ch these higher truths were concealed were handed
down as traditions to succeeding generations--traditions in which
history, astrology, and mythology are strangely combined.

After long periods, through war, conquest, and the various changes
incidental to shifting environment, these traditions were in the main
forgotten. Fragments of them, however, were from time to time gathered
together, and, intermingled with later doctrines, were used by the
priests as a means of increased self-aggrandizement and power.

It is now thought that the Iliad (Rhapsodies) of Homer is only a number
of "detached songs" which perhaps for centuries were delivered orally,
and that they contain the secret doctrines of the priests. Porphyry
says that "we ought not to doubt that Homer has secretly represented
the images of divine things under the concealment of fable." It has been
said of Plato that he banished the poems of Homer from his imaginary
republic for the reason that the people might not be able to distinguish
what is from what is not allegorical. Hippolytus informs us that the
Simonists declared that in Helen resided the principle of intelligence;
"and thus, when all the powers were for claiming her for themselves,
sedition and war arose, during which this chief power was manifested to
nations." These songs which were gathered together by Pisistratus and
revised by Aristotle for the use of Alexander, have generally been
regarded merely as a bit of history recounting a severe and protracted
struggle between the Greeks and Trojans.

Within the earliest historical accounts which we have of the Egyptians,
we observe that their ceremonies and symbols have already become
multitudinous, the true meaning of the latter being concealed. The
masses of the people, who had grown too sensualized and ignorant to
receive the higher divine "mysteries," and too gross to be entrusted
with their true significance, had become idolaters.

Not only the Egyptian and Chaldean priests, but Moses and the Jewish
doctors were well versed in religious symbolism. The fact is observed,
also, that as late as medieval Christianity, the fathers in the Church,
the Christian painters, sculptors, and architects, still employed signs
and symbols to set forth their religious doctrines. Even at the present
time, many of the emblems representing certain ideas connected with
the creative principles, and which were part and parcel of the pagan
worship, are still in use. The m