Preface

or if one is granted, let the other also be granted: the same judgment will apply to the rest of the Pagan authors and their writings. But we Christians have long ago cast aside, mocked, and ridiculed that multitude of gods, as we are instructed by the truth of the Word of God: What then shall we say of the deeds of so many gods and heroes? Are these things possible and true, even though the ones who supposedly performed them were not gods and were false? Or shall we indeed refute and reject the gods, yet nonetheless admit and receive their deeds and their progeny? Shall we pronounce these stories to be as false as the gods themselves, and conclude there is no truth in either among any of these authors?

It is a wonder that no one among so many myriads of writing Christians has been concerned about this, when the explanation of these difficulties is so necessary that hardly any writing, whether political or Theosophical original: "Theosophicum". Referring to "divine wisdom" or the study of God through nature and mystical insight. after the sacred scriptures, could be offered to the world more usefully. But the reason for this neglect is that these matters seem not only most ancient and stored beyond all memory of writers, but also most secret—insofar as they have always been kept from their true origin and have remained known to very few.

For those things ought by right to be deemed most ancient and at the same time MOST SECRET which, through so many ages of the world—for more than three thousand years, from the first authors even to our own times—have been covered and hidden like a Treasure original: "Thesaurus" enclosed most securely in a chest. Although Pagan writers have unrolled some of these things (albeit fabulous things in a fabulous manner—that is, according to their own limited understanding), they called them "mysteries." This is clear from the titles of the books of Eumolpus, Menander, Melanthius, Iamblichus, Evanthis, and others Maier lists various ancient Greek and Neoplatonist authors associated with the "Mysteries" of Eleusis or esoteric philosophy. who contain nothing besides poetic fables and do not truly explain even a jot of them. They wrote in this way because they understood that great and mystical things lie hidden under these fictions, containing in reality more in their depths than they promise on the surface.

For the ancient Egyptians, the wisest of men (from whom, if we seek the first origin, we will notice all these things have been propagated), when they had obtained most precious things by the gift of GOD and their own labor, which they did not want to be entirely unknown to posterity, nor yet equally known to everyone, found a way of obscuring them, and as if wrapping them in certain darkness, so that