The History of Initiation - The Masonic Trowel

90 HISTORY OF INITIATION
that he had now received the inestimable gift of superior
endowments, and a power of instructing others, was
confined to theology. His doctrines embraced disquisitions
on the nature of God, and the creation and ultimate
destruction of the world. His opinion of the divine
nature was, that it contained three hypostases, which he
termed Tagathon Nous Psyche, or Goodness, Wisdom,
and Spirit, the second of which emanated from the first,
and the third from both. But he taught that all good
men, after death, became demons, and were, therefore,
entitled to the homage of divine worship; that the
governor of the world had committed all things to their
superintendence; and that they were the authorized
mediators between the gods and men, and appointed to
convey sacrifices and supplications from earth to heaven,
and blessings and rewards from heaven to earth. He
taught that Grod created the world, but held, from the
deductions of human reason, that, as something could
not have been formed from nothing, the materials must
have descended from some pre-existent state. 36 He be-
lieved that the universe was doomed to be ultimately
destroyed by fire, 37
in verification of the fable of Phaeton ;
and preserved in his system a tradition of the first created
beings in Paradise ; how they conversed with angels in
a state of nature and unclothed; how the earth brought
forth its fruits spontaneously to provide these favourites
of heaven with food; how they spent their time in innocence
and unoffending simplicity ; and how at length,
by the suggestions of a serpent, they fell from their purity,
became ashamed of their nakedness, and were cast forth
into a world of sorrow, grief, and despair. 38 These traces
30 37 De 1. Eepub., v.
In Timj-eo.
33 An obscure tradition of this event had been propagated in every
nation of the heathen world from the dispersion but it ; had been
studiously disguised by fable to keep it secret from the vulgar and
uninitiated, until, in process of time, the true intent and meaning of
the
^ymbols
and allegory in which it had been enveloped, were almost
entirely lost. "
Origen thinks that Plato, by his converse with the
Jews in Egypt, did understand the history of the Fall of Man;
which he, after his way, enigmatically describes in his Symposiacks.
Where he brings in Porus the god of plenty feasting with the rest of
the gods ; after supper, Penia comes a begging to the door ; Porus
being drunk with nectar, goes into Jupiter's garden, and there falls
asleep. Penia observing it, steals to him, and by this deceit con-