It really seems too bad to strip Rome of all her symbols at once;

but justice must be done to the despoiled hierophants. Long before

the sign of the Cross was adopted as a Christian symbol, it was

employed as a secret sign of recognition among neophytes and adepts.

Says Levi: “The sign of the Cross adopted by the Christians does not

belong exclusively to them. It is kabalistic, and represents the

oppositions and quaternary equilibrium of the elements. We see by

the occult verse of the _Pater_, to which we have called attention

in another work, that there were originally two ways of making it,

or, at least, two very different formulas to express its meaning--one

reserved for priests and initiates; the other given to neophytes

and the profane. Thus, for example, the _initiate_, carrying his

hand to his forehead, said: _To thee_; then he added, _belong_; and

continued, while carrying his hand to the breast--_the kingdom_;

then, to the left shoulder--_justice_; to the right shoulder--_and

mercy_. Then he joined the two hands, adding: _throughout the

generating cycles: ‘Tibi sunt Malchut, et Geburah et Chassed per

Æonas’_--a sign of the Cross, _absolutely_ and magnificently

kabalistic, which the profanations of Gnosticism made the militant

and official Church completely _lose_.”[124]

How fantastical, therefore, is the assertion of Father Ventura,

that, while Augustine was a Manichean, a philosopher, ignorant of

and refusing to humble himself before the sublimity of the “grand

Christian revelation,” he knew nothing, understood naught of God,

man, or universe; “... he remained poor, small, obscure, sterile,

and wrote nothing, did nothing really grand or useful.” But, hardly

had he become a Christian “... when his reasoning powers and

intellect, enlightened at the _luminary of faith_, elevated him to

the most sublime heights of philosophy and theology.” And his other

proposition that Augustine’s genius, as a consequence, “developed

itself in all its grandeur and prodigious fecundity ... his intellect

radiated with that immense splendor which, reflecting itself in his

immortal writings, has never ceased for one moment during fourteen

centuries to illuminate the Church and the world!”[125]

Whatever Augustine was as a Manichean, we leave Father Ventura to

discover; but that his accession to Christianity established an

everlasting enmity between theology and science is beyond doubt.

While forced to confess that “the Gentiles had possibly something

_divine_ and true in their doctrines,” he, nevertheless, declared

that for their superstition, idolatry, and pride, they had “to

be detested, and, unless they improved, to be punished by divine

judgment.” This furnishes the clew to the subsequent policy of the

Christian Church, even to our day. If the Gentiles did not choose

to come into the Church, all that was divine in their philosophy

should go for naught, and the divine wrath of God should be visited

upon their heads. What effect this produced is succinctly stated

by Draper: “No one did more than this Father to bring science and

religion into antagonism; it was mainly he who diverted the _Bible_

from its true office--a guide to purity of life--and placed it in

the perilous position of being the arbiter of human knowledge, an

audacious tyranny over the mind of man. The example once set, there

was no want of followers; the works of the Greek philosophers were

stigmatized as profane; the transcendently glorious achievements

of the Museum of Alexandria were hidden from sight by a cloud of

ignorance, mysticism, and unintelligible jargon, out of which there

too often flashed the destroying lightnings of ecclesiastical

vengeance.”[126]

Augustine and Cyprian[127] admit that Hermes and Hostanes believed in

one true god; the first two maintaining, as well as the two Pagans,

that he is invisible and incomprehensible, except spiritually.

Moreover we invite any man of intelligence--provided he be not a

religious fanatic--after reading fragments chosen at random from the

works of Hermes and Augustine on the Deity, to decide which of the

two gives a more philosophical definition of the “unseen Father.” We

have at least one writer of fame who is of our opinion. Draper calls

the Augustinian productions a “rhapsodical conversation” with God; an

“incoherent dream.”[128]

Father Ventura depicts the saint as attitudinizing before an

astonished world upon “the most sublime heights of philosophy.” But

here steps in again the same unprejudiced critic, who passes the

following remarks on this colossus of Patristic philosophy. “Was it

for this preposterous scheme,” he asks, “this product of ignorance

and audacity, that the works of the Greek philosophers were to be

given up? It was none too soon that the great critics who appeared

at the Reformation, by comparing the works of these writers with one

another, brought them to their proper level, and taught us to look

upon them all with contempt.”[129]

For such men as Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Apollonius, and even

Simon Magus, to be accused of having formed a pact with the Devil,

whether the latter personage exist or not, is so absurd as to need

but little refutation. If Simon Magus--the most problematical of all

in an historical sense--ever existed otherwise than in the overheated

fancy of Peter and the other apostles, he was evidently no worse than

any of his adversaries. A difference in religious views, however

great, is insufficient _per se_ to send one person to heaven and the

other to hell. Such uncharitable and peremptory doctrines might have

been taught in the middle ages; but it is too late now for even the

Church to put forward this traditional scarecrow. Research begins to

suggest that which, if ever verified, will bring eternal disgrace on

the Church of the Apostle Peter, whose very imposition of herself

upon that disciple must be regarded as the most unverified and

unverifiable of the assumptions of the Catholic clergy.

The erudite author of _Supernatural Religion_ assiduously endeavors

to prove that by _Simon Magus_ we must understand the apostle Paul,

whose Epistles were secretly as well as openly calumniated by Peter,

and charged with containing “_dysnoëtic_ learning.” The Apostle of

the Gentiles was brave, outspoken, sincere, and very learned; the

Apostle of Circumcision, cowardly, cautious, _insincere_, and very

ignorant. That Paul had been, partially, at least, if not completely,

initiated into the theurgic mysteries, admits of little doubt. His

language, the phraseology so peculiar to the Greek philosophers,

certain expressions used but by the initiates, are so many sure

ear-marks to that supposition. Our suspicion has been strengthened by

an able article in one of the New York periodicals, entitled _Paul

and Plato_,[130] in which the author puts forward one remarkable

and, for us, very precious observation. In his _Epistles to the

Corinthians_ he shows Paul abounding with “expressions suggested

by the initiations of Sabazius and Eleusis, and the lectures

of the (Greek) philosophers. He (Paul) designates himself an

_idiotes_--a person unskilful in the Word, but not in the _gnosis_

or philosophical learning. ‘We speak wisdom among the perfect or

initiated,’ he writes; ‘not the wisdom of this world, nor of the

archons of this world, but divine wisdom in a mystery, secret--which

_none of the Archons of this world knew_.’”[131]

What else can the apostle mean by these unequivocal words, but

that he himself, as belonging to the _mystæ_ (initiated), spoke of

things shown and explained only in the Mysteries? The “divine wisdom

in a mystery which none of the _archons of this world knew_,” has

evidently some direct reference to the _basileus_ of the Eleusinian

initiation who _did know_. The _basileus_ belonged to the staff of

the great hierophant, and was an _archon_ of Athens; and as such was

one of the chief _mystæ_, belonging to the _interior_ Mysteries, to

which a very select and small number obtained an entrance.[132] The

magistrates supervising the Eleusinians were called archons.

Another proof that Paul belonged to the circle of the “Initiates”

lies in the following fact. The apostle had his head shorn at

Cenchrea (where Lucius, _Apuleius_, was initiated) because “he

had a vow.” The _nazars_--or set apart--as we see in the Jewish

Scriptures, had to cut their hair which they wore long, and which “no

razor touched” at any other time, and sacrifice it on the altar of

initiation. And the nazars were a class of Chaldean theurgists. We

will show further that Jesus belonged to this class.

Paul declares that: “According to the grace of God which is given

unto me, as a wise _master-builder_, I have laid the foundation.”[133]

This expression, master-builder, used only _once_ in the whole

_Bible_, and by Paul, may be considered as a whole revelation. In the

Mysteries, the third part of the sacred rites was called _Epopteia_,

or revelation, reception into the secrets. In substance it means that

stage of divine clairvoyance when everything pertaining to this earth

disappears, and earthly sight is paralyzed, and the soul is united

free and pure with its Spirit, or God. But the real significance of

the word is “overseeing,” from οπτομαι--_I see myself_. In Sanscrit

the word _evâpto_ has the same meaning, as well as _to obtain_.[134]

The word _epopteia_ is a compound one, from Επι--upon, and οπτομαι--to

look, or an overseer, an inspector--also used for a master-builder.

The title of master-mason, in Freemasonry, is derived from this, in

the sense used in the Mysteries. Therefore, when Paul entitles himself

a “master-builder,” he is using a word pre-eminently kabalistic,

theurgic, and masonic, and one which no other apostle uses. He thus

declares himself an _adept_, having the right to _initiate_ others.

If we search in this direction, with those sure guides, the Grecian

Mysteries and the _Kabala_, before us, it will be easy to find the

secret reason why Paul was so persecuted and hated by Peter, John,

and James. The author of the _Revelation_ was a Jewish kabalist _pur

sang_, with all the hatred inherited by him from his forefathers

toward the Mysteries.[135] His jealousy during the life of Jesus

extended even to Peter; and it is but after the death of their

common master that we see the two apostles--the former of whom

wore the Mitre and the Petaloon of the Jewish Rabbis--preach so

zealously the rite of circumcision. In the eyes of Peter, Paul, who

had humiliated him, and whom he felt so much his superior in “Greek

learning” and philosophy, must have naturally appeared as a magician,

a man polluted with the “_Gnosis_,” with the “wisdom” of the Greek

Mysteries--hence, perhaps, “Simon[136] the Magician.”

As to Peter, biblical criticism has shown before now that he had

probably no more to do with the foundation of the Latin Church at

Rome, than to furnish the pretext so readily seized upon by the

cunning Irenæus to benefit this Church with the new name of the

apostle--_Petra_ or _Kiffa_, a name which allowed so readily, by an

easy play upon words, to connect it with _Petroma_, the double set

of stone tablets used by the hierophant at the initiations, during

the final Mystery. In this, perhaps, lies concealed the whole secret

of the claims of the Vatican. As Professor Wilder happily suggests:

“In the Oriental countries the designation פתר, Peter (in Phœnician

and Chaldaic, an interpreter) appears to have been the title of this

personage (the hierophant).... There is in these facts some reminder

of the peculiar circumstances of the Mosaic Law ... and also of the

claim of the Pope to be the successor of Peter, the hierophant or

interpreter of the Christian religion.”[137]

As such, we must concede to him, to some extent, the right to be such

an interpreter. The Latin Church has faithfully preserved in symbols,

rites, ceremonies, architecture, and even in the very dress of her

clergy, the tradition of the Pagan worship--of the public or exoteric

ceremonies, we should add; otherwise her dogmas would embody more

sense and contain less blasphemy against the majesty of the Supreme

and Invisible God.

An inscription found on the coffin of Queen Mentuhept, of the

eleventh dynasty (2250 B.C.), now proved to have been transcribed

from the seventeenth chapter of the _Book of the Dead_ (dating not

later than 4500 B.C.), is more than suggestive. This monumental text

contains a group of hieroglyphics, which, when interpreted, read thus:

=PTR.= =RF.= =SU.=

Peter- ref- su.

Baron Bunsen shows this sacred formulary mixed up with a whole

series of glosses and various interpretations on a monument forty

centuries old. “This is identical with saying that the record (the

true interpretation) was at that time no longer intelligible.... We

beg our readers to understand,” he adds, “that a sacred text, a hymn,

containing the words of a departed spirit, existed in such a state

about 4,000 years ago ... as to be all but unintelligible to royal

scribes.”[138]

That it was unintelligible to the uninitiated among the latter is as

well proved by the confused and contradictory glossaries, as that it

was a “mystery”-word, known to the hierophants of the sanctuaries,

and, moreover, a word chosen by Jesus, to designate the office

assigned by him to one of his apostles. This word, PTR, was partially

interpreted, owing to another word similarly written in another group

of hieroglyphics, on a stele, the sign used for it being an opened

eye.[139] Bunsen mentions as another explanation of PTR--“to show.”

“It appears to me,” he remarks, “that our PTR is literally the old

Aramaic and Hebrew ‘Patar’, which occurs in the history of Joseph as

the specific word for _interpreting_; whence also _Pitrum_ is the

term for interpretation of a text, a dream.”[140] In a manuscript of

the first century, a combination of the Demotic and Greek texts,[141]

and most probably one of the few which miraculously escaped the

Christian vandalism of the second and third centuries, when all such

precious manuscripts were burned as magical, we find occurring in

several places a phrase, which, perhaps, may throw some light upon

this question. One of the principal heroes of the manuscript, who

is constantly referred to as “the Judean Illuminator” or Initiate,

Τελειωτὴς, is made to communicate but with his _Patar_; the latter

being written in Chaldaic characters. Once the latter word is coupled

with the name _Shimeon_. Several times, the “Illuminator,” who rarely

breaks his contemplative solitude, is shown inhabiting a Κρύπτη

(cave), and teaching the multitudes of eager scholars standing

outside, not orally, but through this _Patar_. The latter receives the

words of wisdom by applying his ear to a circular hole in a partition

which conceals the teacher from the listeners, and then conveys them,

with explanations and glossaries, to the crowd. This, with a slight

change, was the method used by Pythagoras, who, as we know, never

allowed his neophytes to see him during the years of probation, but

instructed them from behind a curtain in his cave.

But, whether the “Illuminator” of the Græco-Demotic manuscript is

identical with Jesus or not, the fact remains, that we find him

selecting a “mystery”-appellation for one who is made to appear later

by the Catholic Church as the janitor of the Kingdom of Heaven and

the interpreter of Christ’s will. The word Patar or Peter locates

both master and disciple in the circle of initiation, and connects

them with the “Secret Doctrine.” The great hierophant of the ancient

Mysteries never allowed the candidates to see or hear him personally.

He was the Deus-ex-Machina, the presiding but invisible Deity,

uttering his will and instructions through a second party; and

2,000 years later, we discover that the Dalaï-Lamas of Thibet had

been following for centuries the same traditional programme during

the most important religious mysteries of lamaism. If Jesus knew

the secret meaning of the title bestowed by him on Simon, then he

must have been initiated; otherwise he could not have learned it;

and if he was an initiate of either the Pythagorean Essenes, the

Chaldean Magi, or the Egyptian Priests, then the doctrine taught by

him was but a portion of the “Secret Doctrine” taught by the Pagan

hierophants to the few select adepts admitted within the sacred adyta.

But we will discuss this question further on. For the present we

will endeavor to briefly indicate the extraordinary similarity--or

rather identity, we should say--of rites and ceremonial dress of

the Christian clergy with that of the old Babylonians, Assyrians,

Phœnicians, Egyptians, and other Pagans of the hoary antiquity.

If we would find the model of the Papal tiara, we must search the

annals of the ancient Assyrian tablets. We invite the reader to give

his attention to Dr. Inman’s illustrated work, _Ancient Pagan and

Modern Christian Symbolism_. On page sixty-four, he will readily

recognize the head-gear of the successor of St. Peter in the coiffure

worn by gods or angels in ancient Assyria, “where it appears crowned

by an emblem of the _male_ trinity” (the Christian Cross). “We may

mention, in passing,” adds Dr. Inman, “that, as the Romanists adopted

the mitre and the tiara from ‘the cursed brood of Ham,’ so they

adopted the Episcopalian crook from the augurs of Etruria, and the

artistic form with which they clothe their angels from the painters

and urn-makers of Magna Grecia and Central Italy.”

Would we push our inquiries farther, and seek to ascertain as much

in relation to the nimbus and the tonsure of the Catholic priest

and monk?[142] We shall find undeniable proofs that they are solar

emblems. Knight, in his _Old England Pictorially Illustrated_, gives

a drawing by St. Augustine, representing an ancient Christian bishop,

in a dress probably identical with that worn by the great “saint”

himself. The _pallium_, or the ancient stole of the bishop, is the

feminine sign when worn by a priest in worship. On St. Augustine’s

picture it is bedecked with Buddhistic crosses, and in its whole

appearance it is a representation of the Egyptian =T= (tau), assuming

slightly the figure of the letter =Y=. “Its lower end is the mark of

the masculine triad,” says Inman; “the right hand (of the figure) has

the forefinger extended, like the Assyrian priests while doing homage

_to the grove_.... When a male dons the pallium in worship, he becomes

the representative of the trinity in the unity, the _arba_, or mystic

four.”[143]

“Immaculate is our Lady Isis,” is the legend around an engraving

of Serapis and Isis, described by King, in _The Gnostics and their

Remains_, Ἡ ΚΥΡΙΑ ΙϹΙϹ ΑΓΝΗ “... the very terms applied afterwards to

that personage (the Virgin Mary) who succeeded to her form, titles,

symbols, rites, and ceremonies.... Thus, her devotees carried into the

new priesthood the former badges of their profession, the obligation

to celibacy, the tonsure, and the surplice, omitting, unfortunately,

the frequent ablutions prescribed by the ancient creed.” “The ‘Black

Virgins,’ so highly reverenced in certain French cathedrals ...

proved, when at last critically examined, basalt figures of

Isis!”[144]

Before the shrine of Jupiter Ammon were suspended tinkling bells,

from the sound of whose chiming the priests gathered the auguries; “A

golden bell and a pomegranate ... round about the hem of the robe,”

was the result with the Mosaic Jews. But in the Buddhistic system,

during the religious services, the gods of the Deva Loka are always

invoked, and invited to descend upon the altars by the ringing of

bells suspended in the pagodas. The bell of the sacred table of Siva

at Kuhama is described in Kailasa, and every Buddhist vihara and

lamasery has its bells.

We thus see that the bells used by Christians come to them directly

from the Buddhist Thibetans and Chinese. The beads and rosaries

have the same origin, and have been used by Buddhist monks for over

2,300 years. The _Linghams_ in the Hindu temples are ornamented upon

certain days with large berries, from a tree sacred to Mahadeva,

which are strung into rosaries. The title of “nun” is an Egyptian

word, and had with them the actual meaning; the Christians did not

even take the trouble of translating the word _Nonna_. The aureole

of the saints was used by the antediluvian artists of Babylonia,

whenever they desired to honor or deify a mortal’s head. In a

celebrated picture in Moore’s _Hindoo Pantheon_, entitled, “Christna

nursed by Devaki, from a highly-finished picture,” the Hindu Virgin

is represented as seated on a lounge and nursing Christna. The hair

brushed back, the long veil, and the golden aureole around the

Virgin’s head, as well as around that of the Hindu Saviour, are

striking. No Catholic, well versed as he might be in the mysterious

symbolism of iconology, would hesitate for a moment to worship at

that shrine the Virgin Mary, the mother of his God![145] In Indur

Subba, the south entrance of the Caves of Ellora, may be seen to this

day the figure of Indra’s wife, Indranee, sitting with her infant

son-god, pointing the finger to heaven with the same gesture as the

Italian Madonna and child. In _Pagan and Christian Symbolism_, the

author gives a figure from a mediæval woodcut--the like of which we

have seen by dozens in old psalters--in which the Virgin Mary, with

her infant, is represented as the Queen of Heaven, on the crescent

moon, emblem of virginity. “Being before the sun, she almost eclipses

its light. Than this, nothing could more completely identify the

Christian mother and child with Isis and Horus, Ishtar, Venus, Juno,

and a host of other Pagan goddesses, who have been called ‘Queen of

Heaven,’ ‘Queen of the Universe,’ ‘Mother of God,’ ‘Spouse of God,’

‘the Celestial Virgin,’ ‘the Heavenly Peace-Maker,’ etc.”[146]

Such pictures are not purely astronomical. They represent the male

god and the female goddess, as the sun and moon in conjunction, “the

union of the triad with the unit.” The horns of the cow on the head

of Isis have the same significance.

And so above, below, outside, and inside, the Christian Church, in

the priestly garments, and the religious rites, we recognize the

stamp of exoteric heathenism. On no subject within the wide range of

human knowledge, has the world been more blinded or deceived with

such persistent misrepresentation as on that of antiquity. Its hoary

past and its religious faiths have been misrepresented and trampled

under the feet of its successors. Its hierophants and prophets, mystæ

and epoptæ,[147] of the once sacred adyta of the temple shown as

demoniacs and devil-worshippers. Donned in the despoiled garments

of the victim, the Christian priest now anathematizes the latter

with rites and ceremonies which he has learned from the theurgists

themselves. The Mosaic _Bible_ is used as a weapon against the people

who furnished it. The heathen philosopher is cursed under the very

roof which has witnessed his initiation; and the “monkey of God”

(_i.e._, the devil of Tertullian), “the originator and founder of

magical theurgy, the science of illusions and lies, whose father

and author is the demon,” is exorcised with holy water by the hand

which holds the identical _lituus_[148] with which the ancient

augur, after a solemn prayer, used to determine the regions of

heaven, and evoke, in the name of the HIGHEST, the minor god (now

termed the Devil), who unveiled to his eyes futurity, and enabled

him to prophesy! On the part of the Christians and the clergy it is

nothing but shameful ignorance, prejudice, and that contemptible

pride so boldly denounced by one of their own reverend ministers, T.

Gross,[149] which rails against all investigation “as a useless or

a criminal labor, when it must be feared that they will result in

the overthrow of preëstablished systems of faith.” On the part of

the scholars it is the same apprehension of the possible necessity

of having to modify some of their erroneously-established theories

of science. “Nothing but such pitiable prejudice,” says Gross,

“can have thus misrepresented the theology of heathenism, and

distorted--nay, caricatured--its forms of religious worship. It is

time that posterity should raise its voice in vindication of violated

truth, and that the present age should learn a little of that common

sense of which it boasts with as much self-complacency as if the

prerogative of reason was the birthright only of modern times.”

All this gives a sure clew to the real cause of the hatred felt by the

early and mediæval Christian toward his Pagan brother and dangerous

rival. We hate but what we fear. The Christian thaumaturgist once

having broken all association with the Mysteries of the temples and

with “these schools so renowned for magic,” described by St.

Hilarion,[150] could certainly expect but little to rival the Pagan

wonder-workers. No apostle, with the exception perhaps of healing by

mesmeric power, has ever equalled Apollonius of Tyana; and the scandal

created among the apostles by the miracle-doing Simon Magus, is too

notorious to be repeated here again. “How is it,” asks Justin Martyr,

in evident dismay, “how is it that the talismans of Apollonius (the

τελεσματα) have power in certain members of creation, for they

prevent, _as we see_, the fury of the waves, and the violence of the

winds, and the attacks of wild beasts; and whilst our Lord’s miracles

are preserved by tradition alone, those of Apollonius _are most

numerous_, and actually manifested in present facts, so as to lead

astray all beholders?”[151] This perplexed martyr solves the problem

by attributing very correctly the efficacy and potency of the charms

used by Apollonius to his profound knowledge of the sympathies and

antipathies (or repugnances) of nature.

Unable to deny the evident superiority of their enemies’ powers, the

fathers had recourse to the old but ever successful method--that

of slander. They honored the theurgists with the same insinuating

calumny that had been resorted to by the Pharisees against Jesus.

“Thou hast a dæmon,” the elders of the Jewish Synagogue had said to

him. “Thou hast the Devil,” repeated the cunning fathers, with equal

truth, addressing the Pagan thaumaturgist; and the widely-bruited

charge, erected later into an article of faith, won the day.

But the modern heirs of these ecclesiastical falsifiers, who charge

magic, spiritualism, and even magnetism with being produced by a

demon, forget or perhaps never read the classics. None of our bigots

has ever looked with more scorn on the _abuses_ of magic than did the

true initiate of old. No modern or even mediæval law could be more

severe than that of the hierophant. True, he had more discrimination,

charity, and justice, than the Christian clergy; for while banishing

the “unconscious” sorcerer, the person troubled with a demon, from

within the sacred precincts of the adyta, the priests, instead of

mercilessly burning him, took care of the unfortunate “possessed

one.” Having hospitals expressly for that purpose in the neighborhood

of temples, the ancient “medium,” if obsessed, was taken care of and

restored to health. But with one who had, by conscious _witchcraft_,

acquired powers dangerous to his fellow-creatures, the priests of

old were as severe as justice herself. “Any person _accidentally_

guilty of homicide, or of any crime, or convicted of _witchcraft_,

was excluded from the Eleusinian Mysteries.”[152] And so were they

from all others. This law, mentioned by all writers on the ancient

initiation, speaks for itself. The claim of Augustine, that all the

explanations given by the Neo-platonists were invented by themselves

is absurd. For nearly every ceremony in their true and successive

order is given by Plato himself, in a more or less covered way.

The Mysteries are as old as the world, and one well versed in the

esoteric mythologies of various nations can trace them back to the

days of the ante-Vedic period in India. A condition of the strictest

virtue and purity is required from the _Vatou_, or candidate in India

before he can become an initiate, whether he aims to be a simple

fakir, a _Purohita_ (public priest) or a _Sannyâsi_, a saint of the

second degree of initiation, the most holy as the most revered of

them all. After having conquered, in the terrible trials preliminary

to admittance to the inner temple in the subterranean crypts of his

pagoda, the sannyâsi passes the rest of his life in the temple,

practicing the eighty-four rules and ten virtues prescribed to the

Yogis.

“No one who has not practiced, during his whole life, the ten virtues

which the divine Manu makes incumbent as a duty, can be initiated

into the Mysteries of the council,” say the Hindu books of initiation.

These virtues are: “Resignation; the act of rendering good for

evil; temperance; probity; purity; chastity; repression of the

physical senses; the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures; that of

the _Superior_ soul (spirit); worship of truth; abstinence from

anger.” These virtues must alone direct the life of a true Yogi. “No

unworthy adept ought to defile the ranks of the holy initiates by

his presence for twenty-four hours.” The adept becomes guilty after

having once broken any one of these vows. Surely the exercise of such

virtues is inconsistent with the idea one has of _devil_-worship and

lasciviousness of purpose!

And now we will try to give a clear insight into one of the chief

objects of this work. What we desire to prove is, that underlying

every ancient popular religion was the same ancient wisdom-doctrine,

one and identical, professed and practiced by the initiates of every

country, who alone were aware of its existence and importance. To

ascertain its origin, and the precise age in which it was matured, is

now beyond human possibility. A single glance, however, is enough to

assure one that it could not have attained the marvellous perfection

in which we find it pictured to us in the relics of the various

esoteric systems, except after a succession of ages. A philosophy

so profound, a moral code so ennobling, and practical results so

conclusive and so uniformly demonstrable is not the growth of a

generation, or even a single epoch. Fact must have been piled upon

fact, deduction upon deduction, science have begotten science, and

myriads of the brightest human intellects have reflected upon the

laws of nature, before this ancient doctrine had taken concrete

shape. The proofs of this identity of fundamental doctrine in the

old religions are found in the prevalence of a system of initiation;

in the secret sacerdotal castes who had the guardianship of mystical

words of power, and a public display of a phenomenal control over

natural forces, indicating association with preterhuman beings. Every

approach to the Mysteries of all these nations was guarded with the

same jealous care, and in all, the penalty of death was inflicted

upon initiates of any degree who divulged the secrets entrusted

to them. We have seen that such was the case in the Eleusinian

and Bacchic Mysteries, among the Chaldean Magi, and the Egyptian

hierophants; while with the Hindus, from whom they were all derived,

the same rule has prevailed from time immemorial. We are left in no

doubt upon this point; for the _Agrushada Parikshai_ says explicitly,

“Every initiate, to whatever degree he may belong, who reveals the

great sacred formula, must be put to death.”

Naturally enough, this same extreme penalty was prescribed in all the

multifarious sects and brotherhoods which at different periods have

sprung from the ancient stock. We find it with the early Essenes,

Gnostics, theurgic Neo-platonists, and mediæval philosophers;

and in our day, even the Masons perpetuate the memory of the old

obligations in the penalties of throat-cutting, dismemberment,

and disemboweling, with which the candidate is threatened. As the

Masonic “master’s word” is communicated only at “low breath,” so the

selfsame precaution is prescribed in the Chaldean _Book of Numbers_

and the Jewish _Mercaba_. When initiated, the neophyte was led by

an _ancient_ to a secluded spot, and there the latter whispered _in

his ear_ the great secret.[153] The Mason swears, under the most

frightful penalties, that he will not communicate the secrets of any

degree “to a brother of an _inferior degree_;” and the _Agrushada

Parikshai_ says: “Any initiate of the third degree who reveals before

the prescribed time, to the initiates of the second degree, the

superior truths, must be put to death.” Again, the Masonic apprentice

consents to have his “tongue torn out by the roots” if he divulge

anything to a profane; and in the Hindu books of initiation, the same

_Agrushada Parikshai_, we find that any initiate of the first degree

(the lowest) who betrays the secrets of his initiation, to members of

other castes, for whom the science should be a closed book, must have

“his _tongue cut out_,” and suffer other mutilations.

As we proceed, we will point out the evidences of this identity of

vows, formulas, rites, and doctrines, between the ancient faiths.

We will also show that not only their memory is still preserved in

India, but also that the Secret Association is still alive and as

active as ever. That, after reading what we have to say, it may be

inferred that the chief pontiff and hierophant, the _Brahmâtma_, is

still accessible to those “who know,” though perhaps recognized by

another name; and that the ramifications of his influence extend

throughout the world. But we will now return again to the early

Christian period.

As though he were not aware that there was any esoteric significance

to the exoteric symbols, and that the Mysteries themselves were

composed of two parts, the lesser at Agræ, and the higher ones at

Eleusinia, Clemens Alexandrinus, with a rancorous bigotry that

one might expect from a renegade Neo-platonist, but is astonished

to find in this generally honest and learned Father, stigmatized

the Mysteries as indecent and diabolical. Whatever were the rites

enacted among the neophytes before they passed to a higher form of

instruction; however misunderstood were the trials of _Katharsis_

or purification, during which they were submitted to every kind of

probation; and however much the immaterial or physical aspect might

have led to calumny, it is but wicked prejudice which can compel a

person to say that under this external meaning there was not a far

deeper and spiritual significance.

It is positively absurd to judge the ancients from our own standpoint

of propriety and virtue. And most assuredly it is not for the

Church--which now stands accused by all the modern symbologists of

having adopted precisely these same emblems in their coarsest aspect,

and feels herself powerless to refute the accusations--to throw the

stone at those who were her models. When men like Pythagoras, Plato,

and Iamblichus, renowned for their severe morality, took part in the

Mysteries, and spoke of them with veneration, it ill behooves our

modern critics to judge them so rashly upon their merely external

aspect. Iamblichus explains the worst; and his explanation, for an

unprejudiced mind, ought to be perfectly plausible. “Exhibitions of

this kind,” he says, “in the Mysteries were designed to free us from

licentious passions, by gratifying the sight, and at the same time

vanquishing all evil thought, through _the awful sanctity_ with which

these rites were accompanied.”[154] “The wisest and best men in the

Pagan world,” adds Dr. Warburton, “are unanimous in this, that the

Mysteries were instituted pure, and proposed the noblest ends by the

worthiest means.”[155]

In these celebrated rites, although persons of both sexes and all

classes were allowed to take a part, and a participation in them

was even obligatory, very few indeed attained the higher and final

initiation. The gradation of the Mysteries is given us by Proclus

in the fourth book of his _Theology of Plato_. “The perfective rite

τελετη, precedes in order the initiation--_Muesis_--and the initiation,

_Epopteia_, or the final apocalypse (revelation).” Theon of Smyrna, in

_Mathematica_, also divides the mystic rites into five parts: “the

first of which is the previous purification; for _neither are the

Mysteries communicated to all_ who are willing to receive them; ...

there are certain persons who are prevented by the voice of the crier

(κηρυξ) ... since it is necessary that such as are not expelled from

the Mysteries should first be refined by certain purifications which

the reception of the sacred rites succeeds. The third part is

denominated _epopteia_ or reception. And the fourth, which is the end

and design of the revelation, is _the binding of the head and fixing

of the crowns_[156] ... whether after this he (the initiated person)

becomes ... an hierophant or sustains some other part of the

sacerdotal office. But the fifth, which is produced from all these,

_is friendship and interior communion with God_.” And this was the

last and most awful of all the Mysteries.

There are writers who have often wondered at the meaning of this

claim to a “friendship and interior communion with God.” Christian

authors have denied the pretensions of the “Pagans” to such

“communion,” affirming that only Christian saints were and are

capable of enjoying it; materialistic skeptics have altogether

scoffed at the idea of both. After long ages of religious materialism

and spiritual stagnation, it has most certainly become difficult

if not altogether impossible to substantiate the claims of either

party. The old Greeks, who had once crowded around the Agora of

Athens, with its altar to the “Unknown God,” are no more; and their

descendants firmly believe that they have found the “Unknown” in the

Jewish Jehova. The divine ecstasies of the early Christians have made

room for visions of a more modern character, in perfect keeping with

progress and civilization. The “Son of man” appearing to the rapt

vision of the ancient Christian as coming from the seventh heaven, in

a cloud of glory, and surrounded with angels and winged seraphim, has

made room for a more prosaic and at the same time more business-like

Jesus. The latter is now shown as making morning calls upon Mary and

Martha in Bethany; as seating himself on “the _ottoman_” with the

younger sister, a lover of “ethics,” while Martha goes off to the

kitchen to cook. Anon the heated fancy of a blasphemous Brooklyn

preacher and harlequin, the Reverend Dr. Talmage, makes us see her

rushing back “with besweated brow, a pitcher in one hand and the

tongs in the other ... into the presence of Christ,” and blowing him

up for not caring that her sister hath left her “to serve alone.”[157]

From the birth of the solemn and majestic conception of the

unrevealed Deity of the ancient adepts to such caricatured

descriptions of him who died on the Cross for his philanthropic

devotion to humanity, long centuries have intervened, and their

heavy tread seems to have almost entirely obliterated all sense of

a spiritual religion from the hearts of his professed followers. No

wonder then, that the sentence of Proclus is no longer understood by

the Christians, and is rejected as a “vagary” by the materialists,

who, in their negation, are less blasphemous and atheistical than

many of the reverends and members of the churches. But, although the

Greek _epoptai_ are no more, we have now, in our own age, a people

far more ancient than the oldest Hellenes, who practice the so-called

“preterhuman” gifts to the same extent as did their ancestors far

earlier than the days of Troy. It is to this people that we draw the

attention of the psychologist and philosopher.

One need not go very deep into the literature of the Orientalists to

become convinced that in most cases they do not even suspect that

in the arcane philosophy of India there are depths which they have

not sounded, and _cannot_ sound, for they pass on without perceiving

them. There is a pervading tone of conscious superiority, a ring

of contempt in the treatment of Hindu metaphysics, as though the

European mind is alone enlightened enough to polish the rough diamond

of the old Sanscrit writers, and separate right from wrong for the

benefit of their descendants. We see them disputing over the external

forms of expression without a conception of the great vital truths

these hide from the profane view.

“As a rule, the Brahmans,” says Jacolliot, “rarely go beyond the

class of _grihesta_ [priests of the vulgar castes] and _purohita_

[exorcisers, divines, prophets, and evocators of spirits]. And

yet, we shall see ... once that we have touched upon the question

and study of manifestations and phenomena, that these initiates

of the _first_ degree (the lowest) attribute to themselves, and

in appearance possess faculties developed to a degree which has

never been equalled in Europe. As to the initiates of the second

and especially of the third category, they pretend to be enabled to

ignore time, space, and to command life and death.”[158]

Such initiates as these M. Jacolliot _did not meet_; for, as he says

himself, they only appear on the most solemn occasions, and when the

faith of the multitudes has to be strengthened by phenomena of a

superior order. “They are never seen, either in the neighborhood of,

or even inside the temples, except at the grand quinquennial festival

of the fire. On that occasion, they appear about the middle of the

night, on a platform erected in the centre of the sacred lake, like

so many phantoms, and by their conjurations they illumine the space.

A fiery column of light ascends from around them, rushing from earth

to heaven. Unfamiliar sounds vibrate through the air, and five or

six hundred thousand Hindus, gathered from every part of India to

contemplate these demigods, throw themselves with their faces buried

in the dust, invoking the souls of their ancestors.”[159]

Let any impartial person read the _Spiritisme dans le Monde_, and

he cannot believe that this “implacable rationalist,” as Jacolliot

takes pride in terming himself, said one word more than is warranted

by what he had seen. His statements support and are corroborated by

those of other skeptics. As a rule, the missionaries, even after

passing half a lifetime in the country of “devil-worship,” as they

call India, either disingenuously _deny_ altogether what they cannot

help knowing to be true, or ridiculously attribute phenomena to this

power of the Devil, that outrival the “miracles” of the apostolic

ages. And what do we see this French author, notwithstanding his

incorrigible rationalism, forced to admit, after having narrated the

greatest wonders? Watch the fakirs as he would, he is compelled to

bear the strongest testimony to their perfect honesty in the matter

of their miraculous phenomena. “Never,” he says, “have we succeeded

in detecting a single one in the act of deceit.” One fact should be

noted by all who, without having been in India, still fancy they

are clever enough to expose the fraud of _pretended_ magicians.

This skilled and cool observer, this redoubtable materialist, after

his long sojourn in India, affirms, “We unhesitatingly avow that we

have not met, either in India or in Ceylon, a single European, even

among the oldest residents, who has been able to indicate the means

employed by these devotees for the production of these phenomena!”

And how should they? Does not this zealous Orientalist confess to us

that even he, who had every available means at hand to learn many

of their rites and doctrines at first hand, failed in his attempts

to make the Brahmans explain to him their secrets. “All that our

most diligent inquiries of the Pourohitas could elicit from them

respecting the acts of their superiors (the invisible initiates of

the temples), amounts to very little.” And again, speaking of one of

the books, he confesses that, while purporting to reveal all that

is desirable to know, it “falls back into mysterious formulas, in

combinations of magical and occult letters, the secret of which it

has been impossible for us to penetrate,” etc.

The fakirs, although they can never reach beyond the first degree of

initiation, are, notwithstanding, the only agents between the living

world and the “silent brothers,” or those initiates who never cross

the thresholds of their sacred dwellings. The Fūkara-Yogis belong

to the temples, and who knows but these cenobites of the sanctuary

have far more to do with the psychological phenomena which attend the

fakirs, and have been so graphically described by Jacolliot, than the

_Pitris_ themselves? Who can tell but that the fluidic spectre of the

ancient Brahman seen by Jacolliot was the Scin-lecca, the spiritual

_double_, of one of these mysterious sannyâsi?

Although the story has been translated and commented upon by

Professor Perty, of Geneva, still we will venture to give it in

Jacolliot’s own words: “A moment after the disappearance of the

hands, the fakir continuing his evocations (_mantras_) more earnestly

than ever, a cloud like the first, but more opalescent and more

opaque, began to hover near the small brasier, which, by request of

the Hindu, I had constantly fed with live coals. Little by little it

assumed a form entire human, and I distinguished the spectre--for I

cannot call it otherwise--of an old Brahman sacrificator, kneeling

near the little brasier.

“He bore on his forehead the signs sacred to Vishnu, and around his

body the triple cord, sign of the initiates of the priestly caste. He

joined his hands above his head, as during the sacrifices, and his

lips moved as if they were reciting prayers. At a given moment, he

took a pinch of perfumed powder, and threw it upon the coals; it must

have been a strong compound, for a thick smoke arose on the instant,

and filled the two chambers.

“When it was dissipated, I perceived the spectre, which, two steps

from me, was extending to me its fleshless hand; I took it in mine,

making a salutation, and I was astonished to find it, although bony

and hard, warm and living.

“‘Art thou, indeed,’ said I at this moment, in a loud voice, ‘an

ancient inhabitant of the earth?’

“I had not finished the question, when the word AM (yes) appeared

and then disappeared in letters of fire, on the breast of the old

Brahman, with an effect much like that which the word would produce

if written in the dark with a stick of phosphorus.

“‘Will you leave me nothing in token of your visit?’ I continued.

“The spirit broke the triple cord, composed of three strands of

cotton, which begirt his loins, gave it to me, and vanished at my

feet.”[160]

“Oh Brahma! what is this mystery which takes place every night?...

When lying on the matting, with eyes closed, the body is lost

sight of, and the soul escapes to enter into conversation with the

Pitris.... Watch over it, O Brahma, when, forsaking the resting body,

it goes away to hover over the waters, to wander in the immensity

of heaven, and penetrate into the dark and mysterious nooks of the

valleys and grand forests of the Hymavat!” (_Agroushada Parikshai._)

The fakirs, when belonging to some particular temple, never act but

under orders. Not one of them, unless he has reached a degree of

extraordinary sanctity, is freed from the influence and guidance of

his guru, his teacher, who first initiated and instructed him in

the mysteries of the _occult_ sciences. Like the _subject_ of the

European mesmerizer, the average fakir can never rid himself entirely

of the psychological influence exercised on him by his guru. Having

passed two or three hours in the silence and solitude of the inner

temple in prayer and meditation, the fakir, when he emerges thence,

is mesmerically strengthened and prepared; he produces wonders far

more varied and powerful than before he entered. The “master” has

_laid his hands upon him_, and the fakir feels strong.

It may be shown, on the authority of many Brahmanical and Buddhist

sacred books, that there has ever existed a great difference between

adepts of the higher order, and purely psychological subjects--like

many of these fakirs, who are mediums in a certain qualified sense.

True, the fakir is ever talking of Pitris, and this is natural; for

they are his protecting deities. But are the Pitris _disembodied

human beings of our race_? This is the question, and we will discuss

it in a moment.

We say that the fakir may be regarded in a degree as a medium; for he

is--what is not generally known--under the direct mesmeric influence

of a living adept, his sannyâsi or guru. When the latter dies, the

power of the former, unless he has received the last transfer of

spiritual forces, wanes and often even disappears. Why, if it were

otherwise, should the fakirs have been excluded from the right of

advancing to the second and third degree? The lives of many of them

exemplify a degree of self-sacrifice and sanctity unknown and utterly

incomprehensible to Europeans, who shudder at the bare thought of

such self-inflicted tortures. But however shielded from control by

vulgar and earth-bound spirits, however wide the chasm between a

debasing influence and their self-controlled souls; and however well

protected by the seven-knotted magical bamboo rod which he receives

from the guru, still the fakir lives in the outer world of sin and

matter, and it is possible that his soul may be tainted, perchance,

by the magnetic emanations from profane objects and persons, and

thereby open an access to strange spirits and _gods_. To admit one

so situated, one not under any and all circumstances sure of the

mastery over himself, to a knowledge of the awful mysteries and

priceless secrets of initiation, would be impracticable. It would

not only imperil the security of that which must, at all hazards,

be guarded from profanation, but it would be consenting to admit

behind the veil a fellow being, whose mediumistic irresponsibility

might at any moment cause him to lose his life through an involuntary

indiscretion. The same law which prevailed in the Eleusinian

Mysteries before our era, holds good now in India.

Not only must the adept have mastery over himself, but he must

be able to control the inferior grades of spiritual beings,

nature-spirits, and earthbound souls, in short the very ones by whom,

if by any, the fakir is liable to be affected.

For the objector to affirm that the Brahman-adepts and the fakirs

admit that of themselves they are powerless, and can only act with

the help of disembodied human spirits, is to state that these Hindus

are unacquainted with the laws of their sacred books and even the

meaning of the word _Pitris_. The _Laws of Manu_, the _Atharva-Veda_,

and other books, prove what we now say. “All that exists,” says the

_Atharva-Veda_, “is in the power of the gods. The gods are under the

power of magical conjurations. The magical conjurations are under

the control of the Brahmans. Hence the gods are in the power of the

Brahmans.” This is logical, albeit seemingly paradoxical, and it is

the fact. And this fact will explain to those who have not hitherto

had the clew (among whom Jacolliot must be numbered, as will appear

on reading his works), why the fakir should be confined to the first,

or lowest degree of that course of initiation whose highest adepts,

or hierophants, are the _sannyâsis_, or members of the ancient

Supreme Council of Seventy.

Moreover, in Book I., of the Hindu _Genesis_, or _Book of Creation_

of _Manu_, the _Pitris_ are called the _lunar_ ancestors of the human

race. They belong to a race of beings different from ourselves, and

cannot properly be called “human spirits” in the sense in which the

spiritualists use this term. This is what is said of them:

“Then they (the gods) created the Jackshas, the Rakshasas, the

Pisatshas,[161] the Gandarbas[162] and the Apsaras, and the Asuras,

the Nagas, the Sarpas and the Suparnas,[163] and the Pitris--_lunar

ancestors of the human race_” (See _Institutes of Manu_, Book I.,

sloka 37, where the Pitris are termed “progenitors of mankind”).

The Pitris are a distinct race of spirits belonging to the

mythological hierarchy or rather to the kabalistical nomenclature,

and must be included with the good genii, the dæmons of the Greeks,

or the inferior gods of the invisible world; and when a fakir

attributes his phenomena to the Pitris, he means only what the

ancient philosophers and theurgists meant when they maintained

that all the “miracles” were obtained through the intervention of

the gods, or the good and bad dæmons, who control the powers of

nature, the _elementals_, who are subordinate to the power of him

“who knows.” A ghost or human phantom would be termed by a fakir

_palīt_, or _chutnā_, as that of a female human spirit _pichhalpāi_,

not _pitris_. True, _pitara_ means (plural) fathers, ancestors; and

pitrā-i is a kinsman; but these words are used in quite a different

sense from that of the Pitris invoked in the mantras.

To maintain before a devout Brahman or a fakir that any one can

converse with the spirits of the dead, would be to shock him with

what would appear to him blasphemy. Does not the concluding verse of

the _Bagavat_ state that this supreme felicity is alone reserved to

the holy sannyâsis, the gurus, and yogis?

“Long before they finally rid themselves of their mortal envelopes,

the souls who have practiced only good, such as those of the

sannyâsis and the vanaprasthas, acquire the faculty of conversing

with the souls which preceded them to the swarga.”

In this case the Pitris instead of genii are the spirits, or rather

souls, of the departed ones. But they will freely communicate only

with those whose atmosphere is as pure as their own, and to whose

prayerful _kalassa_ (invocation) they can respond without the risk of

defiling their own celestial purity. When the soul of the invocator

has reached the _Sayadyam_, or perfect identity of essence with the

Universal Soul, when matter is utterly conquered, then the adept

can freely enter into daily and hourly communion with those who,

though unburdened with their corporeal forms, are still themselves

progressing through the endless series of transformations included in

the gradual approach to the Paramâtma, or the grand Universal Soul.

Bearing in mind that the Christian fathers have always claimed for

themselves and their saints the name of “friends of God,” and knowing

that they borrowed this expression, with many others, from the

technology of the Pagan temples, it is but natural to expect them

to show an evil temper whenever alluding to these rites. Ignorant,

as a rule, and having had biographers as ignorant as themselves, we

could not well expect them to find in the accounts of their beatific

visions a descriptive beauty such as we find in the Pagan classics.

Whether the visions and objective phenomena claimed by both the

fathers of the desert and the hierophants of the sanctuary are to

be discredited, or accepted as facts, the splendid imagery employed

by Proclus and Apuleius in narrating the small portion of the final

initiation that they dared reveal, throws completely into the shade

the plagiaristic tales of the Christian ascetics, faithful _copies_

though they were intended to be. The story of the temptation of St.

Anthony in the desert by the female demon, is a parody upon the

preliminary trials of the neophyte during the _Mikra_, or minor

Mysteries of Agræ--those rites at the thought of which Clemens railed

so bitterly, and which represented the bereaved Demeter in search of

her child, and her good-natured hostess Baubo.[164]

Without entering again into a demonstration that in Christian, and

especially Irish Roman Catholic, churches[165] the same apparently

indecent customs as the above prevailed until the end of the last

century, we will recur to the untiring labors of that honest and

brave defender of the ancient faith, Thomas Taylor, and his works.

However much dogmatic Greek scholarship may have found to say

against his “mistranslations,” his memory must be dear to every

true Platonist, who seeks rather to learn the inner thought of the

great philosopher than enjoy the mere external mechanism of his

writings. Better classical translators may have rendered us, in more

correct phraseology, Plato’s _words_, but Taylor shows us Plato’s

_meaning_, and this is more than can be said of Zeller, Jowett, and

their predecessors. Yet, as writes Professor A. Wilder, “Taylor’s

works have met with favor at the hands of men capable of profound

and recondite thinking; and it must be conceded that he was endowed

with a superior qualification--that of an intuitive perception of the

interior meaning of the subjects which he considered. Others may have

known more Greek, but he knew more Plato.”[166]

Taylor devoted his whole useful life to the search after such

old manuscripts as would enable him to have his own speculations

concerning several obscure rites in the Mysteries corroborated by

writers who had been initiated themselves. It is with full confidence

in the assertions of various classical writers that we say that

ridiculous, perhaps licentious in some cases, as may appear ancient

worship to the modern critic, it ought not to have so appeared to the

Christians. During the mediæval ages, and even later, they accepted

pretty nearly the same without understanding the secret import of

its rites, and quite satisfied with the obscure and rather fantastic

interpretations of their clergy, who accepted the exterior form

and distorted the inner meaning. We are ready to concede, in full

justice, that centuries have passed since the great majority of the

Christian clergy, who _are not allowed to pry into God’s mysteries

nor seek to explain_ that which the Church has once accepted and

established, have had the remotest idea of their symbolism, whether

in its exoteric or esoteric meaning. Not so with the head of the

Church and its highest dignitaries. And if we fully agree with

Inman that it is “difficult to believe that the ecclesiastics who

sanctioned the publication of such prints[167] could have been as

ignorant as modern ritualists,” we are not at all prepared to believe

with the same author “that the latter, if they knew the real meaning

of the symbols commonly used by the Roman Church, would _not_ have

adopted them.”

To eliminate what is plainly derived from the sex and nature worship

of the ancient heathens, would be equivalent to pulling down the

whole Roman Catholic image-worship--the _Madonna_ element--and

reforming the faith to Protestantism. The enforcement of the late

dogma of the Immaculation was prompted by this very secret reason.

The science of symbology was making too rapid progress. Blind

faith in the Pope’s infallibility and in the immaculate nature

of the Virgin and _of her ancestral female lineage to a certain

remove_ could alone save the Church from the indiscreet revelations

of science. It was a clever stroke of policy on the part of the

vicegerent of God. What matters it if, by “conferring upon her such

an honor,” as Don Pascale de Franciscis naïvely expresses it, he has

made a goddess of the Virgin Mary, an Olympian Deity, who, having

been by her very nature placed in the impossibility of sinning,

can claim no virtue, no personal merit for her purity, precisely

for which, as we were taught to believe in our younger days, she

was chosen among all other women. If his Holiness has deprived her

of this, perhaps, on the other hand, he thinks that he has endowed

her with at least one physical attribute not shared by the other

virgin-goddesses. But even this new dogma, which, in company with the

new claim to _infallibility_, has quasi-revolutionized the Christian

world, is not original with the Church of Rome. It is but a return to

a hardly-remembered _heresy_ of the early Christian ages, that of the

Collyridians, so called from their _sacrificing cakes_ to the Virgin,

whom they claimed to _be Virgin-born_.[168] The new sentence, “O,

Virgin Mary, _conceived without sin_,” is simply a tardy acceptance

of that which was at first deemed a “_blasphemous heresie_” by the

orthodox fathers.

To think for one moment that any of the popes, cardinals, or other

high dignitaries “were not aware” from the first to the last of the

external meanings of their symbols, is to do injustice to their

great learning and their spirit of Machiavellism. It is to forget

that the emissaries of Rome will never be stopped by any difficulty

which can be skirted by the employment of Jesuitical artifice.

The policy of complaisant conformity was never carried to greater

lengths than by the missionaries in Ceylon, who, according to the

Abbé Dubois--certainly a learned and competent authority--“conducted

the images of the Virgin and Saviour on triumphal cars, imitated

from the orgies of Juggernauth, and introduced the dancers from the

Brahminical rites into the ceremonial of the church.”[169] Let us at

least thank these black-frocked politicians for their consistency in

employing the car of Juggernauth, upon which the “wicked heathen”

convey the _lingham_ of Siva. To have used _this_ car to carry in its

turn the Romish representative of the female principle in nature,

is to show discrimination and a thorough knowledge of the oldest

mythological conceptions. They have blended the two deities, and thus

represented, in a Christian procession, the “heathen” Brahma, or Nara

(the father), Nari (the mother), and Viradj (the son).

Says Manu: “The Sovereign Master who exists through himself, divides

his body into two halves, male and female, and from the union of

these two principles is born Viradj, the Son.”[170]

There was not a Christian Father who could have been ignorant of

these symbols in their physical meaning; for it is in this latter

aspect that they were abandoned to the ignorant rabble. Moreover,

they all had as good reasons to suspect the occult symbolism

contained in these images; although as none of them--Paul excepted,

perhaps--had been initiated they could know nothing whatever about

the nature of the final rites. Any person revealing these mysteries

was put to death, regardless of sex, nationality, or creed. A

Christian father would no more be proof against _an accident_ than a

Pagan _Mysta_ or the Μύστης.

If during the _Aporreta_ or preliminary arcanes, there were some

practices which might have shocked the pudicity of a Christian

convert--though we doubt the sincerity of such statements--their

mystical symbolism was all sufficient to relieve the performance

of any charge of licentiousness. Even the episode of the Matron

Baubo--whose rather eccentric method of consolation was immortalized

in the minor Mysteries--is explained by impartial mystagogues quite

naturally. Ceres-Demeter and her earthly wanderings in search of

her daughter are the euhemerized descriptions of one of the most

metaphysico-psychological subjects ever treated of by human mind.

It is a mask for the transcendent narrative of the initiated seers;

the celestial vision of the freed soul of the initiate of the last

hour describing the process by which the soul that has not yet been

incarnated descends for the first time into matter, “Blessed is he

who hath seen those _common concerns_ of the underworld; he knows

both the end of life and its divine origin from Jupiter,” says

Pindar. Taylor shows, on the authority of more than one initiate,

that the “dramatic performances of the Lesser Mysteries were

designed by their founders, to signify _occultly_ the condition of

the unpurified soul invested with an earthly body, and enveloped

in a material and physical nature ... that the soul, indeed, till

purified by philosophy, suffers death through its union with the

body.”

The body is the sepulchre, the prison of the soul, and many Christian

Fathers held with Plato that the soul is _punished_ through its union

with the body. Such is the fundamental doctrine of the Buddhists and

of many Brahmanists too. When Plotinus remarks that “when the soul

has descended into generation (from its _half_-divine condition)

she partakes of evil, and is carried a great way into a state the

opposite of her first purity and integrity, to be entirely merged

in which is nothing more than to fall into dark mire;”[171] he only

repeats the teachings of Gautama-Buddha. If we have to believe the

ancient initiates at all, we must accept their interpretation of the

symbols. And if, moreover, we find them perfectly coinciding with

the teachings of the greatest philosophers and that which we know

symbolizes the same meaning in the modern Mysteries in the East, we

must believe them to be right.

If Demeter was considered the intellectual soul, or rather the

_Astral_ soul, half emanation from the spirit and half tainted with

matter through a succession of spiritual evolutions--we may readily

understand what is meant by the Matron Baubo, the Enchantress, who

before she succeeds in reconciling the soul--Demeter, to its new

position, finds herself obliged to assume the sexual forms of an

infant. Baubo is _matter_, the physical body; and the intellectual,

as yet pure astral soul can be ensnared into its new terrestrial

prison but by the display of innocent babyhood. Until then, doomed to

her fate, Demeter, or _Magna-mater_, the Soul, wonders and hesitates

and suffers; but once having partaken of the magic potion prepared

by Baubo, she forgets her sorrows; for a certain time she parts with

that consciousness of higher intellect that she was possessed of

before entering the body of a child. Thenceforth she must seek to

rejoin it again; and when the age of reason arrives for the child,

the struggle--forgotten for a few years of infancy--begins again. The

astral soul is placed between matter (body) and the highest intellect

(its immortal spirit or _nous_). Which of those two will conquer? The

result of the battle of life lies between the triad. It is a question

of a few years of physical enjoyment on earth and--if it has begotten

abuse--of the dissolution of the earthly body being followed by death

of the astral body, which thus is prevented from being united with

the highest spirit of the triad, which alone confers on us individual

immortality; or, on the other hand, of becoming immortal mystæ;

initiated before death of the body into the divine truths of the

after life. Demi-gods below, and GODS above.

Such was the chief object of the Mysteries represented as diabolical

by theology, and ridiculed by modern symbologists. To disbelieve that

there exist in man certain arcane powers, which, by psychological

study he can develop in himself to the highest degree, become an

hierophant and then impart to others under the same conditions of

earthly discipline, is to cast an imputation of falsehood and lunacy

upon a number of the best, purest, and most learned men of antiquity

and of the middle ages. What the hierophant was allowed to see at the

last hour is hardly hinted at by them. And yet Pythagoras, Plato,

Plotinus, Iamblichus, Proclus, and many others knew and affirmed

their reality.

Whether in the “inner temple,” or through the study of theurgy

carried on privately, or by the sole exertion of a whole life of

spiritual labor, they all obtained the practical proof of such divine

possibilities for man fighting his battle with life on earth to win a

life in the eternity. What the last _epopteia_ was is alluded to by

Plato in _Phædrus_ (64); “... being initiated in those _Mysteries_,

which it is lawful to call the most blessed of all mysteries ... we

were freed from the molestations of evils which otherwise await us

in a future period of time. Likewise, in consequence of this divine

_initiation_, we became _spectators_ of entire, simple, immovable,

and _blessed visions_, resident in a pure light.” This sentence shows

that they saw _visions_, gods, spirits. As Taylor correctly observes,

from all such passages in the works of the initiates it may be

inferred, “that the most sublime part of the _epopteia_ ... consisted

in beholding the gods themselves invested with a resplendent light,”

or highest planetary spirits. The statement of Proclus upon this

subject is unequivocal: “In all the initiations and mysteries, the

gods exhibit many forms of themselves, and appear in _a variety of

shapes_, and sometimes, indeed, a formless light of themselves is

held forth to the view; sometimes this light is according _to a human

form_, and sometimes it proceeds into a different shape.”[172]

“Whatever is _on earth is the resemblance and_ SHADOW _of something

that is in the sphere_, while that resplendent thing (the prototype

of the soul-spirit) remaineth in _unchangeable_ condition, it is well

also with its shadow. But when the _resplendent one_ removeth far

from its shadow life removeth from the latter to a distance. And yet,

that very light is the shadow of something still more resplendent

than itself.” Thus speaks _Desatir_, the Persian _Book of Shet_,[173]

thereby showing its identity of esoteric doctrines with those of the

Greek philosophers.

The second statement of Plato confirms our belief that the Mysteries

of the ancients were identical with the Initiations, as practiced

now among the Buddhists and the Hindu adepts. The highest visions,

the most _truthful_, are produced, not through _natural_ ecstatics

or “mediums,” as it is sometimes erroneously asserted, but through

a regular discipline of gradual initiations and development of

psychical powers. The Mystæ were brought into close union with

those whom Proclus calls “mystical natures,” “resplendent gods,”

because, as Plato says, “we were ourselves pure and immaculate, being

liberated from this _surrounding vestment_, which we denominate body,

and to which we are now bound like an oyster to its shell.”[174]

So the doctrine of planetary and terrestrial Pitris was revealed

_entirely_ in ancient India, as well as now, only at the last moment

of initiation, and to the adepts of superior degrees. Many are the

fakirs, who, though pure, and honest, and self-devoted, have yet

never seen the astral form of a purely _human pitar_ (an ancestor or

father), otherwise than at the solemn moment of their first and last

initiation. It is in the presence of his instructor, the guru, and

just before the _vatou_-fakir is dispatched into the world of the

living, with his seven-knotted bamboo wand for all protection, that

he is suddenly placed face to face with the unknown PRESENCE. He sees

it, and falls prostrate at the feet of the evanescent form, but is

not entrusted with the great secret of its evocation; for it is the

supreme mystery of the holy syllable. The AUM contains the evocation

of the Vedic triad, the _Trimurti_ Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, say the

Orientalists;[175] it contains the evocation of _something more real

and objective than this triune abstraction_--we say, respectfully

contradicting the eminent scientists. It is the trinity of man

himself, on his way to become immortal through the solemn union of

his inner triune SELF--the exterior, gross body, the husk not even

being taken in consideration in this human trinity.[176] It is,

when this trinity, in anticipation of the final triumphant reunion

beyond the gates of corporeal death became for a few seconds a UNITY,

that the candidate is allowed, at the moment of the initiation, to

behold his future self. Thus we read in the Persian _Desatir_, of

the “Resplendent one;” in the Greek philosopher-initiates, of the

Augoeides--the self-shining “blessed vision resident in the pure

light;” in Porphyry, that Plotinus was united to his “god” six times

during his lifetime; and so on.

“In ancient India, the mystery of the triad, known but to the

initiates, could not, under the penalty of death, be revealed to the

vulgar,” says Vrihaspati.

Neither could it in the ancient Grecian and Samothracian Mysteries.

_Nor can it be now._ It is in the hands of the adepts, and must

remain a mystery to the world so long as the materialistic savant

regards it as an undemonstrated fallacy, an insane hallucination, and

the dogmatic theologian, a snare of the Evil One.

_Subjective_ communication with the human, god-like spirits of those

who have preceded us to the silent land of bliss, is in India divided

into three categories. Under the spiritual training of a guru or

sannyâsi, the vatou (disciple or neophyte) begins _to feel_ them.

Were he not under the immediate guidance of an adept, he would be

controlled by the invisibles, and utterly at their mercy, for among

these subjective influences he is unable to discern the good from the

bad. Happy the sensitive who is sure of the purity of his spiritual

atmosphere!

To this subjective consciousness, which is the _first_ degree, is,

after a time, added that of clairaudience. This is the _second_

degree or stage of development. The sensitive--when not naturally

made so by psychological training--now audibly hears, but is still

unable to discern; and is incapable of verifying his impressions, and

one who is unprotected the tricky powers of the air but too often

delude with semblances of voices and speech. But the guru’s influence

is there; it is the most powerful shield against the intrusion of the

_bhutná_ into the atmosphere of the vatou, consecrated to the pure,

human, and celestial Pitris.

The _third_ degree is that when the fakir or any other candidate

both feels, hears, and sees; and when he can at will produce the

_reflections_ of the Pitris on the mirror of astral light. All

depends upon his psychological and mesmeric powers, which are always

proportionate to the intensity of his _will_. But the fakir will

never control the Akasa, the spiritual life-principle, the omnipotent

agent of every phenomenon, in the same degree as an adept of the

third and highest initiation. And the phenomena produced by the

will of the latter do not generally run the market-places for the

satisfaction of open-mouthed investigators.

The unity of God, the immortality of the spirit, belief in salvation

only through our works, merit and demerit; such are the principal

articles of faith of the Wisdom-religion, and the ground work of

Vedaism, Buddhism, Parsism, and such we find to have been even that

of the ancient Osirism, when we, after abandoning the popular sun-god

to the materialism of the rabble, confine our attention to the _Books

of Hermes_, the thrice-great.

“The THOUGHT concealed as yet the world in silence and darkness....

Then the Lord who exists through Himself, and _who is not to be

divulged to the external senses of man_; dissipated darkness, and

manifested the perceptible world.”

“He that can be perceived only by the spirit, that escapes the

organs of sense, who is without visible parts, eternal, the soul of

all beings, that none can comprehend, displayed His own splendor”

(_Manu_, book i., slokas, 6-7).

Such is the ideal of the Supreme in the mind of every Hindu

philosopher.

“Of all the duties, the principal one is to acquire the knowledge of

the supreme soul (the spirit); it is the first of all sciences, _for

it alone confers on man immortality_” (_Manu_, book xii., sloka 85).

And our scientists talk of the Nirvana of Buddha and the Moksha of

Brahma as of a complete annihilation! It is thus that the following

verse is interpreted by some materialists.

“The man who recognizes the _Supreme Soul_, in his own soul, as well

as in that of all creatures, and who is equally just to all (whether

man or animals) obtains the happiest of all fates, that to be finally

_absorbed_ in the bosom of Brahma” (_Manu_, book xii., sloka 125).

The doctrine of the Moksha and the Nirvana, as understood by the

school of Max Müller, can never bear confronting with numerous

texts that can be found, if required, as a final refutation. There

are sculptures in many pagodas which contradict, point-blank, the

imputation. Ask a Brahman to explain Moksha, address yourself to

an educated Buddhist and pray him to define for you the meaning of

Nirvana. Both will answer you that in every one of these religions

Nirvana represents the dogma of the spirit’s immortality. That,

to reach the Nirvana means absorption into the great universal

soul, the latter representing a _state_, not an individual being

or an anthropomorphic god, as some understand the great EXISTENCE.

That a spirit reaching such a state becomes a _part_ of the

integral _whole_, but never loses its individuality for all that.

Henceforth, the spirit lives spiritually, without any fear of further

modifications of form; for form pertains to matter, and the state of

_Nirvana_ implies a complete purification or a final riddance from

even the most sublimated particle of matter.

This word, _absorbed_, when it is proved that the Hindus and

Buddhists believe in the _immortality_ of the spirit, must

necessarily mean intimate union, not annihilation. Let Christians

call them idolaters, if they still dare do so, in the face of science

and the latest translations of the sacred Sanscrit books; they have

no right to present the speculative philosophy of ancient sages as

an inconsistency and the philosophers themselves as illogical fools.

With far better reason we can accuse the ancient Jews of utter

_nihilism_. There is not a word contained in the Books of Moses--or

the prophets either--which, taken literally, implies the spirit’s

immortality. Yet every devout Jew hopes as well to be “gathered into

the bosom of A-Braham.”

The hierophants and some Brahmans are accused of having administered

to their epoptai strong drinks or anæsthetics to produce visions

which shall be taken by the latter as realities. They did and do use

sacred beverages which, like the Soma-drink, possess the faculty

of freeing the astral form from the bonds of matter; but in those

visions there is as little to be attributed to hallucination as

in the glimpses which the scientist, by the help of his optical

instrument, gets into the microscopic world. A man cannot perceive,

touch, and converse with pure spirit through any of his bodily

senses. Only spirit alone can talk to and see spirit; and even our

astral soul, the _Doppelganger_, is too gross, too much tainted

yet with earthly matter to trust entirely to its perceptions and

insinuations.

How dangerous may often become _untrained_ mediumship, and how

thoroughly it was understood and provided against by the ancient

sages, is perfectly exemplified in the case of Socrates. The old

Grecian philosopher was a “medium;” hence, he had never been

initiated into the Mysteries; for such was the rigorous law. But he

had his “familiar spirit” as they call it, his _daimonion_; and this

invisible counsellor became the cause of his death. It is generally

believed that if he was not initiated into the Mysteries it was

because he himself neglected to become so. But the _Secret Records_

teach us that it was because he could not be admitted to participate

in the sacred rites, and precisely, as we state, on account of his

mediumship. There was a law against the admission not only of such

as were convicted of deliberate _witchcraft_[177] but even of those

who were known to have “a familiar spirit.” The law was just and

logical, because a genuine medium is more or less irresponsible;

and the eccentricities of Socrates are thus accounted for in some

degree. A medium must be _passive_; and if a firm believer in his

“spirit-guide” he will allow himself to be ruled by the latter,

not by the rules of the sanctuary. A _medium_ of olden times, like

the modern “medium” was subject to be _entranced_ at the will and

pleasure of the “power” which _controlled_ him; therefore, he could

not well have been entrusted with the awful secrets of the final

initiation, “never to be revealed under the penalty of death.” The

old sage, in unguarded moments of “spiritual inspiration,” revealed

that which he had never learned; and was therefore put to death as an

atheist.

How then, with such an instance as that of Socrates, in relation

to the visions and spiritual wonders at the epoptai, of the Inner

Temple, can any one assert that these seers, theurgists, and

thaumaturgists were all “spirit-mediums?” Neither Pythagoras,

Plato, nor any of the later more important Neo-platonists; neither

Iamblichus, Longinus, Proclus, nor Apollonius of Tyana, were ever

mediums; for in such case they would not have been admitted to

the Mysteries at all. As Taylor proves--“This assertion of divine

visions in the Mysteries is clearly confirmed by Plotinus. And in

short, that magical evocation formed a part of the sacerdotal office

in them, and that this was universally believed by all antiquity

long before the era of the later Platonists,” shows that apart from

natural “mediumship,” there has existed, from the beginning of time,

a mysterious science, discussed by many, but known only to a few.

The use of it is a longing toward our only true and real home--the

after-life, and a desire to cling more closely to our parent spirit;

abuse of it is sorcery, witchcraft, _black_ magic. Between the two is

placed natural “mediumship;” a soul clothed with imperfect matter, a

ready agent for either the one or the other, and utterly dependent

on its surroundings of life, constitutional heredity--physical as

well as mental--and on the nature of the “spirits” it attracts around

itself. A blessing or a curse, as fate will have it, unless the

medium is purified of earthly dross.

The reason why in every age so little has been generally known of

the mysteries of initiation, is twofold. The first has already been

explained by more than one author, and lies in the terrible penalty

following the least indiscretion. The second, is the superhuman

difficulties and even dangers which the daring candidate of old

had to encounter, and either conquer, or die in the attempt, when,

what is still worse, he did not lose his reason. There was no real

danger to him whose mind had become thoroughly spiritualized, and

so prepared for every terrific sight. He who fully recognized the

power of his immortal spirit, and never doubted for one moment its

omnipotent protection, had naught to fear. But woe to the candidate

in whom the slightest physical fear--sickly child of matter--made

him lose sight and faith in his own invulnerability. He who was not

wholly confident of his moral fitness to accept the burden of these

tremendous secrets was doomed.

The _Talmud_ gives the story of the four Tanaïm, who are made, in

allegorical terms, to enter into _the garden of delights_; _i.e._, to

be initiated into the occult and final science.

“According to the teaching of our holy masters the names of the four

who entered the garden of delight, are: Ben Asai, Ben Zoma, Acher,

and Rabbi Akiba....

“Ben Asai looked and--lost his sight.

“Ben Zoma looked and--lost his reason.

“Acher made depredations in the plantation” (mixed up the whole and

failed). “But Akiba, who had entered in peace, came out of it in

peace, for the saint whose name be blessed had said, ‘This old man is

worthy of serving us with glory.’”

“The learned commentators of the _Talmud_, the Rabbis of the

synagogue, explain that the _garden of delight_, in which those

four personages are made to enter, is but that mysterious science,

the most terrible of sciences _for weak intellects, which it leads

directly to insanity_,” says A. Franck, in his _Kabbala_. It is not

the pure at heart and he who studies but with a view to perfecting

himself and so more easily acquiring the promised immortality,

who need have any fear; but rather he who makes of the science of

sciences a sinful pretext for worldly motives, who should tremble.

_The latter will never withstand the kabalistic evocations of the

supreme initiation._

The licentious performances of the thousand and one early Christian

sects, may be criticised by partial commentators as well as the

ancient Eleusinian and other rites. But why should they incur the

blame of the theologians, the Christians, when their own “Mysteries”

of “the divine incarnation with Joseph, Mary, and the angel” in

a sacred _trilogue_ used to be enacted in more than one country,

and were famous at one time in Spain and Southern France? Later,

they fell like many other once secret rites into the hands of the

populace. It is but a few years since, during every Christmas week,

Punch-and-Judy-boxes, containing the above named personages, an

additional display of the infant Jesus in his manger, were carried

about the country in Poland and Southern Russia. They were called

_Kaliadovki_, a word the correct etymology of which we are unable

to give unless it is from the verb _Kaliadovât_, a word that we as

willingly abandon to learned philologists. We have seen this show in

our days of childhood. We remember the three king-Magi represented

by three dolls in powdered wigs and colored tights; and it is from

recollecting the simple, profound veneration depicted on the faces

of the pious audience, that we can the more readily appreciate the

honest and just remark by the editor, in the introduction to the

_Eleusinian Mysteries_, who says: “It is ignorance which leads to

profanation. Men ridicule what they do not properly understand....

The undercurrent of this world is set toward one goal; and inside of

human credulity--call it human weakness, if you please--is a power

almost infinite, a holy faith capable of apprehending the supremest

truths of all existence.”

If that abstract sentiment called _Christian charity_ prevailed in

the Church, we would be well content to leave all this unsaid. We

have no quarrel with Christians whose faith is sincere and whose

practice coincides with their profession. But with an arrogant,

dogmatic, and dishonest clergy, we have nothing to do except to see

the ancient philosophy--antagonized by modern theology in its puny

offspring--Spiritualism--defended and righted so far as we are able,

so that its grandeur and sufficiency may be thoroughly displayed. It

is not alone for the esoteric philosophy that we fight; nor for any

modern system of moral philosophy, but for the inalienable right of

private judgment, and especially for the ennobling idea of a future

life of activity and accountability.

We eagerly applaud such commentators as Godfrey Higgins, Inman, Payne

Knight, King, Dunlap, and Dr. Newton, however much they disagree

with our own mystical views, for their diligence is constantly being

rewarded by fresh discoveries of the Pagan paternity of Christian

symbols. But otherwise, all these learned works are useless. Their

researches only cover half the ground. Lacking the true key of

interpretation they see the symbols only in a physical aspect. They

have no password to cause the gates of mystery to swing open; and

ancient spiritual philosophy is to them a closed book. Diametrically

opposed though they be to the clergy in their ideas respecting it, in

the way of interpretation they do little more than their opponents

for a questioning public. Their labors tend to strengthen materialism

as those of the clergy, especially the Romish clergy, do to cultivate

belief in diabolism.

If the study of Hermetic philosophy held out no other hope of reward,

it would be more than enough to know that by it we may learn with

what perfection of justice the world is governed. A sermon upon this

text is preached by every page of history. Among all there is not

one that conveys a deeper moral than the case of the Roman Church.

The divine law of compensation was never more strikingly exemplified

than in the fact that by her own act she has deprived herself of

the only possible key to her own religious mysteries. The assumption

of Godfrey Higgins that there are two doctrines maintained in the

Roman Church, one for the masses and the other--the esoteric--for the

“perfect,” or the initiates, as in the ancient Mysteries, appears

to us unwarranted and rather fantastic. They have lost the key, we

repeat; otherwise no terrestrial power could have prostrated her, and

except a superficial knowledge of the means of producing “miracles,”

her clergy can in no way be compared in their wisdom with the

hierophants of old.

In burning the works of the theurgists; in proscribing those who

affect their study; in affixing the stigma of demonolatry to magic

in general, Rome has left her exoteric worship and _Bible_ to be

helplessly riddled by every free-thinker, her sexual emblems to be

identified with coarseness, and her priests to unwittingly turn

magicians and even sorcerers in their exorcisms, which are but

necromantic evocations. Thus retribution, by the exquisite adjustment

of divine law, is made to overtake this scheme of cruelty, injustice,

and bigotry, through her own suicidal acts.

True philosophy and divine truth are convertible terms. A religion

which dreads the light cannot be a religion based on either truth

or philosophy--hence, it must be false. The ancient Mysteries were

mysteries to the profane only, whom the hierophant never sought nor

would accept as proselytes; to the initiates the Mysteries became

explained as soon as the final veil was withdrawn. No mind like

that of Pythagoras or Plato would have contented itself with an

unfathomable and incomprehensible mystery, like that of the Christian

dogma. There can be but one truth, for two small truths on the same

subject can but constitute one great error. Among thousands of

exoteric or popular conflicting religions which have been propagated

since the days when the first men were enabled to interchange their

ideas, not a nation, not a people, nor the most abject tribe, but

after their own fashion has believed in an Unseen God, the First

Cause of unerring and immutable laws, and in the immortality of our

spirit. No creed, no false philosophy, no religious exaggerations,

could ever destroy that feeling. It must, therefore, be based upon

an absolute truth. On the other hand, every one of the numberless

religions and religious sects views the Deity after its own fashion;

and, fathering on the unknown its own speculations, it enforces these

purely human outgrowths of overheated imagination on the ignorant

masses, and calls them “revelation.” As the dogmas of every religion

and sect often differ radically, they cannot be _true_. And if

untrue, what are they?

“The greatest curse to a nation,” remarks Dr. Inman, “is not _a bad

religion_, but a form of faith which prevents manly inquiry. I know

of no nation of old that was priest-ridden which did not fall under

the swords of those who did not care for hierarchs.... The greatest

danger is to be feared from those ecclesiastics who wink at vice,

and encourage it as a means whereby they can gain power over their

votaries. So long as every man does to other men as he would that

they should do to him, and _allows no one to interfere between him

and his Maker_, all will go well with the world.”[178]