VOLUME XXVI

NUMBER 10

E

GYPT!-mother of mysteries, cradle of initiation. The shattered remains of your mighty monuments are the admiration

of the world. We view them with a feeling akin to awe, remembering the words of an Egyptian king, who thus expressed himself regarding the great pyramid: "Built for eternity, time shrinks before it." Though immemorial years have touched the temples of the gods with comparative lightness, the ruthless hand of man has shivered the heads of colossi, and overturned many a pylon and pillar.

When night, with its blue-black canopy, studded with brilliant stars, has fallen upon the world of the Orient, these ancient ruins seem to breathe forth mystery as the earth exhales moisture. The silvery moon, sacred disk of Isis, floods the faces of the colossi, images of the gods, and intensifies their grotesque shadows. In this solemn hour of repose and silence, a weird phantasmagoria presents itself to our entranced sight. We behold the ruins restored as if by magic; pylon and pillar, obelisk and avenue of sphinxes, all are intact as of old. Within the sacred enclosure-the sanctum sanctorum-we can hear the chant of the hierophants. The candidate for the mysteries presents himself at the bronze

doors that lie dark and fast-sealed between the twin towers of the tall propylon. Carved above the portal is the winged disk, emblem of the sun and of eternal life. "Seek and ye shall find! Knock and it shall be opened unto you!" Suddenly the doors swing back with a noise like thunder; the trembling neophyte enters the gloomy building. Behind him close the brazen doors with a hollow clang. We would enter, but, alas, there is no admission to the profane. The moon passes behind a cloud, there gradually comes a faint light in the east; the dawn is breaking, the young Horus is making ready to sail the heavens in his mystic boat. The desert dream is at an end; the huge temple is once more a ruin. the shadow-haunted home of owl and bat. Upon the bank of the sacred lake a solitary crane stands, brooding upon the desolate scene. We realize to its fullest extent the vanity of earthly hopes. Where are the priests and initiates and the worshippers of Isis and Osiris, who died so many centuries ago? Are they still wandering through the shadowy realms of Amenti, or have they found the blissful "Pools of Peace" in the kingdom of the divine Osiris? Ah, who can tell! But this one fact we know: they have vanished like dreams.

What were the Mysteries of Isis and

Osiris? Most writers are agreed that they were sacred rites designed to teach certain occult, or esoteric, doctrines.

According to Renouf there was no "esoteric doctrine known to the scribes and priests alone, as distinct from the popular belief." If this be so, the wellformulated opinion among ancient writers-Grecian and Roman-that the Mysteries were designed to teach higher truths to the initiates, unknown to the masses, must be abandoned.

I cannot accept this negative conclusion. Rawlinson says (Ancient Egypt, p. 437): "The Egyptians, we are assured, had 'Mysteries;' and it was of the essence of Mysteries, in the Greek and Roman sense of the word, to distinguish between the outer husk of a religion and its inner kernel, the shell of myth and legend and allegorical fable with which it was surrounded, and the real essential doctrine or teaching which that shell contained and concealed. Initiation into the Mysteries conveyed to those who received it an explanation of rites, an interpretation of myths and legends, which gave them quite a different character from that which they bore to the uninitiated."

The Mysteries, even in the period of Egyptian decadence, undoubtedly taught the initiates many profound truths the idea of the one God, even though that idea was conveyed in a pantheistic form. The lowest kind of pantheism is still a recognition of the imminence and unity of Deity. To a believer in polytheism this revelation must have come as a sublime awaken

ing. The next highest and most logical step was to predicate the transcendency of Deity. But this latter knowledge was lost to the Egyptians of later times, if Renouf's theories are correct.

The Mysteries of Isis and Osiris were regarded with awe and wonder by the ancient world, Philosophers came. from distant lands to receive arcane instruction at the hands of the hierophants of Egypt. The initiates doubtless received instruction in the exact sciences as well as the sacred doctrines.

Pythagoras, the Grecian philosopher

and mathematician, is said to have been initiated into the Mysteries of Egypt (Porphyr. de Vita Pythag.), his life being exposed to great danger. Says Wilkinson (Ancient Egyptians, Vol. III, pp. 391-392):

The reluctance of the Egyptians, particularly in the time of the Pharaohs, to admit strangers to these holy secrets probably rendered his trial more severe even than that to which the Egyptians themselves were subjected; and it appears that notwithstanding the earnest request made by Polycrates to Amasis to obtain this favor for the philosopher, many difficulties were thrown in the way by the priests on his arrival in Egypt. Those of Heliopolis, to whom he first presented the letters given him by Amasis, referred him to the college of Memphis, under the pretext of their seniority; and these again, on the same plea, recommended him to the priests of Thebes. Respect for the king forbade them to give a direct refusal; but they hoped, says Porphyry, to alarm him by representing the arduous task he had to perform, and the repugnance of the previous ceremonies to the feelings of the Greeks. It was not, therefore, without surprise that they beheld his willingness to submit to the trials they proposed; for though many foreigners were, in aftertimes, admitted to the Mysteries of Egypt, few had then obtained the indulgence, except Thales and Eumolpus. This prejudice of the Egyptians against the Greeks is perfectly consistent with the statement of Herodotus, and is shown by other writers to have continued even after the accession of the Ptolemies and the Roman conquest.

Says Gould in his History of Freemasonry: "Of the ceremonies performed at the initiation into the Egyptian Mysteries, we must ever remain ignorant, and Sir Gardner Wilkinson expressly states that our only ing them are to be derived from our means of forming any opinions respectimperfect acquaintance with those of Greece, which were doubtless imitative of the rites practiced in Egypt.'"

An imaginative account of the cere monies of the Mysteries of Isis is to be found in Thomas Moore's beautiful story, "The Epicurean," in which the ordeals by fire, water, and air, the three great elements of the universe, are described with thrilling effect. It is generally conceded, however, that a dramatic representation of the myth of Isis and Osiris was represented in the

But more than that, the Master Mason should endeavor to practice the precepts laid down for his guidance. True Mastership consists in dominating the animal nature by the spiritual nature; the two points of the compasses being elevated above the square. The square symbolizes the earthy and material plane, the compasses the spiritual. The divine spark of life (the soul) on leaving the bosom of its Divine Source descended into matter (the Fall of Man), symbolized by the flap of the Masonic Apron as worn by an Apprentice and afterwards by a Master. The soul passes through the material plane of this our earthly life and finally seeks its original source, when after death it enters the Eternal Temple not made with hands. Initiation is regeneration, rebirth. We look back upon brethren of Isis and Osiris with mingled feelings of love and veneration. Perhaps we were identical with some of them, if reincarnation be a fact, which I am inclined to believe.

our

Says Albert Pike (Morals and Dogma, p. 379): "The object of all the mysteries was to inspire men with piety, and to console them in the miseries of life. That consolation, so afforded, was the hope of a happier future, and of passing, after death, to a state of eternal felicity. Cicero says that the initiates not only received les

sons which made life more agreeable. but drew from the ceremonies happy hopes for the moment of death. Socrates says that those who were so fortunate as to be admitted to the mysteries, possessed, when dying, the most glorious hopes of eternity. It

is a great mistake to imagine that they were the inventions of charlatanism, and means of deception. They may in lapse of time have degenerated into imposture and schools of false ideas; but they were not so at the beginning; or else the wisest and best men of antiquity have uttered the most wilful falsehoods."

The

The Mysteries of Isis and Osiris and those of Eleusis lasted until late in the Christian era, but they had become disfigured by many gross practices. sacred rites of Isis and Osiris had their last stronghold in the little island of Philæ, in the Nile, at the first cataract. There the Hierophants made a long and successful stand against the encroachments of the Christian religion. Finally there came a special edict from Constantinople, from the Emperor Theodosius, abolishing the pagan worship at Philæ. The temples of Isis and Osiris were pulled down by fanatical fellahs; the sacred shrines were violated, and thus ended those Mysteries that were the admiration of the ancient world.