The Secret Doctrine Volume 3.pdf

A few further extracts may be given from his Occult Masonry, as they bear directly upon our
subject. However learned and erudite, some of the chronological mistakes of that author are
very great. He says:
After deified man (Hermes) came the King-Priest [the Hierophant] Menes was
the first legislator and the founder of Thebes of the hundred palaces. He filled
that city with magnificent splendour; it is from his day that the sacerdotal
epoch of Egypt dates. The priests reigned, for it is they who made the laws. It
is said that there have been three hundred and twenty-nine [Hierophants]
since his time—all of whom have remained unknown.
After that, genuine Adepts having become scarce, the author shows the Priests choosing
false ones from the midst of slaves, whom they exhibited, having crowned and deified them,
for the adoration of the ignorant masses.
Tired of reigning in such a servile way, the kings rebelled and freed
themselves. Then came Sesostris, the founder of Memphis (1613, they say
before our era). To the sacerdotal election to the throne succeeded that of the
warriors. . . . Cheops who reigned from 1178 to 1122 built the great Pyramid
which bears his name. He is accused of having persecuted theocracy and
closed the temples.
This is utterly incorrect, though Ragon repeats “History.” The Pyramid called by the name of
Cheops is the Great Pyramid, the building of which even Baron Bunsen assigned to 5,000
B.C. He says in Egypt’s Place in Universal History:
The Learning of Egypt -
(Page 301) The Origins of Egypt go back to the ninth millennium before
Christ.[Op. cit., iv. 462.]
And as the Mysteries were performed and the Initiations took place in that Pyramid—for
indeed it was built for that purpose—it looks strange and an utter contradiction with known
facts in the history of the Mysteries to suppose that Cheops, if the builder of that Pyramid
ever turned against the initiated Priests and their temples. Moreover, as far as the Secret
Doctrine teaches, it was not Cheops who built the Pyramid of that name, whatever else he
might have done.
Yet, it is quite true that
Owing to an Ethiopian invasion and the federated government of twelve
chiefs, royalty fell into the hands of Amasis, a man of low birth.
This was in 570 B.C., and it was Amasis who destroyed priestly power. And
Thus perished that ancient theocracy which showed its crowned priests for so
many centuries to Egypt and the whole world.
Egypt had gathered the students of all countries around her Priests and Hierophants before
Alexandria was founded. Ennemoser asks:
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