The mystery of Osiris

Front matter

Class Book.

GpigM .

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT.

Dedication

To the sweetest, dearest, loveliest woman, she who is true to the one she swears to be true to, and who is to be the Isis to Osiris and knows how to love as Psyche loved her Eros, this work is dedicated.

E. Swinburne Clymer. '

Preface

The work before the reader is not an original one, for nearly all that it contains has been in book form before. However, it has not been our desire to produce an original one, for even had it been, it would be impossible, since there is very liittle original along these lines.

In saying this, we naturally refer to the outer symbolism of the Egyptians, for nearly all of this has been given to the world at some time or another.

Our desire, therefore, is not to simply place symbolism before the people, but to explain and make clear, a part of the inner meaning of this sublime symbolism, so that those who really care for the truth will be able to find it.

In the year 1859 a work was issued by G. C. Stewart under the title of "The Hierophant." This work, while far from correct, is possibly the best and most fair of all such works ever published, there is but one shortcoming, and that is, the fact that he knew nothing of the inner meaning of these things or Egyptian teachings for the reason that he was not an Initiate.

The present work has for a base, this book by Stewart and has been so edited that it brings it within the exact truths known to the Initiates of the Inner Egyptian Mysteries. All such parts as are taken from "The Hierophant" are started with quotation marks, and the reader will thus know at onee what is selected material to coroborate the statements, and which is the matter which appeared in "TheHierophant."

The notes to the work are absolutely correct and in perfect harmony with the Ancient Egyptian Initiation ; this is said by authority of that Sublime Order which still has the conservation of those secrets and which will always retain them. Naturally, these things are not made plain, but they are so plain that all may understand them.

The small work, as edited by G. C. Stewart, was not original, but had its foundation upon the writings of the Philosopher Dupuis, Professor Fellows, C. G. Squier, Robert Taylor, Nott and Gliddon, Higgins' Anacalypsis, O'Brien's Round Towers of Ireland, Mrs. Child's Progress of Religious Ideas, Prof. Rhodes, Ovid, Homer, Virgil, and fragments from older writings, such as the Hebrew Bible, the Greek Testament, English Bible, Catholic and Protestant creeds, and is therefore not original itself. To this has now been added extracts from the Rosicrucian books and from the secret manuscripts now held by an order which is the legitimate successor to the Fraternity of Osiris, the descendant of the true Ancient Egyptian Initiation.

"We have but one desire in placing this work before the reader, and that desire is an honorable one : To show that all religions, no matter what the name, originally came from the same source ; that they are actually still the same, —but that they use the symbols of the Ancient Religions under different names. This is proven throughout the present work.

Another object in view is to show that, contrary to popular belief, the Ancient Priesthood did not teach the worship of idols but on the other hand, that theirs was absolutely the worship of the one God, and that instead of condemning the ancient religions, the moderns should be thankful to them for what they have taught us. Nowhere, and by no one, has there heen founded such a sublime symbolism as by the Ancient Egyptians. ( .... .

Says Franz Hartmann, M.D., in his ''The Life of Jehoshua, the Prophet of Nazareth:" "When the truth was driven away from its birthplace in the East by the king of all evils, the love of self, it found refuge dn Egypt. Her indestructible books hold the records of ancient wisdom, and sectarian bigotry has in vain sought to destroy them. With her they will rest safely, until selfishness dies and men wake up to a consciousness of their freedom. Then will the truth return to them, and they may re-enter the Holy Land of knowledge.

' ' In vain the powers of darkness have attempted to silence the voice of the truth that speaks through thy stony lips. Sectarian vandals have broken thy tablets and plastered up thy hieroglyphics ; but thy stones cry out and proclaim the gospel of wisdom. Men have carried away thy monuments, and they have become messengers of light from the East to the West. No more is thy ancient wisdom taught in subterranean eaves to the initiated ; thy secrets have been profaned by the profane ; thy sacred pears have been thrown before the swine of superstition and to the dogs of blind scepticism ; but the swine and the dogs turned away from the pearls and devoured only the dirt with which the treasures were covered. Men have robbed thy temples of precious gold, but the gold which they found turned to ashes in the hands of the selfish, because they did not know its true value. They went to the fountain of truth, to drink of its waters ; but their cups were not purified. They communicated to the water their own impurities, and it became a poison to them, causing villainous leprosy, which they communicated to others. They penetrated to the ark that contained the mystery, but they had no key to unlock it; so they carried away the ark and exhibited it in the West, but the mystery remained in Egypt,''

"To thee, Egypt, the true Redeemer was known; not as a man-made deity, or as a figure in history, hut as the spirit of truth, constituting all that is immortal in man. Thy knowledge was too grand to be grasped by the pigmies

12 MYSTERIES OF 0&IRIS

that invaded thy soil, desecrated thy temples, profaned thy sanctuaries, travestied the truths which were taught end made of a sacred myth, that teaches an eternal truth, as historical falsehood. ' '

"It was known that the Ancient Egyptians were well versed in Astronomy, and recent discoveries made in regard to the construction of the Great Pyramid go to show that they knew in many respects more about this science than the moderns suspect; but to them the sun and planets were representing invisible realities. To them the visible corporeal stars were merely external manifestations of invisible internal powers. Where the present civilization beholds nothing else but dead material bodies, obeying the mechanical law of gravitation, whose cause it cannot explain, the ancient Egyptians beheld a universe filled with life, following the universal law of order and harmony, whose cause is the will of the eternal Creator, who produced these forms within the substance of His own mind. ' '

' ' The visible terrestrial sun was to them a representation of the Invisible Spiritual Central Sun of Divine Wisdom, named the Sun-God Osiris (Christ), unknowable to external sensation, but manifesting itself as Hoitis (Jesus) in the hearts of mankind; becoming "regenerated" urilhvn the souls of the pure by the power of our eternal Mother, I*w, the ever immaculate virgin, the goddess of nature. ' ' God ' ' to them was not a limited being, but the Eternal Cause of all manifestations of power within the realm of matter and in the kingdom of spirit, containing withm himself everything that exists, and yet in consciousness being superior to all beings. While all things are living and changing in him, he remains always the same; tranquil in his eternal glory and undisturbed by any external influence. He does not descend to us, but the gifts which we receive from Hiia differ according to the position we occupy in regard to Him.

"Let those who desire to know whether these doctrine* are true look within their own minds, for maa w an imag* of his creator. There they will find a continually changing tegJom of thoughts. Subjective forms of all kinds throng that iniesrior realm, ever changing, and without rest. But If they peaetrftte deeper, even the realm of the spirit within, they will find a tranquil plaee and a principle whose state of consciousness is not affected by the changes going on in the mind, and yet these changes are produced by that principle, sending its rays into the world of ideas existing within the mind. The Divine spirit in man does not descend to the sphere of man's intellectual understanding; but man may rise up to it in his thoughts. There are periodical changes taking place in the mind of man, similar to the astronomical changes in the universe. There are ebbs and tides of thought, as there are ebbs and tides of the ocean. There are times when man involuntarily approaches nearer to God, and times when he recedes. The Egyptians knew that all the mental processes going on in the mind of man are images on a small scale in the Universal Mind, and that external phenomena are the shadows of internal realities. Being aware of the unity of the all and knowing the nature of the spiritual forces in the microcosm of nature and their correspondences in the microcosm of man ,they studied the position of the stars, to know the time when humanity would again approach near to the Divine Sun of Wisdom. They were able to tell the changes occurring in the spiritual condition of mankind by studying the position of the visible sun to the zodiac."

If the student will be only honest and sincere ha will find herein ths mystery of the Egyptian religion. He will know that the Spirit or the "Soul" of all? Religions are alike, that the forms of all are but the houses wherein the spirit dwells and — that the spirit of them all has practically flown to the beyond and is only retained by the few, and possibly persecuted ones, of earth.

He will also learn to know that the real object of the Ancient Egyptian Initiation, and of all true religions was the union of the individual soul with the Universal Spirit, the attainment of self-control, of divine communion or of spiritual perfection.

R. Swinburne Clymer.

Allentown, J a., June 27, 1908.

EN PASSANT.

The object of the present work is to draw aside the veil that ignorance and bigotry has thrown over the past; to show how and where the false teachings and mummeries, oft-times called religion, had their origin ; to lead the studious mind by pleasing and sublime paths to those ancient fields the fathers wandered through; there to pluck the same kind of fruit on which they feasted, and scent the fragrant perfumes that were wafted to them from amid the ambrosial bowers where science held her court ; to give the hidden sense to those hieroglyphs that eastern sages carved upon their temples, obelisks and tombs, and explain the meaning of terms and phrases — keys to their mysteries, (the real sense of which has given place to false interpretations and conclusions,) all of which are based upon those ancient symbols, which were so beautiful in their inception, but have been perverted by the ignorance of succeeding ages. Our object is to help the student to read the history of the past, as we find it recorded in the hieroglyphs, engraved upon pyramids, tombs, temples, triumphal arches, and statuary; explain it as we have it handed down to us in feasts and fasts, in forms and ceremonies, names and symbols, and the various fragments of the arts and sciences that have reached our time, notwithstanding the mad fury of superstitious zealots. And above all, to give as much of the inner mysteries which ive have been taught in the real initiation into these mysteries as we are allowed to give to the world at large at the present time.

"A knowledge of these religions (in their outer form) has been handed down to us in the form of myths, legends, riddles and parables; and these, as interpreted by most of the moderns, are merely childish stories, destitute of either truth or plausibility, giving evidence of a most feeble intellect on the part of the authors; but, rescued from the misrepresentations of learned ignorance, and understood according to their real meaning, they rise up before us in beauty and grandeur, and exhibit to us a system of worship and belief,- — intricate most certainly, and requiring ages to complete it, — yet eminently worthy of the giant minds and vigorous intellects that during many generations were engaged in perfecting it."

Ancient mythology is a stupendous, or, if you please, a childish lie to the uninitiated: but to those who are admitted into the secret or initiation, they teach a lesson that no one can afford to remain ignorant of, for within the sacred walls of the Egyptian Initiation was taught all that ever was of religion ; its very foundation was, and is, taught there and the Mighty Mystery of Being, which is in the mystery of the sex, was taught in all its sublimity. So great is this mystery that when the prepared and well trained Initiate is brought face to face with it ne stands still as though turned into stone for there are no thoughts formed within him which can do justice to this mighty mystery. Man fails to find language to express his feeling, and he can form no thoughts concerning them ; the mystery can therefore be but a state of feeling, since he cannot express its sublimity.

"The earliest Bible writers were Egyptian in feeling and religion, and until they were snugly settled on lands that other hands had cultivated, the tribes were ever anxious to return; and even in their oum Uuyid the religion of the Egyptimis prevailed over the worship of Jehovah. The forms, ceremonies and symbols of the Egyptians were transferred to Jerusalem, and adopted in gross, in the temple worship."

To understand a large proportion of the Bible we must become Egyptianized, or baptized into the spirit of their institutions. Their (outer) religion was purely astronomical and agricultural; and their creed, confession of faith, and Bible, were written on the skies, and still remain there for our inspection. The Baal worship of the nations in and around Judea was the same system, modified to suit the peculiar condition of the people. These writings in the ekies, the oldest remaining on record, were transferred, in allegory or parables, to the parchment rolls that in early times constituted the Jewish Bible. They are the lexicons to resort to, if we desire to interpret the dead language of ancient science in which the Bible was written. These are the mystic keys that alone will unlock the secret chambers of imagery that abound in that book. These constitute a vast library, containing the text books of the ancient writers, from which they gathered the materials of their strange stories. Looking up into the blue vault of heaven, the uncultured eye sees naught but a confused and promiscuous sprinkling of the starry hosts, without system or harmony; but, viewed as ancient science arranged them, in their various divisions or constellations, they are seen to wheel into line, and pursue their daily and yearly course with the utmost order and regularity. This arrangement of the stars into constellations, forms the basis of all the forms of all religions, as it does also of the Masonic ceremonies and those of many other mystical and secret societies that have during the past ages excited the curiosity and wonder of the world. The student must understand that we say the "forms" and not the inner mystery of the ancient and sacred teachings for these were not in forms or ritual, but in living the part. Even a superficial knowledge of the meaning of this arrangement of the starry hosts opens up to the scientific and theological student a hitherto almost untrodden field for investigation — a field rich with the hidden treasures of the past, that interested speculators in human credulity and ignorance have buried there, and who are constantly on the watch to prevent any search in that quarter.

"Historians are amazed at the conformity in many respects, between the practices of the Hebrews and those of nations given over to the grossest idolatry. Most of the learned — not being Initiates — in order to account for such a similitude of usages, say that false religions only copied and mimicked the true. Other learned men, however, and among the rest, Sir John Marsham, in his Rule of Times, being very sensible how much unknown to, and separated from other nations the Hebrews were; how much disliked by those that knew them, and of course how little fit they were to serve them as models; and finding, moreover, from a multitude of proofs, that the sacrifices, the ceremonials, and the very objects themselves of idolatry, were prior themselves to Moses and the Scriptures, they have maintained that the laws and the ceremonies of the Hebrews were an imitation of the customs of Egypt and the neighboring nations, but adapted to the worship of the one God."

Even this fails far short of the truth and we will say with the author of the Occult Science in India, "Between the Trinitarian systems of Christianity and those of the Hindus, of the Cabalists (Hebrew Initiates), and. of the Neo-Platonists, the numerous points of similarity are obvious at a glance, and we can readily see the source from. which the founders of that religion have derived their revelation.

"We say founders, though that is not the proper name to apply to the authors of the four gospels, whose idea it was to create a tradition of their own, for it is now well settled that Christianity, which is as old as the temple of Egypt and the pagodas of India, is a symbolic synthesis of all tlje beliefs of antiquity."

The greater mysteries of the Egyptian taught the doctrine of the one Supreme God, and that polytheism was an error; admitting that the sun, moon, and stars, were minor divinities or forces under the superintendence of the one Supreme God. It was from the Egyptianized or Initiated. Moses that the Hebrews received their first idea of the one God for Moses tried to teach all his people this mystery — and failed. This idea, the only one which the Hebrews have been able, to claim > even was not original with them, but was already as old as man

"According to Nott and Gliddon (types of manhood) the Egyptian- kingdom was in its glory 5,600 years ago. This fact is, (practically) proved by their monuments, which are known to be of the earliest antiquity, and are covered with figures, among which those of the crab and the wild goat,, of the balance and the scorpion, of the ram and the bull, of the lion, the virgin, and the other signs of the zodiac are frequently found. The religions of the race, according to most authors, had their origin in Egypt, along the banks of .the Nile. This conclusion is drawn from the fact that they seem to have been in possession of the most perfect system of symbols, and the various notions that have obtained a lodgement among the sects in regard to God, Heaven, Hell, etc."

There is a slight mistake in this. It is true that the symbolism peculiar to Egypt had their origin in Egypt a.nd along the banks of the Nile, but the Inner Mysteries or True Religion of the- Egyptians did not have- their origin there, for they were old before Egypt was populated by mankind.

Genesis 1 :14 : And God said, "Let there be 'lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and for years. ' '

"Field of glories! spacious field, And worthy of the Master: He whose hand Wiith hieroglyphics, older than the Nile, Inscribed the mystic tablet ; hung on high, •

2* MYSTERIES OP QSIRIS

To public gaze, and said, Adore, man ! Hie finger of thy God."

The ancient man did not vainly exhaust his intellect to (discover God. Untrammelled by creeds, he did not seek God, he simply found him — kn-ew Him in the love which engenders life; the wisdom that sustains it; the power that upholds it — knew Him in the sacred flame, which is heat; the splendor of light, which is revelation. He discovered the reflection of his dwelling-place in the majesty of the blazing sun, and perceived his own destiny — God's providence and nature's profoundest harmonies — in the constellated paths of the starry heavens and the movements of the fiery legions of space.

Casting about for the cause of existence, the supports on which it rested and the aims for which he lived, the ancient man dedicated all his earliest powers of mind to religion. Even his earliest triumphs in the arts of civilization were but used as means to this one end. His superb temples of worship, his solemn preparations for another life, and his colossal monuments record his religious beliefs, remains which are imperishable evidences of his deep and undivided interest in the problems of religion ; whilst of his social and commercial pursuits, only the most fragmentary and unimportant vestiges can be found. India, Elgypt, Arabia, the recesses of the mighty Himalayas and the giant Koh Kas, the lovely vales and smiling plains of Asia — vales blooming like glimpses of the fabled Eden, the savage wilds, ■deserted now, desolate and ruined — all bear witness to the unquenchable devotion .of the early man to his religious belief ; all are thickly strewn over with colossal remains of that stupendous system in which that belief found expression. The burning lands of the Orient are one vast Bible overwrittea with distinct asservations that to the early roan God wm not the Unknowable, and religious faith was no mystery. Whence came this faith if not from man's intuitive knowledge and the obvious facta of creation? Sun, moon, stars, the constellated glories of the heavens, their eternal order and their majestic march through infinity — these were the Scriptures which the natural instincts of an unspoiled nature recognized God's own handwriting, and interpreted it without failure or effort.

Creedism and artificial civilization, with their long train of crime and disease, want and woe — an overstrained devotion to the idols of ecclesiasticism and physical (material) science, have alienated the soul of man from pure, natural, spiritual religion, interrupted the precious communion which pure, spiritual natures alone can enjoy with angelio spheres of existence, and driven off the soul into the baneful mysticism of idolatrous creeds or blank materialism.

Thence came symbolism and ritualism, creeds and churches.

The first settlers upon the Egyptian soil attempted to cultivate the earth according to the order of the year and in the manner of other countries, but no sooner were they ready to cut down their harvest in the driest season of the year, and without the least appearance of rain, than the river swelled to their great amazement — it flowed on a sudden over its banks, and took from them the provision which they thought themselves already sure of. The waters continued to rise, sweeping away their cattle and even some of the inhabitants themselves.

"The inundation lasted ten or eleven weeks, and according to tradition caused them to quit lower and retire to upper Egypt. They there founded the city of Thebes, originally called Ammon-No (Ammon's abode). But many finding it inconvenient to remove from lower Egypt, which, after the retiring of the waters, was throughout the remaining part of the year like a beautiful garden and a delightful place to dwell in, endeavored to fortify themselves against the return of the waters. But they wanted the means of knowing exactly the time when it would be necessary for tfhem to prepare for the inundation. The flowing of the river beyond its banks happened some days sooner or later, when the sun was under the stars of the Lion, Near the stars of cancer, though pretty far south from the hand of the zodiac, they saw. in the morning one of the most brilliant, if not the largest, star of the whole heaven, ascending the horizon. The Egyptians pitched upon the rising of this magnificent star as the infallible sign of the sun's passing under the stars of Leo, and the beginning of the inundation. That star became the public mark on which every one was to keep a watchful eye, not to miss the instant of retiring to the higher ground. As it was seen but a little time above the horizon ere the sun made it disappear, it seemed to show itself to the Egyptians merely to warn them of the overflowing which soon followed. They gave this star two names. It warned them, of danger, wherefore they called it Thaaut or Tayaut, the dog; they called it also the barker, the monitor, in Egyptian Anubis; in Phoenician Hannobeach, the people called it the Nile Star, or barely the Nile."

Such was the origin of the Egyptian symbolism, but where is there a student who will believe that. man, before that time, who already understood the laws of civilization and society, to have been without any religion ? And yet, such seems to be. the idea of practically all those who have treated upon this vast subject, and this has been, and still is, the great cause of confusion concerning religion, both modern and ancient.

"Jesus taught in parables, according to the custom of all the learned teachers of the olden times. The varied figurative expressions that apply, or are applied to 'the kingdom of heaven' in the teachings of theologians had their origin in the astronomical notions, and in the agricultural and social condition of the most ancient nations. The Egyptians opened their year in accordance with the peculiarity of their country; but most nations, including the Hebrews, commenced their year at the vernal equinox; and this, with the autumnal equinox, formed the two foundations on which rested the royal arch, or the months constituting the warm season, which to the ancients was the kingdom of heaven, the home of the gods, and was in reality nothing

Oft EGYPTIAN INITIATION. 23

but the astronomical and agricultural heaven.

"In all religious (forms) systems, in order to fulfill ail righteousness, the founders must needs organize them in aeeordance with the method adopted in the earlier ages. Thus, as there were twelve domiciles of the sun, there must be twelve teachers or leaders, and when one was lost another must be chosen to supply his place. When Levi was selected for the priesthood another tribe was divided to maintain the perfect number; and when Judas fell, another was chosen to fill his place. All the (outer or ritualistic) worship of the ancients, when performed systematically, consisted in imitating the movements of the heavenly bodies and the action of the elements, and in celebrating the labors of the sun, together with the sacrifices to appease a supposed angry God. Jesus was well acquainted with these customs of the ancients and conformed to them externally, when he commenced his career; for we find him acknowledging them in his baptism and forty days' fast, in which he imitated the passage of the sun through the constellation Aquarius, where John, Joannes or Janus, the baptizer, had his domicile and baptized the earth with his yearly rains. Having been baptized in Jordan he fasted forty days in the wilderness, in imitation of the passage of the sun from the constellation Aquarius, through the fishes, to the mutton or Lamb of March. During the forty days when the sun is among the fishes, the faithful Catholics, Episcopalians and Mahomedans abstain from meat and live upon the fishes during the season of Lent, as did the Jews and the Ancients, and as did also Jesus to fulfill all righteousness, until the time that he abolished the first, or Jewish, to establish the second or Christian dispensation."

The fishes of the sea, and the birds of heaven, and all creeping things that creep upon the earth.... are rightly understood, spiritually, as all the affections and emotions of the soul, which we have like those animals. (St. Augustine, De Gen c Manich, Lib. 1, ch. 20.)

Here we have the inner and the outer and the Mystery of

Hermes in which he says, "As above so below." The symbolical form was the outer and the living; remember this, the living was the inner. The abolition of the form, or the observing of Lent, was the new dispensation or the time for the command of God, "I have given you the herbs of the field, etc., and to you they shall be as meat." In other words, when man should live a natural life and should neither sacrifice anything that contained blood nor should he use such things as food.

The labors of the Initiate Jesus, or the Nazarene, consisted mainly in attempting to abolish a system of religion founded upon the forms or ceremonies, or ritualism, and of introducing a religion purely spiritual, a worship in which the religious life of man should be purity, benevolence and love. In this, his life and work was an exact counterpart of that of Moses and the results were the same, for :

"It is self-evident from the New Testament history that although Jesus disregarded the Jewish Sabbath, and also the Pagan, which was observed a day later and which is our Sunday, and although he taught his disciples not to pray in public, but in their closet with the door shut, and entirely ignored all outward observances as obligator} 1 - on man, yet the church, soon after his death, returned to the old forms of religion, and has perpetuated them to this day, retaining the same days in their ceremonies that the old Ancients and Jews did in theirs. Thus the birthday of Jesus is identical with the birthday of the year; Epiphany is observed on the same day that they observed it; water baptism is borrowed from them; Lent is an ancient fast, which they held the same space of time; the/ Passover is still celebrated, and the Assumption and Nativity of the Virgin occur on the precise day that they did in the old Egyptian ritual.