Chapter I (part 2)

prove that the present form of Freemasonry has almost entirely lost the meanings of the traditional symbols, which constitute the trust which it ought to have transmitted through the ages. The elaborate ceremonials of the ritual appear ridiculous to the vulgar common sense of a lawyer or grocer, the actual modern representatives of the profound doctrines of antiquity. We must, however, make some exceptions in favour of great thinkers, like Ragon and a few others. In short, Freemasonry has lost the doctrine confided to it, and cannot by its self provide us with the synthetic law for which we are seeking. THE CULTUS. The secret societies were to transmit in their symbolism the scientific side of primitive initiation, the religious sects were to develop the philosophical and metaphysical aspects of the doctrine. Every priest of an ancient creed was one of the Initiates , that is to say, he knew perfectly well that only one religion existed, and that the cultus merely served to translate this religion to the different nations according to their particular temperaments. This fact led to one important result, namely, that a priest, no matter which of the gods he served, was received with honour in the temples of all the other gods, and was allowed to offer sacrifice to them. Yet this circumstance must not be supposed to imply any idea of polytheism . The Jewish High Priest in Jerusalem received one of the Initiates, Alexander the Great, into the Temple, and led him into the Holy of Holies, to offer sacrifice. Our religious disputes for the supremacy of one creed over another would have caused much amusement to one of the ancient Initiate priests; they were unable to suppose that intelligent men could ignore the unity of all creeds in one fundamental religion. Sectarianism, chiefly sustained by two creeds, equally blinded by their errors, the Christian and the Mussulman, was the cause of the total loss of the secret doctrine, which gave the key to Synthetic Unity. Still greater labour is required to re-discover Synthesis in our Western religions, than to find it in Freemasonry. The Jews alone possessed, no longer the spirit, but the letter of their oral or Kabbalistic traditions. The Bible, written in Hebrew, is marvellous from this point of view, for it contains all the occult traditions, although its true sense has never yet been revealed. Fabre d'Olivet commenced this prodigious work, but the ignorant descendants of the Inquisition at Rome have placed these studies on the list of those prohibited. Posterity will judge them. Yet every cultus has its tradition, its book, its Bible, which teach those who know how to read them the unity of all creeds, in spite of the difference existing in the ritual of various countries. The Sepher Bereschit of Moses is the Jewish Bible, the Apocalypse and the Esoteric Gospels form the Christian Bible, the Legend of Hiram is the Bible of Freemasonry, the Odyssey the Bible of the so-called polytheism of Greece, the Æneid that of Rome, and lastly the Hindu Vedas and the Mussulman Koran are well known to all students of ancient theology. To any one possessing the key, all these Bibles reveal the same doctrine; but this key, which can open Esoterism, is lost by the sectarians of our Western creeds. It is therefore useless to seek for it any longer amongst them. THE PEOPLE. The Sages were under no illusions respecting the possible future of the tradition, which they confided to the intelligence and virtue of future generations. Moses had chosen a people to hand down through succeeding ages the book which contained all the science of Egypt; but before Moses, the Hindu Initiates had selected a nation to hand down to the generations of the future the primitive doctrines of the great civilizations of the Atlantides. The people have never disappointed the expectations of those who trusted it.