Initiation ancient and modern

Initiation: Ancient and Modern

Lewis S. Keizer, Ph.D.

INITIATION: Ancient and Modern

Lewis Keizer, M.Div., Ph.D. C. 1976, 1998 Bishops Lewis and Willa Keizer

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PROLEGOMENA

Human spirituality evolved over great aeons of time. Perhaps its earliest expression is represented by symbolic artifacts carefully laid in prehistoric graves. They proclaim an intuitive knowledge of afterlife, and the occult truth that love transcends death. Gifted souls became specialists of the sacred, mediating between tribes and the unseen world of spirits. Their shamaning was an inspired combination of raw creativity and traditional secret technology. It contained the seeds of art, music, science, philosophy, religion, politics and most other elements of higher human culture. From ancient shamaning there emerged three basic types of spirituality. The first was that of the warrior-king, like Menes of Egypt, or Saul and David of Israel. His was the path of spiritual leadership, innovation and the foundation of new institutions. This developed into the path of the ascetic and the yogi. This fundamental pathway is rooted in Will, and expresses what has been called the First Ray. Another type that emerged was that of the priest, or priestess. He or she was a mediator between the lower lower and upper worlds, and often a medium for communication communication with ancestors in the spirit world. The basic priestly function was to serve the gods or the cult of the ancestors, and to mediate healing. These selfless ones served their people as “medicine men” or “herb women.” Their way became that of the physician and savior, rooted in devotion or Love. This expresses the Second Ray of human spirituality, and the one that is said to rule our world under the High Priesthood of Jesus Christ. The other basic type that came from shamaning was that of the astronomer and seeker of causes. This type was intellectually gifted, served as a priest in ancient courts, and was a sage. He did not invent the written symbols for language. (That was initiated by tradesmen who needed business records and and made crude drawings drawings of what was exchanged.) exchanged.) But he created advanced advanced symbols for keeping the complex records necessary to transmit astronomical and other knowledge (i.e, he invented “writing”), chronicled history, accumulated libraries and created new technologies. He was both student and teacher, and usually male (though women came into this path in small numbers). His type became that of the philosopher, scholar, historian and scientist. These expressions emanated from what has been called the Third Ray, that of Intellect.



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As the souls of these gifted ones returned they enriched the spiritual knowledge of mankind. It was they who founded the ancient mysteries, authored the world religions, returned as adepts to reveal the mystic path that lay above and beyond the range of static religious institutions, and finally returned no more in physical bodies but guided the younger souls of mankind by means of higher noetic technology known as “inspiration” or “overshadowing.” In their ascent to more advanced quantum states of reality, they drew the younger souls of humanity upward. Other gifted souls began to manifest the progress of their spiritual elder brothers, and they became the ascetics, philosophers and priests of mankind. Those who make the ascent know that there are stages of development, and that each of these stages involves a different kind of work. The stages are known, in occult terminology, as degrees (Greek bathmoi, bathmoi, “heights/depths”). They are joined by a sacred means of passage that may or may not be marked with rites of passage. That sacred means of passage is called initiation, from a Latin word meaning “entry, acceptance into a group, precinct or estate.” This monograph is an occult study of human initiation from prehistoric times to the present. It is based based on the work of classicists classicists and historians historians rather than occultists, occultists, because in order order to make a proper interpretation of history one has to grasp it. Occultists generally are not thorough scholars, and although they may have spiritual insight, they all too often simply lack knowledge of the facts. Scholars rarely have spiritual insight, but at least they try to discover the truth. That is the starting point for this monograph. Equally important, however, is an ability to intuitively interpret the facts. As a scholar I have studied and taught the history of religions for many years, and always tried to grasp the spiritual realities symbolized in their most sublime forms of mysticism. But my most important credential for this kind of monograph is my six years with Mother Jennie, an advanced Fifth Degree Initiate. I dedicate this work to her. She opened my understanding and initiated me into the Great Work.

In service to the Master,

LEWIS S. KEIZER, Ph.D. ALL SAINTS DAY, 1979



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THE EARLIEST INITIATIC MYSTERIES Although tribal initiation is the most primitive form of passage rite in the modern world, still practiced by isolated peoples, it is not the most ancient form of initiation. Tribal rites are vestiges of male initiation forms that began to be practiced with the advent of the patriarchal or early historical period. They include some elements of the earliest mystery rites (period of preparation, testing, reception of secret information) information) and preserve the the basic format, which which I outline using traditional terminology: TA LEGOMENA

“The things spoken,” or cultic mythos, mythos, part of which was exoteric (like the Greek myths)

TA DROMENA

“The things done,” or acted out in the form of liturgy and sacred drama, some of which became exoteric (as in Greek drama) TA DEIKNUMENA “The things manifested,” or the phenomena phenomena of the mysteries, none of which became exoteric, but including magical demonstrations of life after death and (in both Eleusinian and Osirian mysteries) mysteries) the manifestation of divine light, associated with the phenomenon of “enlightenment” from early times, and with the vision of the Magna Mater. Tribal initiation, however, reserves ta deiknumena for deiknumena for initiates into the shamanic office alone. Rites of passage (birth, puberty, marriage, death) were overseen by the shaman, who alone was fully initiated. Among tribal peoples in general there was no initiation into what has been called the Spiritual Kingdom, except for the shaman and any who might have some share in the sacredness of his or her office. The shaman stood midway between the group of candidates for initiation in the rites of passage (which most closely correspond to cultic initiation) and the spirit world. The candidates received the secrets and powers of adulthood by proving themselves worthy. Male circumcision conferred power for battle and procreation by the symbolic opening of the genital center. Within the institution of shamanism, however, there were two degrees of further initiation. The first was entrance to the world of the spirits, or Spiritual Kingdom, which led directly to a long period of inner struggle. This This struggle takes the form of insanity, neurosis, neurosis, wandering, self-inflicted self-inflicted rigors, asceticism and all the elements that characterize the “shamanic illness.” The seeker is beset with demons, spiritual enemies and a seemingly unfathomable melange of true visions and



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misleading hallucinations. If the subject overcomes his “illness,” he or she triumphs as shaman and healer. If not, the soul is lost for the duration of the lifetime. But when the shaman is victorious, he or she is initiated into a third degree, from which vantage point the care of his people is mediated. It is from the prehistoric institutions of shaman and shamaness that priesthood and kingship seem to have evolved. The most ancient rulers of Upper and Lower Egypt were priestkings who presided over the fecundity of the Nile. Special offices of organized society--metalsmith, physician and herbalist, priest, architect, musician, scribe and archivist--seem in general to have been delegations of shamanic power. Certainly in the patriarchal period the office of commander-in-chief of the army was not only royal, but the source of ruling dynasties. The earliest Greek heros (deified humans whose cults were similar to those of the Christian saints) were warriors, as were the first pharaohs of Egypt and the first kings of Israel. Again, it seems to be from the special rites of shamans in their own degree of initiation that the seeds of the mysteries appear. Certainly the Egyptian Books of the Dead do not begin as rites of passage for common citizens, citizens, but for those of priestly (royal) blood. Thus unless the rites were suddenly invented by some religious genius, they must have evolved from death-rites for the priestly initiates initiates or “shamans” of Upper Upper and Lower Egypt, who were were united under the dynasty dynasty of King Menes. As we examine the rites of the Osireion, let us keep in mind that the communities of the Upper and Lower Nile River were essentially tribal before the time of Menes. Each village had its own totem animal and joined an amphictionic league of other villages in contact with a ruling dynasty of Upper or Lower Egypt. Each village was represented by its protective spirit and shamanic gnosis had been already standardized among a confraternity of priests and healers under a high priest residing with the royal family at the royal village. In addition to the local totems (such as the Crocodile God of Soknebtunis), there were a bevy of other local and national national spirits who worked worked with the priests. priests. These, too, like most most shamanic spirits were animals whose virtues (“powers”) were called upon by the priests. For this reason, then, Egyptian theology and mysticism would continue to use animal-headed gods in the symbolism of its great mysteries even when the rest of the world had grown used to anthropomorphism. It would also preserve its pre-Aryan matriarchal roots in the face of patriarchal social structures, as did the ancient Eleusinian cult.



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As we begin consideration of the two great mystery religions--those of Osiris and Demeter--let me clarify my use of the terms “matriarchal” and “patriarchal.” I use the terms basically in the sense sense of Bachofen, whose pioneering work on Mutterrech on Mutterrecht t (the (the legal rites of the mother) made nineteenth-century scholars aware that social structure in the period closely preceding the historical historical era was much different different than that of the ancient ancient world as we know it. The oldest laws of mankind show that before the rise of ancient nations, male armies and patriarchal prerogatives, women women (and specifically the the mother) enjoyed great power. There were feminine feminine priesthoods (such as as that of the Mycenaeans), Mycenaeans), and feminine gnoseis gnoseis that included knowledge knowledge of plants and seeds, fertility, birth and death. It is the gnosis of the shamaness shamaness (represented (represented by Isis and Demeter) that characterizes the Osirian and Eleusinian mysteries, and permeated the Apollonian cult at Delphi as well as most of the early Near-Eastern religions of the Mesopotamian Mesopotamian plains. It was against the distorted forms forms of these religions that the Hebrew prophets battled (the cults of the Ashera and Astarte, Kybele and their Canaanite adaptations). When I use the term “matriarchal” I speak of the shamanic order (both male and female) that existed in recent prehistory, and is associated with the numerous female fertility images that characterized the ancient Near East. I am not speaking of some kind of Amazonian culture, but a pre-Aryan state of affairs. The term “patriarchal” refers to conditions in the Near East as a result of the Aryan invasions and the rise of male armies of offence and defense. As male power usurped that of the female, masculine symbols invaded those of the mystery rites resulting in the importance of Anubis and Thoth in Egypt, and later HermesThoth, as well as the addition of Dionysian elements to the Eleusinian Mysteries, and a guardian priesthood to the original female Sybil at Delphi. There are positive and negative elements to both matriarchal and patriarchal periods. The matriarchal is clearly a lower and less developed form, and yet it is the root of the great Mysteries. The patriarchal is characterized by warfare and slavery, and yet it brought us writing (hence history), higher civilization and the spirit of science and exploration. It is a more advanced form. The two were brought together during the Roman-Hellenistic period in a spree of creativity that resulted in Christian, Gnostic, Jewish and Hermetic mysteries of “wholeness,” whereby the initiate was reconciled to his deity and put on the path to the third degree of the shaman. No longer just the royal or aristocratic families, but groups of common people were given a “gate” or “door” into

the spirit world, Spiritual Kingdom, or Kingdom ( Malkuth, Malkuth, “Rulership”) of God.



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The Mysteries of Osiris From the year 3,200 B.C. the corpses of the kings of Egypt lay in Abydos, a most holy city between Aswan and and Thebes on the Nile River. By the beginning of the second second millennium B.C. the shrine at Abydos had become the guardian of the sacred relic of the head of Osiris. In 1,300 B.C. construction was begun on the Osereion, a mystery shrine of initiation. Originally Seth was the god of the kings of Upper Egypt, and Horus that of the kings of Lower Egypt. After the two were united by the conquest of Menes, Seth (god of the losing dynasty) was identified as evil and Horus as good. Osiris was god of the Nile at Busiris in the delta of ,

Lower Egypt, and during the period of theological synthesis of the fifth dynasty (25th century B.C.) became, with his wife Isis, sixth and closest to mankind in an ennead of gods. At the top was Atum (the local deity of Heliopolis who became important to the priests), then Show (air) and Tefnut (water of the air), Geb (earth, masculine) and Nut (sky, feminine). Directly over mankind were Osiris and Isis, patrons of the ruling dynasty, and Seth and his wife Nephtys, rulers of the underworld. The myth (or legend, if based on historical events) of Osiris tells of his murder by Seth, his brother, who dismembers dismembers him and scatters the parts of the body over the the Nile. Horus, the son and successor of Osiris as King of Egypt, gathers the pieces together and magically brings Osiris back to life. Osiris ascends into the spirit world of his ancestors, the gods. This clearly reflects an initiatory ceremonial death rite for a dead shaman-king. Unlike rites for common people, the shaman-king’s rites rescue him from the underworld or lower spirit world and symbolize his ascension into the higher realms of the gods after death. The rites can be conducted only by his son and successor, represented represented by Horus. The dismemberment of Osiris is reflected in the cutting open of a body for removal of the organs for placement in canopic jars, and the magical reassembly of the body by Horus reflected in mortuary priestcraft. More than this, however, the dismemberment of Osiris is archetypal in Near Eastern religion of the period. The same is found in the Mysteries of Tammuz or Adonis. In the Greek Islands Orpheus was torn to pieces by the crazed women of the Omophagion, as the longsuppressed elements of matriarchal mysticism began to reassert their place in Dionysian religion, where originally it was the child Dionysos who was dismembered in his crib. Why dismemberment? A study of shamanic practices throughout the world gives an answer.1 Dismemberment is the final initiation for the shaman. It represents 1

Cf. SHAMANISM: ARCHAIC TECHNIQUES OF ECSTASY, Mircea Eliade (Princeton,

1972), pp. 53-64



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non-attachment and total disassociation disassociation with the old human form. It is necessary for apotheosis. In the later Mysteries of Hermes Trismegistus this is accomplished accomplished in the Liturgy of Rebirth as the student sees his physical body disappear and finds his zodiacal body. In the Christian Mysteries related by St. Paul the body is replaced by a pneumatikos a pneumatikos body body just as the seedling replaces the ,

seed, in the process of physical death. For the Christian, dismemberment is equivalent to crucifixion, or the inner struggle between the Old Adam and the New Adam. In general terms, dismemberment is a symbol for shamanic illness, and magical reassembly a symbol for victory. In many shamanic traditions the shaman symbolically dismembers and then reassembles himself. But often dismemberment is associated with magic food--the flesh or blood of a god or totem animal that is offered ritually on a special occasion, and transmits the power of spiritual overcoming to the worshipper. Thus also the Kykeon of later Eleusinian tradition, which was probably instituted as a counter-ritual to the strong wine of Dionysian Dionysian ecstasies (6th or 7th century B.C.), the Jewish Passover meal that became the Christian Eucharist, the blood of Mithraic bullsacrifices, and so on. In such cases dismemberment or the death passage-rites of the first shaman (the primal hero like Orpheus or Jesus) are taken as a substitute for dismemberment of the succeeding shamans. This is the case for Osirian tradition, where the worshipper identifies with Horus (not specifically .with Osiris except at certain times), and ascends to heaven in the identity of the Son of Osiris. The worshipper will be dismembered by Seth (death) but reassembled or resurrected through the powers of the ascended Osiris. Why? Because in life he (or she) has morally identified with the good son, Horus, rather than the evil son, Seth. When his heart is weighed it will be found pure, and worthy of admission. admission. This is the crux of the two great ancient mysteries, Osirian and Eleusinian. Initiation and admission to the spirit world of the gods, rather than the usual place of spirits in the lower world, depends upon moral and spiritual purity. purity. The basic criterion, the test for admission, is the purity of one’s heart. This was the ancient form of the Osirian Mysteries, and though it was rooted in matriarchal prehistory it was clothed in the symbolism symbolism of a male mystery. It was largely the product product of fifthdynasty (and later) priestly mortuary science. But in the last millennium B.C. the figure of Isis assumed greater importance-so much that by the Roman-Hellenistic Roman-Hellenistic period these mysteries mysteries would be regarded regarded as the Mysteries Mysteries of Isis. Osiris Osiris had been officially changed to Osiris-Apis or Osirapis,



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worshipped as Serapis, patron of the Serapeum in Alexandria, and mere consort of the great mother Isis. Briefly, then, the Mysteries of Osiris (which became the Mysteries of Isis) were of shamanic and priestly origin. They transmitted a stage of initiation available at first only to shamans (or the shaman-king) and their fellow initiates. If tribal rites admitted the common person to adulthood, priestly rites admitted the chosen ones first to the world of the spirits and then--by successfully passing the tests and horrors of the “shamanic illness”--to the world of the gods. As the Mysteries developed at Abydos, their form seems to have been as follows. Preparation1 The postulant was probably at the end of a long period of preparation by the time he was admitted to the sacred rites of Abydos. This (to judge from the literature described by Clemens Alexandrinus carried by the priests of the Sera— peum) must have involved years of study in what we would call philosophy, theology and the sciences as well as the following of dietary and moral regulations. He would be presented for initiation by an initiated sponsor--probably his (or later, her) teacher. The Journey At the door to the Temple the postulant was greeted by Anubis (later HorusAnubis, abbreviated Hermanubis, and in the Hermetic form Hermes). He was the psycho-pomp, or guide of souls, both after death and here, in life, to initiation--which was a preparation for immortality. The priestly mask was of black and gold, in the form of a dog’s face. “I am the Jackal of jackals, the luminous Air which carries away our breaths before the Venerable Ones, up to the regions of the heavens, up to the ends of the earth!” cries Anubis. He leads the postulant toward the Guardian of the Sanctuary, who questions the seeker in a long, ritual series for which answers have been memorized. “Open to me!” he cries. “I am one worthy of esteem, one who knows how to guard a secret, one who serves in the Temple of Osirisl...Open to me! I am one who knows its magical formula. I was initiated into these things and did not tell them to the uninitiated!” After a long liturgy, the gates to the sacred underground sanctuary of Abydos are opened, and the postulant admitted to it. First he must traverse a long, dank 1. The following account is taken from that of Prof. Max Guilmot, THE INITIATORY PROCESS IN ANCIENT EGYPT (Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum Publication, 1978)



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and dark hallway cut into the earth. At this point on the journey the postulant questions Atum concerning the realities of death. “0 Atum, why have I traveled to a deserted place? The fact is that there is no water, there is no breeze of air. This place is deep, deep, dark, dark, having no limits or boundaries!” Here the postulant describes the existential facts of death, with its lack of earthly pleasures and sensory stimulation. “There, thou shalt live with thy heart at peace,” answers the god Atum. “But over there one cannot satisfy love!” objects the postulant. “True, but it is there that I have placed the powers of Mind instead of water, cool breezes and the pleasures of love; and peace of mind instead of bread and beer.” “And what,” asks the postulant, “will be the span of my life?” “Thou shalt live for millions and myriads of years,” Atum replies, “yes, thy life shall last for millions of years!” Now, after perhaps many many hours in the darkness darkness of the underground tunnel, the postulant postulant is led before a priest (possibly Thoth, scribe of the gods). He is given final preparation for entrance into the Hall of Judgment. In the later Isian Mysteries here and before entering the Temple the postulant was drilled drilled on the many responses responses and formulas he was was supposed to have memorized. memorized. This abbreviated preparation was in lieu of the years of priestly training that earlier initiates from aristocratic families had received, and was given by way of popularizing and ~itnOlifying~ entry into the Mysteries. Now the postulant is led before the scales scales of Maat, “Justice” “Justice” or “Truth” or “Universal “Universal Harmony.” It is here that the ritual examination takes place, in imitation of the final Judgment when the soul of the deceased initiate will be spiritually “weighed” according to what exists in his heart as a condition for entrance into the heaven of the gods. This part is a long liturgy of questions and declarations. In later Isian Mysteries it follows an eternal pledge to the goddess Isis. It is clear from the Hermetic initiation tractates XIII and Nag Hammadi Codex VI, Tractate 6, that final examination of the heart-motives was done by a psychic guide who “looked into” the postulant. If he saw within him the Ogdoad Ogdoad (i.e, the pattern of the Ogdoad Ogdoad imprinted in his microcosmic vehicle) he declared the postulant to be a successful candidate. Perhaps psychic means were also used by the priests of Osiris to determine the postulant’s suitability. In any case, if the postulant were judged worthy, he was declared one with Maat, Justice.



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Osiris, presiding over the scales, declares: “I grant thee the title of ‘Just,’ and ‘Triumphant.’ In Maat thou art initiated!” Now the candidate cannot cannot fail, and he is declared declared an initiate. But at at this point the initiate initiate must complete the initiation, and first in the process a ritual baptism. Abydos included a long corridor leading from the floor of the Temple to an underground cavern. At the basin of the cavern was a lake of water, and at the opposite side of the lake a mound with dual steps leading up to the coffin of Osiris and back down again. The candidate was immersed in water. “Here we are ready to live again,” says an ancient Egyptian hymn to the Sun, “we have entered into the primordial sea. It has restored vigor to him who begins his youth anew. Let the old man take off his clothes. Then another one puts them on!” Masked priests surround the initiate as he steps naked into the vivifying waters of the Nile-Osiris. As he comes up from the water and begins to climb the twelve steps to the esplanade of Osiris, he is clothed in pure white linen garments. Now he is ready for the sacred vision that, like like the epopteia of epopteia of Eleusis, will bring illumination. First a brilliant light of some sort. “The brightness of the Light has fallen upon my steps!” Then he watches in amazement as the foliage surrounding the relics of Osiris (in Abydos, the head of Osiris) suddenly comes to life. “The living plant grows green! The earth becomes green also!” The holy sepulcher is opened by the priests. The god speaks: “Let him advance toward me. Let him see my wounds.” Through the power of the ritual the initiate witnesses the resuscitation resuscitation of the god, from a body of wounds and pallid skin skin to that of a healthy young man. He contemplates contemplates the miracle of Osiris. Exactly what was involved in ta deiknumena, deiknumena, “the things shown,” of the Osirian Mysteries we cannot know. It is clear that they included a vision of the god and, like the Eleusinian Mysteries, a profound personal experience for the initiate. More about this after a description of the Mysteries of Demeter.



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The Eleusinian Mysteries Toward the middle of the second millennium B.C. in the early Mycenaean period the Mysteries of Demeter made their appearance outside of what would become Athens. According to the myth, Persephone, daughter of Demeter (the Mother Earth), was kidnapped by Pluto, god of the underworld known as Hades. He wanted her for his bride. Demeter was disconsolate and wandered grieving grieving about the earth. As she did so, the trees lost their life, the snow fell, and all became cold and inhospitable (i.e, winter). Having descended from the realm of the gods in her attempts to find her daughter, but unable to discover the magical access to Hades, Demeter sat by the Virgin’s Well in Eleusis. She was in disguise, and appeared as an old woman suitable not for child-bearing, but as a nurse maid. Discovered by the four daughters of King Keleos (or in another version, of a shepherd), she is invited to serve as nurse maid for the new child of the house. As she crosses the threshhold of the palace (or house, in the other version) the doorway is filled with divine light, which startles Queen Metaneira, who offers the old woman her chair. But the goddesstakes only a simple chair and sits sadly. Now Iambe, the serving maid, enters. She turns Demeter’s grief to to tenderness by jesting, jesting, joking and making suggestive suggestive and even obscene gestures. gestures. (This part of the the myth was related related to the coarse and bawdy festivals at one time associated with the area. In the later Dionysian versions of the Mysteries the character of Baubo was introduced and the setting changed to the home of the peasant Dysaules, Dysaules, a shepherd.) Baubo and Dysaules came into the Eleusinian Mysteries as a result of the conquest of Dionysian ecstatic religion and its sacred drink, wine, which was used for wild aftd drunken celebrations. To demonstrate its opposition to Dionysian worship and the immorality of drunken displays, the later Demeter myth includes a section where the goddess is offered wine to drink. She declines, saying that it is not themis, themis, “natural” or lawful. However, as a counter-measure she mixes a stimulating tea of barley, water and mint (probably pennyroyal) which she offers as her sacred drink, Kykeon drink, Kykeon.. Most of the dialogue and interplay between the sorrows of Demeter and her acceptance of the care of the baby Demophobn is a series of ritual additions justifying new customs and celebrations that came into the rites of Eleusis. But finally we come to the point of the story, where Demeter takes the child Demophoon into her care.



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Demeter grows to love the little child, and decides to make him immortal. This she does by placing him in the fire each night like a log. Finally Finally she is discovered discovered doing this by the Queen Queen Mother, who mourns for her son. Demeter takes the child out of the fireplace and returns him alive(but now only mortal )to his astounded mother, and Demeter reveals her identity, rebuking the Queen for her ignorance. Demeter demands that a temple be built for her above the well. It is done, and her worship is carried on. She withdraws, but lets no plants grow on earth. Finally, however, Zeus sends Hermes to retrieve Persephone because human beings have stopped making sacrifices to the gods (there are no more cereals and grains for sacrifice), and Demeter allows spring to appear. The point of all this is that mankind has been visited by the Great Mother of Life. She has loved a mortal child and, for this reason, instituted her mysteries on earth in the care of the priestly Eumolpidai dynasty. There are many variations and other characters in the Demeter cycles, and there seems to be a confusion of goddesses (somehow Demeter Demeter and Persephone are one person), as well as other complications of the sort that scholars love. But the basic idea is that immortality has been given to mankind through the the Mysteries of Eleusis. Eleusis. All kinds of explanations have been contrived for the origin of the Mysteries. Demeter and Persephone are aspects of a corn ritual, it is suggested, where the corn is stored over the winter in underground silos and resurrected for planting in the spring. Whatever the origins of the cult, it is clear that its importance lies in what the cult became. The same is true of the Hebrew Pesach or Passover, which may have originated as a “limping dance.” Its importance, however, is as the Passover--not as a limping dance. It is in this light that we will consider the rites of Eleusis, which lasted in the ancient world for a period as long as the Christian church has existed, or almost two millennia. The following reconstruction of the Mysteries follows that of Kerenyi in his remarkable book, ELEUSIS. Preparation On the banks of the Ilissos River near Athens, not far from the sanctuary of Agrai, postulants for initiation initiation underwent the first first part of the rite, the Myesis. Myesis. These were were the Lesser Mysteries “of love,” as the priestess Diotima declares in Plato’s SYMPOSIUM. The postulant had been prepared by spiritual instruction preceding the pilgrimage to the Ilissos. Now he came with a pig--the proper sacrifice to Zeus. Rit ual sacrifices were performed, with the best parts of the smoking pork being offered to the priests of the Eumolpidai family. This was equivalent to “dismemberment,” for the pigs died in place of the initiands, or postulants for initiation. initiation. Once this was was done, they were able able to begin hearing ta legomena from legomena from the mouths of the priests. This “hearing” was was done at Agrai, where initiands were given newer, newer, more strict rules of purification and moral guidance. Many months would pass before they would gather



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again--in September--for the Greater Mysteries at Eleusis, assuming they were each found worthy after this passage of time. It was probably here that ta dromena were dromena were enacted as part of the first stage, since there was no place for drama at Eleusis. Other purifications, including the baptism in river water and white robe, were done. Some of ta deiknumena were deiknumena were also demonstrated--relics of symbolic value carried in a basket (later to be Dionysian relics such as the baby rattle, but earlier symbols of the comb or female genital and phallus). Most important, the final moral instructions were given, for the Mysteries of Eleusis, like those of Osiris, were basically those of a higher morality. Initiates of Eleusis were supposed to be the noblest, most ethical and moral people of the Greeks, and immoral persons (even the Emperor Emperor of Rome) could not bribe or force their way into the Mysteries, as history tells us many times. Toward the middle of September the initiands would gather again, but this time on the seashore opposite the Sacred Road to Eleusis. Here those who had been faithful to the vows and gnosis revealed to them earlier would hear the cry, “Initiates into the sea!” This was a later method of baptism when larger groups were being formed for initiation. Earlier the baptism had been done by a Hydranos or baptising baptising priest in a basin. On the next day a sow was offered to Demeter and Persephone, although at an earlier time it was probably a ewe or ram, upon whose fleece the initiand would sit. One the next day the initiands stayed inside meditating while the traditional procession of Asklepios was held. On this day the ruler of the underworld smiled upon mankind as Healer, and the Kykeon was made ready for the initiands. The Journey On the next day, the 19th of Bo~dromion, the Greater Mysteries began. They took the form of a procession on the Sacred Road to Eleusis carrying mysterious relics of Demeter. The hair of the mystai was mystai was decorated with myrtle boughs, which they held also in their hands, and the sacred cry, “Iakchos,” echoed through the hills.



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This was a procession of mourning, in imitation--nay, participation--in the sacred grieving of Demeter. It was a Via Dolorosa, an aspect of crucifixion, dismemberment, and separation from the world of the senses. Along the way the drama of Demeter’s wanderings was played out, including sitting by the Virgin’s Well, the bridge jests of Baubo (possibly as an evil demon trying to distract the mourners), and other various episodes unknown to us. Finally the procession, now lighted by torches for it was night, came to a final narrow bridge. Here the mystai were mystai were to repeat the synthema the synthema or or mystic abridgement of the Mysteries whose meaning only they were to know. The non-secret part of this test said: “I have fasted, drunk the Kykeon, taken things out of the big basket and, after performing a rite, put them into the little basket, whence I put them back in the big basket.” Now a thread was attached attached to the right hand and left foot of the initiand, initiand, and he was admitted to a location outside the gates of the sanctuary of Eleusis, by the Well of the Beautiful Dances. The Mystagogue led the procession through sacred precincts that included the grotto of Pluto (or passageway into the underworld) and the omphalos or omphalos or navel of the world, where young boys were sent out (in (in imitation of Demophoon) to to lead the sacred dancing. dancing. The little child who led them was chosen each year from the noble families of Athens and initiated at public expense as the “boy of the hearth” or Demophoon. After participating in the sacred dancing, the procession moved toward the Telesterion for the main goal of initiation, the Epopteia the Epopteia or or Blessed Vision. Here only a few at a time could come, for originally initiation had involved far fewer people at a time. Those worthy to enter the Telesterion had fasted for nine days and processed on the tenth, with only Kykeon to drink. Here the hierophant or “priestly demonstrator,” the one who made the sacred things appear, sat enthroned. To his left was the Anaktoron or “little palace,” a small room from which the manifestation would take place. All we know is that witnesses across the bay describe a sudden brilliant flash of light that momentarily illuminated everything as though it were noon. From the Anaktoron came forth a brilliant light, and somehow somehow in this light the worshipper saw Persephone, Persephone, the Kore or Virgin. Virgin. Afterwards the worshipper processed, awe-struck, awe-struck, to a small sanctuary to meditate upon a sheaf of grain. Jesus drew profound meaning from the seeds and growth of nature. What thoughts crossed the minds of the initiates as they contemplated a sheaf of grain, the Triptolemos of Eleusis?



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The Visio Beatifica of the Mysteries In both the Osirian and Eleusinian mysteries, the culminating experience was that of the Visio Beatifica, the Blessed Vision. Later in Isis religion the Vision is described by Apuleius as an image of Isis. It sounds suspiciously like an excellent and beautiful idol of the goddess, fully decorated for public viewing. I would suggest that the Visio Beatifica was experienced by most initiates of both mysteries, and that it was drawn forth from them. In other words, the Visio Beatifica was a thought-form made visible in a contrived vision, using all the gimmicks that produce visions-fasting, drugs (Kykeon), intense dogmatic preparation. The initiate knows what he is to see, but exactly what he sees is left up to him. What caused the light? Perhaps the priesthood had developed a method of burning something like magnesium. Or perhaps the priesthood, though not as scientifically developed as modern people, were far more capable of manipulating the interior lives and perceptions of people through mass hypnosis, or concentration of mass ectoplasm to produce physical manifestations, something like physical mediumship. Perhaps all of these were used together unconsciously or consciously. In any case, the mysteries worked. Ta deiknumena were deiknumena were astounding and awe-producing, and they demonstrated to the initiate the reality of life after death. Demeter was the Kore, the Virgin. She had been made young again. The child in the fire was alive, and now half-divine as a surety that after death he would become wholly divine. Like the early Christians, the Eleusinian initiates lived both in the world of now and the world to come, sustaining their compact with heaven by means of noble living and moral behavior. They had a Vision that could comfort them and cause them to wonder whenever they reflected back on it. They had glimpsed the spirit world with their own eyes, and were true epopteis. epopteis. In one tradition we are told that a Brahmin yogin lept into the flame of Eleusis to demonstrate his power over fire and was burnt to death. What was the source of the suddenly flashing fire? Was it physical? If so, what technology was used that it could create such light as to illuminate the whole bay, yet scorch none of the worshippers who stood only a few feet away? Ancient man was subject to visions and auditions by manipulation. If a general wanted psychic information about about the whereabouts of his rival army, he might kidnap a young virgin, take her underground into a cavern where she could be possessed by Apollo,1 and when the hairs of her head stood up in great religious fear with her heart pounding so that she might die of heart failure, the oracle 1. As told by the poet Lucan.



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would speak through her mouth and answer his questions. In this particular story, the young girl at first tried to pretend the god was speaking through her, but the general knew she was lying because the hair of her head was not standing on end. He cast her farther down into the depths of the cavern until the frenzy came upon her, and Apollo spoke. Afterwards he left her panting and exhausted in the field, perhaps to recover, or perhaps to die from the abuse of her physical vehicle. On the other hand, the priestesses of Delphi were women who were naturally talented at trance. For them, as psychics, the effects of prolonged channeling were not disastrous. Nevertheless, Nevertheless, like most mediums they suffered physical and psychological psychological effects, effects, their lives were were short, and some of them went insane. Again, to better understand the psychology of ancient religion, let us examine the oracle of Trophonius. Here a person would be his own oracle, by being lowered into a narrow opening the led to a cavern in the earth with an underground stream. The seeker would be engrossed in fear and awe as he was lowered, and a scribe would listen to record whatever shrieks and utterances he might make while in the frenzied state under the earth. When the seeker was pulled back up from the cavern he was usually incoherent and required rest and medical care. 1 Another example of epopteia in epopteia in the ancient world involved the healing temples of the divine hero (or saint) Asklepios. He was, of course, the great physician of Cos who had established the medical profession, but now served mankind as an ascended master. Those for whom standard medical procedure had failed would seek out the Temple of Asklepios. There the priests would allow them to sleep or “incubate” in the Temple. Often the seeker was rewarded with a dream of the great healer, who would either prescribe some new form of treatment or, as the golden tablets of Epidaurus record, actually cure them. I quote from one of them: “A man whose fingers, all but one, were paralyzed. He came to the god looking for help, but when he read the tablets set up in the Temple he gave no credence credence to the healings and made made fun of the inscriptions. But as he slept, he had the following dream. It seemed to him that he was playing dice in the Temple Temple and was about to make make a throw. The god appeared appeared to him, and sprang upon his hand and stretched out his fingers. Then he got up and, still in his dream, the man clenched his fist and opened it, stretching out one finger after another. After he had stretched them all out, the god asked him if he still refused to believe what the inscriptions related, and he said, ‘No.’ ‘Well then,’ answered the god, ‘since you formerly refused to believe what is not unbelievable, you shall henceforth be known as “the

1. Pausanias GUIDE TO GREECE IX (BOEOTIA) 39.5-14, quoted in HELLENISTIC RELIGIONS, F. C. Grant (New York, 1953), pp. 39-41


Doubter.”’ When it was day, he came out cured.”


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1

From these examples, we can conclude that ancient man possessed a waking consciousness that was more easily put into contact with the unconscious mind (so to speak) through suggestion, repetition and preparation than modern man. It is interesting to note that as little as a century ago Frank Bucke’s accounts of experimentation with psychogenic drugs center on visions that were essentially medieval and classical. He saw unicorns, castles and centaurs. This is much different from what modern drug-trippers see. Compare the opium dreams of a poet like Coleridge with those of a beat poet. The two have no common ground. Drug experience has radically altered even within the change of generations from the decade of the fifties to that of the seventies in the United States. One generation (the “beatniks”) used drugs for artistic purposes. The following decade of the sixties used drugs for social protest and (most significantly) religious-spiritual purposes (“consciousness raising”). In the seventies drugs are used essentially for “kicks,” without any sacred or artistic rationale. This is, of course, only a general characterization, but one that holds fairly true. The implication is that we use hallucinogenic means for our own purposes at purposes at any given time, and that they result in widely differing experiences depending upon our purpose. The same differences can be noted in religious visionary experience. In the trance of religious ecstasy a Christian like the martyr Stephen will see Jesus Christ seated at the right hand of God Jahweh, where an American Indian like Black Elk will see the Six Grandfathers seated in the Sky. Mohammad will see the Archangel Gabriel before him, no matter which way he turns his face, while Saul of Tarsus will see the Lord Jesus rebuking him for his unbelief. Two things are important to note about the quality of personal religious vision. First, similarities in vision are determined by similarities in preparation and expectation, not by supposed similarities in the spirit world. That is, Black Elk could never see Jesus Christ seated at the right hand of God Jahweh unless he had spent a lot of time with a Christian missionary! Second, often it is the element of unbelief that that somehow trips the mechanism for visionary experience, as in the case of “the Doubter” at the Temple of Askelpios. Revelation comes in two modes. First, as in the mysteries, by means of preparation, dogmatic education and the contriving of a “peak experience,” to use Maslow’s terminology. Or second, as in personal “conversion” experiences, by means of a psychological booby-trap in which the possibility of the miraculous has been consciously suppressed. suppressed. When a healing, healing, “wholing” or regenerating regenerating experience occurs and all 1. Cf. HELLENISTIC RELIGIONS (op. cit.), p. 56



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the psychological chickens (conscious or unconscious) come home to roost, a “conversion experience” occurs. Such an experience can be pleasant, as for the healed “Doubter” of Epidaurus, or very unpleasant, such as a brush with death. Needless to say, the “conversion” is most typical of modern man because he has set the booby-trap with dialectical materialism and denied the reality of the numen, numen, or spirit world. His personal religious experience, therefore, begins at the most rudimentary levels--fundamentalist levels--fundamentalist Christianity, Han Krishna, charismatic experiences rooted in lower-brain functions, psychedelic and other forms of induced trance. All these are elements of the Visio Beatifica, which at its most basic is a hallucination based on cultural images images (such as those of the idols of Isis), a trance experience common common to all tribal religions (such as glossolalia), or in its more sublime forms a noetic vision seen not with the eyes of flesh, but the eye of understanding (Greek nous). “I would rather speak five words with my nous…than thousands of words by means of glossolalia.” So spoke the initiate Paul to the newly born Christians of Corinth as he exhorted them to strive for higher and more advanced forms of spiritual expression, the highest of which was agape, agape, “impartial love.” The Visio Beatifica of the Osireion and the Anaktoron may have been caused by means of secret, shamanic or priestly knowledge. The hierophant may have been a physical medium capable of concentrating the “ectoplasm” of the initiate(s) into phenomena symbolic of rebirth and immortality. Again, ta deiknumena of deiknumena of these and other ancient mysteries such as those of Tammuz may have been produced by miraculous relics, parallel to the bleeding icons and weeping statues of European and Mediterranean Catholicism, or the faces that appear on church walls and crosses of light in church windows, to mention a few validated phenomena of modern Christianity. Certainly the mysteries at some times used physical means, not to deceive, but to imitate. The secret of cosmic power was sympatheia was sympatheia,, and the statue-maker’s art was a sacred science of producing the most accurate accurate image of a god, since since this would “draw down” and make his power power available to priest and worshipper. When we read Hero of Alexandria and learn of all the complicated hydraulic and steam engines used to power temple automatons and statue mechanisms during the Roman-Hellenistic period, we realize that these artifacts were meant not to deceive, but to enhance the dramatic power of ritual. Hierophantic science undoubtedly included use of physical and chemical means to enhance the epopteiae of epopteiae of the mysteries, as was probably



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the case at Eleusis with the brilliant light of the Anaktoron (in which a Hindu was burnt to death, according to THE LIFE OF APOLLONIUS OF TYANA). TYANA). The light was certainly witnessed by many who were not part of the mysteries, although again it could have other than physical origins. We know that a strobe light flashing at the proper interval can induce epilepsy, and also visions. A strong flash of brilliant light, such as that produced by phosphorus, seems a likely candidate to trigger the grand vision of Eleusis. Whatever the case might have been, it is clear that the original purpose and effect of the mysteries was to show that the reward of purity and integrity is everlasting life. life. The meaning of initiation was this: The initiand has proven him-or herself worthy to join a communio sanctorum of sanctorum of elect souls who participate in a higher form of life and consciousness than mankind in general. The initiation ceremony marked the completion of requirements for admission to a grade or degree. degree. It was, in shamanic traditions of higher degrees, also the seed of another level of progress, or the beginning of a new askesis or askesis or discipline leading to an even higher form of initiation. Thus the initiate of Osirian or Eleusinian mysteries had completed the work of the first degree and was now admitted to the Spiritual Kingdom. The priests of the mysteries had been initiated into the Spiritual Kingdom (and thus admitted to the work of the second degree), completed priestly training (the second degree), and initiated into the priesthood (the work of the third degree). In this we can discern three degrees of attainment. The First Degree, which leads to initiation into the Spiritual Kingdom by means of baptism and the Visio Beatifica. The Second Degree, which involves priestcraft and apprenticeship in the sanctuary. This also involved all the inherent dangers of contact with the sacred, and especially in the case of spontaneous vocation (as in certain shamanic traditions) a long period of trial, striving and final victory over the lower spirit world (angelology, demonology and theurgical technique). Initiation into the Third Degree therefore implies ordination into the priesthood and the life of service to man and god. The ancient mysteries, then, like tribal religion and shamanism, preserved three degrees of initiation and two rites of initiation (the third rite being the tribal or familial initiation performed at birth or puberty, but not leading leading into the Spiritual Kingdom).



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The prehistoric first degree was simply attainment of adulthood, and was recognized by means of rites of passage at puberty. In some cases, children were initiated into ruling families by means of birth rites that legitimized their claim to inheritance and succession. None of these categories is spiritual, however. Only shamans were admitted to the spirit world, it seems, before the advent of the mysteries (approximately mid-second millennium B.C.). How much earlier shamans and priests began to enter the Spiritual Kingdom is not certain, but burial sites of Neanderthal Man indicate that a concept of immortality was recognized as early as 50,000 B.C, and possibly much earlier. Admission of common people to the mysteries wasn’t really open until the Hellenistic period, and spiritual democracy democracy didn’t really exist exist until the advent of Christianity Christianity (which admitted admitted both male and female female of all social classes). classes). In the diagram on page 18, we see that the basic work of the new First Degree (as opposed to the prehistoric First Degree, which became a kind of vestigial degree) was moral. The lower aspects of the conscious mind were exercised with dogmas, rules, laws of cleanliness and preparation, for the goal was purity was purity of intent . As a result, the kind of visio one visio one expected had to do with rebirth, immortality and heavenly joy. In the priesthood, the work of the Second Degree combined the ancient shamanic trials and struggles (“illness”) with striving for mastery in the spirit world. Here the apprentice made his precarious way, sometimes sometimes with tragic results, but always always with a vision of attainment before him. We can see that successful completion of the apprenticeship was, in a sense, mastery. The basic visio for visio for ordination into priesthood, then, would be that of the hieros gamos, gamos, or sacred compact with heaven. One marries the god, pledges eternal service in exchange for eternal favor, and ascends the sacred throne of priestly service. In the Third Degree, then, the work was that of service to the god and to his worshippers. With this the person was complete--the conflicting inner elements (masculine and feminine) had achieved a state of balance that allowed his life to become impartial and servicable to all. The initiations of ancient man had found their consummation.



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THE MYSTERY CULTS Toward the end of the ancient period, dating roughly from the middle of the last millennium B.C, great changes occured in both East and West. National or royal dynastic religions began to feel the contact contact of other religions, and and were mutually influenced. influenced. The teachings of Gautama and Zoroaster, Moses and Pythagoras, as well as other scientists and philosophers were carried to foreign places. It is clear that the Brahmin concept of reincarnation was transferred into Western thought through the Pythagorean idea of metempsychosis, metempsychosis, the transmigration of the soul. From here it made its way into Platonic literature. But according to the TIMAEUS of Plato, the idea was quite ancient in Egypt already, and Egyptian priestly cultus had cultus had developed an approach to death different than that in the BOOKS OF THE DEAD, familiar to us in the Osirian Mysteries. As the religion of Osiris opened its doors to the many and became Isis religion (a piety as common in Hellenistic times as Roman catholicism is today), Egyptian priestly gnosis had moved into a higher octave of spirituality that would eventually produce the Mysteries of Hermes Trismegistus. The subject of this chapter, however, is the democritization of the mysteries that occured in Greece with the incursions of northern Celts, devotees of the Magna Mater Kybele, and the development of Dionysian ecstasy. What had long been repressed in the human psyche now returned, often in negative form, with a vengeance. I refer to the power of women and femininity. By the sixth century B.C. great cities and colonial orders had arisen around the Mediterranean. They had been won by men in battle, built by slaves captured by male warriors, and governed by powerful kings and patriarchs. But the booby-trap was set, for settled agrarian civilization led naturally to a rise in the status and power of women. With the rise of a commercial trading class (under the totem of the previously minor deity Hermes), the psychological power of women began to manifest. Perhaps the most vengeful of the conquering Great Mothers was Kybele, the Syrian goddess who demanded castration of her galli her galli or or priests. They exchanged male for female garments and conducted annual rites of initiation. “While the others play flutes and perform their orgies, the frenzy seizes many of them, and many who have come as spectators presently engage in the same activity. I will tell you what they do. The young man who is thus seized strips off his clothes, and with a loud shout pushes his way into the flagellants, and picks up a sword--for many years, I suppose, these swords have been stacked there. He takes it and at once castrates himself and then runs through the city, carrying in



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his hands what he has cut off. He throws it into any house he chooses, and from this house he takeswomen s apparel and ornaments.”1 Today we have a similar cult--that of the male homosexual. The ritual has changed and the spiritual elements profaned or secularized, but nevertheless the Syrian goddess still has her devotees, as she has in every age. The effect on women was also powerful. The Greek Islands were swept with a new form of religious piety, no longer concerned with purity and the masculine or Apollonian virtues, but with ecstasy. This was the cult of Dionysios, with his drunken celebrations ruled by Bacchus, god of the vine, and his processions of satyrs, centaurs and panisci--the diminuative forms of the once omnipotent Pan, who had given place to the Christ-like Eros of Hesiod’s WORKS AND DAYS. DAYS. How easily the rites of the slaughtered child Dionysios were integrated into those of Eleusis! The devotees of Dionysios were often women. Worship of the dying and rising god Orpheus was integrated into Dionysian rites as well, the most interesting of these (for our case) being the mid-winter frenzies of women who ran naked through the snow catching rabbits and eating them alive. This was an ecstatic rite of immortality, represented mythically by the dismemberment of Orpheus, who was eaten by women. This was the Omophagion of Orpheus. Women began to reclaim their mysterious power, and the myths of the Amazons were probably created or at least least popularized and elaborated elaborated at this time in Greek history. On the the Island of Lesbos a new kind of Amazon appeared--the “lesbian.” The fame of Thessalonian witches, witches, who “drew down” the power of the moon and could destroy the strongest warriors ten at a time, spread far and wide. It was considered herioc for a man to find and kill one of these women. But the feminine mystery was very positive as well, and never moreso than in the Mysteries of Isis, whose cult was perhaps the most popular form of religion in the RomanHellenistic world. Isis religion permeated daily life for most of the Greek-speaking world in Egypt, Rome, Asia Minor and the Greek Islands. Children were members of the gilds of the child HorusHarpokrates, and wore a special knotted hairstyle, much like the Girl and Boy Scouts or other contemporary value—oriented’’ youth organizations. They attended Isian private schools, and worshipped at Isian sanctuaries, both in the home and at great temples erected to the “virtues” of Isis. It was she who gave mankind science, music, philosophy, technology and immortality, and to her the oaths must be made, and to her minions that supplication for help must be directed. Isis was the Magna Mater in her most positive form, and it is from her rites and 1

Lucian, “The Syrian Goddess,” quoted in HELLENISTIC RELIGIONS (op. cit.), p. 118.



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and iconography that the Italian, Spanish and European cult of the Virgin Mary arose. Indeed, today when the archaeologist finds an icon or statue of the Divine Mother and Child, he doesn’t know whether it belongs to an early Christian or Isian period. The early Christians in Egypt identified Christ with a trinity of Father, Mother and Son. On the 25th of December (by the Julian calendar), or at the end of the month of Choiack, Isis religion celebrated the birth of the Divine Child (HorusHarpokrates) by giving gifts. This date later became gift-giving time for another Divine Child--the Christ. Two weeks later they celebrated the Epiphany of the Eye of Horus (the Sun). That date later became the Epiphany of Christ, with the legendary visit of the three Magi. Clearly Isis religion was a basic matrix for the nourishment of Christianity, and Christianity owes a debt to Isis religion that few people today realize or understand. Isis lived on as the Christotokos and the Theotokos or Mother of God in Egypt. Her recent elevation by papal decree, which promulgated the doctrine that the Mother of Christ was bodily assumed into heaven heaven without necessity necessity of death or decay, illustrates illustrates how strong strong Isis remains in the modern world. Compare the following description of the morning ritual for Isis with what what had been done in the ancient Egyptian temples, where the gods were zoomorphic. “The daily ritual of Isis, which seems to have been as regular and complicated as that of the Catholic Church, produced an immense effect on the Roman mind. Every day there were two solemn offices, at which white-robed, tonsured priests, with acolytes and assistants of ever degree, officiated. The morning litany and sacrifice was an impressive service. The crowd of worshippers thronged the space before the chapel at the early dawn. The priest, ascending by a hidden stair, drew apart the veil of the sanctuary, and offered the th e holy image to their adoration. He then made the round of the altars, reciting the litany, and sprinkling the holy water ‘from the secret spring.’ At two o’clock in the afternoon the passers could hear from the temple in the Campus Martias the chant of vespers. A fresco of Herculaneum gives us a picture of the service. It is the adoration of the holy water, representing in symbol the fructifying and deathless power of Osiris. A priest, standing before the holy place, raises breast high a sacred urn for the adoration of the crowd. The sacrifice is smoking on the altar, and two choirs are chanting to the accompaniment of the seistron and flute.. .it is clear from Apuleius, that an important part of worship was also long silent 1

mediation before the image of the goddess.”

1. ROMAN SOCIETY FROM NERO TO MARCUS AURELIUS, S. Dill (London, 1920), pp. 577-



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As for initiation into the Mysteries of Isis, they were quite similar to initiations into the many other mysteries that had spread widely over the Mediterranean and Near East. For religion was no longer national, or bound to the royal throne of a particular political area. It had become cultic and evangelistic, as much at home in Alexandria as at Rome, and concerned to make proselytes to increase increase the wealth wealth of each temple, gild or chapel. chapel. After all, the priests priests were no longer patronized exclusively exclusively by a royal throne. They needed needed local subsidies in order to survive! Israel, for example, and then Judaea had been conquered. The educated and priestly class of Jerusalem were taken in captivity to Babylon, where they came into contact with the sophisticated philosophy of the Zoroastrian Magi. This was the impulse that caused the Jewish priests to codify their their sacred literature literature and produce the Pentateuch, Pentateuch, or first five books of the Old Testament. The teachings of the prophets, which had been recorded by their disciples in both Judah and Israel, were codified, as well as other ceremonial, hymnodic and wisdom writings, and the first “religion of the Book” came into being. For Judaism, even after the colonies of Ezra and Nehemiah had reclaimed the land from the Samarians, ceased to be the strange dialogue between monarchical priesthood and reformist prophet that had characterized characterized the two kingdoms kingdoms of the previous era. era. Instead, the religion of the Temple at Jerusalem (monarchical priesthood) extended itself democratically into all the colonies of Palestine by way of the synagogue—-a the synagogue—-a surrogate surrogate house of worship without priesthood or animal sacrifice. The same was done in other traditions. The Mystery House of Pompeii, decorated with scenes from the myth of Demeter and Persephone but including Dionysian and Orphic figures as well, seems to represent a formal initiation center for some kind of hybrid gild claiming (possibly) the authority of the Eleusinian priesthood for its rites. Perhaps as popular as the Isian rites were with families, the Mithraic Mysteries found their stronghold among the Roman troops. Mithraism came very close to eclipsing both Isis religion and the foundling Christianity as a world religion. Originally Attis was the consort of Kybele, and a dying and rising god of Syria. His rites were synthesized with those of Mithra, an ancient Aryan war deity, and brought to Rome by Pompey’s army. Here Mithras (as he was now called) was identified with Helios, the Sun God, and he became the patron and strength of the Roman soldier. His rites were carried as far as the British Isles. Here for the first time grades of male initiation similar to those found in medieval brotherhoods were clearly clearly defined, with zoomorphic zoomorphic gods guarding each of



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seven degrees (each of which was associated with a planetary or astrological figure). Baptism was in the blood of the Taurobolium, a sacrifice in which the devotee stood beneath planks covering a pit upon which a bull was was bled to death. The rite rite could be repeated every twenty years, and conferred power, blessedness, luck and assurances of immortality to the worshipper. When he had attained the eighth degree of initiation, or the Ogdoas, he was assured of having the purity to pass beyond the seven planetary planetary spheres into the eighth eighth region--where the souls of the blessed blessed heros dwelt in eternal happiness. This was a useful mystery for the Roman generals to encourage, since it gave them troops unafraid to die in battle who were united in a brotherhood of blood baptisms and sacred meals that welded them together into a formidable fighting force. The use of lustrations or baptisms and sacred meals of bread and wine or water were common to the Jewish mysteries that had developed during the Hellenistic period, as well. Communities of “righteous ones” or Zadokites had forsaken the cities with their corrupt Hellenic ways, and turned against the priests of Jerusalem much as the later protestants would turn against the Roman catholic church. They were opposed to non-spiritual practices like animal sacrifice, following the intentions of the prophets, who taught that God required brotherly love (hesed (hesed , ‘‘mercy’’) and not animal sacrifice. Perhaps the closest to a mystery cult of these were the Essenes, of whom we know very little except that they were of two kinds--those who married, and those who did not marry. Our main source of information about the Essenes is a turncoat Jewish writer named Josephus, who went to the side of the Roman conquerors after the devastating seige of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Much of what he says is unreliable because it is aimed at pleasing the Hellenized Romans. Josephus represents the Essenes as a mystery cult--the highest form of Jewish spirituality--in order to impress his readers. The sectaries of Qumran on the Dead Sea were clearly not the sort of Essene Josephus describes, but they too used lustrations and a sacred common meal. They kept books of the legendary Scribe of God, Enoch, which today are collected among the Pseudepigrapha or “False Name Writings” of the Old Testament, Testament, and no longer considered scripture scripture by Christians or Jews (in spite of the fact that they are quoted as scripture by the writers of the New Testament scripture!). It is possible that John the Baptist was an evangelist from such a community, but a comparison of early Christianity with what we know of Qumran shows more differences than similarities. Jesus was clearly not connected with this group.



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In the Roman-Hellenistic period the mystery cults had become popular and (in many cases) corrupt. Their doors were open to nearly all who could pay the initiation costs. Great numbers of people had been initiated, initiated, and many of the secrets secrets of the various mystery mystery rites divulged. Night-time Night-time processions of devotees devotees were common in Rome, Rome, Alexandria and all all the major cities, with their garlands and torches, imitating the orgies of the god or goddess. By the way, an “orgy” (Greek org~, org~, “passion”) was a deeply-felt emotion--usually the grief of a goddess (Demeter). The orgies of Demeter, then, were sacred participation in the divine emotions of the goddess. These included grief and joy, according to which part of the drama was being liturgically enacted. enacted. These emotions emotions were internalized internalized by the devotees, much much as modern pilgrims walk the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem Jerusalem in celebration celebration of the mysteries of the Mother of Christ every Easte r. The following observations from Plutarch’s CONCERNING THE SOUL (second discourse as quoted in Stobaeus FLORILEGIUM 120) give the flavor of a Hellenistic mystery liturgy (whether Orphic, Isian or other), and makes an important point about death and initiation (cf. Romans 6.4, “By baptism we were buried with him, and lay dead, in order that, as Christ was raised from the dead in the spendor of the Father, so also we might set our feet upon the new path of life.”): “Thus death and initiation closely correspond; even the words (teleutan (teleutan and and teleisthai, teleisthai, from the Greek root meaning to end, complete something) correspond, and so do the things. At first there are wanderings, and toilsome running about in circles, and journeys through the dark over uncertain roads and culs de sac then, sac then, just before the end, there are all kinds of terrors, with shivering, sweating, trembling, and utter amazement. “After this, a strange and wonderful light meets the wanderer; he is admitted into clean and verdant meadows, where he discerns gentle voices, and choric dances, and the majesty of holy sounds and sacred visions. Here the now fully initiated one is free, and walks at liberty like a crowned and dedicated offering, joining in the revelry. He is the companion of pure and holy men, and looks down upon the uninitiated and unpurified crowd here below in the mud and fog, trampling itself down, and crowded together, through fear of death remaining still sunk in its evils, unable to believe in the blessings that lie beyond.” But even as the mystery cults began to abbreviate, popularize and finally corrupt the ancient rites, neglecting the finer teachings of purity of heart and emphasizing instead the quick path to supposed immortality, immortality, a new initiation initiation even higher than that of the priest was being being attained by great souls. As a result of their



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work, truer and holier mysteries were being founded in Greece, Egypt and Palestine. Central to the impulse that guided these pioneers was the intuitive criticism of traditional religion that characterized them all. They were heretics or, as the Greeks would say, “philosophers,” friends of wisdom. Their tutor was Wisdom herself, known to one as Sophia, to another as Hokmah, to another as Nous, flanda or Gnosi s. One of these was Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, who sang his philosophy in the streets (the philosophers were at first bards) and was was sentenced to death death for the heresy of claiming claiming that the sun was not a god, but a molten mass of fire. He had two disciples who developed his concept of nous (“understanding; mind”) as the first principle of cosmic interpretation. He chose banishment rather than death, and died a broken man in Lampsacus on the Hellespont. Anaxagorus may have been one of the first Western initiates to attain the Fourth Degree. This came by way of the Third Initiation, which is martyrdom. He opened the way to higher understanding for the succession of philosophers leading down the centuries to Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. He introduced the noetic world, which would have its culmination in great teachers like Hermes Trismegistus, Epictetus and St. Paul. He was among the first martyr-teachers of the West, who realized in their own lives the divine pattern of the dying and rising gods. His life became an org~ of org~ of the mysteries, as did those of the martyred Hebrew prophets and the rejected genius named Socrates. He pledged himself to Wisdom, and how difficult that was is best summarized in this section from THE WISDOM OF JESUS BEN SIRACH, where Wisdom is compared to a mystagogue: “At first She will lead him by tortuous paths, filling him with craven fears. Her discipline will be a torment to him, and her decrees a hard test, until She fully trusts him. “But then She will come straight back to him again and bring great joy, and reveal her secrets unto him.” (Eccl. 4.17,18) The high wisdom of the Magi became the mediator of Eastern and Iranian gnoseis to the West through Pythagoras and priestly Judaism. New sciences like astrology from Persia and alchemy from China were transmitted through Chaldaean philosophy to Greece, Palestine and Egypt. Esoteric philosophical brotherhoods and communities formed in Palestine (Therapeutae, Essenes), Southern Italy (Pythagorean community of Samos), Eastern Greece (Hippokratic healers of Kos and Knidos), and along the Nile River (Hermetic fraternity of Egyptian priests). A new kind of work was coming into being--that of the Fourth Degree Initiate. The gateway to the Fourth Degree was martyrdom, or a real-life enactment of



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the sacred mysteries. It was this that the ancient human sacrifice had prefigured, and that the dismemberment and death characterizing entrance into the Spiritual Kingdom had foreshadowed! Martyrdom meant sometimes death, but always rejection. It meant coming apart from the world’s institutions and social structures and standing as an independent individual, usually at great personal cost. It meant meant most of all finding and and being loyal to a vision of of higher reality, whether whether as scientist, politician or priest, and being able to communicate that vision to at least a few others. Thus the mysteries were elevated to a higher octave, internalized and manifested in the flesh and blood of those ready for Fourth Degree work. It is useful now to characterize the four degrees of sacred initiation as they had developed in Roman-Hellenistic times. FIRST DEGREE: Opening of solar of solar plexus center; plexus center; concern for development of lower mental abilities abilities and purity of moral intent. SECOND DEGREE:

Opening of heart center , with solar plexus active; concern for

development of lower psychic (psychological) psychic (psychological) awareness and unification of opposites through control of animal nature. THIRD DEGREE: Opening of throat center to to blend with heart and solar plexus centers; full harmonization of lower triad (mental psychic, buddhic) through ,

development of lower buddhic awareness buddhic awareness in service to mankind. Abilities in music, speech, art, writing. FOURTH DEGREE:

Opening of pituitary of pituitary center as as first step into higher triad, though

pituitary-pineal interaction interaction has been initiated initiated by means of service in Third Degree; concern for development of higher mental abilities abilities (science, scholarship, composition, philosophy, occult studies--but as creative innovator, not mere imitator). Development of intuitive faculties. With the Fourth Degree came two consequences. The first was that now human beings were beginning the path toward mastery of the higher triad in man’s constitution, and no longer able to keep faith with normal human institutions. Thus heresy, innovation, individuality and the sense of anomie came into being. This resulted in a two-fold path for the Fourth Degree Initiate. This gifted individual could follow the path of intuition in its first manifestation as ‘‘conscience’’ which, like the daemon of Socrates never told him what to do, but warned him what not to to do. Or he (or she) could follow the will-to-power that separation from normal humanity encourages and embark upon a path of conquest.



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The choice was simple--mastery of self, or mastery of others. Those who chose the latter became sorcerers, sorcerers, adepts, witches and maguses. They are members of what is is known as the Great Great Black Brotherhood and Sisterhood, whose power over the earth has grown by leaps and bounds in the past few centuries. This is culminating even now as I write in the death-struggle of the age, and the outcome is uncertain. Those who chose the former are now members of the Great White Brotherhood and Sisterhood, the Communio Sanctorum of ascended saints who assist mankind and guide them along the upward path. But to return to our subject, Great Pan was dead, and the ancient mysteries had been vulgarized. The world was full of harlots and homosexuals. Thieves and murderers shared political power over the dominions of the earth, and especially especially in Rome, Babylon the Great, Great, where all piety piety had been made corrupt. The Greek sages had been taken into slavery and made to teach the children of the wealthy. The orgies of the gods had been converted to drunken sexual events that often included ritual murder. The barbarous sword of Rome, dripping with the blood of the Tauro bolium, was poised over the known world ready to to strike down whoever whoever would resist.



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THE MYSTERIES OF HERMES TRISMEGISTUS The Greek philosophers were at first bards who sang their irreverent verses in public places, offending the religious ideas of their their times. They quickly quickly developed into schools of disciples centered around a master like Thales, Parmenides or Anaximander. By the time of Socrates philosophy was a study open to all young men through their itinerant teachers, most of whom were “sophists,” or wandering scholars familiar with the arguments of all schools who, like Gorgias, accepted the teachings of none. For them reality was not something for man to discover-like the natural causes of the earliest philosophers, who disdained deisidaimonia (“fear deisidaimonia (“fear of daimons” or superstition) and sought the true explanations for physical phenomena. Rather, reality was created by man’s consciousness. The person who could be most persuasive in an argument would be, by definition, “right.” This very unfortunate idea (which was most repugnant to the great Socrates), the moral equivalent of “might makes right,” ruled Greek, Roman and medieval education for 1,500 years. All true philosophers (as opposed to sophists) opposed it. It is an idea that is much in vogue today, and has the advantage of explaining many things. If man is the measure of reality, then reality must be whatever man decrees decrees for himself. Most Most modern scientists, scientists, having grasped the elements elements of Einsteinian relativity, dismiss the great scientist’s scientist’s passion for a unified theory as part of his conservative belief that God doesn’t play dice with the universe. That is, even though Einstein himself saw a single reality underlying the relativism of the physical universe, most of his students dismiss the greater idea as incompatible with relativism. Yet even though human perceptions and cultural terms change, the true philosopher yearns passionately for the unknowable, ineffable One One Reality that is expressed expressed in manifold nature. nature. The philosopher’s faith in the the unity and ultimate knowable-ness knowable-ness of Reality Reality is perhaps the single single most important element of the period we now study--that of the ancient schools of wisdom.

The Wisdom Schools In earliest times “wisdom” meant skill, and often refered to the special skills that a scribe, metal-smith or weaver might have. Within the family traditions of particular skills there developed bodies of esoteric knowledge. This in cluded cluded the gnoseis of sacred sacred invocation and proper relation relation of the skill to the gods who ruled it as well as basic technique and use of materials. Thus Socrates refers to the “wisdom” of various craftsmen in the same terms as the wisdom of the philosophers in Plato’s APOLOGY OF SOCRATES.



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The most important “wisdom” however was that of the priests and rulers, and we have extant texts from ancient Egypt summarizing the moral, political and spiritual protocols for a young pharaoh. These wisdom wisdom collections bring together together pithy verses dealing dealing with the “skills” “skills” of life itself. Though many of the skills are mundane, others are quite profound. “Let not thy heart be puffed up because of thy knowledge; be not confident because thou art a wise man. Take counsel with the ignorant as well as with the wise. The full limits of skill (“wisdom”) cannot be attained, and there is no skilled man equipped to his full advantage. Good speech is more hidden than the emerald, but it may be found with maidservants at the grindstones...”1 These instructions for the royal and priestly youth of Middle Kingdom Egypt are as relevant today as four thousand years ago, and as little heeded! By studying Egyptian wisdom we find many passages familiar to us in the Old Testament Book of Proverbs, yet written down a millennium before the time of the Hebrews. We also find many of the Proverbs in more ancient Edomite and other Near Eastern texts. Why? Because wisdom was international, and particular schools of wisdom drew from a common stream of tradition that transcended cultural boundaries. The wisdom of Israel represented in the Book of Proverbs was a synthesis of Egyptian, Edomite and many other wisdom schools. It was only after the Babylonian captivity that the Jews became philosophers, producing the Job cycle and works of the schools like Ecclesiastes (Qoheleth (Qoheleth being the master), The Wisdom of Solomon, The Wisdom of Jesus Ben Sirach (or Sirach (or Ecclesiastic Ecclesiasticus) us),, and the apocalyptic literature of Enoch. At this point wisdom became personified as Wisdom (Sophia to the Greeks, I~okmah to the Jews), and She (as the Magna Mater of newer, more spiritual mysteries) served as Mistress of the schools. Her cult was an affront to conservative, zealous sectaries, who hated everything Hellenic and “female.” They left the corrupt cities to await God’s judgment on them, forming the Zadokite and other desert communities that were forerunners of Qumran. But midway between the extremes were the really interesting schools of the Essenes (of whom we know very little) and the Nazarenes (of whom we know even less). According to Josephus, the Essenes were monastic Jewish philosophers who exercised healing powers. Many have speculated that Jesus may have come from this milieu, and it is possible that they were closely related to the Therapeutae of the Egyptian desert from whom, said Eusebius, the Christians arose. Jesus and his “brother” James the Righteous were both called Nazarenes, however. This does not refer to the place of Jesus’ home (Nazareth), although both

1. THE INSTRUCTIONS OF THE VIZIER PTAH-HOTEP, 50, trans. J. A. Wilson in ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN TEXTS RELATING TO THE OLD TESTAMENT, ed. J. B. Pritchard (Princeton, 1955), p. 412



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the name of the village and the religious cult come from the same Hebrew root, NZR. In Jewish prophetic tradition, especially especially that of the later later saint-and-martyr tradition that characterized characterized the intertestamental intertestamental period, the Nazor the Nazor (“root, (“root, branch”) was the community or remnant of those in Israel still faithful to Yahweh. By extension, and according to prophecy, the Nazor the Nazor was was the Messiah or Anointed Messenger of God who was to come. To say that Jesus and James were both Nazorim both Nazorim and and “brothers” implies no genetic relationship. Rather, they were members of the same Jewish brotherhood, the Nazarenes. It is precisely for this reason that James became the dynastic successor of Jesus among the disciples at Jerusalem, and for the same reason that it was James the religious authorities sought to murder when the sect appeared to be gathering followers. Jewish Christianity suffered persecution from both Judaism and the growing gentile Christian churches. It was eventually declared heretical and gnostical by the gentile Christians, and driven out of Jerusalem by both the Jewish religious authorities and the Roman seiges. It existed only in obscure semitic communities, and had its most potent influence several centuries after the Roman Church had taken control of gentile Christianity. That is to say, it was through the long-ago rejected Jewish form of messianic religion that Islam gained its knowledge of the One God, the Holy Scriptures, and the prophet Jesus, for these communities survived on the outskirts of the defunct Roman Empire and were the only interface with history and civilization available to Mohammed. It was their influence that provided the framework for the higher form of religion preached by the great prophet of Islam. History has made it impossible for us to know anything substantial about the Nazarenes. It is clear from the teaching of Jesus, however, that they had roots in the Babylonian exile and the cult of the prophet and seer Daniel, whose apocalypse is the youngest book of the Old Testament canon, and the only one written partially in Aramaic, the language of Jesus. It is from this tradition of apocalypse (rather than that of Enoch) and its roots in the Isaian school of prophecy that all Christian revelation proceeds. Rather than the school of Daniel, this might be called the Son of Man school. The Nazarenes practiced practiced poverty, charismatic charismatic healing, exorcism exorcism and were opposed to the religious establishment surrounding the Herodian Temple in Jerusalem. They believed themselves to be part of the Son-of-Man community, a communio sanctorum of sanctorum of all those faithful to Yahweh and his only true interpreters, the prophets. Their way was difficult but open to all who would submit to God’s guidance, which was superior to the legal counsel of rabbis and had the characteristics of a gnosis a gnosis kardia or kardia or inner knowledge.



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They practiced lustrations and a covenantal sacred meal. They used the vow of the Nazirite, in which the hair would riot be cut cut or wine not drunk for specified specified periods. They radically radically spiritualized and allegorized religious symbolism, symbolism, and did not take the Old Testament rules of animal sacrifice litera1ly. As in prophetic tradition, the only true sacrifice was an attitude of submission to submission to God (which, by the way, is what the word “Islam” means). Jesus seems to have comes from this milieu, which was not that of a professional rabbinical or priestly family, but that of a lay religious association or gild—probably Masonic, since he and his father were stone and wood masons, with Joseph’s lineage from the first Jewish builder, Zerubbabel of the Babylonian Captivity, who was was trained by Babylonian Babylonian masons to build the Second Temple in Jerusalem under Ezra and Nehemiah. In any case, this direction in Jewish philosophy was the extreme extreme “school’ or master-disciple master-disciple form that that Wisdom took. She ( Hochmah, Hochmah, Wisdom) was deeply respected by Jesus, whose name for Her was Ruah was Ruah Qodesh, Qodesh, the Spirit of Holiness, or the Pure Spirit, or the Holy Spirit. In Aramaic (Hebrew) the term is feminine. Against Her Jesus would tolerate no blasphemy. So it was that the higher, more advanced and spiritualized initiates initiates of the ancient world created the “paths” of progress--no longer as the ritualized wandering of a god, but as the drama of individual souls ascending by degrees of understanding to the sanctuary of Wisdom. These were the pioneer souls of the Fourth Degree of initiation, which contained within it a microcosm of minor degrees that both recapitulated and foreshadowed the pattern of human initiation through all seven degrees. Their pathways were many, including those of the Pythagoreans, Cyrenaics, Stoics, Platonists and the misunderstood but quite ascetic Epicureans. Their wisdom began with a criticism of traditional religion--the search for natural causes by such persons as Thales and Anaximander, whose schools led to the thought of Aristotle, Theophrastus and the Hellenistic philosophers. Euhemerus speculated that the gods were, in reality, men and women of ancient times whose deeds had been memorialized in myth and legend. Contemporary scholars of religion still include the Euhemerist category in their understanding of the origins of certain gods. But philosophy wasn’t just the activity of those who had “leisure” to reflect, as it had been in the days of Socrates. Philosophia Socrates. Philosophia became became a cult in itself, so that by the time of the reformer Apollonius of Tyana to be a “philosopher” was to be a committed initiate of the highest wisdom-one whose style of life was radically different, whose diet was vegetarian, whose consciousness was mystical, and whose worship was a noetic communion with deity beyond the deities of traditional religion. A philosophical school was much like what is known in the East as an ashram. ashram. Disciples sat at the feet of a master in order to advance under his tutelage. In the time



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of the Neo-Platonist Plotinus, his disciple Porphyry describes mystic ecstasies and psychic phenomena more remeniscent remeniscent of a shaman than than a learned contemplative. contemplative. Apollonius of Tyana Tyana was regarded not only as a sage, but as a saint and thaumaturge whose miracles rivalled those of Jesus. There was more intercourse between East, Near East and West in ancient times than has been generally recognized. recognized. For example, the Pythagorean Pythagorean community of Southern Southern Italy held to beliefs and practices practices that were essentially essentially Brahmin in origin. origin. They were vegetarian, vegetarian, believed in transmigration of the soul, originated the first monastic “ashram” community in the West, and developed an esoteric doctrine of “number” quite unlike anything that came from the Milesian school. While it is possible that Pythagoras was a brilliant intuitive thinker whose individuality Ieft its mark on all Western philosophy quite apart from contact with the East, there is one bit of

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evidence that indicates a strong link between Pythagorean thought and Brahminical influence. Apollonius of Tyana, after completing the five-year silence of the Pythagorean initiate, made a pilgrimage to the East to perfect his knowledge knowledge by studying with Brahinin Brahinin teachers. teachers. Only after this journey did his full ministry ministry bloom, according to the LIFE OF APOLLONIUS APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. TYANA. By the Roman-Hellenistic Roman-Hellenistic period, at least, Pythagorean initiation could be connected with a journey to the East, and it was probably so earlier. India was as much a magnet for the seeker of two thousand years ago as it is today! Will future archeological research demonstrate the correctness of I3lavat-sky’s assertion that India is the seat of mankind’s oldest spiritual wisdom? Greek philosophy “reaHzed” the ideal of the religious hero or saint. What in the mysteries had been achieved only symbolically was given flesh and blood in the lives of the sages who, like Socrates, drank the bitter cup. Job is an ancient figure in Near Eastern philosophy. He represents the dilemma of the traditionally religious person, and as such a figure was used in Edomite and other wisdom traditions of paraHel to that of the Hebrews. As the righteous man whom the gods allow to suffer, he was the seed for religious speculation leading to elevated religious concepts. Job showed the philosophers that man’s man’s righteousness was was not God’s righteousness, righteousness, and man’s thoughts thoughts were not God’s thoughts. Deity was more difficult to grasps more mysterious and alien to the human mind, than the Deuteronomic God of simple earthly rewards and punishments. Why does God allow a just man to suffer? The Book of Job presents several current philosophical views, views, then rejects them them all. The basic question question cannot be answered, answered, but the questioner has grown by the experience of the quest. It ends with an epiphany of the Deity, not unUike the Visio Beatifica of the mysteries but



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somehow different. The reader or hearer of the story has been intellectuaHy, not emotionaHy, changed. His vision of Godhead has been spiritualized, and no longer will the simple answers of the traditional religionist be sufficient for him. The seeker is faithful to the quest. Like Job, or the Suffering Servant of Isaiah, or the Son of Man in Daniel, the wise man of the Wisdom of Solomon, Solomon, the Teacher of Righteousness of the Qumrari community, the martyred philosophers of the Greeks--like all these, who were faithful unto death and raised into glory through martyrdom--the new Fourth-Degree initiates found a reward in their very fidelity to truth and the inner gn5sis inner gn5sis.. They showed a better way, but society abandoned them to their small schools or communities of disciples. Yet it has been their writings, their ideals and their discoveries that have sustained and enriched mankind during the past two millenia. “Woe to you, rabbis and Pharisees, hypocrites! You build up the tombs of the prophets and embellish the monuments of the saints, and you say, ‘If we had been avive in our fathers’ time, we should never have taken part with them in the murder of the prophets.’ So you acknowledge yourselves to be sons of those who killed the prophets. Well said, for you act in the same way! Therefore the Wisdom of God said, ‘I will send them prophets arid apostles, some of whom they will kill arid persecute,’ meaning that the blood of aN the prophets shed from the foundation of the world may be required of this generation, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the the altar and the sanctuary!” sanctuary!” Luke 11.47-51 In the Alice Bailey literature the Fourth Degree is ca1led The Crucifixion. How appropriate, for the path to Wisdom leads upward from the lower human triad and into the higher triad--the realms of understanding no longer shared by mankind, but by rare individuals and even rarer groups of seekers whom society neither recognizes nor understands. The Hermetic Mysteries Although there have been many individual initiates, there have been few groups more advanced than the brotherhood of Hermes Trismegistus. The Hermetic symbolism of medieval European alchemy, astrology and the cosmological diagrams of the Freemasons and Rosicrucians is a mere relic--a fossil-—of Hermetic gn5sis Hermetic gn5sis as as it existed during the Roman-Hellenistic era. The Christian Fathers, bent upon destroying all vestiges of pagan religion, bowed their heads in reverence to the sacred logoi of logoi of Hermes Trismegistus--Justin Trismegistus--Justin Martyr, Cyprian, Lactantius and CyrH of Alexandria, to name a few. Cyril identified



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“Trismegistus” “Trismegistus” with the Christian Trinity. The words of Hermes were those of Christ, or of the Holy Spirit. As early as the end of the first century, a Christian prophet Hermas of the Church of Rome delivered a series of revelations which he received from an “angel” caNed The Shepherd or Poimen. Scholars have remarked on the fact that the revealer of the Hermetic mysteries is Poimandres, The Shepherd of Men. The coincidence is even more strange because the name of the Christian prophet Hermas is etymologically taken from Hermes. It is not unlikely that Hermas of Rome, whose spiritual ideas in THE SHEPHERD OF HERMAS greatly influenced the future course of catholic Christian interpretation, and whose revelation was considered equal to the other books of the New Testament for several centuries before it filtered out of the canon (probably because of its extreme length), length), was a Hermetic Hermetic initiate. The religious ideas expressed in THE SHEPHERD OF HERMAS had a greater impact on Roman catholicism than those of Paul (whose tradition arid spirituality reflect Jewish, not gentile, mysticism and were also far truer to the original teachings of Jesus than most of the Greek New Testament). Apparently it was necessary for these hermetic revelations to be integrated into early Christian thought in order to complete the transition to gentile or world religion, and Hermas was the instrument. Through him the ideas were brought to the highest authorities in the Roman Church, and disseminated with that blessing to aN the churches. The Roman Church and its form of interpretation would eventuaHy dominate Christian thought and define Christianity in the West. Hernias appeared at the critical beginning point in the history of the Roman Church, before it was dominant and while it was still fluid and able to receive sublime revelation. Until very recently we had no idea of what the mysteries of Hermes Trismegistus were like. There were no general exoteric descriptions of Hermetic rites, as we have for the mysteries of Eleusis, or authentic esoteric monuments, as in Egyptian rites for the dead. All that has come down to us is the Greek CORPUS HERMETIGUM and the Latin Asciepius, most of which has been Platonized in transmission and exists in manuscripts of the medieval period only. The CORPUS, as it now stands, constitutes an exoteric “reading mystery” of more interest to philosophers than occultists. Like the later medieval aichemical allegories, the diagrams of Freemasonry, or even the ancient magical papyri that contain hermetic words of power or magical appropriations of spiritual rites, the CORPUS HERMETICUM is a degenerated relic of a once great form of initiation. At the end of World War II a library and archaeological remains of a 3ewish desert community dating from the time of Christ was found on the Dead Sea at Qumran. The Dead Sea Scrolls received the full attention of the scholarly world, more than adequate research funds, and was of strong interest to established Jewish and Christ-



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ian institutions. A second discovery of equal importance came a year or so later. It was made originally in a cave on the Nile River near Chenoboskion, and resulted in the assembling of the Nag Hamrnadi Coptic Gnostic Library. It, however, received little attention until the early 1960’s, had to glean what minor funding it could from UNESCO rather than normal sources of biblical research, and was of little interest to the economic institutions of Judaism and Christianity because it concerned the “heretical” groups of the early Christian period--the Gnostics. The Library, however, contained two hermetic documents dating from the first centuries of the Christian era. One was merely a more original version of the Asclepius, but the other was an authentic esoteric initiation memoir used in the mysteries of Hermes Trismegistus. Tractate 6 of Codex VI is unnamed because the titTh has been lost to a lacuna, and it is clearly secondary to an autograph that (according to the tractate) lay in a hermetic temple of Diospolis. But it is perhaps the most important vantage-point for an understanding of advanced spiritual initiation in the ancient world that we possess, since it has all the evidence of being an esoteric document. It is, in fact, the spiritual “birth certificate” of a hermetic student who has entered the highest degree of initiation known in the Mysteries--the initiation of Palingenesis, the Fourth Degree of attainment. The First Degree of initiation was known among the disciples and apostles of Jesus, if we are to judge by the language used in the Fourth Gospel, where Jesus is made to speak of mystic “‘Birth from Above” to the highly educated and deeply spiritual Nicodemus (John 3.1-14). Needless to say, say, this First Degree Degree is the “born-again” state of the new Christian Christian (although fundamentalist biblical interpretation would try to claim Palingenesis for itself!). The first Christian initiation is symbolized by a lustration known as baptism. It signifies the identification of the believer with Christ crucified, as well as the vows to renounce moral impurity, and the action of the Holy Spirit in quickening his soul. She, however, will leave him if he submits the temple of his body to spiritual impurities, impurities, and return only when when the temple is clean. clean. (The number of times a person could be re-entered re-entered by the Holy Spirit was an issue in the the early churches, when when apostasy during persecution was common, and repentance after the cessation of persecution also common. People were finally allowed to repent more than one time, but without necessity of a second baptism.) Genesis An5then (Greek An5then (Greek “Birth from Above”) has no equivalent Aramaic religious term known to me, yet it seems clear that it was part of the inner teaching of Jesus since it is transmitted in the only gospel (albeit probably the Iatest) that was written in a tradition taken directly from a •

living disciple of Jesus--



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in this case the old man John, who was a young man, indeed youngest of the disciples, when Jesus was crucified. Mark’s gospel was written by a disciple of Peter, but he did not include esoteric teachings in it. Rather, he wrote a “secret” gospel for advanced Christian initiates. Its existence has been proven in a recently recently discovered letter of Clement Clement of Alexandria, Alexandria, which quotes parts of it in confidential correspondence to correct the version held by the correspondent. Clemens Alexandrinus was deeply concerned with textual criticism, and we have many of his memoranda correcting corrupted sections of duplicated texts. The letter (published recently by Professor Morton Smith) is clearly genuine, and demonstrates that there was an inner and more advanced form of Christian instruction for mature initiates during the period of the early churches, and that the claim of many gnostics to p05sess all or part of that legacy must be taken more seriously by biblical scholars. scholars. In any case, only St. John and St. Paul preserve references to that more sublime doctrine. Most of it, contrary to what has been thought, is probably contained in Paul ‘s epistles and is faithful to the mystic teachings of Jesus. After all Paul studied for fourteen years before he was asked to serve as an apostle, and he was one of the best-trained and most intellectually scrupulous of the Jewish-Christian rabbis. In his letters he is always careful to delineate his own thought from what he has “received.” With the researches of scholars like Daube, Hunter and Davies demonstrating how little of Paul’s teaching is innovative (rather, it is faithful to his received traditions and Jewish rabbinical categories of interpretation), interpretation), it has become clear that is not only our earliest source for the teachings of Jesus, but perhaps our best vehicle for rediscovering the esoteric teachings of early Christianity. It is interesting that Pauline and Johannine traditions often agree against synoptic traditions (which are clearly exoteric, evangelical and gentile oriented). Paul, however, never mentions Palingenesis since his letters are usually directed at First Degree (newly baptized) Christians who are “fleshly” (sar kikos) kikos) rather than “spiritual” ( pneumatikos), pneumatikos), and unready for higher teachings. Like Christians, hermetic students were attracted through exoteric, public lectures. Those who were strongly attracted and “begged for instruction” were taken into regular large-group instruction on moral, cosmological and soteriological subjects. Like Christians, who would attend regular instruction as members of the Catachumenate for at least two years before baptism, the hermetic students were given a long period of probation before being admitted to the rite of baptism in the basin. basin. The baptising agent was the Nous or Understanding Understanding of God. (It was was the nous or understanding of the disciples that was opened in Emmaeus in the post-resurrection meal with Christ, and the nous that Paul exhorted his hearers to exercise rather than the babble of glossolalia).



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After the initiation in the krat~r or or basin of Nous (water), hermetic students continued their studies in smaller groups. They worked through degrees of understanding, learning the occult sciences and growing in an ethical-mystical ascent of the soul through dialogue with a hermetic “Father” or Teacher. As the student progressed over the years, he was finally taken in groups of only two or three, and finally alone as an individual. This is not unlike the Christian inner path, except that esoteric teaching in the early church was given only to those ascending the degrees or minor offices that led, for some, to ordination, and finally consecration with apostolic laying-on of hands. The full hermetic initiate would also become a teacher himself, himself, but it is unclear unclear whether full initiation initiation was the goal of all hermetic initiates. One thing is clear, however. Hermetic initiates of the higher degrees were male only-there were no female teachers or high initiates. The same was true in Christian orders of ministry. Both were esoteric brotherhoods, for the most part, although it is clear that Jesus differed radically from other Jewish rabbis of his time in accepting female disciples, and there is some evidence for female leadership in some quarters of the early Church. Clearly, also, female saints and martyrs were honored in the Christian canon, while the hermetic saints were male (the “brotherhood” of the Ogdoad, or the ascended initiates). Yet the great female figure of Isis is prominent throughout the CORPUS HERMETICUM, HERMETICUM, and one cannot be certain that women were not taken in as disciples and then considered to be “male,” as is implied in the GOSPEL OF THOMAS, “Every woman who makes herself male will enter the Kingdom ( Malkuth, Malkuth, ‘Rulership’) of God.” As early as Pythagoras the spiritual symbolism of male versus female was being used. “Male” was associated associated with divinity and incorruption or immortality, even numbers, the right hand, strength and so on. “Female” was associated with mortality, the round of rebirth, odd numbers,

the left hand, weakness and moral cor ruptibility. That is why the gnostic Jesus of one of the early apocryphal gospels says, “I have come to destroy the works of woman!” By “woman” he means mortality. In spite of this symbolical milieu, the Jesus of history (as opposed to the gnostic philosopher who put his his ideas into the mouth of Jesus) Jesus) was astoundingly astoundingly positive in his attitude toward women, treating them as equal souls with men in the Anastasis or Resurrection, when they would become “as the angels.” St. Paul carried this attitude further when he announced in Galatians that in Christ there is no “male” or “female,” but all are one. To what extent this may have been the attitude of the hermetics, we cannot say. It is certain, however, that unlike many of the Gnostics, they did not use use



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the male-female symbolism in any of their teaching, and Isis was revered by them just as the Holy Spirit was by the Christians. The main contrast between Christianity and hermetic cultism is this: the former was a religion of devotion, for the most part, while the latter was a path of scholarship or the intellect. Such pathways developed within the Christian churches, but they never dominated its worship. The Mysteries of Hermes Trismegistus Trismegistus were for an elite number of highly developed souls ready for initiation into the Fourth Degree, while Christianity was a vessel for the purpose of gathering those ready to enter the Spiritual Kingdom--mostly as First Degree Initiates, but also as Second Degree Initiates striving for the Third Degree, where one could become pneumatikos become pneumatikos and and serve as an apostle. Christianity was for the masses, and contained no intellectual requirements. The intellectual pathways were developed developed as the religion grew and matured, and only as members passed into higher degrees degrees or membership was was augmented by those of of higher degree. The apostles, apostles, with the exception of Paul (who had not been a disciple of Jesus), were not initiates of high degree. Rather, they were great souls in the making who were able to respond like strings on a harp. For this reason it is unlikely that the esoteric teachings of Jesus known only by the disciples who were chosen as apostles could have been of the sort that the Gnostics claimed--systems claimed--systems of aeons, cosmological schemes, occult sciences. This is all Fourth Degree work, and the apostles were neither suited for this kind of education nor chosen for their intellect. Rather, the inner teachings of Jesus concerned spiritual growth, charisms like healing, and revelations about the mystical union between man and God. God. Gnosticism is a very inclusive word. It refers as much to the “fundamentalist” pseudointellectuals derided by Porphyry and Celsus as to the great spiritual philosophers of the early Christian period like Basilides, Isidore and Valentinus. There was a world of difference between Cerenthus or Nicolaus, whom the Johannine disciples despised for their immoral teachings, and an intellectual saint like Basilides, whose ideas were too advanced for the First and Second Degree initiates of the early Christian churches. The adjective “hermetic,” however, was not an inclusive word. It refered to a body of high spiritual gn5sis spiritual gn5sis transmitted transmitted only to the worthy few able to absorb and understand it. Originating somewhere in the interface between Hellenism and traditional Egyptian priestly cult, it provided the only organized system of initiation into the Fourth Degree that the ancient world west of the Mesopotamian region produced. Fourth Degree initiates were being produced by the Pythagorean and other Greek schools, but not as conscious initiates.



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This brings us to the crux of the chapter. Just what is initiation is initiation into the Fourth Degree? We have seen the ways that people enter the First Degree (baptism), the Second Degree and finally arrive at the Third Degree--a state of service and sanctity shared by Christian apostles, priests and tribal shamans. Now let us examine the Rebirth that characterizes entry into the Fourth Degree of Initiation. The Mystery Liturgy of Hermes Trismegistus Trismegistus Let us compare the “Tractate on Rebirth,” CORPUS HERMETICUM XIII, and the newly discovered hermetic initiation Tractate Tractate 6 of Nag Hammadi Codex VI. They are both reflections of the same mystery liturgy of Palingenesis, performed as the final stage of hermetic initiation. The difference is that C.H. XIII is a stylized or generalized version, while Tractate 6 is edited from an actual historical initiation. Each is in the form of a dialogue between the student or “son” and the hermetic “father,” so called because he is the spiritual generator of the new initiate. Included in the ceremony would have been a scribe, whose work was to faithfully record the proceedings of the dialogue, which would be placed as a sacred record in the House of Life of Diospolis--an ancient record depository which included birth certificates as part of its library. The dialogues begin with the fervent desire of the student to know the final way into the Ogdoas or Eighth Plane of Consciousness, where hermetic initiates in and out of the body exist “as energies, increasing other souls.” Those of the Ogdoas eventually, after selfless service of mankind, ascend into the Enneas or Ninth Level of Consciousness, which is the realm of the aeonic powers (Truth, Beauty, Logos, etc.), where they “mingle with the powers,” or become pure emmanations of the Godhead. In Christian terms, they would become “higher than the angels,” the eventual mystic goal of Pauline revelation. (According to the words of Jesus, they would become “as the angels” in the Anastasis or Resurrection.) To compare Christianity and hermetic thought, the Christian Resurrection (which is also called the Palingenesia in Matthew’s Gospel--the only place in the New Testament that the term “Rebirth” is used in the mystic sense) seems to be equivalent to the hermetic Palingenesis. Palingenesis. This may explain why Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians speaks against Christian mystics who think they have already achieved the Resurrection while in the body, and consider themselves to be pneumatikoi be pneumatikoi.. First Degree Initiates, caught in the inflation of charismatic experience, considered themselves in their human knowledge to be sages! The same can be seen today among the fundamentalists. fundamentalists.



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This leads to the question of whether the hermetic initiates had really achieved Anastasis-a goal of the Gnostics as well. The answer is that while the Christian Gnostics of many persuasions (with many other exceptions), such as those who were the object of Paul’s Corinthian epistle, thought it possible to achieve Anastasis in the flesh, the hermetic mystics (with certain of the Gnostics as well as Church Fathers like Origen and other Alexandrians) considered their share in the Anastasis only a partial and symbolic condition. Like the original Jewish Christians who prayed, “Grant us this day our heavenly bread of Thy Morrow,” Morrow,” in which a foretaste foretaste of God’s great Shalom under His Malkuth or Rulership (“Kingdom”) was asked, the hermetic mystics sought only a mystic communion with the Brotherhood of the Ogdoad--not the illusion of full membership while in the flesh. Jesus announced that God’s Malkuth was immediate, immanent and near at hand for those who would submit (“repent”) to God’s guidance. Certainly the best translation of Malkuth is not “Kingdom” of God, as the Christians would have it, nor is it even “Rulership.” Rather, the word “Guidance” carries the meaning best. This Malkuth is available to all who will submit to its discipline (usually translated as “repent”--a gross misunderstanding of the Aramaic root NHM), which is tramsmitted through the mediation of God’s angels (“messengers”) and spiritual guides. The ancient mythical guides of the souls or psychopompoi or psychopompoi were were Thoth and Hermes. In the hermetic mysteries they fused as Thoth-Hermes, or Tat-Hermes, often represented by the figure of Tat (Thoth) in the CORPUS HERMETICUM.

In the historical mysteries of Hermes Trismegistus, however, the guides of men’s souls were the ascended, regenerated brothers of the Ogdoad. Like the Bodhisatvas of the East, they had vowed to help mankind as spiritual energies after physical death, and while still in the body (through magical prayer). Those still in the body, while symbolically initiated into the Anastasis of the Ogdoad, did not “become rich” and “reign as kings,” as Paul accused the self-styled Corinthian charismatic Christians of having claimed to do. Instead, they remained anonymous, hidden spiritual centers to focus the love, light and power of the ascended brotherhood where it was needed among mankind. This is a much different kind of Anastasis than that claimed by the Corinthian charismatics, who considered themselves to be superior Christians worthy of material wealth and secular power. This path would lead, of course, to the Great Black Brotherhood, and there is no doubt that the inferior Lodge has gained more membership through the Christian Church than any other spiritual instrument of the past two millenia! It is at the First and Fourth degrees of initiation that the downward path is most easily mistaken for the upward path, because these are the “mental” degrees, and the mind is the deluder and destroyer of the Real.



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The major difference is that First Degree Initiates are more capable of redemption from the downward path than Fourth Degree Initiates, because they are younger and their minds weaker. But a Fourth Degree Initiate who choses the downward path is very difficult to redeem, and he will manifest his decision through desires for self that are difficult to recognize. Motives for First Degree failure are easy to see--desire for wealth, earthly power, adulation, leadership, superiority. But Fourth Degree motives subsist on inner planes. The initiate may serve humanity, but why? Eventually the motives can be discerned through patterns of behavior, and they are the same as those for First Degree Initiates. But they are cleverly disguised. The First Degree Initiate can eventually see through his motives, given time and help. But the Fourth Degree Initiate, with his developed mind, finds it far more difficult to honestly discern his own motives. Yet, once he has found himself, it is far easier for him to remain on the upward path than it is for the First Degree Initiate. To return to our question of whether hermetic initiates had achieved the Resurrection or Anastasis, the answer must be, no. But this is because they didn’t consider themselves to have achieved Anastasis in a physical body. Resurrection was only symbolically liturgized, for it would be the crisis point that led into the Sixth Degree, or the Visio Visio Beatifica of Fifth Degree Degree Work. Instead, the hermetic mystics made contact with the Ogdoad through initiation into the Fourth Degree. By this means the intuition was activated, so that after the completion of the Fourth Degree he (or she?) could make conscious contact with a guide of the Ogdoad. At this point, Fifth Degree work would begin (still in the physical body), with the opening of psychic centers that would allow for growing continuity of consciousness (awareness of past lives, ability to see future or past events, to visualize motives and thought forms of others). At the end of this work would come the Anastasis, when the hermetic initiate would no longer return in a physical body, but exist “as the energies, augmenting other souls.” This, then, was the subject of the Mystery Liturgy of Palingenesis. Its purpose was twofold: To complete initiation into not only the Fourth Degree, but into the new, higher spiritual plane of the upper triad into which the disciple had come. It was therefore similar to First Degree Initiation, in that it was a Rebirth-—but not into the Spiritual Kingdom. Rather, it symbolized rebirth as a Pneumatic on the higher plane of consciousness. It was a higher octave of First Degree initiation, being concerned with higher (not lower) mind, and entrance into the higher triad of spiritual consciousness. Second, the Mystery Liturgy brought the consciousness (Coptic MEEYE) into the



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Ogdoad or Eighth Plane, the abode of the guides. It did not take the entire person, but just his consciousness, into the Eighth. When the Father could see the pattern of the Ogdoad in the soul of the student (which he discerned through psychic inspection), with all the Powers singing sacred hymns to the One God, he knew that the disciple had achieved the initiation. The disciple had received the typos of typos of the succeeding triad of heirarchical work (degrees Four, Five and Six), and would be able to proceed under the guidance of the Ogdoad. When the disciple had successfully entered the Ogdoad in consciousness, consciousness, he would spontaneously bring forth a sacred hymn to the Godhead, the Father of the All. This was a kind of higher glossolalia in which the Powers (Truth Beauty, etc.) would “play” on the disciple’s nous as nous as a musician plucks the strings of an instrument, bringing forth sacred praise from the lips of the new initiate in his own rational tongue. The proper understanding for what happenes here is not a kind of mediumship, but rather an intuitive outpouring. From this point on, the disciple will be able to answer through his own mouth any mouth any spiritual question he might have. He has become an “intuitive.” Guidance flows through him, as well as to him. He will always serve as a guide and teacher to others from this point on, if he continues on the upward path. Let us now examine the actual mechanism of the Mystery Liturgy of Hermes Trismegi stus. “(0 my Father) you promised me yesterday (to bring) my consciousness into (the) Ogdoad, and afterwards to bring me into the Ennead. You said, ‘This is the succession of the ((Hermetic)) tradition.’ “0 my son, this is indeed the succession. But the promise was made in human terms. For I said it to you when I instituted the promise, and I said it on the condition that you are remembering each one of the degrees.” Tractate 6 begins with the son’s request for the Liturgy. He knows that the eventual goal is not the Ogdoad, but the Ennead (abode of the ascended Masters). The Father reminds him that the Liturgy was promised in the formal covenental vows that were made early in the son’s training, but also that the only way the son can attain the Ogdoad is through overcoming each one of the seven astral degrees--Lunar, Mercurial, Venusian, Solar, Martian, Jupiterian and Saturnine. Before the soul is free of necessity for physical incarnation, it must overcome the causality that binds it to earth over seven degrees of ascending consciousness. In order for the disciple’s MEEYE or “consciousness” to extend into the Eighth or Ogdoad during this initiation, he must consciously elevate himself above these seven planes of causality. This will be a joint effort of consciousness between the Father Father and the I,

son.



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In Tractate XIII the Father guides the student through this process in a Zen-like series of paradoxes that somehow somehow shock his awareness awareness into the necessary necessary change. He compains, compains, “You tell me a riddle, my Father, and do not converse with me as a Father to a son.” The Father answers, “This sort of thing, my child, cannot be taught, but God recalls it to your consciousness when He wills.” Knowledge ( gn5sis) gn5sis) was gained not through senses, but by means of recollection, since the soul is immortal and all-knowing. Knowledge came from within, and had only to be “drawn out,” as the Latin roots for our word “education” demonstrate (e-duc3re, “to draw or lead out”). Thus God “recalls it to your memory.” Now the sudent is beginning beginning to become confused. confused. “You give me explanations that are impossible and forced, 0 my Father!” The Father replies, “What am I to say, my Son? I can say nothing but this: Seeing in myself an immaterial vision produced by the mercy of God, I went forth from myself into an immortal body and am not now what I was before, but have been born in the Nous (Higher Mental Body). This thing cannot be taught nor can it be grasped by this element formed of matter which enables one to see in this world. That is why I have had no concern for my first composite (i.e, human) form. I no longer have color or sense of touch or size; I am a stranger to all these things. Now you see me, my child, with your eyes, but you cannot understand what I am by staring at me with corporeal eyes and earthly vision. It is not with these eyes that I can be seen now, my child.” The disciple is beginning to experience a radical change of consciousness. consciousness. “You have thrown me, my Father, into a great frenzy and delerium. For now I cannot see myself!” “May you, too, my child, go forth from yourself like those who are haunted by dreams in their sleep, but in your case without going to sleep,” exclaims the Father in a hermetic benediction. “Now at last, my Father, you have rendered me speechless! I have lost my former senses.. .but yes, I see your size the same, my Father, along with your external shape.” “And in that,” declares the Father, “you are mistaken, for the mortal form changes daily since with time in increases and decreases, altering itself like a deceiver. “What then is true, Trismegistus?” cries the disciple, having lost his former wisdom, the secret sciences he has studied, the astronomy, medicine and mathematics



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he has mastered over past years as an advanced hermetic disciple. Suddenly all this is worthless, and he knows nothing. “That which is not polluted, my child, that which is unlimited, without color, without shape, without change, naked, shining, that which can be grasped by you yourself, the unalterable Good, the Incorporeal Reality,” intones the Father, using the Greek particle a-, a-, so common in mystical language about the un-knowable, invisible, invisible, im-perceivable qualities of Godhead and true Reality (cf. Gregory Naziantius and the Cappadocian Fathers of the Christian Church). “I am truly mad, my Father. For when I thought that you had made me wise, the perception which I have of my thought was blocked up!” “That you may expect, my child. The senses can perceive what is carried upwards like fire and carried downwards like earth and what is wet like water and which blows throughout the universe like air. But how can you perceive with the senses that which is not hard, hard, not wet, wet, not tightly bound (i.e, solid), which cannot be pierced--that which can be understood only by the effect of its power and activity, and which requires someone who can understand birth in God?” Here it is useful to compare the Christian dialogue in the Fourth Gospel John 3.1-12, concerning rebirth into the Spiritual Kingdom, or the First Initiation, which is not called Palingenesis (as the fundamentalists fundamentalists seem to think), but rather the Birth From Above (Genesis (Genesis An5then). “ Amen, amen, amen, I say unto you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Malkuth of God. That which is born of flesh is flesh, and that which is born of Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born from Above.’ The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Why does the writer of the Gospel compare birth into the Spiritual Kingdom with the blowing of the wind? Not simply because the Greek words for spirit spirit and wind are the same- pneuma. Rather, it is because initiation into into the First Degree, Degree, or Spiritual Birth, like the the Rebirth of the hermetic initiate, cannot be taught or transmitted by human agents. It comes when the Pneuma (Spirit, or “wind”) wills it. As the hermetic Father says, “This sort of thing, my child, cannot be taught, but God recalls it to your memory when He wills.” In Pauline mysticism there was a strong sense of anamnesis or “remembrance” in the Christian initiate. He states that the Christian way was determined for all initiates aeons ago, “even as He chose us in Him (Christ) before the foundation of the world.. .He destined us in love to be His sons through Jesus Christ...” (Ephesians 1.4-5). This kind of language has led to the Christians dogmas of predes



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tination (not only to salvation, but to damnation!). While this can be viewed as predestination for not only salvation (Aramaic jeshua (Aramaic jeshua,, “liberation,” the name of Jesus), but for ascent into the highest initiations for all members of the human race, it is basically a reference to the “pattern” or typos of typos of sanctification that God has implanted into all mankind. This predestines all flesh to eventual “remembrance” of who and what they really are, really are, so that “conversion” or any other method of stumbling into the guidance of God is basically anemnestic. It occurs through “recognition” of the divine patterns, and thus through the unconscious memory. Two things are important for understanding First Degree initiation, then. First, it occurs (as said in the Fourth Gospel) when the Spirit is willing, not when some evangelist immerses a candidate into a baptismal basin. Second, it can occur only when the subject himself or herself is ready. The candidate initiates himself! When the student is ready, the master appears. Returning to the Mystery Liturgy, it is clear that the son is ready for the crisis of initiation. The Father has not hypnotized him so that he can generate an experience. In fact, he simply tells the son of his own, personal experience, and leaves the matter in the hands of God. If the son is ready for initiation, his memory will be stimulated by the pattern of the Father’s initiation, and the noetic process will occur. The son feels that he is going mad. The words of the Father seem strange to him. He feels the futility of the massive education he has received, and now feels that the perception he has of his own thought is suddenly blocked. The Father, seeing that the son is verging on the crisis, intones mystical philosophy about the insensibility of true Reality, declaring that it can be understood only by one who understands apotheosis apotheosis (the process process of a human being becoming becoming divine). “Am I then incapable of doing so, my Father?” “By no means, my child,” the Father declares, knowing now that the student is ready. “Draw it to yourself and it will come. Desire it, and it will be,” he says. For the son is now operating in the causal planes of consciousness. “Abolish the senses of the body and the birth of deity will occur. Cleanse yourself from the irrational afflictions of matter.” Here the son is undergoing an ascent through the Hebdomad (or Seven Planes) of causality, each degree associated with the lower psychic, astral or psychological realm--that is, the realm of the physical senses. They are (in hermetic terms) “executioners,” for they delude the soul into thinking that the illusions of this lower plane are more real than the intuitions of the higher planes. The student of Tractate XIII is taken through a liturgical cleansing of the



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twelve (zodiacal) powers of illusion. They are: Ignorance of the executioners or physical senses; Grief; Incontinence; Lust; Injustice; Greed; Deceit; Envy; Treachery; Anger; Rashness; Evil. These are driven out by what must replace them in the zodiacal or astral body, in order: Knowledge of God; Joy; Continence; Steadfastness; Justice; Fellowship; Truth; Good; finally, Life and Light vanquish the other four. These are called “powers,” or in the Latinized English form, “virtues,” a word meaning also “powers.” In spiritual reality, moral virtues are “power,” just as light overpowers darkness. The twelve zodiacal errors have been replaced by an astral body composed of ten powers or emmanations from the Ennead, or Ninth Plane. In Tractate 6, the historical document, there is no liturgy of exorcism for the student has already undergone an ethical-mystical ascent through the Hebdomad in previous training. It is included in Tractate XIII simply as part of the pattern. But in both tractates, once the student has begun to ascend in consciousness, consciousness, he has a profound personal experience. experience. “Now that God has made me steadfast, my Father, I form mental images not through the sight of eyes but through the spiritual activity granted me by the Powers! I am in the heaven, in the earth, in the water, in the air! I am in animals, in plants! I am in the belly, before the belly, after the belly, everywhere!...I see see the All and I see myself in the Nous!” The Father replies, “This is Rebirth, my child: To form mental images no longer in the shape of threedimensional corporeality.. .The perceptible body of nature is far removed from (the one that comes in) Real birth. For the one is perishable, the other is not; the one is mortal, the other is not. Do you not know that you have been born a god and son of the One just as I have been?” This is exactly what St. Paul speaks of as Resurrection in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 15: “There are celestial bodies, and there are terrestrial bodies, but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.. .So it is with the Resurrection of the dead. What is sown (i.e, the body planted in the like a seed) is perishable, but what is raised is imperishable.. .it is sown a physical ( psychikos, psychikos, “sentient; of the senses”) body, but it is raised a spiritual (p~matikos (p~matikos)) body. If there is a physical physical body, there is also also a spiritual body.” Clearly, then, hermetic Palingenesis or Rebirth was equivalent to Christian Anastasis or Resurrection. It was a higher octave of the Christian Baptism, or First Degree Initiation into the world of Spirit, where the initiate was given a new birth “from Above.”



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Another point must be mentioned here. Although hermetic baptism in the krat~r of of water symbolizing Nous was ceremonially equivalent to Christian baptism, it was in fact only a recapitulation of an earlier entrance into the Spiritual Kingdom experienced by the disciple in an earlier life. This recapitulation of past initiations is a common way of finding our spiritual level. These days, for example, many people have achieved Second, Third and Fourth degree initiations. Yet a Third Degree initiate might undergo an enthusiastic conversion to Christianity resulting in a baptism at the age of nineteen, stick with the Church for ten years, then find himself more interested in (for example) studying to be a professional counselor. During this period he has recapitulated the First Degree of an initiation he took several lifetimes ago, and now begins to recapitulate the Second Degree. He may have completed this degree as a monk, subjecting himself to strong disciplines of introspection, self-examination and analysis of motives. This time, however, he undertakes a course of study in psychology, during which he undergoes major personality changes, experiments with behavior and finally (after a crisis) emerges as a mature, steadfast counselor able to guide others in their transition through the Second Degree. He stands on the Third Degree of attainment and reaches back to help those following him. This is, indeed, his true life’s work (no matter how long it may last). He is a Third Degree Initiate, and his work is service to mankind, like that of the ancient priests and shamans. The other “stages” of his life were mere recapitulations of past degrees that guided him finally into his true status, and into the degree in which he could creatively serve and spiritually mature. So it was with the hermetic initiates. They had already been converts, seekers, and servers. They were now ready for Fourth Degree work, and for Rebirth into the higher triad of Reality. They had served as priests, ruled as kings. Now they were ready for higher discipleship and world service. Not so with the Christians. Christians. Many of them were entering the Spiritual Spiritual Kingdom for the first first time, and the Third Degree (the “Third Heaven” of St. Paul’s visions) was the highest service known-—that of an apostle. Christianity was designed to serve the spiritual need of a great number of human souls, and is the gate through which hundreds of millions of people have entered in the past two millenia. millenia. The hermetic mysteries, mysteries, on the contrary, existed existed as a gateway gateway of higher initiation for a small number of advanced, highly gifted souls, who would reappear as adepts and saints in the coming millennium--inside and outside of the Church. When the hermetic initiate had achieved the Visio Beatifica, the Vision of the Ogdoad, this was confirmed by psychic inspection, as in Tractate 6:



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“We have received this enlightenment, and I see this single vision within you (0 my son)--I see the Ogdoas, with the souls that are in it and the angels singing unto the Ennead (Ninth) and its Powers. Moreover, I see Him possessing the power of them all, while He creates in the Spirit.” Now the initiated initiated disciple pours forth his eucharist and joy in the form of the hermetic hymn, which was sung “in silence,” yet is recorded aloud during initiation. The ability to spontaneously sing praise unto the Deity was the sort of higher charism that St. Paul urged his hearers to develop, so that they could speak with the nous in nous in terms that were logikos or logikos or rational. The son begins to hymn the Godhead: “I shall send forth praise with my heart, imploring for the consummation of the All, and the Origin of the origin of that which men seek, the Immortal Thing that is found, the Begetter of Light and Truth, the Sower of the Logos ((cf. Jesus’ parable of the Sower)), the Love of Life Immortal! No occult doctrine will will ever be fitting to discourse upon Thee, Lord! Wherefore Wherefore my nous wishes nous wishes to hymn Thee daily! I am the ((musical)) instrument of Thy Spirit, the Nous is Thy plectrum, and Thy Will performs psaltery upon me! I see myself! I have received power through Thee because Thy Love has strengthened us!...O the grace which ensues! I return grace ((Coptic idiom meaning ‘give thanks’)) in hymning Thee, for I received life through Thee when Thou madest me wise! I praise Thee! I call Thy Name, which is hidden within me! A 0 EE 0 !~ 000 III 000 0000 0000 YYYYYY 000000-000000000000! Thou art He Who exists with the Spirit! I hymn Thee in a divine state of consciousness!” The Name is a mathematical sequence of the seven Greco-Coptic vowels, which were magical sounds of power if properly inflected. The creative use of sound is a Fourth Degree study, but it cannot be taught. As in the disciple’s disciple’s ecstatic utterance, utterance, the knowledge is is “hidden” within each of us. A final note. The hermetic “Father” must have been a Fifth Degree Initiate, for he exercised the higher psychic perceptions (such as looking “into” the disciple to verify that he had, in fact, attained to the Vision of the Ogdoas). No information exists either here or in any other occult literature authoritatively describing the Fifth Initiation with the exception of the Alice Bailey writings. There the description is sparse. One thing can be certain. There have been so few Fifth Degree Initiates on the earth that it has been impractical to establish formal mysteries of initiation for them. That has been true up to this point in human history. Now, however, the number of souls working on the Fourth Degree necessitates a formal initiation into Fifth Degree work, for there are hundreds and perhaps thousands



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50 of them in the world today. Most of them are still recapitulating past progress, but with the rate of change in today’s world and the new systems of communication open to many people (especially those with higher education and well developed minds), it is certain that communication will be established among them. With that will eventually come the establishment of new mysteries of initiation.



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It is appropriate now to explore the many facets of Fourth Degree work as they have appeared in history, and to briefly name some of the better-known initiates whose work has contributed the mankind. Having already said something about the ancient period, let us examine the medieval period, beginning with the adepts of Alexandria before they were persecuted by the ascending Christian Church. The Medieval Adepts To begin with, let us clarify what is meant by an “adept.” The term has been used to describe alchemists, alchemists, sorcerers, sages and wizards of all kinds, but the one thing they all have in common is wisdom. wisdom. An adept is a person who is “adept” in one or more fields of occult study. The term, therefore, may refer to initiates of either Fourth or Fifth degrees, and will be used here to mean an “advanced student” of these degrees. In the earlier centuries of the medieval period most of the Fourth Fourth Degree work was done in the occident by educated educated or Church connected men. Later the work included large numbers of those whose interests forced them out of the Church, or who were Moslems, protestants, scientists, scientists, philosophers, physicians, Jews or other seeming “infidels.” But they were spiritually more advanced than the Churchmen, with the exception of those few Churchmen who, like Thomas More and Erasmus, were also engaged in Fourth Degree work. First we must consider the adepts of Alexandria, who represented the full flowering of Hellenistic spirituality, spirituality, and the last chance women would have for the education required for work of the Fourth Degree. Two women stand out: Cleopatra the Alchemist, whose manuscripts (some of them) are still extant, and Hypatia the Neo-Platonist philosopher, who was murdered by a group of zealous Christian monks determined to rid the city of paganism. Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemais, had been one of her pupils, and she was the last of a line of great Middle- and Neo-Platonic philosophers that included included Plotinus, Porphyry, Porphyry, lamblichus, as well well as the Christian philosophers philosophers Basilides, Isidore, Pantaenus (first head of the Christian catechetical school at Alexandria), Clement of Alexandria (his successor), and Origen (perhaps greatest of the Christian philosophers, declared heretical during the later ecumenical councils). As the Church started to build an intellectual base of doctrine, many souls progressed into Second Degree work--that of the introspective life. Monasticism



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had its first impulses through the Johannine and Syrian Christian schools, on the one hand, and the Coptic Christian school (centered in Alexandria), on the other. The movement began to gain adherents through the pioneering work of the desert fathers and mothers in Egypt, with St. Anthony of the Desert as the figurehead of this idealized and romanticized discipline. Soon the monastery of St. Pachomius had been established. This earliest of Christian monasteries, by the way, was the location of the Nag Hammadi Coptic Gnostic Library. What were the Pachomian monks doing reading all that gnostical hermetic and otherwise unorthodox, heretical literature? The fact is that ,

Gnosticism belonged to Second Degree Christianity, and appealed to the Second Degree Initiate. It was the path to Third Degree wholeness, the bringing together of light and darkness, masculine and feminine, right hand and left hand--the pathway of psychological or “lower psychic” development. Monasticism was gnostical, gnostical, by definition, since it sought God in the context of an inner search. search. No longer was Deity “up” in the sky. It was “within” the heart of the seeker, as the words of the desert fathers so clearly reveal. A very few had become Fifth Degree Initiates, some through sojourn in the desert, others through the viscisitudes of life. These were able to assist human beings through their cults and relics, and were called “saints.” They were like the Greek heros, whose cults provided miraculous cures and protection on a journey, help in finding lost items, help during disaster, and whatever. Those whose progress was made in the desert would return to complete the work of the Fourth Degree in another lifetime, though they were already operating at the level of the Fifth Degree. This would be necessary for mental balance, for progress after the Second Degree is begun can be stimulated beyond the natural pace, as in other yogas. Yet the disciple must recapitulate and work out the details of Second, Third and Fourth Degree progress in other lives. There is no real advantage in forced progress, and the motive for it is impure. Yet the monastic tradition helped create the cult of saints, who worked with and for Christian seekers through the instruments of their relics, names and symbols until the time came for another life in flesh. Since the time period between incarnations incarnations increases with with spiritual progress up to the Fifth Degree, Degree, the “saints” were were active in their cults for several centuries at a time. When they returned to lead another life, it was often quite anonymous, so that after the next passing out of the body, the cult of the older saint would be revitalized, since it was the established mode for that great soul to aid mankind. This was done without higher charisms, by the way. The knowledge of hermetic sciences, and especially alchemy, was perpetuated in Egypt until the time of the Moslem invasions. The names of two alchemists have



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come down to us from this period. The first was a Christian adept of Panopolis (modern Akhmim) on the Nile, one Zosimos, who compiled twenty-eight books on the science of alchemy, adding original research to volumes of past hermetic work. Zosimus was a contemporary of St. Augustine of Hippo, whose Platonistic theological writings (such as THE CITY OF GOD) set the tone for Christian philosophy for at least eight hundred years, and still dominates Anglican and Roman theology. He, too, was working on the Fourth Degree of attainment. The second alchemist was Stephanos of Alexandria, who was in favor at the court of the Christian Byzantine Emperor Herakleios. He left a long alchemical treatise that reflects not a laboratory knowledge, but a theoretical philosophical approach approach to alchemy as a mental mental process. ,

Thus by the seventh century physical alchemy seems no longer practiced, which is not strange, since it was an art known to Alexandrian scientists scientists employed by the pagan courts to produce curious glass-work, strange metals and other experimental oddities. When the courts disappeared, so did the knowledge of the art, which had been collected in encyclopedic books. After their invasions of Egypt and other parts of the Byzantine Empire, the Moslems discovered Greek and Latin libraries containing volumes of philosophy, biology, mathematics and the hermetic sciences. Alchemy was made a part of certam schools of Islamic mysticism, such as that of Al Jabir (called Geber in the West). Jabir effectively reconstituted a large portion of ancient knowledge in his studies as an advanced student of the Fourth Degree, and preserved such hermetic classics as THE EMERALD TABLE, where the great statement is given, “As above, so below.” The misinterpretation of this axiom led scientists of the occident far from truth on many occasions, but it is an occult classic, classic, for the key to to knowledge is the ability ability to interpret the correspondences correspondences between celestial celestial and terrestrial things, as St. Paul did in his wisdom concerning concerning the two bodies, bodies, psychikos and psychikos and pneumati pneumati kos. kos. There were other Islamic alchemists, such as Al Razi, and various esoteric Islamic brotherhood who collected and encyclopedized knowledge knowledge of music, art, physics, physics, alchemy, astrology, medicine and philosophy. All these were engaged in work of the Fourth Degree, but they were few and isolated in their times. Their schools, like those of the Christian monks who by now had turned scribes and scholars, organized and accumulated wisdom from ancient and (when possible) contemporary contemporary sources. This, also, also, was Fourth Degree Degree work, although at a far far more rudementary stage, for the work (being of the higher mental plane) is infinitely varied and contains many sub-degrees. No student can master all areas, but must work as widely as possible in only a few areas. The goal is depth of study, and mastery of what is studied.



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It was Fourth Degree work that led to the canons of the cathedrals in Europe becoming schools, and to the development of libraries and universities. It was Fourth Degree work that led to the ascent of nominalism, Thomism and humanistic philosophy. It was Fourth Degree work that created the Renaissance, and stimulated both the Reformation and Counter-Reformation in Europe and on the Mediterra nean. Names like Albertus Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Bacon, Arnold of Villanova, Paracelsus, Paracelsus, Montaigne, Montaigne, for those in occult work, and Copernicus, Galileo, Vespucchi and Columbus, for those who creatively explored reality, and Aquinas, More, Erasmus, Francis Bacon, for those whose originality pioneered the birth of intellectual Europe--these are a few who did the work of the Fourth Degree Initiate. They and many others, whose contributions lay in such areas as technology, cartography, politics and human relations, began to bring the illumination of the rational mind into medieval life. What of the Fifth Degree? Initiates of this degree were rare, and when they existed their lives were often obscure, cloaked in legend. It is reasonable to assume that one Michel de NostraDame, who graduated in medicine from the University in Montpellier early in the sixteenth century and spent much of his life as a doctor to those afflicted by the Great Black Death, was an initiate of the Fifth Degree. He is known to us as Nostradamus, and has left us prophecies whose allegories have produced uncanny parallels to events in world history. He was a healer and an occult adept. Through study of ancient Jewish occult books he learned the secrets of the seer, and produced oracles outlining world history for the two millenia following the sixteenth century. They are called CENTURIES AND PRESAGES, PRESAGES, and predict world holocaust for the latter part of our century, as well as a great Antichrist. It is possible that Lord Francis Bacon was a Fifth Degree Initiate, and there is evidence that he and a brotherhood of free-thinkers added significant sections to the plays of a moderately literate playwright named William William Shakespeare. Shakespeare. There is also evidence evidence that Bacon was involved in a secret secret brotherhood, probably the Order of the Rosy Cross or something something similar. Although Although his exoteric work was in the subject matter of the Fourth Degree, it seems likely that Bacon was a Fifth Degree Initiate. His secret influence was significant in Elizabethan England. From his writings we know that he was well acquainted with occult affairs, such as the life and writings of Nostradamus, and extremely talented at anything he fancied, from poetry to science. He was certainly an adept, and probably one of the Fifth Degree. Degree.



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Another historical Fifth Degree adept was Jakob Boehme, the German mystic of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. His disciple, Johann Gichtel, was certainly an advanced Fourth Degree Initiate, and it seems fair to assume that his entrance into the work of the Fifth Degree was his apprenticeship in interpreting the works of Boehme to the world. Other initiates of the Fifth level must have existed. The secret societies such as that of the Freemasons bear mute testimony to the organizing and teaching work of such adepts. The Freemasons were perhaps the greatest single intellectual force at the time of the American and French revolutions, and United States currency still bears the masonic symbolism of the era. Before the term of John F. Kennedy (the first Roman Catholic President of the United States), every President had been a 32nd degree Mason (for political reasons, if none other). The secular, protestant mythology of the United States reflects the importance of Freemasonry in such ideas as democracy (rather than monarchy), education for the masses, education of women, use of the scientific method. The founders and great, unknown teachers of this and other secret societies must have been Fifth Degree Initiates. Perhaps the most visible transition of a person into Fifth Degree work from his completion (not just his recapitulation) of Fourth Degree work is demonstrated in the life of the great scientist, Emanuel Swedenborg. His brilliant contributions to science fill volumes, and many of his insights and conclusions made over two hundred years ago are still valid. In late middle age, however, he began having visions and falling falling into prolonged trances. trances. He learned to to enter these states by using breath control (a yogic technique technique intuitively discovered discovered by him). He soon became became a seer, and could could predict events in other other cities. He amazed amazed many people, including the the royal family of Sweden, Sweden, and began the task of voluminous voluminous writing on the subject subject of religion. He understood understood what the “true” practice of Christianity Christianity should be, and many of his his insights should an intuitive grasp of the original original Aramaic teachings of Jesus--centuries before biblical scholars were able to make such an analysis. Still emerging from the intellectual Fourth Degree, Swedenborg wanted to codify and systematize his spiritual discoveries. This resulted in tens of thousand of pages that now comprise the religious works of Emanuel Swedenborg--a whole library of writings on all subjects from Christian metaphysics to revelations concerning angels, planetary spirits, heavens, hells and world religions. Perhaps the most interesting writing, however, is his personal diary of dreams, which give the researcher an overview of his spiritual development from Fourth to Fifth Degrees, and a firsthand account of initiation into the Fifth Degree.



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Adepts of the Modern Period For the purposes of this discussion I define the modern period as that beginning in the nineteenth century. The Inquisition was over, protestantism had become successful, free-thinking men and women began to appear in bodies all over Europe and America. The work of the Fourth Degree Initiates had now become the curriculum for most educated people, and the universities supported faculties in secular law, medicine, classics, philosophy, music and science as well as theology. Many of the American colleges would soon become fairly independent of church ties, and several major European universities were known for their academic freedom. America became the breeding ground for all kinds of strange religions, in the eyes of the world. It was not unlike modern California. New Age prophets like John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed) appeared, walking the wildernesses wildernesses with their Bibles and (in the case of Johnny Appleseed) a bag of Swedenborgian tracts, which were passed out as liberally as the appleseeds he scattered. From up North the Fox sisters began having manifestations--an intelligent rapping on walls, or through tipping tables, that could answer questions with a “yes” or “no.” Soon mediums appeared, and the new phenomenon of Spiritualism made its way into the highest places. President Abraham Lincoln began the practice of getting psychic advice that has continued in the White House (though rarely admitted) for over a century. Lincoln himself was a great “intuitive,” and easily recapitulated the skills in Fourth Degree work he had gained in earlier lifetimes. He was a Spiritualist and a very advanced disciple of the Fourth Degree. A fifteen-year-old boy named Joseph Smith began to have visions that resulted in the production of new Bible called called the Book of Mormon. He was the instrument instrument of higher sources of revelation, and his activity resulted in the creation of a new religion based on Christianity and American pioneering Spiritualism. Brigham Young led the community of Mormons--who were persecuted from city to city--finally to settle settle in the New Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Salt Lake City, Utah. The Civil War resulted in terrible personal suffering for most American families. Nearly everyone had a son, father, brother or husband who had died in the hostilities, and so thousands of people experienced first-hand first-hand the mystic things things that so often occur occur in cases of violent violent death: premonition of disaster, disaster, knowledge of the time time and circumstances of a loved one’s sudden death death (through dreams and sometimes visions or vivid “feelings”), visits of loved ones after their deaths (ghosts), and other weird experiences. Because people had first-hand brushes with the supernatural (as they did in world wars I and II, when Spiritualism again re



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vived), they were open to new kinds of religious expression. Spiritualism Spiritualism became a potent force on the American frontiers and in the older cities like Boston. This brought a new development--the appearance of physical mediums, those whose manifestations included seances and the manipulation of “ectoplasm,” apports, mind-over-matter and many startling physical phenomena. The British Society for Psychical Research was founded, including many prominent scientists as members. Several were Fourth Degree Initiates ready to explore the Fifth Degree, the Higher Psychic. Legends had persisted of one Comte de St.-Germain, a Sixth Degree adept who never died, but lived in whatever whatever body he chose for purposes of guiding guiding human affairs, and of his his recent appearances at the French court during the crisis of the French Revolution. English writers like Bulwer-Lytton told stories of such people (ZANONI) that made a deep impression upon the minds of English-speaking seekers. Physical mediums like Maude Lord appeared--mediums of strong enough character to avoid the usual fate of such instruments, which was alcoholism or attempts to fake a performance when the phenomena (which were not under their control) didn’t manifest. Into this confused world came a personality that would make an indelible impression upon the minds of Fourth Degree Initiates--Madame Blavatsky, an advanced student of the Fifth Degree who was extremely psychic, skilled in various hypnotic techniques, capable of wonderful demonstrations of physical mediumship, and brilliant enough to fascinate the greatest minds of Europe and America. Her tracts, and especially ISIS UNVEILED and THE SECRET DOCTRINE, are occult classics of the English language. She sacrificed her health and reputation in order to leave Fourth Degree students clues on the path. Her effect on intellectuals will never be truly known, but in THE SECRET DOCTRINE Blavatsky castigated the scientists of her time as closed-minded dogmatists. She introduced scientific hypotheses counter to those current that have proven, over the course of a century, to be closer to truth than the theories of her foes. I am told by a former secretary of the Theosophical Society based in Wheaton, Illinois, that she personally saw a third book-order for THE SECRET DOCTRINE mailed in from Professor Albert Einstein, who had worn out his other two copies! Whether this is true, or an exaggeration, or an outright lie I cannot say, but the story does emphasize the enormity of Blavatsky’s intellectual contribution to occult thought-regardless of the literal truth of her claims.



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The most striking thing about Blavatsky was that she claimed to be under the guidance, and in touch with, a high initiate living in a body in India. Those around her, like Colonel Alcott, were convinced of the truth of her claim, and actually met her guru on certain occasions. He would have been a Sixth Degree Initiate, like St. -Germain, using a physical body from choice, having full continuity of consciousness and mental control over physical matter. At this point in history the names of other high initiates became known-Morya, Kutumi or Kut Hoomi, Hilarion and Djwal Khul, the D.K. of the Alice Bailey literature. A whole canon of “ascended masters” became known in Theosophy and Spiritualism, which had their Golden Age in the twenties and thirties of this century. As to the validity of this knowledge, it seems at best hearsay, although one thing is certain--the Alice Bailey transcripts of D.K. are brilliant in many areas. They are certainly the product of a high initiate speaking through the mental vehicle of an educated Fourth Degree Initiate. Like all great spiritual writings, however, they need interpretation. One must have a high degree of intuitive discernment to understand and creatively benefit from the Alice Bailey, Blavatsky, Swedenborg or any other inspired writings. In any case, it seems clear that the pioneering work of the medieval Fourth Degree Initiates had taken root in Europe and America by the nineteenth century, making possible the advent of a new period--a period of Fifth Degree pioneers. These would be advanced students or adepts who are ready to exercise the higher psychic perceptions in service for mankind--not as trance mediums (for that sort of psychism is rooted in the lower triad), but as intuitive channels of spiritual power, custodians of initiation, and psychic adepts able to discern motives, intentions, causes and the invisible realities of human service. Initiation into the Fifth Degree, as we can discern from the life of Emanuel Swedenborg, is like stepping from this world into a higher world. It is much like what was foreshadowed in the Mystery Liturgy of Hermes Trismegistus--a transition from normal human consciousness into higher, causal consciousness, where one sees not only with the eyes of flesh, but with the eyes of Spirit. Other Fifth Degree Adepts in World History As we go back into history, it becomes increasingly difficult to know to what extent the legends told about remarkable people are fact or fiction. There is one general rule I can apply. The Fifth Degree Initiate is the last one that will



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be born as a child, and the completion of Fifth Degree Degree work (the final incarnation) incarnation) will not generally be recognized by others. The lives become more anonymous as they progress, the adepts tend to be more secretive, and are unable to form group attachments (except in the case of secret societies at certain times in history). It is clear that most of the Hebrew prophets were Fifth Degree Initiates, not only from their precognition and strongly intuitive intuitive intellectual intellectual base (many were were not highly educated), but from from the accounts of their charisms. The great prophet Elijah is said to have been assumed directly into heaven without necessity of physical death, like Enoch, who “walked with God.” One must also recognize the many anonymous great ones of India and Persia. Gautama Buddha, Zoroaster and other religious founders (or teachers) were probably doing Fifth Degree work. Traditionally it is India and Tibet that serve as refuge for the most advanced students. Unlike the West, however, records do not exist to help us know and memorialize these souls. China, as well was probably the place of origin for alchemy, and certainly the source of technological ,

knowledge used by the West (such as gunpowder technology, water power, cutting of precious stones, manufacture of perfumes). China must have produced many adepts. Also the prehistoric world, and early Egypt, Sumeria and Europe undoubtedly had their Fifth Degree adepts. This we know from the remarkable astronomical artifacts of the periods. Apollonius of Tyana was a Fifth Degree adept, and the story of his life is an illuminating guide to his development and the way he was initiated. As a Pythagorean he completed the work of initiation (five years of silence) by travelling to India and studying with the Brahmans. St. Francis of Assisi was probably a Third Degree soul but a very great one, whereas whereas ,

Savonarola of Florence was a Fifth Degree soul. The degree of initiation does not correlate with the degree of greatness, the success of a given ministry, or how a person might be remembered by other people. There are many First Degree souls that are far greater than other Third Degree souls. They are highly gifted, very pure monads. Some are intellectual, some emotional, some of strong will or any blend of these three elements--which elements--which have been called “rays” of creation. Jesus Christ was the Master of masters, the most ancient and greatest of Seventh Degree Initiates, who chose to return to the earth existence as a human being and establish clearly the upward path for all mankind. Those who claim that Jesus is a separate monad from the Christ, and that he lives in Syria at the present time, blah, blah, blah, simply don’t know what they say in this matter. The truth is written in the brilliant epistles of St. Paul and implied throughout the Old and New Testaments. Testaments. New Age writers writers have a blind spot about Christ because because Christianity is their their native religion.



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We have made a cursory examination of initiation throughout history. Our sources of information have come mainly from the Near East and West, though we know it is in the East that traditions of initiation are most ancient and sophisticated. There various yogas and disciplines developed from primitive shamanic roots earlier after the last ice age than anywhere else, with the possible exception of Africa and along the Nile. Nile. Egypt and India remained remained the spiritual centers of the ancient world until the medieval period began. Let us now turn our attention to the basic categories of initiation and spiritual growth as they appear in both phylogenic (racial-historical) and ontogenic (individual) development. We agree with Freud’s observation that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, and must add that ontogeny recapitulates itself. That is, the spiritual growth of the individual person follows the categories of development in sequence that mankind as a whole exhibits through history, and also recapitulates its own categories of development as the individual life itself unfolds. By examining the unfolding pattern of an individual individual life we see its monadic history as well well as the general spiritual history of man reflected. Two complications enter the picture, however. First, just as there were Fifth Degree Initiates ages ago when most of mankind was entering the Old First Degree (tribal initiation), there are elements of any given monad (or individual) that may be far advanced--what we might call “splinter charisms.” Yet the individual is still doing work of the lower initiations. Conversely, there may be individuals of advanced degree who, for karmic reasons, must complete work remaining in early initiations. For this reason it is very difficult to “place” a person at any specific degree of initiation by simple inspection of the life pattern. Second, some monads are “great souls,” regardless of their degree of initiation. The way is just and perfect for every soul, but each soul is is different. Just as as we have individuals with with great genius or gifts in music, mathematics or other areas, so we have individuals of great purity and light who dwell among us regardless of their degree of initiation. Others of high degree were from the beginning very impure, and more prone to take the downward path. Some very young souls may be far wiser than older souls of vast earthly experience. The gifted ones will attain very quickly, while their elders may tarry on the way. In one lifetime the differences can appear, that one young soul will overtake his teacher and surpass him, thus becoming his teacher. The extreme example is Jesus Christ and John the Baptist, both of whom were great souls.



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This means the following: A. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR ANYONE ANYONE EXCEPT EXCEPT A HIGH INITIATE INITIATE TO ESTIMATE THE SPIRITUAL DEGREE OF ANOTHER SOUL, AND EVEN HERE ACCURACY IS MOST DIFFICULT. B.

IT IS EVEN MORE DIFFICULT DIFFICULT FOR ANYONE, ANYONE, EVEN A HIGH INITIATE, TO KNOW HIS OWN DEGREE OF ATTAINMENT WITH CERTAINTY.

To further complicate the picture, if we try to correlate the ideas of Blavatsky, Swedenborg, the Rosicrucians, the Osirians, the Eleusinians, the Hermetics, the Brahmins, the Masons and all other mystic and occult systems, we find them all at variance. If we read the four Christian gospels carefully, we find that they, too, disagree on important issues. My intuitive understanding of initiation categories takes into consideration all the other systems I have studied, but it is an independent view of initiation. At this point in history I, as a scholar, have the advantage of many good points of reference. We know more today of world religions than we ever have before, and a scholar has access to more sources than ever before. But comparison, correlation and evaluation of both sources and the validity of various traditions is no simple matter. There is no simple key or cipher to the mysteries of human spirituality, though there are many patterns discernable. Becoming spiritually mature means being able to create thought forms with the confidence that they are as accurate, thorough and comprehensive as possible, knowing that human thought on spiritual matters is merely what the Greeks called theoria, theoria, “vision, model, theory.” No one can tell us they way “it” is, even even if he knew the way “it” “it” is, because we haven’t the ability to understand the way “it” is! How would you explain astronomy to an ape, or algebra to an ant? “If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?” John 3.12 So we humans are stuck with theoria. theoria. The only way to evaluate it is to test it and see if it works--a bit of Fourth Degree magic known as Scientific Method.

The FIRST DEGREE The Old First Degree is still represented in tribal puberty rites of passage, or in teenage and gang initiations, as well as service club initiations of certain kinds. It represents entry into the adult world, or into the milieu of a specific



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society with special activities. These may be criminal oriented or service oriented, but the initiation represents acceptance as a co-worker in these enterprises. In its most ancient form, the Old First Initiation represented entrance into the human (not human (not just adult) community. We are told by Blavatsky and D.K. that the gate into the Human Kingdom (to coin a phrase) was opened long ago, then closed. It will be opened again in the distant future, when other life forms will become human on this planet. The Old First Degree was the work of becoming fully human, which meant becoming a working, productive productive member of adult society. society. The First Degree (New) was opened up in the mysteries of Egypt, Greece and the Near East, as well as in Brahminical traditions lost to history, during the second millennium B.C. It represents entrance into the Spiritual Kingdom, and submission to the Malkuth (Guidance) of Deity, or the Soul and its Oversoul. In the modern world the First Degree is characterized by the following: SETTING: A religious group or cult using baptisms, name changes, radical changes of lifestyle (often quite “foreign” to the convert to heighten the contrast between the old and new lives). Church, cult, ashram, temple--institution with strong economic base. CONSCIOUSNESS: Radical conversion, with strong impress of group thought-form (i.e, indoctrination), zealous loyalty to strong prophet or charismatic guru (willing to “die” for faith--this is an allegory for what the person has done!), done!), alienation from rest of society. Development is of the LOWER MENTAL BODY, quickening the basic forms of virtue such as morality, fidelity, purity and continence. Though the forms the forms of of virtue are developed, virtue itself doesn’t exist. The exercise of intellectual power is still through physical force (i.e, the evangelist who forces himself upon another and won’t let him get a word in edgewise, or who takes the physical offensive going door to door with a salesman-like campaign strategy). strategy). Whoever shouts the loudest wins the argument, or whoever can swing the majority opinion to his view assumes leadership. Never argue with a First Degree Initiate unless you are prepared to punch him in the mouth, but if ever forced take the offensive--criticise offensive--criticise him him as a hypocrite and back up your criticism with examples, examples, as Jesus did with the Pharisees. You won t make any friends, but you might get “heard.”



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SPIRITUAL CENTER: The Solar Plexus is quickened and (as occult allegory describes) the Christ child born within. The Initiate’s most important task is to create the forms of virtue and establish them in sensitive linkage to the Solar Plexus so that he is offended at a “gut level” by injustice, falsity, etc, and deeply moved by justice, love and mercy. PATHWAYS: May be any of the three, depending upon the individual monad: ASCETIC: The Ray of Will (First Ray) DEVOTIONAL: DEVOTIONAL: The Ray of Love (Second Ray) INTELLECTUAL: The Ray of Intellect (Third Ray) In Judaism or Christianity, First Ray monads will tend toward positions of lay authority or press for ordination, making making whatever sacrifices sacrifices are necessary. necessary. Second Ray monads will will be steadfast church or synagogue goers, contribute large amounts to their churches, and serve in any capacity open to them. Third Ray nunads will (if protestant) pursue courses of study (especially biblical studies or, if Jewish, talmudic studies), where catholics might prefer Thomistic or or other Christian theological studies--all in varying degrees. It is the Third Ray type who is most rational about religion, although he develops stronger thought-forms to which he is committed than do the other ray types. COMMENTS: The world seems suddenly full of young First Degree Initiates--fundamentalist Initiates--fundamentalist Christians, Hare Krishnas, devotees of Sun-Moon and other cults. The fact that most of these people are young points to the probability that many of them are simply recapitulating a a previous degree. If this theoria is theoria is correct, in the next ten years many of them will leave the cults (or “lapse,” as it may seem to them). The same is probably true to a lesser extent for the wealthy, vigorous media churches (PTL Club, etc.), which will (with the neighborhood Foursquare Gospel churches) continue to be the setting for First Degree work and the young race of monads streaming into the world. The mainline protestant churches will retain enough membership to sustain them from the ascending, maturing First Degree Christians who



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filter out of the fundamentalist groups as they slowly “lapse” or mature into more virtuous forms of religion. By “virtuous” I mean those forms that realize their eschatology and begin to discern Christ outside their own group, and find the service of God in service to mankind.

The SECOND DEGREE Reasonably astute monads should be able to complete the work of the First Degree in one or two lifetimes, although history shows us a pattern in Christianity indicating a longer period for many. That is because the first movement toward monasticism, which is Second Degree work, began only a few centuries centuries after the establishment establishment of the religion, religion, yet lasted for over a thousand years in its full flower. This shows that First Degree Initiates can proceed rather quickly into Second Degree work, as indeed they were urged by St. Paul to do in all his epistles. But evangelism, which is a characteristic if the dogmatic First Degree mentality, has never really ceased (although it was quite dormant for certain centuries), showing that First Degree work remains fundamental to Christians (especially to the fundamentalist protestants, protestants, rather than the more advanced catholics of this era). Apparently First Degree Initiates come in historical waves into the Church or the churches, and they require several lifetimes to enter fully into the Spiritual Kingdom. The work of the Second Degree can be accomplished in a lifetime through concentrated, monastic effort. Some of the great Christian and other monks have attained two and three degree of progress in one lifetime lifetime through developing splinter splinter charisms. This does not release them them from the necessity of doing the work of those degrees, but it makes the work easier when it comes and gives them an inner depth that is felt by others around them. The monastic period in Christianity was somewhat replaced by secular options in the late medieval period, and psychological-growth options in the twentieth century. Although their methods and approaches differed in form and philosophy, the overall results were the same-completion of the Lower Psychic work. With the coming of these other options, three forms of initiation have been made available to modern disciples: (1) The traditional monastic disciplines from Eastern yogas to Western monasticism; (2) The process of joining a “growth” or inner religious institutional group for the purpose of dynamic instruction instruction in psychological healing--psychiatry, psychological psychological counseling, the the gamut of “growth” and



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therapy groups, ministerial counseling centers, singles groups, senior citizens groups, etc.; (3) The process of “lapsing” or dropping out of a religious group and experiencing the Dark Night Night of the Soul in secular terms. This is the type often experienced by First Ray monads, although it occurs with Third Ray monads commonly too. In any case, forms of initiation into Second Degree work vary greatly, being rooted in priestly or shamanic initiations, and can be represented in experiences such as madness (“shamanic illness”) and many other forms barely recognizable as initiatory. SETTING: Usually a smaller group within or without the original religion or cult, but also can occur in isolation or alienation from the original group. Monastery, convent, ashram, psychotherapy, growth groups, psychological illness, lapse and spiritual failure (addictions, sexual disorders, sociopathic manifestations, criminality). CONSCIOUSNESS: The recognition of duality within one’s nature, the inner struggle (“So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, sin lies lies close at hand; for I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in all my members another law at war with the law of my nous and nous and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my mem bers. Wretched man that that I am! Who will deliver deliver me from this body of death?”) described by St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans. This is the psychological period, the development of the LOWER PSYCHIC BODY predominating. Here, now, the form of virtue cries out for the essence of virtue. But this essense requires two ingredients--the inner and the outer, ignorantly seen as the good and the evil, the light and the darkness. In fact, a marriage must be made between the the conscious and the unconscious unconscious mental realms, realms, so that no more “booby traps” can exist, no more hypocrisy be manifest, no more external virtue be exhibited without the internal essence being present. SPIRITUAL CENTER: The Heart Center is quickened. The issue becomes motive, intent, inner reality, dreams, fantasy, hidden meaning. (“When you make the inner and the outer into a single one,” said the Jesus of THOMAS’ GOSPEL, “then shall you enter the Kingdom.”). Goal: Wholeness, sin-



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cerety, honesty, lack of guile, to become (as Jesus said) shal~m said) shal~m,, “whole, perfect.” The process is to analyze, analyze, tear down, and then rebuilt. rebuilt. In catholic Christianity Christianity the confessional confessional becomes very important, important, and in other traditions introspection, self-examination, self-examination, selfobservation are used. In groups various kinds of “feedback” and Gestalts are exercised to bring out what is hidden to oneself within so that that it can become known known and understood. The desert monks learned to use sublimation rather than psychological repression (a process of denial) in rebuilding rebuilding their psychological psychological responses--a fact fact that is much misunderstood by psychological detractors of monastic techniques. The fact is that many psychological fads are ineffective and even even counterproductive, such as the idea that expresexpressing an undesirable response (such as anger) will release it and free the subject of its consequences. This, in fact, serves only to strengthen to strengthen the the response--although it at least makes it known. But the response must be sublimated or transformed, rather than encouraged. PATHWAYS: Monastic, Gnostic, Psychological--greatly Psychological--greatly varied, and often secular in the modern world. Suicides are generally Second Degree Initiates, as are neurotics and chronic therapy seekers, although these (like criminals) may be working in the Old First Degree. The Rays are no longer pure types in Second Degree work, but synthesize to form seven possible combinations combinations (I II III IV V VI VII). VII). COMMENTS: Many of today’s educated Americans are progressing through Second Degree work, especially those who experience constant change in their lives, consciousness and circumstances. It is difficult to know whether someone with these characteristics is in the Old First Degree, the Second Degree, or merely recapitulating the Second Degree. Generally, recapitulation occurs earlier earlier in the life--before the age of forty or so. This degree holds many dangers. The use of yogic techniques or psychedelic drugs, or the experiencing of other psychical shocks to the Lower Psychic Body, can result in splinter charisms like mediumship (usually only by means of trance) or psychism-—even physical mediumship. Those of this degree who develop such splinter charisms are usually temporarily destroyed by them through mental disorientation



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leading to insanity, drug or alcohol addiction, or intense spiritual inflation that can result in physical harm (anurisms of the brain, small strokes). It is wise to avoid seeking advice from psychics who are not Fifth Degree Initiates unless one knows what he is doing and how to intelligently proceed. This is the degree for success with Oija boards and all other forms of divination (along with the Old First Degree), with concommitant liabilities to possession, poltergeist phenomena and a host of so-called “astral” influences. It is also, toward the end of the degree, host for the Great Tribulation--known as the Shamanic Illness, the Overwhelming Depression, the Great Fear, and the Dark Night of the Soul. Every degree contains an element of “crucifixion.” In this case, the disciple must “crucify” his ancient self, as St. Paul says, so that the “crucifixion” is instigated by the monad itself. In this degree the disciple must learn to take responsibility for himself and his actions, and indeed his very circumstances. He must no longer point the accusing finger at others, but at himself. He must go within his own heart. The THIRD DEGREE This is the beginning of hierarchical or “priestly” work, for the Third Degree is a completion of the lower triad (mental, psychic, buddhic) and the point at which service to humanity becomes possible possible for the initiate. This is the degree of the shaman, saint, healer healer and mediator of knowledge. Those of this degree have usually been granted some kind of social status or recognition conferring upon them authority to teach, heal, preach, legislate or practice a service profession. This is not to say that all doctors, doctors, professors, ministers ministers and politicians politicians are Third Degree Initiates! We must remember that professional people generally are promoted up to the their level of incompetency! But a really effective medical doctor, for example, whose inner life is peaceful and professional life one of true service is probably working out his Third Degree, unless he has achieved an even higher degree. Another doctor with family and emotional problems whose work is self-centered and production—oriented may be Old First Degree, First Degree or Second Degree. At this level a person has “overcome” his basic duality, and achieved a marriage of inner and outer personality. What you see is what you get--he has no guile. He has healed or “wholed” himself, overcome the shamanic illness, passed through the Dark Night of the Soul, and is now able to help others. The truth is this: One cannot help others if he has been unable to help himself.



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To this might be added the important corollary that in order to help oneself, one must learn to accept help from others. All help is hierarchical, just as all teaching and progress is hierarchical. It proceeds downward from above. One has to accept that help in order to help himself. Those who serve must learn to join with the trend of hierarchical help in order to be effective. The Third Degree Initiate has proven himself worthy to join in the Great Work, which is the service of care of human souls. He will appear in society as a recognized server, often with a higher education and professional license or degree, but may also appear as a lesser server (nurse’s aid, Red Cross volunteer). The amount of social recognition has nothing to do with the spiritual stature of the soul soul in question. question. The Third Degree is characterized by the following: SETTING: Human service professions (teaching, counseling, ministry, humanitarian projects, volunteer work, research, politics, etc.), often secular and always group-connected. Entrance into the degree may start with menial labor (janitor) or dangerous professions (police work, military), but evolves evolves into more intellectual intellectual activities as as the Fourth Degree is approached. CONSCIOUSNESS: Inner peace and harmony are brought into adjustment. Initiates are no longer subject to compulsive desires. They become steadfast and faithful. The Third Degree Initiate is able to respond to hierarchical urging better than those whose minds are divided and cluttered, and so becomes a tower of strength during crisis, a charismatic leader in an emergency situation. He or she is much respected by others. During this stage the LOWER BUDDHIC (or “Wisdom”) BODY is developed, thus activating the entire lower triad of the human constitution. At this point the pineal and pituitary glands begin development of a coordinated activity that that will eventuate in the manifestation of inner sight (to unfold fully during the Fifth Degree work), or psychism. SPIRITUAL CENTER: The Throat Center is quickened as the disciple learns to get his spiritual “voice.” For the first time he can project can project outward, outward, serving as a co-creator with Deity and joining in hierarchical labor. He gains spiritual spiritual authority and struggles struggles with proper manipulation of power



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for the general good. At this point artistic creativity is also stimulated, and Third Degree Initiates will often excel in music, sculpture, literary pursuits, or find pleasure in the appreciation of these and other artistic or dramatic interests. The inner harmony is strengthened by exposure to classic arts, and especially fine mu si c. PATHWAYS: The general pathway of SERVICE is a Second Ray labor, that of Love. The forms it can take are practically unlimited. As a general rule, service requires contact with people, although those that are isolated, imprisoned or bed-ridden serve through prayer and the radiation of protective love. The Second Ray and combinations predominate here. COMMENTS: With advancement in the Third Degree, the monad has built the pattern of the higher triad, or spiritual body in which he will live eternal ly.

But the pattern is an empty empty form, like the form of virtue established established in the First

Degree. Only by completing work in the succeeding three degrees does the disciple bring that celestial body to life. The disciple has become fully human. Now he must experience a transfiguration or Palingenesis that will bring his lower mental consciousness into the higher octave, and begin his life as an immortal conscious Soul. The divine pattern of ,

ascent is first crucifixion, and then resurrection. This pattern is present in all degrees. Here it manifests as the gateway between Third and Fourth degrees. The end of service is rejection, and finally crucifixion (in the Fourth Degree). The great and enlightening Visio Beatifica of the Third Degree is what has been called a Transfiguration--a vision of what is to come, and of the reality of the spiritual world. This differs for each individual. For some it comes through music or art. For others, through dreams. For some it is a trance-like mystical experience, while for others it is a long, slow realization. In any case, the rejection and alienation that must come is made bearable by the transfiguring vision, and the Third Degree Initiate enters into the work of the Fourth Degree naturally, almost imperceptably.



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The FOURTH DEGREE The Fourth Degree is unlike any other, perhaps because it marks the beginning of a new ontological status. It is more complex than any other because it is the degree of Higher Intellect. It contains more paths, sub-paths and sub-degrees than other stages of development. It is the first occult stage, and the first that forces the seeker out of society and into spiritual isolation. Remember, monastic isolation was still a group matter, in the context of masters and disciples. Now, however, there are usually no human masters masters and rarely any secret secret esoteric groups to guide the disciple. This is a great need that is being partially filled by certam esoteric groups, but only in the first stages of the Fourth Degree. From now on the disciple must seek hierarchical help and, if possible, the guidance of a Fifth Degree Initiate. His “group” is invisible to him--a communio sanctorum of sanctorum of Souls united by common discipleship under a master yet unknown to the seeker in his present state of consciousness. Yet this group will guide and comfort him in ways too subtle to know. SETTING: Isolation with perhaps an esoteric group in the earlier stages, and a few friends, but completely alone for the Crucifixion, or Second Dark Night of the Soul. Deep and occult study, both intellectually and through contemplation of life. CONSCIOUSNESS: Development of the HIGHER MENTAL BODY through advanced study and research, creative synthesis (rather than simple acceptance of other authorities), unfolding awareness of occult and spiritual dimensions. Development of INTUITION as means of communication with Soul without understanding that the ,

personality should serve serve the Soul--not the Soul Soul the personality. This This paradox leads to the Crucifixion, as the proper relationship is slowly grasped--”Not my will, 0 Lord, but Thine be done!” SPIRITUAL CENTER: The Pituitary Center is quickened, heightening the intuitive and sometimes psychic awareness of the disciple, as well as increasing his abilities for creative intellectual work. It is possible at this point for Throat Center activity (service, writing, the arts--all projected manifestation) to become “inspired.” Thought forms become defined and substantial, so that the disciple is able to conceive and successfully



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PATHWAYS: Where the Third Degree was ruled by combinations of the Second Ray, the Fourth Degree is ruled by the Third Ray of Intellect in other combinations. Thus the paths that will be chosen all contain aspects of higher education, intellectual pursuit and occult skills. On the other hand, the intuitive skills of an advanced Fourth Degree intellect may result in a pathway totally outside outside the realms of higher higher education. COMMENTS: After the Crucifixion a Fourth Degree Initiate’s need for formal education wanes because now his intuitive faculties provide him with far more intellectual stimulation than scholarly deduction. He has found his true Guide--the Soul. In his studies he has heard that the Soul is the Guide and he its disciple, but never before did he understand the truth of that statement. Now he hungers for meditation and contemplation which, combined with the activities of a life of service, provide a menu for fo r the greatest intellectual feast he has yet known! Since the Fourth Degree is so very complex, the reader will want to review other comments made on pages 40ff, “The Mystery Liturgy of Hermes Tn smegi stus.” It is during this study that the disciple is implanted with the Visio Beatifica, the vision of the rest of the pathway to mastery. This occurs on many terms, but generally parallel to those of the hermetic vision (i.e, Eastern philosophy). No true liturgies of initiation exist for the Fourth Degree seeker in the modern world, for such procedings must be officiated hierarchically by someone of higher degree. But the great liturgy of Rebirth will be reinstituted because of the ascending need of many who traverse the Fourth Degree. This is especially critical because of the great danger inherent in Fourth Degree work, during which many disciples, unwilling to accept yet another crucifixion, have turned to the ways of darkness. The world condition today demands proper guidance for Fourth Degree seekers, whose light could potentially counterbalance the forces of darkness that even now storm against humanity.



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The FIFTH DEGREE The initiate generally fades into obscurity with entrance into the Fifth Degree, although there have been many significant religious founders that were advanced students of this degree. The monad has begun to express as a Soul in flesh. Those who manifest as great leaders, teachersand founders do so because they are great Souls--not because of any social recognition. There are no places in society for Fifth Degree Initiates, so they impinge upon society from a foundation of spiritual authority, like the prophets of old. A Fifth Degree Initiate may or may not accept disciples. If so, the disciples must prove themselves in steadfastness and intuitive skill. It is counterproductive for a Fifth Degree Initiate to take students of the Second Degree, but Third and especially Fourth Degree students can be well served in this context. The Fifth Degree Initiate who completes his or her work no longer returns to earth in a normal body--i.e, through the process of birth. As a Sixth Degree worker, the Initiate may return to earth in an illusory body. The body, however, is usually unnecessary, since he or she communicates with Fifth Degree disciples by means of the psychic channel, the opening of which is one main element of Fifth Degree work. The Fifth Degree Initiate makes contact with his or her immediate facilitators (Sixth Degree guides of their specific group) at first on the intuitive level, but later in Fifth Degree work through direct psychic perception--auditory and visual. These Sixth Degree guides are, in fact, “facilitators” (as are all true teachers). They provide the final and most direct connection to one’s Soul--the real Guide, Who is the Christ, and the Son of the Father, or Great Oversoul. The work of the Fifth Degree is called Anastasis or Resurrection, and results in full continuity of consciousness (past, present and future) through the slow expansion of consciousness as a psychic in flesh. The Fifth Degree Initiate comes to recognize and know his past lives, as one great initiate told me, “by bits and pieces, as you would come to know a piece of music by hearing the phonograph needle dropped for a brief time on one and then another section of a recording.” Initiation into the Fifth Degree is hierarchical, but transmitted through a Fifth Degree Initiate. It needn’t be liturgical, and is usually in the form of an apprenticeship or discipleship. A Fifth Degree Initiate is not easily recognized. Only those who recognize the Initiate are worthy of direct instruction.



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SETTING: A life of service, ministry or contemplation (with service done in astral planes while sleeping or in self-controlled trance). The Fifth Degree Initiate does not advertize him- or herself, does not seek disciples, and refuses remuneration for charismatic work (such as healing and teaching). CONSCIOUSNESS: Development of the HIGHER PSYCHIC BODY, with concommitant opening of psychic perception from within intuitive intuitive faculty. As the disciple advances advances through the Fifth Degree, Degree, a slow and natural opening of inner vision, clairvoyance and clairaudience results. These never become “fulltime” perceptions, but operate at certain times and under certain conditions. They are developed and manifested through the hierarchical help of the Sixth Degree “facilitators” who work with the initiate. They are the “Teachers” of the initiate. This degree contains all elements of human life (suffering, joy, physical love), but at times the Teachers will guide the initiate into certain kinds of fasting or dietary restrictions (usually vegetarian), and eventually into sexual continence. These seeming restrictions are welcome, healthful practices for the initiate, and constitute no privation of any kind. SPIRITUAL CENTER: The Pineal Center and Frontal Lobes are quickened. Speaking, writing, musical performance, prophecy, psychic psychic reading, preaching, story-telling, story-telling, improvisation improvisation of epiclike quatrains and many other manifestations flow from the initiate like water from a spring. Creativity, insight, articulateness, interpretive ability--ability to view all things from “within” them, looking down (as it were) from the causal planes. PATHWAYS: The spiritual service of mankind, sleeping or waking, through manipulation and intuitive understanding of the subtle, causal reticulum of physical reality. Able to help people thousands of miles away, to sense disasters from great distances and before they occur, to exorcise, heal, counsel and speak pure wisdom. To finally learn how to pray and meditate, to teach and to learn. To become an adept.



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COMMENTS: None but this: Those who try to “force” spiritual spiritual and psychic development development by adopting the habits of the Fifth Degree Initiate (fasting, vegetarianism, sexual abstinence, prolonged meditation, astral travel) may achieve splinter charisms. If they are wise, they will let them die and cease trying to achieve them. Vegetarianism and the others are used by the Fifth Degree Initiate only after psychic charisms charisms have begun to manifest, manifest, and in this case only only for a period of time, to make an adjustment. Vegetarianism is not done to avoid killing animals, but because the taste taste of meat becomes foul for about ten years. Diet Diet should be adjusted only under the audible guidance of Sixth Degree Teachers. The other gimmicks that people (especially First Degree ascetics) engage in to achieve the effects of advanced spirituality can actually slow development by unbalancing the centers, burning their members, members, and resulting in psychic-psychological psychic-psychological imbalances, imbalances, inflation, insanity or criminality. The SIXTH and SEVENTH DEGREES What I know of these degrees has been learned intuitively and through the aid of a Fifth Degree Initiate who was my Teacher for six years. In the Sixth Degree, the BUDDHIC BODY (or “Wisdom”) develops in service to mankind. These guides work under their specific Seventh Degree masters, normally out of a physical body but in relation to specific specific geographical, familial familial or traditional gestalts. gestalts. Their Crown Centers Centers are quickened, and it is said they glow like halos. They are like the hermetic Brotherhood of the Ogdoad, or the Christian angels, or the Buddhist boddhisatvas. My Teacher called them the Teachers. When the Sixth Degree work has been completed, the initiate is admitted to a higher level of reality and becomes a Master of the Seventh Degree. The basic setting for these degrees is the ashram, school or academy, with Sixth Degree Initiates serving mankind and gathering their own disciples from the Fifth Degree (or continuing their instruction from earlier lives). The Seventh Degree is the completion of all that I have intuitive knowledge about, although it seems reasonable that the higher stages (Solar and beyond) described by D.K. in the Alice Bailey literature exist.



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We have seen that in ancient times the “gods” established rites of initiation on earth to implant the pattern of spiritual progress in human souls. The mysteries formally opened the door to the Spiritual Kingdom through catechisms, lustrations and the Visia Beatifica. Now humanity stands at another stage--one parallel to that at which the mysteries mysteries were introduced. Many souls cry out for initiation into the Fourth Degree, that higher octave of the First Degree which marks entry into the Noetic Kingdom, or the higher spiritual triad. They are ready to build the form of immortality, immortality, to leave behind earthly earthly religious institutions institutions and press onward onward in the eternal ascent to God. They are ready to receive the pattern of what lies ahead. Where do we go from here? The Th e ancient mysteries were not established by gods (in the mythological sense) but by men able to receive higher inspiration. The spiritual history of mankind is an ascending pathway of revelation brought down to earth by sensitive shamans and priests. “When I was a child I spoke like a chHd, thought like a child, reasoned like a child. But when I became a man I gave up childish ways.. .Brethren, do not be children in your thinking,” exhorted the great Paul in his first Corinthian epistle. It was as great a leap of the spirit for an ancient man to become a Christian as it wiH be today for a contemporary person to become a-what? Bahai? Theosophist? As mankind matures, perhaps the ancient form known as “religion” is no longer appropriate. I would suggest that the appropriate form must be that of the Fourth Degree--the academy, school or ashram. Our institutions of religion contam a three-fold progression that ends with the Third Degree, but today many people are ready for Fourth Degree work. What is more, many other First and Second Degree souls no longer find what they need in the context of religion, and are foundering in uncertainty. It seems to me that religious institutions must be the custodians of the First and Second initiations, and that they will change eventually in order to accomodate the needs of their people. But they cannot change unless hierachical connections are made that will inspire church leadership. The church (and synagogue et al.) al.) leadership should, itself, have a form a-f guidance--a vision of what lies ahead. Religious leadership should be under strong souls of Third Degree initiation, not (as the trend now seems to be) under weaker souls of Second and Third Degree initiation, or strong souls of the First Degreel



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Thus for sake of both lower and higher triad initiates, the higher triad mysteries should be restored on earth. How can this be done? Should a Fifth Degree Initiate re-establish re-establish the Mysteries of Hermes Trismegistus? Should someone from the East introduce a new form of initiation, or restore an ancient form? I think not. Ancient mysteries were for ancient man. They contain thought forms and conventions that are inappropriate. The scientific intellect cannot retreat into pre-scientific ideology. No, indeed. The only method method that makes sense sense is for contemporary initiates of high degree to intuitively design the form of contemporary initiation. initiation. Such a project would require the best minds and most devoted hierarchical disciples available. They would have to design a model of reality that could successfully interface between the physical and spiritual worlds according to the best understanding of scholars of religion, logicians, philosophers and physical scientists (to name a few specialists). In this way we would do (in contemporary analogy) what the ancient priests of Osiris and Eleusis did. As technicians of the sacred, we would create a form through which hierarchical work could manifest. Three elements would have to be thoroughly synthesized into contemporary mysteries of initiation: ta legomena (the legomena (the teachings); ta dr5mena (the dr5mena (the sacred actions); and, ta deiknumena (the deiknumena (the things manifested). The final element requires an advanced Fifth Degree Initiate even more than all others, for manifestation of the Visio Beatifica would have to be by psychic means. A fourth element must not be forgotten: A valid priesthood. The Christians traced theirs back to Melchizedek, Melchizedek, the Jews to Aaron, Aaron, the Magi to Zoroaster, Zoroaster, the Brahmins to Brahma, the the Egyptians to Osiris, the Orphics to Orpheus, and so on. I suggest that the priesthood of the mysteries should be taken from the Christian priesthood, since in the history of religions all new manifestations build on the roots of the old, but more especially since Jesus Christ is ontologically the High Priest of all humanity. Without this there can be no effective hierarchical connection, for hierarchy in this age descends through Christ. The master D.K. has foretold that during this era the mysteries would be restored on earth. They must be!



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Initiation ancient and modern

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