The Rosicrucians

Alternative Religions

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Alternative Religions

The Rosicrucians

Hargrave Jennings

Obelisks, spires, minarets, tall towers, upright stones (Menhirs), monumental crosses, and architectural perpendiculars of every description, and, generally speaking, all erections conspicuous for height and slimness, were representatives of the sworded, or of the pyramidal, Fire. They bespoke, wherever found, and in whatever age, the idea of the First Principle, or the male generative emblem. Having given, as we hope, some new views of the doctrine of Universal Fire, and shown that there has been error in imagining that the Persians and the ancient Fire-Worshippers were idolaters simply of fire, inasmuch as, in bowing down before it, they only regarded Fire as a symbol, or visible sign, or thing placed as standing for the Deity,— having, in our preceding chapters, disposed the mind of th reader to consider as a matter of solemnity, and of much greater general significance, this strange fact of Fire-Worship, and endeavoured to show it as a portentous, first, all-embracing as all-genuine principle,—we will proceed to exemplify the wide-spread roots of the Fire-Faith. In fact, we seem to recognise it everywhere.

Instead of—in their superstitions—making of fire their God, they obtained Him—that is, all that we can realise of Him; by which we mean, all that the human reason can find of the Last Principle—out of it. Already, in their, thoughts, had the Magi exhausted all possible theologies; already had they, in their great wisdom, searched through physics—their power to this end (as not being distracted by world's objects) being much greater than that of the modern faith-teachers and doctors; already, in their reveries, in their observations (deep within their deep souls) upon the nature of themselves, and of the microcosm of a world in which they found themselves, had the Magi transcended. They had arrived at a new world in their speculations and deductions upon facts, upon all the things behind which (to men) make these facts. Already, in their determined climbing into the heights of thought, had these Titans of mind achieved, past the cosmical, through the shadowy borders of Real and Unreal, into Magic. For, is Magic wholly false ?

Passing through these mind-worlds, and coming out, as we may figure it, at the other side, penetrating into the secrets of things, they evaporated all Powers, and resolved them finally into the Last Fire. Beyond this, they found nothing; as into this they resolved all things. And then, on the Throne of the Visible, they placed this—in the world, Invisible—Fire: the sense-thing to be worshipped in the senses, as the last thing of them, and the king of them, —that is, that which we know as the phenomenon, Burning Fire,—the Spiritual Fire being impalpable, as having the visible only for its shadow; the Ghostly Fire not being even to be thought upon; thought being its medium of apprehension when it itself had slipped; the waves of apprehension of it only flowing back when it—being intuition—had vanished. We only know that a thought is in us when the thought is off the object and in us: another thought being, at that simultaneous instant, in the object, to be taken up by us only when the first has gone out of us, and so on; but not before to be taken up by us;—that thought being all of us, and a deceptive and unreal thing to pass at all to us through the reason, and there being no resemblance between it and its original; the true thing being “Inspiration,” or “God in us,” excluding all matter or reason, which is only built up of matter. It is most difficult to frame language in regard to these things. Reason can only unmake God; He is only possible in His own development, or in His seizing of us, and “in possession.” Thus Paracelsus and his disciples declare that Human Reason become our master, that is, in its perfection,—but not used as our servant,—transforms, as it were, into the Devil, and exercises his office in leading us away from the throne of Spiritual Light—other, and, in the world, seeming better; in his false and deluding World-Light, or Matter-Light, really showing himself God. This view of the Human Reason, intellectually trusted, transforming into the Angel of Darkness, and effacing God out of the world, is borne out by a thousand texts of Scripture. It is equally in the beliefs and in the traditions of all nations and of all time, as we shall by and by show. Real Light is God’s shadow, or the soul of matter; the one is the very brighter, as the other is the very blacker. Thus, the worshippers of the Sun, or Light, or Fire, whether in the Old or the New Worlds, worshipped not Sun, or Light, or Fire,—otherwise they would have worshipped the Devil, he being all conceivable Light; but rather they adored the Unknown Great God, in the last image that was possible to man of anything—the Fire. And they chose that as His shadow, as the very opposite of that which He really was; honouring the Master through His Servant; bowing before the manifestation, Eldest of Time, for the Timeless; paying homage to the spirit of the Devil-World, or rather to Beginning and End, on which was the foot of the ALL, that the ALL, or the LAST, might be worshipped; propitiating the Evil Principle in its finite shows, because (as by that alone a world could be made, whose making is alone Comparison) it was permitted as a means of God, and therefore the operation of God Downwards, as part of Him, though Upwards dissipating as before Him,—before HIM in whose presence Evil, or Comparison, or Difference, or Time, or Space, or anything, should be Impossible: real God being not to be thought upon.

But it was not only in the quickening Spirit of Divinity that these things could be seen. Otherwise than in faith, we can hope that they shall now—in our weak attempts to explain them—be gathered as not contradictory, and merely intellectual, and seen as vital and absolute. They need the elevation of the mind in the sense of “inspiration,” and not the quickening and the sharpening of the Intellect, as seeking wings—devil-pinions—wherewith to sail into the region only of its own laws, where, of course, it will not find God. Then step in the mathematics, then the senses, then the reason,—then the very perfection of matter-work, or this world’s work, sets in—engines of which the Satanic Powers shall realise the work. The Evil Spirit conjures, as even by holy command, the translucent sky. The Archangelic, clear, childlike rendering-up in intuitive belief,—intense in its own sun,—is FAITH. Lucifer “fills the scope of belief with imitative, dazzling clouds, and built splendours. With these temptations it is sought to dissuade, sought to rival, sought to put out Saints’ sight—sought even to surpass in seeming a further and truer, because a more solid and a more sensible, glory. The apostate, real-born Lucifer is so named as the intensest Spirit of Light, because he is of the things that perish, and of the things that to Mind—because they are all of Matter—have the most of glory! Thus is one of the names of the Devil, the very eldest-born and brightest Star of Light, that of the very morning and beginning of all things—the clearest, brightest, purest, as being soul-like, of Nature; but only of Nature. Real Law. or Nature, is the Devil; real Reason is the Devil.

Now we shall find, with a little patience, that this transcendental, beyond-limit-or-knowledge ancient belief of the Fire-God is to be laid hand upon-as, in a manner, we shall say—in all the stories and theologies of the ancient world— in all the countries (and they, indeed, are all) where belief has grown,—yea, as a thing with the trees and plants, as out of the very ground,—in all the continents—and in both worlds. And out of this great fact of its universal dissipation, as a matter of history the most innate and coexistent, shall we not assume this fire-doctrine as being of truth?—as a thing really, fundamentally, and vitally true ? As in the East, so in the West; as in the old time, so in the new; as in the preadamite and postdiluvian worlds, so in the modern and latter-day world; surviving through the ages, buried in the foundations of empires, locked in the rocks, hoarded in legends, maintained in monuments, preserved in beliefs, suggested in traditions, borne amidst the roads of the multitude in emblems, gathered up—as the recurring, unremarked, supernaturally coruscant, and yet secret, evading, encrusted, and dishonoured jewel—in rites, spoken (to those capable of the comprehension) in the field of hieroglyphics, dimly glowing “up to a fitful suspicion of it in the sacred rites of all peoples, figured forth in the religions, symbolised in a hundred ways; attested, prenoted, bodied forth in occult body, as far as body can;—in fine, in multitudinous fashions and forms forcibly soliciting the sharpness of sight directed to its discovery, and spelt over a floor as underplacing all things, we recognise, we espy, we descry, and we may, lastly, ADMIT the mysterious sacredness of Fire. For why should we not admit it ?

Of course, it will not for a moment be supposed that we mean anything like—or in its nature similar to—ordinary fire. We hope that no one will be so absurd as to suppose that this in any manner could be the mysterious and sacred element for which we are contesting. Where we are seeking to transcend, this would be simply sinking back into vulgar reason. While we are seeking to convict and dethrone this world’s reason as the real devil, this would be distinctly deifying common sense. Of common sense, except for common-sense objects, we make no account. We have rather in awed contemplation the divine, ineffable, transcendental SPIRIT—the Immortal fervour—into which the whole World evolves. We have the mystery of the Holy Spirit in view, called by its many names.

It is because theologies will contest concerning divers names of the same thing, that we therefore seek, in transcending, but to identify. It is because men will dispute about forms, that we seek philosophically to show that all forms are impossible,—that, when we take the human reason into account, all forms of belief are alike. Reason has been the great enemy of religion. Let us see if this world’s reason cannot be mastered.

We are now about—in a new light—to treat of facts, and of various historical monuments. They all bear reference to this universal story of the mystic Fire. We claim to be the first to point out how strikingly—and yet how, at the same time, without any suspicion of it— these emblems and remains, in so many curious and unintelligible forms, of the magic religion are found in the Christian churches.