Samson and Hercules as Neophytes near Their Trials' End

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Buddhas and Initiates Series · 16 pages

The starting point is the Nazars, a monastic class of celibates consecrated to the service of God, to which Samson and Samuel belonged, and also — on Blavatsky's reckoning — Zoroaster, Azara-Ezra, Zorobabel, Paul and Joseph. Samson she treats as a true Nazarite whose hair was his strength, his father Manu and the mother of his counterpart Samuel named Anna; and she cites an old palm leaf showing a blind giant of Ceylonian antiquity, hair reaching the ground, arms outstretched around the four central pillars of a pagoda and pulling them down on a crowd of armed enemies, as an antitype of the biblical Samson.

The argument is that Samson, consecrated before birth to become a Nazarite — that is, an adept — and then losing everything through Delilah and the cropping of his hair, is evidence of the esotericism of the Bible and of the character of the mystery gods of the Jews. Biblical Samson is identified with the Hindu Ganesha, Samuel with a Hebrew Hercules and double of Samson, both fictitious characters, as King David is the Israelitish King Arthur. The ritual reading follows: Samson and Hercules are personifications of neophytes near the end of their trials, kneeling before the hierophant who cuts off seven locks of their hair representing the golden beams of the sun and replaces them with a wreath of sharp ligneous spines that symbolises the loss — the crown of thorns treated separately elsewhere in this section. Two astronomically connected crucifixions close the study.

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