Esoteric - Spiritual

THE mysteries of the ancients, and the associations in which their doctrines were taught, have hardly been considered in modern times, but with a view to decry and ridicule them. The systems of ancient mythology have been treated as monstrous absurdities, debasing the human reason, conducting to idolatry, and favouring depravity of manners. A TGS reprint from 1820. This little book serves up a lot of information into the background of Freemasonry.

A doctrine with more than one point of resemblance to the doctrine of Plato and Spinoza; a doctrine which in its form rises at times to the majestic tone of religious poetry; a doctrine born in the same land, and almost at the same time, as Christianity; a doctrine which developed and spread during a period of more than twelve centuries in the shadow of the most profound mystery, without any supporting evidence other than the testimony of a presumptive ancient tradition, and with no apparent motive than the desire to penetrate more intimately into the meaning of the Sacred Books--such is the doctrine found in the original writings and in the oldest fragments of the Kabbalah

IN recent years a reawakening has taken place in the study of American arch

Many years ago I heard of the existence of this manuscript from a celebrated occultist, since dead; and more recently my attention was again called to it by my personal friend, the well-known French author, lecturer, and poet, Jules Bois, whose attention has been for some time turned to occult subjects. My first-mentioned informant told me that it was known both to Bulwer Lytton and Eliphas Levi, that the former had based part of his description of the sage Rosicrucian Mejnour on that of Abra-Melin, while the account of the so-called observatory of Sir Philip Derval in the Strange Story was to an extent copied from and suggested by that of the magical oratory and terrace, given in the eleventh chapter of the second book of this present work.

The form of his countenance is like that of a wild beast; his right eye like the star that rises in the morning, and the other without motion; his mouth one cubit; his teeth a span long; his fingers like scythes; the track of his feet of two spans; and in his face an inscription, Antichrist.' A reprint from the 1800s, this is a scanned text book. The authors use apocryphal books in their research to prove the validity of the Antichrist and disproving the Jesus mythology. Interesting read and research.

IN the present edition, it is intended to publish in a collected form the works ascribed to Gildas for which, roughly speaking, a date is assigned during the twenty years that elapsed between A.D. 540 and 560. The earliest references to Gildas that have come down to us are the two made by Columbanus in his letter to St. Gregory the Great, which must have been written between thirty and forty years after the death of the British writer (i.e., A.D. 595-600).

Who does not remember the story of the Christian missionary in Britain, sitting one evening in the vast hall of a Saxon king, surrounded by his thanes, having come thither to preach the gospel of his Master; and as he spoke of life and death and immortality, a bird flew in through an unglazed window, circled the hall in its flight, and flew out once more into the darkness of the night. The Christian priest bade the king see in the flight of the bird within the hall the transitory life of man, and claimed for his faith that it showed the soul, in passing from the hall of life, winging its way not into the darkness of night, but into the sunlit radiance of a more glorious world.