Ancient Mystic Oriental Masonry

116."With the passing of time the old Orders changed, old forms perished, and the Divine Sun that ^[80] shone on the ever-changing screen of time veiled Itself in new hues, and gathered into new groupings the humanity of the Western races, and each century which rolled by, evolved a new phase of the Ancient Mystic tradition."*

117." Religious parties, Secret Societies, sects of every description, such is the shifting panorama of the Religious life of the world during the last eighteen hundred years. And as we glance back from our present standpoint, it is difficult at times to discern the Mystic traditions, unless one has the Key, so loud is the clamour of contending sects over their formal doctrines, the outward expressions of their Inner faith.

118."A word may here be said to guard against one error that might arise with regards to the Spiritual Hierarchy before mentioned, ** the guardians of the world's religions. It is from this Great Communion that the "World-Saviours have from time to time come forth, and from this Center have sprung all the ' Sons of God, ' for there have been many ' Sons of God; ' not but one, as some seem to believe.

119." The building of form — even religious form — is materializing in its tendency, and thus we see that in all the centuries subsequent to the inception of ^[81] Christianity, the tendency of every 'reformation' has been to throw back, if possible, to the original standard erected by the Founder. "

120.On careful investigation, for instance, we find the Christ responsible only for certain high and pure ideals, insistance being made on a holy life leading to a Divine goal.

The doctrine and elaborations which were later introduced arose in every case from the followers, who brought in their more worldly aims, and transformed thereby the purity and simplicity of the early ideal into an ornate body, with worldly passions and constant strivings for mundane power.

121." Hence we find at the end of the nineteenth century, on one side the Catholic Church, on the other the Protestant, and between the extremes of these doctrinal communities, a fluctuating, ever-increasing body of thinkers, formed by the Mystics and Idealists of both parties, who from century to century have been at variance with their 'orthodox' brethren, seeking a higher truth, a purer ideal, than those offered by the dogmatists.

122.''The doctrines hidden in the Secret Fraternities, no matter what the name, have been handed down in regular succession from first to last. We can see that the esoteric teachings which in Atlantis first, then in Egypt, in Persia, and in Greece, were kept from the ears of an illiterate multitude precisely because it was known that they could not, in their then uneducated and ignorant condition, understand the deeper truth of Nature and of God. Hence, the secrecy with which ^[82] these pearls of great price were guarded and handed on with slight modifications into the possession of those grand early Christians, the Gnostics, the so-called heretics; then straight from the Gnostic schools of Syria and Egypt to their successors, the Manichaeans, and from these through the Paulicians, Albigenses, and Templars to the Hermetics, the Rosicrucians, and other less powerful Secret Fraternities — these Occult traditions, or rather, Occult Truths, have been bequeathed to the Mystic bodies of our own times. Persecuted by Protestants on one side and by Catholics on the other, the history of Mysticism, outside of the Rosicrucian Fraternity, is a history of martyrdom."