"Close Not the Ends of My Cross."
It was in the time of the annual respite from study that I made my advent to the capital city. In this vacation the, Xioqua and the Incala participated, the majority seeking their homes first, for a season, but generally soon returning to the capital, in order to enjoy the special pleasures of the resting time. But some went over the ocean to Umaur, or to Incalia, that is, South or North America, respectively; others went only to the more distant provinces in Atl itself.
Thus far the reader has had to guess what sort of religion the worship of Incal was; it may even have been inferred that Poseidi were polytheists, from my reference to the various gods of this and that title, class or grade. Truly, I have said that we believed in Incal, and symbolized him as the Sun-God. But the sun itself was an emblem. To assert that we, despite our enlightenment, adored the orb of day, would he as absurd as to say that the Christians adore the cross of the crucifixion for itself; in both cases it is the attached significance that caused the sun, and causes the cross, to be held in any sort of regard.
The Atlantides were given to personification of the principles of nature and of the objects of the earth, seas and skies;
but this was purely a result of the national love of poetry, and could be mainly traced to the favor which popular fancy had accorded to a chronological epic history of Poseid, wherein the chief men and women figured as heroes and heroines. The powers of nature, such as wind, rain, lightning, heat and cold, and all kindred phenomena were gods of various degree, while the germinal principal of life, the destroying one of death, and other of life's greater mysteries, were characterized as the greater gods; but each and all were but offspring of the Most High Incal. It was an epic related in metrical measure and rhyme, constituting a poem whose every line exhibited the master touch of genius. Its authorship was lost in the night of time. It was supposedly the work, however, of a Son of the Solitude. There was an addendum embracing later events and epochs, but it was a markedly inferior work, and was not valued as highly as the body of the poem.
As a fact, the worship of Incal never included anything other than the adoration of God as a spiritual entity, and the "gods" had no portion in the religious services held on the two Sundays of each week, that is, the eleventh and the first days, for with the Poseidi a week consisted of eleven days, just as a month comprised three weeks, and a year eleven months, with one or more "leap-year" days at its end, as the exigencies of the solar calendar might require, these days being a regularly recurring holiday season, as New Year's Day is now. That so many gods and goddesses seem to have been venerated was due to the national influence of the epic history spoken of, and it was but a habit of mind to speak of them at all.
In our monotheism we differed little from the religion dominating the Hebraic civilization; we recognized no divine trinity, nor any Christ-spirit, neither any savior except the endeavor to do the best we knew in the sight of Incal. We considered all mankind as the sons of God, not any one mysteriously conceived person as solely His son. Miracle was an impossible thing, for all things we deemed rationally referable to uncontravenable law. But the Poseidi did believe that Incal had once lived in human form upon the earth, and had cast
off the gross body of the world to assume that of unfettered spirit. He had in that time created mankind and, as the Poseidi were evolutionists, that word, "mankind," embraced all the lower animals too. In course of time beings of the genus homo were evolved, one man and one woman, and then Incal had placed woman spiritually highest and above man, a position which she had lost through an attempt to enjoy a fruit which grew on the Tree of Life in the Garden of Heaven. But in doing this she had, according to the legend, disobeyed Incal, who had said that His highest, most progressed children should not enjoy this fruit, for whosoever did should surely die, because no mortal being could have immortal life and also reproduce its kind. The legend read: "I have said unto my creatures, attain perfection and study it evermore, and such is endless life. But whoso enjoyeth this tree, can not contain self."
The form of punishment meted out was the rationalistic, as the woman's attempt was to attain forbidden pleasures and she did not, uninstructed, know how. Her hand slipped from its grasp on the fruit and its side was torn out, so that its seed dropped on the earth and became flint-stones, while the fruit, still adhered to the tree, and became of the likeness of a great fiery serpent, whereof the breath scorched the hands of the culprit. Feeling the pain, she let go her hold on the Tree of Life, falling prone upon the earth and never fully recovering from the injury. Thus man became the superior being through the development of his nature by the necessity he was under of preserving his mate and himself from the cold and kindred conditions which came along with the flint-stones. (The last Glacial or Ice-age). Having fallen back into these material conditions, reproduction of species was a necessity once more, and so the law of continence supposedly commanded by Incal was broken. Death thus entered again into the sum of human reckoning and, until the Word be observed, no man could know a deathless condition. CONTAIN THYSELF! On this dependeth all knowledge; no occult law is so great as this. Use all things of this world as abusing none. (I. Cor. vii., 31).
Such was the popular belief regarding the creation of human
kind by Incal. The higher priests held to a religion which was virtually Essenianism, although for obvious reasons the populace were not aware of this fact. The date of this fabled occurrence was theologically supposed to have been preceded at least 9 thousand centuries, and some semi-authorities set it at even a more extended period than that.
Incal, the Father of Life, was not supposed to punish His children except that He made the laws of nature self-executive, His immanent, will, and if any one transgressed these the guilt was inexorably punished by nature, it being impossible to set in motion a cause without a consequent effect; if the cause was good, so also was the consequence. And in this they were undeviatingly correct; no mediator can avert for us the results of our misdeeds. 1 The Poseid nation believed in a heaven of good effects for those who put good causes into operation, and there was a region filled with bad effects for the wicked; the two places were adjacent, and those who were neither wholly good, nor wholly had, were supposed to live on a middle territory, so to speak. But, both of these post-vital conditions were included in the Shadow Land, as the word "Navazzamin" may be translated, literally, "A country of departed souls."
Though the religion of Incal was one based on cause. and effect, nevertheless a slight inconsistency appeared in the more or less prevalent belief that He was supposed to reward the very good.
To-day, my friend, thou standest on the threshold of a new unfoldment. The religion of to-day is even yet tinctured by this concept of an omnipotent, but man-like, Creator, heritage of a dead antiquity. But thou art living in the final years of am old Human Cycle, the Sixth. While I choose not at present to explain what this means, I will do so ere I bid thee God's peace. But I will say that humanity's new conception of the Eternal Cause will be more lofty, more sublime, purer, wider and more of an approach to boundlessness, than anything of
which the long gone aeons of time have ever dreamed. Christ is indeed risen and cometh unto His own, who ere long shall know Him as no exoteric man hath ever known Him. And, knowing Him, they shall know the things of the Father and do them, because it is written, "I go unto my Father."
GLORIA IN EXCELSIS!
Faith shall soon be knowledge. Belief shall be twin with science, and the Word shall blaze as a sun of glorious new meaning, for true religion means "I bind together."
RESURGAM CHRISTOS
"Close Not the Ends of My Cross."
The Exoteric Church hath closed the ends of His Cross. Wherefore they are exoteric, and shall not ever be esoteric until they open the ends of that Four-Way Path. Open thine eyes and thine ears.
90:1 NOTE.--Do not confuse "undoing" with "atonement." Christ atoned; we must undo, see note, page 236.