The Stages of Light

The Stages of Light

Disclaimer:  This is a FIRST DRAFT.  It needs revision. 

Process:  Voice To Text notes, compiled and fed into Grok AI along with a prompt; collate these notes and express it as a manuscript which deals section by section with all the relevant facts of my original writing. 

Much of the text is my own interpretation and understanding. Some of the phrases used here are spurious and require elucidation and expansion (intended for second draft). There is also that Grok AI has altered the original nuance during streamlining this essay, thereby changing some of the intended frames of reference. I regard the original notes and research notes for this essay as 'a zero draft.' 

Warning: the plot pivots toward the end, in a way you probably are not expecting. It provides a framework for contemplation.  

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The Stages of Light

A Hermetic and Gnostic Reading of the Abrahamic Revelations,

Belief as Experiment, and the Long Path of Reunion

An exploratory manuscript

First Draft

©2026 snakeappletree. All Rights Reserved.

Preface: A Hermetic Frame

This manuscript is offered as a Hermetic and Gnostic exploration rather than as a claim of exclusive orthodoxy. It treats the three Abrahamic traditions not as competing final revelations but as successive stages in a single, multi-layered process of consciousness. In the language of the ancient Egyptian stages of light; Dawn (the spark), Midday (the full illumination), and Night (the cast shadow) and in the Christian symbolism of the Trinity (intention, interpretation, and the vague directional theme), the religions appear as progressive instruments.

Judaism functions as foundation; the teaching associated with the historical Jesus as the moment of light and the awakening called Christed consciousness; and the subsequent institutional forms, including much of what later crystallised as Islam and post-Nicene Christianity, as the necessary shadow in which the original impulse is both preserved and obscured. The goal throughout is the absolute reunion with God; what Christian mysticism has named theosis, what the Latin tradition calls unio mystica, and what Sufism knows as fanāʾ. The intervening process is the purgatory required for that reunion.

What follows integrates original reflections, researched sources concerning Islamic end-times narratives and the “angel of light” polemic, and the historical and symbolic clarifications that arise when these materials are analysed together under a Hermetic lens. 

I. The Triadic Structure of the Abrahamic Traditions

To comprehend the greater picture in context we must understand the three Abrahamic religions as components of a whole. This is alluded to in Christianity by the concept of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, where one intention, two interpretation, and three the shadow of that light cast in the general direction, are factors characteristic of the religions. The same pattern works on many layers. Judaism (foundation), Jesus (son of God / light), and Islam (theme / shadow) constitute another interpretation of the holy triad. I have explored the Trinity as symbolising planetary astrology around the birth and death of Christ and antichrist in another essay. 

The symbolism is ancient, rooted in the three stages of light in Egyptian spirituality: Dawn, Midday, and Night, also spark, light, and the shadow cast. Muslims today, taking the later institutional forms of the Trinity literally, often misunderstand the encoded knowledge of the original intention. The same misreading occurs within institutional Christianity and within later Judaism. All three have, in different ways, forgotten how to translate the poetic symbolism that was intended to teach the mystery.

II. The Council of Nicaea and the Veiling of the Human Christ

The Council of Nicaea in 325 AD made a decisive choice. The Arian understanding of Christ, Christ the man, closer in spirit to the later Franciscan emphasis on the human and imitable Jesus, was judged incorrect and heretical. The council decided to deify Christ into a supernatural entity. The Church thereafter took the path that Christ was not, in the primary sense, a mortal man teaching a way of living.

This decision obfuscates the original teachings of Christ the man, what Christ was actually saying, preserved more directly in texts such as the Gospel of Thomas. There is poetic symbolism designed to teach the mystery, encoded into the miracle narratives of the supernatural Christ. People forgot how to translate it because they forgot or cannot identify what he was talking about.

The Arian (or more precisely, the human and interior) Christ was teaching a comprehension of the world which is the awakening within called Christed consciousness. The post-Nicaea Church is the institutional form which, in Islamic prophecy, is to be destroyed during the end of times. Not the true teachings of the man Jesus, His teachings of how to live in harmony with God internally and externally, but the later doctrinal overlay. Those original teachings remain after the false doctrine is removed. And not only the false doctrine of the Churches Christianity, but the corresponding false doctrines that later crystallised within Islam and within Judaism. They all got it wrong. Only understanding what Christ meant by His teachings, is the correct way. 

The foundation texts themselves did not escape this pattern. Origen’s Hexapla in the third century already documented that the Hebrew manuscripts then circulating among the rabbis had been systematically shortened in precisely those places that pointed most clearly to the Messiah. The Apostles and the early Church had read the fuller Septuagint; the Western decision, following Jerome, to elevate the later Masoretic form over that older witness meant that one major stream of Christianity received a foundation already filtered after the light had been refused. The Eastern tradition’s continued use of the Septuagint preserved more of the original Messianic contour. The same impulse that later deified and institutionalised Christ at Nicaea had already begun, earlier, to edit the preparatory texts that should have prepared the ground for him.

This is why Islamic prophecy of the Mahdi has Christ reborn destroying the Antichrist (Dajjāl). The pure connection with the divine removes the need for a third-party intermediary that confuses us away from that knowing. This is why Christianity uses the symbolism of the sacrifice of Christ. We have to remove the symbolism of Him from the connection in order to be pure in our connection with God. No third party intervention, not even Jesus. To know God directly we must go beyond prophets, messiahs, imam, priests, teachers. It is an internal revelation, a more direct knowing that God flows through the enlightened individual. The purpose of religions and teachers is merely guide us there. 

“Christ died for our sins so we don’t have to” refers, at the level of inner meaning, to anxiety and insecurity which prohibit the manifestation of God’s intent, that we live in a state of union with God. Self-doubt creates bad manifestations. That is essentially a core of Christ’s sacrifice: to give us confidence to walk with God, that the creation reflects back to us our internal state, and for that state to be in blissful harmony with the divine. It is quite simple to comprehend.

This is why everything the devil sends is confusion and distraction. We use the word 'temptation' to describe the lure away from that trust, that faith, that connection. The world rewards the spiritually pure, those who trust in God to do the decision-making. The only real choice we have is to let go of the reptilian limbic brain’s need to control, which stems from anxiety. 

Of course, this must be compromised with modern life and the urban way of being we have collectively allowed to run away and control so much of our lives as we collectively went to the devil. Our pollution and selfishness prove that to be a reality, as much as our fear of each other and lack of empathy. Christ’s other core teaching is the radiant heart: Acceptance, Forgiveness, Gratitude, Trust (Faith). But we do have to make critical choices along the way.

III. The Hidden Text and the Mahdi

In the Islamic book of the end times there is reference to a hidden text to be revealed by the Mahdi at the end times. Traditions, especially within Shi‘i collections such as Bihar al-Anwar, speak of the Qā’im opening the seal of the Prophet’s gold-sealed letter or book and reading it aloud to the people. Parallel accounts concern the muṣḥaf of ʿAlī, an alleged complete codex compiled by ʿAlī that includes the proper order, occasions of revelation, and inner meanings, refused by the early community and reserved until the end of time. When the Mahdi arises he will recite the Book of God in its entirety and bring forth that which was hidden.

Awareness of this situation debunks the Q'ran and Islamic practise as being accurate to the intention of the Prophet, that it will necessarily be put right again by the Mahdi. I have paralleled this to the Nicaea Christian doctrine being in discord with Christs actual teachings, and similar with Judaism. 

These traditions form part of the larger eschatological drama in which the Mahdi (Islamic Messiah / Christian AntiChrist) and the returning Christ (ʿĪsā) confront the Dajjāl (Devil - of misperception, lies, delusion, deviance, corruption, etc). From the perspective developed here, the destruction prophesied is the destruction of the false institutional overlay, not of the original impulse. The pure connection removes the need for the third party.

Importantly, as it is a contentious topic; the Islamic prophecy then has Christ kill the Mahdi (the christian antichrist) also. Christ IS the light, whatever the dawn and dusk components have to say about the trinity system. 

IV. The Sources on the “Angel of Light” and Islamic Eschatology

The inquiry that generated this manuscript began with exploration of two sources concerning Islam and the end times. The first is a pastoral presentation that links Muhammad’s experience in the cave to the New Testament warnings. Galatians 1:8 states that even if an angel from heaven should preach another gospel, let him be accursed. 2 Corinthians 11:14 states that Satan masquerades as an angel of light. The narration presents Muhammad’s report of an angelic revelation that produced a different way as the fulfilment of that warning, and traces the spiritual lineage of Islam through Ishmael rather than Isaac.

The second source, a detailed exposition by John MacArthur, examines Islamic eschatology from its own texts. In that system Jesus is a man and prophet, not God; he did not die and therefore did not atone; he is presently in heaven and will return at Allah’s command primarily to correct the Christians who have misunderstood him. After his return he will marry, have children, and die, to be buried next to Muhammad. Three great end-time figures appear: the Mahdi (the rightly guided one), the Dajjāl (the great deceiver, often described as one-eyed and claiming divine status), and the returning ʿĪsā. MacArthur argues that the description of the Mahdi closely matches the biblical Antichrist, while the Dajjāl functions as a counterfeit or related figure within the same drama.

Read within a Hermetic frame, these polemical and comparative materials become data rather than final verdicts. They illustrate the intensity with which institutional forms defend their boundaries, and they record the very prophecies that, from the perspective of this manuscript, point toward the eventual removal of those institutional overlays so that the original teaching of harmony with God may stand clear.

V. The Civilisational Necessity of the Institutional Church

I will argue here for the essential part the Christian Church played in God’s design of why that had to happen in the way it did. The reason the Church needed to exist as a sworn entity is because it got Europe through the Dark Ages, where the monasteries were bastions of knowledge, spirituality, sustainability, and civilisation. From them, Christendom, all the illiterate, ordinary people who believed in God through the device of Jesus and Mary in simple peasant terms, was protected from massacre. As a result, Europe went through a Renaissance, an Age of Reason, the development of sciences and technologies, the industrial revolution, and medicines. Massive social progress based on Christian morality that humans have individual rights. Widespread improvement of the quality of life. Meanwhile, other regions of the world have still not caught up with that yet.

For “the message” to get through to everyone in real time, the world perhaps needs to be connected by a live television feed, satellite links. To the mind of a pre-tech civilisation, that is a miracle. It came through the only route it could.

In the same way that the Christian Church is not what was meant by Christ the Man when he was teaching, but had been corrupted, what is meant by Islam in the religion of modern Islam is not the same thing which was meant by it, nor Judaism. Christ chose a path of sacrifice to launch his religion. Muhammad chose a path of conquest to launch his religion. Both devices were used to launch their religions, and almost immediately their original teachings were corrupted so that the religions were not teaching their message but instead were distorting it.

VI. Fulfilment of Prophecy and the Collective Generation of Deities

Fulfilment of prophecy proves that humans can collectively create deities. The experiments humans have been doing for a long time is how to evolve. To be able to manifest God through stages of experimentation is part of the long-term strategy of the secret priesthood. It is more ancient than we know. Religions are experiments to generate sufficient focus of belief to manifest deity as tools and leverage to fulfil tasks required so that we can access higher levels of consciousness. It is magical thinking, but it does have a measurable impact. We see echoes of it in the religions (deification). It is part of the mechanics which not all people need to know about or are aware of, as a real thing our species is involved with. The Creation mirrors our preconceptions. Control and direction of that volume of psychic energy through the format of religious doctrine is a tool of statecraft. 

Why would a secret organisation manipulate so many people this way? We do it because we can, and because given the choice not to, we chose to do it anyway. The reason is objectively positive; it is because we may as well test all the systems to learn about our existential limitations and how to expand them. As a species we are going for absolute reunion with God. The process is the purgatory necessary to achieve that. This ancient project is thousands of years underway. Civilisations rise and fall for the purpose of studying, experimenting, with collective power of focussed belief. We make Gods in our image to help us become God through enhanced understanding. It is evolution. It works through us. 

VII. The Mechanics of Belief and the Secret Priesthood

Belief is not merely propositional. It is a focusing mechanism that concentrates attention, emotion, and collective intention until something begins to answer back, whether that something is an interior psychological complex, a cultural egregore, or an actual opening toward higher orders of consciousness. Deification is then the visible residue of successful experiments: figures or principles that have accumulated enough sustained attention to function as stable levers. A deity is a caricaturisation of any concept invested with sufficient power of belief to act autonomously. 

This is not modern invention. Mystery traditions, Hermetic streams, certain Gnostic lineages, and later esoteric orders have repeatedly spoken in similar terms: the gods are both real and constructed, real because they are constructed through disciplined focus, and constructed in order to become real enough to serve as bridges. The “secret priesthood” language is the traditional way of pointing to those who treat the process as deliberate rather than accidental. Whether there is a continuous, self-aware lineage spanning millennia, or simply recurring human patterns of initiatory knowledge that rediscover the same mechanics, is historically underdetermined. What is observable is that the pattern itself keeps reappearing.

The measurable impact is the least controversial part. Sustained collective belief demonstrably alters social reality, individual psychology, and the felt texture of experience. The claim that these effects can scale into genuine access to higher cognitive or ontological states is the disputed layer. Mystical traditions across cultures treat that access as real. The position of this manuscript sits with them while remaining experimental rather than dogmatic: we keep running the trials because the alternative, of refusing to test the outer limits of what consciousness can do, is itself a choice, and not a neutral one.

VIII. The Radiant Heart and the Goal of Reunion

The long-term trajectory is absolute reunion with God. The classic telos of the mystical path, whether framed as theosis, unio mystica, or fanāʾ. Calling the intervening process “purgatory” is precise in the older sense of the word: not punishment for its own sake, but the necessary purification and densification of experience required before the dualism of seeker and sought can collapse.

The institutional religions appear as successive experimental chambers. Some generate the required intensity of focus; some generate the necessary friction and shadow work; some produce the civilisational scaffolding that allows later stages to become possible at planetary scale. Corruption and distortion are not bugs in this reading; they are part of the data.

Christ’s core practical teaching remains the radiant heart: Acceptance, Forgiveness, Gratitude; and Trust. The only real choice is to let go of the limbic need to control. The pure connection with the divine removes the need for the third party that confuses us away from that knowing. When that occurs, electronic technology and every other intermediary become unnecessary. The world reflects back the internal state; when that state is in blissful harmony with the divine, the Creation itself becomes the unbroken field of the reunion.

Conclusion

What has been constructed is a single narrative that keeps the historical achievements of institutional Christianity, the interior teaching associated with the historical Jesus, the corrective eschatology of Islamic Mahdism, and a critique of all three religions’ later dogmatic solidifications. It is not the reading any of the orthodox communities would accept, but it is internally consistent as a Hermetic and Gnostic interpretation of the shared Abrahamic material.

The experiments continue because the species has not yet exhausted what can be learned by pressing against the current limits of manifestation and identity. The process is the purgatory necessary to achieve absolute reunion with God. The radiant heart is both the method and the destination.