Christian Heresy
Christian Heresy Abstracts Piped from Yahoo! Pipes
Abstract
These abstracts are taken from the actual AskWhy! pages and piped here via Yahoo! Pipes. They allow you to get a flavour of each page to see whether it might be of interest without having to load every one. An aid to browsing the website! The Heading in each case is a link to the page.
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Wednesday, 14 October 2009
Abstract
These abstracts are taken from the actual AskWhy! pages and piped here via Yahoo! Pipes. They allow you to get a flavour of each page to see whether it might be of interest without having to load every one. An aid to browsing the website! The Heading in each case is a link to the page.
AskWhy! Christian Heresy Abstracts
Abstracts from each page on the Chistian Heresy directory of the AskWhy! main website.
Parousia of Christ? End of the World? 1000 AD The Millennium
The millennium passed with no End of the World, no Parousia or appearance of Christ, no kingdom of heaven to relieve their abject misery, and Christians realised they had been fooled. They turned to the more sincere religion of the heretics at the grass roots previously tolerated by the established Church as powerless and inconsequential. The enormity of Christianity has been hidden by writers, even Jewish ones, claiming it taught a humane way of life, tending the poor and the sick. Really, the Catholic mendicant orders were a response to the popularity of heresies and their apostolic poverty. The voluntary poverty of these monks was meant to match the voluntary poverty of the Parfaits and the Cathar and Waldensian missionaries who wandered around in pairs emulating the life of Christ and his apostles.
Heresy and the Inquisition. Cathar Beliefs
Some Catholics retained the Essene lifestyle while otherwise conforming. Canon 8 of the Nicene Council of 325 concerned “those who call themselves Cathari”. Canon 19 concerns “the Paulianists”. For established Christianity, the Ebionite-like or Nazarene-like Christians were a nuisance, but they persisted to become the earliest declared heretics. “Heresy” was unorthodoxy, and could apply only to whoever had been baptized as Christians. Manichæans were not Christians, and Manichæism could not have been a Christian heresy. Yet, so-called Manichæan sects were labelled as heresies by Catholics, and even the sectaries accepted they were. They must have been a dualistic form of Christianity. The Dead Sea Scrolls show the Essenes were dualistic. Cathars must have been Christians who kept much more of the original Essenism than Catholic Christianity.
Persecution of Cathars, Albigenses and Waldenses
Four Church Councils in 1119, 1139, 1148 and 1163 declared the Cathars to be heretics. The Council of Toulouse in 1119 and then the Lateran Council of 1139 urged the secular powers to proceed violently against heresy—they did not. Even so, Cathars were burned or imprisoned in many places, but, William IX of Aquitaine and many of the nobles of the Midi continued to protect them. They valued their industry and integrity in a corrupt world. The French bishops at the Council of Tours (1163) discussed the presence of Cathars in Cologne, Bonn and Liege. They called them Manichæans, a taunt, for they knew they were not, and the Cathars called themselves the Good Christians. From 1180 to 1230, the Catholic Church enacted legislation against heresy, and set up a permanent tribunal, staffed by Dominican friars. It was the Inquisition.
Heresy and the Free Spirit: Beghards and Béguines
In northern Europe, the Free Spirit of Beghards and Béguines led the war against the established Church. From around 1250, they cited Cathars, Waldenses, and Joachites. Their common beliefs included hatred of the Church, that sacraments are worthless, the spiritual value of poverty, and most important of all, that each of us can become God. Organized in small groups, they faded away when trouble threatened, “migrating from mountain to mountain like strange sparrows”, a good description of the lifestyle the fleeing Cathars were obliged to follow. If they differed, they were merely variations on the Cathar original.
Ideas of the Free Spirit: Mirror of Simple Souls
Schwester Katrei is heretical because of its Free Spirit ideas, including permanent union with God, and the acknowledgment of possible independence from the institutional Church. Sister Catherine, a Béguine, speaks to her father confessor. She remains respectful of her confessor throughout, but ends up his spiritual superior, and teaches him. Like the Cathar Perfects, she had become a Christ. She had “achieved by grace what Christ was by nature”. The Catholic calumny against the Free Spirit was that they became self indulgent because a perfect being could not sin. The confessor indeed thought the perfect Catherine would want to be free, but she wanted to be nothing but poor until her death. She would not deviate from the model of Jesus Christ, humble until death.
Synopses of Documents relating to Bogomiles, Albigensians and Waldensians
Some heretical sources in summary.
The Medieval Inquisition: Catholicism’s Answer to the Cathars
The purpose of the Inquisition was terrorism. It was meant to intimidate people into abandoning Catharism. Its terrorist methods were threats, torture, imprisonment and impoverishment, with burning alive the ultimate punishment. If anyone was denounced for heresy to the inquisitors, the best thing they could do was to go at once and declare themselves as heretics and abjure their supposed heresy. Denial meant horrible torture and certain death for those who persisted in it, even if they were telling the truth! Besides those who died at the stake, many died in prison, and their dependents were impoverished. The Inquisition must have fined, imprisoned, tortured, and even slain a large number of honest Christians.
The Spanish Inquisition: Making Jews and Moslems Heretics
The excuse for the Spanish Inquisition is that the Church and Christian kingdoms had to protect themselves from the wicked Moors and Jews who were trying to stop the spread of Christianity. Christianity thrives on ignorance and intolerance, but the Moors and Jews had civilized Spain and founded its universities. Under the Catholics, many Jews and Moors had to profess Catholicism to keep their possessions, but they were suspected of secretly practising their old religion. The Spanish people, every historian tells us, were tolerant and disinclined to quarrel, but the clergy lashed them into pogroms. The expulsions of Jews and Moors ruined the brilliant civilization they had created in Spain just as the massacre of the Albigensians ruined Languedoc and the massacre of the Hussites ruined Bohemia.
Heresy: Catholics still Excuse the Inquisition
An excuse is that the Church was not stifling belief but imposing discipline! The Church must make laws and uphold them with penalties. Heresy violates ecclesiastical law and strikes at the Christian communion. But it does not suffice to expel a member not conforming. That is why “heresy” was and is a lie. It is not “heresy”, it is mind control. People who were never baptised as Catholic Christians cannot be Catholic heretics. Even those who were baptised were baptised before they had the chance to dissent, but when they did as adults, they were deemed heretics and murdered. Protestants wanted to secede from the Church of images and luxury and return to the ways of the Essenes. They were therefore heretics and had to be burnt alive. Excusing The Spanish Inquisition
Witches: Scattered Heretics Pursued by the Inquisition
The word “witch” was applied to heretics—the dualist heretics called Cathars. Having scattered them with the Albigensian crusade and the Inquisition, and driven them into hiding, the Christian cardinals had to come up with a new way of rooting them out. The Church identified witchcraft with heresy. It defined heretics as witches and Satanists, and set the population into a frenzy against them. The Inquisition was fighting an organized conspiracy led by the Devil. The Cathars, who held that the influence of the Devil had perverted the teachings of Christianity, were falsely accused of worshipping the Devil as witches. Witches were incorrigible. All that could be done was to kill them. Europe again stank with burning flesh and echoed with the groans of tortured women.
Witchcraft: Magic, Sex and the God of the Witches
Using magic was to call upon the Devil in the physical world. Both Protestants and Catholics did not have as much faith in their own God as they had in the Devil, the supposed god of the witches’ magic. Witches were thought to have the power of Christ—they could raise the dead, turn water into wine or milk, control the weather and know the past and future. Catholics could use ritual acts like crossing themselves to ward off the hex, but Protestants lacked similar superstitions. They had to kill the witch. Belief in the power of witchcraft itself is what gives rise to witch hunts, and the best way to stop them is to stop people believing in “witchcraft”, whatever political shape it is given.
Witchcraft: Broom, Sabbaths, Familiars, and Dancing in Circles
Worshippers were considered slaves of their God, and slaves were branded with the mark of their masters. In Christian baptism the brand of the cross is made with holy water so that no one except God can see it! The witch hunters had so much trouble finding anything convincingly like a brand, they were either getting the wrong people or the brand was invisible like the Christian one. Each witch had to report to the Devil “what wickedness he hath committed”. Catholic confession also is a report to the priest on what wickedness the confessor has done. The confession was adopted by the Lateran Council of 1215, aimed at countering the Cathars and Waldensians, alongside other, now established Church practices introduced to counter heresy by approving popular heretical practices in a Catholic context.
Witchcraft the Old Religion: Primitive Christianity
Witchcraft was not the ancient Pagan religion of Europe. Witches were never an organized force until the thirteenth century, when they suddenly had a Europe wide organization. This threat to Catholic Christianity only appeared when the Cathars had been driven underground by the Albigensian crusade and the Inquisition. Witchcraft indeed had a “Christian cosmology”, and knew Satan as a God. Modern Christians are no different except to pretend their Satan is not a god. Magic could be used for good or ill in the popular imagination, and belief in it was everywhere, but blaming it on to demons was an ecclesiastical device to persuade the doubtful population that only the Church had the good magic. Medieval literature does not attest to a widespread witch hysteria until the Church generated it.
Catharism: the History and Meaning of Tarot Cards
The plethora of Catholic sins keep people guilt ridden and supporting the Church by their faith in the useless magic of the sacraments instead of personal effort. The only sin of the earthly soul to a Cathar is not knowing, and that is corrected through experience. Salvation is by gnosis not pistis. All souls will get to heaven. It is no sin that a soul is still on earth. Each soul has to make the journey to knowledge personally, through experience, through actual rejection of the Devil and his world. Gnosis will come by seeking, and cannot be forced. Faith is inadequate. The supposed sufficiency of faith is a trick of the Devil. Wealth, power, sexual indulgence, the easy life, ambition, and the Catholic sacraments were all temptations of the Devil to lure the soul from gnosis, and obstruct its escape from the material to the spiritual.
Dualism, Christianity, Catharism: Myth and Solar Belief
John the Baptist and the Catholic Christian Jesus mythologically were the same god—the winter rain giving sun of Palestine. The Orthodox Church puts S John’s eve, not in the midsummer, but at twelfth night, the old Christmas! It is rationalised as the occasion of the baptism of Jesus, which Christians consider as a rebirth—through baptism they are “born again”. John the Baptist brought about the rebirth of Jesus, and so acted as his mystic father. The father of Jesus specifically is God, Yehouah—Iove, Ieua, Yah, Ea—the Babylonian god of freshwaters, written in Greek as Oannes which is John. John the Baptist was the Cathar’s Janus, or Janicot—Little John, who looked both ways at the year’s end, backwards and forwards in time.
Solar Dualism: George, Michael, Summer, Good; Dragon, Boar, Winter, Bad
The “mummers” were masked thespians who enacted the story of S George and the Dragon at the end of the year. S George is the archangel Michael, who was the Persian Mithras and the Babylonia Marduk. All are good sun gods and the dragon is chaos or the wicked sun. Good prevails and, where the victim is depicted as a beautiful maiden, the god wins her too, whence the wedding dress. The sky represented by the sun is male and the earth is female. The sky fertilises the earth with rain and the womb of the earth bears crops. The woman is the earth goddess, Persephone—Israel personified as the daughter of Zion for the Jews—who in Christian mythology became the Church itself, metaphorically the bride of Christ. The earth goddess married the revivified sun god in a hierogamos to produce all the fruits of summer.
Celtic and Cathar Beliefs: Solar Heroes
The Celts took the beginnings of their months and years from the moon, but each day began with the setting sun, as it did in Judaism. The Celtic year was primarily divided into summer and winter at Beltane (1 May) and Samhain (1 November), but the middle of each half year were also celebrated—1 February, 1 August. Imbolc on 1 February was dedicated to the goddess, Brigit, when all things were purified and refreshed. Lughnasa on 1 August was dedicated to the god, Lugh, (Lleu). So, the Celts divided the year into four segments, each of which was halved, making four main festivals each year and four lesser ones. Beltane was devoted to the god, Belenos, and Samhain on 1 November was devoted to all the gods and the spirits of the dead. Fires were burnt at Beltane and Samhain as the two beginnings, summer and winter, when the sun and the seasons were urged to be true and fruitful.
Cathars, Troubadours, Chivalry and Solar Heroes
Gwydion, son of Don, was the British Odin, but he is absent from ArthurÂ’s retainers. Lludd, Gwyn, Arawn, Prideri, and Manawddan, all appear, as do the other sons of Don, Amaethon, and Govanno—but not Gwydion. But some of the figures of Brythonic mythology have been renamed as Arthurian characters. Gwalchmai, the “Falcon of May”, is Percival, Lancelot (“Little Spear”) and Galahad (Gwalchaved, “Falcon of Summer”). Medrawt is Dylan, god of darkness and malice, and becomes Mordred. Morgan, ArthurÂ’s sister, is an old goddess called Gwyer (“Gore”). Merlin (Myrddin) once was the British god because Britain was “MerlinÂ’s Enclosure”. Urien, the patron of the bards, was symbolized by a raven (“bran”), and in one poem, he ordered his head to be cut from his wounded body, so he must have been Bran. The story of Lancelot is a late, non-Celtic graft on the Arthurian stock.
Cathars, Witchcraft and the Knights Templar
The crushing of the Order of the Templars is one of the grossest single exploits of the Inquisition. The king of France, Philip the Fair, was bankrupt and wanted their wealth, and the pope, Clement V, felt obliged to him, because the French king had helped him buy the papal tiara. The good pope, the humane pope, permitted the Templars to be robbed and murdered after one of the worst travesties of a trial in history. Less than a week after they had been arrested, the Dominicans were torturing 140 prisoners in the Paris Temple. Thirty six of the victims died under torture. Like Bush and Blair, typically hypocritical as Christian leaders, Philip claimed he was doing God’s work, and accounted to God alone. Large numbers of the knights died under the fearful torture rather than lie about their own order.
Cathars, Medieval Builders, and the Freemasons
The foundation myths of the Freemasons link them to the construction of Solomon's temple, proving that they were wrong, Solomon being mythical, but it is a myth that the ancient masonic guilds in the middle ages held to be true. Another myth is that the Masons were founded by the Knights Templar. These myths can be shown to be plausible, given considerable correcting, but plausibility is not proof, even though Christians, and perhaps Masons too, think it is. There is no solid evidence, and we have to remain skeptical.
Cathars, Celtic Solar Heroes and the Holy Grail
Percival had been a naïve, uncouth, rustic fellow with a simplicity that often overcame the guile of more worldly knights, but he is equally easily distracted and discouraged, and was often foolishly imprudent. Bors is much more thoughtful. He is cautious and prudent, and makes reasoned choices, but comes over therefore as a plodder. Launcelot does not even get to Sarras, condemned by his concupiscence, dallying with Arthur’s wife, Guinevere. He is made a penitent for confessing his sins, but through it only glimpses the Grail. Perceval and Bors, shrove their former sins and got close to their goal, reaching Sarras. Gawain, the early hero of the tales, and himself an idealized knight, is depicted as half hearted, not willing to be bothered to take difficult advice, and makes no progress. Only Galahad is good enough, and allusions to him are allusions to the gospels and Acts. He is “in semblence” a second Christ.
Robin Hood, Folk Traditions and Cathars
Robin Hood was more than the hero of Sherwood Forest. The cult of Robin Hood was widespread both geographically and in time. Robin Hood is Odin, the god of the full year, consisting of the white or bright summer half (Robin) and the dark or blind winter half (Hood). He had a band of twelve companions, suggestive of a solar cult, and of a traditional witches’ coven. The Teutonic gods called the Aesir were the court of Odin. There are twelve of them besides the high god. The word “Aesir” is the same as the words used by the Iranians and Indians, namely “Ahura” and “Asura”, respectively, both cognate with “Surya”, the Indian word for sun. The god of the year end in classical mythology was the two faced Janus, and Robin Hood seems to have had the same connotations, although the name “Janus” seems to have gone to Little John (Janicot), one of Robin’s companions.
Cathars, Witches, Good People, and Fairies
The Lord’s Prayer was the main prayer of the Cathars, and all of their Perfects were considered as living Christs. They were called the Good People. The Catholic Church insisted that the Cathars, though Christians, worshipped Satan under the name of Lucifer. The Church always made out that Satan was the god of the heretics because they accepted he was the god of the material world. Yet the heretics were in rebellion against the wicked god and his earthly agents including the Catholic Church, and sought only the light, through Lucifer, the Light-Bringer, who was the same as Christ and the archangel Michael. People might have no choice but to accept a wicked ruler, but they need not like him or obey him. Fairies and the Cathars
