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Richard, Duc de Palatine (1916-77) was an Australian spiritual teacher whose work included the synthesis of esoteric, Masonic and religious authorities in an organization called the Sovereign Imperium of the Mysteries, later the Brotherhood and Order of the Pleroma. He was ordained and consecrated bishop within the Order of Antioch by Mar Georgius of Glastonbury (Hugh George de Willmott Newman) and established the church that later became known as the Pre-Nicene Ekklesia. He was succeeded on his death by Archbishop Count George Boyer (1921-2008), a noted esoteric teacher who in 1983 became a bishop of the Apostolic Episcopal Church. His wife Bishop Leila Boyer led the Pre-Nicene Ekklesia until her death in 2015.

Analogy and Correspondence
By
Richard, Duc de Palatine
Edited by Bishop Leila Boyer

One of the problems facing the specialists in pre-history is the correct interpretation of the ancient systems of writing.  It was not until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone that the Egyptian hieroglyphics were decipherable.  Upon the clarification of the Egyptian language they discovered that the whole of the narratives of the Bible were taken from the Pagan Mysteries and made into a history and distorted into the story of Jesus the Man of Galilee.  This was done after A.D. 325.  They did admit that the symbol of “Jesus Christ” was the outward representation of the Divine Soul within man, and could only be understood under allegorical forms and cryptic language.  This Occult Philosophy known as the Gnosis just cannot be explained in the mortal terms of reference, so no terms have been coined in any language by which men can speak of it.

As with all the religions of the world, the basic principle which is common to them all, as well as in Christianity, is that Jesus our Hero-God exists among us today, but as the inner Christ Principle which actually lives and acts, but which is not confined in a body of any kind as the Christos, but in its mortal aspect is confined within the mind of every man, woman and child that has ever existed, is now, and will exist so long as Man is Man.  While the mortal is subject to a physical and chemical death, the Immortal part of Man can never die.  Therefore the Christ or Christos was never a person in a physical and chemical form, but it exists eternally as the Inner Principle within.

With regards to this Wisdom of the Self, Clement Alexandrinus quotes approvingly of Plato, when he says: “We must speak in enigmas; that should the tablet come by chance on its leaves either by sea or land he who reads may remain ignorant.” He also infers that there is a Secret Doctrine within Christianity, which not being understood, is made a subject of ridicule among unbelievers, or those who have not become perfected by the Gnosis.  When the Church in A.D.381, drove the Gnostics and Philosophers out of the Church, they lost the Keys to their Mysteries. Since that time, the Religion of the Inner Christ has been exposed to disdain and ridiculed by the intellectuals to this day, as they speak of the Christian doctrine as being absurd and a rehash of Paganism.  But even those who have taken it as the ipse dixit version, have ignored the Inner or Gnostic interpretation of this Perennial Occult Philosophy.

Those who say that Primitive Christianity does not possess an esoteric doctrine can be refuted by the words of Origen, when he says: “It is good to keep close to the secret of a king, in order that the doctrine of the entrance of souls into animal bodies may not be thrown before the common understanding, nor what is holy given to the dogs, nor the pearls of the Gnosis be cast before swinish hearers….For privately, to His own disciples did Jesus open up all things, esteeming above the multitudes those who desired to know his wisdom.”

In DE PRINCIPIIS, Origen again proves beyond all doubts that “The Scriptures have a meaning, not only such as is apparent at first sight, but also another, which escapes the notice of most men.  For such is written in the forms of certain Mysteries, and the image of divine things.  Respecting which there is one opinion throughout the whole Church, that the whole law is indeed spiritual; but that the spiritual meaning which the law conveys is not known to all, but to those on whom the grace of the Holy Spirit is bestowed in the word of wisdom and Gnosis.”  We could fill many pages with live quotations from the writings of the early Church Fathers from 44 to 325 A.D., and their successors, showing the existence of the Gnosis or the Inner Teachings.  These statements come from undoubted authority.

It was considered by the early Fathers that the Mysteries of the Faith could not be divulged to all. That the LOGIA OF THE LORD was unsuitable to those who are still blind and dumb, not having that inner understanding, or the undazzled and keen inner vision of the contemplative Soul, who must stand outside the Choir of Perfected Soul. It was also obvious that the Teachers of early Christianity spoke in the same manner as the Hierophants of the Pagan Mysteries, that the Mysteries of the Gnosis were delivered mystically under the veils of allegory and parable, which were used to conceal and yet at the same time to reveal the Priceless Gems of the Immortal Self to those who were able to secretly observe what is being delivered.  That which is veiled shall be disclosed to the Soul as Truth; and what is hidden to the many shall appear manifest to the few.  The mysteries are delivered mystically, that which is spoken may be in the mouth of the speaker; rather not in his voice, but in his own understanding.

After the separation of the Jewish Christians at Antioch in A.D.44 from the Gnostic Chrestian stream of the “Mysteries of Jeshu,” many of the Christian teachers still preserved the Inner Circle of Christians, and were recognized as a body of advanced Souls who had unfolded the Christos Principle so far as to be able to comprehend these Superior Mysteries of the Soul in a direct and comprehensible manner.  Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, writes to certain others hoping that they are “well versed in the sacred Scriptures and that nothing is hidden from you; but to me this privilege is not yet granted.”

It is clear that the Chrestian Ekklesia was the inner School of Christianity, and that the Christian Church was the public School.  Thus, this division of the Church of Christ is the same as the two divisions existing in the Gnostic and Pagan Mysteries.  The exoteric schools presented the Mysteries under the guise of allegories, symbols, legends, typographical events and places, and mysteries, and it was left to the multitudes to elucidate and interpret these stories according to their understanding.  But the Perfecti in the Pagan and Christian systems adopted the practice of interpreting all sacred legends and narratives, myths and mysteries, by a rule of or principle of analogy and correspondence; so that events which were related as having occurred in the external world were regarded as expressing the nature of the immortal and mortal part of man, and describing the operations and experiences of the human soul while chained to bodies of animals.

Therefore the departure of the Nicene Church from these Inner Teachings of the Gnosis of the Soul was a great calamity, from which the Church and its followers are still suffering.  Iamblichus resolved to reconcile every system of religion by demonstrating in his own life their identical origin to establish one universal creed based on ethics.  Richard, the founder of the present Pleroma, is resolved to follow this same great Plan.  This has become truly possible, since with the help of his members, past and present, he has been permitted to live in his own life the whole of the Grand Drama of the Soul outlined in the various religions of the known world.  We must also keep in mind that such well-known Fathers of the Christian Church endeavoured to follow the life-style of Iamblichus and Porphyry, such as Clement of Alexandrinus, Origen, Longinus, and the neo-Platonics such as Plotinus, Proclus, Ammonius Saccas and Hypatia, who were basically Gnostics after the School of Pythagoras.

Thus it was after the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325 that the Church began to condemn the Pagan Mysteries, Philosophers and Gnostics, accusing them of perverting the True Faith of the Christ who came in the flesh, which demanded of its followers a blind faith in a mortal man.  Why did the Church turn from its Mother – the Occult and Gnostic Philosophy which had existed from the very origin of the human race – to that of a false and baseless faith founded upon the materialisation of the eternal verities – the Immortal Christos within each and every human being?

This article was first published as a leaflet of The Brotherhood and Order of the Pleroma, The Disciplina Arcani in 1976