isis unveiled, vol 2: chapter ii (sorcery)

“In these celebrated rites, although persons of both sexes and all classes were allowed to take a part, and a participation in them was even obligatory, very few indeed attained the higher and final initiation. The gradation of the Mysteries is given us by Proclus in the fourth book of his Theology of Plato. “The perfective rite, τελετή, precedes in order the initiation – Muesis – and initiation, Epopteia, or the final apocalypse, (revelation).”

Theon of Smyrna, in Mathematica, also divides the mystic rites into five parts: “the first of which is the previous purification; for neither are the Mysteries communicated to all who are willing to receive them; there are certain persons who are prevented by the voice of the crier…since it is necessary that such as are not expelled from the Mysteries should first be refined by certain purifications which the reception of the sacred rites succeeds. The third part is denominated epopteia or reception. And the fourth, which is the end and design of the revelation, is the binding of the head and fixing of the crowns…whether after this he, (the initiated person), becomes…a hierophant or sustains some other part of the sacerdotal office. But the fifth, which is produced from all these, is friendship and interior communion with God.” And this was the last and most awful of all the Mysteries.

There are writers who have often wondered at the meaning of this claim to a “friendship and interior communion with God.” Christian authors have denied the pretensions of the “Pagans” to such “communion”, affirming that only Christian saints were and are capable of enjoying it; materialistic skeptics have altogether scoffed at the idea of both. After long ages of religious materialism and spiritual stagnation, it has most certainly become difficult, if not altogether impossible, to substantiate the claims of either party.

The old Greeks, who had once crowded around the Agora of Athens, with its altar to the “Unknown God”, are no more; and their descendants firmly believe that they have found the “Unknown” in the Jewish Jehovah. The divine ecstasies of the early Christians have made room for visions of a more modern character, in perfect keeping with progress and civilization.”

H. P. Blavatsky