Part 53 (1/2)
G.o.d, 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 wors.h.i.+p 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. G.o.d 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 pa.s.sing 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 G.o.d: 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 wors.h.i.+pped 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 G.o.d. But I am nothing--_nothing_; and LIGHT is the creature of the unseen G.o.d that taught the true religion to the Ancient Patriarchs: AWFUL, MYSTERIOUS, THE ABSOLUTE.
Man was created pure; and G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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.
G.o.d 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 s.p.a.cE, 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 G.o.d; and bird and beast, and every living thing but Man: and light and air, and the mysterious currents, 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 G.o.d's own Infinite Being penetrated the brain, and became the Soul: and lo, MAN THE IMMORTAL!
Thus, threefold, fruit of G.o.d'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 pa.s.sions 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 G.o.d, the Ancient Absolute Existence, the Infinite Mind and Supreme Intelligence; and floated helplessly out upon the sh.o.r.eless 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, s.p.a.ce 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 G.o.d; 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 pa.s.sed, heard much of the ancient wors.h.i.+p 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 G.o.ds or G.o.ddesses, with human characteristics and pa.s.sions, and with the mult.i.tude 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 wors.h.i.+p to you as the most ancient and original wors.h.i.+p 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 G.o.d of Upper Egypt, wors.h.i.+pped at Thebes; the same as the OM or AUM of the Hindus, whose name was unp.r.o.nounceable, and who, like the BREHM of the latter People, was ”The Being that was, and is, and is to come; the Great G.o.d, 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-G.o.ds, and all personifications of Powers, Elements, and Luminaries; symbolized by Light, the Principle of Life.
AMUN was the Nature-G.o.d, or Spirit of Nature, called by that name or AMUN-RE, and wors.h.i.+pped 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-G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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, he 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, [Greek: ?????e???], 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 G.o.d 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, Darda.n.u.s, Himeros or Imbros; in Crete he appears as Iasius or even Zeus, whose orgiastic wors.h.i.+p, 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 Persephone, 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 t.i.tans 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 Parna.s.sus.
Dionusos, as well as Apollo, was leader of the Muses; the tomb of one accompanied the wors.h.i.+p 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 G.o.d 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 precentor 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 G.o.ds, bearing the Caduceus wreathed with serpents; and in our Council he is represented by the ORATOR.
The _Hindus_ called the Sun SURYA; the _Persians_, MITHRAS; the _Egyptians_, OSIRIS; the _a.s.syrians_ and _Chaldaeans_, BEL; the _Scythians_ and _Etruscans_ and the ancient _Pelasgi_, ARKALEUS or HERCULES; the _Phnicians_, ADONAI or ADON; and the _Scandinavians_, ODIN.