The Secret Doctrine Volume 3.pdf

was crowned by the Gods in whose presence he had drunk “the waters of life”—in the Hindu
Mysteries there was the fount of life, and soma, the sacred drink.]. . . whether after this he
[the initiated person] becomes a torchbearer, or an hierophant of the Mysteries, or sustains
some other part of the sacerdotal office. But the fifth, which is produced from all these, is
friendship and interior communion with God. And this was the last and most awful of all the
Mysteries. [Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, T.Taylor, p.46, 47.]
The chief objects of the Mysteries, represented as diabolical by the Christian Fathers and
ridiculed by modern writers, were instituted with the highest and most moral purpose in view.
Mysteries and Theophany (Page 283) There is no need to repeat here that which has
been already described in Isis Unveiled [ii. III, 113] that whether through temple Initiation or
the private study of Theurgy, every student obtained the proof of the immortality of his Spirit,
and the survival of his Soul. What the last epopteia was is alluded to by Plato in Phaedrus:
Being initiated in those Mysteries which it is lawful to call the most blessed of
all mysteries. . . . we were freed from the molestations of evils, which
otherwise await us in a future period of time. Likewise in consequence of this
divine initiation, we become spectators of entire, simple, immovable, and
blessed visions, resident in a pure light. [Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries,
p.63.]
This veiled confession shows that the Initiates enjoyed Theophany—saw visions of Gods and
of real immortal spirits. As Taylor correctly infers:
The most sublime part of the epopteia or final revealing, consisted in
beholding the Gods [the high Planetary Spirits] themselves, invested with a
resplendent light. [Op.cit, p.65]
The statement of Proclus upon the subject is unequivocal:
In all the Initiations and Mysteries, the Gods exhibit many forms of
themselves, and appear in a variety of shapes; and sometimes indeed a
formless light of themselves if held forth to the view; sometimes this light is
according to a human form and sometimes it proceeds into a different shape.
[Quoted by Taylor. p.66.]
Again we have
Whatever is on earth is the resemblance and shadow of something that is in
the sphere, while that resplendent thing [the prototype of the Soul-Spirit]
remaineth in unchangeable condition, it is well also with its shadow. When that
resplendent one removeth far from its shadow life removeth [from the latter] to
a distance. Again that light is the shadow of something more resplendent than
itself. [Verses 35-38]
Thus speaks the Desatir, in the Book of Shet (the prophet Zirtusht), thereby showing the
identity of its Esoteric doctrines with those of the Greek Philosophers.
221