Hierophant.—Discloser of sacred learning. The Old Man, the Chief of the Adepts at the initiations, who explained the arcane knowledge to the neophytes, bore this title. In Hebrew and Chaldaic the term was Peter, or opener, discloser; hence, the Pope, as the successor of the hierophant of the ancient Mysteries, sits in the Pagan chair of “St. Peter.” The vindictiveness of the Catholic Church toward the alchemists, and to arcane and astronomical science, is explained by the fact that such knowledge was the ancient prerogative of the hierophant, or representative of Peter, who kept the mysteries of life and death. Men like Bruno, Galileo, and Kepler, therefore, and even Cagliostro, trespassed on the preserves of the Church, and were accordingly murdered.
Every nation had its Mysteries and hierophants. Even the Jews had their Peter—Tanaïm or Rabbin, like Hillel, Akiba,[38] and other famous kabalists, who alone could impart the awful knowledge contained in the Merkaba. In India, there was in ancient times one, and now there are several hierophants scattered about the country, attached to the principal pagodas, who are known as the Brahma-âtmas. In Thibet the chief hierophant is the Dalay, or Taley-Lama of Lha-ssa.[39] Among Christian nations, the Catholics alone have preserved this “heathen” custom, in the person of their Pope, albeit they have sadly disfigured its majesty and the dignity of the sacred office.
Initiates.—In times of antiquity, those who had been initiated into the arcane knowledge taught by the hierophants of the Mysteries; and in our modern days those who have been initiated by the adepts of mystic lore into the mysterious knowledge, which, notwithstanding the lapse of ages, has yet a few real votaries on earth.
Kabalist, from קבלה, Kabala; an unwritten or oral tradition. The kabalist is a student of “secret science,” one who interprets the hidden meaning of the Scriptures with the help of the symbolical Kabala, and explains the real one by these means. The Tanaïm were the first kabalists among the Jews; they appeared at Jerusalem about the beginning of the third century before the Christian era. The Books of Ezekiel, Daniel, Henoch, and the Revelation of St. John, are purely kabalistical. This secret doctrine is identical with that of the Chaldeans, and includes at the same time much of the Persian wisdom, or “magic.”
Lamas.—Buddhist monks belonging to the Lamaic religion of Thibet, as, for instance, friars are the monks belonging to the Popish or Roman Catholic religion. Every lama is subject to the grand Taley-Lama, the Buddhist pope of Thibet, who holds his residence at Lha-ssa, and is a reïncarnation of Buddha.
Mage, or Magian; from Mag or Maha. The word is the root of the word magician. The Maha-âtma (the great Soul or Spirit) in India had its priests in the pre-Vedic times. The Magians were priests of the fire-god; we find them among the Assyrians and Babylonians, as well as among the Persian fire-worshippers. The three magi, also denominated kings, that are said to have made gifts of gold, incense, and myrrh to the infant Jesus, were fire-worshippers like the rest, and astrologers; for they saw his star. The high priest of the Parsis, at Surat, is called Mobed, others derived the word from Megh; Meh-ab signifying something grand and noble. Zoroaster’s disciples were called Meghestom, according to Kleuker.
Magician.—This term, once a title of renown and distinction, has come to be wholly perverted from its true meaning. Once the synonym of all that was honorable and reverent, of a possessor of learning and wisdom, it has become degraded into an epithet to designate one who is a pretender and a juggler; a charlatan, in short, or one who has “sold his soul to the Evil One;” who misuses his knowledge, and employs it for low and dangerous uses, according to the teachings of the clergy, and a mass of superstitious fools who believe the magician a sorcerer and an enchanter. But Christians forget, apparently, that Moses was also a magician, and Daniel, “Master of the magicians, astrologers, Chaldeans, and soothsayers” (Daniel, v. 11).
The word magician then, scientifically speaking, is derived from Magh, Mah, Hindu or Sanscrit Maha—great; a man well versed in the secret or esoteric knowledge; properly a sacerdote.
Manticism, or mantic frenzy. During this state was developed the gift of prophecy. The two words are nearly synonymous. One was as honored as the other. Pythagoras and Plato held it in high esteem, and Socrates advised his disciples to study Manticism. The Church Fathers, who condemned so severely the mantic frenzy in Pagan priests and Pythiæ, were not above applying it to their own uses. The Montanists, who took their name from Montanus, a bishop of Phrygia, who was considered divinely inspired, rivalled with the μάντεις (manteis) or prophets. “Tertullian, Augustine, and the martyrs of Carthage, were of the number,” says the author of Prophecy, Ancient and Modern. “The Montanists seem to have resembled the Bacchantes in the wild enthusiasm that characterized their orgies,” he adds. There is a diversity of opinion as to the origin of the word Manticism. There was the famous Mantis the Seer, in the days of Melampus and Prœtus, King of Argos; and there was Manto, the daughter of the prophet of Thebes, herself a prophetess. Cicero describes prophecy and mantic frenzy by saying that “in the inner recesses of the mind is divine prophecy hidden and confined, a divine impulse, which when it burns more vividly is called furor” (frenzy, madness).
But there is still another etymology possible for the word mantis, and to which we doubt if the attention of the philologists was ever drawn. The mantic frenzy may, perchance, have a still earlier origin. The two sacrificial cups of the Soma-mystery used during the religious rites, and generally known as grahâs, are respectively called Sukra and Manti.[40]