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

The Genius of Freemasonry.
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Egypt, overran the country, destroyed its cities,
palaces and temples, scattered its priest-initiates,
and reduced the country to a Persian province
Many of its priests took refuge in Greece, and conveyed
thither the Egyptian Mysteries, which Pythagoras
had journeyed to Egypt to obtain half a century
earlier. In the time of Plato, a century later,
the Mysteries were in a flourishing condition, and
in them he learned his sublime philosophy. At the
beginning of our era the mysteries had declined.
There remained, however, the Gnostics, the Essenes,
and the Therapeutse of Alexandria, and from these
the Christian mysteries were undoubtedly derived.
The Neoplatonists, headed by Ammonius Saccus,
undertook to preserve the primitive revelation, and
the utterances of the Christian Bishops to which
I have referred, show how the Secret Doctrine was
adopted from the earlier mysteries by the primitive
Christians during the first three centuries of our
era. After the first Council of Nice, a. d. 325,
little more was heard of the earlier doctrines, and
with the burning of the Great Library of Alexandria,
Catholic supremacy and the dark ages obliterated
the primitive wisdom in Western Europe, as
it was also overrun by hordes of barbarians from
the north. The principal seats of learning were