Mysticism.

MYSTICISM .

BY MASONIC STUDENT . e IN Mr . Gerard de Nerval's interesting work , " Les Illumines , " we find at page 298 a curious chapter entitled "Du Mysticisme Revolutionnaire , " and at page 303 another , "Les Precurseurs , " or Forerunners . Though these chaptersas in most foreign writersabound in paradoxes and perversities

, , , errors and erratic views , as many of my readers probably have never read them , I translate them for their edification to-clay , the more so as they touch upon Freemasonry . Those of us who have studied the question of Mysticism ancl Hermeticism know at once how many are the mistakes into which Mr . de Nerval falls , but his language is eloquent and worth reading . The practical mind of English Freemasons is not likely to be affected either by sentimental

theories or misapplied crotchets . So let us listen to Mr . G . de Nerval : — " When Catholicism had triumphed decidedly over paganism in the whole of Europe , and constructed thenceforward the feudal edifice which subsisted until the fifteenth century , that is to say , for a thousand years , it could not restrain nor destroy everywhere the spirit of ancient customs , ancl those .

philosophic ideas which had transformed the pagan teaching at the period of the polytheistic reaction set on foot by the Emperor Julian . " [ N . B . He was called the Apostate . " Note currente calamo " by the P . D . ] It was not enough to have overthrown the last asylum of the Grecian philosophy , and of anterior beliefs , by destroying the " Serapheum" of Alexandria ; by dispersing and persecuting the Neo Platonistswho had replaced the

ex-, ternal worship of the Gods , by a spiritualistic doctrine derived from the mysteries of Eleusis and the Egyptian initiations ; it was further needful that the Church should follow up its victory in all the places impregnated with ancient superstitions , and persecution itself was not so powerful as time ancl oblivion for this difficult result .

To occupy ourselves only with France , we acknowledge that the pagan worship long survived the official conversions effected by the change of religion of the Merovingian kings . The respect of the people for certain sacred spots , for the ruins of the temples , and the fragments even of statues , compelled the christian clergy to rebuild the most part of the churches on the foundations of the ancient pagan edifices . Everywhere where they neglected this precautionand especiallin solitary

, y places , the ancient worship continued , as on Mount St . Bernard , where in the last century they honoured the God "Jon" on the spot where the ancient temple of Jupiter once stood , and although the ancient goddess of the Parisians , Isis , had been replaced by St . Genevieve as protectress and patroness , there was still to be seen in the eleventh century an image of Isis , preserved in the park of St . Germain de Pres , piously honoured by the wives of mariners , ancl which fact obli

ged the Archbishop of Paris to have it reduced to powder and thrown into the Seine , A statue of the same goddess some years ago was still at Quenpilly , in Brittany , and received the homage of the population . In a part of Alsace and Franche Comte a worship of the "Mothers" has been preserved , whose figures in "bas relief' are found on many monuments , and who are no other than the great goddesses C ybele , Ceres , and Vesta . It would be too long to refer to the different superstitions that have taken a thousand forms according to the epoch . In the eighteenth century there