The Phoenix. An illustrated review of occultism and philosophy

rising from the depths of Space, is the strong support of the universe. The altar of the Everlasting One is lifted up in the midst of the world and upon it flickers throughout all duration the flame of His covenant.

If we study the history of vanished races, we will discern the cause of their destruction. When a nation ceases to serve the beautiful, it has already begun to die; when a cause departs from truth, that cause has already failed. When glutted with success and tyrannical with power, like the fabled princes of Atlantis the legendary lost continent first described by Plato, men no longer love the beautiful and serve the good, they are destroyed by the weight of their own iniquity. The old writings tell us that black magic overshadowed Egypt. Perverted and licentious, the priests served the great specters invoked by their incantations. They called up monsters by their spells and fabricated false gods who were but demons in disguise. The heavenly light upon the temple altars grew fainter and fainter, for Truth became less evident as error increased in power. Lust and pride likewise undermined the solidarity of Greece and wild debauchery caused the streets of Rome to run with blood and wine. Being but men, the priests of the temples were infected with the common plague and lost the mystic word of power: the Name Ineffable the unpronounceable or secret name of the Divine.

Though an almost infinite diversity of creeds has come into manifestation since the primitive doctrine of the first ages, these creeds have all sought to achieve a single end: the restatement of that primitive revelation which, according to the doctrines of the Cabala the ancient Jewish mystical and esoteric tradition, was revealed to the patriarchs by the angelic schools. A Hermetic philosopher, writing anonymously in the sixteenth century, declared in his interpretation of The Book of the Seven Seals that there existed in the heavens above the circles of the earth a university of divine knowledge, a sort of college of celestials. Before his relapsed state, Adam himself had studied in the school of God, and when later he was banished to wander in the corporeal sphere, he was privileged by a benign Providence to preserve a faint remembrance of those transcendental doctrines that had been imparted to him by the heavenly host.

Having inclined themselves towards material concerns, Adam's descendants became tillers of the fields and builders of cities. These natural enterprises established new orders of learning concerned with the institutions of the material world. The wisdom of God and His hosts and the secrets of spiritual philosophy slowly faded from the conscious mind of the race to remain, however, permanently impressed upon the subconscious intellect. The divine arts and sciences thus came to be forgotten and in their place was erected the structure of the liberal arts, sciences, and crafts. Thus upon the footings of worldly wisdom empire was established. The sages no longer retired into the wilderness to receive that heavenly wisdom with which the messengers of that Most High nourished the hungering soul. In the terms of the same quaint philosopher quoted, but whose name has not been preserved, "The angels still attended the celestial school with appropriate humility and contribution, but men in their pride rejected the divine instruction, were expelled from the university of the elect, and set up a false knowledge upon the earth in defiance to the eternal truths they could no longer comprehend."

Such traditions, while of dubious authenticity, still embody a germ of truth which, though ridiculed by the sophist one who uses clever but false arguments, will not be rejected by the scholar. Who can deny that mankind has defied the laws of universal order and sought to set up the supremacy of his own mandates? We have all erred from the paths of wisdom, as is well witnessed by the misery everywhere apparent in mortal affairs. Men of more exalted vision than the rest have sensed the real cause of human unhappiness, and in every age the strongest of these have gone forth as reformers, sages, seers, and prophets, seeking to impart to a thoughtless world the priceless treasures of understanding. But the path of reformation is hard and martyrdom is the reward that a deluded world metes out to those who would waken it from the coma of its materialism. If we turn to the lives of the great philosophers and sages, we will discover them to be bound together in a common fraternity of purpose. We will furthermore discover that these men were initiates of secret societies, either pagan or Christian, and that their revelations so-called were but restatements of the sacred doctrines expounded by the Mysteries the secret religious rites and hidden wisdom of ancient civilizations.

The Rosicrucian rose was Martin Luther's crest. The Comte de St.-Germain initiated his disciples into the doctrines of the Illuminati an Enlightenment-era secret society and Freemasons in caves along the Rhine. Claude St. Martin, the Unknown Philosopher, received his light, if we are to believe the authorities, from the Bohemian Brothers in the dark fastnesses of the Black Forest. Then came the "divine" Cagliostro, defined by Pike as the agent of the Templars and well called by Brother Evans "the Masonic martyr." Over a hundred years have passed since Cagliostro languished in the dungeon of San Leo but the prejudice which destroyed him still remains.

Fleeing from the wrath of enthroned ignorance and living in cellars and garrets, the Hermetic philosophers of the Middle Ages preserved as a sacred trust for a better day those doctrines that had been entrusted to them from remote antiquity. Vilified by such epithets as "sorcerer" and "necromancer," these venerable adepts perpetuated at enormous personal sacrifice the mysteries of the pagan fire philosophy destined by the gods never to pass away. The names of these ancient Masters are revered by us today. We are amazed at the powers which they possessed; we bow humbly before their erudition. We are fascinated by the adventures which befell them in the fulfillment of their trust. We marvel at the profundity yet magnificent simplicity of their beliefs and the almost divine patience with which they tended the flame of philosophy and bore the burden of an afflicting age. Roger Bacon, Nicholas Flammel, Paracelsus, Helvetius, Von Helmont, Francis Bacon, Elias Ashmole, Robert Fludd, John Heydon, Eugenius Philalethes, and a host of other patrons of the arts and sciences, men of deep learning and wide experience: these illustrious men, as adepts of the Magnum Opus the Great Work; the alchemical process of spiritual transformation, look to their more fortunate Brothers of this less hazardous century for a fuller measure of accomplishment and devotion.

The adepts of the past have come to be regarded as almost mythological personalities whose lives and words, fantastically distorted, have been woven into fairy tales for the amusement of the children of the race. What is folklore but a history of mysterious hap-

A large engraving titled "ZARATHUSTRA HAS RETURNED TO HIS FLAME" illustrates this page. It depicts a towering figure made of or emerging from a pillar of fire on top of a stone altar. The fire-figure has a beard and arms stretched toward the sky. Several robed priests or Magi are at the foot of the altar, expressing worship and awe. Some are bowing and others have their hands raised. The background consists of dark, jagged mountain peaks under a turbulent, cloudy sky. The artist's signature, J.A. KNAPP, is in the bottom left.