"24th Degree - Prince of the Tabernacle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pike Albert)
XXIV. PRINCE OF THE TABERNACLE
SYMBOLS were the almost universal language of ancient theology. They were the most obvious method of instruction; for like nature herself, they addressed the understanding through the eye and the most ancient expressions denoting communication of religious knowledge, signify ocular exhibition. The first teachers of mankind borrowed this method of instruction and it comprised an endless store of pregnant hieroglyphics. These lessons of the olden time were the riddles of the Sphynx, tempting the curious by their quaintness, but involving the personal risk of the adventurous interpreter. "The Gods themselves," it was said, "disclose their intentions to the wise, but to fools their teaching is unintelligible; "and the King of the Delphic Oracle was said
not to declare, nor onthe other hand to conceal; but emphatically to "intimate or signify."
The Ancient Sages, both barbarian and Greek, involved their meaning in similar indirections and enigmas ; their lessons were conveyed either in visible symbols, or in those "parables and dark sayings of old," which the Israelites considered it a sacred duty to hand down unchanged to successive generations. The explanatory tokens employed by man, whether emblematical objects or actions, symbols or mystic ceremonies, were like the mystic signs and portends either in dreams or by the wayside, supposed to he significant of the intentions of the Gods; both required the aid of anxious thought and skillful interpretation. It was only by a conect appreciation of analogous problems of nature, that the will of Heaven could be understood iy the Diviner, or the lessons of Wisdom become manifest to the Sage.
The Mysteries were a series of symbols; and what was spoken there consisted wholly of accessory explanations of the act or image; sacred commentaries, explanatory of established symbols; with little of those independent traditions embodying physical or moral speculation, in which the elements or planets were the Sage actors and the creation and revolutions of the world were
intermingled with recollections of ancient events: and yet with so much of that also, that nature became her own expositor through the medium of an arbitrary symbolical instruction; and the ancient views of the relation between the human and divine received dramatic forms.
There has ever been an intimate alliance between the two systems, the symbolic and the philosophical, in the allegories of the monuments of all ages, in the symbolic writings of the priests of all nations, in the rituals of all secret and mysterious societies; there has been a constant series, an invariable uniformity of principles, which come from an aggregate, vast imposing, and true, composed of parts that fit harmoniously only there.
Symbolical instruction is recommended by the constant and' uniform usage of antiquity, and it has retained its influence throughout all ages, as a system of mysterious communication. The Deity, in his revelations to man, adopted the use of material images for the purpose of enforcing sublime truths; and Christ taught by symbols and parables. The mysterious knowledge of the Druids was embodied in signs and symbols. Taliesin, describing his initiation, says: "The
secrets were imparted to me by the old Giantess (Ceridwen, or Isis), without the use of audible language." And again he says, "I am a silent proficient" Initiation was ,a school, in which were taught the truths of primitive revelation, the existence and attributes of one God, the immortality of the Soul, rewards and punishments in a future life, the phenomena of Nature, the arts, the sciences, morality, regulation, philosophy, and philanthropy, and what we now style psychology and metaphysics, with animal magnetism, and the other occult sciences.
All the ideas of the Priests of Hindustan, Persia, Syria, Arabia, Chaldaea, Phoenicia, were known to the Egyptian Priests. The rational Indian philosophy, after penetrating Persia and Chaldaea, gave birth to the Egyptian Mysteries. We find that the use of Hieroglyphics was preceded in Egypt by that of the easily understood symbols and figures, from the mineral, animal, and vegetable kingdoms, used by the Indians, Persians, and Chaldans to express their thoughts; and this primitive philosophy was the basis of the modern philosophy of Pythagoras and Plato. All the philosophers and legislators that made Antiquity illustrious, were pupils of the initiation; and all the beneficent modifications in the religions of the different people instructed by them were
owing to their institution and extension of the Mysteries. In the chaos of popular superstitions, those Mysteries alone kept man from lapsing into absolute brutishness. Zoroaster and Confucius drew their doctrines from the Mysteries. Clement of Alexandria, speaking of the Great Mysteries, says: "Here ends all instruction. Nature and all things are seen and known moral truths alone been taught the Initiate, the Mysteries could never have deserved nor received the magnificent eulogiums of the most enlightened alien of Antiquity, of Pindar, Plutarch, Isocrates, Diodorus, Plato, Euripides, Socrates, Aristophanes, Cicero, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and others; philosophers hostile to the Sacerdotal Spirit, or historians devoted to the investigation of Truth. No, all the sciences were taught there and those oral on written traditions briefly communicated, which reached back to the first age of the world.
Socrates said, in the Phaedo of Plato: "It well appears that those who established the Mysteries, or secret assemblies of the initiated, were no contemptible personages, but men of great genius, who in the early ages strove to teach us, under enigmas, that he who shall go to the invisible regions without being punfied, will be precipitated into the abyss; while he who arrives there, purged of the stains of this world, and accomplished in virtue, will be admitted to the dwelling-place of the Deity. The jnitiated are certain to attain the company of the Gods."
Pretextatus, Proconsul of Achaia, a man endowed with all the virtues, said, in the 4th century, that to deprive the Greeks of those Sacred Mysteries which bound together the whole human race, would make life insupportable. Initiation was considered to be a mystical death; a descent into the infernal regions, where every pollution, and the stains and imperfection's of a corrupt
and evil life were purged away by fire and water; and the perfect Epopt was then said to be regenerated, newborn, restored to a renovated existence of life, light, and purity; and placed under the Divine Protection.
And to them ultimately were confined the learning, the morality and the political power, of every people among which the Mysteries were practiced. So effectually was the knowledge of the hieroglyphics of the highest Degree hidden from all but a favored few, that in process of time their meaning was entirely lost, and none could interpret them. If the same hieroglyphics were employed in the higher as in the lower Degrees, they had a different and more abstruse and
figurative meaning. It was pretended, in later times, that the sacred hieroglyphics and language were the same that were used by the Celestial Deities. Everything that could heighten the mystery of initiation was added, until the very name of the ceremony possessed a strange charm, and yet conjured up the wildest fears. ache greatest rapture came to be expressed by
the word that signified to pass through the Mysteries.
The Priesthood possessed one third of Egypt. They gained much of their influence by means of the Mysteries, and spared no means to impress the people with a full sense of their importance. They represented them as the beginning of a new life of reason and virtue the initiated, or esoteric companions were said to entertain the most agreeable anticipations respecting death and eternity, to comprehend all the hidden mysteries of Nature, to have their souls restored to the original perfection from which man had fallen; and at their death to be borne to the celestial mansions of the Gods. The doctrines of a future state of rewards and punishments formed a prominent feature in the Mysteries; and they were also believed to assure much temporal happiness and good fortune, and afford absolute security against the most imminent dangers by land and sea. Public odium was cast of those who refused to be initiated. They
were considered profane, unworthy of public employment or private confidence; and held to be doomed to eternal punishment as impious. To betray the secrets of the Mysteries, to wear on the stage the dress of an Initiate, or to hold the Mysteries up do derision, was to incur death at the hands of public vengeance.
It is certain that up to the time of Cicero, the Mysteries still retained much of their original character of sanctity and purity. And at a later day, as we know, Nero, after committing a horrible crime, did not dare, even in Greece, to aid in the celebration of the Mysteries; nor at a still later day was Constantine, the Christian Emperor, allowed to do so, after his murder of his
relatives.
Everywhere, and in all their forms, the Mysteries were funereal; and celebrated the mystical death and restoration to life of some divine or heroic personage: and the details of the legend and the mode of the death varied in the different Countries where the Mysteries were practiced.
Their explanation belongs both to astronomy and mythology, and the Legend of the Master's Degree is but another form of that of the Mysteries, reaching back, in one shape or other, to the remotest antiquity.
Whether Egypt originated the legend, or borrowed it from India or Chaldea, it is now impossible to know. But the Hebrews received the Mysteries from the Egyptians; and of course were familiar with their legend, known as it was to those Egyptian Initiates, Joseph and Moses. It was the fable (or rather the truth clothed in allegory and figures) of Osiris, the Sun, Source of Light and Principle of good, and Typhon, the Principle of Darkness, and Evil. In all the histories of the Gods and Heroes lay couched and hidden astronomical details and the history of the operations of visible Nature; and those in their turn were also symbols of higher and profounder truths.
None but rude uncultivated intellects could long consider the Sun and Stars and the Powers of Nature as Divine, or as fit objects of Human Worship; and they will consider them so while the world lasts ; and ever. remain ignorant of the great Spiritual Truths of which these are the hieroglyphics and expressions.
A brief summary of the Egyptian legend will serve to show the leading idea on which the Mysteries among the Hebrews were based. Osiris, said to have been an ancient King of Egypt, was the Sun; and Isis, his wife, the Moon and his history recounts, in poetical and figurative style, the annual journey of the Great Luminary of Heaven through the different Signs of the Zodiac. In the absence of Osiris, Typhon, his brother, filled with envy and malice, sought to
usurp his throne; but his plans were frustrated by Isis. Then he resolved to kill Osiris. This he did,. by persuading him to enter a coffin or sarcophagus, which he then flung into the Nile. Alter a Long search, Isis found the body, and concealed it in the depths of a forest; but Typhon, finding it there, cut it into fourteen pieces, and scattered them hither and thither. After tedious search, Isis found thirteen pieces, the fishes having oaten the other (the privates), which she replaced of wood, and buried the body at Philae; where a temple of surpassing magnificence was erected in honor of Osiris.
Isis, aided by her son Orus, Horus or Har-oeri, warred against Typhon, slew him, reigned gloriously, and at her death was reunited to her husband, in the same tomb. Typhon was represented as born of the earth; the upper part of his body covered with feathers, in stature reaching the clouds, his arms and legs covered with scales, serpents darting from him on every side, and fire flashing from his mouth. Horus, who aided in slaying him, became the God of the Sun, answering to the Grecian Apollo; and Typhon is but the anagram of Python, the great serpent slain by Apollo.
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