Having read the Synagogue of Satan or as alternative newer title the Gnosis of evil by Stanisław_Przybyszewski just now...I further
feel confirmed, that TFI is gnostic...there are links between Gnosis and Satanism....the question is though...how much did/does TFI leadership know about it...because many rituals...rules...thoughts are so similar...it's "frightening" / feeling for those, who still remain!!!
I don't see Stanislaw's book translated in fullness on the net...I got it cheap to reduced price...from that book I learned first about Vintras and much more...The Cathars in southern France appeared often in "good light"...when I studied up on church history...TFI refers to them...only Stanislaw shows them in bad light!!?!!
By 1848, the Church of Carmel was condemned by the pope and in 1851, Vintras was accused of homosexuality, conducting black masses in the nude and masturbating while praying at the altar. At that time, he had already followers in England and Belgium, and they had set up “religious houses” at St. Odile in Alsace and at Sion-Vaudemont in Lorraine.
On August 6, 1839 Eugene Vintras had finished work in the French village of Tillay when an extraordinary event irrevocably changed his life. An old man knocked at his door and addressing Vintras by his baptismal name ‘Pierre-Michel’, told him the time had come for him to carry out a special mission. The end of the age (that is, the age of the Second Reign, that of Christ) was at hand, and Vintras was to announce the coming of the Holy Spirit and the commencement of the ‘Reign of Love’. The old man ‘whose face shone so brightly you could not look at him,’ again appeared to Vintras while he was on a visit to Paris. Subsequent visionary experiences confirmed the ‘old man’ was the Archangel Michael and Vintras a reincarnation of the prophet Elijah. In addition to Archangel Michael, Vintras told of being visited by the Virgin Mary, St. Joseph, as well as other angelic beings, who disclosed to him the secret teachings of the original Christians. Followers flocked to Vintras, who now known by his spiritual name “Elie-Strathaniel,” celebrated Mass wearing a vestment adorned with an upside down cross. “I want this cross to be known as the cross of grace, because this is an age of crime and corruption, having drawn down on all the earth the terrible effects of my Father’s justice,” Christ had told Vintras in a vision.
Vintras, the pious, mild-mannered Catholic, had been transformed by his experiences and as ‘Elijah returned’ radiated a powerful presence. People from all over France rushed to join his “Church of Carmel” or “Work of Mercy,” with its new priesthood which was to replace the ‘corrupt’ priesthood of the Catholic Church. Lacking any formal religious training and with only a basic education, Eugene Vintras, the Prophet Elie-Strathaniel, preached complex rites and doctrines which remarkably resembled those of the ancient Gnostics. As the historian Richard Griffiths explains:
These rites were sacrificial in nature, and they enabled those who performed them to receive the merits of ‘redemption’, and to participate in the preparation for the coming of the Paraclete. The belief in the efficacy of a specific rite in freeing man from the fetters of matter and bringing him nearer to the spiritual redemption which would announce the Third Reign is very near to that of most gnostic sects, for whom the method of redemption consisted not so much in the profession of certain opinions or virtues as in the practice of certain rites.
The ancient Gnostics included both men and women in the priesthood, a tradition revived by Vintras in the Church of Carmel.
Women were permitted into the priesthood of the rite, in fact they held a very important place, for it was through Woman that salvation was to come. And in the attitude towards the Virgin Mary we find a conception of her as ‘created Wisdom’, the invariable reflection of ‘uncreated Wisdom’. This can be seen to be very close to one form of Valentinianism, a gnostic belief in which Sophia, or Wisdom (a divine principle which had fallen from the realm of light into the realm of matter) was conceived as being a double figure. The higher Sophia remained in the sphere of light, the lower Sophia had sunk into darkness. Through this duality Sophia became the fallen divinity through whom the mingling of light and dark, of spirit and matter, in the world, had been achieved; she was also seen as the intermediary between the lower and higher worlds and an instrument of redemption.[5]
In 1842, under pressure from the Catholic Church, Vintras was arrested by the French authorities and imprisoned for five years on the trumped-up charge of soliciting donations from people to whom he claimed to reveal the name of their guardian angel. While he was in prison, the Abbe Marechal, known as Ruthmael, took over the community. He apparently began publicly teaching certain rituals that had a sexual content. According to some reports, he confided to his congregation, “Those who feel love for one another should share it often. Every time they do, they are sure to create a spirit in heaven.”
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