“No modern or even mediaeval law could be more severe than that of the hierophant. True, he had more discrimination, charity, and justice, than the Christian clergy; for while banishing the “unconscious” sorcerer, the person troubled with a demon, from within the sacred precincts of the adyta, the priests, instead of mercilessly burning him, took care of the unfortunate “possessed one”.
Having hospitals expressly for that purpose in the neighborhood of temples, the ancient “medium” of obsessed, was taken care of and restored to health. But with one who had, by conscious witchcraft, acquired powers dangerous to his fellow-creatures, the priests of old were as severe as justice herself. “Any person accidently guilty of homicide, or of any crime, or convicted of witchcraft, was excluded from the Eleusinian Mysteries. And so were they from all others. This law, mentioned by all writers on the ancient initiation, speaks for itself.
The claim of Augustine, that all the explanations given by the Neo-Platonists were invented by themselves is absurd. For nearly every ceremony in their true and successive order is given by Plato himself, in a more or less covered way. The Mysteries are as old as the world, and one well versed in the esoteric mythologies of various nations can trace them back to the days of the ante-Vedic period in India.
A condition of the strictest virtue and purity is required from the Vatou, or candidate in India before he can become an initiate, whether he aims to be a simple fakir, a Purohita, (public priest), or a Sannyasi, a saint of the second degree of initiation, the most holy as the most revered of them all. After having conquered, in the terrible trials preliminary to admittance to the inner temple in the subterranean crypts of his pagoda, the sannyasi passes the rest of his life in the temple, practicing the eighty-four rules and ten virtues prescribed to the Yogis.
“No one who has not practiced, during his whole life, the ten virtues which the divine Manu makes incumbent as a duty, can be initiated into the Mysteries of the council”, say the Hindu books of initiation. These virtues are: “Resignation – the act of rendering good for evil; temperance; probity; purity; chastity; repression of the physical senses; the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures; that of the Superior soul, (spirit); worship of truth; abstinence from anger.”
These virtues must alone direct the life of a true Yogi. “No unworthy adept ought to defile the ranks of the holy initiates by his presence for twenty-four hours.” The adept becomes guilty after having once broken any one of these vows. Surely the exercise of such virtues is inconsistent with the idea one has of devil-worship and lasciviousness of purpose.”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 