Towards a New Jerusalem: A Gathering of Jacobites, Scottish Rite-Rosicrucian Freemasons, Moravians, Sabbatian Jews and the Father of Theosophy Part II
In Part I of this series we left off with the false Messiah Sabbatai Zevi changing the year of his bringing forward the Messianic era and redemption for the Jewish people from 1648 (which was prophesised in the Kabbalah) to the year 1666 (which was prophesised by the Book of Revelation), after he had failed to bring it forward in the former year.
Recall that Sabbatai Zevi would begin the Sabbatian movement, where the concept of “Holy Sin” had been introduced. Central to his teachings was the belief that during the Messianic Age, acts traditionally considered sinful would be transformed into righteous ones.
Sabbatai Zevi was born in Smyrna, Turkey under the Ottoman Empire. His father Mordecai worked in Morea, the Peloponnese peninsula in southern Greece. Morea had gone through Byzantine, Ottoman and later Venetian rule. During the Ottoman-Venetian wars, Smyrna became the center of Levantine trade. Mordecai would become a Smyrnan agent for an English trading house, achieving great wealth.[1]
This is significant since it is believed by historians that the Book of Revelation date, the Christian prophecy of the return of the Messiah, likely came to Mordecai, who was an Ottoman Jew, through his relations with the British.
The Book of Revelation, also known as the Book of the Apocalypse, or the Apocalypse of John, would prophesise that the year 1666 would bring forth the Apocalypse along with the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. John writes that this would be accompanied by visions of a woman clothed with the sun and with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars, the Serpent, the Seven-Headed Dragon, and the Beast. In Revelation 13:18 it states “Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.”
Note that Aleister Crowley would call himself “the Beast 666.”
The year 1666 would also have importance within the Old Testament with the reference to Gog from Magog, later referred to as Gog and Magog in Jewish tradition. The Gog prophecy is meant to be fulfilled at the approach of what is called the "end of days." In the Book Ezekiel, the prophet records a series of visions he has received. Ezekiel is a priest of Solomon’s Temple, who was among the captives during the Babylonian exile.
‘The Babylonian captivity or Babylonian exile was the period in Jewish history during which a large number of Judeans from the ancient Kingdom of Judah were exiled to Babylonia by the Neo-Babylonian Empire. The expulsions occurred in multiple waves: After the siege of Jerusalem in 597 BCE, around 7,000 individuals were exiled to Mesopotamia. Further expulsions followed the destruction of Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple in 587 BCE.’[2]
Ezekiel tells his fellow Jewish captives in Babylon that the exile is God’s punishment on Israel for turning away, but that God will restore his people to Jerusalem when they return to him. ‘After this message of reassurance, chapters 38–39, the Gog oracle, tell how Gog of Magog and his hordes will threaten the restored Israel but will be destroyed, after which God will establish a new Temple and dwell with his people for a period of lasting peace (chapters 40–48).’[3]
Thus, Gog and Magog appear to be relating to the work of the Devil who will bring forward the end of days that will in turn invoke the second coming of the Messiah.
Gog and Magog would also be incorporated into a medieval British tale and a strange City of London tradition as protectors of the city.
The Lord Mayor of London’s annual parade is one of the oldest civic parades in the world, where among many strange things are the parading of the giants Gog and Magog who are viewed as the traditional guardians of the City of London.
According to this storyline, Gog and Magog, sometimes written as Gogmagog and Corineus (from older writings), are mythical pagan giants whose origins lie in the medieval legends of the early British Kings.
Stephen Liddell writes on his blog Musings on a Mad World:
The story goes that the Roman Emperor Diocletian had thirty-three wicked daughters. He managed to find thirty-three husbands to curb their unruly ways, but the daughters were not pleased and under the leadership of their eldest sister Alba they plotted to cut the throats of their husbands as they slept.
For this crime they were set adrift in a boat with half a year’s rations, and after a long and dreadful journey they arrived at a great island that came to be named Albion, after the elder sibling. They decided to set up home in Albion and with the assistance of demons they populated the wild, windswept islands with a race of giants.
Some time later Brutus, the great-grandson of Aeneas, fled after the fall of Troy and by way of various scrapes arrived at the same islands. He too named them for himself, so we also know them as Britain. With him he brought his most able warrior and champion Corineus, who faced the leader of the giants in single combat and eventually hurled him from a high rock to his death. The name of the giant was Gogmagog and the rock from which he was thrown became known as Langnagog or ‘The Giants Leap’. As a reward Corineus was given the western part of the island, which came to be called Cornwall after him. Brutus travelled to the east and founded the city of New Troy, which we know as London. How this ties in with King Lud who also founded London and indeed the historically slightly more certain King Cassivellanus…is all a little bit conflicting!
The full story can be found in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s twelfth century Historia Regum Brittaniae, a largely fanciful (but hugely influential) history that connects Celtic royalty to the heroic world of the Greek myth by way of the old Welsh legend of King Arthur. Those who enjoy history might know that the fall of Troy was about 2300 years before the reign of Diocletian and that the name Gogmagog is a mangled borrowing from the Old Testament, but these histories were accepted as fact for centuries and would have real importance to the mediaeval participants in the Mayor’s procession.
The custom of carrying effigies and images such as Gog and Magog at festivals can be said to be a relic of the days when the same festival would have revolved around a human sacrifice. The victim was replaced with a symbolic representation, and as the old rites were incorporated into the Church the sacrificial effigy became the saint who had made the sacrifice. Whatever one thinks of this theory, the custom of carrying effigies at festivals was widespread in the middle ages both in England and on the continent, and the giants of myth were among them. The tall figures that you will see on the day of the Lord Mayor’s Show are just the latest in a long line of pagan effigies that go back at least a thousand years and a few miles away there is the annual festival at St Albans where effigies are brought through the street to commemorate historical events there.
So according to this legend, Britain apparently began with Alba and her sisters procreating with demons and siring a race of giants, two of them who are now viewed as guardians of the City of London….
The year 1666 was believed by many in Britain to be as the Book of Revelation had prophesied.
On Sunday, September 2, 1666 a fire started in the medieval City of London. It appears to be the general consensus that the fire was allowed to grow out of control due to the refusal or “delay” of the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Bloodworth, in ordering for firebreaks to be setup in a timely fashion. This delay allowed for the fire to spread over nearly the whole city by Tuesday and lasted until Wednesday September 5, 1666. By then most of the city had been burned down. London at the time was the largest city in Britain and the third largest city in the Western world with an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 inhabitants. The death toll from the fire is not clear.
Strangely, the City of London would choose the giants Gog and Magog as their guardians and are located in the Guildhall, the ancient seat of power of the City of London Corporation.
If you look at Magog’s shield, you will see the emblem of the phoenix, which symbolises how the City of London rose from the ashes after the Great Fire of 1666, and was reborn anew…
1666 the Beginning of the New Millenium
It is here that we will resume our story where we left off in Part I. By the year 1666 there was great rejoicing among the Jews of Poland who believed that after years of great persecution, their people would finally be redeemed.
S.M. Dubnow writes in History of the Jews in Russia and Poland (1916):
The Jews – says the contemporary Ukrainian writer Galatovski – triumphed. Some abandoned their houses and property, refusing to do any work and claiming that the Messiah would soon arrive and carry them on a cloud to Jerusalem. Others fasted for days, denying food even to their little ones…
‘Sabbatai Zevi was to begin his work of redemption by dethroning the Sultan of Turkey, who at that time ruled over the Holy Land. Two days before the beginning of the year 1666 he departed for Constantinople where he was to do his Messianic work. On his arrival there he was imprisoned and then sent to the fortress of Abydos in Gallipoli. But the strength of his support was so great that the prison was transformed into a royal residence to which Jews from all over the world flocked bearing gifts. He had become the spiritual leader of hundreds of thousands of people.’[4]
Zevi was visited by the Polish Kabbalist Nehemiah HaKohen who came to interview him in his captivity. Due to HaKohen’s knowledge of the Kabbalah, he was sent in 1666 by the Jewish communities of Poland to Gallipoli, where Sabbatai Zevi was being detained in order to investigate his claim of being the Messiah. The meeting did not go well and HaKohen declared Zevi an impostor. It was said that some Sabbatians around Zevi were contemplating murdering HaKohen and he ran onto the street declaring his wish to convert to Islam whereupon an Islamic turban was placed on his head and he was declared to be a Muslim, thus offering him protection within the Ottoman Empire. [5]
HaKohen manages to gain an audience with the Turkish kaymakam over Zevi’s ambitions to dethrone the Sultan, who then informs the Sultan Mehmed IV of Zevi’s plot. Zevi was given three choices by the Sultan: subject himself to a trial of his divinity in the form of a volley of arrows (should the archers miss, his divinity would be proven), be impaled, or convert to Islam.[6] [7]
Towards the end of the year 1666 for which the redemption was scheduled, Zevi appeared before the Sultan, casted off his Jewish clothing and put a turban on his head, thereby converting to Islam. Zevi was then given a title of nobility, effendi, and worked as the Sultan’s doorkeeper on a generous salary. His wife Sarah along with approximately 300 families converted to Islam following Zevi and became known as the Dönme. Zevi ordered that all his followers now wear turbines.
This obviously created a massive spiritual upheaval.
The Jewish people had been ready to receive the Messiah and were overcome with joy over this prospect. The long-awaited redemption had come. What had been a hope and a dream was about to finally become a reality, or so they believed. The proof that the thousands of years of suffering which the Jews had experienced had not been in vain was soon to be revealed.
David Bakan writes in Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition:[8]
Sabbatianism did not pass away with the conversion of Sabbatai Zevi, however. Among some it led to a kind of spiritual nausea that persisted for centuries, based on the sense of having been trifled with and betrayed. Other groups followed the lead of Sabbatai Zevi and became Moslems. Large numbers of Jews sought the traditional safety of orthodox Judaism, redoubling their efforts to satisfy every demand to the last letter in the rabbinic mood. But most important, it represented a turn of the mystical impulse from an esoteric study to a large scale movement, with important political, social, and economic consequences. There is little doubt but that it was revolutionary, that it made cracks in the old system of rabbinical rule, and that the disruption which was experienced had to be countered by the Jewish community for centuries afterward. According to Scholem, Sabbatianism was largely responsible for the creation of the atmosphere which eventually led to the Jewish reform movement in the nineteenth century.
Sabbatianism continued to propagate itself as a sect in spite of strenuous efforts to blot it out. The orthodox rabbis persecuted the Sabbatians and invoked the herem (excommunication) against them. Groups of Jews clung to the idea that Sabbatai Zevi was the Messiah and continued to worship him. A Lithuanian Jew by the name of Zadok prophesied that 1695 would be the date of the coming of the Messiah. A Kabbalist, Hayim Malakh, preached that Sabbatai Zevi was really the Messiah, but as with Moses who kept the Jews from entering the Holy Land for forty years, forty years would have to elapse between 1666 and 1706 before the redemption would come. In 1700 Hayim Malakh together with Judah Hasid led a trek of about 1300 people to the Holy Land to be ready for the appearance of the Messiah in 1706. About a thousand survived the arduous journey. In their disillusioned wait, some became Christians, some Moslems, some returned to Poland to spread fantastic mystical tales, while others stayed and developed strange rites which, it is alleged, was a dance about a wooden image of Sabbatai Zevi.
Sabbatianism presented the first translation of Kabbalistic doctrines into a major social movement. However, the failure of Zevi in performing the redemption of the Jews as the self-declared Messiah produced deep distrust in Messianism more generally and a heavy shame within Jewish communities who had spent months or longer in an elated state, refusing to work and do other menial tasks, believing that they would be taken away from their hardships - these people now felt like fools and it was ever harder to return to that life in which they so desperately wished to escape from.
Sabbatian literature and associations were destroyed. It became common to say that the movement had only been a minor one, that only a small group participated in such folly. It also became common to overlook the degree to which Sabbatianism took hold of those among the most orthodox. People who descended from Sabbatian families would conceal their background.[9]
Bakan continues:[10]
Scholem advances an interesting hypothesis…that Sabbatianism, encountering the emancipation of the Jews in the nineteenth century, passes into a rationalism which tends to conceal its Sabbatian origins.[11] After the French Revolution, it was the Sabbatian groups still within the Jewish fold that fostered the movements toward reform, liberalism, and the enlightenment.[12] Sabbatianism articulated with rationalism in several ways. For one thing, although Sabbatianism had its own collection of myths, it was opposed to the myths of orthodoxy. For another, the Sabbatians held to a doctrine of the necessity of the descent into evil in order to attain spiritual liberation, a doctrine which was to be endowed with specific sexual reference by the Frankists[13]…The “holiness’ of participating in all things, evil or non-evil, already contains a harbinger of the more enlightened view of pursuing truth no matter where it might lead, with full confidence that “truth” must lead to good. But perhaps most important is the fact that Sabbatianism, as a form of mysticism, shares with rationalism the conviction that the world of reality, all reality, may be apprehended by, and encompassed in, thought. And…Sabbatianism encouraged concern with the forbidden areas of human experience.
In such a movement toward the world of Western civilization, Sabbatianism lent itself as a rationalization of apostasy. Although the failure of a Messianic prediction may have the effect of disillusionment, it may also act paradoxically to make the original conviction even stronger. This is what took place in the instance of Sabbatianism.
‘One of the more important supports to Sabbatianism came from the Marrano Jews who had migrated from Spain into other parts of Europe. During the great persecution of the Spanish Jews in the fifteenth century, many permitted themselves to be baptized, behaving outwardly as Christians. In secret, they managed to maintain their Jewish identity and some of the Jewish practices. It is a phenomenal fact that they were able to work out a system of religious duplicity which could be maintained for generations. In the seventh century many of these Jews fled from Spain to other parts of Europe and quickly reasserted their Judaism. Nevertheless, guilt feeling over their apostasy was still very strong, and this made the figure of Sabbatai Zevi extremely attractive, especially and paradoxically because of his apostasy.’[14]
‘The fact that the Messiah should have been an apostate served to reinforce the Marrano acceptance of him. They themselves had been apostates and suffered guilt because of it. The image of a Messiah who had, like themselves, been forced into the violation of the critical commandment not to worship strange gods, served the function of relieving them from their deep sense of guilt.’[15]
And so the concept of “Holy Sin” and apostasy became core tenets to the Sabbatian movement. Jacob Frank (1726-1791) a Polish Jew would be the next great leader of the movement. He proclaimed himself to be the reincarnation of the self-proclaimed messiah Sabbatai Zevi (1626-1676). Frank would work closely with the Moravian “Christians” under Zinzendorf to create a strange and rather monstrous mix of religions and mysticisms. Frank would later encourage his followers to convert to Christianity, more specifically to that of the Moravian Church (more on this later in this series).
The Moravians claim that they descended from the Unitas Fratum (Unity of the Brethren), there is debate around this which will be discussed further in this series. However, assuming there is truth to this for now, the Moravians would have suffered centuries of persecution by the Catholics, the Jesuits playing a large role. Thus, the Moravians would share a degree of experience and hardship in common with the Jewish communities in Eastern Europe who had also suffered centuries of persecution, particularly with those who continued to have faith in Sabbatianism. Both the Moravians and the Sabbatians would look more towards mysticism and the concept of “Holy Sin” as avenues for salvation in the new Millenium.
The Moravians (under Unitas Fratum) were almost entirely wiped out on several occasions throughout the centuries, living in Bohemia and Moravia which were under heavy Catholic rule. In order to survive and continue their religion they had to live in caves buried deep in the forest and remained hidden there for years. Because of this, they came to be known as the “Pitmen.” By the time of the Thirty Years War the church and its members were effectively all destroyed. The few who survived had remained scattered and isolated. When they finally re-emerged they had come to be known as the “Hidden Seed” and with their new leadership under Nikolaus von Zinzendorf, they were radically reformed. They became what is arguably the first communes based on the principles of radical socialism as well as the adherence to “Holy Sin,” very similar to how the Sabbatians viewed it. Through these communes that had spread throughout Europe and the world (including the United States), it was reported that anything that had been considered forbidden from the old world was now to be considered a virtue in the new Millennia – a New Age that had been brought forward by an apostate Messiah.
Part III “Tiberius’ Temple of Apollo: From Clairvaux’s Templars & Erotic Mysticism to Zinzendorf’s Moravian Brotherhood & the Sex Cult Communes”
Cynthia Chung is the President of the Rising Tide Foundation and author of the books “The Shaping of a World Religion” & “The Empire on Which the Black Sun Never Set,” consider supporting her work by making a donation and subscribing to her substack page Through A Glass Darkly.
Also watch for free our RTF Docu-Series “Escaping Calypso’s Island: A Journey Out of Our Green Delusion” and our CP Docu-Series “The Hidden Hand Behind UFOs”.
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Footnotes:
[1] Singer, Isidore; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.
[2] Babylonian captivity. Source: Wikipedia.
[3] Ibid
[4] David Bakan. Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition (2004). pg. 98.
[5] Kaufmann Kohler and M. Seligsohn (1901–1906). "NEHEMIAH HA-KOHEN". In Singer, Isidore; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. Jewish Encyclopedia bibliography: Jacob Emden, Torat ha-Ḳena'ot, pp. 17-18, 26, Lemberg, 1804; Me'ora'ot Ẓebi, pp. 54-55, Warsaw, 1890.
[6] Ibid
[7] HaKohen would later claim that he only converted to Islam to gain access to the Sultan but that it was not a true conversion. He returned to Poland where rather strangely he would continue to extol the teachings of Zevi and the Sabbatian movement and considered himself still a Sabbatian. He declared himself a fervent adherent to Zevi as the true Messiah, relating wonders performed by him. HaKohen even went so far as to declare himself “Messiah ben Joseph”, the precursor of the great Messiah. In consequence, Polish communities excommunicated him. Source: Jewish Encyclopedia.
[8] David Bakan. Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition (2004). pg. 99-102
[9] Gershom Scholem. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism 3rd edition. (1954) pg. 300-301.
[10] David Bakan. Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition (2004). pg. 99-102
[11] David Bakan. Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition (2004). pg. 101
[12] Ibid, pg. 104
[13] Frankists are what the followers of Jacob Frank are called. Frank had proclaimed himself the reincarnation of Zevi and thus the Messiah.
[14] David Bakan. Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition (2004). Pg. 102
[15] Ibid, pg. 103
Convolutions of man-made religion are madness in glowing robes. There is no way to intellectualize the great claim of Christ-man Jesus: "I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father [God] but by me." To get one's mind around THAT is to adopt the innocent mind of a child and ask one's heavenly Father for the Holy Spirit (Luke11:13). Ask.
Thank you Cynthia what a piece! Only read the first bit and saved for reading later.
Part one a smasher, then again it's the author an historian you so although I try not to arm myself with the expectation cloak, you give nothing less. Thanks yet again!