Orphic initiation may, according to Ballanche, be summarised in the following manner: “Made subject in the first place to the influence of the elements, man’s own influence must afterwards govern these. Creation is the act of a divine magism which is continuous and eternal. True being resides for man in self-knowledge. Responsibility is for him a conquest and the very penalty of sin is another occasion for victory. All life is founded on death, and palingenesis is the law of reparation. Marriage is the reproduction in humanity of the great cosmogonical mystery. It should be one, as God and Nature are one. It is the unity of the Tree of Life, while debauch is division and death. Astrology is a synthesis, because the Tree of Life is a single tree and because its branches—spread through heaven and bearing flowers of stars—are in correspondence with its roots, which are hidden in earth. The knowledge of the medical and magical virtues resident in plants, metals and bodies endowed with varying degrees of life, is also a synthetic knowledge. The capacities for organisation in their various grades are revealed by a synthesis. The aggregations and affinities of metals, like the vegetative soul of plants and like all powers of assimilation, are also made known by a synthesis.” It has been said that the beautiful is the splendour of the true, and it is therefore to this great light of Orpheus that we must ascribe the perfection of form which was manifested for the first time in Greece. To him also—as to a source—is referable the school of divine Plato, that pagan father of all high Christian philosophy. From him did Pythagoras and the _illuminati_ of Alexandria alike derive their mysteries. Initiation does not suffer vicissitude; it is one and the same, wheresoever we meet with it through the ages. The last disciples of Martines de Pasqually are still the children of Orpheus; but they adore the Realiser of antique philosophy, Who is the incarnate Word of Christians.