Friday, July 27, 2007
FRANKISTS PRACTICE SEXUAL RITES
From the writings of T. Allen Greenfield, Bishop of the Gnostic Catholic Church:
At approximately the same time that Chassidic Judaism was developing, another trend which for many years was almost lost to history was bubbling up in the Ghettoes of Eastern Europe in the wake of the Tzvi messianic expectations. Indeed, most older English-language sources relegate this rather substantial movement to a footnote, usually couched in the most unflattering terms.
This was a sect known as the Zoharists or Frankists, after Jacob Frank (1726-91 EV), originally named Jacob Leibowicz1.
Like the Chassidim, the Zoharists were deeply steeped in Qabala and magick and ecstatic religious expression.
Like the followers of Tzvi, they were also messianic. Unique to the Frankists was a doctrine of salvation through sexual ecstasy that had not characterized these other tendencies. Indeed, the Zoharists anticipated the sexual magick that emerged a century and more later under the influence of such luminaries as P.B. Randolph, Max Theon and, ultimately, Aleister Crowley.
There is a bare chance, in fact, that the Zoharists may have influenced these later exponents of sexual spirituality. ...
Within five years the Rabbinical Judaism had denounced the Zoharists as heretics.
The Frankists enjoyed some protection in Roman Catholic circles, ever hopeful of making conversions among the Jews.
In a certain sense Frank's critique of the Talmudic Judaism of his time resembled the friction between Jesus and the Pharisees of an earlier era.
Frank, who felt that his sect was above restriction, was quick to exploit this protection, and proceeded to promise Baptism of his followers.
He was himself baptized in Warsaw with the Polish King, Augustus III, acting as his godfather.
But the Frankists continued to practice sexual orgiastic ecstasy as a spiritual sacrament, and soon ran afoul of the Holy Inquisition.
Unlike Aharon Yosef's Pontifications, this article cites references.
