The Perfect Way represents a discovery to ascertain the nature and method of existence. It also represents a recovery because the system propounded has proved to be that which constituted the basic and secret doctrines of all the great religions of antiquity, including Christianity, – the doctrine commonly called the Gnosis, and variously entitled Hermetic and Kabbalistic.

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THE PERFECT WAY PART 2

Lecture the Eight - The Redemption
Lecture the Ninth - God as the Lord; or, the Divine Image

APPENDICES
Concerning the interpretation of scripture
Concerning the hereafter
On prophesying; and prophecy
Concerning the nature of Sin
Concerning the "Great Work" and the share of Christ Jesus therein
The time of the End
The Higher Alchemy
Concerning Revelation
Concerning the Poet
Concerning the One Life
Concerning the Mysteries
Hymn to the Planet God
Fragments of the "Golden Book of Venus"

Part -1-
Hymn of Aphrodite
Part -2-
A discourse of communion of souls, and of the uses of love between creature and creature.
Hymn to Hermes
The Secret of Satan
Plates
Figure - 1 - The Cherubim of Ezekiel and the Apocalypse
Figure - 2 - The tabernacle in the wilderness
Figure - 3 - Section of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh

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LECTURE THE EIGHTH.

THE REDEMPTION.

PART I

1. THAT, then, which, mystically, is called the Fall of Man, does not mean, as commonly supposed, the lapse, through a specific act, of particular individuals from a state of original perfection; nor, as sometimes supposed, a change from a fluidic to a material condition. It means such an inversion of the due relations between the soul and the body of a personality already both spiritual and material, as involves a transference of the central will of the system concerned, from the soul – which is its proper seat – to the body, and the consequent subjection of the soul to the body, and liability of the individual to sin, disease, and all other evils which result from the limitations of Matter.

2. That, therefore, which, mystically, is called the Redemption, and which is the converse of the Fall, does not mean, as commonly supposed, the remission, or transference from the guilty to the innocent, of the penalties incurred through the Fall. No penalty incurred by man ever is or can be remitted by God, since the Divine Justice is just. Nor, for the same reason, can it be borne by another, since a substitution of the innocent for the guilty would in itself be a violation of justice. Wherefore the doctrine of Vicarious Redemption, as ordinarily accepted, represents a total misconception of the truth, and one derogatory to the Divine Character. The Redemption means such removal of the will of the individual system concerned, from the body, and reinstatement of it in the soul, as thenceforth to secure to the soul full control over the body, and to exempt the individual from further liability to transgression. He who is redeemed cannot sin, that is, mortally.

3. It is according to the Divine order of Nature that the soul should control the body. For, as a manifested entity, man is a dual being, consisting of soul and body; and of these, in point both of duration and function, and therefore in all respects of value, the precedence belongs to the soul. For the soul is the real, permanent Individual, the Self, the everlasting, substantial Idea, of which the body is but the temporary residence and phenomenal expression. The soul, nevertheless, has, properly speaking, no will of her own, since she is feminine and negative. And she is therefore, by her nature, bound to obey the will of some other than herself. This other can be only the Spirit or the Body; – the Within and the Above, which is Divine, and is God; or the Without and the Below, which, taken by itself and reduced to its last expression, is the “devil”. It is, therefore, to the Spirit and soul as one, that obedience is due. Hence, in making the body the seat of the will, the man revolts, not merely against the soul, but against God; and the soul, by participation, does the same. Of such revolt the consequence is disease and misery of both soul and body, with the liability, ultimately, to extinction of the soul as well as of the body. For the soul which persistently rejects the Divine Will in favor of the bodily will, sins mortally, and, becoming mortal, at length dies. For her life is withdrawn and her constituents are scattered to the elements; so that, without any actual loss either of the Life or of the Substance of the universal existence, the individuality constituted by her perishes. The “man” is no more.

4. The result, on the other hand, of the soul’s steadfast aspiration towards God, – the Spirit, that is, within her – and of her consequent action upon the body, is that this also becomes permeated and suffused by the Spirit as, at last, to have no will of its own, but to be in all things one with the soul and Spirit, and to constitute with these one perfectly harmonious system, of which every element is under full control of the central Will. It is this unification, occurring within the individual, which constitutes the Atonement. And in him in whom it occurs in its fullest extent, Nature realizes the ideal to attain which she first came forth from God. For in the man thus redeemed, purified, and perfected in the image of God, and having in himself the power of life eternal, she herself is vindicated and glorified, and the Divine Wisdom is justified of her children. The process, however, is one which each individual must accomplish in and for himself. For, being an interior process, consisting in self-purification, it cannot be performed from without. That whereby perfection is attained is experience, which implies suffering. For this reason the man who is reborn in us of “Water and the Spirit,” – our own regenerate Self, the Christ Jesus and Son of Man, who in saving us is called the Captain of our salvation, – is said to be made perfect through suffering. This suffering must be borne by each man for himself. To deprive any one of it by putting the consequences of his acts upon another, so far from aiding that one, would be to deprive him of his means of redemption.

5. There are two senses in which the term Fall is used, each of them having relation to an indispensable epoch in the process of the universe. The one is the fall of Spirit, the other of the Soul. The first occurs in the universal, and concerns the Macrocosm. The second occurs in the individual, and concerns the Microcosm. The first and general descent of Spirit into Matter consists in that original projection of the Divine Substance from pure Being into the condition of Existence, whereby Spirit becomes Matter, and Creation occurs. The doctrine which regards the universe as the Thought of God, is a true doctrine. But the universe is not therefore unsubstantial. God is real Being, and that which God thinks is also God. Wherefore in consisting of the thought of the Divine Mind, the Universe consists of the Substance of that Mind, the Substance, that is, of God. God’s Ideas, like God, are real beings, Divine Personages, that is, Gods. Put forth by, and, in a sense divided from, God, in order to accomplish God’s purposes, these become messengers of God, that is, Angels. And, of them, those to whom is assigned a condition below that of God, – a condition no longer of Spirit, – are called “Fallen Angels.” Wherefore the “Fall of the Angels”, denotes simply the original and cosmic descent of Spirit into the condition of Matter, – the precipitation, that is, of the Divine Substance from a state of pure Being, into the various elements and modes which are comprised in and which constitute Existence or Creation. Creation is thus, not, as ordinarily supposed, a making out of that which is not, but a manifestation or putting forth, – by the conversion of essence into things – of that which already is, but which subsists unmanifest. It is true, that prior to such manifestation, there is no thing. But this is not because there is nothing; but because before things can exist, the ideas of them must subsist. For a thing is the result of an idea, and except as such cannot exist. Thus, Matter, as the intensification, or densification, of Idea, is a mode of the Divine consciousness, put forth through an exercise of the Divine Will; and being so, it is capable, through an exercise of the Divine Love, of reverting to its original, unmanifest condition of Spirit. The recall of the universe to this condition constitutes the final Redemption or “Restitution of all things.” And it is brought about by the operation of the Divine Spirit within the whole.

6. The Redemption from the other of the two Falls specified, is due to the operation of the divine element within the individual. And it is of this alone that we propose to treat on this occasion. As already stated, this Fall does not consist in the original investment of the soul with a material body. Such investment – or incarnation – is an integral and indispensable element in the process of the individualization of soul-substance, and of its education into humanity. And until perfected, or nearly so, the body is necessary to the soul in turn as nursery, school, house of correction, and chamber of ordeal. It is true that redemption involves deliverance from the need of the body. But redemption itself is from the power of the body; and it is from its fall under the power of the body that the soul requires redemption. For it is this fall which, by involving the alienation of the individual from God, renders necessary a reconciliation or at-one-ment. And inasmuch as this can be effected only through the total renunciation of the exterior or bodily will, and the unreserved acceptance in its place of the interior or divine will, this at-one-ment constitutes the essential element of that Redemption which forms the subject of the present discourse.

7. Although Redemption, as a whole, is one, the process is manifold, and consists in a series of acts, spiritual and mental. Of this series, the part wherein the individual finally surrenders his own exterior will, with all its exclusively material desires and affections, is designated the Passion. And the particular act whereby this surrender is consummated and demonstrated is called the Crucifixion. This crucifixion means a complete, unreserving surrender, – to the death, if need be, – without opposition, even in desire, on the part of the natural man. Without these steps is no atonement. The man cannot become one with the Spirit within him, until by his “Passion” and “Crucifixion,” he has utterly vanquished the “Old Adam” of his former self. Through the atonement made by means of this self-sacrifice he becomes as one without sin, being no more liable to sin; and is qualified to enter, as his own high-priest, into the holy of holies of his own innermost. For thus he has become of those who, being pure in heart alone can face God.

8. The “Passion” and “Crucifixion” have their immediate sequel in the Death and Burial of the Self thus renounced. And these are followed by the Resurrection and Ascension of the true immortal Man and new spiritual Adam, who by his Resurrection proves himself to be – like the Christ – “virgin-born,” – in that he is the offspring, not of the soul and her traffic with Matter and Sense, but of the soul become “immaculate,” and of her spouse, the Spirit. The Ascension with which the Drama terminates, is that of the whole Man, now regenerate, to his own celestial kingdom within himself, where – made one with the Spirit – he takes his seat for ever “at the right hand of the Father.”

9. Although the Resurrection of the man regenerate has a twofold relation, in that it sometimes affects the body, the resurrection is not of the body in any sense ordinarily supposed, nor is the body in any way the object of the process. The Man, it is true, has risen from the dead. But it is from the condition of deadness in regard to things spiritual, and from among those who, being in that condition, are said to be “dead in trespasses and sins.” In these two respects, namely, as regards his own past self and the world generally, he has “risen from the dead”; and “death,” of this kind, “has no more dominion over him.” And even if he has redeemed also his body and made of it a risen body, this by no means implies the resuscitation of an actual corpse. In this sense there has been for him no death, and in this sense there is for him no resurrection. It was through misapprehension of the true doctrine, and the consequent expectation of the resurrection of the dead body, that the practice – originally symbolical and special – of embalming the corpse as a mummy, became common, and that interment was substituted for the classic and far more wholesome practice of cremation. In both cases, the object was the delusive one of facilitating a resuscitation at once impossible and undesirable, seeing that if reincarnation be needful, a soul can always obtain for itself a new body.

10. That which constitutes the Great Work, is, not the resuscitation of the dead body, but the redemption of Spirit from Matter. Until man commits what, mystically, is called idolatry, he has no need of such redemption. So long as he prefers the inner to the outer, and consequently polarizes towards God, the will of his soul is as the Divine Will, and she has, in virtue thereof, power over his body, as God has over the universe. Committing idolatry, by reason of perverse will to the outer, – looking back, and down, that is, and preferring the form to the substance, the appearance to the reality, the phenomenon to the idea, the “city of the Plain” to the “mount of the Lord,” – she loses this power, and becomes, as already said, a “pillar of Salt,” fixed and material. Thus does Man become “naked,” for he has brought his soul to degradation and shame and profaned the temple of the Spirit. He has eaten of the “Forbidden Fruit” of Sense; “Paradise” is his no longer; and only by “Redemption” can he regain it.

PART II

11. IN order to obtain an adequate conception of the vastness of the interval between the condition of man “fallen” and man “redeemed,” it will be necessary to speak yet more particularly of the Man perfected and having power. Thus contrasted the heights and depths of humanity will appear in their true extent. It is but a sketch, comparatively slight, which can here be given of what they must endure, who, for love of God, desire God, and who, by love of God, finally attain to and become God; and who, becoming God without ceasing to be man, become God-Man, – God manifest in the flesh, – at once God and Man. The course to this end is one and the same for all, whenever, wherever, and by whomsoever followed. For perfection is one, and all seekers after it must follow the same road. The reward and the means towards it, are also one. For “the Gift of God is eternal Life.” And it is by means of God, – the Divine Spirit working within him, to build him up in the Divine Image, – he, meanwhile co-operating with the Spirit, – that man achieves Divinity. In the familiar, but rarely understood terms, “Philosopher’s Stone,” “Elixir of Life,” “universal Medicine,” “Holy Grail,” and the like, is implied this supreme object of all quest. For these are but terms to denote pure Spirit, and its essential correlative, a Will absolutely firm and inaccessible alike to weakness from within and assault from without. Without measure of this Spirit is no understanding – and therefore no interpretation – of the Sacred Mysteries of existence. Spiritual themselves, they can be comprehended only by those who have, nay, rather, who are Spirit; for God is Spirit, and they who worship God must worship in the Spirit.

12. The attainment in himself of a pure and Divine Spirit, is, therefore the first object and last achievement of him who seeks to realize the loftiest ideal of which humanity is capable. He who does this, is not an “Adept” merely. The “Adept” covets power in order to save himself only; and knowledge is him thing apart from love. Love saves others as well as oneself. And it is love that distinguishes the Christ; – a truth implied, among other ways, in the name and character assigned in mystic legends, to the favourite disciple of the Christs. To Krishna, his Arjun; to Buddha, his Ananda; to Jesus, his John; – all terms identical in meaning, and denoting the feminine and tender moiety of the Divine Nature. He therefore, and he alone who possesses this spirit in quality and quantity without measure, has, and is, “Christ.” He is God’s anointed, suffused and brimming with the Spirit, and having in virtue thereof the power of the “Dissolvent” and of “Transmutation,” in respect of the whole man. Herein lay the grand secret of that philosophy which made “Hermes” to be accounted the “trainer of the Christs.” Known as the Kabalistic philosophy, it was a philosophy – or rather a science – based upon the recognition in Nature of an universal Substance, which man can find and “effect,” and in virtue of which he contains within himself the seed of his own regeneration, a seed of which – duly cultured – the fruit is God, because the seed itself also is God. Wherefore the “Hermetic science” is the science of God.

13. “Christ,” then, is, primarily, not a person, but a process, a doctrine, a system of life and thought, by the observance of which man becomes purified from Matter, and transmuted into Spirit. And he is a Christ who, in virtue of his observance of this process to its utmost extent while yet in the body, constitutes a full manifestation of the qualities of Spirit. Thus manifested, he is said to “destroy the works of the devil,” for he destroys that which gives pre-eminence to Matter, and so re-establishes the kingdom of Spirit, that is, of God.

14. This, the interior part of the process of the Christ is the essential part. Whether first or last, the spiritual being must be perfected. Without this interior perfection, nothing that is done in the body, or exterior man only is of any avail, save, in so far as it may minister to the essential end. The body is but an instrument, existing for the use and sake of the soul and not for itself. And it is for the soul, and not for itself, that it must be perfected. Being but an instrument, the body cannot be an end. That which makes the body an end, ends with the body and the end of the body is corruption. Whatever is given to the body is taken from the Spirit. From this it will be seen what is the true value of Asceticism. Divested of its rational and spiritual motive, self-denial is worthless. Rather is it worse than worthless; it is materialistic and idolatrous; and, being in this aspect a churlish refusal of God’s good gifts it impugns the bounteousness of the Divine nature. The aim of all endeavor should be to bring the body into subjection to, and harmony with, the spirit, by refining and subliming it, and so heightening its powers as to make it sensitive and responsive to all the motions of the Spirit. This it can be only when, deriving its sustenance from substances the purest and most highly solarized, such as the vegetable kingdom alone affords, it suffers all its molecules to become polarized in one and the same direction, and this the direction of the central Will of the system, the “Lord God of Hosts” of the Microcosmic Man – Whose mystic name is Adonai.

15. The reason of this becomes obvious when it is understood that the Christs are, above all things, Media. But this not as ordinarily supposed, even by many who are devoted students of spiritual science. For, so far from suffering his own vivifying spirit to step aside in order that another may enter, the Christ is one who so develops, purifies, and in every way perfects his spirit, as to assimilate and make it one with the universal Spirit, the God of the Macrocosm, so that the God without and the God within may freely combine and mingle, making the universal the individual, the individual the universal. Thus inspired and filled with God, the soul kindles into flame; and God, identified with the man, speaks through him, making the man utter himself in the name of God.

16. It is in his office and character as Christ, and not in his own human individuality, that the Man Regenerate proclaims himself “the way, the truth, and the life,” “the door,” and the like. For, in being, as has been said, the connecting link between the creature and God, the Christ truly represents the door or gate through which all ascending souls must pass to union with the Divine; and save through which “no man cometh unto the Father.” It is not, therefore, in virtue of an extraneous, obsessing spirit that the Christ can be termed a “Medium,” but in virtue of the spirit itself of the man, become Divine by means of that inward purification by the life or “blood” of God, which is the secret of the Christs, and “doubled” by union with the parent Spirit of all, – the “Father” of all spirits. This Spirit it is Whom the typical Regenerate Man of the Gospels is represented as calling the “Father.” It is the Unmanifest God, of Whom the Christ is the full manifestation.

17. Hence he disavows for himself the authorship of his utterances, and says, “The words which I speak unto you I speak not of myself. The Father which dwelleth in me, He doeth the works.” The Christ is, thus, a clear glass through which the divine glory shines. As it is written of Jesus, “And we beheld his glory, the glory as of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” Now, this “Only Begotten” is not mortal man at all, but He Who from all eternity has been in the bosom of the Father, namely, the Word or Logos, the Speaker, the Maker, the Manifestor, He Whose mystic name, as already said, is Adonai, and of whom Christ is the counterpart.

18. To attain to the perfection of the Christ, – to polarize, that is, the Divine Spirit without measure, and to become a “Man of Power” and a Medium for the Highest, – though open potentially to all, – is, actually and in the present, open, if to any, but to few. And these are, necessarily, they only who, having passed through many transmigrations and advanced far on their way towards maturity, have sedulously turned their lives to the best account by means of the steadfast development of all the higher faculties and qualities of man; and who, while not declining the experiences of the body, have made the spirit, and not the body, their object and aim. Aspiring to the redemption in himself of each plane of man’s fourfold nature, the candidate for Christhood submits himself to discipline and training the most severe, at one physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual, and rejects as valueless or pernicious whatever would fail to minister to his one end, deeming no task too onerous, no sacrifice too painful, so that he be spiritually advanced thereby. And how varied soever the means, there is one rule to which he remains constant throughout, the rule, namely, of love. The Christ he seeks is the pathway to God; and to fail, in the least degree in respect of love, would be to put himself back in his journey. The sacrifices, therefore, in the incense of which his soul ascends, are those of his own lower nature to his own higher, and of himself for others. And life itself, it seems to him, would be too dearly bought, if purchased at the expense of another, however little or mean, – unless, indeed, of a kind irremediably noxious, whose extinction would benefit the world. For, – be it remembered, – though always Saviour, the Christ is sometimes also Purifier, as were all his types, the Heroes, – or Men Regenerate, – of classic story. Enacting, thus, when necessary the executioner’s part, he slays for no self-gratification, but “in the name of the Lord.”

19. They who have trod this path of old have been many, and their deeds have formed the theme of mystical legends innumerable. Epitomizing these, we find that the chief qualifications are as follows: – In order to gain “Power and the Resurrection,” a man must, first of all, be a Hierarch. This is to say, he must have attained the magical age of thirty-three years, having been, in the mystic sense of the terms, immaculately conceived, and born of a king’s daughter; baptized with water and with fire; tempted in the wilderness, crucified and buried, having borne five wounds on the cross. He must, moreover, have answered the riddle of the Sphinx. To attain the requisite age, he must have accomplished the Twelve Labors symbolized in those of Heracles, and in the signs of the Zodiac; passed within the Twelve Gates of Holy City of his own regenerate nature; overcome the five Senses; and obtained dominion over the Four Elements. Achieving all that is implied in these terms, “his warfare is accomplished,” he is free of Matter, and will never again have a phenomenal body.

20. He who shall attain to this perfection must be one who is without fear and without desire, save towards God; who has courage to be absolutely poor and absolutely chaste; to whom it is all one whether he have money or whether he have none, whether he have house and lands or whether he be homeless, whether he have worldly reputation or whether he be an outcast. Thus is he voluntarily poor, and of the spirit of those of whom it is said that they inherit the kingdom of heaven. It is not necessary that he has nothing; it is necessary only that he care for nothing. Against attacks and influences of whatever kind, and coming from whatever quarter without his own soul’s kingdom, he must impregnably steel himself. If misfortune be his, he must make it his fortune; if poverty, he must make it his riches; if loss, his gain; if sickness, his health; if pain, his pleasure. Evil report must be to him good report; and he must be able to rejoice when all men speak ill of him. Even death itself he must account as life. Only when he has attained this equilibrium is he “Free.” Meanwhile he makes Abstinence, Prayer, Meditation, Watchfulness and Self-restraint to be the decades of his Rosary. And knowing that nothing is gained without toil, or won without suffering, he acts ever on the principle that to labor is to pray, to ask is to receive, to knock is to have the door open, and so strives accordingly.

21. To gain power over Death, there must be self-denial and governance. Such is the “Excellent Way,” though it be the Via Dolorosa. He only can follow it who accounts the Resurrection worth the Passion, the Kingdom worth the Obedience, the Power worth the Suffering. And he, and he only, does not hesitate, whose time has come.

22. The last of the “Twelve Labors of Heracles “ is the conquest of the three-headed dog, Cerberus. For by this is denoted the final victory over the body with its three (true) senses. When this is accomplished, the process of ordeal is no longer necessary. The Initiate is under a vow. The Hierarch is free. He has undergone all his ordeals, and has freed his will. For the object of the Trial and the Vow is Polarization. When the Fixed is Volatilized, the Magian is Free. Before this, he is “subject.”

23. The man who seeks to be a Hierarch must not dwell in cities. He may begin his initiation in a city, but he cannot complete it there. For he must not breathe dead and burnt air, – air, that is, the vitality of which is quenched. He must be a wanderer, a dweller in the plain and the garden and the mountains. He must commune with the starry heavens, and maintain direct contact with the great electric currents of living air and with the unpaved grass and earth of the planet, going barefoot and oft bathing his feet. It is in unfrequented places, in lands such as are mystically called the “East,” where the abominations of “Babylon” are unknown, and where the magnetic chain between earth and heaven is strong, that the man who seeks Power, and who would achieve the “Great Work,” must accomplish his initiation.

PART III

24. IN assigning to the Gospels their proper meaning, it is necessary to remember that, as mystical Scriptures, they deal primarily, not with material things or persons, but with spiritual significations. Like the “books of Moses,” therefore, and others which, in being mystical, are, in the strictest sense, prophetical, the Gospels are addressed, not to the outer sense and reason, but to the soul. And, being thus, their object is not to give an historical account of the physical life of any man whatever, but to exhibit the spiritual possibilities of humanity at large, as illustrated in a particular and typical example. The design is, thus, that which is dictated by the nature itself of Religion. For Religion is not in its nature historical and dependent upon actual, sensible, events, but consists in processes, such as Faith and Redemption, which, being interior to all men, subsist irrespectively of what any particular man has at any time suffered or done. That alone which is of importance, is what God has revealed. And therefore it is that the narratives concerning Jesus are rather parables founded on a collection of histories, than any one actual history, and have a spiritual import capable of universal application. And it is with this spiritual import, and not with physical facts, that the Gospels are concerned.

25. Such were the principles which, long before the Christian era, and under divine control, had led the Mystics of Egypt, Persia, and India to select Osiris, Mithras, and Buddha as names or persons representative of the Man Regenerate and constituting a full manifestation of the qualities of Spirit. And it was for the same purpose and under the same impulsion that the Mystics of the West, who had their headquarters at Alexandria, selected Jesus, using him as a type whereby to exhibit the history of all souls which attain to perfection; employing physical occurrences as symbols, and relating them as parables, to interpret which literally would be to falsify their intended import. Their method was, thus, to universalize that which was particular, and to spiritualize that which was material; and, writing, as they did, with full knowledge of previous mystical descriptions of the Man Regenerate, his interior history and his relations to the world, – notable among which descriptions was the fifty-third chapter of the miscellaneous, fragmentary, prophetic utterances collected together under the typical name of Isaiah, – they would have had no difficulty in presenting a character consistent with the general anticipation of those who were cognizant of the meaning of the term “Christ,” even without an actual example.

26. The failure to interpret the mystical Scriptures by the mystical rule, was due to the loss, by the Church, of the mystical faculty, or inner, spiritual Vision, through which they were written. Passing under a domination exclusively sacerdotal and traditional, and losing thereby the intuition of things spiritual, the Church fell an easy prey to that which is the besetting sin of priesthoods, – Idolatry; and in place of the simple, true, reasonable Gospel, to illustrate which the history of Jesus had been expressly designed, fabricated the stupendous and irrational superstition which has usurped his name. Converted by the exaltation of the Letter and the symbol in place of the Spirit and the signification, into an idolatry every whit as gross as any that preceded it, Christianity has failed to redeem the world. Christianity has failed, that is, not because it was false, but because it has been falsified. And the falsification, generally, has consisted in removing the character described under the name Jesus, from its true function as the portrait of that of which every man has in him the potentiality, and referring it exclusively to an imaginary order of being between whom and man could be no possible relation, even were such a being himself possible. Instead of recognizing the Gospels as a written hieroglyph, setting forth, under terms derived from natural objects and persons, processes which are purely spiritual and impersonal, the Churches have – one and all – fallen into that lowest mode of fetish worship which consists in the adoration of a mere symbol, entirely irrespective of its true import. To the complaint that will inevitably be made against this exposition of the real nature of the Gospel history, – that it has “taken away the Lord,” – the reply is no less satisfactory than obvious. For he has been taken away only from the place wherein so long the Church has kept him, that is, – the sepulchre. There, indeed, it is, with the dead, – bound about with cerements, a figure altogether of the past, – that Christians have laid their Christ. But at length the “stone” of Superstition has been lifted and rolled away by the hand of the Angel of Knowledge, and the grave it concealed is discovered to be empty. No longer need the soul seek her living Master among the dead. Christ is risen, – risen into the heaven of a living Ideal, whence he can again descend into the hearts of all who desire him, none the less real and puissant, because a spiritual and not merely an historic personage; none the less mighty to save because, instead of being a single Man Regenerate, he is every Man Regenerate, ten thousand times ten thousand, – the “Son of Man” himself.

27. The true design and method of the Gospels, together with the process of their degradation, become clear in proportion as the nature of their real subject – the Man Regenerate – is understood. In dealing with this we are met at the outset by an example of perversion, one of the most conspicuous and disastrous in the whole history of religion. This is the perversion of the doctrine of the “Incarnation.” Of this doctrine the original basis was a prophecy – or declaration of universal import founded in the nature of existence – of the means whereby, both as race and as individual, man is redeemed. Born originally of Matter and subject to the limitations of Matter, Man, according to this prophecy, is redeemed, and made superior to those limitations, by being reborn of Spirit, a process by which he is converted from a phenomenal into a substantial being, one in nature with original Deity, and having, therefore, in himself the power of life eternal. Of this perfected man the foster-father is always that which, spiritually, is called Egypt – the body or Matter, and, by derivation, the Intellect, or reason of the merely earthly mind – the mystic name of which is always “Joseph.” On his first appearance in the drama of the soul, as set forth in the Bible, this Joseph is represented as a youth already sufficiently developed, in his affectional nature, to return good for evil and to succor his kindred; in his intellectual nature, to fill with credit posts of responsibility and to secure the confidence of his sovereign; and in his moral nature, to resist the seductions of the world. He is, thus, a type of the philosophical element, both in itself and in its relations with the State; and a representative of the rising Hebrew Mysteries. In the Gospels he reappears – like Egypt itself – aged and past the glories of his prime. And he is represented as the adoptive father only of the Man Regenerate, because this last is really the product, not of the mind, but of the soul; not of “Egypt,” but of “Israel;” not of the “man” Intellect, but of the “woman” Intuition, being “begotten” through her, not by any physical process, but by Divine spiritual operation. Nevertheless he has the benefit of the wisdom and knowledge of his “foster-father,” for he is instructed in the sacred Mysteries of Egypt, which are, indeed, one with those of Israel, only first of Egypt, – a priority denoting the precedence, in point of time, of the development of the intellect over that of the intuition. In representing Joseph as the foster-father only, and not the real father, the parable implies that man, when regenerate, is so exclusively under the influence of his soul, or Mother, as to have but a slender connection with his external part, using it only for shelter and nourishment, and such other purposes as may minister to the soul’s welfare.

28. He who would redeem and save others, must first be himself redeemed and saved. The Man Regenerate, therefore, first saves himself, by becoming regenerate. He receives, accordingly, a name expressive of this function. For, of Jesus one of the significations is Liberator. This name is given, not on the birth of the man physical, nor to the man physical, – of whose birth and name the Gospels take no note, – but to the man spiritual, on his initiation, or new birth from the material to the spiritual plane. And it is the name, not of a person, but of an Order, the Order of all those who – being regenerate and attaining perfection – find, and are called, “Christ Jesus.” (As see Eph. iii. 15.)

29. Of the miracles worked by the Regenerate Man, some are on the physical, some on the spiritual plane; for, being himself regenerate in all, he is master of the spirits of all the elements. But while the terms in which the Miracles are described are uniformly derived from the physical plane, the true value and significance of these Miracles are spiritual. That, for example, known as the Raising of Lazarus, is altogether a parable, being constructed on lines rigidly astronomical, and having an application purely spiritual. To a like category belongs also the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand. For the “loaves” given to the multitude represent the general doctrine of the lesser Mysteries, whose “grain” is of the Earth, the kingdom of Demeter, and of the outer; and the “fishes” – given after the loaves – denote the greater Mysteries, those of Aphrodite, – fishes symbolizing the element of the sea-born Queen of Love, and her dominion, the inner kingdom of the soul. It may be noted in this relation that the Gospels represent their typical Man as at first speaking explicitly to the people, but afterwards, warned by experience, addressing them in parables only. Of the Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension, also, notwithstanding that these have a physical correspondence, the signification intended to he enforced, and which alone is valuable, is spiritual. Wherefore the Gospel narrative, though told as of an actual particular person, is a mystical history only of any person, and implies the spiritual possibilities of all persons. And, being thus, it represents, designedly, that which is general rather than that which is particular, and makes no pretence to an accuracy which is merely historical, the object being not to relate facts, but to illustrate doctrines.

30. There is, moreover, a yet further explanation of the indifference to identity of detail by which everywhere this narrative is characterized. Being four in number, and disposed in order corresponding to that of the four divisions of man’s nature, the Gospels have for standpoint, and bear relation to, different regions of existence. Thus, the Gospel of Matthew, which represents the lower and physical plane, appeals more particularly on behalf of the character ascribed to Jesus of Nazareth as fulfilling the promises of the Messiah of the Old Testament, and is pervaded by one principle, the fulfillment in him at once of the Law and of the prophecies. The Gospel of Mark is adapted to the plane next above this, namely, the rational; its appeal on behalf of the divinity of the mission of Jesus, being founded on the nature of his doctrine and works. The Gospel of Luke represents the further ascent to the plane of the soul and the intuition. Hence it occupies itself chiefly with accounts of the spiritual parentage of the Man Regenerate, – setting forth under a parabolic narrative his genesis from the operation of God in a pure soul. To the same end, this Gospel gives prominence to the familiar conversations, rather than to the formal teaching of its Subject, since it is in these that the affectional nature of a man is best manifested. In the Fourth Gospel the scene changes to a sphere transcending all the others, being in the highest degree interior, mystic, spiritual. This Gospel, therefore, corresponds to the Nucleolus, or Divine Spirit, of the microcosmic entity, and exhibits the Regenerate Man as having surmounted all the elements exterior and inferior of his system, and won his way to the inmost recess of his own celestial kingdom, where, arrived at his centre and source, he and his Father are One; and he knows positively that God is Love, since it is by Love that he himself has found and become God. Such being the controlling idea of this Gospel, its composition is appropriately assigned to that “Beloved Disciple” whose very name denotes the feminine and love principle of existence. And to “John,” surnamed “the Divine” in respect of the character thus ascribed to his ministry, is unanimously assigned the emblem of the Eagle, as representing the highest element in the human kingdom. With regard to the distribution of the other three symbols, it is obvious – when once the intention of each division of the Christian evangel is understood – that Matthew, who corresponds to the earth or body, is rightly represented by the Ox; Mark, the minister of the astral or fire, by the Lion; and Luke, whose pen is chiefly occupied with the relation of Christ to the Soul, by and Angel with the face of a man to denote the sea-god Poseidon, the “father of Souls.” The Gospels are thus dedicated, each to one of the elemental spirits, Demeter, Hephaistos, Poseidon, and Pallas. Owing, however, to the loss by the Church of the doctrine which determines this distribution, much confusion and difference of opinion exist among ecclesiastical authorities with regard to the correct assignment of the elemental emblems. All the Fathers are agreed in giving the Eagle to the Fourth Golpeller, and but little doubt exists respecting the claim of Mark to the Lion; but the Ox and Angel have been generally misplaced in order.

PART IV

31. IN every part of the world of antiquity exist memorials of the Sacred Mysteries and tokens of the ceremonials which accompanied initiation into them. The scene of these ceremonials was generally a subterranean labyrinth, natural or artificial, the object being to symbolize the several acts in the Drama of Regeneration as occurring in the interior and secret recesses of man’s being. The Catacombs of Rome, used for similar purposes by the early Christians, were suggestive of the same idea, though this was not the immediate motive for the selection of such a retreat to be the home of the infant Church. And explorers of the passages under the Great Temple of Edfou relate how, after traversing with extreme difficulty a tunnel thirty inches high and forty-two inches wide, they emerge into a large hall adorned with a profusion of sacred paintings and hieroglyphs. Similar excavations have been found at Hermione in Greece, Nauplia, Gadara, Ptelion, Phyle, and other places. And all accounts agree in stating that the Mysteries, were variously celebrated in pyramids, pagodas, and labyrinths which were furnished with vaulted rooms, extensive wings, open and spacious galleries, and numerous secret caverns, passages, and vistas, terminating in mysterious adyta. And in describing a catacomb in Upper Egypt, called Biban el Moluk, Belzoni mentions an alabaster chest deposited therein, which, though surmised by him to have been intended as a sarcophagus, resembled rather the coffers used in the religious celebration for which such labyrinths were designed. Similar constructions, of vast antiquity, abound in Upper Egypt, and bear in their hieroglyphical remains indications of having been meant for similar purposes. The story of the Labyrinth at Crete, and the Minotaur who, until finally subdued by Theseus, devoured those who entered therein, is a parable of the Mysteries and the dangerous nature of the ordeals to be encountered by candidates for initiation.

32. But of all existing memorials of these institutions, the most wonderful is that known as the Great Pyramid of Gizeh, the formative idea of purpose of which has for ages baffled inquirers. This artificial mountain of stone is, however, no other than a religious symbol setting forth in its every detail from base to apex the method of that which constitutes the title and subject of these lectures, namely the Perfect Way and The Finding of Christ. Outwardly, its form denotes the ascent of the soul, as a flame ever aspiring from the material plane to union with the Divine, and attaining this union through Christ, who, as “the Headstone of the corner,” is symbolized by the topmost point of the pyramid, and in whom, as the culmination, completion, and perfection of the whole creation, the earthly is “taken up” into the heavenly, or existence into pure Being. The successive layers of stone form a series of steps from the base to the summit, and represent the various stages of the soul’s upward progress in its ascent of the “hill of the Lord;” – an idea expressed by Peter when he writes, – “Be ye also as living stones built up a spiritual house, acceptable to God by Christ Jesus. As it is said, Behold I lay in Sion a chief cornerstone, elect and precious.” Similarly, Paul says, – “Christ Jesus himself is the chief cornerstone, in whom all the building being fitly framed together, groweth up into an holy temple in the Lord. In whom ye also are built together, into an habitation of God in the Spirit.” Thus is the whole intention of Creation, from its lowest to his highest plane, recognized as finding its fulfillment and realization in the headstone which is at once the Christos and the Chrestos, the “Anointed “ and the “Best,” being Anointed because the Best, and the Best because the Anointed. In being, moreover, four-sided like the Heavenly city of the Apocalypse, and culminating in respect of each side in an angle, the Pyramid denotes the fourfold nature at once of the Macrocosm and the Microcosm, and the final assumption of each kingdom of Nature, through Evolution into the At-one-ment of Christ. [ The statement of Manetho and Herodotus, that this pyramid was built by the Egyptians under compulsion of a foreign and hated people who obtained temporary dominion over them, may be regarded as due to a literal acceptation of some mystical legend intended to imply that it was built by Egypt’s body or State at the dictation of Egypt’s soul or Church, by the physical element, that is, of the country, in obedience to the spiritual element, and as a monument in illustration of the power of the soul over the body, and of Spirit working in Matter.]

33. Interiorly, the Pyramid is designed to illustrate, both in character and in duration, the various stages of the soul’s history, from her first immergence in Matter to her final triumphant release and return to Spirit. In this view was constructed the complicated system of shafts, passages, and chambers recently described and drawn after researches involving extraordinary toil, skill, and care, by Professor Piazzi Smyth. Of the two shafts, one, whereby the light from without enters the edifice, points directly to the Pole star at its lower culmination 2,500 BC, the date given as that of the erection of the Pyramid. By this is indicated the idea of the soul as a ray proceeding from God as the Pole-star and source of all things, whose Seven Spirits – like the seven stars of the constellation called by us the Great Bear, but by the Mystics of old, more significantly, the Sheepfold – keep watch and ward over the universe, yet ever indicate the Supreme. Of this shaft the opposite extremity terminates in a pit lying below the centre of the Pyramid. Constituting the only portion of the whole structure which is unpaved, this pit represents the bottomless abyss of negation, and, consequently, final destruction. Descending thither, the ray would become extinguished; and such is the fate of the soul which, entering into Matter, persists in a downward course. The pyramid, however, is designed expressly to represent the way of salvation; and it accordingly provides a passage turning out of that just described, and leading upwards towards the centre of the edifice, just beyond which centre lies the principal apartment, which is called the “King’s Chamber.” This is reached by a series of passages, steep, narrow intricate, and in some parts so contracted in dimensions as to compel the explorer to traverse them on his hands and knees. Such peculiarities of construction, involving an exercise of great ingenuity, skill, and labor could not, it is obvious, have been introduced into a structure intended, as some have suggested, as a granary or as a tomb. The “King’s Chamber,” which terminates the series, is a large vaulted apartment having six roofs or ceilings, composed in all of seven stones, placed one above another, the two topmost stones forming an angle. In the centre of this chamber is a coffer, hollowed out of a single stone, and representing in its proportions and dimensions the idea thus expressed in the Epistle to the Ephesians: – “When we all meet in the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” In a coffer such as this, the candidate who had successfully encountered all the ordeals symbolized in the passages of the pyramid, was, at his final initiation, laid as a corpse in a sarcophagus. And the Initiator, who presided on the occasion, was a woman – a priestess – who was called the “Mother,” and who acted as the sponsor representative of Isis, the universal soul and intuition of Humanity. By this funeral ceremony was denoted the death of the candidate to things merely material and sensible, and his attainment of the grade of a Man Regenerate. It has its continuance and correspondence in the rite whereby, in the Catholic Church, candidates for reception into the “religious” life make final profession of the vows which sever them from the world. This burial concluded, as still in the Catholic Church, by the “rising from the dead” of the candidate, who, having quitted the tomb, was invested with the insignia of his new condition, and received the “new “ or “religious” name, bestowed by the Sponsor. This name in the Egyptian and allied Mysteries, was Issa, the son, by initiation, of Isis, and therein child of the Soul, and “Seed of the Woman”. Thus was symbolized the gift of eternal life through Christ, the second or new birth of the Man Regenerate, attained only by gradual and painful processes of ascent, extending over many lives, and requiring for their accomplishment desire so fervent, perseverance so great, and courage so indomitable, as not only to deter many of the candidates at the outset but to turn some, even when far advanced. It is manifestly from the details of this ceremonial, with which, as an “Initiate,” the Jesus of the Gospels was familiar, that was derived his allusion to the “Second Birth,” and the idea expressed in the warning: “Strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto Life, and few there be that find it.”

34. Such was the mode whereby was accomplished initiation into those greater Mysteries of which the culminating stage was termed the Ascension. The lesser Mysteries, the “acts” of which were designated the Baptism or Betrothal, the Temptation or Trial, and the Passion, are symbolized in the great pyramid by the apartment called the Queen’s Chamber. This is situated considerably below the King’s Chamber and in the northern section of the building; and is reached by a level passage, at the commencement of which is a precipitous chasm, having for bottom the pit already described, and betokening the fate of those who fail to become regenerate, and consequently the danger escaped by those who have attained initiation into things spiritual. The Queen’s chamber serves also as the “Banqueting Hall,” wherein, after his accomplishment of the three acts named, the candidate celebrates the “Solemnization.” He is then qualified to proceed to the greater Mysteries of which the final scene is the “King’s Chamber.” This, as already said, is placed at the extreme summit of the passages, and beyond the centre of the Pyramid; and its purpose is to symbolize that kingdom of heaven which the Initiate attains by what is called the Divine Marriage, an act which separates him altogether from his life of the past. The six superposed beams which compose the ceiling of this chamber denote the “six crowns” of the Man Regenerate, that is, the six acts or stages of initiation, of which three appertain to the lesser and three to the greater Mysteries. These “crowns,” therefore, are Baptism, Temptation, Passion, Burial, Resurrection, and Ascension. Of all these the ultimate object is that full and complete Redemption which, by its realization of the soul’s supreme felicity, is termed the “Marriage of the Son of God.” And in the second shaft passing upwards through the pyramid, from the topmost point of the last gallery, and pointing in one direction to the coffer in the King’s Chamber, and in the other direction to the Pole-star at it greatest altitude, may be seen symbolized the return to God of the soul, perfected and triumphant, on her final release from Matter. So that by the two pole-star-pointing shafts are typified respectively the forces centrifugal and centripetal, the Will and the Love, from the operation of which proceed Creation and Redemption. (Fig. 3.)

35. Between the “Resurrection” and “Ascension” of the Man Regenerate, is an interval which – in accordance with the mystical system of making all dates which relate to the soul’s history coincide with the corresponding solar periods – is termed “Forty Days.” The actual length of the period, however, is dependent upon individual circumstance. The New Testament contains nothing in compatible with the suggestion that Jesus may have lived on the earth for many years after his “Resurrection,” and was therefore still in the body when seen of Paul. For that which occurs at the expiration of this cycle is not a quittance of the earth in the physical sense ordinarily supposed, but the complete withdrawal of the man into his own interior and celestial region. The Spirit attains the Sabbath of perfection only by attaining Rest or Quiescence; and to this Sabbath – or Nirvana – the Man Regenerate necessarily attains, sooner or later, after his “Crucifixion” and “Resurrection;” and the attainment of it constitutes his “Ascension.” There are then no longer two wills. The man has “ascended to his Father,” and he and God are One. Henceforth he is Lord of his own microcosmic universe, having the “kingdom, the power, and the glory” thereof. And all things in “heaven” and on “earth” are subject to him. “He hath put all things under his feet, that God may be all in all.”

36. But although the true signification of the Gospel narrative of the Ascension is spiritual only, the process of Redemption is not without its physical results; for every faculty is enhanced thereby to the degree ordinarily deemed “miraculous,” rendering the Subject clairvoyant and clairaudient, enabling him to impart health and recall life by the touch or by the will, to project himself in visible form through material obstructions, and to withdraw himself from sight at will. And not only is disease eliminated from and rendered impossible to his system, but his organism becomes so highly refined and vitalized that wounds, however severe, heal by first intention and even instantaneously. So that, if only for this reason, it is quite impossible that the Gospels should have intended to represent their typical regenerate man as dying, in a physical sense, of the injuries described by them as received on the cross.

37. By the Crucifixion of the Man Regenerate is denoted no physical or brief exterior act, but the culmination of a prolonged Passion, and its termination in the complete surrender of the soul. And this arrival of the “last hour” of the earthly man, or old Adam, is symbolized by the action of tasting the very dregs and lees of the cup of suffering, – the soul’s experience, that is, of the limitations of existence. Accordingly it is written: – “Jesus, knowing that all things were accomplished, said, I thirst. And they put a sponge full of vinegar upon a reed, and gave him to drink. Jesus, then, when he had tasted the vinegar, said, It is consummated. And bowing his head, he gave up the ghost.” By this exclamation is announced the emptying of that cup of spiritual bitterness which may not pass from the Christ until the dregs even be consumed. This selfsame cup it is, of which the symbol, fixed on the summit of a reed, was borne in the hand of an attendant priestess at the ceremony of final initiation as practiced in the Mysteries.

38. By this cup is represented the chalice of Existence or Incarnation, wherein is contained that Substantial Water, or Soul, which by the “marriage” of the will of the man with the Will of God, becomes the Wine of the holy Sacrament, or Communion with God. The Reed which supports this Cup is the universal rod or Staff which so constantly recurs in Hermetic Scriptures, and is at once the rod of Moses, the wand of the Magician, the sceptre of the King, the reed of the Angel, the rod of Joseph that flowers, and the caduceus of Hermes himself. For it is the symbol of Force, the Line, or Jod, by which is typified alike the creative act of projection into Matter and individualization thereby and the energy of the will – inflexible and undivided – through which the return to Spirit is accomplished and salvation achieved. Of these cup-surmounted reeds the bearers, in the Greek Mysteries, were called Canephorae, or reed bearers. And the corresponding celebration in the Gospels is appropriately described as occurring at Cana of Galilee, where, as may be gathered from Josephus, was a cave of initiation. The nature of the occasion depicted in Fig. 9 is further denoted by the symbol carried in the right hand, both of the priestess and of the candidate. This is the Crux ansata, or handled cross, called the Cross of Osiris, and already referred to as an indispensable emblem in all religious ceremonials, in that, combining the cross with the circle, it denotes Renunciation as the means whereby Eternal Life, the object of initiation, is attained. This symbol it was which, transferred to Christian hands, became the model of the Papal Keys of the kingdom of heaven; while, mounted on four steps, or traversed by four bars, it indicated also the fourfold nature of the existence to be comprehended by those who would attain to perfection. The character of this perfection is, moreover, symbolized in the cross, in that, being formed of two transverse beams, it portrays the at-one-ment between the divine and human wills. The “new-born” is represented as overshadowed by a dove – emblem of the Holy Spirit – as is the Man Regenerate of the Gospels at his baptism of initiation. The two figures on either side of the candidate are, respectively, the male representative of Thoth or Hermes, wearing the ram’s horns – emblematic of Intelligence; and the female representative of Isis, the initiating priestess, bearing the Rosary of the Five wounds or Decades already mentioned. By the presence of these two, as representatives of the Intellect and the Intuition, is denoted the absolute necessity to the individual of perfecting himself alike in both regions – the masculine and feminine – of his nature, so that by tile coequal unfoldment of head and heart he may attain to the stature of the whole humanity. It is the man thus complete and become, spiritually, man and woman in one, that, primarily is typified by the Greeks under the dual form of Hermaphroditus, the joint child, as his name denotes, of Intelligence and Love.

39. As the last substance tasted by the Regenerate Man of the Gospels before his death on the cross, is the “vinegar” of the exhausted Chalice of the Passion, so the first food partaken by him after his resurrection is “fish,” to which some add “an honeycomb”. By these is symbolized the commencement of the new life inaugurated by the greater Mysteries. For the fish, as already stated, is the symbol of Water, and therein of the Soul, its Greek name being the monogram of the Christ and the tessera of redemption. And the honey, uniting sweetness of taste with the color of gold, and contained in the six-sided cell on “cup” of the comb, typifying the six acts of the Mysteries, – is the familiar emblem of the Land of Promise “beyond Jordan,” to which only the Man Risen can attain. For, as the River of Egypt denotes the Body, and the Euphrates the Spirit, – the redeemed man being promised the dominion of the whole region contained within these (Genesis xv, 18.) – so the Hiddekel, the Ganges, and the Jordan, in the mystical systems of their respective countries, denote the Soul, and constitute the boundary between “the wilderness” of the Material, and the “Garden” of the Spirit.

40. It is in Jordan, therefore, that the Man Regenerate of the Gospels celebrates the first scene of that supreme act, his spiritual marriage – the Betrothal or initiatory purification by baptism. On this occasion the Divine Spirit announces to him his Sonship; and thenceforth he knows himself divine. The second scene is the Solemnization, which is celebrated on the “third day,” at the Cana of Galilee already mentioned, in the “banqueting hall” of the Mysteries. The whole narrative is constructed on astronomical lines, and in its exterior sense denotes the ripening of the grape and arrival of the vintage season in the month which follows the “assumption” of the constellation Virgo. For then the Sun, or emblem of the Man Regenerate, transmutes the watery element into wine. And this process, though prompted, as it were, by the genius of August, cannot be accomplished save by the genius of September; hence the remonstrance represented as addressed by Jesus to his “Mother.” The time of vintage was “not yet come.” The mysteries represented on this occasion are those of Bacchus whose mystic name is Iacchos. And it is the more interior mysteries of Iacchos which really are implied in the parable. For the “beginning of miracles” for the Man Regenerate is always the transmutation of the “Water” of his own Soul into the “Wine” of the Divine Spirit. And the impelling influence under which the change is effected, is always the “woman” in the man, his own pure intuition, who is the “virgin Mother of God” within himself.

41. The third and final scene of the “Marriage” belongs to the greater Mysteries. The “Crucifixion” is the last stage of the lesser Mysteries, and closes initiation into them. Immediately on “giving up the ghost,” – or renouncing altogether the lower life, – the Christ “enters into his kingdom;” and “the veil of the Temple is rent from the top to the bottom.” For this veil is that which divides the Covered Place from the Holy of Holies; and by its rending is denoted the passage of the individual within the kingdom of God, or of the soul, – typified by the King’s Chamber. The first three acts – the Baptism or Betrothal, the Temptation or Trial, and the Passion or Renunciation – belong to the Mysteries of the Rational Humanity as distinguished from those of the Spiritual Humanity. The last three acts – the Burial, the Resurrection, and the Ascension – belong to the greater Mysteries of the Soul and Spirit, the Spirit being the central Lord, King, and Adonai of the system, and the “Spouse” of the Bride or Soul. These Mysteries, therefore, belong to the “kingdom of God,” and are performed in the “King’s Chamber,” that is to say, within the veil and in the holy of Holies. The hour of the “Death” which follows the “Crucifixion” witnesses the passage of this veil; and the exclamation “Consummatum est” – uttered at this “ninth hour” of “the twelve in which man may work” in the process of regeneration – signifies that at length the Kingdom is entered, the King’s Chamber attained, the conflict of the Soul crowned with victory. The seventh and concluding act of the whole process follows the accomplishment of the three stages of the greater Mysteries of the King or Spirit, and is called the “Consummation of the Marriage of the Son of God.” In this act the “King” and “Queen,” “Spirit and Bride,” and are indissolubly united; the Man becomes pure Spirit; and the Human is finally taken up into the Divine.

PART V

42. IT was no part of the design of the Gospels to represent either the course of a man perfect from the first, or the whole course from the first of the man made perfect. Had they been designed to represent the former, they had contained no account of a Crucifixion. For, of the man perfect, no crucifixion, in the Mystical sense, is possible, since he has no lower self or perverse will, or any weakness, to be overcome or renounced, the anima divina in him having become all in all. That, therefore, which the Gospels exhibit, is a process consisting of the several degrees of regeneration, on the attainment of the last of which only does the man become “perfect.” But of these successive degrees not all are indicated. For the Gospels deal, not with one whose nature is, at first wholly unregenerate, but with one who is already, in virtue of the use made of his previous earth-lives, so far advanced as to be within reach, in a single further incarnation, of full regeneration.

43. For, owing to the complex and manifold nature of existence, every sphere or plane of man’s being requires for itself a redemptive process; and, for each, this process consists of three degrees. Of these the first three relate to the Body, the second three to the Mind, the third three to the Heart, and the fourth three to the Spirit. There are thus, in all, twelve Degrees or “Houses” of the Perfect Man or Microcosm, as there are Twelve Zodiacal Signs or Mansions of the Sun in his course through the heavens of the Macrocosm. And the Gospels set forth mainly the six of the Heart and Spirit. The crown both of the twelve degrees and of the six acts, – that which constitutes alike the “Sabbath” of the Hebrews, the “Nirvana” of the Buddhists, and the “Transmutation” of the Alchemists, – is the “Divine Marriage.” Of this, accordingly, types and parables recur continually in all Hermetic Scriptures. The last book of the Bible, the Apocalypse of John, fitly closes with a descriptive allegory of it. In this allegory the “Bride” herself is described as Salem, the Peace, or Rest, of God, a “city lying four-square,” having Twelve Foundations, and Four Aspects, all equal to each other, and upon every Aspect Three Gates. This heavenly Salem is, thus, the perfected Microcosm in whom is seen the At-one-ment of all the four planes, the physical, the intellectual, the moral, and the spiritual; the “Gates” of each side, or plane, symbolizing the three degrees of Regeneration appertaining to each. And these twelve gates are described as being each of a single pearl, because, like pearls, the excellences denoted by them are attainable only through skill and courage, and devotion even to the death, and require of those who would attain them the divestment of every earthly encumbrance.

44. The idea of this heavenly Salem is expressed also in the Tabernacle of Moses. For this, too, was fourfold. The Outer Court, which was open, denoted the Body or Man physical and visible; the covered Tent, or Holy place, denoted the Man intellectual and invisible; and the Holy of Holies within the veil, denoted the Heart or Soul, itself the shrine of the Spirit of the man and of the divine Glory, which, in their turn, were typified by the Ark and Shekinah. And in each of the four Depositaries were three utensils illustrative of the regenerative degrees belonging to each. (Fig. 2) The Marriage Supper, then, can he celebrated in the Kingdom of the Father only, when all the “Twelve Apostles,” or elements corresponding to the twelve degrees, have been brought into perfect harmony and at-one-ment, and no defective element any longer exists among them. In the central place at this divine feast is the Thirteenth Personage, the Master or Adonai of the system, the founder and president of the banquet. He it is who in later times found a representative in the pure and heaven-born Arthur – Ar-Thor – the “Bright Lord” of the Round Table. For, as already stated, the number of the Microcosm is thirteen, the thirteenth being the occupant of the interior and fourth place, which, thus, he personifies, constituting the fourth and completing element, the Nucleolus of the whole cell or “Round Table.” “And of this Fourth the form is as the Son of God.” Thus the number thirteen, which on the earthly plane, and before the “Crucifixion,” is, through the treachery of “Judas,” the symbol of imperfection and ill fortune, becomes, in the “Kingdom of the Father,” the symbol of perfection. As the number of the lunar months, it is the symbol also of the Woman, and denotes the Soul and her reflection of God, – the solar number twelve being that of the Spirit. The two numbers in combination form the perfect year of that dual humanity which alone is made in the image of God, the true “Christian year,” wherein the two, – the inner and the outer, Spirit and Matter, – are as one. Thirteen then represents that full union of man with God wherein Christ becomes Christ.

45. In representing the Regenerate Man as descended through his parents from the house of David and the tribe of Levi, the Gospels imply that man, when regenerate is always possessed of the intuition of the true prophet, and the purity of the true priest, for whom “David” and “Levi” are the mystical synonyms. Thus the spiritual blood of prophet, priest, and king mingles in the veins of the Messiah and Christ, whose lineage is the spiritual lineage of every man regenerate, and attainable by all men.

46. For, as cannot be too clearly and forcibly stated, between the man who becomes a Christ, and other men, there is no difference whatever of kind. The difference is alone of condition and degree, and consists in difference of unfoldment of the spiritual nature possessed by all in virtue of their common derivation. “All things,” as has repeatedly been said, “are made of the divine Substance.” And Humanity represents a stream which, taking its rise in the outermost and lowest mode of differentiation of that Substance, flows inwards and upwards to the highest, which is God. And the point at which it reaches the celestial, and empties itself into Deity, is “Christ.” Any doctrine other than this – any doctrine which makes the Christ of a different and non-human nature – is anti-Christian and subhuman. And, of such doctrine the direct effect is to cut off man altogether from access to God and God from access to man.

47. Such a doctrine is that which representing the Messiah as an incarnated God or Angel who, by the voluntary sacrifice of himself saves mankind from the penalty due for their sins, has distorted and obscured the true doctrine of atonement and redemption into something alike derogatory to God and pernicious to man.

That from which man requires to be redeemed is not the penalty of sin, but the liability to sin. It is the sin, and not the suffering which is his bane. The suffering is but the remedial agent. And from the liability to sin, and consequently to suffering, he can be redeemed only by being lifted into a condition in which sin is impossible to him. And no angel or third person, but only the man himself, co-operating with the God within him, can accomplish this. Man is, himself, the laboratory wherein God, as Spirit, works to save him, by re-creating him in God’s image. But – as always happens under a control exclusively sacerdotal religion has been presented as a way of escape, not from sin, but from punishment. With redemption degraded to this unworthy and mischievous end, the world has, as was inevitable, gone on sinning, more and more, and, by the ever-increasing grossness of its life and thought, sinking itself deeper and deeper into Matter, violating persistently on every plane of existence, the divine law of existence, until it has lost the very idea of Humanity, and – wholly unregenerate in Body, Mind, Heart, and Spirit – has reached the lowest depth of degradation compatible with existence. Thus, of modern society – as of Israel when reduced, through its own wickedness and folly to the like evil plight – it may he said that from the sole of the foot even unto the head, there is no soundness in it; but, wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores.” And even though “the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint” at the view of its own hopeless theory of existence, it seeks to “revolt more and more” by becoming increasingly pronounced in its denial of Being as a divine Reality, and so does its utmost to “bring upon itself swift destruction.” Such, to eyes in any degree regenerate, is the spectacle presented by the world in this “Year of Grace,” 1881.

48. As it was no part of tile design of the Gospels to represent the whole course, of the Man Regenerate, so neither was it a part of that design to provide, in respect of religious life and doctrine, a system whole and complete independently of any which had preceded it. Having a special relation to the Heart and Spirit of the Man, and thereby to the nucleus of the cell and the Holy of Holies of the Tabernacle, Christianity, in its original conception, relegated the regeneration of the Mind and Body – the covered House and open Court of the Tabernacle, or exterior dualism of the Microcosm – to systems already existent and widely known and practiced. These systems were two in number, or rather, were as two modes or expressions of the one system, the establishment of which constituted the “Message” which preceded Christianity by the cyclical period of six hundred years. This was the Message of which the “Angels” were represented in the Buddha Gautama and Pythagoras. Of these two nearly contemporary prophets and redeemers, the system was, both in doctrine and in practice, essentially one and the same. And their relation to the system of Jesus, as its necessary pioneers and forerunners, finds recognition in the Gospel under the allegory of the Transfiguration. For the forms beheld in this – of Moses and Elias – are the Hebrew correspondences of Buddha and Pythagoras. And they are described as beheld by the three Apostles in whom respectively are typified the functions severally fulfilled by Pythagoras, Buddha, and Jesus; namely, Works, Understanding, and Love, or Body, Mind, and Heart. And by their association on the Mount is denoted the junction of all three elements, and the completion of the whole system comprising them, in Jesus as the representative of the Heart or Innermost, and as in a special sense the “beloved Son of God.”

49. Christianity, then, was introduced into the world with a special relation to the great religions of the East, and under the same divine control. And so far from being intended as a rival and supplanter of Buddhism, it was the direct and necessary sequel to that system; and the two are but parts of one continuous, harmonious whole, whereof the later division is but the indispensable supplement and complement of the earlier. Buddha and Jesus are, therefore, necessary the one to the other; and in the whole system thus completed, Buddha is the Mind, and Jesus is the Heart; Buddha is the general, Jesus is the particular; Buddha is the brother of the universe, Jesus is the brother of men; Buddha is Philosophy, Jesus is Religion; Buddha is the Circumference, Jesus is the Within; Buddha is the System, Jesus is the Point of Radiation; Buddha is the Manifestation, Jesus is the Spirit; in a word, Buddha is the “Man,” Jesus is the “Woman.” But for Buddha, Jesus could not have been, nor would he have sufficed the whole man; for the man must have the Mind illuminated before the Affections can be kindled. Nor would Buddha have been complete without Jesus. Buddha completed the regeneration of the Mind; and by his doctrine and practice men are prepared for the grace which comes by Jesus. Wherefore no man can be, properly, Christian, who is not also, and first, Buddhist. Thus the two religions constitute, respectively, the exterior and interior of the same Gospel, the foundation being in Buddhism – the term including Pythagoreanism, – and the illumination in Christianity. And as without Christianity Buddhism is incomplete, so without Buddhism Christianity is unintelligible. The Regenerate Man of the Gospels stands upon the foundation represented by Buddha, the earlier stages, that is, of the same process of regeneration, so that without these he would be impossible. Hence the significance also of the Baptist’s part.

50. The term Buddha, moreover, signifies the Word. And the Buddha and the Christ represent, though on different planes, the same divine Logos or Reason, and are joint expressions of the “Message” which, in preceding cycles had been preached by “Zoroaster” – the Sun-star – as well as by Moses, and typified in Mithras, Osiris, and Krishna. Of all these the doctrine was one and the same, for it was the doctrine of the Man Regenerate even the “Gospel of Christ.” It was, thus, the treasure, – beyond all other priceless – of which Israel, fleeing, “spoiled the Egyptians;” of which, that is, the soul, escaping the power of the body, retains the possession, having gained it through the experience of the body. That Buddha, great as was his “Renunciation,” underwent no such extremity of ordeal as that ascribed to his counterpart of the Gospels, is due to the difference of the parts enacted, and the stages attained by them. Suffering is not of the mind, but of the heart. And whereas, of their joint system, Buddha represents the intellect, and Jesus represents the affections; – in Jesus, as its highest typical expression of the love-element, Humanity fulfils the injunction. “My son, give me thine heart.” [ This relation between the two systems, and the necessity of each to the other, have found recognition among the Buddhists themselves. Of this, one instance which may be cited, is that of a Cingalese chief who had sent his son to a Christian school; and who, on finding his consistency called in question by a Christian, replied that the two religious were to each other as the canoe of his country, and the contrivance, – called an outrigger, – by means of which, when afloat, it is kept upright. “I add on”, he said, “your religion to my own, for I consider Christianity a very good outrigger to the Buddhism.” – Tennant’s Ceylon. ]

51. Since of the spiritual union in the one faith of Buddha and Christ, will be born the world’s coming redemption, the relations between the two peoples through whom, on the physical plane, this union must be effected, becomes a subject of special interest and importance. Viewed from this aspect the connection subsisting between England and India rises from the sphere political to the sphere spiritual. As typical peoples of the West and of the East, of the races light and dark, these two, as representative Man and Woman of Humanity, will in due time constitute one Man, made in the image of God, regenerate and having power. And so shall the “lightning from the East”, after “illuminating the West”, be reflected back, purified and enhanced, “a light to lighten all nations and to be the glory of the spiritual Israel”. Thus, them, in Christ Jesus the holy systems of the past find their maturity and perfectionment. For by Christ is made possible the gift of the Divine Spirit, – the “Paraclete” – who could not come by Pythagoras nor by Buddha, because these represent the outer elements of the Microcosm; and the nucleolus, or Spirit, can be manifest only in the inner element, or Nucleus, of which Jesus is the representative. And thus, as said in Genesis xv. 16, “in the fourth generation,” shall the spiritual seed of Abraham, or Brahma, – for they are one and the same word and denote one and the same doctrine, – “return” to the promised land of their inheritance; and, as said by Jesus, “many shall come from the East and West, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven.”

52. For, as the “three, Noah, Daniel, and Job” were, for the Hebrews, types of Righteousness, so the three, “Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob “were types of Truth, ancestors of the spiritual Israel, and representatives of the several sacred mysteries of whose “kingdom” the Man Regenerate is always, and the world regenerate will be ultimately, by adoption and grace, the inheritor. The mysteries specially denoted by “Abraham” are, as just indicated, those of India. They are the mysteries of the Spirit, or Innermost, and are sacred to the Supreme Being, Brahma, who represents Deity under process of self-manifestation and, therefore, in activity. In this process, the Original Being, Brahm becomes Brahma; God becomes the Lord, the Manifestor. And it is in recognition of this change, that Abram becomes Abraham. The history of this personage, his flight, – always an invariable element in such histories, as witness that of Bacchus, of Israel, of the Holy Family, of Mohammed, and others, – his adventures and wanderings, is the history of the migration of the mysteries of India, by way of Chaldaea, to that divinely selected centre and pivot of all true religions Egypt – a term denoting the body, which itself is the divinely-appointed residence of the soul during its term of probation. [ In accordance with Hindu usage, which makes the masculine the passive, and the feminine the active principle of existence, the mysteries are represented by the wives of the divine persons. Thus, of Brahma the active principle is his wife Saraswati; after whom the wife of Abraham, who is also his active principle, is called Sara, “the Lady,” meaning of heaven. The story of the long courtship and two wives of Jacob, is a parable of initiation into the mysteries, lesser and greater. And the finding of the wife of Isaac at a well – like the finding of Moses in a river by the king’s daughter – indicates the woman, or soul, as the agent of intuition, and thereby of initiation and redemption. The “Haran” and “Ur,” from which Abram comes, denote the place of spiritual light; and the pedigrees imply, not persons, but spiritual states. ]

The next great order of mysteries refers to the soul, and is sacred to Isis, the goddess of the intuition, and “Mother” of the Christ. These mysteries were, for the Israelites, represented by Isaac, a name occultly connected with Isis and Jesus, as also with that of an important personage in the pedigree of this last, namely Jesse, the “father of David,” and a “keeper of sheep.” The third and remaining great order of the mysteries – that which refers to the body, and which early migrated to Greece is sacred to Bacchus, whose mystic name Iacchos is identical with Jacob. Comprising the three great divisions of existence, and by implication the fourth division also, these three combined orders of mysteries formed, in the original conception of Christianity a system of doctrine and life at once complete, harmonious, and sufficient for all needs and aspirations of humanity, both here and hereafter. And to this effect were the terms ascribed to Jesus in his reply to the inquiries made of him touching the resurrection of the dead. For, passing over the actual question, and coming at once to its mystic sense, he made a reply which referred, at least primarily, not to the individuals themselves who had been named, but to the systems implied in their names; and declaring those systems to be as full of vitality, and as essential to salvation, as when first divinely communicated to Moses in the words: “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,” he added that “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” Wherefore, according to this and the concurrent prophecy quoted above, these mysteries which are at once Hindu, Chaldaean, Persian, Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek, and Christian – will, restored to their original purity, constitute the controlling doctrine of the ages to come.

53. In this forecast of the now imminent future is to be found the clue to the world’s politics. The “kings of the East,” or Magi, may, in one sense, indeed, be they who – being in the West – hold political sovereignty over the provinces of Hindustan. But in the profounder sense they are those everywhere – whether in the East or in the West – who possess the “magical” knowledge or keys of the kingdom of the Spirit. For these are always Magians. Of one of the chief depositaries of this knowledge – the Bible – England has long been the foremost guardian and champion. For three centuries and a half– at once the mystic “time, times, and half a time,” and the “year of years” of the solar hero Enoch – has England lovingly and faithfully, albeit ignorantly, cherished the Letter which now, by the finding of the Interpretation, is – like its prototype – “translated” to the plane of the Spirit. Becoming thus a partaker of the divine Gnosis, England will be fitted for the yet loftier sovereignty to which she is destined. For then, through the union of East and West in the same doctrine, the waters of “the great river Euphrates” – symbol of the Spirit – will, as said of old of the Red Sea, be “dried up,” so that between the two hemispheres there will no longer be any barrier of creed, but a way divinely prepared and safeguarded, whereby the “kings of the East” may freely pass on their mission of enlightenment to all the world. All, therefore, that tends to bind England to the Orient is of Christ, and all that tends to sever them is of Antichrist. They who seek to wed Buddha to Jesus are of the celestial and upper; and they who interpose to forbid the banns are of the astral and nether. Between the two hemispheres stand the domain and faith of Islam, not to divide, but, as umbilical cord, to unite them. And nought is there in Islamism to hinder its fulfillment of this high function, and keep it from being a partaker of the blessings to result therefrom. For, not only is it the one really monotheistic and non-idolatrous religion now existing; but its symbolic Star and Crescent are essentially one with the Cross of Christ, in that they also typify the elements masculine and feminine of the divine existence, and the relation of the soul to God. So that lslamism has but to accomplish that other stage of its natural evolution, which will enable it to claim an equal place in the brotherhood of the Elect. This is the practical recognition in “Allah” of Mother as well as Father, by the exaltation of the woman to her rightful station on all planes of man’s manifold nature. This accomplished, Esau and Ishmael will be joined together with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in Christ.

54. In this recognition of the divine idea of humanity, and its ultimate results, will consist what are called the “Second Advent and millennial reign of Christ.” Of that advent – although described as resembling the coming of a thief in the night – the approach will not be unheeded. For even in the darkest of spiritual nights, there are always on the alert some who, as faithful shepherds, keep constant watch over the flocks of their own pure hearts, and who, “living the life, know of the doctrine.” And these, “dwelling by the well of clear vision,” and “discerning the signs of the times,” perceive already the mustering of the heavenly hosts, and the bright streamers of dawning of the long-wished-for better Day. [ See Appendices, Nos. V, VI. and VII. ]

 

LECTURE THE NINTH.

GOD AS LORD; OR, THE DIVINE IMAGE.

PART I

1. ALL sacred books, of whatever people, concur in adopting, in respect of the Deity, two apparently opposite and antagonistic modes of expression. According to one of these modes, the Divine being is external, universal, diffused, unformulated, indefinable, and altogether inaccessible and beyond perception. According to the other, the Divine Being is near, particular, definite, formulated, personified, discernible, and readily accessible. Thus, on the one hand it is said that God is the high and holy One that inhabiteth eternity, and is past finding out; that no man hath seen God at any time, neither heard God’s voice, or can see God and live. And, on the other hand, it is declared that God has been heard and beheld face to face, and is nigh to all who call upon God, being within their hearts; and that the knowledge of God is not only the one knowledge worth having, but that it is open to all who seek for it; and the pure in heart are promised, as their supreme reward, that they shall “see God.”

2. Numerous instances, moreover, are recorded of the actual sensible vision of God. Of the Hebrew prophets, Isaiah says that he saw the Lord “high and lifted up;” Ezekiel, that he beheld the “glory of the God of Israel” as a figure of fire; Daniel, that he beheld God as a human form, enthroned in flame; and John records in the Apocalypse a similar vision. The writers of the book of Exodus show their cognizance of such experiences by ascribing the vision not only to Moses, but to the whole of the elders and leaders of Israel, in all, seventy-four persons. And of these many are represented as competent to receive it in virtue of their own unaided faculties. For, by the statement that “upon the nobles Moses laid not his hands,” it is implied that their own spiritual condition was such that they needed no aid from the magnetism of the great hierarch their chief. The sight of the “God of Israel” on this occasion is described as like that of “a devouring fire.”

3. Among similar experiences related in other Scriptures is that in the Bhagavad Gita, wherein the “Lord Krishna” exhibits to the gaze of Arjun his “supreme and heavenly form,” “shining on all sides with light immeasurable like the sun a thousand fold,” and “containing is his breast all the Gods, or Powers, masculine and feminine, of the Universe.”

4. Yet, notwithstanding the difference of the two natures thus described, the Scriptures regard both as appertaining to one and the same Divine Being; and, combining the names characteristic of both, declare that the Lord is God, and God is the Lord, and appoint the compound term Lord-God as the proper designation of Deity.

5. Besides the title Lord, many various names are applied to Deity as subsisting under this mode. In the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, these names are Jehovah, El Shaddai, the Logos, the Ancient of Days, Alpha and Omega, Son of God, the Only Begotten, Adonai. The Hindus have Brahma, and also Ardha-Nari, – identical with Adonai. The Persians, Ormuzd; the Egyptians, Ra, or the Sun; the Greeks, the Demiourgos; the Kabbala has Adam Kadmon; and some later mystics employ the term “Grand Man.”

6. Of these last the most notable, Emmanuel Swedenborg, asserts the vision to be a fact in respect of the angels, – whom he claims as his informants, – saying that the Lord is God manifested in the universe, as a man, and is thus beheld, interiorly, by the angels. (Divine Love and Wisdom, 97, etc., etc.)

7. Swedenborg, however, identifies the Lord who is thus discerned with the historical Jesus, maintaining the latter to be very Deity, Jehovah in person, who assumed a fleshly body, and manifested Himself as a man, in order to save men from hell, and commanded His disciples to call Him Lord. (True Christian Religion, 370; D. L. and W., 282, etc., etc.) Swedenborg, herein falls into the common error of confounding “our Lord” with “the Lord,” the Christ in the man with Adonai in the heavens of whom the former is the counterpart; – an error due to his failure to recognize the distinction between the manifest and unmanifest, and between the microcosmic and macrocosmic deity. [ In his presentation of the Incarnation, Swedenborg is at variance, not only with the Gnosis but with himself. For in it he sets aside the canon of interpretation formulated by himself, his recovery and general application of which – together with the doctrine of correspondence – constitute his chief merit. Thus, to cite his own words: – “In the internal sense there is no respect to any person, or anything determined to a person. But there are three things which disappear from the sense of the letter of the Word, when the internal sense is unfolded; that which is of time, that which is of space, and that which is of person.” “The Word is written by mere correspondence, and hence all its contents, to the most minute, signify things heavenly and spiritual” (Arcana Cœlestia, 5253 and 1401). He also repeatedly declares that the literal sense of the Word is rarely the truth, but only the appearance of the truth, and that to take the literal sense for the true one is to destroy the truth itself, since everything in it relates to the heavenly and spiritual, and becomes falsified when transferred to a lower plane by being taken literally (see e g. T. C. R. 254, 258.) According both to this rule and the Gnosis, that which is implied by the term Incarnation is an event purely spiritual in its nature, potential in all men and of perpetual occurrence, inasmuch as it takes place in every regenerate man, being at once the cause and effect of his regeneration.

The authority twice cited by Swedenborg (T.C.R., 102 and 827) in support of his doctrine, – namely, an apparition professing to be the spirit of the Mother of Jesus, – is one which a duly instructed oculist would, at the least, have hesitated to regard as aught but a projection of his own magnetic aura, and as merely a mechanical reflect, therefore, of his own thought. Swedenborg had learned little or nothing from books, was ignorant of any system other the Christian, and also of the origin and meaning of the Christian symbology, and trusted for his information entirely to his own faculty; and this, extraordinary as it was, was allied to a temperament too cold and unsympathetic to generate the enthusiasm by which alone the topmost heights of perception and inmost core of the consciousness can be attained. Nevertheless, despite his limitations, Swedenborg was beyond question the foremost herald and initiator of the new era opening in the spiritual life of Christendom, and no student of religion can dispense with a knowledge of him. Only, he must be read with much discrimination and patience.]

8. In “the Lord,” the Formless assumes a form, the Nameless a name, the Infinite the definite, and these human. But, although “the Lord is God, manifested as a man,” in and to the souls of those to whom the vision is vouchsafed, it is not as man in the exclusive sense of the term, and masculine only, but as man both masculine and feminine, at once man and woman, as is Humanity itself. The Lord is God manifested in substance; and is dual in form because Deity, though one in essence, and statistically is twofold in operation, or dynamically. And the vision of Deity under a definite form, dual and human, – or androgynous, thought not as ordinarily apprehended, – has been universal and persistent from the beginning; and this, not as a conception merely mental and “subjective,” but as perception objective to an interior faculty, in that it is actually beheld. Hence it is, that in terms employed to denote Deity, both sexes are expressed or implied; and where one sex only is designated, it is not because the other is wanting, but because it is latent. And hence it is also, that, in order to be made in the image of God; the individual must comprise within himself the qualities masculine and feminine of existence, and be, spiritually, both man and woman. Man is perfect only when the whole humanity is manifested in him; and this occurs only when the whole Spirit of Humanity – that is God – is manifested through him. Thus manifesting Himself, God, as the book of Genesis says, “creates man in His own Image, Male and Female.”

9. Such is the doctrine of all Hermetic Scriptures. And when it is said, – as of the Kabbala, – that these Scriptures were delivered by God first of all to Adam in Paradise, and then to Moses on Sinai, it is meant that the doctrine contained in them is that which man always discerns when he succeeds in attaining to that inner and celestial region of his nature where he is taught directly of his own Divine Spirit, and knows even as he is known. The attainment of this divine knowledge constitutes existence a paradise. And it is symbolized by the ascent of a mountain, variously designated Nyssa, Sinai, Sion, Olivet. Peculiar to no particular period or place, the power to receive this knowledge is dependent entirely upon condition. And the condition is that of the understanding. Man attains to the image of God in proportion as he comprehends the nature of God. Such knowledge constitutes, of itself, transmutation. For man is that which he knows. And he knows only that which he is. Wherefore the recognition, first of God as the Lord, and next of the Lord as the divine Humanity, constitutes at once the means of salvation and salvation itself. This is the truth which makes free, – the supreme mystery, called by Paul the “mystery of godliness.” And it is by their relegation of this mystery to the category of the incomprehensible, that the priesthoods have barred to man the way of redemption. They have directed him, indeed, to a Macrocosmic God subsisting exteriorly to man, and having a nature altogether different from man’s, and to a heaven remote and inaccessible. But they have suppressed altogether the Microcosmic God and the kingdom within, and have blotted the Lord and his true image out of all recognition. Now the main distinction between the uninitiate and the initiate, between the man who does not know and the man who does know, lies in this: – For the one, God, if subsisting at all, is wholly without. For the other, God is both within and without; and the God within is all that the God without is.

10. It cannot be too emphatically stated, that the definition which sets forth Mystery as something inconsistent with or contradictory of sense and reason, is a wrong definition, and one in the highest degree pernicious. In its true signification, Mystery means only that which appertains to a region of which the external sense and reason are unable to take cognizance. It is, thus, the doctrine of Spirit and of the experiences connected therewith. And inasmuch as the spiritual is the within and source of the phenomenal, so far from the doctrine of Spirit contradicting and stultifying the experiences and conclusions of the external faculties, it corrects and interprets them; – precisely as does reason correct and interpret the sensible impression of the earth’s immobility, and of the diurnal revolution of the skies. That, therefore, which the degradation of the term Mystery to mean something incomprehensible, really represents, is the loss by the priesthoods of the faculty of comprehension. Declining, through “idolatry,” from the standard once attained by them, and losing the power either to discern or to interpret Substance, the Churches abandoned the true definition of Mystery which referred it to things transcending the outer sense and reason, and adopted a definition implying something contradictory of all sense and reason. Thenceforth, so far from fulfilling their proper function of supplying man with the wholesome “bread” of a perfect system of thought, they gave him instead the indigestible “stones” of dogmas altogether unthinkable; and for the “fish,” – or interior mysteries of the soul, – the “serpents,” or illusory reflects, of the astral. Reduced by this act to a choice between the suicide of an absolute surrender of the reason, and open revolt, the world adopted the lesser of the two evils. And this both rightly and of necessity. For man neither ought if he could, nor can if he would, suppress his reason. And now the Churches, having lost cognition of Spirit, and suppressed the faculty whereby alone it could be attained, are absolutely without a system of Thought wherewith to oppose the progress of that fatal system of No-thought which is fast engulfing the world. And so profound is the despair which reigns even in the highest ranks of Ecclesiasticism, as recently, from one of its most distinguished members, to elicit the confession that he saw no hope for Religion save in a new Revelation.[ Related of Cardinal Newman, on his investiture at Rome.]

PART II

11. IT is necessary to devote a brief space to an exposition of the ancient and true doctrine in respect of the place and value of the Understanding in things religious. Four so we shall both further minister to the rehabilitation of this supreme faculty, and exhibit the extent to which sacerdotalism has departed from the right course. Mention has already been made of Hermes as the “trainer of the Christs.” The phrase is of a kind with those more familiar phrases which describe Christ as the “Son of David” and as the “Seed of the Woman;” and, in short, with all statements respecting the genealogy of the Christ, including the declaration that the Rock on which the Church of Christ is built is the Understanding. For of all such statements the meaning is, that the doctrine represented by the term Christ – so far from being a Mystery, in the sacerdotal sense – is a truth necessary and self-evident, and requiring for its discernment as such, only the full and free exercise of Thought. Now this term Thought is no other than name of the Egyptian equivalent of Hermes, the God Thaut, frequently written Thoth; these being for the Greeks and Egyptians respectively the personification of the Divine Intelligence. It has already been stated that in the Celestial all properties and qualities are Persons, the fact being that it is always in the guise of a person that the Divine Spirit of a man holds intercourse with him, the mode adopted on the occasion corresponding to the function to be exercised. Thoth and Hermes are, then, names expressive of the personality assumed by the supreme Nous of the Microcosm when operating especially as the Intelligence or Understanding. In different nations, while the function is the same, the name and form vary according to the genius of the people. Thus, to a Hebrew the same Spirit becomes manifest as Raphael. In the Bhagavad-Gita the Supreme Being, speaking as the Lord (Krishna), declares that he himself is the Spirit of Understanding. As the parent Spirit – the Nous, or divine Mind – is God, so the product Thought, or the “Word,” as a Son of God, is also God. Nor does the Divine procession cease at the first generation. For, whereas of such Divine Word the Christ is the manifestation “in ultimates,” the Christ also is Son of God, and therefore God.

12. But not the less, however, is “Christ” the “Son of David,” though not by physical descent – his line had long been extinct – but in a spiritual sense. Like the patriarchs – who were therefore said to live in concubinage – David was not “married to the Spirit,” but held only occasional communion with it, receiving but a measure of illumination. “Christ” implies full regeneration and illumination. The attainment of this state is the ultimate aim of the science called Hermetic and Alchemic, the earliest formulation of which is ascribed to the god Thoth, – the Egyptian equivalent for the Divine Thought. Tracking the Christ-idea to this source, we have a yet further – though still but a secondary – signification for the saying, “Out of Egypt hast thou called thy Son.”

13. One of the most general symbols of the Understanding, and of its importance in the work of regeneration, has always been the Ram. Hence the frequent portrayal of the representative of Hermes and Thoth with a ram’s head. For by this was denoted the power of the faculty of which the head is the seat, the act of butting with the horns typifying the employment of the intellect whether for attack or defence. The command to cover the holy place of the Tabernacle with a ram’s fleece implied that only to the understanding were the mysteries of the Spirit accessible. The mighty walls of the “Jericho” of Doubt are represented as falling at the sound of rams’ horns, after being “encompassed” during the typical period of seven days. The narrative of the previous entry – that of the “spies” – into this stronghold through the agency of a woman, is similarly designed to exalt the understanding, the direct reference being to the intuition as essential to the understanding, and therefore to the resolution of doubt. The ascription to this woman of the vocation of the Magdalen, accords with the mystical usage of regarding the soul as impure during the term – necessary for her education – of her association with Matter. This finished, she becomes “virgin.” One of the chief glories of Hermes – his conquest of the hundred-eyed Argus – denotes the victory of the understanding over fate. For Argus represents the power of the stars over the unenfranchised soul. Wherefore Hera, the queen of the astral spheres and persecutrix of the soul thus subject, is said to have placed the eyes of Argus in the train of her vehicular bird, the peacock.

14. The story of the slaying of Goliath is a parable of like import. For Goliath is the formulation of the system represented by the “Philistines,” – that system of doubt and denial which finds its inevitable outcome in Materialism. The killing of Goliath signifies, thus, the discomfiture of Materialism by the understanding. And David, moreover, is represented – on arraying himself for the conflict – as declining the “king’s weapons,” or arms of the exterior reason, and choosing “a smooth stone out of a brook;” this being the “philosopher’s stone” of a pure spirit, a firm will, and a clear perception, such as is attained only through the secret operation of the soul, of which the brook is the emblem. Such a stone, also, is that which, “cut out without hands,” smites in pieces, as already explained, the giant image of Nebuchadnezzar. The reward of David’s achievement – the possession of the king’s daughter, the usual termination of such heroic adventure – denotes the attainment by the conqueror of the highest gifts and graces; – the daughter of Saul, or the outer Reason, being the inner Reason, or psychic faculty, developed from the “Man” and constituting the “Woman” in the man. Hence by David’s subsequent history in relation to Michal, is implied a spiritual retrogression on the soul’s part.

15. Similar reasons dictated the selection of a dog as specially sacred to Hermes, and his representation as the dog-headed Anubis; the intelligence and faithfulness of this animal making it an apt type of the understanding as the peculiar friend of man. Raphael – the Hebrew equivalent of Hermes, and like him called the “physician of souls” – is also represented as accompanied by a dog when travelling with Tobias. And the name of the special associate of Joshua, – a name identical with Jesus, – the final leader of the chosen people into the promised land of their spiritual perfection, – namely, Caleb, signifies a dog, and implies the necessity of intelligence to the successful quest of salvation. For the like reason were “rams,” and the “fat of rams,” used as symbolic terms to denote the offering most acceptable to God. It was intended by them to teach that man ought to dedicate to the service of God all the powers of his mind raised to their highest perfection, and by no means to ignore or suppress them.

16. The like high rank is accorded to understanding in all Hermetic Scriptures. For, – as in Isaiah xi. 2, – it is always placed second among the seven Elohim of God, the first place being assigned to Wisdom, which is accounted as one with Love. The same order is observed in the disposition of the solar system. For Mercury is Hermes, and his planet is next to the Sun. The ascription, in the mythologies, of a thievish disposition to this divinity, and the legends which represent him as the patron of thieves and adventurers, and stealing in turn from all the Gods, are modes of indicating the facility with which the understanding annexes everything and makes it its own. For Hermes denotes that faculty of the divine part in man which seeks and obtains meanings out of every department of existence, intruding into the province of every “God,” and appropriating some portion of the goods of each. Thus the understanding has a finger upon all things, and converts them to its own use, whether it be the “arrows” of Apollo, the “girdle” of Aphrodite, the “oxen” of Admetus, the “trident” of Poseidon, or the “tongs” of Hephaistos. Not only is Hermes – as already said – the rock on which the true church is built; he is also the divinity under whose immediate control all divine revelations are made, and all divine achievements performed. His are the rod of knowledge wherewith all things are measured, the wings of courage, the sword of the unconquerable will, and the cap of concealment or discretion. He is in turn the Star of East, conducting the Magi; the Cloud from whose mist the holy Voice speaks; by day the pillar of Vapour, by night the shining Flame, leading the elect soul on her perilous path through the noisome wilderness of the world, as she flies from the Egypt of the Flesh, and guiding her in safety to the promised heaven. He, too, it is who is the shield of saints in the fiery furnace of persecution or affliction, and whose “form is like the Son of God.” And by him the candidate for spiritual knowledge attains full initiation. For he is also the Communicator, and without him is no salvation. For, although that which saves is faith, that is not faith which is without understanding. Happily for the so-called “simple,” this understanding is not necessarily of the outer man; it suffices for salvation that the inner man has it. (See Apps. XII. 6 and XIV.)

17. “Hermes, as the messenger of God,” says the Neoplatonist Proclus, “reveals to us His paternal will, and – developing in us the intuition – imparts to us knowledge. The knowledge which descends into the soul from above excels any that can be attained by the mere exercise of the intellect. Intuition is the operation of the soul. The knowledge received through it from above, descending into the soul, fills it with the perception of the interior causes of things. The Gods announce it by their presence, and by illumination, and enable us to discern the universal order.” Commenting on these words of a philosopher regarded by his contemporaries with a veneration approaching to adoration, for his wisdom and miraculous powers, a recent leader of the prevailing school exclaims, “Thus is Proclus consistent in absurdity!” [ G.H. Lewes, Biog. Hist. Phil.] Whereas, had the critic been aware of the truth concerning the reality, personality, and accessibility of the world celestial, so far from denouncing Proclus as “absurd,” he would have supremely envied him, and eagerly sought the secret and method of the Neoplatonists. “To know more,” says the writer in question, “we must be more.” But when the Mystic – who, in virtue of his supreme sense of the dignity and gravity of man’s nature, affirms nothing lightly or rashly – offers his solemn assurance that we are more, and prescribes a simple rule, amply verified by himself, whereby to ascertain the fact, he turns away in disdain, and proceeds in his own manner to make himself infinitely less, by becoming a ringleader of that terrible school of Biology, which does not scruple, in the outraged name of Science, to indulge its passion for knowledge to the utter disregard of humanity and morality, by the infliction of tortures the most atrocious and protracted, upon creatures harmless and helpless. Little wonder is it that between Mystic and Materialist should gulf so impassable, feud so irreconcilable, intervene; seeing that while the one seeks by the sacrifice of his own lower nature to his higher, and of himself for others, to prove man potential God, the other – turning vivisector – makes him actual fiend. [ This paragraph was written with a view to its publication in the lifetime of Mr. Lewes. Unhappily, the necessity for it has not ceased with his life. Hence its appearance now. Both in the schools and in the laboratory his writings and influence survive him. The work cited is an University textbook; and a scholarship has been instituted in his name for the promotion of vivisectional research.]

18. To resume our exposition of the “mystery of godliness,” or doctrine of God as the Lord, and of the duality of the Divine image. According to the Zohar – the principal of the Kabbala – the Divine Word by which all things are created is the celestial archetypal Humanity, which subsisting eternally in the Divine Mind – makes the universe in His own image. God, as absolute Being, having no form or name, cannot and may not be represented under any image or appellation. Bent upon self-manifestation, or creation, the Divine Mind conceives the Ideal Humanity as a vehicle in which to descend from Being into Existence. This is the Merkaba, or Car, already referred to; and that which it denotes is Human Nature in its perfection, at once twofold in operation, fourfold in constitution, and sixfold in manifestation, and as a cube – Kaabeh – “standing four-square to all the winds of heaven.” In virtue of its two-foldness this “vehicle” expresses the corresponding opposites, Will and Love, Justice and Mercy, Energy and Space, Life and Substance, Positive and Negative, in a word, Male and Female, both of which subsist in the Divine Nature in absolute plenitude and perfect equilibrium. Expressed in the Divine Idea – Adam Kadmon – the qualities masculine and feminine of existence are, in their union and co-operation, the life and salvation of the world; and in their division and antagonism, its death and destruction. One in the Absolute, but two in the Relative, this ideal – but not therefore the less real – Humanity resumes both in itself, and is king and queen of the universe, and as suc