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

222 Mystic Masonry.
own creation. The imagination of the noveHst can
hardly supply the philosophy of true occultism.
The stories that have come down to us of the
magnificent pageantry, and the almost superhuman
trials attending initiation into the Mysteries, from
those of ancient Egypt down to Tom Moore's Epicurean,
all pertained to the various degrees of the
Lesser Mysteries. The secrets of the Greater Mysteries
were never written or told. What they were
can only be surmised from a complete philosophical
knowledge of what initiation really means, and some
idea as to what the last supreme revelation may be.
This has probably never been betrayed in any individual
case, nor is it likely that it will ever be revealed,
because, as shown in the preceding chapters,
it is the meeting face to face with one's own god;
the Higher Self, latent in every man, but now wholly
revealed. It concerns the things "impossible to
utter," of St. Paul, an Initiate. The philosophy of
the whole process may, however, be fairly apprehended
as the consummation of the Higher Evolution
of Man. Thus philosophy, for him who can
understand it, takes the place of the whole of the
instruction of the Lesser Mysteries, except such
practical experience and final training of the neophite
as enable him to enter the Greater Mysteries.