s
condemnation. We, ordinary men and women of the age, are all "lost
sheep," human souls struggling in ignorance; shall we then stone our
fellows because their theology has a different nomenclature to our own?
For man was the same in the past as he is to-day. The Human Soul has
ever the same hopes and fears, loves and hates, passions and
aspirations, no matter how the mere form of their expression differs.
That which is important is the attitude we hold to the forms with which
we are surrounded. To-day the form of our belief is changed; the fashion
of our dress is scientific and not allegorical, but are we any nearer
the realization that it is a dress and no more, and not the real
expression of the true man within?

Let us now take a brief glance at the Symbolical Tree of Life, which
plays so important a part in the Simonian Gnosis. Not, however, that it
was peculiar to this system, for several of the schools use the same
symbology. For instance, in the _Pistis-Sophia_[130] the idea is
immensely expanded, and there is much said of an Aeonian Hierarchy
called the Five Trees. As this, however, may have been a later
development, let us turn to the ancient Hindu Shastras, and select one
out of the many passages that could be adduced, descriptive of the
Ashvattha Tree, the Tree of Life, "the Ashvattha of golden wings," where
the bird-souls get their wings and fly away happily, as the
_Sanatsujatiya_ tells us. The passage we choose is from the _Bhagavad
Gita_, that marvellous philosophical episode from the _Mahabharata_,
which from internal evidence, and at the very lowest estimate, must be
placed at a date anterior to Simon. At the beginning of the fifteenth
Adyaya we read:

They say the imperishable Ashvattha is with root above and branches
below, of which the sacred hymns are the leaves. Who knows this, he
is a knower of knowledge. Upwards and downwards stretch its
branches, expanded by the potencies (Gunas); the sense-objects are
its sprouts. Downwards, too, its roots are stretched, constraining
to action in the world of men. Here neither its form is
comprehended, nor its end, nor beginning, nor its support. Having
cut with the firm sword of detachment (_sc._ non-attachment to the
fruit of action) this Ashvattha, with its overgrown roots, then
should he (the disciple) search out that Supreme whither they who
come never return again, (with the thought) that now he is