“” The worship of words is more pernicious than the worship of images”, remarks Robert Dale Owen. “Grammatolatry is the worst species of idolatry. We have arrived at an era in which literalism is destroying faith. …The letter killeth.” There is not a dogma in the Church to which these words can be better applied than to the doctrine of transubstantiation. “Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life”, Christ is made to say. “This is a hard saying”, repeated his dismayed listeners. The answer was that of an initiate. “Doth this offend you? It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing. The words (remata, or arcane utterances) that I speak unto you, they are Spirit, and they are Life.”
During the Mysteries wine represented Bacchus, and bread Ceres. The hierophant-initiator presented symbolically, before the final revelation, wine and bread to the candidate who had to eat and drink of both in token that the spirit was to quicken matter. i.e., the divine wisdom was to enter into his body through what was to be revealed to him. Jesus, in his Oriental phraseology, constantly assimilated himself to the true vine (John 15:1). Furthermore, the hierophant, the discloser of the Petroma, was called “Father”. When Jesus says, “Drink… this is my blood”, what else was meant, it was simply a metaphorical assimilation of himself to the vine, which bears the grape, whose juice is its blood, wine. It was a hint that as he had himself been initiated by the “Father”, so he desired to initiate others. His “Father” was the husbandman, himself the vine, his disciples the branches. His followers being ignorant of the terminology of the Mysteries, wondered; they even took it as an offense, which is not surprising, considering the Mosaic injunction against blood.
There is quite enough in the four gospels to show what was the secret and most fervent hope of Jesus; the hope in which he began to teach, and in which he died. In his immense and unselfish love for humanity, he considers it unjust to deprive the many of the results of the knowledge acquired by the few. This result he accordingly preaches – the unity of a spiritual God, whose temple is within each of us, and in whom we live, as He lives in us – in Spirit. This knowledge was in the hands of the Jewish adepts of the school of Hillel and the kabalists. But the “scribes”, or lawyers, having gradually merged into the dogmatism of the dead letter, had long since separated themselves from the Tanaim, the true spiritual teachers; and the practical kabalists were more or less persecuted by the Synagogue.
Hence, we find Jesus exclaiming: “Woe unto you lawyers! For ye have taken away the key of knowledge [the Gnosis]. Ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering, ye prevented” (Luke 11:52). The meaning here is clear. They did take the key away, and could not even profit by it themselves, for the Masorah (tradition) had become a closed book to themselves as well as to others.”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 