Julian and Socrates Died for the Same Crime

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Buddhas and Initiates Series · 9 pages

Drawn from Blavatsky Collected Writings XIV, under the heading What the Occultists and Kabbalists have to say. The argument begins from a general claim — that Christianity is exoterically Paganism pure and simple, and esoterically transcendental and practical magic or occultism — and moves to the Solar Trinity, which is presented not as Mazdean but as universal and as old as man, with the evidence that temples in antiquity were invariably made to face the sun, their portals opening east.

The Emperor Julian, now called the Apostate, is treated as the last of the Solar Priests in Europe: he tried to benefit the world by revealing a portion of the great mystery of the Solar Trinity, and died for the same offence as Socrates. Blavatsky notes a difference between the two deaths which she says is suggestive for the student of occultism. The closing pages state the charge she brings against the Roman Church — not that it worships under other names the divine beings worshipped by all nations in antiquity, but that it declares idolatrous both the pagans, ancient and modern, and every Christian nation that has freed itself from Rome. The frontispiece is a portrait of Julian by Sasha Chaitow, reproduced with permission.

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