The subject is not yet exhausted, and has to be examined from still other
aspects.
Whether Milton’s grandiose description of the three _days’_ Battle of the
Angels of Light against those of Darkness justifies the suspicion that he
must have heard of the corresponding Eastern tradition—it is impossible to
say. Nevertheless, if not himself in connection with some Mystic, then it
must have been through some one who had obtained access to the secret
works of the Vatican. Among these there is a tradition concerning the
“Beni Shamash”—the “Children of the Sun”—relating to the Eastern allegory,
with far more minute details _in its triple version_, than one can get
either from the _Book of Enoch_, or the far more recent _Revelation_ of
St. John concerning the “Old Dragon” and his various Slayers, as has been
just shown.
It seems inexplicable to find, to this day, authors belonging to mystical
societies who yet continue in their preconceived doubts as to the
“alleged” antiquity of the _Book of Enoch_. Thus, while the author of the
_Sacred Mysteries among the Mayas and Quiches_ is inclined to see in Enoch
an Initiate converted to Christianity (!!),(1168) the English compiler of
Éliphas Lévi’s works, _The Mysteries of Magic_, is also of a like opinion.
He remarks that:
Outside the erudition of Dr. Kenealy, no modern scholarship
attributes any more remote antiquity to the latter work [the _Book
of Enoch_] than the fourth century B.C.(1169)
Modern scholarship has been guilty of worse errors than this one. It seems
but yesterday that the _greatest_ literary critics in Europe denied the
very authenticity of that work, together with the Orphic Hymns, and even
the Book of Hermes or Thoth, until whole verses from the latter were
discovered on Egyptian monuments and tombs of the earliest dynasties. The
opinion of Archbishop Laurence is quoted elsewhere.
The “Old Dragon” and Satan, which have now become singly and collectively
the symbol of, and the theological term for, the “Fallen Angel,” are not
so described either in the _original_ Kabalah (the Chaldæan _Book of
Numbers_) or in the modern. For the most learned, if not the greatest of
modern Kabalists, namely Éliphas Lévi, describes Satan in the following
glowing terms:
It is that Angel who was proud enough to believe himself God;
brave enough to buy his independence at the price of eternal
suffering and torture; beautiful enough to have adored himself in
full divine light; strong enough to still reign in darkness amidst
agony, and to have made himself a throne out of his
inextinguishable pyre. It is the Satan of the republican and
heretical Milton ... the prince of anarchy, served by a hierarchy
of pure spirits(!!).(1170)
This description—one which reconciles so cunningly Theological dogma and
Kabalistic allegory, and even contrives to include a political compliment
in its phraseology—is, when read in the right spirit, quite correct.
Yes, indeed; it is this grandest of ideals, this ever‐living symbol—nay
apotheosis—of self‐sacrifice for the intellectual independence of
humanity; this ever Active Energy protesting against Static Inertia—the
principle to which Self‐assertion is a crime, and Thought and the Light of
Knowledge odious. As Éliphas says with unparalleled justice and irony:
It is this pretended hero of tenebrous eternities, who,
slanderously charged with ugliness, is decorated with horns and
claws, which would fit far better his implacable tormentor.(1171)
It is he who has been finally transformed into a Serpent—the Red Dragon.
But Éliphas Lévi was yet too subservient to his Roman Catholic
authorities—one may add, too jesuitical—to confess that this Devil was
mankind, and never had any existence on Earth outside of that
mankind.(1172)
In this, Christian Theology, although following slavishly in the steps of
Paganism, has only been true to its own time‐honoured policy. It had to
isolate itself, and to assert its authority. Hence it could not do better
than turn every Pagan Deity into a Devil. Every bright Sun‐God of
antiquity—a glorious Deity by day, and its own Opponent and Adversary by
night, named the Dragon of Wisdom, because it was supposed to contain the
germs of night and day—has now been turned into the antithetical Shadow of
God, and has become Satan on the sole and unsupported authority of
despotic human dogma. After which all these producers of light and shadow,
all the Sun‐ and the Moon‐Gods, have been cursed, and thus the one God
chosen out of the many and Satan have both been anthropomorphized. But
Theology seems to have lost sight of the human capacity for discriminating
and finally analyzing all that is artificially forced upon its reverence.
History shows in every race and even tribe, especially in the Semitic
nations, the natural impulse to exalt its own tribal deity above all
others to the hegemony of the Gods, and proves that the God of the
Israelites was such a _tribal_ God, and no more, even though the Christian
Church, following the lead of the “chosen” people, is pleased to enforce
the worship of that one particular deity, and to anathematize all the
others. Whether originally a conscious or an unconscious blunder,
nevertheless, it _was_ one. Jehovah has ever been in antiquity only a God
“among” other “Gods.”(1173) The _Lord_ appears to Abraham, and while
saying, “I am the _Almighty God_,” yet adds, “I will establish my covenant
... to be _a_ God unto thee” (Abraham); and unto _his seed_ after
him(1174)—but not unto Âryan Europeans.
But, then, there was the grandiose and ideal figure of Jesus of Nazareth
to be set off against a dark background, to gain in radiance by the
contrast; _and a darker one the Church could hardly invent_. Lacking the
_Old Testament_ symbology, ignorant of the real connotation of the name of
Jehovah—the Rabbinical secret substitute for the Ineffable and
Unpronounceable Name—the Church mistook the cunningly fabricated shadow
for the reality, the anthropomorphized _generative_ symbol for the one
Secondless Reality, the ever Unknowable Cause of All. As a logical
sequence the Church, for purposes of duality, had to invent an
anthropomorphic Devil—created, as taught by her, by God himself. Satan has
now turned out to be the monster fabricated by the Jehovah‐
Frankenstein—his father’s curse and a thorn in the divine side, a monster,
than whom no earthly Frankenstein could have fabricated a more ridiculous
bogey.
The author of _New Aspects of Life_ describes the Jewish God very
correctly from the kabalistic standpoint as:
The Spirit of the Earth, which had revealed itself to the Jew as
Jehovah.(1175)... It was that Spirit again who, after the death of
Jesus, assumed his form and personated him as the risen Christ
—the doctrine of Cerinthus and several Gnostic sects with slight
variation, as one can see. But the author’s explanations and deductions
are remarkable:
None knew ... better than Moses, ... [and] so well as he, how
great was the power of those [Gods of Egypt] with whose priests he
had contended, ... the gods of which Jehovah is claimed to be the
God [by the Jews only].
Asks the author:
What were these gods, these Achar of which Jehovah, the Achad, is
claimed to be the God ... by overcoming them?
To which our Occultism answers: Those whom the Church now calls the Fallen
Angels and collectively Satan, the Dragon—overcome, if we have to accept
_her_ dictum, by Michael and his Host, that Michael being simply Jehovah
himself, one of the subordinate Spirits at best. Therefore, the author is
again right in saying:
The Greeks believed in the existence of ... _daimons_. But ...
they were anticipated by the Hebrews, who held _that there was a
class of personating spirits_ which they designated _demons_,
“personators.”... Admitting with Jehovah, who expressly asserts
it, the existence of other gods, which ... were personators of the
One God, were these other gods simply a higher class of
personating spirits, ... which had acquired and exercised greater
powers? And is not personation _the key to the mystery of the
spirit state_? But once granting this position, _how are we to
know that Jehovah was not a personating spirit_, a spirit which
arrogated to itself that it was, and thus became, the personator
of the one unknown and unknowable God? Nay, how do we know that
the spirit calling itself Jehovah, in arrogating to itself his
attributes did not thus cause its own designation to be imputed to
the One who is in reality as nameless as incognizable?(1176)
Then the author shows that “the spirit Jehovah _is_ a personator” on its
own admission. It acknowledged to Moses “that it had appeared to the
patriarchs as the God Shaddai” and the “God Helion.”
With the same breath it assumed the name of Jehovah; and it is on
the faith of the assertion of this personator that the names El,
Eloah, Elohim, and Shaddai, have been read and interpreted in
juxtaposition with Jehovah as the “Lord God Almighty.” [Then when]
the name Jehovah became ineffable, the designation Adonai, “Lord,”
was substituted for it, and ... it was owing to this substitution
that the “Lord” passed from the Jewish to the Christian “Word” and
World as a designation of God.(1177)
And how are we to know, the author may add, that Jehovah was not many
spirits personating even that seemingly one—Jod or Jod‐He?
But if the Christian Church was the first to make the existence of Satan a
dogma, it was because, as shown in _Isis Unveiled_, the Devil—the powerful
Enemy of God (?!!) had to become the corner stone and pillar of the
Church. For, as a Theosophist, M. Jules Baissac, truly observes in his
_Satan ou le Diable_:
Il fallait éviter de paraître autoriser le dogme du double
principe en faisant de ce Satan créateur une puissance réelle, et
pour expliquer le mal originel, on profère contre Manes
l’hypothèse d’une permission de l’unique Tout‐Puissant.(1178)
The choice and policy were unfortunate, anyhow. Either the personator of
the lower God of Abraham and Jacob ought to have been made entirely
distinct from the mystic “Father” of Jesus, or—the “Fallen” Angels should
have been left unslandered by further fictions.
Every God of the Gentiles is connected with, and closely related to,
Jehovah—the Elohim; for they are all One Host, whose units differ only in
name in the Esoteric Teachings. Between the “Obedient” and the “Fallen”
Angels there is no difference whatever, except in their respective
functions, or rather in the inertia of some, and the activity of others,
among those Dhyân Chohans, or Elohim, who were “commissioned to create,”
_i.e._, to fabricate the manifested world out of the eternal material.
The Kabalists say that the true name of Satan is that of Jehovah turned
upside down, for “Satan is not a black God but the negation of the white
Deity,” or the Light of Truth. God is Light and Satan is the necessary
Darkness or _Shadow_ to set it off, without which pure Light would be
invisible and incomprehensible.(1179) “For the Initiates,” says Éliphas
Lévi, “the Devil is not a person but a creative Force, for Good as for
Evil.” The Initiates represented this Force, which presides at physical
generation, under the mysterious form of God Pan—or Nature; whence the
horns and hoofs of that mythical and symbolic figure, as also the
Christian “goat” of the “Witches’ Sabbath.” With regard to this too,
Christians have imprudently forgotten that the “goat” was also the victim
selected for the atonement of all the sins of Israel, that the scape‐goat
was indeed the sacrificial martyr, the symbol of the greatest mystery on
earth—the “fall into generation.” Only, the Jews have long forgotten the
real meaning of their (to the non‐initiated) ridiculous hero, selected
from the drama of life in the Great Mysteries enacted by them in the
desert; and the Christians have never known it.
Éliphas Lévi seeks to explain the dogma of his Church by paradoxes and
metaphors, but succeeds very poorly in the face of the many volumes
written by pious Roman Catholic Demonologists under the approbation and
auspices of Rome, in this nineteenth century of ours. For the true Roman
Catholic, the Devil or Satan is a _reality_; the drama enacted in the
Sidereal Light according to the seer of Patmos—who desired, perhaps, to
improve upon the narrative in the _Book of Enoch_—is as real, and as
historical a fact as any other allegory and symbolical event in the
_Bible_. But the Initiates give an explanation which differs from that
given by Éliphas Lévi, whose genius and crafty intellect had to submit to
a certain compromise dictated to him from Rome.
Thus, the true and “uncompromising” Kabalists admit that, for all purposes
of Science and Philosophy, it is enough that the profane should know that
the Great Magic Agent—called by the followers of the Marquis de St.
Martin, the Martinists, the Astral Light, by the mediæval Kabalists and
Alchemists the Sidereal Virgin and the Mysterium Magnum, and by the
Eastern Occultists Æther, the reflection of Âkâsha—is that which the
Church calls Lucifer. That the Latin scholastics have succeeded in
transforming the Universal Soul and Plerôma—the _Vehicle of Light_ and the
receptacle of all forms, a Force spread throughout the whole Universe,
with its direct and indirect effects—into Satan and his works, is no news
to any one. But now they are prepared to give out to the above‐mentioned
profane even the secrets hinted at by Éliphas Lévi, without _adequate
explanation_, for the latter’s policy of veiled revelations could only
lead to further superstition and misunderstanding. What, indeed, can a
student of Occultism, who is a beginner, gather from the following highly
poetical sentences of Éliphas Lévi, which are as apocalyptic as the
writings of any of the Alchemists?
Lucifer [the Astral Light] ... is an intermediate force existing
in all creation; it serves to create and to destroy, and the Fall
of Adam was an erotic intoxication which has rendered his
generation a slave to this fatal Light, ... every sexual passion
that overpowers our senses is a whirlwind of that Light which
seeks to drag us towards the abyss of death. Madness,
hallucinations, visions, extasies, are all forms of a very
dangerous excitation due to this _interior phosphorus_[?]. Thus
light, finally, is of the nature of fire, the intelligent use of
which warms and vivifies, and the excess of which, on the
contrary, dissolves and annihilates.
Thus man is called upon to assume a sovereign empire over this
[Astral] Light and conquer thereby his immortality, and is
threatened at the same time with being intoxicated, absorbed, and
eternally destroyed by it.
This Light, therefore, inasmuch as it is devouring, revengeful,
and fatal, would thus really be hell‐fire, the serpent of the
legend; the tormented errors of which it is full, the tears and
the gnashing of teeth of the abortive beings it devours, the
phantom of life that escapes them, and seems to mock and insult
their agony, all this would be the Devil or Satan indeed.(1180)
There is no _false_ statement in all this; nothing save a superabundance
of ill‐applied metaphors, as, for instance, in the application of the myth
of Adam to the illustration of the astral effects. Âkâsha,(1181) the
Astral Light, can be defined in a few words; it is the Universal Soul, the
Matrix of the Universe, the Mysterium Magnum from which all that exists is
born by separation or _differentiation_. It is the cause of existence; it
fills all the infinite Space, _is_ Space itself, in one sense, or both its
_sixth_ and seventh principles.(1182) But as the finite in the Infinite,
as regards manifestation this Light must have its _shadowy_ side—as
already remarked. And as the Infinite can never be manifested, hence the
finite world has to be satisfied with the _shadow alone_, which its
actions draw upon humanity and which men attract and _force into __
activity_. Hence, while the Astral Light is the Universal Cause in its
unmanifested unity and infinity, it becomes, with regard to mankind,
simply the effects of the causes produced by men in their sinful lives. It
is not its bright denizens—whether they are called Spirits of Light or
Darkness—that produce Good or Evil, but mankind itself that determines the
unavoidable action and reaction in the Great Magic Agent. It is mankind
which has become the “Serpent of Genesis,” and thus causes daily and
hourly the Fall and Sin of the “Celestial Virgin”—which thus becomes the
Mother of Gods and Devils at one and the same time; for she is the ever‐
loving, beneficent Deity to all those who stir her _Soul_ and _Heart_,
instead of attracting to themselves her shadowy manifested essence, called
by Éliphas Lévi—the “fatal light” which kills and destroys. Humanity, in
its units, can overpower and master its effects; but only by the holiness
of their lives and by producing good causes. It has power only on the
manifested _lower_ principles—the shadow of the Unknown and Incognizable
Deity in Space. But in antiquity and _reality_, Lucifer, or Luciferus, is
the name of the Angelic Entity presiding over the Light of Truth as over
the light of the day. In the great Valentinian Gospel _Pistis Sophia_ it
is taught that of the three Powers emanating from the Holy Names of the
three Triple Powers (Τριδυνάμεις), that of Sophia (the Holy Ghost
according to these Gnostics—the most cultured of all), resides in the
planet Venus or Lucifer.
Thus to the profane, the Astral Light may be God and Devil at once—_Demon
est Deus inversus_—that is to say, through every point of Infinite Space
thrill the magnetic and electrical currents of _animate_ Nature, the life‐
giving and death‐giving waves, for death on earth becomes life on another
plane. Lucifer is divine and terrestrial Light, the “Holy Ghost” and
“Satan,” at one and the same time, _visible_ Space being truly filled with
the differentiated Breath invisibly; and the Astral Light, the manifested
effects of the two who are one, guided and attracted by ourselves, is the
_Karma_ of Humanity, both a personal and impersonal entity—personal,
because it is the mystic name given by St. Martin to the Host of Divine
Creators, Guides and Rulers of this Planet; _impersonal_, as the Cause and
Effect of Universal Life and Death.
The Fall was the _result of man’s knowledge_, for his “eyes were opened.”
Indeed, he was taught Wisdom and the Hidden Knowledge by the “Fallen
Angel,” for the latter had become from that day his Manas, Mind and Self‐
consciousness. In each of us that golden thread of continuous
Life—periodically broken into active and passive cycles of sensuous
existence on Earth, and super‐sensuous in Devachan—_is_ from the beginning
of our appearance upon this Earth. It is the Sûtrâtmâ, the luminous thread
of immortal _impersonal_ Monadship, on which our earthly “lives” or
evanescent Egos are strung as so many beads—according to the beautiful
expression of the Vedântic Philosophy.
And now it stands proven that Satan, or the Red Fiery Dragon, the “Lord of
Phôsphoros”—brimstone was a Theological improvement—and Lucifer, or
“Light‐Bearer,” is in us: it is our Mind, our Tempter and Redeemer, our
intelligent Liberator and Saviour from pure animalism. Without this
principle—the emanation of the very essence of the pure divine principle
Mahat (Intelligence), which radiates direct from the Divine Mind—we would
be surely no better than animals. The first _man_ Adam was made only a
_living soul_ (Nephesh), the last Adam was made a _quickening
spirit_(1183)—says Paul, his words referring to the building or _creation_
of man. Without this _quickening_ spirit, or _human mind_ or soul, there
would be no difference between man and beast; as there is none, in fact,
between animals with respect to their actions. The tiger and the donkey,
the hawk and the dove, are each one as pure and as innocent as the other,
because _irresponsible_. Each follows its instinct, the tiger and the hawk
killing with the same unconcern as the donkey eats a thistle, or the dove
pecks at a grain of corn. If the Fall had the significance given to it by
Theology; if that Fall occurred as a result of an act never intended by
Nature—a _sin_, how about the animals? If we are told that they procreate
their species in consequence of that same “original sin,” for which God
cursed the Earth—hence everything living on it—we will put another
question. We are told by Theology, as also by Science, that the animal was
on Earth far earlier than man. We ask the former: How did it _procreate
its species_, before the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
had been plucked off? As said:
The Christians—far less clear‐sighted than the great Mystic and
Liberator whose name they have assumed, whose doctrines they have
misunderstood and travestied, _and whose memory they have
blackened by their deeds_—took the Jewish Jehovah as he was, and
of course strove vainly to reconcile the _Gospel of Light and
Liberty_ with the Deity of Darkness and Submission.(1184)
But it is sufficiently proven now that all the _soi‐disant_ evil Spirits
who are credited with having made war on the Gods, are identical as
personalities; that, moreover, all the ancient religions taught the same
tenet, save the final conclusion, which differs from the Christian. The
seven primeval Gods had all a dual state, one essential, the other
accidental. In their essential state they were all the Builders or
Fashioners, the Preservers and the Rulers of this World; and in the
accidental state, clothing themselves in visible corporeality, they
descended on the Earth and reigned on it as Kings and Instructors of the
lower Hosts, who had incarnated once more upon it as men.
Thus, Esoteric Philosophy shows that man is truly the manifested deity in
both its aspects—good and evil, but Theology cannot admit this
philosophical truth. Teaching as it does the dogma of the Fallen Angels in
its dead‐letter meaning, and having made of Satan the corner‐stone and
pillar of the dogma of redemption—to do so would be suicidal. Having once
shown the rebellious Angels _distinct_ from God and the Logos in their
personalities, to admit that the downfall of the _disobedient_ Spirits
means simply their fall into generation and matter, would be equivalent to
saying that God and Satan were identical. For since the Logos, or God, is
the aggregate of that once divine Host accused of having fallen, it would
naturally follow that the Logos and Satan are one.
Yet such was the real philosophical view in antiquity of the now
disfigured tenet. The Verbum, or the “Son,” was shown in a dual aspect by
the Pagan Gnostics—in fact, he was a _duality_ in full _unity_. Hence, the
endless and various national versions. The Greeks had Jupiter, the son of
Cronus, the Father, who hurls him down into the depths of Kosmos. The
Âryans had Brahmâ (in later theology) precipitated by Shiva into the Abyss
of Darkness, etc. But the Fall of all these Logoi and Demiourgoi from
their primitive exalted position, contained in all cases one and the same
Esoteric signification; the Curse, in its philosophical meaning, of being
incarnated on this Earth; an unavoidable rung in the Ladder of Cosmic
Evolution, a highly philosophical and fitting Karmic Law, without which
the presence of Evil on Earth would have to remain for ever a closed
mystery to the understanding of true Philosophy. To say, as the author of
_Esprits Tombés des Paiens_ does, that since—
Christianity is made to rest on two pillars, that of evil
(πουηροῦ), and of good (ἀγαθοῦ); on two forces, in short (ἀγαθαὶ
καὶ κακαὶ δυνάμεις): hence, if we suppress the punishment of the
_evil forces_, the protecting mission of the good powers will have
neither value nor sense
—is to utter the most unphilosophical absurdity. If it fits in with, and
explains, Christian dogma, it obscures the facts and truths of the
primitive Wisdom of the ages. The cautious hints of Paul have all the true
Esoteric meaning, and it took centuries of scholastic casuistry to give
them the false colouring in their present interpretations. The Verbum and
Lucifer are one in their dual aspect; and the “Prince of the Air”
(_princeps aeris hujus_) is not the “God of _that_ period,” but an
everlasting principle. When the latter was said to be ever _circling_
around the world (_qui circumambulat terram_), the great Apostle referred
simply to the never‐ceasing cycles of human incarnations, in which evil
will ever predominate unto the day when Humanity is redeemed by the true
divine Enlightenment which gives the correct perception of things.
It is easy to disfigure vague expressions written in dead and long‐
forgotten languages, and palm them off on the ignorant masses as truths
and _revealed_ facts. The identity of thought and meaning is the one thing
that strikes the student in all the religions which mention the tradition
of the Fallen Spirits, and in those great religions there is not one that
fails to mention and describe it in one or another form. Thus, Hoang‐ty,
the Great Spirit, sees his Sons, who had acquired _active wisdom_, falling
into the Valley of Pain. Their leader, the Flying Dragon, having drunk of
the forbidden Ambrosia, _fell to the Earth_ with his Host (Kings). In the
_Zend Avesta_, Angra Mainyu (Ahriman), surrounding himself with Fire (the
“Flames” of the Stanzas), seeks to conquer the Heavens,(1185) when Ahura
Mazda, descending from the _solid_ Heaven he inhabits, to the help of the
Heavens _that revolve_ (in time and space, the manifested worlds of cycles
including those of incarnation), and the Amshaspands, the “seven bright
Sravah,” accompanied by their stars, fight Ahriman, and the vanquished
Devas fall to the Earth along with him.(1186) In the _Vendîdâd_ the Daêvas
are called “evil‐doing,” and are shown to rush away “into the depths of
the ... world of hell,” or Matter.(1187) This is an allegory which shows
the Devas _compelled to incarnate_, once that they have separated
themselves from their Parent Essence, or, in other words, after the Unit
had become multiple, after differentiation and manifestation.
Typhon the Egyptian Python, the Titans, the Suras and the Asuras, all
belong to the same legend of Spirits peopling the Earth. They are not
“_Demons_ commissioned to create and organize this visible universe,” but
the Fashioners or “Architects” of the Worlds, and the Progenitors of Man.
They are the _Fallen_ Angels, metaphorically—the “true mirrors” of the
“Eternal Wisdom.”
What is the complete truth as well as the Esoteric meaning about this
universal myth? The whole essence of truth _cannot be transmitted from
mouth to ear_. Nor can any pen describe it, not even that of the Recording
Angel, unless man finds the answer in the sanctuary of his own heart, in
the innermost depths of his divine intuition. It is the great _Seventh
Mystery_ of Creation, the first and the last; and those who read St.
John’s _Apocalypse_ may find its shadow lurking under the _seventh seal_.
It can be represented only in its apparent, objective form, like the
eternal riddle of the Sphinx. If the Sphinx threw herself into the sea and
perished, it is not because Œdipus _had_ unriddled the secret of the ages,
but because, by anthropomorphizing the ever‐spiritual and the subjective,
he had dishonoured the great truth for ever. Therefore, we can give it
only from its philosophical and intellectual planes, unlocked with three
keys respectively—for the last four keys of the seven that throw wide open
the portals to the Mysteries of Nature are in the hands of the highest
Initiates, and cannot be divulged to the masses at large—not in this
century, at any rate.
The dead‐letter is everywhere the same. The dualism in the Mazdean
religion was born from exoteric interpretation. The holy Airyaman, the
“bestower of weal,”(1188) invoked in the prayer called Airyama‐ishyô, is
the divine aspect of Ahriman, “the deadly, the Daêva of the Daêvas,”(1189)
and Angra Mainyu is the dark material aspect of the former. “Keep us from
our hater, O Mazda and Ârmaita Spenta,”(1190) has, as a prayer and
invocation, an identical meaning with “Lead us not into temptation,” and
is addressed by man to the terrible _spirit of duality_ in man himself.
For Ahura Mazda is the Spiritual, Divine, and Purified Man, and Ârmaita
Spenta, the Spirit of the Earth or materiality, is the same as Ahriman or
Angra Mainyu in one sense.
The whole of the Magian or Mazdean literature—or what remains of it—is
magical, occult, hence allegorical and symbolical, even its “mystery of
the law.”(1191) Now the Mobed and the Parsî keep their eye on the Baresma
during the sacrifice—the divine twig off Ormazd’s “Tree” having been
transformed into a bunch of metallic rods—and wonder why neither the
Amesha Spentas, nor “the high and beautiful golden Haômas, nor even their
Vohu‐Manô (good thoughts), nor their Râta (sacrificial offering),” help
them much. Let them meditate on the “Tree of Wisdom,” and by study
assimilate, one by one, the fruits thereof. The way to the Tree of Eternal
Life, the white Haôma, the Gaokerena, is through one end of the Earth to
the other; and Haôma is in Heaven as it is on Earth. But to become once
more a priest of it, and a “healer,” man must heal himself, for this must
be done before he can heal others.
This proves once more that, in order to be dealt with, with at least an
approximate degree of justice, the so‐called “myths” have to be closely
examined from all their aspects. In truth, every one of the seven keys has
to be used in its right place, and never mixed with the others—if we would
unveil the entire cycle of mysteries. In our day of dreary soul‐killing
Materialism, the ancient Priest‐Initiates have become, in the opinion of
our learned generations, the synonyms of clever impostors, kindling the
fires of superstition in order to obtain an easier sway over the minds of
men. This is an unfounded calumny, generated by scepticism and
uncharitable thoughts. No one believed more than they did in Gods—or, we
may call them, the spiritual and now invisible Powers, or Spirits, the
Noumena of the phenomena; and they believed simply because _they knew_.
And though after being initiated into the Mysteries of Nature, they were
forced to withhold their knowledge from the profane, who would have surely
abused it, such secrecy was undeniably less dangerous than the policy of
their usurpers and successors. The former taught only that which they well
knew. The latter, teaching what _they do not know_, have invented, as a
secure haven for their ignorance, a jealous and cruel Deity, who forbids
man to pry into his mysteries under the penalty of damnation; as well they
may, for _his_ mysteries can at best be only hinted at in polite ears,
never described. Turn to King’s _Gnostics and their Remains_, and see for
yourself what was the primitive Ark of the Covenant, according to the
author, who says:
There is a Rabbinical tradition ... that the Cherubim placed over
it were represented as male and female, in the act of copulation,
in order to express the grand doctrine of the Essence of _Form_
and _Matter_, the two principles of all things. When the Chaldeans
broke into the Sanctuary and beheld this most astounding emblem,
they naturally enough exclaimed, “Is this your God, of whom you
boast, that He is such a lover of purity!”(1192)
King thinks that this tradition “savours too much of Alexandrian
philosophy to demand any credit,” to which we demur. The shape and form of
the wings of the two Cherubim standing on the right and left sides of the
Ark, these wings meeting over the “Holy of Holies,” are an _emblem_ quite
eloquent in itself, not to speak of the “holy” Jod within the Ark! The
Mystery of Agathodæmon, whose legend states, “I am Chnumis, Sun of the
Universe, 700,” can alone solve the mystery of Jesus, the number of whose
name is “888.” It is not the key of St. Peter, or the Church dogma, but
the Narthex—the Wand of the Candidate for Initiation—that has to be
wrenched from the grasp of the long‐silent Sphinx of the ages. Meanwhile:
The augurs, who, upon meeting each other, have to thrust their tongues
into their cheeks to suppress a fit of laughter, may be more numerous in
our own age than they ever were in the day of Sylla.