Well my sweeties! Today's article will be a bit tricky and I'll explain the reason why! First of all, summer is gone (finally) and I hope everyone's refreshed and ready to create! I surely am and actually eager to start writing and researching! Time is my only enemy of course, but I'll do my best to engage! So, the tricky part on this article is to write about a book that I've read in Greek and I'll try to tell you about it in English. Of course you can understand that page referrence won't be applied and I will only state the facts and comment on them, as I don't own (yet) an english copy.
Let me start by telling you a few things about the author whose book I will write about.
Édouard Schuré was born on January 21, 1841, in Strasbourg and was a French philosopher, novelist, and poet, among others. He studied Law but never practiced it. His love for French and German literature and culture in general offered him significant friendships, such as Richard Wagner and Rudolf Steiner (whom I'm planning to include in a future article about famous occultists in Europe). Not only did his friendship with Wagner give him recognition among literary circles in Europe, but mostly his French work "Richard Wagner et le Drame Musical" that brought him fame and made him the French expert on Wagner. Quite a title, don't you think?!
The Franco-German War of 1870-1871 disrupted their relations for a while due to his nationalistic and patriotic ideas. After that, and having also met the great Friedrich Nietzsche, with whom they shared their enthusiasm and love for Wagner, their relations were restored, only to be disrupted again due to Wagner's occult activities. Though Schuré himself was engaged in the occult, having written some minor texts on the matter after meeting Helena Blavatsky and becoming a member of the Theosophical Society. In 1889, he wrote "The Great Initiates," the book I want to talk to you about today. Although I consider myself quite the bookworm, it was only this year that I managed to read it at last. Better now than never, they say!
The present article will display the facts I found interesting in the book but also reflect some of my thoughts on the matter as well as the writing of Schuré.
Many times I was startled by the style of Schuré's writing. I wouldn't expect such a writer to express himself in such a pompous way, especially when dealing with topics as serious as the onset of religions. At the beginning of my reading, I thought I was reading a patriotic paean from dark and fanaticized eras of modern history, which we would like to forget but we ought to remember. Something like.. bad dreams of WWII.
I was appalled when I saw some chapters of history being corrupted and changed, and then I remembered the "politically correct" viewpoint of the "modern reality" is not a scenario that is being built today.
I freaked out when I read pompous lyricisms about "special races," but then I remembered when Schuré lived and in what times and societies he wrote his works. With all these considerations, I somehow calmed down a bit and managed to continue my reading.
The truth is that in every chapter, in every great Initiate he is referring to, analyzing all the known details of his life, he talks in the same way. With absolute awe and utter lyricism. Everybody has the right to express their ideas and opinions, it's just that to some people it may look alien the fact that he deals with historical matters while his studies were of Law. Of course, we're talking about a writer with broad knowledge of many fields, a polymath, in an era when knowledge was a privilege of the few.
His style of writing contains poetic license descriptions from the author's fantasy in detail, in order to give a more vivid result to the reader. It is enormously interesting to see how people of the specific eras saw the world, in the tide of the previous century, what they imagined when they were "lost" in "dreams" and in reality of the ancient peoples. More specifically, the chapter about Orpheus truly overwhelmed me. Perhaps because of the liveliness he describes the ancient rituals and mysteries with. Or maybe because this time I was born Greek (and obviously a few times more). He is exceptionally descriptive, as if he himself was present. Despite the fact that no one (no longer) knows any details of the "travel" initiations of the ancient Greek and Egyptian mystic rituals.
I confess that the chapter about Rama and Krishna got me excited. Amazing stories... even after the many storytelling fantasies of Schuré concerning the stories that religions created. In my opinion, they should be taught in all schools!
Let's see the work in a little more detail..
In the chapter "Greece in the 6th century," while talking about Orpheus, he mentions Alexander the Great. Surely, if Schuré were a historian, he would have known the reason why Alexander the Great started his expedition and wouldn't write in such a spontaneous and unhistorical way.
"This development gave Greece three centuries of great artistic creation and spiritual glory. It allowed the Orphic idea, which is at the same time the first impulse but also the ideal composition for Greece, to gather all its light and to transmit it to all mankind, before its political construction, undermined by internal disputes, faltered under the Macedonian strikes, only to collapse in the end under the iron fist of Rome." (p. 237 o.t.g.c.)
On page 298-299 o.t.g.c. (on the Greek copy), he writes in such a detail the initiating rituals of Pythagoras, describing the stages of the soul and differenciates the souls of animals. Is it his opinion or Pythagoras? And how does Schuré knows about it? It was supposed to be a secret initiation and its revealing was punishable by death. He was clearly a devoted Christian, in order to place the souls of animals in lower levels than of the human race. I guess he never had a pet himself! These were the ideas of the Hebrew-derived religions, in which they believe that animals don't have a soul and if they do, they are inferior. Isn't it true that God created all creatures (on this planet at least)??!! He chose to create them without a soul? That is the least to say unacceptable!
A general commendation if I may at this point... And even though, in the beginning of the book, the reader considers the author to be a supporter of eugenics and of the Aryan race theory (and whatever this entails), continuing the reading, he realizes that he is a man of the spirit who is passionate about metaphysics, hidden knowledge, the ethereal, the uncatchable, the utopic idea about mankind: that the soul and spirit are the highest of our powers. Unfortunately, contemporary societies are discrediting him!
Schuré is fascinated by ancient initiation rituals in theory but also in practice, in their fulfillment to the divine creature, the 'Man'. And as the great Greek teacher Ioannis Fourakis would say, "anthropoi (άνθρωποι - men, humans) and onthropoi (όνθρωποι - creatures, beings) are not the same". Onthropoi are lacking in spirit and you can distinguish them from their style of walking among others. With fear for the future, I must add that also, in the society I'm living in, the onthropoi constitute the majority of the population.
Schuré is thrilled by the Pythagorean philosophy. He is taking a journey of analysis into the lives and stages of the soul. He is passionate about esoteric teachings. It is not a coincidence that the biggest part of the book is dedicated to Pythagoras!
Despite the common knowledge of the time, Schuré dedicates quite a part of his book to the female. He creates a hymn to the secret and mystical celestial power of woman!
At the end of the Pythagorean chapter, the love and admiration for the person and work of Pythagoras is quite apparent. We see, ending the chapter and before he goes on to Plato, he praises the philosophy, the system, and the entirety of his cosmology, elevating them to the ultimate, brightest scale of mystic spirituality and the ultimate Truth! Rarely has a Greek author elevated the spirit of Pythagoras so high, contrary to foreign writers, historians, researchers, and scholars who could grasp his grandeur!
Continuing reading, in the first chapter about Jesus, I must make a comment. The prophetic tradition of Israel and its truths that kept the faith unaltered and timeless were indeed "truths," as they prophesied what they were foretelling. They would achieve a 100% accuracy rate in their predictions.
I quote: "the true Israel mission"
I have the need to pose a question here: Why, no matter what, was their mission to infiltrate the rest of peoples and civilizations? No matter what, at all costs.., which is something that missionary Christianity made real.
And something about Jesus' mystical initiation...
All the knowledge of the Essenes was transferred to Jesus. But I must raise the question, why are Christians not taught this theogony and cosmotheory, upon which Jesus based his philosophy? Why does the clergy worldwide hide this knowledge? Why do they throw all of this in the bin, naming it a "Jewish fairytale"? Especially since Jesus was taught and initiated exactly in all of that?
Why, since Jesus said "love one another as you love yourselves" and "be perfect as God is perfect", have all these unspeakable and atrocious crimes against humanity taken place, especially by believers of Christ in his name? Were they not proper and good Christians, since they didn't follow his commandments? Therefore, was it a fault to make them saints, hordes of supposed Christians or... I don't know what else... The issue raises a lot of sequenced question marks. One of the many questions is the non-belief in the existing person of Jesus or of God, his "father" by the Christians themselves. After all, we witness the lives, the unspeakable way of life of the "God's representatives on Earth", why are they not afraid of what they are preaching? What do they know and what do they hide from their "flock"?
Further on, in the same chapter, I give more credit to Schuré, where he shows and analyzes the "words" of Jesus to Nicodemus, the knowledge of the ancient initiation mysteries, and the esoteric quest from Greece, Egypt, and India. Therefore, deliberately, the Church subtracted from Jesus' words specific sayings to avoid any connection of Christianity with the ancient cosmologies. Hence, in most cases, the scripts don't make any sense and consist of hazily doubletalk.
When Schuré is referring to the baptism by water and spirit (fire), he means, of course, the ancient practices of purification, transmutation, and initiation, and therefore regeneration, that were exercised thousands of years ago by the oldest peoples and civilizations. All of that, the "Christian faith" excommunicated, naming them "pagan," "satanic," and hanging on them the label "magic," abolishing, hanging, burning, and inflicting a myriad of other punishments on people of intellect and spirit, and not only.
Since my spirit is an exploring one, I must ask another question: How could Schuré know the thoughts and visits to infinity and beyond of Jesus? Are they mentioned somewhere? Is there a historical text where the thoughts of Jesus are written? There you go. I'll let you start your own research and share with us your discoveries. An article must make us think and look further. It must be a stimulus. Not to give us information on a plate, but to move the cogwheel of our mind!
Schuré mentions that Jesus was thinking about the instructions he would give to his disciples on the "religion he had come to build"! I believe we all know the verse from the Gospels in which he himself supposedly says: "Don't create a church (=religion) in my name." Why, I wonder, is a prophet of Israel, as Schuré himself is referring to him, interested in the universality and adoption of his words by all peoples of the planet?
Food for thought!!!
I know today's article was quite radical, but it only came from one of my readings by the famous Schuré. Why should we be afraid to question everything?
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