Preface: Among those revered and cherished repositories of ancient arcane wisdom which have transmitted the enlightenment of demi-gods from age to age the myth of Genesis holds an important place. And no less certainly can it be asserted that the loss of its true esoteric meaning, along with that of other similarly cryptic oracles of truth and wisdom, has been the cause of a vast befuddlement of the mind of western nations for some fifteen centuries. When, about the third century, the early Christian movement revolted viciously against the whole ancient system of imparting truth and knowledge in secret to disciplined recipients only, in the Arcane Brotherhoods and Mystery Schools, and discarded in consequence the allegorical interpretation of the myths, substituting a purely literal rendering and turning the figures of a spiritual drama into "historical" characters, the great ancient light of knowledge passed under an eclipse from which it has not by any means emerged even now. Except in the marvelous development of mechanics, we are still under the cloud of the Dark Ages. Philosophically, spiritually, we have not recovered what was once known - and lost. And perhaps the sorriest feature of the situation is that the mass of people, and even the leaders of orthodox religionism are neither aware of our having lost precious truth, nor can they be told convincingly that it is so.
Preface: Among those revered and cherished repositories of ancient arcane wisdom which have transmitted the enlightenment of demi-gods from age to age the myth of Genesis holds an important place. And no less certainly can it be asserted that the loss of its true esoteric meaning, along with that of other similarly cryptic oracles of truth and wisdom, has been the cause of a vast befuddlement of the mind of western nations for some fifteen centuries. When, about the third century, the early Christian movement revolted viciously against the whole ancient system of imparting truth and knowledge in secret to disciplined recipients only, in the Arcane Brotherhoods and Mystery Schools, and discarded in consequence the allegorical interpretation of the myths, substituting a purely literal rendering and turning the figures of a spiritual drama into "historical" characters, the great ancient light of knowledge passed under an eclipse from which it has not by any means emerged even now. Except in the marvelous development of mechanics, we are still under the cloud of the Dark Ages. Philosophically, spiritually, we have not recovered what was once known - and lost. And perhaps the sorriest feature of the situation is that the mass of people, and even the leaders of orthodox religionism are neither aware of our having lost precious truth, nor can they be told convincingly that it is so.
