Apollonius of Tyana, the Philosopher-Reformer of the First Century A.D.Mead, G. R. S. (George Robert Stow)
Religion
Apollonius of Tyana, the Philosopher-Reformer of the First Century A.D.
Mead, G. R. S. (George Robert Stow)
Apollonius, of Tyana; Philosophers -- Greece -- Biography; Philosophy, Ancient -- Oriental influences
The description of a certain hall, however, to which Apollonius had
access, seems to be a garbled version of the interior of the temple. The
roof was dome-shaped, and the ceiling was covered with “sapphire”; in
this blue heaven were models of the heavenly bodies (“those whom they
regard as Gods”) fashioned in gold, as though moving in the ether.
Moreover from the roof were suspended four golden “Iygges” which the
Magi call the “Tongues of the Gods.” These were winged-wheels or spheres
connected with the idea of Adrasteia (or Fate). Their prototypes are
described imperfectly in the Vision of Ezekiel, and the so-called
Hecatine _strophali_ or _spherulæ_ used in magical practices may have
been degenerate descendants of these “living wheels” or spheres of the
vital elements. The subject is one of intense interest, but hopelessly
incapable of treatment in our present age of scepticism and profound
ignorance of the past. The “Gods” who taught our infant humanity were,
according to occult tradition, from a humanity higher than that at
present evolving on our earth. They gave the impulse, and, when the
earth-children were old enough to stand on their own feet, they
withdrew. But the memory of their deeds and a corrupt and degenerate
form of the mysteries they established has ever lingered in the memory
of myth and legend. Seers have caught obscure glimpses of what they
taught and how they taught it, and the tradition of the Mysteries
preserved some memory of it in its symbols and instruments or engines.
The Iygges of the Magi are said to be a relic of this memory.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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