,iLiHUHlsUiHI'H»K'i>i'U-^ 
 
 P 
 Itllil 
 
 i 
 
 THE 
 
 APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 JAMBS M, l*RtSB 
 
 l>MilH|lllii|i11)|ii!illt%iViB 
 
BS 
 
 pay 
 
 l9io 
 
 CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Mrs Carl Vail 
 
Date Due 
 
 TTT" 
 
 firr r n i nnAm r i 
 
 mv^^^ps^ 
 
 i- ' ^TERL 
 
 \M^: 
 
 ^ Loaa A, 
 
 ^i^gy t^AT- 
 
 Cornell University Library 
 BS2825 .P97 1910 
 
 Apocalypse "™aSiiiiiiiimM^ 
 
 olln 
 
 3 1924 029 295 289 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029295289 
 
% 
 
 'i 
 
 ■ t 
 
 I 
 
 '0 N[x6jv 1,000 
 
 ( The Conqueror) 
 
 'ETCi(7Tyj[i,6JV 999 
 
 ( Intuitively Wise ) 
 
 '1/ 
 
 { The Higher Mind ) 
 
 888 
 
 111 
 
 666 j 
 
 E7rtOuf/.Ca 555 
 
 ( Desire ) 
 
 27C£i'p7]f/,a 444 
 
 Zxaupoc 
 
 (The Cross ) 
 
 'H (Ppyjv 
 
 ( The Lower Mind ) 
 
 tf y/'^ ( The Serpent-coil ) 
 
 I' # Axpacia 
 
 (Sensualitj' ) 
 
 *«:£>^si^>L 
 
 H KXslc TTJC rV(0(7£W(; 
 
 (The Key of the Sacred Science) 
 
 333 
 
THE 
 APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 BEING AN 
 
 ESOTERIC INTERPRETATION 
 
 OF 
 
 THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 
 
 • ('ATTOKoXvi^tS 'Iwai/vov) 
 
 COMMONLY CALLED 
 
 THE REVELATION OF [ST.] JOHN 
 
 WITH A NEW TRANSLATION 
 BY 
 
 JAMES M. PRYSE 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 NEW YORK 
 JOHN M. PRYSE 
 9-15 MURRAY ST. 
 1910 
 
I3s 
 
 Copyright, 1910, by 
 John M. Pryse, New York. 
 
 Entered at Stationers' Hall, 
 London. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE . vii 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Chapter I. The Key of the Gnosis 1 
 
 Chapter II. The Path of Power 6 
 
 Chapter III. The Riddles of "Revelation" ... 24 
 
 Chapter IV. The Drama of Self-Conquest . . 33 
 
 THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 77 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Key of the Gnosis Colored Frontispiece 
 
 The Seven Principal Ganglia 17 
 
 The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac 20 
 
 The Gnostic Chart Concealed in the Apocalypse ... 26 
 
 The Cubical City Unfolded 31 
 
 The Apocalyptic Zodiac 41 
 
 The Light of the Cosmos 78 
 
 The Seven Cities in Asia 93 
 
 Kronos 95 
 
 Zeus 98 
 
 Ares 101 
 
 Helios 104 
 
 Aphrodite . . 106 
 
 Hermes 109 
 
 Selene Ill 
 
 Seal 123 
 
 Trumpet 136 
 
 Virgo 154 
 
 Draco 156 
 
 Cetus 162 
 
 Medusa 166' 
 
 Agnus Dei 169 
 
 Sickle 174 
 
 PhialS 178 
 
 Crater 188 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The purpose of this book is to show that the 
 Apocalypse is a manual of spiritual development and 
 not, as conventionally interpreted, a cryptic history 
 or prophecy. In the following pages the reader will 
 find the complete solution of the Apocalyptic 
 enigma, with ample proof of the correctness of that 
 solution. As the subject dealt with in the work is, 
 however, familiar to only a comparatively few spe- 
 cial students of the sacred science, which to the 
 many has ever been a sealed book, the exposition 
 here given is put in the form of an elementary trea- 
 tise. If it were written for the few, it would have 
 been expanded to great bulk; but as it is intended 
 for the many, the author has kept within the limits 
 of a small volume, avoiding everything mystical, 
 scholastic and controversial, using plain, concise 
 language, and employing technical terms only when 
 they are required by the nature of the subject. 
 
 The translation of the Apocalypse here presented 
 attempts no more than to reproduce the meaning of 
 the original accurately and clearly in modern Eng- 
 lish. But, while this translation differs radically, in 
 
PREFACE 
 
 some respects, from the authorized version, the in- 
 terpretation here offered is not based upon any pe- 
 culiarities of the translator's work, or upon any 
 mere matter of details, but rests broadly upon the 
 undisputed meanings of the Greek text. 
 
 James M. Pryse. 
 
 New York City, September, 1910. 
 
 Owai iiju.iv ToTs vofUKOis, on ^pare 
 TTJv K\€iSa TTJs yvwcrtios' avTol oiiK 
 clcn^\9aTi Kol Tovs etcrep^o/iei'ODS 
 iKtaXvcrare. 
 
 Woe unto you, conventionalists, for 
 you toolc away the key of the sacred 
 science; you did not go in and those 
 who were about to go in you pre- 
 vented, Lk. xi. 52 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE KEY OF THE GNOSIS 
 
 Every thoughtful student of the hterature of the 
 ancient religions, including that of early Christian- 
 ity, can not but be impressed by the fact that in each 
 and all of them may be found very clear intimations 
 j of a secret traditional lore, an arcane science, 
 I handed down from times immemorial. This secret 
 body of knowledge is repeatedly alluded to in the 
 New Testament, as also in the Upanishads and 
 other ancient writings, in whose pages a few of the 
 arcane doctrines are cautiously unveiled; and from 
 the meagre glimpses thus afforded of the system it 
 is clearly apparent that it was essentially the same 
 in all the old religions and philosophies, constitu- 
 ting, in fact, their common esoteric basis. In the 
 /primitive Christian Church, organized as a secret 
 society, this Gnosis, or secret science, was guarded 
 with jealous care, being imparted only to a compara- 
 tive few who were deemed worthy of initiation, 
 according to the maxim, "Many are the called, but 
 few are the chosen." Through corrupting political 
 influences and the ultimate dominance by a selfish 
 and decadent priesthood, the Christian Society in 
 
2 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 the early centuries lost this esoteric knowledge, in 
 place of which there grew up during the succeeding 
 centuries a system of dogmatic theology formulated 
 from the literal interpretation, the dead letter, of 
 the books of the Old and New Testaments. On the 
 hypothesis that the Bible, as a divine revelation, 
 contains a record of God's dealings with mankind 
 throughout the ages, the historical element in it has 
 been unduly emphasized, while books that are 
 purely allegorical and mystical have been construed 
 as history. For several centuries it was attempted 
 to give the Apocalypse an historical interpretation ; 
 and failing this, through the lack of any record of 
 past events that would serve the purpose, it was 
 next interpreted as history of the future, that is, 
 prophecy. At the present time, the Apocalypse is 
 the despair of theology; the ablest scholars in the 
 ranks of orthodoxy frankly admit that it must be 
 regarded as an unsolved, and possibly insoluble, 
 enigma. They translate its title "Revelation" — ^yet 
 it reveals nothing to them. Literally d'n-oKd\v\}ji<s 
 means "disrobing" or "unveiling" ; but Isis wrapped 
 in her peplum was not more safe from profane gaze 
 than is the meaning of the Apocalypse, nor is any 
 book in all literature more heavily veiled. 
 
 Yet the Apocalypse is the key to the New Testa- 
 ment; more, it is in very truth the key of the GnSsis. 
 Incomprehensible as the book may seem to the exo- 
 teric scholar, however great his intellectual attain- 
 ments, keen his mental acumen, and vast his store of 
 erudition, to the mere tyro in the sacred science the 
 general meaning of the Apocalypse is perfectly 
 clear. It is unintelligible to the conventional scholar 
 
THE KEY OF THE GNOSIS 3 
 
 Simply because its subject-matter, veiled in sym- 
 bolical language, relates to the Mysteries of the 
 early Christian Society, the esoteric teachings which 
 it was not lawful to reveal. For secrecy has always 
 been maintained regarding the sacred science, so as 
 to guard it from those who are morally unworthy to 
 receive it; since the power its possession confers 
 would be destructive to them and injurious to their 
 fellow-men. But so far as concerns the Apocalypse 
 this reason does not apply very forcibly : much that 
 is given in it had already been very clearly and 
 openly stated in the writings of Plato (with which 
 the Apocalyptist was evidently familiar) and of 
 other Greek Initiates, as well as in the Buddhistic 
 and Brahmanical scriptures. Moreover, although 
 the Apocalypse treats very fully of the spiritual and 
 psychic forces in man, it nowhere gives even a clue 
 to the process by which these forces can be aroused 
 to action; in fact, in the introductory part l6annSs 
 clearly intimates that it is intended for the guidance 
 of those who, without any esoteric instruction, find 
 these forces awakened within them by the very pu- 
 rity of their" nature and the intensity of their aspira- 
 tion for the spiritual life. Evidently, then, he had 
 another motive for resorting to the symbology and 
 the ingenious puzzles which have baffled the pro- 
 fane for so many centuries ; and this motive is easily 
 perceived. If he had written the book in clear lan- 
 guage, it. would almost undoubtedly have been de- 
 stroyed; and it certainly would never have found a 
 place in the Christian canon. Again, from the con- 
 cluding portion of his Evangel it is plain that I6an- 
 n6s, the great Seer and Initiate, clearly foresaw the 
 
4 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 fate of the Christian Church and its loss of the eso- 
 teric doctrine. It would seem, therefore, a reason- 
 able supposition that he wrote the Apocalypse for 
 the purpose of preserving that doctrine in the Chris- 
 tian records, carefully concealing it under the most 
 extraordinary symbols, checked off by a numerical 
 key and by similar "puzzles," so that the meanings 
 could be conclusively demonstrated from the text 
 itself, and concluding it with a dread imprecation 
 against any one who should add to or take away 
 anything from the book (a device which has un- 
 doubtedly helped to preserve the text from mutila- 
 tion) ; and having thus with marvellous ingenuity 
 prepared the book, which is unique in all literature, 
 he confided it to the keeping of the exoteric church, 
 confident that in their ignorance of the real nature 
 of its contents the exotericists would carefully pre- 
 serve it until the proper time should come for its 
 meaning to be explained. If this was his purpose 
 (as the present author firmly believes it was) , then 
 this present time, when modern Biblical criticism — 
 scholarly accurate, conventionally exoteric, and 
 remorselessly unsparing — has demonstrated the 
 unsoundness and instability of the venerable theo- 
 logical structure, and has so undermined it that it 
 seems to be tottering to its fall, would appear to be 
 the intended and appropriate time for the seals of 
 the Apocalypse to be broken, and the contents of 
 the book made known. Thus it is that I6ann6s, "who 
 bore witness of the Logos of the God, and of the 
 witness of Anointed iSsous," has borne witness of 
 the esoteric doctrine which underlies not only Chris- 
 tianity but also all the religions of antiquity. 
 
THE KEY OF THE GNOSIS 5 
 
 Through the long centuries the orthodox church 
 has treasured this mysterious book — designed for 
 the undoing of orthodoxy — as part of its sacred 
 scriptures, a place to which the book is justly en- 
 titled, for it is the masterpiece of I6ann8s, the Seer. 
 It is unquestionably from the same hand that penned 
 the fourth Evangel: tradition is quite clear on that 
 point; and though its Greek is somewhat inferior to 
 that of the Evangel, the difference is due merely to 
 the more intricate and artful composition of the 
 Apocalypse; while both works reveal the same in- 
 imitable mental traits and unmistakable literary 
 peculiarities. That they are by the same author, 
 and that the text is practically intact, is the view of 
 sober-minded Biblical scholars, a reaction having 
 set in against an erratic school of criticism which is 
 now generally discredited as being an instance of 
 scholasticism running riot with untenable theories 
 and whimsical conjectures. 
 
 Now, in plain words, what does this very occult 
 book, the Apocalypse, contain? It gives the eso- 
 teric interpretation of the Christos-myth ; it tells 
 what "lesous the Christos" really is; it explains the 
 nature of "the old serpent, who is the Devil and 
 Satan"; it repudiates the profane conception of an 
 anthropomorphic God; and with sublime imagery it 
 points out the true and only path to Life Eternal. 
 It gives the key to that divine GnSsis which is the 
 same in all ages, and superior to all faiths and phi- 
 losophies — that secret science which is in reality 
 secret only because it is hidden and locked in the 
 inner nature of every man, however ignorant and 
 humble, and none but himself can turn the key. 
 
6 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 It is impossible for the Gn6sis itself ever to be 
 "revealed," from the very nature of it, for it per- 
 tains to the realm of the spiritual mind, and lies 
 beyond the scope of mere intellection, which can 
 never rise higher than speculative philosophy; but 
 the key of the Gnosis — the scientific method by 
 which this higher knowledge may be attained — can 
 be placed in possession of any one who is intuitive 
 enough to appreciate its value and apply it in 
 practice. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 THE PATH OF POWER 
 
 As but few readers may be expected to have suf- 
 ficient acquaintance with ancient philosophy and 
 the rather detailed knowledge of psycho-physiology 
 necessary for even a superficial survey of the Apoca- 
 lypse, a brief sketch will here be given of the 
 topics which must be entered into in interpreting it. 
 A comprehensive treatise, or even a complete outline 
 of the subject, would be far beyond the scope of the 
 present work, which is strictly limited to the eluci- 
 dation of the Apocalypse. 
 
 The point where the arcane system sharply di- 
 verges from all the conventional schools of thought 
 is in the means of acquiring knowledge. To make 
 this clear, Plato's analysis of the four faculties of 
 the soul, with their four corresponding degrees of 
 knowledge, may be taken. {Rep. vi. 511.) Tabu- 
 lated, it is as follows : 
 
THE PATH OF POWER 7 
 
 THE VISIBLE, SENSUOUS WORLD. 
 
 1. Ei/cao-ta, perception of images,] So^a, opinion, illu- 
 
 2. nuTTis, faith, psychic groping,/ sory knowledge. 
 
 THE INTELLIGIBLE, SUPRASENSUOUS WORLD. 
 
 3. Aiavoia,phil0S0phic reason,"! yi'5cri?,e'n-i(mf/*i7,wis- 
 
 4. NoTjo-isj direct cognition, jdom, true knowledge. 
 
 The first of these degrees covers the whole field 
 of the inductive physical sciences, which are con- 
 cerned with investigating the phenomena of external 
 nature ; the second degree embraces exoteric religion 
 and all phases of blindbelief; and these two degrees, 
 pertaining to the phrSnic or lower mind, comprise all 
 the knowledge available to those whose conscious- 
 ness does not transcend the illusions of the material 
 world. The third degree relates to speculative phi- 
 losophy, which seeks to arrive at first principles by 
 the effort of pure reason; the fourth degree is the 
 direct apprehension of truth by the lucid mind inde- 
 pendently of any reasoning process ; and these two 
 degrees, pertaining to the noetic or higher mind, 
 represent the field of knowledge open to those 
 whose consciousness rises to the world of spiritual 
 reality. Elsewhere Plato speaks of the mantic 
 state, which he describes as a kind of madness pro- 
 duced "by a divine release from the ordinary ways 
 of men." 
 
 The exoteric scientist and religionist rely on the 
 physical senses, the psychic emotions, and the in- 
 tellectual faculties as these are in the present stage 
 of human evolution ; and while the scientist some- 
 
8 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 what enlarges the scope of the senses by employing 
 the telescope, the microscope, and other mechanical 
 devices, the religionist puts his trust in the muti- 
 lated records of suppositional revelations received 
 from the remote past. But the esotericist, refusing 
 to be confined within the narrow limits of the senses 
 and the mental faculties, and recognizing that the 
 gnostic powers of the soul are hopelessly hampered 
 and obscured by its imperfect instrument, the physi- 
 cal body, devotes himself to what may be termed 
 intensive self-evolution, the conquest and utilization 
 of all the forces and faculties that lie latent in that 
 fontal essence within himself which is the primary 
 source of all the elements and powers of his being, 
 of all that he is, has been, and will be. By gaining 
 conscious control of the hidden potencies which are 
 the proximate causes of his individual evolution, he 
 seeks to traverse in a comparatively brief period of 
 time the path leading to spiritual illumination and 
 liberation from terrestrial bondage, rushing for- 
 ward, as it were, toward that goal which the human 
 race as a whole, advancing at an almost impercep- 
 tible rate of progress, will reach only after ^eons of 
 time. His effort is not so much to know as to be- 
 come; and herein lies the tremendous import of the 
 Delphic inscription, "Know Thyself," which is the 
 key-note of esotericism. For the esotericist under- 
 stands that true self-knowledge can be attained only 
 through self-development in the highest possible 
 sense of the term, a development which begins with 
 introspection and the awakening of creative and re- 
 generative forces which now slumber in man's inner 
 protoplasmic nature, like the vivific potency in the 
 
THE PATH OF POWER 9 
 
 ovum, and which when roused into activity trans- 
 form him ultimately into a divine being bodied in a 
 deathless ethereal form of ineffable beauty. This 
 process of transcendental self-conquest, the giving 
 birth to oneself as a spiritual being, evolving from 
 the concealed essence of one's own embryonic na- 
 ture a self-luminous immortal body, is the sole 
 subject-matter of the Apocalypse, as it is also the 
 burden of the four Evangels; but, whereas in his 
 Evangel I6annes has been content to follow the 
 form of statement found in the three Synoptics, in 
 the Apocalypse he has given an almost complete 
 outline of the psycho-physiological process of re- 
 generation or, as he calls it in his Evangel, the birth 
 "from above." 
 
 In the esoteric philosophy — the infelicitous word 
 esoteric being used in this work merely because the 
 English language appears to afford no happier one 
 — the absolute Deity is considered to be beyond the 
 spheres of existence and ulterior to Being itself. 
 The world of true Being is that of the Logos, or 
 Nous, the realm of divine ideas, or archetypes, 
 which are the eternal patterns, so to say, of all' 
 things in the manifested universe. By a paradox 
 which defies the reasoning faculty, but which is 
 readily resolved intuitively, the God is said to be 
 apart from, and independent of the universe, and 
 yet to permeate every atom of it. The God is the 
 abstract Unit, which is the origin of all number, but 
 which never loses its unit-value, and can not be 
 divided into fractions ; while the Logos is the mani- 
 fested or collective Unit, a deific Individuality, the 
 collectivity of a countless host of Logoi, who are 
 
10 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 differentiated into seven hierarchies, constituting 
 in the aggregate the Second Logos, the uttered 
 Thought, or Word. 
 
 As a mediate principle for the manifestation of 
 the Logos in and from the God, loannSs in his 
 Evangel places the Archeus, the first element or 
 substratum of substantive objectivity, that which 
 becomes by differentiation first the subtile and then 
 the gross material elements of the manifested 
 worlds. If this primary substance is related back 
 to the God, and considered as being prior to the 
 Logos, the result is the refined dualism that mars 
 some of the old systems of philosophy. But in the 
 prologue the Logos is really coeval with the Archeus : 
 the Logos is (subsists) in the Archeus, and the lat- 
 ter becomes, in the Logos, the principle of Life, 
 which irradiates as Light. This Light of the Logos 
 is identical with the Pneuma, the Breath or Holy 
 Spirit, and esoterically it is the pristine force 
 which underlies matter in every stage, and is the 
 producer of all the phenomena of existence. It is 
 the one force from which differentiate all the forces 
 in the cosmos. As specialized in the human organ- 
 ism, it is termed, in the New Testament, the para- 
 kletos, the "Advocate," and is the regenerative force 
 above referred to. 
 
 From the Archetypal world, that of the Logos, 
 emanate successively the Psychic and the Material 
 worlds ; and to these three may be added a fourth, 
 which is usually included, by ancient writers, in 
 the Psychic, though in reality it is distinct from it. 
 This fourth world, which will here be called the 
 Phantasmal — since the word "hell" connotes mis- 
 
THE PATH OF POWER 11 
 
 leading and lurid notions — is the region of phan- 
 toms, evil spirits, and psychic garbage generally. 
 
 All that the universe contains is contained also 
 in man. The origin of man is in the Deity, and his 
 true self or individuality is a Logos, a manifested 
 God. Analogous with the universe or macrocosm, 
 man, the microcosm, has three bodies, which are 
 called in the New Testament the spiritual body 
 (soma pneumatikon) , the psychic body (sdma psy- 
 chikon), and the physical body (soma, or sarx, 
 "flesh"). In the .Upanishads they are termed 
 "causal body" (kdrana sharira), "subtile body" 
 (sukshma sharira) , and "gross body" (sthula sha- 
 rira) . In mystical writings they are made to corre- 
 spond to the four occult elements, and also to the 
 sun, moon, and earth, and hence are given the 
 names air-body, water-body, fire-body, lunar body, 
 and solar body. The spiritual (pneumatic) body 
 is, strictly speaking, not a body at all, but only an 
 ideal, archetypal form, ensphered, as it were, by 
 the pneuma or primordial principle which in the 
 duality of manifestation generates all forces and 
 elements: it is therefore called the "causal body," 
 because from its sphere all the other bodies are en- 
 gendered; and all these lower forms are enveloped 
 by the same circumambient aura (called in the New 
 Testament "the radiance" or "glory," he doxa) , 
 which is visible to the seer as an oviform faint film 
 of bluish haze. Semi-latent within this pneumatic 
 ovum is the paraklete, the light of the Logos, which 
 in energizing becomes what may be described as 
 living, conscious electricity, of incredible voltage 
 and hardly comparable to the form of electricity 
 
12 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 known to the physicist. This is the "good serpent" 
 of ancient symbology; and, taken with the pneu- 
 matic ovum, it was also represented in the familiar 
 symbol of the egg and the serpent. It is called in 
 the Sanskrit writings kundalini, the annular or ring- 
 form force, and in the Greek speirSma, the serpent- 
 coil. It is this force which, in the telestic work, or 
 cycle of initiation, weaves from the primal sub- 
 stance of the auric ovum, upon the ideal form or 
 archetype it contains, and conforming thereto, the 
 immortal AugoeidSs, or solar body (soma helia- 
 kon) , so called because in its visible appearance it 
 is self-luminous like the sun, and has a golden radi- 
 ance. Its aureola displays a filmy opalescence.' 
 This solar body is of atomic, non-molecular sub- 
 stance. 
 
 The psychic, or lunar, body, through which the 
 Nous acts in the psychic world, is molecular in 
 structure, but of far finer substance than the ele- 
 ments composing the gross physical form, to whose 
 organism it closely corresponds, having organs of 
 sight, hearing, and the rest. In appearance it has a 
 silvery lustre, tinged with delicate violet; and its 
 aura is of palest blue, with an interchanging play 
 of all the prismatic colors, rendering it iridescent. 
 
 The physical body, in its physiological relation to 
 psychology, will necessarily have to be considered 
 somewhat in detail in elucidating the Apocalypse; 
 but before entering on this subject, it may be ex- 
 plained that a fourth body is sometimes alluded to 
 in mystical writings. It is called in Sanskrit kdma 
 rupa, the form engendered by lust, and it comes into 
 existence only after the death of the physical body. 
 
THE PATH OF POWER 13 
 
 save in the exceptional case of the extremely evil 
 sorcerer who, though alive physically, has become 
 morally dead. It is a phantasm shaped from the 
 dregs and effluvia of matter by the image-creating 
 power of the gross animal mind. Of such nature 
 are the daimones and "unclean spirits" of the New 
 Testament, where also the "abominable stench" 
 {bdelugma) seems to be a covert allusion to this 
 malodorous shade. This phantasm has the shad- 
 owy semblance of the physical body from which it 
 was derived, and is surrounded by a cloudy aura of 
 brick-red hue. \ 
 
 It should be observed that in the esoteric cos- 
 mogony the theory of "dead" matter has no place. 
 The universe is a manifestation of life, of conscious- 
 ness, from the Logos down to the very atoms of the 
 material elements. But in this philosophy a sharp 
 distinction is made between Being and existence: 
 the Logos, the Archetypal world, is that of True 
 Being, changeless and eternal ; while existence is a 
 going outward into the worlds of becoming, of 
 ceaseless change and transformation. The Nous, 
 the immortal man, or mind (for the mind should 
 be regarded as the real man), when incarnated 
 comes under the sway of this law of mutation, en- 
 tering upon a long cycle of incarnations, passing 
 from one mortal body to another. The metaphysi- 
 cal aspect of this subject need not be discussed'here; 
 but it may be said that the fact of reincarnation, so 
 far from being mysterious and difficult of proof, is 
 really very prosaic and simple, so that it has always 
 been treated as exoteric in all archaic religions and 
 philosophies. Positive knowledge of its truth, on a 
 
14 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 basis of personal experience, is one of the first re- 
 sults obtained by any one who enters upon the ini- 
 tial stages of self-conquest. It is then a fact as 
 apparent to him as are the cognate facts of birth 
 and death. The telestic work has for its object to 
 achieve deliverance from reincarnation, and this de- 
 liverance is complete and final only when the death- 
 less solar body is formed, and the perfected man is 
 thereby freed from the necessity of reincarnating in 
 the mortal physical and psychic forms. 
 
 The physical body may itself be considered to be 
 an objective microcosm, an epitome of the material 
 world, to every department of which its organs and 
 functions correspond and are in direct relation. 
 Moreover, as the organism through which the soul 
 contacts external nature, its organs correspond to, 
 and are the respective instruments of, the powers 
 and faculties of the soul. Thus the body has four 
 principal life-centres which are, roughly speaking, 
 analogues of the four worlds, and of the four mani- 
 fested generic powers of the soul; these four so- 
 matic divisions are as follows : 
 
 1 . The head, or brain, is the organ of the Nous, 
 or higher mind. 
 
 2. The region of the l^eart, including all the or- 
 gans above the diaphragm, is the seat of the lower 
 mind {phrin, or thumos), including the psychic 
 nature. 
 
 3. The region of the navel is the centre of the 
 passional nature (epithumia) , comprising the emo- 
 tions, desires, appetites, and passions. 
 
 4. The procreative centre is the seat of the vivify- 
 ing forces on the lowest plane of existence. This 
 
THE PATH OF POWER 15 
 
 centre is often ignored by ancient writers as, for in- 
 stance, Plato, who assigns four faculties to the soul, 
 but classifies only three of the somatic divisions, 
 assigning the Nous, or Logos, to the head, thumos 
 to the cardiac region, and epithumid to the region 
 below the midriff. Others, however, give the four- 
 fold system, as does Philolaus, the Pythagorean, 
 who placed the seat and germ (arche) oi reason in 
 the head, that of the psychic principle in the heart, 
 that of growth and germination in the navel, and 
 that of seed and generation in the sexual parts. 
 
 It is unnecessary, in this brief sketch, to go into 
 further details concerning these correspondences, 
 save only in regard to the nervous system and the 
 forces operating through it.i There are two nervous 
 structures: the cerebro-spihal, consisting of the 
 brain and the spinal cord; and the sympathetic or 
 ganglionic system. These two structures are virtu- 
 ally distinct yet intimately associated in their rami- 
 fications. The sympathetic system consists of a. 
 series of distinct nerve-centres, or ganglia — small 
 masses of vascular neurine — extending on each side 
 of the spinal column from the head to the coccyx. 
 Some knowledge of these ganglia and the forces 
 associated with them is indispensable in an exami- 
 nation into the meaning of the Apocalypse; and as 
 their occult nature is more fully elucidated in the 
 Upanishads than in any other available ancient 
 works, the teaching therein contained will here be 
 referred to,, and their Sanskrit terms employed. The 
 ganglia are called chakras, "discs," and forty-nine 
 of them are counted, of which the seven principal 
 ones are the following: (1) sacral ganglion, maid- 
 
16 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 dhdra; (2) prostatic, adhishtMna; (3) epigastric, 
 manipuraka; (4) cardiac, andhata; (5) pharyn- 
 geal, vishuddhi; (6) cavernous, djM; and (7) the 
 conarium, sahasrdra. Of these only the seventh, 
 the conarium or pineal body, need be considered 
 here with particularity. It is a small conical, dark- 
 grey body situated in the brain immediately behind 
 the extremity of the third ventricle, in a groove be- 
 tween the nates, and above a cavity filled with sabu- 
 lous matter composed of phosphate and of carbo- 
 nate of lime. It is supposed by modern anatomists 
 to be the vestige of an atrophied eye, and hence is 
 termed by them "the unpaired eye." Though atro- 
 phied physically, it is still the organ of spiritual 
 vision when its higher function is restored by the 
 vivifying force of the speirema, or paraklete, and 
 it is therefore called esoterically "the third eye," the 
 eye of the seer. I 
 
 When through the action of man's spiritual will, 
 whether by his conscious effort or unconsciously so 
 far as his phrenic mind is concerned, the latent kun- 
 dalint (speirema) , which in the Upanishads is poeti- 
 cally said to lie coiled up like a slumbering serpent, 
 is aroused to activity, it displaces the slow-moving 
 nervous force or neuricity and becomes the agent of 
 the telestic or perfecting work. As it passes from 
 one ganglion to another its voltage is raised, the 
 ganglia being like so many electric cells coupled for 
 intensity; and moreover in each ganglion, or chakra, 
 it liberates and partakes of the quality peculiar to 
 that centre, and it is then said to "conquer" the 
 chakra. In Sanskrit mystical literature very great 
 stress is laid upon this "conquering of the chakras." 
 
Conarium 
 
 Sacral 
 
 . Cavernous 
 
 .Pharyngeal 
 
 .Cardiac 
 
 Midriff 
 
 .Epigastric 
 
 •■/..... Prostatic 
 
 The Seven Principal Ganglia 
 
THE PATH OF POWER 19 
 
 The currents of the kundalini, as also the channels 
 they pursue, are called nSciis, "pipes" or "tubes," and 
 the three principal ones are : ( 1 ) sushumnd, which 
 passes from the terminus of the spinal cord to the 
 top of the cranium, at a point termed the hrahma- 
 rOndra, or "door of Brahma" (in early Christian 
 mysticism, thura lesou, "door of iSsous") ; (2) 
 pingala, which corresponds to the right sympa- 
 thetic; and (3) idd, which corresponds to the left 
 sympathetic. The force, as specialized in the gan- 
 glionic system, becomes the seven tattvas, which in 
 the Apocalypse are called the seven pneumata, 
 "breaths," since they are differentiations of the 
 Great Breath, the "World-Mother," symbolized by 
 the moon. Concurrent with these seven lunar 
 forces are five solar forces pertaining to the cerebro- 
 spinal system, called the five prdnas, "vital airs," 
 or "life-winds," which in the Apocalypse are termed 
 "winds" (anemoi). The Apocalypse represents 
 these twelve forces, the seven "breaths" and the 
 five "winds," as corresponding to the twelve signs of 
 the zodiac, of which, therefore, a brief description 
 will here be appropriate. 
 
 The zodiac is a belt of the celestial sphere, about 
 seventeen degrees in breadth, containing the twelve 
 constellations which the sun traverses during the 
 year in passing around the ecliptic. Within this 
 zone are confined the apparent motions of the moon 
 and major planets. The zodiacal circle was divided 
 by the ancients into twelve equal portions called 
 signs, which were designated by the names of the 
 constellations then adjacent to them in.the following 
 order: Aries, the Ram; Taurus, the Bull; Gemini, 
 
20 
 
 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 the Twins; Cancer, the Crab; Leo, the Lion; Virgo, 
 the Virgin; Libra, the Balance; Scorpio, the Scor- 
 pion; Sagittarius, the Bowman; Capricornus, the 
 Goat; Aquarius, the Water-bearer; and Pisces, the 
 Fishes. Owing to the precession of the equinoxes, 
 the signs of the ecliptic are now about one plsfce 
 
 ^ 
 
 The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac 
 
 ahead of the corresponding zodiacal constellations, 
 which constitute the fixed zodiac. Aside. from its 
 astronomical utility, the scheme of the zodiac was 
 employed to symbolize the relations between the 
 macrocosm and th^ microcosm, each of the twelve 
 signs being made to correspond to one of the twelve 
 greater gods of the ancient pantheon and assigned 
 as the "house" of one of the seven sacred planets; 
 
THE PATH OF POWER 21 
 
 each sign, moreover, being said to govern a particu- 
 lar portion of the human body, as shown in the 
 familiar exoteric chart here reproduced. 
 
 The foregoing covers the topics which must nec- 
 essarily be referred to in elucidating the recondite 
 meaning of the Apocalypse; but to convey a clearer 
 conception of its practical and psychological appli- 
 cation, further explanation will now be given of the 
 action of the "serpent force" (speirSma) in the 
 telestic or perfective work. This work has to be 
 preceded by the most rigid purificatory discipline, 
 which includes strict celibacy and abstemiousness, 
 and it is possible only for the man or woman who 
 has attained a very high state of mental and physi- 
 cal purity. To the man who is gross and sensual, 
 or whose mind is sullied by evil thoughts or con- 
 stricted by bigotry, the holy paraklete does not 
 come ; the unpurified person who rashly attempts to \ 
 invade the adytum of his inner God can arouse only I 
 the lower psychic forces of his animal nature, forces ' 
 which are cruelly destructive and never regenerative. 
 The neophyte who has acquired the "purifying vir- / 
 tues" before entering upon the systematic course 
 of introspective meditation by which the spiritual 
 forces are awakened, must also as a necessary pre- 
 liminary gain almost complete mastery of his 
 thoughts, with the ability to focus his mind unde- 
 viatingly upon a single detached idea or abstract 
 concept, excluding from the mental field all asso- 
 ciated ideas and irrelevant notions. If successful 
 in this mystic meditation, he eventually obtains the 
 power of arousing the speirema, or paraklete, and 
 can thereby at will enter into the state of manteia, 
 
22 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 the sacred trance of seership. The four mantic 
 states are not psychic trances or somnambulic con- 
 ditions ; they pertain to the noetic, spiritual nature ; 
 and in every stage of the manteia complete con- 
 sciousness and self-command are retained, whereas 
 the psychic trances rarely transcend the animalistic 
 phrSnic nature, and are usually accompanied by un- 
 consciousness or semi-consciousness. 
 
 Proficiency in the noetic contemplation, with the 
 arousing of the speirema and the conquest of the 
 life-centres, leads to knowledge of spiritual realities 
 (the science of which constitutes the GnSsis) , and 
 the acquirement of certain mystic powers, and it 
 culminates in emancipation from physical existence 
 through the "birth from above" when the deathless 
 solar body has been fully formed. This telestic 
 work requires the unremitting effort of many years, 
 not in one life only but carried on through a series 
 of incarnations until the final result is achieved. But 
 almost in its initial stages the consciousness of the 
 aspirant becomes disengaged from the mortal 
 phrgnic mind and centred in the immortal noetic 
 mind, so that from incarnation to incarnation his 
 memory carries over, more or less clearly according 
 to the degree he has attained, the knowledge ac- 
 quired; and with this unbroken memory and cer- 
 tainty of knowledge he is in truth immortal even 
 before his final liberation from the cycle of reincar- 
 nation. 
 
 In arousing the kundalini by conscious effort in 
 meditation, the sushumnd, though it is the all-im- 
 portant force, is ignored, and the mind is concen- 
 trated upon the two side-currents ; for the sushumnd 
 
THE PATH OF POWER 23 
 
 can not be energized alone, and it does not start into 
 activity until the tdd and the pingala have preceded 
 it, forming a positive and a negative current along 
 the spinal cord. These two currents, on reaching 
 the sixth chakra, situated back of the nasal pas- 
 sages, radiate to the right and left, along the line of 
 the eyebrows; then the sushumnd, starting at the 
 base of the spinal cord, proceeds along the spinal 
 marrow, its passage through each section thereof 
 corresponding to a sympathetic ganglion being ac- 
 companied by a violent shock, or rushing sensation, 
 due to the accession of force — increased "voltage" 
 — until it reaches the conarium, and thence passes 
 outward through the brahmarandra, the three cur- 
 rents thus forming a cross in the brain. In the ini- 
 tial stage the seven psychic colors are seen, and 
 when the sushumnd impinges upon the brain there 
 follows the lofty consciousness of the seer, whose 
 mystic "third eye" now becomes, as it has been 
 poetically expressed, "a window into space. "^ In 
 the next stage, as the brain-centres are successively 
 "raised from the dead" by the serpent-force, the 
 seven "spiritual sounds" are heard in the tense and 
 vibrant aura of the seer. In the succeeding stage, 
 sight and hearing become blended into a single 
 sense, by which colors are heard, and sounds are 
 seen — or, to word it differently, color and sound be- 
 come one, and are perceived by a sense that is 
 neither sight nor hearing but both. Similarly, the 
 psychic senses of taste and smell become unified; 
 and next the two senses thus reduced from the four 
 are merged in the interior, intimate sense of touch, 
 which in turn vanishes into the epistemonic faculty. 
 
24 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 the gnostic power of the seer — exalted above all 
 sense-perception — ^to cognize eternal realities. This 
 is the sacred trance called in Sanskrit samMhi, and 
 in Greek manieia; and in the ancient literature of 
 both these languages four such trances are spoken 
 of. These stages of seership, however, are but the 
 beginning of the telestic labor, the culmination of 
 which is, as already explained, rebirth in the im- 
 X perishable solar body. As the Apocalypse has for 
 > its sole theme this spiritual rebirth, it should now 
 be apparent why that book has ever been unintelli- 
 gible to the conventional theologian, and has never 
 yielded its secrets to the mere man of letters. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 THE RIDDLES OF "REVELATION " 
 
 In the analysis which will be given in the next 
 chapter it will be shown that the Apocalypse is a 
 coherent whole, symmetrical, and having every de- 
 tail fitted into its appropriate place with studied 
 care. In its orderly arrangement and concise state- 
 ment the book is a model of precise literary work- 
 manship. But it contains a series of elaborate puz- 
 zles, some of which are based upon the numerical 
 values of certain Greek words, thereby serving to 
 verify the correct interpretation of the more impor- 
 tant symbols; and as the detailed explanation of 
 these in the analysis would interrupt the interpre- 
 tation of the book as a whole, for the sake of clear- 
 
THE RIDDLES OF "REVELATION" 25 
 
 ness the solution of these puzzles will here be given 
 in advance. 
 
 / In the Apocalypse four animal-symbols or beasts 
 \iheria) are conspicuous dramaf is persome; (1) a 
 Lamb, having seven horns and seven eyes, and who 
 is identified as lesous, who becomes "the Con- 
 queror"; (2) a beast resembling a Leopard, with a 
 bear's feet and a lion's mouth, and having seven 
 heads and ten horns; (3) a red Dragon, having 
 seven heads and ten horns, and who is "the Devil 
 and Satan" ; and (4) a beast having two horns like 
 a Lamb but speaking like a Dragon, and who is 
 called the Pseudo-Seer, or false teacher {pseudo- 
 propMtes) . Of these four the Leopard is particu- 
 larly referred to as "the Beast"; and concerning 
 him the Apocalyptist says : 
 
 "Here is cleverness (sophia) : he who has the 
 Nous, let him count the number of the Beast; for 
 it is the number of a man, and his number is 666." 
 
 The "cleverness" of this puzzle lies in its very 
 simplicity; for the words "the Nous" (ovovs), the 
 familiar term in Greek philosophy for the higher 
 mind, or man, naturally suggest the correct answer, 
 the PhrSn (-^ <}>pw) . the cognate term for the lower 
 mind, or man. As numbers are expressed in Greek 
 by the letters of the alphabet, and not by arithmeti- 
 cal figures, the number of a name is simply the sum 
 of the numerical values of the letters composing it. 
 Thus the numerical value of he phrSn is 666. If 
 this were the whole of the puzzle, it would be almost 
 puerile; but it is, in fact, only a part of, and the 
 clue to, an elaborate puzzle, which in its entirety is 
 remarkably ingenious. It will be noticed that the 
 
1000 Ho Nikon, "The Conqueror " 
 999 Epistemon, Intuitively Wise 
 888 lesotts, the Higher Mind 
 
 I. "The Lamb " 
 777 Stauros, the Cross 
 
 666 He Phren, the Lower Mind 
 II. "The Beast " 
 
 555 Epithumia, Desire 
 
 III. "The Red Dragon" 
 
 444 Speirema, the Serpent-coil 
 333 Akrasia, Sensuality 
 IV. "The False Seer " 
 
 The Gnostic Chart Concealed in the Apocalypse 
 
1. The Conqueror 
 {ho nikon ) 
 
 70 
 50 
 10 
 20 
 800 
 50 
 
 o 
 
 V 
 
 t 
 
 le 
 
 w 
 V 
 
 1,000 
 
 Intuitively Wise 
 (epistemon ) 
 
 5 
 
 80 
 
 10 
 
 6 
 
 8 
 
 40 
 
 800 
 
 50 
 
 999 
 
 IT 
 
 ( 
 
 CTT 
 
 V 
 
 CO 
 
 3. The Higher Mind 
 {lesotts ) 
 
 'I 
 
 V 
 
 IT 
 O 
 V 
 
 s 
 
 10 
 
 8 
 
 200 
 
 70 
 400 
 200 
 
 888 
 
 4. The Cross 
 (stauros ) 
 
 CTT 
 
 a 
 
 V 
 
 P 
 o 
 s 
 
 6 
 1 
 
 400 
 
 100 
 
 70 
 
 200 
 
 777 
 
 The Lower Mind 
 {he phren ) 
 
 V 
 </> 
 P 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 8 
 
 500 
 
 100 
 
 8 
 
 50 
 
 666 
 
 6. Desire 
 
 {epithumia ) 
 
 e 
 
 TT 
 ( 
 
 e 
 
 V 
 
 I 
 a 
 
 5 
 80 
 10 
 
 9 
 
 400 
 
 40 
 
 10 
 
 1 
 
 555 
 
 7. The Serpent-coil 
 {speirema ) 
 
 a 
 
 It 
 e 
 t 
 P 
 V 
 P- 
 a 
 
 200 
 
 80 
 
 5 
 
 10 
 
 100 
 
 8 
 
 40 
 
 1 
 
 444 
 
 8. Incontinence 
 {akrasia ) 
 
 1 
 
 20 
 
 100 
 
 1 
 
 200 
 
 10 
 
 1 
 
 333 
 
 K 
 
 P 
 u 
 cr 
 I 
 
 (8.) Licentiousness 
 {akolasia ) 
 
 1 
 20 
 70 
 30 
 
 1 
 
 200 
 
 10 
 
 1 
 
 333 
 
 K 
 O 
 X 
 
 a 
 a 
 I 
 a 
 
 The Numbers of the Names 
 
28 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 Beast, the phrenic mind, is the faculty ruling over 
 one of the four somatic divisions, from which the 
 natural inference is drawn that the three other 
 beasts likewise are the regents of the three other 
 somatic divisions. The Lamb, iSsous, would there- 
 fore stand for the highest of these, the Nous. Now, 
 the word lesous gives the sum 888. The red 
 Dragon, "the archaic serpent, who is the Devil and 
 Satan," fits neatly into place as the ruler of the 
 third somatic division, epithumia, which word 
 yields the number 555. The fourth beast, the 
 "False Prophet," takes his place in the fourth divi- 
 sion as the generative principle, akrasia, "sensu- 
 ality," the number of his name being 333. Plato ap- 
 plies to this principle the word akolasia, which has 
 the same meaning and the same numerical value. 
 
 Placing these four names, with their numbers, 
 in the form of a diagram of the four somatic divi- 
 sions, it becomes apparent that the puzzle is still 
 only partly solved, for evidently a complete series 
 of numbers is intended. A space is left where the 
 diagram, to fill out the meaning, requires the cross, 
 and another space for the "good serpent," the re- 
 generative force; the "bad serpent," the Devil, the 
 lust for life which leads to generation, being already 
 included. The number of the cross, stauros, is 777 
 (the letters or being taken, of course, as 9=6). 
 The spiraling electric force, "the coil of the ser- 
 pent," is the speirema, which word gives the num- 
 ber 444. Now, the action of this force upon the 
 brain, where its triple current forms the cross, gives 
 the noetic perception, direct cognition (the epis- 
 timi, or highest degree of knowledge, so beautifully 
 
THE RIDDLES OF "REVELATION" 29 
 
 defined by Plato), and to express this in the dia- 
 gram it becomes necessary to insert the word episte- 
 mon, the philosophic and esoteric equivalent for 
 the exoteric word christos; its numerical value is 
 999. Further, he who has attained to this higher 
 knowledge forthwith becomes the conqueror, and 
 as "The Conqueror" is the hero, so to say, of the 
 Apocalyptic Drama, his name must be placed at the 
 head of the list, as ho nikon, with its number, 1 ,000. 
 
 The diagram thus completed makes clear the 
 basic teaching of the Apocalypse, which treats of 
 the speirema and its energizing through the vital 
 centres as the Conqueror gains mastery over them 
 and builds up for himself, out of that primordial 
 substance, his immortal vehicle, the monogenetic or 
 solar body. This deathless solar vesture is sym- 
 bolized as a city which comes down out of the sky, 
 enveloped in the radiance (doxa) of the God, and 
 it is portrayed with poetic imagery of exquisite 
 beauty. The description, with its wealth of detail, 
 should be enough to show very clearly what the 
 city really is; but ISannSs has supplied conclusive 
 proof of the true meaning by inserting in the de- 
 scription a puzzle which reads- as follows : 
 
 "The Divinity who was talking with me had for 
 a measure a goldea reed, to measure the city, its 
 gateways, and its wall. The city lies foursquare, 
 and its length is as great as the width. He mea- 
 sured the city with the reed, by stadia,' twelvQ thou- 
 sand; its length, width and height are equal. And 
 he measured its wall, one hundred and forty-four 
 cubits, [including] the measure of a man, that is, 
 of a Divinity." 
 
30 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 As the expression "by stadia" (eVlo-raSiW) 
 shows that the measurement should not be taken in 
 stadia, it naturally follows that it should be reduced 
 to miles. Therefore, dividing 12,000 by JYz, the 
 number of stadia to the Jewish mile, the quotient is 
 1,600, and this is the numerical value of the words 
 to soma heliakon, "the solar body." In the author- 
 ized version the prepositon epi, "by," is not trans- 
 lated, being omitted as redundant — ^which merely 
 shows the untrustworthiness of an empirical trans- 
 lation. That version also reads, "a hundred and 
 forty and four cubits, [according to] the measure 
 of a man, that is, of an angel," the inserted words 
 making the passage meaningless. The "wall" of 
 the solar body is its aura, or "radiance," hS doxa; 
 but the letters of that name amount to only 143. 
 As a puzzle, that number would be too transparent, 
 nor would it harmonize with the other numbers 
 given in relation to the city, as the twelve thousand 
 stadia, twelve gateways, twelve foundations, etc., 
 all of which have a real or an apparent reference to 
 the zodiac. Therefore loannSs increased it to 144, 
 the square of twelve, by adding another alpha, 
 which he calls "the measure of a man, that is, of a 
 Divinity." In the formula, "I am the Alpha and 
 the 6 [megal, the first and the last," alpha is the 
 symbol of the divine man, or Divinity, before his 
 fall into matter; and 6 mega is the symbol of the 
 perfected main, who has passed through the cycle 
 of reincarnation and regained the spiritual con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 The city is described as having the form of a 
 cube. To solve this element of the puzzle it is only 
 
V 
 
 8 
 
 T 
 
 300 
 
 8 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 70 
 
 
 
 70 
 
 <T 
 
 200 
 
 ^ 
 
 60 
 
 (a 
 
 800 
 
 a 
 
 1 
 
 t^ 
 
 40 
 
 a 
 
 1 
 
 a 
 
 1 
 
 
 144 
 
 V 
 
 8 
 30 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 a 
 
 1 
 
 •^ 
 
 
 K 
 
 20 
 
 
 
 o 
 
 70 
 
 
 
 V 
 
 50 
 
 ,600 
 
 The Cubical City Unfolded 
 
 7.5)12,000 em o-raSi'wv 
 1 ,600 lirl fuXiiav 
 
THE DRAMA OF SELF-CONQUEST 33 
 
 necessary to unfold the cube, thereby disclosing a 
 cross, which represents the hum^n form — a man 
 with outstretched arms. 
 
 Although loannes speaks of measuring "the city, 
 its gateways, and its wall," he does not give the 
 measure of the gateways, for the very obvious rea- 
 son that it is wholly unnecessary, since the word 
 "gateway" {pylon, from pyle, "an orifice") suffi- 
 ciently indicates their nature: they are the twelve 
 orifices of the body. In the Upanishads the human 
 body is often called poetically the twelve-gate city 
 of God's abode. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE DRAMA OF SELF-CONQUEST 
 
 In literary construction the Apocalypse follows 
 to some extent the conventional model of the Greek 
 drama : although in narrative form, it divides natu- 
 rally into acts, or scenes, in each of which the scenic 
 setting is vividly pictured; and interspersed with the 
 action are monologues, dialogues, and choruses, 
 and even the deus-ex-machina, or "god-on-a-string," 
 plays a part. As a mere literary device, these 
 scenes are represented in a series of visions ; and in 
 this I6ann8s has adopted the style of the Hebrew 
 seers, from whom he obtained much of the quaint 
 symbolism, ornate imagery, and mystifying phrase- 
 ology he employs, having as full right to them, 
 doubtless, as the older seers had, for their curious 
 symbology and cryptic jargon appear to have been 
 the common property of the nabia, who had their 
 
34 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 initiation in the schools of seership. But with the 
 material obtained" from this source IQannes has skil- 
 fully combined symbols drawn from the pagan 
 Greek and the Christian arcana, even levying, it 
 would seem, upon the Egyptian, Chaldaic and other 
 systems, weaving these materials into a harmonious 
 whole, wonderfully systematic and complete, and, 
 having all the details worked out with painstaking 
 exactness. Then, having thus darkly veiled his 
 teachings by this eclectic symbolism, utterly baff- 
 ling to the conventional symbologist, he has ingeni- 
 ously supplied means for verifying the import of 
 each of the principal symbols, and this he accom- 
 plished by word-numbers and other puzzles. 
 
 By sentimental literalists the Apocalypse is gen- 
 erally accepted as a record of visions actually seen 
 by "the Seer of Patmos," although it requires but 
 little discrimination to perceive that the visionary 
 style is merely an artifice of the Apocalyptist, 
 adopted for the purpose of introducing the fabulous 
 characters of his drama and mystifying his readers. 
 It is only the psychics, the mystai or "veiled ones," 
 who see symbolical visions. The true seer, the 
 epoptes, beholds the things of nature and of supra- 
 nature as they really are, and not as they seem: 
 perceiving that all the forms and processes of ex- 
 ternal nature are themselves but the shadowy sym- 
 bols of the eternal Ideas of the intelligible world, 
 he passes beyond this fabric of material and 
 psychic glamour, this veil by which the True is 
 covered and concealed, and penetrates to the first 
 principles of things, the archetypal, spiritual real- 
 ities. 
 
THE DRAMA OF SELF-CONQUEST 35 
 
 A few of the technical words employed by the 
 New Testament writers are substitutes for terms 
 used in older Greek. Thus angelos, "messenger," 
 takes the place of the word daimon, Deity in mani- 
 festation, including the hosts of lesser deities, 
 powers and essences. As the anglicized word "an- 
 gel" summons to the mind only the theological and 
 popular conception of a celestial being whose func- 
 tion in the universe is undetermined and dubious, 
 angelos will in this work be rendered "Divinity," a 
 word which covers in range of meanings the various 
 significations of the Greek word. Similarly, apoka- 
 lypsis, literally, "uncovering," "unveiling," is a 
 substitute for epopteia, "beholding," a word techni- 
 cally denoting initiation into the greater mysteries. 
 The Apocalypse is, as its title implies, an account 
 of the initiation of iQannSs himself. In the sub- 
 title he calls It "the Initiation of Anointed lesous," 
 that is, of his own illumined Nous, the "witness" 
 for the universal Logos, as I6annes in the material 
 world, the "slave" (doulos) of the true Self, is the 
 "witness" for the individual Logos. 
 
 Many actors, apparently, play their parts in the 
 drama of the Apocalypse; yet in reality there- is but 
 one performer — the neophyte himself, the sacrifi- 
 cial "Lamb," who awakens all the slumbering 
 forces of his inner nature, passes through the ter- 
 rible ordeals of the purificatory discipline and the 
 telestic labors, and finally emerges as the Con- 
 queror, the self-perfected Man who has regained his 
 standing among the deathless Gods. He is the 
 hero of, and the sole actor in the drama; all the 
 other dramatis personce are only personifications of 
 
36 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 the principles, faculties, forces, and elements of 
 Man, that minor world so vast and mysterious, 
 whose ultimate destiny it is to become coextensive 
 with the divine and illimitable universe. 
 
 In the brief prologue to the drama, the Anointed 
 lesous, the illuminated Mind, is depicted as the 
 first-born from the dead (the moribund inner facul- 
 ties) , the ruler of the lower powers, yet having been 
 crucified by them on the cross of matter, the physi- 
 cal body. Now, at his coming, they who wounded 
 him shall weep and wail over him. In the New 
 Testament allegory there are two crucifixions : one 
 relating to the soul's descent into matter, the gen- 
 eration of the physical form, and the other to its 
 ascent to spirit, or regeneration in the solar body. 
 
 Then, "in the Breath," that is, in samddhi, the 
 sacred trance, loannes has a vision of the Logos, 
 his own spiritual Self, in the self-luminous pneu- 
 matic body, of which he gives a magnificent descrip- 
 tion, partly literal and partly symbolical. He sees 
 him walking to and fro among seven little lamp- 
 stands, and holding in his right hand seven stars ; 
 announcing himself to be the ever-living Self, who 
 became "dead" (incarnated), but is now alive 
 throughout the seons, the Logos explains that the 
 lampstands are the "seven Societies in Asia," and 
 the seven stars their Divinities. That is, they repre- 
 sent respectively the seven Rays of the Light of the 
 Logos (his seven forces) , and the seven centres or 
 chakras in the body, through which they energize. 
 Asia is the native land of I6annes, therefore typify- 
 ing the body, the home-land of the soul; and the 
 seven Societies (groups or ganglia) are designated 
 
THE DRAMA OF SELF-CONQUEST 37 
 
 by the names of Asian cities, each of which, by 
 some well-known characteristic, or something for 
 which it was noted, calls to mind the somatic centre 
 it represents. These cities are given in the same 
 order in the Apocalypse as are the chakras in the 
 Upanishads, thus: (1) Mulddhdra, sacral gan- 
 glion; Ephesos, a city celebrated for its great temple 
 of Diana, the "many-breasted mother," who ap- 
 pears in the Apocalypse as the "Woman clothed 
 with the Sun, the moon underneath her feet," the 
 lunar goddess and the Apocalyptic heroine alike 
 personifying the regenerative force, the sushumnd, 
 mystically called the "World-Mother." (2) Adhish- 
 thdna, prostatic ganglion ; Smyrna, noted for the fig 
 industry; the fig is preeminently a phallic symbol. 
 (3) Manipuraka, epigastric ganglion; Pergamos, 
 celebrated for its temple of i^sculapius; the epi- 
 gastric, or solar plexus, is the controlling centre of 
 the vital processes of the body, and of the forces 
 utilized in all systems of psychic healing. (4) 
 Andhata, cardiac ganglion; Thyateira, a city noted 
 for the manufacture of scarlet dyes ; the name being 
 thus a covert reference to the blood and the circu- 
 ^ latory system. (5) FfsAucZd/w', laryngeal ganglion ; 
 \Sardeis, a name which suggests the sardion, sardine 
 or carnelian, a flesh-colored stone, thus alluding 
 |to the laryngeal protuberance vulgarly termed 
 'Adam's apple." (6) Ajiid, cavernous ganglion; 
 hiladelpheia, a city which was repeatedly destroyed 
 y earthquakes ; the manifestation of the kundalim 
 t this sixth centre is especially violent, and so 
 [loannSs describes the opening of the sixth seal 
 (which is identical with the sixth Society) as being 
 
38 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 accompanied by a "great earthquake." (7) Sa- 
 hasrdra, conarium, or pineal body, the "third eye" ; 
 Laodikeia, noted for the manufacture of the so- 
 called "Phrygian powder," which was esteemed a 
 sovereign remedy for sore and weak eyes, presuma- 
 bly the "eyesalve" mentioned by I6ann6s in the 
 message to this seventh Society. 
 
 To each of these Societies the Logos sends a mes- 
 I sage ; and in these communications, which he dic- 
 \tates to loannes, the nature and function of each 
 ^centre is indicated : a particular aspect of the Logos 
 is presented to each one, a good and a bad quality 
 being ascribed to each centre, and a reward or prize 
 jis promised, specifying the spiritual results accru- 
 ing to "the Conqueror" from the conquest of each 
 chakra. 
 
 In the next vision is shown the Logos enthroned 
 in the sky, with his four septenary powers. Here 
 I6ann6s has constructed a simple little puzzle by 
 employing redundant symbols and by inverting the 
 order of the forces, enumerating the lesser ones first 
 and the greater ones last. He places twenty-four 
 Ancients ("elders") circling the throne, Ijefore 
 which also are seven Breaths ("spirits") and 
 a crystalline sea ; after which he describes four Zoa 
 ("living creatures"), each of whom has six wings. 
 Yet he makes it clearly apparent, later, that the 
 Zda are superior to the Ancients and next in rank 
 to the Logos. In fact, the four Zoa are the four 
 manifested Powers of the Logos, the archetypes 
 of the four "Beasts," whose nature, as the regents 
 of ,the four somatic divisions, has already been 
 explained. As these Zoa are septenates, they 
 
THE DRAMA OF SELF-CONQUEST 39 
 
 are said to have six wings each. These wings 
 are identical with the twenty-four Ancients; and 
 the seven Breaths before the throne are Hkewise 
 identical with the highest septenate, the noetic 
 Zoon. The seemingly complicated assemblage thus 
 resolves itself simply into the Nous centred in the 
 brain, with its four septenary powers; and the 
 "glassy sea" is the ether pulsating in the mystic 
 "eye" of the seer. For the "sky" in the Apocalypse 
 is not the "heaven" of the profane, the celestial 
 world supposed by them to be somewhere in the far 
 depths of space. 
 
 The four Z6a are the Lion, the- Bull, theJVlan, 
 and the Eagle. These symbols represent the four 
 cardinal signs of the zodiac, constituting the so-called 
 cross of the zodiac : Leo, Taurus , Aqua rius (water- 
 man) , and Scorpio . The constellation Aquila, the 
 Eagle, though extra-zodiacal, rising at the same 
 time as Scorpio is frequently substituted for it. The 
 word zodiac (zodiakos) is derived from zddion, 
 "a little animal," a diminutive form of zoon, "an 
 animal." Hence, the zodiacal signs being called 
 zodia, the four principal ones are the z6a. 
 
 A scroll ("book") is the next symbol introduced. 
 It is simply the human body, esoterically consid- 
 ered : it is "written inside and at the back," referring 
 to the sympathetic and the cerebro-spinal systems, 
 and "close sealed with seven seals," which seals are 
 the seven major chakras. The sacrificial Lamb, the 
 neophyte who has attained to the intuitive, noetic 
 consciousness — ^which is symbolized by his having 
 seven horns and seven eyes, that is, mental powers 
 of action and perception — opens the seals (arouses 
 
40 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 I the chakras) successively. As they are opened, 
 however, they change to zodiacal signs, the zodiac 
 being applied to the microcosm, man, as shown in 
 the diagram here presented, the man being depicted 
 as lying in a circle, and not standing upright as in 
 the exoteric zodiac. The seven planets are assigned 
 to the twelve signs of the zodiac in the order fol- 
 lowed by Porphyrios, and, in fact, by all ancient 
 and modern authorities. In Sanskrit works the 
 planets are made to correspond also to the seven 
 chakras in the following order, beginning with 
 mulddhdra: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mer- 
 cury, Moon, and Sun. According to this zodiacal 
 scheme, therefore, seven signs, with their planets, 
 extend along the cerebro-spinal region, and corre- 
 spond to the seven chakras, which are the focal cen- 
 tres of the iattvas, and have the same planets ; while 
 the remaining signs pertain to the five prdnas. 
 
 When the Lamb opens one of the seals, one of the 
 ^our Zoa thunders, "Come!" A white horse ap- 
 pears, its rider having a bow. This is Sagittarius, 
 the Bowman or Archer. loannSs thus starts the 
 kundalini current at the second chakra, and cor- 
 rectly so, for the sushumnd does not energize until 
 Ida and pingala have reached the forehead, and 
 then it starts from the first centre, corresponding 
 to the terminus of the spinal cord. He therefore 
 avoids calling this the first seal, but says, "one of 
 the seals," and then numbers the others merely in 
 the order in which they are opened. 
 
 The second seal being opened, the second Zoon 
 says, "Come!" A red horse comes forth; to its 
 rider is given a great sword, and power to take 
 
The Apocalyptic Zodiac 
 
THE DRAMA OF SELF-CONQUEST 43 
 
 away peace from the earth. This is Scorpio, the 
 house of Mars, the War-God. 
 
 Upon the opening of the third seal, the third 
 Zoon says, "Come!" A black horse appears, its 
 rider having a balance in his hand. This is. Libra, 
 the Balance. 
 
 When the fourth seal is opened, the fourth Z6on 
 says, "Come!" A "pale" (chWros, "yellowish") 
 
 I horse comes forth, and its rider is Death, accom- 
 panied by Had6s; they are given power over one 
 quarter of the earth, to kill with sword, famine and 
 death, and by the wild beasts of the earth. This 
 is Virgo, the astrological sign of the womb. In the 
 New Testament, as in the Upanishads and other 
 mystical literature, "Death" is the name very fre- 
 [quently applied to the physical, generative world, 
 in which birth, decay and death hold sway. In her 
 
 'character of the bad virgin, "a queen and not a 
 widow," Virgo appears later in the Apocalyptic 
 drama in the r6le of the Woman in scarlet, who is 
 seated on the red Dragon, the epithumetic nature. 
 But here she is associated with a higher centre 
 which has to do with the psychic consciousness, and 
 therefore HadSs, the psychic realm, is said to ride 
 
 I with Death ; and the evil thoughts, desires and pas- 
 sions of the psycho-physical consciousness devas- 
 tate the earth to the extent that they dominate. 
 
 I The four horses, corresponding to the four Zoa, 
 as also to the four beasts, are the four somatic 
 
 ^ divisions. 
 
 The fifth seal opened is the cavernous ganglion, 
 
 I to which corresponds the sign Cancer. Although 
 Leo precedes Cancer in the zodiac, its correspond- 
 
44 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 ing chakra, the conarium, is the last of the centres 
 to be aroused; for tdd and pingala branch out to 
 right and left at the forehead, and it is only the 
 sushumnd, starting at the sacral ganglion, that 
 reaches the conarium. Yet the influence of the two 
 currents, at this stage, causes a partial awakening 
 of the lower centres in the brain; and this is stated 
 by iSannes in an ingenious little allegory about the 
 uneasy ghosts ("souls") of those who had been 
 sacrificed (atrophied, that is) because of the evi- 
 dence they held. For it is by the atrophy of these 
 noetic centres that man has lost the evidence of 
 spiritual realities. 
 
 The sixth seal opened is the sacral plexus, to 
 which corresponds the sign Capricorn. When this 
 chakra is awakened, the sushumnd passes along the 
 spinal cord and impinges upon the brain. Words 
 can not adequately describe the sensations of the 
 neophyte upon his first experience of the effects 
 produced by this mighty power: it is as if the earth 
 crumbled instantly to nothingness, and sun, moon 
 and stars were swept from the sky, so that he sud- 
 denly found himself to be but an unbodied soul 
 alone in the black abyss of empty space, struggling 
 against dread and terror unutterable. Thus I6an- 
 n6s vividly pictures it, in terms of cosmic phenom- 
 ena, as a seismic cataclysm, seemingly the end of 
 the world. To the neophyte unprepared for this 
 ordeal, failure may mean merely a short period of 
 blank unconsciousness, or it may mean instant 
 death — for this vital electricity has all the destruc- 
 tiveness, when misdirected, of the thunder-bolt. 
 This sixth centre, djM, is the great "lunar" chakra, 
 
THE DRAMA OF SELF-CONQUEST 45 
 
 where the currents bifurcate; and at this point the 
 resurgent "solar" fires— those related to the cere- 
 bro-spinal system — form a cross in the brain. 
 These solar forces iSannes pictures as five Divin- 
 ities, of whom four stand at the corners of the 
 earth, presiding over the four winds, and a domi- 
 nant Divinity, the fifth, who, bearing the signet-ring 
 of the living God, ascends from the fifth direction 
 , of space, "the birthplace of the sun" — quite natu- 
 1 rally, since he is in fact an aspect of that "Sun," the 
 Nous. With his signet-ring he seals 144,000 out 
 of the tribes of the children of Israel. The twelve 
 tribes are simply the twelve zodiacal signs, symbol- 
 izing the twelve forces of the Logos, which differen- 
 tiate into countless minor forces. These, in the^ 
 microcosm, are the nddis of the Upanishads, which 
 enumerate variously the nddis centring in the brain, 
 but usually place the number at 75,000. I5ann8s, 
 however, holds to the zodiacal scheme : as each of 
 the signs of the zodiac is subdivided into twelve 
 minor signs, he multiplies these by 1 ,000 — a num- 
 ber often used in mystical writings to express an in- 
 ^ definite term — and so arrives at a total of 144,000. 
 After this is seen a great multitude, from all 
 nations and people of all languages, white-robed 
 and pure, who wave palm-branches and sing a paean 
 before the throne ; they are said to be those "coming 
 out of the great ordeal." This "great ordeal" is 
 reincarnation, the vast misery of being bound for 
 ages to the wheel of birth. But this concourse of 
 the "redeemed" who sing the chorus in this scene 
 are the liberated elements in the aspirant's own 
 nature; they are not a throng of people exterior to 
 
46 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 him. By evoking the marvellous potencies of his 
 spiritual self-hood the Conqueror thereby regermi- 
 nates all that was good, beautiful and true in each of 
 his past incarnations, and so can say, in the mag- 
 nificent language of the Gospel of Phillip, "I have 
 united myself, assembling myself together from 
 the four quarters of the universe, and joining to- 
 gether the members that were scattered abroad." 
 
 The seventh seal is the conarium, its zodiacal 
 correspondence being Leo, which is the house of 
 the Sun. Here reigns the Silence from which issue 
 the seven spiritual "voices," or sounds. These 
 mystic sounds I5ann6s describes figuratively as 
 trumpet-calls given successively by seven Divin- 
 ities. They become audible when the chakras in 
 the brain are awakened. The first four have a rela- 
 tion to the four somatic divisions, and react upon 
 them; hence l6annSs ascribes to the trumpet-calls 
 an obscuring or destructive effect upon the earth, 
 the sea, the rivers and springs, and the sky, which 
 correspond to the somatic divisions. At this stage 
 of the telestic meditation the physical body is al- 
 ready in a state of trance, and it is now the lower 
 psychic consciousness that is to be temporarily 
 paralyzed or placed in abeyance; so, leaving the 
 physical consciousness out of the reckoning, ISannSs 
 terms the psychic the * 'third" as applied to each of 
 the four planes, to which correspond the first four 
 trumpet-calls. The results produced by the three 
 remaining trumpet-calls he terms "woes," since 
 they entail very trying ordeals, the issue of which 
 is certain failure to the unpurified neophyte, of 
 whom it has been said: "His vices will take shape 
 
THE DRAMA OF SELF-CONQUEST 47 
 
 and drag him down. His sins will raise their voices 
 like as the jackals laugh and sob after the sun goes 
 down; his thoughts become an army and bear him 
 off a captive slave." Thus, at the fifth trumpet-call 
 appears "a star fallen from the sky to the earth," 
 who is the "Divinity of the abyss" and has the key 
 to its crater, or opening, and whose name is Apol- 
 lyon, "he who utterly destroys," the "Murderer" ; 
 he opens the crater of the abyss, and from it. 
 1 emerges a locust-swarm of centaurs, who with their \ 
 \ scorpion-like tails inflict torments on men. This 
 '"star" is Lucifer, the fallen "son of the, morning," 
 the debased psychic mind of man, which is indeed 
 the ruler over the abysmal depths of desire, the bot- 
 tomless pit of the passional nature, and the. "mur- 
 derer" truly of all that is pure, beautiful and true. / 
 ^This fifth trumpet-call refers to the carnal mind 
 energizing in the sympathetic nervous system, the 
 seat of the epithumetic consciousness, "the throne 
 of the Beast"; and the next trumpet-call, the sixth, 
 bears relation to the cerebro-spinal axis, the Apoca- 
 lyptic "river Euphrates," and to what may be 
 I termed the psycho-religious consciousness, which 
 ! manifests itself in the emotional worship of the un- 
 I real mental images of Deity — the lower phase of 
 religion that indulges in irrational theologies, super- 
 stition, sorcery, fanaticism and persecution. The 
 neophyte who has not thoroughly freed his mind 
 from these pseudo-religious illusions will inevitably 
 fail in the mystic meditation, which requires that 
 all thought-images and preconceptions must be 
 erased from the mind, so as to present it as a clean 
 tablet for the inscription of truth. After this sixth 
 
48 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 trumpet-call, the four Divinities fettered at the river 
 Euphrates are loosed : they are the solar regents of 
 the seasons, ruling the quaternary divisions of the 
 year, month, day and hour. The liberation of these 
 forces is followed by the appearance upon the scene 
 of an army of warriors mounted on lion-headed, 
 serpent-tailed horses, who represent the countless 
 powers of the Nous. A "strong" Divinity, the 
 fifth, then descends from the sky, enveloped in a 
 cloud, with a rainbow about his head; his face is 
 luminous like the sun, and his feet resemble pillars 
 of fire. This description of him is very similar to 
 that of the Logos ; he is, in fact, the Nous, for he 
 and the four Euphratean Divinities are the ana- 
 logues, on the purely intellectual plane, of the 
 Logos and the four Zoa. The strong Divinity cries 
 out with a lion-like roar, and seven thunders utter 
 their voices. Concerning the utterances of these 
 seven thunders loannes is very reticent. However, 
 as the Greek language has but the one word 
 {phone) for both "voice" and "vowel," the mean- 
 / ing obviously is that the "great voice" of the Logos, 
 who is the seven vowels in one, is echoed by the 
 seven vowels, the sounds by which the higher forces 
 are evoked; and these the seer is forbidden to write 
 down. At this stage of the sacred trance the neo- 
 phyte, having attained to the noetic consciousness, 
 begins to receive the mystery-teachings, the "sa- 
 I cred, unspeakable words" {appr^a ptjfiaTo) which, 
 I as Paulos says, it is not lawful for a man to disclose. 
 When he shall have mastered the next noetic centre, 
 the "third eye" of the seer, he shall pass beyond the 
 illusions of time; "time shall be no more," and 
 
THE DRAMA OF SELF-CONQUEST 49 
 
 "the God-mystery shall be perfected." The Divin- 
 ity gives a little scroll (booklet) to I5annes, who 
 eats it; and though honey-sweet in his mouth, it 
 makes his belly bitter. The scroll symbolizes the 
 esoteric instructions he has received, which are in- 
 j deed bitter to the lower man, for they inculcate the 
 ; utter extirpation of the epittiumetic nature. He is 
 ; then told that he must become a teacher, opposing 
 the exoteric beliefs of the masses. 
 
 By a side-scene, a parenthetical explanation is 
 
 given of the adytum or shrine of the God and the 
 
 "two witnesses" of the "strong" Divinity, the Nous. 
 
 The adytum — ^the temple-cell or fane in which the 
 
 J God is enthroned — is the seventh of the noetic cen- 
 
 j tres ; and the two witnesses are idd and pingala, the 
 
 / sushumnd being the third witness, "the believable 
 
 ( and true." 
 
 When the seventh trumpet-call is sounded, there 
 is a choral announcement that the God, the true 
 Self, has come to his own and will reign throughout 
 the aeons. The adytum is opened, disclosing the 
 ark, the mystic receptacle in which were placed the 
 "tablets" whereon was inscribed the contract of the 
 God with man. Thereupon appears the Woman 
 clothed with the Sun, star-crowned and standing on 
 the moon ; travailing, she gives birth to a man-child. 
 She symbolizes the Light of the Logos, the World- 
 Mother, that is, the pristine force-substance from 
 which is moulded the solar body — her "man-child." 
 The red Dragon, the epithumetic nature, seeks to 
 devour her child; but it is caught up to the God's 
 throne, and the Woman flees to the desert, where she 
 is nourished three and a half years. This means 
 
50 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 that after the formation of the solar body has be- 
 gun, any strong passion or emotion may disinte- 
 grate and destroy it; and that during the first half 
 of the cycle of initiation (here placed at seven 
 Wears) the nascent body remains in the spiritual 
 ^orld, as it were, while the sushumna force abides 
 in its "place" in the material form, or "desert." 
 For, strictly speaking, the solar body is not really 
 born at this stage, but only has its inception. In 
 the allegory, however, I6ann§s could hardly employ 
 the more accurate but less delicafe mystery-repre- 
 sentation of the Eleusinia. 
 
 Here the sacred trance ends for the present; and 
 next follows a battle in the sky. The Dragon and 
 his Divinities are hurled down from the sky by 
 Mikael and his hosts ; that is, the mind is now puri- 
 fied from the taint of impure thoughts. Mikael and 
 his fellow Chief-Divinities (archangeloi) , Uriel, 
 Raphael and Gabriel^ of whom he alone is named 
 in the Apocalypse, are but the four Zoa in another 
 guise. But the Dragon, though ejected from the in- 
 tellectual nature, continues his persecutions on the 
 lower plane. 
 
 The Beast, the phrenic nature, is described next. 
 One of his seven heads (the seven dominant de- 
 sires) has been slain, but comes to life; it represents 
 the desire for sentient existence, the principle which 
 causes the soul to reincarnate. This will to live, 
 this passionate clinging to sensuous life, is expati- 
 'ated on by Plato. Although the aspirant has ap- 
 parently extirpated this longing, so far as the 
 grosser affairs of the material world are concerned, 
 it revives when he enters into the subtler planes of 
 
THE DRAMA OF SELF-CONQUEST 51 
 
 consciousness and perceives the psychic realms of 
 existence. In Buddhistic literature it is termed 
 tanha (the trishna of Sanskrit philosophical 
 works) ; and in one ritual it is said: "Kill love of 
 life; but if thou slayest tanha, take heed lest from 
 the dead it rise again." Because this 'principle 
 keeps man under the sway of reincarnation, loan- 
 nSs says significantly: "If any one welcomes cap- 
 tivity, into captivity he goes; if any one shall kill 
 with the sword, with the sword must he be killed." 
 
 Another beast appears, who is the symbol of the 
 generative principle. He participates in the na- 
 ture of each of the other beasts, for he has two 
 horns like the Lamb, talks like the Dragon, and has 
 the magical powers of the Beast. He is called the 
 Pseudo-Seer. His false seership is a certain very 
 low form of psychism which, though not neces- 
 sarily sensual, is due to the generative nervous 
 ether. From this source come most of the "visions" 
 of religious ecstatics, and the material manifesta- 
 tions produced by some spiritist-mediums; and, in a 
 more general way, it is the source of the emotional 
 element in exoteric religion, or so-called religious 
 fervor, which is in reality but a subtle sort of eroti- 
 cism. As a blind emotional impulse to worship, it 
 stimulates the lower mind, the phren, or Beast, to 
 project an image of itself upon the mental screen 
 and to worship that illusionary concept; and this — 
 the "image of the Beast" — is the anthropomorphic 
 i God of exoteric religion. 
 
 Next appears again the Lamb, who by strict clas- 
 sification is one of the four beasts, though really 
 too exalted to have that title applied to him, since he 
 
52 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 is the Nous, the regent of the highest of thd four 
 somatic divisions. With him are his many virginal 
 attendants, who, as a prelude to the next act of the 
 drama, chant a new pgean, to the accompaniment of 
 many lyres. The neophyte has now become, as it 
 were, like a lyre, with all the loose strings of his 
 psychic nature tightened and tuned, tense and vi- 
 brant to the touch of his true Self. 
 
 The conquest of the cardiac centres is presented 
 as a harvest scene, in which seven Divinities play 
 \ their parts. Here, again, four of the septenate are 
 Velated to the four somatic divisions. The fifth 
 Divinity is "like the son of man," and with a sickle 
 he reaps the "dried up" harvest of the earth. He 
 is the Logos, or spiritual Self, which assimilates 
 the higher aspirations and idealizing of the psychic 
 'nature — a harvest that is, usually, by no means 
 abundant. The sixth Divinity, who comes out of 
 the God's adytum, reaps the vine of the earth, and 
 casts the ripe grapes into the great wine-vat of the 
 God's ardor (thumos), and when the vat is trod- 
 den, outside the city, not wine but blood comes out, 
 "up to the bridles of the horses, as far as 1,600 
 stadia." Now, while this sixth Divinity represents 
 the Nous as intellect, the fifth Divinity reflects the 
 aspect of the Logos as Er6s, or Divine Desire. The 
 vine of the earth may be considered to be that vine 
 of the purely human emotional nature, or feeling, 
 whose tendrils are love, sympathy and devotion, 
 and whose fruitage yields the wine of spiritual 
 exaltation; but in the technical esoteric meaning the 
 vine consists of the force-currents which corres- 
 pond to the cerebro-spinal nervous system; while 
 
THE DRAMA OF SELF-CONQUEST 53 
 
 the great wine-vat of the God's ardor, outside the 
 city (the physical body), is the auric ovum, which | 
 becomes suffused with an orange or golden color 
 through the action of these currents in the cardiac 
 centres. The horses are the four somatic divisions, j 
 and the number 1,600 is that of to sdma heliakon, \ 
 the solar body: the cardiac, forces pervade and color 
 the aura, imparting to it a golden hue, returning 
 through the chakras, and circulating through the 
 solar body — a process analogous to the nutrition of 
 the foetus, the solar body being, as it were, in a 
 foetal state. Thus the Woman is nourished in the 
 desert, weaving for the soul its immortal and glori- 
 fied robe. 
 
 It will be noticed that the word thumos is here 
 rendered "ardor." The learned revisers of the "au- 
 thorized" version translate it "wrath," making it 
 a synonym of orge, but changing to "fierceness" 
 when, as in two instances, I6ann8s has the two 
 words so conjoined that the result of their theory, 
 if carried out, would be the impossible expression 
 "wrath of his wrath," which is, however, but little 
 worse than one that is actually used, "the wrath of 
 her fornication." But the word has not that mean- 
 ing in the Platonic philosophy, or in that of the 
 Apocalypse, which is practically identical with it. ^ 
 Plato makes thumos the energizing principle of the 
 soul, intermediate between the rational nature (to 
 logistikon) and the irrational (to epithuntetikon) , \ 
 and he explains that it is not a kind of desire, "for / 
 in the conflict of the soul thumos is arrayed on the j 
 side of the rational principle." It is a complex of 1 
 emotions qualified by comprehensive ideas, as / 
 
54 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 veracity, honor, pride, sympathy, affection, etc., 
 and not at all an ordinary, impulse of resentment. 
 In Apocalyptic usage, thumos is likewise an ener- 
 gizing, creative principle ; but whereas Plato, writ- 
 ing works of the more popular sort, confined him- 
 self to a threefold system and wrote with caution, 
 I6ann8s, using the medium of symbol and allegory, 
 : unintelligible to the profane, divulges the full four- 
 ' fold system; he puts phren as the intermediate prin- 
 ciple between the psychic and the noetic nature, 
 and elevates thumos to be the energizing principle 
 of the latter. It thus corresponds to Eros, the 
 Divine Love, whose inverted reflection in the animal 
 nature is Erds, the love-god, or lust. With these 
 two Erotes of Grecian mythology he gives also its 
 two Aphrodites, picturing them as the supernal vir- 
 gin clothed with the sun and the infernal prostitute 
 larrayed in scarlet, the two symbolizing respectively 
 divine regeneration and human generation. Now, 
 again, the word orge, although signifying colloqui- 
 ally and in ordinary literature any violent passion, 
 as anger and the like, has a more technical meaning 
 in the terminology of the Mysteries, where it signi- 
 fies the fecundating power or parturient energy in 
 nature. The word is derived from opyai/, "to swell 
 (with internal moisture)," as do plants and fruit 
 from their sap, "to teem," "to swell (with pas- 
 sion)"; and from the same root comes orgia, the 
 Mystery-rites practised in the worship of lacchos, 
 the phallic God. 
 
 Next follows the conquest of the generative cen- 
 tres. After a pasan chanted by the conquerors of 
 the Beast, seven Divinities emerge from the adytum. 
 
THE DRAMA OF SELF-CONQUEST 55 
 
 They are more majestic and more splendidly ar- 
 rayed than the three septenates who have preceded 
 them, and their part is to finish the regenerative 
 work. One of the four Zoa gives them seven golden 
 saucers (phialai, shallow libation-cups) containing 
 the formative force of the Logos, "the thumos of 
 the God." What ensues upon the outpouring of the 
 creative potency is the eradication of the procrea- 
 tive centres — leaving thereafter but three somatic 
 divisions — and the elimination from the other cen- 
 tres of every remaining vestige of psychic impurity. 
 The first four Divinities act successively upon the 
 four somatic divisions. The first Divinity pours 
 out his saucer upon the earth, producing a painful 
 sore on the men who had the brand of the Beast 
 and worshipped his image. The force under the 
 stimulus of which the lower psychic nature engen- 
 dered pseudo-devotional illusions, irrational senti- 
 ments and emotions, and erroneous notions or con- 
 cepts, now becomes the destroyer of these delu- 
 sions, and of the psychic centres to which they are 
 due. 
 
 The second Divinity pours out his saucer into the 
 sea ; it becomes as blood, and all creatures in it die. 
 Every vestige of passion and desire is eliminated. 
 
 The third Divinity pours out his saucer into the 
 rivers and springs, and they become blood. This 
 is the somatic division of which the regent is the 
 Beast, or phrenic mind, in which is centred the con- 
 sciousness of the profane, the polloi who have per- 
 secuted and put to death many spiritual teachers 
 and reformers. Here, again, loannSs indulges in 
 sarcasm; for he makes the Divinity of the waters 
 
56 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 (the Nous as presiding over this plane) say of the 
 profane, "They poured out the blood of devotees 
 and seers, and blood thou hast given them to drink, 
 for they are worthy," a paronomastic use of the 
 word axios, "deserving" and also "highly respecta- 
 ble." However, when the "blood of the Logos" 
 suffuses the mystic centres of the heart "the know- 
 ledge from below" ceases to vaunt itself, and is re- 
 placed by "the wisdom from above." 
 / The fourth Divinity pours out his saucer upon 
 (the sun, and it radiates scorching heat — alluding to 
 ^the intense activity of the brain at this stage. 
 
 The fifth Divinity pours out his saucer upon the 
 throne of the Beast, whose realm is thereby dark- 
 ened, and whose subjects are afflicted with pains 
 , and sores. The Beast's throne is the great sympa- 
 'thetic nervous system, so that his realm extends 
 ■ over practically all the so-called involuntary physi- 
 ' cal and psychic functions; but, now that the four 
 somatic divisions have been purified, the Beast is 
 I deposed, and henceforth the Nous is to reign su- 
 preme. 
 
 The sixth Divinity pours out his saucer upon the 
 Euphrates, and its waters are dried up to prepare 
 the path for the rulers who come from the source of 
 the sun. These are the five "solar" Divinities who 
 \ were erstwhile unfettered at the river Euphrates, 
 ! the cerebro-spinal system. All the irredeemable 
 elements of the man's lower self are now expelled, 
 and they become a sort of entity external to him : 
 as when, after the death of the physical body, all 
 the evil psychic elements which are rejected by the 
 soul before it enters the spiritual realm survive in 
 
THE DRAMA OF SELF-CONQUEST 57 
 
 the phantasmal world as a simulacrum, shade, or 
 ghost of the dead personality, so upon the spiritual 
 rebirth of a man — ^which connotes the death of his 
 carnal nature, though the purified physical body 
 continues to live out its allotted span — these ex- 
 pelled elements take shape in that same phantasmal 
 world, or Tartarus, and remain there as a congeries 
 of evil forces and impure elements, forming a ma- 
 lignant demon, which has no animating principle 
 save hatred and lust, and is doomed to disintegrate 
 in the cosmic elements. Thus loannes describes 
 this g'^uesome thing in his allegory : he sees issuing 
 from the mouths of the Dragon, the Beast and the 
 Pseudo-Seer three unclean spirits, resembling frogs, 
 who are "spirits of demons," and who collect all 
 the evil forces and muster them for the last great 
 battle upon the advent of the God. 
 
 The seventh Divinity pours out his saucer into 
 the air (the aureola), and the enthroned God an- 
 nounces, "He has been born" (gegone) . The au- 
 thorized version gives the strained empirical trans- 
 lation, "It is done." But genesthai means "to be 
 born," "to become," and is often used in the New 
 Testament in the former sense, as in Galatians iv. 4, 
 "born of woman." If used to convey the meaning 
 "It is done," it would be dubious Greek; but here 
 I6ann6s is speaking quite openly of the new birth, 
 whereas in his Evangel, where he depicts the new 
 birth allegorically as the crucifixion, he gives the 
 ultimate utterance as tetelestai, "It has been fin- 
 ished," referring to the initiation-rite, or "finishing" 
 [telos), and conveying the esoteric meaning "He 
 has initiated (perfected) himself." The spiritual 
 
58 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 i birth is, in the Apocalyptic drama, accompanied by 
 a general upheaval and readjustment: the great 
 city, Babylon (the physical body), becomes three- 
 divisional; the cities of the people (the procreative 
 centres) are overthrown; and great hail (the con- 
 densation psychically of the auric substance) falls. 
 In the main action of the drama it is now that the 
 Conqueror, the new-born Initiate, appears on his 
 white horse; but the sequence of events is inter- 
 rupted by a side-scene, which amounts to a paren- 
 thetical dissertation on the mysteries of physical 
 existence and the epithumetic principle, symbolized 
 by the Woman in scarlet and the fiery red Dragon. 
 The Woman stands for Babylon, the physical body, 
 and, in a more general sense, incarnate existence. 
 She sits on the "many waters," the great psychic 
 sea of sensuous life, and is likewise sitting on the 
 Dragon — for he represents microcosmically the 
 same principle that the sea does macrocosmically. 
 The Dragon who sustains the Woman was, and is 
 not, and yet is; for he is the glamour of sensuous life, 
 the deceptive phenomena of which ever appear to 
 be that which they are not. His seven heads are 
 seven mountains where the Woman is sitting on 
 I them; that is, the seven cardinal desires energize 
 through the seven chakras of the physical body dur- 
 ing incarnation. It is then explained that there are 
 seven rulers (kings), of whom five have perished, 
 one is, and the other has not yet come, and when 
 he comes he must abide a little while. The cycle of 
 initiation extends through seven incarnations, which 
 are not, however, necessarily consecutive; of these 
 the Apocalyptic initiate is represented as having 
 
THE DRAMA OF SELF-CONQUEST 59 
 
 passed through five, and being now in the sixth; 
 and in the seventh he will attain final emancipation. 
 They are called kings because the only incarnations 
 counted are those in which the aspirant is veritably 
 the ruler of his lower faculties and propensities. 
 The Dragon himself is an eighth, a sort of by- 
 product of the seven, and he goes to destruction; 
 rfor he is the phantom which forms after the final 
 Ipurification, and his fate is to disintegrate in the 
 Inether-world. His ten horns, or five pairs of horns, 
 are the five prdnas, each of which is both positive 
 and negative. They are solar forces, the correspon- 
 dences on the lowest plane of the Nous and the four 
 Zoa, the regents of the four regions of space and 
 the four divisions of time; but here, in the sphere of 
 animal vitality, they energize the desires and pas- 
 sions. Thus they "have one purpose," and confer 
 their power upon the Dragon, and rule with him 
 each for one hour. They are the forces which in 
 the innocent child produce its exuberant vitality 
 and exquisite vivacity, but which in the individual 
 who yields to the dictates of passion become wo- 
 ' fully destructive ; hence they are said to devour the 
 flesh of the Woman in scarlet and consume her 
 with fire. 
 
 Then comes a series of proclamations, exhorta- 
 tions and lamentations relating to the downfall of 
 Babylon, the scarlet prostitute, who is the bad 
 Virgo, the terrestrial AphroditS, all of which applies 
 to the complete subjugation of the physical body 
 and its forces, and to liberation from the bondage of 
 physical life. There are two "falls" in the allegory, 
 paralleling the two crucifixions. 
 
60 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 After this long but necessary digression, the ac- 
 tion of the drama is resumed: the Conqueror ap- 
 pears, mounted on a white horse ; "he treads the wine- 
 vat of the ardor of the God's fecundating energy" ; 
 his mantle is blood-hued, and upon it and upon his 
 thigh is inscribed his title of supreme ruler. The 
 word "thigh" (mews) is euphemistic; the phallos, 
 membrum virile, is intended. This particular euphe- 
 mism is common in the Old Testament {Genesis 
 xxiv. 2, at passim) . Moreover, it will be noticed 
 that here the Conqueror has the sword of Mars, 
 and is riding the white horse of the Archer who, at 
 the opening of the first seal, the adhishthdna chakra, 
 "came forth conquering and to keep on conquer- 
 ing." Thus the incarnated Logos is shown to bear 
 a direct relation to the lowest centres. Now, it 
 would be utterly impossible to elucidate the Apoca- 
 lypse and ignore this delicate but perfectly pure 
 subject, concerning which even the most communi- 
 cative expositors of the esoteric philosophy have 
 been extremely reticent; and so the present writer, 
 being opposed to all undue secrecy, and believing 
 that in this matter harm has resulted from the sup- 
 pression of the truth, feels justified in dealing with 
 the subject frankly and without constraint, though 
 with necessary brevity. As every practical "pyro- 
 technist" knows, the human brain contains certain 
 centres or components, including the pituitary body 
 and the conarium, the higher functions of which are 
 almost completely dormant in the normal individu- 
 als of the present races of mankind, who are there- 
 fore termed in the New Testament and other 
 esoteric writings "the dead" ; yet it is only through 
 
THE DRAMA OF SELF-CONQUEST 61 
 
 these organs of the brain that the spiritual Self of 
 man, his overshadowing God, can act upon the con- 
 sciousness of the psycho-intellectual self. This 
 corpse-like condition of the finer organs of the brain 
 does not preclude very high development of the 
 ordinary intellectual faculties, apart from the episte- 
 monic power; indeed, there are and always have 
 been men who are lamentable examples of brilliant 
 intellectuality combined with the densest spiritual 
 stupidity. In the case of the true genius, the poet, 
 artist, intuitive philosopher, and religious mystic of 
 saintly purity, there is a partial awakening of these 
 centres; while in the case of the seer (excluding 
 from that class the mere psychic clairvoyant) the 
 higher faculties are so quickened that he becomes 
 cognisant of the interior worlds, the planes of true 
 Being. But when the brain is fully restored to its 
 true functions by the energizing of the speirema, 
 the parakletos of the New Testament, that "Light 
 of the Logos" which is literally the creative force 
 of thq Logos, then it, the brain, becomes an andro- 
 gynous organ, wherein takes place the immaculate 
 conception and gestation of the self-born spiritual 
 man, the monogenes, who is in very truth "born 
 from above." This is the process of regeneration 
 and redemption which iQannSs sets forth both in 
 the Apocalypse and the fourth Evangel, and which 
 Paulos and the three Synoptists have written in 
 large characters easily to be read by him who has 
 "the single eye," and which is expressed by myth 
 and symbol in all the great world-religions of an- 
 tiquity. There being a direct and intimate relation- 
 ship and correspondence between the sacred centres 
 
62 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 in the brain and the lower procreative centres, it 
 follows that true spirituality can be attained only 
 when a pure and virtuous life is led; while for the 
 neophyte who would enter upon the telestic labor, 
 the task of giving birth to oneself, perfect celibacy 
 is the first and absolute prerequisite. Unless he is 
 inspired by the loftiest aspiration, guided by the 
 noblest philosophy, and restrained by the most 
 rigid moral discipline, his possibility of success is 
 extremely remote; and the mere dabbler in the 
 pseudo-occult will only degrade his intellect with the 
 puerilities of psychism, become the prey of the evil 
 influences of the phantasmal world, or ruin his soul 
 by the foul practices of phallic sorcery — as thou- 
 sands of misguided people are doing even in this 
 age. 
 
 The Conqueror and his host are opposed by the 
 Beast and his followers, and in the ensuing battle 
 the Beast and the Pseudo-Seer are captured. They 
 are thrown into the lake of sulphurous fire — ^which 
 simply means that the rejected elements of ijian's 
 animal nature return to the elemental kingdom 
 whence they were derived — are thrown, as it were, 
 into the great crucible of nature. The Dragon, 
 however, is imprisoned for a thousand years, after 
 which he must be let loose for a short time ; that is, 
 the Conqueror has yet one more incarnation to 
 undergo, and therefore does not now destroy alto- 
 /•gether the epithumetic principle, though in his next 
 and final earth-life he will make short work of it. 
 The thousand years, as a period between incarna- 
 tions, merely express the apparent time on the 
 spiritual plane, where, as Plato explains, sensation 
 
THE DRAMA OF SELF-CONQUEST 63 
 
 / / is of tenfold intensity, so that the thousand years, 
 i j here as in the vision of Er, "answer to the hundred 
 \ \ years that are reckoned as the hfe of man." The 
 Dragon is disposed of, so far as the Apocalyptic 
 drama is concerned; but I6ann8s gives a paragraph 
 in the future tense to tell of his final fate. But, 
 finding it necessary to explain first, in a general 
 way, what happens to the soul after death and be- 
 tween incarnations, he does so by describing a 
 vision. He sees thrones and those seated on them, 
 and judgment is passed on them. These represent 
 a series of after-death judgments; for after each 
 incarnation the incarnating Ego passes through a 
 purifying ordeal or "judgment." All his activities 
 during the past earth-life are reviewed ; in the alle- 
 gory they are described as souls revivified. Thus 
 the souls of those that had been beheaded because 
 they had the evidence of iSsous (the Nous) , and 
 those who had not worshipped the Beast (that is, 
 the latent intuitions that had been suffered to die in 
 the mind, and the higher thoughts, emotions and 
 aspirations) come to Hfe and reign with the Chris- 
 tos (the Nous now illumined, epistemon, because 
 freed from the body) for a thousand years, that is, 
 during the non-incarnated period. But the rest of 
 the dead (the thoughts and emotions that were con- 
 cerned only with the carnal nature) do not come to 
 life until the expiration of the celestial interregnum. 
 They lie in latency until the Ego reincarnates, when 
 they again become kinetic impulses. This coming 
 to life of the nobler elements of man's nature, which 
 were suppressed and slain during his earthly so- 
 journ, is called "the first resurrection." Returning 
 
64 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 from this general exposition to the particular case 
 of the Dragon in the drama (and hence changing 
 to the future tense) , I6ann6s explains that this Ad- 
 versary will be let loose at the expiration of the 
 thousand years and will muster all the evil forces 
 to make an assault on the beloved city — only to 
 have his forces consumed by the divine fire, and 
 himself be thrown into the lake of fire and sulphur, 
 where the Beast and the Pseudo-Seer had already 
 been sent, thus sharing with them the "second 
 death." 
 
 But the physical body of the Conqueror is not 
 dead; it is subjugated, purified and shorn of its 
 passional centres. The downfall of Babylon ex- 
 presses figuratively the death of the carnal nature; 
 for in his regeneration the initiate has passed 
 through a process analogous to death, and therefore 
 he undergoes a judgment-ordeal similar to that 
 meted out to the excarnated soul, but of vaster 
 scope and mightier import. A great white throne 
 appears, and from the face of the enthroned Maj- 
 esty the earth and the sky flee and vanish, for he is 
 the perfected Self of the Man, higher than earth and 
 heaven, greater than all the Gods. He is summing 
 up the cycle of his incarnations, and on all the 
 elemental forces and faculties of his composite 
 nature which have made up his many personalities 
 of the past he renders judgment "according to their 
 works." All these, "the dead" in the three lower 
 worlds, spring to life and are "judged," as loannes 
 reiterates, "every one according to their works." 
 The condemned elements of the physical and psy- 
 chic natures ("Death and the Unseen") are thrown 
 
THE DRAMA OF SELF-CONQUEST 65 
 
 into the lake of fire, the chaotic "eighth sphere" in 
 which the creative fire refines, as material for future 
 aeons, the hylic refuse of each cycle; and this is 
 termed the "second death." 
 
 Then appear a new sky and a new earth, that is, 
 the subjective and the objective consciousness of 
 the Nous on its own plane ; but the sea, the sensuous 
 consciousness of the lower plane, has passed out of 
 existence. The holy city, the deathless solar body, 
 now comes down out of the sky, enveloped in its 
 halo, or radiance (he doxa), the sun-robe of the 
 God. This aureola is self-luminous, with an opales- 
 cent glitter; it is the "wall" of the city, having 
 twelve gateways (the orifices of the body) , and at 
 the gateways twelve Divinities (the twelve great 
 Gods of the Zodiac, or cosmic forces) , and with the 
 names of the twelve tribes of Israel (the zodiacal 
 signs) inscribed on the gates; the tribes are in four 
 triads, assigned to the four regions of space. The 
 wall of the city has twelve foundations, which have 
 on them the names of the twelve apostles of the 
 ' Lamb ; these are the twelve powers of the Logos, 
 the spiritual archetypes of the twelve cosmic forces ; 
 for in symbology the "foundation" of all things is 
 in spirit, upon which rests the structure of what- 
 ever is manifested. The measurements of the city 
 and its wall have already been explained, together 
 with the enigma of its cubical form ; the further de- 
 tails relating to it will be elucidated in their proper 
 place in the commentary. 
 
 "Aum. Come thou, Thought Divine! The 
 grace of the Divine Thought be with the holy devo- 
 tees. Aum." Thus ends the Apocalypse of I6an- 
 
66 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 nSs, one of the most stupendous allegories ever 
 penned by the hand of man. 
 
 So comprehensive, complete and coherent is the 
 Apocalypse, that its full beauty, even in its fine fin- 
 ish of details, can be perceived only when it is 
 viewed as a whole; nor can its deeper meaning be 
 grasped by mere analytical study. Its multiplicity 
 of details and reduplication of symbols have utterly 
 baffled all attempts to analyze it by empirical meth- 
 ods; and the exotericists have fared even worse 
 through inability to distinguish from the main ac- 
 tion of the drama the explanatory matter introduced 
 by means of side-scenes. Yet, in reality, the con- 
 struction of the drama is not complicated, and its 
 characters are not numerous. Its dramatis per- 
 soTue are : 
 
 A. The God, the for ever concealed Divine 
 Presence. 
 
 I. The First Logos (logos endiathetos, imma- 
 nent idea), the DiviNE LoVE, from whom 
 proceed : 
 
 II. ( a ) The Second Logos ( logos prophorikos, 
 uttered thought), the DiviNE THOUGHT, 
 the ruler of the cosmic forces ; symbolized 
 by the Conqueror, the Sun ; 
 (b) The Light of the Logos, Arche, the 
 Divine Substance, primordial matter; 
 symbolized by the Sky- Virgin, the Moon. 
 As Philo Judsus says (De Confus. Ling, 
 p. 267) the Logos is the ArchS; as Spirit- 
 Matter they are one in essence. They ema- 
 nate: 
 
THE DRAMA OF SELF-CONQUEST 67 
 
 III. The Twelve Powers, of which five are 
 noetic (solar) and seven are substantive 
 (lunar) ; symbolized by the Twelve Zodi- 
 acal Constellations. The twelve powers, 
 emanated successively on four planes of 
 existence, make fortyreight cosmic forces; 
 and, with Archl-Logos, forty-nine. 
 
 These are the sole performers in the Apocalyptic 
 drama, though some of them assume various roles. 
 The ancient zodiac was subdivided into sections of 
 ten degrees each, called decans, giving three to each 
 of the twelve signs ; and to each of these thirty-six 
 subdivisions was assigned an extra-zodiacal con- 
 stellation, a paranatellon, which rises or sets simul- 
 taneously with it. These forty-eight constellations, 
 twelve in the zodiac and three sets of twelve beyond 
 it, with the Sun considered as the centre and making 
 up the number forty-nine, completed the stellar 
 scheme of the zodiac, which is faithfully adhered 
 to in the Apocalypse. The seven sacred planets 
 play their parts in the drama ; but they only repre- 
 sent seven aspects of the Sun. The extra-zodiacal 
 constellations Draco, Cetus, Medusa and Crater 
 are especially prominent as characters in the drama. 
 The First Logos takes no active part, and is but a 
 Voice speaking from the throne. 
 
 The dramatis personcB and scenic arrangement 
 are shown in the diagram on page 68. 
 
 It should be borne in mind, however, that these 
 are the worlds and forces of the microcosm, man, 
 as portrayed in the zodiacal scheme ; and, as the two 
 triangles represent the conflicting spiritual and ani- 
 
The First Logos 
 (The God's Love) 
 
 The Second Logos 
 (Divine Ideation) 
 
 The Virgin 
 (Primordial Substance) 
 
 L The Sky. 
 
 (Spiritual World.) 
 12 Noetic Forces. 
 
 IL The Rivers and Springs. 
 (Psychic World.) 
 12 Psycho-mental Forces. 
 
 o 
 (Li 
 
 III. The Sea. 
 
 (Phantasmal World.) 
 
 12 Animal-psychic Forces. 
 
 IV. The Earth. 
 
 (Physical World.) 
 12 Vital Forces. 
 
 3 
 o 
 
 Si 
 
 The Beast 
 (Phrenic Intellect) 
 
 The Prostitute 
 (The Gross Elements) 
 
 The Pseudo-Seer 
 (Desire) 
 
THE DRAMA OF SELF-CONQUEST 69 
 
 mal principles in the human soul, they should be 
 considered as being interlaced in man, the "perfect 
 square," and enclosed within the auric pWrdma, or 
 divine synthesis, thus : 
 
 The four planes of existence are represented in 
 the Apocalypse as (1) the Sky, (2) the Rivers and 
 Springs, (3) the Sea and (4) the Earth; while en- 
 compassing these four is the Air, the Empyrean, 
 which is called the fifth world in the Ptolemaic 
 system, although it really stands for the three form- 
 less planes. 
 
 The twelve forces energizing on each of the four 
 manifested planes, or worlds of form, are divided 
 into a five and a seven; the five is subdivided into 
 a one and a four; and the seven is subdivided into a 
 three and a four, the three being subdivided into a 
 one and a two. These divisions, written diagram- 
 matically as if on a measuring-stick, make the "rod" 
 with which to "measure the adytum of the God, the 
 altar, and those who worship in it," excluding "the 
 
70 
 
 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 court which is exterior to the adytum" — the lower 
 triad: 
 
 1 
 
 
 A. 
 
 
 
 1 1 2 
 
 
 A 
 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 5 
 
 7 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 7 
 
 8 
 
 9, 
 
 10 
 
 11 
 
 12 
 
 This "measuring-stick" applies to each of the 
 four manifested planes; and in each of them the 
 fivefold group relates to the Sun and the Rectors of 
 the Four Regions of Space, symbolizing variously 
 the Logos and his four manifested powers, the 
 Nous and the four intellective faculties, etc.; and 
 the sevenfold group relates to the Moon and her 
 septenary time-periods. 
 
 The fivefold group, which is really a quaternary 
 and a dominating power, in each case correspond- 
 ing to the Arch6-Logos, is shown, with a few of its 
 ^any correspondences, in the table on facing page. 
 
 The drama has seven acts: (1) the opening of 
 the seven seals, the conquest of the seven principal 
 centres of the sympathetic nervous system; (2) 
 the sounding of the seven trumpets, the conquest of 
 the seven centres of the brain, or cerebro-spinal 
 system; (3) the battle in the sky, resulting in the 
 expulsion of the Dragon and his Divinities, that 
 is, the elimination from the mind of all impure 
 thoughts; (4) the harvesting of the earth and its 
 vine, the conquest of the seven cardiac centres; (5) 
 the outpouring of the seven scourges, the conquest 
 
a 
 Z 
 
 < 
 
 en U 
 
 (- Ol 
 
 gg 
 
 u 
 >j 
 U 
 
 •H 5 
 ■2(2 
 
 a; 
 
 
 
 WW 
 
 > 
 
 u 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 u 
 
 Is 
 
 = '2 
 ffiS 
 
 r 
 
 (0 
 
 Is 
 
 
 IP 
 
 1 
 
 S 
 
 u 
 3 
 0" 
 
 c 
 
 a 
 
 J. 
 
 in «) 
 
 .2 g- . 
 5 E 10 
 
 .52=3 
 
 (1> (L> 
 
 £1 
 
 CO CA 
 
 ■2« 
 
 ■tS (U 
 
 (0 
 
 "> Si, 
 S 3 
 
 .5 
 
 P 
 
 u 
 a, 
 
 3 
 
 
 z, 
 
 .Q in 
 
 IS. 
 I§ 
 
 ii 
 
 W M 
 
 is 
 
 0. 
 
 0. 
 
 . lit 
 §0.22 
 
 
 
 .sis lu 
 
 
 c8.g « 
 
 
 1 
 1 
 
 
 J 2 
 
 m C t- 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 ^^ 
 
 w.a 
 
 in 
 
 .c 
 a. 
 
 < 
 
 - 
 
 :: 
 
 ;:: 
 
 > 
 
72 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 of the generative centres, which finishes the "con- 
 quest of the chakras" and brings about the birth of 
 the solar body; (6) the battle in the psychic world, 
 or infernal region, called "Harmagedon," resulting 
 in the overthrow of the three beasts, that is, the 
 extinction of the extraneous phantasmal demon, or 
 composite elemental self; and (7) the last judg- 
 ment, the summing-up of the completed cycle of 
 earth-lives. All the remaining portions of the book 
 are explanatory and descriptive. Of these seven 
 acts, four (the conquests of the chakras) relate to 
 the four somatic divisions, and the other three to 
 the mental, psychic and auric principles. Tabu- 
 lated, the four acts that are concerned with the 
 conquest of the centres, in their bearing upon the 
 process of regeneration, are as shown on page 73. 
 In a general way, the four conquests made by 
 the Logos-Sun correspond to the four seasons of the 
 year: the opening of the seals, the beginning of 
 man's spiritual resurrection, is Spring, the time of 
 germinating seed, expanding bud and upspringing 
 vegetation ; the energizing of the noetic centres, the 
 trumpet-calls awakening to life the sunlike intel- 
 lectual faculties, is Summer, the season of sturdy 
 I growth and hastening to ripeness, the over-fervid 
 sun at times scorching the tender-green growth ; the 
 opening of the heart-centres, the harvesting of the 
 earth and the vine, is Autumn, the period for gath- 
 ering and garnering the fruitage; and the conquest 
 of the lower life-centres, the scourging of all that is 
 base and impure in man's nature, is Winter, the 
 season of purifying frost and cold, which prevail 
 until the returning Sun, lengthening the days, is 
 
it a 
 
 55 
 
 z 
 
 < 
 
 C4 
 
 <u 
 
 (-■ 
 
 o 
 
 B 
 o 
 Z 
 
 SI 
 
 
 
 <u 
 
 ° 
 
 H 
 
 '0 
 <u 
 
 J3 
 
 2 c« 
 
 OS 
 
 i < 
 
 H 
 
 CO 
 
 JDT3 ca 
 o 
 
 (U 
 
 °§ • 
 
 ■■s.S s 
 
 C3"" CU 
 
 o 
 
 <u 
 
 §|Sa 
 
 
 a. 
 
 lis 
 
 fflt3M 
 CU 
 
 c'S 
 
 •Sis" 
 
 0-2 
 
 c 
 cg.S3£ 
 •2a>^ 
 
 .-SJicu-g. 
 ♦'W 
 
 T3 
 
 I< 
 
 C J= 
 
 0- 
 ■s 
 
 •O.S 
 
 CO 
 
 T3 m e . 
 r- o oj3 
 
 c c « 
 
 .22 = " 
 
 C 03 U O 
 
 Co oJ 
 
 5°o.S 
 « O ^ J; 
 
 oaC(u^ 
 
 o o OJ»i 
 
 ills 
 
 >> ' . 
 
 5 S2M 
 
 I, a a 
 Sc 
 
 > 
 
 .2 
 
 c a, 
 ^ a. 
 
 ^& 
 
 CO 
 CO 
 
 
 
 Act II 
 7 Trumpet- 
 calls 
 
 
 c— CO 
 
 B 5 
 
 1. 11 
 
 H c/3 
 
 si- 
 
 *' -CD 
 
 = co 
 
 2^-S 
 
 U^ (U 
 u^ 
 
 H 
 
 CO 
 
 .t; s? CO 
 
 c .5 <u 
 
 U " 3 
 
 c 
 
 > 
 
 CO 
 
 C CO 
 
 sac 
 ■gji 
 
 c 
 
 C CO 
 
 ta t 
 coE 
 
 I" 
 
 h 
 
 ^1. 
 
 "r C 2 
 
 CO 
 ■?.& CO . 
 
 0) 
 
 
 
 c 
 u 
 
 (U 
 
 J3 
 H 
 
 O M 
 
 u 
 .a 
 H 
 
 <U 
 
 u 
 
 Si 
 H 
 
 if 
 
 « a 
 
 J3t3 
 
 
 CO 
 CO 
 
 u a. 
 
 ^ 3 
 
 < 
 
 CU 
 
 1 
 
 la 
 
 go 
 
 .■sa 
 ou 
 
 .2 M 
 
 &.5 
 
 3 c^ 
 
 C J> 
 fi S 
 
 to 
 
 ^ c 
 
 
 
 ■" 0.10 
 
 C 
 m c 
 
 6 
 
 2 
 
 (U 
 
74 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 mystically reborn as the Christ-child, the Sun-God 
 of a new divine year, the ason of the deified man. 
 
 Thus, it will be seen, the Apocalyptic drama is 
 expressed in terms of natural phenomena : its hero 
 is the Sun, its heroine the Moon; and all its other 
 characters are Planets, Stars and Constellations; 
 while its stage-setting comprises the Sky, the 
 Earth, the Rivers and the Sea. It elucidates its sub- 
 ject with the glare of lightning, proclaims it with 
 the roll of thunder, emphasizes it with the shock of 
 the earthquake, and reiterates it with the Ocean's 
 voice, the ceaseless murmur of its "many waters." 
 Ever it maintains this cosmic language, this vast 
 phrasing of nature. In the first magnificent chorus 
 of Constellations who encircle the throne of the 
 Sun-God the starry hosts praise him as the creator 
 of the universe; yet when the drama has been en- 
 acted that universe has perished, "the first sky and 
 the first earth are passed away, and the sea exists 
 no more." Then from his effulgent throne the 
 Logos-Sun announces, "Behold! I am making a 
 new Universe." Now, this Apocalyptic Universe 
 is Man, the lesser cosmos, of whom the Logos-Sun 
 is in truth the Architect and Builder, and whom the 
 Sun, the Moon, and all the Stars of heaven have 
 helped to mould and make: for in every human 
 creature, however fallen and degraded, are stored 
 up all the forces, both cosmic and deific, which 
 brought him into existence and have nurtured him 
 throughout the vast cycle of generation, in count- 
 less incarnations upon earth, while the Logos of 
 Light has taught him the loving lessons of the Good, 
 the Beautiful and the True, and the Logos of Dark- 
 
THE DRAMA OF SELF-CONQUEST 75 
 
 ness has held before him the dread lessons of the 
 Evil, the Ugly and the False; and these same cre- 
 ative forces of the Light-giving Logos, with the tire- 
 less patience of the deathless Gods, but await the 
 time when the resurgent divine life again stirs 
 within him, and then, disintegrating the elements 
 composing the carnal man, they begin a new evolu- 
 tion, the work of "making perfect" this child of the 
 aeons, whom the Sun-Adversary, "the Scorpion- 
 monster of Darkness," can drag down till he is lower 
 than the beasts, but whom the Logos-Sun, the Eagle 
 of Light, can exalt above the Gods. 
 
"Eyo) eijut TO <^u)S Tov koctixov 6 
 aKoXov$!!)v jJLOi ov fir] Trepi-TraT-ijcrrj iv 
 rrj UKOTiaj dW' eia to ^ois T^s 
 
 The Light of the World am 1 ; he who 
 goes along with me shall not at all 
 walk about in the darkness, but shall 
 have the light of the [supernal] life. 
 Jn. viii. 12. 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 
 
The white hair of hoary 
 
 Kpovo? Q 
 
 (Saturn) 
 The bjflzing eyes of wide-seeing 
 
 ZsucT 
 
 (Jupiter) 
 
 The keen sword of 
 
 'Apr;c 
 
 ( Mars } 
 ,f^ The shining face of 
 
 "HXco? I 
 
 (Sun) 
 
 The chiton and girdle of 
 
 'AcppoBlTT] H 
 
 (Venus ) 
 The swift feet of 
 
 Epjjt,:^? E 
 
 ( Mercury ) 
 
 To $W? TOO KoCfJLOU 
 
 The wave-murmuring voice of 
 
 2£)^>]V7] A 
 
 (Moon) 
 
 (The Light of the Cosmos) 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 
 
 Chapter I. 1, 2 
 
 The initiation of Anointed iSsous, which the 
 God conferred on him to make known to his slaves 
 the [perfections] which must be attained speedily. 
 He sent his Divinity and by him symbolized [them] 
 to his slave iQannSs, who gave evidence of the 
 Logos of the God and of the evidence of Anointed 
 Ilsous — of all the [visions] that he saw. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 In the Greek Mysteries, which were also called 
 the "perfecting" or "finishing" rites, the candidates 
 for initiation, after receiving some preparatory train- 
 ing in semi-exoteric lesser rites, were termed mystai, 
 "veiled ones," while the Initiates were called epop- 
 tai, "those having super-sight" — or seers. The 
 word apokalypsis, "unveiling," is clearly a substi- 
 tute for epopieia, "initiation into seership." That 
 I6ann6s could not possibly have intended the title 
 of his occult treatise to convey the meaning of 
 "revelation" is evident from the nature of the work, 
 which is not only profoundly esoteric and couched 
 in the mystery-language of the zodiac, but also has 
 
 79 
 
80 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 its meaning so impregnably intrenched behind 
 symbolism, allegory, anagram, number-words, and 
 other puzzling devices, that it has successfully 
 withstood the assaults of "those without" (the 
 exotericists) for nearly two millenniums. Its sub- 
 title also, by the word "symbolized" (esSmanen) , 
 likewise indicates that it was not written as light 
 literature for the profane. True, the "authorized" 
 translators render the verb "signified"; yet with 
 bland inconsistency they ascribe the sense of "mira- 
 cle" to the substantive semeion, which properly 
 means a "symbol," or a "sign," as a constellation 
 or sign of the zodiac. 
 
 The title makes iSannSs the one to be initiated 
 (unless it is taken as merely indicating his author- 
 ship, which in the light of the text is hardly a rea- 
 sonable supposition), while the sub-title gives 
 lesous as the candidate for initiation who emerges 
 as the Conqueror after the telestic ordeals ; for here, 
 as in the fourth Evangel, loannes and lesous are 
 but one individuality, iSannes representing the in- 
 carnated man, and iSsous his noetic Self, whose 
 "slave" the material man truly must become if he 
 wills to reach the heights celestial. The Divinity 
 who comes at the behest of l6sous is higher than 
 lesous himself; for he is the Logos, who in the 
 initial vision makes his appearance as the "son of 
 man," and remains throughout as the Hierophant, 
 or Initiator, while lesous is the candidate who is 
 subjected to the initiatory trials and has to do the 
 perfecting "works," whereby he finally becomes the 
 Conqueror on the white horse — the new Initiate in 
 his solar body. The spiritual perfections have to 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 81 
 
 be attained "speedily" by sustained, unremitting 
 effort; yet, as time is regarded by those who look 
 upon earth-life as an affair of but one incarnation, 
 the telestic work would seem by no means expedi- 
 tious; for it requires not less than seven incarna- 
 tions of untiring effort before the final goal is 
 reached. But the "path" of the esotericist is indeed 
 a short-cut, and his a speedy journey, as compared 
 with the progress of those who are content to fol- 
 low the common highway of evolution, and who 
 will reach their divine destination, their promised 
 land, only after long ages of aimless wandering in 
 the wilderness of terrestrial life. 
 
 It is the intuitive mind — "Anointed lesous" — 
 that gives evidence of the Logos to the neophyte, 
 and he in turn must, according to the law of the 
 occult, transmit it to his fellow-men — ^who usually 
 repay him with some form of physical or mental 
 martyrdom. 
 
 Ch. I. 3 
 
 Immortal is he who discerns, and they who learn 
 [from himj, the arcane doctrines of this Teaching, 
 and observe the [precepts] which are written in it; 
 for [their] season is near. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 This is a dedication of the book to every mystic 
 who may succeed in penetrating to its inner mean- 
 ing, and impart to other students the occult doc- 
 trines (logoi) it contains. For the "Logoi (oracles) 
 
82 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 of the Lord" are esoteric aphorisms having in them 
 
 the potency of the Divine Thought, and are not mere 
 
 "words" comprehensible to the conventionalist. 
 
 Likewise, prophiteia is not merely "prophecy" in 
 
 the fortune-telling sense of predicting future events ; 
 
 the word means literally "speaking for" (the 
 
 Gods) ; the office of the seer being to receive and 
 
 interpret the truths taught in the noetic world, the 
 
 realm of the Logos. The writings of Ezekiel, 
 
 Zechariah, and the other Hebrew "prophets," are 
 
 ; esoteric treatises on the nature of man, thinly dis- 
 
 ' guised as predictions. In them, nations and person- 
 
 /' ages play the parts that in the Apocalypse are acted 
 
 [ by the heavenly bodies. 
 
 The word mdkarios means much more than sim- 
 ply "blessed." It connotes the state of the immor- 
 tal Gods (emancipated souls) , as expressed by the 
 Sanskrit term sachchiddnanda, "true being, con- 
 sciousness and bliss." To the man or woman who 
 resolutely pursues the path of purity and devotion, 
 there will come unfailingly this consciousness of 
 immortality and spiritual calm ; it is but a matter of 
 centring the mind upon the deathless inner Self 
 instead of upon the outer self that is under the sway 
 of alternating death and birth. This mental revert- 
 ing is the metanoia of the New Testament, not 
 merely "repentance," but "changing the mind" 
 from the mortal to the immortal mode of thought. 
 
 Ch. l 4, 5 
 
 I6ann6s to the seven Societies which are in Asia : 
 Grace to you, and peace, from [the enthroned 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 83 
 
 God] who [for ever] is, who was, and who is com- 
 ing, and from the seven Breaths that are before his 
 throne, and from Anointed iSsoiis, that believable 
 witness, the first-born from "the dead," and the 
 foremost of the rulers of the earth. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The word ekklesia, meaning an assembly, or 
 group of people called together for some special 
 purpose, a society, applies very neatly in the alle- 
 gory to a nervous plexus, or ganglion, which con- 
 sists of nucleated cells acting as a centre of nerve- 
 force to the fibres connected with it. The seven 
 Societies are the seven principal ganglia ; later they 
 are metamorphosed into "seven little lampstands," 
 each ganglion being a little brain, a minor light- 
 giver in the body, as the brain is the great light- 
 giver, or microcosmic sun; and then they are 
 changed almost directly into "seven seals" on a 
 scroll, the chakras being indeed sealed in the ma- 
 terialistic person, so far as concerns their psychic 
 functions. 
 
 The enthroned God is the First Logos, who 
 abides in the Eternal, and is not to be considered as 
 incarnated, but rather as overshadowing the man 
 on earth. The word "coming" (erchomenos) is 
 used because the future participle of the verb "to 
 be" (esomenos) would convey an erroneous meta- 
 physical concept; "was," in the imperfect tense, ex- 
 presses an action still continuing, but the future, 
 "shall be," would imply something that does not yet 
 
84 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 exist, whereas the Logos is represented as subsist- 
 ing in an infinite Present which includes in itself 
 the Past and the Future. In his Evangel (viii. 58) 
 iSannes expresses the same idea by the words, 
 "Before Abraham was born, I am." Thus also 
 Plato teaches (Timaios, 38) that it is erroneous to 
 attribute the past and the future to the Eternal; 
 "For we say, indeed, that he was, he is and he will 
 be ; but 'he is' alone approximates the true concept 
 (logos) ; for 'was' and 'will be' are properly to be 
 said only of generation in time." 
 
 The two Logoi are practically one, the distinction 
 between them being purely metaphysical. 
 
 The seven Breaths (pneumata), which appear 
 later as seven stars (the seven planets), are the 
 Chief-Divinities, Mikael, Gabriel, etc., representing 
 Iseven aspects of the Logos. iSsous Christos, the 
 first-born from "the dead," is the epistemonic (in- 
 tuitive) Mind; the intuition is the first of man's 
 dormant spiritual faculties to awaken, bringing 
 certainty of knowledge, and becoming the dominant 
 power in his life. 
 
 The pronoun "you," plural, in this translation 
 is thin-spaced, to distinguish it from "you" in the 
 singular. 
 
 Ch. l 5, 6 
 
 To him who, having graciously welcomed us and 
 washed us from our sins in his blood, also made us 
 rulers and sacrificers to his God and Father — to 
 him be the glory and the dominion throughout the 
 aeons of the £eons ! Am^n. 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 85 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 These words of iSannes refer to the initiation he 
 has passed through, and which he is about to 
 describe. The lustration (baptismos) of blood, 
 which emancipates from sin, is the rain of purify- 
 ing fire (the "blood" of the Logos) poured out by 
 the Divinities charged with the seven scourges. By 
 a bold oriental simile, a variant of the parable of the 
 prodigal, the higher Self is represented as hospita- 
 bly entertaining the returned wanderer, the reincar- 
 nating self, and washing from him the stains of 
 travel. 
 
 To each of the planets a distinctive attribute is 
 assigned; and here "dominion" applies to the Sun, 
 and "glory" to the Moon. 
 
 The Amen is the Greek equivalent of the San- 
 skrit Aum, the latter being pronounced with a nasal 
 prolongation, called ardha-mdtn, "half measure," 
 thus giving the Apocalyptic "time, [two] times and 
 half a time." Used in a certain way, this word has 
 the power, through the correlation of sound and the 
 vital electricity, to arouse the speirema, or regenera- 
 tive force. To use it effectively, one must know not 
 only its correct pronunciation but also the predomi- 
 nant color and the key-note of his own aura. 
 
 Ch. I. 7 
 
 Behold ! He comes amidst the clouds, and every 
 eye shall see him, and they who pierced him [shall 
 see himj ; and all the tribes of the earth shall wail 
 over him. Verily! Amen. 
 
86 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The eyes that see him are the noetic centres ; they 
 who "pierced him" are the sense-perceptions ;. and 
 the "tribes" are the repentant elements of the men- 
 tal and psychic constitution. The "clouds" are the 
 auric forces; here the nimbus seems to be referred 
 to rather than the aureola ; the latter envelopes the 
 entire body, while the nimbus is limited to the head. 
 In conventional Christian art the nimbus of the 
 "Father" (who is, in fact, the First Logos and not 
 the Supreme Deity) is represented of a triangular 
 shape, irradiating light-rays; that of the Crucified 
 (the Second Logos) contains a cross; and that of 
 the Virgin (ArchS) has a circlet of stars. In the 
 Christos-mythos there are two crucifixions, corre- 
 sponding respectively to generation and to regenera- 
 tion. The first crucifixion is the descent of the soul 
 into matter, when the physical body becomes its 
 "cross" and the five senses are its five "wounds" ; 
 the human figure, with extended arms, forming a 
 cross, and the objective senses being avenues that 
 lead away from the spirit. The second crucifixion 
 is the ascent of the soul to spirit through the initia- 
 tion-rite, or self-conquest, when it is mystically said 
 to be crucified in the brain — in the place called 
 Golgotha, "the skull." 
 
 Ch. I. 8 
 
 "I am the Alpha and the 6," says the Master, the 
 God who [for ever] is, who was, and who is com- 
 ing, the AU-Dominator. 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 87 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 In apposition to the announcement of the com- 
 ing of the Crucified, the uncrucified First Logos, 
 the Eternal, declares, "I am the A and the ft," 
 which formula includes the five intermediate vow- 
 els, E, H, I, O and T, and is equivalent to saying, 
 "I am the seven vowels in one." Cedrenus says 
 (p. 169) that the Chaldseans symbolized the Light 
 of Reason (noesis) by the vowels a <o. These two 
 vowels, the first and the last letters of the Greek 
 alphabet, were assigned to the Moon and Saturn, 
 the intermediate planets answering to the five other 
 vowels in their order. Thus Achilles Tatius 
 {Isagog., p. 136) correctly ascribes the seven vow- 
 els to the planets as follows: A, Moon; E, Mercury; 
 H, Venus; I, Sun; O, Mars; T, Jupiter; and 12, 
 Saturn. The seven Planetary Powers are potential 
 in the First Logos; in the Second Logos they be- 
 come manifested potencies. The title "AU-Domi- 
 nator" is solar; HSlios pantokrator dominates all 
 the planets, and the title is applicable to either 
 Logos. The revised version retains the anachro- 
 nistic "Omega," a word coined in the middle ages 
 to designate the letter O. 
 
 Ch. I. 9-1 1 
 
 I, iSannSs, who am your brother, as also your 
 copartner in the ordeal, ruling and patience of 
 Igsous, came to be in the island which is called Pat- 
 mos, through the arcane doctrine of the God and 
 
88 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 through the evidence of lesous. I came to be in the 
 Breath [-trance] on the master-day, and I heard 
 behind me a loud voice, Hke a trumpet-call, saying : 
 "What you see, write in a scroll, and send [the 
 message] to the seven Societies which are in Asia : 
 to Ephesos, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyateira, Sardeis, 
 Philadelpheia and Laodikeia." 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 Serene patience is one of the indispensable quali- 
 fications of the aspirant for spiritual knowledge, 
 and so is the "ruling," or dominance of the higher 
 intellect, the Nous (iSsous), over the lower facul- 
 ties. The ordeal (thlipsis) is that of initiation, now 
 begun. Through the awakening noetic perception 
 (the "evidence of lesous") and the increasing light 
 from the Logos — the whitening of the dawn of the 
 new life — the aspirant becomes isolated, and in the 
 drear loneliness of one who has for ever abandoned 
 the illusions of sensuous existence, but has not yet 
 seen the sunrise of the spirit, he dwells, as it were, 
 on an island, apart from his fellow-men. Then 
 through his introspection comes the message of the 
 Great Breath, and in the sacred trance he attains 
 his first autopsia, beholding the apparition of his 
 own Logos. 
 
 Ch. I. 12-16 
 
 I turned about to see the Voice which was speak- 
 ing with me. Having turned, I saw seven little 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 89 
 
 golden lampstands, and in the midst of the little 
 lampstands an [apparition] like the son of man, 
 wearing [a vesture] reaching to the feet and girded 
 at the paps with a golden girdle. His head and his 
 hair were white as white wool, [white] as snow; and 
 his eyes were as a blaze of fire. His feet were like the 
 liquid-metal that is as if it had been melted in a fur- 
 nace. His voice was as the voice of many waters. 
 In his right hand he had seven stars. From his 
 mouth kept flashing forth a keen two-edged sword. 
 His face was [luminous], as shines the sun by its 
 inherent force. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 This apparition is a fanciful picture of the Sun 
 as the Panaugeia, or fount of all-radiating light; 
 and like all the puzzles of I6annes it is ingeniously 
 .constructed. The "voice" that speaks is the pri- 
 mary aspect of the Second Logos, in whom the 
 seven "voices" or vowels (for phorie is the one 
 Greek word for both "vowel" and "voice") become 
 differentiated. As the all-pervading solar Light he 
 walks about among the seven golden lampstands, 
 the seven planetary bodies, holding in his right hand 
 their seven "stars," the light which he confers upon 
 them. The Logos-figure described is a composite 
 picture of the seven sacred planets: he has the 
 snowy-white hair of Kronos ("Father Time"), the 
 blazing eyes of "wide-seeing" Zeus, the sword of 
 Ar§s, the shining face of H8lios, and the chiton and 
 girdle of AphroditS; his feet are of mercury, the 
 
90 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 metal sacred to HermSs, and his voice is like the 
 murmur of the ocean's waves (the "many waters") , 
 alluding to Sel6n8, the Moon-Goddess of the four 
 seasons and of the waters. To have placed the 
 winged feet of Hermis on the figure, or to have 
 used the ordinary word hydrargyros ("water- 
 silver") for mercury, would have made the puzzle 
 altogether too transparent; so loannes has em- 
 ployed the archaic word chalkolibanon, which he 
 evidently borrowed from Plato, to designate the 
 material used in fabricating the feet of his Plane- 
 tary Logos. Plato speaks of chalkolibanon (Kri- 
 tias, p. 1 14) as a metal mined by the Atlantians and 
 esteemed by them as the most precious of metals 
 except gold — which it is, in the series of esoteric 
 correspondences. He does not describe it, but says, 
 "Chalkolibanon is now only a name, but was then 
 something more than a name," a statement that is 
 no more than a sarcastic comment on the spiritual 
 degeneracy of the times. But in his highly tech- 
 nical alchemical work, the Timaios (p. 59) , he un- 
 mistakably describes this metal, calling it simply 
 chalkos and ranking it as a primary metal next to 
 gold, as "a sort of bright and condensed fluid." 
 The Word is rendered "fine brass" in the authorized 
 version, although brass was unknown to the Greeks, 
 who used a bronze composed of copper and tin. 
 But chalkos was used as a general term for metal, 
 as well as for copper in particular; and chalkoliba- 
 non is simply the "metal that forms in drops," as 
 does gum exuding from a tree. It is neither "brass" 
 nor "incense-gum," but simply quicksilver — fluidic, 
 "as if melted in a furnace." 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 91 
 
 This figure of the Sun as the ruler of the planets 
 is a symbol of the incarnated Self, the Second 
 .Logos; and, as given in the description of the appa- 
 jrition, the seven planets are in reversed order, for 
 jthe Second Logos is the inverted reflection of the 
 First: the celestial man is, as it were, upside-down 
 when incarnated in the material world. The signifi- 
 cance of this inversion develops later in the Apoca- 
 ylyptic drama. 
 
 Similar descriptions of the "son of man" are to 
 be found in Ezekiel, Zechariah and Daniel, but 
 though similar they are not the same ; for the Apoca- 
 lypse is sui generis, and while iSannes apparently 
 borrows many symbols and poetic images from the 
 ancient writings, he usually employs them to cloak 
 his real meaning by endowing them with a different 
 or a variant significance. Hence the exotericists 
 who attempt to follow these supposed parallels will 
 only be misled and confused, as I6ann8s doubtless 
 intended they should be; and, since this commen- 
 tary is not concerned with the esotericism of the 
 Hebrew writings, the usual references to them will 
 be omitted. The real parallels between the Apoca- 
 lypse and Plato's writings are much more numer- 
 ous and striking than these deceptive ones that are 
 to be found in the Hebrew scriptures. 
 
 Ch. I. 17-20 
 
 When I saw him, I fell at his feet as one dead. 
 He placed his right hand on me, saying: 
 
 "Be not afraid. / am the First [Adam] and the 
 Last [Adam], he who is Alive. I became a 'dead 
 
92 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 man' ; and, Behold ! I am alive throughout the aeons 
 of the aeons, and I have the keys of Death and of 
 the Unseen. Write down the [glories] you saw, 
 also those which are, and those which are about to 
 be attained next after them, [beginning with] the 
 mystery of the seven stars which you saw on my 
 right hand, and the seven little golden lampstands. 
 The seven stars are the Divinities of the seven So- 
 cieties ; and the seven little lampstands are the seven 
 Societies. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The esoteric tenet as to "the First and the Last" 
 is very clearly stated by Paulos (I Cor. XV. 22, 45) : 
 "For even as in the Adam [-man] all became mori- 
 bund, so likewise in the Christ [-man] all are re- 
 stored to life." "The first man, Adam, was born in 
 a living psychic form {psyche) , the last Adam in a 
 life-producing breath (pneuma) ." 
 
 The Logos, or Divine Man, becomes "dead" dur- 
 ing the long cycle of material evolution; but as 
 it emerges from material conditions through the 
 awakening of the epistemonic faculty, or spiritual 
 intuition, it is restored to life; for the man has then 
 the consciousness of immortality, and holds the 
 keys with which he can unlock the prison-doors of 
 the physical world ("Death") and the psychic 
 world, or Hadgs, the "Unseen." This representa- 
 tion of incarnated life as the death-like obscura- 
 tion of the soul is very common in ancient mystical 
 literature. Plato puts forward the idea repeatedly, 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 
 
 93 
 
 as in the punning etymology of the Kratylos (p. 
 400) : "Some say that the body (sdma) is the tomb 
 (sema) of the soul, which may be considered as 
 buried in our present life." 
 
 The cities of the seven Societies were on the 
 
 Pergamos. 
 
 ThyeSteira . 
 
 Smyrna 
 
 Sardeis . 
 
 PhiladelpWia, 
 Ephesos 
 
 Laoclik' 
 
 eia 
 
 The Seven Cities in Asia 
 
 mainland, not far from Patmos. Starting with 
 Ephesos, the nearest to the island, they extended in 
 a circular form, and thus answered admirably the 
 purpose of the allegory. But that there was no 
 Christian Society at Thyateira history is positive, 
 and is somewhat dubious about the others. Ephe- 
 
94 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 SOS was celebrated for her wonderful temple of 
 Diana, the Huntress Goddess, whom the Romans 
 connected with the sign Sagittarius ; and Sardeis had 
 a temple to the Goddess Rhea, the "Mother," who 
 was quite the moral reverse of the chaste Diana. 
 At Pepuza, a desert place in Phrygia not far from 
 Patmos and the seven cities, there was a centre of 
 the Mithriac Mysteries. 
 
 A marked peculiarity of the Apocalypse and the 
 fourth Evangel is the constant use of diminutive 
 forms, as "little lampstands" ; for in both works 
 I6ann8s deals with the microcosm. The small lamp- 
 stands are the chakras, and their "stars" are the dif- 
 ferentiated forces of the speirema. 
 
 Chapter n. 1-7 
 
 "To the Divinity of the Society in Ephesos write : 
 "These [words] says he who with his right hand 
 dominates the seven stars, he who walks about in 
 the midst of the seven little golden lampstands: I 
 know your works, and your over-toil and patience, 
 and that you can not bear wicked men. You put to 
 the test those pretending to be apostles (and they 
 are not!) and found them false. You endured and 
 have patience; on account of my name you have 
 toiled and have not grown weary. But I have [this 
 complaint] against you, that you left your first 
 love. Remember, therefore, whence you are fallen; 
 reform, and do the first works — ^but if not, coming 
 to you speedily, I shall move your lampstand out of 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 95 
 
 its place, unless you do reform. But you have this 
 [virtue] , that you abhor the works of the Nikolai- 
 tanes, which I also abhor. He who has an ear, let 
 him hear what the Breath is saying to the Societies. 
 "The Conqueror — to him I shall award to eat 
 [the fruit] of the tree of life which is in the middle 
 of the Garden of the God. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 ^) To this Society the Logos announces himself in 
 his aspect as MEMORY, the faculty of receiving and 
 retaining impressions, which links 
 together the past, present and fu- 
 ture, and is thus the power upon 
 which depends the continuity of 
 the individual consciousness. The 
 ever-toiling and unwearied memory 
 stores up all the experiences of the 
 individual, throughout the long 
 cycle of incarnations, and no memories are ever 
 lost save those that are evil and therefore suffer the 
 "second death" after the final purification of the 
 soul. 
 
 The muladhdra chakra (represented by Ephe- 
 sos) lies at the base of the spinal cord, and being 
 thus at the lower pole of the cerebro-spinal system, 
 and the starting-point of the sushumnd, it is di- 
 rectly related to the highest, the sahasrdra, or 
 conarium; for, as already explained, the lower 
 plane of life is the inverted reflection of the higher. 
 Hence it is said to have left its first love (the divine 
 
96 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 love having become human love), and is told to 
 remember whence it has fallen and do the first works 
 — that is, pour its force into the first and highest 
 chakra, the regenerative brain-centre. The quality 
 of this chakra still retains somewhat of the higher 
 love, a clinging to purity and an aversion to sensu- 
 ality and every perversion of the creative function. 
 It is therefore said to have exposed the impure char- 
 latans and to abhor the works (secret rites) of the 
 Nikolaitanes. The latter were a pseudo-occult sect 
 who practised the vilest forms of phallic sorcery. 
 The unclean worship of the "Great Mother," called 
 Rhea, Cybele, AstartS, and by other names, was 
 wide-spread in Asia, and many were her temples, 
 with their "consecrated women." But in the older 
 mythology Rhea was not thus degraded. 
 
 The attainment of spiritual knowledge is m effect 
 the process of reviving the memory of the incar- 
 nating Ego in relation to the supernal worlds, be- 
 fore it became immured in matter; and this memory 
 of things divine can be recalled only through the 
 action of the parakletos, the regenerative force. 
 Hence in this aspect the Nous is said to hold in its 
 grasp the seven stars and to walk about among the 
 seven little lampstands. According to Plato, all 
 true knowledge is derived from the "recollection of 
 the things in which the God abides" : the immature 
 souls, who can not "feed on the vision of truth," 
 fail of being "initiated into the mysteries of Being, 
 and are nourished with the food of opinion," but 
 "he who employs aright these memories is ever 
 being initiated into the perfect mysteries, and alone 
 Becomes perfect." 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 97 
 
 As the sun enters each sign of the zodiac it is 
 said, astrologically, to "conquer" the sign and to 
 assimilate its particular quality; and the same is 
 said of the kundalini as it passes through the chak- 
 ras. Hence the hero of the Apocalypse, who is the 
 Nous, or microcosmic Sun, is called "the Con- 
 queror." 
 
 The award to the Conqueror, in the aspect here 
 presented, is the Eternal Memory : he shall eat the 
 fruit of the tree of life (the fruitage of the life- 
 cycle) in the God's own abiding-place, the mystical 
 Paradise, or state of ineffable bliss. 
 
 In this aspect the Logos is Kronos (Saturn) , the 
 God of Time; the corresponding vowel is o, and the 
 quality itrxy's, "strength," the power of holding 
 and retaining. 
 
 Ch. II. 8-1 1 
 
 "To the Divinity of the Society in Smyrna write : 
 "These [words] says the First [Adam] and the 
 Last [Adam], who became a 'dead man,' and came 
 to life: I know your ordeal and poverty (but you 
 are rich!) and the profanity of those claiming to be 
 loudaians — and they are not, but are an assembly 
 of the Adversary. Do not fear the [ordeals] which 
 you are about to undergo. Behold! The Accuser 
 is about to cast some of you into prison, that you 
 may be brought to trial; and you will have an or- 
 deal of ten days. Become confiding until death and 
 I shall give you the crown of life. He who has an 
 
98 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 ear, let him hear what the Breath is saying to the 
 Societies. 
 
 "The Conqueror shall not at all be punished 
 by the second death. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 Here the Logos is presented in his aspect as 
 Reason, the highest philosophical intellection 
 (noSsis) , which in the carnal man 
 is dormant, but which awakens 
 when he turns to the serious con- 
 sideration of the concerns of the 
 higher life. 
 The reasoning faculty, hampered 
 Zeus ^y *^^ niaterial brain, is poverty- 
 
 stricken ; but when freed from the 
 trammels of matter it is rich in ideas. The pseudo- 
 loudaians are the irrational dogmas of exoteric 
 religion, which are put forth as divine revelations, 
 though they are obviously opposed to reason, and 
 are but the mere vagaries of the phrSnic mind when 
 under the stimulus of the perverted devotional na- 
 ture, and come, therefore, not from the Logos but 
 from his adversary, Satanas, the foe of intellectual 
 light. The Hebrew language was at first a secret 
 sacerdotal jargon of Egyptian origin, and St. Greg- 
 ory of Nyssa asserts (Oratio, p. 12) that the most 
 learned men of his day knew positively that it was 
 not as ancient as other languages and did not be- 
 come the spoken language of the Jews until after 
 their departure from Egypt. The word "Jew" is 
 
# 
 
 THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 99 
 
 used throughout the Apocalypse in its Kabalistic 
 meaning, for one having esoteric knowledge, an 
 initiate; as in the Kabalistic maxim, "The stone be- 
 comes a plant, the plant an animal, the animal a 
 man, the man a Jew, and the Jew a God." Hence 
 came the myth of the "chosen people." 
 
 The "ten days" refer to a zodiacal decan and a 
 paranatellon — here, the constellation Draco, the 
 "archaic snake," who is the prosecutor or accuser, 
 the theological "Devil" and "Satan." 
 
 This chakra, the adhishthdna, is the starting-point 
 of idd and pingala, which are allegorized in the 
 Apocalypse as the "two witnesses," the sushumnd 
 being the third. 
 
 The reward of the Conqueror is Conscious Im- 
 mortality : he is to wear the crown of life, and noth- 
 ing that originates in the spiritual mind shall pass 
 into the oblivion of the second death. 
 
 This aspect of the Logos is that of Zeus (Jupi- 
 ter) , the son of Kronos and the father of Gods and 
 men, who was also called Zeus Triopes, the "Three- 
 eyed," and was represented on the Acropolis of 
 Argos by a gigantic statue having two eyes in its 
 face and one on the top of its forehead. The corre- 
 sponding vowel is T, and the attribute a-o^ta, 
 "skill." 
 
 Ch. II. 12-17 
 
 "To the Divinity of the Society in Pergamos 
 write : 
 
 "These [words] says he who has the keen two- 
 edged sword : I know your works, and where you 
 
100 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 dwell — where the throne of the Adversary is. You 
 are holding fast my name, and you did not abjure 
 belief in mt even in the days in which [the oracle 
 was] Antipas, my believable witness, who was slain 
 among you, where the Adversary dwells. But I 
 have a few [complaints] against you, because you 
 have there those who uphold the teaching of Ba- 
 laam, who taught Balak to set a snare before the 
 children of Israel, to eat [food] offered to ghosts, 
 and to prostitute. So, also, you have those who 
 uphold the teachings of the Nikolaitanes, which I 
 abhor. Reform — ^but if not, coming to you speed- 
 ily, I shall combat them with the sword of my 
 mouth. He who has an ear, let him hear what the 
 Breath is saying to the Societies. 
 
 "The Conqueror — to him I shall award to eat 
 a share of the occult manna ; and I shall award to 
 him a white voting-pebble, and on the voting-pebble 
 [will be] a new name engraved, which no one 
 knows but he who receives it. ' 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 To this Society the Logos presents himself in his 
 aspect as Will, volition, the energizing principle, 
 and he carries, therefore, the sword of the War-God. 
 
 Pergamos stands for the manipuraka chakra, the 
 solar plexus, which is the chief centre of the sym- 
 pathetic nervous system, and the seat of the epithu- 
 metic nature — the Dragon, or Satanas, the Adver- 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 101 
 
 sary of the Logos. Plato states (Timaios, p. 70 
 et seq.) that the desires are "chained down like a 
 wild beast" in the region between 
 the midriff and the navel, "and 
 knowing that this principle in man 
 would not listen to reason" and 
 "was liable to be led away by 
 ghosts and phantoms of the night 
 and also by day, the God, consider- ^^.^ 
 
 ing this, formed the liver, to con- 
 nect with the lower nature and to dwell there, 
 contriving that it should be compact, smooth and 
 bright, and both sweet and bitter, in order that 
 in it the energy of the thoughts, proceeding from the 
 mind (nous), might be received like figures in a 
 mirror and projected as images." Thus, he says, 
 the creative powers, in order that the lower nature 
 "might obtain a measure of truth, placed in the 
 liver their oracle (to manteion) — which is a suffi- 
 cient proof that the God has given second-sight 
 (mantiken) to the foolishness of man." "Such 
 then, is the nature of the liver, such its function 
 and place, as said, formed for the sake of second- 
 sight." This, of course, is the faculty of the man- 
 tis, or individual gifted with "second-sight"; and 
 this is also the "witness Antipas," who has indeed 
 been slain by those who have lost even this psychic 
 function of the liver, as well as the intuition of 
 the intellectual nature. ANTI-IIA-S is simply 
 MANTIS disguised by having its initial M converted 
 into UA{pa) and anagrammatically transposed. To 
 solve the puzzle, it is only necessary to combine the 
 letters n and A, forming lAI, which when inverted 
 
102 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 makes a passable M — and incidentally shows why 
 "eminent scholars" have failed to find a satisfactory 
 Greek derivation for the word or any historical 
 record of the supposed "martyr." 
 
 The snare of Balak, the eating of food devoted 
 to spirits, and sexual promiscuity, all refer to vari- 
 ous goetic practices, the nature of which is best left 
 unexplained. 
 
 The reward to the Conqueror, who by the daunt- 
 less energy of the will vanquishes all the evil foes 
 in his own nature and fights his way to the pure 
 region of spiritual light, is that he has imparted to 
 him the secret knowledge, the Gnosis, and is given, 
 as it were, a ballot, being named and naturalized a 
 citizen of the republic of the initiated. 
 
 Here the Logos has the semblance of Ares 
 (Mars). The corresponding vowel is O, and the 
 attribute Si/i/a/nis, "force." 
 
 Ch. n. 18-29 
 
 "To the Divinity of the Society in Thyateira 
 write : 
 
 "These [words] says the son of the God, who 
 has his eyes as a blaze of fire and his feet like the 
 liquid metal: I know your works, and your love, 
 belief, service and patience; and that your last 
 works [are to be] greater than the first ones. But 
 I have [a complaint] against you, that you tolerate 
 the woman lezabSl, who, professing to be a seeress, 
 teaches and deludes my slaves to prostitute and to 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 103 
 
 eat [food] offered to ghosts. I gave her time, that 
 she might reform; but she does not will to reform 
 from her prostitutions. Behold! I throw her down 
 on a [sick-]bed, and those committing adultery with 
 her [I shall subject] to a grievous ordeal, unless 
 they shall reform from their works, I shall slay 
 her children in the Death [-world] ; and all the So- 
 cieties shall know that / am he who searches into 
 kidneys and hearts. I shall give [awards] to each 
 of y u according to your works. But to y o u I say, 
 to the rest in Thyateira — as many as do not possess 
 this teaching, who remained guileless of knowledge 
 concerning the depths of the Adversary, as they 
 say — I do not cast on you an additional burden. 
 Nevertheless, that which you do possess, retain 
 dominion over it till I come. 
 
 "The Conqueror — who also observes my 
 works until the perfecting-period — to him I shall 
 award authority over the people, and he will rule 
 them with an iron wand (like vessels of clay they 
 are being crushed!) as / also received [authority] 
 from my father. And I shall award to him the 
 morning star. He who has an ear, let him hear 
 what the Breath is saying to the Societies. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 To this centre the Logos presents himself in his 
 aspect as Direct Cognition, the faculty of appre- 
 hending truth without the aid of inductive reason- 
 
104 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 ing; and in this aspect as the Sun, the pure intellec- 
 tual effulgence, he is not the "son of man," but is 
 the "son of the God," having the 
 all-seeing eyes of Zeus and the 
 winged feet of HermSs, thus com- 
 bining the attributes of the Divine 
 Reason and the Divine Thought. 
 
 Thyateira represents the and- 
 hata chakra, the cardiac centre. 
 ^'°^ As the liver, the organ of divina- 
 
 tion, is the reflector of the mind in the epithumetic 
 region, so the heart is the organ which in the phrS- 
 nic region serves as the reflector of the Nous, and 
 is therefore the centre of the higher psychic con- 
 sciousness. The corresponding reflector in the 
 brain is the conarium; and the generative organs, 
 the "three witnesses," or inverted analogue of the 
 higher triad, fulfil the same psychic function in 
 the lowest of the four somatic divisions; hence 
 the allusion to the "kidneys" or "loins" — an euphe- 
 mism for testes. The four virtues enumerated, love, 
 belief, service and patience, correspond to the four 
 noetic qualities as transmitted through the heart. 
 The pseudo-seeress lezabel has the name and 
 attributes of the sorceress, Ahab's wife, of mal- 
 odorous memory, in the Old Testament story. She 
 here represents the emotional, erotic sort of psy- 
 chism which is sometimes developed at orgiastic 
 "religious revivals," and which is more character- 
 istic of hysterical women than of rational human 
 beings. By this prostitution of mind and emotion 
 to the base epithumetic nature, causing moral dis- 
 integration and the dissipation of psychic energy, 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 105 
 
 mediumistic faculties are sometimes developed, 
 opening up avenues of communication with the 
 shades of the dead, the disgusting larvse to whom 
 the misguided medium quite literally offers as food 
 the elements of his own disintegrating personality. 
 
 The award to the Conqueror — if he also heeds 
 the works of the Logos, that is, observes the ad- 
 monitions of the spiritual mind — is the absolute 
 dominion over the lower faculties and forces, which 
 he rules as with a rod of iron ; and he receives the 
 morning star, which symbolizes the Divine Love 
 that heralds the coming day of full spiritual illu- 
 mination. 
 
 Here the Logos has the aspect of Helios (the 
 Sun) ; the corresponding vowel is I, and the attri- 
 butes, three in number, are Kparo?, "dominion," 
 ttXovtos, "wealth," and eix'^pi-o'TCa, "thanks" or 
 "all-graciousness," the latter epithet implying that 
 the Sun-Logos unites in himself all the graces, or 
 good qualities, of the seven planets. 
 
 Chapter hi. 1-6 
 
 "To the Divinity of the Society in Sardeis write: 
 "These [words] says he who has the seven 
 Breaths of the God and the seven stars: I know 
 your works : that you have the name that you are 
 alive, but that you are a dead man. Become awak- 
 ened [from the dead] and strengthen the remaining 
 [affections] that are on the point of dying; for I 
 have not found your works accomplished before 
 my God. Therefore, remember how you have re- 
 
106 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 ceived [this message] and heard [it] ; and observe 
 [its precepts], and reform. If, therefore, you will 
 not be awake, I shall come upon you [silently] as 
 a thief [comes] , and you will not at all know what 
 hour I shall come upon you. But you have a few 
 names in Sardeis who did not sully their garments, 
 and they shall walk with me in white [raiment] , for 
 they are deserving. 
 
 "The Conqueror — he shall thus be clothed in 
 white garments, and I shall not at all erase his name 
 from the book of life, but I shall acknowledge his 
 name before my Father and before his Divinities. 
 He who. has an ear, let him hear what the Breath is 
 saying to the Societies. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 To this Society the Logos proclaims himself in 
 his aspect as the Divine Love, the deific creative 
 energy; and here he is the syn- 
 thesis of the seven planets (stars) 
 and the seven creative forces 
 (pneumata) , thus corresponding, 
 in a way, to the First Logos, or 
 Er6s. 
 
 Sardeis represents the vishuddhi 
 ^ ^° ^^ chakra, the centre in the throat, 
 which is directly related to the lower creative cen- 
 tres, as is shown by the change of voice at the time 
 of puberty and the castrato voice of the eunuch. 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 107 
 
 The throat is also peculiarly affected by the finer 
 emotions. 
 
 This higher love is here said to have the name 
 of being alive, yet to be dead in reality; for the de- 
 votional aspirations and purer affections of human- ' 
 ity are indeed pitifully weak and moribund. It is 
 this deadness of the moral feelings that stills the 
 voice of conscience; yet at any time that conscience 
 may unexpectedly speak out, bringing remorse and 
 sorrow to him whom the Self has thus suddenly 
 aroused, coming upon him silently, like a thief in 
 the night. This simile is repeated in xvi. 15, with 
 almost the same wording. 
 
 The cify of Sardeis was a centre of Venus-wor- 
 ship, having a temple of Astart6. 
 
 The reward to the Conqueror is perfect purity; 
 and the auric color corresponding to this chakra 
 (its esoteric "name") will remain in the aureola 
 (the book of life) , or "glory" ; emotion becoming 
 transmuted into the eternal gladness. 
 
 In this aspect the Logos is Aphfodite (Venus) , 
 the Goddess of Love; it is only in this female aspect 
 that the Logos is the creative "Word" (in one sense 
 the occult potency of sound) , and therefore identi- 
 cal with Vach, "speech," who is also Sarasvatt 
 (Venus) in Hindu mythology. The corresponding 
 vowel is H, and the attributes are evXoyia, "invoca- 
 tion," and ^aa-iXeCa, "realm," or "ruling." 
 
 Ch. III. -7-13 
 
 "To the Divinity of the Society in Philadelpheia 
 write : 
 
108 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 "These [words] says he who is Holy, who is 
 True, who has David's key, who opens and no one 
 shall shut, who shuts and no one opens: Behold! 
 . I have swung open before you a door which no one 
 can shut. For [I know] that you have a little 
 force; and you observed my arcane doctrine, and 
 did not abjure my name. Behold! I am giving 
 [deliverance to some of you] from among the 
 assembly of the Adversary [composed] of those 
 professing to be loudaians — and they are not, but 
 are lying. Behold! I shall cause them to come and 
 make obeisance before your feet, and to know that 
 / have graciously received you. Because you 
 guarded the arcane doctrine of my patience, / also 
 shall guard you from the [first] hour of that proba- 
 tion which is about to come upon the entire home- 
 land, to put to the proof those who are dwelling 
 upon the earth. Behold! I am coming speedily. 
 Retain a firm grasp on the [steadfast virtue] which 
 you possess, so that no one may carry off your 
 crown. 
 
 "The Conqueror — I shall make him a pillar in 
 the adytum of my God, and never more shall' he go 
 outside of it; and I shall write on him the name of 
 my God, and the name of the city of my God, the 
 new Hierousalem, which is coming down out of the 
 sky from my God; and [I shall write on him] my 
 new name. He who has an ear, let him hear what 
 the Breath is saying to the Societies. 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 109 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 Here the Logos presents the aspect of the Divine 
 Thought, the pure and unmixed nature of intel- 
 lect, or the unrefracted light of the 
 Nous — Thought not differentiated 
 into thoughts, but considered as the 
 energizing principle of Mind, and 
 the complement of the energizing 
 principle of Love. "The Holy" 
 and "the True" are identical with 
 "the Good" and "the True" of ""'"'^' 
 Plato, while the correlated AphroditS-aspect is "the 
 Beautiful." 
 
 According to Kabalistic mysticism, ADaM stands 
 for Adam, David and Messias, making the Mes- 
 sias the reincarnation of Adam and of David : these 
 represent three stages in man's life-cycle, Adam 
 being the primeval state of childlike innocence, 
 David the adolescence in which good and evil strug- 
 gle for the mastery, and ISsous (Messias) the stage 
 of spiritual maturity. David, for all his vileness 
 and evil deeds, had the virile depth of feeling, philo- 
 sophic breadth of mind and poetic insight that give 
 promise of the spiritual man; and these were his 
 "key" to the door giving entrance to the spiritual 
 consciousness. Compare with this xxii. 16 and 
 commentary. V 
 
 Philadelpheia stands for the djfid chakra, the 
 centre at the forehead. This centre is the point of 
 divergence of the auric light, the color of which 
 reveals infallibly the spiritual status of each indi- 
 vidual. Thus, if the light radiating from it is / 
 
110 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 golden-yellow, it is the "name" of the Sun; if dull 
 red or green, it is the "brand of the Beast." 
 
 The reward of the Conqueror is that he is to be- 
 come a sustaining power in the spiritual world, no 
 more to reincarnate, but to abide in the eternal city, 
 the solar body. 
 
 The aspect of the Logos here is that of Hermes 
 (Mercury) , the God of Occult Wisdom. The corre- 
 sponding vowel is E, and the attributes are TLfitj 
 "honor," and a-oynipia, "deliverance." 
 
 Ch. m. 14-22 
 
 "To the Divinity of the Society in Laodikeia 
 write : 
 
 "These [words] says the Amen, the witness be-' 
 lievable and true, the origin of the God's organic 
 world: I know your works, that you are neither 
 cold nor hot. I would that you were cold or hot! 
 So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, 
 I am on the point of vomiting you from my mouth. 
 Because you say, *I am rich, I have become rich, 
 and / have lack of nothing,' and do not know that 
 you are the worn-out, pitiable, beggarly, blind and 
 naked one, I advise you to buy from me gold tried 
 by fire — so that you may be rich — and white gar- 
 ments — so that you may clothe yourself, and the 
 shame of your nakedness not be apparent — and 
 eyesalve to anoint your eyes — so that you may see. 
 As many as / love, I confute and instruct. There- 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 111 
 
 fore be emulous and reform. Behold ! I am stand- 
 ing at the door and gently tapping. If any one 
 hears my voice and opens the door, I shall visit him ; 
 and I shall dine with him, and he with me. 
 
 "The Conqueror — I shall award to him to be 
 seated with me on my throne, as / also conquered 
 and was seated with my father on his throne. He 
 who has an ear, let him hear what the Breath is 
 saying to the Societies." 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 To this Society the Logos announces himself as 
 the Divine Substance, ArchS, from which orig- 
 inate all the elements, both subtile 
 and gross, including those forms of 
 matter which the modern physicist 
 classifies as "forces." 
 
 Laodikeia represents the sahas- 
 rdra chdkra, the atrophied "un- 
 paired eye." Hence the allusion to „ ,. . 
 
 . T^i . jt 1 ij Selene 
 
 the Phrygian eyesalve. 
 
 Neither cold nor hot, that is, having neither the 
 dispassionate reason nor the devotional fervor, but 
 lukewarm and nauseating to the spiritual mind, the 
 lower mind yet prides itself on its supposed wealth 
 of intellectual attainments ; yet, without the gold of 
 spiritual refinement and the white garments of pu- 
 rity, these attainments are meagre and unlovely. 
 
 The reward of the Conqueror is to share the 
 throne of the God, to become one with his own 
 highest Self. 
 
112 
 
 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 Here the Logos has the semblance of Sel8nS (the 
 Moon) , the "white-armed" Goddess who rules the 
 four seasons and the waters. The corresponding 
 vowel is A; and the attributes are Sofa, "glory," 
 and i^ovcrCa, "authority." 
 
 Tabulated, with their correspondences, the seven 
 aspects of the Logos are as follows : 
 
 Correspon- 
 dences 
 
 Planets 
 
 AND 
 
 Vowels 
 
 Aspects 
 
 Attributes 
 
 Rewards to Con- 
 queror 
 
 Generative 
 Centres. 
 (Earth.) 
 
 1? 
 (0)) 
 
 o 
 
 Memory. 
 
 Strength. 
 
 Continuity of Con- 
 sciousness. 
 (Tree of Life.) 
 
 Navel. 
 (Sea.) 
 
 % 
 (5) 
 
 T 
 
 Reason. 
 
 Skill. 
 
 True Being. 
 (Crown of Life.) 
 
 Heart. 
 
 (Rivers and 
 
 Springs.) 
 
 (?) 
 
 
 
 Will. 
 
 Force. 
 
 Spiritual Power and 
 
 Knowledge. 
 
 (Occult Manna and 
 
 Voting-pebble.) 
 
 Head. 
 (Sky.) 
 
 O 
 
 I 
 
 Direct 
 Cognition. 
 
 Dominion. 
 Wealth. 
 Thanks. 
 
 Dominion over All 
 
 Faculties. 
 
 (Iron'Wand.) 
 
 Sympathetic 
 Nervous 
 System. 
 
 ? 
 
 H 
 
 Divine 
 Love. 
 
 Praise. 
 Ruling. 
 
 Eternal Bliss. 
 (Book of Life.) 
 
 Cerebro- 
 spinal 
 System. 
 
 § 
 
 E 
 
 Divine 
 Thought. 
 
 Honor. 
 Deliverance. 
 
 Emancipation from 
 
 Reincarnation. 
 (Pillar of Adytum.) 
 
 Aura. 
 
 a> 
 
 A 
 
 Divine 
 Substance. 
 
 Glory. 
 Authority. 
 
 The Solar Body. 
 (Throne of the God.) 
 
 In the seven benedictions contained in the Apoca- 
 lypse twelve attributes are given; of these three 
 are assigned to the sun, two to each of the members 
 of the higher triad, and one to each of the lower. 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 
 
 113 
 
 When the two triads (the sun being always the cen- 
 tral planet) are paralleled, the result is a fourfold 
 system, in which the Christos-faculty, episteme, 
 stands alone, and the other faculties are paired, as 
 shown in the following table: 
 
 
 Planets 
 
 Faculties 
 
 Attributes 
 
 1. 
 
 Helios (Sun). 
 
 Direct Cognition. 
 
 Dominion. 
 Wealth. Thanks. 
 
 2. 
 
 Ares (Mars). 
 Aphrodite (Venus). 
 
 Will. 
 Love. 
 
 Force. Praise. 
 Ruling. 
 
 3. 
 
 Zeus (Jupiter). 
 HermSs (Mercury). 
 
 Reason. 
 Thought. 
 
 Skill. Honor. 
 Deliverance. 
 
 4. 
 
 Kronos (Saturn). 
 SeienS (Moon). 
 
 Memory. 
 Substance. 
 
 strength. Glory. 
 Authority. 
 
 Chapter iv. 1-3 
 
 After these [things] I saw; and. Behold! a door 
 opened in the sky ; and it was that first voice which 
 I [now] heard, like a trumpet-call speaking to me, 
 [the enthroned God] saying : 
 
 "Come up hither, and I shall make known to you 
 the [perfections] which must be attained here- 
 after." 
 
 Immediately I came to be in the Breath [-trance] . 
 Behold! a throne was placed in the sky, and on the 
 throne [a God] was seated. The enthroned [God] 
 was in appearance like an opal and a carnelian, and 
 a rainbow encircled the throne, in appearance like 
 an aqua-marine. 
 
114 . THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 This trumpet-like voice is that of the First Logos, 
 the Enthroned Eternal (ch. i. 8), and not that of 
 the Planetary Logos who sent the messages to the 
 seven Societies. 
 
 The names of the precious stones in the Greek 
 are somewhat uncertain ; but here it is obvious from 
 the context that the lao-Triswas what is 'now called 
 the opal, and the a-fj,dpaySo^ the aqua-marine, or 
 blue beryl. 
 
 The somatic divisions in the Apocalypse agree 
 with the symbolism of the Jewish tabernacle, except 
 that the latter was semi-exoteric, following the 
 threefold system. Thus Josephus says of the taber- 
 nacle and its arrangements : "They represent in some 
 sort the universe. For out of the three portions into 
 which the length of the tabernacle is divided, the 
 two into which the sacrificing priests are allowed to 
 enter represent the Earth and the Sea, which are 
 open to everyone, and the third portion, which is 
 inaccessible to them, is like the Sky, which is re- 
 served for God, because it is his dwelling-place." 
 
 Ch. IV. 4-8 
 
 Encircling the throne were twenty-four thrones, 
 and on the thrones [I saw] twenty-four Ancients 
 seated, arrayed in white garments, and [wearing] 
 on their heads golden crowns. From the throne 
 went out lightnings, thunders and voices; and 
 [there were] seven lamps of fire burning before the 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 115 
 
 throne, which are the seven Breaths of the God. 
 Before the throne [was a sheen] as a glassy sea, 
 Hke crystal. In the middle of the throne and in a 
 circle afeout the throne [were] four Beings, full of 
 eyes before and behind. The first Being was like 
 a Lion; the second Being was like a young Bull; 
 the third Being had the face of a Man; and the 
 fourth Being was like a flying Eagle. The four 
 Beings, having each one of them six wings, are full 
 of eyes round about and within; and ceaselessly 
 day and night they keep saying : 
 
 "Holy, holy, holy [is] the Master-God, the AU- 
 Dominator, who was, who [for ever] is, and who is 
 coming!" 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The four Beings, or four operative Powers of 
 the Logos, correspond to the four great planes of 
 existence and, therefore, also to the four manteias, 
 or states of seership, on each of those planes. 
 (When I6ann6s speaks of being "in the Breath" 
 he uses the word pneuma in place of manteia, 
 "trance," as the latter word would be too explicit 
 for allegorical purposes.) Each of these four states 
 of seership has a subjective and an objective phase 
 on the plane to which it relates; and this is sym- 
 I bolized by the many exterior and interior eyes of 
 the Beings. As already explained, the Nous has 
 its "reflector" in each of the four somatic divisions. 
 As macrocosmic powers, the four Beings are mysti- 
 cally the four quarters of the zodiac, the four arms. 
 
116 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 SO to say, of the .sun ; and as solar forces each is a 
 septenate, radiating from a focal point into the six 
 directions of space. Similarly, the time-periods are 
 divided into fourths, as the year, which has four 
 seasons, each containing three months, these being 
 again subdivided into bright and dark fortnights, 
 making twenty-four such periods, corresponding to 
 the twenty-four hours of the day. The forces which, 
 whether in the macrocosm or the microcosm, govern 
 successively these various time-periods are the 
 twenty-four "very old men" (presbyteroi) , the 
 Ancients, and they are identical with the twenty- 
 four wings of the four Beings. 
 
 The glassy sea is the ether specialized in the 
 brain; the aura of the chakras being represented by 
 the seven fire-lamps or Breaths. 
 
 Ch. IV. 9-1 1 
 
 And as often as the Beings gave glory, honor 
 and thanks to the [God] seated on the throne, to 
 him who lives throughout the aeons of the aeons, the 
 twenty-four Ancients kept falling down [succes- 
 sively] in front of the [God] seated on the throne, 
 worshipping him who lives throughout the £ons of 
 the aeons, and letting fall their crowns in front of 
 the throne, saying : 
 
 "Worthy thou art, our Master and our God, to 
 receive the glory, the honor and the force; for thou 
 didst bring into existence the universe, and through 
 thy will it exists and was established." 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 117 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The forces preside in turn over the time-periods ; 
 thus in the human aura a tattva rules each hour, its 
 particular psychic color predominating in the aura 
 during that time. Hence the Ancients are repre- 
 sented as worshipping before the throne, each mak- 
 ing obeisance in turn and throwing down his crown, 
 giving over his rule to the next. 
 
 Chapter V. l, 2 
 
 I saw on the right hand of the [God] seated on 
 the throne a scroll, written inside and on the back, 
 securely sealed with seven seals. And I saw a 
 strong Divinity proclaiming with a great voice : 
 
 "Who is worthy to open the scroll and force open 
 its seals?" 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The scroll is a mysterious document which it has 
 taken the God aeons to write, a Bible which, when 
 rightly read, discloses cosmic and divine mysteries. 
 It is simply the human body, and its seals are the 
 force-centres wherein radiates the formative force 
 of the Logos. These seals are the same as the seven 
 Societies and the lampstands. The expression 
 "written inside and on the back" refers to the cere- 
 bro-spinal axis and the great sympathetic system. 
 
 The "strong Divinity," as shown by the attribu- 
 tive adjective, is Kronos, the God of Time, who in 
 mythology is the oldest of the twelve great Gods. 
 
118 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 CH. V. 3-5 
 
 No one — in the sky, on the earth, or under the 
 earth — ^was able to open the scroll, or [even] to see 
 it. I wept much because no worthy one was found 
 to open the scroll, or [even] to see it! One of the 
 Ancients says to me : 
 
 "Do not weep. Behold ! the Lion, he of the tribe 
 of Juda, the root of David, has conquered : [he is 
 worthy] to open the scroll and its seven seals." 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 Here loannes indulges in one of the sarcastic 
 hyperboles that are not infrequent in his Evangel. 
 Those unable to open the chakras are usually igno- 
 rant of the fact that the body is the lyre of Apollo, 
 the instrument of the Sun-Logos, and therefore do 
 not see it in its real nature. Yet in his day spiritual 
 blindness probably was less prevalent than in the 
 present age, applied to which his statement becomes 
 more nearly literal than hyperbolic. 
 
 The Lion is, of course, Leo, which is also the 
 sign of Juda. The "root" of man is his spiritual 
 Self; for the mystical "tree of life," man, is the in- 
 verted ashvattha tree, which has its roots in the 
 heavens and its branches on the earth: therefore 
 "the root of David" is David reincarnated. 
 
 Ch. v. 6, 7 
 
 I saw; and, Behold! in the midst of the throne 
 and the four Beings, and in the midst of the An- 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 119 
 
 cients, there was a Lamb standing, as if it had been 
 sacrificed, having seven horns and seven eyes, 
 which are the seven Breaths of the God, sent off 
 into all the earth. He came — he has taken [the 
 scroll] from the right hand of [the God] seated on 
 the throne ! 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The Lamb is a variant of the Ram, Aries; and 
 the "Lamb" here is identical with the "Lion of the 
 tribe of Juda," since the sign Leo is the sole domi- 
 cile of the Sun, and Aries is the place of his highest 
 exaltation. Microcosmically, Leo corresponds to 
 the sahasrdra chakra, the "third eye," and Aries 
 to the nimbus, or cerebral radiance. This Lamb is 
 the incarnated Nous, the intellectual Sun, which 
 may be regarded as the Third Logos — man as he is 
 on earth. The horns and eyes are the seven noetic 
 powers of action and the seven noetic perceptive 
 faculties. Thus the Lamb represents the neophyte, 
 whose inner nature is awakening, and who is about 
 to undergo the perfecting, or initiatory, ordeals. 
 
 Ch. v. 8-10 
 
 When he had taken the scroll, the four Beings 
 and the twenty-four Ancients fell down in front of 
 the Lamb, having each a lyre and a golden libation- 
 saucer full of incense-offerings, which are the pray- 
 ers of the devotees. And they chanted a new lyric, 
 saying: 
 
120 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 "Worthy art thou to take the scroll and to open 
 its seals ; for thou wast sacrificed, and didst buy for 
 the God with thy blood [the good qualities] from 
 every tribe, tongue, nation and people, and didst 
 make them [to be] a realm and sacrificers to our 
 God; and they are ruling on the earth." 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 Each of the Ancients, as here described, has a 
 saucer, the phiaW, a discous cup used in pouring 
 out drink-offerings to the Gods, and also, like 
 Apollo, has a lyre. The phiale symbolizes the 
 chakra ("disc"), or ganglion, and the lyre the 
 nerve-fibres connected with it. Each chakra has 
 its distinctive quality, color, sound and incense- 
 odor, all of which are perceivable by the psychic 
 sei;ises. The four symbols employed in the four 
 conquests, the seal, the trumpet, the sickle and the 
 libation-saucer, appropriately represent the chakras. 
 
 The neophyte is worthy to take control of the 
 marvellous psychic mechanism of the body, to 
 "conquer" its chakras, tightening its slack organ- 
 ism till it is tense and vibrant as a lyre in the hands 
 of a musician, because he has in many incarnations, 
 in every nation and in many conditions of life, 
 acquired the nobler characteristics of each and 
 moulded them into a character — a kingdom, truly, 
 — in which they are the ruling elements. 
 
 The chorus of praise by the four Beings and the 
 twenty-four Ancients is the first of the seven chor- 
 uses in the drama. 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 121 
 
 Ch. V. 11-14 
 
 I saw; and I heard a voice of many Divinities 
 around the throne, the Beings and the Ancients — 
 there were myriads of myriads, — saying with a 
 great voice : 
 
 "Worthy is the sacrificed Lamb to receive the 
 force, wealth, skill, strength, honor, glory and 
 praise." 
 
 Every existent being which is in the sky, on the 
 earth, under the earth, and on the sea — the universe 
 summed up in them — I heard saying : 
 
 "To the [God] seated on the throne, and to the 
 Lamb, be the praise, the honor, the glory and the 
 dominion throughout the aeons of the aeons!" 
 
 And the four Beings said "Amen." And the 
 twenty-four Ancients fell down and worshipped 
 [the God]. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The three paeans chanted in praise of the Con- 
 queror and his God are in accordance with the 
 Greek custom of chanting paeans to Apollo, the 
 Sun-God, before and after battle or before any sol- 
 emn undertaking; and they are very appropriate 
 here, since the Conqueror, the Lion-Lamb, stands 
 for the Nous, or microcosmic Sun, and having taken 
 the scroll he is about to undergo the ordeals of ini- 
 tiation; and the word lesous, which is but a mys- 
 tery-name for the Nous, has a most suspicious 
 resemblance to l8ios, the epithet applied to Apollo 
 
122 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 because he was invoked in the paeans by the reite- 
 rated cry "le," hailing him as the "Savior." l8sous 
 is evidently l6ios raised to 888, the Gnostic Ogdoad 
 (the manifested Logos) in triune form. 
 
 The Apocalypse follows the style of the Greek 
 tragedies in employing choruses to divide the drama 
 into acts. Of these three choral songs, the first is 
 chanted by the Beings and the Ancients, and in the 
 second the lesser Divinities join in ; both these paeans 
 being in praise of the sacrificial Lamb; while the 
 third song is a general chorus by all the powers and 
 potencies of the microcosmic universe in praise of 
 the Lamb and the enthroned God. The first paean 
 is merely explanatory, telling why the neophyte is 
 worthy to open the seals; the second is an evoca- 
 tion of the potencies of the seven planets; and the 
 third is addressed to the four higher planets only. 
 All this means simply that the practical student of 
 the sacred science, the neophyte, is here engaged 
 in the«mystic meditation: with exalted mind and 
 feeling he evokes the parakWtos in its active form as 
 the speirSma, the serpent- force that opens the seven 
 planetary centres, or "seven seals." 
 
 Chapter VL 1, 2 
 
 I saw, when the Lamb opened one of the seven 
 seals, and I heard one of the four Beings saying 
 as with a voice of thunder: 
 
 "Come!" 
 
 I saw; and. Behold! a white horse [came out]. 
 The [Divinity] who was riding him had a bow; to 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 
 
 123 
 
 him was given a crown, and he came forth a con- 
 queror, and that he might keep on conquering. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 This seal is the adhishthdna chakra, the prostatic, 
 where the positive and negative currents start. It 
 corresponds to Sagittarius; henCe 
 its rider, or regent, is the Bowman. 
 In this sign the Romans placed 
 Diana, the Greek L6t6is, Apollo's 
 sister, who was sometimes pictured 
 as a bearded Goddess; together 
 they represent the male-female or 
 androgynous man. This chakra 
 belongs to the lowest of the somatic divisions ; yet, 
 as the white horse, that division outranks the 
 , others, and the Bowman, Apollo-Diana, is the Con- 
 queror himself, who is here represented as starting 
 out on his conquests, and who reappears in triumph 
 in the closing scene of the drama. For the Logos, 
 as mirrored in the material world, is inverted. 
 
 Seal 
 
 Ch. VI. 3, 4 
 
 When he opened the second seal, I heard the sec- 
 ond Being saying : 
 
 "Come!" 
 
 Another horse, fiery-red, came out. To the 
 [Divinity] who was riding him [authority] was 
 given to take away peace from the earth — ^that 
 
124 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 [men] should slaughter one another — and to him 
 was given a great sword. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 This seal is the epigastric chakra, and its sign is 
 Scorpio, the house of Mars, the War-God. Scorpio 
 is usually, but inaccurately, given as corresponding 
 to the generative centres; but the real seat of the 
 epithumetic nature is the solar plexus. The red 
 horse represents the abdominal somatic division, 
 and its rider, or regent, who is passion personified, 
 appears later in the drama in the role of the red 
 Dragon, who is identified with Satan and Diabolos, 
 the "Devil." 
 
 Ch. vl 5, 6 
 
 When he opened the third seal, I heard the third 
 Being saying: 
 
 "Come!" 
 
 I saw; and, Behold! a black horse [came out]. 
 The [Divinity] who was riding him had a balance 
 in his hand. I heard as it were a voice in the midst 
 of the four Beings saying : 
 
 "A ration of wheat for a denarius, and three ra- 
 tions of barley for a denarius — and do scant justice 
 to the olive-oil and the wine!" 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 Here it is the cardiac chakra that is opened; it 
 corresponds to Libra, and the regent of this somatic 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 125 
 
 division is the Weigher, the discursive lower mind. 
 Although no actual thinking process takes place in 
 the heart, a distinction is drawn between the spir- 
 itual mind, or pure intellection, and the unspiritual 
 mind, or that portion of the intellectual nature 
 which is tainted by psychic emotions and carnal 
 desires, or, in other words, between the mind that 
 reflects the light which comes from above, from the 
 Nous, and the mind that absorbs the influences that 
 come from below, from the animal nature. This 
 lower intellectual sphere may include the greatest 
 culture, with admirable attainments in scientific re- 
 search and in the acquisition of knowledge, along 
 conventional lines, yet with little 05 no spiritual in- 
 sight or philosophic depth of thought; hence it is 
 depicted in the allegory as a semi-famine, a scarcity 
 of rations. The parsimonious Weigher who rides 
 the black horse appears later in the drama as the 
 Beast, the marine monster in whom fanciful the- 
 ology sees the Anti-Christ. 
 
 Ch. VI. 7, 8 
 
 When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice 
 of the fourth Being saying : 
 
 "Come!" 
 
 I saw; and. Behold! a dun horse [came out]. 
 The [Divinity] who was riding him — his name was 
 Death, and the Unseen went along with him. To 
 them was given authority over the fourth of the 
 earth, to kill with sword, famine and death, and by 
 the wild beasts of the earth. 
 
126 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The laryngeal chakra is the highest of the ones 
 belonging strictly to the sympathetic system, the 
 ones above it being in the brain. It is here given 
 as the regent of the highest of the somatic divisions, 
 the "sky," or rather the lower sky, for the cerebral 
 region is termed in the Apocalypse the mid-sky, or 
 zenith, as being the abode of the God. Plato, in the 
 Phaidros, employs in his allegory two horses, an- 
 swering to the intellectual and the epithumetic na- 
 tures, the Nous being the charioteer; but usually the 
 chariot of the Sun was pictured with four horses. 
 
 The vocal apparatus is, mystically, the creative 
 organ of the Logos ; and for this and other reasons 
 the white and the dun horses are given with their 
 attributes interchanged. The dun horse represents 
 the lowest of the somatic divisions; and as sex 
 exists only in the physical and psychic worlds, the 
 two. Death and Hades (standing for the generative 
 principle on the two planes) are his riders, who slay 
 with sword, famine, materialism and animal pas- 
 sions. They reappear later in the form of the two- 
 horned bogus Lamb, who is called the Pseudo-Seer. 
 
 Ch. vl 9-1 1 
 
 When he opened the fifth seal, I saw underneath 
 the altar the souls of those who had been sacrificed 
 because of the arcane doctrine of the God, and be- 
 cause of the evidence which they had. They cried 
 out with a great voice, saying : 
 
THE INITIATION OF JOANNES 127 
 
 "How long, O thou the Supreme, the Holy and 
 the True, dost thou fail to judge and avenge our 
 blood upon those who dwell on the earth?" 
 
 White robes were given them severally, and it 
 was said to them that they should keep still yet a 
 little time, until their fellow-slaves and also their 
 brothers, who would be killed even as they were, 
 should have finished [their course]. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The fifth seal corresponds to the sign Cancer and 
 the djM chakra, or cavernous plexus, which latter 
 is closely connected with the pituitary body, the 
 memhrum virile, so to say, of the brain. The atro- 
 phied ("sacrificed") brain-centres are partially 
 aroused by the speirema at this stage; but they are 
 suppressed until the other centres (their "bro- 
 thefs") have all been brought into action and then 
 "killed," that is, placed in abeyance while the cere- 
 bral centres are being awakened. They receive 
 "white robes," however, for at this centre the cur- 
 rents bifurcate and their light suffuses the brain. 
 
 During the cycle of reincarnation, all the chakras ' 
 have been slain by the gross elements of the ma- 
 terial, sensuous life; yet they retain the "evidence" 
 of things spiritual. 
 
 Although Leo precedes Cancer, the order in 
 which the chakras are awakened is different; for 
 Capricorn and Leo belong rather to the spinal axis 
 than to the sympathetic system, and are the two 
 poles of the former. 
 
128 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 CH. VL 12-17 
 
 I saw when he opened the sixth seal; and, Be- 
 hold! there came to be a great earthquake; the sun 
 became dark as a sack [woven of camel's] hair; 
 the moon became as blood, and the stars of the sky- 
 fell to the earth, as a fig-tree drops her first-crop figs 
 when shaken by a violent wind. The sky was re- 
 moved like a scroll being rolled up; and every 
 mountain and island — they were moved from their 
 places ! The rulers of the earth, the very great, the 
 commanders, the rich, and the mighty, and every 
 slave and freeman, hid themselves in the caves and 
 among the crags of the mountains; and they kept 
 saying to the mountains and the crags : 
 
 "Fall on us and hide us from the face of the 
 [God] seated on the throne and from the passion of 
 the Lamb ! For the great day of his passion "has 
 come, and who can stand firm?" 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 This sixth seal is the mulddhdra chakra, which 
 lies at the base of the spinal cord and is the starting- 
 point of the central current, the sushumnd, the re- 
 generative force, here called the orge (fecundating 
 energy) of the "Lamb," the Nous. Upon the out- 
 pouring of this fiery electric force into the brain, the 
 mind becomes blank and the novice is conscious 
 only of blind terror; this is allegorized as the dark- 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 129 
 
 ening of the sun (the mind) , the falling of the stars 
 (the thoughts) , the vanishing of the sky (the con- 
 cept of space) , and the panic of the earth-dwellers 
 (the lower forces and faculties) . 
 
 Chapter VII. 1-3 
 
 After these [ordeals] I saw four Divinities stand- 
 ing at the four corners of the earth, dominating the 
 four winds of the earth so that no wind should blow 
 on the earth or the sea, or on any tree. And I saw 
 another [dominant] Divinity ascend from the birth- 
 place of the sun, having the signet-ring of the living 
 God; and he cried out with a great voice to the four 
 Divinities to whom [authority] was given to punish 
 the earth and the sea, saying: 
 
 "Do not punish the earth, the sea or the trees till 
 we shall have sealed [with his signet-ring] the 
 slaves of our God on their foreheads." 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 These five Divinities are the noetic regents of the 
 five prdnas, the solar life-winds. They are repre- 
 sented in the zodiac by the signs Gemini, Taurus, 
 Aries, Pisces and Aquarius, with their respective 
 planets. The four who guard the quarters are the 
 four powers of the Nous ; and the fifth, who rises 
 up from the sun's place of birth (anaiole) , is the 
 representative of the Nous himself, and therefore 
 bears the signet of the Life-God. They correspond 
 
130 ■ THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 to the "five bright powers" of the Upanishads, four 
 of which are regents of the four directions of space, 
 while the fifth "goes upward to immortality." It 
 is these noetic forces that record in the aura of man 
 (his "scroll of life") his every thought and deed; 
 and, as these auric impressions, like phonographic 
 records, automatically reproduce the original 
 thoughts and emotions whenever the forces again 
 act upon them, they thus produce an almost endless 
 concatenation of cause and effect, of retributive 
 action. Therefore, by awakening the occult forces 
 of his nature the neophyte invokes this iron law of 
 retribution, and all the good and evil elements of 
 his nature are arrayed against each other for the 
 final conflict. In the allegory the lower principles 
 are to be chastised, and the higher ones are to be 
 given the seal of the God's approval. 
 
 Ch. vn. 4-8 
 
 I heard the number of those who were sealed, 
 one hundred and forty-four thousand, sealed out of 
 all the tribes of the children of Israel : of the tribe 
 of Juda were sealed twelve thousand; of the tribe 
 of Reuben, twelve thousand; of the tribe of Gad, 
 twelve thousand; of the tribe of Asher, twelve thou- 
 sand; of the tribe of Naphtali, twelve thousand; of 
 the tribe of Manasseh, twelve thousand; of the 
 tribe of Simeon, twelve thousand; of the tribe of 
 Levi, twelve thousand; of the tribe of Issachar, 
 twelve thousand; of the tribe of Zebulon, twelve 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 131 
 
 thousand; of the tribe of Joseph, twelve thousand; 
 and of the tribe of Benjamin, twelve thousand. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The tribes stand for the twelve signs of the 
 zodiac, Juda for Leo, Reuben for Aquarius, Gad 
 for Aries, etc. ; but as here given by loannes, Joseph 
 is substituted for Ephraim, or Taurus ; and Manas- 
 seh, Joseph's firstborn son, replaces Dan, who is 
 Scorpio. This omission of Dan, with the substitu- 
 tions by which Scorpio is shown to be derived from 
 Taurus, is significant; for Taurus is the symbol of 
 celestial creative force, and Scorpio that of the 
 generative function. The Divinities charged with 
 the seven scourges are, astronomically, the seven 
 Pleiades, a star-group in the constellation Taurus. 
 There was a Jewish tradition that from the tribe of 
 Dan was to come the Anti-Messias; hence the sub- 
 stitution of the paranatellon Aquila for Scorpio. 
 
 Ch. VII. 9-12 
 
 After these [things] I saw; and, Behold! a vast 
 multitude, which no one could count, from among 
 every people, and of [all] tribes, nations and 
 tongues, [were] standing before the throne and 
 before the Lamb, wearing white robes and [carry- 
 ing] palm-branches in their hands. They kept cry- 
 iqg out with a great voice, saying : 
 
 "The deliverance is to the [Master] seated on 
 the throne of our God, and to the Lamb!" 
 
132 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 All the Divinities were standing in a circle about 
 the throne, the Ancients and the four Beings ; they 
 fell on their faces in front of the throne, and wor- 
 shipped the God, saying : 
 
 "Amen. The praise, the glory, the skill, the 
 thanks, the honor, the force and the strength be to 
 our God throughout the aeons of the aeons ! Amen." 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 This is the third of the seven choruses ; the verse, 
 or pjean of praise, is chanted by the liberated ele- 
 ments, and the chorus by the ruling powers of ttte 
 three worlds — the Beings, Ancients and Divinities 
 forming three concentric circles about the throne, 
 and thus representing as many planes of manifes- 
 tation. In the benediction the attributes of all the 
 seven planets are ascribed to the Sun-God. 
 
 Ch. vil 13-17 
 
 One of the Ancients responded, saying to me : 
 
 "These who are wearing the white robes — ^who 
 are they, and whence did they come?" 
 
 I said to him : 
 
 "My Master, you know." 
 
 He said to me: 
 
 "These are the [Conquerors] coming out of the 
 great ordeal. They washed their robes and bleached 
 them in the Lamb's blood. Because of this, they are 
 before the throne of the God; and they are serving 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 133 
 
 him day and night in his adytum, and the [Master] 
 seated on the throne will spread his tent over them. 
 They will hunger no more, thirst no more ; neither 
 will [the rays of] the sun beat down on them, nor 
 any scorching heat. For the Lamb who is in the 
 middle of the throne will shepherd them and guide 
 them to springs of waters of life, and the God will 
 wipe away every tear from their eyes." 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The great ordeal of the soul, or Logos, is its in- 
 carceration in the carnal body, not merely for the 
 term of one short lifetime, but during a long series 
 of incarnations throughout the seons of generation; 
 but the Logos has its own mighty purpose in thus 
 crucifying itself by assuming the human form, de- 
 scending into the spheres of generation and passing 
 through the vast "cycle of necessity" : it builds up 
 for itself, out of the elements of the lower worlds, 
 an outer self, a being formed of the "dust of the 
 earth," the refuse of past cycles, yet having within 
 it the breath of the God; and then by unremitting 
 toil throughout the aeons it refines and transmutes 
 the elements of this creature (who is the carnal, 
 animal-human man) until it redeems it, and it be- 
 comes one with the divine individuality. These 
 purified and redeemed principles of the lower self 
 are the countless host who, now that the aspirant 
 has entered upon the cycle of initiation, the final 
 "perfecting" or "finishing" labor, are coming out 
 of "the great ordeal," singing paeans of praise to 
 
134 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 the sacrificial Lamb, the Crucified, and to the en- 
 throned Self, the Eternal, who is beyond change 
 and time, and therefore "uncrucified." 
 
 Chapter viil 1-6 
 
 When he opened the seventh seal, there came to 
 be silence in the sky for about half an hour. 
 
 I saw the seven Divinities who stand before the 
 God. To them were given seven trumpets. Came 
 another Divinity and stationed himself above the 
 altar, having a golden censer; and to him was given 
 much incense, that he might offer it, with the 
 prayers of all the devotees, upon the golden altar in 
 front of the throne. The smoke of the incense, 
 with the prayers of the devotees, went up in front 
 of the God out of the Divinity's hand. The Divinity 
 took the censer and filled it with the fire of the 
 altar, and cast [the fire] into the earth : there came 
 to be voices, thunders, lightnings and an earth- 
 quake. The seven Divinities having the seven 
 trumpets made themselves ready to give the trum- 
 pet-calls. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The seventh seal is the sahasrdra chakra, to 
 which corresponds the sign Leo, the sole domicile 
 of the Sun. This chakra, the conarium, or pineal 
 body, is the "third eye" of the seer — that, and much 
 more. It is the focal point of all the forces of the 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 135 
 
 nervous system and of the aura ; here they come to 
 an equilibrium, and here reigns the mystic Silence. 
 During the meditation, as each chakra is awakened 
 the neophyte sees its corresponding psychic color; 
 and at this seventh centre the colors intermingle as 
 in an opal, with an incessant glittering of white 
 light playing as on the facets of a diamond. The 
 psychic senses of smell and hearing begin to be 
 aroused, so that odors as of incense become per- 
 ceptible, and mysterious sounds are heard; then 
 with a shock that loannSs here compares to an 
 earthquake the forces start upon the circuit of the 
 seven brain-centres, each of which when the current 
 reaches it produces a vibrant sound in the aura, 
 the "trumpet-call" of the allegory. 
 
 The sounding of the trumpets follows the exact 
 order of the opening of the seals ; and the two series 
 correspond throughout, the zodiacal signs being re- 
 peated as related to the brain-centres. 
 
 Ch. VIII. 7 
 
 The first [Divinity] gave the trumpet-call. There 
 came to be hail and fire, mixed with blood; they 
 were cast into the earth, and the third of the earth 
 was burnt up, the third of the trees was burnt up, 
 and all fresh grass was burnt up. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 Of the four planes of consciousness, the fourth, 
 the physical, was stilled, or temporarily suppressed. 
 
136 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 by the opening of the "seals," and the psychic 
 became active; now, by the awakening of the noetic 
 centres the psychic consciousness — "the 
 third" — is in turn placed in abeyance. The 
 colors manifested by the centres of the sym- 
 pathetic system are psychic; the sounds 
 heard upon the opening of the brain-centres 
 pertain to a higher plane. 
 
 The "hail" is a semi-condensation of the 
 lunar element, or ether, "the good water of 
 the Moon" ; the "fire" is the solar force, "the 
 good fire of the Sun"; and the "blood" is 
 the auric fluid, "the blood of the Logos." 
 These three elements affect the lowest of the 
 Trumpet divisions ; the "trees" are the "two olive- 
 trees" (the dual tree of life), and the 
 "grass" is the radiation of the same force through 
 the aureola. They are, of course, the threefold 
 speirema, starting on its course through the brain. 
 
 Ch. VIIL 8, 9 
 
 The second Divinity gave the trumpet-call. [It 
 was] as if a great flaming mountain of fire was cast 
 into the sea; and the third of the sea came to be 
 blood. The third of the existent beings in the sea 
 — having souls — died; and the third of the ships 
 were wrecked. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The active volcano is a symbol of Mars, the plan- 
 etary force ruling the epithumetic nature, "the sea." 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 137 
 
 CH. VIII. 10, 11 
 
 The third Divinity gave the trumpet-call. There 
 fell from the sky a great star flaming like a torch. 
 It fell on the third of the rivers and on the springs 
 of waters. The name of the star is called "Worm- 
 wood" ; and the third of the waters became worm- 
 wood, and many of the men died of the waters, 
 because they were made bitter. 
 
 COMfflENTARY 
 
 The falling star is AphroditS (Venus) , 17 ^co<:(f>6- 
 pos (Lucifer), the torch-bearing Goddess. The 
 force it here symbolizes affects the emotional psy- 
 chic nature; and the imbittering of the waters 
 alludes to the psychological law that all pleasure 
 eventually reacts and becomes pain ; yet, in the end, 
 this bitter water becomes transmuted into the "sweet 
 water of life" when man's nature is purified. 
 
 Ch. VIII. 12 
 
 The fourth Divinity gave the trumpet-call. The 
 third of the sun was stricken, also the third of the 
 moon and the third of the stars, so that the third of 
 them should be darkened, and the day should not 
 give light for the third of it, and likewise the night. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 All mental action is here suspended on the psy- 
 chic, or subjective, plane, as well as on the material, 
 
138 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 or objective. On each plane, in turn, the forces 
 have to be brought into equiHbrium, so that they 
 neutralize each other, and then the consciousness 
 rises to the next higher plane. 
 
 Ch. vm. 13 
 
 I saw; and I heard a lone Eagle, flying in mid- 
 sky, saying with a great voice : 
 
 "Woe, woe, woe to those dwelling on the earth, 
 from the remaining trumpet-voices of the three 
 Divinities who are about to give the trumpet-call!" 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The first four cerebral chakras (symbolized by 
 the trumpets) react upon the four somatic divi- 
 sions ; the three higher ones are related to the dual 
 nervous system and the aura, broadly speaking; but 
 in a more special sense they are analogues of the 
 male creative triad. Comment on this subject, 
 which is a delicate one, though involving nothing 
 that is in the slightest degree impure, must be neces- 
 sarily brief and somewhat superficial in a work that 
 is designed for general circulation. As has already 
 been pointed out, the lower man is an inverted 
 image of the higher; and from this it follows that 
 the highest spiritual centres are directly related to 
 the lowest, the creative centres on the material 
 plane. For this reason the three trumpet-calls are 
 announced as "woes" by the Eagle, the fourth of 
 the Z6a, who is the prototype of Scorpio. It can 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 139 
 
 not be too emphatically reiterated that the sex-func- 
 tion exists only in the physical and psychic worlds ; 
 and the impure forces related to it are not employed 
 in any way or for any purpose whatever by the fol- 
 lowers of the Gnosis. The abuse of this function is 
 the most terrible of all crimes, the "blasphemy 
 against the holy Pneuma," and the "unpardonable 
 sin" — the punishment of which by natural law is 
 the annihilation of the individuality, the "second 
 death." It is only the celibates, who preserve the 
 utmost purity of mind and body, thereby regaining 
 the complete innocence of "little children," who 
 can hope to "enter the kingdom of heaven." 
 
 Chapter ix. 1-12 
 
 The fifth Divinity gave the trumpet-call. I saw 
 a star that has fallen from the sky to the earth ; and 
 to him was given the key to the crater of the abyss. 
 He opened the crater of the abyss, and there went 
 up smoke from the crater, like the smoke of a great 
 furnace. The sun and the air were darkened by the 
 smoke from the crater. Out of the smoke came 
 locusts upon the earth, and to them was given 
 license as the scorpions of the earth have license. 
 It was said to them that they should not punish the 
 grass of the earth, neither anything tender-green 
 nor any tree, but only those men who do not have 
 the seal of the God on their foreheads; and [the 
 command] was given them that they should not 
 kill them, but that they should be tormented five 
 
140 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 months. Their torment was as a scorpion's torment 
 when it stings a man. In those days men will seek 
 death, and find it not; they will long to die, and 
 death will keep fleeing from them! The effigies of 
 the locusts were like horses caparisoned for battle. 
 On their heads were [circlets] like crowns of spuri- 
 ous gold. Their faces were like men's faces, but 
 they had hair like women's hair; and their teeth 
 were like [the teeth] of lions. They had cuirasses 
 like iron cuirasses. The voice of their wings was 
 like the voice of [many] war-chariots — of many 
 horses galloping into battle. They have tails like 
 scorpions, and stings were in their tails. Their 
 license to punish men was five months. They have 
 over them as ruler the Divinity of the Abyss; his 
 name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in the Greek 
 [mysticism] he has the name Apollyon. 
 
 The one woe has passed. Behold! two more 
 woes are coming after. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The star that has fallen is Venus, now become the 
 so-called "infernal Lucifer," the Hecate who pre- 
 sides over the abyss. This abyss is represented 
 astronomically by the constellation Crater, the Cup, 
 the mixing-bowl of lacchos, the phallic God. It 
 appears also in the Apocalypse as the cup held by 
 the Woman in scarlet, who simply is HecatS, the 
 infernal aspect of both Aphrodite (Venus) and 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 141 
 
 LetSi's (Diana), the two Goddesses alike symbol- 
 izing the primordial substance, the Arche. 
 
 The Divinity of the Abyss, who is the "De- 
 stroyer" and the "Murderer," is the Pseudo-Lion, 
 the Beast — the phrSnic mind polluted by the carnal 
 passions ; and his hordes of scorpion-like cavalry are 
 impure and unholy thoughts. The "five months" 
 are the summertime, during which period the pas- 
 sional nature is more active : mystically the summer 
 is said to be the night of the soul, and winter its day. 
 
 Ch. IX. 13-15 
 
 The sixth Divinity gave the trumpet-call. I heard 
 a single voice from the four horns of the golden 
 altar in front of the God, [the Master's voice] , say- 
 ing to the sixth Divinity, who had the trumpet : 
 ^ "Turn loose the four Divinities who are fettered 
 at the great river Euphrates." 
 
 The four Divinities were turned loose, who had 
 been made ready throughout the hpur, day, month 
 and year, that they shouldkill the third of men. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The golden altar is the Nous, or higher mind, 
 and the four horns are its four powers. Gold is the 
 metal of the sun, and the four-horned altar is but a 
 different symbol for the sun and the regents of the 
 four quarters. The four Divinities fettered at the 
 river Euphrates (the cerebro-spinal axis) are the 
 prdnas. 
 
142 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 Ch. IX. 16-21 
 
 The number of the armies of the horsemen 
 [under the command of the four Divinities] was 
 two hundred million — I heard the num.ber of them. 
 Thus I saw the horses in the vision, and their riders, 
 having cuirasses fiery [red], smoky blue and sul- 
 phurous [yellow] : the heads of the horses were 
 like the heads of lions, and from their mouths keep 
 going out fire, smoke and sulphur. By these three 
 scourges were killed the third of the men — ^by the 
 fire, the smoke and the sulphur which went out of 
 their mouths. For the powers of the horses are in 
 their mouths and in their tails ; for their tails are like 
 snakes, and have heads, and with them they inflict 
 punishment. The rest of the men, who were not 
 killed by these scourges, did not reform from the 
 works of their hands, that they should not worship 
 the spirits and the images of gold, silver, bronze, 
 stone and wood, which can neither see, hear nor 
 walk. And they did not reform from their murders, 
 their sorceries, their prostitutions or their thefts. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The vast armies of horsemen in armor represent 
 the limitless powers of the Nous ; the lion-heads of 
 the horses indicating their solar character. As the 
 Mind is the real man, so in the allegory the intellec- 
 tual powers and thoughts are represented as men, 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 143 
 
 the armies of the Nous destroying the evil, false, 
 superstitious thoughts and tendencies of the psychic 
 nature; and as the thoughts of the carnal mind are 
 concerned largely with material possessions, such 
 thoughts are referred to as worshippers of idols. 
 
 Chapter x. 1-4 
 
 I saw another, [the] strong Divinity, coming 
 down out of the sky, wrapped in a cloud, and a 
 I'ainbow was upon his head. His face was [lumi- 
 nous] like the sun, and his feet like pillars of fire. 
 In his hand he had a little scroll unrolled. He placed 
 his right foot on the sea, and the left on the earth, 
 and cried out with a great voice, as a lion roars ; and 
 when he cried out, seven thunders uttered voices of 
 their own. And when the seven thunders uttered 
 [their voices], I was about to writedown [the teach- 
 ings] ; but I heard a voice from the sky saying to 
 me: 
 
 "Seal up [the teachings] which the seven thun- 
 ders uttered, and do not write them down." 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The Divinity, the fifth in the group, is the Nous, 
 the intellectual Sun, in its aspect as Kronos, the 
 God of Time. This fivefold group is the same as 
 that which appeared upon the opening of the sixth 
 seal, save that here they are energizing on a higher 
 plane. 
 
144 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 That the voices of the seven thunders were mys- 
 tery-teachings is evident from the injunction by the 
 Initiator against recording them. 
 
 Ch. X. 5-7 
 
 The Divinity whom I saw standing on the sea 
 and on the earth raised his right hand to the sky 
 and swore by the [God] who lives throughout the 
 aeons of the aeons, who brought into existence the 
 sky and what is in it, the earth and what is in it, 
 and the sea and what is in it, that Time shall be no 
 more, but in the days of the voice of the seventh 
 Divinity, when he is about to give the trumpet-call, 
 also shall be made perfect the Mystery of the God, 
 as he proclaimed to his slaves, the seers. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 Time, the "image of eternity," rules in the physi- 
 cal and psychic worlds, the earth and the sea of the 
 allegory; but in the spiritual world, the mystic 
 "sky," there is the timeless, eternal conscious'- 
 ness of the God. The seventh trumpet-call signal- 
 izes the opening of that "Mystery of the God," the 
 "eye" of the seer, which is made perfect, that is, 
 restored to its spiritual functions, by the action of 
 the speirema, 
 
 Ch. X. 8-1 1 
 
 The voice that I heard from the sky — [I heard 
 it] again speaking with me, and saying : 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 145 
 
 "Go ; take the little scroll unrolled in the hand of 
 the Divinity who is standing on the sea and on the 
 earth." 
 
 I went to the Divinity, asking him to give me the 
 little scroll. He says to me : 
 
 "Take it, and eat it up. It will make your belly 
 bitter; but in your mouth it will be sweet as honey," 
 
 I took the little scroll from the hand of the Divin- 
 ity, and ate it up. In my mouth it was as honey, 
 sweet; but when I had eaten it my belly was made 
 bitter. And [the voices of the seven thunders] 
 keep saying tome: 
 
 "You must teach again in opposition to many na- 
 tions, peoples, tongues and rulers." 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The little scroll is the GnSsis, imparted to the 
 neophyte by the Initiator — his own Logos. When 
 the instruction is assimilated, that is, carried out in 
 practice, it becomes bitter to the epithumetic nature, 
 since it inculcates the extirpation of every impure 
 thought and desire. 
 
 Kronos represents the Logos in his aspect as 
 Memory, and therefore holds the scroll of the Gno- 
 sis, since all true knowledge is spiritual reminiscence. 
 
 Although forbidden to record the utterances of 
 the seven thunders (the theurgic teachings), the 
 seer is under an obligation to proclaim the true phi- 
 losophy and ethics in opposition to the popular 
 dogmas of the exoteric religions. 
 
146 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 Chapter XL 1-3 
 
 There was given me a reed like a wand, [the first 
 voice] saying: 
 
 "Rise up, and measure the adytum of the God, 
 the altar, and those worshipping in it; but the court 
 which is exterior to the adytum cast out as exoteric, 
 and do not measure it; for it has been given to the 
 people, and the holy city they shall trample on for 
 forty-two months. I shall give it [after that] to my 
 two witnesses, and they will teach one thousand 
 two hundred and sixty days, clothed in gunny- 
 sacks." 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The naos, here translated adytum, was the inner 
 temple, or sanctuary, where the God was enshrined, 
 and to which none but the initiated had access; 
 when employed for initiatory rites it was usually 
 called the adyton. Symbolically, the adytum is the 
 spiritual nature, and the altar the intellectual; as- 
 tronomically, it is, as Josephus and other ancient 
 writers said, the sky. But in the psycho-physio- 
 logical rendering of the symbolism the adytum, the 
 altar of sacrifice and the altar of incense are the 
 three divisions of the brain, and the outer court is 
 the body. The worshippers are the forty-nine 
 forces, which are "measured" by being arranged in 
 hierarchies, or groups, as shown on page 70. 
 
 The period of initiation is here placed at seven 
 years, during the first half of which (forty-two 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 147 
 
 months, or three and one-half years) the lower 
 forces continue to rule the functions of the body, 
 while in the latter half (one thousand two hundred 
 and sixty days, again three and one-half years) the 
 dual electric force, idd and pingala, the "two wit- 
 nesses," will pervade the nervous system, gradually 
 and almost imperceptibly replacing the ordinary 
 nerve-force, a subdued action which is expressed in 
 the allegory by their being wrapped in gunny-sacks. 
 The measuring of the adytum and the account of 
 the two witnesses have nothing to do with the action 
 of the drama, but are merely explanatory. 
 
 Ch. XI. 4-6 
 
 These are the two olive-trees, and two little lamp- 
 stands, standing before the God of the earth. If 
 any one wills to use them wrongfully, fire comes 
 out of their mouth and devours their enemies ; and 
 if any one shall will to use them wrongfully, in this 
 way must he be killed. These [witnesses] have 
 authority to shut the sky, so that rain may not 
 shower down during the days of their teaching; also 
 they have authority over the waters, to transmute 
 them into blood, and to chastise the earth with every 
 scourge, as often as they may will. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 Zechariah (iv. 2 et seq.) goes more into detail 
 concerning the two olive-trees and the lampstands 
 
148 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 that Stand before the Earth-God : "I have seen ; and, 
 Behold! a candlestick all of gold, with its bowl 
 upon the top of it, and its seven lamps thereon; 
 there are seven pipes to each of the lamps, which 
 are upon the top thereof: and two olive-trees by it, 
 one upon the right side of the bowl, and the other 
 upon the left side thereof." These are the cerebral 
 chakras and their nddis; and, as they are very small 
 and seemingly unimportant, he continues: "For 
 who hath despised the day of small things? For 
 they [the seven] shall rejoice, and shall see the 
 plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel, even these 
 seven [which are] the eyes of Jehovah; they run to 
 and fro through the whole earth." The plummet of 
 Zerubbabel, who was the builder of the temple, is 
 the pituitary organ, which controls the growth of 
 the entire body. As modern physiologists have 
 demonstrated, the disease called gigantism, in which 
 the body or any of its members grow to abnormal 
 size, is due to the over-activity and enlargement of 
 the pituitary. It is the creative organ of the brain; 
 and when energized by the speirema its pulsating 
 aura takes on a swinging motion, like a plummet, 
 until it impinges on the conarium, "the unpaired 
 eye," impregnating it with the golden force and 
 arousing the spiritual faculties. This action is fur- 
 ther described by Zechariah, who says that "the 
 two olive-trees" and "the two olive branches which 
 are beside the tvP^o golden spouts, that empty the 
 golden [oil] out of themselves" are "the two anoint- 
 ed ones, that stand by the Lord of the whole earth." 
 The dual fire is destructive to the unpurified psy- 
 chic or sorcerer who may succeed in arousing it, 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 149 
 
 and its wrongful use results in moral as well as 
 physical death. 
 
 By "rain" the nerve-fluid is symbolized; "water" 
 is the magnetic, auric substance, and "blood" the 
 golden electric fire. The "chastisement" of the 
 earth is described, later on in the drama, as the pour- 
 ing out of seven scourges by the seven Taurine 
 Divinities, the Pleiades. 
 
 Ch. XL 7 
 
 When they shall have finished giving their evi- 
 dence, the Beast who comes up out of the abyss will 
 battle with them, conquer them, and kill them. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 When the trance is ended, and the neophyte re- 
 turns to the ordinary state of consciousness on the 
 material plane, the kundalini recedes to the "throne 
 of the Beast," the solar plexus, where it is said in 
 the Upanishads to lie coiled up like a slumbering 
 serpent, having three and a half coils, correspond- 
 ing to the three and a half measures of the Aum. 
 
 Ch. XI. 8, 9 
 
 Their corpses [are now lying] in the main-street 
 of the great city which mystically is called "Sodom" 
 and "Egypt," where also their Master was crucified. 
 And [some] from among the nations, tribes, 
 tongues and peoples are guarding their corpses 
 
150 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 three and a half days, and will not permit their dead 
 bodies to be placed in a sepulchre. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The city is the physical body, and its main-street 
 is the spinal cord, in which are the channels of the 
 threefold speirema, the two witnesses and their 
 Master, "the Witness Believable and True"; and 
 these channels — the "corpses" of the witnesses — 
 are preserved from complete atrophy by those nerve- 
 currents which, in each of the four somatic divi- 
 sions, circulate through the cerebro-spinal system. 
 The three and a half days are the latter half of the 
 seven "days of creation," the gross material arc of 
 the cycle of human evolution, during which the 
 "witnesses" are lying moribund in the mystical 
 "Sodom." 
 
 The formula "nations, tribes, tongues and peo- 
 ples" is given seven times in the Apocalypse, but 
 the words are never twice in the same order; in one 
 instance (x. 1 1 ) "rulers" is substituted for "tribes," 
 and in another (xvii. 15) "multitudes" for the 
 same. They apply to the four castes, or classes of 
 mankind, who in oriental mysticism are said to have 
 been born from the four somatic divisions of the 
 Deity: men of learning, warriors, commercialists 
 and laborers. 
 
 l6sous, the Nous, is here said to have been cruci- 
 fied in Sodom, also called Egypt: this is the first 
 crucifixion, the incarnation of the soul in the physi- 
 cal body, which is then its cross. The second is in 
 Calvaria (kranion), on the cross of initiation. 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 151 
 
 CH. XI. 10-14 
 
 Those who dwell on the earth are rejoicing over 
 them and are exultant; and they will send bribes to 
 one another — for those two seers did torment those 
 who are dwelling on the earth ! After the three and 
 a half days the Breath of Life from the God entered 
 into them; they stood on their feet, and great terror 
 overcame those who beheld them. They heard a 
 great voice from the sky saying to them : 
 
 "Come up hither." 
 
 They went up into the sky in the cloud; and their 
 enemies beheld them. In that hour there came to 
 be a great earthquake, and the tenth [section] of 
 the city fell, and there were killed by the earthquake 
 names of men seven thousand; the rest became 
 frightened, and gave glory to the God of the sky. 
 
 The second woe has passed. Behold! the third 
 woe is coming speedily. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The rebuking voice of conscience, which is the 
 voice of the Nous speaking through the "two wit- 
 nesses," is the real tormentor of the evilly disposed, 
 who seek ever to stifle it; and the man who is thus 
 trying to silence his accusing conscience can not be 
 mentally honest with himself, but acts from feigned 
 motives, his desires and thoughts bribing one an- 
 other, as the allegory piits it. But as the individual 
 
152 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 emerges from the materialistic stage of his evolu- 
 tion, the noetic faculties "awaken from the dead," 
 and the base passional nature, symbolized by the 
 tenth of the twelve zodiacal divisions, perishes, 
 with its seven heads, for it is identified with the 
 seven-headed red Dragon. The seven is multiplied 
 by the indefinite number one thousand to indicate 
 the many correlations of these lower principles, the 
 "men," whose "names" are their psychic colors, 
 which are obliterated, the remaining colors becom- 
 ing brighter in the auric "glory" of the Sky-God. 
 
 Ch.xl 15-18 
 
 The seventh Divinity gave the trumpet-call. 
 There came to be great voices in the sky, saying: 
 
 "The realm of the world has become [the realm] 
 of our Master and of his Anointed, and he shall 
 reign throughout the aeons of the seons." 
 
 The twenty-four Ancients who are seated before 
 the God on their thrones fell on their faces and wor- 
 shipped the God, saying: 
 
 "We give thanks to thee, the Master-God, the 
 AU-Dominator, who [for ever] art, and who wast, 
 because thou hast taken thy great force and re- 
 gained sovereignty. The people grew passionate; 
 and thy passion came, and the season of the dead to 
 be judged, and [the season] to give their recom- 
 pense to thy slaves the seers, to the devotees, and 
 to those who fear thy name, the small and the great, 
 and to destroy those who are destroying the earth." 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 153 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The seventh of the mystic "spiritual sounds" sig- 
 nahzes the awakening of the highest of the chakras, 
 the centres through which radiates the Light of the 
 Logos. The passion of the God is not his "wrath," 
 but is the creative energy of the Logos, the "great 
 force" (dynamis) which produces the "birth from 
 above"; and it is here placed in contrast with the 
 passions that "are destroying the earth." 
 
 The chorus by the sky-voices and the Ancients is 
 the fourth of the series. 
 
 Ch. XI. 19 
 
 The adytum of the God in the sky was opened, 
 and in his adytum was seen the ark [containing the 
 emblems] of his compact; and there came to be 
 lightnings, voices, thunders, an earthquake and 
 great hail. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The word kibotos, properly meaning a wooden 
 box, or coffer, is applied in the New Testament to 
 the ark in the temple, as here, and also to the 
 Noachian ark. The constellation Area, the celestial 
 Ship, situated to the south of Virgo, was also called 
 kibotos and "Noah's Ark." As exoteric exponents 
 of phallicism are fond of pointing out, the ark is a 
 symbol of the womb, the place of birth — ^which is 
 perfectly true if it is regarded as merely a concrete 
 symbol. But esoterically it has no such phallic 
 significance, but stands for the exact opposite, the 
 place of spiritual rebirth, the emergence into im- 
 
154 
 
 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 mortality. All mysticism aside, it symbolizes the 
 womb in the brain, the latter being an androgynous 
 organ wherein is immaculately conceived the per- 
 manent spiritual vehicle, the solar body. 
 
 Chapter xiL 1, 2 
 
 A great constellation was seen in the sky: a 
 [winged] Woman clothed with the sun, the moon 
 underneath her feet, and on her head a crown of 
 twelve stars. She had [a babe] in her womb — and 
 she keeps crying out, in the pangs of child-birth, 
 racked with pain of parturition. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The seventh trumpet-call is the sound heard 
 when the conarium is energized, and the latter corre- 
 sponds to the sign Leo, the house 
 of the Sun ; but the constellation 
 here disclosed is triadic, includ- 
 ing in the symbol the signs Virgo 
 (the house of Mercury), Leo 
 and Cancer (the domicile of the 
 Moon) . Thus associated, Virgo 
 figures as the Virgin Mother, 
 who immaculately conceives and 
 gives birth to the Son of the 
 God ; whereas, taken in combina- 
 tion with Libra (the house of 
 Venus), and Scorpio (the house 
 of Mars) , she becomes the scar- 
 let prostitute, the symbol of carnal generation. As 
 
 Virgo 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 155 
 
 the World-Mother, the White Virgin of the Skies, 
 whether called Diana, Aphrodite, or Mary, she is 
 the pure ether, the Logos-Light, or primordial force- 
 substance ; and as the Fallen Woman, the Queen of 
 the Abyss, she is the parturient energy of nature, 
 the basis of physical life, and as such she is named 
 in the Apocalypse Sodom, Babylon and Egypt, 
 merely to make her threefold like her celestial pro- 
 totype, for in reality she includes all cities and 
 countries inhabited by sinful mankind. 
 
 The word semeion (the synonym of sSma) , in 
 the Greek text, is the correct technical word for 
 "constellation." 
 
 Virgo was always pictured with wings ; and later 
 in the text she has the two wings of the Eagle. 
 
 Ch. XII, 3-6 
 
 Another constellation was seen in the sky — and, 
 Behold! a great fiery-red Dragon, having seven 
 heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven dia- 
 dems. His tail was trailing along the third of the 
 stars of the sky and kept throwing them to the 
 earth. The Dragon was standing in front of the 
 Woman who was on the verge of parturition, so 
 that as soon as she gave birth he might devour her 
 child. She gave birth to a son, virile, who is 
 destined to shepherd all the people with an iron 
 wand; and her child was snatched up to the God 
 and to his throne. The Woman fled into the desert, 
 where she has a place made ready by the God, that 
 
156 
 
 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 there [the Divinities] may nourish her one thou- 
 sand two hundred and sixty days. 
 
 Draco 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 This constellatory symbol is Draco, the pole 
 Dragon, which has seven distinguishing stars, and 
 
 which, as de- 
 picted in the an- 
 cient star-maps, 
 extends over 
 seven of the zo- 
 diacal signs, and 
 in setting appa- 
 rently sweeps 
 a third of the 
 starry sky down 
 to the horizon. Microcosmically it sym- 
 bolizes the passional nature, epithumia, 
 the Apocalyptic number of which is 555. 
 The energizing of the cerebral centres pro- 
 duces a reflex action in the lower nature, 
 and unless the neophyte is duly purified the Dragon 
 will indeed devour the child, not at the time of its 
 birth, but at the moment when it is conceived. For 
 the solar body is not born at this point, but only has 
 its inception ; though the psychic form may be pro- 
 jected. In the pagan Greek mysteries this stage of 
 the telestic work was represented quite baldly as the 
 generative act, but loannes has handled the subject 
 more delicately, by substituting for the solar the 
 psychic body, which is "born" with the physical 
 body and grows conjointly with it. In the Apoca- 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 157 
 
 lyptic allegory the Conqueror is not born until after 
 the three and a half years (the 1260 days) during 
 which the Woman is being nourished by the Divini- 
 ties ; and the statement that the child is caught up 
 to the throne connotes a period of spiritual gesta- 
 tion. In fact, the immaculate conception is here 
 represented by the opening of the adytum and dis- 
 closure of the ark; and those who have investigated 
 the subject of the ark need not be reminded of what 
 were the very peculiar emblems it contained. 
 
 Ch. XII. 7-12 
 
 There came to be a battle in the sky. Mikael and 
 his Divinities .gave battle to the Dragon; and the 
 Dragon and his Divinities gave battle, but they 
 lacked strength, nor was their place found in the 
 sky any more. Hurled down was the great Dragon, 
 the archaic Snake, who is called the "Accuser" and 
 the "Adversary," the deluder of the whole inhab- 
 ited earth; he was hurled down to the earth, and 
 his Divinities were hurled down with him. I heard 
 a great voice in the sky, saying: 
 
 "Now are attained the deliverance, the force and 
 the ^ruling of our God, and the authority of his 
 Anointed. For hurled down is the prosecutor of 
 our brothers, who keeps prosecuting them before 
 our God day and night. But they conquered him 
 through the blood of the Lamb, and through the 
 arcane doctrine of his evidence; and they did not 
 
158 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 esteem their psychic bodies until death. Therefore 
 rejoice, ye skies, and ye who are pitching tent in 
 them ; [but] woe to the earth and the sea — for the 
 Accuser has gone down to y o u having great lust, 
 knowing that he has but a short season," 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The Greek of the Apocalypse belongs to no par- 
 ticular period : loannes had evidently acquired the 
 language mainly by reading, picking up his vocabu- 
 lary largely from ancient works, or else lived in some 
 community in Asia Minor where the language was 
 preserved in its older form. Thus he invariably 
 uses the word polemos for "battle". or mere personal 
 combat, although in his day the word had taken 
 the broader meaning of "war," and mache was the 
 usual word for "battle." War, in the sense of pro- 
 tracted hostilities, is not mentioned in the Apoca- 
 lypse, which in every instance speaks only of a brief 
 conflict, told in very few words, or of mere combats 
 between two individuals. The battle between Mi- 
 kael and the Dragon, with their respective hosts, 
 resulting in the expulsion of the evil serpent from 
 the sky, allegorizes the exclusion from the mind of 
 all impure thoughts, especially those relating to the 
 subject of sex. For Satan, the red Divinity, stands 
 for nothing more or less than the principle of De- 
 sire in all its innumerable gradations, from the 
 vaguest yearnings and the mere promptings of the 
 appetites of the body down to the grossest phases of 
 passion and lust; and all of these have their source 
 in the instinct of reproduction, the attracting and 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 159 
 
 cohering force of generated life. The creative 
 Logos is the Dragon of Light, or Day-Sun; and 
 Satan, the Adversary, is the Dragon of Darkness, 
 or Night-Sun. 
 
 Very Httle is said in the Apocalypse concerning 
 the psychic body ; in fact, it is almost ignored, being 
 tacitly included in the mortal, generated nature. 
 While the spiritual awakening is necessarily accom- 
 panied by more or less psychic development, thfes^ 
 latter may proceed independently of, and even ad- 
 versely to, the true noetic progress; and the pur- 
 suit of psychism for its own sake leads inevitably 
 to moral death. The psychic consciousness should 
 not be dragged down into, and confused with, the 
 normal consciousness on the physical plane of life; 
 for the psychological result of thus confounding the 
 two worlds is simply ordinary insanity, differing 
 from common lunacy only in that it is suicidally 
 self-inflicted, and therefore in the highest degree 
 culpable, instead of being merely a misfortune 
 caused by mental disease. The psychic body has 
 its own p'lace, in its own world, and is chiefly of im- 
 portance after the death of the physical form — 
 hence the encomium, "they did not esteem theirs 
 psychic bodies until death." As l6annSs says in 
 his Evangel (xii. 25), "He who loves his psychic 
 body will lose it; and he who disregards his psychic 
 body in this world will preserve it for [its] cyclic 
 (aionion) life." In Apocalyptic symbolism the 
 psychic (lunar) body would be the bride of the 
 Beast, as the solar body is the bride of the Lamb. 
 In fact, an ancient reading of ii. 20 has "your wife 
 lezabel." 
 
160 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 Ch.xil 13-17 
 
 When the Dragon saw that he was hurled down 
 to the earth, he kept pursuing the Woman who gave 
 birth to the man-child. The Woman was endowed 
 with the great Eagle's two wings, so that she might 
 fly to the desert, to her place, where she is being 
 nourished for a season, and seasons, and half a sea- 
 son, from the face of the Snake. The Snake 
 spouted water after the Woman, like a river, that he 
 might cause her to be carried away by the torrent. 
 The earth rescued the Woman: the earth opened 
 her mouth and swallowed up the river which the 
 Dragon spouted from his mouth. The Dragon 
 waxed passionate over the Woman, and went away 
 to battle with the rest of her seed, who keep the 
 commands of the God and have the evidence of the 
 Anointed iSsous; and he stationed himself on the 
 sand of the sea. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The Virgin Mother being sushumnd, the two 
 
 wings of the Eagle are idd and pingala. The winged 
 
 ^ Woman represents the objective, or substantial, 
 
 working of the kundalim, while the three witnesses 
 
 answer to its subjective, or noetic, aspect. 
 
 Foiled in his designs on the man-child (the na- 
 scent solar body) , the Dragon seeks to arrest the 
 spiritual growth of the neophyte by pouring out a 
 flood of psychic phenomenal illusions, but the force 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 161 
 
 thus engendered is absorbed by the material nature; 
 and then, stationing himself on the margin of the 
 sea (the finer and more aesthetic elements of the 
 epithumetic principle) , he combats the intuitions of 
 the intellectual nature. Astronomically, the river 
 spouted out by the Dragon is Eridanus, a winding 
 constellation in the southern hemisphere, also called 
 the River of Orion, which, when Virgo is in ascen- 
 sion, is setting and therefore apparently being swal- 
 lowed by the earth. 
 
 The phrase "season, and seasons, and half a sea- 
 son," is only a puzzling variant of the forty-two 
 months and the 1260 days, namely, three and a half 
 years. 
 
 Chapter xiii. 1-4 
 
 I saw rising out of the sea a [constellatory] 
 Beast, having ten horns and seven heads, and on 
 his horns ten diadems, and on his heads [seven] 
 names of profanities. The Beast which I saw was 
 like a leopard, his feet were like a bear's [feet] , and 
 his mouth was like a lion's mouth. The Dragon 
 gave him his force and his throne, and great au- 
 thority. I saw one of his heads [drooping] as if 
 it had been slain in the Death [-world] ; but his 
 death-blow was healed. The whole earth became 
 admiring followers of the Beast. They also wor- 
 shipped the Dragon because he gave authority to 
 the Beast, and they worshipped the Beast, saying : 
 
 "Who is a match for the Beast? Is any one 
 strong enough to meet him in combat?" 
 
162 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 In Stellar symbolism the Beast is the constellation 
 now called Cetus, which is represented, however, 
 
 not as a Whale but as 
 a nondescript marine 
 monster. The Arabians 
 and the Jews called it 
 the Sea-Lion; and it 
 was also named the 
 Leopard and the Sea- 
 Bear. iSannSs has com- 
 bined these various representations of it, presenting 
 a composite picture. As a caricature of the psycho- 
 material mind, the original figure, in the form 
 drawn by the ancients who invented the zodiacal 
 language, would seem to be sufficiently grotesque, 
 but l6annSs has given it additional touches of satire. 
 The Beast is said to rise from the sea and to receive 
 power from the Dragon, because it is the product 
 of the two lower planes, the psychic and the ma- 
 terial; its seven heads are the seven ruling epithu- 
 metic desires, each of which is a profanation of the 
 Divine Desire; its ten horns are the five intellectual 
 faculties doubled, because its every faculty is dual 
 and at war with itself; the horns are all adorned 
 with diadems to indicate the false pride of the lower 
 intellect. As this lower mind is the shadow or re- 
 flected image, so to say, of the true mind, the Nous, 
 which is symbolized as the Lion, the Beast is pic- 
 tured as a Pseudo-Lion, a hybrid, for it resembles 
 the Leopard, which was fabled to be a cross be- 
 tween the Lion (leo) and the Panther (pardus) ; 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 163 
 
 it is slow-going, with the ponderous paws of the 
 Bear, and has a mouth hke a Lion, thus simulating 
 the voice of the Nous. It represents the highest 
 development of the human intellect dissociated 
 from philosophic reason and spiritual intuition, and 
 it is indeed the admiration of the whole world of 
 the profane. The head that is seemingly slain and 
 yet resurrects is the desire for life on the plane of 
 the senses, a desire which the neophyte must utterly 
 eradicate. In a more general sense, the lower mind, 
 whenever it attempts philosophy, is never quite cer- 
 tain that life is worth living; and in its utter blind- 
 ness to spiritual realities, pe/ceiving only the phe- 
 nomena of the material world, it formulates theories 
 of existence based merely upon them, regarding all 
 else as unknowable. 
 
 Ch. XIII. 5-10 
 
 There was given him a mouth speaking great 
 [boastings] and profanities; and authority was 
 given him to do [this] for forty-two months. He 
 opened his mouth in profanity against the God, to 
 profane his name, his tent, and those pitching tent 
 in the sky. It was given him to do battle with the 
 devotees, and to conquer them ; and authority was 
 given him over every tribe, nation, tongue and peo- 
 ple. All those who dwell on the earth will worship 
 him — [every one] whose name has not been regis- 
 tered in the sacrificed Lamb's scroll of life since 
 the evolution of the world. If any one has an ear, 
 
164 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 let him hear: If any one welcomes captivity, into 
 captivity he goes; if any one shall kill with the 
 sword, with the sword must he be killed. Here is 
 the patience and the faith of the devotees. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 In this allegorical exposition of the powers and 
 peculiarities of the lower mind-principle, only part 
 applies to 'the particular case of the Conqueror, the 
 rest being of a general nature; for without this 
 broader application the treatment of the subject 
 would necessarily be incomplete and obscure. 
 Thus the forty-two months (three and a half years) 
 refers to the first half of the seven-year initiatory 
 cycle, during which the neophyte, passing through 
 the psychic stages of his development, and thereby 
 intensifying the action of the psycho-phrenic mind, 
 has to struggle constantly against its influence; but 
 the rest of the explanatory matter relates to man- 
 kind in general. 
 
 Those who have not been registered in the book 
 of life (see also ch. xvii. S) are the great majority 
 who have not in any incarnation, during the cycle 
 of material evolution, attained the noetic conscious- 
 ness. For, once a man has even glimpsed the su- 
 pernal truths, he can never again rest content with 
 the illusory images of the material world or worship 
 at the shrine of mere intellectualism ; the true Self, 
 the Master-Mind, has placed his seal upon him, and 
 he is thenceforth individualized from the irresponsi- 
 ble mass of mankind, and enrolled among those 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 165 
 
 who must by an irresistible impulse, the call of the 
 God, tread the path of man's higher destiny. 
 
 The word katabole, here translated "evolution," 
 is said by Origen to mean the descent of the souls 
 into material conditions. 
 
 The formula, "He who has an ear, let him hear," 
 is used by iSannes as an appeal to the intuition. 
 Here he states a broad principle: the man who 
 craves material life by that very desire condemns 
 himself to remain in the bondage of reincarnation 
 and subject to the iron law of retribution which 
 obtains in the lower spheres of existence. But the 
 esotericist, knowing that nothing binds him to the 
 physical form of life except the longings of his own 
 heart, patiently endures all the ills of life, in full 
 assurance that through the purification of his moral 
 character he will attain deliverance. 
 
 Ch. XIII. 11, 12 
 
 I saw another [constellatory] Beast rising out 
 of the earth. He had two horns like a lamb, and he 
 talked like a dragon. He is wielding all the au- 
 thority of the first Beast in his presence, and he is 
 causing the earth and all its inhabitants to worship 
 the first Beast, whose death-blow was healed. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 This Pseudo-Lamb is the dual sex-nature, the 
 two riders of the dun horse in a different imper- 
 
166 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 sonation. He is the image on the material plane of 
 the Lamb, who in the opening of the seven seals 
 played the part of the rider of the white horse. 
 
 Thus the Lamb and 
 the Pseudo-Lamb 
 bear the same rela- 
 tion to each other as 
 do Eros, the Divine 
 Love, and pothos 
 ( Cupid) , carnal love, 
 not, however, as the 
 base passion, but in 
 its morerefined forms 
 as sentimental yearn- 
 ing, religious fervor 
 ^^''"sa of the irrational sort, 
 
 and all the emotional impulses. He talks like a 
 dragon, because from this source originate religious 
 cant, sentimental ethics, and erotic utterances gen- 
 erally; and he has all the potentialities of the first 
 Beast, the phr6nic nature, for unutterable vileness. 
 As a constellation, he is the Head of Medusa, the 
 mortal Gorgon, called by the Jews Rosch hasatan, 
 "Satan's Head." Owing to its proximity to Aries, 
 this constellation was sometimes pictured wearing 
 the two horns of the Ram, the Apocalyptic Lamb. 
 
 Ch. xiil 13-18 
 
 He makes great omens, so that he may even 
 make fire come down out of the sky to the earth in 
 the sight of men. He keeps deluding those who 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 167 
 
 dwell on the earth, through the omens which he 
 was permitted to make in sight of the Beast, saying 
 to those who dwell on the earth that they should 
 make an image to the Beast who has the stroke of 
 the sword and came to life. It was permitted [him] 
 to bestow breath on it — the image of the Beast — 
 so that the image of the Beast should not only talk 
 but also cause that all [men] who might not wor- 
 ship the image of the Beast should be slain. He 
 causes all [men], the small and the great, the rich 
 and the poor, alike the freemen and the slaves, to be 
 given a brand on their right hand or on their fore- 
 head, and that no one should be able to buy or to 
 sell unless he has the brand — the name of the 
 Beast, or the number of his name. Here is clever- 
 ness: let him who has the intuitive mind compute 
 the number of the Beast; for it is the number of a 
 man, and his number is six hundred and sixty-six. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 Magical powers were attributed to Medusa, and 
 talismans were made under its stellar influence. 
 The word semeion, here translated "omen," signi- 
 fies also a "talisman" or symbol drawn under the 
 influence of some particular constellation or plane- 
 tary aspect. Cedrenus states (p. 22) that Perseus 
 (the slayer of the Gorgon) taught the Persians the 
 magic of Medusa, by means of which fire came 
 down out of the sky. But, apart from all exoteric 
 
168 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 notions of ceremonial magic, the Pseudo-Lamb of 
 the Apocalypse, as a principle in man, does indeed 
 draw down "fire" from the intellectual sky; for the 
 force which it represents produces all the grosser 
 forms of psychism, and is the agent of the so-called 
 "miracles" of exoteric religion, the prodigies pro- 
 duced by erotic fervor, blind credulity and dis- 
 ordered imagination; and it is likewise the foul 
 force employed in phallic sorcery. It is also the 
 irrational instinct of religionism, the vague yearning 
 for something to worship — a reflection or shadow 
 of the true devotional principle — which prompts 
 men to project a subjective image of the lower, per- 
 sonal mind, and to endow it with human attributes, 
 and then to claim to receive "revelations" from it; 
 and this — the image of the Beast, or unspiritual 
 mind, — is their anthropomorphic God, a fabulous 
 monster the worship of which has ever prompted 
 men to fanaticism and persecution, and has inflicted 
 untold misery and dread upon the masses of man- 
 kind, as well as physical torture and death in hid- 
 eous forms upon the many martyrs who have refused 
 to bend the knee to this Gorgonean phantom of the 
 beast-mind of man. Truly, where the worshippers 
 of this image of the Beast predominate, the man 
 whose brow and hand are unbranded by this super- 
 stition, who neither thinks nor acts in accordance 
 with it, suffers ostracism if not virulent persecution. 
 "Here is cleverness" would be, in the English 
 idiom, "Here is a puzzle." The number of the 
 Beast, as already explained, is simply he phrSn, the 
 letters of which, as numerals, total 666 ; while the 
 Pseudo-Lamb is akrasia, or 333. 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 169 
 
 Chapter XIV. 1-5 
 
 I saw; and, Behold! the Lamb standing on the 
 mountain of Sion, and with him the one hundred 
 and forty-four thousand having his name and his 
 father's name written on their foreheads. I heard 
 a voice from the sky, like the voice of many waters, 
 like the voice of a great thunder; and the voice 
 which I heard was like [that] of lyrists playing on 
 their lyres. They chanted as it were a new lyric 
 before the throne, and before the four Beings and 
 the Ancients, and no one could understand the lyric 
 save the hundred and forty-four thousand — ^they 
 who had been bought from the earth. These are the 
 ones who were not defiled with women; for they 
 are virgins. These are the ones who go along with 
 the Lamb wherever he goes. These were bought 
 from men — a firstling to the God and the Lamb. In 
 their mouth was found no deceit; they are faultless. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The Lamb is the fourth of the animal-symbols, 
 or "beasts," and is identical with the Bowman on 
 the white horse, the regent of the ^-^ 
 
 — - ' — -=> — — -jj-'-fe. 
 
 fourth somatic division. He is the K'J- 
 
 intellectual Sun, the Nous, which is ^fL - 
 lesous, the number of whose name ^^ 
 is 888. The Sun is the Lion when ^^nus Dei 
 domiciled in Leo, which corresponds to the highest 
 of the noetic chakras, and the Lamb when exalted 
 
170 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 in Aries, which corresponds to the nimbus ; and his 
 being on Sion's hill also signifies that exaltation. 
 Here he is represented as being surrounded by his 
 virginal powers, and a thunderous chorus preludes 
 the next act in the drama, the conquest of the car- 
 diac centres. But this chorus, the fifth in the series, 
 is only described, no words being given because, it 
 is intimated, it would be unintelligible to the pro- 
 fane; and the conquest of the chakras of this divi- 
 sion is given with less detail than are the others. 
 
 Ch. XIV. 6, 7 
 
 I saw another Divinity flying in mid-sky, having 
 an seonian divine message to announce to those 
 seated on the earth, to every people, tribe, tongue 
 and nation, and he said with a loud voice: 
 
 "Fear ye the God and to him give glory; for the 
 hour of his judgment is come! Worship him who 
 made the sky, the earth, the sea and the springs of 
 waters." 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 This, the third of the conquests, is represented 
 as a harvesting of the intellectual, psychic and 
 spiritual principles, to which correspond respec- 
 tively the cerebro-spinal axis, the great sympathetic 
 nervous system, and the aureola. The action is 
 therefore confined to the three higher centres corre- 
 sponding to these principles ; while the opening of 
 the four lower centres is given as a proclamation to 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 171 
 
 each of the four lower principles seated in the so- 
 matic divisions. 
 
 An ason (aion) is a definite life-period, as the 
 life-time of a man, a generation, or the whole evo- 
 lutionary period, the complete cycle of generation. 
 It is only the crude, unphilosophical notion that 
 eternity is "a long period of time" that has caused 
 the "authorized" translators of the New Testament 
 to persist in giving aionios the meaning "eternal." 
 Time is not an entity or a thing per se, nor is eter- 
 nity merely time indefinitely prolonged. Time is 
 only a mental concept arising from the conscious- 
 ness of change in the phenomenal world; whereas 
 eternity is noumenal, changeless, extending neither 
 into the "past" nor the "future," and therefore is 
 an immeasurable "present." 
 
 The seonian evangel relates only to the cycle of 
 generation — from which the hero of the Apoca- 
 lyptic drama, the Conqueror, is about to be emanci- 
 pated, after final judgment has been passed upon 
 his deeds during the aeon, in which he has been suc- 
 cessively incarnated among all the races and peoples 
 who have had their lesser cycles in the vast period 
 of human evolution. 
 
 Ch. XIV. 8 
 
 Another, a second Divinity, came after [him], 
 saying: 
 
 "She fell! Babylon the great fell — she who has 
 made all the people drink of the wine of the lust of 
 her prostitution!" 
 
172 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 Babylon, elsewhere called the Woman in scar- 
 let, personifies the physical nature, the carnal body 
 and the lust for existence inherent in its elements. 
 It has "fallen" only in the sense that the conscious- 
 ness of the Conqueror has become free from its 
 trammels. 
 
 Ch. XIV. 9-13 
 
 Another Divinity, the third, came after them, 
 saying with a great voice : 
 
 "If any one worships the Beast and his image, 
 and receives a brand on his forehead or on his 
 [right] hand, he also shall drink of the wine of the 
 God's ardor which has been poured out raw into 
 the wine-cup of his passion; and he shall be tor- 
 mented with fire and sulphur in presence of the holy 
 Divinities and in presence of the Lamb. The smoke 
 of their torment keeps going up throughout aeons of 
 Eeons, and no rest day or night are they having who 
 worship the Beast and his image, and whosoever 
 receives the brand of his name. Here is the patience 
 of the devotees, those who are keeping the com- 
 mands of the God and the belief of lesous." 
 
 I heard a voice from the sky, saying : 
 
 "Write: Immortal are 'the dead' who die in the 
 Master henceforth. 'Yea,' says the Breath, 'that 
 they may cease from their labors — ^but their works 
 accompany them.' " 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 173 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The creative Breath, which at its deific source is 
 the supernal Love, becomes, in the spheres of gene- 
 ration, the force which engenders bodies, and in 
 that respect the worshippers of the Beast and his 
 image, the personal God, partake of it, and thereby 
 are constantly undergoing the miseries of embodied 
 existence, in which they find no abiding peace. Yet 
 /physical existence is in reality a purificatory dis- 
 cipline, like the fumigating with sulphur (a com- 
 mon practice with the ancients) alluded to by loan- 
 n6s. The followers of lesous, the spiritual Mind, 
 knowing this, endure life with patience and faith in 
 the divine justice. The "dead" are the living dead, 
 the embodied souls, who "die in the Piaster" only 
 when they attain liberation from the sepulchre of 
 the carnal body, ceasing then from their toil but re- 
 taining the fruition of their good works. 
 
 Ch. XIV. 14-16 
 
 I saw; and, Behold! a white cloud; and on the 
 cloud [I saw] sitting [a Divinity] like the son of 
 man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his 
 hand a keen sickle. 
 
 Another Divinity came out from the adytum, cry- 
 ing out with a loud voice to the [Divinity] seated 
 on the cloud : 
 
 "Thrust out your sickle and reap, for to you has 
 come the hour to reap — for the earth's harvest is 
 dried up." 
 
174 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 The [Divinity] seated on the cloud struck his 
 sickle on the earth, and the earth was reaped. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The fifth Divinity represents the First Logos, 
 here seated in the nimbus ; for he is the overshadow- 
 ing Self, the Uncrucified, or unin- 
 carnated. He reaps the scant har- 
 vest of the psychic nature. It will 
 be noticed that wherever he is re- 
 sicki ferred to in this passage the word 
 "Divinity" (angelos) has been ex- 
 punged from the text, apparently by some zealot 
 who, recognizing the description as that of the 
 Christos, tampered with the manuscript with the 
 same motive, presumably, which prompts the mod- 
 ern "orthodox" translators to shade misleadingly 
 the values of the Greek tenses, in very many 
 instances. 
 
 Ch. XIV. 17-20 
 
 Came from the adytum which is in the sky an- 
 other Divinity, he also having a keen sickle. 
 
 Another Divinity came out from the altar — he 
 who has authority over fire — and he gave voice 
 with a great shout to the one who had the keen 
 sickle, saying: 
 
 "Thrust out your keen sickle and pick the grape- 
 clusters of the earth's vine, for her bunches of 
 grapes are ripened." 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 175 
 
 The Divinity struck his sickle into the earth and 
 stripped the earth's vine, and threw [the grapes] 
 into the wine-vat, the great [womb] of the God's 
 ardor. The wine-vat was trodden outside the city, 
 and blood issued from the wine-vat, up to the bri- 
 dles of the horses, as far as one thousand and six 
 hundred stadia. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The second of the two Reapers is the Second 
 Logos, and he reaps the spiritually dynamic nature, 
 which on the plane of creative forces corresponds 
 to the fivefold noetic group. The "vine" of this 
 conquest is identical with the "river Euphrates" of 
 the three other conquests. Physiologically, it is the 
 spinal cord, the path of the five prdnas, or life- 
 winds, which are now, by the exigencies of the alle- 
 gory, metamorphosed into bunches of grapes. These 
 solar forces, permeating and energizing the aura 
 (the wine-vat outside the city), produce a return 
 current to the chakras of the four somatic divisions 
 (the bridles of the horses) and into the solar body, 
 the 1,600, or to soma heliakon. It is a process 
 analogous to the nutrition of the foetus in utero. 
 
 In stellar symbolism, each of these seven Divini- 
 ties may be recognized among the constellations. 
 Thus, for instance, as Aries, the Sion of the alle- 
 gory, rises in the eastern horizon, the Eagle is near 
 the zenith, together with the Swan and the Celestial 
 Vulture, these being the three Divinities who are 
 said to fly in the mid-sky. 
 
176 the apocalypse unsealed 
 
 Chapter xv. 1-4 
 
 I saw another constellation in the sky, great and 
 wonderful, [and in it] seven Divinities having the 
 seven scourges, the final [ordeals], for by them the 
 God's ardor is finished. 
 
 I saw [a sheen] , as it were a glassy sea, mixed 
 with fire, and those who were Conquerors of the 
 Beast, of his image, and of the number of his name, 
 standing on the glassy sea, having lyres of the God. 
 They keep chanting the lyric of Moses, a slave of 
 the God, and the lyric of the Lamb, saying: 
 
 "Great and wonderful are thy works, Master- 
 God, the AU-Dominator. Just and true are thy 
 paths, thou Ruler of the i^ons. Who shall not fear, 
 O Master, and glorify thy name? For thou art the 
 Only Sanctified. For all the people shall come and 
 worship before thee. For thy just deeds have been 
 made manifest." 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 This constellation is Taurus, and the seven Divini- 
 ties answer to the Pleiades, the group of stars 
 situated in the neck of the stellar Bull, who is the 
 symbol of spiritual generative force. 
 
 In the Old Testament mythology, Moses repre- 
 sented the Sun in Aries. His paean of victory after 
 crossing the Red Sea (Ex. xiv. 26-31 ; xv. 1-21 ) is 
 presumably the one here referred to; for the Red 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 177 
 
 Sea stood for the sea of generation. The crystalline 
 and fiery sea is the celestial ether. 
 
 Ch. XV. 5-8; XVI. 1 
 
 After these [things] I saw; and, Behold! the 
 adytum of the tent-temple of the evidence in the 
 sky was opened. Came out from the adytum the 
 seven Divinities having the seven scourges, clothed 
 in flawless and brilliant [diamond-] stone, and 
 girded about their breasts with golden girdles. One 
 of the four Beings gave the seven Divinities seven 
 golden libation-saucers full of the ardor of the God 
 who lives throughout the seons of the aeons. The 
 adytum was filled with smoke from the glory of the 
 God and from his inherent force, and no one was 
 able to go into the adytum until the seven scourges 
 of the seven Divinities should be finished. I heard 
 a great voice from the adytum, saying to the seven 
 Divinities : 
 
 "Go and pour out into the earth the seven liba- 
 tion-saucers of the God's ardor." 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The seven superlatively pure and dazzling Divini- 
 ties who emerge from the "most holy place" of 
 the tabernacle are, like the Planetary Logos whose 
 apparition is described in the opening vision, andro- 
 gynous : each is a male figure with female breasts 
 
178 
 
 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 and wearing the girdle of Aphrodite. Here, how- 
 ever, the word stethe is used, which is applica- 
 ble to either sex, while in the other instance the 
 word is mastoi, which applies more particularly to 
 the female breasts. The hermaphroditos, or blended 
 figure of Hermgs (Mercury) and Aphrodite (Ve- 
 nus) , was a familiar figure in Greek art. In both 
 the Greek and the Jewish mystery-paraphernalia 
 the "ark" contained the male and female emblems. 
 As the Planetary Logos is inverted, mirrored upside- 
 down in the material world, these seven andro- 
 gynous Divinities, although they have to do with 
 the lowest of the somatic divisions, are yet the high- 
 est and purest of all. They are the finishers of the 
 great work of regeneration, and the precursors of 
 
 the Conqueror on the 
 white horse. Each has 
 a phiale, a shallow 
 cup, or saucer, used 
 in pouring out drink- 
 offerings to the Gods, 
 and the libations they 
 pour out consist of 
 the primordial creative 
 force-substance — the 
 ether. This ether, as 
 symbolized by the diamond-glittering raiment of the 
 seven Divinities, is colorless and without qualities 
 of its own; but all qualities are imparted to it by the 
 Thought of the God. As Paracelsus says, "All 
 things when they come from the hand of God are 
 white; he colors them afterward according to his 
 pleasure." 
 
 Phiale 
 
the initiation of loannes 179 
 
 Chapter xvi. 2 
 
 The first [Divinity] went and poured out his 
 libation-saucer into the earth. There came to be a 
 bad and painful sore on the men who had the brand 
 of the Beast, and who worshipped his image. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The earth, or lowest division, is the throne of the 
 Pseudo-Seer; and the worshippers of the Beast and 
 his image are the forms of thought mirrored in this 
 lowest reflector of the noetic consciousness, where 
 they become distorted into the crude elemental no- 
 tions of religion. These are represented as ulcera- 
 ting; for the time has come for the complete eradi- 
 cation of the centres whence they radiate. 
 
 Ch. XVI. 3 
 
 The second Divinity poured out his libation- 
 saucer into the sea. It became blood like a dead 
 man's, and every psychic form of life in the sea 
 died. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The sea, or umbilical centre, is the throne of the 
 Dragon, the epithumetic, lower psychic nature. 
 The libation eliminates from it the last vestiges of 
 the passions and desires ; and the aura of this divi- 
 sion is suffused by the golden, orange-yellow color 
 of the prdnas. 
 
180 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 CH. XVL 4-7 
 
 The third Divinity poured out his libation-saucer 
 into the rivers and the springs of the waters, and the 
 [waters] became blood. I heard the Divinity of 
 the waters saying: 
 
 "Thou art just, Master, [thou] who [for ever] 
 art, who wast, and who art sanctified; for thou didst 
 pass this sentence upon [the followers of the 
 Beast] : for they poured out the blood of devotees 
 and seers, and blood thou hast given them to drink; 
 for they are deserving [of it] ." 
 
 I heard [the Divinity hovering above] the altar 
 saying : 
 
 "Verily, Master-God, the AU-Dominator, true 
 and just are thy judgments!" 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The rivers and springs are the throne of the 
 Beast; it receives the golden color when the solar 
 force reaches it. Its regent is the phrSnic mind, 
 which distorts and falsifies the intuitions reaching 
 it from the noetic faculty. The Divinity of the 
 waters is the Zoon corresponding to this centre, and 
 the one hovering over the altar (ch. viii. 3) is the 
 Z6on of the noetic centre. 
 
 Here the word "coming," in the formula applied 
 to the God, is replaced by "sanctified" ; for now the 
 God has come, the future being merged in the 
 present. 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 181 
 
 Ch. XVI. 8, 9 
 
 The fourth Divinity poured out his libation- 
 saucer upon the sun. [Authority] was given it to 
 scorch men with fire. Men were scorched with 
 great heat, and they profaned the name of the 
 God who has authority over these scourges; but 
 they did not reform to give him glory. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The Sun is the throne of the Sky-God, the Lion. 
 The outpouring of the speirema upon this centre 
 produces intense mental strain. The intellectual 
 forces are represented as unrepentant and profane, 
 simply because the Nous, undifferentiated Thought, 
 is the "only sanctified." 
 
 Ch. XVI. 10, 11 
 
 The fifth Divinity poured out his libation-saucer 
 upon the throne of the Beast. His realm became 
 darkened; and his [subjects] gnawed their tongues 
 for pain, and profaned the God of the sky because 
 of their pains and sores; but they did not reform 
 from their works. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The Beast's throne, as a somatic division, is the 
 cardiac centre; but in a general way it includes the 
 
182 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 whole sympathetic system, of which the principal 
 chakra, the epigastric plexus, is shared by the 
 Dragon. 
 
 Ch. XVL 12 
 
 The sixth Divinity poured out his libation-saucer 
 upon that great river, the Euphrates. Its waters 
 were dried up, so that there might be prepared the 
 path of the rulers who [come out] from the birth- 
 place of the sun. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 In each of the four conquests the sixth chakra is 
 related to the cerebro-spinal axis and the five 
 prdnas, the solar or noetic forces, since the forces 
 act on each of the four planes of existence, to which 
 the somatic divisions correspond. In this final con- 
 quest the waters of the Euphrates, that is, the mag- 
 netic or nerve-force of the spinal system, are dried 
 up ; for henceforth the solar electric fires are to take 
 their place permanently. In the "sacred city," the 
 solar body, the Euphrates becomes the main-street, 
 or thoroughfare, "of pure gold, transparent as 
 glass." 
 
 Ch. XVL 13-16 
 
 I saw [coming] out of the mouth of the Dragon, 
 out of the mouth of the Beast, and out of the mouth 
 of the Pseudo-Seer, three unpurified spirits, like 
 frogs. For they are spirits of spectres, making 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 183 
 
 omens, [and] they are going out among the rulers 
 of the whole home-land, to muster them for the 
 battle of the great day [of the coming] of the God, 
 the All-Dominator. [The God says:] 
 
 "Behold! I am coming [silently], like a thief. 
 Immortal is he who stays awake and keeps on his 
 outer garments, so that he may not walk naked, and 
 they see his shame." 
 
 They mustered them in the place which is called 
 in Hebrew Harmagedon. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The forces expelled by the drying up of the 
 "Euphrates" issue from the three lower somatic 
 centres and form a psychic entity analogous to the 
 ghost of a deceased person : the after-death process 
 of purification undergone by the soul takes place 
 before death in him who "dies in the Master." The 
 soul of the disincarnated man, before entering upon 
 its period of blissful rest in the higher world-soul, 
 the spiritual realm, has to purge itself of all the evil 
 forces and elements of the psychic nature; and 
 these discarded elements remain in the lower world- 
 soul, the phantasmal realm, where they constitute, 
 for a time, a psychic entity wearing the semblance 
 of the departed personality, its ghost, shade or 
 spectre — an elemental self, which is a congeries of 
 all the impure and evil constituents thus rejected by 
 the soul. In Greek mysticism, as expounded by 
 Plotinos and others, this higher world-soul was 
 termed Zeus, and the lower world-soul, which is 
 
184 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 next to the material realm and is rendered foul by 
 the impure emanations from the latter, was called 
 Rhea; the latter stands for the Kabalistic "astral 
 light," which is kinetically charged with the evil 
 impulses and thoughts of humanity, and especially 
 with the foul sexuality of the depraved portion of 
 mankind, and by its hypnotic influence is a constant 
 inciter to crime and vice. In this realm the spectre 
 gradually disintegrates; but the elements compos- 
 ing it are again attracted to the soul when it reincar- 
 nates. But in the case of the individual who is 
 engaged in the telestic work this elemental self 
 becomes a malignant demon, against which he must 
 constantly be on his guard, and which he must 
 eventually destroy. The impure "spirits" (pneu- 
 mata) are said to congregate in the place called 
 Harmagedon. The scholiasts have failed to find 
 even a plausible Hebrew derivation for this word; 
 the supposition that it stands for "Mount Me- 
 giddo" meets with the difficulty that the only Me- 
 giddo known to geography was a city on a plain. 
 Considered as an anagram, Harmageddn forms 
 Rhea 'dagmdn, "Rhea of the prurient itchings, or 
 desires" — a very accurate characterization of the 
 anima bruta, or brute-soul of the world, which Rhea 
 typified. The worship of the Goddess Rhea, who 
 was called also Cybele, Astarte, and by many other 
 names and titles, was wide-spread among oriental 
 nations. Her numerous temples abounded in "con- 
 secrated women," and as the Magna Mater, "the 
 Great Mother" of these prostitutes, she was wor- 
 shipped with shameless orgiastic rites. Originally, 
 however, Rhea symbolized the celestial ether. 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 185 
 
 CH. XVI. 17-21 
 
 The seventh Divinity poured out his libation- 
 saucer into the air. There came a great voice from 
 the adytum of the sky — from the throne — saying : 
 
 "He has been born!" 
 
 There came to be voices, lightnings and thun- 
 ders ; and there came to be a great earthquake, such 
 as has not happened since men were born upon the 
 earth — such and so great an earthquake. 
 
 The great city came to be in three divisions. The 
 cities of the people fell ; and Babylon the great was 
 remembered before the God, to give to her the wine- 
 cup of the wine of the ardor of his passion. Every 
 island fled, and the mountains were not found. 
 Great hail, like hundred-pound [catapult missiles], 
 keeps coming down from the sky upon men, and 
 men profaned the God because of the scourge of 
 the hail ; for its scourge is exceedingly great. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The voice from the adytum, that of the First 
 Logos, announces the birth "from above" of the 
 Conqueror, who thereupon appears on the white 
 horse; but before this apparition is described a di- 
 gression is made, to introduce explanatory matter. 
 
 The great city, the physical body, is now three- 
 divisional, the minor cities, the procreative centres, 
 having been extirpated. 
 
186 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 Chapter xvn. 1-5 
 
 Came one of the seven Divinities who had the ' 
 seven hbation-saucers, and talked with me, saying : 
 
 "Hither! I shall show you the judgment of the 
 great prostitute who is sitting on the many waters, 
 with whom the rulers of the earth committed forni- 
 cation — and those who dwell on the earth became 
 intoxicated with the wine of her prostitution." 
 
 He carried me away in the Breath [-trance] into 
 the desert; and I saw a Woman sitting on a scarlet 
 Beast, [having his mouth] full of names of pro- 
 fanity, and having seven heads and ten horns. The 
 Woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, over- 
 jewelled with gold, precious stone and pearls, hav- 
 ing in her hand a golden wine-cup, full of the 
 stenches and filth of her prostitution. On her fore- 
 head was a name written : 
 
 "A Mystery: Babylon the great, the 'Mother' 
 of the [temple-] prostitutes and of the earth's 
 stenches." 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The two "Women" of the Apocalypse are both 
 "Goddesses," in the pagan sense, precisely as the 
 "Angels" are the lesser Gods of the pagan pan- 
 theon; and, whether Christian or pagan, all these 
 Gods and Goddesses are the personified powers 
 and principles of the macrocosm and the micro- 
 cosm. Babylon, as the "mighty city," is the hu- 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 187 
 
 man body; and as the fallen Woman she is a God- 
 dess, the Magna Mater of the temple prostitutes in 
 the Mystery-cult of Rhea, or AstartS. 
 
 Babylon, the human body, is a Mystery, truly. 
 The anatomists, physiologists, surgeons and physi- 
 cians, who have studied this Mystery even on a 
 strictly empirical and materialistic basis, have 
 gained more knowledge of the divine Life mani- 
 fested in the material world, and have conferred 
 vastly greater benefits on the human race, than 
 have all the exoteric religionists who have wasted 
 their lives in formulating fantastic theologies and in 
 coercing their fellow-men into the worship of that 
 figment of the unenlightened mind — ^the personal 
 God. But Babylon represents more than the physi- 
 cal body considered as a mere form composed of 
 various tissues, a congeries of functional organs : it 
 symbolizes also the broad principle of generation, 
 of life confined to a physical basis. According to 
 the arcane science, which iSannSs has outlined in 
 allegorical language, forces are subtile elements, 
 and the material elements are forces that have 
 grown inert; and all the forces and elements have 
 their origin in the celestial ether, the Arch6, or 
 "first principle." The Sun-clothed Virgin of the 
 Sky, who gives birth to the man-child, by the ges- 
 tation of the solar body of the Conqueror, is the 
 pure ether, the primordial force-substance; but in 
 the spheres of animal-human generation, where 
 that ether has become differentiated into the gross 
 material elements, she is the unchaste female, the 
 mother of all that is abominable. As an external 
 form, a marvellous organism evolved by the soul 
 
188 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 for its own divine purposes, the body Is the adytum 
 of the God; but the elements composing it have 
 become foul during the long ages of material evolu- 
 tion, so that the soul is ever being tainted and insti- 
 gated to evil by the impure emanations and vicious 
 impulses which have become inherent in the physi- 
 cal organism. It is thus a Mystery at once divine 
 and infernal, at which the seer represents himself 
 as gazing in wonder. 
 
 Crater 
 
 As a Goddess, the infernal AphroditS, the de- 
 praved Virgo symbolizes the anima bruta, or lower 
 world-soul, which is saturated with sexuality. In 
 this role she holds a cup, which is the adjacent con- 
 stellation Crater, the Mixing-bowl fabled to have 
 belonged to lacchos, the God of orgiastic revelry. 
 
 Ch. xvil 6-8 
 
 I saw the Woman intoxicated with the blood of 
 the devotees and with the blood of the witnesses of 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 189 
 
 ISsous. When I saw her, I gazed in wonderment, 
 with great curiosity. Said the Divinity to me : 
 
 "Why did you wonder? I shall tell you the 
 mystery of the Woman, and of the Beast that was 
 carrying her, which has the seven heads and the ten 
 horns. The Beast which you saw was, and is not, 
 and is about to come up out of the abyss and go to 
 destruction. Those who dwell on the earth — [the 
 men] whose name has not been registered on the 
 scroll of life since the evolution of the world — ^will 
 wonder when they look at the Beast, because he 
 was, and is not, and shall be present! 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The red Dragon, the epithumetic, passional na- 
 ture, is the principle which, in close alliance with 
 the Beast, or phrgnic mind, impels the soul to con- 
 tinue to incarnate, and he thus sustains the Woman, 
 who typifies physical existence. He rises from the 
 abyss, the impure elements, and is again disinte- 
 grated in them when the soul is purified. The 
 formula, "was, is not and shall be present," merely 
 expresses in an enigmatical way the Platonic doc- 
 trine that in the spheres of generation "nothing 
 really is, but all things are becoming"; that is, in 
 the phenomenal world nothing partakes of perma- 
 nent being, but "all things are being created and 
 destroyed, coming into existence and passing into 
 new forms." The men who have not been regis- 
 tered on the scroll of life are simply the uninitiated. 
 
190 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 CH. XVU. 9-1 1 
 
 "Here is the intuitive mind that has cleverness: 
 the seven heads are seven mountains where the 
 Woman is sitting on them; and they are seven 
 rulers, [of whom] the five have fallen, and the one 
 is, and the other has not yet come, and when he 
 does come he must abide a little while. The Beast 
 which was and is not, is himself also an eighth and 
 is [an emanation] from the seven — and to destruc- 
 tion he is going. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The seven heads of the Dragon are, like those of 
 the Beast, the seven cardinal desires, but in the one 
 they are mental, in the other instinctual; and the 
 seven mountains are the seven chakras through 
 which they manifest during incarnation (the Wo- 
 man being then seated on them), and they domi- 
 nate in turn the seven incarnations through which 
 the neophyte must pass in conquering them. The 
 irreclaimable residue of the epithumetic principle, 
 which goes to form the after-death spectre, or ele- 
 mental self, is the eighth, "the son of perdition." 
 The Conqueror is represented in the Apocalyptic 
 drama as being in the sixth of the series of seven 
 incarnations, so that five of them have perished and 
 the seventh is yet to come; hence the Dragon, later 
 on in the drama, is again imprisoned in the abyss, 
 and can not be utterly slain until that seventh and 
 last incarnation. 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 191 
 
 CH. XVII. 12-14 
 
 "The ten hcxrns which you saw are ten rulers who 
 have not yet received a realm ; but they receive au- 
 thority as rulers one hour with the Beast. These 
 have one purpose; and their force and authority 
 they pass along to the Beast. These will battle with 
 the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them ; for he 
 is Mastfer of masters and Ruler of rulers ; and those 
 who [go along] with him are called and chosen and 
 reliable." 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The ten horns are the five prdnas, each of which 
 is dual, positive and negative, on this plane, where 
 they are merely the life-winds, or vital forces ; they 
 are not related to the chakras as the tattvas are, and 
 hence are said to have no realm as yet, though later 
 they have the spinal axis for their realm, when the 
 Lamb has conquered them. Exuberant animal vi- 
 tality, by intensifying the passional nature, tends 
 away from spirituality; hence these forces are 
 represented as being inimical to the Nous, yet they 
 are to be conquered and utilized. The forces sub- 
 dued are here classified according to the three lower 
 degrees of initiation in the Christian secret society. 
 
 Ch. XVII. 15-18 
 
 Also he says to me : 
 
 "The waters which you saw, where the prostitute 
 is sitting, are nations, mobs, peoples and tongues. 
 
192 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 The ten horns which you saw on the Beast — these 
 shall abhor the prostitute and shall make her desti- 
 tute and naked, and shall devour her flesh and con- 
 sume her with fire. For the God put it in their 
 hearts to carry out his purpose, to carry [it] out 
 [as their own] one purpose, and to give their realm 
 to the Beast until the instruction of the God should 
 be finished. And the Woman whom you saw is the 
 great city which has a realm [extending] over the 
 rulers of the earth." 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The waters are the great sea of generated life, 
 humanity in its vast cycle of material and psychic 
 evolution, which comprises all lesser racial and sub- 
 racial cycles, in each of which every individual 
 plays his part; and the whole mighty tide of life 
 slowly works out the divine purpose. Even the 
 minor forces of the individual man have in them 
 the impulse of this purpose of the God, so that he 
 who runs counter to it invites disease and destruc- 
 tion from the very forces that normally vitalize his 
 physical form. The "rulers of the earth" are the 
 underlying forces of the material world. 
 
 Chapter xviil 1-3 
 
 After these [instructions] I saw another Divin- 
 ity coming down out of the sky, having great au- 
 thority; and the earth was lit up by his glory. He 
 cried out with a strong voice, saying : 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES - 193 
 
 "She fell! The great Babylon fell, and became 
 a haunt of ghosts, a prison of every filthy spectre 
 and a cage of every filthy and loathesome bird [of 
 prey.] For by the wine of the lust of her prostitu- 
 tion all the people have fallen. The rulers of the 
 earth committed fornication with her; and the mer- 
 chants of the earth by the force of her lewdness 
 grew rich." 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The Apocalyptic hero, having conquered in the 
 ordeals of his initiation, achieving the spiritual re- 
 birth, has risen above the illusions of life, and has 
 taken his place among the deathless Gods. The 
 exhortations and lamentations which follow the 
 declaration of the radiant Divinity concerning the 
 fall of Babylon are of a general nature, applying 
 to the aggregate of humanity, and not at all to the 
 Conqueror. For, as there are two crucifixions, so 
 there are, correspondingly, two falls. The fall of 
 Babylon referred to by the Divinity is the fall into 
 mortal corruption, the desecration by humanity of 
 their physical bodies, which they have converted 
 into holds of iniquity. But, as pertaining to the 
 Conqueror, the fall of Babylon is the exact reverse 
 of this ; for it means the conquest, subjugation and 
 purification of the body. 
 
 The people, rulers and merchants who were de- 
 bauched by the great prostitute are the three lower 
 castes — the toiling, combative and commercial 
 classes — ^while the Divinities represent the fourth 
 and highest class, the enlightened. 
 
194 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 CH. XVIIL 4-24 
 
 I heard another voice from the sky, saying: 
 
 "Come out from her, O my people, so that you 
 may not have partnership in her sins, and so that 
 you may not receive of her scourges ! For her sins 
 have followed [y o u] up to the sky, and the God 
 has held in memory her misdeeds. Pay her back 
 as she also paid back, and double to her twofold 
 [wages], according to her works. In the wine-cup 
 which she poured out, pour out for her a double 
 [draught]. As much as she glorified herself and 
 grew lewd, so much give her of torment and mourn- 
 ing; for in her heart she keeps saying: 
 
 " 'I sit enthroned a queen, and am not a widow; 
 and I shall not at all put on mourning.' 
 
 "Therefore in one day shall come her scourges — 
 death, mourning and hunger — and she shall be con- 
 sumed by fire. For strong is the Master-God who 
 judged her. The rulers of the earth, who commit- 
 ted fornication and were lustful with her, shall 
 weep and wail over her when they look at the smoke 
 of her conflagration, standing afar through fear of 
 her torment, saying: 
 
 " 'Woe! Woe! The great city, Babylon, the 
 strong city! For in one hour has come your judg- 
 ment!' 
 
 "The merchants of the earth shed tears and 
 mourn over her, for no one buys their stock any 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 195 
 
 more — the stock of gold, silver, precious stone, 
 pearls, byssus, purple [cloth] and silken [fabrics] ; 
 and all citrus wood, every ivory utensil, every uten- 
 sil [made] of very precious wood, of bronze, of 
 iron and of marble; and cinnamon, amomum, in- 
 cense, ointment, frankincense, wine, oil, flour, 
 wheat, cattle and sheep; and [merchandise] of 
 horses and chariots — and of bodies and souls of 
 men! The fruits which your soul lusted for are 
 gone from you, and all dainty and radiant [charms] 
 have perished from you, and [your lovers] shall 
 never more find them at all [in you]. The mer- 
 chants of these wares, who were enriched by her, 
 shall stand afar through fear of her torment, shed- 
 ding tears and mourning, saying : 
 
 " 'Woe! Woe! The great city — she who was 
 arrayed in byssus [fabric], purple and scarlet, and 
 over-jewelled with gold, precious stone and pearl! 
 For in one hour all this wealth has come to destitu- 
 tion.' 
 
 "And every sailing-master, and every crew on 
 the ships, sailors, and as many as toil [on] the sea, 
 stood afar and cried out, on seeing the smoke of 
 her conflagration, saying: 
 
 " 'What [city] is the equal of the great city?' 
 
 "And they threw dust on their heads and cried 
 out, weeping and sorrowing, saying: 
 
 " 'Woe! Woe! The great city, by whom all 
 were enriched who have ships on the sea, from her 
 
196 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 bountifulness! For in one hour she has come to 
 destitution.' 
 
 "Rejoice over her, O sky, and ye devotees, apos- 
 tles and seers! For the God has passed sentence 
 upon her in accordance with your decision." 
 
 A lone Divinity, the strong one, took up a stone, 
 like a great millstone, and threw it into the sea, 
 saying : 
 
 "Thus with a rush shall Babylon, the great city, 
 be thrown down, and shall not at all be found any 
 more. The voice of lyrists, musicians, flutists 
 and trumpeters shall not at all be heard in thee any 
 more; no craftsman, of whatever craft, shall be 
 found any more at all in thee; the voice of a mill- 
 stone shall not at all be heard in thee any more; the 
 light of a lamp shall not at all shine in thee any 
 more; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the 
 bride shall not at all be heard in thee any more. 
 For thy merchants were the magnates of the earth. 
 For by thy witchcraft all the people were deluded." 
 
 In her was found the blood of seers and devotees, 
 and of all who have been sacrificed on the earth. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 In the rejoicing and lamentation over the pro- 
 spective fall of Babylon (an event which, for the 
 mass of mankind, lies in the extremely remote fu- 
 ture) the four castes take part. The highest caste, 
 or distinctive class, is given as threefold, composed 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 197 
 
 of devotees, apostles and seers; but they utter no 
 rejoicings, the Divinities acting as their spokesmen. 
 The profane, comprising the rulers or dominant 
 warlike class, the merchants or trading class, and 
 the sailors, the toiling masses on the sea of life, 
 indulge in lamentations over the downfall of the 
 great city. For the present, and for ages to come, 
 in Christian and pagan lands alike, Astarte remains 
 enthroned on the scarlet Dragon, "who is the Devil 
 and Satan," and in this twentieth century her cup 
 is more overflowing with abominations, and the 
 traffic in the bodies and souls of men and of women 
 goes on even more briskly and heartlessly, than in 
 the days when loannSs penned his mystic scroll. 
 The destruction of the Apocalyptic Babylon will 
 come only when humanity shall have learned to 
 loathe the lusts of the flesh and to love the glories 
 of the spirit. 
 
 Chapter xix. 1-8 
 
 After these [lamentations] I heard [a chorus], 
 as it were the voice of a vast throng in the sky, 
 saying : 
 
 "Hallelouia! The deliverance, glory and force 
 are our God's. For true and just are his judg- 
 ments : for he has judged the great prostitute, who 
 corrupted the earth with her prostitution, and he 
 has avenged the blood of his slaves at her hand." 
 
 And once more they have said : 
 
 "Hallelouia! Her smoke keeps going up through- 
 out the 3Bons of the seons!" 
 
198 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 The twenty-four Ancients and the four Beings 
 fell down and worshipped the God seated on the 
 throne, saying: 
 
 "Amen. HalWlouia!" 
 
 A voice came out of the throne, saying: 
 
 "Praise ye our God, all ye his slaves, and ye who 
 fear him, both the small and the great." 
 
 And I heard [a chorus], as it were the voice of 
 a vast throng, as the voice of many waters, and as 
 the voice of mighty thunders, saying: 
 
 "HalWhuia! For the Master-God, the AU-Domi- 
 nator, has become ruler. Let us rejoice and become 
 ecstatic, and let us give to him the glory; for the 
 marriage of the Lamb has come, and his wife has 
 made herself ready. To her was given [the right] 
 to clothe herself in byssus [-vesture] brilliant and 
 pure; for byssus [-vestures] are the awards to the 
 devotees." 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 Here the main action of the drama is resumed: 
 the chorus, which is the seventh and last, is a paean 
 of victory following the attainment by the Con- 
 queror of the Spiritual Rebirth. The chorus is 
 chanted by all the powers of the microcosmic uni- 
 verse, the enthroned Logos being the chorus-leader. 
 The word HalWlouia, which is not found elsewhere 
 in the New Testament, is here chanted four times. 
 
 The marriage (gamos) was one of the symbolic 
 rites in the Greek Mysteries; and universally in 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 199 
 
 mysticism spirit is represented as the male, and 
 matter as the female principle. Here the "bride" 
 of the Conqueror is the solar body — the "fire-body" 
 of the Initiate. 
 
 Byssus was a fine cloth, naturally of a yellow 
 color, affected by oriental devotees. It represents 
 the auric color of a saintly man. 
 
 Ch. XIX. 9, 10 
 
 And to me [the Divinity] says : 
 
 "Write: Immortal are they who are invited to the 
 wedding dinner of the Lamb." 
 
 And [again] he says to me : 
 
 "These arcane doctrines are the God's." 
 
 I fell down before his feet to worship him; but 
 he says to me : 
 
 "See to it [that you do] not. I am a fellow-slave 
 with you, and with your brothers who have the evi- 
 dence of lesous. Worship the God." 
 
 (For the evidence of ISsous is the "Breath" of 
 seership.) 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 Absolute certainty of the divine, immortal nature, 
 the conscious spiritual Self, can be had only through 
 the sacred trance, in which all the lower faculties 
 are placed in abeyance, the clamor of the senses, 
 emotions and thoughts completely stilled, so that 
 in the perfect peace and silence of the soul the voice 
 
200 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 of the inner Self may become audible. This trance- 
 state can be attained only through the action of the 
 speirema, the dynamic working-force of the para- 
 kletos, or "advocate," who pleads with the Father. 
 
 Ch. XIX. 11-16 
 
 I saw the sky opened; and, Behold! a white horse 
 [appeared], and he who was riding him is called 
 Believable and True, and with justice he judges and 
 gives battle. His eyes are like a blaze of fire, and 
 on his head are many diadems; and [on his fore- 
 head] he has a name written which no one knows 
 save himself. He is clothed in a garment dyed with 
 blood; and his name is called "The Logos of the 
 God." The armies in the sky were following him, 
 on white horses, wearing byssus [-robes], white and 
 pure. From his mouth keeps flashing forth a keen 
 sword, that with it he might chastise the people. He 
 shall rule them with an iron wand. He is treading 
 the wine-vat [overflowing with] the wine of the 
 ardor of the passion of the God, the All-Dominator. 
 He has on his garment and on his thigh the name 
 written, "Ruler of rulers and Master of masters." 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The hero on the white horse is the Second Logos, 
 the incarnating Ego; and he is now the Conqueror, 
 who by indomitable will has completed the telestic 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 201 
 
 work, and is no longer the inverted Logos. For 
 here he wears the aspect of Mars, the War-God, 
 who in the older mythology is the God of Genera- 
 tion ; he rules with a rod of iron, the metal of Mars ; 
 he treads the wine-vat of regenerative force, and he 
 has his title written on his thigh — an euphemism 
 for phallos, as in Old Testament usage (Gen. xxvi. 
 2, et passim) . This means that the Conqueror has 
 attained the state of sinless purity, having eradi- 
 cated from his nature everything that relates to the 
 lower phases of physical existence. He now goes 
 forth to the final battle with the elemental self, the 
 Tartarean ghost of his now defunct psycho-material 
 personality. 
 
 Ch. XIX. 17, 18 
 
 I saw a lone Divinity standing in the sun. He 
 cried out with a great voice, saying to all the birds 
 [of prey] that fly in mid-sky: 
 
 "Come! Flock together to the dinner of the 
 great God, so that you may devour the flesh of 
 rulers, the flesh of commanders, the flesh of strong 
 [warriors], the flesh of horses and of their riders, 
 and the flesh of all, free and slave, both small and 
 great." 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The "lone" Divinities are the Chief-Divinities 
 (archangeloi) , corresponding to the Zoa; here the 
 one standing in the Sun is Mikael, he who drove the 
 Dragon from the sky. 
 
202 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 The elemental self is the essence of impurity in 
 the psychic and material elements ; and as a sort of 
 by-product, so to say, of the evolutionary aeon, it is 
 a concretion of all that was evil in each incarnation 
 during the seonian sojourn of the Ego in the spheres 
 of generation: it is therefore the "flesh," or carnal 
 element, of kings, warriors and all the other per- 
 sonalities assumed by the incarnating Self in the 
 drama being enacted by humanity. 
 
 CH..XIX. 19-21 
 
 I saw the Beast, and the rulers of the earth and 
 their armies, drawn together to do battle with the 
 Rider on the White Horse and his army. The 
 Beast was captured, and with him the Pseudo-Seer 
 who made the omens in his sight, by which he de- 
 luded those who had received the brand of the 
 Beast, and the worshippers of his image. The two 
 [beasts] were cast alive into the lake of fire which 
 flames with sulphur; and the rest were slain by the 
 sword of the Rider on the White Horse, [by the 
 sword] which kept flashing forth from his mouth; 
 and all the birds [of prey] were gorged with their 
 flesh. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The battles in the Apocalypse are described very 
 briefly, as short and decisive conflicts, and never as 
 protracted struggles. In this one, the instinctual 
 and phrSnic principles of the elemental congeries 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 203 
 
 are apprehended and thrown into the astral fire of 
 the phantasmal world, where dissolution is their 
 ultimate fate. 
 
 Chapter xx. 1-3 
 
 I saw a Divinity coming down from the sky, hav- 
 ing the key of the abyss and a great chain in his 
 hand. He apprehended the Dragon, the archaic 
 Snake, who is the Accuser and the Adversary, and 
 enchained him for a thousand years, and cast him 
 into the abyss, and locked and sealed [it] atop of 
 him, so that he should not delude the people any 
 more until the thousand years should be finished; 
 and after that he must be turned loose for a short 
 time. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 Since the hero of the Apocalypse is represented 
 as being in the sixth incarnation of the seven mak- 
 ing up the cycle of initiation, he has one more earth- 
 life to undergo, and therefore can not yet completely 
 destroy the epithumetic principle; instead, it is 
 placed in durance for a thousand years, after which 
 it must be freed, when the hero reincarnates, where- 
 upon it will be speedily exterminated. This sev- 
 enth incarnation is the last of the seven rulers who 
 are the seven heads of the Dragon; and of this ruler 
 it is said that "when he does come he must abide a 
 little while." In placing the time between incarna- 
 tions at a thousand years iSannSs follows Plato, 
 who gives that period, as in Phaidros, p. 249, and 
 
204 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 in the Republic, p. 615; in the latter, however, 
 where he is relating the allegory of Er, Plato ex- 
 plains that, owing to the tenfold intensity of sensa- 
 tion in the subjective after-death state, "the thou- 
 sand years answer to the hundred years which are 
 reckoned as the lifetime of man." 
 
 Ch. XX. 4-6 
 
 I saw thrones and those seated on them; and 
 judgment was passed on them. And [I saw] the 
 souls of those who had been beheaded on account of 
 the evidence of Igsous and on account of the arcane 
 doctrine of the God; also those who did not wor- 
 ship the Beast or his image, and did not receive his 
 brand on their forehead and on their hand, and they 
 came to life and ruled with the Anointed for a 
 thousand years ; [but] the rest of the dead did not 
 come to life again until the thousand years were 
 finished. This is the first resurrection. Immortal 
 and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection; 
 over these the second death does not hold sway, 
 but they shall be sacrificers to the God and his 
 Anointed, and they shall rule with him for the 
 thousand years. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 When the Beast and the Pseudo-Seer were cast 
 into the astral fire, and the Dragon was incarcera- 
 ted in the abyss, they made their final exit from the 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 205 
 
 Apocalyptic stage. The Conqueror has annihilated 
 the bogus Lion and the bogus Lamb ; but in his next 
 incarnation he will have to fight and destroy the 
 Dragon, the bogus Arche-Logos. Yet the Apoca- 
 lyptic drama covers but the one incarnation ; and so, 
 rather than leave in uncertainty the issue of the 
 final combat between the Conqueror and the 
 Dragon, I6ann6s here introduces a side-scene in 
 which he first explains in a general way what hap- 
 pens to the soul of a man during the periods be- 
 tween incarnations, and then, carrying into the 
 future the story of the Conqueror, describes the 
 final battle in the next incarnation, resulting in the 
 defeat and destruction of the Dragon. 
 
 The thrones and those enthroned on them repre- 
 sent a typical individual in a series of incarnations, 
 after each of which, upon the death of the physical 
 body, the enthroned Self passes judgment upon the 
 deeds and misdeeds, on the planes of thought, emo-. 
 tion and action, of the lower self during the preced- 
 ing earth-life. All the pure and noble thoughts, 
 sentiments, aspirations and memories are retained 
 and remain in the deathless Mind, the Nous, 
 throughout the season of subjective peace and bliss 
 which the soul then experiences ; but all the worth- 
 less and evil elements are rejected and left to remain 
 dormant in the lower psychic realm, dying the "sec- 
 ond death," and coming to life only when the soul 
 again descends into the spheres of generation. Thus 
 the man's own past is his personal "Satan" and 
 "Devil," the ancient serpent trailing through the 
 ages and accusing him day and night before his 
 inner God, who is his righteous Judge. 
 
206 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 Ch. XX. 7-10 
 
 When the thousand years are finished, the Ad- 
 versary shall be turned loose from his prison and 
 shall come out to delude the people who are in the 
 four corners of the earth (the Gog and Magog) , to 
 bring them together for battle, the number of whom 
 is as the sand of the sea. They went up on the 
 width of the earth and surrounded the fortress of 
 the devotees, and the beloved city. And fire came 
 down out of the sky and consumed them. The 
 Accuser, the deluder of them, was thrown into the 
 lake of fire and sulphur, where also are the Beast 
 and the Pseudo-Seer; and they shall be tormented 
 day and night throughout the aeons of the seons. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 Here is foretold the fate of the Dragon, the epi- 
 thumetic principle, whose host of desires, passions 
 and longings is indeed as the sand of the sea. But 
 they have now no lodging-place in the purified na- 
 ture of the Conqueror, and exist only as surviving 
 impressions and impulses impressed like phono- 
 graphic records on the plastic world-soul, and as a 
 malignant composite spectral entity they assail him 
 from without. The purifying fire obliterates these 
 collective phantoms; and their focal centre, the 
 Dragon in#his capacity as the "eighth," shares the 
 doom of the bogus Lion and the bogus Lamb. The 
 clause put in parentheses is evidently some scho- 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 207 
 
 liast's marginal gloss that has crept into the text, a 
 mere memorandum referring to "Gog" and "Ma- 
 gog," instead of being written out in full as "Gog, 
 king of the Ignd of Magog." It is a true parallel, 
 however, from the Jewish mythology, and indicates 
 that whoever wrote it understood to some extent the 
 esoteric meaning of the Apocalypse and also the 
 inner sense of the Old Testament myths. In fact, 
 no real esotericist could possibly fail to perceive the 
 general meaning of the Apocalyptic allegory; and 
 the solution of its peculiar puzzles calls only for the 
 exercise of ingenuity on the part of any one "who^^ 
 has the Nous." Butjhrough the ages the esoteri- 
 cists have merely smjlsd and remained silent while 
 the exoteric "Fathers of the Church" and their 
 worthy successors have-t-ortured this magnificent 
 epic into a theoJogicaLnigJitma^ ; for if the "ortho- , 
 dox" had discovered its real nature, the Apocalyps^ 
 would unquestionably have shared the fate of the 
 learned Porphyry's treatise on Christianity, which 
 was burned by decree of the Roman Emperor. 
 
 Ch.xx. 11-15 
 
 I saw a great white throne and [the God] seated 
 on it, from whose face fled the earth and the sky — 
 and a place was not found for them. I saw the dead, 
 the great and the small, standing before the throne; 
 and [their] scrolls were unrolled. Another scroll 
 was unrolled, which is [the Lamb's scroll] of life. 
 The dead were judged from the [records] written 
 in [their] scrolls, according to their works. The 
 
208 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 sea gave up the dead which were in it, and Death 
 and the Unseen gave the dead which were in them ; 
 and they were judged every one according to their 
 works. Death and the Unseen were thrown into 
 the lake of fire. This is the second death — the lake 
 of fire. If any one was not found registered in the 
 [Lamb's] scroll of life, he was thrown into the lake 
 of fire. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 Here the action of the drama is again resumed. 
 The initiate has severed 'himself from the lower life, 
 and by thus renouncing everything pertaining to 
 the generated form of existence he is morally and 
 dynamically in the same condition as is the disincar- 
 nated man, so that his past must be adjudicated in 
 the same way. But, whereas the after-death judg- 
 ment of the uninitiated soul involves only its last 
 preceding earth-life, the Conqueror must render an 
 account of all his past incarnations : the records in 
 their scrolls are reviewed, and then all are summed 
 up in the Lamb's great scroll of life — the compre- 
 hensive record of the incarnating Self. All his 
 deeds in the great sea of sensuous life, all the things 
 that he ever did in the physical and psychic worlds, 
 spring to life in the Eternal Memory, and all are 
 passed upon by the inexorable Judge, and whatever 
 element in the aeon-evolved character of the man 
 that is found unworthy of life eternal is hurled into 
 the consuming fire of the chaos, there to disinte- 
 grate in the second death. In this there is no 
 shadow of that exoteric and profane notion, the 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 209 
 
 "vicarious atonement." According to the philoso- 
 phy of loannSs, Seer and Initiate, the great Teacher 
 of the Christian cycle, rigid justice rules all worlds. 
 
 Chapter xxi. 1-5 
 
 I saw a new sky and a new earth — for the first 
 sky and the first earth have passed away, and the 
 sea is not any more. I saw the holy city, New 
 Hierousalgm, coming down out of the sky — from 
 the God — ^made ready as a bride bedecked for her 
 husband. I heard a great voice from the throne, 
 saying : 
 
 "Behold! the tent of the God is with men, and 
 he shall pitch tent with them. They shall be his 
 people and the God himself shall be with them — 
 their God! He shall wipe away every tear from 
 their eyes ; and there shall not be death any more, 
 nor shall there be mourning, lamentation or pain 
 any more. For the material elements have passed 
 away." 
 
 Said the [Master] seated on the throne : 
 
 "Behold! I am making a new universe." 
 
 And to me he says : 
 
 "Write: These arcane doctrines are believable 
 and true." 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 In the prelude to the first act of the drama (iv. 
 11) the Powers chant a paean to the God who 
 
210 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 brought into existence the universe; but now that 
 microcosmic "universe," the lower self which had 
 been evolved- during the generative aeons, has ful- 
 filled its purpose, and is superceded by a new Uni- 
 verse, a new cycle of spiritual evolution transcen- 
 dent in glory. 
 
 Ch. XXL 6-8 
 
 And [again] he said to me: 
 
 "He has been born, [but] / am the Alpha and 
 the 6, the Origin and the Perfection. To him who 
 thirsts / shall give of the spring of the water of life 
 as a free gift. The Conqueror shall obtain the 
 universe, and I will be a God to him, and he shall 
 be a son to me. But, for the cowardly, the unbe- 
 lieving, the malodorous, murderers, fornicators, sor- 
 cerers, worshippers of phantoms, and all liars, their 
 part [shall be] in the lake which flames with fire 
 and sulphur — ^which is the second death." 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The First Logos, the enthroned God, who is the 
 source of life and its ultimate goal, is never incar- 
 nated; the Second Logos is the incarnating Self; 
 and the man as he is on earth is the Third Logos, 
 who, if he conquers and achieves the second birth, 
 becomes the son of the God. Yet the three are in 
 reality one, the Divine Man manifested on three 
 planes of life. Nevertheless, if the carnal man be- 
 comes irredeemably wicked, his fate is the second 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 211 
 
 death, the reverse of the second birth : his psychic 
 self decomposes in the fiery subtile elements, even 
 as the physical body is resolved into its original ele- 
 ments when abandoned by the animating principle. 
 The second death means the obliteration of the per- 
 sonal consciousness; the second birth leads to the 
 attuning of the individual consciousness with that 
 which is universal and divine. 
 
 A variant reading in the text has "I have been 
 born," but the gegone of the received text is pref- 
 erable. The revisers have adopted the extraordi- 
 nary reading gegonan, from which they extract the 
 almost meaningless statement, "They are come to 
 pass." 
 
 Ch. XXI. 9-14 
 
 Came one of the seven Divinities who had the 
 seven libation-saucers, who were charged with the 
 seven last scourges, and he talked with me, saying: 
 
 "Hither! I shall show you the bride — the 
 Lamb's wife." 
 
 He carried me away in the Breath [-trance] to a 
 mountain great and high, and showed me the holy 
 city HierousalSm, coming down out of the sky 
 from the God, having the God's glory — [and this], 
 her luminary, was like a very precious stone, like 
 an opal crystal-glittering — having a wall great and 
 high ; having twelve gateways, and at the gateways 
 twelve Divinities, and [on the gateways] names 
 inscribed, which are [the names] of the twelve 
 
212 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 tribes of the children of Israel: on the east were 
 three gateways, on the north three gateways, on the 
 south three gateways, and on the west three gate- 
 ways. The wall of the city had twelve foundations, 
 and on them [were inscribed] the twelve names of 
 the twelve apostles of the Lamb. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The mountains of the Apocalypse are the chakras 
 and the states of consciousness to which they corre- 
 spond; the symbolism is almost universal, and 
 many were the ancient cities having their seven 
 sacred mountains, or hills. The Book of Enoch 
 describes seven mountains each of which was com- 
 posed of one of the seven metals ascribed to the 
 planets. These are: Saturn, lead; Jupiter, tin; 
 Mars, iron; Sun, gold; Venus, copper; Mercury, 
 quicksilver; and Moon, silver. 
 
 The iaspis is thought by some authorities to have 
 been the diamond or the opal, and the latter sup- 
 position is doubtless correct, as the self-luminous 
 aura, the glory, basically white, but coruscating 
 with all the seven colors, resembles a brilliant opal. 
 The aura (the wall of the city) has twelve force- 
 centres, where the twelve cosmic forces (the apos- 
 tles of the Lamb, or Sun) are focussed upon the 
 microcosm, and these focal centres are dynamically 
 related to the twelve orifices of the body — the 
 twelve gateways of the city, corresponding to the 
 twelve tribes. Thus, quite literally, even on the 
 plane of forces, the Conqueror obtains the Universe. 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 213 
 
 CH. XXI. 15-21 
 
 The [Divinity] who was talking with me had for 
 a measure a golden reed, to measure the city, its 
 gateways and its wall. The city lies foursquare, 
 and its length is as great as its width. He measured 
 the city with the reed, by stadia, twelve thousand; 
 its length, width and height are equal. And he 
 measured its wall, one hundred and forty-four cu- 
 bits, [including] the measure of a man, that is, 
 of a Divinity. The building-material of its wall was 
 opal, and the city was pure gold, like clear glass. 
 The foundations of the wall of the city were orna- 
 mented with every precious stone: the first foun- 
 dation was opal; the second, sapphire; the third, 
 chalcedony; the fourth, aqua-marine; the fifth, sar- 
 donyx; the sixth, carnelian; the seventh, chrysolite; 
 the eighth, beryl; the ninth, topaz; the tenth, chryso- 
 prase; the eleventh, jacinth; and the twelfth, ame- 
 thyst. The twelve gateways were twelve pearls: 
 each one of the twelve gateways was [carved] from 
 a single pearl. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 As already explained, the cubical city, when un- 
 folded, becomes a cross, symbolizing the human 
 form. It is the solar body, to soma heliakon, the 
 numerical value of the words being 1,600, the num- 
 ber of Jewish miles in 1 2,000 stadia. The Roman 
 mile of about eight stadia, it should be noted, was 
 
214 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 never used by the Jews, who counted seven and a 
 half stadia to the mile. The aura, he doxa, gives 
 the number 143, to which is added an alpha, 1, that 
 being the vowel and number of the primeval man, 
 or Divinity. 
 
 The aura is a brilliant opalescence, self-luminous, 
 and the solar body has the appearance of trans- 
 parent gold. 
 
 The twelve precious stones are not all identified 
 with certainty, as some of the Greek names are du- 
 bious ; but, given in the modern terms generally ap- 
 plied to them, they are probably as follows: 1, opal; 
 2, lapis-lazuli ; 3, chalcedony; 4, aqua-marine; 5, 
 sardonyx; 6, carnelian; 7, topaz; 8, beryl; 9, 
 chrysolith; 10, chrysoprase; 11, hyacinth; and 12, 
 amethyst. Placed in a circle, as if incorporated in 
 the aura, these colored stones form approximately 
 the prismatic scale, and are thus identical with the 
 rainbow (iv. 3) which encircles the throne of the 
 God. 
 
 Ch. XXL 21-27 
 
 The main-street of the city was pure gold, trans- 
 parent as glass. No adytum did I see in it; for the 
 Master-God, the All-Dominator, and the Lamb are 
 its adytum. The city has no need of the sun, nor of 
 the moon, to shine in it; for the God's glory lights 
 it up; and its lamp is the Lamb, and the people 
 [who are of the delivered] shall walk in its light; 
 and the rulers of the earth keep bringing their glory 
 into it. Its gateways shall not at all be closed by 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 215 
 
 day — for there shall be no night there. They shall 
 bring the glory and the honor of the people into it; 
 and there shall not at all enter into it anything pro- 
 fane, or he who creates a stench and [acts] a lie, 
 but only those who are registered in the Lamb's 
 scroll of life. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The broad street, or highway, of the solar forces, 
 "the rulers from the Sun's place of birth," corre- 
 sponds to the spinal cord of the physical body. 
 But the complex structure of the gross form, with 
 the numerous organs and functions made necessary 
 by material conditions, is not duplicated in the spir- 
 itual body, which is formed of etheric fire, and is in 
 direct relation with, and is sustained by, the cosmic 
 and divine forces. 
 
 Chapter xxii. 1-5 
 
 He showed me a pure river of the water of life, 
 clear as crystal, flowing out of the throne of the 
 God and of the Lamb, in the middle of its main- 
 street; and on one side of the river and on the other 
 was the tree of life, producing twelve fruits accord- 
 ing to the months, each one yielding its fruit; and 
 the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the 
 people — and the accursed [function] shall not 
 exist any more. The throne of the God and of the 
 Lamb shall be in it, and his slaves will serve him; 
 
216 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 they will see his face, and his name [will be] on 
 their foreheads. There will be no night there; and 
 they will have no need of lamp or light of the sun : 
 for the Master-God will give them light, and they 
 will rule throughout the aeons of the aeons. 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The river of life and the two trees of life corre- 
 spond to the three nddis; but, whereas in the physi- 
 cal body the triple current ascends to the brain from 
 below, from the generative centres, in the solar 
 
 \ body the "accursed" function, sex, does not exist, 
 and the forces come from above, from the brain- 
 region. In the inverted Logos, the "son of man," 
 the creative centres are the lowest; in the Con- 
 queror, who has become the "Son of the God," they 
 are the highest. The Arche-Logos is the "Witness" 
 and has his "two witnesses," the three constituting 
 the creative triad ; therefore he has his name written 
 on his thigh. This is the secret meaning of the 
 Kabalistic maxim. Demon est Deus inversus. The 
 
 \ \ ( generative function is strictly nothing but an ani- 
 mal one, and can never be anything else. True spir- 
 ituality demands its utter extirpation ; and while its 
 proper exercise for the continuation of the human 
 race, in the semi-animal stage of its evolution, may 
 not be considered sinful, its misuse, in any way, is 
 fraught with the most terrible consequences physi- 
 cally, psychically and spiritually; and the forces 
 connected with it are used for abnormal purposes 
 only in the foulest practices of sorcery, the inevita- 
 
 y 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 217 
 
 ble result of which is moral death — the annihilation 
 of the individuality. The only true creative func- 
 
 \ tion is that of the Nous, the Godlike faculty of for- 
 
 I mative Thought. 
 
 t 
 
 Ch. XXII. 6-9 
 
 He said to me : 
 
 "These arcane doctrines are believable and true. 
 The Master-God of the 'Breaths' of the seers sent 
 his Divinity to make known to his slaves the [per- 
 fections] which must be attained speedily. Behold! 
 I am coming speedily. Immortal is he who observes 
 the arcane doctrines of the teaching of this scroll." 
 
 I, I6annes, am he who was seeing and hearing 
 these [mysteries] ; and when I heard and saw, I fell 
 down to worship before the feet of the Divinity who 
 was making known these [mysteries] to me. And 
 he says to me : 
 
 "See to it [that you do] not. I am a fellow-slave 
 with you and with your brothers, the seers, and 
 those who observe the arcane doctrines of the teach- 
 ings of this scroll. Worship the God!" 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The Breaths (pneumata) of the seers are the dif- 
 ferentiated forces of the Pneuma, or Great Breath 
 of Life, used by the seers in the telestic work, and 
 are not the "spirits" of ancient worthies. The Arch- 
 Divinity of these creative forces is the Nous. 
 
218 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 Nothing should be worshipped that has form or 
 is individuated. The universal Divine Life is alone 
 to be worshipped. There is no colorless pantheism 
 in this concept; for the God of each man is one with 
 the universal God : the Conqueror obtains the Uni- 
 verse, not by being absorbed and obliterated by it, 
 but by transcending the limitations of his individual 
 consciousness and partaking of the universal Di- 
 vine Consciousness. As an individual he loses 
 nothing but his imperfections, but he gains the All, 
 the "Origin and the Perfection." And this is Seer- 
 ship, which is not "prophecy," "second sight," or 
 sense-perception on any plane of consciousness, 
 but is Direct Cognition of Reality. 
 
 Ch. xxil 10-16 
 
 And [again] he says to me : 
 
 "Do not seal up the arcane doctrines of the teach- 
 ings of this scroll ; for the season is near. The un- 
 just, let him do injustice yet more; the sordid, let 
 him be made yet more sordid; the just, let him do 
 justice yet more; and the devotee, let him be made 
 yet more devoted. Behold! I am coming speedily, 
 and my wages are with me, to pay off each [la- 
 borer] as his work is. / am the Alpha and the 6, 
 the First [Adam] and the Last [Adam], the Origin 
 and the Perfection. Immortal are those who are 
 washing their robes so that they may have authority 
 over the tree of life and may enter by the gateways 
 into the city. Outside are the dogs, the sorcerers, 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 219 
 
 the fornicators, the murderers, the phantom-servers, 
 and every one who keeps sanctioning and acting a 
 he. /, l8sous, have sent my Divinity to give evi- 
 dence to you of these [works depending] upon the 
 Societies. / am the Root and the Offspring of 
 David, his bright and Morning Star." 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 The injunction not to seal up the teachings has 
 been followed by the Apocalyptist; for although his 
 scroll is written in veiled language it is not "sealed" 
 as in the case of a strictly occult book, which is 
 written either in cipher or secret language, and can 
 not be read without a key. Mystical works intended 
 for general circulation are usually worded ob- 
 scurely, being designed to elicit and cultivate the 
 intuitive faculty of the reader; and they are, almost 
 without exception, disconnected, fragmentary, and 
 often interspersed with irrelevant passages. But 
 the Apocalypse contains its own key, and is com- 
 plete in itself, coherent, and scrupulously accurate 
 in every detail. The puzzles it contains are not in- 
 tended to mislead or confuse; on the contrary, they 
 serve to verify the correct interpretation of the alle- 
 gory. The book is not sealed to any one who has 
 the developed intuitive faculty, and for whom, 
 therefore, the season, the springtime of noetic un- 
 foldment, is near. 
 
 Though the growth of the inner nature is a slow 
 process during many incarnations, the recognition 
 of the actuality of the soul, of the immanent higher 
 
220 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 mind, comes upon the man suddenly; as iSannSs 
 reiterates, the Logos comes speedily, unexpectedly, 
 as a thief in the night; and when it does come there 
 is a balancing of merits and demerits. If his nature 
 is sufficiently purified, the mystic tree of life (the 
 speirema) is his, and by means of it he enters the 
 holy city; otherwise he remains with "those with- 
 out," the exotericists, until he shall have "washed 
 his robes" and thereby gained the right to employ 
 the "Breaths of the seers." 
 
 The Divinity speaking to loannSs is one of the 
 septenary group who poured out the libations in 
 the final ordeals; he forbids the seer to worship. him, 
 declaring himself to be but a fellow-servitor ; then he 
 announces himself as both the First and the Second 
 Logos; and lastly he calls himself lesous, the in- 
 carnating Self of David. The Initiate has thus 
 "gathered himself together," unifying his whole 
 nature, and correlating his consciousness in the 
 four worlds. 
 
 Ch. xxn. 17-21 
 
 Both the Breath and the Bride are saying, 
 "Come!" Let him who hears say, "Come!" Let 
 him who is athirst come ; and let him who is willing 
 receive the water of life as a free gift. 
 
 I give corroborative evidence to every one who 
 hears the arcane doctrines of the teaching of this 
 scroll, [and I give warning] that if any one shall 
 add [forgeries] to them, the God will add to 
 him the scourges which are written in this scroll; 
 
THE INITIATION OF lOANNES 221 
 
 and if any one shall erase [any portion] from the 
 arcane doctrines of the scroll of this teaching, the 
 God will erase his portion from the scroll of life 
 and from the holy city, [even from] the [initia- 
 tions] which are described in this scroll. 
 
 He who gives evidence of these [arcane doc- 
 trines] says: 
 
 "Verily, I am coming speedily." 
 
 AMfiN. Come, Master lesous! 
 
 The Grace of the Master lesous be with the devo- 
 tees. Amen, 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 In the days when books could be published only 
 in the form of manuscripts it was comparatively 
 easy for unscrupulous persons to alter them to suit 
 their own views by expunging words and passages 
 and by interpolating forgeries. Religious sectari- 
 ans were particularly addicted to this form of liter- 
 ary vandalism, as is clearly evident from the 
 mutilated text of portions of the New Testament, 
 especially the letters of Paulos. The statement that 
 terrible consequences would result to any one tam- 
 pering with the text of this scroll of loannSs has 
 doubtless stayed the hand of many a superstitious 
 bigot, and has operated to preserve it intact; but 
 the warning is more than a mere idle threat, for the 
 man who would maliciously mutilate this manual 
 written for the spiritual guidance of the "little chil- 
 dren" of the Logos would find a grave indictment 
 charged against him when he came to be "judged 
 
222 THE APOCALYPSE UNSEALED 
 
 according to his works." That the text has been 
 preserved with remarkable purity is shown by the 
 fact that the puzzles it contains have not been 
 touched, though even slight changes by a meddle- 
 some "redactor" might have ruined them. 
 
 Even as the Light of the Logos keeps saying to 
 mankind, "Come," so the learner, he who hears 
 that summons, should repeat the call, tendering as a 
 free gift the water of life to all who thirst for it and 
 are willing to receive it. But woe to those who by 
 attempting to trade in the things of the spirit have 
 lost the key of the GnSsis, leaving themselves 
 locked out and hindering those who were ready to 
 enter ! 
 
 Now, the Master lesous is the Spiritual Mind of 
 man, which alone can give absolute proof of the 
 truth of the Life Eternal; and he indeed comes 
 swiftly to those who make themselves pure and 
 become worthy to utter the word of power — ^the 
 Amen.