We found this in La Science Secrète, 1890, edited by Papus. This extract anticipates our own work, in that it describes the line of transmission of this particular Tradition. It is by a certain Doctor Ferran, from a short article he wrote for the above-named publication, entitled Origins and Symbols of Freemasonry. Clip this one and save it for the scrapbook!
An excerpt from Origins and Symbols of Freemasonry, by Doctor Ferran, in THE SECRET SCIENCE, (1890), pp. 37 - 46. Translation Copyright © 2001 c.e., Jonathan Sellers. All Rights Reserved.
THE CONQUESTS of Alexander the Great transported to Egypt and to Alexandria all the Hermetic traditions of the Chaldean and Egyptian priests.
Later, worships and religious rites of practically all the nations, successively having been transported to Rome, due to conquest, all arriving naturally in the Imperial era complete with all the liturgies and strange ceremonies, the more disparate and the more immondes, located there, and brought together pell-mell.
Such was the case even for philosophical sects, like the Stoics, Kabbalists, Essenes, Galileeans, Gnostics, etc. All of them having for their rallying sign, their Initiation.
Among these philosophical sects, were the Gnostics, who regarded themselves as the heirs of the Occult Science of Egypt and Chaldaea.
What was this Occult Science, object of Sacerdotal Initiations and, later, of that of the Gnostic philosophers?
What was the nature of this transmitted secret with such mystery?
"Whoever," says the Talmud, "was instructed in this secret and guarded by a pure heart, can count on the love of God and the favor of men; his name inspires respect, his science does not fear forgetfulness and it is the heir of the two worlds, the one where we are located now and the world to come."
"How," said M. Jacolliot, "was one able to know, if one did not receive the communications of those that live it already?"
Here, on the other hand, is what Herodotus has to say for us:
"The happiness of the Initiated did not limit itself to this life, it continued himself beyond the grave."
And Pindar, on the subject of these mysterious initiations, writes this:
"Happy the man that descends under the earth after having seen these things; he knows the ends of life, he knows the law divine."
And the Homeric Hymn to Demeter adds:
"The type of the initiated and that of the profanes are different even in death."
There we conclude with M. Jacolliot: that in antiquity, the Initiation was not the knowledge of the great religious works of the era, the Vedas, the Zend-Avesta, or the Bible: but of a small number of occult scientists who had their origin, theology, philosophy and special practices, of which the revelation was forbidden to the vulgar.
Therefore, of what did this science consist?
We know of it today, and M. Jacolliot, in unveiling the phenomenal phenomena that bring back the days of the Fakirs of India, strongly contributed to this elucidation.
This science consisted in the manipulation of occult forces, the nature of which are nervoso-dynamic-human. It was the body of these phenomena that we call today magnetism and hypnotism, insensibilisation, somnambulism, catalepsy and provoked lethargy; the phenomena of suggestion, of the communication and penetration of thoughts, the phenomena of levitation, and at last the most important secret of all, the knowledge of the means of communication between theliving and the dead, that is to say between those that live on the earth and those that live in space.
I do not need to place emphasis on how much the reality or non-reality of the last-mentioned item is of immense importance, not only to the philosophical and religious points of view, but again to the juridical and sociological points of view! Even official science has refused to make it the object of its investigations, as it had done for a long time with all the phenomena magnetism that it denies with an imperturbable bias, showing thus the infamous degree of confidence that one must have in one's denials.
Here, I do not want to examine this question from its historic side: that the means of communication with ultra-terrestrials (1A) existed at Rome as early as the first years of Christianity. Tertullian, speaks about it as a known and proven thing. One used it for knowing of events to come, and these practices, when they applied to the political, were not always without danger. Witness the evocation which Ammianus Marcellinus left the narrative for us and in which it was a question of knowing which would be the successor of the emperor Valens against which a fearsome conspiracy had been hatched. Now, here is the speech that was pronounced, it says, in front of the judges. Hilarius, one of the conjurers, disciple of the Gnostic philosopher Iamblichus:
"Magnificent judges, we constructed the Delphian tripod with laurel sticks under the auspices of spirits, this unfortunate table. .., and after having submitted in all the rules to the action of the mysterious formulas and of the Conspiracies with all the accompaniments during long hours, we reached at last to put it in movement. Now, when one wanted to consult it on secret things, the procedure to do it is to move this one: One the planchet is in the middle of a carefully purified house everywhere with Arabian perfumes(1B); one put over a round plateau with nothing inside, which one was done various metaux. On the edges of the plateau were placed the twenty-four letters of the alphabet separated exactly by equal intervals.
"Standing, above, one of the numbers of the assembly, instructs magic ceremonies, dressed in fabric of linen, having shoes of linen, the head ceinture of a torsade and carrying by hand the foliage of a happy tree, after having reconciled itself by certain prayers the protection of the God that inspires the prophecies, balances a suspended ring to the dais, which one ring is consecrated following the mysterious procedures. This ring jumping and falling in the intervals of following letters that they stop it successively, composed by replying to the questions put to it, and perfectly uniform as those of the Pythia.
"We demand which would be the successor of the prince currently reigning; and as one said that this would be would be a man of perfect education, the ring having touched in its bonds two syllables [THEO IN GREEK] with the addition of a last letter, someone assisting writing that the destiny designated Theodosius.
"The consultation has just had to do no more, for it had convinced us that it was him, in fact, than the type designated."
Add that the accused were put to death; if it is necessary for some to believe the historian Zonoras, in not forcing the oracle to accomplish itself, for Theodosius succeeded Valens.
Already in Greek antiquity one had attributed to Pythagoras the ability to resuscitate the dead, and of conversing with the invisible, of which one heard distinctly the responses.
The prodigies, attributed to the two great apostles of the Gnosticism, Appollonius and Simon Magus, accomplished at Rome under the reign of Nero, would be great again, if one can believe the narratives of Philostratus and Bias of Babylon. Thus Simon Magus
"ordered to a false to work all only, and this one cut down as much work as the most skillful faucheur. Much better, it created gifted statues of movement, and that walked to the eyes of the crowd. Consternation, admiration and of fright. -It had converted the rocks into bread; -it had remained healthy and except in the middle of the flames; -at last it had raised itself and maintained in the air to the view of all a public immense."
Thus there are several Miracles that are less-known than those of the Galileean, though not having less authenticity.
"This great thaumaturge," said L. Figuier, "had known that to impose on the Pagans and on the Christians that or the an or the others not songèrent to protest the reality of its prodigies; but songèrent only to do ecarner for them to their profit. For the Pagans Simon Magus sent antique divinities that come to show and defend their jeopardized power. To the eyes of Christians, to the opposite, Simon operates thanks to the secret support of the demon, but by virtue of a concession of their very God, true God.
"The supporters of Simon, it says, that the people and the Roman Senate had worshipped as a God raised in the Isle of the Tiber a statue with this inscription: Simoni Deo Sancto, to Simon the Holy God.
"Several fathers of the Church, Saint Justin among others, that speak of this inscription, recognize all the authenticity of the miracles of Simon; they protest only against the qualification of attributing sanctity to his divinity (2)."
The prodigies attributed to Appollonius are not any less.
IN ADDITION TO Simon Magus and Apollonius of Tyana, the sect of the Gnostics counted among its Chiefs a great number of illustrious men such as Basilides, Marcion, Iamblichus, Plotinus, Porphyry, etc.
"All these philosophers," said L. Figuier, "did profess to evoke the spirits; and the supreme goal of their philosophy was the union of man with the great God that fills the universe (3)."
The Gnostics of which the schools and the cradle were at Alexandria; that had concentrated in their teaching all the high traditions of the Indians, Egyptians, Asians and Greeks; the Gnostics, I say, were a very trusted Science, and looked at with pity the humble supporters of the Galileean doctrine. Only they had inherited the secret of the Antique Initiations.
Unfortunately, after they contributed wider leaves to the dissolution of the polytheistic beliefs, the free thought arranged among them the formation of systems of fomenters of discords, and they were forced to undergo the pain of the triumph of the Galileeans.
These last, infinitely less scholars, itself mixing among the small people to a great degree, and drawing an irresistible force just as well in their doctrinal unity than in the immense spirit of charity that had them inculcating the Christ. To the inverse of the Christians today, those of the primitive Church formed a true Society of Equality and of mutual relief where one thought only to raise the unfortunate and the disinherited.
Those could again today claim the paternity of the three great registered principles to the frontispiece of our monuments: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity; for they are the glory of the substitution in the world. Although their auréole is itself promptly tarnished, when reached in power, they change from that which the state persecutes to that of the persecutors; that does not diminish to nothing the beauty of their primitive feelings.
If I myself am overbearing also in detail on this period of Gnosticism, today if not very well known, this is as it marked in the end of the Pagan world a very remarkable period. This is that in their teachings and in their initiations, the Gnostics had called together the whole tradition of the Egyptian Hermetism and Magism; and that in reality they were, historically speaking, the true ancestors of Masonry.
In fact, five centuries before our era, the Egyptian Priests transported to Babylonia had brought to the Chaldaean mages as well as to the Jewish priests deported there, the secrets of philosophy and Indo-Egyptian Theosophy; even at the 6th century c.e., the Sectarians of the Gnosis and Kabbalah were to undergo a similar sort. Ruined at Rome and in Italy by the barbaric invasions; oppressed by Christianity triumphant; hunted also at Alexandria, their cradle, by the great Arabic invasion, they have had no other alternative than to return to the East, to the shadow of the Byzantine throne, or else hide in secret with all the victims of Paganism, Druidism and Kabbalah.
Later, this great class of the oppressed being the coarsest of the debris of the order of the Templars, and of all those that had rejected in the West the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, one is put to see them, on many occasions, try to give a sign of life. But the inquiry that had already been heard in all Europe its fearsome tentacles, falling fast to put it in good order. They were condemned as heretics, the others as sorcerers and their numbers were regulated. ...
All these rebels of the free conscience were not men of mediocre value. Among them are for us a very great number of illustrious men. What did I say? These were the only men of science of the era. These were: the kabbalist Sédécias under Pépin the Short; the rabbi Yechelié under Louis IX; then Albert the Great, then Raymond-Lulle, Arnaud Villeneuve, Nicolas Flamel, Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, Khunrath, Jerome Cardan, Oswal-Croll, Rosenroth, and many others.
They were all forced to remain in the shadows. Notwithstanding, their activity does not slow down because of this. The occult phalanx multiplied itself well, so that by the dawning of the 18th century she had formed legions, so that at the first glimmers of the new era and well before 1789, Hermetism and Masonry arise the one and the other; all armies of the occult depths, as Minerva was born out of the brain of Jupiter.
The Hermetism itself revealed by two men who became legendary: first the rich Count of Saint-Germain, the guest of Louis XV; in second place by the celebrated Cagliostro, the founder of the Egyptian Lodges of Paris.
1. Jacolliot, le Spiritisme dans le monde, p. 19.
1A. The original word in the French was "ultra-terrestre", ultra-terrestrial: or, as we would say it today, Extra-Terrestrial.
1B. Arabian Perfumes: Perhaps the author of this extract is referring to Frankincense, which originated in Arabia. Perhaps this is the "grass of the Arabs," as written of in Liber Aleph.
2. Louis Figuier, Histoire du Merveilleux, t. 1, p. 2.
3. Id., ibid.