Theosophical Publishing House
Adyar, Madras, India
VII
The ritualism of primitive Christianity — as now sufficiently shown — sprang
from ancient Masonry. The latter was, in its turn, the offspring of the, then,
almost dead Mysteries. Of these we have now a few words to say.
It is well known that throughout antiquity, besides
the popular worship composed of the dead-letter forms and empty exoteric
ceremonies, every nation had its secret cult known to the world as the MYSTERIES.
Strabo, one among many others, warrants for this assertion. ( Georg, lib.
10) No one received admittance into them save those prepared for it by
special training. The neophytes instructed in the upper temples were initiated
into the final Mysteries in the crypts. These instructions were the last surviving
heirlooms of archaic wisdom, and it is[Page 2]under
the guidance of high Initiates that they were enacted. We use the
word “enacted” purposely;
for the oral instructions at low breath were given only in
the crypts, in solemn silence and secrecy. During the public classes and general
teachings, the lessons in cosmogony and theogony were delivered in allegorical
representation, the
modus operandi of the gradual evolution of Kosmos, worlds, and finally
of our earth, of gods and men, all was imparted in a symbolical way. The great
public performances during the festivals of the Mysteries, were witnessed by
the masses and the personified truths worshipped by the multitudes — blindly.
Alone the high Initiates, the Epoptae, understood their language and real meaning.
All this, and so far, is well known to the world of scholars.
It was a common claim of all the ancient nations
that the real mysteries of what is called so unphilosophically, creation,
were divulged to the elect of our (fifth) race by its first dynasties of
divine Rulers — gods in flesh, “divine
incarnations”, or Avatars, so called. The last Stanzas, given from the
Book of Dzyan in The Secret Doctrine (Vol. II, p. 21 ), speak of those
who ruled over the descendants “produced from the holy stock”,
and . . . “who re-descended, who made peace with the fifth (race) who
taught and instructed it”.
The phrase “made peace” shows
that there had been a previous quarrel. The fate of the Atlanteans in our
philosophy, and that of the prediluvians in
the [Page 3] Bible, corroborates the idea.
Once more — many centuries before the Ptolemies — the same abuse
of the sacred knowledge crept in amongst the initiates of the Sanctuary in
Egypt. Preserved for countless ages in all their purity, the sacred teachings
of the gods, owing to personal ambition and selfishness, became corrupted again.
The meaning of the symbols found itself but too often desecrated by unseemly
interpretations, and very soon the Eleusinian Mysteries remained the only ones
pure from adulteration and sacrilegious innovations. These were in honour of
(Ceres) Demeter, or Nature, and were celebrated in Athens, the flowers of the
intellect of Asia Minor and Greece being initiated thereinto. In his 4th Book,
Zosimus states that these Initiates embraced the whole of mankind; [Says
Cicero in De Nat. Deorum, lib. I : “Omitto Eleusinem sanctam
illam et augustam; ubi initiantur gentes orarum ultime”. ] while
Aristides calls the Mysteries the common temple of the earth.
It is to preserve some reminiscence
of this “temple”,
and to rebuild it, if need be, that certain elect ones among the initiated
began to be set apart. This was done by their High Hierophants in every century,
from the time when the sacred allegories showed the first signs of desecration
and decay. For the great Elusinia finally shared the same fate as the others.
Their earlier excellency and purpose are described by Clement of Alexandria
who shows the greater Mysteries divulging the secrets and the mode of[Page
4]construction of the Universe, this being
the beginning, the end and the ultimate goal of human knowledge, for in them
was shown to the initiated Nature and all things as they are. (Strom. 8.) This
is the Pythagorean Gnosis, Epictetus speaks of these instructions in the highest
terms: “All that
is ordained therein was established by our masters for the instruction of men
and the correction of our customs.” (Apud Arrian. Dissert. lib. cap.
21.) Plato asserts in the Phaedo the same: the object of the Mysteries
was to re-establish the soul in its primordial purity, or that state of
perfection from which it had fallen.
VIII
But there came a day when the
Mysteries deviated from their purity in the same way as the exoteric religions.
This began when the State bethought itself, on the advice of Aristogeiton
(510 B.C.), of drawing from the Eleusinia a constant and prolific source
of income. A law was passed to that effect. Henceforth, no one could be initiated
without paying a certain sum of money for the privilege. That boon which
could hitherto be acquired only at the price of incessant, almost superhuman
effort, toward virtue and excellency, was now to be purchased for so much
gold. Laymen — and even priests themselves — while[Page 5]accepting the desecration lost eventually their past reverence for
the inner Mysteries, and this led to further profanation of the Sacred Science.
The rent made in the veil widened with every century; and more than ever the
Supreme Hierophants, dreading the final publication and distortion of the most
holy secrets of nature, laboured to eliminate them from the inner programme,
limiting the full knowledge thereof but to the few.
It is those set apart who soon became the only custodians of the divine
heirloom of the ages.
Seven centuries later, we find Apuleius, his sincere inclination toward magic
and the mystical notwithstanding, writing in his Golden Age a bitter
satire against the hypocrisy and debauchery of certain orders of half-initiated
priests. It is through him also, that we learn that in his day (second century
A.D.)
the Mysteries had become so universal that persons of all ranks and conditions,
in every country, men, women, and children all were initiated! Initiation
had become as necessary in his day as baptism has since become with the Christians;
and, as the latter is now, so the former had become then — i.e.,
meaningless, and a purely dead-letter ceremony of mere form. Still later, the
fanatics of the new religion laid their heavy hand on the Mysteries.
The Epoptae, they “who see things as they are” disappeared
one by one, emigrating into regions[Page 6] inaccessible
to the Christians. The Mystae (from Mystes “or veiled”) “they
who see things only as they appear” remained very soon, alone, sole masters
of the situation.
It is the former, the “set apart”,
who have preserved the true secrets; it is the Mystae, those who
knew them only superficially, who laid the first foundation stone of modern
Masonry; and it is from this half pagan, half converted primitive fraternity
of Masons that Christian ritualism and most of dogmas were born. Both the Epoptae and
the Mystae are
entitled to the name of Masons: for both carrying out their pledges to, and
the injunction of their long departed Hierophants and “Kings” rebuilt,
the Epoptae, their “lower”, and the Mystae, their “upper
temples. For such were the irrespective appellations in antiquity, and are
so to this day in certain regions. Sophocles speaks in the Electra (Act
2) of the foundations of Athens — the site of the Eleusinian Mysteries — as
being the “sacred edifice of the gods”, i.e., built by
the gods. Initiation was spoken of as “walking into the temple”,
and “cleaning”, or rebuilding the temple referred to the body of
an initiate on his last and supreme trial. (Vide St. John's Gospel, 2:19).
The esoteric doctrine, also, was sometimes called by the name of “temple” and
popular exoteric religion, by that of “city”. To build
a temple meant to found an esoteric school; to “build a city temple” signified
[Page 7] to establish a public cult. Therefore, the true surviving “Masons” of
the lower Temple, or the crypt, the sacred place of initiation,
are the only custodians of the true Masonic secrets now lost to the
world. We yield willingly to the modern Fraternity of Masons the title of “Builders
of the higher Temple”, as the à priori superiority of
the comparative adjective is as illusionary as the blaze of the burning bush
of Moses itself in the Templars' Lodges.
IX
The misunderstood allegory known as the Descent into Hades,
has wrought infinite mischief. The exoteric “fable” of Hercules
and Theseus descending into the infernal regions; the journey thither of Orpheus,
who found his way by the power of his lyre (Ovid Metam.); of Krishna,
and finally of Christ, who “descended into Hell and the third day rose
again from the dead” — was twisted out of recognition by the non-initiated adapters of pagan rites and transformers thereof, into Church rites and dogmas.
Astronomically, this descent into hell symbolized
the Sun during the autumnal equinox when abandoning the higher sidereal regions,
there was a supposed fight between him and the Demon of Darkness who got the
best of our luminary. Then the Sun was imagined to undergo a temporary death
and to descend into the infernal regions. But mystically,[Page
8]it typified the initiatory rites in the
crypts of the temple, called the Underworld. Bacchus, Herakles, Orpheus, Asklepios
and all the other visitors of the crypt, all descended into hell and ascended
thence on the third day, for all were initiates and “Builders of the lower Temple”.
The words addressed by Hermes to Prometheus, chained on the arid rocks of the
Caucasus — i.
e., bound by ignorance to his physical body and devoured therefore by
the vultures of passion — apply to every neophyte, to every Chrestos on
trial. “To such labours look thou for no termination until the (or
a) god shall appear as a substitute in thy pangs and shall be willing to go
both to gloomy Hades and to the murky depths around Tartarus.” (Aeschylus: Prometheus,
1027, ff.) They mean simply that until Prometheus (or man) could find the “God”,
or Hierophant (the Initiator) who would willingly descend into the crypts of
initiation, and walk around Tartarus with him, the vulture of passion would
never cease to gnaw his vitals.[The
dark region in the crypt, into which the candidate under initiation was supposed
to throw away for ever his worst passions and lusts. Hence the allegories by
Homer, Ovid, Virgil, etc., all accepted literally by the modern scholar. Phlegethon
was the river in Tartarus into which the initiate was thrice plunged by the
Hierophant, after which the trials were over and the new man born anew. He
had left in the dark stream the old sinful man for ever, and issued on the
third day, from Tartarus, as an individuality, the personality being
dead. Such characters as Ixion, Tantalus, Sisyphus, etc., are each a personification
of some human passion. ] Aeschylus as a pledged Initiate could
say no more; but Aristophanes less pious, or more daring, divulges [Page
9] the secret to those who are not blinded by a too strong preconception,
in his immortal satire on Heracles' descentinto Hell. (Frogs.)
There we find the chorus of the “blessed ones” (the initiated),
the Elysian Fields, the arrival of Bacchus (the god Hierophant) with Herakles,
the reception with lighted torches, emblems of new LIFE and RESURRECTION from
the darkness of human ignorance to the light of spiritual knowledge — eternal
LIFE.
Every word of the brilliant satire shows the inner meaning of the poet:
Wake, burning torches ... for thou comest
Shaking them in thy hand, Iacche,
Phosphoric star of the nightly rite.
All such final initiations took place during the night.
To speak, therefore, of anyone as having descended into Hades, was equivalent
in antiquity to calling him a full Initiate. To those who feel inclined
to reject this explanation, I would offer a query. Let them explain, in that
case, the meaning of a sentence in the sixth book of Virgil's Aeneid.
What can the poet mean, if not that which is asserted above, when introducing
the aged Anchises in the Elysian fields, he makes him advise Aeneas his son,
to travel to Italy . . . where he would have to fight in Latium, a rude and
barbarous people; therefore, he adds, before you venture there “Descend
into Hades”, i.
e., get yourself initiated.
The benevolent clericals, who are so apt to send
us on the slightest provocation to Tartarus and the[Page
10] infernal regions,
do not suspect what good wishes for us the threat contains; and what a holy
character one must be before one gets into such a sanctified place.
It is not pagans alone who had their Mysteries. Bellarmin
(De Eccl. Triumph.
lib. 2, cap. 14) states that the early Christians adopted, after the example
of pagan ceremonies, the custom of assembling in the church during the nights
preceding their festivals, to hold vigils or “wakes”. Their ceremonies
were performed at first with the most edifying holiness and purity. But very
shortly after that, such immoral abuses crept into these “assemblies” that
the bishops found it necessary to abolish them. We have read in dozens of works
about the licentiousness in the pagan religious festivals. Cicero is quoted
(de Leg. lib. 2, cap. 15) showing Diagondas, the Theban, finding no
other means of remedying such disorders in the ceremonies than the suppression
of the Mysteries themselves. When we contrast the two kinds of celebrations,
however, the Pagan Mysteries hoary with age centuries before our era, and the
Christian Agape and others in a religion hardly born and claiming such a purifying
influence on its converts, we can only pity the mental blindness of its defenders
and quote for their benefit Roscommon, who asks:
When you begin with so much pomp and show,
Why is the end so little and so low?[Page 11]
X
Primitive Christianity — being derived from the primitive Masonry — had
its grip. pass-words, and degrees of initiation. “Masonry” is an
old term but it came into use very late in our era. Paul calls himself a “master-builder” and
he was one. The ancient Masons called themselves by various names and most
of the Alexandrian Eclectics, the Theosophists of Ammonias Saccas and the later
Neo-Platonists, were all virtually Masons.
They were all bound by oath to secrecy, considered themselves a Brotherhood,
and had also their signs of recognition. The Eclectics or Philaletheians comprised
within their ranks the ablest and most learned scholars of the day. as also
several crowned heads. Says the author of The Eclectic Philosophy:
Their doctrines were adopted by pagans and Christians in
Asia and Europe, and for a season everything seemed favourable for a general
fusion of religious belief. The Emperors Alexander Severus and Julian embraced
them. Their predominating influence upon religious ideas excited the jealousy
of the Christians of Alexandria. The school was removed to Athens, and finally
closed by the Emperor Justinian. Its professors withdrew to Persia, [And
we may add, beyond, to India and Central Asia, for we find their influence
everywhere in Asiatic countries. ] where they made many disciples.
A few more details may prove perchance,
interesting. We know that the Eleusinian Mysteries[Page
12]survived all others. While
the secret cults of the minor gods such as the Curates, the Dactyli,
the worship of Adonis, of the Kabiri, and even those of old Egypt
had entirely disappeared under the revengeful and cruel hand of the pitiless
Theodosius, [The
murderer of the Thessalonians, who were butchered by this pious son of the
Church. ] the Mysteries of Eleusis could not be so easily
disposed of. They were indeed the religion of mankind, and shone in all their
ancient splendour if not in their primitive purity. It took several centuries
to abolish them, and they could not be entirely suppressed before the year
396 of our era. It is then that the “Builders of the higher, or City
Temple” appeared first on the scene and worked unrelentingly to infuse
their rituals and peculiar dogmas into the nascent and ever fighting and quarrelling
church.
The triple Sanctus of the Roman Catholic Mass is the triple S.S.S. of these
early Masons, and is the modern prefix to their documents or “any written balustre — the
initial of Salutem, or Health” as cunningly put by a Mason. “This
triple masonic salutation is the most ancient among their greetings.” (Ragon.)
XI
But they did not limit their grafts on the tree
of the Christian religion to this alone. During the[Page
13] Mysteries
of Eleusis, wine represented Bacchus and Ceres — wine and bread, or corn. [Bacchus
is certainly of Indian origin. Pausanias shows him the first to lead an expedition
against India, and the first to throw a bridge over the Euphrates. “The
cable which served to unite the two opposite shores being exhibited to this
day”, writes this historian, “it being woven from vine-branches
and trailings of ivy”. (X 29. 4.) Arrianus and Quintus-Curtius explained
the allegory of Bacchus' birth from the thigh of Zeus, by saying that he was
born on the Indian Mount Meru (from thigh). We are aware that Eratosthenes
and Strabo believed the Indian Bacchus had been invented by flatterers to simply
please Alexander, believed to have conquered India as Bacchus is supposed to
have done. But on the other hand, Cicero mentions the god as a Son of Thyoné and
Nisus; and Dionysus or means the god Dis from Mount Nys in India. Bacchus crowned
with ivy, or Kissos, is Krshna, one of whose names was Kissen. Dionysus was
pre-eminently the god who was expected to liberate the souls of men from their
prisons of flesh — Hades and the human Tartarus, in one of its symbolical
senses. Cicero calls Orpheus a son of Bacchus, and there is a tradition which
not only makes Orpheus come from India (he being called dark, of tawny complexion)
but identifies him with Arjuna, the chela and adoptive son of Krshna. (Vide Five Years of Theosophy: “Was writing known before Pãnini?”) ] Now
Ceres or Demeter was the female productive principle of the Earth; the spouse
of Father Aether, or Zeus; and Bacchus, the son of Zeus-Jupiter, was his father
manifested: in other words, Ceres and Bacchus were the personifications of
Substance and Spirit, the two vivifying principles in Nature and on Earth.
The hierophant Initiator presented symbolically, before the final revelation of
the mysteries, wine and bread to the candidate, who ate and drank, in token
that the spirit was to quicken matter: i.e. the divine wisdom of the
Higher-Self was to enter into and take possession of his inner Self or Soul
through what was to be revealed to him.[Page 14]
This rite was adopted by the Christian
Church. The Hierophant who was called the “Father”, has now passed,
part and parcel — minus knowledge — into
the “Father” priest, who today administers the same communion.
Jesus calls himself a vine and his “Father” the husbandman;
and his injunction at the Last Supper shows his thorough knowledge of the symbolical
meaning (Vide infra, note) of bread and wine, and his identification
with the
logoi of the ancients. “Whose eateth my flesh and drinketh my
blood hath eternal life”. “This is a hard saying”, he adds.
. . . “The
words (rhemata, or arcane utterances) that I speak unto you, they
are Spirit and they are Life”. They are; because “it is the Spirit
that quickeneth”. Furthermore these rhemata of Jesus are indeed the arcane
utterances of an Initiate.
But between this noble rite, as
old as symbolism, and its later anthropomorphic interpretation, now known
as transubstantiation, there is an abyss of ecclesiastical sophistry. With
what force the exclamation — “Woe
unto you lawyers. For ye have taken away the key of knowledge”,
(and will not permit even now gnosis to be given to others); with
what tenfold force, I say, it applies more now than then. Aye; that gnosis, “ye
entered not in yourselves, and them that were (and are) entering ye prevented”,
and still prevent. Nor has the modern priesthood alone laid itself open to
this blame. Masons, the descendants, or at any rate the successors, of the
[Page 15] “Builders of the upper Temple” during the Mysteries,
they who ought to know better, will pooh-pooh and scorn any one among their
own brethren who will remind them of their true origin. Several great modern
Scholars and Kabalists, who are Masons, and could be named, received worse
than the cold shoulder from their Brethren. It is ever the same old, old story.
Even Ragon, the most learned in his day among all the Masons of our century,
complains of it, in these words:
All the ancient narratives attest that the initiations in the days of old
had an imposing ceremonial, and became memorable for ever through the grand
truths divulged and the knowledge that resulted therefrom. And yet there
are some modern Masons, of half-learning, who hasten to treat as
charlatans all those who successfully remind of, and explain to them, these
ancient ceremonies! (Cours. Philos. p. 87 note [2].)
XII
Vanitas vanitatum! Nothing is
new under the sun. The “Litanies of the
Virgin Mary” prove it in the sincerest way. Pope Gregory I, introduces
the worship of the Virgin Mary and the Chalcedonian Council proclaim her the
mother of God. But the author of the Litanies had not even the decency
(or is it the brains?) to furnish her with any other than pagan adjectives
and titles, as I shall presently show. Not a symbol, not a metaphor of this
famous Litany, but belonged to a crowd of goddesses; all Queens,[Page
16]Virgins, or Mothers; these three titles applying to Isis, Rhea,
Cybele, Diana, Lucifera, Lucina, Luna, Tellus, Latona triformis, Proserpina,
Hecate, Juno, Vesta, Ceres, Leucothea, Astarte, celestial Venus and Urania,
Alma Venus, etc., etc., etc.
Besides the primitive signification
of trinity (the esoteric, or that Father, Mother, Son) does not this Western
Trimurti (three faces) mean in the Masonic pantheon: “Sun, Moon, and the Venerable”?
a slight alteration, forsooth, from the Germanic and Northern Fire, Sun and
Moon.
It is the intimate knowledge of this, perchance, that made the Mason, J. M.
Ragon describe his profession of faith thus:
For me the Son is the same as Horus, son of Osiris and Isis; he is the
SUN who, every year redeems the world from sterility and the universal death
of the races.
And he goes on to speak of the Virgin Mary's particular litanies,
temples, festivals, masses and Church services, pilgrimages, oratories, Jacobins,
Franciscans, vestals, prodigies, ex voto, niches, statues, etc., etc., etc.
De Maleville, a great Hebrew scholar and translator
of Rabbinical literature, observes that the Jews give to the moon all those
names which, in the Litanies, are used to glorify the Virgin. He finds in
the Litanies of Jesus, all the attributes of Osiris — the
Eternal Sun, and of Horus, the Annual Sun.
And he proves it.[Page 17]
Mater Christi is the mother of the Redeemer of the
old Masons, who is the Sun. The hoi polloi among the Egyptians,
claimed that the child, symbol of the great central star, Horus, was the Son
of Osireth and Oseth, whose souls had ensouled, after their death,
the Sun and the Moon. Isis
became, with the Phoenicians, Astarte, the name under which they adored the
Moon, personified as a woman adorned with horns, which symbolised the crescent.
Astarte was represented at the autumnal equinox after her husband's (the Sun's)
defeat by the Prince of Darkness, and descent into Hades, as weeping over the
loss of her consort, who is also her son, as Isis does that of her consort,
brother and son (Osiris-Horus). Astarte holds in her hand a cruciform stick,
a regular cross, and stands weeping on the crescent moon. The Christian Virgin
Mary is often represented in the same way, standing on the new moon, surrounded
by stars and weeping for her son juxta crucem lacrymosa dum pendebatfilius (See, Stabat
Mater Dolorosa). Is not she the heiress of Isis and Astarte? asks the
author.
Truly, and you have but to repeat the Litany
to the Virgin of the Roman Catholic Church, to find yourself repeating
ancient incantations to Adonaïa (Venus),
the mother of Adonis, the Solar god of so many nations; to Mylitta (the Assyrian
Venus), goddess of Nature; to Alilat, whom the Arabs symbolized by the two
lunar horns; to Selene, wife and sister of Helios, the Sun [Page18] god
of the Greeks; or, to the Magna Mater, . . . honestissima, purissima, castissima,
the Universal Mother of all Beings — because SHE
IS MOTHER NATURE.
Verily is Maria (Mary) the Isis Myrionymos,
the Goddess Mother of the ten thousand names! As the Sun was Phoebus,
in the heaven, so he became Apollo, on earth, and Pluto in the still lower
regions (after sunset); so the moon was Phoebe in heaven, and Diana
on earth (Gaia, Latona,
Ceres); becoming Hecate and Proserpine in Hades. Where is the wonder then,
if Mary is called regina virginum, “Queen of Virgins”,
and castissima (most chaste), when even the prayers offered to her
at the sixth hour of the morning and the evening are copied from those sung
by the “heathen” Gentiles at the same hours in honour
of Phoebe and Hecate? The verse of the “Litany to the Virgin”, stella
matutina, [The “Morning Star”, or Lucifer,
the name which Jesus calls himself in Rev. 22:16, and which becomes, nevertheless,
the name of the Devil, as soon as a theosophical journal assumes it! ] we
are informed, is a faithful copy of a verse from the litany of the triformis of
the pagans. It is at the Council which condemned Nestorius that Mary was first
titled as the “Mother of God”, mater dei.
In our next, we shall have something
to say about this famous Litany of the Virgin, and show its origin in full.
We shall cull our proofs, as we go along, from the classics and the moderns,
and supplement the whole from the annals of religions as found in the Esoteric
Doctrine. Meanwhile, we may add a few more [Page 19] statements and give
the etymology of the most sacred terms in ecclesiastical ritualism.
XIII
Let us give a few moments of attention
to the assemblies of the “Builders
of the upper Temple” in early Christianity. Ragon has shown plainly to
us the origin of the following terms:
(a) “The word 'mass', comes
from the Latin Messis — 'harvest,'
whence the noun Messias, 'he who ripens the harvest,' Christ, the
Sun”.
(b) The word “Lodge” used
by the Masons, the feeble successors of the Initiates, has its root in loga, (loka, in Sanskrit)
a locality and a world; and in the Greek logos, the Word,
a discourse; signifying in its full meaning “a place where certain things are discussed”.
(c) These assemblies of the logos of the primitive
initiated masons came to be called synaxis, “gatherings” of
the Brethren for the purpose of praying and celebrating the coena (supper)
wherein only bloodless offerings, fruit and cereals, were used. Soon after
these offerings began to be called hostiae — or
sacred and pure hosties — in contrast to the impure sacrifices
(as of prisoners of war, hostes, whence the word hostage),
as the offerings consisted of the harvest fruits, the first fruits of messis,
thence the word “mass”. Since no father of the Church mentions,
as some scholars would have it, [Page 20] that
the word mass comes from the Hebrew missah (oblatum, offering)
one explanation is as good as the other. For an exhaustive enquiry on the word
missa and mizda, see King's Gnostics, pp. 124, et
seq.
Now the word synaxis was also called by the Greeks agyrmos,
(a collection of men, assembly). It referred to initiation into the Mysteries.
Both words — synaxis and agyrmos[Hesychius
gives the name (agyrmos) to the first day of the initiation into the
mystery of Ceres, goddess of harvest, and refers to it also under that of Synaxis.
The early Christians called their mass, before this term was adapted, and the
celebration of their mysteries — Synaxis, a word compounded
from sun “with”, and ago “I lead”,
whence, the Greek synaxis or an assembly ] — became
obsolete with the Christians, and the word missa, or mass, prevailed
and remained. Theologians will have it, desirous as they are to veil its etymology,
that the term messias (Messiah) is derived from the Latin word missus (messenger,
the sent). But if so, then again it may be applied as well to the
Sun, the
annual messenger, sent to bring light and new life to the earth and
its products. The Hebrew word for Messiah, mashiah (anointed, from mashah,
to anoint) will hardly apply to, or bear out the identity in the ecclesiastical
sense; nor will the Latin missa ( mass) derive well from that other
Latin word mittere, missum, “to send”, or “dismiss”.
Because the communion service — its heart and soul — is based on
the consecration and oblation of the host or hostia (sacrifice), a
wafer ( a thin, leaf-like bread) representing the body of Christ in the Eucharist,[Page 21]and such wafer of flour is a direct
development of the harvest or cereal offerings. Again, the primitive masses were coenas (late
dinners or suppers), which, from the simple meals of Romans, who “ washed,
were anointed, and wore a cenatory garment” at dinner became
consecrated meals in memory of the last Supper of Christ.
The converted Jews in the days of the Apostles met at their synaxes,
to read the Evangels and their correspondence (Epistles). St. Justin (150 A.D.)
tells us that these solemn assemblies were held on the day called Sun (Sunday, dies
magnus), on which days there were psalms chanted — “collation
of baptism with pure water and the agape of the holy Coena with
bread and wine”. What has this hybrid combination of pagan Roman dinners,
raised by the inventors of church dogmas to a sacred mystery, to do with the
Hebrew Messiah “he
who causes to go down into the pit” (or Hades), or its Greek transliteration Messias.
As shown by Nork, Jesus “was never anointed either as high priest
or king”, therefore his name of Messias cannot be derived
from its present Hebrew equivalent. The less so, since the word anointed, or “rubbed
with oil” a Homeric term, is chris, and chrio,
both to anoint the body with oil. (See LUCIFER for
Nov.1887, “The Esoteric Character of the Gospels.”)
Another high Mason, the author
of “The Source of Measures”,
summarizes this imbroglio of the ages in a few lines by saying:[Page
22]
The fact is, there were two Messiahs: One, as
causing himself to go down into the pit, for the salvation of the world; [From
times immemorial every initiate before entering on his supreme trial of initiation,
in antiquity as at the present time, pronounced these sacramental words . .
. “And I swear to give up my life for the salvation of my brothers, which
constitute the whole of mankind, if called upon, and to die in the defence
of truth. . . .” ] this was the Sun shorn of his golden
rays and crowned
with blackened ones (symbolizing this loss) as the thorns. The other,
was the triumphant Messiah, mounted up to this summit of the arch
of Heaven, personated as the Lion of the tribe of Judah. In both
instances he had the cross. . . .”
At the Ambarvales, the festivals in honour of Ceres, the Arval (the
assistant of the High Priest) clad in pure white, placing on the hostia (sacrificial
heap) a cake of corn, water and wine, tasted the wine of libation and
gave to all others to taste. The oblation (or offering) was
then taken up by the High Priest. It symbolized the three kingdoms of Nature — the
cake of corn (vegetable kingdom), the sacrificial vase or chalice (mineral),
and the pall (the scarf-like garment) of the Hierophant, an end of
which he threw over the oblation wine cup. This pall was made of pure white
lamb skins.
The modern priest repeats, gesture for gesture,
the acts of the pagan priest. He lifts up and offers the bread to be consecrated;
blesses the water that is to be put in the chalice, and then pours the wine
into it,[Page 23] incenses
the altar, etc., etc., and going to the altar washes his fingers saying, “I
will wash my hands amongthe INNOCENT and encompass thy
altar, O Lord.” He does so, because the ancient and pagan priest
did the same, saying, “I
wash (with lustral water) my hands among the INNOCENT (the fully initiated
Brethren) and encompass thy altar, O great Goddess” (Ceres). Thrice
went the high priest round the altar loaded with offerings, carrying high
above his head the chalice covered with the end of his snow-white lamb-skin.
. . .
The consecrated vestment worn
by the Pope, the pall, “has the form
of a scarf made of white wool, embroidered with purple crosses”.
In the Greek Church, the priest covers, with the end of the pall thrown over
his shoulder, the chalice.
The High Priest of antiquity repeated
thrice during the divine services his “O
redemptor mundi” to Apollo 'the Sun, his “Mater Salvatoris”,
to Ceres, —the earth, his “Virgo paritura” to
the Virgin Goddess etc., and pronounced seven ternary commemorations.
(Hearken, O Masons!).The ternary number, so reverenced in antiquity, is as
reverenced now, and is pronounced five times during the mass. We have three
introibo, three Kyrie
eleison, three mea culpa, three agnus dei, three Dominus
Vobiscum. A true masonic series! Let us add to this the three et cum
spiritu tuo, and the Christian mass yields to us the same seven triple
commemorations. [Page 24]
PAGANISM, MASONRY, and THEOLOGY — such
is the historical trinity now ruling the world sub rosa. Shall we close with
a Masonic greeting and say:
Illustrious officers of Hiram Abif, Initiates,
and “Widow's sons”.
The Kingdom of Darkness and ignorance is fast dispelling, but there are
regions still untouched by the hand of the scholar, and as black as the night
of Egypt. Fratres, sobrii estote et vigilate!