World Famous Cults and Fanatics by Colin Wilson Read Free Book Online Page A

it Adonai.)
    Like all messiahs, he soon collected a small band of followers who believed every word he said. His fellow orthodox Jews found this menacing, and banished him when he was twenty-five. In the
Turkish town of Salonika (now Thessaloniki, and a part of Greece) he gained even more converts. But even his followers were often puzzled by his strange behaviour. On one occasion he went around
carrying a basket of fish, explaining that it represented the Age of Pisces, when Jews would be released from bondage. And on another occasion he shocked the rabbis by inviting them to a feast,
then taking a Scroll of the Law in his arms as if it were a woman, and carrying it to a marriage canopy that he had set up; this symbolic marriage of the Messiah and the Law shocked the orthodox so
much that he was expelled from Salonika.
    At the age of thirty-six, surrounded by disciples (who supported him in style) he moved to Jerusalem. There he was seen by a young man who was to become his John the Baptist or St Paul, the son
of a Jewish scholar named Nathan Ashkenazi, who was deeply impressed when he saw Sabbatai in the street, but was too young and shy to approach him. It was at this time that Sabbatai found himself a
bride, a Polish girl named Sarah, who had escaped the pogrom, become a courtesan (or high-class tart), and developed a strange conviction that she was destined to be the bride of the Messiah. The
story has it that Sabbatai heard about the beautiful courtesan and sent twelve of his disciples to Leghorn, in Italy, to bring her to him. They were married in March 1664.
    In the following year, Sabbatai finally met Nathan, who was now twenty-two (Sabbatai was nearly forty), and allowed himself to be convinced that it was time to announce to the whole world
– and not merely to his disciples – that he was the Messiah.
    The news spread throughout Palestine. But when Sabbatai rode seven times around the city of Jerusalem, then went to present himself to the rabbis as their new master, he met with violent
hostility, and another order of banishment. Sabbatai now decided to return to the city of his birth, Smyrna. Meanwhile, his St Paul was writing letters to Jewish communities all over Europe
announcing that the Messiah had come. These letters were read aloud in synagogues, and thousands of Jews were suddenly filled with hope that the Day of Judgement had at last arrived. In Amsterdam,
another Jewish centre, crowds danced in the streets. In London, Samuel Pepys recorded that Jews were placing ten to one bets that Sabbatai would soon be acknowledged as the King of the World.
    Not all Jews shared this enthusiasm; the orthodox were appalled, for the doctrines preached by Sabbatai were horribly similar to those preached by the Brethren of the Free Spirit. “The
forbidden” was now allowed, which included incest and promiscuity. The Sabbataians (as they were called) shocked their neighbours by walking around naked at a time when nakedness was regarded
as a sin. In the Jewish religion, as in Mohammedanism, women were kept strictly apart. Sabbatai told them they were men’s equals and should mix freely with their fellow worshippers. Divorce
or infidelity was no reason for a woman to be excluded from full participation in religious rites. Was not the Messiah himself married to a woman who admitted to having been a whore?
    Not that Sabbatai’s followers were inclined to sexual self-indulgence. They took pride in mortifying the flesh, scourging and starving themselves, rolling naked in the snow, even burying
themselves in the earth so only their heads stuck out. It was a frenzy of religious ecstasy, all based on the belief that the Millennium was about to arrive.
    Now Sabbatai made the mistake that was to dismay all his followers and bring an abrupt end to his career. He decided to go to Constantinople, the Turkish capital, a journey of fourteen days by
sea. When the news reached Constantinople, it caused the same wild