. Furthermore, to our utter astonishment, they somehow knew intimate details about each of our personal lives. For example, we might be curious about our classmate Alexander Rogozhkin (who would become a renowned film director). With whom was he secretly going out until late at night? And we would immediately receive the answer: “With Katya, a second-year student.” Rogozhkin was indignant, huffing and puffing – and by his fury it was quite obvious that this answer had been spot on.

{p. 8} But there were other “revelations” that were even more amazing. Once during a break between lectures, one of my friends, who was particularly engrossed by these seances, started almost throwing himself at us, his classmates, urgently asking around in a conspiratorial whisper, with eyes red from sleeplessness: “Who is Mikhail Gorbachev?” Neither I nor any of my classmates had ever heard of anyone by this name (it was 1982). But my friend explained: “Last night we asked ‘Stalin’ who was going to be running this country and he answered: ‘Some guy named Mikhail Gorbachev. But I’ve never heard of him myself. Find out who he is!”

Three months later we were all shocked to hear the news that the young former First Secretary of the Regional Committee of the Stravropol Provincial Communist Party had been elected a Candidate Member of the Politburo.
{endquote}

Well, the same has happened to be. I have encountered ESP, Telepathy and Witchcraft – the bad kind.

The latter happened through my attending a Tarot Reading. The Reader, a Filipino woman, told me that she had called up the spirit of Hose Rizal. She wrote down the message in a book. The spirit proceeded to warn me of something very personal (which I cannot disclose), but in effect he was warning me about something the Reader would do in coming months.

She engaged in witchcraft, and attempted to take over my mind and life, promising to give me half her power. “You can have sex with anyone you like,” she said. “I don’t want your power,” I said, “Take it back.”

I can’t prove that the witchcraft was spiritual; it could have been a form of hypnosis. But she could even do it over the phone.

So, like Tikhon, I conclude that there is another dimension, a spiritual dimension, what clairvoyants call “The Other Side”.

I don’t claim to know much about it. But I am sure that all religions try to engage it. That is why religions are important to people. And yet, in their theology and teachings, all religions are wrong. We are not given to “see through the glass”.

Even though all religions are wrong, many of them have some good features.

The Catholic Church, on account of its long experience of syncretism with other faiths, is well-placed to ‘discern the spirits’ and draw features of merit from traditional religions, even while rejecting other features.

This is a strength that the Catholic Church has, that Evangelical Churches and Orthodox Judaism do not.

Recently, Pope Francis was in the news for saying “I don’t go to the Doctor, I go to the Witch!”.

By ‘witch’ he meant ‘shaman’.

The stories mentioned two ‘witches’: Dr. Liu Ming, an Acupuncturist from China, and a woman from South America who visited Francis at the Vatican and gave him Healing.

For conventional Catholics, the story was shocking. But one of my readers, David West, commented, “The stuff the Shrmans do is not magic. It’s the same basic principles that Jesus Christ used when healing people.”

I think so too.

The Talmud disparages Jesus of Nazareth, calling him a  ‘Magician’ or ‘Sorceror’:

{quote}
10 … On (Sabbath eve and)10 the eve of Passover Jesus the Nazarene11 was hanged (telduhu).12 And a herald went forth before him 40 days (heralding): Jesus the Nazarene13 is going forth to be stoned because he practiced sorcery (kishshef) and instigated (hissit) and seduced (hiddiah) Israel (to idolatry). Whoever knows anything in his defense, may come and state it. But since they did not find anything in his defense, they hanged him on (Sabbath eve and) 14 the eve of Passover.

Ulla said: Do you suppose that Jesus the Nazarenell was one for whom a defense could be made? He was a mesit (someone who instigated Israel to idolatry), concerning whom the Merciful [God] says: Show him no compassion and do not shield him (Deut. 13:9).
{endquote}
– Talmud Bavli (Babylonian Talmud), Sanhedrin 43a.
From Jesus in the Talmud, by Peter Schafer, Princeton University Press, 2007, p. 64.

Another translation uses the word ‘magician’ instead of ‘sorceror’:

{quote}
It was taught: On the day before the Passover they hanged Jesus. A herald went before him for forty days [proclaiming], “He will be stoned, because he practiced magic and enticed Israel to go astray. Let anyone who knows anything in his favor come forward and pleads for him.” But nothing was found in his favor, and they hanged him on the day before the Passover. (b. Sanhedrin 43a)
{endquote}

– from The Rabbinic Tradition: Jesus the Magician and Deceiver
https://www.newhartfordpresbyterian.org/content.cfm?page_content=blogs_include.cfm&blog_id=82

In 1987, when in the Philippines, I visited a Psychic Surgeon and saw him perform bloodless operations on patients without using instruments.

My contacts in the Philippines were sceptical, and tried to dissuade me, but in the end I was able to find out this healer’s address, and called on him.

He had patients queued up as in a doctor’s surgery. In the operating room, there was a statue of Jesus of Nazareth, recumbent on a sofa. I have never seen such a recumbent statue before or since.

People call them “Faith Healers”, but that is a misnomer. They do perform surgery; it is not just a matter of faith.

He opened his patient’s stomach with his bare hands, removed something, then closed the wound with his fingers. There was no blood. He sprinkled a disinfectant over the wound.

Anthropologists used to encounter ‘Sorcerors’ and ‘Medicine Men’, some seemingly doing evil, and others good. Professor A.P. Elkin wrote about “Aboriginal Men of High Degree”.

Perhaps some of them were like the Psychic Surgeon I saw; I don’t know if this is uniquely Christian. Such healers are found in Catholic countries, and are (I believe) frequented more by poorer people than by urban professionals. Perhaps they’re more gullible; or perhaps less inhibited by scepticism.

If there is another Dimension, a spiritual dimension, then it is not subject to the physical evolution that occurs in the Physical Dimension.

The Theosophists say so; that Evolution is compatible with spirit, because they operate in discrete domains.

I must say a final word about Theosophy.

I have studied their literature; bought books at Theosophical bookshops; and was a member of the Theosophical Society in Canberra for a while.

On the one hand, they spread knowledge and tolerance about other religions (including witchcraft); on the other hand, the founders of Theosophy were devotees of Lucifer – called Ahriman in Zoroastrianism, and Satan in Christianity.

These Theosophical feminists portrayed Satan as an Enlightener. They put out a magazine called “Lucifer”.

The word “Lucifer” DOES mean “Light”; but so does the word “Mazda”, name of the Good God in Zoroastrianism. If you want Light, why not go to the Good God instead of the Bad one?

Alice Bailey was associated with the Lucis Trust – once again the “Light” theme.

And Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy is also pro-Ahriman.

Here is a review of the book Satanic feminism, by Per Faxneld:

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2019/10/women-under-the-spell/

Women Under the Spell

Augusto Zimmermann

20th October 2019

Satanic feminism is based on Faxneld’s doctoral dissertation, which was awarded the Donner Institute Prize for Eminent Research on Religion. It discusses how prominent feminists—primarily between 1880 and 1930—used Satan as a symbol of their rejection of the so-called “patriarchal traits of Christianity”. It shows that these women were inspired by the period’s most influential new religion, Theosophy, and how the anti-Christian discourses of radical secularism affected feminism.

Satanic feminism sheds a new light on the early feminist movement. It discusses neglected or unknown aspects of the intellectual connections of early feminism with Satanism in a way that nobody before Faxneld has dared to do. In doing so, he richly illustrates how leading figures of the early feminist movement, such as the suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the actress Sarah Bernhardt and the poet Renée Vivien, viewed God as the precursor of patriarchy and Satan as an ally in the fight against it.

This feminist view of Satan as the liberator of women, according to Faxneld, was “intertwined with prominent anticlerical, left-wing, and esoteric currents of its time”. Examples in his book include feminists employing Lucifer as a symbol of revolution and eulogising him as an anti-patriarchal figure. As Faxneld points out, Satanism and feminist politics were interwoven from the first appearance of the theme of Satan as a benevolent revolutionary figure and the liberator of womankind. […]

The founder of the spiritualistic movement called Theosophy, Helena Blavatsky, is notorious for promoting Satanic inversions of Genesis 3, arguing that “Satan, the enemy of God, is in reality, the highest divine Spirit”. Blavatsky’s books Isis Unveiled (1877) and The Secret Doctrine (1888) were hugely successful, the first book selling roughly half a million copies up until 1980. These books depict the Fall positively, as a significant event that implies an up-valuation of women: “She is no longer responsible for mankind’s fall into sin but is instead actively involved in the gaining of spiritual wisdom from the benevolent snake.”

According to Blavatsky, Satan—or Lucifer, or the Devil, as she often uses the names interchangeably—brought mankind spiritual wisdom and is “the spirit of Intellectual Enlightenment and Freedom of Thought”. Beginning in September 1887 she published a journal in England called Lucifer, which infamously spread the notion of a connection between the use of pro-Satan symbolism and the struggle for women’s rights.

There was another feminist periodical in the United States also called Lucifer. Through its choice of name, in combination with a heavy emphasis on women’s rights, it disseminated the image of Satan and female emancipation as related. As Dr Faxneld notes, Lucifer was an influential American feminist organ for more than twenty-five years. By 1879 it reached readers in at least thirty-seven American states and at least eight other countries.
{end}

You can buy Satanic feminism at Amazon:

Satanic Feminism: Lucifer as the Liberator of Woman in Nineteenth-Century Culture
https://www.amazon.com/Satanic-Feminism-Liberator-Nineteenth-Century-Esotericism/dp/0190664479

or at Abebooks.com:
https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=Per%20Faxneld&tn=satanic%20feminism

You can buy Everyday Saints and Other Stories at Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Everyday-Saints-Stories-Archimandrite-Tikhon/dp/0984284834

or at Abebooks:
https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=tikhon&tn=everyday%20saints

Peter