Jesus, Magick, and The Bible
by Jeffrey Pierce

Our first introduction to The Bible comes wrapped in an interesting phenomena that occurs nowhere else in the entire realm of spirituality. Before we read the first verse, we are told what The Bible means, the story that it holds, and what we will find when we read it. What's more is that, when we do encounter questions, exploration and open-minded seeking are stifled, directed back to the original answers we were given. The position we are presented with is predefined and leaves no room for additional interpretation.

In other words, we are told before we even begin to explore for ourselves, "All of the questions have been answered. This is what you are to believe."

This phenomena doesn't have to be blatant to prejudice a person's experience. It's extraordinarily rare in our culture to find someone who can honestly say, "Who is this Jesus guy? I've heard about him, but have no idea who he really is. I heard that he appears in a book called The Bible, so I decided to read it and find out for myself what his story is all about." Instead, we all have a definition gift-wrapped for us before we sit down to explore scripture for the very first time.

The Nature of Spirituality

One of the challenges that we encounter is that spirituality isn't like mathematics; its answers are typically layered, offering additional insight for each seeker and where they are on their personal path. The Bible is no exception to this concept.

If we set aside our preconceived ideas, The Bible is the story of a group of individuals - mostly men - who had very real spiritual experiences. Because of the layered insight involved in spiritual experiences, those men often perceived the divine in contradictory ways, not because of a conflicting nature to the sacred, but because each individual saw things from their own perspective.

We color all of our experiences with personal perspective and prejudices. For instance, if the divine manifested to a native aboriginal of Australia, chances are it wouldn't take the form of an old white guy dressed like the Pope. Likewise, a Protestant minister is unlikely to see the divine as a woman from India. Extending this concept further, we find that one person in The Bible sees the divine as vengeful (Romans 12:19) while the other sees it as the very epitome of love (1 John 4:8), which isn't vengeful at all (1 Corinthians 13:4-7).

This concept requires us to release predefined answers and take The Bible as it is written. Many in the Christian faith would define this approach as "undeniable truth;" I disagree and would offer that we need to embrace the individual's perspective and their interpretation of the event. To understand The Bible, we need to stop trying to mold it to a predefined answer and instead consider each character's perspective, journey, and what their position and interpretation of events teaches us.

What we find when we do so isn't a contradictory divine edict that we somehow have to reconcile so that each bit is the unadulterated "Word of God." Instead, we have an eye-witness account to a journey through time and spirituality that is filled with as many missteps and unenlightened ideas as it is with pieces of the sacred. Instead of being a divine text, The Bible becomes a text of divine experiences from a limited and skewed human perspective.

Who Was Jesus?

This concept extends to the modern day. Instead of approaching the story of Jesus with an open mind and a willingness to discover his path for ourselves, we're offered the perspective of men that seek to mold Jesus to match their own preconceived definition. We're going to be looking at the heart and personality of Jesus in great detail as we continue this journey together, as his story holds a vast amount of insight into our own lives and paths. But for now we need to frame that life in a way that we can understand.

When the Gospel of Mark opens, our initial introduction is that "Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee" to be "baptized by John in the Jordan." (Mark 1:9) This is our first hint that Jesus doesn't clearly match the mold that the modern church wants him to fit.

I type approximately 120 words per minute. When I sit down to write, I can knock out several thousand words in a very short period of time. Given space to pause, collect my thoughts, drink some water, etc., it would take approximately ten minutes for me to type up the first chapter of the Gospel of Mark. What we fail to consider is that this high speed, literate world of ours communicates in a very different manner than the culture which was behind the composition of The Bible.

The time in which the stories from The Bible were initially shared was one of memorization, of the verbal telling of stories, and when things were written down they were written slowly and precisely by hand. This process leads to a concept that I refer to as "the conservation of language." Each word, each phrase, was carefully chosen because of its importance. You simply don't memorize something that is irrelevant. You will not find any passages that read, "Jesus woke up, yawned, stretched, and got dressed before going off to find out what the disciples were making for breakfast." All of that can be assumed or is implied by what we know of life and the human experience.

You can't skim The Bible. It all means something, not because it's a sacred text, but because the authors didn't waste words on anything that wasn't important.

Rebellion and Defiance

For instance, what we fail to consider is that the Gospel of Mark opens with an act of defiance and rebellion against the established religion of the time. Jesus wasn't the champion of the ancient equivalent of the Church - he was the champion of those who stood against the Church. The beliefs of "God's chosen people" were based on commandments that were said to be given directly from God. One of the critical pieces of this system of belief was the need for blood sacrifice for the atonement of sins. (Leviticus 4:27-31) In our world today, we don't give a second thought to a passage like, "And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins." (Mark 1:4) However, this is the equivalent of a modern day person saying, "You don't need to go to church or follow Jesus. Just love each other and focus on living a life filled with love that is focused on Spirit. The church and everything it teaches is wrong."

Imagine if Jesus came today and instead of going from church to church telling them how wonderfully they were doing, his first act was to ally himself with someone who preached a very different message. "Stop tithing! Instead of giving your money to the church, pool it together and help each other. Stop looking to religion for your answers. Find the divine in each other!" This is the Jesus that is introduced to us from his first appearance in the Gospel of Mark. His first act is to ally himself with a rebel who is preaching against a core piece of the dominant religion, instead of illustrating dogma in a slightly different light or from a slightly more enlightened perspective.

In the second chapter of Mark, Jesus strengthens his alliance with the teachings of John the Baptist and his stance against God's law. "When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, 'Son, your sins are forgiven.' Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, 'Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?'" (Mark 2:7)

Today, this does not seem like a big deal to us because we've all been taught to adhere to a specific perspective, but the word "blaspheming" was intentionally and accurately chosen in this passage.

The concept is pretty simple. "Sin" was understood as a spiritual malady, one that only a spiritual source (God) or a spiritual act (blood sacrifice by a trained priest) could remedy. What Jesus was saying was simply, "The understanding of the Church is incorrect. Each of us has the power. We do not need God to forgive us; we can take the role of Spirit and do it ourselves."

The Path Jesus Followed

It is critical that we frame Jesus from this perspective or we miss everything that he came to teach. Jesus stood against the very laws that were handed down from God; he took the power from the priesthood and put it in the hands of the common people; he taught common sense and love, that greed was the biggest stumbling block to a spiritual life, and that if you are simply open, loving, and have faith in Spirit, all the rest is irrelevant.

This strongly infers that Jesus did not follow the major religion of the time. You can't follow something and also take a firm stand against it. The question then becomes, "What path did Jesus follow?"

We know that Jesus was intimately familiar with the scriptures of the time. At several points, as early as the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Mark (Mark 4:12) he quotes various passages. As we have seen from his alliance with John the Baptist, this does not mean that he followed the religion that was handed down by God. What's more is that this perspective is strengthened in the very first chapter of Mark, "What is this? A new teaching - and with authority!" (Mark 1:27) It is clear - absolutely clear if you're willing to set your preconceived ideas aside, that Jesus walked a different path altogether. The Bible even refers to the path Jesus presented as "a new teaching."

We know that Jesus sought out "solitary places" (Mark 1:35), wilderness areas by himself (Mark 1:13), went alone onto mountainsides (Mark 6:46), and even stepped away from the disciples to pray at Gethsemane (Mark 14:32-35) when his death was drawing near. We also know that he practiced ritual magick on at least two occasions (Mark 7:33-35 and Mark 8:22-25). None of this is definitive in its own right, but it begins to build the framework for a very different perspective of Jesus.

Word and Deed

There are two individuals described in The Bible as being mighty in word and in deed. To understand the parallels, we're going to go to rely on the King James Version. Luke 24:19 reads, "And he said unto them, What things? And they said unto him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people." Acts 7:22 describes a second person in the same manner. "And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds."

The common interpretation of these passages is that both men worked miracles and that Jesus was a skilled orator, teaching the people on countless occasions. However, this perspective is flawed as it doesn't adequately embrace what we know about Moses.

The story of Moses is fairly well known. Adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter (Exodus 2:9-10), Moses would have been given a royal education. Moses would have attended The Prince's School, as it was known, which was overseen by the highest ranking Egyptian priest. While many subjects that we consider scholarly (science, history, math) were taught, the school was directed by the Egyptian priesthood, an order deeply steeped in magick. Again and again as Moses and his brother, Aaron, perform miracles before Pharaoh, "...Pharaoh then summoned wise men and sorcerers, and the Egyptian magicians also did the same things by their secret arts." (Exodus 7:11)

Somewhere along the line, we began seeing this as "bad" (sorcerers and magicians) versus "good" (the hand-picked of God), as magick (secret arts) versus miracles. However, what we have are two groups of people doing exactly "the same things."

The Bible is absolutely bursting with magick. Abram (who will one day become Abraham) worked necromancy to open a portal to the spirit world (Genesis 15:9-11;17). Elisha either predicted or directed the future (2 Kings 13:14-19) depending on your perspective and called down a deadly curse upon some boys who call him "baldy." (2 Kings 2:23-24) The Book of Numbers details a horrific curse, to be performed by the priests at the direction of the LORD, that even the most jaded would consider black magick. (Numbers 5:12-31) Daniel (who once found himself in the lion's den), was not only an expert at interpreting dreams and visions (Daniel 1:17) but the "chief of the magicians, enchanters, astrologers and diviners." (Daniel 5:11) Joseph (of the "coat of many colors" fame) was skilled at dream interpretation (Genesis 41:12-13) and practiced scrying (Genesis 44:4-5). Many of the prominent individuals we've come to revere in Sunday School worked some form of magick. Moses and Jesus simply add to that extensive list.

What's interesting is that, while Jesus set Peter as the rock his work would continue to be built upon, The Gospel of Peter appears nowhere in The Bible. The closest we have is The Gospel of Mark, which was written by a disciple of Peter's.

In 1886, a fragmented manuscript called, The Gospel of Peter, was recovered by a French archaeologist in the modern Egyptian city of Akhmim, buried reverently with a monk. While it isn't believed to have been actually written by Peter (the dating of the manuscript fragments falls after Peter's death), the name the manuscript carries is certainly intriguing. The manuscript itself has been condemned as heretical and, amidst its handful of differences from the other Gospels is one that caught my attention and supports our mystical spirituality argument.

Mark 15:34 portrays a very specific portion of the crucifixion. "And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, 'Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?'—which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'" This ties in with Psalm 22:1 and infers that the final words that Jesus spoke were from a passage of scripture.

However, the admittedly heretical Gospel of Peter relates the last words of Jesus as, "My power, my power, thou hast forsaken me."

Even though it's heretical, it was so highly thought of that the Gospel of Peter was carefully buried with an Egyptian monk.

What many Christians don't realize is that the Church hasn't always been opposed to the study of magick. As late as the 1500s, works on hermetic magick were met with guarded approval by Christian leaders. John Trithemius, Abbot of Saint James of Herbipolis, wrote in response to an early draft of Three Books Of Occult Philosophy, by Henry Cornelius Agrippa, "...with how much pleasure I received it, no mortall tongue can express, nor the pen of any write... Your work, which no learned man can sufficiently commend, I approve of."

Judaism is rich in magickal tradition, from the Talmud to the Kabala. When Jesus practiced such things publicly, the people of the time would have marveled at his power, but no one would have batted an eye or considered the legitimacy of a holy man working magick. What's more is that the people of the time believed in reincarnation and references to it are mentioned throughout the Gospels, we've simply chosen to overlook them in the same way we've disregarded The Bible's magickal tradition.

In our day and age, we've redefined Jesus as a Pharisee - a legalistic, rigid, dividing force. Ironically, those are the exact same traits embodied by the people who wanted to have Jesus killed for the stance that he took as an open-minded, accepting, powerful, magickal rebel. What if "mighty in words and in deeds" actually described something specific? What if it referred to the abilities of the two people who clearly demonstrated their mastery of a very mystical path?

The Story of Jesus

What the story of Jesus portrays isn't the tale of a divine avatar who comes down to champion a cause (in this case, Christianity, which didn't even exist at the time). The story of Jesus is of a man, much like you and I, who devoted his life to his spiritual path. In his triumphs, his failures, his challenges, and his moments of love, compassion, and beauty, we see the story of ourselves reflected in brilliant colors. What's ironic is that this doesn't lessen the teachings of Jesus by making him more "real," but it empowers them.

If Jesus was simply an avatar, he would have a home amidst the other personas in myth and folklore. Much like Thor was the son of Odin, or Hercules was the son of Zeus, so Jesus would be the son of God. This is useful for the followers of a religion as such figures provide powerful archetypes to draw upon, but few of us possess divine gifts, heritage, or the personal cell phone number of the divine. "Hereditary divinity" is also useful for the leaders of such a religion as it provides them with a tool to control the masses, primarily by taking the power that is our birthright out of our hands. However, the story of Jesus is almost unique in our modern world. It is the story of a carpenter (a profession that was less exalted in those times than it is today), who began from lowly roots and devoted his life to his spiritual beliefs. His journey tells us what we need to do to thrive on our own spiritual paths and where we will be drained and misstep if we fail to take the time to re-center and balance. It contains not only the encouragement that we are capable of working the same sorts of "miracles" that Jesus did (or even greater according to John 14:12) but the path do actually accomplish them is laid out for us if you know where to look.

Excerpted from the upcoming book, Word and Deed: A New Perspective On Jesus by Jeffrey Pierce.

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Originally published in Old Ways on January 15, 2012