The Eleusinian Mysteries were viewed as the efflorescence of all the Greek religion, as the purest essence of all its conceptions. The offering of bread and wine to the candidate by the Hierophant symbolised the spirit that was about to quicken matter: i.e., the divine wisdom of the Higher Self was to take possession of the candidate’s inner Self or Soul through what was to be revealed to him. The transformation of Cybele to Ceres-Demeter was the basis for the sacredness of bread and wine in ritualism. Cybele is the Moon-Goddess of the Athenians, Pallas or Minerva, invoked in her festivals as Monogenes Theou, the One Mother of God, and Virgin Queen of Heaven. Esoterically, Cybele is Kabeiros, a representative of the Phoenician Kingly Race. The Hierophant was always an old unmarried man. This and so many other features of the great archaic system, known as the Sacred Wisdom Science, have been appropriated by the Romish Church. One of the greatest mysteries is how the ever immaculate and yet ever prolific Divine Virgin who, fecundated by the fructifying rays of the Sun, becomes the Mother of all that lives and breathes on her vast bosom. Her very “Breath” is Akasha-tattva or Universal Essence, i.e., Vital Electricity — Life itself. The Mysteries are fragments of a grand pre-historic Philosophy, as old as the world itself. They are not only the foundation-stone of modern Philosophy, they also gave birth to hieroglyphics, as permanent records were needed to preserve and commemorate their secrets. The fact that the Sanskrit and Greek words for Initiation to the Greater Mysteries, Avapta and Epopteia, imply revelation not by human agent but by receiving the Sacred Drink, points out to the pre-Vedic origin of the Eleusinia. A cup of Kykeon, quaffed by the Mystes at the Eleusinian Initiation, forcibly connects the inner, highest “spirit” of man, which spirit is an angel like the mystical Soma, with his “irrational soul” or astral body, and thus united by the power of the magic drink, they soar together above physical nature and participate during life on earth in the beatitude and ineffable glories of Heaven. One well versed in the esoteric mythologies of various nations can trace the Mysteries back to the ante-Vedic period in India. Only those of the strictest virtue and purity were admitted. Those who consciously engaged in Black Magic or were responsible for homicide, whether accidental or not, and other evil acts were excluded. Every approach to the Mysteries was guarded with the same jealous care everywhere, and the penalty of death was inflicted upon Initiates of any degree who divulged secrets entrusted to them. Why Truth keeps hiding like a tortoise within her shell? Because Truth is too dangerous even for the highest Lanoo. No one can be entrusted with full knowledge of the Secret Science before his time. In Egypt the Mysteries had been known since the days of Menes. The Greeks received them much later when Orpheus introduced them from India. Thus, even in the days of Aristotle, few were the true Adepts left in Europe and even in Egypt. While darkness fell upon the face of the profane world, there was still eternal light in the Adyta on the nights of Initiation. Athenians, the real barbarians of Hellas, charged Æschylus with sacrilege and condemned him to be stoned to death because, they claimed, having been uninitiated, he had profaned the Mysteries by exposing them in his trilogies on a public stage. But he would have incurred the same condemnation, had he been initiated. Every truth revealed by Jesus, and which the Jews and early Christians understood, was concealed by a Church that has always pretended serving Him. To deprive the Greeks of their Sacred Mysteries, which bind in one the whole of mankind, was to render their very lives worthless to them. Blessed is he who has seen these things before he goes beneath the hollow earth; for he understands the end of mortal life, and the beginning of a new life. The Lesser grades of Eleusinia symbolised the descend of Persephone, Ceres-Demeter’s daughter, to earth and were preparatory to Greater Mysteries, when the daughter returns to her divine abode and is finally reunited with her mother. Similarly, Northern Buddhism has its “Greater” and its “Lesser” vehicle, the Mahayana or Esoteric, and the Hinayana or Exoteric School. The object of the Lesser Mysteries was to instruct the candidate about the condition of the unpurified soul invested with an earthly body, and enveloped in a material and physical nature that, until and unless purified by high philosophy and ethics, is destined to suffer pain and death through its attachment to embodied life. Selfishness is the prisoner of the divine soul. Physical body is the prison. And real hell is life here, on earth. The Book of Job is a complete representation of ancient Initiation, and the trials which generally precede this grandest of all ceremonies. Still, the cunning translators of the Hebrew Bible imply that Job’s “Champion,” “Deliverer,” and “Vindicator,” was Messiah. Nothing could be further from the truth. With the Hindus, the real Champion and Deliverer it Atman; with the Neo-Platonists, Nous Augoeides; with the Buddhists, Agra; with the Persians, Ferouer. The true Champion is the immortal spirit in every man. It alone can redeem our soul and save us from ourselves, if we follow its behests instead of squandering our divine inheritance by pandering to our lower nature. There were two classes of participants, the Neophytes and the Perfect. And two castes of Magi, the initiated and those who were allowed to officiate in the popular rites only. Neophytes first taught in upper temples were initiated in crypts. Oral instructions were given at low breath, in solemn silence and secrecy. Jesus and Paul classified their doctrines as esoteric and exoteric: The Mysteries of the Kingdom of God for the Apostles, the parables for the multitude. Aristides calls Mysteries the common temple of the earth. Epictetus says that all that is ordained therein was established by the Masters of Wisdom for the instruction of mortals and the correction of their customs. Plato asserts that the object of the Mysteries was to re-establish the soul in that state of perfection from which it had fallen. Baptism was one of the earliest Chaldeo-Akkadian rites of inner purification. Candidates were immersed thrice into water by Hydranos, the Baptist. At the Mysteries of the Anthesteria at limnai, i.e., the Feast of Flowers at the temple lakes, after the usual baptism by purification of water, the Mystai were made to pass through to the gate of Dionysus, that of the purified. After their Second Birth was accomplished, and the Mystai had returned from their baptism in the sea, the Tau or Egyptian cross was laid upon the breast. The Mysteries of the Jews were identical with those of Pagan Greeks, who took them from the Egyptians, who borrowed them from the Chaldaeans, who got them from the Aryans, who inherited them from the Atlanteans, and so on. But what Gods and Angels had revealed, exoteric religions, beginning with that of Moses, reviled, reveiled, and hid for ages from the sight of the world. The lure of lucre was the final nail in the coffin of the Eleusinia. An Athenian demagogue and sycophant, whose eloquence was described as of a coarse and vehement character, degraded the Sacred Mysteries by persuading the State to levy a charge for those seeking admission to higher life. Thus initiation had become a commodity — and as necessary as baptism has since become with the Christians. The first hour for the demise of the Mysteries struck on the clock of the Races with the Macedonian conqueror. The first strokes of its last hour sounded 47 BCE in the Thebes of the Celts. But the Mysteries of Eleusis could not be so easily disposed of. They were indeed the religion of mankind, and shone in all their ancient splendour if not in their primitive purity. It took several centuries to abolish them, and they could not be entirely suppressed before the year 396 of our era. The Eleusinian Mysteries were archaic Wisdom-Religion dressed in Greek garb. Prehistoric Greece was colonised by two great Indian races, the Solar and the Lunar dynasties. Springing up from the kingdoms of Cashmir and Tibet, the prehistoric colonists of Greece consisted of the two great primitive and radical races of Aryavarta, the Solar or ancient Budhistic dynasty (Surya Vansa), and the Lunar dynasty (Chandra Vansa). The former were the earliest settlers in Greece and their religious exponents appear to have been the Dodan, or Brahmanical priests of the great tribe, Doda. As history progressed, the original Lamaic system of religion has been so much modified and so far compromised, as to be compelled to seek refuge in the asyla of the Grecian Mysteries, instead of the state-position it once occupied. Inside Greece, Bacchus was a prosonym of Zagreus, the successor of the Lamaic sovereignty in whose service was Orpheus, the founder of the Mysteries. Outside Greece, Bacchus was the Tartarian Jupiter Hammon whose Lamaic worship accompanied the emigrants of Tartary to Egypt. In Budhistic belief, the young Lama is born again from the consort of the Jaina Pontiff, Semele or Su-Lamee, the Great Lama Queen. The Eleuth-Chiefs, who spread the Lamaic doctrines in the Attic territory, became Eleusine. Their forms of worship and Tartar ceremonials composed the staple of the celebrated Eleusinian Mysteries. The high-born Brahmans or Culini lived on the Peloponnesian Mount Cyllene. The Mysteries were communicated to Culyus-Celeus, ruler of the land of the Rarhya, by Demeter herself. Yet the Greeks besmirched their noble ancestry by belittling their Hierophants as troglodytes. Three Hierarchs represented Budhistical and Brahmanical power. Two orders of priests officiated over the initiations. The descendants of the High Budha Priest or Eumolpidai, and the Budhist Keerukos or Keryx, the sacred herald of the Greeks, the latter aided by the daughters of the late Eleusinian high-caste king Culyus or Celeus. Modern Greek authors who treat Eleusinian worship as mysteries, rather than the old national form of worship, name those admitted to the Lesser Mysteries as Mokshtai or Mystai, from the Budhist word Moksha. After taking an oath of secrecy to preserve the old religion of the country against the more attractive heresy of Homer and his popular gods, those admitted to the Greater Mysteries were styled avapta or epoptai. Iacchos (Bacchos), properly Yogin, who appeared on the sixth day of the Mysteries, is none other than Dio Nausho or Dionysos, son of the Jaina Pontiff (Jeyus), and the Great Lama Queen, Soo Lamee or Semele. Couros, a prosonym of Iacchos, is Gooros or Guru, a spiritual teacher. Hence, Demeter is styled by the Greeks Couro-trophos or Guru-nurse. Erectheus-Poseidon was worshipped jointly with Athene and is identified with Poseidon or Po-Sidhan, Prince of all Saints, Chief of Saidan, and Prince of Sidon. Saidan, Eracland, and Phœnicia, are in close proximity to Afghanistan; Sidan is repeated in the Phœnicia of Palestine. Poseidon was worshipped jointly with Adheene, the Virgin Queen of Heaven, modified by the Greeks as Athene. She is the Egyptian Neeti, corruptly written Neith. The mysterious name of Onge-Athene was also derived from AUM, the Triple Fire representing the highest Tetraktys.

Part 1. What is truth? Where is it to be searched for amid this multitude of warring sects? Each claims to be based upon divine revelation, and each to have the keys of the celestial gates. Society seems to have been ever balancing itself upon one leg, on an unseen tightrope stretched from our visible universe into the invisible one; uncertain whether the end hooked on faith in the latter might not suddenly break, and hurl it into final annihilation. Christian symbols have been pervaded by heathen phallicism. Neither Catholics nor Protestants have a right to talk of the “indecent forms” of heathen monuments so long as they ornament their own churches with the symbols of the Lingam and Yoni, and even write the laws of their God upon them. The torrents of human blood shed by the Vatican are unparalleled in the annals of Paganism. Christians were the first to make the existence of a fictitious devil a dogma of their Church. But what is the use of a Pope, if there is no devil? Paganism was converted wholesale and applied to Popery. The Romish Church has two far mightier enemies than the “heretics” and the “infidels” — Comparative Mythology and Philology. The voice of Truth is stronger than the voice of the mightiest thunder. When the Theurgists of the third Neo-platonic school, deprived of their ancient Mysteries, strove to blend the doctrines of Plato with those of Aristotle, and by combining the two philosophies added to their theosophy the primeval doctrines of the Oriental Kabbalah, then the Christians from rivals became persecutors. For once the metaphysical allegories of Plato were to be discussed in public, all the elaborate system of the Christian trinity would be unravelled and the divine prestige completely upset. Paganism was modified by Christianity, and vice versa. Either the Pagan worship and the Neo-platonic theurgy, with all ceremonial of magic, must be crushed out forever, or the Christians become Neo-Platonists. The original and pure forms of the most important ecclesiastical doctrines of Christianity are to be found only in the teachings of Plato. Part 2. Poor fools, hysterical women, and idiots were roasted alive, without mercy, for the crime of so-called “magic.” Yet magic and sorcery are rife among popes, bishops, and priests. In the latter part of the sixteenth century there was hardly a parish to be found in which the priests did not study magic and alchemy. Benedict IX, John XX, and Gregories VI and VII, are known magicians. The papal government realized much money by selling to the rich dispensations to secure them from the Inquisition. What room is there in a theology which exacts such holocausts as these to appease the bloody appetites of its priests? It has been admitted that the elimination of devil from theology would be fatal to the perpetuity of the Church. But this is only partially true. The Prince of Sin would be gone, but the sin itself would survive. If the devil were annihilated, the Articles of Faith and the Bible would remain. Vulgar magic in India is the work of the lowest clergy; in Rome, that of the highest Pontiffs. It is designed to hold the populace in a perpetual state of fear. The devil, asserts a Jesuit Father, is forced to submission before the holy minister of God — he dares not lie. Christianity being pure heathenism, and Catholicism with its fetish-worshipping, are far worse and more pernicious than Hinduism in its most idolatrous aspect. When the Roman Church is no longer able to deny that there have been fake relics, she resorts to sophistry, and replies that if false relics have wrought miracles it is “because of the good intentions of the believers, who thus obtained from God a reward of their good faith!” Pope fraternizing with Islam for his Church feels more sympathy for the Moslem than the schismatic. The identical evocations and incantations of the Pagan and Jewish Kabbalist are now repeated by the Christian exorcist, and the theurgy of Iamblichus is adopted word for word. The Latin Church despoiled Kabbalists and Theurgists of their magical rites and ceremonies, and hurled anathemas upon their devoted heads. 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. The sign is absolutely and magnificently kabbalistic: it represents the perpetual opposition and quaternary equilibrium of the elements. Paul and Peter compared and contrasted. By Simon Magus we must understand 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. The ceremonial dress of the Christian clergy is identical with that of the old Babylonians, Assyrians, Phœnicians, Egyptians, and other Pagans of the hoary antiquity. The nimbus and tonsure of the Catholic priest and monk are solar emblems. The “Black Virgins,” so highly reverenced in certain French cathedrals during the Middle Ages, were basalt figures of Isis. The Catholic bells were imported from Buddhist pagodas. Beads and rosaries were imported directly from the Buddhist Thibetans and Chinese. Donned in the despoiled garments of the victim, the Christian priest anathematizes the latter with rites and ceremonies learned from the Theurgists themselves. Underlying every ancient popular religion was the same Wisdom-doctrine, one and identical, professed and practiced by the initiates of every country, who alone were aware of its existence and importance. The Mysteries were instituted pure, and proposed the noblest ends by the worthiest means. The whispered secrets of initiation, when divulged, were punished with death. The final part of the mystic rites reveals the friendship and interior communion with God. The Lunar Pitris are our progenitors. They are identical with the Seven Elohim of the Hebrew Bible. They are not the ancestors of the present living men but those of the primitive races of mankind, the spirits of the early human races which preceded ours but which were physically, as well as spiritually, far superior to the modern pigmies. The Pitris must be included with the good genii, the daimons of the Greeks, or the inferior gods of the invisible world. The doctrine of the 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. The splendid imagery employed by Proclus and Apuleius in narrating the small portion of the final initiation, throws completely into the shade the plagiaristic tales of the Christian ascetics. AUM is the trinity of mortal man on his way to become immortal through the union of his outer self with his inner triune Self. When this trinity, in anticipation of the final triumphant reunion beyond the gates of corporeal death becomes a Unity, then the candidate is allowed, at the moment of initiation, to behold his future Self. Man cannot perceive, touch, and converse with pure spirit through any of his bodily senses. Only spirit alone can talk to and see spirit. Man’s highest duty (religion) is to acquire the knowledge of his universal self (paramatman) and then, by the annihilation of his worldly self (atman), to experience the infinity of happiness prevalent in Unconscious Immateriality. A deep longing toward our true and real home is legitimate; abuse of it is sorcery, witchcraft, black magic. He who fully recognizes the power of his immortal spirit, and never doubted for one moment its omnipotent protection, has naught to fear. 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. 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. As the dogmas of every religion and sect often differ radically, they cannot be true. And if untrue, what are they? Part 3. Gnostic Basilides was a philosopher devoted to the contemplation of divine things. On the other hand, the unintelligible dogmas, enforced by Irenæus, Tertullian, and others, are far more heretical than those they accused of apostasy. The Church of Rome was consistent in choosing as her titular founder the apostle who thrice denied his master at the moment of danger; and the only one, except Judas, who provoked Christ in such a way as to be addressed as the “Enemy.” When frightened at the accusation of the servant of the high priest, Peter thrice denied his master. Whosoever else might have built the Church of Rome it was not Peter. He invented a burning hell and threatened everyone with it; promised miracles, but worked none. The only thing absolutely necessary for man is Truth; and to that, and that alone, must our moral consciousness adapt itself. Zoro-Aster was the Nazar of Ishtar. There is another hypothesis possible, which is that Zoro-Ishtar was the high priest of the Chaldæan worship, a Magian hierophant. The Jewish Scriptures indicate two distinct religions: that of Bacchus-worship under the mask of Jehovah; and that of the Chaldæan initiates to whom belonged some of the Nazars, the Theurgists, and a few of the prophets. Nazarenes, a term nearly synonymous with Galileans, were a class of Chaldæan Theurgists that existed long ages before Christ. Jesus was a true reforming Nazarene. The Essenes were the converts of Buddhist missionaries who had overrun Egypt, Greece, and even Judæa at one time, since the reign of Ashoka. Jesus cannot strictly be called an Essene. Neither was he a Nazar, or Nazaria of the older sect. Jesus was inspired by the genius of Mercury. He preached the philosophy of Buddha-Shakyamuni. His motive was evidently like that of Gautama-Buddha: to benefit humanity at large by producing a religious reform which should give it a religion of pure ethics. The early plebeian Israelites were Canaanites and Phœnicians, with the same worship of the Phallic gods: Bacchus, Baal or Adon, Iacchos — Iao or Jehovah; but even among them there had always been a class of initiated adepts. Baptismal water, fire, and spirit, or Holy Ghost, have all their origin in India. If baptism is the sign of regeneration, and an ordinance instituted by Jesus, why do not Christians now baptize as Jesus did, with the Holy Ghost and with fire, instead of following the custom of the Nazarenes? From time immemorial the prophets of old had been thundering against the baptism of fire as practiced by their neighbours, which imparted the “spirit of prophecy,” or the Holy Ghost. The true, original Christianity, such as was preached by Jesus, is to be found only in the so-called Syrian heresies. Such also was the faith of Paul. The secret doctrines of the Magi, of the pre-Vedic Buddhists, of the hierophants of the Egyptian Thoth or Hermes, and of the adepts of whatever age and nationality, including the Chaldæan Kabbalists and the Jewish Nazars, were identical from the beginning. Zarathustra and his followers had been settled in India before they immigrated into Persia. The old gods, whether Zoroastrian or Vedic, are personifications of the occult powers of nature, the faithful servants of the adepts of secret wisdom. Buddhism is the doctrine of wisdom-religion, which by many ages antedates the metaphysical philosophy of Siddhartha Shakyamuni. By analogy and a close study of the hidden meaning of their rites and customs, we can now trace the kinship of the Pagan worshippers of Adonis, their neighbours, the Nazarenes, and the Pythagorean Essenes, the healing Therapeutai, the Ebionites, and other followers of the ancient theurgic Mysteries. The chiefs of the Essene communities were Kabbalists and Theurgists. The Essenes were Pythagoreans in all their doctrine and habits. Jesus expressed his thoughts in purely Pythagorean sentences. The descent to Hades signified the inevitable fate of each soul to be united for a time with a terrestrial body. This union, a dark prospect for the soul to find itself imprisoned within the bleak tenement of a body, was considered by all the ancient philosophers, and even by the modern Buddhists, as a punishment. In common with Pythagoras and other hierophant reformers, Jesus divided his teachings into exoteric and esoteric. He also divided his followers into “neophytes,” “brethren,” and the “perfect.” The civilized portion of the Pagans, who knew of Jesus and honoured him as a philosopher-adept, placed him on the same level with Pythagoras and Apollonius. If Jesus did wear his hair long, like Samson, parted in the middle of the forehead after the fashion of the Nazarenes, he must have belonged to the sect of the Nazarenes and been called Nazaria for this reason, and not because he was an inhabitant of Nazareth. The full significance of Christos and its mystic meaning revealed. Christos suffered spiritually for us, and far more acutely than did the illusionary Jesus while his body was being tortured on the cross. Hence, the meaning of the Gnostics who, by saying that “Christos” suffered spiritually for humanity, implied that his Divine Spirit suffered mostly. It was Ephesus, with her numerous collateral branches of the great college of the Essenes, which proved to be the hotbed of all the kabbalistic speculations brought by the Tannaïm from the captivity. Tertullian and Epiphanius vehemently reproach Marcion by erasing passages from the Gospel of Luke, which never were in Luke at all. What the Fathers fought for was not truth, but their own interpretations and unwarranted assertions. In the days of Marcion two factions divided the primitive Church: The one considering Christianity a mere continuation of the Law, and dwarfing it into an Israelitish institution, a narrow sect of Judaism; the other, representing the glad tidings as the introduction of a new system, applicable to all, and supplanting the Mosaic dispensation of the Law by a universal dispensation of grace. Marcion maintained that the mission of Jesus was to abrogate the Jewish “Lord,” who was opposed to the God and Father of Jesus Christ as matter is to spirit, and impurity to purity. In what particular does the jealous, wrathful, revengeful God of Israel resemble the unknown deity, the God of mercy preached by Jesus? The “Father who is in secret” alone is the God of spirit and purity. It is only through the doctrines of Pythagoras, Confucius, and Plato, that we can comprehend the idea which underlies the term “Father” in the New Testament. To compare Him with the subordinate and capricious Sinaitic Deity is an error. The divine injunctions of Matthew, the living up to which would purify and exalt humanity, are identical with the Ordinances of Manu. The Hindus taught to return good for evil, but the Jehovistic command was “an eye for an eye” and “a tooth for a tooth.” Jehovah and Bacchus are one the same. Would Christians still maintain the identity of the “Father” of Jesus and Jehovah, if evidence sufficiently clear could be adduced that the “Lord God” was no other than the Pagan Bacchus, Dionysos? Part 4. Ageless Wisdom is the only religion of reason and free thought, of truth and impartiality, not authority. The sorely-abused communities compared with the Christian sects, and the Secret Science, its students and champions defended against unjust imputation. We will begin with a quick glance at the Ophites and Nazareans, their scions in Syria and Palestine that still exist today under the name of Druzes of Mount Lebanon, and near Basra under that of Mandæans or Disciples of St. John. And we will conclude with a brief survey of the Jesuits, and of that venerable nightmare of the Roman Catholic Church, modern Freemasonry. The work of Buddhistic proselytism began in Nepal. Not only did they make their way to the Mesopotamian Valley, but they even went so far west as Ireland. The encircled cross came from the far East with the Phœnician colonists, who erected the Round Towers as symbols of the life-giving and preserving power of man and nature, and of universal life that is produced through suffering and death. For Ireland, like every other nation, once listened to the proponents of Siddhartha-Buddha. The scheme of the Ophites varies from the description given by the Fathers, inasmuch as it makes Bythos or depth a female emanation, and assigns her a place answering to that of Pleroma, only in a far superior region; whereas, the Fathers assure us that the Gnostics gave the name of Bythos to the First Cause. The Ophite Serpent, emblem of wisdom and eternity, is androgyne manifesting itself as the double Principle of Good and Evil. The Serpent, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Tree of Life, are all symbols transplanted from the soil of India. The Nazarene and Gnostic-Ophite Cosmogonies are one and the same. Neither King David nor Solomon recognized either Moses or the law of Moses. IAO is a title of the Supreme Being and belongs partially to the Ineffable Name; but it neither originated with, nor was it the sole property, of the Jews. The First Cause is manifesting itself in its creatures as a hermaphrodite deity: the male principle is the vivifying invisible spirit; the female, mother nature. The two are the Alpha and Omega, moved by the Hierarchy of Compassion, making IAO the trilateral name of the mystery-God, a breath of life. But Yaho IAO, the supreme deity of the Semites, is not the Lord God of other nations. The numerals of Pythagoras are hieroglyphical symbols, by means whereof he explained ideas concerning the nature of things. The first is I, and the final O-mega. It is only by associating Yaho with the Masoretic points that the later Rabbins succeeded in making Jehovah read Adonai, or “Lord.” The future Deity of the sons of Israel calls out from the burning bush, gives His name as “I am that I am,” and specifies carefully that He is the “Lord God of the Hebrews,” not of the other nations. The scapegoat of Israel was a sacrificial martyr, symbol of the greatest mystery in heaven and on earth, the “fall” into generation. Eusebius, Irenæus, Theophilus, Cyril, Athanasius, and a host of other canonized “saints,” were followed by an army of pious assassins who had improved upon the system of deceit by proclaiming that it was lawful even to kill, when by murder they could enforce the new religion. Constantine, the Emperor of Darkness, drowned his wife in boiling water, butchered his little nephew, murdered with his own pious hand two of his brothers-in-law, killed his own son Crispus, bled to death several men and women, and smothered in a well an old monk. What a record! How determined Irenæus was to crush Truth and build up a Church of his own on the mangled remains of the seven primitive churches mentioned in the Revelation, may be inferred from his quarrel with Ptolemæus. Neither falsehood, nor sophistry, was too much for the bishop of Lugdunum. The mystic Magian religion, also known as Machagistia, is the most uncorrupted form of worship in things divine. Later, the mysteries of the Chaldæan sanctuaries were added to it by one of the Zoroasters and Darius Hystaspes, a hierophant and initiated Magian himself. Secrecy was preserved by the one and supreme great lodge as well as other sub-lodges. The mysterious Druzes of Mount Lebanon are the descendants of all these. Well over 80,000 Syrian Druzes are scattered from the plain east of Damascus to the western coast. There never was a case of an initiated Druze becoming a Christian. These people do not accept the name of Druzes but regard the appellation as an insult. They call themselves the “disciples of H’amsa,” their Messiah, who came to them in the eleventh century from the “Land of the Word of God.” The characteristic dogma of the Druzes is absolute unity with God. He is the essence of life and, although incomprehensible and invisible, He is to be known through occasional manifestations in human form. Chastity, honesty, meekness, and mercy, are the four theological virtues of all Druzes. Murder, theft, cruelty, covetousness, and slander are the five main sins. H’amsa, like Jesus, was a mortal man, and yet H’amsa and Christos are synonymous terms as to their inner meaning: they stand for Nous, the divine and higher soul of man, his Spirit. Buddhistic philosophy does not teach annihilation. Nirvana implies impersonal life-eternal in Spirit, not in Soul. But even this actionless state is maya-illusion. It was the Christian missionaries in China and India, who first started this falsehood about Nirvana. Students of Esoteric Philosophy see in the Nazarene Sage a Bodhisattva with the spirit of Buddha Himself in Him. Gautama Buddha was moved by that generous feeling which locks the whole humanity within one embrace, inviting the poor, the lame, and the blind to the King’s festival table, from which he excluded those who had hitherto sat alone, in haughty seclusion. All this he did six centuries before another reformer, as noble and as loving, though less favoured by opportunity, in another land. If both, aware of the great danger of furnishing an uncultivated populace with the double-edged weapon of knowledge which gives power, left the innermost corner of the sanctuary in the profoundest shade, who that is acquainted with human nature can blame them for it? But while one was actuated by prudence, the other was forced into such a course. While the mythical birth and life of Jesus are a faithful copy of those of the Brahmanical Krishna, his historical character of a religious reformer in Palestine is the true type of Buddha in India. What the Nazarene did as a consequence of his humble birth and position, Buddha did as a voluntary penance. The most important element of Buddhist reform has always been its social and moral code, one of the most perfect which the world has ever known, not just its metaphysical theories. It is curious that three dissenting and inimical religions, Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Jainism, should agree so perfectly in their traditions and chronology, as to Buddhism. There is a perfect identity of philosophical thought and popular rites between the Jainas and the Buddhists. Christianity is fraudulent through and through. The myths of “miraculous,” immaculate conception are now debunked. Even the annunciation by an angel to Joseph “in a dream,” the Christians copied from the message of Apollo to Ariston, Perictione’s husband, that the child to be born from her was the offspring of that god. Times have changed now, and even the once all-powerful clergy have to either bridle their tongues, or prove their slanderous accusations. Irenæus did not furnish one single valid proof of the claims that he so audaciously advanced against every Gnostic sect which had the temerity to claim the right to think for itself, and who resorted to endless forgeries. He gives authority neither for his dates nor his assertions. This Smyrniote worthy has not even the brutal but sincere faith of Tertullian, for he contradicts himself at every step, and supports his claims solely on acute sophistry. Eusebius, another champion for the propagation of Apostolic Succession, was attacked by George Syncellus for falsifying the Egyptian chronology. Nine reasons for rejecting a preposterous incongruity by Josephus, supported by Renan are given. Rough, rude, and brutal was Tertullian, the patristic firebrand. Thus the whole pyramid of Roman Catholic dogmas rests not upon proof, but upon assumption. Nearly everything in Christianity is mere baggage brought from the Pagan Mysteries. But the Church can claim one invention as thoroughly original with her, namely, the doctrine of eternal damnation, and one custom — that of the anathema. Even primitive Christian art is nothing but Pagan art in its decay, or in its lower departments. Forcing upon Jesus four gospels, in which there is not a single narrative, sentence, or peculiar expression, whose parallel may not be found in some older doctrine or philosophy, is a poor compliment paid to the Supreme. Drop out from Christianity the personality of Jesus, so sublime, because of its unparalleled simplicity, and what remains? History and comparative theology echo back the melancholy answer, “A crumbling skeleton formed of the oldest Pagan myths!” Apollonius was the friend of kings and moved with the aristocracy, while Jesus, representing the people, “had nowhere to lay his head.” But like Buddha and Jesus, Apollonius was the uncompromising enemy of all outward show of piety, all display of useless religious ceremonies and hypocrisy. The calumnies set afloat against him, were as numerous as they were false. Gautama Buddha is the perfect model of all the virtues he preaches: his abnegation, his charity, his unalterable sweetness of disposition, do not fail him for one instant. He who lives for humanity does even more than him who dies for it. The groundwork of the Eclectic School was identical with the doctrines of the Yogins, the Hindu mystics, and the earlier Buddhism of the disciples of Gautama.

Myths are now proved to be fables, just in proportion as we misunderstand them; truths, in proportion as they were once understood. Western ignorance is a Hellenic inheritance, much of it the result of Hellenic vanity. See how the European Orientalist has raised himself to the eminence of a philological oracle. In ascribing chronological dates to Indian antiquities, Anglo-Indian as well as European archæologists are often guilty of the most ridiculous anachronisms. Greek chronology is too defective, too bombastic, and too diametrically opposed to fact, to inspire with confidence anyone less prejudiced than the European Orientalist. Comparative mythology bear witness that the religious ideas of the Greeks and most of their gods were derived from the religions flourishing in the northwest of India, the cradle of the main Hellenic stock. Let hypothesis prevail, even though the heavens may fall. As Yavanacharya was the Indian title of a single Greek, Pythagoras, so Shankaracharya was the title of a single Hindu philosopher. Yavanani does not mean Greek writing, it means any foreign writing. The Aryan Mahabharata and the Homeric Trojan War belong to the same cycle of events: both epics are mythical as to personal biographies and fabulous supernumeraries, yet perfectly historical in the main. The Greeks besmirched their noble ancestry by belittling their Hierophants as Troglodytes! Three Hierarchs represented Budhistical and Brahmanical power in pre-Homeric Greece. While the political power of Sri-B’dho-Lemos or Triptolemos was formidable, the cave-dwelling Budhist Priests or Sroo-cula-dutæ, Lords of the Cave, who protected their secret doctrines from profanation, are today belittled as Troglodytai. Further examples of the profound Brahmanical influence in Greece are the Goghos, or Cow-Killer, who became Kakos, i.e., bad. And Soo-Bhoo-ya, or one engaged in abstract meditation, became Sophos, i.e., Wise. Despatis or Land-Lord became Despotes, thus marking the transition from Oligarchic privilege to Democratic tyranny. Sanskrit is the Mother of Greek. As Ouranos destroyed his children from Gaia, so Kronos destroyed his from Rhea. This is an allusion to the fruitless efforts of Earth or Nature alone to create real human men. An auspicious prophecy: the Greek language will wake up once more after the Sanskrit goes to sleep. With glossary of pre-Homeric Indo-Grecian terms.

The Theosophist believes in neither Divine nor Satanic miracles. There is neither Saint nor Sorcerer, neither Prophet nor Soothsayer for him. There are only Adepts, or proficients in the production of feats of a phenomenal character, to be judged by their words and deeds. It is only theological bigotry and intolerance that could so maliciously and arbitrarily separate two harmonious parts, psychic and physical phenomena, into two distinct manifestations of Divine and Satanic Magic, or “godly” and “ungodly” works. The very name Apocrypha forbids critics to trust them for information. The Occultists, however, claim that, one-sided and prejudiced as they may be, the Apocryphal Gospels contain far more historically true events and facts than does the New Testament, the Acts included. The former are crude tradition; the latter (the official Gospels), an elaborately made up legend. Simon Magus was a Kabbalist and a Mystic who, like so many other reformers, endeavoured to found a new Religion based on the teachings of the Secret Doctrine, yet without divulging more than necessary of its mysteries. He rejected the individuality of his personal spirit, and recognized the Divine Ray which dwells in his Higher Ego as a reflection of the Universal Spirit. By Simon Magus we must understand the Apostle Paul, whose Epistles were secretly, as well as openly, calumniated and opposed by Peter. The Church extols unstintingly his wonderful magic feats. On the other hand, Scepticism, represented by scholars and learned critics, tries to make away with him altogether. Thus, after denying the very existence of Simon, they have finally thought fit to merge his individuality entirely in that of Paul. The virus of insatiable power and ambition, culminating finally in the dogma of infallibility and tyrannical authority of the Churches, are the curse of humanity and the great extinguishers of Light and Truth. The aim of the Tannaïm, ancient Israeli Initiates, who were Kabbalists of the same secret school as John of the Apocalypse, was to conceal the real meaning of the names in the Mosaic Books. Be that as it may, no Christian could rival Simon’s thaumaturgic deeds. Simon could not submit to the leadership or authority of any of the Apostles, least of all to that of either Peter or John, the fanatical author of the Apocalypse.

Part 1. The shoreless Ocean of Space is the Light of the Central Sun and First Cause. Space exists whether there is a God, gods or none; whether there is a universe or no universe: during the Maha Yugas, the Pralayas, as well as during the periods of Manvantara. Part 2. Space is Chaos, Unseen and Unknowable Deity that thrills throughout every atom in Boundless Kosmos. Space is filled with darkness, which is primordial matter in a pre-cosmic state. This Abstract Deity is a Single Absolute Omniscience and Intelligence that thrills throughout every atom, and infinitesimal point in boundless Kosmos. The Infinitude of Chaos is the Nest of the Eternal Bird, the flutter of whose wings produces life. Part 3. Space is the Pythagorean Monas, Potential Space within Abstract Space. It is symbolised by the Central Point of the Circle. Space and Universe are synonymous. In Space there is not only Matter, Force, and Spirit, but all that and much more. Space is the Soul of the World, the One Element or Root of Life which, in its eternal, ceaseless motion, like the out- and in-breathing of One Boundless Ocean, evolves only to reabsorb all that lives and feels and thinks and has its being in it. Part 4. Space is the Aether of the Greek philosophers or pre-cosmic Mind. Chaos is pre-cosmic Matter. Part 5. Parentless Space is the incomprehensible Deity, whose invisible robes are the mystic root of all matter, whether seen or unseen. Interplanetary Space is full of imponderable substances, interpenetrating each other. They are the direct cause of natural phenomena manifesting through vibration at the lower end. Part 6. Space is a body of limitless extent, whose Septenary Principles manifest in our phenomenal world only the grossest fabric of their sub-divisions. The septenary constitution of Space will become visible when the so-called “fourth dimension of space,” i.e., the sixth characteristic of matter and harbinger of the Sixth Sense, is fully awakened. Part 7. To the profane, Space is Eternal Darkness; to the Initiate, the Celestial Fountain of the Waters of Life. The Dark Energy of Be-ness is reflected in Chaos. The Waters of Life is the Fifth Principle of Kosmos in the lower septenary, however, they differ from the Waters of Salvation. Only earth and water, when warmed by the Sun, can bring forth a living soul. Part 8. Space is Akasha, Soul of the World: potential energy, whose function it is to evolve all visible things out of itself. Akasha is Aether, the Light of Creative Thought and Causeless Cause of every manifesting intellection, plus the reservoir of all thought because Absolute Thought. Ether is the lowest and grossest from of thought. Part 9. Space is Be-ness: Absolute Subjectivity plus Great Breath or motion unmanifested. Space and Time are forms of the One incognisable Deity. They are forms of That, the Absolute All. Real Time is abstract motion in Space. Part 10. The voidness of the seeming full is the fullness of the seeming void. Chaos is Void to sense, latent Deity to reason. Nature abhors a vacuum because there is no Spiritual Fire in vacuity. Nihil or Non-being in the mind of Ancient Philosophers became No-thing-ness and Emptiness among modern materialists. Vacuum or Voidness is a perception of lower minds. Vacuum is Absolute Deity, eternal and unchangeable. Its vehicle is pure, luminous Aether, Infinite Space. The abyss of Nothingness of the profane is the Infinite Space of the Divine Plenum of the Occultist.

The power of names is great, and was known since the first men were instructed by the divine masters. As Solon had studied it, he translated the Atlantean names into names devised by himself. The so-called barbaric peoples, the physical and political representatives of the nascent Aryan race speaking a now extinct Aryan language that stood before this division of nations, had a higher civilization as a root race and its sub-races than has yet been found in the geological strata. We, who place the origin of the Pelasgians far beyond the Biblical ditch of historic chronology, have reasons to believe that the “most barbarous language” mentioned by Herodotus was simply the primitive and now extinct pure Aryan tongue that preceded the Vedic Sanskrit. Pelasgians were a remnant of an Atlantean sub-race. The Aeolic was neither the language of Æschylus, nor the Attic, nor even the old speech of Homer — it was Vedic Sanskrit. In old Greece barbarous names were sacred and it was unlawful to change them. Yet, the Greeks got in the habit of twisting primeval names. They even besmirched their noble ancestry by belittling their Hierophants as Troglodytes. Three Hierarchs represented Budhistical and Brahmanical power in Greece. While the political power of Sri-B’dho-Lemos or Triptolemos was formidable, the cave-dwelling Budhist Priests or Sroo-cula-dutæ, Lords of the Cave, who protected their secret doctrines from profanation, are today belittled as Troglodytai. Further examples of the profound Brahmanical influence in Greece are the Goghos or Cow-Killer that became Kakos, i.e., bad. Soo-Bhoo-ya or one engaged in abstract meditation became Sophos, i.e., Wise. Despatis or Land-Lord became Despotes, thus marking the transition from Oligarchic privilege to Democratic tyranny.

Cosmic Substance or Noumenon of Matter is the origin and root of intelligent operations in (and of) Nature. Cosmic Substance and Cosmic Ideation are inseparable and interdependent. Their Androgyne Power is the Infinite, Shoreless Ocean of Life, expanding and contracting regularly. It is Absolute Consciousness! Cosmic Ideation is expressed by innumerable centres of Intellectual Force (Mahat) which, on the objective plane of being, become Fohat — thus differentiating the One into Many under cyclic law. By merging Her Seven Pitris with their Solar counterparts, Abstract Nature creates the miracle of Man. Life, Energy, and Force, are Eternal and Unchangeable, yet interchangeable when manifested. They are the Noumenon of Matter and Womb of the World.

Initiation teaches us to live a better life and to die with better hope. The Mysteries were known to unveil the operations of nature and lead to the contemplation of celestial powers. Magic was considered a Divine Science which led to a participation in the attributes of the Divinity itself. But it was Black Magic that led finally to the abolition of the Mysteries, and not Christianity, as is often erroneously thought.

Eastern Occult Philosophy transcends the perceptive faculties of human reason and speculations, which are illusive emanations of strict logic. Though the deific Essence is Unknown and ever unknowable (yet supreme Causality, emanating from the concealed point), its action can be apprehended in the universe of effects. The symbol of the Great Unknown is letter X. The Fullness of Valentinus is the Space of Occult Philosophy. The Theogony of Wisdom-Religion is the Aletheia of Occult Science. The Bull stands for the seed of life, generative as well as destructive. It’s horns are the emblem of eternal divine power. The Solar Gods are heroes, warriors, and shepherds, followed by their faithful herds of cows and bulls. Moschus’ Arcadian Hymn to Europa. Plutarch directs love to the soul, not to the beauty. The science of the gods is mastered by violence.

Where is the necessity for imposing our personal views upon others who must be allowed to possess as good a faculty of discrimination and judgment as we believe ourselves to be endowed with? It is difficult to obliterate innate differences of mental perceptions and faculties, let alone to reconcile them by bringing under one standard the endless varieties of human nature and thought. No attempt toward engrafting our views and beliefs on individuals, whose mental and intellectual capacities differ from ours as one variety or species of plants differs from another, will ever be successful. Nor we will ever be able prove our love to our fellow man by depriving him of his divine prerogatives — those of an untrammelled liberty of reason, right of conscience, and self-reliance. The religion of love and charity is built upon the gigantic holocaust of the faithful, fuelled by the illegitimate desire to impose a universal belief in Christ. Where is that creed that has ever surpassed it in bloodthirstiness and cruelty, in intolerance, in papal bulls, and the damnation of all other religions? Genuine morality does not rest with the profession of any particular creed or faith, least of all with belief in gods or a God. No matter how sincere and ardent the faith of a theist, unless he gives precedence in his thoughts first to the benefit that accrues from a moral course of action to his brother, and then only thinks of himself (if at all), he will remain at best a pious egotist. Theism and atheism grow and develop together our reasoning powers, and become either fortified or weakened by reflection or deduction of evidence. Why should not men imagine that they can drink of the cup of vice with impunity when one half of the population is offered to purchase absolution for its sins for a paltry sum of money? The more a child feels sure of his parents love for him, the easier he feels to break his father’s commands. One ought to despise that virtue which prudence and fear alone direct. We have therefore no right to be influencing our neighbours’ opinions upon purely transcendental and unprovable questions, which are speculations of our emotional nature, for none of us is infallible. Opinions are never static: they are amenable to change by reason and experience. By stirring up religious hatred, propagandism and conversion are the fertile seeds of cruelty and crimes against humanity. Where is that wise and infallible man who can show to another man what, or who, should be his ideal? The most fragrant rose has often the sharpest thorns. And it is the flowers of the thistle, when pounded and made up into an ointment, that will cure the wounds made by her cruel thorns the best. For all its beauty, it is an ungrateful task to seek to engraft the rose upon the thistle, since the rose will lose its fragrance, both plants will be deformed, and become a monstrous hybrid. Theosophy is Religion itself. Loyalty to Truth is its creed. Virtue, morality, brotherly love, and kind sympathy with every living creature are its noble objectives. Godless Buddhism ennobled the least philosophical of the dissenting sects of his religion, the Lamaism of the nomadic Kalmyks.