THEOSOPHY, Vol. 58, No. 4,
February, 1970
(Pages 111-116; Size: 19K)
(Number 28 of a 36-part series)
THE CHRISTIAN SCHEME
from
WisdomWorld Website
Plato states that the mystic
religion, known under the name of Machagistia, is the most
uncorrupted form of worship in things divine. Later, the
Mysteries of the Chaldean sanctuaries were added to it by one of
the Zoroasters and Darius Hystaspes. The latter completed and
perfected it still more with the help of the knowledge obtained by
him from the learned ascetics of India, whose rites were
identical with those of the initiated Magi.(1)
Ammian, in his history of
Julian’s Persian expedition, gives the story by stating that one
day Hystaspes, as he was boldly penetrating into the unknown
regions of Upper India, had come upon a certain wooded solitude, the
tranquil recesses of which were "occupied by those exalted sages,
the Brachmanes (or Shamans).
Instructed by their teaching in the
science of the motions of the world and of the heavenly bodies, and
in pure religious rites,
... he transfused them into the
creed of the Magi. The latter, coupling these doctrines with
their own peculiar science of foretelling the future, have
handed down the whole through their descendants to succeeding
ages."
It is from these descendants that the
Sufis, chiefly composed of Persians and Syrians,
acquired their proficient knowledge in astrology, medicine, and the
esoteric doctrine of the ages.
"The Sufi doctrine," says C. W.
King, "involved the grand idea of one universal creed which
could be secretly held under any profession of an outward faith;
and, in fact, took virtually the same view of religious systems
as that in which the ancient philosophers had regarded such
matters."
The mysterious Druzes of Mount
Lebanon are the descendants of all these. Solitary Copts,
earnest students scattered hither and thither throughout the sandy
solitudes of Egypt, Arabia Petræa, Palestine, and the impenetrable
forests of Abyssinia, though rarely met with, may sometimes be seen.
Many and various are the nationalities to which belong the disciples
of that mysterious school, and many the side-shoots of that one
primitive stock. The secrecy preserved by these sub-lodges, as well
as by the one and supreme great lodge, has ever been proportionate
to the activity of religious persecutions; and now, in the face of
the growing materialism, their very existence is becoming a mystery.(2)
But it must not be inferred, on that account, that such a mysterious
brotherhood is but a fiction, not even a name, though it remains
unknown to this day. Whether its affiliates are called by an
Egyptian, Hindu, or Persian name, it matters not. Persons belonging
to one of these sub-brotherhoods have been met by
trustworthy, and not unknown persons, besides the present writer,
who states a few facts concerning them, by the special permission of
one who has a right to give it. In a recent and very valuable work
on secret societies, K. R. H. Mackenzie’s Royal Masonic
Cyclopúdia, we find the learned author himself, an honorary
member of the Canongate Kilwinning Lodge, No. 2 (Scotland),
and a Mason not likely to be imposed upon, stating the
following, under the head, Hermetic Brothers of Egypt:
"An occult fraternity, which
has endured from very ancient times, having a hierarchy of
officers, secret signs, and passwords, and a peculiar method of
instruction in science, religion, and philosophy.... If we may
believe those who, at the present time, profess to belong to it,
the philosopher’s stone, the elixir of life, the art of
invisibility, and the power of communication directly with the
ultramundane life, are parts of the inheritance they possess.
The writer has met with only three
persons who maintained the actual existence of this body of
religious philosophers, and who hinted that they themselves were
actually members. There was no reason to doubt the good faith of
these individuals -- apparently unknown to each other, and men
of moderate competence, blameless lives, austere manners, and
almost ascetic in their habits. They all appeared to be men of
forty to forty-five years of age, and evidently of vast
erudition ... their knowledge of languages not to be doubted....
They never remained long in any one country but passed away
without creating notice."(3)
Whoever desires to assure himself that
there now exists a religion which has baffled, for centuries, the
impudent inquisitiveness of missionaries, and the persevering
inquiry of science, let him violate, if he can, the seclusion of
the Syrian Druzes. He will find them numbering over 80,000
warriors, scattered from the plain east of Damascus to the western
coast. They covet no proselytes, shun notoriety, keep friendly -- as
far as possible -- with both Christians and Mahometans,
respect the religion of every other sect or people, but will never
disclose their own secrets.
Vainly do the missionaries stigmatize
them as infidels, idolaters, brigands, and thieves. Neither threat,
bribe, nor any other consideration will induce a Druze to
become a convert to dogmatic Christianity. We have heard of
two in fifty years, and both have finished their careers in prison,
for drunkenness and theft. They proved to be "real Druzes,"(4)
said one of their chiefs, in discussing the subject. There never was
a case of an initiated Druze becoming a Christian. As
to the uninitiated, they are never allowed to even see the sacred
writings, and none of them have the remotest idea where these are
kept.
That their religion exhibits traces of Magianism and
Gnosticism is natural, as the whole of the Ophite esoteric
philosophy is at the bottom of it. But the characteristic dogma
of the Druzes is the absolute unity of God. He is the
essence of life, and although incomprehensible and invisible, is to
be known through occasional manifestations in human form.(5)
Like the Hindus they hold that he was incarnated more than once on
earth. Hamsa was the precursor of the last manifestation to
be (the tenth avatar) (6)
not the inheritor of Hakem, who is yet to come. Hamsa
was the personification of the "Universal Wisdom." Boha-eddin
in his writings calls him Messiah.
The whole number of his disciples, or
those who at different ages of the world have imparted wisdom to
mankind, which the latter as invariably have forgotten and rejected
in course of time, is one hundred and sixty-four (164, the
kabalistic s d k).
Therefore,
-
their stages or degrees of
promotion after initiation are five
-
the first three degrees are
typified by the "three feet of the candlestick of the inner
Sanctuary, which holds the light of the five elements"
-
the last two degrees, the most
important and terrifying in their solemn grandeur belonging
to the highest orders
-
and the whole five degrees
emblematically represent the said five mystic Elements
The "three feet are the holy
Application, the Opening, and the Phantom," says one of their
books; on man’s inner and outer soul, and his body, a phantom, a
passing shadow. The body, or matter, is also called the "Rival,"
for,
"he is the minister of sin, the
Devil ever creating dissensions between the Heavenly
Intelligence (spirit) and the soul, which he tempts
incessantly."
Their ideas on transmigration are
Pythagorean and kabalistic. The spirit, or Temeami (the
divine soul), was in Elijah and John the Baptist; and the soul of
Jesus was that of H’amsa; that is to say, of the same
degree of purity and sanctity. Until their resurrection, by which
they understand the day when the spiritual bodies of men will be
absorbed into God’s own essence and being (the Nirvana of the
Hindus), the souls of men will keep their astral forms, except the
few chosen ones who, from the moment of their separation from their
bodies, begin to exist as pure spirits.
The life of man they divide into soul,
body, and intelligence, or mind. It is the latter which imparts and
communicates to the soul the divine spark from its H’amsa (Christos).
They have seven great commandments which are imparted equally to all
the uninitiated; and yet, even these well-known articles of faith
have been so mixed up in the accounts of outside writers, that, in
one of the best Cyclopædias of America (Appleton’s), they are
garbled. (See Isis II, 311).
The morality of the Druzes is strict and uncompromising.
Nothing can tempt one of these Lebanon Unitarians to go astray from
what he is taught to consider his duty. Their ritual being unknown
to outsiders, their would-be historians have hitherto denied them
one. Their "Thursday meetings" are open to all, but no interloper
has ever participated in the rites of initiation which take place
occasionally on Fridays in the greatest secrecy. Women are admitted
to them as well as men, and they play a part of great importance at
the initiation of men.
The probation, unless some extraordinary
exception is made, is long and severe. Once, in a certain period of
time, a solemn ceremony takes place, during which all the elders and
the initiates of the highest two degrees start out for a pilgrimage
of several days to a certain place in the mountains. They meet
within the safe precincts of a monastery said to have been erected
during the earliest times of the Christian era. Outwardly one sees
but old ruins of a once grand edifice, used, says the legend, by
some Gnostic sects as a place of worship during the religious
persecutions. The ruins above ground, however, are but a convenient
mask; the subterranean chapel, halls, and cells, covering an area of
ground far greater than the upper building; while the richness of
ornamentations, the beauty of the ancient sculptures, and the gold
and silver vessels in this sacred resort, appear like "a dream of
glory," according to the expression of an initiate.
As the lamaseries of Mongolia and
Thibet are visited upon grand occasions by the holy shadow of
"Lord Buddha," so here, during the ceremonial, appears the
resplendent ethereal form of Hamsa, the Blessed, which
instructs the faithful. The most extraordinary feats of what would
be termed magic take place during the several nights that the
convocation lasts; and one of the greatest mysteries -- faithful
copy of the past -- is accomplished within the discreet bosom of our
mother earth; not an echo, nor the faintest sound, not a glimmer of
light betrays without the grand secret of the initiates.
Hamsa, like Jesus, was a mortal man, and yet "Hamsa"
and "Christos" are synonymous terms as to their inner and hidden
meaning. Both are symbols of the Nous, the divine and higher
soul of man -- his spirit. The doctrine taught by the Druzes
on that particular question of the duality of spiritual man,
consisting of one soul mortal, and another immortal, is identical
with that of the Gnostics, the older Greek philosophers, and other
initiates.
The Druzes may be said to belong to one of the least
esoteric of secret societies. There are others far more powerful
and learned, the existence of which is not even suspected in Europe.
There are many branches belonging to the great "Mother Lodge" which,
mixed up with certain communities, may be termed secret sects within
other sects.
COMPILER’S NOTE: The following is a separate item
which followed the above article but was on the same
page. I felt it was useful to include it here:
A UNIVERSAL SYMBOL
The snake as a symbol of rebirth following death
is an ancient, yet ever-present conception which can be
traced through endless patterns of sculpture, painting,
verse, and the myths of gods, demigods, or heroic
mortals. This is so because during its yearly period of
hibernation the snake sheds its skin and reappears as if
renewed. The wisdom of the serpent, which is
suggested by its watchful lidless eye, lies essentially
in mankind’s having projected into this lowly creature
his own secret wish to obtain from the earth a knowledge
he cannot find in waking daylight consciousness alone.
This is the knowledge of death and rebirth forever
withheld except at those times when some transcendent
principle, emerging from the depths, makes it available
to consciousness.
--The Wisdom of the Serpent |
FOOTNOTES
(1) We hold to the idea --
which becomes self-evident when the Zoroastrian imbroglio is
considered -- that there were, in the days of Darius, two
distinct sacerdotal castes of Magi: the initiated and
those who were allowed to officiate in the popular rites only.
We see the same in the Eleusinian Mysteries. Belonging to
every temple there were attached the "hierophants" of the inner
sanctuary, and the secular clergy who were not even instructed
in the Mysteries. It is against the absurdities and
superstitions of the latter that Darius revolted, and "crushed
them," for the inscription of his tomb shows that he was a
"hierophant" and a Magian himself. It is also but the exoteric
rites of this class of Magi which descended to posterity, for
the great secrecy in which were preserved the "Mysteries" of the
true Chaldean Magi was never violated, however much
guess-work may have been expended on them.
(2) These are truths which cannot fail to impress
themselves upon the minds of earnest thinkers. While the
Ebionites, Nazarites, Hemerobaptists, Lampseans, Sabians, and
the many other earliest sects which wavered later between the
varying dogmatisms suggested to them by the esoteric and
misunderstood parables of
the Nazarene teacher, whom they
justly regarded as a prophet, there were men, for whose names we
would vainly search history, who preserved the secret doctrines
of Jesus as pure and unadulterated as they had been received.
And still, even all these above-mentioned and conflicting sects
were far more orthodox in their Christianity, or rather
Christism, than the Churches of Constantine and Rome....
(3) What will, perhaps, still more astonish American
readers, is the fact that, in the United States, a mystical
fraternity now exists, which claims an intimate relationship
with one of the oldest and most powerful of Eastern
Brotherhoods. It is known as the Brotherhood of Luxor,
and its faithful members have the custody of very important
secrets of science. Its ramifications extend widely throughout
the great Republic of the West. Though this brotherhood has been
long and hard at work, the secret of its existence has been
jealously guarded. Mackenzie describes it as having "a
Rosicrucian basis, and numbering many members" ("Royal Masonic
Cyclopædia," p. 461). But, in this, the author is mistaken; it
has no Rosicrucian basis. The name Luxor is primarily
derived from the ancient Beloochistan City of Looksur,
which lies between Bela and Kedgee, and also gave its name to
the Egyptian city.
(4) These people do not accept the name of Druzes,
but regard the appellation as an insult. They call themselves
the "disciples of Hamsa," their Messiah, who came to
them, in the tenth century, from the "Land of the Word of God,"
and, together with his disciple, Mochtana Boha-eddin, committed
this Word to writing, and entrusted it to the care of a few
initiates, with the injunction of the greatest secrecy. They are
usually called Unitarians.
(5) This is the doctrine of the Gnostics who held
Christos to be the personal immortal Spirit of man.
(6) The ten Messiahs or avatars remind again of the five
Buddhistic and ten Brahmanical avatars of Buddha and Christna.
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