Mr 'E'

Why do I keep banging on about the Mysteries? What are they & why are they so important to myself & many others when twenty or thirty years ago no one I knew in England at any rate had ever even heard of them? Part of the first half of these questions may be answered in this uncomplicated manner, they run the world
& have done for a long time.
The second half boils down to two separate events,
1; the internet & 2; Sept 11th 2001.
As for 'What are they?', they are essentially a conglomerate of Pagan institutions who meet privately (read secretly) in temples wherein the religion of the ancients is practiced & preached,
one example of course being the Masonic Lodge. 
It's a pyramidal system of instruction, thus those on the bottom rungs of the lower degrees are only shown glimpses of the;
'true nature of the Craft' as they put it. Outwardly the Initiates are shown a certain number of Degrees, or level of instruction, for example there are 33 Degrees in the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry however, there are 360 degrees in a circle (a perfect shape to them) & people like Aleister Crowley have shown there are degrees much higher such as the Rite Of Mizraim. In any event my take on their teachings, structure etc is the topic of discussion here.

​As I said, their doctrines go back to the dawn of civilisation & as far as I can tell, the first priests of this religion were Astronomers, who could predict the movement of the heavily bodies from long periods of recorded observation & thus by studying the stars as they did, could for example aid the farmer/fisherman by connecting the full moon with high tides & so on. By such circumstances these men became a dominant class within society & they quickly learned to keep their wisdom under wraps so as to maintain their elevated status among men. One method of protecting this knowledge was to symbolise it, i.e. give the processes/principles/laws in man, nature & the cosmos layer upon layer of metaphor. In this way, anything the priests would put into stone, papyrus or common parlance would be a hopeless MYSTERY to the common man, who, as was the case with Dr Faust, would be; 'none the wiser than before',
even though he'd be witnessing their teachings every day of his life.
An ancient Egyptian example would be Isis, she represents on certain levels, the moon, knowledge & the Mystery School itself, her husband/brother Osiris represented the sun,
the (secret) doctrine of the Mystery Schools & so on.

​There is no absolute consensus as to where these schools were first formulated although Albert Pike suggested India & many agree with him, however, the Mystery School was certainly refined & codified so to speak in Egypt & much of what was practiced in Ancient Egypt is still adhered to today within the modern Mystery Schools. Many prominent Greek Statesmen visited Egypt to study under the priest system there for many years, including Solon, Pythagoras & Plato. These men returned to Greece & implemented what they had learned & thus was born Western Civilisation. Always moving behind the scenes as it were, the actors & Dramatists of Greece were priests of the Mysteries.
Philosophy came from them as did astronomy, mathematics,
as did religion, politics, science &
many other branches of the Arts we today take for granted. 
Indeed were it not for the Invisible Colleges, there would have been no Roman Empire nor a Catholic Church. Around the beginning of the 4th Cen AD there was a split in the doctrine of the Pagan Mystery Schools, between those who believed in the divinity of Jesus & those who did not (Gnostics, Neoplatonists, Hermetists etc...). Those who adhered to the literal teachings of Jesus whilst still practicing the old pagan religion became the Catholic Church, which is a melding of Christianity & Paganism. 

Whether the hierarchy of the Catholic Church actually believed in the divinity of Jesus is doubtful, as the Church was formed as an expedient measure for ensuring the preservation of the Roman Empire, however, it came down hard on the orthodox pagan schools shall we say as it did with other religions under the sway of the Church of Rome bar Judaism, from then on, the Mysteries were persecuted & driven underground, but nothing near the brutality to which Christianity was subjected under the pagans it must be said. Thus the pagan schools scattered, mainly to the Levant & Egypt where they regrouped under the tutelage of the Arabs.
'This is what magic had been, from Zoroaster to Manes, from Orpheus to Apollonius Thyaneus; when positive Christianity, triumphing over the splendid dreams & gigantic aspirations of the school of Alexandria, publicly crushed this philosophy with its anathemas, & compelled it to become more occult & more mysterious than ever' 
 - Albert Pike, 'Morals & Dogma' (1871)


​Once the moment seemed propitious, they activated their cells in Europe & made a beeline for the Holy Land under the banner of the Crusades, from this moment on we see the Mystery Schools operating under many guises, the Cathars, the Bogomils, the Albigensians, these were all well entrenched in France & Italy, waging covert war on the Church from a multitude of angles, all the while never revealing its true identity though I'm sure the Church knew who it was dealing with, seeing as all the great churches (cathedrals) now springing up everywhere came laced with pagan imagery.

​The Qabbalists, who deal primarily with a magickal use of words & numbers, had become a powerful force in Spain by the time
'Men of Towardness' like Leonardo Da Vinci set to work on the Renaissance (re-birth). It's here the Jesuits first came into operation, socialising & communising as they went round the globe.
In Germany, men such as Martin Luther had openly begun the rebellion against the Church & in England it's Tudor Monarchs severed its connections altogether with Rome, thus, London became the epicentreof pagan plans for the;
'Restoration of the Golden Age'. 

Christian Kings held out however, the Vatican itself had became an impotent political football as far back as the 12th/13th Cen, & it was only by virtue of the European Monarchs sympathetic to its cause was it able to continue to operate at all. Freemasonry as a public institution was began in England at some point during the reign of Elizabeth I, most probably by
Sir Francis Bacon & his entourage, as was the British Empire which incorporated the Slave Trade, & it was thus how the American Colonies were created & Asia conquered.....Africa was one vast goldmine of raw materials & free labour. Then came the Enlightenment, suffice to say they could not of had their enlightenment had they not stolen the raw materials needed for study from those many distant lands whose lands & peoples were utterly decimated in the process.

To finish the job, those Europeans loyal to the Pope were duly attacked, most notably perhaps by Freemason Napoleon. When Napoleons job had ran its course, Old Bony was shipped by the British to a paradisiacal island to live out his days in peace & comfort. Certain strands of the old Order remained however, & so began the most bloody century the world had yet known. Before Germany was created in 1871, it existed for nearly a 1000yrs as 
The Holy Roman Empire. The Germanic peoples acted as the principle protectors of the Catholic Church, then came the Masonic French Revolution against the French Crown, but more so against the Catholic population. After a century of despoliatin, intrigue, conspiracy & revolution, Britain & France signed the treaty of
The Entente Cordial in 1904, the very day British Intelligence Officer Aleister Crowley 'received' The Book Of The Law
in Cairo, Egypt. In 1911, Crowley wrote;
'One last word on this subject. There is a Magical operation of maximum importance: the Initiation of a New Aeon. When it becomes necessary to utter a Word, the whole Planet must be bathed in blood. Before man is ready to accept the Law of Thelema, the Great War must be fought. This Bloody Sacrifice is the critical point of the World-Ceremony of the Proclamation of Horus, the Crowned & conquering Child, as Lord of the Aeon.'
(Magick In Theory & Practice)

Suffice to say WWII was brought into being in a similar manner by the same ancient pagan religion on its inexorable march toward Valhalla. & here we find ourselves, either in a
​post-Apocalyptic world or still in the throes of one, who can say?
In any event, the Mystery Schools are now firmly in control & intent on keeping it so as long as there's a man or woman on earth,
because that's the kind of people they are.

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So what else is with all the surrounding chaos & uncertainty everywhere? 

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