The Secret Doctrine Volume 3.pdf

In the Oriental countries the designation Peter (in Phoenician and
Chaldaic an interpreter), appears to have been the title of this
personage. [ Taylor’s Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, Wilder’s ed., p.
x.]
So far, and as the “interpreters” of Neo-Christianism, the Popes have most
undeniably the right to call themselves successors to the title of Peter, but hardly the
successors to, least of all the interpreters of, the doctrines of Jesus, the Christ; for
there is the Oriental Church, older and far purer than the Roman hierarchy, which,
having ever faithfully held to the primitive teachings of the Apostles, is known
historically to have refused to follow the Latin seceders from the original Apostolic
Church, though, curiously enough, she is still referred to by her Roman sister as the
“Schismatic” Church. It is useless to repeat the reasons for the statements above
made, as they may all be found in Isis Unveiled, [ ii.91-94.] where the words, Peter,
Patar, and Pitar, are explained, and the origin of the “Seat of Pitah” is shown. The
reader will find upon referring to the above pages that an inscription was found on the
coffin of Queen Mentuhept of the Eleventh Dynasty (2250 B.C. according to Bunsen),
which in its turn was shown to have been transcribed from the Seventeenth Chapter
of the Book of the Dead, dating certainly not later than 4500 B.C. or 496 years before
the World’s Creation, in the Genesiacal chronology.
The Seat of Peter - (Page 127) Nevertheless, Baron Bunsen shows the group of the
hieroglyphics given (Peter-ref-su, the “Mystery Word”) and the sacred formulary
mixed up with a whole series of glosses and various interpretations on a monument
4,000 years old.
This is identical with saying that the record (the true interpretation) was
at that time no longer intelligible . . . We beg our readers to understand
that a sacred text, a hymn, containing the words of a departed spirit,
existed in such a state, about 4.000 years ago, as to be all but
unintelligible to royal scribes. [ Bunsen, Egypt’s Place in History. v.90.]
“Unintelligible” to the non-initiated - this is certain; and it is so proved by the confused
and contradictory glosses. Yet there can be no doubt that it was - for it still is - a
mystery word. The Baron further explains:
It appears to me that our PTR is literally the old Aramaic and Hebrew
“Patar,” which occurs in the history of Joseph as the specific word for
interpreting, whence also Pitrum is the term for interpretation of a text, a
dream.
This word, PTR, was partially interpreted owing to another word similarly written in
another group of hieroglyphics, on a stele, the glyph used for it being an opened eye,
interpreted by De Rougé [ Stele, p.44.] as “to appear,” and by Bunsen as
“illuminator,” which is more correct. However, it may be, the word Patar, or Peter,
would locate both master and disciple in the circle of initiation, and connect them with
the Secret Doctrine; while in the “Seat of Peter” we can hardly help seeing a
connection with Petroma, the double set of stone tablets used by the Hierophant at
the Supreme Initiation during the final Mystery, as already stated, also with the Pithasthâna
(seat, or the place of a seat), a term used in the Mysteries of the Tantriks in
India, in which the limbs of the Satî are scattered and then united again, as those of
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