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28°- KNIGHT OF THE
SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT
Morals and Dogma
Albert Pike
GOD is the author of everything that existeth; the Eternal,
the Supreme, the Living, and Awful Being; from Whom nothing in the Universe is
hidden. Make of Him no idols and visible images; but rather worship Him in the
deep solitudes of sequestered forests; for He is invisible, and fills the
Universe as its soul, and liveth not in any Temple!
Light and Darkness are the World's Eternal ways. God is the
principle of everything that exists, and the Father of all Beings. He is
eternal, immovable, and Self-Existent. There are no bounds to His power. At one
glance He sees the Past, the Present, and the Future; and the procession of the
builders of the Pyramids, with us and our remotest Descendants, is now passing
before Him. He reads our thoughts before they are known to ourselves. He rules
the movements of the Universe, and all events and revolutions are the creatures
of His will. For He is the Infinite Mind and Supreme Intelligence.
In the beginning Man had the WORD, and that WORD was from
God: and out of the living power which, in and by that WORD, was communicated to
man, came the LIGHT of his existence. Let no man speak the WORD, for by it THE
FATHER made light and darkness, the world and living creatures!
The Chaldean upon his plains worshipped me, and the
sea-loving Phnician. They builded me temples and towers, and burned sacrifices
to me upon a thousand altars. Light was divine to them, and they thought me a
God. But I am nothing--nothing; and LIGHT is the creature of the unseen
GOD that taught the true religion to the Ancient Patriarchs: AWFUL, MYSTERIOUS,
THE ABSOLUTE.
Man was created pure; and God gave him TRUTH, as He gave him
LIGHT. He has lost the truth and found error. He has wandered far
into darkness; and round him Sin and Shame hover evermore. The Soul that is
impure, and sinful, and defiled with earthly stains, cannot again unite with
God, until, by long trials and many purifications, it is finally delivered from
the old calamity; and Light overcomes Darkness and dethrones it, in the Soul.
God is the First; indestructible, eternal, UNCREATED,
INDIVISIBLE. Wisdom, Justice, Truth, and Mercy, with
Harmony and Love, are of His essence, and Eternity and
Infinitude of Extension. He is silent, and consents with MIND, and is known
to Souls through MIND alone. In Him were all things originally contained, and
from Him all things were evolved. For out of His Divine SILENCE and REST, after
an infinitude of time, was unfolded the WORD, or the Divine POWER; and then in
turn the Mighty, ever-acting, measureless INTELLECT; and from the WORD were
evolved the myriads of suns and systems that make the Universe; and fire,
and light, and the electric HARMONY, which is the harmony of spheres and
numbers: and from the INTELLECT all Souls and intellects of men.
In the Beginning, the Universe was but ONE SOUL. HE was THE
ALL, alone with TIME and SPACE, and Infinite as they.
------ HE HAD THIS THOUGHT: "I Create Worlds:" and lo!
the Universe, and the laws of harmony and motion that rule
it. the expression of a thought of God; and bird and beast, and every living
thing but Man: and light and air, and the mysterious cur-rents, and the dominion
of mysterious numbers!
------ HE HAD THIS THOUGHT: "I Create Man, whose Soul
shall be my image, and he shall rule." And lo! Man, with senses, instinct,
and a reasoning mind!
------ And yet not MAN! but an animal that breathed,
and saw, and thought: until an immaterial spark from God's own Infinite Being
penetrated the brain, and became the Soul: and lo, MAN THE IMMORTAL! Thus,
threefold, fruit of God's thought, is Man; that sees and hears and feels; that
thinks and reasons; that loves and is in harmony with the Universe.
Before the world grew old, the primitive Truth faded out from
men's Souls. Then man asked himself, "What am I? and how and whence am I? and
whither do I go?" And the Soul, looking inward upon itself, strove to learn
whether that "I" were mere matter; its thought and reason and its passions and
affections mere results of material combination; or a material Being enveloping
an immaterial Spirit: . . and further it strove, by self-examination, to learn
whether that Spirit were an individual essence, with a separate immortal
existence, or an infinitesimal portion of a Great First Principle,
inter-penetrating the Universe and the infinitude of space, and undulating like
light and heat: . . and so they wandered further amid the mazes of error; and
imagined vain philosophies; wallowing in the sloughs of materialism and
sensualism, of beating their wings vainly in the vacuum of abstractions and
idealities.
While yet the first oaks still put forth their leaves, man
lost the perfect knowledge of the One True God, the Ancient Absolute Existence,
the Infinite Mind and Supreme Intelligence; and floated helplessly out upon the
shoreless ocean of conjecture. Then the soul vexed itself with seeking to learn
whether the material Universe was a mere chance combination of atoms, or the
work of Infinite, Uncreated Wisdom: . . whether the Deity was a concentrated,
and the Universe an extended immateriality; or whether He was a personal
existence, an Omnipotent, Eternal, Supreme Essence, regulating matter at will;
or subjecting it to unchangeable laws throughout eternity; and to Whom, Himself
Infinite and Eternal, Space and Time are unknown. With their finite limited
vision they sought to learn the source and explain the existence of Evil, and
Pain, and Sorrow; and so they wandered ever deeper into the darkness, and were
lost; and there was for them no longer any God; but only a great, dumb, soulless
Universe, full of mere emblems and symbols.
You have heretofore, in some of the Degrees through which you
have passed, heard much of the ancient worship of the Sun, the Moon, and the
other bright luminaries of Heaven, and of the Elements and Powers of Universal
Nature. You have been made, to
some extent, familiar with their personifications as Heroes suffering or
triumphant, or as personal Gods or Goddesses, with human characteristics and
passions, and with the multitude of legends and fables that do but allegorically
represent their risings and settings, their courses, their conjunctions and
oppositions, their domiciles and places of exaltation.
Perhaps you have supposed that we, like many who have written
on these subjects, have intended to represent this worship to you as the most
ancient and original worship of the first men that lived. To undeceive you, if
such was your conclusion, we have caused the Personifications of the Great
Luminary of Heaven, under the names by which he was known to the most ancient
nations, to proclaim the old primitive truths that were known to the Fathers of
our race, before men came to worship the visible manifestations of the Supreme
Power and Magnificence and the Supposed Attributes of the Universal Deity in the
Elements and in the glittering armies that Night regularly marshals and arrays
upon the blue field of the firmament.
We ask now your attention to a still further development of
these truths, after we shall have added something to what we have already said
in regard to the Chief Luminary of Heaven, in explanation of the names and
characteristics of the several imaginary Deities that represented him among the
ancient races of men.
ATHOM or ATHOM-RE, was the Chief and Oldest Supreme God of
Upper Egypt, worshipped at Thebes; the same as the OM or AUM of the Hindūs,
whose name was unpronounceable, and who, like the BREHM of the latter People,
was "The Being that was, and is, and is to come; the Great God, the Great
Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent One, the Greatest in the Universe, the
Lord;" whose emblem was a perfect sphere, showing that He was first, last,
midst, and without end; superior to all Nature-Gods, and all personifications of
Powers, Elements, and Luminaries; symbolized by Light, the Principle of Life.
AMUN was the Nature-God, or Spirit of Nature, called by that
name or AMUN-RE, and worshipped at Memphis in Lower Egypt, and in Libya, as well
as in Upper Egypt. He was the Libyan Jupiter, and represented the intelligent
and organizing force that develops itself in Nature, when the intellectual types
or forms of bodies are revealed to the senses in the world's order, by their
union with matter, whereby the generation of bodies is effected. He
was the same with Kneph, from whose mouth issued the Orphic egg out of which
came the Universe.
DIONUSOS was the Nature-God of the Greeks, as AMUN was of the
Egyptians. In the popular legend, Dionusos, as well as Hercules, was a Theban
Hero, born of a mortal mother. Both were sons of Zeus, both persecuted by Here.
But in Hercules the God is subordinate to the Hero; while Dionusos, even in
poetry, retains his divine character, and is identical with Iacchus, the
presiding genius of the Mysteries. Personification of the Sun in Taurus, as his
ox-hoofs showed, the delivered earth from the harsh dominion of Winter,
conducted the mighty chorus of the Stars, and the celestial revolution of the
year, changed with the seasons, and underwent their periodical decay. He was the
Sun as invoked by the Eleans, Πυριγενης, ushered into the world amidst lightning
and thunder, the Mighty Hunter of the Zodiac, Zagreus the Golden or ruddy-faced.
The Mysteries taught the doctrine of Divine Unity; and that Power Whose Oneness
is a seeming mystery, but really a truism, was Dionusos, the God of Nature, or
of that moisture, which is the life of Nature, who prepares in darkness, in
Hades or Iasion, the return of life and vegetation, or is himself the light and
change evolving their varieties. In the Egean Islands he was Butes, Dardanus,
Himeros or Imbros; in Crete he appears as Iasius or even Zeus, whose orgiastic
worship, remaining unveiled by the usual forms of mystery, betrayed to profane
curiosity the symbols which, if irreverently contemplated, were sure to be
misunderstood.
He was the same with the dismembered Zagreus, the son of
Persephoné, an Ancient Subterranean Dionusos, the horned progeny of Zeus in the
Constellation of the Serpent, entrusted by his father with the thunderbolt, and
encircled with the protecting dance of Curetes. Through the envious artifices of
Here, the Titans eluded the vigilance of his guardians and tore him to pieces;
but Pallas restored the still palpitating heart to his father, who commanded
Apollo to bury the dismembered remains upon Parnassus.
Dionusos, as well as Apollo, was leader of the Muses; the
tomb of one accompanied the worship of the other; they were the same, yet
different, contrasted, yet only as filling separate parts in the same drama; and
the mystic and heroic personifications, the God of Nature and of Art, seem, at
some remote period, to have proceeded from a common source. Their separation was
one of form rather than of
substance: and from the time when Hercules obtained initiation from Triptolemus,
or Pythagoras received Orphic tenets, the two conceptions were tending to
re-combine. It was said that Dionusos or Poseidon had preceded Apollo in the
Oracular office; and Dionusos continued to be esteemed in Greek Theology as
Healer and Saviour, Author of Life and Immortality. The dispersed Pythagoreans,
"Sons of Apollo," immediately betook themselves to the Orphic Service of
Dionusos, and there are indications that there was always something Dionysiac in
the worship of Apollo.
Dionusos is the Sun, that liberator of the elements; and his
spiritual meditation was suggested by the same imagery which made the Zodiac the
supposed path of the Spirits in their descent and their return. His second
birth, as offspring of the highest, is a type of the spiritual regeneration of
man. He, as well as Apollo, was precepter of the Muses and source of
inspiration. His rule prescribed no unnatural mortification: its yoke was easy,
and its mirthful choruses, combining the gay with the severe, did but
commemorate that golden age when earth enjoyed eternal spring, and when
fountains of honey, milk, and wine burst forth out of its bosom at the touch of
the thyrsus. He is the "Liberator." Like Osiris, he frees the soul, and guides
it in its migrations beyond the grave, preserving it from the risk of again
falling under the slavery of matter or of some inferior animal form. All soul is
part of the Universal Soul, whose totality is Dionusos; and he leads back the
vagrant spirit to its home, and accompanies it through the purifying processes,
both real and symbolical, of its earthly transit. He died and descended to the
Shades; and his suffering was the great secret of the Mysteries, as death is the
grand mystery of existence. He is the immortal suitor of Psyche (the Soul), the
Divine influence which physically called the world into being, and which,
awakening the soul from its Stygian trance, restores it from earth to Heaven.
Of HERMES, the Mercury of the Greeks, the Thoth of the
Egyptians, and the Taaut of the Phnicians, we have heretofore spoken
sufficiently at length. He was the inventor of letters and of Oratory, the
winged messenger of the Gods, bearing the Caduceus wreathed with serpents; and
in our Council he is represented by the ORATOR.
The Hindūs called the Sun SURYA; the Persians,
MITHRAS; the Egyptians,
OSIRIS; the Assyrians and Chaldæans, BEL; the Scythians and
Etruscans and the ancient Pelasgi, ARKALEUS or HERCULES; the
Phnicians, ADONAI or ADON; and the Scandinavians, ODIN.
From the name SURYA, given by the Hindūs to the Sun, the Sect
who paid him particular adoration were called Souras. Their painters
describe his car as drawn by seven green horses. In the Temple of Visweswara, at
Benares, there is an ancient piece of sculpture, well executed in stone,
representing him sitting in a car drawn by a horse with twelve heads. His
charioteer, by whom he is preceded, is ARUN [from אור, AUR the Crepusculum?],
or the Dawn; and among his many titles are twelve that denote his distinct
powers in each of the twelve months. Those powers are called Adityas, each of
whom has a particular name. Surya is supposed frequently to have descended upon
earth, in a human shape, and to have left a race on earth, equally renowned in
Indian story with the Heliades of Greece. He is often styled King of the Stars
and Planets, and thus reminds us of the Adon-Tsbauth (Lord of the Starry Hosts)
of the Hebrew writings.
MITHRAS was the Sun-God of the Persians; and was fabled to
have been born in a grotto or cave, at the Winter Solstice. His feasts were
celebrated at that period, at the moment when the sun commenced to return
Northward, and to increase the length of the days. This was the great Feast of
the Magian religion. The Roman Calendar, published in the time of Constantine,
at which period his worship began to gain ground in the Occident, fixed his
feast-day on the 25th of December. His statues and images were inscribed,
Deo-Soli invicto Mithræ--to the invincible Sun-God Mithras. Nomen
invictum Sol Mithra. . . . Soli Omnipotenti Mithræ. To him, gold, incense,
and myrrh were consecrated. "Thee," says Martianus Capella, in his hymn to the
Sun, "the dwellers on the Nile adore as Serapis, and Memphis worships as Osiris;
in the sacred rites of Persia thou art Mithras, in Phrygia, Atys, and Libya bows
down to thee as Ammon, and Phnician Byblos as Adonis; and thus the whole world
adores thee under different names."
OSIRIS was the son of Helios (Phra), the "divine offspring
con-generate with the dawn," and at the same time an incarnation of Kneph or
Agathodæmon, the Good Spirit, including all his possible manifestations, either
physical or moral. He represented in a familiar form the beneficent aspect of
all higher emanations and in
him was developed the conception of a Being purely good, so that it became
necessary to set up another power as his adversary, called Seth, Babys or Typhon,
to account for the injurious influences of Nature.
With the phenomena of agriculture, supposed to be the
invention of Osiris, the Egyptians connected the highest truths of their
religion. The soul of man was as the seed hidden in the ground, and the mortal
framework, similarly consigned to its dark resting-place, awaited its
restoration to life's unfailing source. Osiris was not only benefactor of the
living; he was also Hades, Serapis, and Rhadamanthus, the monarch of the dead.
Death, therefore, in Egyptian opinion, was only another name for renovation,
since its God is the same power who incessantly renews vitality in Nature. Every
corpse duly embalmed was called "Osiris," and in the grave was supposed to be
united, or at least brought into approximation, to the Divinity. For when God
became incarnate for man's benefit, it was implied that, in analogy with His
assumed character, He should submit to all the conditions of visible existence.
In death, as in life, Isis and Osiris were patterns and precursors of mankind;
their sepulchres stood within the temples of the Superior Gods; yet though their
remains might be entombed at Memphis or Abydus, their divinity was unimpeached,
and they either shone as luminaries in the heavens, or in the unseen world
presided over the futurity of the disembodied spirits whom death had brought
nearer to them.
The notion of a dying God, so frequent in Oriental legend,
and of which we have already said much in former Degrees, was the natural
inference from a literal interpretation of nature-worship; since nature, which
in the vicissitudes of the seasons seems to undergo a dissolution, was to the
earliest religionists the express image of the Deity, and at a remote period one
and the same with the "varied God," whose attributes were seen not only in its
vitality, but in its changes. The unseen Mover of the Universe was rashly
identified with its obvious fluctuations. The speculative Deity suggested by the
drama of nature, was worshipped with imitative and sympathetic rites. A period
of mourning about the Autumnal Equinox, and of joy at the return of Spring, was
almost universal. Phrygians and Paphlagonians, Botians, and even Athenians,
were all more or less attached to such observances; the Syrian damsels sat
weeping for Thammuz or Adoni, mortally
wounded by the tooth of Winter, symbolized by the boar, its very
general emblem: and these rites, and those of Atys and Osiris, were evidently
suggested by the arrest of vegetation, when the Sun, descending from his
altitude, seems deprived of his generating power.
Osiris is a being analogous to the Syrian ADONI; and the
fable of his history, which we need not here repeat, is a narrative form of the
popular religion of Egypt, of which the Sun is the Hero, and the agricultural
calendar the moral. The moist valley of the Nile, owing its fertility to the
annual inundation, appeared, in contrast with the surrounding desert, like life
in the midst of death. The inundation was in evident dependence on the Sun, and
Egypt, environed with arid deserts, like a heart within a burning censer, was
the female power, dependent on the influences personified in its God. Typhon his
brother, the type of darkness, drought, and sterility, threw his body into the
Nile; and thus Osiris, the "good," the "Saviour," perished, in the 28th year of
his life or reign, and on the 17th day of the month Athor, or the 13th of
November. He is also made to die during the heats of the early Summer, when,
from March to July, the earth was parched with intolerable heat, vegetation was
scorched, and the languid Nile exhausted. From that death he rises when the
Solstitial Sun brings the inundation, and Egypt is filled with mirth and
acclamation anticipatory of the second harvest. From his Wintry death he rises
with the early flowers of Spring, and then the joyful festival of Osiris found
was celebrated.
So the pride of Jemsheed, one of the Persian Sun-heroes, or
the solar year personified, was abruptly cut off by Zohak, the tyrant of the
West. He was sawn asunder by a fish-bone, and immediately the brightness of Iran
changed to gloom. Ganymede and Adonis, like Osiris, were hurried off in all
their strength and beauty; the premature death of Linus, the burthen of the
ancient lament of Greece, was like that of the Persian Siamek, the Bithynian
Hylas, and the Egyptian Maneros, Son of Menes or the Eternal. The elegy called
Maneros was sung at Egyptian banquets, and an effigy enclosed within a
diminutive Sarcophagus was handed round to remind the guests of their brief
tenure of existence. The beautiful Memnon, also, perished in his prime; and
Enoch, whose early death was lamented at Iconium, lived 365 years, the number of
days of the solar year; a brief space when compared with the
longevity of his patriarchal kindred.
The story of Osiris is reflected in those of Orpheus and
Dionusos Zagreus, and perhaps in the legends of Absyrtus and Pelias, of Æson,
Thyestes, Melicertes, Itys, and Pelops. Io is the disconsolate Isis or Niobe:
and Rhea mourns her dismembered Lord, Hyperion, and the death of her son Helios,
drowned in the Eridanus; and if Apollo and Dionusos are immortal, they had died
under other names, as Orpheus, Linus, or Hyacinthus. The sepulchre of Zeus was
shown in Crete. Hippolytus was associated in divine honors with Apollo, and
after he had been torn to pieces like Osiris, was restored to life by the
Pæonian herbs of Diana, and kept darkling in the secret grove of Egeria. Zeus
deserted Olympus to visit the Ethiopians; Apollo underwent servitude to Admetus;
Theseus, Peirithous, Hercules, and other heroes, descended for a time to Hades;
a dying Nature-God was exhibited in the Mysteries, the Attic women fasted,
sitting on the ground, during the Thesmophoria, and the Botians lamented the
descent of Cora-Proserpine to the Shades.
But the death of the Deity, as understood by the Orientals,
was not inconsistent with His immortality. The temporary decline of the Sons of
Light is but an episode in their endless continuity; and as the day and year are
more convenient subdivisions of the Infinite, so the fiery deaths of Phaëthon or
Hercules are but breaks in the same Phnix process of perpetual regeneration, by
which the spirit of Osiris lives forever in the succession of the Memphian Apis.
Every year witnesses the revival of Adonis; and the amber tears shed by the
Heliades for the premature death of their brother, are the golden shower full of
prolific hope, in which Zeus descends from the brazen vault of Heaven into the
bosom of the parched ground.
BAL, representative or personification of the sun, was one of
the Great Gods of Syria, Assyria, and Chaldea, and his name is found upon the
monuments of Nimroud, and frequently occurs in the Hebrew writings. He was the
Great Nature-God of Babylonia, the Power of heat, life, and generation. His
symbol was the Sun, and he was figured seated on a bull. All the accessories of
his great temple at Babylon, described by Herodotus, are repeated with singular
fidelity, but on a smaller scale, in the Hebrew tabernacle and temple. The
golden statue alone is wanted to complete
the resemblance. The word Bal or Baal, like the word
Adon, signifies Lord and Master. He was also the Supreme Deity of the
Moabites, Amonites, and Carthaginians, and of the Sabeans in general; the Gauls
worshipped the Sun under the name of Belin or Belinus: and Bela is found among
the Celtic Deities upon the ancient monuments.
The Northern ancestors of the Greeks maintained with hardier
habits a more manly style of religious symbolism than the effeminate enthusiasts
of the South, and had embodied in their Perseus, HERCULES and MITHRAS,
the consummation of the qualities they esteemed and exercised.
Almost every nation will be found to have had a mythical
being, whose strength or weakness, virtues or defects, more or less nearly
describe the Sun's career through the seasons. There was a Celtic, a Teutonic, a
Scythian, an Etruscan, a Lydian Hercules, all whose legends became tributary to
those of the Greek hero. The name of Hercules was found by Herodotus to have
been long familiar in Egypt and the East, and to have originally belonged to a
much higher personage than the comparatively modern hero known in Greece as the
Son of Alcmena. The temple of the Hercules of Tyre was reported to have been
built 2300 years before the time of Herodotus; and Hercules, whose Greek name
has been sometimes supposed to be of Phnician origin, in the sense of Circuitor,
i.e. "rover" and "perambulator" of earth, as well as "Hyperion" of the
sky, was the patron and model of those famous navigators who spread his altars
from coast to coast through the Mediterranean, to the extremities of the West,
where "ARKALEUS" built the City of Gades, and where a perpetual fire burned in
his service. He was the lineal descendant of Perseus, the luminous child of
darkness, conceived within a subterranean vault of brass; and he a
representation of the Persian Mithras, rearing his emblematic lions above the
gates of Mycenæ, and bringing the sword of Jemsheed to battle against the
Gorgons of the West. Mithras is similarly described in the Zend-Avesta as the
"mighty hero, the rapid runner, whose piercing eye embraces all, whose arm bears
the club for the destruction of the Darood."
Hercules Ingeniculus, who, bending on one knee, uplifts his
club and tramples on the Serpent's head, was, like Prometheus and Tantalus, one
of the varying aspects of the struggling and declining Sun. The victories of
Hercules are but exhibitions of Solar power which have ever to be repeated. It
was in the far North, among the Hyperboreans, that, divested of his Lion's skin,
he lay down to sleep, and for a time lost the horses of his chariot. Henceforth
that Northern region of gloom, called the "place of the death and revival of
Adonis," that Caucasus whose summit was so lofty, that, like the Indian Meru, it
seemed to be both the goal and commencement of the Sun's career, became to Greek
imaginations the final bourne of all things, the abode of Winter and desolation,
the pinnacle of the arch connecting the upper and lower world, and consequently
the appropriate place for the banishment .of Prometheus. The daughters of
Israel, weeping for Thammuz, mentioned by Ezekiel, sat looking to the North, and
waiting for his return from that region. It was while Cybele with the Sun-God
was absent among the Hyperboreans, that Phrygia, abandoned by her, suffered the
horrors of famine. Delos and Delphi awaited the return of Apollo from the
Hyperboreans, and Hercules brought thence to Olympia the olive. To all Masons,
the North has immemorially been the place of darkness; and of the great lights
of the Lodge, none is in the North.
Mithras, the rock-born hero (Πετρογενης), heralded the Sun's
return in Spring, as Prometheus, chained in his cavern, betokened the
continuance of Winter. The Persian beacon on the mountain-top represented the
Rock-born Divinity enshrined in his worthiest temple; and the funeral
conflagration of Hercules was the sun dying in glory behind the Western hills.
But though the transitory manifestation suffers or dies, the abiding and eternal
power liberates and saves. It was an essential attribute of a Titan, that he
should arise again after his fall; for the revival of Nature is as certain as
its decline, and its alternations are subject to the appointment of a power
which controls them both.
"God," says Maximus Tyrius, "did not spare His own Son
[Hercules], or exempt Him from the calamities incidental to humanity. The Theban
progeny of Jove had his share of pain and trial. By vanquishing earthly
difficulties he proved his affinity with Heaven. His life was a continuous
struggle. He fainted before Typhon in the desert; and in the commencement of the
Autumnal season (cum longæ redit hora noctis), descended under the guidance of
Minerva to Hades. He died; but first applied for initiation to Eumolpus, in
order to foreshadow that state of religious preparation which should precede the
momentous change. Even in Hades he
rescued Theseus and removed the stone of Ascalaphus, reanimated the
bloodless spirits, and dragged into the light of day the monster Cerberus,
justly reputed invincible because an emblem of Time itself; he burst the chains
of the grave (for Busiris is the grave personified), and triumphant at the close
as in the dawn of his career, was received after his labors into the repose of
the heavenly mansions, living forever with Zeus in the arms of Eternal Youth.
ODIN is said to have borne twelve names among the old
Germans, and to have had 114 names besides. He was the Apollo of the
Scandinavians, and is represented in the Voluspa as destined to slay the
monstrous snake. Then the Sun will be extinguished, the earth be dissolved in
the ocean, the stars lose their brightness, and all Nature be destroyed in order
that it may be renewed again. From the bosom of the waters a new world will
emerge clad in verdure; harvests will be seen to ripen where no seed was sown,
and evil will disappear.
The free fancy of the ancients, which wove the web of their
myths and legends, was consecrated by faith. It had not, like the modern mind,
set apart a petty sanctuary of borrowed beliefs, beyond which all the rest was
common and unclean. Imagination, reason, and religion circled round the same
symbol; and in all their symbols there was serious meaning, if we could but find
it out. They did not devise fictions in the same vapid spirit in which we,
cramped by conventionalities, read them. In endeavoring to interpret creations
of fancy, fancy as well as reason must guide: and much of modern controversy
arises out of heavy misapprehensions off ancient symbolism.
To those ancient peoples, this earth was the centre of the
Universe. To them there were no other worlds, peopled with living beings, to
divide the care and attention of the Deity. To them the world was a great plain,
of unknown, perhaps inconceivable limits, and the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars
journeyed above it, to give them light. The worship of the Sun became the basis
of all the religions of antiquity. To them light and heat were mysteries; as
indeed they still are to us. As the Sun caused the day, and his absence the
night; as, when he journeyed Northward, Spring and Summer followed him; and when
he again turned to the South, Autumn and inclement Winter, and cold and long
dark nights ruled the earth; . . . as his influence produced the leaves and
flowers, and ripened the harvests, and brought regular inundation,
he necessarily became to them the most interesting object of the
material Universe. To them he was the innate fire of bodies, the fire of nature.
Author of Life, heat, and ignition, he was to them the efficient cause of all
generation, for without him there was no movement, no existence, no form. He was
to them immense, indivisible, imperishable, and everywhere present. It was their
need of light, and of his creative energy, that was felt by all men; and nothing
was more fearful to them than his absence. His beneficent influences caused his
identification with the Principle of Good; and the BRAHMA of the Hindūs, the
MITHRAS of the Persians, and ATHOM, AMUN, PHTHA, and OSIRIS, of the Egyptians,
the BEL of the Chaldæans, the ADONAI of the Phnicians, the ADONIS and APOLLO of
the Greeks became but personifications of the Sun, the regenerating Principle,
image of that fecundity which perpetuates and rejuvenates the world's existence.
So too the struggle between the Good and Evil Principles was
personified, as was that between life and death, destruction and re-creation; in
allegories and fables which poetically represented the apparent course of the
Sun; who, descending toward the Southern Hemisphere, was figuratively said to be
conquered and put to death by darkness, or the genius of Evil; but, returning
again toward the Northern Hemisphere, he seemed to be victorious, and to arise
from the tomb. This death and resurrection were also figurative of the
succession of day and night, of death, which is a necessity of life, and of life
which is born of death; and everywhere the ancients still saw the combat between
the two Principles that ruled the world. Everywhere this contest was embodied in
allegories and fictitious histories: into which were ingeniously woven all the
astronomical phenomena that accompanied, preceded, or followed the different
movements of the Sun, and the changes of Seasons, the approach or withdrawal of
inundation. And thus grew into stature and strange proportions the histories of
the contests between Typhon and Osiris, Hercules and Juno, the Titans and
Jupiter, Ormuzd and Ahriman, the rebellious Angels and the Deity, the Evil Genii
and the Good; and the other like fables, found not only in Asia, but in the
North of Europe, and even among the Mexicans and Peruvians of the New World;
carried thither, in all probability, by those Phnician voyagers who bore
thither civilization and the arts. The Scythians lamented the death of Acmon,
the Persians that of Zohak conquered
by Pheridoun, the Hindus that of Soura-Parama slain by Soupra-Muni,
as the Scandinavians did that of Balder, torn to pieces by the blind Hother.
The primitive idea of infinite space existed in the first
men, as it exists in us. It and the idea of infinite time are the first two
innate ideas. Man cannot conceive how thing can be added to thing, or event
follow event, forever. The idea will ever return, that no matter how long bulk
is added to bulk, there must be, still beyond, an empty void without
limit; in which is nothing. In the same way the idea of time without
beginning or end forces itself on him. Time, without events, is also a
void, and nothing.
In that empty void space the primitive men knew there was no
light nor warmth. They felt, what we know scientifically, that there must
be a thick darkness there, and an intensity of cold of which we have no
conception. Into that void they thought the Sun, the Planets, and the Stars went
down when they set under the Western Horizon. Darkness was to them an enemy, a
harm, a vague dread and terror. It was the very embodiment of the evil
principle; and out of it they said that he was formed. As the Sun bent Southward
toward that void, they shuddered with dread: and when, at the Winter Solstice,
he again commenced his Northward march, they rejoiced and feasted; as they did
at the Summer Solstice, when most he appeared to smile upon them in his pride of
place. These days have been celebrated by all civilized nations ever since. The
Christian has made them feast-days of the church, and appropriated them to the
two Saints John; and Masonry has done the same.
We, to whom the vast Universe has become but a great
machine, not instinct with a great SOUL, but a clockwork of
proportions unimaginable, but still infinitely less than infinite; and part at
least of which we with our orreries can imitate; we, who have measured the
distances and dimensions, and learned the specific gravity and determined the
orbits of the moon and the planets; we, who know the distance to the sun, and
his size; have measured the orbits of the flashing comets, and the distances of
the fixed stars; and know the latter to be suns like our sun, each with his
retinue of worlds, and all governed by the same unerring, mechanical laws and
outwardly imposed forces, centripetal and centrifugal; we, who with our
telescopes have separated the galaxy and the nebula into other stars and groups
of stars; discovered new
planets, by first discovering their disturbing forces upon those already known;
and learned that they all, Jupiter, Venus, and the fiery Mars, and Saturn and
the others, as well as the bright, mild, and ever-changing Moon, are mere dark,
dull, opaque clods like our earth, and not living orbs of brilliant fire and
heavenly light; we, who have counted the mountains and chasms in the moon, with
glasses that could distinctly reveal to us the temple of Solomon, if it stood
there in its old original glory; we, who no longer imagine that the stars
control our destinies, and who can calculate the eclipses of the sun and moon,
backward and forward, for ten thousand years; we, with our vastly increased
conceptions of the powers of the Grand Architect of the Universe, but our wholly
material and mechanical view of that Universe itself; we cannot, even in the
remotest degree, feel, though we may partially and imperfectly imagine,
how those great, primitive, simple-hearted children of Nature felt in regard to
the Starry Hosts, there upon the slopes of the Himalayas, on the Chaldæan
plains, in the Persian and Median deserts, and upon the banks of that great,
strange River, the Nile. To them the Universe was alive--instinct with
forces and powers, mysterious and beyond their comprehension. To them it was no
machine, no great system of clockwork; but a great live creature, an army of
creatures, in sympathy with or inimical to man. To them, all was a mystery and a
miracle, and the stars flashing overhead spoke to their hearts almost in an
audible language. Jupiter, with his kingly splendors, was the Emperor of the
starry legions. Venus looked lovingly on the earth and blessed it; Mars, with
his crimson fires, threatened war and misfortune; and Saturn, cold and grave,
chilled and repelled them. The ever-changing Moon, faithful companion of the
Sun, was a constant miracle and wander; the Sun himself the visible emblem of
the creative and generative power. To them the earth was a great plain, over
which the sun, the moon, and the planets revolved, its servants, framed to give
it light. Of the stars, some were beneficent existences that brought with them
Spring-time and fruits and flowers,--some, faithful sentinels, advising them of
coming inundation, of the season of storm and of deadly winds; some heralds of
evil, which, steadily foretelling, they seemed to cause. To them the eclipses
were portents of evil, and their causes hidden in mystery, and supernatural. The
regular returns of the stars, the comings of Arcturus, Orion, Sirius, the
Pleiades, and Aldebarán, and the journeyings of the Sun, were voluntary and not
mechanical to them. What wonder that astronomy became to them the most important
of sciences; that those who learned it became rulers; and that vast edifices,
the Pyramids, the tower or temple of Bel, and other like erections everywhere in
the East, were builded for astronomical purposes?--and what wonder that, in
their great child-like simplicity, they worshipped Light, the Sun, the Planets,
and the Stars, and personified them, and eagerly believed in the histories
invented for them; in that age when the capacity for belief was infinite; as
indeed, if we but reflect, it still is and ever will be?
If we adhered to the literally historic sense, antiquity
would be a mere inexplicable, hideous chaos, and all the Sages deranged: and so
it would be with Masonry and those who instituted it. But when these allegories
are explained, they cease to be absurd fables, or facts purely local; and become
lessons of wisdom for entire humanity. No one can doubt, who studies them, that
they all came from a common source.
And he greatly errs who imagines that, because the
mythological legends and fables of antiquity are referable to and have their
foundation in the phenomena of the Heavens, and all the Heathen Gods are but
mere names given to the Sun, the Stars, the Planets, the Zodiacal Signs, the
Elements, the Powers of Nature, and Universal Nature herself, therefore the
first men worshipped the Stars, and whatever things, animate and inanimate,
seemed to them to possess and exercise a power or influence, evident or
imagined, over human, fortunes and human destiny.
For ever, in all the nations, ascending to the remotest
antiquity to which the light of History or the glimmerings of tradition reach,
we find, seated above all the gods which represent the luminaries and the
elements, and those which personify the innate Powers of universal nature, a
still higher Deity, silent, undefined, incomprehensible, the Supreme, one God,
from Whom all the rest flow or emanate, or by Him are created. Above the
Time-God Horus, the Moon-Goddess or Earth-Goddess Isis, and the Sun-God Osiris,
of the Egyptians, was Amun, the Nature-God; and above him, again, the Infinite,
Incomprehensible Deity, ATHOM. BREHM, the silent, self-contemplative, one
original God, was the Source, to the Hindūs, of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. Above
Zeus, or before him, were Kronos and Ouranos. Over the Alohayim was the great
Nature-God AL, and still beyond him, Abstract Existence, IHUH--He that IS, WAS,
and SHALL BE. Above all the Persian Deities was the Unlimited Time,
ZERUANE-AKHERENE; and over Odin and Thor was the Great Scandinavian Deity
ALFADIR.
The worship of Universal Nature as a God was too near akin to
the worship of a Universal Soul, to have been the instinctive creed of any
savage people or rude race of men. To imagine all nature, with all its
apparently independent parts, as forming one consistent whole, and as itself a
unit, required an amount of experience and a faculty of generalization not
possessed by the rude uncivilized mind, and is but a step below the idea of a
universal Soul.
In the beginning man had the WORD; and that WORD was from
God; and out of the living POWER communicated to man in and by that WORD, came
THE LIGHT of His Existence.
God made man in His own likeness. When, by a long succession
of geological changes, He had prepared the earth to be his habitation, He
created him, and placed him in that part of Asia which all the old nations
agreed in calling the cradle of the human race, and whence afterward the stream
of human life flowed forth to India, China, Egypt, Persia, Arabia, and Phnicia.
HE communicated to him a knowledge of the nature of his Creator, and of the
pure, primitive, undefiled religion. The peculiar and distinctive excellence and
real essence of the primitive man, and his true nature and destiny, consisted in
his likeness to God. HE stamped His own image upon man's soul. That image has
been, in the breast of every individual man and of mankind in general, greatly
altered, impaired, and defaced; but its old, half-obliterated characters are
still to be found on all the pages of primitive history; and the impress, not
entirely effaced, every reflecting mind may discover in its own interior.
Of the original revelation to mankind, of the primitive WORD
of Divine TRUTH, we find clear indications and scattered traces in the sacred
traditions of all the primitive Nations; traces which, when separately examined,
appear like the broken remnants, the mysterious and hieroglyphic characters, of
a mighty edifice that has been destroyed; and its fragments, like those of the
old Temples and Palaces of Nimroud, wrought incongruously into edifices many
centuries younger. And, although amid the ever-growing degeneracy of mankind,
this primeval word of revelation was
falsified by the admixture of various errors, and overlaid and
obscured by numberless and manifold fictions, inextricably confused, and
disfigured almost beyond the power of recognition, still a profound inquiry will
discover in heathenism many luminous vestiges of primitive Truth.
For the old Heathenism had everywhere a foundation in Truth;
and if we could separate that pure intuition into nature and into the simple
symbols of nature, that constituted the basis of all Heathenism, from the alloy
of error and the additions of fiction, those first hieroglyphic traits of the
instinctive science of the first men, would be found to agree with truth and a
true knowledge of nature, and to afford an image of a free, pure, comprehensive,
and finished philosophy of life.
The struggle, thenceforward to be eternal, between the Divine
will and the natural will in the souls of men, commenced immediately after the
creation. Cain slew his brother Abel, and went forth to people parts of the
earth with an impious race, forgetters and defiers of the true God. The other
Descendants of the Common Father of the race intermarried with the daughters of
Cain's Descendants: and all nations preserved the remembrance of that division
of the human family into the righteous and impious, in their distorted legends
of the wars between the Gods, and the Giants and Titans. When, afterward,
another similar division occurred, the Descendants of Seth alone preserved the
true primitive religion and science, and transmitted them to posterity in the
ancient symbolical character, on monuments of stone: and many nations preserved
in their legendary traditions the memory of the columns of Enoch and Seth.
Then the world declined from its original happy condition and
fortunate estate, into idolatry and barbarism: but all nations retained the
memory of that old estate; and the poets, in those early days the only
historians, commemorated the succession of the ages of gold, silver, brass, and
iron.
In the lapse of those ages, the sacred tradition followed
various courses among each of the most ancient nations; and from its original
source, as from a common centre, its various streams flowed downward; some
diffusing through favored regions of the world fertility and life; but others
soon losing themselves, and being dried up in the sterile sands of human error.
After the internal and Divine WORD originally communicated
by God to man, had become obscured; after man's connection with his
Creator had been broken, even outward language necessarily fell into disorder
and confusion. The simple and Divine Truth was overlaid with various and sensual
fictions, buried under illusive symbols, and at last perverted into horrible
phantoms.
For in the progress of idolatry it needs came to pass, that
what was originally revered as the symbol of a higher principle, became
gradually confounded or identified with the object itself, and was worshipped;
until this error led to a more degraded form of idolatry. The early nations
received much from the primeval source of sacred tradition; but that haughty
pride which seems an inherent part of human nature led each to represent these
fragmentary relics of original truth as a possession peculiar to themselves;
thus exaggerating their value, and their own importance, as peculiar favorites
of the Deity, who had chosen them as the favored people to whom to commit these
truths. To make these fragments, as far as possible, their private property,
they reproduced them under peculiar forms, wrapped them up in symbols, concealed
them in allegories, and invented fables to account for their own special
possession of them. So that, instead of preserving in their primitive simplicity
and purity these blessings of original revelation, they overlaid them with
poetical ornament; and the whole wears a fabulous aspect, until by close and
severe examination we discover the truth which the apparent fable contains.
These being the conflicting elements in the breast of man;
the old inheritance or original dowry of truth, imparted to him by God in the
primitive revelation; and error, or the foundation for error, in his degraded
sense and spirit now turned from God to nature, false faiths easily sprung up
and grew rank and luxuriant, when the Divine Truth was no longer guarded with
jealous care, nor preserved in its pristine purity. This soon happened among
most Eastern nations, and especially the Indians, the Chaldæans, the Arabians,
the Persians, and the Egyptians; with whom imagination, and a very deep but
still sensual feeling for nature, were very predominant. The Northern firmament,
visible to their eyes, possesses by far the largest and most brilliant
constellations; and they were more alive to the impressions made by such
objects, than are the men of the present day.
With the Chinese, a patriarchal, simple, and secluded people,
idolatry long made but little progress. They invented writing within
three or four generations after the flood; and they long preserved the memory of
much of the primitive revelation; less overlaid with fiction than those
fragments which other nations have remembered. They were among those who stood
nearest to the source of sacred tradition; and many passages in their old
writings contain remarkable vestiges of eternal truth, and of the WORD of
primitive revelation, the heritage of old thought, which attest to us their
original eminence.
But among the other early nations, a wild enthusiasm and a
sensual idolatry of nature soon superseded the simple worship of the Almighty
God, and set aside or disfigured the pure belief in the Eternal Uncreated
Spirit. The great powers and elements of nature, and the vital principle of
production and procreation through all generations; then the celestial spirits
or heavenly Host, the luminous armies of the Stars, and the great Sun, and
mysterious, ever-changing Moon (all of which the whole ancient world regarded
not as mere globes of light or bodies of fire, but as animated living
substances, potent over man's fate and destinies); next the genii and tutelar
spirits, and even the souls of the dead, received divine worship. The animals,
representing the starry constellations, first reverenced as symbols merely, came
to be worshipped as gods; the heavens, earth, and the operations of nature were
personified; and fictitious personages invented to account for the introduction
of science and arts, and the fragments of the old religious truths; and the good
and bad principles personified, became also objects of worship; while, through
all, still shone the silver threads .of the old primitive revelation.
Increasing familiarity with early oriental records seems more
and more to confirm the probability that they all originally emanated from one
source. The eastern and southern slopes of the Paropismus, or Hindukusch, appear
to have been inhabited by kindred Iranian races, similar in habits, language,
and religion. The earliest Indian and Persian Deities are for the most part
symbols of celestial light, their agency being regarded as an eternal warfare
with the powers of Winter, storm, and darkness. The religion of both was
originally a worship of outward nature, especially the manifestations of fire
and light; the coincidences being too marked to be merely accidental. Deva, God,
is derived from the root div, to shine. Indra, like Ormuzd or Ahura-Mazda,
is the bright firmament; Sura or Surya, the Heavenly, a name of the
Sun, recurs in the Zend word Huare, the Sun, whence Khur and Khorshid or Corasch.
Uschas and Mitra are Medic as well as Zend Deities and the Amschaspands or
"immortal Holy Ones" of the Zend-Avesta may be compared with the seven Rishis or
Vedic Star-God, of the constellation of the Bear. Zoroastrianism, like Buddhism,
was an innovation in regard to an older religion; and between the Parsee and
Brahmin may be found traces of disruption as well as of coincidence. The
original Nature-worship, in which were combined the conceptions both of a
Universal Presence and perpetuity of action, took different directions of
development, according to the difference between the Indian and Persian mind.
The early shepherds of the Punjaub, then called the country
of the Seven Rivers, to whose intuitional or inspired wisdom (Veda) we owe what
are perhaps the most ancient religious effusions extant in any language,
apostrophized as living beings the physical objects of their worship. First in
this order of Deities stands Indra, the God of the "blue" or "glittering"
firmament, called Devaspiti, Father of the Devas or Elemental Powers, who
measured out the circle of the sky, and made fast the foundations of the Earth;
the ideal domain of Varouna, "the All-encompasser," is almost equally extensive,
including air, water, night, the expanse between Heaven and Earth; Agni, who
lives on the fire of the sacrifice, on the domestic hearth, and in the
lightnings of the sky, is the great Mediator between God and Man; Uschas, or the
Dawn, leads forth the Gods in the morning to make their daily repast in the
intoxicating Soma of Nature's offertory, of which the Priest could only compound
from simples a symbolical imitation. Then came the various Sun-Gods, Adityas or
Solar Attributes, Surya the Heavenly, Savitri the Progenitor, Pashan the
Nourisher, Bagha the Felicitous, and Mitra the Friend.
The coming forth of the Eternal Being to the work of creation
was represented as a marriage, his first emanation being a universal mother,
supposed to have potentially existed with him from Eternity, or, in metaphorical
language, to have been "his sister and his spouse." She became eventually
promoted to be the Mother of the Indian Trinity, of the Deity under His three
Attributes, of Creation, Preservation, and Change or Regeneration.
The most popular forms or manifestations of Vishnu the
Pre-server, were his successive avataras or historic impersonations,
which represented the Deity coming forth out of the incomprehensible
mystery of His nature, and revealing Himself at those critical epochs which
either in the physical or moral world seemed to mark a new commencement of
prosperity and order. Combating the power of Evil in the various departments of
Nature, and in successive periods of time, the Divinity, though varying in form,
is ever in reality the same, whether seen in useful agricultural or social
inventions, in traditional victories over rival creeds, or in physical changes
faintly discovered through tradition, or suggested by cosmogonical theory. As
Rama, the Epic hero armed with sword, club, and arrows, the prototype of
Hercules and Mithras, he wrestles like the Hebrew Patriarch with the Powers of
Darkness; as Chrishna-Govinda, the Divine Shepherd, he is the Messenger of
Peace, overmastering the world by music and love. Under the human form he never
ceases to be the Supreme Being. "The foolish" (he says, in Bhagavad Ghita),
"unacquainted with my Supreme Nature, despise me in this human form, while men
of great minds, enlightened by the Divine principle within them, acknowledge me
as incorruptible and before all things, and serve me with undivided hearts." "I
am not recognized by all," he says again, "because concealed by the supernatural
power which is in me; yet to me are known all things past, present, and to come;
I existed before Vaivaswata and Menou. I am the Most High God, the Creator of
the World, the Eternal Poorooscha (Man-World or Genius of the World). And
although in my own nature I am exempt from liability to birth or death, and am
Lord of all created things, yet as often as in the world virtue is enfeebled,
and vice and injustice prevail, so often do I become manifest and am revealed
from age to age, to save the just, to destroy the guilty, and to reassure the
faltering steps of virtue. He who acknowledgeth me as even so, doth not on
quitting this mortal frame enter into another, for he entereth into me; and many
who have trusted in me have already entered into me, being purified by the power
of wisdom. I help those who walk in my path, even as they serve me."
Brahma, the creating agent, sacrificed himself, when, by
descending into material forms, he became incorporated with his work; and his
mythological history was interwoven with that of the Universe. Thus, although
spiritually allied to the Supreme, and Lord of all creatures (Prajapati), he
shared the imperfection and
corruption of an inferior nature, and, steeped in manifold and perishable forms,
might be said, like the Greek Uranus, to be mutilated and fallen. He thus
combined two characters, formless form, immortal and mortal, being and
non-being, motion and rest. As Incarnate Intelligence, or THE WORD, he
communicated to man what had been revealed to himself by the Eternal, since he
is creation's Soul as well as Body, within which the Divine Word is written in
those living letters which it is the prerogative of the self-conscious spirit to
interpret.
The fundamental principles of the religion of the Hindi's
consisted in the belief in the existence of One Being only, of the immortality
of the soul, and of a future state of rewards and punishments. Their precepts of
morality inculcate the practice of virtue as necessary for procuring happiness
even in this transient life; and their religious doctrines make their felicity
in a future state to depend upon it.
Besides their doctrine of the transmigration of souls, their
dogmas may be epitomized under the following heads: 1st. The existence of one
God, from Whom all things proceed, and to Whom all must return. To him they
constantly apply these expressions--The Universal and Eternal Essence; that
which has ever been and will ever continue; that which vivifies and pervades all
things; He who is everywhere present, and causes the celestial bodies to revolve
in the course He has prescribed to them. 2d. A tripartite division of the Good
Principle, for the purposes of Creation, Preservation, and Renovation by change
and death. 3d. The necessary existence of an Evil Principle, occupied in
counteracting the benevolent purposes of the first, in their execution by the
Devata or Subordinate Genii, to whom is entrusted the control over the various
operations of nature.
And this was part of their doctrine: "One great and
incomprehensible Being has alone existed from all Eternity. Everything we behold
and we ourselves are portions of Him. The soul, mind or intellect, of gods and
men, and of all sentient creatures, are detached portions of the Universal Soul,
to which at stated periods they are destined to return. But the mind of finite
beings is impressed by one uninterrupted series of illusions, which they
consider as real, until again united to the great fountain of truth. Of these
illusions, the first and most essential is individuality. By its influence, when
detached from its source, the soul becomes
ignorant of its own nature, origin, and destiny. It considers itself
as a separate existence, and no longer a spark of the Divinity, a link of one
immeasurable chain, an infinitely small but indispensable portion of one great
whole."
Their love of imagery caused them to personify what they
conceived to be some of the attributes Of God, perhaps in order to present
things in a way better adapted to the comprehensions of the vulgar, than the
abstruse idea of an indescribable, invisible God; and hence the invention of a
Brahma, a Vishnu, and a Siva or Iswara. These were represented under various
forms; but no emblem or visible sign of Brihm or Brehm, the Omnipotent, is to be
found. They considered the great mystery of the existence of the Supreme Ruler
of the Universe, as beyond human comprehension. Every creature endowed with the
faculty of thinking, they held, must be conscious of the existence of a God, a
first cause; but the attempt to explain the nature of that Being, or in any way
to assimilate it with our own, they considered not only a proof of folly, but of
extreme impiety.
The following extracts from their books will serve to show
what were the real tenets of their creed:
'By one Supreme Ruler is this Universe pervaded; even every
world in the whole circle of nature. . There is one Supreme Spirit, which
nothing can shake, more swift than the thought of man. That Supreme Spirit moves
at pleasure, but in itself is immovable; it is distant from us, yet near us; it
pervades this whole system of worlds; yet it is infinitely beyond it. That man
who considers all beings as existing even in the Supreme Spirit, and the Supreme
Spirit as pervading all beings, henceforth views no creature with contempt....
All spiritual beings are the same in kind with the Supreme Spirit. . . . The
pure enlightened soul assumes a luminous form, with no gross body, with no
perforation, with no veins or tendons, unblemished, untainted by sin: itself
being a ray from the Infinite Spirit, which knows the Past and the Future, which
pervades all, which existed with no cause but itself, which created all things
as they are, in ages most remote. That all-pervading Spirit which gives light to
the visible Sun, even the same in kind am I, though infinitely distant in
degree. Let my soul return to the immortal Spirit of God, and then let my
body, which ends in ashes, return to dust! O Spirit, who pervadest fire, lead us
in a straight path to the riches of beatitude. Thou, O God, possessest all the
treasures of knowledge! Remove each foul taint from our souls!
"From what root springs mortal man, when felled by the hand
of death? Who can make him spring again to birth? God, who is perfect wisdom,
perfect happiness. He is the final refuge of the man who has liberally bestowed
his wealth, who has been firm in virtue, who knows and adores that Great One. .
. . Let us adore the supremacy of that Divine Sun, the Godhead who illuminates
all, who re-creates all, from whom all proceed, to whom all must return, whom we
invoke to direct our understandings aright, in our progress toward his holy
seat. . . . What the Sun and Light are to this visible world, such is truth to
the intellectual and visible Universe. . . . Our souls acquire certain
knowledge, by meditating on the light of Truth, which emanates from the Being of
Beings. . . . That Being, without eyes sees, without ears hears all; he knows
whatever can be known, but there is none who knows him; him the wise call the
Great, Supreme, Pervading Spirit. . . . Perfect Truth, Perfect Happiness,
without equal, immortal; absolute unity, whom neither speech can describe, nor
mind comprehend: all-pervading, all-transcending, delighted with his own
boundless intelligence, nor limited by space or time; without feet, running
swiftly; without hands, grasping all worlds; without eyes, all-surveying;
without ears, all-hearing; without an intelligent guide, understanding all;
without cause, the first of all causes; all-ruling, all-powerful, the Creator,
Preserver, Transformer of all things: such is the Great One; this the Vedas
declare.
"May that soul of mine, which mounts aloft in my waking hours
as an ethereal spark, and which, even in my slumber, has a like ascent, soaring
to a great distance, as an emanation from the Light of Lights, be united by
devout meditation with the Spirit supremely blest, and supremely intelligent! .
. . May that soul of mine, which was itself the primeval oblation placed within
all creatures. . . . which is a ray of perfect wisdom, which is the
inextinguishable light fixed within created bodies, without which no good act is
performed. . . . in which as an immortal essence may be comprised whatever has
passed, is present, or will be hereafter. . . . be united by devout meditation
with the Spirit supremely blest and supremely intelligent
"The Being of Beings is the Only God, eternal and everywhere
present, Who comprises everything. There is no God but He . . . . The Supreme
Being is invisible, incomprehensible, immovable, without figure or shape. No one
has ever seen Him; time never comprised Him; His essence pervades everything;
all was derived from Him.
"The duty of a good man, even in the moment of his
destruction, consists not only in forgiving, but even in a desire of benefiting
his destroyer; as the sandal-tree, in the instant of its overthrow, sheds
perfume on the axe which fells it."
The Vedanta and Nyaya philosophers acknowledge a Supreme
Eternal Being, and the immortality of the soul: though, like the Greeks, they
differ in their ideas of those subjects. They speak of the Supreme Being as an
eternal essence that pervades space, and gives life or existence. Of that
universal and eternal pervading spirit, the Vedanti suppose four modifications;
but as these do not change its nature, and as it would be erroneous to ascribe
to each of them a distinct essence, so it is equally erroneous, they say, to
imagine that the various modifications by which the All-pervading Being exists,
or displays His power, are individual existences. Creation is not considered as
the instant production of things, but only as the manifestation of that which
exists eternally in the one Universal Being. The Nyaya philosophers believe that
spirit and matter are eternal; but they do not suppose that the world in its
present form has existed from eternity, but only the primary matter from which
it sprang when operated on by the almighty Word of God, the Intelligent Cause
and Supreme Being, Who produced the combinations or aggregations which compose
the material Universe. Though they believe that soul is an emanation from the
Supreme Being, they distinguish it from that Being, in its individual existence.
Truth and Intelligence are the eternal attributes of God, not, they say, of the
individual soul, which is susceptible Both of knowledge and ignorance, of
pleasure and pain; and therefore God and it are distinct. Even when it returns
to the Eternal, and attains supreme bliss, it undoubtedly does not cease. Though
united to the Supreme Being, it is not absorbed in it, but still
retains the abstract nature of definite or visible existence.
"The dissolution of the world," they say, "consists in the
destruction of the visible forms and qualities of things; but their material
essence remains, and from it new worlds are formed by the creative energy of
God; and thus the Universe is dissolved and renewed in endless succession."
The Jainas, a sect at Mysore and elsewhere, say that the
ancient religion of India and of the whole world consisted in the belief in one
God, a pure Spirit, indivisible, omniscient and all-powerful; that God, having
given to all things their appointed order and course of action, and to man a
sufficient portion of reason, or understanding, to guide him in his conduct,
leaves him to the operation of free will, without the entire exercise of which
he could not be held answerable for his conduct.
Menou, the Hindū lawgiver, adored, not the visible, material
Sun, but "that divine and incomparably greater light," to use the words of the
most venerable text in the Indian Scripture, "which illumines all, delights all,
from which all proceed, to which all must return, and which alone can irradiate
our intellects." He thus commences his Institutes:
"Be it heard!
"This Universe existed only in the first divine idea yet
unexpanded, as if involved in darkness, imperceptible, undefinable,
undiscoverable by reason, and undiscovered by revelation, as if it were wholly
immersed in sleep:
"Then the Sole Self-existing Power, Himself undiscovered, but
making this world discernible, with five elements, and other principles of
nature, appeared with undiminished glory, expanding His idea, or
dispelling the gloom.
"He Whom the mind alone can perceive, whose essence eludes
the eternal organs, who has no visible parts, who exists from Eternity, even He,
the soul of all beings, Whom no being can comprehend, shone forth.
"He, having willed to produce various beings from His own
divine Substance, first with a thought created the waters.... From that which
is [precisely the Hebrew יהוה], the first cause, not the object of sense,
existing everywhere in substance, not existing to our perception, without
beginning or end" [the Α∴ and Ω∴, or the Ι∴Α∴Ω∴], "was produced the divine male
famed in all worlds under the appellation of Brahma."
Then recapitulating the different things created by Brahma,
he adds: "He," meaning Brahma [the Λογος, the WORD], "whose powers are
incomprehensible, having thus created this Universe, was again absorbed in the
Supreme Spirit, changing the time of energy for the time of repose."
The Antareya Aranya, one of the Vedas, gives this
primitive idea of the
creation: "In the beginning, the Universe was but a Soul: nothing else, active
or inactive, existed. Then HE had this thought, I will create worlds; and
thus HE created these different worlds; air, the light, mortal beings, and the
waters.
"HE had this thought: Behold the worlds; I will create
guardians for the worlds. So HE took of the water and fashioned a being
clothed with the human form. He looked upon him, and of that being so
contemplated, the mouth opened like an egg, and speech came forth, and from the
speech fire. The nostrils opened, and through them went the breath of
respiration, and by it the air was propagated. The eyes opened; from them came a
luminous ray, and from it was produced the sun. The ears dilated; from them came
hearing, and from hearing space:" . . . and, after the body of man, with the
senses, was formed;--"HE, the Universal Soul, thus reflected: How can this
body exist without Me? He examined through what extremity He could penetrate
it. He said to Himself: If, without Me, the World is articulated, breath
exhales, and sight sees; if hearing hears, the skin feels, and the: mind
reflects, deglutition swallows, and the generative organ fulfils its functions,
what then am I? And separating the suture of the cranium, He penetrated into
man."
Behold the great fundamental primitive truths! God, an
infinite Eternal Soul or Spirit. Matter, not eternal nor self-existent, but
created--created by a thought of God. After matter, and worlds, then man, by a
like thought: and finally, after endowing him with the senses and a thinking
mind, a portion, a spark, of God Himself penetrates the man, and becomes a
living spirit within him.
The Vedas thus detail the creation of the world:
"In the beginning there was a single God, existing of
Himself; Who, after having passed an eternity absorbed in the contemplation of
His own being, desired to manifest His perfections outwardly of Himself; and
created the matter of the world. The four elements being thus produced, but
still mingled in confusion, He breathed upon the waters, which swelled up into
an immense ball in the shape of an. egg, and, developing themselves, became the
vault and orb of Heaven which encircles the earth. Having made the earth and the
bodies of animal beings, this God, the essence of movement, gave to them, to
animate them, a portion of His own being. Thus, the soul of everything that
breathes being a fraction of
the universal soul, none perishes; but each soul merely changes its mould and
form, by passing successively into different bodies. Of all forms, that which
most pleases the Divine Being is Man, as nearest approaching His own
perfections. When a man, absolutely disengaging himself from his senses, absorbs
himself in self-contemplation, he comes to discern the Divinity, and becomes
part of Him."
The Ancient Persians in many respects resembled the Hindūs,--in
their language, their poetry, and their poetic legends. Their conquests brought
them in contact with China; and they subdued Egypt and Judea. Their views of God
and religion more resembled those of the Hebrews than those of any other nation;
and indeed the latter people borrowed from them some prominent doctrines, that
we are in the habit of regarding as an essential part of the original Hebrew
creed.
Of the King of Heaven and Father of Eternal Light, of the
pure World of LIGHT, of the Eternal WORD by which all things were created, of
the Seven Mighty Spirits that stand next to the Throne of Light and Omnipotence,
and of the glory of those Heavenly Hosts that encompass that Throne, of the
Origin of Evil, and the Prince of Darkness, Monarch of the rebellious spirits,
enemies of all good, they entertained tenets very similar to those of the
Hebrews. Toward Egyptian idolatry they felt the strongest abhorrence, and under
Cambyses pursued a regular plan for its utter extirpation. Xerxes, when he
invaded Greece, destroyed the Temples and erected fire-chapels along the whole
course of his march. Their religion was eminently spiritual, and the earthly
fire and earthly sacrifice were but the signs and emblems of another devotion
and a higher power.
Thus the fundamental doctrine of the ancient religion of
India and Persia was at first nothing more than a simple veneration of nature,
its pure elements and its primary energies, the sacred fire, and above all,
Light, the air, not the lower atmospheric air, but the purer and brighter air of
Heaven, the breath that animates and pervades the breath of mortal life. This
pure and simple veneration of nature is perhaps the most ancient, and was by far
the most generally prevalent in the primitive and patriarchal world. It was not
originally a deification of nature, or a denial of the sovereignty of God. Those
pure elements and primitive essences of created nature offered to the first men,
still in a close communication
with the Deity, not a likeness of resemblance, nor a mere fanciful image or
a poetical figure, but a natural and true symbol of Divine power. Everywhere in
the Hebrew writings the pure light or sacred fire is employed as an image of the
all-pervading and all-consuming power and omnipresence of the Divinity. His
breath was the first source of life; and the faint whisper of the breeze
announced to the prophet His immediate presence.
"All things are the progeny of one fire. The Father perfected
all things, and delivered them over to the Second Mind, whom all nations of men
call the First. Natural works co-exist with the intellectual light of the
Father; for it is the Soul which adorns the great Heaven, and which adorns it
after the Father. The Soul, being a bright fire, by the power of the Father,
remains immortal, and is mistress of life, and fills up the recesses of the
world. For the fire which is first beyond, did not shut up his power in matter
by works, but by mind, for the framer of the fiery world is the mind of mind,
who first sprang from mind, clothing fire with fire. Father-begotten Light! for
He alone, having from the Father's power received the essence of intellect, is
enabled to understand the mind of the Father; and to instill into all sources
and principles the capacity of understanding, and of ever continuing in
ceaseless revolving motion." Such was the language of Zoroaster, embodying the
old Persian ideas.
And the same ancient sage thus spoke of the Sun and Stars:
"The Father made the whole Universe of fire and water and earth, and
all-nourishing ether. He fixed a great multitude of moveless stars, that stand
still forever, not by compulsion and unwillingly, but without desire to wander,
fire acting upon fire. He congregated the seven firmaments of the world, and so
surrounded the earth with the convexity of the Heavens; and therein set seven
living existences, arranging their apparent disorder in regular orbits, six of
them planets, and the Sun, placed in the centre, the seventh;--in that centre
from which all lines, diverging which way soever, are equal; and the swift sun
himself, revolving around a principal centre, and ever striving to reach the
central and all-pervading light, bearing with him the bright Moon."
And yet Zoroaster added: "Measure not the journeyings of the
Sun, nor attempt to reduce them to rule; for he is carried by the eternal will
of the Father, not for your sake. Do not endeavor to understand the impetuous
course of the Moon; for she runs
evermore under the impulse of necessity; and the progression of the Stars
was not generated to serve any purpose of yours."
Ormuzd says to Zoroaster, in the Boundehesch: "I am he who
holds the Star-Spangled Heaven in ethereal space; who makes this sphere, which
once was buried in darkness, a flood of light. Through me the Earth became a
world firm and lasting--the earth on which walks the Lord of the world. I am he
who makes the light of Sun, Moon, and Stars pierce the clouds. I make the corn
seed, which perishing in the ground sprouts anew. . . . I created plan, whose
eye is light, whose life is the breath of his nostrils. I placed within him
life's unextinguishable power."
Ormuzd or Ahura-Mazda himself represented the primal light,
distinct from the heavenly bodies, yet necessary to their existence, and the
source of their splendor. The Amschaspands (Ameschaspenta, "immortal Holy
Ones"), each presided over a special department of nature. Earth and Heaven,
fire and water, the Sun and Moon, the rivers, trees, and mountains, even the
artificial divisions of the day and year were addressed in prayer as tenanted by
Divine beings, each separately ruling within his several sphere. Fire, in
particular, that "most energetic of immortal powers," the visible representative
of the primal light, was invoked as "Son of Ormuzd." The Sun, the Archimagus,
that noblest and most powerful agent of divine power, who "steps forth as a
Conqueror from the top of the terrible Alborj to rule over the world which he
enlightens from the throne of Ormuzd," was worshipped among other symbols by the
name of MITHRAS, a beneficent and friendly genius, who, in the hymn addressed to
him in the Zend-Avesta, bears the names given him by the Greeks, as the
"Invincible" and the "Mediator"; the former, because in his daily strife with
darkness he is the most active confederate of Ormuzd; the latter, as being the
medium through which Heaven's choicest blessings are communicated to men. He is
called "the eye of Ormuzd, the effulgent Nero, pursuing his course triumphantly,
fertilizer of deserts, most exalted of the Izeds or Yezatas, the never-sleeping,
the protector of the land." "When the dragon foe devastates my provinces," says
Ormuzd, "and afflicts them with famine, then is he struck down by the strong arm
of Mithras, together with the Devs of Mazanderan. With his lance and his
immortal club, the Sleepless Chief hurls down the Devs into the dust, when as
Mediator he interposes to guard the City from evil,"
Ahriman was by some Parsee sects considered older than Ormuzd,
as darkness is older than light; he is imagined to have been unknown as a
Malevolent Being in the early ages of the world, and the fall of man is
attributed in the Boundehesch to an apostate worship of him, from which men were
converted by a succession of prophets terminating with Zoroaster.
Mithras is not only light, but intelligence; that luminary
which, though born in obscurity, will not only dispel darkness but conquer
death. The warfare through which this consummation is to be reached, is mainly
carried on through the instrumentality of the "Word," that "ever-living
emanation of the Deity, by virtue of which the world exists," and of which the
revealed formulas incessantly repeated in the liturgies of the Magi are but the
expression. "What shall I do," cried Zoroaster, "O Ormuzd, steeped in
brightness, in order to battle with Daroodj-Ahriman, father of the Evil Law; how
shall I make men pure and holy?" Ormuzd answered and said: "Invoke, O Zoroaster,
the pure law of the Servants of Ormuzd; invoke the Amschaspands who shed
abundance throughout the seven Keshwars; invoke the Heaven, Zeruana-Akarana, the
birds travailing on high, the swift wind, the Earth; invoke my Spirit, me who am
Ahura-Mazda, the purest, strongest, wisest, best of beings; me who have the most
majestic body, who through purity am Supreme, whose Soul is the Excellent Word;
and ye, all people, invoke me as I have commanded Zoroaster."
Ahura-Mazda himself is the living WORD; he is called
"First-born of all things, express image of the Eternal, very light of very
light, the Creator, who by power of the Word which he never ceases to pronounce,
made in 365 days the Heaven and the Earth." The Word is said in the Yashna to
have existed before all, and to be itself a Yazata, a personified object of
prayer. It was revealed in Serosch, in Homa, and again, under Gushtasp, was
manifested in Zoroaster.
Between life and death, between sunshine and shade, Mithras
is the present exemplification of the Primal Unity from which all things arose,
and into which, through his mediation, all contrarieties will ultimately be
absorbed. His annual sacrifice is the Passover of the Magi, a symbolical
atonement or pledge of moral and physical regeneration. He created the world in
the beginning; and as at the close of each successive year he sets free the
current of life to invigorate a fresh circle of being, so in the
end of all things he will bring the weary sum of ages as a hecatomb
before God, releasing by a final sacrifice the Soul of Nature from her
perishable frame, to commence a brighter and purer existence.
Iamblichus (De Mys. viii. 4) says: "The Egyptians are
far from ascribing all things to physical causes; life and intellect they
distinguish from physical being, both in man and in the Universe. They place
intellect and reason first as self-existent, and from these they derive the
created world. As Parent of generated things they constitute a Demiurge, and
acknowledge a vital force both in the Heavens and before the Heavens. They place
Pure Intellect above and beyond the Universe, and another (that is, Mind
revealed in the Material World), consisting of one continuous mind pervading the
Universe, and apportioned to all its parts and spheres." The Egyptian idea,
then, was t |
