IMPLICATIONS OF THE NON-THEISTIC ESOTERIC SUBSTRATE FOR WORLD HISTORY, AND WHAT IS THE WISDOM-RELIGION AND MYSTERY-LANGUAGE OF THE INITIATES OF EVERY OLD COUNTRY
One of the main subjects of Theosophy is the MYSTERIES, and one of the aims of Theosophists were to recover this system. Theosophy does not claim that all religions are “fragments of a single revealed doctrine” in a literalist sense, nor does it exoticize living traditions as fossils. It asserts that various ancient exoteric forms are outer shells of one prehistoric symbolic composite system of numbers, sound, geometry, myth and ritual — preserving the mysteries of Nature.
Unlike the Freemasons and Rosicrucians, Theosophy diverged from Biblical, Abrahamic centrality and Christian primacy. One can then argue that Theosophy decenters the spiritual origin-point from the Near East to various points across the globe but mainly focused on Central Asia and Tibet for a historical reason I will explain. The main point is that even the fragmentary elements of the Mysteries predate the Abrahamic traditions, making the latter traditions late, partial expressions, not the core or origin-source of religious authority, though it arrogated to itself this role, that offshoots have modified, expanded or reformed.
This history is not seen from the constructed historiography of the ancient Israelites through their theological storytelling shaped by exile and imperial domination by flattening, e.g., Babylonian religion into a caricature. Later Christian writers created conspiratorial narratives about Babylon called the “mystery Babylon” conspiracy to develop anti‑pagan polemics against interest in esotericism by distorting the origin of “the Mysteries.” It is a long-standing conspiracy from the nineteenth-century that spreads more during the popularization of personal computing in the Information Age, specifically the early 97-00s. Christian writers invented a “Babylonian mystery religion” and an evil secret Chaldean priesthood to incorporate into a universal pagan and revolutionary conspiracy of networks that challenged to overthrow Christian Theocratic power. The conspiracy is essentially built upon medieval demonology, Protestant anti‑Catholic writings and nineteenth-century pseudo‑scholarship like Alexander Hislop.
Despite attempts by Christian polemics, modern tools actually increasingly corroborate the shared technical substrate, even if scholars stop short or reject initiatory epistemology. There existed a shared ancestor of both early Vedic religion and ancient Iranian religion, sometimes described as “tantric-alchemical.” It developed among the Sintashta and Andronovo cultures of the Eurasian Steppe (c. 2200-1150 BCE). This much older esoteric system, or pre‑Vedic system is described by various generic markers, e.g., the “Wisdom‑Religion” is also defined as esoteric BODHISM or BUDHISM (based on the Sanskrit root budh “to awaken”), and Blavatsky believed its custodians preserved it in Central Asia and Tibet. BODHISM does not describe a singular sect or a historical religion, but a primordial doctrine of awakening underlying later religions. Blavatsky therefore did not invent this notion of a shared proto-tradition preserved in both Brahmanic and Zoroastrian tradition. All the elements that exist in Theosophy are strongly rooted in pre-Islamic Iranian oral mythic belief systems and across Southwestern Asia into the history of the pre-Vedic and non-Vedic systems of Central Asia. So, the story is not rooted in Babylon and Chaldea, and the conspiracy is not a realistic history of Mesopotamian religions, and how these people defined themselves as opposed to their rivals.
Every culture interpreted rival empires through its own worldview, true. The problem is that our world has been shaped for two millennia by the biases of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
This is why the Theosophists declared that it is time everyone gets their due. This decentering of the “Abrahamic religions” isn’t about attacking them, but this has been used in the polemics to defend their worldviews about the outsider and ancient rivals in their narratives. This is mainly about correcting a distorted picture of world history focused exclusively on theistic traditions. Theosophy is saying, this ancient system was non-dual and non-theistic, rather than a system of devotional theism to a singular tribal-protector god and a promise of land.
TEACHINGS OF SALVIFIC GNOSIS PREDATE CHRISTIANITY
Even the Nag Hammadi texts reveal a broader phenomenon of salvific gnosis, rather than belief in Jesus through faith, interacting with Hellenistic, Hermetic, Jewish, and pre-Christian mystery traditions, as opposed to being an aberrative Christian variant or heresy subject to the judgement and interpretations of the Christian usurpers of the MYSTERIES. The ancient Mediterranean was full of Mystery cults, and Christianity was born from within this rich cultural environment. The form of initiation rites, ritual banquets, symbolic themes, ritual drama, communal identity exists in them all. Even The New Testament adapts the Hebrew mysteries, with its parables “for those with ears to hear” and deeper teachings for disciples. What constitutes the “deeper teachings,” and what are its origins? The Christians have re-constructed their answers to this question to run from giving any credence to the “Gnostics.” These religions have often just thrown dirt in the eyes of people who saw the holes in the narratives and truth-claims of the rival sect that emerged as the authoritative Church and Vicar, even though it will open people to a new understanding that challenges the powers that have been set up. Scholars now emphasize the independence and diversity of the “Gnostics,” which is exactly Theosophy’s view of Gnosticism as a fragmentary survival of the universal esoteric current.
BIASES IN MODERN SKEPTICISM
It is central to Theosophy to assert the historical existence of a multi-modal “Mystery Language” of symbolism across cultures in antiquity, deliberately veiled in myths, scriptures, geometry and emblems for both protection and efficacy. We are forced to challenge modern skepticism philosophically and historically, highlighting how reductionist materialism, literalism, and institutional biases limit engagement with these ideas.
The idea is that a single prehistoric symbolic system (not ordinary speech) encodes cosmic principles across all ancient religions, that is multi-layered (numbers, geometry, symbols, narratives) and recoverable through initiates, or hierophants. It is their language. Vedic, Egyptian, Chaldean, Zoroastrian, and Mesoamerican systems, predating diffusion explanations reveal this system. Sacred geometry and numerical correspondences (e.g., π approximations in Hebrew gematria, Egyptian cubits, Vedic altars) appear independently in disconnected cultures, as noted in nineteenth-century metrological studies revived by modern archaeoastronomy. This multi-modal system is a symbolic meta-system (not phonetic language), expressed in myths, pictographs and architecture and many writers devoted the rest of their lives to understand it. The kind of efforts, e.g., of Ralston Skinner hardly exists in our time. The interest has become distorted by speculative “occult geopolitics” and conspiratorial instigations such as fixating determining who is actually “controlling the world.” In these conspiracies, the MYSTERIES is demonized and solely portrayed through Jewish and Christian theological interpretations and modern conspiracies about the Tower of Babel.
Modern linguistics and philology dismiss this as unfalsifiable because they prioritize phonetic evolution over symbolic embedding, yet cognitive linguistics (e.g., conceptual metaphor theory) and embodied cognition now validate multi-modal symbolism as a stable knowledge-preservation tool. Historically, post-Enlightenment scientism inherited a Protestant literalism that flattens symbols into “primitive superstition,” ignoring how Renaissance Kabbalists and Neoplatonists (Ficino, Pico) recovered similar systems philosophically. Skepticism becomes unmasked as not empirical rigor, but ontological prejudice against non-discursive knowledge.
REALITIES OF A HYBRID SYMBOLIC SYSTEM BETWEEN INITIATES
John Algeo, speaking of the ideas of Ralston Skinner point out that Skinner says the mystery language can be expressed through the symbolism of the letter shapes or parabolic stories and visually not a single form, but a symbolic use of many different forms, archetypal symbols in myths, and a visual representation in pictographs or hieroglyphic. This Mystery Language is therefore a hybrid symbolic protocol combining narrative, geometric and pictorial representation embeddable in any medium, conveying “double interpretations” for initiates. This is the ignored side of the History of Religions I never find scholars dealing with. Never.
Skinner’s Hebrew-Egyptian Mystery and the Source of Measures demonstrate π and geometric ratios are basically encoded in Bere’shith through Hebrew letter-values and narrative structure. These are patterns in Egyptian pyramid proportions and Vedic fire-altars. How and Why? Ordinary scholarship does not explain it.
Global archaeoastronomy demonstrates that visual and symbolic crypt is represented by the Göbekli Tepe’s T-pillars, Nabta Playa stone circles, and the Mayan stelae use pictographic and numerical systems for cosmic cycles. Also, archetypal symbols (e.g., world-tree, flood, septenary division) exists as cross-cultural constants, not by coincidence or diffusion alone.
This invisibility in scholarship is a problem. Academia’s structuralist and functionalist turn (post-Müller) still treat symbols as psychological projections or social glue, not deliberate technical codes. Yet phenomenology in the ideas of Merleau-Ponty and semiotics have led to conclusions that multi-modal systems can transmit precise knowledge beyond language. Historically, the nineteenth-century “solar myth” reductionism (now discredited) blinded scholars to non-solar technical layers, and any modern dismissal of Skinner as “numerology” repeats this error, prioritizing peer-reviewed literalism over initiatory epistemology.
THE FRAGMENTATION AND LIMITATIONS OF SCHOLARSHIP
Blavatsky stated in The Secret Doctrine, that the proofs of this system are scattered widely, but no one has ever gone to the trouble of collecting and collating the facts that demonstrate ancient scriptures embed verifiable historical and technical facts in symbolic form, such as the odd alignment of calendrical knowledge at Stonehenge, Giza, Teotihuacan, and Angkor (myths directly lead to observable phenomena of solstices and precession); or the shared motifs in Puranic, Avestan and Egyptian texts. This reveals a history of humanity on a grander scale than history surrounding Christology or the family histories of the ancient Israelites.
Specialization in academia seems to naturally fragment scholarship, where there exists no single discipline that “collects and collates” across linguistics, archaeology and astronomy as Blavatsky urged us to do. Philosophically, Kantian epistemology limits knowledge to phenomena, excluding a such thing as a noumenal “Wisdom Science.” Colonial-era Orientalism dismissed Eastern texts as “myth” while privileging Greco-Roman literalism, yet postcolonial studies now validate the very synthesis Theosophy pioneered, while ignoring it.
Nineteenth-century Müllerian solarism collapsed under its own absurdity, while Theosophy sought to demonstrate that the solar myth symbologists were reading the ancient texts through a particular lens, and were not capable of pushing beyond the veil. Positivism rejects “historical lining” in myth because it threatens materialist origins narratives, but this view served Victorian progressivism by portraying the ancients as irrational, ignoring how Plato, Plutarch, and Iamblichus treated myths as veiled philosophy.
PEARLS AND STREAMS OF WISDOM
Theosophists are saying, that a primordial “Wisdom Religion” or Perennial Philosophy underlies all exoteric faiths, and that it is knowledge-based, preserved by initiates through various means of transmission, and that these systems, means, institutions, etc, predate their established religious form. The history of these transmissions are usually left out of the common telling of how these religio-philosophical ideas are migrating and developing. Blavatsky focuses on the pre-Vedic mythology and systems that influenced later Brahmanism and Buddhism, demonstrating this “stream.” Pythagoras, Plato and others that studied in Egypt and India, along with the Neoplatonists also demonstrate another means of transmission and preservation of this “stream of knowledge.” However, academic historicism demands linear “development” and dismisses “perennial” claims as ahistorical romanticism. Eliade and Campbell have questioned this, however. The universal experiential facts challenge nominalism, because if truths recur independently, they point to a shared ontological ground modern materialism denies. Church suppression of “pagan” wisdom (Justinian’s 529 CE closure of Plato’s Academy) created the very fragmentation we are led to critique.
Symbology is essential for reading any of the ancient sacred scriptures, poetry, etc, because every major tradition uses layered symbols, even sidereal-terrestrial imagery across the globe. Post-structuralism reduces symbols to power discourses, but symbols can induce real psycho-physical states. German Romantic philology prefigured this but was sidelined by Müller’s literalism. Take Freemasonry for example. Freemasonry’s public face hides deeper layers through guarded transmission. This violates Popperian falsifiability, yet initiatory systems is the verification method rejected by empiricism. History shows secrecy preserved knowledge through inquisitions and colonial erasure. This shows that this knowledge is initiatory and dangerous if wielded by the public to distort and misuse as it pleases, and Christianity is an example of this. Mystery schools (Eleusis, Pythagorean, Egyptian) enforced strict secrecy with oaths and graded initiation. It was the ancient colleges that transmitted this knowledge symbolically, and the hierophants or adepts of these ancient colleges preserved it across ages.
POST-PRINTING PRESS
While liberal rationalism equates secrecy with elitism or fraud, ignoring pragmatic dangers (e.g., misuse of psycho-physical techniques similarly to the misuse of nuclear science). The shift historically from initiatory to public knowledge (post-Reformation and printing press) coincided with scientism’s rise, but the perennialist revival (Theosophy, Guénon) shows the intuition persists because exoteric modernity lacks integrative wisdom. Theosophy’s framework is not disproven by modern tools but rendered invisible by them. Archaeology, cognitive science and perennial philosophy increasingly supply the “collation” Blavatsky called for, suggesting the “adepts” transmission network is less fantasy than a functional historical reality modern ontology refuses to name. The limitation is not evidence, but the lens through which we view it.
PASSAGES ABOUT THE MYSTERY-LANGUAGE
The “‘secret doctrine’ is the general name given to the esoteric teaching of antiquity.”
THEOSOPHICAL GLOSSARY
FOLLOW THE TRAILS OF THE PAST
“Recent discoveries made by great mathematicians and Kabalists thus prove, beyond a shadow of doubt, that every theology, from the earliest and oldest down to the latest, has sprung not only from a common source of abstract beliefs, but from one universal esoteric, or “Mystery” language. These scholars hold the key to the universal language of old, and have turned it successfully, though only once, in the hermetically closed door leading to the Hall of Mysteries. The great archaic system known from prehistoric ages as the sacred Wisdom Science, one that is contained and can be traced in every old as well as in every new religion, had, and still has, its universal language — suspected by the Mason Ragon — the language of the Hierophants, which has seven “dialects,” so to speak, each referring, and being specially appropriated, to one of the seven mysteries of Nature. Each had its own symbolism. Nature could thus be either read in its fulness, or viewed from one of its special aspects.” (Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1., pg. 310.)
This language is described as “one universal esoteric, or ‘Mystery’-Language (…) the language of the Hierophants,” which is said to have seven dialects, each referring to one of seven mysteries of Nature.
“Skinner says the mystery language that he has hypothesized and that H.P.B. elsewhere calls Senzar can be expressed in a concealed fashion in ordinary language through the symbolism of the letter shapes or correspondences, but can also be expressed through parabolic stories and visually in constructions of many kinds. That mystery language is thus not a single form of expression, but is rather a symbolic use of many different forms.” (John Algeo, Senzar: The Mystery of the Mystery Language)
John Algeo explained that we can summarize what Blavatsky says or implies about this universal Mystery-language of the initiates as follows:
- The original text The Secret Doctrine is based on as a commentary to the Stanzas presented is described as pictographs and geometrical figures. The text of the Stanzas in The Secret Doctrine is not the original, but is a paraphrase based on Blavatsky’s understanding of the original and adapted to our ability to grasp the ideas symbolized.
- The “Mystery language” was used by initiates all over the world and from the earliest days of humanity. It is not a language known to philologists.
- The Mystery language was originally the common property of all human beings and was, indeed, the one language of our race, but by the time of our present humanity it has become an esoteric, that is, an inner or private system.
- Despite the fact that H.P.B. sometimes calls it “speech,” the Mystery language is not normal spoken language, but is “pictorial and symbolical.”
- On the one hand, the esoteric language is allegory like that found in the writings of the alchemists and Jewish scriptures.
- On the other hand, the esoteric language is a form of written symbols that can be interpreted in various ways and by various spoken languages, especially geometrical figures with a hieroglyphic, cipher-like appearance.
- The Mystery language is what we now call symbolism: it speaks to our unconscious minds and can be only imperfectly translated into ordinary, logical language.
Thus we can think of the Mystery Language as being the whole complex of sacred symbols with expressions of various kinds, but of two chief types:
- the archetypal symbols in myths and fairy tales, allegories and parables, alchemical recipes and biblical history — stories that have a hidden meaning underneath the obvious narrative, stories that bear “a double interpretation”; and
- a visual representation of those archetypal symbols in pictographs or hieroglyphic and cipher-like characters whose meaning the initiated can interpret independently of any language.
“The proofs brought forward in corroboration of the old teachings are scattered widely throughout the old scriptures of ancient civilizations. The Puranas, the Zendavesta, and the old classics are full of them; but no one has ever gone to the trouble of collecting and collating together those facts.” (Blavatsky. 1888. The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1., p. 307)
LIMITATION OF MYTHICIST INTERPRETATIONS AND HIDDEN MEANINGS IN LEGENDS
Theosophy rejecting the reductionist solar myths and their limited interpretations. All mythologies were not built on the worship of the physical Sun:
“The study of the hidden meaning in every religious and profane legend, of whatsoever nation, large or small — pre-eminently the traditions of the East — has occupied the greater portion of the present writer’s life. She is one of those who feel convinced that no mythological story, no traditional event in the folk-lore of a people has ever been, at any time, pure fiction, but that every one of such narratives has an actual, historical lining to it. In this the writer disagrees with those symbologists, however great their reputation, who find in every myth nothing save additional proofs of the superstitious bent of mind of the ancients, and believe that all mythologies sprung from and are built upon solar myths.” (The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1., pg. 303)
THE ORIGINS OF THE MYSTERIES
“There is a universal Divine Revelation called the Perennial Philosophy, or the “Wisdom Religion” and its traces can be found in the teachings, however fragmentary and incomplete, that are partially contained in ancient texts belonging to the Hindu, the Zoroastrian, the Chaldean, the Egyptian religion, to Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and to Christianity, but to none exclusively. The Secret Doctrine is the essence of all these. Sprung from it in their origins, the various religious schemes are now made to merge back into their original element, out of which every mystery and dogma has grown, developed, and become materialized.” (The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1., pg., viii.)
“The oldest religions of the world — exoterically, for the esoteric root or foundation is one — are the Indian, the Mazdean, and the Egyptian. Then comes the Chaldean, the outcome of these — entirely lost to the world now, except in its disfigured Sabeanism as at present rendered by the archaeologists; then, passing over a number of religions that will be mentioned later, comes the Jewish, esoterically, as in the Kabala, following in the line of Babylonian Magism; exoterically, as in Genesis and the Pentateuch, a collection of allegorical legends. Read by the light of the Zohar, the initial four chapters of Genesis are the fragment of a highly philosophical page in the World’s Cosmogony. (See Book III., Gupta Vidya and the Zohar.) Left in their symbolical disguise, they are a nursery tale, an ugly thorn in the side of science and logic, an evident effect of Karma. To have let them serve as a prologue to Christianity was a cruel revenge on the part of the Rabbis, who knew better what their Pentateuch meant. It was a silent protest against their spoliation, and the Jews have certainly now the better of their traditional persecutors. The above-named exoteric creeds will be explained in the light of the Universal doctrine as we proceed with it.” (The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1, pg. 10-11)
“What is the history of the “Wisdom Religion ?” It has its origins with thinking man. It is the one religion which underlies all the now-existing creeds. That “faith” which being primordial, and revealed directly to human kind by their progenitors and informing Egos required no “grace,” nor blind faith to believe, for it was knowledge (…) It is on this Wisdom Religion that Theosophy is based.” (Theosophical Glossary, pg. 343). It is an “unveiling” of old, very old, truths to minds hitherto ignorant of them, ignorant even of the existence and preservation of any such archaic knowledge.” (Key to Theosophy, 1889, pg. 30)
“The Wisdom-Religion was ever one, and being the last word of possible human knowledge, was, therefore, carefully preserved. It preceded by long ages the Alexandrian Theosophists, reached the modern, and will survive every other religion and philosophy. It was preserved among the Initiates of every country; among profound seekers after truth—their disciples; and in those parts of the world where such topics have always been most valued and pursued: In India, Central Asia, and Persia.” (Helena P. Blavatsky, Key to Theosophy, pg. 7.)
“We can assert, with entire plausibility, that there is not one of the many sects—Kabalism, Judaism, and our present Christianity included—but sprang from the two main branches of that one mother-trunk, the one universal religion, which antedated the Vedic ages—we speak of that prehistoric Buddhism which merged later into Brahmanism.” (Isis Unveiled, Vol. 2, pg. 123). By Buddhism (…) we mean that religion signifying literally the doctrine of wisdom, and which, by many ages, antedates the metaphysical philosophy of Siddharta Sakyamuni.” (Isis Unveiled, Vol. 2., pg. 143)
THE SYMBOLISM OF EVERY ANCIENT NATION
“The untiring researches of Western, and especially German, symbologists, during the last and the present centuries, have brought every Occultist and most unprejudiced persons to see that without the help of symbology (with its seven departments, of which the moderns know nothing) no ancient Scripture can ever be correctly understood. Symbology must be studied from every one of its aspects, for each nation had its own peculiar methods of expression. In short, no Egyptian papyrus, no Indian tolla, no Assyrian tile, or Hebrew scroll, should be read and accepted literally. (The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1., pg. 305)
The origin and meaning of mythology have been missed altogether by these solarites and weather-mongers! Mythology was a primitive mode of thinking the early thought. It was founded on natural facts, and is still verifiable in phenomena. There is nothing insane, nothing irrational in it, when considered in the light of evolution, and when its mode of expression by sign-language is thoroughly understood. The insanity lies in mistaking it for human history or Divine Revelation. Mythology is the repository of man’s most ancient science, and what concerns us chiefly is this — when truly interpreted once more, it is destined to be the death of those false theologies to which it has unwittingly given birth. (The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1., pg. 304)
“When the “false theologies” disappear, then true prehistoric realities will be found, contained especially in the mythology of the Aryans — ancient Hindoos, and even the pre-Homeric Hellenes.” (The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1., pg. 304 fn.)
“This every scholar now knows. (…) every symbol in papyrus or olla is a many-faced diamond, each of whose facets not merely bears several interpretations, but relates likewise to several sciences. This is instanced in the just quoted interpretation of the moon symbolized by the cat — an example of sidero-terrestrial imagery; the moon bearing many other meanings besides this with other nations.” (The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1., pg. 305)
ALL ESOTERIC SOCIETIES USE EMBLEMS AND SYMBOLS
“As a learned Mason and Theosophist, the late Mr. Kenneth Mackenzie, has shown in his Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia, there is a great difference between emblem and symbol. The former “comprises a larger series of thoughts than a symbol, which may be said rather to illustrate some single special idea.” Hence, the symbols (say lunar, or solar) of several countries, each illustrating such a special idea, or series of ideas, form collectively an esoteric emblem. The latter is “a concrete visible picture or sign representing principles, or a series of principles, recognizable by those who have received certain instructions” (initiates). To put it still plainer, an emblem is usually a series of graphic pictures viewed and explained allegorically, and unfolding an idea in panoramic views, one after the other. Thus the Puranas are written emblems. So are the Mosaic and Christian Testaments, or the Bible, and all other exoteric Scriptures. As the same authority shows: —
“All esoteric Societies have made use of emblems and symbols, such as the Pythagorean Society, the Eleusinian, the Hermetic Brethren of Egypt, the Rosicrucians, and the Freemasons. Many of these emblems it is not proper to divulge to the general eye, and a very minute difference may make the emblem or symbol differ widely in its meaning. The magical sigillae, being founded on certain principles of numbers, partake of this character, and although monstrous or ridiculous in the eyes of the uninstructed, convey a whole body of doctrine to those who have been trained to recognise them.” (Helena P. Blavatsky. The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1., pg.)
“The writer is quite certain that there was an ancient language [not an ordinary language] which modernly and up to this time appears to have been lost, the vestiges of which, however, abundantly exist. . . .The author discovered that this (integral ratio in numbers of diameter to circumference of a circle) geometrical ratio was the very ancient, and probably the divine origin of linear measures. . . . It appears almost proven that the same system of geometry, numbers, ratio, and measures were known and made use of on the continent of North America, even prior to the knowledge of the same by the descending Semites. . . . .”
“The peculiarity of this language was that it could be contained in another, concealed and not to be perceived, save through the help of special instruction; letters and syllabic signs possessing at the same time the powers or meaning of numbers, of geometrical shapes, pictures, or ideographs and symbols, the designed scope of which would be determinatively helped out by parables in the shape of narratives or parts of narratives; while also it could be set forth separately, independently, and variously, by pictures, in stone work, or in earth construction.”
“To clear up an ambiguity as to the term language: Primarily the word means the expression of ideas by human speech; but, secondarily, it may mean the expression of ideas by any other instrumentality. This old language is so composed in the Hebrew text, that by the use of the written characters, which will be the language first defined, a distinctly separated series of ideas may be intentionally communicated, other than those ideas expressed by the reading of the sound signs. This secondary language sets forth, under a veil, series of ideas, copies in imagination of things sensible, which may be pictured, and of things which may be classed as real without being sensible…” (Ralston Skinner, The Hebrew-Egyptian Mystery and the Source of Measures; also see The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1., pg. 308.)
REASONS FOR THE RULE OF SECRECY
The phrase “mysteries of the kingdom of heaven” refers to the mysteries of nature and the system of the colleges of the initiates. The keys are its dialects, or modes of interpretation. The writers of these texts clearly use this language repeatedly.
“Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand.” (The New Testament, Luke 8:10)
“The mysteries never were, never can be, put within the reach of the general public, not, at least, until that longed for day when our religious philosophy becomes universal. At no time have more than a scarcely appreciable minority of men possessed nature’s secret, though multitudes have witnessed the practical evidences of the possibility of their possession. The adept is the rare efflorescence of a generation of enquirers.” (The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter no. 2. Simla Oct. 19, 1880)
“…the world is yet in its first stage of disenthralment if not development, hence — unprepared. Very true, we work by natural not supernatural means and laws. But, as on the one hand Science would find itself unable (in its present state) to account for the wonders given in its name, and on the other the ignorant masses would still be left to view the phenomenon in the light of a miracle; everyone who would thus be made a witness to the occurrence would be thrown off his balance and the results would be deplorable. Believe me, it would be so — especially for yourself who originated the idea.” (K.H., The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter no. 1., Simla, Oct. 15, 1880.)
“Were we to accede to your desires know you really what consequences would follow in the trail of success? The inexorable shadow which follows all human innovations moves on, yet few are they, who are ever conscious of its approach and dangers. What are then to expect they, who would offer the world an innovation which, owing to human ignorance, if believed in, will surely be attributed to those dark agencies the two-thirds of humanity believe in and dread as yet? You say — half London would be converted if you could deliver them a Pioneer on its day of publication. I beg to say that if the people believed the thing true they would kill you before you could make the round of Hyde Park; if it were not believed true, — the least that could happen would be the loss of your reputation and good name, — for propagating such ideas.” (ibid.)
“The danger was this: Doctrines such as the planetary chain, or the seven races [epochs, ages], at once give a clue to the seven-fold nature of man, for each principle is correlated to a plane, a planet, and a race; and the human principles are, on every plane, correlated to seven-fold occult forces — those of the higher planes being of tremendous power. So that any septenary division at once gives a clue to tremendous occult powers, the abuse of which would cause incalculable evil to humanity.
The documents were concealed, it is true, but the knowledge itself and its actual existence had never been made a secret of by the Hierophants of the Temple, wherein Mysteries have ever been made a discipline and stimulus to virtue. This is very old news, and was repeatedly made known by the great adepts, from Pythagoras and Plato down to the Neoplatonists. It was the new religion of the Nazarenes that wrought a change for the worse — in the policy of centuries. (Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1., pg. xxxv.)
“And the disciples came and said to Him, “Why do You speak to them in parables?” Jesus answered them, “To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted…” (The New Testament, Matthew 13:10-11.)
THE ANCIENT COLLEGES
“Ages before the Royal Society found itself becoming a reality upon the plan of the “Prophetic Scheme” an innate longing for the hidden, a passionate love for and the study of nature had led men in every generation to try and fathom her secrets deeper than their neighbours did. Roma ante Romulum fuit — is an axiom taught to us in your English schools. Abstract enquiries into the most puzzling problems did not arise in the brain of Archimedes as a spontaneous and hitherto untouched subject, but rather as a reflection of prior enquiries in the same direction and by men separated from his days by as long a period — and far longer — than the one which separates you from the great Syracusian.” (The Mahatma Letters, no. 1., Received Simla October 15th, 1880)
“The above enumerated societies are all comparatively modern, none dating back earlier than the middle ages. How much more proper, then, that the students of the oldest Archaic School should be careful not to divulge secrets of far more importance to humanity (in the sense of being dangerous in the hands of the latter) than any of the so-called “Masonic Secrets,” which have now become, as the French say, those of “Polichinelle!” But this restriction can apply only to the psychological or rather psycho-physiological and Cosmical significance of symbol and emblem, and even to that only partially. An adept must refuse to impart the conditions and means that lead to a correlation of elements, whether psychic or physical, that may produce a hurtful result as well as a beneficent one. But he is ever ready to impart to the earnest student the secret of the ancient thought in anything that regards history concealed under mythological symbolism, and thus to furnish a few more land-marks towards a retrospective view of the past, as containing useful information with regard to the origin of man, the evolution of the races and geognosy; yet it is the crying complaint to-day, not only among theosophists, but also among the few profane interested in the subject. “Why do not the adepts reveal that which they know?” To this, one might answer, “Why should they, since one knows beforehand that no man of science will accept, even as an hypothesis, let alone as a theory or axiom, the facts imparted. Have you so much as accepted or believed in the A B C of the Occult philosophy contained in the Theosophist, “Esoteric Buddhism,” and other works and periodicals? Has not even the little which was given, been ridiculed and derided, and made to face the “animal” and “ape theory” of Huxley — Haeckel, on one hand, and the rib of Adam and the apple on the other? Notwithstanding such an unenviable prospect, a mass of facts is given in the present work. And now the origin of man, the evolution of the globe and the races, human and animal, are as fully treated here as the writer is able to treat them.” (The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1., pg. 306)
THE MYSTERY LANGUAGE OF THE INITIATES
“All this may have been the experience of the Past, and these strange records lie embedded in the “Mystery language” of the prehistoric ages, the language now called Symbolism.” (The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1., pg. 309)
“The proofs brought forward in corroboration of the old teachings are scattered widely throughout the old scriptures of ancient civilizations. The Puranas, the Zendavesta, and the old classics are full of them; but no one has ever gone to the trouble of collecting and collating together those facts. The reason for this is, that all such events were recorded symbolically; and that the best scholars, the most acute minds (…) have been too often darkened by one or another preconception; still oftener, by one-sided views of the secret meaning.” (The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1., pg. 307.)
“Yet even a parable is a spoken symbol: a fiction or a fable, as some think; an allegorical representation, we say, of life-realities, events, and facts. And, as a moral was ever drawn from a parable, that moral being an actual truth and fact in human life, so an historical, real event was deduced — by those versed in the hieratic sciences — from certain emblems and symbols recorded in the ancient archives of the temples. The religious and esoteric history of every nation was embedded in symbols; it was never expressed in so many words. All the thoughts and emotions, all the learning and knowledge, revealed and acquired, of the early races, found their pictorial expression in allegory and parable. Why? Because the spoken word has a potency unknown to, unsuspected and disbelieved in, by the modern “sages.” Because sound and rhythm are closely related to the four Elements of the Ancients; and because such or another vibration in the air is sure to awaken corresponding powers, union with which produces good or bad results, as the case may be. No student was ever allowed to recite historical, religious, or any real events in so many unmistakable words, lest the powers connected with the event should be once more attracted. Such events were narrated only during the Initiation, and every student had to record them in corresponding symbols, drawn out of his own mind and examined later by his master, before they were finally accepted. Thus was created in time the Chinese Alphabet, as, before that, the hieratic symbols were fixed upon in old Egypt. In the Chinese language, the alphabet of which may be read in any language (…) every word has its corresponding symbol conveying the word needed in a pictorial form. The language possesses many thousands of such symbol letters, or logograms, each meaning a whole word; for letters proper, or an alphabet, do not exist in the Chinese language any more than they did in the Egyptian till a far later period.” (The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1., pg. 307.)
REFERENCES
- Helena Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1, 1888
- James Ralston Skinner, The Hebrew-Egyptian Mystery and the Source of Measures.
- See Sun and Lunar Worship: Adonai, Baal and Moloch in the Mysteries
- See The Connection of Theosophy to Tibet, Iran and Chaldea
The American Minervan 
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