The antiquity of the Secret Doctrine may be better realised when it is
shown at what point of history its Mysteries had already been desecrated,
by being made subservient to the personal ambition of despot‐ruler and
crafty priest. These profoundly philosophical and scientifically composed
religious dramas, in which were enacted the grandest truths of the Occult
or Spiritual Universe and the hidden lore of learning, had become subject
to persecution long before the days when Plato and even Pythagoras
flourished. Withal, primal revelations given to Mankind have not died with
the Mysteries; they are still preserved as heirlooms for future and more
spiritual generations.
It has been already stated in _Isis Unveiled_,(511) that so far back as in
the days of Aristotle, the great Mysteries had already lost their
primitive grandeur and solemnity. Their rites had fallen into desuetude,
and they had to a great degree degenerated into mere priestly speculations
and had become religious shams. It is useless to state when they first
appeared in Europe and Greece, since recognised history may almost be said
to begin with Aristotle, everything before him appearing to be in an
inextricable chronological confusion. Suffice it to say, that in Egypt the
Mysteries had been known since the days of Menes, and that the Greeks
received them only when Orpheus introduced them from India. In an article
“Was writing known before Pânini?”(512) it is stated that the Pândus had
acquired universal dominion and had taught the “sacrificial” Mysteries to
other races as far back as 3,300 B.C. Indeed, when Orpheus, the son of
Apollo or Helios, received from his father the phorminx—the seven‐stringed
lyre, symbolical of the sevenfold mystery of Initiation—these Mysteries
were already hoary with age in Central Asia and India. According to
Herodotus it was Orpheus who brought them from India, and Orpheus is far
anterior to Homer and Hesiod. Thus even in the days of Aristotle few were
the true Adepts left in Europe and even in Egypt. The heirs of those who
had been dispersed by the conquering swords of various invaders of old
Egypt had been dispersed in their turn. As 8,000 or 9,000 years earlier
the stream of knowledge had been slowly running down from the tablelands
of Central Asia into India and towards Europe and Northern Africa, so
about 500 years B.C. it had begun to flow backward to its old home and
birthplace. During the two thousand subsequent years the knowledge of the
existence of great Adepts nearly died out in Europe. Nevertheless, in some
secret places the Mysteries were still enacted in all their primitive
purity. The “Sun of Righteousness” still blazed high on _the midnight
sky_; and, while darkness was upon the face of the profane world, there
was the eternal light in the Adyta on the nights of Initiation. The _true_
Mysteries were never made public. Eleusinia and Agræ for the multitudes;
the God Εὐβουλῆ “of the good counsel,” the great Orphic Deity, for the
neophyte.
This mystery God—mistaken by our Symbologists for the Sun—who was He?
Everyone who has any idea of the ancient Egyptian exoteric faith is quite
aware that for the multitudes Osiris was the Sun in Heaven, “the Heavenly
King,” Ro‐Imphab; that by the Greeks the Sun was called the “Eye of
Jupiter,” as for the modern orthodox Pârsî he is “the Eye of Ormuzd:” that
the Sun, moreover, was addressed as the “All‐seeing God” (πολυόφθαλμος) as
the “God Saviour,” and the “saving God” (Αἴτιον τῆς σωτηρίας). Read the
papyrus of Papheronmes at Berlin, and the stela as rendered by Mariette
Bey,(513) and see what they say:
Glory to thee, O Sun, divine child! ... thy rays carry life to the
pure and to those ready.... The Gods [the “Sons of God”] who
approach thee tremble with delight and awe.... Thou art the first
born, the Son of God, the Word.(514)
The Church has now seized upon these terms and sees presentments of the
coming Christ in these expressions in the initiatory rites and prophetic
utterances of the Pagan Oracles. They are nothing of the kind, for they
were applied to every worthy Initiate. If the expressions that were used
in hieratic writings and glyphs thousands of years before our era are now
found in the laudatory hymns and prayers of Christian Churches, it is
simply because they have been unblushingly appropriated by the Latin
Christians, in the full hope of never being detected by posterity.
Everything that could be done had been done to destroy the original Pagan
manuscripts and the Church felt secure. Christianity has undeniably had
her great Seers and Prophets, like every other religion; but their claims
are not strengthened by denying their predecessors.
Listen to Plato:
Know then, Glaucus, that when I speak of the production of good,
it is the Sun I mean. The Son has a perfect analogy with his
Father.
Iamblichus calls the Sun “the image of divine intelligence or Wisdom.”
Eusebius, repeating the words of Philo, calls the rising Sun (ἀνατολὴ) the
chief Angel, the most ancient, adding that the Archangel who is
_polyonymous_ (of many names) is the Verbum or Christ. The word Sol (Sun)
being derived from _solus_, the One, or the “He alone,” and its Greek name
Helios meaning the “Most High,” the emblem becomes comprehensible.
Nevertheless, the Ancients made a difference between the Sun and its
prototype.
Socrates saluted the rising Sun as does a true Pârsî or Zoroastrian in our
own day; and Homer and Euripides, as Plato did after them several times,
mention the Jupiter‐Logos, the “Word” or the Sun. Nevertheless, the
Christians maintain that since the oracle consulted on the God Iao
answered: “It is the Sun,” therefore
The Jehovah of the Jews was well known to the Pagans and
Greeks;(515)
and “Iao is our Jehovah.” The first part of the proposition has nothing,
it seems, to do with the second part, and least of all can the conclusion
be regarded as correct. But if the Christians are so anxious to prove the
identity, Occultists have nothing against it. Only, in such case, Jehovah
is also Bacchus. It is very strange that the people of civilised
Christendom should until now hold on so desperately to the skirts of the
idolatrous Jews—Sabæans and Sun worshippers as they were,(516) like the
rabble of Chaldæa—and that they should fail to see that the later Jehovah
is but a Jewish development of the Ja‐va, or the Iao, of the Phœnicians;
that this name, in short, was the secret name of a Mystery‐God, one of the
many Kabiri. “Highest God” as He was for one little nation, he never was
so regarded by the Initiates who conducted the Mysteries; for them he was
but a Planetary Spirit attached to the visible Sun; and the visible Sun is
only the central Star, not the central spiritual Sun.
And the Angel of the Lord said unto him [Manoah] “Why askest thou
thus after my name, seeing it is secret.”(517)
However this may be, the identity of the Jehovah of Mount Sinai with the
God Bacchus is hardly disputable, and he is surely—as already shown in
_Isis Unveiled_—Dionysos.(518) Wherever Bacchus was worshipped there was a
tradition of Nyssa,(519) and a cave where he was reared. Outside Greece,
Bacchus was the all‐powerful “Zagreus, the highest of Gods,” in whose
service was Orpheus, the founder of the Mysteries. Now, unless it be
conceded that Moses was an initiated Priest, an Adept, whose actions are
all narrated allegorically, then it must be admitted that he personally,
together with his hosts of Israelites, worshipped Bacchus.
And Moses built an altar, and called the name of it _Jehovah
Nissi_ [or, Iao‐nisi, or again Dionisi].(520)
To strengthen the statement we have further to remember that the place
where Osiris, the Egyptian Zagreus or Bacchus, was born, was Mount Sinai,
which is called by the Egyptians Mount Nissa. The brazen serpent was a
nis, כהש, and the month of the Jewish Passover is Nisan.