M. D., James R. Phelps, M. D., Hargrave Jennings, and

Eduard Schure. Each one of these great teachers has been as important to the present work as the other, and equal credit is therefore due to all.
In the body of the work, the text is not often interrupted by giving author's names in immediate connection with quotations, it being the compiler's desire to give the teachings of Masters with the least possible interruption of thought.
If the work will be the means of opening the eyes of a few and will influence them to try "to find their own Soul," I will be well satisfied.
R. Swinburne Clymer. "Beverly Hall" Quakertown, Pa. Dec. 27, 1919.
Tke Ancient Mysteries
All Religious and all Occult and Mystical Schools have their Foundation in the Ancient Mysteries taught in the Secret Schools of Antiquity as they are today.
"The belief in a Supreme Power is inherent in every hu- man being; and, so thoroughly interwoven with our nature is this sentiment, that it is impossible for anyone, at any period of life, wholly to divest himself of it.
"When the reflecting man looks around upon all the ob- jects about him, the question naturally arises : 'What has called this world into existence? Why does it exist, and what is its ultimate destiny ? Why do I exist, and what will become of me after death?' The answers to these questions can only be given by and through a long course of philosophical investigation and individual training. These problems have been the study of the ablest men from the earliest ages, and have given rise to all the various systems of philosophy and religion, which have pre- vailed in all times, beginning with the first conscious being and coming down to our own day and generation.
Of one thing we are certain, the first religion that we have any account of, was far superior to any of those formulated in later centuries because it was a religion of both living and be- lieving in place of a religion of faith only. I have reference to the philosophy of the Atlantians. Theirs was the pure Fire
NOTE : The Ancient Mysteries, Secret Doctrines, Philosophy of the Secret Schools, and Divine Mysteries are synonymous.
28 PHILOSOPHY OF FIRE
Philosophy; not only was it a virgin and absolute philosophical religion but, at the same time, it gave them those powers which a truly religious life will always confer upon the faithful neophyte. The Philosophy of Fire of the Atlantians not merely inculcated a strict morality, a blameless life and loyalty to the school which taught it, but it likewise demanded obedience to the Laws governing health, strength and power. This phi- losophy, under whatever name it has since passed, always gives wisdom and power to its Initiates. It is only with these phi-, losophies I will deal at the present and set forth the history, in compact form, of those systems of philosophy which worship at the Shrine of Fire, symbol at once of Love and of God — and believe this to be all potent. The Philosophers of these sys- tems do not worship the Fire as the profane suppose, but recog- nize the flame of the Fire as a symbol of that supreme hierarch which they believe in and know to be all powerful and absolute and which can be personified only by the fire which is Life, and Love, which is Eternal.
An author has said: "It is to be presumed that, when the minds of men were directed to the subject of the mysterious things of nature which they could not comprehend, they were forced to conceal their ignorance of the ultimate causes of all the phenomena by which they were constantly surrounded, and as constantly called upon to explain, that then, as well as at present, their inventive talents were exercised to conceal their ignorance by systems of terminology."
This is not altogether true, the Mysteries did not have their origin in such a manner, but rather, because the Initiates of these Mysteries were aware it would be unwise to give the true meaning of the Mysteries to the masses ; therefore invented sym- bols and ceremonies thereby teaching those who were not pre- pared to receive the truth or who were unable to worship God in the abstract.
"It is, however, conceded that the rites and ceremonies
PHILOSOPHY OF FIRE 29
were originally pure in character and had the power to im- press the minds of the Initiates with a suitable feeling of awe and reverence for those who taught the Mysteries, and likewise a desire to be personally benefitted through obedience to the instructions such teachers were willing to give."
One who claims to be an authority on the subject has said : "It is impossible to definitely assert in what country the Mys- teries were first introduced. Authors differ very materially upon that question. It is, however, very certain that, while there are various changes to be found in the Mysteries of the different na- tions of the Orient, there was a great similarity in them all; so much so that we may conclude either that they were all inde- pendent copies from a great criginal system or that they were propagated one from another, until they were spread over the whole of Asia, Europe, and that part of Africa peopled from Asia and in constant intercourse therewith. The first wave from that region, now known as Arya Varta, was to the South- east, and across the great rivers, into that part of India where they found a people descended from the Turanian families, who had come from the North and Northeast. We are informed that, when the Aryans entered the country of India, they carried with them traditions, manners, customs and religious ideas, which differed very materially from those possessed by the first inhabi- tants, Who were, no doubt, of Turanian descent."
This author is mistaken in several respects. We know absolutely that these mysteries primarily came from Atlantis, then connected with Yucatan where the ruins of the Fire Phi- losophers still remain, and that the Initiation into these Mys- teries was first had there. We know that in the Temples of At- lantis these Mysteries were first taught to the Neophytes and that these Mysteries were brought into Asia and India, thence into Egypt by the Initiates of the older School of Atlantis.
The author may well say: ''While there are various changes to be found in the Mysteries of the different nations of
30 PHILOSOPHY OF FIRE
the Orient, it is also certain there was a great similarity in them all." Why should they be unlike in their spirit, though possibly different in the letter, since all of them were from the same source? True, changes have been made in both form and name; but this has only been done to meet the customs and race beliefs of the various people and ages. All the Secret Schools founded on the Fire Philosophy come from the one source; in their spirit they are the same, simply taking form under different names, as the Fraternity now called the Rose Cross was known as the Paracelsians, Alchemists and Illumi- nated Brethren It has ever been the same Great School under names in harmony with the age and the needs of the peoples.
The Great School of the Magi, the Initiates, the Alchemists and the Secret Priesthood, known and designated also by other names, has never for a moment ceased to exist; this School has often, though secret and unknown, shaped the course of em- pires, and controlled the fate of nations. France and its Na- poleon Marleon is an excellent example; without the help of the Count Germaine, Napoleon never could have been the mighty master of Strategy he was, a mastership torn from him when he became self-centered and arrogant, working for glory instead of humanity's good.
These Initiates and Masters, seeking always the line of least resistance, and knowing both when and how to act, having always in view only one object, that is, the welfare and progress of Humanity and the greatest good to the greatest number, despising fame and worldly honors, working "without the hope of fee or reward," concealed their labors, and either influenced those who knew them not, to do their work or worked through agents pledged to conceal their very existence.
To the public generally, which cannot comprehend why one should do unselfish service without hope of compensation, this is a matter of little interest or importance. To the Seeker for Wisdom and enlightenment and the Initiate, it is of great inter-
PHILOSOPHY OF FIRE 31
est, indicating as it does, the role played by the masters of the Secret Schools in their desire to be of help to humanity. It will likewise reveal to them the meaning and goal of human evolution and development, and give them the unqualified assur- ance that such development is being aided by those who know, now, as it has not been for many centuries. This work has now become possible, because of a cycle of enlightenment, when the workers are unlikely to be sacrificed by an Inquisition, although they may be persecuted for their beliefs or teachings. Such Secret Masters and Initiates do exist, and they are truly possessed of profound knowledge; they are ready to help the denizens of the world; but these must be ready and willing to receive help if they are to be benefitted by it. Guided by a complete Philosophy, armed with a Key to Symbolism, aided by the Initiates and the Secret Schools, the Lost Mysteries may be restored and confer their benefits upon the races of men now so badly in need of the instructions and help these schools can confer.
Mere vulgar curiosity and secrecy alone have never been, and never will be, the password to the adytum of true Initia- tion. It necessitates something more than curiosity to find the Gate of the Path that leads to Soul Illumination — Initiation. It requires a heart that throbs for the welfare of humanity and a Love for Equal Opportunity and justice to all. He alone who seeks Initiation because he desires help and thereby seeks to confer a benefit upon his fellow man, can hope to reach the Goal of Attainment.
A history of those who have become Initiates would neces- sarily be tinged with a touch of pathos, on account of the many sorrowful disappointments it would record, in the case of ear- nest souls seeking, with sincerity and in truth, for the "Lost Word of the Masters," the Key that Unlocks the Magic Wand of Power, and points the way to the Soul and proofs of Immor- tality, who, for their earnestness and sincerity, and their loyalty
32 PHILOSOPHY OF FIRE
to those who taught them, ultimately were publicly executed as malefactors and enemies of State or Church, as most of them have been in the past.
However, no one has sought the Path to Initiation in love and humility, without having found entrance to the Secret Schools, and, proving faithful and loyal, reach the Goal where they were brought face to face with the Sublime Mysteries — the knowledge that Love leads to God; that both Love and God are symbolized by the Sacred, Everburning Fire, that same Fire which Moses of old saw burning in the bush as he would have passed it and from whence issued the Voice which commanded him to be the saviour of his race.
That these Secret Schools and their Masters should exist throughout all time and remain without a history seems at first a strange paradox. The enemies of the Mysteries and Sacred Philosophy will urge this fact as a reason for rejecting all that is herein contained, ignorant of the fact that few histories of any people or any epoch are better founded. Foremost among these detractors or deniers will be found the bigoted sectarian and the modern materialist. With each of these, the real gen- ius of the Mysteries is in perpetual conflict. For the first, the Equal Rights and Privilege of Justice to all men, is a dead letter; for he believes only he himself and his chosen associates can be saved. For the second, the materialist, the recognition of the Divine Principle in Man, and belief in the Immortality of the Soul, will prove a stumbling block of equal terror. For- tunately, the number of bigoted sectarians and out-and-out materialists are few; but these few seemingly are in authority and able to persecute all those who may not be to their way of thinking. The historical deficiency referred to is by no means without a parallel. That superstructure known as Christianity has, it is true, many historical phases; of dogmas the most con- tradictory; of doctrines promulgated in one age, and enforced with vice-regal authority and severe penalties for denial and
PHILOSOPHY OF FIRE 33
disbelief, only to be denied and repudiated as "damnable heresy" in another age. In the meantime, the origin of these doctrines and the personality of the Man of Sorrows around which these traditions cluster receives no adequate support from authentic history.
Simply because there is no true history of the birth and life of Jesus to be had, or for the reason orthodox Christianity has not been able to produce a history of those they make pretensions of following, but whom they have never really known, must we conclude that it is all a fable, that there was no Jesus of Nazareth; that the legend was put forth and kept alive by designing men, thereby to support their pretensions to author- ity? Are historical facts and personal biography alone entitled to credit? While everlasting principles, Divine Beneficence, and the laying down of one's life for another are of no account ? Is that which has inspired the hope and brightened the lives of the down-trodden and despairing for ages a mere fancy, a designing lie? Tear every shred of history from the life of Jesus, today, and prove beyond controversy that he never existed, and Humanity, from its heart of hearts, would create him again tomorrow and justify the creation by every need of the daily life of man. The historical contention might be given up, to- tally ignored, and the whole character, genius, and mission of Jesus, who became the Christ, be none the less real, beneficent and eternal, with all of its human and dramatic episodes. Ex- plain it as you will, it can never be explained away; the char- acter remains; and, whether historical or Ideal, it is real and eternal. Christ is no myth.
This digression serves to illustrate a principle of Interpre- tation. The Traditions and the Symbols of Mysticism and the Philosophy of Fire or the Pathway to the Soul, do not derive their real value from historical data, but from the universal and eternal truths which they embody, and from the fact that all the teachings and symbolism of the Secret Schools are found-
34 PHILOSOPHY OF FIRE
cd on the Divine Philosophy that the Soul is a smaller edition of the Father, that this Soul is manifested through Fire in the form of Love for one's fellow man, for truth, for the greatest good to all, and, finally, in the heart's desire to portray God. Love is the only bond that can bind man to man, and all men to God. Were these representations historical episodes only, the world in its cyclic revolution would long since have swept by and bur'ed £ em :n eternal oblivion. They are facts, im- parted by Initiate to Initiate in the Secret Schools, from time immemorial even as now. Such great truths, obscured and lost in one age by misinterpretation or persecution, rise, Phoe- nix-like, rejuvenated, in the next. We should not say lost, they are merely suppressed and held in the secret Archives of the Great Schcxl to be a ain promulgated when the time is oppor- tune. They are immortal truths, knowing neither decay nor diatb. . hey . re .ike Divine images concealed in a block of stone, which many artists assail with mallet and chisel, square and compass, only, perchance, to release a distorted idol. Only the Master V. orkman, the Initiate, can so chip away the stone as to iweal .'n all ts grandeur and beauty the Divine Ideal, and en- dow it with the breath of life. Such is the builder of the Soul. C remonial Initiation can never make one either a Master or an Initiate. It requiies a Mas er-Teacher to accept man in his crude or m^t rialistic s ate, and through instruction, training and development "tad him to Initiation; and this can only be accomplished by a process of growth and a rigid system of training.
No genuine Mystic, imbued with the spirit of liberality, will treat any religion with derision or coniempt, or will exclude from fellowship any ens who believes in the existence of God, the Fight of free Choice to all men and Freedom of action so long as such action does not interfere with others. This spirit is the foundation of Mysticism, and any departure from it leads away from the Path of Wisdom :.nd directly opposite to the fundamental thought of the A.:. A.:. The Secret Schools have,
PHILOSOPHY OF FIRE 35
for ages, held aloft the torch light of Toleration, Equity and Fraternity. The bigoted sectarian, whoever he may be, divides the world into two classes: Those who, with zeal and blind faith, accept his dogmas; and those who do not. The first he calls "brother," and the second class he regards as enemies who must be persecuted.
The Secret Schools, it is true, demand obedience to Laws and instructions from all those who desire to travel the Path. but these Schools do not, and never did, attempt to force upon outsiders any of their beliefs or philosophies.
The distinction between the esoteric and the exoteric doc- trines was always, even from the very earliest times, preserved among the Initiates. It came from the Egyptian School up to the time of Alexander; and after that they resorted for instruc- tions, and the Mysteries, to other schools, namely, to those of Asia as well as those of ancient Thrace, Sicily, Etruria and other countries.
The more profound secrets of the Mysteries cannot be re- vealed or taught by means of Ceremonial Initiation. They be- long only to those few who are willing to live the life and there- by grow into knowledge conferred by such living. To exper- ience is to know. To be taught is merely to believe and noth- ing more. These secrets must be sought by the individual; the Neophyte is debarred from possessing them solely by his own inattention to the hints everywhere given by the Initiates of the Secret Schools, such as the Magi, the Rose Cross, the Alchem- ists and those of Eulis. If one prefers to treat the whole subject with contempt, to deny that any such real knowledge exists, it becomes evident that he not only closes the door against the possibility of himself possessing such knowledge, but even be- comes impervious to any evidence of its existence that might come to him. He has no one but himself to blame if he is left in darkness. "Seek and ye shall find, Knock and it shall be opened unto you," such has ever been the Divine Command,
36 PHILOSOPHY OF FIRE
"So long as the struggle for bare existence involves, as it does today, the greater part of the energy, time and opportuni- ties of man, he may never discover the real meaning of life or the purpose of human existence. Even this much may be dis- cerned from physical evolution alone; from the study of the human brain, in which there is a continually increasing por- tion of gray substance set free from the functions incident to the preservation of the physical structure, and evidently de- signed to be appropriated to separate and Higher use. Mere intellectual activities alone, connected with the physical plane, with the maintenance and enjoyment of life, will not explain the philosophy of cerebral development. It is only when man divides his day of twenty-four hcurs into three equal parts, one-third for labor wherewith to obtain the necessities of life, one-third for rest, and the other third for recreation, self-im- provement and the awakening of his higher self, that he will become the balanced being God, his Creator, had intended he should be. This is the rational and natural doctrine taught by the Initiates and Instructors in the Secret Schools.
There are latent powers and almost infinite capabilities in man, the meaning of which he has hardly dreamed of possess- ing. Nor will leisure and intellectual cultivation alone reveal these powers. It is only through a complete, balanced philos- ophy of the entire nature of man and the capacities and destiny of the human soul supplemented by the use of such knowledge, that man will eventually come into possession of his birthright and begin the journey to perfection; it is such a path the Ini- tiates would lead man to follow, knowing as they do, from long experience, it is the only one that leads to the Goal of Rejuvena- tion of the entire bring called man.
Two conditions at the present moment stand squarely in the way of such achievement. First, anarchy and confusion, a non-belief in Law and Order, the result of selfishness in social relations. Ihis plight can be overcome in but one way, viz.,
PHILOSOPHY OF FIRE 37
the recognition of the unqualified Equal Rights of all Men to seek Knowledge and Wisdom in their own way, not as a theory, a religious duty, or a mere matter of sentiment, but as a fact in nature, a Universal and Divine Law, the penalty for the viola- tion of which is precisely the conditions under which humanity now struggles and suffers.
The second condition, which has given rise to "Confusion among the Workmen" in building the social temple, and the in- dividual habitation of man, are false ideals, inefficient methods of education, and almost total ignorance of the finer forces, potentialities and Soul Fire possessed by man until these Di- vine inheritances are well-nigh starved to death and only the physical and intellectual part of man survives. The result of this ignorance may be seen in the fact that hardly one indi- vidual in a million who has both leisure and opportunity attains real advancement in the evolution of the higher powers possessed, nor is he cognizant of the fact that he may become a living soul with all that such possession might mean to him.
This ought not to be so, nor need it be, if earnest men and women would seek diligently, first for the cause of all our ills, and second, for an efficient remedy. This remedy is found, first, in knowledge; second, in obedience to Creative Laws.
If real knowledge and the nature of the Soul and the des- tiny of man had never existed, our present status would be pitiable in the extreme. But, when we demonstrate that this knowledge always existed, at times only in the Secret Archives of the Great School, that it became degraded by selfishness and then suppressed by design; that for centuries designing Priests, many of whom would have disgraced a scaffold, but have been canonized as saints, have done their utmost to deprive hu- manity of this knowledge what shall humanity say? Shall man- kind preach the Equal Rights of All Men, Toleration to all Beliefs and yet seek revenge on the priesthood? A thousand times, no! but rather leave priests and proletariat to settle their
38 PHILOSOPHY OF FIRE
own affairs and go their own way; and let us go to work ourselves to establ'sh the ancient Schools wherein all those who seek may be taught the Way of Life. Knowing these things as we do, can we condemn the Arch Fraternities who have for a time hidden this knowledge so saving it for future races? Should we not rather be thankful to them for keeping it in its virgin purity? In all our popular present religious instruc- tions, beginning with childhood, and through all the ministra- tions of religion thereafter, we are taught to look very sharply after the salvation of cur souls; and this in the face of the statement that a very large proportion of the human race will eventually be utterly lost, or damned, for all eternity. Science forms another picture by trying to demonstrate that the 'struggle for existence is a necessary condition for improvement in every department of man's nature, pointing out that all the great leaders of the past were indefatigable workers, while the lag- gard fell prey to the strong, which is undoubtably true but does not go far enough, dealing only with the physical man, forget- ful of the spiritual counterpart. To the scientist, self-preserva- tion at the expense of others of the human family, is regarded as the "first Law of Life." What is the result? The world is chaotic, man is against man, the spiritual life of all nations is at its lowest ebb, faith in law and order at a minimum, con- fidence in neither Legislator, Physician or Minister. Until we can bring man to an understanding that he is a complex, com- bined being, pointing out to him that he must develop the inner, the spiritual being in harmony with the external man, this chaos will continue to increase until revolution which turns man against man in blood, shall cast the pall of night over humanity. Is it not reasonable to suppose that if humanity generally were possessed of real knowledge it might govern their actions so shaping their lives as to avoid the pitfalls of ignorance and set its feet on the line of a Higher Race Development ? Religion,
PHILOSOPHY OF FIRE 39
that of the Soul, which comes from the heart rather than the head, offers Faith; and through Faith all things become pos- sible. This is the Science-Religion of the Initiates and the basis of the Secret Schools.
There is but one source of real knowledge, namely, self- awakening, development and enlightenment through the Mystic Philosophy. The doctrine of Equal Rights and Opportunity to all men, must be, and is, the only basis of true Ethics; and the Great Republic which is jealous of the Rights of every man great or small, is the Ideal State. If these concepts were ac- cepted and acted upon, there would result time, opportunity and the power to apprehend the deeper and higher problems Oi the origin, nature and destiny of man. "Man is not man as yet and will not be until he has sought, and found, his Soul, thai Living Fire which allies him with the Creator of all mankind, namely, God the Father of All, the high and the low, the wise and the ignorant, and who would have the ignorant to become wise; the weak like the strong, the low equal to the greatest. What man may become or what he might accomplish undtu favorable conditions, is seldom dreamed of by humanity and is only visualized for us by the lives of the great masters of the past.
There is widespread and increasing conviction that true education — that which deals with the whole man — would prove a panacea for all our evils and that, if we could begin with the training of the children, we could eventually reform society; that even the children of vicious parentage might be trans formed from criminals in embryo to useful citizens in whom no longer lingered any trace of the desire to commit crime or dis- obey law. Such a system of education would not merely include the branches at present taught in our schools and colleges, bu; would likewise include a harmonious physical training; a
40 PHILOSOPHY OF FIRE
method of mental development and thorough instruction in con- structive sex science.*
The demand for a real, higher, inner education and train- ing is becoming insistent. Such an education would neces- sarily mean the bringing out of the highest in man, it would be a four-fold and rational development of the entire being. Only by teaching the truth, not as supposed to be by materialist or theological educators, but as the Soul, the Higher self in man teaches man what is right, will the race be elevated. Selfish- ( ness, or material gain only, is the key-note of the present-day educational system; hence it has miserably failed and establish- ed caste and class distinction. Nothing so shrouds the Higher Self, the real in man, in darkness and misconception as selfish- ness; this is the primary cause of the universal mistrust and hatred between classes and races.
It should be toward this Higher Knowledge, once termed the Ancient Mysteries, which all useful and rational acquire- ment tend. And why should our efforts cease short of the very highest? All education that does not follow this direction, with the final goal consistently and continually in view, is false, and is necessarily a failure. If this were not actually true, would individuals and nations be heading toward chaos as they now are? Certainly established systems of education and training have had a fair trial and what has been the result? Mistrust of each other, anarchy, socialism and disloyalty to the estab- lished government, condemnation of creeds and churchism, dis- belief in medical science, and mistrust of the Courts of Justice, together with an almost universal sex degradation and millions of bodies staggering under the load of diseases the result of vice.
This Higher Education, this Ancient Wisdom, is a knowl-
*The "Humanitarian Society" was founded for the express purpose of imparting instruction in Inner Sex Laws, Higher Race Development, Dietetics for Health and Strength, and Mental Development for Con- structive purposes.
PHILOSOPHY OF FIRE 41
edge of the powers and requirements of the physical being, an understanding of the Soul, of its origin, nature, potentialities, and the laws that govern its evolution and development; and this is precisely the knowledge which modern science fails to afford, but which the Ancient Science and the Secret Schools have taught in the Mysteries, and is open today to all who truly seek. All preliminary study and training lead up to this — "The real measure of a man." Just as all life should be constant evolution, so much all real knowledge, or Philoso- phy, be an Initiation, proceeding in a natural order, advanc- ing by specific "degrees" of growth and unfoldment. These "Degrees" are materialized to some extent in the modern Masonic Fraternity, an order which has much of the material and hidden Mysteries of Antiquity, but which has lost the key, except in a few rare instances. In the true Initiation, that of gradual growth and becoming, the candidate or neophyte must always be worthy and well qualified, duly and truly prepared. That is, he must perceive that such knowledge exists, must de- sire to possess it, be willing to make every effort and what- ever personal sacrifice is necessary for its acquisition. He must have passed beyond the stage of blind belief or superstition, the bondage of fear, the age of fable, and the dominion of appetite and sense desires. This is the meaning of being "duly and truly prepared." He must prove his fitness in these directions, no less than show the absence in himself of that subtler form of intellectual selfishness which comes from the possession of wha! usually passes as knowledge, and from the desire for dominion through it over others less highly endowed, for selfish purposes of his own. His motives, therefore, alone, will determine that he is "worthy and well qualified."
It is undoubtedly true that on every plane of life, in the process by which knowledge is acquired — always by experience — man becomes that which he seeks to know. That is, knowing is a progresive becoming through experience. There results,
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therefore, a continuous transformation or transmutation of the motives, ideals and perceptions of the individuality, whenever in his daily experience in life he is placed on the lines of least resistance or the natural order of Evolution. This is the science and philosophical meaning of true Initiation as taught by the Secret Schools and is* termed the Alchemical Process of trans- forming or transmutation the lesser into the greater.*
There is, at the present moment, so much of the common- place which passes as knowledge, and is accepted as such by the worthy, though unthinking student, which is so utterly void of comprehension, that unless a person is familiar with this line of thought, he would not really be able to see the truth and the bearing of the statement that man always becomes that which he really attempts to live and practice. This is the fun- damental reason why the mere inculcation of moral precepts so often fails entirely in transforming character, and why there is so much lip-service and so little actual service one for the other. When men once comprehend this, they will understand the Mystery of Alchemy, the Transformation, or Transmutation, of baser metals into the pure and shining gold. Once they com- prehend, once the Conscience has become awakened and they have learned to know, they will begin to become; for, in the pro- cess of doing will they commence to know and thus become.
Conscience is the struggle of the understanding in assimi- lating experience; it is the effort of the individual to adjust precept with practice; or, in other words, Conscience is that living, active something, which acts as an incentive to do, thus helping the growth of the Soul and the increase of man's power to apprehend the truth and to apply it in every day life. Thus,
*The Secret School, Order of the A.:. A.:, is devoting its every effort to teach its Neophyte this four-fold development and Alchemical Transmutation. Though generally unknown it upholds the Sacrednesi of religion and the family circle, loyalty to the Government and incul- cates faith and trust in medicine, law and order.
PHILOSOPHY OF FIRE 43
while man is learning, if he also lives, he is actually growing or transmuting, and the process will be far advanced ere he is aware of any great growth made.
In the Ancient Mysteries, Life presented itself to the can- didate, or Neophyte, as a problem to be solved, and not merely as certain propositions to be memorized and then forgotten. The solution of the problem constituted all genuine Initiation; and at every step or "degree" expanded. Therefore "Man, know thyself" was written above the door of every temple wherein were taught the Ancient Mysteries and Initia- tion accomplished. As the vision of the Neophyte enlarged in relation to the labors and meaning of life, his power of apprehension and assimilation also increased proportionately. This was likewise an evolution. The lower degrees of such Initiation concerned the ordinary affairs of life, namely, a knowledge of the laws and processes of external nature; the Neophyte's relation to these through his physical body; and his relations, on the physical plane, through his animal senses and social instincts, to his family and his fellow men.
These things being learned through experience and develop- ment, not merely memorized, the Neophyte passes on to the next degree. Here he learns the nature of his Soul and the process of its development, and begins to unfold those finer instincts which have been so often referred to in books dealing with Initiation. If he is found capable of understanding these, and keeps his vow in the preceeding degrees, he presently dis- covers the evolution within him of senses and faculties pertain- ing to the "soul-plane." His progress would be instantly arrested, and his teachers refuse him all further instructions, if he were found negligent of the ordinary duties of life — those to his family, his neighbors, or his country. All these duties must be fully discharged before he can stand upon the thresh- old of the Greater Mysteries; because in these he becomes to be an unselfish servant to humanity as a whole; and there is no
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longer the right to bestow the gifts of knowledge or power that he possesses upon his own kinsmen or friends in preference to others who might more justly claim these through the law of greater necessity. In the higher degrees, he may even be pre- cluded from using his powers to preserve his own life or protect his own property; both the Initiate and his powers be- long to humanity. If the reader will but consider how those who crucified Jesus called upon him in mockery to "save him- self and to come down from the cross," if he were the Christ, it may be readily understood that this doctrine of Supreme Un- selfishness ought, long ago, to have been apprehended by the Christian world; for, while it is a Divine Attribute, the syno- nym of The Christ, it is latent in all humanity, and must be evolved in all if it is to be of service to a greater humanity, though it must not be understood for a moment that the Initiate gives to all alike, whether worthy or unworthy, because in giv- ing to the unworthy, or those who can help themselves, he would merely weaken them instead of strengthening them. Even to curse.
That which seems to make such an evolution impossible, is that it cannot be conceived as being accomplishable in a single life; nor can it be. It is the result of persistent effort guided by High Ideals through many lives. Those who deny pre- existence may logically deny all such evolution. There must, however, come a time when the consummation is reached in one life; this may be in our present life; this is the logical meaning of the saying of Jesus — it is finished.
Today, many of those who have not the honor to belong to any of the Secret Fraternities, know there were both an exo- teric and an esoteric doctrine with the early Christians; that the esoteric doctrines were communicated orally in the Mysteries of Initiation; and that these Mysteries conformed to, and were" originally derived from, those of the so-called Pagan world. The Mysteries of the Christ received a new interpretation after
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the first Nicene Council; and, as the Church sought dominion, it lost the Great Secret; since then it has denied that it ever existed, and has done all in its power to obliterate all its rec- ords and monuments.
History, both sacred and profane, proves this. Tertullian, who died about A. D. 216, says in his Apology: "None are admitted to the religious Mysteries without an oath of Secrecy. We appeal to your Thracian and Eleusinian Mysteries; and we are specially bound to this caution, because if we prove faith- less, we should not only provoke Heaven, but draw upon our heads the utmost rigor of human displeasure."*
Archelaus, Bishop of Cascara in Mesoptamia, the year 278, said: "These mysteries the church now communicates to him who has passed through the introductory degree. These are not explained to the Gentiles at all, nor are they taught in the hearing of the Catechumens ; but much that is spoken is in disguised terms, that the Faithful, who possess the knowledge, may be still more informed, and those who are not acquainted with it may suffer no disadvantage."
The Council of Nice had not taken the Secret Schools and Occult Fraternities into consideration, nor did they know much concerning them. The Council had knowledge such Schools and Orders existed but were under the mistaken impression they were cnly for ihe purpose of Pagan Initiations; had no knowledge of the fact that these Secret Schools and Orders possessed records to be handed down from Initiate to Initiate
*Many students of the Mysteries have had the mistaken idea that the Masters or Initiates in the Secret Schools draw a curse upon those students who break their vow, having been led to this belief because si now, suffering and ultimate misfortune always follows such broken vows. Neither Master, Initiate or Teacher ever pronounces a curse; on the contrary, the student, through the law he himself sets in motion when he takes the vow, brings upon himself sorrow, misery, suffering and misfortune if he proves disloyal.. A vow is like a boomerang; if thrown straight will continue forward, but when misdirected will return and destroy the one responsible.
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for all time to come; that the Keys to the Sacred Mysteries could never be lost to the Secret Schools and Occult Orders.
St, Basil, the great Bishop of Caesarea, says: "We receive the dogmas transmitted to us by writing, and those which have descended to us from the Apostles and beneath the Mystery of Oral tradition; for several things have been handed to us with- out writing, lest the vulgar, too familiar with our dogmas, should lose a due respect for them. This is why the Unitiated are not permitted to contemplate; and how should it ever be proper to write and circulate among the people an account oi them."
Those who composed the Council of Nice undoubtedly knew of the claims made by certain Priests of the day, that the Secret Mysteries were in possession of certain Secret School-., but considering these assertions as being voiced by madmen and fanatics, little or no attention was paid to them.
This Sublime Philosophy, inclusive of the Sacred Mys- teries, once taught in the Greater Mysteries of Egypt, India, Chaldea, Asia and Persia, likewise among many other nations of antiquity, is known neither to modern churchianity nor to any of the exoteric orders any more than it was known to the Council of Nice.
In the year 525, B. C. Cambyces, called "the mad," led an army into Egypt, overran the country, destroyed its cities, palaces and temples, scattered its Priest- Initiates (all Priests of the temple wcr. Initiates and instructors to the Neophytes), and reduced the country to a Persian province. Many of the priests took refuge in Greece, and conveyed thither the Egyptian Mys- teries, the same Mysteries Pythagoras had journeyed to Egypt to obtain half a century earlier."
At th: beginning of the Christian era, the Mysteries were known only to the Initiates and Priests; the masses were in ignorance as to their very existence. There remained, at the Jtime, th: Essenian Order, as well as the Gnostics, the latter an
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inner circle of the Essenes. The Therapeutae of Alexandria was merely another name for a branch of the Essenian Frater- nity. Today the order of men then known as the Essenes i§ termed the Rosy Cross. There never has been the slightest 'n- terruption of this eecret Fraternity. It has many times changed its name since its foundation, but its instructions remain the same. Thus, from these Orders were derived the Christian Mysteries, preserved in the Secret Archives of the Great Schools, known only to In'tiates of the Higher degrees.
The Neoplatonists, headed Ly Ammonius Saccus, under- took to preserve the primitive relation; and the utterances of the Christian Bishops, to which reference has been made, show how the Secret Doctrine was adopted from the earlier mysteries by the primitive Christians during the first three centuries of our era. After the first Council of Nice, A. D, 325, which was p-esided over by none others than exoteric or form Christians, looking for power and authority, little more was heard of the earlier doctrines; and, with the burning of the Great Library of Alexandria, Church supremacy end the dark ages obliterated the primitive wisdom of Western Europe, so far as the masses were concerned, as it was overrun by hordes of Barbarians from the North. The principal seats of learning were the convents rnd monasteries. Coming now to the dawn of the sixteenth century, and the great Protestant and Rosicrucian Reforma- tions, we find Johann Trithemius, Abbott of St. Jacob, at Wurtzburg, celebrated as one of the greatest Alchemists and' Adepts; Cornelius Agrippus, and Paracelsus were his pupils. We must not forget Christian Rosencreutz, the Refounder of the Rosicrucian Fraternity, which had previously been known as the Alchemists and Paracelsuians, and the powerful influ- ence his works had on the reformation of the time. John Reuchlin, a famous Kabalist of the time and Counted as one or the most learned men of his da}' in Europe, was the friend and preceptor of Luther; and Luther's first public utterances were
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a course of lectures on the Philosophy of Aristotle. What effect the Rosicrucian Reformation had on Luther can only be judged from the fact that the private seal used by Luther was the Rose and the Cross, then a purely Rosicrucian symbol. Great effort was made to revive the Ancient Wisdom among those outside of the Secret Schools of the Fraternity; but the age was too gross and superstitious, and the reformation resulted in cen- turies of blind belief, likewise in the suppression of the Secret Doctrine as far as this could be accomplished. However, the Universal Reformation had accomplished one of its purposes: It had drawn to itself those who were truly ready to receive the Inner Training and the Mysteries of the Great Fraternity.
The sincere student should always remember the impor- tant fact that in the Secret School there has always been, and ever will be, an exoteric portion given out to the world, to the uninitiated, and an Esoteric doctrine reserved for the Initiate; revealed by gradual degrees, according as the Neophyte demon- strates his fitness to receive, conceal and rightly use the knowl- edge imparted to him.
The Great Schools, whether Rosicrucian, Magian or Se- lect Priesthood, recognize the whole world as one Republic, of which each Nation is a family, and every individual a child of the family. This relationship, not in any wise derogating from the differing duties which the diversity of states requires, tends to create a new people, which, composed of many nations and tongues, shall be bound together by the bonds of a true, Uni- versal Science, believe in the Equal Rights of all men to De- velopment, Advancement, Religious Freedom and Justice. Therefore, one of the real objects of these Orders, whether Mys- tic Masonry or any other Mystic or Occult Fraternity, may be summed up in the following: To efface from among men the prejudices of caste, the conventional distinctions of color, origin, opinion, nationality; to annihilate fanaticism and superstition, to extirpate national discord and with it to extinguish the fire-
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brand of war; in a word — to arrive, by free and pacific prog- ress, at one formula or model of universal right, according to which each individual human being shall be free to develop every faculty with which he may be endowed, and to concur heartily and with all the fulness of his strength in the bestow- ment of happiness upon all, and thus to make of the whole human race one family of brothers, united by Love, Wisdom and Science.
That this may be accomplished, a true and constructive Philosophy must be taught; avarice as to possessions must be eliminated from the human heart through an understanding of law, having all come to comprehension that the desire for possessions which bring pleasure is legitimate, but that one should not covet the possessions of others though like posses- sions may be desired. True Science and Religion must be wedded ; and the key to both Science and Religion or Philosophy must be Love, one for the other. Such a Philosophy has always been the foundation of the Secret Schools and of the Rose Cross.
The essential form or idea of all things; the potency or force; and matter as we now discern it, existed in primordical space. Therefore, these two always exist, namely, the inner potency, and the outer act; the concealed idea, and the outer form; the inner meaning and the outer event; each in turn a symbol of the other. Hence the saying on the Smaragdine Table of Hermes, "As Above, So Below." All outward things are therefore symbols, or embodiments of pre-existing Ideas, and out of this subjective Ideal realm all visible things have ema- nated. This doctrine of emanations is the key to the Philos- ophy of the Gnostic and Essene sects from which the early Christians derived their mysteries and whence the Secret Schools have their foundation.
The fundamental doctrine of the Secret Schools may be briefly stated thus : There is a Grand Science generally known as Magic, because little understood by the masses, every
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real Initiate of any Order must be a Magus. Feared by the ignorant, and often ridiculed by the supposedly "learned" the Divine Science and its Masters have, nevertheless, existed in all ages, and do today as surely as the Fraternities in which they are the Masters. Occultism in its deeper meaning and rec- ondite mysteries constitutes and possesses this Science, and all genuine Initiation consists in an unfolding of the natural pow- ers of the Neophyte, so that he shall become that which he de- sires to possess. In seeking Magic, he finally becomes the Magus. All genuine Initiation is like evolution and regenera- tion from within. Devoid of this Inner meaning and power, all rituals and ceremonial Initiations are but foolish jargon and without meaning to the Initiated. That the Christ-life and power which made Jesus to be called Christos- Master, whereby he healed the sick, cast out devils, and foretold future events, is the same life revealed by Initiation in the Secret Schools, is perfectly plain. The disrepute into which the Mysteries have fallen has arisen from their abuse and degradation by those who broke their vows and proved false to the instructions they had received.
Undoubtedly there are dangers met with in Symbolism and Mysticism, which afford an impressive lesson regarding simi- lar risks attendant on the use of any other secret force. The Imagination called in to assist the reason may usurp its place, or leaves its ally helplessly entangled in its web. Names which stand for things are confounded with them; the means are mis- taken for the end; the instrument of interpretation for the ob- ject; and thus symbols come to usurp an independent character as truths and persons, though perhaps a necessary path, they are dangerous ones to approach the Deity; in which many, says Plutarch, mistaking the sign for the thing signified, fell into a ridiculous superstition, while others, in avoiding one extreme, plunged into the no less hideous gulf of irreligion and impiety.
It is through the Mysteries, said Cicero, that we have
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learned the first principles of life, wherefore the term "Initiation is used with good reason."
The employment of Nature's Universal Symbolism instead of the technicalities of language, rewards the humblest inquirer and discloses its secrets to everyone in proportion to his prepara- tory training to comprehend them. If their philosophical signifi- cance was above the comprehension of some, their moral and political meaning are within the reach of all.
In every age there have been dabblers in the mysteries as there are at the present time sorcerers and necromancers, who, possessing some few of the secrets, and imbued with none of its beneficence, have used this knowledge and power for purely personal and selfish ends, thereby ultimately destroying them- selves. Hypnotism is one illustration of the power referred to, mighty in its power for good, especially in the correction of destructive habits when employed by one morally clean, but vastly destructive in the hands of one without principle. Magic, per se, is always an absolute Science, and up to a certain point it may be cultivated without regard to its use and for the well- being of man; although any abuse of it will prove fatal to the magus sooner or later, and the black Magician, he who uses his forces for selfish purposes, will eventually destroy himself.
The popular idea is that education consists in the cultiva- tion of the intellect. An average standard. of morals is always recommended by educators; and its outer form is illus- trated by religious ceremonies. But intellectual cultivation alone, no matter to what extent it may be carried — and the further it goes on in this one-sided way the worse for all con- cerned— is in no sense an evolution, as such one-sided education is the cause of our present day bigotism and intolerance of the opinions represented and expressed by the few who are always considered as unorthodox. Perfect intellectual development, without spiritual discernment and moral obligation, is the sign- manual of Satan: Intelligence, without goodness, lies athwart the Divine Plan in the evolution of Humanity. Intellect and
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Altruism by no means necessarily, go hand in hand. One may have a very clear intellect, have quick perception, and be a good reasoner, and yet be a consciousless scoundrel. On trie con- trary, one may be dull intellectually, and yet be kind, brotherly and sympathetic to the highest degree. A world made up of the former would be a bad place to live in ; of the latter, a thousand times to be preferred. Magic, in its true meaning, contemplates that all-around development of the entire man, which, liberat- ing the intellect from the dominion of the senses and illuminat- ing the Spiritual Perceptions, places the individual on the lines of least resistance with the Inflexible Laws of Nature, and the Magus becomes Nature's co-worker or hand-maid. To all such, Nature makes obeisance, and delegates her powers, and they become Masters. The real Master conceals his power and em- ploys it only for the gocd of others. He works "without the hope of reward," knowing that God is just.
Believing that "Knowledge is Power," designing and evil minded men desire to possess both knowledge and power for entirely selfish purposes. It may be readily understood that the greater the possession of power a purely selfish man has, the more inimical to humanity he becomes. This is especially true in the case with the Deeper Sciences which deal with Men- tal forces, and which influence the thoughts and actions of others. Modem Science, purely materialistic in its aims and conclusions, has always ridiculed the idea embodied in Magic, for materialism can never recognize the Spiritual Forces.
The traditional Lost Word of the Master is a key to all the Science of the Soul, term this Science Magic or what we will; but it must be remembered that the so-called Lost Word is not a Word, but refers to a Force, Power or Energy, resulting from careful training and Spiritual Development. The wisdom of the Initiate is not empirical; it does not consist of a few iso- lated formulas by which certain startling or unusual effects can be prcduced. Formulas have little to do with this knowledge.
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The Magus has found and knows his own sold, he has purified the heart so that it throbs with Love for humanity; and, through the re-awakening of Instinct and Intuition, he holds the key to many of Nature's Laws whereby he is enabled to accomplish his desires. He does not work contrary to Natural Laws, but in harmony with them.
The Magi's art is therefore based on a Science far deeper and more exact than modern physical science has yet dreamed of, and back of it lies a Philosophy as boundless as the Uni- verse, as inexhaustible as Time, and as beneficent as the "Father in Heaven."
Such Initiates have always existed; and no book or record worth preserving or in any way necessary for the good of man is ever lost. In the secret Crypts, alike inaccessible to the un- initiated man and to the corrosion of time and decay, these records are well preserved and can only be made use of by those who are truly prepared and are fit to make use of their teach- ings for the greatest good of the many.
All human progress runs in cycles. Modern materialistic science has had its brief day and must gradually take its right- ful place. True philosophy has already undermined its foun- dation, the new age will show a genuine revival of philosophy and true science.
The immortal principles enunciated by the Philosophers, clothed in modern garb of thought, less involved and dialectical, again commands the attention of the thinking world. Every one is aware that the source of the old Philosophers knowledge was the Mysteries; they were Initiates, and on almost even- page reveal the obligation they were under not to betray to the profane (the uninitiated) the secrets taught only to Initiates under the pledge of secrecy.
"There is in Nature one most potent force, by means of which, a single person, who would possess himself of it, and know how to direct it, could revolutionize and change the whole
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face of the world. This force was known to the Ancients and the secret is possessed by the Secret Schools of the present day. It is a universal agent, whose supreme law is Equilibrium; and whereby, if science can but learn how to control it, will be possible to send a thought in an instant around the world; to heal or slay at a distance; to give our words universal success, and to make them reverberate everywhere."
There is a Life Principle, a universal agent, wherein are two natures and a double current of love and wrath. This ambient fluid pervades everything. It is a ray detached from the glory of the Sun, and fixed by the weight of the atmosphere and the central attraction. It is the body of the Holy Spirit, the Universal Agent, the Serpent devouring its own tail, symbol at once of Continued Youth and Immortality of the Soul, plus Unlimited Power.
With this electro-magnetic ether, this vital and luminous caloric, developable in everyone, the Ancients and the Alchem- ists* were familiar. Of this agent, that phase of modern igno- ance termed physical science, talks incoherently, knowing noth- ing of it save its effects; and theology might apply to it all its pretended definitions of spirit and still be unable to define it.
Quiescent, it is appreciable by no human sense; disturbed, or in movement, none can explain its mode of action except the Initiate, and to term it a "fluid" and to speak of its "currents," is but to veil a profound mystery under a cloud of words.
The Bible, with all the allegories it contains, expresses, in a veiled and incomplete manner only, the religious science of the Hebrews. The doctrines of Moses and the prophets, identi- cal at bottom with that of the ancient Egyptians, also had its outer meaning and its mysteries hidden behind a veil. The Hebrew books were written only to recall to memory the tradi- tions; and they were written in symbols unintelligible to the
*See "Alchemy and the Alchemists."
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profane. The Pentateuch and the prophetic poems were merely elementary books of doctrines, morals or liturgy; and the true secret and traditional philosophy was only written afterwards, under a veil still less transparent. This was a second Bible born, unknown to, or rather uncomprehended by, the Christians of latter times, "a collection, they say, of monstrous absurdities; "a monument," the Initiates say, "wherein is to be found every- thing that the genius of Philosophy and of religion have ever formed or imagined of the Sublime; a treasure surrounded by thorns; a diamond concealed in a rough dark stone."
The Kabalah, then, alone consecrates the alliance of the Universal Reason and Divine Word ; it establishes by the coun- terpoise of two forces apparently opposite the eternal balance of being; it alone reconciles Reason with Faith, and Power with Liberty, Science with Mystery; it has the keys of the Present, Past and the Future. One is filled with admiration on pene- trating into the Sanctuary of the Kabalah, at seeing a doctrine so logical, so simple, and at the same time so absolute. "The necessary union of ideas and signs, the consecration of the most fundamental realities by the primitive characters; the Trinity of Words, Letters and Numbers; a Philosophy simple as the alphabet; profound and infinite as the world; Theorems more complete and luminous than those of Pythagoras; a theology summed up by counting on one's fingers; an Infinite which can be held in the hollow of an infant's hand, ten ciphers and twenty-two letters, a triangle, a square and a circle — -these are all the elements of the Kabalah. These are the elementary prin- ciples of the written Word, reflection of that spoken Word which created the world."
Life may be represented by a Triangle, at the apex of which is God. Of this triangle the two sides are formed by two streams, the one flowing outwards, the other upwards. The base may be taken to represent the material plane. Thus, from God proceed the Gods. From the Gods proceed all the Hier-
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archy of heaven, with the various orders from the highest to the lowest. Here again we have the Doctrine of Hermes.
The Kabalah of the ancient Hebrews, which Moses de- rived by Initiation into the Mysteries of Egypt and Persia, was identical among the Hebrews, the Egyptians, the Hindus, and other nations of antiquity, and known as the Grand Science, or Secret Doctrine.
Initiation is knowledge unfolded by degrees in an orderly, systematic process, step by step, as the capacity to apprehend grows and opens in the Neophyte. The result is not a posses- sion, but a growth, an evolution, plus development. Knowledge is not a mere sum in addition; something added to something that already exists; but rather such a progressive change or transformation of the original material man to make of him at every step a New Being. Real knowledge, or the growth of Wisdom in man, is an Eternal Becoming; a progressive trans- formation of the crude and material, into the likeness of the Supreme Goodness and Supreme Power.
The Sacred books of all religions, including those of the Jews and the Christians, were and still remain, more than par- ables and allegories of the Secret Doctrines, transcribed for those who will live the life so as to comprehend the inner Mystery. All commentaries written on these Sacred books, whether on those of Moses, the Psalms and the Prophets of Judaism, the Gospels of the Gnostics and Christians, or those written on the Sacred books of the East — the Vedas, Pranas, and Upanishads — either make confusion more confounded when written by one ignorant of the Secret Doctrine or, when writ- ten by Initiates, but further elaborate the parables and alle- gories, plus applying them to ordinary life.
It is easily demonstrable that the Secret Doctrine was the Primitive Wisdom Religion. Its earliest records are to be found in Asia, Egypt, and India, and thence have been carried to other countries.
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Underlying this Secret Doctrine is a profound philosophy of the creation or evolution of worlds and of man. The present humanity in many quarters of the globe has evolved on the intellectual plans so far that there now exists a very large num- ber of persons capable of apprehending this old philosophy, and, at the same time, capable of understanding the responsi- bility incurred in misusing or misinterpreting it. A large num- ber of people have reached, on the intellectual plane, the state of manhood, making them capable of partaking of the "fruit of the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil." There is, there- fore, no reason why this old philosophy should be longer con- cealed. On the contrary, there are many reasons why it should be given to those who are ready to receive it. Empirical knowl- edge has advanced in certain directions into the realm of Psychism and the arts anciently designated by the term Magic; and it is imperative that the dangers which attend these pur- suits should be pointed out and demonstrated, whereby they may be avoided by the beneficient, and that the ignorant or innocent may be afforded protection. How far these modern inroads into Occultism or ancient Magic extended very few persons seem to realize. It is therefore high time that the Philosophy of the East should illumine the science of the West, and thus give the death blow to that intellectual diabolism and spiritual nihilism, known as materialism, on the one hand, and Spiritism, on the other, and this a comprehension of the Secret Doctrine only can accomplish. Grave responsibility, however, is incurred by such a revelation. Those who, like the professional Hypnotist and the Spiritist, have sinned, perhaps ignorantly, and thus have been unconsciously "Black Magicians," will eventually find no avenue from escape.
As I am preparing the above, I receive a clipping entitled "The Mystic Side of the Bacillus Theory," published in one of the leading Medical Journals, the "Alkaloidal Clinic," and pre- pared by the master of both medicine and the Secret Science,
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James R. Phelps, M. D. Serum Therapy having become an accepted therapeutic agent in treatment of diseases, by repre- sentatives of the recognized Medical schools, I think it well to reproduce the article, because it will show we are reaching a plane of existence where true knowledge is demanded.
"The man who has the temerity to question, or even dis- cuss in a questioning way, the generally accepted basic prin- ciples which underlie his profession, is apt to find himself set down a heretic, and invites the sneers and innuendoes, if not crucifixion, of those who accept the deductions of scientists, and deny the right of speech to anyone who dares to be wise above what is written. Not that it follows, by any means, that the heretic is necessarily right any more than it follows that the human scientist is always right. For science has a large rub- bish-heap in its back yard, on which may be found many a dis- carded plank that once formed part of its infallible platform.
"A scientist once told me that a drop of nitric acid applied to a piece of freshly broken granite revealed, under the micro- scope, numerous living things similar to animalculae found in stagnant water. 'This,' he asserted, 'proves that the solid rock is full of life!' I fail to see that it proves any such thing. It simply shows that the action of the acid produced a form of motion there, and wherever there is motion there is a magnetic current, and forms having life spring into existence — not that they were any more in the rock than in the acid or that neces- sarily they were in either.
"After all, is there not as much mystery about the mani- festation of life in matter as there is about thought action? Things become perceptible to us when they come within the range of the senses, but have they no form of existence before they come into this plane? Or do things spring from nothing?
"It has become the fashion, when there is a diseased bodily condition, to go on a hunt for the bacillus which is one of the manifestations of that condition. I have nothing to say against
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this proceeding, but it is a mistake to allow this research to close up every other avenue of investigation, and to assume, offhand, that the bacillus is the creator of the disease, rather than its creation. And there are many of our profession who are think- ing along this same line.
"If we read of the cures effected by the Divine Master (call him 'The Nazarene,' if you please, names are immaterial), we find His cures almost invariably prefixed by the words, 'Thy sins be forgiven thee;' and this declaration was always an offense to the pharasaical beholder. They could recognize the fact that a paralytic had been strangely healed, a leper cleansed, when the paralyzed man walked off with his bed on his back, or the hue of health came back to the pallid, ulcerated countenance of the leper; but the word of power that reached beyond their vision, and changed the mental condition that produced the disease, was too much for their comprehension.
"Let me quote from a writer on mystical subjects : 'Disease does not enter in any manner from without. That which is ex- ternal simply awakens that which is already within us. Disease is not an entity — it is simply a depolarization. That sights and sounds lure the imagination into activity, I claim, and in this faculty of the mind depolarization of the spirit's action takes place, which causes a sudden condensation of spirit in some parts of the system, to the damage of other parts left destitute. Thus the system is all thrown out of harmony, because the nor- mal action of spirit is disturbed.' Polarize the system, establish equilibrium, and a cure quickly results.*
"Now, belief being the fundamental principle of power, and man being more physical than mental, his belief is more
*The basis of the doctrine on health and disease taught by the Secret Schools of today; also the reason for some of their wonderful cures without the use of drugs of serums, though it must not be under- stood these schools condemn the employment of medicine in the treat- ment of disease. Some of the most successful physicians in the world belong to these schools.
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readily aroused and sustained by physical substances than by ideas; hence, the Magi used charms, amulets and talismans to inspire the belief of the ignorant and material and, produced many cures.
"Furthermore, who can doubt for a moment that drugs, metals, vegetable substances, etc., have a peculiar affinity for, or are antipathetic to, that department of the spiritual nature which we call the Imagination?
"All action is dual — direct and reflex. If material sub- stances act on and create mental conditions — which I do not deny — then mental conditions act on and create material things** The impure, diseased imagination, finding in the physical organism soil suitable for the purpose, impregnates it and generates bacilli. To deny this hypothesis does not disprove it. The bacteriologist, with his microscope, discovers bacilli, and assumes that they are self-created or produced by material, chemical action on the physical atoms. This may answer as explanation of maggots in rotten cheese; but the house of an immortal thing, which we call soul or spirit, is something differ- ent. There is no motion of muscles, tendon or ligament that is not started first by mental aciion and will, through, not by, the brain. And there is not a bacillus or microbe infesting the blood or tissues, that did not have a definite, positive existence before it became manifested to the microscope; and if we under- stand the working of the mind as well as we do the anatomy of the body (and there are many facts regarding this even, that we are totally ignorant of), we might get more control over disease than we now seem to possess. And even with this influ- ence over the mind, what do we do when an epidemic of cholera breaks out? We set people to cleaning out their back yards, disposing of rubbish, and, more important still, we try to teach
**Known in the Secret Schools as Image Formation, Visualization and Projection and taught as part of the Higher Mysteries.
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them to keep themselves clean, and this occupation tends to produce a (temporary, at least), condition of mental cleanli- ness. Washing the outside of cup and platter is something in the way of removing filth, and it is an accomplishment of some moment to teach some men the religion of a clean shirt. Mental uncleanliness is apt to generate bodily uncleanliness, and then the bacillus is a logical sequence.
"There is much attention being directed of late to prophy- lactic treatment. Would it not be as well to extend this system a little farther, and see if it is not possible to pass over the bor- der a little way — cross the fence which science has erected be- tween the realm of matter and the realm of the imponderable, and see if, after all, there may not be something to be accom- plished in the way of regulation of disease before the enemy effects his invasion of the land? I believe we can meet with some measure of success, if we divest ourselves of some of out preconceived notions, and cease to take council of our denials, our limitations, our fears. It may be that there is something to be learned by looking at the bacillus theory from the Mystic standpoint. For, let the materialist doubt, and scout, and deny, as he will, there is that side of the question, and it is every day forcing itself more and more into recognition. 'There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philos- ophy,' and there always will be."
Here was one who did not fear to attempt to wed Science and Religion. Had we more of such teachers both Science and Religion would be the better for it and possibly shortly we would have an exact Science to deal with the physical ills of man. There can actually be no line drawn as to where material science ends and Spiritual Science begins, and because men have always attempted to do, confusion continually arises, which, blinding the Scientist on the one hand, and the Religion- ist on the other, results in chaos.
They know little of the forces at work, or the principles
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involved, who imagine there is sufficient force in dissolving creeds, or in the dying throes of materialism, to greatly retard the progress of these truths by sneers or ridicule, or to prevent their triumph by any opposition that can be brought to bear against them.
The Secret Doctrine was the universally diffused religion of the ancient world. Proof of its diffusion, authentic records of its history, a complete chain of documents, showing its char- acter and presence in every land, together with the teachings of all its great Initiates or Masters, exist to this day in the secret crypts of libraries belonging to the Secret Schools and Fraternities.
The days of Constantine were the last turning point in his tory, the period of the supreme struggle that ended in the West- ern world; throttling the old religions in favor of the new ones, build on their bodies. Thence the vista into the far distant Past, beyond the "Deluge" and the "Garden of Eden," began to be forcibly and relentlessly closed by every fair and unfair means against the indiscreet gaze of posterity. Every issue was blocked up, every record that hands could be laid upon, de- stroyed.
This same Constantine who, with his soldiers, environed the Bishops at the first Council of Nice, A. D. 325, and dic- tated terms to their deliberations applied for Initiation into the Mysteries, and was told by the officiating priest that no purga- tion could free him from the crime of putting his wife to death or from his many perjuries and murders. Every careful and unbiased student of history knows why the Secret Doctrine has been heard of so little since the days of Constantine. An exo- teric religion, antl belief in personal God blotted it out; and yet, the very Pentateuch conceals it, and for many students of the Kabalah, of the coming century, the seals will be broken.
There are three fundamental propositions which underlie the Secret Doctrine;
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(1). "An omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless, and Immutable Principle on which all speculation is impossible, since it tran- scends the power of human conception, and could only be dwarfed by any human expression or similitude. It is beyond the range and reach of human thought — in the words of Man- dykya, "Unthinkable and unspeakable." This Infinite and Eternal Cause — dimly formulated in the "Unconscious" and "Unknowable" of current Philosophy — is the rootless root of "all that was, is, or ever shall be." In Sanskrit it is "Sat." This "Beness" is symbolized in the Secret Doctrine under two aspects. On the one hand, absolute abstract Space, representing bare subjectivity, the one thing which no human mind can either exclude from any conception or conceive of by itself. .
On the other hand, absolute abstract Motion, representing "Unconditional Consciousness." Spirit (or Consciousness) and Matter are, however, to be regarded, not as independent reali- ties, but as the two facets or aspects of the Absolute, which con- stitutes the basis of conditional Being whether subjective or objective. "Considering this metaphysical triad" (the one reality, Spirit and Matter) "as the root from which proceeds all manifestation, the 'Great Breath' assumes the character of pre^ cosmic Ideation."
(2). The second of the three postulates of the Secret Doc- trine is: "The eternity of the Universe in Toto as a boundless plane: periodically 'the playground of numberless Universes incessantly manifesting and disappearing,' called 'the manifest- ing stars' and the 'sparks of Eternity.' 'The Eternity of the Pilgrim' (the Monad or Self in man) is like a wink of the Eye of Self-Existence. 'The appearance and disapperance of worlds is like a regular ebb of flux and reflux."
(3). "The fundamental identity of all Souls with the Uni- versal Over-Soul, the latter being itself an aspect of the Un- known Root; and the obligatory pilgrimage for every Soul — a Spark of the former — through the Cycle of Incarnation in ac-
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cordance with Cyclic and Karmic law, during the whole term." "The pivotal doctrine of the Eastern Philosophy admits no privileges or specific gifts to man, save those won by his own Soul by personal effort and merit though a long series of De- velopment and possibly many Incarnations."
Souls are reincarnated many times; but not the person (which implies the body), for the body returns to the dust from whence it came. These things were taught by the Essenes, Gnostics, Therapeutae, and Jesus; and the doctrine is embodied in the parable of the Talents, as thus explained: Into the Soul of the individual is breathed the Spirit of God, divine, pure, and without blemish. It is part of God. And the individual has, in his earth-life, to nourish that Spirit and feed it as a Flame with oil. When you put oil into a lamp, the essence passes into and becomes flame. So is it with the spirit of him who nourishes the Soul. It grows gradually pure, and becomes the Soul. By this means the Soul becomes the richer. And, as in the parable of the Talents, where God has given five talents, man pays back ten; or he returns nothing, and perishes.
When a soul has once become regenerate, it returns to the body only at its own free will, as a Redeemer or Messenger of Light to those not yet Regenerated. Such a one regains in the flesh the memory of the past. Regeneration or Transmutation may take place in an instant; but it is rarely a sudden transi- tion from the mortal to the Immortal; and it is best that it comes gradually, through normal growth, so that the "Mar- riage" of the Soul be only after a prolonged engagement.
The doctrine of "Counterparts," so familiar to certain classes of Spiritualists, is a travesty, due to delusive spirits, on the "Marriage of Regeneration." Regeneration does not affect the interior man only. A Regenerate person may have his body such that no poison will cause death and that disease cannot gain foot hold. ("Zanoni," in Lytton's story, "drinking the poisoned wine.")
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At death, a portion of the spirit remains unconsumed — untransmuted, that is, unrefined. The spirit is fluid, and between it and vapor is this analogy. When there is a large quantity of vapor in a small place it becomes condensed, and is thick and gross. But when a portion is removed, the rest be- comes refined, and is rare and pure. So it is with the spirit. By the transmutation of a portion of its material the rest be- comes finer, rarer, and purer, and continues to do so more and more until — it has all returned to God. The Soul, after many incarnations, and by the help of the Spirit, returns to the Di- vine Soul, and becomes associated with God.
Every Soul must work out its own salvation. Salvation by faith and the vicarious atonement were not taught, as now in- terpreted, by Jesus, nor are these doctrines taught in the esoteric Scriptures. They are later and false perversions of the original doctrines. In the early Church, as in the Secret Doctrine, there was not one Christ for the whole world, but a Potential Christ in every man. Theologians first made a fetish of the Imper- sonal, Omnipresent Divinity; and then tore Christos from the hearts of all humanity in order to deify Jesus, that they might have a God-man peculiarly their own!
How much one's idea of God colors all his thoughts and deeds, is seldom realized. The ordinary crude and ignorant conception of a personal God more often results in slavish fear on the ene hand, and Atheism on the other. It is what Carlyle calls "an absentee God, doing nothing since the six days of creation, but sitting on the outside and seeing it go!" This idea of God carries with it, of course, the idea of creation, as some- thing already completed in time; when the fact is, that creation is a process without beginning or end. The world — all worlds — are being "created" today as much as at any period in the past. Even the apparent destruction of worlds is a creative, or evolutionary process. Emanating from the bosom of the All, and running their cyclic course; day alternating with night, on
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the outer physical plane, they are again indrawn to the invisible plane, only to re-emerge after a longer night and start again on a higher cycle of evolution. Theologians have tried in vain to attach the idea of immanance to that of personality, and ended in a jargon of words and utter confusion of ideas. A personal Absolute is not, except in potency. God does not think, but is the cause of Thought. God does not love, He is Love, in the perfect or absolute sense; and so with all the Divine Attributes. God is thus the concealed Logos, the "Causeless Cause." God never manifests Himself (to be seen of men, except by symbol- ism). Creation is His manifestation; and as creation is not complete, and never will be, and as it never had a beginning, as such, there is a concealed or unrevealed potency back of and beyond all creation, which is still God.
All men are brothers by right of being born of woman and through the same first cause, and by all the laws of Nature and by the very being of God. But so long as religion defines Heresy as a crime, or imagines a God with human attributes, "man's inhumanity to man" will continue to make "countless millions mourn," and find vent for all evil passions justified by their idea of God.
Christ is no less Divine because all men may reach the same Divine state of Perfection. It will be urged that "there is no other name given under heaven or amongst men whereby we can be saved." This is the Ineffable Name, which every Initiate is to possess through becoming, and salvation and per- fection are synonomous. Every act in the life of Jesus, and every quality assigned to the Christ, is to be found in the life of Krishna and in the legend of all the Sun- Gods from the remotest time, showing thereby that in the hearts of man has always been found an understanding of what Christ, or the Perfect Man, should be.
One of the principle reasons the orthodox Churchman will find to oppose this view is not that it dethrones or degrades the
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Christ, but that it disproves the idea of the Christ as their ex- clusive possession, and denies that all other religions are less Divine than their own. The same selfishness is brought into religion that is indulged in regard to other possessions, such as wife and children, and other things highly valued; and the same partisan spirit that we find in politics (and this more than any- thing else appears to justify selfishness in general) militates against the institution of a reign of Justice to all men, and pre- vents the founding of a Great Republic composed of all nations of the earth with equal opportunities to all. This idea of a Brotherhood of Man was a cardinal doctrine in the Ancient Mysteries; because the Mysteries could not conceive of any favorite in the Divine Conception. Justice regards each indi- vidual of all the myriads constituting humanity with equal favor, granting to each one either the favor or the punishment earned. Justice of God toward all implies Justice toward each other among men. This principle of Justice is a Universal Law, and that such Justice may be meted out to all and the per- fectibility of man's nature through evolution accomplished, necessitates Reincarnation.
The number of souls constituting humanity, though prac- tically innumerable, is, nevertheless, definite. Hence the doc- trine of pre-existence taught in all the Mysteries applied to "every child of woman born," all conditions in each life being determined by previous lives. Thus the Fatherhood of God in the personification of Divinity in Humanity includes the Uni- versal and Unqualified Justice which all men will receive sooner or later during their existence on the earth plane. No one can escape; the rich and favored sons of today, will be, under such an absolutely just law, the beggars of tomorrow.
The real Initiates in all ages, knowing this from the les- sons taught in the Mysteries of Initiation, have ever been the foes of Autocrats, Oligarchies, Potentates, and Oppression in every form, whether ecclesiastical or political. Neophytes are
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taught to obey the laws of the country in which they live. If such laws are clearly unjust, then they are at perfect liberty to work for their rescinding or replacement by just laws. Initi- ates are not agents of Revolution, but of Evolution. By en- lightenment and persuasion they may strive to reform a nation or a church, but they do not attempt to overthrow either. The true, lasting Republic is the outgrowth of granting equal rights to all, and a jealous monarch in Church or State will naturally oppose the diffusion of doctrines that tend to the liberation and enlightenment of the people.
Mysticism does not preach a new religion, there can be none, it only reiterates the New Commandment announced by Jesus, as the .mouthpiece of the New Dispensation of that Se- cret School — the Essenes in which he had been trained and to which he belonged. This same Commandment had been an- nounced by every great reformer of religion since the dawn of history. Drop the theological barnacles from the Religion taught by Jesus, and by the Essenes and Gnostics of the first centuries, and it is the true and eternal Mysticism of the Secret Schools. Mysticism, or Occultism, is not derived from the Ancient Religion, Secret Doctrine of the Kabalah, but is the Secret Doctrine.
The old Hebrew Kabalah as part of the Great Universal Wisdom-Religion of Antiquity, stands squarely for the Equal Rights and Opportunities of all men, and this was actually per- sonified in the Essenian Order at the time Jesus lived. To Churchitize Mysticism, is an impossibility; it cannot be bound by Creeds; it is free, just as those must be free, even from self, who would belong to the Secret Schools.
Dr. J. D. Buck, the universally respected Mystic Mason, wrote: "The thinnest veil over the Sublime Mystery of the Ineffable Name is Brotherhood and Love! The gross darkness that hangs like a black veil over the Shekinah is Selfishness and Hate. Even so hath it ever been; and so will it ever be till
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Brotherly Love, Relief, and Truth reign universally in the hearts of all humanity. The refinements of so-called civiliza- tion do not change the essential nature of man. Beneath all these there sleeps or wakes a demon or an angel, and one of these is ever in chains, for no man can serve two masters."
Had Dr. Buck lived a few years longer and witnessed the self sacrifice of the millions during the late war, and the profi- teering of others during this same time, both classes calling themselves Christians, his conclusions that demons still lived in some men would have been greatly strengthened. Possibly never in the history of the world, even when under clearly pagan rule, has so much selfishness been manifested by such a diver- sity of men in all classes as during these days of Reconstruc- tion, propoundedly manifesting to the student of history that churchanity has undoubtedly been a failure because it has for- gotten Christianity.
The Science and Religion of the West are in perpetual conflict. The genius of this religion discerns Faith and Miracle as its foundation. Science holds as its ideal Fact and jpurely materialistic Law. Thus religion is necessarily illogical, while science is materialistic to the extreme; and, thanks to both, mankind is as far from real knowledge of the nature and des- tiny of the Soul as it was two thousand years ago. The conflict has long been maintained; it is a war to the death; both science and religion are gradually being reformed, and long before the battle ceases, neither of the original champions will be found to exist in their present form.
The religion of the Secret Schools is vastly different and in harmony; Faith and Absolute Law are at the base, so-called miracles rest upon Law and Justice, for God cannot be unjust that He may perform a miracle. Science, as acknowledged by the Secret Schools, is founded on Logic, Law and Spirit as the Life of the material with which science deals.
The western world laughs at this; for, looking at the Se-
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cret Doctrine and the mighty religions of India, Egypt, Greece, and Judea only from the outside, nothing but discord, super- stition, and chaos can be seen. But, if one examines the sym- bols, questions the Mysteries, and searches out the root-idea of the founders and of the prophets, harmony will be found throughout. Along divers and often # winding paths, one will always reach the same point, so that penetration into the Ar- canum of one of these religions means entrance into the secrets of the rest. Then a strange phenomenon takes place. By de- grees, but in a widening circle, the Doctrine of the Initiates is seen to shine forth in the Center of the religions, like a Sun clearing away its nebula. Each religion appears as a different planet. With each we change both atmosphere and celestial orientation, still it is always the same Sun which illumines us. India, the mighty dreamer, plunges us along with herself into the dream of eternity. Egypt, sublime and imposing, austere as death, invites us to the journey beyond the grave and shows us there is no death. Enchanting Greece sweeps us along to. the magic feasts of Life, and gives to her Mysteries the seduc- tion of her form, charming or terrible in turn, and of her ever- passionate Soul, that soul which was burned out of her through her practice of homo-sexuality, taught and practiced by the Priestess of hell — the poetess Sapho, a cult rapidly undermin- ing Western civilization. Finally Pythagoras scientifically for- mulated the Esoteric Doctrine, gives it the most nearly complete and concise expression it had ever had. From these, then will come the Science-Religion of the not far distant future.
The western theory of religion is that of a Personal God and an arbitrary and equally mechanical, though miraculous, creation; of a Revelation equally miraculous; of souls created as by arbitrary caprice of Deity, with the accidental co-opera- tion of man, ever in violation of Divine Law. It talks of Laws, but admits their abrogation through the Will (caprice) of God. It is true that neither Science nor Religion has openly formu-
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lated the foregoing creeds but they are fair deductions from the postulates assumed, the logical results of a Nature without In- telligence; and a God who creates Laws only to annul them at his own good pleasure so he may perform a Miracle whereby to force His foolish children to both fear and believe in Him, neither of which they inwardly do, though outwardly act as if they did. Reconciliation between such a Science and such a Religion becomes impossible, because each is a contradiction of the other and to itself. Preaching Law, it yet teaches the Great Lawgiver can abrogate all Law.
How vastly different this from the Doctrine taught by Or- pheus: "God is one and eternally unchangeable. He reigns over all. The Gods are diverse and innumerable, for Divinity is eternal and infinite. The greatest gods are the souls of the constellations. Each constellation has its own suns and stars, earths and moons, and all issue from the Celectial Fire of Zeus, from the Initial Light. Half-conscious, inaccessible, and un- changeable, they govern the mighty whole by their unvarying movements. Each revolving constellation draws along in its ethereal sphere phalanxes of demi-gods or radiant souls who were formerly human, and who, after descending the scale of kingdoms, have gloriously ascended the cycles, and finally issued from the round of generations. It is through these divine spirits that God breathes, acts, and manifests Himself; or, rather, these form the breath of His living soul, the rays of His eternal consciousness. They rule over armies of lower spirits which govern the elements; they control the universe. Far and near, they surround us, and, although of immortal essence, they as- sume ever-changing forms, according to nation, epoch, or region. The impious man who denies their existence still dreads them; the pious man worships without knowing them; the Initiate knows, attracts and sees them, I struggled to find them, braved death, and, as is said, descended into hell to tame the demons of the abyss, to summon the gods from on high to my beloved
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Greece, that lofty heaven might unite with earth, listening with delight to strains divine. Celestial beauty will become incarnate in the flesh of woman, the Fire of Zeus will run in the blood of heroes, and, long before mounting to the constellations, the sons of the Gods will shine forth like Immortals."
There is nothing negative in the Secret Doctrine, nor in the Doctrines of Krishna, Orpheus, and the other Gods. All they taught was of a positive nature. It is only in the western interpretation of religion, which are ofttimes mere forgeries of the Eastern Doctrines that we find everything negative. A lie can never be positive, because the positive element is missing.
Krishna, an Initiate as mighty as Orpheus, taught the doc- trine of the immortal soul, its rebirths and mystical union with God. The body, he taught, envelopes the soul, which makes therein its dwelling, and is a finished thing; but the indwelling soul is invisible, imponderable, incorruptible, eternal. "The earthly man is threefold (and four-square), like the Divinity of which he is the reflection; intelligence, soul, and body. If the soul is united with the intelligence it attains to Sattva — Wisdom and Peace; if it remains uncertain, between the intelli- gence and the body, it is dominated by Rajas — passion — and turns from object to object in a fatal circle; if it abandons itself to the body it falls into Tamos — want of reason, ignorance, and temporary death. This every man may observe in and about him.
"The soul never escapes the law, but always obeys it. This is the Mystery of Rebirths. As the depths of heaven are laid bare before the starry rays, so the abyss of life light up be- neath theglory of this truth. When the body is dissolved, when Sattva is in the ascendant, the soul flies away into the region of those pure beings who have knowledge of the Sublime. When the body experiences this dissolution whilst Rajas dominates, the soul once more comes to live amongst those who have bound themselves to things on earth. Again, if the body is destroyed
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when Tamas dominates, the soul, whose radiance is dimmed by matter, is again attracted by the wombs of irrational beings.
"The devout man, surprised by death, after enjoying for some time the due reward of his virtues in superior realms of peace, finally returns again to inhabit a body in some holy and respectable family. But this kind of regeneration in this life is very difficult to attain. The man thus born again finds himself possessed of the same degree of application and ad- vancement, as regards the intellect, as he had in his first body, and he begins to work fresh perfection through service and devotion.
"The mighty and profound secret, the sublime and sover- eign mystery, is: To attain to perfection one must acquire the knowledge of unity, which is above wisdom; one must rise to the divine Being who is above the personal Soul, above the in- telligence. This divine Being, this sublime Friend is in each one of us. God dwells within each man, though few can find Him. This is the Path to salvation. Once thou hast perceived the perfect Being who is above the world and within thyself, do thou decide to abandon the enemy, which takes the form of desire. Control thy passions. The joys afforded by the senses are like wombs of future sufferings. Not only do good, but be good. Let the motive be in the action, not in its fruits. Abandon the fruits of thy works, but let each action be as an offering to the Supreme Being. The man who sacrifices his desire and works to the Being whence proceed the beginnings of all things, and by whom the universe has been formed, attains to perfec- tion by this sacrifice. One in spirit, he acquires that spiritual wisdom which is above the worship of offerings, and experiences a felicity divine. For he who within himself finds his happiness, his joy, his peace, and light, is one with God. Know then that the soul which has found God is freed from rebirth and death, old age and grief. Such a soul drinks the water of Immor- tality."
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Thus Krishna explained his doctrine, which was really the Secret Doctrine of the Ancients, given in language harmonizing with the age. By inner contemplation he gradually raised his disciples to the sublime truths which had been opened out to himself through his visions, the result of living the exalted life.
The old universal Wisdom Religion or Secret Doctrine is scientific to the last degree; for beneath both Science and Re- ligion is the Philosophy which discerned the ordinary process of Eternal Nature, with no "missing links" in evolution, and no caprice or contradiction anywhere in Cosmos. This is the Science-Religion that is being implanted in the Western World by the Secret Schools and as it grows, so will the formal creeds and materialistic science be swept aside.
The man reaching perfection is a Christ; and Christ is united to God. This is the birthright of every human Soul. It was taught in all the Greater Mysteries of Antiquity; but the exoteric creeds of Churchanity, derived from the parables and allegories in which this doctrine was concealed from the igno- rant and the profane, have accorded this Supreme Consumma- tion to Jesus alone, and made it obscure to all the rest of hu- manity. In place of this, the grandest doctrine ever revealed to man, theologians have set up Salvation by faith* in a man-
* America is called a Christian Nation; all who do not belong to one of the established churches are frowned upon, but the Student in the Secret Schools cannot see the consistency, and why not? As there is before us a letter from a friend living in St. Joseph, Mo., which states in part: "There was much suffering in St. Joseph and fate visited all alike, slack two-thirds dirt was put up by dealers and people had to pay ten to fifteen dollars a ton. It was an outrage on humanity. Coal sold at ten dollars in one-fourth ton lots and half the time dealers would not deliver it for less than three to five dollars per quarter ton, many poor could not pay this on top of coal prices. All this on the tenth of December, bitter cold weather and the poor forced to meet the demands of robbers or freeze.
All these dealers live in a church-going community, most of them, if not all, belong to some church, are known as Christians, yet in spite of all this, they are allowed to continue their robbery of the poor and needy and continue to belong to the church and be received as respected
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made creed, and the authority of the Church to "bind or lose on earth or in heaven.'' Law is annulled; Justice, dethroned; Merit, ignored; Effort, discouraged; and Sectarianism, Atheism, and Materialism are the result. How could it be otherwise when the millions of poor are at the mercy of the profiteers and unionized labor, and still have no greater assurance of gaining the "Kingdom of Heaven'' than those who systematically rob and degrade them?
All real Initiation is an internal, not an external, or formal process. The outer ceremony is useful only so far as it sym- bolizes and illustrates, and thereby makes clear the inward change taking place. In many of the Fraternities, ceremonial Initiation is entirely dispensed with until after inner Initiation has been accomplished, as it often clouds the mind that would otherwise be clear. In true Initiation no ceremonies are neces- sary. To be initiated truly, means to be transformed; to be transformed is to have become regenerated ; and this results only by trial, by effort, by se£/-conquest, through sorrow, disappoint- ment, failure; and a daily renewal of the conflict. It is in this that man must "work out his own salvation." The consumma- tion of Initiation is Mastership according to the "degree" one has been able to overcome the finite, it is to have found the Christos; for these are the same. They are the goal, the perfect consummation, of human evolution through conscious develop- ment.
By constant struggle and daily conflict the Initiate has conquered self. Life after life he has gathered experience. Truly hath he been a "man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." He
citizens. This, the student of the Secret Doctrine contends, is the result of the doctrines of "Salvation by Faith" and Vicarious Atonement."
Such men could not for a moment continue in the Secret Schools, because they are guilty of the greatest crime man can commit, namely, Injustice to those too weak to defend themselves. The Secret Schools teach the Equal Rights to Justice and Fair-dealing to the weak as well as the strong.
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has assailed all problems; studied all science; exhausted all litanies; apprehended all philosophies; practiced all arts. At every step he has loved and helped humanity more and more, and sought his own benefit less and less. Grown familiar thus with all planes of life by sore trial, by bitter conflict, by fre- quent defeat, by hope deferred, almost despairing, he has at last mastered the selfish self, and so desiring nothing, every- thing comes to him.
The Initiate of the highest degree — one who has power to command the elemental spirits, to create the elementals, can, through the same agency, heal the disorders and regenerate the functions of the body, often in himself and in many others. And this he does by an exercise of his will which sets in motion the AEtheric fluids.
Such a person, an Initiate, or Hierarch, of the Secret Science, is, necessarily, a person of many incarnations. It was principally in the East that these were to be found, for it was there that the oldest souls were wont to congregate. It was in the East that human science first arose; and the soil and astral fluids were charged with power as a vast battery. The Hierarch of the Orient both was himself an older soul and had the mag- netic support of a chain of older souls, and the earth beneath his feet and the medium around him were charged with electric force to a degree not to be found elsewhere. It was for this rea- son that the East was far more enlightened than the West. This, alas, is no longer true because of the negativeness into which the peoples of the East allowed themselves to fall, and now men of the West are the Masters of the great East and the millions of souls in the East are gradually falling into the like sleep which overtook Egypt, Greece, Persia and other highly devel- oped civilizations of the past.
How can man become such a Master according to the Doc- trine? The man who is without fear and without concupis- cence; who has courage to be absolutely poor and absolutely
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just and kind. Who is ready and willing to study, obey and live the life taught. When it is all one whether he has gold in his possession or has none, whether he owns the house and lands on which he lives or whether another does, whether he has world- ly reputation or whether he is an outcast, who is ready to defend the poor but just against power and injustice, such an one is ready for the Path.
It is not wrong to have possessions, but it is -necessary to hold the attitude that all material things are merely for use in the climb to the Divine. It is not essential to be a virgin; it is important to set no value on flesh. There is nothing so diffi- cult to attain as this equilibrium — the Double Triangle, the White interlaced with the Black. When you have ceased to wish to retain or to burn, then you have the remedy in your hands, and it is a hard and a sharp one, and a terrible ordeal. Never- theless, be thou unafraid. Control the five senses, and above all, the taste and the touch. The power is within you if you will to attain it. Eat no dead thing which contained warm blood. Drink no fermented drinks, while you are under train- ing. Make living entities of all the elements of your body. Take your food full of life, and let not the touch of the de- natured pass your lips. Remember that without self-control there is no power over death.
When a man has attained power over the body, the proc- ess of ordeal is no longer necessary. The Neophyte is uncler vow; the Initiate and Hierarch is free. Jesus, after his train- ing, came eating and drinking; for all things had become law- ful to him. He had undergone, while a Neophyte with the Essenes, and had freed the will and the desire. The object of the trial and the vow is polarization. When the fixed is volatil- ized, the Magian is free. Before Jesus was become the Christ he was subject; and his Initiation lasted thirty years. All things are lawful to the Hierarch; for he knows the nature and value of all.
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Through natural evolution man is continually climbing upward to higher planes; evolution fortified by Conscious de- velopment help him to reach the goal centuries or eons before natural evolution could possibly bring him to it. Through de- velopment his five senses are adjusted to observations and exper- iences of the physical plane; and he has spiritual experiences. The senses are narrow and circumscribed; yet even these be- come refined. His tastes alter, his tendencies ascend. He is reaching outward as his sympathies expand, and upward, as his ideals become higher. There is revealed to him a whole world of experience in which the lower senses play no part; a world of aspiration in which the selfish self is not the goal. The very physical bounds of this self are loosening, expanding, and dis- appearing. Hitherlo he has been conscious of flashes of intui- tion; of knowing things he has seemingly never learned. He feels inner meanings, and senses subtler powers. Not only in visions and intuitions of the day, but in dreams of the night he has experiences beyond the bounds of sense. He learns the power of Concentrated thought. By conquering self, his Will becomes strong; by subduing passion, his mind creatively power- ful. He has premonitions of coming events; for all events and thoughts and things exist first on the subjective plane, and are precipitated thence into matter. He may become clairaudient and clairvoyant. He has broken the bonds of self and begins to function on higher planes of being, thus coming into har- monious touch with the Divine.
The problem of genuine Initiation, or training in the Se- cret Science, consists in placing all the operations of the body under the dominion of the Will until the Soul can begin tc function; in freeing the Ego from the dominion of the appe- tites, passions, and the wThole lower nature. The idea is not to despise the body, but to purify and refine it; not to destroy the appetites, but to elevate and control them absolutely. This mastery of the lower nature does not change the key of the phy-
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sical nature as such, but subordinates it to that of a higher plane. Without this subordination, the clamorous lower nature drowns out all higher vibrations; as if in an orchestra, the bass-viols and the drums only could be heard ; and noise, rather than harmony, result.
The first point to be made in real Initiation is for the Neophyte to control his thoughts. Instead of passively and helplessly receiving all suggestions that come from the physical sense, or appetites, or all that come from ambition, selfishness, and pride, he selects, and chooses, and wills what thoughts shall come. In this manner he acquires mastery over his own mind, and frees his will from the dominion of Desire; or rather, ele- vates and purifies his desires.
In the Ancient Mysteries not every Initiate became a Mas- ter. There were the Lesser and the Greater Mystries. To the Lesser all were eligible; to the Greater, very few; and of these fewer still were ever exalted to the sublime and last degree. Some remained for a lifetime in the lower degrees unable to pro- gress further on account of constitutional defect or mental and spiritual incapacity; this is just as true at the present time. The Mysteries unfolded the building of worlds, the religion of Nature, the possibility of the Universal Brotherhood of Man, the Immortality of the Soul, and the natural evolution of human- ity. No ceremony was artificial or meaningless; no symbol, however grotesque to the ignorant, was merely fanciful.
Thales and Pythagoras learned in the Sanctuaries of Egypt that the earth revolved around the Sun; but they did not attempt to make this generally known, because to do so would have been necessary to reveal one of the great Secrets of the Temple, the double law of attraction and radiation, or of sympathy and antipathy, or of fixedness and movement, which is the principle of creation and the perpetual cause of life. The truth was ridi- culed by Lactanius, and long after sought to be proved a false- hood by Papal Rome.
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The Ideal in Church and State, the motive for the Eccle- siastical and Political Hierarchies, has undoubtedly been in all ages to govern men professedly for their own good. The Secret Doctrine teaches man to govern himself first, then to work in harmony with all others for the Ideal Republic and Church. So long as Hierarchies subordinate all things to the real benefit of man, and give Light and Knowledge to all in such measure as they can receive, they are a blessing and not a curse. When, however, the Potentate suppresses Knowledge, claims power by Divine Right, cr by inheritance, rather than by proof of knowl- edge, apostolic succession, and by service done to man; when ignorance or disbelief is published as a crime and men torture the body, or agonize the mind under the devil's plea — "to save the soul" — then does the Hierarchy become an enemy of both God and man. Freedom and enlightenment are the only real Saviors of Mankind; while ignorance is the father of supersti- tion, and selfishness the parent of vice.
The Ancient Mysteries were organized schools of learning, and knowledge was the signal of progress and the basis of Fel- lowship. The doors of real Initiation were open to women as to men; as they are at the present time. The Illuminati* and the Rose Cross both admit women to their training on equal basis with men, though it is regrettable, admission must be made that more women enter out of curiosity and repudiate their solemn vow, than is the case with men.
The Ancient Wisdom concerned itself largely, as do the Secret Schools at present, with the Souls of men, and under- took to elevate the material life by purifying the Soul and exalt- ing its Ideals. It teaches that souls are sexless in themselves;
^Reference to the school of the Illuminati is not to the German order, which admittedly was political, treasonable and atheistic ; believ- ing neitiier church, government, or the sacredness of marriage and the family. The Secret Schools absolutely had no connection in any
shape or form with that Order,
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and that the sex of the body is a selection by the incarnating soul. No civilization known to man has ever risen to any great heights or long maintained its supremacy, that debased woman. The Secret Doctrine demonstrates with unmistakable clearness that sexual debasement in any form is the highway of degener- acy and destruction of both man and woman, of nations quite as certainly as of individuals — that it destroys both the body and soul of man.
Ever since the time of Atlantis, the true Initiates and Mas- ters have been the keepers of the Great School. These Ini- tiates have taught the Secret Religions and true Science. The Ancient governments were Patriarchal*; the Ruler was always a Master Initiate, and the people were regarded by him as his children. In those days a reigning Prince did not consider it beneath his dignity to go into the desert alone, and there sit at the feet of some inspired recluse whereby he might receive "More Light," which he would dispense to those who were ready to receive such instructions. Instead of teaching super- stition and idolatry, when the real meaning of symbolism is revealed, it will be found to be the thinnest veil ever imposed between the sublime Wisdom and the comprehension of men. The old gods were the symbolical or personified attributes of Nature, through which man was taught to realize the existence of the Supreme Being. This was not polytheism, nor idolatry, but a system of training which could not be denned, and pointing to that which must forever remain unknown and unknowable, except by the aid of symbol, parable, and alle- gory. No word painting known to man seems half so beautiful as some of these ancient parables and allegories. Not only was every oblation to love and duty portrayed; every joy of home and affection illustrated, and the most common duties of
*"Our Story of Atlantis" by Dr. Phelon, Secret School of Atlantis, Luxor and Elphante.
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life, feats of valor, devotion, and self-sacrifice depicted, but in a language so musical, and in rhythm and meter so perfect, as to make the whole recital more like a symphony than a poem. This symbolic writing is continued by us in the present day, in chemistry, medicine and other science.
The parables were not invented to conceal the truth from those who could comprehend it, or to keep the people in igno- rance whereby the Priests and Rulers might preserve their power; for no Initiate cares fcr power except that he may do good to humanity; nor does he seek to control any people or office, the people seek the Initiate. "We seek no man, but men seek us." Power did not ccme through the people but by development and possession of the Mysteries, continually exer- cised and exemplified in all the works of the initiate, was the badge of office and sign of authority. To such a Priesthood the people rendered most willing obedience. The doors of Initiation were open, then as at present, to all who had evolved the capac- ity "to Know, to Dare, to Do, and to Keep Silent" in regard to that which should not be prematurely revealed.
With the Light of the Great Lodge standing in the midst, the Peligion of the pe pie was a perfect representative of Science and Philosophy, in which superstition and idolatry found no place, hence the symmetry in all the old Wisdom- Religicns. There was originally but one Secret Doctrine; in later times, many nations had the same Philosophy; but each bad its own symbolism and method of expression.
The religions of Egypt, Chaldea and Persia, had back of them the same Secret D:ctrine, the same Mysteries, formerly taught in the Great Ledge of Atlanti^; and it was from these they were transplanted to Egypt, India, Asia, and other coun- tries. This religion was both scientific and philosophical. Egypt and Chaldea repeated the folly of India, and perished, with the exception of a few Initiates who remained true. These few kept their vows and placed the Secret Doctrines in the
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Archives of the Temples; and taught those who became the future Masters, such as Hermes, Zoroaster, Confucius, and others who thereafter taught the Secret Doctrines to a selected few and revived the old religion under new names and forms harmonizing with the customs and forms of their respective countries. Pythagoras and the Schools of the Persian^ Magi*, as well as the Ansaireth of Syria where Dr. P. B. Randolph was trained and taught, keeping the true light burning; always to be found By those iruly seeking.
The conquest of Egypt by Cambyses completed the ruins of the land of the Pharoahs; and Pythagoras became the link be- tween the old philosophy and the Christian Mysteries, together with the Jewish Kabalah, derived jointly from the Mysteries of Egypt and Syria.
From the Essenes and the schools of Alexandria, then in their glory, and from the Kabalah, the Christian Mysteries were derived. In fact, the Christian Mysteries were none other than the Ancient Mysteries and Secret Doctrine, changed, it is true, to meet with ideas, customs and laws of the time. During the first three centuries after the time of Jesus these doctrines flour- ished openly but were finally forced to be taught secretly and a selected few through the conquest of Constantine, followed by the dark ages.
The religion of Jesus was that of the Ancient Mysteries; it was the same Wisdom-Religion, though perhaps the ethical features were more pronounced, as necessitated among what was termed ':a generation of vipers/ ' The ethical teachings of Jesus in time gave place to pritescraft and sacredotalism; to worldly power and thirst for conquest; and the religion, or rather, cere- monialism of Constantine was finally succeeded by the "Holy- Inquisition, " a reign of torture and bloodshed.
*The "Venerable Order of the Magi," coming clown the ages from the time before Jesus, through direct Apostolic descension, exists today and teaches the same age old Secret Doctrines.
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During this reign of terror, the Secret Schools were sup- pressed with an iron hand, though in spite of all the Inquisition could do, the schools nourished and never wanted for candi- dates. As the "Holy Inquisition" gradually lost force, pretend- ers to Occult and Mystic powers arose and these charlatans did untold harm to the Secret Doctrine.
There are many names in history covered with obloquy, and their possessors charged with fraud and imposition, who were genuine Initiates. The seeker should distinguish between self- conviction that comes from the pretender's own mouth and those accusations which come from others and are unsupported by evi- dence. As a fact, the true Master, or Initiate, never, under any circumstances, makes the claim that he is such. The man or the woman who openly claims to be either an initiate, an adept, or a master, is never what he claims to be, but merely a pretender. The pretender is usually loaded with honors and found rolling in wealth, as the regard of his deceit and lying, of fraud and cor- ruption, which he is shrewd enough to conceal from the masses but is apparent to the Initiate or the Master. Man betrays his character, his heredity, his ideas, and all his past life in every lineament of his face, in the pose of his body, in his gait, in the lines of his hands, in the tone of his voice, and in the expression of his eyes especially. No man possesses character. Character is that which he is and not something apart from himself. One need not be a Master to discover all this; he need only ob- serve, think, and reason on what he sees. The individual who is really sincere and devout will not fail to recognize sin- cerity and true devotion in an acquaintance or in any character in history that possessed these virtues. Hence the faithful stu- dent of the Secret Science, though not himself an Initiate, soon learns to recognize by unfailing signs those in the present or the past who were really Initiates and who had understanding of the Wisdom Religion.
The teal Initiate is often gibbeted by the populace and
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anathematized by the church, because he is neither time-serving nor willing to barter the truth for gold.
All along the line of history, from the foundation of Atlan- tis to the present time, may be found those who possessed the true light. Initiates who concealed both their wisdom and their own identity from vulgar notice and foolish praise ; they walked the earth in the past, as many do at present, unseen and un- recognized by the multitude, but always known to their associ- ates and to all real seekers.
These Initiates, or Masters, constitute in every age, as they do at the present time, the Great School. They are the Masters of the Fraternities known as the Rose Cross, the Magi and the Illuminati. For be it known to all those who would find the Light, to all who would trod the Path, these Secret Schools exist today as they did in the past; and initiates are to be found in them in greater number today than since the time of the fall of Egypt the Glorious. Whether these Initiates congregate beneath vaulted domes, or meet at stated times, no one would be likely to know unless he belongs to the same degree as those called ; but one thing is certain; they help to bring knowledge to humanity when most needed and often shape the destinies of nations. They are working today in the West as they have never labored before. They are enabled to give their services to many because the way has been prepared for them by "those who know;" and the present century will yet know more of them.
MISCONCEPTIONS
A destructive misconception so often met with in those who are apparently following the Path to a Higher Evolution, leading them to believe, often to teach, that in order to follow the Illum- inating Life one must ignore the body and its physical powers; the family and its necessities ; the sex and its demands, is totally devoid of any foundation in fact. The Secret Schools teach that man must "render unto Caesar that which belongs to Caesar", neglecting none of the four divisions of his being, giving equal attention to each department of his nature, at the same time in- culcating the positive doctrine that the man allowing anything to interfere with his search for the ultimate of Conscious Individu- ality (the Holy Grail) is a weakling and a disgrace to his Creator.
The Philosophy of Fire
The Philosophy of Fire underlies all True Initiation as well as the Secret Doctrine and the Ancient Mysteries; it is like- wise the foundation upon which rest all Mystic and Occult Fra- ternities.
Of all the Secret Orders of the present day, probably more is known of the Grand Fraternity of the Rose Cross* than ol any other of the Secret Schools. This is not because the Frater- nity itself has given extensively of its teachings to the profane world, but rather through the voluminous writings of such of its members as Hargrave Jennings, Paschal Beverly Randolph, Lord Belwer Lytton, Honore de Balsac, Freeman B. Dowd, and others.
In a Manifesto published during the year 1871, by the then Supreme Master of the Trple Order — P. B. Randolph, M.D., it is freely admitted the foundation of the teachings of the Fraternity is the Philosophy of Fire.
"It is urged against us that we 'believe in, and practice, Magic;' we admit the fact: we certainly do, — the pure white, oright, effulgent, radiantly glorious Magic of the Human Will,** — through and by which alone, human passions are made to correct themselves, and by wine, alone, otherwise defenseless woman is fully armed against the coarse brutal 'ty of thousands of misnamed "men and husbands;1' and this is a purely Christie
*Thc Grand Fraternity is composed of the Triple Order: The "Rose Cross Order," the "Temple of the Rosy Cross," and the "Hier- archy of Eulis."
**The "Occult Arcanum" of the Secret Schools.
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power too, an integrant of the early Christie faith — dead here, and buried nearly everywhere else, beneath mountains of gab- ble-dust and deserts of error. It is further charged that we have "certain quite extra-ordinary Esoteric, or Secret Dactrines." We admit the fact, and the animus is apparent from that other fact, namely, "that these Secret Doctrines are only divulged to the pure, virtuous, and worthy." Our assailants failed in all their schemes to penetrate these Mysteries, and the inference is plain, nor can even the disaffectd fail to see "the reason why." Now, however, we herewith present some of these "Secret Doc- trines."
"We teach that Deity dwells within the Cryptic portals ol the luminous worlds, and that the lamp that lights it is — supreme Love.
"We assert that no power ever comes to man through the intellect, that goodness alone is Power, and that that pertains to the Heart only, hence that Power comes to the Soul only through Love (not lust, mind you, but Love), the underlying, Phimal Fire-Life, sub-tending the bases of Being — the formative flowing floor of the world — the true sensing of which is the beginning of the road to personal power. Love lieth at the foundation, and is the synonym of Life and Strength and Clingingness.
"Holding, as we do, that Deity dwells within the Shadow, behind the everlasting Flame, the amazing glories of which minds have confounded with the very God, we declare all things, especially the human Soul, to be a form of Fire; that man is not the only intelligence in nature, but that there are, and the aerial spaces abound with, multiform intelligences, having their con- scious origin in Aeth*, as man has his in matter; and that there are grades of these, towering away in infinite series of Hierar- chies, human and ultra-human, to an unimaginable Eterne. We inculcate the doctrine that the Soul is a polar world of White
* Fundamental Teachings of the AEth Priesthood.
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Fire within the human body; that its negative pole resides with- in the brain as a general dwelling; that in dreamless sleep it goes to the solar plexus (Abdominal Brain) to impart stores of Life- fire to the body; in dream it visits (by sight and rapport) other scenery, and that all dreams have a determinate meaning and purpose — even though they may merely indicate indigestion or the eating of improper food which will produce disease in the system.
"We maintain that the other pole of the Soul is situated within the genital system (Pelvic Brain). That the superior pole of the soul is in direct magnetic and ethereal contact with the Soul of Being; the foundation-Fire of the Universe; with all that vast domain underlying increase, growth, emotion, beauty, power, heat, energy; the sole and base of being, the subtending Live, or Fire-floor of Existence. Hence through Love man seizes directly on all that is, and can come into actual contact and rapport with every being that feels and loves and dwells within the confines of God's habitable universe.
"Declaring that true manhood is more or less en rapport with one or more of the Upper Hierarchies of Intelligent Poten- tialities, earth-born and not earth-born, we believe and teach there are means whereby a person may become associated with, and receive instruction from, them. More than that, we believe in talismans; that it is possible to construct and wear them, and that they emit a peculiar light, discernable across the gulfs of space by these intelligent powers, just as we discern a diamond across a playhouse; that such signal to the beholders, and that they will, and do, cross the chasmal steeps to save, succor, and assist the wearer, just as a good brother here flies to the relief of him who shall give the grand hailing-signs of distress.
"God, the Soul of the Universe, is positive heat, celestial fire; the Aura of Deity (God-od) is Love, the prime element of all Power, the external Fire — sphere, the informing and forma- tive pulse of matter. The induction is crystalline; for it follows
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that whoso hath most love — whether its expression be coarse or fine, cultured or rude — hath, therefore, most of God in him or her; the element of time being competent to the perfection of all refining influences over the ocean, if not upon the hither side."
Another Rosicrucian wrote: "Justice is so late of arrival to all original thinkers — the terms of prejudice, and of astonish- ment (not in the good sense), are so long in falling off from profound researches — that even now, the Rosicrusians — in other words, the Paracelsians or Magnetists — are totally ignored as the arch-chemists, the experimenters in Fire, to whose deep thoughts, and unrelaxing labors, modern science is indebted for most of its truths.
"As astrology (not the jugglers of the stars, but the true explorers, seeking the method of being, and of working, of the glittering habitants of space) : was the mother of astronomy, so is the lore of the Hermetic Brethren — the groundwork of all present philosophy. On its applied side, Rosicrucianism is the science which is so familiar and s*o valuable. But as the Her- metic (Rosicrucian) beliefs are a great religion, they, of course, have their popular adaptations; and, in consequence, there is a mythology to them. There must always be a machinery (sym- bolism) to every faith, through which it may be known; and the mistake of people is in accepting the childish machinery and colored mythology of a religion for the religion itself.
"Mystical, fantastical, and transcendental — nay, impossi- ble, as the studies and objects of the Rosicrucians seem to be in these modern, ultra-practical days, it is forgotten that the truths of contemporaneous science are all based on the dreams of the old thinkers. Out of natural philosophy, the occult brethren sought the spirit of natural philosophy, and to this inner heaven — so unlike ordinary life — through purification of the self, through invocations*, through humbling and prayers, through
^Invocation development belongs peculiarly to the Magi system of Soul growth.
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penances to change the desires of the body for worldly things, through fumigations and incensing to raise up another world about them, and to place themselves en rapport with the inhabi- tants of it, through the purifying of the senses, and thereby to the opening of the finer senses — to the shutting-out of one state, in order to make possible the passing into another state — to all this the Rosicrucian sought to reach.'"
The Hermetic Doctrine is merely a part of the Universal Rosicrucian system, a branch of the Grand Fraternity. Their teachings concerning Fire are identical with the Rosicrucian Doctrines: "Fire is at once the great purifier and separator of elements. It is hell for the evil, but on the pure spirit it works no injury. For pure Soul is also the soul of the Fire. The whole world must be purified by this fire — the intensity of true Love for the new dispensation. When we recall the fact that Fire is also the Basis of life, we will understand what love really is, and may do for us and the whole human family.
"Like all other things he touches, the undeveloped man has constantly acted to draw down to his plane of being everything belonging to the higher conception of sex, which is itself a form of fire. He forgets it is the direct emanation of the Divine Crea- tive Thought. All the highest, purest, and sweetest thoughts lead up to the manifestation of the sex condition and sex forces, as the Alpha and the Omega, at once the beginning and the end, of both desire and fulfillment. It holds within itself the whole Divine statement of Being: "and God said, Let there be and there was." Life and death are in it; the out-pouring and the in-drawing.''
All the great lessons of living and acting are held in the three-lettered word of unperfected activity. The Law of Love — God expression in man — holds its basis of manifestation on the health activity of the sex function — the basis wherein dwells the physical fire. The beginning and the end of life, if we so will it, is held here. The moment of conclusion is the beginning of
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a new life. It is also the moment of death — the dead point at which the whole organism enters into the realms of dissolution, as it is ever striving to do. But the great sex-force and body of life carries always forward and beyond, so there shall be no dwelling within the House of Death.
"It is in this 'House of the Fire of Life' wherein is mani- fested the completion of the Divine plan. It is here the Was becomes the Is, and this Is-Is passes into the Shall be. It is through this differentiation, that the great trinity manifests itself unto itself. Verily, the kingdom of Heaven — the Power of God — lies within us, for the Transmission of Life. His knowledge of its origin is the point at which His Supremacy assumes for itself unquestioned authority — the Omnipotence of the One only Unity. Love, Sex, and Fire are one. The Three in One.*
In Sweden, on the first of May, the opening or germination of the year, the peasantry, as they do all over the North at certain times, light fires. A candle is lighted by all devout Catholics on Christmas Eve, and is kept burning, in memory and as a reminder of the mysterious Incarnation, until the dawning of the real day of the Blessed Nativity. The Yule- Log, whose bright blazing is of so much moment that with the last brand of it, most carefully and superstitiously laid aside for the purpose, the next year's Christmas Fire is to be lighted, fol- lows the same rule. The Christmas Tree, the origin of which is lost in the mists of tradition, and which Teutonic emblem (time out of mind employed in Germany) was transposed into England, though without the slightest suspicion of its Pagan meaning; is the Mystic Northern sacrifice; and the attestation, in its multitudinous blazing candles, to the Genius, or the God, of the Fire. The toys representing all the things of man and of the earth, which are suspended among the boughs in its mystic light, are the sacrifices of all good things of the world, and all
*See "Divine Alchemy."
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the products of the Creative Fiat, as in surrender and acknowl- edgement, back to the Unknown Living Spirit, or Immortal Pro- ducer, who hath chosen Fire as His symbol and His shadow.
"If the reader will refer to the crest of His Royal Highness, Prince Albert, he will find the mystic, magic horns distinctly set up. The reproduction of the ever-recurring symbol which is recognizable as horns, wings, or otherwise in the head-pieces of his ancestors of the North. The rough Rustic Soldiers who, in their barbarian incursions, overturned (in the Roman be- liefs), and buried in the ruins of the Empire, a faith identical, in its secrets, with their own, All-ignorant of the fact that the symbols of both spoke but the same tale, the original, Soular, Fire Faith.
"The laurel-wreath around the head of heroes and Empor- ers, accorded only to the great conquerors, the Imperator, or the poet (majestic Triplicate!), not only mark out the line, and denote the place of the organs of the highest intellectual and god-like faculties in the brows of the human being, but prove the knowledge of the ancients of phrenology, and represent the original starry radius — that which symbolically invests the head of all the Gods. It speaks the Spirit Flame radius — magnetic and supernatural — intensifying to its real magico-generative power in a circle of intolerable light, about the head; in which Mystic Light all magic and sorcery, as well as all Sainthood, was supposed, by the Rosicrucians, to be possible, in accord- ance with the laws of the super-natural Fire-World. Crowns, garlands, wreaths, all the insignia of dignity that encircle the head; and all passing, be it remarked, over the psysico-phre- nological places of the faculties of "causality, comparison, won- der, and imagination," and in tracing them along, disclosing and glorifying all the bodily points of the means of the greatness of man — mitres and priestly head coverings, the tonsure of the sacredotes, freeing the sacred circle of the intellect (within which may the terrifically grand, very apprehension of God
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Himself be realized); from the barbarian and the degraded-— nay, brute-like giowth of hair, the very investiture and most closely branding confession, and the complete and irresistible conviction of the beasts — most abundant, and the grossest, there were, in the scale, lowest; — sceptres, wands, priestly staves or crosiers, batons and maces: — all these marks of rank, with the original disk, orb, mound, surmounting, with the mystic symbol of the Cross, the royal reds or sceptres of the European mon- archs:— All these forms are but the changes and reproduction of the rod of the Magician. He whose creed was the Fire-faith, and whose secret means of working upon nature was the mys- terious ''Sorcerer's Sign," displayed upon, and through which stretched — he declared — the "images" of worlds, and converse with the real Sub-strata of which, he pronounced, was by spells, as spirit-visages were only to be won to the sight, or through en- chantments.
It has already been indicated that both Krishna and Orpheus taught the Christian Mysteries. Buddha, another founder of religion, also taught these Mysteries and Secret Doc- trines but in their negative form.
"The subject of Buddhism is the obscurest in the whole round of learned inquisition," says Hargrave Jennings: "This old, and beyond all measure, broadest and sublimest of all the religions of the East — this ancient and really philosophical be- lief— demands a capacity to grasp abstractions before its prin- ciples can be understood. Men who argue from effect to cause — men who rpp ehend cause as all — that is, cause as gathered from an experience derivable from being — cannot but fail in at- taining to the disclosure of it. Materialism is a constant charge urged upon the Buddhist. In cne sense, materialism is cor- rectly assured of him. For Buddhism denounces all being, apart from form, as impossible. It is the purest Spinozism. It is identical with it.
"Accepted with the literal eye, the tenets of thf Indian
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theology, in reference to its Buddhist groundwork, appear to present the usual average of mythological fabling. But we judge upon the means of expression, not upon the thing ex- pressed. That, in the very terms of expression, has escaped. As the reconcilement of that which 'knows no sense,' with appre- hension through the means of sense alone, must always be im- possible. Man's very being — that is, the laws by which he is, of his mind — shut him up, as it wrere, within themselves (or itself), as in a prison. And all his knowledge of things comes from that Light shining within his prison — his mind. Within that radius, the Light is perfect and he himself perfect. But what guesses he, or can he know, of the great Light without? That light, to him, may be no light. Light is material. Being, itself, only necessary to matter, and the life of it, or the soul oi the world,
"This was the faith taught by those Persians who believed in the one Universal groundwork of light — the soul, or ultimate principle of everything to be known — which is the religion of the Magi, of Zoroaster, of the Guebres, of the modern Indian Parsees as of the middle age European Bohemians ; the remains of whose Fire-Palaces, or Fire-Temples, are yet to be seen, crumbling, indeed, into their own god, light, around the reverend and time- battered, as well as war-battered, Prague.
"Man is the center to himself in his light of mind, shining as in his castle and prison of body. The forceful outer day — the god of the universal circle of things — once, in its violent in- qu- st, fixed, cranny and penetrating, would annihilate the tem- porary possessor of the tenement, and absorb all within (that is, him), to itself — laws to light; organism to broad being, until, reincorporate; that is, concrete.
"The whole round world is as a microcosm, whose wonders are exhaustless; whose beauties are beyond expression; whose changes, whose decay, whose rcommitment into new forms is as the ceaseless revolvment of the Inexpressible Glory. Through
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the sea floors and their multitudinous mimic continents, fruitful of moving life, fecund with their three-growths and their semi- Sylvan, semi-oceanic vegetation; through the clouds of the seas that rest or roll over them, through which speed the winged ships as golden (sunlighted)1 specks; through the hollow-crusted earth and its rigid rocks — -earth-torn and battered like a battle beaten man of Eternal War, as it circles its resounding way amidst the roads of the lighted stars, 'baring' to the changing Sun, and to the cold, renewing moon, its ploughed side, globing Up, still defiant, with the wounds of the contentions of the cen- turies and with the retardation of the space-forces'; — through the 'built-work' of Nature, in short, runs the ever coursing Inner Spirit, which forces, in its stupendous track (comet-like) the bordering matter into Flame — to Life.
"Is not all the world a woven tissue — wizard-colored — of which the creative sun strikes the spangles into sparkling; stains, prismatically, with the rose-hues of being, or the blues of decay — or, rather, change? Roars not old ocean with his caves; as the Nereid music swelleth or sinketh, to fascination, loudly or faintly through its shell? Fires, and smokes, and springs, and steam attest the attenuate bulk, spun through the hands of the Great Magnetic Life, or by the power of the Earth-Body, into tissues. What is at the core, and the mighty heart of the great world, but the spouting fire? What are the magnificent air- shapes of our atmosphere; what the crossed cloud-platforms of our sky; what the reduplicate and multiplicate fog-work and flocculance of the Western or the Eastern Heavens, when the golden or the burning light is poured through the heaped won- der-worlds of the Magician of the Great Air; — what should be all the cloud-settings of our sky, but as the precipitate, and dross, of the mere 'used-up matter;' — glorious to our senses, as even all the refuse is ? And if Fire be, in its own nature — so to speak — but the roaring back, the illuminate, of Nature from the real unto the unreal ( as which the Magi teach, and as which
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the worshippers of the Spirit of Fire believe), then the very ex- cess of material light shall be but as the very excess of the dense matter, remonstrating (as it were), itself the brighter as it is, in itself, the blacker. Nor are these the vagaries of Philosoph- ers, but the world-old persuasions, when the vanity of knowledge had not made a base 'machine of wheels' of the world !
"Let us rest with this sublime assurance; the Kingdom of God lieth much nearer to us than we believe in our vain imagina- tion of possibilities. Yea, is at our door! God on our Thres- hold! We all the while — Peter-like — denying Him. Denying the Spirits because we cannot feel the Spirit!
"The old Buddhists — as equally as the ancient believers in the Doctrine of the Universal Spiritual Fire — taught that Spirit Light was the floor or basis of all created things. The material side or complement of this Spiritual Light being Fire, into which element all things could be rendered; and which Fire (or Heat) was the motive of all things that are. They taught that matter or mind — as the superflux — as the sum of sensations, or as natural and unreal shows of their various kinds — were plied, as layer on layer, or tissue on tissue, on this immutable and Immortal floor or ground- work of Divine Flame, the soul of the world.
Such is the magnificent view the Buddhists hold of Crea- tion. Is it any wonder that it has more votaries than any other system of Religion? Fire — Love — God, is the foundation of this Philosophy, though in this instance taught in a negative form — that God can be reached by means of contemplation rather than by work, which supplies us with the key as to the reason a few Englishmen can rule millions of the inhabitants of India.
The emotion, intensity, mind-agitation, thought, according to the powers of the unit or the lifting heavenward: — or as the dots or dimples in the ever-flowing onwave of being: were — to speak in the familiar sense — "as impressions down," perhaps
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through and through its covers, upon this living floor of 3pirit- ual Flame. The escape of which was the magnetism — magnet- ism of the body : supersential force, or miracle, of the spirit.
The Paracelsists of the sixteenth century were also Philoso- phers of Fire and were known as such. "The Fire-Philosophers, or Philosophi per ignem, were known throughout every country of Europe and declared that the intimate Essenes of natural things were only to be known by the trying effects of Fire, direct- ed in a chemical process. They insisted that human reason might be a dangerous and deceitful guide; that no real progress could be made in knowledge, or in religion, by it, and that to all vital, that is, supernatural purpose, it was a vain thing; they also taught that Divine and supernatural exaltation was the only means of arriving at Truth. Their name of Paracelsists was derived from Paracelsus,* the eminent physician and chemist, who was the chief Philosopher of this school. In England, Robert Fludd was their great advocate and exponent. Rivier, who wrote in France; Severinus, an author of Denmark; Kun- rath, an eminent physician of Dresden; and Daniel Hoffman, professor of Divinity in the University of Helmstadt, have also treated largely on Paracelsus, and on his system.
"Akin to the school of the Ancient Philosophers and of the Magnetists cf a later period," says Dr. Ennermoser, "of the same cast as these speculators and searchers into the mysteries of nature, drawing from the same source, were the Theosophists (the Paracelsists were termed Theosophists by this author) of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuris. These practiced chemis- try, by which they asserted that they could explain the profound- est secrets of nature. As they strove, above all earthly knowl- edge, after the divine, and sought the Divine Light and Fire,
*After the "Fame Fraternities or. Discovery of the Fraternity of the most Laudable Order of the Rosy Cross" was issued by Christian Rosen- crutz, they became known as Rqsicrucians,., See "The Rosicrucians ; Their Teachings."
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through which all men acquire the true wisdom, they were called the Fire-Philosophers. As a great general principle, they called the Soul a Fire, taken from the eternal ocean of Light.
Hargrave Jennings, the Rosicrucian and Philosopher, says: "We may thus sum our historical examination. That, at every turn of our inquiry, we meet Light. At every cross-road, as it were, of our laborious journey — of our philosophical pilgrimage — we encounter this pertinacious and ever-flowing Light. Not only at birth, but as taking a prominent part in the torch-cele- bration at marriage, and again, and more impressively, at death and in the ceremonials of sepulture, the panthom of Light never fails. It is the more dimly or the brighter — the more gloriously and the more cheerfully celebrant, or the more awfully full everywhere disclosed. As everything, it must — though dis- guised— be everything. What may mean this concentrate, Re- splendent Fifure? This ever-flowing myth? This terrible, and yet this Grand Angel, found at the couch-side at our birth, ac- companying us, as the best and most distant sacrifice, to the altar of presentation, where our mother bows in her thanksgivings to the Holy God who has helped her in her time of need ; and who has equally made birth, and life, and death, and as equally vouchsafed safety in each and all? What is this that presseth in — chief est of guests — at our marriages, in all the splendor of his yellowest glow; and waiting, with his face shrouded, with his pale lights and abounding in ghostly tapers — though in the glory of the hope of heaven! — at that last, solemn scene, where the very cause of the sable royalties — black (Imperial, then, alike to poor and rich in the common Spirit-threshold upon which we all stand) — is as the smallest, and very often the least thought-of, of all the show? What, to conclude, is this Fire which is so constantly about us, and of which we think so little and know so little, but which seems over-whelmingly much? What is this wondrous, universal Element, or least proveable Soul of the World, which hath been so significantly,
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and yet so unsuspectedly, mythed; universally, through the in- telligent ages? What is this Magic reflection which is glassed through Time? We ask thinkers for an answer. But only out of their meditations — only out of the impossibility of denial — do we hope to wring the confession of the Divine Spirit that is in the Fire.
Of course we have no reference to material fire, but to a something of which the material fire is merely an image. Being the imparticled spirit, in which everything is at one, as in which are the things only unreal. And unreal things (out of the World) are the only real.
"Through two baptismals must the Initiate pass. Through the baptism of both Fire and Water. The mysterious meaning of bapt'sm by water as a symbolism prevailing through all faiths, Heathen and Christian. It is that of the earliest tradi- tional or the Pythagorean Transmigration, not abjudged as by its vulgar reading, but as signifying the onward dissolution, into nothingness, of being, that is, of this being, through the farthest separated (save air, in which man always is, and therefore al- ways is baptised) matter — water! This, therefore, is the only element for a rite. Holy water, and ablution, also signify the same although the church has lost the meaning. Thence, as from the next-loosest of matters-water, the only possible symbol for a rite. Man is delivered into the farther, supernatural, airy changes, where matter ceases — loosening utterly from above him. And, then, the Spirit of Fire, begins, taking up the matter-undu- lations. This is the freedom into the foundations, or inspiring Light— the God Flame of the Magi— the Holy Spirit of the Christians; the everything, out of this state, and the nothing in it, of all religions. Life — nay, all existence — being considered as a Purgatory cf a severer cr a more assuasive order. And, therefore, being evil— or God's Shadow — for the very reason of its being Life — or consciousness at all."
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This is the Mystic meaning cf that text in the New Testa- ment where St. John declares: "I "ndeed i aptize you with water unto repentance; tut he that comes after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear; he shall baptize you with the Koly Ghost." rn the Ian a age cf the Philoso- phers, this is the baptism with Fire.
INTELLECTUALITY
It is a fundamental doctrine of the Secret Schools that in- tellectual attainments are highly desirable and to be encouraged, though mental brilliancy alone will not make Conscious Indi- viduality a possibility. On the contrary, it may, and often does, give the possessor. an exalted opinion of himself; critical of both the teachings and actions of those who could help him on the way; unwilling to obey instructions, and prone to argue the method indicated by the instructor, thus preventing him from travelling the lowly Path leading to Soul Illumination — the boon of Immortality.
The Sacred Fire
(Continuation of Philosophy of Fire)
The appearance of God to mortals seems always to have been in brightness and great glory, whether He was angry and in displeasures, or benign and kind. These appearances are mentioned throughout the Bible.
"And it came to pass on the third day in the morning, that there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud; so that all the people that were in the camp trembled.
"And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with God; and they stood at the nether part of the mount.
"And Mount Sinai was altogether in smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire (italics mine) : and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly.
"And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice.
"And the Lord said unto Moses, go down, charge the people, lest they break through unto the Lord to gaze^ and many of them perish.
"And let the priests also, which come near to the Lord, sanctify themselves, lest the Lord break forth upon them." Exo- dus 19: 16 to 23.
We have been taught that by means of the connection? made between man and God through Jesus who became the Christ, God would draw nearer to mankind. The Lord God
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appeared to Moses long before the time of Jesus, when mankind is said to have been far less evolved than at present, then why should God be unable to appear to man at the present time? Only one answer is possible: Either man has retrograded, which we cannot, and do not, admit, or God is just as willing to appear to man today as He was in the past, provided man brings about the conditions making this appearance possible.
In these verses it is likewise clearly indicated that it is dangerous for anyone to attempt to come into the presence of God, or the Fire in which He may appear, if such are not care- fully and thoroughly prepared, for He said to Moses: "Go down, charge the people, lest they break through unto the Lord to gaze, and many of them perish.''
This was the Fundamental Doctrine taught in the Anci- ent Mysteries, just as it is in the Secret Schools of the present: That man may so live as to make it possible for God to appear unto him and instruct him, through the medium of the Fire, and furthermore, if man attempts to come into the presence of God, or draws unto himself, the Sacred Fire before he is fully prepared, death may result. In not one particle has the Secret School changed in all these years since the mighty Initiate- Priests ruled wisely in Egypt; since Moses led away the Israel- ites after the Priesthood had fallen into degradation, or the time when Jesus was trained by the Essenes.
In Deuteronomy God instructs Moses what he should teach the children he had led to safety so they might remain a great people; it would be well if the people of the present age might heed these same instructions and profit greatly thereby :
"For what nation is there so great who hath God so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is in all things that we call upon him for?
"And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day?
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"Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons' sons;
''Specially the day that thou stoodst before the Lord thy God in Horeb, when the Lord said unto me, Gather me the peo- ple together, and I will make them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that they shall live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children.
"And ye came near and stood under the mountain; and the mountain burned with -fire unto the midst of heaven, with dark- ness, clouds and thick darkness.
"And the Lord spake unto you out of the midst of the fire: ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude; only ye heard a voice.'' Deut. 4: 7-12.
In this instance it matters little whether we interpret this to mean that the fire within Moses, which we call the Soul, thus spoke to him, or whether it was actually God Himself. In the one instance it would be the Voice of God through the Living Soul within Moses, while in the other it would be God speaking directly to Moses, but even so, God does not speak to the mater- ial man; only to the Soul of Man, wruch is likewise a fire, as does God always appear through fire, which He is.
"Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian: and held the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb.
"And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush : and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.
"And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.
"And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I.
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"And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." Exodus 3: 1-5.
Why should the bush have been on fire and yet remained unconsumed? Simply because the bush here has reference to the body, the physical being named Moses, while the Fire within the bush represented the Soul of Moses having become awakened and into communication with God, as always happens when man travels the Path which leads to Illumination.
The Voice which spake unto Moses, was that of the Soul, the Conscience. It was the Soul become Conscious and in com- munication with God which Spake unto Moses and instructed him what he should do.
It is through this message received by Moses from God, whereon is based the doctrine of the modern Secret Schools, as well as that of Masonry, which inculcates the tenet, requiring the Profane to free themselves of shoes and ordinary. clothing before they may enter the Path of Initiation. It is representative of giving up all that is material and destructive when one enters the Path, shoes being emblematic of all that is material, earthly, and temporary.
The appearances of the Angel of God's presence, or that Divine Person who represents God, likewise the presence which is symbolic of God, are always in brightness ; or, in other words, the Shechinah was always surrounded with glory. This seems to have given occasion to those of old to imagine fire as the sphere in which God dwelt.
It was the fire from the Lord which consumed upon the altar the burnt offerings of Aaron :
"And Moses and Aaron went into the tabernacle of the congregation, and came out, and blessed the people: and the glory of the Lord appeared unto all the people.
"And there came a fire out from the Lord, and consumed upon the altar the burnt offering and the fat: which when all
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the people saw, they shouted, and fell on their faces. Lev: 23-24.
Strange it seems, that people in this age should be willing to believe God was willing to accept the offerings of the ancient people, but if one of us were to attempt to preach that Incense offered to God with a prayerful heart and noble desire were ac- ceptable to Him, we would be considered as either insane or fanatics. Nevertheless, if God made Laws at the creation of Order out of Chaos, then those Laws must exist today as they did in the beginning. God being unchangeable, that which He created must likewise be unchangeable, otherwise he would not be the unchangeable God, and being changeable He could not be Eternal; since that which is Everlasting and Eternal must be Unchangeable.
In Judges we find: "And Gideon went in, and made ready a kid, and unleavened cakes of an ephah of flour: the flesh he put in a basket, and he put the broth in a pot, and brought it out unto him under the oak, and presented it'.
"And the angel of God said unto him, Take the flesh and the unleavened cakes, and lay them upon this rock, and pour out the broth. And he did so.
"Then the angel of the Lord put forth the end of the staff that was in his hand, and touched, the flesh and the unleavened cakes; and there rose up fire out of the rock, and consumed the flesh and the unleavened cakes. Then the angel of the Lord departed out of his sight." Judges 6: 19-21.
The things the ancients did in goodness of heart, manifest- ing thereby their willingness to be a servant in the sight of their God, was acceptable to God, and likewise is this true at the present day. God requires the services of his creation as much at the present time as He did then, if not more so, and only the unbelief of the multitudes prevents the Lord from manifesting Himself unto his creatures.
"And David built there an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings, and called upon the Lord;
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and he answered him from heaven by fire upon the altar of burnt offering.
"And the Lord commanded the angel; and he put up his sword again into the sheath thereof.
"At that time when. David saw that the Lord had answered him in the threshing floor of Oman the Jebusite, then he sacri- ficed there.
"For the tabernacle of the Lord, which Moses made in the wilderness, and the altar of the burnt offering, were at that sea- son in the high place at Gibeon." I Chron. 21 :-26-29.
At the dedication of the temple of Solomon, God showed His pleasure by appearing in a Fire and consuming the burnt offering :
"Now when Solomon had made an end of praying, the fire came down from heaven, and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices; and the glory of the Lord filled the house.
"And the priests could not enter into the house of the Lord, because the glory of the Lord had filled the Lord's house.
"And when all the children of Israel saw how the fire came down, and the glory of the Lord upon the house, they bowed themselves with their faces to the ground upon the pavement, and worshipped, and praised the Lord, saying, For He is good; for his mercy endureth for ever." 2 Chron. 7: 1-3.
About an hundred years thereafter, Elijah made an extra- ordinary sacrifice in proof that Baal was not a god :
"And it came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that Elijah the prophet came near, and said, Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel (Jacob), let it be known this day thou art God in Israel, and that I am thy ser- vant, and that I have done all these things at thy word.
"Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that thou art the Lord God, and that thou hast turned their heart back again.
"Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt
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sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the. trench,
'''And when all the people saw it, they fell on their face.-: and they said, The Lcrd, he is the God; the Lord, he is the God.
"And Elijah said unto them, Take the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape. And they took them: and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them there," I Kings 18: 36-40.
Already in Genesis man had become degraded and through the medium of fire God made a covenant with Abram :
"But in th? fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the x\morites is not yet full.
"And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces.
"In the same day the Lcrd made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates:"'
Of such vast importance was it to every woman to become a mother that when those who were barren called upon the Lord for relief from their unhallowed state, the Lord listened unto them. Thus we find in the thirteenth chapter of Judges, an angel appeared to the wife of Manoah. Now the wife of Manoah was barren, and the angel promised her the birth of a child if she obey certain instructions which it would be well if all women of our most gloriously enlightened age would follow:
"And the angel of the Lord appeared unto the woman, and said unto her, Behold now, thou art barren, and bearest not: but thou should conceive, and bear a son.
"Now, therefore beware, I pray thee, and drink not wine nor strong drink, and eat not any unclean thing.
•For, lo, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and no razor' shall come on his head : for the child shall be a Nazarite unto
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God from the womb : and he shall begin to deliver Israel out Ot the hand of the Philistines." Judges 13 : 3-5.
There is a sound scientific reason for the instructions given the wife of the Danite: Both wine and other strong drink, as well as the meats (unclean things) are acid in their nature, and eating of them may, and often does, create such an acidity of the system that the lochia of the woman is so acid in its nature as to destroy the seed and prevent impregnation of the ovum.
Manoah desired to speak with the angel and at his request, God allowed the angel to appear before him, though Manoah thought it a man:
"So Manoah took a kid with a meat offering, and offered it upon a rock unto the Lord: and the angel did wondrously; and Manoah and his wife looked on.
"For it came to pass, when the flame went up toward heaven from off the altar, that the angel of the Lord ascended in the flame of the altar. And Manoah and his wife looked on it, and fell on their faces to the ground/' Judges 14: 19-20.
"The first appearance of God, then, being in a glory — or, which is the same thing, in light or fire — and He showing His acceptance of sacrifices in so many instances by consuming them with fire, hence it was that the Eastern people, and par- ticularly the Persians, fell into the worship of fire as a symbol of God's presence, and worshipped God in, or through, fire. From the Assyrians, or Chaldeans, or Persians, this worship was propagated southward among the Egyptians, and westward among the Greeks; and by them it was brought into Italy. The Greeks were wont to meet together to worship their Prytaneia, and there they consulted for the public good; and there was a constant fire kept upon the altar, which was dignified by the name of Vesta by some. The fire itself was properly Vesta; and so Ovid said:
"Nee te aliud Vestam, quam vivam intelligere flammam."
The Prytaneia were the atria of the temples, wherein a
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fife was kept that was never suffered to go out. On the change in architectural forms from the pyramidal (or the horizontal) to the obeliscar (or the upright, or vertical), the flames were trans- ferred from the altars, or cubes, to the summits of the typical up- rights, or towers; or to the tops of the candles, such as we see them used now in Catholic worship, which art* called "tapers/' from their tapering or pyramidal form, and which are supposed always to indicate the Divine presence or influence. This, through the symbolism that there is in the Living Light, which is the last exalted show of fluent or of inflamed brilliant mat- ter, passing off into the unknown and unseen world of celestial light (or Occult Fire), to which all the forms of things tend, and in which even idea itself passes from recognition as mean- ing, and evolves — spring up, as all flame does, to escape, and to wing away.
"Vesta, or the fire, was worshipped in circular temples, which were the images, or the miniatures of the "temple" of the world, with its dome, or cope, of stars. It was in ihe. atria of the temples, and in the presence of and before the above-men- tioned lights, and the forms of ceremonial worship were always observed. It is certain that Vesta was worshipped at Troy; and Aeneas brought her into Italy, for in the Aeneid it is written :
"manibus vittas, Vestamque potentem, AEternumque adytis effert penetralibus Ignem.'' — AEneir, ii 298.
Numa settled an order of Virgin Priestesses, whose business and care it was constantly to maintain the Holy Fire. And long befcre Numa's day, we find it not only customary, but hon- orable, among the Albans to appoint the best-born virgins to be Priestesses of Vesta, and to keep up the constant unextinguished fire.
It is from this that sprang the Catholic Vestals so well known throughout the civilized nations. This worship was all purity in its beginning but like many other pure religious prac- tices, it was abuse'd to such an extent that the underlying prin-
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ciple is no longer recognizable. The foundation of Fire Worship is in God and no man can say it is a heathen practice who has given it any consideration whatever.
"When Virgil speaks (AEneid, iv. 200) of Iarbas, in Africa, as building a hundred temples and a hundred altars, he says:
"vigilemque sacraverat Ingem, Excubian Divum asternas," — that he had "concentrated a fire that never went out." And he calls these temples and these lights, or this fire, the "Per- petual Watch," "Watch Lights," or proof of the presence of the Gods. By which expression he means, that the places and things were constantly protected and solemnized where such lights burned, and that the celestials, or angel-defenders, "camped," as it were, and were sure to be met with thickly, where these flames upon the altars, and these torches or lights about the tem- ples, were studiously and incessantly maintained"
"Thus the custom seems to have been general from the earliest antiquity to maintain a constant fire, as conceiving the Gods present there. 1 his was not merely the opinion of the inhabitants of Judaea, but it extended all over Persia, Greece, Italy, Egypt, and most other nations of the world. Even in Masonry of the present age there can be no initiation without its lighted tapers. Why?
"Prophyry imagined that the reason the most ancient mortals kept up a constant, everburning fire in honor of the im- mortal Gods was because Fire was most like God. He says that the ancients kept an unextinguished fire in their temples to the Gods because it was like them. Fire was not especially like the Gods, but through it their presence became manifest to mortals. The true God always appeared in brightness and glory; yet no one would say that the brightness was God, but was most like the Shechinah, in which God appeared. Hence the custom arose of keeping up an unextinguished fire in the ancient temples.
"God, then, being wont to appear in Fire, and being con-
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ceived to dwell in Fire, the notion spread universally, and was universally admitted. First, then, it was not at all out of the way to think of engaging in friendship with God by the same means as they contracted friendship with one another. And since they to whom God appeared saw Him appear in Fire, and they acquainted others with such appearances, He was con- ceived to dwell in Fire. By degrees, therefore the world came to be over-curious in the fire that was constantly to be kept up, and in things to be sacrificed ; and they proceeded from one step to another, till at length they filled up the measure of their aberrations, which were in reality instigated by their zeal, and by their intense desire to mitigate the displeasure of their divini- ties— for religion was a much more intense feeling in earlier days — by passing into undesirable ceremonies in regard to this fire, which they reverenced as the last possible physical form of divinity ; not only in its grandeur and power, but also in its purity.
"The pyramidal or triangular form which Fire assumes in its ascent to heaven is in the monolithic typology used to signify the great generative power. We have only to look to Stonehenge, Ellora, the Babel-towers of Central Africa, the gigantic ruins scattered all over Tartary and India, to see how gloriously they symbolized the majesty of the Supreme Being. To these upright obelisks, or lithoi, of the old world, including the Bethel, or Jacob's Pillar, or Pillow, raised in the plain of "Luz," we will add, as the commemorative or reminding shape of the Fire, the Pyramids of Egypt, the Millenarius, Gnomon, Mete-Stone, or Mark, called London-Stone, and all Crosses raised at the junc tion of four roads, all Market-crosses, the Round-Towers of Ireland, and in all the changeable aspects of their genealogy, all spires and towers, in their grand hieroglyphic proclamation, all over the world."
Thus, in what has been written, mighty truths have been given to all Neophytes, Initiates and Mystics whereby they
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should profit. It is the duty of those of the Secret Schools who are undergoing training, and while in "practice" to have their light lighted, and to burn incense; for, where the light and in- cense are, the impure Elements dare not enter, and thus is the Neophyte afforded protection, provided mind and heart are kept pure from impious and unworthy thoughts. Likewise, "when you see the Light, listen to the Voice of the Light" as Moses of old listened to the Voice in the burning bush.
The Philosophij of the Persians
As a great general principle, the Initiated, as do all the members of the Secret Schools of the present, designated the Soul a Fire, called from the eternal ocean of Light.
In regard to the supernatural — using the word in its widest sense — it may be said that "all the difficulty in admitting the strange things told us lies in the non-admission of an internal causal world as absolutely real: it is said, in intellectually ad- mitting, because the influence of the arts proves that man's feel- ings always have admitted, and do still admit, this reality.
"The Persian philosophy of Vision is, that it is the view of objects really existing in interior Light, which, assuming form, not according to arbitrary laws, but according to the state of Mind. This interior light unites with exterior light in the eye, and is thus drawn into a sensual or imaginative activity; but when the outward light is separated, it reposes in its own serene atmosphere. It is, then, in this state of interior repose, that the usual class of religious, or what are called inspired, visions, occur. It is the same light of eternity so frequently alluded to in books that treat of mysterious objects; the light revealed to Pimander, Zoroaster, and all the sages of the East, as the emanation of the Spiritual Sun. Bohmen writes of it as his Divine Vision of Contemplation, and Molinos in his Spiritual Guide, — whose work is the ground of Quietism : Quietism being the foundation of the religion of the people called Friends, or Quakers, as also of the other Mystic or meditative sects. We en- large from a very learned, candid, and instructive book upon the Occult Science.
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"Regard Fire, then, with other eyes than with those soul- less, incurious ones, with which thou hast looked upon it as the most ordinary thing. Thou hast forgotten what it is — or rather thou hast never known. Chemists are silent about it; or, may we not say that it is too loud for them? Therefore shall they speak fearfully of it in whispers. Philosophers talk of it as anatomists discourse of the continents (cr the parts) of the human body — as a piece of mechanism, wondrous though it be. Such the wheels of the clock, say they in their ingenious ex- pounding of the "whys" and the "wherefores" (and the mech- anics and the mathematics) of this mysterious thing, with a supernatural soul ;n it, called world. Such is the chain, such are the balances, such the larger and the smaller mechanical forces; such the "Time-blood," as it were, that is sent circu- lating through it; such is the striking, with an infinity of bells. It is made for man, this world, and it is greatly like him — that is, mean, they would add. ♦
"Note th? goings of the Fire, as he creepeth, serpentineth, riseth, slinketh, broadeneth. Note him reddening, glowing, whitening. Tremble at his face, dilating; at the meaning that is growing into it, to you. See that spark from the blacksmith's anvil! — struck, as an insect, out of a sky containing a whole cloud of such. Rare locusts, of which Pharaoh and the Cities of the Plain read o.' old the Secret! One, two, three sparks; — dozens come: — faste- and faster the fiery squadrons follow, un- til, in a short while, a whole possible army of that hungry thing for battle, for food for it — Fire — glances up; but is soon warn- ed in again! -lest acres :-hould glow in the growing advance. Think that this thing is bound as in matter-chains. Think that He is outside of all things, and deep in the inside of all things; and that thou rnd thy world are only the thing between: and that outside and n-ide are both identical, couldst thou under- stand the supernatural truths! Reverence Fire (for its mean- ing), and tremble at it; though in the Earth it be chained, and
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the foot of the Archangel Michael — like upon the Dragon — be upon it! Avert the face from it, as the Magi turned, dreading, and (as the symbol) Lefcre it bowed askance. So much for this Great thing — Fire !
"Observe the multiform shapes of fire; the flame- wreaths, the spires, the stars, the spots, the cascades, and the mighty falls of it; where the roar, when it grows high in Imperial raa- terdom, as that of Niagara. Think what it can do, what it is. Watch the trail of sparks, struck, as in that spouting arch, from the metal shoes of the trampling horse. It is a letter of the great alphabet. The familiar London streets, even, can give the Per- sian's God: though in ihy pleasures, and in thy commerce operations, thou so oft forgettest thine own God. Whence lib- erated are those sparks? — as stars, afar off, of a whole sky 01* flame; — sparks, deep down in possibility, though close to us; — great in their meaning, though small in their show; — as dis tant single ships of whole fiery fleets; — animate children of, in thy human conception, a dreadful, but, in reality, a great world. of which thou knowest nothing. They fall, foodless, on the re- jecting, barren, and (on the outside) the coldest stone. But in each stone, fence flinty and chilling as the outside is, is a heart of fire, to strike at which is to bid gush forth the waters, as it were, of every fire, like waters of the rock ! Truly, out of sparks can be displayed a whole acreage of fire-works. Forests can be conceived of flame — palaces of the fire; Grandest things — Soul things — last things — all things !
"W'onder no longer, then, if, rejected so long as an idolatry. the ancient Persians, and their Masters, the Magi, — concluding that they saw "All" in this supernaturally magnificent element. — fell down and worshipped it; making it the Visible represen- tation of the very truest; but yet, in man's speculation, and in his philosophers, — nay, in his commonest reason, — impossible God: God being everywhere, and in us, indeed, us, in the God-lighted
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man; and impossible to be contemplated or known outside, — be- ing All!
"Lights and flames, and the torches, as it were, of fire (all fire in this world, the last background on which all things are painted), may be considered as "lancets" of another world — the last world: circles, enclosed by the thick walls (which, however, by the Fire are kept from closing) of this world. As fire and brandishes, will the walls of this world wave, and, as it were, undulate from about it. In smoke and disruption, or combus- tion of matter, we witness a phenomenon of the burning as of the edges of the matter-rings of this world, in which world is fire, like a spot; that dense and hard thing, matter, holding it in. -Oxygen, which is the finest of air, and is the means of the quick- est burning out, or the supernatural (in this world) exhilaration of animal life, or extenuation of the Solid; and, above all, the heightening of the capacity of the Human, as being the quintess- ence of matter : this oxygen is the thing which feeds fire the most overwhelmingly. Nor would the specks, spots and stars of fire stop in this dense world-medium, — in this tissue or sea of things, — could it farther and farther fasten upon and devour the solids : eating, as it were, through them. But as this thick world is a thing the thickest, it presses out, thrusts, or gravitates upon, and stifles, in its too great weight; and conquers not only that liveliest, subtlest, thinnest element of the solids, the finest air, by whatever chemical name — Oxygen, Azote, Azone, or what not — it may be called; which, in fact, is merely the nomenclature of its composition, the naming of the ingredients which make the thing (but not the thing). The denseness of the world not only conquers this, we repeat; but, so to figure it, matter stamps upon, effaces, and treads out fire: which, else, would burn on, back, as in the beginning of things, or into itself, — consuming, as in its great revenge of anything being created other than it, all the mighty worlds which, in Creation, were permitted out of it. This is the teaching of the ancient Fire-Philosophers reestablished
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and restored, to the days of comprehension of them, in the con- clusions of the Rosicrucians of later times, who discovered the Eternal Fire; also found "God" in the "Immortal Light."*
"There are all grades or graduations of the density of matter; but it all coheres by the one law of gravitation. Now, this gravitation is mistaken for a force of itself, when it is noth- ing but the sympathy, or the taking away of the supposed thing between two other things. It is sympathy (or appetite) seeking its food, or as the closing together of two things. It is not be- cause one mass of matter is more ponderable or attractive than another (out of our senses, and in reality), but that they are the same, with different amounts of affection, and that like seeks like, not recognizing or knowing that between. Now, this thing which is, as it were, slipped between, and which we strike into show of itself, or into fire — surprised and driven out of its am- bush— is Fire. It is as the letter by which matter spells itself out — so to speak. Now, matter is only to be finally forced asunder by heat; flame being the bright, subtle something which comes last, and is the expansion, fruit, crown, or glory of heat: it is the vivid and visible soul, essence, and spirit of heat — the last evolvement before rending, and before the forcible closing again of all the center-speeding weights, or desires, of matter. Flame is the expanding out (or even exploding) flower to this growing thing, heat: it is at the bubble of it — the fruit (to which before we have likened it), or seed, in the outside Hand upon it. Given the super-natural Flora, heat is as the gorgeous plant, and flame the glorifying flower; and as growth is greater out of the greater matrix, or matter of growing, so the thicker the material of fire (as we may roughly figure it, though we hope we shall be understood), so the stronger shall be the fire, and of neces-
*See "Divine Alchemy" for the mystery of Fire — Sex.
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sity the fiercer will it be perceived to be — result being according to power.
"Thus we get more of fire — that is, heat — out of the hard things : there being more of the thing Fire in them.
"But Fire disjoints, as it were, all the hinges of the house — laps out the coherence of it — sets ablaze the dense thing, matter — makes the dark metals run like waters of light — conjures the black devils out of the minerals, and, to our astonishment, shows them much libelled, blinding, angel- white ! By Fire we can lay our hands upon the solids, part them, powder them, melt them, fine them, drive them out to more and more delicate and impalp- able texture — firing their invisible molecules, or imponderables, into clouds, into mist, into gas: out of seeing, into smelling; out of smelling into nothing — into real nothing — not even into the last blue sky. These are the potent operations of Fire — the crucible into which we cast all the worlds, and find them, in their last evolution, not even smoke. These are physical and scientific facts which there can be no gainsaying — which were seen and found out long ago, ages ago, in the reveries first, and then in the practice, of the great Magnetists (Rosicrucians), and those who were called the Fire-Philosophers, of whom we have spoken before.
"What is that mysterious and inscrutable operation, the striking of fire from flint? Familiar as it is, who remarks it? Where, in that hardest, closest pressing together of matter — where the granulation compresses, shining even in its hardness, into the solidest Laminae of cold, darkest, blue, and streaky, core-like, agate-resembling white — lie the seeds of fire, spiritual flame-seeds to the so stony fruit? In what folds of the flint, in the block of it — in what invisible recess — speckled and spotted, in what tissue — crouch the fire-sparks ? — -to issue, in showers, on the stroke of iron — on the so sudden clattering (as of the crow- bars of man) — on its stony doors. Stone carving the thing Fire, unseen, as its sepulchre; stroke warning the magical thing forth.
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Whence comes that trail of fire from the cold bosom of the hard, secret, unexploding flint? — Children as from what hard, rocky breast; yet hiding its so sacred, sudden fire-birth! Who — and what science-philosopher — can explain this wondrous darting forth of the hidden something, which he shall try in vain to ar- rest, but which, like a spirit, escapes him? If we ask what fire is, of the man of science, they are at fault. They will tell us that it is a phenomenon, that their vocabularies can give no further account of it. They will explain to us all that can be said of it, that it is a last affection of matter, to the results of what (in the world of man) they can only testify, but of whose coming and of whose going — of the place from whence it came, and the whereabouts to which it goeth — they are entirely ignor- ant,— and would give a world to know.
The foregoing, — however feebly expressed, are a few of the views of the Rosicrucians* respecting the nature of this sup- posedly familiar, but yet puzzling, thing — Fire.
*For the inner Mystery of the Fire Philosophy of the Rosicrucians, see "Divine Alchemy."
LET PHYSICAL SCIENCE ANSWER
We have always been taught, and accepted without question, that the mind functions in the brain; that through mental pro- cesses we do all our thinking, planning, reasoning, and judging; all this taking place in the head.
Why is it that when we receive unfortunate news there is no feeling in the brain, no pain, not even a depression, but instead, a heavy, cold, nauseating feeling in the pit of the stomach, di- rectly over what is termed the "Abdominal Brain"?
Why does the Solar Plexus feel cold, nervous, and we lose our appetite when under a mental (so-called) or physical strain?
If the mind functions only in the brain, as. the majority be- lieve, why is there no pain in the head, no depression or mental blurness, rather than an uncomfortableness in the stomach?
Is it not a fact that throughout the Bible little is mentioned respecting the brain, but time and again are we reminded to be watchful of the "belly", the reins, and the loins.
Is it not a fact that the vast majority believe the mind to function in the head merely because we see through the eyes and they are in the head?
A study of the Abdominal Brain would be of inestimable value to the student of Science; Science being due to the dis- covery of a fact known to the Scriptural writers. More anon.
Rosicrucian Fire Philosophy
"Sparks surrender out of the world, when they disappear to us, in the universal ocean of Invisible Fire. What is its disap- pearance ? It quits us in the supposed light, but to it really darkness — as fire-born, the last level of all — to reappear in the true light, which is to us darkness. This is to understand; but, as the real is the direct contrary to the apparent, so that which shows as light to us is darkness in the supernatural; and that which is light to the supernatural is darkness to us: matter be- ing darkness, and Soul, light. For we know that light is mater- ial, and, being material, it must be dark. For the Spirit of God is not material, and therefore, not being material, it cannot be light to us, and therefore darkness to God.
This was the belief of the oldest Initiates, the founders of magical knowledge in the East; the discoverers of the Gods, also the doctrine of the Fire-Philosophers, and of the later Rosicrucians, who taught that all knowable things (both of the Soul and of the body) were evolved out of Fire, and finally resolvable into it; and that Fire was the last and only-to-be- known God: as that all things were capable of being searched down into it, and of being thought up to it. Fire, they found, when, as it were, they took this world, solid to pieces (and also, as metaphysicians, distributed and divided the mind of man, seeking for that invisible God-thing, coherence of ideas) — fire, these thinkers found, in their supernatural light of mind, to be the latent, nameless matter started out of the tis- sues— certainly out of the body, presumably out of the mind—
• °-l ----m----
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with groan, disturbance, hard motion, and flash (when forced to sight of it), instantly disappearing, and relapsing, and hiding its Godhood in the closing-violently-again solid matter — as into the forcefully-resuming mind. Matter, the agent whose remon- strance at disturbance out of its Rest was, in the winds, murmur, noise, cries, as it were, of air; in the waters, rolling and roaring; in the piled floors of the sky, and their furniture, clouds, circum- volence, contest, and war, and thunders (defiant to nature, but groans to God), and intolerable lightning-rendings, matter tear- ing as a garment, to close supernaturally together again, as the Solid, fettered and chained — devil-bound — in the Hand upon it, "To Be!" In this sense, all noise (as the rousing or conjuration of matter by the outside forces) is the agony of its penance. All motion is pain, all activity punishment; and Fire is the secret, lowest, that is, foundation-spread, thing, the ultimate of all things, which is disclosed when the clouds of things roll, for an instant, off it — as the blue sky shows, in its fragments, like turquoises, when the canopy of clouds is wind-torn, speck-like from off it. Fire is that floor over which the coats or layers, or the spun kingdoms of matter, or of the subsidences of the past periods of time (which is built up of objects), are laid; tissues woven over a gulf of it: in one of which last, We Are. To which Fire we only become sensible when we start it by blows or force, in the rending up of atoms, and in the blasting out of them that which holds them, which then, as Secret Spirit, springs compelled to sight, and as instantly flies, except to the immortal eyes, which receives it (in the supernatural) on the other side.
"The Fire-Philosophers maintained that we transcend everything into Fire, and that we lose it there in the flash, the escape of fire being as the door through which everything dis- appears to the other side. In their very peculiar speculations, and in this stupendous and supernatural view of the universe, where we think that fire is the exception, and is, as it were, spotted over the world (in reality, to go out when it goes out),
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they held that the direct contrary was the truth; that we, and all things, were spotted upon fire; that we conquer patches only of fire when we put it out, or win torches out of the great flame, when we enkindle fire,— which is our master in the truth, making itself, in our beliefs (in our human needs), the slave. Thus fire, when it is put out, only goes into the underworld, and the matter-flags close over it like a grave-stone!
"When we witness Fire, we are as if peering only through a door into another world. Into this, all the things consumed into microscopical smallness) of this world, the compressed and concentrate matter-heaps of defunct tides of Being and Time, are in combustion rushing: kingdoms of the floors of the things passed through—up to this moment held in suspense la the invisible inner worlds. All roars through the hollow. Ail this is mastered in the operations of this Fire, and that is rush- ing through the hollow made by it in the partition- world of the Knowable — across, and out on the other side, into the Unknow- able— seeks, in the Fire, its last and most perfect evolution into absolute nothing, — as a bound prisoner urges to his feet, in his chains, and shrieks for freedom when he is smitten. In Fire, we witness a grand phenomenon of the subsidiary (or further, and under, and inner, and multiplied) birth and death, and the supernatural transit of microscopic worlds, passing from the human sense- worlds to other levels and into newer fields. Then it is that the Last Spirit, of which they are composed, is playing before us; and playing, and playing, into last extinction, out of its rings of this-side matter: all which matter, in its various stages of thickening, is as the flux of the Supernatural Fire, or inside God.
"It will appear no wonder now, if the above abstractions be caught by the Thinker, how it was that the early people consid ered that they saw God, standing face to face with Him — that is, with all that, in their innermost possibility of thought, they could find as God — in Fire. Which Fire is- not our- vulgar,
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gross fire; neither is it the purest material fire, which has some- thing of the base, bright lights of the world still about it — bright- est though fhey be in the matter which makes them the Lightest to the material sight; but it is an occult, mysterious, or inner — not even magnetic, but a supernatural — Fire: a real, sensible, and the only possible Mind, or God, as containing all things, and as the soul of all things; into whose inexpressible intense, and all-devouring and divine, though fiery, gulf, all the worlds in succession, like ripe fruit to the ground, and all things, fall, — back into whose arms of Immortal Light: on the other side, as again receiving them, all things, thrown off as the smoke off light, again fall!
"At the shortest, then, the theory of the Magi may be sum- med up thus. When, as we think, fire is spotted over all the world, as we have said, it is we who make the mistake, necessi- tated in our man's nature, and we are that which is spotted over it; — just as, while we think we move, we are moved; and we conclude the senses in us, while we are in the senses : everything — out of the world — being the very opposite of that which we take it. The views of these mighty thinkers amounted to the suppression of human reason, and the institution of Magic, or God -head, as all. It will be seen at once that this knowledge was possible but for the very few. It is only fit for men when they seek to pass out of the world, and to approach — the nearest according to their natures — God.
"The hollow world in which that essence of things, called Fire, plays, in its escape, in violent agitation — to us, combustion, — is deep down inside of us:* that is, deep-sunk inside of the time-stages of which rings of being (subsidences of spirit) we are, in the flesh, — that is, in the human show of things, — in the outer. It is exceedingly difficult through language, to make this
*See "Divine Alchemy.
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idea intelligible; but it is the real Mystic dogma of the ancient Guebres, or the Fire-Believers.
"What is explosion? It is the lancing into the layers of worlds, whereinto we force, through turning the edges out and driving through; in surprisal of the reluctant, lazy, and secret nature, exposing the hidden, magically microscopical stores of things, passing inwards out of the accumulated rings of worlds out of the (within) supernaturally buried wealth, rolled in, of the past, in the procession of Being. What is smoke but the disrupted vapor- world to the started soul-fire? The truth is, say the Fire-Philosophers, in the rousing of fire we suddenly come upon Nature, and start her violently out of her ambush of things, evoking her secretest and immortal face to us. There- fore is this knowledge not to be known generally to man; and it is to be assumed at the safest in the disbelief of it: that disbe- lief being the magic casket in which it is locked. The keys are only for the Gods, or for godlike spirits.
"We imagine it will be said that it is impossible any re- ligionists could have seriously entertained such extraordinary doctrines; but, incredible as it may seem, — because it requires much preparation to understand them, — it is certainly true; it is only in this manner the ideas of the Divinity of Fire, which we know once prevailed largely, can be made intelligible, — we mean to the philosopher, who knows how properly to value the ancient Thinkers, who were as giants in the earth.
"Obelisks, spires, minarets, tall towers, upright stones (Menhits), monumental crosses, and architectural perpendicu- lars of every description, and, generally speaking, all erections conspicuous for height and slimness, were representatives of the sworded, or of the pyramidal, Fire. They bespoke, wherever found, and in whatever age, the idea of the First Principle, or the male generation Emblem.*
*§ee "Divine Alchemy."
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"Having given, as we hope, some new views of the doctrine of Universal Fire, and shown that there has been error in imagining that the Persians and the Ancient Fire-Worshippers wife idolaters, inasmuch &§, in bowing down before it, they only regarded Fire as a Symbol, Or Visible Sign, or thing placed as itanding for the Dieiy, — having, in our preceding lines, dis- pcefcd the mind of the reader to consider as a matter of solem- nity, and of much greater general significance, this strange fast of Fire- Worship, and endeavored to show it as a portentous, first, all-embracing as all-genuine principle,— we will proceed to ex- emplify the wide-spread roots of the Fire-Faith. In fact, we geeffl to recognize it everywhere.
"Instead of, in their superstition, making fire their God, they obtained Him— that is, all that we can realize of Him; by Which we mean, ail that the human reason can find of the Last Principle — out of it. Already in their thoughts, had the Magi exhausted all possible theologies; already had they, in their great wisdom, searched through physics — their power to this end being much greater than that of the modern faith-teachers and doctors; already, in their reveries, in their observations (deep within their deep souls) upon the nature of themselves, and of the microcosm of a world in which they found themselves, had the Magi transcended. I hey had arrived at a new world in their speculations and deductions upon facts, upon all the things behind which (to men) make these facts. Already, in their de- termined climbing into the heights of thought, and these Titans vi m:nd achieved, past the cosmical, through the shadowy bor- ders of Real and Unreal, into Magean power.
"Passing through the mind-worlds, and coming out, as we may figure it, at the other side, penetrating into the secrets of things, they evaporated all Powers, and resolved them finally into the Last Fire. Beyond this, they found nothing, as into this they resolved all things. And then, on the Throne of the Visi- ble, they placed this — in the world Invisible — Fire: the sense
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thing to be worshipped in the senses, as the last thing of them, and the king of them, — that is, that which we know as the phenomenon, Burning Fire, — the Spiritual Fire being inpalpa- ble, as having the visible only for its shadow; the Ghostly Fire not being even to be thought upon; though being its medium of apprehension when itself had slipped; the waves of apprehen- sion of it only flowing back when it — being intuitive — had van- ished. We only know that a thought is in us when the thought is off the object and in us : another thought being, at that simul- taneous instant, in the object, to be taken up by us only when the first has gone out of us, and so on; but not before to be taken up by us, — that thought being all of us, and a deceptive and unreal thing to pass at all to us through the reason, and there being no resemblance between it and its original; the true thing being "Inspiration," or "God in us," excluding all matter or reason, which is only built up of matter. It is most difficult to frame language in regard to those things. Reason can only inmake God; He is only possible in His own development, or in His seizing of us, and "in possession." Thus Paracelsus and his disciples declare the Human Reason become our master, that is, in its perfection, — but not use as our servant, — transforms, as it were into the Devil, and exercises his office in leading us away from the throne of Spiritual Light — over, and, in the world, seeming better; in his false and deluding World-Light, or Mat- ter-Light, really showing himself God. This view of the Human Reason, intellectually trusted, transforming into the Angel of Darkness, and effacing God out of the world, is borne out by a thousand Texts of Scripture. It is equally in the beliefs and in the traditions of all nations and of all times, as we shall event- ually show. Real Light is God's Shadow, or the soul of matter; the one is the very brighter, as the other is the very blacker. Thus, the worshippers of the Sun, or Light, or Fire, — otherwise they would have worshipped the Devil, he being all conceivable Light: but rather they adored the Unknown Great God, in the last image that was possible to man of anything — the Fire.
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And they chose that as His shadow, as the very opposite of that which He really was: honouring the Master through His Servant; bowing before the manifestation, Eldest of Time, for the Timeless; paying homage to the spirit of the Devil-World, or rather to Beginning and End, on which was the foot of ALL, that the All, or the LAST, might be worshipped; propitiating the Evil Principle in its finite shows, because (as they that alone a world could be made, whose making is alone Comparison) it was permitted as a means of God, and therefore the operation of God Downwards, as part of Him, though Upwards dissipat- ing as before Him, — before HIM in whose presence Evil, or Comparison, or Difference, or Time, or Space, or anything, should be Impossible : real God being not to be thought upon.
"But it was not only in the quickening Spirit of Divinity that these teachings could be seen. Otherwise than in faith, we can hope that they shall now — in our weak attempts to explain them — be gathered as not contradictory, and merely intellectual, but seen as vital and absolute. They need the elevation of the mind in the sense of "Inspiration/' and not the quickening and sharpening of the Intellect, as seeking wings — devil-pinions — wherewith to sail into the region only of its own laws, where, of course, it will not find God. Then step in the mathematics, then the senses, then the reason, — then the very perfection of matter- work, or this world's work, sets in, — engines of which the Satanic Powers shall realize. The evil Spirit conjures, as even by holy command, the translucent sky. The Arch- angelic, clear, child-like rendering-up in intuitive belief, — intense in its own sun— is Faith. Lucifer fills the scope of be- lief with imitative, dazzling clouds, and builds splendours. With these temptations it is sought to dissuade, sought to rival, sought to put out Saints' sight — sought even to surpass in seem- ing a farther and truer, because a more solid and a more sensi- ble, glory. The apostate, real-born Lucifer, is so named as the intensest Spirit of Light, because he is of the things that perish,
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and of the things that to Mind — because they are all of Matter — have the most of glory! Thus is one of the names of the Devil, the very eldest-born and brightest Star of Light, that of the very morning and beginning of all things — the clearest, bright- est, purest, as being soul-like, of Nature; but only of Nature. Real Law, or Nature, is the Devil ; real Reason is the Devil.
"Now we shall find, with a little patience, that this trans- cendental, beyond-limit-or-knowledge ancient belief of the Fire- God is to be laid hand upon — as, in a manner, we shall say — in all the stories (and they, indeed, are all) where belief has grown, —yea, as a thing with the trees and plants, as out of the very ground, — in all the countries and continents — and in -both worlds. And out of this great fact of its universal dissipation, as a matter of history the most innate and coexistent, shall we not assume this Fire-Doctrine as being the truth? As a thing really, fundamentally, and virtually and vitally true ? As in the East, so in the West; as in the old time, so in the new; as in the pre-Adamite and post-diluvian worlds, so in the modern and latter-day world; surviving through the ages, buried in the foundations of empires, locked in the rocks, hoarded in legends, maintained in monuments, preserved in beliefs, suggested in traditions, borne amidst the roads of the multitudes in emblems, gathered up — as the recurring, unremarked, super-naturally coruscant, and yet secret, evading, encusted, and dishonored jewel — in rites, spoken (to those capable of the comprehension) in the field of hieroglyphics, dimly glowing up to a fitful sus- picion of it in the sacred rites of all peoples; figured forth in the religions, symbolized in a hundred ways: attested, prenoted, bodied forth in occult body, as far as body can; — in fine, in multitudinous fashions and forms forcibly soliciting the sharp- ness of sight directed to its discovery, and spilt over a floor as underplacing all things, we recognize, we spy, we descry, and we may, lastly admit the mysterious sacredness of Fire. Why should we not admit it?
GODHOOD
"Philosophy brings life. She is beautiful — she carries a cup in her hand — it is of gold; she begs you to drink and live. She is your handmaiden — Philosophy — the cup is pure metal — the drink is ELIXIR — LIFE. As man, you are mortal; you have stood in the sunshine so long you are blind. As man, you are drunk with a drop of pure life; you have listened so long to the seas that you are deaf. Philosophy brings you the cup and you drink, and you open your eyes ; she waits and you listen and hear.
"You burn with desire and you thrill; then dip in the blood of yourself and write on the parchment a scroll, and read in the letters the words, in the words the command, in the command the design, in the design the beginning and the end; living you read, and reading you live, ceasing to be mortal, but soar as a God"
"If ever the Bush is on fire hearken for the Voice and hear. Something is speaking — listen and listen — Something is shining — The Bush is on Fire." "Divine Alchemy."
Monuments Raised to Fire Worship in all Countries
In the succeeding pages we believe we will be able to show, beyond successful contradiction, an extraordinary discovery. It is that the whole round of disputed emblems which so puzzle antiquaries, and which are found in all countries, point to the belief in Fire as the First Principle. We seek to show that Fire- Worship was the very earliest, from the immemorial times, — that it was the foundation religion, — that the attestation to it is preserved in monuments scattered all over the globe, — that the rites and usages of all creeds, down even to our own day, and in every-day use about us, bear reference to it, — that problems and puzzles in religion, which cannot be otherwise explained, stand clear and evident when regarded in this new light, — that in all the Christian varieties of belief — as truly as in Bhuddism, in Mohammedanism, in Heathenism of all kinds, whether eastern, or western, or northern, or southern— this "Mystery of Fire" stands ever general, recurring, and conspicuous, — and that in being so, beyond all measure, old, and so, beyond all modern. or any idea of it, general, — as nearly universal, in fact, as man himself, and the thoughts of man, — and as being that beyond which, in science and in natural philosophy, we cannot farther go, — it must carry truth with it, however difficult to comprehend, and however unsuspected: that is; as really being the manifesta- tion and Spirit of God, and — to the confounding and annihila- tion of Atheism — Revelation.
"Affirmatively we shall now, therefore, offer to the attention of the reader the universal scattering of the Fire-Monuments, taking up at the outset certain positions about them.
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"Narrowly considered, it will be found that all religions transcend up into this spiritual Fire-Floor, on which, to speak metaphysically, the phases of Time were laid. Material Fire, which is the brighter as the matter of which it is constituted is blacker, is the shadow (so to express, or to speak, necessarily with "words," which have no meaning in the spirit) of the "Spirit-Light," which invests itself in it as the mask in which alone it can be possible. Thus, material light being the very opposite of God, the Egyptians — who were undoubtedly ac- quainted with the Fire-Revelation — could not represent God as light. They therefore expressed their Idea of Deity by Dark- ness. Their chief adoration was paid to darkness. They bodied the Eternal forth under Darkness.
"Stones were set up by the Patriarchs: the Bible records them. In India, the first objects of worship were Monoliths. In the two peninsulas of India, in Ceylon, in Persia, in the Holy Land, in Phoenicia, in Saramathia, in Scythia, every- where where worship was attempted (and in what place where man exists is it not?), everywhere where worship was practiced (and where, out of fear, did not, first, come the Gods, and then their propitiation?) — in all the countries, we repeat, as the earli- est of man's work, we recognize this sublime, mysteriously speaking, ever-recurring monolith, marking up the tradition of the supernaturally real, and only real, Fire-dogma. Buried so far down in time, the suspicion assents that there must somehow be truth in the foundation; not fanciful, legendary, in philo- sophical creed-truth, inexplainable (and only to be admitted without question) truth: but truth, however mysterious and awe- ing, yet cogent, and not to be of philosophy (that is, illumina- tion) denied.
"The death and descent of Balder into the Hell of the Scandinavians may be supposed to be the purgatory of the Human Unit (or the God-illuminate), from the Light (through the God-dark phases of being), back into its native Light.
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Balder was the Scandinavian Sun-God, and the same as the Egyptian Osiris, the Greek Hercules, Bacchus, and Phoebus, or Apollo, the Indian Krishna, the Persian Mithras, the Aten of the Empires of Insular Asia; or, even of the Sidonians, the Athyr or Ashtaroth. The presence of all these divinities — indeed, of all Gods — were of the semblance of Fire; and we recognize, as it were, the mark of the foot of them, or of the Impersonated Fire, in the countless uprights, left, as memorials, in the great ebb of the ages (as waves) to nations in the later divisions of that great roll of periods called Time : yet to totally unguessing of the preternatural mystery — seeming the key of all belief, and the reading of all wonders — which they speak.
"It is to be noted that all the above religions — all the Creeds of Fire — were exceedingly similar in their nature; that they all were fortified by rites, and fenced around with ceremon- ies; and associated as they were with mysteries and initiations, the disciple was led through the knowledge of them in stages, as his powers augmented and his eyes saw, until, towards the last grades (as if he himself grew capable and illuminate), the door was closed upon all after-pressing and unrecognized inquirers, and the Admitted One was himself lost sight of.
"There was a great wave to the westward of all knowledge, all cultivation of the arts, all tradition, all intellect, all civiliza- tion, all religious belief. The world was peopled westward. There seems some secret, divine impress upon the world's destinies — and, indeed, ingrained in cosmical matter — in these matters. All faiths seem to have diverged out, the narrower or the wider, as rays from the great central Sun of this tradition of the Fire-Original. It would seem that Noah, who is sus- pected to be the Fo, Foh, or Fohi, of the Chinese, carried it into the farthest Cathray of the middle ages. What is the Chinese Tien, or Earliest Fire? The pagodas of the Chinese (which name, Pagoda, was borrowed from the Indian; from which country of India, indeed, probably came into China its
il
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worship, and its Bhuddist doctrine of the exhaustion back into the divine light, or unparticled nothingness, of all the stages of being or of Evil), — the Chinese pagodas, we repeat, are nothing but innumerable gilt and belled fanciful repetitions of the primeval monolith. The Fire, or Light, is still worshipped in the Chinese temples; it has not been perceived that, in the very form of the Chinese Pagodas, the fundamental article of the Chinese religion — transmigration, through stages of being, out into nothingness of this world — has been architecturally em- blemed in the diminishing stories, carried upwards, and fining away into the series of unaccountable discs struck through a vertical rod, until all culminates, and — as it were, to speak heraldically of it — the last achievement is blazoned in the gilded ball, which means the final, or Bhuddist, glorifying absorption. Buildings have always telegraphed the Insignia of the mythologies; and, in China, the fantastic speaks the sub- lime. We recognize the same embodied Mythos in all archi- tectural spiring or artistic diminution, whether tapering to the globe or exaltation of the Egyptian Uraeus, or the disc, or the Sidonian crescent, or the lunar horns, or the Acroterium of the Greek temple, or the pediment of the classic Pronaos itself (crowning, how grandly and suggestively, at solemn dawn, or in the "spirit-lustres" of the dimming and still more than dawn, solemn twilight, the top of some mountain, an ancient of the days). Here besetting us at every turn, meet we the same mystic emblem; again, in the crescent of the Mohammedan fanes, surmounting even the Latin, and therefore the once Christian St. Sophia. Last, and not least, the countless "churches" rise, in the Latter-Day Dispensation, sublimely to the universal signal, . in the glorifying, or top, or crowning Cross: last of the Revelation!
"In the fire-towers of the Sikls, in the dome-covered and many-storied spires of the Hindoos, in the vertically turreted and longitudinally massed temples of the Bhudds, of all the
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classes and of all the sects in the religious building of the Cingalese, in the upright flame-fanes of the Parsers, in the original of the Campaniles of the Italians, in the tower of St. Mark at Venice, the flame-shaped or pyramidal (Pyr is the Greek for Fire) architecture of the Egyptians (which is the parent of all that is called architecture), we see the recurring symbol. All the minarets that, in the eastern sunshine, glisten through the Land of the Moslem; indeed, his two-horned cres- cent, equally with the moon, or disc, or two-pointed globe of the Sidonian Ashtaroth (after whose forbidden worship Solo- mon, the wisest of mankind, in his defection from the God of his fathers, evilly thirsted) ; also, the mystic discus, or "round," of the Egyptians, so continually repeated, and set, as it were, as the forehead-mark upon all the temples of the land of sooth- sayers and sorcerers, — this Egypt so profound in its philoso- phies, in its wisdom, in its magic-seeing, and in its religion, raising out of the black Abyss a God to shadow it, all the minarets of the Mohammedan, we say, together with all the other symbols of moon or disc, or wings, or of horns (equally with the shadowy and preternatural beings in all mythologies and in all theologies, to which these adjuncts or Insignia are referred, and which are symbolized by them), — all these monu- ments, or bodied meanings, testify to the Deification of Fire.
"What may mean that "Tower of Babel" and its impious raising, when it sought, even past and over the clouds, to imply a daring sign ? What portent Was that betrayal of a knowledge not for man, — that surmise forbidden save in infinite humility, and in the whispered impartment of the further and seemingly more impossible, and still more greatly mystical, meanings? In utter abnegation of self alone shall the mystery of fire be conceived. Of what was this Tower Belus, or the Fire, to be the monument? When it soared, as a Pharos, on the rock of the traditionary ages, to defy time in its commitment, to "form" of the unpronounceable secret, — stage on stage and story on
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story, though it climbed the clouds, and on its top should shine the ever-burning Fire, — first idol in the world, "dark save with neglected stars," — what was the Tower of Babel but a gigantic monolith? Perhaps to record and to perpetuate this ground-fire of all; to be worshipped, in idol, in its visible form, when it should be alone taken as the invisible thoughts fire to be waited for (spirit possession), not waited on (idolatry.) Therefore was the speech confounded, that the thing should not be; therefore, under the myth of climbing into heaven by the means of it, was the first colossal monolithic temple (in which the early dwellers upon the earth sought to enshrine the Fire) laid prostrate in the thunder of the Great God. And the languages were confounded from that day, — speech was made babble — thence its name, — that the secret should remain a secret. It was to be only darkly hinted, and to be fitfully dis- closed, like a false-showing light, in the theosophic glimmer, amidst the world's knowledge-lights. It was to reappear, like a spirit, to the "initiate," in the glimpse of reverie, in the snatches of sight, in the profoyndest wisdom, through the studies of all ages.
"We find, in the religious administration of the ancient world, the most abundant proofs of the secret fire-tradition. Schweigger shows, in his "Introduction into Mythology" (pp. 132, 228), that the Phoenician Cabiri and the Greek Dioscuir, the Curetes, Corybantes, Telchini, were originally of the same nature, and are only different in trifling particulars. All these symbols represent electric and magnetic phenomena, and that under the ancient name of twin-fires, hermaphrodite fire. The Diescuri is a phrase equivalent to the Sons of Heaven: if, as Herodotus asserts, "Zeus originally represented the whole circle of Heaven."
"From India into Egypt was imported this Spiritual Fire- Belief. We recognize, again, its never-failing structure-signal. Rightly regarded, the great Pyramids are nothing but the
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world-enduring architectural attestation, following (in the pyramidal) the well-known leading law of Egypt's templar piling mound-like, spiry — of the Universal Flame-Faith. Place a light upon the summit, star-like upon the sky, and a prodigious altar the mighty Pyramid then becomes. In this tribute to the world-filling faith, burneth expressed devotion to (radiateth acknowledgement of) the immortal magic religion. There is little doubt that as token and emblem of Fire-worship, as indicative of the adoration of the real, accepted Deity, these Pyramids were raised.* The idea that they were burial places of the Egyptian monarchs is untenable when submitted to the weighing of meanings, and when it comes side by side with this better fire-explanation. Cannot we accept these Pyramids as the vast altars on whose top should burn the flame — commem- orative, as it were, to all the world? Cannot we see in these piles, literally and really Transcendental in original, the Egyp- tian reproduction, and a hieroglyphical signalling on, of special truth, eldest of time? Do we not recognize in the Pyramid the repetition of the first monolith? — all the uprights constituting the grand attesting pillar to the super-natural traditions to a Fire-Born World?
The ever-recurring Globe with Wings, Symbol of the Soul so frequent in the sculptures of the Egyptians, witness to the Electric Principle. It embodies the transmigration of the Indians, reproduced by Pythagoras. Pythagoras resided for a long period in Egypt, and acquired from the priests the philo- sophic "transition" — knowledge, which was afterwards doctrine. The globe, disc, or circle, of the Phoenician Astarte, the cres- cent of Minerva, the horns of the Egyptian Amnion, the deify- ing of the ox, — all have the same meaning. WTe trace, among the Hebrews, the token of the identical mystery in the horns of Moses, distinct in the sublime statue by Michael Angelo in the
*See "Ancient [Mystic Oriental Masonry.-'
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Vatican ; as also in the horns of the Levitical altar : indeed, the use of the "double Hieroglyph" in continental ways. The volutes of the Ionic column, the twin stars of Castor and Pollux, nay, generally, the employment of the double emblem all the world over, in ancient or in modern times, whether displayed as points, or radii, or wings, on the helmets of those barbarian chiefs who made war upon Rome, Attila, or Genseric, or broadly shown upon the head-piece of the Frankish Clovis; whether emblemed in the rude and, as it were, savagely, mystic horns of the Asiatic Idols, or reproduced in the horns of the Runic Hammerer (or Destroyer), or those of the Gothic Mars, or of the modern Devil — All this double-spreading from a com- mon point (or this figure of HORNS) speaks the same story.
"The Colossus of Rhodes was a monolith in the human form dedicated to the Sun, or the Fire, The Pharos of Alex- andria was a fire-monument. Heliopolis, or the City of the Sun, in Lower Egypt (as the name signifies), contained a temple, wherein, combined with all the dark superstitions of the Egyptians, the flame-secret was preserved. In most jealous secrecy was the tradition guarded, and the symbol alone was presented to the world. Of the Pyramids, as prodigious Fire- Monuments, we have before spoken. Magnificent as the princi- pal Pyramid still is, it is stated by an ancient historian that it originally formed, at the base, "a square of eight hundred feet, and that it was eight hundred feet high." Another informs that "three hundred and sixty-six thousand men were employed twenty years in its erection." Its height is now supposed to be six hundred feet. Have historians and antiquaries carefully weighed the fact (even in the name of the Pyramids), that Pyr, or Pur, in the Greek, means Fire? We would argue that that object, in the Great Pyramid, which has been mistaken for a tomb (and which is, moreover, rather fashioned like an altar, smooth and plain, without any carved work), is, in reality, the vase, urn, or depository, of the sacred, ever-burning Fires of
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the existence which ever-living, inextinguishable fire, to be found at some period of the world's history, there is abundant tradition. This view is fortified by the statements of Diodorus, who writes that "Cheops, or Chemis, who founded the principal Pyramid, and Chephren, or Cepherenus, who built the next to it, were neither buried here, but that they were deposited else- where.
"It is evident from their hieroglyphics that the Egyptians were acquainted with the wonders of magnetism. By means of it (and by the secret power which lie in the hyper-sensual, "heaped floors" of it), out of the every-day senses, the Egyp- tians struck together, as it were, a bridge, across which they paraded into the supernatural, the Magic portals receiving them as on the other and armed side of a drawbridge, shaking in its raising (or in its lowering), as out of flesh. Athwart this, in Trances, swept the Adepts, leaving their mortality behind them. All, and their earth-surroundings, to be resumed at their reissue upon the plains of life, when down in their humanity again.
"In the cities of the ancient world, the Palladium, or Pro- testing Talisman (invariably set up in the chief square of place), was — there is but little doubt — the reiteration of the very earliest monolith. All the obelisks, — each often a single stone, of prodigious weight, — all the singular, solitary, wonder- ful pillars and monuments of Egypt, as of other lands, are, as it were, only tombstones of the Fire! All testify to the great, so darkly hinted secret. In Troy was the image of Pallas, the myth of knowledge, of the world, of manifestation, of the Fire. Soul. In Athens was Pallas-Athene, or Minerva. In the Greek cities, the form of the deity changed variously to Bacchus, to Hercules, to Phcebus-Apollo ; to the tri-formed Minerva, Dian, and Hecate; to the dusky Ceres, or the darker Cybele. In the wilds of Sarmathia, in the wastes of Northern Asia, the lumin- ous rays descended from heaven, and, animating the Lama, or
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"Light-Bom," spoke the same story. The flames of the Greeks, the towers of the Phoenicians, the emblems of the Pelasgi; the Itory of Prometheus, and the myth of his stealing the fire from Heaven, wherewith to animate the man (or enSoul the visible world) ; the forges of the Cyclops, and the monuments of Sicily; the' illysteries of th§ Etrurians; the rites of the Carthaginians; the torches borne, in ail priestly demonstrative processions, at all times, in all countries; the Vestal Fires of the Romans, the Very wofd Plamen, as indicative of the office of the officiating sacerdote; trig hiddefl firii of the ancient Persians, and thw grimmer (at least in name) Guebres; the whole Mystic meaning of flames on altars, of the ever-burning tomb-lights of the earlier peoples, whether in the classic or in the barbarian lands, — everything of this kind was intended to signify the deified Fire; Fires are lighted in the funeral ceremonies oi the Hindoos and of the Mohammedans, even to this day, though the body be Committed whole to earth. Wherefore fire, then? Cremation and urn-burial, or the burning of the dead — prac- ticed in all ages — imply a profounder meaning than is generally supposed. They point to the transmigration of Pythagoras, or to the purgatorial reproductions of the Indians, among whom we the earliest find the dogma. The real signification of fire- burial is the commitment of human mortality into the last-of-all matter, overleaping the intermediate state; or the delivering over of the man-unit into the Flame-Soul, past all intervening spheres or stages of the purgatorial; the absolute doctrine of the Bhudds, taught, even at this day, among the Initiates all over the East. Thus we see how classic practice and heathen teaching may be made to reconcile, — how even the Gentile and the Hebrew, the mytho — logical and the (so-called) Christian, doctrine harmonize in the general faith — founded in Magic, That Magic is indeed possible is the moral of our work.
"We find, therefore, in the earliest ages, an AEther (spirit- ual fire) theory, by which many modern theorists endeavor to
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PHILOSOPHY t)F FIRE 143
explain the phenomena of magnetism. This is the "AEth- eraem*" One of the Fundamental doctrines of The AEth Priesthood; and the development of the AEther, or AEth Fire is part of the training.
"Fire, indeed, would appear" to have been the chosen ele- ment of God, In the form of a flaming "bush" He appeared to Moses on Mount Sinai. His presence wai denoted by tor- rents of flame, and in the form of fire He preceded the band of Israelites by night through the dreary wilderness; which is per- haps the origin of the present custom of the Arabians > "whs always carry fire in front of their caravans.'' — (Reade's Veil of I sis). All the early fathers held God the Creator to consist of a "subtle fire," When the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles on the Day of Pentecost, it was in the form of a tongue of fire, accompanied by a rushing wind,
"The personality of Jehovah is, in Scripture, represented by the Material Trinity of Nature^ which also, like the Divine antitype, is of one substance. The primal, scriptural type of the Father is Fire; of the Word, Light; and of the Holy Ghost, Spirit, or Air in motion. Holy fires, which were never suffered to die, were maintained in all the temples: of these were the fires in the Temple of the Gaditanean Hercules at Tyre, in the Temple of Vesta at Rome, among the Brahmans of India, among the Jews, and principally among the Persians.
"As soon as Jesus was born, according to the Gnostic speculative view of Christianity, Christos, uniting himself with Sophia (Holy Wisdom), descended through the seven planetary regions, assuming in each an analogous form to the region, and concealing his true nature from its genii whilst he attracted into himself the sparks of Divine Light they severally retained in their angelic essence. Thus Christos, having passed through
*One of the Fundamental doctrines of The AEth Priesthood; and the development of the AEther, or AEth Fire is part of the. training.
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the seven Angelic Regions before the "Throne," entered into the man Jesus, at the moment of his baptism in the Jordan. From that time forth, being supernaturally gifted, Jesus began to work miracles. Before that, he had been completely ignorant of his mission. When on the cross, Christos and Sophia left his body, and returned to their own sphere. Upon his death, the two took the man "Jesus," and abandoned his material body to the earth; for the Gnostics held that the true Jesus did not (and could not) physically suffer on the cross and die, but that Simon of Cyrene, who bore his cross, did in reality suffer in him room: "And they compel one Simon a Cyrenian, who passed by, coming cut of the country, the father of Alexandria and Rufus, to bear his cross." (St. Mark xv: 21).
"At the point of the miraculous transference of persons, Christos and Sophia (the Divine) left his body, and returned to their own heaven. Upon his death on earth, the two with- drew the "Being" Jesus (spiritually), and gave him another body, made up of Ether (Rosicrucian AEtheraeum). Thence forward he consisted of the two Roscrucian principles only, Soul and spirit; which was the reason the disciples did not recognize him after the resurrection. During his sojourn upon earth eighteen months after he had risen, he received from Sophia (Soph, Suph), or Holy Wisdom, that perfect knowledge or illumination, that true "Gnosis," which he communicated to the small number of the Apostles who were capable of receiving the same.
"As the Son of God remained unknown to the world, so must the disciple of Basilides also remain unknown to the rest of mankind. As they know all this, and yet must live amongst strangers, they must conduct themselves towards the rest of the world as invisible and unknown. Hence our motto, "Learn to know all, but keep thyself unknown." ..(Irenaeus.)
"Though fire is an element in which everything inheres, and of which it is the life, still, according to the Rosicrucian
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idea, it is itself another element, in a second non-terrestrial ele- ment, or inner, non-physical, ethereal fire, in which the first coarse fire, so to speak, flickers, waves, brandishes, and spreads, floating — like a liquid — now here, now there. The first is the natural, material, gross fire, with which we are familiar, con- tained in a celestial, unparticled, and surrounding medium (or celestial fire), which is its Matrix, and of which, in this human body, we can know nothing.*
"Ptha is the emblem of the Eternal Spirit from which everything is created. The Egyptians represented it as a pure ethereal fire which burns forever, whose radiance is raised far above the planets and stars. In early ages, the Egyptians wor- shipped this highest being under the name of Athor. He was the Lord of the Universe. The Greeks transformed Athor into Venus, who was looked upon by them in the same light as Athor. "According to the Egyptians," says Jablonski, "Matter has always been connected with the mind. The Egyptian priests also maintained that the gods appeared to man, and that spirits communicated with the human race." The Souls of men are, according to the oldest Egyptian doctrine, formed of Ether, and at death return again to it."
"The saffron robe of Hymen is of the color of the Flame of Fire. The Bride, in ancient days, was covered with a veil called the "Flammeun;" unless made under this, no vow was considered sacred. The ancient swore, not by the altar, but by the flame of fire which was upon the altar. Yellow, or Flame- colored, was the color of. the Ghebers, or Guebres, or Fire- Worshippers. The Persian lilies are yellow; and here will be remarked a connection between this fact of the yellow of the Persian lilies and the Mystic symbols in various parts. Mystic rites, and the symbolical lights which mean the Divinity of Fire,
*See "Divine Alchemy."
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abound at Candlemasday (February 2nd), or the Feast of Purification; in the torches borne at weddings, and in the typi- cal flame-brandishing at marriage ove*r almost all the world; in the illumination at feasts; in the lights on, and set about the Christian altar; at the festival of the Holy Nativity; in the ceremonies at preliminary espousals; in the Bale, or Baal, fires on the summits of the mountains; in the watch-lights, or votive sanctuary-lights, in the hermitage in the lowest valley; in the Chapelle Ardent e, in the Romish funeral observances, with its abundance of silent, touching lights around the splendid Cata- falque, or twinkling, pale and ineffectual, singly at the side of the death-bed in the cottage of the peasant. Starry lights and innumerable torches at the stately funeral, or at any pompous celebration, mean the same. In short, light all over the world, when applied to religious rites, and to ceremonial, whether in the ancient or in the modern times, bespeaks the same origin, and struggles to express the same meaning, which is Parseeism, perseism, or the worship of the Deified fire, disguised in many theological forms. It will, we trust, never be supposed that we mean, in this material fire, but only the inexpressible some- thing of which fire, or rather its flower or glory (bright Light), is the farthest off — because, in being visible at all, it is the grossest and most inadequate image.
"The Rosicrucians maintain that, all things visible and invisible having been produced by the contention of light with darkness, the earth has denseness in its innumerable heavy con- comitants downwards, and they contain less and less of the original Divine Light as they thicken and solidify the grosser and heavier in matter. They taught nevertheless, that every object, however stifled or delayed in its operation, and darkened and thickened in the solid blackness at the base, yet contains a certain possible deposit, or jewel, of light, — which light, although by natural process it may take ages to evolve, as light will tend at last by its own native, irresistible force upward
PHILOSOPHY OF FIRE U7
(when it has opportunity), can be liberated; that dead matter will yield this spirit in a space more or less expeditious by the art of the Alchemist. These are worlds within worlds, — we, human organisms, only living in a deceiving, or Bhuddistic, "dream-like phase" of the grand panorama. Unseen and unsus- pected (because in it lies magic), there is an Inner magnetism, or divine aura, or ethereal spirit, or possible eager fire, shut and confined, as in a prison, in the body, or in all sensible objects, which have more or less of spiritually sensitive life as they can more successfully free themselves from this ponderable, material obstruction. Thus all minerals, in this spark of light, have the rudimentary possibility of plants and growing organisms; thus all plants have rudimentary sensitives, which might (in the ages) enable them to perfect and transmute into locomotive new creatures, lesser or higher in their grade, no nobler or meaner in their functions; thus all plants and vegetables might pass off (by side-roads) into more distinguished highways, as it were, of independent, completer advance, allowing their orig- inal spark of light to expand and thrill with higher and more vivid force, and to urge forward with more abounding, informed purpose — all wrought by planetary influence, directed by the unseen spirits (or workers) of the Great Original Architect, building His microcosmos of a world from the plans and power evoked in the macrocosm, or heaven of first forms, which in their multitude and magnificence, are as changeable shadows cast off from the Central Immortal First Light, whose rays dart from the centre to the extremest point of the universal circum- ference. It is with terrestrial fire that the alchemist breaks or sunders the material darkness or atomic thickness, all visible nature yielding to his furnaces, whose scattering heat (without its sparks) breaks all doors of this world's kind.
"It is with immaterial fire (or ghostly fire) that tfie Rosi- crucian loosens contradiction and error, and conquers the false knowledge and the deceiving senses which bind the human soul
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in its prison. On this side of his powers, on this dark side (to the world) of his character, the alchemist (rather now become the Rosicrucian) works in visible light, and is a Magean. He lays the bridge (as the Pontifex, or Bridge- Maker) between the world known and the world unknown; and across this bridge he leads the votary out of his dream of life into his dream of temporary death, or into extinction of the senses and of the powers of the senses; which world's blindness is the only true and veritable life, the envelope of flesh falling metaphorically off the now liberated fire into rhapsody, which is at the gate of Heaven. i
"Now a few words as to the theory of Alchemy. The alchemists boasted of the powers, after their elimination and dispersion of the ultimate elements of bodies by fire (repre- sented by the absent difference of their weights before and after their dissolution), to recover them back out of that exterior, unknown world surrounding this world: which world men reason against as if it had no existence, when it has real exist- ence. It is this other world (just off this real world) into which the Rosicrucians say they can enter, and bring back, as proofs that they have been there, the old things (thought escaped), metamorphosed into new things. This act is trans- mutation. This product is Magic gold, or "fairy gold," con- densed as real gold. This growing gold, or self -generating and multiplying gold, is obtained by invisible transfutation (and in other light) in another world out of this world; immaterial to us creatures of limited faculties, but material enough, farther on, on the heavenly side, or on the side opposite' to our human side. In other words, the Rosicrucians claimed not to be bound by the limits of the present world, but to be able to pass into this next world (inaccessible only in appearance), and to be able to work in it, and to come back safe out of it, bringing their trophies with them, which were gold, obtained out of this master-circle, or outside elementary circle, different from ordi-
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nary life, though enclosing it ; and the elixir vitae, or the means of the renewal or the perpetuation of human life through this universal, immortal medicine, or Magisterium, which being a portion of the light outside, or Magic, or Breath of the Spirits, fleeing from man, and only to be won in the audacity of alchem- ical exploration, was independent of those mastered natural elements, or nutritions, necessary to common life.
"The Vedas describe the Persian religion (Fire-worship) as having come from Upper Egypt. "The mysteries celebrated within the recesses of the "hypogea" (caverns or labyrinths) "were precisely of that character which is called Freemasonic or Cabiric. The signification of this latter epithet is as to written letters, a desideratum. Selden has missed it; so have Origen and Sophocles. Strabo, too, and Montfaucon, have been equally astray. Hyde was the only one who had any idea of its com- position when he declared that "it was a Persian word, some- what altered from Gabri, or Guebri, signifying Fire-Worship- pers.".. Pocoke, in his "India in Greece," is very sagacious and true in his arguments ; but he tells only half the story of the myths in his supposed successful divestment of them of all unexplainable character, and of exterior supernatural origin. He supposes that all the mystery must necessarily disappear when he has traced and carefully pointed out the identity and transference of these myths from India into Egypt and into Greece, and their gradual spread westward. But he is wholly wrong; and most other modern explainers are equally mistaken.
"This is not an attempt to restore Superstition to its dis- possessed pedestal, but to replace the Super-natural upon its abdicated throne. Also to discover what the nature of this Fire should be, which seems to have been the thing earliest worship- ped in the world, and continued traces of which survive not only over all Europe, but in all other countries. Fire Philosophy is
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the foundation of all religions, it is the philosophy of the Soul, of Love, and of God. Without Fire there could be no existence. God, Love, and the Soul are all one and the same thing — the Living Fire.
The Fire Philosophy of the Templars
The great men and inquiring spirits among the Templars had penetrated to the very depth of the mystery of the ever- living, supernatural Fire and had taught it to their Neo- phytes as they themselves had been taught by the Saracens. It is readily believable that, at the suppression of this grand, warlike, and monastic Order (whose members were so bound by injunctions and the vows of the secret formula, that they could not deny part of the accusations, nor yet explain why), many of the things of which they were accused, such as magical ceremonies and so-called Pagan rites, trances and innocent sacrifices, etc., were satisfactorily established to those who wanted them to be proven guilty (in their trials), as matters of which they were indisputably guilty. We know they had theii rites and ceremonies, and that these rites and ceremonies had a different meaning from that interpreted by religious fanatics and self-constituted investigators who knew nothing of the Sacred Religious Practices and self-imposed penalties practiced by such men who lived for God and religion.
We know there was nothing more in the denouncement and extinction, at the same time, all over Europe, of these religio-knightly or monastic-military orders — in whose ranks fought, and taught, men of the most powerful, and most dar- ing, understanding of the period — than the jealousy of their power, fear of their influence, and the desire for the riches and worldly accumulation they possessed. We further realize that secret and forbidden studies (as in all Fraternities) were pursued by them; that under the protection and yet in the
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refusal (as it seemed to the profane and religious fanatic) of the Cross, and as from behind their holy and militarily won- drous character, the Arch-leaders among them (whether chief- tains of mind or of arms) closely hung on the track of phil- osophy until it vanished into transcendentalism, or the so-called (because many of the current religious beliefs are no more accepted by them than they are at this time by the members of the Secret Schools) atheistic, and by Occult and Cabalistic means established relations with the Unseen (as we do to-day), seeking to hold communications with the world Invisible.*
The round form of their Temples — as they were styled by the Brotherhood — their various insignia and habits, their secret book, their rites, all seem to bespeak a knowledge, and do so speak 'to the Initiate of the Fire-Philosophy — misunder- stood and perverted in the hands of all those except of the Order who had risen to the highest knowledge in it, and who attained leadership, into the indulgence of sensual appetites and the denial of the future** life, and, consequently, of the fullest and
*This single statement made by the author, when interpreted by the religious fanatic of even the present day, would indicate that the writer upholds Spiritualism. The fact is, man, when he understands, can com- municate with the invisible realms of being by many other than Spir- itualistic means.
The reason we are so certain such a statement might be misinter- preted, is because of late experiences, wherein a book written by us showing the difference between Spiritism and Spiritualism, has been produced as evidence against us to prove we upheld Spiritualism, when in fact we have always, and do now, condemn every system of negative development, no matter what its name.
If this can be brought about in this so-called free and enlightened age when every man is supposed to be guaranteed freedom to practice his religion as he pleases, so long as such practices do not interfere with the liberty of others, what chance did the Templars have, who tried and judged by those who wanted them condemned and destroyed as heretics, could not, and would not deny, they were able to hold communication with worlds Invisible.
**Ih the Philosophy taught by the Secret Schools we do not uphold the forgiveness of sins, justification by faith, and Vicarious Atonement as usually understood. In a recent hearing before a Court some of these lessons and writings, which can only be had under a religious vow, were
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morally darkest, though the most wordly luscious, Epicurean- ism.
This was not the fault of the beautiful Philosophy known and taught by the Templars, but of those would-be followers who did not attempt to understand, and who had no desire to follow the true teachings, but instead, sought an excuse for their miserable outrages.
Whilst the chiefs of the Order of the Templars had pene- trated to truths the most astonishing, though, necessarily, undivulgeable (especially in that superstitious and ignorant age, of which, incontestably, they were far advanced), they paid the usual penalty for their great knowledge in being decried, ending by being burnt as magicians. Simple because the time was not prepared — if indeed any time can be — for that which they could tell. They, and their whole body, there- fore, appeared, in the exaggerations of the Church, and in the magnifying medium of the terror which their doings inspired, as thirsting for seemingly impossible things. Climbing, as in their cowls and mail, as a storming ladder of presumptuously supposed lightning-proof steel, and under the mask and shield of the Cross, which they were accused of denying, into the imagined, accursed (according to the profane) crTambers of Magic, devilish Fire: the treasure house, or home, or Hell, of the forbidden gods, rich in all possible Ethereal and human splendor. The Templars did only that which we of the present school are doing; and, we, as they, are being accused of almost all of the things they were, even as "working for the devil, denying the Divinity of Christ, and preaching a doctrine
produced against us by one who accused us of working for the devil and who had deliberately broken open private, locked cases, wherewith to attempt to prove we did not believe in the Divinity of Christ and a future life. If such things can be brought against those who admittedly teach a clean mode of living, a pure morality, and a high code of ethics, what chance would one have who actually and openly denied the possi- bility of life after death and the existence of a Supreme Being?
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of Free Love, all because we maintain and teach, that man must gain Immortality through service to mankind and purifi- cation of self; demanding Equal Opportunity and Justice to all, rich and poor alike.
The famous Beauseant, or banner of the Templars, was part-colored — that is, divided down the centre, in two halves of ;'black and white." This figuring- forth of the utterly opposed colors is generally taken to signify the immitigable hatred of the Templars for the Infidels, but their abiding love and benignity towards the Christians. This total friendship, or uncompromising abnegation would be heraldically denoted in the perfect contrast of the black and the white halves, or "fields," of the Templars' ensign divided parti-per-pae. But, when we remember that the Egyptians mythed their Perfect Divinity, or Cause of All, under (of this world) the hopeless, empty color of Black, in opposition to White, or Matter- Light which was taken to signify "'This World, and the Glory of this World;" and, when we recall that the proper robes, or vestments, of the Mageans, when invested in their Cabalistic panopy and armed for charms — as directed by the authentic formula — are of the colors WThite and Black, we grow into another sort of belief regarding the meaning of this Temp- lar banner, Mystic as it is; and we conclude that it fell back, for its real hieroglyph, upon the Fire-Creed and Fire-Phi losophy — This faith of the fierce Deistical East, and of the Guefre, Gubh, or Gaur. And this, surely, not without reason. Nor did the Order of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, who, in the grandeur of their stately galleys, made of the Medi- terranean a royal sea, and elevated the Islands of Malta and of Rhodes almost into the splendors of an empire set on the water; nor did this Order escape the imputation of wrong- doing— of being betrayed in the signs and the hieroglyph of the secret, reprobated, infidel doctrine. Their colors, the fashion of their arms, and their attire, in which — in the priestly or any
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other orders or communities — lies much of meaning, glancing up to justifiable Christian suspicion in the wizard, heretical half-light. In short, it is held that the Teutonic Knights, or the soldier monks of St. John of Jerusalem, as equally as the Templars, were very questionable Christians. Though this imagined infidelity might be only confined to the Heads of the Chapters, the great body of the Knights being merely directed.
In the persecutions of the Knights Templars, which are generally known, a certain mystification and secrecy may be observed, as if the whole of the charges against them were not brought publicly. This arose from various causes. The per- secuted were really very religious, and were bound by the most solemn Masonic oaths (and Masonry was intimately connected with these matters) not to divulge the secrets of the Order. The impression is very general that these persecutions were undertaken for the sake of the wealth of the Order. This is not the only reason, there were other, and deeper reasons; hate, jealousy, and fear, among them.
The so-called heathenish doctrines to which allusion has been made, are visible everywhere in the curious mystical figures always seen upon the monuments of the Templars; in the fishes bound together by the tails, in the tombs of Italy, and appearing on the vaulting of the Temple Church, London; in the astrological emblems on many churches, such as the Zodiacs on the floor of the Church of St. Irenaeus at Lyons, and on a church at York, and Notre Dame at Paris, and Bacchus, or the God I. H. S., filling the wine-cask, formerly on the floor of the Church of St. Denis; again, in the round Churches of the Templars, in imitation of the round church at Jerusalem, probably built by them in the Circular or Cyclar, or Gilgal form, in allusion to various recondite subjects, and in the monograms I H E and X H in thousands of places. We, of the present day, know these doctrines were not heathenish in any sense; that they had, and still have, the most wonderful
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mystical meaning; furthermore, that they figure in all true Initiation and in all the Philosophies. Symbolism has never been understood by the masses and ever a strange and abso- lutely false meaning will be given to these symbols and cere- monies by those who do not, and never can, understand them. Perhaps it is well this is so.
At every turn we meet with some remnant of so-called Paganism. It is a rather extraordinary thing that the Christian Templars should call themselves Templars in honor of the Temple, the destruction of which all so-called Christians boasted of as a miraculous example of divine wrath in their favor as Christians. This, then, goes to prove that the Temp- lars are much older than the Crusaders, and the pretended origin of these people is totally false. There is a certain sus- picion entertained by scholars, not without reason, that the origin of this community may be looked for in the College of Cashi, and the Temple of Solomon in Cashmere, or the lake, or mere, of Cashi. The Gymnosophists, the Kasideans, the Essenes (through whom Jesus received his Initiation), the Therapeutae (later; and at present, the Rosicrucians), the Dionesians, the Eleusinians (followers of the Essenes), the Pythagoreans (who were really Rosicrucians), the Chaldeans, were, in reality, all an order of religionists, who combined in their religion both Philosophy and Mysticism; including among them those who were, in fact, the heads of the Societies, nor must it be forgotten that the Masons of the present day have been, time and again, termed anti-Christ, because they do not give Jesus any place in their precepts or ceremonies, therefore this modern Order is under the ban of certain religious sects, especially those of the Evangelical and Methodist persuasion.
The Teutonic Knights seem to have been the first insti- tuted. But it is thought that they were graften upon a class of persons — charitable devotees — who had settled themselves, as the historians say, near the Temple of Jerusalem, to assist poor
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Christian pilgrims who visited it; although the real temple had disappeared even to the last stone, for a thousand years. This proves how little use these historians make of their understand- ing. The Teutonic Knights are said to have come from Ger- many, from the Teutonic tribes. Let us hasten to relieve North Germany from the weighty and undeserved honor. The word Teut is Tat, and Tat is Buddha. The name of Buddha, with some of the German nations, was Tuisto or Tuisco, derived from whose name comes our day of the week — Tuesday. From Tuisto, or Tuisco, came the Teutones, Teutisci, and the Teu- tonic Knights, and the name of Mercury Teusco. Perhaps Mercury Tnmiegistus.
The round church of Jerusalem, built by Helena, the Mys- tic Helena (daughter of Coilus), mother of Constantine, who was born at York, and the chapter-house at York and other cathedrals were reproductions of the circular Stonehenge and Abury, home of the ancient Druids. The choirs of many of the cathedrals in France and England are built crooked of the nave of the church, for the same reason (whatever that might be) that the Druidical temple is so built at Classerniss in Scotland. All the round chapter-houses of our Cathedrals were so built for the same reason that the Church of the Templars were round. In these chapters and the crypts, till the thirteenth century, the Secret Religion, or true Fire Philosophy, was celebrated for away from the profane vulgar. These buildings have been thought to be the representative successors of the caves of India, and afterwards of the cupola-formed buildings there, of the Cyclopean Treasury of Atreus at Mycenae, and of the Labyrinths of which we read in Egypt, Crete, Italy, and other countries. These labyrinths could be only for the pur- pose of religious practices, and, it is not to be doubted, of that religion of the Cyclops which universally prevailed. The under-ground crypts of our cathedrals, with their forests of pillars, were labyrinths in miniature. There is something about
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the circular churches of the Templars which seems very remark- able. We have only four in England, we believe, of the churches of the Templars, namely: those in London, at Maple- stead in Essex, at Northampton, and at Cambridge — and they are all round. This form, we are told, was adopted in imita- tion of the round church at Jerusalem. But how came the church of Jerusalem to be round? Perhaps Phallas Worship had something to do with this form! We are led to believe so at least. Again, how came these Christian Knights to be called by the name of the detested Jewish Temple?
The Templars were divided into Orders exactly after the system of the Assassians, Knights, Esquires; and Lay-Brethren answered to the Refeck, Fedavee, and Laseek of the Assassians; as the Prior, Grand-Prior, and Grand-Master of the former correspond to the Dai, Dai-Al-Kebir, and Sheik of the moun- tain of the latter.*
As the Ishmaelite Refeck was clad in white, with a red mark of distinction, so the Knight of the Temple wore a white mantle, adorned with a red mark of distinction — the Red Cross. It is remarkable that they were called "Illuminators." And it is to be suspected that the red mark of distinction, kept back as common to both Templars and Ishmaelites, was a red eight- point cross, or a Red Rose on a Cross.
The Templars were accused of worshipping a being called Bahumid and Bafomer (the Devil), or Kharuf, just as we, the Initiates of the Secret Schools have been, and now are, accused of working for the devil. Von Hammer says that this word, written in Arabic, has the meaning of "Cald," and is what
*Unquestionably the Ansaireth of the Syrians, living round about the Ansaireth mountains have the most perfect doctrine of Sex and the Sex Fire known to any nation of the earth. Though these people might trace their lineage to the distant past, whence history remains unknown, in 1865 when Dr. P. B. Randolph visited Syria and was Initiated into the Mystery of the Ansaireth by the then Sheik of the Brotherhood, he found the doctrine untarnished by either vulgarism or debasement.
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Kichre calls Anima Mundi. It is difficult not to believe that this "Kharuf" is our "Calf." The assassins are said to have worshipped a Calf; If these latter had a Calf in use as an emblem, it may be justly considered as a proof, that, contrary to the prevailing ideas concerning them, they are a tribe of extreme antiquity (a branch of the Atlanteans), though holding the doctrine of the Ten Incarnations, yet still clings to the ancient worship of Taurus. There is a picture, in Russia, of the Holy Family, in which the Calf is found instead of the Ram. A learned author pronounces that the doctrine of the Assassins and the Templars were the same, and who may say the Templars did not have their inception in Syria ?
All Temples were surrounded with pillars recording the number of the constellations, the signs of the Zodiac, or the cycles of the planets; and each Tern-plum was supposed, in some way, to be a microcosm, or symbol, of the Temple of the Uni- verse, or of the starry vault called Templum.* It was this Templum of the universe from which the Knights Templars took their name, and not from the individual Temple at Jeru- salem, built probably by their predecessors, and destroyed many years before the time allotted to their rise; but which rise, it is suspected, was only a revivification from a state of depression into which they had fallen.
Theatres were originally Temples, where the Mythos was scenically represented. And until they were abused they were intended for nothing else. But it is evident that, for this pur- pose, a peculiar construction of the Temple was necessary. When
*The Rosicrucians of the present day teach this identical doctrine — that man must, through development, become the perfect Temple. St. John taught this also when he said : "Know ye not ye are the Temples of the Living God?" This is the reason the Rose Cross does not have any ceremonial Initiation until after the Neophyte has become the Ini- tiate, then only to personify the stages of growth through which he had passed. See "Temple of the Rosy Cross" by Freeman B. Dowd.
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Scaurus built a Theatre in Greece, he surrounded it with 360 Pillars. The Temple at Mecca was surrounded with 360 stones. xA.nd, in like manner, with the same number the Templum at Iona, in Scotland, was surrounded. The Templars were noth- ing but one branch of the Secret Schools of that age, from whence sprang Masonry, a branch to which the care of some peculiar part of the Temples was entrusted; there is a proba- bility that the name of Templars was only another name for Casideans.
In the Western part of Asia, in the beginning of the twelfth century, the sect or religious tribe called Ishmaelites, or Battenians, or Assassins, arose. These "Assassins" were first noticed, in the Western world, with their chief Hakem Berm- rillah, or Hakembiamr-allah, who was held up, in Syria, as the Tenth Avatar, or, as it is assumed, incarnation. His ideas of God, were very refined. The first of the creatures of God, the only production immediate of His power, was the intelligence universelle, which showed itself at each of the manifestations of the Divinity on earth; by means of this minister, all crea- tures were made; he was the Mediator between God and man. This intelligence universelle is the Logos, Rasir, or Aviatar.
It would seem probable that the followers of Bermrillah were originally adorers of Taurus, or the Calf or Calves, which they continued to mix with the other doctrines of Buddha. It must be remembered that this worship of the Calf is not to be taken in its literal sense but is only a symbol of the Lamb or Christos. The hidden, Living Fire indwelling in all men and coming from God — Love.
Chaldean implies Sabaean.* The word Chaldean is a cor- ruption of the word Chasdim; this is most clearly the same as the Colida, and Colchida, and Colchis of Asia, and as the Colidei and Culdees of Scotland. Now all this, and the circum-
* Another sect of Fire Worshippers, or Fire Philosophers.
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stances relating to the Chaldees, often called Mathematici, to the Assassins, the Templars, Manichaeans, etc., being consid- ered, the name of the Assassins, or Hasesssins, or Assanites, or Chasiens, or Alchaschisin, will not be thought unlikely to be a corruption of Chasdim, and to mean Chaldees or Culdees, and possibly connected with the Templars. We can thus trace them in no other way. When the Arabic emphatic article AL is taken from this hard word AL-chas-chischin, it is Chas- chis-chin. The Assassins were also called Druses, or Druiseans. The learned author of the "Celtic Druids" states that he has proved these Druses to be both Druids and Culdees. In all accounts of the Assassins, they are said to have existed, in the East, in considerable numbers. B. de Tudela states he found these numerous not far from Samarcand or Balkh and also de- scribed many great tribes of what he calls Jews, living, speaking the Chaldee language, occupying the country, and possessing the government of it. He further states that among these Jews are disciples of the wise men. He tells us that they occupy the mountains of Haphton. Here are, it is to be thought, the Afghans, and that too clearly to be disputed. Under the word Haphton lies the word xAighan; and the disciples of the wise man, Hakem, .frequented the Temples of Solomon in Cashmere, and were called Hakmites, Ishmaelians, and Battenians, that is, Buddheans. The word Hakem is the word HKN, which in the Chaldee means wise. xALl physicians, in the East, are called Hakem. All this helps to prove not only that the Templars did share doctrines with the Assassins and Ishmaelians, but that they were much older than the Crusaders; furthermore, that the pretended origin of these people is totally false. The Gymnoso- phites, the Casideans, the Essenes, the Therapeuttae, the Diones- ianSj the Eleusinians, the Pythagoreans, the Chaldeans, the As- sassins, and the Buddheans were all Orders of Philosophical- Religionists, including among them, and consisting in great part
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of an Order of Monks, who were, in fact, the heads of these Societies.
There is no doubt that all the Caliphs of the Saracens were, secretly or openly, Sophees. The Sophees are divided, at this day, into many sects; and, in their four stages, they have a species of Masonic, or Eleusinian, . initiation from lower to higher de- grees; and this Order, it may be truthfully said, has some of the greatest Mysteries in their possession now held by any Order or Fraternity in the world. Sir John Malcolm says that Hassan Sabah and his descendants were a race of Sophees, and that they were of the sect of Battaneah, that is, Buddha. They were Templars, or Casi-deans, or Chas-di-im, or followers of Ras, or Masons.
The use of the Pallium, or sacred cloak, to convey the char- acter of Inspiration, was practiced by the Imaums of Persia, the same as practiced by Elias and Elishah (Eli-shah). This is continued by their followers to this day. When a person is ad- mitted to the highest degree, he will receive the investiture with the Pallium and the Samach. When the Grand-Seignior confers honour on a person, he gives him a pellise, a Paul, a pla, a sacred clcak, a remnant of the old form. From this comes the word "palls" at our funerals.
One of the names which excites the greatest curiosity as to its meaning, of the chief of the Assassins, was "Old Man of the Mountain"— senex de montibus. The Buddwa of Scotland was called "old man:" and Buddha, in India, means old man. • he opinion that the Assassins were Buddaists receives confirma- tion, in part, from the idea that he was reckoned as representa- tive of the "ancient of days." The representative idea, or form, or figure, by which the Prophet speaks of the Divine Intelligence — "Ancient of days,"' whose hair was wool, of a white color. But in Persian, according to Sir John Malcolm, the word sofee means both wisdom and wool. It is possible that from this idea we obtain the white goats' hair cloaks of the Albanians, with.
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their "snowy samese and their shaggy capote;" the white ber- noose of the Moors, the white robes of the Carmelites; nay, the sacred acceptation, and the supposedly enchanted value, of the color white generally.
That the renowned and feared tribes of Assassins, or Ishmaelites, whose history presents such an inextricable connec- tion with that of the Templars, and also with that of the Hos- pitallers, were acquainted with, if not professors of, the Fire- Philosophy of Zoroaster (so little understood by the profane), from which, indeed, they derived their atheistic desperation, will be apparent when we examine their belief.
What was really the object of the worship of the Knights Templars, in their secret synods, none but the Initiate can know. Whether, indeed, in their intercourse with infidels, they had not imbibed some of the ancient, traditionary ideas, and learned the religion of the inhabitants of that part of Asia bounded by Persia on the one hand, and by the Mediterranean on the other, seems a point more readily settled in the affirmative. In this view, Flame-worship would have passed a part of the adopted rites. We are thus brought to contemplate the Templars not so much in the light of a new superstition as in the brilliancy of the Philosophic position of the Magi in the old world of thought, and of the Rosicrucians, Brethren of the Rosy Cross, or Illu- minati, in the new.
Lamps and cloisters, lamps and altars, lamps and shrines, lights and tombs, lights (fire) everywhere, are connected ideas. The romance lingering and brightening about these strange sub- jects may have its origin in the real, philosophic, unsuspected truth which gives life to their meaning even for all time. Romance never has life except for the truth that underlies it. With these Fires among the graves — with the ultimate and funeral burning — with the pyre of the classics and the Fire-im- molations of the Orientals — with the Sacred Fire of the Magi, now as in the past, and the cressets and the torches of the
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Christian Knightly Fraternities, we connect the Ever-Burning lamps, (always representing true Love and Immortality to the Initiate, and merely heathenism to the masses and profane of which we have archaeological accounts, and the suspected, Ishmaelitish, Bohemian, or Fire-Worshipping Mysticism, which is no less than Fire, or Love (God) Worship, harbored as the "strange thing'' among the cowles and stoles, amidst the crosses and the books, and glancing, as the fiery crested snake (which is a symbol of Love and Fire Wisdom) from among the resplen- dent arms of the supposed (by the profane) renegade Templars.
To this striking object of tomb-Lights, incoherent in any other view than as the attestation, through the ages, of a Uni- versal, though Secret, faith, Walter Scott accidently (and un- conscious of its meaning) makes reference when he adjures the dying lamps as burning —
" Before thy low and lonely urn, O Gallant chief of Otter bourne; And thine, dark Knight of LiddesdaleP'
01 the "grave of the mighty dead,'* Michael Scott, the wizard of such dreadful fame, he also says that, within it — "Burned a wondrous light; Which lamp shall burn unquenchably ; " which means the Soul, the Fire, the Love, in man.
The only serious hold which it is possible to gain over the minds of men is through the influence of the supernatual. It is absurd and inconsequential to believe that all the wonderful effects caused by the Templars and other Fraternities of Devotees which seemed bound by a religion produced in their time, could have sprung from no higher motive than the desire to aggrandise, to overpower, to rule, to force. Wonderful things, unbelievable things, miraculous things, impossible things, must have been offered to the common-sense of the men of the age, before they would have given in to the authority which became to them a* that of angels, of spirits, and of gods. It is no slight task to master the resisting common-sense of the world, that which is
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invincible, except at conviction. Instincts at detection were as strong then as now. We are accustomed, every day, to. the in- fallable judgments of common-sense. That, decision as to what a thing is, is as independent of us as the sense of light. Quick wit, sharp wits, hardness of unbelief, suspicion, the same reason as is at work now — these were identical in the dark ages — in any age in which man was man. Prophecy must have been wonderfully verified, the assumed magic must have been demon- strated real, something not at all a fraud, first, before imagina- tive and enthusiastic men themselves could believe it; second, before plain men could accept that which material sense assured was impossible.
There existed in those secret societies, the dreams, trances, visions, and fore-knowledge which made princes of the Seers. It is in this secret medium — whatever it may be, whether con- jured out of the capacity of man in the intoxication of nar- cotics, through fumes, anointings, training, or lapsing out of the prisoned sense into the unimprisoned sense — it is in their new world that the explorers stumble upon unbelievable, though real, things. Of a piece with the miraculous provision obtained by the Grand Master of the Templars, in his agony, as noticed hereafter, were the two following instances of forecasting, which as far as can be affirmed by records, are definitely established. The Priestess Phoennis, the daughter of a Chaonic King, fore- told the devastating march of the Gauls, and the course which they would take from Europe to Asia, together with the de- struction of the cities, and this a generation before the event hap- pened. The King Phrrhus had received an oracular sentence — that he was destined to die as soon as he liad seen a wolf fight- ing with a bull. The sentence was fulfilled when in the market- place or Argos, he saw a bronze group representing such a com- bat. An old woman killed him by throwing down a tile from a house. _. The Assassins, as a secret sect, had a University among
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them. The course of instructions in this university, according to Macrisi, by following nine degree.
The object of the first section of instruction, which was long and tedious, was to infuse doubts and difficulties into the minds of the aspirant, and to lead him to repose, with a blind, admir- ing confidence, in the knowledge and wisdom of the teachers. To this end he was perplexed with extraordinary, and seemingly unanswerable, questions. The absurdities of the literal sense of the Koran, and its repugnance to reason, were studiously pointed out. Dark hints were given that, beneath the shell of the philosophy taught, lay a kernel sweet to the taste and nutritive to the soul. But all further information was most rigorously withheld from the inquiring mind until the disciple had con- sented to bind himself, by a most solemn oath, to absolute faith and obedience to his instructor.
In the second place, when the aspirant had taken the pre- scribed oath, he was admitted as a member of the second degree, in which was inculcated the acknowledgement of the particu- lars appointed by God as the sources of all knowledge. This in- cluded science, and the arts and facts of life.
The third degree included the knowledge of farther import- ant facts, and the connection, and succession, and power of those facts. It also informed the student what was the number of the blessed and holy imams. This was the mystic seven; for, as God hath made seven heavens, seven earths, seas, planets, metals, tones, and colors, so seven was the number of the noblest angels, spirits, or attributes of God. Religion, as yet, was not outstept.
In the fourth degree, the pupil learned that God had sent seven lawgivers into the world, each of whom was commissioned to alter and improve, or rather to develop, the system of his predecessor; that each of these had seven helpers, who appeared in the interval between him and his successor; these helpers, as they did not appear as public teachers, were called the mute
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(samit), in contradistinction to the speaking lawgivers. The seven lawgivers were Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mo- hammed, and Ismail, the son of Jaaffer; the seven principal helpers, called Seats (Soos), were Seth, Shem, Ismael, the son of Abraham, Aaron, Simon, Ali, and Mohammed, the son oi Ismail. It is justly observed by the discerning Hammer that, as this last personage was not more than a century dead, the teacher had it in his power to fix on whom he would as the mute prophet of the time, and to inculcate the belief in, and obedience to, him of all who had not gone beyond this degree.
The fifth degree taught that each of the seven mute prophets had twelve apostles for the dissemination of his faith. There were twelve signs of the Zodiac, twelve months, twelve tribes of Israel, twelve joints in the four fingers of each hand, and so forth. This all proves that this school was founded on facts that were absolute and not to be contradicted then or even at the present time.
In the sixth degree, the disciple" being carefully led thus far, and his mind duly prepared for what followed, the Koran and the precepts contained in that book of authority were once more brought under consideration; and he was told that all the positive portions of religion, all the facts of faith, must be subordinated to the laws of nature and reconciled to the lights of philosophy, or be rejected as perhaps necessary to the compre- hension, though intrinsically worthless. In fact, man herein was thrown back upon nature, and taught to discover the exter- ior influences alone in it. Then succeeded, for a long space of time, instructions in the system of Aristotle. When considered fully qualified, the scholar was admitted to the seventh degree, in which knowledge was imparted in the Mystic pantheism which is held and taught by the sect of the Sofees.
Von Hammer argues an identity between the two orders, as he styles them, of the Ishmaelites and the Templars from the similarity of their dress, their internal organization, and their
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Secret Doctrine. The color of the Khalifs of the house of Ommiyah was white; hence the house of Abbas, in their contest with them, adopted black as their distinguishing hue. Hassan Sabah, when he formed the institution of the fedavee, or the ''Devoted to Death/' assigned them a red girdle or cap. The mantle worn by the members of the Hospital was black.
The last Grand Master of the Templars, Jacques de Molar, together with his companion, Guy, brother of the Dauphin of Auvergne, was brought forth and placed upon a pile erected upon that point of the islet of the Seine, at Paris, where after- wards was erected the statue of Henry IV. It was a day of March, the 19th, as it is stated by the historians, 1314. The two Unfortunate Templars suffered with constancy, to the last asserting their innocense of the things with which they were accused. The spectators wept and shrieked at the spectacle of their sacrifice. During the night their ashes were gathered up to be preserved as relics.
Molay, ere he expired, summoned Clement, the Pope who had pronounced the bull of abolition against the Order and had condemned the Grand Master to the flames, to appear, within forty days, before the Supreme Eternal Judge, and Phillip to the .same awful but just tribunal within the space of a year. Both predictions were fulfilled and thus was justice meted out. The Pontiff did actually die of a colic on the night of the 19th of the following month. More dreadful still, the church in which his body was deposited in state, took fire, the flames spread, and the corpse of Clement was half consumed. The King, be- fore the year had elapsed, by an accidental fall from his horse, suffered such injury that he died. The fulfillment of these two prophecies showed to what knowledge the Master of the Order had achieved and produced marvelous effect. The un- fortunate Templars were justly regarded as martyrs.
We know that the general — nay, the universal — belief to the contrary, that the Order of the Knights Templars, in cer-
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tain forms, has continued down to the present day. The Ring of Portugal, in his dominions, formed the Order of Christ out of the Templars. The Freemasons also were connected with the ancient Templars; and there is a society bearing -the name of Brethren of the Temple, whose chief seat is at Paris, and its branches extend into various countries, and into England. Jacques de Molay, in the year 1315, in anticipation of his speedy martyrdom, appointed Johannes Marcus Lormenius to be his successor in his dignity, and there has been an unbroken, though secret, succession of the Grand Masters down to the present time. That the Secret Doctrines of the Templars were partaken of by the Knights of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem we also have proof. Signor Rossetti, who possessed a very intimate acquaint- ance with the history of the Hospitallers, maintains stoutly that there is much in common between the doctrines taught in the higher grades of Freemasonry — more, also, that has been lost — and the views, formulae, and fashions of the Order of the Temple. True Masons, who appreciate the spirit of their Fra- ternity as well as the rituals, know that Masonry, as least in part, sprang from the Templars.
Lost in the clouds of antiquity, the dim forms of the mailed Templars disappear. Their buildings, their churches, their haunts, remain. But the inhabitants are passed into the shadows. Their remembrances and their secrets only survive in the quaint courts of the Temples. The fact that their dwell- ing-place was once within the present purlieus of law, that the notes of their wild Eastern music, and the ceremonies of their strange, deeply Mystic worship were, in the time that has almost become a dream, real matters in the story of those, at present, so unromantic buildings — truths amidst this wilderness of me- chanical-law-spelling, these things of a life so unlike our present form of existence lend an interest to the very name of the Tem- ples yet standing, holding their secrets as ever and defying the
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crude and unnatural investigations of the profane, but so well- known to the true Initiate.
There exist real personal memorials of this antique and wonderful body of the Templars, preserved in secret at the pres- ent time in Paris. Some of the archives and statutes — portions of the unexamined history — even some of the mystic banners, and an assortment of the arms of the brotherhood, still survive. These are kept in unknown but not in obscure or dilapidated buildings, as some, for want of knowledge, seem to think. Strange that the world should think the secrets of such a mighty sect of Fire Philosophers, once living, should ever die ! It is im- possible. God does not permit it to be.
Atlantis
Its Beauty. Its Fall.
"On that portion of the maps of the earth's surface named the Western Hemisphere can be found an immense island-stud- ded sea, and an almost land-locked gulf. Into this gulf stretches a nearly perfect parallelogram, the peninsula of Yucatan.
"So long ago that history fades into the hoary mists of tra- dition, the gulf was an inland lake. Where the islands now show themselves amid the blue waters, a continent sunned itself in the light of blazing days.
"This continent was peopled by the Aryan race. Its lati- tude teemed with all needed conditions to make exotic life most desirable, whether such life was on the animal or the vegetable plane. The population increased and multiplied until the whole broad land became one vast city. Temples and palaces, works of skill and art, abounded everywhere. These did not there represent the slow toil of human sweat and agony, of brute force tyrannized into sulky compliance. Brilliant in design and bold in execution, they were the manifestation of soul-power over Elemental force. The worship of the one God was taught. To those who desired, training for the acquisition of the most Oc- cult and Mystical knowledge and power ever known to men was possible.
"They who had charge of these departments as Keepers of the Keys and treasuries of knowledge were neither unaware nor unmindful of the fact of other planes of existence upon the earth. For thousands of years they strove earnestly to better all states of their fellowmen by imparting a knowledge of the truth.
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"By the silent thought the whole people were lifted grade by grade as rapidly as they could assimilate the instructions which are of so much influence and assistance in the duties and pleasures of life. Just as fast as they could be educated to per- ceive these facts, they were advanced in the scale of existence.
"It is true of all peoples, nations, kindreds, and tongues, that in proportion as the lower classes rise from a given starting point towards the Light, the force generated (vibrations set in motion) by their action will lift those who are sensitive and fit still farther above them. It is better to be the wise men of a nation of Philosophers than the learned of a race of cringing slaves.
"It is not strange, therefore, that these of whom I speak should have held the mightiest secrets of the universe in their keeping. It was unquestionable that the trackless waste of water in unknown seas became to them familiar paths, nor that the mysteries of the earth, of the air, and of all Nature were at their command. The archives of all ancient nations, carved in their books of stone, speak clearly and truly of them. In Egypt, in Assyria, in India, are found the same inscriptions, conveying the same knowledge that is today locked up in the ruined cities covered by the forests of thousands of years in Yucatan*.
"The Western lamp of knowledge was never lighted from the East. From the proud seagirt continent of Atlantis went forth, as from the sun, to all parts of the earth under the heav- ens, the Illumination of truth and knowledge.
"The old Atlantians, going forth in their galleys hither and yon, so controlled the Elementals by their knowledge of the Hid- den Laws of Nature that they had no need to wait for the mov- ing of the winds or tides. Like Christos, who, in the storm, stilled the waves and bade them be at peace, and immediately
*The Fraternity "Sons of Osiris" continues its office in Yucatan, from whence it had been transplanted to Egypt ages ago.
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they were at the place whither they were going, so the Atlantians moved over the wide wilderness of waters on earth, scattering the seeds of their knowledge along the shores they visited. The seeds fell into good ground in Egypt, Chaldea, and India.
"It can be noted wherever the pressure of the ever-recurring demands of the physical — that never-yielding circle of neces- sity—was least on the matter over which the spirit sought to maintain dominion, meanwhile sinking deeper and deeper into its illusions with the downward rush of the cycle, there the seeds of Truth took root and grew most vigorously. At such point? were more leisure, strength and purpose to bring forth, as fruit, the knowledge of the unseen in its greatest perfection and abund- ance. Spirit domination is a tropical fruit reaching mature per- fection only in those countries where the bountiful earth minis- ters voluntarily, always anticipating man's physical necessities, sun-cooked food does not stimulate groveling desires.
"The dwellers in more rigorous latitudes, who, in spite of opposing force, still gain spiritual elevation for themselves, are richer in strength and force. This is the result of the discipline acquired in the overcoming of the natural obstacles of their en- vironment. The harder the battle, the more important the vic- tory. So long as Atlantis obeyed the law that makes all men gods in wisdom, it prospered mightily. But there came at last a time when they who had the knowledge only in trust, permitted themselves to think, to wish, and to plan for grasping the absolute control of the whole world. In this they sought to climb into the seat and place of the Supreme. Beyond the earth lies the universe. The lesser is but the result of the greater.
"The One denies no one knowledge. Whoever seeks to take from it, its authority, its supremacy, thus attempting arrogation or absorption into the Oneness in any other than the appointed ways which lie open to all created beings, shows a taint of gross- ness inspiring the desire, surely provocative of swift destruction. They who thus planned were powerful far beyond the concep-
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tion of mortal, holding at option all the secrets of Nature save one, that one embracing the Infinite supremacy of the one.
"These leaders had freely scattered knowledge abroad upon the earth. By self-denial and long training they had attained, and yet at almost the supreme moment, dazzled by the bright- ness of the Illumination, they looked once again toward self. From their memories faded out the unchanging law: 'Thus far and no farther, shalt thou go.' The ceaseless breaking of the waves of the mighty sea against the silent resistance of rock- bound coasts, ceased to utter its warning to dazed mentality. The on-ccming day, beginning of the end to those who had forgotten the very life and essence of the One, was at hand. The proud city of Atlantis, city and continent one, sitting as a queen upon the throne of the waters, had, by arrogant presumption, filled full the cup of wrath, for which expiation must be made. They — masters of all the Elements and all lawful knowledge of the Unseen — now sought the forbidden, as if the part should de- mand equality with the whole. Step by step they had reached the veil separating them from the whiteness of the Immediate Presence; and now, as the last fatal step, they had determined by the exercise of their most potent skill to rend the veil and to come unheralded and unsummoned before the fact of It whom nc man hath seen at any time.
"Carefully were their preparations made, most accurately were the sacred computations wrought out to decide the auspici- ous hour. . . . Panoplied with the consciousness of previous achievement, their call to the embattled hosts of the universe rang out along the astral currents. Confidently the word of power was spoken in all the pride of human will. The expected accomplishment did not follow. To their amazed horror they discerned a new vibration, a resultant of creative thought in its own defence. To this they had no key, and first bewildered, then terrified, they perceived that the immense force, by their own act, had destroyed the accurate balance and adjustment of
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Nature's laws. Utterly without resource, they waited for the outcome.
"Thus knowing the inner, behold the outer. The sun rises in its eastern splendor. The mighty millions who dwell in palaces and temples, in luxury or frugality, dream not of nor can they understand the word of the Omnipotent, already spoken and gone forth whereunto it was sent. They awake to their life of ease and pleasure with the self-assurance that the thing exist- ing hitherto will still continue to be. In their hearts they say : 'Have we not compelling power and force! Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof/ They pass on, without concern, to their usual affairs. Clouds begin to interrupt the clearness of the sky. They deepen and darken. The uncontrollable, elemental storm of the tropics, after years of durance, has burst its prison- ing fetters. The people are awed by the terrific intensity of the outburst, but comfort their hearts with the idea that it will pass on as it has hitherto done. They know not that the sceptre had slipped from the hands of the former rulers, who, within the chambers of the Three, Five, and Seven, in the great tower of the temple, now lie prone upon their faces, heroically awaiting the unrolling of the book of just judgment. The cyclone becomes a continuous storm of day after day. The rocking earth vibrates beneath their feet, and trembles with each new blast of the mighty forces of Nature, wind-enveloped, drawn here by human will, and now uncontrolld. The waters of the sea invade the land. Lashed on by the fierce currents upon their surface, the tides seem to be mounting higher and higher. It is now known that is was the sinking of the land, and not the rising of the water, which for ages has hidden from investigation the abodes of the r'chest and most powerful nation ever dwelling upon the earth. Foot by foot all that had ever been given to us by the waters was again demanded, and returned to its origin. The records of thousands of years were buried beneath the storm-tossed waters ■ — buried, but not destroyed. Only the mountain-tops and the
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highest plateaus now known as islands, remained of all the vast continent. The inland lake mingled its waters with the incoming torrent from the salty ocean, and a great gulf waters the southern shore of the country, where now live in peace and Wonder, over the hidden past, the same reincarnated mighty race. A few scattered books, written in stone, were saved, and a wall invisible and impermeable, was built around the indestructible manuscript. Unseen and Infinite Power has thus preserved Useful knowledge until the times for the revealing shall have
COffii;
:;Fe&r and dread for ages and ages after the awful cata- clysm, detained within the boundaries of their own country, the feeble remnant of a people once so invincible and venturesome. The rest of the world passed on and forgot them.
The story of the Light bearer who fell from heaven is like the story of lost Atlantis. The legend of the great flood is the true narrative of facts of whose awfulness only the Atlantians had experience. They were forbidden to return to earth until the impetus of their knowledge should in some manner have spent itself, lest recurring memory tempt them to their own fu- ture ruin. Thanks to the Ruler of Men, they are again to be permitted to pass out of the valley of the shadow into the possi- bility of new experience, life and knowledge. None but he who has lived under the awful shadow can understand w7hat it is to exist outside of the Love current of the universe, enveloped in the separating displeasure of the Almighty ; which is the condition of those who seek selfish interest in preference to the good and welfare and benefits of others.
This is the story of the lost Atlantis, a continent where men had reached earthly perfection, in which all power had been granted them except the privilege to stand face to face with God. This they were forbidden to ask; but they were not satisfied with the mighty power in their possession and they attempted to rend the veil which separated them from the presence of God, and
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ruin and absolute loss of power was the result. The story of Atlantis should be a warning to all of those who would travel the Occult path: "Thus far and no farther, mayst thou go while in the flesh." It is a warning to all men to be careful of their desires, to seek within themselves for the why they covet the potential and awful dynamic forces which may be obtained through living the life taught by the Secret Schools.
While the Atlantians were united as one and obeyed the Supreme Law, all was well, but no sooner did they follow the desires of the flesh and become dis-united than the fall came. This is the history not only of the Atlantians, but also of the Egyptians, the Grecians, the Persians, as well as of the Romans.
In our present incarnation we study to recall the ancient teachings and methods of use in our unfolding, knowing that we gathered from out the 'Golden Age' the 'One Word, One Princi- ple, One Truth,' which will last as long as Eternity. Yet, in each incarnation, we must recall the wisdom already gained, and add new experiences as we continue in the grand march of evo- lution. Therefore, the new is built out of the old, and who knows but what we shall find some things that will prove the part we played in the drama of life on the stage where the light first appeared in Atlantis, and where it disappeared to reappear in Egypt, flourishing for a time, but finally disappearing in India, leaving that great nation and its people in darkness.
Who knows but in turning to the great Past, studying the ancient people and religions, we may regain some forgotten knowledge giving us the power to reach the place God intended, when the 'Word became flesh.1
"There is but little revealed concerning the Art of Atlantis. A great deal can be said of the arts of ancient Egypt. Indian history tells us that the degree of excellence attained by that grand nation was of the most exalted kind.
"Art as well as nations plays a part in the history of prog- ress, and we might say, in many respects, of the human mind;
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for the mode of expression is at all times a type, or symbol, of the tone or feeling which suggests it. In this, the Past is linked with the Present. Many consider all efforts in Art or life a sort of influence toward the perfect Ideal. Therefore, the genius displayed in those days exhibits results more beautiful and per- fect than that which came after that era.
"All nations have their Arts, Sciences, and Religions. They display magnificent temples, and palaces where the multitude can gather, giving offerings of physical, as well as spiritual na- ture to the Deity. The Arts of the ancients were controlled by, or dependent upon, their respective religions, and flourished more or less according to the liberty allowed the Artist and the state of respect in which he was held by his fellowman.
"Little can be traced concerning the Arts and Sciences of Atlantis, therefore allow me to quote something that has been re- vealed. Our own race, the Aryan, has naturally achieved far greater results in almost every direction than the Atlantians. Where they failed to reach our level, the records of what they did accomplish are of interest as representing the high-water mark their tide of civilization reached. On the other hand, the character of the scientific achievements in which they did out- strip us are of so dazzling a nature that we are bewildered by such unequal development.
"The Arts and Sciences, as practiced by the first two Races, were, of course, crude in a degree. The history of the Atlant- ians, as of the Aryan race, was interspersed with periods of prog- ress and decay. Eras of culture were lost in lawlessness, dur- ing which their artistic and scientific development was lost; be- ing succeeded by civilization reaching to still higher levels.
"Architecture, sculpture, painting, and music were all cul- tivated in Atlantis. From what has been gathered from na-. tions in the near Past in regard to the development of Music, we cannot expect that the Atlantians reached any degree of
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— — — ^ —— — M^M — I
perfection. Their instruments undoubtedly were of the most primitive type; the music at the best crude.
"One thing is certain, the Atlantians were fond of color, and brilliant hues decorated both inside and outside of their buildings, but painting as we know it today as a fine art could hardly have been established. As time brought forth de- velopment of a love for studying Nature and depicting her beau- ties upon paper, or whatever material they used- drawing and painting must have formed a part of their school studies.
"Sculpture, on the other hand, was most certainly taught extensively and widely practiced. It attained great ex cellence, becoming in a religious way the custom for the rich to place in some of the temples an image of themselves. These were usually carved in wood or a black stone. The wealthiest had their statues cast in one of the precious metals, gold, silver, or aurichalcum. This metal was made from a yellow copper ore. Its lustre is pearly; its color pale green, sometimes azure.
. "Architecture was naturally widely practiced, as manifest- ing their respect and devotion to their religious beliefs, if we were to judge, believing as we do, that the Atlantians in fleeing from their disappearing country, found a resting place in Egypt. The Atlantians built massive structures of gigantic proportions, the ruins of some of their temples and pyramids wherein it is clear!}" indicated that the Fire Philosophy was the base of their religion, still remain in Yucatan where a few of the Masters, or Initiates, of the old Order still remain.
Their temples were beyond description; some of the buildings in the last World's Fair in Chicago were built from some re- maining memory in the minds of the architects. The future still holds the reproduction of the other great temples. As time rolls on and the human family becomes more harmonious and cul- tured through the refining process of the Spiritual Fire, again the 'One Word, One Principle, and One Truth' shall dominate,
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forcing through the spirit of harmonious vibration the desire for one Church, or Temple, the Temple of Universal Justice, where- in all shall have Equal Opportunity, the Right of Free Choice, and taught so that each may become truly Human and truly Divine, while yet in the flesh.
Egypt,
once the Glorious
The history of Egypt, which is but a continuation of Atlan- tis, may be divided into two periods, each subject to various changes and revolutions. What took place during the reign of Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings, and the period of the Israel- ites' captivity, or the immediate generations preceeding the eigh- teenth dynasty, or that of Ramses the Great, who lived about fourteen centuries before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, he who became the Master- Initiate, may be considered the beginning of true Art in Egypt, of which little is known beyond what is said in the book of Genesis and the account in Exodus.
"Pliny tells us, that according to their own accounts, the Egyptians were masters of painting full 6,000 years before it passed from them to the Greeks. The Art of Egypt was purely symbolic in its principles and historic in its practice; was the tool of a hierarchy; its artists the slaves of superstitions. Egyptian hieroglyphics appear to be simply records, social, re- ligious, and political. Egyptian painting was accordingly more of a symbolical writing than a liberal art.
"The architectural remains that have attracted so much no- tice in Egypt during the last century are scattered along both sides of the Nile for a distance of nearly a thousand miles. These consist of temples, pyramids, obelisks, and monoliths, or large stone pillars. Very diverse opinions have been expressed as to the periods when these various monuments were built; but it is generally agreed that their construction must have embraced the long period of at least 2,000 years. Some, situated near the mouth of the Nile, having been constructed after the commence-
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ment of the Christian era; while others, high up in the country toward Abyssinia, are believed to have been built nearly 2,000 years before the Christian era. Whatever may be the difference of opinion on these conjectural points, it is agreed by those who know, that Egypt displayd the most mighty examples of struc- tures built ages before Greece and Rome were numbered among the nations of the world, and all other ancient structures may be best viewed by comparing them with those of Egypt.
"At a short distance from Danderah, now called upper Egypt, is the most extraordinary group of architectural ruins presented in any part of the world, known as the Temples of the ancient City of Trebes. Trebes in its prime occupied a large area on both sides of the Nile. This city was the center of a great commercial nation of Upper Egypt, ages before Memphis was the capital of the second nation in Lower Egypt; and how- ever grand the architectural monuments of the latter may have been, those of the former surpassed them.
"What sublime conceptions can be derived from such mag- nificent specimens of man's creation in architecture, not only in magnitude, but in form, proportion, and construction! The portrayal by pencil or brush can convey but a faint idea of the perfected city. As the city stands today it is like a city of giants, who after a long conflict, have been all destroyed, leav- ing the ruins of their various temples as the only proofs of their existence.
"The Temple of Luxor (it was in this temple that the Grand Lodge of Initiates always met) stands on a raised plat- form of brickwork covering more than 2,000 feet in length and 1,000 in breadth. It is the one that interests the members of all Ancient Orders, especially so all the members of those Orders that worshipped at the Shrine of the Secret Fire, more than per- haps any other, and stands on the eastern bank of the Nile. It is in a very ruined state; but records say the stupendous scale of its proportions almost takes away the sense of its incomplete-
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ness. Up to about a quarter of a century ago, the greater part of its columns in the interior and part of the inner sanctuary remained; but the outer walls had been removed after falling, for use elsewhere.
"This Temple (which figures more or less in the history of the different Occult or Mystical Orders as all originally came from one source and that Atlantis, from the Atlantian Fire Worshippers), was founded by Amenothis III, who construct- ed the southern part, including the heavy colonnade over-looking the river; but the world is indebted to Rameses II for the re- maining portion, but destruction unfortunately conceals this fact. The chief entrance to the Temple looked to the East; while the Holy Chamber at the upper end of the plan approach- ed the Nile. As mighty as the Temple of Luxor was, it was ex- ceeded in magnitude and grandeur by that of Carnak. The distance between these two great structures was a mile and a half. Along this avenue was a double row of Sphinxes placed twelve feet apart and the width of the avenue was sixty feet. When in perfect state, this avenue presented the most extraordin- ary entrance that the world has ever seen. If we had the power to picture from the field of imagination the grand processions of Neophytes constantly passing through and taking part in the ceremonies of Initiation, we would be powerless to produce the grandeur of the surroundings and the imposing sight of color and magnificent trappings of those who took part. Neither can we produce the music that kept the vast number of people in steady marching order. Crude it may have been to the culti- vated ear of the twentieth century. But could not the palpitating strain sung by massed voices on the lapse of time, whose his- tory touches the profoundest aspirations of the human heart, like the trend of a mighty river, become the grand currents of Universal Law, imparting the desire to that shadowy Past, as it steps forth from the pages of a history dim with age?
"Egypt must have been, when these Temples were built, a
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marital nation; for records of its war-like deeds are perpetu- ated in deeply engraved tablets, which even now, excite the ad- miration of the best judges of archaeological remains. It was also a highly civilized nation and of a nature that could bear the expenditure which always attends the culture of the Arts. Yet, strange as it may seem, we do not know with any certainty either its history or its chronology. It surpassed, in its aston- ishing architecture, all other nations that have existed upon the earth; and yet the greater power and beauty which belongs to intellect was scarcely to be traced.
"In those times, the armies of Egypt went forth to conquer and subdue the known physical world. But the knowledge and potency that found rest and culture at Atlantis, Luxor, and Ele- phantis so permeated and controlled all nations that records of experience, becoming knowledge, have been preserved even to the present day. So deeply were they impressed upon the unseen that they, returning upon their cycles of development, have been considered by our age, as original inventions and discoveries. The earth-born forget nothing so easily as wisdom, or its pos- session. The Thrice-Wise said: 'There is nothing new under the sun.' But in our day, when, instead of the best men and soldiers of a nationality coming forth from fair and beautiful cities, arrayed for the conquest, the armies of Egypt and Chaldea are swarming from out the unseen. They are overrunning all countries where there is spiritual Light and Life enough to give them assurance of sufficient advancement to warrant their in- carnation. They are hampered by the customs and restrictions of the mortal laws, and their own strict regard for all law. If there was one thing more than another that an Egyptian re spected and venerated, it was the law under which he lived; the symbols of authority upon the throne; and the sign of Spiritual Presence in the temple. Urged on, however, by the impulses of the Higher Self, they are striving in this day and generation to the best of their unfolding, for their own progress, and for the
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consolidation of the Brotherhood seen and unseen. They have perceived it was absolutely necessary to rise above the mental impediments of their environments; and the Unseen Brotherhood who are not yet ready to support their colleagues, in manifesta- tion, stand behind them rank upon rank. The impulse and the vibration coming from these supporting columns, thrill along the soul formations of the past. The vibrations bring recurring memories, which whisper of the One, the great God Om, and of His truth. Everywhere, on all lines, these Ancient Ones are seeking to verify in the outer, what Cabalistic symbols and signs are, the Hidden Truths of Being, which from time to time have been whispered out of the intelligence and knowledge locked up in the Archives of the Astral Light Library.
"Oh! You Neophytes, listen to the Voice that comes out of the Silence, and believe it for the truth's sake. You have not yet concentrated enough. The Watch-Fires on the mountain top do not yet break down the darkness. So separated they contain within themselves weakness. If they can be brought together, knowing each other's feeling and intensity of purpose, which de- mands sacrifice of the modes of expression, of the spirit of the utterances, then it will be as if a thousand camp-fires were mass- ed in one, and it became the beacon light of the world. The field is ripe for the harvest and the stalks are falling on the ground from the weight of the grain ; will you save it ? Will you accom- plish for yourself that which shall make the path of those who follow you easier? We have, in our Archives, the Mysteries; are you ready to receive them? As Egypt in the olden time, when her star of glory was highest, was mistress of the world, so now may you be full of potency and power, Masters of the good, ready to lean on and place on record the conditions needed to bring about the opening again of that which was lost to those who are now crying, hungering, and thirsting for the truth.
"The t^ue Egyptian knows whatever was lost had not dis-
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appeared in the sense of being destroyed, but is simply veiled. The Veil of Isis is thrown over it; and no arm since that time, has been strong enough, potent enough, will-f\i\ enough to tear it aside. The land of Egypt lies desolate, the stranger treadeth within her gates, desolation broods over her temples, her palaces, her cities, and the Archives and treasures of Incomparable knowledge. How long, O sons of Egypt! Brothers of the one family! Sons of the One! will you refuse or think it of little moment to take concerted and united action, that there may come to Light once again all the beauty and grandeur; all the potency and knowledge that have been waiting thousands of years, for the time and times when you should once more be upon earth. We, in our Secret Archives hold the documents and the Myster- ies of the temples. Are you ready to receive these Mysteries? Shall the cycles move on, and you, having accomplished your pilgrimage, go hence into the Unseen leaving all unrevealed that might have come to you; and thus all the world to await the un- folding of anothet cycle ? You are face to face with all that ever has been. The means are in your hands; the world is before you; the potencies of the most ancient knowledge with the direct influence of the search-light pouring upon it, is your birthright. Take and use it. Commence at once and persist, until you have reached that point where you can say to the physical, 'Stay, as I shall have need of thee.'
"Egypt has left us no memory of a Homer, a Pericles, or a Xenophon. A single Hebrew writer, Moses, gives us a clearer insight, a more exact and truthful view of the actual state of that land than we can gain from any of its monuments, or written re- mains, or from Herodotus or any other Greek. The principal idea presented to us in the rapid sketches of the books of Moses, is that of power — absolute power. T am Pharaoh, and with me none shall lift up his hands or foot in all the land of Egypt.' All travelers on their journeys stand amazed at the prodigies which surround them on every side, but the main fact is the
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same. Power must have created all these things; for, in the Twentieth Century of the Christian Era, to reproduce the works which can be found even in the present at Luxor and Carnak, would be utterly and entirely impossible.
So long as we are ununited and self-seeking, we are creat- ing both in the visible and in the invisible realms a feeling of opposition that grows stronger and stronger, as we increase our momentum of individuality. To this condition, by the very es- sence of its existence are necessarily drawn all other discordant forces. Singly, they hold, perhaps, but little energy; but, like grains of sand, in united action, they can weigh tons. It is strange how long it has taken man to learn this lesson of unity from the physical world; but, as he will not let go of his physi- cal, and look towards the spiritual side of himself, he must receive the chastisements that are the inevitable consequence. When he does come to the time and place, where from the spirit- ual side of himself, he can contemplate, he perceives a new view from his contemplation. This does not help self as a center of action or a starting point of force; but it holds out; it makes unity of harmonious action the main spring of all life.
The "words of the wise" to man consequently ring and echo with injunctions to him of important import: "Obey the law — the word of the Supreme Will." "Do the will of the Father." These reiterated words of advice are forever reverberating through the arches of space. The more we declare that we will not obey, but will follow our own short-sighted inclinations in the direction of our desire and pleasure, the more we shall be sure to become tangled in savagery. Here we attempt to stay the immutable law, bringing upon ourselves the condign punishment or pain, by which only our animality can be trained. It is we and not God who is benefited by our conformity to law — the na- tural order of things. Thus we as animals have been and are gradually forced to perceive that the potency of united action is the only way by which we may hope to succeed. To be emi-
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nently successful, is the only result if we are truly on the basis of Universal Law, the only right method of action.
Under the impress of the spirit, we become desirous of be- ing of some service to all our fellows, even if it is no more than to eat at the second table. When we have come to this point, it is no longer possible for us to hold enmity against our fellows, even in behalf of our most carefully cultivated feuds. What others may do, often causes annoyance, but never that unrelent- ing setness we know as hatred, which, like the hardening of a plaster cast, binds into an immovable and inflexible limitation, influencing even the condition of the Soul in both the hater and the one hated.
The reader may thnk I am transgressing in giving the cause of certain results; I am not. In writing the history of a people or an Order, it is as important to give the reason for its downfall as it is to state what was taught, so warning other nations and Orders not to fall into like error; hence is it necessary to point out the way of deliverance.
"It is a mistake to look at an Egyptian Temple in the light of a Church, or even of a Greek Temple. Here no public wor- ship was performed; the faithful did not congregate for public prayer; indeed, no one was admitted inside the Sanctuary except the Priest and the Initiates of the Order. In some, not even the King, unless he was an Initiate, was allowed at all times. The Temple was a royal proscenium, that is, a token of Piety from the King who erected it whereby to win the favor of the Gods.
"The Egyptian Temples were always dedicated to three Gods — a Triad, and it is actually from this was copied the Christian Trinity. The first was the male principle; second, the female principle; third, the off-spring of the two. Creator, creating, and creation — in the Christian Trinity it is the Father (Creator), the Virgin Mary (Creatrix), and Jesus (the Son, or off-spring). Thus the three Deities are blended into one, ex- pressing neither beginning nor end. We thus prove that the
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Ancient Mysteries were taught and celebrated, first, in Atlantis; second, in Egypt; third, in Elephantis. In all of the Temples of these places the Fire Philosophy was taught as it has been throughout all the Secret Orders since the time of Ancient Atlan- tis. Of the Fire Philosophy of Atlantis, Egypt, and India, not much can be said in a history, as they are secret and not to be divulged to the profane. Only a small part of these instruc- tions may be quoted from the secret manuscript, proving that such was the philosophy of the ancient Masters.
Each spark contains the Flame Consciousness belonging to every soul, which evolves finally into manifestation. In it, and under all, rests the eternal Essence, the Never-Dying Flame, which, once lighted (Soul awakened), bridges the Eternal Past with the Eternal Future. It is the Life Existent, the Soul of Fire. It is the Only True Way, the Infinite God.
The Mighty Spirit of the Flame has no destructive essence within itself. But it holds all power, by Divine commission, to create the light that glorifies and uplifts everything that it shines upon. The central Fire (God) radiates to the circumference and there touches the periphery of all its existence. Again re- turning to the Center, it holds ensouled within its vibrations other souls to be illuminated and to become self-radiating from the same Great Fire. The fire of all the Gods is kindled from, and concentrated in, one Great God !
"Since the beginning of days, sacrifices have been laid upon the altar of Fire. In all ancient writings are we told of the corn- men fire; the sacred Fire and of Sacrificial Fire. What means the fire upon the altar ? What means the Mysterious Light ; the incense soaring in misty waves, as a Soul expands in exalta- tion;- the air heavy with its exhaled perfume: the solemn multi- tude of lamps, which with their richly wrought golden arbra gleams about Shrine and tabernacle? What, but that Fire, as- cending toward heaven in its pristine blueness and triangular
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shape is the profoundest symbol of the supreme life-giving power!
''Watching the leaping flame, the Triangle plainly mani- fests itself. The base below, the apex pointing up, is from the beginning, put forth as symbolic of the Unseen, the Unknown God. There is nothing in all the world that holds so completely within itself all the attributes of the Supreme Intelligence. The point reaching upward is always the node of superior energy, the Creator of Life and sensation. Hence, the apex of the fiery triangle must be the Absolute; for the real potency of Fire ap- pears at the moment of contact.
"The spirit of Fire we cognize as Life. Wherever God is, there Fire, as the Holy Ghost, will also be. Wherever Fire is, there is Life. Wherever Fire rests, there manifestation will be. If Fire is Life, then it must hold within itself the Divine Intelli- gence. Hence the flame. The essential essence of the flame is Life — God. If Fire is God and God is Love, the essential Fire must be Love; and thus we can only find the fire through Love and God through the fire. The manifested fire can sweep away all man's possession, and destroy his body; but the Essence drop- ping into the Secret Place of the Most High, the maelstrom or vehicle, which holds within itself the Unseen charm of all exist- ence, lights the Flame that makes man Immortal.
"Where man worships, the lights burning upon the altar are symbolical of the Divine Energy, of generation and regeneration. These flaming lights encircle the most holy point of the ancient mosques. They glow in ambient beauty about the Shrine of saints and the churches of the Eternal Cities. They burn con- stantly in Mystic attestation before the tombs of the Redeemers. Always and everywhere, they are and always have been a silent witness and sign to the Initiate, of the origin and significance of the Sun Worshippers.
Man, seeing fire struck out from the cold, unyielding flint, comes to believe that the coldest, hardest stone must have a
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heart of fire. All Nature is built upon the Divine Fire. The flagstone of matter shuts it down, waiting for the great Central Sun to drop a ray of fiery essence into the bosom of Mother Earth. It thereby creates sufficient impulse to cause it to stream forth, unwind its starry limbs, and step into manifestation. This fire descending upon the altar of Mother Earth holds concealed as its ultimate, the Secret of Life.
"The lily bulb contains the same forceful fire. It possesses the Creative Energy to rise from the lowest to the highest. The Lotus is the whole lesson and law of transmutation. By its own function and growth the law of the Creative Energy acts. The gross becomes the supernal. The supreme atom of the lily and all else that is, has kindled, at the base of this Altar of the Wa- ters, the Eternal Essence of Life, which is fire. When it reaches the surface, in manifesting beauty, there burns within its bosom — White Chalice of the Gods, the Heart of Fire — the tongue of flame of the Holy Spirit. Having descended into matter for the purpose of taking hold of the material, it converts the opaque into the brilliant purity of the Highest Transmutation. The Holy Spirit does not really descend, but only places Itself in touch with that which is lower. What a beautiful illustration of the True Initiation we have here. The secret is so plainly unveiled that all who have eyes may see.
"The fire springing out of the Etheric and Auric vibrations is the highest Esoteric Fire, born of the spontaneous action of the positive and the negative forces. We gaze with awe upon its multiform shapes ; its trails of sparks ; its flame wreaths ; scin- tilating, wavering arches and vortices, starting up out of the matrix of apparent solidity, reducing its source to its own ulti- mate invisibility.
Flame is significant of rebirth and Resurrection; of the Spiritual born out of the material. It is symbol and substance at once, of the Immortality of the Ego. Hence the Angel of Fire hath dominion. Above all, is the glowing supernatural flower of
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Love, concealed in the inanimate womb of matter. The great love of the physical world, whose warmth and ardor destroys the material and perceptible form, is symbolized by the enwrapping liame. Freed from its prison of limitation and thus formless, it gives rebirth to the spirit, in both the Seen and the Unseen worlds.
"The Fire God, the Beautiful, the Resplendent! Conceived in ike Land of Silence! Born out of the womb of Mystery! Thou art the Shadow of the Shadowless! Thou art the Cause- less Cause! The existent God! We worship not the Fire, but that which is represented by the Fire — Love.
"There is no power but Love strong enough to hold through all the complex problems of earth life. It is Love that meets us as we cross the threshold of the narrow gate. It is Love that looks into our eyes, as we close them in the last earthly sleep. It is Love that greets us, when the Gates of Paradise swing inward for our reception, after our long or brief pilgrimage in the mortal realm. Love is that which abides, and is as eternal as God. This is the Love that dies not. They who love truly, can easily and cheerfully put aside self for the Beloved. Whoever returns to earth searching for whom he seeks, can only find and rejoin them, by entering into this realm of Omnipotence. Love is a guide which will never fail. Love will restore the loved ones to each other should they ever be lost.
"Love, the Law, in its fulfilling, must hold for itself both an inflowing and an outflowing current. The ebb and flow of the life blood is symbolical of the give and take of love in activ- ity. He who loves, lives in the highest realm of the all-life. He who loves counts all things but loss, if he may but win and hold the true love and real affection of the one loved. The true lover, takes labor and toil by the hand, as benefactors and boon com- panions, leads them into verdant pastures giving fresh hope to the tired and overtaxed heart. Love tunes the Harp of Life to the perfect vibration of the At-One-Ment.
The Essenes and Therapeutae
The Order of the Essenes, in the time of Jesus, constituted the final remnant of those Brotherhoods of prophets believed to have been organized by Samuel. The despotism of the rulers of Palestine, the jealousy of an ambitious and servile priesthood, had forced them to take refuge in silence and solitude. They no longer struggled as did their predecessors, but contented them- selves with preserving their traditions. They had two principal centers, one in Egypt, on the banks of Lake Maoris, the other in Palestine, at Engaddi, near the Dead Sea. The name of "Es- senes" which they had adopted came from the Syrian word assay a, a physician — in Greek, therapeutis; for their only acknowledged ministry with regard to the public was that of healing diseases both physical and moral. They studied with great diligence certain medical writings dealing with the occult virtue of plants and minerals.
It is chiefly due to the Syrian word, "Assay a," that the mis- take is made in regard to the Essenes and the Therapeutae. The Therapeutae was a branch of the Essenes, of lesser degrees and with different duties. The fact that the name of the Order was derived from the Syrian, induced Dr. P. B. Randolph to journey to Syria while in the Orient, to investigate whether there might be a possibility of the Essenians being a branch of some still older Order, and proved of vast importance to him and his work, find- ing as he did, the source of the mystical knowledge now known as the Ansaireth.
The branch known as the Therapeutae had their home
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chiefly on Lake Mareotis, near Alexandria; this branch had colonies in other places. Like the parent body — the Essenes — they lived chiefly in monasteries, and were very moderate with regard to dress and food; they prayed at sunrise, having their faces turned to the East ; studied the Secret Doctrine and Greater Mysteries of Antiquity. They differed from the Essenes in thai they lived a contemplative life, while the Essenes followed many useful occupations, such as agriculture, arts, science, etc. The Essenes lived together in common; the Therapeutae often lived separately and alone. The Therapeutae, being of the Outer De- gree, knew none of the divisions that marked the several de- grees of Initiation of the Inner Circle — the Essenes. Both Branches resembled the Pythagoreans; and the teachings were almost identical. Neither used animal food; and both the Inner and outer admitted women to their assemblies and even to cer- tain of the degrees.
The Essenes, living a more active life, bore a very import ant, though secret, part in the development of Judaism. John the Baptist belonged to their ranks before Jesus was admitted.
Seme of the members possessed the gift of prophecy, as, Menahim, who had prophesied to Herod that he should reign. They served God with great piety, not by offering victims but by sanctifying the Soul; avoiding towns, they devoted themselves to the arts of peace; not a single slave was among them; they were all free and worked for one another. The rules of the Order were very strict as was necessary in such times. To be ad- mitted to enter, a year's novitiate was necessary. If one had given sufficient proofs of temperance, he was then permitted to receive the ablutions, though without entering into relations with the Masters of the Order. Tests, extending over another two years, were necessary before being received into the Brotherhood. They took the Sacred vow to observe the rules of the Order and to betray none of its secrets. Then only did they participate in the common repasts, which were celebrated with great solemnity
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and constituted the Inner worship of the Essenes. The garments they had worn during these repasts they looked upon as sacred and to be removed before resuming work. These fraternal Love feasts, after which was patterned the Supper instituted by Jesus later on, began and ended with prayer. The interpretation of the sacred books of Moses and the prophets was here given. But the explanations of the texts allowed of three significations. All this wonderfully resembled the organization of the Pythagoreans, having been almost the same amongst all the ancient prophets, for it is identical in spirit, if not entirely in form, wherever true Initiation has ever existed. The Essenes professed the essential dogma of the Orphic and Pythagorean doctrine: that of the pre- existence of the Soul, the consequence and reason of its Immor- tality. The soul descending from the most subtle Ether, and attracted into a body by certain desires, remains there as in a prison; freed from the bonds of the body, as from a long servi- tude, when it has worked out its own salvation, joyfully takes its flight.
Among the Essenes, the brothers, properly so-called, lived under a community of property, and in a condition of celibacy, net because they believed that to be the best state for man, but be- cause experience had taught them man could seldom live har- moniously when married and continue his care and instruction of women. There were married Essenes, but these formed a separate class, did not teach, and were under subjection of the others. Silent, gentle and grave, they were to be met with here and there, cultivating the Arts of Peace. Carpenters, weavers, vine-planters, or gardeners, never gunsmiths or merchants. Scattered in small groups about the whole of Palestine, and in Egypt, even as far as Mount Horeb, they offered one another the most complete hospitality. Thus we see Jesus and his disciples journeying from town to town, and from province to province, and always certain of finding shelter and lodging. They obeyed the laws of true Initiation: "Do unto ethers as you would that they should do unto you."
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The Essenes were of an exemplary morality; they forced themselves to suppress passion and anger, transmuting it into love, always benevolent, peaceable, and trustworthy. Their word was more powerful than an oath, which, in ordinary life, they looked upon as superfluous, and almost perjury. They endured the most cruel tortures with admirable steadfastness of soul and smiling countenance, rather than violate the slightest religious precept. Indifferent to the outward pomp of worship at Jeru- salem, repelled by the harshness of the Sadducees, and the Prayers of the Pharisees, as well as by the pedantry of the syna- gogue, as these were merely forms without soul.
From the Essenes, Jesus received what they alone could give him: The esoteric traditions of the prophets, and, by its means, his own historical and religious tendency or trend. He was shown how wide was the gulf that separated the official Jewish doctrine from the Ancient Wisdom of the Initiates — the veritable mother of religion — though ever persecuted by Satan — by the spirit of evil, of egotism, hatred, pride of form, and denial, allied with absolute political power and priestly imposture. He learned that Genesis, under the seal of its symbolism, concealed a theogony and a cosmogony as far removed from the literal sig- nification as is the profoundest truth of science from a child's fable. He contemplated the days of AElohim, or the eternal creation by emanation of the elements and the formation of the worlds, the origin of the floating souls, and their return to God by progressive existences or generations of Adam. He was taught the grandeur of the thoughts of Moses, whose intention had been to prepare the religious unity of the nations by establishing the worship of the one God, and incarnating this idea into a people.
He was instructed in the doctrine of the divine Word, al- ready taught by Krishna in India, by the priests of Osiris, by Orpheus and Pythagoras in Greece, and known to the prophets under the name of the Mysteries of the Son of Man and of the Son of God. According to this doctrine, the highest manifesta-
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tion of God is man, who, in constitution, form, organs, and in- telligence, is the image of the Universal Being, whose faculties he possesses and whose powers he may develop if he will.
In the earthly evolution of humanity, however, God is scat- tered, split up, and mutilated, so to speak, in the multiplicity of men and of human imperfections. In it He struggles, suffers, and tries to find Himself, He is the Son in Man, the Perfect Man, the Man-Type, the profoundest thought of God, remaining hidden in the infinite abyss of His desires and power. At cer- tain epochs, when humanity is to be saved from some terrible gulf. and set on a higher plane, a chosen one identifies himself with Divinity, attracts It to himself by strength, wisdom, and love, and manifests it anew to man. Then, Divinity, by the virtue and breath of the Spirit, is completely present in him: the Son of Man then becomes the Son of God, and His Living Word. In other ages and among other nations, there have already ap- peared Sons of God; but, since Moses, none had arisen in Israel. All the prophets were expecting this Messiah. The Seers even said that this time he will call himself the Son of Woman, of the Heavenly Isis, of the divine light which is the Bride of God (Soul with God) ; for the light of Love would shine in him.
All these secrets which the patriarch of the Essenes unfold- ed to the young Galilean on the solitary banks of the Dead Sea, in lonely Engaddi, seemed to him wonderful, but yet known. It was with no ordinary emotion that he heard the chief of the Order comment on the words still tc be read in the books of Enoch: "From the beginning the Son of Man was in the Mystery. The Father kept him near his mighty presence, and manifested him to his elect. But the kings shall be afraid and shall prostrate themselves to the ground with terror, when they shall see the son of woman seated on the throne of his glory. Then the elect shall summon all the forces of heaven, all tht saints from on high and the power of God; and the Cherubim, the Seraphim, the Ophanim, all the angels of Might, all the
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angels of the Lord, ie., of the Elect, and of the other Might, serving on earth and obey the waters, shall raise their voices."
A history of the Philosophers would not be complete with- out dwelling on the Essenian Order, because the Ancient Myster- ies and the Secret Doctrine took another form after the Initia- tion of Jesus, who became the Christ. Their teachings are there- fore of vital importance and show that the Essenian Fraternity fully understood the instructions and training of all other Orders and religious beliefs, moreover, that the Essenian Order was merely a continuation of the older Schools under a new name.
The fundamental doctrine regarding Initiation taught by the Essenes differed but slightly from that of the Ancient Mys- teries. This doctrine was that: "The union of God with the soul which is to become Illuminated, is the principle of all Mystic life. But this union, the fulness and final consumma- tion of which cannot be experienced till death has been passed through and eternity has been achieved, can be accomplished on this earth in a more or less perfect manner; and the literature of the Ancient Secret Doctrine has no other end in view than to unvail to us, by a full and profound analysis of the different stages of evolution in the Soul of man, the diverse successive degrees of this divine union. Seven distinct stages of the soul's ascent towards God have always been recognized by the Mys- tics; and they constitute what has been emblematically called the Castle of the interior man. They represent the seven absolute processes of Soul Development and of Illumination, or trans- figuration. The first link in this Arcane sequence is called the state of prayer, which, from the pneumatic standpoint, is the concentration of the intellectual energies upon God as the object of thought, which is commonly assisted by the ceremonial appeal made by religion to the senses. It has, however, a higher aspect, comprised in the second evolutionary process, called the state of mental prayer. Here the illusionary phenomena of the visible world are regarded as informed wth the Inner pneumatic signi-
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ficance, to divine which is the chief end of Mysticism. In order to make progress therein, and so attain the third stage, it ii^ necessary that the Aspirant, shaping all practical life in con- formity with this theory, should perform no outward act except with a view to its inward meaning, all things which are of time and earth, and man being simply figures and symbols of earth and heaven and God. The postulant as he advances will per- ceive that the inmost thoughts of his own conscious being are only a limited and individual speculation of the speech or word of God, concealed even in its apparent revelation, and itself a veil of the Divine truth which must be removed for the con- templation of the truth absolute, which is behind it. When he has reached this point the Mystic will have entered the third stage of his growth. The next step is the most difficult of all; it is termed by Mystics the obscure night; and here it is neces- sary that the aspirant become stark naked, that means — he should empty himself completely, should be stripped of all his j acuities, renouncing all his own predilections, his own thoughts, his own will, in a word, his whole self, and take upon himself that of the divine will. Aridity, weariness, temptation, desola- tion, darkness, are characteristic of this epoch, and these have been experienced by all who have ever made any progress in the Mysteries oi Mystical Love. The fourth condition i-s denomi- nated the prayer of quietism. Complete immolation of self and unreserved surrender into the hands of God, have repose as their first result. Such quietism, however, is not to be confounded with insensibility; or negativeness, for it leads to the soul's real activity, jo that which has Gcd for its impulse. The fifth de- gree in the successive spiritualization of the human soul is called the state of union, in which the will of man and the will of God become substantially identical. This is the Mystical irrigation which fertilizes the garden of the Soul. During this portion of his development, the Neophyte, imbued with a pover- eign disdain of all things material, as well as of himself, accom-
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plishes in peace, serenity, and joy of spirit, the will of God, supernaturally speaking, within himself. On the extreme fur- ther limit of this condition, the Mystic enters the sixth state, which is that of estatic prayer; the soul's transport above and outside itself. It constitutes a union with Divinity by the instrument of positive love which is a state of sanctificarion, beatitude, and ineffable torrents of delight flowing over the whole being. It is beyond description, it transcends illustra- tion, and its felicity is not to be conceived. Love which is a potency of the soul, or of the anima which vivifies our bodies, has passed into the spirit of the soul, into its superior, divine, and universal form; and this process completed comprises the seventh and final state of pneumatic development, which is that of ravishment. Renouncing all that is corporeal about it, the soul becomes a pure spirit, capable of being united, in a wholly celestial manner to the Uncreated Spirit, whom it beholds, loves, serves, adores above and beyond all created forms; this is the Mystic marriage*, the perfect union, and entrance of God and Heaven into the interior of man.
*See "The Chymical Marriage of Christian Rosencreutz" in "The Rosicrucians ; Their Teachings."
The Initiatory Patli
The first step in the Occult path is to thoroughly search the self thereby to find the reason why such knowledge is de- sired.
In many instances the desire is unquestionably based on a selfish motive; when this is true, the path become a dangerous one to both body and reason and it were much better for such an one to forego the quest so avoiding the penalty that must be paid sooner or later when man attempts to use the divine forces for ulterior purposes.
The Neophyte once having entered the Path there is actu- ally no turning back. Experience teaches us that many who enter the Way possibly one-half attempt to turn back, always ending in failure — the law set into motion when the entrance is made and the vow taken cannot be recalled, it proceeds ever forward, and though the student seems to give up the search for a time, the internal urge, continually accentuated by the working of the law, will sooner or later force such to reenter the path and then it becomes doubly difficult for those who' had entered for selfish purposes.
The Occult Law may be thus set forth: "The Neophyte once admitted, there can be no possibility of successfully retreat- ing; one must succeed or lose freedom, and in some cases, where the vow is broken, life itself; because the powers of evil which are aroused always when man undertakes to follow the Spiritual life rather than the material, must be conquered, or they will conquer the seeker."
The sincere seeker, he who in his heart desires the better and diviner life, cannot be intimidated; his desire is for wisdom
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and knowledge, that knowledge which comes through experience, aye, even through sorrow and suffering. Such know no fear, or if it is momentarily aroused within them, quickly master it and proceed with the Work.
Within man are all the passions of the animal world; every animal known to man is represented in his being as so clearly depicted in "Pilgrim's Progress'' by John Bunyan, and though these passions may be dormant in man and lead him to the de- lusion he is not bound to them, no sooner does he enter the Path than they become aroused and urge him to their satisfaction.
Therefore it is entirely possible one may have lived an exemplary life so far as the sex nature is concerned and been entirely free from temptation, no sooner does he enter the Path when this nature within himself is aroused and tempta- tion after temptation from without comes his way. This is not because any great change has as yet taken place within him- self, but because he has set forth to master the Dragon, all Dragons, and these feel their days will be numbered unless they become the master. He has set a law into motion with which he must keep pace or become the slave, for this reason it has often been stated that Fate is a peculiar feminine character; she will tempt man, betray man, and ruin him if she can, but once she learns she can do neither of these things she becomes his willing slave.
It is likewise with the passions. Man seemingly is a unit, a single being; as a fact, he is fearfully composite; within him dwell all things in existence; he is actually the microcosm of the macrocosm, the small duplicate of the large world. While he lives the material life these forces may be dormant, his power is merely nominal, but when he arouses himself, then he arouses all these forces likewise, and as he masters one after the other of these energies, forces or beings, he is possessed of a new power until at last, when he has mastered all the denizens within him-
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self he possesses all potency, thus it is written; "Man shall be- come master of the beasts of the field, etc."
Once the mastery of creatures within himself is well under way, another equally important step is undertaken; that of the search within the self for what may be found there. Within man are all powers, all forces, all wisdom, all that is. The Ancients, knowing this to be true, wrote above their Temples of Initiation: "Man, Know Thyself," fully aware of the fact that once man accomplished this search successfully, he would have a knowledge of all.
This search opens up unknown worlds and darkening shadows, not least of these being the gradual comprehension that he who has so far awakened as to comprehend that he must be different from others who have not yet awakened, and then is born within the feeling of a great and overpowering loneliness which seems to fill the entire being with sorrow and misery.
The comprehension that the seeker must ultimately pass through this chamber of darkness as he had to pass through the chamber of animal creation and passion, should not by any means prevent one from entering the path, for let it be known that before immortality can be reached by a living human being possessing a soul, this path must be travelled, therefore, it is the logical conclusion, that sooner or later, ALL souls must pass through the shadows.
Apparently there is nothing more terrible than isolation and solitude to those who know of no other life than that of ex- ternal sensation and who cannot, as yet, create their own thought world; especially if there is no change in their surroundings, to attract their attention and to stimulate them to think. Thinking is an Art, and few can think what they wish, or hold on to a thought ; once they can do this they* create their own world and can be happy in isolation. Men only think what they must ; they feed on the ideas that enter their minds without their volition or at the behests of the physical appetites. Welcome and unwelcome
204 PHILOSOPHY OF FIRE
thoughts enter; they neither come at their bidding nor go away when they are not wanted; they are like disorderly guests who do not obey the rules which the landlord prescribes. This is diffusion; it is the one reason why man is weak, sickly, and a failure. The Path leads to concentration, to mastery of thought and the power to create a constructive thought and hold to it until personification takes place.
Naturally, in the beginning there is confusion which seems to be destructive. The mind awakening from its centuries of sleep and confusion attempts, like a mother with a large family of untrained children, to bring order out of chaos and finds the din so much the greater, but gradually, very gradually, a separation begins to take place, each one is placed in its own proper niche or sphere and when all are well arranged the mind which has been enabled to establish system, will begin to con- struct new thoughts, new ideas, and new mental pictures and life commences to take on an entirely new aspect, this is the awakening — the baptism of St. John, by water, or Mind.
Now that the mind has become awakened, aroused to a new state of existence, the power to picture a new world with new creatures, all of whom apparently work in harmony one with the other, man begins to look within his own soul, a new sphere opens before him ; his image forming faculty grows stronger, and pictures begin to present themselves before the inner eye and become objective and real as the objects of the external world ; he begins to realize he can bring them into manifestation once he has fully developed all his powers and faculties.
Visions of things formerly seen, but of which memory had been lost, appear again, vivid and real with all their living de- tails; desires entering the heart immediately take objective form in the mind, representing in seemingly living forms the objects of which he thinks; and thus may be seen many beautiful things in the vision, and desirable things learned, for this is the Path to Knowledge. Nor must we forget those sights which are un-
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desirable, aye, horrible, for only he who has thoroughly cleansed the whole temple can be entirely free from disturbing vision: Therefore, let your first duty be the cleansing of your temple, in like manner as did Jesus clean the Temple of robbers, thiefs and money-changers. Even Jesus had his work of cleansing the temple from tilth, degrading conditions and undesirable deni- zens.
What is the plastic power of the imagination, and what do men mean by calling subjective images "merely works of the imagination?" Can we imagine anything that does not exist? Are the creations of our thoughts less real to us than the things which the imagination of others created for us, since ail things must exist first in the imagination? Is not the universe itself a product of the imagination of God; and are we not gods in our inner world, able to create forms from that which apparently does not yet exist? Did not the great teacher say, through St. John, "But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God."
Gradually, as man finds — himself, he sees within his inner world another world, with space as infinite as that of the outer world, with mountains and plains, with oceans and rivers, with creatures who now look up to him as their god — He has mas- tered them. These draw life from his Will, and nourishment frrm his Thoughts, in the same sense as man now receives power and ideas from the God of the universe, appearing to him in his dreams while asleep, and in visions while awake.
'1 he next step in the path is to be able to close the senses and the desires of the material world and being, thereby giving the spiritual desires an opportunity to be heard. This is not the work of a day or a week, but a result of training and growth.
No vision is possible, nor will the spiritual sight be opened to the initiate unless he first has learned, through long training and concentration, to silence the senses and passions of rhe mor- tal being. Having opened the vision and spiritual sight, the Ini-
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tiate is well on the path to power, and has the means to gain knowledge.
Knowledge cannot be gained by any outside teaching. We may take the teacher's word for all he may tell us; but we can- not know, or have knowledge, unless the inner perceptions, the very ioul, feels and senses that it is so. From the inner being — the Soul, and through personal experience alone, can come knowledge and understanding. To feel is to know. To suffer is to know. To create is to know. To see may be a delusion.
The materialist who has not awakened the Soul within, has neither right nor power to know inner truths. It is only he who, through training and right living—living the life that is taught, —has been enabled to awaken the Still Small Voice, the inner bemg, who can understand Spiritual truths.
The student must firmly close all the doors — external senses = — and exclude all the profane, the sophists and the scoffers — prejudices. Open up the spiritual perceptions. Beware of pas- sions and evil desires; avoid erroneous opinions and intellectual prejudices. Keep the mind continually directed toward the divine source of all existence, strive after a continual realiza- tion of the presence of the Supreme; and, in the desire to walk upon the Path of Light to Immortality, do not forget even for a moment that you are living in the consciousness of Him whose power has created the world. He is all things and all things are in Him. He is self -existent, pure knowledge, pure wisdom, and, although He is seen by no man, except in the Light or Fire within your own Center, there is nothing within the Universe that can hide itself from His sight.
The next step is to come into an understanding of the Laws of Nature, and a comprehension that nothing within Her is dead, but that all forms are manifestations of the one Uni- versal power of Life. Learn to know the cause of the physical phenomena occurring in the world of phenomena, the nature of
PHILOSOEHV OF FIRE 207
Light and Sound, of Heat and Electricity, and of all other things,
The student must master the mystery of the spiritual nature of man and the laws of Reincarnation. How the human nomad again and again descends to build up a mortal physical form and to evolve a new personality at each of its visits to earth; that the human form, which we know as men, women, and chil- dren, are not the real man, but merely ever-changing aggrega- tions of matter, endowed with an ever-changing consciousness, unsubstantial although living illusions, doomed to perish when the Soul retires to its home, to rest f*om its labors; while the substantial, indivisible, and incorruptible Spirit is the real man, continually returning to the earth plane until the mind iff awakened, the Soul Illuminated and the individuality created and perfected.
The student is taught the signification of the sacfed sylla- ble AVM and of certain symbolical signs, including the double- interlaced Triangle, the Snake, and the Tau, and his office is to guard the portals of man, so that nothing impure may enter; for not one is ever admitted into the Sanctuary of the Inner Temple, unless he first proves himself a faithful guardian of that door by which evil thoughts and desires continuously at- tempt to enter the mind, and if the guardian of the Door is not faithful to his trust, allowing these undesirable visitors to enter, then no talisman will prove of avail.
These enemies of the Soul of man can easily be kept from the Sacred Portals if the aspirations are for something higher than the gratification of sensual appetites, and the beauty of. any corporeal form, however pleasing it may be to the eyes, cannot enslave him who has learned to know the beauty of the spirit, and who quickly retires to the Throne of the Soul when tempta- tion comes.
He who has not been tempted cannot know the power of temptation, nor yet can one learn the mysteries of the Spirit, who
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has not descended into the lowest caves where the supreme temptress dwells. Let no student take pride in his strength un- til he has been thoroughly tested, and let him not condemn one who may have fallen, for neither may he know the strength possessed by the tempter, nor yet the weakness of the one tempt- ed. Let him search himself for his own weakness, and beware there is no secret entrance left open within himself, by which a favorite passion may enter, and should the temptress gain en- trance during his slumber, he must call to his aid the superior power of his awakened Will, and repel her. Then will the door of the soul open, Reason will enter and guide him by the light of D!v;ne Wisdom. Lest he forget, it must be impressed upon It's mind that the temptress does not come announcing her ar- rival with a blare of trumpets, but in the silence of the night when all seems well.
No man can actually know his own weakness, not yet find his strength who does not descend to the innermost depths of his soul, where he may find it infested with poisonous serpents and venomous reptiles, the symbols of the brood of passions and spir- its of evil desires; but, if he calls to his aid the Divine Wisdom, these evil creatures will gradually leave him and give place to pure and holy desires and aspirations for the highest, and peace be established.
The student, during his initiation, must come into a clear comprehension of the great Law of Karma; that is to say, the Absolute Law of Cause and Effect, not merely upon the physical plane, where the law of Mechanics exists, but upon all planes, and in the higher realm, where Divine Justice rules supreme, where Good finds its own reward, and Evil its own just punish- ment.
Whatever man does or thinks, will produce a correspond- ing reaction both upon himself and all things with which he is allied or connected. He who benefits others is actually benefitting himself, while he who injures others, if ever so
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slightly, is decreeing his own punishment. The acts of men are the external symbols of their interior lives, and every thought and act has a tendency to repeat itself. Thoughts be- come beings who struggle for life according to the strength given them by the thinker, and who seek to become embodied in acts; and when once embodied, they cling to their life in the same way man clings to his.
The principal work of the student, besides self-purification, is the cultivation of the power of Intuition, by which man may know the truth and attain wisdom, independent of external in- formation and without the necessity of adopting the opinions of others, by means of coming into direct communication with the Hierarchies of learning.
Finally, the neophyte must come to a clear comprehension that there is no relative Good without relative Evil. There is no man so pure as not to have some animal elements within his constitution; were there such a man, he would not be able to develop higher; for the reason that it is from the animal ele- ment the soul draws its nourishment and strength to rise higher and become more spiritual, just as does the purest lily draw its life from the slimy bed of the lake. Not to destroy, but to make use of the elements of evil for the purpose of ac- complishing good, is the object of Alchemy or the higher Edu- cation. When the higher life begins to awaken within the soul and the light of the Spirit penetrates into the regions of the elements, the animal egoes begin to revolt and to rise to the surface. They may even appear in objective form and thus the Terror of the Threshold may show his face. He may be nothing more than a product of man's own imagination tinged, or col- ored, by the evil w7ithin which has not yet been transmuted, nev- ertheless, to the eyes that see him he seems as real as any other living thing among the so-called realities of this world; and, if the candidate for Initiation is subject to fear, the Dweller may appear again and again, and take possession of the mind.
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There is a region in the soul of man in which such Dwell- ers reside. In very degraded persons this region swarms with living, semi-developed, or full-grown animal principles and sub- jective monstrosities of all kinds, and, under certain conditions, especially if the physical organism is weakened by disease, they may, so to say, step out of their centre, and assume an objec- tive form, clothing themselves in the grosser elements of matter and becoming visible even to the external senses. The Material- ization of modern Spiritualism furnishes an example of this. Obsession is another, and is often curable only when a master mind, or one with experience, controls, for a time, the mind of the obsessed and frees the victim of the control, by means of the power of will. Frequently students who have taken the vow and have proven unfaithful to it in some manner, either by betraying the secrets of that which is written for them alone, become victims of the Terror and can be freed only be redeeming their vow and by the help of the Master who had been appointed as the instructor.
"When ye stand, take heed lest ye fall." Jesus,
OUR SOCIAL LIFE
Listen! All social problems lie in the conquest over the natural and personal man. It is the continual protest against the Natural Law. Rising into the world of Love and self-con- sciousness, we rise into a world of freedom and equality. A great teacher has said : "Man is a composite being. In him is the angelic and the animal. The spiritual training of life means no more than the subjugation of the animal, and the setting free of the Angelic."
There is a great and wonderful epitome founded upon hav- ing, and holding in our possession, the key that unlocks all doors, and the knowledge of how to use and handle it. That key is Love. He who loves lives; he who loves not, is dead; he who loves himself alone, lives in hell, because, centering all the essence of existence upon his own body, he burns and shrivels under the intolerant intensity of its force. He who loves others, lives in heaven, because the desire to love and bring good, reacts and compels harmony.
PUBLISHERS NOTE
Practically all of the books and manuscripts mentioned in the notes throughout this book may be obtained from the pub- lishers. Catalog will be forwarded on request, and questions freely answered.
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