My Soon to be lost to Antiquity (1809-1941) Listed by Year
The Truth Of The Christian Religion. (1809). Hugo Grotius.
One of the pioneering natural rights theorists of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, Grotius defined natural law as a perceptive judgement in which things are good or bad by their own nature. This was a break from Calvinist ideals, in that God was no longer the only source of ethical qualities. These things that are by themselves good are associated with the nature of man. The Dutch Republic had been founded on princples of religious toleration but had become a Calvinist theocracy. Grotius, a humanist and Dutch patriot, struggled with Calvinism all of his life.In this struggle, he dealt with the international laws of war and issues of peace and justice. Although most famous for his theories of natural law, Grotius was also considered to be a great theologian. While occasionally writing about Christianity and religion, his intention for law was to write of it as independant of religious opinions.
Ancient Fragments (1828). I.P. Cory.
Containing what remains of the writings of Sanchoniatho, Berossus, Abydenus, Magesthenes, and Manetho.
Also the Hermetic Creed, the Old Chronicle, The Laterculus of Eratosthenes, The Tyrian Annals, the Oracles of Zoroaster, and the Periplus of Hanno.
Pythagorean Triangle: or The Science of Numbers
by George Oliver, George (1850ish)
Contents: The Pythagorean Triangle Explained, with a Dissertation on the Peculiarities of Masonic Number; The Monad or Point Discussed as the Origin of All Calculation; The Duad or Line Exemplified; Illustration of the Triad or Superfice; (The Superfice, or Equilateral Triangle, Triad, Ternary, or the Number Three); Progressive Generation of the Tetrad or Solid, Representing Fire; Geometrical Application of the Pentad or Pyramid, Representing Water; Infinite Divisibility of the Hexad or Double Triangle, Representing Earth; Remarkable Properties of the Heptad; Mysterious References of the Ogdoad or Cube, Representing Air; Ancient Superstitions Attached to the Ennead or Triple Triangle; Perfect Nature of the Decad or Circle, and the Application of the Dodecaedron as a Representation of the System of the Universe.
The History Of Initiation. (1855). Rev. George Oliver, D.D.
In Twelve Lectures, comprising a detailed account of the Rites and Ceremonies, Doctrine and Discipline, of all the secret and mysterious Institutions of the Ancient World.
Vestiges Of The Spirit History Of Man. (1858). S.F. Dunlap.
Thirteen chapters on Spirits, Great Gods, Sun-Worship, Fire-Worship, Light, Cosmogony, Philosophy, The Logos, Genesis and Exodus, The Garden, Polytheism, Brahmanism and Buddhism, The World-Religions. 1858. The basis of the world is power. It lives in us and in every thing. From the beginning it came forth from God, and was uttered in the philosophies of great teachers and prophets of the ancient world. God has not placed it here to remain inactive: it strives, creates, institutes. So long as the world is filled with it, so long will its efforts continue, for power expresses the will of God. This work proceeds upon the conviction that there has been a gradual rise of systems, one cultus growing out of another. Thought grows like a plant. New fruits become the bases of further developments. The present perpetually evolves new power.
Ancient Symbol Worship.The Influence Of The Phallic Idea In The Religions Of Antiquity (1875). H.M. Westropp and C.S. Wake
"Nature to the early man was not brute matter... The Earth was looked upon as the mould of nature, as the recipient of seeds, the nurse of what was produced in its bosom; the sky was the fecundating and fertilizing power... These ideas bear a prominent part in the religious creeds of various nations..."
Ancient Faiths And Modern. (1876). Thomas Inman
A Dissertation Upon Worships, Legends and Divinities in Central and Western Asia, Europe and Elsewhere Before the Christian Era, Showing Their Relations to Religious Customs as They Now Exist. "...With the idea which was gradually forced upon my mind, that there was a systematic suppression of the truth in the pulpit, I very carefully searched the Bible, with which I have been familiar from infancy, and upon which, it is asserted, all our faith is founded.
At this time, too, a casual inquiry into some ancient cognomens, which have descended to us from remote antiquity, induced me to examine into ancient faiths generally. With this became associated an examination of all religions, and their influence upon mankind."
The Virgin Of The World, Or, Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus. (1885).
Now first rendered into English, with Essay , Introduction and Notes, by Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland.
The Gnostics And Their Remains, Ancient And Medieval. (1887). C.W. King, M.A.
In Five Parts: 1 - Gnosticism and its Sources; 2 - The Worship of Mithras and Serapis; 3 - Abraxas, Abraxaster and Abraxoid Gems; 4 - The Figured Monuments of Gnosticism; 5 - Templars, Rosicrucians and Freemasons.
Clothed With The Sun. (1889).
Being the Book of Illuminations of Anna Bonus Kingsford. ".. speak of the Tree and of its meaning. Of this the Hindus understand more than you, for they represent their gods with many arms. This is because they recognize the fact that the type of all existence is a Tree, and that God's universe symbol is that of the vegetable kingdom.
It is for this reason that the Tree was planted in the midst of the garden, forasmuch as it was and is the type of all existence, the centre from which radiates the whole of creation."
The Eleusinian And Bacchic Mysteries. (1891). Thomas Taylor.
" (The Mysteries) once represented the spiritual life of Greece, and were considered for two thousand years and more the appointed means for regeneration through an interior union with the Divine Essence.
However absurd, or even offensive they may seem to us, we should therefore hesitate long before we venture to lay desecrating hands on what others have esteemed holy.
Har Moad, or, The Mountain of the Assembly (1892). O.D. Miller.
".. to ascertain the real character, and to trace the actual origin, of those ideas that formed the theoretical basis of the religious, political, and social institutions of the ancient world.
But a still more definite aim in this direction has been to discover that primitive stratum of conceptions and doctrines which may be regarded as fundamental to the two religions of the Bible, constituting historically the germ of their development." Chapters on: Mosaic and Babylonian Cosmology, The Twelve Stars of Phoenicia, Zodiacal Chronology, etc.
The Great Law. (1899).
A Study Of Religious Origins And Of The Unity Underlying Them. W. Williamson. "The greater part of this work, then, will be found to consist of extracts drawn from the many high authorities whose writings are the chief sources, and in some cases the only sources, of our knowledge about archaic religions. Extracts, too, will be quoted relating to customs of high antiquity.." Chapters on: Birth of Saviours; Death and Resurrection; Solar Symbols; Trinities; Cosmic Origin of Solar Myths, etc.
Brother of the Third Degree.Garver, Will L.(1902)
A cloak and dagger novel which incorporated the mysteries of the path into a moving romantic and coming of age story. Follow the main character make decisions that effect his and others lives. It is a good story that helps explain the process of the spirit.
Another of the first books reccommended to me when I was a new student. Jessika
Restorations of Masonic Geometry and Symbolry Being a Dissertation on the Lost Knowledges of the Lodge by H.P. Bromwell(1905).
Here is the most important work ever written on Masonic Geometry! "This work is not designed to be a history of Freemasonry but occupies an entirely new field, Masonic Geometry and the conformity of the Lodge in its degrees to the natural order of the Universe and its forms and situation to the form of the Earth as to the astronomical lines represented on the terrestrial and celestial globes." Contents: Design of this Work; What is Masonry; What is the Lodge; Government of the Lodge; Geometry; The Three Great Lights; Form and Situation of the Lodge; The 47th Problem of Euclid; The Floor of the Lodge; The Entered Apprentices' Lodge; The Globe; The Fellow Crafts' Lodge; Light; The Master Mason's Lodge; The Royal Arch; The Temple; The Two Great Pillars; The Four Cardinal Points and Circumambulation Lavishly Illustrated! Scarce! Essential for true Masons.
Fragments Of A Faith Forgotten. (1906). G.R.S. Mead.
Some short sketches among the Gnostics, mainly of the first two centuries - a contribution to the study of Christian Origins based on the most recently discovered materials. "I have written so that the man of one language only may read from the first to the last page, without being forced to regret his ignorance of other tongues; for I believe that the subject is of profoundly human interest, and not one of merely academical import... my main object has been to hand on what the earliest Christian philosophers and teachers wrote and thought.
They seem to me to have written many beautiful things, and I, for my part, have learned through them to sense the work of the Great Master in a totally new light."
The Gnosis Of The Light. (1918). F. Lamplugh.
A translation of the ancient Gnostic work based on the Codex Brucianus, brought to England from Upper Egypt, by the famous traveller, Bruce, in 1769 and bequeathed by him to the care of the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The Codex Brucianus is a translation of an ancient Gnostic work from the sixth century and was brought to England from Upper Egypt and donated to the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Gnosis is the power of receiving and understanding direct revelation of God and the transformation of the whole man into a spiritual being by contact with Him. This book is a very beautiful Gnostic work and should be read by anyone interested in experiencing the divine Gnosis of God.
Tertium Organum by P. D. Uspenskii, P. D. Ouspensky (1920)
First Published 1920 and hailed by soem as Ouspensky's greatest work.. The Third Canon of Thought and a Key to the Enigmas of the World. Translated from Russian. Introduction by Claude Bragdon. The Mystery of Time and Space; Shadows and Reality; Occultism and Love; Animated Nature; Voices of the Stones; Mathematics of the Infinite; The Logic of Ecstasy; Mystical Theosophy; Cosmic Consciousness; The New Morality; Birth of the Superman.
Ouspensky's name was mentioned in a sermon. Jessika
Epilegomena To The Study Of Greek Religion. (1921). Jane Ellen Harrison.
"I have tried here to summarize as briefly as possible the results of
many years' work on the origins of Greek Religion, and to indicate the
bearing of these results on religious questions of to-day. For the new
material offered I am largely indebted to the psychological work of
Jung and Freud and to the less well known writings of the greatest of
Russian philosophers Vladimir Soloviov....
The religious impulse is directed... to one end and one only, the
conservation and promotion of life. This end is served in two ways, one
negative, one positive, by the riddance of whatever is conceived to be
hostile and by the enhancement of whatever is conceived as favourable
to life...
This double-edged aspect of ritual comes out rather beautifully
in the bonfire festivals that survive to-day. Leaping over a bonfire,
dancing round it, is still... supposed to bring fertility.. to man and
beasts and crops. In France-Comte a bonfire is lighted on the Eve of
Twelfth Night and while the bonfire blazes the people dance round it
crying "Good Year come back ! Bread and Wine come back!". Here we have
it would seem pure impulsion, the bringing in of good. But behind lurks
expulsion.
The word "bonfire" is not, as used to be held, bon-feu, good
fire, feu de joie; it is bane or bone fire, a fire for burning up old
bones and rubbish of very kind. Purification and the rubbish-heap
first, and only later, because of the splendid blaze, a glow like the
life-giving sun, jollification, fertility, impulsion.
Pagan Regeneration: A Study of Mystery Initiations in the Graeco Roman World by Harold R. Willoughby 1929.
Contents: pagan piety in the Graeco-Roman world; greater mysteries at Eleusis; Dionysian excesses; Orphic reform; regenerative rites of the great mother; death and rebirth in Mithraism; Isiac initiation; new birth experience in Hermeticism; mysticism of Philo; social significance of mystery initiation.
Ancient Prehistoric Wisdom.(1941). Ludwig B. Larsen, author of "Key To The Bible And Heaven".
Revealing the periodic rediscovery of the American continent and the year for the beginning of the Millennium Age. Describing the law and origin of the gods, history, religion and mythology; Chaldean astronomy; the creating, polar fall, tides and deluge of the earth; the evolution of man in ages, and the future existence of the soul of man.
We read in the Preface that : "In September, 1919, the author published "The Key to the Bible and Heaven", a book describing what the Bible actually contains, but this book did not explain the causes of the historic events related in the Bible. It also contained some unavoidable errors which have been corrected in this book.
The object in writing "Ancient Prehistoric Wisdom" is to explain of what the law of heaven consists, as well as to give the reason for the causes and effects of the events recorded in the Bible as the law of creation. The writings known as sacred books contain descriptions of the astronomical law of the heaven and the natural laws of this earth. These writings have in past ages been considered sacred, and are called holy by the races who preserved them.
The contents of these books originated in prehistoric times, centuries before grammatical written language was invented. In transcribing and translating these writings from the primitive records, a personal interpretation of the law was employed. The language used and the method of describing the law is recorded in a peculiar manner and is misleading.
The ancient writers recorded the formation of races, time, space, and the astronomical law as the words of a God spoken to man, which have led students of these writings to infer that there existed a personal God who spoke the words written in these books. It is the law and the misinterpretation of the writings which are described in this book, and that is what in B.C. time, was called ancient wisdom."