It is more than likely, that the Protestants in the days of the
Reformation knew nothing of the true origin of Christianity, or, to be
more explicit and correct, of Latin Ecclesiasticism. Nor is it probable
that the Greek Church knew much of it, the separation between the two
having occurred at a time when, in the struggle for political power the
Latin Church was securing, at any cost, the alliance of the highly
educated, the ambitious and influential Pagans, while these were willing
to assume the outward appearance of the new worship, provided they were
themselves kept in power. There is no need to remind the reader here of
the details of that struggle, well‐known to every educated man. It is
certain that the highly cultured Gnostics and their leaders—such men as
Saturnilus, an uncompromising ascetic, as Marcion, Valentinus, Basilides,
Menander and Cerinthus—were not stigmatised by the (now) Latin Church
because they were heretics, nor because their tenets and practices were
indeed “_ob turpitudinem portentosam nimium et horribilem_,” “monstrous,
revolting abominations,” as Baronius says of those of Carpocrates; but
simply because they knew too much of fact and truth. Kenneth R. H.
Mackenzie correctly remarks:
They were stigmatised by the later Roman Church because they came
into conflict with the purer Church of Christianity—the possession
of which was usurped by the Bishops of Rome, but which original
continues in its docility towards the founder, in the Primitive
Orthodox Greek Church.(128)
Unwilling to accept the responsibility of gratuitous assumptions, the
writer deems it best to prove this inference by more than one personal and
defiant admission of an ardent Roman Catholic writer, evidently entrusted
with the delicate task by the Vatican. The Marquis de Mirville makes
desperate efforts to explain in the Catholic interest certain remarkable
discoveries in Archæology and Palæography, though the Church is cleverly
made to remain outside of the quarrel and defence. This is undeniably
shown by his ponderous volumes addressed to the Academy of France between
1803 and 1865. Seizing the pretext of drawing the attention of the
materialistic “Immortals” to the “epidemic of Spiritualism,” the invasion
of Europe and America by a numberless host of Satanic forces, he directs
his efforts towards proving the same, by giving the full Genealogies and
the Theogony of the Christian and Pagan Deities, and by drawing parallels
between the two. All such wonderful likenesses and identities are only
“seeming and superficial,” he assures the reader. Christian symbols, and
even characters, Christ, the Virgin, Angels and Saints, he tells them,
were all personated centuries beforehand by the fiends of hell, in order
to discredit eternal truth by their ungodly copies. By their knowledge of
futurity the devils anticipated events, having “discovered the secrets of
the Angels.” Heathen Deities, all the Sun‐Gods named Soters—Saviours—born
of immaculate mothers and dying a violent death, were only
Ferouers(129)—as they were called by the Zoroastrians—the demon‐ante‐dated
copies (_copies anticipées_) of the Messiah to come.
The danger of recognition of such _facsimiles_ had indeed lately become
dangerously great. It had lingered threateningly in the air, hanging like
a sword of Damocles over the Church, since the days of Voltaire, Dupuis
and other writers on similar lines. The discoveries of the Egyptologists,
the finding of Assyrian and Babylonian pre‐Mosaic relics bearing the
legend of Moses(130) and especially the many rationalistic works published
in England, such as _Supernatural Religion_ made recognition unavoidable.
Hence the appearance of Protestant and Roman Catholic writers deputed to
explain the inexplicable; to reconcile the fact of Divine Revelation with
the mystery that the divine personages, rites, dogmas and symbols of
Christianity were so often identical with those of the several great
heathen religions. The former—the Protestant defenders—tried to explain
it, on the ground of “prophetic, precursory ideas”; the Latinists, such as
De Mirville, by inventing a double set of Angels and Gods, the one divine
and true, the other—the earlier—“copies ante‐dating the originals” and due
to a clever plagiarism by the Evil One. The Protestant stratagem is an old
one, that of the Roman Catholics is so old that it has been forgotten, and
is as good as new. Dr. Lundy’s _Monumental Christianity_ and _A Miracle in
Stone_ belong to the first attempts. De Mirville’s _Pneumatologie_ to the
second. In India and China, every such effort on the part of the Scotch
and other missionaries ends in laughter, and does no harm; the plan
devised by the Jesuits is more serious. De Mirville’s volumes are thus
very important, as they proceed from a source which has undeniably the
greatest learning of the age at its service, and this coupled with all the
craft and casuistry that the sons of Loyola can furnish. The Marquis de
Mirville was evidently helped by the acutest minds in the service of Rome.
He begins by not only admitting the justice of every imputation and charge
made against the Latin Church as to the originality of her dogmas, but by
taking a seeming delight in anticipating such charges; for he points to
every dogma of Christianity as having existed in Pagan rituals in
Antiquity. The whole Pantheon of Heathen Deities is passed in review by
him, and each is shown to have had some point of resemblance with the
Trinitarian personages and Mary. There is hardly a mystery, a dogma, or a
rite in the Latin Church that is not shown by the author as having been
“parodied by the Curvati”—the “Curved,” the Devils. All this being
admitted and explained, the Symbologists ought to be silenced. And so they
would be, if there were no materialistic critics to reject such
omnipotency of the Devil in this world. For, if Rome admits the
likenesses, she also claims the right of judgment between the true and the
false Avatâra, the real and the unreal God, between the original and the
copy—though the copy precedes the original by millenniums.
Our author proceeds to argue that whenever the missionaries try to convert
an idolater, they are invariably answered:
We had our Crucified before yours. What do you come to show
us?(131) Again, what should we gain by denying the mysterious side
of this copy, under the plea that according to Weber all the
present _Purânas_ are remade from older ones, since here we have
in the same order of personages a positive precedence which no one
would ever think of contesting.(132)
And the author instances Buddha, Krishna, Apollo, etc. Having admitted all
this he escapes the difficulty in this wise:
The Church Fathers, however, who recognized their own property
under all such sheep’s clothing ... knowing by means of the Gospel
... all the ruses of the pretended spirits of light; the Fathers,
we say, meditating upon the decisive words, “all that ever came
before me are robbers” (_John_, x. 8), did not hesitate in
recognizing the Occult agency at work, the general and superhuman
direction given beforehand to falsehood, the universal attribute
and environment of all these false Gods of the nations; “_omnes
dii gentium dæmonia (elilim)_.” (_Psalm_ xcv.)(133)
With such a policy everything is made easy. There is not one glaring
resemblance, not one fully proven identity, that could not thus be made
away with. The above‐quoted cruel, selfish, self‐glorifying words, placed
by John in the mouth of Him who was meekness and charity personified,
could never have been pronounced by Jesus. The Occultists reject the
imputation indignantly, and are prepared to defend the man as against the
God, by showing whence come the words plagiarised by the author of the
Fourth Gospel. They are taken bodily from the “Prophecies” in the _Book of
Enoch_. The evidence on this head of the learned biblical scholar,
Archbishop Laurence, and of the author of the _Evolution of Christianity_,
who edited the translation, may be brought forward to prove the fact. On
the last page of the Introduction to the _Book of Enoch_ is found the
following passage:
The parable of the sheep rescued by the good Shepherd from
hireling guardians and ferocious wolves, is obviously borrowed by
the fourth Evangelist from _Enoch_, lxxxix, in which the author
depicts the shepherds as killing and destroying the sheep before
the advent of their Lord, and thus discloses the true meaning of
that hitherto mysterious passage in the Johannine parable—“All
that ever came before me are thieves and robbers”—language in
which we now detect an obvious reference to the allegorical
shepherds of Enoch.
“Obvious” truly, and something else besides. For, if Jesus pronounced the
words in the sense attributed to him, then he must have read the _Book of
Enoch_—a purely Kabalistic, Occult work, and he therefore recognised the
worth and value of a treatise now declared apocryphal by his Churches.
Moreover, he could not have been ignorant that these words belonged to the
oldest ritual of Initiation.(134) And if he had not read it, and the
sentence belongs to John, or whoever wrote the Fourth Gospel, then what
reliance can be placed on the authenticity of other sayings and parables
attributed to the Christian Saviour?
Thus, De Mirville’s illustration is an unfortunate one. Every other proof
brought by the Church to show the infernal character of the ante‐and‐anti‐
Christian copyists may be as easily disposed of. This is perhaps
unfortunate, but it is a fact, nevertheless—_Magna est veritas et
prevalebit_.
The above is the answer of the Occultists to the two parties who charge
them incessantly, the one with “Superstition,” and the other with
“Sorcery.” To those of our Brothers who are Christians, and twit us with
the secresy imposed upon the Eastern Chelâs, adding invariably that their
own “Book of God” is “an open volume” for all “to read, understand, and
_be saved_,” we would reply by asking them to study what we have just said
in this Section, and then to refute it—if they can. There are very few in
our days who are still prepared to assure their readers that the _Bible_
had God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth without any
mixture of error for its matter.
Could Locke be asked the question now, he would perhaps be unwilling to
repeat again that the _Bible_ is
all pure, all sincere, nothing too much, nothing wanting.
The _Bible_, if it is not to be shown to be the very reverse of all this,
sadly needs an interpreter acquainted with the doctrines of the East, as
they are to be found in its secret volumes; nor is it safe now, after
Archbishop Laurence’s translation of the _Book of Enoch_, to cite Cowper
and assure us that the _Bible_
... gives a light to every age,
It gives, but borrows none.
for it does borrow, and that very considerably; especially in the opinion
of those who, ignorant of its symbolical meaning and of the universality
of the truths underlying and concealed in it, are able to judge only from
its dead‐letter appearance. It is a grand volume, a master‐piece composed
of clever, ingenious fables containing great verities; but it reveals the
latter only to those who, like the Initiates, have a key to its inner
meaning; a tale sublime in its morality and didactics truly—still a tale
and an allegory; a repertory of invented personages in its older Jewish
portions, and of dark sayings and parables in its later additions, and
thus quite misleading to anyone ignorant of its Esotericism. Moreover it
is Astrolatry and Sabæan worship, pure and simple, that is to be found in
the _Pentateuch_ when it is read exoterically, and Archaic Science and
Astronomy to a most wonderful degree, when interpreted—Esoterically.
SECTION VIII. THE BOOK OF ENOCH THE ORIGIN AND THE FOUNDATION OF
CHRISTIANITY.
While making a good deal of the _Mercavah_, the Jews, or rather their
synagogues, rejected the _Book of Enoch_, either because it was not
included from the first in the Hebrew Canon, or else, as Tertullian
thought, it was
Disavowed by the Jews like all other Scripture which speaks of
Christ.(135)
But neither of these reasons was the real one. The Synedrion would have
nothing to do with it, simply because it was more of a magic than a purely
kabalistic work. The present day Theologians of both Latin and Protestant
Churches class it among apocryphal productions. Nevertheless the _New
Testament_, especially in the _Acts_ and _Epistles_, teems with ideas and
doctrines, now accepted and established as dogmas by the infallible Roman
and other Churches, and even with whole sentences taken bodily from Enoch,
or the “pseudo‐Enoch,” who wrote under that name in Aramaic or Syro‐
Chaldaic, as asserted by Bishop Laurence, the translator of the Ethiopian
text.
The plagiarisms are so glaring that the author of _The Evolution of
Christianity_, who edited Bishop Laurence’s translation, was compelled to
make some suggestive remarks in his Introduction. On internal
evidence(136) this book is found to have been written before the Christian
period (whether two or twenty centuries does not matter). As correctly
argued by the Editor, it is
Either the inspired forecast of a great Hebrew prophet, predicting
with miraculous accuracy the future teaching of Jesus of Nazareth,
or the Semitic romance from which the latter borrowed His
conceptions of the triumphant return of the Son of man, to occupy
a judicial throne in the midst of rejoicing saints and trembling
sinners, expectant of everlasting happiness or eternal fire; and
whether these celestial visions be accepted as human or Divine,
they have exercised so vast an influence on the destinies of
mankind for nearly two thousand years that candid and impartial
seekers after religious truth can no longer delay enquiry into the
relationship of the _Book of Enoch_ with the revelation, or the
evolution, of Christianity.(137)
The _Book of Enoch_
Also records the supernatural control of the elements, through the
action of individual angels presiding over the winds, the sea,
hail, frost, dew, the lightning’s flash, and reverberating
thunder. The names of the principal fallen angels are also given,
among whom we recognize some of the invisible powers named in the
incantations [magical] inscribed on the terra‐cotta cups of
Hebrew‐Chaldee conjurations.(138)
We also find on these cups the word “Halleluiah,” showing that
A word with which ancient Syro‐Chaldæans conjured has become,
through the vicissitudes of language, the Shibboleth of modern
Revivalists.(139)
The Editor proceeds after this to give fifty‐seven verses from various
parts of the _Gospels_ and _Acts_, with parallel passages from the _Book
of Enoch_, and says:
The attention of theologians has been concentrated on the passage
in the _Epistle of Jude_, because the author specifically names
the prophet; but the cumulative coincidence of language and ideas
in Enoch and the authors of the _New Testament_ Scripture, as
disclosed in the parallel passages which we have collated, clearly
indicates that the work of the Semitic Milton was the
inexhaustible source from which Evangelists and Apostles, or the
men who wrote in their names, borrowed their conceptions of the
resurrection, judgment, immortality, perdition, and of the
universal reign of righteousness, under the eternal dominion of
the Son of man. This evangelical plagiarism culminates in the
Revelation of John, which adapts the visions of Enoch to
Christianity, with modifications in which we miss the sublime
simplicity of the great master of apocalyptic prediction, who
prophesied in the name of the antediluvian patriarch.(140)
In fairness to truth, the hypothesis ought at least to have been
suggested, that the _Book of Enoch_ in its present form is simply a
transcript—with numerous pre‐Christian and post‐Christian additions and
interpolations—from far older texts. Modern research went so far as to
point out that Enoch is made, in Chapter lxxi, to divide the day and night
into eighteen parts, and to represent the longest day in the year as
consisting of twelve out of these eighteen parts, while a day of sixteen
hours in length could not have occurred in Palestine. The translator,
Archbishop Laurence, remarks thus:
The region in which the author lived must have been situated not
lower than forty‐five degrees north latitude, where the longest
day is fifteen hours and a‐half, nor higher perhaps than forty‐
nine degrees, where the longest day is precisely sixteen hours.
This will bring the country where he wrote as high up at least as
the northern districts of the Caspian and Euxine Seas ... the
author of the _Book of Enoch_ was perhaps a member of one of the
tribes which Shalmaneser carried away, and placed “in Halah and in
Habor by the river Goshen, and in the cities of the Medes.”(141)
Further on, it is confessed that:
It cannot be said that internal evidence attests the superiority
of the _Old Testament_ to the _Book of Enoch_.... The _Book of
Enoch_ teaches the preëxistence of the Son of man, the Elect One,
the Messiah, who “from the beginning existed in secret,(142) and
whose name was invoked in the presence of the Lord of Spirits,
before the sun and the signs were created.” The author also refers
to the “other Power who was upon Earth over the water on that
day”—an apparent reference to the language of _Genesis_, i.
2.(143) [We maintain that it applies as well to the Hindu
Nârâyana—the “mover on the waters.”] We have thus the Lord of
Spirits, the Elect One, and a third Power, seemingly foreshadowing
this Trinity [as much as the Trimûrti] of futurity; but although
Enoch’s ideal Messiah doubtless exercised an important influence
on primitive conceptions of the Divinity of the Son of man, we
fail to identify his obscure reference to another “Power” with the
Trinitarianism of the Alexandrine school; more especially as
“angels of power” abound in the visions of Enoch.(144)
An Occultist would hardly fail to identify the said “Power.” The Editor
concludes his remarkable reflections by adding:
Thus far we learn that the _Book of Enoch_ was published before
the Christian Era by some great Unknown of Semitic [?] race, who,
believing himself to be inspired in a post‐prophetic age, borrowed
the name of an antediluvian patriarch(145) to authenticate his own
enthusiastic forecast of the Messianic kingdom. And as the
contents of his marvellous book enter freely into the composition
of the _New Testament_, it follows that if the author was not an
inspired prophet, who predicted the teachings of Christianity, he
was a visionary enthusiast whose illusions were accepted by
Evangelists and Apostles as revelation—alternative conclusions
which involve the Divine or human origin of Christianity.(146)
The outcome of all of which is, in the words of the same Editor:
The discovery that the language and ideas of alleged revelation
are found in a preëxistent work, accepted by Evangelists and
Apostles as inspired, but classed by modern theologians among
apocryphal productions.(147)
This accounts also for the unwillingness of the reverend librarians of the
Bodleian Library to publish the Ethiopian text of the _Book of Enoch_.
The prophecies of the _Book of Enoch_ are indeed prophetic, but they were
intended for, and cover the records of, the five Races out of the
seven—everything relating to the last two being kept secret. Thus the
remark made by the Editor of the English translation, that:
Chapter xcii. records a series of prophecies extending from
Enoch’s own time to about one thousand years beyond the present
generation,(148)
is faulty. The prophecies extend to the end of our present Race, not
merely to a “thousand years” hence. Very true that:
In the system of [Christian] chronology adopted, a day stands
[occasionally] for a hundred, and a week for seven hundred
years.(149)
But this is an arbitrary and fanciful system adopted by Christians to make
Biblical chronology fit with facts or theories, and does not represent the
original thought. The “days” stand for the undetermined periods of the
Side‐Races, and the “weeks” for the Sub‐Races, the Root‐Races being
referred to by an expression that is not even found in the English
translation. Moreover the sentence at the bottom of page 150:
Subsequently, in the fourth week ... the visions of the holy and
the righteous shall be seen, the order of generation after
generation shall take place,(150)
is quite wrong. It stands in the original: “the order of generation after
generation had taken place on the earth,” etc.; that is, after the first
human race procreated in the truly human way had sprung up in the Third
Root‐Race; a change which entirely alters the meaning. Then all that is
given in the translation—as very likely also in the Ethiopic text, since
the copies have been sorely tampered with—as about things which were to
happen in the future, is, we are informed, in the past tense in the
original Chaldæan MSS., and is not prophecy, but a narrative of what had
already come to pass. When Enoch begins “to speak from a book”(151) he is
reading the account given by a great Seer, and the prophecies are not his
own, but are from the Seer. Enoch or Enoichion means “internal eye” or
Seer. Thus every Prophet and Adept may be called “Enoichion,” without
becoming a pseudo‐Enoch. But here, the Seer who compiled the present _Book
of Enoch_ is distinctly shown as reading out from a book:
I have been born the seventh in the first week [the seventh
branch, or Side‐Race, of the first Sub‐Race, after physical
generation had begun, namely, in the third Root‐Race].... But
after me, in the second week [second Sub‐Race] great wickedness
shall arise [arose, rather] and in that week the end of the first
shall take place, in which mankind shall be safe. But when the
first is completed iniquity shall grow up.(152)
As translated it has no sense. As it stands in the Esoteric text, it
simply means, that the First Root‐Race shall come to an end during the
second Sub‐Race of the Third Root‐Race, in the period of which time
mankind will be safe; all this having no reference whatever to the
biblical Deluge. Verse 10th speaks of the sixth week [sixth Sub‐Race of
the Third Root‐Race] when
All those who are in it shall be darkened, the hearts of all of
them shall be forgetful of wisdom [the divine knowledge will be
dying out] and in it shall a man ascend.
This “man” is taken by the interpreters, for some mysterious reasons of
their own, to mean Nebuchadnezzar; he is in reality the first Hierophant
of the purely human Race (after the allegorical Fall into generation)
selected to perpetuate the dying Wisdom of the Devas (Angels or Elohim).
He is the first “Son of Man”—the mysterious appellation given to the
divine Initiates of the first human school of the Mânushi (men), at the
very close of the Third Root‐Race. He is also called the “Saviour,” as it
was He, with the other Hierophants, who saved the Elect and the Perfect
from the geological conflagration, leaving to perish in the cataclysm of
the Close(153) those who forgot the primeval wisdom in sexual sensuality.
And during its completion [of the “sixth week,” or the sixth Sub‐
Race] he shall burn the house of dominion [the half of the globe
or the then inhabited continent] with fire, and all the race of
the elect root shall be dispersed.(154)
The above applies to the Elect Initiates, and not at all to the Jews, the
supposed chosen people, or to the Babylonian captivity, as interpreted by
the Christian theologians. Considering that we find Enoch, or his
perpetuator, mentioning the execution of the “decree upon sinners” in
several different weeks,(155) saying that “every work of the ungodly shall
disappear from the whole earth” during this fourth time (the Fourth Race),
it surely can hardly apply to the one solitary Deluge of the _Bible_,
still less to the Captivity.
It follows, therefore, that as the _Book of Enoch_ covers the five Races
of the Manvantara, with a few allusions to the last two, it does not
contain “Biblical prophecies,” but simply facts taken out of the Secret
Books of the East. The editor, moreover, confesses that:
The preceding six verses, _viz._, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th,
and 18th, are taken from between the 14th and 15th verses of the
nineteenth chapter, where they are to be found in the MSS.(156)
By this arbitrary transposition, he has made confusion still more
confused. Yet he is quite right in saying that the doctrines of the
_Gospels_, and even of the _Old Testament_, have been taken bodily from
the _Book of Enoch_, for this is as evident as the sun in heaven. The
whole of the _Pentateuch_ was adapted to fit in with the facts given, and
this accounts for the Hebrews refusing to give the book a place in their
Canon, just as the Christians have subsequently refused to admit it among
their canonical works. The fact that the Apostle Jude and many of the
Christian Fathers referred to it as a revelation and a sacred volume, is,
however, an excellent proof that the early Christians accepted it; among
these the most learned—as, for instance, Clement of Alexandria—understood
Christianity and its doctrines in quite a different light from their
modern successors, and viewed Christ under an aspect that Occultists only
can appreciate. The early Nazarenes and Chrestians, as Justin Martyr calls
them, were the followers of Jesus, of the true Chrestos and Christos of
Initiation; whereas, the modern Christians, especially those of the West,
may be Papists, Greeks, Calvinists, or Lutherans, but can hardly be called
Christians, _i.e._, the followers of Jesus, the Christ.
Thus the _Book of Enoch_ is entirely symbolical. It relates to the history
of the human Races and of their early relation to Theogony, the symbols
being interblended with astronomical and cosmic mysteries. One chapter is
missing, however, in the Noachian records (from both the Paris and the
Bodleian MSS.), namely, Chapter lviii. in Sect. X; this could not be
remodelled, and therefore it had to disappear, disfigured fragments alone
having been left of it. The dream about the cows, the black, red and white
heifers, relates to the first Races, their division and disappearance.
Chapter lxxxviii, in which one of the four Angels “went to the white cows
and taught them a mystery,” after which, the mystery being born “became a
man,” refers to (_a_) the first group evolved of primitive Âryans, and
(_b_) to the “mystery of the Hermaphrodite” so called, having reference to
the birth of the first human Races as they are now. The well‐known rite in
India, one that has survived in that patriarchal country to this day,
known as the passage, or rebirth through the cow—a ceremony to which those
of lower castes who are desirous of becoming Brâhmans have to submit—has
originated in this mystery. Let any Eastern Occultist read with careful
attention the above‐named chapter in the _Book of Enoch_, and he will find
that the “Lord of the Sheep,” in whom Christians and European Mystics see
Christ, is the Hierophant Victim whose name in Sanskrit we dare not give.
Again, that while the Western Churchmen see Egyptians and Israelites in
the “sheep and wolves,” all these animals relate in truth to the trials of
the Neophyte and the mysteries of initiation, whether in India or Egypt,
and to that most terrible penalty incurred by the “wolves”—those who
reveal indiscriminately that which is only for the knowledge of the Elect
and the “Perfect.”
The Christians who, thanks to later interpolations,(157) have made out in
that chapter a triple prophecy relating to the Deluge, Moses and Jesus,
are mistaken, as in reality it bears directly on the punishment and loss
of Atlantis and the penalty of indiscretion. The “Lord of the sheep” is
Karma and the “Head of the Hierophants” also, the Supreme Initiator on
earth. He says to Enoch, who implores him to save the leaders of the sheep
from being devoured by the beasts of prey:
I will cause a recital to be made before me ... how many they have
delivered up to destruction, and ... what they will do; whether
they will act as I have commanded them or not.
Of this, however, they shall be ignorant; neither shalt thou make
any explanation to them, neither shalt thou reprove them; but
there shall be an account of all the destruction done by them in
their respective seasons.(158)
... He looked in silence, rejoicing they were devoured, swallowed
up, and carried off, and leaving them in the power of every beast
for food....(159)
Those who labour under the impression that the Occultists of any nation
reject the _Bible_, in its original text and meaning, are wrong. As well
reject the _Books of Thoth_, the Chaldæan _Kabalah_ or the _Book of Dzyan_
itself. Occultists only reject the one‐sided interpretations and the human
element in the _Bible_, which is an Occult, and therefore a sacred, volume
as much as the others. And terrible indeed is the punishment of all those
who transgress the permitted limits of secret revelations. From Prometheus
to Jesus, and from Him to the highest Adept as to the lowest disciple,
every revealer of mysteries has had to become a Chrestos, a “man of
sorrow” and a martyr. “Beware,” said one of the greatest Masters, “of
revealing the Mystery to those without”—to the profane, the Sadducee and
the unbeliever. All the great Hierophants in history are shown ending
their lives by violent deaths—Buddha,(160) Pythagoras, Zoroaster, most of
the great Gnostics, the founders of their respective schools; and in our
own more modern epoch a number of Fire‐Philosophers, of Rosicrucians and
Adepts. All of these are shown—whether plainly or under the veil of
allegory—as paying the penalty for the revelations they had made. This may
seem to the profane reader only coincidence. To the Occultist, the death
of every “Master” is significant, and appears pregnant with meaning. Where
do we find in history that “Messenger” grand or humble, an Initiate or a
Neophyte, who, when he was made the bearer of some hitherto concealed
truth or truths, was not crucified and rent to shreds by the “dogs” of
envy, malice and ignorance? Such is the terrible Occult law; and he who
does not feel in himself the heart of a lion to scorn the savage barking,
and the soul of a dove to forgive the poor ignorant fools, let him give up
the Sacred Science. To succeed, the Occultist must be fearless; he has to
brave dangers, dishonour and death, to be forgiving, and to be silent on
that which cannot be given. Those who have vainly laboured in that
direction must wait in these days—as the _Book of Enoch_ teaches—“until
the evil‐doers be consumed” and the power of the wicked annihilated. It is
not lawful for the Occultist to seek or even to thirst for revenge: let
him
Wait until sin pass away; for their [the sinners’] names shall be
blotted out of the holy books [the astral records], their seed
shall be destroyed and their spirits slain.(161)
Esoterically, Enoch is the “Son of man,” the first; and symbolically, the
first Sub‐Race of the _Fifth_ Root Race.(162) And if his name yields for
purposes of numerical and astronomical glyphs the meaning of the solar
year, or 365, in conformity to the age assigned to him in _Genesis_, it is
because, being the seventh, he is, for Occult purposes, the personified
period of the two preceding Races with their fourteen Sub‐Races.
Therefore, he is shown in the Book as the great grandfather of Noah who,
in his turn, is the personification of the mankind of the Fifth,
struggling with that of the Fourth Root‐Race—the great period of the
revealed and profaned Mysteries, when the “sons of God” coming down on
Earth took for wives the daughters of men, and taught them the secrets of
the Angels; in other words, when the “mind‐born” men of the Third Race
mixed themselves with those of the Fourth, and the divine Science was
gradually brought down by men to Sorcery.