Jesus, the last great initiate

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JESUS

THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

BY

EDOUARD SGHURE ^

t

TRANSLATED BY
F. ROTHWELL, B.A.

PUBLISHED BY

YOGI PUBLICATION SOCIETY

MASONIC TEMPLE, CHICAGO, ILL.

?1 Blir LiBl^AKY

JESUS
THE L.4ST GREAT INITIATE

THE MISSION OF THE CHRIST.

"7 came not to destroy the Law and the Prophets,
hut to fulfil them.*' — Matthew v. 17.

''The Light was in the world, and the world was
made hy it, hut the world knew it not.'* — John i. 10.

"As the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth
even unto the west; so sliall also the coming of the Son
of man be." — Matthew xxiv. 27.

PREFACE

Criticism on the life of Jesus during the past century
has been greatly to the fore. A complete account of
this criticism will be found in the luminous sketch made
by M. Sabatier/ in which the entire history and present
state of this investigation are given. Sufficient for the
moment to refer to the two principal phases supplied by
Strauss and Renan, with the object of determining the
new point of view I now wish to offer.

Departing from the philosophical school of Hegel to
ally himself with the critical and historical one of Bauer,
Strauss, without denying the existence of Jesus, en-
deavored to prove that his life, as related in the Gospels,
is a myth, a legend created by popular imagination, to
meet the necessities of a rising Christianity, and in
accordance with Old Testament prophecy. His position,
a purely negative one, but which he defended with great
skill and erudition, has been found true in certain
details, but quite untenable in its entirety and essential
elements. It has, in addition, the grave defect of ex-
plaining neither the character of Jesus nor the origin
of Christianity. The life of Jesus, according to Strauss,
is a planetary system without a sun. One merit, how-
ever, must be granted this work, that of having trans-
ferred the problem from the ground of dogmatic
theology to that of textual and historical criticism.

^ Dictionnaire des Sciences Eeligieuses, par Lichtenberger, tome
7, article "Jesus."

7

8 PREFACE

M. Kenan's Vie de Jesus owes its brilliant success to
its lofty, aesthetic, and literary qualities, as well as to
the boldness of the writer, the first who dared make the
life of the Christ a problem of human psychology. Has
he solved the problem? After the dazzling success of
the book, the general opinion of all serious critics has
been in the negative. The Jesus of M. Renan begins
his career as a gentle dreamer, an enthusiastic but simple-
minded moralist; he ends it as a violent thaumaturgist,
devoid of all idea of reality. "In spite of all the pre-
cautions of the historian," says M. Sabatier, '*it is the
march of a healthy mind in the direction of madness.
The Christ of M. Renan hovers between the calculations
of ambition and the dreams of a seer." The fact is
that he becomes the Messiah without wishing — almost
without knowing — it. He permits himself to be given
this name merely to please the apostles and to fulfil the
popular wish. It is not with so feeble a faith that a
true prophet creates a new religion and changes the
soul of the earth. The life of Jesus, according to M.
Renan, is a planetary system illumined by a pallid sun
devoid of vivifying magnetism or creative heat.

How did Jesus become the Messiah? That is the
primordial question, the solution of which is essential
to the right understanding of the Christ; it is also that
before which M. Renan hesitated and turned aside.
M. Theodore Kein; saw that this question must be boldly
faced {Das Lehen Jesu, Ziirich, 1875, 3rd edition). His
life of Jesus is the most remarkable that has appeared
since M. Renan's. It throws on the question all the
light given by texts and history esoterically interpreted.
But the problem is not one capable of being solved
without the aid of intuition and esoteric tradition.

PREFACE 9

It is by means of this esoteric light, the inner flame
of all religions, the central truth of all fruitful philosophy,
that I have attempted to reconstruct along its main lines,
the life of Jesus, taking into account whatever previous
historical criticism has hitherto cleared and prepared
the ground. No need to define what I mean by the
esoteric point of view, the synthesis of Religion and
Science. Concerning the historical and relative value
of the Gospels, I have taken the three synoptical Gospels
(those of Matthew, Mark, and Luke) as a basis, and
that of John as the arcanum of the esoteric teaching of
the Christ, at the same time acknowledging the subse-
quent language and form, and the symbolical tendency
of this Gospel.

All four Gospels, which should be mutually examined
and verified, are equally authentic, though from different
claims. Those of Matthew and Mark are precious gos-
pels of letter and fact ; therein are to be found the public
deeds and words of the Christ. The gentle Luke affords
a glimpse of the mystery-meaning beneath the poetical
legend-veil; it is the Gospel of the Soul, of Woman,
and of Love. Saint John unfolds these mysteries; in
his Gospel are to be found the inner depths of the doc-
trine, the secret teaching, the meaning of the promise,
the esoteric reserve. Clement of Alexandria, one of the
few Christian bishops who held the key to universal
esoterism, rightly named it the Gospel of the Spirit.
John has a profound insight of the transcendent truths
revealed by the Master, and a great facility in presenting
them. Accordingly, his symbol is the Eagle, whose wing
cleaves the firmament, and whose flaming eye encom-
passes the depths of space.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

Paqb

Condition of the World at the Birth of Jesus 13

CHAPTER II
Mary — First Development of Jesus ... 28

CHAPTER III

The Essenes — John the Baptist — The Tempta-
tion 39

CHAPTER IV

The Public Life of Jesus — Popular and Eso-
teric Instruction — Miracles — Apostles —
Women 59

CHAPTER V

Struggle With the Pharisees — Flight to

C^SAREA — The Transfiguration ... 74
11

12 CONTENTS

CHAPTER VI

Final Journey to Jerusalem — The Promise —
The Supper — Trial of Jesus — Death and
Resurrection 88

CHAPTER Vn
The Promise and Its Fulfilment — The Temple 121

JESUS,
THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

CHAPTER I

CONDITION OF THE WORLD AT THE
BIRTH OF JESUS

A SOLEMN period of the world's destiny was approach-
ing; the sky was overshadowed with darkness and filled
with sinister omens.

In spite of the efforts of the initiates, polytheism,
throughout Asia, Africa, and Europe, had terminated
only in the downfall of civiHzation. The sublime cos-
mogony of Orpheus, so gloriously chanted by Homer,
had not V -v^n attained, and the only explanation possible
is that human nature found great difficulty in maintaining
a certain intellectual altitude. For the great spirits of
antiquity, the gods were never anything more than a
poetical expression of the subordinated forces of Nature,
a speaking image of its inner organism ; it is as symbols
of cosmic and animic forces that these gods live
indestructible in the consciousness of humanity. This
diversity of gods and forces, the initiates thought, was
dominated and penetrated by the supreme God or pure
Spirit. The principal aim of the sanctuaries of Memphis,
Delphi, and Eleusis had been precisely the teaching of

13

14 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

this unity of God with the theosophical ideas and moral
discipline resulting therefrom.

But the disciples of Orpheus, Pythagoras, and Plato
failed before the egoism of the politicians, the sordidness
of the sophists, and the passions of the mob. The social
and political decomposition of Greece was the conse-
quence of its religious, moral, and intellectual decom-
position. Apollo, the Solar Word, the manifestation of
the supreme God and the supra-terrestrial world, is silent.
No more oracles, no more inspired poets are to be
heard! Minerva, Wisdom, and Foresight, veils her
countenance in presence of her people converted into
Satyrs, profaning the mysteries, and insulting the gods
in Aristophanic farces on the stage of Bacchus. The
very mysteries themselves are corrupted, for cycophants
and courtesans are admitted to the Elusinian rites.
. . . When soul becomes blunted, religion falls into
idolatry ; when thought becomes materialized, philosophy
degenerates into scepticism. Thus we see Lucian, poor
microbe born from the corpse of paganism, turn the
myths into ridicule, when once Carneades had denied
their scientific origin.

Superstitious in religion, agnostic in philosophy, ego-
istical and divided in politics, reeling under anarchy and
fatally abandoned to despotism, Greece had become
sadly changed from the time when she transmitted the
science of Egypt and the mysteries of Asia in immortal
forms of beauty.

If there was one who understood what the world
needed, and who endeavored to restore this need by an
effort of heroic genius, that one was Alexander the
Great. This legendary conqueror, initiated, as was also
his father, Philip, into the mysteries of Samothrace,

THE WORLD AT THE BIRTH OF JESUS 15

proved himself even more of an intellectual son of
Orpheus than a disciple of Aristotle. Doubtless, the
Achilles of Macedonia, who, accompanied by a mere
handful of Greeks, crossed Asia as far as India, dreamed
of universal empire, but not after the fashion of the
Caesars, by oppression of the people, and the destruction
of religion and unfettered science. His grand idea was
to reconcile Asia and Europe by a synthesis of religions,
supported by scientific authority. Impelled by this
thought, he paid homage to the science of Aristotle, as
he did to Minerva of Athens, the Jehovah of Jerusalem,
the Egyptian Osiris, and the Hindu Brahma, recog-
nizing, as would a veritable initiate, an identical divinity
and wisdom beneath these differing symbols. This new
Dionysus possessed a broad sympathy and mighty pro-
phetic insight. Alexander's sword typified the last flash
of the Greece of Orpheus, illumining both East and
West. The son of Philip died in the intoxication of
victory and the glorious accomplishment of his dream,
leaving the shreds of his empire to selfish and rapacious
generals. But his thought did not die with him; he
had founded Alexandria, where Oriental Philosophy,
Judaism, and Hellenism were to be fused in the crucible
of Egyptian esoterism, until the time might be ripe for
the resurrection word of the Christ.

In proportion as Apollo and Minerva, the twin constel-
lations of Greece, paled away on the horizon, the people
saw a menacing sign, the Roman She- Wolf, rise in the
troubled sky.

What is the origin of Rome? The conspiracy of a
greedy oligarchy, in the name of brute force ; the oppres-
sion of the human intellect, of religion, science, and art,
by deified political power: in other words, the contrary

l6 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

of truth, by which a government receives its justifica-
tion, according to the supreme principles of science,
justice and economy.^

The whole of Roman history is merely the consequence
of the iniquitous pact by which the Conscript Fathers
declared war, first, against Italy, and afterwards against
the whole Roman race. They chose a fitting symbol ; for
the brazen She-Wolf, with tawny hair erect, and hyena's
head turned in the direction of the Capitol, is the image
of this government, the demon which will take possession
of the Roman soul to the very end.

In Greece, at least, the sanctuaries of Delphi and
Eleusis were long respected ; at Rome, from the very
outset, science and art were rejected. The attempt of
the sage Numa, the Etruscan initiate, failed before the
suspicious ambition of the Conscript Fathers. He brought
with him the Sibylline books, which contained part of
the science of Hermes, appointed magistrates elected by
the people, distributed territory, and submitted the right
of declaring war to the Fecial priests. Accordingly, King
Numa, long cherished in the memory of the people, who
regarded him as inspired by divine genius, seems to be a
historical intervention of sacred science in the govern-
ment. He does not represent the genius of Rome, but
rather that of the Etruscan initiation, which followed the
same principles as the schoool of Memphis and Delphi.

After Numa, the Roman Senate burnt the Sybilline
Books, ruined the authority of the flamens, destroyed

* This point of view, in diametrical opposition to the empiric
school of Aristotle and Montesquieu, was that of the great in-
itiates, the Egyptian priests, as of Moses and Pythagoras. It had
been previously amplified in the Missioji dcs Juifs of M. Saint-
Yves. See hifl remarkable chapter on the foundation of Kome.

THE WORLD AT THE BIRTH OF JESUS 17

arbitral institutions, and returned to its old systems in
which religion was nothing more than an instrument of
public domination. Rome became the hydra which en-
gulfed the peoples and their gods with them. The
nations of the earth were gradually reduced to subjec-
tion and pillage. The Mamertine prison became filled
with kings from North and South. Rome, bent on
having no other kings than slaves and charlatans,
destroys the final possessors of esoteric tradition in Gaul,
Egypt, Judea, and Persia. She pretends to worship the
gods, but the only object of her adoration is the She-
Wolf. And now, away on the blood-stained dawn, there
appears the final offspring of this ravenous creature, the
embodiment of the genius of Rome — Caesar! Rome has
conquered all the nations of the earth, Caesar, her incar-
nation, arrogates to himself universal power. He aspires
not merely to become the ruler of mankind, for, uniting
the tirara with the diadem, he jcauses himself to be pro-
claimed Chief Pontifif. After the Battle of Thapsus,
deification as a hero is voted him, after that of Munda,
divine apotheosis is granted by the Senate ; his statue is
erected in the temple of Quirinus, and a college of offi-
ciating priests appointed, bearing his name. To crown
all in irony and logic, this very Caesar who deifies him-
self, denies in the presence of the Senate the immortality
of the soul ! Would it be possible to proclaim more
openly that there is no longer any other God than
Caesar.

Under the Caesars, Rome, inheritor of Babylon, ex-
tends her power over the whole world. What has
become of the Roman State? It is engaged in destroy-
ing all collective life outside of governors and tax-

1 8 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

collectors in the provinces. Conquering Rome feeds like
a vampire on the corpse of a worn-out system.

And now the Roman orgies are freely and publicly
paraded with all their bacchanalia of vice and crime.
They begin with the voluptuous meeting of Mark
Antony and Cleopatra, and will be brought to an end
with the debaucheries of Messalina and the mad frenzy
of Nero. They signalize their presence by a lascivious
and public parody of the mysteries, and are destined to
close in the Roman Circus, where nude virgins, martyrs
to their faith, are torn to pieces and devoured by savage
beasts, amid the plaudits of thousands of spectators.

And yet, among the nations conquered by Rome, there
was one which called itself the people of God, whose
genius was the very opposite to that of Rome. How
comes it that Israel, worn out by intestine strife, crushed
by three centuries of slavery, had preserved its indomi-
table faith? Why did this conquered people rise,
prophet-like, to oppose Greek decadence and Roman
orgies? Whence did they derive the courage to predict
the fall of the masters who had their feet on the throat
of the nation, and speak of some vague final triumph,
when they themselves were drawing to an irremediable
ruin? The reason was, that a great idea, inspired by
Moses, lived in the nation. Under Joshua, the twelve
tribes had erected a commemorative pillar with the
inscription, "This is a testimony between us that Jehovah
is God alone."

The law-maker of Israel had made monotheism the
corner-stone of his science and social law, as well as of
a universal religious idea. He had had the genius to
understand that on the triumph of this idea the future
of mankind would depend. To preserve it, he had writ-

THE WORLD AT THE BIRTH OF JESUS 19

ten a hieroglyphic book, constructed a golden ark, and
raised up a people from the nomad dust of the wilder-
ness. On these witnesses of the spiritualistic idea Moses
brought down the lightning flash and the thunderbolt
from heaven. Against them conspired not only the
Moabites, the Philistines, the Amalekites, and all the
tribes of Palestine, but even the frailties and passions
of the Jewish people itself. The Book ceased to be
understood by the priesthood; the ark was captured by
enemies, numerous were the times when the people
almost forgot their mission. Why then, in spite of all,
did they remain faithful to this mission? Why had the
idea of Moses remained graven on the brow and heart
of Israel in letters of fire? To whom is due this exclu-
sive perseverance, this magnificent fidelity amid the vicis-
situdes of a troubled history, such a fidelity as gave
Israel a unique character among the nations? It may
boldly be attributed to the prophets and the institution
of prophecy; by oral tradition it may be traced back to
Moses. The Hebrew people has had Nabi at all periods
of its history, right to its dispersion. But the institution
of prophecy appears first under an organic form at the
time of Samuel. He it was who founded the confraterni-
ties of Nehiim, those schools of prophets, in the face of
a rising royalty and an already degenerate priesthood.
He made them austere guardians of the esoteric tradi-
tion and the universal religious thought of Moses against
the kings, in whom the political idea and national aim
was to predominate. In these confraternities were pre-
served the relics of the science of Moses, the sacred
music, the occult art of healing, and finally, the art of
divination, exercised by the great prophets with masterly
force and abnegation.

20 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

Divination has existed under the most diverse forms
among all the peoples of the ancient cycle ; but prophecy
in Israel possesses an amplitude, a loftiness and authority,
belonging to the intellectual and spiritual nature in which
monotheism keeps the human soul. The prophecy offered
by the theologians, literally, as the direct communication
of a personal God, denied by naturalistic philosophy as
pure superstition, is in reality nothing but the superior
manifestation of the universal laws of the Spirit. "The
general truths which govern the world," says Ewald, in
his fine work on the prophets, "in other terms, the
thoughts of God, are immutable and incapable of attack,
quite independent of the fluctuations of things, or of the
will and action of men. Man is originally intended to
participate in them, and translate them freely into acts.
But for the Word of the Spirit to enter into carnal man,
he must be fundamentally influenced by the great commo-
tion of history. Then the Eternal Truth springs forth
like a flash of light. This is why we so often read in the
Old Testament that Jehovah is a living God. When man
listens to the divine call, a new life is created in him;
now he no longer feels himself alone, but in communion
with God and all truth, ready to proceed eternally from
one verity to another. In this new life, his thought
becomes one with the universal will. He possesses a
clear grasp of the present, and entire faith in the final
success of the divine idea. The man who experiences
this is a prophet, i. e., he feels himself irresistibly impelled
to manifest himself before others as a representative of
God. His thought becomes vision, and this superior
might which forces the truth from his soul, at times with
heart-breaking anguish, constitutes the prophetic element.

THE WORLD AT THE BIRTH OF JESUS 21

The prophetic manifestations, throughout history, have
been the thunderbolts and lightning Hashes of truth/'^

From this spring, those giants, Elijah, Isaiah, Ezekiel,
and Jeremiah, drew their might. Deep in their caves or
in the palaces of the kings, they were indeed sentinels of
Jehovah, and, as Elisha said to his master Elijah, "the
chariots of Israel, and the horsemen thereof." Often do
they foretell with prophetic vision the death of kings, the
fall of kingdoms, and the punishments to be visited on
Israel. At times they are mistaken. The prophetic
torch, though lit by the sun of divine truth, will vacillate
and darken in their hands under the influence of national
passion. But never do they waver concerning moral
truths, the real mission of Israel, the final triumph of
justice to mankind. As true initiates, they preach their
scorn of outer worship, the abolition of sacrifices of blood,
the purification of the soul, and the practice of love.
It is with regard to the final triumph of monotheism, its
liberating and peace-bringing role to all nations, that
their vision is truly remarkable. The most frightful
misfortunes that can strike a nation, foreign invasion,
captivity in Babylon, cannot shake their faith. Listen
to what Isaiah said during the invasion of Sennacherib :

''Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all
ye that love her: rejoice for joy with her, all ye that
mourn for her.

'That ye may suck and be satisfied with the breasts
of her consolations ; that ye may milk out and be delighted
with the abundance of her glory.

"For thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will extend peace
to her like a river, and the glory of the Gentiles like a

* Ewald, Die Propheten : Introduction.

22 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

flowing stream : then shall ye suck, ye shall be borne upon
her sides, and be dandled upon her knees.

"As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I com-
fort you ; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem.

"And when ye see this, your heart shall rejoice, and
your bones shall flourish like an herb: and the hand of
the Lord shall be known towards his servants, and his
indignation toward his enemies.

"For behold, the Lord will come with fire and with
his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with
fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire.

"For by fire and by his sword will the Lord plead with
all flesh : and the slain of the Lord shall be many.

"They that sanctify themselves, and purify themselves
in the gardens behind one tree in the midst, eating
swine's flesh, and the abomination and the mouse shall
be consumed together, saith the Lord.

"For I know their works and their thoughts: it shall
come that I will gather all nations and tongues ; and
they shall come and see my glory. "^

It is only before the tomb of the Christ that this vision
begins to find realization, but who could deny its pro-
phetic truth when thinking of the part Israel played in
the history of mankind ?

No less firm than this faith in the future of Jerusalem,
in its moral grandeur and religious universality, is the
faith of the prophets in a Savior or a Messiah. They all
speak of him; the incomparable Isaiah is still the one
whose vision is clearest, and who depicts it with greatest
force in bold, lofty language:

"There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of
Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of its roots ;
* Isaiah Ixvi. 10-18.

THE WORLD AT THE BIRTH OF JESUS 23

"And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the
spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel
and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the
Loid;

"And shall make him of quick understanding in the
fear of the Lord, and he shall not judge after the sight
of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears ;

"But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and
reprove with equity for the meek of the earth; and he
shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with
the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked.

"And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins,
and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. "^

Before this vision, the gloomy soul of the prophet
becomes calm and clear, as does a tempest-troubled sky
after a storm. For now it is indeed the image of the
Galilean which is present before his inner vision:

"For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant
and as a root out of a dry ground : he hath no form nor
comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no
beauty that we should desire him.

"He is despised and rejected of men, a-man of sorrows
and acquainted with grief : and we hid as it were our
faces from him; he was despised and we esteemed him
not.

"Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sor-
rows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God
and afflicted.

"But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was
bruised for our iniquities : the chastisement of our peace
was upon him ; and with his stripes we are healed.

"All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned
* Isaiah si, 1-5.

24 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on
him the iniquity of us all.

"He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened
not his mouth ; he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth
not his mouth.

"He was taken from prison and from judgment: and
who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out
of the land of the living: for the transgression of my
people was he stricken."^

For eight centuries the thunder-words of the prophets
caused the idea and image of the Messiah to hover above
all national dissensions and misfortunes, at times under
the form of a terrible avenger, and again as an angel of
mercy. The Messianic idea, tenderly nurtured under
Assyrian despotism in Babylonian exile, and brought to
light under Persian domination, continued to grow under
the reign of the Seleucides and the Maccabees. When
the Roman rule and the reign of Herod came, the Mes-
siah was alive in the consciousness of all. The great
prophets had seen him as a great man, a martyr, a veri-
table son of God . . . the people, faithful to the
Judaic idea, imagined him as a David, a Solomon, or a
new Maccabeus. Whatever he might be, this restorer
of Israel's greatness was believed in and expected by all.
Such is the might of prophetic action.

Thus we see that just as Roman history ends«in Caesar,
along the instinctive path and infernal logic of Destiny,
so the history of Israel leads freely to the Christ along
the conscious path and divine logic of Providence, mani-
fested in its visible representatives, the prophets. Evil

» Isaiah liu. 2-8.

THE WORLD AT THE BIRTH OF JESUS 25

is fatally condemned to contradict and destroy itself, for
it is the False ; but Good, in spite of all obstacles, engen-
ders light and harmony after a lapse of time, for it is
the fruit of Truth. From her triumph Rome obtained
nothing but Csesarism, from her downfall Israel gave
birth to the Messiah.

A vague expectancy hung over the nations. In the
excess of its evil all humanity had a presentiment of a
savior. For centuries mythology had dreamt of a divine
child. The temples spoke of him in mystery ; astrologists
calculated his coming; frenzied sibyls had loudly pro-
claimed the downfall of pagan gods. The initiates had
announced that some day the world would be governed
by one of their own, a Son of God.^ The world was
expecting the spiritual king, such a one as would be
understood by the poor and lowly.

The great ^schylus, son of a priest of Eleusis, was
almost killed by the Athenians for daring to say in the
crowded theater, by the mouth of his Prometheus, that
the reign of Jupiter-Destiny would come to an end.
Four centuries later, under the shadow of the throne
of Augustus, the gentle Virgil announces a new age, and
dreams of a marvelous child —

** Ultima Cumaei venit jam carminis aetas;
Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo.
Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna:
Jam nova progenies coelo demittitur alto.
Tu modo nascenti puero, quo ferrea primum
Desinet, ac toto surget gens aurea mundo.
Casta, fave, Lucina; tuus jam regnat Apollo.

^ Such is the esoteric significance of the beautiful legend of the
magi coming from the far East to worship the child of Bethlehem.

26 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

. . . Aspice convexo nutantem pondere mundum,
Terrasque, tractusque maris, coelumque profundum,
Aspice venture laetantur ut omnia saeclo. "^

When will this child be born? From what divine
world will this soul come? In what brilliant lightning-
flash of love will it descend to earth ? By what wonderful
purity, what superhuman energy will it remember the
abandoned heaven? By what mightier effort will it
return from the depth of its earthly consciousness, taking
with it mankind in its train?

No one could have told, but all were waiting and
expecting. . . . Herod the Great, the Idumean
usurper, the protege of Augustus Caesar, was then at the
point of death in his Cyprian chateau at Jericho, after a
sumptuous and blood-stained reign, which had covered
Judea with splendid palaces and human hectacombs. He
was dying from a terrible malady, decomposition of the
blood, hated by all, torn with fury and remorse, haunted
by the spectres of his innumerable victims, amongst

^Virgil, Eclogue 4: —
''The last great age, foretold by sacred rhymes,
Eenews its finished course, Saturian times
Eoll round again, and mighty years begun
From their first orb in radiant circles run,
The base degenerate iron offspring ends,
A golden progeny from Heaven descends:
Oh! Chaste Lucina! Speed the mother's pains,
And haste the glorious birth, thy own Apollo reigns.

See, laboring Nature calls thee to sustain

The nodding frame of Heaven and Earth and main:

See to their base restored, earth, seas, and air;

And joyful ages from behind in crowding ranks appear;

To sing thy praise. ..."

— Detden.

THE WORLD AT THE BIRTH OF JESUS 2^

whom were numbered his innocent wife, the noble
Marian, of Maccabee blood, and three of his own sons.
The seven women of his harem had fled the presence of
the royal phantom. His very bodyguard had abandoned
him. Impassive by the side of the dying wretch sat his
sister Salome, his evil genius, the instigator of his foulest
crimes. With diadem on brow, and breast sparkling with
precious stones, she kept watch, waiting for the king's
last breath, when she in her turn would seize the reins
of sovereignty.

Thus died the last king of the Jews. At this very
moment had just been born the future spiritual king of
humanity,^ and the few initiates of Israel were silently
preparing for his reign in profound humility and silence.

^Herod died in the fourth year before our era. Calculations of
the critics are now generally unanimous in giving this date also
as the birth of Jesus. See Keim, Das Leien Jesu.

CHAPTER II

MARY — FIRST DEVELOPMENT OF JESUS

Jehoshoua, whom we call Jesus, from the Greek form
of his name, was probably born in Nazareth.^ It was
certainly in this abandoned corner of Galilee that his
childhood was passed, and the first, the greatest, of the
Christian mysteries accomplished : the appearance of the
soul of the Christ. He was the son of Miriam, or Mary,
wife of the carpenter Joseph, a Galilean woman of noble
origin, affiliated to the Essenes.

Legend has woven a tissue of marvels around the birth
of Jesus. If legend gives refuge to numerous super-
stitions, it also at times conceals psychic truths but little
known, for they are above the perception of the mass of
mankind. One fact may be learned from the legendary
history of Mary, that Jesus was a child consecrated
before his birth to a prophetic mission, by the wish of
his mother. The same thing is related of several heroes
and prophets of the Old Testament. These sons thus
dedicated to God were called Nazarenes. Touching this
point, it is interesting to refer to the histories of Samson
and of Samuel. An angel announces to Samson's mother
that she will soon be with child, and will give birth to a

^ It is by no means impossible that Jesus might chance to have
been born in Bethlehem. But this tradition seems to form part
of the cycle of posterior legends relating to the holy family and
the infancy of the Christ.

28

FIRST DEVELOPMENT OF JESUS 29

son, whose head the razor shall not touch. In the case
of Samuel, it is the mother who herself requests a child
from God (Conf. Judges xiii. 3-5 ; and i Samuel i. 11-20).

Now Sam-u-el^ in its original root signification, means.
Inner glory of God. The mother, feeling herself, as it
were, illumined by the one she incarnated, considered him
as the ethereal essence of the Lord.

These passages are extremely important, as they intro-
duce us to the esoteric, the constant and living tradition
in Israel, and, along this channel, into the real significa-
tion of the Christian legend. Elkana, the husband, is
indeed the earthly father of Samuel in the flesh, but the
Eternal is his heavenly Father in the Spirit. The figura-
tive language of Judaic monotheism here masks the doc-
trine of the pre-existence of the soul. The woman initiate
appeals to a superior soul, demanding to receive it in her
womb, and bring to birth a prophet. This doctrine, con-
siderably veiled by the Jews, and completely absent from
their official worship, formed part of the secret tradition
of the initiates. It appears in the prophets. Jeremiah
affirms it in the following terms: 'The word of the
Lord came unto me, saying, Before I formed thee in the
belly, I knew thee ; and before thou earnest forth out of
the womb, I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a
prophet unto the nations."^

Jesus will say the same to the scandalized Pharisees,
"Jesus said unto them. Verily, verily, I say unto you,
before Abraham was, I am."^

How much of this can we apply in the case of Mary,
the mother of Jesus ? It appears that, in the first Chris-
tian communities, Jesus had been regarded as a son of

* Jeremiah i. 4.
' John viii. 58.

30 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

Mary and Joseph, since Matthew gives us the genealogi-
cal tree of Joseph to prove that Jesus can • trace his
descent. from David. At a later date, legend, anxious
to show the supernatural origin of the Christ, wove her
web of gold and azure ; the history of Joseph and Mary,
the Annunciation and even the infancy of Mary in the
temple.^

An attempt to discover the esoteric signification of
Jewish tradition and Christian legend would lead one to
say that the action of Providence, or the influx of the
spiritual world which co-operates in the birth of any
man, whoever he be, is more powerful and evident at the
birth of all men of genius, whose appearance can in no
way be explained by the sole law of physical atavism.
This influx reaches its greatest intensity in the case of
one of those divine prophets destined to change the face
of the world. The soul, chosen for a divine mission,
comes from a divine world ; it comes freely and con-
sciously, but that it may enter upon an earthly life a
chosen vessel is needed, and the appeal of a highly gifted
mother, who by the attitude of her moral being, the
desire of her soul, and the purity of her life, has a
presentiment, attracts and incarnates into her very blood
and flesh the soul of the Redeemer, destined in the eyes
of men to become a son of God. Such is the profound
truth beneath the ancient idea of the Virgin-Mother.
The Hindu genius had already given expression to this
idea in the legend of Krishna. The Gospels of Matthew
and of Luke have rendered it with an even more
admirable simplicity and poetic instinct.

*To the soul which comes from heaven, birth is a

^ ' ' Apocryphal Gospel of Mary and of the Savior 's Childhood,
published by Tischendorfif . "

FIRST DEVELOPMENT OF JESUS 31

death/' Empodocles had said 500 years B. C. However
subHme the spirit be, once imprisoned in flesh, it tem-
porarily loses the remembrance of all its past; once
engaged in corporal life, the development of its earthly
consciousness is subjected to the laws of the world in
which it incarnates. It falls under the force of the
elements. The higher its origin, the greater will be the
effort to regain its dormant powers, its celestial innate-
nesses, and to become conscious of its mission.

Profound and tender souls need silence and peace to
spring into manifestation. Jesus passed his early years
amid the calm of Galilee. His first impressions were
gentle, austere, and serene. His birthplace resembled a
corner of heaven, dropped on the side of a mountain.
The village of Nazareth has changed but little with the
flight of time.^ Its houses rising in tiers under the rock,
resembled — so travellers say — white cubes scattered
about in a forest of pomegranate, vine, and fig trees,
while myriads of doves filled the heavens. Around this
nest of verdant freshness floats the pure mountain air,
while on the heights may be seen the open, clear horizon
of Galilee. Add to this imposing background the quiet,
solemn home-life of a pious, patriarchal family. The
strength of Jewish education lay always in the unity of
law and faith, as well as in the powerful organization of
the family dominated by the national and religious idea.
The paternal home was a kind of temple for the child.
Instead of the grinning frescoes, the nymphs and fauns
which adorned the atrium of the Greek houses, such as
could be seen at Sephoris and Tiberias, there could be

^ See the masterly description of M. Eenan 's Galilee in Ms Fie
de Jesus, and the no less remarkable one of M. E. Melchior de
Vogue in his Voyage en Syrie et en Falestine.

32 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

found in the Jewish houses only passages from the laws
and the prophets, the stern, rigid texts standing out in
Chaldean characters above the doors and upon the walls.
But the union of father and mother in mutual love of
their children illumined and warmed the house with a
distinctly spiritual life. It was there Jesus received his
early instruction, and first became acquainted with the
Scriptures under the teaching of his parents. From his
earliest childhood the long strange destiny of the people
of God appeared before him in the periodic feasts and
holy days celebrated in family life by reading, song, and
prayer. At the Feast of Tabernacles, a shed, made of
myrtle and olive branches, was erected in the court or on
the roof of the house in memory of the nomad patriarchs
of bygone ages. The seven-branched candlestick was
lit, and there were produced the rolls of papyrus from
which the secret history was read aloud. To the child's
mind, the Eternal was present, not merely in the starry
sky, but even in this candlestick the reflex of his glory,
in the speech of the father and the silent love of the
mother. Thus Jesus was made acquainted with the
great days in Israel's history, days of joy and sorrow, of
triumph and exile, of numberless afflictions and eternal
hope. The father gave no reply to the child's eager and
direct questions. But the mother, raising those dreamy
eyes from beneath their long dark lashes, and catching
her son's questioning look, said to him, "The Word of
God lives in his prophets alone. Some day the wise
Essenes, solitary wanderers by Mount Carmel and the
Dead Sea, will give thee an answer."

We may also imagine the child Jesus among his
young companions, exercising over them the strange
prestige given by a precocious intelligence joined to his

FIRST DEVELOPMENT OF JESUS 33

active sympathy and the feeling of justice. We follow
him to the synagogue, where he heard the Scribes and
Pharisees discuss together, and where he himself was to
exercise his dialectical powers. We see him quickly
repelled by the arid, teaching of these doctors of the law,
who tortured the letter to such an extent as to do away
with the spirit. And again, we see him brought into
contact with pagan life as he visited the wealthy Sephoris,
capital of Galilee, residence of Antipas, guarded by
Herod's mercenaries, Gauls, Thracians, and barbarians
of every kind. In one of those frequent journeys to visit
Jewish families, he might well have pushed on to a
Phoenician town, one of those veritable hives of human
beings, swarming with life, by the seaside. He would
see from afar the low temples, with their thick sturdy
columns, surrounded with dark groves, whence issued
the songs of the priestesses of Astarte, to the doleful
accompaniment of the flute; their voluptuous shrieks,
piercing as a cry of pain, would awaken in his heart a
deep groan of anguish and pity. Then Mary's son re-
turned to his beloved mountains with a feeling of deliver-
ance. He mounted the steeps of Nazareth, gazing around
on the vast horizon towards Galilee and Samaria, and
cast lingering eyes on Carmel, Gilboa, Tabor, and Sichem,
old-standing witnesses of the patriarchs and prophets.

However powerful might have been the impressions
of the outer world on the soul of Jesus, they all grew
pale before the sovereign and inexpressible truth in his
inner world. This truth was expanding in the depths of
his nature, like some lovely flower emerging from a dark
pool. It resembled a growing light which appeared to
him when alone in silent meditation. At such times men
and things, whether near or far away, appeared as

34 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

though transparent in their essence. He read thoughts
and saw souls; then, in memory, he caught glimpses, as
though through a thin veil, of divinely beautiful and
shining beings bending over him, or assembled in adora-
tion of a dazzling light. Wonderful visions came in his
sleep, or interposed themselves between himself and
reality by a veritable duplication of his consciousness.
In these transports of rapture which carried him from
zone to zone as though towards other skies, he at times
felt himself attracted by a mighty dazzling light, and
then plunged into an incandescent sun. These ravishing
experiences left behind in him a spring of ineffable ten-
derness, a source of wonderful strength. How perfect
was the reconciliation he felt with all beings, in what
sublime harmony was he with the universe! But what
was this mysterious light — though even more familiar
and living than the other — which sprang forth from the
depths of his nature, carrying him away to the most
distant tracts of space, and yet uniting him by secret
vibrations with all souls ? Was it not the source of souls
and worlds?

He named it: His Father in Heaven.^

This primitive feeling of unity with God in the light of
Love, is the first, the great revelation of Jesus. An
inner voice told him to hide it deep in his heart; all the
same, it was to give light to his whole life. It gave him

* Mystical annals of all times show that moral or spiritual
truths of a superior order have been perceived by certain highly-
endowed souls, without reasoning, simply by inner contemplation
and under the form of a vision. This is a psychical phenomenon
imperfectly known to modern science, but still an incontestable
fact. Catherine de Sienne, daughter of a poor dyer, at the age
of four years, saw visions of an extremely remarkable nature.
Swedenborg, man of science, calm observer and reasoner, began

FIRST DEVELOPMENT OF JESUS 35

an invincible feeling of certainty, made him at onge
gentle and indomitable; converted his thought into a
diamond shield, and his speech into a sword of flame.

Besides, this profoundly secret, mystical life was united
with a perfect clearness on matters of every-day life.
Luke shows him at the age of twelve years as "increasing
in strength, grace, and wisdom." The religious con-
sciousness was, in Jesus, innate, absolutely independent
of the outer world. His prophetic and Messianic con-
sciousness could only be awakened by outer circum-
stances, by the life of his age, in short, by special initiation
and long inner elaboration. Traces of this are found in
the Gospels and elsewhere.

The first great shock came to him during a journey to
Jerusalem with his parents, as related by Luke. This
town, the pride of Israel, had become the center of
Jewish aspirations. Its misfortunes had had no other
effect than to exalt the minds of men. Under the
Seleucides and Maccabees, first by Pompey and finally
by Herod, Jerusalem had been subjected to the most
terrible of sieges. Blood had been shed in torrents; the
Roman legions had butchered the people in its streets,
and innumerable crucifixions had polluted the surround-
ing heights. After such horrors, and the humiliation fol-
lowing on the Roman occupation, after decimating the
Sanhedrim and reducing the pontiflf to a mere trembling
slave, Herod, as though in irony, had rebuilt the temple

at the age of forty years, and in perfect health, to have visions
which had no relation with his previous life. I do not pretend
to place these phenomena on exactly the same plane as those which
look place in the consciousness of Jesus, but simply to establish
the universality of an inner perception, independent of the bodily

36 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

with more magnificent pomp and glory than ever.
Jeroushalaim remained, none the less, the holy city. Had
not Isaiah, the favorite author of Jesus, named it "the
bride, before whom the people shall bow down"? He
had said *The Gentiles shall come to thy light, and
kings to the brightness of thy rising. . . . Violence
shall no more be heard in thy land, wasting nor destruc-
tion within thy borders ; but thou shalt call thy walls
Salvation and thy gates Praise."^ To see Jerusalem and
the Temple of Jehovah was the dream of all Jews,
especially since Judaea had become a Roman province.
They journeyed hither from Perea, Galilee, Alexandria,
and Babylon. On the v/ay, whether in the wilderness
under the waving palms, or near the wells, they cast
longing eyes, as they sang their psalms, in the direction
of the hill of Zion. A strange feeling of oppression must
have come over the soul of Jesus, when, on his first pil-
grimage, he saw tlie city girt around with lofty walls,
standing there on the mountain, like a gloomy fortress,
the Roman amphitheater of Herod at its gates, the
Antonia tower dominating the temple, and Roman legions
— lance in hand — keeping watch from the heights. He
ascended the temple steps, and admired the beauty of
those marble porticoes, along which walked the Pharisees
in sumptuous flowing garments. After crossing the
Gentiles', he proceeded to the women's court, and,
mingling with the crowd of Israelites, drew near the
Nicanor gate, and the three-cubit balustrade, behind
which were to be seen priests in sacerdotal robes of
purple and violet, shining with gold and precious stones,
officiating there in front of the sanctuary, sacrificing bulls
and goats, and sprinkling the blood over the people as
* Isaiah Ix. 3, 18.

FIRST DEVELOPMENT OF JESUS 37

they pronounced a blessing. All this bore no resemblance
to the temple of his dreams, or the heaven in his heart.

Then he descended again into the more populous
quarters of the town, where he saw beggars pallid with
hunger, and whose faces were torn with anguish ; a veri-
table reflection of the tortures and crucifixions accom-
panying the late wars. Leaving the city by one of the
gates, he wandered among those stony valleys and gloomy
ravines forming the quarries, pools, and tombs of
the kings, and converting Jerusalem into a veritable
sepulchre. There he saw maniacs issue from the caves,
shrieking out blasphemies against living and dead alike.
Then, d-escending a broad flight of stones to the pool of
Siloam, he saw stretched out at the water's brink lepers,
paralytics, and wretches, covered with ulcers and sores
in the most abject misery. An irresistible impulse com-
pelled him to look deep into their eyes, and drink in all
their grief and pain. Some asked him for help, others
were gloomy and hopeless, others again, with senses
numbed, seemed to have done with suffering. But then
how long had they been there to have come to such a
state ?

Then Jesus said to himself: ''Of what use are these
priests, this temple and these sacrifices, since they can
afford no relief to such terrible suffering?" And, of a
sudden, like an overwhelming torrent, he felt pouring
into his heart the grief and pains of this town and its
inhabitants — of the whole of humanity. He understood
now that a happiness he could not share with others was
absolutely impossible. These looks of despair were never
more to leave his memory. Human Suffering, a sad-
faced bride, would henceforth accompany him every-

38 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

where, whispering in his ear: "I will never leave thee
more !"

His soul full of anguish, he left Jerusalem, and pro-
ceeded towards the open peaks of Galilee. A cry leapt
forth from the depths of his heart: ''Father in Heaven!
Grant that I may know, and heal and save !"

CHAPTER III

THE ESSENES — JOHN THE BAPTIST — THE
TEMPTATION

What he wished to know he could learn from none
other than the Essenes.

The Gospels have maintained perfect silence as to the
deeds of Jesus, previous to his meeting with John the
Baptist, through whom, according to them, he in some
way took possession of his ministry. Immediately after-
wards he makes his appearance in Galilee with a clearly
defined doctrine, the assurance of a prophet, and the con-
sciousness of the Messiah. But evidently this bold and
premeditated debut was preceded by the long develop-
ment of a veritable initiation. No less certain is it that
this initiation must have taken place in the sole asso-
ciation in Israel, which, at that time, preserved the real
traditions of the prophets and adopted their mode of
living. There can be no doubt of this among those who,
rising above the superstition of literal interpretation, have
the courage to discover how things are linked together
by their spirit. This arises not merely from the intimate
relations seen to exist between the doctrine of Jesus and
that of the Essenes, but even from the very silence kept
by the Christ and his disciples concerning this sect. Why
does he who attacks with unparalleled courage all the
religious sects of his day, never mention the Essenes?
And why do neither the apostles nor evangelists speak

39

40 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

of them ? Evidently because they considered the Essenes
as belonging to themselves, as being linked with them by
the oath of the mysteries, and linked to the sect of the
Christians.

The Order of the Essenes constituted in the time of
Jesus the final remnant of those brotherhoods of prophets
organized by Samuel. The despotism of the rulers of
Palestine, the jealousy of an ambitious and servile priest-
hood, had forced them to take refuge in silence and soli-
tude. They no longer struggled as did their predecessors,
but contented themselves with preserving their traditions.
They had two principal centers, one in Egypt, on the
banks of Lake Maoris, the other in Palestine, at Engaddi,
near the Dead Sea. The name of Essenes they had
adopted came from the Syrian word "Asaya," physician
— in Greek, therapeutes; for their only acknowledged
ministry with regard to the public was that of healing
disealfc, both physical and moral. "They studied with
great diligence," says Josephus, ''certain medical writings
dealing with the occult virtues of plants and minerals."^

Some of them possessed the gift of prophecy, as, e. g.,
Menahim, who had prophesied to Herod that he should
reign. 'They serve God," said Philo, "with great piety,
not by offering victims but by sanctifying the spirit;
avoiding towns, they devote themselves to the arts of
peace ; not a single slave is to be found among them ;
they are all free and work for one another."^ The rules
of the Order were strict ; in order to enter, a year's
novitiate was necessary. If one had given sufficient
proofs of temperance, he was admitted to the ablutions,

* Josephus, "Wars of the Jews," xxx. 2, &c.j "Antiquities,"
xiii. 5-9; xviii. 1-5.

'Philo, "On the ContemplatiTe Life."

THE ESSENES 41

though without entering into relations with the masters
of the Order. Tests, extending over another two years,
were necessary before being received into the brother-
hood. They swore "by terrible oaths" to observe the
rules of the Order and to betray none of its secrets.
Then only did they participate in the common repasts,
which were celebrated with great solemnity and consti-
tuted the inner worship of the Essenes. The garment
they had worn during these repasts they looked upon- as
sacred and to be removed before resuming work. These
fraternal love-feasts, primitive form of the Supper insti-
tuted by Jesus, began and ended by prayer. The first
interpretation of the sacred books of Moses and the
prophets was here given. But the explanation of the
texts allowed of three significations, just as there were
three degrees of initiation. Very few attained to the
highest degree. All this wonderfully resembles the
organization of the Pythagoreans,^ but certainly it was
almost the same among the ancient prophets, for it is
to be found wherever initiation has existed. It must be
added that the Essenes professed the essential dogma of
the Orphic and Pythagorean doctrine; that of the pre-
existence of the soul, the consequence and reason of its
immortality. "The soul," they said, "descendihg from
the most subtle ether, and attracted into the body by

^ Points in common between Essenes and Pythagoreans ; Prayer
at sunrise ; linen garments, fraternal love-feasts j one year 's novi-
tiate; three degrees of initiation; organization of the Order and
community of possessions managed by trustees ; the law of silence ;
the oath of the mysteries; the division of instruction into three
parts: (1) Science of the universal principles of Theogony, what
Philo calls Logic; (2) Physics or Cosmogony; (3) Morals, 1. e.,
everything dealing with man, the conscience to which the healers
specially devoted themselves.

42 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

a certain natural charm ( ivyyt rm <^vcriKTj), remains
there as in a prison ; freed from the bonds of the body,
as from a long servitude, it joyfully takes its flight'*
(Josephus, A. /., ii. 8).

Among the Essenes, the brothers, properly so called,
lived under a community of property, and in a condition
of celibacy, cultivating the ground, and, at times, edu-
cating the children of strangers. The married Essenes
formed a class affiliated and under subjection to the
other. Silent, gentle, and grave, they were to be met
with here and there, cultivating the arts of peace. Car-
penters, weavers, vine-planters, or gardeners, never gun-
smiths or merchants. Scattered in small groups about
the whole of Palestine, and in Egypt, even as far as
Mount Horeb, they offered one another the most com-
plete hospitality. Thus we see Jesus and his disciples
journeying from town to town, and from province to
province, and always certain of finding shelter and lodg-
ing. 'The Essenes," said Josephus, "were of an exem-
plary morality, they forced themselves to suppress pas-
sion and anger; always benevolent, peaceable, and trust-
worthy. Their word was more powerful than an oath,
which, in ordinary life, they looked upon as superfluous,
and almost as perjury. They endured the most cruel of
tortures, with admirable steadfastness of soul and smiling
countenance rather than violate the sHghtest religious
precept." Indifferent to the outward pomp of worship at
Jerusalem, repelled by the harshness of the Sadducees,
and the prayers of the Pharisees, as well as by the
pedantry of the synagogue, Jesus was attracted towards
the Essenes by natural affinity.^

^ Points in common between the doctrines of the Essenes and
those of Jesus : ' ' Love of one 's neighbor, emphasized as one 's first

THE ESSENES 43

The premature death of Joseph set entirely free Mary's
son, now grown into a man. His brothers could continue
the father's trade and supply all family needs, so Mary
gave him permission to leave secretly for Engaddi. Wel-
comed as a brother and one of the elect, he rapidly
acquired over his very masters an invincible ascendancy,
by reason of his superior faculties, his ardent love, and
an indescribable divine element manifested throughout
his entire being. From the Essenes he received what
they alone could give him: the esoteric tradition of the
prophets, and by its means, his own historical and re-
ligious tendency or trend. He came to understand how
wide a gulf separated the official Jewish doctrine from
the ancient wisdom of the initiates, the veritable mother
of religions, though ever persecuted by Satan, i. e., by
the spirit of evil, of egoism, hatred, and denial, allied
with absolute political power and priestly imposture. He
learned that Genesis, under the seal of its symbolism,
concealed a theogony and cosmogony as far removed
from their literal signification as is the profoundest truth
of science from a child's fable. He contemplated the
days of Aelohim, or the eternal creation by emanation of
the elements and the formation of the worlds, the origin
of the floating souls, and their return to God by pro-
gressive existences or generations of Adam. He was
struck with the grandeur of the thought of Moses, whose
intention had been to prepare the religious unity of the
nations by establishing the worship of the one God, and
incarnating this idea into a people.

duty; prohibition of the oath as witnesses to truth; hatred of
lying; meekness; institution of the Supper, borrowed from the
fraternal love-feasts of the Essenes, but with a new significance,
that of sacrifice."

44 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

Afterwards he was instructed in the doctrine of the
divine Word, already taught by Krishna in India, by the
priests of Osiris, by Orpheus and Pythagoras in Greece,
and known to the prophets under the name of the
Mysteries of the Son of Man and of the Son of God,
According to this doctrine, the highest manifestation of
God is man, who, in constitution, form, organs, and
intelligence is the image of the Universal Being, whose
faculties he possesses. In the earthly evolution of
humanity, however, God is scattered, split up, and muti-
lated, so to speak, in the multiplicity of men and of
human imperfections. In it he suffers, struggles, and
tries to find himself, he is the Son of Man, the perfect
Man, the ^Ian-Type, the profoundest thought of God,
remaining hidden in the infinite abyss of his desire and
power. And yet at certain epochs, when humanity is to
be safed from some terrible gulf, and set on a higher
stand, a chosen one identifies himself with divinity,
attracts it to himself by strength, wisdom, and love, and
manifests it anew to men. Then, divinity, by virtue and
breath of the Spirit, is completely present in him: the
Son of Man becomes the Son of God, and his living
word. In other ages and among other nations, there
had already appeared sons of God, but since Moses, none
had arisen in Israel. All the prophets were expecting
this Messiah. The Seers even said that this time he
would call himself the Son of Woman, of the Heavenly
Isis, of the divine light which is the Bride of God, for
the light of Love would shine in him, above every other
light, with a dazzling splendor, hitherto unknown on
earth.

All these secrets which the patriarch of the Essenes
unfolded to the young Galilean on the solitary banks of

THE ESSENES 45

the Dead Sea, in lonely Engaddi, seemed to him wonder-
ful, but yet known. It was with no ordinary emotion
that he heard the chief of the Order comment on the
words still to be read in the Book of Henoch: "From
the beginning the Son of Man was in the mystery. The
Father kept him near his mighty presence, and mani-
fested him to his elect. . . . But the Kings shall
be afraid and shall prostrate themselves to the ground
with terror, when they shall see the Son of Woman
seated on the throne of his glory. . . . Then the
elect shall summon all the forces of heaven, all the
saints from on high and the power of God; and the
Cherubim, the Seraphim, the Ophanim, all the angels
of Might, all the angels of the Lord, i e. of the Elect
and of the other Might, serving on earth and above the
waters, shall raise their voices." ^

At these revelations the words of the prophets, read
and meditated upon times innumerable, appeared before
the eyes of the Nazarene, with a profound and terrible
light, like lightning flashes in the night. Who could
this Elect be, and when would he appear before Israel?

Jesus passed a series of years among the Essenes. He
submitted to their discipline, studied with them the
secrets of nature, and the occult power of healing. To
develop his spirit, he gained entire mastery over his
body. Not a day passed without self-questioning and
meditation on the destiny of humanity. That was a

^Book of Henoch, chaps, xlviii. and Ixi. This passage shows
that the doctrine of the Word, the Trinity found in the Gospel of
John existed in Israel long before the time of Jesus, and came
from the very depths of esoteric prophecy. In the Book of Henoch,
the Lord of Spirits represents the Father, the Elect represents the
Son, and the other Might, the Holy Ghost.

46 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

memorable night for the Order of Essenes and the new
adept, when he received in profoundest secrecy the su-
perior initiation of the fourth degree, the one granted
only in the special case of a prophetic mission, requested
by the brother, and confirmed by the Elders. A meet-
ing was held in a cave cut into the mountain, and re-
sembling a vast hall with an altar of stone seats. The
chief of the Order was there with a few Elders. Some-
times two or three initiates, prophetesses also, Essenes,
were admitted to the mysterious ceremony. Bearing
torches and branches of palm trees, they greeted the
new Initiate who was clothed in a robe of white linen, as
"Bridegroom and King," the one they had seen in vision,
and whom they now looked upon perhaps for the last
time ! Then, the chief of the Order, generally an old
centenarian (Josephus states that the Essenes lived to
an advanced age) offered him the golden chalice as a
syml^l of the final initiation, containing the unne of the
Lord's vineyard, symbol of divine inspiration. Some
said that Moses and the seventy had drunk therefrom;
others trace it back from Abraham, who received from
Melchisedek this very initiation under the elements of
bread and wine.^ The Elders never offered the cup to
anyone in whom they had not recognized, with distinct
certainty, the signs of a prophetic mission. But no one
could define this mission, he was to find it himself; such
is the law of the initiates — nothing from without, every-
thing from within. Henceforth he was free, master of
his own actions, liberated from the Order, a very hiero-
phant, obedient to the impulses of the spirit which could
fling him into the depths or transport him on high, far
above scenes of torture and human passion.
' Genesis xiv. 18.

THE ESSENES 47

When after the songs and prayers and sacramental
words of the Elder the Nazarene took the cup, a pale
ray of the sun shooting through a rugged mountain
crag ran in and about the torches and the flowing white
garments of the Essene prophetesses. They too shud-
dered as they saw it fall on the Galilean's beautiful coun-
tenance, now overshadowed with a look of infinite sor-
row. Were his thoughts dwelling on the poor wretches
of Siloam ; had he already, in that ever-present anguish,
caught a glimpse of the path he was to traverse?

About this time, John the Baptist was preaching on
the banks of the Jordan. He was not an Essene but a
prophet of the people, belonging to the sturdy race of
Judah. Driven into the wilderness by a fierce unyield-
ing piety, he had there, in prayer, fasting, and mortifica-
tion, lived a life of the strictest asceticism. Over his bare
sun-tanned skin he wore a camel's-hair cloak, symbol
of the penitence he wished to impose both on himself
and on his people. Deeply did he feel Israel's distress,
and ardently did he await deliverance. According to
the Jewish idea, he imagined the Messiah would soon
come as an Avenger and a Judge; that, like another
Maccabaeus, he would rouse the people to revolt, drive
out the Romans, punish the guilty, and finally enter
Jerusalem in triumph, where, in peace and justice, he
would re-establish the kingdom of Israel over all na-
tions. He announced to the multitudes, who eagerly
drank in his words, that the time was nigh for the com-
ing of this Messiah, adding that they might prepare for
it in a spirit of true repentance. Adopting the Es-
senian custom of ablution and transforming it, he had
looked upon baptism in the Jordan as a visible symbol,
a public accomplishment of the inner purification he in-

48 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

sisted upon. This new ceremony, this earnest preaching
to immense crowds of people, with the wilderness as
a background, and beside the sacred waters of the Jor-
dan, near the rugged mountains of Peraea and Judaea,
seized hold of the imagination, and attracted multitudes.
It recalled the glorious days of the prophets of old, and-
gave the people what the temple could not give them, an
inner shock, and, after the terrors of repentance had
passed, a vague though mighty hope. They came from
every part of Palestine, and even from more distant
lands, to hear the desert-saint who foretold the coming
of the Messiah. The populace, attracted by his mes-
sage, remained there in camps, for weeks at a time, lis-
tening to him daily, unwilling to depart, awaiting the
Messiah's coming. Many asked to take up arms under
his command, and to recommence the holy war. Herod
Antipas and the priests of Jerusalem began to be un-
easy ^t this excitement of the populace. The signs of
the times, too, were ominous ; Tiberius, at the age of
seventy-four, was rapidly hastening his death by scenes
of debauchery at Capreae ; Pontius Pilate was perse-
cuting the Jews with redoubled fury ; while, in Egypt,
the priests had given forth that the Phoenix was about
to spring again to birth from her ashes. ^

Jesus, who felt the prophetic calling even more em-
phatic within his soul, though as yet he was still feeling
his way, came also to the desert of the Jordan, accom-
panied by a few Essenes, who already acknowledged
him as master. He wished to see the Baptist, to listen
to his message, and be baptized in public. His desire
was to present himself in an humble and respectful at-
titude towards the prophet who had the courage to
* Tacitus, Aiumls, vi. 28, 31.

THE ESSENES 49

denounce the present rulers, and arouse from slumber
the soul of Israel.

He saw the rough ascete, hairy and bearded, with
his prophetic lionlike head, standing in a wooden pulpit
under a rustic tent covered with branches and goat-
skins. All around among the scanty desert shrubs was
a mighty crowd, an entire camp: publicans, soldiers of
Herod, Samaritans, Levites from Jerusalem; Idumeans
with their flocks of sheep, even Arabs with their camels,
tents and caravans arrested by "the voice crying in the
wilderness," and this voice of thunder passed over these
multitudes. It said: "Repent ye; prepare ye the way
of the Lord, make His paths straight." He called the
Pharisees and Scribes "a race of vipers." He added
that "the axe was already laid unto the root of the
trees," and said of the Messiah: "I baptize you with
water only, but He shall baptize you with fire." Then,
about sunset, he saw the crowds press towards a cove
on the water's bank, and Herod's mercenaries bend
their rough backs beneath the water poured over them
by the Baptist. He drew nearer; John did not know
Jesus, knew nothing whatever concerning him, but he
recognized the Essene by his linen garment. He saw
him, a mere unit in the crowd, enter the water up to the
girdle, and humbly bend to receive the baptismal sprink-
ling. When the neophyte arose, the savage preacher's
fiery eyes met the Galilean's calm, gentle gaze. A quiver
ran through the man of the wilderness as he saw the
look of wondrous sweetness beaming from the eyes of
Jesus, and involuntarily the question escaped his lips:
"Art thou the Messiah ?" ^

^ According to the Gospels, John immediately recognized Jesus
as the Messiah, and baptized him as such. There are contradictory

50 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

The mysterious Essene made no reply, but with bowed
head and crossed hands, he awaited the blessing. John
knew that silence was the law of the ^Issene novices.
After solemnly extending both hands, the Nazarean dis-
appeared with his companions among the water reeds.

The Baptist saw him depart with mingled feelings of
doubt, secret joy, and profound sadness. What was his
own knowledge, his own prophetic hope compared with
the light he had seen in the eyes of the unknown, a
light which seemed to illuminate his whole being? Ah!
if the handsome young Galilean were the Messiah, then
indeed had the brightest day of his life dawned! But
his own part would now be over, his own voice silent.
From this day forward he preached in deeper and more
emotional tones on the melancholy theme: ''He must
increase and I must decrease." He was beginning to
feel the gloom and weariness of an old lion tired of
roaring, and now silently awaiting the end.

Could it be that he were the Messiah? The Baptist's
question also found an echo in the soul of Jesus. Ever
since his consciousness had sprung to life, he had found
God within himself, and the certainty of the kingdom of
Heaven in the radiant beauty of his visions. Then came
the suffering of humanity which had filled his heart with
the awful outpour of its anguish. The wise Essenes had
taught him the secret of religions and of mysteries,

accounts on this point, for, at a later time, when a prisoner of
Antipas at Makerous asks the question of Jesus, ''Art thou he
that should pome, or do we look for another?" this tardy doubt
proves that though he might have suspected Jesus to be the Mes-
siah, he was not convinced of it. The first compilers of the Gos-
pels, however, being Jews, wished to present Jesus as having re-
ceived hifl mission and consecration from John the Baptist, a
popular prophet of Judaea.

THE ESSENES 51

they had shown him the spiritual decadence of human-
ity, and its expectation of a savior. But how could he
find the strength needed to rescue it from the pit? And
now, the direct call of John the Baptist fell on the si-
lence of his meditations like a thunderbolt from Sinai.
Could he be the Messiah?

■^ Jesus could answer this question only by inmost med-
itation. Hence this retreat, this forty days' fast, nar-
rated by Matthew in the form of a symbolic legend.
The Temptation in reality represents in the life of Jesus
this great crisis, this sovereign vision of truth, which
all prophets, all religious initiates, must infallibly ex-
perience before beginning their work.

Over above Engaddi, where the Essenes cultivated
sesame and the vine, a steep footpath led to a cave or
grotto opening out on to the mountainside. It was en-
tered by way of Dorian columns cut out of the rough
rock, similar to those of the "Apostles" retreat in the
valley of Jehosophat. There one remained suspended
above the yawning precipice as though from an eagle's
nest. Below, in a gorge, could be seen vineyards and
human dwellings away in the distance, the Dead Sea
motionless and grey, and the lonely mountains of Moab.
The Essenes had appointed this retreat for such among
them as wished to submit to the test of solitude. In this
spot were several rolls of the prophets, strengthening
spices, dry figs, and a small stream of trickling water,
sole nourishment of the ascete in meditation. It was
to this cave that Jesus retired. First of all, he mentally
reviewed the whole of humanity's past life, and esti-
mated the gravity of the present times. Rome was in
sovereign power, and with her what the Persian magi
had called the reign of Ahrimanes, and the prophets the

52 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

reign of Satan, the sign of the Beast, the apotheosis of
Evil. Darkness covered humanity, the soul of earth.

The people of Israel had received from Moses the
royal and sacerdotal mission of representing the male
religion of the Father of the pure Spirit, of teaching it
to other nations, and efifecting its triumph. Had its
kings and prophets fulfilled this mission? The prophets
who alone had been conscious of it, replied unanimous-
ly : No ! Israel was in her last throes, crushed beneath
the might of Rome. Ought a rising of the people to be
hazarded once more as the Pharisees still expected; a
restoration by force of the temporal royalty of Israel?
Should he declare himself son of David, and exclaim
with Isaiah: 'Tn my wrath I will trample upon the
people. . . . and overthrow their might"? Should
he be a second Maccabaeus, and allow himself to be nom-
inated pontif ex-king? Jesus might have made the at-
tempt. He had seen the crowds ready to rise at the
voice of John the Baptist, and the strength he was him-
self conscious of was far greater than that of the
prophet of the wilderness ! But then, would violence
overcome violence? Would the sword put an end to
government by the sword? Would there not be thus
supplied fresh recruits to the powers of darkness who
were watching their prey in secret?

Ought he not rather to place within the reach of all
mankind this truth, which hitherto had remained the
privilege of a few sanctuaries and initiates, to open
every heart to receive it, until the time should be ripe
for it to penetrate the mind by inner revelation and
science, /. c. to preach the kingdom of Heaven to the
poor and lowly, substitute the reign of Grace for that

THE ESSENES 53

of the Law, transform humanity from its very base by
regeneration of souls?

But to whom would victory belong, to Satan or to
God? To the spirit of evil who reigns with the for-
midable powers of earth, or to the divine spirit who is
enthroned above the invisible regions of heaven, and
sleeps in the heart of man just as the spark lies hidden
in the flint? What would be the fate of the prophet
who should dare to tear away the veil from the temple
and lay bare the emptiness of the sanctuary, braving at
once Herod and Caesar?

And yet it must be done! The inner voice did not
say to him as it did to Isaiah: "Take a large volume
and write therein with a man's pen !" The voice of
God cried out to him, "Rise and speak !" The word of
life must be found, the faith which removes mountains,
the strength which shatters the bulwarks of evil.

Jesus began fervently to pray. Then a feeling of un-
easiness, an increasing trouble came over his soul. He
had a feeling that he was losing the marvellous felicity
he had participated in, and that he was sinking into a
very pit of darkness. A black, dense mist came over
him, peopled with phantoms of every kind. He recog-
nized his brothers, his Essene masters, his mother. One
after the other they said to him : "It is madness for you
to wish for what can never be! You know not what
is before you ! Renounce it all !" The invincible inner
voice replied : "I must go on !" Thus he struggled for
a series of days and nights, at times standing, then
again on his knees or prostrate on the ground. The
abyss in which he was sinking became deeper and
deeper, and thicker and thicker the enveloping mist. He

54 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

felt as though he were approaching something inex-
pressibly terrible.

Finally, he entered that state of lucid ecstasy in which
the very depth of consciousness awakens, enters into
communication with the living Spirit of things, and
projects in dreams the images of past and future. His
eyes close, and the outer world disappears. The Seer
contemplates truth in the light which floods his whole
being, and converts his intelligence into a burning
furnace.

Then came the clash o . thunder, the mountain shook
to its foundations. A whirlwind coming from distant
space carried off the Seer to the top of the temple at
Jerusalem. Down below shone roofs and minarets like
a forest of gold and silver. Hymns were ascending
from the Holy of Holies, waves of incense arose from
every altar and formed in eddying circles beneath his
feet. People in festive garb filled the porticos, while
women joyfully sang into the air their hymns of ardent
devotion. Trumpets sounded, and a mighty chorus of
voices exclaimed: "Glory to the Messiah! the King of
Israel !" 'Thou shalt be this King if thou wilt worship
me," said a voice from below. *'Who art thou?" asked
Jesus.

Again the wind carried him through space to the sum-
mit of a mountain. At his feet lay, in their golden
glory, all the kingdoms of the earth.

'T am the king of spirits and the prince of the earth,"
answered the voice from below. . . . 'T know who
thou art," said Jesus; "thy forms are innumerable, thy
name is Satan. Appear in thy earthly form." . . .
The figure of a crowned monarch appeared, enthroned
in the clouds. Around his imperial head shone a faint.

THE ESSENES 55

pale halo. The sombre figure stood out against a blood-
red nimbus, with its pallid, ghastly countenance, and
eyes flashing forth a cold steely light. He said: "I
am Caesar. Only bow down before me, and I will give
thee all these kingdoms." Jesus said to him: "Get
thee behind me, tempter! It is written: Thou shalt
worship only the Lord thy God." Immediately the vision
faded away.

Finding himself alone in the cave of Engaddi, Jesus
said: "By what sign shall I overcome the powers of
the earth?" . . . "By the sign of the Son of Man,"
said a voice from above. "Show me this sign," said
Jesus.

Away on the horizon appeared a shining constella-
tion, four stars in the sign of a cross. The Galilean
recognized the sign of ancient initiations familiar to
Egypt and preserved by the Essenes. When the world
was young, the sons of Japhet had worshipped it as the
sign of earthly and heavenly fire, the sign of Life with
all its joys, of Love with all its wonders. Later the
Egyptian initiates had seen in it the symbol of the great
mystery. Trinity dominated by Unity, the image of the
sacrifice of the ineffable Being who breaks himself in
order to manifest himself in the universe. Symbol at
once of life, death, and resurrection, it covered innumer-
able hypogea, temples and tombs. . . . The brilliant
cross grew larger and came nearer, as though attracted
by the heart of the Seer. The four living stars shone
forth like suns of light and glory. "Behold the magic
sign of Life and Immortality !" said the heavenly voice.
"In ancient times it was in the possession of men, now
it is lost. Wilt thou restore it to them?" ... "I

56 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

will," said Jesus. . . . 'Then look, behold thy
destiny!"

Suddenly the four stars disappeared. It was night;
loud thunderclaps shook the mountains to their founda-
tions; while from the depths of the Dead Sea emerged
a dark, sombre mountain, surmounted with a black
cross. On it was nailed a man in the agony of death.
The mountain was covered with a demon-stricken mob,
crying out in hellish jeers: *Tf thou art the Messiah,
save thyself!" The Seer opened wide his eyes, then
fell back, cold drops of perspiration streaming down his
face, for this crucified man was himself. . . . He
had understood. In order to overcome, he must identify
himself with this terror-stricken image, summoned up
by himself, and placed there before him like an evil-
boding omen. Wavering in his uncertainty as to the
emptiness of infinite space, Jesus felt at once the tortures
of the crucified one, the insults of men, and the pro-
found silence of heaven. . . . 'Thou canst take it
or reject it," said the angelic voice. The vision of the
cross-phantom and the crucified victim began to grow
dim, when of a sudden Jesus saw once more by his side
the sick wretches of the pool of Siloam, and behind them
myriads of despairing souls murmuring, with clasped
hands: "Without thee we are lost; save us, thou who
knowest how to love !" Then the Galilean slowly arose,
and with outstretched arms, in an attitude of supreme
love, exclaimed: "Mine be the cross! Let but the
world be saved !" Immediately Jesus felt a mighty rend-
ing asunder throughout his frame, and a terrible groan
escaped his lips. ... At the same time the dark,
sombre mountain and the cross faded away, a gentle
radiant beam of divine felicity entered the soul of the

THE ESSENES 57

Seer, and from the heights of heaven a voice descended,
saying, "Satan is no longer master ! Death is over-
thrown ! Glory to the Son of Man ! Glory to the Son
of God !"

When Jesus awoke from this vision nothing around
him had changed; the rising sun cast his golden beams
on the sides of the cave of Engaddi ; soothing dewdrops
— veritable tears of angelic love — bathed his bruised
feet, and light clouds of mist were rising from the Red
Sea. But he was no longer the same. A definite event
had taken place in the fathomless depths of his con-
sciousness, he had solved the problem of life and had
won peace, the great certainty had entered his soul.
From the rejection of his earthly being, which he had
trodden under foot and cast into the pit, a new con-
sciousness had arisen in radiant majesty. . . . He
knew he had become the Messiah by an irrevocable act
of his will.

Soon after, he once more descended to the village of
the Essenes, where he learned that John the Baptist
had just been seized by Antipas and imprisoned in the
fortress of Makerous. Far from showing fear at this
omen, he saw therein a sign that the time was ripe and
that he in his turn must act. Accordingly, he gave out
to the Essenes that he was about to preach in Galilee,
"the Gospel of the kingdom of Heaven." That meant,
to bring the great mysteries within reach of the poor
and lowly, to translate for them the doctrine of the
initiates. Like boldness had never been seen since the
days when Cakia Mouni, the last Buddha, moved by
mighty compassion, had preached on the banks of the
Ganges. The same sublime compassion for humanity
animated Jesus. To it he joined inner illumination, ca-

58 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

pacity for loving, a grandeur of faith and energy of
action belonging to himself alone. From the abyss of
death which he had fathomed, and whose bitterness he
had tasted beforehand, he brought both hope and life
for all his brethren.

CHAPTER IV

THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS — POPULAR AND ESOTERIC IN-
STRUCTION MIRACLES APOSTLES — WOMEN

Hitherto I have endeavored to illuminate with its own
light that portion of the life of Jesus which the Gospels
have left in comparative obscurity, or wrapped around
with the veil of legend. I have related by what kind
of initiation and development of soul and thought the
great Nazarean attained to the Messianic consciousness.
In a word, I have endeavored to reconstruct the inner
genesis of the Christ. The rest of my task will be
all the easier if this genesis be once acknowledged. The
public life of Jesus has been related in the Gospels.
These narratives contain divergences and contradictions
as well as additions. The legend which overlies or
exaggerates certain mysteries may still be traced here
and there, but from the whole there is set free such a
unity of thought and action, so powerful and original
a character, that we invincibly feel ourselves in the
presence of reality and of life. These inimitable stories
cannot be reconstructed; their childlike simplicity and
symbolical beauty tell us more than any amplifications
can do. But what is needed nowadays is the illumina-
tion of the role of Jesus by esoteric traditions and truths,
showing the signification and bearing of his double
teaching.

What were these good tidings of which he was the
69

6o JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

bearer, this already famous Essene who had now re-
turned from the shores of the Dead Sea to his native
GaHlee to preach there the Gospel of the Kingdom?
How w^as he to change the face of the world? The
thoughts of the prophets had just found their realiza-
tion in him. Strong in the entire gift of his very being,
he now came to share with men this kingdom of heaven
which he had won in meditation and strife, in torments
of pain and boundless joy. He came to rend asunder
the veil which the ancient religion of Moses had cast
over the future beyond the tomb. He came to say:
''Believe, love, act, and let hope be the soul of your
deeds. Beyond this earth there is a world of souls, a
more perfect life. This I know, for I come therefrom ;
thither will I lead you. But mere aspiration for that
world w^ill not suffice. To attain it you must begin by
realizing it here below, first in yourselves, afterwards
in humanity. By what means? By Love and active
Charity."

So the young prophet came to Galilee. He did not
say he was the Messiah, but discussed in the synagogues
concerning the laws and the prophets. He preached on
the banks of the lake of Gennesareth, in fishermen's
boats, by the fountains, in the oases of verdure abound-
ing between Capernaum, Bethsaida, and Korazin. He
healed the sick by laying-on of hands, a mere look or
command, often by his presence alone. Multitudes fol-
lowed him, and already numerous disciples attached
themselves to him. These he recruited from among the
fishermen, tax-collectors, from the common people, in a
word. Those of upright, unsullied nature, possessed
of an ardent faith, were the ones he wanted, and these
he irresistibly attracted to himself. He was guided in

THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS 6i

his choice by that gift of second sight, which has ever
been the pecuHarity of men of action, but especially of
religious initiators. A single look enabled him to fathom
the depths of a soul. He needed no other test, and
when he said : "Follow me !" he was obeyed. A single
gesture summoned to his side the timid and hesitating,
to whom he said: "Come unto me, ye that are heavy-
laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you,
and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart : and
ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy
and my burden is light." ^ He divined the innate
thoughts of men, who in trouble and confusion recog-
nized the Master. At times, he recognized in unbelief
uprightness of heart. When Nathaniel said, "Can any-
thing good come out of Nazareth ?" Jesus replied : "Be-
hold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile !" ^ From
his adepts he required neither oaths nor profession of
faith ; simply love and belief in himself. He put into
practice the common possession of goods as a principle
of fraternity among his own.

Jesus thus began to realize, within his small group
of followers, the Kingdom of Heaven he wished to es-
tablish on earth. The Sermon on the Mount offers us
an image of this kingdom already formed in germ, along
with a resume of the popular teaching of Jesus. He is
seated on the top of a hill; the future initiates are
grouped at his feet; farther down the slope the eager
crowd drinks in the words which fall from his mouth.
What is the doctrine of the new teacher? Fasting or
maceration or public penance? No; he says, "Blessed
are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of

* Matthew xi. 28.
« John i. 47.

62 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

heaven. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be
comforted." Then he unrolls in ascending order the
four final beatitudes, the marvellous power of humility,
of sorrow for others, of the inner goodness of the heart
and of hunger and thirst after righteousness. . . .
Then, in glowing colors he depicts the active and tri-
umphant virtues, compassion, purity of heart, militant
kindness, and finally martyrdom for righteousness' sake.
"Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God."
Like the sound of a golden bell, this promise gives his
listeners a faint glimpse of the starry heavens above
the Master's head. Then they see the humble virtues,
no longer in the guise of poor emaciated women in
grey penitents' robes, but transformed into beatitudes,
into virgins of light whose brightness effaces the splen-
dor of the liHes and the glory of Solomon. With the
gentle breath of their palm leaves they scatter over
these thirsting souls the fragrant perfumes of the
heavenly kingdom.

The wonder is that this kingdom expands, not in the
distant heavens, but in the hearts of the listeners. They
exchange looks of astonishment with one another; these
poor in spirit have, of a sudden, become so rich. Might-
ier than Moses, the soul's magician has struck their
hearts, from which rushes up an immortal spring of life.
His teaching to the people may be summed up in the
sentence : The kingdom of heaven is within you ! Now
that he lays before them the means necessary to attain
to this unheard-of happiness, they are no longer aston-
ished at the extraordinary things he asks of them: to
kill even the desire for evil, to forgive oflFences, to love
their enemies. So powerful is the stream of love with
which his heart overflows, that he carries them away

THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS 63

along the current. In his presence they find everything
easy. Mighty the novelty, singular the boldness of such
teaching. The Galilean prophet sets the inner life of
the soul above all outer practices, the invisible above the
visible, the Kingdom of Heaven above the benefits of
earth. He commands that the choice be made between
God and man. Then, summing up his doctrine, he says,
"Love your neighbor as yourself! ... Be ye per-
fect even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect !"
Thus, in popular form, he afforded a glimpse of the
whole profundity of science and morals. For the su-
preme commandment of the initiation is to reproduce di-
vine perfection in the perfecting of the soul, and the
secret of science lies in the chain of analogy and corre-
spondences, uniting in ever-enlarging circles the partic-
ular to the universal, the finite to the infinite.

If such was the public and purely moral teaching of
Jesus, it is evident that in addition he gave private in-
struction to his disciples, parallel with and explanatory
of the former, showing its inner micaning and penetrat-
ing to the very depths of the spiritual truth he held of
the esoteric traditions of the Essenes and of his own ex-
istence. As this tradition was violently crushed by the
Church from the second century onwards, the majority
of theologians no longer knew the real bearing of the
Christ's words, with their sometimes double and triple
meanings, and saw none but the primary and literal sig-
nification. For those who deeply studied the doctrine of
the mysteries in India, Egypt, and Greece, the esoteric
thought of the Christ animates not merely his slightest
word, but every act of his life. Dimly perceptible in
the three Synoptics, it springs into complete evidence

64 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

in the Gospel of John. Here may be stated an instance
touching an essential point of the doctrine: —

Jesus happens to be passing by Jerusalem. He is not
yet preaching in the temple, though he heals the sick
and gives instruction to his friends. The work of love
must prepare the ground into v^^hich the fruitful seed
shall fall. Nicodemus, a learned Pharisee, has heard of
the new prophet. Filled with curiosity, though unwill-
ing to compromise himself in the eyes of his sect, he re-
quests with the Galilean a secret interview, which is
granted. The Pharisee calls at his dwelling by night
and says to him: ''Rabbi, we know that thou art a
teacher come from God : for no man can do these mir-
acles that thou doest, except God be with him." Jesus
replied: ''Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man
be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.'*
Nicodemus asks if it is possible for a man to enter a
second time into his mother's womb and be born. Jesus
answered : "Verily I say unto thee. Except a man be
born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the
kingdom of God." ^

Under this evidently symbolical form, Jesus sums up
the ancient doctrine of regeneration already known in
the mysteries of Egypt. To be born again of water and
of. the Spirit, to be baptized by water and by fire, mark
two degrees of initiation, two stages of the inner and
spiritual development of man. Water here represents
truth perceived intellectually, t. e. in an abstract and
general manner. It purifies the soul and develops its
spiritual germ.

A new birth by the Spirit, or baptism by (heavenly)
fire, signifies the assimilation of the truth by the will in
*Jolm iii. 5.

ESOTERIC INSTRUCTION 65

such a way that it may become the blood and Hfe, the
very soul of every action. From this results the com-
plete victory of spirit over matter, the absolute mastery
of the spiritualized soul over the body transformed into
a docile instrument; a mastery which awakens its dor-
mant faculties, opens its inner sense, and gives it an in-
tuitive insight into truth, and a direct action of soul on
soul. This state is equivalent to the heavenly one which
Jesus Christ called the kingdom of God. Baptism by
water, or intellectual initiation, is accordingly the first
step in rebirth; baptism by the spirit is total rebirth, a
transformation of the soul by the fire of intelligence and
will, and consequently, to a certain extent, of the ele-
ments of the body — in a word, a radical regeneration.
From this come the exceptional powers it gives to man.
This is the earthly signification of the eminently theo-
sophical conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus.
There is also a special signification which might briefly
be called the esoteric doctrine concerning the constitu-
tion of man. According to this doctrine, man is three-
fold: body, soul, and spirit. He has an immortal and
indivisible part, the spirit; a perishable and divisible
part, the body. The soul which unites the two shares in
the nature of both. Living organism as it is, it pos-
sesses an ethereal and fluidic body, similar to the ma-
terial body, which, but for this invisible double, would
have neither life, movement, nor unity. According as
man obeys the suggestions of the spirit or the impulses
of the body, according as he attaches himself to the one
or the other, the fluidic body becomes etherealized or
dulled; unifies or becomes disaggregated. Accordingly,
it happens that, after physical death, the majority of
men have to submit to a second death of the soul, which

66 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

consists of cleansing itself from the impure elements of
their astral body, sometimes even undergoing its slow
decomposition ; while the completely regenerated man,
having formed on this earth his spiritual body, possesses
his heaven in himself and enters the region to which his
affinity attracts him. . . . Now water, in ancient
esoterism, symbolizes fluidic matter which is infinitely
transformable, as fire symbolizes the one spirit. In
speaking of rebirth by water and spirit, the Christ makes
allusion to that double transformation of his spiritual
body, his fluidic envelope which awaits man after death,
and v.ithout which he cannot enter the kingdoni of
lofty souls and purified spirits. For ''that which is born
of the flesh is flesh (/. c. chained down and perishable),
and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit (/. c. free
and immortal). ''IMarvel not that I say unto thee, Ye
must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth,
and thou hearest the sound thereof, but can not tell
whence it cometh and whither it goeth : so is every one
that is born of the Spirit." ^

Thus spoke Jesus to Nicodemus in the silence of the
night at Jerusalem. A small lamp, placed between the
two, dim.ly lights their vague, uncertain forms. But the
eyes cf the Galilean blaster shine with mysterious bril-
liancy through the darkness. How could one help believ-
ing in the soul, when looking into those eyes, now gently
beaming, now flashing forth the glory of heaven? The
learned Pharisee has seen his knov/ledge of Scripture
texts crumble away, but then he obtains a glimpse of a
new world. He has seen a divine light in the face of the
prophet, whose long auburn hair is falling over his
shoulders. He has felt the powerful warmth emanating
* John iii. 6-8.

ESOTERIC INSTRUCTION 67

from his being draw him to the Master. He has seen
small white flames like a magnetic halo appear and dis-
appear around his brow and temples. And then he
imagined he felt the breath of the Spirit pass over his
heart. Moved to his inmost soul, Nicodemus returned
secretly in the silence of the night to his home. He will
continue to live among the Pharisees, but in the secrecy
of his heart he will remain faithful to Jesus.

Let us note one more important point in this teach-
ing. According to the materialistic doctrine, the soul
is an ephemeral and accidental resultant of the forces
of the body; in the ordinary spiritualist doctrine it is
something abstract, without any conceivable bond with
the body ; in the esoteric doctrine — the only rational one
■r-the physical body is a product of the incessant work
of the soul, which acts upon it by the similar organism
of the astral body, just as the visible universe is only a
dynamism of the infinite Spirit. This is the reason Jesus
gives this doctrine to Nicodemus as explanation of the
miracles he works. It may indeed serve as a key to the
occult healing art, practiced by him and by a small num-
ber of adepts and saints before as well as after Christ.
Ordinary medicine combats the evils of the body by act-
ing on the latter. The adept or saint being a centre of
spiritual and fluidic force, acts directly on the soul of
the patient, and by his astral on his physical body. It is
the same in all magnetic cures ; Jesus operates by means
of forces existing in all men, but he operates in large
doses by powerful and concentrated projections. He
gives the Scribes and Pharisees his power of healing
bodies as a proof of his power to pardon and heal the
soul, his higher object. The physical cure thus becomes
the counter proof of a moral cure which permits of his

68 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

saying to the man made whole, ''Rise and walk !"
Science of to-day tries to explain the phenomenon which
the ancients and middle ages called ''possession" as be-
ing a simple nervous disorder. The explanation is in-
sufficient. Psychologists who attempt to penetrate more
deeply into the mystery of the soul see therein a dupli-
cation of consciousness, an irruption of its latent part.
This question touches that of the different planes of the
human consciousness, which acts now on the one, now on
the other, the changing play being studied in different
somnambulistic conditions. It also touches the sensitive
world. In any case, it is certain Jesus had the faculty
of restoring equilibrium in troubled bodies, and restor-
ing equilibrium in troubled bodies, and restoring souls
to their purest consciousness. "Veritable magic," said
Platinus, "is love, with hate its contrary. It is by love
and hate that magicians act, through their philters and
enchantments." Love in its highest consciousness and
supreme power constituted the magic of the Christ.

Numerous disciples took part in his inner teaching.
Still, in order to give lasting power to the new religion,
there was needed an active group of chosen ones who
should become the pillars of the spiritual temple he
wished to erect over against the other: hence the insti-
tution of the apostles. These he did not choose from
among the Essenes, as he needed men whose natures
were vigorous and fresh, to implant his religion in the
very heart of the people. Two groups of brothers,
Simon Peter and Andrew, the sons of Jonas, on the one
hand ; James and John, the sons of Zebedce. on the other,
all four fishermen by occupation and belonging to re-
spectable families, formed the first apostles. At the
beginning of his career Jesus appears to them at Caper-

MIRACLES 69

naum, by the lake of Gennesareth, vdiere they were en-
gaged in their daily occupation. He takes up his abode
with them and converts the whole family. Peter and
John stand out as prominent figures among the twelve.
. . . Peter, straight-forward and narrow-minded,
easily influenced by either hope or discouragement, but
at the same time a man of action, capable, by reason of
his energetic character and absolute faith, of leading
the others. . . . John, of a deep hidden nature, en-
thusiastic to such a degree that Jesus called him "the
son of thunder," his ardent soul always concentrated on
itself; by disposition melancholy, and given to reverie,
though subject to formidable outbursts and apocalyptic
visions. His tenderness of soul, spite of all this, was
such as the rest never suspected and only the Master
knew. John alone, silent and contemplative, will under-
stand the inmost thought of the Christ. He will be the
Evangelist of love and divine intelligence, the esoteric,
apostle par excellence.

Persuaded by his words, convinced by his acts, dom-
inated by his mighty intelligence, and encircled in his
magnetic radiance, the apostles followed the Master
from town to town. Preaching to the populace alter-
nated with secret instruction as he gradually opened out
to them his thoughts. All the same, he still maintained
profound silence concerning himself, his own future. He
had told them that the kingdom of heaven was at hand,
that the Messiah would soon come. The apostles were
already whispering to one another, "It is he!" and re-
peating it to others. But Jesus, with gentle dignity,
simply called himself "The Son of Man," an expression
the esoteric signification of which they did not yet un-
derstand, though, in his mouth, it seemed to mean "Mes-

70 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

senger of suffering humanity." For he added, "The
foxes have their holes, but the Son of Man hath not
where to lay his head." It was only in accordance with
the popular Jewish idea that the apostles had hitherto
considered the Messiah ; their simple hopes conceived of
the kingdom of heaven as being a political government,
of which Jesus would be the crowned king and they the
ministers. To combat this idea and radically transform
it, revealing to the apostles the true IMessiah, the spirit-
ual royalty; to communicate to them this sublime truth
he called the Father, the supreme force he called the
Spirit, mysteriously uniting all souls with the invisible;
to show them by his word, life, and death, a true Son
of God ; to leave them the conviction that they and all
men were his brothers and could rejoin him if they
wished ; and finally to leave them, only after opening
to their longing eyes the whole immensity of heaven —
this was the mighty work Jesus had commenced on his
apostles. ''Will they believe or not?" is the question of
the drama being played between them and himself. An-
other question far more poignant and terrible is being
asked in the depths of his own consciousness. To this
we shall soon give our attention.

For at this hour a wave of joy overwhelmed the
tragic thought in the consciousness of the Christ. The
tempest has not yet burst over the lake of Tiberias. It
is the Galilean springtime of the Gospel, the dawn of
the kingdom of God, the mystic union of the initiate
with his spiritual family, which follows and travels with
him as the procession of paranymphs follows the bride-
groom in the parable. The believing crowd hurries
along in the footsteps of the beloved Master on the
banks of the azure lake enclosed in the glorious hills

APOSTLES 71

as in a golden bowl. They go from the fragrant banks
of Capernaum to Bethsaida's orange groves and the
mountainous Chorazin, where the lake of Gennesareth is
bordered by shady palms. In this procession the women
have a place apart. The Master is everywhere sur-
rounded by the mothers or sisters of his disciples, by
timid virgins, or repentant Alagdalenes. Attentive and
faithful, impelled by passionate love, they scatter along
his path eternal blossoms of sadness, and hope. They
at any-rate need no proof that he is the Messiah: a
single look into his face is sufficient for them. The won-
derful felicity emanating from his aura, added to the
note of divine unexpressed suffering they instinctively
feel, persuades them that he is the Son of God. Jesus
had early stifled in himself the cry of the flesh; during
his stay among the Essenes he had tamed the might of
the senses. This had given him an empire over souls
and the divine power of pardon, a true angelic bliss. He
says to the sinning woman now, with dishevelled hair,
kneeling at the Master's feet, over which she pours the
precious ointment: ''Much shall be forgiven her, for
she has loved much !" Sublime thought, containing an
entire redemption, for pardon sets free.

The Christ is the liberator and restorer of women, in
spite of St. Paul and the Fathers of the Church who,
by lowering woman to the role of man's servant, have
wrongly interpreted the Master's thought. She had been
glorified in Vedic times; Buddha had mistrusted her;
the Christ has raised her by restoring her mission of love
and divination. The initiate Woman represents the soul
of Humanity; Aisha, as Moses had named it, i. e. the
power of Intuition ; the loving and seeing Faculty. The
impetuous Mary Magdalene, out of whom, according to

^2 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

the biblical expression, Jesus had driven seven devils,
became the most ardent of his disciples. She it was v^^ho
first, St. John tells us, saw the divine Master, the spirit-
ual Christ risen from the tomb. Legend has been ob-
stinately bent on seeing in the passionate believing
woman the greatest worshipper of Jesus, the heart-initi-
ate, and legend has not been mistaken, for her history
represents the whole regeneration of woman as desired
by the Christ.

It was in the farm of Bethany, near Martha and Mary
Magdalene, that Jesus loved to rest from the labors of
his mission, and prepare himself for supreme tests.
There he lavished his tenderest words of comfort, and in
sweet discourse spoke of the divine mysteries he dared
not yet confide to his disciples. At times, as the sun
w^as setting in the golden horizon of the west, half-
hidden in the branches of the olive-groves, Jesus would
become pensive, and a veil would overshadow his illum-
ined countenance. He thought of the difficulties of his
work, of the uncertain faith of the apostles, of the hostile
powers of the world. The temple, Jerusalem, humanity
itself, with its crime and ingratitude, seemed to over-
whelm him beneath a living mountain.

Would his arms upraised to heaven be strong enough
to grind this mountain to powder, or would he himself
be crushed beneath its mighty bulk? Then he spoke
vaguely of a terrible trial which awaited him, and also
of his coming end. Awed by his solemn tones, the
women dared not question him. However unchangeable
the Master's serenity of soul might be, they understood
that it was as though wrapped about with the shroud of
an indescribable sadness, separating him from the joys
of earth. They had a presentiment of the prophet's des-

WOMEN^ 73

tiny, they felt his invincible power of resolution. What
was the meaning of those gloomy clouds which arose
form the direction of Jerusalem? Wherefore this burn-
ing wind of fever and death, passing over their hearts as
over the blighted hills of Judaea, with their violet cadav-
erous hues? One evening — a star of mystery — a tear
shone in Jesus' eyes. A shudder passed through the
frames of the women, their tears also flowed in silence.
They were lamenting over him; he was lamenting over
all mankind!

CHAPTER V

STRUGGLE WITH THE PHARISEES FLIGHT TO C^SAREA

THE TRANSFIGURATION

This Galilean springtime, during which the dawn of
the Kingdom of Heaven seemed to rise upon the atten-
tive multitudes, lasted two years. Now, however, the
sky darkened, sinister flashes appeared, forerunners of
catastrophe. The storm burst upon the small family at
Galilee like one of those tempests which sweep the lake
of Gennesarelh, and in their wild fury engulf the fisher-
men's frail barques. Jesus was in no way surprised at
the consternation and terror of his disciples, he fully ex-
pected it. It was impossible that his preaching and in-
creasing popularity should not stir the religious authori-
ties of the Jews, and just as impossible that the struggle
should not be a complete one between these authorities
and himself. On the contrary, from this conflict alone
could light flash forth.

At the time of Jesus the Pharisees formed a compact
body of six thousand men. Their name Perishin means
"separate" or ''distinguished." Of a lofty and often
heroic though narrow and haughty patriotism, they rep-
resented the party of national restoration ; their exist-
ence dating back from the Maccabees. They acknowl-
edged both an oral and a written tradition. They be-
lieved in angels, a future life and resurrection, but the
glimpses of esoterism which came to them from Persia

74

STRUGGLE WITH THE PHARISEES 75

they buried beneath the darkness of a gross material in-
terpretation. Strict observers of the law, though quite
opposed to the spirit of the prophets who placed religion
in the love of God and of men, they made piety con-
sist of rites and ceremonies, fasts and public penance.
On great occasions they were to be seen in the open
streets, their faces covered with soot, praying aloud
with contrite mien, and ostentatiously distributing alms.
In contradistinction to all this they lived in luxury,
eagerly intriguing after authority and power. None the
less were they the chiefs of the democratic party, hold-
ing the people under their control.

The Sadducees, on the other hand, represented the
sacredotal and aristocratic party. They were composed
of families whose pretension it was to have exercised
priesthood by hereditary right ever since the time of
David. Extreme in their conservatism they rejected oral
tradition, accepted nothing but the letter of the law, and
denied the existence of the soul and a future life. They
ridiculed alike the stormy practices of the Pharisees and
their extravagant beliefs. For them, religion consisted
entirely in sacerdotal ceremonies.. Under the Seleucides
they had deprived the pontificate of power, as they were
in complete accord with the pagans, and were even im-
bued with Greek sophistry and refined Epicurism. Un-
der the Maccabees the Pharisees had been ejected from
the pontificate, though, under Herod and the Romans,
they had apparently regained this position. The Sad-
ducees were stern and hard-hearted as men, and lovers
of good cheer as priests, possessed of one faith, that of
their own superiority, and of one idea, the determination
to maintain the power tradition had handed down to
them.

'j^i JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

In such a religion what could Jesus find, Jesus the
initiate, inheritor of the prophets, the Seer of Engaddi,
seeking in social order the image of the divine, in which
justice reigns over life, science over justice, and love and
wisdom over all three? ... In the temple, instead
of supreme science and initiation, he found materialistic
and agnostic ignorance, playing on religion as on a
power-giving instrument, in other words, priestly im-
posture, ... In schools and synagogues, instead of
the bread of life, and the dew from heaven falling upon
men's hearts, he saw an interested morality under the
veneer of formal worship, i. e. hypocrisy. . . . Far
above, enthroned in a nimbus of glory, sat almighty
Caesar, the apotheosis of evil and the deification of mat-
ter, the sole god of the then world, only possible master
of the Sadducees and Pharisees, whether they wished it
so or not. In adopting the idea from Persian esoterism
as did the prophets, was Jesus wrong in naming this
reign the dominion of Satan or Ahrimanes, i. e. the
rule of matter over spirit, in place of which he wished
to substitute that of spirit over matter? Like all great
reformers, he attacked not men, who as exceptions,
might be excellent, but doctrines and institutions which
mold the majority of mankind. The challenge must
be delivered, and war declared against the existing
powers.

The struggle began in the synagogues of Galilee and
continued beneath the porticos of the temple at Jerusa-
lem, to which Jesus made lengthened visits, preaching
and replying to his opponents. In this as throughout
his whole career, he acted with that mixture of pru-
dence and boldness, meditative reserve and impetuous
action, which characterized his wonderfully well-bal-

STRUGGLE WITH THE PHARISEES ^7

anced nature. He did not take the offensive against his
opponents, but waited and replied to their attack, which
never tarried, for, from the very beginning of his min-
istry, the Pharisees had been jealous of him by reason
of his popularity and his healing of the sick. They
quickly suspected him to be their most dangerous enemy.
Accosting him with that mocking urbanity, that cunning
malevolence, veiled beneath a mask of hypocritical gen-
tleness, in which they were past-masters, in their role
as learned doctors and men of importance and authority,
they asked what reasons he had for having dealings
with publicans and sinners? Why did his disciples dare
to pluck ears of corn on the Sabbath day? Such con-
duct constituted a grave violation of their regulations.
With magnanimous gentleness, Jesus replied in words
at once tender and courteous. He tried on them his gos-
pel of love, spoke of the love of God, who rejoicej more
over one repentant sinner than over many just persons.
He related to them the parables of the lost sheep and of
the prodigal son. In embarrassed astonishment they
held their peace. Uniting again, they returned to the
charge, reproaching him for healing the sick on the Sab-
bath day. ''Hypocrites!" repHed Jesus, a flash of in-
dignation illumining his eyes, "do not you on the Sab-
bath day remove the chain from your own oxen's neck
and lead them away to the watering-trough? May not
therefore the daughter of Abraham be delivered this
same day from the chains of Satan?" No longer know-
ing what to reply, the Pharisees accused him of casting
out devils in the name of Beelzebub. With quite as
much wit as logical acumen, Jesus replied that the devil
does not cast himself out, adding that sin against the
Son of Man will be forgiven, but not sin against the

78 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

Holy Ghost, signifying thereby that he attached slight
importance to insults against himself personally, but that
a denial of the Good and the True, when once estab-
lished, constitutes intellectual perversity the supreme vice
and an irremediable evil. This was a declaration of war.
He was called Blasphemer ! Agent of Beelzebub ! which
accusations he answered by the expressions : Hypocrites !
Generation of vipers! From this time the struggle con-
tinually increased in bitterness. Jesus gave evidence of
a close incisive logic, his words lashed like whips and
pierced like arrows. He had changed tactics ; instead
of defending himself, he attacked and replied to charges
by other charges more vigorous still, showing no pity for
hypocrisy, the one vice at the root of all others. "Why
transgress ye the law of God by reason of your tradi-
tions? God commanded. Honor thy father and thy
mother; you dispense with honoring parents, if, as al-
ternative, money flows into the temple. With your lips
you serve Isaiah, but your devotion is devoid of heart.'*'
Jesus ever kept perfect control over himself, though
the enthusiasm and greatness of the struggle daily in-
creased. The more he was attacked, the more emphat-
ically did he proclaim himself as the Messiah. He be-
gan to utter threats against the temple, to foretell the
misfortunes that Israel would undergo, to appeal to the
heathen, and to say that the Lord would send other
laborers into his vineyard. Thereupon the Pharisees of
Jerusalem became anxious. Seing they could neither
impose silence on him nor find any effective retort, they
too changed tactics. Their idea now was to ensnare
him, so they sent deputations whose object it was to
induce him to utter heretical sayings which would war-
rant the Sanhedrim in laying hands on him as a bias-

STRUGGLE WITH THE PHARISEES 79

phemer, in the name of the law of Moses, or of having
him condemned as a rebel by the Roman governor.
Hence the insidious question concerning the woman
taken in adultery, and the coin stamped with Caesar's
image. Ever penetrating the designs of his enemies,
Jesus, with profound psychology and skilful strategy,
disarmed them by his replies. Finding it impossible to
effect their object by these means, the Pharisees at-
tempted to intimidate him by annoying him at every
turn. Worked upon and excited by them, the majority
of the people began to turn away from Jesus when they
saw that he was not restoring the kingdom of Israel.
Everywhere, even in the smallest of hamlets, he met
suspicious and wily countenances, spies, and treacherous
emissaries to track and dishearten him. Some came and
said to him, "Depart from here, for Herod (Antipas)
is bent on killing thee." He replied proudly, "Go tell
that fox; it cannot be that a prophet die out of Jeru-
salem!" Nevertheless, he was often obliged to cross
the sea of Tiberias and take refuge on the eastern bank
in order to escape these snares. Nowhere was he now
free from danger. Meanwhile John the Baptist was
put to death by order of Antipas in the fortress of
Makerous. It is said that Hannibal, on seeing the head
of his brother Hasdrubal, killed by the Romans, ex-
claimed: "Now I recognize the fate of Carthage."
Jesus could recognize his own fate in the death of his
precursor. He had had no doubt of this ever since his
vision at Engaddi ; had begun his work, knowing the
ine/itable end, and yet this news, when brought by the
sorrow-stricken disciples of the prophet of the wilder-
ness, struck Jesus as a death-warning. He exclaimed:
"They did not recognize him, but have done with him

8o JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

as they wished, thus shall the Son of IMan suffer at
their hands."

The twelve were troubled and anxious ; Jesus was
hesitating on his pathway. He did not wish to let him-
self be taken, but rather, once his work finished, to offer
himself of his own free will, and die as a prophet at
the hour he himself should choose. Already hunted
down during the whole of the past year, accustomed to
escape from the enemy by making marches and counter-
marches, disheartened with the people, whose apathy,
after days of enthusiasm, he was keenly conscious of,
Jesus determined once more to escape with his disciples.
Reaching the summit of a mountain, he turned around
to cast one final lingering look on his beloved lake, on
whose banks he had wished the dav»'n of the Kingdom
of Heaven to shine. His eyes vrandered over those
towns lying by the water-side, or rising tier upon tier
along the mountain-side, half buried in their verdant
oases, and now glittering v/ith white beneath the golden
veil of twilight ; those beloved towns in v.hich he had
sown the words of life, and which nov/ abandoned him.
A presentiment of the future came over him. With
prophetic vision he sav/ this splendid country changed
into a wilderness beneath the vengeful hand of Ishmael,
and those words, devoid of anger, though full of sorrow
and bitterness, fell from his lips: "Woe unto thee,
Capernaum ; woe unto thee, Chorazin ; woe unto thee,
Bethsaida !" Then turning towards the heathen world,
accompanied by his disciples, he took the path leading
along the Jordan valley from Gadara to Csesarea
Philippi.

Sad and long was the route of the fugitive band
across the mighty plain of reeds and the marshes of the

FLIGHT TO C^SAREA 8l

upper Jordan under the burning Syrian sun. The
nights were passed beneath the tents of shepherds, or
with such Essenes as were Hving in the small hamlets
of this abandoned country. The anxious disciples pro-
ceeded with downcast eyes; the master, filled with sor-
row, remained plunged in silent meditation. He was
reflecting on the impossibility of the triumph of his doc-
trine by preaching to the people, and on the unremitting
plottings of his enemies. The final struggle was becom-
ing imminent, he had reached a terrible difliculty; how
was he to escape? On the other hand, his thoughts
dwelt with anxiety on his spiritual family now scattered
abroad, and especially on the twelve apostles, who, in
faith and trust, had left everything — family, profession,
and fortune — to follow him, and who, in spite of all,
would soon be heartbroken and deceived in their mighty
hope of a triumphant Messiah. Could he leave them to
themselves? Had the truth sufficiently penetrated their
souls? Would they beheve in him, and in his doctrine,
at all events? Did they know who he was? Dominated
by this thought, he one day asked them : "Whom say
men that I, the Son of Man, am ?" They replied :
"Some say that thou art John the Baptist, some Elias,
and other Jeremias, or one of the prophets." Then
Jesus said unto them, "But whom say ye that I am?"
Simon Peter answered and said, "Thou art the Christ,
the Son of the living God."^

In the mouth of Peter, and the thought of Jesus,
these words have not the signification the Church at a
later date wished to give them : "Thou art the Elect of
Israel announced by the prophets." In the Hindoo, the
Egyptian, and the Greek initiation, the term "Son of

^Matt. xvi. 13-16.

82 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

God" signifred ''a consciousness identified with divine
truth, a will capable of manifesting it." According to
the prophets, this Messiah must be the greatest of these
manifestations. He would be the Son of Man, i. e.,
the Elect of earthly Humanity ; the Son of God, i. e.,
the Envoy of heavenly Humanity, and as such having in
himself the Father or Spirit, who, by Humanity, reigns
over the universe.

At this affirmation of the faith of the apostles Jesus
felt an immense joy. So his disciples had understood
him ; he would live in them, and the bond between
heaven and earth would be re-established. Jesus said to
Peter, ''Happy art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and
blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father
which is in heaven." By this reply Jesus gives Peter to
understand that he considers him as an initiate, as he
himself was, and also possessed of a deep insight into
truth. This is the true, the only revelation, this is "the
stone on which the Christ wishes to build his Church,
and against which the gates of hell shall not prevail."
Jesus relies on the Apostle Peter only in so far as he
shall have this intuition. A moment later, the apostle
reverting to the ordinary, fear-stricken Peter, the Master
treats him in quite a different fashion. Jesus had an-
nounced to his disciples that he was about to be put to
death at Jerusalem, and Peter protested with the words,
"Be it far from thee, Lord, this shall not be unto thee !"
But Jesus, as though seeing a temptation of the flesh in
this impulse of sympathy, attempting to shake his
mighty resolution, turned sharply round to the apostle
and said: "Get thee behind me, Satan, thou art an
offense unto me, for thou savorest not the things that
be of God, but those that be of men" (Matt. xvi. 21-23).

FLIGHT TO C^SAREA 83

And the Master's imperious gesture seemed to say, "For-
ward through the desert !" Intimidated by his solemn
voice and stern look, the apostles bowed their heads in
silence, and resumed their journey over the stone hills
of the Gaulonitide. This flight, by which Jesus brought
his disciples out of Israel, resembled a march towards
the problem of his Messianic destiny, the key to which
he was seeking.

They reached the gates of Csesarea. That town,
which had become pagan since the time of Antiochus
the Great, w^as sheltered within a verdant oasis near the
Jordan's source, at the foot of Hermon's snowy peaks.
It had its amphitheater, and was resplendent with costly
palaces and Grecian temples. Jesus crossed it, and con-
tinued to the spot at which the Jordan in a clear bubbling
stream issues from a mountain cavern, like the stream
of life springing from the profound bosom of nature.
There was erected a small temple dedicated to Pan ; and
in the grotto, on the banks of the stream, numerous col-
umns, marble nymphs, and pagan divinities. The Jews
held in horror these tokens of idolatrous worship ; Jesus
contemplated them with an indulgent smile. In them
he recognized the imperfect effigies of the divine beauty,
whose radiant models he bore within his own soul. He
had not come to utter maledictions against paganism,
but to transform it; not to scatter anathema on earth
and its mysterious powers, but to point out to it the way
to heaven. His heart was large enough, and his doctrine
sufficiently vast, to embrace all people, and to say to
men of every religion : ''Raise your heads, and learn
that you all have one same father." And yet, there he
was at the extreme limit of Israel, hunted like a wild
beast, stifled between two peoples who rejected him

84 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

alike. In front, the heathens who did not yet under-
stand him, and on whom his words fell powerless; be-
hind, the Jews, a people which stoned his prophets, and
stopped its ears, so as not to hear its Messiah ; while
all the time the Pharisees and Sadducees were watching
their prey. What superhuman courage, what unprece-
dented power of action would be needed to crush all
these obstacles, to penetrate beyond heathen idolatry
and Jewish harshness right to the heart of that sufTering
humanity he loved with every fiber of his being, and
induce it to listen to his resurrection message ! Then
suddenly his mind went back to bygone times, descend-
ing once again the stream of the Jordan, Israel's sacred
river, passing from the temple of Pan to that of Jeru-
salem, measuring the distance which separated ancient
paganism from the universal prophetic thought, and,
regaining its source, as an eagle its nest, returned from
the anguish of Csesarea to the vision of Engaddi ! And
now, from the depths of the Dead Sea, he sees this ter-
rible phantom of the cross once more spring forth!
. . . Had the hour of the great sacrifice at length
come? Jesus, like all men, possessed two conscious-
nesses ; the earthly one lulled him with illusions, saying :
"Who knows? Perhaps I shall escape this destiny."
The other, the divine one, repeated implacably: "The
path of victory passes through the gate of anguish."
Must he choose this latter voice?

At all important epochs in his life we see Jesus with-
draw to the mountain to pray. Had not the Vedic sage
said, "Prayer upholds heaven and rules the Gods?"
Jesus knew this greatest of all forces. Usually he ad-
mitted of no companion in this mountain solitude when
he descended into the inmost elements of his being.

THE TRANSFIGURATION 85

This time, however, he took with him Peter, and the
two sons of Zebedee, James and John, to spend the
night on the summit of a lofty mountain. Legend
states this to have been Mount Tabor. There, be-
tween the Master and three of the greatest initiates
among the disciples, the mysterious scene related in the
Gospels under the name of the Transfiguration took
place ! According to Matthew, the apostles saw the
Master's form, luminous and apparently diaphanous,
appear in the transparent penumbra of the Eastern night.
His face shone like the sun, and his garments became
brilliant as the light; at his side appeared two figures,
which they took for those of Moses and Elijah. As,
trembling, they emerged from their strange prostration,
which seemed to them at once a profounder sleep and a
more intense waking state, they saw the Master alone
by their side, restoring them to full consciousness by
his touch. The transfigured Christ they had contem-
plated in this dream was never effaced from their
memory (Matt. xvii. 1-8).

But what had Jesus himself seen and passed through
during that night which preceded the most decisive act
of his prophetic career? A gradual effacing of earthly
things, beneath the ardor of prayer, a rapturous ascent
from sphere to sphere, he seemed by degrees to be
returning along the depths of his consciousness into
some previous existence, an altogether spiritual and
divine one. Far in the distance were suns, worlds,
earths, vortices of suffering incarnations ; now he was
conscious of one homogeneous atmosphere, one fluid
substance, one intelligent light. Within this radiance
legions of celestial beings form a moving vault, a firma-
ment of ethereal bodies, white as snow, whence beam

86 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

forth gentle flashes of Hght. On the shining cloud
where he was standing six men in priestly robes, and
mighty of stature, raise aloft, with joined hands, a
dazzling Chalice. These are the six Messiahs who have
already appeared on earth ; the seventh is himself, and
this Cup signifies the Sacrifice he must undergo, by
incarnating himself on earth in his turn. Beneath the
cloud is heard the roar of thunder ; there yawns a black
abyss ; the circle of generations, the pit of life and death,
the terrestrial hell. The Sons of God with suppliant
gesture raise the Cup, the very firmament of heaven is
silent, as Jesus, in token of assent, extends his arms
in the form of a cross as though he wished to embrace
the whole universe. Then the Sons of God bow down
.their faces to the earth, a band of female angels, with
outspread wings and downcast eyes, carry off the incan-
descent Chalice towards the vault of light. The hosanna
resounds, with ineffably melodious strains, throughout
the heavens. . . . But he, without even listening to
it, plunges into the pit. . . .

This is what had taken place long ago among the
Essenes, in the bosom of the Father, where the mys-
terious rites of Eternal Love are celebrated and the
revolutions of the constellations pass, light as waves.
This is what he had sworn to accomplish, this is the
reason of his birth and the purpose of his past struggles.
And now, once more this mighty oath bound him down
at the end of his task.

Terrible oath, dreaded chalice ! Still, it must be
drained to the dregs. After all this rapturous bliss he
awoke in the depths of the pit, on the brink of martyr-
dom. No further doubt was possible; the time was at

THE TRANSFIGURATION 87

hand. Heaven had spoken and Earth cried aloud for
help.

Retracing his steps, Jesus once again descended the
valley of the Jordan, and proceeded by slow stages
along the road to Jerusalem.

CHAPTER VI

FINAL JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM THE PROMISE ^THE

SUPPER TRIAL OF JESUS DEATH AND RESURRECTION

"HosANNA to the son of David!" This was the cry
which greeted Jesus as he entered by the eastern gate
of Jerusalem, along streets covered with branches of
palm trees. They who welcomed him with such en-
thusiasm were adherents of the Galilean prophet who
had assembled from both without and within the town
to greet him with this ovation. They were welcoming
him who was to free Israel, who would soon be crowned
king. Even the twelve apostles still shared this illusion
in spite of all Jesus had said. He alone, the proclaimed
Messiah, knew that he was advancing to his death, and
that only afterwards would even his disciples penetrate
the inner sanctuary of his thought. Resolutely was he
offering himself, of his own free will, and fully con-
scious of the end. Hence his resignation, his sweet
serenity. As he passed beneath the colossal porch, cut
in the gloomy fortress of Jerusalem, the cry resounded
beneath the vault and pursued him like the voice of
Destiny, seizing its prey: "Hosanna to the son of
David!"

By this solemn entrance into the city, Jesus publicly
declared to the religious authorities of Jerusalem that he
took upon himself the role of the Messiah, with all its
consequences. The following morning he appeared in

88

FINAL JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM 89

the temple, in the Gentiles' Court, and, advancing
towards the cattle-dealers and money-changers who by-
usury and the deafening cHck of money profaned the
parvise of the holy place, he uttered against them
Isaiah's words : "It is written, My house shall be called
the house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of
thieves." The dealers fled, carrying off their tables
and money-bags, intimidated by the partisans of the
prophet who formed a solid rampart around him, and
even more terrified by his imperious gesture and flashing
look. The astonished priests marvelled at this boldness
and manifestation of power. A deputation from the
Sanhedrim came demanding an explanation, with the
words: "By what authority doest thou these things?"
To this insidious question Jesus, as was his wont, replied
by a question no less embarrassing for his enemies:
"Whence was the baptism of John, from heaven or of
men?" Had the Pharisees replied: "From heaven,"
Jesus v*^ould have said, "Then why did you not believe
him?" Had they said, "From men," they would have
had to consider the anger of the people who looked
upon John the Baptist as a prophet. Accordingly, they
replied: "We cannot tell." "Neither tell I you," said
Jesus, "by what authority I do these things." Once
the blow warded off, however, he assumed the offensive
and added: "Verily I say unto you, the publicans and
harlots go into the kingdom of God before you." Then
in a parable he compared them to the wicked husband-
man, who kills his master's son so as to inherit the
vineyard; and he called himself: "the stone which had
become the head of the corner, and which should grind
into powder whomsoever it should fall upon." These
acts and words show that in making this final journey

90 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

to Israel's capital, Jesus wished to cut off all retreat.
His enemies had long been in possession of the two
great keys of accusation necessary for his ruin: his
threats against the temple, and the affirmation that he
was the Messiah. These last attacks exasperated his
enemies ; from that moment his death, determined upon
by the authorities, was only a matter of time. Since
his entrance into Jerusalem, the most influential mem-
bers of the Sanhedrim, Scribes and Pharisees, recon-
ciled in common hatred against Jesus, had come to an
understanding on the death of this "seducer of the
people." They hesitated only on the matter of seizing
him in public, for they dreaded a rising of the people.
On different occasions already, officials sent against him
had returned, won over by his ^\T)rds, or alarmed at the
multitudes of people. Often had the soldiers of the
temple seen him disappear from their midst in mysterious
fashion. So also had the Emperor Domitian, fascinated
and struck with blindness, so to speak, by the image he
wished to condemn, seen Apollonius of Tyana disap-
pear from before the tribunal and from the midst of his
guards ! The struggle between Jesus and the priests
thus continued from day to day with increasing hatred
on their side, and on his, an enthusiastic strength and
impetuosity, given him by the certainty he felt as to the
fatal issue. This was his last assault against the powers
of the day ; in it he manifested a mighty energy as well
as that masculine force which like a coat of mail clothed
that sublime tenderness of his, which might be called:
The Eternal-Feminine of his soul. This formidable
combat ended in terrible maledictions against these de-
basers of religion: "Woe unto you Scribes and Phari-
sees, who shut up the kingdom of heaven against such as

FINAL JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM 91

wish to enter in. Ye fools and blind, who pay tithes and
neglect justice, pity, and fidelity ; ye are like unto whited
sepulchres which appear beautiful from without, but
are within full of dead men's bones and of all
uncleanness."

After having thus branded religious hypocrisy and
false sacerdotal authority what had for centuries held
sway, Jesus considered his struggles at an end. He left
Jerusalem with his disciples and proceeded to the Mount
of Olives. As they ascended, Herod's temple could be
seen in all its majesty, with its terraces and vast porti-
coes, its sculpturing of white marble incrusted with
jasper and porphyry, and its dazzling roof of gold and
silver. The disciples, discouraged and under the pre-
sentiment of a catastrophe, drew the master's attention
to the splendor of the building he was leaving forever.
Their words were tinged with melancholy and regret,
for, to the last, they had hoped to take their seats therein
as judges of Israel around the Messiah, the crowned
priest-king. Jesus turned, facing the temple, and said :
''See ye not all these things? Verily I say unto you,
there shall not be left here one stone upon another, that
shall not be thrown down."^ He was judging the dura-
tion of the temple of Jehovah by the moral worth of
those who ruled therein. He meant that fanaticism,
intolerance, and hatred were not sufficient arms against
the battle-axes and battering-rams of the Roman Caesar.
With the insight of the initiate, which had become more
intense through that clairvoyance given by the approach
of death, he saw the Judaic pride, the policy of their
king, the whole Jewish history, terminate fatally in this
catastrophe. Triumph did not exist there, it was rather

* Matthew xxiv. 2.

92 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

in the prophetic thought, the universal rehgion, that
invisible temple v^hich he alone at that hour had full
consciousness of. As for the ancient citadel of Zion
and the temple of stone, he already saw the angel of
destruction standing, sword in hand, at its doors.

Jesus knew that his hour was nigh, but he did not
wish to fall into the hands of the Sanhedrim, so he
withdrew to Bethany. As he had a predilection for
the Mount of Olives, he :came there almost daily to con-
verse with his disciples. From the summit the view
was magnificent. The range of vision embraces the
rugged mountains of Judaea and Moab, with their
purplish-blue tints, whilst away in the distance could be
caught a glimpse of the Dead Sea, like a leaden-hued
mirror, from whose surface rise dense sulphurous mists.
At the foot of the mountain stretched Jerusalem, the
Temple, and the citadel of Zion towering above all other
edifices. Even in these days, as twilight descends on the
dark, mysterious gorges of Hinnom and Jehoshaphat, the
city of David and of the Christ, protected by the sons
of Ishmael, rises in imposing majesty above these
gloomy valleys. Its cupolas and minarets reflect the
fading light of the heavens and seem to be ever awaiting
the angels of judgment. It was there Jesus gave the
disciples his final instructions regarding the future of
the religion he had come to found, and the destiny of
mankind, thus bequeathing them his promise — at once
terrestrial and divine — intimately wedded with his
esoteric teaching.

Evidently the writers of the Synoptic Gospels have
handed down to us the apocalyptic sayings of Jesus
amid a confusion which renders them almost impene-
trable. Their meaning only begins to become intelligible

THE PROMISE 93

in John's Gospel. If Jesus had really believed in his
return on the clouds, some years after his death, as is
admitted according to the naturalistic interpretation;
or if he had imagined that the end of the world, and
the last judgment of men would take place in this man-
ner, as orthodox theology believes, he would have been
a very ordinary visionary indeed, instead of the sage
initiate, the sublime seer every word of his teaching and
every action of his life proclaim him to have been. It
is evident that here, especially, his words must be under-
stood in their allegorical signification according to the
transcendent symbolisp of the prophets. John's Gospel,
the one which has most fully handed down to us the
Master's esoteric teaching, forces this interpretation, so
perfectly in accord as it is with the parabolical genius
of Jesus, when he relates the Master's words : "I have
yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear
them now. . . . These things have I spoken unto
you in parables, but the time cometh when I shall no
more speak unto you in parables, but I shall show you
plainly of the Father."

The solemn promise of Jesus to the apostles embraces
four objects, four increasing spheres of planetary and
cosmic life : the individual psychic life ; the national life
of Israel ; the earthly evolution and end of humanity as
well as the divine. Let us take one by one these four
spheres through which radiates the thought of the
Christ before his martyrdom, like the setting sun, filling
with its glory the whole terrestrial atmosphere right to
the zenith, before shining on other worlds.

I. The first judgment signifies the ultimate destiny
of the soul after death. This is determined by its own
inner nature and the acts of its life. I have already

94 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

expounded this doctrine, with reference to Jesus' con-
versation with Nicodemus. On the Mount of Olives he
says to his disciples: *'Take heed to yourselves, lest at
any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting,
and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day
come upon you unawares."^ And again: *'Be ye also
ready : for in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of
man cometh."-

2. The destruction of the temple and the end of
Israel. ''Nation shall rise against nation. . . . They
shall deliver }tiu up to be afflicted. . . . Verily I
say unto you, This generation shall not pass till all these
things be fulfilled.''^

3. The terrestrial aim of humanity, which is not fixed
at some definite epoch, but must be reached by a grad-
uated series of successive realizations. This aim is the
coming of the social Christ or the divine man on earth;
i. e., the organization of Truth, Justice, and Love in
human society, and consequently, the pacification of the
nations. Isaiah had already foretold this distant epoch
in a splendid vision beginning with the words: "For
I know their works and their thoughts ; it shall come
that I will gather all nations and tongues ; and they shall
come and see my glory. And I will set a sign among
them," &c., &c.* Jesus completing this prophecy explains
to his disciples what this sign shall be ; the complete un-
veiling of the mysteries or the coming of the Holy Ghost,
whom he also calls the Comforter or **the spirit of Truth

' Luke xxi. 34.
' Matthew xxiv. 44.
' Matthew xxiv. 4-34.
* Isaiah Ixvi. 18, &c.

THE PROMISE 95

which shall lead you into all truth. "^ The apostles shall
have this revelation beforehand, the mass of humanity
in the course of time. But whenever it takes place in
an individual consciousness or among a group of men,
it pierces through and through. 'Tor as the lightning
icometh out of the east and shineth even unto the west,
so shall also the coming of the son of man be."- Thus,
when the central and spiritual truth is kindled it illumines
all other truths throughout creation.

4. The last judgment signifies the end of the cosmic
evolution of humanity, or its entrance into a definitely
spiritual state. This is what Persian Esoterism had
called the victory of Ormuzd over the Ahrimanes, or of
Spirit over Matter. Hindu Esoterism named it the com-
plete reabsorption of matter by Spirit, or the end of a
day of Brahma. After thousands of centuries a period
must come when, through series of births and rebirths,
incarnations and regenerations, the individuals compos-
ing a humanity shall have definitely entered the spiritual
state, or been annihilated as conscious souls by evil, i. e.
by their own passions symbolized by the fire of Gehenna
and gnashing of teeth. ''Then shall appear the sign of
the Son of man in heaven . . . they shall see the
Son of man coming in the clouds. ... He shall
send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and
they shall gather together his elect from the four
winds. "^ The Son of Man, a generic term, here signifies
humanity in its perfect representation, i. e. the small
number of those who have raised themselves to the rank

^ John xiv. 16-17.
' Matthew xxiv. 27.
» Matthew xxiv. 30, 31.

96 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

of Sons of God. His Sign is the Lamb and the Cross,
i, e., Love and Eternal Life. The Cloud is the image of
the Mysteries which have become translucid, as well as
of the subtle matter transfigured by the spirit; of the
fluidic substance which is no longer a dense obscure veil,
but a light transparent garment of the soul, no longer a
gross obstacle, but an expression of the truth ; no longer
a deceptive appearance but spiritual truth itself, the
inner world instantaneously and directly manifested. The
Angels who gather together the Elect are glorified
spirits, who have themselves sprung from humanity. The
Trumpet they sound symbolizes the living word of the
Spirit, which lays bare the real nature of the soul, and
destroys all lying appearances of matter.

Jesus, feeling his end near, thus explained to his as-
tonished disciples the lofty perspectives which from by-
gone times had formed part of the doctrine of the mys-
teries, but to which each religious founder has always
given personal form and color. To engrave these truths
on their minds and facilitate their propagation, he
summed them up in such images as were characterized
by extreme boldness and incisive energy. The revealing
image and speaking symbol formed the universal lan-
guage of the ancient initiates. Such a language pos-
sesses a communicative virtue, a power of concentration
and duration lacking in the abstract term. In using it,
Jesus merely followed the example of Moses and the
prophets. He knew the Idea would not immediately be
understood, but he wished to impress it in letters of
flame in the simple souls of his followers, leaving to suc-
ceeding ages the task of generating the powers con-
tained in his word. Jesus feels himself one with all the
prophets of the earth who had gone before, as he had

THE PROMISE 97

done, messengers of Life and of the eternal Word. In
this sentiment of unity and solidarity with immutable
truth, he dared address to his afflicted disciples the proud
words: ''Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my
word shall not pass away."

These mornings and evenings on the Mount of Olives
flew swiftly by. One day, obedient to an impulse pe-
culiar to his ardent and impressionable nature, which
caused him suddenly to descend from the most sublime
heights to the sufferings of earth, which he felt as his
own, he shed tears over Jerusalem, the holy city and its
inhabitants, whose frightful destiny he foresaw. His
own was also approaching with giant strides. The San-
hedrim had already discussed his fate and decided on
his death. Judas Iscariot had already promised to de-
liver his master into their hands. It was not sordid
avarice, but rather ambition and wounded pride which
occasioned this black treachery. Judas, a type of cold
egoism and absolute positivism, incapable of the faintest
idealism, had become a disciple of the Christ merely from
a spirit of wordly speculation. He was relying on the
earthly and immediate triumph of the prophet, and on
his own consequent gain. The Master's profound
words : He who wishes to save his life shall lose it, and
he who is willing to lose it, shall save it; had no mean-
ing for him. Jesus, in his boundless charity, had re-
ceived him as one of his disciples, in the hope of chang-
ing his nature. When Judas saw that matters were not
proceeding as he wished, that Jesus and his disciples
were compromised, and himself deceived in his hopes, his
deception became converted into a feeling of rage. The
wretch denounced the man, who, in his eyes, was only
a false Messiah who had deceived him. The penetrat-

98 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

ing insight of Jesus txDld him what was taking place in
the mind of the faithless apostle. He now determined
he would no longer avoid the destiny whose inextricable
folds were daily tightening around him. It was the eve
of Easter, so he ordered his disciples to prepare the
meal at a friend's house in the town. He foresaw it
would be his last repast, and accordingly wished to give
it an exceptional solemnity.

Now we enter upon the final act of the Messianic
drama. In order to thoroughly understand the spirit
and work of Jesus, it has been necessary to shed an
inner light on the first two acts of his life ; his initiation
and public career. Subsequently, the inner drama of his
consciousness has been unfolded. The final act of his
life, or the drama of the passion, is the logical conse-
quence of the two preceding. Since it is known to all,
it explains itself, for the peculiarity of the sublime is that
it is at once simple, grandiose, and clear. The drama
of the passion has powerfully contributed to the insti-
tution of Christianity. It has drawn tears from every
human being possessed of a heart, and converted mil-
lions of souls. Throughout all these scenes the gospels
are of incomparable beauty. Even John descends from
his lofty heights, and his circumstantiated account as-
sumes a character of poignant truth such as an eye-
witness alone could give. Every one may live again in
himself the divine drama, no one could recreate it. And
yet, in ending my task, I must concentrate the rays of
esoteric tradition on the three essential events by which
the life of the divine Master came to an end: the Holy
Supper, the trial of the Messiah, and the Resurrection.
If light is thrown on these points, it will be reflected

THE SUPPER 99

backwards on the whole career of the Christ, and for-
wards on the succeedmg history of Christianity.

The twelve, forming thirteen with the Master, had met
in the upper room of a house in Jerusalem. The un-
known friend, Jesus' host, had covered the floor with a
rich carpet. In oriental fashion the Master and his dis-
ciples reclined on four large divans in the form of tric-
linia arranged around the table. When the paschal lamb,
and the golden chalice lent by the friend had been brought
into the room, and the vases filled with wine, Jesus, seated
between John and Peter, said: "With desire I have de-
sired to eat this passover with you before I suffer : For
I say unto you, I will not any more eat thereof, until it
be fulfilled in the kingdom of God."^ Thereupon their
countenances became overshadowed ; silence filled the air.
"The disciple whom Jesus loved," who alone divined
everything, bowed his head on the Master's breast. As
was usual among the Jews at the Easter meal, not a word
was uttered as they ate the bitter herbs and charoset
placed before them. Finally Jesus took bread, and after
giving thanks, he brake it and distributed unto them, say-
ing: 'This is my body which is given for you: this do
in remembrance of me." He also took the cup, saying:
"This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed
for you."^

Such is the institution of the Supper in all its sim-
plicity. It has a far wider signification than is generally
granted or known, for not only is the mystical and sym-
bolic act the conclusion and resume of the entire teach-
ing of the Christ, it is the consecration and rejuvenation
of a very ancient symbol of initiation. Among the ini-

*Luke xxii. 15, 16.
"Luke xxii. 19,

4237071^

100 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

tiates of Eg}'pt and Chaldea, as among the prophets and
Essenes, the fraternal agape marked the first stage of
initiation. The Communion, under the element of bread,
the fruit of the sheaf, signified knowledge of the mys-
teries of earthly life, as well as a sharing of terrestrial
blessings, and consequently the perfect union of affiliated
brothers. In the higher degree, communion under the
element of wine, the blood of the vine, penetrated through
and through by the sun, signified the sharing of heavenly
blessings, a participation in spiritual mysteries and di-
vine science. Jesus, in bequeathing these symbols to the
apostles, enlarged their meaning. Through them he ex-
tends to the whole of mankind fraternity and initiation,
formerly limited to the few. To them he adds the pro-
foundest of mysteries, the greatest of forces, that of his
own sacrifice. This he converts into the invisible but in-
frangible chain of love between himself and his followers.
It will give his glorified soul a divine power over their
hearts, as well as over the hearts of all men. This cup
of truth which had come from distant prophetic ages,
this golden chalice of initiation which the old Essene had
offered him in addressing him as prophet, this chalice of
celestial love the Sons of God had oflfered him in the
ecstasy of his loftiest rapture — this cup in which he now
sees his own blood reflected — he now gives over to hiy
well-beloved disciples with the inefifable tenderness of a
last farewell.

Do the apostles see and understand this redeeming,
world-embracing thought? It shines in the Master's pro-
found though sorrowful glance, as he turns from the
"disciple he loved" to the one about to betray him. No,
they do not yet understand ; they seem to breathe with
difficulty, as though under the power of some frightful

TRIAL OF JESUS lOI

dream; a kind of heavy, ruddy vapor floats in the air,
and they wonder as to the source of that strange radi-
ance about the Christ head. When, finally, Jesus tells
them that he is about to spend the night in prayer on
the Mount of Olives, and as he rises, requests them to
follow him, they no longer doubt as to what is about to
happen.

The night is past; the anguish of Gethsemane at an
end. With terrifying clearness he has seen the infernal
circle about to destroy him grow less and less. In the
horror of the situation, and the dreadful momentary ex-
pectation of being seized by his enemies, a shudder
passed through his frame ; for a moment his soul shrank
before the tortures that awaited him; drops of bloody
sweat stood on his brow. Then prayer came to his aid.
. . . Confused cries, torches flashing beneath the
gloomy olive-trees, the clash of arms, were so many signs
testifying to the approach of a band of soldiers sent by
the Sanhedrim. Judas, at their head, kisses his Master,
so that they may recognize the prophet. Jesus returns
the kiss with a look of ineffable compassion, and says to
him : "Friend, wherefore art thou come ?" The effect of
this gentleness, this brotherly kiss given in exchange for
the basest treason, will be such on that heart — notwith-
standing its hardness — that, a moment later, Judas, over-
come with horror and remorse, will take his own life.
And now, with rude, cruel hands, the soldiers have seized
the Galilean rabbi. After a brief resistance the terrified
disciples have fled. Peter and John alone remain at
hand, and follow the Master to the tribunal. Their
hearts are well-nigh broken as they anxiously await his
fate. Jesus has now regained control over himself; from

102 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

that moment not a single protest or complaint will break
from his lips.

The entire Sanhedrim is hastily assembled, and Jesus
is brought into their presence at midnight, for the court
is determined to deal promptly with the dangerous
prophet. Priests and sacrificers, turbans on their heads
and wearing purple, yellow and violet tunics, are sol-
emnly seated in a semi-circle. In their midst sits Caia-
phas, the chief priest, wearing on his head the "migbah" ;
at each end of the arc, on two small tribunes sit the clerks,
one for acquittal, the other for condemnation : advocatus
Dei, adz'Gcatus Diaboli. Jesus, in his white Essenian
robe, stands impressive in the center. Officers of justice,
armed with ropes and thongs, men with bared arms and
evil-looking eyes, stand around. Witnesses for the accu-
sation alone are present; there is not one for the de-
fense. The high priest, the supreme magistrate, is the
principal accuser; the trial, apparently a measure of
public safety against a crime or religious treason, is in
reality the preventive vengeance of an anxious priest-
hood which feels its power in danger.

Caiaphas rises and accuses Jesus of being a seducer
of the people, a *'mesit." A few witnesses taken at
hazard from the crowd give their depositions, but only
succeed in contradicting one another. Finally, one of
them reports the words of Jesus, 'T can destroy the
temple, and build it again in three days" — words which
had been considered blasphemous, and which the Naza-
rene had more than once flung in the face of the Phari-
sees under Solomon's porch. Jesus holds his peace.
"Answerest thou nothing?" asks the high priest.
Jesus, who knows he will be condemned, and is unwill-
ing to lavish words to no purpose, still makes no reply.

TRIAL OF JESUS 103

These words, however, even if proved, would not form
sufficient motive for a death penalty. A graver avowal
is needed. To force one, Caiaphas, the cunning Sad-
ducee, addresses him a question involving his honor,
the vital question of his mission. The greatest skill
often consists in going straight to the root of a matter.
*lf thou art the Messiah, say so now" Jesus at first
replies evasively, thus proving that he is not their dupe.
"If I say it, you will not believe me, but if I ask you
the same question you will give me no answer." As
Caiaphas does not succeed in his artifice, he uses his
authority as high priest, and solemnly says: *T adjure
thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou
be the Christ, the Son of God." Thus called upon
either to retract or affirm his mission before the highest
representative of the religion of Israel, Jesus no longer
hesitates. He replies calmly, "Thou hast said. Never-
theless, I say unto you, hereafter shall ye see the Son
of Man sitting on the right hand of Power, and coming
in the clouds of heaven." Thus expressing himself in
the prophetic language of Daniel, and of the book of
Henoch, Jehoshoua, the Essene initiate does not address
Caiaphas as an individual. He knows that the Sadducee
agnostic is incapable of understanding him, and accord-
ingly speaks to the sovereign priest of Jehovah, and
through him to all future priests and priesthoods of
earth, saying to them: After my mission, sealed by
death, the reign of unexplained religious Law is at an
end, both in principle and in deed. The Mysteries shall
be revealed, and man shall see the divine through the
human. Religions and acts of worship which cannot be
demonstrated and vivified by one another shall be void
of authority. This, according to the esoterism of the

104 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

prophets and Essenes, is the meaning of the Son sitting
on the right hand of the Father. Thus understood,
Jesus' reply to the high priest of Jerusalem contains the
intellectual and scientific testament of the Christ to the
religious authorities of the earth, just as the institution
of the Supper contains his testament of love and initi-
ation to the Apostles and to mankind in general.

In addressing Caiaphas Jesus spoke to the whole world.
The Sadducee, however, who had obtained what he
wished, listens to nothing more. Tearing his vestment
of fine linen, he exclaims : **He has blasphemed ; what
further need have we of witnesses? Ye have heard his
blasphemy; what think ye of it?" A gloomy though
ominous murmur arose from the Sanhedrim : ''He is
guilty of death." Immediately vile insults and brutal
outrage on the part of those of lower rank gave answer
to the condemnation uttered by their superiors. The
guards spit on him and strike him in the face, as they
exclaim: "Prophesy unto us, thou Christ, who is he
that smote thee?" Beneath this outburst of low and
savage hatred, the pale sublime countenance of the great
sufferer resumes its visionary marble fixity. Some one
has said that there are statues which weep ; there is in-
deed a tearless grief, victims' unuttered prayers, full of
terror to their assailants whom they pursue for the
remainder of their lives.

All was not yet over, however. The Sanhedrim may
pronounce the death penalty, the secular power and the
consent of the Roman authorities are needed to put it
into execution. The interview with Pilate, related in
detail by John, is no less remarkable than that with
Caiaphas. This strange dialogue between the Christ
arid the Roman governor, to which the violence of the

TRIAL OF JESUS 105

Jewish priests, and the cries of a fanatical populace, play
the part of an ancient tragedy chorus, gives the convic-
tion of a mighty dramatic truth, for it lays bare the souls
of the different characters, and shows the clash of the
three powers in play: Roman Csesarism, bigoted Juda-
ism, and the universal religion of the Spirit represented
by the Christ. Pilate, totally indififerent to the religious
quarrel, but greatly troubled over the matter, for he is
afraid the death of Jesus will occasion a rising of the
people, questions him with a certain amount of precau-
tion, and offers him a means of escape, in the hope that
he will take advantage of it. "Art thou the King of the
Jews ?" Jesus answered : "My kingdom is not of this
world." Pilate asked: "Then thou art a king?" Jesus
again replied: "To this end was I born, and for this
cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness
unto the truth." Pilate no more understands this affirma-
tion of the spiritual royalty of Jesus than Caiaphas under-
stood his religious testament. "What is truth?" he re-
marks, with a shrug of the shoulders. The sceptical
Roman knight's question reveals the state of mind in
which the heathen world then was, as it does that of all
society in a state of decadence. All the same, as he did
not see in the accused Jesus anything other than a harm-
less dreamer, he added: "I find no fault in him," and
proposes to the Jews that he should liberate him. The
populace, however, instigated by the priests, cries aloud:
"Release unto us Barabbas !" Then Pilate, who detests
the Jews, gives himself the ironical pleasure of causing
their pretended king to be beaten with rods. He thinks
this will satisfy the fanatics, but they only become the
more furious, and madly exclaim : "Crucify him !"
In spite of this outburst of popular passion Pilate still

io6 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

resists. He is tired of being cruel. Throughout his
Hfe he has seen so much bloodshed, punished with death
so many rebels, and heard so many groans and curses
without his equanimity being troubled in the slightest.
But the mute, stoic suffering of the Galilean prophet
beneath the purple cloak and crown of thorns has sent a
hitherto unknown thrill through his very being. In a
strange fugitive vision he utters the words, with no idea
of their import : ''Ecce Homo ! Behold the Man !" The
stern, hard-hearted Roman is almost overcome with emo-
tion ; he is on the point of pronouncing a sentence of
acquittal. The priests of the Sanhedrim, with eyes in-
tently fixed on him, see this emotion, and are filled with
terror in consequence ; they feel that their prey is escap-
ing them. Craftily they deliberate among themselves.
After a few moments they raise their right hands, and,
turning aside their heads with horrified gesture, exclaim
in one voice: ''He has made himself the Son of God!"
When Pilate heard that saying, says John, his fear
increased. Fear of what? What meaning had this for
the unbelieving Roman, who heartily despised both the
Jews and their religion, and believed in none other than
Csesar, and the political religion of Rome? . . .
There is a serious reason for this. Although different
meanings were given to it, the expression "Son of God"
was tolerably well known in ancient esoterism, and Pilate,
although sceptical, was not altogether free from super-
stition. At Rome, in the Minor Mysteries of Mithras,
in which Roman knights became initiated, he had heard
that a Son of God was a kind of interpreter of divinity.
To whatever nation or religion he belonged, an attempt
on his life was a great crime. Pilate had little faith in
these Persian reveries, but the name troubled him never-

TRIAL OF JESUS 107

theless, and increased his embarrassment. Seeing this,
the Jews fling at the proconsul the final accusation : "If
thou settest free this man, thou art no friend of Caesar's;
whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar.
. . . We have no king but Caesar." Irresistible argu-
ment; denying God is of little import, but conspiring
against Caesar is the crime of crimes. Pilate is obliged to
give way and pronounce sentence of condemnation.
Thus, at the end of his public career Jesus finds himself
face to face with the master of the world, against whom
he — an occult opponent — has fought indirectly all his
life. The shadow of Caesar sends him to the cross!
Profound is the logic of events ; the Jews have delivered
him up to judgment, but it is the Roman specter which
stretches out its hand to kill. The body indeed is de-
stroyed, but it is he, the glorified Christ, whose martyr-
dom will forever deprive Caesar of the aureole he has
usurped, the divine apotheosis, the infernal blasphemy
of absolute power.

Pilate, after washing his hands of the blood of the
innocent Jesus, now utters the terrible words : ' Con-
demno, ibis in crucem; and the impatient mob hurries
away in the direction of Golgotha.

Following them, we find ourselves on the barren
heights overlooking Jerusalem, and bearing the name of
Gilgal, Golgotha, or place of skulls ; a sinister desert
covered with human bones, for centuries the scene of
horrible punishments. Not a tree can be seen, the
ground seems to bristle with gibbets. It is here that
Alexander Janneus had come with his whole harem to
witness the execution of hundreds of prisoners; here
that Varus had crucified two thousand rebels; and now

io8 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

the gentle Messiah, whose coming had been foretold by
the prophets, was on this same spot to undergo the ter-
rible death penalty, invented by the atrocious genius of
the Phoenicians, and adopted by the implacable law of
Rome. The cohort of the legionaries has formed a
mighty circle on the top of the hill; they drive away
with their lances the few followers who remained faith-
ful to the condemned Christ. These are Galilean women,
mute with despair, who fling themselves on the ground
before the cross. The final hour has come ; the defender
of the poor, the feeble and the oppressed, must finish his
task in that state of abject martyrdom reserved for slaves
and robbers. The prophet, consecrated by the Essenes,
must allow himself to be nailed to the cross he had
accepted in the vision of Engaddi ; the Son of God must
drink of the chalice which had appeared to him in the
Transfiguration, and must descend into the depths of
hell and of all earthly horror. ... He has refused
the traditional drink prepared by the pious women of
Jerusalem, and which is intended to deaden the suffer-
ings of the crucified victims. In fullest consciousness
will he suffer the agony of death. Bound to the cruel
gibbet, as the stern, hard-hearted soldiers with mighty
hammer-blows drive the nails into those feet, the object
of such passionate reverence, and through those hands
never raised except in blessing, a dull mist of horrible
pain closes his eyes and chokes his throat. Still, amid
such convulsions of pain and infernal anguish, the Savior
pleads for his executioners: ''Father, forgive them, for
they know not what they do."

Now the cup is being drained to its dregs ; the death-
agony lasts from noon to sunset. Moral is added to
physical torture, which it surpasses in malignity. The

DEATH AND RESURRECTION 109

initiate has abdicated his powers, the Son of God is
about to suffer eclipse ; only the man of sorrows remains.
For a few hours he will lose his heaven, to measure and
fathom the depths of the abyss of human suffering.
There stands the cross with its victim, and the super-
scription— the proconsul's final shaft of irony — 'This is
the King of Jews !" As through a mist of anguish, the
crucified one sees the holy city Jerusalem he wished to
glorify now hurling anathemas against him. Where are
his disciples? They have disappeared in all directions.
He hears nothing but the insults of the members of the
Sanhedrim, who, imagining that the prophet is no longer
to be feared, exult with joy at his death-struggles. ''He
saved others," they say ; "himself he cannot save !"
Through such perverse blasphemies Jesus sees, in terri-
fying prophetic vision, all the crimes that unjust poten-
tates and fanatical priests are to commit in his name.
With his own sign will they pronounce maledictions,
and with his own cross will they crucify. It is not the
gloomy silence of the heavens veiled against him, but
rather the light, lost to humanity, which tears from him
the despairing wail : "Father, why hast thou forsaken
me?" Then, in one final burst, there springs forth from
his soul the cry, "It is finished !"

Sublime Nazarene, divine Son of Man, even now is
the victory thine. Doubtless thy soul has once again
found, in light more dazzling than before, the heaven
of Engaddi and Mount Tabor ! Down through the ages
hast thou seen thy word fleeting victorious, and no other
glory hast thou desired than the uplifted hands and eyes
of those thou hast healed and comforted. . . . Even
now a shudder of dread comes over thy torturers, as they
listen to thy final words so full of meaning but which

no JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

they do not understand. The Roman soldiers have
turned their gaze at the strange radiance thy spirit has
left on the tranquil countenance of this corpse, while
thy slayers look at one another in wonder and say:
"Could this have been a God?"

Is the drama really finished? The silent though for-
midable strife now at an end, the struggle between divine
Love and Death which has united with the reigning
powers of earth to overwhelm him, at last closed?
Where is the victor? Does triumph remain with those
self-satisfied priests as they descend from Calvary well
pleased with their deed, for they have seen the prophet
breathe his last, or with this pale crucified Christ, already
livid in death? For these faithful, weeping women,
whom the Roman legionaries have permitted to approach
the foot of the cross, as well as for the terror-stricken
disciples who have taken refuge in the grotto of Jehosha-
phat, all is indeed at an end. The Messiah, who was to
be enthroned at Jerusalem, has died an infamous death
on the cross. The master has disappeared, and with
him hope, the Gospel, the Kingdom of Heaven itself.
A gloomy silence of deep despair hangs over the small
community. Even Peter and John are overwhelmed
with grief. Darkness is all around ; not a single ray
illumines their souls. And yet, just as in the Eleusinian
mysteries, profound darkness is followed by a dazzling
light, so, in the Gospels, this deep despair is succeeded by
a sudden miraculous joy which bursts forth like a beam
of light at sunrise, and the joyful cry resounds through-
out Judaea : "He is risen again !"

Mary Magdalene, wandering near the tomb in the
excess of her grief, was the first to see the master, and

DEATH AND RESURRECTION in

to recognize him by his voice as he uttered her name,
Mary! Overcome with joy, she threw herself at his
feet. Again she saw Jesus look at her, and wave his
hand as though to prevent her touching him; then the
apparition suddenly vanished, leaving around the Mag-
dalene an atmosphere of warmth and the delight of a
real presence. Afterwards the holy women met the Lord,
who said to them : ''Go and tell my brethren to proceed
to Galilee, there they shall see me." That same evening,
as the eleven were met in private, they saw Jesus enter
the room. He took a seat in their midst, and gently
reproached them for their unbelief. Then he said : "Go
ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every
creature." They listened to him as in a dream, for they
seemed to have completely forgotten his death, and were
persuaded that the Master would not again leave them.
However, just as they were about to speak, they saw
him disappear from their midst like a vanishing light.
The echo of his voice still vibrated in their ears. The
apostles, amazed, sought the spot where he had been;
there still lingered a vague light, which quickly disap-
peared. According to Matthew and Mark, Jesus ap-
peared once more on a mountain to five hundred of the
brethren assembled by the apostles. He also showed
himself again to the eleven, after which the apparitions
ceased. Faith, however, had been created, the first im-
pulse given, and Christianity was a living force. The
apostles, filled with the sacred fire, went about healing
the sick and preaching their Master's gospel. Three
years afterwards, a young Pharisee, named Saul, ani-
mated by violent hatred against the new religion, whose
defenders he persecuted with all the vigor of youth,
journeyed to Damascus, accompanied by several com-

112 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

panions. On the way he saw himself suddenly envel-
oped in so dazzling a flame of fire that he fell to the
earth. Trembling, he exclaimed: "Who art thou?" A
voice replied: 'T am Jesus whom thou persecutest; it
is hard for thee to kick against the pricks." Saul's ter-
rified companions raised him to his feet. They had
heard the voice though they had seen nothing. The
young man, blinded by the flash, recovered his sight only
three days afterwards.

Converted to the faith of Christ, he became Paul, the
apostle of the Gentiles. On this one point is the whole
world agreed, that but for Saul's conversion Christianity,
confined as it was to Judaea, would never have conquered
the Western world.

Such are the facts as related in the New Testament.
V/hatever efforts be made to reduce their results to a
minimum, and whatever be the religious or philosophical
idea attached to them, they cannot be regarded as
legends, pure and simple, and refused the value of au-
thentic testimony on all points essential. For eighteen
centuries the waves of doubt and denial have assailed
the rock of this testimony; for a hundred years the
weapons of criticism have been directed against it.
Breaches have been effected in places, but its position
remains steadfast. What is there behind the visions of
the apostles? Elementary theologians, interpreters of
the letter, and agnostic savants may dispute for ever ;
they will never convert one another, and their reason-
ings will be in vain, so long as Theosophy, the science
of the Spirit, has not enlarged their conceptions, and a
superior experimental psychology, the art of laying bare
the soul, left their eyes unopened. But from the stand-
point of the conscientious historian, i. c, the authenticity

DEATH AND RESURRECTION 1 13

of these facts as psychical actuahties, there is one point
on which doubt is impossible ; that the apostles had these
apparitions, and that it was impossible to shake their
faith in the resurrection of the Christ. If John's account
be rejected on the ground of having received its definite
compilation about a hundred years after the death of
Jesus, and also Luke's account of the Christ's appearance
to the disciples at Emmaus as a mere poetical amplifica-
tion, there still remain the simple and positive affirma-
tions of Matthew and Mark, which lie at the very root
of the Christian tradition and religion. And even more
solid and indisputable is the testimony of Paul. Wishing
to explain to the Corinthians the reason of his faith and
the basis of the gospel he preaches, he enumerates in
order six successive appearances of Jesus : those to Peter,
to the eleven, to the five hundred, "most of whom," he
says, "are still living"; to James, to the assembled
apostles, and finally, his own vision on the way to Da-
mascus. These facts were communicated to Paul by
Peter himself, and by James, three years after the
death of Jesus, just after Paul's conversion, at the time
of his first journey to Jerusalem. Accordingly he re-
ceived them from eye-witnesses. Finally, the most indis-
putable of all these visions is by no means the least
extraordinary ; I refer to that of Paul himself. He con-
tinually alludes to it in his Epistles as being the source
of his faith. Given the former psychological condition
of Paul and the nature of his vision, we see it is from
without, not from within. Of an unexpected and ter-
rifying character, it completely changes his whole being.
Like a baptism of fire, it descends upon him, clothes him
in a new and impenetrable armor, and establishes him in

114 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

the sight of the whole world as the invincible champion
of the Christ.

Paul's testimony accordingly possesses a double au-
thority, in so far as it confirms his own vision and cor-
roborates those of the others. Whoever might feel
inclined to doubt the sincerity of such affirmations would
be obliged to reject ^;z. masse all historical testimony,
and to renounce the writing of history. Note, too, that
if critical history is incompatible with an exact weighing
and well-thought-out selection of all the documents,
philosophical history would also be impossible, if great-
ness of effects could not be referred back to greatness
of causes. It would be possible with Celsus, Strauss,
and M. Renan to refuse all objective value to the resur-
rection, and consider it as a phenomenon resulting from
pure hallucination. If so, one is obliged to found the
greatest religious revolution of humanity on an aberra-
tion of the senses and a mere delusion of the mind.^
There can be no denying that faith in the resurrection is
the basis of historical Christianity. But for this con-
firmation of Jesus' teaching by a dazzling fact, his
religion would not even have had a beginning.

This event effected a complete revolution in the souls
of the apostles. In consequence of it their whole mental
attitude, from being Judaic, became Christian. The
Christ is living in glory, he has spoken to them. The
heavens have opened; the life beyond has entered into
the life within, the dawn of immortality has touched
them and kindled their souls with a fire which nothing

* Strauss says: *'The fact of the resurrection is explicable
only as * ein welthistorischer humbug. ' ' ' The expression is rather
cynical than mtty, and does not explain the visions of the apostles
and of Paul.

' DEATH AND RESURRECTION 115

can extinguish. Above Israel's tottering earthly king-
dom they have caught a glimpse of the world-v^ide
heavenly kingdom in all its glory. Hence their eager-
ness for the strife, their joy in martyrdom. Jesus' resur-
rection gives birth to this mighty impulse and hope which
carries the gospel to all nations and the good tidings
to the utmost limits of earth. For the success of Chris-
tianity two things were necessary, as Fabre d'Olivet has
said: that Jesus should be willing to die, and that he
should have the power to rise again.

To form a rational idea of the fact of the resurrection,
and understand its reHgious and philosophical bearing,
one must consider only the phenomenon of the successive
appearances, and, from the very outset, remove from
one's mind the absurd idea of the resurrection of the
body, one of the greatest stumbling-blocks of Christian
dogma, which, in this particular as in many others, has
remained at quite a childish and rudimentary stage. The
disappearance of Jesus' body can be explained by natural
causes, and it is worthy of note that the bodies of several
great adepts have disappeared quite as mysteriously and
without leaving the slightest trace. It has never been
discovered what became of the bodies of Moses, Pytha-
goras, and Apollonius of Tyana. Possibly the brothers,
known or unknown, who kept w^atch over them, destroyed
by fire their master's body, to prevent pollution at the
hands of enemies. In any case, it is only when regarded
from the esoteric point of view that the scientific aspect
and spiritual grandeur of the resurrection really appear.

By Egyptians as by Persians, of the religion of
Zoroaster, both before and after Jesus, by Israelites and
by Christians of the first and second centuries, the resur-
rection has been interpreted in two ways, the one ma-

ii6 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

terial and absurd, the other spiritual and theosophical.
The first is the popular idea, finally adopted by the
Church after the repression of gnosticism ; the second
is the profound idea of the initiates. According to the
first view, the resurrection signifies the return to life of
the material- body ; in a word, the reconstitution of the
decomposed or dispersed corpse, so it was imagined, was
destined to take place at the coming of the Messiah, or
at the Last Judgment. It is useless to insist on the gross
materialism and absurdity of this conception. To the
initiate the resurrection has a far different meaning. It
refers to the doctrine of the ternary constitution of man.
It signifies the purification and regeneration of the
sidereal, ethereal, and fluidic body, which is the very
organism of the soul. This purification may take place
commencing from the present life, through the inner
work of the soul, and a certain method of existence ;
although, for the generality of mankind, it finds accom-
plishment only after death, and then for those only who,
in one way or another, have aspired towards justice and
truth. In the other world hypocrisy is impossible. There
souls appear as they are in reality, they fatally manifest
themselves under the form and color of their essence ;
dark and hideous if they are evil ; radiant and beautiful
if they are good. Such is the doctrine given by Paul in
the Epistle to the Corinthians, where he formally says:
"There is an animal body and there is a spiritual body."^
Jesus states this symbolically but with greater profundity
for those who can read between the lines in the secret
conversation with Nicodemus. Now, the more a soul is
spiritualized, the farther will it be from the earthly
atmosphere; the farther away the cosmic region which
» I Cor. XT. 39-46.

DEATH AND RESURRECTION 117

attracts it by the law of affinity, the more difficult its
manifestation to men.

Accordingly, superior souls seldom manifest them-
selves to man, except in a state of ecstacy or profound
slumber. Then, the physical eyes being closed, the soul,
half detached from the body, itself sees souls at times.
Nevertheless, it sometimes happens that a mighty prophet,
a veritable son of God, manifests himself to his own in
the waking state of consciousness, the better to persuade
them by a striking appeal to sense and imagination. In
such instances the disincarnated soul succeeds in momen-
tarily giving its spiritual body a visible, sometimes even
a tangible appearance, by means of the special dynamism
exercised by spirit over matter, through the intermediary
of the electrical forces of the atmosphere and the mag-
netic forces of living bodies.

Apparently this is what happened in the case of Jesus.
The appearances related in the New Testament may be
placed in one or the other, alternately, of these two cate-
gories— spiritual vision and sense apparition. What is
certain is that they possessed for the apostles the char-
acter of supreme reality. They would rather have
doubted the existence of heaven and earth than their
living communion with the resurrected Christ; for these
soul-stirring appearances formed the brightest events in
their lives, the profoundest truth of which they were
conscious. There is nothing supernatural in them,
though there is an unknown element in Nature, its occult
continuation into the Infinite, the flashes of the invisible
on the confines of the visible. In our present corporeal
state we can scarcely believe or even conceive of the
reality of the impalpable; in the spiritual state, it is
matter which will appear to us the unreal and non-

ii8 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

existent. In the Spirit is found the synthesis of soul and
matter, two phases of the one substance. Reverting to
eternal principles and final causes, it is the innate laws
of intelligence which explain the dynamism of nature,
as it is the study of the soul, by experimental psychology
which explains the laws of life.

Consequently the resurrection, esoterically understood
as I have just pointed out, was at once the necessary con-
clusion of the life of Jesus and the indispensable preface
to the historical evolution of Christianity — necessary con-
clusion, for Jesus had on several occasions announced
it to his disciples. The power of appearing to them in
triumphant glory after his death was due to the purity
and innate force of his soul, increased a hundredfold by
the grandeur of the eflfort and of the accomplished work.

Regarded from without, and from an earthly point of
view, the Messianic drama ends on the cross. Though
sublime in itself, there is yet lacking the fulfilment of
the promise. Regarded from within, from the inmost
consciousness of the Christ, and from the heavenly point
of view, the drama contains three acts, whose summits
are marked by the Temptation, the Transfiguration, and
the Resurrection. These three phases represent in other
terms, the Initiation of the Christ, the total Revelation,
and the Crowning of the work. They correspond to
what the apostles and the Christian initiates of the first
centuries called the Mysteries of the Father, of the Son,
and of the Holy Ghost.

A necessary crowning, as I have said, of the life of the
Christ, and an indispensable preface to the historical
evolution of Christianity. The ship, built on the beach,
needed to be launched on the ocean. The resurrection
w^as, in addition, as a flood of light thrown on the whole

DEATH AND RESURRECTION 1 19

esoteric life of Jesus. We have no occasion for aston-
ishment at finding that the early Christians were, so to
speak, dazzled and blinded by the wonderful event, that
they often gave a literal interpretation to the Master's
teaching, and mistook the meaning of his words. But
in these days, now that the human spirit has traversed
ages, religions, and sciences, we can divine what a Saint
Paul, a Saint John, what Jesus himself understood by
the mysteries of the Father and of the Spirit. We see
that they contained the very highest and truest elements
of the psychical science and theosophic intuition of the
East. We also see the power of renewed expansion
given by the Christ to the ancient eternal truth by the
grandeur of his love and the energy of his will. Finally,
we see the metaphysical and practical side of Christianity,
the cause of its power and vitality.

The old theosophists of Asia were acquainted with
transcendent truths. The Brahmans even found the key
to the past and future life by formulating the organic law
of reincarnation and the alternation of lives. In entering
the life beyond, however, and contemplating Eternity,
they forgot terrestrial realization, individual and social
life. Greece, at first initiated into the same truths under
more veiled and anthropomorphic forms, became attached
by its very genius to the natural terrestrial life. This
enabled it to reveal the immortal laws of Beauty, and to
formulate the principles of the sciences of observation.
From this point of view, its conception of the life beyond
gradually diminished and darkened. Jesus, in his breadth
and universality, embraces both sides of life. In the
Lord's prayer, which sums up his teaching, he says:
"Thy kingdom come on earth as in heaven." Now the
kingdom of the divine on earth signifies the fulfilment

120 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

of the moral and social law in all its richness, in all the
glory of the Beautiful, the Good, and the True. Thus
the magic of his doctrine, his — in a sense — unlimited
power of development, dwell in the unity of his moral
and metaphysical aspects, his ardent faith in the life
eternal, and the necessity he felt of beginning it in the
world by a life of action and love. The Christ says to
the soul, cast down by earthly trouble: "Rise; heaven
is thy fatherland; still, in order to believe this and to
attain thereto, prove it here below by deeds of love."

CHAPTER VII

THE PROMISE AND ITS FULFILMENT — THE
TEMPLE

"In three days I will destroy the temple, and in three
days I will build it up again." This was said to his
disciples by the Son of Mary, the Essene consecrated as
Son of Man, i. e., the spiritual inheritor of the Word of
Moses, of Hermes, and of all the former sons of God.
Has this bold promise, the word of the initiator and ini-
tiate, been realized? Yes, if consideration be taken of
the consequences which the teaching of the Christ, con-
firmed by his death and spiritual resurrection, have had
for humanity, and all the consequences his promise holds
over a limitless future. His word and sacrifice have laid
the foundations of an invisible temple, but it is only con-
tinued and brought to completion in proportion as each
individual, throughout all time, contributes to the work.

What is this temple? It is of a nature at once moral,
social, and physical, the temple of regenerate humanity.

The moral temple is the regeneration of the human
soul, the transformation of individuals by the human
ideal offered as an example to humanity in the person of
Jesus. The wonderful harmony and plenitude of his
virtues make it difficult to define ; balanced reason, mystic
intuition, human sympathy, power of word and action;
infinite compassion, love even unto sacrifice, courage unto
death; no experience was unknown to him. There was

121

122 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

sufficient soul in every drop of his blood to make a hero,
and yet, what divine gentleness was his! The profound
union of heroism and love, of will and intelligence, of
the Eternal-Masculine with the Eternal-Feminine make
of him the flower of the human ideal. His whole moral
teaching, whose loftiest expression is unending brotherly
love and a universal human alliance, flows naturally from
such a mighty personality. The work of the eighteen
centuries which have elapsed since his death has resulted
in the inculcating of this ideal in the consciousness of
all mankind. For there is scarcely a man throughout the
civilized world who does not possess a more or less
clear notion thereof. Accordingly, it may be affirmed
that the moral temple desired by the Christ is, if not fin-
ished, at any rate based on an indestructible foundation
at the present day.

It is not so with the social temple. This supposes the
establishment of the kingdom of God or of the provi-
dential law in the organic institutions of humanity ; it
remains to be constructed from the foundation. For
men still live in a state of warfare under the law of
Force and Destiny. The law of the Christ, which re-
mains in the moral conscience, has not yet passed into
human institutions. I have only incidentally touched
upon questions of social and political organization in this
book, which is solely intended to throw light on the philo-
sophical and religious question at its base, through some
of the essential esoteric truths. In these few concluding
words I will not discuss the question any further. It is
too vast and complex, and beyond my power to attempt
even to define it within the compass of a few words. I
will merely say that social warfare exists, as a principle,
in all European countries. There are no economic, re-

THE PROMISE AND ITS FULFILMENT 123

ligious, or social principles admitted by all classes of
society. The nations of Europe, also, have not ceased
existing in a state of open war or armed peace with
one another. They are united by no common federative
principle. Their interests and common aspirations appeal
to no recognized authority, they have no sanction before
any supreme tribunal. If the law of Christ has pene-
trated into individual consciousness and, up to a certain
point, into social life, it is still the pagan and barbarian
law which governs our political institutions. At the
present time, political power is everywhere constituted
on insufficient foundations. On the one hand it emanates
from the so-called divine right of kings, which is none
other than military force; on the other from universal
suffrage, which is merely the instinct of the masses, or
mere average intelligence. A nation is not a number of
uniform values or ciphers ; it is a living being composed
of organs. So long as national representation is not the
image of this organization, right from its working to its
teaching classes, there will be no organic or intelligent
national representation. So long as the delegates of all
scientific bodies, and the whole of the Christian churches
do not sit together in one upper council, our societies
will be governed by instinct, by passion, and by might,
and there will be no social temple.

Then how comes it that, rising above the Church
which is too small to contain him in his entirety, above
politics which deny him, and above Science which only
half understands him, the Christ is fuller of life than
ever? It is because his sublime morality is the corollary
of a science even more sublime. Behind him we perceive,
contemporary with and beyond the time of Moses, the
whole ancient theosophy of Indian, Egyptian, and Grecian

124 JESUS, THE LAST GREAT INITIATE

initiates, of whom he forms a striking confirmation. We
are beginning to understand that Jesus, at the very height
of his consciousness, the transfigured Christ, is opening
his loving arms to his brothers, the other Messiahs who
preceded him, beams of the Living Word as he was,
that he is opening them wide to Science in its entirety.
Art in its divinity, and Life in its completeness. But
his promise cannot be fulfilled without the help of all the
living forces of humanity. Two main things are neces-
sary nowadays for the continuation of the mighty work :
on the one hand, the progressive unfolding of experi-
mental science and intuitive philosophy to facts of psychic
order, intellectual principles, and spiritual proofs ; on the
other, the expansion of Christian dogma in the direction
of tradition and esoteric science, and subsequently a
reorganization of the Church according to a graduated
initiation ; this by a free and irresistible movement of all
Christian churches, which are also equally daughters of
the Christ. Science must become religious and religion
scientific. This double evolution, already in preparation,
would finally and forcibly bring about a reconciliation
of Science and Religion on esoteric grounds. The work
will not progress without considerable difficulty at first,
but the future of European Society depends on it. The
transformation of Christianity, in its esoteric sense would
bring with it that of Judaism and Islam, as well as a
regeneration of Brahminism and Buddhism in the same
fashion, it would accordingly furnish a religious basis
for the reconciliation of Asia and Europe.

This is the spiritual temple to be constructed, the
crowning of the word intuitively conceived and des;red
by Jesus. Can his message of Love form the magnetic

THE TEMPLE 125

chain of Science and Art, of religions and peoples, and
thus become the universal word?

At the present time the Christ is master of the globe,
through the two youngest and most vigorous races, still
full of faith. By way of Russia he has a foothold in
Asia, and through the Anglo-Saxon race he rules the
New World. Europe is older than America, but younger
than Asia. They slander Europe who believe her destined
to an irremediable decadence. Still, if she continues her
internal struggles, instead of federating beneath the rule
of one capable authority, at once scientific and religious ;
if, through the extinction of this faith which is only the
love-fed light of the spirit, she is continuing the prepa-
ration for her moral and social decomposition, her civili-
zation runs the risk of perishing, first by social upheavals,
and afterwards by the invasion of younger races, which
will seize the torch dropped from her hands.

Surely she has a more glorious part to play, the
preservation of the guiding of the world, by finishing
the social work of the Christ, formulating his complete
and perfected thought, and crowning by the help of
Science, Art, and Justice, the spiritual temple of the
greatest of the Sons of God.

THE END