Page:A Collection of Esoteric Writings.djvu/240

226 is acceptable to the mind of a modern agnostic, can the evolution of these doctrines from a few simple ideas which are common to humanity in general be explained by the operation of known psychological laws? If the latter hypothesis is tenable, how is it that these products of human experience have not undergone any change in spite of great improvements in material civilization and mental culture?

It is not my object now to undertake a discussion of the above subject and offer my own solutions of the problem; I only beg to call the reader's attention to this important question, and request him not to lose sight of it in meditating on the origin and history of religious belief amongst mankind, and the possibility of discovering a common platform on which the followers of the various religions on the globe may take up their stand with brotherly love and affection, forgetting the petty differences of their exoteric dogmatic creeds. The Sphinx does not think it necessary to say anything about the contents of the short philosphical dissertations appended to "The Virgin of the World" as they seem to contain more of Grecian speculation than of Egyptian wisdom.

"THE VIRGIN OF THE WORLD."

your remarks upon my prefatory essay to the "Virgin of the World," you assert that Persephone cannot be regarded as the Kosmic Virgin. She was, however, undoubtedly so regarded by all the neo-Platonic school, whose exponent, Thomas Taylor, in his "Dissertation of the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries," quotes largely from Greek Hermetic authors to prove this very point. I wish that my reviewer, before committing himself to the statement he has made on page 97 of the November number of the Theosophist, had made himself familiar with this standard work, and also with certain passages of Proclus, Olympiodorus, the Orphic hymns, Claudian, Apuleias, and other accredited and classic authorities, from all of which it is abundantly clear that the mythos of the rape of Persephone, the theme of the mysteries, represented the descent into Matter, or Generation, of the Soul, and that the title "Kore