“Appolonius and Iamblichus held that it was not “in the knowledge of things without, but in the perfection of the soul within, that lies the empire of man, aspiring to be more than men.”
Thus they had arrived at a perfect cognizance of their godlike souls, the powers of which they used with all the wisdom, outgrowth of esoteric study of the hermetic lore, inherited by them from their forefathers. But our philosophers, tightly shutting themselves up in their shells of flesh, cannot or dare not carry their timid gaze beyond the comprehensible.
For them there is no future life; there are no godlike dreams, they scorn them as unscientific; for them the men of old are but “ignorant ancestors”, as they express it; and whenever they meet during their physiological researches with an author who believes that this mysterious yearning after spiritual knowledge is inherent in every human being, and cannot have been given us utterly in vain, they regard him with contemptuous pity.
Says a Persian proverb: “The darker the sky is, the brighter the stars will shine.”
Thus, on the dark firmament of the mediaeval ages began appearing the mysterious Brothers of the Rosie Cross. They formed no associations, they built no colleges; for, hunted up and down like so many wild beasts, when caught by the Christian Church, they were unceremoniously roasted.
“As religion forbids it”, says Bayle, “to spill blood”, therefore, “to elude the maxim, Ecclesia non novit sanguinem, they burned human beings, as burning a man does not shed his blood!””
H. P. Blavatsky
