A fellowship for the study of ancient mystical Christianity
The Way of the Essenes, kept for those who seek the inner Light
Essenes.org gathers the history, the teachings, the sacred texts, and the daily practices of the ancient Essenes and Nazarenes, and offers them freely to students who wish to walk the old road in a new age.
"They rise before the sun and speak no common word until they have offered the old prayers toward the dawn, as if asking the Light to rise within them as it rises over the hills."
From the Lections of the Morning Watch, after the ancient witnesses
Three Doors into the Way
Every student who comes to this site arrives by a different road. Some want to know what actually happened in the desert two thousand years ago. Some want the teachings themselves. Some want to know what to do tomorrow morning. All three doors open onto the same house.
Learn the History
Who the Essenes were, where they lived, what the ancient writers said of them, and how their scrolls came out of the caves after nineteen centuries of silence.
EnterReceive the Teachings
Eight key teachings that the fellowship has drawn from the old tradition: the One Law, the Children of Light, the Tree of Life, the Sevenfold Peace, and more.
EnterTake Up the Practice
The Morning and Evening Watch, the Still Lamp meditation, the Communions, the Noon Peace, and the simple disciplines that make the teaching a life rather than a theory.
EnterA Word for Today
Rise before the sun and you will meet the Light coming to meet you.
Lections of the Morning Watch
The Key Teachings
The fellowship holds eight teachings as the heart of the Essene way as we have received it. Each is given first in a nutshell, then at length, with its roots in the ancient writings and its fruit in daily practice.
Teaching One
The One Law
Behind every change in nature and in the soul there is a single order of balance, and the whole of the spiritual life is learning to live in harmony with it.
ReadTeaching Two
Children of Light
Two spirits contend in every human heart. The Essene does not deny the darkness but chooses, each dawn, to be counted among the children of light.
ReadTeaching Three
The Tree of Life
Seven roots in the earth and seven branches in heaven: the ancient symbol by which the Essenes mapped the forces that sustain a human life.
ReadTeaching Four
The Sevenfold Peace
Peace with the body, the mind, the family, humanity, one's heritage, the earth, and the Eternal. A whole life described in seven words.
ReadTeaching Five
The Inner Kingdom
The heart as a temple, the mind as its priest, and the kingdom of heaven as a present reality to be entered rather than a distant country to be awaited.
ReadTeaching Six
The Sanctity of Life
Reverence for every living thing, the refusal to shed blood, and the simple table as a daily act of worship.
ReadTeaching Seven
The Soul and Its Journey
The ancient witnesses say the Essenes held the soul to be immortal and the body a passing tent. What follows from that for the way we live and die?
ReadTeaching Eight
Knowledge, Wisdom, Understanding
The threefold lamp of the mind in the scrolls and the psalms, and why the Essene path has always been a path of knowing as well as of believing.
ReadThe Sacred and Forgotten Texts
Much of what the Essenes and their neighbors wrote was lost, suppressed, or hidden. Much has been found again. The fellowship reads these texts slowly, with the mind awake and the heart open.
- The Dead Sea Scrolls
- The library of the desert community: the Community Rule, the Thanksgiving Hymns, the War of the Sons of Light, the Damascus Covenant, and the commentaries that read the prophets as if they spoke of the present hour.
- The Book of Enoch
- The visionary ascent of the seventh from Adam, treasured by the Essenes and quoted by the earliest followers of the Way, then set aside by the later church for a thousand years.
- The Nag Hammadi Library
- Thirteen codices buried in a jar in Upper Egypt, holding the sayings gospels and the visionary treatises of those who sought the kingdom within.
- The Lections of the Morning Watch
- The fellowship's own book of readings, written in the voice of the tradition for use at the morning and evening hours. Not ancient, but faithful.
For Students
The road is long, and that is its gift
Many begin the study of the Essene way with a rush of recognition, as if remembering something half known. Then comes the long middle, when the reading is slow and the practice is dry. The fellowship exists for the long middle. If you have begun, continue. If you have stopped, begin again. Nothing is lost.
From the Articles
Longer essays on the history, the texts, and the practice, written by the keepers of the fellowship and offered for study.
History
Who Were the Essenes?
What three ancient writers tell us about the holy ones of the desert, and what the scrolls add to the picture.
ReadHistory
The Voice in the Wilderness
John who baptized in the Jordan and the community that read the same verse of Isaiah: kin, rival, or something else?
ReadPractice
The Desert as Teacher
Why the holy ones went out to the dry places, and what a student with a kitchen and a mortgage can learn from them.
ReadAbout the Fellowship
Essenes.org is kept by the Morning Watch Fellowship, a small company of readers and practitioners who have met for many years to study the old way and keep its hours. We are not a church and we have no clergy, no buildings, no membership rolls, and nothing to sell. We hold the teachings as a trust, and we hand them on freely to any who ask.