HPB-IU v.1 ch.1: Difference between revisions

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{{Style P-Title|THE VEIL OF ISIS.}}

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{{Style P-No indent|human body was of a half-ethereal nature; and that, before the fall, mankind communed freely with the now unseen universes. But since that time matter has become the formidable barrier between us and the world of spirits. The oldest esoteric traditions also teach that, before the mystic Adam, many races of human beings lived and died out, each giving place in its turn to another. Were these precedent types more perfect? Did any of them belong to the {{Style S-Italic|winged}} race of men mentioned by Plato in {{Style S-Italic|Phædrus?}} It is the special province of science to solve the problem. The caves of France and the relics of the stone age afford a point at which to begin.}}

The Kalmucks and some tribes of Siberia also describe in their legends earlier creations than our present race. These beings, they say, were possessed of almost boundless knowledge, and in their audacity even threatened rebellion against the Great Chief Spirit. To punish their presumption and humble them, he imprisoned them {{Style S-Italic|in bodies,}} and

{{Style P-No indent|so shut in their senses. From these they can escape but through long repentance, self-purification, and development. Their {{Style S-Italic|Shamans,}} they think, occasionally enjoy the divine powers originally possessed by all human beings.}}

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Moreover, fossil implements have been exhumed together with human remains, which show that man hunted in those remote times, and knew how to build a fire. But the forward step has not yet been taken in this search for the origin of the race; science comes to a dead stop, and waits for future proofs. Unfortunately, anthropology and psychology possess no Cuvier; neither geologists nor archæologists are able to construct, from the fragmentary bits hitherto discovered, the perfect skeleton of the triple man—physical, intellectual, and spiritual. Because the fossil implements of man are found to become more rough and uncouth as geology penetrates deeper into the bowels of the earth, it seems a proof to science that the closer we come to the origin of man, the more savage and brute-like he must be. Strange logic! Does the finding of the remains in the cave of Devon prove that there were no contemporary races then who were highly civilized? When the present population of the earth have disappeared, and some archæologist belonging to the “coming race” of the distant future shall excavate the domestic implements of one of our Indian or Andaman Island tribes, will he be justified in concluding that mankind in the nineteenth century was “just emerging from the Stone Age?”

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As it is claimed to be unphilosophical to inquire into first causes, scientists now occupy themselves with considering their physical effects. The field of scientific investigation is therefore bounded by physical nature. When once its limits are reached, enquiry must stop, and their work be recommenced. With all due respect to our learned men, they are like the squirrel upon its revolving wheel, for they are doomed to turn their “matter” over and over again. Science is a mighty potency, and it is not for us pigmies to question her. But the “{{Style S-Italic|scientists”}} are not themselves science embodied any more than the men of our planet are the planet itself. We have neither the right to demand, nor power to compel our “modern-day philosopher” to accept without challenge a geographical description of the dark side of the moon. But, if in some lunar cataclysm one of her inhabitants should be hurled thence into the attraction of our atmosphere, and land, safe and sound, at Dr. Carpenter’s door, he would be indictable as recreant to professional duty if he should fail to set the physical problem at rest.

We can judge, moreover, of the lofty civilization reached in some

{{Style P-No indent|periods of antiquity by the historical descriptions of the ages of the Ptolemies, yet in that epoch the arts and sciences were considered to be degenerating, and the secret of a number of the former had been already lost. In the recent excavations of Mariette-Bey, at the foot of the Pyramids, statues of wood and other relics have been exhumed, which show that long before the period of the first dynasties the Egyptians had attained to a refinement and perfection which is calculated to excite the wonder of even the most ardent admirers of Grecian art. Bayard Taylor describes these statues in one of his lectures, and tells us that the beauty of the heads, ornamented with eyes of precious stones and copper eyelids, is unsurpassed. Far below the stratum of sand in which lay the remains gathered into the collections of Lepsius, Abbott, and the British Museum, were found buried the tangible proofs of the hermetic doctrine of cycles which has been already explained.}}

Any Kabalist well acquainted with the Pythagorean system of numerals and geometry can demonstrate that the metaphysical views of Plato were based upon the strictest mathematical principles. “True mathematics,” says the {{Style S-Italic|Magicon}}, “is something with which all higher sciences are connected; common mathematics is but a deceitful phantasmagoria, whose much-praised infallibility only arises from this—that

{{Style P-No indent|materials, conditions, and references are made its foundation.” Scientists who believe they have adopted the Aristotelian method only because they creep when they do not run from demonstrated particulars to universals, glorify this method of inductive philosophy, and reject that of Plato, which they treat as unsubstantial. Professor Draper laments that such speculative mystics as Ammonius Saccas and Plotinus should have taken the place “of the severe geometers of the old museum.”{{Footnote mark|*|fn54}} He forgets that geometry, of all sciences the only one which proceeds from universals to particulars, was precisely the method employed by Plato in his philosophy. As long as exact science confines its observations to physical conditions and proceeds Aristotle-like, it certainly cannot fail. But notwithstanding that the world of matter is boundless for us, it still is finite; and thus materialism will turn forever in this vitiated circle, unable to soar higher than the circumference will permit. The cosmological theory of numerals which Pythagoras learned from the Egyptian hierophants, is alone able to reconcile the two units, matter and spirit, and cause each to demonstrate the other mathematically.}}

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{{Style P-No indent|design which underlies the maze of metaphysical contradictions so perplexing to the reader of the {{Style S-Italic|Timæus,}} is but too evident. But has Plato ever been read understandingly by one of the expounders of the classics? This is a question warranted by the criticisms to be found in such authors as Stalbaum, Schleirmacher, Ficinus (Latin translation), Heindorf, Sydenham, Buttmann, Taylor and Burges, to say nothing of lesser authorities. The covert allusions of the Greek philosopher to esoteric things have manifestly baffled these commentators to the last degree. They not only with unblushing coolness suggest as to certain difficult passages that another phraseology was evidently intended, but they audaciously make the changes! The Orphic line:}}

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{{Style P-No indent|of the ancients before venturing to disparage its teachers? The solution of the great problem of {{Style S-Italic|eternity}} belongs neither to religious superstition nor to gross materialism. The harmony and mathematical equiformity of the double evolution—spiritual and physical—are elucidated only in the universal numerals of Pythagoras, who built his system entirely upon the so-called “metrical speech” of the Hindu {{Style S-Italic|Vedas.}} It is but lately that one of the most zealous Sanskrit scholars, Martin Haug, undertook the translation of the {{Style S-Italic|Aitareya Brahmana}} of the {{Style S-Italic|Rig-Veda.}} It had been till that time entirely unknown; these explanations indicate beyond dispute the identity of the Pythagorean and Brahmanical systems. In both, the esoteric significance is derived from the number: in the former, from the mystic relation of every number to everything intelligible to the human mind; in the latter, from the number of syllables of which each verse in the {{Style S-Italic|Mantras}} consists. Plato, the ardent disciple of Pythagoras, realized it so fully as to maintain that the Dodecahedron was the geometrical figure employed by the {{Style S-Italic|Demiurgus}} in constructing the universe. Some of these figures had a peculiarly solemn significance. For instance {{Style S-Italic|four,}} of which the Dodecahedron is the trine, was held sacred by the Pythagoreans. It is the perfect square, and neither of the bounding lines exceeds the other in length, by a single point. It is the emblem of moral justice and divine equity geometrically expressed. All the powers and great symphonies of physical and spiritual nature lie inscribed within the perfect square; and the ineffable name of Him, which name otherwise, would remain unutterable, was replaced by this sacred number 4 the most binding and solemn oath with the ancient mystics—the {{Style S-Italic|Tetractys.}}}}

If the Pythagorean metempsychosis should be thoroughly explained and compared with the modern theory of evolution, it would be found to supply every “missing link” in the chain of the latter. But who of our scientists would consent to lose his precious time over the vagaries of the ancients. Notwithstanding proofs to the contrary, they not only deny that the nations of the archaic periods, but even the ancient philosophers had any positive knowledge of the Heliocentric system. The “Venerable Bedes,” the Augustines and Lactantii appear to have smothered, with their dogmatic ignorance, all faith in the more ancient theologists of the pre-Christian centuries. But now philology and a closer acquaintance with Sanskrit literature have partially enabled us to vindicate them from these unmerited imputations. In the {{Style S-Italic|Vedas,}} for instance, we find positive proof that so long ago as 2000 b.c., the Hindu sages and scholars must have been acquainted with the rotundity of our globe and the Heliocentric system. Hence, Pythagoras and Plato knew well this astronomical truth; for Pythagoras obtained his knowledge

{{Style P-No indent|in India, or from men who had been there, and Plato faithfully echoed his teachings. We will quote two passages from the {{Style S-Italic|Aitareya Brahmana:}}}}

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In one of the earliest {{Style S-Italic|Nivids,}} Rishi Kutsa, a Hindu sage of the remotest antiquity, explains the allegory of the first laws given to the celestial bodies. For doing “what she ought not to do,” Anahit (Anaitis or Nana, the Persian Venus), representing the earth in the legend, is sentenced to turn round the sun. The {{Style S-Italic|Sattras,}} or sacrificial sessions{{Footnote mark|*|fn60}} prove undoubtedly that so early as in the eighteenth or twentieth century b.c., the Hindus had made considerable progress in astronomical science. The {{Style S-Italic|Sattras}} lasted one year, and were “nothing but an imitation of the sun’s yearly course. They were divided, says Haug, into two distinct parts, each consisting of six months of thirty days each; in the midst of both was the {{Style S-Italic|Vishuvan}} (equator or central day), cutting the whole {{Style S-Italic|Sattras}} into two halves, etc.”{{Footnote mark|†|fn61}} This scholar, although he ascribes the composition of the bulk of the {{Style S-Italic|Brahmanas}} to the period 1400-1200 b.c., is of opinion that the oldest of the hymns may be placed at the very commencement of Vedic literature, between the years 2400-2000, b.c. He finds no reason for considering the {{Style S-Italic|Vedas}} less ancient than the sacred books of the Chinese. As the {{Style S-Italic|Shu-King}} or {{Style S-Italic|Book of History,}} and the sacrificial songs of the {{Style S-Italic|Shi-King,}} or {{Style S-Italic|Book of Odes,}} have been proved to have an antiquity as early as 2200, b.c., our philologists may yet be compelled before long to acknowledge, that in astronomical knowledge, the antediluvian Hindus were their masters.

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{{Style P-No indent|corroboration of the claims of the hermetic philosophers. That the period of Zarathustra Spitama (Zoroaster) was of untold antiquity, can be easily proved. The {{Style S-Italic|Brahmanas,}} to which Haug ascribes four thousand years, describe the religious contest between the ancient Hindus, who lived in the pre-Vedic period, and the Iranians. The battles between the {{Style S-Italic|Devas}} and the {{Style S-Italic|Asuras—}}the former representing the {{Style S-Italic|Hindus}} and the latter the Iranians—are described at length in the sacred books. As the Iranian prophet was the first to raise himself against what he called the “idolatry” of the Brahmans, and to designate them as the {{Style S-Italic|Devas}} (devils), how far back must then have been this religious crisis?}}

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{{Style P-No indent|former is pure, subtile ether, or Divine Spirit; the other entirely inert in itself till united with the active principle. That the Divine Spirit acting upon matter produced fire, water, earth, and air; and that it is the sole efficient principle by which all nature is moved. The Stoics, like the Hindu sages, believed in the final absorption. St. Justin believed in the emanation of these souls from Divinity, and Tatian, the Assyrian, his disciple, declared that “man was as immortal as God himself.”{{Footnote mark|*|fn63}}}}

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{{Style P-No indent|confesses itself {{Style S-Italic|powerless.}} Not so did Plato and his disciples. With him {{Style S-Italic|the lower types were but the concrete images of the higher abstract ones.}} The soul, which is immortal, has an arithmetical, as the body has a geometrical, beginning. This beginning, as the reflection of the great universal Archæus, is self-moving, and from the centre diffuses itself over the whole body of the microcosm.}}

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{{Style P-No indent|which lies the limitless and the incomprehensible, or rather the {{Style S-Italic|Unutterable.}} If our mortal language is inadequate to express what our spirit dimly foresees in the great “{{Style S-Italic|Beyond”}}—while on this earth—it {{Style S-Italic|must}} realize it at some point in the timeless Eternity.}}

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{{Style P-No indent|lapius had indeed come; the time when impious foreigners would accuse Egypt of adoring monsters, and naught but the letters engraved in stone upon her monuments would survive—enigmas incredible to posterity. Their sacred scribes and hierophants were wanderers upon the face of the earth. Obliged from fear of a profanation of the sacred mysteries to seek refuge among the Hermetic fraternities—known later as the {{Style S-Italic|Essenes—}}their esoteric knowledge was buried deeper than ever. The triumphant brand of Aristotle’s pupil swept away from his path of conquest every vestige of a once pure religion, and Aristotle himself, the type and child of his epoch, though instructed in the secret science of the Egyptians, knew but little of this crowning result of millenniums of esoteric studies.}}

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{{Style P-No indent|the universe is the result of mere chance. Such an idea appears to him more absurd than to think that the problems of Euclid were unconsciously formed by a monkey playing with geometrical figures.}}

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{{Style P-No indent|natural? It is an insult to human nature to brand magic and the occult science with the name of imposture. To believe that for so many thousands of years, one-half of mankind practiced deception and fraud on the other half, is equivalent to saying that the human race was composed only of knaves and incurable idiots. Where is the country in which magic was not practised? At what age was it wholly forgotten?}}

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{{Style P-No indent|as impossible to name the time when it sprang into existence as to indicate on what day the first man himself was born. Whenever a writer has started with the idea of connecting its first foundation in a country with some historical character, further research has proved his views groundless. Odin, the Scandinavian priest and monarch, was thought by many to have originated the practice of magic some seventy years b.c. But it was easily demonstrated that the mysterious rites of the priestesses called {{Style S-Italic|Voïlers, Valas,}} were greatly anterior to his age.{{Footnote mark|*|fn77}} Some modern authors were bent on proving that Zoroaster was the founder of magic, because he was the founder of the Magian religion. Ammianus Marcellinus, Arnobius, Pliny, and other ancient historians demonstrated conclusively that he was but a reformer of Magic as practiced by the Chaldeans and Egyptians.{{Footnote mark|†|fn78}}}}

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{{Style P-No indent|without surprise, we meet with ideas {{Style S-Italic|which we flatter ourselves originated in our own times.”}} This remark, uttered in relation to the scientific writings of the Saracens, would apply still better to the more secret {{Style S-Italic|Treatises}} of the ancients. Modern medicine, while it has gained largely in anatomy, physiology, and pathology, and even in therapeutics, has lost immensely by its narrowness of spirit, its rigid materialism, its sectarian dogmatism. One school in its purblindness sternly ignores whatever is developed by other schools; and all unite in ignoring every grand conception of man or nature, developed by Mesmerism, or by American experiments on the brain—every principle which does not conform to a stolid materialism. It would require a convocation of the hostile physicians of the several different schools to bring together what is now known of medical science, and it too often happens that after the best practitioners have vainly exhausted their art upon a patient, a mesmerist or a “healing medium” will effect a cure! The explorers of old medical literature, from the time of Hippocrates to that of Paracelsus and Van Helmont, will find a vast number of well-attested physiological and psychological facts and of measures or medicines for healing the sick which modern physicians superciliously refuse to employ.{{Footnote mark|*|fn79}} Even with respect to surgery, modern practitioners have humbly and publicly confessed the total impossibility of their approximating to anything like the marvellous skill displayed in the art of bandaging by ancient Egyptians. The many hundred yards of ligature enveloping a mummy from its ears down to every separate toe, were studied by the chief surgical operators in Paris, and, notwithstanding that the models were before their eyes, they were unable to accomplish anything like it.}}

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{{Style P-No indent|those of man’s strength, there are also specimens of artificial hair, and gold ornaments of different kinds. The New York {{Style S-Italic|Tribune}}, reviewing the contents of the {{Style S-Italic|Ebers Papyrus,}} says:—“Verily, there is no new thing under the sun. . . . Chapters 65, 66, 79, and 89 show that hair invigorators, hair dyes, pain-killers, and flea-powders were desiderata 3,400 years ago.”}}

Speaking of the world of eternal truths that lies “within the world of transient delusions and unrealities,” Professor Draper says: “That world is not to be discovered through the vain traditions that have brought down to us the opinion of men who lived in the morning of civilization, nor in the {{Style S-Italic|dreams of mystics}} who thought that they were inspired. It is to be dis-

{{Style P-No indent|covered by the investigations {{Style S-Italic|of geometry, and by the practical interrogations of nature.”}}}}

As to practical results to be obtained by “the investigations of geometry,” very fortunately for students who are coming upon the stage of action, we are no longer forced to content ourselves with mere conjectures. In our own times, an American, Mr. George H. Felt, of New York, who, if he continues as he has begun, may one day be recognized as the greatest geometer of the age, has been enabled, by the sole help of the premises established by the ancient Egyptians, to arrive at results which we will give in his own language. “Firstly,” says Mr. Felt, “the fundamental diagram to which all science of elementary geometry, both plane and solid, is referable; to produce arithmetical systems of proportion in a geometrical manner; to identify this figure with all the remains of architecture and sculpture, in all which it had been followed in a marvellously exact manner; to determine that the Egyptians had used it as the basis of all their astronomical calculations, on which their religious symbolism was almost entirely founded; to find its traces among all the remnants of art and architecture of the Greeks; to discover its traces so strongly among the Jewish sacred records, as to prove conclusively that it was founded thereon; to find that the whole system had been discovered by the Egyptians after researches of tens of thousands of years into the laws of nature, and that it might truly be called the science of the Universe.” Further it enabled him “to determine with precision problems in physiology heretofore only surmised; to first develop such a Masonic philosophy as showed it to be conclusively the first science and religion, as it will be the last;” and we may add, lastly, to prove by ocular demonstrations that the Egyptian sculptors and architects ob-

{{Style P-No indent|tained the models for the quaint figures which adorn the facades and vestibules of their temples, not in the disordered fantasies of their own brains, but from the “viewless races of the air,” and other kingdoms of nature, whom he, like them, {{Style S-Italic|claims}} to make visible by resort to their own chemical and kabalistical processes.}}

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{{Style P-No indent|from Het-aat, the Lords of Protection, the masters of eternity and salvation. I came from Sais with the Mother-goddesses, who extended to me protection. {{Style S-Italic|The Lord of the Universe}} told me how to free the gods from all murderous diseases.” {{Style S-Italic|Eminent men were called gods by the ancients.}} The deification of mortal men and supposititious gods is no more a proof against their monotheism than the monument-building of modern Christians, who erect statues to their heroes, is proof of their polytheism. Americans of the present century would consider it absurd in their posterity 3,000 years hence to classify them as idolaters for having built statues to their god Washington. So shrouded in mystery was the Hermetic Philosophy that Volney asserted that the ancient peoples worshipped their gross material symbols as divine in themselves; whereas these were only considered as representing esoteric principles. Dupuis, also, after devoting many years of study to the problem, mistook the symbolic circle, and attributed their religion solely to astronomy. Eberhart {{Style S-Italic|(Berliner Monatschrift)}} and many other German writers of the last and present centuries, dispose of magic most unceremoniously, and think it due to the Platonic mythos of the {{Style S-Italic|Timæus.}} But how, without possessing a knowledge of the mysteries, was it possible for these men or any others not endowed with the finer intuition of a Champollion, to discover the esoteric half of that which was concealed, behind the veil of Isis, from all except the adepts?}}

Thither gathered the students of all countries before Alexandria was founded. “How comes it,” Ennemoser goes on to say, “that so little has become known of these mysteries? through so many ages and amongst so many different times and people? The answer is that it is owing to the universally strict silence of the initiated. Another cause may be found in the destruction and total loss of all the written memorials of the secret knowledge of the remotest antiquity.” Numa’s books, described by Livy, consisting of treatises upon natural philosophy, were found in his tomb; but they were not allowed to be made known, lest they should reveal the most secret mysteries of the state religion. The

{{Style P-No indent|senate and the tribune of the people determined that the books themselves should be burned, which was done in public.{{Footnote mark|*|fn82}}}}

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{{Style P-No indent|declares that Moses, besides the teachings of the covenant, communicated some very important secrets “from the hidden depths of the law” to the seventy elders. These he enjoined them to impart only to persons whom they found worthy.}}

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{{Style P-No indent|plained forces of nature—manifested themselves. At the head of these three churches, pre-eminent stands the Church of Rome. Her hands are scarlet with the innocent blood of countless victims shed in the name of the Moloch-like divinity at the head of her creed. She is ready and eager to begin again. But she is bound hand and foot by that nineteenth century spirit of progress and religious freedom which she reviles and blasphemes daily. The Græco-Russian Church is the most amiable and Christ-like in her primitive, simple, though blind faith. Despite the fact that there has been no practical union between the Greek and Latin Churches, and that the two parted company long centuries ago, the Roman Pontiffs seem to invariably ignore the fact. They have in the most impudent manner possible arrogated to themselves jurisdiction not only over the countries within the Greek communion but also over all Protestants as well. “The Church insists,” says Professor Draper, “that the state has no rights over any thing which it declares to be within its domain, and that Protestantism being a mere rebellion, has no rights at all; that even in Protestant communities the Catholic bishop {{Style S-Italic|is the only lawful}} spiritual pastor.”{{Footnote mark|*|fn90}} Decrees unheeded, encyclical letters unread, invitations to ecumenical councils unnoticed, excommunications laughed at—all these have seemed to make no difference. Their persistence has only been matched by their effrontery. In 1864, the culmination of absurdity was attained when Pius IX. excommunicated and fulminated publicly his anathemas against the Russian Emperor, as a “{{Style S-Italic|schismatic}} cast out from the bosom of the Holy Mother Church.”{{Footnote mark|†|fn91}} Neither he nor his ancestors, nor Russia since it was Christianized, a thousand years ago, have ever consented to join the Roman Catholics. Why not claim ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the Buddhists of Thibet, or the shadows of the ancient Hyk-Sos?}}

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{{Style P-Quote|“The lights burn blue: it is now dead midnight,

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{{Style P-No indent|of God, and taken care of in love and pity. Superstitious and blind as it is, a faith conducted on such principles certainly deserves some respect, and can never be offensive, either to man or the {{Style S-Italic|true}} God. Not so with that of the Roman Catholics; and hence, it is they, and secondarily, the Protestant clergy—with the exception of some foremost thinkers among them—that we purpose questioning in this work. We want to know upon what grounds they base their right to treat Hindus and Chinese spiritualists and kabalists in the way they do; denouncing them, in company with the infidels—creatures of their own making—as so many convicts sentenced to the inextinguishable fires of hell.}}

How many of our inveterate skeptics belong, notwithstanding their materialism, to Masonic Lodges? The brothers of the Rosie-Cross, mysterious practitioners of the mediæval ages, still live—but in name only. They may “shed tears at the grave of their respectable Master, Hiram Abiff “; but vainly will they search for the true locality, “where the sprig of myrtle was placed.” The dead letter remains alone, the spirit has fled. They are like the English or German chorus of the Italian opera, who descend in the fourth act of {{Style S-Italic|Ernani}} into the crypt of Charlemagne, singing their conspiracy in a tongue utterly unknown to them. So, our modern knights of the Sacred Arch may descend every night if they choose

{{Style P-No indent|“through the nine arches into the bowels of the earth,”—they “will never discover the sacred Delta of Enoch.” The “Sir Knights in the South Valley” and those in “the North Valley” may try to assure themselves that “enlightenment dawns upon their minds,” and that as they progress in Masonry “the veil of superstition, despotism, tyranny” and so on, no longer obscures the visions of their minds. But these are all empty words so long as they neglect their mother Magic, and turn their backs upon its twin sister, Spiritualism. Verily, “Sir Knights of the Orient,” you may “leave your stations and sit upon the floor in attitudes of grief, with your heads resting upon your hands,” for you have cause to bewail and mourn your fate. Since Philippe le Bel destroyed the Knights-Templars, not one has appeared to clear up your doubts notwithstanding all claims to the contrary. Truly, you are “wanderers from Jerusalem, seeking the lost treasure of the holy place.” Have you found it? Alas, no! for the holy place is profaned; the pillars of wisdom, strength and beauty are destroyed. Henceforth, “you must wander in darkness,” and “travel in humility,” among the woods and mountains in search of the “lost word.” “Pass on!”—you will never find it so long as you limit your journeys to {{Style S-Italic|seven}} or even seven times seven; because you are “travelling in darkness,” and this darkness can only be dispelled by the light of the blazing torch of truth which alone the right descendants of Ormasd carry. They alone can teach you the true pronunciation of the name revealed to Enoch, Jacob and Moses. “Pass on! Till your R. S. W. shall learn to multiply 333, and {{Style S-Italic|strike}} instead 666—the number of the Apocalyptic Beast, you may just as well observe prudence and act “{{Style S-Italic|sub rosa.”}}}}

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{{Style P-No indent|change of climate is necessarily attended by cataclysms, earthquakes, and other cosmical throes.{{Footnote mark|*|fn97}} As the beds of the ocean are displaced, at the end of every decimillennium and about one neros, a semi-universal deluge like the legendary Noachian flood is brought about. This year was called the {{Style S-Italic|Heliacal}} by the Greeks; but no one outside the sanctuary knew anything certain either as to its duration or particulars. The winter of this year was called the Cataclysm or the Deluge,—the Summer, the Ecpyrosis. The popular traditions taught that at these alternate seasons the world was in turn burned and deluged. This is what we learn at least from the {{Style S-Italic|Astronomical Fragments}} of Censorinus and Seneca. So uncertain were the commentators about the length of this year, that none except Herodotus and Linus, who assigned to it, the former 10,800, and the latter 13,984, came near the truth.{{Footnote mark|†|fn98}} According to the claims of the Babylonian priests, corroborated by Eupolemus,{{Footnote mark|‡|fn99}} “the city of Babylon, owes its foundation to those who were saved from the catastrophe of the deluge; {{Style S-Italic|they were the giants}} and they built the tower which is noticed in history.”{{Footnote mark|§|fn100}} These giants who were great astrologers and had received moreover from their fathers, “the sons of God,” every instruction pertaining to secret matters, instructed the priests in their turn, and left in the temples all the records of the periodical cataclysm that they had witnessed themselves. This is how the high priests came by the knowledge of the {{Style S-Italic|great}} years. When we remember, moreover, that Plato in the {{Style S-Italic|Timæus}} cites the old Egyptian priest rebuking Solon for his ignorance of the fact that there were several such deluges as the great one of Ogyges, we can easily ascertain that this belief in the {{Style S-Italic|Heliakos}} was a doctrine held by the initiated priests the world over.}}

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{{Style P-No indent|back in the antediluvian ages. Their system comprises a kalpa or grand period of 4,320,000,000 years, which they divide into four lesser yugas, running as follows:}}

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{{Style P-No indent|tant, is certainly not to be found in libraries, as it formed one of the most ancient Books of Hermes,{{Footnote mark|*|fn104}} the number of which is at present undetermined.}}

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{{Style P-No indent|in ten ages, 6,000 years more, the sun would have been situated relatively to the Southern Hemisphere as he is now to the Northern; in ten ages, 6,000 years more, the two planes would coincide again; and, in ten ages, 6,000 years more, he would be situated as he is now, after a lapse of about twenty-four or twenty-five thousand years in all. When the sun arrived at the equator, the ten ages or six thousand years would end, and the world would be destroyed {{Style S-Italic|by fire;}} when he arrived at the southern point, it would be destroyed by water. And thus, it would be destroyed at the end of every 6,000 years, or ten neroses.”{{Footnote mark|*|fn105}}}}

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{{Style P-No indent|Alexander the Macedonian and Napoleon the Great, in the realm of physical conquests, were but reflexed images of human types which had existed ten thousand years before, in the preceding decimillennium, reproduced by the mysterious powers controlling the destinies of our world. There is no prominent character in all the annals of sacred or profane history whose prototype we cannot find in the half-fictitious and half-real traditions of bygone religions and mythologies. As the star, glimmering at an immeasurable distance above our heads, in the boundless immensity of the sky, reflects itself in the smooth waters of a lake, so does the imagery of men of the antediluvian ages reflect itself in the periods we can embrace in an historical retrospect.}}

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{{Style P-No indent|logical and the Christian doctrine harmonize in the general faith founded on Magic. That Magic is indeed possible is the moral of this book.”{{Footnote mark|*|fn107}}}}

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{{Style P-No indent|melancholy can throw at a man, to tell him that he is at the end of his nature, or that there is no future state to come, unto which this seems progressive, and otherwise made in vain.” Let any religion offer itself that can supply these proofs in the shape of scientific facts, and the established system will be driven to the alternative of fortifying its dogmas with such facts, or of passing out of the reverence and affection of Christendom. Many a Christian divine has been forced to acknowledge that there is {{Style S-Italic|no authentic}} source whence the assurance of a future state could have been derived by man. How could then such a belief have stood for countless ages, were it not that among all nations, whether civilized or savage, man {{Style S-Italic|has been}} allowed the demonstrative proof? Is not the very existence of such a belief an evidence that thinking philosopher and unreasoning savage have both been compelled to acknowledge the testimony of their senses? That if, in isolated instances, spectral illusion may have resulted from physical causes, on the other hand, in thousands of instances, apparitions of persons have held converse with several individuals at once, who saw and heard them collectively, and could not all have been diseased in mind?}}

But all such definitions must be subjected to the careful analysis of philosophy. Too many of our thinkers do not consider that the numerous changes in language, the allegorical phraseology and evident secretiveness of old Mystic writers, who were generally under an obligation never to divulge the solemn secrets of the sanctuary, might have sadly misled translators and commentators. The phrases of the mediæval alchemist they read literally; and even the veiled symbolology of Plato is commonly misunderstood by the modern scholar. One day they may learn to know better, and so become aware that the method of extreme necessarianism was practiced in ancient as well as in modern philosophy; that from the first ages of man, the fundamental truths of all that we are permitted to know on earth was in the safe keeping of the adepts of the sanc-

{{Style P-No indent|tuary; that the difference in creeds and religious practice was only external; and that those guardians of the primitive divine revelation, who had solved every problem that is within the grasp of human intellect, were bound together by a universal freemasonry of science and philosophy, which formed one unbroken chain around the globe. It is for philology and psychology to find the end of the thread. That done, it will then be ascertained that, by relaxing one single loop of the old religious systems, the chain of mystery may be disentangled.}}