The Cathars recognized Jesus Christ as a model Perfecti (a “perfected” priest). He was, however, not the one and only Son of God but an angelic Christed spirit. They maintained that it was necessary for Jesus to come to Earth to receive redemption through purification for his past sins, thereby implying that he had previously incarnated on the planet.
The Cathars’ philosophical leanings regarding Jesus, along with their other heretical revelations, including the belief that Mary Magdalene had once been married to the Christ, eventually got them in trouble with the Catholic Church. But they were deemed harmless until they began to baptize Catholics into their heretical faith, including previously anointed Catholic priests and bishops. Eventually entire dioceses began to defect, and to add insult to injury, the new Cathar converts stopped paying their tithes to the Church.
The Church also became very jealous of the Cathar Perfectis’ ability to soundly defeat leading Catholic theologians in philosophical debate. As heirs to the intellectual Manichaeans, the Cathars nourished both hemispheres of the brain in order to eventually unite them in the production of Gnostic Consciousness.
The Cathar’s heresy and their distaste of everything related to the Church was eventually distilled and summarized by one famous Catholic saint who publicly stated:
[T]hey [the Perfecti] talk to the laity of the evil lives of the clerks and prelates of the Roman Church…they attack all the sacraments of the Church, especially the sacrament of the Eucharist, saying that it cannot contain the body of Christ. Of Baptism, they assert that the water is material and corruptible…and cannot sanctify the soul…they claim that confession made to the priests of the Roman Church is useless…. They assert, moreover, that the cross of Christ should not be adored or venerated [having been an instrument of torture]…”
In 1209, Pope Innocent III issued a bull authorizing a Crusade against the Cathar heresy. This was the beginning of the final, sad chapter in the Cathars’ short history. Over the next thirty years an estimated 500,000 Cathar men, women and children would be tortured and slaughtered. Through much of this time their only protection was the gnostic sympathizers that came to their aid, especially the Johannite Knights Templar who, it was said, were “the secular arm of the Perfecti.”
On the night before the fateful day of March 16, 1244, when 225 Cathars marched down from hilltop fort of Montsegur and into the hands of the Catholic authorities, it is believed that one or more versions of the Holy Grail they had possessed, along with some priceless gnostic manuscripts, were lowered from the mountain and hidden in a local cave.
Finally, with their sacred work in Earth complete, the Cathars chanted songs of thanksgiving for their impending release from the shackles of Rex Mundi and the material world. Then, upon reaching the foot of Montsegur, they joyfully entered the lapping flames of a roaring bon fire and began their ascent to their eternal home in the Pleroma.
From: World Gnosis: The Coming Gnostic Civilization by Mark Amaru Pinkham
Mark Amaru Pinkham is the author of nine books detailing the mysteries of ancient humanity and their civilizations, and the spiritual wisdom derived from them. Listed below in order of publication, beginning in 1997…
? The Return of the Serpents of Wisdom
? Conversations with the Great Goddess: The Secret Doctrine of the Fifth World
? From the Green Man to Jesus: The Origin and Evolution of the Christ Myth
? Guardians of the Holy Grail: The Knights Templar, John the Baptist and the Water of Life
? World Gnosis: The Coming Gnostic Civilization
? Sedona: City of the Star People
? Sacred Geometry and the Creation of the Universe
? An Initiate’s Guide to The Path of the Dragon
? The Complete Seven Rays of Healing System
? And The Sedona Vortex Video