Jesus and the Lost Goddess

Drawing on modern scholarship, the authors of the international bestseller The Jesus Mysteries decode the secret teachings of the original Christians for the first time in almost two millennia and theorize about who the original Christians really were and what they actually taught.

In addition, the book explores the many myths of Jesus and the Goddess and unlocks the lost secret teachings of Christian mysticism, which promise happiness and immortality to those who attain the state of Gnosis, or enlightenment. This daring and controversial book recovers the ancient wisdom of the original Christians and demonstrates its relevance to us today.

Author Biography

Timothy Freke (left) has a degree in philosophy, is the author of more than twenty books, and is an authority on world spirituality.

Peter Gandy (right) has an M.A. in classical civilization, specializing in the ancient mystery religions. They have coauthored three previous publications: The Jesus Mysteries, The Complete Guide to World Mysticism, and Hermetica.

Excerpt:

Page 208

Like the Christian Gnostics, the Islamic Gnostics were internationalists who embraced wisdom wherever they could find it, regardless of religious, cultural or political boundaries. They honoured the Pagan philosophers and translated their works into Arabic. Ibn Arabi was so immersed in Pagan Gnosticism that he was known as 'the Son of Plato'. Suhrawardi, who was honoured as 'the Master of Illumination', taught that all the sages of the ancient world had preached one doctrine which had reached him through his teachers al-Bistami and al-Hallaj. He portrayed the Pagan sages Pythagoras and Empedocles as Sufis, clearly equating Islam and Paganism in the same way that the original Christians equated Christianity and Paganism. Suhrawardi attempted to create a universal philosophical system which united all spiritual traditions into one - for which noble endeavor the Islamic Literalists had him put to death.

Islamic Gnostics adopted Pagan and Christian images, such as the Cross of Light. They encoded traditional Gnostic ideas into their own myths - for example, the ladder of seven steps leading to the ogdoad and the heavenly pleroma became Mohammad's mythical journey of seven steps to heaven. Like pagan and Christian Gnosics, the Islamic Gnostics also portrayed this world as the underworld of the spiritually dead. Rumi writes:

'The mind sees things inside-out. What it takes to be life is really death, and what it takes to be death is really life.'

End excerpt.