The Mysteries of Osiris

Or Ancient Egyptian Initiation

Reuben Swinburne Clymer

• Publisher: Barakaldo Books
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781839744549
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Buddhism

R. Swinburne Clymer (1878-1966) was an American Rosicrucian. He reached the rank of Grand Master in 1905 and became the Supreme Grand Master of Fraternitas Rosae Crucis in 1922, serving as such until his death. The Mysteries of Osiris describes itself as "Setting forth the symbolism, mythology, legends and parables beginning with the outer religious systems of the Egyptians, primarily based on The Drama of the Heavens; together with the Inner or Esoteric Interpretations as taught in the lesser and greater mysteries throughout the ages, including the present.—Print ed.

THE PYRAMID

An Altar to God. a temple of Initiation, a resting place for the gods.

“In that Jay there shall be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar at the border thereof to the Lord; and it shall be for a sign and for a witness onto the Lord of Hosts in the Land of Egypt.”—Isiah 19:19, 20.

IN the interior of the Pyramid there was a temple designed to teach and illustrate all known science, and especially the Sacred or Secret Science of the Soul. The Soul of man was known to the Initiates as a direct ray of Light from Deity. The Sublime Drama, which the temples were built to exemplify, represented successive stages in the Soul’s progress through matter for the purpose of gaining the wisdom of the gods; its “fall” from pristine purity to an alliance with gross matter; its transmigration through various experiences for the purpose of probation and purification, its ultimate growth into manhood, and—should the animal nature gain the ascendency, its descent again into degradation or, contrawise, should the spiritual in its nature prevail, its new rebirth and final transformation into Cosmic Consciousness.

The greatest of these temples was the famous Temple of Cheops which, by profound and correct astronomical calculations, the founders designed to be the then physical center of the earth.

They likewise metaphysically designed it to be the great center for the school of all the sublime teachings which, in the form of the Greater Mysteries, too profound for the vulgar mind, were later to be organized and exemplified in Symbolic or Ritualistic Initiation, in which, and during which, symbols displaced inner development and knowledge as the result of personal experience.

The base of the temple is the perfect square which symbolizes in its four corners the sacred number 1, the beginning, the four square man of body, spirit, mind and Soul; the union of the masculine and feminine principles, i.e., balance or equilibrium between the two forces.

Its corners are the perfect triangle, the Δ, symbol of fire, the Soul; emblematic of the Great Light so highly esteemed by all true Initiates throughout the ages.

The triangle also symbolizes the number three and is further symbolic of the descent of the sun upon its apex at the two solemn epochs of the year, which signifies life eternal, and adversely, death as the result of adverse principles of evil. One of these Initiates has this to say:

“The magnificent unison that strikes from the lowest depth to the highest pinnacle of creation, including all the tones of creation, sounds in vain the harmony of choiring worlds upon the ears that are dulled to every tone save the clink of money—the emblem of materialism—but amidst this eclipse of the true light, this total darkness on the subject of the spirit of religious faith, the grand old Pyramid of Cheops stands grimly mute except to the knowing ones; eloquently speechless, waiting for the hour when the builders of the new Temple of a divine humanity, missing the key-stone of the arch, which is neither oblong nor square, shall search amidst the ‘rubbish’ of antiquity, and finding the ‘stone that the builders rejected,’ place it as the keystone in the arch by which the heavens [the above] overshadows the earth [the below], and constitutes the Universal or Divine Temple of the Master Builder—God.

“Notwithstanding the picture of a supposed degradation handed down to us by selfish interests, the animating spirit of ancient Egypt, which filtered through the epics of classic Greece, and the memories of once stately Rome, still lives in the depths of the Souls as well as the Subconsciousness of men.

“The spirit continues to animate the inner depths of the earnest student and the patient scholar to fresh research in the letter of the past, but not dead, Orient—an Orient unknown to the mass and the superficial scholars—and there will be fresh discoveries in the hidden, or secret meaning of the Orient’s immortal Soul.

“The day will come when gross materialism as we know it, and which holds men in its iron grip, will weaken, and the Mysteries of the ancients will become the science of the moderns. In the morning light of revelation the Great Pyramid of Cheops will reveal its innermost secrets; the alphabet which spells out the significance of the Divine Drama of existence; not as men know it, but as it really is.”

The poet glimpsed this truth:

“Gazing, rapt, awed, upon that mighty pile,

The mind is filled with wonder, and we ask,

Is it a tomb or teacher? Whence its style?

What men, what age conceived, achieved the task?

Wonder of wonders in the land of Nile,

Its chambers, passages, mysterious coffer,

Its layers, angles, measurements and stone,

All each, to unsealed eyes of men now offer

Solutions (for four thousand years unknown)

Of truths which stand against the doubting scoffer,

The clearer from their test, as fully shown.

How, in its presence, modern pride is bowed!

Its hoary wisdom whispering from the dead,

Sublime, mysterious, awful, with the shroud

Of forty centuries wrapped around its head!

We catch its muffled tones, now low, now loud,

And hear with wonder nigh akin to dread.”—

Joseph A. Seiss, in A Miracle of Stone

The Egyptian, or Greater and Lesser, Mysteries were shrewdly and painstakingly hidden in the symbolism of the pyramids. In these Mysteries there was both an outer or open worship for the mass, and an inner form of worship for the Initiates. It has been stated, all too frequently, by those who knew little of these Mysteries, that the Priests of the Temples of Initiation deliberately brought this segregation about.

This is utterly false. The people themselves would not understand; were wholly unwilling to make the efforts necessary to unveil the Mysteries as MUST EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF, BY THE HELP OF THE INITIATED, but instead, themselves built up the legends and the forms which they could understand and worship as a creed; not as a knowledge.

What cavil is this?

Thousands of years after the building of the pyramids, after a new cycle and a new age had set in, this was still true. The great Initiate, the Nazarene was well aware of it. He did not try to hide it, but frankly told his followers;

“And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why Speakest thou unto them in parables?

“He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given,”—Matt. 13:10, 11.

Read “disciples” as “Neophytes” and again, “unto you” as “Neophytes,” and “the Mysteries of the kingdom of heaven,” as “The Greater Mysteries.”

The saying of the Nazarene is in nowise different from what the Initiate Priests of ancient Egypt taught their Acolytes. Moreover, these ancient Priests could not possibly have used a plainer language to tell their Neophytes, that for the mass there was a creed and a worship which was symbolic or parable, and that the true Mysteries would be unveiled to them only if they progressed in their efforts and grew toward spiritual development.

Men of all nations were admitted as Neophytes to the Mysteries. Many of these unveiled the Light and became conscious of the meaning of this Great Light. The Initiate Priests, on their return to their own country, or when traveling in other countries, did not always give the same names to their Deity or the gods of the people, due to the peculiar temperament and lack of understanding on the part of the people.

It is unquestionably true that while one nation adopted the gods of another or other countries, they did not necessarily follow the same worship, nor use the same names for their gods. This was again due to the temperament of the people and many other reasons; but the worship, or method of worship by the people, had nothing whatever in common with the practices of the Initiate Priests.

In Rome, for instance, the worship of Bacchus was in vogue long before the mysteries themselves were recognized and, even so, these mysteries as known to the people were no more than the “parables” of the Masters. Again, at times and in other instances, the worship of strange, that is, previously unknown gods, was introduced merely for the purpose of hiding their mysteries, as, in the same Rome, the mysteries of Isis and Osiris.

The first of these Mysteries of which we have any actual knowledge, or account, were those of Isis and Osiris—who became the prototypes of the later “gods” of the Christians—Jesus and Mary. These mysteries of Isis and Osiris were transplanted into Greece, by Cadmus and Inachus; Zoroaster, as far as is known, brought them into Persia; Orpheus into Thrace; Melapus into Argos; Trophonius into Bœotia; Minos into Crete; Cinyras into Cyprus, and Erechtheus into Athens.

These mysteries, their practice, and all their gods, though stemming from the same truth, or the one foundation, differed in almost every respect in the various countries; the fruit had to be suited to the soil. BUT THE GREATER MYSTERIES, THAT IS, THE INCULCATIONS, THE PRACTICES AND THE METHOD FOR BRINGING THE Inner Light INTO MANIFESTATION have remained unchanged. This is necessarily true, since the Light which, Biblically speaking, “...is on neither land nor sea” was the same Light in all countries; in all ages; in the time of the Nazarene a...

Table of contents

• Title page
• INTRODUCTION
• THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES
• THE PYRAMID
• SYMBOLISM
• OSIRIS, THE GOD, and THE SOLAR YEAR
• ISIS, or the Civil Year
• ARGUS
• CIRCE
• MENES, OR MOSES AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A NEW LAW
• MAN’S SPIRITUAL RELATION TO GOD
• THE LEGEND OF SOULS
• MYTHS MAY BE HIDDEN SPIRITUAL TRUTHS
• RELIGION IS A PORTRAYAL OF THE LIFE OF MAN
• RELIGION IS NOT IN FORM, BUT IN FEELING
• MYSTERIES OF ISIS AND OSIRIS
• SYMBOLS WHICH AT ONE AND THE SAME TIME REPRESENT GENERATION AND REGENERATION
• THE BEGINNING OF MAN ON EARTH AS A CONSCIOUS BEING
• THE CHERUBIM AS THE HIERARCHIES OF HEAVEN
• TO KNOW ALL THINGS IS TO FORGIVE, I.E., UNDERSTAND, ALL THINGS
• THE DUAL NATURE OF THE SERPENT
• THE NECESSITY FOR A PERSONAL DEVIL
• ADDENDA