be haunted by the venerable specter of Zarathustra, lying with the spear wound in his back; and Moses, the strong man of Israel, alone in death upon the dreary hills of Moab?

The line is endless, these Masters of other days. They were men above creed and clan. They were nobler than those distinctions with which we separate the common aspirations of humanity. They served not idols but ideals. Theologies grew up about them, yet each was greater than the order which he founded. From the same place they all came forth. The spirit of their doctrines was identical. Each finally mingled his own smaller self with the common accomplishment. Among the great teachers of humanity there was neither superiority nor inferiority. There was simply difference. This was not a difference of purpose but of method, not a divergence of end but of way. Hand in hand they marched down the ages. Each revered the other, for all true greatness loves greatness, and only littleness hates. That same overshadowing consciousness that had made them truly great had revealed to them not only the brotherhood of all life but, more than this, the identity of all life.

As never before, the secret doctrines of the ancients intrigue the philosophically minded. The insufficient creeds and dogmas that survived the Renaissance are fast crumbling before the crushing force of rationalism. Men who were once of different faiths are now united in the common questing of a more reasonable code of living. Though the objects of his veneration may change, man remains essentially a religious animal. He may break away from the limitations and futilities of ecclesiastical schisms, but he cannot escape from the inherent urge to venerate his Creator. Ever surrounded by irrefutable evidence of an Abiding Destiny, the thinking man is powerless to resist that dominating impulse to propitiate in some appropriate manner the mysterious Spirit abiding in the Furthermost and the Innermost.

See Jung:
Modern Man
in Search
of a Soul
p. 130

Throughout the first ages of humanity certain divinely instituted Mysteries were the intermediaries between man and his Maker. These august institutions were the custodians of a superior learning by which the human mind was inclined toward the way of truth and understanding. But as nations verged towards materialism and the peoples of the earth ceased to venerate the Sovereign Good the highest or ultimate reality, so these sacred schools gradually became corrupted. Those which through compromise escaped utter annihilation remained as perverse spirits to impede the very progress which they had once sponsored.

Politically we are disillusioned as to the divine right of temporal monarchs and ecclesiastically as to the apostolic succession of the spiritual elect. Thus disheartened by the sophistry of an unenlightened age, we turn from vagaries to renew our endless search for the substance of Truth. We would follow in the footsteps of those prophets of earlier days who, ascending the mountain tops of wisdom, beheld their Maker face to face in the midst of the lightnings and heard the deep rumble of his voice even above the far-flung echoes of the thunder. In his rocky cavern upon the slopes of Mount Hira, Mohammed, the Prophet of Islam, prayed that the pure religion of the first patriarchs might again be revealed to a humanity bowed down in sackcloth and ashes by the weight of numberless afflictions. The strong man of Arabia

stretched forth his arms into the darkness and pled with the night that the Wisdom which abides in Space might again come forth to lead men from idolatry back to the worship of that one God who is a Spirit and who must be served in Spirit and in Truth.

Too long have we wandered in the vale of shadows, grovelling before phantoms of our own creation and worshipping ghosts and specters; too long have we been afraid to lift our eyes to the radiant countenance of our Creator lest we be blinded by the awful light of Truth; too long have we prostrated ourselves abjectly at the feet of gilded men, bestowing upon mortals that homage reserved for the gods alone; too long has the shortness of our vision made gods of men and men of gods.

The darkest pages of history are those upon which are traced the record of men's faiths. In the great march of nations and beliefs, Death has ever ridden in the vanguard, loosing upon the earth the horrors described by Milton. Men have sung their "hymns of hate" and in their hearts they have tired of gory splendor. Enough of the God who marches with the arms of ambition and stands upon the battlefield surrounded by the bodies of the slain. A disillusioned humanity, weary of its own mistakes, turns again in despair to the mysterious emptiness about it. This emptiness seems to be the abiding place of a mighty Spirit.

In all this panorama of confusion and error, Space alone seems capable of gentle comprehension. In extremities, such as now confront mankind, the ages have demonstrated that it is natural for the more seriously minded individual to depart from commerce and industry and turn to philosophy; verging from material possessions, he inclines his mind to all-satisfying Reason. There is scant solace in our ducats when the real issues of life are at stake. The wise man knows that the glamor of so-called "fortune" but complicates the many uncertainties of temporal affairs.

There is much of pathos in that envy with which we gaze upon the placid face of the sage. How is it that but a few achieve to the composure of the wise, while utter misery is the lot of the many? What is the essence of that mysterious learning which not only enables man to discover peace, but also endows him with such surpassing attributes that we are prone to accredit him with qualities but little inferior to a god? By what procedure is that wisdom acquired which not only reveals the end toward which all natures are being swept by an irresistible Destiny, but also transfigures the human soul with the light of an all-pervading Good?

There is a science, real to the few and mythical to the many, preserved from a remote age for him who has become what John Heydon, the Rosicrucian, calls "a servant of God and a secretary of Nature." In an Egyptian ritual, The Book of the Master, it is written that ultimately death is swallowed up in light. Through the disciplines of philosophy humanity can be caused to rise, Phoenix-like rebirth from the ashes of the old self, from the dead ashes of materiality to mingle its lesser mind with the Eternal Reason. The elements of such an accomplishment constitute the natural religion of man, that unwritten doctrine which has ever been the spiritual bread of the wise and of which, if a man should eat, he will never hunger again.

Egyptian: Thrice Deepest Darkness.
Kabbalistic: 3 modes of Ain Soph the Infinite or Boundless divinity
Oriental: 3 hypostases fundamental substances or realities of Atman the universal spirit or self

A large symbolic woodcut titled "The Ladder of Souls" shows a central circular emblem containing a rose and a cross. Concentric rings around the center are filled with zodiac signs, planetary symbols, and geometric patterns. Two figures stand on either side: a figure on the left holds a sun, and a figure on the right holds a moon. The entire image is enclosed in an ornate floral and vine border.

The Ladder of Souls

The Golden Everlasting Chain

MARJORIE M. TYBERG From The Theosophical Forum, April 1946

Among the ancients there was the tradition of a chain, one end of which was held at the highest seat of the Gods. It extended downward to the lesser Gods and Heroes and Sages, who were instructed by those above them and in turn instructed those below them. Thus was communicated to mankind the knowledge and the wisdom necessary for human life on Earth. Homer and Milton were two inspired poets who sang of this golden chain:

Whose strong embrace holds heaven and earth and main
— Iliad, Book VIII

And in the Book of Genesis Jacob's Ladder is another symbol of this link between those Elder Brothers who "go up and down" on errands as Associates of the Hierarchy of Compassion. Theosophy gives a wealth of timely and precious teaching about these beings.

The year 1946 brings terrifying realization that human intelligence and insight may prove inadequate for the mediation of differences between nations and the prevention of further global war. Are there then, in the Universe, Superior Beings, Spiritual Intelligences, who concern themselves with human affairs and have wisdom and power to guide human progress towards intellectual and spiritual maturity? Some step must be taken to render men capable of maintaining the global unity now seen to be essential for the completion of human destiny.

Planetary experience has gone on for millions of years, perhaps billions. Ours is not even the first man-bearing planet. Some there have been who have had, and have taken, the opportunity to mount high, even to transcend the human stage on the Ladder of Life. They watch over and guide those who follow, and who shall, like themselves become the twice-born spiritually regenerated or enlightened, the spiritually illuminated. For man is born not only into a family, a race, but into a universal spiritual home.

"As above, so below." Theosophy teaches that what human

was made in imitation of the world might be governed by an essence similarly divine."

Above the seven planetary spheres forming the ladder of the world stretches what the Hermetics called the firmament of the fixed stars. In their esoteric instructions, the Egyptians distinguished three conditions or aspects of this empyrean the highest part of heaven, which together they referred to as the "Thrice Deep Darkness." The highest division was the Ocean of Eternity. This diffused itself throughout all space and through it were scattered innumerable masses of ungerminated stars. This was the Schamayim Hebrew for the fiery-water of the heavens of the Cabalists—the heaven of fiery-water. The middle division was the Milky Way, the seed-ground of souls. The last division was composed of the fixed stars, which were 1,122 in number and symbolized by the Syrian mystics as a circle of cherubim filled with eyes. These three departments of the empyrean are equivalent to the three divisions of AIN SOPH the Infinite in the Cabala and the three hypostases essential parts of Atman the Supreme Soul in Oriental metaphysics. It is from this threefold firmament that the three divine constituents of the soul are derived. The lowest circle of the firmament formed the wall of heaven, known to the Greeks as Mount Olympus and to the Hindus as Mount Meru. When in the exoteric classification of Ptolemy the mundane sphere is divided into seven concentric circles, which are regarded as the orbits of the planets, the empyrean is not included. It is in no way a part of the inferior world, being the abode of principles and not of vehicles. Paracelsus terms it the spirit of the world to distinguish it from the seven planetary rings which are the soul of the world and the four elemental substances which are the body of the world.

Enclosed within the firmament as a fruit within its rind are the concentric orbits of the planets, which the