| Small and Great Mysteries |
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The distinction between "small Mysteries" and "great Mysteries" goes back to Greek esotericism, but in reality it is always the same path followed by the man who wants to return to God, to be a part of his Kingdom. They are stages or grades of the same progressive Initiation. The small Mysteries are a preparation for those great, since the purpose of the "small" is only a stage of the initiatic way. The small Mysteries are the preparation for the Mystery of mystical death and of resurrection. The genius of Moses, guided by the wisdom of the Egyptians, outlining the plan of Genesis, has already given, in the myth of Adam and Eve, of the terrestrial Paradise and of the drama of the fall due to the famous fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, with the intervention of the Cherubs armed with flaming swords in defense of the Tree of the Initiatic Life, has already given, we have said, the way to go to the "small" and "great" Mysteries. The small Mysteries synthesize all that which refers to the development, to the perfection of the human state considered in its integrality; traditionally, they designated the restoration of the "primordial state". Generally this is what the various esoteric schools aim at, and it is already a great conquest, but it would be a half-way journey. Much more was, and had to be, the state of Adam-Eve, the archetype of Humanity. If we read again the Mosaic passage of Genesis, 2, 16:17, we would understand better what it means: "Jahve God commanded man: - Of all the trees of the garden you can eat (the fruit), but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you must not eat, because on the day in which you eat, you must certainly die -". The Archetypal Man therefore had to feed also on the fruit, on the juice of the Tree of Life . Here is the fundamental theme of the "great Mysteries"! Adam had to develop into a superhumanity, to be like God, to identify himself with Him by the will of God Himself, but he cut himself off from this possibility. If the minor (small) Mysteries are the restoration of the "primordial state" (or Edenic), the "major (great) Mysteries" can do much more because they relate to the realization of the superhuman state, taking the being from the point in which it has been left by the "small Mysteries". The "great Mysteries" are the taking possession of the superior states of the being: knowledge of what is beyond nature, pure immutable metaphysical knowledge, one in its essence, for its archeosophical character; a taking possession of superhuman states and of the order of the pure spirituality, ably described by Clement of Alexandria in Stromata, V, 11, writing of the Initiation to the epoptate (the state of who no longer reasons, but contemplates God). excerpt from "WHAT THE MINOR AND MAJOR MYSTERIES ARE" from the 4th Booklet |
