magic skill and such Occult phenomena, that the most credulous Occultist of our own times would hesitate to believe them to be true. The Orientalists have found a plank of salvation, while yet publishing and delivering the papyri to the criticism of literary Sadducees: they generally call them “romances of the days of Pharaoh So‐and‐So.” The idea is ingenious, if not absolutely fair. SECTION XXVIII. THE ORIGIN OF THE MYSTERIES. All that is explained in the preceding Sections and a hundredfold more was taught in the Mysteries from time immemorial. If the first appearance of those institutions is a matter of historical tradition with regard to some of the later nations, their origin must certainly be assigned to the time of the Fourth Root Race. The Mysteries were imparted to the elect of that Race when the average Atlantean had begun to fall too deeply into sin to be trusted with the secrets of Nature. Their establishment is attributed in the Secret Works to the King‐Initiates of the divine dynasties, when the “Sons of God” had gradually allowed their country to become Kookarma‐ des (the land of vice). The antiquity of the Mysteries may be inferred from the history of the worship of Hercules in Egypt. This Hercules, according to what the priests told Herodotus, was not Grecian, for he says: Of the Grecian Hercules I could in no part of Egypt procure any knowledge: ... the name was never borrowed by Egypt from Greece.... Hercules, ... as they [the priests] affirm, is one of the twelve (great Gods), who were reproduced from the earlier eight Gods 17,000 years before the year of Amasis. Hercules is of Indian origin, and—his Biblical chronology put aside—Colonel Tod was quite right in his suggestion that he was Balarâma or Baladeva. Now one must read the _Purânas_ with the Esoteric key in one’s hand in order to find out how on almost every page they corroborate the Secret Doctrine. The ancient classical writers so well understood this truth that they unanimously attributed to Asia the origin of Hercules. A section of the Mahâbhârata is devoted to the history of the Hercûla, of which race was Vyasa.... Diodorus has the same legend with some variety. He says: “Hercules was born amongst the Indians and, like the Greeks, they furnish him with a club and lion’s hide.” Both [Krishna and Baladeva] are (lords) of the race (cûla) of Heri (Heri‐cul‐es) of which the Greeks might have made the compound Hercules.(486)