NOT-VIOLENT TERROR
13 The Unmaking of Jesus (cont.)
The story of the murder of the Bogomil leader Basil by the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I is a story well known in the 12th century when it took place. It is not so today. Today many people are likely to be shocked to hear that what happened to Basil is a story that parallels closely to what happened to Jesus. There is a reason and explanation for this.
The story of Jesus was created around the story of Basil. The dreadful events that overtook Basil provided a ready available armature for the story for then emerging neo-Christian church founded by the Byzantine emperor Alexius I. Of course, the new story is reaches us not only inverted in the reasons for it happening, but the main cathartic events were changed from burning to being nailed to a cross. The reasons for these changes, too, are founded on the need to divert the public’s attention from what really happened.
Most likely these events happened under the rule of the Byzantine empire’s Emperor Alexius I. The Emperor felt compelled to change the story and found a new church and a new religion, for two main reasons.
1. The arch-Christian church, what we today derogatorily call the cult of “pagans”—of which Alexius his predecessors and I had been the sacred kings—had for many years felt alienated from their king. The people had once called their kings “the sacred king”. However, something increasingly unacceptable happened. For several consecutive generations the sacred king began to fail to fulfill his sacred function—which was to act the role of the kingdom’s founding father—by reenacting the founding violent moment by self-sacrificing himself. Since time immemorial, the founding moment (of death and miraculous rebirth) was celebrated during the annual solstice festivals. The festivals, one in winter and one in summer, generally went by their local name, but for the most part retained the root name of the sacred being: John, Yan. We see this practice in such names as Ivan Kapusta, John the Baptist, Yannukah, Hunnapu, Yohammad, and so on. Depending on the age of the sacred king (whether young or old), the length of his reign was determined by priests. Usually the agon, the moment of self-sacrifice, came with an obviously old age.
In any event, the sacred king of the Byzantine empire began to act increasingly as merely a king, that is to say, a man with a standing army who could and often did rob his people, his neighbors, aggrandized himself, and dictated what people should or should not do and think. In short, there occurred mutual alienation between the king’s and the people. Eventually, this alienation reached a stage, where it broke out into a civil war. As part of his war effort, the emperor needed to kill not only the Johns, the wandering priests of arch-Christendom, but also to replace their ideas with ideas of his own.
2. It is probable hat the alienation between the sacred king and the people began when the king began to use a number of the priests to the Sun, as not only his bookkeepers, but collectors of the gifts that the people donated to the temple-palace. These priests, were self-castrated devotees of the Sun, and, thus, not attracted to women for sexual reasons. This made them attentive workers and bookkeepers. Unfortunately, since the priests were such competent gift collectors, the sacred king soon discovered a way to have them collect more gifts than was customary. In time, the word “gift” came to mean “tax”.
At first, the tax was used to build grander temples, which then became the sacred king’s palaces, which of course soon no longer pretended to be temples. As the sacred king abandoned the temple for the palace, he became what today we call a temporal or secular man, an atheist as religiously devoted to materialism, as the sacred king had once been devoted to the aura of charisma that held the community under its umbrage. The temple prostitutes (women who wished to make the temple especially attractive as a place for leaving gifts) became part of the king’s harem. The “gifts” paid for a standing army, employed an increasingly large number of artists and artisans, and so on. Indeed, the king abandoned the ancient practice of self-sacrifice and began to seek ways to escape death altogether. This is what is behind the stories where kings and heroes go out on adventures to seek the magic plant (usually guarded by a serpent), the eating of which will give one immortality.
However,
3. The priests of Iananna (the Johns) learned not only how to do bookkeeping and collect taxes, they needed to invent writing to do so. And they did so. With the invention of writing, the castrates learned not only how to record old stories, but invent new ones. Some of the stories, which the priests invented, did not sit well with the king. He began to fear that they would take power away from him. This fear was the cause for discovering various ways by which to bind the priests closer to the palace and alienate them from the temple.
This is how there developed two factions of priests. One faction stayed with the people. These were the wandering preachers, the Johns. The other faction became known as “Jews”, most likely a word that was semantically connected to words for gifts and taxes. The word “jewel” comes to mind. The Jews necessarily became involved in palace intrigue, while the Johns remained of the people.
13 The Unmaking of Jesus (cont.)
The story of the murder of the Bogomil leader Basil by the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I is a story well known in the 12th century when it took place. It is not so today. Today many people are likely to be shocked to hear that what happened to Basil is a story that parallels closely to what happened to Jesus. There is a reason and explanation for this.
The story of Jesus was created around the story of Basil. The dreadful events that overtook Basil provided a ready available armature for the story for then emerging neo-Christian church founded by the Byzantine emperor Alexius I. Of course, the new story is reaches us not only inverted in the reasons for it happening, but the main cathartic events were changed from burning to being nailed to a cross. The reasons for these changes, too, are founded on the need to divert the public’s attention from what really happened.
Most likely these events happened under the rule of the Byzantine empire’s Emperor Alexius I. The Emperor felt compelled to change the story and found a new church and a new religion, for two main reasons.
1. The arch-Christian church, what we today derogatorily call the cult of “pagans”—of which Alexius his predecessors and I had been the sacred kings—had for many years felt alienated from their king. The people had once called their kings “the sacred king”. However, something increasingly unacceptable happened. For several consecutive generations the sacred king began to fail to fulfill his sacred function—which was to act the role of the kingdom’s founding father—by reenacting the founding violent moment by self-sacrificing himself. Since time immemorial, the founding moment (of death and miraculous rebirth) was celebrated during the annual solstice festivals. The festivals, one in winter and one in summer, generally went by their local name, but for the most part retained the root name of the sacred being: John, Yan. We see this practice in such names as Ivan Kapusta, John the Baptist, Yannukah, Hunnapu, Yohammad, and so on. Depending on the age of the sacred king (whether young or old), the length of his reign was determined by priests. Usually the agon, the moment of self-sacrifice, came with an obviously old age.
In any event, the sacred king of the Byzantine empire began to act increasingly as merely a king, that is to say, a man with a standing army who could and often did rob his people, his neighbors, aggrandized himself, and dictated what people should or should not do and think. In short, there occurred mutual alienation between the king’s and the people. Eventually, this alienation reached a stage, where it broke out into a civil war. As part of his war effort, the emperor needed to kill not only the Johns, the wandering priests of arch-Christendom, but also to replace their ideas with ideas of his own.
2. It is probable hat the alienation between the sacred king and the people began when the king began to use a number of the priests to the Sun, as not only his bookkeepers, but collectors of the gifts that the people donated to the temple-palace. These priests, were self-castrated devotees of the Sun, and, thus, not attracted to women for sexual reasons. This made them attentive workers and bookkeepers. Unfortunately, since the priests were such competent gift collectors, the sacred king soon discovered a way to have them collect more gifts than was customary. In time, the word “gift” came to mean “tax”.
At first, the tax was used to build grander temples, which then became the sacred king’s palaces, which of course soon no longer pretended to be temples. As the sacred king abandoned the temple for the palace, he became what today we call a temporal or secular man, an atheist as religiously devoted to materialism, as the sacred king had once been devoted to the aura of charisma that held the community under its umbrage. The temple prostitutes (women who wished to make the temple especially attractive as a place for leaving gifts) became part of the king’s harem. The “gifts” paid for a standing army, employed an increasingly large number of artists and artisans, and so on. Indeed, the king abandoned the ancient practice of self-sacrifice and began to seek ways to escape death altogether. This is what is behind the stories where kings and heroes go out on adventures to seek the magic plant (usually guarded by a serpent), the eating of which will give one immortality.
However,
3. The priests of Iananna (the Johns) learned not only how to do bookkeeping and collect taxes, they needed to invent writing to do so. And they did so. With the invention of writing, the castrates learned not only how to record old stories, but invent new ones. Some of the stories, which the priests invented, did not sit well with the king. He began to fear that they would take power away from him. This fear was the cause for discovering various ways by which to bind the priests closer to the palace and alienate them from the temple.
This is how there developed two factions of priests. One faction stayed with the people. These were the wandering preachers, the Johns. The other faction became known as “Jews”, most likely a word that was semantically connected to words for gifts and taxes. The word “jewel” comes to mind. The Jews necessarily became involved in palace intrigue, while the Johns remained of the people.
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