This is an ancient legend whose threads the sages wove in ages gone by — a legend of the legends of the ancients, which pictures the world as the Greater Man, possessed of soul and body, passing through the phases and vicissitudes of the living being; and when it reaches the age of maturity, the magicians and soothsayers take notice and announce to the world the glad tidings of the new event. —
As for man, he in his turn holds the station of the lesser world, in whom the rays of the greater cosmos
are reflected. —
So the bond between them is a matter of exchange and interaction. —
Thus the birthday of man is matched by a new stage among the stages of the world, which has passed from the phase of foundation to the phase of settling and consecration. —
This correspondence is accompanied by an atmosphere of awakening: man's awakening makes him pierce from the seen to what is unseen, and from the lower ideal to the higher ideal.
And the cosmos's awakening makes it move with man and take on his stamp. —
And man gathers up the
properties of the two awakenings and so arrives at the knowledge of the truth. —
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Man, held in the two prisons — the prison of the body and the prison of matter — is forever occupied with wrestling appearances; his weapon is the light of reason and his instruments are certain symbols. —
Among the ancient symbols is a second legend: the allegory of the Platonic cave. —
The sage of Greece says that our case with knowledge is the case of people who have been placed since their childhood in the depths of a cave, and bound with heavy chains so that they can neither rise nor walk nor turn about; their faces have been turned toward the interior of the cave so that they can look only toward their own places, and they see upon the wall the light of a great fire and the
shadows of persons and things passing behind them; and since they have never in their lives seen anything but the shadows, they imagine them to be the things themselves. —
If we release one of them and turn his face suddenly toward the fire, he is dazzled and grows bewildered over his dark station, and believes that true knowledge is the knowledge of the shadows; then he wakes from his stupor and looks at things in the pale light of night, or at their images reflected in the water, until his eyes grow accustomed to the light of day and he is able to look at the things themselves, and then at the sun, the source of all light.
In this connection I recall that the ancient Egyptians used to style the sun the akura of God, that is, the Word; and that the sages of the pagans had secret beliefs whose office it was to unravel all the symbols of the world. —
And the belief prevailed among them that if man could bear the blazing light, he attained to knowledge and became one of the artisans of the One Mind. —