Mystic masonry, or, The symbols of freemasonry and the greater ...

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The Secret Doctrine. 207
CHAPTER VII.
THE SECRET DOCTRINE (CONTINUED).
The Sign of the Master.
It must not be supposed that in the Ancient Mysteries
every Initiate became a Master in the sense
outlined in the preceding chapters. There were the
Lesser and the Greater Mysteries. To the Lesser
all were eligible; to the Greater, very few; and of
these few, fewer still were ever exalted to the sublime
and last degree. Some remained for a lifetime
in the lower degrees, unable to progress further on
account of constitutional defect or mental and spiritual
incapacity. The Mysteries unfolded the Building
of Worlds, the Religion of Nature, the Brotherhood
of Man, the Immortality of the Soul, and the
Evolution of Humanity. No ceremony was artificial
and meaningless ;
symbol, however grotesque to
the ignorant, was merely fanciful.
"It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but
in the religious symbolism of the Ancients, that we
must look for the footprints of Science, and re-