The Christian Book of the Dead

What is the Christian Book of the Dead? It is a contribution to the studies of death and posthumous soul experience according to archeosophic teaching and the early Church Fathers. Those who saw the previous conference will notice an action similar to that of Padma Sambhava, the Lotus King, who develops teachings that were present in Buddhist tantras but before there was none and now there is. Tommaso Palamidessi does the same. There are very ancient doctrines, rituals of the Roman Church, in the Roman Missal there are invocations, etc... but not properly arranged, not systematized, not developed in an orderly systematic way. Tommaso Palamidessi thus fills a gap by writing a text that properly collects all these doctrines, developing them according to Christian tradition and organizing them in the form of a true manual.

Let us set aside for a moment the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which is anyway after the advent of Christ. We have seen Egypt with the Egyptian Book of the Dead in which the deceased had to defend himself from attacks by monsters of the afterlife. A rather gloomy world with kinds of tricks, stratagems to escape one's destiny (one of which was precisely embalming).

Greeks... Fear of the second death, not returning to life but disintegrating. This concept could bring us back to the ancient opinion of Plutarch and the mystery schools already briefly stated: the disincarnate, after wandering and atoning in the afterlife, would undergo a second death, the separation of spirit from soul which would be reabsorbed each by its own element, thus making the personality of the deceased disappear.

Let us seek evidence of this in the New Testament and, why not, also in the Old. The revelation according to Ezekiel says: "The soul that sins is the one that will die" (Ez. 18:4). Jesus then says something more: "Do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can make both soul and body perish in Gehenna."

Gehenna or hell was a desolate locality southwest of the gates of Jerusalem where the city's refuse was thrown, corpses to be burned, sadly famous since the time of Hezekiah for the cult of Moloch, and where children slaughtered for sacrifice to idols were burned. Therefore it remained as an allegory to indicate the state and cosmic point of gathering of lost souls; an allusion to the possible failure of survival in the afterlife for some individuals after a more or less long sojourn in the beyond whose conclusion was the dissolving and reabsorption of the soul, nothing remaining of the conscious personal being. Being thrown into gehenna meant an effective extinction as a human being.

This fear of the second death in the absence of individuation of a developed individuality. This was certainly not for everyone, it was only for a few initiates, Sacred Kings and Prophets who had sanctified an Alliance with God.

In Christianity, on the other hand, at the foundation of all Christianity there is a particular event that changes the course of events in history and which is precisely the Event of the Cross, namely the sacrifice of Christ, Death and Resurrection. Let us analyze it:

"In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God. He was God. He was in the beginning with God. Through him God created everything. Without him he created nothing. He was life and life was Light for men. That light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. [...] I am the Light of the World; whoever follows me will not walk in darkness."

The Light that is the Word becomes incarnate in a man at the moment of Baptism. He celebrates the Last Supper and institutes an Alliance with the Apostles. According to the Rite of Alliance that Melchizedek had instituted in antiquity in which he transmits his presence to the Apostles. Then at the moment of death he celebrates exactly this same rite in a macrocosmic aspect no longer for individuals but in general.

From that moment man's consciousness changes because he has the presence of Christ so he is the bearer of a Light that he did not have before and as salt dissolved in water immediately salts all the water, behold that the grafting of Christ changes Man.

Mystical Ascent

With this Alliance Christ descends to hell, that is, he binds himself to the most telluric aspects of human consciousness celebrating an alliance with them too and despite this ascends to heaven, thus giving everyone the possibility of Ascending to heaven.

"If Christ were born a thousand times in Bethlehem and not within you, your soul would be lost. In vain will you look to the Cross of Calvary if you do not first erect it within yourself" (Silesius)

All the doctrine of passing in Christian doctrine has a cardinal point of reference that...