[42]. ὁσοντε ὲκ τοῦ κατηγορουμένου ἡμῶν ὀνομάτος χρησότατοι ὑπάρχομεν (First Apology).
[43]. The extraordinary amount of information collated by that able Egyptologist shows that he has thoroughly mastered the secret of the production of the New Testament. Mr. Massey knows the difference between the spiritual, divine and purely metaphysical Christos, and the made-up “lay figure” of the carnalized Jesus. He knows also that the Christian canon, especially the Gospels, Acts and Epistles, are made up of fragments of gnostic wisdom, the ground-work of which is pre-Christian and built on the MYSTERIES of Initiation. It is the mode of theological presentation and the interpolated passages—such as in Mark xvi. from verse 9 to the end—which make of the Gospels a “magazine of (wicked) falsehoods,” and throw a slur on Christos. But the Occultist who discerns between the two currents (the true gnostic and the pseudo Christian) knows that the passages free from theological tampering belong to archaic wisdom, and so does Mr. Gerald Massey, though his views differ from ours.
[44]. “The key to the recovery of the language, so far as the writer’s efforts have been concerned, was found in the use, strange to say, of the discovered integral ratio in numbers of diameter to circumference of a circle,” by a geometrician. “This ratio is 6,561 for diameter and 20,612 for circumference.” (Cabalistic MSS.) In one of the future numbers of “Lucifer” more details will be given, with the permission of the discoverer.—Ed.
[45]. Cory’s Anc. Frag., p. 59, f. So do Sanchoniaton and Hesiod, who both ascribe the vivifying of mankind to the spilt blood of the gods. But blood and soul are one (nephesh), and the blood of the gods means here the informing soul.
[46]. The existence of these seven keys is virtually admitted, owing to deep research in the Egyptological lore, by Mr. G. Massey again. While opposing the teachings of “Esoteric Buddhism”—unfortunately misunderstood by him in almost every respect—in his Lecture on “The Seven Souls of Man,” he writes (p. 21):—
“This system of thought, this mode of representation, this septenary of powers, in various aspects, had been established in Egypt, at least, seven thousand years ago, as we learn from certain allusions to Atum (the god ‘in whom the fatherhood was individualised as the begetter of an eternal soul,’ the seventh principle of the Theosophists,)[Theosophists,)] found in the inscriptions lately discovered at Sakkarah. I say in various aspects, because the gnosis of the Mysteries was, at least, sevenfold in its nature—it was Elemental, Biological, Elementary (human), Stellar, Lunar, Solar and Spiritual—and nothing short of a grasp of the whole system can possibly enable us to discriminate the various parts, distinguish one from the other, and determinate the which and the what, as we try to follow the symbolical Seven through their several phases of character.”
[47]. “Gnostic and Historic Christianity.”
[48]. “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” (John iii. 4.) Here the birth from above, the spiritual birth, is meant, achieved at the supreme and last initiation.
[49]. Or Life-origination, Life-fusion, Life-division, Life-renewal and Life-transmission[Life-transmission].
[50]. “Mistaking” is an erroneous term to use. The men of science know but too well that what they teach concerning life is a materialistic fiction contradicted at every step by logic and fact. In this particular question science is abused, and made to serve personal hobbies and a determined policy of crushing in humanity every spiritual aspiration and thought. “Pretending to mistake” would be more correct.—H. P. B.