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 The first ‘Friends of God’ formed an egalitarian brotherhood, professing the universal priesthood.
Later, the persecutions brought the Cathars to organize themselves; three degrees were formed from the primitive equality: the Novitiate, the grade of Perfection and the Priesthood. The diaconate was raised to the episcopate and the episcopate blossomed into the patriarchate.
‘As old as pain and evil of which it wants to cure the injuries, the religion of the Consoler and purifying Spirit goes back to the first days of the world.
Before Christ, it radiated upon the Indian Brahmans, the Persian Magi, the Judean Essenes, on the Greeks, on Pythagoras and Plato.
After Christ and all Gnostics, it was more directed to the thought world of Plato and the soul world of Pythagoras, preserving meanwhile in the Orient its pure primordial radiation: celestial radiation and Greek light.’
Hierarchy
The upper border of the hierarchical development was the monopoly of the patriarchate. This patriarchal aristocracy never acted as a theocratic monarchy.
It never succumbed to the dream of Manes who had enveloped the whole world in his project of a universal theocracy. Pyrenean Catharism was too spiritual in its essence to see the Paraclete incarnated in a man: its pope was the Spirit; its Vatican was Heaven!
‘No word sealed in the Bible. No Scripture chained to the Temple. No God imprisoned in the Tabernacle. No priest as keeper of God. No Pope as caretaker of Heaven and Hell. No servitude and no death of the Spirit!’
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