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Egyptian Mysteries

Antiquity of Egyptian Civilization.—Al1 Egypt is an initiation. A long and narrow strip of land, watered by immense floods and surrounded by immense solitudes—such is Egypt. Very high and steep rocks protected it from the incursions of the nomadic tribes, and thus a valley, a river, and a race sufficed to create, if not the most ancient, at least one of the most ancient and illustrious cultures, a world of marvels, at a time when Europeans went naked, and dyed their skins, as Caesar found the ancient Britons, and when the Greeks, armed with bows and arrows, led a nomadic existence. The Egyptians, many thousand years before the Trojan war, had invented writing, as is proved, for instance, by the hieratic papyrus of the time of Rameses II, full of recipes and directions for the treatment of a great variety of diseases, and now in the Berlin Museum. They also knew many comforts of life, which our pride calls modern; and the Greek writers, whom the Egyptian priests called children, are full of recollections of that mysterious land, recording the father Nile, Thebes with its hundred gates, the Pyramids, Lake Meroe, the Labyrinth, the Sphinx, and the statue of Memnon saluting the rising sun.

Temples of Ancient Egypt.—Egyptian chronology, the reproof and paragon of all others, is graven on imperish­able monuments. But those obelisks, sacred to the sun, by their conical form like that of the flame; those labyrinths; those human-headed birds, typifying the intelligent soul; those scarabei, signifying creative power; those sphinxes, repre­senting force, the lion or sun, and man; those serpents, ex­pressing life and eternity ; those strange combinations of forms; those hieroglyphics—they long remained secrets for us, and perhaps always were a secret for the Egyptian people that in fear and silence erected the pyramids—all these symbols constituted the language of one of the vastest and most elaborate secret societies that ever existed. Pene­trating into those gigantic temples which seem the work of an extinct race, different from ours, as fossil quadrupeds are different from those now living; traversing those cloisters, which after many windings lend to the innermost sanctuary, we are seized by a singular thought—that of the silence and solitude which ever reigned within those edifices into which tile people were not allowed to penetrate; only the few were admitted, and we moderns are the first profane that have set foot within the hallowed precincts. The temple of Luxor is the vastest on earth—six propylaea with long files of columns, and colossi and obelisks and sphinxes; six cloisters—every new generation of kings for seventy centuries added some new portion and inscribed on the walls the history of its deeds, and every new addition removed the faithful further from the seat of the god; the marvel and mystery increased. The sixth propylaea is not finished; it is a chapter of his­tory broken off in the middle and will never be completed. The walls and pillars of the temples were covered with reli­gious and astronomical representations, and from the fact of many of these pictures showing human beings in various states of suffering and under torture, it has been assumed that the Egyptian ritual was cruel, like the Mexican but such is not the case; the pictures are only repre­sentations of the punishments said to be inflicted on the wicked in another life.

Egyptian Priests and Kings.—The priestly caste, pos­sessing all the learning, ruled first and alone; but in its own defense it armed a portion of the population; the rest it kept down by superstition, or disarmed and weakened it by corruption. To Plato, who saw it from a distance, this government seemed stupendous, and he idealized it; it was for him the “city of God,” the pattern republic. Neverthe­less, as was inevitable, might rebelled against doctrine, the soldiery broke the reign of the priesthood, and by the side of the pontiffs arose the kings, or to speak more correctly, the two series proceeded in parallels; that of the priests was not set aside, it had its palaces, the temples, strong like fort­resses, along the Nile, which were at the same time splendid abodes, agricultural establishments, commercial dépôts, and caravan stations; its members appointed and ruled the kings themselves, regulating the most minute acts of their daily conduct; they were the depositaries of the highest offices, and as the learned savants, magistrates, and physicians, enjoyed the first honors. Their chief colleges were at Thebes, Memphis, Heliopolis, and Sais; they possessed a great portion of the land, which they caused to be cultivated; paid no taxes, but collected tithes. They formed indeed the elect, privileged, and only free portion of the nation.

Exoteric and Esoteric Doctrines.—The priests were no followers of the idolatrous faith of the people; but to have undeceived the latter would have been dangerous for them­selves. The true doctrine of the unity of God, therefore, which was their secret, was only imparted to those that after many trials had been initiated into the mysteries. Their doctrines, like those of all other priesthoods, were therefore exoteric and esoteric; and the mysteries were of two kinds, the greater and the less, the former being the mysteries of Osiris and Serapis, the latter those of Isis. The mysteries of Osiris were celebrated at the autumnal equinox; those of Serapis at the summer solstice; and those of Isis at the vernal equinox.

Egyptian Mythology.—Though want of space does not allow  fully to enter upon the vast subject of Egyptian mythology, yet a few words thereon are necessary to render its bearing on the mysteries clear, and also to show its con­nection with many of the rites of modern freemasonry.

That all the symbols and ceremonies of all the ancient creeds originally had a deep and universal cosmic meaning, has already been shown but at the time when the mysteries were most flourishing that meaning was to a great extent lost, and a merely astronomical one substituted for it, as will be seen from the following explanations: Osiris, represented in Egypt by a sceptre surmounted by an eye, to signify him that rules and sees, symbolizes the sun. Osiris is evidently derived from Iswara, an epithet of Brahma, and means the Supreme Lord; it is therefore a title, and not a proper name. The same adventures that are attributed to Osiris are related of Brahma. Osiris is killed by Typhon, a serpent engendered by the mud of the Nile. But Typhon is a transposition of Python, derived from the Greek word “to putrefy,” and means no­thing else but the noxious vapors arising from steaming mud, and thus concealing the sun; wherefore in the Greek mythology Apollo—another name for the sun—is said to have slain Python with his arrows, that is to say, dispelled the vapors by his rays. Osiris having been killed by Python—to which, however, the wider meaning of the sun’s imaginary disappearance, or death, during the winter season, was attached—Isis, his wife, or the moon, goes in search of him, and at last finds his body, cut into fourteen pieces that is to say, into as many parts as there are days between the full moon and the new. She collects all the pieces, with one important exception, for which she made a substitution, which gave rise to a worship resembling that of the lingam in India, and which in Egypt was called that of the phallus. Among the Sidonians, Isis was called Ashtaroth, meaning “flocks,” “riches,” i.e., the plenty of the earth; and hence we so frequently find “asherah” and “ashtaroth” men­tioned together. In the Bible asherah is translated grove,” but this is an error; asherah means “pillar,” or the phallus, the mast of the ship of Isis, which was carried in procession at Egyptian religious festivals.

But although to the vulgar crowd Isis was only the moon, to the initiated she was Hathor, the Universal Mother, the primordial harmony and beauty, called in Egyptian “Jophis,” which the Greeks turned into “Sophia,” whence the Virgin Sophia of theosophy. Hence also the many names by which Isis was known, indicating the multifarious aspects she necessarily assumed. Her image was worshipped at Sais under the emblem of “Isis veiled,” with this in­scription: “I am all that has been, all that is, and all that will be, and no mortal has drawn aside my veil.”

Apis, or the Bull, was an object of worship throughout the ancient world, because formerly the zodiacal sign of the Bull opened the vernal equinox .

The Phoenix—The Egyptians began the year with the rising of the dog-star or Sirius. But making no allow­ance for the quarter of a day which finishes the year, the civil year every four years began one day too soon, and so the beginning of the year went successively through every one of the days of the natural year in the space of four tunes 365, which makes 1460 years. They fancied they blessed and made all the seasons to prosper by making them thus to enjoy one after another the feast of Isis, which was celebrated along with that of Sirius, though it was frequently very remote from that constellation; where­fore they introduced the image of dogs, or even the real and living animals, preceding the chariots of Isis. When in the 1461st year the feast again coincided with the rising of the star Sirius, they looked upon it as a season of plenty, and symbolized it by a bird of singular beauty, which they called Phoenix, saying that it came to die upon the altar of the sun, and that out of its ashes there arose a little worm, that gave birth to a bird perfectly like the preceding.

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