The Equinox (Volume I, Number VI)

THE EQUINOX Egyptian kings; Apollonius of Tyana, a contemporary of our Jesus, visited the Gymnosophists of the Upper Nile, but said that they were not equal to those of India. The British Druids must have had a knowledge of the “Serpent fire ” in their secret instruction, or why exclaim, “I am a serpent.” The Mythraic Mysteries, and all the Eranoi Societies, were equally protected by the laws of Solon seven centuries BL, and Mr Pryse observes that only once does the word Halleluiah occur in the Bible, yet we know that it formed the close of a chant in the “ Rites of Purification” in a call to the slain god {or deliverance, in pre— Christian centuries, and further there are Mythraic traces in Revelation We also know from a large mass of inscriptions found in recent times, that the early Christians made use of the very ancient societies, and by that course spread their doctrine. Before the issue of the “ Unsealing," the same translatorpublished the " Magical Message of IGannes,” a translation of great value which receives much additional light from the later work, and the more so as it supplies, in a know- ledge of HermeticGreek, muchmeaningwhich escapes us in the authorised version. In the “ Unsealing,” Mr Pryse goes solid for the book, the whole book, and nothing but the book, as the veritable work of the Apostle John, hence the clergy may extend a welcome hand to it. He quite believes it is a work of the Apostle John, and defends the style; amongst these there are some doubtless who are narrow-minded, but here, and still more prominently in America, there are broad-minded clergy who will welcome the Unsealing. The Freemasons too in their higher grades, which have more or less reached us through the Rosicrucians, have very strong allusions to the Apocalypse, and may profit by it, and this refers to several systems practised throughout the world. Thus the Order of Heredem (Harodim) Rosy Cross, which has an unchanged Ritual from r740, at least, draws upon Dionysius the Areopagite, adisciple of St Paul, and it has also a rhythmetical description of the New Jerusalem. Again, two entire degrees of the Scottish Rite of 33" are drawn from the Apocalypse, and certainly entered the Rite before 1758, and seem as if they were drawn bodily from the Rosicrucian Militia of the Cross: I allude to the 17” Knight of the East and West, and the 19" of Grand Pontiff, which treat upon the Heavenly Jerusalem, and the opening scene of the Revelations. Itwas rather a pity that when the late Albert Pike was revising the Rituals, he did not consolidate the Rite by changing the places of the 17° with the zo", which latter treats of Zerubbabel. His predecessor Morin, in 1767, did a like thing by the Amalgamation of Prince Adept, which he had in his patent of 1762, with Knight of the Sun, and supplying the blank thus created with Patriarch Noachite. There is also the Royal Oriental Order of the Sat Bhai which was founded I743-5, by a Brahmin Pundit at Frag, for certain Anglo-Indian officers, and which is now well established in America. 166