Ancient Masonry Is Archaic Gnosticism

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Blavatsky Speaks Series · 43 pages

Forty-three pages arranged in twelve numbered sections, and among the most tightly structured documents in the series. The argument is that Freemasonry is an offspring of the earliest Mysteries and the origin of Christian ritualism — that there was a day when Church and Masonry were one, Masonry being archaic Gnosticism or early esoteric Christianity, and church ritualism exoteric paganism unchanged.

The sections build in order. The first sets theism without altruism against what she calls theosophical atheism; the second traces the reign of ritualism and anthropomorphic cults; the fourth allows only one Grand Architect while multiplying his sidereal counterparts; the sixth places the real Sun as the heart of numberless solar systems with its brain hidden behind the visible one. The eighth carries the sharpest historical point — that the profanation of the Mysteries began in 510 BC, when Athens stopped requiring purity for initiation and began charging for it instead, so that initiation became as popular among the masses then as baptism has since become among Christians. The tenth identifies the Alexandrian Eclectics and the Philaletheians of Ammonius Saccas as Masons, which is where this website takes its name from.

Read the full text (PDF, 2.1 MB, 43 pages)