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Steiner was a philosopher, social thinker, architect, and esotericist. Terrasson claimed he had translated this book from an ancient Greek work of fiction that was based on real events. The book was actually his own invention, inspired by ancient Greek sources that assumed Greek philosophers had derived their wisdom from Egypt. In the novel, Egypt's priests run an elaborate education system like a European university. Based on Lucius's statement in The Golden Ass that he was "borne through all the elements" during his initiation, Terrasson describes the initiation as an elaborate series of ordeals, each based on one of the classical elements: William Warburton 's treatise The Divine Legation of Moses , published from to , included an analysis of ancient mystery rites that drew upon Sethos for much of its evidence.
One of them, Moses , learned this truth during his Egyptian upbringing and developed Judaism to reveal it to the entire Israelite nation. Freemasons , members of a European fraternal organization that attained its modern form in the early eighteenth century, developed many pseudohistorical origin myths that traced Freemasonry back to ancient times. Egypt was among the civilizations that Masons claimed had influenced their traditions.
Late in the century, Masonic writers, still assuming that Sethos was an ancient story, used the obvious resemblance between their rites and the initiation of Sethos as evidence of Freemasonry's supposedly ancient origin. The best-known of these works is the opera The Magic Flute by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Emmanuel Schikaneder , in which the main character, Tamino, undergoes a series of trials overseen by priests who invoke Isis and Osiris. Karl Leonhard Reinhold , a philosopher and Freemason writing in the s, drew upon and modified Warburton's claims in an effort to reconcile Freemasonry's traditional origin story , which traces Freemasonry back to ancient Israel, with its enthusiasm for Egyptian imagery.
He claimed that the sentence " I am that I am ", spoken by the Jewish God in the Book of Exodus , had a pantheistic meaning. He compared it with an Egyptian inscription on a veiled statue of Isis recorded by the Roman-era authors Plutarch and Proclus , which said "I am all that is, was, and shall be," and argued that Isis was a pantheistic personification of Nature.
According to Reinhold, it was this pantheistic belief system that Moses imparted to the Israelites, so that Isis and the Jewish and Christian conception of God shared a common origin. In contrast, some people in the wake of the dechristianisation of France during the French Revolution used the imagery of a pantheistic Isis to represent their opposition to the clergy and to Christianity in general.
To them, she symbolized both modern scientific knowledge—which hoped to uncover Nature's secrets—and the mystical wisdom of the ancient mystery rites. The vague set of esoteric beliefs that surrounded the goddess offered an alternative to traditional Christianity. Various esoteric organizations that emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as the Theosophical Society and the Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis , repeated the beliefs that had originated with Sethos: James imagined this mystery school as a grandiose organization with branches on many continents, so that the purported system of Egyptian mysteries shaped cultures all over the world.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Scholars sometimes refer to the veneration of Isis, or of certain other deities who were introduced to the Greco-Roman world, as "religions" because they were more distinct from the culture around them than the cults of Greek or Roman gods. He could have introduced elements of the Eleusinian Mysteries into the worship of Isis at the same time. Along with Osiris, these gods were once analyzed as members of a category of " dying and rising gods " who had the power to overcome death.
These gods and their myths are now known to be more different from each other than was once thought, and some may not have been resurrected at all. Authors who imitated Terrasson's description of the Egyptian initiation included a trial by earth as well. Alvar, Jaime []. Translated and edited by Richard Gordon.
The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism. Religions of Rome, Volume I: From Adhesion to Conversion in the Mystery Cults". Mystery Cults of the Ancient World.
Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World. Isis in the Isaeum at Pompeii".
Mystic Cults in Magna Graecia. University of Texas Press. Power, Politics and the Cults of Isis: Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture. Casadio, Giovanni; Johnston, Patricia A.
Isis on the Nile: Egyptian Gods in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt. Religion in Roman Egypt: My lips will not be dry': Plutarch's De Iside et Osiride. University of Wales Press. Apuleius, the Isis-book Metamorphoses, book XI. The Secret Lore of Egypt: Its Impact on the West. Translated by David Lorton. Not Out of Africa: Paganism in the Roman Empire. In Redford, Donald B. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt. Journal for the Study of Religions.
Interpreting Early Hellenistic Religion: Foundation of the Finnish Institute at Athens. University of Delaware Press. Remarks on some statues of Isis and on the diffusion of her cult in the Greco-Roman World". Turcan, Robert []. The Cults of the Roman Empire. Translated by Antonia Nevill. Isis in the Ancient World. Johns Hopkins University Press. Retrieved from " https: Views Read Edit View history. This page was last edited on 2 December , at People looked at the statue and did not know in the age of scientific profundity in the land Philisterium that the Statue, in fact, was only the veil for an invisible statue.
But the invisible statue was not noticed by people, for it was the new Isis , the Isis of a new age. Some few persons of the land of scientific profundity had once heard of this remarkable connection between what was visible and what, as Isis-image, was concealed behind what was open and evident. And then in their profound allegorical-symbolical manner of speech they had put forward the assertion that this combination of the Representative of Man with Lucifer and Ahriman signified Isis.
For it was not in the least the point that the figures signified something, but that they already were what they appeared to be. And behind the figures was not an abstract new Isis, but an actual, real new Isis. But they possessed the peculiarity that behind them there was the real being, the new Isis. Some few who in special circumstances, in special moments, had nevertheless seen this new Isis, found that she is asleep. And so one can say: Many persons then turned in special moments to the inscription, which is plainly there at the spot where the statue stands in preparation, but which also has been read by few.
And yet the inscription stands clearly there, just as clearly as the inscription once stood on the veiled form at Sais. In fact the inscription stands there: Every mortal should lift my veil. Another figure, as a visitor, once approached the sleeping figure of the new Isis, and then again and again.
And the sleeping Isis considered this visitor her special benefactor and loved him. And one day she believed in a particular illusion, just as the visitor believed one day in a particular illusion: He regarded himself as the father, but he was not. The spirit-visitor, who was none other than the new Typhon, believed that he could acquire a special increase of his power in the world if he took possession of this new Isis.
So the new Isis had an offspring, but she did not know its nature, she knew nothing of the being of this new offspring. And she moved it about, she dragged it far off into other lands, because she believed that she must do so. She trailed the new offspring about, and since she had trailed and dragged it through various regions of the world it fell to pieces into fourteen parts through the very power of the world. Thus the new Isis had carried her offspring into the world and the world had dismembered it in fourteen pieces. When the spirit-visitor, the new Typhon, had come to know of this, he gathered together the fourteen pieces, and with all the knowledge of natural scientific profundity he again made a being, a single whole, out of the fourteen pieces.
But in this being there were only mechanical laws, the law of the machine. Thus a being had arisen with the appearance of life, but with the laws of the machine. And since this being had arisen out of fourteen pieces, it could reproduce itself again, fourteen-fold. And Typhon could give a reflection of his own being to each piece, so that each of the fourteen offspring of the new Isis had a countenance that resembled the new Typhon. And Isis had to follow all this strange affair, half-divining it; half-divining she could see the whole miraculous change that had come to her offspring.
She knew that she had herself dragged it about, that she had herself brought all this to pass. But there came a day when in its true, its genuine form she could accept it again from a group of spirits who were elemental spirits of nature, could receive it from nature elementals. As she received her true offspring which only through an illusion had been stamped into the offspring of Typhon, there dawned upon her a remarkable clairvoyant vision: And he was obliged through the power of the clairvoyance of the new Isis to set a crown on her head in the place where once the old Isis had had the crown which Horus had seized from her, that is to say, on the spot where she developed the cow-horns.
And she now had two crowns on her head, the cow-horns and the paper crown embellished with all the wisdom of scientific profundity. Through the strength of her clairvoyance there one day arose in her the deep meaning, as far as the age could reach, of that which is described in St. John's Gospel as the Logos. There arose in her the Johannine significance of the Mystery of Golgotha. Through this strength the power of the cow-horns grasped the paper crown and changed it into an actual golden crown of genuine substance.
These then are the main features, my dear friends, that can be given of the new Osiris-Isis Legend. I will not of course make myself the commentator who explains this Osiris-Isis Legend. It is the other Osiris-Isis Legend. But it must set one thing definitely before our souls: Even though the power of action which is bound up with the new Isis statue is at first only weak, exploring and attempting, it is to be the starting point of something that is deeply justified in the impulses of the modern age, deeply justified in what this age is meant to become and must become. In recent days we have spoken of how the Word has withdrawn, as it were, from the direct soul-experience from which it originally gushed forth as from a spring.
We have seen how we live in the age of abstractions, where men's words and concepts have only an abstract meaning, where man stands far away from reality. The power of the Word, the power of the Logos, however, must be laid hold of again. The cow-horns of the ancient Isis must take on quite a different form. It is difficult to say such things with the modern abstract words.
For such things it is better if you try to bring them before the eye of your soul in such Imaginations as have been brought before you, and to work over these Imaginations as Imaginations. It is very important for the new Isis, through the power of the Word which is to be regained through spiritual science, to transform the cow-horns, so that even the paper crown which is written upon in the new deeply profound scientific method, that even the paper crown will become a genuine golden crown.
And lo and behold!
Humanity has only forgotten the matter, but centuries ago something was placed before the new humanity about the nature of the new humanity, in so far as this new humanity is still only master of the abstract word, the abstract concept, the abstract idea and is far removed from the reality. This new humanity keeps well to words and always asks: Is it a pumpkin or is it a flask? Today, however, men themselves have already forgotten what was put before them for the benefit of their self-knowledge, in the 15th, 16th, 17th centuries. And the being went on chuckling and said: Because a tombstone stands there and on this tombstone is drawn an owl Eule which holds before itself a looking-glass Spiegel.
And it is related that Till Eulenspiegel, after he had wandered through the world with all sorts of buffoonery and pranks, was buried there. It is related that this Till Eulenspiegel existed, that he was born in the year , went to Poland, even reached Rome and in Rome even had a wager with the Court-jesters over all sorts of odds and ends of wisdom, and committed all the other Till Eulenspiegelisms, which indeed are to be read in the literature about Till Eulenspiegel himself. One of the chief reasons why the actual bones of the actual Till Eulenspiegel, who was only the representative of his age, are not supposed to lie beneath the tombstone in Lauenburg, on which is depicted the owl with the looking-glass, was because another tombstone had been found in Belgium upon which there was likewise an Owl with a mirror.
Well, we say, if I have one franc, then I have one franc. So long as I only know that I have a franc, I believe it! But then I get another and I now have two. Now I believe that I have not one at all! But what is the essential point of the Eulenspiegel-buffoonery? Read it up in the book: