Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries. Annie Besant

life, the practice of virtue, the fulfilling of the divine Law in every detail of outer conduct, the perfection of righteousness, were – as with the Pagans – only the beginning of the way instead of the end. Nowadays religion is considered to have gloriously accomplished its object when it has made the Saint; then, it was to the Saints that it devoted its highest energies, and, taking the pure in heart, it led them to the Beatific Vision.

      The same fact of secret teaching comes out again, when Origen is discussing the arguments of Celsus as to the wisdom of retaining ancestral customs, based on the belief that "the various quarters of the earth were from the beginning allotted to different superintending Spirits, and were thus distributed among certain governing Powers, and in this way the administration of the world is carried on."133

      Origen having animadverted on the deductions of Celsus, proceeds: "But as we think it likely that some of those who are accustomed to deeper investigation will fall in with this treatise, let us venture to lay down some considerations of a profounder kind, conveying a mystical and secret view respecting the original distribution of the various quarters of the earth among different superintending Spirits."134 He says that Celsus has misunderstood the deeper reasons relating to the arrangement of terrestrial affairs, some of which are even touched upon in Grecian history. Then he quotes Deut. xxxii. 8-9: "When the Most High divided the nations, when he dispersed the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the people according to the number of the Angels of God; and the Lord's portion was his people Jacob, and Israel the cord of his inheritance." This is the wording of the Septuagint, not that of the English authorised version, but it is very suggestive of the title the "Lord" being regarded as that of the Ruling Angel of the Jews only, and not of the "Most High," i. e. God. This view has disappeared, from ignorance, and hence the impropriety of many of the statements referring to the "Lord," when they are transferred to the "Most High," e. g. Judges i. 19.

      1

      S. Mark xvi. 15.

      2

      S. Matt vii. 6.

      3

      Clarke's Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Vol. IV. Clement of Alexandria. Stromata, bk. I., ch. xii.

      4

      I. Cor. iii. 16.

      5

      Ibid., ii. 14,

1

S. Mark xvi. 15.

2

S. Matt vii. 6.

3

Clarke's Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Vol. IV. Clement of Alexandria. Stromata, bk. I., ch. xii.

4

I. Cor. iii. 16.

5

Ibid., ii. 14, 16.

6

S. John, i. 9.

7

Psalms, xlii. 1.

8

1 Cor. xv. 28.

9

Ante-Nicene Library, Vol. XII. Clement of Alexandria. Stromata, bk. V., ch. xi.

10

See Article on "Mysteries," Encyc. Britannica ninth edition.

11

Psellus, quoted in Iamblichus on the Mysteries. T. Taylor, p. 343, note on p. 23, second edition.

12

Iamblichus, as ante, p. 301.

13

Ibid., p. 72.

14

The article on "Mysticism" in the Encyclopædia Britannica has the following on the teaching of Plotinus (204-206 A.D.): "The One [the Supreme God spoken of above] is exalted above the nous and the 'ideas'; it transcends existence altogether and is not cognisable by reason. Remaining itself in repose, it rays out, as it were, from its own fulness, an image of itself, which is called nous, and which constitutes the system of ideas of the intelligible world. The soul is in turn the image or product of the nous, and the soul by its motion begets corporeal matter. The soul thus faces two ways – towards the nous, from which it springs, and towards the material life, which is its own product. Ethical endeavour consists in the repudiation of the sensible; material existence is itself estrangement from God… To reach the ultimate goal, thought itself must be left behind; for thought is a form of motion, and the desire of the soul is for the motionless rest which belongs to the One. The union with transcendent deity is not so much knowledge or vision as ecstasy, coalescence, contact." Neo-Platonism is thus "first of all a system of complete rationalism; it is assumed, in other words, that reason is capable of mapping out the whole system of things. But, inasmuch as a God is affirmed beyond reason, the mysticism becomes in a sense the necessary complement of the would-be all-embracing rationalism. The system culminates in a mystical act."

15

Iamblichus, as ante, p. 73.

16

Ibid, pp. 55, 56.

17

Ibid, pp. 118, 119.

18

Ibid, p. 118, 119.

19

Ibid, pp. 95, 100.

20

Ibid, p. 101.

21

Ibid, p. 330.

22

G. R. S. Mead. Plotinus, p. 42.

23

Iamblichus, p. 364, note on p. 134.

24

G. R. S. Mead. Orpheus, pp. 285, 286.

25

Iamblichus, p. 364, note on p. 134.

26

Iamblichus, p. 285, et seq.

27

G. R. S. Mead. Orpheus, p. 59.

28

Ibid, p. 30.

29

Ibid, pp. 263, 271.

30

G. R. S. Mead. Plotinus, p. 20.

31

Shvetâshvataropaniṣhat, vi., 22.

32

Kaṭhopaniṣṣhat, iii., 14.

33

I. Cor. xiii. 1.

34

Kaṭhopaniṣhat,

133

Vol. XXIII. Origen against Celsus, bk. V. ch. xxv.

134

Ibid. ch. xxviii.