Blavatsky on the Pagan Origins of Easter and Egg Symbolism

 

The Pagan origins of Easter is still a popular topic of discussion nowadays, and back in the day, Blavatsky had her own take on this question in some brief, but suggestive remarks. For a full exposition on the world egg see The Secret Doctrince I, 2, ch. 6-The Mundane Egg. 

 

Easter. The word evidently comes from Ostara, the Scandinavian goddess of spring (1) She was the symbol of the resurrection of all nature and was worshipped in early spring. It was a custom with the pagan Norsemen at that time to exchange coloured eggs called the eggs of Ostara. These have now become Easter-Eggs. As expressed in Asgard and the Gods (WilhelmWagner, 1880) : “Christianity put another meaning on the old custom, by connecting it with the feast of the Resurrection of the Saviour, who, like the hidden life in the egg, slept in the grave for three days before he awakened to new life” . This was the more natural since Christ was identified with that same Spring Sun which awakens in all his glory, after the dreary and long death of winter (Asgard, p.114, 8th ed, 1917). (See “Eggs”.)

Eggs (Easter). Eggs were symbolical from an early time. There was the “Mundane Egg”, in which Brahmâ gestated, with the Hindus the Hiranya-Gharba, (2) and the Mundane Egg of the Egyptians, which proceeds from the mouth of the “unmade and eternal deity”, Kneph, (3) and which is the emblem of generative power. Then the Egg of Babylon, which hatched Ishtar, and was said to have fallen from heaven into the Euphrates. (4) Therefore coloured eggs were used yearly during spring in almost every country, and in Egypt were exchanged as sacred symbols in the spring-time, which was, is, and ever will be, the emblem of birth or rebirth, cosmic and human, celestial and terrestrial. They were hung up in Egyptian temples and are so suspended to this day in Mahometan mosques. (5) (Theosophical Glossary)

Orphic Egg

The Christians — especially the Greek and Latin Churches — have fully adopted the symbol, and see in it a commemoration of life eternal, of salvation and of resurrection. This is found in and corroborated by the time-honoured custom of exchanging “Easter Eggs.” From the anguinum, the “Egg” of the “pagan” Druid (6), whose name alone made Rome tremble with fear, to the red Easter Egg of the Slavonian peasant, a cycle has passed. And yet, whether in civilized Europe, or among the abject savages of Central America, we find the same archaic, primitive thought; if we only search for it and do not disfigure — in the haughtiness of our fancied mental and physical superiority — the original idea of the symbol. (The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1, Page  368)

 

Footnotes

(1) Bede. De temporum ratione ("The Reckoning of Time", Ch, 15:“Ēosturmōnaþ has a name which is now translated “Paschal month”, and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Ēostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance.”

Blavatsky is referring to the folklore speculations of the time. Very little historical evidence exists on the question. See

Ostara and the Hare: Not Ancient, but Not As Modern As Some Skeptics Think. Stephen Winick, April 28, 2016

(2) In classical Purāṇic Hinduism, Hiraṇyagarbha is the term used in the Vedanta for the "creator". Hiraṇyagarbha is also Brahmā, so called because it is said he was born in a golden egg (Manu Smṛti 1.9)

(3) Kneph (Eg.). Also Cneph and Nef, endowed with the same attributes as Khem. One of the gods of creative Force, for he is connected with the Mundane Egg. He is called by Porphyry “the creator of the world”; by Plutarch the “unmade and eternal deity”; by Eusebius he is identified with the Logos; and Jamblichus goes so far as almost to identify him with Brahmâ since he says of him that “this god is intellect itself, intellectually perceiving itself, and consecrating intellections to itself; and is to be worshipped in silence”. One form of him, adds Mr. Bonwick “was Av meaning flesh. He was criocephalus, with a solar disk on his head, and standing on the serpent Mehen. In his left hand was a viper, and a cross was in his right. He was actively engaged in the underworld upon a mission of creation.” Deveria writes: “His journey to the lower hemisphere appears to symbolise the evolutions of substances which are born to die and to be reborn”. (Catal. MSS. (1881), 49) Thousands of years before Kardec, Swedenborg, and Darwin appeared, the old Egyptians entertained their several philosophies. (James Bonwick, Egyptian Belief and Modern Thought C. Kegan Paul & Company, 1878., p. 105-106, 203)(Theosophical Glossary) (see also Chnoumis and Chnouphis)

Their God Kneph, out of whose mouth issued the Orphic egg, whence the author of the Clementine Recognitions makes a hermaphroditic figure to emerge, uniting in itself the two principles whereof Heaven and the earth are forms, and which enter into the organization of all beings which the heavens and the earth engender by their concourse, furnishes another emblem of the double power, active and passive, which the ancients saw in the Universe, and which they symbolized by the egg. (Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma, 1871, p. 654-656). See also W R. Cooper, The Serpent Myths of Ancient Egypt. 1873, p.17

For more about platonic sources of Kneph, see http://www.archaeologicalresource.com/Books_and_Articles/Iamblichus_Mysteries_3_Translations/Iamblichus_Mysteries.htm

(4) Pseudo-Hyginus’s Fabulae 197 reads as follows, as translated by R. Scott Smith:

“It is said that an egg of remarkable size once fell from the sky into the Euphrates River and that the fish pushed it out onto the bank. Doves came and alighted upon the egg, and after it grew warm, it hatched. Out came Venus [i.e. Ishtar], who afterward was called the Syrian Goddess. Since she was far more just and upright than the rest of the gods, Jupiter gave her choice, and she had the fish raised into the stars. Because of this the Syrians consider fish and doves to be gods and do not eat them.” Smith, R. Scott & Trzaskoma, Stephen M. (transl.), Apollodorus' Library and Hyginus' Fabulae: Two Handbooks of Greek Mythology

Nubian Egg

(5) "Colored eggs appear on the altars made for the new year known as Nowruz, which is celebrated at the vernal equinox. This tradition has ancient roots in Persia and Zoroastrianism, but is now practiced across Eurasia by Persian and Turkic peoples of various faiths.' Ancient Art of Decorating Eggs Stephanie Hall 2017 https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2017/04/decorating-eggs/

3,000 BC carved stone ball Aberdeenshire

 

(6) (Pliny, Natural History, 29, 3*) There is also a sort of egg, famous in the provinces of Gaul, but ignored by the Greeks. Innumerable snakes coil themselves into a ball in the summertime. Thus they make it so that it is held together by a bodily secretion and by their saliva. It is called an anguinum. The Druids say that [the snakes] hiss and cast it upwards, and that it is to be caught in a cloak so that it not touch the ground. One must immediately ride off on a horse with it, for the snakes will continue to pursue until the course of a stream blocks their way. If one tests it, the anguinum will float against the current of a river even when covered in gold. And, as the magi will throw a cloak of deception over their trickery, they make out as though the eggs are to be taken only on a particular point in the lunar cycle, as though it was up to human beings to determine the snakes’ role in this procedure. Nonetheless, I have seen one of these eggs myself. It was round the size of a small apple. The shell was cartilaginous, and mottled with cups like the tentacles of a squid. The Druids value it highly: it is praised as insuring success in litigation and in going to audiences with kings. However, this is nonsense; for once a man (a Roman knight and a tribesman of the Vocontii) held one of these eggs against his body during a trial, and was condemned to death by the Emperor Claudius, for that reason alone so far as I can tell.

Blavatsky and the Iamblichus Revival

In Letters to the Sage, vol. 2, a regular recurrent topic in Alexander Wilder’s letters to T.M. Johnson is his pioneering work on translating Iamblichus’ On the Mysteries, which he spent several decades working on. Both Blavatsky and Olcott were supportive of this work, although he ultimately opted for another publisher when the work was assembled in book form, but it was serialized in The Theosophist magazine, beginning with the July, 1881 issue). The theosophy movement still continued to support the work, with Wizards Bookshelf offering a reprint of the Thomas Taylor translation in the 1980s.

 

Posterity has shown that these early theosophical efforts of reviving obscure neoplatonic works were important, considering the major rediscovery of the importance of Iamblichus in the history of western ideas. In the English language, it was the 1973 publication of John Dillon’s The Fragments of Iamblichus that brought to light the major influence of Iamblichus in determining the course of western philosophy for the medieval and early modern period. The fact that he is one of the most influential western thinkers of all time had been largely occluded due mainly to the loss of much of his writings and the rise of modern materialism. Since then, there has been a serious revival of interest in his work, a recent sample is Iamblichus and the Foundations of Late Platonism, Brill, 2012. https://brill.com/view/title/21497 .

 

To give an idea of the current position of Iamblichus in the academic world, below are some extracts from John Bussanich’s “New Editions of Iamblichus: A Review Essay,” Ancient Philosophy 25.2 (2005): 478-494. https://www.academia.edu/247793/New_Editions_of_Iamblichus

 

Since he lived in Apamea in southeastern Turkey, it is not surprising that of all the Platonists in late antiquity it was Iamblichus who looked to the East most creatively and sought to harmonize its wisdom traditions with those of archaic and classical Greece. Like its aptly-named sister-city Zeugma, to which it was connected by a bridge over the Euphrates, Apamea was the home of that elusive second century CE Pythagorean-Platonist Numenius and as well as the refuge of Amelius (ca. 270 CE), a key disciple of Plotinus, and later of Iamblichus (born in Syria), who settled there in his mature years after long postings in Egypt and Italy. As a crossroads for caravans running East and West Apamea was a fitting base of operations for these Platonists who mixed Plato and Pythagorean oral traditions with the Oriental wisdom of the Brahmins, Magi, Egyptians, and Chaldaeans.

 

What is certain is that in the first half of the twentieth century Iamblichus’ immersion in Hermetic and Chaldaean wisdom and magic provoked antipathy from many classical scholars and ancient philosophers. These two masterly editions and commentaries make an essential contribution to the revaluation of Iamblichus’ thought which has been underway for a generation.

 

They join the editions of his major writings by Des Places and of the fragments of his commentaries on Plato and Aristotle by Dillon and Larsen and these fundamental studies of his thought: Carlos Steel, The Changing Self: A Study on the Soul in Later Neoplatonism: Iamblichus, Damascius and Priscianus (1978); John Finamore, Iamblichus and the Theory of the Vehicle of the Soul (1985); Garth Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes (1986); Dominic O’Meara, Pythagoras Revived: Mathematics and Philosophy in Late Antiquity (1989); Beate Nasemann, Theurgie und Philosophie in Iamblichus de mysteriis (1991); Greg Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus (1995); Emma Clarke, Iamblichus De Mysteriis: A Manifesto of the Miraculous (2001); and important articles by H.D. Saffrey, P. Athanassiadi, John Finamore, John Dillon and others.

 

With the changes in intellectual fashions marked by the explosion of scholarship on late antiquity in the past fifty years, including Neoplatonism, it is useful to recognize to what extent twentieth-century attitudes towards Iamblichus, especially among English-language scholars, are rooted in the seminal work of E.R. Dodds, who both perpetuated some of the extreme rationalist biases of earlier European scholarship against the religious dimension of his thought but who also recognized the Syrian’s philosophical genius. The religious and philosophical aspects of Iamblichus’ thought, which certainly would not have been recognized by its author as separate or distinct, sit uncomfortably side by side in Dodds’ interpretive perspective.

 

In his great 1933 edition of Proclus’ Elements of Theology he observed that ‘the historical importance of Iamblichus has hardly been sufficiently recognized’ because his primary metaphysical writings have been lost and his views have had to be reconstructed from fragments and from what Dodds called ‘the semi-philosophical’ De Mysteriis (1933, xix). Dodds’s schizophrenic image of Iamblichus comes into focus in the very next sentence: ‘Mystagogue and thaumaturgist though he was, and in intellectual quality immeasurably inferior to a Posidonius or a Plotinus, his contribution to the final shaping of Neoplatonism is scarely less than theirs’ (xix). How could an inferior intellect determine the character of Neoplatonism, a tradition for which Dodds had great respect? And, more disturbingly, how could a magician or mystagogue be a creative ‘philosophical’ thinker?

 

Dodds’s grand vision of late antique thought in decline is motivated in part by his sense of the gradual defeat of Hellenic rationalism by Oriental irrationalism, a war whose earlier battles in archaic and classical Greece were charted, with a good deal of Freudian cartography, in that classic of mid-century scholarship The Greeks and the Irrational (1951).

 

Even as Iamblichus scholarship has become more comprehensive and self-critical, it has continued to be shaped consciously and unconsciously by Dodds’s pathbreaking work, sometimes confirming his inspired judgments and sometimes replicating his biases in milder form.

 

In 1910 Praechter dubbed him the ‘Neoplatonic Chrysippus’, the second founder of the Neoplatonic school (114, cited by Dodds), which is appropriate for someone who was both synthesizer and innovator.

 

Iamblichus systematized the Platonism he inherited both methodologically and philosophically. In the first respect he articulated an educational curriculum, which may have begun with the Pythagorean curriculum before proceeding to the study of Aristotelian and then Platonic texts (DA 6-7).

 

Iamblichus’ major surviving work in religious thought is the De Mysteriis, an abbreviation of the title coined by Ficino in the fifteenth century: De Mysteriis Aegyptiorum, Chaldaeorum, Assyriorum. As Athanassiadi has argued (1995, 246) this title may be less extravagant than it is usually thought to be if Iamblichus’ knowledge of Hermetic doctrine and Egyptian religion generally is given its due. The actual title is ‘The Master Abamôn’s Response to Porphyry’s Letter to Anebo, and the solutions to the difficulties contained in it’.

 

The DM’s combination of oriential wisdom with Platonic philosophy alarmed earlier scholars like Dodds, but the suspicions remain alive in Armstrong 1987, 184, who refers to ‘the more spiritual, Plotinian, side of the tradition” and in Wallis, who contrasts Plotinian rationalism with Iamblichus’ superstition (1972, 100). However, other scholars assert that Iamblichus’ thought is more attractive precisely because it recognizes the limits of Plotinus’ putative rationalism, as in Shaw’s distinction between the theurgical Platonism of Iamblichus and his descendants and the non-theurgical Platonism of Porphyry and Plotinus (1995, 5).

 

Thus, differences among scholars tend now to turn more on how similar or not the complementary relationship between theurgy and philosophy in Iamblichus makes his thought in comparison to earlier Neoplatonists. In other words, disputes about theurgy are more fine-grained—and truer to the texts—than they were in Dodds’s milieu. A softer version of these judgments appears in FD’s edition of DA: ‘With Iamblichus and his advocacy of theurgy as a necessary complement to theology, Platonism also becomes more explicitly a religion. Before his time, the mystery imagery so popular with Platonist philosophers (going back to Plato himself), was, so far as can be seen just that—imagery’ (3). They maintain that theurgy is ‘is really only magic with a philosophical underpinning…Partly this was a response to a Christian emphasis on the miracle-working holy man’ (7).

Blavatsky and the Thomas Taylor Revival

Thomas Taylor is a regular subject of discussion in Alexander Wilder’s letters in Letters to the Sage, Vol.2. Ralph Waldo Emerson was already quite familiar with him (see http://thefintrytrust.org.uk/shrineofwisdom.org.uk/SoW102.htm). Wilder’s interest in Taylor spread to theosophical circles and this interest continued in esoteric circles with people such as Manly Hall and Samuel Weiser, and there have been some more mainstream reprints as well. Since Prometheus Trust launched their complete works of Thomas Taylor series, there has been a renewed interest in his life, works and influence. Besides his monumental corpus of translations of ancient Greek writings, his own original writings are full of interest, showing an erudition and insight that are difficult to match. Below is a brief introductory selection of some of his main writings, of which the liberal reader may perhaps wish to investigate for their own noetic effulgence.

 

A Dissertation on the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries (1790)

A masterful piece of research into Greek mysticism; still the most insightful work on the subject; a classic.

http://www.iapsop.com/ssoc/1875__taylor___eleusinian_and_bacchic_mysteries.pdf

 

Theoretic Arithmetic, in three books, containing the substance of all that has been written on this subject by Theo of Smyrna, Nicomachus, Iamblicus, and Boetius (1816)

A concise, clear presentation of ancient numerology and number mysticism, a classic in the genre.

http://djm.cc/library/Theoretic_Arithmetic_Thomas_Taylor.pdf

 

A Dissertation on the Philosophy of Aristotle (1812)

Besides his encyclopedic knowledge of Plato and the neoplatonists, Taylor was also thoroughly fluent in all the technicalities of Aristotelian philosophy (and the commentaries of Simplicius), as this massive original work shows.

https://archive.org/details/adissertationon00taylgoog/page/n6

 

A History of the Restoration of the Platonic Theology by the later Platonists (1789)

Taylor gives a very esoteric and perennialist take on Greek philosophical history, making this a unique and insightful introduction to Neoplatonism.

https://archive.org/details/philosophicalan00marigoog/page/n220

 

The Allegory of the Wanderings of Ulysses (1823)

An erudite study on Homer’s Odyssey, which gives a clear overview of the esoteric symbolism of the neoplatonists.

http://www.philaletheians.co.uk/study-notes/hellenic-and-hellenistic-papers/taylor-on-the-wanderings-of-ulysses.pdf

 

The Triumph of the Wise Man over Fortune & The Creed of the Platonic Philosopher (1805)

The first is a fine piece of inspirational philosophy and the second is a nice, concise overview of the principles of Neoplatonism.

https://archive.org/details/miscellaniesinp01taylgoog/page/n4

 

A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes (1792)

A wonderfully buddhistic and pioneering piece on animal rights.

http://www.philaletheians.co.uk/study-notes/down-to-earth/taylor%27s-vindication-of-the-rights-of-brutes.pdf

 

List of Writings:

https://www.universaltheosophy.com/writings-taylor/

Blavatsky, Alexander Wilder and Thomas Moore Johnson

Following up our review of Letters to the Sage, Vol. 2, I thought it might be useful to present a brief summary of some of the writings of Alexander Wilder and Thomas Moore Johnson:
Wilder began editing reprints of works on ancient religious symbolism for publisher James W Bouton,. (ca 1831-1902) just around the time the Theosophical Society was forming. Blavatsky was interested in the vogue for this type of literature and wanted to present a more spiritual interpretation, so there was a common interest between her and Wilder. It was therefore logical for Bouton to have Wilder work on Isis Unveiled. She would refer to these types of works extensively, starting with Isis Unveiled.

Ancient symbol worship : Influence of the phallic idea in the religions of antiquity.

(New York, J. W. Bouton ; London, Trübner & co., 1874), by Hodder M. Westropp and C. Staniland Wake)

Serpent and Siva worship and mythology,

(New York, J. W. Bouton, 1877), by Hyde Clarke and C. Staniland Wake)

The symbolical language of ancient art and mythology; an inquiry,

(New York, J.W. Bouton, 1892), by Richard Payne Knight

Wilder and Bouton were early champions of the great neoplatonic scholar, Thomas Taylor with a reprint of his classic Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries in 1876. Blavatsky appreciated Wilder’s platonic knowledge and jumped on the Thomas Taylor bandwagon (although the entry on Thomas Taylor in her Theosophical Glossary is from Kenneth MacKenzie and is not very good, he didn’t perform animal sacrifices):

The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries: A Dissertation  (1876)
by Thomas Taylor , Alexander Wilder , Albert Leighton Rawson https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupid?key=ha001392221

In his letters, Wilder often discusses his translation of Iamblichus’ On the Mysteries, an important mystical text that he worked on sporadically for thirty years and sadly, was not published in book form in his lifetime. Presumably he left the copyrights and manuscript with Edmund Whipple. In his letters, we see that Blavatsky encouraged him with this work and Olcott offered to publish it (and it was serialized in The Theosophist magazine, beginning with the July, 1881 issue):

Theurgia, Or, The Egyptian Mysteries
by Iamblichus , Alexander Wilder Publication date 1911 Publisher W. Rider & son ltd .; Metaphysical Pub. Co
https://archive.org/details/theurgiaoregypt00wildgoog/page/n8

This nice edition presents both the Wilder and Thomas Taylor translations side-by-side:
On the mysteries =​ De mysteriis Aegyptiorum /​
Iamblichus of Chalcis ; edited by Stephen Ronan with the translations of Thomas Taylor &​ Alexander Wilder ; together with two extracts from lost works of Proclus, On the sacred art &​ On the signs of divine possession. Hastings, E. Sussex, England : Chthonios Books, 1989.

Iamblichus’ Exhortation to Philosophy is part of his ten-volume neo-Pythagorism project, of which four volumes have come down to us. Johnson did a nice translation, which was later reprinted by David Fideler’s Phanes Press:
Iamblichus' Exhortation to the Study of Philosophy (1908):
Phanes Press, 1988 - Philosophy - 128 pages https://books.google.ca/books/about/Iamblichus_the_exhortation_to_philosophy.html?id=N3AEAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y

There’s a whole blog devoted to this work (a new edition is due to appear in 2020): http://blog.protrepticus.info/2016/07/the-first-english-translation-of.html

Johnson also did a translation of Proclus’ Elements of Theology. This is a very influential philosophical work. An Arabic version was known as the Liber de Causis (the Book of Causes) of Aristotle. It was translated into Latin and Thomas Aquinas wrote a commentary on it. E. R. Dodds did a landmark translation of the work in 1934, setting a standard for thorough  manuscript research, although his translation is a little quirky, making Johnson’s translation still relevant:

Metaphysical elements (1909)
by Proclus, ca. 410-485; Johnson, Thomas M
https://archive.org/details/metaphysicalelem00procuoft/page/n3

Extracts from the Ronnie Pontiac Wilder/Johnson bio:

http://realitysandwich.com/323328/alexander-wilder-blavatsky-and-the-sunset-of-american-platonism/

Short Jay Bregman text on Johnson from the Prometheus Trust anthology:

http://platonic-philosophy.org/platonica.php?pg=Platoneia

Short text by Wilder on Pagan Religion :
https://theamericanminvra.com/2016/05/19/alexander-wilder-on-pagans-and-the-value-of-the-classical-religions/

Blavatsky and Wicca

Blavatsky’s Influence on Wicca:
Where would we be without Wicca? (Part 2) June 16, 2015 - John Halstead
The “occult” is more or less synonymous with “esoteric”.  The only difference is that the former sometimes carries a pejorative connotation and the latter tends to be used more in academic discourse.  Esotericism refers to a nexus of related quasi-religious movements, sometimes called the “Western Esoteric Tradition” or the “Western Mystery Tradition”, which includes elements of Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Kaballah, ceremonial magic (or “magick”), astrology, alchemy, tarot, spiritualism, and Theosophy, and the philosophies of Jacob Bohme, Franz Mesmer, Emanuel Swedenborg, Helena Blavatsky, Rudolph Steiner, and Aleister Crowley. The common trait among these movements is the notion that there is secret or hidden (i.e., “occult”) knowledge which available only to a small elect group and only through intense study. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/allergicpagan/2015/06/16/where-would-we-be-without-wicca-part-2/

Pagan studies scholar Thorn Mooney encourages Blavatsky discussion:

“ I took courses in Buddhism and Chinese religions and found ways to talk about Helena Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott (and, obviously, by extension, European occultism)”
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/oathbound/2015/08/pagan-studies-a-guide-for-students/

Blavatsky heads list of “fascinating female occultists:

“Author of the pioneering esoteric text The Secret Doctrine and co-founder of the Theosophical Society (focused on exploring the origin of humanity and the divine “without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or color”), Helena Blavatsky is one of the progenitors of the New Age movement. Attempting to unify Eastern tradition with Western occult practices, Blavatsky traveled throughout Europe, Asia, and the United States studying various doctrines. She reportedly underwent training with Hindu gurus in India. In her first major book Isis Unveiled, Blavatsky raised eyebrows when she claimed that science and religion was not the way to true enlightenment (she also believed she was psychic), though she did find legions of followers in America during the Spiritualist craze (and later in India once more). She was frequently declared a fraud — a vastly different reception than in her native Russia where she was born into an aristocratic family. Her coarse demeanor and seemingly exaggerated personal history didn’t help her reputation, but Blavatsky’s contributions are still celebrated today.”
http://flavorwire.com/470583/fascinating-female-occultists

Gnosticism Article:

Jesus the Essene July 17, 2015 - Philip Jenkins

The mystic Madame Blavatsky agreed that “the Gnostics, or early Christians, were but the followers of the old Essenes under a new name.” In 1887, Arthur Lillie published his book Buddhism in Christendom: or, Jesus, the Essene.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2015/07/jesus-the-essene/