Course XXVI - Teaching 1: Legends about the Esoteric Orders

Michael, Chief of the Host of Fire, had purified a Holy Mount amid thunders, lightnings and flames. For centuries, a volcanic and powerful fire shone on this Mountain and, vomiting burning lava and red-hot stones formed an impenetrable circle.
If someone had tried to reach this place, he should walk East through unhealthy, marshy and inhospitable lands. Later he would find a green, uneven earth that softly descended on the shore of a lake of salt waters, immobile and transparent, which behind their meekness would hide the fury unleashed on stormy days.
Further on, an immense slop, a cliff of undetermined bottom, would totally discourage to find a road, a path, to reach the superb volcano standing far away ever crowned with fire and white clouds, which would hide its foot in the depth of the abyss.
After centuries and deluges upon the earth, the planet trembled several times by terrible convulsions. And the calm returned.
A snowy shroud covered the swamps. The salt lake, now dried, became a sandy desert; the cliff became more abrupt and the volcano of the Holy Mountain was apparently dead.
Where were Michael and his radiant hosts? Where his crown, of fire, flame, radiance and death?
The fiery power still was sleeping in the bosom of the Mountain, and even though flames were not visible, you could sense how life, the boiling life, was bubbling.
And one luminous day, oh marvelous day!, when the rainbow rode the winds from East to West, a procession of men in white put their feet for the first time put on those virgin places, never trodden by man.
But… were they really men? Or were Angels? Who were they?
Slim and beardless young men, of sleepy and feverish eyes, were at the head of the procession and walked slowly. A youthful emotion, expressed but still not entirely under control became visible by rapid movements of their heads, in spite of the slow march.
In the middle of the row there were beings more mature. Strong, serious, beautiful men, half-opened eyes and white hands, like the hands of death.
But at the end of this mystical procession, there were old men of white beard, snowy hair floating to the wind; they have just the external appearance of men.
Who could understand their language, a tongue whose words were uttered at the foot of the Mountain, when they had already formed a circle of men?
The old men speak the language of the gods, which just their disciples can understand. They indicate a path in the Mountain; hollows in stones, which should be cells and abodes; inlaid stones in the mount for their seats and sites; nets of eagles; nets of saints.
There was a solemn atmosphere ever announcing life or death. One of those beings held a big sealed book: the Book of the Divine Mother.
At sunset they chanted; music notes of a mystical hymn serenely soared from the earth to heaven, like the Mother’s cry that woke up and faced the eternity. The old men, floating on the air and covered by clouds and radiance, disappeared behind the veils of the night before the eyes of the disciples who stared at the shadows.
This was the Temple, sanctuary and school. They bored through the Mountain like a swarm of bees and entered the mountain. They built a round Temple upon the crater that still was hot, and wrote the Name and Sign of the Mother on the highest peak of the Mountain.
Esoteric teachings and achievements of every one of the disciples of those great Initiates of the first times were written on the walls of those rocky cells.
And when a disciple soared and went to his Master, he was substituted for another disciple in this cell, in the Temple of the Mountain.
How many years passed? How many men dwelt in that lonely place? How many souls reached the summit of the mount and understood the mystery of Mantras?
But a voice went round: Kaor is dead! No more fire on the Mountain. It shall fall tomorrow forever. Those beings marched again to Egypt in solemn procession and white row.
Who would hold the world under control?
The noisy and destructive earthquake that sank Kaor in the abyss or the Song of Eternity chanted by those beings who walked forward, ever looking forward, toward a time to come, toward new men, toward new things: toward realization.
Sea and desert are brothers: they keep relics of past times and the history of lost civilizations. They are like God who hides under his robe marvels of his Presence as he passes through the world.
Strange races of men ever live on seashore or in the wild: they are somewhat savage, somewhat self-absorbed and distrustful of the rest of mortals. They watch over rocks and undulating sandbanks.
A race of men, totally different from all the rest, lived on an area of the desert, which keeps a portion of the lost Atlantis.
They had been worshippers of stone tables, bathed with milk and oil; later they followed the sect of the Prophet. But their true religion was different; to keep a black and square table, that was a memorial of a very ancient esoteric Table.
These men were descendants of the early Masters of the Mountains of Kaor.