Author Description

Through the veil of all the hieratic and mystical allegories of the ancient dogmas, through the obscurity and the bizarre trials of all the initiations, under the seal of all the sacred, ancient scriptures in the ruins of Nineveh or Thebes, on the eroded stones of the temples and on the blackened faces of the sphinxes of Assyria or Egypt, in the monstrous or marvelous paintings which translate for the believers of India the sacred pages of the Vedas, in the strange emblems of our ancient books of Alchemy, in the ceremonies of reception practiced by all in mysterious societies, the traces of a similar doctrine are found everywhere and everywhere carefully hidden. Occult philosophy seems to have been the nurse or godmother of all religions. It had reigned in Persia with the Magi, who perished one day, as the masters of the world perish, for having abused their power; he had endowed India with the most marvelous traditions and an incredible luxury of poetry, grace and terror in its emblems; he had civilized Greece to the sound of the lyre of Orpheus; hid the principles of all the sciences and all the progress of the human mind in the audacious calculations of Pythagoras; the fable was full of its miracles, and history, when it undertook to judge this unknown power, became confused with the fable; he shook or strengthened empires with his oracles, eclipsed tyrants on their thrones and ruled all minds by curiosity or fear. To this science, said the crowd, nothing is impossible: it commands the elements, knows the language of the stars and directs the course of the stars; the moon, at his voice, falls all bloody from the sky; the dead rise in their tomb and articulate in fatal words the wind of the night which whistles in their skull.