Truth or Lies

Laura Knight-Jadczyk

November 15, 2003: I would like to ask the reader a question before we continue. Have you ever, as a child, been accused of something you didn't do, either by your parents, teachers or other "authorities?" And if so, were you punished unfairly for something you didn't do? Do you remember how it felt?

As you remember, can you feel the frustration, the helpless anger and resentment that you told the truth and no one believed you? YOU know what you did or did not do, and no one can take that away from you. But they have taken away from you the right for that truth to be known by others. And someone else has taken away THEIR right to know the truth. You have been slandered and punished, and there is NO WAY you can ever prove that it was wrong and unjust, and all the other people will have a "history" of you that is false. In fact, this knowledge that others will have false memories of you, will have false ideas about what you did until they die, hurts almost worse than the punishment. What is more, in a vague way, you can perceive that those who believe the lie have been deprived of something valuable about you: the truth that you did not do what you were accused of doing, and that you did tell the truth. A barrier has been erected between you and the others - the barrier of a lie.

Now expand that concept just a little bit. Imagine that such false accusations, false stories, are being told about history, the history that defines your origins, your very reason for being. The only difference is that it is not a "personal" lie against you, and you do not have the knowledge inside your head that it is certainly a lie because you were there and YOU know.

Imagine that people are born, live their lives, and die believing lies about where they came from and how they got where they are, and the reasons for all that exists in the world around us. Just like the people who believed the lies about something you didn't do, (they have no way of getting inside your head and perceiving the truth), people have been separated from the truth by the barrier of lies.

As you probably know, the event from your childhood may have been small in terms of your entire life history, but still, there are those who judge you based on that lie, and all your subsequent history follows from those beliefs about you.

We have just seen an example of just such a lie that erects a barrier between people and the truth: the fact that Constantine must have seen an asteroid impact on the earth and the truth was sidelined in favor of the lie of a great conversion effected by God Almighty, proving that Christianity was the "truth."

Regarding religion, and most particularly the religions that hold sway over our world such as Christianity born of Judaism, we simply cannot overstress the importance of deep and serious study. We cannot ignore the question of whether or not Christianity and Judaism and Islam are "true," and if they are NOT, then why have they spread and persisted? And if they are not true, we need to evaluate a proper response to them.

The history of Christianity - from the apostles in Rome down to the present day - has been an unquestioned premise upon which much that exists in our world today is founded. The very condition of our planet at the moment is based upon this "history of Christianity" which we are beginning to think might be a tad distorted. And when we consider the fact that Christianity developed in the way it did, we must begin to ask if it is possible that Christianity worked long and hard to validate Judaism in order to claim the transfer of the covenant from God to the Jews. In fact, when we observe the "fruits" of these religions, we begin to see that our very lives may depend upon finding out what really did happen, to the best of our ability.

As I wrote in Chapter Two of this present little series, Historians of ancient times face two constant problems: the scarcity of evidence, and how to fit the evidence that IS known into the larger context of other evidence, not to mention the context of the time to which it belongs.

Fortunately, ancient history is not "static" in the sense that we can say we know all there is to know now simply because the subject is about the "past." For example, the understanding of ancient history of our own fathers and grandfathers was, of necessity, more limited than our own due to the fact that much material has been discovered and has come to light in the past two or three generations through archaeology and other historical sciences.

Jews, Christians and Moslems have a certain notion of the past that is conveyed to them in hagiography, Bible stories, and the Koran, as well as in chronologies and historical accounts. We tend to accept all of these as "truth" - as chronological histories along with what else we know about history - and we often reject out-of-hand the idea that these may all be legends and myths that are meta-historical - special ways of speaking about events in a manner that rises above history.

If that is the case, then the chronologies, the way that we arrange dates and the antecedents that we assume for events, should be of some considerable concern to everyone. If we can come to some reasonable idea of the REAL events, the "facts," the data that make up our view of the world in which we live and our own place within it, then perhaps such facts about our history can explain why our theologies and values tell us, not what we believe, but WHY we believe what we do, and whether or not we ought really to discard those beliefs as "historical."

One could say, of course, that all history is a lie. Whenever we recount events or stories about people and times that are not immediately present to us, we are simply creating a PROBABLE picture of the past or a "distant happening." For most people, the horror and suffering of the Iraqi people, at the present moment in "time," has no spatial meaning because it is "over there." It is quite easy for false images of such events to be created and maintained as "history" by those who are not directly experiencing the events, particularly if they are not told the truth about them by those who DO know. And so it has been throughout history.

An additional problem is that history not only is generally distorted by the victors, it is then later "mythicized." There is a story found in the History of Herodotus, which is an exact copy of an older tale of Indian origin except for the fact that in the original, it was an animal fable, and in Herodotus' version, all the characters had become human. In every other detail, the stories are identical. Joscelyn Godwin quotes R. E. Meagher, professor of humanities and translator of Greek classics saying: "Clearly, if characters change species, they may change their names and practically anything else about themselves."

Going further still, historian of religion, Mircea Eliade, clarifies for us the process of the "mythicization" of historical personages. Eliade describes how a Romanian folklorist recorded a ballad describing the death of a young man bewitched by a jealous mountain fairy on the eve of his marriage. The young man, under the influence of the fairy was driven off a cliff. The ballad of lament, sung by the fiancée, was filled with "mythological allusions, a liturgical test of rustic beauty."

The folklorist, having been told that the song concerned a tragedy of "long ago," discovered that the fiancée was still alive and went to interview her. To his surprise, he learned that the young man's death had occurred less than 40 years before. He had slipped and fallen off a cliff; in reality, there was no mountain fairy involved.

Eliade notes that "despite the presence of the principal witness, a few years had sufficed to strip the event of all historical authenticity, to transform it into a legendary tale." Even though the tragedy had happened to one of their contemporaries, the death of a young man soon to be married "had an occult meaning that could only be revealed by its identification with the category of myth."

To the masses, hungry to create some meaning in their lives, the myth seemed truer, more pure, than the prosaic event, because "it made the real story yield a deeper and richer meaning, revealing a tragic destiny."

In the same way, a Yugoslavian epic poem celebrating a heroic figure of the fourteenth century, Marko Kraljevic, abolishes completely his historic identity, and his life story is "reconstructed in accordance with the norms of myth." His mother is a Vila, a fairy, and so is his wife. He fights a three-headed dragon and kills it, fights with his brother and kills him, all in conformity with classical mythic themes.

The historic character of the persons celebrated in epic poetry is not in question, Eliade notes. "But their historicity does not long resist the corrosive action of mythicization." A historic event, despite its importance, doesn't remain in the popular memory intact.

The memory of the collectivity is anhistorical. Murko, Chadwick, and other investigators of sociological phenomena have brought out the role of the creative personality, of the "artist," in the invention and development of epic poetry. They suggest that there are "artists" behind this activity, that there are people actively working to modify the memory of historical events. Such artists are either naturally or by training, psychological manipulation adepts. They fully understand that the masses think in "archetypal models." The mass mind cannot accept what is prosaic and individual and preserves only what is exemplary. This reduction of events to categories and of individuals to archetypes, carried out by the consciousness of the masses of peoples functions in conformity with archaic ontology. We might say that - with the help of the artist/poet or psychological manipulator - popular memory is encouraged to give to the historical event a meaning that imitates an archetype and reproduces archetypal gestures.

At this point, as Eliade suggests, we must ask ourselves if the importance of archetypes for the consciousness of human beings, and the inability of popular memory to retain anything but archetypes, does not reveal to us something more than a resistance to history exhibited by traditional spirituality?

What could this "something more" be?

I would like to suggest that it is easily explained by the saying: "the victors write the history." In other words, the lie is more acceptable to the masses because it generally produces what they would LIKE to believe rather than what is actually true. We have certainly seen a few hints that this is exactly what Constantine did, and based on this "rewriting of the event" wherein he scripted himself as the star of the show and the direct recipient of a "sign from God," he was able to create a world-dominating religion that clearly was no different from others of its type with the exception that he, Constantine, was the beneficiary. Sounds a lot like what Stalin did in Russia, and what the CIA has been doing all over the planet since WW II?

The fact is, manipulation of the mass consciousness is "standard operating procedure" for those in power. We saw how Constantine did it, and the truth is, nothing has changed since that day except that the methods and abilities to manipulate the minds of the masses with "signs and wonders" has become high tech and global.

Does that sound like I am proposing a conspiracy?

Yup.

Many people experience knee-jerk reactions to the word "conspiracy." That is deliberate. Throughout history, creating the illusion that theres are no "conspiracies" has been one of the primary objectives of conspirators. From the most basic conspiracies, such as a philandering husband keeping his wife in the dark about his extra-curricular activities, to corporate boardrooms, to the halls of government and finance, keeping the ones that are being manipulated and used in the dark is the main objective of conspiracy. Always was, always will be. As G.K. Chesterton wrote:

[...] if there is no conspriacy, why is there no conspiracy? Why should nature abhor all vacuums except this particular vacuum? If the means of controlling the lives and destinies of mankind exists, as undoubtedly they do exist, why should use of them go by default? It is not as if there was any shortage of unscrupulous manipulators."

From a historical point of view, the ONLY reality is that of conspiracy. Maintaining and controlling wealth and power require secrecy, as anyone who has ever worked in the corporate world easily understands. If you have a product and you want to "corner the market," you have to work in secret. Everyday lawsuits are filed for theft of ideas, of products, of corporate secrets that enable a small group of individuals to become wealthy and establish their dominance in a given field of enterprise.

It is no different in the citadels of government. In fact, you can imagine that it is many factors more intense and well developed in such circles.

The main product of government is to acquire and hold more power over more people. It's an economic thing. And this is generally done via war or the threat of war. As anyone who has ever served time in the military knows, deception is the key element of warfare, (the tool of power elites), and when winning is all that matters, the conventional morality held by ordinary people becomes an impediment. In other words, secrecy stems from a pervasive and fundamental element of life in our world, that those who are at the top of the heap will always take whatever steps are necessary to acquire or to maintain their own position of power and wealth.

The primary way that these positions of power are acquired or maintained is by controlling the thinking of the masses.

And how do they do that?

By "official culture" which most definitely, by definition, includes religion. And official culture, understood this way, from the perspective of elite groups wishing to acquire or maintain power, means only one thing: COINTELPRO. And here we do not mean the specific FBI program, but the concept of the program, and the likelihood that this has been the mode of controlling human beings for possibly millennia. In fact, I like to call it "Cosmic COINTELPRO" to suggest that it is almost a mechanical system that works so well due to the psychological nature of human beings, most of whom LIKE to believe things that relieve them of responsibility.

Let's keep in mind, at this point, that a cult is defined as having an "object of worship," the worship of which/whom - if the rules of worship are followed properly - will result in certain benefits.

Now, naturally, if you are told that a certain product is going to give you absolutely stupendous benefits and it is cheap to boot, you are certainly going to buy it, right? Even if you think "well, if it's too good to be true, it probably is a lie."

And that is exactly the point: it probably IS a lie.

Nevertheless, if you are facing a really, REALLY good salesman, you will probably buy the product because it IS cheap and "well, it can't hurt. I'm not really spending much, and if it works, all the better!" And we find ourselves in the presence of Pascal's Wager: better to believe and be proved wrong than to NOT believe and be proved wrong.

And so it is that Christianity is formulated: for a LOW price - simply believe - you get the whole world - heaven as a waiting room and resurrection and rule of the world in the end!

What a deal!

But wait! There IS fine print! You have to remember that Christianity can only be valid if Judaism is valid first. After all, Christianity's claim to the New Covenant is based on the idea that Judaism had the Old Covenant and blew their chances by being arrogant and obstinate. So, if you buy the Christianity product, by default you get at least some of the Judaism product. This means, of course, that you have to believe that Israel had or has a "central role" in the manifesting of the benefits to be obtained by purchasing the product: resurrection and rule of the world.

Getting back to history, the average Christian has been kept in the dark about the REAL history of Christianity from the very beginning. The lies have piled higher than Mount Everest.

The myth tells us that, as Christianity centered itself in Rome, it attracted more attention from the Imperial authorities who, at first, persecuted the Christians. Later, as the Romans witnessed the amazing faith of the "Martyrs for Christ," they were, of course, influenced to succumb to this great, "Good News" that was so awesome that it bestowed the ability to endure horrible tortures and gruesome deaths with peace and a smile.

And so, as the fairy tale goes, year by year Christianity became more and more powerful until, finally, Constantine was converted by God himself. It was a veritable military march to Damascus a la Paul. After Constantine's conversion, though he was a "nominal Christian," he took part in theological debate and helped to form and direct Christian dogma so that the growth and stability of the church would be guaranteed. Christianity then became part of the Roman empire centered in Rome, and developed a strong, external structure and placed itself under the authority of the bishop of Rome who was the successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Peter.

Now, all of this was supposed to be happening - the seat of power of the Constantine's church was being established in Rome - while Constantine himself just happened to be in Constantinople, the ancient city of Byzantium.

A particularly bogus piece of history tells us that, upon the death of Constantine, the temporal power of the Roman Empire passed to the Bishop of Rome as though in anticipation of the chaos to follow.

Continuing with the fairy tale, in the fifth century, with the invasions of the Germanic barbarians, the Roman Empire fell. The church, of course, was the glue that held everything together in this age of decline. The bishop of Rome assumed the direction of man's temporal and spiritual life since the temporal authorities of the world had become virtually ineffective. Seeing the turmoil of the world, many Christians retreated to the deserts, fearing that the apocalypse was upon them. Society was demoralized and shaken to its foundations and the only place to turn was to the church, the surety of the promise of a better life in the "other world."

Into this darkness, according to the myth, after hundreds of years, the ninth century restored hope: from among the German tribes, the Empire was reborn guided by the hand of the bishop of Rome. With the crowning of Charlemagne on Christmas Day, 800, the Pope of Rome finally had a use for his power. At long last, the manifest authority of the Papacy could be expressed in the new "secular branch" of the church - the Holy Roman Empire. The church could now delegate its wearisome burden of secular power to a new Emperor who would initiate and lead the Holy Army.

We are told in this historical farce that the Emperors and the Popes began to vie for authority, the Emperor making sole claim to authority in the Empire, and the Bishop of Rome asserting his privilege of granting such power on the Emperor by virtue of the authority of the church over BOTH the Church and the Empire. We are told of endless rivalries that ensued in the midst of famine and plagues - the Dark Ages - while in fact, a careful study of this period and its architecture demonstrates that this was a period of rich social and cultural growth that was, effectively, destroyed by the church via the crusades and the inquisition, after which, history was re-written.

In the year 1054, we are told, a number of "Eastern Christians" tried to bogart their way to power by claiming that their "pope," or patriarch, actually held the authority over the Empire, causing a rift in the church. The story goes that these "upstarts" then went off and established their own church - the Eastern Orthodox Church - and united under this establishment the Christians of Eastern Europe including Russia, Bulgaria and the Levant. According to standard Christian history, the "Cathar Heresy" came from Bulgaria - obviously from that "corrupt Easter Church." The facts seem to indicate however that Catharism had existed in Western Europe for a very long time - probably since the beginning of Christianity and may very well have been the ORIGINAL Christianity.

At the end of the fourteenth century, we are told that the "years of darkness" came to an end, and the Italian city-states began to move toward political power free from the Church. Intellectuals and artists began to exalt man, rather than god and the Renaissance began.

The Church attempted to stem this vile secularism, but faith in man and his world and science exploded, and the classical world of art and literature was brought back to human consciousness, and man began to put religion in its proper place. A true separation of the spiritual and the mundane was taking form. But, there was an evil thing stalking the land! Those vile apostate Christians in the East, fearing invasions from their Moslem enemies to the south, again attempted a union with Rome. Their "intransigent Eastern ideas", their "inarticulate" and "unsystematic" theological notions coupled with their long years of estrangement from "mainstream Christianity" made such a union impossible. Better to kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out.

After the raping and pillaging of the REAL Roman Empire in the East by the newly created "Germanic Roman Empire" in the West, the Eastern Church faded into obscurity until Russia later entered into the Western world by virtue of an intentional "Westernization" of their culture and religion.

All of these events, the invasions, the early church schism, the development of Renaissance ideas, were leading to a "proper" separation of Church and state which was ultimately brought about by the the challenge of Protestantism. Questioning the historical emergence of the Roman Pontiff as the unifying force in the political and spiritual development of the Roman Empire and the ancient world, the Protestant Reformation challenged not only the authority of the pope in worldly matters, but also in spiritual matters. The center of gravity of Christianity of Protestantism was to be moved from the person of the Pope to the text of the Bible which was to guide the individual Christian conscience.

And so - we are told - the Christian church has remained until this very day. Until very recently, the Pope has held to his ancient claim to primacy over Christianity, and the protestants have held to their claims of the primacy of the scriptures. It seemed for a long time that these two camps were doomed to be forever at loggerheads. BUT, with the advent of the "Ecumenical Age," there has been the emergence of a certain tolerance among Christians. The protestants have acknowledged the role of the Pope in the formation of the church, and the Papacy has admitted a certain "overstatement of powers" in that development. The Christian church reached a certain stage of rapprochment.

The big problem is, this whole history of Christianity is BOGUS!

The consequence of this history is, however, interesting. I'll never forget watching televangelist Jimmy Swaggert declare in one of his sermons that Mother Theresa was doomed to Hell because she was not "born again" in the terms of Fundamental Protestantism. This exemplifies the problem that comes to the fore when a body of text is given absolute authority as the "word of God," and the conscience of the individual - any individual - is the sole arbiter of what that text actually says and feels it is incumbent upon them to force this interpretation on others.

How could such a false history have been created and foisted on the world? That is what we are going to find out as we go along.

The fact is, organized religion, most particularly Christianity, has a VERY long history of domination and persecution of OTHERS. It is often explained as the "good intentions gone wrong" of the early Church; their hearts were in the right place, but it was a semi-barbaric time. But, I submit to you that the proselytizing Jehovah's Witness who knocks on your door uninvited, to tell you THEIR version of the "truth," are just as guilty of trying to dominate your mind and soul as the Grand Inquisitor who followed the dictum: "kill them all; God will know his own." It is merely a matter of degree.

But, we are talking about Jesus. Or possibly, we are talking about Jesus. We may be talking about somebody altogether different from the mythical Jesus; a seed person or event around which a body of stories formed, which then were corrupted and became a tool in the plan of unscrupulous power mongers whose only desire was to control the whole world. And they knew, as Machiavelli enunciated, that religion is the best means of doing so. What was true in Machiavelli's time is still true in our own.

Machiavelli observed that religion and its teachings of faith, hope, charity, love, humility and patience under suffering were factors that render men weak and cause them to care less about worldly and political things, and thus they will turn political power over to wicked men who are not influenced by such ideals. Of course, the real trick is to convince people that the "afterlife" is the only thing worth thinking about, and it is to this end that Christianity has been formulated.

Another of Machiavelli's ideas is that a religion is good only if it supports the state and contributes to state ends. By using religion, one can give "divine sanction" to laws which people would otherwise have no reason to obey. Therefore, the state must control the teachings of the Church. This is certainly what Constantine had in mind when he made Christianity the state religion. He never foresaw that the later Popes would attempt to use his very tactic against the state.

The most pivotal belief of Christians and Christianity is the belief in a singular, supreme being whose son and representative they serve as intermediaries. At the time of the forcible imposition of Christianity, monotheism differed radically from the widespread "pagan" belief that divinity could be manifest in a multiplicity of forms and images.

As people were hypnotized to believe that God can have only one face, they also were convinced that worth or godliness among other people can also have but one face. Different genders, races, classes or beliefs were all ordered as "better than" or "less than" one another. No longer could two notions or opinions exist harmoniously together - one of them must be superior to the other. And, this was mandated politically!

Still another teaching of Machiavelli is: The political leader must APPEAR to be religious, even though he neither believes in nor practices religion. This is certainly true of Constantine who actually worshipped Sol Invictus, and was only baptized into Christianity on his death bed as a sort of "Pascal's wager" type of ploy... better to do it and be wrong than to not do it and be wrong. The flagrant LACK of Christianity among the very popes and princes of the church who imposed the system on the masses should tell anyone how much confidence THEY had in the new religion!

Machiavelli writes:

"to see and hear [the Prince], he should seem to be all mercy, faith, integrity, humanity, and religion... for men in general judge more by the eyes than by the heads, for everyone can see but very few have to feel... Let a prince therefore aim at conquering and maintaining the state, and the means will always be judged honourable and praised by everyone, for the vulgar is always taken in by appearances." [Machiavelli, The Prince]

Another precept of a successful plan for the domination of humanity is:

"love is held by a chain of obligation which, men being selfish, is broken whenever it serves their purpose; but fear is maintained by a dread of punishment which never fails." [Ibid.]

Within Christianity, God is understood to reign not by love and support, but by fear. The Bible repeatedly exhorts people to "fear God." The 3rd century Church Father, Tertullian wrote:

"But how are you going to love, without some fear that you do not love? Surely [such a God] is neither your Father, towards whom your love for duty's sake should be consistent with fear because of his power; nor your proper Lord, whom you should love for His humanity and fear as your teacher."

St. John Chrysostom believed that fear was absolutely necessary:

"...if you were to deprive the world of magistrates and the fear that comes from them, houses, cities and nations would fall upon one another in unrestrained confusion, there being no one to repress, or repel, or persuade them to be peaceful through the fear of punishment."

Violence, says Machiavelli, is an effective means of holding onto power. Violence must be used quickly and mercilessly because violence can engender hatred, and hatred can make a person willing even to sacrifice his life in order to gain revenge.

When a new leader comes to power, he should be quick to suppress opposition with complete ruthlessness - cut it off quickly and cleanly. The new ruler should then seek out and cultivate the minority groups that were oppressed under the preceding administration to use them as a foundation of support.

"Christianity owes its large membership to the political maneuvering of orthodox Christians. They succeeded in turning Christianity from an abhorred minor cult into the official religion of the roman Empire. Their goal was to create what Bishop Irenaeus called 'the catholic church dispersed throughout the whole world, even to the ends of the earth.' To that end, they used nearly any means. They revised Christian writings and adapted their principles to make Christianity more acceptable. They pandered to Roman authorities. They incorporated elements of paganism. Orthodox Christianity appealed to the government, not as a religion that would encourage enlightenment or spirituality, but rather as one that would bring order and conformity to the faltering empire. The Roman government in turn granted orthodox Christians unprecedented privilege, enabling the Christian church to become the very sort of authoritarian power Jesus had purportedly resisted!

"Winning acceptance for Christianity was no small feat; Christians were not well-liked within the Roman Empire. Romans had easily incorporated new gods and goddesses into their pantheon with the hope of adding to their own protection and security. The 313 C.E. Edict of Milan, for example, granted everyone religious freedom so 'whatever divinity is enthroned in heaven may be well-disposed and propitious towards us and all those under our authority.' Christians, however, believing theirs to be the one and only god, refused to allow Him to be worshipped alongside others. When they refused to profess loyalty to the Roman pantheon of gods, Christians were seen as likely traitors to the Roman state.

"Christians held attitudes that did little to endear them to Romans. Bishop Irenaeus declared: 'We have no need of the law for we are already far above it in our godly bahavior.' Accounts from around the year 200 reflect the dislike Romans had for Christians: '...they were the ultimate filth,' a gang of ignorant men and credulous women, who with meetings at night, solemn fasts and inhuman food made up a hole-in-the-corner, shadow-loving crew, silent in public, but clacking away in corners, spitting on the gods and laughing at holy things....' "(Gosh! Sounds like the young punk/neo-Nazi type kids of today! Elitist and haters of all who are different from them!)" [Ellerbe, 1995]

The kinds of people that Constantine attracted to Christianity for the purposes of tax avoidance, were exactly the kind of people who would see how useful Christianity could be as a political tool. They not only used politically expedient means, they designed an organization that is clearly NOT focused on developing spiritually, but rather is set up to manage large numbers of people. They simplified the criteria for membership to the "club," by requiring only that a person confess the Creed, accept baptism, participate in worship, obey the church, and believe "the one and only truth handed down from the apostles." Such a criteria suggests, as one historian wrote, "to achieve salvation, an ignoramus need only believe without understanding, and OBEY the authorities."

And that's the key: OBEY.

The Bible was assembled NOT to bring together all the Christian writings, but to cull and curry them so that they would be uniform. By prohibiting and burning any "dissenting" texts, the impression eventually became established that the Bible with its four gospels was the original Christian view! Yet, as late as 450 C.E., Theodore of Cyrrhus mentioned that there were at least 200 different gospels circulating in his diocese. Amazing that none of these have come down to us. These guys are thorough if nothing else!

"Beyond choosing from the many gospels and writings to construct the Bible, the Church edited its message with each translation. The Roman philosopher Celsus, witness to the falsification of Christian writings already in the second century, said of the revisionists: 'Some of them, as it were in a drunken state producing self-induced visions, remodel their Gospel from its first written form and reform it so that they may be able to refute the objections brought against it.'" [Ellerbe, 1995]

The Catholic Encyclopaedia remarks:

"[the] idea of a complete and clear-cut canon of the New Testament existing from the beginning... has no foundation in history." and "In all the departments forgery and interpolation as well as ignorance had wrought mischief on a grand scale."

It was probably thought by the early Church Fathers that they could enlist the aid of the downtrodden and potentially useful Jewish population, by "validating" their God Jehovah through the establishing of his son as the new Representative on Earth. This actually backfired on them, but that is going in another direction. Nevertheless, this amalgamation seems to have been the plan, and the adoption of the Hebrew Bible was a political maneuver. Included in this Bible was the Hebrew myth of creation which assumed a posture of contempt for the female, and this move was used to lock women into the role of passive and inferior beings.

Even today, Hebrew males are taught to offer the daily prayer:

"Blessed art Thou O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has not made me a woman."

As the years went by, the church continued to hold to its course of creating and maintaining a male-dominated society. In the new religion, ALL men were to be considered as direct messengers of the Lord, not just the priests in church, but ordinary men in the privacy of a woman's kitchen and bed. Women were to be obedient, denying themselves the right to speak up and even to think!

All of this was directed at further suppression of the old Pagan religions which were feminine and cyclical, nurturing and cooperative, and which did NOT postulate an End of the World, in which Hell-fire and Damanation were imminent, and for which a "savior" outside of oneself was necessary!

But, back to Machiavelli: he wrote that, as far as possible, a prince should get someone else to do the injuries for him so that any hatred that might arise will then be directed at the perpetrator of the violence, and not at the prince.

A regime based upon the support of the masses is more stable than one based upon the support of the aristocracy, therefore, a prince should found his support on the people rather than the nobility. The politically sophisticated nobility is more likely to suspect the motives of the prince, to distrust his actions, and to look for hidden meanings. Since they are less trusting, they are less manageable and hence, more likely to resist.

Power and authority can be most easily obtained where people obey because they believe that obedience is morally appropriate. Machiavelli taught that authority is preferable to coercion because coercion is a terribly inefficient method to compel obedience. It requires enormous resources to "hold a gun" against the heads of the masses. Because, in the end, raw power is inadequate in holding a whole population in line through the use of force.

Therefore, an astute prince would harness the power of emotions and manage the passions rather than guide men through reason. The prince must make use of the human passions of love, hate, fear, desire for glory and power, and even boredom.

According to the standard Christian History, after Constantine, there were the barbarian hordes. The adoption and imposition of Christianity was followed by the fall of the Roman Empire. But that is, in fact, false.

If you have been reading carefully, you have noted that Constantine packed up his marbles and went elsewhere to play. If Rome would not accept him, he wasn't going to play in their sandbox anymore. And with him went the majority of Christians - the real ones who wanted to escape ongoing persecution in Rome and the fake ones who were just after a tax break. What's more, for the seekers of the "treasure" from the temple in Jerusalem, supposedly confiscated by the Emperor Titus, if such ever existed, it went with Constantine to Byzantium along with all the other treasures of the Roman Empire.

The overview of Christian history that we have presented in the first half of this chapter is a veritable lie. It survives only because it ignores what threatens it. It is sufficient to the average person because it is easy to believe, and there is no cognitive dissonance against that which compromises it. It sustains itself by the ignorance of the masses. It completely ignores the real history - and this real history DOES exist - of the first 500 years of Christianity - dismissing it as years of chaos and uncertainty. It dismisses as insignificant the very Roman Empire which it so confidently asserts that it represents, tossing aside the stupendous wealth, power and achievements - not to mention the overwhelming numbers of Christians - of the Byzantine Empire. The REAL history of Christianity becomes a mere footnote in the writings of the myopic Edward Gibbon. History becomes a well-told fable instead of an honest attempt to understand where we came from and where we might be going.

And the lies pile higher and higher.

One thousand, six hundred seventy-seven years ago, on November 4th, 326 AD, Constantine laid the foundation stone of his new city, Constantinople, on the site of the ancient city of Byzantium.

A curious sidenote is that I actually was reading about this fact on the anniversary of that day. And, as I was reading it, our Sun spat out the biggest coronal mass ejection in our recorded history of solar observations. I did, indeed, think that it was a rather fitting cosmic punctuation mark to the matters that concern me at the moment: the take-over of our planet by a cult that does not have the best interests of humanity at heart.

In any event, the day was chosen because it was astrologically favorable: the Sun was in Sagittarius and Cancer was on the ascendant, the ancient writers tell us. What I find to be even more interesting is that the essential parts of the city necessary for the new inhabitants to take up residence there, were completed on May 11, 330. Now those are numbers to make any numerologist or esotericist smile with secret delight!

Forty days of celebration followed with bread, circuses and ceremony. Constantine personally supervised every detail and he was able to entice many of the Roman elite and aristocrats to Byzantium by creating replicas of their Roman villas beside the Bosphorus.

Constantinople had seven hills, just like Rome, and Tyche was the tutelary goddess of the city, but beyond that, there were few resemblances. Constantinople was designed to be the Capital of the New World Order. It was on Hellenic ground that Christianity became fused with the Roman state and it was known as the Kingdom of the Holy Grail.

Constantine was the great High-Priest and spiritual father of many Sovereigns of the Grail and he received, so the legends say, from two angels, the symbols of his power. As secular guardian of the Kingdom of God, he was initiated by a cherub into the mysteries of Greek fire - the technique of flame-throwers and poison gas. And, since he was also defender of the faith, a second cherub bestowed upon him the magical crown jewels of the Byzantine Empire.

Constantine's Imperial regalia was not the helmet of a warrior or other implements of violence. The Byzantine diadem was the fillet of a priest, the taenia of the adept. Even though it was changed three times in the course of eleven centuries, it kept always the free-flowing "umbilicus" of the brain signifying the link between the eternal and temporal. In fact, the word "religare" - to bind - has always constituted the essence of religion.

Constantine was a master statesman. It is clear from the history of his reign that - other than the violent passion he must have experienced that drove him to murder his wife and son - he never took desperate chances. He was so good at playing the game of the diplomat that when he died, not only was he regarded as a saint by the Christians, but the pagans elevated him to the position of a god in the Roman pantheon. (Rome was still pagan at this point and for a long time to come.) On the reverse side of his coins there was a plainly engraved image of Mithra with the words: "To my Companion." You could say it was a different spin on the currently popular "Walk with Jesus" motto. This money was circulated everywhere, but at the same time, Constantine commissioned the building of St. Peter's and the Lateran - paid for with Mithraic money!

The Labarum, the imperial standard that Constantine had used as the "sign" by which he conquered, was actually a skilfull reworking of an old Roman legion ensign that now masqueraded as the monogram of Christ.

The Roman army, at that period, consisted mostly of Teutons, Celts and Slavs. Few of them could read Greek and so, the Chi Rho of the Imperial standard meant nothing to them except the fact that it was the emblem under which their commander achieved an unbroken series of victories in battle.

Now, even the most righteous among us are probably not offended by cleverness and quick thinking such as that displayed by Constantine. But what IS worrisome is that the claimed visions of signs from god and angels so shrewdly promulgated by a guy with an urge to rule all of the known world, have been adapted to a religion and presented as truth at innumberable 11 am sermons for hundreds of years!

A more brazen "mystical union" could hardly be conceived.

Unquestionably, we can detect the political maneuvers of the Council of Nicaea. There are letters and other documents that show us how little Constantine actually cared for doctrine. He was interested in one thing and one thing only, creating a religion that would enable him to rule the world. And it has been used for this purpose ever since.

Ten years before his death, Constantine divided his empire among his sons and a nephew. He certainly knew that no such arrangement would last and must have wanted to force the stronger of the four to prove himself.

When he died, his body was embalmed and continued to "rule" - his mail was read to him, state reports were presented to him, and no decision was made behind the dead Emperor's back- for almost a year until the arrival of his son, Constantius. Then, the body of the first Sovereign of the Grail was interred in the Church of the Apostles where thirteen porphyry sarcophagi had been arranged by constantine: twelve for the apostles, and the central one for himself.

Then, for the first time, was intoned the words to be repeated for the next eleven hundred years whenever a Priest King of Imperial Byzantium - the Kingdom of the Grail - was laid to rest:

"Arise, Lord of the World. The King of Kings awaits thee for the Last Judgment."

Continued...

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