“Initiates are sure to come into the company of the Gods.”—Socrates, in the Phaedo.
In the first number of the La Revue Théosophique, at the beginning of the fine lecture delivered by our brother and colleague, the learned corresponding secretary of the T.S., Hermes, we read in a note—note 2, p. 23:
“We designate under the term Initiate every seeker possessing the elementary data of Occult Science. One must beware of confusing this term with that of Adept, which indicates the highest degree of elevation to which the Initiate can attain. We have in Europe many Initiates; I do not think that there exists an Adept as in the East.”
A stranger to the genius of the French language, not having even at hand a dictionary of etymology, it is impossible for me to say whether this double definition is authorized in French, except in the terminology of the Freemasons. But in English, and according to the sense which usage has sanctioned among Theosophists and Occultists in India, these two terms have a meaning absolutely different from that which the author has given them; I mean that the definition given by M. Papus to the word Adept is that which applies to the word Initiate, and vice versa.
I should never have thought of pointing out this error, at least if it did not threaten, in my opinion, to cast into the minds of the subscribers of our Revue a confusion most regrettable for the future. Employing, as I do, these two qualificatives in a sense wholly opposite to that which the Masons and M. Papus attach to them, there would certainly result misunderstandings which must be avoided at any price. Let us first understand ourselves, if we wish to be understood by our readers. Let us settle upon a fixed and invariable definition of the terms we employ in Theosophy; for otherwise, instead of order and clearness, we should bring into the chaos of ideas of the profane world only a confusion yet greater.
Not knowing the reasons which have decided our learned brother to employ the aforesaid terms in the manner he does, I content myself with laying the blame upon the “Sons of the Widow” who use them in a sense wholly inverse to the true sense.
Everyone knows that the word Adept comes to us from the Latin Adeptus. This term is derived from two words, ad—“to, toward”—and apisci—“to pursue” (Sanskrit āp). An Adept would therefore be a person versed in some art or in some science whatsoever, having acquired it in one manner or another. It follows that this qualification can apply as well to an adept in astronomy as to an adept in the art of making pâtés de foie gras. A shoemaker as well as a perfumer—the one versed in the art of making boots, the other in the art of chemistry—are “adepts.”
It is otherwise with the term Initiate. Every Initiate must be an adept in Occultism; he must become such before being initiated into the Great Mysteries. But every adept is not always an Initiate. It is true that the Illuminati used the term Adeptus in speaking of themselves, but they did so in a general sense—e.g., in the seventh degree of the Order of the Rite of Zinnendorf. Thus one employed the terms Adoptatus, Adeptus, Coronatus in the seventh degree of the Swedish Rite, and Adeptus Exemptus in the seventh degree of the Rosicrucians. This was an innovation of the Middle Ages. But no true Initiate of the Great, or even of the Lesser Mysteries, is called in the classical works Adeptus, but Initiatus in Latin, and Epoptes (ἐπόπτης) in Greek. These same Illuminati called “initiates” only those of their brethren who were more instructed than all the others in the mysteries of their Society. It was only the less instructed who bore the name Mystes and Adepts, since they had as yet been admitted only into the lower degrees.
Let us now pass to the term initié (initiated).
Let us say first that there is a great difference between the verb and the substantive of this word. A professor initiates his pupil into the first elements of some science whatsoever—a science in which this pupil can become an adept, that is to say, versed in his specialty. On the other hand, an adept of Occultism is first instructed in the religious mysteries, after which, if he has the good fortune not to succumb during the terrible initiatory trials, he becomes an Initiate. The best translators of the classics render invariably the Greek word ἐπόπτης (Epoptes) by this phrase: “Initiate in the Great Mysteries,” for this term is synonymous with Hierophant (ἱεροφάντης), he who explains the sacred mysteries. Initiatus among the Romans was the equivalent of the term Mystagogus, and both were absolutely reserved for him who, in the Temple, initiated into the highest mysteries. He then represented figuratively the universal Creator. No one dared pronounce that name before a profane person. The place of the “Initiatus” was in the East, where he sat, an orb of gold suspended at his neck. The Freemasons have tried to imitate the Hierophant-Initiates in the person of their “Venerables” and Grand Masters of the Lodges.
But does the habit make the monk?
It is to be regretted that they did not stop at this single profanation.
The French and English substantive “initiation” being derived from the Latin word initium, beginning, the Masons, with more respect for the dead letter that kills than for the spirit that quickens, have applied the term “initiated” to all their neophytes or candidates—to beginners—in all degrees of Masonry, the highest as well as the lowest. Yet they knew better than anyone that the term Initiatus belonged to the 5th and highest degree of the Order of Templars; that the title Initiate in the mysteries was the 21st degree of the metropolitan chapter in France, just as that of Initiate in the profound mysteries indicated the 62nd degree of the same chapter. Knowing all this, they nevertheless applied this sacred title, sanctified by its antiquity, to their simple candidates—the babes among the “Sons of the Widow.” But because the passion for innovations and modifications of every kind led the Masons to commit what an Occultist of the East regards as a veritable sacrilege, is that a reason why Theosophists should accept their terminology?
We, disciples of the masters of the East, have nothing to do with modern Masonry. The true secrets of Symbolic Masonry are lost—as Ragon proves very well besides. The keystone, the central stone of the arch built by the first royal dynasties of Initiates—ten times prehistoric—has been shaken since the abolition of the last mysteries. The work of destruction, or rather of strangling and stifling, begun by the Caesars, was finally completed in Europe by the Fathers of the Church. Imported once again from the sanctuaries of the Far East, the sacred stone was cracked and at last broken into a thousand pieces.
Upon whom shall the blame for this crime be made to fall?
Upon the Freemasons—above all the Templars—persecuted, assassinated, and violently stripped of their annals and written statutes? Upon the Church, which, having appropriated the dogmas and rituals of primitive Masonry, wished to pass off its disguised rites as the sole TRUTH, and resolved to stifle the latter?
Be that as it may, it is no longer the Masons who have the whole truth, whether one casts the blame upon Rome or upon the insect Shermah1 of the famous Temple of Solomon, which modern Masonry claims as the basis and origin of its Order.
For tens of thousands of decades the genealogical tree of the sacred science which peoples held in common was the same, since the temple of that science is ONE, and it is built upon the unshakable rock of primitive truths. But the Masons of the last two centuries have preferred to detach themselves from it. Once again—and applying this time practice to allegory—they have broken the cube which has divided into twelve parts. They have rejected the true stone for the false; and whatever they made of the first as their corner-stone, it was certainly not according to the spirit that quickens but according to the dead letter that kills.
Is it again the Worm Samis (alias the “insect Shermah”), whose traces upon the rejected stone had already misled the “builders of the Temple,” which gnawed the same lines? But this time what was done was done knowingly. The builders ought to have known the total2 by heart, seeing the thirteen lines or five surfaces.
No matter! We, faithful disciples of the East, prefer to all these stones a stone which has nothing to do with all the other mummeries of Masonic degrees. We shall adhere to the eben Shatijah [אֶבֶן הַשְּׁתִיָּה; ʾeben ha-shətiyyāh, “foundation stone”] (having another name in Sanskrit), the perfect cube, which, while containing the delta or triangle, replaces the name of the Tetragrammaton of the Kabbalists by the symbol of the incommunicable Name.
We willingly leave to the Masons their “insect,” while hoping for them that modern symbology, which marches with such rapid steps, will never discover the identity of the worm Shermah-Samis with Hiram Abif, which would be rather embarrassing.
However, on reflection, the discovery would not be without its useful side and would not lack a certain charm. The idea of a worm at the head of the Masonic genealogy and the Architect of the first temple of the Masons would make of this worm also the “Father Adam” of the Masons, and would render the “Sons of the Widow” only dearer to the Darwinists. It would bring them closer to modern Science, which seeks only proofs of a nature to strengthen the Haeckelian theory of evolution. What would it matter to them, after all, once they have lost the secret of their true origin?
Let no one cry out against this assertion, which is a well-established fact. I permit myself to remind the gentlemen Masons who might read this, that as regards esoteric masonry almost all secrets have disappeared since Elijah (Elias) Ashmole and his immediate successors. If they seek to contradict us, we shall say to them like Job: “It is your mouth that condemns you and not I; and your books testify against you” (Job 15:6).
Our greatest secrets were once taught in Masonic lodges throughout the whole Universe. But their great Masters and Gurus perished one after another, and all that remained inscribed in secret manuscripts—such as that of Nicolas Stone, for example, destroyed in 1720 by scrupulous brethren—was burned and annihilated between the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth in England, as well as on the Continent.
Why this destruction?
Certain brethren in England whisper to one another that this destruction was the consequence of a shameful pact made between certain Masons and the Church. An aged “brother,” a great Kabbalist, has just died here, whose grandfather, a celebrated Mason, was the intimate friend of the Count of Saint-Germain, when the latter was sent, it is said, by Louis XV to England in 1760 to negotiate peace between the two countries. The Count of Saint-Germain left in the hands of this Mason certain documents concerning the history of Masonry, and containing the keys of more than one misunderstood mystery. He did so on condition that these documents should become the secret inheritance of all those of his descendants who should be Masons. These papers profited only two Masons, moreover—the father and the son, he who has just died—and will profit no one more in Europe. Before his death the precious documents were entrusted to an Oriental, an Hindu, who had the mission to deliver them to a certain person who would come to fetch them at Amritsar—the city of Immortality. It is said secretly also that the celebrated founder of the Lodge of the Trinosophists, J.-M. Ragon, was likewise initiated into many secrets in Belgium by an Oriental, and there are those who assert that he knew Saint-Germain in his youth. This would perhaps explain why the author of the Tuileur général de la Franc-Maçonnerie ou Manuel de l’Initié affirmed that Elias Ashmole was the true founder of modern Masonry. No one knew better than Ragon the extent of the loss of Masonic secrets, as he says so well himself:
“It is of the essence and of the nature of the Mason to seek light everywhere where he believes he can find it,” announces the circular of the Grand Orient of France. “Meanwhile,” he adds, “they give the Mason the glorious title of child of light, and they leave him wrapped in darkness!” (Cours philosophique, etc., p. 60).
Therefore, if, as we think, M. Papus has followed the Masons in his definition of the terms Adept and Initiate, he has been wrong; for one does not turn toward darkness when one is oneself in a ray of light. Theosophy has invented nothing, has said nothing new, but only repeats faithfully the lessons of the highest antiquity. The terminology introduced fifteen years ago into the T.S. is the true one; for in each case its terms are a faithful translation of their Sanskrit equivalents, almost as old as the last human race. This terminology could not be modified at this hour without risking the introduction into Theosophical teachings of a chaos as deplorable as it would be dangerous for their clearness.
Let us recall above all those words, so true, of Ragon:
“Initiation had India for its cradle. It preceded the civilization of Asia and of Greece, and in polishing the mind and the morals of peoples it served as the basis of all civil, political, and religious laws.”
The word initiated is the same as dvīja, the Brahmin “twice-born.” That is to say, initiation was regarded as a birth into a new life; or, as Apuleius says, “it is the resurrection into a new life”; novam vitam inibat . . .
Apart from this, the lecture of M. Papus on the seal of the Theosophical Society is admirable, and the erudition he displays there is very remarkable. The members of our Fraternity owe him sincere thanks for explanations as clear and just as they are interesting.
1. According to a Jewish tradition, the stones which served to build the Temple of Solomon (a symbol, an allegory taken literally, of which one has made a real edifice) were not cut nor polished by the hand of man, but by a worm named Samis, created by God for that purpose. These stones were transported miraculously to the place where the temple was to rise, and cemented afterwards by the angels who raised the Temple of Solomon. The Masons have introduced the worm Samis into their legendary history and call it the “insect Shermah.”
2. This total is composed of a bisected isosceles triangle—three lines—the edge of the cube being the base; two squares bisected diagonally, each having a perpendicular line toward the centre—six lines—two straight lines at right angles and a square bisected diagonally—two lines—total 13 lines or 5 surfaces of the cube.