Mystery Schools - News, Updates, Images & Quotes

...in the ancient Mystery dramas the central character was ever the Sun-god the role being enacted by the candidate for initiation in person. He went through the several initiations as himself the type and representative of the solar divinity in the field of human experience.

— Alvin Boyd Kuhn; The Great Myth of the Sun-Gods (quoted by Michael Tsarion) view

The preeminence of any philosophical system can be determined only by the excellence of its products. The Mysteries have demonstrated the superiority of their culture by giving to the world minds of such overwhelming greatness, souls of such beatific vision, and lives of such outstanding impeccability that even after the lapse of ages the teachings of these individuals constitute the present spiritual, intellectual, and ethical standards of the race. The initiates of the various Mystery schools of past ages form a veritable golden chain of supermen and superwomen connecting heaven and earth. They are the links of that Homeric "golden chain" with which Zeus boasted he could bind the several parts of the universe to the pinnacle of Olympus. The sons and daughters of Isis are indeed an illustrious line--founders of sciences and philosophies, patrons of arts and crafts, supporting by the transcendency of their divinely given power the structures of world religions erected to do them homage. Founders of doctrines which have molded the lives of uncounted generations, these Initiate-Teachers bear witness to that spiritual culture which has always existed--and always will exist--as a divine institution in the world of men.

— Manly P. Hall; The Secret Teachings of all Ages view

If this inner doctrine were always concealed from the masses, for whom a simpler code had been devised, is it not highly probable that the exponents of every aspect of modern civilization--philosophic, ethical, religious, and scientific-are ignorant of the true meaning of the very theories and tenets on which their beliefs are founded? Do the arts and sciences that the race has inherited from older nations conceal beneath their fair exterior a mystery so great that only the most illumined intellect can grasp its import? Such is undoubtedly the case.

— Manly P. Hall; The Secret Teachings of all Ages view

When the standards of the pagans became corrupted, a division took place in the Mysteries. The band of truly enlightened ones separated themselves from the rest and, preserving the most important of their secrets, vanished without leaving a trace. The rest slowly drifted, like rudderless ships, on the rocks of degeneracy and disintegration. Some of the less important of the secret formulæ fell into the hands of the profane, who perverted them--as in the case of the Bacchanalia, during which drugs were mixed with wine and became the real cause of the orgies.

— Manly P. Hall; The Secret Teachings of all Ages view

Candidates aspiring to membership in the religious orders underwent severe tests to prove their worthiness. These ordeals were called initiations. Those who passed them successfully were welcomed as brothers by the priests and were instructed in the secret teachings. Among the ancients, philosophy, science, and religion were never considered as separate units: each was regarded as an integral part of the whole. Philosophy was scientific and religious; science was philosophic and religious; religion was philosophic and scientific. Perfect wisdom was considered unattainable save as the result of harmonizing all three of these expressions of mental and moral activity.

— Manly P. Hall; The Secret Teachings of all Ages view

Some ancient schools of wisdom taught that all poisonous insects and reptiles are germinated out of the evil nature of man, and that when intelligent human beings no longer breed hate in their own souls there will be no more ferocious animals, loathsome diseases, or poisonous plants and insects.

— Manly P. Hall; The Secret Teachings of all Ages view

[...] we may say the the Mystery Schools interpret truth along the lines of the familiar, clothing wisdom in symbol and allegory familiar to those who are supposed to receive it.

— Manly P Hall; What the Ancient Wisdom Expects of Its Disciples view

Each one of these Mystery Schools is invisible and unknown. They can only be found after long searching and repeated disappointment.

— Manly P Hall; What the Ancient Wisdom Expects of Its Disciples view

The seven schools, each composed of twelve initiates and their disciples surrounding a thirteenth exalted brother, are the God-ordained perpetuators of the Ancient Wisdom as it has come from the dawn of the world when the gods descended from the nebula of the sun and took up their dwelling place on the sacred island at the north polar cap.

— Manly P Hall; What the Ancient Wisdom Expects of Its Disciples view

Intuition is transformed intellect that perceives the spiritual beings as real. Paul calls this faith.

Wonder is transformed feeling, feeling that has become aware of the spiritual workings of the cosmos but is not overwhelmed by them. Paul calls this hope.

Conscience is transformed will, when by the exercise of thought and imagination, faith and hope, we have begun to transform that part of ourselves, including the willpower that lives beneath the threshold of consciousness. Paul calls this charity or love.

By applying faith to hope, and by applying faith and hope to love, a human being may then be transformed into an angel.

So the Scorpion is transformed into an Eagle. The Eagle works with the Bull and the Bull grows wings. The winged Bull works on the Lion so that it grows wings in its turn.

And the end of this fourfold process is that the winged Lion works on the Man so that he is transformed into an Angel. This is a great mystery taught in the Mystery centres of the ancient world, which became the great mystery of esoteric Christianity.

— Mark Booth; The Secret History of the World view

There has been some debate in occult circles as to how much esoteric wisdom should be made public. How much is useful in the war against materialism - and how much is dangerous?

— Mark Booth; The Secret History of the World view

According to esoteric thinkers, life in a mechanized, industrialized, digitalized environment has a deadening effect on our mental processes.

— Mark Booth; The Secret History of the World view

We have touched on various techniques for inducing altered states, including breathing exercises, dancing and meditation. But these sexual techniques are the hard stuff, and most closely guarded secrets of the secret societies.

— Mark Booth; The Secret History of the World view

One of the more intriguing notions associated with the secret societies is that you can never track them down. Instead they operate some form of occult but benevolent surveillance. When the time is right, when you are ready, a member of the secret schools will come to you and offer himself as your spiritual guide or master.

The same initiate told me how at a gathering of top academics who all shared an interest in the esoteric - he himself was an art historian - it eventually emerged that the great teacher in their presence was none of the doctors or professors but the cleaning lady with mop and pail at the back of the lecture theatre. Such stories may have an apocryphal air about them, but they also have a universal resonance. The spiritual master of the greatest esoteric teacher of the twentieth century, Rudolf Steiner, was a woodcutter and herb-gatherer.

Karl von Eckartshausen, the early theosophist, wrote: 'These sages whose number is small are children of light. Their business is to do as much good to humanity as is in their power and to drink wisdom from the eternal fountain of truth. Some live in Europe, others in Africa, but they are bound together by the harmony of their souls, and they are therefore one. They are joined even though they may be thousands of miles apart from each other. They understand each other, although they speak in different tongues, because they language of the sages is spiritual perception. No evil person could possibly live among them, because he would be recognized immediately.'

— Mark Booth; The Secret History of the World view

Each Mystery school taught a wisdom unique to it, which is why Moses and Pythagoras were initiated into more than one.

— Mark Booth; The Secret History of the World view

Above all the Mystery schools influenced the evolution of consciousness.

Conventional history puts little emphasis on the evolution of consciousness[...]

— Mark Booth; The Secret History of the World view

It is very important in certain forms of initiation that at a particular point in the ceremony the candidate believes, perhaps briefly but with total conviction, that he or she is going to die.

— Mark Booth; The Secret History of the World view

[...] initiation into the Cabala has traditionally only been permitted at the age of forty, and candidates for initiation into the school of Pythagoras had to live in isolation and without speaking for years before their education could begin.

— Mark Booth; The Secret History of the World view

Paracelsus said: 'It is as necessary to learn evil things as good, for who can know what is good without learning what is evil.' [...] It is sometimes supposed that all secret societies engage in commerce with evil spirits. However, the great, historically significant secret societies, such as the Rosicrucians and the Freemasons, acknowledge the dark side in order to combat it.

— Mark Booth; The Secret History of the World view

If Herodotus had been an initiate of the Mystery schools, he would have understood that the three dynasties were, first, the oldest generation of creator gods - Saturn, Rhea, Uranos - the second generation made up of Zeus, his siblings and their children, such as Apollo and Athena - and lastly the generation of demi-gods and heroes.

— Mark Booth; The Secret History of the World view

In the same way that in the secret societies techniques are taught to control sexual forces as a way of achieving higher forms of consciousness, so there are also teachings on channelling the closely intertwined death forces. Osman Spare developed a practice which involved closing off mouth, nostrils, ears and eyes. In India adepts including Bhagavan Shri Ramana and Thakur Haranath have achieved long, death-like trances which have even led to their being prepared for burial, then been reborn into a new, higher form of consciousness.

— Mark Booth; The Secret History of the World view

According to the old Mysteries, the secret father, or as the Greeks called it, the hidden god, abode in the heart - that is, in the sanctum sanctorum. Man prays not to some vast spirit in the sky, but rather to the divine principle within himself; that is his god, his own spirit; his own over-self; the father that abides in the innermost. Many have raised their eyes to the skies, but few have turned them inward to the contemplation of the hidden god.

— Manly P Hall; How to Understand Your Bible view

The secret history was encoded in the zodiac [...] and preserved into modern times by esoteric groups such as the Freemasons and various Rosicrucian groups, but always and very deliberately in a way that was hard for outsiders to understand.

— Mark Booth; The Secret History of the World view

Creation was re-enacted in the Mystery schools, a drama in three acts.

The first act dramatized Saturn's oppression of Mother Earth. This was called the Age of Saturn.

The second act dramatized the birth of the Sun and his protection of Mother Earth. This, the paradise time of the flower people, was remembered as the Age of the Sun.

[...] in the third great act of the drama of creation, the god of the Moon won a great victory.

— Mark Booth; The Secret History of the World view

In the secret history not only is it true to say that what eventually evolved into human life passed through a vegetable state, but the vegetable element remains an essential part of the human being today.

— Mark Booth; The Secret History of the World view

The Mystery schools taught that as well as head-consciousness we each have, for examples, a heart-consciousness which emanates from the sun then enters our mental space via the heart. Or to put it another way, the heart is the portal through which Sun god enters our lives. Likewise a king of kidney-consciousness beams into us from Venus, spreading out into our mind and body via the portal of our own kidneys. The working together of these different centres of consciousness makes us variously loving, angry, melancholy, restless, brave, thoughtful and so on, forming the unique thing that is human experience.

— Mark Booth; The Secret History of the World view

According to them [the secret societies], a tree only falls over in a forest, however remote, so that someone, somewhere at some time is affected by it. Nothing happens anywhere in the cosmos except in interaction with the human mind.

— Mark Booth; The Secret History of the World view

The most secret teachings of the secret societies are transmitted only orally. Other parts are written in a deliberately obscure way that makes it impossible for outsiders to understand. For example, it might be possible to deduce the secret doctrine from Helena Blavatsky's prodigiously long and obscure book of the same name...but in all these cases the writing is aimed at people already in the know. These texts aim to conceal as much as they reveal.

— Mark Booth; The Secret History of the World view

In the ancient world the teachings of the Mystery schools were guarded as closely as nuclear secrets are guarded today.

— Mark Booth; The Secret History of the World view

The Mysteries do not demand poverty, but they demand the right use of that which is possessed.

— Manly P Hall; How to Understand Your Bible view

The ability of the Mystery Schools to communicate with the invisible worlds is the basis of their power; for all the creative hierarchies dwell in the unseen worlds, and there the disciple must go in order to consult them. The reason for this is that the human race is the only one in our scheme of things that is equipped with both a physical and a mental body. The gods, so-called, have never descended into physical substance. Consequently, having no body composed of dense chemical elements, they are incapable of manifesting here. In order to communicate with them, man must, therefore, learn to function consciously in his own invisible bodies. When he is capable of doing this, he can communicate with the spiritual beings who dwell in similar superphysical substances. Thus, while religion deals only with fancies, theorems, and beliefs, the initiates of the Ancient Wisdom go straight to the fountainhead of wisdom and, learning the will of the gods, make that will the law of their lives. The initiate does not guess, wonder or soliloquize; he labors with facts for he is one with the truths of Nature.

— Manly P Hall; What the Ancient Wisdom Expects of Its Disciples view

But man was never left to wander alone in ignorance. When the ties connecting him to the unseen worlds were broken, certain methods were established whereby the will of the gods could be made known. To this end, a certain number of men and women were instructed how to bridge the chasm which then separated the gods from men. The method of establishing this communication was the greatest of all the secrets of ancient occultism. This secret has been preserved for the race, for at a later time all human beings will be able to communicate directly with the gods once more. During the great interval of ages, this wisdom has been perpetuated in the Mystery Schools, and a few chosen disciples in each generation have been given the sacred privilege of knowing the gods. This wisdom and the power and knowledge they have gained they in turn impart to a few chosen and beloved disciples. Thus the work is carried on.

— Manly P Hall; What the Ancient Wisdom Expects of Its Disciples view

Gradually a separation took place among the schools of the Mysteries. The zeal of the priests to spread their doctrines in many cases apparently exceeded their intelligence. As a result, many were allowed to enter the temples before they had really prepared themselves for the wisdom they were to receive. The result was that these untutored minds, slowly gaining positions of authority, became at last incapable of maintaining the institution because they were unable to contact the spiritual powers behind the material enterprise. So the Mystery Schools vanished. The spiritual hierarchy, served through all generations by a limited number of true and devoted followers, withdrew from the world; while the colossal material organizations, having no longer any contact with the divine source, wandered in circles, daily becoming more involved in the rituals and symbols which they had lost the power of interpreting.

— Manly P Hall; What the Ancient Wisdom Expects of Its Disciples view

In the very early period of human differentiation, man was incapable of self-government, but was ruled by those appointed by Nature to preserve him and unfold him to the point when he would be capable of taking care of himself. We are told that when our solar system began its labors, spirits of wise beings from other solar systems came to us and taught us the ways of wisdom that we might have that birthright of knowledge which God gives to all His creations. It was these minds which are said to have founded the Mystery Schools of the Ancient Wisdom, for this Wisdom was the knowledge of the will of Nature for Her children.

— Manly P Hall; What the Ancient Wisdom Expects of Its Disciples view

The Masters are ever waiting to entrust their disciples and students who show desire to receive with that wisdom which the world so sadly needs. If the student desires to go forth and teach, he will be given a work to do - that is, if he will honestly, sincerely, and intelligently prepare himself for his labors. The reason why so many false doctrines are being taught is that people who have an idea do not ask themselves, "Is this theory which I have, true? Am I living the sort of a life that would permit me to receive real truth into my soul? Am I unselfish, open, obedient, humble, and consecrated? Have I developed my mind so that it can think? Have I opened my heart so that it can feel? If I have not, then the thing which I have received is distorted by the glass through which it shines, and all I can give the world is a distorted image, a dishonest representation of truth. Have I actually consecrated my life and all that I am, unselfishly and without reservation, or am I only an intellectual dabbler? Am I a success or a failure in life? Am I surrounded by friends or by enemies of my own making? Am I respected by my community? Do I allow other people to live their own lives, or am I trying to force my beliefs upon all with whom I come in contact? Have I, or have I not, consciously and beyond all possibility of mental exaggeration, received personal instruction from the inner schools? I and I alone know that. The rest of the world, except the enlightened few, must believe what I say. If I have not received such instructions, am I big enough to admit it and say, with respect to my doctrines, that they are only my own opinions; or am I palming off these opinions as cosmic truths upon no firmer ground than the fact that I believe them?"

— Manly P Hall; What the Ancient Wisdom Expects of Its Disciples view

There is another class of people who go about discussing the Infinite with ease and fluency who as yet have never acquainted themselves with the finite. A most interesting rule of the Ancient Wisdom is that none of its initiates discuss the Absolute. They explain the hypothesis of First Cause, but state finally that no human being, themselves included, know sufficient concerning it to give an intelligent opinion or definition; and no wise man presumes to discuss that bout which he knows nothing.

— Manly P Hall; What the Ancient Wisdom Expects of Its Disciples view

Without labor, there is no inspiration, and none can do our work for us but ourselves. The Ancient Wisdom demanded many years of purification and preparation before the adepts were willing to instruct in even the simplest things.

— Manly P Hall; What the Ancient Wisdom Expects of Its Disciples view

The Vedas, the sacred books of the ancient Aryan Hindus, appear to be the oldest of Scriptural writings and the source of most of the sacred books now venerated throughout the world...The traditions of these people indicate that the laws and institutes of the gods were revealed to the progenitors of the Aryans in the highlands of the Himalaya mountain country nearly a million years ago...

From the Vedas poured forth the streams of religious tradition which, flowing into various nations down through the ages, appear in the course of time as the single source of the numerous Scriptural writings of the world. Great saints and sages interpreting this ageless wisdom, wrote their commentaries or re-states in the terms of their own day the Vedic lore and the sacred tradition. In China Lao-Tze and Confucius were the interpreters, and their writings have become Scripture. In India Buddha was the great Emissary. In Persia it was Zoroaster. In Egypt, Akhnaton and Hermes. In Greece, Orpheus, Pythagoras and Plato. In Syria it was Moses, and later Jesus.

— Manly P Hall; How to Understand Your Bible view

After the decline of the Mysteries, when the sacred books fell into the hands of the profane, the subtler values were lost.

— Manly P Hall; How to Understand Your Bible view