It was given to a contemporary of Jesus to become the means of pointing out to posterity, by his interpretation of the oldest literature of Israel, how deeply the kabalistic philosophy agreed in its esoterism with that of the profoundest Greek thinkers. This contemporary, an ardent disciple of Plato and Aristotle, was Philo Judaeus. While explaining the Mosaic books according to a purely kabalistic method, he is the famous Hebrew writer whom Kingsley calls the Father of New Platonism.
It is evident that Philo’s Therapeutes are a branch of the Essenes. Their name indicates it - ’Εσσαίοι, Asaya, physician. Hence, the contradictions, forgeries, and other desperate expedients to reconcile the prophecies of the Jewish canon with the Galilean nativity and godship.
Luke, who was a physician, is designated in the Syriac texts as Asaia, the Essaian or Essene. Josephus and Philo Judaeus have sufficiently described this sect to leave no doubt in our mind that the Nazarene Reformer, after having received his education in their dwellings in the desert, and been duly initiated in the Mysteries, preferred the free and independent life of a wandering Nazaria, and so separated or inazarenized himself from them, thus becoming a travelling Therapeute, a Nazaria, a healer. Every Therapeute, before quitting his community, had to do the same. Both Jesus and St. John the Baptist preached the end of the Age;[1] which proves their knowledge of the secret computation of the priests and kabalists, who with the chiefs of the Essene communities alone had the secret of the duration of the cycles. The latter were kabalists and theurgists; “they had their mystic books, and predicted future events”, says Munk.[2]
Dunlap, whose personal researches seem to have been quite successful in that direction, traces the Essenes, Nazarenes, Dositheans, and some other sects as having all existed before Christ: “They rejected pleasures, despised riches, loved one another, and more than other sects, neglected wedlock, deeming the conquest of the passions to be virtuous”,[3] he says.
These are all virtues preached by Jesus; and if we are to take the gospels as a standard of truth, Christ was a metempsychosist “or re-incarnationist” - again like these same Essenes, whom we see were Pythagoreans in all their doctrine and habits. Iamblichus asserts that the Samian philosopher spent a certain time at Carmel with them.[4] In his discourses and sermons, Jesus always spoke in parables and used metaphors with his audience. This habit was again that of the Essenians and the Nazarenes; the Galileans who dwelt in cities and villages were never known to use such allegorical language. Indeed, some of his disciples being Galileans as well as himself, felt even surprised to find him using with the people such a form of expression. “Why speakest thou unto them in parables?” [5] they often inquired. “Because, it is given unto you to know the Mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given”, was the reply, which was that of an initiate. “Therefore, I speak unto them in parables; because, they seeing, see not, and hearing, they hear not, neither do they understand.” Moreover, we find Jesus expressing his thoughts still clearer - and in sentences which are purely Pythagorean - when, during the Sermon on the Mount, he says:
“Give ye not that which is sacred to the dogs,
Neither cast ye your pearls before swine;
For the swine will tread them under their feet
And the dogs will turn and rend you.”
Professor A. Wilder, the editor of Taylor’s Eleusinian Mysteries, observes “a like disposition on the part of Jesus and Paul to classify their doctrines as esoteric and exoteric, the Mysteries of the Kingdom of God ‘for the apostles’, and ‘parables’ for the multitude. ‘We speak wisdom’, says Paul, ‘among them that are perfect’ (or initiated).” [6]
NOTES BY H.P.B.:
[1] The real meaning of the division into ages is esoteric and Buddhistic. So little did the uninitiated Christians understand it that they accepted the words of Jesus literally and firmly believed that he meant the end of the world. There had been many prophecies about the forthcoming age. Virgil, in the fourth Eclogue, mentions the Metatron - a new offspring, with whom the iron age shall end and a golden one arise.
[2] “Palestine”, p. 525, et seq.
[3] “Sod”, vol. ii., Preface, p. xi.
[4] “Vit. Pythag.” Munk derives the name of the Iessaens or Essenes from the Syriac Asaya - the healers, or physicians, thus showing their identity with the Egyptian Therapeutae. “Palestine”, p. 515.
[5] Matthew xiii. 10.
[6] “Eleusinian Mysteries”, p. 15.
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The above text is a fragment from “Isis Unveiled, Volume II”. See pp. 144-145. It was published as part of the May 2024 edition of The Aquarian Theosophist, pp. 1-3. The article is available as an independent item on the websites of the Independent Lodge of Theosophists since 11 June 2026.
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Helena Blavatsky (photo) wrote these words: “Deserve, then desire”.
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