And the Angel of the Lord said unto him [Manoah] “Why askest thou thus after my name, seeing it is secret.”[517]
However this may be, the identity of the Jehovah of Mount Sinai with the God Bacchus is hardly disputable, and he is surely—as already shown in Isis Unveiled—Dionysos.[518] Wherever Bacchus was worshipped there was a tradition of Nyssa,[519] and a cave where he was reared. Outside Greece, Bacchus was the all-powerful “Zagreus, the highest of Gods,” in whose service was Orpheus, the founder of the Mysteries. Now, unless it be conceded that Moses was an initiated Priest, an Adept, whose actions are all narrated allegorically, then it must be admitted that he personally, together with his hosts of Israelites, worshipped Bacchus.
And Moses built an altar, and called the name of it Jehovah Nissi [or, Iao-nisi, or again Dionisi].[520]
To strengthen the statement we have further to remember that the place where Osiris, the Egyptian Zagreus or Bacchus, was born, was Mount Sinai, which is called by the Egyptians Mount Nissa. The brazen serpent was a nis, כהש, and the month of the Jewish Passover is Nisan.
Section XXXI. The Objects of the Mysteries.
The earliest Mysteries recorded in history are those of Samothrace. After the distribution of pure Fire, a new life began. This was the new birth of the Initiate, after which, like the Brâhmans of old in India, he became a dwija—a “twice born,”
Initiated into that which may be rightly called the most blessed of all Mysteries ... being ourselves pure,[521]
says Plato. Diodorus Siculus, Herodotus, and Sanchoniathon the Phœnician—the oldest of Historians—say that these Mysteries originated in the night of time, thousands of years probably before the historical period. Iamblichus informs us that Pythagoras