MORALS AND DOGMA by Albert Pike

 XVII. KNIGHT OF THE EAST AND WEST.

    This is the first of the Philosophical Degrees of the Ancient and
Accepted Scottish Rite; and the beginning of a course of in- struction
which will fully unveil to you the heart and inner mys- teries of
Masonry. Do not despair because you have often seemed on the point of
attaining the inmost light, and have as often been disappointed.  In all
time, truth has been hidden under symbols, and often under a succession
of allegories: where veil after veil had to be penetrated before the true
Light was reached, and the essential truth stood revealed.  The Human
Light is but an im- perfect reflection of a ray of the Infinite and
Divine.
    We are about to approach those ancient Religions which once ruled
the minds of men, and whose ruins encumber the plains of the great Past,
as the broken columns of Palmyra and Tadmor lie bleaching on the sands of
the desert.  They rise before us, those old, strange, mysterious creeds
and faiths, shrouded in the mists of antiquity, and stalk dimly and
undefined along the line which divides Time from Eternity; and forms of
strange, wild, startling beauty mingled in the vast throngs of figures
with shapes mon- strous, grotesque, and hideous.
    The religion taught by Moses, which, like the laws of Egypt,
enuciated the principle of exclusion, borrowed, at every period of its
existence, from all the creeds with which it came in contact. While, by
the studies of the learned and wise, it enriched itself with the most
admirable principles of the religions of Egypt and Asia, it was changed,
in the wanderings of the People, by every- thing that was most impure or
seductive in the pagan manners and superstitions. It was one thing in the
times of Moses and Aaron, another in those of David and Solomon, and
still another in those of Daniel and Philo.
    At the time when John the Baptist made his appearance in the desert,
near the shores of the Dead Sea, all the old philosophical and religious
systems were approximating toward each other. A general lassitude
inclined the minds of all toward the quietude of that amalgamation of
doctrines for which the expeditions of Alex- ander and the more peaceful
occurrences that followed, with the establishment in Asia and Africa of
many Grecian dynasties and a great number of Grecian colonies, had
prepared the way. After the intermingling of different nations, which
resulted from the wars of Alexander in three-quarters of the globe, the
doctrines of Greece, of Egypt, of Persia, and of India, met and
intermingled everywhere. All the barriers that had formerly kept the
nations apart, were thrown down; and while the People of the West
readily connected their faith with those of the East, those of the Orient
hastened to learn the traditions of Rome and the legends of Athens. While
the Philosophers of Greece, all (except the dis- ciples of Epicurus) more
or less Platonists, seized eargerly upon the beliefs and doctrines of the
East,--the Jews and Egyptians, be- fore then the most exclusive of all
peoples, yielded to that eclecti- cism which prevailed among their
masters, the Greeks and Romans.
    Under the same influences of toleration, even those who em- braced
Christianity, mingled together the old and the new, Chris- tianity and
Philosophy, the Apostolic teachings and the traditions of Mythology  The
man of intellect, devotee of one system, rarely displaces it with another
in all its purity.  The people take such a creed as is offered them.
Accordingly, the distinction be- tween the esoteric and the exoteric
doctrine, immemorial in other creeds, easily gained a foothold among many
of the Christians; and it was held by a vast number, even during the
preaching of Paul, that the writings of the Apostles were incomplete;
that they contained only the germs of another doctrine, which must
receive from the hands of philosophy, not only the systematic arrange-
ment which was wanting, but all the development which lay con- cealed
therein. The writings of the Apostles, they said, in address- ing
themselves to mankind in general, enunciated only the articles of the
vulgar faith; but transmitted the mysteries of knowledge to superior
minds, to the Elect,--mysteries handed down from gen- eration to
generation in esoteric traditions; and to this science of the mysteries
they gave the name of Gnosis.
    The Gnostics derived their leading doctrines and ideas from Plato
and Philo, the Zend-avesta and the Kabalah, and the Sacred books of India
and Egypt; and thus introduced into the bosom of Christianity the
cosmological and theosophical speculations, which had formed the larger
portion of the ancient religions of the Orient, joined to those of the
Egyptian, Greek, and Jewish doctrines, which the Neo-Platonists had
equally adopted in the Occident.
    Emanation from the Deity of all spiritual beings, progressive
degeneration of these beings from emanation to emanation, re- demption
and return of all to the purity of the Creator; and, after the
re-establishment of the primitive harmony of all, a for- tunate and truly
divine condition of all, in the bosom of God; such were the fundamental
teachings of Gnosticism.  The genius of the Orient, with its
contemplations, irradiations, and intuitions, dictated its doctrines. 
Its language corresponded to its origin. Full of imagery, it had all the
magnificence, the inconsistencies, and the mobility of the figurative
style.
    Behold, it said, the light, which emanates from an immense centre of
Light, that spreads everywhere its benevolent rays; so do the spirits of
Light emanate from the Divine Light.  Behold, all the springs which
nourish, embellish, fertilize, and purify the Earth; they emanate from
one and the same ocean; so from the bosom of the Divinity emanate so many
streams, which form and fill the universe of intelligences.  Behold
numbers, which all emanate from one primitive number, all resemble it,
all are com- posed of its essence, and still vary infinitely; and utterances, de- composable into so many syllables and elements, all contained
in the primitive Word, and still infinitely various; so the world of
Intelligences emanated from a Primary Intelligence, and they all resemble
it, and yet display an infinite variety of existences.
    It revived and combined the old doctrines of the Orient and the
Occident; and it found in many passages of the Gospels and the Pastoral
letters, a warrant for doing so.  Christ himself spoke in parables and
allegories, John borrowed the enigmatical language of the Platonists, and
Paul often indulged in incomprehensible rhapsodies, the meaning of which
could have been clear to the Initiates alone.
    It is admitted that the cradle of Gnosticism is probably to be
looked for in Syria, and even in Palestine.  Most of its expound- ers
wrote in that corrupted form of the Greek used by the Hellen- istic Jews,
and in the Septuagint and the New Testament; and there is a striking
analogy between their doctrines and those of the Judaeo-Egyptian Philo,
of Alexandria; itself the seat of three schools, at once philosophic and
religious--the Greek, the Egyp- tian, and the Jewish.
    Pythagoras and Plato, the most mystical of the Grecian Philos-
ophers (the latter heir to the doctrines of the former), and who had
travelled, the latter in Egypt, and the former in Phoenicia, India, and
Persia, also taught the esoteric doctrine and the distinc- tion between
the initiated and the profane.  The dominant doc- trines of Platonism
were found in Gnosticism.  Emanation of Intelligences from the bosom of the
Deity; the going astray in error and the sufferings of spirits, so long
as they are remote from God, and imprisoned in matter; vain and
long-continued efforts to arrive at the knowledge of the Truth, and
re-enter into their primitive union with the Supreme Being; alliance of a
pure and divine soul with an irrational soul, the seat of evil desires;
angels or demons who dwell in and govern the planets, having but an
imperfect knowledge of the ideas that presided at the creation;
regeneration of all beings by their return to the kosmos noetos, the
world of Intelligences, and its Chief, the Supreme Being; sole possible
mode of re-establishing that primi- tive harmony of the creation, of
which the music of the spheres of Pythagoras was the image; these were
the analogies of the two systems; and we discover in them some of the
ideas that form a part of Masonry; in which, in the present mutilated
condition of the symbolic Degrees, they are disguised and overlaid with
fiction and absurdity, or present themselves as casual hints that are
pass- ed by wholly unnoticed.
    The distinction between the esoteric and exoteric doctrines (a
distinction purely Masonic), was always and from the very earliest times
preserved among the Greeks. It remounted to the fabulous times of
Orpheus; and the mysteries of Theosophy were found in all their
traditions and myths. And after the time of Alexander, they resorted for
instruction, dogmas, and mysteries, to all the schools, to those of Egypt
and Asia, as well as those of Ancient Thrace, Sicily, Etruria, and
Attica.
    The Jewish-Greek School of Alexandria is known only by two of its
Chiefs, Aristobulus and Philo, both Jews of Alexandria in Egypt.
Belonging to Asia by its origin, to Egypt by its residence, to Greece by
its language and studies, it strove to show that all truths embedded in
the philosophies of other countries were trans- planted thither from
Palestine.  Aristobulus declared that all the facts and details of the
Jewish Scriptures were so many allegories, concealing the most profound
meanings, and that Plato had bor- rowed from them all his finest ideas. 
Philo, who lived a century after him, following the same theory,
endeavored to show that the Hebrew writings, by their system of
allegories, were the true source of all religious and philosophical
doctrines.  According to him, the literal meaning is for the vulgar
alone.  Whoever has meditated on philosophy, purified himself by virtue,
and raised himself by contemplation, to God and the intellectual world,
and received their inspiration, pierces the gross envelope of the letter,
 discovers a wholly different order of things, and is initiated into
mysteries, of which the elementary or literal instruction offers but an
imperfect image. A historical fact, a figure, a word, a letter, a number,
a rite, a custom, the parable or vision of a prophet, veils the most
profound truths; and he who has the key of science will interpret all
according to the light he possesses.
    Again we see the symbolism of Masonry, and the search of the
Candidate for light.  "Let men of narrow minds withdraw," he says, "with
closed ears.  We transmit the divine mysteries to those who have received
the sacred initiation, to those who prac- tise true piety and who are not
enslaved by the empty trappings of words or the preconceived opinions of
the pagans."
    To Philo, the Supreme Being was the Primitive Light, or the
Archetype of Light, Source whence the rays emanate that illumi- nate
Souls. He was also the Soul of the Universe, and as such acted in all its
parts. He Himself fills and limits His whole Being. His Powers and
Virtues fill and penetrate all.  These Powers (dunameis) are Spirits
distinct from God, the "Ideas" of Plato personified. He is without
beginning, and lives in the prototype of Time (aion).
    His image is THE WORD, a form more brilliant than fire; that not
being the pure light.  This LOGOS dwells in God; for the Supreme Being
makes to Himself within His Intelligence the types or ideas of everything
that is to become reality in this World. The LOGOS is the vehicle by
which God acts on the Uni- verse, and may be compared to the speech of
man.
    The LOGOS being the World of Ideas, by means whereof God has created
visible things, He is the most ancient God, in comparison with the World,
which is the youngest pro- duction. The LOGOS, Chief of Intelligence, of
which He is the general representative, is named Archangel, type and
representa- tive of all spirits, even those of mortals.  He is also
styled the man-type and primitive man, Adam Kadmon.
    God only is Wise. The wisdom of man is but the reflection and image
of that of God.  He is the Father, and His WISDOM the mother of creation:
for He united Himself with WISDOM (Sophia), and communicated to it the
germ of creation, and it brought forth the material world. He created the
ideal world only, and caused the material world to be made real after its
type, by His LOGOS, which is His speech, and at the same time the Idea
of Ideas, the Intellectual World.  The Intellectual City was but the
Thought of the Architect, who meditated the creation, accord- ing to that
plan of the Material City.
    The Word is not only the Creator, but occupies the place of the
Supreme Being. Through Him all the Powers and Attributes of God act. On
the other side, as first representative of the Human Family, He is the
Protector of men and their Shepherd.
    God gives to man the Soul or Intelligence, which exists before the
body, and which he unites with the body. The reasoning Principle comes
from God through the Word, and communes with God and with the Word; but
there is also in man an irrational Principle, that of the inclinations
and passions which produce disorder, emanating from inferior spirits who
fill the air as ministers of God.  The body, taken from the Earth, and
the irrational Principle that animates it concurrently with the rational
Principle, are hated by God, while the rational soul which He has given it,
is, as it were, captive in this prison, this coffin, that encompasses it.
 The present condition of man is not his primi- tive condition, when he
was the image of the Logos.  He has fallen from his first estate.  But he
may raise himself again, by following the directions of WISDOM and of the
Angels which God has commissioned to aid him in freeing himself from the
bonds of the body, and combating Evil, the existence whereof God has
permitted, to furnish him the means of exercising his liberty.  The souls
that are purified, not by the Law but by light, rise to the Heavenly
regions, to enjoy there a perfect felicity. Those that persevere in evil
go from body to body, the seats of passions and evil desires.  The
familiar lineaments of these doc- trines will be recognized by all who
read the Epistles of St. Paul, who wrote after Philo, the latter living
till the reign of Caligula, and being the contemporary of Christ.
    And the Mason is familiar with these doctrines of Philo: that the
Supreme Being is a centre of Light whose rays or emanations pervade the
Universe; for that is the Light for which all Masonic journeys are a
search, and of which the sun and moon in our Lodges are only emblems:
that Light and Darkness, chief enemies from the beginning of Time,
dispute with each other the empire of the world; which we symbolize by
the candidate wandering in darkness and being brought to light: that the
world was created, not by the Supreme Being, but by a secondary agent, who
is but His WORD, and by types which are but his ideas, aided by an
INTELLIGENCE, or WISDOM, which gives one of His Attributes; in which we
see the occult meaning of the ne- cessity of recovering "the Word"; and
of our two columns of STRENGTH and WISDOM, which are also the two
parallel lines that bound the circle representing the Universe: that the
visible world is the image of the invisible world; that the essence of
the Human Soul is the image of God, and it existed before the body; that
the object of its terrestrial life is to disengage itself of its body or
its sepulchre; and that it will ascend to the Heavenly regions when-
ever it shall be purified; in which we see the meaning, now almost
forgotten in our Lodges, of the mode of preparation of the candi- date
for apprenticeship, and his tests and purifications in the first Degree,
according to the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.
    Philo incorporated in his eclecticism neither Egyptian nor Oriental
elements. But there were other Jewish Teachers in Alex- andria who did
both. The Jews of Egypt were slightly jealous of, and a little hostile
to, those of Palestine, particularly after the erection of the sanctuary
at Leontopolis by the High-Priest Onias; and therefore they admired and
magnified those sages, who, like Jeremiah, had resided in Egypt.  "The
wisdom of Solomon" was written at Alexandria, and, in the time of St.
Jerome, was attrib- uted to Philo; but it contains principles at variance
with his. It personifies Wisdom, and draws between its children and the
Profane, the same line of demarcation that Egypt had long before taught
to the Jews.  That distinction existed at the beginning of the Mosaic
creed. Moshah himself was an Initiate in the mysteries of Egypt, as he
was compelled to be, as the adopted son of the daughter of Pharaoh,
Thouoris, daughter of Sesostris-Ramses; who, as her tomb and monuments
show, was, in the right of her infant husband, Regent of Lower Egypt or
the Delta at the time of the Hebrew Prophet's birth, reigning at
Heliopolis.  She was also, as the reliefs on her tomb show, a Priestess
of HATHOR and NEITH, the two great primeval goddesses.  As her adopted
son, living in her Palace and presence forty years, and during that time
scarcely acquainted with his brethren the Jews, the law of Egypt
compelled his initiation: and we find in many of his enact- ments the
intention of preserving, between the common people and the Initiates, the
line of separation which he found in Egypt. Moshah and Aharun his
brother, the whole series of High-Priests, the Council of the 70 Elders,
Salomoh and the entire succession of Prophets, were in possession of a
higher science; and of that science Masonry is, at least, the lineal
descendant. It was famili- arly known as THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORD.
    AMUN, at first the God of Lower Egypt only, where Moshah was reared
(a word that in Hebrew means Truth), was the Su- preme God. He was styled
"the Celestial Lord, who sheds Light on hidden things." He was the source
of that divine life, of which the crux ansata is the symbol; and the
source of all power.  He united all the attributes that the Ancient
Oriental Theosophy assigned to the Supreme Being. He was the Pleroma, or
"Fullness of things," for He comprehended in Himself every- thing; and
the LIGHT; for he was the Sun-God. He was un- changeable in the midst of
everything phenomenal in his worlds. He created nothing; but everything
emanated from Him; and of Him all the other Gods were but manifestations.

    The Ram was His living symbol; which you see reproduced in this
Degree, lying on the book with seven seals on the tracing- board.  He
caused the creation of the world by the Primitive Thought (Ennoia), or
Spirit (Pneuma), that issued from him by means of his Voice or the WORD;
and which Thought or Spirit was personified as the Goddess NEITH.  She,
too, was a divinity of Light, and mother of the Sun; and the Feast of
Lamps was celebrated in her honor at Sais.  The Creative Power, another
manifestation of Deity, proceeding to the creation conceived of in her,
the Divine Intelligence, produced with its Word the Universe, symbolized
by an egg issuing from the mouth of KNEPH; from which egg came PHTHA,
image of the Supreme Intelligence as realized in the world, and the type
of that mani- fested in man; the principal agent, also, of Nature, or the
creative and productive Fire. PHRE or RS, the Sun, or Celestial Light,
whose symbol was the point within a circle, was the son of PHTHA; and
TIPHE, his wife, or the celestial firmament, with the seven celestial
bodies, animated by spirits of genii that govern them, was represented on
many of the monuments, clad in blue or yellow, her garments sprinkled
with stars, and accompanied by the sun, moon, and five planets; and she
was the type of Wisdom, and they of the Seven Planetary Spirits of the
Gnostics, that with her presided over and governed the sublunary world.
    In this Degree, unknown for a hundred years to those who have
practised it, these emblems reproduced refer to these old doctrines. The
lamb, the yellow hangings strewed with stars, the seven columns,
candlesticks, and seals all recall them to us.
    The Lion was the symbol of ATHOM-RE, the Great God of Upper Egypt;
the Hawk, of RA or PHRE; the Eagle, of MENDES; the Bull, of APIS; and
three of these are seen under the platform on which our altar stands.
    The first HERMES was the INTELLIGENCE, or WORD of God. Moved with
compassion for a race living without law, and wishing to teach them that
they sprang from His bosom, and to point out to them the way that they
should go (the books which the first Hermes, the same with Enoch, had
written on the mysteries of divine science, in the sacred characters,
being unknown to those who lived after the flood), God sent to man OSIRIS
and ISIS, ac- accompanied by THOTH, the incarnation or terrestrial
repetition of the first Hermes; who taught men the arts, science, and the
cer- emonies of religion; and then ascended to Heaven or the Moon. OSIRIS
was the Principle of Good. TYPHON, like AHRIMAN, was the principle and
source of all that is evil in the moral and physi- cal order. Like the
Satan of Gnosticism, he was confounded with Matter.
    From Egypt or Persia the new Platonists borrowed the idea, and the
Gnostics received it from them, that man, in his terres- trial career, is
successively under the influence of the Moon, of Mercury, of Venus, of
the Sun, of Mars, of Jupiter, and of Saturn, until he finally reaches the
Elysian Fields; an idea again symbolized in the Seven Seals.
    The Jews of Syria and Judea were the direct precursors of
Gnosticism; and in their doctrines were ample oriental elements. These
Jews had had with the Orient, at two different periods, inti- mate
relations, familiarizing them with the doctrines of Asia, and especially
of Chaldea and Persia;--their forced residence in Cen- tral Asia under
the Assyrians and Persians; and their voluntary dispersion over the whole
East, when subjects of the Seleucidae and the Romans. Living near
two-thirds of a century, and many of them long afterward, in Mesopotamia,
the cradle of their race; speaking the same language, and their children
reared with those of the Chaldeans, Assyrians, Medes, and Persians, and
receiving from them their names (as the case of Danayal, who was called
Baeltasatsar, proves), they necessarily adopted many of the doc- trines
of their conquerors. Their descendants, as Azra and Na- hamaiah show us,
hardly desired to leave Persia, when they were allowed to do so. They had
a special jurisdiction, and governors and judges taken from their own
people; many of them held high office, and their children were educated
with those of the highest nobles.  Danayal was the friend and minister of
the King, and the Chief of the College of the Magi at Babylon; if we may
be- lieve the book which bears his name, and trust to the incidents
related in its highly figurative and imaginative style. Mordecai, too,
occupied a high station, no less than that of Prime Minister, and Esther
or Astar, his cousin, was the Monarch's wife.
    The Magi of Babylon were expounders of figurative writings,
interpreters of nature, and of dreams,--astronomers and divines; and from
their influences arose among the Jews, after their rescue from captivity,
a number of sects, and a new exposition, the mys- tical interpretation,
with all its wild fancies and infinite caprices. The Aions of the
Gnostics, the Ideas of Plato, the Angels of the Jews, and the Demons of
the Greeks, all correspond to the Ferouers of Zoroaster.
    A great number of Jewish families remained permanently in their new
country; and one of the most celebrated of their schools was at Babylon. 
They were soon familiarized with the doctrine of Zoroaster, which itself
was more ancient than Kuros.  From the system of the Zend-Avesta they
borrowed, and subsequently gave large development to, everything that
could be reconciled with their own faith; and these additions to the old
doctrine were soon spread, by the constant intercourse of commerce, into
Syria and Palestine.
    In the Zend-Avesta, God is Illimitable Time.  No origin can be
assigned to Him: He is so entirely enveloped in His glory, His nature and
attributes are so inaccessible to human Intelligence, that He can be only
the object of a silent Veneration.  Creation took place by emanation from
Him.  The first emanation was the primitive Light, and from that the King
of Light, ORMUZD.  By the "WORD," Ormuzd created the world pure.  He is
its pre- server and Judge; a Being Holy and Heavenly; Intelligence and
Knowledge; the First-born of Time without limits; and invested with all
the Powers of the Supreme Being.
    Still he is, strictly speaking, the Fourth Being.   He had a
Ferouer, a pre-existing Soul (in the language of Plato, a type or ideal);
and it is said of Him, that He existed from the beginning, in the
primitive Light.  But, that Light being but an element, and His Ferouer a
type, he is, in ordinary language, the First-born of ZEROUANE-AKHERENE. 
Behold again "THE WORD" of Masonry; the Man, on the Tracing-Board of this
Degree; the LIGHT toward which all Masons travel.
    He created after his own image, six Genii called Amshaspands, who
surround his Throne, are his organs of communication with inferior
spirits and men, transmit to Him their prayers, solicit for them His
favors, and serve them as models of purity and perfec- tion. Thus we have
the Demiourgos of Gnosticism, and the six Genii that assist him.  These are
the Hebrew Archangels of the Planets.
    The names of these Amshaspands are Bahman, Ardibehest, Schariver,
Sapandomad, Khordad, and Amerdad.
    The fourth, the Holy SAPANDOMAD, created the first man and woman.
    Then ORMUZD created 28 Iseds, of whom MITHERAS is the chief. They
watch, with Ormuzd and the Amshaspands, over the happi- ness, purity, and
preservation of the world, which is under their government; and they are
also models for mankind and interpre- ters of men's prayers.  With
Mithras and Ormuzd, they make a pleroma (or complete number) of 30,
corresponding to the thirty Aions of the Gnostics, and to the ogdoade,
dodecade, and decade of the Egyptians.  Mithras was the Sun-God, invoked
with, and soon confounded with him, becoming the object of a special
wor- ship, and eclipsing Ormuzd himself.
    The third order of pure spirits is more numerous.  They are the
Ferouers, the THOUGHTS of Ormuzd, or the IDEAS which he conceived before
proceeding to the creation of things.  They too are superior to men. They
protect them during their life on earth; they will purify them from evil
at their resurrection.  They are their tutelary genii, from the fall to
the complete regeneration.
    AHRIMAN, second-born of the Primitive Light, emanated from it, pure
like ORMUZD; but, proud and ambitious, yielded to jeal- ousy of the
First-born.  For his hatred and pride, the Eternal condemned him to
dwell, for 12,000 years, in that part of space where no ray of light
reaches; the black empire of darkness.  In that period the struggle
between Light and Darkness, Good and Evil will be terminated.
    AHRIMAN scorned to submit, and took the field against OR- MUZD. To
the good spirits created by his Brother, he opposed an innumerable army
of Evil Ones.  To the seven Amshaspands he opposed seven Archdevs,
attached to the seven Planets; to the Izeds and Ferouers an equal number
of Devs, which brought upon the world all moral and physical evils. 
Hence Poverty, Maladies, Impurity, Envy, Chagrin, Drunkenness, Falsehood,
 Calumny, and their horrible array.
    The image of Ahriman was the Dragon, confounded by the Jews with
Satan and the Serpent-Tempter. After a reign of 3000 years, Ormuzd had
created the Material World, in six periods, calling successively into
existence the Light, Water, Earth, plants, animals, and Man.  But Ahriman
concurred in creatmg the earth and water; for darkness was already an
element, and Ormuzd could not exclude its Master.  So also the two
concurred in pro- ducing Man.  Ormuzd produced, by his Will and Word, a
Being that was the type and source of universal life for everything that
exists under Heaven. He placed in man a pure principle, or Life,
proceeding from the Supreme Being.  But Ahriman destroyed that pure
principle, in the form wherewith it was clothed; and when Ormuzd had
made, of its recovered and purified essence, the first man and woman,
Ahriman seduced and tempted them with wine and fruits; the woman yielding
first.
    Often, during the three latter periods of 3000 years each, Ahri- man
and Darkness are, and are to be, triumphant. But the pure souls are
assisted by the Good Spirits; the Triumph of Good is decreed by the
Supreme Being, and the period of that triumph will infallibly arrive.
When the world shall be most afflicted with the evils poured out upon it
by the spirits of perdition, three Prophets will come to bring relief to
mortals.  SOSIOSCH, the principal of the Three, will regenerate the
earth, and restore to it its primitive beauty, strength, and purity. He
will judge the good and the wicked. After the universal resurrection of
the good, he will conduct them to a home of everlasting happiness.
Ahriman, his evil demons, and all wicked men, will also be purified in a
tor- rent of melted metal. The law of Ormuzd will reign everywhere; all
men will be happy; all, enjoying unalterable bliss, will sing with
Sosiosch the praises of the Supreme Being.
    These doctrines, the details of which were sparingly borrowed by the
Pharisaic Jews, were much more fully adopted by the Gnostics; who taught
the restoration of all things, their return to their original pure
condition, the happiness of those to be saved, and their admission to the
feast of Heavenly Wisdom.
    The doctrines of Zoroaster came originally from Bactria, an Indian
Province of Persia. Naturally, therefore, it would include Hindu or
Buddhist elements, as it did.  The fundamental idea of Buddhism was, matter
subjugating the intelligence, and intelli- gence freeing itself from that
slavery.  Perhaps something came to Gnosticism from China.  "Before the
chaos which preceded the birth of Heaven and Earth," says Lao-Tseu, "a
single Being existed, immense and silent, immovable and ever active--the
mother of the Universe.  I know not its name: but I designate it by the
word Reason.  Man has his type and model in the Earth; Earth in Heaven;
Heaven in Reason; and Reason in Itself." Here again are the Ferouers, the
Ideas, the Aions--the REASON or INTELLIGENCE, SILENCE, WORD, and WISDOM
of the Gnostics.
    The dominant system among the Jews after their captivity was that of
the Pharoschim or Pharisees.  Whether their name was derived from that of
the Parsees, or followers of Zoroaster, or from some other source, it is
certain that they had borrowed much of their doctrine from the Persians. 
Like them they claimed to have the exclusive and mysterious knowledge,
unknown to the mass. Like them they taught that a constant war was waged
be- tween the Empire of Good and that of Evil. Like them they at-
tributed the sin and fall of man to the demons and their chief; and like
them they admitted a special protection of the righteous by inferior
beings, agents of Jehovah.  All their doctrines on these subjects were at
bottom those of the Holy Books; but singularly developed and the Orient
was evidently the source from which those developments came.
    They styled themselves Interpreters; a name indicating their claim to
the exclusive possession of the true meaning of the Holy Writings, by
virtue of the oral tradition which Moses had re- ceived on Mount Sinai,
and which successive generations of Ini- tiates had transmitted, as they
claimed, unaltered, unto them. Their very costume, their belief in the
influences of the stars, and in the immortality and transmigration of
souls, their system of angels and their astronomy, were all foreign.
    Sadduceeism arose merely from an opposition essentially Jewish, to
these foreign teachings, and that mixture of doctrines, adopted by the
Pharisees, and which constituted the popular creed.
    We come at last to the Essenes and Therapeuts, with whom this Degree
is particularly concerned.  That intermingling of oriental and occidental
rites, of Persian and Pythagorean opinions, which we have pointed out in
the doctrines of Philo, is unmistak- able in the creeds of these two
sects.
    They were less distinguished by metaphysical speculations than by
simple meditations and moral practices. But the latter always partook of
the Zoroastrian principle, that it was necessary to free the soul from
the trammels and influences of matter; which led to a system of
abstinence and maceration entirely opposed to the ancient Hebrai cideas,
favorable as they were to physical pleasures.
    In general, the life and manners of these mystical associa- tions,
as Philo and Josephus describe them, and particularly their prayers at
sunrise, seem the image of what the Zend-Avesta pre- scribes to the
faithful adorer or Ormuzd; and some of their observances cannot otherwise
be explained.
    The Therapeuts resided in Egypt, in the neighborhood of Alex-
andria; and the Essenes in Palestine, in the vicinity of the Dead Sea. 
But there was nevertheless a striking coincidence in their ideas, readily
explained by attributing it to a foreign influence. The Jews of Egypt,
under the influence of the School of Alexan- dria, endeavored in general
to make their doctrines harmonize with the traditions of Greece; and
thence came, in the doctrines of the Therapeuts, as stated by Philo, the
many analogies between the Pythagorean and Orphic ideas, on one side, and
those of Ju- daism on the other: while the Jews of Palestine, having less
com- munication with Greece, or contemning its teachings, rather im-
bibed the Oriental doctrines, which they drank in at the source and with
which their relations with Persia made them familiar. This attachment was
particularly shown in the Kabalah, which belonged rather to Palestine
than to Egypt, though extensively known in the latter; and furnished the
Gnostics with some of their most striking theories.
    It is a significant fact, that while Christ spoke often of the
Pharisees and Sadducees, He never once mentioned the Essenes, between
whose doctrines and His there was so great a resem- blance, and, in many
points, so perfect an identity.  Indeed, they are not named, nor even
distinctly alluded to, anywhere in the New Testament.     John, the son of
a Priest who ministered in the Temple at Jerusalem, and whose mother was
of the family of Aharun, was in the deserts until the day of his showing
unto Israel. He drank neither wine nor strong drink.  Clad in hair-cloth,
and with a girdle of leather, and feeding upon such food as the desert
afford- ed, he preached, in the country about Jordan, the baptism of re-
pentance, for the remission of sins; that is, the necessity of repent-
ance proven by reformation.  He taught the people charity and liberality;
the publicans, justice, equity, and fair dealing; the soldiery peace,
truth, and contentment; to do violence to none, accuse none falsely, and
be content with their pay.  He incul- cated necessity of a virtuous life,
and the folly of trusting to their descent from Abraham.
    He denounced both Pharisees and Sadducees as a generation of vipers
threatened with the anger of God.  He baptized those who confessed their
sins.  He preached in the desert; and therefore in the country where the
Essenes lived, professing the same doctrines. He was imprisoned before
Christ began to preach. Matthew men- tions him without preface or
explanation; as if, apparently, his history was too well known to need
any.  "In those days," he says, "came John the Baptist, preaching in the
wilderness of Judea." His disciples frequently fasted; for we find them
with the Pharisees coming to Jesus to inquire why His Disciples did not
fast as often as they; and He did not denounce them, as His habit was to
denounce the Pharisees; but answered them kindly and gently.
    From his prison, John sent two of his disciples to inquire of
Christ: "Art thou he that is to come, or do we look for another ?" Christ
referred them to his miracles as an answer; and declared to the people
that John was a prophet, and more than a prophet, and that no greater man
had ever been born; but that the hum- blest Christian was his superior. 
He declared him to be Elias, who was to come.
    John had denounced to Herod his marriage with his brother's wife as
unlawful; and for this he was imprisoned, and finally exe- cuted to
gratify her.  His disciples buried him; and Herod and others thought he
had risen from the dead and appeared again in the person of Christ.  The
people all regarded John as a prophet; and Christ silenced the Priests
and Elders by asking them whether he was inspired. They feared to excite
the anger of the people by saying that he was not. Christ declared that
he came "in the way of righteousness"; and that the lower classes
believed him, though the Priests and Pharisees did not.
    Thus John, who was often consulted by Herod, and to whom that
monarch showed great deference and was often governed by his advice;
whose doctrine prevailed very extensively among the people and the
publicans, taught some creed older than Chris- tianity. That is plain:
and it is equally plain, that the very large body of the Jews that
adopted his doctrines, were neither Phari- sees nor Sadducees, but the
humble, common people. They must, therefore, have been Essenes.  It is
plain, too, that Christ applied for baptism as a sacred rite, well known
and long practiced. It was becoming to him, he said, to fulfill all
righteousness.
    In the 18th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles we read thus: "And a
certain Jew, named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an elo- quent man, and
mighty in the Scriptures, came to Ephesus. This man was instructed in the
way of the Lord, and, being fervent in spirit, he spake and taught
diligently the things of the Lord, know- ing only the baptism of John;
and he began to speak boldly in the synagogue; whom, when Aquilla and
Priscilla had heard, they took him unto them, and expounded unto him the
way of God more perfectly."
    Translating this from the symbolic and figurative language into the
true ordinary sense of the Greek text, it reads thus: "And a certain Jew,
named Apollos, an Alexandrian by birth, an eloquent man, and of extensive
learning, came to Ephesus. He had learned in the mysteries the true
doctrine in regard to God; and, being a zealous enthusiast, he spoke and
taught diligently the truths in regard to the Deity, having received no
other baptism than that of John."  He knew nothing in regard to
Christianity; for he had resided in Alexandria, and had just then come to
Ephesus; being, probably, a disciple of Philo, and a Therapeut.
    "That, in all times," says St. Augustine, "is the Christian re-
ligion, which to know and follow is the most sure and certain health,
called according to that name, but not according to the thing itself, of
which it is the name; for the thing itself, which is now called the
Christian religion, really was known to the An- cients, nor was wanting
at any time from the beginning of the human race, until the time when
Christ came in the flesh; from whence the true religion, which had
previously existed, began to be called Christian; and this in our days is
the Christian religion, not as having been wanting in former times, but
as having, in later times, received this name."  The disciples were first
called "Christians," at Antioch, when Barnabas and Paul began to preach
there.
    The Wandering or Itinerant Jews or Exorcists, who assumed to employ
the Sacred Name in exorcising evil spirits, were no doubt Therapeutae or
Essenes.
    "And it it came to pass," we read in the 19th chapter of the Acts,
verses 1 to 4, "that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul, having passed
through the upper parts of Asia Minor, came to Ephesus; and finding
certain disciples, he said to them, 'Have ye received the Holy Ghost
since ye became Believers ?' And they said unto him, 'We have not so much
as heard that there is any Holy Ghost.' And he said to them, 'In what,
then, were you baptized ?' And they said 'In John's baptism.'  Then said
Paul, 'John in- deed baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying to
the people that they should believe in Him who was to come after him,
that is, in Jesus Christ. When they heard this, they were baptized in the
name of the Lord Jesus."
    This faith, taught by John, and so nearly Christianity, could have
been nothing but the doctrine of the Essenes; and there can be no doubt
that John belonged to that sect.  The place where he preached, his
macerations and frugal diet, the doctrines he taught, all prove it
conclusively.  There was no other sect to which he could have belonged;
certainly none so numerous as his, except the Essenes.
    We find, from the two letters written by Paul to the brethren at
Corinth, that City of Luxury and Corruption, that there were contentions
among them.  Rival sects had already, about the 57th year of our era,
reared their banners there, as followers, some of Paul, some of Apollos,
and some of Cephas.  Some of them de- nied the resurrection. Paul urged
them to adhere to the doctrines taught by himself, and had sent Timothy
to them to bring them afresh to their recollection.
    According to Paul, Christ was to come again.  He was to put an end
to all other Principalities and Powers, and finally to Death, and then be
Himself once more merged in God; who should then be all in all.
    The forms and ceremonies of the Essenes were symbolical. They had,
according to Philo the Jew, four Degrees; the members being divided into
two Orders, the Practici and Therapeutici; the latter being the
contemplative and medical Brethren; and the former the active, practical,
business men.  They were Jews by birth; and had a greater affection for
each other than the mem- bers of any other sect. Their brotherly love was
intense.  They fulfilled the Christian law, "Love one another."  They
despised riches. No one was to be found among them, having more than
another. The possessions of one were intermingled with those of the
others; so that they all had but one patrimony, and were brethren.  Their
piety toward God was extraordinary.  Before sunrise they never spake a
word about profane matters; but put up certain prayers which they had
received from their forefathers. At dawn of day, and before it was light,
their prayers and hymns ascended to Heaven. They were eminently faithful
and true, and the Ministers of Peace.  They had mysterious ceremonies,
and initiations into their mysteries; and the Candidate promised that he
would ever practise fidelity to all men, and especially to those in
authority, "because no one obtains the government without God's
assistance."
    Whatever they said, was firmer than an oath; but they avoided
swearing, and esteemed it worse than perjury. They were simple in their
diet and mode of living, bore torture with fortitude, and despised death.
They cultivated the science of medicine and were very skillful. They
deemed it a good omen to dress in white robes. They had their own courts,
and passed righteous judgments. They kept the Sabbath more rigorously
than the Jews.
    Their chief towns were Engaddi, near the Dead Sea, and Hebron. 
Engaddi was about 30 miles southeast from Jerusalem, and Hebron about 20
miles south of that city.  Josephus and Eusebius speak of them as an
ancient sect; and they were no doubt the first among the Jews to embrace
Christianity: with whose faith and doctrine their own tenets had so many
points of resemblance, and were indeed in a great measure the same.
Pliny regarded them as a very ancient people.
    In their devotions they turned toward the rising sun; as the Jews
generally did toward the Temple.  But they were no idola- ters; for they
observed the law of Moses with scrupulous fidelity. They held all things
in common, and despised riches, their wants being supplied by the
administration of Curators or Stewards. The Tetractys, composed of round
dots instead of jods, was re- vered among them.  This being a Pythagorean
symbol, evidently shows their connection with the school of Pythagoras;
but their peculiar tenets more resemble those of Confucius and
Zoroaster; and probably were adopted while they were prisoners in
Persia; which explains their turning toward the Sun in prayer.
    Their demeanor was sober and chaste.  They submitted to the
superintendence of governors whom they appointed over them- selves. The
whole of their time was spent in labor, meditation, and prayer; and they
were most sedulously attentive to every call of justice and humanity, and
every moral duty.  They believed in the unity of God.  They supposed the
souls of men to have fallen, by a disastrous fate, from the regions of
purity and light, into the bodies which they occupy; during their
continuance in which they considered them confined as in a prison. 
Therefore they did not believe in the resurrection of the body; but in
that of the soul only.  They believed in a future state of rewards and
punishments; and they disregarded the ceremonies or external forms
enjoined in the law of Moses to be observed in the worship og God;
holding that the words of that lawgiver were to be un- derstood in a
mysterious and recondite sense, and not according to their literal
meaning. They offered no sacrifices, except at home; and by meditation
they endeavored, as far as possible, to isolate the soul from the body,
and carry it back to God.
    Eusebius broadly admits "that the ancient Therapeutae were
Christians; and that their ancient writings were our Gospels and
Epistles."
    The ESSENES were of the Eclectic Sect of Philosophers, and held
PLATo in the highest esteem; they believed that true philos- ophy, the
greatest and most salutary gift of God to mortals, was scattered, in
various portions, through all the different Sects; and that it was,
consequently, the duty of every wise man to gather it from the several
quarters where it lay dispersed, and to employ it, thus reunited, in
destroying the dominion of impiety and vice.
    The great festivals of the Solstices were observed in a distin-
guished manner by the Essenes; as would naturally be supposed, from the
fact that they reverenced the Sun, not as a god, but as a symbol of light
and fire; the fountain of which, the Orientals supposed God to be.  They
lived in continence and abstinence, and had establislments similar to the
monasteries of the early Christians.
    The writings of the Essenes were full of mysticism, parables,
enigmas, and allegories.  They believed in the esoteric and exote- ric
meanings of the Scriptures; and, as we have already said, they had a
warrant for that in the Scriptures themselves.  They found it in the Old
Testament, as the Gnostics found it in the New. The Christian writers,
and even Christ himself, recognized it as a truth, that all Scripture had
an inner and an outer meaning. Thus we find it said as follows, in one of
the Gospels:
    "Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the Kingdom of God; but
unto men that are without, all these things are done in parables; that
seeing, they may see and not perceive, and hearing they may hear and not
understand  ....  And the disciples came and said unto him, 'Why speakest
Thou the truth in parables ?'-- He answered and said unto them, 'Because
it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but
to them it is not given.'"
    Paul, in the 4th chapter of his Epistle to the Galatians, speak- ing
of the simplest facts of the Old Testament, asserts that they are an
allegory.  In the 3d chapter of the second letter to the Corinthians, he
declares himself a minister of the New Testament, appointed by God; "Not
of the letter, but of the spirit; for the letter killeth."  Origen and
St. Gregory held that the Gospels were not to be taken in their literal
sense; and Athanasius ad- monishes us that "Should we understand sacred
writ according to the letter, we should fall into the most enormous
blasphemies."
    Eusebius said, "Those who preside over the Holy Scriptures,
philosophize over them, and expound their literal sense by alle- gory."
    The sources of our knowledge of the Kabalistic doctrines, are the
books of Jezirah and Sohar, the former drawn up in the second century,
and the latter a little later; but containing materials much older than
themselves.  In their most characteristic ele- ments, they go back to the
time of the exile.  In them, as in the teachings of Zoroaster, everything
that exists emanated from a source of infinite LiGHT.  Before everything,
existed THE AN- CIENT OF DAYS, the KING OF LIGHT; a title often given to
the Creator in the Zend-Avesta and the code of the Sabaeans.  With the
idea so expressed is connected the pantheism of India. KING OF LIGHT, THE
ANCIENT, is ALL THAT IS.  He is not only the real cause of all
Existences; he is Infinite (AINSOPH).  He is HIMSELF: there is nothing in
Him that We can call Thou.
    In the Indian doctrine, not only is the Supreme Being the real cause
of all, but he is the only real Existence: all the rest is illu- sion. 
In the Kabalah, as in the Persian and Gnostic doctrines, He is the
Supreme Being unknown to all, the "Unknown Father." The world is his
revelation, and subsists only in Him. His attri- butes are reproduced
there, with different modifications, and in different degrees, so that the
Universe is His Holy Splendor:it is but His Mantle; but it must be
revered in silence.  All beings have emanated from the Supreme Being: The
nearer a being is to Him, the more perfect it is; the more remote in the
scale, the less its purity.
    A ray of Light, shot from the Deity, is the cause and principle of
all that exists.  It is at once Father and Mother of All, in the
sublimest sense.  It penetrates everything; and without it nothing can
exist an instant. From this double FORCE, designated by the two parts of
the word I.. H.. U.. H.. emanated the FIRST-BORN of God, the
Universal Form, in which are contained all beings; the Persian and
Platonic Archetype of things, united with the Infinite by the primitive
ray of Light.
    This First-Born is the Creative Agent, Conservator, and ani- mating
Principle of the Universe. It is THE LIGHT OF LIGHT. It possesses the
three Primitive Forces of the Divinity, LIGHT, SPIRIT and LIFE.  As it
has received what it gives, Light and Life, it is equally considered as
the gen- erative and conceptive Principle, the Primitive Man, ADAM
KADMON. As such, it has revealed itself in ten emanations or Sephiroth,
which are not ten different beings, nor even beings at all; but sources
of life, vessels of Omnipotence, and types of Cre- ation.  They are
Sovereignty or Will, Wisdom, Intelligence, Benignity, Severity, Beauty,
Victory, Glory, Permanency, and Empire. These are attributes of God; and
this idea, that God re- veals Himself by His attributes, and that the human
mind cannot perceive or discern God Himself, in his works, but only his
mode of manifesting Himself, is a profound Truth.  We know of the
Invisible only what the Visible reveals.
    Wisdom was called NOUS and LOGOS, lN- TELLECT or the WORD.
Intelligence, source of the oil of anoint- ing, responds to the Holy
Ghost of the Christian Faith.
    Beauty is represented by green and yellow.  Victory is YA-
HOVAH-TSABAOTH, the column on the right hand, the column Jachin: Glory is
the column Boaz, on the left hand.  And thus our symbols appear again in
the Kabalah. And again the LIGHT, the object of our labors, appears as
the creative power of Deity. The circle, also, was the special symbol of
the first Sephirah, Kether, or the Crown.
    We do not further follow the Kabalah in its four Worlds of Spirits,
Aziluth, Briah, Yezirah, and Asiah, or of emanation, crea- tion,
formation, and fabrication, one inferior to and one emerging from the
other, the superior always enveloping the inferior;its doctrine that, in
all that exists, there is nothing purely material; that all comes from
God, and in all He proceeds by irradiation; that everything subsists by
the Divine ray that penetrates crea- tion; and all is united by the
Spirit of God, which is the life of life; so that all is God; the
Existences that inhabit the four worlds, inferior to each other in
proportion to their distance from the Great King of Light: the contest
between the good and evil Angels and Principles, to endure until the
Eternal Himself comes to end it and re-establish the primitive harmony;
the four distinct parts of the Soul of Man; and the migrations of impure
souls, until they are sufficiently purified to share with the Spirits of
Light the contemplation of the Supreme Being whose Splendor fills the
Universe.
    The WORD was also found in the Phoenician Creed.  As in all those of
Asia, a WORD of God, written in starry characters, by the planetary
Divinities, and communicated by the Demi-Gods, as a profound mystery, to
the higher classes of the human race, to be communicated by them to
mankind, created the world. The faith of the Phoenicians was an emanation
from that ancient worship of the Stars, which in the creed of Zoroaster
alone, is connected with a faith in one God.  Light and Fire are the most
important agents in the Phoenician faith.  There is a race of children of
the Light. They adored the Heaven with its Lights, deeming it the
Supreme God.
    Everything emanates from a Single Principle, and a Primitive Love,
which is the Moving Power of All and governs all.  Light, by its union
with Spirit, whereof it is but the vehicle or symbol, is the Life of
everything, and penetrates everything.  It should therefore be respected
and honored everywhere; for everywhere it governs and controls.
    The Chaldaic and Jerusalem Paraphrasts endeavored to render the
phrase, DEBAR-YAHOVAH, the Word of God, a personalty, wherever they met
with it. The phrase, "And God created man," is, in the Jerusalem Targum,
"And the Word of IHUH created man."
    So, in xxviii. Gen. 20,21, where Jacob says: "If God (IHIH ALHIM)
will be with me... then shall IHUH be my ALHIM; UHIH IHUH LI LALHIM; and
this stone shall be God's House (IHIH BITH ALHIM): Onkelos paraphrases
it, "If the word of IHUH will be my help . . . . then the word of IHUH
shall be my God."
    So, in iii. Gen. 8, for "The Voice of the Lord God" (IHUH ALHIM),
we have, "The Voice of the Word of IHUH."
    In ix. Wisdom, 1, "O God of my Fathers and Lord of Mercy! who has
made all things with thy word."
    And in xviii. Wisdom, 15, "Thine Almighty Word  leap- ed down from
Heaven."
    Philo speaks of the Word as being the same with God.  So in several
places he calls it  the Second Di- vinity; the Image of God: the Divine
Word that made all things:  substitute, of God; and the like.
    Thus when John commenced to preach, had been for ages agitated, by
the Priests and Philosophers of the East and West, the great questions
concerning the eternity or creation of matter: immediate or intermediate
creation of the Universe by the Su- preme God; the origin, object, and
final extinction of evil; the relations between the intellectual and
material worlds, and be- tween God and man; and the creation, fall,
redemption, and restoration to his first estate, of man.
    The Jewish doctrine, differing in this from all the other Oriental
creeds, and even from the Alohayistic legend with which the book of Genesis
commences, attributed the creation to the immediate action of the Supreme
Being.  The Theosophists of the other Eastern Peoples interposed more
than one intermediary between God and the world.  To place between them
but a single Being, to suppose for the production of the world but a
single inter- mediary, was, in their eyes, to lower the Supreme Majesty. 
The interval between God, who is perfect Purity, and matter, which is
base and foul, was too great for them to clear it at a single step. Even
in the Occident, neither Plato nor Philo could thus im- poverish the
Intellectual World.
    Thus, Cerinthus of Ephesus, with most of the Gnostics, Philo, the
Kabalah, the Zend-Avesta, the Puranas, and all the Orient, deemed the
distance and antipathy between the Supreme Being and the material world
too great, to attribute to the former the creation of the latter.  Below,
and emanating from, or created by, the Ancient of Days, the Central
Light, the Beginning, or First Principle, one, two, or more Principles,
Existences, or Intellectual Beings were imagined, to some one or more of
whom (without any immediate creative act on the part of the Great
Immovable, Silent Deity), the immediate creation of the material and
mental universe was due.
    We have already spoken of many of the speculations on this point. To
some, the world was created by the LOGOS or WORD, first manifestation of,
or emanation from, the Deity.  To others, the beginning of creation was
by the emanation of a ray of Light, creating the principle of Light and
Life.  The Primitive THOUGHT, creating the inferior Deities, a succession
of INTELL- GENCES, the Iynges of Zoroaster, his Amshaspands, Izeds, and
Ferouers, the Ideas of Plato, the Aions of the Gnostics, the Angels of
the Jews, the Nous, the Demiourgos, the DIVINE REA- SON, the Powers or
Forces of Philo, and the Alohayim, Forces or Superior Gods of the ancient
legend with which Genesis begins,- to these and other intermediaries the
creation was owing.  No re- straints were laid on the Fancy and the
Imagination. The veriest Abstractions became Existences and Realities.
The attributes of God, personified, became Powers, Spirits,
Intelligences.
    God was the Light of Light, Divine Fire, the Abstract Intellec-
tuality, the Root or Germ of the Universe. Simon Magus, founder of the
Gnostic faith, and many of the early Judaizing Christians, admitted that
the manifestations of the Supreme Being, as FATHER, or JEhOVAh, SON or
CHRIST, and HOLY SPIRIT, were only so many different modes of Existence,
or Forces of the same God.  To others they were, as were the multitude of
Sub- ordinate Intelligences, real and distinct beings.
    The Oriental imagination revelled in the creation of these In-
ferior Intelligences, Powers of Good and Evil, and Angels.  We have
spoken of those imagined by the Persians and the Kabalists. In the
Talmud, every star, every country, every town, and almost every tongue
has a Prince of Heaven as its Protector. JEHUEL, is the guardian of fire,
and MICHAEL of water.  Seven spirits assist each; those of fire being
Seraphiel, Gabriel, Nitriel, Tammael, Tchimschiel, Hadarniel, and
Sarniel. These seven are represented by the square columns of this
Degree, while the columns JACHIN and BOAZ represent the angels of fire
and water.  But the col- umns are not representatives of these alone.
    To Basilides, God was without name, uncreated, at first contain- ing
and concealing in Himself the Plenitude of His Perfections; and when
these are by Him displayed and nianifested, there result as many
particular Existences, all analogous to Him, and still and always Him. To
the Essenes and the Gnostics, the East and the West both devised this
faith; that the Ideas, Conceptions, or Manifestations of the Deity were
so many Creations, so many Be- ings, all God, nothing without Him, but
more than what we now understand by the word ideas.  They emanated from
and were again merged in God.  They had a kind of middle existence be-
tween our modern ideas, and the intelligences or ideas, elevated to the
rank of genii, of the Oriental mythology.
    These personified attributes of Deity, in the theory of Basilides,
were the  First-born, Nous or Mind: from it emanates Logos, or THE WORD
from it : Phronesis, Intellect :from it Sophia, Wisdom :from it Dunamis,
Power: and from it Dikaiosune, Righteousness: to which latter the Jews
gave the name of Eirene, Peace, or Calm, the essential characteristics
of Divinity, and harmonious effect of all His perfections. The whole
number of successive emanations was 365, expressed by the Gnostics, in
Greek letters, by the mystic word Abraxas; desig- nating God as
manifested, or the aggregate of his manifestations; but not the Supreme
and Secret God Himself. These three hun- dred and sixty-five
Intelligences compose altogether the Fullness or Plenitude  of the Divine
Emanations.
    With the Ophites, a sect of the Gnostics, there were seven infe-
rior spirits (inferior to Ialdabaoth, the Demiourgos or Actual Cre- ator
: Michael, Suriel, Raphael, Gabriel, Thauthabaoth, Erataoth, and
Athaniel, the genii of the stars called the Bull; the Dog, the Lion, the
Bear, the Serpent, the Eagle, and the Ass that formerly figured in the
constellation Cancer, and symbolized respectively by those animals; as
Ialdabaoth, Iao, Adonai, Eloi, Orai, and As- taphai were the genii of
Saturn, the Moon, the Sun, Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury.
    The WORD appears in all these creeds.  It is the Ormuzd of
Zoroaster, the Ainsoph of the Kabalah, the Nous of Platonism and
Philonism, and the Sophia or Demiourgos of the Gnostics.
    And all these creeds, while admitting these different manifesta-
tions of the Supreme Being, held that His identity was immutable and
permanent. That was Plato's distinction between the Being always the same
 and the perpetual flow of things inces- santly changing, the Genesis.
    The belief in dualism in some shape, was universal.  Those who held
that everything emanated from God, aspired to God, and re-entered into God,
believed that, among those emanations were two adverse Principles, of
Light and Darkness, Good and Evil. This prevailed in Central Asia and in
Syria; while in Egypt it assumed the form of Greek speculation.  In the
former, a second Intellectual Principle was admitted, active in its
Empire of Dark- ness, audacious against the Empire of Light. So the
Persians and Sabeans understood it. In Egypt, this second Principle was
Mat- ter, as the word was used by the Platonic School, with its sad at-
tributes, Vacuity, Darkness, and Death.  In their theory, matter could be
animated only by the low communication of a principle of divine life.  It
resists the influences that would spiritualize it. That resisting Power
is Satan, the rebellious Matter, Matter that does not partake of God.
    To many there were two Principles; the Unknown Father, or Supreme
and Eternal God, living in the centre of the Light, happy in the perfect
purity of His being; the other, eternal Mat- ter, that inert, shapeless,
darksome mass, which they considered as the source of all evils, the
mother and dwelling-place of Satan.
    To Philo and the Platonists, there was a Soul of the world, cre-
ating visible things, and active in them, as agent of the Supreme
Intelligence; realizing therein the ideas communicated to Him by that
Intelligence, and which sometimes excel His conceptions, but which He
executes without comprehending them.
    The Apocalypse or Revelations, by whomever written, belongs to the Orient and to extreme antiquity.  It reproduces what is far older than
itself.  It paints, with the strongest colors that the Ori- ental genius
ever employed, the closing scenes of the great strug- gle of Light, and
Truth, and Good, against Darkness, Error, and Evil; personified in that
between the New Religion on one side, and Paganism and Judaism on the
other.  It is a particular appli- cation of the ancient myth of Ormuzd
and his Genii against Ahri- man and his Devs; and it celebrates the final
triumph of Truth against the combined powers of men and demons.  The
ideas and imagery are borrowed from every quarter; and allusions are
found in it to the doctrines of all ages.  We are continually reminded
of the Zend-Avesta, the Jewish Codes, Philo, and the Gnosis. The Seven
Spirits surrounding the Throne of the Eternal, at the opening of the
Grand Drama, and acting so important a part throughout, everywhere the
first instruments of the Divine Will and Vengence, are the Seven
Amshaspands of Parsism; as the Twenty-four Ancients, offering to the
Supreme Being the first supplications and the first homage, remind us of
the Mysterious Chiefs of Judaism, foreshadow the Eons of Gnosticism, and
re- produce the twenty-four Good Spirits created by Ormuzd and in-
closed in an egg.
    The Christ of the Apocalypse, First-born of Creation and of the
Resurrection is invested with the characteristics of the Ormuzd and
Sosiosch of the Zend-Avesta, the Ainsoph of the Kabalah and the Carpistes
of the Gnostics. The idea that the true Initiates and Faithful become Kings
and Priests, is at once Persian, Jewish, Christian, and Gnostic.  And the
definition of the Supreme Being, that He is at once Alpha and Omega, the
be- ginning and the end--He that was, and is, and is to come, i.e., Time
illimitable, is Zoroaster's definition of Zerouane-Ak- herene.
    The depths of Satan which no man can measure; his triumph for a time
by fraud and violence; his being chained by an angel; his reprobation and
his precipitation into a sea of metal; his names of the Serpent and the
Dragon; the whole conflict of the Good Spirits or celestial armies
against the bad; are so many ideas and designations found alike in the
Zend-Avesta, the Ka- balah, and the Gnosis.
    We even find in the Apocalypse that singular Persian idea, which
regards some of the lower animals as so many Devs or ve- hicles of Devs.
    The guardianship of the earth by a good angel, the renewing of the
earth and heavens, and the final triumph of pure and holy men, are the
same victory of Good over Evil, for which the whole Orient looked.
    The gold, and white raiments of the twenty-four Elders are, as in
the Persian faith, the signs of a lofty perfection and divine purity.
    Thus the Human mind labored and struggled and tortured itself for
ages, to explain to itself what it felt, without confessing it, to be
inexplicable. A vast crowd of indistinct abstractions, hovering in the
imagination, a train of words embodying no tangible mean- ing, an
inextricable labyrinth of subtleties, was the result.
    But one grand idea ever emerged and stood prominent and un-
changeable over the weltering chaos of confusion.  God is great, and
good, and wise.  Evil and pain and sorrow are temporary, and for wise and
beneficent purposes.  They must be consistent with God's goodness,
purity, and infinite perfection; and there must be a mode of explaining
them, if we could but find it out; as, in all ways we will endeavor to
do. Ultimately, Good will pre- vail, and Evil be overthrown. God, alone
can do this, and He will do it, by an Emanation from Himself, assuming
the Human form and redeeming the world.
    Behold the object, the end, the result, of the great speculations
and logomachies of antiquity; the ultimate annihilation of evil, and
restoration of Man to his first estate, by a Redeemer, a Ma- sayah, a
Christos, the incarnate Word, Reason, or Power of Deity.
    This Redeemer is the Word or Logos, the Ormuzd of Zoroaster, the
Ainsoph of the Kabalah, the Nous of Platonism and Philon- ism; He that
was in the Beginning with God, and was God, and by Whom everything was
made.  That He was looked for by all the People of the East is abundantly
shown by the Gospel of John and the Letters of Paul; wherein scarcely
anything seemed neces- sary to be said in proof that such a Redeemer was
to come;but all the energies of the writers are devoted to showing that
Jesus was that Christos whom all the nations were expecting; the "Word,"
the Masayah, the Anointed or Consecrated One.
    In this Degree the great contest between good and evil, in antici-
pation of the appearance and advent of the Word or Redeemer is
symbolized; and the mysterious esoteric teachings of the Essenes and the
Cabalists.  Of the practices of the former we gain but glimpses in the
ancient writers; but we know that, as their doc- trines were taught by
John the Baptist, they greatly resembled those of greater purity and more
nearly perfect, taught by Jesus; and that not only Palestine was full of
John's disciples, so that the Priests and Pharisees did not dare to deny
John's inspiration; but his doctrine had extended to Asia Minor, and had
made converts in luxurious Ephesus, as it also had in Alexandria in
Egypt; and that they readily embraced the Christian faith, of which they
had before not even heard.
    These old controversies have died away, and the old faiths have
faded into oblivion.  But Masonry still survives, vigorous and strong, as
when philosophy was taught in the schools of Alexan- dria and under the
Portico; teaching the same old truths as the Essenes taught by the shores
of the Dead Sea, and as John the Baptist preached in the Desert; truths
imperishable as the Deity, and undeniable as Light.  Those truths were
gathered by the Essenes from the doctrines of the Orient and the
Occident, from the Zend-Avesta and the Vedas, from Plato and Pythagoras,
from India, Persia, Phoenicia, and Syria, from Greece and Egypt, and
from the Holy Books of the Jews. Hence we are called Knights of the East
and West, because their doctrines came from both. And these doctrines,
the wheat sifted from the chaff, the Truth seperated from Error, Masonry
has garnered up in her heart of hearts, and through the fires of
persecution, and the storms of calamity, has brought them and delivered
them unto us.  That God is One, immutable, unchangeable, infinitely just
and good; that Light will finally overcome Darkness,--Good conquer Evil,
and Truth be victor over Error ;--these, rejecting all the wild and
useless speculations of the Zend-Avesta, the Kabalah, the Gnostics, and
the Schools, are the religion and Philosophy of Masonry.
    Those speculations and fancies it is useful to study; that know- ing
in what worthless and unfruitful investigations the mind may engage, you
may the more value and appreciate the plain, simple, sublime,
universally-acknowledged truths, which have in all ages been the Light by
which Masons have been guided on their way; the Wisdom and Strength that
like imperishable columns have sustained and will continue to sustain its
glorious and magnificent Temple. 