The Secret Doctrine Volume 3.pdf

the initiated, and immediately after the latter had a weapon placed in his right hand, and was
ordered to strike. This is the true origin of the Christian dogma of atonement.”
As Ballanche says, quoted by Ragon: “Destruction is the great God of the World, justifying
therefore the philosophical conception of the Hindu Shiva. According to this immutable and
sacred law, the Initiate was compelled to kill the Initiator: otherwise initiation remained
incomplete . . . . It is death that generates life.” Orthodoxie maçonnique, p. 104. All that,
however, was emblematic and exoteric. Weapon and killing must be understood in their
allegorical sense.]
The Transmission of Light - (Page 273) Only in truth the Hierophant was never killed—
neither in India nor elsewhere, the murder being simply feigned—unless the Initiator had
chosen the Initiate for his successor and had decided to pass to him the last and supreme
WORD, after which he had to die—only one man in a nation having the right to know that
word. Many are those grand Initiates who have thus passed out of the world’s sight,
disappearing.
As mysteriously from the sight of men as Moses from the top of Mount Pisgah
(Nebo, oracular Wisdom), after he had laid his hands upon Joshua, who thus
became “full of the spirit of wisdom;” i.e., initiated.
But he died, he was not killed. For killing, if really done, would belong to black, not to divine
Magic. It is the transmission of light, rather than a transfer of life, of life spiritual and divine,
and it is the shedding of Wisdom, not of blood. But the initiated inventors of theological
Christianity took the allegorical language à la lettre ; and instituted a dogma, the crude,
misunderstood expression of which horrifies and repels the spiritual “heathen.”
All these Hierophants and Initiates were types of the Sun and of the Creative Principle
(spiritual potency) as were Vishvakarma and Vikarttana, (Page 274) from the origin of the
Mysteries. Ragon, the famous Mason, gives curious details and explanations with regard to
the Sun rites. He shows that the biblical Hiram, the great hero of Masonry (the “widow’s son”)
a type taken from Osiris, is the Sun-God, the inventor of arts, and the “architect,” the name
Hiram, meaning the elevated,” a title belonging to the Sun. Every Occultist knows how
closely related to Osiris and the Pyramids are the narratives in Kings concerning Solomon,
his Temple and its construction; he knows also that the whole of the Masonic rite of Initiation
is based upon the Biblical allegory of the construction of that Temple, Masons conveniently
forgetting, or perhaps ignoring, the fact that the latter narrative is modelled upon Egyptian
and still earlier symbolisms. Ragon explains it by showing that the three companions of
Hiram, the “three murderers,” typify the three last months of the year; and that Hiram stands
for the Sun—from its summer solstice downwards, when it begins decreasing—the whole rite
being an astronomical allegory.
During the summer solstice, the Sun provokes songs of gratitude from all that
breathes; hence Hiram, who represents it, can give to whomsoever has the
right to it, the sacred Word, that is to say life. When the Sun descends to the
inferior signs all Nature becomes mute, and Hiram can no longer give the
sacred Word to the companions, who represent the three inert months of the
year. The first companion strikes Hiram feebly with a rule twenty-four inches
long, symbol of the twenty-four hours which make up each diurnal revolution;
it is the first distribution of time, which afer the exaltation of the mighty star,
feebly assails his existence, giving him the first blow. The second companion
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