Western European stream·The Great Initiates·Pythagoras: The Mysteries of Delphi

Source context

Theme

Pythagorean initiation and the esoteric-numerical doctrine transmitted through the Delphic mystery stream

Soul-faculty

Intellectual Soul

Steiner

not engaged in the GA corpus

Cross-tradition

• Neopythagorean and Neoplatonic traditionIamblichus and Porphyry both record that Pythagorean mathematical harmonics functioned as a ladder of initiation, structurally paralleling Schuré's account of number as the vehicle through which the initiate ascends from sense-perception to intelligible reality.
• Delphic oracle traditionAncient sources (Plutarch, De E apud Delphos) identify Apollo's maxim 'Know thyself' as the oracular centre of Delphic wisdom, which cross-tradition congruence with Schuré's framing of Pythagoras as transmitting a self-knowledge discipline rooted in number and cosmic order.
• Vedantic traditionThe Pythagorean doctrine that the soul is a harmony of numerical ratios shows cross-tradition congruence with the Upanishadic identification of Nada-Brahman (sound-vibration as ground of being), where cosmos and self share a common vibrational substrate.

Pythagoras: The Mysteries of Delphi

The Mysteries of Delphi

Know yourself -- and you will know the universe and the gods. -- Inscription in the Temple of Delphi.

Sleep, dream and ecstasy are the three doors opening upon the Beyond, whence come to us the science of the soul and the art of divination.

Evolution is the law of Life.

Number is the law of the Universe.

Unity is the law of God.

30Greece in the Sixth Century
The soul of Orpheus had crossed the stormy sky of nascent Greece like a divine meteor. Once he had disappeared, darkness covered it once again. After a series of revolutions the tyrants of Thrace burned his books, overturned his temples, drove out his disciples. The Greek kings and many cities, more jealous of their frenetic licence than loving that justice which flows from pure doctrines, imitated them. They wished to erase his memory, to destroy his last remains, and this was so well done that a few centuries after his death, a part of Greece doubted that he had ever existed. In vain the initiates preserved his tradition for more than a thousand years; in vain Pythagoras and Plato spoke of him as of a divine man; the sophists and rhetoricians saw in him nothing more than a legend concerning the origin of music. Even today students firmly deny the existence of Orpheus. They base themselves on the fact that neither Homer nor Hesiod mentions him. But the silence of these poets is amply explained by the censorship the local governments had placed upon the memory of the great initiator. The disciples of Orpheus missed no opportunity to rally all powers under the supreme authority of the temple of Delphi, and did not cease to repeat that it was necessary to submit the differences arising between the various states of Greece to the Council of the Amphictions. This annoyed the demagogues as well as the tyrants. Homer, who probably received his initiation in the sanctuary of Tyre, and whose mythology is the poetic translation of the theology of Sankoniaton, -- Homer the Ionian may very well not have known the Dorian Orpheus, whose tradition was held all the more secret since it was more persecuted. As for Hesiod, born near the Parnassus, he should have known Orpheus' name and teaching through the sanctuary of Delphi, but his initiators imposed silence upon him, and with good reason. Nevertheless, Orpheus lived in his work, he lived in his disciples and even in those who denied him. What is this work? Where must one find this life-soul? Is it in the fierce military oligarchy of Sparta where knowledge was scorned, ignorance built up into a system and brutality required as a complement of courage? Is it in those stern wars of Messenia in which one sees the Spartans pursue a neighboring people to the point of extermination and those Romans of Greece preface the Tarpeian rock and blood-stained laurels of the Capitol by thrusting brave Aristomenes, the defender of his country, over a precipice? Is it in the turbulent democracy of Athens, ever ready to drink of tyranny? Is it in the Praetorian Guard of Pisitratus, or in the dagger of Harmodius and Aristogiton, hidden in a myrtle branch? Is it in the numerous cities of Hellas, of Greater Greece and Asia Minor, of which Athens and Sparta are contrasting types? Is it in all these democracies and tyrannies -- envious, jealous, forever ready to tear each other asunder? -- No. The soul of Greece is not there. It is in her temples, in her Mysteries and in their initiates. It is in the sanctuary of Jupiter at Olympus, of Juno at Argos, of Ceres at Eleusis; it reigns over Athens with Minerva, it shines at Delphi with Apollo, who dominates and penetrates all the temples with his light. This is the center of Hellenic life, the head and heart of Greece. It is here that the poets who interpret sublime truths to the people in living images, and the wise men who propagate them in subtle dialectic, will receive instruction. The spirit of Orpheus moves everywhere the heart of immortal Greece throbs. We shall find it in the contests of poetry and athletics, in the games of Delphi and Olympus, important institutions which the successors of the Master invented in order to reconcile and unite the twelve Greek tribes. We are very near it in the Council of the Amphictions, that assembly of initiates, the supreme arbitration court which met at Delphi, manifesting great power of justice and concord, in which Greece found her unity in hours of bravery and abnegation.~ But this Greece of Orpheus, her spirit a pure doctrine guarded in the temples, her soul, a plastic religion, her body, a high court of justice located at Delphi, -- this Greece began to be threatened in about the seventh century. The commands of Delphi were no longer respected; sacred lands were trespassed upon. This was because the race of great inspired ones had disappeared. The spiritual and moral level had lowered. The priests sold themselves to political power; even the Mysteries began to be corrupted from this time. The general aspect of Greece had changed. The ancient priestly and agricultural royalty was followed here by tyranny pure and simple, there by military aristocracy, elsewhere by anarchical democracy. The temples had become powerless to warn men of impending dissolution. They needed a new helper. A popularization of esoteric teaching had become necessary. In order that the thought of Orpheus could live and expand in all its brilliance, it was necessary that the wisdom of the temples should pass into the ranks of the laity. Therefore, hidden under various disguises it slipped into the heads of civil legislators, into the schools of poets, beneath the porticos of philosophers. In their teaching the latter felt the same requirement that Orpheus had recognized in regard to religion -- that of two doctrines: one public, the other secret. These doctrines expounded the same truth in a different degree and under different forms commensurate with the development of the pupils. This evolution gave Greece its three great centuries of artistic creation and intellectual splendor. It allowed Orphic thought, Greece's first impetus and ideal synthesis, to concentrate all its light and to radiate it over the entire world. This took place before Greece's political edifice, undermined by internal dissensions, shook beneath the attacks of Macedonia and finally crumbled under the iron hand of Rome. The evolution of which we speak had many co-workers. It gave birth to physicists like Thales, legislators like Solon, poets like Pindar, heroes like Epaminondas; but as an official leader it had an initiate of the first order, a sovereign intelligence, creative and disciplined. Pythagoras is the master of secular Greece, as Orpheus is the master of sacerdotal Greece. Pythagoras interprets and continues the religious thought of his predecessor, applying it to the new age. But his interpretation is a creation. For he coordinates the Orphic inspirations into a complete system; he furnishes its scientific proof in his teaching, its moral proof in his institute of education, embracing them in the Pythagorean order, which outlives him. Although he appears in the broad daylight of history, Pythagoras has remained an almost legendary figure. The main reason for this is the dreadful persecution he experienced in Sicily, and which cost the lives of so many Pythagoreans. Some perished, crushed under the debris of their school which had been set afire, others died of starvation in a temple. The memory and teaching of the Master was perpetuated only by those survivors who were able to flee into Greece. At great pains and expense Plato obtained through Archytas one of Master's manuscripts. Pythagoras, by the way, never wrote his esoteric doctrine except in secret signs and in symbolic form. His real work, like that of all reformers, was effected through his oral teaching. But the essence of his system consists in the Golden Verses of Lysis, in the commentary of Hierocles, in fragments by Philolaus and Archytas, as well as in Plato's Timaeus which contains Pythagoras' cosmogony. Finally, the writers of antiquity are filled with the spirit of the philosopher of Croton. They have an endless store of anecdotes which depict his wisdom, charm and miraculous power over men. The Neoplatonists of Alexandria, the Gnostics and even the early Church Fathers quote him as an authority. These are valuable testimonies, in which eternally vibrates the powerful wave of enthusiasm that the great personality of Pythagoras knew how to communicate to Greece, and whose last effects are still felt eight centuries after his death. From a higher point of view, when opened with the keys of comparative esoterism, his doctrine presents a magnificent composite, a solid whole, whose parts are bound by a fundamental concept. In it we find a rational reproduction of the esoteric doctrine of India and Egypt, to which he gave clarity and Hellenic simplicity, adding a more forceful feeling and a more exact idea of human freedom. At the same time and in various parts of the globe, great reformers were making similar doctrines more generally known. In China, Lao-Tse departed from the esoterism of Fo-Hi; the last Buddha, Sakya-Moni, was preaching on the banks of the Ganges; in Italy, the Etruscan priesthood sent an initiate to Rome. This initiate was King Numa, who, armed with the Sibylline Books, sought to restrain the threatening ambition of the Roman Senate by wise institutions. And it is not by chance that these reformers appear at the same time among such different peoples. Their various missions are united in a common goal. They prove that at certain times a single spiritual current mysteriously passes through all mankind. Where does it come from? -- From that divine world which is beyond our sight, but whose seers and prophets are its ambassadors and witnesses. Pythagoras travelled over the entire ancient world before giving his teachings to Greece. He saw Africa and Asia, Memphis and Babylon, their politics and their initiation. His tempestuous life resembles a boat launched in the midst of a storm; with sails unfurled he pursues his goal without deviating from his path, the picture of calmness and strength in the midst of unleashed elements. His doctrine gives the sensation of a cool night following the stifling heat of a torrid day. It reminds one of the beauty of the firmament, which bit by bit displays its scintillating archipelagos and its ethereal harmonies above the head of the seer. Let us try to remove Pythagoras' life and work from both the obscurities of legend and the prejudices of the schools. Notes for this chapter:

53The Amphictyonic Oath of the allied peoples gives an idea of the grandeur and social strength of
this institution: "We swear never to overthrow the Amphictionic cities, never to turn aside from the things necessary to their needs, whether during peace or war. If any power dares trouble them, we will move against it and we will destroy its cities. Should the impious steal the offerings from the temple of Apollo, we swear that we shall use our feet, arms, voices, all our strength, against them and their accomplices!"

31Years of Travel: Samos, Memphis, Babylonia
At the beginning of the sixth century B.C. Samos was one of the most flourishing islands of Ionia. Its port faced the purple mountains of Asia Minor, from which came all wealth and culture. Behind a broad bay, the city spread itself along the green shore and arose like an amphitheater against the mountainside, at the foot of a promontory crowned with the temple of Neptune. The columns of a magnificent palace overlooked it. There the tyrant Polycrates reigned. Having deprived Samos of its freedoms, he had given it the radiance of the arts and an Asiatic splendor. Courtesans of Lesbos, summoned to Samos by him, invited young men of the city to their festivals where they taught them the most refined voluptuousness, accompanied by music, dancing and feasting. Called by Polycrates, Anacreon was brought to Samos in a trireme with velvet sails and golden masts. And, a silver cup in his hand, before this high court of pleasure the poet had his caressing odes played, perfuming the hearers like a shower of roses. The good fortune of Polycrates had become proverbial in all Greece. His friend, the Pharaoh Amasis warned him several times to fear such continuous happiness, and above all not to boast about it. Polycrates answered the Egyptian monarch's warning by throwing his ring into the sea. "I make this sacrifice to the gods," he said. The next day a fisherman brought back to the tyrant the precious ring which he had found in the belly of a fish. When the Pharaoh heard this, he said that he was breaking his friendship with Polycrates because such brazen luck would draw upon him the vengeance of the gods. In any case, Polycrates met a tragic end. One of his satraps lured him into a neighboring province, caused him to be tortured to death and ordered his body fastened to a cross on Mount Mycale. Hence, one day as the blood-red sun set in the west, the Samians could see the body of their tyrant crucified on a promontory facing the island where he had ruled in glory and pleasure. But let us return to the beginning of Polycrates' reign. On a clear night, a young man was sitting in a grove not far from the temple of Juno, whose Dorian facade was bathed in full moonlight, revealing its mystical majesty. For a long time a scroll of papyrus containing one of Homer's songs laid on the ground at his feet. His meditation, begun at dusk, continued into the silence of the night. The sun had set long ago, but its flaming disk still floated before the gaze of the young dreamer. His thought was wandering far from the visible world. Pythagoras was the son of a rich ring merchant of Samos, and of a woman named Parthenis. The Pythoness of Delphi, consulted during a trip by the newly-married couple, had promised them "a son who will be useful to all men for all time," and the oracle had sent the husband and wife to Sidon in Phoenicia so that the promised son might be conceived, formed and brought into the world far from the disturbing influences of his homeland. Even before his birth the wondrous child had been fervently dedicated by his parents to the light of Apollo in the moonlight of love. The child was born. When he was one year old, in harmony with the counsel given in advance by the priests of Delphi, his mother brought him to the temple of Adonai in a valley of Lebanon. There the high priest had blessed him, and the family returned to Samos. Parthenis' child was very beautiful, gentle, even- tempered and filled with justice. Intellectual passion alone shone in his eyes, giving a secret power to his deeds. Far from restraining him, his parents had encouraged his early desire for wisdom. He had been able to confer freely with the priests of Samos and with the scholars who were beginning to establish schools in Ionia, where they taught the principles of physics. At eighteen he had studied the lessons of Hermodamas of Samos, at twenty, those of Pherecydus at Syros; he had even conferred with Thales and Anaximander at Miletus. These masters had opened new horizons to him, but none had satisfied him. Among their contradictory teachings he inwardly sought the link, the synthesis, the unity of the Great Whole. Now Parthenis' son had reached one of those crises where the mind, excited by the contradictions in things, concentrates all its faculties in a supreme effort to see through to the goal, to find the road which leads to the sunlight of truth, to the center of life. On this warm, beautiful night, Parthenis' son looked at the earth, the temple and the starry sky. Demeter, the earth-mother, was there beneath and around him; her nature he wished to fathom. He breathed her powerful emanations, he felt the invincible attraction which bound him as a thinking atom to her breast, like an inseparable part of herself. These wise men whom he had consulted had told him, "Everything comes from her. Nothingness does not come from nothingness. The soul comes from water, or fire, or both. Subtle emanation of the elements, it escapes, only to return. Resign yourself to its fatal law. Your only merit will be to know it and to submit to it." Then he looked at the firmament and the letters of fire which the constellations form in the unfathomable depths of space. These letters had to have a meaning. For if the infinitely small, the movement of atoms, has its reason for being, would not the infinitely great, the outspread stars, whose grouping represents the body of the universe, also have significance? Indeed, each of these worlds has its own law, and all move together according to number, and in supreme harmony! But who will decipher the alphabet of the stars? The priests of Juno had said to him, "The world of the stars is the heaven of the gods, which was before earth. Your soul comes from there. Pray to the gods that your soul may ascend there once again." This meditation was interrupted by a voluptuous song which came from a garden on the banks of the Imbrasus. The lascivious voices of the Lesbians languidly mixed with the sounds of the zither; young men responded with Bacchic airs. Suddenly these voices were drowned by piercing, mournful cries coming from the port. These were the rebels whom Polycrates had ordered into a ship, to be sold as slaves in Asia. They were driven with lashes tipped with nails so that they could be tightly crowded into the rowers' galley. Their cries and blasphemies faded into the night. Everything became silent once again. The young man felt a painful tremor surge up in him, but he repressed it and concentrated his thoughts. The problem was before him, more poignant and sharp than ever. Earth said, Fate! The sky said, Providence! And mankind, poised between the two, responded, Folly, Grief, Slavery! But deep within himself the future initiate heard an invincible voice which answered the chains of earth and the glory of heaven with the cry, Freedom! Who then was right -- the sages, the priests, the madmen, the unhappy, or himself? All these voices spoke the truth; each was triumphant in its own sphere, but not one revealed to him his reason for being. The three worlds existed, eternal as the heart of Demeter, as the light of the stars and as the human heart. But only one who could find their agreement and the law of their balance would be a true sage; he alone would possess divine knowledge and would be able to help men. In the synthesis of the three worlds was to be found the secret of the cosmos! Upon pronouncing this word which he had just discovered, Pythagoras stood up. His fascinated gaze fixed itself upon the Dorian facade of the temple. The severe building seemed transfigured beneath the chaste rays of Diana. He thought he saw the ideal image of the world and the solution he was seeking. For the base, columns, architrave and triangular pediment suddenly represented for him the threefold nature of man and universe, of microcosm and macrocosm, crowned with divine unity, which is itself a trinity. Cosmos, dominated and penetrated by God, formed The holy Tetrad, vast and pure symbol, Origin of Nature and model of the gods. Yes, it was there, hidden in those geometric lines, -- the key to the universe, the science of numbers, the ternary law which rules the constitution of beings, that of the septenary which controls their evolution. And in a tremendous vision Pythagoras saw the worlds move according to the rhythm and harmony of the sacred numbers. He saw the equilibrium of earth and heaven, whose balance human freedom holds; he observed the three worlds, the natural, human and divine, supporting each other, determining one another and playing the universal drama through a double movement -- a rising and a falling. He divined the spheres of the invisible world enveloping the visible and giving it life unceasingly; he finally perceived the purification and liberation of man from this earth by a threefold initiation. He saw all this, and his life and work in an instantaneous and clear illumination, with that irrefutable certainty of spirit which feels itself in the presence of truth. It was seen as if in a flash of lightning. Now it was a question of proving through reason what his pure intelligence had grasped in the Absolute; in order to do this a lifetime and a herculean effort were needed. But where could he find the knowledge necessary to bring such an effort to a happy conclusion? Neither the songs of Homer, the sages of Iona nor the temples of Greece sufficed. The spirit of Pythagoras which suddenly had found wings, began to look into his past, his birth hidden beneath veils of mystery, and into the love of his mother. A memory of his childhood came to him clearly. He recalled that when he was one year old his mother had carried him into a valley of Lebanon, to the temple of Adonai. He saw himself a child again, his arms around Parthenis' neck, in the midst of tremendous mountains and enormous forests, where a river descended in a great waterfall. His mother was standing on a terrace shaded by tall cedars. Before her a majestic priest with a white beard smiled at mother and child while uttering serious words the child did not understand. Later his mother often reminded him of these strange words of the hierophant of Adonai: "O woman of Iona, your son will be great in knowledge, but remember that if the Greeks still possess the wisdom of the gods, the science of God is to be found only in Egypt." These words came back to him along with the memory of his mother's smile, the handsome face of the old man and the distant roar of the waterfall, dominated by the voice of the priest in a setting as beautiful as the dream of another life. For the first time he guessed the meaning of the oracle. Indeed he had heard men speak of the prodigious knowledge of the Egyptian priests and their awe-inspiring Mysteries, but he thought he could do without them. Now he realized that he needed this wisdom of God in order to penetrate to the very heart of nature, and that he would find it only in the temples of Egypt. And it was gentle Parthenis with her mother-instinct, who had prepared him for this work, had carried him as an offering to the supreme God! From that moment his decision was made to go to Egypt, there to have himself initiated. Polycrates boasted that he was the patron of philosophers as well as of poets. He promptly gave Pythagoras a letter of recommendation to Pharaoh Amasis, who in turn presented him to the priests of Memphis. The latter received him unwillingly, and only after he had overcome many difficulties. The Egyptian sages distrusted the Greeks, for they considered them superficial and undependable. Therefore they did everything to discourage this young man from Samos. But with an unshakable patience and courage the novice submitted himself to the delays and the oral tests that were imposed upon him. He knew in advance that he would achieve knowledge only by a complete domination of his entire being. His initiation lasted twenty-two years under the pontificate of the high priest, Sonchis. In the section on Hermes we have experienced the tests, the temptations, the terrors and ecstasies of the initiate of Isis, including the seeming cataleptic death of the adept and his resurrection into the Light of Osiris. Pythagoras went through all these stages, which allowed him to realize, not as empty theory but as something he had experienced, the doctrine of the Word-Light or the Universal Word, and the evolution of mankind through seven planetary cycles. At each step of this ascent the tests became more and more difficult. A hundred times one risked one's life, especially if one wished to reach the manipulation of spiritual forces, the dangerous practice of magic and theurgy. Like all great men, Pythagoras had faith in his star. Nothing that could lead to knowledge rebuffed him, and fear of death did not stop him, because he saw the life beyond. When the Egyptian priests had recognized in him an extraordinary strength of soul and that impersonal desire for wisdom which is the rarest thing in the world, they revealed to him the treasures of their experience. Now he was able to delve deeply into sacred mathematics, the science of numbers, or the universal principles, which he made the center of his system and formulated in a new way. The severity of Egyptian temple discipline taught him the tremendous power of the human will when wisely exercised and guided, and its infinite applications to the body as well as to the soul. "The science of numbers and the art of the will are the two keys of magic," said the priests of Memphis. "They open all the doors of the universe." It was in Egypt, therefore, that Pythagoras acquired this divine insight which allows one to see the spheres of life and of the sciences in a concentric order, to understand the involution of the mind in matter through universal creation, and its evolution, or its reascent to unity through this individual creation, which is called the development of consciousness. Pythagoras had achieved the summit of Egyptian priesthood and perhaps dreamed of returning to Greece, but war came and spilled over into the Nile basin, bringing all its calamities, drawing the initiate of Osiris into a new whirlwind. For a long time the despots of Asia had been plotting the destruction of Egypt. Their attacks which had been repeated for centuries, had failed in face of the wisdom of the Egyptian institutions, before the power of the priesthood and the strength of the Pharaohs. But the ancient kingdom, shelter of the wisdom of Hermes, could not last forever. The son of the conqueror of Babylon, Cambyses; pounced upon Egypt with his vast armies, starving like a cloud of locusts, and put an end to the rule of the Pharaohs. In the eyes of the sages this was a catastrophe for the whole world. Until then, Egypt had shielded Europe against Asia. Its protective influence extended throughout the Mediterranean area by means of the temples of Phoenicia, Greece and Etruria with which the Egyptian priests were in constant contact. Once this contact was destroyed, the Bull would disappear, head lowered, on the shores of Hellas. Pythagoras saw Cambyses invade Egypt. He observed the Persian despot, heir of the crowned scoundrels of Nineveh and Babylon, sack the temples of Memphis and Thebes and destroy that of Ammon. He saw the Pharaoh Psammetichus led before Cambyses, bound in chains, placed on a mound, around which were assembled the priests, the leading families and the king's court. He saw the daughter of the Pharaoh clothed in rags, followed by all her ladies-in-waiting, similarly dishonored, as well as the royal prince and two thousand young men paraded with bits in their mouths and halters on their necks, later to be beheaded. The Pharaoh Psammetichus scarcely could restrain his sobs at this terrible scene, while the infamous Cambyses, seated on his throne, enjoyed the grief of his fallen rival. For Pythagoras this was a cruel but instructive lesson in science. What a picture of unleashed animal nature in man, culminating in the monster of despotism who treads everything underfoot and by his ugly apotheosis imposes upon humanity the reign of the most implacable destiny! Cambyses had Pythagoras transported to Babylon along with a part of the Egyptian priesthood, and imprisoned him there. This colossal city which Aristotle compares to a country surrounded with walls, offered a vast field of observation. Ancient Babel, the great prostitute of the Hebrew prophets, after the Persian conquest was more than ever a pandemonium of peoples, languages, cults and religions in the midst of which Asiatic despotism raised its lofty tower. According to Persian traditions, its foundation dated back to the legendary Semiramis. It is she, they said, who built its monstrous enclosure, some fifty miles in circumference, the Imgum-Bel, its walls where two chariots ran abreast, its terraces, rising one above the other, its mighty palaces with polychrome reliefs, its temples supported by stone elephants and overhung with multi-colored dragons. There the series of despots who had conquered Chaldea, Assyria, Persia, a part of Tartary, Judea, Syria and Asia Minor, had followed one another. There Nebuchadnezzar, the assassin of Magi, had the Jewish people led into captivity. The latter continued to practice their cult in a corner of the vast city, four times larger than London. The Jews even had provided the king a powerful minister, the prophet Daniel. With Belshazzar, son of Nebuchadnezzar, the walls of old Babel finally crumbled under the avenging blows of Cyrus, and for several centuries Babylon passed under Persian domination. As a result of this series of events, at the time Pythagoras came there, representatives of three different religions rubbed elbows with each other in the high priesthood of Babylon: the ancient Chaldean priests, survivors of the Persian Magi and the elite of the Jewish captivity. The proof that these various priesthoods agreed among themselves in esoteric matters is seen in the role of Daniel who, while constantly affirming the God of Moses, remained prime minister under Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar and Cyrus. Pythagoras had to broaden his horizon still further by studying these doctrines, religions and cults, whose synthesis a few initiates still preserved. In Babylon he was able to increase his knowledge of the Magi, heirs of Zoroaster. If the Egyptian priests alone possessed the universal keys of the holy sciences, the Persian Magi had the reputation of having advanced furthest in the practice of certain arts. They attributed to themselves the manipulation of hidden powers of nature which are called pantomorphic fire and astral light. In their temples, it is said, darkness was created in broad daylight, lamps lighted of themselves, one saw the gods shining and heard the thunder roll. The Magi called that bodiless fire, that generating agent of electricity which they knew how to condense or disperse at will, the celestial lion. The electric currents of the atmosphere, magnetism of earth which they claimed they could aim at men like arrows, they named serpents. They also had made a special study of the suggestive, magnetic and creative power of human speech. They employed formulas, borrowed from the oldest languages of earth, for the evocation of spirits. The following is the psychic reason they themselves gave for this: "Do not change any of the barbaric names of evocation, for they are the pantheistic names of God; they are magnetized by the adorations of multitudes and their power is ineffable." These evocations, practiced in the midst of purifications and prayers were, properly speaking, what was later called black magic. In Babylon, therefore, Pythagoras penetrated the Mysteries of ancient magic. At the same time, in this den of despotism he saw a great spectacle: above the debris of crumbling religions of the Orient, above their decimated and degenerated priesthood, a group of initiates, courageous, united, defend their science, their faith and, as much as they can, justice. Standing before despots as did Daniel in the lion's den, always near being devoured, they charmed and subdued the wild beast of absolute force through their spiritual power, disputing every inch of ground with him. After his Egyptian and Chaldean initiation, the child of Samos knew much more about physics than his teachers, far more than any Greek, priest or layman, of his time. He knew the eternal principles of the universe and their applications. Nature had opened her depths to him; the crude veils of matter were torn from his eyes to show him the wonderful spheres of nature and of spiritualized mankind. In the temple of Nith-Isis at Memphis, in that of Bel at Babylon, he had learned many secrets of the history of religions, of the history of continents and races. He had been able to compare the advantages and disadvantages of Jewish monotheism, of Greek polytheism, Hindu trinitarianism and Persian dualism. He knew that all these religions were rays of the one truth, filtered by different degrees of intelligence and intended for various social conditions. He held the key, that is, the synthesis of all these doctrines of esoteric science. His gaze, embracing the past and looking into the future, had to judge the present with extraordinary clarity. His experience showed him mankind threatened by the greatest calamities, by the ignorance of priests, the materialism of scientists and the lack of discipline of democracies. In the midst of universal deterioration he saw Asiatic despotism increase, and from this black cloud a terrible tempest was about to break over defenseless Europe. Therefore he realized that it was time to return to Greece, in order to accomplish his mission there. It was there that he was to begin his work. Pythagoras had been confined in Babylon for twelve years. In order to leave, a release from the king of the Persians was necessary. A fellow-Greek, Democedes, the king's physician, interceded in his favor and obtained the philosopher's freedom. Therefore Pythagoras returned to Samos after thirty- four years of absence. He found his country crushed under a satrap of the great king. Schools and temples were closed; poets and scientists had fled like a flock of sparrows before the Persian Caesarism. At least he had the consolation of being present at the death of his first teacher, Hermodamas, and of finding his mother, Parthenis, who alone had not doubted his return. Everyone else had thought that the adventurous son of the jeweler of Samos was dead, but never had she doubted the oracle of Apollo. She realized that beneath his white Egyptian priest's robe, her son was preparing for a high mission. She knew that from the temple of Nith-Isis emerged the beneficent Master, the luminous prophet of whom she had dreamed in the sacred grove of Delphi, and whom the hierophant of Adonai had promised her beneath the cedars of Lebanon. Now a small ship was carrying this mother and her son on the blue waves of the Cyclades into a new exile. With all their possessions they were fleeing from oppressed and lost Samos. They had set sail for Greece. But it was neither Olympic crowns nor the poet's laurels which tempted the son of Parthenes. His work was more mysterious and greater: to awaken the sleeping soul of the gods in the sanctuaries, to give back power and prestige to the temple of Apollo and finally, to establish somewhere a school of knowledge and life from which would come, not politicians and sophists, but initiated men and women, true mothers and pure heroes!

32The Temple of Delphi, Apollonian Science,
Theory of Divination, The Pythoness Theoclea From the plain of Phocis one traversed the smiling meadows which border the banks of Plistios, to descend between high mountains into a winding valley. At each step the way became narrower and the country more impressive and more desolate. One finally reached a circle of rugged mountains topped with sharp peaks, a veritable vortex for electricity, overhung with frequent storms. Suddenly at the end of the dark gorge, the city of Delphi appeared like an eagle's nest on a rock, surrounded with precipices and overhung by the two crests of Parnassus. From afar one saw gleaming bronze Victories, brass horses, innumerable gold statues placed along the sacred way, arranged like a guard of heroes and gods around the Dorian temple of Phoebus Apollo. This was the holiest place in Greece. There Pythia prophesied, there the Amphictions met, there all the Greeks had erected chapels around the sanctuary enclosing treasures and offerings. There processions of men, women and children coming from afar, ascended the sacred way to greet the god of light. From time immemorial religion had dedicated Delphi to the veneration of peoples. Its central location in Hellas, its rock, sheltered from surprise attacks and easily defended, had helped. The god was made to strike the imagination; a uniqueness gave him his prestige. In a cavern behind the temple a fissure opened, from which came cold vapors which induced, it was said, inspiration and ecstasy. Plutarch relates that in very ancient times a shepherd, having sat down at the edge of the crevice, began to prophesy. At first he was thought insane, but when his predictions came true, people paid attention to the phenomenon. Priests took possession of the place and dedicated it to the god. From this came the institution of Pythia, whom they had sit over the fissure upon a tripod. The vapors rising from the abyss gave her convulsions, strange attacks and provoked in her that second sight which is experienced by unusual somnambulists. Aeschylus, whose statements carry weight, for he was son of a priest of Eleusis and himself an initiate, tells us in the Ewmenides through the mouth of Pythia that Delphi first had been dedicated to Earth, then to Themis (Justice), then to Phoebe (mediatory Moon) and finally to Apollo, the solar god. Each of these names represents long periods in the symbolism of the temples and embraces centuries. But the fame of Delphi dates from Apollo. Jupiter, said the poets, desiring to know the center of the earth, caused two eagles to fly simultaneously from the east and the west; they met at Delphi. Where does this prestige come from, -- this universal and uncontested authority, which made Apollo the Greek god par excellence? History teaches us nothing about this important point. Question the orators, poets, philosophers; they give only superficial explanations. The real answer to this question remained the secret of the temple. Let us try to fathom it. According to Orphic thought, Dionysus and Apollo were two different revelations of the same divinity. Dionysus represented esoteric truth, the heart and interior of things -- accessible to the initiates alone. He held the mysteries of life, of past and future incarnations, of the relationships between soul and body, the heaven and earth. Apollo personified the same truth applied to terrestrial life and the social order. Inspirer of poetry, medicine, and law, he represented science through divination, beauty through art, the peace of peoples through justice and the harmony of soul and body through purification. In a word, for the initiate, Dionysus meant nothing less than the evolving divine spirit in the universe, and Apollo his manifestation to earthly man. The priests caused the people to understand this by means of a legend. They told them that in Orpheus' time, Bacchus and Apollo had fought for the tripod of Delphi. Bacchus had willingly yielded it to his brother and had withdrawn to one of the summits of Parnassus where Thebian women celebrated his Mysteries. In reality, the two great sons of Jupiter divided the world empire. One reigned over the mysterious Beyond, the other, over the living. Therefore we find in Apollo the Solar Word, the Universal Word, the Great Mediator, the Vishnu of the Hindus, the Mithras of the Persians, the Horus of the Egyptians. But in the Greek legend of Apollo, the old ideas of Asiatic esoterism were adorned with a plastic beauty, an incisive splendor, which caused them to penetrate more deeply into human consciousness like the arrows of a god. "White winged serpents, shot from his golden bow," Aeschylus called them. Apollo bursts forth out of the deep night at Delos; all the goddesses greet his birth. He walks, he seizes his bow and lyre, his arrows whirr through the air, his quiver rattles on his shoulder. The sea throbs, and all the island shines in a flood of flame and gold. He is the epiphany of divine light, who by his august presence creates order, splendor and harmony of which poetry is the marvelous echo. The god goes to Delphi and with his arrows pierces a monstrous serpent which had been laying waste the country. By this deed he makes the land safe and establishes the temple. Picture the victory of this divine light over darkness and evil! In the ancient religions the serpent symbolized both the fateful circle of life and the evil resulting from the latter. Nevertheless, from this endangered and vanquished life comes knowledge. Apollo, destroyer of the serpent, is the symbol of the initiate who pierces nature with science, subdues it to his will and, breaking the cycle of flesh, ascends in splendor of spirit while the broken fragments of human animality writhe in the dust. This is why Apollo is the master of expiations, of purifications of soul and body. Sprinkled with the blood of the monster, he expiated, purified himself in an exile of eight years, under the bitter laurels of the valley of Tempe. Apollo, teacher of men, likes to sojourn among them; he enjoys himself in their cities among male youth, in the contests of poetry and the palestra, but he lives there only temporarily. In autumn he returns to his homeland, to the country of the Hyperboreans. The latter are the mysterious people of luminous, transparent souls who live in an eternal aurora of perfect happiness. His true priests and beloved priestesses are there. He lives with them in an intimate, deep community and when he wishes to make a royal gift to men, from the land of the Hyperboreans he sends one of those great, luminous souls, causing it to incarnate upon earth in order to teach and delight mortals. Apollo returns to Delphi every spring when peans and hymns are sung. He arrives, visible only to the initiates, in his Hyperborean brightness, drawn in a chariot by melodious swans. He returns to live in the sanctuary where Pythia transmits his oracles, where the wise men and poets listen. Then the nightingales sing, the Fountain of Castalia bubbles with silver wavelets, the living echoes of a blinding light and celestial music penetrate the heart of men and women, even moving through the veins of nature. In this legend of the Hyperboreans the esoteric essence of the myth of Apollo sheds its brilliant rays. The country of the Hyperboreans is the after-life, the empyrean of victorious souls whose astral auroras lighten the multicolored regions. Apollo himself personifies immaterial and intelligible light, of which the sun is but the physical reflection, and whence flows all truth. The wondrous swans which draw him are the poets, the divine genii, messengers of his great solar soul, leaving in their wake tremors of light and melody. Hyperborean Apollo therefore personifies the descent from heaven to earth, the incarnation of spiritual beauty in flesh and blood, the afflux of transcendent truth through inspiration and divination. But now we must lift the golden veil from the legends and penetrate into the temple itself. How was divination practiced? Here we touch upon the arcana of Apollonian science and the mysteries of Delphi. In antiquity a strong tie united divination with the solar cults. The cult of the sun is the golden key to all Mysteries referred to as "magic." From the beginning of civilization the worship of Aryan man was directed to the sun as the source of light, warmth and life. But when the thought of the wise men rose from phenomenon to cause, they perceived behind this sensitive fire and visible light a non-material fire and an intelligible light. They identified the first with the male principle, with creative spirit, the intellectual essence of the universe, and the second with its female principle, its formative soul, its plastic substance. This intuition traces back to an unknown time. The concept of which I speak is mixed with the oldest mythologies. It flows in the Vedic hymns under the form of Agni, the universal fire, which penetrates everything. It unfolds in the religion of Zoroaster, of which the cult of Mithras represents the esoteric part. Mithras is the male fire and Mitra the female light. Zoroaster formally says that by means of the Living Word the Eternal created celestial Light, seed of Ormuzd, principle of material light and material fire. For the initiate of Mithras, the sun is but a crude reflection of this Light. In his hidden grotto, the vault of which is painted with stars, he invokes the Sun of mercy, the Fire of Love, Conqueror of evil, Reconcilor of Ormuzd and Ahriman, Purifier and Mediator who inhabits the soul of the holy prophets. In the crypts of Egypt the initiates look for this same Sun under the name Osiris. When Hermes asks to view the origin of things, first he feels plunged into the ethereal waves of a delightful Light where all living forms move. Then, thrust into the darkness of dense matter, he hears a voice and recognizes the Voice of Light. At the same time a fire bursts forth from the depths; immediately, order and light result from chaos. In the Book of the Dead of the Egyptians, souls painfully sail toward this light in Isis' boat. Moses completely adopted this doctrine in Genesis: "Elohim said, Let there be light, and there was light." But the creation of this light precedes that of the sun and stars. This means that in the order of the elements and of cosmogony, intelligible Light precedes material light. The Greeks who cast the most abstract ideas into human form and dramatized them, expressed this same teaching in the myth of the Hyperborean Apollo. As in the great temples of Egypt, the divination practised at Delphi was composed of an art and a science. The art consisted in penetrating the past and future through clairvoyance or prophetic ecstasy; its science consisted in calculating the future according to the laws of universal evolution. Art and science controlled each other. It is known that clairvoyance and prophecy were practised at Delphi through the intermediary of young and old women called the Pythia or Pythonesses, and who played the passive role of somnambulists. The priests interpreted, translated and arranged their often confusing oracles according to their own points of view. Modern historians have seen in the institution of Delphi merely the exploitation of superstition by intelligent charlatanism. But in addition to the assent by all philosophical antiquity to the divining science at Delphi, several oracles reported by Herodotus, such as those concerning Croesus and the Battle of Salamis, speak in its favor. Doubtless this art had its inception, its flowering and its decadence. Charlatanism and corruption eventually became mixed with it -- witness King Cleomenes who bribed the high priestess of Delphi in order to deprive Demaratus of his throne. Plutarch wrote a treatise inquiring into the reason for the extinction of the oracles, and this degeneracy was regarded by all the ancient world as a great misfortune. During the preceding era, divination was cultivated with a religious sincerity and a scientific thoroughness which raised it to the height of a true priesthood. Above the entrance to the temple one read the inscription, "Know thyself," as well as, "Let no one without clean hands come near." These words warned everyone that earthly passions, lies and hypocrisies were not to pass over the threshold of the sanctuary, and that within its portals, divine truth reigned with fearful solemnity. Pythagoras came to Delphi only after having visited all the temples of Greece. He had spoken with Epimonides in the sanctuary of Jupiter Idaean; he had attended the Olympic Games; he had been present at the Mysteries of Eleusis, where the hierophant had given up his place to him. Everywhere he had been received as a teacher. He was awaited at Delphi. There the divining art had declined, and Pythagoras wished to restore it to its former profundity, strength and prestige. Therefore he came to Delphi less to consult Apollo than to enlighten his interpreters, rekindle their enthusiasm and awaken their energies. His deeds for them would act in turn upon the soul of Greece and prepare it for its future. Fortunately in the temple he found a marvelous instrument which a providential plan seemed to have reserved for him. Young Theoclea belonged to the school of priestesses of Apollo. She came from one of those families in which the priestly dignity is hereditary. The great impressions of the sanctuary, the ceremonies of the cult, the paeans, the festivals of Pythian and Hyperborean Apollo had nourished her in childhood. One can imagine her as one of those young girls who have an inborn and instinctive aversion for the things which attract others. They do not like Ceres at all, and fear Venus, for the heavy terrestrial atmosphere disturbs them and physical love, dimly seen, seems to them a rape of the soul, a pollution of their undefiled, virginal being. On the other hand, they are strangely sensitive to mysterious currents, to astral influences. When the moon shone in the dark groves of the Fountain of Castalia, Theoclea saw white forms gliding there. In broad daylight she heard voices. When she exposed herself to the rays of the rising sun, their vibration plunged her into a kind of ecstasy in which she heard invisible choirs. Nevertheless, she was completely insensitive to superstitions and to the popular idolatries of the cult. Statues meant nothing to her, and she had a horror of animal sacrifices. She did not speak to anyone of the appearances which disturbed her sleep. She felt instinctively that the priests of Apollo did not possess the supreme Light which she needed. On the other hand, they hoped to be able to convince her to become a Pythoness, but she felt herself drawn by a higher world, whose key she did not possess. Who were these gods who seized her with inspirations and tremors? She wished to know them before surrendering herself to them. For great souls need to see clearly, even in giving themselves to divine powers. With what deep anticipation, with what mysterious foreboding must Theoclea's soul have been stirred when she saw Pythagoras for the first time, when she heard his eloquent voice resound within the Apollonian sanctuary! She felt the presence of the initiator for whom she was waiting; she recognized her teacher. She wanted to know; through him she would know, and this inner world, this world which she bore within her, -- he would make it speak! For his part, the certainty and penetration of his gaze must have recognized in her the living, vibrant soul he was seeking, the one who would become the interpreter of his thought in the temple, who would infuse the latter with a new spirit. From the first glances they exchanged, from the first word spoken, an invisible chain bound the sage of Samos to the young priestess who listened to him silently, drinking in his words with her large, attentive eyes. Someone has said that the poet and the lyre knew each other by the profound vibration which came about when they were in each other's presence. In this manner Pythagoras and Theoclea recognized each other. At sunrise Pythagoras had long conversations with the priests of Apollo, ordained saints and prophets. He asked that the young priestess be admitted in order that he might initiate her into his secret teaching and prepare her for her task. Therefore she was allowed to attend the lessons which the master gave every day in the sanctuary. At this time Pythagoras was in the prime of life. He wore a white robe folded in Egyptian style; a band of velvet was wrapped around his broad forehead. When he spoke, his slow, serious eyes rested upon his hearer, enveloping him with a warm light. The very air about him seemed to become lighter and completely filled with intelligence. The conversations between the sage of Samos and the highest representatives of Greek religion were of the utmost importance. It was not only a question of divination and inspiration, but of the future of Greece and the destiny of the entire world. The knowledge, titles and powers he had acquired in the temples of Memphis and Babylon gave him the highest authority. To those who inspired Hellas he had the right to speak as a superior and guide. He did this with the eloquence of his genius, with the enthusiasm of his mission. To enlighten them, he began by telling of his youth, his battles and his Egyptian initiation. He spoke to them of Egypt, the mother of Greece, old as the world, unchangeable as a mummy covered with hieroglyphs in the depths of its pyramids, but possessing in its tomb the secret of peoples, of languages and of religions. Before their eyes he unfolded the Mysteries of the great earthly and heavenly Isis, mother of gods and men; and, passing them through his trials, he plunged with them into the Light of Osiris. Next he enabled them to experience the Babylon of the Chaldean Magi, their secret sciences, and those deep massive temples where they evoked the living fire in which demons and gods move. Listening to Pythagoras, Theoclea experienced surprising sensations. All that he said engraved itself in her mind in characters of fire. These things seemed both wonderful and familiar to her. While learning it was as though she actually was remembering. The words of the master enabled her to turn the pages of the universe like a book. She no longer saw the gods in their human likenesses, but in their actual natures, as they formed objects and spirits. With the gods she penetrated, ascended and descended through space. Sometimes she had the illusion of no longer feeling the limits of her body, and of being dispersed into infinity. Thus, little by little her imagination entered the invisible world, and the former impressions of it which she found in her own soul told her that this world was real, was the only reality, and that the outer world was only semblance. She felt that soon her inner eyes would open, and that she would see the spiritual world directly. From these heights the master suddenly led her back to earth by describing the misfortunes of Egypt. After speaking of the greatness of Egyptian wisdom, he told of its drowning beneath the waves of the Persian invasion. He painted the horrors of Cambyses, the pillaged temples, the sacred books destroyed in a holocaust, the priests of Osiris murdered or exiled, the monster of Persian despotism assembling under his iron hand all the old Asiatic barbarism, the wandering half-savage races of central Asia and the borders of India, now waiting only for the opportunity to fall upon Europe. Indeed, this gathering cyclone would break over Greece as surely as lightning must come from a cloud which gathers itself in the sky. Was divided Greece prepared to resist this terrible onslaught? The master was certain that it was not. Peoples do not escape their destinies, and if they do not watch unceasingly, the gods will even hasten the day of reckoning. Had not Egypt, wise nation of Hermes, crumbled after six thousand years of prosperity? Alas! Greece, beautiful Iona, would pass away even more quickly! A time will come when the solar god will abandon this temple, foreigners will overturn its stones and shepherds will lead their herds to graze upon the site of ruined Delphi. . . At these sinister prophecies, the face of Theoclea was transformed with terror. She sank to the ground, and, embracing a column with her arms, her eyes staring, sunk in thought, she resembled the genius of Grief weeping over the sepulchre of Greece. "But," continued Pythagoras, "these are secrets which must be buried in the depths of the temples. The initiate attracts death or repels it at will. By forming a magic chain of wills, the initiates can also prolong the life of peoples. It is for you to postpone the fatal hour. It is for you to cause Greece to shine; it is your task to cause the Word of Apollo to radiate in her. Peoples reflect what their gods do, but the gods reveal themselves only to those who call upon them. Who is Apollo? He is the Word of the One God Who is eternally manifest in the world. Truth is the Soul of God, His Body and His Light. The sages, seers, prophets alone see this; men see only its shadow. The glorified spirits whom we call heroes and demi-gods inhabit this Light by legions, in infinite spheres. This is the true glory of Apollo, Sun of the initiates; without its rays nothing great is accomplished upon earth. As the magnet attracts iron, so by our thoughts, our prayers, our actions, we attract divine inspiration. It is for you to transmit to Greece the Word of Apollo, and Greece will shine with an immortal light!" Through words like this Pythagoras succeeded in giving the priests of Delphi an awareness of their mission. Theoclea absorbed them with a silent, intense passion. Under the thought and will of the master she became transformed. Standing in the midst of the astonished elders, she undid her black hair, shaking it out as though she felt a fire running through it. Already her eyes, opened wide, transfigured, seemed to contemplate the solar and planetary Genii in their luminous orbits, with their powerful radiations. One day she fell into a deep, clear sleep. The five prophets surrounded her, but she remained insensible to their voices as well as to their touch. Pythagoras approached her and said, "Arise, and go where my thought sends you! For now you are a Pythoness!" At the voice of the teacher, a tremor ran through her whole body and lifted her in a long vibration. Her physical eyes were closed; she was seeing with the inner eye. "Where are you?" asked Pythagoras. "I am climbing . . . I continue climbing." "And now?" "I am bathing in the Light of Orpheus . "What do you see in the future?" "Great wars ... mighty men... victories .. . Apollo returns to inhabit his sanctuary, and I shall be his voice! But you, his messenger, Alas! Alas! You are about to leave me . . . and you will carry his Light into Italy!" With eyes closed the seeress spoke for a long time in her musical, pulsing, rhythmic voice; then, suddenly with a sob, she fell as though dead. Thus Pythagoras poured his pure teachings into Theoclea's heart and tuned her like a lyre for the breath of the gods. Once exalted to this height of inspiration, she became a torch for him, by which he could fathom his own destiny, penetrate the possible future and move into the shoreless reaches of the Invisible. This living counter-proof of the truths he taught filled the priests with admiration, awakened their enthusiasm and revived their faith. The temple now had an inspired Pythoness, as well as priests initiated in divine wisdom and art. Again Delphi could become a center of life and activity. Pythagoras remained there for a whole year. Only after instructing the priests in all the secrets of his teaching, and preparing Theoclea for her ministry did he depart for Greater Greece.

33The Order and the Teaching
(Part 1 — Notes for this chapter at the end of Part 3) The city of Croton was located on the Gulf of Tarentum, near the Lacinian promontory, facing the open sea. Like Sybaris, it was one of the most flourishing cities of southern Italy. It was renowned for its Dorian constitution, its athletes, victors in the Olympic Games and its doctors, rivals of the Asclepiad. The Sybarites owed their fame to their luxury and indolence. The Crotons perhaps would have been forgotten despite their virtues had they not had the privilege of providing a shelter for the great Pythagorean school of esoteric philosophy, which can be considered the mother of the Platonic School and the ancestor of all idealist schools. However noble the descendants may have been, the ancestor far surpassed them. The Platonic School stemmed from an incomplete initiation; the Stoic School lost the true tradition. The other systems of ancient and modern philosophy are more or less fortunate speculations, while the doctrine of Pythagoras was based on an experimental science and was accompanied by a complete organization of life. Like the ruins of the ancient city, today the secrets of the Order as well as the teacher's thought are buried deeply underground. Nevertheless, let us try to call them to life once again. For us this will be opportunity to penetrate into the heart of esoteric teaching, the arcanum of religions and philosophies, and to lift a corner of Isis' veil in the light of Greek genius. For several reasons Pythagoras chose this Dorian colony as the center of his activity. His aim was not only to teach esoteric doctrine to a circle of chosen disciples, but also to apply these principles to the education of youth and to the life of the state. This plan required the establishment of an institute for the initiation of the laity, with the underlying design of slowly transforming the political organization of the cities in the image of Pythagoras' philosophical and religious ideas. It is certain that none of the republics of Hellas or of Peloponnesus would have tolerated this innovation. The philosopher would have been accused of conspiring against the state. The Greek cities of the Gulf of Tarentum, less influenced by demagogues, were more liberal. Pythagoras was not disappointed in his hope of finding a favorable reception for his reforms in the senate of Croton. In addition, his aims extended beyond Greece. Envisioning the evolution of ideas, he foresaw the fall of Hellenism and dreamed of planting the principles of a scientific religion in the human mind. By establishing his school on the Gulf of Tarentum, he spread his esoteric ideas into Italy, and in his doctrine he preserved the purified essence of Oriental wisdom for the peoples of the Occident. Upon his arrival in Croton, which then inclined toward the pleasure-filled life of neighboring Sybaris, Pythagoras brought about a veritable revolution. Porphyry and lamblicus depict his first activities there as those of a magician rather than of a philosopher. He assembled the young men at the temple of Apollo, and by his eloquence succeeded in wresting them from debauchery. He called the women to the temple of Juno, and persuaded them to bring their golden robes and their ornaments to that place as trophies of their victory over vanity and luxury. He enveloped the austerity of his teaching in mercy; from his wisdom shone a heart-warming flame. The beauty of his face, the nobility of his person, the charm of his manner and his voice won the people. The women compared him to Jupiter; the young men to the Hyperborean Apollo. He captivated the crowd, who were astonished that at his words they fell in love with virtue and truth. The senate of Croton or "Council of One Thousand" became concerned about his growing influence. They summoned Pythagoras before them to give an account of his conduct and of the means he used to master people's minds. This was an opportunity for him to explain his ideas on education, and show that, far from threatening the Dorian constitution of Croton, his teaching would only strengthen it. When he had won over the wealthiest citizens and the majority of the senate to his project, he proposed to them the creation of an institute for him and for his students. This brotherhood of lay initiates would lead a communal life in a specially constructed building, but without separating themselves from civil life. Those among them who already were qualified as teachers could instruct in physics as well as the psychic and religious sciences. As for the young men, they would be admitted to the classes of the institute at various levels of initiation according to their intelligence and their willingness, subject to the control of the leader of the Order. But first they had to submit themselves to the rules of communal life and to pass the entire day in the institute under the supervision of their teachers. Those who wished to enter the Order formally would give up their wealth to a curator, with the privilege of taking it back whenever they wished. There would be a section for women in the institute, with parallel initiation, but differentiated and adapted to the duties of their sex. This project was adopted with enthusiasm by the senate of Croton, and after a few years a building, surrounded with broad porticoes and beautiful gardens, appeared on the outskirts of the city. The Crotons called it the Temple of the Muses, and in reality, at the center of these buildings, near the modest habitation of the master, was a temple dedicated to these divinities. Thus the Pythagorean institute was born. It became a school of education, an academy of sciences, as well as a small model city under the direction of a great initiate. Through theory and practice, through science and art united, the Pythagoreans slowly attained that science of sciences, that magic harmony of soul and mind with the universe, which they considered the arcanum of philosophy and religion. The Pythagorean school has a supreme interest for us because it was the most remarkable attempt at lay initiation. Anticipated synthesis of Hellenism and Christianity, it grafted the fruit of science onto the tree of life; it knew that inner living attainment of truth which deep faith alone can give. It was an ephemeral attainment, but nevertheless was of major importance. In order to obtain some impression of it, let us enter the Pythagorean institute with the novice, following his initiation step by step. THE TEST The white home of the initiate brothers stood on a hill among cypress and olive trees. From below, passing along the coast, one saw its porticoes, gardens and gymnasium. The Temple of the Muses, with its circular colonnade was larger than the two wings of the building. From the terrace of the outer gardens one overlooked the city with its Prythaneum, its harbor, its great assembly square. In the distance, the gulf extended itself between the sharp coasts like an agate cup, and with its blue line the Ionian Sea marked the limit of the horizon. Sometimes women clothed in various colors could be seen leaving the left wing of the building, passing down the long avenue of cypresses toward the sea. They were going to perform their rites in the temple of Ceres. Often from the right wing, men in white robes could be seen ascending to the temple of Apollo. And it was not the least attraction for the seeking mind of youth to think that the school of the initiates was placed under the protection of those two divinities. Indeed, the great goddess, Ceres, embraced the deep Mysteries of Woman and Earth, and Apollo, the solar god, revealed those of Man and Heaven. Therefore this little city of the elect shone outside and above the populous city of Croton. Its tranquil serenity appealed to the noble instincts of youth; nothing that went on inside its doors was seen, and it was known that it was not easy to gain admission to its activities. A simple green hedge served as the only barrier to the gardens of Pythagoras' institute, and the entrance door remained open all day long. But a statue of Hermes was placed there, and on its pedestal could be read: Eskato Babeloi, Go Back, Profane Ones! Everyone obeyed this commandment of the Mysteries. Pythagoras was extremely strict when it came to admitting novices, saying, "Every wood is not fit for fashioning a Mercury." The young men who wished to enter the Order had to undergo a period of probation. Presented by their parents or one of the teachers, they were allowed first to enter the Pythagorean gymnasium where the novices entered into games suited to their age. At first glance the young man observed that this gymnasium did not resemble those in the city. Here were no violent shouts, no noisy groups, neither ridiculous bragging nor vain display of strength by athletes in embryo, challenging one another and showing their muscles. Here were groups of affable, distinguished young men walking two by two beneath the porticoes or playing in the arena. With kindness and simplicity the newcomer was invited to share in their conversation as if he was one of them; there was no eyeing him with a suspicious look or greeting him with a malignant smile. In the arena they practiced running, as well as throwing javelin and discus. They also carried out make- believe combats in the form of Dorian dances, but Pythagoras had strictly forbidden physical combats in his institute, saying that these were superfluous and even dangerous, in that they tended to develop pride and hatred along with strength and agility. He believed that men destined to practice the virtues of friendship should not begin by attacking one another and rolling in the sand like wild beasts, that a real hero knows how to fight courageously, but without anger, and that hatred makes a man inferior to any adversary. The newcomer heard these sayings of the teacher repeated by the novices, who were very proud to be able to communicate their precocious wisdom to him. At the same time they asked him to express his own opinions and to contradict theirs freely. Emboldened by these advances, the naive candidate soon showed his true nature. Happy at being listened to and admired, he made speeches and boasted as much as he liked. During this time the teachers observed him closely without once reprimanding him. Unknown to him, Pythagoras came in order to study his gestures and his words. Pythagoras gave particular attention to the bearing and laughter of the young men. Laughter, he said, reveals the character in an infallible manner, and no dissimulation can beautify the laugh of a wicked man. In addition, he had made such a profound study of human physiognomy that in the latter he could discern the depths of the soul. Through these detailed observations, the master obtained a precise idea of his future disciples. At the end of a few months the decisive tests came. These were imitations of Egyptian initiation, but were very much milder and had been adapted to the Greek nature, whose sensitivity could not have survived the mortal terrors of the crypts of Memphis and Thebes. The Pythagorean aspirant was made to spend the night on the outskirts of the city in a cavern where it was said there were monsters and phantoms. Those who did not have the strength to bear the dread experiences of loneliness and night, who refused to enter or fled before morning, were considered too weak for initiation and were sent away. The moral test was more serious. Suddenly, without preparation, one fine morning the hopeful disciple was locked in a dismal, bare cell. He was handed a slate and was coldly ordered to find the meaning of one of the Pythagorean symbols, for example, "What is the meaning of a triangle inscribed in a circle?" or, "Why is the dodecahedron, enclosed in a sphere, the number of the universe?" He spent twelve hours alone in his cell with his slate and his problem, with a pitcher of water and dry bread for food. Afterward he was led into a room before the assembled novices. On this occasion they had orders mercilessly to ridicule the miserable one who, cross and starved, appeared before them like a guilty man. "There," they said, "is the new philosopher! How inspired his countenance looks! He is about to tell us his meditations! Do not conceal from us what you have discovered! You shall go through all the symbols; another month of this, and you will become a great sage!" Meanwhile the master was observing the attitude and countenance of the young man very attentively. Irritated by his fast, overwhelmed by the sarcastic tauntings, humiliated at his inability to solve an incomprehensible enigma, he had to make a great effort to control himself. Some would cry out in rage; others answered with cynical words; others, beside themselves, broke their slates in fury, pouring curses upon the school, the master, and his students. Pythagoras then appeared and calmly said that, having so poorly withstood the test of vanity, the aspirant was requested not to return to a school about which he held such a bad opinion, where the elementary virtues had to be friendship and respect for the teachers. Ashamed, the rejected candidate went away, sometimes becoming a dreadful enemy of the Order, like the celebrated Cylon who later stirred up the people against the Pythagoreans and brought about the destruction of the Order itself. On the other hand, those who bore the attacks with calmness, who answered the provocations with accurate and spiritual reflections, declaring that they were ready to begin the test again a hundred times over in order to obtain a bit of wisdom, were solemnly admitted to the novitiate, amid the enthusiastic congratulations of their new fellow students. THE FIRST STEP — PREPARATION The Novitiate and the Pythagorean Life Only then did the novitiate, called preparation (paraskeis), begin. It lasted at least two years, and could extend to five. During their instruction, the novices or listeners (akousikoi), were placed under a rule of absolute silence. They had no right to make any objection to their instructors, or to discuss their teachings. They had to receive the latter with respect, then to meditate upon them at length within themselves. In order to impress this rule upon the mind of the new listener, he was shown a statue of a woman covered with a long veil, her finger placed upon her lips. She was the Muse of Silence. Pythagoras did not believe that a youth was capable of understanding the beginning and end of things. He thought that to exercise him in dialectic and reasoning before he had been given the meaning of truth, made an empty and a pretentious sophist. Above all he wished to develop in his pupils the archetypal, higher faculty of man -- Intuition. And for this reason he did not teach mysterious or difficult things. He proceeded from natural feelings and the first duties of man at his entry into life, and showed their relationship with universal laws. Since he first inculcated in the young men a love for their parents, he enlarged this sentiment by assimilating the idea of father to that of God, the Great Creator of the universe. "Nothing is more venerable," he said, "than the quality of the father. Homer called Jupiter the ruler of the gods, but to show all his greatness, he called him the Father of gods and men." He compared the mother to generous and beneficent nature. As celestial Cybele produces the stars and Demeter produces the fruits and flowers of the fields, so the mother nourishes the child with all joy. Therefore in his father and mother the son should honor the representatives, the earthly representations of these great divinities. He further showed that the love one has for one's country comes from the love one felt for one's mother in childhood. Parents are given to us, not by chance, as man generally believes, but by an antecedent and higher order called Fortune or Necessity. It is necessary to honor them, but one ought to choose one's friend. The novices were urged to group themselves in twos according to their affinities. The youngest was to seek in the eldest the virtues he himself pursued, and the two companions should inspire each other to the better life. "The friend is another self; one must honor him like a god," said the master. If the Pythagorean rule imposed upon the novice listener absolute submission with regard to his teachers, it left him complete freedom in the joy of friendship; it even made friendship the stimulus to all virtues, the poetry of life, the pathway to the ideal. Individual strength thus was awakened, morality became living and poetic, the rule accepted with love ceased to be a restriction and became the very affirmation of individualism. Pythagoras wished obedience to be an assent. In addition, moral training paved the way for philosophical teaching. For the relationships that were established between social duties and the harmonies of the cosmos caused one to feel the law of correspondences and universal concordances. In this law lies the principle of the Mysteries, of esoteric teaching and of all philosophy. The mind of the pupil thus became accustomed to finding the mark of an invisible order upon visible reality. General maxims, concise formulations opened vistas upon the higher world. Morning and evening The Golden Verses sounded in the student's ear, accompanied by the accent of the lyre: Render dedicated worship to the immortal gods; Keep, then, your faith. In analyzing this maxim, it was shown that the gods, seemingly different, were basically the same among all peoples since they corresponded to the same spiritually animate forces active throughout the universe. The sage therefore could honor the gods of his own country, at the same time making of their essence an idea different from that of the common man. Tolerance for all cults, oneness of all peoples, unity of religions in esoteric science -- these new ideas were vaguely outlined in the novice's mind like grandiose divinities dimly seen in the splendor of the setting sun. And the Golden Lyre continued its grave teachings: Revere the memory Of heroes who are benefactors, of spirits which are demigods! Behind these lines the novice saw as through a veil the divine Psyche, the human soul, shining. The heavenly road glistened like a stream of light. For in the worship of heroes and demigods the initiate viewed the doctrine of the future life and the mystery of universal evolution. This great secret was not revealed to the novice, but he was being prepared to understand it by hearing about a hierarchy of beings called heroes and demigods who are superior to mankind, and who are its guides and protectors. It was added that since they were intercessors between man and the divine, through them man could succeed by degrees in coming close to the spiritual by practising heroic virtues. "But how can one communicate with these invisible Genii?" "Where does the soul come from?" "Where is it going, and why this dark mystery of death?" The novice did not dare formulate these questions, but they were divined from his expressions. And in reply his teachers would show him fighters on earth, statues in the temple, and glorified souls in the sky, "in the fiery citadel of the gods," which Hercules had reached. In the heart of the ancient Mysteries, all the gods were re-established in the One Supreme God. This revelation, together with all its consequences, became the key to the cosmos. For this reason it was reserved entirely to initiation proper. The novice knew nothing about this. He was allowed to see this truth only in part through what was called the power of Magic and Number. For numbers, the master taught, contain the secret of things, and God is universal harmony. The seven sacred modes built on the seven notes of the heptachord correspond to the seven colors of light, to the seven planets and to the seven forms of existence, which are reproduced in all the spheres of material and spiritual life, from the least to the greatest. The melodies of these modes, wisely instilled, should bring the soul into harmony, making it capable of vibrating exactly with the breath of truth. To this purification of the soul necessarily corresponded that of the body, which was obtained by hygiene and the strict discipline of habits. To conquer one's passions was the first duty of initiation. One who has not made an harmonious entity of his own being, cannot reflect divine harmony. Nevertheless, the ideal of the Pythagorean life had nothing of the ascetic element, since marriage was considered sacred. But chastity was recommended to the novices and moderation to the initiates as a source of power and perfection. "Do not yield to pleasure except when you agree to be untrue to yourself," said the master. He added that pleasure does not exist by itself, and compared it to "the song of the Sirens who, when they are approached, vanish and in their place cause broken bones and bloody flesh on a reef devoured by the waves, while real joy is similar to the concert of the Muses, which leaves a celestial harmony in the soul." Pythagoras believed in the virtues of the female initiate but he greatly mistrusted the uninitiated woman. To a disciple who asked him when he would be allowed to approach a woman, he answered ironically, "When you become tired of your composure." The Pythagorean day was arranged in the following manner. As soon as the burning sun arose out of the blue waves of the Ionian Sea, gilding the columns of the temple of the Muses above the home of the initiates, the young Pythagoreans sang a hymn to Apollo while executing a Dorian dance of a masculine and sacred nature. After the required ablutions, they walked to the temple in silence. Each awakening is a resurrection which has its flower of innocence. The soul should wrap itself in meditation at the beginning of the day, and remain pure for the morning lesson. In the sacred groves they gathered around the master or his interpreters and the lesson was conducted in the cool shade of the tall trees or in the shadow of the porticoes. At noon a prayer was said to the heroes and benevolent Genii. Esoteric tradition assumed that good spirits prefer to approach the earth with the solar radiation, while evil spirits haunt the shadows and pervade the atmosphere when night comes. The frugal noonday meal generally consisted of bread, honey and olives. The afternoon was dedicated to gymnastic exercises, followed by study, meditation and work on the lesson of the morning. After sunset, prayer was said in a group and they sang a hymn to the cosmogonic gods, to celestial Jupiter, to Minerva Providence and to Diana, protectress of the dead. During this time, styrax, balm or incense was burning on the altar in the open air, and the hymn, blended with the perfume, sweetly ascended in the dusk as the first stars pierced the pale blue sky. The day ended with the evening meal, after which the youngest gave a reading, analyzed by the eldest. Thus flowed the Pythagorean day, limpid as a stream, clear as a cloudless morning. The year was regulated according to the great astronomical festivals. For example, the return of Hyperborean Apollo and the celebration of the Mysteries of Ceres brought together novices and initiates, men and women of all degrees. The young girls were seen playing ivory lyres; married women in peplos of deep-red and saffron, performed in antiphonal choirs, accompanied by songs with the harmonious movements of the strophe and antistrophe which tragedy later imitated. In the midst of these great festivals where divinity seemed present in the grace of forms and movements, in the incisive melody of the choirs, the novice experienced something like a foretaste of esoteric powers, the omnipotent laws of the universe and the deep, transparent heavens. Marriage and funeral rites had a more intimate but no less solemn character. One unusual ceremony made a special appeal to the imagination. When a novice voluntarily left the institute to resume ordinary life, or when a disciple had betrayed a secret of the teaching, which happened but once, the initiates erected a tomb in the consecrated enclosure, as if he were dead. The master would say, "He is more dead than the dead, since he has returned to evil life; his body walks among men, but his soul is dead; let us mourn for it." And this tomb, erected to a living being, tortured him like his own phantom, like a sinister omen. THE SECOND STEP — PURIFICATION The Numbers — Theogony It was a beautiful day, "a golden day," as the elders said, when Pythagoras received the novice in his home, solemnly accepting him as one of his disciples. Now the novices entered into intimate and direct relationship with the master; they were invited into the inner court of his home, reserved for his faithful students. From this fact we derive the name esoterics, those of the inside, opposed to exoterics, those of the outside. Real initiation began at this stage. This revelation consisted of a complete and rational explanation of esoteric doctrine from its beginnings, continued with the mysterious science of numbers, to the final consequences of universal evolution, and dealt with the destinies and supreme goals of the divine Psyche, of the human soul. This science of numbers was known under various names in the temples of Egypt and Asia. Since it provided the key to all doctrine it was carefully concealed from the uninitiated. The numbers, letters and geometric figures, or the human representations which served as signs for this algebra of the secret world were understood only by the initiate. The latter revealed their meaning to the adepts only after they had taken the oath of silence. Pythagoras formulated this science in his book called Hieros Logos, The Sacred Word. This work has not come down to us, but the later writings by the Pythagoreans, by Philolaus of Archytas, and by Hierocles, the Dialogues of Plato, the treatises of Aristotle, as well as those of Porphyrus and Iamblicus, have made the principles known. If they have remained a closed book for modern philosophers, it is because their meaning and depth cannot be understood except by comparison with the esoteric doctrines of the Orient. Pythagoras called his disciples mathematicians because his higher teaching began with the study of numbers. But his sacred mathematics or science of principles was both transcendent and more alive than the secular mathematics known to our modern scientists and philosophers. Number was not considered an abstract quantity but an intrinsic and living virtue of the supreme One, of God, the Source of universal harmony. The science of numbers was that of the living forces of divine faculties in action in the world and in man, in macrocosm and microcosm ... By penetrating these, by distinguishing and explaining their workings, Pythagoras made nothing less than a theogony or a rational theology. A real theology should provide the principles for all the sciences. It will be the science of God only if it manifests the unity and link between the sciences of nature. It deserves its name only on condition that it constitutes the organ and synthesis of all the others. And this is exactly the role that the science of the Sacred Word played in the Egyptian temples, later formulated and made more exact by Pythagoras under the name of the science of numbers. It claimed to provide the key of being, science and life. The adept, guided by the master, had to begin by contemplating the principles in his own intellect, before following their manifold applications in the vast cycles of evolution. A modern poet felt this truth when he made Faust descend to the Mothers in order to restore life to Helena's phantom. Faust seizes the magic key, earth crumbles beneath his feet, dizziness overwhelms him and he plunges into the emptiness of space. Finally he arrives at the realm of the Mothers who guard the archetypal forms of the Great All. These Mothers are Pythagoras' numbers, the divine forces in the world. The poet has rendered for us the awe of his own thought at this plunge into the Abyss of the Unfathomable. For the ancient initiate, in whom the direct view of Intelligence slowly awakened like a new sense, this inner revelation seemed rather to be an ascent into the great incandescent sun of truth where, in the fullness of Light he viewed beings and forms projected into the whirlwind of lives by a great outpouring. He did not reach in a single day that inner possession of truth in which man sees universal life as reality by means of the concentration of his faculties. Years of exercise and that accord of intelligence, so difficult to attain, were necessary. Before using the Creative Word -- and how few succeed -- it is necessary to spell the Sacred Word, letter by letter, syllable by syllable. Pythagoras was in the habit of teaching in the Temple of the Muses. At Pythagoras' request, and according to his designs, the magistrates of Croton had had the temple built very near his home, in an enclosed garden. Only the disciples of the second degree entered it with the master. In the interior of this circular temple could be seen the nine Muses, carved in marble. Standing in the center, covered with a veil, Hestia watched, solemn and mysterious. With her left hand she protected the flame of the hearth; with her right she pointed to Heaven. Among the Greeks as well as the Romans, Hestia or Vesta is the guardian of the divine element present in everything. Conscious of the sacred fire, she had her altar in the temple of Delphi, in the Prytaneum of Athens, as well as in the humblest home. In Pythagoras' sanctuary she symbolized the divine, central science of Theogony. Surrounding her statue the esoteric Muses in the circular temple, in addition to their traditional and mythological names, bore the names of the esoteric sciences and sacred arts of which they had custody. Urania presided over astronomy and astrology; Polymnia, the science of souls in the other life and the art of divination; Melpomene with her tragic mask, the science of life and death, of transformations and of rebirths. Together these three higher Muses constituted cosmogony or celestial physics. Calliope, Clio, and Euterpe presided over the science of man, or psychology, with its corresponding arts, medicine, magic, ethics. The last group, Terpsichore, Erato, and Thalia, embraced earthly physics, the science of the elements, stones, plants, and animals. Thus from the very start the organism of the sciences, imitating the organism of the universe, appeared to the disciple in the living circle of the Muses, lighted by the divine flame. Having led his disciples into this little sanctuary, Pythagoras opened the book of the Word and began his esoteric teaching. "These Muses," he said, "are only the earthly prototypes of divine powers whose incorporeal, sublime beauty you are about to view within yourselves. Just as they look at the Fire of Hestia from which they emanate and which gives them movement, rhythm, and melody, so you must plunge into the central Fire of the Universe, into divine Spirit, in order to spread out with it in its visible manifestations." Then, with a powerful, sure hand, Pythagoras lifted his disciples from the world of forms and realities; he erased time and space, causing them to descend with him into the Great Monad, into the essence of the Uncreated Being. Pythagoras called this the first One, composed of harmony, the Male Fire which passes through everything, the Spirit which moves by itself, the Indivisible, great non-manifest, whose creative thought the ephemeral worlds make manifest, the Unique, the Eternal, the Unchangeable hidden under the many things which pass away and change. "Essence conceals itself from man," said Philolaus, the Pythagorean. "Man knows only the things of this world, where the finite is combined with the infinite. And how can he know them? Because between him and things is a harmony, a relationship, a common principle, and this principle is given to them by the One who gives them dimension and intelligibility, along with their essence. He is the common measure between object and subject, the reason for things by which the soul shares in the final cause of the One." But how can one approach Imperceptible Being? Has anyone ever seen the Master of Time, the Soul of the Suns, the Source of Intelligence? No, and it is only in becoming one with Him that one fathoms His Essence. He is like an invisible fire placed at the center of the universe, whose living flame moves in all worlds and impels all." He added that the work of initiation was to get closer to the great Being by resembling Him, by making oneself as perfect as possible, by mastering things through intelligence, by thus becoming active like Him, and not passive like them. "Your being is yours; is your soul not a microcosm, a little universe? -- But it is filled with storms and discords. Therefore, it is a question of effecting unity in harmony. Then, -- only then -- will God descend into your consciousness; then will you share His power; then will you make of your will the stone of the hearth, the altar of Hestia, the throne of Jupiter!" God, indivisible Substance, therefore, has as a number the Unity which contains Infinity; as a name, that of Father, Creator, or Eternal Masculine; as a sign, the Living Fire, the symbol of the Spirit, the essence of Everything. This is the first principle. But divine faculties are similar to the mystic lotus which the Egyptian initiate, lying in his sepulchre, sees emerging from the blackness of night. At first it is only a brilliant dot, then it opens like a flower, the incandescent center spreading out like a rose of light with a thousand petals. Pythagoras said that the Great Monad acts as a creative Dyad. From the moment God is manifest, He is double; indivisible Essence, divisible Substance, masculine, active, animating and passive feminine principles. Therefore the Dyad represented the union of the Eternal Masculine and Eternal Feminine in God, the two basic, corresponding divine faculties. Orpheus poetically expressed this idea in the line, Jupiter is the divine Husband and the divine Wife. All polytheisms, by representing divinity sometimes in the masculine, sometimes in the feminine form, have been aware of this idea intuitively. This eternal Nature, this great Wife of God, is not only earthly nature but heavenly nature, invisible to our eyes of flesh, the Soul of the world, the Primordial Light, -- in turn Maia, Isis, or Cybele who, first vibrating under the divine impulse, contains the essences of all souls, the spiritual archetypes of all beings. Demeter is next, the living earth and all earths, along with the bodies they enclose, into which souls are incarnated. Then she is Woman, companion of Man. In humanity, Woman represents nature; and the perfect image of God is not Man alone, but Man and Woman. Hence their invincible, charming, fateful attraction; hence the intoxication of love, into which the dream of infinite creation plays, as well as the vague feeling that the Eternal Masculine and the Eternal Feminine enjoy a perfect union in the Heart of God. "Honor, therefore, be to Woman, on earth and in Heaven," said Pythagoras, in harmony with all the ancient initiates. "She makes us understand that great Woman, nature. Let her be Her sanctified image and help us to return by degrees to the great Soul of the World who gives birth, preserves and renews, -- to the divine Cybele who bears the people of souls in her cloak of light!" The Monad represents the essence of God, the Dyad, His generative and reproductive faculty. The latter generates the world; it is the visible unfolding of God in space and time. But the real world is threefold. Man is composed of three elements, distinct yet blended into one another: body, soul and spirit. The universe likewise is divided into three concentric spheres: the natural world, the human world and the divine world. The Triad or the threefold law, therefore, is the essential law of things and the actual key to life. For this law is found at all stages of the ladder of life, from the constitution of the organic cell through the physiological constitution of the animal body, the functioning of the blood system and the cerebro-spinal system, to the hyperphysical constitution of man, universe and God. Thus, as if by enchantment it opens the internal structure of the universe to the astonished mind; it reveals the infinite correspondences of macrocosm and microcosm. It acts like a light which would pass into things in order to make them transparent, and to illuminate the small and large worlds like so many magic lanterns. Let us understand this law by means of the basic correspondence of man and universe. Pythagoras stated that the mind of man receives its immortal, invisible and entirely active nature from God. For the mind moves of its own accord. He called the body its mortal, divisible, passive part. He thought that what we call soul is closely linked with the mind, but that it is formed of a third intermediate element which comes from the cosmic fluid. Therefore the soul resembles an etheric body which the mind weaves and constructs. Without this etheric body the material body could not be moved, and would be only an inert, lifeless mass. The soul has a form similar to that of the body, to which it gives life and which it outlives after dissolution or death. Then, according to a metaphor employed by Pythagoras and Plato, it becomes a subtle chariot which carries the spirit toward the divine spheres or lets it fall back into the dark regions of matter, depending upon whether it is more or less good or evil. And the constitution and evolution of man are repeated in widening circles, involving every scale of being and all spheres. Just as the human psyche struggles against the spirit which attracts it and the body which holds it, so humanity evolves between the natural and animal worlds where it is held by earthly roots, and the divine world of pure spirits, its celestial source, toward which it strives to raise itself. And what occurs in mankind takes place on all earths and in all solar systems in ever-varying proportions, in ever new modes. Extend the circle to infinity and, if you can, embrace the limitless worlds with a single concept. What do you find? -- Creative thought, astral fluid and worlds in evolution: mind, soul and body of Divinity. Lifting veil after veil, and tapping the qualities of that Divinity itself, you will discover the Triad and Dyad enveloping each other in the dark depths of the Monad like an efflorescence of stars in the abysses of infinity. From this brief sketch one perceives the major importance Pythagoras attached to the threefold law. It can be said that it forms the cornerstone of esoteric science. All the great religious initiators were aware of it; all spiritual leaders felt it. An oracle of Zoroaster said, The number Three reigns everywhere in the Universe, And the Monad is its beginning. The great accomplishment of Pythagoras is that he formulated the threefold law with the clarity of Greek genius. He made it the center of his theogony and the foundation of the sciences. Already concealed in Plato' exoteric writings, but completely misunderstood by later philosophers, this concept has been fathomed in modern times by only a few rare initiates of the esoteric sciences." Today one can begin to recognize what a broad, solid base the law of universal threefoldness afforded the classification of the sciences, the building of a cosmogony and a psychology. Just as the universal threefold law is centered in the unity of God, or in the Monad, so human threefoldness is centered in the consciousness of self and in the will, which gathers all the faculties of body, soul and spirit into a living unity. Human and divine threefoldness, summed up in the Monad, constitutes the sacred Tetrad. But man realizes his own unity only in a relative manner. For his will, which acts on all his being, nevertheless cannot act simultaneously and thoroughly in its three organs, that is, in the instinct, in the soul and in the intellect. The universe and God Himself appear to him only one after the other, and are reflected by these three mirrors: 1. Viewed through the instinct and the kaleidoscope of the senses, God is multiple and infinite like His manifestations. Hence polytheism, where the number of gods is not limited. 2. Seen through the rational soul, God is two-fold, that is, mind and matter. Hence the dualism of Zoroaster, of the Manicheans, and of several other religions. 3. Seen through pure intellect He is threefold, that is, spirit, soul and body in all the manifestations of the universe. Hence the trinitarian cults of India (Brahma, Vishnu, Siva) and the Trinity itself of Christianity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit). 4. Conceived through the will which sums up the whole, God is One, and we have the hermetic monotheism of Moses in all its firmness. Here there is no further personification, no further incarnation; we leave the visible universe and return to the Absolute. Alone the Eternal rules over the world, the latter reduced to dust. The diversity of religions therefore stems from the fact that man realizes Divinity only through his own being, which is relative and finite, while at every instant God realizes the unity of the three worlds in the harmony of the universe. In itself, this last application would prove the somewhat magic virtue of the Tetragram in the order of ideas. Not only would one discover the principles of the sciences, the law of beings and their manner of evolution, but also the reason for the various religions and for their higher unity. It was truly the universal key. Thus one understands the enthusiasm with which Lysis speaks of it in The Golden Verses, and one realizes why the Pythagoreans swore by this great symbol: I swear by the One Who engraved in our hearts The sacred Tetrad, mighty and pure Symbol, Source of nature, archetype of the gods. Pythagoras pursued the teaching of Numbers still further. In each of them he defined a principle, a law, an active force of the universe. But he said that the basic principles are contained in the first four numbers, since in adding or multiplying them one finds all the others. So the infinite variety of beings who make up the universe is produced through the combinations of the three primordial forces: matter, soul and spirit under the creative impetus of divine unity which combines and differentiates them, concentrates and breaks them up. Along with the principal teachers of esoteric science, Pythagoras attached great importance to the number seven and the number ten. Seven, the compound of three and four, means the union of man and divinity. It is the number of the adepts, of the great initiates, and since it expresses complete fulfillment in everything through seven stages, it represents the law of evolution. The number ten, formed by the addition of the first four and which also contains the preceding one, is the perfect number par excellence, since it represents all the principles of Divinity evolved and united in a new unity. Upon completing the teaching of his theogony, Pythagoras showed his disciples the nine Muses, personifying the sciences grouped three by three, presiding at the triple ternary evolved in nine worlds, and with Hestia forming divine Science, Guardian of the Archetypal Fire -- the Sacred Decade. 33b. The Order and the Teaching (Part 2 — Notes for this chapter at the end of Part 3) THE THIRD STAGE — PERFECTION Cosmogony and Psychology -- Evolution of the Soul The disciple had received the principles of science from the master. This first initiation caused the thick scales of matter which had covered the eyes of his mind, to fall. Tearing away the shining veil of mythology, it had snatched him from the visible world and had cast him into limitless spaces, plunging him into the Sun of Intelligence, from which Truth radiates over the three worlds. But the science of numbers was only the preamble to the great initiation. Armed with these principles, it was now a question of descending from the heights of the Absolute into the depths of nature, there to grasp divine thought in the formation of things, and in the evolution of the soul through the worlds. Esoteric cosmogony and psychology were very close to the greatest mysteries of life, as well as to the jealously guarded secrets of the esoteric arts and sciences. Pythagoras preferred to give these lessons at night, free from the profane light of day, on the terraces of the Temple of Ceres, accompanied by the gentle murmuring of the Ionian Sea with its melodious rhythm, beneath the distant phosphorescences of the starry cosmos; or in the crypts of the sanctuary where Egyptian naphtha lamps cast a steady, gentle, clear light. The women initiates attended these nocturnal gatherings. Sometimes priests or priestesses from Delphi or Eleusis came to confirm the teachings of the master either by relating their experiences, or through the clear speech of clairvoyant sleep. Material and spiritual evolution of the world are two opposite but parallel and concordant movements upon the entire scale of being. One is explained only by the other, and together they explain the world. Material evolution represents the manifestation of God in matter through the activity of the soul of the world. Spiritual evolution represents the development of consciousness in the individual monads and their efforts to rejoin, across the cycle of lives, the divine spirit from which they emanate. To see the universe from the physical point of view or the spiritual point of view is not to consider a different object; it is to look at the world from two opposite viewpoints. From the terrestrial point of view the rational explanation of the world must begin with material evolution, since it is from this aspect that it appears to us. However, by causing us to see the work of universal Mind in matter and by pursuing the development of individual monads, this rational explanation leads to the spiritual point of view, causing us to pass from the outside to the inside of things. In this way Pythagoras explained the universe as a living being, animated by a great Soul, and permeated with a great Intelligence. The second part of his teaching therefore began with Cosmogony. If one relies upon the divisions of heaven which we find in the esoteric fragments of the Pythagoreans, this astronomy would be similar to the astronomy of Ptolomy -- a motionless earth with the sun, the planets and the entire firmament revolving around it. But the very nature of this astronomy indicates that it is entirely symbolic. At the center of his universe Pythagoras places Fire, of which the sun is but a reflection. And in all the esoterism of the East, Fire is the sign of Spirit, of divine universal Consciousness. Therefore, what our philosophers generally accept as the physics of Pythagoras and Plato is nothing but a figurative description of their secret philosophy, luminous for the initiates, but all the more impenetrable for the common man, since it was made to pass for explanations of simple physical phenomena. Let us therefore regard it as a sort of cosmography of the life of souls, nothing more nor less. The sublunar region designates the sphere where earthly attraction is exerted, and is called The Circle of Generations. By this the initiates meant that for us the earth is the region of corporeal life. All the activities which accompany the incarnation and excarnation of souls take place there. The sphere of the six planets and of the sun corresponds to ascending categories of spirits. Olympus, conceived as a revolving sphere, is called The Heaven of Fixed Things because it is assimilated within the sphere of perfect souls. This apparently naive astronomy, therefore, conceals a concept of the spiritual universe. But everything leads us to believe that the ancient initiates, and particularly Pythagoras, had much more accurate ideas of the physical universe than is generally conceived. Aristotle says positively that the Pythagoreans believed in the movement of the earth around the sun. Copernicus affirms that the idea of rotation of the earth upon its axis came to him while reading in Cicero that a certain Hycetas of Syracuse had spoken of the daily movement of the earth. To his disciples of the third degree, Pythagoras taught the dual movement of the earth. Without the exact calculations of modern science, nevertheless he knew, as did the priests of Memphis, that planets coming from the sun revolve around it; that the stars are so many solar systems governed by the same laws as ours, and that each has its appointed place in the vast universe. He also recognized that each solar world forms a little universe, having its correspondence in the spiritual world and its own heaven. But these ideas would have upset the popular mythology of the ancients, and the masses would have labeled them as sacrilege. Therefore they were never entrusted to profane writing, but were taught only under the seal of the deepest secrecy." Pythagoras said that the visible universe, the sky with all its stars, is but a passing form of the world- soul, of the great Maia, who concentrates scattered matter out of infinite spaces, then dissolves and scatters it in an imponderable, cosmic fluid. Each solar vortex possesses a part of this universal soul, which evolves for millions of centuries with a special force of impulsion and dimension. As for the powers, kingdoms, species and living souls which will appear successively in the stars of this little world, they come from God, they descend from the Father, that is, they emanate from an unchangeable and higher spiritual order as well as from a former material evolution, from an extinct solar system. Some of these invisible powers which are entirely immortal, direct the formation of this world. Others await its unfolding in cosmic sleep or in divine dream in order that they may return to visible generations according to eternal law. Nevertheless, the solar soul and its central fire which the Great Monad activates directly, cultivates matter to a condition of fusion. The planets are the daughters of the sun. Each of them, fashioned by forces of attraction and rotation inherent in matter, is endowed with a semi-conscious soul coming from the solar soul, and has its distinct character, its particular role in evolution. Since each planet is a varied expression of the thought of God and since it plays a special role in the planetary chain, the ancient wise men identified the names of the planets with those of the great gods which represent the divine Faculties in action in the universe. The four elements, of which the stars and all beings are formed, are progressive states of matter. The first, denser and cruder than all the others, is the most refractory to spirit; the last, being most refined, shows a great affinity for spirit. Earth represents the solid state, water, the liquid state, air, the gaseous state, fire, the imponderable state. The fifth element, or the etheric, represents a state of matter so subtle and alive that it is no longer atomic, and is endowed with the property of universal penetration. It is the fundamental cosmic fluid, the astral light or the world-soul. Pythagoras then spoke to his disciples about Egypt and Asia. He knew that earth in fusion was originally surrounded by a gaseous atmosphere which, liquefied by its subsequent cooling, had formed the seas. According to tradition, he summed up this idea metaphorically by saying that the seas were produced by the tears of Saturn, the cosmic age. But now appear the kingdoms, invisible seeds, floating in the ethereal aura of earth. They swirl in its gaseous robe, then are attracted into the depths of the seas and the first emerging continents. The plant and animal worlds, still combined, appear at almost the same time. Esoteric doctrine accepts the transformation of animal species, not only according to the secondary law of selection but also according to the primary law of percussion of the earth by celestial powers, and of all living beings by intelligible principles and invisible forces. When a new species appears on the globe, it is because a group of souls of a higher type becomes incarnated at a given time in the descendants of the older species, in order to cause it to ascend by remolding and transforming it. Thus esoteric doctrine explains the appearance of man upon the earth. From the point of view of earthly evolution, man is the crown of all anterior species. But this point of view no more explains his entrance upon the scene than it explains the appearance of the first algae or the first crustaceans on the bottom of the seas. All successive creations presuppose, as does each birth, the percussion of earth by the invisible powers which create life. The creation of man presupposes the previous reign of a celestial mankind which presides at the blossoming of earthly mankind. Pythagoras, enlightened by the temples of Egypt, had precise ideas on the great revolutions of the globe. Indian and Egyptian teaching spoke of the existence of the ancient austral continent, called Atlantis by the Greeks, which had produced the red race and a powerful civilization. It attributed the alternating emergence and submersion of continents to the oscillation of the poles, stating that mankind had passed through six floods. Each interdiluvian cycle brings about the dominance of a great human race. In the midst of partial eclipses of civilization and human faculties, a general upward movement takes place. Therefore, humanity is constituted and races are launched upon their careers through the cataclysms of the globe. On these continents which emerge from the seas, only to disappear again, in the midst of peoples who pass away, and civilizations which crumble, -- what is the great, poignant, everlasting mystery? This is the great inner problem of everyone. It is the problem of the soul, which discovers within itself an abyss of darkness and light, which views itself with a mixture of rapture and fear, saying, "I am not of this world, for it does not suffice to explain myself to me. I do not come from earth, and I am going elsewhere. -- But where?" This is the mystery of Psyche, which includes all others. The cosmogony of the visible world, Pythagoras said, leads us to the history of earth, and the latter brings us to the mystery of the human soul. With this we approach the sanctuary of sanctuaries, the arcanum of arcana. Once its consciousness is awakened, in its own eyes the soul becomes the most astonishing of spectacles. But even this consciousness is but the lighted surface of man's being; beneath it lie obscure and unfathomable abysses. In their unknown depths, the divine Psyche views with fascination all the lives and all worlds: past, present, and future, which Eternity unites. "Know yourself, and you will know the universe of the gods." -- This is the secret of the initiate- sages. But in order to pass through this narrow door into the vastness of the invisible universe, let us awaken in us the direct life of the purified soul, and let us arm ourselves with the torch of Intelligence, with the science of principles and sacred numbers. Pythagoras thus passed from physical to spiritual cosmogony. After the evolution of the earth, he described the evolution of the soul through the worlds. Outside initiation, this doctrine is known as the transmigration of souls. No part of esoteric doctrine has been more falsely represented than this. Hence ancient and modern literature know about it only under naive disguises. Whether his prudence or his oaths prevented him from saying all he knew, Plato, who of all the philosophers contributed most to making it popular, gave only fantastic and sometimes extravagant sketches of it. Few people today doubt that for the initiates it must have had a scientific aspect, in order to open infinite perspectives and to give the soul divine consolation. The doctrine of the ascending life of the soul through the series of existences is the common characteristic of esoteric traditions and the crown of spiritual knowledge. In addition, it is of major importance for us, since the man of today, rejects equally the abstract, vague immortality of philosophy and the childish heaven of elementary religion. Nevertheless, the dryness and emptiness of materialism shocks him. Unconsciously he strives for the consciousness of an organic immortality, which responds both to the requirements of his reason and to the needs of his soul. One understands, moreover, why the initiates of the ancient religions, knowing these truths, nevertheless kept them so secret. They are of such nature as would startle unprepared minds. They are closely linked to the profound mysteries of spiritual generation and of generation in the flesh, upon which the destinies of future mankind depend. This important hour of esoteric teaching, therefore, was awaited with a kind of awe. Through Pythagoras' speech, as through a solemn chant, heavy matter seemed to lose its weight, the things of earth became transparent, visible to the mind. Golden and blue spheres, traced with luminous essences, unfolded their orbits into Infinity. Then the male and female disciples, grouped around the master in a subterranean part of the Temple of Ceres, called the Crypt of Proserpine, listened with sacred rapture to The Celestial History of Psyche. What is the human soul? It is a part of the great Soul of the world, a spark of the divine spirit, an immortal monad. But if its possible future opens the unfathomable splendors of divine consciousness, its mysterious unfolding traces back to the origins of organized matter. In order to become what it is in modern humanity, it was necessary for it to traverse all the kingdoms of nature, every gradation of beings, gradually becoming developed through a series of innumerable existences. The mind which cultivates the worlds and condenses cosmic matter into enormous masses, is manifest in the successive kingdoms of nature in a varied intensity and an ever greater concentration. A blind and indistinct force in the mineral, individualized in the plant, polarized in the sensitivity and instinct of animals, -- it tends toward the conscious monad in this slow unfolding, while the simple monad is visible in the lowest animal. The animate and spiritual element exist, therefore, in every kingdom, although only in an infinitesimal degree in the lower kingdoms. Souls which existed in the germ state in the lower kingdoms sojourn there without leaving them for long periods of time, and it is only after great cosmic revolutions that they pass to higher kingdoms by changing planets. All they can accomplish during the period of life on a given planet is to ascend a few stages. Where does the monad begin? This is the same as asking when a cloud was formed, or when a sun shone for the first time. What constitutes the essence of any human being had to evolve during millions of years across a chain of planets and lower kingdoms, all the while preserving throughout these existences an individual principle, which follows it everywhere. This vague but indestructible individuality constitutes the divine seal of the monad in which God wishes to manifest Himself through consciousness. The higher one ascends through the series of organisms, the more the monad develops the latent principles which are in it. The polarized force becomes sensitive; sensitivity becomes instinct, instinct becomes intelligence. And as the flickering flame of consciousness is lighted, this soul becomes more independent of the body, more capable of leading a free existence. The fluid, non- polarized soul of minerals and vegetables is linked to the elements of the earth. The soul of animals, strongly attracted by earth fire, sojourns there a certain time when it has left its cadaver, then returns to the surface of the globe to be reincarnated in its species without being able to leave the lower layers of air. These latter are inhabited by elementals or animal souls, which have their role in atmospheric life and a great hidden influence on man. The human soul alone comes from heaven and returns there after death. But at what era of its long cosmic existence did the elemental soul become a human soul? Through what incandescent crucible, what ethereal flame did it pass in order to accomplish this? Transformation was not possible in an interplanetary period except through the meeting of human souls already fully formed, which had developed their spiritual principle in elemental souls and had imprinted their divine prototype, like a fiery seal upon plastic substance. But how many journeys, how many incarnations and how many planetary cycles are yet to be crossed in order for the human soul, thus formed, to become man as we know him? According to the esoteric traditions of India and Egypt, the individuals who comprise modern humanity probably began their human life on other planets, where matter is less dense than on ours. The body of man was then almost vaporous, his incarnations, light and gentle. His faculties of direct spiritual perception must have been very powerful and very subtle in this first human phase; reason and intelligence, on the other hand, were in the embryonic state. In this semi-corporeal, semi-spiritual state, man saw spirits; all was splendor and charm to his eyes, music to his ears. He even heard the harmony of the spheres. He did not think nor reflect; he scarcely wished. He caused himself to live by drinking in sounds, forms and light. Like a dream he floated from life to death, from death to life. This is what the Orphics called The Heaven of Saturn. According to Hermes' teaching, it was only as man incarnated on denser and denser planets that he became material. By becoming incarnated in dense matter, mankind lost its spiritual sense, but through man's ever greater struggle with the external world, he developed his reason, intelligence and will. Earth is the last stage of this descent into matter which Moses calls the expulsion from Paradise, and Orpheus describes as the fall into the sublunar circle. From here man can painfully reascend the circles in a series of new existences and regain his spiritual senses by the free exercise of his intellect and his will. Then only, say the disciples of Hermes and Orpheus, does man acquire consciousness and come to possess the divine through his deeds. Then only does man become the Son of God. And those who have borne this name on earth, before appearing among us, had to descend the dread spiral and ascend it once again. What then is humble Psyche like at her origin? -- A passing breath, a floating seed, a bird which emigrates from life to life, beaten by the winds. And nevertheless, from shipwreck to shipwreck, across millions of years, the soul has become the daughter of God, and no longer recognizes any other home than Heaven! This is why Greek poetry, with rich, profound, luminous symbolism, compared the soul to a winged insect, now a worm, now a heavenly butterfly. How many times was it a chrysalis, how many times a butterfly? It will never know, but it feels that it always has wings! Such was the past of the human soul. This explains its present condition and allows us partly to see its future. What is the divine Psyche's situation in earthly life? If one but thinks about it, one cannot imagine one stranger or more tragic. From the moment it painfully awakens in the dense atmosphere of earth, the soul is entwined in the folds of the body. It does not see, breathe or think except by means of the body, yet it is not the body. As it develops, it feels a flickering light forming within itself, something invisible and incorporeal which it calls its spirit, its consciousness. Indeed, man has the inborn feeling of his threefold nature, since he distinguishes, even though instinctively, between his body and his soul, between his soul and his spirit. But the captive, tormented soul struggles with its two companions as in the grip of a serpent of a thousand coils on the one hand, and an invisible genius who calls to the soul, but whose presence is only felt by the beating of its wings and fleeting lights, on the other. Sometimes the body absorbs the soul to such a degree that the latter lives only by sensations and passions; it grovels in bloody orgies of madness, or in the thick vapor of fleshly pleasures until it is frightened because of the great silence of its invisible companion. Sometimes, attracted by the latter, the soul loses itself in such lofty thoughts that it forgets the existence of the body until the latter reminds it of its presence by a tyrannical demand. Nevertheless, an inner voice tells the soul that the link between it and its invisible companion is insoluble, while death will break the soul's attachment to the body. But, tossed back and forth between the two in its everlasting struggle, the soul vainly seeks for happiness and truth. In vain does the soul seek itself in its passing sensations, in its fleeting thoughts, in the world which changes like a mirage; Finding nothing permanent, tormented, blown like a leaf in the wind, it doubts itself as well as the divine world which reveals itself to the soul through the latter's sorrow and inability to reach it. Human ignorance is inscribed in the contradictions of so-called wise men, and human sorrow is written in the unquenchable longing of the human glance. Finally; whatever the extent of his knowledge, birth and death enclose man between two fateful boundaries. They are two doors of darkness, beyond which he sees nothing. The flame of his life lights up as he enters by the one, and flickers out as he leaves by the other. Is it the same with the soul? If not, what becomes of it? The answers that the philosophers have given to this profound question are very varied. The reply of the initiates of all ages is fundamentally identical. It is in harmony with the universal sentiment and inner spirit of all religions. However, the latter have expressed this truth only in superstitious or symbolic forms. Esoteric doctrine opens much broader perspectives, and its affirmations are in accord with the laws of universal evolution. Instructed by tradition and by numerous experiences of the psychic life, the initiates have said to man, What moves in you, what you call your soul, is an etheric double of the body which encloses within itself an immortal spirit. The spirit creates and weaves its spiritual body by its own activity. Pythagoras calls the spirit the subtile chariot of the soul because it is destined to carry the soul from earth after death. This spiritual body is the organ of the spirit, its sensitive covering and its volitive instrument. It aids in the animation of the body, which would remain motionless without it. In the apparitions of the dying or the dead, this double becomes visible. But this always presupposes a special inner state on the part of the seer. The subtlety, the power and the perfection of the spiritual body vary according to the quality of the spirit it encloses, and between the substance of souls woven in the astral light but impregnated with imponderable fluids of earth and heaven, there are more numerous nuances, greater differences, than between all terrestrial bodies and all states of ponderable matter. This astral body, though much subtler and more perfect than the earthly body, is not immortal like the monad it contains. It changes, it becomes pure according to the atmospheres it passes through. The spirit molds and perpetually transforms it in its image, but never abandons it. And if spirit slowly discards it, it is while it is being clothed with yet more etheric substances. This Pythagoras taught, but he did not conceive the abstract spiritual entity, the formless monad. Spirit in action in the heights of the heavens as well as on the earth, must have an instrument; this instrument is the living soul, bestial or sublime, dark or radiant, but having a human form -- the image of God. What happens at death? At the beginning of the death agony, the soul generally senses its imminent separation from the body. It again sees all its earthly existence in brief tableaux in rapid succession and startling clarity. But when the exhausted life ceases, the soul becomes troubled and loses consciousness entirely. If it is a holy or pure soul, its spiritual senses are already awakened by the gradual separation from matter. Before dying, in one manner or another, even if only by a looking into its own state, it has the feeling of the presence of another world. At the silent urgings, the distant calls, the dim rays of the Invisible, earth already has lost its solidity, and when the soul finally escapes the cold body, joyful because of its deliverance, it feels itself lifted in a great light toward the spiritual family to which it belongs. But it is not thus with the ordinary man whose life has been divided between material instincts and higher aspirations. He awakens in a semi-consciousness, as in the torpor of a nightmare. He no longer has arms to stretch or voice to speak with, but he remembers, he suffers, he exists in a limbo of darkness and fear. The only thing he perceives is the presence of his body, from which he is detached, but for which he still feels a very strong attraction. For it is through the body that he lived, and now what is he? He seeks for himself with fright in the frozen fibers of his brain, in the congealed blood of his veins, and no longer finds himself. Is he dead? Is he alive? He would like to see, to cling to something, but he does not see; he grasps nothing. Darkness encloses him; around him, in him, everything is chaos. He sees but one thing, and that thing attracts him and horrifies him. ... It is the sinister phosphorescence of his own cast-off skin; and the nightmare begins again. ... This state can last for months or years. Its length depends upon the strength of the material instincts of the soul. But, good or bad, infernal or heavenly, slowly this soul will become aware of itself and its new condition. Once free from its body, it will escape into the abysses of the earthly atmosphere, whose magnetic streams carry it here and there, and whose wandering forms, more or less similar to itself, the soul begins to perceive like fleeting lights in a thick fog. Then on the part of the still heavy soul begins a severe struggle to ascend into the higher layers of air, to free itself from earthly attraction, to reach the region which is suited to it and which friendly guides alone can reveal in the sky of our planetary system. But before hearing and seeing them, the soul often requires a long period of time. This phase of the life of the soul has been given various names in different religions and mythologies. Moses calls it Horeb; Orpheus, Erebus; Christianity, Purgatory, or "the valley of the shadow of death." The Greek initiates identified it with the cone of shadow which extends to the moon, and which earth forever trails behind it, for this reason calling it "the gulf of Hecate." According to the Orphics and Pythagoreans, in this dark vortex whirl souls which through desperate efforts seek to reach the circle of the moon, while the violence of the winds beats them back to earth by the thousands. Homer and Virgil compare them to whirling leaves, to flocks of birds overwhelmed by the tempest. The moon played an important role in ancient esoterism. On the moon' surface, turned toward the heavens, the soul was supposed to purify its astral body before continuing its celestial ascension. It was alleged that heroes and geniuses sojourned a while on its surface turned toward earth in order to become clothed in a body appropriate for our world before reincarnating in it. In some degree the ancients attributed to the moon the power of magnetizing the soul for terrestrial incarnation or demagnetizing it in preparation for heaven. Generally speaking, these assertions, to which the initiates attached both a real and a symbolic meaning, meant that the soul must pass through an intermediate state of purification and rid itself of the impurities of earth before continuing its journey. But how is one to depict the arrival of the pure soul in its own world? Earth has disappeared like a dream. A new sleep, a delightful swoon surrounds it like a caress. It sees only its winged guide carrying it with the swiftness of light into the widths of space. What is to be said of its awakening in the valleys of an ethereal star, without elemental atmosphere, where everything, mountains, flowers, vegetation, is of an exquisite, sensitive, expressive nature? Above all, what is to be said of these luminous forms, men and women, which surround it like a sacred procession, to initiate it into the holy mystery of its new life? Are these gods and goddesses? No, they are souls like itself; and the wonder is that their intimate thought is expressed upon their faces, and that tenderness, love, desire or fear shine through these diaphanous bodies in a spectrum of shining colors. Here, bodies and faces no longer are masks of the soul, but the transparent soul appears in its true form and shines in the full light of its pure truth. Psyche has found her divine home. For the secret light in which she is bathing, which emanates from herself and which returns to her in the smile of beloved men and women, -- this light of happiness is the World-Soul. The soul feels the presence of God! Now there are no more obstacles. Now the soul will love, will know, will live without any limit other than its own wings. O strange and marvelous happiness! The soul feels joined to all its companions by profound affinities. For in the life of the beyond, those who do not like each other flee one another, and only those who understand each other remain together. The soul will celebrate the divine Mysteries with them in the most beautiful temples, in a more perfect communion. There will be living and ever new poems, of which each soul will be a strophe and in which each one will relive his life in that of the others. Then, ecstatic, the soul will throw itself into the light from above at the call of the envoys, of the winged spirits, of those who are called gods because they have escaped the cycle of rebirths. Led by these sublime intelligences, the soul will attempt to spell the great poem of the Hidden Word, to understand what it can grasp of the symphony of the universe. The soul will receive the hierarchical teachings of the circles of divine Love; it will strive to behold the Essences which the animating spirits spread through the worlds; it will contemplate the glorified spirits, the living rays of the God of Gods; and it will not be able to bear their blinding splendor, which makes the suns appear pale like dim lamps. And when the soul returns, awed by these dazzling journeys, for it trembles at these immensities, it will hear from afar the call of beloved voices and will fall back upon the golden strands of its star, beneath the pink veil of a gentle sleep, filled with white forms, perfumes and melodies. Such is the celestial life of the soul which we, dulled by earth, scarcely perceive, but which the initiates divine, the seers live and the law of analogies and universal concordances makes clear. Our crude pictures, our imperfect languages try vainly to translate it, but each living soul feels its essence in its own secret depths. If, in our present state we find it impossible to achieve this, the philosophy of the unseen formulates its psychic conditions for us. The idea of ethereal stars, invisible to us, but forming a part of our solar system and serving as a place of sojourn for happy souls, is often spoken of in the Mysteries and in esoteric tradition. Pythagoras calls it a counterpart of earth, the antichthon lighted by the central Fire, that is, by divine Light. At the end of his Phaedo, Plato describes this spiritual earth at length, although in a disguised manner. He says that it is as light as air and is surrounded by an ethereal atmosphere. In the other life, therefore, the soul preserves all its individuality. It retains only the noble memories of its earthly existence and drops the others in that forgetfulness which the poets call Lethe. Freed from its impurities, the human soul feels its consciousness returning. It has passed from the outside of the universe to the inside; with a deep sigh, Cybele-Maia, the world-Soul, has taken it into her breast once again. There Psyche will complete her dream, that dream interrupted at every moment and unceasingly begun again on earth. She will complete it in proportion to her earthly effort and her acquired light, but she will enlarge it a hundredfold. Dashed hopes will flower again in the dawn of her divine life; the dark sunsets of earth will flame forth into shining days. Yes, if man lived but a single hour of ecstasy or abnegation, that single note, taken from the dissonant scale of his earthly life, will be repeated in his other life in wondrous progressions, in aeolian harmonies. The fleeting happiness the charms of music provide, the ecstasies of love, or the raptures of charity are but the separate notes of a symphony which we shall then hear. Does this mean that the after-life will be only a long dream, a great illusion? What is more real than what the soul feels within it and what it sees fulfilled by its divine communion with other souls? As consistent and transcendent idealists, the initiates have always thought that the only real and durable things of earth are the manifestations of spiritual Beauty, Love and Truth. Since the other life can have no other goal than this Truth, Beauty and Love for those who have made it the aim of their life, they are certain that heaven will be more real than earth. The celestial life of the soul can last hundreds of thousands of years, according to its rank and its impelling force. But it is the privilege of only the more perfect, the more sublime, those who have gone beyond the circle of generations to prolong it indefinitely. The former have reached not only temporary rest, but immoral activity in truth; they have created their wings. They are inviolable, for they are light; they govern the worlds, for they see beyond. As for the others, they are led by an inflexible law to be born again in order to undergo a new trial and to elevate themselves to a higher degree or to fall still lower if they fail. Like earthly life, spiritual life has its beginning, its climax and its decline. When this life is exhausted, the soul feels overcome with heaviness, faintness and melancholy. An invincible force again draws it to the struggle and sufferings of earth. This desire is mixed with terrible apprehensions and a tremendous grief at leaving the divine life. But the time has come; the law must be fulfilled. The heaviness increases, a darkening takes place within it. It sees its luminous companions only through a veil, and this veil, growing ever thicker, causes the soul to sense the imminent separation. It hears their sad farewells; the tears of the happy loved ones permeate it like a celestial dew and will leave in its heart the burning thirst for a forgotten happiness. Then, with solemn vows it promises to remember: in the world of darkness to remember light, in the world of falsehood to remember truth, in the world of hate to remember love. Only at this price can the soul gain the return and the immortal crown. Now it awakens in a heavy atmosphere. Ethereal star, diaphanous souls, oceans of light, -- all have disappeared. Again the soul is on earth, in the vale of birth and death. Nevertheless, it has not yet lost its celestial memory, and its winged guide, still visible to its eyes, points out the Woman who will be its mother. The latter carries within her the seed of a child. But this seed will live only if the spirit comes to animate it. Then, during nine months is accomplished the most impenetrable mystery of earthly life, that of incarnation and maternity. The mysterious fusion takes place slowly, systematically, organ by organ, fiber by fiber. As the soul is plunged into this warm cave which makes a confused sound and which enlarges, as it feels itself taken into the organism, the consciousness of divine life fades and dies away. For between the soul and the light from above are interspersed waves of blood, tissues of flesh, which bind it and fill it with darkness. Already this distant light is no more than a dying flicker. Finally, dreadful pain compresses it, pressing it into a vice, a bloody convulsion tears it from the maternal soul and fixes it within a throbbing body. -- The child is born, a pitiful earthly image, and he cries with fright. But the memory of heaven has returned to the secret depths of the unconscious. It will live again only by science or by pain, by love or by death! The law of incarnation and excarnation emphasizes the real meaning of life and death. It constitutes the main link in the evolution of the soul, allowing us to follow the latter backward and forward to the depths of nature and of divinity. For this law reveals to us the rhythm and measure, the reason and purpose of immortality. Taking the latter out of the abstract or the fantastic, it makes it alive and logical by showing the correspondences between life and death. Earthly birth is a death from the spiritual point of view, and death is a heavenly birth. The alternation between the two lives is necessary for the development of the soul, and each of the two is both the result and explanation of the other. Whoever has fathomed these truths has arrived at the very heart of the Mysteries, at the center of initiation. But, you will say, what is there to prove to us the continuity of the soul, of the monad and of the spiritual entity throughout all these existences, since it successively loses memory? And what, we reply, proves to you the identity of your self while you are awake and asleep? You awaken each morning from a strange state as inexplicable as death, you revive from this nothingness, only to fall back into it again in the evening. Was it nothingness? No, for you have dreamed, and for you your dreams have been as real as the reality of waking. A change of the physiological conditions of the brain has modified the relationships of soul and body and has altered your psychic viewpoint. You were the same individual, but you found yourself in another environment and you were leading another existence. With hypnotized persons, somnambulists and clairvoyants, sleep acquires new faculties which to us seem miraculous but are the natural faculties of the soul when it is detached from the body. Once awakened, these clairvoyants no longer remember what they saw, said and did during their sleep. However, in one of their sleeps, they recall perfectly what happened in the preceding sleep and sometimes foretell with mathematical exactness what will happen in the next one. Therefore they have two consciousnesses, two distinctly alternating lives, but each has its rational continuity and revolves around the same individual. It is therefore in a very deep sense that the ancient initiate poets called sleep the brother of death. For a veil of forgetfulness separates sleeping from waking as it does birth from death. As our earthly life is divided into two alternating parts, so in the immensity of its cosmic evolution the soul alternates between incarnation and spiritual life, between earth and heaven. This alternate passage from one plane of the universe to another is no less necessary to the development of the soul than are the alternations of waking and sleeping to the corporeal life of man. We need the waves of Lethe as we pass from one existence to another. In the present, a salutary veil hides past and the future from us. But the forgetfulness is not complete, and light penetrates through the veil. Innate ideas in themselves prove an anterior existence. But there is more; we are born with a world of vague recollections, mysterious impulses and divine feelings. Among children born of gentle, calm parents are sometimes observed eruptions of wild passions which atavism does not suffice to explain, and which come from a preceding existence. Sometimes in the most humble life is to be found unexplained, sublime faithfulness to an emotion, an ideal. Do these not come from the promises and vows of celestial life? For the hidden memory which the soul has preserved is stronger than all earthly reasoning. Depending upon whether the soul becomes attached to this memory or abandons it, does it conquer or succumb. Real faith is that speechless fidelity of the soul to itself. Therefore one perceives that Pythagoras considered corporeal life to be a necessary extension of the will and celestial life to be a spiritual growth and fulfillment. Lives follow but do not resemble one another, yet with merciless logic they form a sequence. If each of them has its own law and its special destiny, their succession is governed by a general law which can be called the repercussion of lives. * According to this law, the deeds of one life have their fatal repercussion in the following life. Not only will man be born again with the instincts and faculties he developed in his preceding incarnation, but the nature of his existence itself will be determined in a large measure by the good or evil use he made of his freedom in the preceding life. "There is no word or action which does not have its echo in Eternity," says a proverb. According to esoteric doctrine this proverb is literally applicable from one life to another. For Pythagoras, the apparent injustices of destiny, the deformities, miseries, strokes of fate, -- misfortunes of all kinds -- have their explanation in the fact that each existence is the reward or punishment of the one preceding. A criminal life engenders a life of expiation; an imperfect life, a life of trials. A good life leads to a task; a higher life, to a creative mission. Retribution, which is applied with seeming imperfection from the point of view of a single life, is therefore applied with admirable perfection and minute justice in the sequence of lives. In this sequence there can be progression toward spirituality and intelligence as well as regression toward bestiality and gross materialism. As the soul climbs, by degrees it acquires a greater share in the choice of reincarnations. The inferior soul is subject to the latter; the average soul chooses among those offered to it; the superior soul, who imposes a mission upon itself, chooses reincarnation through self-sacrifice. The higher the soul, the more it preserves in its incarnations the clear and unbroken consciousness of the spiritual life which reigns beyond our earthly horizon, surrounding it like a sphere of light and sending its rays into our darkness. Tradition even has it that the initiator of the first order, the divine prophets of humanity, remembered their preceding earthly lives. According to legend, Gautama Buddha, Sakya-Muni, had found in his ecstasies the thread of his past existences, and of Pythagoras it is said that he claimed he owed the remembrance of some of his former lives to a special favor of the gods. We have said that in the series of repeated earth lives the soul can regress or advance, depending upon whether it surrenders itself to its lower or to its divine nature. In all lives there are struggles to bear, choices to make, decisions to be formed, the consequences of which cannot be determined. But on the ascending path of good, extending through a long series of incarnations, there must be a lifetime, a year, a day, perhaps an hour when the soul, arriving at a full awareness of good and evil, with a final, supreme effort can lift itself to a height from which it will not have to descend again, and where the way to the heights begins. Likewise, on the descending road of evil, there is a point where the soul can still turn back. But once this point is passed, the hardening is definitive. From incarnation to incarnation it will roll at last to the bottom of darkness. It will lose its humanity. Man will become demon, an animal demon, and his indestructible monad will be forced to begin again the painful, dreadful evolution through a long series of ascending kingdoms and innumerable existences. This is the real Hell, in harmony with the law of spiritual evolution, and is this not as terrible and even more logical than that of exoteric religions? The soul therefore can climb or descend in the course of its series of incarnations. As for earthly mankind, its journey takes place according to the law of an ascending progression, which is a part of the divine order. This truth, which perhaps we may believe to be a recent discovery, actually was known and taught in the ancient Mysteries. "Animals are relatives of man, and man is the relative of the gods," said Pythagoras. He developed philosophically what the symbols of Eleusis also taught: the progression of ascending kingdoms, the striving from the vegetable world to the animal world, from the animal world to the human world, and in humanity the succession of more and more perfect races. This progression is not accomplished in a uniform manner, but in regular and increasing cycles, enclosed one within the other. Each people has its childhood, its maturity, its decline. It is the same with races as a whole: the red race, the black race, the white race who in turn have reigned on the globe. The white race, still in the fullness of youth, has not yet reached its maturity. At its height it will develop a perfected race out of itself through the reestablishment of initiation and through spiritual selection in marriages. Thus races follow one another; thus mankind progresses. The ancient initiates went much farther in their forecasts than do modern men. They said that a time would come when the great mass of individuals who compose contemporary humanity would pass to another planet in order to begin a new cycle. In the series of cycles which constitute the planetary chain, all mankind will develop those intellectual, spiritual, transcendent principles which the great initiates cultivated in themselves, and thus humanity will come to a more general efflorescence. Needless to say, such a development embraces not only thousands, but millions of years, and it will bring about such changes in the condition of mankind that we cannot even imagine them. In an attempt to characterize them, Plato said that in that future age, the gods really will inhabit the temples of men. It is logical to conclude that in the planetary chain, that is, in the successive evolutions of humanity on other planets, mankind's incarnations become of an ever more ethereal nature, which will bring them unconsciously closer to the purely spiritual state, that eighth sphere which is beyond the circle of generations and by which the ancient initiates indicated the divine state. What then is the final goal of man and mankind, according to esoteric doctrine? After so many lives, deaths, rebirths, intervals and reawakenings, what is the end of Psyche's labors? The initiates say that the goal will have been attained when the soul will have decisively conquered matter; when, developing all its spiritual faculties, the soul will have found within itself the principle and goal of all. Then, since incarnation will be no longer necessary, the soul will enter the divine state through a complete union with divine intelligence. For Pythagoras, the apotheosis of man was not submersion into unconsciousness but creative activity in supreme consciousness. The soul, having become pure spirit, does not lose its individuality; it terminates it, since it rejoins its archetype in God. It remembers all its anterior existences, which seem to it like so many stepping-stones, necessary in order to reach the stage where it embraces and penetrates the universe. In this state, man is no longer man, as Pythagoras said; he is a demigod. For in all his being he reflects the ineffable Light whose immensity is God. For Pythagoras, knowledge is power; loving means creating; existing means radiating truth and beauty. Is this boundary definitive? Spiritual Eternity has other measures than solar time; it has its own stages, norms and cycles, and these are entirely beyond human conception. But the law of progressive analogies in the ascending kingdoms of nature allows us to affirm that once spirit has reached this sublime state it can no longer regress. Therefore, even if the visible worlds change and pass away, the invisible world, which is its own reason for being, is immortal. With these luminous perspectives Pythagoras concluded the story of the divine Psyche. The last word had died away on the lips of the sage, but the meaning of the incommunicable Truth remained suspended in the motionless air of the crypt. Each listener thought he had finished the dream of lives and was awakening in great peace, borne upon the sweet ocean of the one, endless life. The naphtha lamps softly lighted the statue of Persephone, standing there in the form of the Celestial Reaper, causing her symbolic story to come to life in the sacred frescoes of the sanctuary. At times a priestess, entering into a state of ecstasy at the harmonious voice of Pythagoras, seemed in her attitude and in her shining face to incarnate the ineffable beauty of her vision. And the disciples, seized with a religious ecstasy, looked on in silence. But soon, with a calm and certain gesture, the master brought the "inspired" prophetess back to earth. Slowly her features relaxed, she slumped into the arms of her companions and fell into a deep lethargy from which she awakened troubled, sad and exhausted from her journey. Then they went out from the crypt and entered into the gardens of Ceres, into the freshness of dawn, which began to turn the sea white at the margin of the starry sky. 33c. The Order and the Teaching FOURTH STAGE — EPIPHANY The Adept -- The Woman Initiate -- Love and Marriage With Pythagoras we have reached the summit of ancient initiation. From this summit, earth appears in deep shadow like a dying star. From above, sidereal perspectives open and like a marvelous unity the Epiphany of the Universe unfolds.°? But the purpose of the teaching was not to absorb man in contemplation or ecstasy. The master had walked with his disciples in the measureless regions of the cosmos; he had plunged with them into the depths of the Invisible. From this awesome journey the true initiates were to return to earth better, stronger and more suited for the tests of life than before. The initiation of the intelligence was to be followed by that of the will, the most difficult of all. For now it was for the disciple to cause truth to descend into the depths of his being, to apply it in his daily life. To attain this, according to Pythagoras it was necessary to bring together three perfections: to realize truth in the intellect, virtue in the soul and purity in the body. A wise hygiene and temperate continence was to preserve corporeal purity. This was required not as an end, but as a means. All bodily excess leaves a trace, a stain, as it were, in the astral body, the living organism of the soul, and also in the spirit. For the astral body contributes to all the deeds of the physical body, in fact, it effects them since without it the material body is an inert mass. It is necessary, therefore, for the body to be pure in order that the soul also may be pure. Therefore, in the constant light of intelligence the soul must acquire courage, abnegation, devotion and faith -- in short, virtue, and make of the latter a second nature which substitutes for the first. Finally, it is necessary for the intellect to attain the wisdom to distinguish good and evil in everything, and to see God in the smallest of beings as well as in the totality of worlds. At this height man becomes an "adept," and if he is able to summon sufficient energy, he enters into possession of new faculties and powers. The inner senses of the soul open and will radiate into the outer faculties. His bodily forces, penetrated by the effluvia of his astral nature, electrified by his will, acquire a seemingly miraculous power. In certain instances he is able to heal the sick by the laying on of hands, or by his presence alone. Often he reads the thoughts of men at a single glance. Sometimes in the waking state he sees events which are taking place afar off. From a distance, through the concentration of thought and will, he acts upon persons who are attached to him by bonds of personal sympathy, causing his image to appear to them as though his astral body could be transported outside his physical body. Finally, the adept feels himself surrounded and protected by invisible, higher, luminous Beings who lend him their strength and help him in his mission. Rare are the adepts; rarer still are those who attain this power. Greece knew but three: Orpheus, at the dawn of Hellenism; Pythagoras, at its height; Apollonius of Tyana, in its decline. Orpheus was the great inspired one, the great initiator of Greek religion; Pythagoras, the organizer of esoteric science and the philosophy of the Schools; Apollonius, the Stoic moralist and the popular magician of the period of decadence. But in all three the divine fire shines; their spirits are aflame for the well- being of souls, their undaunted energy is clothed with gentleness and serenity. But one must not come too close to those great, calm countenances. One feels the furnace of ardent but eternally controlled will burning underneath. Pythagoras represents an adept of the first rank who is most accessible to the modern mind. But he himself could not, nor did he pretend to make perfect adepts of his disciples. A great age always has a great inspirer at its inception. His disciples and their pupils form the magnetic chain which spreads his thought through the world. At the fourth stage of initiation Pythagoras therefore contented himself with teaching his faithful ones the application of his doctrines in life. For "Epiphany," seen from a higher viewpoint, provided a collection of deep and regenerating attitudes toward earthly things. The origin of good and evil remains an incomprehensible mystery for one who has not taken into account the origin and end of things. A morality which does not consider the supreme destinies of man will be only utilitarian and very imperfect. Moreover, real human freedom does not exist for those who are slaves of their passions, and it rightfully does not exist for those who do not believe in the soul or in God, those for whom life is a lightning bolt between two vacuums. The first live in bondage to the soul, chained by passions; the second, in bondage to the intellect limited to the physical world. This is not true for the religious man, for the true philosopher, and certainly not for the initiate, who recognized truth in the threefoldness of his being. In order to understand the origin of good and evil, the initiate looks at the three worlds with the eye of the spirit. He sees the dark world of matter and animality where ineluctable Destiny reigns. He sees the luminous world of the Spirit, which for us is the invisible world, the great hierarchy of freed souls where divine law reigns. These freed souls are Providence in action. Between the two he sees mankind rooted in the natural world on the one hand and touching the summits of the divine world on the other. The genius of humanity is Freedom, for from the moment man perceives truth and error, he is free to choose between them. He is at liberty to unite with Providence in fulfilling truth, or to fall under the law of Fate by following falsehood. Evil causes man to descend toward the fatality of matter; Good causes him to climb toward the divine law of Spirit. Man's real destiny is forever to climb higher by his own effort. But in order to do this, he must also be free to descend again. The scope of freedom widens to the infinitely great as one ascends; it shrinks to the infinitely small as one descends. The higher one climbs, the freer one becomes; the more one enters into the light, the more one acquires strength for good. The more one descends, the more one becomes a slave, because each fall into evil weakens one's understanding of truth and one's capacity for doing good. Therefore, destiny reigns over the past, Freedom, over the future, and Providence, over both. Providence rules over the ever-existing present, which can be called Eternity. From the combined action of Destiny, Freedom and Providence come innumerable destinies, hells and paradises of souls. Evil, being a lack of accord with divine law, is not the work of God but of man. It has only a relative, illusory, temporal existence. Good, since it is in accord with divine law, has a real, eternal existence. The priests of Delphi and Eleusis, as well as the philosopher-initiates never wished to reveal these profound ideas to the people, for the latter would have understood them only imperfectly and would have abused them. In the Mysteries this doctrine was symbolically represented by the dismemberment of Dionysus, thus hiding what were called "the sufferings of God" beneath an impenetrable veil for the uninitiated. Another major factor in social and political relationships is the inequality of human conditions. The spectacle of evil and pain is something frightening in itself. In addition, the distribution of these two, apparently arbitrary and unjust, is the source of all hatreds, revolts and denials. Here again as in the problem of the origin of good and evil, esoteric wisdom brings into our earthly darkness its sovereign light of peace and hope. As a matter of fact, the diversity of souls, conditions and destinies cannot be justified except by the plurality of existences, and by the teaching of reincarnation. If a man is born for the first time into this life, how can one explain the numberless evils which seem to fall upon him? How can one believe that there is eternal justice, when some men are born into a condition which brings misery and humiliation while others are born into good fortune and live happily? However, if it is true that we have lived previous lives, that we shall live still others after death, that over all these existences rules the law of recurrence and repercussion, then the differences of soul, of condition and of destiny are but the effects of former lives and represent the manifold applications of this law. Differences in human conditions stem from an unwise use of freedom in preceding lives, while differences in human intelligence arise from the fact that men go through earth existences in highly varying stages of evolution, extending all the way from the primitive conditions of backward peoples to the angelic states of saints and even to the divine royalty of genius. In reality, earth resembles a boat, and all of us who inhabit it are travelers who come from far countries and are scattered to all points of the horizon. The teaching of reincarnation gives a reason for existence in line with justice and eternal logic. It explains the cause of the most frightening evil as well as the most desirable happiness. All physical and moral suffering, all happiness and unhappiness, will appear in their manifold aspects as the natural and wise fruits of the instincts and actions, the mistakes and virtues of a long past. For in its hidden depths the soul preserves all that it accumulates in its various earth lives. Lysis expresses this truth under a veil in his Golden Verses: You will see that the evils which devour men Are the fruit of their choice; and that these unhappy ones Seek far from them the good whose source they bear. Far from weakening the sentiment of fraternity and human solidarity, the teaching of reincarnation can but reinforce it. We owe help, sympathy and charity to all, for all of us are of the same human race, though at various stages of development. All suffering is sacred, for pain is the crucible of souls. All sympathy is divine, for it makes us feel the invisible chain which links all worlds. The virtue of grief is the reason of genius. Indeed, sages and saints, prophets and divine creators shine with a more supernal beauty for those who know that they too have come out of universal evolution. How many lives, how many victories were required for this power which amazes us? From what heavens already traversed does this inborn light of genius come? We do not know. But these lives have been, and these heavens exist. Therefore the conscience of nations is not mistaken, the prophets did not lie when they called men the sons of God, the ambassadors of the Most High. For their mission is willed by eternal Truth; invisible legions protect them, and in them speaks the living Word! Among men is a diversity which comes from the primitive essence of individuals. Another, as has been said, arises from the degree of spiritual evolution which men have attained. From the latter point of view one recognizes that men can be grouped in four categories, comprising all subdivisions and variations: Ist. For the great majority of men, the will acts mainly in the body. Therefore they can be called instinctive persons. Their activity is not only physical, but also includes the exercise and development of their intelligence in this world. Hence they have a genius for commerce and industry. 2nd. At the second stage of human development the will and consciousness reside in the soul, that is, in sensitivity reacted upon by intelligence, which constitutes understanding. These are the spirited or passionate persons. By temperament they are adapted to be soldiers, artists or poets. The great majority of men of letters and scientists are of this type, for they live in relative ideas, modified by passions or bound by a limited horizon without having risen to the pure idea or universality. 3rd. In a third class of much rarer men the will has acquired the habit of acting principally in the pure intellect. It works to free intelligence from the tyranny of passions and limitations. This gives all their concepts the character of universality. These are the intellectuals. These men are the hero- martyrs, the poets of the first rank and above all, the true philosophers and sages, who, according to Pythagoras and Plato, should govern humanity. In these men passion is not extinct, for without passion nothing is done. Passion constitutes the fire and electricity of the moral world. However, among these men the passions have become the servants of intelligence, while in the second category, the intelligence is frequently the servant of the passions. 4th. The highest human ideal is realized by the fourth group of men. To the majestic control of soul and instincts by intelligence, they have added dominion over all their being. Through the mastery and control of all their faculties they exercise the great mastery. They have brought about a unity in the human threefoldness. Thanks to this marvelous concentration of all the powers of life, their will acquires an almost unlimited strength, an all-pervading, creative magic. These men have had various names in history. They are the archetypal men, the adepts, the great initiates, the sublime geniuses who transform humanity. They are extremely rare in history; Providence dispenses them upon earth at long intervals of time, like stars in the sky. It is evident that this last category of human beings is beyond rule or classification. But a constitution of human society which does not take into account the first three categories, which does not provide each of them with its normal life and the necessary means of developing, is merely external and is not organic. It is evident that in a primitive age, which probably dates from Vedic times, the Brahmans of India established the division of society into castes on the threefold principle. But with time this highly just and fruitful division changed into priestly and aristocratic privilege. The principle of vocation and initiation gave way to that of heredity. The closed castes ended by becoming petrified, and the irremediable decadence of India followed. Under the reigns of all the Pharaohs, Egypt preserved the threefold constitution with its open and mobile castes. The principle of initiation applied to the priesthood, and that of examination to all civil and military functionaries; this arrangement continued for five to six thousand years without changing its form. As for Greece, its volatile temperament caused it to pass rapidly from aristocracy to democracy, from democracy to tyranny. It revolved in this vicious circle like a sick person who goes from fever to lethargy, only to return to fever. Perhaps it needed this stimulus in order to produce its unique work: the translation of the profound but obscure wisdom of the Orient into a clear, universal language, the creation of the Beautiful through art, and the establishment of exoteric, rational science following secret, intuitional initiation. Greece also owed her religious organization and her highest inspirations to this principle of initiation. Socially and politically speaking, it can be said that she always lived in the provisional and in the excessive. In his capacity as an adept, from the heights of initiation, Pythagoras understood the eternal principles which rule society, and pursued the plan of a great reform according to these truths. We shall see how he and his school were shipwrecked in the storms of democracy. From the pure summits of his teaching the life of worlds unfolds in harmony with the rhythms of eternity. What a splendid Epiphany! But in the magic rays of the unveiled firmament, earth, humanity and life also reveal their hidden depths to us. One must find the infinitely great in the infinitely small in order to feel the presence of God. This is what the disciples of Pythagoras experienced when, as the crown of his teaching, their master showed them how eternal truth is manifest in the union of man and woman in marriage. They were about to find in the very heart of life the beauty of the sacred numbers which they had heard and viewed in Infinity, and God would shine forth for them out of the great mysteries of the sexes and of love. Antiquity understood a major truth which the succeeding ages have all too greatly misunderstood. In order to fulfill her functions of wife and mother, woman needs instruction, a special initiation. Hence purely feminine initiation, that is, one entirely reserved for women, existed in India in Vedic times, and the woman was the priestess at the domestic altar. In Egypt this initiation dates back to the Mysteries of Isis. Orpheus organized it in Greece. Until the extermination of paganism it flourished in the Dionysian Mysteries as well as in the temples of Juno, Diana, Minerva and Ceres. It consisted in symbolic rites, ceremonies, nocturnal festivals and in special teaching given by the older priestesses or by the high priest, and dealt with the most intimate things of conjugal life. Advice and rules concerning the relationship between the sexes as well as information on times of the year and of each month favorable to successful conception were given. The greatest importance was placed upon physical and moral hygiene of the woman during pregnancy so that the sacred work, the creation of the child, might be accomplished according to divine laws. In brief, the science of conjugal life and the art of maternity were taught. The latter extended far beyond the birth of the child. Until seven years of age, the children remained in the gyneceum, which the husband did not enter, under the exclusive care of the mother. The wisdom of antiquity considered the child to be a delicate plant which needs the arm of maternal environment in order not to become stunted. It was believed that the father would deform the child. Therefore in order to cause it to unfold properly the kisses and caresses of the mother were considered necessary. The powerful, enveloping love of woman is needed to defend the soul, frightened by the attacks of external life. Because in full consciousness she fulfilled these lofty functions considered divine by antiquity, woman was really the priestess of the family, the guardian of the sacred fire of life, the Vesta of the hearth. Feminine initiation therefore can be considered the true cause of the beauty of the race, of the power of generation, the continuance of families in ancient Greece and Rome. By establishing a section for women in his institute, Pythagoras only refined and intensified what had existed before him. Through him, along with the rites and precepts, the woman initiates received the supreme principles of their function. Thus he gave to those who were worthy the consciousness of their role. He revealed to them the transfiguration of love in perfect marriage, in other words, the interpenetration of two souls at the very center of life and truth. In his power, man is the representative of principle and of creative mind. Woman personifies nature in its plastic force, in its marvelous earthly and divine achievements. Therefore, when these two beings succeed in entering into one another completely, into body, soul and spirit, they will form by themselves a miniature of the universe. But in order to believe in God, woman needs to see Him living in man. For this reason, man must be initiated. Man alone, through his profound knowledge of life and his creative will, can fertilize the feminine soul, thus transforming it through the divine ideal. And the beloved woman transmits this ideal to him, multiplied in her vibrant thoughts, in her subtle sensations, in her profound insights. She transmits to him his image, transfigured by enthusiasm, because she becomes his ideal. For she brings this about through the power of love in her own soul. Through her his ideal becomes alive and visible; it becomes flesh and blood. Man creates through desire and will; woman physically and spiritually generates through love. In her role as lover, wife, mother, or inspired one, woman is no less great, and is even more divine than man. For to love is to forget. Woman, forgetting herself, lost in her love, is always sublime. In this forgetfulness she finds her celestial rebirth, her crown of life, the immortal radiation of her being. Love has reigned as master in literature for two centuries. This is not the purely sensual love which lights up at the beauty of the body, as with the ancient poets; neither is it the tasteless cult of an abstract, conventional ideal, as in the Middle Ages. No, this is love both sensual and psychic which, released in full freedom and in complete individual fantasy, gives itself unbounded expression. Frequently the two sexes make war on one another, even in love. This takes the form of a revolt of woman against the egotism and brutality of man, the disdain of man for woman's infidelity. Vanity, expressing itself in cries of flesh, and powerless rage of the victims of pleasure, makes them slaves of debauchery. Here, profound passions and attractions become all the more powerful when they are bettered by the worldly conventions of social institutions. Hence those loves, filled with tempest, moral collapse and tragic catastrophe, around which the modern novel and drama revolve almost exclusively. Weary, finding God neither in science nor in religion, man seeks Him desperately in woman. And he does well, but it is only through the initiation into the great truths that he will find God in her, and she will find God in him. Between these souls who know neither each other nor themselves, who sometimes leave one another with curses, there is a deep thirst to penetrate one another and to find in this fusion impossible happiness. In spite of the aberrations and outbursts which result, this desperate search is necessary; it comes from a divine unconsciousness. It will be a vital point in the rebuilding of the future. For when man and woman have found each other through deep love and initiation, their union will be a radiating and creative power par excellence. Psychic love, the love-passion of the soul, has entered literature comparatively recently, and through it, universal consciousness. But it has its origin in ancient initiation. If Greek literature scarcely lets the existence of psychic love be suspected, this is due to the fact that it was a profound secret of the Mysteries. Nevertheless, religious and philosophical tradition has preserved the trace of the initiate woman. Behind official poetry and philosophy a few female forms appear, half-veiled but luminous. We already know the Pythoness Theoclea who inspired Pythagoras; later will come the priestess Corinne, the often successful rival of Pindar, himself the most initiated of the Greek lyricists; finally, the mysterious Diotime appears in Plato's Banquet to give the supreme revelation of love. Beside these exceptional roles, the Greek woman exercised her function as a veritable priestess in the home and in the gyneceum. Those heroes, artists and poets whose songs, works in marble and sublime deeds we admire, were rightly her own creation. It was she who conceived them in the mystery of love, who molded them in her womb with the desire for beauty, who caused them to unfold by nestling them under her maternal wings. In addition, for a man and a woman who are truly initiated, the creation of the child has an infinitely more beautiful meaning, a greater import than otherwise. When father and mother know that the soul of the child exists before its earthly birth, conception becomes a sacred act, the call of a soul to incarnation. Between the incarnated soul and the mother is almost always a great degree of similarity. As evil, perverse women attract demonic spirits, tender mothers attract divine spirits. Is this invisible soul which one awaits and which will come and go so mysteriously and so certainly, not a thing divine? Its birth, its imprisonment in flesh, will be a painful thing, for between it and the heaven it has left behind, a crude veil is interposed. If it ceases to remember, it will suffer no less! And sacred and divine is the task of the mother, who must create for it a new home, must make its prison livable, its trial easier to bear. Thus, the teaching of Pythagoras which had begun in the depths of the Absolute with the divine Trinity, ended in the very center of life with the human trinity. In the father, mother and child, the initiate now knew how to recognize Spirit, Soul and Heart of the living Universe. For him this last initiation constituted the foundation of a social work conceived in all the sublimity and beauty of the ideal, -- a creation to which each initiate was to bring a building-stone. Notes for this chapter:

54In transcendent mathematics, it is demonstrated algebraically that Zero multiplied by Infinity is
equal to One. Zero, in the order of absolute ideas, means indeterminate Being. The Infinite, the Eternal in the language of the temples, was indicated by a circle or by a serpent biting its tail, which meant the Infinite moving itself. And, from the moment Infinity becomes determined, it produces all the numbers it contains in its great unity and which it governs in perfect harmony. This is the transcendent meaning of the first problem of the Pythagorean theogony, the reason which brings it about that the great Monad contains all the small ones, and that all numbers originate from the great Unity in movement.

55This doctrine is identical with that of the initiate St. Paul, who speaks of the spiritual body. (See
Rudolf Steiner: The Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul -- Ed.)

56One must place Fabre d'Olivet (Golden Verses of Pythagoras) in the first rank of these. This
living concept of the forces of the universe permeating it from top to bottom has nothing to do with the empty speculations of the pure metaphysicians, for example, thesis, antithesis and synthesis of Hegel, which are simply intellectual exercises.

57Certain strange definitions in the form of metaphors which have been transmitted to us and
which come from the secret teaching of the master, allow one to surmise the grandiose concept that Pythagoras had of the Cosmos. Speaking of the constellations, he called the Great and Little Dipper: the hands of Rea-Kybele. Now, Rea-Kybele esoterically means astral light returning, the divine wife of the universal fire, or creative spirit which, in concentrating in the solar systems, attracts the non- material essences of beings, grasps them, and causes them to enter the cycle of lives. He also called the planets the Dogs of Proserpine. This unusual expression has no meaning other than an esoteric one. Prosperpine, the goddess of souls, was present at their incarnation into matter. Pythagoras therefore called the planets Dogs of Proserpine because they keep the incarnated souls as the mythological Cerberus guards souls in hell.

58The law is called Karma by the Brahmans and Buddhists. (See Rudolf Steiner: The
Manifestations of Karma, 1910. -- Ed.)

59The Epiphany or vision from above; the autopsy, or direct view; the theophany, or manifestation
of God, are so many correlative ideas and expressions which indicate the state of perfection in which the initiate, having joined his soul to God, contemplates complete Truth.

60We shall cite two famous absolutely authentic events of this kind. The first took place in
Antiquity, and the hero is the famous philosopher-magician, Apollonius of Tyana. The Second-sight of Apollonius of Tyana. "While these things (the assassination of the Emperor Domitian) were taking place in Rome, Apollonius saw them at Ephesus. Domitian was attacked by Clement around noontime; the same day at the same hour, Apollonius was making a speech in the gardens near the Xystes. Suddenly he lowered his voice a little, as if he had been gripped by a sudden fright. He continued his speech, but his language did not have its usual power, as happens with those who speak while thinking of something else. Then he became silent, like those who have lost the train of their thought. He cast terrified glances toward the earth, moved three or four steps forward, and cried out, Kill the tyrant!' One would have said that he saw, not the reflected image of the event as in a mirror, but the event itself in all its reality. The Ephesians (for all Ephesus went to hear Apollonius' speeches) were struck with amazement. Apollonius stopped, like a man who waits to see the outcome of an uncertain event. Finally he cried out, Be of good cheer, Ephesians, the tyrant was killed today! What am I saying? -- Today? By Minerva! He was killed at the very instant I interrupted myself!' The Ephesians thought that Apollonius had lost his mind; they indeed hoped that he had told the truth, nevertheless they feared that some danger would result for him from this discourse . . . But soon messengers came to announce the good news and gave testimony in favor of Apollonius' science: for the murder of the tyrant, the day it was consummated, the hour of noon, the author of the murder whom Apollonius had encouraged, -- all these details were in perfect agreement with those the gods had shown him the day of his speech to the Ephesians." -- Life of Apollonius by Philostratus. (See Emil Bock, The Three Years for an account of Apollonius of Tyana -- Ed.) The Second-sight of Swedenborg: The second event refers to the greatest seer of modern times. One can have reservations regarding the objective reality of Swedenborg's vision, but one cannot doubt his second-sight, attested to by a host of facts. The vision that Swedenborg had at thirty leagues' distance from the fire of Stockholm created an uproar in the second half of the eighteenth century. The famous German philosopher, Kant had an inquiry made by a friend at Gothenburg in Sweden, the city where the event took place, and this is what he writes about it to one of his friends: "The following occurrence appears to me to have the greatest weight of proof, and to place the assertion respecting Swedenborg's extraordinary gift beyond all possibility of doubt. In the year 1759, toward the end of September, on Saturday, at four oclock in the afternoon, Swedenborg arrived at Gothenburg from England, when Mr. William Castel invited him to his house, together with a party of fifteen persons. About six o'clock, Swedenborg went out and returned to the company quite pale and alarmed. He said that a dangerous fire had just broken out in Stockholm, at the Södermalm (Gothenburg is about 50 German miles -- about 500 English -- from Stockholm), and that it was spreading very fast. He was restless and went out often. He said that the house of one of his friends, whom he named, was already in ashes and that his own was in danger. At eight o'clock, after he had been out again, he joyfully exclaimed, Thank God! The fire is extinguished, the third door from my house.' The news occasioned great commotion throughout the whole city, but particularly amongst the company in which he was. It was announced to the governor the same evening. On Sunday morning, Swedenborg was summoned to the governor, who questioned him concerning the disaster. Swedenborg described the fire precisely, how it had begun, in what manner it had ceased, and how long it had continued. On the same day the news spread through the city, and as the governor had thought it worthy of attention, the consternation was considerably increased, because many were in trouble on account of their friends and property, which might have been involved in the disaster. On Monday evening a messenger arrived at Gothenburg, who was dispatched by the Board of Trade during the time of the fire. In the letters brought by him, the fire was described precisely in the manner stated by Swedenborg. On Tuesday morning the royal courier arrived at the governor's with the melancholy intelligence of the fire, of the loss which it had occasioned, and of the houses it had damaged and ruined, not in the least differing from that which Swedenborg had given at the very time when it happened; for the fire was extinguished at eight o'clock." -- Letter from Immanuel Kant to Charlotte von Knobloch, written at Konigsburg. (Quoted in George Trobridge, Emanuel Swedenborg, Life and Teaching, page 197-8. -- Ed.)

61This idea comes logically from the human and divine ternary, from the trinity of the Microcosm
and Macrocosm which we have discussed in the preceding chapters. The metaphysical correlative of Destiny, Liberty and Providence has been admirably deduced by Fabre d'Olivet in his analysis of The Golden Verses of Pythagoras.

62This classification of men corresponds to the four stages of Pythagorean initiation, forming the
basis of all initiations up to that of the original Free Masons, who possessed a few bits of esoteric doctrine. (See Fabre d'Olivet, The Golden Verses of Pythagoras.)

34The Family of Pythagoras -- The School and its Destiny
Among the women who followed the teaching of the master was a young girl of great beauty. Her father, a Croton, was named Brontinos; her own name was Theano. At that time Pythagoras was nearly sixty, but great self-mastery of passions and a pure life entirely dedicated to his mission had preserved his manly strength. Youthfulness of soul, that immortal flame which the great initiate draws from his spiritual life and which he nourishes with the hidden forces of nature, shone in him. The Greek Magus was not in his decline, but at the summit of his power. Theano was attracted to Pythagoras by the almost supernatural radiance which emanated from his being. Serious and reserved, she had sought from the master an explanation concerning those Mysteries which she loved without understanding them. But when in the light of truth, in the gentle warmth which slowly enveloped her, she felt her soul open within her like a mystical rose of a thousand petals, when she felt that this unfolding came from him and from his speech, she was drawn to the master with a boundless rapture and a passionate love. Pythagoras had not sought to attract her. His affection belonged to all his disciples. He was dreaming only of his school, of Greece, of the future of the world. Like many great adepts, he had given up the love of woman in order to devote himself fully to his work. The magic of his will, the spiritual possession of so many souls which he had guided and who remained attached to him as to an adored father, the mystical incense of all these unexpressed loves and that exquisite perfume of human sympathy which united the Pythagorean brothers, -- for him, all of this took the place of pleasure, happiness and love. But one day when he was alone, meditating on the future of his school in the crypt of Proserpine, he saw coming to him that beautiful and serious virgin to whom he had never spoken in private. She knelt before him, and without lifting her head, she begged the master to free her from an impossible and unhappy love which was consuming her body and devouring her soul. Pythagoras asked the name of the one whom she loved. After long hesitation, Theano confessed that it was he himself, but at the same time she said that she would submit to his will. Pythagoras said nothing. Encouraged by his silence, she lifted her head and looked toward him pleadingly, offering him the essence of her life and the perfume of her soul. The sage was disturbed; he knew how to conquer his senses, he had subdued his imagination, but the light of this soul had penetrated him. In this virgin, matured by passion, transfigured by absolute devotion, he had found his life-companion and had glimpsed a more complete fulfillment of his work. Pythagoras raised the young girl to her feet and drew her to him. In the master's eyes Theano could read that their destinies were joined forever. By his marriage to Theano, Pythagoras placed the seal of fulfillment upon his work. The union, the fusion of two lives was complete. One day when the wife of the master was asked how much time is necessary for a woman to become pure after having had relationship with a man, she answered, "If it is with her husband, she is pure immediately; if it is with another, she never is pure." It is not marriage which sanctifies love; it is love which justifies marriage. Theano entered so completely into the thought of her husband that after his death she served as the center of the Pythagorean Order, and a Greek author quotes as an authority her opinion on the doctrine of numbers. She gave Pythagoras two sons, Arimnestus and Telaugus, and one daughter, Damo. Telaugus later became the tutor of Empedodes and transmitted to him the secrets of the teaching. Pythagoras' was a model family. His house was called the temple of Ceres, and his court, the temple of the Muses. In the family and religious festivals the mother led the chorus of women, and Damo, the chorus of young girls. Damo was worthy of her father and mother in every way. Pythagoras had entrusted certain writings to her with the express prohibition against communicating them to anyone outside the family. After the dispersal of the Pythagoreans, Damo fell into extreme poverty. She was offered a large sum for the valuable manuscript, but faithful to the wish of her father, she always refused to surrender, it. Pythagoras lived in Croton for thirty years. At the end of twenty years this extraordinary man had acquired such power that those who called him a demigod did not exaggerate. His influence was something tremendous; never has any philosopher exercised anything equal to it. It extended not only to the school at Croton and to its branches in the other cities of the Italian coast, but also to the political life of all those little states. Pythagoras was a reformer in every sense of the word. Croton, an Achaean colony, had an aristocratic constitution. The Council of One Thousand, composed of representatives of great families, exercised the legislative and supervised the executive power. Popular assemblies existed, but their activities were restricted. Pythagoras wanted the state to be an order and a harmony and liked oligarchic restraint no better than the chaos of demagoguery. Accepting the Dorian constitution as it was, he simply tried to introduce a new method of activity into it. His courageous plan was to establish over and above the political authority a scientific power having a deliberative and consultative voice in vital questions. This scientific power was to be the keystone, the supreme regulator of the state. Over the Council of One Thousand he organized The Council of Three Hundred, chosen by the first, but recruited from among the initiates alone. Their number was sufficient for this. Porphyrus relates that two thousand citizens of Croton gave up their customary life and assembled themselves together to live a communal life along with their wives and children, after having given over their property to the community. In control of the state Pythagoras therefore wanted a scientific government, less secret, but as highly placed as the Egyptian priesthood. What he effected for a moment remained the dream of all the initiates who participated in political life. He introduced the principle of initiation and examination into the government of the state and reconciled in this higher synthesis the elective or democratic principle with a government formed on the basis of intelligence and virtue. Hence the Council of Three Hundred formed a kind of political, scientific and religious order, whose recognized leader was Pythagoras. By a solemn and awesome vow they pledged him secrecy as absolute as that of the Mysteries. These societies or Hetaries spread out from Croton, where the parent society was formed, into almost all the cities of Greater Greece, where they exercised a great political influence. The Pythagorean Order had as its goal to become the head of the state in all of southern Italy. Branches existed in Tarente, Heraclea, Metapontus, Regium, Himere, Catane, Agrigente, Sybaris and, according to Aristoxenus, even among the Etruscans. As for the influence of Pythagoras on the government of these great, rich cities, one cannot imagine one higher, more liberal, or more peaceful. Everywhere he appeared he reestablished order, justice and concord. Summoned before a tyrant of Sicily, by his eloquence alone he persuaded the latter to give up ill-acquired riches and restore rights he had stolen. Cities that were in bondage to one another, he set free. So beneficent were Pythagoras' deeds that everywhere he went people said, "He has not come to teach, but to heal!" The sovereign influence of a great spirit, a great character, that magic of the soul and of the intellect, stirs up terrible jealousies and violent hatreds, just because it is invulnerable. Pythagoras' power lasted for a quarter of a century. The indefatigable adept had attained the age of ninety when reaction came. The spark came from Sybaris, the rival of Croton. An uprising took place there, and the aristocratic party was defeated. Five hundred exiles asked the Crotons for asylum, but the Sybarites demanded their extradition. Fearing the anger of an enemy city, the magistrates of Croton were about to give way to their demand when Pythagoras intervened. Upon his entreaties, the Crotons refused to surrender the unfortunate fugitives to their implacable adversaries. At this refusal, Sybaris declared war on Croton, but the army of the Crotons, lead by the famous athlete Milon, a disciple of Pythagoras, completely defeated the Sybarites. The fall of Sybaris followed. The city was conquered, sacked, utterly destroyed, and was turned into a wilderness. It is impossible to claim that Pythagoras approved such reprisals, for they were contrary to his principles and those of all initiates. But neither he nor Milon could bridle the uncontrolled passions of a victorious army, aroused by ancient jealousies and stimulated by an infamous attack. All vengeance, whether of individuals or of peoples, brings in return a recoil of the passions thus unleashed. The nemesis of the latter was fearful; the consequences fell upon Pythagoras and on his entire Order. After the sack of Sybaris, the people demanded the division of lands. Not satisfied with this, the democratic party proposed a change in the constitution which removed the privileges of the Council of One Thousand and suppressed the Council of Three Hundred, allowing only a single authority and demanding universal suffrage. Naturally the Pythagoreans who were part of the Council of One Thousand were opposed to a reform contrary to their principles, and one which attacked the patient work of the master at its roots. Already the Pythagoreans were the object of that blind hatred which mystery and superiority always stimulate in the mob. Their political attitude brought the fury of demagoguery upon them, and a personal hatred against the master caused the final explosion. A certain Cylon had once presented himself for admission into the school. Pythagoras, who was very strict in admitting disciples, rejected him because of his violent, imperious nature. This rejected candidate became a bitter opponent. When public opinion began to turn against Pythagoras, he organized a large body of people in opposition to the Order of the Pythagoreans. Cylon succeeded in gathering around him the principal leaders of the people, and began to plot a revolution which was to begin with the expulsion of the Pythagoreans. Before a surging mob, Cylon climbs to the rostrum and reads extracts stolen from the secret book of Pythagoras, titled The Holy Word, Hieros Logos. The teachings are distorted, dishonored. A few orators try to defend the brothers of silence who respect even animals, but the speakers are received with bursts of laughter. Cylon mounts and remounts the tribunal. He claims that the religious catechism of the Pythagoreans attacks freedom. "And that is saying little," adds the tribune. "Who is this teacher, this so-called demigod, who is blindly obeyed and who has only one word for the brothers, the master said so!"? What creates this indissoluble friendship uniting all the members of the Pythagorean hetaries, if not disdain and scorn for the people? Always they have the words of Homer on their lips, that the prince must be the shepherd of his people. For them, therefore, the people are but a stupid mob! Yes, the very existence of the Order is a permanent conspiracy against popular rights! As long as he is not destroyed, there will be no freedom in Croton!" One of the members of the popular assembly, moved by feelings of loyalty, cried out, "At least let Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans come and justify themselves on our rostrum before condemning them!" But Cylon answered haughtily, "Havent these Pythagoreans robbed you of the right to judge and decide on public affairs? What right have they to be heard here today? Did they ask you before they stripped you of the right to exercise justice? Well then, now it's your turn! Strike without hearing!" A thunder of applause greeted these words, and the mob became more and more excited. One evening when the forty leading members of the Order were assembled at Milon's home, the tribune led an attack upon them. The house was surrounded. The Pythagoreans, together with the master, barricaded the doors. The furious crowd set fire to the house, and soon the building was a mass of flames. Thirty-eight Pythagoreans, the chief disciples of the master, the flower of the Order, along with Pythagoras himself, perished. Some were destroyed by the fire, others were put to death by the people. Only Archippus and Lysis escaped destruction. Thus died that great sage, that divine man who had tried to introduce wisdom into the government of men. The murder of Pythagoras was the signal for a general uprising in Croton and all along the Gulf of Tarento. The cities of Italy drove out the unfortunate disciples of the master. The Order was dispersed but its remnants spread into Sicily and Greece, everywhere sowing the word of the master. For example, Lysis became Epaminondas' teacher. After new revolutions the Pythagoreans were able to return to Italy on the condition that they would no longer form a political body. The spirit of brotherhood did not cease to unite them; they considered themselves members of one and the same family. One of them, poor and sick, was received by an innkeeper. Before dying, the disciple traced a few mysterious signs on the door of the house, saying to his host, "Rest assured, one of my brothers will pay my debt." A year later, a stranger passing this same inn saw the signs and said to the host, "I am a Pythagorean; one of my brothers died here; tell me what I owe you for him." The Order itself survived for two hundred and fifty years. As for the ideas and traditions of the master, these live even today. The regenerating influence of Pythagoras on Greece was tremendous. It was exerted mysteriously but surely through the temple where he had worked. We have seen how at Delphi it gave a new power to divinatory science, strengthened the authority of the priests and formed a model Pythoness with its art. Thanks to this inner reform which awakened enthusiasm in the very heart of the sanctuaries and in the soul of the initiates, Delphi became more than ever the moral center of Greece. This was clearly evident during the Median wars. Thirty years had hardly elapsed since Pythagoras' death when the Asiatic cyclone, foretold by the sage of Samos, burst upon the coast of Greece. In this epic struggle of Europe against barbaric Asia, Greece, representative of freedom and civilization, has behind her the science and genius of Apollo. It is he whose patriotic and religious inspiration stills the growing rivalry between Sparta and Athens. It is he who inspires the Miltiades and Themistocles. At Marathon the enthusiasm is such that the Athenians think they see two shining warriors fighting in their ranks. Some recognize Theseus and Echetos, others Castor and Pollux. When the invasion of Xerxes, ten times more formidable than that of Darius, overflows Thermopylae and submerges Hellas, from her tripod Pythia indicates salvation to the ambassadors from Athens and helps Themistocles conquer the ships of Salaminus. The pages of Herodotus tremble with her gasping prophecy: "Abandon the houses and high hills if the city is built in a circle . . . the fire and the fearful . . . Mars, mounted on a Syrian chariot, will destroy your towers . . . the temples topple, from their walls drips a cold sweat, from their tops flows black blood. . . . Leave my sanctuary! Let a wooden wall be for you an impregnable rampart. .. . Flee! Turn your back on the numberless horsemen! O divine Salaminus! How disastrous you will be for the sons of women!" In Aeschylus' account the battle begins with a cry which resembles a hymn of praise to Apollo: "Soon the day on white chargers, spread its shining light over the world. At that moment an immense clamor, modulated like a solemn chant, arises from the ranks of the Greeks. The echoes of the island respond with a thousand deafening voices." Need one be surprised that, drunk with the wine of victory at the battle of Mycale, the Greeks, facing conquered Asia, chose as their rallying cry, "Hebe, eternal youth?" Indeed, the breath of Apollo broods over these amazing Median wars. It is a religious enthusiasm which works miracles, carries away the living and the dead, lights up trophies and decorates the tomb. All the temples have been burned, but that of Delphi has remained standing. The Persian army has arrived to destroy the sacred city. Everybody trembles. But the solar god says through the voice of the pontiff, "I shall defend myself!" By order of the temple, the city is emptied; the inhabitants take refuge in the grottos of Parnassus; only the priests remain on the steps of the sanctuary, with the sacred guard. The Persian army enters the city, now silent as a tomb; only the statues watch the invaders pass. A black cloud gathers at the mouth of the gorge; thunder rolls and lightning falls upon the Persians. Two enormous rocks fall from the summit of Parnassus. Tumbling down, they crush many of the invaders. At the same time cries come from the temple of Minerva and flames arise from the earth beneath the tread of the enemy. At these wonders, the frightened barbarians draw back; their army flees. Indeed, the god has defended himself! Would these marvels really have happened, would these victories -- so famous in human history -- really have taken place if thirty years earlier Pythagoras had not appeared in the Delphic sanctuary to light the sacred fire once again? It is doubtful. Something more should be said about the teacher's influence upon philosophy. Before him there had been moral philosophers on the one hand, moralists on the other. Pythagoras united morality, science and religion in his vast synthesis. This synthesis is nothing other than the esoteric doctrine, whose full light we have tried to discover in the depths of Pythagorean initiation. The philosopher of Croton was not the inventor, but was the enlightened organizer of these primordial truths in the scientific order of things. Therefore his system has been chosen as the most favorable background for a complete outline of the doctrine of the Mysteries. Those readers who have followed the master with us will have understood that at the heart of this doctrine shines the sun of the one Truth. Its scattered rays are found in philosophies and religions, but their center is here. What is needed to reach this Truth? Observation and reason are not enough. Above all, one must have intuition. Pythagoras was an adept, an initiate of the first rank. He possessed a direct view of the spirit, the key of secret sciences and the way to the spiritual world. Therefore he drew from the original source of Truth. To these transcendent faculties of the intellectual and spiritualized soul he linked detailed observation of physical nature and the masterly classification of ideas through his keen reason. As a result, none was better equipped to build the edifice of the science of the cosmos. Notes for this chapter:

63This is the version of Diogenes of Laérte on Pythagoras' death. According to Dicearcus, quoted
by Porphyrus, the master probably escaped destruction, along with Archippus and Lysis. But he doubtless wandered from city to city until reaching Metapontus, where he let himself die of hunger in the Temple of the Muses. The inhabitants of Metapontus claim, on the other hand, that the sage, welcomed by them, died peacefully in their city. They showed his house, his seat and tomb to Cicero. It should be noted that a long time after the master's death, the cities which had persecuted Pythagoras at the time of the change, claim the honor of having sheltered and saved him. The cities around the Gulf of Tarentum fought over the philosopher's ashes with the same ferocity that the cities of Iona struggled over the honor of having given birth to Homer.

64In the language of the temples, the term "son of woman" designated the lower stage of initiation,
woman meaning here, nature. Above these were "sons of men" or initiates of Spirit and Soul; "the sons of the gods" or initiates of cosmogonic science, and "Sons of God" or initiates of the supreme science. Pythia calls the Persians "sons of women," designating them thus from the nature of their religion. Taken literally, her words would not have any meaning.

65"These are still to be seen in Minerva's garden," said Herodotus, VIII, 39. The Gallic invasion
which took place two hundred years later was repelled in a similar manner. There again a storm gathers, lightning falls on the Gauls at intervals, the earth trembles under their feet, they see supernatural appearances, and the Temple of Apollo is saved. These facts seem to prove that the priests of Delphi possessed the science of cosmic fire, and knew how to manipulate electricity through secret powers like the Chaldean magi. (See Amedee Thierry, Histoire des Gaulois, 1, 246).

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