Ancient Mystic Oriental Masonry

136." This same Constantine who, with his soldiers environed the Bishops at the first Council of Nice, A. D. 325, and dictated terms to their deliberations, applied for Initiation into the Mysteries, and was told by the Officiating Priest that no purgation could free him from the crime of putting his wife to death, or from his many pur juries and murders. Every careful and unbiased student of history knows why the Secret Doctrine has been heard of so little since the days of Constantine. An exoteric religion, and belief in a personal God blotted it out for self protection; and yet, oh, irony of history! the very Pentateuch conceals it, and for many a student of the Kabalah of the coming century, the seals will be broken."* *

137."Three centuries had passed since the orgin of Christianity when at this epoch of barbarism there arose in the same Persia, whence so many teachings ^[89] had gone forth, a philosopher who wished to lead back the confused spirit of men to the cult of the only true God. He was called Manes. Some of the uninstructed have regarded him as the first originator of our (Masonic) Order, and the creator of our doctrines.

138."Manes lived under the Persian King Sopares. He endeavored to recall to life in their entire purity the Mysteries and the religion of Zoroaster, uniting them with the pure compassionate teachings of Jesus Christ. The Teachings of Manes were liberal, whereas superstition and despotism governed Europe. It is easy to believe that those who professed demagogic principles and a religion free from all that was chimerical would be persecuted. Thus the Manichaeans from about the fourth century were persecuted to the fullest by all the despots and by the Romish Priests. The Holy Augustine, brought up in the mysteries of Zoroaster — to a certain point — adapted to the holy teachings of Jesus, became his bitterest persecutor and the greatest enemy to the teachings of Manes which was known under the name of the religion of the Child of the Widow.

139."This hatred shown towards Manes by St. Augustine, and his zeal to the Christian Trinity doctrine— after he had been refused admittance to the Higher Degrees of the Mysteries — arose in the vexation which Augustine experienced at having been only admitted into the first degree of the Mysteries of Manes. The Magi, who had recognized in him an ambitious and restless spirit, were thereby induced to refuse to him all advancement, and this in spite of his nine years ^[90] study, which he made in order to be raised to the higher degree. This fact is sufficiently confirmed by Fleury, Baronius, and by Augustine himself in his confessions. After the death of Manes, twelve of his pupils went forth into all the parts of the earth and imparted his teachings and his mysteries to all people. They illumined, as with a lightning-flash, Asia, Africa, and Europe, as may be seen from Baronius, Fleury, Bayle, and others.

140." Already in the lifetime of Manes, his pupil Herman had spread his teachings in Egypt, where Coptic priests and other Christians mingled it with the mysteries adopted from the Jews. It was through these same Coptic priests and the Eastern Christians that both the mysteries of the Children of the Widow, and the cult of the great Architect came to us in consequence of apparently unforseen events, and it will be seen that it was principally by means of the Crusades that they obtained a secure footing in the West. The mysteries maintained their existence under the name of the cult of the Great Architect of the Universe (G. A. 0. T. U.), a name that has its origin in the allegory of Hiram, which represented, in the Mysteries, 'The unknown God,' the Eternal, and sole Creator of all things and the Regenerator of all beings.

141."Bossuet, in his Historie des Variations, TV, says that in the middle ages the Christian sects, and especially the Manichaeans and Gnostics, had concealed themselves as much as possible in the Orthodox Church itself; the remainder of the Manichæans who had ^[91] maintained themselves only too well in the East, crowded into the Latin Church. Montfaucon, VII, p. 271, says, when he speaks of the religion of the Egyptians, that the heresy of the good and evil principles which had been upheld by Manichæans, had at various times brought forth in the Church great disorder, and he asserts that in the East these doctrines existed at the time of the Crusades the long time that elapsed during the wars of the Crusaders gave them the opportunity of being admitted into all the mysteries of the Children of the Widow, the teachings of the 'Great Architect of the