As to the
similar assumption made for their Greek followers, for a long array of
Christian ecstatics, and, finally, for the last two claimants to
"God-seeing" within these last hundred years--Jacob Bohme and
Swedenborg--this pretension would and should have been philosophically
and logically questioned, if a few of our great men of science, who are
spiritualists, had had more interest in the philosophy than in the mere
phenomenalism of spiritualism.
The Alexandrian Theosophists were divided into neophytes, initiates and
masters, or hierophants; and their rules were copied from the ancient
Mysteries of Orpheus, who, according to Herodotus, brought them from
India. Ammonius obligated his disciples by oath not to divulge his
higher doctrines, except to those who were proved thoroughly worthy and
initiated, and who had learned to regard the gods, the angels, and the
demons of other peoples, according to the esoteric hyponia, or
under-meaning. "The gods exist, but they are not what the hoi polloi,
the uneducated multitude, suppose them to be," says Epicurus.
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