ered to the disciples at Initiation,
which had the Moon as its symbol, conferred the gift of divine
clairvoyance and separated the soul from the body.

The "white stone" is none other than the _alba petra_, the white
cornelian, the chalcedony, or stone of Initiation. It was given to the
candidate who had successfully passed through all the preliminary
tests.[175] The "Word" written on the stone is the _sacred Word_, the
"lost Word" which Swedenborg said was to be sought for amongst the
hierophants of Tartary and Tibet, whom theosophists call the Masters.

"He who overcometh" is, therefore, the disciple ready for initiation;
it is of him that "a pillar in the temple of God" will be made. In
esoteric language, the column signifies Man redeemed, made divine and
free, who is no longer to revolve on the wheel of Rebirths, who "shall
no more go out," as the _Apocalypse_ says, _i.e._, shall not again
leave Heaven.

If we examine the text of both _Old_ and _New Testament_ by the light
of esoteric teaching, the dead letter, often absurd and at tunes
repellent and immoral, would receive unexpected illumination, and
would fully justify the words of the great rabbi, Maimonides, quoted a
few pages back.[176]

Origen, the most learned of the Fathers of the Church, adds in his
turn:

"If we had to limit ourselves to the letter, and understand after the
fashion of the Jews or the people, what is written in the Law, I
should be ashamed to proclaim aloud that it was God who gave us such
laws; I should find more dignity and reason in human laws, as, for
instance, in those of Athens, Rome, or Sparta...." (_Homil 7. in
Levit._)

Saint Jerome, in his _Epistle to Paulinus_, continues in similar
fashion:

"Listen, brother, learn the path you must follow in studying the Holy
Scriptures. Everything you read in the divine books is shining and
light-giving without, but far sweeter is the heart thereof. He who
would eat the nut must first break the shell."

It is because they have lost the Spirit of their Scriptures that the
Christians--ever since their separation from the Gnostics--have
offered the world nothing more than the outer shell of the World
Religion.

NEOPLATONISM.

The great philosophic body that formed a bridge, as it were, between
the Old World and the New was the famous School of Alexandria, founded
about the second century of our era by Ammonius Saccas and closed in
the year 429 A.D. through the intolerance of Justi