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Please do not assume that a book's appearance in 'The Builder' library means it can be used in any manner anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe. The Webmaster I'---~ EDOUAPD 1:,.... -(1 SCHUPE )--------( A Study of the l-----~ Secret History I • l THE GREAT INITIATES A Study of the Secret History of Religions BY ÉDOUARD SCHURÉ Translated from the French by Gloria Rasberry Introduction by Paul M. Allen Authorized English Translation by permission of the Librairie Académique Perrin, Paris, France This book is published in France under the title Les Grands Initiés THE GREAT INITIATES. Copyright © 1961 by Rudolf Steiner Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022. Published simultaneously in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside, Limited, Toronto. The text of this book is printed on 100% recycled paper. _________________________________________________________________________________ Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Schuré, Édouard, 1841-1929. The great initiates. Translation of Les grands initiés. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Religions. I. Title. BL80.S33 1980 291 79-3597 ISBN 0-06-067125-4 _________________________________________________________________________________ 84 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 Dedicated to the Memory of Margherita Albana Mignaty by The Author "The soul is the key to the Universe." "I am convinced that the day will come when psychologists, poets and philosophers will speak the same language, and will understand one another." —Claude Bernard These words were chosen by Édouard Schuré as the motto for the Introduction to the first French edition of this book in 1889. "Édouard Schuré speaks about the 'Great Illuminated,' the Great Initiates, who have looked deeply into the background of things, and from this background have given great impulses for the spiritual development of mankind. He traces the great spiritual deeds of Rama, Krishna, Hermes, Pythagoras and Plato, in order to show the unification of all these impulses in Christ.... The light streaming from Schuré's book enlightens those who wish to be firmly rooted in the spiritual sources from which strength and certainty for modern life can be drawn." -- Rudolf Steiner The Great Initiates presents the perennial wisdom to be found in the lives and accomplishments of figures of extraordinary stature. In the course of his investigations, Schuré covers such topics as the mysterious dawn of pre-historic Europe • the Bhagavad Gita: India's dream of eternity • death and resurrection in ancient Egypt • the light of Osiris • esoteric wisdom of Moses • Orpheus and his lyre: a divine cosmogony • Pythagorean initiation, secrets of numbers, the divine Psyche • Plato: initiate and idealist • the Greek mysteries of Eleusis • the Essenes and their spiritual training • the significance of Christ in human evolution. The aliveness, the freshness, the excitement of discovery that breathes through The Great Initiates well explains its continuing popularity after nearly three- quarters of a century. Born out of Schuré's deep experience and observation, The Great Initiates encompasses long centuries of life on earth and reflects the greatest search of all -- the quest for the spirit. 3 Introduction This first American edition of Édouard Schuré’s The Great Initiates marks another chapter in the eventful history of a remarkable book. According to a recent report, since its first publication in Paris in 1889 it has gone through 220 new editions. It is estimated that it has been purchased by approximately 750,000 persons, and -- counting its translations into many other languages, including Russian -- it has been read by somewhere between three and four million people. Today, without advertising effort beyond a brief listing in the trade catalogue of the Paris publisher, the French edition continues to sell about 3,000 copies annually. Compared with the record of many modern American bestsellers, these figures may not seem particularly impressive. However, the fact that after seventy-two years The Great Initiates is still read and continues to sell in appreciable quantities, shows that many people in various parts of the world still enjoy this book. Perhaps one of the reasons for this continued interest in The Great Initiates is that it is certain to make a very definite impression upon the reader. He may or may not enjoy it, but he will not easily forget it. Readers the world over recall their first meeting with Schuré’s Great Initiates with pleasure and appreciation, even after a lapse of many years. In a certain sense, The Great Initiates is a pioneer work. It was born out of the author’s deep experience and observation of life. It is a protest against what he called "a false idea of truth and progress" current in his time, and in ours as well. It is his constructive answer to "the stagnation, disgust and impotence" resulting from a one-sided view of life, a pernicious evil still at work in human affairs today. The Great Initiates encompasses long centuries of man’s life on earth, and reflects his great search -- the greatest search of all -- the quest for the spirit. The book describes the motivations behind external history, the growth of man’s religious striving, the rise and fall of cultures, and indicates their importance for us today. It reflects the lives and deeds of men of extraordinary stature, "the fire-pillars in the dark pilgrimage of mankind," Carlyle called them. In these pages one witnesses spiritual adventure of a depth and intensity rarely experienced by creative human beings, even in their most exalted moments. This aliveness, this freshness, this excitement of discovery which breathes through The Great Initiates may well explain its continuing popularity after nearly three- quarters of a century. Édouard Schuré was born in the old cathedral city of Strasbourg on January 21, 1841. As a young boy he experienced certain events which, as he described them many years later, "left traces upon my thoughts, to which my memory returns ever and again." The result of these events he called "inner vision, evoked by impressions of the external world." The first of these experiences occurred shortly after the death of his mother, when he and his father visited a resort in Alsace. On the walls of one of the buildings the ten-year-old boy saw a remarkable series of frescoes, depicting the world of undines, sylphs, gnomes and fire-spirits. Before these representations of what men of the Middle Ages called the Elemental Beings, here shown in vivid, wonderful artistic form, the boy was transported, as it were, into another world, the world of creative fantasy. Like a talisman, the pictures awakened the magic forces of wonder in the child’s soul. The artist’s creative fantasy called to the fantasy slumbering within the boy, and the result was a new perception. For, as Carlyle wrote, "Fantasy, being the organ of the Godlike, man thereby -- though based, to all seeming, on the small Visible, -- does nevertheless extend down into the infinite deeps of the Invisible, of which Invisible, indeed, his Life is properly the bodying." 4 From this time, "the infinite deeps of the Invisible" seemed to draw the boy ever and again into the cathedral at Strasbourg. There, in the hush of the crypt, the majesty of the great nave, the glory of the music, the awe-inspiring mystery of the service, the holy calm of the candle-flames, the wreathing fragrance of incense smoke ascending into the dimness, he felt a kind of inner satisfaction, a longing fulfilled.