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The love of truth is inherently the
love of god ; and so predominating over every desire
of the soul, purifying it, and assimilating it to the
divine, thus governing every act of the individual,
it raises man to a participation and communion with
divinity, and restores him to the likeness of God. The
soul dwells in "the grave which we call the body"
and in its incorporate state, and previous to the discipline
of education, the spiritual element is 'asleep'. Life
is thus a dream rather than a reality. The soul cannot
come into the form of a man if it has never seen the
truth. By making the right use remembered from the former
life, by constantly perfecting himself in the perfect
mysteries by contemplation, a man becomes truly perfect
- an initiate into the diviner of Wisdom.
Mysteries are observance, generally
kept secret from the uninitiated, in which were taught
by a dramatic representation and other methods, the
origin of thins, the nature of the human spirit, its
relations to the body, and the method of its purification
and restoration to higher life.
Hence, we may understand why the sublimer
scenes in the mysteries were always in the night. The
life of the interior spirit is the death of the external
nature ; and the night of the physical world denotes
the day of the spiritual and this perhaps is the reason
why Lodges are held after dusk, and spiritual light
could be obtained only at night.
Pythagoras is Truly the Enlightened
Mason.
Ennemoser says : " Into Egypt
and the East went Herodotus Thales Parmenides, Empedocles,
Orpheus and Pythagoras, to instruct themselves in Natural
Philosophy and Theology". There, too, Moses acquired
his Wisdom and Jesus passed the earlier years of his
life. Pythagoras brought his doctrines from the eastern
sanctuaries, and Plato compiled them into a form more
intelligible to the uninitiated mind, than the mysterious
numerals of the sage - whose doctrines he has fully
embraced.
It is admitted on all hands that from
time immemorial the distant cast was the Land of Knowledge.
And it must be due to this fact that the lodge faces
the east.
Pythagoras awakened the deepest intellectual
sympathy of his age, and his doctrines exerted a powerful
influence upon the mind of Plato. His cardinal idea
was that there existed a permanent principle of unity
beneath the forms, changes, and other phenomena of the
universe. He taught that "numbers are the first
principle of the entities". Ritter has expressed
the opinion that the formula of Pythagoras should be
taken symbolically, which is doubtless correct. Timoeus
said "God formed things as they first arose according
to forms and numbers". Modern science recognises
that all the higher form of nature assume the form of
quantitative statement. Numbers were regarded as the
best representations of the laws of harmony which pervade
the Cosmos. We know too that in Chemistry the doctrine
of atoms and the laws of combination are actually, defined
in numbers. The world is then through all its department,
a living arithmetics in its development, a realised
geometry in its repose.
The key to the Pythagorean dogmas is
the general formula of unity in multiplicity, the one
evolving of the many and the pervading of the many.
The Apostle Paul accepted this as true - " Out
of him and through him and in him all things are".
The mystic Decade 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10
is a way of expressing this idea. The One is God ; the
two, matter ; the three combining the one and the two
and partaking of the nature of both is the phenomenal
world ; the Four or tetrad is the form of perfection
and expresses the emptiness of all ; and the Decad,
or sum of all involves the entire Cosmos. The Universe
is a combination of thousand elements, and yet the expression
of a single spirit, a Chaos to the senses, a Cosmos
to the reason. Speusippus seems to have added aether
an elements ; so that there were five principal elements
to correspond with the five regular figures in Geometry.
The philosophers of these days thought that the one
(monad) did not exist ; nor till he had united with
the many and the emanated existence (the monad and the
Daud) was a being produced. This honoured manifestation
dwells in the centre as in the circumference, but it
is only the reflection of the world soul.
Xenocrates held the Pythagorean Doctrine
and his system of neumerals and mathematics in the highest
estimation. He gave to the soul of man, the intellect
formed of the three qualities - Thought, Perception
and Knowledge by Intuition, or in other words Intelligence,
conscience and will ; and the five organs of the outward
perception. The relation of numbers to ideas was developed
by him, and by reducing them to their ideal primary
elements, he demonstrated that every figure and form
originated out of the smallest indivisible line. He
was the first to originate the theory of indivisible
magnitudes. The Human Soul with him is a compound of
the most spiritual properties of the Monad and Daud,
possessing the highest principles of both. He utterly
despised everything except the highest virtue, and describes
the stainlessness and severe austerity of his character.
The Cosmological theory of numerals
which Pythagoras learned from the Egyptian hierophants
is alone able to reconcile the two unites matter and
spirit, and cause each to demonstrate the other mathematically.
The harmony and mathematical equiformity
of the double evolution spiritual and physical are elucidated
only in the Universal numerals of Pythagoras, who built
his system entirely upon the socalled "Metrical
speech" of the Hindu Vedas. Martin Haug undertook
the transiation of Aitreya Brahmana of the Rig Veda,
and his explanations established beyond doubt or dispute
the identity of the Pythagorean and Brahmanical Systems.
In both, the esoteric significance is derived from numbers
; in the former, from the mystic relations of every
number to everything intelligible to the human mind
; in the latter, from the number of syllables of which
each verse in the Mantras consists.
Plato, the ardent disciple of Pythagoras,
realised it so fully as to maintain that the Dodecahedron
was the geometrical figure employed in constructing
the Universe. Some of these figures had a peculiarly
solemn significance for instance "Four", of
which the Dodecahedron is the trine, was held sacred
by the Pythagoreans. It is a perfect square, and neither
of the bounding lines exceeds the other in length, by
a single point. It is the emblem of moral justice and
divine equity geometrically expressed. All the power
and great symphonies of physical and spiritual nature
lie inscribed within the perfect square ; and the ineffable
name of Him, which name otherwise, would remain unutterable,
was replaced by this sacred number 4 the most binding
and solemn oath with the ancient mystics - the Tetractys.
In the Vedas, (Aitrays Brahmana - "Mantra
- Ayamaguh prisnir akramit") there is positive
proof that so long ago as 2000 B. C. the Hindu sages
must have been acquainted with the rotundity of the
globe and the heliocentric system. Pythagoras and Plato
know well this astronomical truth ; for Pythagoras obtained
his knowledge from India from men who had been there
and Plato faithfully echoed his teachings.
In this translation of the Rig Veda
(Aitraya Brahmana) Dr. Haug was forced to express "the
denial of the existence of the sunrise and sunset and
hence must be supposed that the sun must always remain
in its high position (Meridian). The Veda says "The
God Agnishtoma is that one god who burns. The sun never
sets nor rises. For having arrived at the end of the
day, it produces too opposite effects, making night
to what is below and day to what is on the otherside.
How true the dictum that the sun is always at its meridian
with respect to freemasonry.
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