“We have read the rules of these holy initiates of the Christian Society of Jesus. Compare them with those enforced upon the Pagan postulant, and Christian (!) morality with that inculcated in those mysteries of the Pagans upon which all the thunders of an avenging Deity are invoked by the Church. Had the latter no mysteries of its own? Or were they in any wise, purer, nobler, or more inciting to a holy, virtuous life? Let us hear what Niccolini has to say, in his able History of the Jesuits, of the modern mysteries of the Christian cloister.
“In most monasteries, and more particularly in those of the Capuchins and reformed (reformati), there begins at Christmas a series of feasts, which continues till Lent. All sorts of games are played, the most splendid banquets are given, and in the small towns, above all, the refectory of the convent is the best place of amusement for the greater number of the inhabitants. At carnivals, two or three very magnificent entertainments take place; the board so profusely spread that one might imagine that Copia had here poured forth the whole contents of her horn. It must be remembered that these two orders live by alms. The sombre silence of the cloister is replaced by a confused sound of merry-making, and its gloomy vaults now echo with other songs than those of the psalmist. A ball enlivens and terminates the feast; and, to render it still more animated, and perhaps to show how completely their vow of chastity has eradicated all their carnal appetite, some of the young monks appear coquettishly dressed in the garb of the fair sex, and begin the dance, along with others, transformed into gay cavaliers. To describe the scandalous scene which ensues, would be but to disgust my readers. I will only say that I have myself often been a spectator at such saturnalia.”
The cycle is moving down, and, as it descends, the physical and bestial nature of man develops more and more at the expense of the Spiritual Self. With what disgust may we not turn from this religious farce called modern Christianity, to the noble faiths of old! In the Egyptian Funeral Ritual found among the hymns of the Book of the Dead, and which is termed by Bunsen “that precious and mysterious book”, we read an address of the deceased, in the character of Horus, detailing all that he has done for his father Osiris. Among other things the deity says: “30, I have given thee thy Spirit. 31, I have given thee thy Soul. 32, I have given thee thy force (body)”, etc. In another place the entity, addressed as “Father” by the disembodied soul, is shown to mean the “spirit” of man; for the verse says: “I have made my soul come and speak with his Father”, its Spirit.
The Egyptians regarded their Ritual as essentially a Divine inspiration; in short, as modern Hindus do the Vedas, and modern Jews their Mosaic books. Bunsen and Lepsius show that the term Hermetic means inspired; for it is Thoth, the Deity itself, that speaks and reveals to his elect among men the will of God and the arcana of divine things. Portions of them are expressly stated “to have been written by the very finger of Thoth himself”; to have been the work and composition of the great God. “At a later period, their Hermetic character is still more distinctly recognized, and on a coffin of the 26th Dynasty, Horus announces to the deceased that Thoth himself has brought him the books of his divine words, or Hermetic writings.”
Since we are aware that Moses was an Egyptian priest, or at least that he was learned in all their wisdom, we need not be astonished that he should write in Deuteronomy (ix., 10), “And the Lord delivered unto me two tables of stones written with the finger of GOD”; or to find in Exodus xxxi., “And he (the Lord) gave unto Moses…two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God.”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 