Christianity is made to rest on two pillars, that of evil (πουηροῦ), and of good (ἀγαθοῦ); on two forces, in short (ἀγαθαὶ καὶ κακαὶ δυνάμεις): hence, if we suppress the punishment of the evil forces, the protecting mission of the good powers will have neither value nor sense
—is to utter the most unphilosophical absurdity. If it fits in with, and explains, Christian dogma, it obscures the facts and truths of the primitive Wisdom of the ages. The cautious hints of Paul have all the true Esoteric meaning, and it took centuries of scholastic casuistry to give them the false colouring in their present interpretations. The Verbum and Lucifer are one in their dual aspect; and the “Prince of the Air” (princeps aeris hujus) is not the “God of that period,” but an everlasting principle. When the latter was said to be ever circling around the world (qui circumambulat terram), the great Apostle referred simply to the never-ceasing cycles of human incarnations, in which evil will ever predominate unto the day when Humanity is redeemed by the true divine Enlightenment which gives the correct perception of things.
It is easy to disfigure vague expressions written in dead and long-forgotten languages, and palm them off on the ignorant masses as truths and revealed facts. The identity of thought and meaning is the one thing that strikes the student in all the religions which mention the tradition of the Fallen Spirits, and in those great religions there is not one that fails to mention and describe it in one or another form. Thus, Hoang-ty, the Great Spirit, sees his Sons, who had acquired active wisdom, falling into the Valley of Pain. Their leader, the Flying Dragon, having drunk of the forbidden Ambrosia, fell to the Earth [pg 543] with his Host (Kings). In the Zend Avesta, Angra Mainyu (Ahriman), surrounding himself with Fire (the “Flames” of the Stanzas), seeks to conquer the Heavens,[1185] when Ahura Mazda, descending from the solid Heaven he inhabits, to the help of the Heavens that revolve (in time and space, the manifested worlds of cycles including those of incarnation), and the Amshaspands, the “seven bright Sravah,” accompanied by their stars, fight Ahriman, and the vanquished Devas fall to the Earth along with him.[1186] In the Vendîdâd the Daêvas are called “evil-doing,” and are shown to rush away “into the depths of the ... world of hell,” or Matter.[1187] This is an allegory which shows the Devas compelled to incarnate, once that they have separated themselves from their Parent Essence, or, in other words, after the Unit had become multiple, after differentiation and manifestation.
Typhon the Egyptian Python, the Titans, the Suras and the Asuras, all belong to the same legend of Spirits peopling the Earth. They are not “Demons commissioned to create and organize this visible universe,” but the Fashioners or “Architects” of the Worlds, and the Progenitors of Man. They are the Fallen Angels, metaphorically—the “true mirrors” of the “Eternal Wisdom.”
What is the complete truth as well as the Esoteric meaning about this universal myth? The whole essence of truth cannot be transmitted from mouth to ear. Nor can any pen describe it, not even that of the Recording Angel, unless man finds the answer in the sanctuary of his own heart, in the innermost depths of his divine intuition. It is the great Seventh Mystery of Creation, the first and the last; and those who read St. John's Apocalypse may find its shadow lurking under the seventh seal. It can be represented only in its apparent, objective form, like the eternal riddle of the Sphinx. If the Sphinx threw herself into the sea and perished, it is not because Œdipus had unriddled the secret of the ages, but because, by anthropomorphizing the ever-spiritual and the subjective, he had dishonoured the great truth for ever. Therefore, we can give it only from its philosophical and intellectual planes, unlocked with three keys respectively—for the last four keys of the seven that throw wide open the portals to the Mysteries of Nature are in the hands of the highest Initiates, and cannot be divulged to the masses at large—not in this century, at any rate.
The dead-letter is everywhere the same. The dualism in the Mazdean religion was born from exoteric interpretation. The holy Airyaman, the “bestower of weal,”[1188] invoked in the prayer called Airyama-ishyô, is the divine aspect of Ahriman, “the deadly, the Daêva of the Daêvas,”[1189] and Angra Mainyu is the dark material aspect of the former. “Keep us from our hater, O Mazda and Ârmaita Spenta,”[1190] has, as a prayer and invocation, an identical meaning with “Lead us not into temptation,” and is addressed by man to the terrible spirit of duality in man himself. For Ahura Mazda is the Spiritual, Divine, and Purified Man, and Ârmaita Spenta, the Spirit of the Earth or materiality, is the same as Ahriman or Angra Mainyu in one sense.
The whole of the Magian or Mazdean literature—or what remains of it—is magical, occult, hence allegorical and symbolical, even its “mystery of the law.”[1191] Now the Mobed and the Parsî keep their eye on the Baresma during the sacrifice—the divine twig off Ormazd's “Tree” having been transformed into a bunch of metallic rods—and wonder why neither the Amesha Spentas, nor “the high and beautiful golden Haômas, nor even their Vohu-Manô (good thoughts), nor their Râta (sacrificial offering),” help them much. Let them meditate on the “Tree of Wisdom,” and by study assimilate, one by one, the fruits thereof. The way to the Tree of Eternal Life, the white Haôma, the Gaokerena, is through one end of the Earth to the other; and Haôma is in Heaven as it is on Earth. But to become once more a priest of it, and a “healer,” man must heal himself, for this must be done before he can heal others.
This proves once more that, in order to be dealt with, with at least an approximate degree of justice, the so-called “myths” have to be closely examined from all their aspects. In truth, every one of the seven keys has to be used in its right place, and never mixed with the others—if we would unveil the entire cycle of mysteries. In our day of dreary soul-killing Materialism, the ancient Priest-Initiates have become, in the opinion of our learned generations, the synonyms of clever impostors, kindling the fires of superstition in order to obtain an easier sway over the minds of men. This is an unfounded calumny, generated by scepticism and uncharitable thoughts. No one believed more than they did in Gods—or, we may call them, the spiritual and [pg 545] now invisible Powers, or Spirits, the Noumena of the phenomena; and they believed simply because they knew. And though after being initiated into the Mysteries of Nature, they were forced to withhold their knowledge from the profane, who would have surely abused it, such secrecy was undeniably less dangerous than the policy of their usurpers and successors. The former taught only that which they well knew. The latter, teaching what they do not know, have invented, as a secure haven for their ignorance, a jealous and cruel Deity, who forbids man to pry into his mysteries under the penalty of damnation; as well they may, for his mysteries can at best be only hinted at in polite ears, never described. Turn to King's Gnostics and their Remains, and see for yourself what was the primitive Ark of the Covenant, according to the author, who says:
There is a Rabbinical tradition ... that the Cherubim placed over it were represented as male and female, in the act of copulation, in order to express the grand doctrine of the Essence of Form and Matter, the two principles of all things. When the Chaldeans broke into the Sanctuary and beheld this most astounding emblem, they naturally enough exclaimed, “Is this your God, of whom you boast, that He is such a lover of purity!”[1192]
King thinks that this tradition “savours too much of Alexandrian philosophy to demand any credit,” to which we demur. The shape and form of the wings of the two Cherubim standing on the right and left sides of the Ark, these wings meeting over the “Holy of Holies,” are an emblem quite eloquent in itself, not to speak of the “holy” Jod within the Ark! The Mystery of Agathodæmon, whose legend states, “I am Chnumis, Sun of the Universe, 700,” can alone solve the mystery of Jesus, the number of whose name is “888.” It is not the key of St. Peter, or the Church dogma, but the Narthex—the Wand of the Candidate for Initiation—that has to be wrenched from the grasp of the long-silent Sphinx of the ages. Meanwhile: