of knowledge, in Occultism as in every
other science.

The occult records partly endorse the story told in the Gospels, and
partly do not endorse it; they show us the life, and thus enable us to
disentangle it from the myths which are intertwined therewith.

The child whose Jewish name has been turned into that of Jesus was born
in Palestine B.C. 105, during the consulate of Publius Rutilius Rufus
and Gnaeus Mallius Maximus. His parents were well-born though poor, and
he was educated in a knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures. His fervent
devotion and a gravity beyond his years led his parents to dedicate him
to the religious and ascetic life, and soon after a visit to Jerusalem,
in which the extraordinary intelligence and eagerness for knowledge of
the youth were shown in his seeking of the doctors in the Temple, he was
sent to be trained in an Essene community in the southern Judaean desert.
When he had reached the age of nineteen he went on to the Essene
monastery near Mount Serbal, a monastery which was much visited by
learned men travelling from Persia and India to Egypt, and where a
magnificent library of occult works--many of them Indian of the
Trans-Himalayan regions--had been established. From this seat of mystic
learning he proceeded later to Egypt. He had been fully instructed in
the secret teachings which were the real fount of life among the
Essenes, and was initiated in Egypt as a disciple of that one sublime
Lodge from which every great religion has its Founder. For Egypt has
remained one of the world-centres of the true Mysteries, whereof all
semi-public Mysteries are the faint and far-off reflections. The
Mysteries spoken of in history as Egyptian were the shadows of the true
things "in the Mount," and there the young Hebrew received the solemn
consecration which prepared him for the Royal Priesthood he was later to
attain. So superhumanly pure and so full of devotion was he, that in his
gracious manhood he stood out pre-eminently from the severe and somewhat
fanatical ascetics among whom he had been trained, shedding on the stern
Jews around him the fragrance of a gentle and tender wisdom, as a
rose-tree strangely planted in a desert would shed its sweetness on the
barrenness around. The fair and stately grace of his white purity was
round him as a radiant moonlit halo, and his words, though few, were
ever sweet and loving, winning even the most harsh to a temporary
gentleness, and the most rigid to a p