Palm Sunday April Fools Day

How appropriate that the Divine Fool is celebrated today both because it is April Fools Day and Palm Sunday.

Radical Theologin Harvey Cox wrote a whole book on the divine fool.

The Feast of Fools: A Theological Essay on Festivity and Fantasy (1969),

One of the Protestants who has addressed festivals is Harvey Cox who argued that human beings are “essentially festive and ritual creatures” (1969, 8; cf. Browning 1980). As homo festivus and homo fantasia, human beings express festivity and fantasy through festival as a form of “theatre of the body.” Cox argues that with the march of secularization and the continued rejection of festivity “Christianity has often adjusted too quickly to the categories of modernity” (Ibid. 15), and with this, important facets of what it means to be human are neglected. As a result, Cox believes that there is a real need for Christianity in the West to develop a theology of festivity

An article from that book was published back in the early Seventies in Playboy, I read it for the articles back then, which included an illustration one rarely sees; Jesus Laughing.

And, what else, the symbol of Christ that best symbolizes this theology is "Christ the Harlequin" (as in The Parable, New York World's Fair 1966), who personifies festivity and fantasy in an age that has almost lost both.

Perhaps because as a divine fool he was high.

The Feast of Fools, known also as the festum fatuorum, festum stultorum, festum hypodiaconorum, or fête des fous , are the varying names given to popular medievalfestivals regularly celebrated by the clergy and laity from the fifth century until the sixteenth century in several countries of Europe, principally France, but also Spain, Germany, England, and Scotland. A similar celebration was the Feast of Asses.

The central idea seems always to have been a brief social revolution, in which power, dignity and impunity is briefly conferred on those in a subordinate position. In the view of some, this makes the medieval festival a successor to the Roman Saturnalia.

In the medieval version the young people, who played the chief parts, chose from among their own number a mock pope, archbishop, bishop, or abbot to reign as Lord of Misrule. Participants would then "consecrate" him with many ridiculous ceremonies in the chief church of the place, giving names such as Archbishop of Dolts, Abbot of Unreason, Boy Bishop, or Pope of Fools. The protagonist could be a boy bishop or subdeacon, while at the Abbey of St Gall in the tenth century, a student each December 13 enacted the part of the abbot. In any case the parody tipped dangerously towards the profane. The ceremonies often mocked the performance of the highest offices of the church, while other persons, dressed in different kinds of masks and disguises, engaged in songs and dances and practiced all manner of revelry within the church building.

I highly recommend Harvey Cox's work which in many ways compliments Bakhtin's work on the subversive nature of the Carnival and the role playing of the Fool.

"The carnival was not only liberating because for that short period the church and state had little or no control over the lives of the revellers—although Terry Eagleton points out this would probably be 'licensed' transgression at best—but its true liberating potential can be seen in the fact that set rules and beliefs were not immune to ridicule or reconception at carnival time; it 'cleared the ground' for new ideas to enter into public discourse. Bakhtin goes so far as to suggest that the European Renaissance itself was made possible by the spirit of free thinking and impiety that the carnivals engendered."

The Carnivale and Feast of Fools became recuperated in post Renaissance society as comedie della art, and play festivals like the Fringe, which exists world wide and is a popular summer festival here in Edmonton, reflect the same anarchic festivus that one would see at carnival or the earlier Fool's Feasts.

And we see the modern Carnival not only during Mardi Gras but with Feast of Fools that is the Burning Man festival. As pointed out in this article by John Morehead, whose blog is well worth perusing for it's writings on alternative religious movements..

"Burn, Baby, Burn, Christendom Inferno: Burning Man and the Festive Immolation of Christendom Culture and Modernity"

Second and related to the context of counter-modernity and counter-Christendom, Burning Man expresses itself within a cultural context that exhibits a decidedly post-modern and post-Christendom approach to spirituality. Christianity continues to play a significant role in American culture, and may have been the dominant religion in America and the Western world in the past, but in recent decades there has been a “declining influence of religion – particularly Christianity” (Heelas & Woodhead 2005, 1). This has come about through a secularization of the West which in turn has led to a spiritual re-enchantment[1] process. This re-enchantment involves the preference for spirituality rather than religion, and is characterized by an emphasis upon an individualized, subjective, and eclectic spiritual quest. In this environment of the post-modern spirituality seeker, Christianity is perceived negatively as a dogmatic institution rather than a vibrant spirituality whose adherents have often failed to live up to the moralizing they present to the culture. In reaction, many Burning Man participants have either rejected Christianity outright, or consider it of no consequence as a viable option in creating a spirituality suited for the challenges of the twenty-first century

---

[1] Christopher Partridge explores the ramifications of the re-enchantment thesis in The Re-Enchantment of the West, vol. 1 (London & New York: T & T Clark International, 2004).

Since the play is the thing, we can see that since the earliest days of Christendom the Easter pageant played a significant role in society, as we know by way of the York Guilds which in a gift economy share their surpluses by holding feasts and a two week series of plays, it comes full circle, with the sacrificed god being the fool king.

If the power of the King/Church/State lay in divine right, the power of the people lay in the fool king whom they crowned. It is why in the movie Andre Rublev, about the icon painter, the opening scene has a village fool crucified for making fun of the priests. It too was produced in 1969 when Cox published his book.

Only by learning to laugh at the hopelessness around us can we touch the hem of hope. Christ the clown signifies our playful appreciation of the past and our comic refusal to accept the spectre of inevitability in the future. He is the incarnation of festivity and fantasy. (Harvey Cox 1969, 142)

Jesus as Fool, is a subversion on the classic church iconography of the slain and resurrected lord. For as Harliquen, fool, clown, he is life giver, alive, part of the meme of a living humanity. Not an icon but a living force. For the truth of his sacrifice is that life goes on.

Thus the religious heresies originating in Gnosticism that arose during the transition from the Catholic and Orthodox Empires to Protest-ism were about this spirit.

What if it is possible to awaken to a profound state of oneness and love, which the Gnostic Christians symbolized by the enigmatic figure of the laughing Jesus?

What the sacrifice originally meant was ironically the end of sacrifice. Which is why the religion of Christianity began with Agape feasts hidden away in caves and grotos, where all could be equal. The slave religion was about the end of sacrifice, the end of all sacrifice, not only of animals, but of people and of freedom.

Godspell: A Musical Based on the Gospel According to St Matthew (1973)

The portrayal of Jesus as a clown may have been offensive to some, however this reviewer found it to be refreshing, the clown communicates joy while communicating the seriousness of the gospel message. He reminds us that the gospel is a message of great joy and humility, love and peace, of triumph and victory. However in saying that there are some aspects that don't fit with our understanding, for instance the betrayal scene, Jesus kisses Judas. Then it does finish with a question hanging over it, that being, why no resurrection scene? Or maybe there was, perhaps the grand finale represents the risen Jesus, carried lifted high into the crowded streets, it gives a sense of inclusiveness, that somehow Jesus lives on in each one of us.

Jesus the fool returns again and again as a radical revolutionary icon for popular spirituality and its heresies, in opposition to the institutions of Christianity.

THE ENIGMA OF SANCTITY
	1950

Still, theologian Harvey Cox saw the Sixties' counterculture as a reclamation of facets of humanity eclipsed by the rise of technological society — essentially, Rossellini's jester side of man. In his book the Feast of Fools: A Theological Essay on Festivity & Fantasy, Cox idenfied certain aspects of the youth revolt - the recovery of celebration and imagination — not just with a hunger for for wholeness, but vital to both psychological health and, significantly, to being able to have compassion for the oppressed of the world. A capacity for being able to imaginatively "put themselves in other shoes" was prerequisite for the developed nations to be able to have understanding and compassion for those oppressed and different than themselves.

Here we see why Rossellini takes this "jester side" so seriously and so centrally: his offering of St. Francis as a model for conflict-weary Europe isn't a simple-minded Utopian vision, a rejection of private property and reduction to begging (that begs the question "begging from whom?"), but a recovery of that sense of play and imaginative identification with others that makes people more valuable than efficiency, and the "abnormality" of the Other less prone to threaten and result in conflict. The mere existence of the jester is a check on the hubris of power in both ruler and system. In his book, Cox cites an essay by Leszek Kolakowski titled, "The Priest and the Jester":

The philosophy of the jester is a philosophy which in every epoch denounces as doubtful what appears as unshakeable; it points out the contradictions in what seems evident and incontestable; it ridicules common sense into the absurd — in other words, it undertakes the daily toil of the jester's profession along with the inevitable risk of appearing ludicrous.

The jester is the quintessence of the carnival spirit, and just as the jester's cap is pants worn on the head, carnival turns upside-down the values by which the world is typically run. Carnival mocks the pretensions of permanence and power, defies the illusions of the masses. No wonder the faith of Francis has been described as a "carnivalized" Christianity: his topsy-turvy insistence that Perfect Joy is found in suffering, his irrational love for everything and everybody, his scandalous rejection of all the world holds dear — power, property, status, etc. Technically, of course, this is Christianity, for which the adjective "carnivalized" is required only when it forgets its own scandalous identity. Yet the upsidedowness of a faith whose God is born in a stable, the meek inherit the earth, and whose secrets are given to children and fools is all too easily domesticated, and even the court of Christ himself would seem to require its own jester.

was more than a juggler. He was also a poet, singer, all-around entertainer. The Indeed, Francis referred to himself as "the jester of God," and the Italian title of Rossellini's film is Francesco, giullare di Dio — "Francis, God's Jester". The Italian term refers to a French one, jongleur — whence comes "juggler" — but the jongleurjongleur was in fact more earthy than the troubadour: the Latin joculator means "joker", and Francis's joculatores Domini ("ministrels of God") were renowed for putting on a good show when they pulled into a town to preach. Francis's name and terms point to France, home to a Medieval love cult which, though eventually declared heretical and wiped out, left a deep and permanent mark on European culture. So much of what we know as "love in the Western world" finds its source in this flamboyantly romantic vision, including the veneration of an ideal lady — whether Dante and his Beatrice, or St. Francis and his "Lady Poverty."

Today there is the reinvention of the feast of fools, not only in the neo-pagan movement, or the Burning Man festival but in the far left as well. Paul Goodman and other Marxist Freudians talked about humans being playful, that the alienation of work under capitalism was that it meant that it was labour, as in slavery, drudgery rather than fun, playfulness. A Little Eros For Valentine's Day

Since Cox wrote his book in the sixties, the search for this human playful utopia continues.

I was involved with one utopia called Minnesota Experimental City. It was in an era when in the United States there was a lot of utopian thinking. Harvey Cox’s book, The Secular City, was an all time best seller that told us that as soon as we get rid of symbol and myth, get enough guitar players and good architects and civil rights workers, the Kingdom will have come.4 Three years later he was back with a better book called The Feast of Fools.5 These were written just before New York burned and Detroit burned and Watts burned, just before the U.S. committed troops to Vietnam, just before everything went bad. But we were building Minnesota Experimental City. Fifty-eight corporations put up four million dollars for our study. Buckminster Fuller – Mr. Twenty-First Century – was on the panel; Harrison Brown (Lyndon Baines Johnson’s doctor, head of the Mayo Clinic); and then they salted it with a few humanists who would ask the human questions.

We were to build a city – utopia – of two hundred and fifty thousand people. It had to be at least seventy-five miles from any other urban centre. It would be built around a branch of the University of Minnesota; 3M and all the other big firms would have a base there. We thought through everything. It’s cold up there, how are you going to play tennis all year, and how are you going to keep people from arthritis cramps? Well, Buckinster Fuller said, "nothing to it, we build a one mile square plastic dome." How do we get on with pollution? Well, we owe you a ride on an elevator in a building, so we owe you horizontal transportation in our Minnesota Experimental City. You get to the edge, and we’ll take care of you from there.

Situationism was a game of revolution and revolutionaries at play in the Sixties. So it makes sense that the recuperation of their radical politics should, like the surrealists before them, end on the stage. For once the world of 1968 was their stage today they are the play.

The meta-play is an example of Reflectionism through performance. Professor Steve Mann of the University of Toronto, who invented EyeTap to literally mediate monocultural reality, proposes: ﾅReflectionism as a new philosophical framework for questioning social values. The Reflectionist philosophy borrows from the Situationist movement in art and, in particular, an aspect of the Situationist movement called d￩tournement, in which artists often appropriate tools of the "oppressor" and then resituate these tools in a disturbing and disorienting fashion. Reflectionism attempts to take this tradition one step further, not only by appropriating the tools of the oppressor, but by turning those same tools against the oppressor as well. I coined the term "Reflectionism" because of the "mirrorlike" symmetry that is its end goal and because the goal is also to induce deep thought ("reflection") through the construction of this mirror. Reflectionism allows society to confront itself or to see its own absurdity. The participants of the meta-play who do not wish to see themselves in the mirror (thus confronting themselves) quickly turn away, but are left with the lingering image of grotesque ugliness, which will haunt them until a profound internal resolution is reached. Drawing upon traditional folly, but appearing in a disenchanted post-modern society, the concept of The Fool is resurrected, challenging and satirizing oppressors in order to cause reflection on their positions, attitudes, and worldviews. Harvey Cox describes the Foolﾒs perennial message in his 1969 The Feast of Fools: A Theological Essay on Festivity and Fantasy: It is the eternal message of The Fool, who takes the stage whenever greed, arrogance, authority, pride and sycophancy lay claim to the public headspace. These are the acts of real fools, without which The Fool would be useless and mute. The Fool is a looking-glass. She is male and female, he is human and animal, they are one moment immersed in the workaday routine and the next overturning the norms of daily life. When we play The Fool, we are The Other, strangers who are in this world but not entirely of it. The ancient term Narrenfreiheit means "freedom of the fool." That freedom reminds us that in a moment of ecstasy we can sweep away the illusion of so much of what we endure. The Fool breaks the trail; the revolutionaries follow. Those who participate, reflect, and achieve the ﾓmoment of ecstasy,ﾔ will soon realise that playing the Fool is not only one of the most satisfying and liberating experiences they will ever encounter, but is also an urgent direct action to reclaim the public headspace. To counter the oppressive and ubiquitous corporate monoculture that is so prevalent in late capitalist society, culture jamming through performance may well be the only solution to cause reflection, hence shattering a dystopic corporate reality. The idea will, I sincerely hope, spread like a virus until such a time whereby all human beings are free to express and play without fear of reprisal, are free from oppression and exploitation of all sorts, and are truly equal to one another.

See:

Jesus

Gnostic

Paganism

April Fools

Judas the Obscure

For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing

New Age Libertarian Manifesto

Another Prehistoric Woman

My Favorite Muslim

Antinominalist Anarchism

Marxism and Religion

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Light and Life

The Online Journal of Rev. Thomas Langley

Rise, Prophet!

"Musings, meditations and poems of a mystic anarchist (with some gnostic Christian, Zen Buddhist and Advaita Vedantic thought thrown in for good measure)"

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Black History Month; P.B. Randolph

Paschal Beverly Randolph (P.B. Randolph) was a 19th Century magickian, a spiritualist and founder of the Rosicrucian movement in the United Sates.

Like Paul Lafargue he was a mulatto but one who initially denied his Negro roots.

( 8 Oct. 1825 - 29 July 1875 ), physician, philosopher, and author, was born in New York City , the son of William Beverly Randolph, a plantation owner, and Flora Beverly, a barmaid. At the age of five or seven Randolph lost his mother to smallpox, and with her the only love he had known. Randolph later stated, "I was born in love, of a loving mother, and what she felt, that I lived." His father's devotion is questionable. In 1873 Randolph hinted at his own illegitimacy, stating that his parents "did not stop to pay fees to the justice or to the priest."

Randolph 's mother possessed a strong temperament, unusual physical beauty, and intense passions, characteristics that Randolph inherited. Later many, especially his enemies, perceived Randolph as being of "Negro descent," which he denied. Sent to live with his half-sister, Randolph was ignored, unloved, and abused and eventually turned to begging on the streets.

Being born in New York to a 'free black' woman, his reluctance to be considered a Negro at the time is understandable. And since his upbringing was in the time and area of the Gangs of New York, plagued by nativism as it was, it is also understandable.

But by the time of the Civil War he was an outspoken advocate of Negro Rights.

Born poor and of mixed race in 1825 and raised (more or less) by prostitutes in the Five Points slum of New York, Randolph was self-educated and prickly proud. Creating himself, he picked and chose just how "black " to be. He could de-emphasize his African heritage in the face of prejudice--after his suicide, a newspaper said he was "part Spaniard, and inherited all the suspicious distrusting qualities of the people of that nationality. " At other times, he emphasized it, as during his Civil War Black Nationalist phase, when he worked briefly as a teacher for the short-lived Freedman 's Bureau, an agency designed to educate freed slaves but only halfheartedly supported by the federal government.

Yet when some Northerners advocated a scheme to ship freed slaves to Africa, Randolph, speaking for the slaves, emphasized "American: " "We men of color were born here; so were our fathers and mothers down a long line of ancestry....Are all our sufferings to be rewarded by our removal to African deserts and barbaric climes and places?...No! Never! Here is our home, and here we mean to stay, and on this soil will die, and in it be buried. "

And like Lafargue he was an internationalist, traveling and training as well as lecturing in Europe. As with many in the occult movement of the 19th Century he was a social reformer. And like his contemporary Virginia Woodhull, Mrs. Satan, he was an advocate of womens rights and Free Love.

Randolph is to be remembered for his philosophical works on love, marriage, and womanhood. He provided new and unique insight into the then taboo world of sexual love. He aided the education, rights, and equality of both women and blacks. He foresaw the evils of tobacco and drug abuse. Finally, Randolph, through his position as the Americas' first Supreme Grand Master of the Fraternitas Rosæ Crucis, directly or indirectly touched the lives of more than 200,000 neophytes (students) comprising the Fraternitas and other Rosicrucian orders.

P.B. Randolph 's life story demonstrates also how reform-minded American Spiritualism turned into "occultism. " Spiritualism was well-intentioned, "scientific " but also passive, linked to social reform (early feminism, the abolition of slavery) but also to faddishness, most notably "free love, " which could, depending on who was talking, mean anything from a partnership of equals to mere spouse-swapping. ( "You and I were meant to be soul mates. ") Occultism, on the other hand, is individualistic, rooted in personal development and self-improvement, and generally not connected to any social or political philosophy.

With the democratic decline in Europe after the revolutions of 1848 and the Paris Commune secret societies were formed for the purposes of pursuing democratic as well as socialist revolution. In England and the Commonwealth they were formed for the purposes of pursuing trade unionism which had been banned as an illegal combination.

That secret societies should form for finding and revealing secret knowledge, was thus a natural outgrowth of this period and was coincidental with the growth and popularity of fraternal orders after the Civil War in America and across Europe.

His patron both in Spiritualism as well as getting him work with Lincoln was Colonel Ethan A. Hitchcock, a noted military officer as well as practicing alchemist. Like other occultists, John Dee comes to mind, he too was also a spy. The secrecy of the occult overlaps with the secret society of intelligence gathering. They share a similar cosmological outlook that is the search for hidden or secret knowledge.

As happens in the Occult community, as in the political one, sectarian differences are frequent and lead to rivalries and mutual denunciations. Such was the case with P. B. Randolph, who is credited with founding the Rosicrucian movement in the United States.

He faced attack by rivals for hegemony over the occult movement in America denouncing him for his Luciferian ideas from the likes of Madam Blavatsky and her Theosophists and from the white supremacist founder of the American Scottish Right of Freemasonry; Albert Pike. Ironic because both of them are also accused of being Luciferians.

Such is the case of 19th Century occult wars not only in America but in Europe where again competing orders of Rosicrucian's charged and counter charged each other as being in league with Lucifer.

The Luciferian charge comes about from Randolph's advocacy of free love, which was also embraced by American Anarchists at the time. His theories were outlined in his book Eulis and in his other famous treatise; Magia Sexualis

Today we would call his practices sex therapy, where he discussed sexual dysfunction with his patients, and as a Doctor he practiced mesermism, the passing of hands over the body to affect the magnetic energies. He also advocated the tantra practice of heightened sensuality by controlling the male orgasm and ejaculation.

 In 1870 he founded the Order of Eulis, which kept its teachings
secret because of the sex and drugs.  Some people must've talked,
though: H. P. Blavatsky denounced Randolph as immoral, a charge also
leveled at the Luciferian Freemason Sir Albert Pike.  An occult war
followed.  In 1872 his "Rosicrucian Rooms" were raided by police and
he was jailed for distributing "Free Love" literature.  Fires,
robberies, and disease followed, and on July 29, 1975, he shot
himself.  His friends and followers claimed that Blavatsky's curses
had nailed him.  Blavatsky founded the philosophical society the same
year.

By the 1870s many of Randolph's writings dealt with 
occult aspects of  love and sexuality.

Randolph, as a physician, also counseled many of his patients on matters of
family relations, marital bliss and the art of love. These acts of kindness and
concern were sometimes taken as conduct condoning "free love."

In February 1872, he was arrested and imprisoned for promoting
"free love" or immorality. Although acquitted of all charges, as it was discovered in
court that the indictment was merely a clever attempt by former
business partners (now enemies) to obtain his book copyrights, Randolph
never recovered from the humiliation of the proceeding.

Although dying at age 49, Randolph was a prolific writer, producing many books
and pamphlets on love, health, mysticism and the occult.

And further confusion was sown with his initiation into a mystical Gnostic cult from Syria/Iraq which mistakenly has been associated with the Yezedi.

The Yezedi created a sensation amongst some 19th Century scholars who had finally discovered a genuine devil worshiping cult. And the devil they worshiped was Lucifer.

Despite my best googling efforts the only references I could find to Ansaireh is that referred back to the region in Syria/Iraq which is named after a Mountain.

Gertrude Bell in her diary refers to visiting the region and the Yezedi who dwelled there. Which may have been the reason the author of the introduction to Magica Sexualis thought Randolph had been initiated into their religious teachings.

During his journeys to Paris, Pascal became aware of several works which were being published in France and Germany dealing with the Ansaireth or Nusairis of Syria. 25 There was much discussion, in the Rosicrucian circles that Randolph traveled in, of the purity and sublimity of the teachings of the Ansaireh. Books by Niebuhr, M. Catafago, Victor Langlois and others told of these mysterious hill dwellers in Northern Syria who were neither Jews, Christians or Muslims. They may well have been the people that modern anthropology has identified as the Yezidi, the devotees of the Peucock god, Melek Ta'aus.

PBR tells how the chief of the Ansaireth, Narek El Gebel, arrived at the Rosicrucian Third Dome in Paris with letters of introduction and then, recognizing Randolph's abilities and character, invited him to come to Syria and to study with the Ansaireth. Randolph went to Syria and was initiated into the Ansairetic Brotherhood. Upon his return to America, he established the Priesthood of Aeth based on the Ansairetic Mysteries

There were a variety of Christian and Islamic sects in the region. Including the Druze and Nusairis and one of the last surviving gnostic sects the Mandaens. As well as Kurds and Yezedi, Sabians all of whom faced persecution from the Turks for being dhimmis.

In another part of this Consular District there seems to have been little change from the old times of rapine and bloodshed in Turkey. I allude to the Ansaireh mountains, stretching from the valley of the Orontes to Mount Lebanon. On a late occasion a member of the Medjlis of Tripoli, passing through a Christian village in pursuit of the revolted Ansaireh, set fire to it, and, when the inhabitants conveyed their moveable property of value into their Church (…), it was broken open and plundered. This case, with many others equally abominable, of simultaneous occurrence, was laid before Her Majesty’s Consul General for Syria, the perpetrators of the outrages being under the jurisdiction of the Pasha of Beyrouth, and will thus have already come under Your Excellency’s notice. (Aleppo, 31st March, 1859; FO 78/1452 (No. 11), Skene to Bulwer, Constantinople)

The author of the introduction to Magica Sexualis is mistaken in associating the Ansairth with the Yezedi. As I said the Yezedi at the time had become somewhat of a sensation amongst certain Christian religious and historical scholars. And the Nusairis refer to an Islamic Shi'a Sunni sect.

Randolphs Rosicrucian Order and his fellow occultists of the time were fascinated with the recent discoveries of Gnosticism and the Gnostic's. Finding a living Gnostic religion which offered initiation would have been more in keeping with their occult traditions.

I suspect Randolph had been initiated into the the mystery religion of the Mandaens. Whose followers were in the same region of Syria at the time.

Within the Middle East, but outside of their community, the Mandaeans are more commonly known as the Ṣubba (singular Ṣubbī). Likewise, their Muslim neighbors will refer to them collectively as the Sabians (Arabic al-Ṣābiʾūn), in reference to the Ṣabians of the Qur'an. Occasionally, the Mandaeans are also called the "Christians of St. John" (a misnomer, since they are not Christians by any standard), based upon preliminary reports made by members of the Barefoot Carmelite mission in Basra during the 16th century.

Other groups which have been identified with the Mandaeans include the "Nasoraeans" described by Epiphanius and the Dositheans mentioned by Theodore Bar Kōnī in his Scholion. Ibn al-Nadim also mentions a group called the Mughtasila, "the self-ablutionists," who may be identified with one or the other of these groups. The members of this sect, like the Mandaeans, wore white and performed baptisms.

The similarity of beliefs about healthy living, not eating meat, avoiding tobacco, reincarnation and sexuality strike me as Mandaean rather than Yezedi.

According to E.S. Drower in the introduction to The Secret Adam, Mandaeans believe in marriage and procreation, and in the importance of leading an ethical and moral lifestyle in this world, placing a high priority upon family life. Consequently, Mandaeans do not practice celibacy or asceticism. Mandaeans will, however, abstain from strong drink and red meat. While they agree with other gnostic sects that the world is a prison governed by the planetary archons, they do not view it as a cruel and inhospitable one.

The Rosicrucian movement he founded still exists today publishing his works;

SEERSHIP; Guide to Soul Sight


The importance of Randolph cannot be underestimated. His works influenced later magickal and occult practitioners including Eliphas Levi as well as the Ordo Templi Orientis in particular Theodore Reuss and Aleister Crowley.




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