My Library

It will be seen that there is nothing magical here, yet I do not doubt but the members could tell strange stories if they chose. Many, but by no means all, the Alchemists and Hermetic Philosophers were acolytes of that vast secret Brotherhood, which has thrived from the earliest ages, and, under different names in different lands, has performed, is still performing its mission. The members of this mystic union were the Magi of old, who flourished in Chaldea (Mesopotamia) ages before one of their number (Heber) left his native plains, and on foreign soil founded the Hebraic confederation. They were the original Sabi and Sabeans, who for long ages preceded the Sages of Chaldea. They were the men who founded that Semitic civilization, the faint shade of which we find, having leaped long avenues of centuries, in the mouldy records of early China, itself numbering its years by the thousand. Of this great Brotherhood sprung Brahma, Buddha, La-otze, Zoroaster, Plato, the Gnostics, the Essenes, and therefore Christ himself—who was an Essene, and who preached the sacred doctrines of the Mountain of Light. They were the Dreamers of the ages—the sun of the epochs —eclipsed occasionally, but anon bursting forth