But there is something more in the old literature of the early centuries. Iamblichus wrote a biography of the great Pythagoras.

The latter so closely resembles the life of Jesus that it may be taken for a travesty. Diogenes Laërtius and Plutarch relate the history of Plato according to a similar style.[255]

Why then wonder at the doubts that assail every scholar who studies all these lives? The Church herself knew all these doubts in her early stages; and though only one of her Popes has been known publicly and openly as a Pagan, how many more were there who were too ambitious to reveal the truth?

This “mystery,” for mystery indeed it is to those who, not being Initiates, fail to find the key of the perfect similitude between the lives of Pythagoras, Buddha, Apollonius, etc.—is only a natural result for those who know that all these great characters were Initiates of the same School. For them there is neither “travesty” nor “copy” of one from the other; for them they are all “originals,” only painted to represent one and the same subject: the mystic, and at the same time the public, life of the Initiates sent into the world to save portions of humanity, if they could not save the whole bulk. Hence, the same programme for all. The assumed “immaculate origin” for each, referring to their “mystic birth” during the Mystery of Initiation, and accepted literally by the multitudes, encouraged in this by the better informed but ambitious clergy. Thus, the mother of each one of them was declared a virgin, conceiving her son directly by the Holy Spirit of God; and the Sons, in consequence, were the “Sons of God,” though in truth, none of them was any more entitled to such recognition than were the rest of his brother Initiates, for they were all—so far as their mystic lives were concerned—only “the epitomisers of the history of the same Sun,” which epitome is another mystery within the Mystery. The biographies of the external personalities bearing the names of such heroes have nothing to do with, and are quite independent of the private lives of the heroes, being only the mystic records of their public and, parallel therewith, of their inner lives, in their characters as [pg 141] Neophytes and Initiates. Hence, the manifest sameness of the means of construction of their respective biographies. From the beginning of Humanity the Cross, or Man, with his arms stretched out horizontally, typifying his kosmic origin, was connected with his psychic nature and with the struggles which lead to Initiation. But, if it is once shown that (a) every true Adept had, and still has, to pass through the seven and the twelve trials of Initiation, symbolised by the twelve labours of Hercules; (b) that the day of his real birth is regarded as that day when he is born into the world spiritually, his very age being counted from the hour of his second birth, which makes of him a “twice-born,” a Dvija or Initiate, on which day he is indeed born of a God and from an immaculate Mother; and (c) that the trials of all these personages are made to correspond with the Esoteric significance of initiatory rites—all of which corresponded to the twelve zodiacal signs—then every one will see the meaning of the travels of all those heroes through the signs of the Sun in Heaven; and that they are in each individual case a personification of the “sufferings, triumphs and miracles” of an Adept, before and after his Initiation. When to the world at large all this is explained, then also the mystery of all those lives, so closely resembling each other that the history of one seems to be the history of the other, and vice versâ, will, like everything else, become plain.

Take an instance: The legends—for they are all legends for exoteric purposes, whatever may be the denials in one case—of the lives of Krishna, Hercules, Pythagoras, Buddha, Jesus, Apollonius, Chaitanya. On the worldly plane, their biographies, if written by one outside the circle, would differ greatly from what we read of them in the narratives that are preserved of their mystic lives. Nevertheless, however much masked and hidden from profane gaze, the chief features of such lives will all be found there in common. Each of those characters is represented as a divinely begotten Sotēr (Saviour), a title bestowed on deities, great kings and heroes; everyone of them, whether at their birth or afterwards, is searched for, and threatened with death (yet never killed) by an opposing power (the world of Matter and Illusion), whether it be called a king Kansa, king Herod, or king Mâra (the Evil Power). They are all tempted, persecuted and finally said to have been murdered at the end of the rite of Initiation, i.e., in their physical personalities, of which they are supposed to have been rid for ever after spiritual “resurrection” or “birth.” And having thus come [pg 142] to an end by this supposed violent death, they all descend to the Nether World, the Pit or Hell—the Kingdom of Temptation, Lust and Matter, therefore of Darkness, whence returning, having overcome the “Chrest-condition,” they are glorified and become “Gods.”

It is not in the course of their everyday life, then, that the great similarity is to be sought, but in their inner state and in the most important events of their career as religious teachers. All this is connected with, and built upon, an astronomical basis, which serves, at the same time, as a foundation for the representation of the degrees and trials of Initiation: descent into the Kingdom of Darkness and Matter, for the last time, to emerge therefrom as “Suns of Righteousness,” is the most important of these and, therefore, is found in the history of all the Sotērs—from Orpheus and Hercules, down to Krishna and Christ. Says Euripides:

Heracles, who has gone from the chambers of earth,

Leaving the nether home of Pluto.[256]

And Virgil writes:

At Thee the Stygian lakes trembled; Thee the janitor of Orcus