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The Great Initiates – Edouard Schuré

What is that shining, far distant point that appears imperceptible against the black background of the shadows? It is coming closer, it is growing larger, it is becoming a five-pointed star, whose rays include all the colours of the rainbow, and which shoots into the darkness discharges of magnetic light. Now there is a sun that attracts it into the brightness of its incandescent center. Is it the magic of the masters that produces this vision? Is it the invisible that becomes visible? Is it a foreboding of celestial truth, the flaming star of hope and immortality?

 It is disappearing, and in its place a flower blooms in the night, a flower not of matter, but sensitive and endowed with soul! It opens before him like a white rose; it spreads its petals, he sees its living leaves tremble and its shining calyx blush. Is this the flower of Isis, the Mystical Rose of Wisdom that enclosed Love in its heart? But now it is evaporating, like a cloud of perfume. Then the ecstatic one feels flooded with a warm, caressing breeze. Having assumed strange forms, the cloud condenses and becomes a human figure, the figure of a woman, the Isis of the hidden sanctuary but younger, smiling and radiant. A transparent veil is wrapped around her and her body shines through it. In her hand she holds a scroll of papyrus.

 She softly approaches, leans over the initiate lying in his tomb, and says, "I am your invisible sister; I am your divine soul, and this is the book of your life. Its written pages contain your past lives, its blank pages, your future lives. One day I shall unroll all before you. You know me now.  Call, and I shall come!" As she speaks, a ray of tenderness streams from her eyes.... O presence of my angelic counter-part, ineffable promise of the divine, wondrous fusion in the impalpable Beyond!

But everything bursts; the vision fades. With a horrible rending, the adept feels himself hurled into his body as into a corpse. He returns to a state of conscious lethargy; bands of iron fetter his limbs; a terrible weight presses upon his brain; he awakens.... Standing before him is the hierophant, accompanied by the Magi. They surround him, make him drink a cordial, and he arises.

"You are resurrected!" exclaims the prophet. "Come and celebrate with us the agape of the initiates, and tell us of your journey in the light of Osiris. For henceforth you are one of us."

Let us accompany the hierophant and the new initiate to the observatory of the temple, in the warm splendour of an Egyptian night.

"Listen carefully," said the hierophant............................