False Light and the “Other Gospel”
- Michelle Hayman
- Sep 10, 2025
- 12 min read
From a biblical perspective, believers are repeatedly warned to be vigilant against spiritual imposters. Jesus Himself prophesied that false Christs and false prophets would arise, showing great signs and wonders to deceive even the elect. The Apostle Paul likewise admonished the early church about those who would preach another gospel contrary to the true message of Christ. In apocalyptic prophecy, Babylon’s downfall is tied to occult deception: “for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.” The Greek word pharmakeia, often translated “sorceries,” implies occult arts or enchantments. These scriptures foretell a global spiritual deception – counterfeit light and false teachings mimicking truth.
An examination of a famous occult society – the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn – illustrates how such “false light” operates, repackaging pagan mythology and esoteric lore as a path to spiritual illumination.
The Golden Dawn’s Osirian Ritual Drama – A Counterfeit Resurrection
Founded in 1887 by three British esotericists, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was a secret society devoted to ritual magic and mystical knowledge. It drew heavily on Egyptian symbolism and Rosicrucian lore in crafting its initiatory ceremonies. At the very heart of the Golden Dawn system was the myth of Osiris, the ancient Egyptian god who was slain and resurrected. The Order deliberately wove the Osiris cycle into its grade rituals so that every new initiate symbolically re-enacted the death, dismemberment, and resurrection of Osiris as a drama of spiritual rebirth.
In the Neophyte initiation, the ceremonial hall was styled as the Hall of the Two Truths, the Egyptian judgment hall of the dead, where Osiris appears as Judge of the Dead presiding over the weighing of the heart. The blindfolded candidate, representing the deceased soul, was led in by Anubis and Thoth and underwent a ritual judgment – a test of purity and preparedness for enlightenment – just as a soul would be judged by Osiris in the afterlife.
Throughout the Golden Dawn rituals, Osiris was portrayed as a solar dying-and-rising principle – the eternal divine life-force that dies each night and is reborn at each dawn, echoing the sun’s cycle. The initiate mystically became Osiris, undergoing a figurative death in darkness and awakening into light. In one ritual the aspirant, bound in a posture like the mummified Osiris between twin pillars (Isis and Nephthys), experienced symbolic death and resurrection. The climax was a mystical communion in the body of Osiris, where officers recited on the candidate’s behalf: “I am Osiris Triumphant… the Lord of Life triumphant over Death.” This formula of the justified Osiris consciously paralleled the Christian narrative of Christ’s death and resurrection, as well as other dying-and-rising god myths.
In effect, the Golden Dawn dramatized Osiris as an archetype of the Initiate – a prototype for spiritual adepts. Every candidate was to become Osiris slain and risen, reliving that myth in order to awaken the divine life-force within. The Order’s founders explicitly saw Osiris as a universal archetype connecting Egyptian religion with Christ’s passion and resurrection, thus bridging Egyptian, Hermetic, Kabbalistic, and Christian traditions into one esoteric framework. This syncretic approach – treating Christ as one more instance of the dying god motif – can be seen by biblical Christians as exactly the false Christ and another gospel dynamic that Scripture warns against.
Osiris, the Solar Serpent, and the Counterfeit Wisdom of Babylon
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn forged, in modern dress, the old pagan pattern: the initiate must die and rise. Their central drama is not Christ crucified and raised by the power of the Father, but Osiris—the solar principle that “dies” nightly, “rises” at dawn, and judges the dead in Egypt’s Hall of the Two Truths. In the Neophyte rite the candidate is led as a corpse-soul, weighed, tested, and finally “raised” as Osiris. Polarity is exalted: Osiris and Isis, the sun and moon, male and female, marry to beget Horus, the “divine child,” the initiate’s “higher self.” It is a full-scale sacrament of the sun, rehearsed as “spiritual transformation.”
The “Light in Extension” they invoke is not the uncreated Light of the Son but the solar gnosis of Hermetic myth. The candidate “becomes Osiris,” not a sinner justified by the blood of the Lamb. It is a counterfeit resurrection—ritually precise, spiritually potent, and theologically false.
The engine beneath the ritual is number. Not number as arithmetic, but number as a pantheon of qualities. One, the Monad, is the principle of unity, the center, usually the Sun but sometimes the hidden limit, Saturn. Two, the Dyad, is the Moon, polarity, reflection, the maternal matrix. Three, the Triad, is Jupiter, harmony, benefic rulership, synthesis. Four, the Tetrad, is Saturn or Earth, structure, time, boundary, mortality. Five, the Pentad, is Mars, trial, will, the human microcosm. Six, the Hexad, is Venus, beauty, union, equilibrium. Seven, the Heptad, is Mercury, mystery, initiation, occult intelligence. Eight, the Ogdoad, is the higher octave of Saturn or Uranus, return, order, the perpetual cycle. Nine, the Ennead, is the higher Moon, completion, gestation, initiation. Ten, the Decad, is the cosmos, the all-in-all, the world-totality.
Revelation 13:1 (KJB):
“And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.”
For the magus, numbers are keys that open plants, stones, metals, angels, planets, even human temperaments. This is the “universal grammar” of Hermeticism. It looks like wisdom; it is in fact dominion by the elements—what Paul calls the rudiments of the world. It promises ascent by gnosis, not grace.
Renaissance magi and, later, the Golden Dawn mapped this number-religion onto the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. The structure is simple and subversive. Kether, the Crown, was the Monad, divine unity beyond planets, often called the primal motion or infinite light. Binah was Saturn, the boundary, structure, the strict “Great Mother” who gives form to overflow. Tiphareth was the Sun, harmony and balance at the heart, the redeemer or solar logos in their system. This was the Golden Dawn’s Hermetic Qabalah: Kether to Saturn to Sun. It was a polished cosmology wherein the Sun became the spiritual heart and surrogate mediator. But Christ is not a Sephirah, and the Son is not the Sun. To recast the Lord of Glory as a rung on an occult ladder is to preach another gospel.
If the Church of Rome truly sat under the yoke of Scripture, she would honor the seventh day that God sanctified at creation and stamped with His covenant. Instead, the Roman world enthroned the first day; Sunday; as its civil and sacred axis. This was not merely a scheduling quirk; it was a cosmological confession. The planetary week; Saturn’s day, Sun’s day, Moon’s day; enslaves time to the principalities and powers. The biblical seventh day marks God’s dominion over creation; the Roman first day marks the sun’s dominion over man.
The visual theology matches. A towering Egyptian obelisk stands in St Peter’s Square; an Osirian solar emblem in the navel of Latin Christendom. Bernini’s vast colonnade functions as a cosmic dial; the obelisk acts as a gnomon. If the worship were truly oriented to the Christ of Scripture, Rome would honor the sanctity of the seventh day and purge the square of its solar needle. Instead, the "Holy" Roman Church presents the same imperial profile as the empire that crucified the Lord. Scripture itself disproves the Friday–Sunday crucifixion tradition, as I’ve already demonstrated as seen in my previous post: https://www.rebuildspirit.com/post/after-three-days-before-corruption-reclaiming-the-biblical-resurrection-timeline
The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil—in its Hermetic, Golden Dawn dress—is the occult Tree of Life system rebranded as salvation. The serpent who promises illumination is the solar serpent—Osiris, the dawn-light, the bearer of wisdom, the false light. That is the spine of every mystery religion from Eden to Egypt to Rome to the Golden Dawn: eat the gnosis, become as gods, rise into the pantheon of gods, (just like good old George Washington).
This is why it is another gospel. It dethrones the Cross and rescripts the Resurrection. Where Scripture proclaims the Son who rose as the Sabbath closed, the Lord of the Sabbath vindicated by the Father, the mystery system proclaims the Sun who rises every day by inexorable cycles. Where Scripture sanctifies the seventh day with divine rest, the system enthrones the first day as the Monad’s festival—unity through the sun.
It predates Rome, and it captivates with the lure of unmatched power—unmatched, that is, until it collides with one filled by the Holy Spirit.
This is the urgency: do not confuse the biblical calendar with the Roman planetary week; do not receive the Osirian resurrection for the Resurrection of the Lord. The Golden Dawn only dramatized what Babylon has always preached: be your own savior, ascend by light, master the powers, and you will be as gods. Scripture answers: repent and believe the Gospel. The blood atones; the Spirit sanctifies; the Lord reigns. The serpent’s wisdom is a counterfeit—glittering, ancient, lethal. The nations are drunk on it.
Agrippa’s Renaissance Synthesis of Magic and Religion
The Golden Dawn did not invent this syncretic occult approach; they were heirs to a long tradition of Western esotericism. A key figure was Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, whose Three Books of Occult Philosophy became the definitive Renaissance encyclopedia of magic. Agrippa argued for a three-fold world – the elemental, celestial, and intellectual – all linked in a great chain of being. He portrayed the magus as one who can ascend and descend this chain by using correspondences, symbols, and divine names. Magic, in his view, was a universal science uniting natural philosophy, astronomy, and theology.
Agrippa frequently cited Scripture and the Church Fathers to support his synthesis, including Hierom (Jerome), Augustine, Origen, and others. By doing so, he attempted to legitimize Hermetic and Neoplatonic philosophy within a Christian framework. Yet in appealing to Jerome’s Latin Vulgate rather than the original Hebrew and Greek, Agrippa sometimes introduced concepts shaped more by Roman tradition than biblical truth. Jerome’s rendering of Lucifer in Isaiah 14:12, for example, became a cornerstone of later occult symbolism. Such translation choices allowed esotericists to seize upon biblical language and reshape it within their Hermetic framework.
Agrippa’s reverence for Pythagorean numerology, the Tetractys, and planetary correspondences shows the same blending later developed by the Golden Dawn. By placing Christ within this continuum of pagan gods, planetary spirits, and numerical archetypes, he diluted the exclusivity of the Gospel. This grand synthesis promised salvation through hidden knowledge, not through Christ crucified.
“By Her Sorceries Were All Nations Deceived” –
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, with its Osirian resurrection rites and cosmopolitan symbolism, serves as a revealing case study of how Mystery Religion elements have been repackaged in modern times. What they offered was, in essence, an esoteric gospel. Instead of salvation from sin through Jesus Christ, they taught the initiation of the soul through secret wisdom – a journey of becoming Osiris, or becoming Christ, by balancing lunar and solar forces, conquering death, and awakening one’s higher self.
They preached another gospel – one that integrated Egyptian myth, Neoplatonic philosophy, Jewish Kabbalah, and Christian terminology into a new synthesis. It spoke of light, life, and spirit, even quoting Scripture, yet in a framework where Christ was not uniquely the Way but one symbol among many. This diffusion of Christ’s identity is a deception of Antichrist.
The Bible’s prophecy that all nations would be deceived by sorcery is strikingly plausible when we survey the global spread of esoteric and occult ideas. The Golden Dawn’s influence continues in modern occultism, New Age spirituality, and interfaith mysticism. Theirs was a golden dawn of false light, echoing Paul’s warning that Satan transforms himself into an angel of light.
The Hermetic path sought the “Light in Extension,” but in rejecting the Lord of the Sabbath and the exclusivity of Christ’s resurrection at the close of the seventh day, they offered only a Luciferian facsimile. True light is found only in the risen Christ – not in Osiris, not in the planetary Monad, not in numerological mysteries, but in the One who is the Word made flesh, the unique Savior who has triumphed once for all.
Basically, we are being ruled by men swollen with the same satanic ego—hungry to be gods themselves, never to bow to the Almighty. That is why they nailed Christ to the cross—they could not endure that the true God had come in the flesh to sacrifice Himself and break their satanic chains. And still these egomaniacs repeat the same rebellion. To be filled with the Spirit of Christ is the greatest gift, for the truth will set you free. Do not let them deceive you or sell your soul to their demonic gods.
Sorcery as Possession
In Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Agrippa compiles the testimony of the ancients: that the highest poets, prophets, and magicians did not speak from their own wisdom but by possession. Plato called this “divine madness,” a frenzy in which the soul, loosed from the body’s reins, clung to a deity. Agrippa details how this frenzy came in degrees; from the Muses, from Dionysus, from Apollo, from Venus; each carrying men out of their senses and filling them with alien powers.
The magicians did not resist these visitations; they pursued them. They inhaled suffumigations, chanted invocations, and mutilated their bodies in rites of ecstasy. In that vacancy, spirits; daimons; descended. They gave sudden eloquence to the dumb, skill to the ignorant, prophecy to the blind. To the unlearned they lent wisdom, to the weak they lent invulnerability, to the mad they lent vision. Men celebrated these possessions as gifts of the gods (daimons).
Thus sorcery is not merely illusion; it is hospitality to spirits. The sorcerer becomes a throne for daimons. And by this enthronement, he imagines himself divine.
But being filled with the Holy Spirit of the Almighty is altogether different. The Spirit does not invade a vacant soul to use it as a puppet; He indwells the repentant, cleansed by the blood of Christ. The Spirit sanctifies rather than corrupts, convicts rather than deceives, and empowers not for vainglory but for service. Where daimons exalt the self and whisper, “Ye shall be as gods,” the Holy Spirit humbles the heart and glorifies the one true God. The sorcerer becomes a vessel of delusion; the believer becomes a temple of the Living God. One enthronement leads to bondage, the other to life eternal.
And the crucial truth is this: the false gods these men become through daimonic enthronement have no power over the one who is truly indwelt by the Spirit of the Most High. For the holiest of Spirits cannot be bound, cannot be tricked, and cannot be mastered. The sorcerer may boast as a god, but when faced with a servant of the Lord filled with His Spirit, all their incantations break and their illusions collapse. Darkness cannot command light; the counterfeit cannot overcome the true.
The Tree of Knowledge as Kabbalistic Ladder
Here the lie of Eden reveals itself. The serpent’s promise;“Ye shall be as gods” ;is fulfilled not by eating literal fruit but by partaking of forbidden knowledge, gnosis that opens the soul to spirits. In Renaissance magic, this was charted as the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, adapted into Christian Cabala and absorbed by Hermetic orders.
Agrippa mapped the ten Sephiroth onto planets, angels, and numbers. From top to bottom, the Tree became a ladder of ascent; a counterfeit Jacob’s ladder; by which the soul could rise from earth through planetary spheres to supposed union with God.
But this was the very Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil recast. To climb it was to seek wisdom outside of obedience, light apart from revelation, godhood apart from grace. And the serpent at its root was the solar serpent, the false light-bearer, who promised divinity through possession. Just as Nimrod became a Nephilim and bound mankind under a false cosmic order, so also do these men who crown themselves as gods through possession by fallen powers—powers from which Christ came to set us free.
Repent, and be filled with His Spirit, that you may stand untouchable against the witches and sorcerers who rule in power—the very secret societies and hidden forces that President John F. Kennedy openly opposed and sought to expose before he was assassinated.
The Man of Sin and the Sorcerer-Kings
History records the fruit of this deception. Nimrod, the mighty hunter, was remembered as the first sorcerer-king, a man who sought to become more than human. The Pharaohs, possessed as Horus-incarnate, ruled as gods on earth. The Caesars claimed divinity by right of their solar cults. Agrippa notes how oracles, sibyls, and rulers alike called their spirits “gods” and enthroned them in temples.
This finds its climax in the man of sin, who exalts himself above God and sits in God’s temple, proclaiming himself divine. He is not merely arrogant; he is possessed, the vessel of the solar serpent. His throne is the same as that of Osiris and Nimrod: the enthronement of daimonic power in human flesh.
Thus we understand Revelation’s warning: “For by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.” Sorcery is the machinery of possession. It is the calculated opening of the human vessel to spirits who masquerade as gods. It is the ascent of the Kabbalistic tree, the imitation of Osiris, the cycle of planetary powers, the enthronement of the Sun. Nations are drunk on its promises of wisdom, immortality, and transformation. But its end is corruption.
For to eat of this tree is not to ascend but to fall. The sorcerer who becomes “as a god” is no saint but a Nephilim, swollen with spirit but emptied of humanity. The initiate who rises as Osiris does not walk in the light of Christ but in the shadow of the serpent. The empire that enthrones the Sun does not serve the Creator of days but the powers of the air.
The lie of Eden remains: take, eat, and be as gods. And the truth of Scripture remains: only in Christ, the Lord of the true Sabbath, is there life, light, and resurrection.
John F Kennedy´s Secret Societies Speech
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