Bona-Oma, or Bona Dea. A Roman goddess, the patroness of female Initiates and Occultists. Called also Fauna after her father Faunus. She was worshipped as a prophetic and chaste divinity, and her cult was confined solely to women, men not being allowed to even pronounce her name.

She revealed her oracles only to women, and the ceremonies of her Sanctuary (a grotto in the Aventine) were conducted by the Vestals, every 1st of May. Her aversion to men was so great that no male person was permitted to approach the house of the consuls where her festival was sometimes held, and even the portraits and the busts of men were carried out for the time from the building.

Clodius, who once profaned such a sacred festival by entering the house of Caesar where it was held, in a female disguise, brought grief upon himself. Flowers and foliage decorated her temple and women made libations from a vessel (mellarium) full of milk. It is not true that the mellarium contained wine, as asserted by some writers, who being men thus tried to revenge themselves.

(See also: Bona-Oma, Bona Dea, Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary, )

Saturnalia (Latin) [from Saturnus Saturn]

A Roman festival held on the 17th of December and for a week following, honoring the deity Saturnus; undoubtedly this was the beginning of the occult festival held in celebration of the winter solstice. Saturnus was identified by Roman scholars with the Greek Kronos, though his attributes at times are rather those of Demeter, who presides over the gifts of earth. Legend states that Tullus Hostilius founded the festival, but also that Romulus founded it under the name of Brumalia [from bruma winter solstice]

. This is the time when the sun enters Capricorn, one of the houses of Saturn. The observances described are almost identical with those which we associate with Christmas; and Christmas again links up with a Norse version of the solstice festival. There was a general relaxation of discipline and social barriers; a spirit of joy and mirth; the interchange of gifts; abolition of distinctions of rank and social casts; no fighting or punishment. All over Europe, in Ancient Mexico, and in many other places, candles or fires were lighted. Even the harmless familiar Christmas and New Year festivals are themselves but exoteric forms of what in its essence was a dramatic presentation of the mysteries of initiation appropriate to this particular one of the four sacred seasons. Saturnalia has got its present meaning from the licentiousness into which this celebration degenerated.

Occultly the Saturnalia derived its name not only from the regent of the planet Saturn, but also from the esoteric teachings of the Mystery schools dealing with Saturn's cosmogonical role. There were also the somewhat distorted mythologic ideas concerning the Age of Saturn, or the period of beginnings, of human happiness and innocence. While the Age of Saturn is usually placed at the beginnings of human history, Saturn likewise closes an evolutionary period when the age of innocence and happiness plus spirituality and intellect shall have returned. Saturn therefore both opens and closes a grand evolutionary period.

(See also: Saturnalia, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Boat of the Sun, Seker Boat, Hennu (Egyptian) A frequent Egyptian representation is the boat in which the god Seker is seated. In its center is placed a large coffer, representing the covering of the dead body of the sun god Af or of Osiris.

Oftentimes a hawk, a symbol of the sun, is represented hovering over it with outstretched wings, and the boat was said to be steered by the dead -- a reference both to the spiritual power of those who have passed on to other planes and to the idea of cycles, in that the past or dead produces the present, which in its turn is both the parent and self of the future.

On the day of the festival of Seker, the coffer was lifted off at the moment of sunrise by the High Priest of Memphis, and carried in a procession circling the temple of the deity. This represented the common rotational or revolving movements of all celestial bodies, whether of the sun or planets.

(See also: Boat of the Sun, Seker Boat, Hennu, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Amen. In Hebrew is formed of the letters A M N = 1,40,50 =91,and is thus a simile of "Jehovah Adonai"=10, 5, 6, 5 and 1,4, 50,10 =91 together; it is one form of the Hebrew word for "truth". In common parlance Amen is said to mean "so be it".

But, in esoteric parlance Amen means "the concealed". Manetho Sebennites says the word signifies that which is hidden and we know through Hecateus and others that the Egyptians used the word to call upon their great God of Mystery, Ammon (or "Ammas, the hidden god ") to make himself conspicuous and manifest to them.

Bonomi, the famous hieroglyphist, calls his worshippers very pertinently the "Amenoph", and Mr. Bonwick quotes a writer who says: "Ammon, the hidden god, will remain for ever hidden till anthropomorphically revealed; gods who are afar off are useless". Amen is styled "Lord of the new-moon festival". Jehovah-Adonai is a new form of the ram-headed god Amoun or Ammon (q.v.) who was invoked by the Egyptian priests under the name of Amen.

(See also: Amen, Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary, )

Eleusinia (Ancient Greek). The Eleusinian Mysteries were the most famous and the most ancient of all the Greek Mysteries (save the Samothracian), and were celebrated near the hamlet of Eleusis, not far from Athens. Epiphanius traces them to the days of Inachos (1800 B.c.), founded, as another version has it, by Eumolpus, a King of Thrace and a Hierophant. They were celebrated in honour of Demeter, the Greek Ceres and the Egyptian Isis; and the last act of the performance referred to a sacrificial victim of atonement and a resurrection, when the Initiate was admitted to the highest degree of "Epopt" (q.v.).

The festival of the Mysteries began in the month of Boëdromion (September), the time of grape-gathering, and lasted from the 15th to the 22nd, seven days. The Hebrew feast of Tabernacles, the feast of Ingatherings, in the month of Ethanim (the seventh), also began on the 15th and ended on the 22nd of that month, The name of the month (Ethanim) is derived, according to some, from Adonim, Adonia, Attenim, Ethanim, and was in honour of Adonai or Adonis (Thammuz), whose death was lamented by the Hebrews in the groves of Bethlehem.

The sacrifice of both " Bread and Wine" was performed before the Mysteries of initiation, and during the ceremony the mysteries were divulged to the candidates from the petroma, a kind of book made of two stone tablets (petrai), joined at one side and made to open like a volume.

(See Isis Unveiled II., pp. 44 and 91, et seq., for further explanations.)

(See also: Eleusinia, Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary, )

Michael micha'el (Hebrew) Who is as God; one of the seven archangels, in the Old Testament one of the chiefs of the heavenly host, regarded as the guardian angel or celestial patron of Israel. According to one legend, Michael was chief of the four or seven angels who surrounded the heavenly throne.

The Roman Catholic Church regards Michael in much the same light, his festival, Michaelmas, being held on September 29. With the Gnostics, the first of the Aeons, called the savior. In the New Testament Michael leads the angelic host against the Apocalyptic Dragon, repeating the familiar tale of many ancient mythologies. Again, he is the chief opponent of Samael, the principal antagonist of the heavenly host.

Originally, however, both Michael and Samael were as one, both proceeding from ruah (soul), neshamah (spirit), and nephesh (vitality) -- as taught in the Qabbalah (in the Chaldean Book of Numbers).

"Samael is the concealed (occult) Wisdom, and Michael the higher terrestrial Wisdom, both emanating from the same source but diverging after their issue from the mundane soul, which on Earth is Mahat (intellectual understanding), or Manas (the seat of Intellect). They diverge, because one (Michael) is influenced by Neschamah, while the other (Isamael) remains uninfluenced. This tenet was perverted by the dogmatic spirit of the Church; which . . . made of Samael-Satan (the most wise and spiritual spirit of all) -- the adversary of its anthropomorphic God and sensual physical man, the devil!" (SD 2:378).

In Ezekiel's vision of the Cherubim, or the four sacred animals, the angel with the face of the lion corresponds to Michael, as in the Ophite scheme.

(See also: Michael, micha'el, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Ullambana (Sanskrit). The festival of "all souls", the prototype of All Souls’ Day in Christian lands.

It is held in China on the seventh moon annually, when both " Buddhist and Tauist priests read masses, to release the souls of those who died on land or sea from purgatory, scatter rice to feed Pretas [ classes of demons ever hungry and thirsty] , consecrate domestic ancestral shrines, . . . . recite Tantras . . . accompanied by magic finger-play (mudra) to comfort the ancestral spirits of seven generations in Naraka" (a kind of purgatory or Kama Loka) The author of the Sanskrit-Chinese Dictionary thinks that this is the old Tibetan (Bhon) " Gtorma ritual engrafted upon Confucian ancestral worship," owing to Dhamaraksha translating the Ullambana Sutra and introducing it into China.

The said Sutra is certainly a forgery, as it gives these rites on the authority of Sakyamuni Buddha, and " supports it by the alleged experiences of his principal disciples, Ananda being said to have appeased Pretas by food offerings ". But as correctly stated by Mr. Eitel, "the whole theory, with the ideas of intercessory prayers, priestly litanies and requiems, and ancestral worship, is entirely foreign to ancient and Southern Buddhism ".

And to the Northern too, if we except the sects of Bhootan and Sikkim, of the Bhon or Dugpa persuasion - the red caps, in short. As the ceremonies of All Saints’ Day, or days, are known to have been introduced into China in the third century (265-292), and as the same Roman Catholic ceremonial and ritual for the dead, held on November 2nd, did not exist in those early days of Christianity, it cannot be the Chinese who borrowed this religious custom from the Latins, but rather the latter who imitated the Mongolians and Chinese.

(See also: Ullambana, Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary, )

Mendeans (Ancient Greek). Also called Sabians, and St. John Christians.

 The latter is absurd, since, according to all accounts, and even their own, they have nothing at all to do with Christianity, which they abominate. The modern sect of the Mendeans is widely scattered over Asia Minor and elsewhere, and is rightly believed by several Orientalists to be a direct surviving relic of the Gnostics.

For as explained in the Dictionnaire des Apocryphes by the Abbé Migrie (art. "Le Code Nazaréan" vulgaire-ment appele "Livre d’Adam"), the Mendeans (written in French Manda?tes, which name they pronounce as Mandai) "properly signifies science, knowledge or Gnosis. Thus it is the equivalent of Gnostics" (loc. cit. note p. 3). As the above cited work shows, although many travellers have spoken of a sect whose followers are variously named Sabians, St. John’s Christians and Mendeans, and who are scattered around Schat-Etarab at the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates (principally at Bassorah, Hove?za, Korna, etc.), it was Norberg who was the first to point out a tribe belonging to the same sect established in Syria. And they are the most interesting of all. This tribe, some 14,000 or 15,000 in number, lives at a day’s march east of Mount Lebanon, principally at Elmerkah, (Lata-Kieh).

They call themselves indifferently Nazarenes and Galileans, as they originally come to Syria from Galilee. They claim that their religion is the same as that of St. John the Baptist, and that it has not changed one bit since his day. On festival days they clothe them selves in camel’s skins, sleep on camel’s skins, and eat locusts and honey as did their "Father, St. John the Baptist". Yet they call Jesus Christ an impostor, a false Messiah, and Nebso (or the planet Mercury in its evil side), and show him as a production of the Spirit of the "seven badly- disposed stellars" (or planets). See Codex Nazareus, which is their Scripture.

(See also: Mendeans, Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary, )

Ithyphallic (Ancient Greek). Qualification of the gods as males and hermaphrodites, such as the bearded Venus, Apollo in woman’s clothes, Ammon the generator, the embryonic Ptah, and so on.

 Yet the phallus, so conspicuous and, according to our prim notions, so indecent, in the Indian and Egyptian religions, was associated in the earliest symbology far more with another and much purer idea than that of sexual creation. As shown by many an Orientalist, it expressed resurrection, the rising in life from death. Even the other meaning had nought indecent in it: "These images only symbolise in a very expressive manner the creative force of nature, without obscene intention," writes Mariette Bey, and adds, "It is but another way to express celestial generation, which should cause the deceased to enter into a new life". Christians and Europeans are very hard on the phallic symbols of the ancients.

The nude gods and goddesses and their generative emblems and statuary have secret departments assigned to them in our museums; why then adopt and preserve the same symbols for Clergy and Laity? The love-feasts in the early Church - its agape as pure (or as impure) as the Phallic festivals of the Pagans; the long priestly robes of the Roman and Greek Churches, and the long hair of the latter, the holy water sprinklers and the rest, are there to show that Christian ritualism has preserved in more or less modified forms all the symbolism of old Egypt. As to the symbolism of a purely feminine nature, we are bound to confess that in the sight of every impartial archeologist the half nude toilets of our cultured ladies of Society are far more suggestive of female-sex worship than are the rows of yoni-shaped lamps, lit along the highways to temples in India.

(See also: Ithyphallic, Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary, )

Mysteries, The [from Greek mysteria Mysteries from mystes one initiated into the Mysteries from mueo to initiate from muo to close the eyes or lips]

Applies chiefly to Greece, but once extended to Asiatic cults of religio-philosophical character, it acquired a wider range under the Romans, and is used in The Secret Doctrine in reference to equivalent institutions in any part of the world. The most celebrated in Greece were those of Eleusis pertaining to Demeter and Persephone, which gave rise to many branches and influenced schools of older foundation.

Others were those of Samothrace, the Orphic Mysteries, and the Festivals devoted to Dionysos. Schools like that of Pythagoras diffused their influence, as did Academies such as that of Plato. The history of Greece furnishes notable examples of great men who had been initiated into such Mysteries. The Mysteries came into Greece from India and Egypt, and their origin goes back to Atlantean times. They were in historic times, what remained of the means whereby man's divine ancestors communicated truths concerning the mysteries of cosmos and of human nature and of the communion divinity and man.

In times when sacred knowledge was whole and not divided into sacred and profane, the human body, not yet desecrated, was held as sacred as any other part of function of human nature; so that the teaching embraced medicine, hygiene, singing, dancing, the useful arts and crafts; and the teachers of religion, philosophy, science, and of crafts, the founders of cities, and great artists derived their powers from this source.

The Mysteries were divided into the Greater and Less, inner and outer, esoteric and partly exoteric; and, as the former were guarded by well-observed secrecy the sources of ordinary information are mostly based on the latter. The more recondite Mysteries could not, from their very nature, be publicly divulged; they were revelations, appreciable only by an awakened spiritual perception and incommunicable to anyone not thus awakened. The Greater Mysteries were successive initiations for prepared candidates. The Less consisted of symbolic and dramatic representations for the public, in which, among other things, the profound symbology of the Greek mythology was employed.

The elevating and unifying influence of these institutions was acknowledged by Greek and Roman authorities and is apparent from a study of Greek history. With the advance of a cycle of materialism, the Mysteries became degraded, especially in Asia Minor in Roman times; the symbolism was perverted and even made to palliate licentious practices. What little was left to abolish was formally abolished by Justinian, who closed the mystic and quasi-esoteric Neoplatonic School of Athens in 529.

In a recognition of the ancient Mysteries we find a clue to the meaning of the universal prevalence, among peoples fallen into a degenerate and falsely called primitive state of life, of strange rites and black magical practices. These are the very dregs and distortions of the ancient holy teachings; but even here unprejudiced inquirers find that, when sympathetically approached, the existence of secret cults which preserve at least remnants of some of the essential teachings of the ancient wisdom.

As formal institutions, the Mysteries had their earliest origin during the fourth root-race, Atlantis, after its fourth subrace. Indeed, the still more primitive roots of the Mysteries can be traced to a much earlier time, probably during the third subrace of the Atlanteans, when the rapid degeneration of mankind into the worship of matter had brought about the absolute need of segregating the nobler and finer spirits of the human race into groups or schools where they could, under the vows of inviolable secrecy, study the deeper mysteries of nature and their own oneness with the divine. From that time the Mysteries became with every subrace more and more secret and entrance into them became ever more difficult. After the fifth root-race came upon the scene, the Mysteries had become well established in all countries of the globe, and their rites and functions, both of the Greater and the Less, were conducted as functions of the State.

Even from the time of the incarnation of the manasaputras in the third root-race, there has been an unbroken line, stream, or succession of lofty spiritual teachers guarding the ancient god-wisdom received in primordial ages from the dhyanis; and the Mysteries, even in their heyday of splendor and in their most secret lines of work, were the outer side of clothing of this inner stream of inspiration and sublime teaching. The light has not yet died from off the earth, and the spiritual stream still exists and does its work in the world, although for ages it has been acting more secretly and esoterically than ever. However, the time is coming when the Mysteries will again be reestablished and will receive the common reverence and respect from mankind that in former ages they universally had.

(See also: Mysteries, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

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