Page 25 (part 8)

Semele, the wife of Jupiter and mother of Bacchus, the Sun , is, according to Nonnus, also "carried," or made to ascend to heaven after her death, where she presides between Mars and Venus, under the name of the Queen of the World , or the universe, [[ panbasileia ]]; "at the names of which, as at the names of Hathor, Hecate, and other infernal goddesses," "tremble all the demons."** "[[Semelen premousi daimones]]." This Greek inscription on a small temple, reproduced on a stone that was found by somebody, and copied by Montfaucon, as De Mirville tells us (113, Archaeologie de la Vierge mere ) informs us of the stupendous fact, that the Magna Mater of the old world was an impudent plagiarism , perpetrated by the Demon , of the Immaculate Virgin Mother of his Church. Whether so, or vice versa , is of no importance. That which is interesting to note is the perfect identity between the ARCHAIC COPY and the MODERN ORIGINAL. Did space permit we might show the inconceivable coolness and unconcern exhibited by certain followers of the Roman Catholic Church, when made to face the revelations of the Past. To Maury's remark that "the Virgin took possession of all the Sanctuaries of Ceres and [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Hathor is the infernal Isis, the goddess pre-eminently of the West or the nether world. ** This is De Mirville, who proudly confesses the similarity, and he ought to know. [[Vol. 1, Page]] 401 ANTE-HISTORICAL CATHOLICISM. Venus, and that the pagan rites, proclaimed and practised in honour of those goddesses, were in a good measure transferred to the mother of Christ," the advocate of Rome answers: -- "That such is the fact, and that it is just as it should be and quite natural. As the dogma, the liturgy, and the rites professed by the Roman Apostolical Church in 1862 are found engraved on monuments, inscribed on papyri, and cylinders hardly posterior to the Deluge , it does seem impossible to deny the existence of a FIRST ANTE-HISTORICAL (Roman) C ATHOLICISM OF WHICH OUR OWN IS BUT THE FAITHFUL CONTINUATION. . . . But while the former was the culmination, the summum of the impudence of demons and Goetic necromancy . . . . the latter is divine. If in our (Christian) Revelation ( l ' Apocalypse ), Mary, clothed with the Sun and having the moon under her feet, has nothing more in common with the humble servant of Nazareth ( sic. ), it is because she has now become the greatest of theological and cosmological powers in our universe." -- (Archaeol. de la Vierge, pp. 116 and 119, and by the Marquis de Mirville). Verily so, since Pindar's Hymns to Minerva (p. 19) . . . "who sits at the right hand of her Father Jupiter, and who is more powerful than all the other (angels or) gods," are likewise applied to the Virgin. It is St. Bernard, who, quoted by Cornelius a Lapide , is made to address the Virgin Mary in this wise: -- "The Sun-Christ lives in thee and thou livest in him." (Sermon on the Holy Virgin.) . . . . Again the Virgin is admitted to be the MOON by the same unsophisticated holy man. Being the Lucina of the Church, that is in childbirth, the verse of Virgil -- " Casta fove Lucina , tuus jam regnat Apollo " -- is applied to her. Like the moon, the Virgin is the Queen of Heaven," adds the innocent saint; (Apocal., ch. xii., Comm. by Cornelius a Lapide ) . This settles the question. The more similarity, according to such writers as De Mirville, there exists between the pagan conceptions and the Christian dogmas, the more divine appears the Christian religion, and the more is it seen to be the only truly inspired one, especially in its Roman Catholic form. The unbelieving scientists and the academicians who think they see in the Latin Church quite the opposite of divine inspiration, and who will not believe in the satanic tricks of plagiarism by anticipation, are severely taken to task. But then "they believe in nothing and reject even the ' Nabathean Agriculture ' as a romance and a pack of superstitious nonsense," complains the memorialist. "In their perverted opinion Qu-ta-my's 'idol of the moon' and the statue of the Madonna are one!" A noble Marquis wrote twenty years ago six huge volumes, or, as he calls them " Memoires to the French Academy," with the sole object of showing Roman Catholicism an inspired and revealed faith. As a proof thereof, he furnishes numberless facts, all tending to show that the entire ancient world, ever since [[Vol. 1, Page]] 402 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. the deluge, had been, with the help of the devil, systematically plagiarizing the rites, ceremonies, and dogmas of the future Holy Church to be born ages later. What would that faithful son of Rome have said had he heard his co-religionist -- M. Renouf, the distinguished Egyptologist of the British Museum -- declaring, in one of his learned lectures, that "neither Hebrews nor Greeks borrowed any of their ideas from Egypt?"* But perhaps it is just this that M. Renouf intended to say namely -- that it is the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Aryans, who borrowed theirs from the Latin Church? And if so, why, in the name of logic, do the Papists reject the additional information which the Occultists may give them on Moon-worship, since it all tends to show their (the Roman Catholic) worship as old as the world -- OF S ABAEANISM AND A STROLATRY? The reason of early Christian and later Roman Catholic astrolatry, or the symbolical worship of Sun and Moon -- identical with that of the Gnostics, though less philosophical and pure than the "Sun worship" of the Zoroastrians -- is a natural consequence of its birth and origin. The adoption by the Latin Church of such symbols as the water, fire, sun, moon and stars, and a good many other things, is simply a continuation by the early Christians of the old worship of Pagan nations. Thus Odin got his wisdom, power, and knowledge, by sitting at the feet of Mimir, the thrice-wise Jotun , who passed his life by the fountain of primeval Wisdom, the crystalline waters of which increased his knowledge daily. Mimir "drew the highest knowledge from the fountain, because the world was born of water; hence primeval wisdom was to be found in that mysterious element" ("Asgard and the Gods," 86).