e
adoration of man as he was known and seen to be. As is written in the
_Book of Dzyan_, "Then the Fourth became tall with pride. We are the
kings it was said; we are the Gods.... They built huge cities. Of rare
earths and metals they built, and out of the fires vomited, out of the
white stone of the mountains and of the black stone, they cut their
own images in their size and likeness, and worshipped them." Shrines
were placed in temples in which the statue of each man, wrought in
gold or silver, or carved in stone or wood, was adored by himself. The
richer men kept whole trains of priests in their employ for the cult
and care of their shrines, and offerings were made to these statues as
to gods. The apotheosis of self could go no further.

It must be remembered that every true religious idea that has ever
entered into the mind of man, has been consciously suggested to him by
the divine Instructors or the Initiates of the Occult Lodges, who
throughout all the ages have been the guardians of the divine
mysteries, and of the facts of the supersensual states of
consciousness.

Mankind generally has but slowly become capable of assimilating a few
of these divine ideas, while the monstrous growths and hideous
distortions to which every religion on earth stands as witness, must
be traced to man's own lower nature. It would seem indeed that he has
not always even been fit to be entrusted with knowledge as to the mere
symbols under which were veiled the light of Deity, for in the days of
the Turanian supremacy some of this knowledge was wrongfully divulged.

We have seen how the life and light giving attributes of the sun were
in early times used as the symbol to bring before the minds of the
people all that they were capable of conceiving of the great First
Cause. But other symbols of far deeper and more real significance were
known and guarded within the ranks of the priesthood. One of these was
the conception of a Trinity in Unity. The Trinities of most sacred
significance were never divulged to the people, but the Trinity
personifying the cosmic powers of the universe as Creator, Preserver,
and Destroyer, became publicly known in some irregular manner in the
Turanian days. This idea was still further materialized and degraded
by the Semites into a strictly anthropomorphic Trinity consisting of
father, mother and child.

A further and rather terrible development of the Turanian times must
still be referred to. With the