All that is explained in the preceding Sections and a hundredfold more was
taught in the Mysteries from time immemorial. If the first appearance of
those institutions is a matter of historical tradition with regard to some
of the later nations, their origin must certainly be assigned to the time
of the Fourth Root Race. The Mysteries were imparted to the elect of that
Race when the average Atlantean had begun to fall too deeply into sin to
be trusted with the secrets of Nature. Their establishment is attributed
in the Secret Works to the King‐Initiates of the divine dynasties, when
the “Sons of God” had gradually allowed their country to become Kookarma‐
des (the land of vice).
The antiquity of the Mysteries may be inferred from the history of the
worship of Hercules in Egypt. This Hercules, according to what the priests
told Herodotus, was not Grecian, for he says:
Of the Grecian Hercules I could in no part of Egypt procure any
knowledge: ... the name was never borrowed by Egypt from
Greece.... Hercules, ... as they [the priests] affirm, is one of
the twelve (great Gods), who were reproduced from the earlier
eight Gods 17,000 years before the year of Amasis.
Hercules is of Indian origin, and—his Biblical chronology put
aside—Colonel Tod was quite right in his suggestion that he was Balarâma
or Baladeva. Now one must read the _Purânas_ with the Esoteric key in
one’s hand in order to find out how on almost every page they corroborate
the Secret Doctrine. The ancient classical writers so well understood this
truth that they unanimously attributed to Asia the origin of Hercules.
A section of the Mahâbhârata is devoted to the history of the
Hercûla, of which race was Vyasa.... Diodorus has the same legend
with some variety. He says: “Hercules was born amongst the Indians
and, like the Greeks, they furnish him with a club and lion’s
hide.” Both [Krishna and Baladeva] are (lords) of the race (cûla)
of Heri (Heri‐cul‐es) of which the Greeks might have made the
compound Hercules.(486)
The Occult Doctrine explains that Hercules was the last incarnation of one
of the seven “Lords of the Flame,” as Krishna’s brother, Baladeva. That
his incarnations occurred during the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Root‐Races,
and that his worship was brought into Egypt from Lanka and India by the
later immigrants. That he was borrowed by the Greeks from the Egyptians is
certain, the more so as the Greeks place his birth at Thebes, and only his
twelve labours at Argos. Now we find in the _Vishnu Purâna_ a complete
corroboration of the statement made in the Secret Teachings, of which
Purânic allegory the following is a short summary:
Raivata, a grandson of Sharyâti, Manu’s fourth son, finding no man worthy
of his lovely daughter, repaired with her to Brahmâ’s region to consult
the God in this emergency. Upon his arrival, Hâhâ Hûhû, and other
Gandharvas were singing before the throne, and Raivata, waiting till they
had done, imagined that but one Muhûrta (instant) had passed, whereas long
ages had elapsed. When they had finished Raivata prostrated himself and
explained his perplexity. Then Brahmâ asked him whom he wished for a son‐
in‐law, and upon hearing a few personages named, the Father of the World
smiled and said: “Of those whom you have named the third and fourth
generation [Root‐Races] no longer survive, for many successions of ages
[Chatur‐Yuga, or the four Yuga cycles] have passed away while you were
listening to our songsters. Now on earth the twenty‐eighth great age of
the present Manu is nearly finished and the Kali period is at hand. You
must therefore bestow this virgin‐gem upon some other husband. For you are
now alone.”
Then the Râja Raivata is told to proceed to Kushasthalî, his ancient
capital, which was now called Dvârakâ, and where reigned in his stead a
portion of the divine being (Vishnu) in the person of Baladeva, the
brother of Krishna, regarded as the seventh incarnation of Vishnu whenever
Krishna is taken as a full divinity.
“Being thus instructed by the Lotus‐born [Brahmâ], Raivata returned with
his daughter to earth, where he found the race of men dwindled in stature
[see what is said in the Stanzas and Commentaries of the races of mankind
gradually decreasing in stature]; ... reduced in vigour, and enfeebled in
intellect. Repairing to the city of Kushasthalî, he found it much
altered,” because, according to the allegorical explanation of the
commentator, “Krishna had reclaimed from the sea a portion of the
country,” which means in plain language that the continents had all been
changed meanwhile—and “had renovated the city”—or rather built a new one,
Dvârakâ; for one reads in the _Bhagavad Purâna_(487) that Kushasthalî was
founded and built by Raivata within the sea; and subsequent discoveries
showed that it was the same, or on the same spot, as Dvârakâ. Therefore it
was on an island before. The allegory in _Vishnu Purâna_ shows King
Raivata giving his daughter to “the wielder of the ploughshare”—or rather
“the plough‐bannered”—Baladeva, who “beholding the damsel of excessively
lofty height ... shortened her with the end of his ploughshare, and she
became his wife.”(488)
This is a plain allusion to the Third and Fourth Races—to the Atlantean
giants and the successive incarnations of the “Sons of the Flame” and
other orders of Dhyân Chohans in the heroes and kings of mankind, down to
the Kali Yuga, or Black Age, the beginning of which is within historical
times. Another _coincidence_: Thebes is the city of a hundred gates, and
Dvârakâ is so called from its many gateways or doors, from the word
“Dvâra,” “gateway.” Both Hercules and Baladeva are of a passionate, hot
temper, and both are renowned for the fairness of their white skins. There
is not the slightest doubt that Hercules is Baladeva in Greek dress.
Arrian notices the great similarity between the Theban and the Hindu
Hercules, the latter being worshipped by the Suraseni who built Methorea,
or Mathûrâ, Krishna’s birthplace. The same writer places Sandracottus
(Chandragupta, the grandfather of King Asoka, of the clan of Morya) in the
direct line of the descendants of Baladeva.
There were no Mysteries in the beginning, we are taught. Knowledge (Vidyâ)
was common property, and it reigned universally throughout the Golden Age
(Satya Yuga). As says the Commentary:
_Men had not created evil yet in those days of bliss and purity, for they
were of God‐like more than of human nature._
But when mankind, rapidly increasing in numbers, increased also in variety
of idiosyncrasies of body and mind, then incarnated Spirit showed its
weakness. Natural exaggerations, and along with these superstitions, arose
in the less cultured and healthy minds. Selfishness was born out of
desires and passions hitherto unknown, and but too often knowledge and
power were abused, until finally it became necessary to limit the number
of those _who knew_. Thus arose Initiation.
Every separate nation now arranged for itself a religious system,
according to its enlightenment and spiritual wants. Worship of mere form
being discarded by the wise men, these confined true knowledge to the very
few. The need of veiling truth to protect it from desecration becoming
more apparent with every generation, a thin veil was used at first, which
had to be gradually thickened according to the spread of personality and
selfishness, and this led to the Mysteries. They came to be established in
every country and among every people, while to avoid strife and
misunderstanding exoteric beliefs were allowed to grow up in the minds of
the profane masses. Inoffensive and innocent in their incipient stage—like
a historical event arranged in the form of a fairy tale, adapted for and
comprehensible to the child’s mind—in those distant ages such beliefs
could be allowed to grow and make the popular faith without any danger to
the more philosophical and abstruse truths taught in the sanctuaries.
Logical and scientific observation of the phenomena in Nature, which alone
leads man to the knowledge of eternal truths—provided he approaches the
threshold of observation unbiassed by preconception and sees with his
spiritual eye before he looks at things from their physical aspect—does
not lie within the province of the masses. The marvels of the One Spirit
of Truth, the ever‐concealed and inaccessible Deity, can be unravelled and
assimilated only through Its manifestations by the secondary “Gods,” Its
acting powers. While the One and Universal Cause has to remain for ever
_in abscondito_, Its manifold action may be traced through the effects in
Nature. The latter alone being comprehensible and manifest to average
mankind, the Powers causing those effects were allowed to grow in the
imagination of the populace. Ages later in the Fifth, the Âryan, Race some
unscrupulous priests began to take advantage of the too‐easy beliefs of
the people in every country, and finally raised those secondary Powers to
the rank of God and Gods, thus succeeding in isolating them altogether
from the One Universal Cause of all causes.(489)
Henceforward the knowledge of the primeval truths remained entirely in the
hands of the Initiates.
The Mysteries had their weak points and their defects, as every
institution welded with the human element must necessarily have. Yet
Voltaire has characterised their benefits in a few words:
In the chaos of popular superstitions there existed an institution
which has ever prevented man from falling into absolute brutality:
it was that of the Mysteries.
Verily, as Ragon puts it of Masonry;
Its temple has Time for duration, the Universe for space.... “Let
us divide that we may rule,” have said the crafty; “Let us unite
to resist,” have said the first Masons.(490)
Or rather, the Initiates whom the Masons have never ceased to claim as
their primitive and direct Masters. The first and fundamental principle of
moral strength and power is association and solidarity of thought and
purpose. “The Sons of Will and Yoga” united in the beginning to resist the
terrible and ever‐growing iniquities of the left‐hand Adepts, the
Atlanteans. This led to the foundation of still more Secret Schools,
temples of learning, and of Mysteries inaccessible to all except after the
most terrible trials and probations.
Anything that might be said of the earliest Adepts and their divine
Masters would be regarded as fiction. It is necessary, therefore, if we
would know something of the primitive Initiates to judge of the tree by
its fruits; to examine the bearing and the work of their successors in the
Fifth Race as reflected in the works of the classic writers and the great
Philosophers. How were Initiation and the Initiates regarded during some
2,000 years by the Greek and Roman writers? Cicero informs his readers in
very clear terms. He says:
An Initiate must practise all the virtues in his power: justice,
fidelity, liberality, modesty, temperance; these virtues cause men
to forget the talents that he may lack.(491)
Ragon says:
When the Egyptian priests said: “All for the people, nothing
through the people,” they were right: in an ignorant nation truth
must be revealed only to trustworthy persons.... We have seen in
our days, “all through the people, nothing for the people,” a
false and dangerous system. The real axiom ought to be: “All for
the people and _with_ the people.”(492)
But in order to achieve this reform the masses have to pass through a dual
transformation: (_a_) to become divorced from every element of exoteric
superstition and priestcraft, and (_b_) to become educated men, free from
every danger of being enslaved whether by a man or an idea.
This, in view of the preceding, may seem paradoxical. The Initiates were
“priests,” we may be told—at any rate, all the Hindu, Egyptian, Chaldæan,
Greek, Phœnician, and other Hierophants and Adepts were priests in the
temples, and it was they who invented their respective exoteric creeds. To
this the answer is possible: “The cowl does not make the friar.” If one
may believe tradition and the unanimous opinion of ancient writers, added
to the examples we have in the “priests” of India, the most conservative
nation in the world, it becomes quite certain that the Egyptian priests
were no more priests in the sense we give to the word than are the temple
Brâhmans. They could never be regarded as such if we take as our standard
the European clergy. Laurens observes very correctly that:
The priests of Egypt were not, strictly speaking, ministers of
religion. The word “priest,” which translation has been badly
interpreted, had an acceptation very different from the one that
is applied to it among us. In the language of antiquity, and
especially in the sense of the initiation of the priests of
ancient Egypt, the word “priest” is synonymous with that of
“philosopher.”... The institution of the Egyptian priests seems to
have been really a confederation of sages gathered to study the
art of ruling men, to centre the domain of truth, modulate its
propagation, and arrest its too dangerous dispersion.(493)
The Egyptian Priests, like the Brâhmans of old, held the reins of the
governing powers, a system that descended to them by direct inheritance
from the Initiates of the great Atlantis. The pure cult of Nature in the
earliest patriarchal days—the word “patriarch” applying in its first
original sense to the Progenitors of the human race,(494) the Fathers,
Chiefs, and Instructors of primitive men—became the heirloom of those
alone who could discern the noumenon beneath the phenomenon. Later, the
Initiates transmitted their knowledge to the human kings, as their divine
Masters had passed it to their forefathers. It was their prerogative and
duty to reveal the secrets of Nature that were useful to mankind—the
hidden virtues of plants, the art of healing the sick, and of bringing
about brotherly love and mutual help among mankind. No Initiate was one if
he could not heal—aye, recall to life from apparent death (coma) those
who, too long neglected, would have indeed died during their
lethargy.(495) Those who showed such powers were forthwith set above the
crowds, and were regarded as Kings and Initiates. Gautama Buddha was a
King‐Initiate, a healer, and recalled to life those who were in the hands
of death. Jesus and Apollonius were healers, and were both addressed as
Kings by their followers. Had they failed to raise those who were to all
intents and purposes the dead, none of their names would have passed down
to posterity; for this was the first and crucial test, the certain sign
that the Adept had upon Him the invisible hand of a primordial divine
Master, or was an incarnation of one of the “Gods.”
The later royal privilege descended to our Fifth Race kings through the
kings of Egypt. The latter were all initiated into the mysteries of
medicine, and they healed the sick, even when, owing to the terrible
trials and labours of final Initiation, they were unable to become full
Hierophants. They were healers by privilege and by tradition, and were
assisted in the healing art by the Hierophants of the temples, when they
themselves were ignorant of Occult curative Science. So also in far later
historical times we find Pyrrhus curing the sick by simply touching them
with his foot; Vespasian and Hadrian needed only to pronounce a few words
taught to them by their Hierophants, in order to restore sight to the
blind and health to the cripple. From that time onward history has
recorded cases of the same privilege conferred on the emperors and kings
of almost every nation.(496)
That which is known of the Priests of Egypt and of the ancient Brâhmans,
corroborated as it is by all the ancient classics and historical writers,
gives us the right to believe in that which is only traditional in the
opinion of sceptics. Whence the wonderful knowledge of the Egyptian
Priests in every department of Science, unless they had it from a still
more ancient source? The famous “Four,” the seats of learning in old
Egypt, are more historically certain than the beginnings of modern
England. It was in the great Theban sanctuary that Pythagoras upon his
arrival from India studied the Science of Occult numbers. It was in
Memphis that Orpheus popularized his too‐abstruse Indian metaphysics for
the use of Magna Grecia; and thence Thales, and ages later Democritus,
obtained all they knew. It is to Saïs that all the honour must be given of
the wonderful legislation and the art of ruling people, imparted by its
Priests to Lycurgus and Solon, who will both remain objects of admiration
for generations to come. And had Plato and Eudoxus never gone to worship
at the shrine of Heliopolis, most probably the one would have never
astonished future generations with his ethics, nor the other with his
wonderful knowledge of mathematics.(497)
The great modern writer on the Mysteries of Egyptian Initiation—one,
however, who knew nothing of those in India—the late Ragon, has not
exaggerated in maintaining that:
All the notions possessed by Hindustan, Persia, Syria, Arabia,
Chaldæa, Sydonia, and the priests of Babylonia, [on the secrets of
Nature], was known to the Egyptian priests. It is thus Indian
philosophy, without mysteries, which, having penetrated into
Chaldæa and ancient Persia, gave rise to the doctrine of Egyptian
Mysteries.(498)
The Mysteries preceded the hieroglyphics.(499) They gave birth to the
latter, as permanent records were needed to preserve and commemorate their
secrets. It is primitive Philosophy(500) that has served as the
foundation‐stone for modern Philosophy; only the progeny, while
perpetuating the features of the external body, has lost on its way the
Soul and Spirit of its parent.
Initiation, though it contained neither rules and principles, nor any
special teaching of Science—as now understood—was nevertheless Science,
and the Science of sciences. And though devoid of dogma, of physical
discipline, and of exclusive ritual, it was yet the one true Religion—that
of eternal truth. Outwardly it was a school, a college, wherein were
taught sciences, arts, ethics, legislation, philanthropy, the cult of the
true and real nature of cosmic phenomena; secretly, during the Mysteries,
practical proofs of the latter were given. Those who could learn truth on
all things—_i.e._, those who could look the great Isis in her unveiled
face and bear the awful majesty of the Goddess—became Initiates. But the
children of the Fifth Race had fallen too deeply into matter always to do
so with impunity. Those who failed disappeared from the world, without
leaving a trace behind. Which of the highest kings would have dared to
claim any individual, however high his social standing, from the stern
priests, once that the victim had crossed the threshold of their sacred
Adytum?
The noble precepts taught by the Initiates of the early races passed to
India, Egypt, and Greece, to China and Chaldæa, and thus spread all over
the world. All that is good, noble, and grand in human nature, every
divine faculty and aspiration, were cultured by the Priest‐Philosophers
who sought to develop them in their Initiates. Their code of ethics, based
on altruism, has become universal. It is found in Confucius, the
“atheist,” who taught that “he who loves not his brother has no virtue in
him,” and in the _Old Testament_ precept, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour
as thyself.”(501) The greater Initiates became like unto Gods, and
Socrates, in Plato’s _Phædo_, is represented as saying:
The Initiates are sure to come into the company of the Gods.
In the same work the great Athenian Sage is made to say:
It is quite apparent that those who have established the
Mysteries, or the secret assemblies of the Initiates, were no mean
persons, but powerful genii, who from the first ages had
endeavoured to make us understand under those enigmas that he who
will reach the invisible regions unpurified will be hurled into
the abyss [the Eighth Sphere of the Occult Doctrine; that is, he
will lose his personality for ever], while he who will attain them
purged of the maculations of this world, and accomplished in
virtues, will be received in the abode of the Gods.
Said Clemens Alexandrinus, referring to the Mysteries:
Here ends all teaching. One sees Nature and all things.
A Christian Father of the Church speaks then as did the Pagan Pretextatus,
the pro‐consul of Achaia (fourth century A.D.), “a man of eminent
virtues,” who remarked that to deprive the Greeks of “the sacred Mysteries
which bind in one the whole of mankind,” was to render their very lives
worthless to them. Would the Mysteries have ever obtained the highest
praise from the noblest men of antiquity had they not been of more than
human origin? Read all that is said of this unparalleled institution, as
much by those who had never been initiated, as by the Initiates
themselves. Consult Plato, Euripides, Socrates, Aristophanes, Pindar,
Plutarch, Isocrates, Diodorus, Cicero, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, not to
name dozens of other famous Sages and writers. That which the Gods and
Angels had _revealed_, exoteric religions, beginning with that of Moses,
_reveiled_ and hid for ages from the sight of the world. Joseph, the son
of Jacob, was an Initiate, otherwise he would not have married Aseneth,
the daughter of Petephre (“Potiphar”—“he who belongs to Phre,” the Sun‐
God), priest of Heliopolis and governor of On.(502) Every truth _revealed_
by Jesus, and which even the Jews and early Christians understood, was
_reveiled_ by the Church that pretends to serve Him. Read what Seneca
says, as quoted by Dr. Kenealy:
“The world being melted and having reëntered the bosom of Jupiter
[or Parabrahman], this God continues for some time totally
concentred in himself and remains concealed, as it were, wholly
immersed in the contemplation of his own ideas. Afterwards we see
a new world spring from him.... An innocent race of men is
formed.” And again, speaking of a mundane dissolution as involving
the destruction or death of all, he [Seneca] teaches us that when
the laws of Nature shall be buried in ruin and the last day of the
world shall come, the Southern Pole shall crush, as it falls, all
the regions of Africa; and the North Pole shall overwhelm all the
countries beneath its axis. _The affrighted sun shall be deprived
of its light_; the palace of heaven, falling to decay, shall
produce at once both life and death, and some kind of dissolution
shall equally seize upon all the deities, who thus shall return to
their original chaos.(503)
One might fancy oneself reading the Purânic account by Parâshara of the
great Pralaya. It is nearly the same thing, idea for idea. Has
Christianity nothing of the kind? Let the reader open any English _Bible_
and read chapter iii. of the _Second Epistle of Peter_, and he will find
there the same ideas.
There shall come in the last days scoffers, ... saying, Where is
the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep all
things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.
For this they willingly are ignorant of that by the word of God
the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water
and in the water: whereby the world that then was, being
overflowed with water, perished. But the heavens and the earth,
which are now, by the same word are ... reserved unto fire, ... in
the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the
elements shall melt with fervent heat.... Nevertheless we ... look
for new heavens and a new earth.
If the interpreters chose to see in this a reference to a creation, a
deluge, and a promised coming of Christ, when they will live in a New
Jerusalem in heaven, that is no fault of Peter. What he meant was the
destruction of the Fifth Race and the appearance of a new continent for
the Sixth Race.
The Druids understood the meaning of the Sun in Taurus, therefore when all
the fires were extinguished on the 1st of November their sacred and
inextinguishable fire remained alone to illumine the horizon like those of
the Magi and the modern Zoroastrian. And like the early Fifth Race and the
later Chaldæans and Greeks, and again like the Christians (who do it to
this day without suspecting the real meaning), they greeted the “Morning‐
Star,” the beautiful Venus‐Lucifer.(504) Strabo speaks of an island near
Britannia where Ceres and Persephone were worshipped with the same rites
as in Samothrace, and this was the sacred Ierna, where a perpetual fire
was lit. The Druids believed in the rebirth of man, not, as Lucian
explains,
That the same _Spirit_ shall animate a new body, not here, but in
a different world,
but in a series of reïncarnations in this same world; for as Diodorus
says, they declared that the souls of men after a determinate period would
pass into other bodies.(505)
These tenets came to the Fifth Race Âryans from their ancestors of the
Fourth Race, the Atlanteans. They piously preserved the teachings, while
their parent Root‐Race, becoming with every generation more arrogant,
owing to the acquisition of superhuman powers, were gradually approaching
their end.