Isis Unveiled

from a Eve from Adam’s left rib. modification of the water Adam is the Microcosm of the is born the earth,” says Macrocosm, and is created in Manu (book i.). the image of the Elohim. In the Tree of Life עצחיום the “Ye are born of Aditi from triple triad is disposed in the water, you who are born such a manner that the three of the earth, hear ye all my male Sephiroth are on the call.” right, the three female on the left, and the four In this water (or primeval uniting principles in the chaos) the “Infinite” centre. From the Invisible androgyne, which, with the Dew falling from the Higher Eternal Cause, forms the “Head” Sephira creates first abstract Triad, primeval water, or chaos rendered by AUM, deposited taking shape. It is the the germ of universal life. first step toward the It is the Mundane Egg, in solidification of Spirit, which took place the which through various gestation of Pūrūsha, or the modifications will produce manifested Brahma. The germ earth. “_It requires which fecundated the earth and water to make a Mother Principle (the living soul_,” says Moses. water) is called Nara, the Divine Spirit or Holy When Sephira emerges like an Ghost, and the waters active power from within the themselves, are an emanation latent

Deity, she is female; of the former, Nari, while when she assumes the office the Spirit which brooded of a creator, she becomes a over it is called male; hence, she is Narayana. androgyne. She is the “Father and Mother Aditi,” “In that egg, the great of the Hindu Cosmogony. Power sat inactive a whole After brooding over the year of the Creator, at “Deep,” the “Spirit of God” the close of which, by his produces its own image in thought alone, he caused the the water, the Universal egg to divide itself.” Womb, symbolized in Manu The upper half became by the Golden Egg. In the heaven, the lower, the earth kabalistic Cosmogony, Heaven (both yet in their ideal, and Earth are personified by not their manifested form). Adam Kadmon and the second Adam. The first Ineffable Thus, this second triad, Triad, contained in the only another name for the abstract idea of the “Three first one (never pronounced Heads,” was a “mystery aloud), and which is the name.” It was composed of real pre-Vedic and En-Soph, Sephira, and Adam primordial secret Kadmon, the Protogonos, the Trimurti, consisted of latter being identical with the former, when Nara, Father-Heaven, bisexual. In every Nari, Mother-Earth, triad there is a male, a Viradj, the Son - or Universe. female, and an androgyne. Adam-Sephira is

the Crown The Trimurti, comprising (Keter). It sets itself to Brahma, the Creator, Vishnu, the work of creation, by the Preserver, and Siva, the first producing Chochmah, Destroyer and Regenerator, Male Wisdom, a masculine belongs to a later period. active potency, represented It is an anthropomorphic by חה, jah, or the Wheels of afterthought, invented for Creation, אפּוַים, from which the more popular proceeds Binah, Intelligence, comprehension of the female and passive potency, uninitiated masses. The which is Jehovah, יהוה, Dikshita, the initiate, whom we find in the Bible knew better. Thus, also, the figuring as the Supreme. But profound allegory under the this Jehovah is not the colors of a ridiculous kabalistic Jodcheva. The fable, given in the binary is the fundamental Aytareya Brahmana, corner-stone of Gnosis. As which resulted in the the binary is the Unity representations in some multiplying itself and temples of Brahm-Nara, self-creating, the kabalists assuming the form of a bull, show the “Unknown” passive and his daughter, En-Soph, as emanating from Aditi-Nari, that of a himself, Sephira, which, heifer, contains the same becoming visible light, is metaphysical idea as the said to produce Adam Kadmon. “fall of man,” or that of But, in the hidden sense, the Spirit into Sephira and Adam are one and generation - matter. The the same light, only latent All-pervading Divine

Spirit and active, invisible and embodied under the symbols visible. The second Adam, as of Heaven, the Sun, and Heat the human tetragram, (fire) - the correlation of produces in his turn Eve, cosmic forces - fecundates out of his side. It is this Matter or Nature, the second triad, with which the daughter of Spirit. And kabalists have hitherto Para-Brahma himself has to dealt, hardly hinting at the submit to and bear the Supreme and Ineffable One, penance of the curses of the and never committing other gods (Elohim) for such anything to writing. All an incest. (See knowledge concerning the corresponding column.) latter was imparted orally. According to the immutable, It is the second Adam, and, therefore, fatal law, then, who is the unity both Nara and Nari are represented by Jod, emblem mutually Father and Mother, of the kabalistic male as well as Father and principle, and, at the same Daughter. Matter, time, he is Chochmah, through infinite Wisdom, while Binah or transformation, is the Jehovah is Eve; the first gradual product of Spirit. Chochmah issuing from Keter, The unification of one or the androgyne, Adam Eternal Supreme Cause Kadmon, and the second, required such a correlation; Binah, from Chochmah. If we and if nature be the product combine with Jod the three or effect of that Cause, in letters which

form the name its turn it has to be of Eve, we will have the fecundated by the same divine tetragram pronounced divine Ray which produced IEVO-HEVAH, Adam and Eve, יחוה, nature itself. The most Jehovah, male and female, or absurd cosmogonical the idealization of humanity allegories, if analyzed embodied in the first man. without prejudice, will be Thus is it that we can prove found built on strict and that, while the Jewish logical necessarianism. kabalists, in common with their initiated masters, the “Being was born from Chaldeans and the Hindus, not-being,” says a verse in adored the Supreme and the Rig-Veda. The Unknown God, in the sacred first being had to become silence of their androgyne and finite, by the sanctuaries, the ignorant very fact of its creation as masses of every nation were a being. And thus even the left to adore something sacred Trimurti, containing which was certainly less Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva than the Eternal Substance will have an end when the of the Buddhists, the “night” of Para-Brahma so-called Atheists. As succeeds the present “day,” Brahma, the deity manifested or period of universal in the mythical Manu, or activity. the first man (born of Swayambhuva, or the The second, or rather the Self-existent), is finite, first, triad - as the so Jehovah, embodied in Adam highest

one is a pure and Eve, is but a human abstraction - is the god. He is the symbol of intellectual world. The Vâch humanity, a mixture of good which surrounds it is a more with a portion of definite transformation of unavoidable evil; of spirit Aditi. Besides its occult fallen into matter. In significance in the secret worshipping Jehovah, we Mantrâm, Vâch is personified simply worship nature, as as the active power of embodied in man, Brahma proceeding from him. half-spiritual and In the Vedas she is made half-material, at best: we to speak of herself as the are Pantheists, when not supreme and universal soul. fetich worshippers, like the “I bore the Father on the idolatrous Jews, who head of the universal mind, sacrificed on high places, and my origin is in the in groves, to the midst of the ocean; and personified male and female therefore do I pervade all principle, ignorant of IAO, beings.... Originating all the Supreme “Secret Name” of beings, I pass like the the Mysteries. breeze (Holy Ghost). I am above this heaven, beyond Shekinah is the Hindu Vâch, this earth; and what is the and praised in the same Great One that am I.” terms as the latter. Though Literally, Vâch is speech, shown in the kabalistic Tree the power of awakening, of Life

as proceeding from through the metrical the ninth Sephiroth, yet arrangement contained in Shekinah is the “veil” of the number and syllables En-Soph, and the “garment” of the Mantras, of Jehovah. The “veil,” for corresponding powers in it succeeded for long ages the invisible world. In in concealing the real the sacrificial Mysteries supreme God, the universal Vâch stirs up the Brahma Spirit, and masking Jehovah, (Brahma jinvati), or the exoteric deity, made the the power lying latent at Christians accept him as the the bottom of every magical “father” of the initiated operation. It existed from Jesus. Yet the kabalists, eternity as the Yajna (its as well as the Hindu latent form), lying dormant Dikshita, know the power in Brahma from of the Shekinah or Vâch, “no-beginning,” and and call it the “secret proceeded forth from him as wisdom,” חכמח־נסהדח. Vâch (the active power). It is the key to the The triangle played a “Traividyâ,” the thrice prominent part in the sacred science which teaches religious symbolism of every the Yajus (the sacrificial great nation; for everywhere Mysteries). it represented the three great principles - spirit, Having done with the force, and matter; or the unrevealed triad, and the active (male), passive first triad of the (female), and the dual or Sephiroth, called the correlative principle which “intellectual world,” little partakes

of both and binds remains to be said. In the the two together. It was the great geometrical figure Arba or mystic “four,” which has the double the mystery-gods, the Kabeiri, triangle in it, the central summarized in the unity of circle represents the world one supreme Deity. It is within the universe. The found in the Egyptian double triangle belongs to pyramids, whose equal sides one of the most important, tower up until lost in one if it is not in itself the crowning point. In the most important, of the kabalistic diagram the mystic figures in India. It central circle of the is the emblem of the Brahmanical figure is Trimurti three in one. The replaced by the cross; the triangle with its apex celestial perpendicular and upward indicates the male the terrestrial horizontal principle, downward the base line. But the idea female; the two typifying, is the same: Adam Kadmon is at the same time, spirit and the type of humanity as a matter. This world within collective totality within the infinite universe is the the unity of the creative microcosm within the God and the universal macrocosm, as in the Jewish spirit. Kabala. It is the symbol of the womb of the universe, “Of him who is formless, the the terrestrial egg, whose non-existent (also the

archetype is the golden eternal, but not First mundane egg. It is from Cause), is born the heavenly within this spiritual bosom man.” But after he created of mother nature that the form of the heavenly proceed all the great man אדמעלאה, he “used it as saviours of the a vehicle wherein to universe - the avatars of the descend,” says the Kabala. invisible Deity. Thus Adam Kadmon is the avatar of the concealed “Of him who is and yet is power. After that the not, from the not-being, heavenly Adam creates or Eternal Cause, is born the engenders by the combined being Pouroucha,” says Manu, power of the Sephiroth, the the legislator. Pouroucha is earthly Adam. The work of the “divine male,” the creation is also begun by second god, and the Sephira in the creation of avatar, or the Logos of the ten Sephiroth (who are Para-Brahma and his divine the Pradjapatis of the son, who in his turn Kabala, for they are produced Viradj, the son, or likewise the Lords of all the ideal type of the beings). universe. “Viradj begins the work of creation by The Sohar asserts the producing the ten same. According to the Pradjapati, ‘the lords of kabalistic doctrine there all beings.’” were old worlds (see Idra Suta: Sohar, iii., p. 292 According to the

doctrine of b). Everything will return Manu, the universe is some day to that from which subjected to a periodical it first proceeded. “All and never-ending succession things of which this world of creations and consists, spirit as well as dissolutions, which periods body, will return to their of creation are named principal, and the roots Manvântara. from which they proceeded” (Sohar, ii., 218 b). The “It is the germ (which the kabalists also maintain the Divine Spirit produced from indestructibility of matter, its own substance) which albeit their doctrine is never perishes in the being, shrouded still more for it becomes the soul of carefully than that of the Being, and at the period of Hindus. The creation is pralaya (dissolution) it eternal, and the universe is returns to absorb itself the “garment,” or “the veil again into the Divine of God” - Shekinah; and the Spirit, which itself rests latter is immortal and from all eternity within eternal as Him within whom Swayambhuva, the it has ever existed. Every ‘Self-Existent’” world is made after the (Institutes of Manu, pattern of its predecessor, book i.). and each more gross and material than the preceding As we have shown, neither one. In the Kabala all the Svâbhâvikas, Buddhist were called sparks. Finally, philosophers - nor the our present grossly Brahmans believe in a materialistic

world was creation of the universe ex formed. nihilo, but both believe in the Prakriti, the In the Chaldean account of indestructibility of matter. the period which preceded the Genesis of our world, The evolution of species, Berosus speaks of a time and the successive when there existed nothing appearance of various new but darkness, and an abyss types is very distinctly of waters, filled with shown in Manu. hideous monsters, “produced of a two-fold principle .... “From earth, heat, and These were creatures in water, are born all which were combined the creatures, whether animate limbs of every species of or inanimate, produced by animals. In addition to the germ which the Divine these fishes, reptiles, Spirit drew from its own serpents, with other substance. Thus has Brahma monstrous animals, which established the series of assumed each other’s shape transformations from the and countenance.” plant up to man, and from man up to the primordial essence.... Among them each succeeding being (or element) acquires the quality of the preceding; and in as many degrees as each of them is advanced, with so many properties is it said to be endowed” (Manu, book i., sloka 20).

This, we believe, is the veritable theory of the modern evolutionists. In the first book of Manu, we read: “Know that the sum of 1,000 divine ages, composes the totality of one day of Brahma; and that one night is equal to that day.” One thousand divine ages is equal to 4,320,000,000 of human years, in the Brahmanical calculations. “At the expiration of each night, Brahma, who has been asleep, awakes, and through the sole energy of the motion causes to emanate from himself the spirit, which in its essence is, and yet is not.” “Prompted by the desire to create, the Spirit (first of the emanations) operates the creation and gives birth to ether, which the sages consider as having the faculty of transmitting sound. “Ether begets air whose property is tangible, and which is necessary to life. “Through a transformation of the air, light is produced. “From air and light, which begets heat, water is formed, and the water is the womb of all the living germs.”

Throughout the whole immense period of progressive creation, covering 4,320,000,000 years, ether, air, water and fire (heat), are constantly forming matter under the never-ceasing impulse of the Spirit, or the unrevealed God who fills up the whole creation, for he is in all, and all is in him. This computation, which was secret and which is hardly hinted at even now, led Higgins into the error of dividing every ten ages into 6,000 years. Had he added a few more ciphers to his sums he might have come nearer to a correct explanation of the neroses, or secret cycles.

In the Sepher Jezireh, the kabalistic Book of Creation, the author has evidently repeated the words of Manu. In it, the Divine Substance is represented as having alone existed from the eternity, boundless and absolute; and emitted from itself the Spirit. “One is the Spirit of the living God, blessed be His Name, who liveth for ever! Voice, Spirit, and Word, this is the Holy Spirit;” and this is the kabalistic abstract Trinity, so unceremoniously anthropomorphized by the Fathers. From this triple ONE emanated the whole Cosmos. First from ONE emanated number TWO, or Air, the creative element; and then number THREE, Water, proceeded from the air; Ether or Fire complete the mystic four, the Arba-il. “When the Concealed of the Concealed wanted to reveal Himself, he first made a point (primordial point, or the first Sephira, air or Holy Ghost), shaped it into a sacred form (the ten Sephiroth, or the Heavenly man), and covered it with a rich and splendid garment, that is the world.” “He maketh the wind His messengers, flaming Fire his servants,” says the Jezireh, showing the cosmical character of the later euhemerized angels, and that the Spirit permeates every minutest atom of the Cosmos.

When the cycle of creation is run down, the energy of the manifested word is weakening. He alone, the Unconceivable, is unchangeable (ever latent), but the Creative Force, though also eternal, as it has been in the former from “no beginning,” yet must be subject to periodical cycles of activity and rest; as it had a beginning in one of its aspects, when it first emanated, therefore must also have an end. Thus, the evening succeeds the day, and the night of the deity approaches. Brahma is gradually falling asleep. In one of the books of Sohar, we read the following: “As Moses was keeping a vigil on Mount Sinai, in company with the Deity, who was concealed from his sight by a cloud, he felt a great fear overcome him and suddenly asked: ‘Lord, where art Thou ... sleepest thou, O Lord?’ And the Spirit answered him: ‘I never sleep; were I to fall asleep for a moment before my time, all the Creation would crumble into dissolution in one instant.’” And Vamadeva-Modēly describes the “Night of Brahma,” or the second period of the Divine Unknown existence, thus:

“Strange noises are heard, proceeding from every point.... These are the precursors of the Night of Brahma; dusk rises at the horizon and the Sun passes away behind the thirtieth degree of Macara (sign of the zodiac), and will reach no more the sign of the Minas (zodiacal pisces, or fish). The gurus of the pagodas appointed to watch the rās-chakr (Zodiac), may now break their circle and instruments, for they are henceforth useless. “Gradually light pales, heat diminishes, uninhabitable spots multiply on the earth, the air becomes more and more rarefied; the springs of waters dry up, the great rivers see their waves exhausted, the ocean shows its sandy bottom, and plants die. Men and animals decrease in size daily. Life and motion lose their force, planets can hardly gravitate in space; they are extinguished one by one, like a lamp which the hand of the chokra (servant) neglects to replenish. Sourya (the Sun) flickers and goes out, matter falls into dissolution (pralaya), and Brahma merges back into Dyäus, the Unrevealed God, and his task being accomplished, he falls asleep. Another day is passed, night sets in and continues until the future dawn.

“And now again re-enter into the golden egg of His Thought, the germs of all that exist, as the divine Manu tells us. During His peaceful rest, the animated beings, endowed with the principles of action, cease their functions, and all feeling (manas) becomes dormant. When they are all absorbed in the SUPREME SOUL, this Soul of all the beings sleeps in complete repose, till the day when it resumes its form, and awakes again from its primitive darkness.” If we now examine the ten mythical avatars of Vishnu, we find them recorded in the following progression: 1. Matsya-Avatar: as a fish. It will also be his tenth and last avatar, at the end of the Kali-yug. 2. Kurm-Avatar: as a tortoise. 3. Varaha: as a boar. 4. Nara-Sing: as a man-lion; last animal stage. 5. Vamuna: as a dwarf; first step toward the human form. 6. Parasu-Rama: as a hero, but yet an imperfect man. 7. Rama-Chandra: as the hero of Ramayâna. Physically a perfect man; his next of kin, friend and ally Hanoumā, the monkey-god. The monkey endowed with speech. 8. Christna-Avatar: the Son of the Virgin Devanaguy (or Devaki) one formed by God, or rather by the manifested Deity Vishnu, who is identical with Adam Kadmon. Christna is also called Kaneya, the Son of the Virgin.

9. Gautama-Buddha, Siddhârtha, or Sakya-muni. (The Buddhists reject this doctrine of their Buddha being an incarnation of Vishnu.) 10. This avatar has not yet occurred. It is expected in the future, like the Christian Advent, the idea of which was undoubtedly copied from the Hindu. When Vishnu appears for the last time he will come as a “Saviour.” According to the opinion of some Brahmans he will appear himself under the form of the horse Kalki. Others maintain that he will be mounting it. This horse is the envelope of the spirit of evil, and Vishnu will mount it, invisible to all, till he has conquered it for the last time. The “Kalki-Avataram,” or the last incarnation, divides Brahmanism into two sects. That of the Vaïhnâva refuses to recognize the incarnations of their god Vishnu in animal forms literally. They claim that these must be understood as allegorical.

In this diagram of avatars we see traced the gradual evolution and transformation of all species out of the ante-Silurian mud of Darwin and the ilus of Sanchoniathon and Berosus. Beginning with the Azoic time, corresponding to the ilus in which Brahma implants the creative germ, we pass through the Palæozoic and Mesozoic times, covered by the first and second incarnations as the fish and tortoise; and the Cenozoic, which is embraced by the incarnations in the animal and semi-human forms of the boar and man-lion; and we come to the fifth and crowning geological period, designated as the “era of mind, or age of man,” whose symbol in the Hindu mythology is the dwarf - the first attempt of nature at the creation of man. In this diagram we should follow the main-idea, not judge the degree of knowledge of the ancient philosophers by the literal acceptance of the popular form in which it is presented to us in the grand epical poem of Maha-Bharata and its chapter the Bagaved-gitta.

Even the four ages of the Hindu chronology contain a far more philosophical idea than appears on the surface. It defines them according to both the psychological or mental and the physical states of man during their period. Crita-yug, the golden age, the “age of joy,” or spiritual innocence of man; Treta-yug, the age of silver, or that of fire - the period of supremacy of man and of giants and of the sons of God; Dwapara-yug, the age of bronze - a mixture already of purity and impurity (spirit and matter), the age of doubt; and at last our own, the Kali-yug, or age of iron, of darkness, misery, and sorrow. In this age, Vishnu had to incarnate himself in Christna, in order to save humanity from the goddess Kali, consort of Siva, the all-annihilating - the goddess of death, destruction, and human misery. Kali is the best emblem to represent the “fall of man;” the falling of spirit into the degradation of matter, with all its terrific results. We have to rid ourselves of Kali before we can ever reach “Moksha,” or Nirvana, the abode of blessed Peace and Spirit.

With the Buddhists the last incarnation is the fifth. When Maitree-Buddha comes, then our present world will be destroyed; and a new and a better one will replace it. The four arms of every Hindu Deity are the emblems of the four preceding manifestations of our earth from its invisible state, while its head typifies the fifth and last Kalki-Avatar, when this would be destroyed, and the power of Budh - Wisdom (with the Hindus, of Brahma), will be again called into requisition to manifest itself - as a Logos - to create the future world. In this diagram, the male gods typify Spirit in its deific attributes, while their female counterparts - the Sakti, represent the active energies of these attributes. The Durga (active virtue), is a subtile, invisible force, which answers to Shekinah - the garment of En-Soph. She is the Sakti through which the passive “Eternal” calls forth the visible universe from its first ideal conception. Every one of the three personages of the exoteric Trimurti are shown as using their Sakti as a Vehan (vehicle). Each of them is for the time being the form which sits upon the mysterious wagon of Ezekiel.

Nor do we see less clearly carried out in this succession of avatars, the truly philosophical idea of a simultaneous spiritual and physical evolution of creatures and man. From a fish the progress of this dual transformation carries on the physical form through the shape of a tortoise, a boar, and a man-lion; and then, appearing in the dwarf of humanity, it shows Parasu Rama physically, a perfect, spiritually, an undeveloped entity, until it carries mankind personified by one god-like man, to the apex of physical and spiritual perfection - a god on earth. In Christna and the other Saviours of the world we see the philosophical idea of the progressive dual development understood and as clearly expressed in the Sohar. The “Heavenly man,” who is the Protogonos, Tikkun, the first-born of God, or the universal Form and Idea, engenders Adam. Hence the latter is god-born in humanity, and endowed with the attributes of all the ten Sephiroth. These are: Wisdom, Intelligence, Justice, Love, Beauty, Splendor, Firmness, etc. They make him the Foundation or basis, “the mighty living one,” אלחי, and the crown of creation, thus placing him as the Alpha and Omega to reign over the “kingdom” - Malchuth. “Man is both the import and the highest degree of creation,” says the Sohar. “As soon as man was created, everything was complete, including the upper and nether worlds, for everything is comprised in man. He unites in himself all forms” (iii., p. 48 a).

But this does not relate to our degenerated mankind; it is only occasionally that men are born who are the types of what man should be, and yet is not. The first races of men were spiritual, and their protoplastic bodies were not composed of the gross and material substances of which we see them composed now-a-day. The first men were created with all the faculties of the Deity, and powers far transcending those of the angelic host; for they were the direct emanations of Adam Kadmon, the primitive man, the Macrocosm; while the present humanity is several degrees removed even from the earthly Adam, who was the Microcosm, or “the little world.” Seir Anpin, the mystical figure of the Man, consists of 243 numbers, and we see in the circles which follow each other that it is the angels which emanated from the “Primitive Man,” not the Sephiroth from angels. Hence, man was intended from the first to be a being of both a progressive and retrogressive nature. Beginning at the apex of the divine cycle, he gradually began receding from the centre of Light, acquiring at every new and lower sphere of being (worlds each inhabited by a different race of human beings) a more solid physical form and losing a portion of his divine faculties.

In the “fall of Adam” we must see, not the personal transgression of man, but simply the law of the dual evolution. Adam, or “Man,” begins his career of existences by dwelling in the garden of Eden “dressed in the celestial garment, which is a garment of heavenly light” (Sohar, ii., 229 b); but when expelled he is “clothed” by God, or the eternal law of Evolution or necessarianism, with coats of skin. But even on this earth of material degradation - in which the divine spark (Soul, a corruscation of the Spirit) was to begin its physical progression in a series of imprisonments from a stone up to a man’s body - if he but exercise his WILL and call his deity to his help, man can transcend the powers of the angel. “Know ye not that we shall judge angels?” asks Paul (1 Corinthians, vi. 3). The real man is the Soul (Spirit), teaches the Sohar. “The mystery of the earthly man is after the mystery of the heavenly man ... the wise can read the mysteries in the human face” (ii., 76 a).

This is still another of the many sentences by which Paul must be recognized as an initiate. For reasons fully explained, we give far more credit for genuineness to certain Epistles of the apostles, now dismissed as apocryphal, than to many suspicious portions of the Acts. And we find corroboration of this view in the Epistle of Paul to Seneca. In this message Paul styles Seneca “my respected master,” while Seneca terms the apostle simply “brother.” No more than the true religion of Judaic philosophy can be judged by the absurdities of the exoteric Bible, have we any right to form an opinion of Brahmanism and Buddhism by their nonsensical and sometimes disgusting popular forms. If we only search for the true essence of the philosophy of both Manu and the Kabala, we will find that Vishnu is, as well as Adam Kadmon, the expression of the universe itself; and that his incarnations are but concrete and various embodiments of the manifestations of this “Stupendous Whole.” “I am the Soul, O, Arjuna. I am the Soul which exists in the heart of all beings; and I am the beginning and the middle, and also the end of existing things,” says Vishnu to his disciple, in Bagaved-gitta (ch. x., p. 71).

“I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.... I am the first and the last,” says Jesus to John (Rev. i. 6, 17). Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva are a trinity in a unity, and, like the Christian trinity, they are mutually convertible. In the esoteric doctrine they are one and the same manifestation of him “whose name is too sacred to be pronounced, and whose power is too majestic and infinite to be imagined.” Thus by describing the avatars of one, all others are included in the allegory, with a change of form but not of substance. It is out of such manifestations that emanated the many worlds that were, and that will emanate the one - which is to come.

Coleman, followed in it by other Orientalists, presents the seventh avatar of Vishnu in the most caricatured way. Apart from the fact that the Ramayana is one of the grandest epic poems in the world - the source and origin of Homer’s inspiration - this avatar conceals one of the most scientific problems of our modern day. The learned Brahmans of India never understood the allegory of the famous war between men, giants, and monkeys, otherwise than in the light of the transformation of species. It is our firm belief that were European academicians to seek for information from some learned native Brahmans, instead of unanimously and incontinently rejecting their authority, and were they, like Jacolliot - against whom they have nearly all arrayed themselves - to seek for light in the oldest documents scattered about the country in pagodas, they might learn strange but not useless lessons. Let any one inquire of an educated Brahman the reason for the respect shown to monkeys - the origin of which feeling is indicated in the story of the valorous feats of Hanoumā, the generalissimo and faithful ally of the hero of Ramayana, and he would soon be disabused of the erroneous idea that the Hindus accord deific honors to a monkey-god. He would, perhaps, learn - were the Brahman to judge him worthy of an explanation - that the Hindu sees in the ape but

what Manu desired he should: the transformation of species most directly connected with that of the human family - a bastard branch engrafted on their own stock before the final perfection of the latter. He might learn, further, that in the eyes of the educated “heathen” the spiritual or inner man is one thing, and his terrestrial, physical casket another. That physical nature, the great combination of physical correlations of forces ever creeping on toward perfection, has to avail herself of the material at hand; she models and remodels as she proceeds, and finishing her crowning work in man, presents him alone as a fit tabernacle for the overshadowing of the Divine spirit. But the latter circumstance does not give man the right of life and death over the animals lower than himself in the scale of nature, or the right to torture them. Quite the reverse. Besides being endowed with a soul - of which every animal, and even plant, is more or less possessed - man has his immortal rational soul, or nous, which ought to make him at least equal in magnanimity to the elephant, who treads so carefully, lest he should crush weaker creatures than himself. It is this feeling which prompts Brahman and Buddhist alike to construct hospitals for sick animals, and even insects, and to prepare refuges wherein they may

finish their days. It is this same feeling, again, which causes the Jaïn sectarian to sacrifice one-half of his life-time to brushing away from his path the helpless, crawling insects, rather than recklessly deprive the smallest of life; and it is again from this sense of highest benevolence and charity toward the weaker, however abject the creature may be, that they honor one of the natural modifications of their own dual nature, and that later the popular belief in metempsychosis arose. No trace of the latter is to be found in the Vedas; and the true interpretation of the doctrine, discussed at length in Manu and the Buddhistic sacred books, having been confined from the first to the learned sacerdotal castes, the false and foolish popular ideas concerning it need occasion no surprise.

Upon those who, in the remains of antiquity, see evidence that modern times can lay small claim to originality, it is common to charge a disposition to exaggerate and distort facts. But the candid reader will scarcely aver that the above is an example in point. There were evolutionists before the day when the mythical Noah is made, in the Bible, to float in his ark; and the ancient scientists were better informed, and had their theories more logically defined than the modern evolutionists.

Plato, Anaxagoras, Pythagoras, the Eleatic schools of Greece, as well as the old Chaldean sacerdotal colleges, all taught the doctrine of the dual evolution; the doctrine of the transmigration of souls referring only to the progress of man from world to world, after death here. Every philosophy worthy of the name, taught that the spirit of man, if not the soul, was preëxistent. “The Essenes,” says Josephus, “believed that the souls were immortal, and that they descended from the ethereal spaces to be chained to bodies.” In his turn, Philo Judæus says, the “air is full of them (of souls); those which are nearest the earth, descending to be tied to mortal bodies, παλινδρομοῦσι αὖθις, return to other bodies, being desirous to live in them.” In the Sohar, the soul is made to plead her freedom before God: “Lord of the Universe! I am happy in this world, and do not wish to go into another world, where I shall be a handmaid, and be exposed to all kinds of pollutions.” The doctrine of fatal necessity, the everlasting immutable Law, is asserted in the answer of the Deity: “Against thy will thou becomest an embryo, and against thy will thou art born.” Light would be incomprehensible without darkness, to make it manifest by contrast; good would be no good without evil, to show the priceless nature of the boon; and so, personal virtue could claim no merit, unless it had passed through the furnace of temptation.

Nothing is eternal and unchangeable, save the Concealed Deity. Nothing that is finite - whether because it had a beginning, or must have an end - can remain stationary. It must either progress or recede; and a soul which thirsts after a reünion with its spirit, which alone confers upon it immortality, must purify itself through cyclic transmigrations, onward toward the only Land of Bliss and Eternal Rest, called in the Sohar, “The Palace of Love,” היבל אהבת; in the Hindu religion, “Moksha;” among the Gnostics, the “Pleroma of eternal Light;” and by the Buddhists, Nirvana. The Christian calls it the “Kingdom of Heaven,” and claims to have alone found the truth, whereas he has but invented a new name for a doctrine which is coëval with man.

The proof that the transmigration of the soul does not relate to man’s condition on this earth after death, is found in the Sohar, notwithstanding the many incorrect renderings of its translators. “All souls which have alienated themselves in heaven from the Holy One - blessed be His Name - have thrown themselves into an abyss at their very existence, and have anticipated the time when they are to descend on earth.... Come and see when the soul reaches the abode of Love.... The soul could not bear this light, but for the luminous mantle which she puts on. For, just as the soul, when sent to this earth, puts on an earthly garment to preserve herself here, so she receives above a shining garment, in order to be able to look without injury into the mirror, whose light proceeds from the Lord of Light.” Moreover, the Sohar teaches that the soul cannot reach the abode of bliss, unless she has received the “holy kiss,” or the re-union of the soul with the substance from which she emanated - spirit. All souls are dual, and, while the latter is a feminine principle, the spirit is masculine. While imprisoned in body, man is a trinity, unless his pollution is such as to have caused his divorce from the spirit. “Woe to the soul which prefers to her divine husband (spirit), the earthly wedlock with her terrestrial body,” records a text of the Book of the Keys.

These ideas on the transmigrations and the trinity of man, were held by many of the early Christian Fathers. It is the jumble made by the translators of the New Testament and ancient philosophical treatises between soul and spirit, that has occasioned the many misunderstandings. It is also one of the many reasons why Buddha, Plotinus, and so many other initiates are now accused of having longed for the total extinction of their souls - “absorption unto the Deity,” or “reunion with the universal soul,” meaning, according to modern ideas, annihilation. The animal soul must, of course, be disintegrated of its particles, before it is able to link its purer essence forever with the immortal spirit. But the translators of both the Acts and the Epistles, who laid the foundation of the Kingdom of Heaven, and the modern commentators on the Buddhist Sutra of the Foundation of the Kingdom of Righteousness, have muddled the sense of the great apostle of Christianity, as of the great reformer of India. The former have smothered the word φυχικος, so that no reader imagines it to have any relation with soul; and with this confusion of soul and spirit together, Bible readers get only a perverted sense of anything on the subject; and the interpreters of the latter have failed to understand the meaning and object of the Buddhist four degrees of Dhyâna.

In the writings of Paul, the entity of man is divided into a trine - flesh, psychical existence or soul, and the overshadowing and at the same time interior entity or SPIRIT. His phraseology is very definite, when he teaches the anastasis, or the continuation of life of those who have died. He maintains that there is a psychical body which is sown in the corruptible, and a spiritual body that is raised in incorruptible substance. “The first man is of the earth earthy, the second man from heaven.” Even James (iii. 15) identifies the soul by saying that its “wisdom descendeth not from the above but is terrestrial, psychical, demoniacal” (see Greek text). Plato, speaking of the Soul (psuché), observes that “when she allies herself to the nous (divine substance, a god, as psuché is a goddess), she does everything aright and felicitously; but the case is otherwise when she attaches herself to Annoia.” What Plato calls nous, Paul terms the Spirit; and Jesus makes the heart what Paul says of the flesh. The natural condition of mankind was called in Greek αποστασια; the new condition αναστασις. In Adam came the former (death), in Christ the latter (resurrection), for it is he who first publicly taught mankind the “Noble Path” to Eternal life, as Gautama pointed the same Path to Nirvana. To accomplish both ends there was but one way, according to the teachings of both. “Poverty, chastity, contemplation or inner prayer; contempt for wealth and the illusive joys of this world.”

“Enter on this Path and put an end to sorrow; verily the Path has been preached by me, who have found out how to quench the darts of grief. You yourselves must make the effort; the Buddhas are only preachers. The thoughtful who enter the Path are freed from the bondage of the Deceiver (Marâ). “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction.... Follow me.... Every one that heareth these sayings and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man” (Matthew vii. and viii.). “I can of mine own self do nothing” (John v. 30). “The care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word” (Matthew xiii. 22), say the Christians; and it is only by shaking off all delusions that the Buddhist enters on the “Path” which will lead him “away from the restless tossing waves of the ocean of life,” and take him “to the calm City of Peace, to the real joy and rest of Nirvana.”

The Greek philosophers are alike made misty instead of mystic by their too learned translators. The Egyptians revered the Divine Spirit, the One-Only One, as NOUT. It is most evident that it is from that word that Anaxagoras borrowed his denominative nous, or, as he calls it, Νοῦς αυτοκρατης - the Mind or Spirit self-potent, the αρχητης κινησεως. “All things,” says he, “were in chaos; then came Νοῦς and introduced order.” He also denominated this Νοῦς the One that ruled the many. In his idea Νοῦς was God; and the Logos was man, the emanation of the former. The external powers perceived phenomena; the nous alone recognized noumena or subjective things. This is purely Buddhistic and esoteric.

Here Socrates took his clew and followed it, and Plato after him, with the whole world of interior knowledge. Where the old Ionico-Italian world culminated in Anaxagoras, the new world began with Socrates and Plato. Pythagoras made the Soul a self-moving unit, with three elements, the nous, the phren and the thumos; the latter two, shared with the brutes; the former only, being his essential self. So the charge that he taught transmigration is refuted; he taught no more than Gautama-Buddha ever did, whatever the popular superstition of the Hindu rabble made of it after his death. Whether Pythagoras borrowed from Buddha, or Buddha from somebody else, matters not; the esoteric doctrine is the same. The Platonic School is even more distinct in enunciating all this. The real selfhood was at the basis of all. Socrates therefore taught that he had a δαιμόνιον (daimonion), a spiritual something which put him in the road to wisdom. He himself knew nothing, but this put him in the way to learn all. Plato followed him with a full investigation of the principles of being. There was an Agathon, Supreme God, who produced in his own mind a paradeigma of all things.

He taught that in man was “the immortal principle of the soul,” a mortal body, and a “separate mortal kind of soul,” which was placed in a separate receptacle of the body from the other; the immortal part was in the head (Timæus xix., xx.) the other in the trunk (xliv.). Nothing is plainer than that Plato regarded the interior man as constituted of two parts - one always the same, formed of the same entity as Deity, and one mortal and corruptible. “Plato and Pythagoras,” says Plutarch, “distribute the soul into two parts, the rational (noëtic) and irrational (agnoia); that that part of the soul of man which is rational, is eternal; for though it be not God, yet it is the product of an eternal deity, but that part of the soul which is divested of reason (agnoia) dies.”

“Man,” says Plutarch, “is compound; and they are mistaken who think him to be compounded of two parts only. For they imagine that the understanding is a part of the soul, but they err in this no less than those who make the soul to be a part of the body, for the understanding (nous) as far exceeds the soul, as the soul is better and diviner than the body. Now this composition of the soul (φυχη) with the understanding (νοῦς) makes reason; and with the body, passion; of which the one is the beginning or principle of pleasure and pain, and the other of virtue and vice. Of these three parts conjoined and compacted together, the earth has given the body, the moon the soul, and the sun the understanding to the generation of man.

“Now of the deaths we die, the one makes man two of three, and the other, one of (out of) two. The former is in the region and jurisdiction of Demeter, whence the name given to the Mysteries τελειν resembled that given to death, τελευταν. The Athenians also heretofore called the deceased sacred to Demeter. As for the other death it is in the moon or region of Persophoné. And as with the one the terrestrial, so with the other the celestial Hermes doth dwell. This suddenly and with violence plucks the soul from the body; but Proserpina mildly and in a long time disjoins the understanding from the soul. For this reason she is called Monogenes, only-begotten, or rather begetting one alone; for the better part of man becomes alone when it is separated by her. Now both the one and the other happens thus according to nature. It is ordained by Faith that every soul, whether with or without understanding (νοῦς), when gone out of the body, should wander for a time, though not all for the same, in the region lying between the earth and moon. For those that have been unjust and dissolute suffer there the punishment due to their offences; but the good and virtuous are there detained till they are purified, and have, by expiation, purged out of them all the infections they might have contracted from the contagion of the body, as if from foul health, living in the mildest part of the air, called the Meadows of Hades, where they must remain for a certain prefixed and appointed time. And then, as if they were returning from a wandering pilgrimage or long exile into their country, they have a taste of joy, such as they principally receive who are initiated into Sacred Mysteries, mixed with trouble, admiration, and each one’s proper and peculiar hope.”

The dæmonium of Socrates was this νοῦς, mind, spirit, or understanding of the divine in it. “The νοῦς of Socrates,” says Plutarch, “was pure and mixed itself with the body no more than necessity required.... Every soul hath some portion of νοῦς, reason, a man cannot be a man without it; but as much of each soul as is mixed with flesh and appetite is changed and through pain or pleasure becomes irrational. Every soul doth not mix herself after one sort; some plunge themselves into the body, and so, in this life their whole frame is corrupted by appetite and passion; others are mixed as to some part, but the purer part [nous] still remains without the body. It is not drawn down into the body, but it swims above and touches (overshadows) the extremest part of the man’s head; it is like a cord to hold up and direct the subsiding part of the soul, as long as it proves obedient and is not overcome by the appetites of the flesh. The part that is plunged into the body is called soul. But the incorruptible part is called the nous and the vulgar think it is within them, as they likewise imagine the image reflected from a glass to be in that glass. But the more intelligent, who know it to be without, call it a Daëmon” (a god, a spirit).

“The soul, like to a dream, flies quick away, which it does not immediately, as soon as it is separated from the body, but afterward, when it is alone and divided from the understanding (nous).... The soul being moulded and formed by the understanding (nous), and itself moulding and forming the body, by embracing it on every side, receives from it an impression and form; so that although it be separated both from the understanding and the body, it nevertheless so retains still its figure and resemblance for a long time, that it may, with good right, be called its image. “And of these souls the moon is the element, because souls resolve into her, as the bodies of the deceased do into earth. Those, indeed, who have been virtuous and honest, living a quiet and philosophical life, without embroiling themselves in troublesome affairs, are quickly resolved; because, being left by the nous, understanding, and no longer using the corporeal passions, they incontinently vanish away.”

We find even Irenæus, that untiring and mortal enemy of every Grecian and “heathen” heresy, explain his belief in the trinity of man. The perfect man, according to his views, consists of flesh, soul, and spirit. “... carne, anima, spiritu, altero quidem figurante, spiritu, altero quod formatur, carne. Id vero quod inter haec est duo, est anima, quae aliquando subsequens spiritum elevatur ab eo, aliquando autem consentient carni in terrenas concupiscentias” (Irenæus v., 1).

And Origen, in his Sixth Epistle to the Romans, says: “There is a threefold partition of man, the body or flesh, the lowest part of our nature, on which the old serpent by original sin inscribed the law of sin, and by which we are tempted to vile things, and as oft as we are overcome by temptations are joined fast to the Devil; the spirit, in or by which we express the likeness of the divine nature in which the very Best Creator, from the archetype of his own mind, engraved with his finger (that is, his spirit), the eternal law of honesty; by this we are joined (conglutinated) to God and made one with God. In the third, the soul mediates between these, which, as in a factious republic, cannot but join with one party or the other, is solicited this way and that and is at liberty to choose the side to which it will adhere. If, renouncing the flesh, it betakes itself to the party of the spirit it will itself become spiritual, but if it cast itself down to the cupidities of the flesh it will degenerate itself into body.”

Plato (in Laws x.) defines soul as “the motion that is able to move itself.” “Soul is the most ancient of all things, and the commencement of motion.” “Soul was generated prior to body, and body is posterior and secondary, as being, according to nature, ruled over by the ruling soul.” “The soul which administers all things that are moved in every way, administers likewise the heavens.” “Soul then leads everything in heaven, and on earth, and in the sea, by its movements - the names of which are, to will, to consider, to take care of, to consult, to form opinions true and false, to be in a state of joy, sorrow, confidence, fear, hate, love, together with all such primary movements as are allied to these ... being a goddess herself, she ever takes as an ally NOUS, a god, and disciplines all things correctly and happily; but when with Annoia - not nous - it works out everything the contrary.”

In this language, as in the Buddhist texts, the negative is treated as essential existence. Annihilation comes under a similar exegesis. The positive state, is essential being but no manifestation as such. When the spirit, in Buddhistic parlance, entered nirvana, it lost objective existence but retained subjective. To objective minds this is becoming absolute nothing; to subjective, NO-thing, nothing to be displayed to sense. These rather lengthy quotations are necessary for our purpose. Better than anything else, they show the agreement between the oldest “Pagan” philosophies - not “assisted by the light of divine revelation,” to use the curious expression of Laboulaye in relation to Buddha - and the early Christianity of some Fathers. Both Pagan philosophy and Christianity, however, owe their elevated ideas on the soul and spirit of man and the unknown Deity to Buddhism and the Hindu Manu. No wonder that the Manicheans maintained that Jesus was a permutation of Gautama; that Buddha, Christ, and Mani were one and the same person, for the teachings of the former two were identical. It was the doctrine of old India that Jesus held to when preaching the complete renunciation of the world and its vanities in order to reach the kingdom of Heaven, Nirvana, where “men neither marry nor are given in marriage, but live like the angels.”

It is the philosophy of Siddhârtha-Buddha again that Pythagoras expounded, when asserting that the ego (νοῦς) was eternal with God, and that the soul only passed through various stages (Hindu Rupa-locas) to arrive at the divine excellence; meanwhile the thumos returned to the earth, and even the phren was eliminated. Thus the metempsychosis was only a succession of disciplines through refuge-heavens (called by the Buddhists Zion), to work off the exterior mind, to rid the nous of the phren, or soul, the Buddhist “Winyanaskandaya,” that principle that lives from Karma and the Skandhas (groups). It is the latter, the metaphysical personations of the “deeds” of man, whether good or bad, which, after the death of his body, incarnate themselves, so to say, and form their many invisible but never-dying compounds into a new body, or rather into an ethereal being, the double of what man was morally. It is the astral body of the kabalist and the “incarnated deeds” which form the new sentient self as his Ahancara (the ego, self-consciousness), given to him by the sovereign Master (the breath of God) can never perish, for it is immortal per se as a spirit; hence the sufferings of the newly-born self till he rids himself of every earthly thought, desire, and passion.

We now see that the “four mysteries” of the Buddhist doctrine have been as little understood and appreciated as the “wisdom” hinted at by Paul, and spoken “among them that are perfect” (initiated), the “mystery-wisdom” which “none of the Archons of this world knew.” The fourth degree of the Buddhist Dhyâna, the fruit of Samâdhi, which leads to the utmost perfection, to Viconddham, a term correctly rendered by Burnouf in the verb “perfected,” is wholly misunderstood by others, as well as in himself. Defining the condition of Dhyâna, St. Hilaire argues thus: “Finally, having attained the fourth degree, the ascetic possesses no more this feeling of beatitude, however obscure it may be ... he has also lost all memory ... he has reached impassibility, as near a neighbor of Nirvana as can be.... However, this absolute impassibility does not hinder the ascetic from acquiring, at this very moment, omniscience and the magical power; a flagrant contradiction, about which the Buddhists no more disturb themselves than about so many others.”

And why should they, when these contradictions are, in fact, no contradictions at all? It ill behooves us to speak of contradictions in other peoples’ religions, when those of our own have bred, besides the three great conflicting bodies of Romanism, Protestantism, and the Eastern Church, a thousand and one most curious smaller sects. However it may be, we have here a term applied to one and the same thing by the Buddhist holy “mendicants” and Paul, the Apostle. When the latter says: “If so be that I might attain the resurrection from among the dead [the Nirvana], not as though I had already attained, or were already perfect” (initiated), he uses an expression common among the initiated Buddhists. When a Buddhist ascetic has reached the “fourth degree,” he is considered a rahat. He produces every kind of phenomena by the sole power of his freed spirit. A rahat, say the Buddhists, is one who has acquired the power of flying in the air, becoming invisible, commanding the elements, and working all manner of wonders, commonly, and as erroneously, called meipo (miracles). He is a perfect man, a demi-god. A god he will become when he reaches Nirvana; for, like the initiates of both Testaments, the worshippers of Buddha know that they “are gods.”

“Genuine Buddhism, overleaping the barrier between finite and infinite mind, urges its followers to aspire, by their own efforts, to that divine perfectibility of which it teaches that man is capable, and by attaining which man becomes a god,” says Brian Houghton Hodgson.

Dreary and sad were the ways, and blood-covered the tortuous paths by which the world of the Christians was driven to embrace the Irenæan and Eusebian Christianity. And yet, unless we accept the views of the ancient Pagans, what claim has our generation to having solved any of the mysteries of the “kingdom of heaven?” What more does the most pious and learned of Christians know of the future destiny and progress of our immortal spirits than the heathen philosopher of old, or the modern “Pagan” beyond the Himalaya? Can he even boast that he knows as much, although he works in the full blaze of “divine” revelation? We have seen a Buddhist holding to the religion of his fathers, both in theory and practice; and, however blind may be his faith, however absurd his notions on some particular doctrinal points, later engraftings of an ambitious clergy, yet in practical works his Buddhism is far more Christ-like in deed and spirit than the average life of our Christian priests and ministers. The fact alone that his religion commands him to “honor his own faith, but never slander that of other people,” is sufficient. It places the Buddhist lama immeasurably higher than any priest or clergyman who deems it his sacred duty to curse the “heathen” to his face, and sentence him and his religion to “eternal damnation.” Christianity becomes every day more a religion of pure emotionalism. The doctrine of Buddha is entirely based on practical works.

A general love of all beings, human and animal, is its nucleus. A man who knows that unless he toils for himself he has to starve, and understands that he has no scapegoat to carry the burden of his iniquities for him, is ten times as likely to become a better man than one who is taught that murder, theft, and profligacy can be washed in one instant as white as snow, if he but believes in a God who, to borrow an expression of Volney, “once took food upon earth, and is now himself the food of his people.”

“Of the tenets of the Druzes, nothing authentic has ever come to light; the popular belief amongst their neighbors is, that they adore an idol in the form of a calf.” - KING: The Gnostics and their Remains. “O ye Lords of Truth without fault, who are forever cycling for eternity ... save me from the annihilation of this Region of the Two Truths.” - Egyptian Ritual of the Dead. “Pythagoras correctly regarded the “Ineffable Name” of God ... as the Key to the Mysteries of the universe.” - PANCOAST: Blue and Red Light. In the next two chapters we shall notice the most important of the Christian secret sects - the so-called “Heresies” which sprang into existence between the first and fourth centuries of our era.

Glancing rapidly at the Ophites and Nazareans, we shall pass to their scions which yet exist in Syria and Palestine, under the name of Druzes of Mount Lebanon; and near Basra or Bassorah, in Persia, under that of Mendæans, or Disciples of St. John. All these sects have an immediate connection with our subject, for they are of kabalistic parentage and have once held to the secret “Wisdom Religion,” recognizing as the One Supreme, the Mystery-God of the Ineffable Name. Noticing these numerous secret societies of the past, we will bring them into direct comparison with several of the modern. We will conclude with a brief survey of the Jesuits, and of that venerable nightmare of the Roman Catholic Church - modern Freemasonry. All of these modern as well as ancient fraternities - present Freemasonry excepted - were and are more or less connected with magic - practically, as well as theoretically; and, every one of them - Freemasonry not excepted - was and still is accused of demonolatry, blasphemy, and licentiousness. Our object is not to write the history of either of them; but only to compare these sorely-abused communities with the Christian sects, past and present, and then, taking historical facts for our guidance, to defend the secret science as well as the men who are its students and champions against any unjust imputation.

One by one the tide of time engulfed the sects of the early centuries, until of the whole number only one survived in its primitive integrity. That one still exists, still teaches the doctrine of its founder, still exemplifies its faith in works of power. The quicksands which swallowed up every other outgrowth of the religious agitation of the times of Jesus, with its records, relics, and traditions, proved firm ground for this. Driven from their native land, its members found refuge in Persia, and to day the anxious traveller may converse with the direct descendants of the “Disciples of John,” who listened, on the Jordan’s shore, to the “man sent from God,” and were baptized and believed. This curious people, numbering 30,000 or more, are miscalled “Christians of St. John,” but in fact should be known by their old name of Nazareans, or their new one of Mendæans.

To term them Christians, is wholly unwarranted. They neither believe in Jesus as Christ, nor accept his atonement, nor adhere to his Church, nor revere its “Holy Scriptures.” Neither do they worship the Jehovah-God of the Jews and Christians, a circumstance which of course proves that their founder, John the Baptist, did not worship him either. And if not, what right has he to a place in the Bible, or in the portrait-gallery of Christian saints? Still further, if Ferho was his God, and he was “a man sent by God,” he must have been sent by Lord Ferho, and in his name baptized and preached? Now, if Jesus was baptized by John, the inference is that he was baptized according to his own faith; therefore, Jesus too, was a believer in Ferho, or Faho, as they call him; a conclusion that seems the more warranted by his silence as to the name of his “Father.” And why should the hypothesis that Faho is but one of the many corruptions of Fho or Fo, as the Thibetans and Chinese call Buddha, appear ridiculous? In the North of Nepaul, Buddha is more often called Fo than Buddha. The Book of Mahawānsa shows how early the work of Buddhistic proselytism began in Nepaul; and history teaches that Buddhist monks crowded into Syria and Babylon in the century preceding our era, and that Buddhasp (Bodhisatva) the alleged Chaldean, was the founder of Sabism or baptism.

What the actual Baptists, el-Mogtasila, or Nazareans, do believe, is fully set forth in other places, for they are the very Nazarenes of whom we have spoken so much, and from whose Codex we have quoted. Persecuted and threatened with annihilation, they took refuge in the Nestorian body, and so allowed themselves to be arbitrarily classed as Christians, but as soon as opportunity offered, they separated, and now, for several centuries have not even nominally deserved the appellation. That they are, nevertheless, so called by ecclesiastical writers, is perhaps not very difficult to comprehend. They know too much of early Christianity to be left outside the pale, to bear witness against it with their traditions, without the stigma of heresy and backsliding being fastened upon them to weaken confidence in what they might say.

But where else can science find so good a field for biblical research as among this too neglected people? No doubt of their inheritance of the Baptist’s doctrine; their traditions are without a break. What they teach now, their forefathers taught at every epoch where they appear in history. They are the disciples of that John who is said to have foretold the advent of Jesus, baptized him, and declared that the latchet of his shoe he (John) was not worthy to unloose. As they two - the Messenger and the Messiah - stood in the Jordan, and the elder was consecrating the younger - his own cousin, too, humanly speaking - the heavens opened and God Himself, in the shape of a dove, descended in a glory upon his “Beloved Son!” How then, if this tale be true, can we account for the strange infidelity which we find among these surviving Nazareans? So far from believing Jesus the Only Begotten Son of God, they actually told the Persian missionaries, who, in the seventeenth century, first discovered them to Europeans, that the Christ of the New Testament was “a false teacher,” and that the Jewish system, as well as that of Jesus (?), came from the realm of darkness! Who knows better than they? Where can more competent living witnesses be found? Christian ecclesiastics would force upon us an anointed Saviour heralded by John, and the disciples of this very Baptist, from the earliest centuries, have stigmatized this ideal personage as an impostor, and his putative Father, Jehovah, “a spurious God,” the Ilda-Baoth of the Ophites!

Unlucky for Christianity will be the day when some fearless and honest scholar shall persuade their elders to let him translate the contents of their secret books and compile their hoary traditions! It is a strange delusion that makes some writers think that the Nazareans have no other sacred literature, no other literary relics than four doctrinal works, and that curious volume full of astrology and magic which they are bound to peruse at the sunset hour, on every Sol’s day (Sunday).

This search after truth leads us, indeed, into devious ways. Many are the obstacles that ecclesiastical cunning has placed in the way of our finding the primal source of religious ideas. Christianity is on trial, and has been, ever since science felt strong enough to act as Public Prosecutor. A portion of the case we are drafting in this book. What of truth is there in this Theology? Through what sects has it been transmitted? Whence was it primarily derived? To answer, we must trace the history of the World Religion, alike through the secret Christian sects as through those of other great religious subdivisions of the race; for the Secret Doctrine is the Truth, and that religion is nearest divine that has contained it with least adulteration. Our search takes us hither and thither, but never aimlessly do we bring sects widely separated in chronological order, into critical juxtaposition. There is one purpose in our work to be kept constantly in view - the analysis of religious beliefs, and the definition of their descent from the past to the present. What has most blocked the way is Roman Catholicism; and not until the secret principles of this religion are uncovered can we comprehend the iron staff upon which it leans to steady its now tottering steps.

We will begin with the Ophites, Nazareans, and the modern Druzes. The personal views of the author, as they will be presented in the diagrams, will be most decidedly at variance with the prejudiced speculations of Irenæus, Theodoret, and Epiphanius (the sainted renegade, who sold his brethren), inasmuch as they will reflect the ideas of certain kabalists in close relations with the mysterious Druzes of Mount Lebanon. The Syrian okhals, or Spiritualists, as they are sometimes termed, are in possession of a great many ancient manuscripts and gems, bearing upon our present subject.

The first scheme - that of the Ophites - from the very start, as we have shown, varies from the description given by the Fathers, inasmuch as it makes Bythos or depth, a female emanation, and assigns her a place answering to that of Pleroma, only in a far superior region; whereas, the Fathers assure us that the Gnostics gave the name of Bythos to the First Cause. As in the kabalistic system, it represents the boundless and infinite void within which is concealed in darkness the Unknown Primal motor of all. It envelops HIM like a veil: in short we recognize again the “Shekinah” of the En-Soph. Alone, the name of ΙΑΩ, Iao, marks the upper centre, or rather the presumed spot where the Unknown One may be supposed to dwell. Around the Iao, runs the legend, ϹΕΜΕϹ ΕΙΛΑΜ ΑΒΡΑΣΑΞ. “The eternal Sun-Abrasax” (the Central Spiritual Sun of all the kabalists, represented in some diagrams of the latter by the circle of Tiphereth).

From this region of unfathomable Depth, issues forth a circle formed of spirals; which, in the language of symbolism, means a grand cycle, κυκλος, composed of smaller ones. Coiled within, so as to follow the spirals, lies the serpent - emblem of wisdom and eternity - the Dual Androgyne: the cycle representing Ennoia or the Divine mind, and the Serpent - the Agathodaimon, Ophis - the Shadow of the Light. Both were the Logoï of the Ophites; or the unity as Logos manifesting itself as a double principle of good and evil; for, according to their views, these two principles are immutable, and existed from all eternity, as they will ever continue to exist. This symbol accounts for the adoration by this sect of the Serpent, as the Saviour, coiled either around the Sacramental loaf or a Tau. As a unity, Ennoia and Ophis are the Logos; when separated, one is the Tree of Life (Spiritual); the other, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Therefore, we find Ophis urging the first human couple - the material production of Ilda-Baoth, but which owed its spiritual principle to Sophia-Achamoth - to eat of the forbidden fruit, although Ophis represents Divine Wisdom.

The Serpent, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Tree of Life, are all symbols transplanted from the soil of India. The Arasa-Maram, the banyan tree, so sacred with the Hindus, since Vishnu, during one of his incarnations, reposed under its mighty shade, and there taught humanity philosophy and sciences, is called the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life. Under the protective umbrage of this king of the forests, the Gurus teach their pupils their first lessons on immortality and initiate them in the mysteries of life and death. The Java-ALEIM of the Sacerdotal College are said, in the Chaldean tradition, to have taught the sons of men to become like one of them. To the present day Foh-tchou, who lives in his Foh-Maëyu, or temple of Buddha, on the top of “Kouin-long-sang,” the great mountain, produces his greatest religious miracles under a tree called in Chinese Sung-Ming-Shŭ, or the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life, for ignorance is death, and knowledge alone gives immortality. This marvellous display takes place every three years, when an immense concourse of Chinese Buddhists assemble in pilgrimage at the holy place.

Ilda-Baoth, the “Son of Darkness,” and the creator of the material world, was made to inhabit the planet Saturn, which identifies him still more with the Jewish Jehovah, who was Saturn himself, according to the Ophites, and is by them denied his Sinaitic name. From Ilda-Baoth emanate six spirits, who respectively dwell with their father in the seven planets. These are Saba - or Mars; Adonai - Sol, or the Sun; Ievo - the Moon; Eloi - Jupiter; Astaphoi - Mercury (spirit of water); and Ouraïos - Venus, spirit of fire. In their functions and description as given, these seven planets are identical with the Hindu Sapta-Loca, the seven places or spheres, or the superior and inferior worlds; for they represent the kabalistic seven spheres. With the Ophites, they belong to the lower spheres. The monograms of these Gnostic planets are also Buddhistic, the latter differing, albeit slightly, from those of the usual astrological “houses.” In the explanatory notes which accompany the diagram, the names of Cirenthius (the disciple of Simon Magus), of Menander, and of certain other Gnostics, whose names are not to be met with in the Patristic writings, are often mentioned; such as Parcha (Ferho), for instance.

The author of the diagram claims, moreover, for his sect, the greatest antiquity, bringing forward, as a proof, that their “forefathers” were the builders of all the “Dracontia” temples, even of those beyond “the great waters.” He asserts that the “Just One,” who was the mouthpiece of the Eternal Æon (Christos), himself sent his disciples into the world, placing them under the double protection of Sige (Silence, the Logos), and Ophis, the Agathodæmon. The author alludes, no doubt, to the favorite expression of Jesus, “be wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” On the diagram, Ophis is represented as the Egyptian Cnuphis or Kneph, called Dracontiæ. He appears as a serpent standing erect on its tail, with a lion’s head, crowned and radiated, and bearing on the point of each ray one of the seven Greek vowels - symbol of the seven celestial spheres. This figure is quite familiar to those who are acquainted with the Gnostic gems, and is borrowed from the Egyptian Hermetic books. The description given in the Revelation, of one “like unto the Son of Man,” with his seven stars, and who is the Logos, is another form of Ophis.

The Nazarene diagram, except in a change of names, is identical with that of the Gnostics, who evidently borrowed their ideas from it, adding a few appellations from the Basiledean and Valentinian systems. To avoid repetition, we will now simply present the two in parallel. Thus, we find that, in the Nazarene Cosmogony, the names of their powers and genii stand in the following relations to those of the Gnostics: NAZARENE. GNOSTIC-OPHITE. First Trinity. First Unity in a Trinity. Lord FERHO - the Life which IAO - the Ineffable Name of is no Life - the Supreme God. the Unknown Deity - Abraxas, The Cause which produces and the “Eternal Spiritual the Light, or the Logos in Sun.” Unity enclosed within abscondito. The water of the Depth, Bythos, feminine Jordanus Maximus - the water principle - the boundless of Life, or Ajar, the circle, within which lie all feminine principle. Unity in ideal forms. From this Unity a Trinity, enclosed within emanates the ISH AMON. Second Trinity. Second Trinity. (The manifestation (Idem.) of the first.) 1. Lord MANO - the King of 1. Ennoia - mind. Life and Light - Rex Lucis. First LIFE, or the primitive man. 2. Lord Jordan - manifestation 2. Ophis, the Agathodæmon. or emanation of Jordan Maximus - the waters of grace. Second LIFE. 3. The Superior Father - 3. Sophia Androgyne - wisdom; Abatur. Third LIFE. who, in her turn - fecundated with the Divine Light - produces

This Trinity produces also a Christos and Sophia-Achamoth duad - Lord Ledhoio, and (one perfect, the other Fetahil, the genius (the imperfect), as an emanation. former, a perfect emanation, the latter, imperfect). Lord Jordan - “the Lord of Sophia-Achamoth emanates all Jordans,” manifests Ilda-Baoth - the Demiurge, NETUBTO (Faith without who produces material and Works). soulless creation. “Works without Faith” (or grace). Moreover, the Ophite seven planetary genii, who emanated one from the other, are found again in the Nazarene religion, under the name of the “seven impostor-dæmons,” or stellars, who “will deceive all the sons of Adam.” These are Sol; Spiritus Venereus (Holy Spirit, in her material aspect), the mother of the “seven badly-disposed stellars,” answering to the Gnostic Achamoth; Nebu, or Mercury, “a false Messiah, who will deprave the ancient worship of God;” SIN (or Luna, or Shuril); KIUN (Kivan, or Saturn); Bel-Jupiter; and the seventh, Nerig, Mars (Codex Nazaræus, p. 57). The Christos of the Gnostics is the chief of the seven Æons, St. John’s seven spirits of God; the Nazarenes have also their seven genii or good Æons, whose chief is Rex Lucis, MANO, their Christos. The Sapta Rishis, the seven sages of India, inhabit the Sapta-Poura, or the seven celestial cities.

What less or more do we find in the Universal Ecclesia, until the days of the Reformation, and in the Roman Popish Church after the separation? We have compared the relative value of the Hindu Cosmogony; the Chaldeo, Zoroastrian, Jewish Kabala; and that of the so-termed Hæretics. A correct diagram of the Judaico-CHRISTIAN religion, to enforce which on the heathen who have furnished it, are expended such great sums every year, would still better prove the identity of the two; but we lack space and are also spared the necessity of proving what is already thoroughly demonstrated.

In the Ophite gems of King (Gnostics), we find the name of Iao repeated, and often confounded with that of Ievo, while the latter simply represents one of the genii antagonistic to Abraxas. In order that these names may not be taken as identical with the name of the Jewish Jehovah we will at once explain this word. It seems to us surpassingly strange that so many learned archæologists should have so little insisted that there was more than one Jehovah, and disclaimed that the name originated with Moses. Iao is certainly a title of the Supreme Being, and belongs partially to the Ineffable Name; but it neither originated with nor was it the sole property of the Jews. Even if it had pleased Moses to bestow the name upon the tutelar “Spirit,” the alleged protector and national deity of the “Chosen people of Israel,” there is yet no possible reason why other nationalities should receive Him as the Highest and One-living God. But we deny the assumption altogether. Besides, there is the fact that Yaho or Iao was a “mystery name” from the beginning, יהוה and יה never came into use before King David. Anterior to his time, few or no proper names were compounded with iah or jah. It looks rather as though David, being a sojourner among the Tyrians and Philistines (2 Samuel), brought thence the name of Jehovah. He made Zadok high-priest, from whom came the Zadokites or Sadducees. He lived and ruled first at Hebron חברון, Habir-on or Kabeir-town, where the rites of the four (mystery-gods) were celebrated. Neither David nor Solomon recognized either Moses or the law of Moses. They aspired to build a temple to יהוה, like the structures erected by Hiram to Hercules and Venus, Adon and Astarte.

Says Fürst: “The very ancient name of God, Yâho, written in the Greek Ιαω, appears, apart from its derivation, to have been an old mystic name of the Supreme deity of the Shemites. (Hence it was told to Moses when initiated at HOR-EB - the cave, under the direction of Jethro, the Kenite or Cainite priest of Midian.) In an old religion of the Chaldeans, whose remains are to be found amongst the Neo-platonists, the highest divinity enthroned above the seven heavens, representing the Spiritual Light-Principle (nous) and also conceived as Demiurgus, was called Ιαω יחד, who was, like the Hebrew Yâho, mysterious and unmentionable, and whose name was communicated to the initiated. The Phœnicians had a Supreme God whose name was trilateral and secret, and he was Ιαω.” But while Fürst insists that the name has a Semitic origin, there are other scholars who trace it farther than he does, and look back beyond the classification of the Caucasians.

In Sanscrit we have Jah and Jaya, or Jaa and Ja-ga, and this throws light on the origin of the famous festival of the car of Jaga-nath, commonly called Jaggernâth. Javhe means “he who is,” and Dr. Spiegel traces even the Persian name of God, “Ahura,” to the root ah, which in Sanscrit is pronounced as, to breathe, and asu, became, therefore, in time, synonymous with “Spirit.” Rawlinson strongly supports the opinion of an Aryan or Vedic influence on the early Babylonian mythology. We have given, a few pages back, the strongest possible proofs of the identity of Vishnu with Dag-on. The same may be adduced for the title of Ιαω, and its Sanscrit root traced in every country. JU or Jovis is the oldest Latin name for God. “As male he is Ju-piter, or Ju, the father, pitär being Sanscrit for father; as feminine, Ju-no or Ju, the comforter - דוח being the Phœnician word for rest and comfort.” Professor Max Müller shows that although “Dyaus,” sky, does not occur as a masculine in the ordinary Sanscrit, yet it does occur in the Veda, “and thus bears witness to the early Aryan worship of Dyaus, the Greek Zeus” (The Veda).

To grasp the real and primitive sense of the term ΙΑΩ, and the reason of its becoming the designation for the most mysterious of all deities, we must search for its origin in the figurative phraseology of all the primitive people. We must first of all go to the most ancient sources for our information. In one of the Books of Hermes, for instance, we find him saying that the number TEN is the mother of the soul, and that the life and light are therein united. For “the number 1 (one) is born from the spirit, and the number 10 (ten) from matter;” “the unity has made the TEN, the TEN the unity.”

The kabalistic gemantria - one of the methods for extracting the hidden meaning from letters, words, and sentences - is arithmetical. It consists in applying to the letters of a word the sense they bear as numbers, in outward shape as well as in their individual sense. Moreover, by the Themura (another method used by the kabalists) any word could be made to yield its mystery out of its anagram. Thus, we find the author of Sepher Jezira saying, one or two centuries before our era: “ONE, the spirit of the Alahim of Lives.” So again, in the oldest kabalistic diagrams, the ten Sephiroth are represented as wheels or circles, and Adam Kadmon, the primitive man, as an upright pillar. “Wheels and seraphim and the holy creatures” (chioth), says Rabbi Akiba. In another system of the same branch of the symbolical Kabala, called Athbach - which arranges the letters of the alphabet by pairs in three rows - all the couples in the first row bear the numerical value ten; and in the system of Simeon Ben-Shetah, the uppermost couple - the most sacred of all, is preceded by the Pythagorean cipher, one and a nought, or zero - 10.

If we can once appreciate the fact that, among all the peoples of the highest antiquity, the most natural conception of the First Cause manifesting itself in its creatures, and that to this they could not but ascribe the creation of all, was that of an androgyne deity; that the male principle was considered the vivifying invisible spirit, and the female, mother nature; we shall be enabled to understand how that mysterious cause came at first to be represented (in the picture-writings, perhaps) as the combination of the Alpha and Omega of numbers, a decimal, then as IAO, a trilateral name, containing in itself a deep allegory.

IAO, in such a case, would - etymologically considered - mean the “Breath of Life,” generated or springing forth between an upright male and an egg-shaped female principle of nature; for, in Sanscrit, as means “to be,” “to live or exist;” and originally it meant “to breathe.” “From it,” says Max Müller, “in its original sense of breathing, the Hindus formed ‘asu,’ breath, and ‘asura,’ the name of God, whether it meant the breathing one or the giver of breath.” It certainly meant the latter. In Hebrew, “Ah” and “Iah” mean life. Cornelius Agrippa, in his treatise on the Preëminence of Woman, shows that “the word Eve suggests comparison with the mystic symbols of the kabalists, the name of the woman having affinity with the ineffable Tetragrammaton, the most sacred name of the divinity.” Ancient names were always consonant with the things they represented. In relation to the mysterious name of the Deity in question, the hitherto inexplicable hint of the kabalists as to the efficacy of the letter H, “which Abram took away from his wife Sarah” and “put into the middle of his own name,” becomes clear.

It may perhaps be argued, by way of objection, that it is not ascertained as yet at what period of antiquity the nought occurs for the first time in Indian manuscripts or inscriptions. Be that as it may, the case presents circumstantial evidence of too strong a character not to carry a conviction of probability with it. According to Max Müller “the two words ‘cipher’ and ‘zero,’ which are in reality but one ... are sufficient to prove that our figures are borrowed from the Arabs.” Cipher is the Arabic “cifron,” and means empty, a translation of the Sanscrit name of the nought “synya,” he says. The Arabs had their figures from Hindustan, and never claimed the discovery for themselves. As to the Pythagoreans, we need but turn to the ancient manuscripts of Boëthius’s Geometry, composed in the sixth century, to find in the Pythagorean numerals the 1 and the nought, as the first and final cipher. And Porphyry, who quotes from the Pythagorean Moderatus, says that the numerals of Pythagoras were “hieroglyphical symbols, by means whereof he explained ideas concerning the nature of things.”

Now, if the most ancient Indian manuscripts show as yet no trace of decimal notation in them, Max Müller states very clearly that until now he has found but nine letters (the initials of the Sanscrit numerals) in them - on the other hand we have records as ancient to supply the wanted proof. We speak of the sculptures and the sacred imagery in the most ancient temples of the far East. Pythagoras derived his knowledge from India; and we find Professor Max Müller corroborating this statement, at least so far as allowing the Neo-Pythagoreans to have been the first teachers of “ciphering” among the Greeks and Romans; that “they, at Alexandria, or in Syria, became acquainted with the Indian figures, and adapted them to the Pythagorean abacus” (our figures). This cautious allowance implies that Pythagoras himself was acquainted with but nine figures. So that we might reasonably answer that although we possess no certain proof that the decimal notation was known to Pythagoras, who lived on the very close of the archaic ages, we yet have sufficient evidence to show that the full numbers, as given by Boëthius, were known to the Pythagoreans, even before Alexandria was built. This evidence we find in Aristotle, who says that “some philosophers hold that ideas and numbers are of the same nature, and amount to TEN in all.” This, we believe, will be sufficient to show that the decimal notation was known among them at least as early as four centuries B.C., for Aristotle does not seem to treat the question as an innovation of the “Neo-Pythagoreans.”

Besides, as we have remarked above, the representations of the archaic deities, on the walls of the temples, are of themselves quite suggestive enough. So, for instance, Vishnu is represented in the Kurmavatara (his second avatar) as a tortoise sustaining a circular pillar, on which the semblance of himself (Maya, or the illusion) sits with all his attributes. While one hand holds a flower, another a club, the third a shell, the fourth, generally the upper one, or at the right - holds on his forefinger, extended as the cipher 1, the chakra, or discus, which resembles a ring, or a wheel, and might be taken for the nought. In his first avatar, the Matsyavatam, when emerging from the fish’s mouth, he is represented in the same position. The ten-armed Durga of Bengal; the ten-headed Ravana, the giant; Parvati - as Durga, Indra, and Indrani, are found with this attribute, which is a perfect representation of the May-pole. The holiest of the temples among the Hindus, are those of Jaggarnâth. This deity is worshipped equally by all the sects of India, and _Jagg_arnâth is named “The Lord of the World.” He is the god of the Mysteries, and his temples, which are most numerous in Bengal, are all of a pyramidal form.

There is no other deity which affords such a variety of etymologies as Iaho, nor a name which can be so variously pronounced. It is only by associating it with the Masoretic points that the later Rabbins succeeded in making Jehovah read “Adonaï” - or Lord. Philo Byblus spells it in Greek letters ΙΕΥΩ - IEOV. Theodoret says that the Samaritans pronounced it Iabè (Yahva) and the Jews Yaho; which would make it as we have shown I-ah-O. Diodorus states that “among the Jews they relate that Moses called the God Ιαω.” It is on the authority of the Bible itself, therefore, that we maintain that before his initiation by Jethro, his father-in-law, Moses had never known the word Iaho. The future Deity of the sons of Israel calls out from the burning bush and gives His name as “I am that I am,” and specifies carefully that He is the “Lord God of the Hebrews” (Exod. iii. 18), not of the other nations. Judging him by his own acts, throughout the Jewish records, we doubt whether Christ himself, had he appeared in the days of the Exodus, would have been welcomed by the irascible Sinaitic Deity. However, “The Lord God,” who becomes, on His own confession, Jehovah only in the 6th chapter of Exodus (verse 3) finds his veracity put to a startling test in Genesis xxii. 14, in which revealed passage Abraham builds an altar to Jehovah-jireh.

It would seem, therefore, but natural to make a difference between the mystery-God Ιαω, adopted from the highest antiquity by all who participated in the esoteric knowledge of the priests, and his phonetic counterparts, whom we find treated with so little reverence by the Ophites and other Gnostics. Once having burdened themselves like the Azazel of the wilderness with the sins and iniquities of the Jewish nation, it now appears hard for the Christians to have to confess that those whom they thought fit to consider the “chosen people” of God - their sole predecessors in monotheism - were, till a very late period, as idolatrous and polytheistic as their neighbors. The shrewd Talmudists have escaped the accusation for long centuries by screening themselves behind the Masoretic invention. But, as in everything else, truth was at last brought to light. We know now that Ihoh יהוה must be read Iahoh and Iah, not Jehovah. Iah of the Hebrews is plainly the Iacchos (Bacchus) of the Mysteries; the God “from whom the liberation of souls was expected - Dionysus, Iacchos, Iahoh, Iah.” Aristotle then was right when he said: “Jon יהוה was Oromasdes and Ahriman Pluto, for the God of heaven, Ahura-mazda, rides on a chariot which the Horse of the Sun follows.” And Dunlap quotes Psalm lxviii. 4, which reads:

“Praise him by his name Iach (יה), Who rides upon the heavens, as on a horse,” and then shows that “the Arabs represented Iauk (Iach) by a horse. The Horse of the Sun (Dionysus).” Iah is a softening of Iach, “he explains.” ח ch and ה h interchange; so s softens to h. The Hebrews express the idea of LIFE both by a ch and an h; as chiach, to be, hiah, to be; Iach, God of Life, Iah, “I am.” Well then may we repeat these lines of Ausonius: “Ogugiâ calls me Bacchus; Egypt thinks me Osiris; The Musians name me Ph’anax; the Indi consider me Dionysus; The Roman Mysteries call me Liber; the Arabian race Adonis!” And the chosen people Adoni and Jehovah - we may add.

How little the philosophy of the old secret doctrine was understood, is illustrated in the atrocious persecutions of the Templars by the Church, and in the accusation of their worshipping the Devil under the shape of the goat - Baphomet! Without going into the old Masonic mysteries, there is not a Mason - of those we mean who do know something - but has an idea of the true relation that Baphomet bore to Azâzêl, the scapegoat of the wilderness, whose character and meaning are entirely perverted in the Christian translations. “This terrible and venerable name of God,” says Lanci, librarian to the Vatican, “through the pen of biblical glossers, has been a devil, a mountain, a wilderness, and a he-goat.” In Mackenzie’s Royal Masonic Cyclopædia, the author very correctly remarks that “this word should be divided into Azaz and El,” for “it signifies God of Victory, but is here used in the sense of author of Death, in contrast to Jehovah, the author of Life; the latter received a dead goat as an offering.” The Hindu Trinity is composed of three personages, which are convertible into one. The Trimurti is one, and in its abstraction indivisible, and yet we see a metaphysical division taking place from the first, and while Brahma, though collectively representing the three, remains behind the scenes, Vishnu is the Life-Giver, the Creator, and the Preserver, and Siva is the Destroyer, and the Death-giving deity. “Death to the Life-Giver, life to the Death-dealer. The symbolical antithesis is grand and beautiful,” says Gliddon. “Deus est Dæmon inversus” of the kabalists now becomes clear. It is but the intense and cruel desire to crush out the last vestige of the old philosophies by perverting their meaning, for fear that their own dogmas should not be rightly fathered on them, which impels the Catholic Church to carry on such a systematic persecution in regard to Gnostics, Kabalists, and even the comparatively innocent Masons.

Alas, alas! How little has the divine seed, scattered broadcast by the hand of the meek Judean philosopher, thrived or brought forth fruit. He, who himself had shunned hypocrisy, warned against public prayer, showing such contempt for any useless exhibition of the same, could he but cast his sorrowful glance on the earth, from the regions of eternal bliss, would see that this seed fell neither on sterile rock nor by the way-side. Nay, it took deep root in the most prolific soil; one enriched even to plethora with lies and human gore!

“For, if the truth of God hath more abounded, through my lie unto his glory; why yet am I also judged as a sinner?” naïvely inquires Paul, the best and sincerest of all the apostles. And he then adds: “Let us do evil, that good may come!” (Romans iii. 7, 8). This is a confession which we are asked to believe as having been a direct inspiration from God! It explains, if it does not excuse, the maxim adopted later by the Church that “it is an act of virtue to deceive and lie, when by such means the interests of the Church might be promoted.” A maxim applied in its fullest sense by that accomplished professor in forgery, the Armenian Eusebius; or yet, that innocent-looking bible-kaleidoscopist - Irenæus. And these men were followed by a whole army of pious assassins, who, in the meanwhile, had improved upon the system of deceit, by proclaiming that it was lawful even to kill, when by murder they could enforce the new religion. Theophilus, “that perpetual enemy of peace and virtue,” as the famous bishop was called; Cyril, Athanasius, the murderer of Arius, and a host of other canonized “Saints,” were all but too worthy successors of Saint Constantine, who drowned his wife in boiling water; butchered his little nephew; murdered, with his own pious hand, two of his brothers-in-law; killed his own son Crispus, bled to death several men and women, and smothered in a well an old monk. However, we are told by Eusebius that this Christian Emperor was rewarded by a vision of Christ himself, bearing his cross, who instructed him to march to other triumphs, inasmuch as he would always protect him!

It is under the shade of the Imperial standard, with its famous sign, “In hoc signo vinces,” that “visionary” Christianity, which had crept on since the days of Irenæus, arrogantly proclaimed its rights in the full blaze of the sun. The Labarum had most probably furnished the model for the true cross, which was “miraculously,” and agreeably to the Imperial will, found a few years later. Nothing short of such a remarkable vision, impiously doubted by some severe critics - Dr. Lardner for one - and a fresh miracle to match, could have resulted in the finding of a cross where there had never before been one. Still, we have either to believe the phenomenon or dispute it at the risk of being treated as infidels; and this, notwithstanding that upon a careful computation we would find that the fragments of the “true Cross” had multiplied themselves even more miraculously than the five loaves in the invisible bakery, and the two fishes. In all cases like this, where miracles can be so conveniently called in, there is no room for dull fact. History must step out that fiction may step in.

If the alleged founder of the Christian religion is now, after the lapse of nineteen centuries, preached - more or less unsuccessfully however - in every corner of the globe, we are at liberty to think that the doctrines attributed to him would astonish and dismay him more than any one else. A system of deliberate falsification was adopted from the first. How determined Irenæus was to crush truth and build up a Church of his own on the mangled remains of the seven primitive churches mentioned in the Revelation, may be inferred from his quarrel with Ptolemæus. And this is again a case of evidence against which no blind faith can prevail. Ecclesiastical history assures us that Christ’s ministry was but of three years’ duration. There is a decided discrepancy on this point between the first three synoptics and the fourth gospel; but it was left for Irenæus to show to Christian posterity that so early as A.D. 180 - the probable time when this Father wrote his works against heresies - even such pillars of the Church as himself either knew nothing certain about it, or deliberately lied and falsified dates to support their own views. So anxious was the worthy Father to meet every possible objection against his plans, that no falsehood, no sophistry, was too much for him. How are we to understand the following; and who is the falsifier in this case? The argument of Ptolemæus was that Jesus was too young to have taught anything of much importance;

adding that “Christ preached for one year only, and then suffered in the twelfth month.” In this Ptolemæus was very little at variance with the gospels. But Irenæus, carried by his object far beyond the limits of prudence, from a mere discrepancy between one and three years, makes it ten and even twenty years! “Destroying his (Christ’s) whole work, and robbing him of that age which is both necessary and more honorable than any other; that more advanced age, I mean, during which also, as a teacher, he excelled all others.” And then, having no certain data to furnish, he throws himself back on tradition, and claims that Christ had preached for over TEN years! (book ii., c. 22, pp. 4, 5). In another place he makes Jesus fifty years old.

But we must proceed in our work of showing the various origins of Christianity, as also the sources from which Jesus derived his own ideas of God and humanity. The Koinobi lived in Egypt, where Jesus passed his early youth. They were usually confounded with the Therapeutæ, who were a branch of this widely-spread society. Such is the opinion of Godfrey Higgins and De Rebold. After the downfall of the principal sanctuaries, which had already begun in the days of Plato, the many different sects, such as the Gymnosophists and the Magi - from whom Clearchus very erroneously derives the former - the Pythagoreans, the Sufis, and the Reshees of Kashmere, instituted a kind of international and universal Freemasonry, among their esoteric societies. “These Rashees,” says Higgins, “are the Essenians, Carmelites, or Nazarites of the temple.” “That occult science known by ancient priests under the name of regenerating fire,” says father Rebold, “... a science that for more than 3,000 years was the peculiar possession of the Indian and Egyptian priesthood, into the knowledge of which Moses was initiated at Heliopolis, where he was educated; and Jesus among the Essenian priests of Egypt or Judea; and by which these two great reformers, particularly the latter, wrought many of the miracles mentioned in the Scriptures.”

Plato states that the mystic Magian religion, known under the name of Machagistia, is the most uncorrupted form of worship in things divine. Later, the Mysteries of the Chaldean sanctuaries were added to it by one of the Zoroasters and Darius Hystaspes. The latter completed and perfected it still more with the help of the knowledge obtained by him from the learned ascetics of India, whose rites were identical with those of the initiated Magi. Ammian, in his history of Julian’s Persian expedition, gives the story by stating that one day Hystaspes, as he was boldly penetrating into the unknown regions of Upper India, had come upon a certain wooded solitude, the tranquil recesses of which were “occupied by those exalted sages, the Brachmanes (or Shamans). Instructed by their teaching in the science of the motions of the world and of the heavenly bodies, and in pure religious rites ... he transfused them into the creed of the Magi. The latter, coupling these doctrines with their own peculiar science of foretelling the future, have handed down the whole through their descendants to succeeding ages.” It is from these descendants that the Sufis, chiefly composed of Persians and Syrians, acquired their proficient knowledge in astrology, medicine, and the esoteric doctrine of the ages. “The Sufi doctrine,” says C. W. King, “involved the grand idea of one universal creed which could be secretly held under any profession of an outward faith; and, in fact, took virtually the same view of religious systems as that in which the ancient philosophers had regarded such matters.” The mysterious Druzes of Mount Lebanon are the descendants of all these.

Solitary Copts, earnest students scattered hither and thither throughout the sandy solitudes of Egypt, Arabia Petræa, Palestine, and the impenetrable forests of Abyssinia, though rarely met with, may sometimes be seen. Many and various are the nationalities to which belong the disciples of that mysterious school, and many the side-shoots of that one primitive stock. The secresy preserved by these sub-lodges, as well as by the one and supreme great lodge, has ever been proportionate to the activity of religious persecutions; and now, in the face of the growing materialism, their very existence is becoming a mystery.

But it must not be inferred, on that account, that such a mysterious brotherhood is but a fiction, not even a name, though it remains unknown to this day. Whether its affiliates are called by an Egyptian, Hindu, or Persian name, it matters not. Persons belonging to one of these sub-brotherhoods have been met by trustworthy, and not unknown persons, besides the present writer, who states a few facts concerning them, by the special permission of one who has a right to give it. In a recent and very valuable work on secret societies, K. R. H. Mackenzie’s Royal Masonic Cyclopædia, we find the learned author himself, an honorary member of the Canongate Kilwinning Lodge, No. 2 (Scotland), and a Mason not likely to be imposed upon, stating the following, under the head, Hermetic Brothers of Egypt:

“An occult fraternity, which has endured from very ancient times, having a hierarchy of officers, secret signs, and passwords, and a peculiar method of instruction in science, religion, and philosophy.... If we may believe those who, at the present time, profess to belong to it, the philosopher’s stone, the elixir of life, the art of invisibility, and the power of communication directly with the ultramundane life, are parts of the inheritance they possess. The writer has met with only three persons who maintained the actual existence of this body of religious philosophers, and who hinted that they themselves were actually members. There was no reason to doubt the good faith of these individuals - apparently unknown to each other, and men of moderate competence, blameless lives, austere manners, and almost ascetic in their habits. They all appeared to be men of forty to forty-five years of age, and evidently of vast erudition ... their knowledge of languages not to be doubted.... They never remained long in any one country, but passed away without creating notice.”

Another of such sub-brotherhoods is the sect of the Pitris, in India. Known by name, now that Jacolliot has brought it into public notice, it yet is more arcane, perhaps, than the brotherhood that Mr. Mackenzie names the “Hermetic Brothers.” What Jacolliot learned of it, was from fragmentary manuscripts delivered to him by Brahmans, who had their reasons for doing so, we must believe. The Agrouchada Parikshai gives certain details about the association, as it was in days of old, and, when explaining mystic rites and magical incantations, explains nothing at all, so that the mystic L’om, L’Rhum, Sh’hrum, and Sho-rim Ramaya-Namaha, remain, for the mystified writer, as much a puzzle as ever. To do him justice, though, he fully admits the fact, and does not enter upon useless speculations.

Whoever desires to assure himself that there now exists a religion which has baffled, for centuries, the impudent inquisitiveness of missionaries, and the persevering inquiry of science, let him violate, if he can, the seclusion of the Syrian Druzes. He will find them numbering over 80,000 warriors, scattered from the plain east of Damascus to the western coast. They covet no proselytes, shun notoriety, keep friendly - as far as possible - with both Christians and Mahometans, respect the religion of every other sect or people, but will never disclose their own secrets. Vainly do the missionaries stigmatize them as infidels, idolaters, brigands, and thieves. Neither threat, bribe, nor any other consideration will induce a Druze to become a convert to dogmatic Christianity. We have heard of two in fifty years, and both have finished their careers in prison, for drunkenness and theft. They proved to be “real Druzes,” said one of their chiefs, in discussing the subject. There never was a case of an initiated Druze becoming a Christian. As to the uninitiated, they are never allowed to even see the sacred writings, and none of them have the remotest idea where these are kept. There are missionaries in Syria who boast of having in their possession a few copies. The volumes alleged to be the correct expositions from these secret books (such as the translation by Petis de la Croix, in 1701, from the works presented by Nasr-Allah to the French king), are nothing more than a compilation of “secrets,” known more or less to every inhabitant of the southern ranges of Lebanon and Anti-Libanus.

They were the work of an apostate Dervish, who was expelled from the sect Hanafi, for improper conduct - the embezzlement of the money of widows and orphans. The Exposé de la Religion des Druzes, in two volumes, by Sylvestre de Sacy (1828), is another net-work of hypotheses. A copy of this work was to be found, in 1870, on the window-sill of one of their principal Holowey, or place of religious meeting. To the inquisitive question of an English traveller, as to their rites, the Okhal, a venerable old man, who spoke English as well as French, opened the volume of de Sacy, and, offering it to his interlocutor, remarked, with a benevolent smile: “Read this instructive and truthful book; I could explain to you neither better nor more correctly the secrets of God and our blessed Hamsa, than it does.” The traveller understood the hint.

Mackenzie says they settled at Lebanon about the tenth century, and “seem to be a mixture of Kurds, Mardi-Arabs, and other semi-civilized tribes. Their religion is compounded of Judaism, Christianity, and Mahometanism. They have a regular order of priesthood and a kind of hierarchy ... there is a regular system of passwords and signs.... Twelve month’s probation, to which either sex is admitted, preceded initiation.” We quote the above only to show how little even persons as trustworthy as Mr. Mackenzie really know of these mystics. Mosheim, who knows as much, or we should rather say as little, as any others, is entitled to the merit of candidly admitting that “their religion is peculiar to themselves, and is involved in some mystery.” We should say it was - rather!

That their religion exhibits traces of Magianism and Gnosticism is natural, as the whole of the Ophite esoteric philosophy is at the bottom of it. But the characteristic dogma of the Druzes is the absolute unity of God. He is the essence of life, and although incomprehensible and invisible, is to be known through occasional manifestations in human form. Like the Hindus they hold that he was incarnated more than once on earth. Hamsa was the precursor of the last manifestation to be (the tenth avatar) not the inheritor of Hakem, who is yet to come. Hamsa was the personification of the “Universal Wisdom.” Boha-eddin in his writings calls him Messiah. The whole number of his disciples, or those who at different ages of the world have imparted wisdom to mankind, which the latter as invariably have forgotten and rejected in course of time, is one hundred and sixty-four (164, the kabalistic s d k). Therefore, their stages or degrees of promotion after initiation are five; the first three degrees are typified by the “three feet of the candlestick of the inner Sanctuary, which holds the light of the five elements;” the last two degrees, the most important and terrifying in their solemn grandeur belonging to the highest orders; and the whole five degrees emblematically represent the said five mystic Elements. The “three feet are the holy Application, the Opening, and the Phantom,” says one of their books; on man’s inner and outer soul, and his body, a phantom, a passing shadow.

The body, or matter, is also called the “Rival,” for “he is the minister of sin, the Devil ever creating dissensions between the Heavenly Intelligence (spirit) and the soul, which he tempts incessantly.” Their ideas on transmigration are Pythagorean and kabalistic. The spirit, or Temeami (the divine soul), was in Elijah and John the Baptist; and the soul of Jesus was that of H’amsa; that is to say, of the same degree of purity and sanctity. Until their resurrection, by which they understand the day when the spiritual bodies of men will be absorbed into God’s own essence and being (the Nirvana of the Hindus), the souls of men will keep their astral forms, except the few chosen ones who, from the moment of their separation from their bodies, begin to exist as pure spirits. The life of man they divide into soul, body, and intelligence, or mind. It is the latter which imparts and communicates to the soul the divine spark from its H’amsa (Christos).