Michael Wynn's Occult Reference Library
DIONYSUS,DIONYSIAN,DIONYSIUS

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18276066 GRIMM JACOB TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY VOL 1

freyr or of his father xiorsr. according to yngl. saga cap. 11, these very blessings were believed to proceed from niorsr also' ausigt seni niorsr (rich as n) was a proverbial saying for a wealtliy man, vatnsd. p. 202. snorri, in formali 10, identifies him with saturn, for he instructed mankind in vine-dressing and husbandry; it would be nearer the mark to think of him and freyr in connexion with dionysus or liber, or even with noah, if any stress is to be laid on niors's abode being in noatun. as' freyr' was affixed to other names of heroes (p. 211-2, i find geirniorffr used for a hero in general, siem. 266; conf. geirmimir, geirniflungr &c. the name itself is hard to explain; is it akin to north, as. nors, on. norsr, goth. naur])s? in sa3m. 109^ there is niarslas for sera firma, or pensi

n. 27; from the mountains of the 218 fro. midland he longs to be away where the swans sing on the cool shore; a water-plant, the spongia marina, bears the name of niar&ar vdttr, niors's glove, which elsewhere was very likely passed on to his daughter freyja, and so to mary, for some kinds of orchis too, from their hand-shaped root, are called mary's hand, lady-hand, god's hand (dan. gudshaand. as dionysus stands outside the ring of the twelve olympian gods, so morsr, freyr and freyja seem by rights not to have been reckoned among the ases, though they are marshalled among them in sn. 27-8. they were vanir, and therefore, according to the view of the elder edda, different from ases; as these dwelt in asgars, so did the vanir in vanaheim, the alfar in alfheim, the lotnar in lotunheim. freyr

st place to our goddess and her worship. the greeks said galinthias was turned into a weasel or cat (yaxetf, ovid, metam. 9, 306 (see suppl. in so far as such comparisons are allowable, friffj would stand on a line with here or juno, especially the pronuba, jupiter's spouse; and freyja with venus^ but also with isis who seeks osiris. frcyr and his sister freyja are suggestive of liber and libera (dionysus and proserpina, or even her mother demeter; of sun and moon. mary could replace the divine mother and the goddess of beauty; verbally frigg agrees better with libera, and adam of bremen's fricco, if he was god of love, answers in name to liber, in character to freyr. the passage quoted from paul diac. is one of the clearest and most convincing testimonies to the harmony between the german

A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO WITCHCRAFT AND MAGICK SPELLS

celtic tradition. the god dates back to the shamanic figures portrayed on cave walls. cernunnos was lord of winter, the hunt, animals, death, male fertility and the underworld, and was sometime portrayed as a triple or trefoil god, an image later assimilated by st patrick with his emblematic shamrock. other forms of the horned god include herne the hunter, the greek pan, god of the woodlands, and dionysus, greek god of vegetation and the vine, whose ecstatic mystery cult involved ritual dismemberment and resurrection. cerunnos' importance has been in his continuing presence as the horned god, the male principle in witchcraft through the ages, in modern wicca and other neo-pagan faiths. he is also invoked for prosperity, fertility, instinctive power and knowledge of when it is necessary to

smemberment and resurrection. cerunnos' importance has been in his continuing presence as the horned god, the male principle in witchcraft through the ages, in modern wicca and other neo-pagan faiths. he is also invoked for prosperity, fertility, instinctive power and knowledge of when it is necessary to hunt, whether to find employment or a home, and as protection against predators of all kinds. dionysus dionysus, sometimes depicted as a horned god, was a god of the grain, who died and was reborn every year as a child in a basket, representing the seed corn. he was the greek god of fertility, ecstasy and wildness, who bestowed great abundance on his followers; his cult performed savage rites at eleusius where human flesh was eaten as the bread of life. not an easy deity to use, without gr

ALEISTER CROWLEY BOOK OF LIES

ice that the secret of the o.t.o. cannot be used unworthily "it is interesting in this connection to recall how it came into my possession. it had occurred to me to write a book `the book of lies, which is also falsely called breaks, the wanderings or falsification of the thought of frater perdurabo which thought is itself untrue' one of these chapters bothered me. i could not write it. i invoked dionysus with particular fervour, but still without success. i went off in desperation to `change my luck, by doing something entirely contrary to my inclinations. in the midst of my disgust, the spirit came over me, and i scribbled the chapter down by the light of a farthing dip. when i read it over, i was as discontented as before, but i stuck it into the book in a sort of anger at myself as a d

igible in samasamadhi. book of lies get any book for free on: www.abika.com 22 [28] 7 kappa-epsilon-phi-alpha-lambda-eta zeta the dinosaurs none are they whose number is six:(5) else were they six indeed. seven(6) are these six that live not in the city of the pyramids, under the night of pan. there was lao-tzu. there was siddartha. there was krishna. there was tahuti. there was mosheh. there was dionysus.(7) there was mahmud. but the seventh men called perdurabo; for enduring unto the end, at the end was naught to endure (8) amen. book of lies get any book for free on: www.abika.com 23 [29] commentary( zeta) this chapter gives a list of those special messengers of the infinite who initiate periods. they are called dinosaurs because of their seeming to be terrible devouring creatures. they

"living not" is to be found in liber 418. the word "perdurabo" means "i will endure unto the end. the allusion is explained in the note. siddartha, or gotama, was the name of the last budda. krishna was the principal incarnation of the indian vishnu, the preserver, the principal expounder of vedantism. tahuti, or thoth, the egyptian god of wisdom. mosheh, moses, the founder of the hebrew system. dionysus, probably an ecstatic from the east. mahmud, mohammed. all these were men; their godhead is the result of mythopoeia. notes (5) masters of the temple, whose grade has the mystic number 6= 1+ 2+ 3 (6) these are not eight, as apparent; for lao-tzu counts as 0 (7) the legend of "christ" is only a corruption and perversion of other legends. especially of dionysus: compare the account of chris

the result of mythopoeia. notes (5) masters of the temple, whose grade has the mystic number 6= 1+ 2+ 3 (6) these are not eight, as apparent; for lao-tzu counts as 0 (7) the legend of "christ" is only a corruption and perversion of other legends. especially of dionysus: compare the account of christ before herod/pilate in book of lies get any book for free on: www.abika.com 24 the gospels, and of dionysus before pentheus in "the baccae (8) o, the last letter of perdurabo, is naught [25] 8 kappa-epsilon-alpha-lambda-eta eta steeped horsehair mind is a disease of semen. all that a man is or may be is hidden therein. bodily functions are parts of the machine; silent, unless in dis-ease. but mind, never at ease, creaketh "i. this i persisteth not, posteth not through generations, changeth mome

ALEISTER CROWLEY MAGICK IN THEORY AND PRACTICE

ls and of races, which is characteristic of nature. he has perhaps a tendency to perceive the "first noble truth" uttered by buddha, that everything is sorrow. nature, it seems, is a tragedy. he has perhaps even experienced the great trance called sorrow. he should then consider whether there is not some deity who expresses this cycle, and yet whose nature is joy. he will find what he requires in dionysus. there are three main methods of invoking any deity. the "first method" consists of devotion to that deity, and, being mainly mystical in character, need not be dealt with in this place, especially as a perfect instruction exists in liber 175("see" appendix. the "second method"is the straight forward ceremonial invocation. it is the method which was usually employed in the middle ages. it

nd rage excited by this incarnation, and of the heavenly protection afforded to the infant. next should be commemorated the journeying westward upon an ass. now comes the great scene of the drama: the gentle, exquisite youth with his following (chiefly composed of women) seems to threaten the established order of things, and that established order takes steps to put an end to the upstart. we find dionysus confronting the angry king, not with defiance, but with meekness; yet with a subtle confidence, an underlying laughter. his forehead is wreathed with vine tendrils. he is an effeminate figure with those broad leaves clustered upon his brow? but those leaves hide 13 horns. king pentheus, representative of respectability<
rmula of the macrocosm potent in certain very lofty operations of the magick of the inmost light (see liber 813) the formula of thelema may be summarized thus: theta "babalon and the beast conjoined- epsilon unto nuith (ccxx, i, 51- lambda the work accomplished in justice- eta the holy graal- mu the water therein- alpha the babe in the egg (harpocrates on the lotus) that of "agape" is as follows: dionysus (capital alpha- the virgin earth gamma- the babe in the egg (small alpha- the image of the father- the massacre of the innocents, pi (winepress- the draught of ecstasy, eta. the student will find it well worth his while to seek out these ideas in detail, and develop the technique of their application. there is also the gnostic name of the seven vowels, which gives a musical formula most p

carefully the problems connected with the bloody sacrifice, for this question is indeed traditionally important in magick. nigh all ancient magick revolves around this matter. in particular all the osirian religions- the rites of the dying god- refer to this. the slaying of osiris and adonis; the mutilation of attis; the cults of mexico and peru; the story of hercules or melcarth; the legends of dionysus and of mithra, are all connected with this one idea. in the hebrew religion we find the same thing inculcated. the first ethical lesson in the bible is that the only sacrifice pleasing to the lord is the sacrifice of blood; abel, who made this, finding favour with the lord, while cain, who offered cabbages, was rather naturally considered a cheap sport. the idea recurs again and again. we

skin slips from thy sleek shoulders, slips from thy lissome loins; drunk on delight of the godly grape, thou knowest no more the burden of the body and the vexation of the spirit. come, bacchus, come thou hither, come out of the east; come out of the east, astride the ass of priapus! come with thy revel of dancers and singers! who followeth thee, forbearing to laugh and to leap? come, in thy name dionysus, that maidens be mated to god-head! come, in thy name iacchus, with thy mystical fan to winnow the air, each gust of thy spirit inspiring our soul, that we bear to thee sons in thine image! verily and amen! let not the magician forget for a single second what is his one sole business. his uninitiated "self (as he absurdly thinks it) is a mob of wild women, hysterical from uncomprehended a

f "five" etc, and "in act free, firm, aspiring, ecstatic, rather than "gentle" etc. as in the present text> yet ward their a from attack. the hermit to himself, the fool to foes, 289 the hierophant to friends, nine by nature, naught by attainment, five by function. in speech swift, subtle and secret; in thought creative, unbiassed, unbounded; in act gentle, patient and persistent. hermes to hear, dionysus to touch, pan to behold. a virgin, a babe, and a beast! a liar, an idiot, and a master of men! a kiss, a guffaw, and a bellow; he that hath ears to hear, let him hear! take ten that be one, and one that is one in three, to conceal them in six! thy wand to all cups, and thy disk to all swords, but betray not thine egg! moreover also is iaf verily 666 by virtue of number; and this is a myst

ation unto generation, thou adored of us upon heaths and in woods, on mountains and in caves, openly in the market-places and secretly in the chambers of our houses, in temples of gold and ivory and marble as in these other temples of our bodies, we worthily commemorate them worthy that did of old adore thee and manifest thy glory unto men "lao-tze and siddhartha" and krishna and "tahuti" mosheh "dionysus, mohammed and to mega therion, with these also" hermes "pan" priapus, osiris, and melchizedeck, khem and amoun "and mentu, heracles" orpheus and odysseus; with vergilius "catullus" martialis "rabelais, swinburne and many an holy bard; apollonius tyanaeus" simon magus, manes "pythagoras" basilides, valentinus "bardesanes and hippolytus, that transmitted the light of the gnosis to us their

ALEISTER CROWLEY MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS

of life. let us leave the sinister figure of schopenhauer for the mysteriously radiant shape of spinoza! this latter philosopher, in respect at least of his pantheism, represents fairly enough the fundamental thesis of the white tradition. almost the first observation that we have to make is that this white tradition is hardly discoverable outside europe. it appears first of all in the legend of dionysus (in this connection read carefully browning's apollo and the fates) the egyptian tradition of osiris is not dissimilar. the central idea of the white school is that, admitted that "everything is sorrow" for the profane, the initiate has the means of transforming it to "everything is joy. there is no question of any ostrich-ignoring of fact, as in christian science. there is not even any m

ALEISTER CROWLEY THE HEART OF THE MASTER

of the next word, and to maintain or to restore the virtue of the word then current. and on the unfurled portion of the chart i read the names of certain of these brethren, and the words as one was uttered after the other. but some i could not read, because the characters were strange. these: fu-hsi. after a great space (with few names and those illegible) lao-tze, gautama, zerdusht, pythagoras, dionysus, osiris. these were sent forth at the same time- and dionysus under the heart of the master get any book for free on: www.abika.com 17 several diverse forms- to enlighten six great civilizations, about to be drawn together by the opening up of communications over the planet by the expansion of the roman power. after these there stood almost alone the name: apollon. but above that extract

ALEISTER CROWLEY THE OLD AND NEW COMMENTARIES TO LIBER AL

also are one. but they are not of me. let asar be the adorant, isa the sufferer; hoor in his secret name and splendour is the lord initiating" the old comment 49. declares a new system of magic, and initiation. asar-isa is now the candidate, not the hierophant. hoor- see cap. iii- is the initiator. the new comment this verse declares that the old formula of magick- the osiris-adonis-jesus-marsyas-dionysus-attis-etcetera formula of the dying god- is no longer efficacious. it rested on the ignorant belief that the sun died every day, and every year, and that its resurrection was a miracle. the formula of the new aeon recognizes horus, the child crowned and conquering, as god. we are all members of the body of god, the sun; and about our system is the ocean of space. this formula is then to b

the mongol; whiskey for the dour temperament and damp cold climate of the scot. sex-expression, too, depends on climate and so on, so that we must interpret the law to suit a socrates, a jesus, and a burton, or a marie antoinette and a de lamballe, as well as our own don juans and faustines. with this expansion, to the honour and glory of them, of their natures, we acclaim therefore our helpers, dionysus, aphrodite, apollo, wine, woman, and song. intoxication, that is, ecstasy, is the key to reality. it is explained in "energized enthusiasm "the equinox" i(9) that there are three gods whose function is to bring the soul to the realization of its own glory: dionysus, aphrodite, apollo; wine, woman, and song. the ancients, both in the highest civilizations, as in greece and egypt, and in th

ore deduce that the description applies to this "equinox of the gods" itself. how have the conditions been fulfilled? the introduction to book 4, part iv tells us. we may briefly remind the reader of the principal events, arranging them in the form of a rubric, and placing against each the corresponding magical acts of the equinox previous to ours, as they are symbolized in the legends of osiris, dionysus, jesus, attis, adonis, and others. the ritual. aeon of horus aeon of osiris another prophet the beast 666 dionysus and shall arise (aleister crowley) others others are names for (perhaps) apollonius of tyana. in the conditions then obtaining, several magi were required and bring fresh "force& fire" of horus fever from the "skies" of nuit skies. another woman see comment on "venus" of the

ALEISTER CROWLEY THE OTO GNOSTIC MASS

of gold and ivory and marble as in these other temples of our bodies, we worthily commemorate them worthy that did of old adore thee and manifest they glory unto men (at each name the deacon signs with thumb between index and medius. at ordinary mass it is only necessary to commemorate those whose names are italicized, with wording as is shown) laotze and siddartha and krishna and tahuti, mosheh, dionysus, mohammed and to mega therion, with these also hermes, pan, priapus, osiris and melchizedek, khem and amoun and mentu, heracles, orpheus and odysseus; with vergilius, catullus, martialis, rabelais, swinburne, and many an holy bard; apollonius tyanaeus, simon magus, manes, pythagoras, basilides, valentinus, bardesanes and hippolytus, that transmitted the light of the gnosis to us their suc

ALEISTER CROWLEY EQ I 5

this perfect wine be the quintessence, and the elixir, and by the draught thereof shall he renew his youth; and so shall it be eternally, as age by age the worlds do dissolve and change, and the universe unfoldeth itself as a rose, and shutteth itself up as the cross that is bent into the cube. and this is the comedy of pan, that is played at night in the thick forest. and this is the mystery of dionysus zagreus, that is celebrated upon the holy mountain of kithairon. and this is the secret of the brothers of the rosy cross; and this is the heart of the ritual that is accomplished in the vault of the adepts that is hidden in the mountain of the caverns, even the holy mountain abiegnus. and this is the meaning of the supper of the passover, the spilling of the blood of the lamb being a rit

ALEISTER CROWLEY EQUINOX EQ I 3 3

he philosophical writings of ibn gebirol, or avicebron, and their connection with the hebrew qabbalah and sepher ha-zohar, with remarks upon the antiquity and contents of the latter, and translations of selected passages from the same; also, an ancient lodge of initiates, translated from the zohar, and abstract of an essay upon the chinese qabbalah, a translation of part of the mystic theology of dionysus, the areopagite, etc. etc, by isaac myers, ll.b. royal 4to, large paper, with diagrams and illustrations, cloth, t. e g, others uncut, philadelphia, 1888. 35s. nostrodamus_ the true prophecies and prognostications of michel nostrodamus, physician to henry ii, francis ii, and charles ix, kings of france, and one of the best astronomers that ever were; a work full of curiosity and learning

ALEISTER CROWLEY EQUINOX EQ I 3

eaves prose for poetry, there is no more of this bunkum, bombast, and balderdash; we find a poet, and rather an illuminated poet. we have to appeal from philip sober to philip drunk "in vino veritas" good poetry enough all this: yet one cannot help feeling that it is essentially 113 the work of a scholar and a gentleman. one is inclined to think of him as pentheus in a frock-coat. a mystery-play. dionysus. i bring ye wine from above from the vats of the storied sun- mr. waite. butler, decant the claret carefully! dionysus. for every one of ye love- mr. waite. ay, lawful marriage is a sacrament. dionysus. and life for everyone- mr. waite. and lawful marriage should result in life. dionysus. ye shall dance on hill and level- mr. waite. but not the vulgar cancan or mattchiche. dionysus. ye sh

utler, decant the claret carefully! dionysus. for every one of ye love- mr. waite. ay, lawful marriage is a sacrament. dionysus. and life for everyone- mr. waite. and lawful marriage should result in life. dionysus. ye shall dance on hill and level- mr. waite. but not the vulgar cancan or mattchiche. dionysus. ye shall sing through hollow and height- mr. waite. see that ye sing with due sobriety! dionysus. in the festal mystical revel, the rapturous bacchanal rite! mr. waite. if isabel de s..should approve! dionysus. the rocks and trees are yours- mr. waite. according to laws of property. dionysus. and the waters under the hill- mr. waite. provided that you pay your water rate. dionysus. by the might of that which endures- mr. waite. me, surely, and my fame as an adept. dionysus. the holy

ite! mr. waite. if isabel de s..should approve! dionysus. the rocks and trees are yours- mr. waite. according to laws of property. dionysus. and the waters under the hill- mr. waite. provided that you pay your water rate. dionysus. by the might of that which endures- mr. waite. me, surely, and my fame as an adept. dionysus. the holy heaven of will! mr. waite. will shakespeare was not an initiate. dionysus. i kindle a flame like a torrent to rush from star to star- mr. waite. incendiarism! arson! captain shaw! dionysus. your hair as a comet's horrent- mr. waite. not for a fortune would i ruffle mine. dionysus. ye shall see things as they are. mr. waite. play fair, god! do not give the show away["the maenads tear him limb from limb, and "madame de s "tries to "brain "dionysus" with a dummy w

ALEISTER CROWLEY EQUINOX EQ I 4 2

th destiny. ethel archer. 208 mr. todd a morality by the author of "rosa mundi""in memoriam" lilith "obiit kal. mai" 1906 mr. todd persons of the play grandfather ossory("eighty-one) alfred ossory("fifty "his son, a shipowner" emily ossory("forty-five "his wife" euphemia ossory("eighteen "his daughter" charley ossory("ten "his son" george delhomme("twenty-four "of the ministry of foreign affairs" dionysus carr("thirty-four "professor of experimental eugenics in the" university of t bingen; and mr. todd thomas "a footman" a hospital nurse scene "the sitting-room in" ossory's "house in grosvenor square" time "midday "the persons are in correct morning dress, except the invalid "grandfather "who "is in a scarlet dressing-gown, with gold embroidery, and "carr "who affects "a pseudo-bohemian ex

ALEISTER CROWLEY EQUINOX EQ I 6 2

elody<typhon. brother hermanubis, what is the place? hermanubis. the summit of mount kithairon. typhon. procul, o procul este viri["all male probationers retire to back of stage" typhon. sisters, let us invoke the father to manifest in the son. sphinx. per spiritum sanctum, amen["she also retires to her place on wheel" maenads. evoe! evoe ho! iacche! iacche! typhon. hail, o dionysus! hail! winged son of semele! hail, o hail! the stars are pale; hidden the moonlight in the vale; hidden the sunlight in the sea. blessed is her happy lot who beholdeth god; who moves mighty-souled without a spot, mingling in the godly rout of the many mystic loves. holy maidens, duly weave dances for the mighty mother bacchanal to bacchus cleave! wave his narthex wand, and leave earthly j

theban dame! 37 caught in that fiery wave, her love and life she gave with one last kissing cry the unborn child to save. and thou, o zeus, the sire of bromius- hunter dire- didst snatch the unborn babe from that olympian fire: in thine own thigh most holy that offspring melancholy didst hide, didst feed, on light, ambrosia, and moly. ay! and with serpent hair and limbs divinely fair didst thou, dionysus, leap forth to the nectar air! ay! thus the dreams of fate we dare commemorate, twining in lovesome curls the spoil of mate and mate. o dionysys, hear! be close, be quick, be near, whispering enchanted words in every curving ear! o dionysys, start as the apollonian dart! bury thy horned head in every bleeding heart! 1st maenad. he is here! he is here! autonoe. tigers, appear! agave. to th

ALICE A BAILEY10 FROM BETHLEHEM TO CALVARY

of the father. to quote one writer who seeks to prove this continuity "at the time of the life or recorded appearance of jesus of nazareth and for some centuries before, the mediterranean and neighbouring world had been the scene of a vast number of pagan- 109- from bethlehem to calvary copyright 1998 lucis trust creeds and rituals. there were temples without end dedicated to gods like apollo or dionysus among the greeks, hercules among the romans, mithra among the persians, adonis and arris in syria and phrygia, osiris and isis and horus in egypt, baal and astarte among the babylonians and carthaginians, and so forth. societies, large or small, united believers and the devout in the service or ceremonials connected with their respective deities, and in the creeds which they confessed con

he rose into heaven. so also was the phrygian attis called saviour, and the syrian tammuz or adonis likewise both of whom, as we have seen, were nailed or tied to a tree, and afterwards rose again from their biers or coffins. prometheus, the greatest and earliest benefactor of the human race, was nailed by the hands and the feet, and with arms extended, to the rocks of mount caucasus. bacchus or dionysus, born of the virgin semele to be the liberator of mankind (dionysus eleutherios as he was called) was torn to pieces, not unlike osiris. even in far mexico quetzalcoatl, the saviour, was born of a virgin, was tempted, and fasted forty days, was done to death, and his second coming looked for so eagerly that (as is well known) when cortes appeared, the mexicans, poor things, greeted him as

BLAVATSKY H P ANTHROPOGENESIS

and within the period of biblical chronology, having been shown to have never existed, the pious, but very arbitrary supposition of bishop cumberland has but to follow that deluge into the land of fiction. indeed it seems rather fanciful to any impartial observer to be told that there were "two distinct races of kabiri" the first consisting of ham and mizraim, whom he conceives to be jupiter and dionysus of mnaseas; the second "of the children of shem, are the kabiri of sochoniston, while their father sydyk is consequently the scriptural shem (append. de cabiris, ap. orig. gent. p. 364, 376, and the latter statement on p. 357) the kabirim "the mighty ones" are identical with our primeval dhyan-chohans, with the corporeal and the incorporeal pitris, and with all the rulers and instructors

BLUE EQUINOX

s manes william of schyren basilides frederick of hohenstaufen valentinus roger bacon bardesanes jacobus burgundus molensis king wu ko hsuen christian rosenkreutz osiris ulrich von hutten melchizedek paracelsus khem michael maier menthu jakob boehme johannes dee francis bacon sir edward kelly andr a thos. vaughan robertus de fluctibus elias ashmole chau comte de chazal saturnus sigismund bacstrom dionysus molinos and recently: wolfgang von goethe friedrich nietzsche sir richard payne knight hargrave jennings sir richard francis burton karl kellner forlong dux eliphas l vi ludovicus rex bavari franz hartmann richard wagner cardinal rampolla ludwig von fischer papus (dr. encausse) the equinox 200 the names of women members are never divulged. it is not lawful here to disclose the name of any

f gold and ivory and marble as in these other temples of our bodies, we worthily commemorate them worthy that did of old adore thee and manifest they glory unto men (at each name the deacon signs+ with thumb between index and medius. at ordinary mass it is only necessary to commemorate those whose names are italicized, with wording as is shown) laotze and siddartha and krishna and tahuti, mosheh, dionysus, mohammed and to mega therion, with these also hermes, pan, priapus, osiris and melchizedek, khem and liber xv 261 amoun and mentu, heracles, orpheus and odysseus; with vergilius, catullus, martialis, rabelais, swinburne, and many an holy bard; apollonius tyan us, simon magus, manes, pythagoras, basilides, valentinus, bardesanes and hippolytus, that transmitted the light of the gnosis to

BUCKLAND RAYMOND COMPLETE BOOK OF WITCHCRAFT

the parchment and pen and writes, at the top, his/her "seed (try to concentrate it into as few words as possible. the parchment is passed around the circle and all add their "seeds. when it is returned, priest/ the priapic wand is named after priapus, the roman god of procreation. in asia minor he was equated with pan, the nature deity of greece, and was considered the off-spring of aphrodite and dionysus. he presided over the fecundity of fields and flocks, over the raising of bees, the culture of the vine and over fishing. he protected orchards and gardens, where his phallic image was prominently displayed. the priapic wand is, in effect, a representation of a phallus (penis. although only used in a few rituals (if you so desire, you will need one. it should be about twenty-one inches in

CASSANDRA EASON A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO WITCHCRAFT AND MAGIC

celtic tradition. the god dates back to the shamanic figures portrayed on cave walls. cernunnos was lord of winter, the hunt, animals, death, male fertility and the underworld, and was sometime portrayed as a triple or trefoil god, an image later assimilated by st patrick with his emblematic shamrock. other forms of the horned god include herne the hunter, the greek pan, god of the woodlands, and dionysus, greek god of vegetation and the vine, whose ecstatic mystery cult involved ritual dismemberment and resurrection. seite 41 wicca01.txt cerunnos' importance has been in his continuing presence as the horned god, the male principle in witchcraft through the ages, in modern wicca and other neo-pagan faiths. he is also invoked for prosperity, fertility, instinctive power and knowledge of whe

wicca01.txt cerunnos' importance has been in his continuing presence as the horned god, the male principle in witchcraft through the ages, in modern wicca and other neo-pagan faiths. he is also invoked for prosperity, fertility, instinctive power and knowledge of when it is necessary to hunt, whether to find employment or a home, and as protection against predators of all kinds [insert pic p075- dionysus dionysus, sometimes depicted as a horned god, was a god of the grain, who died and was reborn every year as a child in a basket, representing the seed corn. he was the greek god of fertility, ecstasy and wildness, who bestowed great abundance on his followers; his cult performed savage rites at eleusius where human flesh was eaten as the bread of life. not an easy deity to use, without gr

DAVID ICKE AND THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE

have been added to and twisted under the guidance of the prison warder consciousness, until the original meaning has been lost under an avalanche of myth and invention. so often when you investigate the origin of the foundation stories of the religions, you find the same basic themes with different names for the alleged heroes and villains. for the christian version of jesus, see also bel (sumer, dionysus (greece, mithra (persia and rome, osiris (egypt, quetzalcoatl (central and south america, krishna (india, and so on. in this way, the spiritual knowledge from which all religions originally derive, has, to a large extent, been destroyed in the public arena. this process has been essential to controlling the human race. you take information out of the public arena and pass it on secretly o

DAVID ICKE CHILDREN OF THE MATRIX

es in the edda. the king arthur legends have sir gawain slaying the green man. as i have said, the chaldeans called the balder/abel character tammuz. he was their "established son" and the "son of god" who died for humanity. tammuz was also closely associated with the theme of the serpent and the bloodline of the "dragon kings. hecate, another version of el or hel, was symbolised as the mother of dionysus, another classic son of god figure. both 168 children of the matrix tammuz and dionysus were mirrors of the much later "jesus" myth. lamentations of the chaldees for the death of tammuz/balder/abel are preserved in a large collection of hymns of the mother-son (serpent) cult in babylonian tablets from around 3000bc. they used to wail for tammuz in certain rituals and the wailing of jewish

sick, including lepers, the blind, and the deaf. he died at about the age of 30 and some traditions say he was crucified on a tree. he was also portrayed on a cross, rose from the dead, and was considered the saviour. his followers apparently knew him as "jezeus" or "jeseus, which means "pure essence. it is said that he will return on a white horse to judge the dead and fight the "prince of evil. dionysus or bacchus, the son of god of greece he was born to a virgin mother on december 25th and put in a manger and swaddling clothes. he was a teacher who travelled, performing miracles. he turned water into wine (like the sun) and rode in triumph on an ass (so did the egyptian deity, set. he was the ram or the lamb, god of the vine, god of gods and king of kings, only begotten son, bearer of s

he human female. mary magdalene, the "reformed prostitute" or whore, is another version of the goddess symbolism. she portrays the great whore of babylon, the goddess, mari-anna-ishtar.27 the ritual of the "sacred harlot" or priestess anointing a saviourking goes back to sumer and further to atlantis and, no doubt, lemuria. it was a pagan priestess who announced the resurrection of osiris, attis, dionysus, and orpheus, just as mary magdalene was the first to see the "resurrected" jesus. it's all symbolism from the ancient mystery religions and it was used to create a mythical hero for a manufactured prison-religion. as i have mentioned, mag also appears to be code of the reptilian dna passed on by the female line, the mitochondrial dna. jesus was crucified many of these mythical solar deit

"28 the reference to the "man carrying the water pitcher" in luke's gospel is more aquarius symbolism. john the baptist was an almost exact copy of bala-rama, the forerunner of krishna, the hindu son of god. 212 children of the matrix jesus and the 12 disciples is there a universal law that all deities must have 12 disciples or followers? jesus had them, so did horus, buddha, king arthur, mithra, dionysus, and so many other symbols of the sun. we also have the 12 sons of jacob, 12 tribes of israel, the 12 gods of the greeks, egyptians, and persians. this fixation with 12 derives once again from sun symbolism with their disciples and followers representing the months of the year and the signs of the zodiac. the romans openly symbolised the sun as a living man and the signs of the zodiac as

festival of the sun, was transformed into the birthday of jesus" the defining moment in christian history came in ad325 when constantine called together 318 bishops of the "christian" church to his palace at nicaea (now iznik in turkey) for the infamous council of nicaea. i say "christian, but in fact there were representatives of the sun and moon cults of apollo, osiris and isis, demeter/ceres, dionysus/bacchus, jupiter/zeus, and, of course, sol invictus. so jesus was naturally given the birthday of december 25th; the birthday of the sun. nicaea was the moment when jesus and christ were brought together for the first time in the way of the other "anointed" sun gods. the council was convened to end the conflict and squabbling between the followers of st paul's "jesus, a supernatural god

loodlines of the anunnaki designed specifically to occupy the positions of power. interestingly, the olmec people of central america, whose whole culture was based on serpent worship, used to take hallucinogenic psilocybin mushrooms that they called "the flesh of the plumed serpent, and this took them into a fourthdimensional awareness- the serpent frequency. in their rituals to the "serpent son" dionysus (another "jesus, the greek initiates would drink strong wine and take mind-altering drugs and mushrooms to "unite with their son of god. at the end of those 15 days in the united states, when i was speaking at a whole life expo event in minneapolis, a gifted psychic lady told me how she sees people in power, like henry kissinger, george bush, and hillary clinton, turn into reptilians all

DAVID ICKE THE BIGGEST SECRET

mohammed ormahomet, of arabia.22all but a few of those sons of god or prophets, and the mind-prison religions foundedin their names, come from the very lands occupied or influenced by peoples emerging fromthe near east and the caucasus. the lands of the aryans and reptile-aryans. other sons ofgod included mithra or mithras, the pre-christian roman-persian god, and in greece andasia minor they had dionysus and bacchus. these were sons of god who died so our sinscould be forgiven, born of a virgin mother, and their birthdays were on. december 25th!mithra was crucified, but raised from the dead on march 25th- easter! mithran initiationstook place in caves adorned with the signs of capricorn and cancer, symbolic of the winter90and summer solstices, the high and low points of the sun. mithra wa

eir stories all the symbols of the sun religionand babylonian brotherhood myths. they locate their saul/paul in tarsus in asiaminor (now turkey, the chief city of the cilicians. this just happens to be a majorcentre for the mithra sun religion and it was the cilicians who had taken this cult torome, from where it spread throughout the empire. asia minor was also a region whichfollowed the cult of dionysus. both were symbolic sun gods, born on december 25th,who died so our sins could be forgiven. everything christians believe about jesus, theromans and persians believed about mithra. sunday was the sacred day for mithraistsbecause he was a sun god and they called this the lords day. dionysus was born to avirgin mother, and he was known as: the vine, our lord, the saviour, the judge of thede

ld be forgiven. everything christians believe about jesus, theromans and persians believed about mithra. sunday was the sacred day for mithraistsbecause he was a sun god and they called this the lords day. dionysus was born to avirgin mother, and he was known as: the vine, our lord, the saviour, the judge of thedead, the deliverer, the born again and the only begotten son of god. above the headof dionysus were the words: i am life, death, and resurrection, i hold the wingedcrown (the sun).18 the writer, h. g. wells, pointed out that many of the phrases usedby paul for jesus were the same as those used by the followers of mithra. the liturgyof mithra is the liturgy of jesus. when paul says: they drank from the spiritual rockand that rock was christ (i corinthians 10:4, he was using exactly

f the fraternity of r.c.and the true rituals of the freemasonic order, of which order it may be discovered that hewas the actual founder.22the rituals and symbols of freemasonry can be traced back to ancient egypt andbeyond. in truth, its knowledge of sacred geometry, numbers and form, go back to beforethe last cataclysm. the dionysiac artificers or architects, composed of initiates of thebacchus-dionysus (sun) mysteries whose role it was to design the public buildings andmonuments, can be traced back at least three thousand years if not more.23 it was thesearchitect-initiates who designed the great buildings of constantinople, rhodes, athensand rome and it was this same stream who built the temple to the goddess diana at theworld centre for the diana cult at ephesus,24 which is remembered

names, the dionysian architectsand initiates from the frater solomonis mystery school also built great christiancathedrals funded by the knights templar. there were many rosicrucian and masonicemblems to be seen in the carvings of the notre dame cathedral in paris and numerousdepictions of compasses, squares and building tools before they were destroyed duringthe french revolution.25 the bacchus-dionysus architects were divided intocommunities headed by masters and wardens, just as freemasonry is today, and theysettled in israel where some researchers link them with the essenes, the egyptian sectwho produced the dead sea scrolls.26 bacchus-dionysus (two names for the same deity)was a symbol of the sun who was said to have been born to a virgin on december 25th.the foundation of freemasoni

t,spawned a particularly important strand, a fusion between freemasonry and thejacobite movement which became known as grand orient freemasonry. there are alsogrand orient networks in others countries like brazil and portugal. grand orient meansgrand east and its rituals are inspired by the worship of zoroaster in persia, ishtar andtammuz (semiramis and nimrod) in babylon, demeter, persephone and dionysus ingreece, aphrodite and adonis in syria, isis and osiris in egypt, and mithra in persia.39the grand orient in france was to be the focus behind the manipulation andcoordination of the french revolution. from the brotherhoods point of view, thispeoples revolution had nothing to do with freedom and everything to do with itsagenda for global control. the famous cry of the french revolutionar

DEMONIC BIBLE

reborn in the image of satan. i am reborn in the image of satan, as a living demon in the flesh (dip forefinger of left hand in anointing oil, form inverted pentagram on forehead. i am ordained as a priest of the dark lord and an ambassador of his infernal empire *recite threee times. invocation of the lord of the earth i call upon the lord of the earth, the horned god of the earth. pan, bacchus, dionysus, kernunnos, herne, lord of the earth, horned god of the earth, come forth and manifest thyself. lord of the earth, i invoke thee. lord of the earth, i summon thee. lord of the earth, i conjure thee. come forth, lord of the earth, and manifest thyself within this body, this temple which i have prepared. come forth, lord of the earth, and manifest thyself. for i have crossed the gates of he

il incarnate. i am satan; i am lucifer; i am belial; and i am leviatan. come forth, lord of the earth, and manifest thyself. come forth, lord of the earth, and manifest thyself. invocation of the queen of the earth i have called upon the lord of the earth, the horned god of the earth. and in calling upon the lord of the earth i have become the horned god of the earth. i am pan; i am bacchus; i am dionysus; i am kernunnos; i am herne. i sit upon the throne of the infernal empire, as lord of the living and the dead. i take the queen of the earth also as my wife and as my lover. ishtar, inanna, isis, demeter, ceres, queen of the earth, goddess of pleasure and fertility, come forth and manifest thyself. queen of the earth, i invoke thee. queen of the earth, i summon thee. queen of the earth, i

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF OCCULTISM AND PARAPSYCHOLOGY VOL 1

. boston, 1876. cabiri (or cabeiri) a group of minor deities of greek origin. the name appears to be of semitic origin, signifying the great gods, and the cabiri seem to have been connected in some manner with the sea, protecting sailors and vessels. the chief seats of their worship were lemnos, samothrace, thessalia, and boeotia. they were originally only two in number, the elder identified with dionysus, and the younger with hermes, who was also known as cadmilus. their worship was later amalgamated with that of demeter and ceres, with the result that two sets of cabiri came into being.dionysus and demeter, and cadmilus and ceres. a greek writer of the second century b.c.e. states that they were four in number.axisros, axiokersa, axiokersos, and casmilus, corresponding, he states, to dem

hic photographer william hope and to sit with etta wriedt while in london in 1920. he later published one book, opening the psychic door (1933. flagellation flagellation (usually with whips) has been associated with religious fervor from pagan times. in ancient egypt devotees of the goddess isis scourged themselves at an annual festival. according to pausanias, women were flogged in the temple of dionysus. plutarch states that the priests of cybele were flogged in the temple of the goddess. in the christian religion, flagellation found many rationalizations. it was used as an official punishment for priests and monks, a self-inflicted penance, and a dramatization of the sufferings of christ. there was an epidemic of flagellant sects in europe during the tenth and fourteenth centuries, asso

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF OCCULTISM AND PARAPSYCHOLOGY VOL 2

the earth-god or goddess is in most countries often allied with the powers of darkness. it is from the underworld that grain arises, and therefore it is not surprising to find that demeter, ge, and aglauros are identified with the underworld. but there were also the mysteries of artemis, of hecate, and the cherites. some of which may be regarded as forms of the great earth mother. the worship of dionysus, trophonious, and zagreus was also of a mysterious nature; however it is the eleusinian and orphic mysteries that undoubtedly are the most important to the occult student, and though archaeological findings (such as vase-painting) it has been possible to glean some general idea of these. that is not to say that the heart of the mystery is revealed by any such illustrations, but that these

e been associated with eleusinian mysteries, usually signified by terms such as the gods or the goddesses. mythological science suggests that such nameless gods are merely those whose higher names are hidden and unspoken. in egypt, for example, the concept of the concealed name was extremely common. the name of the power of a god, if discovered, bestowed on the discoverer control over that deity. dionysus is also a figure of some importance in the eleusinian mystery. it has been thought that orphic influence was responsible for his presence in the cult, but traces of orphic doctrine have not been discovered in what is known of the mysteries. a more baffling personality in the great ritual drama is that of iacchus, who appears to be none other than dionysus under another name. in either cas

onysus is also a figure of some importance in the eleusinian mystery. it has been thought that orphic influence was responsible for his presence in the cult, but traces of orphic doctrine have not been discovered in what is known of the mysteries. a more baffling personality in the great ritual drama is that of iacchus, who appears to be none other than dionysus under another name. in either case dionysus (or iacchus) does not appear to be a primary figure of the mystery. in early greek legends there are allusions to the sacred character of the eleusinian mysteries. from the fifth century their organization was in the hands of the athenian city, the royal ruler of which, along with a committee of supervision, undertook the general management. the rites took place at the city of eleusis and

essary magical formula. thus, friendship with the holy mother and daughter (demeter and persephone, to the eleusinian votary, was the chief assurance of immortality. dionysiac a great many offshoots of the eleusinian cult were established in several parts of greece. the most important cult next to the eleusinian was the orphic, which probably arose in phrygia, and which came to be associated with dionysus, originally a god of vegetation, who was also a divinity of the nether world. by entering into communion with dionysus it was believed that immortality might be assured. his celebrations were marked by orgies of a bacchic description, in which it was thought that the neophyte partook for the moment of the character and the power of the deity himself. the rites of the cult of dionysus were

ources: angus, samuel. the mystery religions and christianity. london: john murray, 1928. reprint, new york: dover, 1975. burkert, walter. ancient mystery cults. cambridge, mass: harvard university press, 1987. cumont, f. v. m. mysteries of mithra. london: kegan paul; chicago: open court, 1910. harrison, jane e. prolegmena to the study of greek religion. cambridge university press, 1922. masks of dionysus. ithaca, n.y: cornell university press, 1993. mylonas, george e. eleusis and the eleusian mysteries. princeton, n.j: princeton university press, 1961. nilsson, martin p. the dionysian mysteries of the hellenistic and roman age. lund, sweden: c. w. k. gleerup, 1957. ouvaroff, m. essay on the mysteries of eleusis. london: rodwell& martin, 1817. mystic order of veiled prophets of the enchant

dolf steiner publications, 1970. order of napunsakas in the west the order of napunsakas in the west (on) was founded in 1996 as a special interest group (sig) associated with the thelemic magical order the servants of the star and the snake (sss. it was inspired by the writings of the late scholar of hinduism, alain danielou (author of such books as the gods of india: hindu polytheism; shiva and dionysus and while the gods play. the hindu word napunsaka designates some 16 categories of non-heterosexual, gender variant types mentioned in the sanskrit dictionary of v. s. apete. members of the order seek to reestablish the natural, divine order found in pre-aryan shaivism, but with an emphasis on gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered tantra. the outer order is open to all napunsakas (peo

FAUST

each trellis and a rush from stock to stock. baskets creak and buckets clatter, tubs groan on the bearer s back; to the great vat all are going, to the treaders vigorous dance; and thus is the sacred plenty of the pure-born, juicy berries rudely trodden, foaming, spurting, crushed to an unsightly mass. now the ear is pierced by brazen clash of cymbals and of timbrels, for the veil of mystery hath dionysus cast aside; he comes forth with goat-foot satyrs, whirling goat-foot satyresses; and amid them brays, untamed and shrill, silenus long-eared beast. naught is spared! for cloven hoofs are trampling down all decent custom; for the senses whirling stagger, horribly the ear is stunned. for the cup the drunken fumble, over-full are heads and bellies. careful still is this and that-one, but he

GILBERT THE MAGICAL MASON

hens and eleusis, although the distance was 22 kilometres, about 131/ 2miles, the penalty being a fine of 1,000 drachmre. the wife of lycrugus was said to have been the first to incur the penalty. no person attending the festival could be arrested during its continuance for any previous offence, and no petition could be received at the mysteries.thedionysia,or mystic attic ceremonies in honour of dionysus, son of zeus and semele, a god who became the bacchus of the romans, were in their origin religious observ255 ances, but were at last degraded into mere popular holiday festivals of drink and immorality. they were held four times a year. while the eleusinia were representations of the story of proserpine and ceres, of human life and death, and of animal and vegetative life, the dionysia w

GRIMM JACOB TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY VOL 3

to arminius, civilis and siegbert by turns, tanhauser into ulysses. preface. xxvll in all that i had gathered by a careful comparison of original authorities on sorcery and witches, he of course can see neither circumspectness nor moderation, who gravely imagines that witchcraft was once a reality, who from the minutes of a single trial in 1628 jumps at once to the greek dionysia, makes the devil dionysus, and warms up again the stale explanation of hexe (witch) from hecate. this is allowing the devil a great antiquity in comparison with those heroes; to me eeinhart and isengrim seem to reach up far higher than the -ninth century, and siegfried even beyond arminius, therefore a long way before the time when the term devil first came into our language. several designations of the giants are

fitov in oratt. att. ed. bekker 2, 245. bacchus revealed himself to aeschylus: e; se ala)(v\ou\d; kal ol aiovvaov emo-tavra kekevcrat, rpayasiav iroietv. w? se rjv ri/j,epa [treloeaoat dionysus appeared to him and bade him write tragedy. in the morning, wishing to obey, he composed quite easily as soon as he tried. pausan, i. 21, 2; paara, as pela is said of the gods (p. 320. as aeschylus was watching the vineyard, teutonic herdsmen were pasturing sheep or oxen when the gift of wuotan came to them. hallbiorn had long wished to sing the praise of a dead minstrel thorleif, but cou

ames for the devil can be brought under three points of view, according as they are drawn from his character, his figure, or his place of abode. and to these may be added disguised forms of name. i. from his intrinsic nature the devil is called the evil, hostile^ so is our engel, angel borrowed, both name and thing. mone, who thinks' teufel' is unborrowed, and identifies both it and diabohis with dionysus (anz. 6, 351. 8, 449, will hardly bog:!lo over the germanuess of' engel' either. it is true sid^oxos (the slanderer, which the lxx does not yet have, might in the n. t. spring out of an oriental word allied to pers. div and lat. divus (p. 161' and even 'der deutsclicr' as the poles say niejniaszek= german) of the devil, which may really go back to the slav deity nemisa? 8 zabuhis, zabolon

colour (see suppl. 1 ii. 1, 592. thor threatens to lameloki, su. 130, and the liglitning-fiash has a maiming power^ the romans called pluto jupiter niyer, the black god. silius ital. 8, 116. 994 devil. sucli animal sliape was often not made complete^ but merely indicated by some addition to a configuration mainly human, much as the greeks and romans represented their satyrs, fauns or pan, and to dionysus, acteeon or lo simply added horns. the devil then approximates to those wood-sprites, skrats and pilosi treated of in p. 478 seq; shaped like a man in the rest of his limbs, he is betrayed by his goat's ear, his horn, tail or horse's foot. a vdlant is thus described in tund. 51, 33'^er het vil der heyide^ an des libes ende einea vreislichen zagel (tail, der het manigen isnin nagel (iron n

dern times. whirlpools and rivers demanded goats and horses (p. 592, hecate black lambs. in a hessian folktale the devil guards a treasure, and will allow no one to lift it unless he offer to him a black he-goat exacth/ a year and a day old. this is an almost invariable incident in^ mone in anz. 8, 450 interprets the devil's mother as demcter -who in the eleusinian mysteries is made the mother of dionysus. 1010 devil. treasure-lifting, and must have been deeply stamped on the people's imagination. to the examples given at p. 977 i will add one from the mouth of the peasantry in l. saxony. whoever goes into the forest on shrove tuesday and sits down under a harrow, may look on at everything, the beasts rushing through the wood, the king on his car with foxes [sorrel horses] going before him

GRIMM TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY VOL 2 1883 COMPLETE

between the offspring of yimvs hand and those of his foot; a birth from the foot must mean a lower one. there is even a caribbean myth in which luguo, the sky, descends to the earth, and the first parents of mankind come forth from his navel and thigh, in which he had made an incision.2 reading of these miraculous births, who can help thinking of athena coming out of zeus s head (tpitoyeveta, and dionysus out of his thigh (fju^poppa^ri? as the latter was called &ijj,r)ta&gt;p (two-mothered, so the unexplained fable of the nine mothers of heimdallr (p. 234) seems to rest on some similar ground (see suppl. from these earlier creations of gods and giants the edda and, as the sequel will shew, the indian religion distinguish the crea tion of the first human pair. as with adam and eve in sc

HANDBOOK OF EGYPTIAN MYTHOLOGY

d with egyptian priests in several important religious centers, but his information mainly seems to derive from memphis and the eastern delta. he argued that the priests knowledge was important to humanity because, unlike the greeks, the egyptians had access to very ancient and continuous records. herodotus thought it possible to identify many egyptian deities with greek ones, so he calls osiris, dionysus, and horus, apollo. it became a general practice among classical writers to use greek names for egyptian deities, but these cross-cultural identifications are not always consistent. herodotus says more about religious architecture and rituals than about mythology. as for the sto- 34 handbook of egyptian mythology ries told by the egyptians, he wrote, let whoever finds them credible use th

most members of the ptolemy family never learned the egyptian language, but they were conscious that they were ruling a multicultural society and that they needed the support of influential egyptians. as a symbol of cultural fusion, the ptolemies established the cult of a new god, serapis, who combined features of the egyptian deities apis and osiris with aspects of greek deities such as zeus and dionysus. many of the ptolemies were crowned in the temple of ptah at memphis, and they often contributed to the cost of religious ceremonies in the ancient capital. ptolemaic kings and queens were happy to identify themselves with egyptian deities and to rule in their names. they encouraged the egyptians to worship them as divine rulers. the memphis decree of king ptolemy v (205 180 bce) ordered

1 30 bce. after julius caesar returned to rome, cleopatra gave birth to a son, ptolemy caesarion. cleopatra used egyptian myth to political advantage by identifying herself with the goddess isis and her fatherless son with horus the child. a few years later cleopatra joined forces with another roman general, mark antony, to try to establish a new empire of the east. mark antony s patron deity was dionysus, the greek god generally identified with osiris. in 30 bce antony and cleopatra were defeated by octavian, who subsequently became the first emperor of rome under the title of augustus. egypt was reduced to being a province of the roman empire. roman period: 30 bce 395 ce for a time, roman rule had relatively little impact on the religious life of the country. roman emperors replaced ptol

rd pinch) lieve that myths described events that had actually happened. he is scathing about people who interpreted all myths in terms of natural phenomena such as crop cycles or eclipses: one should take the greatest heed and care not unconsciously to reduce and resolve the divine to terms of winds, fluxes, sowings, ploughings, terrestrial occurrences and seasonal changes, like those who explain dionysus as wine and hephaestus as flame. 98 plutarch saw the mythology of isis in particular as a profound expression of the benevolent face of the divine. it is to his credit as a scholar that he related some incidents, such as one in which isis strikes a child dead with her glance, that do not easily fit with this view. roman period hymns in greek and egyptian speak of all gods and goddesses as

HP LOVECRAFT POETRY AND THE GODS

unknowingly the message and the promise from the lotosgardens beyond the sunset. then in his arms hermes bore the dreaming maiden through the skies. gentle breezes from the tower of aiolas wafted them high above warm, scented seas, till suddenly they came upon zeus, holding court upon double-headed parnassus, his golden throne flanked by apollo and the muses on the right hand, and by ivy-wreathed dionysus and pleasure-flushed bacchae on the left hand. so much of splendour marcia had never seen before, either awake or in dreams, but its radiance did her no injury, as would have the radiance of lofty olympus; for in this lesser court the father of gods had tempered his glories for the sight of mortals. before the laurel-draped mouth of the corycian cave sat in a row six noble forms with the

ISIS UNVEILED

igitizecoy google 80 isis unveiled buddha* au come from the same root. jesus says "upon uus pelra i will build my church, and the gates [or rulers] of hades shall not prevail against it; meaning by petra the rock-temple, and metaphorically, the christian mysteries; the adversaries to which were the old myatery-goda of the underworld, who were worshiped in the rites of lus, adonis, atys, sabazius, dionysus, and the eleusinia. no apoaue peter was ever at rome; but the pope, seizing the scepter of the ponufex maximum, the keys fa janus and cybele, and adorning his christian head with the cap of the magna mater, copied from that of the tiara of brahvmnut, the supreme pontiff of the initiates of old india, became the successor of the pagan high priest, the real peter-roma, or peiroma "nte roman

p. 224. digitizecoy google 4s isis unveiled diet such a learned authority, further than to state that it originaud among them no more than did their 'anointed' christos and sophia. the former they modeled on the original of the 'king mesnah' the male principle of wisdom, and the latter on the third sephiroth, from the chaldaean kabala* and even from the hindq brahmi and sara- svatt" and the pagan dionysus and demeter. and here we are on firm ground, if it were only because it is now proved that the new tehameni never appeared in its complete form, such as we find it now, till 300 years after the period of apostles^ and the zohar and other kabalistic books are found to belong to the first centtuy before our era, if not to be far older still. the gnostics entertained many of the essenean ide

r in the work of creation; and for this is he old" now these two assertions are not only purely kabahstic, without even so much as a change of expression, but brahmanical and pagan likewise" vidi virum excellentem codi terraeque conditore natu majorem. i have seen the most excellent [superior] uan, who is older by birth than the maker of heaven and earth" says the kabalistic codex" the bleusinian dionysus, whose particular name was icuxhoe (laccho, lahoh" the god from whom the liberation of souls was expected was considered older than the demiurge. at the mysteries of the an- thesteria at limnae (the lakes, after the usual baptism by purification of water, the mystae were made to pass through to another door (gate, and 620. shepherd ef bmna, aunil. ix, 2. 621. idrah rabbak, i 41. 622. robe

n various, but very shght, modifications ot shape 'hll very late in the medieval ages, it was considered a potent spell against epilepsy and de- m(huacal possession; and the "signet of the living god" brou^t down in st. john's vision by the angel ascending from the east to "seal the servants of our god in their foreheads" was but the same mystic tau the egyptian cross. in the painted glass of st. dionysus (france) this angel is represented as stamping this sign on the forehead^ the elect; the legend reads, siqmvm tay. in king's onottici the author reminds us that "this mark is commonly borne by st. anthony, an egyi^ian recluse" what the real meaning of the tau was, is explained to us iqr the christian st. john, the egjrptian hermes, and the hinda br&hmanas. it b quite evident that, with jo

ir neighbors. the shrewd talmudists have escaped the accusation for long centuries by screening themselves behind the masoretic invention. but, as in everything else, truth was at last brought to light. we know now that ihoh, niit, must be read lahoh and lah, not jehovah. lah of the hebrews is plainly the lacchos (bacchus) of the mysteries; the god "from whom ihe libontion of souls was ex- pected dionysus, lacchos, isbob, lao" aristotle then was ri^t when he said "job niit was oromasdes and ahriman fhito, for the god of heaveo, ahura-mazda, rides on a chariot which the horn of the sun follows" and dunlap quotes pialmt, izviii, 4, which reads: and then shows that "the arabs represented lauk (la'h) by a horse the horse of the sun (dionysus "lah is a softening of lach" he explains "h ch and n

LEADBEATER CW GLIMPSES OF MASONIC HISTORY

orinth and the other cities of greece. 329. hera was a real personage likewise, but very different from pallas athene. she was one of the many incarnations or forms of the feminine aspect of the first ray, and was thought of as the queen of heaven; she corresponds most closely to the indian goddess parvati, the shakti or power of shiva, imaged as his consort, as hera was the consort of zeus. 330. dionysus was the logos himself, just as osiris had been in egypt, though in a somewhat different aspect; and the legend of his death and resurrection corresponded closely with that of osiris, and was taught with the same signification in the mysteries of greece. phoebus apollo, the god of the sun and of music, whose symbol was the lyre, seems originally to have been orpheus; so that in venerating

on the 19th the great procession of the initiates to eleusis was formed, the hallows were carried back to their ancient resting-place with the fullest possible pomp and splendour, and the candidates and brn. marched in triumph to the temple of initiation accompanied by vast crowds of people. 363. first came the car of iacchos, bearing the statue of the fair young god, who was one of the forms of dionysus, the blazing star of nocturnal initiation as aristophanes calls him(*aristophanes. frogs, 346) next marched the young men, myrtle-crowned, with shields and lances glittering in the sunlight, whose duty and privilege it was to escort the sacred hallows, borne aloft upon the ceremonial car in the great wicker baskets, still bound with purple wool; after them came the hierophant and his offi

candidate might pass in full consciousness to the higher planes. to help him in the efforts that lay before him the priest in this way gave the aspirant some of his own magnetism. this rod of power was of the greatest importance, and we can understand why it was regarded with so much awe when we realize something of its occult potency. 379. there was also the krater or cup, always associated with dionysus, and emblematical of the causal body of man, which has ever been symbolized by a cup filled with the wine of the divine life and love. the tradition of this passed down through the ages and became mingled with that of the holy grail, which played so great a part in early mediaeval romance and legend. 380. among the holy symbols there were also highly-magnetized and richly jewelled statues

dle ages and formed part of the inner instruction that was associated with the ceremonies handed down among the operative builders from jewish sources. these were preserved under binding pledges of secrecy, and emerged in speculative masonry after the reformation, thus forming part of our present masonic system. 403. other greek mysteries 404. another line of tradition is that of the mysteries of dionysus (or as the romans called him, bacchus, which approached more closely to the egyptian scheme of initiation than the eleusinian rites. they were celebrated throughout greece and asia minor, but principally at athens; they were carried to rome, and afterwards formed a link in the chain of masonic descent. their central legend deals with the slaying of dionysus by the titans and his subsequen

rtle, clothed in the sacred robes, exhorted to have courage, and then led through dark caverns amid the howling of wild beasts and other fearful noises, while flashes of lightning revealed monstrous apparitions to his sight. after three days and nights of this kind of experience, he was laid on a couch in a solitary cell; there was a sudden crash of waters, typifying the deluge, and the murder of dionysus was enacted, his limbs being scattered on the waters. then, amid lamentations, commenced the search of rhea for the remains of dionysus, and the apartments were filled with shrieks and groans, accompanied by the frantic dances of the corybantes. suddenly the body was found, the scene changed to one of joy, and the aspirant was released from his confinement. after that he descended into th

letters have been found on what are believed to be the foundations of the first temple from phoenicia they spread first into asia minor, and thence into greece, from which country greek colonists no doubt in the course of time carried members of the guild to magna grecia, which was the early name for south italy(*an outline history of freemasonry, by ward, p. 22) 408. it is said that this cult of dionysus survived up to 1908 in thrace, in a slightly modified form at viza, and may still exist(*r. m. dawkins, journal of hellenic studies, xxvi (1906, pp. 191-206) 409. in the same land of phoenicia, the mysteries of adonis or tammuz were celebrated at byblos or gebal, where lived the gibelim or stone-squarers, deriving their name from that of the town. the legend of these mysteries is an inter

to study all existing systems of the mysteries, so that he might adopt in rome those most suited to the development of his people. his high occult rank opened all doors; and like pythagoras, an even greater initiate, who came later, he was enabled to synthesize many lines of tradition into one comprehensive whole. the system which appears to have been adopted in rome was that of the mysteries of dionysus or bacchus, which, as we have already seen, closely corresponded to the egyptian system; and here we have the first of the links with the dionysian artificers of whom masonic tradition so persistently speaks. 438. numa introduced the egyptian line of succession, and thus the hierophants of his mysteries were i.m.s. after the manner of the priests of egypt and the masons of to-day. this su

LEWIS JAMES SATANISM TODAY AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION FOLKLORE AND POPULAR CULTURE

such cases, the possessed proffers his or her body voluntarily and the possessing entity leaves voluntarily. in demonic possession, however, the disembodied entity usually takes over and refuses to leave, and special techniques of exorcism are required to eject the invader. enthusiasm s (greek en theos, to be in god) and ecstasy characterized the initiation and purification process of the cult of dionysus in ancient greece. women, and to a lesser extent men, who were possessed by the god and surrendered to the possessed state could become free forever. this ritual was widespread in the ancient hellenistic world, and became so popular that in rome it was legally suppressed in 186 b.c. this phenomenon was not limited to the mediterranean world. spirit possession is found in different forms t

s inhaling the fumes of certain substances (e.g, sri lankan witch doctor (kattadiya) holding a bottle containing an evil demon that has been exorcised from a possessed person. it will be thrown into the indian ocean where it can do no further harm (fortean picture library) possession and exorcism 211 the oracle of delphi, by taking drugs (e.g, peyote among certain native american groups) or wine (dionysus cults, by rituals involving body techniques (such as hyperventilation, monotonous drumming, dancing, chanting, or by fasting. once this altered state of consciousness is created, the host is no longer in a regular state of wakefulness and might, at times, not even remember the experience of possession (the somnambulistic type of possession. where possession is viewed as an evil phenomenon

LIBER ALEPH

gour of life. and he most thoroughly explored and mapped out the fastnesses of the mind, and gave the keys of its fortresses into the hand of man. but of all this the quintessence is in this one word anatta, because this is not only the foundation and the result of his whole doctrine, but the way of its work. w the book of wisdom or folly 71 br de sri krishna et de dionyso (of sri krishna, and of dionysus) rishna has names and forms innumerable, and i know not his true human birth, for his formula is of the major antiquity. but his word hath spread into many lands, and we know it to-day as inri with the secret iao concealed therein. and the meaning of this word is the working of nature in her changes; that is, it is the formula of magick whereby all things reproduce and recreate themselves

t his true human birth, for his formula is of the major antiquity. but his word hath spread into many lands, and we know it to-day as inri with the secret iao concealed therein. and the meaning of this word is the working of nature in her changes; that is, it is the formula of magick whereby all things reproduce and recreate themselves. yet this extension and specialisation was rather the word of dionysus; for the true word of krishna was aum, importing rather a statement of the truth of nature than a practical instruction in detailed operations of magick. but dionysus, by the word inri, laid the foundation of all science, as we say science to-day in a particular sense, that is, of causing external nature to change in harmony with our wills. k liber aleph vel cxi 72 bs de tahuti (of tahuti

s aum, importing rather a statement of the truth of nature than a practical instruction in detailed operations of magick. but dionysus, by the word inri, laid the foundation of all science, as we say science to-day in a particular sense, that is, of causing external nature to change in harmony with our wills. k liber aleph vel cxi 72 bs de tahuti (of tahuti) ahuti, or thoth, confirmed the word of dionysus by continuing it; for he showed how by the mind it was possible to direct the operations of the will. by criticism and by recorded memory man avoideth error. but the true word of tahuti was amoun, whereby he made men to understand their secret nature, that is, their unity with their true selves, or, as they then phrased it, with god. and he discovered unto them the way of this attainment

d his voice, that there is no grain of dust which shall not attain to the arhan. keep therefore in just balance the relation of illusion to illusion in that aspect of illusion, neither confusing the planes, nor confounding the stars, nor denying the laws of their reaction, yet with eagle.s vision beholding the one sun of the true nature of the whole. verily, his is the truth, and unto it did also dionysus and tahuti and sri krishna set the seal of their witness. cleanse herefore thine heart, o my son, in the waters of the great sea, and enkindle it with the fire of the holy ghost. for his is his peculiar work of sanctification. n the book of wisdom or folly 121 dp de virgine beata (of the bless d virgin) nderstand then well this mystery of universal godliness; for it is the naked beauty of

LIBER DCCCXI ENERGIZED ENTHUSIASM

. often the organization of genius is on original lines, and ill-balanced and ignorant medicine-men mistake it for disorder. time has shown that whistler and gauguin gkept rules h as well as the masters whom they were supposed to be upsetting. iv the greeks say that there are three methods of discharging the leyden jar of genius. these three methods they assign to three gods. these three gods are dionysus, apollo, aphrodite. in english: wine, women and song. now it would be a great mistake to imagine that the greeks were recommending a visit to a brothel. as well condemn the high mass at st. peter fs on the strength of having witnessed a protestant revival meeting. disorder is always a parody of order, energized enthusiasm 5 because there is no archetypal disorder that it might resemble. o

LIBER HHH

nda; tertia. vocatur. et ha reflexiones aquatica sunt trium enthusiasmorum, apollonis, dionysi, veneris .total stella est nechesh et messiach, nomen hyha cum hwhy conjunctum. there are three contemplations as it were breaths in the human mind, that is the abyss of hell: the first is called.,2 the second.,3 and the third..4 these are the watery reflexions of the three enthusiasms; those of apollo, dionysus, and aphrodite.5 the whole star is nechesh and messiach, the name hyha joined with hwhy.6 2 i m m m .i remember a certain holy day in the dusk of the year, in the dusk of the equinox of osiris, when i first beheld thee visibly; when first the dreadful issue was fought out; when the ibis-headed one charmed away the strife. i remember thy first kiss, even as a maiden should. nor in the dark

ferred to the three chapters of liber hhh as indicated, and svb figvra cccxli 9 its number, 341, is the sum of these letters. the other three letters, aleph, yod and vau, re-arranged, give way, a hebrew spelling of iao, which adds to 17. even leaving aside the purported liber iao, there is evidence in other crowley mss. that he referred the letters of iao to the .three enthusiasms. as i= iacchus (dionysus, a= aphrodite, o `orus (as a cognate of apollo: a permissable fudge since the aspirate is not a letter in greek. 7 this whole section parallels .liber pyramidos. fairly closely and is the .meditation practice corresponding to ritual dclxxi. mentioned in liber xiii. the versified solo version of liber 671 which has been published is adequate for the purposes of exploring the parallels, alt

LIBER SAMEKH

ttain to this art, he now hideth it herein so that the worthy may win to his wisdom. let i and f face all* yet ward their a from attack. gthe hermit h to himself, gthe fool h to foes, gthe hierophant h to friends. nine by nature, naught by attainment, five by function, in speech swift, subtle and secret; in thought creative, unbiased, unbounded; in act gentle, patient, persistent. hermes to hear, dionysus to touch, pan to behold! a virgin, a babe, and a beast! a liar, an idiot, and a master of men* if we adopt the new orthography viaov (book 4, part iii, chap. v) we must read gthe sun.6.the son h etc, for gall h; and elaborate this interpretation here given in other ways, accordingly. thus o (or f) will not be gthe hierophant, h but gthe devil h.the eye.baphomet, etc, gfifteen by function

MANLY P HALL THE SECRET TEACHINGS OF ALL AGES

dditional strangeness to the tragic occurrence, by forbidding parsley with the roots from being placed on the table, for they think that parsley grew from the corybantic blood that flowed forth; just as the women, in celebrating the thcsmophoria, abstain from eating the seeds of the pomegranate, which have fallen on the ground, from the idea that pomegranates sprang from the drops of the blood of dionysus. those corybantes also they call cabiric; and the ceremony itself they announce as the cabiric mystery" the mysteries of the cabiri were divided into three degrees, the first of which celebrated the death of cashmala, at the hands of his three brothers; the second, the discovery of his mutilated body, the parts of which had been found and gathered after much labor; and the third--accompan

ding to plato, the greek hermes, and the christ, according to the christian gnostics, are all one and the same as the hebrew adam kadmon, who is the second person of the cabalistic triad. the cyllenian hermes, described by hippolytus, so exactly resembles the lesser man found in cesariano's edition of vitruvius, that they may be justifiably considered to be identical" after relating the figure to dionysus because of the vine leaves wound in the hair, the same writer concludes "here we have clearly and distinctly a curious survival of the cosmic deity of greece, copied and disfigured by the crude draughtsmen of the middle ages, but faithfully preserved, and recognizable to the last" similar figures are to be found in agrippa's de occulta philosophia. like cesariano's diagrams, however, the

MASTERING WITCHCRAFT

a blazing torch or candle on his head, which has sprung from between his antlers, in addition to the one he carries in his hand. he is known by a variety of names to witches in addition to that of lucifer: cernunnos, mamilion, robin, dumus, hu, janus or dianus, barabbon or barabbas among others. his symbolism is partly akin to that of thunor, the norse thunder god of battle, and again of pan and dionysus, the classical gods of ecstatic debauch and revelry. in his alignment with fire, he evokes memories of vulcan (hephaestus) and wayland smith. as vulcan is the suitor of venus and pan of diana, so is the horned one the pursuer of habondia. however, many witches who belong to female-oriented covens which focus their attentions more on the goddess than the god argue that the boot is actually

MICHAEL TSARION ATLANTIS ALIEN VISITATION AND GENETIC MANIPULATION

o our rescue. there is no mention of the conventionalavengers and redeemers: gods, greys, christs, angels, or pleiadeans. there is noflash gordon on his way.we can accept god becoming man to save man, but not man becoming god to save himself (v ernon howard) 2bridges to babylon, from the album by the rolling stones, one of the bands funded by the present, but ancient, powerful psychedelic cult of dionysus.3start the fuse tector, from sam peckinpah's classic western, the wild bunch, which shows exactly how to fightfire with fire.4the empire strikes back, from the film of the same name by george lucas. lucas, founder of industrial light and magic, is one of the bloodkin to the atlantean serpents, as he never ceases intimating in his films. his mov-ies are modernizations, and even corruptions

MOTTA MARCELO THE COMMENTARIES OF AL

inferior to those who underwent its discipline? certainly not. such terms as "inferior" or "superior" have little or no meaning above the abyss. the utterance of helena blavatsky, for instance, although she was master of the temple, cannot be put in class a, because it was printed by theosophists, who cannot be trusted to reproduce straight that which may offend their prejudices. the utterance of dionysus is hopelessly mingled with the ravings, the cries of fear, the sectarian condemnations of unbalanced mystics or all too-balanced politicians who wrote under the collective pseudonyms of john, mark, luke, matthew, paul, peter, etc. the utterance of mohammed can never be had in its purity because, as any scholar knows, he wrote nothing. what we have was written by his followers, purporting

rcle. 49. abrogate are all rituals, all ordeals, all words and signs. ra-hoor-khuit hath taken his seat in the east at the equinox of the gods; and let asar be with isa, who also are one. but they are not of me. let asar be the adorant, isa the sufferer; hoor in his secret name and splendour is the lord initiating. this verse declares that the old formula of magick the osiris-adonis-jesus-marsyas-dionysus- attis-etc. formula of the dying god is no longer efficacious (it never was efficacious; it was merely the least deficient formula possible in the aeon of pisces just past) it rested on the ignorant belief that the sun died every day, and every year, and that its resurrection was a miracle. the formula of the new aeon recognizes horus, the child crowned and conquering, as god. we are all

the mongol; whiskey for the dour temperament and damp cold climate of the scot. sex-expression, too, depends on climate and so on, so that we must interpret the law to suit a socrates, a jesus, and a burton, or a marie antoinette and a de lamballe, as well as our own don juans and faustines. with this expansion, to the honour and glory of them, of their natures, we acclaim therefore our helpers, dionysus, aphrodite, apollo, wine, woman and song. intoxication, that is, ecstasy, is the key to reality. it is explained in "energized enthusiasm (equinox i, ix) that there are three gods whose function is to bring the soul to the realization of its own glory: dionysus, aphrodite, apollo; wine, woman, and song. the ancients, both in the highest civilizations, as in greece and egypt, and in the mo

ore deduce that the description applies to this "equinox of the gods" itself. how have the conditions been fulfilled? the introduction to book 4, part iv tells us. we may briefly remind the reader of the principal events, arranging them in the form of a rubric, and placing against each the corresponding magical acts of the equinox previous to ours, as they are symbolized in the legends of osiris, dionysus, jesus, attis, adonis, and others. the ritual aeon of horus aeon of osiris another prophet shall arise the beast 666. dionysus and others are names for (perhaps) apollonius of tyana. in the conditions then obtaining, several magi were required. and bring fresh fever from the skies "force and fire" of horus "skies" of nuit another woman shall awake see comment on al i, v.15 "venus" of the

r a note; it is treated fully in liber 888. the main source of the 'jesus' of the new testament was the unnamed master of righteousness' of the essenes; but it is impossible nowadays to separate what is historical and about him from what is historical but about the prophet ionas, or the rabbi x, or the rabbi y. to say nothing of the legendary and hieratic details cribbed from the hagiographies of dionysus, meithras, attis, osiris, and others. but even if it were possible to winnow t he genuine from the spurious in the ola pod rida of the gospels for what? sixteen hundred years of 'jesus' ought to be enough for any healthy stomach. unhealthy stomachs may keep their isa, for all we care. see al i, 49, and the commentary thereof. 52. i flap my wings in the face of mohammed& blind him. mohamme

MYTHS AND LEGENDS OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS E

did the nymphs, his once chosen companions, endeavour to win him back to his accustomed haunts; their power to charm was gone, and music was now his sole consolation. he wandered forth alone, choosing the wildest and most secluded paths, and the hills and vales resounded with his pathetic melodies. at last he happened to cross the path of some thracian women, who were performing the wild rites of dionysus (bacchus, and in their mad fury at his refusing to join them, they furiously attacked him, and tore him in pieces. in pity for his unhappy fate, the muses collected his remains, which they buried at the foot of mount olympus, and the nightingale warbled a funeral dirge over his grave. his head was thrown into the river hebrus, and as it floated down the stream, the lips still continued to

most ingenious throne of gold, with secret springs, which he presented to hera. it was arranged in such a manner that, once seated, she found herself unable to move, and though all the gods endeavoured to extricate her, their efforts were unavailing. hephastus thus revenged himself on his mother for the cruelty she had always displayed towards him, on account of his want of comeliness and grace. dionysus, the wine god, contrived, however, to intoxicate hephastus, and then induced him to return to olympus, where, after having released the [99]queen of heaven from her very undignified position, he became reconciled to his parents. he now built for himself a glorious palace on olympus, of shining gold, and made for the other deities those magnificent edifices which they inhabited. he was ass

s holy water, in order to insure large profits from their wares. the fetiales (roman priests whose duty it was to act as guardians of the public faith) refused to recognize the identity of mercury with hermes, and ordered him to be represented with a sacred branch as the emblem of peace, instead of the caduceus. in later page 138 times, however, he was completely identified with the greek hermes. dionysus (bacchus. dionysus, also called bacchus (from bacca, berry, was the god of wine, and the personification of the blessings of nature in general. page 139 page 140 the worship of this divinity, which is supposed to have been introduced into greece from asia (in all probability from india, first took root in thrace, whence it gradually spread into other parts of greece. dionysus was the son

nd the child's life being no longer safe, he was transferred to the fostering care of the nymphs of mount nysa. an aged satyr named silenus, the son of pan, took upon himself the office of guardian and preceptor to the young god, who, in his turn, became much attached to his kind tutor; hence we see silenus always figuring as one of the chief personages in the various expeditions of the wine-god. dionysus passed an innocent and uneventful childhood, roaming through the woods and forests, surrounded by nymphs, satyrs, and shepherds. during one of these rambles, he found a fruit growing wild, of a most refreshing and cooling nature. this was the vine, from which he subsequently learnt to extract a juice which formed a most exhilarating beverage. after his companions had partaken freely of it

n freely of it, they felt their whole being pervaded by an unwonted sense of pleasurable excitement, and gave full vent to their overflowing exuberance, by shouting, singing, and dancing. their numbers were soon swelled by a crowd, eager to taste a beverage productive of such extraordinary results, and anxious to join in the worship of a divinity to whom they were indebted for this new enjoyment. dionysus, on his part, seeing how agreeably his discovery had affected his immediate followers, resolved to extend the boon to mankind in general. he saw that wine, used in moderation, would enable man to enjoy a happier, and more sociable existence, and that, under its invigorating influence, the sorrowful might, for a while, forget their grief and the sick their pain. he accordingly gathered rou

t wine, used in moderation, would enable man to enjoy a happier, and more sociable existence, and that, under its invigorating influence, the sorrowful might, for a while, forget their grief and the sick their pain. he accordingly gathered round him his zealous followers, page 141 and they set forth on their travels, planting the vine and teaching its cultivation wherever they went. we now behold dionysus at the head of a large army composed of men, women, fauns, and satyrs, all bearing in their hands the thyrsus (a staff entwined with vine-branches surmounted by a fir-cone, and clashing together cymbals and other musical instruments. seated in a chariot drawn by panthers, and accompanied by thousands of enthusiastic followers, dionysus made a triumphal [126]progress through syria, egypt

nd other musical instruments. seated in a chariot drawn by panthers, and accompanied by thousands of enthusiastic followers, dionysus made a triumphal [126]progress through syria, egypt, arabia, india &c, conquering all before him, founding cities, and establishing on every side a more civilized and sociable mode of life among the inhabitants of the various countries through which he passed. when dionysus returned to greece from his eastern expedition, he encountered great opposition from lycurgus, king of thrace, and pentheus, king of thebes. the former, highly disapproving of the wild revels which attended the worship of the wine-god, drove away his attendants, the nymphs of nysa, from that sacred mountain, and so effectually intimidated dionysus, that he precipitated himself into the se

son dryas, whom he mistook for a vine. pentheus, king of thebes, seeing his subjects so completely infatuated by the riotous worship of this new divinity, and fearing the demoralizing effects of the unseemly nocturnal orgies held in honour of the wine-god, strictly prohibited his people from taking any part in the wild bacchanalian revels. anxious to save him from the consequences of his impiety, dionysus appeared to him under the form of a youth in the king's train, and earnestly warned him to desist from his denunciations. but the well-meant admonition failed in its purpose, for pentheus only became more incensed at this interference, and, commanding dionysus to be cast into prison, caused the most cruel preparations to be made for his immediate execution. but the god soon freed himself

family, pentheus resolved to witness for himself the excesses of which he had heard such terrible reports, and for this purpose, concealed himself behind a tree on mount citharon; but his hiding-place being discovered, he was dragged out by the half-maddened crew of bacchantes and, horrible to relate, he was torn in pieces by his own mother agave and her two sisters. an incident which occurred to dionysus on one of his travels has been a favourite subject with the classic poets. one day, as some tyrrhenian pirates approached the shores of greece, they beheld dionysus, in the form of a beautiful youth, attired in radiant garments. thinking to secure a rich prize, they seized him, bound him, and conveyed him on board their vessel, resolved to carry him with them to asia and there sell him as

suddenly, to the alarm of all on board, the ship stood still, masts and sails were covered with clustering vines and wreaths of ivy-leaves, streams of fragrant wine inundated the vessel, and heavenly strains of music were heard around. the terrified crew, too late repentant, crowded round the pilot for protection, and entreated him to steer for the shore. but the hour of retribution had arrived. dionysus assumed the form of a lion, whilst beside him appeared a bear, which, with a terrific roar, rushed upon the captain and tore him in pieces; the sailors, in an agony of terror, leaped overboard, and were changed into dolphins. the discreet and pious steersman was alone page 143 permitted to escape the fate of his companions [128]and to him dionysus, who had resumed his true form, addressed

d upon the captain and tore him in pieces; the sailors, in an agony of terror, leaped overboard, and were changed into dolphins. the discreet and pious steersman was alone page 143 permitted to escape the fate of his companions [128]and to him dionysus, who had resumed his true form, addressed words of kind and affectionate encouragement, and announced his name and dignity. they now set sail, and dionysus desired the pilot to land him at the island of naxos, where he found the lovely ariadne, daughter of minos, king of crete. she had been abandoned by theseus on this lonely spot, and, when dionysus now beheld her, was lying fast asleep on a rock, worn out with sorrow and weeping. wrapt in admiration, the god stood gazing at the beautiful vision before him, and when she at length unclosed h

, the god stood gazing at the beautiful vision before him, and when she at length unclosed her eyes, he revealed himself to her, and, in gentle tones, sought to banish her grief. grateful for his kind sympathy, coming as it did at a moment when she had deemed herself forsaken and friendless, she gradually regained her former serenity, and, yielding to his entreaties, consented to become his wife. dionysus, having established his worship in various parts of the world, descended to the realm of shades in search of his ill-fated mother, whom he conducted to olympus, where, under the name of thyone, she was admitted into the assembly of the immortal gods. among the most noted worshippers of dionysus was midas,[46] the wealthy king of phrygia, the same who, as already related, gave judgment aga

ld, descended to the realm of shades in search of his ill-fated mother, whom he conducted to olympus, where, under the name of thyone, she was admitted into the assembly of the immortal gods. among the most noted worshippers of dionysus was midas,[46] the wealthy king of phrygia, the same who, as already related, gave judgment against apollo. upon one occasion silenus, the preceptor and friend of dionysus, being in an intoxicated condition, strayed into the rose-gardens of this monarch, where he was found by some of the king's attendants, who bound him with roses and conducted him to the presence of their royal master. midas treated the aged satyr with the greatest consideration, and, after entertaining him hospitably for ten days, led him back to dionysus, who was so grateful for the kind

low it; as he raised the cup of wine to his parched lips, the sparkling draught was changed into the metal he had so coveted, and when at length, wearied and faint, he stretched his aching frame on his hitherto luxurious couch, this also was transformed into the substance which had now become the curse of his existence. the despairing king at last implored the god to take back the fatal gift, and dionysus, pitying his unhappy plight, desired him to bathe in the river pactolus, a small stream in lydia, in order to lose the power which had become the bane of his life. midas joyfully obeying the injunction, was at once freed from the consequences of his avaricious demand, and from this time forth the sands of the river pactolus have ever contained grains of gold. representations of dionysus a

130]appears riding on a panther; the beautiful upturned face inclines slightly over the left shoulder; the features are regular and finely cut, and a wreath of ivy-leaves encircles the well-shaped head. with her right hand she gracefully clasps the folds of drapery which fall away negligently from her rounded form, whilst the other rests lightly and caressingly on the head of the animal. page 145 dionysus was regarded as the patron of the drama, and at the state festival of the dionysia, which was celebrated with great pomp in the city of athens, dramatic entertainments took place in his honour, for which all the renowned greek dramatists of antiquity composed their immortal tragedies and comedies. he was also a prophetic divinity, and possessed oracles, the principal of which was that on

mount rhodope in thrace. the tiger, lynx, panther, dolphin, serpent, and ass were sacred to this god. his favourite plants were the vine, ivy, laurel, and asphodel. his sacrifices consisted of goats, probably on account of their being destructive to vineyards. bacchus or liber. the romans had a divinity called liber who presided over vegetation, and was, on this account, identified with the greek dionysus, and worshipped under the name of bacchus. the festival of liber, called the liberalia, was celebrated on the 17th of march. aides (pluto. aides, aidoneus, or hades, was the son of cronus and rhea, and the youngest brother of zeus and poseidon. he was the ruler of that subterranean region called erebus, which was inhabited by the shades or spirits of the dead, and also by those dethroned

w became the ever-watchful sentinel of these precious treasures. the names of the hesperides were aegle, arethusa, and hesperia. charites (gratia) graces. all those gentler attributes which beautify and refine human existence were personified by the greeks under the form of three lovely sisters, euphrosyne, aglaia, and thalia, the daughters of zeus and eurynome (or, according to later writers, of dionysus and aphrodite. they are represented as beautiful, slender maidens in the full bloom of youth, with hands and arms lovingly intertwined, and are either undraped, or wear a fleecy, transparent garment of an ethereal fabric. they portray every gentle emotion of the heart, which vents itself in friendship and benevolence, and were believed to preside over those qualities which constitute grac

with the seasons, as attendants upon aphrodite, whom they adorned with wreaths of flowers, and she emerges from their hands like the queen of spring, perfumed with the odour of roses and violets, and all sweet-scented blossoms. the graces are frequently seen in attendance on other divinities; thus they carry music for apollo, myrtles for aphrodite &c, and frequently accompany the muses, eros, or dionysus. hora (seasons. closely allied to the graces were the hora, or seasons, who were also represented as three beautiful maidens, daughters of zeus and themis. their names were eunomia, dice, and irene. it may appear strange that these divinities, presiding over the seasons, should be but three in number, but this is quite in accordance with the notions of the ancient greeks, who only recogni

hters of themis, came to be regarded as the representatives of order, and the just administration of human affairs in civilized communities. each of these graceful maidens took upon herself a separate function: eunomia presided more especially over state life, dice guarded the interests of individuals, whilst irene, the gayest and brightest of the three sisters, was the light-hearted companion of dionysus. the hora were also the deities of the fast-fleeting hours, and thus presided over the smaller, as well as the larger divisions of time. in this capacity they assist every morning in yoking the celestial horses to the glorious chariot of the sun, which they again help to unyoke when he sinks to rest. in their original conception they were personifications of the clouds, and are described

PHILIP NEIL MYTHS LEGENDS EXPLAINED

oduce an element of chance, play, and humor into humanity s relationship with the gods. obatala, the creator, is hymned by the yoruba as the father of laughter, who rests in the sky like a swarm of bees. the mandans believe that first creator actually turned into the trickster god coyote. such tricksters, whose mischief may lead them into wickedness, are found throughout mythology, from the greek dionysus to the norse loki to the japanese susano (see pp. 58, 69, and 123. but another theme is the creator s care for the beings he has made. it is this care that leads vishnu, the hindu preserver of the world, to take on his many avatar forms in order to help humanity in times of crisis. his final avatar, kalkin, the white horse, will appear at the end of this era, to usher in a new age. the gr

d of as a heaven in the skies. from olympus, the gods loved, quarrelled, watched the world, and helped and hindered mortals according to their whims. presided over by zeus (roman jupiter, ruler of heaven and earth, there were many gods and immortals of whom 12 are usually regarded as the most important: aphrodite (venus, apollo (apollo, ares (mars, artemis (diana, athena (minerva, demeter (ceres, dionysus (bacchus, hephaestus (vulcan, hera (juno, hermes (mercury, hestia (vesta, and poseidon (neptune. hades (pluto, zeus brother, ruled the underworld. these olympian gods succeeded earlier generations of gods. gaia (mother earth) was the first goddess, and bore the race of titans by her son uranus. the titans, led by cronos (saturn, seized power from uranus; and in turn were defeated by their

it would have been painted to suggest the power and glory of the patron. artemis artemis (see pp. 36 37) was apollo s twin sister and the goddess of hunting and archery. all wild animals were in her care. demeter demeter, zeus sister, was the greek earth-goddess. her brother zeus fathered her daughter, persephone. her search for persephone formed the basis of the mysteries of eleusis (see p. 29. dionysus dionysus (see pp. 58 59, god of ecstasy and wine, was the child of zeus by a mortal, semele. he is shown with goat s legs and horns. hercules hercules (see pp. 50 51) was a son of zeus by a mortal. hera hated him. he earned immortality by performing 12 impossible tasks. when he went to olympus he married zeus daughter hebe. hermes hermes was the messenger of the gods and zeus son by maia

ful punishment to those who scorned her. barking dog the dog tries to alert hephaestus to the presence of ares under the bed but he remains oblivious. ares and aphrodite, although they were caught on this occasion, managed to have several children together: deimos (fear, phobos (panic, harmonia (concord, and, according to some sources, eros (desire. bed of love aphrodite had many lovers including dionysus (bacchus, who fathered her son the phallic god priapus, and hermes who fathered the twin-sexed hermaphroditus. mortal lovers included adonis (see pp. 32 33) and anchises, who was the father of her son, the hero aeneas (see pp. 66 67. the story of aphrodite s affair with ares, and the revenge of her husband hephaestus, is sung by the blind bard demodocus at the phaeacian games in the odyss

ersephone is away, demeter is too sad to fulfill her duties, but when she returns, demeter works with renewed vigor. the myths of persephone are complex because in their inner meanings they go to the heart of ancient greek religion. in one version of her story, zeus himself falls in love with her, and seduces her by taking the form of a snake and enveloping her in his coils the resulting child is dionysus (bacchus. in the more common version, she is abducted by hades but a hades who reveals many features of dionysus in his archaic role as lord of the underworld (see p. 59. hades and persephone hades was sometimes called pluto, which derives from the greek word for riches. the recipent of buried treasure, he was, therefore, considered the god of agricultural wealth. as such, he exerted infl

w, that she agreed to his request on condition that he did not look at eurydice on the way back to the daylight. but as they neared the end of their journey, orpheus could not help glancing back to make sure his beloved was still with him, and as he looked she faded before his eyes, lost to him forever. orpheus never recovered and lived in misery until his death. orpheus sang in praise of the god dionysus (bacchus, see pp. 58 59) and founded orphism, a cult whose mysteries centered on the god dionysus zagreus, who was torn apart by the titans. human sacrifice may have played a role in orphism, and orpheus himself is said to have been torn apart by the maenads, who were punished by dionysus. the fates the three fates were the daughters of the night: clotho( the spinner, lachesis( the drawer

es were the daughters of the night: clotho( the spinner, lachesis( the drawer of lots, and atropos( the inevitable. even zeus was not more powerful than the fates, who measured out each man s destiny like a length of thread one spun it, one measured it, and the third cut it. queen of the underworld persephone, the dreaded queen of the underworld, was the mother of the god of the orphic mysteries, dionysus zagreus, who was fathered by zeus in the form of a serpent. this may be the reason why she took pity on orpheus, the poet who had sung dionysus praises. orpheus in th e underworld reclaiming eurydice, or the music by jean restout ii (1692 1768) this painting shows orpheus begging hades (pluto) and his wife persephone, rulers of the underworld, to return his wife eurydice to him because he

d to his plea in tears. even the furies cried. hades and persephone were so moved that they could not refuse him. guide of souls the god hermes (mercury) has a role in the underworld as the psychopompos, or guide of souls. here, he leads eurydice down to her new home. unusually, he is shown with wings, rather than winged sandals. orpheus was torn apart by maenads, the wild women in the retinue of dionysus (see pp. 58 59, because he would not join in their revels. only his head survived this floated down the river hebrus singing, and was washed ashore on the island of lesbos, where it began to prophesy, until it was silenced by apollo. aristaeus, the shepherd who chased eurydice, was a son of apollo, and he taught mankind the art of beekeeping. for his part in eurydice s death, the gods des

43. apollo was so skillful that tmolus awarded him the prize, demanding that pan admit his pipes were inferior. midas disagreed with tmolus judgment, preferring pan s playing. apollo was so offended by this that he changed midas ears into those of an ass. midas was so ashamed that he hid them under a turban, but finally his secret became public and he killed himself. foolish king midas, freed by dionysus from the double-edged gift that turned everything he touched to gold, then despised riches. he left his kingdom to live simply in the country and worship pan, the god of wild and lonely places. goat-god here, pan plays a flute, rather than the pan pipes. this is another indication, coupled with the presence of athena, that the artist confused elements of the story of marsyas with that of

nd of apollo and pan s musical competition when apollo has already cursed midas with ass s ears. there are also references to other stories, including pan s invention of the pan pipes, and the secret of midas ears becoming widespread. king midas, the son of gordius, a peasant who had been made king of phrygia by the will of the gods, grew up convinced of the importance of money. as a result, when dionysus (bacchus) offered to grant him a wish for having helped his drunken satyr companion, silenus, midas asked that everything he touched should turn to gold. all went well, until he felt hungry bring me food! he cried. alas, it turned to gold! bring me wine! the same thing happened. horrified, midas begged dionysus to help him. the god told him to wash himself in the river pactolus which expl

40. hermes was also the god of travelers and a fertility god, represented by stone statues with erect phalluses called herms. herms were placed on roadsides, in public places, and in the home. one fateful night in athens in 415 bce hundreds of phalluses were broken off; modern scholars suggest this was a women s protest against athenian militarism. although pan boasted that he had seduced all of dionysus maenads, as well as the moon goddess selene (luna, he was often rejected. his least dignified pursuit was of hercules lover, omphale, queen of lydia. climbing into her bed, pan tried to embrace her, only to discover the couple had exchanged clothes in their loveplay and he was embracing hercules. hercules kicked pan out of bed and across the floor. caduceus, a messenger s emblem in ancien

ung men, which he exacted as tribute from the city of athens. one year, the hero theseus (see pp. 54 55) volunteered as a victim, intending to kill the minotaur and rescue athens from its terrible fate. with the help of ariadne, the king s daughter who had fallen in love with him, he succeeded. he then set sail for athens with ariadne but left her on the island of naxos, where she married the god dionysus (see pp. 58 59. king minos was the son of europa by zeus (see p. 45; europa later married king asterius, who adopted minos as his heir. when he became king, minos prepared an altar to poseidon and prayed for a bull to emerge from the sea to be sacrificed. a beautiful white bull promptly appeared, but it was so handsome that minos took it for himself, and sacrificed a lesser animal in its

wife. death in the maze at the heart of the maze, theseus engages the minotaur in single combat. according to different sources, he slayed him, either with his bare hands, a club, or with a sword that ariadne had given him. a love betrayed theseus leaves with ariadne after he has killed the minotaur with her help. but he will abandon her on the island of naxos, where she will become the bride of dionysus. black sails when previous tributes had been paid, the ships taking the victims to crete had set out and returned with black sails. king aegeus was so confident in theseus that he gave him white sails to hoist if he defeated the minotaur. but theseus forgot to raise them and aegeus, seeing the black sails on the horizon, threw himself into the sea, now called the aegean in his memory. the

t. but icarus, exulting in the freedom of the air, forgot his father s words and flew ever higher, until the sun melted the wax and he plummeted to his death in the ocean below. daedalus arrived safely in sicily and took refuge with king cocalus. minos pursued him to the island, where daedalus, who had installed a system of hot-water pipes in the palace, scalded him to death while he was bathing. dionysus and ariadne 58 dionysus and ariadne ar iadne, a cretan princess, married the god dionysus (roman bacchus) on the island of naxos, where she had been abandoned while sleeping by her lover, theseus (see pp. 54 55. why he did this is unclear he seems either to have tired of her, or feared taking her home to athens as his bride. some accounts say that when ariadne awoke to discover that he ha

e had been abandoned while sleeping by her lover, theseus (see pp. 54 55. why he did this is unclear he seems either to have tired of her, or feared taking her home to athens as his bride. some accounts say that when ariadne awoke to discover that he had left her, she either hanged herself in her grief or, as she was pregnant, was destroyed in childbirth by the goddess artemis (diana, urged on by dionysus who was furious that theseus and ariadne had profaned his sacred grotto on naxos. but other sources say that dionysus wanted ariadne, and scared theseus away by appearing to him in a dream, causing him to forget her. dionysus then married ariadne, although their first two children, oenopion and thoas, are sometimes referred to as fathered by theseus. music and poetry dionysus was associat

, and scared theseus away by appearing to him in a dream, causing him to forget her. dionysus then married ariadne, although their first two children, oenopion and thoas, are sometimes referred to as fathered by theseus. music and poetry dionysus was associated, through the creative inspiration of wine, with poetry, song, music, and drama, resulting in much revelry. maenads the female devotees of dionysus were known as maenads, which translates as raving women. in their ecstatic orgies they tore animals and even humans such as pentheus, king of thebes to pieces, and devoured their raw flesh. silenus silenus, dionysus drunken old tutor, is his constant companion, and the leader of his revelers, made up of sileni, satyrs, maenads, and bassarids. the god pan the god pan (see pp. 42 43, seen h

ranslates as raving women. in their ecstatic orgies they tore animals and even humans such as pentheus, king of thebes to pieces, and devoured their raw flesh. silenus silenus, dionysus drunken old tutor, is his constant companion, and the leader of his revelers, made up of sileni, satyrs, maenads, and bassarids. the god pan the god pan (see pp. 42 43, seen here playing the pan pipes, is often in dionysus company. some sources even suggest that dionysus was his father. although he has goatlike characteristics, he is not a satyr. trees the yew, fir, fig, ivy, and vine were all sacred to dionysus. revelers the orgiastic worship of dionysus lasted until 186 bce when the bacchanalia rites were suppressed by decree of the roman senate. dionysus and ariadne by johann georg olatzer (1704 61) dion

istics, he is not a satyr. trees the yew, fir, fig, ivy, and vine were all sacred to dionysus. revelers the orgiastic worship of dionysus lasted until 186 bce when the bacchanalia rites were suppressed by decree of the roman senate. dionysus and ariadne by johann georg olatzer (1704 61) dionysus and ariadne celebrate their marriage with their friends. the painting contains plenty of references to dionysus role as god of the vine. satyrs the satyrs were spirits with some goatlike characteristics, not least their uninhibited lust. dionysus himself was the father of the phallic god priapus, by the goddess aphrodite (venus. ariadne the daughter of minos and pasipha, ariadne is wearing a bridal wreath, given to her by dionysus. it had belonged to his stepmother, the sea nymph thetis (see p. 25

ited lust. dionysus himself was the father of the phallic god priapus, by the goddess aphrodite (venus. ariadne the daughter of minos and pasipha, ariadne is wearing a bridal wreath, given to her by dionysus. it had belonged to his stepmother, the sea nymph thetis (see p. 25. when ariadne died, the chaplet, a crown of seven stars, became the corona borealis. cherubs the cherubs here may represent dionysus and ariadne s future sons: oenopion, thoas, staphylus, latromis, euanthes, and tauropolus. pan pipes dionysus and ariadne 59 crown of ivy and vine dionysus was the first to wear a crown, and is rarely seen without his crown of ivy and vine. he usually holds a thyrsus, a rod which is also twined round with vines and ivy, topped with a pine cone (an ancient fertility symbol. sacred grapes v

ROBERT KIRK WALKER BETWEEN WORLDS

ed with gaseous air, but is used repeatedly by kirk to define the lightest and most mobile of materialized energies. thus air and bodies of air are really the highest octave of matter, so light, subtle and changeable that it may not be seen without special visual faculties. following the biblical citations, we find the classical sources of authority for kirk's thesis: pythagoras, socrates, plato, dionysus areopagita, and the poets. and if we doubt kirk's learning at all after this array of evidence, he cites dr. moore, and cornelius agrippa. agrippa (1486-1535) is perhaps the most curious reference in the list, for he was notorious as a magician. possibly kirk is referring to agrippa's de occulta philosophia, published in 1531. commentary 115 various examples concerning the protection of h

RUBY TABLET OF SET

en schooled in egypt. panpsychism teaches that every living substance has an immortal psyche or soul, which transmigrates into other life forms. in later greek hellenic thought, materialism was to lead into the sophism of protagoras, while panpsychism was to continue into pythagoreanism and then into the doctrines of plato and aristotle [panpsychism was a crucial component of orphism, the cult of dionysus, which emphasized the division of the human being into psychic and material components] pythagoras (569-470 bce) was born and lived his early years on samos, which was exposed to the "barbaric" east as well as to the greek west. initiated into the egyptian priesthood of hathor, he remained in egypt over ten years, learned hieroglyphics, and was exposed to astronomy, geometry, and the egyp

t is xeper. become each magical aon is characterized by a philosophy, which may be summarized by a formula, which may in turn be summarized by a word. the magus of an aon "utters its word, i.e: he formulates and explains the new philosophy. although crowley speaks of only three historic aons (isis, osiris, and horus, he identifies eight magi: lao-tzu, gotama buddha, krishna, tehuti (thoth, moses, dionysus (christ, mohammed, and himself. anton szandor lavey is the ninth, his number is nine, and his word is indulgence. the formula of the age of satan was an expansion of this word: indulgence instead of abstinence.64 i am therefore the tenth, appearing in the year x, and it has been my task and curse65 to utter the word xeper. this is the egyptian hieroglyphic term for "to become/to be/to com

SALMANRUSHDIE THESATANICVERSES

stone. what would old adam have thought? his own sons are here now: the colossus of hubal, sent by the amalekites from hit, stands above the treasury well, hubal the shepherd, the waxing crescent moon; also, glowering, dangerous kain. he is the waning crescent, blacksmith and musician; he, too, has his devotees. hubal and kain look down on grandee and poet as they stroll. and the nabataean proto-dionysus, he-of-shara; the morning star, astarte, and saturnine nakruh. here is the sun god, manaf! look, there flaps the giant nasr, the god in eagleform! see quzah, who holds the rainbow. is this not a glut of gods, a stone flood, to feed the glutton hunger of the pilgrims, to quench their unholy thirst. the deities, to entice the travellers, come- like the pilgrims- from far and wide. the idols

SATANGEL

as such they are closer to humanity, and more prone to corruption. in occult lore many are considered to be double agents, appearing both as angels and as devils. to the black magician or witch they are thus powerful allies. 4th choir: dominions also called dominations, lords, kuriotetes, and in hebrew lore hamshallim. considerd as channels of mercy residing in the second heaven, and according to dionysus regulate the angel s duties. its ruling lords are zadkiel, hashmal (hasmal/chasmal, the fire speaking angel, yahriel and muriel. 5th choir: virtues known also as malakim, the dunamis, tarshishim, brilliant ones or shining ones. they are said to bestow miracles and blessings, and are most often associated with heroes and those who fight for what is right. according to the book of adam and

SATANIC BIBLE

devil of the western world, was originally an angel whose duty was to report human delinquencies to god. it was not until the fourteenth century that he began to be depicted as an evil deity who was part man and part animal, with goat-like horns and hooves. before christianity gave him the names of satan, lucifer, etc, the carnal side of man's nature was governed by the god which was then called dionysus, or pan, depicted as a satyr or faun, by the greeks. pan was originally the "good guy, and symbolized fertility and fecundity. whenever a nation comes under a new form of government, the heroes of the past become villains of the present. so it is with religion. the earliest christians believed that the pagan deities were devils, and to employ them was to use "black magic. miraculous heave

STEINER RUDOLF CHRISTIANITY AS MYSTICAL FACT

nworthy to attain them! no transgression could be greater than the betrayal of the mysteries to the uninitiated; the betrayer would be punished not just with the confiscation of property but with death. we know that the poet aeschylus was accused of representing certain contents of the mysteries on the stage. he escaped death only by the mysteries and mysteriosophy 3 taking refuge at the altar of dionysus and legally proving that he was not an initiate.3 the ancient testimonies to the mysteries are at once revealing yet full of ambiguity. the initiates were convinced that to tell what they knew would be sinful, and indeed that it would be sinful for the uninitiated to hear it. plutarch mentions the terror of the initiand, and compares his position to a preparation for death.4 a special mod

content of feeling. the acknowledgment of eternal becoming is worthless if it does not lift us above our attachment to transitoriness. heraclitus indicates a renunciation of the sensual urge toward transitory enjoyments when he says: how can we claim that in ordinary life we are? we know that from the vantage point of the eternal we are yet we are not. or according to another fragment: hades and dionysus are one.26 dionysus, god of the joy of life, of sprouting and growing, celebrated in the dionysiac festivals, is for herclitus the same as hades, god of death and destruction. the right perspective on the deficiencies and excellences of existence is granted only to those who see death in life and life in death, and in both the eternal that transcends both life and death. the deficiencies

that is present in ourselves from which the images of the gods are derived and form that power itself into divine images, so that behind the world of the gods we shape an image of the divine mother. this is none other than the archetypal power of the human soul. thus mythology places the goddesses alongside the male gods. our interpretation of this may be exemplified in a study of the myths about dionysus. dionysus is the son of zeus and a mortal mother, semele. but the mother is killed by lightning. zeus, however, snatches the still unformed child and allows it to grow within his own thigh where it lies concealed. hera, the mother of the gods, stirs up the enmity of the titans against dionysus, and they tear the child limb from limb. but pallas athene rescues the still-beating heart and b

inst dionysus, and they tear the child limb from limb. but pallas athene rescues the still-beating heart and brings it to zeus. out of it he engenders his son for a second time.69 the myth can be seen as representing a psychological process of an extremely inward character. let us interpret it after the fashion of the egyptian priest who instructed solon in the nature of myths. it is related that dionysus was born as the son of god and a mortal mother, was dismembered and then reborn. this has a fantastic ring to it, but the truth contained in the story is the birth of the divine and its subsequent destiny in individual human souls. the divine is united with the soul, which is still subject to time and earthly conditions; and as soon as the god, the dionysiac spirit, stirs within the soul

consciousness. she rouses the lower aspects of human nature the titans and the unformed divine child is dismembered. the divine knowledge exists in humanity, but dismembered by the understanding that is bound to the senses. if on the other hand there is within the individual sufficient higher wisdom, this latter nurses and cherishes the unformed child until it is born again as a second son of god dionysus. and thus sense-derived understanding, the dismembered divine force in human beings, is reborn as the undivided wisdom that is identical with the logos. it is the son of god and a mortal mother, who is the transitory human soul aspiring unconsciously after the divine. we are still far removed from the spiritual reality that is played out in the myth if we recognize in it only psychologica

o them is a weaving that unravels itself when it has been spun. wisdom the goddess athene is a sure guide to the deepest powers that the soul possesses. she turns one into a beggar, meaning that she divests one of all that is transitory in origin. the myth and mysteries of eleusis the spirit of mysteriosophy is all-pervasive in the festivals celebrated at eleusis in greece in honor of demeter and dionysus. a sacred way stretched to eleusis from athens, lined with mysterious signs intended to myth and mysteriosophy 83 bring the soul into an exalted mood. at eleusis itself there were mysterious temple-complexes,83 under the direction of a priestly dynasty. the wisdom which qualified them for this task was handed down from generation to generation in the priestly families; it was the wisdom w

has to cease her attempt. all she can do is to institute the temple cult. through this, so far as they are able, human beings can participate in the divine nature. the festivals at eleusis were an eloquent confession of the belief in the immortality of the human soul. the conviction was expressed in the imagery of the myth about persephone. but alongside demeter and persephone at eleusis, the god dionysus was honored. if demeter stood for the divine origin of the eternal within humanity, dionysus was worshipped as the divine presence in the world, which assumes an endless variety of forms. he is the god poured out into cosmic existence, torn apart in order to be reborn spiritually. he rightly takes his place beside demeter in the festivals.85 chapter 5 the egyptian and other eastern myster

the neoplatonic philosophy, which also had its roots in the mysteries. the gnostics were confident that the wisdom of man could give birth to a christ by whom the historical figure could be measured in the light of which alone the historical figure could be given his rightful significance. the esoteric tradition a special interest attaches to the teachings that we find in the books attributed to dionysus the areopagite.167 it is admittedly the case that these books are never mentioned prior to the sixth century a.d, but the place and date of their composition is not the relevant question here. what interests us is that they present christianity, through the medium of ideas of neoplatonic philosophy, entirely as a spiritual vision of the supersensible world. and this is a form of presentat

thrace, see mystery knowledge and mystery centres, pp. 167- 179. relevant sources included in m. meyer, the ancient mysteries, pp. 38ff. 68. for a similar pattern of ideas in the eleusinian mysteries, cf. steiner, wonders of the world, ordeals of the soul, revelations of the spirit (rudolf steiner press, london, 1983, pp. 19-20. 69. for more on this, the specifically orphic version of the myth of dionysus, see steiner, wonders of the world, pp. 90ff. 218 christianity as mystical fact 70. cf. above, ch. 1 and nl 8. 71. on the kinds of explanation developed in the ancient mysteries, which might be allegorical, physical (that is, including cosmic, natural or seasonal events, mystic, and so on, see w. burkert, ancient mystery cults (harvard university press, cambridge, 1987, pp. 78ff. 72. sall

TEXE MARRS CODEX MAGICA SECRET SIGNS MYSTERIOUS SYMBOLS AND HIDDEN CODES OF THE ILLUMINATI

colors "the three major rays" she said "are red, blue, and yellow" the color red, bailey explained, has to do with "will, or power."19 in the symbolism of color, faber birren points out the primacy of the color red. he notes:20 in ancient egyptian religion, the god shu was red, and red animals symbolized seth. the red poppy was sacred to ceres, the goddess of the harvest. the face of the wine-god dionysus was sometimes painted red. in my researches of occult traditions, the color red is always the color of fire and blood, of evil and destruction, and of immorality. even the devil is sometimes conceived of as a red beast. and isn't that what communism has proven to be a red beast? even a red dragon? 570 codex magica earl browder, head of the united states communist party for sixteen years (

THE GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE UNUSUAL UNEXPLAINED VOL 1

ose, referring to the need of the mystes, the initi- t h e g a l e e n c y c l o p e d i a o f t h e u n u s u a l a n d u n e x p l a i n e d afterlife mysteries 31 ate, to close the eyes and the lips and to keep secret the rites of the cult. all of the early mysteries and mystical traditions appear to center around a kind of mystery play or ritual reenactment of the life of such gods as osiris, dionysus, and demeter, divinities most often associated with the underworld, the realm of the dead, the powers of darkness, and the process of rebirth. because of the importance of the regenerative process, the rites of the mysteries were usually built around a divine female as the agent of transformation and regeneration. while the initiates of the mystery cult enacted the life cycle of the gods

, but that they would eventually leave hades to be born again in another life experience. m delving deeper cotterell, arthur, ed. encyclopedia of world mythology. london: dempsey parr, 1999. ferm, vergilius, ed. ancient religions. new york: the philosophical library, 1950. t h e g a l e e n c y c l o p e d i a o f t h e u n u s u a l a n d u n e x p l a i n e d 32 afterlife mysteries the rites of dionysus often featured animal sacrifice. this was meant to symbolize the incarnation, death, and resurrection of the divinity. fox, robin lane. pagans and christians. new york: alfred a. knopf, 1989. gordon, stuart. the encyclopedia of myths and legends. london: headline book publishing, 1994. walker, barbara g. the woman s encyclopedia of myths and secrets. san francisco, harper& row, 1983. dion

y. fox, robin lane. pagans and christians. new york: alfred a. knopf, 1989. gordon, stuart. the encyclopedia of myths and legends. london: headline book publishing, 1994. walker, barbara g. the woman s encyclopedia of myths and secrets. san francisco, harper& row, 1983. dionysian mysteries next to the eleusinian mysteries in importance and popularity were the dionysian, which were centered around dionysus (bacchus, a god of life, vegetation, and the vine who, because all things growing and green must one day decay and die, was also a divinity of the underworld. those initiates who entered into communion with dionysus drank large amounts of wine and celebrated with feasts that encouraged them to dress themselves in leaves and flowers and even to take on the character of the god himself, in

erworld. those initiates who entered into communion with dionysus drank large amounts of wine and celebrated with feasts that encouraged them to dress themselves in leaves and flowers and even to take on the character of the god himself, in an attempt to achieve his power. once the god had entered into union with the initiates, they would experience a new spiritual rebirth. this divine union with dionysus marked the beginning of a new life for the initiates, who, thereafter, regarded themselves as superior beings. and since dionysus was the lord of death, as well as the lord of life, the initiates believed that their union with him would continue even after death, and that immortality was now within their grasp. the rites of dionysus were conducted on a much lower level than those of eleus

mans may enter into animals: divine law preserves the human soul from such infamy. m delving deeper gordon, stuart. the encyclopedia of myths and legends. london: headline house, 1993. orphic mysteries orpheus may have been an actual historic figure, a man capable of charming both man and beast with his music, but god or human, he modified the dionysian rites by removing their orgiastic elements. dionysus zagreus, the horned son of zeus (king of the gods) and persephone (daughter of zeus and demeter, was the great god of the orphic mysteries, who was devoured by the evil titans while zeus was otherwise distracted. athena managed to save dionysus zagreus s heart while the enraged zeus destroyed the titans with his thunderbolts. zeus gave the heart of his beloved son to the earth goddess sem

sephone (daughter of zeus and demeter, was the great god of the orphic mysteries, who was devoured by the evil titans while zeus was otherwise distracted. athena managed to save dionysus zagreus s heart while the enraged zeus destroyed the titans with his thunderbolts. zeus gave the heart of his beloved son to the earth goddess semele who dissolved it in a potion, drank thereof, and gave birth to dionysus, the god of vegetation, whose cycle of birth, death, and rebirth reflects the cycle of growth, decay, and rebirth seen in nature. orpheus preached that humankind was created from the ashes of the titans who devoured dionysus zagreus; therefore, the physical bodies of humans are formed from the evil of the titans, but they also contain within them a tiny particle of the divine essence. wit

riting, ritual acts, and teachings of orpheus and receiving initiation into the mysteries of the cult. although there are no available texts clearly setting forth the process of initiation, it likely included fasting, rites of purification, and the reciting of prayers and hymns. it also seems quite certain that the initiates would have enacted a play depicting the life, death, and resurrection of dionysus zagreus. in addition, records suggest that a horned bull was sacrificed and the initiates partook of a sacramental feast of its raw flesh as a holy act that brought them in closer union with the god. once this had been accomplished, the initiates were given secret formulas which would enable them to avoid the snares awaiting the unwary soul as it descended to hades and would ensure them a

t was time for the child to be born, mnesarchus devised pythagoras to be a name in which each of the specially arranged letters held an individual sacred meaning. pythagoras is said to have traveled the known world of his time, accumulating and absorbing wisdom and knowledge. according t h e g a l e e n c y c l o p e d i a o f t h e u n u s u a l a n d u n e x p l a i n e d afterlife mysteries 35 dionysus, the god of vegetation, whose cycle of birth, death, and rebirth reflects the cycle of growth, decay, and rebirth seen in nature. to the legends surrounding his life, he was taught by zoroaster (c. 628 c. 551 b.c.e, the persian prophet, and by the brahmans of india. although his teachings on past lives formed the essence of so many of the mystery religions, he was initiated into the orphi

eligions, and were branded as cults. in other instances, those who practiced ancient forms of deity worship that were before the more recently established religions were identified as devil-worshippers. in this chapter, a number of faith groups that have been called cults and heresies are examined. 255 chapter exploration egyptian mystery schools akhenaten isis osiris greek mystery schools delphi dionysus eleusis christian mystery schools, cults, heresies black madonna cathars gnosticism manichaeism tribal mysteries ghost dance macumba santeria satanic cults the rise of satanism in the middle ages black mass catherine montvoisin gilles de rais anton lavey s first church of satan temple of set ufo cults aetherius society heaven s gate the raelians twentieth-century spiritual expression bran

ms that the uninitiated faced concerning life, death, and immortality. not only did the initiates know that their communion with the patron god or goddess would continue after death, but that they would eventually leave hades to be born again in another life experience. the early mystery schools of the greeks centered around a kind of play or ritual reenactment of the life of such gods as osiris, dionysus, demeter divinities most often associated with the underworld, the realm of the dead, the powers of darkness, and the process of rebirth. because of the importance of the regenerative process, the rites of the mysteries were usually built around a divine female as the agent of transformation and regeneration. while the initiates of the mystery cult enacted the life cycle of the gods who t

ons of greece the eleusinian, the dionysian, and the orphic were brought to that country from abroad sometime during the closing centuries of the prehistoric era (c. 2000 b.c.e. the oldest of the mysteries, the dionysian, was probably developed in thrace, in the eastern balkans, and introduced to the greeks. once the mysteries were accepted by the greek initiates, the passion plays of demeter and dionysus became popular in the sixth century b.c.e. and again in the hellenistic age in the fourth century b.c.e. this was when individualism was encouraged and the old gods of olympus fell into disregard. perhaps the time of greatest popularity for the mysteries occurred during the closing centuries of pagan worship practices and the advent of the christian era. the early christian fathers regard

parr book, 1999. de boer, j. z, j. r. hale, and j. chanton. new evidence of the geological origins of the ancient delphic oracle. geology, 29 (2001: 707 710. piccardi, l. active faulting at delphi, greece: seismotectonic remarks and a hypothesis for the geologic environment of a myth. geology 28 (2001: 651 54. gaskell, g. a. dictionary of all scriptures& myths. avenel, n.j: gramercy books, 1981. dionysus next to the eleusinian mysteries in importance and popularity was the dionysian, which was centered around dionysus (bacchus, a god of life, vegetation, and the vine, who, because all things growing and green must one day decay and die, was also a divinity of the underworld. those initiates who entered into communion with dionysus drank heavily of the fruit of the vine and celebrated with

those initiates who entered into communion with dionysus drank heavily of the fruit of the vine and celebrated with feasts that encouraged them to dress themselves in leaves and flowers and even to take on the character of the god himself, thereby also achieving his power. once the god had entered into union with the initiates, they would experience a new spiritual rebirth. this divine union with dionysus marked the beginning of a new life for the initiates, who, thereafter, regarded themselves as superior t h e g a l e e n c y c l o p e d i a o f t h e u n u s u a l a n d u n e x p l a i n e d 266 mystery religions and cults theoracle at delphi was a major religious site for 2,000 years. beings. and since dionysus was the lord of death, as well as the lord of life, the initiates believed

e e n c y c l o p e d i a o f t h e u n u s u a l a n d u n e x p l a i n e d 266 mystery religions and cults theoracle at delphi was a major religious site for 2,000 years. beings. and since dionysus was the lord of death, as well as the lord of life, the initiates believed that their union with him would continue even after death and immortality was now within their grasp. the earlier rites of dionysus were conducted on a much lower level than those of eleusis, and often featured the sacrifice of an animal usually a goat that was torn to pieces by the initiates, whose savagery was meant to symbolize the incarnation, death, and resurrection of the divinity. although the cult was not looked upon with high regard by the sages and philosophers of the day, amulets and tablets with fragments

e came into contact. then, so the legend goes, he disappeared, and many presumed him dead. in reality, he had traveled to memphis, where he spent the next 20 years studying in the egyptian mystery schools. when he returned to greece, he was known only by the name that he had received in the initiation rites, orpheus of arpha, the one who heals with light. orpheus next changed the cult of bacchus/ dionysus and set about restructuring the spiritual soul of greece, recreating the mysteries by blending the religion of zeus with that of dionysus. orpheus taught that dionysis zagreus, the horned son of zeus and persephone, the great god of the orphic mysteries, was devoured by the evil titans while zeus was otherwise distracted. athena managed to save dionysus zagreus s heart while the enraged z

agreus, the horned son of zeus and persephone, the great god of the orphic mysteries, was devoured by the evil titans while zeus was otherwise distracted. athena managed to save dionysus zagreus s heart while the enraged zeus destroyed the titans with his thunderbolts. zeus gave the heart of his beloved son to the earth goddess semele who dissolved it in a potion, drank thereof, and gave birth to dionysus, the god of vegetation, whose cycle of birth, death, and rebirth reflects the cycle of growth, decay, and rebirth seen in nature. orpheus preached that humankind was created from the ashes of the titans who devoured dionysus zagreus; therefore, the physical bodies of humans are formed from the evil of the titans, but they also contain within them a tiny particle of the divine essence. wit

so it is the duty of each human to repress the titanic element and allow the dionysian an opportunity to assert itself. the final release of the divine essence within, the redemption of the soul, is the utmost goal of the orphic process. this process may best be obtained by the soul reincarnating in a number of physical bodies in different life experiences. in orphic thought, the gods apollo and dionysus were two representations or revelations of the same divinity. dionysus represented the mysteries of life, the secrets of past and future incarnations, the true relationship between spirit and body truths that could only be accessible to the initiates of the mystery school. dionysus was the expression of the evolving soul in the universe. apollo personified those same truths as they could

ic initiation was the process of the initiate absorbing the healing light of orpheus and purifying the heart and spirit. among the truths that orpheus had learned in the egyptian sanctuaries was that god is one, but the gods are many and diverse. orpheus had t h e g a l e e n c y c l o p e d i a o f t h e u n u s u a l a n d u n e x p l a i n e d mystery religions and cults 267 thegods apollo and dionysus were two representations or revelations of the same divinity. descended into hell, the underworld, and braved its challenges and subdued the demons of the pit. the disciples of the orphic/dionysus schools were promised the celestial fire of zeus, the light retrieved by orpheus, that enabled their souls to triumph over death. these things would all be enacted in the mystery play that depic

world, and braved its challenges and subdued the demons of the pit. the disciples of the orphic/dionysus schools were promised the celestial fire of zeus, the light retrieved by orpheus, that enabled their souls to triumph over death. these things would all be enacted in the mystery play that depicted orpheus descending into hades and observing persephone, the queen of the dead, being awakened by dionysus and being reborn in his arms, thus perpetuating the cycle of rebirth and death, past and future, blending into a timeless immortality. while other schools of reincarnation see the process of rebirth as an evolving of the soul ever higher with each incarnation, the orphic concept introduces the aspect of the soul being gradually purged or purified through the sufferings incurred during eac

THE STAR IN THE WEST BY CAPTAIN FULLER A CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE WORKS OF ALEISTER CROWLEY

h all the colours of the opal, deepening into a limitless amethyst, darkens, and the sun goes out. the spangled pall of night is drawn, and the lull of death is o fer us; but no, hark! the distant boom of a beetle is carried across the still glowing welkin, it is the signal drum announcing the marriage of night and day. the crescent moon rises, diaphanous and fair, and the world wakes to a chant: dionysus i bring ye wine from above, from the vats of the storied sun; for every one of ye love, and life for every one. ye shall dance on hill and level; ye shall sing in hollows and height in the festal mystical revel, the rapturous bacchanal rite! the rocks and trees are yours, and the waters under the hill, by the might of that which endures, the holy heaven of will! i kindle a flame like a to

f which it has flowed a mass of molten and subservient acquiescence. lost in the axiomatic whirlpools of egotistical conceit, it has been cast up once again on the shores of unknowable despair, a veritable mass of philosophic pig-iron, of no further use than that of acting as ballast to the good ship which is to carry us across the turbid ocean of raging eclectics. crowley is more than a new-born dionysus, he is more than a blake, a rabelais or a heine; for he stands before us as some priest of apollo, hovering etwixt the misty blue of the heavens, and the more certain purple of the vast waters of the deep. before the name of that which is beyond life and death, beyond matter and energy, beyond the human and the mortal; he stands, holding before us as a standard, the homologue of the labar

THE SECRET RITUALS OF THE OTO

nd not allowing himself to be tricked into a pledge of secrecy. i ask you, brother master magician, if you clearly understand, and heartily agree, these principles? c (with sign) i do. e: it now becomes my duty to inform you that the ceremony through which you have just passed, is in every essential the lesser or infernal rite of the slain god, whose name is john, or some sound similar, as jonah, dionysus, janus, dianus, nu, anu, oannes, on, noah, and many others. this god of water is of the north, because the sun touches his northern limit as he enters the watery sign cancer, and turns towards the south, represented by the goat-gods, set, had, hades, adad, odin, adonis, adonii, atys, etc, who are of the earthly sign capricornus, the southern limit of the sun s journey. as the end of summe

TWO ESSAYS ON THE WORSHIP OF PRIAPUS

ver. 609. 78 on the worship that he returned the exhalations in dews, tempered with the genial heat which he had transfused into the atmosphere, to restore and replenish the waste of the day. hence, when they personified the attributes, they revered the one as the diurnal, and the other as the nocturnal sun, and in their mystic worship, as macrobius says,1 called the former apollo, and the latter dionysus or bacchus. the mythological personages of castor and pollux, who lived and died alternately, were allegories of the same dogma; hence the two asteriscs, by which they are distinguished on the medals of locri, argos, and other cities. the p ans, or war-songs, which the greeks chanted at the onset of their battles2 were originally sung to apollo,3 who was called p on; and macrobius tells u

TYSON DONALD THE POWER OF THE WORD

t those chants were. more importantly, we do not know how they were vibrated, because they were never written down. the druids of the celts conveyed their magical wisdom verbally. because of the strong bardic tradition of the later druids, it very likely consisted of vocalizations of words of power, but again, the technique as well as the particular chants has been lost. the female worshippers of dionysus among the ancient greeks employed bloodcurdling cries that were reported to freeze the blood of any man foolish enough to venture within hearing range. some of these wild chants have been preserved, but the manner of their vocalization has been lost. the universal features of language allow us to make some general observations on the magical vibration of names. consonants for the most par

WICCA EIGHT SABBATS OF WITCHCRAFT

. that is why both martin luther and john calvin abhorred it, why the puritans refused to acknowledge it, much less celebrate it (to them, no day of the year could be more holy than the sabbath, and why it was even made illegal in boston! the holiday was already too closely associated with the birth of older pagan gods and heroes. and many of them (like oedipus, theseus, hercules, perseus, jason, dionysus, apollo, mithra, horus and even arthur) possessed a narrative of birth, death, and resurrection that was uncomfortably close to that of jesus. and to make matters worse, many of them pre-dated the christian savior. ultimately, of course, the holiday is rooted deeply in the cycle of the year. it is the winter solstice that is being celebrated, seed-time of the year, the longest night and s

WICCA WITCHCRAFT TODAY

ch made me think that voodoo was not solely african in origin but had been compounded in america out of european witchcraft and african mythology; and when i visited the villa of the mysteries at pompeii i realised the great resemblance to the cult. apparently these people were using the witches' processes. i know, of course, that ancient and modern writers have agreed that the greek mysteries of dionysus, zeus, orpheus, zagreus and eleusis were similar; therefore since each mystery had different rites and myths but was the same, this must mean that they had some inner secret. in his learned work the villa of the mysteries, professor vittorio macchioro has this to say on the subject 'the mystery is a special form of religion which existed amongst all ancient peoples, and among primitive pe

ation brought about by suggestion. in its most perfect stage this palingenesis is a veritable substitution of personality: the man is invested with the personality of a god, a hero or an ancestor, repeating and reproducing the gestures and actions attributed to him by tradition' only those deities who, owing to their own mythical history, bore within themselves the elements of new birth, demeter, dionysus, isis, atys and adonis, could confer palingenesis, the identification of the self with the divinity, owing to the special conception which the greeks had of the relations between life and death. the postulant passed through the divine myth, revived the life of god and passed, together with the god of sorrow, into joy, from life unto death. professor macchioro gives this account 'all the m

urely magical ceremony, but with time it acquired a spiritual and moral content. the mystery religions had an enormous influence on the greek conscience, enabling it to comprehend the value of the christian message 'orphism was the most important of these deriving its name from its alleged founder. it was a particular form of that orgiastic and ecstatic religion which originated in the worship of dionysus and consisted in living over again his myth. zagreus, the son of zeus and kore (persephone, is slain at hera's instigation by the titans who tear him to pieces and devour him except for his heart which athene saves and of which is born, as the son of zeus and semele, the second dionysus. palingenesis here consisted in dying and being reborn again in zagreus. mankind had birth from the ash

ne saves and of which is born, as the son of zeus and semele, the second dionysus. palingenesis here consisted in dying and being reborn again in zagreus. mankind had birth from the ashes of the titans smitten by the thunderbolt of zeus in punishment for their crime. this is why all men bear the burden of the titans' crime; but as the titans devoured zagreus, man has within him also the nature of dionysus. theologians said that it was the titanic nature innate in the body from which man must free himself to reunite with the dionysiac nature through the agency of the mysteries. thus the orphic mystery took a lofty moral and spiritual significance and exercised great influence on lofty souls such as heraclitus, pindar and plato, and when christianity spread it was orphism that gave the funda

zagreus '1. the liturgy begins with a maiden who, aided by an attendant and two young boys, one holding a mirror before her, and superintended by a priestess, is performing her bridal toilet. she is draped in the sindon, a ritual veil which was placed on the neophytes in the mysteries; she is the mystic bride, the catechumen, preparing to celebrate under the symbol of matrimony her communion with dionysus. it is she who is the protagonist of the entire liturgy '2. draped in the sindon the maiden reverently approaches a nude youth evidenced to be a priest by the high dionysiac boots he is wearing. this embades, under the tender guidance of a priestess, is reading a charge or ritual from a roll in order that the neophyte may be made cognisant of the rules, or maybe of the significance of the

be celebrated before the communion, as was the custom in primitive christianity '4. after the celebration of the agape the neophyte is worthy of a new birth, represented allegorically. a satyr and satyra are seated; a fawn is stretching out its muzzle towards the satyra who is offering it her breast; on the left old silenus gazes on the scene playing ecstatically on a lyre. in the myth the child dionysus was transformed into a kid to hide him from the wrath of hera. this kid which is being suckled symbolises the infancy of dionysus, and silenus is present because he is to be the pedagogue of the god; the scene represents symbolically the new birth of the neophyte. she is seen again in zagreus under the form of a kid, which is why there is found on the golden tablets buried with the initia

he shrinks back as though to flee and makes the gesture of one who would banish from her eyes a terrible vision. the hemispherical case at which the youth gazes ecstatically is a magical mirror; he is fascinated and falls victim to a hallucinatory monoideism and, as happens in crystallomancy, sees in the mirror a series of visions which have their centre and starting point in the mask and life of dionysus. he sees unrolling itself in the mirror the life of the god, sees how he was rent to pieces and devoured by the titans, and, in short, sees the future destiny of the neophyte, who, if she would be born again as a new creature, must die together with zagreus. it is this dread dionysiac death which he announces to the maiden. it is a divination which is being wrought and it is silenus, firs

irror the life of the god, sees how he was rent to pieces and devoured by the titans, and, in short, sees the future destiny of the neophyte, who, if she would be born again as a new creature, must die together with zagreus. it is this dread dionysiac death which he announces to the maiden. it is a divination which is being wrought and it is silenus, first the pedagogue and then the mystagogue of dionysus, by whom it is wrought. besides including the annunciation of the future death of the neophyte, this scene includes further repetition of the most important gesture attributed by myth to the god: dionysus when a child beheld in a magic mirror, fashioned for him by hephaistos, his future destiny. another tradition is that the titans slew zagreus by showing him in a mirror his own misshapen

y hephaistos, his future destiny. another tradition is that the titans slew zagreus by showing him in a mirror his own misshapen face, so distracting his attention that they killed him. now as the sacramental drama consisted in the repetition of the actions of the god to obtain by this imitation communion with him, this explains why the neophyte, or the youth on her behalf, gazes on the mirror as dionysus did so as to become as dionysus and die with him '6. the neophyte after receiving the annunciation would now become the mystical bride of dionysus, and to signify symbolically this wedlock she is about to uncover a huge phallus which she has brought in a sacred basket. she places this on the ground and seems humbly to crave the assent of a winged semi-nude figure, shod with the dionysiac

ing the annunciation would now become the mystical bride of dionysus, and to signify symbolically this wedlock she is about to uncover a huge phallus which she has brought in a sacred basket. she places this on the ground and seems humbly to crave the assent of a winged semi-nude figure, shod with the dionysiac boot, a ritual roll in her girdle and a rod in her hand. it is talate, the daughter of dionysus, the personification and executrix of the initiation '7. talate stays her gesture with her hand and lifts the rod whilst the maiden kneels bewildered and terrified with her face well-nigh hidden in the lap of a compassionate priestess, to endure the ritual flagellation which replaces and symbolises death. physically she does not die, but she passes symbolically through death and dies myst

ot die, but she passes symbolically through death and dies mystically as the stigmatists die crucified in christ '8. dead with zagreus, she is now born again with him; that is to say, she has become a bacchante and is no more a woman but a divine human being. we see her now nude and frenziedly dancing, aided by a priestess who holds the thyrsus, the symbol of the new dionysiac life. the spirit of dionysus has descended upon her. man has become god, and dionysus is present unseen at the miracle. we behold him in the space between the fifth and sixth scenes, half reclining in the lap of kore, one foot unshod according to the rite, contemplating with divine indifference all that man may suffer for him. thus the mystery is wrought 'the orphic basilica, the great hall, was the hall of initiatio

th, to know the teachings of the brotherhood within the cult, how to attain reunion with their loved ones who had passed on, how to be reincarnated in this way, and, probably, in ways of persuading the gods to favour them and grant their requests; in other words, magic. each of the ancient mysteries at cabrai, samothrace and eleusis had a different myth and was dedicated to a different god, zeus, dionysus, orpheus or another, and performed different ceremonies; but since the classical writers say the mysteries were all the same, the teachings behind the myths may well have been identical. the tribal rites of most primitive peoples include purification, tests of fortitude, instruction in tribal lore, sexual knowledge, charms, religious and magical knowledge, and often a ritual of death and

e dust inwards. in the isle of man it is a common superstition that you must sweep inwards or you will sweep the luck away. in lady kyteler's case there was sufficient evidence to prove the existence of witchcraft and of a coven of thirteen. most likely she was in communication with an irish branch of the fairy or little people who celebrated rites similar to those used in england and to those of dionysus in ancient rome. the second charge against her was that 'she was wont to offer sacrifices to devils, live animals which she and her company tore limb from limb, and made oblation by scattering them at the crossways to a certain demon called robin, son of artes, or robinartison. as remarked above, the name robin was a common one for a spirit, this time perhaps an artful or tricky one('arte

resume that robin mixed soot with his protective ointment so as not to be recognised. they were probably members of a local cult who carried out magical ceremonies to bring themselves luck. there were thirteen people accused but robin was never arrested, so the 'tricky spirit' was probably of high rank or a churchman. thus we may presume that a witch cult which had some resemblance to the cult of dionysus was in full swing at that date and consisted of both irish and english members. mr. hughes mentions that the municipal archives of exeter show that in 1302 the grand jury found that 'dionysia baldwyn does often receive john and agnes de wormhille and joan de cornwale of taignmouth who are witches; and the said dionysia consorts with them' the name dionysia suggests to me that her parents

g unbaptised babies is ridiculous; it was only invented to scare people into having their babies baptised and paying the fees. it is impossible for large numbers of unbaptised babies to disappear without the police asked questions. the sabbath i asked my friends what was the real meaning of the sabbath and they don't know. they know that books say that it is from sabazius, who was identified with dionysus and zeus, also said to be the same as the jewish oreb, lord god of sabaoth. plutarch in synus, vol. iv, 6, says that the jews worship dionysus and that their sabbath was so named after sabazius, which was one of his forms. my friends agree that the cult of dionysus had some connection with their own. this is clear from some of the rituals. they have also read that the first jews who settl

WOLFSON ELLIOT ALEF MEM TAU KABBALISTIC MUSINGS ON TIME TRUTH AND DEATH

. temporal description of human life. in phenomenology and natural existence: essays in honor of marvin farber, edited by dale riepe, 142 150. albany: state university of new york press, 1973. peuch, henri-charles. gnosis and time. in man and time: papers from the eranos yearbooks, edited by joseph campbell, 38 84. princeton: princeton university press, 1957. pfeffer, rose. nietzsche: disciple of dionysus. lewisburg: bucknell university press, 1972. philipse, herman. heidegger s philosophy of being: a critical interpretation. princeton: princeton university press, 1998. pimentel, luz aurora. metaphoric narration: paranarrative dimensions in a la recherche du temps perdu. toronto: university of toronto press, 1990. pines, shlomo. studies in islamic atomism. translated by michael schwarz. ed

ALEISTER CROWLEY EQUINOX EQ I 3 2

belongeth unto thee! either thy love or thine anger, all must again re-enter; for nothing canst thou lose; all must tend unto thy honour and majesty. thou art lord alone, and there is none beside thee! thou dost what thou wilt with thy mighty arm, and none can escape from thee! thou alone helpest in their necessity the humble, the meek-hearted and the poor, who 3 weh note: this is the cry of the dionysian mysteries. it was shouted to warn the uninitiated that the new candidates were about to run amuck. rough translation "look out! look out! here come the drunks" submit themselves unto thee; and whosoever humbleth himself in dust and ashes before thee, to such an one art thou propitious! who would not praise thee then, lord of the universe! who would not extol thee! unto whom there is no l

DAVID ICKE THE BIGGEST SECRET

grand masters and they wore white gloves andaprons and communicated through secret signs and handshakes.22 all this washappening more than a thousand years before the official creation of freemasonry!they were given the patronage of the king of lombardy and were made masters of allmasons and architects in italy.23 it was this secret order, the successors to the earlierbrotherhood architects, the dionysian artificers, who provided the bridge betweenthose who built the ancient pagan temples and their brethren, who would build the greatchristian cathedrals of europe. the same brotherhood built both! the ancient templeswere shrines to the pagan deities, and the christian cathedrals were also shrines to thepagan deities. the only difference was that, with the latter, the public thought they we

DION FORTUNE MYSTICAL QABALA

here of luna. we see then a triangle composed of the lady of nature, the lord of books, and the mistress of witchcraft; in other words, subconsciousness and super- consciousness correlate in psychism. 29. anyone who is familiar with practical mysticism knows that there are three paths of superconsciousness-devotional mysticism, which correlates with tiphareth; nature mysticism, of the inebriating dionysian. type, which equates with the venus sphere of netzach; and intellectual mysticism of the occult type, which equates with hod, the sphere of thoth, lord of magic. tiphareth, as will be seen by reference to the diagram of the tree, belongs to a higher plane than any member of the third triangle; yesod, on the other hand, is drawing very near to the sphere of earth. 30. to yesod are assigne

eration, wherein the operator takes power into his own hands, should commence with the invocation of adonai to indwell his temple of earth and rule therein, that no force may break from its allegiance to the one. mystical qabala page 198 83. thdse who call upon the name of adonai call upon god made manifest in nature, which is the aspect of god adored by initiates of the nature mysteries, whether dionysian or isiac-which concern the different ways of opening super-consciousness via subconsciousness. 84. the archangel is the great angel sandalphon, who is sometimes called by qabalists the dark angel; whereas metatron, the angel of the countenance, is the bright angel. these two angels are held to stand behind the right and left shoulders of the soul in its hours of crisis. they might be tak

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF OCCULTISM AND PARAPSYCHOLOGY VOL 1

in paris masquerading as an indian spirit and left his mantle in the hands of the woman who seized him. first church of satan the first church of satan emerged in the 1990s as an internet fellowship focused upon the ideas of lord egan, the public persona of john dewey alle (b. 1951, a former member of the church of satan. alle had joined the church of satan in 1970 and adopted what he saw as its dionysian celebration of the individual. he believed that it was the duty of people to throw off the self-image imposed by their early social training and remake themselves as the unique individuals they could become. through the 1980s alle turned his attention from the world of satanism to pursue other concerns. when he once again returned to the satanic subculture in the mid-1990s, he noticed th

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF OCCULTISM AND PARAPSYCHOLOGY VOL 2

for example, suggests the possibility of that brotherhood having received its tenets from the east. it seems very likely that its rites were oriental in origin, and certainly the occult systems of europe owed much to the templars, who, probably, after the fall of their own order, secretly formed others or joined existing societies. masons have a hypothesis that they inherited traditions from the dionysian artificers, the artisans of byzantium, and the building brotherhoods of western europe. this is not a proven theory; however, it is much more feasible than the romantic legend concerning the rise of freemasonry at the time of the building of the temple of solomon. one of the chief reasons that we know so little concerning these brotherhoods in medieval times is that the charge of dabblin

FRANCIS A YATES GIORDANO BRUNO AND THE HERMETIC TRADITION

eing orders of a purely spiritual or divine nature. 1 see r. klibansky, the continuity of the platonic tradition, london, warburg institute, 1939, pp. 42 ff. 2 hence he was, for ficino, not only the oilmen of platonism but the columen of christian theology (commentary on dionysius' liber de trinitate; ficino, p. 1013. 117 pseudo-dionysius and theology of a christian magus nevertheless, though the dionysian orders are not, strictly speaking, a cosmological religion, there is something in the whole idea of orders set out in this fashion which recalls the gnostic religion of the world, or religious experience in the setting of the cosmic orders. r. roques has drawn attention to the parallels between the dionysian mysticism and gnosticism, particularly of the hermetic type, and has suggested a

ubim, thrones; the hierarchy of the father. dominions, virtues, powers; the hierarchy of the son. principalities, archangels, angels; the hierarchy of the spirit.3 ficino interprets dionysius as having said that the first order drinks its liquor from the trinity direct (liquorem suum a sola' r. roques, l'univers dionysien, paris, 1954, pp. 240 ff. 2 recent scholarship is tending to put the pseudo-dionysian writings a good deal earlier than the sixth century a.d, the date formerly conjectured. see eleuterio elorduy, ammonio sakkas. i. la doctrina de la creacion y del mal en proclo y el ps. areopagita, burgos, 1959, pp. 23 ff. 3 de christiana religione, cap. xiv (ficino, p. 19. 118 pseudo-dionysius and theology of a christian magus haurit trinitate, the second gets it through the first, and

ers to the inferno and paradiso. the opening of the chapter on souls returning to their star recalls paradiso, iv, 49-54- 119 pseudo-dionysius and theology of a christian magus light, in ficino's exposition may possibly be due to the influence of dante. the notion that the supernal light is reflected down the angelic hierarchies, flashing as in mirrors from one to another, is a characteristically dionysian conception, to which dante had given a somewhat new turn by describing how, as he and beatrice mount through the spheres of the planets, the light changes in quality at each ascent, reaching ever more dazzhng degrees of intensity in the eighth sphere, the ninth sphere and the empyrean. ficino, in the passage analysed above, seems to be definitely using, splendor of light in the eighth sp

requently has occasion to mention the "three worlds" as understood by the cabalists, who divided the universe into the elemental world or terrestrial world, the celestial world or the world of the stars, and the supercelestial world. between all these worlds there was continuity of influences. pico found no difficulty in linking this concept both with neoplatonism and with the christian or pseudo-dionysian mysticism. he makes the link with neoplatonism by identifying (as ficino had also done) the angelic world with what the philosophers call the intelligible world. the highest of the three worlds is called "by the theologians angelic, and by the philosophers, intelligible; then comes the celestial world, and last the sublunar world which we inhabit.2 he then goes on to draw the parallel wi

sted,3 that in the proem to 1 ibid, pp. 255, 257. 2 ibid, p. 189. 3 e. garin, giovanni pico della mirandola, florence, 1937, pp. 194 ff. 122 pseudo-dionysius and theology of a christian magus the third book of the heptaplus' where he refers mysteriously to some perhaps deeper connection between the teachings of dionysius and those of the "ancient hebrews, pico means to suggest a comparison of the dionysian hierarchies with the sephiroth. in the sephiroth also, there is a certain gradation, the highest of them being concerned with pure contemplation of unutterable mysteries whilst the lower ones seem to have more connection with the affairs of men. there is a circular movement in the sephiroth (which pico shows that he has understood in cabalist conclusion 66) by which the first can connect

8) fludd correlates hierarchies and spheres with the twenty-two letters of the hebrew alphabet. the difference between ficino and pico within the angelic plus cosmological framework is that pico, through practical cabala, has a means of reaching and operating with the angelic world which was denied to ficino. the cabalistic angels would be for pico fundamentally the same as the myriads of pseudo-dionysian angels,2 the change being that cabala gave more information about them and how to make contact with them. 1 pico, de hominis dignitate, heptaplus etc, ed. garin, p. 247. 2 in the second cabalistic conclusion (in the set of 48, pico says "noucm sunt angelorum hierarchiae, quarum nomina cherubim, seraphim, hasmalim, hagot, aralim, tarsisim, ophanim, thephrasim, isim (pico, p. 81. these are

hominis dignitate, heptaplus etc, ed. garin, p. 247. 2 in the second cabalistic conclusion (in the set of 48, pico says "noucm sunt angelorum hierarchiae, quarum nomina cherubim, seraphim, hasmalim, hagot, aralim, tarsisim, ophanim, thephrasim, isim (pico, p. 81. these are the names of cabalistic orders of angels (through whom the sephiroth are approached, as the trinity is approached through the dionysian hierarchies) but pico gives only nine of them 5* 123 pseudo-dionysius and theology of a christian magus if we look (pi. 9) at the frontispiece of a work published in 1646 by the jesuit, athanasius kircher, who was a most notable descendant of the hermetic-cabalist tradition founded by pico, we see there the name in hebrew surrounded by rays and clouds in which hosts of angels are indicat

angels in their relation to the trinity, dionysius also sets forth a "negative way. there are no words for god in his actual essence; no names for him as he really is; therefore he is at the last best defined by negatives, by a kind of darkness, by saying that he is not goodness, not beauty, not truth, meaning by this that he is nothing that we can understand by those names. the mysticism of the dionysian negative way brought forth some very beautiful spiritual fruits in the course of the ages, for example the english fourteenth-century cloud of unknowing, in which the unknown author, following the hid divinity of denis,1 puts himself under a cloud of unknowing within which, with a blind stirring of love,2 he reaches forth towards the deus absconditus. and the learned philosopher nicholas

text society, 1955) is the title of a mystical treatise related to the cloud of unknowing. 2 cloud of unknowing, ed. justin mccann, london, 1925, p. 19' klibansky, op. cit, pp. 42, 47 (there should be ten) and begins the list with cherubim and seraphim which do not come first in the cabalistic order. his object must surely have been to bring the cabalistic orders as close as possible to the nine dionysian hierarchies. 124 pseudo-dionysius and theology of a christian magus ficino made a new translation of dionysius on the divine names in which there are various passages on the negative theology and on the thought that god is beyond all knowledge. god, says dionysius, is above bonitas, above essentia, above vita, above veritas, above all his other names, so that in a sense he has no name. y

ysticism, for the ensoph, out of which the ten sephiroth emerge, is the nothing, the unnameable, unknown deus absconditus, and the highest and most remote of the sephiroth, keter or the crown, disappears into the nothing.4 so that here, too, though there are as it were ten names in the sephiroth, the highest is the nothing or the no name. i cannot find that pico anywhere relates the ensoph to the dionysian negative theology, though the fifteenth orphic conclusion is significant: 1 pseudo-dionysius, divine names, i. 2 ficino, p. 1034. 3 c.h, ii, p. 321 (asclepius, 30. 4 see scholem, major trends in jewish mysticism, pp. 12 ff "5 pseudo-dionysius and theology of a christian magus idem est nox apud orpheum& ensoph in cabala.1 it would be but a short step, in pico's mind, from the orphic nox t

ian negative theology, though the fifteenth orphic conclusion is significant: 1 pseudo-dionysius, divine names, i. 2 ficino, p. 1034. 3 c.h, ii, p. 321 (asclepius, 30. 4 see scholem, major trends in jewish mysticism, pp. 12 ff "5 pseudo-dionysius and theology of a christian magus idem est nox apud orpheum& ensoph in cabala.1 it would be but a short step, in pico's mind, from the orphic nox to the dionysian darkness. there is a similar mystical conception in the platonic conclusions: ideo amor ab orpheo sine oculis dicitur, quia est supra intellectum. 2 this describes in terms of the blind cupid the same "negative" experience as that of which dionysius speaks. it is the only clue to pico's synthesis that he makes it on a mystical level, the many names which he collects from all philosophies

of magic consists in love. the work of magic is a certain drawing of one thing to another by natural similitude. the parts of this world, like members of one animal, depend all on one love, and are connected together by natural communion. from this community of relationship is born the communal love: from which love is born the common drawing together: and this is the true magic."1 in the pseudo-dionysian celestial hierarchies there is a current running between them all which he calls eros and compares to a perpetual circle arising from the good and returning to the good.2 m. de gandillac has pointed out that, in another passage of the symposium commentary,3 ficino has deformed this erotic current, giving it a sense quite absent in pseudo-dionysius where it is a gift of pure grace, and he

not necessary to go on with more of this. it is of course cabalism which agrippa derives partly from reuchlin and trithemius4 but which is ultimately based on pico. agrippa is thinking on the lines which we studied in the last chapter; practical cabala, or cabalist magic, which puts the operator in touch with angels or sephiroth or the power of divine names, also puts him in touch with the pseudo-dionysian angelic hierarchies, and thus becomes a christian magic which is organically connected with celestial or elemental magic through the continuity linking all the three worlds. in agrippa, this magic is definitely connected with religious practices. he has much in his later chapters on religious ceremonies and rites,s on rich ritual with music, tapers and lamps, bells, altars. in a chapter

, by symphorien champier in 1507).5 the admired egyptian religion included sun-worship, and the sun is among the fist of the gods of the egyptians given in the asclepius.6 these egypto-hermetic sun-teachings undoubtedly influenced ficino's sun-magic, and they connected philosophically with plato on the sun as the intelligible splendour, or chief image of the ideas, and religiously with the pseudo-dionysian light symbolism. all these influences can be perceived, working together, in ficino's de sole and de lumine. as we have tried to outline in previous chapters, the concentration on the sun in the astral magic, led upwards through the christian neoplatonism of pseudo-dionysius to the supreme lux dei, and in this way the sun very nearly is for ficino what it is for hermes or for the emperor

in. moreover, even the christian basis of the synthesis of the christian magus is shaken when erasmus in his new testament paraphrases, throws doubt on dionysius the areopagite as the author of the hierarchies* this critical impiety, in which erasmus was following the bold valla, greatly shocked the english carthusians4 and must also, one would think, have alarmed his friend john colet, an ardent dionysian. thus in the vicinity of erasmus' critical (and also entirely nonscientific) mind, the whole set-up of the renaissance magus, as so impressively formulated by ficino and pico, would dwindle into vain dreaming based on doubtful scholarship. and, as a christian, the erasmian would repudiate prisca theologia as not the true, 1 erasmus, paraclesis (1519, in opera omnia, leyden, 1703-6, col

nce, j.w.c.i, xvii (1954, p- 254- 2 "mihi sane neque cabala neque talmud nunquam arrisit (opus ep, ed. cit. i l l, p. 589. he uses almost exactly the same phrase in another letter (ibid, iv, p. 100. cf. also ibid, i l l, p. 253; iv, p. 379; ix, p. 300. 3 see opus ep, ed. cit, i l l, p. 482; xi, p. i n, and the note on this page pointing out that erasmus queries the areopagite as the author of the dionysian writings in the paraphrases to acts 17 (erasmus, n.t, i5i6, p. 394) where he is following valla. 4 opus ep, ed. cit, xi, p. iii. 165 against magic (2) the humanist tradition pristine, gospel source to which the christian should return- huizinga has quoted the following words in an address by erasmus to anna of borselen as an example of how erasmus will flatter the "formal piety" of a pat

as a state in which religious toleration should be practised. in the following year, the french prince, francois d'anjou, was installed by 1 mornay, de la verite de la religion chretienne, antwerp, 1581, p. 38. 2 ibid, pp. 80, 98-100. 3 ibid, pp. ior-2. 4 ibid, pp. 106 ff, 740 ff. dagens article cited, pp. 9, n) has pointed out that mornay connects hermetic and cabalist teachings with the pseudo-dionysian mysticism. ibid, pp. 633 ff. 177 religious hermetism in the sixteenth century orange as the titular head of this state, which had but a short life and soon succumbed to the pressure of many disasters' the interesting thing is that those promoting this venture, and its efforts at religious toleration, were using the erasmian tradition of tolerance as a basis. there is thus a point in the

had behind it a conciliatory religious mission to protestant england. french religious hermetism, and the catholic religious hermetism of a capucin like rosseli, is something which bruno would have known in the parisian atmosphere from which he came. nevertheless his own hermetism, his own "new philosophy" which he preaches as a palliative for the religious situation, is not the christian, pseudo-dionysian and angelic type of hermetism which we find in rosseli, though this writer ought to be carefully studied in connection with bruno. in this rapid survey of the tremendous subject of hermetism in the sixteenth century i have picked out only a few examples, chosen with a view to assisting the estimate, to be made in the next chapters, of bruno's position as a hermetic philosopher. i now com

t of europe in the sixteenth century, england was in a curious position of isolation, owing to the religious convulsions through which she passed. the adaptation of catholic theology and philosophy to neoplatonism and the prisca theologia made a beginning in england with thomas more, john colet, and their circle. colet was certainly touched with ficinian influences, and his treatise on the pseudo-dionysian angelic hierarchies is an adaptation of english pre-reformation dionysian mysticism to the new dionysianism.1 more greatly admired pico della mirandola, whose biography by g. f. pico he translated into english for the edification of a nun.2 this biography contains references to pico's interests, translated by more as the "secrete misteryes of the hebrewes, caldyes and arabies" and "ye ol

GNOSTIC HANDBOOK

mankind entered the silver age. during the silver or lunar epoch, earth cults took ascendancy, the feminine and fertility became of paramount significance and this lead to an emphasis on pagan and gaia oriented traditions. the research of marija gimbutas and others gives a good outline of the worship that occurred in this period. as the ages unfounded, in reaction against this earthly epoch, the dionysian or copper age began. the worship of strength, violence, masculine virtues battle against the feminine values and patriarchal civilisations were formed. while these civilisations were of great historical importance, to achieve their balance they suppressed the lunar or silver cultures and hence existed as a reaction rather than as a creative expression. this being so, it only took so long

lues and patriarchal civilisations were formed. while these civilisations were of great historical importance, to achieve their balance they suppressed the lunar or silver cultures and hence existed as a reaction rather than as a creative expression. this being so, it only took so long before the clashes between the two forces dragged man into the current age, that of the kali yuga. now lunar and dionysian, feminine and masculine, sky and earth are in conflict and battle and will continue so until the age ends in bloodshed. evola decried the decadent nature of the modern world and its social and political isms and ologies and demanded a return to old world values, which he felt were epitomised by the teutonic knights, knights who could act as spiritual warriors waging war against the whole

LEADBEATER C W THE HIDDEN LIFE IN FREEMASONRY 2E

ather-teacher, or the teacher from the father(*the masonic initiation, p. 100) that hiram was a widow fs son is also a significant fact. horus as the child of isis was the reincarnation of his own father osiris, and so as a posthumous child might well be described as a widow fs son. 698. though of the tribe of naphtali, he was born and resided in tyre, and may well therefore have learned from the dionysian fraternity which had a centre there. 699. death and resurrection 700. whatever we may think of the traditional history as a story it is clear that it is a myth of death and rising again. the expression of it is perhaps somewhat clumsy, for no reference is made to the soul; it is merely the body which is raised to its feet, but it is obviously implied that when this was done in the proper

LEADBEATER CW GLIMPSES OF MASONIC HISTORY

e great achievements of the age. 275. in this work he was assisted by his ally, hiram king of tyre, who supplied a quantity of material for the building, and lent many clever craftsmen to aid in the work; for the phoenicians were more skilled in building than the jews, who were chiefly a pastoral people. also about fifty years before some of the wandering bands of masons who called themselves the dionysian artificers had settled in phoenicia, so king hiram was able to supply many expert workmen. this alliance is a matter of secular history, for josephus tells us that even in his day copies of the letters which passed between the two kings existed in the tyrian archives and might be consulted by students(*josephus. ant, viii) hiram abiff was also a real personage, though he did not meet his

o one of joy, and the aspirant was released from his confinement. after that he descended into the infernal regions, where he saw the sufferings of the wicked and the rewards of the good, and afterwards became an epopt or seer- one who could look upon the world from above, see it as a whole, and therefore understand it. among the followers of this bacchic form of the mysteries were the celebrated dionysian artificers, a secret society, bound by the most rigid pledges never to reveal their s and p w, and employing emblems adopted from the building trade. these wandering bands of workmen built temples all over syria and asia minor, just as the bands of freemasons afterwards built churches in europe. bro. ward writes of them: 406. they appear to have reached asia minor from the south-east, an

hird century we find manes, the widow s son, the link for all of those who believe in the great work done by the sons of the widow and the magian brotherhood. 654. in the fourth century the central figure for all occult students is the great iamblichus, the forerunner of the rosicrucians. 655. from the third to the ninth century the following organizations and sects appear; manichaeans; euchites; dionysian artificers; ophites; nestorians; eutychians, and the magistri comacini, of whom we may read in llorente s history of the inquisition, and in professor herzario s i maestri comacini. this author says: in this darkness which extended over all italy, only one small lamp remained alight, making a bright spark in the vast italian necropolis. it was from the magistri comacini. their names are

LETTER FROM A LUCIFEREAN

only performed within particular ritual circumstances, thus retaining their emotional associations with taboo, forbidden pleasures and heightened sensuality. ritual sodomy, scatology and flagellation have their uses, but these are greatly lessened if they become normative to the practitioner. in the brotherhood, the aim of sexual magia was to enable celebrants to move between both apollonian and dionysian modes of expression at will. the popular chaos magic obsession with deconditioning- which i understand as an attempt to surpass all personal boundaries tends to ignore the point that some boundaries if deliberately and carefully maintained, can be extremely useful for magical work. it is such fine distinctions which separate the magician from the mere dissolusethe final volume in his mag

LEWIS JAMES SATANISM TODAY AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION FOLKLORE AND POPULAR CULTURE

les, four books in which he argues against nonbelievers and heretics; against the errors of the greeks, in which he expresses his opinion about the doctrinal points disputed by greek and latin christians; and the unfinished summa theologica, a three-part treatise on sacred doctrine that contains the principles of thomistic theology. the element that provides the summa with conceptual unity is the dionysian circle, implying the going forth of all things from god and the return of all things to god. part one includes questions and treatises about creation, the angels, the human being, and divine government. the two divisions of the second part are about virtues, vices, law, and grace, and the questions contained aquinas, thomas 13 in the third part consider christ and his sacraments as indis

iam van. encyclopedia of hell. new york: thomas dunne books, 1998. first church of satan the first church of satan (fcos, founded by lord egan is a self-described heretical offshoot of the original church of satan. egan, a former member of anton lavey s young church of satan in the early 1970s, notes in an essay posted on the first church of satan s website that he fondly recalls the libertarian, dionysian bent of the church in those days. although acknowledging its laveyan lineage, the fcos also seeks to recover the teachings of aleister crowley [the first church of satan] recognizes that much of laveyan satanism in its original form was a simplified version of the teachings of the great dark magus aleister crowley.we believe, as did crowley, in the sovereign uniqueness of each individual

the ancient view that good angels were corrupted by the beauty of women.he argued that the sons of god were never involved with women, because the love they knew was not libidinous. also, in paradise lost, milton did not commit himself on the three principal angelological controversies between protestants and catholics, that is to say those on the worship of angels, the personal guardian, and the dionysian orders, although his personal views were probably protestant. milton s angels and demons are not merely epic machinery, but rather characters and agents in the justification of god s ways to men, and in the exploration of the causes and effects of the fall. milton follows an ancient tradition common to the great alexandrian school of christian philosophy, according to which the universe

MASTERING WITCHCRAFT

iderable differences, all or any of which can be incorporated into an initiation ceremony by the resourceful practitioner; he should also include any additional coven symbolism required. as always, it remains a matter of personal choice and intuition as to what is included and what left out, what bias the ritual should have- knowledge and power with its hermetic overtones or love and joy with its dionysian ones. evolve your coven emblems first, and the rest will follow naturally. the central idea to adhere to is one of the purification and regeneration of the candidate, symbolized by the impositions and removal of the blindfold and ligature, leading to his enlightenment and acceptance by the leaders by and for the entire coven. the sabbat rituals items 4, 5 and 6 have already been dealt wi

MICHAEL TSARION ATLANTIS ALIEN VISITATION AND GENETIC MANIPULATION

. they still provide one ofthe best means of creating family dislocation and personal existential malaise. they grope in the dark without light, and him maketh them to stagger like a drunken man(job 12:25) the youth are especially vulnerable. drugs and perversions of every kind, are madeattractive and chic. the hard drugs that are taken by teens are also made available bythe elites and the modern dionysian cults they fund. every decade they provide someother bromide or toy to distract and befuddle the masses. and the masters have evencreated designer diseases to thin the herd. fabian elitist bertrand russell spoke on thepopulation explosion in this demonic manner: hitherto, in this regard wars have been disappointing..we need to bring into being anotherblack plague from the sword to the sy

, personal physician to aldous huxley, for ford foundation-funded mescaline and lsdresearch. another meeting in 1953. aldous huxley was the grandson of rhodes round table group co-founder thomas huxley. aldous huxley, author of doors of perception, had a personal paradigm whichatlantis, alien visitation, and genetic manipulation381 appendix f: general chronology of events included the concepts of dionysian children of the sun and an illuminist-osiris-isis orientation.aldous was also tutored by h.g. wells, who was also in charge of british foreign intelligence in 1916.one of the curious books written by wells was the open conspiracy: blue prints for a world revolu-tion. huxley's initiation into psychedelic substance was provided by aleister crowley. it is thought bysome that the british pus

MORALS AND DOGMA

e the equilibrium of the universe, and be rulers over the masters of the world "the templars, like all other secret orders and associations, had two doctrines, one concealed and reserved for the masters, which was johannism; the other public, which was the _roman catholic. thus they deceived the adversaries whom they sought to supplant. hence free-masonry, vulgarly imagined to have begun with the dionysian architects or the german stone-workers, adopted saint john the evangelist as one of its patrons, associating with him, in order not to arouse the suspicions of rome, saint john the baptist, and thus covertly proclaiming itself the child of the kabalah and essenism together" for the johannism of the adepts was the kabalah of the earlier gnostics, degenerating afterward into those heretica

NAUDON PAUL THE SECRET HISTORY OF FREEMASONRY

ds concerning architect kings such as dadaelus, trophonius, and agamedes. a typical example is that of the priests of dionysius or bacchus. they were the first to erect theaters in greece and to institute dramatic representations principally linked to worship of the god. the architects responsible for the construction of these buildings maintained a priesthood through initiation; they were called dionysian workers or dionysiasts. we know through strabo and aulu-gelle that the dionysiasts' organization in teos was assigned to them as a residence by the kings of pergama around 300 b.c. they had a specific initiation as well as words and signs by which they recognized one another and were divided into separate communities called synods, colleges, or societies. each of these communities was un

PHILIP NEIL MYTHS LEGENDS EXPLAINED

dionysus pretended to weep and implored them to take pity. but they laughed at him, so the angry god, accompanied by the shadowy shapes of wild animals, stopped the boat and caused vines to sprout up the masts. the terrified sailors flung themselves into the sea, where they changed into dolphins all except the steersman who, having taken the god s side, was protected, and later initiated into the dionysian mysteries. leda and the swan 60 leda and the swan leda, wife of tyndareus of sparta, was another of zeus (roman jupiter s) human lovers. walking by the river eurotas, she was overpowered by zeus in the guise of a swan. as a result, she laid two eggs, from which hatched four children helen and clytemnestra, and polydeuces and castor although only helen and polydeuces are considered to be

RUBY TABLET OF SET

judas, the sodomites, and of course, the serpent. there is an entire school of gnostic groups, called ophites (greek for serpent, who are categorized in the group based on their reverence for the serpent. he was seen as an incarnation of the redeemer, which they called the logos, who brought divine knowledge to humankind. some of these groups are clearly of old origins, probably going back to the dionysian cults, egyptian mysteries, and oriental snake worshipping religions. a few ophite groups were also antiarchal, like the cainites and nicolations, claiming that the serpent should be revered because it defied the demiurge and was cursed. like most gnostics though, most ophite groups were in the ascetic category. while the ascetic gnostics avoided sex, most antiarchal gnostics were very se

THE GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE UNUSUAL UNEXPLAINED VOL 1

f light and darkness that populate the mysterious regions in between. 1 chapter exploration how the major religions view the afterlife buddhism christianity hinduism islam judaism ancient egypt and the afterlife egyptian book of the dead osiris: death and resurrection pyramid texts individual human experience with death and the afterlife deathbed visions near-death experiences the mystery schools dionysian mysteries eleusinian mysteries hermetic mysteries orphic mysteries pythagorus tribal religions burial mounds land of the grandparents how the major religions view reincarnation buddhism christianity hinduism islam judaism contemporary mystery schools and reincarnation akashic records anthroposophy association for research and enlightenment theosophy experiential quests into past lives hy

nysus were conducted on a much lower level than those of eleusis, and often featured the sacrifice of an animal usually a goat that was torn to pieces by the initiates, whose savagery was meant to symbolize the incarnation, death, and resurrection of the divinity. although the cult was not looked upon with high regard by the sages and philosophers of the day, amulets and tablets with fragments of dionysian hymns upon them have been found dating back to the third century b.c.e. these magical symbols were buried with the dead and meant to protect the soul from the dangers of the underworld. m delving deeper brandon, s. g. f. religion in ancient history. new york: charles scribner s sons, 1969. ferm, vergilious ed. ancient religions. new york: philosophical library, 1950. eleusinian mysteries

inian mysteries the sacred eleusinian mysteries of the greeks date back to the fifth century b.c.e. and were the most popular and influential of the cults. the rites took place in the city of eleusis, a small community 14 miles west of athens, but it was the ruler of athens, together with a specially selected committee, who was in charge of the general management of the annual event. although the dionysian and orphic rites could be celebrated at any time, the eleusinian rites were held at a fixed time in the early fall after the seeds had been entrusted to the fields, and were conducted by a hereditary priesthood called the eumolpedie. sometime in the month of september, the eumolpedie removed the eleusinian holy objects from eleusis and carried them to the sacred city of athens, where the

ysus zagreus; therefore, the physical bodies of humans are formed from the evil of the titans, but they also contain within them a tiny particle of the divine essence. within this duality a constant t h e g a l e e n c y c l o p e d i a o f t h e u n u s u a l a n d u n e x p l a i n e d 34 afterlife mysteries war rages, so it is the duty of each human to repress the titanic element and allow the dionysian an opportunity to assert itself. the final release of the divine essence within, the redemption of the soul, is the utmost goal of the orphic process. this process may best be obtained by the soul reincarnating in a number of physical bodies in different life experiences. while other schools of reincarnation see the process of rebirth as an evolving of the soul ever higher with each inca

ome. http//www.jerusalemsyndrome.com/jsint. htm, 12 october 2001. jerusalem fever excellence. mystics from all traditions agree in regarding ecstasy as a wonderful state the one in which the human spirit is swept up and into an immediate union with the divine. as evelyn underhill points out in her mysticism (1961, the word has become synonymous with joyous exaltation: the induced ecstasies of the dionysian mysteries, the metaphysical raptures of the neoplatonists, the voluntary or involuntary trance of indian mystics and christian saints all these, however widely they may differ in transcendental value, agree in claiming such value, in declaring that this change of consciousness brought with it a valid and ineffable apprehension of the real. ecstasy differs from meditation one of the stage

nysus were conducted on a much lower level than those of eleusis, and often featured the sacrifice of an animal usually a goat that was torn to pieces by the initiates, whose savagery was meant to symbolize the incarnation, death, and resurrection of the divinity. although the cult was not looked upon with high regard by the sages and philosophers of the day, amulets and tablets with fragments of dionysian hymns upon them have been found dating back to the third century b.c.e. these magical symbols were buried with the dead and meant to protect the soul from the dangers of the underworld. orpheus may have been an actual historic figure, a man capable of charming both man and beast with his music, but god or human, he modified the dionysian rites by removing their orgiastic elements. accord

hat life was a series of tests and that after death would be revealed the hopes and joys of a glorious world beyond and the opportunity for rebirth. the rites of the mysteries took place near eleusis, a small community 14 miles west of athens, but it was the ruler of athens, together with a specially selected committee, who was in charge of the general management of the annual event. although the dionysian and orphic rites could be celebrated at any t h e g a l e e n c y c l o p e d i a o f t h e u n u s u a l a n d u n e x p l a i n e d 268 mystery religions and cults time, the eleusinian rites were held at a fixed time in the early fall after the seeds had been entrusted to the fields and were conducted by a hereditary priesthood called the eumolpedie, the singers of gracious melodies. s

WICCA WITCHCRAFT TODAY

s, live animals which she and her company tore limb from limb, and made oblation by scattering them at the crossways to a certain demon called robin, son of artes, or robinartison. as remarked above, the name robin was a common one for a spirit, this time perhaps an artful or tricky one('artes. the action seems like a description of a number of bacchantes who used to tear animals in pieces in the dionysian frenzies, since the devouring of an animal victim was supposed to symbolise the incarnation, death and resurrection of the divinity. there was another charge of sacrificing red cocks to robin, who is described as being 'aethiopia- in other words, a negro. it would be very unusual to find a negro with an english name in ireland at that time, so i presume that robin mixed soot with his pro

king the devil. it is possible that someone may have started a new religion, but i think there must have been something already on which to graft it. i think it most curious that such a tradition should have come down from such early times. i have given my reasons for thinking that it must go back at least as far as the days of the first elizabeth. if it was imported from italy then, a relic of a dionysian cult which had survived there, it could easily have survived in england; or it could have been imported from france by the normans far earlier. i wonder if we shall ever really find out. the people i know are taught never to use blood or to make sacrifices; but the irish coven seemingly use them and they are used in voodoo. knowing how the rites in england work, these practices would be

ALEISTER CROWLEY EQUINOX EQ I 2 2

e world, that universal medicine in which is contained all other medicines and the first principle of all substances. in agony and joy he sought to fix the volatile, and transmute the formless human race into the dual child of the mystic cross of light, that is to say, to solve the problem of the perfect man. fludd, bonaventura, lully, valentinus, flamel, geber, plotinus, ammonius, iamblichus and dionysius were all devoured with the avidity and greed which youth alone possesses; there was no halting here"'now, master, take a little rest- not he (caution redoubled, step two abreast, the way winds narrowly) not a wit troubled back to his studies, fresher than at first, fierce as a dragon he (soul-hydroptic with a sacred thirst) sucked at the flagon" 234 plunging into the "tenebrae" of transc

ALEISTER CROWLEY EQUINOX EQ I 6

s but in comparatively recent times that it has been generally accepted as canonical, and this even by those who admit that they do not understand it; and to such as these the "apocalypse unsealed" will be a veritable "revelation" indeed. mr james m. pryse accepts it unreservedly as the work of the apostle john, but we ought to mention that there is a long string of authorities against this view. dionysius, who was surnamed the great, of alexandria, was a pupil of origen, and he of clement of alexandria, all catechists of the "arcane discipline" which taught a christianised version of the older gnosis, which clement and others had brought into the church from the older secret, or occult, societies of which they were, or had been members. this dionysius makes a certain john the presbyter, a

he church from the older secret, or occult, societies of which they were, or had been members. this dionysius makes a certain john the presbyter, as of note in asia minor in the 1st century, and distinct from the apostle, to be the author of the book. presbyter cajus, or gaius, of rome, and the alogi, attributed it to cerinthus, a gnostic of the independent sect of these, and eusebius quotes both dionysius and these alogi; nicephorus callistus uses the same as saying that some who had preceded them had manipulated the book in such way, in every chapter, that the original could not be recognised. this may be an exaggeration, but amongst the eminent critics who have denied the authenticity of the book may be mentioned these, and what else can we expect when none to the present time could und

road-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 heredom (harodim) rosy cross, which has an unchanged ritual from 1740, at least, draws upon dionysius the areopagite, a disciple of st paul, and it has also a rhythmetical description of the new jerusalem. again, two entire degrees of the scottish rite of 33 degree 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 degree knight of the east and west, and the 19 degr

ALICE A BAILEY07 FROM INTELLECT TO INTUITION

d by a strong will, a capacity to endure, and patient persistence. i. the stage of concentration. in all schools of advanced or intellectual mysticism, the first and necessary step is the attainment of mind control. meister eckhart, writing in the fourteenth century, tells us that "st. paul reminds us that we being planted in the likeness of god may attain to higher and truer vision. for this st. dionysius says we require three things. the first is, possession of one's mind. the second is, a mind that is free. the third is, a mind that can see. how can we acquire this speculative mind? by a habit of mental concentration."4(58) this is in the strictest conformity with the eastern method, which aims first to put a man in control of his mental apparatus, so that he becomes the one who uses it

BLAVATSKY H P ANTHROPOGENESIS

bid. lib. v. fol. 64) scarce an ancient poet of historic or prehistoric days who failed to mention the sinking of the two continents- often called isles- in one form or another. hence the destruction, besides atlantis, of the phlegyae (see pausanias and nonus, who both tell how "from its deep-rooted base the phlegyan isle stern neptune shook, and plunged beneath the waves its impious inhabitants- dionysius lib xviii. p. 319. faber felt convinced that the "insulae phlegyae" were atlantis. but all such allegories are more or less distorted echoes of the hindu tradition about that great cataclysm, which befell the fourth, really human, though gigantic, race, the one which preceded the aryan. yet, as just said, like all other legends, that of "the deluge has more than one meaning. it refers in

BLAVATSKY H P COSMOGENESIS

e universe himself abided in it, in the character of brahma. in that egg, o brahman, were the continents, and seas and mountains, the planets and divisions of the universe, the gods, the demons and mankind (book i, ch. 2) both in greece and in india the first visible male being, who united in himself the nature of either sex, abode in the egg and issued from it. this "first born of the world" was dionysius, with some greeks; the god who sprang from the mundane egg, and from whom the mortals and immortals were derived. the god ra is shown in the ritual (book of the dead, xvii, 50) beaming in his egg (the sun, and he starts off as soon as the god shoo (the solar energy) awakens and gives him the impulse "he is in the solar egg, the egg to which is given life among the gods (ibid, xlii, 13. t

eastern adepts, explain well the thousand and one images under which the moon was represented by the ancients. it also shows how much more profoundly learned in the selenic mysteries were the ancients than are now our modern astronomers. the whole pantheon of the lunar gods and goddesses, nephtys or neith, proserpina, melytta, cybele, isis, astarte, venus, and hecate, on the one hand, and apollo, dionysius, adonis, bacchus, osiris, atys, thammuz, etc, etc, on the other, all show on the face of their names and titles- those of "sons" and "husbands" of their mothers- their identity with the christian trinity. in every religious system the gods were made to merge their functions as father, son, and husband, into one, and the goddesses were identified as "wife, mother, and sister" of the male

of the earth" under their respective names of yama, pluto, osiris, the "lord of the lower kingdom, etc, etc" and their tellurial character proves it sufficiently* the ancients knew of no worse abode after death than the kamaloka, the limbus on this earth. if it is argued that the dodonean jupiter was identified with aidoneus, the king of the subterranean world, and dis, or the roman pluto and the dionysius chthonios, the subterranean, wherein, according to creuzer (i, vi, ch. 1, oracles were rendered, then it will become the pleasure of the occultists to prove that both aidoneus and dionysius are the bases of adonai, or "jurbo adonai" as jehovah is called in codex nazaraeus "thou shalt not worship the sun, who is named adonai, whose name is also kadush and el-el (cod. naz, i, 47; see also

CHRONOLOGIA RORISPERGIUS

art of the man. and the same thing happens at the birth-hour, according to the position of the twelve signs" c. 420 "de nuptiis philologi et mercurii" martianus capella 475-525 boethius c. 475 horapollo of nilous hieroglyphica. suda refers to him as a leader of one of the last pagan philosophical schools in menouthis near alexandria, under the reign of emperor zeno (474-491. 500 ce (circa) pseudo-dionysius the areopagite flourished, probably a native of syria. 507: the frankish leader clovis defeats the visigoths at the battle of vouille. the visigoths retreat into spain c. 529: benedict of nursia (d. 543) establishes a monastery at monte cassino and writes an extremely influential rule of life for its inhabitants. 552: the byzantine army under emperor justinian (483-565) invades italy and

gical correlates"-robert zoller 825 al-razi(abu bakr muhammad ibn zakariyya, born at rhagae near tehran 836 thabit ibn qurrah (thebit)exiled'sabian' of harran iun baghdad "we are the heirs and propagators of paganism" hermetic philosopher/priest and sabian scientist. 858- 929 abu abdallah mohammad ibn jabir al-battani. harran astrologer. c. 860: john scotus eriugena (c. 800-880) translates pseudo-dionysius's works into latin and adds a commentary. 873-950 al farabi islamic philosopher mystic influenced by plotinus. 875 d. abu yazid al-bistami sufi said to have first expressed symbolism of wine, cup, and cupbearer "i have come to know allah through allah, and i have come to know what is other than allah with the light of allah "praise to me, for my greatest glory "i set forth on an ocean wh

c astrological texts into latin, most notably abu ma'shar's the abbreviation of the introduction to astrology. 1127-1279 "white lotus society. chinese religious sect which developed out of pure land buddhist lay associations in the southern sung dynasty 1128-1203 alanus ab insulis aka alain de l'isle& alain de lille derived his pythagoreanism from the asclepius and hermetica; influenced by pseudo-dionysius and john scotus erigena. school of chartres. influence on romance of the rose. quotes hermes trismegistus liber de xxiv philosophorum: a gathering of twenty-four philosophers debated: what is god? each participant offered a concise description. liber xxiv philosophorum consists of twenty-four definitions #1 god is the one, he brings forth oneness out of himself, and he lets the oneness r

8. c.1160- 1219 conon de b thune. trouv re, soldier, politician and diplomat, a northern french aristocrat involved in the crusades. a leading figure at constantinople on the 1204 crusade. c. 1160: richard of saint victor (d. 1173, a scotsman who has become abbot of the famous abbey school at saint-victor, writes the mystical ark, also known as benjamin major, and makes considerable use of pseudo-dionysius. 1160: birth of isaac the blind "the father of kabbalah" in provence. 1160-1170 yehuda ibn tibbon translates book of the duties of the heart by bahya ibn pequda which apparently was influenced by the rasa'il of ikhwan as-safa (encyclopaedia of the brotherhood of purity) and, possibly, by hermetic sources< bahya s the duties of the heart, written in arabic in around 1075, denote the first

at the university of paris for five years. 1518 symphorien champier pronostics ou pr sages des proph tes, des astrologues et des m decins contains a chapter on cabala. 1519 jean thenaud la saincte et tr s chrestienne cabale m trifi e exposes fran ois i to the cabala. 1520(31)-1609 r. ben bezalel of prague, r. loew of prague. 1521 trait de la cabale employs a cosmology and numerology derived from dionysius the areopagite and re-interprets kabbalism by means of the figura of the ninth century rabanus maurus of fulda. 1522 n.t. translated into german by m. luther. 1522-1570 moses ben jacob cordovero author of pardes rimmonim, or hashekhal("light of the intellect, and the angelology: derishot be-inyanei ha-mal'akhim. student of joseph caro and a teacher of isaac luria. 1523-1596 blaise de vig

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF OCCULTISM AND PARAPSYCHOLOGY VOL 1

ts. his symbol is a banner hanging on a cross; he is armed and represents victory, with a dart in one hand and a cross on his forehead. it may be noted that god himself is called the angel of the covenant, because he embodied in his own person the whole power and representation of the angelic kingdom, as the messenger, not of separate and temporary commands, but of the whole word in its fullness. dionysius, or st. denis, the supposed areopagite (sixth century c.e, describes three hierarchies of angels in nine choirs: seraphim, cherubim, thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, virtues, angels, and archangels. these were created by assembling various biblical passages (such as exodus 25:18.20; isaiah 6:2.3; ephesians 3:10) and the book of enoch. vartan (or vertabied, the thirteenth-centu

the virtue of this name is conveyed by cherubim to the angel gabriel and influences the sphere of the moon. it causes increase and decrease, and rules the jinn and protecting spirits. 10. elohim, the source of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom, received by the angel jesodoth, and imparted to the sphere of the earth. the division of angels into nine orders or three hierarchies, as derived from dionysius areopagus, was made in the middle ages, which gave the prevalent division much of its symbolism. with it was held the doctrine of their separate creation; the tradition of the rebellious hierarchy, headed by lucifer, was rendered familiar to society by the epic poetry of john milton. the medieval development of angelology was passed on to occultists and a description of the angelic order

06 and held various government posts; he was also private secretary to his brother. like his brother, he was very active in psychical research and also took an important part in organizing and studying the group of automatic writings concerned with crosscorrespondence evidence. he published a number of valuable papers in the proceedings of the society for psychical research, including the earl of dionysius, a study of a crosscorrespondence case presenting evidence for survival. he died january 14, 1945, at whittinghame. sources: balfour, gerald w. the ear of dionysius: further scripts affording evidence of personal survival. proceedings of the society for psychical research 29, no. 74 (1916.18. some recent scripts affording evidence of personal survival. proceedings of the society for psyc

thracian divinities continued to be held in high veneration in late times, but are commonly spoken of in connection with navigation, as the twin dioscuri or tyndaridae; on the other hand the dioscuri are spoken of as the curetes or corybantes. the coins of tripolis exhibit the spears and star of the dioscuri, with the legend cabiri. 6. the roman penates have been identified with the dioscuri, and dionysius states that he had seen two figures of ancient workmanship, representing youths armed with spears, which, from an antique inscription on them, he knew to be meant for penates. so, the lares of etruria and rome. 7. the worship of the cabiri furnishes the key to the wanderings of aeneas, the foundation of rome, and the war of troy itself, as well as the argonautic expedition. samothrace an

a student of their scripts; it has every appearance of being an element imported from outside; it suggests an independent invention, an active intelligence constantly at work in the present, not a mere echo or remnant of individualities of the past. after the death of a. w. verrall, the eminent greek scholar and psychical researcher, an intricate greek mosaic and literary puzzle called the ear of dionysius was transmitted as cross-correspondence. in the opinion of gerald balfour, and other competent judges, this was one of the most striking evidences of survival yet obtained. in the proceedings of the society of psychical research, hundreds of pages are devoted to crosscorrespondences. they are so ingenious and subtle that their disentanglement requires considerable literary skill. the sub

sisting of wine and flowers, and the person who performed the oblation was the first to taste the cup. the birthday was placed under his special care. roman men swore by their genius, the women by their juno. the genius of the reigning prince was an oath of extraordinary solemnity. there were local as well as individual genii, concerning whom many particulars may be found in de idolatria liber of dionysius vossius (editions 1633, 1641. the jinn, on the contrary, who seem to be the lineal descendants of the devates and rakshasas of hindu mythology, were never worshiped by the arabs nor considered as anything but agents of the deity. since the establishment of islam, indeed, they have been described as invisible spirits, and the feats and deformities that figure into romance are as little be

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF OCCULTISM AND PARAPSYCHOLOGY VOL 2

netherlands: kluwer academic publishers group, 1984. east-west fire; schopenhauer s optimism and the lankavatara sutra: an excursion toward the common ground between oriental and western religion. london: j. m. watkins, 1955. esoteric teachings of the tibetan tantra. falcon s wing press, 1961. an evaluation of relativity theory after a half-century. 1953. illumination of jacob boehme: the work of dionysius andreas freher. 1951. the limits of consciousness. journal for the study of consciousness 1 (1968. the politics of psi; acculturation& hypnosis. in joseph k. long, ed. extrasensory ecology: parapsychology and anthropology. 1977. prismatic voices; an international anthology of distinctive new poets. 1958. psychotronic quantum theory; a proposal for understanding mass/space/time/consciousn

e a link between the more austere indian mystics and those of europe. with the rise of alexandrian neoplatonism, mysticism attained a new level of presence in europe. neoplatonism made a definite mark upon early christianity, and we find it mirrored in many of the patristic writings of the sixteenth century. it was erigena who, in the ninth century, transmitted to europe the so-called writings of dionysius the areopagite, the mystic order of veiled prophets of the. encyclopedia of occultism& parapsychology. 5th ed. 1082 sixth century syrian thinker who synthesized christian theology and neoplatonism and thus greatly influenced the mysticism of the middle ages. erigena based his own system upon that of dionysius. this was the so-called negative theology, which placed god above all categorie

, it seems as though reason were silenced for we are above reason. in short we become intoxicated with god. proclus was an adept in the invocation rituals of every people in the world, and a great magical figure. with the advance of byzantinism, he represented the old world of greek thought, and even those who wrote against him as a heathen show the influence he exercised on their doctrines. thus dionysius attempted to accommodate the philosophy of proclus to christianity, and greatly admired his asceticism. the theology of the neoplatonists was always in the first instance a mere matter of logic. they associated universals with causes. the highest became with them merely the most comprehensive. as has been said, neoplatonism exercised great power among the scholiasts and magicians of the

ge orgies in honor of the mystic birth of jupiter resembled secret tradition encyclopedia of occultism& parapsychology. 5th ed. 1380 those of bacchus, ceres, and cybele, and the orphic poems identified the orgies of bacchus with those of ceres, rhea, venus, and isis. euripides also mentioned that the rites of cybele were celebrated in asia minor in a manner identical with the grecian mysteries of dionysius and the cretan rites of the cabiri. the rev. geo. oliver, in his book the history of initiation (1829, asserted that the rites of freemasonry were exercised in the antediluvian world, were received by noah after the flood, and were practiced by people at the building of babel. these rites spread and were molded into a form, the great outlines of which can be traced in the mysteries of ev

FRANCIS A YATES GIORDANO BRUNO AND THE HERMETIC TRADITION

of pico della mirandola in the history of humanity can hardly be overestimated. he it was who first boldly formulated a new position for european man, man as magus using both magia and cabala to act upon the world, to control his destiny by science. and in pico, the organic link with religion of the emergence of the magus can be studied at its source. 1 see above, pp. 2, 14. 116 chapter vi saint dionysius the areopagite was, for ficino, both oilmen of platonism,1 and the saint whom st. paul had met at athens, and whose vision of the nine angelic hierarchies, unquestioningly accepted by thomas aquinas and all the doctors of the church, had become an integral part of orthodox christian theology.2 saint dionysius is constantly referred to in ficino's theologia platonica and de christiana rel

questioningly accepted by thomas aquinas and all the doctors of the church, had become an integral part of orthodox christian theology.2 saint dionysius is constantly referred to in ficino's theologia platonica and de christiana religione, the two works in which he set out his synthesis of platonism with christianity, and indeed, not only for ficino but also for all later christian neoplatonists, dionysius was one of the main christian allies. the author of the celestial hierarchies was, of course, not really the areopagite with whom st. paul spoke but an unknown writer who composed under strong neoplatonic influence his work on nine orders of angels which he grouped into triads, each group of three representing one of the persons of the trinity. these nine angelic orders have their abode

the eighth sphere, whose movement is opposite to that of the planets and which has the qualities of candor and splendor. the chrystalline sphere, which has simple motion and the quality of candor. the empyrean, where all is stable and the lumen of which is a quality of light superior to candor. in the stable and lucens empyrean is accommodated the trinity expressed in the nine orders of angels of dionysius. there are legions of angels in the orders and their number exceeds the faculty of human computation. the nine orders are: seraphim, cherubim, thrones; the hierarchy of the father. dominions, virtues, powers; the hierarchy of the son. principalities, archangels, angels; the hierarchy of the spirit.3 ficino interprets dionysius as having said that the first order drinks its liquor from th

e cult and look after sacred things. angels look after smaller affairs and take charge of individuals as their guardian angels.1 ficino's notions on the celestial hierarchies have been modified by two intermediaries, namely thomas aquinas and dante, and he has also introduced new modifications of his own. the differing activities of the hierarchies, which are not so specifically defined in pseudo-dionysius, he got from thomas aquinas.2 the linking of the hierarchies with the spheres of the cosmos he got from dante who, in his convivio correlates the hierarchies with the spheres3 and, above all, in the paradiso, sets out the souls of the blest on the spheres of the seven planets; places the apostles and the church triumphant in the eighth sphere; in the ninth sphere ranges the nine angelic

supplications, nor try to reach the virtues which move the heavens in order to become a worker of miracles' ficino, pp. 965-75- 2 ibid, pp. 976-86. 3 this transition is definitely made in the de sole, which first discusses the planet sol and its central importance and, in the last chapter, compares the sun to the trinity and the nine orders of angels de sole, cap. xii; ficino, p. 973. 120 pseudo-dionysius and theology of a christian magus the angelic continuation beyond the stars was of course normal to christian thought, and is, for example, exquisitely expressed in terms of music by shakespeare's lorenzo: sit, jessica. look how the floor of heaven is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold: there's not the smallest orb which thou beholdst but in his motion like an angel sings, still qu

sit, jessica. look how the floor of heaven is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold: there's not the smallest orb which thou beholdst but in his motion like an angel sings, still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins' lorenzo, as he gazes at the night sky, is contemplating the marvellous fact that the harmony of the spheres connects with the celestial choirs of the angelic hierarchies. as pseudo-dionysius was immensely important to ficino for the synthesis of neoplatonism with christianity so, too, he helped pico to build the bridge between jewish cabala and christianity. pico's heptaplus, which is a commentary on genesis in the cabalistic manner, is full of references to dionysius. in this work, pico frequently has occasion to mention the "three worlds" as understood by the cabalists, wh

phers, intelligible; then comes the celestial world, and last the sublunar world which we inhabit.2 he then goes on to draw the parallel with the three worlds of the cabalists, which moses represented symbolically when he divided the tabernacle into three parts.3 particularly in the third book of the heptaplus pico devotes himself to assimilating the doctrines of the "ancient hebrews" to those of dionysius. here he repeats the thomistic definitions of the functions of the 1 merchant of venice, v, i. 2 pico, de hominis dignitate, heptaplus, etc, ed. garin, p. 185. 3 ibid, p. 187. 121 pseudo-dionysius and theology of a christian magus hierarchies and relates their three triadic groups to the three worlds, as follows: we read (that is in cabalistic commentary on genesis) that the firmament is

that the firmament is placed in the midst of the waters; and here is indicated to us the three hierarchies of angels. the first and the last (of the hierarchies) is indicated by the waters, those which are above the firmament and those which are below it; the intermediate zone between the two being the firmament. and if we ponder these things we find that they accord perfecdy with the doctrine of dionysius: the supreme hierarchy which, as he says, is given over to contemplation, is figured in the waters above the firmament which are above all action, whether celestial or terrestrial, and praise god with a perpetual music. the intermediate hierarchy, which has celestial functions, is most appropriately indicated by the firmament, that is the heaven itself. the last hierarchy, although by it

to the supercelestial world (waters above the firmament, the second hierarchy to the celestial world (firmament, and the third hierarchy to the elemental or sublunar world (waters below the firmament, pico "astrologises" the celestial hierarchies even more strictly than ficino, by allowing them these special influences in the three zones. there is no trace of such astrologising tendency in pseudo-dionysius himself, for whom the nine hierarchies both represent the trinity and are solely devoted, in their several degrees, to the praise of the trinity. with ficino's "hierarchising" of different qualities of light, may be compared pico's hierarchical presentation of heat "with us, color is an elemental quality; in the heavens (that is in the stars) it is calorific virtue; in the angelic mind i

in which hosts of angels are indicated. below them is the celestial world, with the zodiac; and below that is the sublunary world, over which rules the archduke ferdinand iii. the fundamental conceptions outlined in this chapter have not changed, and the illustration shows how well the baroque style, with its sunglories and swarms of angels goes with such conceptions. another way in which pseudo-dionysius was immensely important in the renaissance synthesis was through his negative theology. besides his positive adumbration of aspects of the godhead, in the nine hierarchies of angels in their relation to the trinity, dionysius also sets forth a "negative way. there are no words for god in his actual essence; no names for him as he really is; therefore he is at the last best defined by neg

y beautiful spiritual fruits in the course of the ages, for example the english fourteenth-century cloud of unknowing, in which the unknown author, following the hid divinity of denis,1 puts himself under a cloud of unknowing within which, with a blind stirring of love,2 he reaches forth towards the deus absconditus. and the learned philosopher nicholas of cusa found in the "learned ignorance" of dionysius the only final solution, or mode of approach to the divine, as he expounds in his famous work the de docta ignorantia. the negative theology or the idea of the negative way reached ficino not only through dionysius but also through cusanus, of whom he was a great admirer, and whom he regarded as an important link in the great chain of platonists.3' deonise hid divinitie (ed. p. hodgson

ogy and on the thought that god is beyond all knowledge. god, says dionysius, is above bonitas, above essentia, above vita, above veritas, above all his other names, so that in a sense he has no name. yet in another sense he has innumerable names for he is the bonitas, essentia, vita, veritas, and so on in all things.1 ficino's commentary on diis passage is as follows: these mysterious sayings of dionysius are confirmed by hermes termaximus, who says that god is nothing, and yet that god is all. that god has no name, yet god has every name.2 he is thinking of the passage in the asclepius, where trismegistus says: it is impossible that the creator of the majesty of the all, the father and lord of all beings, should be designated by one or even by a multiplicity of names. god has no name, or

, since he is at once one and all, so that one must either designate all things by his name, or give him the name of all things. his will is entirely good, and the bonitas which exists in all things is issued from the divinity.3 the hermetic writer is certainly here very close in spirit to the syrian monk, and it is no wonder that ficino was impressed by the way hermes trismegistus confirms saint dionysius on no name yet all names. there is a negative theology also in the hebrew cabalistic mysticism, for the ensoph, out of which the ten sephiroth emerge, is the nothing, the unnameable, unknown deus absconditus, and the highest and most remote of the sephiroth, keter or the crown, disappears into the nothing.4 so that here, too, though there are as it were ten names in the sephiroth, the hi

elow because he loved beautiful nature and was united to her in a passionate embrace.3 the erotic relation to nature is fundamental for sympathetic magic; the magus enters with loving sympathy into the sympathies which bind earth to heaven, and this emotional relationship is one of the 1 pico, p. 107. 2 ibid, p. 96 (sixth platonic conclusion. 3 c.h, i, p. ii pimander; see above, p. 24. 126 pseudo-dionysius and theology of a christian magus chief sources of his power "why is love called a magus" asks ficino in the commentary on the symposium "because all the force of magic consists in love. the work of magic is a certain drawing of one thing to another by natural similitude. the parts of this world, like members of one animal, depend all on one love, and are connected together by natural co

sticism? the guiding line in this maze is the poeticised astrology with which the commentary is full, and by which the transition is made from mystical magic to magical mysticism. those strange and deceptively simple conversations in the hermetic treatises between hermes and his son tat, or with asclepius 1 commentarium in convivium platonis de amore, oratio vi, cap. 10 (ficino, p. 1348. 2 pseudo-dionysius, divine names, iv, 14,15; celestial hierarchies, 1,2. 3 in convivium, oratio iii, cap. 2 (ficino, p. 1329. 4 m. de gandillac, article cited, p. 99. 127 pseudo-dionysius and theology of a christian magus and other followers, convey a strong impression that a deep religious experience has been felt by the participants. and these religious experiences take place within the framework of the

ic. believing as he did that the hermetic dialogues strangely prophesied christian truths, ficino was encouraged to put christian experience into the framework of the world. by real and perspicacious attempts at comparative religion, though made on a wrong chronological basis, ficino and pico perceived resemblances between the hermetic rehgious scheme and the neoplatonised christianity of pseudo- dionysius, to which pico was able to add comparisons with cabalist theosophy. and they were in a sense right since all these three theosophic schemes are related to the religion of the world, or can be connected with the spheres of the universe. the hermetic treatises have been divided by festugierc into those representing an optimist type of gnosis in which the cosmos which is the setting for the

treatises, including the asclepius, are far from dualist and tend more in the direction of pantheism. the cabala, in so far as it can be called a gnosis, is also optimist. whilst pseudo- 1 see above, p. 33. 2 theologia platonica, iv, i (ficino, p. 130; in convivium, ii, 4 (ibid, p. 1325. this extraordinary statement was repeated after ficino in the later renaissance; see below, p. 174. 128 pseudo-dionysius and theology of a christian magus dionysius is surely the supreme type of a neoplatonist illuminated by christian optimism. the word gnosis is applicable to the kind of experience which ficino and pico had, since it was a seeking of knowledge by religious methods. but it must be understood that when "gnosticism" is used in this book to describe the renaissance experience, it is used with

by religion alone cannot live long but is absorbed by divinity. the magician must know the true god, but also secondary divinities and with what cults they must be served, particularly jupiter whom orpheus described as the universe.1 the hymns of orpheus and the ancient magi are not different from the cabalist arcana and from the orthodox tradition. what orpheus calls gods, denis (that is pseudo-dionysius) calls powers, and the cabalists call numerations (that is the sephiroth. ensoph in cabala is the same as ncx in orpheus (this is direct quotation of one of pico's conclusions. the ten numerations or sephiroth have names which act on all creatures, from the highest to the lowest; first on the nine orders of angels, then on the nine celestial spheres, then on men and the terrestrial world

petrarch as a textual scholar, see g. billanovich "petrarch and the textual tradition of livy, j.w.c.i, xiv (1951, pp. 137 ff. 2 valla pointed out (in his invective against bartolomeo facio) that the ad herennium is not written in cicero's style and therefore cannot be by him. other bold feats of textual criticism by valla were his exposure of the donation of constantine and his realisation that dionysius the areopagite was not the author of the writings traditionally ascribed to him. 3 or rather, he has chosen the subject which suits his bent. two fundamental studies have clarified the meaning of the word "humanist" in the renaissance. a. campana has shown that "umanista" was originally university slang for a teacher of classical literature (a. campana "the origin of the word humanist, j

GAMBLE ELIZA BURT THE GOD IDEA OF THE ANCIENTS OR SEX IN RELIGION

on various coins as a "bearded venerable figure" appears with the limbs, features, and character of a beautiful young woman. sometimes this deity is portrayed with sprouting horns, and again with a crown of ivy. the phrygian attis and the syrian adonis, as represented in monuments of ancient art, are androgynous personifications of the same attributes. according to the testimony of the geographer dionysius, the worship of bacchus was formerly carried on in the british islands in exactly the same manner as it had been in an earlier age in thrace and on the banks of the ganges. in referring to the idean zeus in crete, to demeter at eleusis, to the cabairi in samothrace, and dionysos at delphi and thebes, grote observes "that they were all to a great degree analogous, is shown by the way in w

HELENA BLAVATSKY THE KEY TO THEOSOPHY

ch is ever concealed. thus, speech is the logos of thought; hence, in its metaphysical sense, it is aptly translated by the terms verbum, and the word. long face a cabalistic term, areekh anpeen in hebrew; or "long face" in greek, macroprosopus, as contrasted with "short face" or zeir anpeen, the microprosopus. one relates to deity, the other to man, the "little image of the great form" longinus, dionysius cassius a famous critic and philosopher, born in the very beginning of the third century (about 213. he was a great traveler, and attended at alexandria the lectures of ammonius saccas, the founder of neo-platonism, but was rather a critic than a follower. porphyry (the jew malek or malchus) was his pupil before he became the disciple of plotinus. it is said of him that he was a living l

ISIS UNVEILED

babbis in palestine, who pass their lives in commenting upon the taimvd. they say that not all the ndls and manuscripts, reported in history to have been bumed by caesar, by the christian mob, in 389, and by the arab general amni, perished as it is conmionly believed; and the story they tell is the following: at the time of the contest for the throne, in 51 b. c, between cleopatra and her brother dionysius ptolemy, the bruchioo, which contained over seven hundred thousand rolls, all bound in wood and fire-proof parchment, was undergoing repairs, and a great number of uie original manuscripts, considered among the most precious, and whidb were not duphcated, were stored away in the house of one of the librarians. as the fire which consumed the rest was but the result of accident, no precaut

f disciples contemporaneous with the latter* commenting upon the subject, a. franck, the learned hebrew scholar of the institute and translator of the kabala, expresses the same idea "are we not authorized" he asks "to view the kabala as a predous remnant ot religious philosophy of the orient, which, trans' ported into alexandria, got mixed with the doctrine of hato, and under the usurped name of dionysius the areopagite, bishop of atiiens, con- verted and consecrated by st. paul, was thus enabled to penetrate into the mysticism of the medieval ages* says jacouiot" what is then this religious philosophy of the orient, which has penetrated into the mystic symbousm of christianity? we an- swer: this philosophy, the traces of which we find among the magians, the cbaldaeans, the egyptians, the

JENNINGS HARGRAVE ROSICRUCIANS RITES MYSTERIES

stone, or the palladium, in cannon street, city of london: which stone is said to be london s fate which we hope it is not to be in the unprosperous sense. the letter s, among the gnostics, with its grimmer or harsher brother (or sister) z, was called the reprobate, or malignant, letter. of this portentous sigma (or sign) s (the angular and not serpentine s is the grinding or bass s the letter z, dionysius the halicarnassian says as follows: that the letter s makes a noise more brutal than human. therefore the ancients used it very sparingly( per sunqej; see, also, sect 14 of origin and progress of language, vol. ii. p. 233. 140 the rosicrucians. notwithstanding the contentions of opposing antiquaries, and the usually received ideas that the irish round towers were of christian, and not he

ts circumference. each prismatic atom, when a ray of light strikes uponit, opens out on a vertical axis, as a radius or ran of seven different widths of the seven colours, from the least refrangible red up to the most refrangible violet. refer to diagram on next page) t the seven colours and vowels. 143 the egyptian priests chanted the seven vowels as a hymn addressed to serapis (eusebe-salverte, dionysius of halicarnassus. the vowels were retained to a comparatively late period in the mystic allegories relative to the solar system. the seven vowels are consecrated to the seven principal planets (belot, chiromancie, 16th cent) the cause of the splendour and variety of colours lies violet. 7. indigo. 6. blue. 5. green. 4. yellow. 3. orange. 2. red. 1. most refrangible ray. least refrangible

rol, at a church in (and at the cathedral of) augsburgh, where the black figures are as large as life, at the borghese chapel in rome, at the church of santa maria maggiore in the pantheon, and in a small chapel at st. peter s, on the right-hand side, on entering, near the door. the reader can make references in his memory to these places, if he be a traveller. the writer, who goes by the name of dionysius areopagita, teaches that the highest spiritual truth is revealed only to those who have transcended every ascent of every holy height, and have left behind all divine lights and sounds and heavenly discoursings, and have passed into that darkness where he really is (as saith the scripture) who is all, above all things (de mystica theologia, cap. i. sec. 3; ephesian diana. 155 hours with

f profaning it. here we have the rites of aphrodite or venus, or the watery deity, 204 the rosicrucians. observed even in china, which worship, in protean forms, being also the worship of the dragon or snake, prevails, in its innumerable contradictory and effective disguises, over the whole world. how like are the noises and explosions of crackers &c, to the tumult of the festivals of dionusus or dionysius, to the riot or rout of the corybantes amongst the greeks, to the outcry and wild music of the priests of the salii, and, in modern times, to the noises said to be made at initiation by the freemasons, whose myths are claimed to be those (or imitative of those) of the whole world, whose mysteries are said to come from that first time, deep-buried in the blind, unconscious succession of t

LEADBEATER CW GLIMPSES OF MASONIC HISTORY

ewhat by the still older mysteries of ireland which date from atlantean times. the lyre of apollo became the harp of angus; and the old worship of god as the divine beauty manifesting through music thus passed down into britain. 492. the druidical mysteries had a certain influence on the imported roman or norman rites. they are compared by strabo and artemidorus to the rites of samothrace, and by dionysius to those of bacchus, while mnaseas refers to their kabiric correspondences. we learn from diogenes laertius and from caesar that the druidic method of instruction was by symbols, enigmas and allegories, and that they taught orally, deeming it unlawful to commit their knowledge to writing. it is said that their ceremonies of initiation required much physical purification and mental prepar

MANLY P HALL THE SECRET TEACHINGS OF ALL AGES

ch came to life and ordered the pharaoh to bring it to alexandria with all possible speed. ptolemy soter, not knowing the whereabouts of the statue, was sorely perplexed as to how he could discover it. while the pharaoh was relating his dream, a great traveler by the name of sosibius, coming forward, declared that he had seen such an image at sinope. the pharaoh immediately dispatched soteles and dionysius to negotiate for the removal of the figure to alexandria. three years elapsed before the image was finally obtained, the representatives of the pharaoh finally stealing it and concealing the theft by spreading a story that the statue had come to life and, walking down the street leading from its temple, had boarded the ship prepared for its transportation to alexandria. upon its arrival

erses partaking of the light and darkness which are in the nature of the creator. the dark half represents the deep, or chaos, the eternal waters pouring forth out of the deity; the light half-circle containing the figure of apollo represents the diurnal hemisphere of the world, which in the ancient mysteries was ruled over by apollo. the dark half-circle is the nocturnal hemisphere ruled over by dionysius (dionysos, whose figure is faintly visible in the gloom. p. 164 themselves upon the fourth floor, where stood a square kettle filled with silver sand warmed by a gentle fire. the great white egg was placed upon the warm sand to mature. in a short time it cracked and there emerged an ugly, ill-tempered bird, which was fed with the blood of the beheaded royal persons diluted with prepared

n isis unveiled, has written "they [the rabbis of palestine and the wise men] say that not all the rolls and manuscripts, reported in history to have been burned by c sar, by the christian mob, in 389, and by the arab general amru, perished as it is commonly believed; and the story they tell is the following: at the time of the contest for the throne, in 51 b. c, between cleopatra and her brother dionysius ptolemy, the bruckion, which contained over seven hundred thousand rolls all bound in wood and fire-proof parchment, was undergoing repairs and a great portion of the original manuscripts, considered among the most precious, and which were not duplicated, were stored away in the house of one of the librarians *several hours passed between the burning of the fleet, set on fire by c sar's

estament, the apocalypse--popularly accredited to st. john the divine--is by far the most important but least understood of the gnostic christian writings. though justin martyr declared the book of revelation to have been written by "john, one of christ's apostles" its authorship was disputed as early as the second century after christ. in the third century these contentions became acute and even dionysius of alexandria and eusebius attacked the johannine theory, declaring that both the book of revelation and the gospel according to st. john were written by one cerinthus, who borrowed the name of the great apostle the better to foist his own doctrines upon the christians. later jerome questioned the authorship of the apocalypse and during the reformation his objections were revived by luth

MEANING OF MASONRY

are administered to the whole public alike and in a way implying a common level of doctrine for all and uniform power of comprehension by every member of the congregation. it was, on the other hand, a graduated method of instruction and identical with the masonic system of degrees conferred by reason of advantage merit and ability. to cite one of the most instructive of early christian treatises (dionysius: on the ecclesiastical hierarchy, with which every masonic student should familiarize himself, it will be found that admission to the early church was by three ceremonial degrees exactly corresponding in intention with those of masonry" the most holy initiation of the mystic rites has as its first godly purpose the holy cleansing of the initiated; and as second, the enlightening instruct

MORALS AND DOGMA

uld not but share the greatnesses and decadences of the priesthood and of royalty. every philosophy hostile to the national worship and to its mysteries, was of necessity hostile to the great political powers, which lose their grandeur, if they cease, in the eyes of the multitudes, to be the images of the divine power. every crown is shattered, when it clashes against the tiara. plato, writing to dionysius the younger, in regard to the nature of the first principle, says "i must write to you in enigmas, so that if my letter be intercepted by land or sea, he who shall read it may in no degree comprehend it" and then he says "all things surround their king; they are, on account of him, and he alone is the cause of good things, second for the seconds and third for the thirds" there is in thes

here existed among them a favored class, or order, who were initiated into certain mysteries which they were bound by solemn promise not to disclose, or even converse about, except with such as had received them under the same sanction. they were called _brethren, the faithful, stewards of the mysteries, superintendents, devotees of the secret, and architects. in the _hierarchi, attributed to st. dionysius the areopagite, the first bishop of athens, the tradition of the sacrament is said to have been divided into three degrees, or grades _purification, initiation, and _accomplishment_ or _perfection; and it mentions also, as part of the ceremony _the bringing to sight. the apostolic constitutions, attributed to clemens, bishop of rome, describe the early church, and say "these regulations

as saluted in his cradle by the three magi, that is to say by the hieratic ambassadors from the three parts of the known world, and from the three analogical worlds of the occult philosophy. in the school of alexandria, magic and christianity almost take each other by the hand under the auspices of ammonius saccos and plato. the dogma of hermes is found almost entire in the writings attributed to dionysius the areopagite. synesius traces the plan of a treatise on dreams, which was subsequently to be commented on by cardan, and composes hymns which might serve for the liturgy of the church of swedenborg, if a church of illuminati could have a liturgy. to this epoch of ardent abstractions and impassioned logomachies belongs the philosophical reign of julian, an illuminatus and initiate of th

on and a passion, a void and a plenitude, an arrow and a wound. the initiates ought to understand this, and, lest the profane should overhear, masonry never says too much. when science had been overcome in alexandria by the fanaticism of the murderers of hypalia, it became christian, or, rather, it concealed itself under christian disguises, with ammonius, synosius, and the author of the books of dionysius the areopagite. then it was necessary to win the pardon of miracles by the appearances of superstition, and of science by a language unintelligible. hieroglyphic writing was revived, and pantacles and characters were invented, that summed up a whole doctrine in a sign, a whole series of tendencies and revelations in a word. what was the object of the aspirants to knowledge? they sought f

REGARDIE ISRAEL THE COMPLETE GOLDEN DAWN

res and gathers up knowledge and pours it into the house of life, binah. the number of the path, 12, suggests the synthesis of the zodiac, as mercury is the synthesis of the planets. the colours yellow, violet, grey and indigo, point to the mysterious astral light surrounding the great adept. it is a card linked with the name tahuti and hermes as the previous one is with krishna and harparkrat or dionysius. ii. the high priestess. the high priestess rules the long path uniting 588 the tarot trumps 589 kether to tiphareth, crossing the reciprocal paths of venus and leo. she is the great feminine force controlling the very source of life, gathering into herself all the energising forces and holding them in solution until the time of release. her colours, pale blue, deepening into sky blue, s

RITUEL ET DOGME DE LA HAUTE MAGIE BY ELIPHAS LEVI PART I

erious founder was saluted in his cradle by three magi that is to say, by the hieratic ambassadors of the three parts of the known world and the three analogical worlds of occult philosophy. in the school of alexandria, magic and christianity almost joined hands under the auspices of ammonius saccas and of plato; the doctrine of hermes is found almost in its entirety in the writings attributed to dionysius the areopagite; synesius outlined the plan of a treatise on dreams, which was annotated subsequently by cardan, and composed hymns that might have served for the liturgy of the church of swedenborg, could a church of the illuminated possess a liturgy. with this period of fiery abstractions and impassioned warfare of words there must be connected also the philosophic reign of julian, call

and a wound. the initiates will understand me, and on account of the profane i must not speak more clearly. after the marvellous golden ass of apuleius, we find no more magical epics. science, conquered in alexandria by the fanaticism of the murderers of hypatia, became christian, or rather concealed itself under christian veils with ammonius, synesius and the pseudonymous author of the books of dionysius the areopagite. in such times it was necessary to exonerate miracles under the pretence of superstition and science by an unintelligible language. hieroglyphic writing was introduction 11 revived; pantacles and characters were invented to summarize an entire doctrine by a sign, a whole sequence of tendencies and revelations in a word. what was the end of the aspirants to knowledge? they

ROBERT KIRK WALKER BETWEEN WORLDS

s, they hurt them not at all [just] as if they acted not maliciously like devils, but in sport like buffoons and drolls. all ages have offered some obscure testimonies of it [that is, the existence of otherworldly beings] such as pythagoras' doctrine of transmigration; socrates' daemone that gave him precautions of future dangers; plato's classing them into various vehiculated species of spirits; dionysius areopagita's marshalling [of] nine orders of spirits [from] superior [to] subordinate; the [classical] poets [in] their borrowing from the philosophers, and adding their own fancies of fountain, river, and sea nymphs, wood, hill and mountain inhabitants, and worldwide copyright 1990, 1998-2001 ,rjstewart, all rights and permissions reserved http//www.dreampower.com/kirk_wbw/pg_40.htm (9

RUBY TABLET OF SET

2 author: don webb iii date: march 20, xxviii (spring equinox) html revision: dec 17, 1998 ce subject: the nine angles reading list: 6l, 6n, f6b, 7 (all, 24 (all [graal] at the monastery of leng our ancestors' ancestors were taught the dhol chant. our ancestors' ancestors spread this dread magic throughout the world. in the north it was the mead of inspiration, in the south it was the amethyst of dionysius, in the east it was the medukasha- the honey whip of wisdom, in the west it was the milk and honey of medb. drink now the cup of your ancestors' ancestors, and renew your bond with the hidden source [elemental summoning] our ancestors' ancestors caught the light of the northern star in a ninefold knot. it has been nast of the sufis, the valknutr of the northmen, the enneagram of the sarm

SATANGEL

the most blessed and glorious ever virgin mary, by the prayers of the prophets, by the merits of the patriarchs, by the intercession of the angels and archangels, by the intervention of the apostles, by the passion of the martyrs, by the faith of the confessors, by the chastity of the virgins, and by the intercession of all the saints, and by the seven sleepers, whose names are malchus, maximian, dionysius, john, constantine, serapion, and mortian, and by the name of the lord god which is blessed forever a g l a, that you should cause or inflict no harm or any evil on this servant of god,[n, whether in sleep or while awake. christ has conquered nchrist reigns nchrist rules nmay christ bless us nand defend us from every evil namen. in the name of the father, and the son, and of the holy spi

SCHLAGER NEIL WORLD RELIGIONS REFERENCE LIBRARY

d, ovid, and virgil collected and organized greco-roman myths. homer s iliad and the odyssey remain popular with modern readers. sites. delphi was a special location to greeks, who would consult with its famous oracle. observances. each member of the greco-roman pantheon had festival days attributed to him or her, such as the great dionysia held each spring in athens in honor of the fertility god dionysius. phrases. there is no common word or phrase that was shared between worshippers. 212 world religions: almanac greco-roman religion and philosophy at the city of naucratis. one theory holds that traders brought ancient egyptian wisdom and practices home to the shores of asia minor. the prosperous center of miletus, on the ionian coast, was one place where many of these travelers gathered

ism, grew up around this imported god. basic beliefs: greco-roman religion greek religion was dominated by the olympian gods, who made their home on mount olympus in northern greece. even though most sources say there were twelve gods living on mount olympus, there are fourteen gods listed next. hades did not live on olympus, although most myths about him associate him with the olympian gods, and dionysius was a later addition to the pantheon: plotinus s idea of emanation, his belief that people wanted to return to the divine mind, can be seen in the christian story of the fall, when adam and eve were tempted into sin and were forced out of the garden of eden. public domain. 220 world religions: almanac greco-roman religion and philosophy zeus was a sky god, but he also represented order

me and hearth. in that role, she served as the protectress of order within the family. although she was worshipped in households throughout greece, the center of her cult was at delphi, where her sacred hearth was kept. demeter was the goddess of agriculture and, some critics say, may have been a version of the earth mother worshipped by prehistoric europeans. hades was the god of the underworld. dionysius was the god of wine, fruit, fertility, and ecstasy( joy. dionysius s myth is much more complex than that of the other olympians. as a child, the story goes, he was torn apart by wild women and spent three years in the underworld. the worship of dionysius played a significant role in the development of greek drama. the romans adopted this pantheon and gave many of them different names. th

and goddesses are shown at their home on mount olympus. greek and roman mythology had a lasting impact on the arts and literature. arte& immagini srl/corbis. world religions: almanac 225 greco-roman religion and philosophy while historians know of other mystery cults active in ancient greece, such as the pythagorean mysteries, details are sketchy or missing. one exception to this was the cult of dionysius. a fertility god, dionysius was honored by rituals fully as unique as those of the orphic or orphic mysteries. dionysius was a relatively new god in the pantheon, not mentioned by homer. by the fifth century bce he had become one of the more popular gods. during the festivals honoring him, people sang, danced, and performed sacred plays. these plays later developed into classical greek d

ted six days and included music, dancing, feasts, athletic contests, and a huge procession on the sixth day to the parthenon for sacrifices to the goddess. people from all over greece might attend one of these gatherings. these were both religious festivals and also times for the greeks to enjoy themselves. each spring in athens the great dionysia was held. this was in honor of the fertility god, dionysius, and dramatic contests were held at the theater named for him. a spring festival, it represented rebirth and new life. additionally, there were larger festivals held at various locations throughout greece that honored the major gods and attracted people from not just one city-state, but from all over greece. the largest and best known of these was the games at olympia that celebrated the

losophers also wrote their books in dialogue form, with socrates playing a principle role. in the early twenty-first century many teachers still use the socratic method of questions and answers in the classroom. at one point plato lived in syracuse on the island of sicily, where he became a tutor to dion (409 354 bce, the brother-in-law of the island s world religions: biographies 315 plato king, dionysius i (c. 430 c. 367 bce. legend holds that at some point plato offended dion, who then made arrangements to have plato sold into slavery. most historians regard this story as doubtful, for plato and dion had very similar personalities and became good friends. the academy in 387 bce, at age forty, plato ended his travels and returned to athens. just outside the city he founded a school calle

luding phaedrus, symposium, meno, euthydemus, menexenus, cratylus, phaedo, and much of his most important and widely read work, the republic. the academy, in effect the first university in europe, operated for nearly a thousand years until it was shut down by the roman emperor justinian in 529 ce. later life when he was in his sixties, plato s quiet life at the academy was interrupted. in sicily, dionysius i died and his teenage son, dionysius ii (c. 384 344 bce, became king. at this point dion urged the young king to invite plato to sicily, where he could help the ruler become a philosopher-king as modeled in the republic. because he had become disappointed with athenian politics and was disgusted with the city s rulers, plato had written in this work that politics could be saved only if

d with the city s rulers, plato had written in this work that politics could be saved only if either true and genuine philosophers attain political power or the rulers of states by some dispensation [indulgence] of providence [preparation] become genuine philosophers. despite being busy with teaching and the administration of the academy, plato agreed and made the trip. after he arrived, however, dionysius ii, who saw dion as a rival, ordered dion into exile for treason. exile is the enforced removal from one s native country. plato, because of his association with dion, was held in sicily under house arrest, although officially he was a guest of the king. 316 world religions: biographies plato plato was eventually released and returned to athens, where he and dion were reunited and remain

. exile is the enforced removal from one s native country. plato, because of his association with dion, was held in sicily under house arrest, although officially he was a guest of the king. 316 world religions: biographies plato plato was eventually released and returned to athens, where he and dion were reunited and remained from 365 to 361 bce. during this time plato refused an invitation from dionysius ii to return to syracuse, in sicily. a year later dionysius sent a ship with one of plato s close friends, archedemus, on board. archedemus urged plato to accept the king s invitation. dion agreed with the plan, so once more plato departed for syracuse. his goal was to resolve the rivalry between dion and dionysius. again, he was held there effectively against his will and was released o

s close friends, archedemus, on board. archedemus urged plato to accept the king s invitation. dion agreed with the plan, so once more plato departed for syracuse. his goal was to resolve the rivalry between dion and dionysius. again, he was held there effectively against his will and was released only after his friends spoke on his behalf with the king. dion, by this time, had lost patience with dionysius. he assembled an army of mercenary soldiers, or soldiers for hire, and invaded sicily. he gained control of the island in 357 bce, but was killed three years later. plato remained at the academy for another thirteen years, until he died quietly in his sleep in 348 (or 347) bce. during this period he wrote the last of his books, including sophist, statesman, philebus, timaeus, critias, an

SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON ZANONI A ROSICRUCIAN TALE

lecting subjects from roman history, rather than from the copious world of grecian beauty, or those still more sublime stories of scriptural record from which raphael and michael angelo borrowed their inspirations. his grandeur was that not of gods and saints, but mortals. his delineation of beauty was that which the eye cannot blame and the soul does not acknowledge. in a word, as it was said of dionysius, he was an anthropographos, or painter of men. it was also a notable contradiction in this person, who was addicted to the most extravagant excesses in every passion, whether of hate or love, implacable in revenge, and insatiable in debauch, that he was in the habit of uttering the most beautiful sentiments of exalted purity and genial philanthropy. the world was not good enough for him;

a dastard. when the veriest shadow of danger threatened his person, the frame cowered, but the will swept the danger to the slaughter-house. so there he sat, bolt upright, his small, lean fingers clenched convulsively; his sullen eyes straining into space, their whites yellowed with streaks of corrupt blood; his ears literally moving to and fro, like the ignobler animals, to catch every sound, a dionysius in his cave; but his posture decorous and collected, and every formal hair in its frizzled place "yes, yes" he said in a muttered tone "i hear them; my good jacobins are at their post on the stairs. pity they swear so! i have a law against oaths, the manners of the poor and virtuous people must be reformed. when all is safe, an example or two amongst those good jacobins would make effect

SPENSER THE CULT OF THE ALL SEEING EYE 1960

mb, according to plutarch's account. she and her brother-husband comprehended all nature and all the gods of the heathens. she was the venus of cyprus, the minerva of athens, the cybele of the phrygians, the ceres of eleusis, the proserpine of sicily, the diana of crete, the bellona of the romans &c. and she was the moon and osiris the sun.43 osiris received the same adoration as anubis, bacchus, dionysius, jupiter and pan. in other words, debauched revelries or saturnalias (from saturn, his father) were held in his honor "he visited the greater part of the kingdoms of asia and europe, where he enlightened the minds of man by introducing among them the worship of the gods, and a reverence for the wisdom of a supreme being."44 totten, tracing the symbolism of the eye, affirmed that "the wor

STEINER RUDOLF CHRISTIANITY AS MYSTICAL FACT

lizing in the worldview of john scotus erigena, who lived in the ninth century at the court of charles the bald. there we find a natural transition from the perspective of primitive christianity to that of aquinas. he derives his conceptual language from neoplatonic philosophy, and his augustine and the church 169 work on the divisions of nature constitutes a further extension of the teachings in dionysius the areopagite. those teachings were based upon the idea of an utterly transcendent god, from whom the sense-perceptible world nevertheless originated. human beings are caught up in the process of the transmutation of all things back into this god, whose goal is to be what he was from the beginning. everything is to be reintegrated into god, who has gone forth into the cosmic process and

p. 187ff. the discovery of the secret mark fragment (cf. note 118) has again strikingly confirmed his insight. steiner discussed the basic myth of gnosticism, concerning the divine sophia and the pre-earthly existence of spiritual worlds( aeons) in his lectures christ and the spiritual world (london, n.d. 167. these include mystical theology, on the divine names, and on the celestial hierarchies. dionysius the areopagite was the pupil of paul in athens (acts 17:34) by whom these works claim to be written. steiner described dionysius as a teacher of esoteric christianity in the tradition of paul (steiner, the gospel of st. john, new york, 1962, pp. 34 5. his teachings were presumably given written form much later by his pupils (the notes 229 present texts use late philosophical language and

n. steiner described dionysius as a teacher of esoteric christianity in the tradition of paul (steiner, the gospel of st. john, new york, 1962, pp. 34 5. his teachings were presumably given written form much later by his pupils (the notes 229 present texts use late philosophical language and even include a quotation from the fifth-century a.d. neoplatonist proclus) 168. the theme is dealt with in dionysius ecclesiastical hierarchies (which echo those in heaven. he says explicitly that the incarnate son of god is the source and perfection of all hierarchies see andrew louth, denys the areopagite (morehouse, harrisburph1-4 symbolism of the banners r. r. e t a. c. z e l a t o r a d e p t u s m i n o r 2 as the neophyte goes through his initiation, he is told by the hiereus to make the salutin

TEXE MARRS CODEX MAGICA SECRET SIGNS MYSTERIOUS SYMBOLS AND HIDDEN CODES OF THE ILLUMINATI

ce by an uninformed populace as a sign of victory. 522 codex magica young winston churchill arrives for his druid initiation ceremony. was churchill taught the true, occult meaning of the fiery and destructive "v" hand sign that he later made so famous it became used around the world (photo: from the book, the druids, by peter berresford ellis) victory for the devil 523 in this ancient engraving, dionysius the areopagite, an athenian "convert" to christianity, gives the double "v" sign-"as above, so below" with left hand toward hell. dionysius was a mystical christian, a gnostic heretic who is thought to have been the author of an occultic treatise entitled the mystical divinity (from the book, mystics and mysteries of alexandria, by manly p. hall, 33) the green man, sign of the druids, is

THE STAR IN THE WEST BY CAPTAIN FULLER A CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE WORKS OF ALEISTER CROWLEY

iods, each embracing three distinct cycles. of renaissance, decadence, and slime. in the first the adepts rise as artists, philosophers, and men of science, who are sooner or later recognized as great men; in the second the adepts as adepts appear, but seem as fools and knaves; and in the third, that of slime, vanish altogether, and are invisible* then the chain starts again. thus crowley writes *dionysius thus describes the mystical adept: gthen is he delivered from all seeing and being seen, and passes into the truly mystical darkness of ignorance, where he excludes all intellectual apprehensions, and abides in the utterly impalpable and invisible; being wholly his who is above all, with no other dependence, either on himself or any other; and is made one, as to his nobler part, with the

THE SECRET RITUALS OF THE OTO

atin, lutheran and anglican churches alike are but the machine-gods of all fraud and oppression, being stolen and prostituted from that christ in whom our fathers in the gnosis strove to synthesize the warring gods of syria, greece, chaldea, rome and egypt at the time when the growth of the roman empire first made travel and the intercommunication of the priests of mithras, adonis, attis, osiris, dionysius, isis, astarte, venus and many scores of others possible. traces of this recension are still visible in the mass and in the calendar of the saints, all gods and goddesses of universal import receiving the same honour by the same rites as before, while the local gods were replaced by saints, virgins, martyrs, or angels, often of the same name, always of the same character. thus on the alt

rituals of the o.t.o. vi of classical fables the ancients of every nation report their heroes to have been born of the marriage of gods with mortals. as, romulus and remus begotten of the god mars upon a vestal virgin, hercules of jove, buddha of vishnu in the form of a white elephant with six tusks, jesus of jehovah upon a virgin, and many another. even true gods were born of mortal mothers, as dionysius of semele. also they recount many loves of heaven for earth, diana for endymion, zeus for leda, danae, europa, and the rest; even hades issued from his gloomy kingdom to ravish the maid persephone. there are also loves of gods for nymphs, bacchus for the ariadne, zeus for io, pan for syrinx; there is no end of these. and satyrs, fawns, centaurs, dryads, a thousand gracious tribes, leap l

THE HOLY BIBLE KING JAMES VERSION

e world in righteousness by [that] man whom he hath ordained [whereof] he hath given assurance unto all [men] in that he hath raised him from the dead. 17:32 and when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked: and others said, we will hear thee again of this [matter] 17:33 so paul departed from among them. 17:34 howbeit certain men clave unto him, and believed: among the which [was] dionysius the areopagite, and a woman named damaris, and others with them. 18:1 after these things paul departed from athens, and came to corinth; 18:2 and found a certain jew named aquila, born in pontus, lately come from italy, with his wife priscilla (because that claudius had commanded all jews to depart from rome) and came unto them. 18:3 and because he was of the same craft, he abode with th

TWO ESSAYS ON THE WORSHIP OF PRIAPUS

f the beneficent powers of the creator, and all their faculties directed to imitate him in the exertion of his great characteristic attribute. to heighten this enthusiasm, the male and female saints of antiquity used to lie promiscuously together in the temples, and honour god by a liberal display and general communication of his bounties.4 herodotus, indeed, excepts the greeks and egyptians, and dionysius of halicarnassus, the romans, from this general custom of other nations; but to the testimony of the former we may oppose the thousand sacred prostitutes kept at each of the temples of corinth and 1 priap. carm. 34. ed sciappii. 2 see plate iii, fig. 3. 3 ver. 613. 4 herodot. lib. ii. of priapus 105 eryx;1 and to that of the latter the express words of juvenal, who, though he lived an ag

WOLFSON ELLIOT ALEF MEM TAU KABBALISTIC MUSINGS ON TIME TRUTH AND DEATH

ound, see beierwaltes, platonisme et id alisme, pp. 126 128. 284. schelling, ages, p. 20. 285. ibid, p. 24. 286. ibid, pp. 42 43. see ibid, p. 80, where schelling writes that the eternity before the world immediately vanishes into nothing, or what likewise says as much, vanishes into a mere moment. 287. ibid, p. 80. 288. ibid, p. 43. 289. ibid, p. 76. schelling s view may have been anticipated by dionysius the areopagite, divine names, ch. 10, 940a, p. 194: there is a time in the writings when eternity is glorified as being in time and time as being eternal. but if we more greatly and properly know these, we shall call and designate those beings which are by eternity and those beings which are subject to genesis by time. it is therefore necessary that we do not conceive those which are cal

ty. further, we should interpret those beings which in some way [partake in] eternity and in some way [partake in] time to be intermediate between those which are and notes to pages 39 42 199 those which come to be. in the continuation of the passage, god is extolled as being both eternity and time and beyond eternity and time. as one might expect from a neoplatonist committed to christian dogma, dionysius views jesus as the being in whom the opposites cohere. see ibid, ch. 1, 592b, p. 111: from this the simple jesus was ineffably composed; the everlasting received a temporal dimension and came to be equal in our nature with its unchanging and steady founding of those things which are fitting to it. nevertheless, according to every nature, it exceeds every nature beyond every manner of bei

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