
				
				
				
				
					
				
				
				
					
					
						
						The Ancient Evolution of Religion 
						Dr. Bruce Chilton
						
						
					
				
					
				
				
				
			
				
				
			 
				
				
				
				
					
				
				
				
				
				
				
				Bruce ChiltonIn this episode of the Gnostic Warrior, I speak with author and scholar of early Christianity and Judaism, Dr. Bruce Chilton. Bruce is the author of several books such as 'Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography', 'Mary Magdalene: A Biography', and 'Visions of the Apocalypse: Receptions of John's Revelation in Western Imagination', to name a few.In this podcast Dr. Chilton discusses how in the ancient Roman Empire, the Caesars were held up as gods to the people they had ruled. People like the ancient Christians who refused to worship Caesar were often exterminated. Everyone, but the Jews. Bruce talks about the Rabbi Jesus' Jewish upbringing and the meaning of the Messiah and Christ. He shares his knowledge of the purpose of why there is religion, the various Christian religious denominations, and the identity of the ancient Jews.Bruce also talks about his theory that experience is everything, and how a focus on perception was both the strength and the weakness of Adolph Huxley's approach to religion.This interview was originally conducted by Moe on February 12, 2015 from San Diego County, California and Bruce in New York.
			 
			 
				
				
				
			 
				
				
			 
				
				
			 
				
				
				
				
					
				
				
				
				
				
				
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					Jun 24, 2021 | Gnosis, Gnostic Warrior Podcast ArchivesPlease check out my latest interview on Finding Hermes with Miguel Conner of Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio. I discuss my research on mold, fungi, and other microorganisms’ spiritual and material impact. As Miguel says; "What we find is an “as above, so below” sensibility...
			
			 
				
			

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Dr. Bruce Chilton: Ancient Evolution of Religion

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There are many holidays we celebrate across the world, and especially here in America that very few people truly understand.
Today, January 1st is one of those holidays many people think is just about partying and bringing in the New Year with some new resolutions that they never keep.
But in reality, this day has a deeper meaning you are probably unaware of…
The name of the month January, is derived from the two-faced god with the Latin name of Janus.
The reason he has two faces, is because one face looks back into the past, and the other face forward to the future.
This is essentially what happens on New Years Eve when you countdown to midnight which is the ending of one year, and the beginning of a brand new year filled with new hopes and dreams.
A time to put an end to the past year which is now old, and begin fresh with a new year.
To the ancient pagans and Greeks, he was their custodian of the key to the Temple of Wisdom.
Plutarch had written; “For this Janus, in the most remote antiquity, whether a demi-god or a king, being remarkable for his political abilities, and his cultivation of society, reclaimed men from their rude and savage manners; he is therefore represented with two faces, as having altered the former state of the world, and given quite a new turn to life.”
The Greek historian and geographer, Strabo, had said that the original worship of Janus had come from the priesthood of the Curetes of Crete who were accustomed to celebrate annually the rites of Juno and Latona, on Solmissus. (1)
The Roman advocate, rhetorician, and Christian apologist, Minucius Felix had said Saturn fled from Crete to Italy and was received hospitably by Janus. Out of gratitude, since he was a Greek of culture, he taught the rude and uncivilized Italians many things, among them, to write, to coin money, and to make tools.(2) 
The ancient Romans had adopted  him as their god of time, doorways, new beginnings, coinage, war and peace. The double face of Janus was often placed on Roman coins.
During the time of war, the Gates of Janus would be left open, and when a war was about to commence, lavish wartime ceremonies were performed throughout the Roman Empire.
It was during the time of Pax Romona (Peace of Rome), when Augustus Caesar had officially “closed the gates of Janus,” instituting a time of peace which ended 200 years of constant war.
The Pax Romana started after Octavian (Augustus) beat Marc Anthony in the Battle of Actium. He became princeps, or “first citizen”.

The Hidden Meaning of New Year and January 1st

“So long as the root of wickedness is hidden, it is strong. But when it is recognized, it is dissolved. When it is revealed, it perishes…. It is powerful because we have not recognized it.” – The Gospel of Phillip (Gnostic Text)
One of Phillip K. Dick’s most famous Gnostic theories was that of the Black Iron Prison (BIP), which he described as an invisible complex life form (organism) that was a criminal virus and self-perpetuating.
Its human representatives were the fake people and inauthentic human beings who were its unwitting slaves. They were the army for the Roman Empire, which he claimed never ended, they just went underground.

Think of the Black Iron Prison as a synonymous term to the Matrix to describe our world and the hidden realities which govern it as it exists today. Dick shares through his novels and his own personal story about being a prisoner trapped within it.
According to Dick, those people who do not believe in this world are the victims of its illusions and the people who believe in it are its victims.
Both are slaves but neither is free.
Both must endure its suffering without hope of release or reprieve, because there is no escape from this world.
We are all trapped – unable to break free from the hidden chains of our own enslavement because we have been conditioned to believe we live in freedom.
Dick writes, “We are in a kind of prison but do not know it. The Black Iron Prison is a vast complex life form (organism) which protects itself by inducing a negative hallucination of it.”
He says,  “The criminal virus controls by occluding (putting us in a sort of half sleep)…. The occlusion is self-perpetuating; it makes us unaware of it.”
As if this “living organism” is a immortal in that it perpetually self-generates until we manage to break its spell.
Dick writes, “the very occlusion itself prevents us from assessing, overcoming or ever being aware of the occlusion.”
This self generating organism has the ability to insert itself into our thoughts without us ever knowing it is there. A type of mind virus or parasite creating thought-disorder.
Dick says, “There is some kind of ubiquitous thinking dysfunction which goes unnoticed especially by the persons themselves, and this is the horrifying part of it: somehow the self-monitoring circuit in the person is fooled by the very dysfunction it is supposed to monitor.”
When we have fallen under its spell or its control, we are completely unaware and appear to be normal, but we often have the sense that we are no longer ourselves.
It’s as if we have been highjacked by something alien to ourselves as it exploits the hidden aspects that control our reality such as the neuro circuits of our brain, our gastrointestinal tracts, and our central nervous systems.
All the while, we are asleep to the fact that this organism that constitutes that Black Iron Prison has commandeered our very bodies and brains by exploiting the unconscious systems of our minds making us all its unwitting slaves.
It’s goal is to use us humans as its host to not only harvest our energy and our thoughts, which this living organism feeds upon, but to use its victims to control the planet making us a type of android or zombie slave for its cause.
Dick says that it warps us into micro-extensions of itself. This is why it and its slaves are so dangerous.
He writes; “This is the dread thing it does: extending its android thinking more and more extensively. It exerts a dreadful and subtle power, and more and more people fall into its field, by means of which it grows.”
In fact, Dick claims there is collusion between us and the Black Iron Prison and “we’re sources of psychic/psychol...

Phillip K. Dick: The Black Iron Prison of the Empire that Never Ended

“The most primitive and fundamental of all symbols is the dot.” — Manly P. Hall; Lectures on Ancient Philosophy
The ancient symbol known as the dot in the circle, circled dot, circle with a point, or a circumpunct, is one of the oldest symbols known to humans.
According to Gnostics, it is the most primal aspect of God. To Greek philosophers and the Pythagoreans, the circumpunct represents God, or the Monad – the point of the beginning of creation, and eternity.
It is the sun of astrologers and astronomers; the alchemical gold of the alchemist, and the Keter of the Kabbalah.
33rd Freemason, and one of Masonry’s foremost scholars, Manly P. Hall had written about the circumpunct in the Lectures on Ancient Philosophy view;
“The keys to all knowledge are contained in the dot, the line, and the circle. The dot is universal consciousness, the line is universal intelligence, and the circle is universal force – the threefold, unknowable Cause of all knowable existence (the three hypostases of Atma).
In man the spirit is represented by the dot and conscious activity or intelligence by the line. Conscious activity is the key to intelligence, because consciousness belongs to the sphere of the dot and activity to the sphere of the circle.
The center and the circumference are thus blended in the connecting line – conscious activity or intelligence. The circle is the symbol of body and body is the limit of the radius of the activity of mind power pouring out of the substance of consciousness.”
The circle around the dot is the universe or world in which we live.
A blank canvas to draw from the circle that we wish to create.
A place to also retreat back from the world when things in life get too chaotic. Erase our problems in ‘order’ to have a clean slate.
In a sense, to redeem our souls.
As you can see, the circumpunct is a symbol that can help evolve our souls to become truly illuminated. An enlightened soul who is “I AM.”
In order to know the meaning of this symbol, you first must understand how the world in which we live operates.
The modern man-made world is ruled by chaos which confuses people and often leads their souls astray.
Man-u-fact-ured chaos.
This is why the motto of the 33rd degree of Freemasonry is ORDO AB CHAO.
A Latin term meaning “Order from (out of) Chaos.”
To find order, we must first look within our own selves. You do not find true order within by searching without in books or buying the latest online course from some self-proclaimed enlightened guru who claims they have all the answers.
The whole goal of going within is to find your true soul. To find your true self. To “KNOW THYSELF.”
To KNOW THYSELF, we must go WITHIN THYSELF.
To accomplish this, we must silence the outside world and any chaotic thinking by going within and finding the center of space that is within each one of us.
In a sense, meditate.
We must often leave the web of the man-made reality of confusion in order to move into the circumpunct where we find clarity and retain our true selves.
The knowing of who you are, who you were, and where you are heading.
The symbol to your own individual Gnosis, knowledge, the past, and our mission as an evolving soul in life is contained in the dot within the circle. Our mission is to go there.
To be one with the one. To be you.
The symbol of the circumpunct is the ancient symbol that helps us realize this truth. If you concentrate on the circumpunct, you can visualize your soul as the dot within the world of which we live.
Think and meditate on the symbol of the circumpunct. This is how knowing the meaning of symbols can help you learn, grow and evolve.

The Meaning of the Circumpunct

Some people believe that Baphomet is an image of Satan or the Devil. While others claim that it is simply a symbol of man's animal and spiritual nature in which it contains the secret to enlightenment.

But what did Eliphas Levi truly mean when he created this mysterious figure?

Baphomet: Learn the true meaning of this mysterious symbol

Many scholars from different religious persuasions have believed that the Antichrist will likely be a unique individual who appears during the end times. The French mystic and Traditionalist thinker, René Guénon also believed that the Antichrist would likely be a specific person.

In The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, Guénon says the modern world is a realm of pure materialism because of the “Western deviation” from eternal truth. This resulted in the “reign of quantity”. This was not just about economics and politics, it was also a spiritual war.
He wrote of the current age – “the word ‘Satanic’ can indeed be properly applied”.
Guénon, uses the word satanic to represent the negation and reversal of order and denial of traditional truth. He says the spirit of negation is the spirit of lying that is often disguised by the unexpected, in order to avoid being recognized, and in even in order to pass itself off as the very opposite of what it is. The adversary naturally will try to pass himself off as an angel of light.


For Guénon, the Antichrist would be who he called an imposter who comes at an opportune time when everything traditional is inverted (upside down), which brings about his coming – the Great Parody. His rule will bring about the end of the reign of quantity, and he will claim it will be the Golden Age.


A counterfiet messiah that promises the people heaven on earth. But it’s a lie in the form of a pseudo traditional restoration and counter initiation.
According to Guénon, the counter-initiation is  the expression of the counter-tradition in the social order, which is precisely the reign of the Antichrist. This will be the time we have a reintroduction of quality, but of quality inverted with respect to its normal and legitimate significance. 
Guénon says the Antichrist will be a person who will be at the head of the thing as the incarnation of what it will represent. He will establish a new visible counter hierarchy, the summit of which will be occupied by this being. He wil be less an individual than a symbol, a synthesis of all the inversion of tradition that has led upto his time. 
We could interpret this event that Guénon describes as the Last Great Illusion to end all illusions for the people. As if the Antichrist will be a natural outgrowth of modern society at the agreed upon End Time, but he is also chosen or annointed to assume his role as the defacto leader of the last act.
Guénon said the Antichrist will also have specific physical traits and deformities showing inwardly that he is the closest to hell –  bearing the mark of the devil. He will have neither a predecessor nor successor. (326)
In The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, Guénon wrote;
“He [the Antichrist] will be an ‘imposter’ (this is the meaning of the word dajjāl by which he is usually designated in Arabic) since his reign will be nothing other than the ‘Great Parody’ in its completest form, the ‘satanic’ imitation and caricature of everything that is truly traditional and spiritual.
His time will certainly no longer be the ‘reign of quantity’, which was itself only the end-point of the ‘anti-tradition’; it will on the contrary be marked, under the pretext of a false ‘spiritual restoration’, by a sort of reintroduction of quality in all things, but of quality inverted with respect to its normal and legitimate signiﬁcance.
After the ‘egalitarianism’ of our times there will again be a visibly established hierarchy, but an inverted hierarchy, indeed a real ‘counter-hierarchy’, the summit of which will be occupied by the being who will in reality be situated nearer than any other being to the very bottom of the ‘pit of hell’.” (pg. 271)

Dr. Bruce Chilton: Ancient Evolution of Religion

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