The Mystagogue, or the Origin of Ancient Mysteries and Hieroglyphs

of the Peoples.

planets, and shimmering stars. If he looked at the objects which were around and beside him, he saw a painting of a thousand colors; he saw the vibrant green of the meadows, the silver-gray colors of the heaths, the sacred darkness of the forests, the reflection of rippling brooks, and a thousand species of animals, birds, and the like. He found, therefore, a thousand reasons for conviction that there must be a supreme being who had produced the beauty and regularity of the great world-structure The "world-structure" (Weltgebäude) is a common Enlightenment-era term for the universe, imagined as a grand, orderly building or mechanism..

The duration of this first religion.

This doctrine was maintained in its original purity among almost all peoples until nearly the two-thousandth year of the world The author is using the Anno Mundi (Year of the World) chronology, which dates history from the biblical creation., but after the year two thousand and seventeen, the first traces of idolatry are found. We find the origin of this idolatry in Chaldea An ancient region in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), traditionally cited in historical texts as the birthplace of organized paganism and astrology., from which land it poured out like a stream over the neighboring countries.

Second Section.

The Cause of Idolatry.

The cause of idolatry

Human beings showed themselves to be exactly as they were from the very beginning, and remain to this day: namely, sensual sensual (Sinnlichkeit): the quality of being governed by the five physical senses and material things rather than abstract spiritual concepts. It was this nature that gave them the first occasion for idolatry. A certain inner feeling made religion a necessity for them, but the instruction which God had given them—to worship Him in spirit—did not satisfy their sensory nature.